Something Blue Chapter 25, a mass effect fanfic

A/N: AUGH THIS WASN'T SUPPOSED TO TAKE THIS LONG AUGH

Life update: I have now taught at a summer camp. It is an interesting experience.

On the topic of this fic... I hope to have the entire (covering pre-ME1 to slightly post-ME3) fic done before Mass Effect: Andromeda comes out. Obviously, I will need to increase my pace. Here's to writing!

Liara had a hard time getting to sleep that night.

It wasn't the gifts that the Commander so casually gave her, although those certainly didn't help. She was... unaccustomed to being in the position of needing the help of another person. She liked to think she wasn't above accepting it when she needed it, but to be so dependent on somebody she had barely even met was... well, awkward was the best term she could think of.

It wasn't even the murder the Commander had committed to keep her past hidden, although that definitely bothered her. She understood why the woman had done it, especially after the explanation she gave about her upbringing (and wasn't that a tragedy), but she certainly didn't like it. Killing somebody... even somebody as bad as she said he was... wasn't something Liara felt should be particularly easy.

No, it was the way everything seemed to be spiraling out of control... and how much she found herself liking it.

Obviously, she wasn't happy about what had happened to her, or the people of Eden Prime. But... despite the pain, misery, the shock and betrayal, there was a small piece of her that was enjoying this turn of events in her life. There was a part of her that wanted it. A that part thrived on the chaos, the drama, the frantic pace and the subjects that they were diving into. Ancient prothean artifacts? The geth? It was like drinking from the bottom a waterfall – overwhelming, intense, painful... and yet it was an experience that she wouldn't trade for the world.

It scared her.

She had grown up sheltered. Not coddled – her mother had insisted on exposing her to the outside world, and even if she hadn't Liara had always been something of a curious child – but she had never been without the benefit of a support network befitting the sole heir to what amounted to a dynasty. To be completely free of all the things that had surrounded her her entire life... it was frightening, dangerous, new, exciting.

And you want more of it.

Her stomach flipped a little bit at that admission. Yes, she wanted more. More to see, more to feel, more to touch, to explore, to understand. Her curiosity was always voracious, and like a furnace stoking it only made it hunger for more. She doubted now that if she went back to the academic life that she'd be able to tolerate the ponderous nature of it. Not the science – doing proper science was always worthwhile – but the politics. Being forced to wait decades or even centuries to be considered "wise enough" to have something worth listening to made her want to scream.

Calm, Liara, calm.

Yes, she liked how things were going now... but there was so much she simply didn't know, and so much that could go wrong. Her own mother had tried to kidnap her, after all, and had thrown her lot in with that of a madman in the process. She had no idea why. She didn't know what Saren wanted. She didn't know what the beacon the Commander was exposed to told her... although she dearly wanted to find out.

Come to think of it, I barely know anything about Shepard at all.

How did one begin that conversation, anyway? It would be awkward in asari circles; she had absolutely no idea how to go about phrasing it for a human.

"Hi, you just spent thousands of credits to make me safe and comfortable. What's your name?"

She cringed.

Well. Maybe she couldn't go asking like that, but the Commander was a public figure. There had to be something on the extranet about her.

And if I'm not going to sleep anyway, she thought while fumbling around beneath her cot for her omni-tool, then I may as well get something done.

"–on the initial sensor data, that's the situation on the ground," Shepard said to the grim faces gathered around the Normandy's briefing and communications room.

They had arrived in the system to find that yes, in fact, there were geth in the system, and that they were the cause of the colony dropping out of contact. Tali had worked with Kaidan and several of the Normandy's technicians to narrow down how many, and based on her work, they believed that no fewer than three geth frigates were on-station.

While Joker was fairly confident in his ability to take all three of them out with the Normandy's weaponry in a surprise attack from stealth, Shepard had nixed that idea – not only did they have no idea what the geth were after on Feros, but they'd likely take out the colony of Zhu's Hope as well, and that wasn't something she was planning on doing without good reason.

Privately, she was more concerned with why three frigates of geth couldn't seem to take a colony of what had to be several hundred colonists at most. She'd seen how they tore through Eden Prime, and while that was a larger force of geth, Eden Prime had also possessed a much stronger and better prepared military defending it. The most they could see from orbit were a couple of light anti-aircraft weapons to deter pirates, and those wouldn't do much more than scratch the paint on her hull, let alone the geth's.

Which meant they weren't trying to wipe the place out, but were there for some other purpose, and Shepard profoundly disliked it when enemies did things she didn't understand.

"While normally I'd prefer to have a solid mission plan for you, that's unfortunately not in the cards here," she continued. "Instead, we have three contingencies."

She held up a hand with a finger. "First, the simple plan. If the colony is wiped out and we can't determine what the geth were here for, we return to the Normandy and bombard the entire site from orbit until there's nothing left."

A pensive silence filled the room.

"While I'm aware that's not a pleasant option, our primary task here is to stop Saren. If we can't find out what he wants here, I will take any measures I feel necessary to ensure that he gets nothing useful from this place."

Ashley and Kaidan's face were set in the same grim line. Liara was pale, while Wrex and Garrus merely nodded. Tali's expression was, as always, unreadable... but the quarians were known for their expressive body language, and while she was no expert, the tension in the young quarian was obvious.

"Ideally, however, that's not what happens. Our second case contingency is in the event that the geth are here for something valuable, in which case our goal is as simple as it is open-ended: Find it and get it before they do, or if that's not possible, ensure that nobody gets it. Given the prothean ruins here and the relative insignificance of this colony aside from that, it's my personal belief that this is the case."

Most of the rest of the murmured their assent.

"Now, the final option. If we don't find anything special here, and this turns out to be just a side diversion, we clear out the geth as quickly as possible and make for our next stop. ExoGeni can handle long-term support here if there aren't geth waiting to blow people to pieces."

Wrex raised a talon. "If there's nothing important here, why stay at all?"

"Aside from humanitarian reasons?" Shepard asked, noting the indignant look on Ashley's face, "it won't take us long to clear the skyscraper the colony is set in, and it earns us a lot of goodwill."

"Hrh."

Shepard smiled. "Corporate goodwill, Wrex, which can be exchanged for all kinds of shiny toys."

"Oh, well," he said, shifting in his undersized chair, "that's different."

"By your leave, then," she said dryly. "Now. Assuming that we're dealing with scenario two here, we'll break into two and possibly three teams."

The holo-display shifted, showing a crude schematic of Zhu's Hope on top of the skyscraper.

"Team one will be hunter team, and consist of myself, Doctor T'Soni for her expertise with prothean structures, and Tali'Zorah for her experience with the geth. Wrex, if you're not needed elsewhere, you'll also be with us – there are some remarkable similarities to tuchanka here, and I think you'd do well in these buildings."

The old krogan nodded slowly, saying nothing.

"Team two will be watchdog team, and consist of Garrus and Kaidan, with Kaidan in charge. You two will be of overseeing the colonists, organizing a defense force if applicable, and liaising with their leadership. You'll also have the Normandy's marine detachment under your command as well. Try not to break them."

Kaidan and Garrus glanced at each other, then nodded. "Aye aye, ma'am," Kaidan acknowledged.

"The third team, which may not be necessary depending on colony layout, is firebreak team. Ash, Wrex, this is you. If the colonists don't have the skyscraper they built their colony on fully secured, you'll be in charge of sweeping it for geth and taking them out."

"Heh," Wrex grinned. "Killing monsters in warrens? Sounds like home."

"Not a home I'd ever want to live in," Ash muttered.

Wrex laughed. "Your home must be boring."

Ash's face set. "My home was blown up by geth."

"Oh," Wrex said, completely unrepentant. "this will be fun for you, then."

The chief shook her head.

"If you're done?" Shepard said, quirking an eyebrow at the pair. "Good. In the event the colonists do have their building secured, Wrex will accompany me on our search while Williams works with Vakarian and Alenko securing the colony."

She tapped a button and the display winked out. "That's it for the briefing," she said with a slight shrug. "Anybody have any questions before we suit up? No? Then grab your gear and kit up, we're dropping on our next orbit."

Picking what gear to take on a mission was always something of a challenge for Shepard.

Unlike many of her fellow marines, she was not blessed with a hundred-kilo, two-meter physique that could carry everything she could possibly want on a mission. She massed a bit over fifty five kilos soaking wet. While her Alliance-standard genetic modifications made her far stronger than somebody her size should be, there wasn't a whole lot that could be done for her small frame.

When some of her compatriots were carrying forty kilos or more of gear on a mission, she'd be lucky to take twenty, and even that was on the heavy side.

She was fortunate to be a biotic. Not only did it give her a way to cheat, if she needed to, it also meant that she wasn't expected to carry heavy weaponry. Her loadout was typically a lightweight shotgun, a heavy pistol, a small medical kit, and some nutrient packs to help with the calorie expenditure her biotic metabolism consumed.

She glanced over at desk to her right where Liara was loading bag with everything under the sun: Water purification gear, hostile environment survival gear, spare combat suit parts, several ammunition blocks, three different medical kits, a spare superconducting shield capacitor...

It looks like she's trying to bring half the quartermaster's closet wit her, Shepard thought with a smile.

She was just considering how to tell the doctor not to bring so much stuff on what could be a fairly strenuous mission hiking up and down a skyscraper when Liara zipped the bag shut and, in one smooth motion, hefted it onto her back and cinched it tight. She bounced a couple times on the balls of her feet to settle the bag, then gave a satisfied hmph noise.

Shepard blinked. Well, that's not something you see every day. That pack has to weight at least twenty five kilos...

Liara looked up from the bench and noticed Shepard staring. "Is there a problem, Commander?" she asked, a faint purple blush tinging her cheeks.

Shepard shook her head. "No, no problem. I was going to suggest you not take quite so much with you, given that we're going to be walking up and down skyscrapers, but you look like you have things well in hand."

The asari smiled faintly. "It is not entirely unlike hauling specimens up from the bottom of a dig site, Commander. I would almost call it easier, given that your equipment is a fair bit hardier than the prothean artifacts I typically have to carry. One does not need to worry that the slightest bump will ruin invaluable samples here."

"At least people aren't shooting at you when you're working a dig site."

Liara laughed. "That is very true. Although... while I have never been assaulted on a dig, one of my classmates on Thessia did her master's thesis on krogan architecture. The stories she has about tuchanka..." she smiled and shook her head. "They are quite something."

"Really?" Shepard raised an eyebrow. "You'll have to tell me about that sometime. Did the locals not appreciate the intrusion?"

That had been the case for numerous expeditions on Earth: Well-meaning (but often arrogant and heavy-handed) archeological expeditions had inadvertently caused a great deal of destruction and misery in their attempts to preserve – or steal – history from other cultures.

"The local krogan were generally cooperative, if not for the reasons I would appreciate," Liara said, with a wary glance in Wrex's direction. "but some of the wildlife on Tuchanka is, ah, equipped with projectile weaponry."

"Thresher maws," Wrex rumbled without looking up from his shotgun, "spit acid. It'll eat right through your vehicle, your armor... you."

Clamping the weapon to the magnetic holster above the base of his tail, he waddled over toward them. "Too many krogan don't appreciate the past," he said with an eye on Liara. "The young ones, they don't care. They see nothing but supplies to be looted, territory to be gained. The old... they can't stand the memories. Would rather see the past fall to dust than live amidst the reminders of what the krogan used to have."

"What about you, Wrex?" Shepard asked.

Wrex snorted. "I'm old, Shepard. I gave up on my people long ago. The genophage killed us. What's left of our corpse hasn't stopped twitching yet."

They watched in silence as Wrex stomped his way to the elevator.

"He's right, you know," Shepard commented.

Liara stared at her. "You really think so?"

She nodded while strapping the rest of her equipment on. "I'm not that well educated, Liara, but even I can compare the birth rate of the krogan with the death rate. He's right. It might not be soon – krogan can live a long time – but it's coming. Maybe not in my lifetime, but definitely in yours."

"I always wished there had been another way," Liara said. "The genophage always struck me as... cruel. The turians say it was justified, but..."

Shepard buckled the last piece of equipment to her belt. "Just because it was, at one point, justified does not mean that still is today."

"You think using it was wrong?"

"No," Shepard corrected, "I think that keeping the genophage is wrong. Context is important."

"I see," Liara said.

"Regardless, it's moot at the moment – I somehow doubt there are many people eager to undo the genophage. Come on, let's get to the airlock."

Shepard scrunched up her nose. The air on Feros was... odd. Not foul, like some of the worlds she had traveled to were, but definitely not what she had expected of a colony built on a skyscraper.

It smells... musty? Almost like mildew.

The air was also far more moist than she had anticipated. From the summary of the planet, it seemed like the world would be dry and dusty, not humid.

Another oddity, I suppose, she thought. Oh, well. The galaxy is full of them.

"Okay, people, move out," she ordered. "Joker says there are geth signatures all over the area, but we're also picking up signs of colonists, so check your targets. I'd like to avoid killing the people we're trying to rescue."

Following her own directive, she drew her pistol but kept it pointed carefully at the ground a few meters in front of her – close enough that an accidental shot wouldn't hit something important, but far enough away that the high explosive rounds she used wouldn't take out her legs.

They moved forward slowly, moving carefully around the odd stone blocks scattered around the makeshift docking bay. The less experienced among them flinched at the occasional explosion echoed from somewhere in the skyscraper's structure.

She rounded the corner of the walkway and nearly ran into someone standing perfectly still in the center of the path.

"What the-" she flinched, her gun twitching up at the figure by pure reflex.

"David al Talaqani," the man said brusquely by means of introduction. "We saw your ship. Fai Dan wants to speak with you. Immediately."

Lowering her weapon slightly, she scowled at the man. There was something off about the cadence of the man's speech. It was strangely hesitant, like he was having trouble with words, or picking them exceedingly carefully.

"Who's Fai Dan?" she asked.

"He's... our leader," David said. "He needs your help to prepare for the geth. They're making another push. Please," he gestured behind him, "up the stairs and past the freighter."

A flicker of motion behind him spurred Shepard to dive behind one of the stone blocks. To her satisfaction, the other members of her team followed her movement almost immediately. The caution quickly proved itself warranted, as a bright flash and swiftly moving red roar announced the presence of a geth rocket trooper arriving in the area.

The man didn't even try to dodge. He simply turned around and stared at the slow-moving rocket with an expression between dull surprise and idle curiosity before it slammed into his stomach, detonating and transforming him from a person into a pile of fresh gore.

Shepard wiped a piece of viscera from her face, sighting in on the pair of geth troopers that had fired upon them. A quick flash of blue and a mental tug sent the offending troopers tumbling over the railing and into a long trip down to the ruined planet's surface hundreds of meters below.

"I wonder what his problem was?" Ashley asked, picking pieces of the man out of her air with a look of disgust. "Didn't even try to get out of the way."

"Maybe stress from dealing with the geth?" Kaidan suggested with a shrug.

"Whatever it was, doesn't matter any more," Wrex rumbled, checking the thermal vent on his shotgun. "We've got geth to kill."

Shepard decided that she actually liked fighting the geth.

They were challenging opponents, for one. Between their varying levels of skill depending on how many of them there were in a given area and their unusual weaponry, there was always something new to be learned when fighting them.

They were also "acceptable" targets in the eyes of the galaxy: The quarians hated them for what happened on their homeworld. The humans hated them for attacking Eden Prime. The turians didn't like any threat to galactic stability. The asari, as a rule, didn't hate... but they strongly disapproved of things that inflicted mass misery. She could safely tear the geth to pieces without concern for her reputation or what people would think of her. And if some people thought she was a little too eager to engage them, well, that was perfectly understandable given what happened to the human colony on Eden Prime.

Even better, they let her really play around with her abilities. As a human biotic, she always had to be careful – unlike the other races of the galaxy where the capabilities of biotics were well-understood by their general public, fear and suspicion tended to rule human perception of biotics... especially if she used them to the point where she made everyone else look weak by comparison.

Which was annoying, because as a biotic, there really was a huge gap in terms of capabilities between her and a non-biotic member of the species. Yet she had to be very careful to avoid pointing this fact out to anyone, lest she step on their pride, or worse, appear arrogant.

Public relations. Life would be so much easier if people were honest with themselves.

Nobody cared, however, when she used her abilities to tear the "cold robotic murderers of Eden Prime" into tiny pieces. Hell, she hadn't been surprised when somebody 'leaked' a clip from suit camera of her warping the armor of one of the geth infantry on the colony. She didn't mind – it wasn't a bad recruitment tool, as things went, and even if she had cared she'd signed rights to her likeness away when she joined the military in the first place.

While things weren't quite to the point where she could skip, dance, and hum a merry tune while slamming the geth troopers into pieces, she could have a little fun with her foes before tossing their broken forms out of the building. They were even kind of enough to make little electronic pain-like chirps and warbles when she broke something important inside of them.

If I were designing robot bodies for my military, I wouldn't make them able to make noise when hurt. That seems unnecessary.

Their loss was her gain, however, and she smiled viciously as the last geth in the landing bay fell. Blue-gray hydraulic fluid seeped from its seams after she had crushed whatever reservoir contained it, dripping down its battered limbs while it slumped to the stone floor.

"Everyone okay?" she called over her shoulder.

"Hrh," Wrex exhaled, yanking his shotgun's bayonet out of a twitching hopper. "The jumpy ones bleed. Good to know."

"A little rattled, but we're otherwise okay, Commander," Kaidan called from the back of the group. "Tali says there aren't any geth signals in the immediate vicinity, so I think that's the last of them."

"Copy that, Alenko," she acknowledged. "Let's go see if there's anything left of this colony."

Feros was a mess.

They had arrived almost literally in the nick of time, advancing into the colony mere minutes before the geth made a coordinated push against the exhausted and worn out colony militia. Shepard was surprised – that was the second time in as many deployments that they had arrived only moments before something catastrophic happened.

While it makes for good storytelling, it sure as hell isn't likely for an operation on one planet, let alone across a galaxy!

She made a mental note to make sure nobody on her crew was leaking information about their movements to the enemy. It wasn't likely – if they were, she doubted that she'd keep finding such light opposition – but it was something worth considering.

Luckily, any mole she had – if she had one – wasn't giving a clear impression of her strength, and between her expanded ground team, the Normandy's marine complement, and the colony militia the geth that had been massing for an assault had barely served as a speed bump.

Which immediately led to the less urgent (but no less serious) problems facing the colony: A larger group of geth in the basement, a large colony of varren that had gotten riled up by something, rapidly dwindling food stores, and an offline pump system.

No food, no water, no power, and monsters in the basement.

Better get to work.

"So it looks like we're working with scenario two," Shepard said to the assembled crew of the Normandy. "The colony is intact, such as these things go, and the geth are here in force. Luckily for the colonists, whatever they're looking for seems to be in the ExoGeni building, so that's where hunter team is headed next."

"Are you sure you want to head over there alone, Commander?" Kaidan asked, a concerned frown on his face.

"I'll have a second biotic and a geth expert with me," she countered, "plus, we'll be in the mako, and space is limited. Unless you want to march people across that causeway in the open..." she trailed off.

Kaidan shook his head rapidly. "No, ma'am," he said. "I just wish there was a better option."

She shrugged. "It is what it is, Lieutenant. Worst case scenario we call Joker and have him make a couple passes with the Normandy to soften things up."

Her voice was lighthearted, but the fact of the matter was that the plan she was proposing was dangerous. The thick walls of the prothean buildings made it very hard for scanners to penetrate, and while she was a skilled combatant she doubted she'd be able to take on three geth dropships worth of ground forces by herself.

Or maybe I could. I haven't really tried. Regardless, Kaidan's smart enough to realize that this is our best shot.

"Williams, Wrex – you two are in charge of clearing out any holdouts from the lower levels. As a secondary objective, I want you to try to get the colonist's requests down there taken care of – I know they wanted some Varren dealt with, along with a few other tasks. Check in with Doyle and O'Connel near the entrance."

"Aye aye, ma'am," Ash said with a quick glance at Wrex.

Hope that was just sizing him up. "Oh, and Chief..."

Ashley looked back at Shepard. "Ma'am?"

"Before you go, head to the quartermaster with Wrex and pick out your favorite anti-vehicle weapon."

"Now that's what I'm talking about," Wrex chortled, nearly knocking Ash cleave over with a friendly shoulder shove. "Hunting big enemies with bigger guns!"

Ash shook her head and smiled.

"Alenko, Vakarian, I'm leaving you in charge of defending the colonists. You'll have command of the Normandy's marine complement to help. Feel free to haul whatever supplies you need for it out of the Normandy's stores, as well – just make sure the quartermaster knows what we need to replace."

"Aye aye, ma'am," Kaidan said.

"One last thing before we get to it," she said, gesturing them closer and lowering her voice. "Our primary mission is to stop Saren. If for whatever reason we can't defend the colony against the geth, we leave."

She looked around at the suddenly grim-faced crew. "I understand that might not be a popular order, but the fact of the matter is that, in the grand scheme of things, this colony doesn't matter. We lost many times this colony's entire population on Eden Prime alone, and if Saren gets what he wants the death toll will be thousands if not millions of times worse. The Normandy and its crew is the best, and possibly only, chance we have at stopping him. We cannot afford to throw away that chance for a tiny colony at the edge of civilized space."

The silence weighed heavily over them.

"...understood, ma'am," Kaidan said finally.

"Now, hopefully, it won't come to that," she said, her tone lightening. "But in the event that it does... I need you to be ready to do what's necessary."

"If there are no further questions?" she asked, and the crew shook their heads. "Very well. Move out."

"One of these days, somebody's bound to have a question," Shepard muttered while throwing bags into the Mako.

"I'm sorry?" Liara asked, leaning her head out the door of the tank.

"Oh, nothing," Shepard said. "Just talking to myself."

"Actually, Shepard?" Tali said timidly. "I wanted to ask..." she trailed off at the Commander's stare.

"Wanted to ask what?"

"I... it's just... would you really abandon this place? All these people? Keelah, I saw children..." the quarian shuddered.

Shepard sighed and finished stowing her gear for the trip. "Yes, Tali, I would," she said gently. "But only if I absolutely had to. It's my job."

"To kill children?" Tali asked, then quickly clasped her hands over the speaking indicator of her suit. "Oh- I didn't mean-"

I like her. "I know what you meant, Tali," Shepard said with a chuckle at the quarian's obvious discomfort. "No, the Systems Alliance doesn't pay me to kill kids." Usually. "They pay me to do what needs to be done. Same with the Spectres, come to think of it."

She opened the hatch and gestured Liara and Tali inside. "Sometimes – very rarely – that involves doing unsavory things. More often it involves going to strange places, meeting strange people, patiently listening to strange people complaining about their problems, pointing out the obvious solution to the strange people, then filling out the paperwork. In triplicate."

Tali giggled, relief plain in her voice.

"Anyway," Shepard said as the Mako roared to life, "I think this mission's going to be a pretty easy one, morally speaking. Unless you have an issue blowing up geth mobile platforms...?" she trailed off, tone rising in question.

Tali gave her the best raised eyebrow one could give in a full-bodied environment suit. "You're asking a quarian?"

Shepard smirked. "Somehow, I didn't think you'd mind."

"Shepard? I'm picking up some comm traffic."

Shepard put one more high explosive round into the sparking wreckage of the geth mobile artillery platform for good measure. "Geth?"

"Not geth. Human. And it's not coming from the colony behind us."

She scowled. That meant survivors in the ExoGeni facility proper. From a humanitarian perspective that was excellent news, but it did mean her job just got a lot more complicated. "Put it on speaker, I want to listen in."

"Will do. Piping in... now."

"-ot movement... some kind of vehicle," the radio crackled. "Not one of the geth."

"They've got us on visual, Shepard," Liara said urgently from the turret. "They must be close."

"We'll track them down," Shepard told the pair. "They might be able to give us an idea of what we're getting into here."

Shepard pulled the mako up against a small makeshift barricade tucked into a small alcove off the side of the causeway.

Definitely people here, unless the geth have started eating emergency ration bars, she thought, noting the garbage littering the abandoned barricade.

"Come on," she called to Tali and Liara. "I think they're down here."

She had to give whoever was down here credit; it was a fairly defensible position, at least as far as things went in the ruins she'd seen so far. It wouldn't last against any kind of serious assault with air support, but it would deter the kind of ground forces she'd fought through on the way in. The smaller units would be cut to pieces in the long hallway down, and the larger ones simply wouldn't fit.

And even properly equipped sappers couldn't break through whatever this building is made of that easily. No, this is a good place. Better than the open-air colony for holding out, at least as long as they have supplies.

She kept her gun holstered and nodded respectfully at the exhausted corporate security guards watching the bottom of the ramp. The relief on their faces was almost palpable. They're not going to be happy to learn that I'm not the cavalry they're expecting. Oh, well. They've held out so far, they can hold out until actual relief comes.

"That's close enough!" a tense voice snapped when she reached the bottom.

The owner of the voice was a middle-aged man wearing a badly soiled ExoGeni office uniform. The only office uniform, Shepard noted, in what had so far been a sea of laboratory outfits and security gear.

Wonderful. I've found the resident bureaucrat.

"Relax, Jeong," the woman standing next to him said with a long-suffering eyeroll. "They're obviously not geth."

"Get back, Julianana," he snapped at her. "Who are you? What do you want?"

"Rude," she heard Tali mutter behind her.

Fighting the smirk that the quarian's comment elicited, she raised her hands in a soothing gesture. "I'm Commander Shepard, Council Special Tactics and Reconnaissance. I'm here to help with your geth problem."

"They're not our geth," Julianana said dryly, "but we're grateful for your help. You see, Jeong? You worry too much."

"And you trust too easily, Julianana," he muttered.

"I'm just glad to see a friendly face. I thought we were the only humans left on this planet."

Shepard shook her head. "There are several hundred colonists left at Zhu's Hope," she said, jerking her thumb behind her at the causeway. "They're not in the best of shape, but they're managing."

Come to think of it, these people seem to be in better shape than the Zhu's Hope colonists. Despite their lack of gear, there isn't the same mix of fear and thousand-yard stare among the people here. Odd.

"You said they were all dead!" Julianana exclaimed, whirling on Jeong.

"I said they were probably all dead," the bureaucrat hedged.

"They are surviving despite everything the geth have done to them," Liara said.

Julianana grumbled. "We know what that's like. These damn geth have been relentless."

"I'll do what I can to keep them away from you," Shepard reassured her, "but I need information."

Jeong's eyes narrowed. "What kindof information?"

Shepard shook her head at the man. She was not, as a rule, one to care about the behavior of others – but the irrationality of worrying about corporate secrets while standing in the middle of a literal war zone baffled her, as well as the hostility he seemed to show to everything not ExoGeni.

"Eugh," Julianana said. "Ignore him. The geth are holed up in the ExoGeni headquarters. Just a bit further along the skyway."

"Those headquarters are private property," Jeong said. "Remove the geth and nothing else."

Okay. Time to make something clear.

"Mister Jeong," Shepard said pleasantly.

"Oh, this should be good," she heard Tali mutter.

Jeong glared at her. "What?"

Shepard brought up her omni-tool and tapped it for holographic display, then loaded her newly-minted Council Spectre credentials. "Do you know what these are?"

He glanced at it. "No," he said, not bothering to read the display.

"I suggest you read them."

She waited patiently while he leaned close, holding the display level so he could examine the document she was presenting. She saw him mouth the opening paragraph to himself, and was more than a little satisfied to see the blood drain from his face when he finished.

"I see you're familiar with my office," she said while he stared at her. "Allow me to make something abundantly clear to you, mister Jeong: I don't care about your damn corporate secrets. I'm here to find out why the geth are here, and if possible, to deny them whatever they came for. I am empowered to do literally anything in pursuit of those goals."

She closed the display. "I would strongly recommend against getting in my way. Now. Julianana. Do I need anything to get into the headquarters?"

Julianana quickly wiped the smirk from her face. "You'll need my keycard. Here," she said, untangling an identity card from a lanyard around her neck. "Also... my daughter, Lizbeth... she's missing..."

"They should waste time poking around," Jeong interrupted, apparently recovered from Shepard's browbeating. "We can do a proper accounting of the casualties when the geth are gone."

Liara stared at the man in shock. Personally, Shepard was inclined to agree with him – digging through the rubble of a geth-invaded prothean ruin for a lost civilian was likely to be a fool's errand, but it was rather impolitic to say so. Even she knew that.

"That's my daughter you're talking about," Julianana snapped at him in fury. "She's alive. I know it."

"We'll keep an eye out for her," Shepard promised. "Do you know where she was?"

Julianana shook her head. "All I know is that she was giving a presentation in the headquarters today when the attacks came."

Great. That building is huge. Well, if we find her, we find her. Otherwise, I'm not going to waste time looking.

"Alright. We'll do what we can. The sooner we head out, the better our chances are."

Julianana nodded. "Good luck, Commander."

"Well, I don't see any other ways down, Shepard," Tali said.

They had made it across the causeway in one piece. Shepard was slightly suspicious of precisely how easily, but Tali had reassured her that she wasn't picking up any more geth activity on her sensors than had already been present. It seemed the bulk of the geth forces, wherever they were, were distracted with some other task and not paying close attention to what was happening on the road to their stronghold.

"I agree with Tali'Zorah, Commander," Liara concurred. "It does seem like the only path deeper into this... complex."

Shepard pursed her lips. They were almost certainly correct – they had, after all, spent the last fifteen or twenty minutes searching through the dimly-lit open section at the end of hallway. Every potential way through either led away from where Tali's sensors said they needed to go, or ended in a pile of rubble.

"You're probably right," she said at last. "Liara, I know you packed a rope – want to tie it off up here so we can backtrack if necessary?"

Liara flashed a smile and rolled her pack off her shoulders. "Of course, Commander. I'm on it."

"Why a rope?" Tali asked while Liara began looking for something to tie the length of high-strength polymer line to. "You're both biotics. Can't you just, I don't know, leap out or something?"

"And how were you planning to get out in that case?"

Tali shrugged. "You could lift me? I know you've tossed around stuff far heavier than I am!"

"While that's true," Shepard said, "and we might do that if we need to come back this way in a hurry, it doesn't hurt us to leave multiple options. Besides, what if Liara and I are unable to lift you? You don't want to be stuck down there."

Tali shuddered. "No. You're right, Shepard. Sorry."

"It's nothing to be sorry for," Shepard said, waving her off. "It's simply making sure we have the most options going forward. How's that rope looking, Liara?"

Liara gave an experimental tug on the rope, which was now fastened to what looked like the mangled remains of some kind of heavy lifting equipment. "All set, Commander. We can go down whenever you're ready."

"No time like the present," Shepard said with a short huff. "Let's go."

Sometimes I wonder how the Varren manage to get around so much. Is it really that hard to keep a spaceship sealed?

Fortunately for the trio – and unfortunately for the Varren – evolution had not seen fit to give the creatures immunity to high explosive pistol rounds, and the small pack of Varren that charged at them after climbing down the rope barely made it halfway across the field of debris they'd found themselves in before getting slaughtered.

"Back on Earth," Shepard said as she looked over the mutilated corpses, "we had a huge problem with small animals called rats. They'd climb onto the old sea-ships by the ropes that we used to keep them tied to the docks, and from there head to the cargo holds and food stores. The rats often carried insect parasites themselves, and the parasites carried viruses that could infect people. Many plagues and the destruction of at least two very advanced civilizations in human history were due to disease-bearing creatures catching a ride with us on board our transportation."

She sighed and surveyed the butchered Varren. "You would think that after multiple examples on our home planet leading to billions of deaths we'd be a bit more careful about what we let stow away aboard our vessels."

"It's a lesson we quarians had to learn the hard way," Tali said, stepping up to join the commander. "Rannoch did not evolve insect life. Many of our first trade expeditions to the stars met with disaster due to bugs, and it didn't get better when we moved to the flotilla."

"I can imagine- wait." Shepard held up a fist, staring down at one of the dead Varren in the rear. "I didn't shoot this one. Did either of you?"

Liara shook her head. "I barely had time to lift the front ones, let alone shoot one of the ones in the back."

"Wasn't me, either," Tali said.

"Then we're not alone," Shepard said, sweeping her gaze over the ruins. "Eyes shar-"

The crack of a single pistol shot echoed around the room, accompanied almost immediately afterward by the telltale flash of a shield barrier triggering.

Every species that participated in direct ground combat had different reactions to taking surprise fire. Human troops tended to duck first and return fire second. Turians, who were often better drilled and equipped, typically trusted in their shielding and opted to immediately return fire. The krogan would charge, the salarians would scatter to flank, and asari typically responded with biotics of some kind.

Of course, those reactions were only generalizations of the behavior of typical trained troops, and the crew making their way through the bowels of the ExoGeni headquarters were anything but.

Tali's omni-tool spat out a reusable hacking drone while the quarian dove for cover. Even before she stopped moving, she was already patting her suit for breaches – not a surprising response for a race that would die painfully in the event of a suit rupture.

Liara lifted her hand, flaring blue with the distinct energy of electrical potential being converted into gravitational distortion. In the distance, gravity took a short break – sending everything that wasn't firmly fastened down slowly into the air.

Unfortunately for the shooter, Shepard had very similar reflexes that Liara had. While the asari's biotic lift had sent everything floating, with Shepard's boost the field quickly sent everything that had been on the floor crashing to the ceiling six meters above them.

"WhoooaaAAAAA- OOF!"

Shepard held up a glowing fist. "Cease fire!" she barked, eyes locked on the prone figure on the roof. "Hello?"

"Ow..." the figure mumbled, staggering to her feet upside-down on the ceiling. She seemed somewhat disoriented – not entirely surprising, Shepard thought, given that she was now walking on the roof.

"Ohmygosh," she gasped, dropping her pistol which spun gently in the air before slowly drifting downward. "I am so sorry! Are you okay?"

Shepard sighed. "You should be more careful," she scolded, releasing her grasp on gravity to send the woman slowly spiraling toward the floor in Liara's field. "You could have gotten killed."

The asari dropped her lift effect when the young woman was half a meter from the floor, and she dropped to the ground with a thud. "I know," she said after picking herself up and dusting herself off. "I saw movement and thought maybe it was geth or more of those varren."

"Varren with guns?" Tali asked skeptically, head cocked to the side.

"I-" the woman began, then cut herself off and blushed.

"Well, we're neither varren nor geth. But what were you doing here in the first place? This isn't exactly a good place for civilian researchers to be wandering," Shepard said with a nod at the woman's ExoGeni technician uniform.

"It's my own fault," the woman admitted sheepishly. "Everyone else was running, and... I stayed behind to back up data. Next thing I knew, the geth ship had attached itself to the building and the power went out. I tried to get out, but the way was blocked..."

"Both Doctor T'Soni and I are biotic. We'll clear a path out once we figure out what the geth are here for."

"The geth? Well, since they don't seem to care about what's left of our headquarters, I bet they're here for-" she cut herself off with a hiccup, casting a suddenly wary glance at Shepard.

The commander shifted slightly. It wasn't as brazen as drawing a gun and demanding information, but the body language was still clear: You are now part of my mission here.

"I'm here for the geth," Shepard reminded the woman sternly. "If there's anything you can tell me about why they might have chosen to come here, that would be very useful information."

Fortunately for the civility of their discourse, the woman knew when to hold and when to fold. "I don't know for certain," she said, "but I'm guessing they're here for the Thorian."

"Thorian?" Liara asked, head askance. "I've never heard of such a thing."

"It's an indigenous life form," the woman explained. "ExoGeni was studying it."

"What is it? Where is it? And why was ExoGeni interested?"

"I'd be happy to give you the whole story, but, uh..." she glanced around nervously. "Maybe not here? There are an awful lot of geth around."

Shepard shrugged. It was a delaying tactic and she knew it, but that didn't mean the woman didn't have a point – there were a lot of geth around, including a new kind that had some kind of active camouflage system that made them difficult to spot until they were almost on top of you. Once they got clear, however, more than a few pointed questions were definitely in order.

"Sounds good to me," she said. "Let's head back to the Mako, and-"

She felt more than heard the buzz that interrupted her sentence, and quickly glanced at Liara. "Tell me you felt that, too," she said.

Liara nodded, and Shepard shook her head.

"Felt what?" Tali asked. "I didn't feel anything."

"Element Zero responds to electrical current to create a mass effect, but the reverse is also true," Liara explained while Shepard led them back to the passage. "While element zero does nothing in a fixed gravitational field, if you subject it to a shifting field, it will produce a weak electrical charge. Biotics, who have element zero in their nervous systems, can sometimes feel strong nearby field shifts like those caused by-"

"Biotic barriers starting up," Shepard finished grimly, looking up at the passage they had climbed down. The thin rope still hung in place, but the entire opening was closed off by a shimmering blue wall.

"Oh," Liara said in a small voice.

"Can you break it down?" the woman asked, squinting up at the field.

Shepard shook her head. "Not enough power."

"Huh?"

"It's a question of energy," Liara explained, falling back into her comfort zone with something to explain. "A biotic can only put as much energy into their fields as their body produces. A modern generator or capacitor can source thousands of times as much power."

"There are ways to take a barrier out like this with biotics, but almost all of them involve going around it, and these walls look to be a bit too sturdy," Shepard said, then turned to the woman. "I'm sorry, I just realized I never asked your name."

"Ah, I'm Lizbeth Baynham. Just an assistant researcher at ExoGeni." she said.

Shepard raised an eyebrow. Now isn't that a coincidence. Guess her mother wasn't wrong this time. "Lizbeth? I'm Commander Shepard. The asari is Doctor Liara T'Soni, and the quarian is Tali'Zorah nar Rayya. I think we ran into your mother earlier."

"My mom? Is she okay?" Lizbeth asked, frantic.

Shepard held up her hands in a soothing motion. "She's fine, or was when we left her. She was holed up at the midpoint on the causeway with some of ExoGeni's security and a few other civilians that made it out."

Lizbeth let out an explosive sigh. "Thank goodness."

"She's safer than we are at the moment, though. You know this building better than we do. Is there another way back to the causeway from here that doesn't go through this barrier?"

Lizbeth pursed her lips. "Several, but most of them are blocked off by geth, and I'm no soldier."

"That's fine," Shepard said, patting the butt of her pistol. "I am. Where to?"

It was close quarters combat of the worst – or best, depending on your point of view – kind. The heavily reinforced material of the ancient prothean buildings blocked their suit sensors, most of the navigation aids that ExoGeni had put up had been disabled by the invading geth, and the geth were crawling all over the hive-like tunnels.

"I'm surprised," Lizbeth panted after another sprint through the twisting corridors, "that none of you seem to be lost in here. It took me weeks before I was comfortable navigating."

"Shepard picked us for our skills here," Tali explained while Shepard carefully scouted a hallway split ahead. "Quarians are quite used to living in a warren. Many of our ships have been so heavily retrofitted the only way to find your way around is to have someone who knows the ship guide you."

"I guess that makes sense," Lizbeth admitted. "What about you?" she asked Liara.

Liara smiled. "I am a prothean archeologist. I have spent decades working in ruins not unlike this one. I am more at home in a building like this than I am in busy cities."

"Okay... so what about her?" Lizbeth tossed a nod in the direction of the Commander, who was kneeling down and peering at something on the floor. "How does she do it?"

"I... do not know," Liara replied with a shake of her head. "I would assume she has training for it."

Shepard stood and jogged back to the group. "Okay," she said, "Lizbeth says both paths can lead to a balcony overlooking the causeway. We can rappel down from there to the Mako and drive out. Trick is, neither path is clear."

"Did your sensors pick something up?" Tali asked. "I'm just getting scrambled geth signals bouncing off the walls."

"They get a bit clearer at the junction. I think there's a pretty big group of them down the hall to the right."

"That's near where their ship latched on," Lizbeth said. "We must have come nearly all the way across the building."

"I'd still almost rather deal with that than what I think is down the left passage," Shepard said with a grimace.

Tali looked incredulously at Shepard. "What's worse than a dropship full of geth?"

"Lots of things," Shepard answered primly, "but in this case, I think it's a krogan mercenary... and I don't like fighting them when I have the advantage. Here, in close quarters?" she shook her head. "Not unless there are no better options."

"I don't like the idea of walking into a collection of geth, Shepard," Tali said slowly, "but I'll follow your lead. I've never fought a krogan before."

"We'll defer fighting the krogan for another day, then," Shepard said, nodding to the right path. "Let's go."

The room they walked into was... odd.

It was, as Shepard suspected, filled with geth – but they didn't appear to be active. Instead, they were all kneeling in a concentric semicircle, a good dozen of their mobile units resting on bent knee with artificial heads bowed to what Shepard would swear was some kind of Shrine.

"Tali," Shepard whispered tersely, "explain."

The quarian was as flabbergasted as Shepard had ever seen her. "I... I don't know!" she whispered back, barely loud enough for Shepard's translator to pick it up. "It's almost like they're... worshipping that sphere... but the geth don't do that!" She trailed off and glanced quickly at Shepard. "Do they?"

Shepard pursed her lips. "I think that when all this is over, we need to take a long, hard look at everything we know so far. We're missing something, I know it."

They peered in silence at the still forms of the geth.

"Well, no sense in wasting time, then," Shepard said at last, and unclipped one of her high explosive grenades from her belt. "Cover me in case this doesn't get all of them."

"Are you sure?" Liara asked. "I think we could just sneak by them without them noticing."

Shepard began changing some settings on the grenade. "I don't want to have them wake up after we've gone past them and have them charge up our backsides."

Liara closed her eyes. "I cannot disagree with you, but I still dislike this. It feels... like I am interfering with some kind of ceremony by killing all the participants."

"They're geth," Tali argued. "We're not really killing them, they just get downloaded to the local mainframe. And even if we were killing them, they're not blameless here! Or have you forgotten Zhu's Hope?"

Shepard put a finger to her lips before Liara could respond. "We can discuss this later," she said with a glance at the pair. "For now, I want you to cover your ears – this will be loud."

She primed the grenade and spun it down toward the gathering. It landed almost perfectly in the middle of them before detonating with a thunderous crack, catapulting geth around the room like toys.

The trio scanned the room for any signs of movement, but the grenade had done its work – the geth lay scattered and broken, and the shrine had rolled into a corner where it still glowed softly.

"Leave that be," Shepard said to Tali when the quarian went to go pick up the orb.

"But, Shepard, it's something the geth made! Something original! Do you have any idea how little my people really know about the geth since we went into exile?" Tali exclaimed.

"Yes," Shepard replied levelly. "I also know that, whatever that is, it took a high explosive grenade that shredded all of the mobile combat units in the room without suffering so much as a scratch. That's on top of the geth worshipping it. I have no idea what it is, what it's for, or what it's made of... and I'm not taking any risks bringing it along. Take pictures if you want, but work fast – that grenade will have attracted attention."

"Oh," Tali said in a small voice.

"I'm going to go make sure the geth don't get the drop on us," Shepard said, drawing her shotgun and edging toward the exit of the room. "Take your readings, but be quick. I don't like it here."

"Don't take it too hard," Liara whispered after the Commander was out of earshot. "I want to know what it is, too, but I see where Shepard's coming from."

"It's not that," Tali said, shaking her head in disgust. "I should know better. Unknown functioning geth tech that wasn't damaged by a grenade? I'd be insane to cart it around with me." She sighed and looked wistfully at the orb. "That doesn't mean I'm not curious, of course"

"I think we all are," Liara said with a wry smile. "Even her. Maybe especially her."

"Really?" Tali asked, glancing up from her omni-tool. "She never really struck me as the curious type. Not like you or I, at least."

Liara blushed faintly. "That may be so, but I think there's a lot more to her than meets the eye. Did you know she talked a hanar preacher into applying to a scientific university back on the Citadel?"

Tali blinked. "Really?"

"Yes!" Liara nodded enthusiastically. "He was preaching without a permit, and one of the C-Sec officers was getting aggravated. She talked him into leaving to go pursue higher education to help further support his ideas. It was an... interesting conversation to witness."

"I'll bet," Tali said. "Ah! There we go. Readings done. Want to go over them when we get back to the ship?"

Liara smiled broadly. "I would love to."

Shepard's hunch proved correct, in that the geth were definitely on the lookout after their congregation had been blown to pieces by her grenade. Between Tali's arsenal of hacking tools and the team's biotics, however, most of them did little more than slow the team down briefly.

"Hey, Shepard, have you noticed these?" Tali asked, pointing at the thick braided cables running along the edge of the hallways they were moving through.

"I did, but I'm not sure what they're for. Power?" Shepard replied.

Tali nodded. "I think so. They must be using their dropship to power all the barriers they've been putting up around this building. Perhaps they're making up for the lack of mobile units?"

"That would make sense," Liara said. "The colonists said they'd been attacked multiple times, and the geth dropships don't hold an unlimited number of geth. Perhaps they're running low?"

"That would be a break for us," Shepard said, peering at one of the cables. "Tali, you know geth, do they need to expose the dropship in any way to run this much power?"

Tali frowned. "I don't know," she said after a moment of thought. "The geth have recharging ports on the outside of most of their dropships to top off the supercapacitors that power their mobile units, but they're not meant for use on this scale. They might need to open a hull plate to run taps on the main power bus."

Shepard smiled. "Good. That might mean we can do something about the dropship before we make a run back across the causeway."

"You think you can damage a dropship with what we have with us?" Tali asked incredulously.

"No," Shepard replied with a fierce grin. "I think I can damage a dropship with what they have. Come on."

"Stupid machine! Access encrypted files!"

The voice in Shepard's ear was, while not exactly gentle, still vastly more mild-mannered than the growling roar that echoed through the twisting halls of the prothean building.

Krogan.

She stopped so quickly Liara actually ran into her, making a quiet oof as she did. Shepard didn't spare the time to scold her, instead holding a finger to her lips in a shushing motion as soon as Liara began to apologize for the misstep.

"Keep very quiet," she almost mouthed. "Krogan."

Liara and Tali nodded mutely, while Lizbeth scowled. "Are krogan really worse than geth?" she whispered.

"Yes," Shepard replied firmly. "Stay here. This might be messy."

Leaving the doctor alone huddled beneath a stairwell, the trio made their way cautiously up the stairs. As luck would have it, the krogan was more interested in yelling at the computer terminal than listening for intruders.

I'd fault him for being sloppy, but he's in a building full of his geth. Who could possibly challenge him here?

"Okay," Shepard whispered when they reached the doorway leading into the VI room, "Tali, you cover the door. Liara and I will take down the krogan."

The two nodded, and Shepard unslung her shotgun before flicking the fire selector over to what the grunts always called "Carnage Mode."

Most of people you will be fighting will stop after being seriously injured, even if they're physically capable of continuing for a time, the dry voice of her instructors echoed through her head. It's a survival instinct that is very hard to overcome. The one exception to this rule are the krogan – when severely injured, a krogan will fly into a berserk rage until they are physically incapable of continuing to fight... and since they evolved on Tuchanka, that takes a lot of work.

Shepard dropped a hand from her shotgun to reach into her holster, drawing the compact but absurdly powerful handgun stored there and handing it to Liara. "When he notices us, aim for his torso and don't stop shooting until you can see the far wall through him. We'll start on three, okay?"

Liara swallowed and nodded.

"Good," Shepard whispered. "On three, ready? One, two-"

"-if there is nothing else," the VI said, "please step aside. There is a queue forming behind you for the use of this console."

The world seemed to slow down for Liara as the krogan spun around, his eyes widening in shock briefly before narrowing in fury.

Oh, Goddess!

Beside her, the Commander's shotgun roared, a great flash of red leaving afterimages in her peripheral vision. The hastily snapped shot went wide, however, and while the krogan's shield flared and died, the brilliant red projectile only tore a piece out of his shoulder plate.

Shepard was already bringing the shotgun down into line again when Liara remembered the pistol in her hands. She aimed, her hands only trembling slightly, and squeezed the trigger. Her shot, too, went wide, and Liara almost screamed when the explosive round tore a ten centimeter hole in the ancient prothean wall to the right of the krogan.

Go away go away go away GO AWAY!

Liara yanked the pistol left and pulled the trigger as quickly as she could. Most of her shots missed, but some didn't, and the krogan howled in pain as heaping chunks of its flesh and armor were blasted apart by the torrent of fire.

Shepard's shotgun sounded again, and Liara watched in relief when the left side of the krogan's face evaporated in a red mist. The relief quickly turned to horror, however, when the krogan only stumbled for a moment before roaring louder than before and charging straight at them.

Why isn't he dying! Oh, goddess, no! Shepard!

"DUCK!" Shepard bellowed, diving to the ground while a blue nimbus gathered around her hands. Liara reflexively crouched, just in time to feel the whoosh of the krogan's suddenly airborne form fly over them. It flailed in the air, helpless in the grip of the Commander's quick biotic lift.

"Take it out!" she yelled, gritting her teeth and making a sharp rending gesture with her free hand. The krogan's skin and armor began to writhe and seethe, as if it was made of syrup instead of reinforced alloy and calloused skin.

Liara nodded jerkily, bringing the pistol to bear again. She squeezed off a single shot, only to gape in shock when the round that had previously taken a small chunk out of the Tuchanka native's hide and armor instead blew the limb clean off.

Its howls abruptly stopped, and the resulting silence rang in their ears.

Shepard let the krogan's battered body fall to the floor with a wet splat. "Everyone okay?" she called, her voice still slightly too loud after too many explosions in too small an area.

"Keelah..." Tali whispered from the doorway.

"I'm okay," Liara said, shaking her head. "Are... are all krogan like that?"

Shepard nodded. "In close quarters? Pretty much. I wasn't expecting the VI to give us away, which didn't help."

"What did you do to him?" Tali asked, carefully peering down at the krogan's remains. "Before Liara shot him. It looked like he was... wriggling."

Shepard sighed. "A biotic warp," she explained. "It's a bunch of rapidly shifting mass effect fields designed to shred vehicle armor and buildings. The Alliance prefers it if we don't use it on people. It doesn't exactly endear biotics to the human public."

Tali gently poked the krogan's skin with the toe of her boot, recoiling in horror when a mere touch tore a hole in the tissue-like surface, blood and other liquefied substances flowing out.

"And that would be why," Shepard said grimly.

The quarian backpedaled until she hit the wall, hands held over the mouthpiece on her suit. "Keelah, that's, that's..."

"I know," Shepard said, a touch wearily. "It's cruel, it's unpleasant, and it's every variety of inhumane you could name. It's also one of the few ways to quickly take down a krogan. Come on. Let's go see what he was talking to."

She stepped around the remains of the krogan, and the two followed... albeit with a slightly larger gap than previously.

"Welcome back, research assistant Elizabeth Baynham. What can I do for you?"

Shepard rolled her eyes. Virtual intelligences. "I need to know all the information the previous user was attempting to access," she said.

"Fetching data," the machine informed her. "The previous user was attempting to access new research data on Species 37 – the Thorian," it added helpfully.

"Damn it," she muttered under her breath. "What new data?"

"There has been no new observational data from the research colony beneath Zhu's Hope for several cycles."

Shepard's eyes narrowed as several pieces of the puzzle clicked into place. "Explain the relationship between Zhu's Hope and the Thorian," she ordered.

"The colony of Zhu's Hope was constructed above the current location of the only known specimen of Species 37," the VI explained. "A control group was deemed necessary to test the extent of the properties of Species 37."

"What properties?"

"Species 37 exhibits several properties uncommon to other flora," the VI continued. "It is sentient, possessing verifiable memories dating back prior to the Prothean extinction event, and additionally possesses the ability to control multiple varieties of fauna by means of infectious spores."

"Oh, Goddess..." Liara whispered, half in horror and half in wonder.

"Wait a minute," Tali said. "What does it mean, 'control'?"

Shepard waved the pair to silence. "Explain the control group," she ordered the computer.

"A control group was established to determine the rate and depth of infection in a given population. Before contact was lost, sensors in the Zhu's Hope colony indicated an infection rate of approximately eighty-five percent, with infection taking approximately six to nine solar cycles."

"And what does the infection entail?" Shepard asked.

"Upon inhalation, spores from Species 37 are absorbed into the bloodstream, where they make their way to the central nervous system to begin growth. The parasitic colony develops into what current research indicates to be a biological transceiver of some kind, although the exact signaling mechanism is still under investigation. As the infection progresses, Species 37 is able to exert more influence upon the infected host, beginning with simple sensations and advancing to direct conscious communication."

"So it can control minds," Shepard summarized. "Well."

"And ExoGeni willingly infected its colonists? To study this?!" Tali shook her head. "Keelah..."

"That would certainly explain the odd behavior of some of the colonists," Liara remarked. "Not entirely themselves... we should tell the Normandy."

Shepard nodded and keyed her communicator, only to flinch as a burst of static filled her ear. "The geth fields are generating too much noise," she said with a curse. "We'll need to go deal with them first."

"What about Doctor Baynham?" Liara asked. "Do we confront her about this now?"

Shepard tilted her head back and forth in thought. "No," she answered finally. "It doesn't matter right now. Once we're clear of this building, we can have a little chat, but until we're out it's moot."

"But we are going to talk to her, right?" Tali asked. "I mean, she's part of a team that's infecting people with mind control spores!"

"Oh, don't worry," Shepard said with a smile that made the coldest depths of space look cozy, "we're going to have quite the chat."

"Okay, you three," Shepard said when they came back down from the VI's room, "we're going to be moving at a brisk pace from here on. I want everyone to keep their eyes sharp, their weapons hot, and to pull no punches."

"You mean this has been leisurely?" Tali asked. The quarian had been slightly out of breath the whole way through the building, as she was still recovering from the suit puncture she'd taken before joining the crew.

"Unfortunately, yes," Shepard said. "I wouldn't do it if there wasn't good reason, but there's a very real time limit on us now."

"What is that?" Liara asked, tilting her head. "You don't mean-"

"No," Shepard interrupted. "When we left for this mission, I left instructions with Joker. It's our task to recover what the geth were here for, but, failing that, we need to stop them from getting it even if we don't know what it is. Right now, he doesn't know what our status is... which means it's up to the executive officer to decide when we're a lost cause and to nuke the colony."

"Wait a minute," Lizbeth said. "As in, drop a nuclear-"

"Yes," Shepard interrupted again. "I very much do not want to see how powerful the Normandy's special weapons arsenal is up close, which means we need to move as quickly as possible through this building, take out the geth, and get back in radio contact. Understood?"

They nodded numbly.

"Good. Now let's move."

She's been holding back, Liara thought in wonder after the third room of geth.

Liara had seen flashes of the Commander fighting hard since they'd met... Goddess, had it only been days ago? It felt like forever. It was one thing to see a particularly well-executed combat maneuver once, however, to see a ceaseless stream of them back-to-back as she moved through the building...

Where previously she had made a show of checking choke points, clearing the different entrances and exits, and making sure that everyone was safe and paying attention, now she moved through without hesitation.

And, oh, Goddess, how she moves!

Liara was not a poet, but watching the Commander fight was like watching a hurricane or other unstoppable force of nature. Her weapons were a part of her, and every part of her was a weapon. One geth might take a shotgun round to the torso, while its compatriot might get tossed out a window to fall to the ruins below, all in the same breath and motion.

She uses her biotics like they're a part of her, Liara realized, not like they're abilities she was taught.

It was a style that some of the more spiritual asari biotics strove for – the incorporation of their biotic abilities into their movements and motions the same way one might integrate the use of a hand or elbow into the act of picking up a coffee cup.

When the human jumped over a low barrier to slam her boots into a geth taking cover behind it, there was a tinge of blue amplifying the mass of her boots to flatten the foe in addition to just knocking it over. When she threw a right hook at the eye of an approaching heavy platform, the fist went through the machine's optical sensor, instead of just cracking it. When she wanted to be on the next platform up, she jumped, the blue aura surrounding her making the four meter vertical leap seem effortless.

There was a grace and glory to the violence the Commander wrought upon her foes, a beauty to it the likes of which Liara had never seen before, not even in the action holos. It was violence, yes, but not the brutal slaughter like they had done to the poor krogan earlier. There was an efficiency and poise to it that made it almost enjoyable, far more so than Liara had ever expected combat to be.

Liara knew her own meager talents couldn't match it, but she kept up as best she could. She would finish off the geth that Shepard didn't quite take down on the first pass, provided cover for Tali when the quarian needed to hack something, and treated the injuries they suffered when something went awry.

And things did go awry. Shepard was, in Liara's opinion, astounding... but there was only one of her, and she could only point her guns, grenades, arms, legs, and biotics at so many geth at once. She'd taken a bad hit to the arm when her shield failed after walking straight into a room full of active geth, and Lizbeth had a minor concussion after a disabled geth fell on her from a catwalk. Liara herself had her own collection of bruises and cuts, and while Tali looked unharmed, Liara had no doubt that she was feeling worn out, as well.

Still, there were only so many geth in the building, and sooner than Liara had imagined – but later than she had hoped – they found themselves standing atop a pile of broken and smoldering geth mobile platforms inside a blasted-out room that had served as the docking point for the geth dropship.

"Okay," Shepard said, breathing hard, "we made it here. Anyone see anything we could use to pry that tick off?"

"Tick?" Tali asked.

Shepard shook her head. "A small insect parasite native to Earth. The dropships sort of look like them. Well, cockroaches, really, but the trick's a better metaphor."

"I think this used to be our loading bay," Lizbeth said from the entrance to the room. "Yeah, it is. They'd bring in our supplies and we'd have to haul them through the corridors we came through."

"Andmph?" Shepard asked, chewing on an energy bar.

"Well, it has this big heavy duty hydraulic shutters that actually crushed the hand of one of the dock workers once. Maybe you could, I don't know, use them somehow?"

Shepard swallowed and winced. "I'm pretty knocking this dropship off will take more force than the door can provide."

Liara pursed her lips. "She might be on to something. We can't knock it off like that, obviously, but we can make it very hard for them to leave. What if we call the Normandy over and have them shoot it down once we've locked it in place?"

Tali nodded. "That might work, and with the window here I bet I can rig up an antenna to get a signal to the Normandy."

"Okay, we'll do it," Shepard said. "Tali, Liara, you two start work on a radio. Lizbeth and I will get the door working."

"ormandy to shore party, do you read? Shepard, are you there? Come on, Normandy to shore party!"

They were gathered around the radio. It was a crude affair – parts borrowed from wrecked geth, a power supply, and a pretty ungainly length of wire running to a rod they'd hung out the door – but it worked, at least as far as they could tell.

"Reading you loud and clear, Joker, do you read us? What's going on over there?" Shepard asked, keying the button they'd rigged up for the radio.

"We're in lockdown here, Commander! Something happened to the colonists, they're banging on the hull, trying to claw their way into the ship. They're freaking out!"

Shepard shot a glance at Liara, who nodded grimly. "Copy that, Joker. We know what's going on, but we can't explain right now – we're in need of some fire support."

"Uh, Commander, if I lift off, the guy that's trying to punch his way in through the cockpit window isn't gonna have a good day."

Lizbeth's eyes widened, and Shepard's mouth set in a thin line. "Understood, Joker. Proceed with liftoff. We have a geth dropship that's powering a bunch of barriers here that needs to get taken out. We can trap it against the building for you, but until it's dead we're stuck here."

"I... copy that, Commander. Lighting engines," Joker said, his voice heavy.

"Give us five minutes to get clear of the dropship, then take it out. We will be out of radio contact until it's down, our suit comms don't have the strength to get by these barriers and our jury rigged radio isn't portable."

"Aye aye, ma'am, five minutes then hit the dropship. Hope you know a way out of this mess," he said bitterly.

"We're working on it, Joker. Shepard clear."

Shepard set unplugged her omni-tool from the radio, only to have the irate Lizbeth plow into her, almost knocking her off her feet.

"My FRIENDS!" she cried, eyes wet. "How could you?! First you say you might nuke us, now you're throwing us into the ruins?!"

Faster than Liara had ever seen her move, Shepard drew her pistol and leveled it at the young researcher's face, the barrel steadily pointed at the bridge of her nose.

"We have five minutes before Joker arrives," Shepard said in a completely flat voice, and both Liara and Tali took a half step back at the emptiness in it. "I will talk for three. Are you willing to listen?"

The woman hiccuped, eyes fixed on the gun, but nodded.

"Good. Your research team and company discovered a mind-controlling alien from the age of the protheans and, instead of announcing the discovery to the council or Systems Alliance, conducted a grossly inhumane research experiment using it. I am well within my rights as a Spectre to execute each and every one of you for what you did here."

She flicked the safety off with her thumb. "Give me one good reason I should not begin with you."

"I-"

"Take your time."

"I- I was afraid," Lizbeth almost whispered, eyes dropping to the floor. "I wanted to stop the tests, but they told me I'd be next. My mom doesn't know."

"When you found me... I said I'd stayed to back up files. That wasn't true. I was writing a message to Colonial Affairs about this whole mess. Here, you can read it," she said, offering to transfer a file on her omni-tool.

Shepard tipped her head at Liara, and Lizbeth held her omni-tool's display so that she could read it. The asari gave the message a quick skim, then nodded at Shepard.

"I tried to tell them where to find the Thorian, and what had happened here, but the geth cut the power before I could send the message." She gave a helpless shrug. "I... I never meant for this to happen."

"Where is it?" Shepard asked.

"The entrance is beneath the merchant's freighter," Lizbeth said. "The colonists moved it shortly before the geth attacked."

"It must have known they were coming," Tali mused. "How?"

Lizbeth shrugged. "I don't know."

Shepard lowered the pistol. "Regardless of how it knew, that was a smart move. You say this Thorian is sentient? Good. We can go ask it what the geth want."

"I'm coming with you," she blurted when Shepard turned to leave. "Maybe I can help... undo... this mess I helped create."

The ride back to the first outpost was tense, to say the least.

"A credit for your thoughts, Commander?" Liara asked, breaking the silence that had fallen over the Mako up until that point.

"I am trying to think of a way to not kill half a thousand colonists today," she said.

Liara flinched. "What?"

"The Thorian has obviously decided that we're a threat to it, as evidenced by its attack on the Normandy. I need to speak with it, but the only way to do that is to reach it, and it's in the center of Zhu's Hope... and Zhu's Hope's population was about half a thousand people by our rough count this morning."

"Five hundred and eighty seven," Lizbeth said quietly. "Or it was when this started..."

"Right," Shepard said. "So we need a way to-"

She was interrupted by the crackle of the Mako's radio. "-anyone picking this up?"

Lizbeth perked up. "Hey, was that-"

Another voice sounded throughout the Mako. "Get AWAY from that radio!"

"I repeat, this is Juliana Baynham of Feros Colony. Please send he-"

"I said GET AWAY!"

Lizbeth slammed the back of Shepard's seat with her fist. "That was my mom on the radio! Stop! Stop the rover!" she shouted, before tugging on the hatch release with abandon. Yanking it open, she leapt out of the rover, tumbling along the ground slightly while Shepard slammed on the brakes.

"Well, at least she has spirit," Tali said dryly while Shepard shook her head.

Liara peered out the door after her. "Do you think we should see what's going on?"

Shepard sighed. "Probably. We might also use some of their security supplies – I don't have much in the way of nonlethal gear with me."

They dismounted quickly, parking the Mako off to the side of the long ramp down to the refugees. Lizbeth was crouched against the left wall, obviously taking cover. When the three came up behind her, she frantically pantomimed a gun and pointed down the hall.

"What's going on?" Shepard whispered.

"I don't know!" Lizbeth answered back. "Somebody down there is waving a gun around, and I don't know why! I don't see any geth!"

Shepard drew her pistol. "I bet somebody's conscience isn't quite as clear as yours," she said, they walked up the corridor.

"Just- just everyone be quiet! Let me think!" the man said, pacing back and forth, pistol in his hand.

"You won't get away with this, Jeong" the older woman Shepard recognized as Juliana said.

"Get her OUT OF HERE," he snapped, and a security guard put her in a quick hold before dragging her away.

"Get away from her, you son of a bitch!" Lizbeth shouted, leaping out from behind the crate she'd been hiding behind to run forward.

"Lizbeth!" Juliana cried, breaking out of the guard's hold to run toward her daughter.

"Damn it! Come out where I can see you! All of you!" he barked at Shepard.

Shepard sighed and pushed away from the wall, casually sauntering forward.

"Ah. Shepard. Damn it. I knew it was too much to hope the geth would kill you," he sneered.

Now there's a polite greeting, Shepard thought.

"I found some interesting facts about you in the ExoGeni database," he began, and Shepard's blood ran cold. She had no doubts that some companies had her real personal data – everything the government did these days was subcontracted, and everyone knew that data retention policies only really applied if you got caught keeping things you weren't supposed to, rather than not keeping them in the first place.

"-but this doesn't need to turn out like Torfan," he finished, and Shepard stifled a sigh of relief. So the ExoGeni database only has what I did. Fine. They were supposed to know that... even if they thought they weren't.

"What do you think you're doing, Jeong?" she demanded. It wasn't an unreasonable question, although Shepard suspected she knew the answer.

"Communications are back up," Jeong said. "ExoGeni wants this place purged."

I can imagine, Shepard thought. This place is a huge liability now. The experiment's gone wrong, there are geth crawling all over, and they've even got a Spectre digging up stuff that ExoGeni would pay a very pretty penny to keep away from the council's prying eyes.

"This is a human colony, Jeong, you can't just repurpose us!" Lizbeth protested, while Shepard wondered if 'repurposed' was a deadly euphemism or not.

"It's not just you," he sneered. "There's something here far more valuable than a few colonists."

Shepard scanned the room quickly. It was almost comically easy to tell who was in on the secret – everyone that looked guilty or worried was, everyone that was outraged almost certainly wasn't.

"You're after the one unique thing on Feros," Shepard drawled. "The Thorian."

"The what?" Juliana said, confused.

"It's, ah, a telepathic life form buried beneath Zhu's Hope," Lizbeth explained, somewhat sheepishly. "It's taken control of the colonists there. ExoGeni knew all along."

"You won't get away with this, Jeong," Juliana repeated.

"So you keep saying," he sneered at her. "But nobody's going to miss a few colonists."

And people have the audacity to call me a monster, Shepard mused. I get it, mister Jeong, you don't care about people. Truth be told, we're likely not that different in some respects. But really, there's a lot of value in blending in! Sure, it takes a bit of work, but it's a lot more conducive to longevity than running around telling people exactly what they don't want to hear all the time.

She allowed herself a faint smile. Well, never let it be said that I miss out on opportunities, she thought. It'd be almost criminal to miss out on this one. Someone that careless with human life really doesn't belong in polite society, after all.

Liara was still wrinkling her nose in disgust at the wretched example of a person before her when Shepard drew her pistol, flicked the safety off, aimed, and squeezed the trigger all in one smooth, almost casual motion. The explosive round caught the completely unsuspecting Jeong in the upper chest, instantly transforming his upper torso into an expanding cloud of gore. A quick biotic shove ensured that the majority of it went over the edge, and then, almost as an after thought, the rest of his body followed.

Everyone blinked at her in shock. "What?" she said, lowering her pistol. "He had a gun and a reckless disregard for the lives of those he was in charge of. He was talking about writing off half a thousand people in order to please his boss."

"Now, unless anyone else shares his sentiments...?" she trailed off ominously, shifting her vision to the two security guards fingering their weapons.

"Uh, we're fine, ma'am," one of them said shakily, casting a wary eye at Liara and Tali, who had taken the opportunity to ready their implements of choice.

"Good," Shepard said.

"As if things weren't bad enough already," Juliana said with a grimace. "Now we're shooting each other in the back!"

"Technically, I think it was the face," Shepard heard somebody mutter, and tried to stifle a smirk. No, Shepard. Do not smile about having murdered somebody in cold blood.

"It's my fault," Lizbeth said miserably. "I knew what was going on and didn't do anything..."

"Ah, don't you start," Juliana said, giving the younger woman's hair a quick ruffling. "You do good work, and you know it. What now, Commander?"

She's taking this remarkably well, Shepard thought approvingly. "I need to go find out what the geth wanted from the Thorian, and see what's going on with the colonists there."

"The colonists won't let you near the thorian," Juliana said with a shake of her head. "They'd die first."

"Perhaps your security team has some nonlethal equipment we could use?" Shepard asked. "I don't mean to sound melodramatic, but it's imperative we find out what the geth were here for. The fate of far more than one colony depends upon it."

"I'm not sure what we have... Zeke? What did you take with you when we left?" she called over to one of the security officers.

"Just what was in the heavy truck when we left, ma'am," he replied with a helpless shrug. "We didn't really have time for packing."

"Did you take Moocow or Bowser?"

"Bowser, ma'am, it was closer to the door."

"Excellent!" Juliana said, heading to the large cargo truck at the back of the room. "Before everything went to hell, I was working with some new plants in our greenhouses. We were testing the results of some gene splices, and stashed a bunch of herbicide canisters to clean up."

Liara frowned. "Do you believe the herbicide will work on the spores produced by the Thorian?" she asked.

"I don't know about that," Juliana said, "but I do know that the herbicide is a weak, short-acting nerve agent in high concentrations. It won't do much to someone that's healthy, but in the event that their nervous system is weakened..."

"...then it might be enough to take them out of the fight," Shepard finished. "That might work. At the very least, it's better than assaulting the colony."

Lizbeth nodded in relief. "I... have a lot of friends over there, Commander. Please..." she trailed off helplessly.

Shepard nodded. I make no promises, but I'd rather avoid wholesale slaughter if I can. You reap what you sow.

"Tali, how quickly do you think you can adapt our grenade housings to disperse this stuff?"

Tali peered at the canisters. "Won't take long, I can fit some of our CO2 canisters for cleaning weapons to the housing and have the primer on the grenade puncture them. That should give enough pressure to aerosolize the herbicide through a pinhole. Shouldn't take more than a few minutes per grenade."

Shepard made a mental note to forward a recommendation to the Systems Alliance that every special forces team to have a quarian. "Sounds perfect," she said. "Can you do it in the back of the Mako? I want to get moving."

Tali nodded. "I'll have to, that's where my tools are," she said.

"Perfect," Shepard said. "Let's roll out."

A/N: Conclusion to Feros coming soon! I think next chapter will finally (finally!) see some developments between Liara and Shepard. I've been wanted to write that for so long you have no idea.

Seriously.

Catch you folks soon!