"Vederia, here. Took care of the kett. With the hangar clear, I managed to track the real power drain. Sending you the navpoints, I'll see you there."

The navpoints she sent redirected them to an observation deck. With the power out, it was nearly impossible to see where the enormous, thick sheets of glass containing the deck began, so there was a disorienting sensation of stepping into the abyss as they entered. The quiet twilight of space was marred by the grinding hum of what sounded like a generator.

"Oh, thank the goddess!" Sara was so used to the sound of Vederia's voice over her omni tool, it was jarring to hear the commando in person. She waved them over to the source of all that noise. "This is what's causing the power drain."

"What is this thing?" Sara asked as they joined the asari by the large tower of equipment, pulsating energy.

Vederia pointed a hand to the hull behind her. "It looks like the kett attacks sheared off some hull plating." She nodded at the machine before them, almost proud. "Then someone rigged up this mass effect field device. The field's so strong, it holds the hull together. It would help people evacuate the deck beyond."

"Clever!" Peebee exclaimed, dancing around the device.

"But pointless, now," Cora said. She kneeled at the base of the device, her arms lighting up blue as she wrenched a power cable free. "That deck's deserted."

Peebee sighed in agreement, but it didn't stop her from walking to the hull wall to press her hands along the damage and admire somebody else's precarious quick thinking.

Their omni tools interrupted any more examination of the handiwork. "It's Captain Atandra, Ryder, the drive core's coming online. You did it! A few minutes and we're out of here."

"Can we still go to FTL?" Sara wanted to know. "Say, if there's a big hull breach down here?"

"Uh... the maneuver I've planned should hold us together if the FTL burn doesn't- we'll have to cope."

"Sarissa here," the Pathfinder's voice smoothed over any of the captain's mutterings. "Superb work, all of you. We're almost home."

"It really is over," Vederia murmured to herself.

"Vederia," Sarissa crisped over the frequency. "Why am I not picking up the rest of your squad?"

The commando afforded herself a miserable chuckle. "They vented themselves with the first boarding party, ma'am. It kept any kett from getting to the last wave of evacuees."

"I see. Sarissa out."

"That's how you knew kett could survive in vacuum," Sara realized.

"I should go and help on the bridge." Vederia coughed and darted out of the observation deck.

Sara cupped her hands around her mouth and called after her, "We'll keep an eye on that hull breach just in case."

Vederia predictably didn't even glance back. Sara dropped her hands and sighed. Immediate crisis averted, she mulled about aimlessly, until SAM perked up in her head. "Restoring power has freed up a data cache," she muttered. "SAM says it's got the succession log from Matriarch Ishara."

Cora's head snapped to attention. "Well? Play it."

"Okay..." Sara nodded her permission and the recording echoed from the observation deck's intercom.

"Forget the data!" Ishara's voice was deeper than Sarissa's and strained. Around them, Sara could hear dull weapons fire across a shield. "I need you- the barrier is collapsing!"

"They'll tear the ark apart." It was not the cool and collected Sarissa they were used to over their frequency. Sarissa was panicked. "That data is the only thing that might buy us time."

The asari SAM pinged an alert with a similarly droll tone to its turian counterpart. "Kett reinforcements approaching, Pathfinder Ishara."

"Sarissa! SAM can't- Tiamna, please!"

"I have to save them! Even if I can't save- Forgive me."

The log ended there. The observation deck grew quiet, interrupted only by Peebee's nervous laughter. Sara stood there, not entirely sure what she'd expected from a succession log, particularly when she knew it was going to end with Ishara's demise. But Macen Barro's final words had been so bittersweet. He hadn't been abandoned. What did Alec Ryder's final log sound like? SAM offered to replay it and Sara quickly declined.

Cora took a step back, the vast nothingness of space promising to swallow her whole from where it peeked through the damaged hull. "Tiamna used to mean, 'guardian of the temples,'" she murmured softly. "A champion who stayed faithful even when all was lost. Sarissa left her to die."

"Sarissa was forced to choose between her Pathfinder and her ark." Sara's tongue felt heavy and numb inside her mouth. Unsure of the answer Cora was looking for, she fell back on her AI's analysis. "She made the right call."

Cora's body was rigid in an instant. "Look around you!" She swung an angry hand at the whole of the observation deck, and Sara instinctively jumped back, almost anticipating the blue flare of eezo to follow. "Does this look like the right call? Damn it all, Ryder! What do I do?"

"What I mean, is that according to SAM-"

"No, I didn't ask what SAM would do- what would Sara Ryder do?"

"I don't know," Sara admitted. "I don't think I could have made the choice that Sarissa did. SAM tells me that's wrong. If she'd fought alongside Ishara, finding abandoned dolls would be the least of our worries. The Moshae said I'd made the wrong choice at the Voeld facility, too. But how am I supposed to deny those in front of me for the sake of the hypothetical more?"

It was a lot to confess all at once. A weight seemingly lifted and Sara could breathe easier even as she felt small, stretched out and clawing at the endless universe. Maybe she had been sitting on that longer than she'd realized.

Cora stood quiet as she absorbed all that. When she was confident there was no more, she jerked away from Sara. "I didn't want rhetorical ponderings, I wanted answers."

So, Sara had chosen poorly again. She stood there, her mouth agape, but was relieved of any spiraling awkwardness by the snap of the frequency on their omni tools. "Atandra here. The kett blindsided us. There's a dropship headed straight to deck twelve!"

"How soon til FTL?" Sara asked.

"Too long. Sarissa's on her way."

Oh, good. What more could possibly go wrong?

With the mass effect device disabled, pieces of the damaged hull were sloughing away to reveal a sizable hole left by some kind of cannon. Why look for a docking bay, Sara supposed, if you could just make an entry point wherever you felt like? Maybe they'd luck out and the ship enroute would simply crash through the nearly invisible glass of the observation deck instead of safely maneuvering through the hole? Would that be better or worse?

Cora spared a look at the hole, darkened by the impending shadow of a kett ship, before she spun on Sara. "I want you in cover, now." she demanded. "As far away from that hole as you can get with SAM still being able to assess our situation."

"I'm not entirely helpless-"

"I am not losing our Pathfinder on account of this shit show," the lieutenant snarled. "And I am not asking. So, you move your ass or I will move it for you."

Peebee said nothing and SAM agreed with Cora. As much as she wanted, Sara had to admit now was not the time to compare whose pee pee was bigger when kett were literally going to start raining down on their heads. So she nodded grudgingly and looked for a sturdy place to bunker down.

"Peebee!" Cora barked

"What do you need?" the asari wanted to know.

"Depends," Cora said, her face to the hole in the hull. "What can you do?"

"A little of this and that," Peebee replied. "A lot of hit 'em quick and hard, then run."

Cora nodded. "That works. Okay, hit as many as you can, quickly and hard enough to make sure they don't get inside. I'll try to put up a shield big enough to block the hole."

"All right..." Peebee didn't sound entirely confident about the situation.

Sara couldn't blame her. It looked simple at first, with Peebee blasting the first few kett with eezo, upsetting their trajectory and letting them spiral endlessly as forgotten space debris. But that was when it was only the preliminary scouts. Kett began to drop in such numbers that they blotted out the external ship lighting. There was no way a single asari could pick them all off. Cora's shields would have to be as good as Peebee said if they were to cover such a huge diameter and withstand the weight of that many bodies.

Cora wavered and dropped to one knee. It had Sara eyeballing her pistol and SAM questioning why she was giggling when her vitals showed her to be anything but amused.

"Do not let them board." Sarissa Theris in full gear hurried past the doorframe Sara had chosen to huddle at.

"That was our sentiment as well, ma'am," Cora ground out, her arms quaking beneath the strain. The shield sparked out at the center and kett began to plummet through.

"Incoming!" Peebee hollared.

"Then I suggest you shoot them," Sarissa ordered her coldly. The asari Pathfinder ignored the kett dropping from above and dashed over to the center of the observation deck. She placed a hand on Cora's shoulder and declared, "There's still a chance!"

Sarissa Theris braced herself and dug deep, a new shield lifting from her capable hands and spreading outward to patch Cora's ailing defenses. Even the famed and renowned asari huntress grunted and appeared to struggle with the number of kett clumped atop the barrier, but her reinforced shielding held up well enough. For the moment, at least.

Peebee continued to blast the kett who'd fallen through Cora's shield, shooting those within range with a pistol and expending the rest of her biotics on those too far away. As she did so, spinning and glowing, Sara sat crouched at her doorframe, and bemoaned her own uselessness.

From the ground, Cora panted and tried to regain her composure. They didn't need to win, Sara understood that, they just had to hold off the onslaught long enough to escape. Still, with SAM patched into the Leusinia's systems, she knew it didn't matter if the drive core was 99 point whatever, if it wasn't one hundred percent, they weren't going anywhere.

The kett must have realized that, too. Despite having an entire platoon's worth of troops smashed against a shield barrier, SAM started singing alerts of the dropship's cannons powering up.

"The ship's going to open fire on us!" Sara exclaimed.

Sarissa yanked Cora to her feet. "Lieutenant- please!"

Cora stumbled, but readied her stance. Whatever hidden reserve the lieutenant may have had, was pulled on as she combined her biotics with the asari Pathfinder's to create a larger, stronger barrier. Under Sarissa's guidance, the two pushed it out, away from the Leusinia and directly into the path of the dropship as it erupted in cannon fire. The kickback of the weapons ricocheting off the shield slammed into the enemy ship and space lit up in a fiery blaze.

SAM said the words she was hoping to hear, so Sara busied herself by screaming into her omni tool, "Captain, get us out of here!"

"Punching it- hold on!"

Sara scrambled to her feet as Peebee shot out through the door and toward the tram as fast as her feet would carry her. On her heels was Sarissa, practically dragging an exhausted Cora along. Sara slung one of the lieutenant's arms around her shoulder to help and got pulled into Sarissa's momentum.

"I'm fine," Cora protested.

"Yeah," Sara quickly agreed. "Just consider this a victory parade."

Not to say the observation deck wouldn't be fine under the stress of FTL, but it was always wise to seek shelter deeper within a ship where the gravity and pressures were more stable. Once they heard the engines shift and the air change as the Leusinia made the jump, they slowed their pace toward the monorail.

The ride up to the bridge was a silent one. The ark seemed abuzz with life now that the drive core had enough juice to activate slightly more than just emergency systems. Cora used the time to sit boneless on a tram bench. It was hard to tell if she was deep in thought, or just tired and in pain as she kneaded the site of her L3 biotic implants over and over. Sarissa sat stiff and straight backed, determined to not show any weakness.

In the time it took them to reach the bridge, Vederia had been thawing out essential personnel to assist Captain Atandra. An engineer, a navigator... enough to steer the ark toward the Nexus- presumably after Vederia and Sarissa had finished combing the Leusinia for any remaining kett or suspicious devices.

Cora had come to her senses by that point. After a brief glance out of the captain's viewscreen, she wandered back to Peebee and Sara. "A skeleton crew, but enough to patch up the ark," Cora muttered. "She'll make it to the Nexus. Whatever it cost."

Sara followed Cora's gaze, hoping it wouldn't land on the back of Sarissa Theris's head, but given the lieutenant's narrowed eyes, Sara knew she wasn't going to be that lucky. "Cora," she began. "we weren't there. We have no idea what-"

"We didn't have to be," Cora snapped. "We heard the entire succession!"

Sarissa must have sensed their gossip. With a few muted words to her crew, she turned and walked toward Sara's squad, her arms tucked behind her back.

"I wanted to thank you both," she said. "That was exemplary work. I'm proud to-"

"Ma'am- " Cora interrupted. She paused to gather her thoughts, before continuing on in a clipped tone. "Sarissa. We know about Ishara."

The asari pursed her lips. "The log survived? Then her final moments won't be lost."

"Her final-?" Cora's face flushed pink. "You deserted your Pathfinder! You should be better than-"

"I chose to protect all these people over a single life." Sarissa's response was cold, automatic and sounded as rote as if she'd been reporting on the weather. "The choice they train us to make, Lieutenant."

"But you didn't tell anyone," Cora insisted. "Because then you wouldn't be their shining hero. And maybe that's how it should be."

"Being a Pathfinder means giving them hope." Sarissa raised a questioning brow. Her tone had maintained its even calm, but she seemed to have run out of textbook phrases to feed them. "Ryder, you know this, don't you?"

What she was asking for felt wrong. Slimy and uncomfortable in Sara's guts, but maybe Sara had to start looking beyond her own feelings to see the bigger picture. They needed strength and unity to survive. Ideals had a sneaky way of fracturing the masses.

Future generations would have the luxury of damning them if they ensured a path that allowed for future generations. Why did that sound more like Alec than Sara in her head? Sara shook it off. "It's over," she sighed. "Bringing up what happened won't do any good."

Cora looked at her slackjawed. "Is that justice?"

"Is that for you to decide?" Interesting how Sarissa Theris could make a hypothetical sound like a threat. She gave them a polite smile and turned her attention to Captain Atandra approaching.

"Sorry," Atandra said. "But we need to prep for the Nexus approach. We've got a hell of a story for them."

Cora grimaced, but then stuck her chin up, steeling herself. "You should know...there's more."

"Cora!" Sara hissed.

Cora didn't even give her the courtesy of an apologetic glance; her mind was made up. "Sarissa chose retrieving the kett data over saving Ishara's life. Our SAM found the succession log."

"You..." Atandra spun on Sarissa, the captain's dark eyes narrowed to points. "One of your harebrained ideas got Ishara killed?"

"The kett killed her," Sarissa replied, staring the captain down. "I had to be sure the ark could escape them."

"And we did!" Weeks of pent up frustration and exhaustion spilled over in Atandra's hoarse voice. "Again and again while they hunted us down! It's only dumb luck these humans found us!" Her head snapped to the sparse crew as she demanded, "Who's next in line?"

The small clump of asari stared at one another. Hesitantly, the young commando with pale blue skin and lavender markings raised a hand.

"Vederia?" Atandra realized, though any incredulity seemed to be overruled by her disgust with Sarissa. "Maybe a Pathfinder with some humility can do better. You can look to Ryder's example."

"If you want my professional take," Sara ground out with a glare aimed at Cora, "I'd keep Sarissa where she is."

"You can't be serious," the captain scoffed.

"You already have your humble Pathfinder." Sara gave a flourish toward herself, before pointing directly at Sarissa. "We need someone like her."

Whatever tirade Atandra had planned was derailed into silence. Cora's icy disbelief wasn't enough to propel the captain further when there were dissenting voices. She looked from Sara to Sarissa who had moved to back the human Pathfinder after her glowing commendation, before Atandra settled on glowering furiously.

She pointed her finger at both Pathfinders. "But if she lets her people down again-"

"I'll do my job, Atandra," Sarissa said hotly. A breath later, she had regained her composure. "And I'll take the consequences."

Instead of saying anything, Atandra made a disgusted noise and stormed back to the bridge controls.

Sarissa paused for a few beats, waiting until Atandra was a safe distance before glancing at Cora. "I don't pretend to know what you're thinking," she said. "But... maybe they'll understand. And forgive."

"You can survive without forgiveness." Cora replied. "They train us for that, too." With her hands behind her back and gaze steadfastly anywhere but Sarissa's, Sara couldn't decide if the lieutenant was demonstrating to them what she felt was the poise necessary for leadership, or if she was merely fending off her impending breakdown until she could reach her quarters. As Sara stood pondering that, Cora strode past them both and exited the bridge.