The red glow of the Relay filled the view-port in front of Joker. The Collectors might as well have slapped a 'do not enter' sign on the damned thing. The Normandy hung in space before it, dwarfed.

"Well, that sure isn't something you see everyday."

Beside him, Shepard was sitting in the co-pilot chair. There was no one for her to command in the CIC now. She was strapped in, just like him, though she was in her combat hard suit sans weapons. Every time she shifted ceramic squeaked against the leather.

"Tell me about it."

"Okay." Shepard breathed out. "The Collectors took my people. Time to blow them the fuck up. Take us in."

"Aye aye, ma'am."

EDI spoke over the intercom. "All hands, prepare for jump."

"This is going to be a rough one," he warned Shepard.

"Good thing I'm strapped in."

He breathed in, out, and lined the ship's nose up with the Relay.

"Reaper IFF online, signal acknowledged."

An alarm popped up on Joker's interface. The drive core had lit up like a Christmas tree and was already exceeding normal parameters for charge during a jump. He ignored it. There was nothing he could do about it - he just had to trust EDI and the engineers had sorted it out.

Red light reached out to the Normandy - connected-

And then the whole ship began to shudder and shake as they were propelled through the mass effect tunnel. The few seconds they were in the Relay's grip felt like minutes.

"All hands, brace for deceleration."

The Normandy popped out of FTL, like a car slamming on the brakes. Joker was pressed painfully into his harness, straps driving all the breath out of his lungs. The moment of relief lasted only a millisecond.

"Oh fuck!"

The Normandy was still traveling at hundreds of kilometres a second, and now all Joker could see was huge hunks of broken up starship and debris looming in his view. Beside him he heard the creak of leather as Shepard's gloved fingers tightened on the armrest.

He jerked on the controls, spinning the ship's nose up, pushing the maneuvering thrusters hard. They cleared by only metres - and then popped up out of the debris field. He levelled out, heart pounding against his sternum.

"That was way too close." In space, obstacles were avoided by kilometres, damnit.

"Fuck," Shepard said simply.

A metal graveyard spread out in front of them.

"Activating IES," Joker announced. They were riding the heat load pretty close to the edge - he just hoped the ship's upgrades would put any fight on the short side, or they were going to be in some trouble.

"All these ships..." Shepard breathed.

"They must be all those who've tried to make it through the Omega-4 Relay before us. Some of them look ancient."

"Curiosity killed the cat, huh." Shepard had her helmet off, but her expression remained opaque.

"I have detected an energy signature near the edge of the accretion disk. A space station of some kind."

EDI's hologram flickered and transformed into an image of the Collector station. Had to be, what with the weird bee hive look and random spikes.

"We need to get closer," Shepard said, "how're you doing after that jump, EDI?"

"Heat load is higher than after a normal jump but it remains within acceptable limits. There is no damage to report."

"Good, good."

The good news didn't last as long as Joker would've liked.

"Alert: we are being LADAR pinged. It appears the Collectors are responding to the Relay's activation."

"Great. They'll pick us up?"

"Yes. The IES system only conceals us from passive scans."

"Turn the IES off," Shepard said decisively, "they'll locate us in a second and it's just running the heat up."

"Aye aye." It still felt very uncomfortable to flip the switch off.

"Switch to active scans, EDI," Shepard continued, "if the Collectors have any nasty surprises waiting for us, I want to know about them."

"We have contacts - appears to be drone fighters or something," Joker said, looking at his LADAR screen, "Comin' in fast."

"Of course we do. EDI, seal the bulkheads and power all weapons. Joker, you have the ship."

"Aye, ma'am."

There were seven red, blinking lights on his LADAR screen, closing fast. The little bastards were fast. An alarm sounded in the cockpit like nails on a chalkboard and the lead drone opened fire - a lance of red light coming to meet them.

Of course the Collector fighter drones had thanix cannons.

He rolled the Normandy to port, avoiding the first three shots. Unlike any fighters he'd flown against - or with - they were able to fire from outside the range of the frigate's GARDIAN lasers. Normally fighters were restrained to launching torpedoes or finishing off ships whose GARDIAN systems were so degraded by heat they couldn't hit the broadside of a barn.

"This is just pissing me off," he complained as he pulled the ship up and out of the way of another stream of liquid metal.

"EDI, are the torpedo tubes loaded?"

"Yes, Commander."

"Fire at your discretion."

The first torpedo missed, shooting past the flight of drones to strike the disintegrating hull of a derelict, detonating in a flower of shearing metal.The second and third found their marks, tearing the lead two drones to shreds.

"Yeah!" Joker barely restrained himself from a fist pump.

Their celebration didn't last long. The Normandy shuddered as a lance of light sliced along her top.

"Armour plating is holding," EDI reported.

And then again the drones hit, this time to the port side of her underbelly. The space around them was a maze of quickly moving beams.

"We need to kill these little bastards," Shepard's tone was tense - she was gripping the armrest again.

"Yeah, I'm well aware, Commander!"

The drones were quick - and trailing the Normandy's stern, a position that meant they couldn't bring their own Thanix cannon to bear. Time to change that.

He flipped the Normandy on her access - lined up - and the blue beam sliced through two more drones in quick succession. A third failed to pull up in time and flew right into the frigate's GARDIAN system.

And then the last two were back on their tail.

"We have an issue," EDI began.

"Yeah, I can see that!" he snapped back, as the Normandy shuddered as a lance of orange energy found its mark, boiling away armoured plating.

"Another issue," EDI amended. "The Collector cruiser has undocked from the station and is on an intercept trajectory."

"We need to end this," Shepard added. Unhelpfully. He was well aware, thank you.

"This is going to hurt," he warned, and forced the Normandy down.

Into the mess of broken ship debris below, drones buzzing on their rear like hornets.


The Collector cruiser died in fire as the sheets of oxygen spilling out of her rent hull burned. The Normandy's thanix cannon had cored her right through, and Joker felt his lips tugged into an almost involuntary grin as the cruiser's core detonated. Metal spilled into space as she was torn into three pieces.

That was for his baby, the best ship in the Alliance Navy. That was for Caroline Grenado and Charles Pressly and even Sax, the grumpy old bastard.

That was for Emilia Shepard.

"That feels good," she said from beside him, watching the light show, echoing his thoughts, "lost too many good people to that damned thing."

"Well, we've ticked off revenge."

"Now for everything else."

That was when a new alarm began to ring in the cockpit. He felt it in the split second before the alert popped up on his screens. The sudden weightlessness, countered only by the straps across his chest, the way the Normandy felt wrong in her responses.

They'd lost the drive core - and the inertia dampeners. They were still headed at the Collector base at several hundred kilometres an hour, nose first. If they hit at this angle, the Normandy's hull would crumple like a can, killing everyone onboard.

"The drive core cooling system has failed. Mass effect generators are offline. Inertia dampeners are offline."

Joker hit the thrusters hard for everything they were worth. He had to get the ship's nose up.

"EDI, we need the inertia dampeners. Gimme something!"

A crash at this speed without the dampeners could just as easily kill them all too.

"Engaging emergency batteries. Rerouting."

The station's surface loomed in front of them. One of those very stupid spikes was suddenly looming in his view.

"Oh fuck," the tone in Shepard's voice was closer to panic than he'd ever heard before. He didn't like it. Not one bit. Especially when they were in the process of crashing the ship. "Joker-"

"Ma'am," he said calmly, "respectfully: please shut up and let me fly."

He pulled hard to starboard - the port wing still clipped with a shriek of ceramic plating against metal and sent them yawing, a spin he just barely pulled the ship out of.

C'mon, baby.

He eased her level as best he could and held it with a grimace. She was gonna fight him the whole way down.

"All hands: brace for impact."

Shepard was breathing hard - he could hear the rasp of it.

They hit.

The Normandy shrieked as her ceramic plates ground against the Collector station's hull and metal buckled and bent. Everything shook, and Joker was thrown against his restraints. It drove all of the air from his lung and lit his chest up in starbursts of pain as his ribs protested.

When the screeching of metal finally faded and they were in one piece, Joker and Shepard looked at each other and burst out in the sort of laughter that was close to hysteria, the kind that only burst out of you when you'd gotten decidedly closer to death than was comfortable. It made his chest hurt like a bitch.

After a moment, Shepard leant back in the co-pilot chair and took a deep breath. "Are you alright?"

He winced, twisting gingerly, "Think I broke a rib...or all of them."

"EDI, what's the damage?"

"The drive core is offline. Bow maneuvering thrusters are offline. Reactor shutting down. We have multiple hull breaches on Decks One, Four and Five and the coolant system is non-functional."

"We're not going anywhere anytime soon," Joker surmised.

"Can you fix it?"

"Repairs sufficient for flight are possible, but will take time," the AI replied, holo blinking.

Shepard tilted her head to look at Joker. "I'm sorry. I can't spare anyone to help you."

"EDI and I will make do." They had to.

Shepard nodded before she climbed to her feet and retrieved her helmet, fitting it over her head. It sealed with a faint hiss.

"Commander...good luck."

She nodded, expression hidden behind her visor. "Thanks Joker. You too. We'll see each other soon."


When the first shot ricocheted over Thane's head, he quickly back stepped into cover behind a pillar. Like their ships, the Collector station was of an irregular construction, almost as if it had been grown rather than built. It lacked the smooth, dark, shifting lines the Reaper had had.

"Contact," he announced to the rest of the team.

"Took their time," Shepard said, almost - eager. She fired a burst at the nearest Collector, punching holes into its right leg. It stumbled. Thane sighted down his rifle and squeezed the trigger. It died.

The vent Tali was currently scrambling through ran along the far wall. Thane could see a flash of purple at the quarian's current location. Shepard had emphasized the need to keep up with their engineer in the briefing, and the Commander now fought with urgency and aggression.

A Collector was closing in on Miranda. Thane raised a hand and tore it from the ground with a biotic field. The Cerberus agent immediately responded with her own shearing field. The resulting explosion tore the drone to pieces.

On his left, Samara was staying close to Shepard's side. A very sensible decision - Samara was their strongest biotic, and the Collectors did like to focus on the Commander. On his right, the geth unit Legion methodically shot at the Collectors with their rifle with uncanny precision. Most military-trained snipers shot for centre of mass, but the geth seemed to prefer headshots.

"Shepard, I'm stuck," Tali's voice reverberated over the squad net. "Something is blocking the vent - some kind of gate. I can see the mechanism but it's on your side.'

"Copy that. Thane, Legion covering fire. Miranda, Samara with me."

A concept Shepard had repeatedly emphasized was that of maneuver and 'base of fire'. It was the latter role he and Legion now occupied. He sighted down his rifle and shot in quick succession. The shields of a Collector lit up and then failed - Legion finished it off with a bullet to the head.

Out of the corner of his eye he could see the trio make a break for the far side of the room, Samara bringing up a shimmering barrier to deflect the spattering of gunfire directed at them.

A Collector flew up from the edge of the walkway, wings flared wide. In tandem, Thane and the geth fired, ripping holes big enough to put a fist through in its wings. Rather anticlimactically, it tumbled back into the void from which it had come.

There was a grinding of machinery from Shepard's location.

"Tali, you're clear."

"I'm moving!" The quarian sounded eager to be out of the vent, something Thane couldn't fault her for.

"Regroup! We need to stick close to Tali in case there's any more obstructions," Shepard called over.

Thane jogged over to the Commander, grimacing and holding back the cough that wanted to spasm out of his chest. His teammates were counting on him. He just had to last the length of this mission.

Shepard kept up a frenetic pace, moving through the Collectors with a certain brutal, soldier's efficiency.

He fired rhythmically at the Collectors threatening their flanks. Breathe in, fire, breathe out - through the burning in his lungs. Repeat. The air was thick with gunfire and the buzz of wings.

Shepard tossed herself out of cover, gone in a flash of blue, before she reappeared with a crash of sound, sending a group of Collectors flying. Her shotgun boomed. One clawed its way to its feet, raising its rifle.

Thane breathed in. Gently pulled the trigger. The Collector fell back down, a hole in its chest.

"Shepard, watch out!"

A drone lifted into the air, crackling with sickly yellow energy, focused completely on Shepard, still out of cover.

"Shepard." A low voice, dripping with menace.

"Oh fuck you," Shepard shot back.

Harbinger staggered as a wave of dark energy smashed into him, courtesy of Samara. Shepard took the opening, vaulting back behind the pillar Thane was using as cover. He could see the dark glitter of her eyes behind her visor, the sharp, knife-edge smile on her face.

For the first time since they'd entered the Omega-4 Relay, Thane felt a flicker of apprehension. He knew the look of someone in danger of slipping into the battle sleep.

But there was no time to contemplate this. The pillar shuddered, flecks of strange material raining down on their helmeted heads as one of Harbinger's biotic fields slammed into it.

Thane leant around, fired, but was quickly forced back behind the pillar by the hailstorm of bullets that greeted him. The possessed drone had been joined by at least ten others, two of them armed with the strange beam weapons. Miranda barely managed to deflect one yellow particle beam with a hasty barrier, dropping back behind a low ridge, breathing hard.

"Shepard, there's another obstruction. Can you see the lever on your side?"

"Yeah, I can see it. Just give us a sec." Shepard's attempt to move was quickly thwarted by another orb of roiling energy courtesy of Harbinger. "Fuck this guy, we need to get to that lever."

The Collectors were pressing closer now, lashing their position with assault rifle and particle rifle fire. Thane was forced to pull his pistol and shoot a drone in the head as it tried to vault over the low ridge Miranda and Legion were using for cover. Shepard switched her shotgun for her carbine, firing bursts at their enemies.

"Shepard, it's getting pretty hot in here."

"I'll get it, just-"

One of Harbinger's biotic fields caught Shepard in the chest, slamming her off her feet.

"Shepard!"

"Fucking ow," she sat up, brushing at her chest plate. Some of the ceramic was pitted and crumbling.

"Are you well?" asked Samara, kneeling beside her. Thane hissed as his shields shattered. He pressed his back to the pillar, slotting a new heatsink into his rifle.

"I'm fine, just kill the bastard!"

"Shepard, when I said it was getting hot," Tali's voice was high with anxiety, "I meant that it's. Getting. Hot!"

A Collector rounded the corner, rifle raised. Thane and Shepard, still on the ground, fired at the same time.

"Alright, alright," Shepard shoved herself to her feet. Her dark eyes darted around the room. Focused. She pulled a grenade out of her webbing and pressed it into Thane's hand. "Cover me."

"Shepard, what are you doing?" Miranda demanded, in between taking potshots at the possessed drone with her carbine.

"Making sure my friend doesn't burn to death," Shepard shot back. "Charging!"

The Commander disappeared in an elongated slash of blue. She smashed into a drone kneeling in cover - right next to the lever blocking Tali's progress. She killed it with a quick, hard biotic punch to the skull and then hit the lever.

"...I'm moving on. Thanks, Shepard."

"Sorry it took so long."

That was one problem solved, but now they had another. The Collectors were reorienting to engage Shepard, caught alone and separated from the rest of them.

Thane hefted the grenade Shepard had given him, focusing until it was shrouded in a stable biotic field. And then he threw it. Aided by his biotics, it sailed far across the corridor, to land in the midst of a knot of drones. It went off with a roar, shredding through chitin with razor sharp shrapnel.

Harbinger had found its prey.

"You do not yet understand your place in things."

A wave of dark, crackling energy slashed towards her. Shepard barely rolled out of the way, and came up firing her Locust. The rounds ricocheted off the barrier the creature drew up.

The next biotic attack hit. Thane could feel it - the terrifying way the creature bent the gravity well around it, the way it simply battered through Commander Shepard's shields. Shepard, one of the strongest biotics Thane had met, outmatched on the Normandy only by Jack and Samara.

Harbinger rose above her, rifle pointed at her face.

"No. You shall not have her." Samara's face was a mask of tranquil fury, her biotic field strong enough to make Thane's teeth vibrate. She lifted a hand, and with it, Harbinger. And then she brought it crashing down into the floor. Carapace shattered.

A lone drone remained, still firing mindlessly at Shepard. Legion shot it perfunctorily.

The room was silent for the first time in half an hour.

Shepard carefully got to her feet, twisting her torso experimentally as she gingerly stepped around the mess that had been Harbinger. "Thanks, Samara."

"You are welcome."

"You shouldn't be so bloody reckless," Miranda slammed a new heatsink into her carbine.

"If I hadn't gotten to that lever, Tali would be dead and our mission would be over," Shepard said coolly, "I will do whatever it takes to win. Make sure you're all just as committed. Let's get moving."


Shepard's chest ached like someone had hit her with a baseball bat. She leant against the nearest wall, trying not to show the pain, and looking over her squad. With the doors sealed behind them, they could take a moment to take a breath, check weapons and armour.

Everyone seemed to be in one piece.

"Alright, Tali?" she called over to the quarian.

"I'm okay. A little singed, maybe…"

"Shepard!" There was concern in Miranda's voice.

Shepard pushed off the wall with a barely concealed grimace and moved through the squad - now crowding the far side of the room. No, the ledge. She stuttered to a stop.

Below her was a large chamber, full of machinery. Large pipes ran up along the wall and across the ceiling, thick as she was tall. And everywhere, the dull yellow panes of the pods the Collectors used to move their victims. On the Collector ship they'd been - stacked, as if for storage. Here, they were slotted into the walls.

Somewhere out there was her crew. Chakwas. Daniels. Gardner. The people she was supposed to protect.

"Fuck," Jack opined. Shepard was inclined to agree.

But this chamber was massive and there were thousand, if not tens of thousands of pods. Finding the crew would be close to impossible, and it could take hours. Hours they didn't have. Unless...

"Shepard, looks like one of the colonists - and a Marine," Miranda called. Shepard went to her side. A pair of pods met her eyes, both slotted into the wall just below the edge of the ledge. Shepard hopped down and onto the platform below.

The first pod contained a young woman in the sort of work clothes common on the outer colonies. Her brown hair drifted in the goop encasing her, eyes closed. She looked peaceful, as if she might wake at any moment. The second contained a man, still encased in the dark carapace of Alliance Marine uniform. His helmet was missing, revealing European features. The name tape on his chest said 'Lewandowski' and there were the chevrons of a staff sergeant at his throat.

One of Ashley's Marines?

"Mordin, are they alive?"

The salarian stepped forward and raised his hand, encased in the yellow-orange light of his omnitool as he ran a medscan.

"Yes. Liquid inside pods must be oxygen bearing. Low heart and respiratory rates, but stable. Sedated somehow," he surmised.

"Like the seeker swarms?" Miranda asked.

"No, different. With seeker swarms, patient conscious, merely paralysed. Here, indications of anaesthesia-like state."

"Keep em warm, keep em quiet," Jacob said grimly.

"Yes, but for what purpose?"

"How do we get them out?" Shepard asked, cutting off the scientific curiosity.

That was when there was a foreboding, metallic thunk. For a moment - nothing, Shepard's hand lingering on her carbine. And then the liquid inside the pod began to take on a strange, reddish tint.

Blood, Shepard realised with dawning horror, as tiny cuts appeared on the woman's face.

"We need to get this open, right now!" The edges of the pod were smooth to the touch. Shepard couldn't find a hinge or a button or anything to open it - and nor could Miranda on the other side. Desperate, she drew back and smashed the butt of her carbine into the lid with all her not inconsiderable strength.

Cracks spiderwebbed across from the impact, but it held.

And in moments the woman had disintegrated, rendered down to a horrific meat paste that was swiftly sucked up by the pipe she now saw was attached to the top of the pod.

Shepard had seen some truly horrific things in her time, but now? Now she felt sick to her stomach.

"Oh God," Miranda looked pale behind her visor.

"Nanomachines," Mordin guessed, "some kind of processing centre."

Shepar ignored him, shoving past to the Marine's pod. She had to get him out. She pulled out her pistol, pressed it at an angle against the lid. Took a moment to take a breath, hope so fervently it was almost a prayer, that she wouldn't hit him. Pulled the trigger.

The lid shattered into several pieces, and the man slid out, gasping and spluttering for air. He flopped a few times on the ground, not unlike a fish, as if his limbs weren't sure how to work.

Shepard knelt beside him. He cough a few times, propped up on trembling elbows, expelling the strange liquid from his lungs.

"Staff Sergeant Lewandowski?"

He looked up, droplets falling from his chin and nose. "Well fuck. First I get abducted by cockroaches, now I've been rescued by a dead woman."

"Not dead." Not anymore, at least. "Can you stand?"

"Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, ma'am." Unsteadily, he climbed to his feet.

"We have people to get out. Can you keep up or should my krogan carry you?"

Grunt made a low, disgruntled rumble to show what he thought of that idea.

"Uh. I'll walk. A moment, ma'am." He turned back to his pod - and thrust an arm into the liquid still pooling at the bottom. Before she could muster a what the hell are you doing, he pulled out a dripping M-96 Mattock rifle, the marksman variant still used by some Marines.

"Not sure that's going to fire anymore," Garrus pointed out dubiously.

"One way to find out," Lewandowski said and then immediately fired into the ceiling. "Huh. You really could throw one of these from low orbit and fire it afterwards."

"EDI, please tell me you can get a fix on a crew member. Any crewmember," Shepard said, turning away. They couldn't stay for long, twenty minutes up top, but the thought of leaving her crew to be dissolved was almost unbearable.

"I have located Operative Burt's armour radio," EDI answered, "uploading to your tactical net."

"Bless you EDI." Of course, Burt's radio being functional didn't mean he wasn't meat paste already, but it was hope. "Let's move."

The ground team hardly needed the order. Half of them were already moving. It took five minutes to locate the cluster of pods in which the Normandy crew had been stashed.

"Get them out, right now," Shepard ordered. Some of the crew battered at the lids. Grunt simply cracked them open with his fists. Some found the hinges she hadn't been able to find before. For her part, Shepard found Chakwas' pod and put a biotic fist through the lid.

The doctor slumped forward into her arms and Shepard gently lowered her to the ground, helping her turn onto her side to cough up the liquid. Oxygen-bearing or not, she doubted having that in your lungs was pleasant.

"Shepard," Chakwas whispered, raising a hand to the side of her helmet, "you came for us."

"Of course I did, Doc."

Once the ground team had gently deposited all the flight crew they could find together, Shepard did a head count. And then did it again.

All of them. They'd found everyone who'd survived the boarding. Her people. In one piece, though Hadley had a broken leg and Hawthorne was in even worse shape.

Well, with one stray, counting Lewandowski, who was hanging around clutching that miraculously working rifle of his.

"It's bloody good to see you all," Shepard told them.

"Where's Vadim?" Someone asked from the back. Dark hair - Bolitho.

"He's dead." Chambers spoke, red hair slicked to her skull and her arms wrapped around her knees. Chakwas reached over and squeezed her shoulder.

"We need to get you all back to the Normandy. Mordin, Kasumi and," she glanced over at the stray Marine, "Sergeant Lewandowski will escort you."

"It's just Ski, ma'am," Lewandowski said politely, "and I can still fight."

"I need you to protect my crew." In truth, she wanted him to live, not just because he didn't deserve to die or because he was Alliance and she was still too blue to the bone. But because he was Ash's Marine, and of all the things she owed her, this was the least. "And my ship, for that matter. This isn't a benching, Sarn't. The Collector may well try to attack the crash site."

"Crash site?" Someone asked faintly.

Ski straightened. "I won't let you down, ma'am."

"Good man."

Shepard watched the bedraggled crew leave, escorted by Mordin, Kasumi and Ski. The Marine was jogging. What was the man made of?

She shook her head and turned back to the ground team. It was time for phase two of this operation, and it wasn't going to get any easier. Not at all by the scans EDI uploaded to her omnitool.

"Garrus, you'll lead the main team. Make some noise, hit 'em hard." She had no allusions. She was sending her closest friend right into the hornet's nest. If this plan worked, he'd be fighting the bulk of the Collector forces. "Samara will hold the barrier. Miranda and Grunt will be with me, everyone else is with Garrus. Understood?"

She glanced around and saw determined, hard expressions staring back at her.

"Good. Let's move out."


They shepherded the crew back the way they'd come. Kasumi took the lead, her hands sweaty on her SMG, knowing she was quick enough and had a strong enough cloak to see what was ahead and warn Mordin and 'Ski' if needed. Still, she didn't like it. Taking point felt like the sort of job for buff soldiers with nice, heavy armour. Like the Commander, or Garrus.

They had to step past dead Collectors, lying in heaps where they'd fallen, shot full of holes, or burnt, or smashed to bits with biotics. The walls were riddled with bullet holes.

Hell. She really didn't have the armour for this. She was a thief. A thief, now right in the jaws of the beast. She was not equipped to fight zombies or flying bugs that used to be Protheans.

The crew moved slowly. Daniels shuffled along like she herself was a zombie. Donnelly and Mussa were carrying Hawthorne between them, while Matthews and Burt carried Hadley. Hawthorne was quiet and limp, while Hadley was pale and sweaty, groaning everytime his leg got jostled.

The relief and euphoria of finding all the crew was quickly fading.

They made slow, painstaking progress. She'd never been so glad to see the Normandy in her life. Even if the beautiful girl was looking a bit worse for wear.

Joker met them at the ramp, clutching at his side. "Damn, am I glad to see all of you."

"Glad you made it to the AI core, man," Hadley managed with a weak smile.

"Please, get the worst injured to the medbay." Chakwas told them. "Professor Solus?"

"Yes, will assist as you need, Doctor. EDI, suggest monitoring nearby entrances to inside of base. Collectors will be looking for the ship."

"Of course, Professor," the AI replied.

"Kasumi, Sergeant Lewandowski, please watch cargo bay ramp for now."

"Uh, hate to do it to you," Joker looked at Donnelly and Daniels, "but I could really use the help getting the engines fixed."

The two engineers looked at each other, before Daniels nodded. "Yeah, we'll grab some stims and get to work."

Soon, many of the more able bodied crew had volunteered to help with repairs. Everyone on a ship was a damage control man and all that.

When the crew filtered out of the cargo bay, Kasumi found herself facing the ramp. Waiting. Why was it always waiting?

"Kasumi, right?"

She jumped despite herself. Ski had come up behind her. "Yes and you're - Ski?"

"Troy Lewandowski, but everyone calls me Ski, yeah." He was tall, of Eastern European ancestry, and handsome under the muck, with a jawline that could cut glass and clear green eyes.

"How'd you end up here?"

He shrugged, ceramic plating grating together. "My team got sent to Horizon, and the colony got snatched."

"Oh." Kasumi blinked. "You were there with Shep's ex."

"Her - ex?" He shook his head. "Yeah, damn, that explains a lot."

"You're...very calm for a man who got abducted and shoved in a pod that turns people into mush."

He shrugged again. "Gotta roll with the punches. Just hope I can shoot some bugs before this is over."

Okay. Handsome, but possibly insane.

"Miss Goto, please be advised that I have detected at least a dozen Collector life signs massing in a nearby corridor, as well as eight husks and a Praetorian. I suggest you assume defensive positions."

"Can't you close the ramp and power up the shields or - or something?" She hated that her voice trembled.

"I'm sorry. Full defensive systems will not be available until full power and mass effect generators are restored."

Until Donnelly got the nuclear reactor and drive core back online, a process that could take hours.

Two people couldn't fight all those Collectors and a Praetorian.

She was shaking. Handsome But Crazy put his hand on her shoulder.

His voice was grim now but calm, "We'll move the crates so we've got cover. I saw some rocket launchers in one - I'll grab some. We just need to give your crew time."

"Okay." They were both going to die.

Then, several of the Cerberus crew members came out of the ladder wells, clutching rifles and pistols. Several of them were still pale and shaky, but their expressions were determined.

"We'll help," said Goldstein, "this is our ship - they're not getting her again."


Codex Entry

Select Internal Cerberus Communications:

From: Operative Hermes

To: [CLASSIFIED]

Subject: RE: Omega-4 Relay

Sir,

I understand the interest in the Omega-4 Relay given recent attacks on human settlements in the Terminus, but the truth is that very little data regarding the relay exists. There have been attempts by the curious or the foolhardy to chart it - it's been seen as one of those 'last true frontiers' by explorers - but none have successfully traversed it.

The last government funded attempt was in 2120 by the batarians, when the research vessel Second Son of Juharak disappeared with all hands.

There were a few efforts by the asari centuries ago to take readings of the Relay. I've included what data I could find, though I must stress that this is old data and while it may lead us to some interesting conclusions, there is no guarantee the Omega-4 Relay is in the same state as when it was last studied.

Unfortunately, there have been no further attempts at proper scientific inquiry, primarily due to the unstable political situation in the Omega cluster. There is little incentive for pirates to allow scientists access, after all.

Sincerely,

Operative Hermes

Lead Operative, Hephaestus Cell

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From: Operative Chandana

To: Operative Hermes

Subject: Klendagon

H,

We've located the weapon - and more importantly what it was aiming at. The Alliance is all over the weapon, but they haven't discovered the derelict yet. Typical of the military. Obsess over the big gun and forget what's really important.

I'm leading the team there in two days. Orders straight from the boss. This could be a huge leap forward.

-C

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From: Operative Hermes

To: Operative Chandana

Subject: Re: Klendagon

C,

Excellent news. Be cautious, we still don't know the full capabilities the wreck might still possess.

-H

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From: Operative Leng

To: [CLASSIFIED]

Subject: Interference

Sir,

The Alliance major is getting close to some of our operations and is threatening our ability to continue strikes against the Hegemony. I request permission to remove that threat.

Leng.

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From: [CLASSIFIED]

To: Operative Leng

Subject: RE: Interference

Not yet.