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.

112. Sit Nomine Digna

Chapter 112. Sit Nomine Digna

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30. April 2417 AD, Valhallan Threshold, HSASV Normandy

"Affirmative Normandy, you are cleared to approach the Life Ship Rayya. Be advised, an approach towards any of the life ships will be regarded as an act of hostility," a disembodied quarian voice announced. In response, Joker's hands danced across the holograms in front of him before wiping the sweat of his brow. While he was hard at work, it wasn't the work that was making him sweat though.

Upon the request of the quarians, they'd been flying with the stealth drive engaged ever since entering the Threshold. 'So that no one follows you to the current location of the majority of the flotilla', they'd said – as if a gigantic armada of tens of thousands of ships was that hard to find to begin with.

Because of this request, the Normandy had gotten quite hot these last couple of hours; at least for the human crew members. With the interior temperature pushing thirty-nine degrees Celsius thanks to the heatsinks reaching their capacity, Garrus, Callius, Thane and Mordin were probably feeling right at home. As for Samara, Shepard simply figured that the justiciar wouldn't let it show if she was feeling the heat. She'd been aboard for some time now and Shepard hadn't seen her show a hint of emotion since. Nothing phased that asari.

"I take it engineering can vent the heatsinks now?" Shepard asked Joker. While she was technically in charge, the pilot had far more knowledge about what the Normandy could and could not do than her.

"Since the quarian ships already glowing like a candle, yeah. They can. There's so much emission floating around outside already anyways. If we wanted to sneak up and blow one of their ships up, I could discharge our heatsinks right under their noses and still no one would see us coming. Too much background."

"Good. Let them vent the heatsinks and prepare for docking. We'll be in the airlock decontaminating," she instructed before putting on her helmet and sealing her armor. They weren't expecting trouble. But a small cough could literally kill the entirety of the quarian crew if it got into the air filters of the ship's food supply. Hence they'd suit up – for the quarians' protection.

"Copy that," Joker nodded before turning in his chair as Shepard walked away. "Do try and get me a souvenir while you're over there. Maybe one of those anti-geth guns I read about on the extranet."

"What you need that for?" the N7 responded while opening the airlock and nodding at her fellow N7 and Garrus, who were standing at the ready alongside Tali and the surviving marines. Waiting with them was Lieutenant Callius, who wasn't going to join them this time around on the account of being a biotic.

"For when our own future AI-overlord gets uppity. Besides. Can't be too careful now that we've got a geth onboard as well," Joker retorted before throwing an informal salute at her.

The N7 looked at her turian XO. While she was gone, the reddish-brown plated cabal would have the deck.

"Don't worry, Commander, I'll make sure he plays nice with EDI and Legion while you're gone," the Blackwatch lieutenant offered without her having to ask.

Shepard smiled appreciatingly behind her mirrored visor.

"What would I be doing without you, Callius?"

"I assume you'd be relying on my less experienced human predecessor to fulfill his duties as XO," the turian said seriously before opening the airlock for them. "And you'd probably still be welcome inside Nos Astra PD, albeit at the cost of being short a drell assassin or two," she added after a beat.

It was a slow process, but Callius was clearly warming up to them. Or at least that was Shepard's impression these last couple of weeks. As usual, Callius' joking demeanor – if one could call it that – didn't last long. After the hint of an amused twitch of her mandibles, she got more serious again and her amber eyes quickly looked at the quarian marines. "Remember, the rest of the team's just one call away if you need us. Whatever's over there, we can handle it," she finished. Where others might've whispered that part, Callius said it loud enough for the quarians to here. Intentionally.

Shepard nodded in return and then turned to walk into the airlock. It clamped shut behind them and just as EDI announced that the decontamination process started, Leng bumped her side with his elbow.

"There's something you should know before we go over there," he stated over a private channel – one that excluded Garrus and the quarians. "I don't know about the average quarian but the admirals are probably gonna give our N7 badges a weird look. Something went down in the two years you were gone, something both the HSA and the Migrant Fleet had an interest in keeping quiet. "

Subconsciously, she turned her head towards Leng and judging by the way Garrus reacted, at least he had figured out that they were talking.

"What happened?" the redhaired N7 responded.

"Couple of months after you went MIA, a recovery op run by Blue Team went bad," Shepard peaked up at that unit name. Blue Team – or formally the Sixth Naval Special Operations Command Battalion had been their sister unit back when Leng and she had still been in Red Team. "Long story short, it ended with six N7s going home in boxes and a whole lotta dead suit-" Leng cut himself off, "dead quarian marines," she'd wondered where Leng had picked up his new hatred for quarians. This certainly explained a part of it. And his reaction to the quarians on the Normandy too. Before asking to be reassigned to her unit, Leng had been part of Blue Team. In all likelihood he knew the guys who'd died.

… even so, there was something far more important she needed to say out loud.

"You've known we were going to the Migrant Fleet and you're only telling me this now? What the hell Kai?" she asked, somewhat frustrated with the Petty Officer. This was important news.

"I don't know any of the details of what went down, let alone why the shooting started. Command kept it all under lock and key and considering that we never went to war with the quarians, they probably did as well," the other N7 responded before cracking his neck. "I didn't want to make waves or get you to call this meeting off without knowing what exactly I was talking about. Whether I like 'em or not, if the Reapers really are coming, you're gonna need to be on the good side of the Fleet and bringing back their missing princess will go a long way for that, even if they killed six of our own."

"I'll need more than that."

"Decontamination finished. Opening airlocks," EDI's voice interrupted.

"I know. But I can't give it to you. Like I said. It's all black tape now. If you really wanna know, you'd have to ask Salim. He ran the op back then and he's the only guy I knew who made it out alive," Captain Salim. Leng's old unit commander and one of the officers who'd run her N5 phase.

She was sure now: Leng definitely knew the guys who'd fought the quarians and with that new information now surfacing, she'd also known at least one of them. Salim was a good soldier and an even better officer. In short, an exemplary N7. Last she'd heard, he'd been looking to get a permanent posting back on Earth to be closer to his family. That had been before Eden Prime though. Knowing Salim… he wouldn't have kept his legs still after what happened back then. "But that ain't gonna happen."

"Why not?"

Leng sighed and she already knew what was coming next.

"Because Salim punched his ticket last year. Four-eyed fuckers blew a hole in him during a recon op in the Verge. And before you ask, no, I don't know any details there either. Top-Brass called the Exterior Forces troops who killed Salim a rogue element to avoid yet another war and then they slapped black tape on that op as well, just like they've been doing with everything bad since they finally got their Council-Seat."

"Can't believe they'd just let something like that go unanswered," Shepard observed, a bit off-mindedly.

It was all Leng needed to remind her of something.

"You better. Like I said. Shit changed since you've been gone. Most of it for the worse. N7 too, sadly. Couple years back we would've made the streets run red whenever someone killed our own. Now we just pretend it didn't happen to play nice for the rest of the Council and make people think we earned our seat for being the good guys instead of yet another set of hired muscle to keep the asari from having to bury some of their own for a change," her friend from a life-time ago paused and his voice got softer again. "I'm sorry, I figured you knew about Salim already." And just like that it hit her again that she'd spent two years dead and still had a lot of blanks to fill in.

"I haven't exactly had a lot of time to catch up with people I used to know before I died. Or the way the world's changed," she stated bitterly before the airlock came apart and a wedge of quarians greeted them. All but one of them were marines in yellow armor covered by blue pieces of cloth. From what she'd been able to gather from the informatic video regarding the quarians (naturally produced by the HSA's Ministry for Alien Affairs) these pieces of cloth were essentially their rank insignia. The fancier it looked, the higher-ranking the quarian.

Setting aside the blue headcovers, Shepard focused on what was really important. The guns they were packing.

The marines were carrying outdated but at least identical weaponry. In this case Vindicator rifles had been their weapon of choice. The Vindicators were old turian assault rifles that had gone out of service a couple of decades after the Geth War. Just another victim of the post-geth war modernization of the entirety of the Hierarchy's ground forces (an act a lot of non-turian people considered to be the single largest waste of money in galactic history) Ever since the turians had basically replaced their entire stock of infantry weaponry (minus the Carnifex which had survived the purge on the merit of being the only handgun to reliably kill krogan), weapons like the Vindicator, the Indra sniper-rifle and the Tornado shotgun had flooded the galactic market.

Legally and illegally alike. Say what you want about turian being bad businessmen. As far as gun running went, they were the top-dog. Accessibility bred opportunity.

At the tip of the wedge stood a female quarian in a white suit covered with brown cloth.

"Auntie Raan," the recently rescued quarian exclaimed before moving past Reegar and throwing her arms around her seeming relative.

"Tali, it is good to see you again," the other quarian responded. Shepard couldn't help but notice that she wasn't hugging Tali. A few seconds later she got her explanation. "I only wish that it was under less unfortunate circumstances," she stated before gently but steadily pushing the younger quarian off her and away form the airlock.

"What's going on?" Tali asked.

"Not here," the other quarian responded before leading them away from the docking chute of the ship and into a huge, open garden.

A garden on a spaceship.

They didn't call these things life ships for nothing, did they?

Beside the plants and various trees that dotted the 'yard' the were now standing in (which mind you was nearly as large as the largest gardens on Arcturus) Shepard's attention was caught by something she hadn't expected to see on a quarian ship.

… a statue of a turian.

While her visual translator couldn't make sense of most of the quarian writing that decorated the socket, she could read the turian name and – strangely enough - batarian inscription that was written on a plague attached to the feet of the roughly Garrus-sized, onyx figurine.

'Dedicated to Karian Xatanus – Hero of Nedas Azhana and the Final Wave. Forever remembered by the people of the Rayya. Forever admired by his Wave comrades. Forever forgotten by the rest of galaxy. May you rest with a spirit worthy half as much as you.'

Dangling from the neck of the figurine was a small trinket cut from a colorful stone and even though Shepard was sure that there was a hell of a story behind why this, a turian with batarian admirers, was here, on a quarian life ship, she didn't have the time to stop and ask why the hired gun from the Final Wave was held in such a high regard. The name certainly didn't ring a bell…

"Auntie, please, what happened?" Tali muttered after they had stopped.

A moment before Raan went on, Shepard got a bad feeling in her gut and a worse case of nostalgia, like she'd somehow known what was about to come.

"Something happened while you were gone. Tali, the Alarei- It… it was taken over by geth three days ago. The marine assault force sent to take it back was slaughtered and the Fleet has listed the entire crew as dead as of today."

"Wha-" Tali began only for another quarian to walk over from another part of the garden. Whereas the suit of 'Auntie Raan' was white and brown and clashed with those of the marines guarding her, the suit of this new quarian did not. It was a carbon-copy of the marines' suits, albeit a bit more decorative. He was military, through and through.

"What Admiral Raan is trying to say is that the Alarei's gone dark and that Rael's presumed dead, kid. Everything else is pure speculation at this point,," the quarian said before receiving a salute from Reegar. Shepard noticed the way he pronounced 'presumed'. To her it sounded like he wasn't all too eager to cross Tali's father off either.

"Admiral Gerrel."

"Lieutenant," he greeted before turning his head to Shepard. He looked at her eyes and then at the badge on her chest armor. "Captain Shepard." His tone and salute were respectful, but also somewhat agitated.

"-just Commander actually," she corrected before returning the salute and getting back to the new information. A geth incursion in the quarian migrant fleet, originating from the ship of the father of the quarian whom she had just picked up from geth space… that couldn't be a coincidence, could it?

"You command a ship, under quarian law you're a Captain, whether it's your actual rank or not," the admiral quickly explained before putting a hand on Tali's shoulder. "I'm afraid there's more, kid. We know about the mission Rael sent you on and on Admiral Xen's and Admiral Koris' initiative it's been decided that you be trialed for your role in the loss of the Alarei and your father's presumed death."

"I- what-" Tali took a step back, nearly bumping into Garrus again. She was overwhelmed with the news and Shepard and everyone else could tell. Still, she seemed to get a grip before the N7 had to consider overstepping her boundaries and speaking for her – which was absolutely not the reason she was here. "You're charging me? With what?"

"Treason," another new arrival announced. This one was another quarian female clad in complete black.

"Admiral Xen," Gerrel greeted before looking back at Tali and leaving Shepard to wonder if it usual for quarian leaders to just drop news like that in front of what was supposed to be a diplomatic envoy.

"What the fuck did we walk into here," Leng injected over the closed-off three party battle net they shared.

"That's a question I asked myself every time I had to deal with quarians back at C-SEC," Garrus responded. "They're a weird bunch."

"Do me a favor, Garrus. Let Callius know what's going on here," Shepard instructed, if only out of caution.

"Right, of course," the turian responded before stepping out of the small circle that was assembling, an action that drew the eye of the marines. "Excuse me. Not a fan of crowds," he said casually before stepping past two of the yellow-suited aliens.

"You're charging me with treason?" Tali countered meanwhile. "Why? What do you think I did?"

"You sent a disabled geth back to your father," Xen commented before glancing at Shepard.

"This is ridiculous I would never-" Tali began before crossing her arms and looking at Xen. To Shepard it seemed like she wanted to disagree vehemently; like she had proof that this wasn't her doing…

… so why the hell did she suddenly stop talking?

"Admiral Gerrel –" Kal'Reegar suddenly started, stepping forward. This prompted Tali to turn towards him and stop him.

"Don't," Tali called harshly, showing a side the N7 didn't think the quarian had.

"Ma'am, with all due respect, I won't let you-"

"If you actually respect me, Lieutenant, you will not say another word."

The red-armored marine quickly glanced at the floor and then back at Tali. He was struggling with himself. Like he wanted to say something in Tali's defense but couldn't.

… or at least so it seemed.

"Your father ordered me to protect you Ma'am. I'm, sorry, but I won't let you do this. Admiral Gerrel, permission to speak?"

"What's on your mind, Lieutenant?"

"Sir, Tali'Zorah and I were on the Alarei a couple of weeks ago. When we were there, we talked to Admiral Rael'Zorah. We know how the geth got there-"

"Reegar-" Tali injected again, this time to be cut off by Gerrel.

"Let the man speak, kid," he ordered. "Go on, Lieutenant."

"And it wasn't her doing, Sir. A Fleet Security Officer going by the alias of Veetor'Nara. He's the one who brought back a disabled geth platform form human space. He was acting under the admiral's orders and Tali had nothing to do with it."

Truth be told, Shepard had no idea what they were talking about.

Still, she could tell that Tali was now livid.

"How could you-" she made a move to punch Reegar in the chest and the marine allowed it.

"I'm sorry, Ma'am," he didn't even sound winded after the hit, "But I won't let you throw away your future and your honor for your father's mistakes. You can hate me for that if you want, but you'll get it eventually."

"Is what Lieutenant Reegar is saying true, Tali?" Gerrel asked.

Before the quarian could answer however, Xen interrupted.

"True or false, it's certainly a convenient story. The fleet security officer who you brought back to the Alarei and who's been missing ever since then just happens to be the guilty party," Xen said, sounding almost amused. "You have no evidence of course," she went on. "I suggest you think of a better defense before the proper trial begins. Speaking of which. Normally I would've had you arrested right here and kept you confined to the brig until the Conclave assembled… but since you've kindly brought the second human Spectre and another N7 with you," something about the quarian's tone made Shepard hand inch closer to her sidearm, even if Garrus mumbled 'hey, what about me?' disarmed the tense air quickly. "I think I might be willing to consider your offer after all, Admiral Raan. Not because I think that it has realistic chances of proving Tali'Zorah's innocence, mind you, but rather as a chance for to recover the Alarei after all."

"What offer? What's she talking about?" Tali asked.

Briefly the glow of Admiral Raan's eyes dimmed down, indicating that she'd closed her eyes.

"When the situation became clear, I made a proposal to prevent you from being exiled," exile? To Shepard that seemed like a low sentence for treason… then again, she had no idea how quarian laws functioned. "I suggested that you could retake the Alarei and clear your name that way."

"Which I turned down due to the ludicrously low odds of your success and the resources wasted on bringing you there not being worth you escaping trial," Xen injected. "But now that you brought two trained, human killers," Garrus coughed after the statement but no one seemed to notice other than the quarian taking a cautious step away from him, "it might not be such a suicide mission after all. Admiral Gerrel, I trust that you already made the necessary preparations?"

"All that's needed to prepare the mission is calling in a shuttle. That's hardly something worth preparing in advance, Xen."

"Excellent. Then all that's needed is Tali'Zorah's agreement, no?"

Okay.

She'd officially had enough of this.

Diplomatic intentions be damned.

"Before you go on planning the Normandy's involvement, I'm going to have to ask you to stop pretending like we aren't here," Shepard said loudly, ignoring the desire to add 'and that you tell me what the hell happened between the quarians and the N7s' to her question. "We aren't under quarian command. You can't just talk like we'll help you, especially not when you didn't even have the decency to tell us or Tali about any of this as soon as it happened. You knew we were coming, and you not only kept your mouth shut, but you also insisted on me leaving behind more than half of my team. And now here you are, planning with troops you don't hold any operational authority over for an op I never agreed to," the N7 went on before looking at the highest-ranking officer in the room, Han'Gerrel. "I don't know how it works for quarian soldiers, but that's a no-go. At least for my team."

Xen looked at her for a moment.

"I haven't known humans to be the type to ask questions first," she commented. "As I recall, you are much more in favor of leaving our people behind to fight for their own once we gave you what you need. Or dead, depending on how you happen to feel."

"You aren't helping, Xen."

"I don't intend to. If judged only by their actions and not their status, the humans are just as much our enemies as the batarians."

Gerrel hesitated for a second, as if keeping himself restrained. Then he addressed the remaining yellow-suited quarians.

"Marines, return to your stations."

"Yes, Sir."

Reegar and his remaining squad made an attempt to turn as well, only for Gerrel to tell them stop.

"Not your men and you, Lieutenant," he called. "If this operation is happening, you will be a part of it. You're some of the only marines who survived fighting geth. We'll need you over there if we want the Alarei back."

Whereas the remaining marines seemed very uneager to be thrown into the frying pan all over again – especially the one called Prazza – Reegar only nodded stoically. Whatever had happened between the HSA and the quarians while she'd been stuck with Project Lazarus, one thing was becoming clear to Shepard. Kal'Reegar was one hell of a soldier and officer too, well in line with the (as she now knew) late Captain Salim.

"Captain Shepard, I understand that we are in no position to levy your squad and I can see why you don't like the way this all went down. Trust me, I've been where you are right now," Gerrel went on, "But if you were willing to help Rael's child and the Fleet by proxy, I assure you that the Admiralty will be ready to listen to the case Tali said you want, no matter how outlandish and far flung most of us may think it to be."

Shepard folded her arms. After waking up Harper had told her that the galaxy was all to eager to forget the Reapers and she'd met hints of that skepticism up to now. Still, she was surprised to find it with the quarians of all people.

"You are allowed to name the issue, you know that, right, Admiral?" Shepard responded before thinking about something else Harper had said. She was supposed to start doing things her way, no? "I help you take back the Alarei, you agree to help when the Reapers show up."

Garrel raised his hands.

"I never mentioned an agreement to render military assistance. That's not even something I can do," he stated reflexively. "The only thing I'm offering is an open ear and a grateful Migrant Fleet."

"I want my team."

"I'm afraid that won't be possible."

"Why not?"

"Because biotics will cause irreparable damage to the Alarei," Xen injected. "What would be the point in sending you to reclaim a ship if you destroy it in doing so?"

… fair enough.

"We have a deal then."

"So it would seem," Gerrel stated just as Garrus reapproached and nodded, letting Shepard know that Callius was in the picture now.

"Aren't you all forgetting something?" Admiral Raan suddenly stated before placing a hand on Tali's shoulder. "It's Tali's call if the Fleet becomes involved in the boarding, not Captain Shepard's. That's what the proposal entails. She has to be there to clear her name."

Tali looked at Shepard and Gerrel, then at Reegar and Raan and Xen.

"I can't believe you even have to ask," the quarian responded. "When do we leave?"

---

Ten Minutes Later, 30. April 2417 AD, Valhallan Threshold, HSASV Normandy

As the door of the shuttle – an older Kodiak-model from the Fringe Wars era with a poorly overpainted 'HSAMC' label that she'd definitely not ask any further questions about (especially not how the quarians had gotten their hands on it ) - sealed itself, Garrus let out a sigh.

"I turn away for five minutes and you sign us up for another suicide mission. Way to go, Shepard, way to go."

"Don't pretend you don't love this kind of op, Vakarian," Leng countered. "Hell, we picked you up during your own suicide mission."

"Nah. Omega was different. I was in control all of the time. Nowhere near a suicide mission."

"When we found you, you were running on stims, medigel and a single dextro ration-bar, Garrus," Emily pointed out while looking at the marines. As soon as she'd told Callius where they were going, the Blackwatch officer had offered to join up…

To say that she'd been unhappy when Shepard had agreed with the quarians' terms would be an understatement.

"Like I said, totally in control."

"Really? Even when a gunship kissed your face?" Leng entered.

"… ah come on now. Catching high caliber rounds with your face is a well-recognized strategy in the turian military." he chuckled.

"Tactics like that explain the ton of mausoleums your people have filled over the years," a quarian voice, Prazza, injected.

"Fighting wars sort of comes with losing soldiers," Garrus merely responded, unprovoked by the remark. For the sake of the mission, they had unmuted their helmets. If it were entirely up to Shepard, she'd let them into their shared battlenet as well… but that idea had been shut down by a simple technicality. The quarians had refused to let humans tap into their comms because of EDI being tapped into their channels.

The conversation had actually been quite funny.

She'd said that would harm their operational quality to not use the battlenet, the quarians had responded that 'Ais must not be allowed to harm quarians ever again' and then Leng had said that this op was going to go to shit, an assessment she found herself agreeing with now that she was looking at the gear on these Migrant Fleet Marines. Mismatched weaponry, scraped together armor, salvaged, outdated human shuttles… a barrier generator welded together from two separate models.

… no wonder a single N7 strike team had killed that many of them. They were equipped worse than the IFS in the first week of the war.

HSAIS considered the Migrant Fleet to be one of the largest threats of the Terminus Systems but now that Shepard was here, looking them in the face – or rather mask – she could only think one thing.

The quarians weren't ready for a war with anyone.

Not by a long shot.

… did they even have any combat arms besides infantry?

She'd heard all about the Migrant Fleet Marines… but what about the Migrant Fleet tanks, artillery, mechanized transport and orbital/air superiority fighters?

This wasn't a military… this was a glorified security detail.

She sighed and lamented another fatal flaw she'd found with the quarian military.

This entire op had another huge flaw. The admirals had mentioned an attempt at taking back the Alarei… what they had failed to mention was that there had been no survivors among the marines and that communications would cut out as soon as they docked.

Bad intel, low odds of success, high stakes for all those involved…

In short, same shit, different day.

---

Meanwhile, 2158 CE, HSASV Normandy, Helm

"Okay, I feel like I've said it before… but I don't like this plan," the human pilot in front of Callius muttered. While she should technically be standing at her post in the CIC way behind Joker, the turian had to admit that she'd never been a fan of that particular design choice of her people.

It was far too removed from the action to make sense and while the Normandy had specifically been designed to incorporate the turian command philosophy instead of the human one, the Blackwatch officer had to admit that the humans were onto something by putting their commander in the middle of everyone … even if their insistence of having the CIC at the front of the ship instead of its fortified core was a bit outdated and … somewhat nautical.

"So you've said," she returned before looking at the holo-screen where Joker was tracking the progress of the shuttle. "Shepard will be fine."

"She's flying into a geth-infested hell-hole with nothing but a bunch of quarian rent-a-cops to back her up. Last time I checked, quarians aren't the kind of people you want next to you in a firefight. One bullet to the suit and they're goners."

"The marines are tougher than you give them credit for. Besides. She's an N7 and she's got Vakarian and Leng with her. She'll be fine."

"Under normal circumstances I would agree but you've been here long enough to know that Shepard's missions tend to go anything but normal. At first it all seems so easy and then… blam!" Joker declared, making an explosive gesture with his hand. Or at least that was what Leng had called it the last time she'd asked why their pilot was seeing imaginary explosions. "Everything goes to hell super quick and we only get out in the nick of time before everything literally explodes behind our asses," Joker's hands then continued to fly over the holo-screens. Meanwhile Nader walked up behind Callius. "I just wonder what it's gonna be this time. Maybe she'll accidentally summon a demon? Or find a thresher maw? Uh. Or maybe it's a cult this time around. Not sure which is worse."

"Damn, they weren't kidding. You really are paranoid," Lieutenant Nader – Jack – said with an amused chuckle.

"Ah great. More company on this already way too small helm. May I ask what brings you to my humble domain, Jack?"

"Boredom mostly," the BAR officer responded before looking at Callius. "The marines are on stand-by. I spread the team out on the marine squads, just like you said. Told them to pack EVA-gear too, just in case this thing loses pressure. Trust me, telling Samara that she might want to grab a helmet wasn't fun. And neither was the discussion that followed when she whipped out that weird, clear face-mask thing asari apparently use for EVA-ops."

The turian nodded in return. With Shepard off-board, Nader was the highest-ranking marine left. While the Normandy's marine compartment should've had a lieutenant of its own – a position previously filled by Lieutenant Alenko - there apparently hadn't been anyone the HSA had seen fit to fill those shoes. So instead they'd just let the senior NCOs run the unit – in addition to their other duties… It had worked up to now… but in Callius mind the position still needed filling. And since Nader was here to stay anyway and should really live up to her rank and act like a proper lieutenant for a change instead of pretending that she was just another grunt… she might bring that up to Shepard when she got back from her recapture of the Alarei. Some people had to be forced to find their potential and something was telling Callius that Nader was such a person.

Speaking off the Alarei.

"EDI, were you able to work around the problem?" As soon as she'd been told where Shepard was going, Callius had ordered the Normandy's AI to coordinate with Legion in an attempt to figure out how many geth were on the Alarei… and maybe get them to agree to a peaceful solution. (That wasn't something she'd ever thought she'd say before Haestrom, but times changed and just like the Blackwatch's tenets said, a hunter needed to adapt to changing circumstances or he'd become pray himself.)

Neither of these actions had been Shepard's explicit orders but as far as Callius was concerned, anything that made Shepard's job easier was something the commander would order.

"Negative, Lieutenant. We have not managed to crack the communication barrier put up by the Alarei," EDI stated. "Legion however insists on me pointing out that he does not detect any geth presence whatsoever. As far as he can tell, there are no geth on the Alarei and even if they were, they wouldn't be part of their collective consciousness. Hostilities against the Migrant Fleet are not the geth's intend. His people wouldn't do this."

"Of course a geth would say that," Nader muttered. Like a lot of the human crew, she had a problem with a geth on board because of Eden Prime.

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but if there is a barrier in place there's no way Legion could know, right?" Callius asked cautiously.

"Barrier or not. Legion insists that he would be aware of any geth within a lightyear of his processing unit. He claims that his design allows him to," EDI paused, "sense other geth."

"Sense? Don't you mean detect?" the turian countered.

"His wording, not mine," the AI stated.

"I know I called Joker paranoid but have any of us considered that this might all be a long-con by the geth to kill Shepard? Give her what she wants with news on the Reapers and then blow her up on a spaceship?"

"If Legion wanted us dead, he would've had us killed on Haestrom the minute EDI shut down," Joker mumbled off-mindedly as he swiped away a report. His name and general behavior set aside, Callius had found the human pilot to be surprisingly insightful and vastly more intelligent than he let on. He might pretend like he was just another pilot but somewhere beneath his unregulated beard and the SR-1 hat he insisted on wearing lay a keen military mind with more potential to it than 'just' flying the Normadny. Joker turned in his chair. "I mean just think about it. The geth had us dead-to-rights. An entire fleet in space and an entire army with boots on the ground. Why go through all the trouble of deception when you have that kind of firepower to kill who you want to kill. It just doesn't make sense."

Callius pointed at the pilot and shrugged. She had nothing to add to that logic.

"Well if there aren't any geth on board, why would the quarians be so sure that they lost the Alarei to geth?" Nader asked.

"Case of socially-engineered mass-paranoia," Mordin stated flatly while looking at his omni-tool.

"Hey great, more people in the helm. Guess I must've missed the invitation to the party I was having up here."

"What do you mean?" Nader asked the salarian, ignoring the pilot's remark.

"Quarians conditioned form birth to fear and despise geth to the point of irrationality. Drove them from their homeworld. Drove them into the fleet, into the suits," the salarian slashed his hand through the air and closed his eyes. It was his usual tick. "Geth took everything from their people. When incident happens, only reasonable to assume geth involvement. Well-known societal flaw. Actually, STG used to place geth at strategical positions to discourage quarian incursions into salarian space," the salarian went on.

"You put up geth to keep the quarians out of your space? That seems sort of dangerous," Joker noted.

"My mistake. Should've specified," Mordin corrected. "STG didn't use actual geth. Only used mechs designed to look like geth."

"STG's got geth-mechs?"

"Naturally. Seem surprised. Why?"

"Because if you tell that to the wrong person outside of this ship, people are gonna start thinking the salarians did Eden Prime."

"Ludicrous."

"Tell that to the Iffys."

"Ignoring the possibility of spreading rumors of a salarian false-flag op on Eden Prime," Nader said cautiously. "Who killed the crew if it wasn't the geth?"

"Crew only presumed dead," Mordin retorted. "Besides, not saying that geth incursion impossible. Still within range of likely events. However. Fate of Alarei just equally likely to be caused by other group. Could simply be an accident as well. Life-support failure, Element Zero spill, reactor leakage, nerve-agent funneled into food rations," he listed. "Many ways to kill quarians. Many groups want to. Some even have legitimate reason to, at least form their point of view."

Nader shook her head in response.

"I'm still saying it's the geth."

"Willing to wager?"

"Nah. I don't gamble with salarians anymore. You guys have a hell of a poker face. And photographic memories."

"Shame. Always eager to be proven wrong."

---

Meanwhile, 2158 CE, Quarian Migrant Fleet, Alarei

As soon as the airlock pulled open, Shepard and her companions funneled into the corridor. It was made form a warm, grey material… and dead quarians.

"Guess that explains why your marines never came back," the tall turian, Garrus Vakarian, commented before stepping over one of the many mangled marine bodies that littered the corridor.

If she hadn't been jaded by Haestrom already, Tali probably would've puked at the sight of twisted quarian bodies. But since Haestrom had already introduced her to the concept of combat deaths… she instead noticed the lack of blood and bullet holes.

This had happened with brute force only. And the injuries seemed to be mostly internal, or at least hadn't damaged the suits to the point where the blood could flow out.

"They got cut down right out of the boarding hatch," Prazza muttered next to her.

"Not cut down, beaten to death," Reegar added before kneeling down and lifting a quarians arm. Or rather trying to. There didn't seem to be an unbroken bone left in it. When he grabbed it, it just sagged down at either side of where Reegar was holding it. "Only thing that can do this kind of damage to a body is a machine. Even a krogan would've left marks," he went on. "This is definitely the work of that Kaziel drone Veetor sent to your father. Those things looked like they packed the punch and agility necessary to do this to a squad of marines."

"Wouldn't the geth have just shot them?" Shepard asked from her position at the front of the group.

"They'd need guns for that," Tali spoke up. "The Alarei's a science vessel. Barely any weaponry onboard whatsoever. Maybe some handguns on the security detail," she paused and looked at the pried open hands of the quarians. "They did this to get guns for themselves. Just look at the bodies. Their weapons are all missing."

"Good catch, Ma'am," Reegar commented.

She ignored it. Not just because she was still furious at what he had done but also because she was slowly coming to accept the fact that her father really had been killed by reactivated geth.

After inspecting the bodies of the marines, the group set out to find out what had happened on the ship and to neutralize it. In doing so, they passed through the various lab sections of the ship and stumbled upon more dead quarians. These ones did have gunshot wounds … which was strange since they were clearly part of the crew and as such should've died before the marines. The turian with them pointed out as much. Tali however noticed something else. Or rather remembered something else.

"We know him," she muttered at the sight of the body of a marine with the corporal rank insignia woven on the cloth that covered his yellow armor. "He was there when we dropped Veetor off." The corporal had a pair of gunshot wounds to the chest and – more disturbingly – his mask had been removed, revealing his grey face and white eyes. While the extranet ensured that everyone knew what quarians looked like beneath their suits, it was still disturbing and strange to see one without it – dead or alive.

"You're right," Reegar nodded. "Doesn't look like he had much of a chance to put up a fight though," he said before kneeling down and closing the marine's eyes. "Esu se'lai, Corporal. Your sacrifice will not have been in vain." Next he snapped the identity bracelet off of the marine's environmental suit. Probably for the family.

"Why the hell would geth pull of his mask?" the other N7 asked while securing the door they'd go through next.

"If we weren't talking about synthetics, I'd say they wanted to see him die," Vakarian commented. "But geth aren't sadistic. They can't be. You need emotions for sadism."

… Tali and all other quarians in existence would silently disagree with that assessment…

"Well. This might give us some answers," she suddenly heard Shepard mutter. When turning her head, Tali saw her standing in front of a console, ready to press play. Before she could say that it might not be a good idea to power up things within a geth-infested ship, the N7's fingers had moved and a quarian face appeared to narrate a short diary entry.

"When I first got here, I thought the admiral was insane. Keelah, he probably is," the holographic quarian said. "Insane or not, the work we're doing here in regard to Project Kaziel… it's important. These emissary platforms… they're clearly based on the prototypes made on Haestrom. But they're also something else entirely. Nothing at all like the drones we made before the war. The number of programs they can hold… the intellect that's combined in them…they're … " the quarian paused. "What we are looking at here is definitive proof of synthetic evolution. This is a level we didn't think the geth were capable of reaching. Admiral Zorah thinks that this is proof that these geth really have reached the capacity for true individualism. I find that terrifying…" another pause. "He wants us to figure out why exactly they're going to human space and to that end… we'll have to turn one back on. Keelah. Never thought I'd even consider that."

The recording cut off and Shepard turned around.

"Kaziel," she repeated before turning towards Garrus. "Isn't that the name of the Conclave project Legion said he was based on?" Legion… that was apparently the name the humans had given to the the geth they adopted … she was sure that idea would explode in their face by the way…

The former C-SEC officer nodded. "Yes, he said he was optimized for military operations," he turned his helmeted face towards the marines. "Guess we know what you were doing on Haestrom now."

"Trust me. You know nothing, turian," Prazza muttered in return before walking around one of the lab tables to collect another identity tag. Reegar joined him.

"It seems pretty straightforward to me. The lot of you went to Haestrom because Admiral Zorah wanted you to get more Kaziel prototypes to fund this little research project of his, you underestimated the geth presence there and in the end, we had to pull you out of the fire," he finished before opening a door and looking inside. "Say, how many of this Kaziel platforms did Veetor send back?" he asked cautiously.

"I think only one, why?" Tali responded before walking towards the turian.

"Because there's one right here and unless it can move its body without its head… it definitely didn't kill those marines or take their guns," as she stepped into the doorframe, she saw a jet-black geth. It looked exactly like the ones from Freedom's Progress, only disassembled and next to it a pile of mismatched weapons had been collected.

"Did your father bring any more geth to the Alarei, Tali?" Shepard, who was now standing close to the blue-armored turian, asked.

"Not that I know of," she replied.

"… we might want to reconsider what killed the crew," the turian said before the noise of twisting metal echoed through the ship and the Alarei began to shake hard enough for all of them to have to grab onto something. The only thing that could do that in space was a collision… next, the lights went off. "Oh, that can't be good," he murmured.

---

Meanwhile, 2158 CE, HSASV Normandy

"What the… how…" Joker muttered. Something had drawn his attention and Callius had seen it to. It was a pale-blue flash… a blueshift from an Eezo drive core right next to their objective. The human's fingers danced over the holograms faster than she'd ever seen a turian move. "EDI, re-run the emission scanner in sector Two-Five and get me a clear visual identification of the objective, I think we've got company."

"Flight-Lieutenant Morneau, an emission scan with the background of the Fleet is next to pointless."

"Look for the most recent discharge and tell me that again."

"Emission scanners show recent signs of an Element Zero discharge. Judging by the pattern of spread, a drive core disengaged near the target. Bringing up visual now."

"Yeah that's what I thought," the pilot groaned.

In front of Joker the Alarei appeared. Like most ships of actual quarian design, it had a circular front and a thin, elongated tail to which all kinds of compartments were attached. On its starboard side, an old Kodiak – the 'quarian' vessel that had brought Shepard on board – was attached. That had been there previously as well…

… the jet-black, broad, arrow-shaped corvette-analogue hadn't.

Her amber eyes tried to analyze every detail on the craft but only came up with a lack of details.

There weren't any markings or a hull-number on the craft which could be used to identify its owner. It didn't even have any visible weaponry. Only a faint blue engine glow.

In Callius' experience, this looked bad.

Joker seemed to agree.

"No way in hell is that a quarian ship…" the pilot muttered before a docking tube shot out of the arrowd-shaped craft and drilled itself into the Alarei with flying sparks. "I'm unhooking us from the Rayya and sending them a warning. Try to get Shepard on line, they've got company."

"I don't get it. How did they get through? I thought nothing can sneak up on a Normandy-Class," Nader muttered.

"With all the emissions the fleet's blowing into space, they didn't have to do a whole lot of sneaking. They just rode it out on the fleet's background heat," the pilot said with a resigned tone. "Damn it."

"Get the teams ready," Callius ordered the lieutenant before brining up her omni-tool and grabbing her helmet from the seat she'd put it on earlier. "Shepard, if you can hear me, come in…"

---

Meanwhile, 30. April 2417 AD, Alarei

After a second of darkness, her night vision filters activated themselves. Shepard could see again… and just in time too.

The door Leng had been guarding until the crash had thrown him across the room suddenly exploded into the room.

"Ambush!" a quarian voice yelled. It was coming from one of the marines who still had a visual on the entrance and it was immediately followed up by the barking of Vindicator rifles from the other marines who were in a favorable position.

Shepard tried to get in position to lay some fire down. While she was moving, she was also trying to track where Leng and Garrus were. She could see her fellow N7 scramble for cover but there was no sign of the turian. Meanwhile, one of the marines, Prazza, stuck out his head and rifle to lay down fire. He unleashed a burst into the door and then paused, perplexed.

"What the-"

Before he could finish his sentence, a bright energy field lit up Shepard's night vision. It engulfed the quarian, pulled him forward… and snapped his head right of his shoulders. In response, a dark fluid her NVGs portrayed as dark green started sprouting from the rest of his body, which fell to the ground lifeless.

"Man down! Watch out for biotics, Ma'am!" Reegar declared with a mechanic sound before pressing Tali back down into cover. It was a lot of input right now but Shepard hang on to the most important, most obvious bit.

… geth weren't biotic.

She crouched along the lab table and stopped in her tracks. Her original goal had been Reegar, but Reegar had been kneeling right beside Prazza. Considering what had happened to the other quarian, she was no longer sure that was a good position to take. Reegar, intend on keeping his head, was hunkered down now and grabbing a grenade. The intentions of keeping the Alarei undamaged were now clearly being thrown out of the window just as much as that grenade was about to be.

Reegar, without looking, tossed the grenade over the desk he'd taken shelter behind. While it was a risky move, he managed to hit the breached door. But instead of causing a bright explosion, the fiery wall of shrapnel was caught inside a small bubble and then moved into the face of another quarian. Once there, it was released and exploded in his face and killed him. In response to the display, the shooting stopped ever so briefly.

As all of this happened, Shepard could think only one thing:

She recognized that move from the battle at the Dracon Trade Center Precinct.

…Morinth.

Before she could consider how the Ardat-Yakshi had managed to trail her and what that implied for the whole mole theory of Callius and Garrus, her past experience with the asari overwrote her sense of judgement.

The last time it had taken Samara's intervention to beat the asari back.

Samara wasn't here now. Neither was another strong biotic.

No way in hell were they going to win against Morinth in a space as enclosed as this.

"Fall back!" she ordered angrily and loudly. No one moved. "Retreat damn it, we can't take her!"

"Running again, Shepard?" a soft voice purred before an asari in dark armor stepped into the view and the lights turned on again…

That Ardat-Yakshi really had it with theatrical entrances, didn't she?

"I have to say," she went on before projecting a clear, purple barrier in front of her face, "I expected more of a fight from humanity's greatest hero," she leveled a gun, a turian-made Carnifex, at one of the quarians who's leg was just outside of cover and fired off another bullet. Judging by the blue flash, she had modified the weapon disruptor rounds and since quarian barriers were hardly up to date, the round easily bypassed the shields and caused the marine to fall outside of cover. Not a moment later and despite the rifle fire now hitting her barrier, a satisfied smirk appeared on Morinth's face.

She yanked the injured quarian towards her – somehow making him pass through the barrier without letting a single bullet through.

Shepard didn't quite get the mechanism of biotic control but that in itself seemed like an impossible feat. After he had passed through the shield, Morinth grabbed him by his neck with one hand and held him off the ground – something only made possible by the fact that she had enveloped him within a field of biotic energy. The injured marine tried to pull his knife and stab Morinth in the throat, but before he could make contact, he was frozen in stasis.

"Fierce to the end," she observed as her eyes blackened and the quarian turned limp. At the same time, a small ripple of biotic energy danced over her skin. "You quarians always were my favorite before you became so inaccessible with your Exodus and what not," she commented before discarding the body like a bag of trash. "Now, who's next?"

Shepard wanted to say 'you are', but instead she grabbed Reegar by his arm and repeated her earlier order.

"Fall back, we'll cover you!" for all good that would do.

The marine seemed to hesitate for a second but then grabbed Tali, unloaded an unaimed burst of Vindicator rounds and started to run for the entrance. At the same time, Shepard rose – gambling their lives on the fact that Morinth wanted to primarily kill her.

The shot that winged Reegar in the arm made her second-guess that idea.

But the biotic ball of energy thrown her way not a moment after reinforced it again.

As the pulsating warp field closed in on her, Shepard dove behind the next lab desk – involuntarily putting herself further away from the entrance and the shuttles and separating herself from Leng, who was stubbornly firing at Morinth's barrier and Garrus – whom she could now see creeping out of the room with the disassembled geth, Mantis rifle in hand. He made eye contact with her through his helmet and pointed at the door to her left. If Morinth followed her, her back would be turned towards him and he'd take the shot.

… it wasn't good but it was the best chance they'd get.

First Shepard grabbed the lone smoke grenade she was carrying, pulled the pin and tossed it at her own feet to prevent Morinth from doing her signature move all over again, then she let the smoke explode and started running.

"You're only delaying the inevitable," Morinth called from behind and on instinct alone, Shepard ducked just before a rapidly shifting warp field impacted the door she'd been about to open. "And worse, my paycheck."

… if it were up to the N7, the Ardat-Yakshi wouldn't get to cash that in – and the person paying her wouldn't live much longer either.

Still covered by the smoke, Shepard slapped her hand against the opening mechanism and rolled underneath the door as soon as it started to open. As expected, Morinth turned to follow and as expected, the deafening sound of a Mantis rifle being fired thrice in rapid succession (and its heatsink subsequently overheating) echoed through the enclosed lab. She heard the thermal clip being ejected…. but she also heard Morinth laugh.

"Come on Shepard. Did you really think I'd make such the amateur mistake of producing a one-directional barrier?" the asari taunted before a crack echoed through the room…

---

One Minute Earlier, 2158 CE, Enroute to the Alarei

"As soon as we're clear, you blow that ship up, copy that, Joker?" Callius asked while seated within the shuttle and looking at her unlikely companion – Legion. Whereas everyone else was flying with the Normandy's marines and approaching the ship from other angles to divide the hostiles attention, Callius had decided that the geth and she would dock exactly where Shepard had landed and retrace her steps. Since they were obviously expecting to be cut off from one another upon stepping onto the ship, Callius had made sure that every member of the team Shepard had collected would lead their respective squads towards the center of the ship – or failing that, the bridge.

"I was hoping you'd say that," Joker commented before the newer Kodiak came to a halt next to the one the quarians had borrowed and Legion and Callius jumped outside… right into a corridor full of dead quarians and the arms of Lieutenant Reegar and Tali'Zorah, the former of whom nearly would've shot Legion if not for the Blackwatch officer stepping in front of him. Reegar was bleeding badly from the arm and being carried by Tali.

"Lieutenant, what happened here?" Callius asked, all the while applying a dosage of medigel and gesturing for Legion to watch the way they'd come from.

"This wasn't the geth," the Lieutenant groaned as Tali lifted him into the hatch of the older Kodiak.

"There's an asari in the laboratory. She's trying to kill Shepard," Tali added quickly.

The eyes of the former cabal widened beneath her visor.

She knew exactly what was happening here and stopped the application about halfway through.

Spirits, how could they be so stupid?!

"Where are they?"

"Down the corridor and through a few labs. You can't miss it if you don't take any turns," Tali retorted. Callius nodded.

"Legion, can you boost communications for the squad so they can hear me?" she asked, already jogging down the corridor with her Phaeston at the ready. If Morinth was here, they'd need Samara. She was the only one who could square up with the Ardat-Yakshi.

"Short-range communications have been boosted, Callius-Lieutenant. You are free to speak."

"Samara, it's Morinth. She's here to kill Shepard," the turian officer said while leaping over a series of lab tables and heading through open door after open door. Legion was keeping up with her effortlessly and clearly keeping himself from overtaking her lead, sort of like she'd expected from a geth designed for combat.

"I understand," the justicar stated. "To avoid unnecessary casualties, I suggest that you withdraw your marines. They will only stand in my way."

… knowing human marines, they would like that order just as much as turian marines would, which was not at all.

The justicar was right though.

"You heard her. All members of the marine detachment, fall back to the shuttles and secure our routes of retreat. This isn't a battle you can fight," she began before considering whether she should order Mordin, Thane and Nader to retreat as well… Mordin was 'just' a salarian and Thane and Nader, while biotic, weren't going to be a match for an asari who could destroy an entire police precinct. Before she could make up her mind though (or point out to herself that she was a way weaker biotic than Thane and Nader), she suddenly found herself in the room where the fighting was happening and could no longer make a decision.

She'd clearly interrupted at a crucial point. Red-colored smoke was covering half of the room, Leng was stubbornly shooting into an unmovable barrier and Vakarian had just fired his Mantis to the point where steam was venting from its side.

"Come on Shepard. Did you really think I'd make such an amateur mistake as producing a one-directional barrier?" the asari – she recognized her as Morinth from the recordings of Shepard's helmet cam – taunted before turning around and making a pulling gesture into the direction of her fellow turian.

If she'd get her hands on him, Vakarian was dead.

Then again, if she got in between them, chances were she'd die for him.

Others would've hesitated … but Blackwatch hadn't trained her to consider a threat to her life an issue.

With the assistance of her powered armor, Callius launched herself forward, in between the biotic corridor Morinth was creating. At the same time, she put her entire focus on her barriers. As she came flying, she disrupted the corridor – as visible by her own biotics and shields flaring up – and interrupted Vakarian from being grabbed and killed by the Ardat-Yakshi. Unfortunately for her though, she was now the one being pulled. Normally, Callius could've offered some resistance against an attack like this, but Morinth's biotics were overwhelming. Like a child trying to win a tug-of-war with a tank.

Well… a child in power armor.

"A cabalist," the asari observed while Callius was dragged across the metal floor fast enough to cause sparks flying. "I can't claim to have enjoyed one of your kind yet," she stated as Callius passed the barrier's threshold and the world turned purple.

Whereas others would've panicked at the prospect of imminent death, the Blackwatch officer saw an opportunity now that she was past the protective bubble and started unloading her Phaeston at the feet of the asari. Purple dots appeared in the air, showing Callius that she was hitting another barrier. Two differently layered fields?

There were only a handful of asari alive who could do that.

Of course Morinth would be one of them…

Her attacks on the barrier did next to nothing other than to anger the Ardat-Yakshi. Just as quickly as she'd started shooting, Callius was forced to stop when the asari used her other hand to slap the weapon aside. The Phaeston slid across the ground and bumped against a lab table, out of reach.

With her first weapon removed, Callius settled for her biotics and went to drive a punch through the asari.

She effortless caught the power-armored hand and the cabal could feel her trying to lock her in stasis field.

Every movement became heavy and if not for her own barriers and the fact that Blackwatch power armor had been designed to also resist asari commando levels of biotics (officially just in case they ran into former asari commandos turned merc and definitely not in case the turians had to go to war with the asari), she probably would've been frozen and dead already.

But because she was wearing the black and golden suit of armor that had small Eezo nodes of its own, Callius still had a little wiggle room. Wiggle room she intended to use to at least make Morinth bleed before she killed her. The lieutenant slid her hand towards her Carnifex and started firing from the hip. The first shot hit the ground at Morinth's feet, the others her barriers. First there were only purple sparks but then, there was a blue one.

She'd broken the barrier and was now hitting the shields..

Morinth and her realized what was happening but before either could act, something unforeseen happened.

A metallic arm made from jet-black alloy and synthetic muscle grabbed Morinth by the arm that was holding Callius and a fist made from the same material cracked her skull. There was a blue flare. Legion's attack was so fast and deadly that the shields had registered it as a hit from a mass accelerator.

"You will seize hostile against Callius-Lieutenant immediately," Legion declared before his fist cracked against the shields again and Callius went flying out of the barrier. She wanted to tell Legion to go slow or just grab the asari but before she could do that, she hit the ground and saw the color of Morinth's barriers shift. It was darker now and flakes were already coming off Legion's armored exterior.

An annihilation field…

"You little pest-" the asari began before sinking a biotic strike into the geth's chest and tossing the incredibly heavy geth through the room and towards her. When Legion impacted her with a weight akin to Galviat and snapped her head back, Callius wasn't just dazed.

She was knocked out cold.

---

Meanwhile, 30. April 2417 AD, Alarei

"You little pest-" Shepard heard from the other end of the room. She'd turned on her heels as soon as Phaeston fire and Legion's voice had announced the arrival of back-up and now that she was stepping out of the red smoke – which had blocked all but one layer of her helmet's vision thanks to its design. The one that had worked had only allowed her to see blurry outlines, showing that Hahne-Kedar clearly wasn't keeping its armor production up to date with whoever was supplying the HSA's newest smoke screens. (Well that or her two-year old armor needed a serious upgrade.) Once outside, she could see a badly damaged Legion being thrown into Callius just as another door opened and Thane and Mordin came barging in.

Mordin sent both a white and an orange blast from his omni-tools. A cryogenic detonation and incendiary plasma. These hit Morinth's barriers at the exact same moment and produced a wall of mist upon clashing with each other. She briefly wondered how Mordin – the STG veteran – could think that omni-tool programs would damage biotic barriers as powerful as Morinth's … but then she got it.

Under the cover of the mist created by the clashing temperatures, a purplish-green streak shot through the room in what she could only describe as a flash-step.

Morinth couldn't see Thane coming.

And Thane was going to use that.

It was one thing to hear Callius say that he was fast.

It was another to see it happen.

In the literal blink of an eye, the drell reappeared at Morinth's side and a streak of purple blood shot through the air. Whether his aim had been off (she doubted that) or the barrier had set his trajectory of by just far enough save Morinth's head (since these were both biotic powers, that was more likely), Thane's cut missed the asari's exposed throat by a mere centimeter and instead sliced through the armor on her shoulder. It was a deep, nasty cut – sort of what you'd expect from a blade made to cut through armor. The injury certainly would've permanently incapacitated a human and made them rife for the killing blow.

Sadly, Morinth was a bit stronger than a human and now out for vengeance.

Thane, who instantly seemed to know that he hadn't struck the killing blow he'd hoped for, tried to get clear using the same technique he'd used before.

It worked.

Until he hit Morinth's barrier and realized he was effectively trapped. He hit the barrier like a fly against glass and shook his mask-covered head.

Shepard wanted to do something but other than wasting her ammo, there wasn't anything she could contribute to this battle.

"You'll regret that, you pathetic reptile," the asari taunted before putting a hand on her injured side and summoning biotic energy in her other hand. If this were any other enemy, the amount of playing she was doing with them would've already killed her. Sadly enough, Morinth really was as strong as Samara had claimed and could afford to toy with them.

"Reptilian-like," Thane corrected before taking a low stance and brandishing his blade, clearly intend on going down swinging. Or stabbing. "Amonkira, lord of hunters, grant that my hands be steady," he began to whisper.

"Prayers won't help you."

"-my aim be true and my feet swift," he went on, a bit louder.

"Didn't you hear me? Praying won't save you."

"-And should the worst come to pass," Thane stated, apparently doing some toying of his own. "Grant me forgiveness."

"Your gods aren't here to forgive you drell, only me. And I'm not feeling merciful right now," the Ardat-Yakshi interrupted before taking a step forward, an action Thane answered with a step forward himself. He raised his blade, clearly preparing for a final strike.

… but before he could do so, Morinth's barriers – and the floor around her - were violently ripped open by a marine in BAR armor.

"Neither am I," Jack said before cracking her knuckles and nudging her head at Thane, telling him to make room.

The assassin, despite his previous prayer, complied instantly. In another blink of an eye, he was standing next to Mordin. When he was gone, Shepard moved instantly to get an angle to shoot at Morinth. It was to no avail though; Jack was standing right in front of the human-sized hole she'd made.

"They say you're powerful. Thing is, they say that about me too." the young lieutenant went on before a ripple of uncontrolled biotic energy shredded the ground underneath her and caused it to bend upwards in shards around her feet. It looked almost like an impact crater. "You better get out of here, guys. The justicar was just behind me and I'm not sure we're gonna leave much of this place standing when we're done with her."

Shepard took one look at the marine-biotic facing off with the asari and then made her decision.

"Leng, you grab Callius. Garrus, get Legion. Everyone, head for your closest shuttle and hold as long as possible! This isn't our fight," she called before running back the way she'd come from in the hopes of looping around the room and getting to the entrance Thane and Mordin had come from. In the corridor, she passed an quarian with a suit remarkably like Tali's and remembered what Reegar had snapped off earlier. The identification bracelets.

She quickly stopped to retrieve the piece of jewelry and continued the loop, hearing a biotic detonation behind her.

She might've ordered her team to withdraw for their safety, but that didn't mean that she'd leave as well.

This was her team, her responsibility. As long as Samara and Jack were on the ship, so would she. She'd be the last to leave, just like it would be expected from her in officer school.

The N7 made her way through a lab and ignored the various ways the quarians inside had been stabbed… knives, lab equipment… metal shards ripped from the wall… it was all there and all being ignored.

What she couldn't ignore however was the black-armored pair of troopers standing in front of what she would now assume was the reason for the earlier collision.

They saw her the moment she saw them and just as they started to fire, Shepard dove for cover.

She was outnumbered and outgunned and if the steps she was hearing were anything to go by, she'd soon be outflanked too.

She needed to think of a solution quickly, otherwise she'd be just as dead as these quarians-

A very long burst of Phaeston fire rippled through the room, followed by two pairs of strangely human cries which were again followed by two single Phaeston shots. She looked to her left where her savior had come from. The door she'd intended to circle through was open and Garrus was standing there, gun still aimed at the troopers and distinctively unphased by the flashes of purple and violent shaking behind him.

"Well don't just sit there. You said it yourself. We need to go," he said toward her. If she were to guess, he had looped around the other way of the ship.

"You were supposed to grab Legion and run," she countered.

"Turns out Legion could still walk and Leng can't lift Callius on his own," the turian responded before grabbing a grenade and lobbing it into the pathway guarded by the two deceased humans. "I sent them on their way."

"Garrus, I told you to pull back. It's too dangerous to stay," the N7 stated before rising to her feet.

"Then why are you still here?" the turian countered as the Alarei's hull groaned and an airlock shut itself behind them under the announcement of a hull breach in a lower section of the ship.

"Because I'm not leaving until Samara and Jack are in the clear," she repeated. That had been ingrained into her head all the way since HSAMC bootcamp. No man left behind. "Thane and Mordin's shuttle's that way," she pointed behind herself. "Get out of here while you still can," the turian didn't move, so she decided to one up it. "That's an order, Garrus."

Garrus seemed unimpressed, which was a bad thing considering the Alarei was falling apart around them.

"I already watched you go down with one ship, Shepard. I'm not letting that happen twice in one lifetime," he stayed before both of them flinched when a metal frame was thrown into the corridor behind them and it suddenly became the new battleground. They hunkered down behind their own door frame just in time to watch Samara and Morinth walk into the corridor, a sphere of energy caught between them. There was no sign of Nader, though. "If you stay, I stay."

"Garrus, you need to leave," she began, considering her options against Morinth. Maybe she'd take a page out of Section 13's playbook and walk through the annihilation field to shoot her in the back?

… she probably wouldn't walk away from that though. The last (and only) human who'd survived that had at least been a biotic.

"No, I'm not," he countered before switching his Phaeston for his Mantis. "She nearly killed you last time and again just now. Unless we stop her here, she'll keep coming after us. I won't let that happen," he leaned around the corner to align his scope and went to squeeze the trigger. Before he could do so however, the wall behind Morinth exploded and Nader stepped into the corridor, purple rifts dancing over her entire body and warping the metal around her. It was different from the display of power that the asari were using – far less controlled and refined. But definitely not weaker.

She'd heard Jack could turn a tank inside out… but only now was she actually starting to believe it.

It was freaking scary and Jack's demeanor didn't help.

"You… fucking… bitch…" the BAR trooper grunted before doing something that – in retrospective – probably wasn't a very solid decision.

While Samara and Morinth fought to overpower one another, Nader made a fist and threw an instable warp field the size of a person at Morinth's back. Just for reference, warp fields the size of a hand were considered large…

The field moved and one rapidly shifting biotic energy clashing with another.

Again, Shepard didn't know the exact science of biotics…

… but she did know enough to know that that was a bad idea.

Not a moment later, the exterior hull of the Alarei came apart. Shepard and Garrus managed to hunker down for as long as it took the emergency seals to clamp down.

The three biotics in the corridor did not.

Nader went flying and had to grab on to a support bar to avoid being sucked outside and the two asari vanished behind a thick, purple smoke that covered the corridor.

"Everyone, evacuate!" Shepard ordered as the smoke crawled towards them. For a second she felt like she saw something move within the cloud… but then dismissed the notion as the smoke settling after the decompression.

A second later an asari came flying through the smoke, through the room and rolling when she hit the ground. A short-sword was embedded in her stomach and for a second Shepard thought it was Samara.

But then she realized that it was Morinth.

Purple blood was pouring from the Adrat-Yakshi's mouth and she raised her head and hand towards the smoke from which Samara was now emerging, striding as regal as ever. The justicar was carrying her asari-made pistol and stopped right in front of Morinth.

"You've haunted this world for far too long, daughter. It is time that the nightmares you wrought come to an end," the justicar stated while Garrus and Shepard had a silent agreement and got out of the way, just in case this wasn't the end of the biotic annihilation of the Alarei.

"Then finish it, mother," the asari caught, her hand inching back to her body – towards the knife in her stomach.

"I will, in time," Samara said, glancing at Morinth's hand and then stepping on it hard enough to break it. The asari yelled in pain. Her mother didn't even twitch. "Before you depart this world and find forgiveness in the embrace of the goddess, I wish to ask who set you on this course. You were never one to risk a hunt if you knew I was involved. Yet you lured us here for Shepard after already failing once. Why? What drove you to this?"

The asari cracked a bloody smile.

"You know what, I'll tell you, if only to ruin your little fello-"

A loud bang echoed through the room and the contents of Morinth's head were spilled on the ground.

But it hadn't been Samara who had shot.

There, standing in the frame of the door they had originally come from was her fellow N7, aiming his Valkyrie at the deceased Ardat-Yakshi.

Samara's face remained unmoving behind her transparent oxygen mask.

Her pistol however did not.

She leveled it at Leng, who in response turned his gun on the justicar.

"Wow- Are you fucking serious?!" Leng called while jumping into cover.

"Easy, people, easy-" Shepard began, recognizing the situation that was about to unfold and wondering when it had become a trend for her to stop her crew members from killing each other… it was actually an easy question to answer. It was around the time she'd started picking up non-military personal…

"You had no right to do that," Samara said calmly.

"No right?" the N7 responded while inching out of his cover, Valkyrie at the ready. "Look at this fucking place," his gun went down ever so slightly as he extended one hand towards the destruction around them. "Every second you were talking to her you were giving her a chance to space all of us. Battlefield ain't the place for family talks. Especially not when your kid's a biotic-murder-demon-thing."

"Ardat-Yakshi or not, only a justicar may execute another asari. Everything else is a sacrilege against the goddess, punishable by summary execution," the older asari said before turning her head towards Shepard.

"Samara, don't do this," she said quietly before remembering something crucial from Illium that stopped her from watching her friend get spattered all over the walls. "Remember your oath. My right is your right. And as far as I'm concerned, what Kai just did was right."

The asari instantly lowered her gun and glared at Leng.

"Consider yourself fortunate that she is your commander, Petty officer. You'd be a dead man otherwise."

"I do that every day," Leng responded before the Alarei groaned again. "Okay. I suggest we grab Jack and her," he pointed at Morinth's body," and get all the evidence we can for that weird quarian trial thing and then get the hell outta here before this entire thing breaks into two pieces."

Shepard took one look at Samara standing over the body of her dead daughter, wondering what Morinth had been trying to say before Leng had done the reasonable thing and ended the threat the moment he could.

"Agreed. Let's get the hell out of here," she nodded while Garrus put Jack over his shoulders and Leng made a move to grab Morinth.

"She stays," the justicar stated. "This will be her burial site."

"Burial site? What are you talking about?" Leng countered before kneeling down. "Look at what she did to this place. She's worth her weight in gold to the Ascension Program. If we figure out what made her like this every human biotic's gonna be like Jack."

"Oath or not, I will not let you defile a daughter of the goddess to study her gifts to my people," Samara muttered in return, prompting Shepard to shake her head at Leng – even if his argument was reasonable. At the same time, she decided that she really needed to read up on asari religion if Samara was sticking around…

… Liara had never been like this.

"Leave her."

With everything that had happened recently, she had expected Leng to argue to the point where Samara did smear him over the walls…

He didn't.

"Copy."

---

Fifty Minutes Later, 2158 CE, Quarian Migrant Fleet, Life Ship Rayya

"So even if the Alarei was destroyed, it is thus decided that all charges against Tali'Zorah are to be dropped immediately. The evidence brought forward by Captain Shepard is far too clear to sentence anyone in good consciousness," Admiral Gerrel announced. "Tali, you may continue to serve the Migrant Fleet in whichever way you choose."

The words felt hollow.

After Shepard had gotten back from… whatever fight it was that they had had on the Alarei ( it had destroyed the entire ship in the end)… she'd brought Tali something equally valuable as haunting.

The identification bracelet of her father.

It was confirmation of his death, something she'd expected to find but still hadn't been ready for ever since boarding the ship two hours ago.

Additionally to the bracelet, Shepard had also brought an explanation with her; one in the shape of several diary entries by a researcher stationed on the Alarei. Upon hearing it, Tali had wished that she hadn't brought it back. It dishonored her father in the worst possible way.

Two days ago, her father, Admiral Rael'Zorah, had gotten in touch with a group posing as merchants. (Said group would later turn out to be their murderers but that was getting ahead of the point.)

Initially, they had offered to give him what he needed: active geth in exchange for something he had a lot of: data. An exchange worth making, at least in his mind.

To get the geth to the fleet, her father had committed an act of treason equally bad as bringing geth on board; he'd revealed the Migrant Fleet's trajectory to an outsider.

After faking an engine malfunction at an agreed upon destination in the Threshold, the Alarei had fallen behind the rest of the fleet to meet with the group to receive the packaged geth… which had turned out to be no geth at all but rather the Ardat-Yakshi and a pair of mute, humanoid commandos. They had quickly overwhelmed the security and then laid in ambush for their real target: Shepard herself. Their ship, which had gone undetected by riding inside the emissions of the Fleet, had trailed behind thanks to an advanced VI program. (Which had been destroyed alongside the ship and the Alarei.

From the recordings alone they couldn't understand the reason for any of this, but one thing was clear: no quarian on the Alarei had died at the hands of the geth. More so, there never had been any active geth to begin with.

"As for you, Lieutenant Reegar," Gerrel went on, "starting today, you will once more be placed under the command of the Migrant Fleet Marines. Your days of being part of Admiral Zorah's personal security detail are over."

"Understood, Sir."

"With this, the trial is concluded," Gerrel stated. "Captain Shepard, a word."

As the human followed the admiral with her once again reduced entourage (it really was weird that the still didn't trust the crew of the Normandy after today) Tali watched them, thinking back to what Shepard had told her back on the Normandy.

Her father was dead now.

Her attempts at serving the fleet had only brought disaster. Of the original squad she'd been granted everyone but Reegar was dead and the Alarei and her crew had also met doom.

That was her track record for this mission.

Ever since barely surviving the encounter with Saren's men on the Citadel, she'd been living off the choices other people made for her.

It had only had negative consequences.

Four days ago, what she was about to do would've seemed ludicrous to her. Irresponsible too.

But right now it was the only sensible decision left to be made.

"Wait, Shepard!" she called, jogging through the open yard within the Rayya and stopping the N7 and the admirals before they could go off to their private talks.

"Tali, now is not-" her aunt began.

She'd no longer let others speak for her.

This was the right thing; the only way to make a difference.

"Shepard, after you picked me up on Haestrom you made me an offer. You wanted me to help you stop the Collectors," she began, forcing her voice not to tremble. "I accept, if you'll still have me."

Shepard briefly glanced at the admirals and her turian companion, who seemed to say something no one but they could hear. She nodded in return and then turned back to Tali, looking at her with emerald eyes visible through her clear visor.

"Welcome to the crew, Tali."

---

Codex: Status of Quarian-Human Relations

Officially, the Human Systems Alliance does not maintain any diplomatic relations to the Quarian Migrant Fleet. Similarly, quarian representatives are not present onboard of Arcturus-Station. Both entities, while unified by their proximity to the Terminus Systems, have not exchanged with one another through official channels beyond basic formalities after humanity's entrance to the galactic plane.

Unofficially however ships flying under the banner of the HSA and Migrant Fleet have not only engaged in (up to now luckily casualty-devoid) interception maneuvers but also exchanged fire with one another and caused extensive property damage to one another. Rumors of 'brawls between prospectors and colonists' and outright gun fights with Migrant Fleet Marines and HSAMC forces have also surfaced.

Due to the at first somewhat strained relations between parts of the Council and the HSA – the root of the differences being humanity's violation of the Treaty of Farixen and an anti-human conspiracy headed by then Councilors Tevos and Vaelen – many political scientists initially predicted that the HSA would distance itself from the Council and embrace the quarians as unlikely allies. A mutually beneficial diplomatic relationship was predicted.

On paper (and especially under the condition that the quarian Migrant Fleet can be considered the sleeping giant of the Terminus Systems that some make it out to be) this would have been a logical development for a simple reason.

Even as far back as 2383 AD, a sizeable part of the HSA's territory was located within the eastern expanse of the Attican Traverse. The Fringe Systems and even parts of the human core worlds, predominantly located on the Orion or Perseus arms of the Milky Way (commonly referred to as the Skyllian Verge), are encompassed of systems now considered to be the Council's largest consecutive relay border with the Terminus Systems.

Because of this regional proximity and the fact that the seventy-one percent of all colonial activities within the Traverse are either state-funded HSA projects or private human ventures from companies such as 'ExoGeni' and 'Ad Astra Incorporated', it was predicated that the HSA would have an interest in maintaining a stable ally within the Terminus.

Due to the inherent incompatibility of the Batarian Hegemony – a fact made clear after the very first diplomatic meeting between human and batarian delegates ended when HSA Envoy Baxter Martell left said meeting prematurely and under the threat of personal violence against the batarian envoy after being asked if the HSA were interested in 'a most beneficial slave trade between the glorious batarian empire and its new human subsidiaries' – it was predicted that the HSA would align itself with the quarians for security reasons and protection from the various forces of the Terminus.

These predictions lasted only as long as it took for the first human military actions against the Terminus Systems to occur.

Following the waves of instability within the Terminus caused by the decimation of major military players at the hands of the now unveiled might of the still partially mobilized Fringe Wars-era human military at the eve of the 25th human century and its leaders willingness to unleash it at the slightest provocation, predictions that the HSA would rely on the quarians for security were turned on their head.

It was now assumed that the quarians would turn to humanity for protection.

Similarly to early predictions, these assumptions were proven wrong sometime later – again through human military action.

Starting in the late 2390s, human colonists (carried on the wings of the ever-expanding Human Systems Alliance Navy – a fleet now only rivaled in size by the of the Hierarchy's armada and the Republican navy ) began to venture into the Terminus Systems, scoping out planets for colonialization previously only visited by the mining operations of small Terminus Nations and the prospectors of the Migrant Fleet. Unlike these groups however, the human colonists had every intention of staying and the fierce will and governmental backing to develop colonies too fortified to invite the run-of-the-mill Terminus Raiders rendering these planets unattractive.

Clashes about resources and territories followed soon after and while there have officially not been any fatalities related to hostile action between quarians and humans (something that cannot be said for other groups who have treaded too closely to what the HSA considers its expanded sphere of influence), the lack of casualties isn't related to restraint on either side but rather dumb luck and good aim of human naval aviators and the restraint and tough armor of quarian ship crews.

While no official statistics from quarian sources exist, the HSAN has kept a meticulous record of all 'quarian-related border incursions' since the year 2401 AD.

The statistic paints a harrowing picture to those who predicted an alliance.

In the last sixteen years the human navy has logged 2139 instances of quarian incursions into what it considers sovereign HSA space.

While it has to be mentioned at this point that the territories considered sovereign HSA space by the HSA are not accepted as such by most non-HSA bodies outside of the Turian Hierarchy (an issue caused mostly by the fact that under HSA law all neutral space within 10 AU of an HSA ship, outpost or installation is automatically considered sovereign HSA space – in the case of the Hierarchy it is 15 AU) the number is most likely not inflated but rather undersold.

Before human territories became the largest border region with the Terminus Systems, salarian territories in the north-westerns part of the Attican Traverse logged a similar number of quarian incursions into Union Space. Unlike their human counterparts however, salarians never used direct military action against the quarians.

Because of this simple statistic and the injured quariand and humans it hides, relations can be described as 'tense-to-non-existant.'

---

A/N:

So this chapter's a weird one.

It's Samara's loyalty mission; Tali's recruitment mission; Tali's loyalty mission AND still entirely different from all three of those...

I will admit that I could've had this out a month ago but life just sort of happened (and will continue to happen for the forseeable future) and that I only sat down and actually wrote this because I was starting to feel guilty about holding out on you guys when the chapter itself was techncially done already... at least in sturcutre.

So yeaaaah. Sorry.

Moving on, I've got two things I wanna briefly talk about.

First of I realised something crucial in regard to last chapter.

I forgot to mention that the character Moravek isn't my creation. He's an immigrant from 'Xeno Noir', the latest anthology story written by AdmiralSakai.

It just sort of flew under the radar, so sorry about that too.

Second announcement:

I actually necromanced my DeviantArt account and intend to eventually use it for content related to Semper Vigilo.

I don't have a large enough fanbase for fanart or the talent needed to make some 'official' art of my own, naturally (I almost failed fucking ART and MUSIC twice in middle school so just take that as an indicator for my qualities as an artist) but I have been thinking about adding stuff like timelines and a sort of an (in-universe) character sheet to the page when I find time. Maybe some simplified unit-insignias too (I can do those... but I can't draw hands or faces or details so my ideas for individual 'covers' for the various Parts of SV is probably going to die in its child-bed)

I don't know when I'll find the time to do this, naturally, but I will eventually due to the fact that SV has become so freaking massive that I can't help but agree with all of you who are wishing for a database. (it would be useful for me too, especially now that I'm starting to accept that my goal of 150 chapters and a bit over 2 million words might be... optimistic.)

Okay, with that out of the way I don't have a lot to say other than that I hope that you enjoyed this chapter. I know most of it was a fight scene but since we've been picking up all these characters a lot of them have faded into the background compared to Shepard, Garrus, Callius, and Leng.

To counter-act that, I decided that everyone gets to do something and I will admit without shame that I was listening to Minato's theme from Naruto while writing Thane's segment. So if you're feeling super-bored, maybe go over that little segment again with that in mind and please accept that Thane has officially graduated to reptile ninja with a quasi teleport. (or a very fast vanguard charge if you want to stay true to lore. I mean he had to become the best assassin of the hanar somehow, hadn't he? :D)

That's all I've got to say today.

Review and let me know what you think. Especially in regards to how each squad mate got their minute to shine in this chapter. (like I said, giving them all equally much to do has been a bit challenging)

For the record, we're at 837 reviews, 1331 favorites (couldn't have given me that LEET could you, ffnet?) and 1424 follows. Our march to the front page continues!

See you around next time.