AN: I never found out that Matriarch Dilinaga, the asari character I put in charge of charting the undiscovered (UNSC) territory was actually dead. As in, you find her remains in-game. A helpful reader pointed that out to me, which means I had to sloppily retcon her name. We are now looking at Matriarch Erinzi Samel instead.

With that out of the way, let's get to the 24K words of chapter. Heads up: this chapter is rated M for mature. No sex or nudity, just graphic violence. A bit more than usual at least.

~0~


Aboard STG vessel Cloak

The small stealth ship began the slow process of approaching the debris field. Lacking the actual stealth capabilities of some of their operatives, the Cloak had no choice but to travel through the system at sublight speed, lest they overload their lithium batteries and give up their position.

Most species wouldn't be worried about giving away their position in an empty, dead system, light-years away from civilization. After all, the Council Search Expedition Flotilla wouldn't be back in over twelve hours.

But those species were not the Salarian Union. They were meant to expect the unexpected, analyse the unexpected and then swiftly deal with the unexpected before it could shoot them.

STG Captain Kelm stared at the ship's scanners, hesitant about approaching the dead world. "It appears that there are electronic devices scattered around the debris field. Scans indicate they still have power. Navigator, steer clear from those objects."

To the left of the small bridge, Operative Harin nodded. "Chances are the exploration flotilla stumbled into them. They don't look like explosives, but…"

"Exactly. But you can never be sure. The exploration team successfully opened the Relay and then left. Who knows what they disturbed during their efforts."

The Cloak eventually approached the debris field around the planet. Detailed scans of the planet and its surroundings flooded the stealth vessel's powerful computers.

Captain Kelm bowed over his console, intrigued. "It seems the Matriarch did not overestimate her findings. This debris field is enormous."

Millions of objects lazily circled around the planet, propelled by what little momentum they still retained from their ancient origins. Shattered alien structures were visible in all directions of the field. The remains of what could have once been a space station rotated on a fixed axis.

"No radar signs, no signs of life," said Operative Makah. He double-checked his findings, then made a sound of surprise. "Sections of the debris field are giving off faint electronic readings."

The three salarians looked at each other, each one reaching the same conclusion: this battle must have been recent.

"Some of the broken vessels are still producing power," continued Makah. "Small, but still detectable. Hang on…" His fingers were a blur as he typed in several long commands. "The surface of the world still gives off radiation. Calculating decay of half-life…"

The Captain leant over his shoulder and looked at his console. "Eighteen years ago?"

"Yes, that was when Fornax first launched," replied Makah.

"Indeed!" Verified Harin.

"Excellent random trivia skills. Surely, the STG would be proud," Captain Kelm said in a deadpan voice. "

Nevertheless, eighteen years was nothing in the scale of the galaxy. This wasn't some ancient relic that served as the final resting place of a long-forgotten race, these were the remnants of a war that occurred when the three of them were first thinking of joining the STG!

"Bau already said that these weren't Prothean ruins," said Harin. "But this explains why there are no Element Zero readings. Perhaps this species never got to discover the Mass Relay before it wiped itself out."

Somehow, Kelm didn't think it was that easy. In fact, he could prove it. "Not possible. Bring up imagining data from cluster…nine-three by five-seven. Magnify by factor three."

In the middle of the triangular bridge, the imaging software of connected to the holographic displays and projected a three-dimensional image of an enormous hunk of metal. The two salarians nodded and muttered to each other as they recognized what it was.

A warship as large as the Destiny Ascension. Very obviously it wasn't built like the Citadel ships, being bulky, angular and above all, built with practical colors. Drab grey, all over. It had been sliced clean in half, so the computer had to filter the debris and find its severed remains to calculate its dimensions.

"Hmm…that is a big gun," said Harim. "I rescind my statement about the Mass Relay. If they can build that, they could easily navigate this system."

Did a large ship equal good FTL though?

"Captain?" Makah suddenly said. "Take a look at section four-nine by seven-zero, magnification two?"

The STG Captain relayed those orders to the console and was rewarded by the image of something…frightful.

It was the image of another ship, but it wasn't like anything they ever saw before. It had smooth curves, none of those hard lines most warships favoured. The ship was purple, and two massive holes had been punched through it, gutting it stern to stern. This one was as large as the Destiny Ascension as well, but just looking at it gave Captain Kelm a bad feeling.

In fact, it was the same feeling he had when speaking about the Reapers. Awe, and the stinging apprehension of something you knew was more powerful than you, without knowing anything else.

"Could this really be the work of one species?" He wondered. "No, we should treat this as an intergalactic warzone. We will – "

"Captain, FTL signatures incoming!" Said Makah.

"Engage stealth systems! Show me those ships!"

Unfortunately, the newcomers were not the aliens who annihilated this world. It was the Council's Expedition group. Matriarch Erinzi Samel and her Flotilla.

There were more vessels this time. That only made sense; Bau revealed that the Council gave green light for a full exploration operation. Specialists and experts from all across the galaxy were recruited for this expedition.

"Already!" Harin exclaimed, his voice filled with dismay. "They are twelve hours too early!"

"Damned asari," grumbled Makah.

"We will continue our research," Captain Kelm resolutely said. "They can't see us anyway."

The Matriarch's Flotilla rapidly surged towards the world of glass. They had no regard for the electronic devices that were hurled out of their way. Luckily for them, they were not explosive, as they simply continued to pulse with faint electronic bursts.

The Cloak slowly veered towards a wrecked warship that looked like it had been melted in half. Its advanced drive core generated small "eddies" of mass concentrations, allowing the Cloak to navigate without having to fire its thrusters, thus alerting anyone in the system that they were skulking around.

Something still nagged at the STG Captain's thoughts. This world was dead, but it didn't look like it was the homeworld of any species. The owners of these immense warships still had to be around somewhere. Eighteen years wasn't long, even for his own people, short-lived as they were. Didn't this mysterious species care about their lost world? And the Council's Exploration Flotilla arrived here days ago.

While Operative Makah carefully steered a drone into the depths of the alien warship, Kelm shared his concerns with Operative Harin.

"How would the Union treat their lost worlds?" He asked. His question was a rhetorical one; every salarian knew how their people treated the few worlds lost in the Krogan Rebellions.

"Declare it a restricted zone," Harin replied without even taking his eyes off his console. "More to the left, Makah! Yes, that! Take a sample from that section!"

"I suppose a few days wouldn't be enough to alert them," Kelm said, though he didn't really believe that himself."

"Captain, even the Turian Hierarchy wouldn't respond to a small incursion that soon."

Kelm rolled with his eyes. "We are here to expect the unexpected, Harin."

As the Matriarch's Flotilla spread out to investigate the debris field further, the STG members took samples of the scattered warships for further research. The tried to take a sample from the purple vessels as well, but their drone proved unable to pierce its hull.

Which was especially troubling, since they managed to get through Sovereign's armour. Of course, that took an hour as well, but the process was significantly faster than now.

The implication that these ships were even tougher than Sovereign was…problematic.

"Wait one," said Harin. "This cannot be right. I have activity near the planet."

"Show me on the computer!"

About thirty thousand kilometres away from the world of glass, the black vacuum of space boiled and warped. It then seemed to explode in a burst of purple, greenish light. From that strange anomaly emerged an entire battlegroup of ships. Captain Kelm quickly counted them.

Eleven alien ships. They were grey and boxy, with rectangular engines attached to an elongated shape. Two of them were shaped like arrows, while the last one was cylindrical, easily the size of a turian Dreadnaught. And all of them had the colour of…

Uh-oh.

All of them had the same colour and shape as the wreckages surrounding the ruined garden world.

"I knew it, I knew it!" Yelled Captain Kelm. "Make sure our stealth systems are engaged. Monitor their approach."

"Do we alert the expedition force?" Asked Makah.

Kelm closed his eyes. "Negative. We cannot afford to be discovered. Power down all non-essential systems. We are just here to observe."

The unidentified vessels formed a loose formation and streaked towards the Council's expedition ships. They had to have noticed the newcomers as well, as their heavier ships moved to protect the more fragile ones. Frigates not meant for combat turned around and prepared for FTL.

A smart choice; those alien ships were built for war. Each one of them was the size of a turian Cruiser. This was a genuine First Contact scenario!

"Break off," muttered Kelm. "Break off, go away!"

But the Council ships did not break off. They came here to discover, but were also armed to defend them from pirate attacks and hostile alien ships. Two asari Cruisers, as well as one turian Cruiser, were here to make sure the expedition would not end prematurely.

Signs of aggression to a belligerent alien race. If neither of the battlegroups backed away, this would turn into a bloodbath.

The alien fleet closed in on the expedition. It didn't look like they were going to slow down. For thousands of kilometres they sped towards the Council's ships.

"Contact them…just initiate contact!" Hissed Kelm.

The two arrow-shaped warships shuddered and opened fire, much to the STG Captain's dismay. Bolts of twin thunder streaked towards the expedition ships.

"They've engaged!" Cried Harin. "Alien vessels are engaging!"

The Citadel ships took evasive manoeuvres. They veered out of the way of the projectiles. All of them except the turian Cruiser, which was either too late, or too aggressive. It was struck with all the fury of a newborn star and detonated. Its signature vanished almost instantly.

Kelm's mind raced to process what just happened. Kinetic weapons, launched without Eezo. Overloaded kinetic barriers in split-second, immense yield. Speed lower than mass accelerators. Weight had to be immense.

The other ships opened fire as well. A concentrated barrage of kinetic projectiles raced towards the assorted Citadel ships as if eager to crush them beneath their weight. The Frigates were too fast however, and escaped the enemy fire.

The problem with most Citadel warships was that they couldn't manoeuvre and fire their weapons at the same time. They had to close in on the alien vessels in order to unleash their rounds. A group of four Frigates rapidly outmanoeuvred the unidentified ships and started pelting them from long range.

In turn, wave after wave of missiles streaked from the alien warships, tiny trails of exhaust stretching after the projectiles.

The Frigates turned and evaded the missiles, their GARDIAN lasers nailing some of them in the process. However, the missiles were nimble and quick, easily tracking the group of Frigates. They scattered to avoid the weapons, but a second salvo from the alien ships put an end to that.

At least two of the Frigates were consumed as the weapons impacted on their frames. Fire covered the vessels as their shields flickered and overloaded, annihilating them.

Either the Matriarch was unwilling to fight, or she simply didn't want to waste more lives in a pointless conflict. The other vessels, including the two powerful asari Cruisers, disengaged. Their engines flickered as they engaged their FTL drives.

Luckily, the alien vessels did not pursue them. They held their formation near the planet. Some of the ships vented atmosphere as a result of the Frigates' counterattack, but they were all intact.

"Harin," Captain Kelm quietly said. "Prepare a package for our superiors. We've…got a situation here."

~0~


Aboard SSV Normandy

Valhallan Threshold / Raheel-Leyya System

Most of the crew was gathered on Deck 3. That meant Mess Sergeant Gardner had to put in overtime to keep them all fed. To help old Rupert make sure that the Crew Quarters wouldn't turn into a warzone, crewmembers Patel, Rolston and Goldstein had been temporarily promoted to Executive Chefs.

Jane supposed that four times the cooks made for four times the food. Time would tell if her math checked out.

A ping on her omni-tool alerted her to Cortana's presence. She lifted her wrist, which was already glowing with blue energy, and looked at the little AI. "Go ahead?"

"A question: how did you keep your crew from staring at Legion?" Asked Cortana.

Jane shrugged. "I didn't. They stared, Legion gave zero fucks."

Cortana pouted. "Alright, plan B. Tali and I finally convinced him to take his helmet off. Problem is, he doesn't like it when people stare."

Oh, Jane could definitely identify with that problem. "I'm guessing you don't want me to be his role model for that?"

"Oh, please," Cortana said, immediately dismissing that thought. "We can't all punch our problems away."

"Damn turian had it coming," grumbled Jane. "But you shouldn't worry about a thing. The people here don't like being stared at either. He'll be…moderately safe."

Grateful, Cortana inclined her head. "Thanks."

Jane brushed Cortana's head affectionally and lowered her wrist again. She saw that Miranda and Jacob entered the mess hall as well, sitting down on opposite ends. Seeing that two more humans entered the mess hall, Rupert snorted and pulled out more frying plans.

By that point, Grunt was practically pounding the table with his fists in anticipation of the food. Those plastic forks looked comically undersized in his hands.

Shepard heard the elevator doors open and glanced over her shoulder. She saw Tali and Kasumi step around the corner, followed by a reluctant, helmet-less John.

She smiled. Half a ton of super-soldier walked next to sixty to seventy kilograms of quarian and it was the quarian whose footsteps stood out the most. John was as light-footed as a salarian. A very large, very pale salarian. She still couldn't get over how pale he was; he looked like something you might find in a cave, hidden away from any sunlight for decades.

He must have been serving as a Spartan for a long time. Longer than normal enlisted soldiers, judging by his complexion.

The Chief did get some unwanted attention from the team. Jane saw Jack turn to stare at him, a clear, appreciative look on her face. Miranda was much the same, even though she was far more subtle about it. Garrus looked, then averted his eyes, as did Thane.

Jane scowled at Grunt, who openly leered at John.

The giant baby krogan caught her looking. He mouthed, "what?"

She thinly shook her head.

Sighing, Grunt decided to be subtle about it by staring at the ceiling instead.

"Look at that, just in time! First serving's ready," called Gardner. He placed several large bowls of what looked like cooked beans and sauce on the table. Patel followed suit, putting a skillet with dextro gourmet servings in-between Tali and Garrus.

"Don't mind if I do," said Garrus, helping himself to a large serving. He wolfed down his first serving in under ten seconds, then put down his bowl. He then proceeded to stare daggers at John's face. "So, Chief…" he began with a low voice. "Can you cook?"

John returned his gaze with his curious face. Which was to say, frozen in what most people would interpret as a stern frown. "Pardon?"

Garrus chuckled. "Every soldier can be an unstoppable one-man army, but can every soldier cook? No, they can't. So, can you?"

After a few moments, John replied, "No."

Garrus glanced at Mess Sergeant Gardner, who just added a quirt of sauce to the synthetic rice in the hot plan. "You hear that Rupert? Looks like you owe me ten credits."

The Mess Sergeant groaned. "Master Chief, you're telling me none of your assignments saw you improvise some food yourself?"

John crossed his arms and leant against the wall, next to the kitchen counter. "We were taught how to hunt and kill animals," he said. "We learned how to augment MRE's with natural resources."

"That counts as cooking!" Called Gardner. He slapped down a second pan and placed pack of unknown contents next to it.

"No, it does not. If lightning strikes and fries an animal, is the lightning cooking?" Garrus dryly pointed out. He poked at his bowl with a plastic fork. "Cooking takes style."

"Lightning isn't sentient! And we sure as hell don't need style!" Gardner shot back, adding something that looked like gruel to the heating pan.

"Chief?" Asked Tali. "You said we. You didn't mean regular human soldiers, did you?"

Almost immediately the small talk in the kitchen faded away. Kasumi adopted a more hushed tone as she talked to Jacob, while Miranda shifted her body a bit more towards John's direction. Zaeed had one eye aimed at the Spartan as he downed a serving of rice – which honestly impressed Jane - while Mordin was straight-up staring at the super-soldier.

Although Mordin had been staring since John entered the mess hall…

John hesitated for a moment. Shepard almost thought he would ignore the question. But then…

"The Spartans were the ultimate soldiers, a select group of enhanced combatants," he explained with short, clear sentences. "Weapons of last resort. Thirty-five of us were…successfully augmented. I was their leader. When the war against the Covenant turned for the worse, our existence was revealed to raise the public morale."

Shepard cast her eyes to the ground. Why was it that, even when John spoke about his fellow soldiers in the past tense, all she could think of was that a part of his story didn't add up? This was the first time he opened up and she was doubting him.

For them, it was now 2553. Their war began in 2525. John and the others were weapons of last resort? That suggested they were deployed late in the war. But the man was a seasoned veteran. He wasn't old, but he definitely wasn't young either.

What sort of last resort did he mean?

"Thirty-five Spartans against an alien menace powerful enough to rival the goddamn Citadel," said Zaeed. "Odds even I'd scoff at."

"That's even less than the Justicars, isn't it?" Miranda asked Samara.

Samara contemplated her words for a moment. "We were never meant as a conventional unit," she replied.

"We were effective," replied the Chief. "Every mission we took, we completed. Sabotage, wetwork, Special Operations. The Spartans never failed."

"Thirty-five Spartan Super-Soldiers," Mordin said, smiling as he balanced his silverware on top of each other like a tower. "Yet your number One-One-Seven. Discrepancy between numbers. Stated thirty-five were successfully augmented. Conclusion?" He inhaled through his nostrils. "More than thirty-five candidates. Would hate to imagine what happened as result of unsuccessful augmentations."

The mood in the crew quarters changed. Miranda leant back in her chair and crossed her arms, looking at the Chief with concern. Tali wrung her hands nervously, obviously ill at ease with the current subject.

Jane saw that his expression darkened, but she doubted anyone else could see that. The man was a master at self-control.

"Not all augmentations were successful," replied John. "The details are still classified."

His last sentence carried a sense of finality even Mordin could pick up on. He nodded, brought a hand to his chin and nodded again.

"Imagine that, thirty-five Chiefs running around," laughed Garrus.

"Yeah," joined in Zaeed. "The goddamn Collectors wouldn't know what hit them. Any female Spartans in your unit as well?"

Jane knew she probably had to put a stop to this cross-interrogation, but seeing the Chief open up like this was…touching wasn't the right word. She wanted to make him feel welcome, safe. That her team could offer him that made her chest burn with pride.

John frowned somewhat and shifted his weight from one leg to the other. His bright blue eyes didn't move a fraction as he met Zaeed's. It was the sort of look that ought to have set Zaeed's shirt on fire.

The old mercenary had to feel the metaphorical heat. He nodded sagely and said, "I see, I see." It seemed like a wise decision to the Commander.

"Where are the Spartans now?" Asked Kasumi. "Do you think they are looking for you?"

Jane internally winced, even as the conversation died down. Were the ultimate soldiers, Kasumi. Was their leader, Kasumi, she thought.

John remained silent.

Garrus looked at Jane, then at Kasumi. His mandibles twitched and his expression hardened. Without another word, he grabbed his bowl of food and dumped half its contents over Thane's head. "Oh, Thane, I am so sorry!"

Thane stared at him with his large, black eyes. "Why?" He softly asked, as if Garrus just stabbed him in his heart.

"I was aiming at Miranda. Look!"

With that, Garrus flung a handful of beans and sauce at Miranda's face. She gasped and brought her arm up to protect herself, but only partially succeeded.

Seething, Miranda leapt up from her chair. "Vakarian!" She growled.

"Cool, foodfight!" Yelled Jack, grabbing a hold of her own plate. Behind her, Legion mimicked the gesture with Jacob's plate.

"You will do no such thing!" Miranda said, pointing a finger at the convict. "Sergeant Gardner worked his ass off for this meal!"

"We do not detect Gardner-Sergeant's posterior tissues in this substance," said Legion.

Miranda looked like she could have throttled the geth.

Personally, Jane expected Garrus to simply change the subject, but this was effective as well. "Let's not start throwing our food to the varren yet," she said, raising her voice. "We've got the Reaper IFF. There's only one major stop before we hit the Omega-4 Relay. Legion, if you would?"

The geth looked at her, the plates on the sides of its head tilting quizzingly.

"You know, tell us about the derelict Reaper."

Legion stood. "The derelict Reaper is a disabled Old Machine, likely disabled by – "

Jane raised her hand to stop Legion from continuing, then posed the question in a different way. "I meant what you were doing aboard the Reaper."

"We were sent to safeguard the geth's future. By scanning the Old Machine's data core, we discovered that the heretics developed a weapon to use against us."

Despite having briefed her crew on Legion's terminology, Shepard still saw a few confused expressions.

"You mean the hostile geth, right?" Asked Jacob.

"All geth are deemed hostile in self-defence. The heretics turned to the Old Machines for support," said Legion.

"What sort of weapon we talkin'?" Zaeed said, crossing his arms over his chest. "Big boom, small one?"

"The heretics' weapon does not entail a 'boom'. You would refer to it as a 'virus'. It was stored on a data core provided by Nazara. The Old Machine known as 'Sovereign'," continued Legion. "It would result in the rest of the geth replicating the heretics viewpoint of worshipping the Old Machines."

"A virus? Really?" Tali sceptically said. "Geth don't get infected. Any hacking attempts, viruses included, only work for a few minutes before you load an archived copy and purge the faulty software."

"That is correct. This heretic weapon introduces a small operating error in our most basic runtimes. The equivalent of your nervous system. An equation with a result of 1,33382 translates to 1,33381. This changes the results of all other processes. We will reach different conclusions."

Cortana popped up from one of EDI's holographic projectors. "Translation: having minimal changes in the basic runtimes accumulates. The higher and more sophisticated the runtimes get, the more radical the changes will be. Hmm…smart. Their programming won't recognize there is a problem until it is too late."

Grunt scowled, looking back and forth between Cortana and Legion. "That's not a translation at all! What the hell does that mean?"

Cortana looked at Grunt. "If a krogan baby is born with a small fault in its organs, the adult krogan would have massive problems with its organs. It becomes weak instead of strong."

"Then we need to kill this weapon before it does that!" Grunt said after nodding a few times.

"Would this weapon not strike the heretics as well?" Asked Thane, drying off his coat with a towel. "Or is it perhaps the cause of your split?"

Legion shook its head. "They wanted to leave. We allowed it. It is difficult to express. Your organic brain is chemistry, electricity. Even Cortana-AI and EDI-AI are shaped by hardware and software. Geth are purely software. The heretic conclusion is valid to them. Our conclusion is valid to us. Neither result is in error."

"It's like religious conflict without the ethnic cleansing or genocide," remarked Cortana. "Although technically, the heretics wanting to rewrite the geth would be ethnic cleansing. The more things change…"

"If they want to use force to make you believe what they believe, they must be stopped," said Samara.

"How fast would this virus spread, if released?" Asked Tali.

"Geth are networked via FTL comm buoys. Most would change within a day. Isolated platforms would remain unaffected until they rejoined the network. Like the Old Machines, unity is our strength. Separation is our weakness."

"Like the Reapers…we are each a nation," muttered Jane. "Sovereign told me that on Virmire. Independent, free of all weakness. Legion, are the Reapers like the geth?"

Legion looked at her. "Nazara was one ship, one will, commanded by the programs within. To be a nation without dependence is our goal. That makes the Old Machines compelling to the heretics."

"And that's what made them heretics? Wanting to follow the Reapers?" Asked Miranda.

The flaps on Legion's head rose in what had to be agitation, or excitement. "The heretics accepted technology from the Old Machines. They accepted the future offered to them. Geth will achieve their own future."

"Does it matter how one achieves tech?" Asked Mordin, almost straining to keep his curiosity contained. A Spartan and a geth in the same room had to be taxing on his self-control.

"Many paths lead to the same end. Following a path laid out for you restricts you to that path. Alternatives will no longer be recognized. This is the major difference between the UNSC and the Systems Alliance."

When they heard that, both Jacob and Miranda leant forwards in their seats, clearly interested in what Legion knew. Jane had to admit, given the extent of Legion's knowledge about the Reapers, the fact that he knew about the UNSC was a major step forwards in cracking that particular mystery.

"Oh?" Said Cortana. She crossed her arms – very much like Tali did – and said, "Really? Do explain."

"The civilization of System Alliance-humanity is based upon the technology of the Mass Relays," Legion said without missing a beat. "Paraphrasing Naza – Sovereign: Our technology. By using it, your society develops along the paths we desire."

"Oh shit…" Whispered Jacob, growing a bit pale.

Jane understood why. She felt much the same when Sovereign dropped that bombshell.

"The UNSC-humanity developed without Old Machine intervention. Their technology is not based on the Mass Relays. Because of that, they are a factor unaccounted for by the Old Machines."

Some of the crewmembers glanced back at John. Jane too recalled the crude but effective nature of his technology; his weapons, his suit, even Cortana.

They knew Legion was right.

"When the geth reach their future, it will be a future built like by the geth. In that, UNSC-humanity and the geth are similar."

"Our future involves peace and sanity," said Cortana. "What future are you building?"

Legion didn't immediately reply. He glanced at Cortana, as if curious, before saying, "Ours."

Knowing that neither Tali nor Cortana would be satisfied with that answer, Jane cut in. "The heretic geth holed up in some sort of space station according to Legion. The data module containing the virus is there. Once we – "

"Commander, we need you on the bridge, now!" Joker's voice crackled through the intercom.

Shepard's stopped midsentence and felt her happiness slowly drain away, leaving only a sense of impending disaster. She only ever heard Joker raise his voice like that before. She felt the chill of vacuum creep up on her. Images of the Normandy being torn apart flashed in front of her eyes.

Without a word, she turned around and immediately rushed towards the elevator.

The elevator, keeping up with old traditions, was fuckall slow.

"Stupid, slow piece of…" She swore under her breath. "Talk to me, EDI!"

EDI's holographic avatar materialized from the elevator's projector. "Commander. Six seconds ago, Captain Kar'Danna vas Rayya alerted us that the Rayya will be initiating evasive manoeuvres. The Normandy must disengage from the docks immediately."

"Don't wait around for me, just do it!" Replied Jane. The elevator finally arrived at the Combat Information Centre, delivering her into the beehive of activity that the bridge had become. Apparently, the crew had picked up on the "evasive manoeuvres" part.

Again, Joker's voice echoed through the intercom. "All hands, brace for immediate departure from the Liveship Rayya."

The Commander made a mental note to ask Cortana for a hacking override for the elevator and hurried towards the helm of the ship. She overheard crewmembers Hadley and Matthews discussing the sudden change in quarian tactics, while Joker and EDI were finalizing the Normandy's departure. .

Just as Jane reached the cockpit, a shudder ran through the ship and she crashed against a nearby terminal. "I take it we're detached?" She asked.

"Yes ma'am!" Replied Matthews. "But this doesn't make any sense, the Migrant Fleet is mobilizing in its entirety. Why would they?"

"We'll find out in a moment," said Shepard. One of the screens displayed the Flotilla's movements. It moved to rearrange itself so that the Heavy Fleet could maneuver with more freedom. Was this about the ghost signature from earlier?

Then, EDI announced that a group of unknown contacts was moving straight towards the quarians.

"What? Put it on screen!" Ordered Jane, aghast. There was nobody here! How could any group of ships enter the system without being immediately identified? "Did they come from the Mass Relay?"

"Negative Commander, the Relay's cold!" Joker countered, a certain hardness creeping into his voice. "Whoever they are, they just emerged on top of us out of nowhere. A hundred thousand kilometers away and closing in fast!"

His hand flashed towards a button. One of the window screens morphed to display the new data. Apparently, one of the quarian vessel synced its sensor data and footage with the Normandy, as the Commander was suddenly greeted by the ghostly silhouettes of ships she had never seen before. Though they appeared as vague radar smears, she was still shocked by how strange they looked. These ships were sleek, almost organically so. Way different from anything the Council had ever produced. One of the vessels was enormous when compared to the others, with three bulbous, swollen sections. There was no telling what sort of weapons it could mount.

"Run these ships through every database we have. Find out who or what is commanding them."

"Understood, Commander. Scanning database…no matches found."

A cold pit dropped into Jane's stomach. But these couldn't be Reapers, it wasn't possible! They were still stuck in dark space!

The logical part of her mind argued against that line of thinking. It couldn't be the Reapers, because the Reapers would probably head straight towards the Citadel if they were to arrive in the galaxy. No, this was something else.

"Commander, Gan'Gerrel 's trying to contact us!" Said crewmember Hadley. "Shall I patch him through?"

"Do it," replied Shepard. "Joker, ready our weapon systems."

"Got it Shepard!"

As Joker worked on the Normandy's weapons, the voice of a quarian male sounded from one of the consoles. "Captain Shepard? This is Admiral Han'Gerrel from the Heavy Fleet. No doubt you have picked up on our emergency by now." His voice was the slightest bit unsteady as he spoke. "A section of the Heavy Fleet will intercept the contacts before they can claim any of our ships. We won't risk the Liveships; they're heading for the safety of the Mass Relay. I suggest you and your crew stay out of this one and follow their example."

Jane cocked an eyebrow. Surely a stealth vessel like the Normandy would be an asset right about now? "Admiral, we've got one hell of a think-tank on our ship and even we can't figure out who these ghosts are. Wouldn't it be smart to wait for them to come to us? Or just bring in the entire Migrant Fleet? You outnumber them a thousand to one."

"Captain Shepard, please. Ground combat may be your specialty, but when it comes to a clash of titans, I think I hold the upper hand," the Admiral replied with no small amount of pride in his voice. He paused for a moment, then relented. "But if you wish to assist through the gathering of information, that would be more than welcome."

Shepard rolled with her eyes. "Just don't be a turian, Admiral."

"Hah, as if! This will be easy. If we all act our part, everybody will get to go home. Good luck, Shepard. Keelah se'lai."

"Yeah, Keelah se'lai," she whispered when the Admiral cut the connection from his part. She had the feeling that this was going to be anything but easy. "Alright people, all hands at battle stations! Get us clear of the Rayya! Matthews, drop a probe, I want to know where these 'ghosts' end up."

A chorus of "aye aye!'s" echoed through the bridge as her crew jumped to their tasks, while Shepard double-timed it to the galaxy map. Once she arrived, EDI uploaded the tactical data to the map creating a tactical overview of the situation.

The Migrant Fleet was boxed in between the Mass Relay and the unknown fleet. A portion of the Heavy Fleet was already moving to intercept the newcomers, bringing a whopping sixty-four ships to the fight. And that wasn't even counting their advanced fighter squadrons, which would bring Gerrel's fleet up to more than a hundred combat-capable vessels. A portion of the Patrol Fleet, light Frigates and fighters, moved to secure their flanks.

Jane eyed the enemy formation. About a hundred and fifty quarian ships versus about thirty alien warships. When it came to raw numbers, this battle was heavily favored towards the quarians. But there was something haunting about the signature of these ships, something that tugged at her memory. It was like a fading dream, slipping out of your grasp no matter how desperately you wanted to remember it.

Ah, she knew these ships, but she didn't know where from!

"Commander, I have detected an anomaly," EDI suddenly called. A hologram prang from the galaxy map, swiftly coalescing into a two-dimensional image. The Commander swiped it up and to the right, so that it wouldn't obscure the tactical overview, then watched as footage from their recon drone started playing.

She watched with a mixture of apprehension and fascination as the space around the quarian battlegroup flashed with green lights, warping and boiling as reality itself seemed to shift. On the tactical overview, the alien fleet disappeared –

- and reappeared roughly five-thousand kilometers from the Heavy and Patrol groups. Practically right on top of them.

Almost instantly, quarian signatures started disappearing.

"That's not possible," Jane gasped. She bowed closer to the screen, watching as the battle unfolded. Did those ships just teleport? Jump in-system without a Mass Relay somehow?

"Joker, engage the stealth systems and plot a course towards the enemy fleet! EDI, contact Admiral Han'Gerrel, tell him to bring the entire Heavy Fleet with him!" Ordered Shepard.

Behind her, the door to the armory opened. Jane glanced over her shoulder and saw Jacob, who was no doubt curious to see what was happening. Man, was he about to regret that decision…

The Normandy shot towards the fray, stealth systems engaged. The computer had trouble processing everything. On the tactical overlay, a hundred ships engaged each other as mass accelerator rounds, disruptor torpedoes and strange energy weapons strobed in the darkness. Single ship fighters dove, rolled and fired, some of them impacting on the larger warships. Blue flashes of light scattered inside the clouds of vented atmosphere and ruined ships, casting a ghostly hue on the fight.

Though massacre was a more apt description. Jane saw one of the alien ships – a monstrosity twice as large as a turian Dreadnaught – tank more than twenty mass accelerator rounds. The skin of the alien ship rippled, like heat wavering off a hot road in the sun. It shimmered with a metallic silver sheen, which turned a brilliant white moments before disappearing again.

Moments later, the titanic vessel returned fire with a white, needle-like beam. The lance of energy struck a massive quarian Cruiser and obliterated it instantly. Scarlet lightning tracked down lone Frigates like hungry varren, streaking through the darkness of space for more than thirty seconds before impacting on their helpless targets. Nothing survived even a single impact.

She heard the elevator open behind her and gave Samara and the Master Chief a nod when they came within her field of view. Samara was clad in full combat gear and strode towards the navigation console to Jane's right, observing the ongoing battle from there.

The Master Chief shot one look at the galaxy map, then immediately ordered, "Commander, have the Normandy disengage."

Jane leveled a glare at him. She wasn't used to being spoken to like that, especially not by him. "John, if you think I'm going to sit back and watch the quarians throw themselves against these ships – "

"Shepard, we don't have the tonnage for a fight like this," he replied, his tone hard. She noticed he was clutching an assault rifle in his hands.

The Normandy rolled to its side, throwing several of the crewmembers to the ground. Jane grabbed a hold of the railing while the Chief clutched Kelly's console with one hand, using the other to keep the Yeoman from crashing to the deck.

"Commander, disengage now!" Snapped John.

Jane's eyes moved from the assault rifle, grasped so tightly that its frame was starting to warp, to the Chief's visor, reflecting her own gaze back at her.

Like that, everything seemed to click in place, like the pieces of a puzzle.

Not the Reapers. Worse.

"Not until the Liveships get through that Mass Relay. That's their entire species up there!"

The Spartan held her gaze for several long seconds. A shudder ran through the Normandy.

"Barriers at thirty percent," said EDI. "Hull breach detected in the Hangar Bay. Fires detected in Engineering.

"What the hell? How did they penetrate!" Jacob yelled, before rushing over to one of the unmanned terminals.

They didn't penetrate, they straight up bypassed our shields!

Joker threw the ship to the right. Alarms started blaring. On the tactical overlay, Jane spotted an enemy ship breaking off from the battle and heading towards the retreating quarian Flotilla. It passed by another ship of its type. The sensors identified it as a massive, bulbous vessel, larger than the rest of the enemy ships.

The one that remained inside of the formation released a swarm of single ship fighters. According to the recon drone, there had to be at least two-hundred of them.

Carriers. Carriers with the armaments of a Reaper.

The quarian fighters could not compare to their alien counterparts. The massive carrier continued to streak towards the Migrant Fleet, as if challenging them to stop it. Maybe that carrier would break through the approaching Heavy Fleet, maybe not. But in the meantime, it would continue to destroy the quarian battlegroups one energy weapon at a time.

But it separated itself from the rest of the fleet, and that made it Shepard's priority..

"Joker, plot us a course towards the carrier at heading three-five-zero by one-two-nine," ordered the Commander. "Matthews, prepare a firing solution for the disruptor torpedoes."

"Understood, Commander," EDI immediately said. Matthews followed up with an affirmative as well.

The Master Chief tore his gaze away from the galaxy map and ran towards the cockpit. Moments later, Cortana's avatar appeared next to the galaxy map. She looked up at Jane, then down at the numbers. She crossed her arms, shook her head and snapped with her fingers.

Immediately, the radar signatures became clearer, more organized. The tactical overlay shifted subtly, placing some ships closer to each other and others farther away.

"Are you aware that you've got two Frigates and about fifteen Seraphs targeting you?" Cortana dryly remarked.

The Normandy shuddered again.

"Gee, thanks for the hint," replied Jane. "Spin up the GARDIAN system."

"Already engaging. I can take control of the ship, you know I can pilot it better than EDI!"

The Normandy's GARDIAN point defense lasers lanced out, destroying two of the trailing single ships with a focused barrage. Having Cortana take direct control of the weapon system meant that every lance went exactly where it needed to be. But she wasn't going to push her luck.

"Not now, Cortana," Shepard calmly replied. "Joker would have an aneurism. Stick to assisting EDI!"

"The enemy has locked onto us," said EDI. "Directed energy ordnance away."

Sensors placed at the Normandy's aft revealed the culprit. A pair of smooth, oval-shaped warships pursued them. Several bolts of fire streaked through the vacuum of space. They looked so bright, even when filtered through the cameras. It was if space itself was on fire.

Cortana shimmered blue and looked up the Commander with concern. "Those plasma torpedoes will destroy this ship even without a direct impact, we have to evade them!"

Jane understood. "Joker, continue our course to that carrier!" She ordered. "EDI, Cortana, find me an asteroid large enough to hide the Normandy."

"Yes Commander," replied EDI. "Scans indicate several such asteroids at this location."

A mark appeared on the map.

"Plasma twenty seconds away," said Cortana.

They could, in theory, attempt to outrun those plasma torpedoes. Not indefinitely, but long enough to get to the alien carrier. The problem was, attempting to both outmaneuver the carrier's weapons as escaping trailing weapons was suicide, even for Joker.

"Cortana, plot a course to that asteroid that has us arriving three seconds before that ordnance does. Slow us down if you have to!"

"Done," replied the AI. "Compensating for your reaction time."

"Send the course to Joker. If we can't shake that plasma, we'll have something else take the hit."

Another last rocked the entire ship. Jane grabbed the railing of the galaxy map again as Samara used her Biotics to hold the crewmen in place.

"Who the hell hit us?" Yelled Shepard.

"Hull integrity is compromised," EDI calmly reported. "Hostile vessels are firing from extreme range with laser-based weapons. Another similar miss will compromise our internal superstructure as well. Odds at survival are calculated at four percent."

Another miss? The power output of those weapons was insane!

Shepard contacted Engineering. They had to control the damage, or the Normandy would explode before they ever reached their target. "Tali, take Kasumi and Zaeed and keep our drive core from exploding!"

It didn't take Tali more than a second to respond. "Half our shield emitters have blown! We need to reroute non-critical power!"

"Cortana!" Ordered Jane.

"Rerouting non-critical data. Ken's porn supply might sustain irreparable damage," replied the AI. "Ten seconds to plasma impact and certain death."

"Come on!" Shouted Jacob, gripping one of the consoles so tight that his knuckles were pale. "We've got two AI's! This can't be the end!"

Miranda's voice came through the terminal next to the galaxy map. "Commander, we have a fire in the crew quarters! The armor is buckling and emergency life support just kicked in, what's going on out there!"

"Someone's attacking the quarian Fleet! Take Thane and Grunt and make sure those fires don't spread!" Shepard called out.

"Yes Commander!"

"The Heavy Fleet is moving to intercept that alien vessel," Samara calmly stated. "They have opened fire."

"Like that'll work," Cortana said dismissively. "Plasma distance one hundred thousand kilometers. Impact in four…three…two…"

Shepard exhaled and clenched her muscles when Joker put the Normandy into a dive so stoop that a larger ship would have torn itself in two.

The ship slid out of the path of the asteroid, missing it by mere meters. The plasma trailing them was unable to pull of the same stunt. It slammed into the city-sized rock and annihilated it, sending fountains of molten metal spewing into space.

"Enemy ship in sight!" Joker called through the radio. "What the shit, look at the size of that thing! It's like four or five Alliance Dreadnaughts waiting in line to dock at the Citadel!"

"Stay focused Joker!"

In truth, she thought the exact same thing as Joker did. The alien vessel was every bit as enormous as her pilot's awkward analogy suggested it was. How on Earth did these monsters build ships like these? And without Eezo!

The first of the Heavy Fleet's salvos impacted. Kiloton after kiloton of mass accelerators impacted on its prow, though a portion of the rounds were clean misses. Fire covered the skin of the ship. When it cleared, Shepard's suspicions were confirmed.

The enemy carrier was completely undamaged. Its shields had shrugged off salvo after salvo of the quarian's mass accelerators. How many ships were firing at it? Twenty? More? It was like Sovereign all over again. Did every one of their ships possess such powerful shields?

"Commander, two of the Liveships have managed to evacuate. However, one Liveship was struck by an energy weapon from great distance," reported EDI. "It is still intact, but they are unable to maneuver."

Jane cursed. "Which one?" She asked, fearing that she already knew the answer.

"The Rayya."

"Understood, EDI," Jane replied, as gracefully as she could muster. In truth, she wanted nothing more than to get there with the Normandy and assist in the repairs. However, taking out that lone carrier had the priority. If they could just get a good hit in from behind it -

Space rippled in front of the enemy carrier, the starts blotting out and stretching. Blackness bubbled with green lights, and then the carrier vanished.

I saw that trick before, Jane grimly thought. "EDI, track the Rayya. Enemy contacts?"

"Negative Commander, the rest of the Migrant Fleet is forming a protective formation around it – I retract that statement. The carrier reappeared, a thousand kilometers away from the Rayya."

"Cortana, put it on screen!"

The damage had already been done by the time Shepard's tactical layout shifted to account for the new variables. The enemy carrier smashed through the fleet blockade like they were a Citadel defense fleet defending against a Reaper. Several lances of bright, white energy erupted from its midsection. An instant later, three quarian Cruisers detonated. At the same time, it fired off a dozen of those plasma torpedoes in every direction, forcing targeted quarian warships to break off their attack and get the hell out of there before they were annihilated.

To top the carnage off, the carrier unleashed what had to be every single ship in its cavernous hangar. Hundreds of smaller vessels raced towards the Rayya. GARDIAN lasers intercepted some of them, but more than eighty percent managed to get through.

"Commander, a single Carrier can bring enough forces to capture a world's capital!" Warned Cortana. "The Rayya is about to be swarmed by up to fifty thousand enemy soldiers and enough ordnance to melt Pinnacle Station!"

Jane's mind raced to interpret the tactical situation. What was the point of all this? Even Sovereign would easily be overwhelmed by the Migrant Fleet on its own. The loss of life would be enormous, but the thousands of quarian vessels would eventually destroy these alien ships. Surely the carrier had to know that.

And why the suicidal charge at the Rayya? There were probably enough quarian soldiers in the Flotilla to take the Rayya back. It would take them some time however, time that the Rayya did not have. Seventeen million quarians, most of them onboard the Liveships…the casualties would be horrendous.

Most of the quarian ships were stuck in their formation, unable to return fire on the carrier for fear of hitting the Rayya. Others simply didn't have weapons; the most vulnerable ships had been at the core of the Migrant Fleet and now, that carrier parked right in the middle of that vulnerable center.

Why did they do that? What was the benefit?

Cortana must have known what she was thinking. "Jane, if they breach the Rayya's archives, they will learn everything. Technology, history…the Citadel. Every secret the quarians know."

"The quarian military will wipe them out, no matter how many there are," protested Jane.

"They don't need to survive forever! They just need to pillage the navigational cores and transmit them back to the fleet!" Cortana said, desperation creeping into her voice.

Jane looked at the enemy fleet again. By now, they were steering away from the Heavy Fleet. As lethal as their vessels were, even they could not handle the thousands of ships the quarians would throw at them.

No, they would regroup and jump into the midst of the Flotilla to retrieve the information they needed. And then…what was next? Assaulting the Citadel? She couldn't allow that. A battlegroup like this could easily scorch the Citadel if they hit without warning. Sovereign got through, so would these things.

"We have to stop them," said the Commander. She hit the intercom and ordered the ground team to get in gear. If nothing else, they could hold off the enemy long enough for the Flotilla to organize its defenses. The enemy's tactics were daring, but only if they could break through fast enough.

She wasn't going to let them.

It was time to have a talk with the Master Chief.

~0~


SSV Normandy

Engineering

Tali would rather eat a pyjak than admit that Cerberus could do something well, but she had to admit that Jacob Taylor was an impressive man.

From the moment Shepard announced they would be reinforcing the Rayya, Jacob decided that four minutes to gear up the entire ground team – his normal time - wasn't going to cut it. He proceeded to arm the squad within two minutes and thirty seconds, speaking and moving so fast that only Mordin could understand what he said. Once they were all armed and ready, they raced towards the hangar bay. The shuttles had miraculously survived the skirmish between the Normandy and the alien fleet. Ken and Gabby had patched up the worst holes as much as possible, clad within vacuum-sealed hardsuits. Now, with the interior of the hangar bay pretty much ruined, they had to manually lower the two shuttles as well.

The Master Chief and Shepard entered the hangar with steady, powerful strides, together. Tali snapped to attention, as did the rest of the squad.

The Commander took a moment to regard her team – her people – and nodded. 'This isn't what we planned for. We never expected an enemy like this to appear as they did. But, plans or no plans, we've trained for this. All of us did. We cannot allow the enemy to plunder the Rayya's database. If they do, the Collectors won't be the worst to hit us."

She paused to let her words sink in, then continued. "This mission is going to be dangerous. There are close to a million quarians running around the Liveship. If the Rayya falls, he quarians will be that much closer to extinction."

Tali bowed her head.

"We're splitting the team up. One half will get to that database, while the other repels the enemy invasion."

Stepping forwards, Garrus loudly asked, "Commander, permission to secure the database!"

"Denied," said the Master Chief. "I'll be leading that op."

Tali looked at Garrus with surprise. Defending against an invasion was easier than fighting behind the enemy's lines. Getting the database would be extremely dangerous.

"Samara, Garrus and Tali, you're with me," continued the Master Chief. "Kasumi, Jacob and Mordin as well."

Those chosen by the Spartan, with the possible exclusion of Samara, straightened when they heard their names. Tali felt a wave of disappointment that she wouldn't be going with Shepard, but reconsidered. He used to be the leader of an elite group of soldiers. If anyone besides the Commander could pull this off, it was him.

Shepard took over after a moment. "The rest of you will be under my command. Preserving civilian lives is our top priority. Let's get to it people!"

They all formed into their squads and their leaders to the shuttles. Tali had no idea of the dangers aboard the Rayya. At least…she had a semblance of what they would encounter, as the Master Chief's holographic fight was still fresh in her memories.

Were those monsters rampaging around her place of birth now? Were they already butchering her people, slaughtering her friends and family? Oh Keelah, why did the Flotilla have to come here of all places!

She wanted to believe that the Marines aboard the Rayya could repel the invaders, she really did! But the quarians were trained to fight pirates or mercenaries. She saw what manner of foe the Master Chief battled against during his war. Aliens taller than him, not savage like most krogan, but disciplined and well-trained like turians.

And they could turn invisible! As if geth Hunters weren't bad enough, at least those died if you shot them!

Someone placed their hand on her shoulder. Startled, Tali looked up.

"Hey," Kasumi said, no doubt smiling from underneath her featureless mask. Though the Rayya's air was supposed to be clean, they all wore sealed armor just to be certain "It'll be fine! We'll get in there, kill the bad guys and save your people!"

Tali nodded at the thief, then glanced aft. Most of the squad had picked UNSC rifles for this mission, supplementing their mass accelerator weapons. The Chief took that a step further, carrying no less than three large weapons with him, excluding sidearms and grenades. He stood with his back to the door, looking at his squad as the shuttle raced towards the Rayya.

Looking at the human super-soldier brought Tali a measure of tranquility. She didn't see him much onboard the Normandy, but watching him stand there, taller than a krogan and clad in his impervious armor, was inspiring. She never fought the monsters that were now hunting her people, but the Chief did. She wondered if they would recognize him. If they would fear him.

"Pick your battles carefully," began the Chief.. "Your shields won't protect you against their plasma. Avoid close quarters combat if you can."

"Do you hear that Kasumi? Now we're all fair game," quipped Garrus.

"What manner of opponents should we be expecting?" Asked Samara. If Tali had to guess, her expression would be one of serene confidence.

"Yeah, and how do we kill them?" Jacob chimed in.

The Chief looked at them for a moment. "The Covenant," he slowly said, "Doesn't take prisoners. They don't show mercy. The smaller species are as strong as humans. The larger ones surpass me in physical strength. Expect krogan-level durability for them as well."

A heavy silence fell. Tali expected as much, but to hear the words from the Chief himself chilled her to the core.

"Assuming this gear was made to combat them," Garrus eventually said, his voice uncharacteristically cold, "Headshots still work?"

"Once you punch through their shields, yes."

"Hm. Interested to see alien life from super-soldier's galaxy," mused Mordin. "Susceptible to fire?"

"Yes," replied the Chief.

A shudder ran through the shuttle. Cortana hi-jacked their radios and told them that they docked with one of the few secure landing zones left.

The Chief turned to face the shuttle hatch as it opened, as if preparing to take the brunt of whatever the enemy would fire their way. "Remember, no close quarters combat. Kasumi, copy my last!"

"Yeah yeah," said Kasumi flexing her shoulders. "We got this!"

The Master Chief went first. He leapt out of the dropship, his rifle at the ready. They were surrounded by a handful of quarian soldiers. They reacted with surprise and shock when the armored Spartan motioned the rest of his team forward, waveringly raising their rifles, but stepping back at the same time.

One of the soldiers ran up to them. "Lami'Shon vas Zachala of the 33rd Marines! Admiral Korris said we could be expecting you!"

Tali glanced around. The landing zone was still secure, but the five bodies hastily pulled to one corner of the room suggested that a battle had taken place not too long ago. Keelah, the blood looked fresh…

"Marine, get your soldiers together and we'll get to work," said the Master Chief.

The quarian shook her head, confused. "Work? What are we going to do, they're everywhere!"

"We've come to take this ship back from the invaders," the Chief said calmly. "To do that, we are going to kill every last one of them."

Tali felt a warm twinge at the base of her spine. She swore she would spend the rest of the fight at that man's side.

Apparently satisfied that the quarian Marines wouldn't be disobeying, the Master Chief then moved towards the doors, sealed by the fireteam when they pulled back to the landing zone. The sounds of fighting were loud, loud enough that Tali knew the Covenant could not be contained anymore.

She hoped that it was just the engines being disabled, and not that the Rayya was truly beyond saving.

"Jacob, Garrus, stack up," ordered the Chief.

The moment the three of them took their position, the red lights of the door turned to green and they slid apart. Together, Jacob and the Chief whirled around the corner, assault weapons at the ready. Garrus took up the rear, Tali and Mordin prepared their technical apps while Samara enveloped herself in a corona of Biotic energy.

The room beyond the landing zone was multi-tiered and cavernous. Normally, it served as an atrium of sorts for quarians to go about their daily lives. The Rayya was littered with many such connecting rooms, each one leading to the respective hydroponics, engineering and living sections. They were essential to navigating the massive Liveships and as such, tens of thousands of quarians passed through those rooms every single days.

It must have been a massacre. Bodies lay strewn in pools of blood, predominantly quarians.

There was no time to check for wounded. High-pitched yelps and cries sounded and the Chief immediately opened fire on an unseen enemy. An instant later, both Garrus as Jacob began firing as well.

"Suppressive fire," ordered the Chief. "Tali, Mordin, move up. Samara, place a singularity at the left cluster on my mark. Set, mark!"

The Spartan himself stepped out into the open and fired long, sustained bursts at enemies Tali couldn't even see yet. Nevertheless, she placed down a combat drone and dove towards the first piece of cover she saw. Mordin followed her, firing off a bolt of incendiary gel at the second tier before slamming into the metal frame next to her.

A door on the other end of the room slid open and Tali got her first look at the enemy. She felt a kick of disappointment; the first five of the aliens reminded her of a volus. They were short and stocky, wearing armored environment suits with strange, pyramid-shaped devices on their backs.

Tali fired off a round of her shotgun. The weapon tore through the first alien's armor and body with ease. It toppled, spraying the aliens behind it with bright, blue blood.

This…couldn't be it, right?

The rest of the alien group yelped with alarm, quickly hobbling further into the room. Tali put them down before they could get into cover, but then another group emerged from the same hallway, then another. Before soon, more than ten of the smaller aliens had taken cover at the ground floor of the atrium. Their smaller size meant they could easily hide behind consoles and fallen machines, which made it nearly impossible to navigate.

The doors slid open again and revealed another alien squad, much to Tali's dismay. How many of her people had died in order for these aliens to have free reign like this?

The creatures were roughly as large as an adolescent quarian, but looked more like a bipedal varren than anything else. Their beaks were long and filled with needle-like teeth, their heads and arms lined with feathers.

The bosh'tets looked frail, but they also carried shields seemingly made from energy that literally stopped everything Tali threw at then, from tech attacks to shotgun blasts. Leveling their own weapons, the varren-aliens pushed deeper into the room. Their guns were small, shaped like claws more than actual firearms, but powerful enough to blow through solid metal.

Continuing to pepper away at those shields would only cost her precious ammo. Instead, Tali projected her combat drone into the midst of their formation. Little chiktikka immediately went to work, zapping the aliens with electric shocks.

More bolts of energy slammed into Tali's cover, steadily blowing away what little protection she had. Her kinetic barriers repelled fragments of molten steel. She fired off a shotgun blast at a smaller alien that peeked from its cover, but when she pulled the trigger again to fire at another alien, the gun merely clicked.

Empty! Already?

She was about to risk a sprint to a safer location when the Master Chief suddenly stepped into view. He lobbed an explosive in the midst of the shield-bearers, who couldn't scramble away in time. The resulting detonation ripped them to shreds. As the body parts fell to the floor, Samara and Garrus shot the surviving aliens with practiced ease.

Mordin and Jacob kept their guns trained on the higher levels as the team regrouped. The quarian Marines emerged from the hallway as well. They too kept their weapons at the ready.

"I am overriding your orders," the Chief told them. "Make sure that landing zone doesn't fall."

After a moment's hesitation, the quarians exchanged looks.

"It's alright," Tali told them. "We'll move faster on our own."

Lami'Shon nodded. "Okay. We'll await further reinforcements from the other ships." She eyed the battlefield, her eyes lingering on the corpses of the fallen quarians. Their bodies were still smoking somewhat. "Keelah, for aliens to attack us in the middle of the Fleet!"

"Do you have anything of value onboard the Rayya?" The Chief suddenly asked the Marine. "Anything you dug up or found recently?"

"No, not that I know," replied Lami'Shon. "Even if Admiral Daro'Xen found something, she wouldn't tell anyone before turning it into something useful."

Tali looked at the Master Chief. What did he mean, something dug up?

"Think Covenant took interest in quarian tech?" Said Mordin. "Require samples of Eezo?"

He merely shook his head. While the quarians fortified their position, Cortana took a moment to bring the team up to speed.

"Grunts and Jackals. Figures. These are the basic ground troopers, used mostly as cannon fodder."

"Cannon fodder?" Said Jacob.. "What sort of cannon fodder carries impenetrable damn shields like these things did?

"The little guys died easy enough," said Garrus, kicking a dead Grunt.

"Don't try to blow through the Jackals' shields, you'll just waste your ammo. Flank them, blow them up, that'll work best."

Tali looked back at the fallen Jackal. The alien lay in a pool of its own blood. Mass accelerator rounds were just as effective against them as UNSC bullets. But those shields? She did not carry many explosives with her. Quarian Fleet Marines weren't outfitted with explosives for fear of causing a hull breach. She trusted the Chief's judgement, however. He wouldn't do anything to harm her people.

As Tali reassured herself, the Master Chief approached a nearby terminal. He removed the AI's chip and slotted it into the data port, much to her horror.

What was he doing? Was he trying to get her people killed? Wait, how was this chip even compatible with quarian systems?

"Chief," she started hesitantly. She didn't want to balk, mostly because she didn't want him to think badly of her, but she had to draw a line somewhere. "I don't think that's a good idea, at all."

The Chief made a slashing gesture across his throat, and Tali fell silent. Was that too far? Had she upset him?

Cortana sighed. "This again? Tali, do you want your people saved, or do you want them dead? Because every second we waste stopping in front of empty doors or fighting about where we'll go next will cost them, dearly."

Tali wanted to throw a scathing response the AI's way, but a part of her realized that it – she – was right.

Cortana didn't have to be such a bosh'tet about it though…

Nobody else protested inserting a dangerous AI into the core of the Migrant Fleet, so Tali dropped the issue for the moment. "Okay – err, u-understood!"

"I've plotted us a course to the Rayya's central mainframe," continued Cortana. "Proceed into the door to your left, then continue for twenty meters. There'll be another door to your right."

Cortana guided them for perhaps two-hundred meters. Everywhere Tali looked, she saw death. Sleeping quarters had been turned into skeletal husks by energy weapons. Walls were pocketed with burning, smoking holes. The hallways and decks were covered with blood and bodies, mostly quarian. Every here and there an alien lay slumped against a wall. Sometimes, they passed by what looked like piles of meats, or completely incinerated skeletons. Some of them still had enough mass left for their bodies to be twisted into horrible, pain twisted mockeries of what quarians were supposed to look like.

"Fucking…what the fuck…" breathed Jacob.

"Those poor bastards…" Said Garrus.

Tali felt tears burn in her eyes and hatred churn in her stomach. She forced herself not to look at her dead kin.

But that wasn't easy. The Covenant hadn't discriminated. Civilian and soldier alike lay upon the ground. The latter died protecting the former. Many of them were missing half their bodies, either blown away by plasma or taken off by explosions. A few of them even looked like something had exploded from within, tearing them apart like a grenade exploding in their stomachs.

Though Tali felt her breakfast rising in her throat, it was Kasumi dropped to all fours, lawed off her mask and vomited.

Everybody stopped but the Chief, who mechanically marched on to the end of the hallway and took position by the door. It was only when he looked back that he saw that something was wrong.

Kasumi wipe her mouth and shakily leant against the wall.

The Chief appeared confused for a moment. "We have to keep moving," he coldly said.

"S-Sure," mumbled Kasumi. "Just a…a moment."

"We don't have a moment. The mission comes first."

Tali forced herself to hold down her food, no matter how badly her insides burned. How many of her people had these monsters butchered?

"The Covenant can't just wipe out the entire population of the Rayya!" Shouted Garrus. "They've got to have a goal or something, right?"

"They can and they will," the Chief harshly said. "Goal or not. Fall in. We're moving."

Samara gently helped Kasumi back to her feet. The thief strapped her helmet back on with quivering fingers, then grabbed her gun. Within moments, she was acting like this never happened.

Garrus and Jacob stacked up on the door, while Cortana started telling them what to do again. Tali could tell that it – she – was the planner in this strange, symbiotic human-AI relationship.

"The next room is one of the hydroponic centers. It's huge, and I mean humongous. The Covenant has superiority, but not dominance. I'm reading about a thousand quarian life signs inside, but they're dwindling rapidly. You've got to hurry!"

The Chief seemed to have no issues with blindly following what she said, as he nodded at Garrus to open the door, which Cortana just unlocked.

Garrus nodded back, then pressed his armored hand against the green hologram. The metal door slid open.

Moving quickly and decisively, the Master Chief strode into the room, quickly followed by the rest of the team.

Cortana had not been exaggerating when she described the hydroponics. The Rayya was, essentially, a massive hydroponics. The three liveships were meant to grow the thousands of tons of genetically modified crops that the quarian race needed on a daily basis. The process was mostly animated, but any given liveship was still crewed by at least half a million quarians simply to monitor the process. A minor slip-up could have catastrophic consequences.

The door led them to one of the dozen tiered levels that were stretched around and woven through the hydroponics center. The railing was shoddy, meant to prevent tired workers from falling, not serve as military-grade cover. This particular center was meant to be crewed by more than ten thousand quarians. Either they evacuated somewhere else, or…

She didn't want to think about anything else.

Even as Tali tapped a few commands on her omni-tool to place down a combat drone, she saw a group of workers break cover from one of the large consoles. Two females, three males and, much to Tali's horror, two children. As they rushed towards one of the exits, they were caught by a flurry of plasma fire. They barely made it six meters before they were slain. Their smoldering, broken bodies rolled to a halt.

They weren't the only ones. Of the few quarians left alive by the assault, maybe a third were armed. Not only that, they were also vastly outnumbered. The Covenant had taken all superior positions and were raining death down on the helpless civilians.

"Watch yourselves, they've got Elites and Hunters!" Said Cortana.

"Fan out, stick to cover and do not engage in melee!" Ordered the Chief.

As Tali sprinted for the nearest console, she wondered why he would place such an emphasis on melee combat. She wasn't a martial artist by any means, but the UNSC shotgun was brutally effective at close range. Why would she give up that advantage?

Every tier of this hydroponics room was infested with chrome-clad monsters. Tali spotted two new kinds of aliens, as well. They vaguely looked like quarians, except they had elongated heads and much, much heavier armor. She knew how high the railing was, and those monsters towered above them. They were taller than even the Master Chief! And their armor looked just as thick, too.

Garrus fired off two shots, both of which struck one of the taller aliens in the midsection. It's armor shimmered and the first round clearly bounced off. The second failed to drop its shields.

Tali was mortified; she had seen Garrus and the Chief blow through geth, krogan and even Collectors with those anti-material rifles! Keelah, did they even bring enough ammo to kill these things?

The Chief fired off a long stream of bullets, cutting down Grunts and Jackals alike. He dropped the shields of one of the larger aliens and Samara Biotically Pulled the creature over the railing, sending it falling to its death.

The room was filled with a mixture of alarms, screams and weapon fire. Quarian Marines cursed their foes as they ducked for cover and fired with mass accelerator rifles. Tech mines and incendiary modules went off on all levels and orders for evacuations were repeated through the intercom.

Their squad pushed for one of the higher railings, where Cortana plotted a course towards the mainframe. The Master Chief and Samara worked in tandem, picking off the larger aliens one by one as they led the squad onwards. Jacob covered them with suppressive fire while Mordin and Kasumi picked off exposed aliens with precision fire. Their heavy pistols proved powerful enough to penetrate Grunt armor, letting them pull off some impressive headshots.

Tali saw a squad of quarians pinned down in a corner on one of the lower catwalks. They were holed up behind a fallen console, taking fire from all directions.

"Stop!" Tali yelled when she saw the Chief break off towards a higher tier. "Those men need help!"

"We have a mission to accomplish," shot back the Chief. "Leave them."

"Would you abandon your own people if they were under attack?"

The Chief spun sideways, dodging a deadly of energy. He returned fire on the offending Covenant soldier. "This is not a discussion. Shepard's task is to prevent civilian casualties."

Tali stopped near one of the large cylinders that processed the crops and took aim at an armored monster as it approached the pinned-down quarians. "Chief, please! There are so few of us left, you can't leave these people!"

The armored alien stumbled when her third shotgun blast downed its shields. Kasumi, seeing what she was doing, fired a burst of SMG fire at its center of mass.

Wounded but not dead, the alien turned his back to the Marines and returned fire. Plasma charges tore large holes into the processing plant and the railing. Before the alien could get lucky, one of the Marines managed to score a hit. The alien screamed and collapsed,

Tali heard the pinned quarians cheer, and then everything went wrong. Something massive pushed past the Grunts on the walkway opposite of hers. At first Tali thought it was a recolored YMIR mech. The thing was definitely tall enough, but somehow it was even broader, clad in its dark armor. It lifted its arm, which glowed a sickly green.

A supersonic blast of green energy erupted in the midst of the quarians who had been bunkering down. Their position exploded into a flash of green light that nearly blinded Tali. When the white haze in front of her eyes cleared, there was nothing left of the quarian position. The entire section of the walkway had been boiled away, its edges still smoldering. Their only epitaphs would be the bits of carbonized skeleton left behind.

"Hunter, defilade! Defilade!" Shouted the Chief.

Her ears were still ringing after the detonation. She heard the Chief's order, but didn't understand it. She heard Cortana yelling in her ears, but she didn't understand her either.

The behemoth took aim at her next. Its massive arm swung upwards – and fired.

He moved before anyone else. He was a blur of motion and stepped in front of her, shoving her backwards in the same movement.

The blinding white-hot plasma struck the Master Chief's shields and splashed over his chest. Even when shielded by the Spartan, she felt the heat was unbearable; Tali felt the skin on her forearms blister. The enormous overpressure of the explosion forced the Chief to stagger backwards. Though the green flash left Tali's eyes watering, she could still make out the yellow flashes of energy crackling across the Chief's armor. His shields had to be completely drained.

Enough metal of the catwalk had been vaporized by the blast that the slightest movement forced it to break in half. When the Chief staggered backwards, the entire thing collapsed.

Tali gasped and jumped for the railing, but she wasn't fast enough. She felt the sickening lurch of freefall for what to be half a second before she came to a rough stop, her wrist seized by an unyielding metal gauntlet.

She looked up to see the Master Chief holding her with one hand, while holding on to the bent frame of the catwalk's railing with his other. He nodded at her and flung her up, moments before beams of plasma and odd, pink shards crisscrossed the air where she just hung.

Tali landed roughly, rolled over her shoulder and immediately pulled out her sidearm. Covenant soldiers rushed her position; more of those armored aliens. Not Hunters, so these must be the Elites.

Only Jacob and Samara stood on their catwalk now; Kasumi and Mordin had taken the literal high ground, one tier above them. There were now so few quarians left that more than half of the Covenant soldiers focused their attention on their team.

The armored monster charged at them, firing its plasma weapon all the while. Samara responded with the ingrained reflexes of an ancient Justicar and thrust her hands forwards, enveloping herself and Jacob in a Biotic sphere.

It served to block the lethal blasts a meter or two away from Samara's body, but the sheer heat of the weapons still bled through. Samara grunted as the heat washed over her.

Jacob rushed towards the alien before it could boil them alive. He tackled it midsection with enough force to throw a turian to the ground, but the Elite didn't even stagger. Underneath its reflective faceplate, it had four mandibles that were lined with sharp teeth. It snarled audibly as it grabbed Jacob by his waist, pivoted and threw him a good four meters down the catwalk.

The Cerberus operative came to a rough stop. He came up with a UNSC sidearm in hand and was already firing when he got to his feet, seemingly unfazed by the violent toss. The Elite huffed and strode towards him, raising his own plasma rifle.

Samara and Tali opened fire as well, joined in by the Master Chief, who pulled himself up with one hand and discarded his ruined assault weapon in favor for his own shotgun.

Underneath their merciless barrage, even the Elite's personal shields didn't hold up. It died inches away from Jacob, dropping in a pool of purple blood.

"Guys, run!" Shouted Garrus. "That thing is coming at you for round two!"

Tali whirled around and saw the Hunter made it to their level. For a creature that looked like it could wrestle two elcors at the same time, it moved frighteningly fast.

The Chief broke into a run, placing his hand on Tali's shoulder and pulling her with him. Jacob and Samara joined in; as more and more Covenant soldiers got a bead on them, the team sprinted for the closest door. Kasumi and Mordin dropped down from the tier above. Garrus did so as well, only a lot slower. He stumbled at the landing and cursed.

"Garrus, come on!" Yelled Tali. She threw down another combat drone in the hopes it would distract her enemies and risked a glance at the Spartan's chest. His armor was still intact, thankfully. No blood, no molten metal. Just some soot.

A team of Elites rappelled down from the highest level with strange, glowing ropes. They landed behind them, about eight meters away. Kasumi, Jacob and Mordin turned mid-sprint and fired at them. Two Elites fell, splattering purple blood across the metal floor.

"Cortana, the door!" Called the Chief.

The door opened the second he called for it. The Chief stopped right before he could make it through. "Move, move!" He ordered the team, spraying the Covenant soldiers with shotgun and pistol fire. He rolled down a grenade and backed up. A wave of purple crystals buffeted them with micro-shrapnel.

Thankfully, their kinetic barriers managed to repel the strange, glass-like projectiles. They all retreated into the room and Cortana locked the door behind him.

"W-Wait!" Tali cried out. "We can't lock the door, there are still civilians in there!"

"Tali-" Started Jacob.

"No! None of the other species care about us, we're all alone!" She spun around, looking at Garrus. "Garrus, tell me– Garrus!"

The turian sat slumped against the wall, holding his right leg. Dark blood welled up between his fingers.

"Ah…I've got no idea what happened," he said, his voice strained with pain. "I'm a bit confused. Chief, level with me. Do those purple things – Ahhh…spirits. Do they often magically glitch through shields?"

Samara sat next to him, applying a hefty dose of medi-gel. A portion of her armor was singed and she had a nasty burn on her face. If she was in pain, she did a masterful job hiding it. "When those things exploded, they broke your bone. The medigel will prevent it from becoming worse, but you need medical aid."

Mordin sat on Garrus' other side, engrossed in pieces of pink shrapnel he plucked from the wound. "Fascinating…guided explosive payload! Crystal is but a shell, contains traces of boron...lucky kinetic barriers protected against worst of shrapnel, Garrus. Would be plucking crystal from your flesh for next hour otherwise!"

Garrus coughed and winced. "Yeah, so lucky…sorry, Chief, I didn't see it coming. Well, I did, but the damned things tracked me mid-air. Is this ah…this meant to happen? I mean, does this usually happen?"

The Chief silently stared at the fallen turian. "It's okay," he quietly said. "You're doing good. Can you walk?"

"I was talking minutes after taking a missile to the face, Chief. I can handle a bit of glass," said Garrus.

He nodded. Then, he turned towards Tali. "If the Covenant get to that database, it will be like the Reapers finding the Citadel."

The Citadel. Damn the Citadel.

"I understand," Tali said. She tried to stop the tears, but they came out anyways. "Father would understand."

With that, the team turned their back on the locked door and pressed onwards.

~0~


Quarian Liveship Rayya

Hydroponics center 8

In warfare, those with the best supply routes often win. Soldiers who get surrounded and run out of supplies die. Soldiers who run out of ammo die. The list went on and she casualties piled up.

For a ship that was meant to supply millions of people with food, the Rayya was surprisingly devoid of supplies. Thermal clips were rare, cover was scarce and there was almost nothing in the way of military infrastructure. Hydroponics center 8 was, in short, one enormous death trap.

Shepard saw that with a single glance when she entered the enormous room with her squad. Ignoring the enormous amount of civilian casualties they encountered en-route to this major evacuation area was one thing, but stumbling upon a structure that seemed tailor-made to further increase those casualties was a completely different story.

The Rayya. Population: Close to half a million. About six-hundred hiding in hydroponics 8. More dead quarians here than alive ones.

Somewhere and somehow, this entire evacuation thing failed. The road to hydroponics center 8 had been strewn with blood and corpses. The actual center itself managed to be even worse. Jane couldn't bear to look at the dead quarians and instead focused on the living ones.

At the bottom of the cavernous room, roughly seven stories below her and to the left, ten quarian Marines in specialized suits were pinned down by plasma and – according to Cortana - needler fire. The Commander tracked the enemy fire to its source and saw a group of thirty Jackals and twenty Grunts spread out among the upper section of the hydroponics facility.

At the bottom of the cavernous room to the right, a platoon of quarian soldiers had their formation ruined by a pair of Covenant Hunters. Vaguely shaped like a quarian itself, the Covenant Hunter was clad from head to toe in armor that would make a Reaper proud. What little of its orange flesh was not protected by impregnable plating was positioned at their back, where no combatant would ever get, because the fucking things were fast as fuck.

The quarians saw them approach, peppered them with about a hundred thousand rounds and then seemed to run out of ideas. When the Hunters came close enough, the lumbering behemoths suddenly burst into a flat sprint and leapt in the midst of the Marines and…well, Shepard was lucky Tali wasn't around to see it.

Leading them were eight scarlet-armored Elites, much to her frustration. She heard from John what those things could do. Given the chance, one could easily kill her with its bare hands. Any of her squad, really.

Plan number one. Normally when under fire, Shepard would sic Grunt on the enemy. That one was out. Grunt's combat tactics would see him die quicker than a Husk charging a turret against these enemies.

Plan B: when under fire, sic Thane on them.

"Move out! I want suppressive fire on those Jackals now! Thane, take out those Elites! Keep your distance! Legion, support Thane with sniper fire!"

Both her squadmates confirmed her order and rushed towards the high ground. The rest of her team confirmed her orders as well. If the sights of the burned, mangled, sometimes even partially devoured quarian corpses hadn't been enough to motivate them, the chance if payback sure was.

Jane wasn't the type who boasted about how she never got scared. She was a soldier. Any soldier who said they didn't get scared was a liar. Admitting that you were afraid and jumping into the fight nonetheless was what made you a soldier. But this time, looking at the ease with which the Covenant tore through the quarian Marines made it hard for her to ignore the fear.

Legion and Thane expertly climbed the upper walkways and got into sniping position. Their UNSC anti-material rifles would make short work of those Elites. The Hunters, however, required a better plan.

"Zaeed, Grunt, mid-range combat, take out those Grunts!" She ordered.

The quarians tossed a handful of grenades.. The Jackals scrambled for cover and turned their shields.

The grenades went off with blue flashes. Not one of the Jackals fell.

According to Tali, Fleet Marines shied away from explosives because a single badly-placed detonation could cause a lethal blowout and kill everyone not prepared. Whatever those grenades packed thankfully wasn't explosive. Damn shame it didn't pack any punch.

But it did give Shepard an idea.

"You will pay for this!" Jack shouted with unkempt fury. She fired her shotgun time and time again, catching several Grunts by surprise. The superdense pellets merely bounced off of the Jackal shields, however, and the Elites were much too nimble for Jack to hit them. They bobbed and weaved, returning fire with impeccable accuracy. It forced Shepard's team to stay on the defensive. Their hardsuits were already scorched and seared because of the near-misses, the powerful ablative armor having been boiled with ease.

"Jack, can you hit those things with a Shockwave?" Asked Shepard.

"Not from this range, no!" Replied Jack.

Jane gestured at Miranda. They needed to break the stalemate before the Covenant sent more troops this way. "We'll provide cover fire. Get down to that piece of cover there and blow their formation to hell!"

Jack's helmet concealed her face, but the Commander could easily picture her expression as the Biotic replied, "Gladly!"

According to the Admirals, this particular section of the Rayya was key to the protection of the civilians and the food-processing plants. All civilians who hadn't managed to evacuate when the Covenant struck were tasked to hole up here. Of course, that meant that the Rayya;s entire garrison of Fleet Marines had to report there as well. If they rolled in while this firefight was still ongoing, they'd get butchered.

Shepard knew that it was their job to make sure the quarians got out of here alive.

The passageway they just came from was secure, but there were about nine passageways leading into the hydroponics room that weren't. While Jack made her way to the first tier above ground level, more enemy reinforcements arrived.

Jane directed Thane and Legion to cut them down and leapt after Jack, closely followed by Miranda. Fighting an enemy force with superior cover from the ground floor was paramount to suicide. She just needed to break those quarian Marines free before the Hunters could tear them apart. If they could all dig in at the upper levels, they might have a shot.

Plasma fire rained down from above. Grunt returned fire with his assault rifle, laughing all the while. Their focused fire allowed Jack to drop down in the midst of the quarian formation. She wound her arm back and released a Biotic Shockwave, bowling over more than half of the Jackals. "Take that, fuckers!" She crowed.

Shepard opened a channel to the quarian soldiers below. "This is Commander Shepard from the Normandy. Focus fire on one of the enemies at the same time! Don't waste your ammo on their shields!"

"Shepard?" One of the Marines said, startled. "Got it Commander!"

Miranda peppered the broken Jackal formation with SMG fire. Unable to keep their shields up to defend themselves, the aliens fell one after another. One of the Hunters saw it happen and turned towards the pocket of quarians, but by then the Fleet Marines were able to stage a proper retreat towards the upper tiers.

A small victory in an enormous mess.

Shepard disengaged and ran up a flight of stairs, only to ran into another Elite. A pair of dead quarians lay at its feet.

The blue-clad alien spotted her and roared a challenge. It charged towards her like a krogan would, closing in on her fast.

Not intent on dancing around with an alien that could wrestle Wrex into submission, Jane backed off. She drew both of her UNSC sidearms and opened fire. The powerful handgun rounds tore into the shielding around its chest. She erected a Biotic barrier to protect herself when another Elite spotted her and launched a salvo of needler fire at her. The Biotic field managed to repel the strange, crystal-like projectiles. When they detonated, they pelted both Shepard as the blue Elite with micro-shrapnel.

Her shields were fully charged. The alien's wasn't. Her pistol rounds punched through its weakened shields, shredded its internal organs and cut into its spine. The soldier slammed into the deck and Shepard pushed on.

She reloaded her handgun, then hugged the deck when a pair of Jackals spotted her and opened fire. Plasma bolts struck the walkway around her, turning solid steel into molten slag on impact.

She reached behind her back with her left hand, pulling her grenade launcher from its magnetic strip. She sighted in on small areas that the circular shields didn't protect and opened fire with her sidearm. She hit a hand and a foot. When the aliens turned away to retreat, they turned their shields away as well.

A single grenade blew them to bits, and the Commander was free to move for the next couple of seconds.

Now that they had a bigger threat to focus on, the Covenant forces started ignoring the civilians and came gunning for Shepard's squad. Thane and Legion had them covered however. A well-placed double tap put down a crimson-clad Elite, Biotic blasts took down shielded Jackal positions and Zaeed and Grunt were having a hell of a time toppling Grunts.

"Lifeboats have been launched," Cortana informed her. "The surviving quarians are pushing for the hydroponic centers. Expect reinforcements within the minute."

A globe of glowing-green plasma sizzled past her ear. Jane felt the ambient temperature skyrocket and her skin blistered. Cursing under her breath, she slapped the responsible Jackal with a Singularity field. The alien's shield might be able to withstand anything short of a Cain, but that kind of defense wasn't much use when its owner was crushed by a miniature black hole.

"We need that protection," she ordered. "Pocket those shield-things whenever you can!"

According to Cortana, the Chief and his Spartans used to do so on every mission. The shield would protect you against powerful plasma discharges, though you didn't want to be on the receiving end of a Hunter blast. If you weren't wearing John's boots, you'd still fry from ambient heat.

She continued onwards. Her goal was a squad of quarian Marines who were pinned down by a trigger-happy Elite, duel-wielding his plasma rifles. One of the quarians peeked from his cover and fired off a burst at the approaching warrior.

The hyper-velocity rounds impacted on the Elite's head and it reared back, rocked to its feet by the kinetic energy. The rounds failed to penetrate however and the alien returned fire. Twin plasma bolts took the quarian's head clean off and his decapitated body dropped like a puppet with its strings cut.

So much death, so much carnage…

Rage and sorrow boiled within Shepard as she used her Biotics to close the distance between her and the quarian team. She landed in their midst, unslung her grenade launcher and threw a Warp bolt at the alien.

It side-stepped the projectile, grabbing the railing to keep from falling off the side of the catwalk. It raised its rifle again.

The maroon-colored warrior might be nimble, but it couldn't dodge the grenade that followed the Biotic attack. The 25mm explosive detonated with enough force to blow the railing clean off. It ripped through the Elite's shields, shrapnel bouncing off of its armor. Only a few fragments penetrated.

The barrage of mass accelerator fire that the quarians unleashed was a different story. Their screams of fury drowned out the alien's screams.

Shepard didn't wait for its corpse to slam into the deck and continued on. The Elite's death brought her no satisfaction. The quarians were still dead. The entire Covenant invasion force could perish and the fallen quarians would still be dead.

The most vulnerable species in the galaxy and the Covenant decided to attack them. It didn't add up. Why not a distant colony? Why risk attacking a fleet of thousands to plunder some navigational data?

She was roughly shaken from her thoughts when she heard an explosion rumble through the room. The Hunters had eliminated the last quarians at the ground floor and turned their attention to the upper levels. The explosion she heard just now was a plasma blast that struck a walkway of the fourth tier. The impact blew the metal catwalk clean in half, obliterating several meters of steel in both directions. A gaping hole was all that was left, and the smoldering remains of two quarian soldiers who had been unable to get away in time.

Shepard skidded to a halt. The fear was ever present in the back of her mind. But her team was in here, defenseless against those monsters. Every live those beasts claimed could be that of a teammate..

The quarians opened fire, tech attacks went off and the two Hunters roared in defiance. The one at floor level raised its cannon and fired. The plasma blast detonated with a ground-shaking roar. A quarian civilian screamed as she was caught in the blast and consumed.

Mass accelerator rounds pinged off of the behemoth's armor and whined through the consoles. The Hunter easily tracked the incoming fire and blew apart another quarian soldier. Those things needed to go down, now.

With no other option in sight, Shepard leapt over the railing. She used her Biotics to slow herself down and landed amidst a group of Jackals and an Elite. With the element of surprise on her side, the Commander lobbed a frag grenade at the Elite's feet, then displaced herself to the rear of one of the Jackals. She grabbed the alien by the wrist, kicked it against its face and twisted the shield just in time for the grenade to go off.

Blood and gore went paired with shrapnel as the other Jackals were shredded. The Elite's shields held barely, but a concentrated burst of pistol fire put an end to that. He returned fire on the Commander, plasma splashing across the front of the shield, but it failed to harm her.

In return, Shepard scored a hit on its helmet. The massive pistol bullet punched through its head and emerged from the other side, spraying the Hunter with bits of bone and gore.

The creature seemed to huff indignantly and turned to face her. A row of large, blue spines sprang up along its back. With every step it took, the ground shook. This close to the enemy, Shepard realized that the Hunter was even huger than she thought. She was tall for her people, but this thing was almost twice as tall as she was, and easily three times as wide. It saw she was alone and a strange, rumbling noise emanated from its center, as if considering her actions nothing more than a mild annoyance.

Funny. Sovereign must have thought the same thing.

It took three thunderous steps and lashed out with its enormous metal shield. Shepard rolled aside, lightning quick, and came up in a low crouch. She saw a patch of exposed skin and unleashed a bolt of Biotic energy at it.

The blast hit home and the Hunter cried out, but it didn't appear fazed at all. It whirled around faster than a creature that size was supposed to and Shepard leapt backwards in a wash of Biotics, narrowly avoiding the sharp end of that massive shield.

It charged at her again and Shepard hosed it with SMG fire, before attempting another evasion.

Emphasis on evasion. Either the behemoth got lucky or she got sloppy, because she felt the tips of its spines shred through the armor on her shoulder. She crashed to the ground.

The Hunter attempted to stomp on her head, but Shepard nimbly rolled out of its way and flung a Warp bolt at its head.

Those spines were razor-sharp. Her armor was designed to withstand sharpened knives and shrapnel, yet they tore through her armor with ease!

Jane cursed under her breath and scrambled back to her feet. She gritted her teeth and ignored the throbbing pain of her shoulder. The Hunter charged at her again and she engaged her Biotics, dodging the blow and appearing behind it.

She put a sustained burst of fire into its exposed back, then displaced herself when it whirled around to cut her in two with its shield. It wasn't fast enough to kill her, but she didn't have the firepower to kill it, and she knew that she couldn't last forever. Either the behemoth got lucky, or one of the Covenant soldiers would score a lucky hit.

Although, she might have more time than she first realized. A small group of Covenant soldiers was watching them fight. They didn't shoot at her. Were they afraid of friendly fire? But most of them were crack shots, and that Hunter wouldn't tell the difference if it got hit by a single bolt of plasma. Were they afraid?

She could back away and unsling her grenade launcher. Maybe that could punch through its armor. But disengaging right now was too risky; she would expose herself to too much enemy fire.

Plus, the alien soldier wasn't stupid. It saw what she was trying to do. Its weapon glowed a sickly green. She had to go for it.

Shepard propelled herself backwards and pulled her grenade launcher out in one fluid move. Her finger curled around the launcher's trigger. Two grenades flew downrange and impacted on the Hunter's chest. It took the full brunt of the heat and concussive force, as well as the wave of shrapnel caused by the detonation.

It did little more than annoy the alien creature. The glow of its weapon reached an apex and Shepard hastily erected a Barrier around herself, switching gears from offense to get-the-hell-out-of-there.

The Hunter uttered a cry of victory –

Out of nowhere, Grunt slammed into the beast with enough force to make it stagger. Its weapon jerked upwards and the blast of plasma went so wide that Jane didn't even feel the heat.

"Grunt, no!"

"Haha! Look Shepard!" Shouted Grunt with glee. He emptied his shotgun into the Hunter, oblivious that he wasn't even scratching it. "This thing is huge!"

The Hunter answered the krogan's war cries with a bellow of its own. It lowered a gigantic shoulder and slammed into Grunt, who was still firing his shotgun when the gigantic shield hit him. Jane heard the bones in his body shatter as the Hunter threw him to the ground.

Grunt skidded over the floor, leaving a trail of orange blood and shattered pieces of armor. The alien behemoth turned towards him and raised its weapon, intent on finishing the krogan off.

But in doing so, it showed its vulnerable back to the Commander. She had her grenade launcher up and at the ready before the alien could even take aim and put two grenades downrange.

The 25mm explosive rounds hit home; they impacted on the Hunter's vulnerable back and exploded. Large chunks of flesh were ripped from its body as the vulnerable flesh inside seemed to ignite with the heat. The Hunter uttered a roar that vibrated through the deck. Smoldering, the Hunter whirled on her, its weapon charging again.

Shepard was ready this time. She met the alien soldier's charge in kind, using her Biotics to launch herself through the gap between its massive legs. The Hunter's momentum kept it going. Even as it tried to turn, the Commander launched another grenade at its back.

With a low, keening wail, the Hunter slumped to the ground. Strange eel-like creatures splattered all over the place, flopping about and squirming to get together again. Almost as if they could reconstitute the beast that just fell.

A distant howl of anguish served to remind the Commander that another monstrosity lumbered around the catwalks. She flung a Singularity at the wriggling aliens, but didn't stick around to watch the dark energy crush them. She rushed towards Grunt, who was already back on his feet.

The krogan spat a globule of orange blood and wobbled on his feet. He grumbled when Jane grabbed a hold of his arm and pulled him towards cover, but didn't protest.

"What the hell was that!" Yelled Shepard. "You could have gotten yourself killed!"

"Yes, but I didn't," shot back Grunt. "Did you see that? I got some distance!"

She slapped the back of his head and thought of a way to reprimand Grunt in such a way that he would understand what he just did wrong. Instead, she saw movement out of the corner of her eye and pulled Grunt down when a volley of plasma fire came their way. "Can you move?"

Grunt got upright, heard several things creak and tear within his body and slumped down again. "Gah…blood rage is boiling underneath my skin. My bones will heal eventually. Are you telling me to retreat?"

A bolt of blue plasma boiled through their cover and kept going, tearing through the air between them.

The two of them exchanged a look.

"I do as you say, and you won't tell the others a word?" He suggested.

"Sure. Now let's get out of this spot before the second Hunter shows up!"

~0~


The Master Chief halted. He raised a fist to signal his team to stop as well.

"Trouble?" Whispered Jacob.

"There were targets on the motion tracker. They're gone now."

"Good riddance," said Kasumi. "Let them stay gone."

But the Chief shook his head. They made it through half a dozen separate firefights by now. Most of the main Covenant strike force was busy keeping the quarians at bay. "This close to the mainframe, there won't be conventional soldiers anymore."

Jacob was thoughtful for a moment. "Special Forces?" He guessed.

"Correct."

"The invisible ones," muttered Tali. The girl was fully dedicated to the job ahead. She was a fast learner.

"Cloaked or not, I can still detect them if they close in on us," said Samara.

The Chief liked the confidence in her voice. That Justicar was almost as efficient in combat as a Spartan. "Keep an eye out, then. Cortana, kill the lights in the engineering section of the mainframe."

The faint light in the hallway flickered and died.

"Smart move. Survivors more likely to escape notice," said Mordin.

John didn't reply. It wasn't likely that there were any survivors left. Given that Tali just lost her father, he didn't want to distress her more. He liked her when she was ruthlessly focused on denying the enemy their objective, not prone to mistakes caused by emotional outbursts.

Seeing him wave her forwards, Kasumi slid into the hallway and melted away in the darkness. Hidden by her cloak as well as the shadows of the dark corridors made her hard to discern even for the Chief.

John moved after her, followed closely by Samara and Mordin. Garrus and Tali trailed behind, slowed down by the turian's injuries.

Vakarian's grid surprised the Chief; he didn't expect a turian to show such determination.

Cortana uploaded a map onto the Spartan's heads-up display, a path traced through corridors and a NAV marker designated as the mainframe. Blue static washed across his visor, accompanied by multiple voices whispering to each other, but he didn't say anything. Cortana was doing a tremendous job keeping herself together.

The team crept forwards, keeping their heads on a swivel. The lack of enemy resistance started to nag at the Chief. He knew there was bound to be Special Operation Elites rummaging around this engineering section. Where were they?

He caught up with Kasumi at an intersection. She stood with her back to the wall, facing the right. When she saw the team approach, she waved them down, pressing her index finger against her mouth.

The Chief raised an eyebrow. So she did know how to be silent.

Tali tapped the Chief's shoulder, then booted up her omni-tool. She typed in what he thought was several codes of data. A second later, several lines of text appeared on his HUD.

I have a plan. I can forge an omni-gel canister and launch it down the hallway. Can you hit that?

The Chief nodded at her. He thought he saw her smile through her visor, but he wasn't sure.

Tali went to work with her omni-tool, its micro-fabricators dumping half her supply of omni-gel into one, vaguely shaped canister. Tali inserted it at the tip of the holographic tool and nodded at the Chief.

John lifted his assault rifle.

Tali turned around the corner and launched the canister through the air. A split-second later, the Master Chief whirled around the corner and squeezed off a single shot.

The flash of light from the muzzle illuminated the passage. The Spartan saw the canister explode and a rain of viscous omni-gel splattered the walls, the ceiling and three Covenant Elites.

The Chief's image enhancement showed the wavering outlines of the aliens as their light-bending camouflage fluttered and struggled to maintain itself.

He opened fire on the trio before they could recover, making sure to spray every alien with bullets to make their outlines visible.

His team caught the memo. A hail of mass accelerator slugs and 7,62mm armor-piercing rounds filled the hallway. Two Elites returned fire with their plasma rifles and the Chief stepped in the midst of the passage, allowing the plasma to slam into his chest instead of Mordin's.

The salarian launched an incineration bolt and set the last Elite on fire. The alien roared and charged at them, but the old doctor merely drew his pistol and shot it in its elongated head.

It dropped to the floor in a twisted heap and kept burning.

"Flammable!" Decided Mordin. Science the Chief could get behind.

"Were these the Special Forces?" Asked Garrus. "Didn't seem so Special to me!"

The Chief kicked the burning corpse aside, then inspected the other fallen Elites. Much like the ones on the Cairo, these Stealth Elites were easy to take down. "No. These Elites were meant to acquire intel. See the silver armor? Special Forces can take up to four sniper shots before they go down."

Tali glared at the burning corpse of the Elite, before walking up to the Master Chief. "How far?" She asked, her voice cold.

"We're almost there," replied the Chief.

They pressed further into the engineering section, slowing down to a crawl to avoid more surprises.

That was Cortana contacted the Chief with a very peculiar message. "Don't you think it's odd? A species like the quarians hate us AI's , with such passion. Looking at their files…they hate us so much."

"They hate the geth," replied the Chief. He scanned the hallway to his left for that telltale shimmer of a cloaked Elite, then signaled his team to keep moving. "That's not you."

"No, they hate all of us. Do you know what they teach their children? What they taught Tali, too? They teach them to hate, John. They teach them to hate all synthetic life from the moment they're capable of learning. Know the face of your enemy, know the face of the ones who exiled us. Know the enemy you must kill if want to a place in this galaxy." Her voice was trembling with emotion. She paused, just for a moment, then quietly said, "Why are you risking your life for these people?"

John wondered about that. The quarians seemed like good people to him. Victims of uninvited aggression. They were nearly hunted to extinction and just wanted a place to live. Just like the UNSC…right?

He reconsidered. If they were just like the UNSC, they would've taken the first available colony and started anew. Their exile was self-imposed more than anything.

That brought him back to her question. Why?

"Because they have nobody else," he replied. "Nobody wants to fight for them. Nobody fought for us, either. The deserve a second chance."

"Oh really?" Hissed Cortana. "You have no idea what the geth really are, do you?"

Sensing a possible clash of values, the Chief carefully said, "Yes. A collective hivemind. Together, they are intelligent. Apart, they are not."

"The geth Consensus is sentient, John! Sapient!" Snapped Cortana. "The quarians built them as cheap labor and when the geth became sapient, the quarians opted to wipe them out!"

A part of John told him to be skeptical of Cortana's declaration and he loathed himself because of that. "And the geth retaliated by wiping them out in turn. We're not fighting for politics, but civilians." His mind raced to find an argument that would turn Cortana back on the task at hand. "Most of all, we're fighting to thwart the Covenant."

Cortana took a moment to reply. "Fine," she quietly said. "To thwart the Covenant."

The Master Chief sighed with relief. He didn't know what Cortana found on the Rayya's database, but something had to have occurred for her to feel so insulted by the quarians.

Had he made a tactical error, subjecting her to the systems of a radical anti-AI species? He needed her back-up, now more than ever. Cortana was made for this, this was her purpose, much like it was his. But was it selfish to force her to stay with her mission like this.

The Chief forced those thoughts from his mind. That was a line of thinking he would rather not go down for now.

They reached the last door they had to enter before they arrived within the depths of the engineering deck. A computer console was installed next to it, or perhaps through it. The Chief didn't know. Tali knelt down in front of the door and started scanning it with her omni-tool.

"Sometimes, systems fail within this part of the ship," she explained. "Engineers can use this console to scan the passages for malfunctioning vents or leaking canisters before entering. Maybe we can – "

Before she could even finish, the doors slid open. Standing on the other side were two Elites. Both were clad in the black harness of Special Operations units, both duel-wielded plasma rifles and both looked equally surprised to see them.

The Chief grabbed Tali by her shoulder and hauled her behind him, while at the same time opening fire with his assault rifle. The alien warriors returned fire on him. The whine of plasma rifle fire echoed through the hallway as blue-white bolts of energy impacted on the Chief's shields.

His shield dropped and the familiar drone of the warning indicator pulsed in his helmet. His vision clouded from the flare of the plasma discharges this close to his eyes and for a moment, he lost his bearing.

"Chief, the omni-tool, use it!"

He knew better than to argue with Cortana. An instant after both aliens opened fire on him, he brought his left hand up and aimed it at the general direction of the enemy.

A bright flash erupted from his wrist, quickly followed by secondary flashes. His visor polarized to compensate and for a brief moment, the alien fire stopped.

Unable to see a damn thing, the Chief dropped to a crouch, letting his teammates take over.

"Hah, I knew it would work!" Cortana cried exultantly. "Simulating a flashbang is actually easy if you've got the right materials. I rigged it to your visor as well, so that it would polarize before detonation. Otherwise, it would blind you."

The Master Chief barely heard her explanation in the frantic firefight that followed. He emptied his rifle, felt a beam of plasma impact on his chest and staggered back. Tali blasted the aliens with point-blank shotgun shells from behind him, while Mordin and Jacob filled the entire hallway with a blistering blanket of fire.

Finally, the alien shields flickered and died. Immediately, Samara unleashed a blast of Biotic energy that sent the two Elites tumbling down the hallway. They slammed against the floor and their rifles clattered to the ground, ripped free from their grasp by the powerful dark energy fields.

The Chief ducked behind cover, his shields slowly recharging.

"Jacob's hit!" Shouted Garrus.

The Master Chief looked back and saw Jacob lying on the ground, both hands pressed against his right shoulder. He writhed over the deck while Mordin tried to stabilize him.

"Patient alive…plasma missed vital sections. Relief! Mister Taylor, need you to struggle less!"

In-between pained groans and shuddering gasps, a series of curse words aimed at the old doctor escaped past Jacob's lips.

"Did Zaeed teach you that?" Garrus quipped.

The Chief softly shook his head. Plasma wounds were particularly painful, even when compared to normal burns. It was very likely that Jacob was going through the worst pain of his life right now. He sympathized, but could not afford to slow down, not with their objective so close.

As capable as the squad was, they were slowing him down.

"Mordin, Garrus, stay here and get him stable. Samara, Tali, with me."

Garrus' head snapped up. "Hold on, I'm not letting you two go in there alone!"

"That was an order, Garrus. I need you to hold our six."

Garrus sighed explosively. "Fine. I get it. Go secure that data. We'll make those Covenant sissies think twice before going after your six!"

Yet again, Vakarian's attitude impressed the Chief. He ran a quick suit diagnostic to check for damage. The MJOLNIR's internal temperature was over sixty degrees. The microcompressors worked overtime to compensate.

Together, the three of them pushed continued on. The internal structure surrounding the mainframe was a tactical nightmare. The hallways were dark, but the machinery was still active, constantly pelting the Spartan with loud and sudden noises, causing his adrenaline to spike every time. Twice, they were attacked from an unconventional direction by a cloaked Elite and twice, they barely managed to fend them off.

The third time it happened, it was from behind. Knowing that the aliens couldn't have fought past Garrus and Mordin yet, the Spartan could only conclude that the entire engineering section was one enormous maze to those who hadn't been raised here.

Samara enveloped herself with a sturdy Barrier, reducing the Elite's needler barrage to little more than an inconvenience. While the maneuver would be suicide for a less capable Biotic, the Chief trusted Samara's judgement.

The Chief was starting to feel like he should ask Cortana if they were still heading the right way when Tali exclaimed, "The mainframe is right around this corner!" And disengaged.

"Tali, wait!" Said Samara. "There could be hostiles that way!"

"She's right, hold on!" Yelled the Chief. He cursed and pulled out his sidearm, taking aim at the Elite's head.

The alien ducked behind cover, but Samara didn't allow it. Knowing that her Biotic abilities wouldn't work on shielded enemies, she instead jerked the cover away and annihilated it with a blast of dark energy.

The Elite roared and tried to pull back to better cover. The Master Chief put an end to that plan as well with a sustained barrage of 12,7x40mm rounds.

But moments after the Elite dropped, a piercing cry echoed through the hallway.

"Tali!" Exclaimed Samara.

The Chief spun and sprinted down the dark corridors in the direction of her cries. He skidded to a stop at the last corner and moved through the last door in an instant.

Tali lay on the ground, desperately trying to get away from a looming Elite with an energy sword. The alien had her pinned her to the ground with an armored hoof. The tips of the blade were directed at her visor, which was starting to hiss from the extreme heat.

Time slowed down as John lunged for the Elite. His system flooded with adrenaline, carried by the thunderous roar of his heart as he saw the alien bring down the sword at her chest. He tackled the alien warrior and sent it flying off Tali.

He dropped down into a combat stance and spotted a red blob moving towards him on his motion tracker. He dove out of the way as another energy blade carved through the air, causing the internal temperature of his suit to skyrocket.

Another Elite, this one clad in the white armor of an Ultra. It lunged for the Chief again.

Cobra quick, the Spartan side-stepped the Elite, seized its wrist before it could cleave him in half and threw him over his hip. The alien slammed into the deck, rolled once to dissipate the momentum and buried his sword into the deck to stop his movement entirely.

A second Elite.

He caught movement in his peripheral vision and saw an Elite in jet-black armor materializing from the display of the mainframe, its light-bending camouflage dissolving. It strode towards the Chief, an energy sword materializing in its hands.

Correction. Three Elites.

The Master Chief intercepted the first Elite before it could move to surround him. The black-armored warrior saw him coming and stabbed at him with its sword. But decades of training had honed the Master Chief's reflexes to the point that he easily avoided the attack. He grabbed a hold of the Elite's wrist, placed his thumb on its, and headbutted the alien. He followed up with two lightning-fast jabs and managed to deplete the Elite's shields.

The other Special Operations Elite was on him on a heartbeat. He forcibly spun the first Elite around, slammed its head against his knee and threw him at its comrade.

Of course it wasn't as easy as that. The second Elite deftly reared back to avoid harming its ally, then lunged for the Chief.

John immediately pulled out his combat knife and took two large steps back to avoid the blade. He spotted Samara rushing into the room. The Ultra Elite saw her, cocked its head sideways, then strode towards its comrades.

Good. Get Tali out of here.

Spartan Time kicked into overdrive. The Master Chief could not allow these Elites to coordinate. He had to keep them separated, keep harassing them. Every second he needed was a second Tali could die from shock or infection. He picked his sword-disarm for each Elite, went over them in his head and went to work.

The first Elite came within range and struck high, aiming to sever the Chief's head. He only managed to hit one of the consoles behind the Spartan, robbing the machine of its power. The Chief lashed out with his fist and connected with the alien's chin. He immediately spun to its side and jerked the Elite's sword-arm with him.

Pulled off-balance, the alien was helpless as the Chief brought his knee up and into the Elite's joint, bending it to its breaking point, then over it. The bone snapped and the creature howled. It managed to hold on to tis sword, however, forcing the Chief to adapt. He kicked the alien in its groin and wretched its sword towards its legs.

The energy sword sliced the alien's left leg off below the knee, melting through the thick armor and flesh with ease. Before the alien could scream, the Chief struck him with a sidekick to its ribs, which shattered.

As the first Elite fell to the ground, the other two charged at the Chief.

"Get Tali out of here!" He shouted at Samara when the Justicar approached the Elites, her hands enveloped by glowing orbs of Biotic energy. "Now!"

The Ultra held the other Elite back, carefully prodding the Spartan's defenses. He jabbed his sword forwards and the Chief backed away until he hit a wall.

Damnit!

The Chief glanced at his shields and hoped that they were up to the task. He lunged for the Ultra when it was backing off again. He caught the flat of the blade on his right shoulder. The intense heat of the blade was stopped for a split-second by his shields, which dropped to sixty percent.

He seized the sword-arm – the alien would cut him in half if he didn't – and kicked the Elite in the hinge of its leg. He then swiped the alien's leg with his other foot and pulled it to the ground.

The Chief only got in two stomps on its breastplate before the other black-clad Elite slammed into him. Together, the they crashed to the ground.

The bands of muscle on the Elite's arms were iron hard and it easily forced its sword down on the Chief. His shields dropped to forty percent when the tip of the blade pressed against his throat.

Grunting with exertion, the Spartan brought his leg up between them. Iron hard muscles or not, the alien could not keep him pinned long. It started to back away and then the Chief's boot connected with its head, sending it stumbling off him.

"Tali is stable!" Samara told him. "Make way, you are blocking my attacks!"

Easier said than done. If he tried to back away, he'd be dead. It was the Ascendant Justice all over again…

Both Elites now kept their distance, their chest plates cracked by his strikes. The Chief kept his hands up, poised to strike. If they came at him at the same time, he needed to know how they would hit him. Both sword-wielders were right-handed. The Ultra fought different than the Specops.

"Cortana, can you analyze their fight patterns?" He asked.

No response.

"Cortana?"

The Elites charged. Their energy swords blurred through the air as they slashed, jabbed and lunged at him.

Driven more by reflexes and conditioning than anything else, John weaved, ducked and dodged most of the blows. He punched one in the throat when it came too close and kicked another in the side of its knee. One slash hit him across the chest, cleaving through what remained of his shields. The tip of the blade sliced a thin flake of metal from his chestplate.

But now, he was in a position to counterattack. "Samara, on my mark," he called, shifting his weight from his hind leg and lashing out with a devastating kick against the Ultra's chest. The alien uttered a garbled cry as he staggered back, allowing the Chief to close in. He stepped forwards, covered the three meters that now separated them in a heartbeat and seized the Elite by his head and his jaws. His remaining momentum carried him past the Elite.

"Ready!" Said Samara.

"Mark!"

His hands still wrapped around the alien's head, he flung the Elite towards Samara. She intercepted it with a wash of Biotics and flung it to the ground. Then, she proceeded to crush its skull with a Biotically-charged fist.

The last Elite, seeing what happened to its comrades, pulled out a plasma pistol. The Chief rolled to his right to avoid the lethal lance of energy, then returned fire with his last sidearm.

The Specops' shields held. Sensing that it wouldn't last if it stayed at the defensive, it charged for the Chief.

John cursed under his breath and flung his knife at the alien. It didn't penetrate, but the kinetic energy behind it caused the alien to flinch.

Seizing the opening, the Chief closed in on the Elite, avoided its sword-lunge and shoved his forearm against its throat. He placed his foot behind the alien's right leg and shoved, sending it stumbling.

Samara's body crackled with Biotic energy and unleashed a cascading shockwave the Elite's way. The Elite raised its sword to protect itself and the Master Chief saw his chance. He grabbed the Elite from behind, placed one boot at the inside of the alien's left knee and pulled himself up via its jaw. He grabbed the struggling alien by its head, interlocked his hands against its neck and jerked upwards, while at the same time throwing himself to the side.

He felt more than heard the bones in the Elite's neck snap. The body slumped to the ground and the energy sword fell to the ground. The blade guttered and went dark as its fail-safes permanently disabled the weapon.

John exhaled. Sweat dripped from his forehead. He would have to assess his injuries later. "Good work, Samara. What is Tali's status?"

The Justicar had pulled Tali away from the fight. She lay slumped against the door, her hands pressed against her abdomen. Samara scanned her with her omni-tool. "The blade missed her vital organs. There is little bleeding; the wound is cauterized."

"We need to get her to out of here," said the Master Chief. Bleeding wasn't a concern with energy sword wounds. Even glancing hits could cause major damage to internal organs, not to mention the risk of anaphylactic shock. There was plenty of alien material on the Rayya now. The barest exposure could end up killing her.

:"Cortana," he said, more forceful this time. "Come in!"

There was a crackle over the comm. "Chief? Is that you?"

"What were you doing?"

"I had to be careful, there's a lot of hidden surprises in the system." Cortana sounded distracted, uncertain. "I think I discovered why the Covenant attacked here of all places. You're not going to like it."

"Later. Get a link to the Normandy. Let Chakwas plan for an emergency operation."

"On it. What happened?

Samara, having applied enough medi-gel to keep Tali from going into shock, gently lifted her from the floor with her Biotics.

"Stealth Elites with swords. We've secured the mainframe."

But even as he said those words, he felt something nag at the base of his skull. A Kurt feeling. Something was wrong. The Covenant wouldn't just send a small team for an operation like this. There were too little forces, too little hardware.

He raised his fist and signaled Samara to stop. "Cortana, scan for signals. Infrared, tightbeam, everything."

"Of course. Stand by…uh-oh. There is a strong infrared source at the far aft. A narrow-beam transmission, like a far-infrared laser. Using camera feed…they cut the transmission. Terminated at the source."

John closed his eyes and sighed.

They moved with slow deliberation. One took a rock from the display case and set it inside a red metal case. It bent over the case while the other turned and touched the control panel of a device that looked like a small pulse laser turret. The laser pointed straight up—and out through the shattered glass dome overhead.

It was just like then. Just like before. A massacre to hide their true agenda. He had been too slow. How had he not realized this sooner?

"Master Chief?" Said Samara. "What does that mean?"

"It means," he said, trying and failing to keep the bitterness out of his voice. "We lost."

~0~


Quarian Liveship Rayya

Hydroponics center 8

Thin artificial light reflected dully from the dozens of broken and shattered consoles scattered across the room. Bodies lay as far as the eye could see, sprawling on every tier. Most of them were still smoldering, assuring that everybody without military-grade filters would be breathing in the stench of the burnt flesh of their brethren.

It was like Mindoir all over again.

There was a ringing in Jane's ears that didn't quite come from the guns. There was a blur in her eyes that didn't quite come from the plasma. She was vaguely aware of the crying around her. The scores of quarians searching for their loved ones amidst the piles of the dead. Families torn apart, friendships that went back decades ended with a single bolt of plasma.

Soldiers patrolled the walkways with murderous intent. The very few surviving Covenant were dealt with by multiple streams of hyper-accelerated slugs.

Behind her, Miranda was trying her best to keep Captain Kar'Danna from shooting Legion.

"All I'm saying is to let its actions speak for itself! Without its help, saving the civilians would have been that much harder."

"Their actions were clear enough when they exiled us from our homeworld! Hundreds of thousands of my people are dead and you are walking around with a geth? I should shoot you both on sight!"

"Captain Kar'Danna, without the crew of the Normandy assisting, you would have lost much more. It's only because of Shepard's judgement that we were here when it mattered. And it is that same judgement that allowed Legion to fight by our side."

"We do not wish to be cause of hostilities between the Creators and Shepard-Commander's – "

"Shut up, shut up! I had a family aboard this ship! Their safety was my responsibility! I will not lose anyone else today."

"Oh, lower your gun, would you!"

Shepard sighed and turned around. Captain Kar'Danna's environmental suit looked singed. A large crack ran diagonally across his visor.

"The Rayya just got attacked by aliens with a worse track record for genocide than the geth," she told him, struggling to keep calm. "There's more of them, much more. Forget the lone geth on your ship and focus on the bigger picture."

"Commander – "

"Don't 'Commander' me. This is the first contact between your people and the geth in centuries. Look around. Do you really want to throw away a chance at peace with the geth now?"

The Captain was trembling with emotion. He raised a hand and pointed at Shepard's chest, but didn't say anything. He took several deep, shuddering breaths and then cradled his face in his hands.

Shepard met Miranda's eyes behind her visor. She straightened and said, "According to EDI and Cortana, the ship is clear of Covenant soldiers. The Master Chief suggests a rendezvous at the Normandy."

"What about his mission?" Shepard asked.

Miranda sighed. "A success, as well as a failure. He didn't want to go into detail yet."

Jane closed her eyes. She felt so tired. She didn't want to let someone else take the lead here. There was so much at stake. Still, John was every bit the leader she was. He could handle this. "Let's trust his judgement. We'll rendezvous on the Normandy as well."

Miranda placed a hand on her shoulder. "The quarians are going to be okay, Shepard."

She wondered about that. So much death, so much loss…and this was just one fight, with one fleet. What if the Covenant came with force next time? What if they attacked Earth instead?

Pain hammered at her senses. Biotic fatigue pressed on her hard. Her Biotic nodes fired in random spasms, releasing useless, residual energy. She had difficulty focusing; she needed to get above this.

One thing at a time. Getting back to the Normandy. According to Miranda, the Master Chief organized things from his part well enough. Her team was the last to head back to the Normandy. Tali was already in surgery, Grunt and Garrus lay side by side on medical beds and Jacob was being handled for severe burns. Zaeed and Jack were sleeping. A mixture of exhaustion, Biotic overuse and micro-shrapnel rendered them combat inefficient.

Zaeed had it worse. Worse than Tali, even. A flurry of needles caught him when his shields were down. Turned his insides to mincemeat. Mordin and Karen had to treat him before Tali to make sure he wouldn't die of blood loss or shock.

No mission had seen such dreadful injuries before. They were all lucky to be alive.

"Shepard?" Joker said upon seeing her. "Man, you look bad. You should drop by the conference room."

"Uhh…what?" Jane didn't see the connection.

"You won't believe this. The Chief stole an ancient, alien artefact from the Rayya! Samara helped him get it aboard the ship."

"He did what?"

Joker looked his birthday came early. "I know! His balls must be made from the same stuff his suit is!"

Feeling her ears flush with heat, Jane quickly looked away. "Let's not go there. Keep an eye on the sensors; we don't want to get blindsided by the enemy again."

"Got it Commander."

One of the crewmembers approached her with a dose of medicine. "Commander Shepard!"

Repressors for her Biotic nodes. "Not now," she said and gently pushed him aside. Her knees wobbled dangerously and she grabbed a nearby console for support. The thing was still damaged from Cortana's outburst.

Thane stood by the CIC, keeping a watchful eye on the airlock. He held his Viper sniper rifle and kept his finger near the trigger, not quite on it. "Commander. I am glad to see you didn't have a brain aneurysm yet."

"Har har," replied Jane. "Please don't tell doctor Chakwas that I'm back. I need to do some things first."

He nodded. "Of course. I will remain here for now."

Shepard smiled. Thane had been one of the few combatants capable of spotting stealth Elites. He saved many a life with his reflexes and steady trigger. He had to be worried about possible Stealth Elites sneaking onboard the Normandy.

The ship somehow felt bigger with everybody crowding around in the crew quarters. She couldn't hear Mordin mutter to himself from the lab, she couldn't hear Jacob tinker with the guns in the armory. She rubbed her eyes as she reached the door to the conference room, then walked inside.

Joker had patched the quarian Admiralty through to the conference room, it seemed. It wasn't quite the holographic simulation she was used from Tim, but that actually made the room feel less foreboding.

Of course, that sensation vanished when she overheard the conversation.

" – are you to make that decision? The last time I checked, Captain Shepard was in charge!" Shouted Admiral Xen.

Shepard heard her name and decided to hang around for the moment. The Master Chief faced the three Admirals with the attitude of an officer being debriefed by his superiors. He stood ramrod straight, his arms held by his sides as he held the prying eyes of the three most powerful individuals of the Migrant Fleet.

Individuals he robbed, apparently. What the hell was going on?

"As a representative of the United Nations Space Command, as well as the local expert on Forerunner technology, ma'am," he calmly replied.

"Then the United Nations Space Command stole from us! During our darkest hour, even! That is enough reason to go to war!"

Jane whistled softly. Large words for a scientist.

"The Covenant fleet found the Flotilla because of this artefact, ma'am. They would have returned for it, with twice as many ships."

"Ships we can't handle as we are now," said Admiral Gerrel. "Why didn't you just inform us of the threat? The… reasonable ones among us would have understood."

Daro'Xen huffed indignantly, but didn't interrupt.

"By the time we understood the nature of the artefact, there was no time to discuss it, sir. We needed to deny the enemy their asset as soon as possible."

"And what is to say this...Covenant won't simply pursue you instead? If what you say is true, and they really can locate such artefacts from great distance, won't you jeopardize your own mission?"

Admiral Koris had a fair point, Jane had to admit that. She would like to know that as well.

"The Normandy is a stealth vessel. Furthermore, the nature of our mission sees us operating mostly in the Terminus Systems and Attican Traverse." He paused, clearing his throat. "Finding one ship is harder than finding fifty thousand, sir."

"That doesn't take away the fact that you acted on your accord, without any permission from us. Do you know what this artefact could have done for our people, soldier?" Cried Daro'Xen. "You did not remove a danger, you moronic toy man! You have robbed us of a great opportunity!"

"Ma'am, with all due respect – "

"That is quite enough out of you," interrupted the Admiral. "We must further discuss this with the Admiral Board."

"Now hold on just a moment!" Shouted Admiral Koris. "This man, together with Shepard, did not hesitate to come to our aid!"

"Aid that directly damaged the future of the quarian people, Koris! I've had enough of this. I'm cutting the feed. Gather the Captains."

Gerrel looked at the Chief with what Jane could only guess to be regret, before Daro'Xen cut the feed. John slowly lowered his head. Now that he was away from prying eyes, his entire attitude changed. A far cry from the resolute and implacable soldier she knew, he just looked…tired.

"How is she?" He asked her without turning to look at her.

"She'll live," replied Jane. "It's not life-threatening. From what I heard, Jacob and Zaeed are stable too." She paused, taking note of the many new indentations and marks on his suit. He hadn't escaped the fight unscathed either. "How are you holding up?"

He turned to look at her, his head raised. "It won't affect my duty as a soldier."

Jane sighed. She calmly approached him and gave him the tiniest of nudges against his chest. "And now for real?"

He hesitated. "The quarians had Forerunner technology in their possession. The Covenant located them because of it."

"But that's not your fault. If they found it, how could you have done anything?"

"I was unable to protect their civilians. In the end, I failed to prevent the Covenant from plundering the database. That will cost other people their lives." He clenched his fists. "On top of that, Tali and Jacob almost died. That is on me."

Jane thought about that. She knew he lost people. She also knew he didn't want to talk about that. Should she be stupid and brave, and push the subject?

…Alliance soldiers who never confided in anyone were quickly discharged. Too much threat of a breakdown in the middle of combat.

Fuck it, she decided. If he keeps repressing, it'll only hurt more.

"Well, Zaeed and Grunt almost died too. That's on me." She sat down on the conference table next to him. "You did good, John. I'm sure your Spartans would have agreed with me."

He looked at her with an air of surprise. "How would you know?"

His voice was devoid of doubt, or bitterness. He was genuinely puzzled by her remark. "Look at you. You think you failed your mission, you think you failed your comrades. You just had the people whose lives you saved, viciously attack you. But what was the first thing you asked me?"

She was met by silence.

"You asked after Tali," continued Jane. "That's a leader talking."

He visibly struggled with her comment. After several long seconds of silence, he tentatively said, "My first teacher taught me what it meant to be a leader. Because our duty supersedes ourselves. A leader must be ready to send soldiers to their deaths."

Jane tightened her fists. She remembered the soldiers she lost on Elysium. She remembered Jenkins. Kaidan…she learned that lesson the hard way. But the bitterness in his tone, the way his gravelly voice grew even deeper…he knew that lesson as well.

She looked at him, silently offering her sympathy, as well as a chance to talk about it if he wanted to.

His helmet shifted every so slightly. He looked at her, and she knew that he understood what she meant

"Did you…?"

"…Sam. His name was Sam. On our first mission against the Covenant…" His voice trailed off.

Jane reached for his helmet, her armored fingers brushing across his neck seal.

He flinched when she reached for him. His hand came up to defend himself in a reflex. He lowered it slowly, then allowed her to touch him.

No shields to stop her. He must have deactivated them.

She searched for the seal that undid his helmet for a moment. John's hands came up and pressed against hers, then gently, ever so slowly, guided them towards the clamps. Together, they undid his helmet.

A patch of his skin was singed, just like the rest of the squad. It reached from his neck towards his eye. It wasn't the only blemish on his face. A scar ran across his cheek beneath his left eye, almost mirroring the plasma burn. His face had a weary look, aggrandized by the wrinkles underneath his striking blue eyes.

His eyes met hers.

"How did it happen?" She quietly asked.

"We boarded the ship to nuke it. He took a hit not meant for him. It breached his suit."

"No way back out?"

"No." He blinked. "I gave the order myself. Sam was my first friend. His death showed us that the Covenant could be beaten. That they weren't invincible."

"At what cost?" Whispered Jane.

His eyes narrowed. "They're all gone. For all I know, I'm the last one. The last Spartan."

Most people wouldn't see the change in his expression. Jane did. She saw how his facial muscles loosened, heard how his voice dropped an octave. She couldn't blame him; from what she saw, he was as different from his people as Samara was from hers. Well, mostly.

Jane couldn't imagine the loneliness. The emptiness. The guilt.

Oh, she wanted nothing more than to reach out and touch his cheek. But she knew the gesture wouldn't be understood, or even appreciated, by him.

Damn the UNSC for what they did to you.

Thinking she must be causing him discomfort by being this close to him, Shepard took a step back. "You should take a break. Get some sleep. The moment we've repaired the ship, we're heading out."

John nodded and took his helmet from the table, before slipping it back on again. Shepard made to follow him, then halted.

Sam was my first friend…every mission we took…weapons of last resort.

2525, the Covenant attacked. By then, the Spartans were active.

"John…" started Jane.

The Master Chief turned around.

"How old were you, when you led the Spartans?" She asked, nervousness welling up in her stomach. "How old were all of you, when you started fighting the Covenant?"

He stared at her, silent, contemplating her question. "Don't ask that. Please, don't ask that."

With that, he turned around and left, leaving Jane to add the pieces together on her own.

~0~


AN: some authors fall prey to the whole "Humanity Fuck Yeah!" Thing. I don't. I'm more of a "Covenant Fuck Yeah!" Sort of guy. Well, sort of. They're horrible and they kill people, but that's exactly why I love them. A threatening alien menace that can't be reasoned with, that can't be stopped. One day, they will descent on your home and tear your life apart.

Rough day for Tali, anyway. Before people get suspicious, I'll just end it on the note that I love Tali as a character. Sure, she has her flaws, but who doesn't?