All the Stars

by BlueWay

When the Long Night of Solace is evaporated over Reach via the weaponized usage of a Slipspace Drive, it ferries with it in its swallowed sections the Covenant Empire and, more horrifyingly, the desperate measures that the UNSC used to fight them. When they are found in a universe on the precipice of their own history, the meaning of the term "Mass Effect" will change forever.

16. 1-9: Fundamentals

A/N: A glimpse into the day to day life of the Normandys as I have planned. For me JD is easy to write this through because he is, relatively, normal, but fear not I'll follow Shepard around on her rounds soon enough.

Anyway, review responses. Also don't worry if I don't answer, if I don't highlight yours it's simply because I can't highlight them or answer them without detracting from the story.

FlackAttack said:

I would be interesting if there were any survivors aboard the Savannah in a cryo-chamber. Even more interesting if that survivor was a member of ONI.

It certainly is an interesting thought, but as I've established I don't think I'll have any more people from the Halo universe come over. JD and Mai are worth the world enough, in exploring a Halo/Mass Effect crossover, along with the Covenant. I do have plans though, completely bat shit crazy ones that will justify this story's existence beyond a character study.

Yeah just one review response today, because you all are raising some very interesting points that you should very much be holding onto, going forward. That and thank you for all the kind words! Means a bunch, and I hope what we have here today gives you some relaxation today.

No omake today. Not one worth a dime that is.

One of my intentions with this chapter is to explore things I think that should've been elaborated, in ME1, and I'm going to do that a bit. You'll see, in this chapter, a large part of it focusing on Tali and how I'd imagine that she was brought up to speed to fight on the level of Shepard and the rest of the crew. This also isn't just a cute bonding moment between the crew, if you take it as that. This is a consequence of Mai and JD being present: The Tali we'll see at the end of this all, because of it, might be fairly reflective of what world JD and Mai came from.

I think two call forwards today? Yeah, just two if you don't count Ryder. And, don't worry, I won't be mentioning his name too much after this until, well, he's actually relevant again. And he will be. This is also a story of my attempt in bringing all of Mass Effect together. I know, real big project. We're a few hundred thousand words deep and we just hit Liara.

---

Section 1-9

Fundamentals

---

For one of the finest Spectres to be hosted in a hospital named after a human, it was controversial, yes, but then again Huerta Memorial Hospital had literally been the newest one on the Citadel with all the newest medical implements. It hadn't hurt that the Alliance had volunteered to foot the dime of Nihlus's treatment, but still there was some ill-meaning behind him being posted there.

He had become Huerta's first patient. With any luck, he wouldn't be its first death.

So he laid there, a stump of a Turian, arms and legs amputated, skin burnt down to a black that only was seen in nightmares. He was the shape of a man, and yet barely that now, in his chamber in Huerta's Burn Center.

Councilor Sparatus had gone to him, almost immediately after he had arrived on the Normandy, witness to all manner of medical equipment getting shoved into him, burnt skin and metal being torn off his skin. It was a mercy he was comatose.

After their deliberations and crowning of Shepard as the next Spectre, making Saren an outlaw like the galaxy had never seen, he had returned to Nihlus. A mask had been around his mouth, helping him breath, the very, very slight ebb of his chest denoting that he did have breath, as much as he did look like a corpse.

The doctors told him that no one would know when he would emerge, if at all, but that was to be expected. That type of trauma he endured, to be alive was a miracle unto itself. Still, if he had awakened, he could verify the events of the mission on Eden Prime beyond anyone else.

Still, it was no easier than talking to a dead man. Perhaps, one day, the galaxy might've been able to raise the dead, but that was not that day, the second-best option hovering as an option in his datapad.

"I thought the very fact he was researching this was enough to cast him asides in even his own military." One of the surgeons had read the procedure that Sparatus was waiting to clear.

"It was close enough," Sparatus admitted as he looked over the technobabble name: Simulated Adaptive Matrix. "Enough for us to stop it. But there was merit in keeping the research."

An entire team was needed, twenty surgeons and doctors of various stripes. Asari, Turian, Salarian, and human. All needed to go into Nihlus's brain and set something straight, and leave something behind.

"It's a shame Dr. Ryder can't be here to help observe us." Spoke a Salarian doctor. "If anything happens we could at least blame her."

The joke was in poor taste, the doctors that knew cringed. The woman was already three-ways dead, but still, there was something more:

"I believe that family has been blamed enough. Especially if this goes through." With a swipe of his finger the records of what was to happen in Huerta that day was to be sealed, and the orders of those surgeons approved. "Proceed."

In another universe, another story, another proceeding of events in that galaxy, one of the human doctors in that room that would carry out the procedure would become one of the doctors on Project Lazarus. Project Lazarus, as carried out by Cerberus, would never quite carry out the same way as anticipated, however this was something close. Close enough to entertain the idea of reaching beyond the flatline and playing god with life.

As the doctors filed past Sparatus, looking through the outside viewing glass, he remembered Shepard's words and why, she thought, Nihlus had become like this:

It was a temptation to be God.

---

The life of being an ODST was one of action. There was hardly a moment of true rest on deployment, if it hadn't been, at least for JD, skirting along Covenant territory or planet's currently under siege and dropping in. All the time spent in between those drops had been in preparations for those drops. From 0600 to around again, the preparation of gear, body, and soul had kept many an ODST detachment busy enough to not think about their often-impending deaths. Death was assured in that war, it felt to JD, so he had no business worrying about it while shipside. He could otherwise use his free time to sleep. So that's what he did, first night on the Normandy, underneath a new Skipper.

He felt the electrifying pulses that the stasis pod used to ease its occupants into waking, his eyes fluttering open to see only Kaiden in his own pod, directly across from him. The two of them had overlapped some during their bunk period, but JD would wake up first.

It wasn't the type of sleep he preferred, but he didn't wake up in a bad mood as his mind returned to him and, again, he woke up in that new galaxy. It still wasn't a dream.

No, just his new life as his pressed his palm against the glass and slowly eased his pod open. There was no fresh of breath air, but at least it smelled better than his morning breath that the pod was filled with in the scant few moments it took for him to leave. Sleeping at an angle was new to him, weird, but the pod's ability to put him to sleep was noted. It did it fast enough for him not to mind, and, if it hadn't been there, he could've done so himself anyway.

There was no, particular set schedule which JD had to adhere to. His position on the Normandy was purely as a Naval Liaison, and even that had just been a cover for his original purpose there: to acclimate to Alliance society. What duty he did have, it was for Shepard to decide, away mission to away mission. As for his duty's on the ship? He could find a routine.

For a moment he had almost convinced himself he had been living this life all along as he had groggily made his way toward the mess table, a cup of coffee somehow conjured by him and in his hand as he awaited the dispenser to shoot out whatever pre-packaged meal counted as breakfast.

If this were a UNSC ship he would've been standing at attention at his bunk with those who had shared his shifts, having changed into his duty uniform, waiting for his CO to get them going for the day. Those whose turn it was to sleep properly would hot bunk next.

The Normandy was unfamiliar in this aspect. It was less rigid it seemed, its duties and rituals that spoke for the rest of the Alliance fleet was less militant in a sense. This didn't feel like a warship, JD thought as he grabbed his tray for breakfast. It felt like a voyager, a cruise of adventure, like in the old stories his mother signed to him before bed.

Freedom was afforded to them, by both being onboard the Normandy and, now, Shepard's Spectre status.

They represented Humanity and the Alliance, but they did not exactly fall under their command. It was a breath of air that JD didn't know exactly how to breath, but as he discarded the plastic packaging and the smell of home fries and powdered scrambled eggs came up at him in steam, he figured he could roll with it.

Out from the rest of the sleeper pods, the rest of the Normandy crew that shift, along with a few of her new Marines.

"Chief." A few of them had nodded at him in greetings, uttering his rank. As far as JD knew, they hadn't had a problem with him as much as they did Mai. He was, seemed, relatively normal. JD hoped he was too, if that count for anything, chewing his breakfast down. It was an interesting feeling to not feel rushed at the start of a shift. Normally PT came first, breakfast an afterthought.

A bigger man, just slightly smaller than Mai it felt like, had been one of those Marines come out. The pod barely fit him, his blonde hair cut short, barely differentiating itself from his pale head. Square, it looked hard enough to give his helmet a run for its money for pure protection it seemed. He wiped some drool from the side of his thin mouth, grabbing his breakfast as he settled next to a bald man that JD recognized from Eden Prime. His bald head shone beneath the artificial lights, and he seemed thin. JD knew that he had history with Doctor Chakwas, and that he himself, if his comments were correct, had been a doctor.

The two had joined him across the table.

"Call me Doc," The bald man had initiated forwardly as he took a seat. JD nodded, offering his hand. Simple enough of a name.

"JD." He offered back as the big man offered his own shake. When JD did clasp it he felt the strength needed to shoulder a light machine gun with it.

"Name's Harris." The man finally drowned out in an accent that was not entirely unlike JD's own. The ODST paused for a moment, eyebrow raised. "Brian Harris." The big man clarified.

Harris was a name familiar to JD. It was Dawn's last name. But coincidences were rife in this galaxy. For a moment, he remembered her, and it brought him some serene peace. She was a good woman, good to him at least, but their reasoning for being together was more physical than anything.

Doc started again. "Been a fast few days, but I figure it's about time to make proper introductions." JD nodded in response, going back to his food. He'd been through these motions before. "Didn't catch the big gal around, she already up?"

JD shook his head. "Sleeps downstairs." He said simply. He hadn't spoken to her since they had left the Citadel.

"Ah." Doc nodded. "Just making sure."

It wasn't the pepper that JD had seasoned his eggs with that caused him to cough in his throat. He rose his eyebrow at the man. "It seems this Marine team is very interested in us." The ODST commented, still chewing, one arm lain on the table in a lean.

"Well, you two are very interesting people, naturally." Doc explained. He rose his hands defensively, casually. "According to Emerson and the wisdom of high command that is. I swear we don't got a problem with ya."

JD had shrugged. All that people were were how they carried themselves, what they did and do'd. If they treated him well, if they treated the people he cared for well, they were good people. "I don't got a problem with you." For a moment, the two Marines seemed relieved, but JD didn't stop as he set his utensils down on the table. "But if you've got a problem with Chief Gul, then it becomes my problem."

They were all each other had. Spartan or not, she was still someone who had fought in the same war he had. They were comrades at the very least, regardless of any... wrinkles right now.

Doc furrowed his thin eyebrows at the shock trooper, but he was sincere about it, that much the Marine could tell. "She your friend?"

JD nodded. As far as anyone was concerned.

Harris had landed his large body into one of the chairs; something of a post up, but JD could deal. "Then keep her in line."

JD was a calm man. A measured man. He had been through too much to throw himself into the drama of Marines. ODSTs who would actually see themselves better than other Marines, or lived in the rivalry they had with Spartans. Oorah -factor come full circle as egotistical servicemembers got distracted by human tendencies while fighting something inhuman.

He tried to remember if he'd always been like this. If he was as quiet as he had been nowadays, even growing up. He had friends, he had a childhood that seemed relatively untouched by the Covenant as they fought by distant stars. All his trauma, then, came from that of war, and it only happened after he developed as a man.

It'd been a long time since he was given moments to think of himself and who'd he'd become.

Mai put himself in perspective, he realized.

To Harris, he said nothing. The silence was his answer and both parties knew it as that. The least JD could do was push along the conversation to something less sinister, Marines slowly popping out of the sleeper pods.

JD gestured a finger. "Mind introducing?"

He cared now, because they weren't ODSTs. Or at least, figured the mortality rate of this crew was not to be as high as a UNSC ship in an active war.

Doc nodded, pointing, gesturing at each Marine present, giving names to those there and those already up.

Hitman was a raider company, he explained, recruited and put together from experienced Marine fireteams who had been out there along the Attican as QRF to colonies under siege.

"Our glue is Commander Ryder. We're here because of him, even if we're on loan."

There was an asterisk to the loan. One JD didn't have, but a cringe held within Doc and Harris. They weren't on loan. Ryder was in hot water and due a retirement, so he sent his best to his best student.

JD very much remembered him. Both he and Mai had, when knowing of where Hitman had come from, knew what their intention was here in some sense. As far as he could tell they didn't know that he and Mai had come from beyond their stars, but still saw them as a liability.

A darker man, younger, but with a rather stoic look on his angular face had stepped out of his sleeping pod, ready for the day.

"That there's Emerson," Doc started. "Real sturdy guy. Ryder's XO, and generally our squad leader when the Commander isn't up with us. Basically he was to our commander as to what Kaiden is to Shepard."

The man with the most regard for Mai out of all of them, JD noticed. Emerson craned his head over to the table, giving a nod to Harris, Doc, and his other Marines as they all settled for a quick chow before assuming their duties today. He held his gaze with JD for a touch long though, only, in the end, to give him a nod.

In his memory JD remembered the last time he felt like this among allies: and that was when he was tasked to a frigate that was not so secretly an ONI deployment platform.

The last Marine to emerge from that shift had done so with a hint of grace. Short, chestnut hair, olive skin and an unkind face. "Sergeant Bannon." Harris explained as the woman walked over, her coffee handed to her by a Hitman already awake.

"G' morn." South African. JD pegged the accent immediately from before when he heard her. She spoke to all at the table. "You twos getting all comfy with our resident Spook?"

Doc and Harris rose their hands as if guilty. "Networking, Bannon." Doc answered light heartedly. Bannon had posted up, a boot on a chair next to JD as she leaned in.

"So what's you're emotional baggage mate?" Bannon had sipped her coffee, feet kicked up on the table after transitioning to a sit. "Didn't like Ma or Pa? Bullied at school? Really hate Xenos?"

JD shook his head at all the implications, but he knew what she was getting at. Anyone who became like them had some wires twisted in the head. He couldn't say anything to the contrary after all. His career put him falling out of perfectly good ships in metal coffins. "Like to think I'm normal."

"People in our trade tend to get normal beat outta us, ya?" South Africa dripped from her voice, and it was an accent he recognized well enough. More than few colonies had adopted South African origins. She reminded him of ODSTs from there. Most of those colonies had become the first hit by the Covenant, and thus, those that signed up for the service became the last survivors of their people. With that large a chip on their shoulders, they were more than just soldiers. They were ghosts in the flesh. Bannon had read like that to JD. The echoes of what ODSTs were made of were within these Marines, the only thing that they had been missing was the war: the one that destroyed planets and societies.

These people, these Marines, they seemed comfortable in their roles. That maybe, perhaps, they had their story once. That this wasn't their first adventure out, high stakes and enemy fire defining every battlefield they stepped on.

Then, perhaps, JD realized, he had his own story to tell: the one of his life, kept to silence by secret and black ink.

"Commander on deck." The words from one of the Marines had spurred everyone up and out, Bannon's fiery gaze replaced by order. JD flew up from his seat to a rigid stand, just as he had done all his life it seemed.

Shepard had inherited Anderson's quarters. It was an unexpected move on everyone's accounts, even Shepard, but she took the small things when it came to her. A bed would've been good for her, as was quarters in general. She emerged in her duty uniform, but still, distinctly, with a casual swagger, her red hair in a bun. Alliance regulations must've been different than UNSC, so seeing any sort of hair long enough to be in that style had been jarring to JD. Even his cut right now had been pushing a length he had been unused to. There was a certain properness to her emergence out of her quarters, but it was admittedly offset by the fact of the matter she had tucked a giant bundle of fur underneath her arm.

"At ease." No one wanted to ask where she had gotten a bear rug, but their eyes had all said the same thing as everyone froze expectantly. "Ah this?" she offered, "Just some decoration." No big deal.

It had taken her less than a few seconds to come to the center of the deck, just before the steps of the sleeper pods and unfurled it out.

"Holy shit that was a big fucking bear." Harris seemed impressed.

Admittedly was JD, despite his stone face.

Shepard could shrug in some bravado, obviously putting on some show. "Didn't even bite me." She declared, obviously neglecting to tell them about the claw marks on her leg. It was the truth. Technically.

Like a body it spread out, like a butterfly, its fur washed down and put to a sheen. Nothing more or less for some grandiose presentation that Shepard could point to and say "I killed that."

"I…" Shepard started, putting her feet on its back, "I offered this to the Captain as some sort of gift for passage, like some old sailors in Greece or something, and, well, I guess he never got to see it." There was a sadness, a wistfulness to her words. She really did feel bad for taking the position that belonged to Anderson.

"Sure he would've liked it, ma'am." Doc nodded at Shepard as the rest of awake Hitman agreed, even JD nodded in concert. Some of the more colorful ODSTs and ships he had been with did such things, art projects as an outlet to the primality of warfare.

Shepard tipped her head in agreement as well before regaining the fire in her eyes, regarding her men. "To your duties, I'll be calling a crew meeting in the conference room in an hour."

"Yes ma'am." They all sorted out, leaving JD alone. He had no duties, and it left him alone. Normally, he figured he would've just loitered with Mai, tinkering with gear, reading more reports and documents on the Extranet.

However, things had been tense. Not since she had refused to answer him, locking herself behind her armor, not giving an answer as to why she had filed for transfers without him.

She never answered to anyone in her life that she hadn't been heeded to by command, and in that moment, JD had felt a fear inside of him that he had become the first. What she did was to just turn away. He was never a man to get angry, to get frustrated and to yell, but for the first time in his life he felt that draw, opening his mouth to her back as he reeled himself back in. His father taught him many things, and to control his temper was one of them.

"JD?" The ODST shook himself to full awareness, finding Shepard before him, a coffee of her own in her hand. "Chief Durante?"

"Ma'am." He straightened his form by reflex, but Shepard, with her free hand, waved him down, back into his seat. At that point his breakfast was almost done, but the coffee, not so. Time enough as Shepard observed to have a chat.

The way she had her hair in a bun, it seemed so unlike her JD observed. There was an air of class to it that he didn't expect from her. Then again it was remarked from time to time that even he as a rough and tumble Marine knew how to clean up if given a suit. On a ship this small he figured getting used to interacting with the Captain was going to be a day to day thing.

Shepard expected nothing less as she spoke to him that morning.

"Do you need anything? Before we hit the Attican, we're going to be stopping in Argos Rho for fuel and provisions. I know how you Navy SOF are different, so just say." JD nodded appreciatively, but he had nothing. "Anything at all." Shepard saw through his want to not even bother her.

He thought silence would've been an answer enough, but Shepard had sat there, a smirk on her face as she sipped coffee, staring right at JD as he tried to ignore that fact. He didn't get three more sips in.

"Fine." JD relented with a breath. "Some good actual comforters. Bedding and all that."

Shepard raised an eyebrow. "Aren't you in a pod?" For a moment JD thought Shepard meant something else, but knew better as he shook his head.

"For Ma- For Chief Gul, ma'am."

"Ah. So she does sleep down there?" He nodded. "Must be rough, woman of her stature not being able to fit in the sleeping pods… but yeah. Okay. I can do that Chief Durante." She lingered on him for a moment, the man unused to such a gaze as Shepard's. Perhaps now he knew what Mai spoke of with Shepard and how she looked into someone.

"Ma'am?"

"Do you know Chief Gul personally?" Shepard asked upfront, motioning for him to sit with her at the table, he did, returning to his breakfast.

"I've operated before with her, ma'am. We're acquaintances."

"Hm." Shepard nodded, glancing back at the bear and how it sat. She was pleased with herself, taking a sip of her coffee. "Still, asking about you Durante, if you need anything."

Again JD shook his head. "Nothing I can't order myself ma'am."

"Just Shepard, Chief Durante." She reminded him kindly. "I don't know who you're last CO was, but I guarantee you my ass isn't that hard."

He shrugged. "I believe you."

"I mean, I'd like you to find out." Maybe it was because of the coffee but JD had blinked at that. Huh? "So I'm serious, if I find out you need some small little stupid thing, later on, I'll send you an entire crate of it."

A dare. There was an ODST unit out there he knew of that had been raised in Britain: the descendants of the Special Air Service. The 22nd SAS. Their motto had been something he thought could've been the motto of every ODST out there, but they had kept it in-house: Who Dares, Wins. So if there was a dare there by Shepard he could only play ball, feeling in his front packet for a box, thrown on the table.

Shepard rose her eyebrow in interest as the slightly bent box landed on the table, JD nodding. "A smoker eh?" The ODST nodded somewhat shamefully. "Uh, sure, yeah. I'll see if I can get any good ones." Shepard's eyes darted back and forth, trying to dig in her memory. "I'm not a smoker but uh, I guess I'll learn?"

"Habit." JD said simply.

Shepard shook her head. "I won't get on your ass about it, unless you start hacking up in the middle of combat." He hadn't that problem yet, last he remembered. He had more problem with intermittent grogginess, but again sleep was his peace in this world. It'd made sense he had a draw to it.

"Thank you, Shepard."

"Anytime." She smiled at him kindly. "I should go. See you in a bit Chief Durante."

Pocketing his smokes, JD had watched Shepard leave up into the flight and command deck. The feeling that this deployment was going to be a long one setting in as he reached the bottom of his coffee.

---

Tali was tolerable. She was small, almost rickety, and had the mannerisms of someone far younger. Someone who had no right to be on that ship. Mai's shadow alone had covered Tali's form when the Quarian made the rounds and awkwardly introduced herself to the immediate crew around her. Hitman had been kind enough, recognizing an awkward coming-of-age adult far past any inherent anti-alien sentiment they might've harbored. Any anti-alien sentiment they might've had was far eclipsed by Mai's own. Mai saw no threat in Tali, as long as she didn't glance at her legs or hands and saw similarities in a species that seemed so unlike the Quarians.

Sangheili and Quarians, they were one and the same in some aspect, and for that, Mai had to have some regard of Tali. Maybe she could've learned something by corollary.

Garrus had been a touch more difficult for Mai to come to terms with as he had also boarded, setting up a bunk on the far corner of the hanger, away from Mai and the Mako. She concentrated on the Turians the most in her readings on Earth, forced herself to recognize not as Covenant. In her head the teachings of Onyx taught her anyone that hadn't been human was a hostile, and even then there were exceptions in the shape of the Insurrection. The way his beady eyes scanned the bay, the gait of a soldier within him as he strode around and set up, locking eyes with her in glances, his mandibles moving in response as if to say something.

Every time she saw his mouth plates move her own jaw would lock up.

How JD and him had seemed to recognize each other well enough she wouldn't know, but as long as he kept a hand off a gun while on the Normandy she suppose she could deal with it.

It was the Krogan that had tested her the most.

Tested the entire Normandy that is, to be fair to Mai.

Maybe if Jorge had been in her place, if he had set off the Slipspace bomb and ended up on the Normandy, the Krogan known as Urdonot Wrex might've gotten along well with him. They both seemed cut from the same cloth: soldiers who had lived for far too long.

Unfortunately, Mai hadn't been Jorge, and instead Wrex had found the only female in the galaxy just short of an Asari Matriarch that just on first impressions was worth a fight.

Inwardly Wrex thought that Shepard, if given enough time, would've been a competent foe, but if he came swinging at a moment's notice, the only person on the Normandy he thought would've stood a chance was this strange beast of a human.

She wasn't in a good mood when JD had left her, and she had left him with no real answer as to why she wanted to transfer away. She would've said that she would've also requested him to be brought with her, but she was not used to lying.

Having this oversized frog before her didn't help any as he first came down, dropped a dusty rucksack in a place he had claimed as his own, and immediately came to her, slowly, methodically, chest to chest. His face came up to her chest anyway, his face craned up to see her, to look for a face behind her helmet.

"I've lived for 1500 years, human. I've seen my very people whittle away and empires rise and fall in a blink of an eye. I've been the very edge of the galaxy and just short of going through the Omega Relay. In a hundred wars and a million battles, I think you're the first time I've had any intrigue in something as squishy as your species… Asides from Shepard of course."

Mai had been reading up on the Krogan on her omni, nothing for her to do until Wrex had appeared out of the corner and looking into her abode, nestled between Mako and wall. She had wisely came out more into the open when he approached. Everywhere Marine and crew member had looked at the two giants as they spoke.

"What do you want?" She spoke harshly. Wrex only grinned at that fire.

"You could fight me."

Mai furrowed her eyes behind her visor. "Do you want to?"

"Yes." They weren't speaking any louder than they needed to, but Wrex's answer silenced the entire hanger. Tali had been in engineering, and Garrus had been still sorting out his accommodations, but even then the Turian had stopped everything and looked over. As a cop he was born to be nosy.

"I won't."

"Why not?" Wrex said breathily, eyeing the two knives on her form.

"You wouldn't like what happens."

Wrex smiled and turned away, out into the center of the bay. "I told you human, I've lived over a millennia, maybe I want a die. You'd be doing me a favor. Besides, wouldn't you like to have the fight of your life?"

The boasting bellows of a beast was something she was unfamiliar with in aliens. Even the Sangheili, the Elites, in what little faith and magic they practiced out on the battlefield, their ego was spiritual in nature. Not down to earth, not in laymen's terms.

"You're on the Normandy for a reason." Mai had spoken out, glancing over at the Marines of Hitman. Some of them clearly wanted them to fight. They wanted a spectacle. "I won't fight you."

"What if I attacked you?"

In her mind flashed a hundred different ways to kill a Krogan. She remembered stepping through the skull of one back at Chora's Den, and she figured, if this one did attack her, she'd do it at least a little more cleanly. Adams had no business cleaning grey matter from the floor.

She said nothing, her form still as she and Wrex stared at each other behind pretenses.

This was the reason she asked to be transferred.

"Fucking love Shepard if this is the type of shit we're a part of." A Hitman had chuckled to another as they worked on their gear near the lockers. The Krogan and the Spartan twisted their heads at the speaker.

"Hmph. I guess I could take care of the welp first, if you'd like." Wrex spoke to Mai, observing the Marines as they suddenly shrunk beneath both their gazes.

Again, she had no answer, turning away and back to her corner.

She knew it was a reality of her new life that she would have to treat aliens with some modicum of respect, for they deserved no hatred from her that hadn't been born out of her training, her previous life. But to have them serving on the same crew as her so soon? The sensibilities of Shepard seemed maddening to her.

Maddening enough that when she heard her voice in the air, she thought herself actually mad.

It wasn't so however.

Just the intercom.

"This is Commander Shepard. All field teams and non-essential personnel to the comm room. Briefings for our current deployment will be given. I repeat all field op personnel and non-essential crewmen to the comm room. This includes our guests."

---

The smell of Marines, a small platoon, squeezing into the comm room had always been an interesting experience. The only one that would've been unfamiliar though was Tali, and she had her suit filters as she nervously walked in amidst the crowd of humans.

"School circle, ladies and gents. No need to be squeamish." Kaiden had riled them all around the comm room, sitting on railings, the floor, and what seats there had been. All with Shepard herself leaning on the holo projector console, waiting for everyone there to get settled, her coffee still in her hand.

To JD, walking in, he looked like a department captain at the beginning of the shift, gathering everyone together and talking of the agendas and wanted that day. He had sat in on a few in his youth, and so he felt comfortable going to Ashley, she having found a chair in that circular chamber and standing by her.

"Chief Durante."

"Just JD." He greeted her back.

"Helluva team we got here." She commented, her elbow tapping his hip as if he hadn't noticed. Indeed, he had. They all looked cut from the same cloth he had, if that had made sense to her. The electricity that existed in the air that came out from people who knew how to kill, so close to each other. Tension radiated from each body, ranging from comfortable to professional as the Hitmen all settled in against what little of the Normandy's original Marine complement remained and her crew not flying the ship.

"Joker?" Shepard spoke into her omni, "You also tuned?"

"Wouldn't miss the ice breakers, ma'am."

Shepard shook her head in a chuckle. "No such luck, lieutenant."

With her speaking what little chatter there was eased out, only to fully stamp out as one of the two odd ones out on the ship had stepped in. Garrus and Tali had already found their places, being offered seats by Shepard, they going for them uneasily, but slowly. What remained had been the red shadow in the shape of a monster:

Wrex had come in through the door, arms crossed, silent, keeping to the back as he locked eyes with the commander.

"Shepard."

"Wrex." The commander acknowledged in a nod, seeing the obvious last one in. She had to have been the last one in, it was the only pretense that she would've done.

Her boots made the metal clacks against the steel floor as the door finally closed them all in, her black visor seemingly sucking in the light as her form was barely seen in its grey paint. She stared straight ahead, away from Wrex, not even locking eyes with her compatriot.

"Chief Gul."

"Ma'am." Mai's voice rung out.

"Okay then, let's get started." Shepard pushed herself off the console, hands rubbing themselves as she scanned the entire crowd. She expected to see the crew like this at first, not in the bay preparing for a drop on Eden Prime, so she was pleased with herself in some small part. "I'm not going to lie to you. I don't feel good having the position I do, knowing Captain Anderson had to give it up."

Kaiden returned to his own seat, speaking for the mass. "Should be no trouble at all ma'am. If Anderson trusted you, we should too. Am I right Marines?"

"Oorah." The answer rung out in the group. It wouldn't be an issue. Not with Shepard.

She smiled at them all brightly. "Thank you." Turning over back to the console she had thrown up a map of the galaxy on the same screen she had bore witness to Eden Prime's attack on. "Now your op orders for the deployment on the Normandy is generally pretty vague. In fact if I remember correctly the language isn't much different than security detail. Now men and women of our pay-grade I can say, respectfully, aren't usually in those duties."

"Well ma'am, our CO usually isn't a Spectre." Emerson made his comment as he stood, arms behind himself.

Shepard paused as stepped back from the screen, taking it in and nodding. "Spectres usually don't have fireteams so I hear, so we're all just winging it." A few eyebrows raised, those with enough confidence or experience to make up op orders on the fly in the field had taken it in stride. "It's not like they gave me a guide for being one." Her coffee steamed at her chin, eyes furrowing at the galaxy map being put up.

The sergeant had kicked around his legs a bit, stretching, trying to find his stride with a new CO while not being XO. He was a little strung up tight JD noticed. "Being honest ma'am, Ryder didn't exactly operate with guidelines even if we had one."

Shepard sighed in some fondness. The Old Man taught her well, and she was thankful for it. For him to come around after all this time in the form of his raiders it was a comfort. For a large portion of her life Ryder had become that father figure for her instead of her actual father. Times had changed, her moody, edgy, dysfunctional family life had been righted with her own flesh and blood and she had decidedly made her peace with it. Still, he enjoyed his presence in some form.

"Well, if you want guidelines here, your op orders are in support of the Normandy and its CO." Some of the Marines shrugged, simple enough. "As for my Op Orders as a Spectre, well, for all the pomp of that speech I gave, it remains. We need to take down Saren and his operation. Piece by piece. This ain't even really for the Council. Eden Prime was hit and we need to bring him to justice."

She sipped as the men and women around her nodded and agreed.

"So are we acting in an SOF capacity?" Ashley asked up from her seat, excited almost, expecting.

There was a badge on Shepard's BDU, in combat, of the rank and caliber of her: N7. They were special forces. Of the highest caliber, and rarely had Shepard acted in that capacity fully.

With one nod, and a sip, Shepard affirmed. Some knuckles were touched and arm pumps had. SOF meant dirty, and Marines knew wet, wild, and dirty. Even Kaiden had his smirk, and the atmosphere was something Wrex could appreciate in his own snort. Tali however, she shrunk. What had she gotten herself into?

"We had a few leads, going out here." Shepard presented them on the holographic. "All of them in the Attican."

"Where we get them from?" Kaiden chinned up. "Council intel?"

Shepard shook her head. "Udina. We're getting Alliance intel boys out there as well with us, chasing any other leads, but as far as the Council is concerned we're the tip of the spear when it comes to this."

"Any other support? Human or otherwise?" Ashley asked, leaning in from her seat.

Shepard nodded. "We have other Spectres out there but none have the force deployment I do with the Normandy. Don't know who they are or where they be, but I just know they're out there. Asides from that, well, look to the men and women to your sides, because that's all we got."

What that meant: a crewed ship, and only its Marine complement. Just shy of sixty or so people. Most of them had been there, or, at least, the ground pounders.

"Ma'am?"

"Alliance Fleet can't follow us, too much at risk, and Saren would know we're coming." Shepard nodded to herself. "But it's alright. This is the perfect size. With an N7-rated complement and my own, we can clear systems fast."

"Ma'am," Emerson started. "We're tasked with an AO that is literally half the galaxy. And we're all that we got?"

Shepard huffed her own amusement. "I know, lucky, right?" Emerson shook his head but said nothing of it. High Command often had their infinite wisdom. "Not gonna lie to you, we're going outside the lines with this. The fact we got our guests here should be enough to dignify that." Shepard had her hands at her hips, gesturing at Garrus, Tali and Wrex, looking at the map of the galaxy. "If you want to get creative during our deployment here, get creative, just ring it up with either Kaiden, and then me first. If Saren's going to play dirty, we're gonna show him dirty, Oorah?"

"Oorah."

Shepard nodded proudly; the chant recited by all. Even JD, if only because of the group mentality. "As always, abide by OPSEC. Anything that happens in this deployment is under Yankee-White classification. Unfortunately the Galaxy knows what we're doing, but not how. Any ports we end up at, stay low profile, and assume security at all times. If this drags on long enough for a short shore leave, we'll be either back at Earth or the Citadel. We're in the shits now people, and because of that, I need your help. I may be a commander, but I need my ship behind me."

And they were. Every man and woman. From that galaxy and beyond.

A resounding "Oorah" broke through, and Wrex seemed amused as Garrus felt right at home in the military aura.

"Now our leads…" One at a time. "I'm gonna need some input on which one we pursue first, so here they are."

On the holographic display information was put up, blazing fast. Shepard had singled out a planet first.

"Feros is a colony out there in the Attican. Pretty much the furthest human colony that exists right now. Small, but it means something to Colonial Authority." Shepard grimaced a bit, taking a harsh sip of her coffee. Her years of being part of a QRF for colonies had made her bitter about the relative lack of security they had. "Being this far out, there ain't much in the way of official support we can give them."

"What's special about it?" Ashley asked.

Shepard nodded at her question. "We lost contact a few hours after Eden Prime. What little comms went out spoke to a Geth attack. And, as far as we can tell, this is the only planet they've hit. That must mean something."

"Hell!" Ashley spoke out. "If a colony is under attack right now we need to go to it!"

"Easy there, Williams. It's a raid, not an invasion. Last we heard colonial authorities were holding out as long as they avoided the Geth. So they have time. We're gonna get there but we have other time sensitive objectives." Shepard spoke business and Ashley detested it.

"But ma'am." Ashley protested. "Human lives are in danger."

Again, Shepard sipped her coffee, cringing. If she were in Ashley's shoes she would've been saying the same. "I know that very well, Chief Williams. But the life of the galaxy is as well. If I had not been tasked on anything else you bet your ass I'd be halfway there right now, but this is more important than human interests right now."

"Ma'am-"

"Chief Williams. Hear me out." Ashley went to speak again but a hand gesture from Kaiden waived her down. "As we heard in the intelligence Tali'Zorah was able to extract from a Geth core, another one of Saren's allies in the Matriarch Benezia. I don't know how well versed in Asari society we all are, but the fact she's a Matriarch means something."

"Yeah? What? She own a public access show and teaches knitting?" A Hitman had joked aloud.

Shepard knew better. "Benezia is a Matriarch in the Asari. It means she lived a long life-"

"Longer than me." Wrex spoke bluntly, affirming. "Some of my toughest kills were the like."

"Know anything Wrex?" Shepard pointed her finger. "Asides from the fact that most of them are near a millennia old and are the backbone of Asari society."

He shrugged. "Nothing specifically. All I know she's a Varren's bitch if I knew one ever."

A few laughs which Shepard let ride until she returned to her point. "Anyway. Word on the street is that she's got a cult of her own within Asari society and went dark a few months ago publicly. Fact that Tali's Geth core states that she's been working with Saren puts her out there with him for that long."

"She an HVT or a VIP?" Emerson asked again. Always so focused on the mission, JD felt. He wasn't that different from Mai it seemed.

"Depends how we catch her." Shepard said, throwing up a few images on the screen. "But in order to even entertain that thought, we gotta get in contact with this lady right here, see if she knows how to track her down."

She was young, JD noticed. Not much older than a twenty-year-old human woman. There was youth in her face that had been absent in their own galaxy. Even eighteen-year-olds that joined the service like him had lost it as they became coherent of the galaxy and the Covenant. Innocence.

"Liara T'soni. Daughter of Matriarch Benezia." A few of the Hitmen went quiet, something that JD and Mai had been particularly aware about as they saw familiarity on their faces. Shepard caught it as well. "Hitman?" She spoke the name of the Marines.

Bannon had ruffled the back of her head, admitting the fact hidden in plain sight. "Dr. T'Soni's a friend of Commander Ryder. Or, at least, an acquaintance. When Sara was around she often spoke of her reports in comparison to her own."

JD's face had been in some perplexion, Shepard looked at him to ask it. Mai spoke up first though, the entire room turning to her. "Ma'am. Commander Ryder awfully seems related to what we've been doing nowadays, especially since his team's here. Are we getting any official support from him?" It was a long-winded way to say it felt like the man was breathing down his neck.

Shepard's face soured. "Commander Ryder is being tried on grounds of AI research, Chief Gul." JD and Mai blinked in surprise. They hadn't known. "I doubt he'll be out here with us."

Tali had twitched almost at the mention of AI research. There had been one word for AI in Quarian, and in her ear as the translator played it back, it read again of "Geth".

"Anyway. Dr. T'Soni's currently on Therum, a mining colony not that far away from core Alliance space. We haven't been able to raise her or anyone at the colony, so we're obliged to go pick her up, see if she knows anything."

"Dead or alive?" Wrex muttered.

Shepard narrowed her eyes at the Krogan. "She's someone we need, Wrex. Not a bounty."

The Krogan snorted. "If she's at all in leagues with the Matriarch, well, dead might be better."

Perhaps. It was a thought Shepard considered. "Last planet," Shepard pointed again to the galaxy, "Is Noveria. Private charter colony in the Horse Head Nebula." Largely, the Attican on Galactic South East had been familiar to Mai. It had been the place of the Outer Colonies. She'd been to Noveria before. In her galaxy, if she remembered correctly, it had been named Gorgon Secundus. The Insurrection had a ground level shipyard hidden away in its frozen wastes. The fact that JD had been out here again, there was a sense of freedom that he hadn't felt. The Outer Colonies had been a no man's land as the war went on, and to see it now in relative peace, it gave him ideas of what the galaxy could've been.

"Private charter ma'am?" The ODST asked.

"Yeah. Privately colonized by big business conglomerates. I don't agree with it, but going private has its merits. Especially if the Alliance don't have the manpower or creds to take a colony."

"This borders Salarian space." Garrus pointed out. "It'd be nice for any human group to claim it, I imagine. At least for the Alliance that is."

Shepard agreed as she zoomed the map in on the sector. "Anyway. Intel points to some sort of Geth interest here. Some sightings of them keep popping up faster than Alliance and Citadel intelligence can squash them. Ain't no need to get the galaxy into a panic yet."

If only Shepard knew her future, she would've been crying out about Geth sightings everywhere just to get the galaxy into a defense spending frenzy. For as much as she kept the Reapers to herself now out of common courtesy of not appearing insane, she and the Council agreed the Geth were a danger enough to tackle as a Spectre.

No need for another crusade.

Yet.

"We're still looking into this one, but point is, I'm bringing up these options to get input. You're my crew, and we're on a fairly special mission in a fairly special modus operandi. I ain't doing nothing you all won't be behind, at least planning wise."

How particular. To Mai it seemed as if insanity: an officer asking for the opinion of their men. To JD it was refreshing, but peculiar. Still they both understood that even if they were from that galaxy and still in their positions now, it certainly was a situation to be for Shepard and being people beneath her.

"Play it by ear, Commander. We grab Liara first, before someone else does. Seems logical." Kaiden reached out, offering his two cents, leaning forward hand on chin.

"And ignore Feros? Come on man, people might be dying right now!" A Hitman cried out as Ashley agreed, echoing.

The guests that hadn't been human had nothing to say. They wouldn't feel right offering an opinion on a ship not even in their own political affiliation.

"Yeah, I know, it's tragic that Feros is under threat right now, but if we go there, do what needs to be done, and go find Liara to find her nabbed? Well we just lost our only actual, non-Geth lead." Kaiden spoke back, turning to the Hitman. This wasn't his Marine group, Hitman would have to be tamed by him at some point, but now hadn't been the time.

For as much as Shepard was a speaker, she was a listener, and as the comm room exploded in discussion she listened. She was good at that, Sun Tzu spoke of the information war in ancient China, she knew. Of knowing being the way to win. What knowledge and insight from her men she would take and grab. In truth, in some slimy truth, her mind had been made on where she wanted to go already, but it was her prerogative to understand the viewpoint of her men and women, and, if there was a hidden nuance that she could not at that moment uncover on her own, it would be done now.

Still, even with this, in an idle moment or two she looked for Chief Gul and Chief Durante. For the ten or so minutes the open discussion went, neither spoke a single word.

Naturally, she decided, that meant an entire research paper about them.

---

Shepard had dismissed them all, shortly after the discussion died down. "Kaiden, we'll talk more by navigation." Her XO nodded promptly before she turned back to her men. "You're all dismissed, and I'll be announcing where we're headed shortly. Back to your duty stations, we've got a long deployment ahead of us."

The Marines and personnel all shuffled out of the room slowly. Doctor Chakwas had been there too, even, but there was nothing much for her to say. "Oh, Chief Durante, I heard you were requisitioning bedding?" She passed him by on her way out.

For a woman who knew partly of his true nature, she didn't seem too much to act on it, or care. "Yes ma'am." Out of respect, not rank did he address her like that, he waiting for the crowds to funnel out before moving back to wherever he planned to go. Shepard and Kaiden had left promptly to the ops deck, Shepard mounting the stand before the galaxy map as he stood below her at a console, speaking of decisions to make and why.

"Things like that go through me, especially. How personnel conduct themselves in sleep either in the pods or alternatively are inherently medical in nature. So, I have to ask why you ordered it for Chief Gul and not herself." A hand had been at her cheek, finger tapping against her temple.

He looked for her as he answered. "She's stubborn." Chakwas saw the drama in that as she shrugged, wanting to instead pursue this another time.

Mai had her back to them all as soon as she was dismissed, not even a regard to JD. He wasn't a man to shy away from confrontation. Ships never gave room to hide, to slink away and avoid the inevitable. Still, as he looked at her go, his gaze was caught with one of the VIPs.

Garrus Vakarian.

He tipped his head at him, and he returned the same. Any man who had a cop as a father, he could see as kin in some way, and because of that, there was a certain ease that he had beneath Garrus's gaze. Before he knew it, he had been walking out of the hall with him. "Durante, right?"

He nodded. "Officer Vakarian?" They took the slow stride, letting the rest of the crowd pass by back to their stations, finding light in the glow of the galaxy map that Shepard had stepped up onto, thumbing through notes and drafting courses for their journey past Pinnacle Station.

Garrus shook his own head with a chuckle. "I'm not on the job, right now, Durante. No need." JD shrugged his shoulders, fair enough. "Garrus is fine."

In a shadow, a figure slunk. They both turned over and the pair had been made three. It was Tali. Between the lot of them, maybe a dozen words had been spoken between all of them, and nothing much past introductions. Staring into her visor JD was enthralled for the slightest moment. How many men and women had he known just by their visor? Never knowing their face? The tip of her nose was visible behind the cloud of her glass, bright eyes looking right back at them. The fact that most aliens had two arms, two legs, and stood not so differently than he, he had chalked it up to the fact that two legs and fingers had been a pretty good way to win the evolutionary war. Any actual alien qualities he had been getting acclimated to.

If anything, he hadn't been sweating in Garrus's presence, and that was a victory.

Tali and Garrus, for the first time perhaps, gazed across the command deck of the Normandy. Oddly enough, Garrus too felt at ease. "This feels like a Turian ship." He said, gesturing to Shepard on her stand.

Tali nodded in agreement. She could talk about ships. No need to do the awkward "Hi, I'm Tali'Zorah and a month ago I hadn't even spoken to a Turian or Human" shtick.

"I can't believe that I'm…" she chose her words carefully, unsure if she could even use them. "I'm serving on one of the most advanced ships in Council space. It's beyond anything I could've wished for." There was a timidness to her words. There was courage behind them all, of course. No one dug up intelligence from Geth without having some, but at the end of the day she didn't operate like that 24/7. Her adventure avoiding Saren's assassins had already taken a great deal on her.

Garrus nodded a few times. "I mean, it feels like a Turian ship, with how it's designed, but… well, I guess my service was a bit stricter." Regimen and schedule, duty and station. There was a place for everyone to do something. They felt out of place.

Tali's eyes lit up. "Yeah." She agreed. "It feels like I'm back on the Flotilla."

They were all cluing into the same thing. "You don't have duty stations here?" JD asked.

Tali shook her head. "I've, uh, they let me assist in engineering, Shepard and Chief Adams are more than happy with the help, but past that no."

Garrus also nodded. "I've taken some time to adjust my gear, read up on some C-Sec intel I picked up before I left, but asides from that I think I'm just on standby."

JD understood, it's where he was now, too. Still, when he wasn't sleeping, the least he could do was just to think of away missions in their near-future and who was going to be with them. The girl before him was one of them. He wondered; from what he had seen of the ship thus far, how PT could be done.

"Are we all down there?" JD started, motioning hands downward. "In the bay?"

They both nodded. "You Marines aren't too bad, I've heard worse from joint-training exercises." Garrus poked fun at him, and he refused to correct him that he was now Navy, if anything. "It's just Chief Gul that's… ah, interesting? Yeah that's the word."

Tali shivered at the thought of her. "Keelah. I'm still not convinced she's human." Distantly, in the back of JD's head, he still thought that, but he assured her in a shake of his head, she was, somewhere deep within her. "I've introduced myself to everyone I could, good impressions and all that, but Chief Gul is just… I don't know how you do it, Mister Durante."

"Just Durante is fine." He said shortly, trying to find a way to explain Mai's very aura and how it threatened to kill them all. "And yeah, she's special. Been through some things."

"Her name, it's May, right?" Tali asked again, unexpectedly. "She won't mind if I call her that? I don't feel comfortable addressing crew members by rank… It was never a thing on the Flotilla, at least, disregarding the captains and admirals."

"Mai." JD corrected. "And, well, I don't think she's in a good mood."

"Oh." She fiddled with her hands a bit, the crowd dispersing down the stairwells. "Well, Shepard makes up for it."

Ever alert for her name the commander herself tsked, not too distracted by her own work. "I'm sorry I'm like this," she said fancifully. "I just really like talking to people, knowing all about them and what not. So good on you for trying yourself Tali."

Returning to her own work Garrus had been a bit quicker on the draw, flicking his hand, getting the two to follow. "We could talk downstairs. Tali? Do you have any gear? I think I have a spare kit I could set you up with."

Feet first into Hell, and, quite frankly, it felt like JD was being dragged into doing it. The Demon inhabiting being Mai. Still there was no point avoiding it, better sooner than later he had to talk to her again.

"You said you could show me the ropes, right? Teach me a few things about… well, fighting." Tali had tapped JD's knuckle, and he nodded. He had offered as such.

"I can." He answered, confirming, the trio entering the elevator from the personnel deck to the well deck.

Garrus still thought about what gear he could offer to Tali, and it posed a question that was inherent to anyone who encountered a Quarian. Perhaps the idea of being around a being who was suited 24/7 wasn't odd to JD, but to Garrus it was. "Your choice in armor is awfully limited Tali. Couldn't you wear something without a helmet?"

Apparently the ship designers didn't invest much thought into the quickness of the Normandy's elevators, leaving JD and them in the awkward three man triangle, riding down an elevator ride they thought to be faster, in the midst of an awkward conversation that Garrus wanted to take back almost immediately. Tali fretted a bit, her eyes going half-lidded and annoyed at the Turian. Sure, it wasn't common knowledge, but it seemed demeaning of her to answer.

"No." She said cleanly. "Living in the clean environment of the flotilla has weakened our immune systems. The environmental suits protect against diseases."

The images of Quarians that JD and Mai studied had rarely been personal shots. More like, sightings or studies. The suits of the Quarians pictured had spoke of a culture surrounding them, as if they were clothes, designs and patterns highlighting belts and fabrics. Expression was derived from the suit.

Frankly the hoods of the female Quarians wore traditionally as far as he could tell reminded him of the hijabs of Islamic customs. Though the design of Tali's had noted how new she had been to the world: basic. As if the designs of wind, spirals in white traces were applied onto a purple hood. It wasn't the same, but JD often thought of ODSTs who personalized their own helmets: with teeth, with flames, with markings for drops survived or memories of planets lost or family distant. Maybe he'd ask what her suit meant to her, personally. The same went for Garrus's face markings, and how blue they burned into his skin.

"So your people are forever wandering, and now they couldn't settle if they wanted to. I'm sorry." Garrus tried to be understanding. He really did, not wanting her to explain something so very basic to her.

She made a sound in her throat, a shrug. She knew it well enough.

Perhaps being galactic refugees might've been humanity's fate if the Covenant had made it to Earth, JD shuddered to think. Running from them for the rest of their lives.

That was the measure JD had empathy and sympathy for Tali.

The elevator doors finally opened, and those Marines who not been on active stations right now had mostly accrued, playing cards, shooting the shit, hanging out amongst themselves. In this universe or in any universe with a Marine Corps, Marines acted like Marines, and, JD had no real intention of partaking in them at the moment. All he needed was his corner and shut eye.

Still, he thought it was worth speaking to them, explaining himself as the Marines of Hitman looked to them arriving out of the elevator.

A shade of movement in the shadow of the far side of the Mako. It was Mai, noticing him, their gazes latching for a moment before turning away.

"Any of you averse to us doing some drills with Miss…" JD turned to her.

"Tali is fine."

"With Tali?"

Bannon had been there playing cards with a handful of her men. "Ain't no problem frogman." She spit from her chewing tobacco into a can besides her. "Ain't no problem at all, human SOF training aliens." She laughed as she turned around, rough edges gratings against JD and the two.

Wrex had already been down here, shrugging as the three of them caught his eye as well. If it hadn't been Mai, Wrex decided, Bannon was a nice runner-up in him wondering how humans fought.

"Do you guys have any pointers for civies who come along on away missions at least?" Bannon turned around, annoyed, yes, but not vain. She nodded with some of her men.

"Yeah, we can help. We've had to escort a few scientists to Prothean ruins from time to time. Damn Batarians don't make it easy."

"That and civilian advisors have always come along, and if well, if they don't know shit but they expected to fire back, well…" One of the Hitmen had looked over to the Req Officer. "Hey, anything we can spare?"

Across the hanger the Req Officer shrugged, looking at the weapon crates of spare rifles and weapons. He had been keeping up with the conversation well enough to what the general thought was to Tali. An M3 Predator had come up first in its case, put asides as he looked over to JD. "Chief Durante, you're the only one on the roster that is slated for the M12s. You have a few spare, mind if she gets one?"

If he was training her, then letting her use some of his own stock was alright. Besides, from what he had felt of the M12 during Eden Prime it had served him well enough after the break in period. It wasn't as if he had a preference in weapons like some other ODSTs. He used what was given to him. The M7 SMG was just what had been the standard.

He nodded promptly; the weapons being given over to Tali as the Req Officer walked across the room. "You break it you buy it."

Tali huffed. As a Quarian she was used to hearing that. Any way a shop owner could screw one of her people over they would do that. Her eyes narrowed, but beat back the feeling to call him out. "Thank you."

The Req Officer nodded before retreating back across the bay, letting this little shindig take its course.

She held the two cases uneasily, not expecting what to do, a deer in the headlights if JD ever saw one. It was a look he knew well: from rookie ODSTs who had never taken part in a LRRP behind enemy lines and had to use enemy weapons.

The Marines looked at her expectantly, and Tali had been glad she had refreshed her suit's precipitation filters.

"What do you know gal?" A Marine from the crowd asked as JD folded his arms over one another, just short of asking the same question. She lightly placed the two weapon cases on the floor as she tried to find an answer. It was if she was interviewing for a job, and all she knew was that she was failing.

"All I know is just what I've learned along the way. Asides from a few days on my ship's range, I was never taught how to fight."

And yet she survived. There was a story she had yet to tell: of her flight from Illium and the assassins that tracked her and her friend down to death. The Marines there had picked that up from her: that there was a fighter inside of the Quarian.

They could respect that at least.

JD looked over to Garrus, a finger very slightly raised at him. "I'm assuming we won't be throwing her into a fight." He nodded to himself as Garrus agreed. "So self-defense shooting… Does C-Sec teach concealed carry courses?"

Garrus nodded again. "I've taught a few people. Yeah…" He seemed unsure. "I mean, if Shepard's away missions are anything like Turian Navy away missions, I'd at least want to know if you can carry your own ruck, endurance, all that."

All of this was dancing around this language: This was a nothing more than a twenty-two-year-old woman. Last time any of the military personnel around her checked, there weren't that many. Mai had been an exception in every regard, but even then, there were females there that looked and made sense: Ashley Williams came from a military family, regardless of their infamy: her trainer noted an intense aggressiveness and instinctual leadership drive within her. Shepard herself had traveled the world as a runaway child and came out on top, and that had been before she even joined the military at 18. Lisa Bannon, Hitman's second in command, she once worked oil fields as a younger woman. Men outnumbered women aboard the Normandy, but what women there were had earned a place in a world of masculine physicality and necessity. They looked the part, knew the part, and could handle it.

Inwardly, to herself, Tali had noted that the women that were on the Normandy alone could've taken on, in a square fist fight, maybe a dozen of her own people. Their strength was shown in muscles and in comfortableness in a profession dominated by the separate sex, and the fact she had been of a species whose very stature had become frail and a shadow of what they had once been, she too had the concerns they all had.

JD however saw past it. He had to. For in his past he had seen militias on planets soon to fall have children and teenagers take up arms. For all his protest and his begging for them not to fight, sometimes there hadn't been a choice.

Mai had seen the same in the Insurrection. Fought the same.

So with Tali, to the two humans from another galaxy, this issue could've been worked around.

"Nothing we can't get you used to." JD ground out at her softly, looking past a visor as he had done for most of his life.

"I'll try my best. I promise." She wanted to be here, on the Normandy, saving the galaxy. That was the best gift she could give her people, if anything.

Garrus had let JD lead the way, going down to the pistol case and holding the pistol, only to look back at the bay toward the hanger door. It was empty, and, although he wouldn't in his right mind even consider putting training rounds through any gun toward it, it sufficed for a good dry-fire range.

"Would setting up a dry fire range over there be an issue?" Garrus asked around.

"Mighty fine idea, Turian." A few of the Marines had echoed some agreement. They too were liable to get board without literally shooting the shit in some way. "But uh, how about you set it up?"

Garrus scoffed. Of course. "Durante, I'll get her set up on some dry fire. Point and shoot. See if she has the basic principles down."

"Gonna teach her how to shoot like a cop or a trooper?" JD didn't know why he asked, but it came from curiosity. Garrus's mandibles did the same things Elites did, and he tensed. Distantly in her shadow, Mai had instinctively reached for a knife before shaking it off.

"My father," he tooled with Tali's new pistol, turning it to a training mode. "He taught me to shoot with a sniper rifle. Prioritizing targets, and all that. Fundamentals should be the same, if I've learned anything. Long as I was quick on the draw and hit what I was aiming at before they knew what was coming, he was happy."

He remembered how many times he has a soldier had lived on the knife's edge of a gunfight: where shooting first was the only difference between a short firefight or a long battle for an inch of dirt. As far as Crisium City PD went, those odds weren't the same, and if a cop ever shot first it made the news. "Do cops shoot first then at C-Sec?"

Garrus looked down at his hip where his own pistol lie, chuckling. "Tell me, Durante, if your father was any good as a cop, what was his most effective weapon?"

"His notes." JD knew. Long and away he had known. The amount of times his father had to shoot someone he could count on his hands. Knowledge was power more often than not.

Garrus considered before shaking his head. "Hmph. I was gonna say it should've been his word."

JD chuckled, an actual chuckle. Admittedly Garrus's answer was the better one. "People tend not to listen to what cops say. Least that's what my father told me." The ODST recounted fondly.

Tali had palmed her pistol as Garrus gave it back to her, the Turian suggesting non-verbally that she keep the pistol pointed down when not in use. She nodded urgently, understanding. "We should trade stories, Durante. Stories of "things that our dads told us". Sounds delightful, doesn't it?"

"Sounds dreadful."

To see a Turian smile, it was a first for JD, but he was glad that he made it happen.

"I'll get her comfortable, set her up."

It was quite amusing to see Tali do finger guns instead of using the actual pistol as Garrus put her through the steps as if she was a civilian taking a pistol permit class, training her mental reaction time with Garrus drawing her eye to targets he threw up holographically on the far end of the bay. The pistol emulating recoil, but not actually shooting as it started.

JD could teach her, run her through, the fundamentals of combat. But for this work, he figured Garrus was more qualified. The fact that he too was an alien (Was that racist to say that he had been?) meant that Tali was probably more comfortable with him at first (Was that racist to assume?).

Besides, he had a more pressing matter to tend to: a woman in the shape of a machine.

Turning away from the crowd Tali had attracted, the more helpful Marines adding pointers to how to hold a gun and use it, he had approached the Mako's front end and a woman standing rigid against it, waiting for him it seemed.

"Mai." He reached out to her, and her helmet barely moved, no word coming out of her in turn. "How're you doing today?"

"Fine." One-word answers, but it was something as he returned to her and the lockers they shared. Moving to his, opening it for a fraction of a second, he found a picture he wanted to make sure had stayed there: Dawn, still in her peace, framed by a photo of sunlight and sundresses. Putting it back, he turned back to Mai, the Spartan having, in her silent gait, appeared almost chest to chest with him before turning back to lean against the Mako.

"What's up?" He posed her, leaning against his locker in turn.

No answer, she looking away down into some distant vision beyond the Normandy, eyes hidden behind her helmet. She probably hadn't even taken it off that entire night shift.

'You wanted to leave this? You would've left me?'

And so, as it was, it was only right that their conversation had picked up from where they left off. Nothing more had been said, only the silence between them that drew out until there was a mutual understand that no words could've been said in response at that very moment. So, JD left her to sleep. Time was something they all needed, and it made no difference now, he figured. She would remain on the Normandy, but this meant more to him than that. She was all that he had in that universe, and whatever that meant.

"I would've told you, when everything was set in stone."

"But why?"

She found her words and JD found his, and it staggered her. To be pressed on the attack meant she could shoot back. Not here, though, not now. She was vulnerable and that armor that costed as much as starships could not protect her as gunshots from Tali went off in an uncoordinated rhythm. In the shadow of the Mako, pinned against the wall, they had their privacy.

"Shepard is… not good for me." Every word she said came from a place of her mind that spoke, not as a Spartan, but as Mai. As a person. She was worried for once in her life.

"She's a good woman, as far as I can tell. A good officer. You must know that."

"I know. I know." She repeated. "But, she wants to know things."

"She's entitled to know her men."

It was so easy to ask questions of her. Mai was very easy to have questions about. Without Anderson to play a blocking position she had to weather all of it from a superior now. "If Shepard asks the right questions, attains the right information from the right people. Our cover is blown."

"It's not that simple."

"You're not a Spartan." She poked back at him. She was an enigma that blocked the light itself it seemed. She could not be ignored. She did not have a cookie cutter role or frame to fit into in this universe.

"You don't have to be that here." They were given new lives. How long had they spent in Buffalo trying to get that drilled into their heads? Mai more than anyone had gone over so many libraries worth of information about their new life it had made JD's own head spin, but now, here, when confronted with a woman who seemed so determined to be a part of history it seemed… It gave her pause that not even a pack of Hunters could.

"I was made into one. It's what I am, Chief Durante."

"It's JD, to you, Mai." He spoke as if insulted and she wanted to take her words back. "It's JD."

"JD." She parroted, nodding her head, sorry. "It's JD."

He took a moment, pushing himself off his locker, looking back, seeing the silhouette of his armor through the mesh metal. A new coat of paint, some new components, but it was still his armor. He might've been a hypocrite then, saying that to Mai. He too would always be a Marine, an ODST, but he meant it more than that. Meant it in a way that he could not articulate no more to himself than he could a Spartan of all things.

"We have the right to shut Shepard up. She has no right to know who we are. Do you know that?" She had never, in her time with JD, heard the stern in his voice, the metal of a man mad for once. He was mad that she did not understand the military as he did, because, of anything, it was the military she was supposed to know utterly and completely. "Our secrets are our orders-"

"I don't want to leave you." Mai caught JD's words in between breath and tongue with her own, causing him to choke. "I don't want you to leave me."

Her words were without feeling. She didn't know that, but they were. If they had been JD would've had more concern, but here, as they were, it was simple. Normal social connotations to words and declarations didn't apply to her, and perhaps that was for the best. She was cold, but it was the truth.

He blinked a few times before trying his best to understand. "Then why apply for a transfer without telling me?"

"To see if I could." She answered simply, her hand resting, held be each other over her stomach.

He needed more than that, so he stayed his words, gave his voice time to settle. He had never spoken so much with anyone in his adult life as he did Mai, and it strained him. Naturally, he fell back to habit: Four fingers touched his forehead before they closed in, only for his pinkie and thumb to be pointed out toward her.

'Why?'

She understood, and if anything, JD had a small shine of pride in it. "If the Geth are the most dangerous thing this galaxy faces, then I think we're fine." She grated her teeth. She wanted to scream but said it in nothing more than a whisper. The Geth were nothing to her. Nothing that she hadn't killed before. "We've faced worse."

"You don't know that for certain. You can't."

"The rhetoric of the Council doesn't seem to agree… and if it was the case, they know what I can do. They'd send me to missions I know. We know." JD's eyes sunk into his head and Mai noticed. "I just wanted to put us in the best situation. If I got cleared, I would've request that you be brought too."

The tiredness in his face was felt again by him. Maybe this new life so far, for all its complexities, had been kind to him so far, but that weight of another war still created the bags beneath his eyes, feeling his skull beneath skin.

"I don't think you understand, Mai."

She tilted her head at him. She didn't understand. "The way you fight. You're more than capable of keeping up with me to a-"

"That's not the point." He tightened his fist. Sure, the Geth might've not been as much of a threat as the Covenant of all things. But the eventuality of his old life: that he'd die fighting, having done nothing but, it had made him tired and old to almost a maddening measure. He had always been like that, ever since his first drop, his first lost squad, his first glassing. It made him almost insane to think his own mind pushed those thoughts to the corner, now only opened up by the impossible situation they were in. "I don't think I'd live if I kept up with you. I can't afford to do that."

A breath he was holding was let go as he unfurled his fist when it began to hurt, his nails digging into his palms.

"What?" He heard the confusion behind her word. What was the difference between fighting the Covenant his whole life or whatever this galaxy threw at them? It was if he had never left the UNSC then. As if he never escaped.

"What's the best for you, can't be the best for me." JD admitted with such a low breath, it seemed shameful. "I can't go where you go Mai, do what you do. Not for the reasons you do. At least here, with Shepard, it feels like I'm fighting for more than just to fit in to a groove."

He wasn't born to die.

His eyes were hazel. Mai had looked into his eyes weeks now when speaking, but now, she noticed the color. His eyes were a warm hazel, and, in that moment, they begged her. They begged her to understand that he was only a man. He couldn't be dragged wherever she went for the reasons she did.

He would go with her anywhere, she knew that of him, but it was unfair of her to put him in that situation. Especially if it degraded him, made him a black asset, beat him down to a life he had escaped.

She tilted her held down before the words left her mouth. "I'm sorry." Words she never spoken before in her life.

"Okay. Thank you."

The smallest of smiles, and his eyes turned to forgiveness as he turned away, back to Garrus and Tali. He was a simple man, with simple desires, simple respects and simple expectations. His family taught him no more, no less, than to expect the best of people, no matter how small it was. Some of the kindest people to JD had been people behind bars, trying to repent for their sins: some of the cruelest, those who had their freedom. This was Mai's best, and it was enough.

Deep down inside, in his heart, in some sappy part of his mind that he had to destroy and bury and eviscerate, the reason he served was more than just survival and need. The galaxy was at stake, yes, it felt. But he hadn't felt that scale, that horror, of the Covenant again. Their journey here and now had been of high ideals and of high principles. He was here because it was the right thing to do. That was what it felt like Mai was running from in some measure, and he wouldn't be who he was if he just let that happen.

---

A small crowd had looked at Tali and Garrus in the middle of their drills, even Wrex looking on, remembering when he had this training, over a thousand years ago.

Tali had breathed out exasperated as the pistol in her hand fumbled down onto the ground. A string of targets that Garrus put up had been too much momentum for her.

"Agh! Bosh'tet!" Tali's curse had drawed Mai and JD out from behind the Mako as Garrus reached down to pick up her pistol.

Garrus had tried to placate her, letting the coil air out on the gun. "Easy. I'm just benchmarking ya. See where your natural talent lies at."

Again, Tali had taken the pistol with a certain ferocity, Garrus going around her, kicking her feet into a proper position for shooting.

Being a warfighter meant more than squaring your feet and landing your shots. It meant a million other particulars that they could not afford to teach right now, or even could, but this was a start: shooting pop up targets. As far as special operators like JD or Shepard were concerned, it meant survival training, endurance regiments, mental and physical straining. The worst training had to offer was so that the war didn't seem that bad in retrospect. The very idea of sparring with Tali seemed dangerous.

She tried though.

"Don't teacup." JD pointed out. He didn't know if it applied to the fingers of Quarians or Turians, but he had to as he saw as she held the pistol. He picked up his own from his locker, coming over, standing side by side with her and holding his own handgun. The whiplash in his mind, from remembering what he had done with this not so long ago, had him silently gag in his throat before he returned himself to composure. "Wrap your fingers around the grip. Don't rest the gun on your palm. Recoil can get the better of you."

Garrus had nodded out, going back to his own bags and trying to find some spare gear for her.

"Okay." She nodded, changing the way she held her gun, aiming it down range, mirroring JD.

"Left eye dominant or right eye?" he asked.

"Left eye, I think."

"With pistols, use both eyes." Some of them there had yet to hear Mai speak, and she did, drawing the attention of the room to her. It didn't dissuade her own advice. "I use both eyes. Keeping both of them open allows you to keep a wider field of view. You can't afford to miss anything."

Tali expected Mai's first words to her proper to be scolding, mean, but instead advice had manifested and quite frankly JD had to agree. "You'll get used to double vision. Better to start early, if you're not combat trained."

The way the target spread downrange was out, it made sense: erratic, not patterned, numbers highlighted on them giving Tali an order to shoot. Mental training as much as finesse training. JD approved as he was tempted. Flicking his omni and interfacing with his pistol to a safer mode, it was obvious what he was about to do.

"Here, this is how I shoot."

Hitman hadn't seen JD shoot. No one in that hanger had except for those on Shepard's fireteam. For all his spookiness as a Navy SOF to Hitman, he had to prove it. This was a part of it as Tali stepped back to take a breather herself.

The M6C SOCOM he had known for his life as an ODST was not a last resort. It was a reliable option: the pistol that he went hunting Covenant with, not the one where he was on his back for. To admit to Mai that he had been better with a pistol was in part a humble statement. For him to say that he was good with a weapon to a Spartan of all things meant that he was more than good.

He liked to think if he was born in the Old West, he would've been a gunfighting lawman as opposed to an outlaw, but the way he shot, it spoke to a violence that seemed so unlike the man. Calm professionalism exploded in a burst of attack.

The holster on his hip was almost ripped off his own belt as the M11 was seized by him, it hadn't even been at chest level before the first shot rang, one hand, extended out toward target one on the far left riding the floor. One shot, one hit. Target two had been the opposite side, he whipping around and finally gripping the pistol with both hands as his entire body shifted as if to accommodate only the act of shooting, the target down the one fraction of the second he had paused. Target three had been back on the other side, he snapping to the target as target four sat directly besides it, as if in one shot, two targets went down. Target six sat above them all, and, almost to prove that he could, he brought the pistol down to his hip, angling up, blasting a shot off that connected as his thumb mistaken felt for a magazine release to change out.

There was no need as he reholstered the pistol.

His back was turned to the crowd, but if he could've seen, the faces on the group would've been impressed.

"You expect me to be like that!?" Came Tali's filtered voice. He could almost here her eyes bug out.

He regretted not wearing gloves. His pistol was never meant to be fired off that quick and he felt the hotness on his palms. Turning to Tali, "No. But I just want you to know that I know what I'm talking about. Your turn."

Stepping back, she had been forced forward to where he stood, the same targets put back up. He felt a talon'd bump on his back and his throat again was in his lungs, but when he snapped over it had just been Garrus. The Turian knew what he had done, stepping back, his face grimacing. For a man like JD, he imagined, Turians were probably not high on the list of "people allowed behind his back". Still the two shared a look of apologies and understanding.

"I just wanted to say nice shooting."

"Hm." He bobbed his head as a thanks to Garrus, standing side by side with him as they watched Tali run clumsily through the same.

Looking over her form, it was as what they expected from an amateur, though there was one thing someone noticed as she did finish the target shooting, nearly ten times the length of JD's own time taking it.

"Leans in a lot. She's involved." It was Wrex from his crates, looking the Quarian over as she held her pistol at her side. "I know what weapon she'd be good with."

"SMG and a pistol?" Garrus guessed.

He shook his head disapprovingly, patting the weapon his back as if it was a handgun. It wasn't, it was just handgun sized to him as he brandished it to the ire of the Marines in there. "Nah. I've read this young one. I think she'll be best on a shotgun. I'll even teach her a few tricks with it."

A shotgun? Really?

Those present had thought otherwise. A Quarian like her able to take that recoil? Wrex had something more on his mind however. "You." He pointed back to Mai. "If we can't fight, how about we compete eh? Put maybe twenty more targets up and we'll use more ammo. Prove to me you're worth your size."

She considered either doing it or putting a bullet in the Krogan, just to be over with it. She declined however. "I don't have to prove anything to you."

"Heh."

The intercom rang out before anything else could transpire: "This is Commander Shepard. A decision has been made. We are setting course for Therum."

That was that then, the objective known: Liara T'Soni.