Aggressor: Rise of Man

Chapter 5

Drafted

"Did I jump at the chance when I was first approached at Ragnar? Of course, what cruiser captain wouldn't after one hundred years of cold war? The chance to see some action, the chance to advance the careers of my crew? It was an obvious decision. Then Special Projects put that thing in my hull. I guess the Devil is always listening, and she has a sense of humor." Capt. David Anderson, CO, EDEN Odysseus

Shepard sat heavily. His feet were tired from pacing the perimeter of the claustrophobic holding cell. Sure, the Sentinel that had introduced herself as Niemeyer had called it a waiting room, but Shepard knew a holding cell when he saw one. The room was beyond plain, smooth steel walls unbroken except for the single door and a row of a half dozen folding crash chairs on one wall. Shepard had sat in each one of them, anything to break up the monotony. At least they'd handed him a change of clothes. Of course, they'd also taken the time it'd him to shrug out of his dirty tunic with its torn sleeves and dark stains as an opportunity to squirrel away his gun and radio set. So, now he had nothing but to wait, and pace, and stew.

After the constant motion of the running battle down below, the inaction was agonizing. The nerves that had haunted him since the morning now jangled, blaring alarms that in prehistoric man had called 'Tiger!' But the tiger was gone, and if it had still been around, there was nothing that Shepard would be able to do about it. And so, he waited, and paced, and stewed. Time was moving slowly in that metal box, stretching out minutes into hours. Or at least he assumed. Somewhere between stepping out of SRPA Station GARDEN that morning and stepping into the cold, vast expanse of the Odysseus' lower hanger bay, his wristwatch had stopped working. Face smashed. Tiny power cell drained. So, perhaps it had been hours. Wait, pace... Shepard's thoughts were drawn back to the hanger bay. It had been crowded, very crowded. And not just by its usual complement of transports and small fighter craft, though those had been crammed into half the space usually allotted to them. There had been a lot of black fatigued SRPA around, their roundel and chevron marking stacks of equipment crates and a dark, slab-sided Shrike transport. And up above, where the hanger's upper deck should have been, closed blast doors. That could have been expected when cleared for cruising, or perhaps during a fleet action, but when launching a ground attack?

The door chimed, shaking Shepard from his ruminations. The biotic Major, Alenko, stood in the doorway. He'd traded his armored chest plate for an undecorated grey accented black service uniform. He'd removed the biotic amplifier from its perch on the back of his neck, leaving only the thick, high collar that covered the docking ports. He smiled politely, tipping his head slightly in greeting.

"Petty Officer," he started, in a quiet, neutral tone that set Shepard on edge, "Sorry about keeping you waiting there. The Asari left quite a mess down on New Eden. Recovery efforts have kept everyone busy; you understand?"

Shepard nodded his assent. He stood, tugged his uniform straight, and prepared to be marched off to some forgotten hole. The biotic's next words threw him off balance.

"The Captain is ready to see you now. If you'll follow me?" He stepped back from the door way and offered a leading hand. No armsmen stood beyond him to clap Shepard in irons, the hallway was, in fact, completely empty. On the wall across from the door, a white stencil on the dark bulkhead labeled the empty corridor as 'C Deck.' Officer country. Shepard was once again a stranger in a strange land. Oh sure, he'd sat bridge shifts before. It felt like a distant memory since the days, or, more accurately, nights that he'd spent recording the empty radio silence deep in the bowels of the Odysseus. But even then, C Deck had been functionally off-limits to the junior NCO. And now he was going to see the Captain. Shepard swallowed haltingly.

"Lead on, Major." He managed to avoid stammering. Just. He followed the biotic out of the room and down a series of slate grey corridors. The deck thrummed under his feet in a familiar way that he hadn't even known he'd missed. They were underway. That surprised Shepard. As first on scene, the clean-up operation should have been the Captain's to command, a duty Shepard doubted he'd simply abandon. Which left the question of where they were headed, and why. And the big one, what did it have to do with him.

They arrived outside the Captain's ready room, the journey having left no imprint on Shepard's distracted memory. Alenko nodded affably to the two marines standing watch and reached up to rap smartly on the plain metal door.

"Come," came the immediate response in the rich tones of a familiar voice touched by a hint of a London accent. The door opened with the hiss of heavy pneumatics. Shepard stepped through and was greeted by the sight of his former CO, Captain David Anderson, sitting behind a simple metal desk, computer terminal casting light across his dark, drawn features. He was a tall, strongly built man, a physique that combined with his hunched, seated position to give him the aspect of a gathering thunderstorm. He looked up at the door's opening and his eyebrows unknit slightly. "Petty Officer Shepard. Welcome back aboard."

"Good to be back, sir," Shepard said, smiling despite himself, "Although I wish that the circumstances could be... different."

"We all do, son, we all do," Anderson said, sighing heavily. He reached out and turned his terminal off, allowing shadows to creep into the corners and creases of his face. "Why don't you take a seat. Major, if you could give us the room?"

"Of course, Captain," Alenko responded, "Colonel Vanek was looking for you too, sir. Says it's urgent and he expects your immediate attention."

"Hmm, yes," Anderson grunted dismissively, "tell the Colonel I have an unavoidable engagement and he'll have to wait for the Captain's attention." He stressed the word 'captain,' made it sound like a threat. He waved off the major, who ducked out of the ready room and allowed the doors to hiss closed once again. Anderson let the lock click into place before releasing his glare. "SRPA, pah." The man leaned back into his chair, seeming to deflate a little before Shepard's eyes. "This is a bad piece of work, Shepard. A bad piece of work. Six thousand casualties, mainly civilian. The Asari pushing at our borders. This..." he slid a thick sided data tablet across the desk and tapped it with a finger. The tablet's screen showed a still image of the dreadnaught hovering above the New Eden skyline. "And then you went and stepped right into it with that transmission."

Shepard's stomach flip flopped at the pronouncement. "Sir?"

Anderson shook his head and heaved himself to his feet. He walked over to a long projection screen that ran the length of the office wall, its glossy surface mimicking a window into space. It was a while before he spoke again.

"Look, Shepard, you've been out of the loop for longer than I would have liked. There's more going on out here than just an attack on a single colony, awful as it was. The Turians are moving fleets around on their side of the DMZ, these Asari are pressing us more and more, and the Citadel Council seems to be doing its damnedest to look the other way." He turned back to the young Radioman with a grave expression. Shepard's guts went cold as realization crept up on him.

"And I just sent a fleetwide transmission showing a Turian Spectre working with the Asari to attack a human colony." His mouth went dry. Anderson nodded along.

"A lot of folks are going to start connecting the dots, coming to some conclusions. Now, how many of those conclusions are true and how many are not, I don't know. I'm just an old skipper. But what I do know is that we're closer than we ever have been to the us and the Birds throwing down for round two. And if that kicks off, we're not going to get another chance at an armistice. This spiral arm is going to be on fire until the Turians buckle, or we do. And they've had almost a hundred years to come up with a way to neutralize any advantages we might have brought to the table last time."

It was a grim pronouncement. The words hung in the air of the ready room like a poisonous cloud. Shepard felt a sickening weight settle on his shoulders. Captain Anderson sighed and shuffled back behind his desk, sitting heavily. Shepard leaned forward.

"So. What do I do, sir?"

"You will resume your post on the Odysseus," Anderson said kindly. At Shepard's apparent surprise, the other man shook his head and offered a tight smile. "I never did agree with the orders to reassign you to ground duty on New Eden. And unlike some amongst the brass, I don't much care who your three times great Granddaddy was. They're not going to get to pin this on you, not if I have anything to say about it. You're on my crew, and that means I'm in your corner. Now, you've met my XO, Major Alenko. He'll have your bunk assignment and duty roster. He's not bad, for a SRPA black hat. You'll have your old job back. Might as well have you do something useful while we get where we're going."

"Thank you, sir," Shepard said, the tiny spark of hope in his chest kindling to life once again. But it was quickly followed by confusion, then doubt, "and where is that?"

"Oh, don't thank me yet, son." Anderson said, chuckling darkly, "When I said you'd stepped right into it, I meant that you'd stepped all the way into it. We've set a course for the wormhole station at Ragnar, and from there, we're to go directly towards the Serpent Nebula."

Shepard's breath hissed in past his teeth as the full impact of his Captain's words landed.

"The Citadel."

Shepard was dazed. Stunned, even. This morning, he had just been another marooned sailor on one of humanity's far-flung bases. By midday, he was embroiled in a deadly pirate raid. By afternoon, he was one of the few survivors of that same raid. And now, at the very beginning of sixth watch, he was being rushed away to the mythical stronghold of the Aliens. And he was desperately hungry. He hadn't noticed during the excitement of the day, but he hadn't eaten since that morning. By the time Captain Anderson released him from the ready room, he was barely able to keep his feet under him. Major Alenko had taken one look at him, slapped a data tablet into his hands, and pointed him towards the nearest mess hall.

Shepard stumbled through the unfamiliar corridors of officer country until he found his way to one of the gravity lifts. He stepped out onto the flat metal disk that hung suspended in the cylindrical shaft and keyed in a location two decks down. The lift drifted to a stop and Shepard stepped off and into a distressingly familiar sight. The black on grey uniform of the SRPA was everywhere. Techs, grey smocked science staff, even a tight knit passel of Black Ops troopers. They moved through the corridors of the Navy ship like they owned the place. A few of them eyed Shepard, their gaze moving from his navy uniform to his lack of brass before dismissing him. Shepard's spirits fell as he made his way towards the designated mess hall. He shuffled in, trying his best to ignore the looks he garnered and went straight to the chow line, prepared for his regulation sized hunk of 'corn bread,' high calorie ration mush, and concentrated vitamin pill. To his surprise, he received a tray back piled with actual, honest to goodness meat, a thin gravy, some kind of whipped up instant potatoes, and yes, the regulation sized hunk of corn bread. He stood there, staring for what felt like a full minute.

"Hey, Navy. You just going to stare at it or are you going to sit and eat?" a voice called from behind him. His eyes snapped up. He'd heard the voice before. A young man's voice, maybe as old as Shepard, jovial and enthusiastic. His gaze fell on a strong looking young man in plain black fatigues. His head was topped with a short-buzzed crop of dirty blonde hair and his eyes shone the gentle gold of a Sentinel. It was that that placed him in Shepard's mind. One from the squad that had abducted him from New Eden. "You look lost, why don't you sit with us?" the Sentinel asked with an open face.

"Sure," Shepard agreed, and he gravitated towards the other man. "John Shepard."

"Richard Jenkins, but you can call me Rick," the affable Sentinel replied, "You're the one who called us down there, right? To New Eden, I mean."

"Yeah, that was me," Shepard admitted. He followed Rick to a short table set apart from the long, mainly empty benches that filled the small mess hall. As they approached closer, he immediately saw why. Three golden-eyed stares looked up from tray tables heavily laden with enough rations for three men each to track him. The motion was uncannily smooth, and he couldn't help but notice, in complete unison. The other three Sentinels were all women, two of them with hair of dark brown and jet black tied back in tight buns behind their heads, the third was an arctic blonde with hair clipped short and apparently gelled into a sharp peak.

"Looky what Jenkins found," the black-haired woman said in a voice tinged with hidden laughter and Japanese accented English. She smiled with lips split by a black bar tattoo. Jenkins' face fell and took on a wounded look. The woman continued. "Ricky, what has the LT told you about bringing home strays?" The woman had separated the food on her tray into neat, segregated piles and was studiously ignoring it, instead absent mindedly sawing at her finger nails with a steel file.

"Don't mind Goto," the blonde added in a German accent that clipped her words as short as her hair, Shepard recognized the voice. Niemeyer, the woman who'd shown him to the waiting room two decks up. The woman had severe features, twisted on one side by the thin silvery lines of a burn scar. She shuffled over in her bench, making room for Jenkins and the Navy Radioman. "The princess has an astonishing lack of manners. She grows on you though. Like a weed."

"Don't call me princess, Comrade," the Sentinel called Goto growled, "I'll give you some manners..."

"Enough," the last woman said, quietly, but firmly. Her fine, olive toned features would have been quite attractive, had it not been for the jagged, twisting scar that worked its way down her forehead and along the line of her cheek. As it was, she would have to settle for striking, "the kid's been through enough today." The woman's words were instantly heeded. Shepard's cheeks heated a little at being called a kid by a woman who couldn't be much older than himself, let alone the fact that he'd needed the woman to jump to his aid. "You'll have to forgive my squad, Radioman. They've been outside the wire just a little too long. Take a load off, you've earned it."

"Thank you," Shepard murmured, collapsing into the unpadded steel bench. He attacked his food with relish, his own manners momentarily lost. Whatever the SRPA were doing aboard the Odysseus in number, they had clearly brought their own, far superior food with them. Although as far as Shepard could have been concerned, he could have been tucking into salt pork and ship's biscuit. He shoveled in mouthful after mouthful, only stopping to drink noisily from a glass of water that had materialized out of somewhere. The food couldn't undo all the damage of the day, but it went kilometers towards making him feel at least human again. The sentinels talked around him and more formal introductions were made as he polished off the last remnants of dinner.

Richard Jenkins, Corporal, was the fire team's heavy weapons operator Staff Sergeant Kasumi Goto, Recon and designated marksman, hailed from the Three Worlds Pact, though she scoffed at Shepard's interest in the multinational conglomerate. Charlotte Neimeyer, Master Sergeant, ran demolitions and served as the squad's tech expert. And finally, Lieutenant Ashley Williams. WIlliams led the small team and carried the healing symbac ampules that accelerated the squad's healing factor past even what their Chimera strain derived Sentinel serum provided. Shepard knew the name, though only by reputation. The lieutenant was descended from a long line of war heroes and heroines, stretching all the way back to the war with the Turians. Why exactly a full team of sentinels had been assigned to the Odysseus, they were much less talkative about.

"That's classified, I'm afraid," Williams replied, tight lipped at Shepard's question. Shepard's heart fell. He'd become used to the SRPA stonewall down on New Eden, but the Sentinels had seemed more friendly than most of the crew that had studiously excluded him at Research Station Garden.

"So, you ran with a Council Spectre down there?" Jenkins asked, changing the subject. Shepard pretended not to notice the near imperceptible nod that his squad leader had given him.

"Yeah," he said, "Although I guess you'd call it more like running next to him, rather than with him." Shepard remembered the brutal efficiency of the four-eyed alien as he'd blasted, beaten, and bludgeoned his way through the grasping hordes of blank eyed cyborgs. He was... something else. Not like the Sentinels, of course." He hastily added at the questioningly raised eyebrow of the Lieutenant.

"I wonder if he'll ever come up to SRPA territory," Jenkins asked, his golden eyes shining a little more brightly. "Wouldn't that be something?"

"Yeah, keep dreaming," Goto responded, miming a pistol shot with her fingers, "he so much as thinks he can just waltz in here, he's getting one between all for of those eyes. Aww, now don't look at me like that. You might have an alien fetish and a cowboy fascination, but I don't play with imperialists or their dogs."

"I do not have an alien fetish," Jenkins spluttered in his defense, but Shepard was distracted by the implications of what he'd said earlier.

"Wait, Balak is on the ship?" he asked suddenly.

"Well, yeah," Jenkins replied, "he came aboard on the next shuttle after yours. Asari trashed his ship on the ground. And besides, he's the whole reason we're going to the Citadel."

"Indeed," Niemeyer chimed in, "Without him aboard, the aliens would light us up the second we entered the nebula. Human warships are strictly not welcome that close to their head honchos. Not after the Peregrine incident."

Shepard shivered at the mention of the unfortunate frigate. The conversation moved on past him as he pondered the Batarian's presence, turning to the matter of fighting Asari. Shepard wasn't really listening. He owed the Spectre his life, the 'blood price' that Balak had talked about. He wasn't entirely sure how he'd even begin to repay it, but as a start the least he could do was offer the alien a thank you. He excused himself from the pack of strain-soldiers and ditched his tray. The path back to his assigned bunk wasn't difficult, just long. He drifted through the halls only half aware of the switch from SRPA black to Navy blues and when he finally found the empty cabin, he sank into the stiff mattress without even taking off his boots and was asleep before he could register the flickering lights of a wormhole transition.

Shepard awoke groggily to the chime of his wall mounted communications panel. He flailed about, his limbs moving sluggishly, constrained. He realized with the lurch that accompanied a sudden descent from the navy bunk that his thin blanket had wrapped around him during what had been a fretful night's sleep. The deck plating helpfully knocked some of the cobwebs out of his half-awoken brain. As memories rushed in to fill the void left by sleep, Shepard wished that it hadn't. He hadn't just had a particularly bad night of nightmares, incoherent images of things with ghostly blue fingers and razor-sharp teeth. Those wraiths that had tormented his unconscious mind had been the mere shadows of the monsters he'd faced down on New Eden the day before. The inhuman Asari pirates and their burned-out human puppets. Shepard shivered as a chill ran down his spine and cold sweat beaded on his forehead. His survival had been a close won thing, closer than he's been consciously willing to admit.

The comm panel chirped again, this time more insistently. Shepard struggled from his woven bindings and slapped at the panel in the dark until a channel opened. He was met with the guttural voice of Balak.

"Ah, good, this contact number the SRPA gave me wasn't another fabrication," the Batarian said, the faint edge of humor in his voice. "I have been given the use of a small storage bay down by your hanger deck. You will meet me there as soon as you are able." The order brought Shepard up sharp. He'd followed the Spectre's commands in battle as a matter of survival, but to be ordered around like a raw recruit on a human ship.

"Excuse me, Spectre," Shepard spluttered, only just remembering to add the title, "But I wasn't made aware that I had been placed under your command. And do you have any idea what time it is?" He looked down at his own watch and stifled an emphatic oath as he realized that he didn't even know what time it was. The watch face remained stubbornly splintered, displaying nothing but the broken underlying electronics.

"You might want to check those orders again, there have been some adjustments," Balak replied, "And to answer your second question, the time is 0500, ship time. you humans with your positively languid twenty-four hour days. It won't be long before we arrive at the Citadel, no time to waste on sleep." The channel closed, leaving Shepard alone in his dark cabin.

He let out a strained groan and went fishing for the tablet that had contained his orders. He found it under slipped under the bunk, apparently dropped in his haste to pass out the night before and kicked into hiding during his struggle to rise. He flicked it one and let it boot, sitting heavily on the bed. He yawned massively as the yellow lines of text scrolled by. "Son of a bitch!" he swore. Where yesterday he had had his old bridge watch outlined amongst a grab bag of secondary maintenance tasks, now there blinked only a single word. Liaison. Shepard dropped the tablet down on the small bedside table in disgust and ground the heels of his palms into his eye sockets, letting out a frustrated groan. It was happening again, and on the ship that was supposed to be his home.

He took in a deep breath and held it. Fine. He slowly unballed his fists and looked down at himself. He was still dressed in the rumpled spare uniform that he'd been given the afternoon before. If he was going to be summoned down to the hanger deck this early, he was going to take the time to scrub up, Spectre be damned.

It was near a full half hour later when Shepard emerged from the lift shaft near the belly of the ship. He tugged at the neck of the utility uniform he'd found neatly folded away in a footlocker. The hanger crew in their bright yellow overalls and vests watched him as he strode across the wide-open space towards the bay that the computer had spat out in response to his query. Shepard tried to ignore the glances, fixing his attention on the still tightly closed blast doors to the upper deck. Shepard's fingers hovered over the door open key. The doors hissed open of their own accord.

"You're late," Balak grumbled. Shepard slipped through the doors and allowed them to hiss closed behind him. Balak was facing away from him, working on some piece of equipment on a sturdy fold-down table. He spoke again without turning his head. "I expect punctuality from my liaison." He snapped two components together. Shepard recognized the ME magnetic accelerator weapon the Spectre had used on the planet. The Batarian ran his hand along the barrel of the heavy rifle, his wrist encapsulated in an orange glow.

"I'm sorry, until you called me, I was under the impression that I was to be going back to my old job," Shepard replied carefully. Balak straightened up and turned slowly. In his hands he held a wicked looking bayonet, thin as a needle and cross shaped. He drove it home onto the catch at the mouth of the barrel with a click. He stared Shepard down with all four eyes. Whatever he was looking for, he apparently found it, because he offered a very human looking shrug and turned to put the rifle back on the table behind him.

"In a way, you are," Balak said, "you were the Naval attaché to the research station back on New Eden, were you not?"

"I was," Shepard replied. He crossed his arms defensively. "With all due respect, Spectre, why did you request that I be your liaison? I mean, it must have been your request to get my duty station changed in such short order."

Balak's eyes narrowed slightly, driving sweat down Shepard's spine. Then, suddenly, he barked out a gurgling guffaw.

"Straight to the point, is it? I like that. Trying to get a straight answer out of anyone on this ship has been like filing teeth. Yes, I did request you be assigned to me," the Batarian left his weapon bench and stalked over to the blank wall at the back of the bay. He fiddled with the lights about his wrist again and an image was splashed on the grey metal. Shepard swallowed at the glowering metal form of the Asari dreadnaught, rendered in crackling orange light. "I need you for my case."

"Your case?" Shepard asked, tearing his eyes aware from the holographic image that hovered just off the steel.

"Against Nihlus," Balak nodded, "he's up to something and I intend to find out what. But he's a fellow Spectre. A move against him would be... impolitic. He has the support of the Turian Hierarchy behind him, rivals to both your people and mine. They're going to play hardball against anything that gets close to messing with their first and only Spectre. Our case is going to have to be airtight. And that means I need eyewitnesses." Balak leered at the image, which had dissolved and reformed as a shot of the Turian Spectre standing next to the cylindrical tank before the unearthed hub tower.

"That witness being me," Shepard filled in.

"That witness being you. The only human survivor of the attack. Well, the only human who got close. That and you're Navy. Your SRPA has been very tight lipped about what exactly Nihlus might have been after out in that valley."

"I don't know either," Shepard said, biting back with a slightly acid tone, "and if I did, it would likely would be classified."

Balak gave another of his predatory smiles and put on what he likely thought was a thoughtful look. He nodded, closing the projection. He turned and clapped a hand on Shepard's shoulder.

"Of course, of course. I'm not asking you to divulge any secrets you might or might not know. I'd never ask you to compromise the security of your race. I wouldn't, in your position." He let go of Shepard's shoulder and looked away. "But think about this. How secure is humanity with a Council Spectre gunning for its colonies. A Spectre that isn't above working with Asari Reavers." Balak let the words linger in the air between them.

Shepard's stomach tightened. On the one hand, he had no love for the brutal alien's methods, nor his obvious attempt to manipulate him. On the other, there was truth to his words. And it wasn't like Shepard had any classified information to divulge.

"Okay, I get your point. We need to take down this Nihlus before he attacks again. And you need my testimony to make that happen. So, what's our game plan?"

Balak turned around, a greedy red gleam in his eyes. "I'm glad you asked."

Intel

The Human/Turian DMZ

Despite its name, the Human/Turian Demilitarized Zone is the most heavily fortified border in the known galaxy. Stretching almost three sectors, the Zone runs the length of the border between the Turian Hierarchy and Earth Defense Executive claimed space, from the Deadlands of the Annos Basin at its coreward end to the Volus/Batarian Border at its rimward end. The dimensions of the Zone demarcation, stipulated by the terms of the Armistice Agreement of 2089 and enforced by the Citadel Council, call for a neutral Mass Relay between any linked Human and Turian claimed systems. Given the lack of activated relays in EDE Space, this stipulation initially favored the Humans. This caused a backlash amongst the Turian fleet elements that had fought in the war, and a general thread of revanchism that persists to this day. As of 2183, these elements have coalesced around popular admiral, Saren Arterius, commander of the Southern Watch Fleets. Saren is an avowed anti-human, and has become famous amongst the fleet for his propensity for simulated war games against an unnamed force attacking across the DMZ.

The DMZ has been the site of a number of provocations and near skirmishes over the course of the near century long Cold War. Early in the Armistice's history, the terms of the cease fire where strained to their limits by the implosion of the EDEN Peregrine in its docking cradle at the Citadel. Before a full investigation could be launched, elements in the Human yellow press and the Turian state media flooded the airwaves with news of an attack, in the case of Earth, an attack on Humanity's first diplomatic envoy to a full session of the Citadel Council, in the case of the Turians, a perfidious attempted suicide bombing on a massive scale. Domestic pressure on both governments rapidly built to the point of spurring naval mobilizations on either side of the border. Political momentum was so great that even the revelation of the true cause of the explosion did little to stall the aggressive maneuvering. In the end, it was only the mutual decision not to fire by the commanders of each force's frigate wings that prevented a renewal in hostilities. The delay allowed for a rare instance of intervention from the Senior Councilor of the Asari Funerary Republic, whose diplomatic mission maintained the status quo.

Other incidents include the pursuit of the human defector, Roger Harkin, by elements of the UPP's Ministry of State Security. Said pursuit crossed into the DMZ in March of 2170. The Turian counter response ran afoul of a hidden space mine near the SR338 Relay. The commander of the MSS team had two choices, complete his capture of Harkin, or render aid to the stricken Turian vessel. He chose the latter, allowing Harkin to escape, but preserving the peace. Harkin himself is still at large, with intelligence services on both sides disavowing him as an asset.

Also of note is the recent discovery of a Turian Blackwatch team operating on the border colony of Dorvan. Located just over the DMZ on the Human side, Dorvan bears the distinction of being the only planet in the galaxy with a significant population of both Humans and Turians. By the terms of the Armistice, the planet belongs to the EDE, though on the ground it is quite another matter. It is essentially a neutral planet, with each population governing itself as an exclave of its respective government. The Blackwatch Team that infiltrated into the colony, posing as Turian immigrants joining families already established, were captured and charged with distributing weapons to pro-Hierarchy militias. The Hierarchy has disavowed the team as radicals associated with the Turian Separatist movement, the Primarch himself declaring in an open session of the Citadel Council that if Blackwatch truly was operating on Dorvan, they wouldn't have been caught at all.

Author's Notes:

Coment9- I'd love to put these Intel drops and codex entries somewhere central. Unfortunately, I haven't heard of an official fanfiction wiki before, nor have I had much experience editing wiki pages. However, if you would be so kind as to DM me more information, I'd be happy to see what I can put together.

Sorlian- Shepard at this point has cause to be pessimistic, but you are right. It remains to be seen whether being disappeared would have been a kinder fate for our hero, of course.

GrimmReaver- Resistance: Fall of Man is very much a well of underutilized potential in my opinion. Given how little questions even its own canon answers, it's just so flexible. Hopefully I'll be able to do it justice.