(Definition of terms at the end of the chapter)

August 26th, 2183

SSV Normandy SR-1 | Skimming the atmosphere of Almos | Vamshi System

Dr. Liara T'Soni | Associate Professor of Xenocultural Studies at the University of Serrice

Liara opens the door of the storeroom-she now thinks of the cramped quarters fondly, like an acolyte's cell-and staggers into the medbay proper. Chakwas is inexplicably, unfairly alert-looking, although the cracks spreading on the flash-glass of the coffeepot in the corner suggest it went through most of its ten-use lifespan since the middle of the night. The only sign of the ravages that they both suffered are the bags under her eyes. She is delicately dabbing at them with pigment using a pad made of some sort of fluffy plant fiber.

Chakwas glances up, smiles, and sets the pad down atop a small clamshell case on her desk.

"Need to borrow it?" she offers.

"I don't understand."

"A code of honor for human women. Providing cosmetic or sanitary supplies in times of need." Chakwas chuckles, smile tightening in the way it does when she's allowing the mirth, but swallowing most of her laughter. Chakwas' laugh is blunt even for a human's laugh and unfiltered for a human woman, who endlessly mute, modulate, and modify their behavior when in a mixed gender company. "Much as marines never leave each other behind, women never leave each other deprived of makeup or tampo-wait."

Liara smiles.

"An asari's womb remains in a semi-vestigial state until she conceives, doctor. The embryo buds from the mother's cells inside a small sac and the womb lines, enlarges, and loosens long before she outgrows the sac. Any shedding cycle begins and ends with the child, with the occasional shadow in the months immediately after."

Chakwas's lips tighten.

"No idea why people are jealous of thousand-year lifespans when you don't have monthlies and you waltz through twenty out of twenty-six months of pregnancy looking sleek as ballerinas."

"Aquatic births and the ability to meld with relatives also play a role in easing the beginnings of motherhood, since nothing can ease the rest. There is pain, but..."

Liara shrugs.

"I know more horror stories about human childbirth than asari childbirth. I grew up surrounded by my mother's friends, nearly all of them mothers themselves. I first spoke with a human three weeks ago."

"Out! Out! No longer welcome in my medbay, you flawless goddess of creation, you!"

Liara flinches. Never could avoid rupturing friendships in a confusing instant. Never could master not reacting to her feelings.

"I'm joking, Liara."

"Please take that," the doctor adds with a smile, gesturing to a cup of coffee nearly as tall as Liara's arm from elbow to hand sitting next to three squares of chocolate, packets of cinnamon, and granular eezo. "I can't tolerate Pressley without coffee. Were it an option, I'd never deal with him sober, either."

"Navigator Pressley?" Liara mumbles. "Surely Lt. Alenko is in command now? Or Lt. Moreau?"

Chakwas shakes her head.

"No, my dear, because putting either the officer that's responsible for flying the ship in combat or the officer that trains and leads marines fighting on the ground would make too much sense, given that those tasks are the key duties of any Alliance ship, especially frigates sent to watch over our colonies. So we put the man who maps between relays in charge."

Liara dumps all but the chocolate in, glances at the eezo grains dancing on top of the liquid like stars, and covers the top with her barrier-clad hand before she pushes with her biotics. Moments later, the liquid is roiling from force and heat alike when she tosses in the chocolate.

"Neat trick. And Liara...since I might be the only person on this crew besides the commander who can speak frankly to Pressley's strengths and weaknesses, allow me to warn you: Your position on this ship is tenuous. Shepard, as a SPECTRE and commanding officer, can do as she pleases. But without her, we are an Alliance vessel with orders from the Council to remain here. Be safe."

"Navigator Pressley has been..." Liara searches for a word. "Abrupt in his treatment of me. But surely he would not...I would be far more worried about Chi-"

"The Chief would die for you, Liara. She would have on Therum, as she would for any civilian she was tasked with protecting. After yesterday, she would because you took care of her family in their hour of need. No matter her feelings, I suspect she will be cold or aloof towards you for some time. She would deny her protectiveness to anyone but Shepard. She won't admit it but subconsciously, she knows she's angry at humans who have treated her poorly because of their attitude about aliens. And the deliberate stunting of her career means she's never spent enough time around aliens to learn anything."

"The Alliance could ask no more from the Williams family. We already ask too much. Counting Ashley, two of four siblings enlisted. Her mother and her barely younger sister married into the military and work in civilian roles that support the fleet. They give so much. In return, they're constantly reminded of General William's surrender of a garrison for the lives in the city it protected. The only human to surrender to an alien, as they remind Ashley endlessly. Combine that bitterness, the lack of exposure to civilian aliens that come with being in a Frontier Division, and the Alliance propaganda that should've been retired with the cease-fire at Shanxi...and I'm not surprised she's struggling."

"She's trying to understand how the mere existence of aliens can cause her so much pain and betrayal. Trying to reconcile that anger with her faith's teachings and her own heart's generosity, Garrus bravery, Tali's sweetness, and your good manners."

"And Wrex's smoldering good looks?"

Chakwas laughs.

"Goes without saying, doesn't it, my dear? Try to imagine if Cellinis T'Soni's offspring had never advanced from acolyte to Justicar or trainee to huntress because she had the gall to surrender to protect civilians. Imagine that three generations later, a hopeful acolyte who burned with the desire to serve the Justicar Order was held back and mocked as an 'Ardat-Yakshi lover' beca-"

"They are a myth, doct-"

"Please. Do you think I cannot read between the lines? Between the ghost stories, the way you lot don't talk about the Malari, and a suspicious gap in asari genetic and neurological research-or the research's outright suppression-I can say with certainty that someone somewhere is denying something."

Twenty-eight centuries of secrecy, undone by one clever human with a penchant for horror-romance novels and the instincts to see patterns in the medical journals.

"Imagine if your own career had been denied because of one choice made in desperation by an ancestor. Imagine that, and you will understand the root of her bitterness. Ashley is being punished for the sake of old men's pride and an event that predates her birth, because her ancestor did the only right thing on a list of bad choices. It also was the one most humiliating to him personally."

A curious interpretation, but one to keep in mind, Liara supposes.

"Shepard fought the ground defense at Elysium, wading through batarian rape, murder, slavery and all manner of savagery. Injured on the very first day. Exhausted. Fought for three weeks. She saw a teenage girl who had volunteered to help her killed. I can't imagine. Pressley was a gunnery officer on the first ship that arrived to provide support, firing from orbit. Two noted veterans of Elysium who took completely opposite lessons from that battle. I think you can guess which had more reasons to hate aliens based on what they saw."

Liara pauses mid-slurp.

"I see."

"Tread lightly, Liara. The pardon a queen decrees cannot be guaranteed under the wrong regent. And take that butter. It's not crest oil, but it's safe for your skin and not far from it. And your middle crests look like a dirt road too long in the sun."

Liara glances at her reflection in the med-bay windows, watches her own eyes go wide in disgust and promptly scoops the butter packet from beside the plate of worried-at toast next to Chakwas' own coffee. She cracks it, scoops the yellow, slick substance onto her fingers, and massages it into her crests, root to tip.

The door is opened from the other side, revealing two fully kitted marines. Their rifles are aimed away from her by only a handful of degrees. Silas Crosby and Jeff Gossard, both low-ranking, both unsettled by her presence aboard-Gossard also hates Alenko for his biotics, too, and hides it poorly-both less hardened than their officers. Easily startled, and startled soldiers overreact.

Out of the handful of marines still able to fight, these would be Shepard's last choices to watch over her and to perform this odd dance with the untrustworthy daughter of their target.

"Silas. Jeff."

One who plays pranks and leers, and one who mutters prayers under his breath and spits when he looks away from me. Splendid.

"Come with us."

Liara takes a long, purposely noisy drink of pseudo-kaffe and nods. It's remarkably good. If she ever wanted to start a new business to add the House's portfolio, human-asari cafes with crossover beverages seem like an untapped niche.

"Lead the way."

A line from one of Ashley's poems springs to mind.

Honour the brave and bold! Long shall the tale be told, Yea, when our babes are old—How they rode onward.

"Long shall the tale be told, how they stood against an unarmed and under-caffeinated professor," Liara whispers as she trudges up the stairs behind Gossard-feeling Crosby's gaze heavy and hot on her backside-and wonders just how much justice the queen has deferred on her behalf.

Pressley stands on the far side of the room, his back to her. The conference room also contains Ashley, seated rather than at attention-no doubt only because of her wound-who gives her a stiff nod. The grimace on her face might well be pain rather than disgust. Kaidan looks exhausted and flicks glances at Ashley each time she fidgets in pain. He still brings his brown eyes to meet Liara's before nodding towards the viewscreen.

Pressley doesn't turn around.

"Doctor, you're late."

"Unless the planet below us has become a black hole and we are well within its clutches, I am..."

She glances at her omni.

"...sixty-six seconds early. I presume humans, especially the elite military, consider each second equal in length?"

Crosby snorts.

"Private!"

"Sir, allergies, sir!"

Despite Chakwas' sage advice, she parried his insult back with a harsher one without thinking of the consequences.

It's the sort of thing Shepard would have said to yank the mandibles of the turian councilor. She was 'not having his shit' as Shepard would put it. Her manners tutor would say she's been spending too much time with uncouth, uneducated humans. But her manners tutor is ancient. And her manners tutor never had to resist the sight of a nearly bare woman carved from pale stone, freckle-dusted skin emblazoned with a trail of fiery fluff below the navel that tempted, tempted, tempted Liara to wonder where it ended. As sleek and lean and long-limbed as a malyk, muscles carving valleys through a plain, like rock worn by eons of wind and rain. Temptation herself leaned against a door, a smirk on her lips and pure sugary sin in her outstretched hand.

"I'm not here to debate the meaning of a second, Professor."

"Good, because I think retrieving our Commander would be easier were we to agree that the task is retrieving her, and not mocking me for imagined slights."

Williams grunts. The back of Pressley's bald head ripples with tension carried over from the muscles in his face.

Perhaps this is familiar to Ashley? I am receiving treatment she's received before?

Pressley sweeps his arm at the screen. On it, a few rough glyphs of Serraci-pictographs rather than alphabetic-have been carved into the mud, and next to them, Shepard's hand passes slowly through several hand-talk signals. The heavy gloves she cannot take off in a caustic atmosphere and Liara's own semi-familiarity with the language will be problematic.

"Translate it. Then they will take you to lockup."

"Has the Commander complained to you about my presence? Has something changed si-"

"You are a priso-" He catches himself. "Translate it and leave. That's an order."

"I am a civilian, Charles, as you are to me under the law. I owe you neither ceremony nor deference. Speaking as one civilian to another, you have not behaved in such a way that I would feel obligated to be courteous to you."

"If it were anything other than the life of Shepard in the balance, I would recommend you check out a book on the history of hand-talk and seek therapy. Learn how to tell a flesh-and-blood asari offering you help apart from a decade-old ghost of a batarian you've constructed from memory."

He wheels to face her, face red, spittle at the corners of his mouth. Both his fists are balled.

"How dare you! If it weren't for you, she wouldn't be down there! Ever since you did your little damsel in distress act, the Commander has lost her alien-loving m-"

He blunders into her barrier as he advances, either unaware he was stalking towards her with a raised fist or having forgotten that no one pushes into the personal space of an asari.

She flexes the outline of her barrier to push his hand down and away, so he might save face in case his subordinates have not already seen the attack.

"Sir, perhaps we don't break the fingers of the only person who can sign messages back to the Commander?" Williams suggests.

"I concur."

"Input noted, Lieutenant."

Pressley's eyes dart down to his hands and he loosens his fists immediately. Some thought flickers through, given away by the way his face relaxes, around the mouth and then loosening of his stance. Liara wonders if he intended to act so brashly, or if her first retort threw them both onto shaky ground because he had expected her to meekly translate while he stood by as the icy, dignified gentleman-soldier. He looks away from her. Away, and slightly down, which most humans do in embarrassment. She thinks. What she knows of interacting with humans, she has learned from painstakingly correlating their gestures to things they actually bother to say in those moments.

Perhaps he did not feel that was appropriate behavior for an 'officer and a gentleman' after all.

"May I step closer to the screen, Navigator Pressley? The controls ideal for the task are behind you. And the differences between 'ajahe' and 'grouse egg' are subtle but depending on the context of the shorthand code used, can mean opposite things tactically. And the commander's armor and quality of the feed make it harder."

He huffs and turns away. Liara instinctively looks around for etching glass, as if the mere presence of asari culture and the fact that it's a round room meant it's a faculty conference room back home.

She links her omni-tool's note-taking program to the nearest display. She secures it against download-you owe the hungry food, but you do not owe the spiteful gifts, Little Wing-and then lifts a chair from the far corner using her biotics, sitting down as she feels its mass approach. Crosby whistles appreciatively and Gossard mutters something. Kaidan makes one of the amused 'huh' sounds he makes when she tries to explain the Art as an extension of body and mind used every moment of the day versus the exclusively military forms of biotics he was taught.

Where you have secrets, Little Wing, they have weakness. Where you have knowledge, you have currency. Where you can give hope, you may charge ransom.

Satisfied she has the tools for the work, a good view, and a modicum of safety from the xenophobes, she turns back to the footage.

"The glyphs in the mud are easy," she tells them. "Turtle, beak, two stops, wisdom, arrow, skittersnake. Wait. Reverse the arrow and skittersnake. That's a conditional precedent mark between them, pointing to the skittersnake, above an additive mark. So that means if some condition is met, then skittersnake plus arrow, but skittersnake first."

"Which means what, exactly?"

"With those conjoining marks, in this context?" Liara sighs. "It means that she thinks the geth are too numerous to attack-turtle-and that she's in danger if she moves. Turtle's beak. It must be why she hasn't called for us to pick her up. Stops followed by Wisdom means that she's had time to consider and thinks she's working the best plan she has right now."

"Curious. The turtles of the type common in the areas around Serrice, where that language is from, are ambush predators. However, they have dreadful eyesight: Impressive in their ability to tell mud from fish, but tuned only to fast-moving objects. My ancestors soon learned that things moving slowly within their narrow field of vision were ignored, making putting a spear to the soft spot behind the head a matter of patience, smearing mud on the feet, and shuffling steps. Interesting that she would choose 'turtle' to describe the geth, with their linked senses and large drone network, and not 'malyk'."

"What in the blazes is a malyk?"

"Imagine an oversized lion which can lighten itself to next to nothing before jumping, has a biotically-enhanced bite and three light-up tails to talk to each other with."

Chairs and boots scrape as all present turn to stare at Ashley.

"What?"

"The stormiest seas have the richest depths," Liara teases, turning back to her work.

"Eh, cousin's got twins. They're in that stage where they want Aunt Ashley to record vids where I read to them about cool animals."

"Ashley is exactly right. A silhouette visually identical to an Earth lion or tiger except for the three tails. Their eyes, ears, and long tufts of fur that run from their jaws along their entire body are extremely sensitive, making them effective in pitch blackness. Of all the species on my homeworld, only asari have more sensitivity to bio-electric fluctuations, changes in mass or velocity, and the presence of eezo. That's why we're truly biotic, and they're animals with unusual tricks."

"Packs can number in the hundreds, led by the oldest breeding pair and any pairs they allow to share territory. Turtles hunt alone. Malyks hunt in packs as large as a small army. They are highly intelligent, much longer-lived than the bulk of Thessian wildlife, and have a communication using their tails that approaches the variety of a true language. Malyk tail-signaling inspired early huntress hand-talk."

Liara chews her lip.

"So why describe the networked, intelligent geth as a dumb, easily tricked predator?"

Oh, no. Goddess, that's reckless, even for Shepard.

"Lieutenant Alenko, There were multiple geth cruisers down there, correct?"

"At least two," Kaidan replies. "The one that was landed on the other side of the mountain range took a potshot at the Makos as we dropped. The one submerged in that alkaline pool came from behind. Threw dropships and armatures at us like confetti. If the Normandy hadn't made that cannon run against it to distract it..."

"Then it took up orbital patrol, yes?"

Pressley has stepped closer to the screen, looking from the display to Liara and back again as if he's just realized something.

"Yes. We can get past it, but we can't get past it and come back."

"Navigator Pressley...would I be correct to assume that within a relay jump or two, there are human colonies that could not be able to withstand an attack from a pair of geth cruisers?"

"Within two jumps? Five we know of. Counting unauthorized wildcat colonies? Probably ten. Within three jumps? If they could hit us when traffic congestion was high...I'd rather not think about what they could do to Ekaterina Arcology or the Red Glass station at Moscow Stellaris before we could send a task force."

"Based on this, and the first few signals of hand-talk, I believe Shepard is telling us she wants to infiltrate or sabotage those cruisers. One tactic of a skittersnake is that they will poison an entire cache of turtle eggs. The turtle, seeing that the eggs are no longer viable, tries to eat them to recover the calories and dies. The skittersnake eats its way into the shell and has months of food supply and an armored hiding place."

Ashley snaps her fingers.

"Poisoned arrow."

Kaidan puts his hand on the railing and stares at the display as if he could pull his friend to safety through it.

"We don't have the marine strength for that. Not by a long shot."

"There's a saying among huntresses: Archers march together but arrows fly alone. Since 'archer' is one of her hand-talk signs, I think we can assume Shepard knows it."

Pressley slams his fist into the railing.

"Solo infiltration against regiments of geth and two hundred armored vehicles? Absolutely out of the question. We'll return to Arctu-"

"Surely the Alliance would not abandon the first human Spectre?" Liara asks. "Especially since they have taken the highly unusual route of dedicating a ship of the line and a military crew to her. Were a newly minted Spectre hiring mercenaries to choose poorly..."

"With all due respect," Ashley grits out. "If you want me to leave the skipper down there today, then you better be willing to go to the Batteries first thing after chow tomorrow. Sir."

Batteries?

"Chief, stow you-"

"Thought you were a navy man," she huffs. "No rank in the Batteries. Six rounds. No gloves. Last man standing picks the team that goes back for her."

The grumbling of Pressley suggests that he's been outmaneuvered. Standing on rank to give such an unpopular order costs him respect and standing up for Shepard makes Ashley a rival, possibly a rival for command, despite his rank. On a ship with fraying protocol because of Shepard's Spectres status and looser behavior...

Kaidan's reaction suggests he thinks the same, so Liara wonders if perhaps the Batteries are some cultural quirk. A release valve for ego and anger, like sparring aboard turian ships?

Ever the loyalist, Williams. Chakwas was right, you're clever.

Liara looks over the hand-talk again.

"Would it be possible to rig up a probe that could project an image of my hands onto the sand near Shepard? A navigation probe's laser and some shadows, perhaps?"

"Not a navigation probe," Pressley huffs. "The Mark IVs are just little balls with sensors and antennae. Rely entirely on a larger carrier to do more than change orbit or reposition their scopes. Recon probe has the range but they're wired to self-destruct if they're taken apart and the instant we open the crate, the anti-tamper explosive arms. Blow the ship open as soon as we touched a bolt."

"Ship-seeker or a cruise missile, maybe. Alenko, you're qualified as a countermeasures and payloads officer. Is that possible?"

He looks up from where he was scrolling through a series of diagrams on his omni-tool.

"Yes, sir. Take the end-stage laser targeting heads from a ground-attack rocket and replace the ventral payload of a cruise missile, leave some panels off, tighten the focus and boost power on the laser, hack together a shutter of some sort. A cruise missile flown carefully enough isn't Normandy stealthy, but it's close. Joker could do it in fly-by-wire mode. No question."

Kaidan counts through the necessary steps by curling his fingers.

"Two hours to rig the probe. One if I can use Tali."

"You have three. Alliance personnel only."

"Understood."

"Williams, Crosby, Gossard. She does not leave this room. Understood?"

"Sir, yes, sir!" Williams replies crisply. She took the chance to comment away from the only men in the room who she outranks.

Pressley leaves and Goddard turns to the baby-faced marine next to him.

"Crosby, retrieve the Chief's armor."

"No need, Private."

"Ma'am, she's asari," Gossard protests. "Protocol di-"

"I watched her fillet a krogan from ten meters away with a flick of her fingers when she was halfway dead of thirst. I know what asari can do. And armor or no armor, I could take your rifle, field-strip it and shove it down your throat one part at a time, Gossard. And you damn well know it. Give me your sidearm."

"Yes, ma'am."

The click and hum of a weapon unfolding from storage mode seems loud in the quiet that follows.

"Everyone back to work," Ashley commands.

"This is the entire message so far?" Liara finally asks.

She's tried six different translations of the hand-talk. Four of them make no sense grammatically and the other two make no sense in context of a woman alone in a dangerous situation.

"Joker's watching the site with a nav-probe we dropped after entering the system. If there's more, he'll relay it."

"Hmm."

"What?"

"I'm not sure the hand-talk is about the plan. Not yet. This seems to mostly be..."

Liara glances between Ashley, who might understand, and Crosby, who would make a joke when it would be unwise to throw him into the nearest wall, and Gossard, who would probably start into a sermon until Ashley knocked him out with the butt of his own rifle.

"Skipper's down there, alone, pinned between two regiment-strength hostile forces with overwhelming numbers, armor, and air support. Be crazy not be scared out of her mind."

"And perhaps lonely?"

"And lonely," Ashley replies. "Every marine on this ship is trained in Morse code for emergencies. It's slow and from the number of signs in those dictionaries you pulled up, it's dumb. But it's easy to read. She used hand-talk for a reason, doc. She wanted you in the game."

Establishing two-way communication might be a relief to Liara, but it seems to have the opposite effect on Shepard's crew. Explaining her plan of attack doesn't help in the slightest.

Or maybe they're just disappointed none of them were invited to dinner in her cabin the moment she's back aboard.

"Lieutenant, setting aside...foreign influences and possible deception by our guest, what do you think Shepard's proposing?"

Kaidan looks to Liara, holds her gaze, smiles more slightly than she's ever seen a human smile, and turns back to Pressley.

"I think she's translating it straight, sir. If it were me, and I had the situation the Commander described, I'd try sneaking mines into the retrieval frames for geth armatures while they're out on patrol. Four climb into a frame and the ship snags it with a cable. I've never seen more than one stay behind to guard the frame. The commander can go one-on-one with an armature any day of the week. Between her biotics, her stealth training, and some omni-tool hacking, she could take a colossus. That's not what worries me."

"What's scary is their network. She would have to isolate those geth from the network or the other hundred come after her. Blow up a few of the big red ones, polish off their escorts, and do it fast before they can reposition replacements...and maybe you punch enough holes that there are parts of the network that are stupid enough to fall for it."

"Shepard would plant as many mines in things they were coming to retrieve as she could and then disappear. Maybe use her biotics to blow a crater and do a charge to somewhere out of sight so that one of the heavies decides that the shell actually hit her. By the time the geth retrieve all their isolated units, they'll think we've retreated. They'll think they killed her and there's not a single human left on that rock. No reason for them to suspect anything. No reason not to ship out."

No one seems ready to comment after that.

"It's...a new one," Kaidan says, breaking the quiet.

Liara licks some of the grease from this-hamburger, was it?-off her fingers and wipes the remainder on a discarded sheet of paper. It seems that the mess sergeant does his best work when the crew needs a boost. Scarce supplies, perhaps.

"It's classic, actually. Asari huntresses do as much anti-pirate and anti-slaver work as the Alliance, but the goal is preemptive strikes, not deterrence. They routinely deploy on shuttles, rented freighters, stolen pirate vessels...only occasionally on true naval vessels. The best way to deal with a large enemy ship is by boarding, either for capture or to place trackers or explosives."

"Based on the news about Project Valkyrie on Thessia, and some of her anecdotes about that lunar training mission, Shepard took part in one pathway through qualification for the Medal of Asha. Those exercises are hosted by Serrice and Armali, the two largest city-states. The head of the T'Soni House Guard, the head of all the House Guards, all the Archons of the Republic's militias, faculty of military academies...all would have been required to sign off on the scores. That is the second stage of training, between 'initiate' and 'commando'. But a cadet might take twenty or thirty years to go from initiate, to commando, to huntress, which for many is the start of decades more training once a huntress. While it's possible to compress the curriculum-we did it during the Rachni war-no doubt it would still be at least two Earth years to earn the Medal. It's possible she went through the third stage for the Mark but I doubt that even a soldier like the Commander can learn that much that fast, on so little sleep."

Kaidan chuckles.

"Oh, she got the third. Kurinth something?"

"Mark of Kurinth. Ritual scars, or in modern times a tattoo," Liara explains, drawing two fingers diagonally across her left breast. "Kurinth's sphere under the Goddess is hunting and war. The mark recalls a wound that goddess Kurinth took hunting the mother of all drakes. One of her mortal followers was in danger and she took the blow in her stead. It symbolizes huntresses as the defenders of the asari."

"Wait, eezo drake? So there really were biotic dragons?" Ashley mumbles around a mouthful of fried potatoes. "Or is it like Hercules fighting the hydra?"

"In the past, yes. Some claim the Justicars still breed them for riding in their old citadels, but that seems fanciful to me. They require colossal amounts of prey, as you can imagine for a biotic creature that size. They would take mature nisset sharks that swam too close to the surface. The size of an orca on Earth, sometimes larger. I think ecologists would notice."

Kaidan rolls his eyes.

"I think I've heard this story. Six times. So damn proud she wouldn't shut up about it for two tours of duty. Tried signing after-action reports 'Huntress Shepard' for three tours. She was broke when she came back. Said it was because she got an adaptive-ink tattoo of some constellation on..."

So if I were to find myself in her bed, I could trace the Huntress' stars on her skin? Where, Shepard? On your back, where I can stroke my finger and recite the verses to soothe your sleep? Or on your belly, where I taste it before I pleasure you with my mouth?

Kaidan coughs. Liara jars out of her fantasy.

"...well, we won't go there. If that's an asari tactic, we should consider the Skipper as qualified on it as a huntress as she is on our procedures. And asari commandos and huntresses run smaller teams than we do. Solo rather than five is different from solo rather than twelve."

"Would it work?" Pressley asks.

"Absolutely. The armatures fold up like a cow sleeping in a field, with the undersides facing the frame. You saw that on Eden Prime, gunny. We all saw what Tali can do with her omni and some sharp scrap if she can get under those things. Power core is somewhere on the lower chassis. It's why they hunker down to protect it when they're damaged and go into self repair."

"Big job, but if Shepard can get enough mines into the frames, with one booster to relay the detonator signal every three or four frames, when the geth pick them up, that's a row of bombs a few centimeters from the power cores of their armored vehicles. Hundreds of geth armatures on a cruiser. And if she can sneak some into a colossus' retrieval frame, one of those would go up like detonating a shuttle on deck."

"And geth ships don't have hangars, they pull them into slots along the entire length of the ship," Pressley muses.

"I'm all for ripping the flashlight-heads in half, but do we have that much ordinance aboard?" Ashley wonders.

Kaidan scratches at his semi-shaven chin. They've been here for hours and all are less rested, less groomed, less fed and less sane than any group of people brainstorming a complex problem should be.

"The cluster munitions in the kinetic bombs for close air support would do it, and we have four loaded with anti-vehicle mines. The mines are painted with LADAR-scattering polymer, near-zero emissions. Packs enough punch to flip a Mako or take the treads off a Grizzly. Take apart all four bombs and we've got thousands of them."

Ashley huffs.

"When they were building the Normandy, they really went for missiles over marines, huh?"

Kaidan shakes his head.

"We loaded the missiles. Security clearances were tight. Having a full load out would come in handy if we got jumped, and some of those needed to be tested with the Persephone combat suite. Fewer crew was fewer leaks for a shakedown."

"If she proved out, the Normandy was to be used for fast response and pre-emptive strikes, suppressing irregulars and pirates."

Ashley huffs. "Like every ship in the Traverse."

"Except we could drop an army on them before they saw us on screen. It's also why we've got so many close-range missiles, knife-fight range rockets, double-density GARDIAN lasers and flak turrets, plus an oversized main gun, but no broadsides for ship-to-ship and only two torpedo tubes. The main gun draws ninety percent of the power that the barriers and stealth don't. Hot. Floods the stealth system's heat sinks in minutes. Torpedo tubes burst fire and the fish are coated in LADAR-scatter just like our hull, and double-armored on the front. The antimatter missiles and torpedos have their own barriers."

"We're optimized to knock an enemy ship out of the sky-one ship-before it knows we're there, strafe a position, drop marines, and bug out to the nearest gas giant so we can run quiet without the stealth drive. Then the CIC here coordinates. Some of our ground support weapons are rigged to be loaded onto sleds and pushed out on a slingshot maneuver. Each missile detaches with compressed gas and then only fires once it's clear of the sled. Hard-to-spot fire support platforms without putting the Normandy in orbit."

"Close-range bombardment followed by long range surprise attacks and harassment. Great idea," he tells the Chief. "If we survive our 'shakedown' cruise."

Ashley's grin is positively feral.

"Catch them with their pants down, throw some marines at them, and disappear. God knows death from above never fails to brighten a marine's day."

"Orders were for me to bring on a company, plus two N5 teams to support the Commander."

"What? A company and N5s? Another hundred and twenty on a ship this size? Where in God's name..."

Ashley groans.

"Stacked cargo containers, with mess and latrine at opposite ends. Stack them between the shuttle rails. Please tell me I'm wrong..."

Kaidan snaps his fingers.

"Bingo. It was repurposed gear from an N7 project to rig a civilian freighter for a sneak attack on hostile spaceports or stations. Hydroponics for atmosphere, water filtration, backup generators. The whole thing could run disconnected from the ship's umbilicals."

"And I thought the Frontier Division was tight sleeping. Bet the N5s got their own beds."

Kaidan unwraps another burger and grabs an eezo-water pouch.

"Nope. Just three pods. Half of which was gear and one pod was going to be sims and sparring only. I was going to put them at the top so they had the longest climb."

"Aww! We grunts appreciate that!"

The next meal goes much the same, save for Kaidan's sudden quiet as he sneakily consults Tali on the tear-down of the bombs. Liara's gone too long since the last time she slept, and the stress of balancing Pressley's desire to prove himself ready for his own command before Shepard returns-she prays he does not want to lose her-Ashley's coolness, and the marines backing her, merely avoiding a brawl has been exhausting, let alone planning this madness.

She's been half-awake, half-asleep for hours. When her eyes droop, she succumbs nearly instantly, only to wake at the smallest noise.

"Doc," Ashley whispers, nudging her with her foot.

The screen is flashing a loop of footage but it's not the one she's clung to like a lifeline.

"New footage came in," Joker reports.

She's still alive.

"Doctor?"

Pressley looks at her, either too exhausted to be harsh or, she hopes, perhaps the first seeds of respect have been planted.

Alone

Frightened

Dreaming

Maiden

Sleep

Ajahe

Split

Taste

Twined

Liara's cheeks heat up.

"Oh, it's that kind of message, eh?" Ashley teases, striking Liara's shoulder gently with an open palm.

A third clip plays, this one time-stamped a few minutes after Liara's last reply was relayed as shadows interrupting the green spear of light from a long-range laser.

Plan

Works

Treasure

Chest

Bed

Compass

Gift

Falling

A break.

Malyk

Walks

Low

In

Parted

Reeds

"What was that?"

"She likes the plan, and I think she wants me to retrieve something from her footlocker, and send it with the ordinance."

"What?"

"A compass. Surely she didn't… Did her unit on Thessia allow her to ta-"

"Share with the class, Professor," Pressley grumbles.

"When tracking enemy ships, huntresses often use what we call a compass. Two identically shaped scraps of highly enriched eezo are hit with a powerful warp blow so that some of their atoms split into quantum-entangled pairs. These are then suspended in a nearly frictionless fluid in two separate containers, one opaque and one transparent. Eezo like that is incredibly sensitive to its surroundings. As each pair moves in space, the eezo in each compass is affected more or affected less by gravity waves from the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy, pulsars, supernova penumbra, and other landmarks."

"The pursuing ship keeps one compass, and the other is secreted aboard the enemy vessel. Since it is quantum-entangled, it emits no radio traffic. They are the size of a small melon. Difficult for the crew to locate. While visual comparison is possible, it's difficult farther out from the galactic core. It takes an elite sniper's vision to see movement and decades of practice. On modern compasses, small apertures allow for sensors to be inserted."

"Goddamned," Kaidan mutters. "Brilliant. You compare the split compass to another pair sitting side by side for reference and, as you follow the enemy ship, you watch them. If your compass acts like the reference, you're getting warmer. Shepard wants to track the geth back to their base. She wants to wipe out these cruisers and the rest of them."

"Precisely, Lieutenant," Liara replies. "Like most tools huntresses prefer, they are simple to manufacture and don't rely on complex supplies like power cells. A clean enough room, or standing inside one's own stasis field, two chunks of eezo scored so the asari's biotics can fracture it, four spherical containers and lubricating fluid is enough for a functional kit."

Pressley drums his fingers on the railing in front of the holographic pads.

"The Normandy could pursue and once we had some confidence, enter a system, confirm the geth presence and then signal the fleet. The Second is nearby and could rally to us tomorrow. Third Fleet, two or three days. But tracking this way would be slow as hell compared to a limpet. Gives us time to mass forces."

Kaidan nods.

"We go through the relay. The opening salvo is every missile, bomb, and cannon round Normandy can throw at them, and then the fleet comes in behind us. Clears out the cluster, at least. Maybe the Traverse."

"You two," he says, gesturing to Liara and Ashley. "Check her quarters. I don't want you," he huffs at Crosby, "looking through the commander's clothes."

Crosby's face falls.

"Understood."

"And she's the only one with a fucking clue what we're looking for. Or how to use it. God help us."

August 28th, 2183

Surface of Maji | Vamshi System

Lieutenant Commander (Lt. Cmdr.) Katherine Shepard | Systems Alliance Marine Corps, Covert Operations Command | N7 Rating Biotics/Assault (primary) and N6 Rating Infiltration/Demolitions/Wetwork (secondary)

Acting commander of the SSV Normandy | Member of the Citadel Council's Special Tactics and Reconnaissance (Spectre)

"You know what I really miss?"

Shepard turns to the ruined husk of the sniper-type geth next to her. Since they don't want to give away their location, the geth don't retrieve damaged sniper units or cloaked ones or the creepy, naked-looking ones that hop around. Like any organic sniper, the trick to popping them is to see them first. On day two, she managed to get the drop on a cloaked unit and try out the fancy dagger Wrex gave her. Crackled tip, he'd grumbled. Bit short for his tastes-it's nineteen fucking inches-so he was 'going to throw it out' rather than admit he wanted to give it to Shepard as a gift. It's meant for a biotic krogan warlord- so the hook-shaped blade absorbs warpfire along the outer edge, the shaft increases in density mid-swing, the grooves channel throw fields in a tight V of pure force. The inner edge flares out into a broad T-shape that hardens with her barrier, meant for cracking bones. Krogan ideas of non-lethal takedowns are less 'out cold' and more 'arms, legs, and teeth broken'.

Cuts through geth armor like a chainsaw cuts whipped cream.

One beheaded geth infiltrator later, she had a patchwork coat and blanket of cloaking mesh which made sneaking up on the next hundred armatures significantly less nerve-wracking. The camo circuits are miles beyond anything she's ever seen, blocking visual, sound, and electromagnetic runoff more than any human, turian, or asari off-she-shelf kits. So she set aside half of them. Tali can fiddle with some and the rest can go to the Alliance and the Spectre's tear-down labs.

If she kills sniper units with a clean headshot, she can use their torso and leg plating as a lining for her foxhole. This one still has a half-charged power core, which has come in handy as acid-rain storms and sulfuric-acid tainted sand have a way of depleting her shields even if she's not taking fire. So she didn't strip it and while Skele-Bot isn't much to talk to, he's a good listener and when it comes to men, she'd rather they listen to her rather than talk.

Some people would make fun. But she's learned the hard way that having half a conversation with something human or human-looking is good for her mental health when she's stuck in the shit.

Helps to complain to someone about her workday.

"Yeah, yeah. Give me the silent treatment. Jesus! You'd think that if anyone could get shot without taking it personally, it's a machine."

"I really miss the way Liara sort of wrings her hands when she thinks she's said the wrong thing. God. I just want to hold her hand and tell her it's all right."

"And when she steps close and then jumps back? God! I just want to grab her. Tell her it's okay to want things and tell her it's not her imagination. Toss her back on that cot of hers and show her that it's not her imagination."

"Is it too soon? Three weeks never felt longer or shorter at the same time, y'know?"

Skele-Bot gives her no insights. The mess of shrapnel that her shotgun turned the sensor housing 'head' and neck into twinkles in the glow of her emergency lights. Gleaming lines of bare steel and aluminum shine in those places where the scuffed outer metal was blown apart and the pristine alloy below revealed.

"Fine. I want a divorce. You can keep the apartment."

She makes sure that the cobbled-together quilt of geth carcasses above her is seated securely and turns on her omni to take stock of her progress.

"Sixteen mines left. Compass aboard each cruiser."

She glances at The Bitch, tilting her beloved pistol this way and that and linking to the onboard computer check the barrel's integrity.

"Damn, girl! One hundred percent. Knew you could do it if I dressed you up nice with a new coating."

She plants a kiss on the top of the barrel.

"Okay, Kate. Good on ammo. Not so good on power cells. Short on food and this planet doesn't have any delicious wildlife. If the first twelve hundred mines in the frames don't do it, these won't."

She looks at her omni's scanner, in case looking at that rather than the heads-up will reveal where in the brave and noble fuck this signal is coming from. It's not geth comms, that's for sure. And it's coming from underground. But it's fifty miles march from the prefab colony building that the geth invaded before massacring the inhabitants, putting them on those damned spikes, and standing around staring at their handiwork.

"Time to hike out to Signal Hill."

Right after a nap.

She taps on her omni-tool to check her perimeter sensors and arm her little surprises. The sniper units also have detachable guns and the in-gun computers are hackable.

Handy, that.

It's not the perimeter alarm that wakes her. Nor is it the fast beeping of geth.

Hello? Please, is anyone out there? My friend is hurt! Please!

"Oh, fuck me. Fuck me with a shovel and no lube."

She tunes her suit's radio to the same frequency-AM radio of all things-and takes a deep breath.

"This is Commander Shepard with the Systems Alliance. I can help you if you can tell me where you are."

"I, uh..."

"It's a bunker," another voice replies. Female, turian, and clearly exhausted. "Old. Probably...Spirits, that hurts...salarian. Lot of comm gear. Found...ugh...more like fell in. Hole in the roof."

STG listening posts. Chances are there's one on any rock with a flat surface this close to a relay.

"Don't talk, Vash, save your strength."

She knows that tone in a woman's voice. There's a sort of scared that only comes with the loss of a loved one. The fear of losing a child or a partner cracks the foundations of each word, like ice about to shatter and swallow the speaker in cold grief.

"Tell me what happened to your friend."

"Geth."

"More specifically, so I have some idea what her wound is like."

"Uh, hang on..."

The sound of dirty cloth being peeled and metal screeching in protest as it's lifted come over the line.

"Above her waist fringe, on the right."

"ATTENTION! All right, shitbrains! Some of you morons think you can fight a turian up close. Much as I'd like to see a few of you cocksuckers turned to bird food, the Good Lord and the Systems Alliance Marine Corps have ordered me to keep you alive."

"Shepard! get your scrawny ginger ass up here!"

"You're all thinking that the shiny rifle keeps you alive. Fuck that. What keeps a marine alive is a goddamned shovel, or a knife, if you're all fancy-like. Square off. And none of that sparkly crap, Shepard. You do this one like a marine."

She mutes her end and thinks through each word of the lecture on where to stab a turian to really hurt them.

"Right side, right side, right side..." Shepard mumbles. "Liver, the lower chambers of the vertically extended heart, gizzard. Wait. No. Stomach. Intestines are center or left..."

She unmutes.

"Start at the narrowest part of her fringe, and count the width of your fingers. Tell me how many fingers up that wound is and how many fingers to the right.."

"Six up, two over."

"When was she hurt?"

"Nine days ago," the turian grunts. "Would you ple-"

"Hush. I've seen you without it before and it's filthy."

Attagirl. Keep up that human-turian outreach.

"OK. It didn't hit her liver, or she wouldn't have made it through the night. Fever?"

"No."

"Then it didn't get her lower stomach or gizzards, either."

"Knew that," the turian grumbles. "Haven't been losing my food through any unusual holes."

"Can she walk?"

"Not far," they reply at nearly exactly the same time.

"Is there a protective suit, or an emergency airlock bubble, or anything like that?"

"Uh...I'm..."

"Just admit it, Maven. We're both biotics."

"Wait, you to-"

"You thought a turian my age was killing time as a mechanic for a shifty mining colony for fun? Just...didn't want to spook the other turians there. Reported for my Tenth of Life and they found out that my clumsiness was because I was a biotic. Was throwing myself around and fast-stepping down stairs without meaning to. Didn't fit in the Cabal, and Blackwatch wasn't hiring."

"You were a Noclavis?" Shepard asks.

"Yeah, how d'you know?"

Shepard chuckles.

"Only reason not to take a turian biotic your age who could make it nine days with a gut wound is that they were full up."

"Primarch's pampered ass! You mean I...I qualified?"

"Sounds like it. But turian biotics are rare enough that sometimes they have a spare they can't place and they don't send you guys out solo. Neutral discharge without explanation, right? With application options for citizenship in a few years?"

"Yeah."

"That's your answer. Sit tight, kids. Carefully test whether you can make an airtight barrier. Use water to test it, not the atmosphere. Work together. Stand close, or hug, and see if you feel each other's biotics. If you can, try to..."

How do I explain huntress blending to two scared teenagers?

"It'll be like...a sound. Sort of. You'll have to work harder than Maven, Vash. Tougher skin. It's like a song you can feel. Try to match. We need to know you can pool enough of your barrier to make it outside for a few seconds so my ship can spot you. If you have any sort of tarp or anything from the salarians, use that too."

She toggles her suit's comms to hail the Normandy.

"Joker, it's tim-"

"Oh, thank God! I don't think Wrex likes the jokes about a krogan, a salarian, and a turian walking into a bar. I was down to knock-knock jokes, and running out."

"I don't like either," the ancient merc grumbles across the connection.

She blinks tears out of her eyes. Comedy night at Joker's station. The Normandy carried on without her.

"Nice to hear your voice, too. I need exfil, but there's a complication. Somewhere within thirty clicks of me, I've got someone transmitting. AM frequency. You'll have to tune it to locate them. STG listening post that didn't scuttle right when they abandoned it."

"Probably a circular structure a few feet under the sand. That's the most common prefab they used on a rock like this. They're kids, Joker. Civilians. They bugged out from the mining colony when it was hit. I need you to find that bunker and meet me on the way. I'm bouncing this signal off what's left of the colony's net, so use the L-shaped ridge next to the lake as a landmark. Can you patch me through to Liara?"

"Hang on."

"Shepard!"

"Hey, gorgeous. There's a couple of miner's kids in a bunker near me. No suits. They're both biotics but the turian's wounded, and the human doesn't sound real sure of herself. I want Joker to drop you, Kaidan, and Wrex there. You can barrier them and Wrex and Kaidan can watch your back. All you have to do is walk them onto the ship. Make sure the damned acid rain doesn't dissolve them. Go to them first. I've got a hardsuit, a barrier and at least a partial cloak."

"I understand."

"See you soon, Liara. Don't have any mad love affairs before I get back, yeah?"

"I promise. Shall I forward you back to Joker?"

"Yeah."

"Joker, there's about seventy geth infantry on patrol between me and the mining prefab. Can you come in hard on them, stealth off, go dark, hit a cloud bank or something and swing around, so they're looking in the wrong direction?"

Joker scoffs.

"Can a krogan scratch his hump?"

Wrex growls. "I can only reach the top, really."

"Joker, tell Tali there's a wrecked Mako about three clicks from where I am. Blew the last tire so I stripped it. If you'd be so kind as to help her fly it back into the bay, I've stuffed it with all the scrap geth that her wicked little heart could desire. The jumpy ones, snipers, hunters, intact sensor hood off a prime, you name it. Tried to shoot different parts for each kill, so you've probably got complete parts for each. Some research might give us a chance against these clanking assholes."

"Thanks!" Tali squeals, having forgotten that she's admitting she hacked the comm channel. "On it, Shepard."

"Joker, just give me thirty, and look for the bang. That'll let you know where I am."

Shepard drops to her knees, relishing the clang of her kneepads against the steel of the deck.

"Sweet fuck, am I glad to see this hangar. Floor...I would lick you if I didn't know that Garrus changes the Mako's lubricant in here."

Tali is humming merrily, bent over in the ruined Mako, her omni-tool's camera clicking as rapidly as an assault rifle in burst mode. The human girl and the turian they rescued are sheltering behind the quartermaster's locker to be out of the caustic winds. Her arms are locked around the middle of her carapace-bare above the fringe of her waist-and she's shaking. Chakwas is fussing over Vash, who seems to have her right arm frozen in salute to Garrus, who looks deeply uncomfortable about that. At the far end of the bay, the carcasses of twenty million credits of bleeding-edge missiles, bombs and probes are stacked in a heap.

"Shepard!"

Liara collides with her, biotics flaring. Her helmet is disassembled into a cloud of neatly separated plates, gaskets and bolts in a blink of the eye because Liara doesn't want to wait.

"I...thought..."

She sniffs.

"C'mere, doc."

With the last of her strength, Shepard grabs the back of Liara's head and pulls her in, crashing her cracked, dry lips against the damp salty-sweet of the asari's mouth.

As consciousness fails her, she thinks he hears someone mutter 'about damn time' but she can't tell if it's Chakwas, Ashley, or Wrex.

I write various things for various sites including , AO3, and others (see my profile).

If you want to know more, I have a Tumblr (alephthirteen-writes dot tumblr dot com) that ties it all together-every site I touch, I link there in a pinned note-and I also I post musings and ramblings about my various headcanons, characterizations, gender or trope rants both for and against, and follow fanartists I like.

For detailed entries on all, see the Systems Alliance Officer's Codex

LADAR - "LAser Detection And Ranging" is the 'active' sensor network used by all spacefaring ships. A pulse of light created by an array of lasers is released and reflections are captured, allowing the computer to compare the outgoing signals with a known pattern, pulse timing, and wavelength, rapidly assembling detailed images of an object with the reflection. Reflecting a pulse off previously scanned surfaces can also yield images of the object from angles out of line-of-sight, such as the aft of an approaching ship, if a nearby object has already been mapped by the computer for comparison.

QEC - Quantum Entanglement Communicator. Originally a term for devices providing holographic projection and voice or video communications using entangled particles of Element Zero. It has come to refer to any technology, practice or technique relying on the entanglement principle.