Cenotaph III: The Mausoleum

by Rob Sears

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

25. Chapter 25: Reclamation Series

"It is in the nature of all things to be apathetic to some degree. For what good could the concept of progress be if it required the care of the common man? Elevation of one's technology and culture represent a concerted effort by the masses to advance every conceivable aspect about their lives. But such advancement merely peels away layers hidden beneath that platinized layer—unfortunate truths that hamper any such group—as any census would indicate.

Living creatures are governed by the simple equation that actions require energy to implement. The energy to think, to exist. With advancement comes the unspoken inclination that the tasks that define them gradually take less and less energy to accomplish. Were it a perfect cycle, the energy saved from societal evolution would be redistributed into activities that might be seen as more altruistic. But a person has the underlying desire to be apathetic. Instead of looking to expand one's influence upon the perfection of the cycles that has defined their figure, some choose to retreat inward, to capitalize upon the lowering expectations that had been set for them, conserving their energy and unbalancing the cycle.

For we are all susceptible to the wonderful fictions we weave in order to discover our own private utopias. We like to believe that our governments have our best interests at heart. We like to think that there are animals not going extinct despite the mistreatment of our worlds. We like to take things at face value, to believe stray gut instincts and not what we can critically cognize. We want the truths to be written by others, because we don't want to take up such burdens. We habitually avoid the facts that are not easy to accept. And the lies are easy. They are too easy. If the common man unexpectedly finds a creative thought in his head, one that reasons that, as an example, the entire governmental fabric of the galaxy is stretched to its fibers and is composed of people who barely have any idea what they are doing, the man thinks to himself, 'How awful!', but resumes doing nothing, resigning himself to his self-imposed truth that he can do nothing to resolve the issue at hand, and very quickly forgets about it altogether. For when one's truth is that the entirety of your reality is at the precipice of disintegration despite how it had been presented on the surface, it is in conflict with the lies they have been told their entire life—one simple counterpoint against the years and years of experienced propaganda piled on to form a great mental wall—that the easiest solution is to simply ignore the truth.

One day, far into the future, when yet another statue of an exemplary altruist is constructed for all of civilization to see, perhaps someone will finally ask the question that everyone has been too timid to voice. That even though for tens of thousands of years we have memorialized the people who brought us the truth and fought the lies, why do we persist in fostering the deceptions that have given rise to such paragons in the first place?"

Final Monograph: Transcriptions of an Augury
Unknown Author, (pg. 144)
Reprinted by permission of Purdue University

---

Illium
Freight Depot Bailey 22

Heavy steel noises wept throughout the depot, large enough to house a Vendetta-class strike cruiser. A multi-storied morass of cabling and thick iron rails consumed nearly every inch of free space, dedicating to spiriting the super-ISOs of freight that made their way through the massive terminal. The rails were utilized by magnetic guiding clamps that could lift one super-ISO—a container more than two stories tall and more than three times the length of a Mako tank—and whisk it away to another part of the bay in less than two minutes, end-to-end. For the transit lines that required the containers to be sent to other hubs around the world, separate mag-lev lines were dedicated near the floor of the bay, whereupon the rails could accelerate the heavy bulk up to seven hundred miles an hour to be hurtling towards a nearby shipping yard or to another warehouse on the other end of the planet.

Near the facility's eastern entrance, the gigantic warehouse door was in the process of laboriously cranking shut as a set of three sleek-looking skycars slowly floated to the ground, touching the scuffed floor with delicate taps from their undercarriages. From within, a well-dressed asari and four body guards—two of them krogan—quickly extricated themselves from the crafts. They were all heavily armed, though the asari only carried a small submachine gun. Their clothing and armor carried little in the way of ostentation, save for the same insignia that adorned their right arms—a dry yellow-colored constellation, with the word Interra ribboned underneath.

The asari, who simply went under the name of Kamara, pointed at her human and turian bodyguards.

"Watch the cars," she said brusquely before she gave her head a firm jostle toward the krogan. "You're with me."

Both krogan silently complied. They hefted their oversized shotguns as they fell into step behind Kamara. They kept their heads slightly angled downward as they followed the asari—a krogan sign of deference. It had been earned after all, for Kamara was not just the person they were being paid to protect, but she was the person who was running Interra in the first place. One didn't just get to command a PMC purely by their business acumen. Surety in one's abilities played a vital role in attracting raw talent, which Kamara had been more than willing to demonstrate with any hapless fool under her command who got just the slightest bit fresh in criticizing her leadership. Such arrogant recruits would pay the price for running their mouths by being forced into a sparring session with the asari herself. One was considered lucky if all they walked away from the ring with only broken bones—if they could walk at all

Winding their way through the facility, Kamara led the krogan on a convoluted path through the stacks of super-ISOs, the roaring of traversing containers and the whooshing of displaced air drowning out their footsteps. Eventually, they ended up in front of a crate painted a chipped red color, shadowed by the irregular stacks of cargo all around them. Kamara walked up to the keypad and punched in a 12-digit passcode. There was a rusty thump and the locks to the crate savagely scraped open. The asari reached over and cranked the manual lever, swinging the door wide open.

The super-ISO was completely empty inside, save for a singular suitcase atop an aluminum pallet. A tiny lamp shone a tender beam of light upon the suitcase, like it had been placed here by a heavenly deity. Ignoring the symbolism, Kamara strode inside, picked up the suitcase, and abruptly thrust it into the arms of her closest bodyguard.

"Count it," was all she said.

There were two snaps as the case was unlatched. The krogan withdrew a singular chit from the suitcase and began holding it up to his omni-tool, his inboard repository already going to work at transmitting the correct code sequence to unlock the digital deposit.

As a PMC, Interra was privy to some of the galaxy's most unfortunate sides to its supposedly sterling institutions. More often than not, her firm was routinely hired by legitimate governments to "clean up" indiscretions committed by some of their more opportunistic members. Kamara didn't care whose work she took—as long as the pay was good, Interra would provide. And she found she preferred government contracts anyway. They paid better and there was a slim chance that they would try to rip her off somehow. If a dirty cop or two required an overwhelming urge to be "checked into rehab", or if a particular union was trying to play hardball with a pension fund, there was no better disruptor to the disorder than Interra.

Decades of accumulating unfortunate secrets had helped create successive side hustles for the PMC. For four years Kamara had been using this location in the freight depot as a blind drop for her most lucrative transactions. Payment goes into the crate… and later the specified "order" arrives at another pre-determined location. A simple system, but it worked. Kamara hated face-to-face meetings.

This had all started when her group had stumbled upon a case of white sand while running a security job. White sand was red sand's prototypical form, before it was cut with diluting agents, meaning that it was pure and unmodified dust, capable of knocking out a yahg with only a couple grams of the stuff. The drugs had been stashed in a safe house by a corrupt unit of Illium's police force, one that Kamara's PMC had been hired to "disrupt." Loyal to the job, Interra had busted the ring per the contracted assignment, stolen the drugs, and pocketed the paycheck. The client didn't care about retrieving the drugs, just that all of the crooked cops spent a few months in the hospital as punishment for their disloyalty. Ever since, Kamara had slowly been whittling the white sand supply down, selling it bit by bit to the most notorious drug dealers on the planet at premium prices. She always demanded cash up front. Who could argue with her? She had a sanctioned army at her disposal, no way anyone would dare try to cross her.

A harsh beeping behind Kamara drew her attention. She turned around. The krogan was holding up the chit, a confused expression on his face.

"Empty." He tossed it to Kamara.

The asari deftly caught the chit with two fingers and sourly appraised it for a moment. Her brow then deepened and a scowl twisted her mouth.

"A setup," she hissed, drawing her submachine gun. "Back to the cars."

Quickly, the group headed back the way they came, the krogan sandwiching Kamara as they took both the rear and point. They made it to the main avenue of the depot unmolested, their skycars remaining where they had left them, along with the bodyguards. Deep and unearthly cranks then began to bay all around them, causing the three to jump. Both rows of super-ISOs on either side of them were suddenly levitating a foot off the ground, drawn upward from the magnetic grapples on the rail overhead. Thousands of tons all delicately manipulated like a child played with toys. They were preparing to move out in formation, like a never-ending train.

It was in that time that the temporary distraction was used against the group. Two figures rolled from underneath the snaking convoys, evading the hissing torrents of boiling coolant as muted groans began to build from the chorus of ISOs straining against accelerating forces. Kamara tried to shout a warning, but the noises had reached almost orchestral levels, drowning her words out.

The turian and human bodyguards turned. Too slow. Their surprise assailants, a heavily tattooed human woman and an asari with immaculate scaled skin, sprang forward, their weapons already ablaze and cutting through the kinetic barriers of their targets. Kamara far away, had no shot with her submachine gun. With the trains of crates barreling around her on both sides, it felt like her entire existence was being shaken to pieces as she could only watch.

The asari assassin, whom Kamara incredibly recognized as Liara T'Soni, shattered the shields of the turian with a well-placed double-tap of her pistol. Then, the young asari gathered her strength, funneled it all to fit just in between the cracks of her fingers, and swept her hand out. Dark forces gripped the turian, momentarily levitating him above the ground for two seconds. Then Liara clenched her hand back together again and the turian bodyguard abruptly folded in half with a crack.

The human woman, who had to be Jack, had far less finesse than Liara, but the results were nonetheless effective. She simply slid forward, her boots modified to project frictionless zones, and swept her leg in a complex maneuver, a bolt of trailing purple energy crackling from her sole. Kamara's human bodyguard flailed their arms and yelled as they were literally swept off their feet, but before they could land, Jack jumped back up and smashed her fist square upon her airborne foe's chest, caving it in, and sending the man flying headlong to smash into a nearby crate. Crunching noises emitted from the impact and a splotch of blood was left behind as the corpse crumpled into a heap on the ground.

Kamara was in the process of turning around, about to scream at her krogan bodyguards to eliminate both Liara and Jack, but blinked her eyes as she became startled for the second time in less than a minute.

Both krogan were currently embroiled in battles of their own, against two more heavily armored warriors that had seemingly come out of nowhere—Grunt and James Vega, no less. Grunt was currently locked in a savage head-to-head with a bodyguard—though Kamara's krogan was more experienced, Grunt was the better fighter. Her own man had no chance, Kamara thought sadly. Grunt used his weight to his advantage as he lashed out with a fearsome kick, destroying the kneecap of the bodyguard and bending the leg concave. The tank-bred then savagely rotated his grip, yanking the shotgun away from his pain-stricken opponent, before smashing the stock of it square onto their head, breaking it in half and sending the bodyguard spinning away.

Right into the path of the moving cargo train.

The surfaces of the ISOs were not smooth—they were heavily ridged and had rudimentary ladders welded onto the sides to allow easy access to the roofs of the containers. And a jutting footstep of a bolted-on staircase passing by at two hundred miles an hour carries enough force to disintegrate a human at that speed. The bodyguard staggered and hit the side of one of the moving super-ISOs with a tremendous clang, quickly followed by a splattering noise as one of those steps caught upon the jaw of the bodyguard. The inertia of the blow spun the krogan completely around, half their face missing, torn away to leave behind a gaping hole of shattered bone and dripping brain matter. The bodyguard jerked once, seemed to realize that it was dead, and fell into a puddle of its own gore.

Meanwhile, Vega was coldly dispatching his own foe with calculated precision. He was continuously marching forward, a modified assault rifle in his hands. With three-shot bursts, the human targeted each of the joints of the remaining bodyguard, starting with the legs. The krogan howled as they fell to the ground and tried to lift a weapon, but that didn't work because Vega quickly shot their hands as well, turning them into hamburger. Kamara was pleased to see that the krogan was not so much of a coward to beg for their life, not that Vega gave them a chance because as soon as the krogan reared their head to make a roar of defiance, he shot them in the throat, nicking their jugular and completely opening them up upon the cold floor of the depot, the speed of which was violent and shocking in its suddenness. Thick fingers of dark orange traveled like glass shards away from the body of the krogan, with Kamara's own image mirrored back up at her.

Slowly, Kamara edged away as the four warriors began to close on her. She gritted her teeth. Ordinarily, she would not be so hesitant and on the defensive, despite being outnumbered like this. Then again, she never had to contend with four legends all at once before.

Seeing as there were little opportunities for her to make a move, Kamara decided to cut her losses and sacrifice pride in lieu of blood. She ducked down and rolled underneath the passing cargo convoy, barely clearing the thin gap and getting her head knocked clean off. Already the asari could hear shouting as her pursuers were trying to figure out a way to get to her—no use, the train she had just rolled under was going too fast to risk moving underneath it now. She sprang to her feet on the other side and was already sprinting across the ground through a thin hallway flanked by the endless stacks of consignments. She had stashed a spare skycar here a long while ago, just for safekeeping, but never thought there would come a time where she was going to need it.

Something behind Kamara—a feeling, perhaps—made her stop in her tracks. She turned around. A slender quarian, but sheathed in armor, was standing at the end of pathway, the train behind her slicing evenly-timed shafts of light like a patient zoetrope, the illumination bustling around her body like she was an immovable mountain. Their shadow leapt forward across the ground, almost touching Kamara's feet. Even with their profile darkened, the asari could make out the slimmest hints of white crowning the quarian's body—suit and sehni both—as if those pieces had been dipped in sterling.

Kamara had to squint her eyes. The quarian remained where she was, fists clenched, feet planted, a glare undoubtedly underneath that darkened visor.

"Let me guess," Kamara sneered, hand holding her weapon twitching as she fought to contain herself, "you're going to use this moment to try to make me see the error of my ways?"

Slowly, the quarian shook her head.

"Nah," Roahn said. "I'm just going to make sure you never hurt anyone ever again."

The asari then snarled as she raised her arm, in the process of clenching down upon the trigger of her submachine gun. But Roahn was faster on the draw—the quarian activated a protocol on her omni-tool and the heat sink to Kamara's weapon spontaneously ejected as it automatically bled heat into the weapon's components. The asari swore, no doubt lamenting the technical prowess of quarians, as she quickly initiated the slide's manual release so that it could insert another clip, but Roahn was already on Kamara by that point. The quarian lunged her arm forward, her artificial fingers reaching out—and finding—the asari's submachine gun. Roahn pushed and clamped down her fingers on the gun's catches at the same time. The newly inserted heat sink popped out from the slide again, trailing sparks and hints of microparticle ejecta inches from both of the combatants' faces, shimmering as the spasmodic flashes caught them in the thin hallway. Roahn kept pushing and the slide finally sprang from the guiding rail, coming off in Roahn's hand. Kamara now held half a useless gun—she tossed to the ground with a cry of anger.

Kamara then tried to give a biotic chop to Roahn's neck, but the quarian stepped into the asari's stance and raised her arm, blocking the maneuver. Impotent sparks fizzled in annoyance from Kamara's fingertips as the charge stored in her body slowly started to seep away. Seeing an opening, Roahn slammed a fist into the asari's stomach. Kamara wheezed, but recovered quickly, now striking the quarian upon the chin of her helmet.

Both warriors struggled and grunted as they traded blows in the tight space. Both embarked in acrobatic rolls as they grappled with each other, sometimes flipping over the walls in quick attempts to land at their opponent's backsides. Roahn coughed and grimaced, feeling slightly winded, as several of the asari's wild blows successfully found her body, but she always straightened and came back at the asari with a vengeance. After a minute of this, Kamara was clearly seeming bit worse for the wear—her knuckles had been torn wide open from punching Roahn's armor too many times, her nose was broken after Roahn had slugged her square in the face, and a cut on her forehead was pouring blood into her eyes, causing her to dart away every so often to wipe a hand over them in desperation.

"What…"

Kamara hurled a haymaker—missed.

"…the hell…"

The asari drew a knife—thrust down—hit Roahn in the prosthesis—stuck there.

"…are you?" Kamara panted incredulously, eyes wide with something approaching fear as she watched Roahn yank the knife from where it had been wedged without so much as a cry of pain.

Without looking, Roahn flipped the knife in her palm, now holding it by the blade.

"Figure it out," Roahn snarled as she bent her arm and hurled the knife as hard as she could.

Kamara threw up her hands to protect her face from the blade singing in her direction, and gasped when she felt a point of fire erupt upon her left hand like a volcano had sprouted there. There was a millisecond of confusion then slow realization as a jet of hot blood sprayed the asari's face. A tiny tringle of anodized steel now sprouted through the back of her hand, having pushed aside bones and sinew to make its intrusion. Roahn had thrown her own knife straight through her hand.

In a panic, Kamara backpedaled and let out a cry as her calves hit something solid. She fell backwards, landing on a curved surface with a crack. She glanced at what she had just collapsed upon—it was the skycar she had been trying to reach. Life had its little ironies sometimes.

The knife still in her hand, the asari groped along the smooth surface of the domed canopy, trying to push herself back up, when she realized that Roahn was standing over her, pistol leveled straight towards her head.

"Wait!" Kamara cried as she raised her hand, her bad one, "I can cut you in! It's all yours! Just name your price! Everyone has their pri-!"

Roahn fired twice, blowing two holes straight through Kamara. The bullets penetrated the windshield of the skycar that the asari had been lying upon, completely disintegrating it. Safety glass shattered into thousands of pieces, caving inward and depositing the corpse of the asari within the interior of the vehicle, leaving her body in a less-than-dignified position with only her legs sticking up into the air, just past the jagged rim that used to be the canopy.

The quarian lowered the smoking pistol, armor scratched but intact. The clanging of metallic rails overhead returned to act as the percussive backdrop to the freight depot once more.

"You had nothing I wanted," she told the dead woman with a tiny shake of her head.

---

253 Mathilde
Habitation Zone

Zero Sum Grand Colonel William V. Hu grimaced as he downed the ice-cold shot of cheap vodka. A bitter fire clung to his throat, the sensation feeling like the end result of a gastric bypass gone wrong. With a careless flick of his finger, he batted the tiny glass away. It rolled to the end of the table and dropped off with a clatter. It didn't even give him the courtesy of breaking into pieces, a shame.

The oscillations from the driving beats being pumped out of the overhead speakers had finally dulled after such copious amounts of alcohol. Multicolored spotlamps dazzled and whirred around the expanse of the club, which had the rather stark name of The Pit, the only place to relax on such a godforsaken rock like Mathilde.

253 Mathilde had barely any qualities that distinguished it from the other asteroids in Sol's belt. The first solar explorers had flocked to Mathilde at first, seeing as it was one of the largest objects in the orbit, hoping to find rare elements. They had gone and mined through the entire rock, even going so far to put fusion torches on the exterior of the asteroid to control its spin and enact a habitable zone. The endeavor turned out to be an entire waste of the time for the prospecting miners, as Mathilde lacked significant deposits of the heavy metals they had hoped to find. So, they had left it abandoned, but the underlying infrastructure had remained intact for someone like Zero Sum to eventually reclaim.

Hu had purchased Mathilde from the government on a rather cheap lease, intending to utilize it as a base for Zero Sum's PMC operations. It turned out maintaining a sizeable place like Mathilde was more of an effort than anticipated, so Hu had turned to subleasing parts of the interior to the public, opening it up as a small refueling station. The Pit, surprisingly, had not been an addition to the facility that Hu had pushed—the miners had actually been the ones to install it. No one could work as hard and party as hard as deep-space drillers, evidentially.

Watery eyes struggling to remain open, Hu lazily scanned the interior of the club. He raised a hand and an armored contractor came over to him. Damn near half the people in this club belonged to his firm, available to serve his whim. Not to mention everyone in here was armed.

"Grab another bottle from the bar," he told the privateer, his voice barely carrying over the din of the electronic music. "And… see what you can do about herding some girls over here."

To his credit, the contractor nodded obediently. "Preference, sir?"

"For what?"

"For the girls."

Hu's brow creased in annoyance, the alcohol making him irritable. "What the fuck are you talking about? Preference for a girl's… blood type? Favorite vid? Be specific!"

The trooper stiffened nervously. "I meant species, sir. Human, asari, turian—"

Hu drunkenly grabbed for a fork and tossed it at the man. It was not going to hit, but the contractor ducked anyway.

"Breathing, new, and at least semi-conscious!" he roared. "How many times do I have to say it?!"

The trooper scurried away without another word, temporarily vanquished. He returned back half a minute later, a chilled bottle of vodka in hand. Hu irritably waved him away, no doubt relieving the cowed man that he would not be subject to any more barbs from his employer.

Just as Hu was pouring himself a new glass, the results of his latter request came to fruition as a new figure stepped up to his plush booth. He looked up from his now-full glass, his vision now fully underwater from the amount of vodka he had already consumed.

A quarian now stood in front of him. Slender, gray visor, white hood, young-ish disposition. Well, credit where it was due, she did fit all three conditions he had set for her procurer. Perhaps he should have specified that he had never been so inclined to the suited oddities, but he did have to admit their adornments left very little to the imagination, especially where they curved around their hips. What the hell, he was drunk enough not to care at this point. Might as well see where this went.

"Interesting. You're not what I expected," he slurred as he patted the seat next to him.

The quarian slid into the booth, but kept a respectable distance away. "That's not the sort of thing to say if you want to get on someone's good side."

Huh. Feisty. Hu could work with this.

"Did they tell you who I am?" he asked right before he took another sip of cheap vodka.

Leaning forward, the quarian's eyes blinked in confusion. "Sorry—what?"

Hu suddenly became aware of where he was. Fumbling around on his omni-tool, he located a particular control and activated it after three failed attempts. A thin blue dome of grid-like energy, nearly transparent, wrapped around the booth. Immediately, the loud music diminished to just a bare thump in the background.

"Sound-suppressing zone," Hu explained with a grin. "Lets us have a little privacy. Now, let's try again. Were you told who I am?"

The quarian gave a shrug, eyes darting all over the place. "Does it matter? Not many people in this place that are worth something. Though I was told that you were some kind of big shot," she said demurely.

"That a direct quote?" Hu raised an eyebrow, hand stroking his thin goatee.

Again, the quarian shrugged. "Maybe not. Wasn't listening that well. I just felt someone grab my arm—told me to sit by you."

"Yes, well, my guys are known more for their aim than their charm. Put simply, honey, I'm the top dog around here. You want to know something about worth? In this place—I'm its most important asset. Mathilde is sort of my turf, you see. All of it."

"Really?" the quarian's pitch grew higher as she drew back in surprise. Clearly she was attracted to importance.

"That's not even the half of it," Hu smirked as he drained a quarter of his glass before he set it down, using the opportunity to scoot closer to the quarian. "You've heard of Zero Sum before?"

Hu was angered when he saw the quarian give a confident shake of her head. She had even closed her eyes to make the motion. Closed them! Like this was a damn game to her!

"We're one of the top security contractors in the galaxy," he managed to get out without raising his voice. He then tapped his own chest with a heavy knuckle. "Zero Sum's my show, you see, and everything on Mathilde goes through me."

To prove his point, he reached out with a numb arm, and groped the quarian in an ungentle manner. He moved his hand up the pliant enviro-suit—it felt warm and was like knotted synth-leather—until he was firmly cupping the alien's suited breast. He gave a squeeze to show her he wasn't kidding.

Judging by the little giggle the woman exuded, she seemed to like the manhandling. Unexpected. Most women tried to shy away at that point. Tonight was certainly yielding interesting results for Hu.

"You certainly don't like to waste time," the quarian said, looking down at where Hu's hand was continuing to rest, but making no motion to remove it.

In the background, the collection of dancers continued to buck and writhe silently through the barrier, as if they were all imagining the music to be in their head, the image reminiscent of a vid with the volume on mute

Hu's imagination was running rampant enough that he was now able to cast aside any hesitations he might have of bending this quarian over and taking her in this booth right now. She was asking for this, practically. Who knows—she might even be attractive under that mask. And if she died from such an experience, then it wouldn't be the first mess Hu would have left behind.

To focus his racing thoughts, he quickly reached over to the table and ran a finger upon where a small mound of powdery substance had been piled upon a reflective tray. He brought his frosted fingertip up to his nose and took a deep sniff. He wiped the reside off his face.

"Where are my manners?" the human patted his chest in apology. He then gestured to the tray. "Did you want some?"

"Maybe when things get going," the quarian whispered as she tiptoed her hands up to where Hu's hand was still upon her suited breast, holding it in place against her.

"Oh, we're probably already there, honey," the human murmured lowly. "But soon, we'll be journeying even farther. Things might get… a little rough."

The quarian's eyes batted and she seemed to purr.

"Don't worry. I like rough."

"This night just gets better and better," Hu nodded in approval as he finally detached his hand from the quarian's breast, slipping his fingers from the alien's hand in the process. He then reached for the bottle to top off his glass, for the hell of it. Little extra liquid courage to keep those misgivings at bay. "Never had one of you lot, come to think of it. Maybe I can make this more interesting, call up some of the younger stock? Give you a playmate to put on a show? I'm interested to see what happens when you—"

There was a wisp of air and a rapid thudding sound. A dark line of pain suddenly erupted inside Hu's hand and he let out an involuntary shout. A dash of red splattered upon the vodka bottle. Soberness returned to his vision all at once, focusing in on the knife that was now pinning his hand to the table, the blade completely sunken into his flesh and beyond—only the hilt was showing. A thin smear of blood was slowly spreading across the stained table, subsonic pulses from the distant music trembling the liquid and making it ridged in time with the tempo.

In a panic, Hu whipped his head around to see the quarian smugly lean back in her seat, having previously leaned over in order to stab his hand with the knife she had hidden in her boot. Gone was her naïve and wide-eyed disposition. Now only lingered a ruthless calculation. It was almost amazing to see how much expression her eyes conveyed. They were cold. Killer's eyes.

"You know," Roahn said idly, with the air of someone reading the news, "I think we both had different concepts of what constituted for 'roughness'. Feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken."

Hu wasn't listening. He grasped his wounded hand, trying to stem the plain that seemed to be flowing into his veins like a well-timed dose, the alcohol and cocaine doing nothing to combat it. "Oh, god!" he was saying. "Oh, god!"

"I'm afraid praying's not going to do you much good," Roahn frowned underneath her mask as she folded her hands upon her lap. She then gave an animated gesture. "That knife's not going to will itself out. Try harder."

"Guards! Guards!" Hu howled.

In derision, Roahn shook her head. "Again, that's the wrong approach," she chided. She waggled a finger in the air. "Sound-suppressing zone, remember? I'm afraid your men aren't going to hear your screams."

"You're dead, suit-rat! When I get free, I'm going to cut you out of that suit and shove my—"

Before Hu could illustrate the details of his threat, Roahn leaned over again and, this time, grabbed a butter knife from the table, quickly angling it downward in a fist. She then drove the utensil down, spearing it through Hu's other hand, breaking several of his bones in the process. The dulled blade had done more damage than her combat knife, it seemed, given that it was not an instrument meant for stabbing in the first place. Flesh rose around the entry site in ragged chunks, as did shards of shattered bone. Hu now full-on screamed, his face flecked with his blood.

"I do believe you were saying something?" Roahn continued on in her airy tone.

Hu was dry heaving now, spittle foaming from his clenched teeth. With the man temporarily indisposed, Roahn grabbed the stained bottle that he had been drinking out of and inspected the label.

"No wonder you've been grimacing each time you sipped this stuff," she clucked, seemingly oblivious to the human's gasps and coughs next to her. Her eyes scanned the bottle. "Concoction's mostly made of ethanol. Fortunately…"

Roahn reached up and unclasped her visor with one hand. Prying away the surface, Hu stared in horror at the youthful but steeled face underneath. Roahn shot the man a savage grin before she took a pull from the bottle. She too murmured a slight cough, now applying her visor again, with only her eyes burning a path through the glass.

"…ethanol is dextro-safe."

She set the bottle back on the table.

Hands pinned, face bloody, Hu could only gape at her now. "The… fuck… are you doing?"

The quarian laughed deeply. It was not a laugh that Hu had heard originally from the woman. This was a sound borne from a deep confidence, an almost malevolent spirit. A sound that intrinsically frightened Hu to the core.

"Waiting for my show to start," Roahn merely replied.

Then the lights to the entire club abruptly snapped out, plunging the room into darkness. The stifled beating of the music ceased as well, allowing the noise of the oversized air filters to momentarily surface. A twisted mutilation of shadowed shapes stumbling about acted as the backdrop—the patrons shuffling across the floor, arms outstretched as if they were groping for a light switch. Somewhere in the murk, a woman screamed.

Hu was barely able to see anything. All he could make out was Roahn sitting plaintively next to him, one leg folded atop the other, hands pressed together. Indeed, it was as if she was simply acting like she was on another timetable, utterly calm despite her surroundings.

All of a sudden, an epic scintillation of blue flares—heavy weapons fire—tore the room completely apart. The aqua flashes ripped shreds of light in spasmatic strobes, catching the entirety of the room's occupants in split-second pulses, creating a deviant animation. Neither Roahn nor Hu could hear the overwhelming bursts of plasma, but they could feel the vibrations through the floor and understood that it probably sounded like the end of the world out there.

In the center of the room, three tall warriors—Grunt, Sagan, and Korridon—mustered forward in a fan-like formation. Each one held a Spitfire in their hands. The rotary barrels of each weapon were a flat blur as they spun, a punishing onslaught of toroids belching from the barrels as their wielders swept them to and fro, cutting everyone down in front of them. The millisecond pulses in between each shot captured the soldiers in cutting detail. Grim and precise. Rigid yet fluid in their movements.

Immediately, twelve Zero Sum contractors were down, their armor melting and smoking. One trooper caught a blast to the face and half of his helmet deformed around his skull, continuing to sear his flesh. Another spun and jerked while continuing to stand on his own two feet, but spears of plasma kept boring their way clean through armor and flesh, riddling him until his wounds were too great for his brain to finally keep it up anymore and he collapsed in a foul-smelling heap. The contractor who had been managing the DJ booth near the back dove behind his stand for cover—a precise rake of fire from Sagan liquefied the booth, along with the man hiding behind it. Miraculously, the music started up again, but the room continued to be dominated by the darkness.

Korridon was silent as he adjusted his aim all the while, eyes fastened and unblinking as he targeted enemy after enemy. Next to him, Grunt was far more joyful in the slaughter. The krogan was howling with glee as he jittered the barrel of his Spitfire all over the place, cutting down all those who dared oppose him, who opposed his team, watching all those who wore the Zero Sum colors be reduced to twitching bodies lying in evaporated puddles of their own blood. Fluid blowback hissed angrily against the superheated barrels of the weapons, electric bolts sparking from the plasma chambers.

Hu was open-mouthed as he watched the slaughter play out in complete silence from behind the safety of the booth's shield. His hands were still aching like complete bastards, but his terror had temporarily overridden all sensation in his body.

"You…" he got out, "…have no idea what you're doing. Zero Sum is under the protection of Aleph's own—"

"Don't worry," Roahn cut him off, the image of a ghastly skull blinking upon her visor for a moment, right before she leaned over and impaled Hu right through the spine. Her omni-sword broke through his chest, boiling blood dripping down his front. "I'll take care of him in due time."

Her foul deeds finished, Roahn flipped up onto the table, boots knocking aside the half-drunk bottle of vodka, and leaped through the sound-nullification barrier and onto the floor. A rush of noise was there to greet her, along with the twisting and churning shapes of the panicked Zero Sum troopers surrounding her, half-blind, weapons out, trying to fire at her teammates but hitting only shadows.

With a stark grin, Roahn ignited her omni-shield and began to run through the crowd of hostiles. Her strides were long, gazelle-like. The most graceful creature in the room. Plasma arcs shunted all around her, as did concussive flak from grenades and ember rubble from hurled debris. The quarian just reinforced her arm with her other hand, pushing against the rounds that smashed into her barrier. Roahn slammed aside troopers as she ran, occasionally slashing at them with her sword as she sprinted through the throng. But she kept her head down, not even wincing as bullets passed over her head, pockmarking the wall to her left. Blue lightning scorched the ceiling, dripping slag on her shield. She kept running. Just an angry wrecking ball of pure force and will. Her kinetic barriers crackled from the rippling of coilgun rounds, but held.

The safety of her squad in sight, Roahn continued to hold the smile on her face in place as she triumphantly carved a path to them. Her glowing weapons were flares in the sinister night, absorbing the lightning and roaring the thunder. Delicately, they swiped and twirled as the quarian moved up and up, her blows sawing open chest cavities, sometimes removing limbs, occasionally ripping off heads.

The warrior within her howled a powerful note of victory. The little girl within her wept for the distance she had fallen.

Right now, in the moment, Roahn just smiled as she let herself become enveloped by the beautiful horror.

---

Impera
Apien Detainment Camp

The flashes of intermittent lightning from the scorched clouds that bubbled and churned in the low recesses of the atmosphere did little to illuminate the eternal night. That was what the automated spotlights were for.

No panes of light slanted in through the sheer rock gorge upon which the Apien Detainment Camp resided. Cleft in the middle of a jagged shelf of fossilized lava, the camp itself existed in its own private sector of the universe. Electric fences separating its four quadrants. A toxic lake, polluted by heavy metals, standing next to it at the edge of a long talus of scree. Monumental watchtowers, each manned by snipers hired by OMC, the most substantial correctional facility contractor in the galaxy. They also ran a private army on the side, which in the grand scheme of current affairs, was not all that surprising.

The guards here were brutal. Apien was where the Hierarchy sent its political prisoners to die, along with anyone they could callously declare as "enemies of the state." Cruelty was encouraged amongst the contractors—public beatings and rapes were common. Having a prisoner die from the abuse was not an idle occurrence, either.

Spotlights loped along the rim of the caldera, the air of the basin so dark it was a deep blue. A coliseum of misery. Garbled shouts warped out of loudspeakers, never giving the prisoners a moment's peace. Oftentimes OMC would pump in music into every barrack to prevent the population, not a one of them a true criminal, from going to sleep. The music was one of two genres, an old human style known as "heavy metal." The other genre was children's jingles.

Down by the lake, the surface of the water thick and oily, but so cold that enormous chunks of ice had formed over it, a pair of helmeted OMC troopers were leading a group of eight detainees down to the water's edge. The prisoners were only turians and humans. Three of the eight were huddled together as they walked, a child squashed between them. They were thinly dressed and shivering, their bare feet covered in cuts.

One of the troopers keyed a radio tone. A signal to stop. The prisoners shuffled in place next to the frozen lake, now standing upon a smooth patch of concrete right against the water's edge.

The captives looked at their tormentors through yellow and sick eyes. They were malnourished and thin. The skin of the humans seemed to tightly wrap around their skulls, allowing their cheekbones to protrude. Every one of them was dressed in ill-fitting rags, barely able to block out the slashing cold. Clouded breath wheezed from their lungs, their teeth black and rotting. They had no energy to beg. That had all been forced out of them in the months since their internment. The fight had been beaten out of the men. For the women, a far worse hell had awaited them here. Now it seemed that death meant the beginning of a long and peaceful journey, far away from Impera and the grip of OMC. Why bother resisting now when salvation was at hand?

A few of the prisoners looked below them. Noticed that the concrete upon which they stood was stained with something dark. Colors were difficult to make out on this planet in the never-ending night. But they all knew that they were not the first to stand where they were standing. Nor did they have reason to believe that they would be the last.

The contractors lifted their weapons, as they had done so many times before. And just like those times, they never bothered to question the 'why' of their purpose in this place, or the 'why' of the need to torture such plain looking insurgents. There was only the 'do' and the promise of gain to be had from their obedience. To help themselves sleep at night, they believed they were doing these men and women a favor from their actions right now. At least they could act as a definitive end to someone's suffering.

There were tiny metallic clicks as the troopers began to pull on their nine-ounce triggers. They would move down the line, one bullet per head. No need to be wasteful.

Then there was a sharp snap. The telltale audio cue of a rifle report. One of the OMC soldiers released his finger from his trigger right before the long crackle of the gunshot caromed off the side of the canyon.

The prisoners were still standing—all eight of them—shivering and looking to the ground. Probably feeling regretful that the bullet had not claimed any one of them. The soldier, the one who didn't fire, looked to his partner and found him lying on the ground with half his head blown off, what was remaining of his life leaking in an irregular puddle away from the ragged opening in his skull.

Now, normal protocol would have been to immediately call in the engagement over the comm. Get backup down by the lake right away. The trooper did not do that. Panic had, for the moment, overridden his common sense.

He whirled to and fro, trying to remember which direction the shot had come from, when he saw a flash of movement, incredibly, just a few feet out into the lake. It had been a momentary flicker, but it had been real, too defined to be a hallucination. With bated breath, the contractor shouldered his rifle and jogged over to the edge of the lake, down where the water made a broad sweep against a fragmented hill.

The trooper, driven by some animal impulse, tenderly lifted his foot and set it down on the ice. The frozen surface held. Cautiously, he crept out across the slippery surface, the ground crackling underneath his boots. He had seen something out there—in this direction. He did not worry about the prisoners he was leaving behind—there was a good chance that a sniper in a tower somewhere was covering his position. Besides, there was nowhere for an escapee to go, anyway. So, why worry?

He had almost approached the adjacent wall, still walking over the lake, when he heard a splash come from just behind him and to his left. The trooper crouched down and aimed his weapon. No one was there. Just a flat plain of frozen and polluted water, the lights of the prison spearing the clouded night on the bluff above.

The trooper grumbled a curse and began the walk back to where he left the prisoners. Coming to his senses, he raised his arm, already cued into the general comm channel, prepared to report the incident.

Something silvery then seemed to billow underneath the translucent surface, deep within the slate-black water. Details seemed to materialize in seconds, shaping around a suited body. There was something in there. Under the ice.

The contractor made a noise that sounded like gah.

Immediately, the ice then exploded into a white foam and jagged chunks. A pair of hands then rose from the shattered surface and clawed at the trooper's armored legs, dragging him under. The cold water gurgled and frothed angrily for a moment. On the surface, the shabbily-dressed prisoners stared at the spot where the man had gone through the ice, blinking in astonishment.

Ten seconds later, Roahn burst from the surface, the water hanging blue as it spurted from her flailing head, the drenched quarian appearing as a demonic serpent from the deep, suit drenched and reflective. Her hands were gripping at something that she was holding underneath the water. The trooper. Her prey was still alive, but not for very long. The thrashings slowly diminished in intensity, the brief motion of arms breaking the fluid growing more and more feeble. The pale reflection of a skull within her helmet stared ominously towards the drowning man. A bitter reflection of all the misery that he had wrought come to visit his final moments.

Seeking to end this, Roahn clenched down her left hand as hard as she could. There was a crunch as her reinforced fingers bit all the way through flesh, down to the bone. The water around her turned a darker shade as the man's struggling abruptly ceased. Panting, she released her grip. The current around her calves flowed more freely as the deadweight object just below was calmly swept away.

Roahn then waded to the shore, where the prisoners were now huddling together. The digital boneplate upon her visor quickly evaporated into a hail of static, letting the twin firelight motes of her eyes peer through the darkened plate.

Upon approaching the group, Roahn eyed them all piteously. They were so weak, so frail, that they barely had the energy to speak. A whimper then drew her attention. She knelt down to where a child was burying her head into the hems of her parents' cloaks. The child's head was shaved—too young to tell the gender. Gently, Roahn reached out and placed her hand upon the young human's head. Immediately, their cries softened and a tender blue eye peeked out behind a ragged strip of cloth. Tears shone in the eye, but they were only remnants.

"Don't worry," Roahn said to the group, but her words were meant for the child. "Just close your eyes. It will all be over soon."

A spotlight then shone down upon the group, but unlike the automated search lights employed by the prison camp, this one was direct and pure in its luminosity. It filtered straight down, as if the sun had finally pierced the clouds for the first time in a millennium on this world.

There was a deep rumbling sound. The child lifted their head away from where they had been hiding, looking up towards the sky, a broad smile coming to their face.

The Vakarian hung in low orbit, an orbit of lightning outlining its sleek form as it remained centered over the OMC camp. The exterior lights, blazing fiercely, brought the light of a star to the scorched world. Through the hangar door, jump-troopers wearing the Vakarian colors (blue and gray) poured from the opening, Kasumi and Jack among them. Twenty troops in all—not enough to take the camp, but the point-defense cannons on the Vakarian were enough to fell all the guard towers in one blow, knocking out the communications and plunging the enemy battlenet into chaos.

OMC tried to get their forces into line, but it was too late. Roahn had sprinted up the hill and cut through the electrified fences with her omni-blade just as the first of her forces touched down in the center of the camp. Unslinging her own weapon, she silently raised a fist into the air as far as she could reach. Everyone's eyes were now on her.

She held that position for five seconds before she abruptly made her arm parallel to the ground, only her index finger extended.

Go.

The forces of the Vakarian hurled themselves upon the enemy, their weapons spraying flak and death upon the OMC guards. Two of Roahn's troopers stood forward with rocket launchers and sent ordinance flying in the direction of the central admin building, which exploded in a hail of bitter flame and crumpled steel. Energy spasmed outward as all the electrical fences died at once. Aside from the lights that the Vakarian was sending forth, the entire camp was plunged into darkness.

OMC troopers waded through the prisoners, brutally batting some of them aside, as they made to get beads on Roahn's forces. But they were confused, separated, completely cut off from their main channels. The soldiers from the Vakarian were better trained and all the more disciplined—they pinpointed the guards that were wading through the crowd, expertly dispatching them with precise shots to the head and body.

On the other side of the compound, a squad of mercenaries jerked and dropped from precise knife cuts in their armor. Kasumi's cloak-weave deactivated, materializing the woman atop the rocky and bare ground. She then slashed her way through the nearby fences and gates, opening them wide open, allowing the prisoners to run through the camp at will.

In another quadrant, body parts and limp corpses were hurled through the air as Jack whirled and waded into the horde of OMC troopers, her glowing hands outstretched as she called upon the energy of the universe to rip apart her enemies at will. OMC had assigned no biotics to Apien. They were all useless in the wake of the former convict's assault, mere crash test dummies for her to fling about until she had them all broken at her feet.

Some of the OMC contractors resorted to shooting their way through the swath of their captives, cutting them all down in broad sweeps of their weapons, ripping apart the air in savage chatters of rifle fire. Several innocent civilians fell, clutching at their riddled chests, many screaming in horror. But that was the one thing that tipped the scales away from the PMC. For months, the beaten-down hostages had withered away under the drought of hope in this purgatory, and now, right when hope had finally showed its face, these mercenaries were now trying to keep it from them? Several of the prisoners came to the same realization and simultaneously experienced the same snap of their psyche. With feral howls, they rushed their tormentors, hurling themselves upon the armored guards with rocks plucked from the ground and their bare hands. OMC's forces were overwhelmed in moments, with many of them being ripped to shreds by the howling mob.

Roahn stood in the middle of the muddy pit, rifle tipped down, watching the slaughter. Watching the abused destroy their abusers. The energy was strangely exhilarating to watch, but also horrifying. Many of the prisoners were staggering away from the scene, their hands bloody, tears streaming down their face, as if they had woken up from a nightmare and had just come to. Their wails upon sobering, realizing that they had killed, were low and throaty, far more disturbing than the screams of dying soldiers on a battlefield.

The quarian's breath was thin, faintly trembling. Her pale visor was illuminated by a furious light while she watched the barracks of the camp disappear into a golden fireball, a courtesy from the Vakarian's point-defense cannons. Slowly, she blinked.

In the center of the camp, the OMC commander had been detained and set on his knees. He was a turian, devoid of facepaint, and he was tilting his head upward towards his captors, acting as if he was the one facing injustice. Roahn had been on her way there when she had heard a low cry peel in that direction. Jack. She began jogging, her heart in her mouth.

She found Kasumi restraining Jack against a nearby fencepost, the smaller woman exerting all her might to keep the tattooed woman in place. Jack was inconsolable, her mouth parted in a fanged snarl, tears streaming down her face. She kept struggling against Kasumi's grip, who was murmuring soothing words to her teammate all the while, but Jack did not use her biotics to break free as she did not want to hurt Kasumi. The target of her anger, though, was the commander sitting less than ten meters away.

Jack stilled herself once Roahn arrived. Kasumi loosened her grip on the biotic. Roahn looked from one woman to the next, waiting for the explanation.

"They were burning bodies in the camp," Jack spoke first, her voice husky but unusually clear. Her eyes sparkled with tears, through the sharp heat that exuded deep in her irises seemed to swell as she seethed through her teeth. "One pile was just children…"

It was as if they were standing on distant shores that were growing closer. Roahn took Jack's hand and squeezed it. It was all that needed to be said. Just a touch, letting the human know that she understood.

"I don't care if he's not worth it," Jack whispered to the quarian. "You can't stop me."

Roahn just nodded, head feeling cold. She now rested her hand upon Kasumi's shoulder, slowly guiding her away from Jack. She remembered the stories of her father managing to calm the temperamental woman, how he had stayed her hand from committing senseless violence. But this was different. The sins in this place could not be forgiven. Nor could they be forgotten, once seen. The terrible nature had already taken hold of Jack—for the human, there was only one way she knew to exorcise such demons, even if it meant going back on a promise.

There was a time and place to break such promises. Roahn stepped aside.

"I won't."

Jack favored her commander with a grateful softening of her face. But then the ridged anger returned. There was no going back now. She marched over to where the OMC commander had been detained, four Vakarian soldiers guarding him. He saw her coming—opened his mouth to speak, presumably to utter a nasty insult.

Tendons sticking out in her hand, Jack slowly drew her arm up, dark forces glowing from her fingertips. The OMC leader gave a rasping noise and then his body began to contort as he sat upon the ground. The biotic spoke no words as she looked upon the pathetic turian. There were tears in her eyes as she slowly clenched her fingers together, cosmic sparks crackling between her knuckles as her fist began to tremble.

The turian's eyes were wide open. A gurgle burst from his throat. A brief globule of blue blood exited his mouth, spitting up on the roughened stones between the man's knees. Roahn, positioned just behind Jack, a few inches to the side, swore that she could see the mercenary's chest twist and deform itself, the proportions looking all wrong at every angle. In astonishment, she stared at the prisoner's face. Blood was bubbling from his mouth now, splashing past his mandibles. He was thrashing… choking on something.

In the next instant, Roahn realized what he was choking on. Her stomach performed several flip-flops. She felt sick.

Jack was grimacing as she continued to slowly sweep her arm upward, her palm tipped in that direction too. A smooth and wet substance was now pushing its way past the turian's teeth, a damp parcel of flesh lightly webbed and veinous. He could no longer scream anymore. The wrenching sounds that approximated wails were enough to chill everyone in earshot all the way to the bone. Roahn's mouth became agape, though she was unable to turn away.

The quarian closed her eyes right before there was a loud splattering sound followed by a noise that sounded like a sodden object was being ripped. She turned her head away so that she wouldn't have to see the scene by the time she opened her eyes again. But even in her peripheral vision, it was no use.

The turian was now lying on his stomach, dead at Jack's feet. A long vesicle of what looked to be blue-tinged and slimy meat had been deposited in front of the man's mouth, the sac still connected deep within the back of his throat like it was a massive tongue. His eyes were still open. It looked like he had died painfully.

With a withering sigh, Roahn took Jack by the arm and slowly led her away from the sight. The Vakarian was dropping down near the lake, a cadre of medical professionals on board ready to receive the former tenants of the camp and to provide them with proper care.

Leaning against the quarian, Jack also sighed. She simply looked at the quarian, her face chiseled in pain, a silent plea for forgiveness forming on her lips. Her tears were silently spilling again and her teeth were chattering.

Maybe at one point, the old Roahn, naïve and firm in her black and white ideals, would have cursed Jack for the atrocity she had just done. But that misguided version of her had died a long while back, the true nature of the galaxy having shown itself to her in all its violence and horror. Castigating Jack would bring no one relief. Sometimes, one had to let these things go.

With a one-armed embrace, she held the human close to her as they began the descent down the hill toward their ship. She said nothing to Jack as they headed back home. There was no need.

---

Berlin
Chimera HQ

"…and I need to say plainly, one more time, just so that I am certain that you've understood me—"

"Annie," Christenson sighed as he strode through the automatic glass doors, his polished Testonis touching cold white marble steps, the winter air of Berlin rushing against his face, armored privateers flanking the door snapping to attention as their boss, the CEO of Chimera, exited the building, "have you ever heard the phrase, 'Brevity is the soul of wit?'"

Behind him, his assistant Annie glowered, though he was unable to see the flush of her face. She continued to follow her boss as he stopped next to the driveway underneath the overhang of the glass and steel headquarters building. It was a clear day in the city, with only a few clouds dotting the sky, but neither one of them was paying attention to the weather.

"I mean, sir, is that considering the recent upheaval that's been reported on the net lately, I'm asking you to consider moving up your timetable for the increased security. The current outfit that's with you right now… with all due respect, they're not enough."

"Annie, we've been over this," Christenson sighed as he finally turned around, the material of his Ermenegildo Zegna jacket making a rustling noise as he spread his arms. He lifted his wrist and checked the antique piece of jewelry that adorned it—a moonphase Blancpain with raised silver Roman numerals adorning its white face. "The bulk of our personnel is wrapped up in skirmishes in the neighboring systems. You think I'm blind that we've sent out the majority of our forces from our home turf to fight someone else's war? All our most skilled troops are, for the moment, in the hands of others. It's because of that unfortunate fact that I have to wait for the additional security to be pulled from their positions and back to home base. But despite that, I'm not breaking from my routine. Intel has yet to report any planned attempts on my life—I'm not going to live in fear just because of a few circumstantial news reports. Besides, to assign any more personnel seems like overkill."

His car was now pulling up—an old-fashioned Maybach with heavily tilted windows. The car's engine had not been swapped—it still ran on fossil fuels. Christenson had to pay a special pollution tax in the city just to use it on the roads. No driver sat up front—a VI had been installed to manually navigate the roads of Berlin to take him wherever he pleased. Two Chimera ATVs rolled up behind it, his armored escort for the evening.

The door to the back row automatically opened and Christenson stepped into the plush leather interior. Annie hung back, arms crossed over her chest, annoyed that she had lost this battle without there being enough time to present her case.

"If you say so, sir," were her parting words before the door began to close. "But you need to expedite that recall order fast or you're going to regret it."

Christenson gave the woman an idle wave before basking in the solitude the car offered once it had finally closed upon him. There was a subtle lurch as the car began to move, rolling out onto the archaic roads while the grid of skycar lanes above him twinkled in their supreme positions. On the tiny dashboard screen, a GPS view with the etched blue route was displayed, along with the ETA when they were projected to arrive at his high-rise in Charlottenburg. It was not a long drive in any case, plus Christenson liked to see the agape reactions of passerby when his car rolled past them, a simple reminder of his luxurious position well above the rest of them.

The Maybach had just begun to enter the Tiergarten before he saw the GPS screen abruptly wink out in the corner of his eye. It then fluttered to life a second later, but Christenson saw that the blue route was now oriented in a different direction. Now, it seemed like they were preparing to go south.

"What the fuck is going on?" he muttered out loud, right before a lurch from the car nearly sent him faceplanting into the side window. The Maybach gave a burst of acceleration, quickly lengthening the gap between the ATVs who had, so far into the journey, been dutifully escorting their boss.

Damn autodriving VI was malfunctioning! Shit!

The wheel of the car turned on its own accord, nimbly darting the massive sedan between a pair of trucks before it whirled towards a roundabout, hanging a long left around the statue that adorned the center, and took the southmost exit as it utilized a semi for cover. Looking out the back window, Christenson was crestfallen as he could see the outlines of the ATVs keep going through the roundabout, having missed the exit where their boss' vehicle had turned off. Those idiots! So much for hiring observant drivers on the payroll. Oh well, this car had its own GPS unit embedded into the bodywork. The Chimera escort would quickly realize that they were going in the wrong direction, consult their own map, and use the coordinates in the head unit to pinpoint his—

A tiny object flew into Christenson's lap, causing him to jump in his seat. With a shaking hand, he lifted it. It was a small yellow chip with a single darkened diode on its face. Glumly, he began to realize what he was looking at.

"Your secretary was right, you know," a voice from the front said.

Christenson looked up just in time to see the passenger seat turn completely around to face him in the back. The seat was occupied by a quarian in heavily scratched armor. N7 coloration seared the plating that wrapped around their right arm. Instinctively, he gulped, realization flooding his brain.

Roahn was tapping a knife against her armored knee, the gaze she was illuminating through her visor expressionless.

Christenson raised his hands. He was unarmed. A terrified smile formed for half a second. "You don't need to do this," he said.

"If that were true," Roahn said, "I wouldn't be here."

"I'm a businessman. I'm worth nothing to you as a hostage." He swallowed. "Or a corpse," he felt he needed to add for good measure.

"You're right about that," Roahn nodded. Christenson began to sigh out in relief, but the quarian then seemed to sit up straighter. "It's not the worth to me that matters here."

The man wiped his mouth with his hand. "We can both walk away. Take me to my apartment and I'll transfer three million credits to any account you want. You'll never see a better payday then that."

"Tax deductible?" Roahn's head tilted.

"Completely off the books."

Past the windows, the concrete and steel of the city had been replaced by an undulating forest. They were traveling in the outskirts, it seems.

Roahn tapped her fingers on her knee. She then tilted her head down a tad. "Three million credits," she said again.

"You get rich. I go free. And we both forget this ever happened."

"I suppose it's just coincidence, then, that three million credits happens to be the maximum amount your insurance pays out in the event of declared extortions?"

Christenson looked at the quarian, his arms dropping back down into his lap in disbelief. He didn't have a snappy retort ready, because he never expected Roahn to come at him with that factoid.

"We can negotiate," he said lamely.

Roahn reached down and withdrew a pistol. It had a suppressor screwed onto the threaded end of the barrel. Christenson stiffened at the sight of the weapon.

"No," she shook her head. "We really can't."

Strange things befall men when faced with what they deem to be certainties. Christenson felt a rise of anger seep into his belly like a shot of scotch. Fear was momentarily held at bay, replaced by a weak indignance. His eyes narrowed and he tried to look brave. The quarian who was holding him at gunpoint looked less than impressed, though.

Trees cut loping shadows through the sunroof as the Maybach drove further into the forest. Roahn raised her weapon, the soft rumbling of the car barely swaying her grip.

"Go to hell, you goddamn quarian," Christenson growled. "You want more credits? Would that solve whatever problem you have with me? You have a price—I just know it. Tell me, and I'll give it to you."

"You'll give it to me?" Roahn asked, sotto voice.

"Name your request. I'll match it."

Roahn's eyes simmered and a soft laugh escaped her vocabulator, almost as if she had been waiting for those words the whole time.

"Dissolve your company," she said. "Resign as Chimera's CEO. Break it up so that it can never be salvaged. Give me a list of all your contractors to be tried for war crimes. Then… I'll consider being lenient."

Now it was Christenson's turn to hoarsely wheeze out a laugh of his own, but it was one of sincere disbelief.

"You're out of your mind," he blurted.

Something hardened in Roahn. She uncrossed her legs and now sat slightly leaning forward, a dour seriousness turning her to stone. Christenson sensed this change and leaned back in fear—anything to escape his own terror that he could see reflected in the quarian's mask.

"I'll take your judgment as a compliment. But negotiating with a brainwashed narcissist was never going to come out to anything, you know that, right? Clearly you can't even see the dichotomy. You run a private military. Your contractors kill innocents, uproot families, force children onto the streets, rape prisoners, and those are only the most visible of crimes I can count on my hands. There are hundred of thousands of victims from the very acts you sanction. And yet… you ride around in luxury vehicles. You wear designer clothing. And… what is that around your arm? A wristwatch? I can start counting and you can stop me when you think that amounts to the number of people you think a thing like that is worth to you. One person? Ten?"

"Don't…" Christenson said, face ashen.

"Twenty? Fifty? A hundred?"

"Shut up."

"Not until you answer me honestly. A thousand? Ten thousand? A hundred thousand?"

"I said, shut up!" Christenson yelled, his voice cracking. He couldn't even meet Roahn's eyes. Sitting in that leather seat, he started to tremble.

In her own seat, Roahn continued to look at the pathetic man. In that instance, she had not blinked once.

"There was no answer," she said after a beat. "Because not once had you ever had to consider such a thing. Wealth and power. That's all you cared about. And, if someone came along and promised you more of the life you craved, well… you don't strike me as the type to rebuff such generous gifts. Or have I figured wrong?"

Christenson had now resorted to wringing his hands. "Turn me in. Just turn me in. I can't lose it. I can't lose all of it!"

Roahn ignored him. "The way I see it, I'm finally closing the door on something that should have been shut years ago. Chimera tried to hurt my father first… now I'm the one hurting them. No matter what happens, Chimera ends today. From the moment you got into this car, you had to have known it was all over. Funnily enough, one can say that Chimera helped make me who I am today. Consider this my way of showing my gratitude."

"I'm sorry," the man blubbered. "I'm so sorry."

Roahn stilled herself for a few seconds. She then put away her pistol, leaving just the knife clenched in a fist.

"I don't believe you," she said as she stood from her seat, now moving toward the cowering human.

---

Atoll Stoa

For the five-hundredth time, Cirae wondered if she was once again wading into affairs that were well over her head.

The grand convention hall of the Atoll Stoa was abuzz with activity. Former representatives, military leaders, and senators were all jockeying to take a position near the central table that occupied the circular room. There were no chairs, so everyone had to stand. The risers on the second level however, were rimmed with plush seats, but even those were filled to the brim by the civilian populace, who were eager to catch more of history being chiseled from the raw foundation.

It had occurred to everyone a long time ago that they were all complicit in what constituted a formal rebellion against the tyrannical conglomerate that continuously threatened to bear down on them at every turn. They all wore grim looks—despite their victory at Messier 78, no one was naïve enough to declare that skirmish a turning point in the war. Slight tinges of euphoria from the battle's outcome dared to fuel that hope, but it would only last for so long. Cirae's job was to now find more fuel to keep that hope burning.

Cirae stood at the podium that marked the capstone of the table. She caught the eye of Avi near the back, who was quickly typing one-handed into his omni-tool. Taking notes, ostensibly. Maybe he was planning to write a new book? Wishful thinking, considering the trials they faced.

She folded her hands behind her back—waiting for the noise to die down. After half a minute, the background volume had reached an acceptable level once everyone seemed to realize that she was patiently pausing on their behalf. A few smattered shushes hissed through the crowd.

"Mark the time," Cirae said to the secretary who was standing next to her. "Synod has come to order. Minutes will be denoted appropriately."

"Yes, ma'am," the secretary nodded in affirmation.

"Thank you all for gathering on such short notice and after such chaotic events," the asari now said to her audience as she made a show of sweeping her gaze around the room, "Before we start in full, I want to thank each and every one of you. Your conduct at Messier 78 was impeccable and deserves to be commended. The importance of the last day was all the results of your admirable efforts and you've proved to the galaxy what the Synod is capable of. You should be proud at your success."

Cold tinged the director's expression as a tiny smile, forged from ice, tilted for a brief moment.

"Unfortunately, I must now request greater efforts from you. One triumph does not define an advantage for us. We've gained Aleph and the Radius' attention from our actions. Suffice to say, they're not going to take us for granted the next time we face off against them. They've suffered a defeat at our hands—rest assured they will do everything in their power to ensure there will not be a second."

"Momentum is the key," a human colonel by the name of Park interjected. Cirae recognized him as the man who had spoken during her first Synod briefing as director. "Doctrine would indicate that immediate pursuit of the destabilized enemy fleet is proper strategy that guarantees maintaining our control of the sector. Also, departing to give chase to the Radius would also prevent the fleet from regrouping and formulating plans to reengage us. We have all the reasons we need to continue this fight further."

"Ordinarily, I would agree with you," Cirae said. "Only this fleet isn't a well-oiled military machine—we're a motley navy of clashing beliefs and stratagems. We're doing all we can to hold our armada together by sheer willpower. But this… this all we have. The Radius has the advantage in numbers of both ships and fleets. Whether we've truly disoriented the enemy after destroying their dreadnought is a question we'll have to leave unanswered for now. We've bought ourselves more time by forcing the Radius to retreat. Instead of cutting that time short by jumping back into the fray, we need to spend more efforts at shoring up our own defensive line."

A salarian, dressed in the garb of a senator, shifted their weight quietly as they stood at the conference table, a hand at his chin.

"I concur with the director," he said. "At the moment we're nothing more than a well-armed flotilla. We may have a sizeable array of warships, but we also have cruisers with families on board. Children. We cannot risk placing them into another warzone."

Park looked at the salarian. "I would never presume to involve noncombatants, even at the brink of our own civility, but procrastinating our attack by having a committee block any offensive action only helps the Radius."

"Suppose you'd prefer ramming these things past this committee, then?" a human representative next to Park interjected dismissively. "The whole reason why we're discussing this is to differentiate ourselves from the Radius. The legislature is imperative for our longevity—we're not going to let the military override collective decisions at every turn!"

"Assuming you believe there'll even be a legislature afterward because we're behaving reactively instead of proactively."

The hologram of a turian admiral, the image shimmering over a display panel, shook his head in derision. "We should speak frankly. The Synod is, for all intents and purposes, a secessionist militia. The legislature has no defined boundaries. There is no charter or social control defined among us that indicates how much weight is given to the minutia of our society. The socio-economic implications have not even been defined. We can imagine we're all having to deal with the varying shades of gray in defining our ideal government, but the truth is that every decision in the near future is going to be mired in so much ambiguity that everything set forth from this point forward will echo as precedent. If you're going to make a plan, you need to do it right."

While the politicians and officers were spinning their wheels in discussion, Cirae had been shucking the shells from a bowl of walnuts she had surreptitiously placed at her station before the meeting had begun. With her bare fingers, she cracked the tough exteriors into thick chunks and plucked out the meat for her to chew. She ate the walnuts quietly, as quietly as walnuts could be consumed, keeping her eyes flatly focused on the rabble in front of her. Eventually, everyone seemed to realize that she was no longer adding to the conversation and a few turned to look at her. Cirae then set down half of the walnut she had been eating, appearing moderately annoyed at the lack of progress so many people could perform even in such an open forum.

"Believe me," she said, "I'm well aware of the dangers that precedents have done to the galaxy. And I'm well aware of the vulnerability of the Synod, both politically and militarily. Luckily, I have two plans to present to you today that intend to set your worries at ease."

The holo-projector in the table now displayed the entire galaxy for the room to see. A series of two serpent-like lines then quickly popped up: super-highways cutting routes through the stars. One path was longer and ended in the inner sector of the Attican Traverse, while the second path was far shorter, comprised of only three relay hops before it terminated in Earth Alliance Space.

"What you've said today is the truth," Cirae nodded at the image of the turian admiral. "The Synod is a rebel army and not a very indestructible one. But our advantage that the Radius cannot replicate is our ability to relocate. A guerilla army, essentially. We can move and maneuver, making us impossible to pin down. But yes," she now nodded to Park, "eventually we have to fight this war. But we need to fight it on ground we control. In space that's ours."

"You're proposing we follow this convoluted path?" a quarian representative pointed at the jagged nav-line within the galactic map.

"How did we win the battle at Messier 78? That was because we controlled the terms of the engagement. If we do that, we keep winning. We achieve victory through our proactive defense. And this is how we're going to do it."

Park studied the map. "By making a series of combined FTL and relay jumps?"

"We know that the Radius tracks the movements of our fleet," Cirae affirmed. "Transit through the relay network is monitored, but only to a certain extent. I'm proposing that we break our fleet into two groups—the military ships and the civilians. The civilians will take the short route and will end up in a safe haven in Earth Alliance Space. The rest of us will journey through the relays, making short and inconsistent hops to disguise our route and make it difficult for the Radius to track our ships. Those ships will then eventually arrive in the Traverse, and will hold in position here," she now increased the view onto a marbled orb tinged with shades of brown, green and blue, "the fortress world of Rema."

The turian admiral gave an intrigued huff. "Rema. Huh. Didn't think anyone still remembered that wasteland."

The salarian representative whirled his head back and forth. "For those of us who are not in the loop, why Rema? What is its significance?"

"It never really was all that significant," Park explained. "Prior to the Reaper War, a few of the galaxy's richest billionaires got together and decided that they were going to take Shepard's warnings seriously. Whether or not the Reapers would be defeated, they wanted to ensure that they would be the richest people in the galaxy once it all blew over, even if it meant hiding out in a bunker for an extended period of time, with cryo facilities and everything. They pooled their money and began construction on a massive bastion city on Rema. A bunker for the ultra-rich, essentially. But it really was a city, with streets and alleys and everything. Even a massive wall, to deter ground attacks."

"You'd think we'd have heard more about this place," the salarian noted.

Park shrugged. "Perhaps the reason you didn't was the fact that it never got used. The billionaires wasted their time in packing their essentials. They were due to set off from Earth—all of them—but the Reapers invaded London, where their ship was, before they could take off. The facility, such as it was, was left abandoned."

"It's a sanctuary site now," Cirae said. "And is in the perfect location for us to fortify and solidify a worthy defense."

The room was quiet for a few seconds as everyone stared at the slowly rotating hologram of Rema above the table. Two tiny moons dotted the periphery, with little else dominating its orbit. Cirae scanned the room and found that a few people were nodding agreement, already seeing the potential in motion.

An asari war strategist now looked to the director. "It still might not be enough to overcome the Radius' troop strength numbers. They still have the PMCs under their control. And they have the Monolith."

A concerned grumble passed through the crowd like a wave. Cirae chewed her lip.

"The Monolith. Yes, well, I might be in the minority among all of you, but I'm not concerning myself with that device all that much."

Several of the captains and politicians at the front shared glances. Others were petrifying their expressions. Studying her.

The salarian representative cleared their throat. "Is that a prudent course of action? A lot of our decisions in the past have been made specifically with the intent of evading the Monolith's strike range—"

"Is that what you believe or are you parroting a line someone told you?" Cirae firmly retorted. "Let me make this clear: there is no Monolith strike range. And I'll clarify further, you want to know how far the Monolith's range extends? How about the entire galaxy? All this time, since the Citadel, we've had the Monolith hovering over our heads practically for every single solitary second. And maybe that was its point. We've been thinking so much about the Monolith that it's been affecting our decisions. We've been living in fear of it. But what was stopping it before from activating and killing all of us at any moment? Why has the enemy waited to use the Monolith after all this time?—I know it hasn't been fired since the Citadel."

Cirae gave a deliberate pause, as if daring someone to challenge her statement. As expected, no one piped up.

Taking a quick breath, she continued, "We cannot afford to be restricted by that fear any longer. I don't know why Aleph has not bothered to use the Monolith, as it is the greatest trump card any foe could possess, but for some reason or another, he has seemingly discarded its use as an asset in his war. If he's simply waiting to use it for our supposed final stand, then he's either driven by dramatic timing, or he has no interest in using the Monolith at all. Look at us—we're all here right now. No better time not to fire, right? Take us all out before the fighting starts? So many times has Aleph had the chance to whittle us down with his tool, yet we're still alive. If I'm wrong, and death is still hanging over our heads, it doesn't change anything now, and it won't change anything going forward. Forget the Monolith—this war can't afford to have an abrupt ending now."

Understandably, most of the group did not appear too swayed by Cirae's words, but neither was anyone making any immediate objections to her hypothesis. That somewhat surprised the asari—back when she was a representative herself, bickering amongst colleagues, even within species, was so commonplace she had thought discourse was a trait that permeated all of politics. Perhaps everyone on this ship was just simply tired of arguing for the sake of arguing. Seems like there were still some reliefs to be had.

"There's still the matter of the PMC threat," the strategist chimed back in.

Unrestrained, a wide grin broke across Cirae's face. "Ah, I had almost forgotten. I should make mention of the fact that the PMC threat is going to become more and more insignificant as the days proceed. You see, the new commander of the Vakarian, Commander Roahn'Shepard, has launched her own mission to shatter the command structure of the PMCs by force. She has provided her personal promise that she will have the beating heart ripped from that war machine before the Radius has a chance to fully regroup."

"Personal promise?" A random voice in the crowd. "Seems a little too hopeful to be relying on traded words. Even if this Roahn'Shepard is half of what her old man was."

Cirae's smile became frosted. "You don't watch the news much."

"Not much, no, ma'am."

The asari did not even bother with a response. She just leaned against her steel and glass podium and bumped her eyebrows in a singular notch. She wasn't going to give out any more hints.

The room then became quietly simmering with the noise of omni-tools engaging—soft electronic trills all bleeping in unison. A third of the faces in the crowd became awash with digital light. They had to know what their director was referencing. Cirae had the pleasure of seeing all of their eyes widen within the span of fifteen seconds. Once she was certain that she had gained the attention of the naysayers, Cirae scythed away the projection of Rema and replaced it with a continually scrolling newscast. The headlines were all similar, each one denoting the downfall of one PMC after another. Private armies apparently all had the same issue of having terrible incorporation standards—a simple shake-up of the command structure (if the CEO or military commander were to be killed, for example) turned the entire complex into a foundational flux. PMCs were built on the network and charismatic selling prowess of their leaders. Removing them left nothing but power vacuums in their places. Any movements that were too slow to rectify the damage and these vacuums would end up consuming the company, whether by the staff leaving of their own accord once the payroll ceased to function, or by hasty layoffs being enacted in a desperate measure to save on assets. Either way, the PMC would dissolve and its death, quick or slow, could be decided in a split-second moment.

From the looks of these newscasts, a lot of those split-second moments had been defined by bullets. No need to guess where said bullets had originated from.

Someone lowly whistled in the audience. Others murmured their agreement.

"From where I'm standing," Cirae said loudly in the conference room, "I'm still confident that words can have an intrinsic value to them. I trust your skepticism is allayed."

She then spread her hands across the display stand and momentarily leaned forward, hands propping her up slightly.

"I did mention that I had two plans that I wanted to present. This one, while perhaps being a little too forward-thinking for some, concerns itself with what we will be going forward. Us. The Synod, I mean."

Cirae took a breath.

"A government formed during wartime can only exist for so long," she said. "I might not be the most proficient student of history, but I am familiar with the tendency of such hastily formed coalitions to flame out abruptly and fold in on themselves once peace has been achieved. Not really a trait that only one species' history can hold a monopoly on, I'm well aware. A galaxy's state of affairs does tend to induce churn if it flips. What all this means is that we need to have a plan for when we survive this ordeal."

She made sure to put significant emphasis on 'when' to ensure that everyone could feel her confidence.

"The position I hold as Synod Director is unusually gifted with powers that are abnormal, compared to how an executive should function. In some models, the breadth of the influence this office wields is so vast that I could theoretically be branded as a dictator. What I aim to present, over the coming weeks, is an outline for the new shape of the Synod. This entire government will be reformatted into something new… something that is representative of the galaxy that the people have always deserved. It will be an idealistic model, one that upholds an admittedly romantic view of the galaxy, but would be one that allows greater voices, greater colors, to permeate our direction, rather than funnel the decisions of trillions into the body of one august councilor."

Wish you could see me now, Irissa, Cirae thought back to her old rival. And you, Pry'cor. I'll show you that we haven't been poisoned by cynicism yet.

"Today marks the first steps of a Galactic Congregation," Cirae straightened, her voice carrying out proudly. "Our own council will comprise dozens—hundreds—of legislators from around the galaxy. Species will cease to divide us. Our Congregation will be founded upon systems, worlds. Planets with life will earn the right to representation, no matter the affiliation. The affairs of our races will be handed down to groups of senators, becoming less granular in order to properly enact decisions. This is how the new order is founded—we will never be afforded a moment for us to reset all of this, to go back to the way things were. We need to be the progressive voice, here. The intellectual spear that drives the way forward. We are a decentralized society, all brought to the same point together. So when we finally are afforded the chance to build ourselves back up one more time, now we will be able to rise as one, rather than individually try and scramble to reach for the stars first."

Silence filled the chamber. Almost as if it had congealed and had frozen Cirae to her spot in front of the masses. She could already sense everyone's doubts. Like they were thinking her plan was too sincere, that she was viewing the galaxy through rose-tinted lenses, thinking that a perfect order to civilization could mystically be conjured out of thin air was nothing but folly.

Cirae held no illusions about what she had just presented as her plan. As a form of government, it was just as flawed as the last one. It was frankly unsophisticated and perhaps a little ignorant of the granular issues that so colored the problems with the previous unification. One could theoretically spend days on end poking holes in her proposal, indicating large gaps in the drafted legislature so vast that an entire Reaper could fly through them.

But something happened within the room—a reaction that Cirae had been hoping for. Everyone started to speak amongst themselves, quickly gathering in small groups as they mulled over this new option that had just been presented to them. Now Cirae could relax. They had all understood. The gaps in her new Congregation had been purposefully left in. They were not mistakes—they were deliberate areas to draft and fill together. Opportunities for the galaxy to hereby update and refine their sacrosanct ideals; to rebuild the government from a half-foundation instead of completely destroying the system they had now. It turned out people would indeed work to refine a bureaucracy for the better. All one had to do was make the gaps so comically large that they could not be ignored.

Folding her hands behind her back, Cirae watched as the Congregation began to shape itself before her.

At some level, a smug thought came to mind, we're all idealists.

---

Normandy
Admiral's Cabin

The ultra-wide display board conveyed several different mini-screens arranged in a grid-like pattern upon the far wall. They were all news articles, each one converted to a simple plaintext and singular language. What they all had to convey was troubling. Murder reports. Sector destabilization. Collateral damage. Different names lined the headers of the articles. Different subjects and victims. Could even be unrelated if one did not try to cognize too hard. But these dots could only be naturally connected. Huston knew better than to wallow in doubt.

Frustrated, Huston waved a hand, shelving the entire display down to a coarse, fine line before it winked out entirely. Just behind where the screen had been floating, the large and angular fabrication of the Haxan straightened up, as if just coming into the admiral's focus.

"This is turning into a monumental clusterfuck," Huston seethed as he gestured a hand to the now-nonexistent screens. "The PMCs are scaling back their operations across the board, whether from their strength being undermined or from the contractors departing out of fear. The total of deceased among the collective commanding staff now is at fifteen. Fifteen heads of PMC operations dispatched in three weeks. That's ten firms who have ceased operations. Our serial vigilante has been keeping busy. No reason to suspect they're going to stop anytime soon."

Hands at their sides, the Haxan offered no reply. A perfect facsimile of what might approximate a living statue. Huston did find the cyborg's silence a fresh change of pace compared to the Aeronaut's antagonistic banter, but the Haxan's rather impervious disposition also left a lot to be desired. He still recalled, from time to time, the violent introduction which the Haxan had introduced themselves by ripping open the jugular of a krogan with their bare hands. A sight like that did not depart from one's head easily.

Huston then moved to behind his desk and sat down behind it. He rubbed at his brow with a knotted finger. "How well do you know this new commander? Roahn'Shepard?"

The only movement the Haxan betrayed was a slight tick of their head. "Well enough," was their grated reply.

"I'd like a little more information than that. What is the nature of your knowledge of this quarian?"

"The nature? Intimate."

Huston raised an eyebrow at the cyborg's blunt statement. "You mocking me?"

The Haxan's head now tilted downward. Their expression didn't change, but it was obvious that it was glaring at Huston. The admiral peered at the automaton in suspicion for a moment before moving on.

"Perhaps all I really want to know is what you make of her. You've seen the reports. She's obviously quite capable."

"Obviously," the Haxan agreed.

"Four hours ago we got a call in from our own brigade unit within AlSec. Seems they found Lars Christenson, the CEO of Chimera, dead in a ditch over in Brandenburg. His possessions were still on his body and his car was parked just a few feet away, like someone wanted him found. He had a singular stab wound to the throat—it's obvious as to what killed him… and who, considering the circumstances."

"Hrmm…" the Haxan merely growled in acknowledgement.

"Plainly," Huston sighed as he straightened in his chair, "this is a worrying predicament. We've got a loose cannon out there in the form of this Roahn'Shepard, and the auxiliary support from our PMCs is being whittled down thanks to her handiwork. If she keeps this up, we'll see our cabal of privateers disband before we get a chance to engage the Synod again. This quarian—how dangerous is she, exactly?"

If it had a little more of its organic nature left, the Haxan would have narrowed its eyes.

"A comparison?"

"Just as you see fit."

The Haxan gave a quiet and unintelligible burst of electronic feedback from its vocabulator. "Proficient and steadfast. Along with an advantage—individuals tend to underestimate her. She's not invincible, but she's a soldier. She's aware of the stakes. Makes her dangerous."

Huston's lips pursed into a simple smile. "You sound like you admire her."

In fact, that was exactly what the Haxan was feeling, although it was more in the direction of a hate-fueled envy. Directed at itself. Directed at Roahn. Damn it, Roahn had been at its mercy on Rotev, trapped at the bottom of a crumbled access shaft with a metal spike through her shoulder. She had been so easy, so helpless, for the Haxan to rest the sights of her weapon upon… but it never pulled the trigger in the end. Why? The Haxan had replayed all of its recordings of that moment ad nauseum, trying to figure out what went wrong. What happened? Why spare the quarian? Was in memory of their past history? The thought was so ridiculous the Haxan nearly snorted out loud in derision. No, Roahn's past choices had destroyed whatever had connected the two of them. There was nothing the Haxan could give back to the quarian except wrath returned in kind. To make up for the mistake it had made.

"Merely an appraisement of her capability," the Haxan said evenly.

The admiral seemed to know too well, but kept any comments to himself. He turned his attention to a datapad on his desk. He scowled as he read the news—looks like another body had turned up, speak of the devil.

The Haxan read the human's growing concern. "When will the Normandy begin its pursuit?"

Sighing, Huston pushed the datapad away. "Pursuit of what?"

"Of the quarian."

Huston cocked his head slightly. "That is not our current course of action."

"Easily rectified."

"The answer is no, Haxan. I'm not going to peel my battle group off to go on a wild-ass goose chase for the commander when the current situation dictates that I focus on regrouping our forces so as not to leave anyone exposed."

The plates on the Haxan's shoulders rippled irritably, producing a deep clicking reminiscent of gnawing teeth.

"I kill her and this all ends."

"But can you guarantee that?" Huston looked up. "Neither one of us has the luxury of being totally assured of our own talents. Perhaps that's a fate that is not meant to be gifted to anyone. But even if you are that anomaly, Haxan, I still wouldn't change this ship's course. Logic and reason would have me consolidate our strength, fall back in a defensive perimeter for the time being so that we don't leave any weak points in the lurch. And like it or not, Aleph has bound your directive to this ship, so wherever it goes, you go."

Annoyed, the cyborg turned on its heel in a huff, sensing that this conversation had reached its end. Not because it was too incensed to think straight, but because Huston had been right on every count.

As it reached the top of the small staircase, the door to the elevator now straight and clear in front of it, the Haxan heard Huston stand just behind it.

"Another thing."

The Haxan stopped in place and did not turn around. Nor did it speak, inquire as to what the question was about.

"The Monolith," Huston said. "It's still sitting in the Normandy's hangar bay."

"So?"

"Does Aleph ever plan to transfer its cryptograph over to me? The thing's only good as the galaxy's largest paperweight right now if it's not allowed to be fired."

"You think you need its power now," the Haxan said.

"It would be the easiest solution to the problem at hand. Aleph gave up a weapon that is unable to be fired. You don't find that a little odd? It can win us the war, so why won't he transfer the responsibility?"

The Haxan glanced back at Huston for a moment, noting his confusion. It then turned forward again and marched towards the exit of the room with a quiet surge of damaged breath.

"Because you haven't shown that you're responsible."

---

A/N: This was probably the chapter that differed the most from my original outline - the montage of Roahn's activities as Commander had been planned from the start, but a lot of the settings and circumstances gradually got jumbled around and reworked as time went on. Just goes to show that at no point are my outlines ever airtight when I start a story.

Playlist:

Freight Terminal
"TRUCKS IN PLACE"
Ludwig Goransson
Tenet (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Club Chaos
"The Revolution Has Begun"
Mark Mothersbaugh
Thor: Ragnarok (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Ice
"Masks On"
Mac Quayle
The Last of Us: Part II (Original Video Game Soundtrack)

Camp Liberation
"Superman Rising, Pt. 2 / Immovable"
Tom Holkenborg
Zack Snyder's Justice League (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)