Mass Effect: Interloper Rewrite Chapter 11

On Feros: Part II


"What are we looking at, Liara?" the squad had gathered around the wall that the asari archaeologist had spotted. The faded shape of a prothean sigil was barely visible about halfway up. Liara stood with her palm pressed to the wall as if feeling for something.

"This symbol, right here, is the prothean sign for power. Or, at least, that's how we in the prothean archaeology field have interpreted it. To be honest, we generally treat it as a general purpose 'no dig' marker. Nine times out of ten it shows up above some kind of conduit in their planet-wide power grids. Often still energized."

"And the tenth time?" Tali asked.

"Um, other utilities," Liara replied, looking almost embarrassed. The rest of the party wrinkled their noses as the implication set in. "Now, I'm not an engineer, but I was thinking, since the colony is short on power, it might be possible to tap into what's left over in the city grid."

"How can we be sure there's still juice in there?" I asked, eyeing the wall skeptically. "I mean, the Protheans have been gone for almost fifty-thousand years."

"Well, the prothean power systems were incredibly robust, if this grid is anything like some of the other sites I've seen, the grid connects to power storage devices all over the city. Like I said, we've had, um, incidents where we've hit these conduits by accident. Even the dregs should be enough to run a colony this size, at least for the short term."

"Miss O'Connell, if we do find power in the grid, will you be able to run your colony off of it?" Shepard asked the colony's engineer.

"Well, power is power," the dark-haired woman in the canvas coveralls said, "this conduit of yours is still juiced, I should be able to run some kind of tap. Assuming they use conductive cabling that is."

"You're confident you can patch in to alien tech?"

"Commander, I could run a tap in my sleep with a pair of pliers. You should see the inside of the Borealis," O'Connell replied with a nod towards the downed freighter, "of course I'll probably have to rig a transformer, I doubt the Protheans were running alliance standards. I should have the parts. Might need to take apart the genny, but she's toast anyway."

"Alright, looks like we have to take down this wall," Shepard said, nodding along. Wrex looked at her expectantly, his hands gripping the heavy shotgun in his hands. Liara cut in.

"Commander, if I may. These conduits need a fine hand to open up. If I could stay with the colonists?" she finished, hopefully. Shepard seemed to mull it over.

"Do it. The geth hasn't made an attempt in a while, and we'll be making a lot of noise heading in the other direction. Just promise me you won't get yourself blown up."

"Oh, of course, Commander! Thank you!" Liara almost bounced on her toes in excitement. Inwardly, I had to laugh. Shepard had just let the Asari loose in a department store at Christmas.

"Good, we should be set to move out then." Shepard turned to face us. "Alenko, what's your situation?" Over the radio, the voice of the biotic was masked by gunfire.

"Jenkins got the door open, but he took a shot. He should be fine though, he applied medigel and is mobile. We found a pocket of Geth and a few Krogan down here guarding a transmitter of some kind. We're attempting to gain access."

"Okay, be careful down there, Lieutenant. Once you've taken the transmitter, shut it down and pull back up to the Zhu's Hope outpost and await further orders.

"Yes, ma'am!"


The five of us assembled at the ramp into the far tower. Wrex and Garrus took up the front, rifles readied. Shepard took up the center, with Tali and me flanking. At Shepard's signal, we rushed into the tower. We didn't see any Geth until we reached the first stairwell. Our first warning was a buzz-rattle that sounded from a landing several stories down.

"Rocket!" Garrus warned at the sudden sputter of flame from the open stairwell. The geth explosive augured in towards us on a pillar of flame. We dove for cover and came up firing. The rocket itself went wide, impacting against the wall behind us in a cloud of shrapnel. The shockwave almost took me off my feet. Below us, geth platforms poured out of a side passage and opened up on us. Our height advantage allowed Shepard and Wrex to simply drop grenades down amongst them. The fat puffs of high explosive detonated and blasted several geth apart before they had time to respond. I added my own fire to the storm of explosives, leaning out over the railing to fire straight down. The rifle vented as it hit its overheat limit. A rookie mistake. I drew my pistol and fired twice. Both shots missed. The geth loosed one last volley and fell back towards the elevator.

"Don't let them get away!" Shepard yelled, advancing and firing. Wrex leapt up from cover and with a closed fist jumped over the railing. He dropped like a cannon ball down the center of the open staircase. Rounds broke down his shields and scoured his armour as he dropped, but nothing would stop his fall. He landed amongst the disorganized geth platforms with an explosion of blue-purple biotics. The corona of warped gravity burst outwards in all directions, tossing the Geth like broken toys. The Krogan jumped from his landing without pause, laying one of the few standing Geth out with a sweeping strike of his shotgun. He pumped a spray of tungsten into the fallen platform and charged the next closest attacker, tossing it aside. In the back of the group, a larger platform stepped forward. Wrex turned on it with a vicious smile. The two titans clashed, each trading blows at close range. The Geth turned Wrex's shotgun to the side before he could use it to blow off the platform's head. Wrex broke the Geth's own shotgun over his knee. The two went to the ground, grappling like wrestlers. When the dust settled, Wrex held the Geth's head over his own, its neck separated from the resto of its body by brute force. Wrex regained his feet and tossed the broken piece down with a look of disgust.

"That was barely worth the fight," he said, "Let's find another one of those big ones."

"I'm sure you'll get your chance, big guy," Shepard responded, "Now let's keep moving. The garage can't be too much further."

We rushed through the ancient, crumbling tunnels. Here, the repairs made by the colonists were more prevalent, but also more heavily damaged. Here the tunnels were marked with explosives, the walls cratered and the steel struts put in place to support them buckled dubiously. I eyed them nervously as we passed, listening carefully for the sounds of strained girders ready to give way. It was hard to hear anything over the deep thumping of anti-air defenses in neighboring towers. The vibrations must have been transferred though the connecting sky bridges.

Shepard drew us up short of another sealed elevator. Quietly, she extended her omni-tool to connect to the elevator car's computer system. She nodded, and the doors swished open.

"The car reads the shaft as navigable, be ready to face resistance at the bottom."

But there was no resistance at the bottom. In fact, the rest of the way to the garage was eerily silent as we became buried in further hives of concrete and metal. These deeper levels were quieter, musty, like a long abandoned cave, though there was evidence of foot traffic carving its way through what looked like a light tan dust shot through with flecks of green. The air was stale, the faintest whiff of decaying meat and withered vegetation drifting on the breeze generated by a single groaning fan mounted high up on the way, though no plant life made itself known. The image of an enormous plant hanging upside down in a concrete shaft flashed across my mind. Did the reach of the Thorian reach even this far out?

The warren of tunnels eventually gave way to the cavernous garage. The space was deserted, a simple box with massive doors on one side and a row of vehicle bays on the other. The smell of Feros, the tomb city, was replaced with the acrid oily tones of Zhu's Hope, the alliance colony once again. The vehicles bays were clogged with burnt out hulks of vehicles I didn't recognize, tall shouldered haulers and bulky all terrain transports. On the far side of the room lay a slump sided pile of spare parts and salvaged pits and pieces. Standing alone in the middle of the room stood an intact looking Grizzly.

The older IFV shared the wedge shaped nose of the Mako, though the cabin extended out from broad shoulders rather than being flush with the body. The crew compartment was almost square, raised on six massive tires on articulated arms. An off center turret sat high on one corner.

"This looks like our ride," Shepard said. "Tali, check the engine Liddle, the controls. We pile in as soon as it checks out."

I hauled myself up onto the projected cockpit and dogged open the round driver's hatch on the IFV's brow. The cabin was roomier than the Mako's little driver's nook, though it was separated from the crew compartment bay a bulkhead. I scooted my way into the vehicle's simple canvas backed seat and stowed my rifle in a handy rack. The controls were dark until there was a thump in the back of the vehicle. The panels flickered on. I checked the usual spots; the dashboard was laid out in much the same way that the Mako was. Big gear stick, the flattened steering column, the narrow pedals. Everything showed green.

"Commander, looks like we're good to go here," I called back, thumbing the radio.

Head out then, we've managed to patch into the Exo-Geni comm. systems. There's a group of scientists, civilians, and security personnel holed up in an outpost about halfway to the headquarters building. Be aware, we're also tracking several geth dropships."

"Marvelous." I removed the parking brake and tested the throttle. The engine was rough, but with some gentle coaxing it rumbled contentedly. A simple flatscreen displayed the tactical scans of the area. The road ahead was angry with little red triangles. Something large, fuzzy, and oval lurked at the edge of our map's range. "Here goes nothing."

Under my gentle goading, the Grizzly started lumbering forward. It was obviously heavier than the Mako, less responsive. But there was power coiled under the deck plates. I could feel it thrum through the pedals, even as we slowly edged our way towards the garage doors. They ground open slowly, letting in a swirl of the gritty wind and the half-light of a planet perpetually blanketed in smog. A rocket sailed through the yawning portal almost immediately, skipping of the concrete to explode in a shower of shrapnel above. I gunned the engine. We shot forward, the Grizzly's slow lope going immediately to a thundering charge. We shouldered into the crosswind, the steady stream barely registering against the burly vehicle. The red triangles on the scans were suddenly all pointed in our direction. Angry flashes of incoming fire lit up the skyway. In response, the blocky turret on our roof roared its rejoinder. My focus was fully engaged on keeping us out of the line of fire. The Grizzly didn't dance like the Mako did, keeping out of the way of enemy fire was more a case of finding cover where I could rather than dodging the inbound rockets. And the Geth seemed to be pulling out all the stops on the rockets. Another volley chewed massive chunks out of the burnt-out hauler truck we'd gone hull-down behind. Our return fire sent another cluster of geth platforms pirouetting into the sky. The radio buzzed.

"Enemy Dropship coming in, right behind us!" Garrus yelled over the open channel. My eyes dropped from the periscope to the threat display and goggled. We'd been caught between the advancing rocket troops ahead and a trio of larger, slower markers behind while I'd been fixated on looking forward. Seconds later the first siege pulse fell. The shield indicators screamed and I threw us into reverse. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled as more pulses sailed right over our heads and slammed into our former cover and turned it to slag. Our massive tires squealed and the engine roared in protest as I set us thundering forward again. The siege pulses fell faster and closer as we overtook the still bubbling remains of the hauler truck. The road ahead was damaged, large chunks missing or buckled. We were running out of room to maneuver. The dropship loomed in the rear scopes, ahead, the geth had erected barriers to block our path. The Grizzly's gun thundered again, the kinetic round blooming orange and bright against the barriers of the dropship, causing them to flash. The dropship didn't slow down though, in fact, it seemed to be gaining. But that was outside of my control now, all I could do was keep us moving to the next tower and the dubious shelter of the Exo-Geni outpost.

The crunching of debris, the pounding of the Geth weapons on our shields, and the steady thump of Garrus' return fire all seemed to blend together as a distant noise. My focus was set entirely on the low opening of the outpost. Behind me the Grizzly's engine whined as it reached its limits. The Geth's barrier disappeared under our tires; the Grizzly was a roaring cannonball. And then we were shooting through a tunnel. I slammed on the breaks before we could exit the over side. In a horrible, gut-wrenching moment, the tank began to tip sideways. The scene moved slowly in my mind as I lost control. The world came crashing back as the vehicle slammed against a guardrail. The kinetic barriers shattered, but the hull held strong.

"Everyone okay?" I asked. Nothing. I pulled my helmet off. The transmitter on the outside had been smashed in the crash. "Great." I banged on the bulkhead. Someone knocked back. Someone's alive at least. I grabbed my rifle and popped the hatch. No Geth seemed to have followed us in. The troop door opened and spilled the rest of the team out onto the stone.

"Let's… never do that again." Shepard winced and clutched her side. The dropship flew off into the distance. "Nice driving, Liddle. You and Tali look over the Grizzly, check for damage. Garrus, watch them. Wrex, come with me." The Commander made for the ramp down to the outpost. Garrus nodded and found himself a perch amongst one of the hills of piled slabs of cracked concrete. His rifle poked out, a ward against the enemies clogging the way back. That left me and Tali.

"So, what are we looking at?" I asked, turning to the stricken tank. The armor on the roof and flanks was blistered, some sections had flaked in charred metal ribbons. The leading tire tread had picked up a handful of punctures, one still plugged by the jagged ended rusty rebar that had torn into it to expose the hex patterned metal weave beneath. The engine ticked and sputtered in a concerning way under its hardened louvers.

"Well, the hull took a beating, obviously," Tali responded as she waved an inquisitive omni-tool over the IFV. "And the tires are going to need some serious patching. Oh, and the antenna is gone, so that'll need to be replaced. The Alliance built these things tough, though, internals don't look too bad. I don't like that engine sound though. Ugh, looks like we cracked a coil; that whole assembly will need to come out. Hope there's some spares in the back." She looked over at me. "There's nothing we can do about the armor unless you're hiding a gallon drum of omni-gel in your hardsuit. You want to start counting holes in the wheels while I take a look for a repair kit?"

"Yeah, I reckon I can handle that," I replied, relived I wasn't going to be called on to try my hand at engine repair on a handful of hours' reading of the wrong technical manual. "I've patched a tire or two in my day." But armored vehicle tires turned out to be a whole different animal to the simple rubber hoops that carried my Toyota Matrix around. The wheels themselves came up almost to my shoulder, the tire surface was plated, hardened rubber over tightly bound metal bands in a thick laminate. The emergency patches Tali handed me from out of the back of the Grizzly were complex, multi part things. And there was the matter of removing the protruding spar. The ribbed metal was stuck tight, wedged between layers of rubber and metal. The barbed end made simply grabbing hold and hauling on it a grim prospect. "What I wouldn't do for a big old wrench or god's own pair of needle nosed pliers," I muttered to myself.

"You know you have and omni-tool strapped to your wrist, right?" Tali weighed in from somewhere in the engine compartment. I blushed furiously. I had taken off my helmet to communicate without the busted transmitter and had forgotten I no longer had the privacy of my very own bubble of metal and plastic.

"You've got good ears," I called back. "You're telling me there's a program on this thing that'll get a four-foot spear out of a tank tire?"

"Maybe yours doesn't, but luckily you're working with me now. Dropping you the program." My Omni-tool pinged with an incoming file request. I activated it, the little progress bar filling quickly. "That's a magnetic anchor, should give you a better grip. Your suit servos should be able to do the rest. Just make sure you don't somehow impale yourself. I'm a mechanic, not a doctor."


The magnetic anchor pinged as it released the final metal barb from the rear tire. We'd picked up more than just the five-foot spar that now lay discarded to the side. I dropped the just about hand sized shard of thin sheet metal stamped with the Exo-Geni logo to the side with the others. I pulled out one of the patches from the dull red plastic box propped up against the IFV's flank and shook out the layers. My finger found the crease left by the sharpened steel and the flat of my heel drove the adhesive underlayer deep into it. My fingers went through the repeated motions of applying the layers and I finished with the application of flash heat from my omni-tool. The patch sealed seamlessly with the tread. There was another thump from the engine compartment and the engine roared back to life again.

"She's all set," Tali chirped, wiping grease from her three fingered glove with a bit of rag. She slammed the louvers with a little more force than required. "Runs better than when we picked her up. Looks like I have once again outdone myself." She tossed the rag aside and cocked her head, the light caught off a little glob of grease on her helmet. I reached out and scooped it away with a thumb, earning myself a friendly swat.

"Mount up," Shepard's voice buzzed in my partially repaired helmet receiver. "Exo-Geni has this place secured: we need to move on to their headquarters. Apparently one of the larger geth ships has latched itself onto the side of the tower. I'm thinking if we can destroy that ship, we can get ourselves some time to breathe, drive the Geth back."

Tali and I shared a shrug and separated. I dropped into the driver's cabin to find the lights back on, green blinking cheerfully back at me from the dash. Shields came up to full and the engine purred contentedly. There was another double knock on the bulkhead, and we were away. The drive up the multistory ramp upwards was harrowing, the Grizzly was no dainty cornerer and multiple times I left paint behind on the guardrails. With a lurch, we gained the upper floor and the path out to the skyway that linked up to the headquarters of the Exo-Geni corporation on Feros.

Our old friend, the dropship, awaited us, hovering over the skyway like the malevolent hornet that it resembled. It seemed content to keep its distance, dipping to drop several waves of foot platforms ahead of us. I charged towards them, moving to keep as much cover as possible between us and the probing fingers of incoming rocket volleys.

"Garrus, focus your fire on that drop ship, I'm tired on it buzzing around. Liddle, take care of the ground forces." Shepard ordered over the interior speakers.

"You want me to pop my head out and shoot them with my rifle, Commander?" I asked, letting more than a little incredulity into my voice.

"The Grizzly has a hull gun, you know," Shepard shot back.

"It does..." My eyes scanned the cockpit. They fell on a canvas sack hanging from something bolted to the far side of the dash. I leaned over, reaching with my finger tips to pull it aside while keeping the Grizzly on the road. We swerved drunkenly and I snapped back to the steering column. Straitening our course, I reached out again, keeping the column on course with my knees. My fingers caught on the bag and whipped it away to reveal the tall, slab-sided machine gun that shared the cabin with me. The mounting looked motorized and some additional searching revealed a stubby joystick halfway between the driver's seat and the short fold out stool that must have been designated for the hull gunner. I flicked the switch on the side and a targeting reticule overlaid my periscope view. My face gained a wolfish grin and I depressed the firing stud.

A bright line of white-hot fireflies spat out from the Grizzly, reaching out to sweep aside the Geth as I kept us aimed at the tower beyond. Behind me, the turret boomed, its own stream of tracer light clawing at the belly of the drop ship. The Grizzly rocked as I drove us up an embankment to avoid another scintillating siege pulse, a larger geth platform crunched under the tires, and the hull gun screamed as it hit its heat limit. Garrus fired again, but this time there was no shimmer of kinetic barriers to intercept the fiery bloom. The white-hot tungsten penetrator punched into the dropship's thorax and with a flash ignited something inside. Three more secondary explosions sent the ship into a slow spiral groundward with a tail of thick black smoke. The Geth ship dropped out of sight in the brown clouds below and the ground shook as it impacted with something. The ancient skyway wavered like a struck spring.

"Drive, Liddle, drive!" barked Shepard, and I was quick to obey. I slammed the pedal to the floor and the Grizzly responded like a goaded bull. No Geth could stop us as we thundered towards the now near Exo-Geni tower. My stomach lurched as concrete cladding fell away under our rear wheels and through the column all the way left. The tank lurched drunkenly, but the front tires bit down, my patches holding as the engine revved and we crawled off the detaching road tile just in time. I fixed my eyes forward, heart hammering. Looking behind might just make me throw up. The vibrations continued as we raced the final yards to an opening in the tower and I brought us to a skating stop in another garage, this one brightly lit for once, if still shabby and strewn with heavy rubble. The engine ticked as I slowly unclenched my fists from the steering column. That was when the wave of nausea hit me. I swarmed through the top hatch, leaving my helmet behind in my haste. I unloaded my helping of Alliance field rations and energy drink a foot from the cabin.

"Look at the stomach on this pyjak," Wrex grunted as he disembarked to my right.

"That's enough, Wrex," Shepard added as she slipped out beside him. "Let it out, Liddle. I think getting us off that skyway has earned you a minute. Wrex, Garrus, take point and clear the garage. I expect this tower hasn't been left unguarded."

"You hear that?" Garrus asked, cocking his head to the side in a way that belied his avian heritage.

"You mean that high pitched buzzing?" I asked. I spat, wiping my mouth. The acrid tang remained on my tongue, but my stomach seemed satisfied that it had extracted the proper punishment for the stress I'd laid on it. I took a real look at the room for the first time. It was a wide, high ceilinged and split-level affair, constructed of the same brown-patinaed concrete as the rest of the colony. A bright geth barrier lit one side of the room. It fizzed as drifting dust intercepted it and under everything there was a persistent buzzing noise. The air was filled with a damp, musty smell that swallowed up even the stink of my exhumed lunch.

"No, that rhythmic thumping," Garrus corrected, "sounds close."

"Keep it down, people," Shepard said in hushed tones. I could hear the noise now too. A slow beat, like a hammer being driven into the stone. The wall to the right of us erupted outwards with an abruptness that almost sent me tumbling to the ground. From the dust emerged the rounded head of a crouching geth armature. The mech rose on its legs, its shoulders pushing aside dangling chunks of the surrounding construction. "Scatter!" Shepard ordered.

I backpedaled, suddenly very aware that my rifle was in the cabin, the high hatch exposed to the now sweeping gaze of the walker. My hand went for my Stinger and I dropped to the ground to scramble under the dubious cover of the Grizzly. The tower lobby filled with criss-crossing fire. The armature's shields sparked as dozens of hits skittered across them. The platform's head swiveled in my direction. Its machine guns fired, stitching a line of impacts through the dust as it tracked me. I scrambled further under the tank and covered my exposed face with my arms as concrete chips began to spark off my own barriers.

"I'm attempting to overload its shields!" Tali cried from somewhere closer to the crackling hallway barrier. There was a surge of sound as the quarian engineer loosed lightning in a bottle at the huge walker. "Hit it now!"

"Switch to penetrators!" Shepard ordered. I took advantage of the momentary lapse in the armature's suppressive fire to complete my scramble under the tank and popped up to a knee on the other side. Blindly, my eyes locked on the weaving head of our attacker, I fumbled for the matchbox sized block of tungsten that fit my hand gun. With shaking hands, I pulled the catch just the way Ashley had taught me and ejected the striated steel ammo wedge. The tungsten went home with a few tries, and the gun beeped readiness as I slammed it closed. I rose and fired into the Armature's leg joints, mostly denting the armor around it, but a handful of shots caught something vulnerable and sent thick red lubricant spurting from within.

The team pumped their own rounds through weakened barriers. The armored shell began to crack under the barrage. With a final pair of shots from Shepard and Garrus, the armature quivered and slumped to one side. Something within caught alight and the machine ground to a halt. In a parting gesture, the self-destruct charges embedded in the mech sputtered in half-detonation, sending the thing's sloped head crashing to the ground. With the immediate threat gone, I rushed for my rifle.

"Team, report!"

"I'm alive." I hopped back out of the cabin, helmet in one hand, my rifle in the crook of my arm. The rest of the team reported in. and gathered together.

"It would appear these Geth really don't want anyone gaining access to this tower," Garrus noted. "These doors are shielded, probably emitted by the ship latched onto the side of the tower. We're not getting in that way."

"We'll have to go under it." Shepard walked over to the entrance to a tunnel full of pipes.

"Where does this go?" Garrus asked.

"It looks like it runs under the entire Exo-Geni complex. There's an opening a couple of meters in that should lead to a stairwell into the building." Tali had a map up on her Omni-tool.

"Are you sure?" Garrus asked, "Once we drop down there, there's no climbing back out."

"I'm sure," responded Tali.

"Wrex, take point," Shepard ordered. The Krogan grunted and dropped off the edge with a crunch. He shuffled about in the darkness before calling back up to us.

"It's clear, I can see the Quarian's opening from here."

Shepard went next, followed by Garrus and Tali. I took one last look around the lobby before dropping into the tunnel. The ground was further than it looked and I missed my footing. Tali caught me by the arm before I fell face first in the dust.

"Thanks." I dusted myself off. The group set off down the tunnel in a loose formation, moving from cover to cover. Shepard was the first into the opening. A shot rang out ahead of us, bouncing harmlessly off her shields.

"Dammit! I'm so sorry. I thought you were Geth, or one of those Varren." A young woman in a light green uniform moved out of a corner holding a pistol. Shepard lowered her own pistol and made a comforting gesture.

"It's okay, we're here to help. What are you doing here?"

"It's my own fault; I stayed to back up data. Then, all of a sudden, the Geth showed up and the power went out. I've been stuck down here since then." The woman, Lizbeth Baynham if I remembered correctly, holstered her weapon.

"We can fight our way through the Geth if we need to." Shepard assured her.

"It's not the Geth that are the problem; that ship is putting up some kind of barrier. Unless you can shut it off, we're stuck down here."

"Why are the Geth here in the first place?" Wrex asked. "What would they want with medical research?" Lisbeth looked down at her feet, obviously uncomfortable.

"I don't know for certain, but they're probably after the Thorian."

"Thorian? What is that exactly?" Tali asked.

"It's an indigenous lifeform; Exo-Geni was studying it."

"What more can you tell us?" Shepard asked. I lost track of the conversation at that point. I had already heard the entire situation relayed to me far too many times. Big Plant, mind control, asari clone. That last point stuck in my head. Feros meant finding the cipher, and the cipher meant another week in the medbay. I really didn't want more time lying around, especially with so many on the team dealing with actual wounds. The cipher would be the last piece of the puzzle though. A plan formed in my brain. If I received the cipher, it would point to Ilos. If I could convince Liara to corroborate my vision, we could head straight there, way ahead of Saren. We could skip Virmire, maybe even take Sovereign down before he alerted the other Reapers. It meant leaving Saren in command of a cloning facility and a whole hoard of Krogan, but that could be dealt with properly once the Reapers were covered, right? Doubts snuck in. My arrival was already causing a cascade of little changes. This would be a massive change, one that might make all my knowledge of the future irrelevant. But on the other hand, the image of Ashley, who'd helped train me, Kaidan, who'd been so supportive of my headaches. Earth, burning. All that loss could be avoided. All I had to do was make a small sacrifice of a few days in medbay. Resolve filled the hole left by concern. One more vision and I could save so many lives.

Fine, one more time.


Author's Note:

Let it be known that this chapter is technically on schedule. Any theoretical delay would be due to me being flying home from a family event this weekend, but since it was most definitely on time, that is, of course irrelevant.