Cenotaph III: The Mausoleum

by Rob Sears

The galaxy has been shattered. A malevolent foe has achieved what the Reapers could not do: eradicate all hope. But there are those that still resist, that push back in the face of futile odds. It will now be up to Shepard and Tali's daughter - Roahn - to figure out a way to restore that hope, unite their lost allies, and pursue their enemy to the universe's very edge.

14. Chapter 14: Surfacing Procedures

"I've long been curious at the mutual desire for individuals and cultures collectively and intrinsically desiring to further their betterment. Pursue an enlightenment, of sorts. Yet enlightenment, by any definition, is an impossible state. We deceive others by formulating stories—carefully crafted lies that mix fantasies to create a semi-plausible reality even though the details defy all belief—into erroneously concluding that such a state can be achieved. Thus, the enlightenment is merely a condition whereupon our actual mind can be tricked into blocking out some form of stimulus. But it is a condition that is a self-inflicted wound, not a rung on a ladder that merely needs to be ascended. Or, merely, a specific ignorance and simultaneous rejection of one's status that could otherwise be reasonably and scientifically explained.

This desire for enlightenment has either spilled over or duplicated itself into several facets of what we know as our civilization. Willful blindness in order to further that progression, a calculated disregard to certain truths. This is not an obscure dimension that is hidden underneath deceptive layers. Sometimes, it is obvious in how we, as a society, conduct our politics, conduct our religion, conduct our relationships, conduct our very lies. Two steps forward, one step back, is the common saying. Is the pattern worth pointing out? To that, I say, no. It is imperative that, for there to be any comprehension to this phenomenon, the oddities must be sought out and observed on one's own recognizance. For the retention on such knowledge will have a far greater effectiveness at taking root if the conclusion can be determined within one's own mind, rather than have the conclusion outlined in front of them."

Final Monograph: Transcriptions of an Augury
Unknown Author, (pg. 71)
Reprinted by permission of Purdue University

---

Atoll Stoa
Conference Room Talat

They stood around the circular table, momentarily drawn to the holo-feeds of the descending enemy fleet that was hurtling their way. The Atoll Stoa, lonely in its empty perch so far away from land, from space, in the middle of this stupid ocean, felt so diminutive as it faced a brutal attack fleet that was in the middle of punching through Vanderpol's atmosphere at this very moment. One blue contact against a swarm of red. Not the sort of odds that would have anyone feel remotely confident, not on this side of such a fight.

The room was still in a state of catastrophe. The civilians on the upper ring level, having now understood that the ship they were on was now in imminent danger of being attacked, all started to panic at once. It rippled across the risers like a tidal wave, a thrumming and excited energy that quickly overtaxed the distraught. Many people were screaming. Some were even scrambling across the rows of fixed seats to get to the exits quicker, having forgotten the fact that they were stuck on this ship and that there was nowhere else for them to go to forestall the seemingly inevitable.

The councilors on the bottom level were also becoming more and more discombobulated, though they had not yet reached such levels of hysteria quite yet. However, some of them, in their trepidation, had resorted to turning around in circles, fighting with themselves not to become a part of the frenzy.

On one side of the room, James, Jack, Cortez, and Traynor formed a ragged quadrilateral formation. Three of the four were now touting armaments—Jack was content to simply get by with her biotics for now. They slowly rotated as one unit, dissuading off any of the Atoll Stoa's guards that had been initially trying to subdue them. Fortunately, no triggers had been pulled during this tense standoff—the contractors for the Synod here were so averse to violence that many of them simply walked away at the sight of a weapon barrel being pointed towards their face. One less thing to worry about on anyone's end.

Cirae was in a state of temporary paralysis, struggling herself to take in the rapidly devolving situation. She had a traitorous raloi politician to her right, a tac-screen showing a stupidly large confederate fleet right in front of her, and her allies making quite the ruckus to her left.

Too many things were vying for her attention, which was why she was slow to detect the rustle of movement from Pry'cor next to her. The raloi had reached inside of one of her dress pockets and had surfaced with a small oblong device clenched in a hand. Cirae, head reeling, almost as if she was drunk, turned a half-second too late. The flashbang grenade popped and sizzled like a tree going up in flames. She closed her eyes just in time, but white magnesium light hammered her eyelids all the same, causing her to loudly gasp in pain as all hearing in her ears was simultaneously brutalized by the stinging pitch that had emitted from the eruption.

When Cirae was able to open her eyes again, she found that parts of the room had been seared to a standstill upon her vision. Goddess, she hoped this was a temporary affliction. She rolled her jaw and groaned loudly, groping her way around the table, her shins continuously colliding from chair to chair.

The barest whisper of a door sliding closed managed to penetrate the whirring void that had otherwise emptied her hearing. Dazedly, Cirae turned to the right and spotted one of the conference room doors cycling itself shut.

Pry'cor. The raloi would rather flee than face her reckoning.

Cirae mumbled several curses, but they all came out as distorted goop to her ears. There was a body of an unconscious guard in front of her—another result of Jack's handiwork. She bent down and relieved him of his sidearm. Forcing her thighs to erupt into a purposeful rhythm, slowly increasing her stride, Cirae staggered her way towards the door, her mind hammering the word run, run, run over and over again. A command. An order.

Well, it was not like she had much success in the past from following anyone else's orders. Might as well be her own voice that issues the proclamations.

The asari had made it into a jog by the time she reached the door and mustered her way through the opening. By that time, the conference room was experiencing difficulties on other fronts.

There were simultaneous eruptions on both levels of the conference room. Four of the doors burst open in clouds of smoke and billowing contrails of sparks. From the hazy void, soldiers in all black armor plating marched forward, weapons at the ready. The circular Bauhaus-inspired chandelier lighting swirled vortexes of tubular halogens upon their polished helmets and chestplates. The rifles they held were strange constructions that seemed rather ramshackle upon first glance—exposed wiring and illegal chipset slots could clearly be glimpsed on the sides of their housings. The wide swaths of black-coated glass mirrored their frightened prey as they plodded into the room, faceless and voices distorted by their radio scramblers.

Dark Horizon. The most exclusive PMC and most personal. Aleph had deep-cover units already in place aboard this ship!

The mercenaries that entered already began shooting at whatever hapless individual came underneath the cold gaze of their sights—civilians, councilors, even Atoll Stoa guards. But what came out of their weapons was not bullets, but streams of thick red columnar energy beams. James heard a faint whine from the guns as their internal mechanisms spooled up, right before the brilliant scintillation of the pulsating lasers surged their way forward. Unlike conventional weapons, the emissions from these rifles were continuous, precise. The shafts of crimson light swept to and fro across the room, leaving scorch marks behind wherever they touched. One such beam narrowly missed where James was standing—his skin felt blistered from the assault.

More guards were streaming in on the ground level—carrying the same strange weaponry. James dropped two of them with his own firearm before the mercs could muster through their guns' wind-up period. Jack helped disperse the rest of a PMC squad with a singularity—once the antagonists were helplessly flailing in the air did she unleash a biotic push that hurled them all into the wall at breakneck speed. Literally, in this case.

James scrambled towards one of the doorways to catch his breath. He jerked a little bit when he saw that others had the same idea. Six Atoll Stoa guards were hunched over here, cowering in this temporary haven, trying to avoid being caught in the crossfire. The marine quickly glanced them over and found that, yes, they all still had their weapons about them.

"Hey!" he shouted at the closest guard. "You guys got comms? Got a line to the main channel?"

One of the guards, a turian, looked hopelessly lost. It took him a second to formulate a response.

"I'm… I'm still reading green on all bands."

James hurriedly nodded. "Good. Don't you think you'd better call for backup?"

The guard blinked, as though he was confounded that he had not thought of this sooner. James noticed that the man's hands were shaking. This must have been the first time he had ever been in a combat scenario.

"Y-Yes. Right. I'll… I'll do just that."

While the turian was stammering into his radio, James snapped his fingers to gain the attention of the rest of the guards. "I'm going back out there. The rest of you, cover me. Try to take out some of the assholes on the upper level so that they don't take potshots at us. Remember—hit the guys in black, the ones with the beam rifles."

A salarian guard poked his head around his comrades, incredulous.

"You're not serious, are you?"

"Why the hell would I resort to jokes at a time like this?" James asked, his face flat. "Besides, shouldn't you guys start earning your pay? You're supposed to protect this ship and the people in it, right?"

"Chain of command's compromised," a human guard interjected. "No one knows whether to fight or flee. Terms of employment never mentioned anything of the likes of this in our contract."

Unbelievable, James resisted the urge to shake his head.

"Look," he sighed, "you do what you want to do, okay? But just know that those guys outside won't give a shit if you're pointing a weapon at them or not. They'll be more than happy to fire at you, regardless of what insignia you've got on your armor. Think about that before you make up your mind."

Without waiting to see the effect of his words upon the guards, James strode back out, making several raking bursts that felled several Dark Horizon troops in the area. The temporarily unaligned guards watched the marine's every move. They saw James and the others out there, refusing to flee, making the most of what they had in the face of nefarious odds. No fear etched upon their expressions. Admirable qualities, ones that they themselves had hoped to have glimpsed upon their own self in reflection.

It became a silent rallying cry, a call to arms for even the most entrenched. More and more Atoll Stoa guards streamed out from the entrances, filing into the room, putting on as brave of a front as they possibly could. They touted their guns, weathering the cavalcade of punishing beams as they started to open fire upon the invading mercenaries. Several of Dark Horizon's shots found their mark, cleaving some of the guards in two. But none of the guards retreated. They remained, rooted in place, trading shots with the best that Aleph had to offer. And while many of them fell amongst the casings of rapidly cooling heat sinks, they all converged upon this room, this central locus for which the fate of the Synod was now hopelessly tangled to.

The Atoll Stoa responded. Waves of bullets, smattering the Dark Horizon forces, emerged as its security forces found their courage, mustering through the inhospitable terror to resurface as a newfound audacity in the face of an invulnerable foe.

A rogue shot by a merc cleaved the conference table in two. It collapsed towards its center. Cortez ran over and upended one side of the newly twain surface, ducking behind it for cover. Traynor joined him after she dispatched a mercenary on the top riser that was lining up a shot with her assault rifle—he fell down to the floor screaming right before he landed on his skull. James and Jack also grouped where Cortez was, but not before James grabbed one of the odd rifles that Dark Horizon had brought in.

"Look at that," Cortez observed as James hefted the rifle for the group to see, noting the confounding tangle of wires that had been sloppily placed around the construction of the weapon. "Thing's got so much energy behind it that it needs an external power source for it to function."

"That's because our current battery cell tech isn't enough to give these things enough juice," Traynor added. "The lasers those guns are firing? That's a magnetohydrodynamic projectile. A stripped down Thanix cannon, essentially."

"Does that mean what I fucking think it means?" Jack barked over the din.

James flinched as another raking burst from Dark Horizon scattered burnt woodchips around his head.

"I believe it does," he said. "Reaper tech. Guess Aleph got a lot more out of his latest acquisition than just another ship."

He then poked his head out from around the shattered remains of the table. Surveying the area.

"Hey," James said as he brought himself back down. He eyed Cortez and Traynor specifically. "You guys remember the Citadel archives?"

"No!" Jack exclaimed behind him. "You guys didn't bring me along back then!"

"Be quiet, you," James shushed, but he did so with a grin, lest he would risk a broken jaw delivered by a rather vengeful girlfriend.

At least, that was what he thought Jack was to him, now.

"I remember," Cortez fiercely nodded. "Hammerhead versus Mako."

"But more importantly…"

"—Pincer maneuver," finished Traynor.

With a nod, they all stood from their cover and proceeded to open fire on the insurgents. It was as if the four had all exploded from both ends of the shattered table at the same time, too locked in their own intense battle trance, staring vengeance in its face. James lifted the strange beam rifle and gave the trigger a tactile pull. There was barely any recoil, which was a strange sensation, but that was quickly replaced by the scorching blast of heat from the weapon's muzzle that felt like he had just wandered too close to a raging inferno. Already sweat was dripping down his face—no wonder Dark Horizon had to use body armor to fire these things.

To James' right, Cortez and Traynor were replicating the same methods, with one of them aiming towards the top level with the other aiming at the lower level. The two of them clenched down on both triggers of their weapons, unleashing continuous streams of bullets in the direction of the Dark Horizon troops, plus sending as many concussive shots as they could towards the mercenaries who had dared venture too close to their position. Meanwhile, Jack had become encased in her own private frenzy, sending punishing walls of pure energy and force hurtling in the direction of the hapless mercs, shattering their bones and smashing them to pieces as she forced space and time to bend to her every whim.

Darting from cover to cover, James was quickly getting used to the mechanics of his appropriated weapon. Short, quick bursts to reduce heat damage to his body—the momentary laser flashes carved blackened gashes through armor and flesh, piercing through bone and meaty organs to flash-fry the internals of whoever was hapless to come into range. The natural twitches of his body made the imperfections in his aim all the more apparent—any subtle shift in his stance would send the hyperheated projectile flicking off into another direction, severing the limbs of several mercenaries in the process. One such trooper dared stick his head above the topmost riser for a shot. James' quick instincts scythed his ignited beam over, which intersected with the trooper's neck and cuased his severed head, still in its helmet, to tumble bloodlessly to the ground.

But James had held down the trigger for too long. The circuitry of the rifle suddenly gave a caustic flash and there was the thick smell of burning plastic. He turned the weapon over and found that he had overheated the electronics for too long. The rifle was ruined. With a curse, he discarded the useless thing and found a more conventional weapon in short order.

The battle could continue.

The parade of red beams from his foes, twinkling like blazing spears, made a spiral configuration in James' eyes. His vision darkened until it was only a distinct little dot of pure clarity. Breathing in long and tight, he cycled his aim of his standardized rifle from merc to merc, waiting only until he saw gentle puffs of bloodmist erupt from the chests his bullets had just penetrated until he could definitively write each one off. In short order, the room quieted, and he could breathe a little easier.

"I think we've bought a little time," Cortez said as he got to his feet, converging at the center of the room.

James frowned after he ejected his spent heat sink. "That's what worries me. The confederates haven't been this sloppy before."

"Maybe they weren't expecting us to be here?" Traynor offered. "They probably thought the only opposition was going to be the personal guard assigned to this ship."

"Regardless of what they did or didn't expect, it won't matter if we don't get this ship out of here. That enemy fleet will be upon us in less than fifteen minutes if we don't move."

Several of the Atoll Stoa's guards were milling about the area now that it had definitively quieted, perhaps wondering how they had managed to fend off the most elite privateers in the galaxy—either that, or they were in shock as they thanked their lucky stars for living to see this moment. James reached out and grabbed the nearest one, jostling the poor man until he had his wits about him.

"I don't have a link to the bridge," James said. "Order the ship to begin surface preparations and make the jump to the nearest relay."

The guard blinked, perhaps half the words having registered upon him.

"On… on… on whose authority… sir?"

James thought for a moment before delivering his answer. "Just mine."

"I… I think we're going to need more than—"

"More than what?" James nearly barked. "I'm trying to save your sorry life and you're arguing with me about protocol? Tell the bridge to take the fuck off now or they'll have to settle for being the cause of everyone's death on this stupid ship. Of course, if the pilots at the helm decide that's still not enough, then they'll have to simply watch in horror as I try to take the reins of this ship to try and lead us all to safety. I can't guarantee that I'll be able to pull it off—never did try to obtain a pilot's license—but I'm sure everyone here will feel a whole lot safer if someone who's actually trained to fly this crate attempts to do so instead of the knucklehead—" he jabbed his own chest with his thumb, "—who would inevitably fuck everything up. I'll let you figure out how to communicate that."

The guard was rapidly nodding in agreement to what James was saying. "Oh, I understand you in full, sir. Just… just so you might know, the engines will require a warm-up period, to extinguish the condensation after being—"

"—Just get the damn ship surfaced and start your preparations as soon as possible!" James snapped. "Hijo de puta, we don't have time for semantics. We need this crate off this planet yesterday. A little haste might be appreciated!"

He left the guard to babble his orders into his comms. The marine was not concerned that his commands had any chance of being rejected—unless the people helming this vessel were in league with Aleph or Dark Horizon, he figured that he would rapidly be alerted to any such change in the situation for him to deal with in a timely manner.

James then beckoned for Jack and the others to form up on him. "Cirae's gone to face against Pry'cor by herself. I'm not about to leave her to her own devices. Esteban, Traynor. Think you guys can hold the fort here?"

Cortez was now sporting one of Dark Horizon's weapons that he now held confidentially. "I believe you can count on us, Vega."

"Never doubted you for a second." He then turned to Jack. "How're you feeling about kicking a certain raloi's ass?"

Jack playfully shrugged. "The ass doesn't matter, so long as I'm doing the kicking."

James smirked at the woman's droll enthusiasm towards violence. It took all of his strength to resist delivering a one-armed hug to Jack, very much taken with her gung-ho attitude and blasé nature towards the rapidly spiraling devolution of order around them. It seemed that, in the face of all that they had endured, she had remained a steadfast constant, an obstinate presence that he could very much rely on.

"Right, that's sorted out, then," James said before he nodded towards Traynor and Cortez. "I'll have my tool linked to yours at all times. Need anything, just give a—"

There was a sudden earsplitting whine as overstressed speakers gave a high-pitched crackle in response to an out-of-range frequency encroaching upon their transmitters. Over the shattered remains of the conference table, a screen quickly scrubbed into view, the image convalescing together to form the craggy visage of someone that James knew from what seemed like eons ago, yet he knew it had only been a matter of mere weeks. Though he knew that no matter what amount of time had passed, the marine intrinsically believed that he would have rather gone the rest of his life without having to see this particular face, either in-person or on a screen, ever again.

"Atoll Stoa, this is Admiral Huston of the SSV Normandy," the rugged and stone-like face said confidentially as they were projected over the ruins of the table like a vehement god. "Our scopes have picked up your attempts to mount a retreat. An inadvisable course of action. My battle fleet has more than enough cannons trained on you right now to evaporate not only your ship, but half the ocean you're sitting in. Power down your systems, so that we might—"

James found that he could not resist. He stepped right in front of the screen, at a point where he knew he would be visible to the man manning the other end of the comms, unable to keep the restrained smile from his face.

"I think we both know that you can save the speech, admiral," he said. "You never were very good at being diplomatic."

"Vega," the word slipped from Huston's mouth like it was a curse. At least James was pleased to see the effect his presence had on the man—his eyes had slightly bulged, his jaw had visibly tightened, and a vein near the admiral's temple had just begun to pulsate. "I should have known that you had survived your ordeal on the Morningtide."

"Such little faith, Huston? I'm disappointed. But then again, I always did have a knack for letting you down when it counted."

There was silence on the other end as Huston glowered.

"See you've got yourself a rather nice ship, there," he continued, taking care to keep his tone frustratingly disinterested. "Not bad. A bit restrained for someone like you, wouldn't you say, Huston? You were always more partial being at the helm of a dreadnought."

Huston's face cracked into a self-satisfied smirk.

"Change of the times, Vega. As a warship, the Normandy's advantages are numerous. As a symbol, even more so."

"As an antique, you mean. Wasn't its last berth in a museum?"

Huston held up a hand to his viewing lens. "Enough quips from you. You're in no position to stall or negotiate, so I'll tell you how lenient I'm willing to be and that will be the best offer you'll ever get today. You will signal your vessel's full and unconditional surrender else we will rain down upon it with fire and fury. Check your ladar returns and you will see that we have you targeted on several shipboard computers. We only need to fire one plasma torpedo to turn your ship into glowing slag."

"Yeah," James sighed. "Ever the master negotiator, admiral."

A thought came to mind—James had to hold up a hand to hide his reactionary smile. Oh, he was going to burn in hell for this, but opportunities to excoriate Huston were few and far between.

He waggled a finger towards the screen. Mischievous. "God, you know… I wish I could've seen you prostrate yourself before Aleph. Just… the very mental image of you getting down on your knees, lips puckered like you're about to blow him, is almost beyond belief yet I know that you must have done it. Why else would you be his lap dog now?"

The effect that James' words was having on Huston was electric. No one had ever dared speak to Huston in such a fashion and yet here was this crass marine doing so with nonchalance. It was plainly obvious that if the two of them had been in the same room together, Huston would have already performed a crazed leap in an attempt to strangle his former subordinate.

Huston's head barely shook back and forth, a sign that James had touched a nerve. "You never stopped being a naïve son of a bitch, Vega. Maybe it never occurred to you that avoiding the most collateral damage could be considered a valiant goal. Or how about safeguarding the most human lives? Do you think your insurrectionary attitude might pay off in the long run? The more conflict you create, the further away from peace we get. There is a game we play in our soldierly role, Vega. Not once have you ever expressed interest in playing it."

"Maybe I was never interested in whoring myself out," James offered coldly.

There was a beat of silence as Huston ground his lower jaw.

"You know the stakes. You have my terms. The Normandy and Ministry will be on top of your position in mere minutes. Think about how you—"

James twitched once as Jack's pistol fired, obliterating the projection bulb in a spray of plastic and glass. The screen jerked in a spasmic dance for a half-second before it winked out entirely. He looked over to find the tattooed woman somberly staring at him, her arm still rigidly extended with her still-cold pistol pointing outward.

"That discussion wasn't doing you any favors," she told him.

The marine nodded and slowly let out a breath that he had not realized he had been holding, the sensation like a fist unclenching just over his heart.

"Thought I had gotten over seeing his face," he said before he softly smiled at Jack. "Thanks for that."

Traynor now came back over to him once she saw that his talk with Huston had ended, her face ashen. She held a datapad in one hand, currently set to a mini-map of the operating area.

"James, surfacing preparations are proceeding on time," she said, "but there's a problem."

James' eyelids felt thick. He almost reached up to rub them. "There always is," he muttered.

"We're now picking up shuttles ahead of the Normandy and Ministry. We've got boarding parties incoming."

The man gave a frown, slowly starting to get it. "The hell is Huston sending troops down here if he's got us targeted from orbit? Unless he was bluffing when he said his fleet could turn us into a lump of slag. Or perhaps he just said that to distract us. One pulverized ship doesn't suffice as a message to the resistance forces."

"But capturing the leadership for a public execution just might," Jack added, also understanding.

"If that's what they're attempting to do."

"Whatever the reason," Traynor said, "we can't jump to FTL until we get the Atoll Stoa out of the sea. You need to buy us time to get the engines warmed up!"

There was the sort of fostered instinct between James and Jack that seemed to make its presence more frequently known through their shared stares. They were tiny movements, fleeting flashes of eye contact, but nearly imperceptible hints that they were on the same wavelength. James lifted his reclaimed rifle an inch higher. The aura around Jack's frame seemed to glow a little brighter. Both knew what they had to do.

"What the hell," James grumbled as he made an abrupt about-face towards the door, Jack matching his every step beside him. "We were heading topside anyway. Though just once, I wish these guys would make things easy for us."

Jack blew a raspberry. "That's why you're the dreamer out of the two of us."

---

Cirae's lungs burned as she sprinted down the now-empty hallways of the Atoll Stoa, the diminutive form of the fleeing raloi several dozen meters in front of her, but still barely within her line of sight. Proximity-sensors for advertising boards activated as she ran past billowing screens with their neon lights and their loud jingles, consistently berating the asari for being in a rush and encouraging her to buy, buy, buy! But the adrenaline that thickly pounded through her head made such trifles easy to ignore. All she could concentrate on was the endless rhythm of her feet finding solid footing, her arms moving in opposite beat of her legs, and her breath maintaining an even tempo as she could feel her heart thump solidly against her ribcage.

Out the windows, Cirae noticed that instead of the dull blue glow that had emanated from being underwater, choppy gray waves and low-hanging silver clouds with smooth underbellies could now be glimpsed as the transparent surface sluiced heavily with a deluge of liquid down their fronts. They had found the surface. Was that a good thing?

Pry'cor, up ahead, was not built for such fierce stretches of running, nor did she have the proper footwear for her taloned feet to find purchase—she was constantly slipping on the polished floors as she struggled along her escape route. Cirae, in contrast, had been wearing a sleek bodysuit underneath her politician's garb in addition to streamlined combat boots. The asari looked like a silken predator, cat-like and nimble, as she seemed to effortlessly close the distance, her military training refusing to be forgotten.

At times, Pry'cor would whip around and take a few random shots at Cirae with a pistol she had managed to snatch during the chaos in the conference room. Upon seeing the flashes, Cirae would either duck into a nearby doorway or quickly summon a barrier for the incoming bullets to harmlessly spark off of. It had the effect of slowing the asari's charge down a bit, but the raloi was also running out of clips.

Abruptly, Pry'cor whipped around a corner past a glass-lined marketplace for designer clothing, heading into a hallway with five-meter ceilings. Cirae altered her own trajectory to take the turn in a wide arc, vaulting over a bench as she did so.

She skidded to a stop—dead end. Outraged, she whirled her head about, looking for the cranny that tricky raloi had undoubtedly made it to.

Cirae found what she was looking for in a shadowed crevasse. A puddle of water had splattered the ground here, but there were no pipes above where the water had come from. There wasn't a ceiling at all, actually. Craning her neck, the asari found a painted ladder bolted onto the side of the wall, leading up to where a simmering pearl ray gently wafted down like a spotlight.

A hatch to the top of the ship.

There was a rattling sound directly from the ladder, causing Cirae to jump. She cautiously approached so that she could look directly up the shaft. Pry'cor was fumbling her way up the rungs, her feet continuing to skate upon the slick beams. A raloi, like an elcor, was apparently not built with climbing in mind.

The asari clenched a fist, preparing to make a biotic strike, but Pry'cor had noticed the asari's presence below. With a screech, the avian-like alien held onto one of the rungs with one hand, her feet momentarily kicking out into empty space, but with her other limb, grabbed at the pistol that had been holstered on her belt. She unleashed three heavy shots—Cirae jerked herself backwards to avoid being hit.

"You're even more deluded than I thought if you figured I was going to give up to you!" she heard the raloi roar from above.

"When did I say I wanted you to give up?!" Cirae shouted back. She waited ten seconds before she gave a quick peek back up the tube—Pry'cor had made it outside, the circle of open air some fifteen meters away looking strangely tantalizing.

Now, Cirae had doubts about tackling the ladder so soon after the raloi had just finished ascending, but she forced herself to put such worries aside. The way she saw it, Pry'cor was so harried and under so much pressure that she could not possibly be thinking straight—a more patient person would simply loiter by the exit to the hatch so that they could simply aim straight down and plug away at any moron trapped on the ladder with no form of cover to utilize. But Pry'cor was probably far from patient right now. Escape would be first and foremost on her mind, not stopping Cirae.

Grunting, the asari continued to rise.

The first breath of actual open air—air that had not been processed through a recycler after being reused and rebreathed so many countless times—felt almost gelatinous to inhale. The strong taste of the sea came immediately after. Brine and salt. Her eyeballs watered instinctively, almost as if they could taste it, too.

A quick spray of foam and water then coated her, caused by the waves lapping against the half-submerged ship. Cold and wet. Wind tugged at her frame with a low howl, threatening to seep down her vacuum-sealed collar. A fine drizzle seeped from the sky. She shivered.

Cirae's fingers groped at wet metal, the surface sopping and nearly mirror-like as it glistened from the sea water upon it. There seemed to be two horizons off in the distance—the rough ore-colored seas and the heavy clouds converging towards a thin pale line where the storm front was breaking. The combined noise from the water and the wind acting in their symphonic dissonance was nearly deafening, the sound like a never-ending roar from an unruly mob.

Quickly, she extricated herself from the hatchway, now fully perched upon the top of the Atoll Stoa. The four towering engine columns on all corners of the ship were billowing scalding clouds of steam, sending periodic heat waves scorching across the deck. The ship beneath Cirae's boots was trembling as it struggled to rise.

Past a forest of metal transmission vanes, Cirae glimpsed the fleeing form of Pry'cor skirting her way down the curvature of the ship. Instinctively, the asari growled. Oh no, you don't.

Fusing her brow together in a look of intense concentration, Cirae stepped forward and made a swipe parallel to the ground, sending a scythe of biotic energy swerving from her fingertips. The resulting force swept forward like the cut of a sword, bisecting many of the transmission vanes as they failed to impede its progression. Pry'cor turned at the last moment, perhaps to line up another shot, and was rewarded when Cirae's attack caught her full-on in the chest. She gave a whumpf! in surprise as the breath left her lungs and was propelled backwards along the deck several feet, sliding further along as her waterlogged clothes failed to provide enough friction upon the drenched starship steel.

Cirae headed towards the downed raloi, but Pry'cor was far from out of the fight. The feathered alien screamed something untranslatable—a curse, was the asari's best guess—and suddenly she was back up on her feet, a submachine gun now in hand. Pry'cor was not the best-trained shot in the galaxy, so she did not know that holding down the trigger of an automatic weapon was more of a detriment than it was an advantage. The first few shots in Cirae's direction smacked the ground to her left, but the rest of the shots went high. The asari could not help but smirk. The weapon the raloi was using was a cheap model—the rounds it was using were standard and it had no tactical targeting software to otherwise compensate for range deflection. Then again, Pry'cor had a weapon and she did not. That meant she needed to use careful tactics.

Enraged, Pry'cor now used both hands to grip her weapon so that she could sweep it to and fro in several wide arcs. Cirae actually had to dodge these shots—she dropped and slid down the slight curve of the ship on her side, the seawater-soaked deck making her trajectory quite easy. The bullets rippled the air as they passed harmlessly over her head. Self-oxidizing gel from the rounds the raloi was spitting out left several small fires in their wake as Pry'cor failed to lead the moving asari through her gunsights. It actually looked like the asari was leaving behind a trail of fire as she slid.

As soon as she felt her boots hitting a less inclined part of the ship, Cirae was bolting at a run at a ninety-degree angle to Pry'cor's path. The raloi, now frantic, ejected a spent clip as the slide port abruptly locked open. That gave Cirae all the time she needed.

The asari bent. She channeled a small percentage of her biotic reserves into the muscles of her thighs. When she pushed off to make a leap a dozen meters into the air, Cirae's expression changed not a whit, though she did manage to see, to her satisfaction, that Pry'cor looked particularly astonished down below. The raloi threw herself to the side just in time before Cirae slammed back down, a large shockwave radiating from where she landed, the radius missing Pry'cor by inches.

Feet kicking out, desperate to stand back up, Pry'cor lifted her submachine gun, finger slipping upon the trigger. She had maybe got four rounds off, the burst cleanly missing the asari by about a foot, before Cirae abruptly spun and caught the weapon with a backwards heel kick. The submachine gun, torn from the raloi's hands, bounced off the deck and landed into the ocean. With a cry, Pry'cor momentarily scrambled away on all fours, the feathers at the back of her neck standing on end, twitching like prehistoric reptile's frill. A splash of white sea foam sprayed over this part of the deck, beading upon the raloi's beak and Cirae's face.

With a trilling thrum, Pry'cor shook her wrists once and two knives appeared in her hands. She bent her knees, adopting a defensive posture. Cirae realized that her quarry had appeared to have ceased running, for now, and stopped where she was.

The asari narrowed her eyes, breathing deeply while seawater dripped from her lips. Pry'cor looked similarly fatigued, but she was the one to laugh first.

"Spectacular," the raloi praised in between swift gulps of air. "You continue to impress, Cirae."

Disgusted, the asari sighed. "Sorry to say the feeling isn't mutual."

"It doesn't have to be like this. You can find a nice place to hide, save your own skin. You don't owe any allegiance to those people down on this ship. They're not worth dying for."

It was almost bizarre to Cirae how she had initially been starry-eyed during her first meeting with the raloi and now she had thrown off the blindfold to view her now as the pathetic wretch that she was. The opportunistic would step over anyone to get what they wanted. Cirae's only regret was that she had been so numb, thinking that there would be many more idealists like her in the wake of Aleph's devastation.

Now, she vowed, she would never make that mistake again.

Her entire body taut, it was now Cirae's turn to laugh. "Again, you presume wrongly. It was not the people down here that I cared about. You're thinking in the wrong direction."

The amethyst eyes of the raloi seemed to turn to diamond as she realized that she could not halt the immovable will of the asari. With a high-pitched scream, knives glittering in her fists, she lunged towards Cirae.

"Either way, you're not leaving!"

With a powerful step forward, Pry'cor's shoulders shifted as she simultaneously flipped one of the knives in her hand, now holding it by the blade. She cocked her arm and hurled the sharpened metal right at Cirae's face! But the asari, eyes having tracked the projectile, was just as quick. She raised her own hand, a sphere of empyrean energy circling her fist—the knife bounced off the orb and skittered off the deck.

The raloi momentarily stalled, looking upon the asari in shock, as if she had made a terrible miscalculation. Dissuading such feelings, Pry'cor spat another curse and hurled her other knife, this time underhand. Cirae batted that one away, too.

The air was filled with the sound of bouncing metal on top of the thundering churn of the waves and the prophetic roaring of the heavens above her. Pry'cor scrambled at her back and came up with more knives. She threw them at Cirae, rapid-fire, who proceeded to knock every one off their intended path. A few sparks were thrown up as the wayward and orphaned blades hit the deck hard.

Desperate, Pry'cor then shifted herself into a side profile and lunged forward in a powerful stab. Cirae was too slow on the uptake and tried to backpedal, but there was a long singing note, followed by a burning line of fire across her forearm. The combatants broke apart. Cirae looked down at herself, finding that her left arm was already half-soaked with her blood, red spatters messily streaming down the sides of the ship as the droplets fell between her feet from the deep cut at her arm. She clenched her hand—still good. But that gave the emboldened raloi all the more reason to press her newfound advantage. Pry'cor treaded forward, weapons trained to prepare a scissor-like strike.

"Last chance to—"

"Shut the fuck up!" Cirae spat.

Avian eyes narrowing in disgruntlement, Pry'cor gave a hearty growl as she darted forward, hoping to skewer the asari on her blades. She stutter-stepped before she suddenly switched stances, now skirting forward to deliver a perfect thrust to her foe's beating heart.

Cirae saw the deep metallic point of the knife focus in upon her body—she slithered in a singular breath, feeling like she had dipped herself in a cleansing bath. Feeling the cosmic will of the galaxy. Right before the etched tip was about to pierce skin, Cirae took a single step backwards but gave a downwards chop towards the oncoming weapon, dark energy reverberating around her rigid hand. Pry'cor screamed as the biotically charged blow knocked the knife from her hand—it shot down so fast that it actually embedded itself into the hull of the Atoll Stoa!

Pry'cor flipped her head upward, soggy feathers flopping around her gaping expression. She locked eyes with the asari, finding no forgiveness there. And no fear.

Savagely, the raloi then quickly flipped her remaining knife in her hand and hurled the serrated blade towards the asari's face, a move made out of sheer panic. Utterly calm, Cirae whipped up her other hand, and willed a circular section of empty space to reverse its gravitational pull right in front of her. The skybound knife hit the rippling void and suddenly bounced back towards its sender! Pry'cor ducked the spinning blade, her feathers whipping contrails of liquid as she made to get out of the projectile's way, but a quick line of red suddenly appeared upon her left triceps. Sharp metal splitting apart flesh. A spit of dark fluid spattered the ground at the raloi's feet.

In the moment that Pry'cor looked down to consider her wound, features stretched in astonishment, Cirae surged forward, blistering energies shooting out from her palms. A pillar of azure power planted itself into Pry'cor's stomach, propelling the raloi off her feet and off the edge of the ship. In the moment before she dropped out of sight, Cirae was able to meet the surprised Pry'cor's eyes, but what intrigued the asari the most was that the raloi did not seem as frightened as she expected. No, there was almost a serenity that had crystallized within the alien's eyes. No fear of death, perhaps? Either way, the moment passed in less than a second, and soon Ciare was eyeing the empty gray horizon before her, steam from the belching engines nearly encapsulating her as the winds shifted. She held up a hand to protect her eyes from the oncoming steam clouds as she soon found herself surrounded by the boiling hot mist.

With the sound of the waves to serenade her, Cirae gave a gasp as she was allowed to relax. Biotics were not effortless motions, even to an asari. It felt like something had drained from her—not like it was her body that was affected, but her very cells. The fatigue seemed to be hereditary, making every part of her weaker. The faintest hint of a headache was cropping up near her temples, threatening to build to a reverberating pain. The remembrance of discomfort then drew her gaze back down. Her left hand had nearly turned maroon from the blood that had dripped from her still dribbling wound—she then commanded her bodysuit to dispense a careful dose of medi-gel to the area. There was a faint stinging sensation as her skin knotted itself together, but by the time it had finished, the cut had finally clotted. Squeezing her fingers together, slippery from blood, Cirae allowed a pained gasp to burst from her throat. An alleviating action.

As the fog then cleared, Cirae realized that the noises from the ocean had been drowned out by the whine of a nearby craft. A Kodiak shuttle now hovered next to the side of the Atoll Stoa, having risen from where it had been previously hidden belowdecks. An unfamiliar logo had been emblazoned upon the side. Both gullwing doors were open, allowing Cirae to sourly perceive that a cadre of black-armored soldiers were seated inside the craft… along with Pry'cor, was provided a sardonic wave towards the asari as the shuttle began to ascend.

"Damn," was all Cirae could hoarsely cough out as she watched the Kodiak disappear above the cloud layer. "You'll have another demonstration soon, Pry'cor. Just you wait."

The asari looked down and noticed that her omni-tool, set to silent, was winking frantically as the comms were currently chaotic with chatter from the Atoll Stoa's crew. She thumbed the control to switch it on, wincing as a cascade of voices surged in all at once.

"—Reading five marks at four-one-dash-four-nine—"

"—engine temperature steadily rising. Five minutes and counting to dust-off—"

"—check on housing leakage. Green on all boards. Running within parameters—"

Gritting her teeth, Cirae set the volume down to background levels. There were other things she needed to concentrate on. As evidenced when the very air seemed to split apart, a low void of pressure now rumbling in the deep recesses of her ears. Something drew her gaze to the sky. An abysmal shadow, dark enough to even immerse the clouds in a pitiful wealth of blackness, hurtled downward at terrifying speeds, like a tremendous meteor about to purge this world in one fateful blow.

But the object was travelling too slow for it to be a spacebound piece of flaming rock. For although it was more than two kilometers tall, there were traces of ruby-red maneuvering jets flickering around the sides of what Cirae could see was a massive vessel, slowing its descent before it could complete its planetfall. Ministry, its multitude of arms spread wide apart, impacted squarely into the center of the bay, a massive wall of water flaring around its body as the ocean around it billowed up to its height, white and spasmatic. The Reaper was far enough for the tidal wave to lose half its energy before it crashed into the Atoll Stoa, but Cirae was nearly thrown off her feet regardless, the ship heavily rocking as it inclined several degrees from the water displacement.

"Oh, fuck me," she muttered to herself as she hunkered down low, trying to keep her center of gravity as close to the ship as possible so as not to lose her footing.

The hurtling low roar of approaching engines snapped Cirae's attention away from the distant Reaper. Five shuttles, painted with the same strange markings as the one that had picked up Pry'cor, were now on an approach vector, skimming just above the gray-capped waves. They maneuvered their way over the Atoll Stoa, their hatches opening to allow their occupants to jump free.

Twenty Dark Horizon troops hurtled towards the ground, the flares in their boots activating just meters above the deck, cushioning their descent. Cirae gave a lurch as she took stock of the odds. She had seen the common foot-soldiers of the elite outfit before, but these were of a different breed entirely. A new make. They were humanoid but were so large and bulky she nearly mistook them for mechs. The shoulder pads of these new arrivals were gigantic—curvaceous and bubble-shaped—with a small turret bolted onto their rightmost one. Rainwater hissed as it met an invisible barrier several inches from the tops of their armor, an indication that the shoulder pads doubled as shield generators. High-powered ones, at that. The serrated gaze of their orange-slit helmets delivered reptilian stares towards their hapless prey, amplifying their menace.

The battle group turned to face the asari. Their hands were clutching at large machine guns that were so heavy they needed to be strapped to their thighs. A caustic blue glow rippled from the barrels of the weapons. Plasma weaponry. Dark Horizon had brought its heavy hitters out to play.

More like its gladiators.

The asari dove into a slide as the entire air seemed to rattle with the continuous chains of packed particle beams. Piercing blue beams simmered like precious crystals all around her, hurled in her direction by the massive machine guns and the auto-personnel turrets the Gladiators were donning. She was still without a weapon, but her biotics had recharged to the point where she could use them at will again.

Cirae pushed out a hand behind her, giving a subtle thrust to her slide, adding to her overall velocity. The Dark Horizon heavies tried to track her trajectory, but even their automated software had trouble trying to discern her diminutive form in all this elemental chaos.

She closed her eyes, listening to the deep energies of the universe singing in her ears.

Then she opened them again.

The asari was now seriously close to one of the Gladiators, who was bent in a combat stance, trying to pulverize his target into bits of cooked meat as his machine gun jackhammered away. With a sigh, Cirae tapped a foot on the deck, altering her slide so that it took her body into a spin. She used the added dimension to give her resulting swipe a little extra velocity. This particular blow zoomed just centimeters over the deck and caught the shins of the Gladiator, bringing him down with a howl.

Yes! Cirae thought, but forced herself to keep calm. This wasn't over.

She then bent her knee before she gave her foot a firm plant upon the curvaceous hull of the Atoll Stoa, sending her in a short leap into the air, just over the merc she had downed. The asari curled her hand into a fist and sent a decisive biotic thrust towards the man, emanating in a pylon of absolute cosmic force that hurtled downward in less than a second. Her blow had been well placed—it crashed in between the gap of the merc's helmet and collar plate, right on his neck. There was a sickening series of crackles and the man fell still almost immediately. A heartbeat later, Cirae's leap had ended and she embarked into a low crouch to catch her breath.

One down.

Her hopes fell as Cirae remembered that there were at least nineteen more mercenaries that she still needed to dispatch. She bit back a murmured groan. This was going to be a long day.

Feeding more biotic energy into her body, Cirae suddenly leapt off at a short burst, momentarily reaching a speed of one hundred and eighty kilometers per hour as she appeared to phase through time and existence, manifesting herself into a comet-like streak. Her charge met the front of another Gladiator, though she had thrown up a barrier upon her shoulder so that she would not feel the impact. The man she had just run into, though, did not share the same fate as he now fell onto his back, the armor around his chest cavity now completely caved in with a harsh sucking sound.

There was a simultaneous whirring noise as the rest of the heavies turned in Cirae's direction. Snarling, the asari hurled herself towards the next one, ripping a machine gun out of the hands of another Gladiator and bashing them in the head with it so hard that their helmet cracked. She then tossed the ruined remains of the weapon to a second merc, who automatically tracked the incoming projectile instead of the thrower, leaving him open for Cirae to send another biotic push in their direction, pushing them clean off the ship.

The rest of the Gladiators were now rallying, half of them trying to put the asari squarely in their sights while the other half moved towards one of the engine columns, attempting to disable it. More rainwater skirted over the deck, half-drenching the combatants and causing a dull filter to sift its way across the ship. A nearby Gladiator's mag-boots momentarily failed from the negative friction and he stumbled. The asari seized her chance. Cirae used a complex tri-blast formation to pull the armored denizen towards her while, at the same time, she swept her left arm in an uppercut-formation, completely turning the Gladiator head over heels for a split-second, right before she slammed her right arm down in a hammer-blow, conjuring a mallet of overwhelming force that pummeled the Gladiator onto the deck, completely snapping his spine.

The dead man slid past her without a sound.

One of the Gladiators, in desperation, primed a grenade and threw it. It rolled near Cirae's foot and detonated. The asari rode the explosion, using another biotically-charged jump to flip through the air to land upright between a pair of Gladiators. They had been so busy concentrating on where the asari had been that the failed to realize where she was now. Two blindingly fast jabs to the sides of their ribcages pushed in metal and plastic through their fibrous jumpsuits and into their bodies, their crushed bones piercing vital organs. Blood gushed from the brutal punctures and both mercenaries dropped with gurgled cries.

Fingertips humming with energy, Cirae spun. A phalanx of the remaining mercenaries had lined themselves up, bringing a battle cruisers' worth of armaments all directed upon her position. Cirae sighed. There was nowhere for her to go.

"Well," she grumbled, "it was fun while it—"

A thunderbolt rained down as though as the heavens had deposited it, but lightning had not been the cause. A massive explosion, red-tinged and veined with thick chunks of smoke, appeared in the middle of the Dark Horizon formation like a second sun, completely consuming every last member whole.

The blossoming fireball soon dissipated, leaving behind a singular shadowed form in its midst. The figure then strolled through the haze, the somewhat bemused but all-too-pleased face of James Vega cutting a path through the smoke and the rain, a gently wisping rocket launcher cradled in his hands.

Cirae finally sagged, doubling over to catch her breath. "You either have the most impeccable timing, or the most dramatic," she coughed to the approaching human.

"You're certainly welcome," James said. "Sorry it took us a bit to get up here."

"I can't argue with the results. Where'd you get the rocket launcher?"

"Borrowed it."

Cirae narrowed her eyes. "I see. I take it the owner didn't hand it over willingly?"

"We might've had a bit of a disagreement," James considered, his voice rising slightly in pitch. "Suffice to say that they won't be needing it anymore."

"There were more headed towards the engines. There another rocket in that tube for you to put to good use?"

"Two more salvos, but I doubt it'll be necessary. Jack seems to have it all covered, from what I can tell."

Truthfully, Cirae had forgotten about the other biotic and turned in the direction of what she had initially assumed to be thunder. She could easily pick out the strobing streams of plasma as the remainder of the Dark Horizon Gladiators were desperately trying to hit the blur that was Jack. The woman had carved a path into the middle of the mercenary pack, shielding herself from any indiscriminate fire. She then proceeded to let loose with a series of singularities, flares, pushes, and pulls, all combining to form a hurricane of pure biotic force in the grandest display of shock and awe she could muster. Bodies were hurled this way and that, their armor plates shattering from the brute force. The mangled remains of weaponry flew into the air, along with the occasional severed limb.

In less than half a minute, Jack stood victorious amongst a pile of dead and dispersed mercenaries. She wiped her chin, tired eyes beginning to lose some of their luster. James and Cirae ran over to assist the tired woman, who was now staggering like her blood sugar had just experienced an alarming nosedive.

"You certainly aren't one for half-measures," Cirae praised as she took one of Jack's arms.

The human woman managed a strangled smile. "I was… never good at pacing myself."

There was a strong pulsation underneath their feet. The three of them froze for a split-second on the deck. They looked up towards the engine columns and found that, instead of puffy white columns of steam, transparent waves of intense heat were being backlit by a blood-orange-like glow, appearing almost crystalline in its shape.

"Engines are warm," James said. "We need to get to the hatch."

The three of them scrambled along the length of the hull, their ears now starting to pop as they realized that the Atoll Stoa had finally left the ocean and was now making its ascent to the clouds. They did not have very long. In moments, they were all drenched in condensation, the brutal fog whirling around them. They made it to the open hatch—James made sure that Jack was the first to enter, followed by Cirae. He then quickly thrust himself into the shaft and entered the command code to close the hatch door. There was a rush of pressurized air—their ears popped again as the atmosphere in the airlock returned to normal levels.

"But what about that Reaper?" Cirae was saying as they extracted themselves from the airlock, finding themselves back in the expansive halls of the Atoll Stoa.

Next to her, James just shrugged.

"It led the fleet's charge and missed completely. Unlucky—it left us an opening in the process. You know the saying? Gift horses, and all that…"

Blankly, Cirae's expression remained frozen. "I don't get your reference."

---

The contoured and sectioned shape of the Atoll Stoa looked like a graceful marine predator leaping from its oceanic perch, seemingly defying its natural arc of returning to the place from whence it came. It lifted away from the planet, fire streaming from all four engines, massive waterfalls cascading from its sides as the pockets of trapped oceanwater were shunted away from the center of the vessel. The power in those four engines was deceptive—they had been built by the finest turian aerospace company on Palaven—and could easily propel the several-hundred-thousand-ton vessel out of a buoyant medium and out into the reaches of space.

Rocketing away, the Atoll Stoa pushed through the towering anvils of a cumulonimbus system and punched out the other side, leaving a massive hole in the clouds behind it. Several thousand miles away, the incoming confederate fleet appeared to wheel in place, realizing that their prey was escaping! But it was too late for them to do anything, even as they fired away a few torpedoes in vain. The former cruise liner had left the lingering reaches of the stratosphere and had now found itself gripped in the dark clutches of outer space. Along its hull, what seawater remained clinging upon it had now frozen completely sold, occasionally breaking away in frosted leafs a dozen yards long to drift in vacuum.

The ship took a few seconds to ensure that it was comfortably away from the gravitational pull of Vanderpol. The magnificent and violent glow from the engines then surged a brilliant purple, a ring of pure white flaring from each rounded emitter.

There was then a flexing of light and reality as the Atoll Stoa jumped to FTL, leaving the space it had just occupied completely absent of matter.

---

SSV Normandy

Just a few miles above the surface of Vanderpol, Admiral Huston fought to contain the sinking feeling in his stomach as he turned away from the main display of the CIC, where an expansive representation of the planet had been scanned into existence by phased-array lasers. Until just a few seconds ago, a contact for the Atoll Stoa had been patiently brimming upon the Normandy's scopes. That was no longer the case—the only icons on the tac-map now were all friendlies.

He took in a breath and began the short descent down the steps that automatically gave him a few feet of height over his subordinates. He headed straight ahead, where the Aeronaut was watching him plaintively, the cyborg's hands clasped behind his back, his helmet keeping him expressionless. Huston's own face betrayed nothing, but he was resenting how much harder he was having to work to guard his true feelings around this disgusting creature.

"A setback," Huston assured. "We've merely prolonged what we know is the inevitable."

The Aeronaut tilted his head. "Have we, now?"

Huston knew that the Aeronaut could see right through him. "Attempting to capture the crew alive was a tactical error, I'll admit. There were factors on board the Atoll Stoa that we couldn't have foreseen. No doubt Volar will be able to explain this in her report when we debrief her."

"Of which I will have to explain in mine."

A few additional canyons marred the craggy surface of Huston's face. "Today was not a failure, Aeronaut—"

"It was not a success, either," the cyborg tipped his head and Huston could swear he could see a dull golden glow of diodes behind the rounded aviator glass. "Don't try to spin this any other way. I would hope, for your sake, that this scenario would not be classified as an archetype of your abilities."

Huston darkly glowered. "This Synod remains scattered and on the run. They are a disorganized and rudderless rabble."

"Yet, when you could have had them destroyed in one fell swoop, you elected to try and take them alive. That, presumably, was a decision that you thought could earn you favor in Aleph's eyes had you succeeded? A very lamentable, choice, admiral. Very lamentable, indeed."

The elder man blinked his wet stone eyes with a careful contemplation. Huston's anger was like a volcano—dormant for long periods at a time before the pressure would prove to be too great and it would all explode out of him in a fiery column. Right now, the Aeronaut was testing that pressure. Worse yet, the Aeronaut knew he was having precisely such an effect.

He had to struggle to keep his voice even. "What might you be suggesting?"

The Aeronaut now lifted a hand to his chest, angling it downward in reptilian fashion. "Simply that you're incompetent," he said matter-of-factly. "Of course, this could very well be an anomaly in what might be a peerless career that you've established. But the circumstantial evidence in this case is… more convincing."

"Circumstances may change," Huston said coldly as the Aeronaut edged past him to ascend up to the galaxy map.

The cyborg then pivoted, the light of the faux-galaxy radiating a scattered halo around his body. "That they can. But you do well to know this, admiral: if you can't get the job done, I'll just have to wrest control from you and do it myself."

Huston was about to spout something courageous, like 'My men would never follow your orders,' or 'Aleph would never let you do such a thing,' but reason and fear stayed his tongue, accompanied by a tickle at the back of his mind.

What if the Aeronaut was right?

"Your silent agreement is a most welcome change from your usual demeanor," the Aeronaut leaned forward as he taunted. "This will be excellent practice for when we find ourselves inundated with company later on."

Huston blinked, puzzled.

"Company?"

"Yes. I've been informed that Aleph wishes to send over an additional presence to oversee his interests. Once they're finished with their own mission that's currently ongoing, the Haxan will become a more permanent fixture on board the Normandy for the foreseeable future. Get comfortable, admiral. The war rages on."

Huston wished he had enough confidence to counter the Aeronaut right about now. But the image of the gargantuan Haxan standing over the mutilated body of Urdnot Shepard had not failed to leave his stray thoughts for the past few weeks now. The concept that such an inhuman and perhaps even more barbaric individual than the Aeronaut being in such close proximity was almost too much for Huston to take.

One more condition. One more impotent concession.

---

Atoll Stoa

Cirae made an educated guess that the main conference room had probably not seen a more chaotic day than this. And the behavior of the people currently inhabiting it at the moment certainly was not helping towards it otherwise muted atmosphere.

Politicians of every creed and rank were in an absolute furor, shouting at their aides, at civilians, at anyone within earshot as they demanded order, demanded answers, demanded a goddamn coffee for all Cirae cared. They were scattered amongst the strewn pieces of the conference table, the one item that had thanklessly been responsible for keeping all the politicians evenly separated from one another. Cirae did see the irony in the symbolic shambles that the table was currently in. The asari glanced back up towards the second story, where the rest of the populace similarly echoed the sentiments of their elected representatives as they all made an enormous clamor as one.

Their fermented babbling all hovered around similar themes. How did the ship come to be invaded? What was to come next? Were they still in danger? Did someone have any answers?

It was rather daunting for Cirae to bear witness as she stood at the head of the room, still in her combat bodysuit, hands on her hips as she surveyed the shambles of both civility and décor. She was witnessing a complete and total breakdown of the last vestiges of representative order in the galaxy, she realized. A couple fistfights had broken out amongst the bystanders, and even one between politicians. The people here were terrified and were letting their emotions run completely amok.

Someone should do something, she thought to herself.

She looked over as Traynor had suddenly appeared at her side.

"Communications will be back up in a few minutes," the human woman said. "James asked me to tell you that we'll be jumping to a safe area where we'll be able to congregate any allied ships into a flotilla, of sorts."

"Thank you," Cirae said. "But first, we need to get this ship under control. Do you have access to the Atoll Stoa's command codes?"

"I do."

"Give them to me, then. I'm going to need them very soon."

Traynor complied without another word, a soft but determined look deeply etched into the stare she was levelling at the asari, one that Cirae reflected back to the human. Somber and world-weary, knowing that she could very well step aside to avoid performing any heavy lifting, even though she knew that she barely had any choice in the matter.

Cirae then stepped forward, towards the undulating throng. She basked in the absolute madness of the moment, watching all the faces of the people, their masks of fear, of rage, of anger, and hatred. Their confusion was only bolstered by the lack of answers. By the lack of a firm foundation. To Cirae, it was as if she had known what they had needed all along and that it had been something these people had lacked for far too many moments. They had forgotten already what it had felt like to live in a galaxy where politics was not their primary concern, for it to just become another boring aspect in their usual day-to-day lives. But when that aspect started to break down, their interest had been piqued in a fragile cocktail of worry and interest. They could only bate their breath, anticipating the absolute shattering of the institution that had imposed order upon them.

But what if they were to relax if said institution held?

She would rather not be the one to do this. For there to be anyone else in her place. Cirae had lost the stomach for this sort of thing. She was exhausted, worn down to the bone. All her life, people had been telling her to keep her nose out of other peoples' business. Well, like it or not, she would prove them all right. But not before she could deliver one last blow to their egos. If nothing else, she would leave a legacy behind that would be far greater than the weight of her individual memory. That, at least, she could justify to herself as a life well spent.

With a fierce scowl and a quick exhalation, Cirae took another step forward and punched a fist straight into the air, a wave of bone-shattering force streaming past her knuckles at the same time. A light fixture overhead shattered in a blistering cacophony, raining a crystalline hail onto the splintered remains of the conference table. Everyone immediately stopped their wailing, some brawlers even frozen in mid-punch. They all turned to look at the asari that had succeeded in breaking the madness, in pounding a void of submission towards their antagonistic tendencies.

"The Atoll Stoa's been placed on a course for safe harbor," Cirae called out, fist still raised in the air for a few more seconds before she lowered her arm back down to her side. "By that time, we will have lost our confederate pursuers. Orders have been sent out to all the military representatives on this ship—we're going to build a fleet of our own using the numbers we have. No longer will we be scattered and disconnected across the galaxy. You wanted to build a network—a true Synod—now, this is your chance."

One of the representatives, a turian, disengaged themselves from a pack of previously squabbling aggressors and stepped forward, looking bewildered.

"Hold on a minute," they said. "We're going to continue to maintain hostilities against the Confederacy? But… we… we just voted to sue for peace! This wasn't in the plan!"

Cirae made a show of slowly looking about the conference room, what with its blast-scorched walls, pockmarked staircases, and the massive table that had been dashed into quite a few pieces, making sure to hammer the sarcastic nature of her gesture home.

"And this was?" she countered, hands firmly on her hips like she was scolding a child. "Honestly, is there no one on board with even an ounce of self-esteem? Do you really think you're going to get a benevolent treatment out of Aleph, even after all that's happened? He deliberately manipulated this council to tarnish its objectives, planted his own personnel to take you out without discrimination, and yet you're still discussing peace options. Peace. For that matter, who the fuck are you again? You weren't even on the committee—"

One of the turian's mates had to come and drag him away before he embarrassed himself further. He had still been mentally reeling from the battle—not thinking clearly. Cirae did not need a distracted audience right now. She needed action.

"You people…" she spat. "And I thought I had seen a shortage of spines back on the Citadel! You're no different than they were. When someone slaps you on the face, humiliates you like a disobedient pet… you lap it up and thank them for it."

The asari whirled with an arm, pointing back towards the exit, where the outside of the ship beckoned.

"I just spent all my efforts saving your miserable lives out there and I come back down to find you all arguing amongst yourselves. I'm not looking for gratitude, but I would at least appreciate a little collective sanity! What—I ask—could possibly be the reason for you to be mired in indecision now?!"

There was a powerful throb of silence—a submissive heartbeat of the captives to Cirae's rage.

One well-dressed human stepped forward, his hair slightly askew, albeit his demeanor was rather timid.

"Ma'am, you must understand… not all of us are in this out of misplaced sanguineness. We have our lives to consider. We have our investments—"

The unfortunate man was cut off with a yelp as Cirae reached out and yanked the man by the lapels of his jacket, bringing him to his knees.

The asari's face was a blistering mask of rage as she snarled into the human's terrified expression. "Shut the fuck up, you failed excuse for an abortion. You do not get to talk to me about investments. I don't want to hear a single word, in this room, that is about money. I don't give a shit about any losses you might have incurred, or how bad your portfolio might look. Money has nothing to do with this. Because, as your poor dress style has shown, along with this ridiculous hairstyle," she yanked out a tuft of the man's obviously dyed locks, producing another yip, "which honestly could be a contender for the worst use of scissors since my botched small intestine operation, only goes to prove that your money cannot buy sense. Or taste."

She then pushed her arms out, releasing her grip on the man. He fell onto his back with a groan but elected to stay there, not wishing to incur Cirae's wrath any longer.

Fuck it. It was not like she had any grand designs after this. She had been crying her gospel from the rooftops for far too long and people still were not listening. Well, the hell with them. They could burn and wail and beg for her forgiveness when judgment would inevitably come calling—they would receive none from her. If this was to be the end of a fractured career, so be it.

"That's the problem with you people," Cirae continued to loudly chastise as she waved her clenched hands animatedly, turning her head so that she could appraise as many people as she could, directly in the eye. "This whole time you've thought of this war as a passing fad. A small measure of excitement in the global markets. 'Currency before flesh,' I believe is the saying. We deal in people's lives but only at the expense of someone's wallet getting fatter and another's getting lighter, that's the thinking, right?"

No one dared challenge the asari, even though her smoldering eyes repeatedly issued powerful provocations.

"What you've miscalculated, and continue to miscalculate, is the longevity of this conflict. You think that there will never be a war to rival the one with the Reapers. Is that only when we declare enough is enough? Total annihilation? Back then we had death staring us all in the face. Today, it's simply our abject domination. Our enslavement. Think I'm exaggerating? Look where I'm standing and tell me I'm a liar. Or have you already forgotten what just happened less than an hour ago?"

Cirae's mouth was dry as a desert, but she let that discomfort fuel her as she continued her glaring tirade. No one seemed willing to stare at her for long, even as she posed question after question.

"If this Synod was truly formed to act as the answer to Aleph, then it has lost its way. But if that was never its intention in the first place, then maybe our ex-council leader Pry'cor had a point all along: burn it all down and start anew. Perhaps I might be the one to light that match."

She stepped over the still-prone body of the man she had previously deposited onto the floor. He gave a whimper. Cirae ignored him.

"Of all the things I've seen over the past few weeks, never have I been as disappointed in such wasted potential as I am today. For a brief moment, I allowed myself to feel hope when I had heard of this place. A group with resources and, perhaps, the resolve to stand up against the confederates. Imagine my disgust when I found out, yet again, I had been duped. But I had felt that hope because, for one glorious moment, I could envision a future where we had a fighting chance. That we would use all of our contacts to rally the largest fleet we could. That we would refuse to give in despite all that Aleph threw at us. That we would strike back against those bastards that murdered our friends, our families, and any of those people out there that you might not have never known, because deep within those intelligent minds of yours, you knew that they did not deserve the fate that had been given to them."

Only now did Cirae realize that there was a steady beating sound coming from the rafters above her. Some of the civilians were slowly pounding on the lip of the riser, their faces firm and poised. They beat their hands in an even and determined rhythm, a somber percussive cadence that rang about the chamber. The heartbeat of a people.

Taking that sound and letting it sing within her chest, Cirae allowed herself a moment to breathe.

"I wish I could have shared in that joy with you then," she said, her voice nearly cracking. "If only you had allowed yourself to look just the tiniest bit outwards."

Some members of the audience had stood, either now stomping the ground or beating a hand hard upon their chest. The scattered krogan in the crowd took quite a lot of pleasure in producing the loudest tones. The politicians down on the floor nervously looked up at the clamoring sight, no doubt feeling smaller than normal. The people did not speak, shout, or utter a single word. They simply crescendoed their fevered praise. Praise unto a woman who had said the words they had been waiting their entire lives to hear, even if they had not known it. Praise unto a woman who had, against all odds, risen above the destitute cycle and corruption to look at the galaxy with eyes unclouded by fear. Praise unto a woman who whispered of idyllic futures but hushed them under shadows of pragmatism.

It was as if they had all experienced the same epiphany. They were fighting to hold back their applause, now hanging onto Cirae's every word.

The asari raised her fist again, but she did not unleash a biotic strike this time. Instead, wrapped around her hand was the glowing construct made of light—her omni-tool.

"Right now, I have the command codes for the Atoll Stoa," she announced. "Anytime I want, I can order this ship to go anywhere. All I have to do is flip a switch and the decision is made."

She then lowered her arm and made a flicking motion with her fingers. A file icon suddenly became suspended in midair, glowing a dull blue almost impetuously. Her omni-tool briefly reading "FILE TRANSFERRED", the asari deactivated it and gestured towards the icon.

"But circumstances change," she said. "There's your proof. I've ceded command in perhaps the last truly foolish decision I've ever made. This is a democracy, is it not? So, let's put that to the test, one last time. A referendum for command of not only this ship, but of the Synod. Someone has to lead. I won't take it. No one in this room will. You'll just have to decide the very person to bestow such power to."

Again, the council members shared worried looks.

"We don't have a quorum to have a vote on a new director!" one of them called out.

"Don't flatter yourself!" Cirae snorted. "You really thought I was referring to people like you to make this decision?"

"Then I don't understand. Who gets to vote?"

The asari merely tipped a palm upward, towards the people in attendance, the ones thrumming their shared contentment.

"Who else? The people we should be fighting for."

There was pandemonium in the conference room. A cadre of emboldened civilians started up a chant of "Vote! Vote! Vote!" Many more voices, in differing accents, differing colors, took up the cry. The pounding of feet grew ever louder, the noise so great it almost seemed like it could shatter any glass surface in close proximity.

The panicked councilors fractured off into smaller groups, political camps, frantically trying to determine how they could hold such a vote on such short notice. A few even suggested outright disregard for the vote as an option, but relented when their colleagues pointed out that the discontented civilians would tear them apart for ruining this chance. There was no one on this ship to protect the so-called politicians. Only by staying in their good graces—fostering the democratic process—could they hope to escape castigation, both verbal and physical.

Cirae was not among them. She had stormed out of the room in a dark cloud when no one was looking, leaving them all to their own devices. After everything that had occurred, she had finally reached her endpoint. This decision would have to be made in her absence. She had lost the stomach to continually grasp for more responsibility, trying to abate a hunger that would never be satisfied. No longer would she act as a common whore for politics, to market herself in a relationship of clever deceit.

No matter what, she would not play this game.

She had managed to find a side room adjacent to the main conference room that contained a comfortable enough chair for her to sit in. The asari took the empty seat gratefully, her entire body unclenching as she let out a simultaneous sigh. Goddess… it felt like she could just go to sleep right at this moment. Her eyelids were already drooping.

It seemed that rebelling against her body's instinct was a war she would have no hope in winning, so Cirae propped her feet up on a low table, crossed her arms upon her chest, and snuggled into a corner of the chair. Only for a blissful moment, she figured.

She was awakened by someone shaking her shoulder. Her eyes rapidly flared open and she sat up with a jolt. Traynor was here, a lopsided smile on her face. Instinctively, Cirae checked her chronometer and found that she had been out for at least two hours. Damn, it felt like she had just closed her eyes, too.

"Well?" Cirae asked as she rubbed at her forehead, not giving the human any chance to speak. "How's the vote going back in there?"

Traynor's voice was husky, thick with an unintelligible emotion.

"They just finished about ten minutes ago. Took them a while for them to figure out how to carry it out fairly, but they managed to do it. No trickery, no fraud. The result was overwhelming."

Cirae bleakly nodded. "Glad I got the sleep when I could. It was just too stressful being in that room one second longer." She then placed her hands on both armrests of the chair, fingers clawing at the ends as she slowly got to her feet. "Probably shouldn't put it off any longer. I should go and congratulate the victor, whoever the poor bastard is. Then we can get on with our lives, however short they might be. Who's the new Synod Director, Traynor?"

Additional creases lined Traynor's face as her mouth momentarily flattened. Cirae noted this and tilted her head quizzically.

"Well? Talk to me, human! Who is it?"

It seemed that Traynor had succumbed to a sudden bout of discomfort as she made a grimace, showing off her perfect teeth for just a second. But Cirae knew. She just knew. It was in Traynor's posture—the slump of her shoulders, her fixated eyes, the rigidity of her back. It was so perfectly encapsulated in how the woman was currently carrying herself that, when Traynor finally did stick out her hand towards Cirae, it was only half as powerful of a shock as the asari had expected.

But Cirae still glanced down at the offered hand, denial radiating in her temples.

"No…" she murmured out of disbelief.

Traynor took a determined step forward, hand still outstretched.

"No," Cirae said again, still astonished.

All her inward promises, all those justifications to herself. Cirae could not have been any less prepared for such news. Truthfully, she had willingly blinded herself in an attempt to shield her very soul from disappointment, a trick she had been practicing quite recently. She had closed herself off from thinking so magnanimously, fearing that such an opportunity would be snatched away from her like a spark of hydrogen in a vacuum. She had been prepared… centered… to believe that her place was to remain in an ignominious role, destined to be forgotten at large by a blind galaxy.

How foolish she had been to realize that the galaxy still had the capability to see.

Smile turning sympathetic, Traynor was a stoic pillar of congeniality as she refused to let her arm drop, palm still empty where it hung.

"My congratulations to you," she said to the asari, "Director Idetha."

---

A/N: I'm assuming that most of you have managed to see the footage from the upcoming trilogy remaster. Personally, I think it looks quite promising and I'm quite excited at the opportunity to experience an upgraded version of the galaxy with the characters we love in their most thrilling moments. All three games remastered for 4K with all DLC and QoL improvements? Sign me up!

Playlist:

Conference Room Chaos
"Soccent Attack"
Steve Jablonsky
Transformers (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Pry'cor Chase/One-on-One
"FAST CARS"
Ludwig Goransson
Tenet (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Gladiators
"The Darklands"
Daniel Pemberton
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

The New Director
"Fate and Hope"
Lorne Balfe
Terminator: Genisys (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)