Shepherd of Humanity

by Empirialtank

The Age of Strife has ended and the lost colonies of man reach for the stars once more, most ignorant of their history or each other's existence. In one corner of the Galaxy mankind meets the peaceful Citadel Council and joins a galactic community. In another the Master of Mankind has lost his sons to the warp. One of those sons has been found in Alliance space. On Elysium. preME1

5. Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Trouble in Torfan

Part 1: Arrival

System 284, as it was registered with the Citadel, or the Karaht as the Batarians named it when first discovered, was a dead system. A white dwarf star orbited by three gas giant's boasting seven moons between them. Nothing in the star's goldilocks zone, none of the moons had any real atmosphere or even the electromagnetic field needed to shield the planetoids from the star's radiation. The gas giants had plenty of heavy metals and H3 to make mining operations there profitable but the expense of maintaining the facilities in such a inhospitable system was preventative. The only thing of real value in the system was relay 284.

That should have been enough for something though. That relay was a secondary relay with in striking distance of both the Verge and the Terminus systems. Such back doors linking regions of habitable space without a primary relay were rare and highly valuable, and should've been enough to make the system into a major trading hub similar to the infamous omega system. But that would've threatened the trade passing through one of the Batarian's primary relays that made a similar connection.

So instead they built a pirate base here. Trying to run merchant ships through such a system was virtually suicidal, and the pirates in the system could freely strike out into Terminus space or make runs through the sparsely inhabited verge to reach Alliance or Hegemony held worlds. Such a world should've been cleaned out decades ago to make way for greater progress, but so far no one was willing to foot the butcher's bill to bring such stability and peace.

Torfan itself was a moon orbiting a gas giant about three AUs from the mass relay, and two from the star. It was close enough to the relay to strike out at any ships that came through before they could escape to another system, but not so close that an enemy fleet could strike the base before it could react. It had almost no atmosphere to speak of, and only about a third of a g of gravity. The only thing of note on the moon was the pirate base that dominated the system.

This base had been built into the base of a ten kilometer wide, one and a half kilometer deep crater created by some ancient asteroid impact. In a considerable feat of engineering the batarians had placed a seven kilometer long dome over the top of the bottom six hundred or so meters of the crater and then buried said dome under another eight hundred meters of stone, that was then crushed and mixed into concrete reinforced with steel columns and other support structures. That dome alone could stand up to week's worth of orbital or even nuclear bombardment, especially with its protective kinetic barriers.

Beneath the dome, the base had not so much been designed as jury rigged together over the course of the more than the century it had been operational. The original structure was divided into ten floors and five quadrants. Over time each floor was further split apart into various living quarters, storage warehouses, bars, brothels, meeting areas, secret chambers, and many areas were simply filled in with concrete to create sound proof and radio resistant interrogation chambers and "inspection" rooms. Numerous corridors and hallways were cut through various rooms and from one floor to another to suit people's needs. Some floors had been inserted in between already existing floors, others had been removed in places to create truly cavernous areas. The whole place had ended up as a nightmarishly convoluted labyrinth of a facility.

Furthermore, two underground caverns had been discovered during its construction and used to further expand the base. The first of these caverns was underneath the man base and was predominantly used to house a nuclear fusion plant that provided the rest of the base with near limitless energy. It also gave the governor a convenient self destruct device with which to threaten his enemies with radioactive death if they should so defy him. The second cavern branched off to the west of the main base. It had been expanded considerably over the years to create a large number of isolated chambers and living quarters for when Torfan was visited by several groups that hated one another and never wanted to interact with each other.

The main base was connected to three star ports by a large underground road way, which snake and spiriled its way around the main base connecting to it at various different floors on all sides of the main base. This roadway was some fifteen meters tall and had a forty meter wide square base that was kept smooth and free of obstacles or debris. The roadway led directly to the main above ground star port about three kilometers away from the main base, at which frigates and even some light cruisers could land upon, thanks the moon's light gravity, to be easily unloaded. Most of that starport was housed underground and had been carefully designed to be easily defended against attackers. The other two starports were both about a kilometer away from the main starport and connected to the main roadway with their own pair of underground roads, each ten meters tall and fifteen meters wide. The secondary starports were both built underground and were meant to allow smaller shuttle craft to easily land and unload in an oxygenated area while ferrying cargo to and from larger ships in orbit around the moon.

The main base housed a sizable fleet of ground cars and repulsor driven trucks meant to transport cargo up and down this vital connection between the starports and base. The governors had always boasted of a plan to replace the road with a high speed railway, but here to such plans had never been carried out. Once cargo had been brought to the main base it was brought in through one of a dozen different entrance ways and usually stored in one of the large main warehouses. Most cargo would only remain there for a short time, before it was either shipped out to be sold, or moved to another area of the base to be better protected.

Although Torfan was predominantly a defensive base meant to house pirates in between raids, it also served as a marketplace and neutral meeting ground. Here pirates came to sell their goods to the governor and the various merchants who had purchased permanent warehouses in the base. And while they relaxed for a time, getting intoxicated on drink, drugs, or whores; smugglers, warlords and government officials would come to that very same base to buy their ill gotten goods. While the two groups rarely ever interacted with each other, their leaders would occasionally have to deal with each other, in reasonable secrecy, and under the judgement and protection of the governor. Hence why so much of the main base had been compartmentalized over the years.

Yet all this meant that Torfan had a rather ridiculously high profile for a main part of the criminal underworld. More than once during the last hundred years, the Turian military had considered clearing the place out, but to do so would be no simple feat. In fact, Nihlus mused to himself as he looked over the assembled information the STG had put together about the base, which Saren had expanded on with his person experience of the place, taking such a installation was likely to be far more trouble than it could ever be worth.

First space above the world would have to be cleared to defending pirates. The simplest part of the operation to be sure, but by no means easy, as pirates were notorious for fighting like devils if cornered. The starports next had to be cleared of any anti-orbital defenses, then breached from the surface with either a large supply of breaching charges or direct orbital fire. Once inside, it would no doubt prove an uphill battle to clear the place out of its defenders. And all of this had to be done while minimizing damage to the starports themselves since they would be needed to bring in further troops and supplies.

The roadway down into the base was fortunately not designed to collapse if compromised, since that would mean forever sealing themselves underground. Instead a number of barricades, pillboxes and other hard point defences had been built into the road itself, ready to be raised up out of the ground, by hydraulic lifts, at a moment notice to hold off invaders. Each of these formed a mini-fortress that needed to be battered directly through with no hope of outflanking or circumventing such a defence, all the while advancing down a long straight tunnel devoid of cover or protection.

Once the main base was reached and breached, soldiers would find themselves having to fight through that great labyrinth of a facility. Every long corridor leading to a narrow bulkhead into a wide killing field of an open warehouse or tightly packed bar. Dozens of blind corners leading into open tunnels down which hardened defenders could poor endless fire and weaponry. For every meter gained, soldiers likely walked right passed hidden doorways to side passages or hidden compartments, from which ambushers could emerge to bottle up the attackers and force them into a meat grinder. Every passageway a man walked down was likely lined with murder holes, traps or explosives meant to collapse the whole hallway on their heads. Radio communication would only work over short distances amongst such heavily insulated walls, while the defenders could easily coordinate with each other along internal lines of communication.

In the end the pirates could slowly but surely be pushed back into their last quarters back behind the base. This would merely end the desperate fight through the labyrinth and leave the attackers with the straightforward, though no less difficult task, of battering down the last few hold outs, dug into their final mini-castles. Of course only then, would one truly begin to see how desperately a man could fight when he has nowhere left to run.

Personally, if tasked with bringing down such a base, Nihlus would never resort to a direct assault. The best strategy was to either try and starve the defenders out with a protracted siege, bury them all alive by destroying the main roadway, or sending a lone operative in to destabilize the fusion reactor and leave them all to rot from radiation poisoning. Of course none of those strategies were an option if he had to rescue a bunch of would be slaves and innocent civilians as well.

Of course Shepherd had already bypassed most of those defenses as he and all his fellow slaves would be escorted directly into the main base. All he had to do was seize a few passageways connecting the warehouses the slaves would be stored in to the main roadway. While the defenses on that roadway were considerable they were not regularly manned, since Tofan was so far away from the mass relay the defenders had plenty of time to prepare such defenses before being attacked. No pirate was going to hold to a post that isn't needed with rigid discipline, not when there are plenty of whores to be had back home anyway. If Shepherd could move quickly enough, he could seize the first few barricades and use them to block the pirates from chasing after the slaves long enough to escape.

Assuming the pirates in orbit would be willing to screw themselves out of the greatest paycheck they had ever dreamed of and give the slaves a free trip off the moon. Assuming Shepherd could even free all the slaves quickly enough to move so decisively. Assuming he could even arm the slaves to free themselves at all. Assuming he could even find the weapons to arm them in the first place.

Most pirate bases were built like their ships, with economy of space holding highest priority. On a pirate ship, it would make sense to centralize the cargo as much as possible to optimize the amount of it they could take on, so an armory would often be placed close to the slave holding cells. While this posed a security risk, if the pirates had to shoot at their own merchandise then things had already gone very, very wrong, and more compact storage meant more merchandise could be transported, which meant higher profits.

Torfan had the room to be inefficient though, the highest priority there was not to merely storing goods, but keeping the people who were buying and selling those goods from killing each other. One of the practical upshots of which was that weapons on Torfan were not stored in a single convenient armory that might be seized and abused, but were spread throughout the facility in hidden caches that were regularly moved and only known to the security personnel that might need to use them. Usually these caches were in mostly inside of the many, many hidden chambers and compartments scattered throughout Torfan and present on none of the numerous schematics and blueprints that had been used to build and modify the main base. Even Saren only had a vague idea of where a handful of such chambers might be, and there was no way to tell if any of them were being used for a weapon cache without breaking them open, which would no doubt, trigger a major security alert.

In short as far as Nihlus could see, Shepherd had to free his fellow slaves with weapons he couldn't find or get if he even found them, then fight his way past armed guards with untrained civilians. Then he had to simultaneously defend his rear guard in a fighting withdraw up the main roadway while also launching a heavy assault against fortified positions at the star ports and then convince the very people who had enslaved all these civilians in the first place, to instead ruin their own futures and rescue them all from certain death. As far as Nihlus was concerned the Hegemony wasn't in any real danger from this whole fiasco and their real mission here was to rescue Shepherd before he managed to kill himself.

It was not as if the idea itself was fundamentally flawed. Case White, the STG's plan to overthrow the Hegemony through targeted slave revolts, even had a plan for something similar to what Shepherd was doing. Operation Inoculation called for the use of slave revolts to force certain pirate captains to help out in the revolution against the Hegemony. Those pirates, cornered between the revolutionaries and the mob of angry slaves, could be forced to smuggle weapons and agitators into Hegemony space. This would in turn force the Hegemony to crack down on piracy and smuggling throughout their territories which would exacerbate their sluggish economy with restricted supplies and force more pirates to rebel against them. But Inoculation called for small scale targeted rebellions against specific captains, the STG plans specifically state that pulling off such an uprising on larger bases in general and Torfan in particular was virtually suicidal.

This was not shaping up to be an easy mission by any means, Nihlus concluded to himself as he reviewed all this information and more while the ship made its final approach vector to the last mass relay between themselves and Torfan. Saren held his thoughts to himself for the time as he made the last few calculations. Quickly they approached the relay, sent out their mass data and desired vector and soon enough they were launched away to the long dead star system.

The ship the two of them were using was a small, 'yacht' sized ship only about thirty meters in length. It was amongst the smallest sized ships that could still be used for interstellar travel and was modeled after a popular civilian brand. While the ship was armed, it didn't have much in the way of heavy firepower and was predominantly designed as a stealth ship. It's small profile, combined with an ingenious system of heat sinks made it virtually undetectable to most long range sensor systems. A larger frigate sized version of such a ship was presently still being designed by a joint Alliance Hierarchy project, but smaller ships had an easier time incorporating such tech.

"Jump complete." Saren announced shortly after the trip was initiated, the ship having traveled almost four hundred light years in just the blink of an eye, "Drift is three AUs as intended. All stealth and navigation systems are operational, setting course for Torfan."

Technically it was possible to bring a ship in anywhere even remotely near a mass relay, but almost all ships focused on reducing drift and coming as close to a relay as possible. This minimized the chances of winding up too close to a planet's or star's gravity well and getting pulled to their doom if not just crashing into an asteroid field or comet. It also allowed larger groups of ships to move in relative formation which maintained organization and effectiveness. But since there was a good chance that a sizeable pirate fleet would be close to the mass relay at this time, the two Spectres had increased their drift to give themselves a less predictable path into the star system.

"Passive sensors are picking up a lot of com chatter," Nihlus noted studying the receptor readings. Actively sending out radio waves of their own would've given away their position but by measuring the radiation naturally traveling through the system their ship could get a general idea of what was happening around them.

"Looks like the fleet just arrived." Nihlus continued, "A lot of ships are making their way from the relay to Torfan, we should get there before them though."

"Any sign of the Shadow's Glory?" Saren asked, looking for the ship the STG believed that Shepherd had boarded on Elysium.

"Hard to say." Nihlus explained, "The sensors aren't really precise enough to pick up a specific ship at this range. Not when they're all so tightly packed together. Closing in would be risky though."

"Agreed, but the ships will have to declare themselves to Torfan's governor to get unloaded." Saren pointed out. "So we should be able to find out if its here by accessing their systems once we've landed."

"I suppose even pirates can't escape the power of bureaucracy." Nihlus noted dryly, "What do you think is our best method for infiltration?"

"The main ports will be too busy for us to slip in unnoticed," Saren explained as he brought up a holo map of Torfan's surface and highlighted an area to the north of the main base. "But the governor has an emergency launch bay connected to the main base by a secret elevator shaft we can use."

"Security would no doubt alert the governor to its use." Nihlus objected half heartedly, he knew Saren had been to Torfan before while operating in the verge, so he had every confidence in his friend's ability to guide them through this mission.

"The launch bay is only staffed by drones," Saren stated derisively, "And the whole security system on the base is woefully outdated and full of holes. The governors have only ever held the reigns on the moon just tight enough to dissuade people from out right insurrection. Torfan is a valued meeting ground precisely because it is so easy to work around the base's administration. I have access to viruses in the main server system that are prepared to disrupt the security system when we need it."

Nihlus nodded in agreement. He expected nothing better from not just pirates but the disgraced nobles who supposedly ruled over them. He knew from his own past growing up with mercenaries that such men that lived out here did so almost solely because they personally hated the order and discipline forced on them by normal society. Such men were all parasites in Nihlus's mind, unable and unwilling to put in the work to build a better life for themselves within the system and so instead they fled from it.

"I've prepared our armor to match the Blue Sun's usual markings." Nihlus offered, "STG reports place a good sized band of them operating on the moon, so we can easily disguise ourselves as their members."

"Good thinking." Saren agreed, "Once we are down there we can confirm the presence of that pirate ship from Torfan's own sensor systems then check the slave quarters for Shepherd."

"How do you want to approach him?" Nihlus asked

"With any luck he has realized that he's in over his head." Saren said sarcastically, "And will accept our help. Ideally we will be able to convince him and the other humans to just wait for the Alliance to come rescue them. Then it will just be a matter of keeping the slaves from being shipped out before they arrive."

"And if Shepherd is determined to be a hero?" Nihlus pressed.

"Work with him then I guess," Saren said with an indifferent shrug. "Supposedly he's a genius, maybe the big lug has an idea or two how to pull this off."

"Work with him?" Nihlus questioned in disbelief, "Our orders were clear, we are here to prevent a slave revolt, not organize one."

"Our orders are to protect the Hegemony and Shepherd," Saren clarified. "Torfan itself is an acceptable casualty if we can contain any uprising here. Really the slaves themselves are only a secondary concern."

Nihlus gave Saren a death stare for a few moments. His fellow Spectre had the good sense to look abashed after Nihlus added in the low throaty subharmonic growel that in millennia past had been the one warning a Turian might receive before being murdered. Nihlus pressed no further after Saren looked away from him. He knew Saren tended to get over focussed on the greater good of the Citadel and the mission at hand and forget that serving the people of the galaxy usually meant keeping as many of the alive as possible.

"Either way," Saren continued as he tried to clear the air, "It's not like we need to demand that Shepherd attack immediately. Once we make sure the humans know that help is coming they should be willing to just hang on and wait. But we can't afford to fight Shepherd and the pirates at once. If he forces the issue, then the best strategy would be to take control of a section of the main base and hold it until reinforcements arrive."

Nihlus mulled the thought over for a few moments. It was unlikely that they could just tranquilize Shepherd and call it a day, so they did have to work with him to an extent. If they could take a day or two to secure sufficient weapons, ambush some members of Torfan security, blame it on the pirates to drive a wedge between them, and get an idea how the defenses were placed out then maybe they could carry out such a take over a section of the base and turn its defenses against the pirates.

"Do you really expect civilians to overpower trained soldiers?" Nihlus pressed.

"The scum holding Torfan hardly count as trained soldiers," Saren scoffed, "The pirates themselves are better fighters. You're right though, the civilians can't be expected to take Torfan's defenders in a straight fight. It will take some preparation to weaken them to the point that such an attack can carried out. Once we are properly entrenched we will be able to hold off further attacks. Then there will only be three forces on Torfan able to break such a stalemate."

"The Blue Suns, Blood Pack and the Special Intervention Unit." Nihlus surmised.

The SIU was the special forces branch of the Batarian military. Drawn from the most talented and least influential members of the warrior caste, their recruits were put through a highly lethal training program considered brutal even by Turian standards. Their equipment was a bit below the standard expected of such an elite force. They also lacked sufficient biotics to back up their firepower. Neither of those were there fault though. Batarian State Arms did produce some decent weaponry but the organization was so corrupt that most of it got sold either to Terminus Warlords or the nobility's private security. Batarian biotics were rare enough, even more so then for Salarians or Turians, and the fanatic priests of the Pillar of Purity considered such abilities to be a dangerous mutation. Outside of the noble, warrior and priest castes that had the clout to protect their children, most biotics were condemned as casteless and enslaved. Still even if they weren't up to the standards of Asari Commandos, STG operatives, or even some more highly honored Turian regiments, they were more than stubborn enough to wade through whatever defense were put in their way and create the breakthroughs needed to destroy such an uprising.

The Blue Suns and Blood Pack were both mercenary groups, and while they had little interest themselves in whether the slave revolt might succeed or fail, they could be easily hired by Torfan's governor if things grew desperate. The Suns were a very well equipped and disciplined mercenary group. New to the galactic stage, they were eager to prove their effectiveness and skill. They recruited heavily from military veterans particularly from humans and Turians who had seen fighting during the relay 314 incident, and used such a strong force as the backbone around which a powerful legionary structure was built and maintained. Such men were even more dangerous than the SIU thanks to their superior equipment which no doubt would be specialized for such close quarter fighting.

The Blood Pack were by far the most dangerous of the three. The predominantly Krogan force was the least disciplined and would lack uniform weapons or armor, since each Krogan expected to provide his own, usually by pillaging the dead for higher grade guns and credits. Yet for all their brutality, fighting a group of Krogan berzerkers in the tight cramped hallways of the moon base would be suicidal in the extreme. The Blood Pack alone might be able to take the whole station.

"We can probably hire the Suns to join us." Nihlus offered, "There should be a good number of humans with them, and the Suns in general always love a chance to play the hero. Especially when they are also paid well and won't get bombed out of existence with the rest of Torfan when the fleets arrive."

"It will be expensive but necessary." Saren agreed, "The SIU will have to brought down beforehand with some sabotage and assassinations. If we are a bit lucky though, they might just get moved off the moon before we have to strike."

"That just leaves the Blood Pack," Nihlus surmised, "The most dangerous of the three, and the one which will never take a job from a pair Turians."

"That one will be tricky." Saren admitted, "We will have to see how things stand exactly at ground level. If the Pack is frustrated with the pirates, or hasn't been paid yet, we might be able to stir up something between them."

"Possibly." Nihlus nodded while considering the situation, then brought up a separate concern "What's our plan if we can't find Shepherd?"

"We'll just have to interrogate some of the pirates for information." Saren dismissed, "Likely Shepherd hijacked one of their ships and just launched off into the depths of space and we will have to track him down once we're done here. I doubt a group of pirates could've killed a genetic monster like that."

"What if he's here but we can't find him with the slaves?"

"Oh come on!" Saren scoffed, "The man is four meters tall! It's not like he can just sneak his way around the base softening up their defenses while the slaves prepare to rise up. If a revolt does break out without our help or knowledge, then our first priority will be to destroy the starports so Shepherd can't escape to cause more trouble. Once we're certain that can't happen then we will just have to do whatever we can to keep as many of the slaves and Shepherd alive."

"I would prefer a more detailed contingency," Nihlus grumbled, "But a lot of this will depend on what we find down on the moon. Either way, we can't afford to take our eyes off of Shepherd for long, and will need to do a lot of running around behind the scenes to keep things smooth."

"Wouldn't hurt to keep the big man guessing just how many Spectre's are in the base in the first place." Saren agreed. "I take it you're volunteering to be the face?"

"Not to brag or anything," Nihlus smuggly offered, "But if there is one thing I am better than you at it's diplomacy."

"Why Nihlus you wound me!" Saren declared in a mock injured tone, "I'll have you know I have a nearly flawless diplomatic track!"

"Yes." Nihlus agreed dryly, "It is amazing how often people will agree with you when you have a gun to their heads."

"The only form of negotiation we Turians are suited for!" Saren further exclaimed, "Though I agree, it's perhaps not the best tactic here. We wouldn't want to hurt the man's pride or anything."

"Oh yes, I know not to ruffle a VIP's feathers."

"We would never want that." Saren concluded as he turned the ship down to the moon's surface. "Starting our approach now, best to begin electronic counter measures. Soon everything will begin."

---

In the medical bay of the Shadow's Glory, sparks danced through the air as Tali Zorah welded a plate of armor to her enviro-suit's chest piece as part of her ongoing efforts to not die. Shield generators were all well and good, but nothing quite beat having a sophisticated polymer weave of palladium, carbon fiber, and titanium set on top of a solid steel plate between her fleshy bits and the people trying to poke holes in her. Especially since she seemed determined to continue to let said people take pot shots at her instead of doing the sensible thing and trying to outrun a whole pirate fleet in a stolen gunship.

Normally doing this kind of radical reconstruction on the only enviro-suit she currently owned would be a bad idea. And not just because any holes she accidently put in the suit as she worked might just lead to her dying of the common cold in the next few days. Just taking off the suit to work on it like this was rather dangerous, in fact it would've been suicidal in most situations. Fortunately, the pirates, as men who regularly got shot at for a living, truly appreciated the value of a fully functioning medical bay, which included having a completely sealed off sterilized room for invasive surgery and the like. After pillaging the materials she needed from the armory, Tali had set up shop here to begin quickly improving her chances of getting through this whole mess in one piece.

The act of working the armor over and slowly improving it came quite naturally to Tali. These kinds of simple but necessary tasks like suit maintenance were often used as the starting point for children to learn how to do the kind of work that might one day save their lives. The movements of armor repair and upgrade had long since been ingrained in Tali's muscle memory and she fondly remembered how nervous she had been when she was first given an acetylene torch and had been told how her work there might just save someone's life down the line. Completely untrue of course, every suit the children worked on was scanned and tested thoroughly before anyone even thought of taking out side of the sterilized portions of the Quarian liveships. But telling the kids so helped them take the task seriously and learn the patience and precision that had kept the Quarian species for alive as long as it had been. Unfortunately such simple work left her mind free to wander a bit and come up with thoughts like those that came out of nowhere and blindsided her.

The Quarian people had managed to survive in the galaxy for over three hundred years without a homeworld or even a single planetary colony to help support them. They had done so in the face of a galaxy that at the very least mistrusted them as scam artists and thieves and more often than not, hated them as the creators of a race of murderous A.I. And they were slowly dying out. There was no getting around it, Shepherd was right, the Migrant Fleet had slowly shrunk over the course of her people's long exile. If this continued, eventually there just wouldn't be enough people to maintain it. Each ship would have to see to its own future, her people would scatter and fade out of sight, memory and existence.

Her father hoped and obsessed over reclaiming Rannoch, the only planet in the galaxy where her people's weak autoimmune system wouldn't be a death sentence for them all. When the Quarians had left the planet it had been inhabited by over two billion geth combat platforms, and there was no reason to suspect that their numbers had waned over the centuries as the Quarians had. If anything it would make sense for the geth to expand their numbers in the face of a likely counter invasion from the A.I. paranoid Citadel Council. Even if the Quarians could fight their way through the geth fleets to reach their home world, they would find the surface held against them by an inexhaustible supply of mechanical soldiers who already out numbered her entire species over a hundred to one. The only way to even hope of dislodging such a force was to extensively bombard the planet from orbit, rendering the only homeworld the Quarian people could ever know, a radioactive slag heap.

The Turians might be able to defeat such an enemy. Their people were hardy, well disciplined, well armed both by science and nature, and had the numbers to match or at least effective challenge the geth in a conventional ground battle. If the Citadel Council would just give her people the support they needed, then there was a fighting chance that one day Quarians would again walk on Rannoch. That chance was the hope and dream of every living Quarian. The chance that had failed to be realized for over three hundred years.

In Tali's opinion, if pressed, Salarians and Turians would agree that something had to be done about the geth and that her people's long exile had been punishment enough. Well most Salarians would, and some Turians at least, though most might disagree with that last part. The problem was the Asari, whose leading Matriarchs had all been alive when Rannoch fell, had all lived through the fear and shock of an A.I. species rising to the galactic stage. Those ancient and powerful women still blamed the Quarians for creating the geth and felt that it was better to leave well enough alone. So long as the Asari opposed helping the Quarians the more bigoted Turians would stand against her people and the Salarians wouldn't consider it worth the fuss to try and challenge the other two. Especially not when the geth had proven to be isolationists and had not troubled the galaxy since driving the Quarians out of their homes. Perhaps when those old Matriarchs passed on and a new generation, for whom the geth uprising was not a vivid memory, rose up the Quarians would have a better chance of securing Citadel cooperation.

But how long would that take? How long did the Quarians have? Tali didn't know. The Quarians knew they were running out of time, but actually investigating such a unthinkable prospect was taboo to the point of being almost illegal. Shepherd seemed to think her people would begin to suffer major genetic problems within the next five hundred years, which was barely half an Asari's lifetime. By the time the present generation of Asari maidens, the ones that Tali herself might be able to positively influence, had reached the Matriarch stage her people might already be doomed. But Shepherd…. He seemed to have a plan of some kind as well.

He talked about her people forming an alliance with the Krogan of all creatures. Tali had never spared the Krogan more than a passing thought her whole life, other than a fervent wish to never meet one in a dark alley. They were her people's opposite in many ways. Quarains had weak immune systems, vulnerable bodies and were on average, slightly weaker than humans. Krogans had survived on a planet that had been bombed into a nuclear wasteland, they were notoriously hard to kill, and were known to grab and flip Turians repulsor tanks over on their sides during the rebellions. The Quarians were a highly technical species, brilliant engineers, flawless space navigators, and could optimize and improve any broken down piece of tech they got their hands on. The Krogan on the other hand were not the most sophisticated people in the galaxy and tended to make due with what ever worked. Now that she thought about it, it seemed like her people could cover a lot of the weaknesses that the Krogan possessed, and vice versa.

Could the Krogan help her people retake their home world? They weren't exactly a numerous people either, but one Krogan could probably take down several geth combat platforms, maybe even take down a juggernaut in a one on one fight, or even go toe to toe with a prime. If the Quarians could get a substantial number of Krogan down to Rannoch and quickly take out as many manufacturing sites as possible before the geth could retaliate, then….

But would the Krogan even want to help her people? What could they possibly give them in return for such help? Would aligning with the Krogan further turn the Council against her people? And what about-

"How you doing in the there buckethead?" Jack called to her from the surgery hall's observation window behind her. Tali nearly dropped her welding tools as she cried out and jumped a bit straight into the air. She had been so absorbed in her own thoughts she hadn't noticed the proximity detectors she had set up outside sending alerts to her omnitool. She immediately whipped around to face the annoying human, and made sure that as much of her body as possible was hidden from view behind her heavy industrial welding apron, since it was kind of the only thing she was wearing at that moment. Jack's eyes snapped up to meet her own as she did so, and Tali got a sinking feeling that before that they had been observing her rear end in great detail.

"I am doing fine thank you." Tali responded after a moment, doing her best not to blush and failing, "Just finishing up some improvements to my suit. I am almost done."

"Good to hear." Jack commented smiling to herself in a much too smugly satisfied way. "How much longer do you think you will be? We just arrived in the Torfan system and should reach the moon in about an hour or so."

"Not long." Tali answered, "I was just putting the finishing touches on it now."

"Well by all means continue." Jack offered.

"I would prefer to work in privacy." Tali said stressing the last word. Privacy was something she had never really had back on the liveships growing up, but she had always had her suit between herself and the world and now felt quite vulnerable without it.

"Oh come on," Jack said jokingly. "Were both girls here, nothing to be embarrassed about."

"I would still-" Tali started,

"Not like you have anything to be embarrassed about really," Jack continued, ignoring her, "From where I'm standing you're looking pretty fine."

"Jack-" Tali again interjected.

"Would it make you feel more comfortable if I took off my shirt as well?" Jack placated.

"JACK!" Tali yelled her face now burning red as Jack actually started laughing at her, but she also turned to face away from the medical room. Clearly she had no intention of leaving, but was offering her some privacy at least. Tali huffed to herself, and made her way to the other side of her impromptu workbench to continue working while facing the observation window.

"In all seriousness though," Jack continued after calming down a bit. "I kind of need to talk to you."

"About what?" Tali asked as she resumed work on her armor, using her omnitool to scan for any cracks, tears, or holes in the enviro-suit that might need to be patched.

"I heard you had a heart to heart with with the big man." Jack explained, "That you expressed certain concerns to him, doubts about our mission here."

"Your mission?" Tali questioned accusingly, she hadn't been all that certain about Jack's relationship to the primarch. At first Tali had assumed that Jack was just another prisoner same as them all. But during the fighting in the slave hold, Jack had displayed some considerable biotic powers and Shepherd had relied on her to help guard and organize the people he had freed. It seemed that she was in fact some kind of co-conspirator with Shepherd and his grand plans.

"To destroy the practice of slavery throughout the galaxy." Jack clarified with total conviction that such a thing was not only the right thing to do but also actually possible.

"Well I can hardly say that sounds like a bad thing." Tali said defensively.

"But…." Jack supplied inviting Tali to explain herself.

"I do have my doubts about his methodology in this matter." Tali stated boldly, she was not about to be intimidated into silence after all. "These people he is leading are not soldiers, they are civilians. Husbands, mothers, confused teenagers and elders close to retirement. They should be back home living easy lives, not out here fighting just to survive. If all this was just to rescue them I could understand, but Shepherd means to make them all into an army and drive them into the heart of the Hegemony. It seems excessive."

Jack nodded in understanding, which Tali found surprising. She had pegged Jack to be the same kind of zealot that it seemed most of the people around Shepherd quickly turned into. It seemed to Tali that most people took it personally when those they so admired and trusted were questioned or insulted, but Jack seemed calm as if she expected this.

"That is the reality that we face." Jack accepted simply. "It is extreme but it doesn't seem to me like anything else is going to get the job done."

"Hmph." Tali snorted and added under her breath. "Is that you talking or is that Shepherd?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Jack demanded, her head snapping around to glare at the young Quarian.

"Have you seen how he acts?" Tali demanded, this was dangerous a small part of her knew. Jack was a strong biotic so she could fold Tali in half with a wave of her hand if she pressed to far and actually insulted her. But Tali had to know there was at least some other sane person on this ship.

"How he talks to people and physically guides them at times." Tali pressed. "He acts like he's their parent or something. The total confidence he shows in everything, how he intimidates people just by existing and then always acts to reassure them that he has total control of everything and so long as they just do what he says things will turn out fine. That kind of charisma can pull people under a kind of spell that shuts their brains down and makes them follow. That's how he is going to get his army. By the end of this he will practically be like a drug to them."

"Ah." Jack said again as if she had expected this somehow. "So that's what this is really about. You're worried that Shepherd is pulling you under his influence and you're worried that you're losing yourself to him."

Tali looked away from the tattooed girl. She couldn't deny there was at least some truth to that. Already Tali had felt pride in herself over how he complimented her, had caught herself trying to make herself as useful to him as possible, she had even suggest a way she could kill people for him! If that wasn't a sign of getting caught up in a cult that what else could be?

"Alright then." Jack nodded to herself and looked back away from Tali. "There's no denying that Shepherd's got a silver tongue. Personally I think I've known him long enough to not be easily swayed by it, but this isn't about me is it? So the real question then is to just try and figure out what it is you really think about the situation. Can you think of any reason that Shepherd hasn't suggested, implied, or even hinted at, why this plan might actually be a good one?"

"What would that matter?" Tali objected, "If I've already been subverted by him, then this is just me making up excuses for him."

"Shepherd doesn't have mind control powers." Jack insisted. "Believe me, if he did this problem would've been solved five or six years ago now. If you can think of a reason why you would do what Shepherd wants to do that Shepherd himself didn't suggest, then it means that if left to your own devices you might have eventually come to the same conclusions he did. All Shepherd did was call your attention to an area of life you were previously content to ignore. Even if you've been caught up in Shepherd wake, well you can't really blame a river for taking you in a direction you already might have wanted to go."

"I don't think I should just let someone else run my life like this though." Tali further denied.

"He's not." Jack countered, "No one can do that, at the end of the day we are all responsible for our own actions. Even if we decide to follow someone else, that is still a choice we made."

"Alright so why did you choose to follow him?" Tali accused, "You know he might lead these people to their deaths, what make you think that is a good idea?"

"Because the sacrifices we might make here." Jack declared, her convictions unshakable. "Are nothing in comparison to the suffering we might end should we succeed."

"How do you figure that? Surely eventually something will end it without having to fight and die."

"I doubt that." Jack countered. "The Batarians have practiced slavery for nearly two thousand years so they don't seem to want to change. The Citadel Council has tolerated them for five hundred years and never intervened. Even the Alliance just wants the pirate attacks to stop and doesn't give a damn about what the Batarians do in their own territory. If for so long circumstances have allowed the practice to continue and no one now is willing to do anything to change that, then what reason do we have to believe that in the future such opinions might change? And if they never change then the practice will go on in perpetuity; infinite slavery creates infinite suffering which is far greater than the momentary discomfort we might have to endure to end it now."

"That is surprisingly well thought out." Tali admitted. She really didn't expect the constantly teasing and joking girl to be so serious about this.

"At least that the answer I give those stuck of jerks who go on and on about how we need to respect other people's culture when their just being assholes to everyone." Jack declared in a nasally and insulting voice. "The truth of the matter is that pirates and slavers are jerks and need to have their faces kicked in. And if I have to lie to a whole ship full of people to get those faces kicked in then so be it."

"Well that's one way to looking at it." Tali said laughing to herself a little bit as Jack returned to her more flippant attitude. "Bit of an odd choice to then work with the people who need their faces kicked in though."

"Yeah not my first choice I admit." Jack explained, "This one was Shepherd's idea really. He says there is no point in clearing out this generation of scum when there exists a culture that needs such scum to exist, pays for their services and invariably produces the kind of hopeless people who become such scum. So better to start kicking faces in at the top of the totem pole and then work our way down."

"This is all still insane," Tali insisted, "You know that right? You're taking on a galactic civilization. Nearly a hundred worlds and tens of billions of people with a just few hundred civilians, one pirate ship and one mad giant."

"I know right?" Jack laughed back at Tali, "It really isn't fair to the Batarians, maybe if we blindfolded Shepherd first then they would have a fighting chance."

Tali joined Jack in a brief fit of laughter as she put away her tools and started to climb into her enviro-suit. She had to admit to herself that no matter what logic and common sense told, she already couldn't really envision a world where Shepherd would be killed by the Hegemony. That easy overwhelming confidence the man showed in everything was just too much for her. Maybe she was getting pulled into his wake or whatever, but it would be good to see some of the galaxies greatest scumbags finally get their comeuppance.

"So you in?" Jack asked as the two of them calmed down. "Are you going to help us get this done?"

"Well I have to help you take over Torfan." Tali admitted still not quite ready to join the Shepherd cult. "Shepherd was right about that, there's no getting away from this fleet on my own, so the only way out is forward."

"I'm not talking about that." Jack pressed, "I'm talking about actually helping to bring down the whole Hegemony. You've been a huge help so far, by all standards you've earned the right to sit back and let things play their course at this point. But if you actually want to make the galaxy a better place, then there is some real work to be done. Shepherd and I need to know if we can fully count on you or not."

"And if I say I just want to go home at this point." Tali asked cautiously. She had hoped to sit on the fence for a bit longer, see how things played out. How Shepherd would honor his word or not before she fully committed. But if Jack was going to press her, then she was going to press right back.

"Shepherd will have the captain radio the other pirates and tell them he's sending out some scout ships to keep an eye on the adjacent systems." Jack explained with total sincerity but also mounting disappointment. "You can take one the shuttles and set right off with none the wiser and take your pick of the loot on board. Return to your pilgrimage or just use the ship and guns to earn your place with the migrant fleet. It's your life and your choice."

"Just like that?" Tali demanded skeptically.

"Just like that." Jack confirmed, "Not long after you holed yourself up in here Shepherd extended the same offer to all the humans on board. Anyone who doesn't want to fight can just leave now. So far, no one has taken the offer."

Of course no one had taken the offer. After Shepherd called them all out earlier about leaving their fellow humans behind to save their own skin, no one was going to take that walk of shame. Of course Tali didn't care what these humans thought of her, and it wasn't like they were going out of their way to rescue a bunch of Quarians. But….

"Well…." Tali hesitated, there would be no going back after this. If she gave into Shepherd even slightly she knew he was going to carry her halfway across the galaxy and back before he was done using her. "I suppose I can't really turn down a chance to rid the galaxy of Batarians pirates. Even indirectly there's just too much the migrant fleet can gain from such a victory. Ancestors know that taking out Torfan is probably worth a pilgrimage in and of itself. So yes. I'm in."

Even if this all came to not and the Hegemony proved too strong to overthrow, Tali was absolutely certain that Shepherd would live through this, probably with an army at his back and a fleet to his name. The man was certain to become one of the great mover and shakers of the galaxy, no doubt his infamy was going to grow by the day and with it his influence too. And by the ancestors he would know that at the beginning of it all, his earliest successes were in part owed to a Quarian girl. And one day he would pay her back for all that. And who knows? That might just help save her whole race from otherwise certain doom.

"Excellent!" Jack exclaimed whipping around while pumping her fist in the air. "The bucket head leet haxor has officially joined the party!"

"I would kind of prefer it if you would stop calling me that." Tali asked rather dryly, she doubted Jack would but it was worth asking. "It is kind of a pejorative."

"And Shepherd would love it if all the bulkheads in the galaxy were an extra meter tall or so." Jack dismissed. "But I don't see that one happening anytime soon either."

"How cute." Tali sighed. "So what do you all need me to hack now?"

"What makes you think we need something hacked?" Jack asked playfully.

"It's kind of the only thing Shepherd has asked of me so far." Tali pointed out. "Honestly I feel like I'm being typed casted at this point."

"Hey if you ever want to just start kicking down doors and taking names let me know." Jack offered, "I always love it when one of you nerds grows up and joins team jock. In all seriousness though we do need to once again call on your leet haxor skillz."

"I thought so." Tali said quite smugly as she finished attaching the least few suit pieces to herself. "So what do you need?"

"Right," Jack said rolling her eyes as she continued, "The original plan was to sneak all the people on this ship down to Torfan armed to the teeth and ready to kick ass. That way we wouldn't need to scramble desperately around looking for an armory to raid in the middle of a station that is more like a giant underground city. With at least this many people armed, we can just hold out until Shepherd convinces the pirate captains to throw their lot in with us and turn over their armories to our people. But after talking with some of the pirates on the ship we've realized there is a small problem.

"See," Jack further explained, "Turns out the governor here doesn't appreciate it when all the pirates and smugglers coming to Torfan try and smuggle pirated goods into the place. There's a very extensive, two step inspection process. All goods being brought down the to the moon base are inspected at the star port by a set of custom officials, tagged with an electronic shipping manifest, and then scanned again thoroughly at the main base before they are brought in. The pirates are confident that so long as they bring our people down one group at a time they can use the confusion of so many ships unloading at once to slip us through the chaos without undergoing the physical inspection. But there is no way past that second scan. So we need to break into their network, falsify a shipping manifest for each of the crates carrying our people, then hack the scanners to sign off on the manifests without incident or alerting the main bases' guards to the fact that our people are heavily armed and armored. Think you can help?"

"Ah I see." Tali said as she took all this in. "This is going to be tricky."

"I don't like the sound of tricky. What's the problem?"

"Torfan's security network is divided in two." Tali explained. "They have an outer network operating at the starports that is kept separate from the inner system working in the main base. The outer network can be remotely accessed even from near orbit and can also be easily hacked either by myself or the impromptu team you organized earlier. But the inner system is kept disconnected from the surface or any kind of long range communication. The inner system is connected to the outer system by a single line of cable running down their main underground highway and is kept inactive by default and can only be turned on from the main base. Any information sent from the outer network to the inner network is heavily scanned by some rather advanced anti virus V.I. and once the inner network is updated the outer network is scrubbed clean.

"We can easily falsify those manifests," Tali concluded, "Safely from orbit, but bypassing that system of scanners will require boots on the ground. Probably mine."

"So we have to get you down there safely and secretly before any of our other people make the trip?" Jack summarized.

"Yes." Tali confirmed, "Once I've gotten inside the main base it will be easy to subvert the system from one of their own consoles. Their inner security shouldn't be too bad, they mostly rely on their digital moat for protection. It will take a bit of time though, preferably an hour of preparation to break into the scanner and make sure it works the way we want it to."

"Well that sucks." Jack decried as Tali finished sealing herself into her enviro-suit and made one last scan to make sure it was all sealed tight. "How do you know so much about this place anyway?"

"The migrant fleet has made a few runs at Torfan in the past trying to break into their networks from a safe distance." Tali revealed. "If we could access their data about which pirates came to them at what times with what cargo and from which regions it would've given us a very good idea about where many of them operate and how to best avoid them. But that data just can't be remotely accessed and sending an infiltration team down to break into the main base was judged to risky to be worth trying. So my people are pretty familiar with Torfan."

"And what they just hand a leaflet out to every Quarian youth that leaves the fleet?" Jack asked mockingly. "'Here's a list of the galaxy's greatest shit holes and how to avoid them?'"

"Ah." Tali realized, "Not exactly. You see my father is part of the admiralty board and was rather bad about keeping his work life and home life separate. So i've kind of head him rant about how he would just love to crash a cruiser into this moon and be done with it forever more than once."

"Wait." Jack suddenly froze as Tali left the clean room and joined her in the main medical bay. "Isn't the Admiralty Board like your people's royalty or something?"

"They aren't royalty!" Tali exclaimed defensively. "You might call them the executive branch of our people in charge of leading our defenses and security but really it's the-"

"So you're basically a Quarian Princess!" Jack yelled out in mocking jubilation, completely ignoring Tali's attempts to explain the nuances of her government.

"No I am not-" Tali tried desperately to clarify.

"Princess Buckethead!" Jack so named her.

"OH NO!" Tali ordered as she drew her smg and pressed it to the powerful biotic's head. Tali liked to think of herself as a patient person, but she had her limits and this was definitely one of them. "You are not going to start calling me that! I swear by the homeworld Jack I will paint these walls with your brains!"

Jack just started laughing uproariously to herself as she stumbled away from Tali clutching at her sides. Tali just stood there frozen for a few seconds as she realized what it was she had just said. Oh Keelah she really was turning into a sociopath! She needed to get away from these insane humans, they were definitely a bad, no terrible influence on her. Eventually Jack grabbed her hand and pulled her away from the med bay.

"Oh that was just priceless!" Jack said as she continued to giggle and smirk to herself. "Oh god you just look so damn cute when you're furious like that!"

"I swear Jack," Tali said irritably as she calmed down a bit, "One day you are going to say the wrong thing to the wrong person and they are going to rip you in half for it."

"Well." Jack answered as she finally seemed to calm down a bit too. "They will certainly try anyway. Come on, we need to talk to Shepherd to figure out how to get you down to the planet in one piece and undetected."

Tali sighed to herself and continued following the very annoying human. As she did she pulled up her omnitool and continued to expand the library of viruses and hacking programs she had begun to develop on the fly while taking the ship. Well technically it wasn't her omnitool actually. It was the one that Shepherd had taken from that Krogan battlemaster, a man name Okeer according to the device itself.

Normally she would've gotten rid of the omnitool by now and replaced it with one of the more standard ones available in the armory. After all, like most Quarians, Tali was extremely sensitive to issues of theft. Most of the galaxy already thought of the Quarians as a race of thieves which was bad enough. But in the migrant fleet the ship one lived on was quite inevitably a very tight knit community, and developing an unsavory reputation there for having sticky fingers would incur a stigmatization far far worse than any corporal punishment that could actually be doled out for being caught with another's property. But this particular omnitool rather intrigued Tali and so far she had been unable to part with it.

On the surface it seemed normal enough. The U.I. was simplistic, there were only a handful of apps running on it, and most of those came preloaded on almost any omnitool, and the largest library on the whole thing was labeled 'research' and filled with several hundred gigabytes worth of pictures of Asari and Krogan females in various states of undress doing truly debaucherous and scandalous things to themselves. Pretty much exactly what one would expect from a Krogan omnitool. But it had two rather unusual extra features.

The first was that the device had been upgraded for a combat role. It had the hardware in place to deploy a hardened holographic 'omni-blade' for close quarter fighting but could also support other forms of electronic conflict. Perhaps such a thing was to be expected for a mercenary, though Tali couldn't remember is Okeer or any of the other Krogan had actually used the digital weapon. Either way, Tali had further upgraded the device with an overload and incinerate program to give her some extra ranged punch.

The far more fascinating feature was that one of the few apps on the omnitool was a fairly advanced encryption program. After some brief experiments, Tali had determined the program could convert text documents into an encrypted code and then hide that code in amongst other programs or files. Once she knew how the program worked she quickly started scanning the omnitool for any such hidden files. She had found that the entire research library actually contained hundred of files about other Krogan Okeer had encountered. When he had met them, what he thought of them, what they had accomplished in battle, what kind of injuries they had faced and survived, what families and clans they came from, and most extensively: whether any of them had attracted a mate and had children.

It seemed a very odd collection of data to assemble, and Tali could find almost nothing else in the omnitool related to it. Nothing to suggest why he had that data, what he meant it for or even how he had gotten most of it. The only thing even closely related was a set of notes Okeer had been writing up about the Krogan who had joined in the attack on Elysium that he no doubt was preparing to encrypt just before Shepherd incapacitated him. It was all very strange to Tali. In the end she had forwarded the info to Shepherd and dropped the matter. She just couldn't think of anything else to do with it at that time. Still though it painted an odd picture of this Okeer fellow that Tali might not have suspected from any Krogan. So she was curious about him, and decided to keep the omnitool. She would have to ask Shepherd about it when she met him.

Eventually they made their way back to the cargo hold the slaves had originally been held in and were beginning to return to. The humans currently looked like a rather wretched bunch at the moment. They were all covered in long ratty, worn out and well stained ponchos and cloaks that clearly had been donated from the least hygienic of the ships fighters. It made it look like they all had been stripped down, robbed and abused by the pirates during the journey which was exactly the point. Even as Tali deliberately searched for the glint of armor or the awkward bulge of a concealed weapon she could find no sign of the contraband she knew they all carried. Jack had obviously been very busy working on it all and it had paid off. This deception was almost certain to succeed if Tali could manage to hack and neutralize that scanner.

Shepherd stood near the entrance of the room alongside a few of his new lieutenants and the pirate captain he had recruited to help them. Unlike the rest of the humans, Shepherd wore no disguise, though his outfit had changed. Like Tali, Shepherd had taken the opportunity to upgrade the jumpsuit he had fought in before with plates of body armor and a few shield generators. It was not very excessive though. Properly armoring Shepherd in the heavy armor he could best utilize would've meant cannibalizing a half dozen lesser suits so Shepherd had much more the look of a light armored infiltrator rather than the heavy vanguard or sentinel he was better suited to.

"Bad new Shep." Jack declared as the giant noticed them enter and waved the pair over to join them. "Tali says we can't remotely access the systems we need to, she needs to get down there in person to clear the way for our people."

"Unfortunate." Shepherd noted with a shake of his head, "But not unexpected. Tell me Tali is your enviro-suit void capable? Could you take it on a space walk?"

"Well yes." Tali said sheepishly, she didn't know what this was leading to, but she had a sense she would not like it much. "Why do you ask?"

"And you're willing to go down there yourself?" Shepherd further asked her, "This is going to be dangerous you know."

"Well I don't really see what other option you have." Tali pointed out, but she really, really did not like where this conversation was going. "I am the best suited to this task, and I am ready and willing."

"All right then." Shepherd concluded smiling at Tali and reaching behind one of the crates to grab a disturbing number to straps and cables. "That makes this much easier if we won't have to seal you in a full space suit. It will save on a lot of weight."

"I'm sorry what are we doing?" Tali asked now openly dreading the next few seconds of her life.

"Going with that plan then?" Jack asked and Shepherd nodded at her. "A bit crazy, but it will take them by surprise for sure."

"What plan?" Tali demanded growing a little panicked, "What's going to take them by surprise?"

"Well I can hardly expect you to go down there alone." Shepherd explained, "So obviously I will have to come with you, and obviously it will be quite dangerous down there if you can't keep up with me."

"Hold on a second." Jack said grabbing Tali by the arm as a wave of what felt like frozen pins and needles raced across Tali's body, "This will be much easier if you're in stasis for this next part."

"WAIT just hold on a sec-" Tali shouted as the wave passed over her and she blacked out for a moment as her body was suspended in time. When she came to a few minutes later, she found that she had been strapped down and attached to Shepherd's chest.

She had been wrapped up in a series of straps and long sheets of cloth so that she was now being held in place like an infant clinging to their mother's breasts. The side of her head was pressed against Shepherd's pectorals and her legs were curled up against his guts. She was tied down tight only able to freely move her head and arms. Shepherd's body felt quite warm to her even through her suit, which had triggered some of its internal cooling systems to compensate for the massive heater pressed against her. She could almost hear his heartbeat through his armor and her helmet. Somewhat understandably, she promptly freaked out.

"What the hell have you people done you BOSH'TETS!" Tali screamed in true and righteous fury, and was completely ignored.

"How's it feel Shepherd?" Jack asked, "Would you prefer her on your back instead?"

"No the balance is better this way." Shepherd declared, swinging his arms back and forth while stretching his legs and back, getting a feel for how he could maneuver with his new passenger. "Plus it's easier to keep track of just where she is incase we get into a firefight."

"It just looks a bit awkward from this angle." Jack commented but accepted Shepherd's analisis.

"It feels very awkward from where I AM!" Tali again shouted out, "Why am I strapped to Shepherd's chest?!"

"I told you," Shepherd explained very calmly and matter of factly. "You need an escort down there, and won't be able to keep up with me on your own. So it only makes sense for me to carry you."

"'Only makes sense?'" Tali repeated in stunned disbelief before her fury returned in full force. "ONLY MAKES SENSE!? How does any of this make any sense?! You're supposed to be the leader of this little army. The leader does not go out on dangerous missions while abandoning his men! You're supposed to stay here and inspire and command them! And I remind you, you are a four METER tall giant! This is an infiltration mission, that means stealth! The only people who wouldn't notice you trying to sneak into their base are those actively trying not to see you! And WILL have you know, that even though I might seem rather small and weak to you, I certainly a lot more precise and quick on my feet than a lumbering, giant, tactless oaf like you!"

"She has a point Shep." Jar'kannath noted, "You don't really seem like the sneaking type. I've got a few men who know how to move unseen while in plain sight. They could take the Quarian down and slip into the base easily enough."

"I would have to infiltrate the base either way." Shepherd declared remaining infuriatingly controlled in the face of Tali ever mounting anger. "No offense captain, but the bureaucrats in the station will probably be a bit more attentive to their cargo then your men were. If they notice a giant in the slave pens they will start asking question that will lead to a shoot out before we're ready. Plus I this point there is more important work for me to do then inspiring the troops. My lieutenants and Jack can get the rest of our people organized easily enough, and I will have to bleed the base a bit before we can bring it down. Escorting Tali while doing that is an added bonus."

Shepherd entourage had looked a bit skeptical about the whole plan up until then, unwilling to let their giant leader put himself in such a needlessly dangerous position. Now they swelled with pride at his confidence in them and nodded in agreement with his assessment. To an extent Tali had to agree with them. It was kind of austonding that the pirates on the ship hadn't noticed Shepherd before he moved against them, though it might be expected since they were confident of having already won. It did seem dangerous to bet on such luck a second time. But….

"That doesn't change the fact that this plan won't work!" Tali insisted, "You will be spotted the moment you set foot in that base."

"Eh," Shepherd casually dismissed. "I picked up a tactical cloak or two from the armory, so they shouldn't be able to easily spot me. This won't be a problem."

"A cloaking field helps yes," Tali conceded but felt that Shepherd wasn't taking the skill of stealth seriously enough. "But that's only part of it all. The field will blur the air around you if you move too quickly, does nothing to dampen sound, and makes it much harder for you to see what you're doing. If you don't have total control of yourself and awareness of your surroundings, people will still be able to find you!"

"Oh just give over Shepherd!" Jack shouted at the giant as he opened his mouth to respond. "You can argue till you're blue in the face, but that won't change their minds. Some preconceptions about people just run too deep after all. Just move already and shut them up."

That was a confusing statement. What was Jack talking about? Shepherd didn't seem to know either since he just shrugged his arms and then-

That was about as far as Tali's mind got before her whole world suddenly blurred as her head was pushed back into the sling holding her as her inertia fought desperately against the sudden motion of her host. She felt her body twist about as that irresistible acceleration turned on a dime a few times and flipped over itself at least once. Then in a blink of an eye she found herself and Shepherd up in the ceiling rafters, back behind the group they had just stood in front of, some thirty meters away from where Shepherd had stood not a full second before. They were wrapped up in a cloaking field, and Shepherd had not made a single sound.

The assembled humans and Batarians with the exception of Jack stared dumbfounded at the spot where Shepherd had just stood. Slowly a few of them started to turn around looking over the room around them, like Jack was already doing. Their eyes slid right past the point where Tali and the giant were hidden. After a few seconds, the giant began to move.

"How in God's name did he do that?" One of the former marines finally exclaimed.

"He just moved, and then he was gone." Another echoed the sentiment.

"Something that large has no business moving that fast." Jar'kannath concluded the thought on everyone's mind.

"Hey Shepherd!" Jack called out to the room at large. "Be careful with our little hacker when you do that! Those suits don't come with inertia dampeners so if you pull more than two or three 'g's with her she might black out!"

"Of course Jack." Shepherd answered, removing the cloak and reappearing in their midst. "I wouldn't want anything to happen to her."

Tali had remained dumbstruck as Shepherd had slowly progressed towards the group. A tactical cloak wasn't perfect invisibility. As its mass effect fields bent light around the wearer is created distortion in the air that could be easily spotted when the wearer stood in a direct powerful light source or while moving about. But Shepherd's movements had been perfect as he approached his targets. He held to the shadows, avoid the overhead lights, distributed the weight of his steps perfectly to not make the slightest noise even when stepping on metal bars that really shouldn't have been able to bear his weight. He moved without a sound, slipped around people's peripheral vision, froze up completely when their eyes slid over him. He didn't move that slowly either, coming back to the group in less than half a minute. And Tali knew, that if any of them had actually seen him, he could've put on another burst of speed and vanish from their sight, leaving the viewer to wonder if they had really seen anything at all.

"Okay." She admitted, "This might actually work. How do you move so quietly?"

"That's actually the way he normally moves." Jack commented dryly. "When we were younger he used to sneak up on people all the damn time. Sentries at the base would be minding their own business and then suddenly poof! There's a mountain standing behind them asking what time it is. After the third time someone accidently shot the ceiling Mama Shepherd insisted he learn how to move while making at least some noise. Took him six months to get it down properly."

"It's just a terribly inefficient way of moving you know." Shepherd explained, taking a few steps that now reverberated around the room. "I have no idea how you people can stand doing it all the time. Nearly drives me mad."

"Right." Tali said now substantially more self conscious about how she walked. "Alright I admit, strapping me to his chest might be a good idea after all. So how do get down to the mo-"

"There you are you giant worthless, spineless piece of thresher maw refuse!" A loud voice boomed from the entrance to the cargo bay. Shepherd turned to face the voice and Tali saw it belonged to the Krogan warlord Okeer. And he looked rather angry.

"I was wondering when the anesthesia would wear off." Shepherd said under his breath before more formally greeting the enraged Krogan. "Good to see you up and about Okeer. How's your arm feeling?"

"It hurts like hell you ass." Okeer answered with a sneer and an angry glare.

"Yeah but that's just the general phantom pain." Shepherd stated cryptically, "I was asking if there is any specific pain around the joint, it might be the nerve connections acting up."

Okeer was left stunned for a second after that, and then looked down at his arm. Now that Tali also got a good look at it she could see that it was slightly bulkier than his other arm, and didn't match the color of his armor. With a start, Tali realized it was a cybernetic replacement. That made sense actually, she remembered that Shepherd had torn off his original arm to give Tali his omnitool. His omnitool that she was still using. Oh crap.

"That's new." Okeer finally stated, apparently just realizing that one of his arms had gone missing and been replaced. "Where did this come from?"

"Captain Jar'kannath had a good selection of prosthetics to choose from." Shepherd explained. "All sized for Batarians though, so i had to make some alterations to yours. Not my best work, but I was a bit pressed for time."

"Completely irrelevant." Okeer dismissed with a shake of his head before focusing his glare back on Shepherd. "Why am I still alive? Why are the Batarians still alive? Weren't you going to hijack the ship?"

"Captain." An electronic voice interrupted the two coming from Jar'kannath's omnitool, "We entered orbit around Torfan. According to the official docking schedule the governor just published, we are slated to be the fourteenth ship unloaded. That gives Shepherd about three hours to get going, maybe less."

"Thanks for the update Harkon." Jar'kannath answered, "Keep us posted."

"We're on Torfan." Okeer surmised as he looked around the room at all the humans begin to assemble into their firing teams and enter their cages. "You've got these people armed and the pirates helping you. You're going to try and free the rest of your people. And the pirates are trying to save their own skin."

"From the Hegemon." Shepherd supplied, "He's setting them up you know."

"Well obviously." Okeer agreed, "It's got nothing to do with me though. So answer my question: why am I alive?"

"I'm a succor for high drama." Shepherd answered with a shug. "Didn't seem right for you to go out like that. A dying race deserves a glorious death I think, on a battlefield somewhere outnumbered a dozen to one, screaming death a glory as each one of them falls. Not getting trounced by one unarmed man in a slave hold."

"If you think," Okeer said with a snort, "That this means I owe you some favor or debt of honor, you've got another thing coming. If you're too dumb to kill your enemies when you've got the chance it's not my problem."

"Oh come now Okeer." Shepherd said sounding faux insulted, "I'm not so low as to try and brow beat you into following me. I just didn't have the heart to kill you like that is all. Give me your word that your blood pack won't get in our way on Torfan and we can go our separate ways."

"As If I would lift a finger." Okeer called back with disgust in his voice, "To save a fat useless fool like that oaf who calls himself a governor. You've got my word. Just return my shotgun and my effects and I will be out of your way."

"Hmm." Shepherd pondered for a moment with a finger on his chin before answering. "No."

"What?" Okeer demanded voice full of malice.

"I've taken a liking to your shotgun." Shepherd explained, "I beat you, and looted it from you downed body. So it's mine now and I intend to keep it."

"You can't loot someone who's still alive!" Okeer insisted "That's just called stealing!"

"Semantics." Shepherd dismissed. "I'm still keeping it."

"Why you little-" Okeer growled and advanced on the giant. But only a step or two before three or four dozen humans all around him drew out their concealed weapons and leveled them at the Krogan battlemaster. All the while Shepherd stared him down with a wide grin on his face and madness in his eyes.

"If you want to try and take it back from me Okeer," Shepherd offered, his voice full of barely restrained excitement. "Then you are more than welcomed to come and try to fight me again. This time I'll tear off your legs and replace them with jet boots. It will be great, good clean fun, and you'll wake up feeling stronger than ever."

The Krogan bared his teeth and flexed his hands like he was grasping at invisible weapons. But he held his place. Okeer had been the only warrior on the whole ship who had even so much as slowed Shepherd down, getting a few clean hits on the giant and drawing his blood with a point black shotgun blast. Every other pirate or mercenary who got in Shepherd's way went down like an oak tree before a crashing meteor. And that was when Okeer had been armed, not coming off anesthesia and had a few lackies to throw as Shepherd first. Now Shepherd was armed, armored and surrounded by zealots riding high off their victory over the pirates. The warlord knew the odds, and he had bigger goals to give his life for than this.

"Fine." Okeer conceded taking a step back and lowering his arms. "What do you want for it?"

"Ten heads." Shepherd instantly named his price as the humans around him lowered their weapons.

"Heads?" Okeer asked confused.

"Yes heads." Shepherd clarified. "Taken from Torfan's security personnel with their badges of office to prove their identity. Bring me ten heads and you can have your shotgun back."

Okeer held silent for a moment and then dryly chuckled to himself. "Is that all? I'll have them for you within a hour of landing."

"Agreed."

"Just have my gun and omnitool with you when we make the exchange down there. I don't want to have to retrieve them from the Batarians if you've gotten caught and lost them."

"I didn't say anything about an omnitool Okeer." Shepherd added bringing the warlord up short. "Those ten heads just get you the shotgun back."

"What are you going on about now?" Okeer demanded his hateful glare back in full force.

"Tali here," Shepherd said resting a hand on his passenger who had been doing her absolute best not be noticed during all of this. "My cyber warfare expert, is using that omnitool and I can hardly be expected to deprive her of such a necessary tool for just ten heads."

"What no!" Tali exclaimed shaking her head furiously. "I don't need this omni-"

"Hush Tali," Shepherd said using two his fingers to cover the speakers on her helmet. "I'm scheming here, don't worry."

"You think I'm going to do more of your dirty work over some omnitool?" Okeer sneared, "I'll just get a new one later."

"Well if that's how you feel about it," Shepherd pressed, "Then I'll just have to forward the contents of your research file to the appropriate authorities."

"Do you really think you can threaten a grown man with the contents of his porn stash?" Okeer dismissed.

"Do you really think your omnitool could stay in the hands of a Quarian for ten hours and they wouldn't manage to crack your encryption?" Shepherd countered. "I think the STG would just love to learn about what you've been up to."

"Are you blackmailing me Shepherd?" Okeer asked eyes full of hate and threats of violence.

"No I'm extorting you warlord." Shepherd responded that wild look still plastered to his face. "So do you want to negotiate for those ten years of your life back do we have to keep trying to one up each other?"

"Ten years!?" Okeer cried out. "Do you think such a pitiable amount of time matters to me? I remember life before the Salarians came to Tuchanka begging for our help against the Rachni! I have walked the stars since before your people knew how gunpowder worked! Be it ten years or another thousand I will continue my work and succeed."

"You don't have another thousand years old man!" Shepherd shouted back. "If you have another twenty in you I'd be amazed! Can you really put your life's work, your people's future on the line just for one petty grudge match!? Does the thought of a true cure really mean so little to you?"

Okeer quivered with rage, but held his place and his peace. The entire hanger bay held dead silent. The spectacle of the encounter had attracted numerous onlookers who now all stood dumbstruck at what Shepherd had suggested. Tali's mind was held just a paralyzed by the thought as it had been by Shepherd's agility. This omnitool on her arm held secrets to curing the genophage? Tali wasn't certain if she look at the thing with wonder or disgust.

"The day will come human." Okeer vowed. "When my people are free of that cursed disease and then your worlds will burn in our vengeance."

"If you believe that Okeer, then you are a fool." Shepherd pronounced.

"You're the fool!" Okeer insisted, "When my people rise up again-"

"They will find the Turian fleet is still far more skilled and disciplined than anything your people can field against them." Shepherd prophesied, "You will find you still have no defence against the next biological weapon of mass destruction the Salarians can throw at you. And you will find a galaxy arrayed against you and no hope of ever defeating them all. If you rise up like that, they will come and purge Tuchanka in nuclear fire and death."

"If that is so," Okeer concluded, "Then it will be far grander death then slowly rotting away to be forgotten."

Now it was Shepherd's turn to laugh, "A grand dream for sure. One that any man might hope in. If it comes to that in the end Okeer, I give you my word I will personally lead the first troops down to the planet that will hunt you all to the end."

In a moment, Okeer's fury likewise turned to laughter as he grinned like a mad man and joined Shepherd. After they both had calmed down they looked over the other, each weighing the other in new found light. Okeer at last nodded to himself and spoke again.

"Alright, name your price for the omnitool. You want another ten heads?"

"The future of a species can hardly be sold for something so petty." Shepherd dismissed. "Bring me the head of Torfan's governor and I will give you back your hope, and a way off of Torfan when the time comes."

"The governor huh? Tricky" Okeer said contemplating. "That one could take a while. How long before you start taking names down there."

"Thirty six hours at the most." Shepherd declared.

"That's a rather short time to raise up an army." Okeer noted.

"I'm on something of a tight schedule for this one." Shepherd said with a sigh, "I would move even faster than that if I didn't have to play politics with the pirates captains first. Oh the things I do for the sake of orbital firesupport."

"Hmmph." Okeer grunted in understanding, he himself had done some extreme things for the same. "I can work with thirty six hours. The rest of the pack might not like it, but I will knock some sense into them."

"Agreed." Shepherd concluded, "Now if you will excuse me, I have to get Tali down to Torfan's surface and start causing a little chaos."

Okeer nodded and Shepherd departed from the cargo hold. Jar'kannath and Jack accompanied him, and Tali finally found she could breath easily again. Behind them, Okeer also departed to rouse the rest of his blood pack that had survived the beating Shepherd had given them.

"That went better than expected." Shepherd commented. "Now we've got the blood pack on our side, things will be much easier."

"Assuming he can talk the rest around to his side." Jar'kannath qualified, "If the governor offers them enough money they pack might split on the issue. They've been known to take both sides before."

"The warlord's name holds a lot of weight in the right circles." Jack added, "If he backs us most of the pack will come with him at the very least. No matter what, most Krogan and all Vorcha like to be on the side that wins. I'm more worried about this research of his, I know the genophage has always been a pet peeve of yours Shepherd but is this the right time to start working on it?"

"It will certainly have to take a back seat to dealing with the Hegemony," Shepherd explained, "But Okeer offers a solution in that regard I had never considered. He wants to selectively breed out his people's vulnerability to the genophage. If he can pull it off, create an actually pure enough male that can reproduce normally, it gives us a viable solution that can implemented gradually while we adjust the galaxy to the reality of a recovering Krogan populace. While at the same time the Krogan will remain weak enough at first that they will have to compromise with the galaxy to avoid just being wiped out immediately, which will give us a chance to actually integrate their populace with galactic culture. It might just be our best bet in that regard. No matter what that man must make it off of Torfan alive and well."

"Wait." Tali interjected. "You've been planning to cure the genophage? You want to unleash the Krogan back onto the galaxy?"

"The genophage is one of the greatest injustices ever perpetrated by the Citadel Council." Shepherd answered with total conviction. "Possibly only surpassed by what the Council did to your own people. An act of slow genocide committed against the people very people who saved the galaxy from the Rachni. All because the Council lacked the will to bring the rebellions to their full conclusion and force a compromise out of the Krogan clans. I won't abide it. I can do better than that. I will do better than that."

"It just seems reckless," Tali continued more than a little confused. The rebellions had been one of the worst periods of galactic history. But she couldn't really deny that the Krogan had in many respects been betrayed by the galaxy that pulled them up out of Tuchanka in the first place. It was one of those rather terrible facts of life that people tried not to think about. The genophage was a terrible thing, but most people thought that a restored Krogan people would be even worse.

"Oh it's reckless alright." Jack agreed. "But Shepherd here also thinks that it's possible to reunite your people with the Geth. So 'reckless' isn't the kind of thing that Shepherd pays much attention to."

"Huh." Tali responded. She couldn't really even begin to process what Jack had just said. Reunification. No. That was not a thing that Tali could afford to deal with right now at all. Best to ignore it. "So like I was saying earlier before Okeer barged in, how are we going to get down to Torfan to start infiltrating their main base?"

"Oh that's easy." Shepherd said with a completely straight face. "We'll just jump."

---

AN: Turns out it's a bad idea to read fanfiction while I'm trying to write fanfiction. I end up wanting to write fanfiction about other people's fanfiction. And there would just be no end to that kind of nonsense. Anyway I blame that for dragging out the update time for this chapter.

I had originally intended to do all of Torfan in one chapter. But after writing 15,000 words i realized that I hadn't even gotten them down to the moon yet, so probably better to do this one in parts rather than waiting for the final end of it all. There will probably just one more part to finish this opening arc and then on to the rest of the revolution. Maybe.

I'm not the most organized author in the world when it comes to writing. I have ideas about specific scenes and lines of dialogue I want to get to, but all the connective tissue around them I kind of make up on the fly. I think this helps with conversations by making them flow more organically, but it does kind of stretch things out with some less than necessary advents and conversations. In the question of maintaining a good pace vs world building and allowing people to just interact I seem to fall on the side of letting things drag out a bit.

anyway. Let me know what you all think. I love getting review notices, it fills me with the determination to keep writing so feel free to review and critique.