Enlea T'Vari sat alone at the aft table in Normandy's galley. She couldn't recall another time in her life when she'd felt so drained; mentally, physically and spiritually. When the Normandy joined the battle over the the geth hub she had no station to attend and no role to play in the coming assault. At the recommendation of Miranda Lawson, she spent the entire engagement strapped in an escape pod where she'd be safe and ready to eject at a moment's notice. Enlea wasn't a fool, though. She had been sent to where she'd be out of the way, where she'd be least likely to do any damage while the crew fought for their lives... and hers.

When the terrible shocks finally ceased and the ship stopped spinning around her, she emerged from the pod, fell on her hands and knees, and promptly threw up on the deck. The corridor filled with smoke and illuminated by sparks and flashing warning lights. It took her a moment to hear it through her explosion-deafened ears, but someone was yelling at her.

"Get over here! Give us a hand!"

She staggered to her feet and followed the shouts which lead her to flashlights sweeping cones of light through the smoke. Hazard-suited figures backlit by flames sprayed retardant foam in all directions. Others dragged unconscious shipmates from the burning compartment. A half-dozen humans, dazed and burned, slumped against the wall in front of her.

Someone shouted at her again. "Get 'em outta here! We gotta vent this section!"

It wasn't until she got close that Enlea realized that the flashlights were the heads of the geth platforms that roamed the Normandy. Each of the geth picked up an injured human and starting moving them forward. She knelt next to a balding man whose face was covered with soot and blood. His uniform was half burned from his body. He moaned as Enlea put her shoulder under his and guided him to his feet, then followed the geth to the next section. They were met by another human who helped ease his comrades to the deck. The geth turned about to go back for more. In a daze, Enlea followed and brought back a younger woman who was just as badly burned.

Then, acting on some unheard order, the geth disappeared to another part of the ship, leaving Enlea in an improvised triage center in the middle of the corridor. Med packs were scattered on the deck among the casualties. She passed basic first aid as part of training decades ago, but the sight and smell of blood and burnt flesh made her turn away to vomit again. Painful moans from the first man she'd brought out made her look back.

One lone human tended the wounded, and he was injured himself. She wiped her mouth clean on her sleeve and reached for a medkit with shaking hands, donned a mask and a pair of surgical gloves contained within, and began to irrigate the man's burns before applying anesthetic and medigel as she had been trained. The entire time she prayed to the Goddess that she was doing more good than harm.

And so that went until trained medical staff arrived, also augmented with geth. Enlea next found herself as part of a brigade ferrying generators and repair equipment to every corner of the ship, then returning to storage to get more. Every able bodied person then joined in damage control. The entire ship was in shambles. Unable to assist in repairs herself, she could at least bring equipment to where it was needed most.

After an hour, her body gave out. Her knuckles were cut and bloody, her face was coated with sweat and grime, and her favorite outfit was stained with every sort of fluid imaginable, synthetic and organic. She staggered into the galley and collapsed in the first chair she could find.

There Enlea slumped over the table, half comatose but unable to sleep, the fear and helplessness of being trapped in the escape pod still fresh in her mind. She watched through blurry eyes as a steady stream of humans and geth went in and out of the infirmary. A short time later, a turian clad in full body armor walked in, followed by the former Justicar, the krogan and Commander Shepard himself. None of them even noticed her as they crowded around the infirmary door until they were chased off by the ship's doctor. After they left, all was quiet. She closed her eyes, just for a few seconds.

A bitter, yet savory odor filled Enlea's nostrils. She opened her eyes to see a mug filled with a steaming black liquid on the table in front of her. Miranda Lawson sat across from her holding a similar cup in her hand. "I must have dozed off."

"You did," Miranda said as she sipped her coffee. "You haven't moved for the past hour." Her uniform was shiny and spotless, her hair neat and clean, her face freshly scrubbed. She looked as though she was ready for inspection. "Are you all right?"

"I don't know," Enlea said, rubbing her neck. "I take it that we won?"

Miranda nodded. "Cerberus forces have been routed from the system and the geth are free of their influence. Through the geth, Tali was able to contact the Migrant Fleet Navy and stop the assault. As a matter of fact, the geth have offered a cease fire to the quarians. It looks like they may be going home soon."

"Incredible," Enlea said. The quarians had been marooned in space for more than half her life, and she never dreamed they'd ever make it home. Once again, Shepard and the Normandy had come to the rescue. "What's going to happen with Cerberus, then?"

"We've contacted both Alliance command and the Citadel. I've turned over everything I've got on Cerberus. C-Sec is going over my data store as we speak, and I'll be giving a formal deposition as soon as the Alliance can arrange council."

Enlea blinked. "You're going to testify against Cerberus?"

"That's right."

"Aren't you afraid of what they might do to you?"

Miranda smirked. "They should be afraid of what we're going to do to them."

If anyone else had said that, Enlea would have assumed false bravado. Having seen how the crew banded together when attacked, she knew it wasn't a bluff. "I can only imagine."

Miranda glanced at her cup on the table's surface. "You know, C-Sec would be very interested in what you have to say, too."

"What? Oh... No. I-" Enlea's voice cracked. "I think I've already exposed myself too much as it is. I mean, Commander Shepard already sent my datapad back with Professor Solus. I think that's enough."

"Was that really everything you know?" That made Enlea look away. Miranda cocked her head. "Listen, I'm not your conscience. But you have an opportunity here that may never come again."

"An opportunity for what?" Enlea said. "To betray my entire species?"

"Do you think I'm betraying mine?" Miranda said with disappointment in her eyes. "Because in my opinion, I'm saving it."

Shepard knew from the moment he came back from the Xenophon what to expect, but that didn't keep him from looking in awe at the vast, empty chamber in front of him. The giant sphere that once dominated the aft engineering compartment was gone. Overhead, a dark circle ten meters wide sparkled with stars, illuminated around its rim by the glow of an emergency barrier. The room was silent, absent the rhythmic throb that used to fill the air. And like the Normandy's mass effect core, his engineer was nowhere to be found. "Tali?"

"Down here," the quarian's voice echoed in the emptiness.

Shepard leaned over the edge of the platform to see Tali's scarfed head poking from a pit at the bottom of the chamber. He swung his leg over the railing and slid down a short ladder to the deck below and carefully made his way to where she worked.

Tali sat cross-legged in the middle of a giant metal socket in the floor, surrounded by glowing holo panels. She studied the schematics projected around her. "I have to give credit to Cerberus. The core ejection system worked perfectly. Clean separation. No overloads, no surges, no damage to the trunking. If the core hadn't exploded after ejection, we could probably have just plugged it right back in."

Shepard knelt next to the pit, trying to make heads or tails of the schematics. "So what does that mean for us in the long run?"

Tali groaned as she raised herself on legs sore from two days of exertion. Standing now, she could almost look Shepard in the eye as he knelt next to her. She gestured at the empty air around them. "Umm, we need a new core. Duh."

Shepard cocked his head at the sarcastic response. In spite of the damage to the ship, Tali was obviously in good spirits. "A new core? So, you don't think we need to abandon ship?"

Tali crossed her arms. "Did you even look at my report?"

"Did you send me one?"

The quarian blinked, then turned her omnitool on. "Oh... Ha. Oops." She pressed a few buttons, making Shepard's omni chime with an incoming message.

"Duh," Shepard said with a smirk and activated his own omni to open the damage control assessment.

"Listen," Tali rested her head on her arms. "It's been a really long day. I've been pulled in ten different directions since we got back."

"Tell me about it." Shepard scrolled through the report. It was over fifty pages long, filled with charts and figures and scans from all over the ship, many of which had been supplied by the geth. He flipped through them, pausing occasionally to read.

Tali watched the pages flick by. "You know, I spend a lot of time on these things. Do you ever actually read them?"

Shepard made a point of flipping the pages even faster. "You know, you get grouchy at times like this. What happened to Nice Tali?"

"She turns into Bitch Tali every time someone wrecks her ship. Three times now in the last week, in case you're counting."

Shepard reached the last page and grinned as he read aloud. "'In my estimation, the Normandy can be restored to full operational capacity. Repair efforts should commence immediately.'"

Tali crossed her arms again. "Unlike some people, quarians don't throw away damaged ships like empty beer cans. Where there's a hull, there's a ship, and a ship can be repaired. So enough with the talk about abandoning my ship."

Shepard jabbed a finger at her. "You just made my day."

"Good." Tali gripped the edge of the pit with her hands as she peered at the report. "I mean, it's an aggressive timeline and we'll probably need to evacuate the ship for the duration of repairs, but I think we can do it, assuming the geth pitch in."

"I don't think there's any question about that." Shepard turned off his omnitool. "That was a hell of a thing you did for them down there. For the Migrant Fleet, too. Not bad, saving two civilizations in one go."

Tali looked into Shepard's eyes. "I just did what my captain would have done."

Shepard held her gaze and gave the slightest of nods. "Well, I'd better go give this a good read before my chief engineer blows a gasket. You know how she is." He stood, his own legs and back aching, walked back to the access ladder. "I'll need to run this by EDI and Miranda. I hate to say it, but-"

At the mention of Miranda's name, Tali slumped. "Then don't..."

"-she'll probably want to call a meeting to sort things out."

Tali rolled her eyes. "I knew it."

Shepard grinned as he climbed. "Don't worry. She's got more pressing tasks than giving you a hard time. Turns out she and C-Sec have some things to talk about."

Tali paused as the meaning of what Shepard was saying finally sunk in. "She's really doing it?"

"Yep," Shepard leaned over the railing of the platform overlooking the room. "She's giving her deposition right now. So when you rebuild the ship, go ahead and leave the Cerberus logos off."

"Wow," Tali shook her head with amazement.

"Wow is right," Shepard said with full-blown smile before turning to the hatch. "See you, Tali."

"Wow," Tali said again to the empty room. In the space of a day, the entire universe had changed.

She knelt back down into the pit and began closing off the access panels and gathering her tools. She stopped and looked at her hands. Ordinarily when talking to Shepard, she'd wear a hole in her gloves from rubbing them together. Her heart would pound and she'd have to cut back her O2 mixture to keep from hyperventilating so her mouth wouldn't disconnect from her brain and utter the most inane things imaginable as she struggled to keep from falling over. But not today.

"Huh," Tali said and went back to gathering her things.

Garrus leaned in the frame of the conference room's hatch, half listening to the interview inside while scanning his omnitool. Thanks to the geth, the Normandy had full inter-relay communication with the rest of civilized space, and the ripples of what had transpired the past week were already being felt. He shook his head as more reports came flooding in.

Shepard stopped next to him to peer through the hatch. Inside, Enlea T'Vari faced holographic representatives of all the Council species, all wearing various expressions of disbelief and dismay. "How's it going?" he whispered.

"She's giving up all the goods," Garrus said. "Executor Pallin just ordered the arrest of Councilor Tevos, and that's just the start. I can't even begin to count the number of heads rolling right now. How's Miranda doing?"

"The same," Shepard said with a grin. "Heads everywhere."

"What about the biggest one?"

Shepard's smile faded. "Alliance agents raided a station at Anadius. Supposed to be his home base. But there was no resistance, and the station self-destructed as they approached."

"Please tell me he was on it."

"Not likely. Miranda says they had a standing procedure in place in case they were ever discovered. Odds are they evacuated well beforehand."

"Damn," Garrus muttered. "Guess the Illusive Man had to know she was going to give him up eventually."

"Yeah."

"How'd she take the news?"

Shepard shrugged. "By pointing out that she'd just given the Alliance every financial and physical asset Cerberus has and that if they still couldn't catch him that we'd be along in a few days to do it for them." The two of them laughed, causing a brief pause in the interview underway in the conference room. "Sorry," Shepard said and beckoned Garrus away from the door. They walked through the lab on the way to CIC.

"Speaking of going back," Garrus said when they were safely out of earshot. "Did you get an estimate for how long it'll be before we're ready to move?"

"It depends," Shepard said. "In order to completely repair the ship, the geth will have to strip it down to the frame. We need to be elsewhere while they do it."

"I don't suppose there's a nice five-star hotel anywhere in the system, is there?"

"Being a geth system, not likely."

"Could they give us a ride somewhere? I can think of at least ten systems off the top of my head with very nice resorts..."

CIC buzzed with activity as geth and humans worked together to disassemble and catalog equipment in preparation for the upcoming overhaul. Shepard and Garrus watched from the back of the compartment to stay out of the way. "That's a good thought," Shepard said. "But the relays between here and the Terminus are jammed tight with the Migrant Fleet trying to consolidate at Nariph, and all the geth ships moving out to escort them back."

"What about our special relay?"

"Well, that'll get us back to Raheel-Leyya, but we'll have the same traffic problem there as we have here. Not to mention we're missing our mass effect generator, remember?"

"Oh yeah. I guess that would make it a little more difficult, wouldn't it?"

Shepard shrugged. "Besides, I think we're safer here with the geth than just about anywhere else. I'm not in any hurry to leave."

"So then, where do we go for the duration of repairs?" Garrus shook his head. "I don't think the crew can handle a week in a featureless tin can after everything they've been through. Wouldn't be fair."

"Well," Shepard said as he walked up the short stairway leading to the galactic map. He tapped the console, highlighting the neighboring system of Tikkun. "I've been kicking around an idea..."