Something Blue Chapter 41, a mass effect fanfic

A/N: Here we go again!

By the time everyone was ready to drop, the Normandy had completed another three orbits around Virmire, and each one made Joker more and more grumpy about the state of affairs on the ground. A larger-than-anticipated set of anti-air installations meant that roughly half of the Normandy's marines would be deploying in a separate air drop from the rest of the ground squad, requiring some precision low-speed maneuvers while under fire.

In Shepard's opinion, it was a risky approach, but not one outside the realm of possibility, and she'd put the pilot's grousing down to his own way of handling pre-battle nerves than any serious objection to the plan.

The rest of the ground team had loaded into the Mako, to prepare for a high-speed drop out the back of the Normandy's cargo bay into one of the many almost idyllic shallow beaches that made up the bulk of this portion of Virmire. The drop zone was about fifteen kilometers out from where they'd seen signs of the STG's crashed vessel and temporary emplacement, and while she'd have liked to drop closer, there was simply no good way to do it with the guns active.

"Coming in for final approach, Commander," Joker's voice crackled in her earpiece. "Better hang tight, you're dropping in sixty."

"You heard the man," Shepard said to the rest of the team. "Ash? You and Garrus both secure up there?"

"Affirm, ma'am," the gunnery chief called back. "Looking forward to giving 'em what for."

Shepard nodded and readjusted her grip on handlebar above her head, silently counting down the seconds. It was something of a game she would play with herself, seeing how close she could keep track of time under different situations without checking her omni-tool.

She managed to get all the way to sixty four before the distinctive lurch of free-fall announced their departure from the Normandy's cargo bay. One… two… three… four…

The braking rockets fired with a roar, Tali squeaked, and the Mako crashed into the shallow waters of Virmire with a splash and trail of sand.

"I've had worse insertions," she remarked. "How do things look up there, chief?"

"Pretty beach, ma'am," Ash called back. "Garrus is looking for something to shoot, but it's calm now."

"Perfect," she said. "We're all in one piece back here, not even rattled, so let's get the show on the road."

"Aye aye!" the woman called, and the whine of the electric motors driving the tank, while not as satisfying as some of the engines she'd heard from old automobiles on earth, was still reassuring to hear.

"Shepard?" Tali said, a worried note in her voice. "My omni-tool just alerted me to drone control signals nearby."

"Damn," Shepard said, punching a button on her omni-tool to start a timer. "That was faster than I'd hoped. Garrus, eyes up, we have drones with eyes open."

"I copy," Garrus yelled down from the turret, and Shepard felt the faint thump of the ammunition block loader cycling in the main gun. "Will be nice to get some target practice in before the going gets tough."

She shook her head at his confidence and leaned back in the seat. Nothing to do now but wait.

Things progressed relatively smoothly, at least from her perspective. There was the occasional thump of enemy weapons fire hitting near them, a few lurches during evasive maneuvers, and the nearly constant rattle of the Mako's machine gun punctuated by the heavy thump of its main cannon, but nothing really untoward. The Mako's shields held against the few shots that did hit them, and Ash was making good time driving them toward the crashed salarian vessel.

"Ma'am? Got a problem," Ash called, the Mako grinding to a halt.

Of course. I would have to tempt fate, Shepard thought. "What's wrong?"

"Road's blocked. Looks like some kind of checkpoint built into the rock."

"I take it the main gun isn't working?" she asked.

"Garrus already put four rounds into it. It left a scratch, but we're not breaking through like that," Ash said.

"Alright, that's our cue," Shepard said to the rest of the team. "Ash, pop the hatch and mind the Mako, we'll go see if we can get this gate open."

"Have fun, ma'am," Ash said as the back of the Mako hissed open.

The four them clambered out of the back, stretching cramped limbs and blinking in the sudden bright sunlight.

"Shepard?" Tali said, stepping up to her. "I'm getting geth signals, now, too..."

"Well, that at least guarantees this place belongs to Saren," Shepard remarked. "Any idea what they're up to?"

"It looks like station-keeping… just idle update pings. I don't think they're active yet."

"But they'll know if we blow them up," Shepard said.

"Definitely," Tali said. "You think we can sneak by? I don't like the idea of having active geth at my back."

Liara frowned. "I'm curious why they weren't activated when the combat drones were. Did those drones belong to another group?"

"There weren't any other installations within sixty kilometers of our LZ," Kaidan said, "and I don't think those drones were long-range models."

Shepard tapped a few buttons into her omni-tool. It had been just over fifteen minutes from their drop and initial contact with the combat drones to arriving at the barricade, which put them well behind where she'd have preferred to be in terms of schedule. But if the drones weren't being actively controlled and Saren didn't have them set to automatically sound an alarm…

"Garrus, were those drones automated or remote controlled?" she asked, thumbing her suit radio in case her voice didn't carry well through the Mako's hull.

"Definitely automated," he said. "They would always do the same dodge down and left whenever I pointed the main gun at them. Whoever set them up did it strictly amateur style."

That doesn't sound like Saren at all, she thought with a frown. Arrogance was his stock in trade, but not to the point of incompetence. If his security was that sloppy…

"Okay. There's a chance we just caught our opposition napping, and they don't actually know we've hit them yet," Shepard said. "We'll keep moving under the assumption that the enemy was aware of us from the beginning, but it's possible that they're not watching their security monitors and didn't have them automated."

Ash whistled into the radio. "Back on Eden Prime, that would be KP for years," she said under her breath.

"If anyone has a better reason than gross enemy incompetence, now's the time to speak up," Shepard said, "because this is not what I'd expect. If not, we're going to move in, open this gate, and try to make contact with the salarians ASAP."

Wrex unholstered his shotgun. "Ready when you are, Shepard," he rumbled.

She nodded. "Then let's move."

The gatehouse was an intimidating structure, built out of reinforced concrete covered in thick armor plating, and covered with plenty of convenient outcroppings for defenders to repel an assault from.

Except there were no defenders.

Or, rather, there were, but they were all in a rack against the wall, curled up in a fetal-like position the geth apparently used for moving ground units in bulk.

"Anyone else find that unsettling?" Kaidan asked, not letting his gun waver from the wall of geth. "Or is it just me?"

"It is definitely unusual," Liara confirmed. "Although still not as strange as that orb."

"Right, that was really strange," Tali said. "I'm still sad we never found what that was all about."

"A little focus, please?" Shepard asked to mumbled apologies. "Thank you. Tali, will these activate if we get close?"

"I… don't know," Tali admitted. "It's possible."

"Okay. Kaidan, do you have any conventional demolition gear in your kit?" she asked.

"No, ma'am," he replied, "but we have some in the Mako. You want to set something up with these?"

She nodded. "I'm worried that opening that door-" she pointed at the controls for the main gate with her pistol, "-will wake them up. I want to have charges on all of them so that if they do wake up, we just have to push a button and book it back to the Mako."

"Sounds good, ma'am. I'll go fetch the demo gear."

"In the meantime," she said while Kaidan jogged back to the Mako, "Tali, I want everything you can get on this – recordings, sensor readings, anything you can capture passively."

"Already on it," Tali said. "I do that all the time. Don't need to order a quarian to learn more about the geth!"

Shepard smiled. "Just making sure."

A minute later, Kaidan jogged back up with a heavy canvas backpack slung over his shoulder. "Here you go, ma'am," he panted. "One bag of bombs."

"Appreciated, Lieutenant," she said, hauling out one of the explosives and giving it a once-over. "Get these active and sync them to your omni-tool. Liara and I will use our biotics to move them into position."

"You think that'll keep them from waking up?" he asked, already priming the first charge and handing it over to Liara.

"Well, these bombs aren't that much bigger than a bird, and I don't see them waking up whenever a bird flies by," Shepard said with a shrug, "so it's worth a shot."

"Fair enough," he said, handing her a charge. "Here you go."

"Thanks," she said, and slide the charge along the ground toward the wall rack full of geth. A little biotic lift moved the explosive up to nestle near the mobile platform's hip, where it hung after she let the field fall.

The three of them set the bombs in place, although with more quantity than precision, and Kaidan activated the arming switch on his omni-tool. "All set, ma'am."

"Good," Shepard said. "I'm going to go hit the gate. If they go active, wait as long as you can before blowing them. I don't to have to walk the rest of the way if these take out the gate systems, too."

With that, she moved smoothly up to the console and tapped the large green button there.

The response was as loud as it was immediate: A klaxxon went off, the geth on the wall began to unfurl, and the behind them started grinding open.

"COVER!" she yelled, leaping over the edge to land with a heavy thud in the wet sands below. A moment passed, then two, then-

WHUMP.

The explosion made her ears ring almost immediately, and she felt the blast more than heard it. She knelt down, covering the back of her head with one hand while raising a biotic barrier to protect herself from the shards of metal and chunks of concrete now raining down around her. She glanced down at her squad's biometric data readout, and aside from some high heart rates, everyone appeared to be alive and largely uninjured.

She tapped a button to start the second timer and looked up at the gatehouse.

The geth storage rack had been completely obliterated, and a five or six meter crater blown in the building on top of the gate, like somebody had taken a giant ice cream scoop to the structure. The gate controls were obliterated, but luckily for them, half the gate was still grinding open.

Wrex peered over the edge and pumped his fist in the air, a wild grin on his face. "Ha HA!" he bellowed. "Now THAT is how you take care of those stupid machines!"

Tali popped up next, checking her suit for ruptures while shaking her head. "While I can appreciate the effectiveness, I might like to be a little farther away next time," she said. "Keelah, I can feel that in my bones..."

"Ahh, it's good for you, makes 'em strong," Wrex said, slapping the quarian on the back.

"Oof-" Tali sputtered.

"Everyone in one piece up there?" Shepard called.

"We're all fine," Liara said. "Although I think they know we're here, now."

"Probably," Shepard said. "I've got another timer running. Let's get moving; I want to meet with the salarians as soon as possible."

"Never thought I'd say this," Kaidan said, "but I think I miss the Mako."

Wrex laughed as the five of them began the jog back to their tank.

"Commander, we've hit a snag," Joker's voice called in her radio as they drove up to the camp. "There are a lot more AA guns here than we thought, and we've had to go to ground about twelve kilometers from your location. Marine teams are out to take them out, but we can't reach you without getting blown out of the sky."

"Copy that, Joker," she said. "Are you safe for now?"

"For now, yes, but we're sitting ducks if they send anything heavy fliers against us," Joker said.

"Understood. I'm going to meet the salarians and get briefed; hang tight and keep me appraised of your situation," she ordered.

"Aye aye," he replied.

"I told you there were more guns than you spotted," Wrex said.

Shepard shrugged. "Hopefully the marines can handle them. We have other things to deal with."

"Yeah, more salarians," he said. "My favorite."

"These are competent ones," she warned. "Be polite."

"Yeah, yeah," he grumbled. "Lead the way."

The salarians had been near their crashed vessel for some time, if the level of fortifications surrounding the wrecked frigate were anything to go by. There were several tiers of barricades with overlapping fire corridors as well as several heavy gun emplacements set into crevasses in the rock around the beach. Not a bad setup, really, she thought as a salarian in white and red armor walked out to meet her.

"Hello," she said, "I'm Commander Shepard. I take it you're in charge here?"

The salarian nodded. "Indeed. I'm Captain Kirrahe, third infiltration regiment, STG. I don't mean to question our good fortune, Commander, but what are you doing here?"

Shepard sighed. "I was tasked with hunting Saren. Councilor Valern suggested we follow your trail after you failed to report in after going planetside."

"Failed to report-" Kirrahe swore under his breath. "Then our transmission didn't go through."

"If it did, the Council never received it," Shepard said. "Why? What did you say?"

"As I'm sure you've already guessed by the geth, this is Saren's base of operations – or at least one of them. We requested a fleet to take it out."

"Have you actually spotted Saren?" Shepard asked. "Is he on site?"

Kirrahe shook his head. "No. We have several taps on their communication relays and know he's overseeing the work here, but we haven't seen him personally."

"Do you know what he's doing here? We guessed building an army, but couldn't tell easily from orbit," Shepard said.

"He is breeding an army of krogan," Kirrahe said bluntly.

Shepard blinked.

Krogan?

It wasn't what she expected, not after all the work he'd put into resurrecting the rachni to be shock troops, but the more she thought about it, the more she realized what a good choice it was.

The krogan are strong and proven in combat, breed very quickly, and can endure the environment on nearly every system he'd care to invade. He has his ship to dominate the minds of the leaders, and the rest would follow. Hell, he might not even need mind control – I imagine many of the existing krogan would fall in line behind him just for curing them.

"How is this possible?" Wrex asked, voice dangerously low, and Shepard mentally shook her head. Put two and two together, Wrex, she thought, bracing for the incoming explosion.

"Apparently, Saren has developed a cure for the genophage," Kirrahe said primly. "A great deal of this facility appears to be cloning vats. For the good of the galaxy, we must ensure that this facility and its secrets are destroyed!"

This time, she actually winced. Kirrahe either didn't notice the two meter tall angry lizard in front of him or was the single most tactless example of the salarian species to be born, and she wasn't entirely willing to rule out "both" as an option.

"I don't think so," Wrex said, in the same slow and dangerous tone. "My people are dying. This cure can save them."

Kirrahe rounded on the krogan. "If that cure leaves this planet, the krogan will be unstoppable. We can't make the same mistake again."

Wrex strode up to Kirrahe, his armored hump towering over the salarian's head, and shoved an armored finger against his breastplate.

"WE ARE NOT A MISTAKE!" he bellowed, then stormed off down the beach.

Huh. That was… surprisingly less violent than I expected, Shepard thought as he left.

"Is he going to be a problem?" Kirrahe asked while she stared. "We already have enough angry krogan to deal with."

"He wouldn't be if you had an ounce of tact," Ash muttered, a little louder than she probably intended, before covering her mouth with a squeak. "Shit. I mean-"

Shepard shot a glare over her shoulder at the gunnery chief. "Williams. Go wash the Mako," she ordered.

Ash looked over at the Mako, which was currently parked half a meter deep in the water off the edge of the beach. "Aye aye, ma'am," she said, snapping a salute and spinning on her heel to march into the water.

"To answer your question," Shepard said, turning back to face the salarian, "Don't worry about it. I'll speak to him."

"I'd appreciate that, Commander," Kirrahe said, either not noticing or choosing not to respond to the previous exchange. "Our current plan is to try to disable the landing pads, but if you're here, we may be able to do some more meaningful damage. Hopefully enough to stop him long enough for somebody to realize we've both gone missing."

"Valiant, Captain, but I have no intention of dying here today," Shepard said. "You know the battlefield better than we do, so I will leave the planning in your hands, but you should be aware that my team is carrying two terajoule-range nuclear weapons."

"That is…" he blinked, mind clearly evaluating the possibilities her armaments offered, "certainly a new factor to consider. I will have to consult with my team. Do you have any other tactically disruptive resources we should be aware of?"

"My frigate is equipped with stealth technology that renders it largely undetectable to sensors operating below visual frequencies, and I have dispatched marines to destroy the outer anti-aircraft guns. If we can disable the inner ones, we should be able to extract from the facility without too much difficulty," she said. "Additionally, we are operating under severe time pressure. If Saren is in-system, we will likely have a visit from his flagship within twenty to twenty five minutes."

Kirrahe nodded. "We will plan quickly. Be prepared to deploy in five."

"We'll be ready," she said, and Kirrahe jogged off to confer with his own advisors.

"Looks like things are a bit of a mess," Kaidan murmured after the salarian got out of earshot.

"We knew it would be going in," Shepard said, "although I have to admit, I was not counting on Saren curing the genophage."

"I am worried," Liara said, glancing down the beach where the krogan was firing his shotgun into the water repeatedly. "This must be incredibly hard for him."

"I'll go talk to him," Shepard said. "The rest of you – go make sure we're ready to move as soon as the salarians have a plan."

"Going to go with what they come up with, Shepard?" Garrus asked.

"Unless it's completely stupid, yes," Shepard said. "They have better intelligence about the state of affairs on the ground, and I don't have time to bring myself up to speed."

"Understood," he nodded. "I'll go make sure the Mako is ready… unless you want someone watching your back with Wrex?"

She pursed her lips. On one hand, having someone watching her back would be important – even if she was confident in her ability to take him down, he was still a battlemaster with centuries of practice, and for all her skill there were still things she didn't know. On the other, going in armed for bear would almost guarantee Wrex wouldn't be walking out alive, and she really would prefer him soaking fire for her in the coming fight, especially if there was an entire compound full of krogan clones to get through.

"You have until I get over to him to set up," she told Garrus with a sigh. "Do not shoot unless I raise my left fist or he shoots me or uses biotics – krogan culture is big on posturing, and he'll probably fall back to what he's familiar with while angry."

Garrus nodded. "On it, Shepard," he said, then began sauntering off to a nearby rocky outcropping.

"You aren't… you do not want to shoot him, I hope?" Liara asked, a hitch in her voice.

"Of course not," Shepard reassured her quickly. "But he is an angry krogan battlemaster. I would be stupid not to make plans."

"I-" Liara shook her head. "Goddess. Do as you must."

"Always do," Shepard said. "I'm going to talk to him. Wish me luck."

The asari smiled faintly. "Good luck, Shepard."

She gave Garrus enough time to get into position, then strolled down to beach. There was no point in trying to appear nonthreatening by disarming; both of them knew that she was lethal no matter what she had strapped to her back.

This was not going to be easy.

She'd been trained in conflict resolution and deescalation skills, of course – it was mandatory for anyone doing security or guard shifts ever since that a bout of excessive force cases back in the late 21st century – but most of the techniques taught there was meant to be used on humans, and while she'd learned a few tricks for nonhumans over the years, she had no idea whether they'd work a reasonably irate krogan… or whether he'd just take offense at her trying.

I suppose I'll just have to wing it, she thought with a mental sigh. I really wish less of my life consisted of improvisation sometimes.

Wrex fired one last round ino the water as she approached before turning one eye to stare at her. "This isn't right, Shepard," he said in a dangerously level voice. "If there's a cure for the genophage, we can't afford to destroy it."

"We can't afford not to," she said, ignoring his resulting growl. "The salarians won't give us their intel or help us if we don't, and we need them to take on Saren's forces."

"And what if I said I didn't want to?" he said, shifting his bulk to face her while tightening his grip on his shotgun. "Help me out here, Shepard. Saren's got something that can save my people. You want to destroy it. The line between friend and foe is getting pretty blurry from where I stand."

She resisted smashing her face with her palm. She liked the krogan, but their physical and cultural propensity towards direct solutions was wearying sometimes. "Wrex, Saren's cure isn't going to help the krogan people. It might briefly help the krogan species, but I somehow doubt the same turian who murdered a team of mercenaries to tie up loose ends while nursing an unhealthy fascination with mind control is going to enable a krogan cultural renaissance."

She let the words sink in for a moment. "Unless, of course, you want the krogan people to be a catspaw for Saren?"

He stared at her, face unreadable. "No. We were tools for the Council once before. To thank us for wiping out the rachni, they neutered us all. I doubt Saren would be as generous."

They stared at each other for a breath, then Wrex sighed and stuffed his shotgun back into the rack above his tail. "Alright, you've made your point. We'll do it your way. I don't like this, but… I'll follow your lead."

She blinked. Wait. What?

"Uh… just like that?" she asked.

"What, you doubt my word?" he glared at her. "Didn't think you came over here to insult me."

"Wait, no, I'm just confused," she protested. "I barely said anything! And now you're just… okay with all of this?"

"No, I'm not 'okay with all of this,'" he snarled at her. "But you're right, Saren's notgoing to help my people. You might not be, either, but at least you're not making them into a mockery of their dreams."

He muttered something under his breath that her translator didn't quite catch and turned away, looking out over the water once more. "Got a question for ya."

"Go ahead," she said.

"How would yousave my people, in my place?" he shifted an eye to look her up and down. "I tried my way. It didn't work. Might be it's a krogan thing. Might just be me. So gonna dodge both of those, an' ask how you'd fix shit."

She hummed. "That would depend," she hedged, "on what you mean by 'your people.'"

"The krogan! Our empire! Our clans! Our families!" he shook his head. "Our people."

"You can't," she said, after thinking it over. "Or if you can, I don't know how."

"So my people are just doomed to extinction, then?" he sighed. "Shoulda gone with Saren, at least then we'd have gone down fighting."

"Hold on, now," she said quickly. "You can't save all those things. Some, definitely. Most, probably. But 'all' isn't on the table, at least not without something wildly unexpected happening."

"Explain," he growled.

"You're not going to like this," she warned.

"I'm used to people saying shit about the krogan. At least now it's for a good cause, rather than just racist varren crap. Talk," he repeated.

She sighed. "Okay. First off – you know why the krogan lost the rebellion, right?"

"Of course," he snorted. "Salarians, genophage, and all that."

"No," she said. "The genophage was the weapon. They could have ended the rebellion just as effectively by ramming an asteroid into your colonies, nuking them from orbit, popping the relays to cut you off from the rest of the galaxy..." she trailed off. "They weren't lacking for means."

"Their vaunted civilization wouldn't stand for a proper fight like that," he scoffed. "No balls."

"Exactly!" she exclaimed with a smile. "Wrex, the galactic community considers itself the arbiters of what is and what is not civilized. If you follow their rules and consume their culture, you are civilized, if not, you are a savage. Their rules don't let them engage in out and out violence against each other. They won because they convinced themselves that you weren't civilized, and because of that, you were an acceptable target for extermination."

He blinked. "And we didn't exactly help things…"

She nodded. "Every time you talked about honor, or clans, or used violence to settle a dispute… you cemented yourselves as uncivilized in their minds."

"Little bit late to fix that now," he said, shaking his head. "They've had centuries to get used to the idea."

"On the contrary," she said, "it's trivial. Tell me, what do you think about killing varren?"

"Varren?" he shrugged. "Don't really think about it, 'cept maybe to pick the right gun."

"Now what if you found a varren – no different from all the others – who could talk? Would that make you reconsider shooting them so casually?"

"Oh," he said. "Oh."

"You don't need all krogan to suddenly start discussing stock futures after a meditation session led by an asari," she said, "you just need one to show up and demonstrate that they understand and respect the values held dear by the rest of galactic civilization. Do that, and you force a heaping pile of cognitive dissonance on them."

"Cognitive what?"

She sighed. "Dissonance. It's when your perception – your image – of the world doesn't reflect what you know truly is. They believe they're good and right. Good people don't kill other people. If the krogan are people..." she trailed off, gesturing a hand at him.

"…then it's not okay to kill us. Huh." He grunted. "So how do you make 'em feel bad?"

"Well, one thing civilization is big on is self sacrifice and restraint. Y'know, not indulging in your base desires as soon as possible, fulfilling obligations before seeking pleasure… some of them even make whole philosophies out of it."

"Loada crap," he muttered.

"Mmm, there are some merits in moderation," she said, waving a dismissive hand, "but that's not the point. The point is that it's something they recognize and respect as a sign of civilization."

"So what do- oh, no," he groaned. "You're shitting me."

She grinned openly at him, full of teeth. "Oh, yes."

Say what you will about him, he's no fool. Not well educated and maybe a bit stuck in his ways, but no idiot, she thought with satisfaction. Glad I brought him along.

"Just imagine it, Wrex," she said, putting a hand around his back and waving her other out in front of her like she was revealing a masterpiece. "Despite the deep personal desire to see your people restored to their glory, you recognize that the needs of the galactic peace and stability must come first. Because of this, you nobly lent your aid to the up-and-coming human Spectre in her mission to defeat the traitor, proving in one fell swoop that your people are capable of putting others first and respecting the needs of the greater galaxy."

She pulled away and craned her neck up at him. "And then later, when you make an impassioned speech before the Council describing the misery and suffering that your people have endured under the genophage, well..."

"… they might actually listen," he said, sighing heavily. "It still sounds like a load of crap to me."

"But it's that crap that the galaxy runs on," she said, some of her levity fading. "Theater and lies. Maybe you don't sway everyone. The prejudices are there, and they're buried deep. But you might attract enough attention to pull people together and get something done on your own, without being sabotaged or ignored."

"Alright," he nodded slowly, without the pain this time. "Alright. We'll try it, Shepard."

He extended a three-fingered hand to her, and she shook it.

Garrus had already packed up his gear and was waiting outside on of the salarian's tents by the time Shepard and Wrex returned from the end of the beach. "Commander," he said with a respectful tilt of his head as she approached. "Wrex."

"Vakarian," Wrex rumbled, lumbering up to him. "You hide your stuff quickly."

Garrus shot Shepard a glance, and she shrugged. "Lots of practice."

"I bet," he said, peering closely at him. "Hmph. I'm gonna go reload my shotgun, Shepard. Let me know when you're ready to go."

The krogan waddled off toward the Mako, and Garrus sighed. "You tell him I was covering you?"

Shepard shook her head. "No, but I'm not surprised he guessed," she said. "He's angry, not stupid."

"Mmm. Dangerous," Garrus said. "Well, I'm glad I didn't have to shoot him. He's starting to grow on me, strange as that might seem."

"It's not, really," Shepard replied. "You've fought together, you both agree on more than either one of you would admit..." she trailed off with a faint smile. "But that's a topic for another day. How goes the planning?"

"They're just about done, I think," he said, obviously grateful for the change of subject. "Just finalizing their deployment plans."

"Good," Shepard said. "Go get the rest of the ground team. We'll do this all at once."

"Aye aye, Commander," he said, tossing her a lazy salute and heading toward the mako.

The assembled crew, including a grumpy but mercifully silent Wrex, stood in a loose half circle around the table Kirrahe's team had set with a portable holoprojector. It was more than a little interesting, Shepard reflected, how differently people handled the stress of an upcoming combat mission.

Wrex was clearly still thinking through what she'd said earlier, and while he was keeping an eye on the diagram, it was obvious even to her that his mind was elsewhere. That was fine by her; he was here to take point and shoot things, not make tactical or strategic decisions, and both of them knew it.

Kaidan was going over his omni-tool, preparing the hacking programs he'd gotten from Tali and making sure that he had copies of all the information the salarians had gathered ready to go in case the plan needed to be changed once they were on the ground – which, if Murphy had anything to say, was fairly likely.

Ash would have been pacing, Shepard was sure, but the tent wasn't big enough to let her do it, so she had settled for awkwardly rocking from side to side, shifting her weight around to the point where she was actually managing to dig her way into the beach.

Tali was, as always, hard to read, but it didn't take a genius to see the stress in the young quarian's posture as she stood, half-hugging herself by the entrance to the tent. Shepard hoped she'd make it through the mission before having whatever breakdown she was desperately holding back, and had already begin figuring out who to put on quarian-minding duty if she froze up during the fight.

And Liara…

She allowed herself a smile, for the asari had bloomed in a manner Shepard had found wildly unexpected. Not unwelcome, mind, not by any stretch of the imagination, but still unanticipated. She stood near the table, pale blue eyes drinking in the plan Kirrahe's team had crafted with a mixture of anticipation and nervousness Shepard had seen many times before on new recruits… but then, new recruits didn't meet her gaze with a deep and profoundly trusting smile before going back to her work.

"I will be quick," Kirrahe said, "as I am sure you have your own preparations to make before we embark."

"Appreciate it," she replied with a nod. "What's the situation?"

Kirrahe gestured down at the holographic projection floating over the nearby table. "This was constructed from a combination of your ship's aerial scans and our own scouting telemetry," he said, "and accurately represents the surface structures of Saren's base. What we do not know are the extents of his underground facilities, although given the number of geth and krogan we have seen walking the surface, we estimate them to be vast indeed."

She pursed her lips. "We'll need to get the charges deep, then, if we want to make sure they're properly disabled."

"Our thoughts precisely," he nodded. "However, there is a more immediate obstacle: The aforementioned teams of geth and krogan patrolling the grounds."

"How many?" she asked.

"Several hundred krogan, at least, backed up by a similar number of geth and an unknown but large number of armed combat drones."

She peered at the table and shook her head. "There's no way we can take this base, defended by those troops, with what we have," she said. "If we waited for the Normandy's marines and could somehow knock out the AA towers over the base proper, we might stand a chance, but it'd be slim."

"We concur with that assessment as well," Kirrahe said. "We have a plan, however: I will split my men into two groups and lead a strike into the facility here along the main entrance as a feint, while the second team makes a push here toward the communications tower. In truth, these will both be distractions – designed to be spotted. You will lead a team here, along the beach, allowing you to get in through a series of boardwalks and then into the base proper."

"A good idea, but you're going to get slaughtered," she pointed out. "There's no good exits from the north entrance, and those forward bunkers aren't for show."

"We're tougher than we look, Commander, and this environment is well-suited to us, but it's true. I don't expect many of us to make it out alive. Which makes my next request even more difficult."

Shepard raised an eyebrow at the salarian and waited.

"I need one of your men to accompany me to help coordinate our forces," Kirrahe said. "I will do my best to keep them out of the line of fire, but..."

"But there are no guarantees, I know," Shepard said, thinking quickly. Needs to be someone who knows Alliance comm protocols to coordinate with both me and Joker, which rules out most of the ground team. Can't use Pressly, he's a racist and the only remaining one with access to the Normandy's remaining WMDs. That means Ash or Kaidan, and while Ash has made good strides, this isn't the place to test them.

"I volunteer," Kaidan said before she could open her mouth, stepping forward.

"Not so fast, LT," Ash interrupted. "Shepard'll want your biotics for the beach assault. I'll go with the salarians."

Probably thinks it's a chance to prove herself, which… isn't wholly wrong, Shepard thought with a faint smile. Not this time, Ash.

"With all due respect, Gunnery Chief," Kaidan said, stressing her rank, "it's not your place to decide."

"Why is it that when someone says 'with all due respect,' they really mean 'kiss my ass?'" Williams muttered.

"Enough," Shepard hissed, and the pair straightened instinctively. "Good. Alenko, you'll go with Kirrahe. Try to stay in one piece."

"Aye aye, ma'am," Alenko nodded.

"Excellent," Kirrahe said. "Once inside, Commander, there are three main objectives to pursue: the AA control tower, the research complex, and the borehole. The AA control tower is here-" he gestured at an ugly square near the beach entrance, "-and reinforced, but not impossibly so. You will need to destroy it in order to allow the Normandy to pick us up and for us to leave."

"No backups?" Shepard asked.

"None that we've been able to identify."

"How reassuring," she muttered.

"It is what we have," Kirrahe snapped. "Once destroyed, your vessel will be able to provide us with air support, which will be necessary for both extraction and the continued assault on the base."

"Um..." Tali raised a hand from behind her. "Is there a reason we're not using your ship?" she asked.

"Our vessel was heavily damage on the approach, and furthermore it lacks the stealth systems we will need to get clear of the outer anti-aircraft weapons," Kirrahe explained. "We are already placing scuttling charges."

"Oh. I see," Tali said, sounding a little sad.

"We suspect the borehole is an access hatch used to excavate material from the below ground portion of this facility. Collapsing it would be ideal, but failing that, dropping one of your nuclear devices in it should suffice. The other target is the research facility aboveground."

"Won't those go up when the subterranean part goes?" Ash asked. "I mean, we're talking nukes here, right?"

"Small nukes," Shepard corrected. "Besides, we need to see if he has any kind of offsite storage, and that means checking for communication equipment or satellite uplinks. Doesn't do much good to blow up his files here if he's already stashed them somewhere else and can pick up at another facility. I also wouldn't mind the chance to capture some of the people doing research, if possible."

"Our objective is to ensure clean destruction of the site and its data," Kirrahe began before Shepard held up a hand.

"And my objective is to stop Saren," she replied, a little steel slipping in to her tone. "I cannot do that if we blow his base up before figuring out what he's up to."

"I- of course, Spectre," Kirrahe said.

She nodded curtly at the salarian, then gestured at the table. "Is there anything else?"

"No. There is an unfortunate degree of improvisation that will be necessary in this operation. We simply lack the time to gather more intelligence."

"I understand," she said. "We'll do our best."

"Then in that case, I will go brief my men and we will set out. Good fortune to you, Commander."

He nodded curtly at her, then his aides, and stepped briskly out the back of the tent toward their troops.

"I suppose I should follow," Alenko said with a nervous smile. "In case we don't make it out, Commander, I just wanted to say that it's been an honor."

He held his hand out, and she shook it firmly. "You as well, Lieutenant," she said. "Keep your head down and we'll swap stories when this is all over."

"Aye aye, ma'am," he said and turned to leave. "Good luck."

"Well then," Shepard said with an eye at the departing salarians and one lieutenant, "it seems we have a job to do. Everyone to the Mako."

"And now my mission parameters," she said with a cold smile.

"Oh, this should be good," Ash smirked.

"Quite. Tali, Liara – how much data storage do you have between the two of you?"

The two glanced at each other. "A fair bit," Liara said after a shared shrug. "I've expanded the storage on my omni-tool, and Tali has the extra data chips from earlier as well as a spare tool."

"Enough to grab, say, Saren's research data?" Shepard asked.

"If his staff is decent enough to organize their findings, easily. If not… we still have the storage, but may not have the time to find it."

"Well, let's hope he's strict. Our first order of business is going to be knocking out the AA towers – I want air support and a ride out of here – but then we're hitting the research facility as soon as possible. I want prisoners, data, everything we can reasonably take out of here packed with us."

"You plan to take Saren's genophage research out of here intact?" Garrus shook his head. "The salarians won't like that."

"Then it's a good thing they're not going to find out," she said. "I am opting not to inform them of this to avoid an argument before conducting a joint operation, but the fact of the matter is that I outrank all of them."

"And what are you gonna do with it?" Wrex asked. "This data?"

"Several things, none of which I'm ready to discuss here," she said. "I'll explain when we're back on the Normandy."

He stared at her, then grunted. "Fine. Better it be in your hands than blown to bits."

"Glad you agree," she said. "Once we've hit the research facility, we'll roll around and plant a bomb down the access hole, radio Joker for pickup, and get the hell out of here before Saren turns up in that ship of his. Any questions?"

They shook their heads, and Shepard nodded. "Good. No split groups – we move as one. Let's roll."

"Marching order," Shepard said while they made their way down the beach. "Wrex and I will take point to draw fire and attention. Liara and Ash, stay mid-range and support us with biotics and rifle fire. Garrus, you're our rearguard.

"What about me?" Tali asked.

"Either stick with the midguard or Garrus, your preference," Shepard said. "I'd like to have you worried less about shooting things and more focused on hacking and sabotage, so pick a position that you're best doing that from."

She glanced at Liara and Garrus, then slowed her pace to fall back with the turian. "These radios are strong enough, and I think I'll focus better without bullets overhead," she explained.

"Works for me," Shepard said. "If you can get those flying drones offline, or better yet, on our side, that would be a huge win."

She nodded. "I'll see what I can do," she promised, and began pulling up several holographic screens from her omni-tool while walking.

It's high risk, but as long as we can beat Saren to the base, I think it might actually work, Shepard thought to herself as they walked along the picturesque beach. That's the clincher.

She tapped a button on her omni-tool and pulled up the timer. Twenty minutes, worst case, about thirty five best case, assuming he was a negligible FTL hop from the system. That wasn't realistically enough time to conduct the operation they were trying, but it was probably enough to get the tower down and a fast sweep done on the labs.

We might be planting bombs under fire, she thought with a sigh. Nothing to be done about it – we desperately need that information, and there's no way I'm nuking it without at least trying. Worst case, we can blast the surface on our way out and tell the Council they need to act ASAP before he rebuilds.

The path curved around a large rocky outcropping, and Shepard quickly held up a fist to halt the group. "Garrus," she hissed over her shoulder. "See that?"

About a hundred and fifty meters ahead, stationed at the base of a ramp leading into a gap in the canyon rocks, was a single geth trooper standing guard.

"I do," the sniper replied, and she heard the characteristic hiss of his rifle unfolding. "Want him gone?"

"If you don't mind," she said, and tucked herself flat against the outcropping. "Tali? Any others nearby?"

"None on my scanners," the quarian replied, "but they'll know it's been disabled."

"Nothing to be done about that," Shepard said. "Soon as he drops, we move. Ready?"

There was a chorus of hissed assents, and Shepard nodded. "Right. Take him out."

As an asari, Liara was quite familiar with size not being indicative of martial prowess, and as a well-educated asari living in an era of cybernetics, composite materials, and advanced weaponry, she was more familiar with it than most.

Yet it was still hard to shake the sense of worry when Shepard had casually informed them she'd be taking point alongside Wrex. Wrex was large, intimidating, and a biotic to boot. It made sense to have him in front; Shepard massed less than a fifth what he did.

It was when they'd rounded a corner in the path to walk nearly straight into a patrol of geth troopers sent to investigate the missing sentry that Liara had realized her fears were unfounded.

She'd frozen in surprise, not having expected to see the geth that close, but the reaction of Wrex and Shepard had been immediate: Wrex bellowed a war cry and charged, his biotics lending the rush a force not found in nature, and Shepard had simply thrown a punch that sent the front trooper crashing into and through the troopers behind it with a screech of twisted metal and shattered composites.

Her own lift had done little more than make the broken remnants bounce on the sandy concrete.

"Well," Shepard said, straightening slowly and glancing over her shoulder, "that was a fine how-do-you do. Tali? Are they jamming you?"

"Sorry, Shepard!" the quarian called from behind her, guilt and sorrow evident in her voice. "These rocks are messing with my sensors something fierce. I can tell there are a lot of geth around, but pinning them down is-"

"It's fine, don't worry about it," Shepard reassured her quickly. "Wrex? Barriers up."

"Yeah, yeah," the krogan muttered, a blue shimmering field coalescing into existence in front of him. "Let's go."

Shepard paused at the next outcropping to take stock of the situation. They were making excellent time – far better than she'd dared hope, considering the forces. It seemed the dense rock formations and chaos the salarians and Kaidan were sowing on the opposite side of the base was working in their favor, as the geth forces they'd encountered so far had been disorganized at best and downright stupid at worst. She'd even passed up the chance to redirect the guard units on their approach away, as she'd even had training simulations that proved to be more challenging than their advance along the cliffs.

"Okay," she said to the assembled team, some of whom were taking deep drinks from their water bottles. "That tall building with the sensor array on it is the AA control tower. I'm not really concerned with being quiet at this point, so I figure we'll just put a bunch of explosives in the ground floor blow it to pieces."

"Subtle," Wrex grinned. "I like it."

"After that, we're off to the research labs," she said. "I think that squat building over there is the closest. Anyone need anything before we go? How are everyone's supplies holding up?"

"I'm low on grenades," Ash said. "If anyone has extras."

"Take mine," Shepard said, unslinging a row off her utility belt. "I'm not using them. Anyone else?"

The rest of the team shook their heads, and Shepard nodded. "Right. Pack it up, then – we're on a schedule."

Once more unto the breach…

It took them barely half a minute to take out the AA tower, which Shepard was sure set some kind of record. Wrex had blown the door open, a volley of suppressing fire and a grenade had turned the first floor into a smoking ruin, and five kilos of high explosive shaped charges pressed against three support beams ensured that the building would soon cease to be an obstacle.

The longest part of the operation was getting to minimum safe distance, at which point the charges transformed three of the four walls into fast-moving debris. The remaining wall buckled almost immediately afterward, and the tower toppled onto the beach with a grinding crash.

"Joker, Shepard," she called while waving her team forward into the nearby building. "AA tower is down."

"Copy that, Commander," Joker replied. "First marine group is back, second group is about fifteen minutes out."

"Tell them to hurry," she said. "If they don't make it back by the time Saren's ship shows up, we're not sticking around."

"I'll let 'em know to double time it," he said.

"Break, break," Kaidan panted into the channel. "Normandy, we need air support ASAP! They've got a bunch of flying drones we can't clear and they're about to flank us!"

"Commander?" Joker asked, tense.

She swore. "Go," she said. "Tell the marines their new rendezvous is the fountain inside, have them go along the beach."

"Aye aye, lighting engines," he said. "ETA minute thirty, Alenko."

"Appreciate it," Kaidan panted.

Shepard released her finger from her comms. "Alright. We still have a research facility to hit and bombs to plant. Tali? What's the status on that door?"

"Almost- got it!" she exclaimed as the door slid open with a groan. "Uh… this doesn't look like a lab..."

"What?" Shepard frowned and jogged over to the quarian, who was staring into the interior of the building.

The door opened up to a long catwalk looking down over rows and rows of what she quickly recognized as holding cells: A toilet, plain bunks, and in a twist, hermetic seals around each unit.

"A prison?" Garrus said, stepping up beside them. "Are those salarians?"

"Careful, this might not be secure," she cautioned, but aside from the occupants of the cells, the building appeared abandoned.

"Is someone there?" a voice called from one of the close cells, and a quick glance down revealed the distorted form of a salarian in tattered civilian garb pushing his face up against the edge of the cell. "Please, if you're not with Saren, you must let me out of here!"

"Goddess," Liara whispered. "Is he… experimenting on live subjects?"

"Apparently so," Shepard murmured. "Come on, let's see what's going on here."

"Well, you're not a geth," the weary looking salarian remarked when they made their way down the stairs to stand in front of his cell. "And you're not wearing a lab coat, so I guess I'm glad to see you. I'm lieutenant Ganto Imness of the Third Infiltration Regiment, captured during recon. I assume the fleet was called in to destroy this base?"

"In a manner of speaking," Shepard said. "Have you been interrogated?"

Ganto shook his head. "No. Saren is studying something he calls indoctrination. My team has been… brainwashed, for lack of a better term. We knew about the breeding grounds coming in, but this facility appears to be focused more on indoctrination than on cloning the krogan."

"He's… studying it? But he's already doing it. That doesn't make sense," Ash protested, frowning.

"It's something from his ship, the big one," Ganto clarified. "I think it's something that he found, not something he developed. He uses it to control his people, but he doesn't understand how it works."

He pressed his hand against the barrier, panic beginning to creep into his voice. "I don't know much else. I just saw what it did to the others. Turned them into empty husks. I can't end up like that. Please – let me out!"

"This is awful," Liara whispered, and began reaching for the door control.

Shepard's hand darted out to grab hers. "Wait," she ordered.

"Shepard, you cannot meant to leave- oh," she said, cutting herself off in apparent realization and pulling her hand away from the access panel.

"Ganto, I take it you were subject to some of these experiments as well?"

The salarian clenched his fist against the barrier, then slumped against it. "I… have to assume so. I don't know. I remember bright lights, and lots of noise, and something pounding in my head, but… the others claimed to hear voices. I haven't heard anything like that, I swear!"

"I understand," she said. "Garrus, give your spare gear to Ash and see if you can rig up a backpack that'll carry him. We're taking him with us, but I'm not having him conscious while we move. Ganto, until we get you examined by a proper medical professional in a laboratory setting, we're treating you as a potential enemy combatant."

"Thank you, thank you," Ganto whispered. "I'll accept anything, just please get me out of here."

"I'm opening the door. Liara, sedate him and get him strapped down. I'm going to check the rest of these cells."

Liara began unpacking her medical kit, rummaging through for the salarian drugs, while Shepard shifted over to the next cell. The salarians inside barely reacted to her presence. A few of them seemed to look toward her, but most of them continued staring aimlessly at whatever they had been looking at before her arrival.

"Gonna take one of these with us, too?" Wrex asked.

She hummed. "No. They're not going to answer questions. I just need their brains."

"Their… what? Their brains?" Tali asked. "Did I hear that right?"

"You did. I made a mistake when we fought Benezia. When I killed her, I did it with a biotic ability that ravages brain tissue. It's nearly instant, painless, and silent, but it also makes it very difficult to find physiological evidence of brainwashing. I will not make the same mistake twice."

Tali took a half-step back, shock plain in her body language.

"If you don't want to watch, go fetch one of the cryogenic storage tanks we passed on the way in," she ordered. "If we can keep their heads cold, we'll get better data."

"Come on," Ash said, reaching out to tug Tali's arm toward the entrance to the prison block. "Let's go, Tali."

"Keelah..." the quarian muttered as she stumbled off in Ash's wake.

She watched them go for a moment, then turned back to the cell. "Wrex, what rounds do you have in your shotgun?" she asked.

"Shredder," he replied promptly.

"Perfect. I'm going to open this. I'll get the ones on the right, you get the ones on the left. Body shots only."

"Understood," he said, drawing his shotgun and reflexively checking the block. "On you."

She tapped the button to open the cell and confirmed the command before stepping back to draw her own shotgun. There was a pause, and a few of the salarians turned to face the noise of the barrier vanishing, before their gunfire began a slow and steady march through the small cell.

"I usually like killing salarians," Wrex said as he stuffed his shotgun back in its holster, "but that was just…"

"I know," she said with a sigh and pulled a combat knife out of a thigh sheath. "Give me a hand, I need to get his head off."

"Sure," Wrex said, and put a heavy boot down on the ruined torso of one of the salarians while Shepard began slicing through the salarian's neck.

The soft tapping of footsteps behind her to the return of one of her teammates, and the blue hands reaching around her from behind clarified who it was. "Hello, Liara," she said, panting slightly as she finished severing the last tendons.

The asari didn't say anything, but pulled herself against her back for a brief moment of contact before stepping back. "The sane one is secure. He was unconscious before you started."

Shit, I hadn't even thought about him, she thought with a sigh. "Thanks. I wasn't really considering his well-being."

"You have a lot on your mind," she said, her voice still barely audible. "And Shepard… take it from someone without your condition – right now, what you have is a blessing, not a curse."

Shepard looked down at the blood covering her hands, the front of her jumpsuit, the floor, and even the walls, and sighed. "Do you think it's going to be a problem for the others?"

"Not now, perhaps, but later? Almost certainly," she said, a little sadly. "I must go re-pack my supplies. Tali and Ash are nearly back. Be as gentle as you can."

With that, Liara stepped back, slipping quietly back to the next cell over to finish preparing to move on.

"Wrex," Shepard said with a sigh, "can you go intercept Ash and Tali and get the cryo tank from them? Liara has reminded me that not everyone is a war-scarred veteran here, and seeing all this might be a bit much."

The old battlemaster grunted and plodded off down the hall.

The downside, of course, is that I have to do the next one by myself, she though wearily. Well. No time like the present.

She adjusted her grip on her knife and went to work.

The squad was far more subdued when they left the prison cells. The largely sane and drooling incompetents, it turned out, were not the worst things they found inside those walls. That dubious honor belonged to the half-sane, the ones still coherent enough to recognize something of who they were but unable to stop themselves from serving Saren's cause. Liara in particular was more heavily affected by what they'd seen, and it hardly took a genius to figure out why.

Knowing what Saren was studying did little to change their main objective, however, even if it provided them with some potential insights to the foundations of his empire – and hopefully, the key to taking it apart. They still needed to grab any data they could, and while they'd passed a great deal of laboratory and testing equipment, there was frustratingly little in the way of computers or archives.

"Shepard, wait," Tali hissed over the radio from her position at the rear of the squad. "I'm picking up something in the next building. Movement."

Shepard keyed her radio. "Geth, or more of those fresh krogan clones?"

They'd encountered more than a few of Saren's tank-bred krogan, and while they seemed like they were in good health to Shepard, they fought like gross novices at best. They charged blindly at them, sometimes appearing to even forget they were carrying guns. She'd asked Wrex about it, but the old battlemaster just shook his head and refused to talk about it, beyond telling her to put them out of their misery.

So she had.

"No," Tali said. "One moment, I'm patching in to the building security feed."

Every single Alliance special forces team needs to have a quarian, Shepard thought fervently, and not for the first time. Their cultural tendency toward high levels of expertise with computer systems – or at least Tali's – was invaluable when fighting a technological foe led by a paranoid turian with an unhealthy fondness for security cameras and combat drones.

"It's a scientist," Tali said excitedly after a moment. "Asari, lab coat, hiding under the desk on the far side of the room."

Shepard's mouth curled into a cruel grin. "Perfect. I want her alive."

"You are not the only one," Liara muttered darkly. "I have a great many questions about what is happening here."

"I think we all do," Tali agreed.

"Focus," Shepard ordered. "Ash, get the door. Garrus, Wrex, cover our backs. Liara, Tali, you're with me. On three – ready, one, two, THREE!"

The door whined open and the three of them stepped into the room like they'd rehearsed it. Shepard took point, her biotics ripping the desk the asari was hiding under away from the wall, while Liara swept the right side and Tali took the left.

"AHH!" the asari screamed, shying away from the sudden explosion of violence while trying to cover her head. "Don't shoot! I just want to get out of here!"

Adjusting her grip on her pistol, Shepard eyed the woman levelly. "Make no sudden movements and keep your hands where I can see them," she ordered. "Who are you?"

The asari slowly stood, keeping her hands in front of her. "I'm Rana Thanoptis – one of Saren's neurologists," she said. "For now, at least."

"For now?" Shepard prompted.

Rana shook her head. "You think the indoctrination only affects prisoners? Sooner or later, Saren will have someone dissect my brain, too."

"You knew what was happening here?" Liara asked, incredulous. "And you kept at it?!"

"I didn't know, not at first," Rana protested. "Saren kept us all in the dark as much as possible. Broke up the data, kept us in separate facilities, you know. Besides, this position ended up being a bit more… permanent… than I'd expected."

Shepard sighed. "That seems to be his preferred approach, yes," she said.

"So will you help me? I can help you! This elevator goes to his private lab- look, I'll let you inside," she said, moving her hand towards a glowing red panel behind her. "See? Full access. I'll leave you the key fob to access his computers. Just don't shoot me, please!"

"Tali, Ash, Wrex-" Shepard called, "-move in, start downloading data. You have… seven minutes to get whatever looks important. Don't touch anything that looks suspicious. As for you, Rana-"

The asari swallowed.

"-summarize your work. Now."

"Uh," she stammered. "That ship of his, he calls it Sovereign. It emits some kind of… signal. We think. The mechanism isn't exactly obvious. It affects those on board or who spend time in close proximity to the ship. We call it indoctrination. Direct exposure, or prolonged exposure indirectly, turns you into a mindless slave like those poor salarians."

"But," she said, glancing down "there's… collateral damage. Spend too much near the ship and you feel it, like a tingle at the back of your skull. Like a, a… a whisper you can't quite hear. You're compelled to do things but you don't know why. You just obey. Eventually, you just stop thinking for yourself."

She turned back to face them. "It happens to everyone at the facility. My first test subject was the man I replaced. Now I just want to get out of here before it happens to me."

"Goddess," Liara whispered. "Benezia..."

"The effect seems to work faster on species with quick metabolisms," Rana explained. "Vorcha fall prey in days. Salarians succumb within weeks. Humans and turians take months. Krogan, asari, drell are longer, some even taking years."

That would explain the extended falling out Liara had with her mother, at least, Shepard thought. "Why does Saren want to research it? Isn't he responsible for it?"

Rana shook her head. "The signal comes from the ship. It makes people obey Saren, but I don't think he controls it. Not exactly. I think… I think he's scared it might be affecting him. Indoctrination is subtle, at first. By the time the effects are noticeable, it's usually too late."

"And you're sure it's a signal? Is it possible to shield against it somehow?" Shepard asked.

Rana shrugged. "Signal's not exactly the right word – the engineers were still trying to work out the mechanism. I'm just a neurologist. I can't tell you what causes it, only what its effects are. Over time – days, weeks, maybe months or years for some – it weakens your will, makes you easier to lead, to control. But like I said, there's a degenerative element. The more control you exert, the less initiative the subjects show, and less capable they become even when removed from the signal."

She nodded slowly. "Alright, Rana, because you've been cooperative, I'm going to give you a choice," she said.

"A choice?" the asari tried to smile. "I hope that's not a 'do you want your bullet in your head or your chest' kind of choice."

"No choice there, I'm afraid. If you opt for death, I'm going to shoot you in the chest so I can add your intact head to my collection," Shepard said, patting her still-frozen backpack. "For science – I'm sure you understand."

The blood drained out of Rana Thanoptis' face.

"Now, if you want to live, you have two choices," Shepard continued. "My team is going to destroy this facility and everything within half a kilometer in less than fifteen minutes with a series of nuclear weapons. You may either come with us, where you will be interrogated by the STG, the Systems Alliance Intelligence, and likely several other branches of military intelligence, or you can attempt to flee on your own. In either case, you will be doing so without your biotic amplifier or omni-tool."

"I- what?! But-"

Shepard lifted her pistol and aimed it at the asari's chest. "I will not have an armed and biotically equipped servant of Saren's, no matter how unwilling, at my back while moving through this facility. You choices are rescue and interrogation, escape on your own, or death. You have a minute to decide."

"Ahhh!" Rana cried, tearing her omni-tool mount off and fumbling with her amplifier socket before tossing both devices on the floor in front of Shepard and sprinting out the door.

"Pity," Shepard said at the departing woman's back, "I would have preferred her testimony."

"As would I," Liara said with a scowl.

Shepard just shook her head. "If we had more time, maybe, but we're getting down to the wire. I do not want to be stuck here when Saren shows up in Sovereign."

"Neither do I," Garrus said. "In fact, I think-"

"SHEPARD!" Ash bellowed from the next room. "GET IN HERE!"

Shaking her head, she sprinted into the next room, wondering what trouble Ash had gotten into now.

Buried in what were apparently Saren's private chambers in this facility – and what she wouldn't give to have more time to go through them – were two very interesting pieces of equipment. The first she recognized almost immediately.

"Goddess," Liara whispered at the faintly glowing obelisk before them. "A prothean communications beacon… and functional! I have never seen one so well-preserved."

Ash jerked her head at the device resting at the end of the catwalk. "Plans, ma'am? That one seems to be in better shape than the last one, but I didn't want to risk getting close just in case."

"Smart move, chief," Shepard said, her mind racing. The last one had knocked her out and left her with a migraine, and she couldn't afford to cripple herself. On the other hand, it wasn't clear that the strain had been due to the beacon's action or its rapid and unplanned detonation the first time around, and she desperately needed the information contained within.

I'd make Liara use it, but without the scar tissue, she'd be a useless wreck, she thought. So be it.

"Stay back," she ordered, holstering her sidearm. "I'm going to use it."

"Uhh…." Ash said, frowning. "Is that really a good idea?"

"No," Shepard said, "but it's necessary and we don't have any alternatives. If you think it's exploding, Ash, shout out and Liara will pull me back with her biotics. Otherwise, don't interfere."

Without waiting for an acknowledgment, she strode up to the beacon and began tapping the sequence to play the last received message.

And how do I know how to do that? She wondered while the beacon began to hum and the world faded around her.

Well, she thought when the beacon dropped her back to the floor, that was… less awful than it could have been.

Whether it was due to having an undamaged beacon, the prothean cipher she'd had written in to her mind, her own acceptance of its strange method of delivery, the vagaries of chance, or some combination of the four, this particular beacon message was far less painful to receive than the previous one. She was left only slightly woozy afterwards, rather than unconscious, which bode well for the rest of the mission.

The message, too, was in better shape. While clearly meant for a mind different from hers, this one was far more comprehensible, with garbled words rather than screeching noise, and a good five or ten extra seconds of information at the end that looked vaguely like a solar system of some kind. The significance of it was unclear at the moment, but she had more than she had started with, which was all that mattered.

"I'm fine," she said after gathering her wits. "I think. This beacon is in better shape. Got more of the message, we'll go over it later."

The crew nodded, relieved, while Liara glanced wistfully at the artifact. "A shame to have to destroy it," she murmured.

"I know," Shepard said, "but we don't have a choice. Ash? What else did you say you found in here?"

"There's a really creepy set of holographic controls the next level up," Ash said, jerking her head towards another ramp. "Blood red, and definitely not of Alliance make. Thought they might be geth, but Tali said no, and that meant I wasn't getting close to check."

Shepard frowned. "Might be from his ship," she said. "Come on, let's go check it out."

They followed the gunnery chief up another set of stairs into a large hallway with strange pieces of machinery haphazardly bolted to the walls. Ash was right; it was clearly not of human make, and Shepard didn't recognize the style of it from her briefings or her travels across the galaxy. At first glance, it seemed normal enough, but upon closer inspection parts seemed just slightly off. Lines that in any other situation would be parallel were slightly off, giving the whole thing a slightly discordant appearance.

Must be a nightmare to install, she thought, sweeping her helmet's camera over the gear. I can't think of a good reason to make it like this, unless the goal is to make people uncomfortable around it.

"Anyone recognize this lettering? Liara?" she asked, peering more closely at one of the holographic panels.

Liara shook her head. "It is like nothing I have ever seen."

"Damn," Shepard muttered. "Maybe it-"

A deep, red glow began to fill the room at the end of the catwalk above the hologram.

"Uh, Shepard," Garrus muttered, and she jerked her head around to stare at the slowly brightening form of Saren's ship hovering in the air.

She stepped closer and peered up at the display. It was bright, almost to the point where she needed to squint in the otherwise dark room, and she had the distinct impression that it was watching her, as well, despite just being a holograph of his vessel.

A deep, almost resonant voice – in English – echoed through the room. "You are not Saren," it said.

"What is that?" Garrus wondered aloud. "Some kind of VI interface?"

The projection either couldn't hear, or elected to ignore the turian's question. "Rudimentary creatures of blood and flesh. You touch my mind, fumbling, in ignorance, incapable of understanding."

That's no virtual intelligence.

"I do not think this is a VI," Liara muttered.

The projection ignored her, as well, as it continued its monologue. "There is a realm of existence so far beyond your own, you cannot even imagine it. I am beyond your comprehension. I… am Sovereign."

And just like that, all the pieces slotted neatly into place.

The Reapers are real, and were not destroyed. They are a race of synthetic intelligences apparently installed in highly advanced warships. They used the geth in the same way we might use a dog.

She peered up at the thing. "So you must be one of Saren's reapers," she said.

"Reaper," Sovereign said, "a label created by the protheans to give voice to their destruction. In the end, what they chose to call us is irrelevant. We simply… are."

"Do you mean to say," Liara said, doubt clear on her face, "that you were actually there fifty thousand years ago?"

"Organic life is brief. Ephemeral. Your lives are measured in years and decades. You wither and die. We are eternal. The pinnacle of evolution and existence. Before us, you are nothing. Your extinction is inevitable. We are the end of everything."

"There are a few trillion sentients around who might disagree with that," she said mildly.

"Confidence born of ignorance. The cycle cannot be broken," it said flatly.

Behind her, Liara gasped.

"Cycle? What cycle?" Garrus asked, a hitch in his voice.

"The pattern has repeated itself more times than you can fathom. Organic civilizations rise, evolve, advance. And at the apex of their glory, they are extinguished. The protheans were not the first. They did not create the Citadel or forge the mass relays. They merely found them, the legacy of my kind."

"Society follows the path of least resistance," Liara said, a hand half-covering her mouth. "It was a trap. For all of us. And we walked right into it."

"Correct," Sovereign said. "Your civilization is based on the technology of the mass relays – our technology. By using it, your society develops along the path we desire."

The creature curled its legs and unfolded them. "We impose order on the chaos of organic evolution. You exist because we allow it, and you will end because we demand it."

"They are harvesting us!" Liara stammered. "Letting us advance to the level they want, then wiping us out!"

Clearly, Shepard thought, mind whirling, but the question is why? These reapers are clearly sentient, and terrifyingly so. The obvious reason would be to eliminate competition, but why all the hoops?

She help up a hand to silence the rest of her party. "I have questions," she said levelly.

"Speak," the entity intoned.

"Where did you come from?" she asked. "Were you made by another, or-"

"We have no beginning," it interrupted, glowering down at her. "We have no end. We are infinite. Millions of years after your civilization has been eradicated and forgotten, we shall endure."

She gave a small shrug. Statistically, that was likely – if they'd been around as long as they'd claimed, and were capable of the kinds of accomplishments they boasted about, they'd almost certainly outlive humanity in its current form.

More crucially, however, Sovereign's interruption revealed something of its nature: It was not merely designed to awe fearful mortals, but it truly believed its own claims. That meant that the creature was self-aware enough to possess an understanding of pride, which had many interesting ramifications… as well as opportunities.

"What do you want?" she asked, changing topics. If she could convince it to tell her what it wanted…

"My kind transcends your very understanding," it said, and Shepard could almost hear a smug tone in its synthesized voice. "We are each a nation, independent, free of all weakness. You cannot even grasp the nature of our existence."

"Each of us, you say," Shepard said. "Then there are more of you?"

"We are legion. The time of our return is nigh. Our numbers will darken the skies of every world. You cannot escape your doom," it intoned once again.

She gave another small shrug. "Possibly," she admitted. "Probably, even, if half of what you say is true."

"Shepard!" Ash hissed, glaring angrily at her.

She waved the soldier away, her gaze still fixed on the projection in front of her. "But if you insist on this course of action, I feel obligated to inform you that we will be stopping you."

"Your words are as empty as your future," Sovereign said, projection rising slightly higher in the chamber. "I am the vanguard of your destruction. This exchange is over."

A groan filled the room, the hologram before her flickered out, and half the machinery on the walls exploded, shattering the windows and sending broken glass flying all around.

"Okay, move!" she ordered as soon as the shards landed. "We need to get our bombs planted, and now."

"Are we out of time?" Garrus asked as they began running for the exit of the building.

"That was a real time call, Garrus," she yelled over her shoulder. "Which either means it's close enough for light-speed latency to not be a problem, or it's within light-speed communication range of a relay!"

She heard the turian swear from behind her. "So he's effectively on top of us. Great!"

"Yup!" she shouted. "Now MOVE!"

Not thirty seconds later, the radio in her ear squawked. "Uh, Commander? You're not gonna like this, but Sovereign just popped in over Virmire, and it's moving fast."

She pushed the toggle on her microphone. "Define fast, Joker," she snapped.

"You've got maybe six minutes," Joker said. "I'm standing by near the southern edge of the facility."

"Shit. I copy, Joker. Kaidan, what's your status?"

Kaidan's voice crackled to life. "We reunited with the rest of the salarians and are making our way to you, ma'am," he said, panting slightly into the radio. "They went west to clear some portable AA guns they saw on the beach, we're moving southeast through what look like residential blocks. Heavy geth, no krogan."

"Understood," she said. "What's your ETA?"

"Ten minutes at least, ma'am," he replied grimly. "It's slow going and the main route got blown up. We're having to push through heavy resistance."

"Don't have that kind of time, LT," she warned. "I'm coming to assist, we'll put pressure on them from the back side."

"Roger that, ma'am. We'll keep moving as best we can. Alenko clear."

Letting her hand fall from the microphone, she turned to to the rest of the team and began pulling the nuclear device out from between the frozen salarian heads in her backpack. "Ash, Wrex, Garrus – here's my charge, get them both planted and armed. Liara and Tali, you're with me, we're going to go clear a path through the geth in the residential area."

Garrus checked his rifle while Wrex took the offered bomb from her. "Sure you don't want more of us with you?"

She shook her head. "No. Bombs are the priority, and this is going to be largely a hack-and-biotic setup. Wrex has the codes for the bombs; have him plant them. We'll be back shortly."

There was a chorus of acknowledgments, and the three of them set off northward, toward a rising column of smoke.

It didn't take long for them to establish a pattern: Tali would hack the ones she could from a distance to sow chaos, Liara used her biotics to cover Tali and keep the irritating leaping snipers from being a problem, while Shepard soaked fire with her own biotic shielding and blew up any stragglers not disabled or destroyed by the other two.

"Oh, shit. Commander, heads up, I just had a dropship fly over my head," Joker's voice called on the radio. "I'm starting to pick off the ones I can, but we're running passive sensors only with the stealth systems engaged and all the smoke is making it hard to see anything."

"They're already here!" Ash's strangled cry came next. "Damn thing is bleeding geth all over the place!"

"Can you hold them off?" she asked. She'd left Wrex behind because he was the other one trained to use the weapons, and Garrus' long range weaponry would be mostly useless in close quarters through an apartment complex. Without a tech expert to take down geth shields and only Wrex's biotics, they'd be hard pressed to fight off the full complement of troops from a geth dropship.

"There's too many, I don't think we can-" she cut out for a moment, then came back on swearing. "Garrus is down, repeat, Garrus is down! Commander, I'm activating the nuke!"

Shepard swore under her breath. "What are you doing, Chief?"

"Making sure this bomb goes off, no matter what," Ash panted into the radio. "There – it's done. Three minutes, ma'am. Get Kaidan, and get clear."

"Belay that," she snapped. "Joker, go active. Clear out any geth ships nearby and meet us at the bomb site. Williams, we're coming back to you."

"Yes, Commander. I-" Ash cut herself off. "I understand."

"It's the right choice, and you know it, Ash," Alenko said. "We'll keep trying to push through, ma'am… and good luck."

Without a word, she turned on her heel and marched back the way she'd come, Tali and Liara silently following behind her.

She knew what she was doing, of course. The chance that she'd be able to fight off the geth dropships and get Kaidan out before Sovereign turned up was minimal, and that was setting aside the three minute timer Ash had just given them all.

If the situation had been different, she'd have blamed the chief for forcing her hand, but realistically speaking nothing Williams had done had seriously changed the tactical reality her team was fighting through. There simply wasn't enough time to do everything, and she was frankly amazed things had gone as well as they had.

But time was relentless, and if the second group of marines and Kaidan were the cost to pay for victory, then she would pay it.

She rounded the last corner leading to the bomb site at a dead sprint, Tali and Liara gasping a few hundred meters behind her as she ran. "Chief! Report!" she barked into her comms, her barrier flaring blue.

"Ash's patching up Garrus," Wrex's yell was punctuated by the sound of gunfire. "Get here fast or don't bother!"

The courtyard she arrived at was a battleground. The once-serene fountain at the center had been blown to pieces, and the smoking wreckage of several geth dropships and their cargo was strewn around.

Wrex had appropriated a piece of plating from a colossus as an improvised shield, and was taking cover behind it while trading fire with the remaining geth units. Ash was hauling Garrus back to his feet, and luckily it seemed the turian hadn't been permanently taken out of action by whatever had left the smoking crater in his hardsuit's chestpiece.

She reached down and picked up a piece of rubble from the ground, idly wishing she hadn't given all her grenades to Ash, then gathered her power and threw it at a group of geth troopers trying to flank around the left edge of Wrex's shield. The chunk of rock, imbued with the mass of a small aircar, smashed into the formation of troopers and sent them crashing into the wall on the far side of the courtyard.

Her presence thus announced, she pushed forward with more conventional weapons, while Wrex wasted no time in taking advantage of the distraction her arrival posed.

"Status," she snapped, stepping up behind him.

"Three dropships," he replied quickly, breathing hard as he did. "One's empty and gone, one's down, the other's circling around-"

The dropship in question chose that moment to do a low pass overhead, its heavy guns sending them both diving for cover while it disgorged another wave of geth troops near where she'd come into the courtyard.

"Right," she said, reinforcing her barrier and rolling her shoulders. "Any sign of-"

Her world exploded.

It was an odd sensation, to be picked up from behind and hurled like a discarded toy, but thanks to her shields and barrier, it didn't actually hurt. She recovered with the reflexes of a well-trained soldier, quickly re-orienting on the new threat while putting some concrete wall between her and whatever had just hit her.

Biotics, almost certainly, she thought quickly, forcing more power into her now weakened barrier. But who- ah.

Floating on some kind of disc-shaped hovercraft, just as haughty as he'd been in the holo before the Council, was Saren.

Liara rounded the corner Shepard had vanished around, only to come face-to-face with a fresh wave of geth reinforcements – but even surprised, a quarian technician primed for a fight and an asari biotic were more than a match for the garden-variety geth that had blocked the path.

Their foes summarily dispatched, she'd began to move forward, only for a figure on a floating platform to rise over the edge of the complex and hurl a brilliant blue orb at Shepard's back. There had been no time to even shout a warning, and Liara looked on in horror as the commander was lifted into the air and tossed away.

But, she realized quickly, Shepard's motions weren't those of an unconscious or dead body, and the human landed in a smooth roll, slipping into cover with a grace that made the entire maneuver almost look like part of a dance.

There was no exchange of words between the Spectre and the traitor after the opening salvo, only mutual recognition, a kind of mirrored expression of determination, and the laws of the universe going completely mad around them.

Liara had seen battles between powerful biotics before, in the form of exhibition matches between asari, and briefly when they'd fought Benezia before she was knocked unconscious. Their command of their abilities was breathtaking, and the power they wielded more than a little awe-inspiring, but she had never felt the pulse-pounding terror that she felt now, and that was while taking cover halfway across the courtyard!

Saren's followup attack was a volley of slow-moving gravitational anomalies, powerful enough to red-shift the light around them and rip pieces of the buildings off as they flew and forced Shepard to sprint away.

She took refuge behind the ruins of the fountain in the center of the plaza while Saren's anomalies sputtered out, and snapped off return fire of her own. The rounds impacted on the turian's barrier with a rolling crash, but utterly failed to penetrate his own barrier and shields.

"Can you do anything about his shields?" she called to Tali without letting her gaze shift from the fight before her. "I don't think Shepard's gun will do it."

"I've been trying," Tali replied, a hint of panic in her voice. "He's got everything locked down tighter than I've ever seen – I can barely tell he's there on my systems!"

Ahead of her, Shepard dipped the hand that wasn't pumping explosive rounds in Saren's direction into the fountain, and she spotted a hint of blue around it, distorted by the ripples from her gunfire. What is she-

Her unspoken question was answered in a flash of blue, as she did something beneath the water that sent the contents of the fountain sailing toward Saren.

"Reduced to splashing, Commander?" Saren sneered at the liquid arcing through the air without bothering to move. "Patheti-"

He was cut off as the water, now coalesced into droplets, crashed over him not with the patter of spray, but the hammer of an avalanche. The few intact tiles on the courtyard shattered with the impact, the dirt was peppered with holes like someone had raked a heavy cannon back and forth over it, and Saren's pristine hardsuit was battered before he was thrown bodily from his platform to the ground below.

Goddess, she thought in awe.

But while Saren might not have expected the kind of attack Shepard had just delivered – and to be fair, Liara hadn't seen it coming, either – that didn't mean he wasn't prepared, and he landed on the ground with only slightly less grace than Shepard had shown in evading him earlier.

"DOC!" Wrex bellowed, and she tore her eyes from the spectacle to see the krogan battling another wave of geth reinforcements. "Quit ogling and help!"

"R-right!" she acknowledged, mentally scolding herself for getting lost in the fight when there was still work to be done. "Right behind you."

Garrus stared at the fight taking place at the far side of the courtyard and clenched his talons. There was nothing he'd like more than to be putting some penetrating rounds through that traitorous bastard's head, but between the bullets still lodged in his left lung, the soup of woefully inadequate painkillers marching through his bloodstream, and the medi-gel that replaced a good chunk of his chestplate, he wasn't in a position to lift his rifle, let alone aim it.

So he got to watch while the first human Spectre did battle with the greatest traitor to his race who had ever existed.

I had no idea she was this good, he thought in a little awe while she fought. Turian Spectres were the best of the best, and it showed. Saren's maneuvers were quick, clean, and in perfect form, not to mention his unusual biotics.

But there was a marked difference between perfection of rote and Shepard's wild, almost improvisational style, and he couldn't help but think that Saren was the one at the disadvantage despite neither one of them managing to score any significant hits after the opening exchange. Saren's attacks were horrifyingly powerful, certainly, but the fight had been going for a good minute and he'd still only used the same three attacks.

Shepard, on the other hand, had never tried the same thing twice. There was the stunt with the fountain, the thrown rock that had taken out the geth, a handful of gravel that she'd used as indirect fire from above, and she'd even used a wave of water kicked up from the waterlogged ground as an impromptu shield against the carnage attachment on Saren's shotgun. It was a never-ending series of new things, attacks from all directions, each one probing, examining, and learning.

He's just battering her down with what he knows, hoping she makes a mistake. She's learning from every thing she tries – what he does, what he doesn't do, how he reacts.

The only question in his mind was time. Ash had set the bomb, and even if she hadn't, there was only so long before the Reaper turned up and rendered the entire fight moot. If Shepard could find an opening before Sovereign arrived, they might get out, otherwise…

Well, I always knew this might end badly, he thought, a little ruefully.

Then Shepard made a mistake.

It was a buried piece of rubble, hidden just beneath the muddy, churned up ground of the plaza that caught the toe of her boot when she went to move between cover, and one of the sickening orbs sailed right over her head into the wall, sending a small cascade of rubble bouncing down on top of her prone form.

He heard Liara gasp in horror beside him, and began redoubling his efforts to get his arms to work. Spirits help him, he was not going to just sit there and watch while Saren killed her!

But his limbs stubbornly refused to work, and he could only look on in growing horror while Saren stomped over, grabbed her by the neck, and hoisted her bodily in the air, her legs dangling half a meter off the ground while she grabbed helpless at his arm with her right hand.

Then Shepard… grinned?

He barely saw the strike, it happened so quickly. One moment, Saren was getting ready to choke the life out of her, and the next there was a veritable fountain of royal blue turian blood covering both of them.

Saren dropped to a knee, shock plain to see in his face, and Shepard bared her teeth in a vicious smile. "Thanks for the armaments," she panted, and swung.

There was loud clang and a wet splattering sound as Saren went sailing away from her into the wall on the other side of the plaza. It was only when she dropped whatever she'd used as a club that Garrus' drug-addled mind took another tumble, as the weapon she'd just sent him flying with was quite literally his own severed arm, shattered at the shoulder by the strike he'd been too slow to see.

"SHEPARD!" Ash bellowed from above Garrus once it was obvious Saren wasn't getting up, and the human's head snapped over to the chief. "BOMB!"

Ash tapped her wrist for emphasis, and Shepard's eyes went wide. "How long?" she called, running over to them.

"A minute thirty," Ash replied grimly. "Kaidan-"

Shepard shook her head. "Isn't going to make it," she said, then keyed her earpiece. "Joker! Status!"

"RAAAAUGH!" Wrex bellowed over her, firing his carnage attachment at where another complement of geth were sprinting for Saren's prone form. The shot went side, missing the bulk of the units, although the blast did manage to knock a pair of troopers into one of the many craters left behind by their fight. "SHEPARD! THEY'RE TAKING HIM!"

"Leave him, Wrex," she barked with a finger pointing at the sky. "Bomb's going off and Sovereign's almost here! We want to get out, we leave now or we don't leave!"

"ETA 20 seconds," Joker's voice hissed in their ears. "Just popped the last dropship. Sovereign's eighty seconds out, assuming it doesn't slow down."

"Pick us up at the plaza," she ordered calmly, then peered down at him. "Why is he still conscious?" she asked, turning to Ash.

"Didn't want to get the dosage wrong, ma'am," Ash said. "Went for minimum safe."

"Hit him with the rest of it," she said. "We need to move him fast and it's going to hurt. Doc can fix it if you overdo it."

"Aye aye," she acknowledged, and Garrus felt a gentle pinch before a floating emptiness stole the world away.

Garrus slumped to the floor, and Shepard took the momentary break to pull a small tube from her kit, tear the seal off with practice ease, and empty the contents under her tongue. The mixture, a sickly sweet suspension of several sugars in some kind of binder, was the third-most serious tool in her arsenal of self-care supplies, and was designed to deliver energy to offset an imminent bout of biotic hypoglycemia when digestion was deemed to be insufficiently quick. They tasted awful, a mix between cake icing and fake sweetener, but they worked.

A close fight, but not as close as I expected, she thought to herself while the Normandy swooped down to pick them up. He was strong, but not the expert I was fearing.

Wrex and Tali helped carry Garrus on board once the Normandy descended enough for them to climb into the cargo bay while Liara and Ash provided rearguard for the few remaining geth troopers that halfheartedly fired shots in their general direction.

Ash was looking over at the corridor Shepard had come from, an expression of mixed anxiety and desperation on her face. Shepard knew what she was thinking, of course: Kaidan still hadn't returned, and maybe, just maybe…

Shepard gave it a few seconds, then keyed her earpiece. "We're all aboard, Joker. Get us out of here."

"Aye aye, ma'am," Joker replied, and the cargo bay began to slowly close in front of them while the Normandy's engines roared, pulling them away from the smoking and blasted facility.

The door closed with a clang and a thud, and Ash squeezed her eyes shot and flung her head away.

I'll talk to her later, Shepard decided. She was… poor with grief at the best of times, and right now hardly qualified. Besides, there's more to do.

Stepping away to give the soldier space, she activated her communicator again. "Sovereign?" she asked.

"Pissed, but too far away to do anything," Joker replied. "Saren?"

"Out of action, but I don't think he's dead," she said, letting her disappointment show in her voice. "Took his arm off, but the wound sealed almost instantly – I think he had one of those experimental medical support modifications in his armor."

"And, uh..." he coughed. "Alenko?"

"Didn't make it," she said simply. "I need to check in with the rest of the team, Joker – I'll give you the rest of the rundown at the debriefing."

"Right. Shit. Uh, I mean, acknowledged, ma'am," he said.

A silent, searingly bright flash lit the cargo bay from the rear-facing windows, and beside her Ashley Williams burst into tears.

The debrief, as it turned out, took quite a while to get to.

When they finally all shuffled into the communications room, it was not with the triumphant expression of victors, but the thousand-yard stare of exhausted survivors.

I don't blame them, Shepard thought as she surveyed the battered ground team. This mission asked a lot more of them than all the previous ones… put together.

"Alright," she said, pausing to drain the rest of her juice pouch before crumpling the package and tucking it into a pocket of her flight suit. "Let's start with the bad: We lost Alenko, half of our marine complement is MIA – more on that later – three quarters of Kirrahe's team is KIA, and Vakarian's out of commission until further notice."

"I still can't believe Alenko didn't make it," Ash muttered bitterly. "How could we just leave him down there?"

She lowered her data slate and stared at the slumped over gunnery chief. "Because the alternative was everyone dying and Saren winning," she said bluntly, and Liara winced. "If you'd been the one late to extraction and he was the one guarding a critical objective, I would have saved him."

"Wrex could have taken Garrus to you," she argued. "Kaidan's a biotic, he's worth a hell of a lot more than a washed up-"

"Enough, Williams," she said sternly, but without ire. "If you want to get into this, I'll discuss it with you afterward in private, but it's not relevant for this debrief. Unless you have an operational critique…?"

She raised an eyebrow at the gunnery chief, who shook her head mutely. "Very well. In that case, speak with me in my office when we're done."

"Aye aye, ma'am," Ash said, her voice small.

"Good. Now, the good news. We successfully dealt a devastating blow to one of Saren's major operations, dealt an equally devastating blow to Saren himself, extracted a huge trove of data both in terms of medical samples and computer archives, put a wrench in his attempt to turn the krogan into a weapon for his cause, and revealed something of the true nature behind his power. We even managed to get Kirrahe out of there and with some of his team, even if Chakwas will be working overtime for the next day or two until we get back to the Citadel."

"So with the mundane issues out of the way," she said, tossing the data slate to the side, "let's address the metaphorical elephant in the room: Sovereign."

"No offense ma'am, but uh, what do we know?" Ash asked. "Like, Saren's working with some ancient monster that wants to wipe us all out and supposedly shaped every race in the galaxy. What the hell do we do with that?"

"A good question," Shepard said, sighing heavily. "For starters, we're going to have some computer forensics experts go over the stuff we stole from his quarters. I want to know what he felt was important enough to write down, and I want the samples and research data we recovered in the hands of specialists as soon as physically possible."

"If I may, Shepard?" Liara raised a hand. "The beacon in his room… what was the message? Was it the same as the one from Eden Prime, or was it more extensive?"

"Wow," Shepard said, rubbing her temples, "I really am tired if I forgot about that. Yes, Liara, there was more to it, but not much. A much clearer image of a reaper hidden in the silhouette of a planet, as well as what looked like a flyby of a solar system. Not one I recognized, unfortunately, but I can show you later if you think you might."

Liara nodded. "I think that would be a wise decision," she said. "But if that was all that was in the message, then we can postpone until we are all a little more rested."

"Tabling that for now, then," Shepard nodded. "I'm going to put a call into the Council, and let them know that there's a new threat they should be aware of. Joker, I'm going to need a data dump from the Normandy's sensor array, anything you can give me on that ship's capabilities."

"Uh, it's as hell and fucking terrifying?" the pilot's voice said over the loudspeaker, positively dripping with sarcasm. "Real talk, Commander, I'll do what I can, but I was a bit more worried about, y'know, flying than taking pretty pictures."

"Duly noted," Shepard said, rubbing her temples. "Just… whatever you can give."

"Will do," he said.

"Now, regarding Alenko..." she pursed her lips. "We'll do a ramp ceremony when we land at the Citadel tomorrow. I'll take care of his things, unless he's made other requests."

"Uh… ma'am? Do you mind if I handle that? I mean..." Ash bit her lip. "It's sort of in my area anyway, and I'd like the chance to, well…"

Shepard eyed the chief levelly, then nodded. "As you wish."

The soldier smiled weakly. "Thanks, ma'am."

"As for the rest of our marine complement," Shepard said, "I spoke with Pressly, and they apparently opted to turn around when Alenko called for air support rather than try to make the extraction point inside the facility. This means there is a very real chance they survived, however, we are not in a position to perform a rescue. The information we're carrying simply must be delivered to the Council and the Alliance before we can even consider doing so. We will be giving search and rescue duties to an Alliance extraction team, but assuming they cleared the blast site, I have high hopes – assuming they don't get caught by geth patrols or stumble into a pirate camp, they stand a good chance, as the planet is quite a nice one if you ignore the bulk of its residents."

Looking down, she thumbed the list on her data slate. "Now, last order of business before we wrap this up. This mission was hard," she said, emphasizing the word, "and I don't just mean in terms of physical exertion. What we did – what we had to do – was rough on everyone, and there's no cowardice in acknowledging it's way beyond what you've had to deal with before. I need all of you to be ready to fight with what we still have to come, and that means body and mind."

"As such," she continued, "my last order to all of you for the day is to talk to someone. It doesn't have to be me. It doesn't have to be on this ship. It doesn't even need to be real-time, but find someone who can listen. If you don't know where to start, I'd recommend speaking with Chakwas or Pressly – if they can't help, they can at least point you in the direction of someone who can."

Her eyes swept the battered, bruised, and more than a little traumatized group of people in the room, and she nodded once again. "Then if there's nothing else," she said softly, "dismissed. And thank you."

When the last of the ground team filtered out of the room, she closed her eyes and let out a long, slow breath.

That, she thought to herself, was far more what I was expecting when I was recruited for this job.

In many ways, it was pushing her limits, as well. Her limits as a soldier, yes, but her limits as a leader far more. She was eternally grateful for the wisdom and tutelage Chakwas and Liara had seen fit to grant her, but even with their background advice, at the end of the day, she was the one who had to do execute on all of it.

It is not easy, juggling a dysfunctional mix of civilians and military in a desperate attempt to save the galaxy, she thought wryly. Still, it is at least interesting.

She look up at the corner of the room where she knew the intercom pickup was located. "Joker, are we near a comm buoy?"

"Negative, ma'am," the pilot replied after a moment's hesitation. "Next one won't be for a few hours. This system's pretty out of the way."

"That's fine," she said with a half smile. "I didn't really want to deal with the Council this evening, anyway. Can you throw a message in the outbound queue?"

"Can do, ma'am," he said. "What message?"

"Drop a note to Councilor Valern, let him know our mission was a partial success, and that I am requesting an urgent meeting with the Council as a whole as soon as we return to the Citadel. They should also make sure the Citadel fleet is standing for possible combat with a dreadnought of unknown but presumably extraordinary capabilities."

"Aye aye, vague warning of doom and one mission report I.O.U. in the dispatch," he said primly, and Shepard snorted. "Hey, if you're gonna make me handle the mail…"

She shook her head. "Just don't say anything that'll get us shot when we land," she said. "I don't have time in my schedule for that."

"Uh, yeah, about that..." Shepard frowned up at the audio pickup. "Permission to speak freely?"

"Go ahead," she said wearily.

"You look pretty beat. Get some sleep, yeah?"

She snorted again. "It's number…" she thought for a moment, "… six on my list, I think."

"If you say so, ma'am," he said, voice skeptical. "At least I can tell the doc I tried?"

"Thanks," she said, rolling her eyes and making for the door.

Item one, she thought, Ashley Williams.

The gunner chief was leaning against the wall outside her door, arms folded and with one foot tucked up and pressed against the steel behind her. "Commander!" she started when Shepard rounded the corner. "You, uh, wanted to see me?"

"I did," Shepard confirmed, palming the door panel and stepping inside. "Have a seat."

Ash looked around the small, sparsely-decorated room seeking something to focus on. "Little bit weird having your bedroom in your office, isn't it, ma'am?"

Shepard shrugged. "Gives me an excuse to practice making a bed like they had us do in basic," she replied while settling in to her own chair. "Now. The mission."

Ash rubbed the back of her head. "Right. Uh..."

I can have a little mercy, I suppose, Shepard thought while Ash struggled to figure out how to say what she wanted without offending her. "Chief, let me make something abundantly clear: I'm not going to throw you off the ship for disagreeing with how I handled something after the mission is done. That's precisely when you're supposed to object to how I do things, and give input on how things should be done better in the future."

She let her smile fade. "Now, objecting during the mission, on the other hand..."

Ash shook her head quickly, aghast. "I would never! 'How high,' and all that, ma'am."

"As long as we're on the same page," Shepard nodded. "Now, during our debrief you felt that I should have done things differently. Is that because you honestly have a problem with how I prioritized the use of resources, or simply because you're dissatisfied with the outcome?"

Ash's head jerked back. "Give me a little credit."

Shepard gave the woman an impassive glance. "I assign credit precisely where it is due, Chief. Which one is it?"

"I-" Ash swallowed, then met Shepard's gaze. "I'm not happy with what happened, obviously, but I really do think things could have been better, ma'am. I set the bomb so that you would be free to go after Alenko."

Shepard raised an eyebrow at her. "And what about Wrex and Garrus?"

"Wrex could have easily carried Garrus," she answered quickly.

"Possibly," she acknowledged. "It was still a more complex maneuver with more risks, and would have prioritized personnel over objectives, but it was not an unfathomable decision."

"The bomb would have gone off regardless, ma'am, the only difference would have been in which one of us made it out."

"That is assuming that we could have reached him in time, that we could have reached a location the Normandy could extract us from in time, and also sets aside how trivial it is to disable modern Alliance nuclear weapons," Shepard said.

"But I locked in the detonation sequence," Ash began, only for Shepard to shake her head.

"Chief, modern nuclear weapons are designed to fail safe, not dangerous," Shepard explained gently. "If you shoot one with a pistol, you'll get a hazmat situation on your hands with radioisotopes everywhere, but you won't get a nuclear explosion. If you don't care about making a mess – and I guarantee Saren doesn't care about mild nuclear contamination that his geth can clean up – then the fastest way to disarm a bomb like that is to just shoot it."

"Oh," Ash said in a small voice. "So… locking that code in only made things worse? Because of the short timer?"

Shepard shook her head again. "No, but that's because we already had Sovereign giving us an equally dangerous time crunch. As your commanding officer, however, I would like to request that you refrain from taking initiative with nuclear weapons in that manner."

"Understood, ma'am," Ash chuckled, a little wetly. "Then there really wasn't any way to get you to pick Kaidan over me, was there?"

Shepard thought for a moment. "No, not really," she said after a moment. "Oh, with the benefit of hindsight we can say all kinds of things, but with the information and team we had going in, I don't think I can imagine a reason to organize our team any differently."

The gunnery chief sighed heavily. "I just don't like the idea of it being unavoidable," she said. "Guess that's something for me to deal with, though, huh?"

"Ulimately, yes, but it never hurts to speak to someone," Shepard said. "There's no more shame in talking to a doctor about mental issues than there is in talking to one about a sprained limb."

Ash snorted. "You say that, but..."

"Changing that perception happens one person at a time, Chief," Shepard said. "'Be the change you want to see in the world,' and all that."

"I guess," Ash said, sighing heavily. "Well, I'll think it over, at least."

"Do so," Shepard ordered. "Was there anything else?"

Ash pursed her lips and shook her head. "No, ma'am."

"Then in that case, I'm going to work on my to-do list," Shepard said, and Williams scooted her chair back and stood, but paused before opening the door. "Ma'am? Can I ask a personal question?"

Shepard cocked her head. "You may," she said. "No guarantees I'll answer."

"You, uh," she rubbed the back of her head again, "you ever talk to one?"

The redhead laughed. "Are you kidding, Chief? I have a whole team."

Never mind that I have a team because they want to make sure I'm still their pet monster, she thought with more than a little amusement at the irony. Still, not technically wrong.

"Wait, really?" Ash blinked. "I guess it makes sense, you must deal with some heavy shit as an N7."

Shepard nodded. "They also keep an eye on the biotics, too, so I'm doubly blessed," she said. "But yes, Chief, I talk to several specialists, including but not limited to psychologists, psychiatrists, neurologists, a bioticist, a general practitioner…"

"Okay, okay, I'll talk to the doc," Ash said, a more natural smile on her face. "And… thanks for the talk, ma'am."

Shepard smiled up at the woman. "Any time, chief."

Let's see, Shepard thought a while later, looking over the list she'd started preparing, what's left?

She needed to assemble a report for the Council, visit Liara and show her the beacon vision, get the data she'd stolen from Saren's computers to a forensics expert, deliver the heads she'd harvested from the indoctrinated salarians to a proper medical team for analysis, write a letter to Kaidan's parents, prepare statements for the crew, send a request for a search-and-rescue operation for her abandoned Marines, meet with Kirrahe, and begin preparations to search for the location of the Conduit in earnest.

And ideally, find out what the Conduit even is, because Saren hasn't been terribly forthcoming so far, she thought with a grumble.

A quiet rap on her door shook her out of her thoughts. "Cone in," she called.

The door hissed open and Liara stepped in, shutting the door behind her. "Good evening," she said. "I'm not disturbing you, am I?"

Shepard shook her head. "Not at all. I'm just figuring out what I still have to do," she said. "Missions like that one tend to leave a lot of loose ends to tidy up, unfortunately."

"At least we will have a little time to handle them in," Liara said. "I saw the injury you inflicted on Saren. That was… severe."

Shepard grimaced. "Actually, I have a sneaking suspicion we won't have as long as we hope," she said. "We know Sovereign – and by extension Saren – have access to extensive biological modification technology that we can't hope to come close to matching, which means I think we might see our turian friend sooner rather than later."

"What modification tech- oh!" Liara paled. "The husks..."

Shepard nodded, her mouth a grim line. "Precisely. I think we might have forced his hand, and if we have, he'll get desperate and go to Sovereign for help."

"That asari doctor, Rana," Liara said, "she suggested he might fear Sovereign's influence. Could that buy us more time?"

"Maybe, maybe not," Shepard hedged. "I'll run my concerns by Garrus when he's awake again, see if he has any insights, but at this point I'm left with a great big question mark over how long Saren will be out of action."

"Speaking of which," Liara said, smiling slightly, "Chakwas says that Garrus should make a full recovery. His hardsuit took the brunt of the damage and the bleeding into his lungs was mostly stopped by the medi-gel. She says he won't be fighting for a few months, but she expects no long-term damage."

"That's good to hear," Shepard said. "I didn't think that shot would take him down, but you never know. How's Chakwas handling the load? Does she need more hands?"

"As well as can be expected, and no, I do not believe so," Liara said, her smile fading. "She is assisting the medic that made it out with Kirrahe's team. They have filled the medbay, and last I saw they had converted a section of the cargo bay into a field hospital."

"I'll check in with Kirrahe before I go to sleep tonight," Shepard said. "That reminds me, what's the status of your room? I would assume Chakwas has commandeered it for its original intended purpose with all the casualties."

"It is hardly commandeering to restore it to its normal function," Liara hedged, "but you are right. She has set up some of the salarians who require more intensive care there. I have been working out of the mess."

"Well, in that case, do you want to sleep here tonight?" she gestured at the double bed tucked behind her desk.

"I-" Liara stammered, blushing a deep purple. "I mean- that is- with you?"

"Why not?" Shepard asked with a shrug. "We trust each other, we enjoy each other's company, we already know we can sleep in the same bed without issue, your normal sleeping arrangements aren't available, and I have extra space."

Truth be told, she did have an ulterior motive into inviting her to bed, but it wasn't the only reason, and none of what she'd just said was wrong, or even particularly misleading.

If you're not accomplishing multiple things with a single action, you're simply not being efficient, she thought with a mental harrumph.

Across the desk, with no inkling of the scheming going on in the Commander's head, Liara gave herself a small shake and met her eyes with a trembling smile. "In that case, Com- no, Shepard, I will accept."

"Good, good," Shepard said, then glanced at the time.Nineteen thirty seven."I've a few things to take care of before I turn in – what time do you usually sleep?"

Liara chuckled softly. "My sleep schedule has not been remotely regular since we began this endeavor, and even if it was, the mission today was… draining."

"Nonetheless," Shepard pressed.

"Say…" the asari glanced at her omni tool, then back to Shepard. "Twenty two hundred? I wish to record some things before short term memory fades."

"Fine by me," Shepard said, standing and stretching. "I need to go talk to Kirrahe and make sure everything's ready for tomorrow's ceremony, anyway."

"Ceremony?" Liara cocked her head. "For Kaidan?"

Shepard nodded. "We'll be arriving at the Citadel tomorrow, and while there's no body to hand over, it's customary to say something to crew before we go our separate ways. I need to write a letter to his family, too – I think at least his mother's still alive."

Liara glanced down at the deck, expression unreadable. "No parent should have to bury a child," she said quietly. "It is a terrible thing."

I wonder which is worse – a parent burying a child, with the loss of investment of resources and violation of biological imperative, or a child burying a parent before their time, with the loss of security, advice, and consistency, she pondered. Maybe somebody's done a study.

"I will take your word on it," Shepard said, and Liara flinched before her expression settled on something between pity and sorrow. "I suppose I could go find an asari who'd lost a child and ask, but even I can tell that might be a bit of a social faux pas."

Liara covered her mouth with her hand, but Shepard could see the smile crinkling the corner of her eyes. "Perhaps a bit, yes," she said.

"Ah, well," Shepard said. "In any case, you came in here presumably seeking something before I distracted you, yes?"

"Oh, yes," Liara nodded. "I wished to see if you were willing to show me the vision the intact beacon bestowed upon you," she said, excitement plain in her voice. "To have an accurate record from the time of the protheans, even one as unpleasant at that… well. I would very much like to see it, if at all possible."

Shepard mulled it over, then shrugged. The melds were draining, yes, and reliving the prothean beacon message was hardly her idea of a good time, but Liara wasn't wrong – they did need every bit of help they could get in finding out what the Conduit was supposed to be and where it was located.

"Sure," she said, pushing away from her terminal. "Might as well, but I warn you – there's not much more there than there was in the first one, and it's not any more pleasant."

"Every piece of information is valuable," Liara reminded her, echoing her thoughts from a moment ago.

"I think you're just looking for an excuse to poke around in my head again," Shepard joked, then leaned forward on the desk. "Ready when you are."

"In that case, Shepard… embrace eternity!"

Shepard opened her eyes, blinking and wincing slightly at the memory of hooked needles pulling through flesh. "I hope you got something useful out of that," she said.

Across the desk, Liara groaned, her face planted flat on the metal surface. "Goddess, why does everything on this mission have to hurt," she complained into it.

"I'll take that to mean no, you didn't get anything useful," Shepard said heavily, and pushed herself out of her chair.

"I did not say that," she said, sitting up and rubbing her eyes. "Those planets at the end, and the one with the Reaper hidden inside – do you think it is a reference to their homeworld? Where they came from, perhaps?"

Shepard shrugged. "You're the expert on protheans," she pointed out. "If you were a prothean leaving behind a message about your assailants, would you leave behind a warning of where they were, where they came from, or a weapon to defeat them?"

"I..." she thought for a moment, then shook her head. "I cannot say," she admitted. "Too much of my understanding of who and what the protheans were is shaped by ideas we now know to be wrong."

"What do you mean?" Shepard asked.

"My education is based, for the most part, on well-established hypotheses about the protheans. They like to call them theories, but in truth, they lack the body of evidence and even basic testability to be considered proper theories," she huffed. "In any case, you and I now know many of those ideas to be wrong, as we have met the party responsible for their departure. I still possess a massive swath of information about them that I consider to be accurate, but I dare not hazard a guess at their psychology or motivations. If we were that wrong about why the mass relays were left behind..."

"Then you might be wildly wrong about the purpose of other relics," Shepard finished for her, and Liara nodded. "Relics like the Citade-"

Oh, no.

Epiphanies were rare, she knew. Most ideas were iterative, produced as the result of trying things based on what one had already confirmed, seeing how they fit the available evidence, and tweaking until a good fit was found. Even revolutionary ideas rarely appeared, complete and intact, in the space of a heartbeat.

But rare was not the same thing as impossible.

It's been staring us in the face the whole time, Shepard thought in a daze. Why he's focusing so much on ground assault forces and why the relic he's hunting is called the Conduit.

He's going to invade the closest thing galactic civilization has to a capital.

It made a certain kind of sense. The mass relays were natural choke points, a fact that military forces across the galaxy took advantage of every day. The Charon relay was one of the most heavily fortified installations the Systems Alliance managed, as it was realistically the only place one could stop an invading fleet. Once inside the Sol system, there was no way to prevent a hostile force from using short-range jumps to come at a target from any angle they desired.

The same was true on an even larger scale with the relay that led to the Citadel: A combined fleet of vessels, many of them dreadnoughts, were constantly at ready in order to deal with a potential attack. The actual fleet around the Citadel, on the other hand, was small by comparison. It consisted mostly of cruisers, frigates, and other small ships designed more to show off or respond to an emergency on board the station.

Liara stopped rubbing her eyes at her abrupt silence. "The citadel? What do- oh," she whispered, reaching the same conclusion Shepard had. "Oh, no, no..."

"'Oh no' is right," Shepard said grimly. "Remember how you were telling me how little the residents of the Citadel actually know about the place or how it works? And how they're discouraged from looking? What if all the systems hidden away from prying eyes are part of the same machinery that lets Sovereign control minds?"

"If… if that is there, then he must not be able to use it remotely," Liara pointed out. "Otherwise most of galactic society would already be in his thrall."

"That or it failed," Shepard said. "Fifty thousand years is a long time for something to go unmaintained."

"But it's not unmaintained," Liara said. "The Keepers repair the Citadel systems."

Shepard shrugged. "The Keepers are a system, too. Nothing stopping them – or whatever gives them their instructions – from breaking."

"I suppose," Liara said, although she sounded unconvinced.

I'll need to tell the Council, Shepard thought to herself. The Alliance will need to have a fleet on standby, as well, in case he shows up, and we'll need to see about bringing heavy arms to our embassy. Damn, damn, damn!

"I think," she said, a little dryly, "that my to-do list just got longer."

"How can I help?" Liara asked, leaning forward over the desk.

Shepard smiled. Even here, tired, traumatized, and in pain, Liara's first thought after hearing something needed doing was to ask how to help. It was… admirable.

Most of the work can wait for now, actually, she thought. There's not much action to take until we get into range of a communications buoy, and even that's mostly work on my end. Still…

"For now, I could use a formal write-up of our ideas here, with the rough edges filed off so it doesn't read like the ramblings of a pair of exhausted lunatics," Shepard said, to Liara's stifled amusement. "Beyond that… if you could make a description of what you saw in the beacon message and ensure it's recorded somewhere, I would appreciate it."

"I was planning on doing that anyway," Liara smiled. "For posterity."

Shepard nodded. She'd expected as much. "Beyond those two things, I can't think of anything that has to happen tonight. The rest will involve lots of comm calls with people who don't like being woken up with bad news, but who have the unfortunate job of being woken up with bad news."

"Then I will begin straight away," Liara said, standing up from her chair with a faint groan.

As should I, Shepard thought while the asari headed for the door. Somehow, I don't think things are going to get easier from here on out.

Captain Kirrahe was, she mused, the last soldier she'd have expected to turn up in the STG. He was everything the STG was not: Direct, upfront, and aggressive. Her debriefing with him had fit perfectly in with his character, as well: He thanked her repeatedly for her rescue, answered the questions she asked about his plans, and agreed to advocate for her in any way he could with the STG.

Or, at least, that's the impression I get, she thought while the elevator hummed. I suppose it could be an act, but the person who might have a better insight didn't survive. A pity.

She sighed and headed for medbay, smiling slightly to herself at Liara's complete disregard for everything going on around her while she worked at the mess hall table.

"Good evening, Shepard," Chakwas said, looking up from the medical chart she was making notes on with a smile. "How are you doing? No ill effects from today's mission?"

Shepard paused, taking a moment to do a brief self-evaluation before shaking her head. "Just tired, I think. Did Liara's things get moved?"

"The cot was stowed and we stacked her bags in the left corner under the shelf," Chakwas said. "Why?"

"She'll be sleeping with me, at least until we get our guests offloaded," Shepard explained over her shoulder while she went to fetch the asari's possessions. "Figured she might want her stuff."

There wasn't much – a duffel bag with clothes, a second personal computer, an empty hard case (the weapon itself was stashed in the Normandy's armory), what she assumed was a kit bag, and a laundry hamper. Nothing that would require multiple trips.

By the time she emerged from the room with a blue-limned bag floating behind her, Chakwas was staring out the window of the medical bay from her desk, a pensive expression on her face.

"Credit for your thoughts, Karin?" she said, letting the duffel float to the ground.

The doctor gave herself a small shake and sighed. "I suppose I am concerned that you two are taking things too quickly," she said. "A bit hypocritical of me, perhaps, as I was the one who encouraged you."

"Hardly," Shepard said. "Although your concerns are misplaced in this instance."

"Oh?" Chakwas raised an eyebrow.

Shepard grinned. "She's just sleeping with me, Doc. As in, unconscious in close proximity, nothing more."

"Ah," Chakwas said, some of the tension leaving her shoulders. "I shouldn't be relieved, but I am. Do you need a hand?"

"Nah," Shepard said, and the bag floated back up behind her while she tapped her temple. "Just don't report me for misuse of military hardware."

"Perish the thought," Chakwas said with a laugh. "Sleep well, Elle."

"You too," Shepard said, then stepped out into the hall, deserted but for Liara and crew in the sleeper pods.

The woman was clearly preoccupied, and she hadn't even twitched from whatever had drawn her attention on her computer screen when Shepard walked into her field of view. It wasn't until Shepard set the duffel bag on the table with a faint thump that Liara noticed her presence… which she noticed by making a small squeaking noise and biting down on the lip she'd been absently chewing on.

That, in turn, resulted in a surprised wince as a tooth caught already-injured flesh, prompting a pained hiss and a slightly aggravated glare. "Yes?" she huffed.

Shepard held her hands up. "Sorry. Didn't realize you were so deep in thought," she said. "I finished up my duties and took the liberty of fetching your things," she gestured at the duffel on the table. "Given that it's getting well on toward twenty three hundred..."

"Is it?" Liara blinked and looked down at the corner of her screen. "Goddess, it is. I completely lost track of time."

"Then if I may be so bold, might I suggest sleep?" Shepard said. "It's not getting any earlier, and we'll be on the Citadel tomorrow morning."

"With all that entails, yes," Liara pursed her lips. "You are right, of course. I will wrap up my thoughts and meet you momentarily."

"Sounds like a plan," Shepard nodded and headed for her cabin, pile of belongings in tow.

Fourteen minutes later by her clock there was a soft rap at the door.

Shepard groaned, leaned back in her chair and laced her fingers together above her head, eliciting a loud pop from her back as she stretched. "Come in," she called.

"Sorry," Liara apologized, tapping the door shut behind her with a hand that Shepard barely noticed trembling.

"It's fine," she reassured her. "The list of things I have to do is pretty much endless at this point."

"Oh?" Liara asked, peering at her terminal. "What were you doing, if I may ask?"

"Nothing happy, I'm afraid," Shepard sighed. "Navy regulations require that the next-of-kin be notified of a soldier's death as soon as possible. It's not my job to write the letter, but it is my job to make sure all the person who writes it has all the details… and to make sure that those details won't compromise mission security, won't paint the soldier in a bad light, and won't paint the service in a bad light."

"Oh," Liara said again, her voice much smaller. "Is it… may I read?"

"Not much to read," Shepard said, spinning the display to allow her to see, "but if you want, go ahead. This one isn't that hard, luckily – the only part the service would prefer I not highlight is the fact that we left him behind as part of the mission. Everything on his part is heroics of the highest order, volunteering for a dangerous position, saving so many allies we can barely fit them all in the ship, bringing honor with his sacrifice..."

"I see," she said, skimming the terminal briefly before stepping back. "Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?"

"By all means," Shepard said, thumbing the terminal off.

"Do you miss him?"

Did she?

She frowned, thinking. Kaidan Alenko had been a good soldier, a kind man, loyal, intelligent, and clever. Williams wasn't wrong when she said that it would have been far better to leave her behind than Kaidan, and if there had been a reasonable way to do so without risking mission success, she'd have done it.

But there hadn't been, and so she'd sent him on an assignment that cost him his life.

The loss of his skills irked her, and the fact that she hadn't been able to bring everyone back was a blow to her vague sense of professional pride, she didn't really miss him. Missed his skills, yes, his insight, yes, and disliked the disruption his death would cause… but the man himself?

She felt nothing.

"No, not really," she said. "I miss the role he played, but as a person…" she shook her head.

"Would-" Liara paused, taking a steadying breath. "Would you miss me? If I died?"

She frowned harder. It was… not pleasant, imagining Liara dying. She'd put a great deal of work into shaping the young asari (she still thought of her as young, despite the fourfold difference in their ages) into who she was, and seeing that wiped away would frustrate her – greatly, even.

But it was more than that. She'd come to enjoy the asari's company. She liked the unabashed, eager enthusiasm with which she dove into new mysteries, and they both shared a deep and profound passion for finding out new things. Shepard felt that while the good of the galaxy certainly added importance to their work, it was the chance to uncover something truly new – or in this case, truly ancient – that truly excited them, and it was simply nice to have a person with the same outlook to compare notes with.

Additionally, the blue woman was most certainly easy on the eyes, and being able to enjoy that kind of company without fearing discovery was something Shepard looked forward to most eagerly.

To lose all that…

"I think," she began, then shook her head. "No, I know I would be angry. I don't really know what I would do about it, but it would definitely upset me. Greatly, even. Why?"

"… perhaps it is foolish or selfish, but… I was thinking, earlier, about how with my mother gone, my family estranged, and my research mocked and ignored, there would be none left to mourn my loss," she said quietly. "I suppose I wanted to know someone would miss me."

"I don't know if I can miss people, at least, the way I think you're talking about," Shepard said slowly. "But you're definitely the best thing that's happened to me in years, and I want to keep you around if at all possible."

Liara gave a small chuckle. "Given the circumstances, I believe that is the best I can hope for," she said.

"I still think you're selling yourself short," Shepard said and began fiddling with the zipper on her jumpsuit. "Remember that we're a pretty short-lived species with strong tribal tendencies. It's not always easy to be considered 'part of the group' by a set of humans, but once you are, they'll be pretty protective of you. A big part of what pushed you over the threshold was Noveria."

"Because of my mother?" she asked.

"Yeah," Shepard said. "Hell, Liara, we do the same thing in gang initiations. 'Go do a heinous, illegal, or immoral act to prove that you value the requirements of our group more than the law of the land.' It has the added benefit of making you complicit, so a new initiate is much easier to blackmail if they get cold feet."

"Everything we did on Noveria was legal and necessary, though," Liara pointed out. "It was hardly a gang initiation."

"The point in this case isn't the legality, it's the tribal loyalty," Shepard explained. "By choosing to side with our group instead of your closest family, you've declared to them that everything you said was accurate, that you really do want to help them, and that you can be trusted. It's not really rational, but it's how our minds tend to work if we're not careful… and most soldiers don't do a whole lot of self-reflection."

"I suppose," she said. "Perhaps I am just tired, and dwelling on unpleasant thoughts."

Shepard shrugged. "Only one solution for that, unless you want to try to explain to Chakwas why you need stimulants."

"No, thank you," Liara shuddered. "I have seen her reprimand the marines. I have no desire to be on the receiving end of that lecture."

"A sensible survival strategy," Shepard grinned, and began tugging on the zipper of her jumpsuit.

"Ah, Shepard," Liara asked, a little hesitantly. "What should I, er… wear?"

"Hm?" Shepard glanced up from the zipper and shrugged. "Whatever makes you most comfortable."

The asari sighed. "That is not the most helpful answer."

"Sorry, sorry," Shepard grinned. "Really, though, it's up to you. I typically haven't worn much to sleep since I left the Reds."

"Since you left the… Reds? Oh, the gang you grew up with?" Liara asked. "Why?"

"A lot of reasons," Shepard explained. "To start, it was part of the 'gang to society' program the military put all the ex-gang recruits through."

"Wait, they wanted you to sleep naked?"

"Hah!" Shepard shook her head. "No, they didn't order us to do anything like that. They recommended that we leave our 'gang attachments' behind – no ink, no signs, and the like – and part of that included changing habits that we kept while in the gang. In the Reds, we kept our hair short and wore clothes everywhere, because Vancouver is cold and skin and hair parasites were a constant problem."

She ran a hand through her disheveled mop of red hair. "Technically, this breaks regs – we're supposed to keep it really short, or if long, in a neat bun or braid, but I've reached the point of seniority where nobody will dare tell me my appearance isn't up to snuff."

"Well, I think you look fine," Liara blurted, then blushed. "I mean-"

Shepard laughed. "I'm glad you enjoy how I look," she said. "To answer your question, though, wear whatever will give you the best rest, and if my attire risks that, let me know."

Putting action to words, she finished taking off her jumpsuit and chucked it in the hamper in the corner, then crawled over the bed and slid beneath the sheets. It was a little strange, sharing a bed – she hadn't slept with another person in… many months, at least, and she hadn't done so with someone she trusted in nearly two decades.

Beside her, the rustling of clothing and the gentle shifting of the mattress announced Liara's decision, and she craned her neck over to see the topless asari pulling the sheets up to her chin.

She blushed at Shepard's gaze, but didn't stop, and even let out a small whimper of relief when she stretched out. "Goddess, my spine feels better already," she murmured, any embarrassment forgotten with the sheer joy of a proper mattress after weeks on an emergency military cot.

"I still think those cots were mislabeled torture devices," Shepard said, to Liara's quiet amusement.

"While I do not wish to complain, especially after all you and the Alliance have done for me-" she said, only for Shepard to snort in amusement, "-those truly are miserable."

"There's more than one reason I offered you a space," Shepard smiled. "Sleep well, Liara."

The bed shifted slightly, and Shepard swore she heard something go pop in the asari's back. "Ahhhhh. Goddess, that felt good. Ah, pleasant dreams to you as well, Shepard," she said as an afterthought.

Shepard grinned and tapped the button that plunged the pair into darkness, and as she drifted off to sleep, it was with the sound of two people steadily breathing in the room instead of the usual one.

You know, she thought fuzzily as consciousness faded, this isn't so bad.

A/N: Aren't they cute? Quick, that's my cue to make everything go wrong again.