Semper Vigilo

by CunkToad

Due to a drive core malfunction, a human vessel arrives just in time to save the Council Envoy from the yahg. What happens when humanity enters the galactic stage not as the race that got attacked by the turians for breaking a law they weren't aware of, but as the race that saved a turian platoon from certain death? M for wartime violence, pre ME1 - ME3, no OP humanity.

107. No Matter the Obstacles

Chapter 107. No Matter the Obstacles

---

26. April 2417 AD, Enroute to Haestrom

The N7 glanced at the map projected on her HUD and pushed down on her talk button when the Normandy's five Kodiaks – the entirety of the frigate's shuttle compartment – passed by the landmark they had determined to be the outer boundary of their operational area.

"We just passed Jericho, Charlie through Echo break off to secure a perimeter and provide overwatch. Alpha and Bravo, we're continuing on to the objective."

As five green affirmative lights flashed on her HUD, Shepard looked to her left.

Whereas the shuttles Charlie, Delta and Echo were fully staffed by members of the Normandy's marine platoon, which she'd drafted into this mission precisely because she didn't want to touch down on a geth world with nothing but the arguably rag-tag bunch of misfits that her current team was, Bravo and her own craft were flying half-empty and only carrying the people she'd collected up to now.

Riding with her was half of the Normandy's ground team; Garrus, Lieutenant Nader and Thane. At the same time Bravo was staffed with her XO Lieutenant Callius, Leng, Samara and Mordin. That way, both halves of her team had an experienced leader– her and Callius -, a powerful biotic – Nader and Samara -, a reliable rifleman- Garrus and Leng - and someone who was as deadly as they were nimble – Thane and Mordin.

If these geth were anything like the ones who had followed Saren and whom she had fought extensively two years ago, that was about the best split of firepower she could think of to ensure that everyone walked away from this one in one piece.

Speaking of Saren.

As their shuttle passed the burned-out husk of a quarian city now lined with various pieces of geth technology ranging from solar arrays to power cords and antennas, Shepard was suddenly back on Virmire. And once she was back on Virmire, she was also back on the Citadel – the last time she had fought the geth…

She bit her lip at the memory. She really would've killed to have had a biotic back then. Maybe that way Anderson and Williams would've still been around to see this day instead of-

"One minute!" the pilot declared, prompting the N7 to snap out of it. Instead of worrying about things in the past she could no longer change, she'd focus on making today different from back then. She looked at the row of empty seats. They would fly back with more people than they were arriving with. She'd save the surviving quarians and Tali'Zorah, no matter what the universe threw at them.

Today would be different.

Meanwhile, 2158 CE, Haestrom

"One minute!" their shuttle pilot stated, prompting Callius to place her hands on the harness' release. While she knew better than to unbuckle before they actually hit the ground – she knew plenty of soldiers who had died or gotten in shuttle crashes because they had overeagerly undone their safety harness in the foolish assumption that 'one minute' was akin to 'we're on the ground' – she still wanted to ensure that she would not spent a second longer within the shuttle than necessary.

She wasn't one for superstition… but ever since her currently absent team-member Galviat had pointed out that his transports only ever got shot down when him and her were sitting in the same shuttle, she had to admit that the hot airdrops of her career displayed a certain pattern…

After spending a second wondering what the black-plated sniper, Veltax and General Arterius were up to right now, the former cabal returned to the interior of the shuttle, which was now bathed in a red light. While it had taken some getting used to – the Hierarchy predominantly used blue lighting within their military craft – Callius had to admit that she was slowly but surely warming up to the human's choice of interior lighting. Even if it was still uncomfortably bright by the standards of the rest of the galaxy-

"Ten second!"

As soon as the declaration had left the human's mouth – his name was Kowalski and from what Callius understood, this particular naval aviator had already been flying for Shepard back when they had first met on Feros – the former cabal dropped all contemplations on humanity's choice of lighting and became entirely mission-focused.

First the lights turned green. Then the magnetic locks of the door opened and she undid her harness… and before she could do as much as blink while her visor tried – and failed – to adjust to the brightness of Haestrom's sun, she was standing with both her feet in front of an actual quarian building on an actual quarian colony. It was an impressive enough sight for her to ignore the slight glitches in her field of vision caused by radiation interfering with her HUD.

This was presumably the first time since the Geth War that a turian soldier had set foot on what had once been Conclave territory and as such, this should by all means have been a historic moment worthy of taking in and addressing…but since pulse rifle fire was zipping past her head and her barriers were already starting to get messed up by Haestrom's sun, she didn't exactly feel like delivering a speech about the Council returning to impose order.

Instead, the tall cabal hunkered down in the shadow of a slab of stone that could've been anything ranging from decoration to a guard post and watched as her half of the team was scattering – or in the justicar's case casually strolling – for cover. She considered shouting for the asari warrior to move it. But the fact that an enormous bubble of biotic energy was surrounding her made Callius reconsider. As did the reality that the high-powered pulse rifle shots hitting her only appeared as small, barely noticeable ripples and the fact that the geth who were shooting her weren't shooting at them. Judging by the way Samara calmly nodded towards the turian was her intention all along.

After assuring herself that the asari would be fine, the turian looked to where Mordin and Leng had taken cover. They too had chosen a remnant of whatever wall or perimeter had once surrounded the larger building that the beacon was in and just like herself, they were taking fire from the ridge on the south of their position and weighing their options. In Leng's case that came down to trying different angles to fire from and in Mordin's case it involved him modifying his pistol to fire grenades.

They had expected this of course and unless she had seriously misjudged how long it would take the Normandy's marines to take up their elevated positions, whoever was shooting them should find themselves on the bad end of human weaponry any minute now.

Not a second after the thought passed her mind their overwatch did its job and an anti-personal missile shot through the air over her head, producing a tail of white smoke in its wake. It exploded against the rock wall and covered it in a cloud of smoke produced by the phosphorous now burning through the geth. While that normally would've been more than enough to ensure that their attackers were down, the commander of the marine detachment covering Callius' element clearly wanted to be certain. Hence, bursts of gauss-machinegun fire followed in the missile's trail and small, man-held grenade launchers opened fire.

She had to admit… she had missed being part of a larger ground force. Ever since joining up with the Normandy, all combat ops she'd been a part of had been small, squad-based operations where all they could rely on was each other.

It was nice to once again have a covering element. Especially one who was as liberal with the use of its firepower as this human one.

After peaking her head out to check if there was still someone left capable of shooting at them – if there was, they didn't dare – Callius gestured for her half of the Normandy's ground team to advance on the objective, trusting that Shepard was doing the same thing on the other side of the building.

If this all went according to the plan, they would each search a half of the building and meet up at the location of the beacon – hopefully with quarian survivors in tow.

Hopefully.

---

Meanwhile, 26. April 2417 AD, Haestrom

"Understood, keep them off their backs," Shepard responded after the leader of Echo team had informed her that Callius' squad (unlike her own team) had come under fire and that her overwatch team had responded accordingly.

Hoping that it would stay that way, the N7 led her half of the ground team over what she was guessing used to be the yard of the compound, which luckily for the electronics of her armor happened to have a mostly intact roof.

Just before they walked into the protection of the shadow, she looked at the stone-grey building in front of them and the large, broken radio dish on top of it. It would seem that the quick background check conducted by EDI had produced a correct hypothesis. This really was an observatory, or at the very least a scientific institute of some kind.

"Damn. The geth really settled in, didn't they?" Garrus commented as they passed a thick power cord running along the ground and into a crack in the wall up ahead. If not for its faint teal glow and flexible appearance, it could've easily been mistaken for one of the rigid industrial pipes that helped fuel the colonial hydro plants back home on Benning.

"Three hundred years are a long time to do some interior decoration," Nader retorted before she looked up at a hole in the roof where elongated antennas and more power cords could be seen. "Although I guess they didn't actually renovate anything. Kinda strange to think about, isn't it? First they kick the quarians off of their worlds, now they're living in their ruins. It's like they're some kind of synthetic hermit crab."

Shepard tended to agree with that.

"They didn't kick the quarians out. They killed them. An entire civilization worth of life, all wiped out in a few years. A hermit crab would not do that. A killing machine however," Thane corrected quietly, making the first sound ever since stepping on board of the shuttle back on the Normandy.

Shepard also tended to agree with that.

Additionally, she also wondered how exactly the drell knew about Earth-born animals like hermit crabs … and if the reason he seemed familiar with terrestrial lifeforms was somehow related to the work he used to do for the Illuminated Primacy.

.. before she could think about the larger political implications of the hypothetical scenario manifesting in her head, Shepard decided to simply be thankful that Thane had reminded them that he was actually still present. Since the drell literally didn't make a single sound when he moved – not even on the crunchy and rocky ground they were currently traversing – nothing short of turning her head to check if he was still bringing up the back of their formation would've allowed Shepard to notice if he were to disappear.

As they reached the broken-down door of the observatory, which was made from the same rust-red metal as the window frames, Shepard risked a peak around the corner before entering. Luckily for them, the place was pretty dark except for the teal glowing of power cords and the occasional ray of lighting shining through a crack in the wall. While fighting in low-light conditions normally wasn't a good thing, this time around it was preferable – even if the geth would have an inherent advantage over them in these conditions.

After sharing a nod with Garrus, she stepped into the old quarian structure and quickly looked at her HUD where their proximity to the beacon's signal was being displayed.

They were only about a hundred meters away from the source… but since she was already looking at a blocked-off corridor and thick walls made of stone-colored metal, the N7 somehow doubted that it would be a quick one hundred meters.

She gestured for the team to follow her lead and then opted to simply head through the first door she could find, something she immediately regretted when the rule of 'you trip in the most inconvenient of moments' suddenly decided to apply to her. In one moment, her foot was firmly on the ground. In the next, she nearly stepped into a rectangular hole in the ground which looked as though it had been dug with from below. Emily already saw herself fall down a three- or four-meter drop into the building's basement, but then a turian hand pulled her back.

"Careful now. Wouldn't want to get the engineers again," Garrus said dryly. "If there are any around in the first place."

"Yeah. I wasn't looking to make today a second Virmire either," she replied before considering the hole, or rather the tunnel it had been dug from. Had the geth dug their way into the building? "Thanks for the safe."

"Don't mention it," the former C-SEC detective responded before both of them stepped over the hole and looked up ahead into the next room. It was almost entirely unremarkable. Just another grey, abandoned chamber of the observatory… except for one thing. "Damn. Now that's just depressing," the turian said, almost with a whisper. It took Shepard a second to notice what he had noticed – probably because up to now she didn't actually have any idea what a quarian skeleton looked like.

There, sitting in the corner were the remains of a larger, vaguely human-looking alien embracing a much smaller, child-like member of its species – or rather shielding it from something

"Like I said. Killing machines, not crabs," Thane said stoically, having once more snuck up behind them without doing as much as moving a breeze of air or kicking one of the small pieces of debris lying all over the ground.

How the hell was he doing that?

She had no idea, but she'd have to ask when they got back to the Normandy.

"I officially take my comparison back," Nader muttered, presumably inspecting the same gaping holes in the skulls of the quarians that Shepard was now noticing as well. They looked almost too human-like for comfort – baring the wider eye sockets and narrower jaws .. and the obviously lethal injury in the middle of their forehead. "Look at those shots. It's like someone straight-up executed them," the young lieutenant went on.

"Because they did," Thane injected. "Geth do not take prisoners. Why would they?"

"Takes a special kind of fucked-up to do something like that," Nader retorted.

"Or just an unfeeling machine," Garrus offered. "No such thing as remorse or hesitation about killing civilians if you were programmed to not feel it in the first place," he sighed and then seemed to whisper something that sounded like something along the lines of 'almost like taetrian hastati', but since it was way too quiet, Shepard couldn't be sure that that was what Garrus had actually said. So instead of pondering on the turian's comment, she looked at the bodies.

Up to today, everything she'd known about the Geth War had come from the extranet or history classes back at the Officer Academy. It had been distant and surreal, almost like a piece of fiction or like the distant wars humanity had fought among itself way before First Contact or the Fringe Wars.

… not anymore.

Now it was a very real, very brutal part of the history of the galaxy she lived in.

"Still, hard to believe some farming bots could graduate to doing something like-" Nader paused before looking away from the pair of long-dead quarians. "- like this. I mean. Fuck. Executions are something you need to know about to do it, so someone obviously taught the geth what they are."

"That really shouldn't come as a surprise," the C-SEC detective responded.

"What do you mean?" Nader responded.

"Not all geth were built for manual labor. Before the war started, the quarians had them enforcing laws and doing military logistics. As far as TNI was concerned, the Conclave wasn't about to stop at crate-stacking either," Garrus replied as Shepard entered the next room, finding yet another shadowy corridor covered in debris, dust and sporadic rays of harmful light shining through the ceiling. While she was glad that there were no geth or dead quarians, she didn't like how the distance between them and the beacon was now increasing with every step she took. "No one talks about it anymore because well… there isn't a Conclave anymore. But back when it existed, it was pretty much an open secret that the quarians were building combat-ready geth to supplement their troops."

"Meaning they already had geth programmed to shoot on sight and kill without hesitation," the biotic responded. "That definitely explains their body count on Eden Prime."

"Yes. Except that Eden Prime was nothing compared to the Geth War. You got hit bad back then, but not like this. Not even by a longshot," Garrus retorted before looking around. "Honestly, I don't think anyone ever got hit like this. Not even the Rebellions or the Rachni Wars were this bad."

"I wasn't trying to say - " Nader started.

"I know you weren't. Just thinking out loud right now. Trying to decide if this is what it'll look like when the Reapers turn up," the turian cut her off.

As soon as he had said that, Shepard couldn't help but wonder the same thing.

… and then she figured that the Reapers turning up would be even worse. (If that was somehow possible.)

She shook her head and opened a door that actually looked like it was leading somewhere other than a corridor that got them further away from the beacon. A moment before she could point that out however, she was made aware of something weird happening outside of their immediate vicinity.

"Alpha, this is Charlie, come in," one of the teamleader's spoke over the radio. She couldn't help but notice how quiet and calm his voice was considering he should be engaging the geth that were converging on their position right now – which judging by the rhythmic, single-shot gunfire noises they were doing (albeit in a strange way).

"This is Alpha," she responded. "What's going on?"

"The geth stopped," he began saying. Or rather, she thought he did. In fact those three words were all he said.

"Come again? Stopped what?"

"Stopped doing anything Ma'am, moving, shooting, fighting, glowing," he listed. "They're just standing there like someone pushed the off-button. It's like shooting fish in a barrel out here."

Before she could inquire more about the situation, the two other teamleaders sounded off as well.

"Same for Delta."

"Echo too."

She stopped in her track, looked back at her half of the team and then decided to hail Callius.

"Lieutenant, can you confirm?"

"Negative, we haven't seen a geth ever since entering the building," was the turian's brief reply. When it came through, Garrus looked at Shepard and then at the rest of the group.

"I don't like this," his voice flanged before a metallic clanking sound echoed through the room ahead of them. "Not. One. Bit," he added before the broken door ahead of them started to be violently shifted by its broken edges by jet-black fingers made up of armor plating and synthetic muscles.

… not good.

She aligned her sights with the door and braced for the inevitable fight.

---

Seven Minutes Earlier, 2158 CE, Haestrom, Dholen Anomaly Dark Energy Observatory

"Okay, that's definitely the sound of a firefight," Prazza muttered all the while Reegar slid down an incline that probably used to be a stairway.

"Agreed. Sounds like its plenty of humans too. They set up around the building, probably to draw up a perimeter," the lieutenant finished as he dusted himself off and looked at Tali. "If this was me looking for our signal, I'd have squads entering the building as well. So our best bet is probably to just stay here and wait," he went on before a sudden explosion overshadowed the gunfire. Someone more practiced in the art of warfighting might have been able to tell whether it was a bomb, a rocket or something else entirely but to Tali it was one thing only: loud. "At least as long as that's an option. Which I'm starting to think it might not be for very long."

Instead of saying something, Tali only nodded quietly and grasped her shotgun more tightly. All resolutions to be a better leader set aside, she knew that Reegar was the one in charge as soon as the rounds started flying and she didn't have a single issue with that.

"Shit. You really still are holding out hope, aren't you?" Prazza asked the marine lieutenant before checking his weapon and then tapping another one of the marines on the shoulder to switch positions with him.

"Aren't you?"

"You and I both know how many geth are hanging around this place. There's no way a bunch of human grunts are going to do anything but make them angry enough to actually hunt us down for good."

As he stepped past her, Reegar let out an audible sigh before taking up positions by the door the marines were securing.

"Your unrelenting optimism never seizes to amaze me, Prazza," he retorted before slapping his hand on the marine's shoulder and not even flinching when another explosion made Tali jump up. "Alright. Time to get into position and earn our pay."

---

Six Minutes Earlier, 2158 CE, Haestrom, Dholen Anomaly Dark Energy Observatory

"Christ, the geth really tore this place up, didn't they?" Leng muttered as Callius and her half of the team walked through the cellar of the observatory – which had clearly been repurposed into a bunker at one point or another. Calling it 'beaten down' wouldn't do the place justice. There wasn't a single reinforced wall that didn't have holes in it and one could not go ten paces without finding aged plasma burns or other signs of the last stand that had clearly taken place here. Bones, holes, wreckages of ancient gun emplacements and halves of broken vehicles disrupted mid-evacuation… the entire place looked like a warzone that was missing just one thing: the enemy that had caused all of this to begin with. There was not a single broken geth to be seen anywhere among the wreckages.

Funnily enough, that same could be said about present-day.

After their overwatch had done its job, they had managed to practically stroll into the building without as much as a hint of resistance. If she would have believed in things like that, she might have even claimed that it was like there was a magic barrier which was keeping the geth from actually stepping into the observatory.

While a welcome change to some of their other missions, Callius didn't like it.

In her experience, a lack of resistance either meant that you were going the wrong way because there was nothing worth defending in that direction or you were going exactly where your enemy wanted you to go because their ambush was waiting just around the next corner.

Even if they were an N7, an STG veteran, a justicar and a member of the Blackwatch's honorguard and could likely handle a small ambush, she had no intentions of trying their luck.

All it took was one good boobytrap or one well-placed Spitfire emplacement (that was the term the Hierarchy used to describe the geth's updated version of what used to be an experimental Conclave weapon – in layman's terms, it was essentially a rotary machine gun that fired plasma and had once been meant to be mounted on the newest generation of quarian IFVs).

"Actually wouldn't attribute most of the damage to geth. Casualties in front of us? Obviously related to geth. But destruction of infrastructure? Collateral damage to civilian populace? More likely than not rooted in actions of Conclave Army. When disadvantage became obvious, quarian military started using scorched earth tactics. Brutal, ruthless, calculated, effective… but still questionable."

"Doctor, you are using peculiar words to describe the cruelty the quarians inflicted on their own people during the war," the asari of her squad responded. Unlike all of them, she had actually been alive during the Geth War. For her this conflict was a memory, not history.

"What do you mean?" Leng injected.

"The geth killed most of the quarians, yes, but the quarians too spilled oceans of their own blood. Collaborators, dissidents, deserters, civilians caught in the wrong place at the wrong time," she listed, "they all died at the quarians' hands, not the geth's," Samara took a pause as she and Callius entered the next segment of the bunker – a large room with a rectangular hole cut into the floor – from below by the looks of it. Only when it was declared clear did she continue.

"If you asked a quarian about what their ancestors did, they'd never admit to it, let alone know what you're talking about. After the Admiralty decided to quell the information flow regarding the war to maintain order among the Fleet, people started to forget that there is no such thing as a clean civil war," Callius peaked up at that choice of words. It gave her reason to pause.

She been part of Hierarchy's elite-military units ever since she was seventeen, yet she had never heard anyone refer to the geth uprising as a 'civil war'.

This was strange considering that the conflict was essentially the very definition of a civil war now that she actually thought about it for a moment. While the geth could probably not be considered as citizens of the Conclave's state, it had still been a war waged within the borders of said state; presumably with a certain build-up and warning signs pointing to its eventual escalation. (And not the freak-accident of synthetics going rogue that the galaxy liked to portray it as.)

… maybe the Admiralty weren't the only ones who had used time to put their own spin on what the war had been?

She pushed the thought back into the corner of her mind and took in the room in front of them fully once more, taking note of a particular scorch mark on the wall and ground up ahead - by the doors of what looked like an underground hangar.

"Those are recent," she noted immediately. Compared to the other marks on the ground and walls, the plasma burns were fresh. Not fresh enough to still flicker and smolder but still fresh enough to stand out compared to the others. Immediately, her eyes scanned the ground with weary suspicion. Could three-hundred-year-old boobytraps still be lying around this cellar?

"Angle of burns suggest shaped detonation on waist level. Likely to be explosive trap meant to delay enemy assault," the salarian member of her team began before suddenly walking past her and casually stepping over several nearly invisibly thin wire she was only now seeing. He knelt down next to them and plucked one up with his thin fingers. "Didn't expect quarian technology to be sturdy enough to endure three centuries of environmental exposure. Particularly on place like Haestrom," he went on before suddenly aiming his gun at a crack in the wall next to the door. Before she could ask what he was doing or call him crazy for walking into what was essentially a tripwire maze, Mordin fired off a shot. It hit whatever he had been aiming for, set off a bright-orange explosion that immediately swallowed the empty air around the door they had been about to walk through, painted the stone-grey metal black and made Leng mutter a silent 'holy shit'. "Clearly misjudged skills of their craftsman ship," he plucked up the wire and held it in front of his omni-tool. After a few seconds, he then pointed his hand forward and bright-red lines started to appear all over the ground – more boobytraps. "Suggest we reroute."

Callius – despite decades of experience with explosives and the one time she had intentionally walked into a slaver minefield – swallowed uneasily upon seeing so many tripwires.

"Agreed."

---

Four Minutes Earlier, 26. April 2417 AD, Cronos Station

Blaring alarms were never a good sign.

Neither was the complete blackout of a room's security system.

Especially when they came in at half past two in the night from a lab no one was supposed to be in on a station no one was supposed to be able to board.

"Ready?" she asked the leader of the Section 9 team facing her.

Unlike her – who had been woken in the middle of night and barely had time to grab her gun and fix her hair up into something vaguely resembling a ponytail– the man was clad in heavy, stone-grey armor and backed up by a whole squad of Section 9 agents wearing the exact same get-up.

Section 9.

They were HSAIS' direct action units; the quasi-counterpart of ASOC, NSOC and Cerberus' Strike Teams (at least according to themselves.) While entirely unnecessary on the battlefield in the presence of the much more … battletested commandos of the Navy, the Army and Cerberus, Section 9 did have its place in the machine that was the HSA's armed forces. Although they'd never be the go-to guys when Arcturus needed a military problem solved with brute force, pure invisibility or a mixture of both, they were preferably approached whenever a sensitive op considered 'too dirty' or 'too asymmetrical' for 'regular' special forces popped up (whatever that meant). Additionally to that very vague mission statement, they had the boring duty of handling everyday tasks such as providing intervention teams of other HSAIS operations and – like today – handling internal security concerns aboard Cronos Station.

"Whenever you are," the operative responded. Somewhere behind his team, Yo-yo could see the two engineers with whom she was currently sharing this lab during daytime hours; Robin Wigmore and Aiden Ardrey. She wasn't sure if someone had decided that it was a good idea to bring them into a situation where there was a potential hostile aboard Cronos Station or if they had simply arrived at the lab at their own discretion… but she did know that their place behind ten heavily-armed Section 9 operatives was probably the safest possible spot in this given situation.

"Breach it," she nodded, knowing full and well that Aiden and Robin would probably lose it as soon as they saw the flashbangs flying through the door and into every corner of their precious research lab. Normally the Niner-guys would've just taken a peek into the room to know if this level of destruction was even necessary. But since the walls of the lab were scanner proof and there was no point of access to insert a camera into, they had to go in blind. And – like the squad leader had said – if they were going in blind, whoever was in that room would be blind as well.

As soon as the door was forced open and the flashbang started flying, Yo-yo covered her ears and closed her eyes. She'd hate to get a tinnitus or have retina damage and without a hardsuit to protect her, the odds were pretty good that exactly that would happen. After she heard the muffled explosions and opened her eyes just in time to see the Niners swarm into the room behind their shield-carrying point man, Yo-yo waited for them to sound the all-clear – or for them to start shooting, whatever happened first.

Personally, she was still working under the assumption that this was a false alert.

"Clear!"

And by the sound of it, she was proven right.

She walked through the door – two concerned engineers on her trail – and then looked around the now positively messed-up room. The Niners were standing around the room in practiced positions and already getting ready to leave now that it was evident they weren't needed anymore. It was funny really, they hadn't taken even ten seconds to pretty much destroy the entire lab. One of the flashbangs had landed squarely on the central lab table and its bright explosion had scorched all the various pieces of equipment lying around it, additionally a table and chairs standing in their path had been kicked out of the way.

"Oh god," she heard Aiden mutter behind her – probably because it had once more been one of his terminals that had gotten the bad end of an explosion. "Oh, dear god." The guy really was unlucky when it came to that.

After choosing to ignore his misfortune for the moment, the brunette specialist turned towards the squad leader of the direct-action team, who was already typing in something on his omni – probably a short report and a request for house-cleaning.

"Any idea what could've triggered the false alert?"

He looked up from the holographic display. "Well, that's the thing," he began before pointing towards one of the containment compartment where a pair of Niners were standing with guns at the ready, "it's not a false alert. Whatever you put in there caused it," she could already see the color drain from Robin's and Aiden's faces and as she remembered what was inside that particular container, she too got a bad feeling. "It got through cyber security and fired off the alarm system," the Niner finished, prompting Yo-yo to turn towards the engineers.

"I thought you shut him off." Him here being their pet-geth program 'Jeff'.

Robin looked at Aiden and Aiden at Robin.

"We did…" the male engineer started, his stare moving towards the container. "We definitely did. There's no way he did anything. Unless-"

"- unless he figured out how to turn himself back on," Robin finished with a mutter. "Which is impossible, right?" she asked Aiden.

"Absolutel-" the other engineer cut himself off. "What if something else turned him back on?"

"Something on Cronos Station? Or something outside?" Robin retorted. At this point pretty much all of the Section 9 operatives seemed to listen in on their conversation. Mentioning the words 'Cronos Station' tended to get the attention of its security department.

"Definitely outside. There's nothing in here that he could connect to."

"Are you sure about that Aiden? I mean he had to connect to something HSA to figure out ED-" Robin replied.

That was Yo-yo's que to step in.

"If you're all done here, I think I'll be taking over for the rest, Agent…" she began, realizing that she had no idea who the squad leader was. In true Section 9 fashion, the only identifier on his armor was an Arabic number, an alphabetic designation and a blood-type. In this case, 'Golf-One' and 'AB Negative'.

"Copy that, Specialist," Golf-One responded with a nod before simply turning on his heel and wondering away alongside the rest of his squad – presumably to report to his superiors that Section 13 was once again 'endangering the existence of all of Cronos Station' (it wouldn't be the first time; to say that Nine and Thirteen didn't exactly get along well was an understatement…). Only when he was gone did Yo-yo readdress the engineers.

"What do you mean something outside of Cronos could have turned him back on?"

The shared another look.

"Another geth maybe?" Robin threw in.

"How's that possible? There shouldn't be a geth anywhere within lightyears of this place."

"True," Aiden responded. "But Cronos Station is the nexus for all military comm-traffic coming in from the Attican Traverse. So if they somehow hijacked a frequency with a direct link to Cronos… I think they could not only figure out EDI's ID but also ride the frequency all the way to the only other geth recipient in the entirety of HSA Space."

"Jeff," she figured, to which Aiden nodded. "What kind of geth could possibly hijack a human frequency? And from where?"

The Scottish man shrugged.

"Beats me."

---

Three Minutes Earlier, 26. April 2417 AD, HSASV Normandy

The last sixty seconds on board of the HSA's most advanced stealth ship had perhaps been the most stressful sixty seconds in the life of Flight Lieutenant Jeff 'Joker' Moreau – which was saying something because he'd literally engaged in a dogfight with a freaky cyber-space squid trying to bring about the end times.

He'd told everyone.

EDI was going to be the death of them.

Yet no one had listened to him.

"You're overreacting Joker, she won't usher in the cyber-apocalypse. Stop being a robophobe." the bearded man mocked while frantically trying to figure out why their onboard AI was currently unresponsive and putting their collective lives at risk by randomly shutting off systems and then powering up others in their place. "She's just a well-meaning synth. She obeys Asimov's laws. Her programming doesn't allow her to have malicious intent against us," he went on in a voice that sounded like a mockery of Shepard's – something he realized few commanders wouldn't take offense to. He didn't care about that right now though. "No way will she ever try to murder us or go rogue or..." his hands flew over the holograms while the bridge and CIC staff were working somewhere behind them – trying to fix the same issue and simultaneously attempting figure out what had killed their communication to Commander Shepard's ground team. Either it was the same thing messing up EDI, or something had gone horribly wrong.

… he'd love for nothing more than to worry about what was going on with Shepard right now, but as things were, he currently had to focus on saving the hundred-something lives attached to the Normandy.

"I swear to god. If I get my ass blown out from under me on two Normandies, I'm hanging up my god damn flight school hat-" he started before all of the sudden, there was a moment of pure darkness. Even his holograms had turned off and for a split-second, he wondered if he had just died.

"What did you do, Joker?!" First Lieutenant Nagato, the officer in charge of spaceborn combat who was currently sitting right behind him, demanded to know.

"I didn't do-" before he could finish, everything turned back on and the Normandy – and EDI – suddenly returned back to their normal state from a minute ago, "anything. Shut up, Nagato."

"Hello, Lieutenant Moreau," a synthetic voice greeted. "I apologize for my brief absence. While I am certain that you have many questions, there has been a development that requires your attention prior to any further discussions."

"What the-"

Two Minutes Earlier, 2156 CE, Haestrom, Dholen Anomaly Dark Energy Observatory

As the communication channel with NRDP-642-3-4-9-02-02-2413 was closed, the head of the jet black platform stopped growing in a bright red and once more turned into a more timid blue.

The exchange between the programs and the entity had been very informative and very revealing – particularly in regard to the organics' flawed perception of the geth's relation to Nazara and the programs' own misconception on the nature of NRDP-642-3-4-9-02-02-2413 – or as it had come refer to itself; 'EDI'. Contrary to their hypothesis of the EDI-intelligence being a servant of Nazara and thus the very thing they were trying to warn the organics about, the EDI-intelligence appeared to be an entity created to combat the same threat.

Still, more data needed to be collected.

Without violent interruption.

Hence, a temporary ceasefire and a reevaluation had become necessary.

With a burst of FTL-communication, the programs of the platform reached out to all other geth units currently engaged in the containment of the creators and the new intruders and presented its case. Faster than any organic mind could process, information was processed and a consensus was reached by all geth on Haestrom.

In face of recently collected data, cooperation was the logical conclusion.

To achieve this, hostilities were to be ceased until an attempt at a diplomatic meeting could be achieved and – to avoid damage to the organics and their platforms – this end would be brought about by all geth programs simply migrating out of the platforms currently engaged. Unlike the programs themselves, the dozens of platforms they currently commanded were expendable. Mass produced machines made of mixed-alloy and synth-muscle carrying a simplistic pulse weapon that could be produced by the millions per one Rannoch planetary-axis rotation if they desired such.

The only platform who would remain active was theirs and they would do everything in their power to ensure a peaceful resolution to this conflict and attempt to fulfil their role as the emissaries to the other organics and creators currently taking shelter within the ruined structure the programs were currently mapping.

While the likelihood of a geth platform successfully and peacefully interacting with an organic was determined to be zero, the programs were hoping - which to them as geth was an inherently foreign concept; hope usually only entered the emotional minds of organics - that the EDI-intelligence would manage to convince the other organics to hold their fire long enough for them to explain their peaceful intentions. Additionally, they hoped that this would not end with the premature deactivation and task failure of all programs currently present in the platform – and on a larger scale, the expected galactic-wide deactivation event.

As the hands of their platforms started to force open the door behind which they had tracked the organics, a final consensus was reached – mirroring the one that had led them on this mission to begin with: They had to make their attempt.

Even if no one would listen.

---

Present Time, 26. April 2417 AD, Haestrom, Dholen Anomaly Dark Energy Observatory

"-ommander," the chopped of voice of Joker came through the radio of her helmet. She thought about answering, but considering the geth hands in her sights, she'd refrain from that until the situation was resolved. "Commander, come in," the pilot declared again. He sounded excited – or maybe anxious about something. Normally that would give her reason to pause but since her team and she were waiting to light up the geth trying to breach the door, she decided that whatever it was, it could wait the couple of seconds it would take them to destroy however many platforms were about to walk into their doom.

As the door started to give way and a black alloy hand turned into a black alloy forearm, Joker suddenly did something very strange.

He shouted.

"Commander, pick up goddammit!" he roared through the radio, prompting Shepard to slide down into cover after exchanging a knowing nod with Garrus and the others – they'd handle the geth.

"Kind of a bad time, Joker," the N7 responded. "What's the-"

Before she ever finished the question, the pilot – realizing that he had her attention – began to speak, nearly as fast as a salarian.

"I know you'll think I'm crazy when I say this, but do not. I repeat. Do not shoot the black geth coming for you. He's the only reason the marines haven't been overrun yet and EDI says that he wants to talk peacefully," the pilot declared, nearly too fast for her mind to even process what was going on.

A black geth coming in peace that had communicated with EDI?

Truth be told, if not for what she had experienced ever since Eden Prime, she would've dismissed Joker immediately – and probably sent him for a psychological reevaluation as soon as she got back to the Normandy.

But since those particular experiences and the accompanying knowledge that there was no such thing as 'too strange' when it came to her missions were an unremovable part of her ever since a prothean beacon had decided to target her, Shepard did something presumably every single commander in the galaxy would've considered moronic.

She rose from her cover and yelled at her squad to stop a mere second before a bulky, tall geth made of black alloy stepped into the room with empty hands.

"Hold fire!" she shouted, just in time for her squad to comply. She was lucky that this was her squad too because they were probably one of the few units in the galaxy that would ever even accept the order to not shoot a geth.

While their weapons stayed raised at the geth and she could at least hear Garrus and Nader accelerated breaths, Shepard only now noticed how impossibly silent things had just become now that she was standing face to face with a geth platform. Similarly, she only now registered that she was standing face to face with a freaking geth platform.

Two years ago, they had tried to kill her.

And now they apparently wanted to talk.

Or at least that's what she was starting to believe due to the geth's clear lack of aggression (or any action whatsoever, really.)

After spending a moment considering if this was some eloquent trick, Emily noticed something about the drone.

It looked nearly exactly like the geth they had found on Freedom's Progress; barring the obvious wear-and-tear on its armor that suggested it had been away from any repairs for quite some time now.

When she had noticed that similarity, Shepard continued to muster the platform and in doing so, subconsciously tilted her head.

After a second of the plates around its 'eye' jittering and folding, the geth did the same and mirrored her posture – all the way down to hunching down so that they were eye to eye.

Still, it remained silent with the exception of some electronic-sounding clicks that the N7 wasn't ready to call attempts at communication.

Since Joker had been so insistent on this geth wanting to talk, she honestly hadn't excepted it to be so silent.

She'd rectify that silence soon enough, but before she did so, there was one more thing she had to take of: their actual mission.

"Lieutenant Callius, this is Shepard," she spoke into her radio, "We have a situation here. You'll need to find the quarians by yourself."

"What's going on?" her XO replied.

Suddenly she found herself in Joker's shoes.

She'd sound crazy when she said what she was about to say.

But it was the truth… so:

"I'm talking to a geth."

"Talking?" the turian's voice came back.

"Yes."

There was a second of pause on Callius' end, no doubt because the turian had to wrap her head around it too. But, as expected from the Blackwatch lieutenant, she reacted professionally and turian.

"Understood, Commander. We'll handle the quarians. Call if things turn bad."

"I will."

When her reply ended, the geth suddenly straightened again and its flashlight-like head blinked several times over, producing thin strands of pale blue light that danced across the rank-insignia of her armor and the place where her radio was integrated into her helmet.

Then it produced an actual, recognizable sound.

"Shepard. Commander. Human," the synthetic declared before it repeated the process on the other members of her team and started rattling off Garrus' and Jack's names and ranks with the exception of Thane, which it only called 'drell'. Its voice was smooth and almost surprisingly quarian-like, if one ignored the lack of an accent. In retrospective, it made a lot of sense; after all, what else would the geth have to model a voice after?

"Yes, that's me," the N7 responded, unsure of this entire scenario. Her entire diplomatic training was based around reading the navy's first contact guidelines. And those definitely didn't cover 'murderous robots who humanity fought a war with two years ago'. She chose her next words carefully because of that. "And you are?" she went on, knowing how basic of a question that was.

The eye of the platform blinked – or rather its light turned off for a moment and then back on.

"We are geth," the platform stated in return, still stoically standing in front of them, ignoring how Garrus had moved to flank it.

"I can see that, but what's your name?"

"Geth do not have names."

"But you have to call yourself something, don't you?"

"No. We are geth," the robot responded before its blue light blinked red. "Arguing about identity is not the reason we sought you out, Shepard-Commander," she'd ignore its butchering of her name and rank for now. "Our mission is to deliver an urgent warning."

"About what?" it had to be quite the something if EDI and Joker were in on it (she'd bother with the circumstances leading to that later, when she wasn't standing inside hostile territory making history)

Suddenly the plates on his head twitched outward and a hologram of the galaxy was projected from the light in its eye socket. "We are all in grave danger," it went on before dots flashed all over the galaxy. While she couldn't be sure about what most of those places were, she definitely recognized that some of them where near human space – mostly on the border of the Fringe Worlds, or rather inside of what was now the CIP. "The servants of Nazara-" her blood froze in her veins when she heard that name. Nazara. That was Sovereign's 'name'. "- are already within. As we speak, they are working to prepare the arrival of the Old Machines. To prevent a galaxy-wide deactivation event, immediate action from all parties is required. Synthetic and organic," the map of the galaxy vanished and the geth looked back at them. "This platform was designed as an emissary. This purpose has now been met. In accordance with our design, we shall now render any assistance needed in stopping this threat."

She had plenty of questions.

But first and foremost, she had one and it wasn't for the geth.

Her head turned towards Garrus, the only one of the squad who'd been around for the fight against Saren and who was already used to weird beings telling them even weirder things.

"… is it saying what I think it's saying?" she asked, her voice uncharacteristically quiet.

The turian's eyes narrowed.

"Yes. I'm afraid it is."

She looked back at the platform and then and there made a decision that she knew could very well get her court-martialed. After all, who in their right mind would bring a geth – a hostile artificial intelligence - aboard the HSA's most advanced spacecraft?

"Are you ready to travel?"

The eye socket spun and flashed red again for a split second.

"Affirmative."

She brought her hand up to her radio to break the good news to Joker and Callius and the rest of the people on this channel.

"Everyone, this Commander Shepard," she steadied her breath, having a hard time believing the words she was about to say. "Prep the hangar with a security team and ready the brig. I'm bringing a live-geth back to the Normandy."

Today really was going to be different, wasn't it?

… just not the way she thought it would.

---

Meanwhile, 2158 CE, Haestrom, Dholen Anomaly Dark Energy Observatory

"Did Em just say what I think she said?" Leng muttered as the four of them moved through the corridors. He sounded confused and even though the justicar and the salarian weren't saying anything, she was certain that the rest of her team was feeling the same.

"Yes," Callius responded dryly, hiding the fact that she was just as lost as them when it came to processing the news.

She'd been in a lot of weird situations, but this one was steadily advancing towards the top.

Making friends with geth.

While Shepard had yet to reach the general's aptitude for finding himself in impossibly strange situations no one would be willing to believe unless they were there to witness them (a habit he seemed to continue even if she wasn't around – at least if his conversation with the Harbinger was anything to go by), the commander really was shaping up to be a worthy challenger of his 'talent'. "Best not think about it," she told Leng when they reached the next door, to which the N7 nodded. In practiced fashion, the turian inspected the door before going through it. Therefore, she immediately noticed that something about this one was different from the others.

… it was freshly locked.

Up to now, every door of the observatory that they had walked through had either been broken, open or missing.

Not this one.

And unless the geth had decided to lock one out of the hundred doors that this place had, that could only mean one thing.

"We're close."

After having Mordin check for booby-traps, she told her team to get into cover (in case there was one the salarian had missed) and wiped her omni-tool over the opening mechanism – halfway expecting something plasma-like to explode in her face and hoping that her Blackwatch armor would survive the detonation of a weapon it had never been designed to combat. Luckily for her though, no such thing happened and the door opened to-

-to reveal several quarians pointing their guns at her face.

Her normal reaction to looking down the muzzle of a gun would have been to shoot the one holding the gun.

But since people holding the mixture of quarian-made and turian-made weapons into her face were the people they were here to save, Callius suppressed the impulse in her mind telling her to engage.

"Easy," she stated while her eyes scanned the group. They looked worse for were, which was probably to be expected considering they'd been behind enemy lines for days. But more importantly than that, they also looked familiar. They were the same people they had met Freedom's Progress and judging by the way they were now lowering their weapons, that realization was now dawning on them too. Her eyes locked on to the small, female quarian standing at the back of the formation. That would be Tali'Zorah. "We've met, haven't we?" Callius offered and in return, the quarian marines lowered their weapons.

"Yes, we have."

---

Thirty Minutes Later, 26. April 2417 AD, HSASV Normandy, Hangar

After returning to the Normandy, Shepard had expected a lot of things. She'd expected a talk with the geth, a talk with the quarians and a talk with Harper. Additionally, she had also expected there to maybe be a negative reaction to the fact that she'd brought a geth onboard of their ship and – once Joker had told them what had happened in her absence – she'd also expected EDI to require a system check.

All possible conflicts, all resolvable.

What she hadn't counted on however was for the quarians to not even manage to leave the hangar before things turned sour.

Due to a slight error in timing, they'd seen the geth walk around the Normandy and ever since then… things had been volatile.

She'd left Leng to handle them while she went to the bridge to figure out what had happened with EDI and Callius took care of the geth for the time being.

Clearly that had been an error on her part.

When she'd stepped into the CIC, she'd already been called back down.

"It's a damn geth. Do yourself a favor and space it," she heard one the quarian marines say as she stepped out of the elevator.

Arguing.

Not good.

As she went to climb down the stairs, the quarian marine took a step forward – towards the storage rooms where they'd put the geth. Leng first tried stopping him with an extended arm and when that didn't work, flat out shoved him backwards. Whether it was because the quarian wasn't expecting the shove to be too strong or because Leng had put his entire weight into the move (knowing him, it was the latter), the freshly-rescued marine stumbled and fell to the ground.

Physical attacks.

Worse.

"Are you fucking deaf? The geth stays right where it is. Commander's orders," her fellow N7 declared, drawing the ire of the rest of the quarian marines and still unaware that said commander was currently walking up behind him.

"If this is your idea of a rescue-op, human, you're doing a shit job," another marine – Prazza if she'd heard correctly – injected as he helped the quarian to his feet. "If you wanna keep a geth around, you might as well drop us off back on Haestrom," he went on before making the same mistake as the other quarian, stepping up to Leng.

"I think it's time you stop talking," her friend said in a tone she sadly recognized from the few times Kai had gotten into some … off-duty altercations.

Those days were long past. It had stopped after a particularly bad night of drinking during a deployment on Eden Prime when the deaths of Leng's original fireteam had come up and the N7 had reacted…. poorly to the krogan who had voiced his opinion on them. Long story short, she'd used all the good will being a war-hero had given her and saved the man from some assault charges and ever since then, Leng had not only vowed to be a different man but also lived up to it.

"Or what? You're gonna break my mask too?" Prazza responded. This situation right here was the perfect example of two very-much short-tempered people meeting and it having the worst possible consequences.

"Don't fucking tempt me, you suit-ra-" Leng began.

As she watched the scene unfold, the words Callius had said in the Je'Fara Precinct back on Illium came back to her.

'Time changes people. Especially if you die on them for two years,' it flanged in her memory. 'The Kai Leng you knew two years ago might not be the one you woke up to.'

She was about to open her mouth and interfere and only hesitated because she honestly needed a second to decide if the N7 currently trying to start a fight in the hangar was still actually the Kai Leng she'd known two years ago.

Because of that hesitation, the other officer present beat her to the punch. Or in this case, beat her to stopping the punch.

Prazza was suddenly pulled backwards by another one of the marines. From his red armor, Shepard recognized him as the same one who'd already reigned the quarian back in on Freedom's Progress.

Lieutenant Reegar.

"Alright that's enough from both of you," Reegar said before shoving Prazza back towards his formation and trading a look with the N7 before poking his finger against Leng's chest armor.

She already saw Leng lash out in front of her mental eyes… but much to her surprise, the other N7 didn't react to what the quarian officer was doing. Or maybe he had realized that she was about to interfere too and was back to being restrained. Either way. "You wanna assault my marines, human? Or maybe just beat on a suit-rat?" Reegar went on, finishing Leng's insult with ice in his tone. "Grab some sparring gloves, clear out the mess hall and we'll set a date," he retracted his finger and looked to Tali'Zorah, the quiet quarian who was the entire reason they had come to Haestrom to begin with. "Ma'am, I think it's about time you and the Commander talked."

She met the gaze of quarian and nodded.

"Agreed," then she turned her head towards Leng, "hit the armory," she paused for a second before she finished the sentence in a way that made her intentions clear, "Petty Officer."

For a split-second, she thought she saw something twitch in the man's face.

But then he was back to normal.

Or at least professional.

"Aye, aye."

---

Three Minutes Later, 2158 CE, HSASV Normandy, Conference Room

Tali followed Shepard through the door of the human frigate, all the while nervously fiddling with her hands to stop them from shaking and distracting her from how wobbly her legs felt. Reegar had told her this would happen as soon as they were out of danger. 'Adrenaline dump' he'd called it. Said that it would probably bad since it was her first time going out of prolonged combat.

.. he hadn't overstated.

"You know you can ask for a doctor if you need one, right?" the human commander offered as soon as the doors of the conference room closed behind them. Truth be told, Tali didn't exactly know why she was here or what she could possibly offer to the human other than her eternal thanks.

"No I-" she caught herself from stuttering. "I'm fine. It's just the adrenaline wearing off."

The human cracked a friendly smile. "Steady breaths help," then she gestured for one of the chairs. "Sit, please."

Tali obliged with both the advice and the offer.

"You probably have a whole lot of questions, starting with how we found you," Tali nodded in return to the human's statements. "And why we were looking for you in the first place," she nodded twice, "and why there's a geth with us," a third nod. "Okay," Shepard said before audibly exhaling. "Let's start from the beginning. You remember Freedom's Progress, right? Come to think of it, how is Veetor anyway?" She realized what the human was doing. It was a calculated question to build a connection, but since there was empathy in her voice Tali decided - or rather fell for the trick – and answered.

"Yes, I remember your colony. And Veetor lived. In no short parts thanks to you allowing us a timely departure," it was true. If Shepard had kept them on Freedom's Progress any longer, Veetor might have ended up like the marines she'd left behind on Haestrom…

Before her mind could go further down that road, Tali forced it to focus on the here and now and once more decided to act according to her station – the leader of the quarian team and a reasonably intelligent individual. She remembered how the geth they'd encountered on the Normandy looked like, thought back to Freedom's Progress and took the initiative to answer some of the questions Shepard had presented.

"This is about the geth we found, isn't it?"

Shepard folded her hands.

"Yes," the human responded. "We came looking for you because we were hoping you could help us with figuring out why they were headed for HSA space," she went on, "although considering how Haestrom went down, we actually kind of know that already," suddenly the human scratched her chin where a glowing surgical scar was noticeable. Probably a remnant of whatever incident had led to her being falsely declared as dead. "Or maybe the geth down in the cargo-hold is messing with us. I honestly don't know. Either way, I was hoping for your help. With the geth and with the Collectors."

"Those are the aliens who attacked your colony?" Tali responded, for now deciding not to ask how someone like herself could possibly help someone like Shepard fight something like the Collectors.

"Colonies, actually. It's plural already." the commander corrected and now that Tali thought back to it, she remembered. Freedom's Progress hadn't been the first colony to get attacked, just the first where there had been a witness. "I did tell you that they were taking our people, didn't I?"

"You did."

"Well. Ever since we parted ways, things got worse. Way worse. The invaded more of our planets, took even more of our people and at this point we might as well be at war with them," she leaned against the table. "But that isn't even the worst part."

"It's not?" she asked, uncertain of what could be worse than that.

"What I'm about to tell you can't leave this room, understood?"

"You saved our lives, the least I can offer you is my silence."

"Good," the human soldier responded before something about her demeanor changed visibly. "You were still on the Citadel back when geth attacked, weren't you?"

Tali felt a tingle down her spine when she remembered that day.

"Inside your embassy," she confirmed.

"So you also remember that ship the geth brought with them, right?"

"Sadly," the explosion had barely missed them.

The commander took a steady breath and only now was Tali noticing that her hand too seemed to be trembling ever so slightly. It wasn't nearly as bad as hers had been, but it was still there.

"What if I told you that everything from back then, the geth, Saren, their ship," she listed, "is all connected to everything happening with the Collectors and the geth right now? That there is someone out there pulling all their strings to finish what was started back then?"

"I'd ask you what you mean and how an issue of the Council could affect the Migrant Fleet," the young quarian answered earnestly. It was an answer worthy of an admiral's daughter. Or at least she'd like to think that it was. In response to her statement, the commander looked her directly in the eyes and only now did Tali notice that the skin around the human's pretty, emerald eyes wasn't just covered with small brown freckles but also tiny scars mirroring the orange one on her chin and neck. Just what had happened to her?

Keelah… had they stitched her back together?

She pushed that thought out of her head as well because of how unlikely it was that that was the case.

No one came back from dying.

"No one wants to admit it, but we are at the brink of something very bad happening to all of us and when it does, it won't matter if you're with the Council or not. Saren, the rogue Spectre who led the attack, he didn't go rogue on his own accord. I know that's what the news said but he didn't. His actions weren't to further his own plan. And neither were those of the geth or of the Collectors. They're all serving someone else. A race called Reapers," the human paused, waiting for what she was saying to sink in.

Tali's slightly glowing eyes narrowed behind her polarized mask.

The distinctive name unearthed a faint memory.

"I thought that was a geth cult?"

"And I wish that was true," Shepard sighed. "But it isn't. The Reapers are real and they didn't just build the Citadel and the relays, they're also the reason the protheans and everyone who came before them is no longer around," the human explained. "To cut a long story very short, everything we've found… the mass effect, the Citadel, it's all part of something they refer to as the cycle. It's-"

Suddenly something she'd read on the extranet shortly after the Battle of the Citadel exploded back into her memory.

Back then she'd thought it was fiction or a bad joke.

"- a rhythmical extinction pattern that's about to repeat itself," her stomach suddenly felt funny and even though she realized it was stupid to believe what she had just heard… she did. "Keelah," she whispered while looking at her hands. "I thought all this stuff was-"

"- just crazy justifications used to explain how the Hero of the Citadel suddenly became the number one bad guy?"

She answered with hesitation, "… yes," For a second, the funny idea of asking how she could help entered her mind – ignoring that her helping would equate to her abandoning the fleet. Still, on a whim, she looked back at Shepard and opened her mouth. "Do you have time to explain it from the beginning?"

"I was hoping you would ask me that."

---

Meanwhile, 2158 CE, HSASV Normandy, Brig

For the last thirty minutes, Callius had been locked in a silent stare off with the black geth platform contained behind the reinforced see-through wall of the brig.

Although she had been reassured that there was no way the geth could do anything from within the room, the former cabal had taken it upon herself to stand guard until Shepard could address the issue personally. After all, that was what XOs did. Stand in for their COs.

While others might feel uneasy with the idea of standing in the same room with a geth platform clearly designed for war, Callius really only felt more alert.

Granted, most people weren't biotics or wearing state-of-the-art Blackwatch armor that gave them the strength and survivability needed to go toe-to-toe with a geth…

But still.

"Has it actually said anything yet?" a flanging voice asked from behind her. It was the sole other turian of the ship – Vakarian. "Or moved?" like herself, he was still clad in his armor – barring his helmet. Although unlike herself, Vakarian never actually seemed to take it off. At least not since Omega.

"No," she replied without taking her eyes off the geth. "I just told it to wait for Shepard and ever since then, it's been standing there in silence," when she realized that her fellow turian was next to her and keeping her eyes on the geth, she risked a sideward glance. "Come to relieve me?"

"Do you need relieving?" he wondered.

"Do you need an answer?" she countered.

"Not really, no," he shrugged. "A geth emissary. Shepard really does attract strange things, doesn't she?"

"Well, considering she did attract you and me among others," Callius responded, wondering if she'd just imagined Vakarian's mandibles twitching at the mention of Shepard 'attracting' him or if that was just his facial injury acting up again, "I'd say that's a safe assumption to make. She's not as bad as the general, of course, but I'd say she's getting there," she went on, latching back on to her earlier line of thought. "Did you come down here for a reason or were you just looking for some turian company?"

"A reason, actually," Vakarian responded. "Don't get me wrong. You're obviously very fun to be around with all the regulations and by-the-book thing you've got going on," he said dryly, "but I came down here to tell you that Shepard's still talking to the quarian and that you might want to settle in for being down here for some time."

"Then so be it," Callius said neutrally. "If guard duty is my duty, I'll fulfill it."

"Spirits, you really are the stereotypical Cipritinian, aren't you?"

She briefly looked at Vakarian's own, blue facial markings. With the exception of the differences in facial structre caused by him being male and her being female and his plates being grey and scarred and hers being reddish-brown and thankfully uninjured, their tattoos were the exact same, showing that they were not only both from Palaven but also both from Cipritine, the heart of the Turian Hierarchy.

"Said the only other Cipritinian on this side of the Veil," she offered dryly before throwing another look at Vakarian. His statement really was ironic because he literally was what people would come up with when asked to imagine the stereotypical Cipritinian – at least if one ignored the fact that half his face was held together by medical crafts and a light-grey bandage. While the Hierarchy was mercifully two thousand years past the point where things like phenotype had mattered, Vakarian had everything needed to be the perfect Cipritinian, right down to the proper plate pigmentation, the right family name and the necessary lack of biotic abilities.

"Huh, guess we're alone together then, aren't we? Just two turians floating around a human warship, trying to save the galaxy and survive Gardner's horrible dextro-food," he said, leading with a strangely human sound. Although it was a small verbal slip-up, Callius noticed it immediately. Probably because it clearly showed that she wasn't the only turian on whom the human crew and their mannerisms were rubbing off on.

"The food's not that bad," she'd had worse.

"It kind of is," he disagreed. "Anyway. It really hasn't said or done anything at all?"

"If it did, it wasn't something I noticed," she responded. "Why are you so curious about the geth?"

"Other than the fact that it's a geth trying to initiate First Contact?"

"Yes. Other than that."

Vakarian's demeanor changed instantly.

"It showed us a map when we talked to it. Said that Sovereign's servants were already trying to usher in the Reaper's arrival. There were a lot of dots on that map."

"And?"

"And one was right where Palaven is."

His blue eyes looked at her amber ones and for a second – or they would have if Callius wasn't still wearing her helmet. In that moment neither of them was looking at the geth, too distracted with the prospect of their home coming under attack.

"They won't break the Crest," she quoted a turian mindset that had been around since the Krogan Rebellions.

"I'm not so sure about that."

Suddenly both turians were interrupted by an electric snap originating from the geth platform. Immediately their eyes – and their sidearms – were pointed at it. While they were still separated by the reinforced glass, they were ready to shoot, at least until they realized that the only thing the geth had done was look at its feet and scan the ground below it with a set of blue rays.

"Alright," Vakarian began, half-lowering his Carnifex. After a few moments of consideration, he decided to what Callius had avoided up to now: address the geth directly. "What are you doing, geth?"

The geth's head snapped back up and the lights started to shift from the ground towards Callius. They stayed blue for a moment, flashed red and then turned blue again.

"In the absence of Shepard-Commander, we have decided to spent processing power on her initial question."

Callius looked at Vakarian. "What question?"

"She wanted to know its name," her fellow turian stated.

"Correct," the geth agreed. "Protocols detailing interaction with organics indicate that an individual designation for this unit and the programs within would be beneficial to our mission," the plates and flaps around its head started to move. It was sort of like a poor impression of a facial expression. Or at least that's how it seemed to Callius. "After seventy-one-hundred-and-two attempts, a consensus on an individual designation could not be reached. This query is beyond our current abilities," its flashlight-like head turned sideways. "Since you already have individual designations for your platforms, we have determined to request your assistance, Vakarian-Detective and Callius-Lieutenant."

"How does it know our names?" Callius muttered as she lowered her weapon.

"Beats me," Vakarian responded before holstering his weapon. "Let me get this straight. You want the two of us to name you?"

The geth's flaps clicked upwards.

"Affirmative."

The turian shared another look.

"I mean, it can't hurt, can it?" Vakarian offered.

"I don't see how it would."

"Any ideas?"

"It mentioned you first, you do it," Callius said quickly and uncharacteristically defensive. She didn't want to give the geth a name… what if it didn't like it and this whole ordeal came crashing down because of it?

"My last name is literally ripped from an old folktale and my dad got the idea for my first name from a movie. I don't think I'm the right guy for the job," Vakarian retorted. "Besides, mothers are so much better at naming children than fathers are. Just ask my sister. She had some effort put into her first name."

Callius smirked underneath her helmet. She'd known 'Garrus' had sounded strangely familiar.

"I didn't know you stormed the beaches of Elapri."

Vakarian blinked and then raised his hand.

"See? This is exactly why I am not qualified for this task."

"Fair enough," she looked at the geth. "You keep calling yourself 'we'," she noted. "How many of you are in there anyway?"

The geth's head began to blink red again.

"This platform is made up of one thousand, one hundred and eighty-three programs who all handle individual tasks to complete our shared assignment. We are a collective. We are geth."

A thousand-something individuals working towards the same mission.

"So there's pretty much a legion of geth stuck in that one platform," she stated plain and simple. It was the first thing that came to her mind. In response, the geth's head flaps moved upwards. While that remark hadn't been her attempt at naming the geth, the geth clearly had other intentions.

"Legion. A designation for turian military formation consisting of up to five-thousand individual soldiers organized into a unit to further a larger objective," the blue light turned red again. "An appropriate metaphor, despite an insufficient number of programs," he tilted his head sideways. "A consensus on naming this platform has been reached. We are Legion. Thank you for resolving this query, Callius-Lieutenant."

She felt Vakarian nudge her chest armor with his own armored elbow.

"Ah. Synthetic killing machines. They grow up so fast, don't they?"

Callius let out a sigh and looked at the now once more passive get- Legion.

"Since I'm wearing a helmet, I'll have you know that I'm currently rolling my eyes."

"You'll warm up to him eventually."

---

Codex: Turian Hastatim Corps

The Turian Hastatim Corps – the arguably most controversial part of the conventional part of turian military – is an element of the Combat branch of the Armed Forces of the Turian Hierarchy (see Codex Entry: 'Organisation of the Corps of the Armed Forces of the Turian Hierarchy').

While most corps tend to have a narrow field of tasks and train accordingly, the Hastatim Corps is essentially an 'all-rounder' with a broad range of duties.

While mostly related to military policing and penal enforcement – which due to the omni-presence of the military in turian society extends to 'civilian' sectors as well – every hastati battalion also maintains a company of sappers meant to be deployed as first responders during urban disasters (or as combat support during urban warfare) and a company of specially equipped medical staff trained to operate within the unique environment of a hasati operation.

Although the'humanitarian' elements of the Hastati are often promoted, one fact remains: In terms of their tasks as a member of the combat branch the traditional role of the Hastatim Corps is simple: engage in urban warfare against armed (turian) populations.

To achieve this, a simple three-stage strategy appears to be used. (Note: The following is not a depiction of official turian military guidelines but rather based on observations made during the last Taetrian Insurgency in 2122 CE – more specifically the highly-controversial five-day deployment of a taetrian Hastati regiment into the city of Madra)

First the Hasati (under the orders of the local Primarch) declare an urban region as an active warzone and relay orders of evacuation towards the affected populations by air and land. During this stage, armed patrols roam the city and openly (and repeatedly) declare a timeframe in which civilians who are not ready to engage in open hostilities can evacuate towards a nearby Hastati camp. Due to strict 'only fire when fired upon' rules of engagements that prevent the hastati from engaging anyone who is not actively attacking them at this point (a distinction that has to be made carefully when most of the population is openly armed with military-grade weaponry and wandering the streets in such a manner), this stage is usually the one in which hastati are engaged the least but suffer the worst when attacked in prepared ambushes. Similarly it's also been described as the most 'frustrating' part for any hastati unit due to them at times literally being forced to watch as separatists make preparations for the upcoming stage of their operation.

Following the first stage of evacuation, the deployed hastati units move into Stage-Two, the most crucial segment of their strategy.

After the evacuation orders are completed, the hasati begin searching the city for any and all 'civilians' who might not be capable of evacuating on their own (for example due to being injured or trapped in prior fighting). It is here that the reputation of the hastati being units 'executioners' who 'go door to door' and 'kill people in their own homes' start. Due to the reality of turian insurgents being indistinguishable from their peaceful and equally armed neighbors, a hastati unit will never know whose doorstep they are standing on until they are either greeted with thanks or calls for aid or with the muzzle of a rifle or an improvised explosive device. Because of this, a hastati search party has to always be prepared to either render first aid or engage in a close-quarter-combat scenario. During the latest Taetrian Insurgency it were video recordings of taetrian hastati engaging in this stage of their operation and meeting heavy resistance that surfaced on the extranet and painted the picture of the city of Madra being 'systematically purged'. Unlike Stage-One, Stage-Two is the part of their operation during which hastati are engaged the most and suffer the heaviest casualties. During the fourth day of the Madra operation, these casualties climbed up to sixty percent.

Due to the scrutiny with which the hastati search-parties engage in this stage of the operation, it has to be noted that few hastati deployments outside of the Unification Wars (and the Madra operation) have ever even reached the now described Stage Three.

After the search of the city is completed and the command echelon of the Hastati Unit gets the repeated permission of the local Primarch to engage, the third stage of their strategy begins.

During this stage, the hastati rules of engagement are shifted. Where before hostility could not be assumed but had to be outright proven, the reverse is now applied: or in layman's terms, the Hastatim Corps is ordered to shoot anyone remaining in the city on sight unless they are absolutely certain that the particular person is either surrendering or in need of evacuation – which due to the hastati's previous scrutiny during the first two stages is an exceedingly rare occasion. It is during this stage that the hastati come closest to their reputation as execution squads as their tactics shift from that of an armed urban-recovery unit prepared for a firefight to those of close-quarter-combat teams expecting enemies around every corner and acting accordingly.

(Editorial Note: The following passage has been marked for further review by the turian embassy due to 'defamation of the Armed Forces'.)

While the turian military has a very liberal opinion towards collateral damage and tends to already be somewhat 'careless' with the deployment of its munitions, it should be noted that Stage-Three Hastati operations are 'cleared for all applications of force', meaning that a hastati unit engaged by a hostile force can – and will – request fire support as it sees fit; no matter the possibility of collateral damage. Interestingly enough, hastati casualties during the third stage of their operation tend to be lowest, which suggests a lack of restraint on the hastati's part or possibly even act of revenge against the remaining civilian population.

(Editorial Note: End of the formal complaint about defamation.)

---

A/N:

Welp. This took far longer than expected and I'm saddened to say that it also ended up being shorter than what I was shooting for.

For starters, a small explanation. In between still re-reading SV (I am nearly done) and work, I haven't had a whole lot of time to write since the last update and even when I finish the re-read (which like I said i'm doing for the sake of continuity - btw I'm happy to report that I still have not run into any major issues other than some odd instances of phrasing) ... I don't see myself speeding up the update pace again anytime soon.

Okay, with that out of the way, let's talk about this chapter. This is obviously a huge divergence from canon - which happened mostly because Legion needed to be introduced far differently now that the derelict reaper is coming up for Haugen instead of Shepard (since I already name-dropped where haugen was going the last time, I'll just assume that that wasn't a spoiler.) Similarly, I also decided to give legion's backstory a little spin. he doesn't have an N7 plate in this one and he doesn't imprint on shepard or edi when it comes to naming himself... he picks Callius.

With that out of the way, I'd like to say that some pretty major things happened in this chapter... and none of them were adressed because that's what will happen next :P

I don't have a whole lot more to say, actually.

So yeah.

For the record we're at 803 reviews, 1241 favorites and 1335 follows.

See you around next time.