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.

17. 1-10: Not a Natural Formation

A/N: This chapter is an experiment to me on how I can translate pure gameplay sections into a chapter, and as you can see it's a terrible idea and I'll be slimming that down as we go forward. But yeah, we're covering Therum here, and, as per my own plotting, I'll bounce back to the Covenant next chapter, this mission's debrief, and then Wrex's loyalty thing. Then to Feros, probably.

Thanks for reading!

---

1-10

Not a Natural Formation

---

Best she could describe it: Like standing in the back of a Warthog that had been moving at a snail's pace. That was how she felt FTL in her feet on the Normandy. If she didn't feel it through the suit, she might've been liable to have some disorientation before she got used to this form of FTL. The idea of all FTL, at least, practical FTL, being dictated by the left behinds of a precursor race, it had left her thinking about interior security questions.

It was a lot to chance for galactic stability: What if someone had been able to control the Relays? Shut them off? Or make it so that their ships were the only ones able to use them? She wasn't a wide strategy planner, but she often thought of doctrine if only because that's what her mind defaulted to.

Mai had a lot to think about as Garrus and the Req officer fashioned Tali a battle belt out of some spare gear, JD fumbling around at the weapons bench with his pistol.

She was glad that it had taken them only a night to get past a funk, for them to talk out an issue that had manifested from Shepard. In truth, she didn't know if she could take a day of it. She was fine with tension between her and the other human crew members because they had never seen anything like her before, because they feared her as an unknown quantity. The tension that had been between her and JD though had been different, hit a different part of her than she had known.

The Normandy had made a pitstop at an outpost which Shepard had great contacts within to the surprise of the crew:

Pinnacle Station had been a Turian station during the Krogan Rebellions, now converted to a joint-species occupation all for the express purpose of something that Mai and JD had gone through during their observance period when they first arrived in that reality: Simulation training. For the good of not creating a show, Mai had stayed aboard as the Alliance crew members unloaded onto the station.

Its CO, Admiral Ahern, had been old friends with Shepard. "How's my apartment treating you?"

They traded pleasantries after a salute. "If I'm being honest, I lease it out to other officers Admiral. It's a popular spot."

"Hah! Smart woman." The gruff admiral had patted her shoulder. "What can I do for you?"

Shepard's request had been anyone who helmed a warship going off on some galaxy-wide adventure would have. Provisions, weapons, gear, equipment, and for the station's utilities to be used one last time by Alliance personnel. Ahern could do nothing but agree. Shepard's status as a Spectre had reached far and wide, even by the time she arrived in Argus Rho. Still, she had other claims to fame.

"Your Captain relies all on luck." JD had come aboard with Shepard, curiosity making him want to view the combat simulators where fireteams broke through missions and tasks, competing and training. As he stared down from the viewing deck down onto a magma field and an ongoing situation, a Turian had scoffed behind Shepard's back and to JD's.

He clenched most of the muscles of his body as he turned around to the flange of a Turian. His name was Vidinos, and according to him, he was really the only holding first place in all of the scenarios on the station. What JD could only take after that was that Jane Shepard had been first. She had, as part of the regimen of the N-Program, been posted here for a time. She made mincemeat of Vidinos's records. He was still sore about it, years later, as he bellyached to JD. Why him, he hadn't known, but Vidinos must've liked the sound of his own voice and JD hadn't made much of his own to intercede him.

To see a Turian more or less butt-hurt had helped calm JD. Calm him enough to rationalize the Turian as he waited for his own req package from Shepard to arrive from Pinnacle's cargo storage.

A thought crossed by his head as the team below made a mistake, pushing forward with momentum they thought they had. To see bodies drop on the battlefield had been a rookie's mistake, and pushing forward where they perceived weakness. The simulated pirates had come up behind them, out of cover and cut them down.

JD could only remember when he was a rookie, and, if he wanted to test something of himself at all in that world, here might've been the place, looking at the enemies they used.

"Hey." He chinned up at the Turian sulking. Apparently, he had been off duty. The ODST thumbed to the records board, eyebrow raised. When Vidinos twitched his mandibles, eyes blankly staring back into this human, he snorted.

"Sure, human."

A few hours later the Normandy had been away from the station, all stocked and fueled up better than Shepard had hoped for. When JD came back however, in his gear no less, those who had been familiar with the nature of the station had been intrigued and disappointed they missed out on the show. Most of them had missed, that is. Doc and Bannon of Hitman had been witness to an hour of JD and Vidinos running through several scenarios.

"The spook worth his silence?" Harris and the Req Officer had thumbed at a diligently working JD at the weapon's table. Ashley had waltzed over from her locker to Hitman's usual school circle by their own lockers.

"You guys doubted?" She said in a hushed toned, having seen the Normandy's Naval "shock trooper" in action at Eden Prime. There was a comfort in every step JD took in danger, as if he had done it a million times before.

Doc and Bannon had breathed out exasperated. "Ain't no doubt about it, lass." Bannon said in her sing-song accent.

Mai's super alert hearing had heard it, and, in some small part, had been sore she missed the display too, approaching him from his left as he sat on a stool, hunched over a pistol split in two: his pistol. To his side had been a rather sizable cardboard box. Even in the future such material had never gone out of fashion. She had thought they had been related, but didn't think too much of it, seeing his name on the markings of the box.

Reaching out with her right hand she had pressed fingertips on his shoulder blade as he pulled back from his tinkering, two soldering irons it seemed in his hands.

He looked up and saw a sight he never thought he could get used to seeing: a wolf-grey Spartan, her visor blackened out. The legends of the Spartans throughout the UNSC, even within the rivalry they had with the ODSTs, was perhaps more myth than man at that point in the war. To see one in the flesh, to know one, it had become an aspect of JD's life he didn't know he could deal with until it happened, in a world away from home.

She tilted her head at him, and he had placed his tools down.

Old habits died hard, and he tried his best to kill one today as he raised up another.

"I requisitioned some mods for my pistol." He said simply, calmly, as if for himself. In their reality, guns and weapons were simple, as far as the UNSC went. Even then though he had some idea how the Covenant Plasma Rifles, Carbines and Needlers operated. It was this focus on Mass Effect-based technology that had thrown him off. Gunpowder and lead had gone the way of mini-gauss cannons and ammunition that had been no more slivers of metal, superheated.

In a gunfight he would've bet his life on a gun that hadn't been hacked any day. It was what he was trying to work toward now.

The M11 Suppressor had been based on the Carnifex handgun, a popular heavy pistol in the parts of the galaxy that the Normandy had been proceeding to. An offensive handgun, born out of the slew of weapons projects that resulted in, among other things, Mai's current M-13 Raptor DMR, they were prototypes to the Normandy that made sense to be within the hands of its Naval spooks. What it meant to the two in question pragmatically is that there had still been a learning period to the manual of arms.

Something that JD, evidently, himself couldn't tolerate. It mystified Mai to see JD have the mark of aggravation on his brows, angled down, his cheeks sucked in through his teeth.

"Did the simulations cause this?" she asked.

The top half of his pistol had been gone: the laser module used for standard issue HUDs and cybernetics attacks that were focused through the guns. Some ammunition that could be fired out of firearms nowadays relied on the secondary ignition or marking agent, and the secondary barrels on a lot of firearms in that universe had been that. Wrex's shotgun could fire grenades, no less from its secondary barrel.

"Mm. Suppose." JD answered, taking in air through his nose, drawing away some bolts that he had pushed back into their position. The last thing he needed was to be losing components on that dark floor. The Normandy's lighting had nothing on UNSC interiors. JD had been half tempted to put on his helmet and light up VISR mode, even with the blaring work lamp on the table's surface.

He went back working on the gun, using his omni-tool to shave off tertiary metals as he, for all intents and purposes, was winging a gun modification that, if the Req Officer was looking, would've made him pale.

For a moment, Mai had thought that modifying such a prototype weapon of the Alliance would've reprimanded him in some way, but then again. She glanced down at her own armor, looking at the synthetic fiber harness that had become her chest rig in another life, salvaged from piloting equipment during her days as Sabre test pilot.

"You're in my light, Mai."

The ghost of Kat B-320 was in JD's words as Mai moved to a side of him that hadn't been obtrusive.

"You know what Three-Twelve? Rough up Three-Twenty a bit today during field training. She got too nosy around Deep Winter again." Chief Mendez had been the first of many in her service to the UNSC to use her personally to exert hurt on someone, and, Kat had been one of the first victims of it during training. Her nosiness, her lust for data and information sometimes got the better of her, and she was reprimanded for it. During the downtime Noble Team did have, briefly, between Sword Base and finding the Long Night of Solace, Kat had never paid Mai back for it. Never even mentioned the times where Mai was the executor of Kurt or Mendez. Downtime with Noble Team had been relatively painless for Mai, something she going to have to learn to get used to on the Normandy.

She hoped Kat had been okay; Carter and Jorge, and Jun as well. She hoped Emile had been still okay as well, for all of his bloodthirstiness that, for moments before she had become who she had been today, even made her think about her own inherent coldness. If she had shared anything with anyone in that world, it would've been with her fellow Spartans.

Still, it was them that had given her that name: Lone Wolf.

"Sorry."

"It's alright." He said, more of a breath than anything.

This man had changed her. She wouldn't have let him know, either by choice if she did know he had done this to her, or unconsciously as a Spartan, grown up to be a soldier, and not a person. It came in ticks like the movement of a watch, barely perceptible, twitches at a time. Though she was heading down a road she'd never been down before nonetheless. For all her life she remained a Spartan, and nothing more or less.

The bare month and a half since they'd arrived here, or rather, since JD had known her, it had changed her. Made her.

She worried the night before, as she strained the cot given to her behind the Mako that night for her rest, that she had failed him. Successes and failures, objectives completed or unfulfilled, her mind had operated within that frame and that frame alone. The only problem was that that tension between her and JD existed outside of it. Her mind had told her that she had lost an asset. A worry, a weight in her lungs, told her that she had put strain on something else. A friend? JD was her friend, wanted to be her friend. He made that clear what felt like a lifetime ago.

All she could do was offer him her best then, even if she didn't want to be here.

"Do you need help?"

JD looked at his omni. At least the mini-computer inside of the pistol had still been connected. "Nah. I don't think so." It took him a moment to even think on that. On what Mai offered. At first he had thought of her technical skills, and, in reality, they probably were still on the same level of understanding the manual of arms in that galaxy, so any help she would give probably wouldn't have gone that far in achieving his goals. Then came another thought, one that paused him as he looked down to the cardboard box to his left. An act of courtesy? Kindness? He replayed her words in his head and they sounded different to him to how she usually spoke. "Oh, uh, thanks anyway."

She nodded at him, unsure of what to do but just stay there, looking down on him. He would've offered her a seat but- "If you got out of that armor, I would've offered you a seat."

She looked to the Marines, some looking at them, caught, only to hurriedly look away.

"Commander Shepard just dropped us into Artemis Tau." Mai replayed the information relayed to the crew's omni. "I think we'll be deployed within the week."

FTL through the relays was instantaneous. Local space travel though had been more tedious. Nothing that hadn't been familiar to the two of them however.

"Have you not taken that off since we embarked?" She shook her head at JD cringed at the thought. Any drop where had to go days without even taking his helmet off had been Hell. Even when behind enemy lines he could've at least aired out or stripped down. With MJOLNIR it had been different. He thought of it as being trapped. She thought of it of as being her body.

"Until servicing." She answered him on when she would take it off. She decided when that was. JD hadn't considered that when he requisitioned the items to his side for her. Those sheets and pillows useless if she couldn't really use them in her armor. Still, he suppose in his most organic way, he was going to get her to break out of her shell, as cliché as that term felt to him.

He was a grown ass man. Twenty-six chronologically. Aged one hundred it felt like with the war. Spending time, under any other pretense, trying to get someone to open up as a person? It sounded wasteful to him while deployed, fanciful. Then again what they were doing now, where they were, exceptions were to be made and Mai had been JD's exception to a lot of things recently in his life.

He looked back to his pistol, holding it firmly in his hand as he aimed downrange toward no one in particular, still sitting. "Hitman might ease off us, if you get out of that, once and a while."

Behind her helmet, she pursed her lips unconsciously. She hadn't been in enough situations to observe people's faces. She hadn't spent much time in her life in general looking at people's faces in social situations, but like a memory she never knew she had, her face broke out of its stone visage with JD, even if he couldn't see. Pursing her lips had been concession. "We'll see."

For JD that had been enough tempting today as he shook his pistol in his hand.

It felt half as light and it pointed with a familiarity that had to be pointed out to Mai.

The oversized handguard had been gone, instead a piece of it molded and treated to a regular trigger guard, the compartment below the barrel where an LED had been was emptied out, stripping the gun further only for the laser on top to have been twisted and mounted upsidedown as if a LAM of a-

"Are you emulating your M6?"

Mai had gotten it right, JD nodding as he pointed with it. It looked ramshackle like any amount of Krogan weaponry, but he had been pleased with it. "Bare essentials. Barely any electronics. Just the action related to shooting, and just shooting, is left."

She flared her omni-tool, trying to target JD's pistol. When it had locked on an annoying amount of time later, it had trouble targeting subsystems of its profile, confused as to what exactly it could do. She did notice one thing.

"Overheating controls, you've turned off the safeties?" Normally that was a hack unto itself.

JD nodded. "ROF limiter, it's tied to. I can't work with that."

Mai, she was used to working within the confines of her battlespace. She never saw fit to break open Covenant weapons and jury rig them to some amazing new form factor or function. She was a fighter, and the rules of her game were the ones she followed. She didn't weld extended magazines for her MA5 to prolong trigger time, or break the sear on Battle Rifles to make them fully auto. Her lethality was simple, practiced.

She looked back at her M13 by her locker. To be fair she did need time to at least field strip it, but anything past that? The nuances of combat in that new reality had eluded her, for the moment, her physicality and brutality eclipsing her enemies for now. When the time came for her to fight a Biotic able to use their powers against her? Or for a tech to fry her weapons internally? She'd deal with it, just like she always did.

"Don't endanger yourself." There was a hint of concern, almost as discernable as a mote of dust in space in her words.

Frankly if he were to listen to that, he would've never have volunteered to come back into the service with the Alliance. Still, he got her point. "I'll try."

---

"According to Ahern, Captain Vidinos and Chief Durante took on one of the scenarios during shore time, waiting for shipments." Kaiden had made comment of it as he and Shepard ran through the data pads on said shipments and intelligence going forward.

Shepard peered up from the report of slavers and mercs even shying away in the Attican due to reports of the Geth. "Really now?" She had been busy asking around the station's officers if they had recognized Durante or Gul as prior competitors at the station after mission-related matters had been squared away. All had said no. They'd never seen them before, at least in Durante's case, until today. She thought they had been referring to him as being spotted with the shore party, not as having gone into the field.

Ahern hadn't been a part of the Admiralty, despite his service record. He preferred his service to keep him close to the fold and not politics, so he had never known of the humans that came from Altis, so, with no reason not to, he had allowed JD to take the simulators on Pinnacle for a spin with his guard captain.

"Here's some footage with Admiral Ahern's notes."

The tropical selection of the simulation had been her go-to pick for running through a situation. Bright sun and blue skies, even simulated, did much to alleviate her cabin fever on Pinnacle. No doubt Vidinos knew that as JD let him select. Take and Hold had been their scenario, a few points in the simulation having to be secured amidst enemy raids and patrols.

On Eden Prime, Shepard had known far and away that Durante had been more than capable of keeping up with her and setting his own pace, but now, from an observational view, she was allowed a level of study she herself was curious to see.

"Few of the Hitmen observed too, first hand, if you want their opinions."

Shepard had shushed Kaiden as JD took point and Vidinos covered rear section as they spawned in, JD getting used to Pinnacle's simulation. A few Alliance training vessels had used the same technology, pioneered here, so it was probably nothing he hadn't been too unfamiliar with.

If anything, he was more familiar with the situation.

Shock Trooper was right.

It was odd that JD had described himself as one. There hadn't been a proper "Shock Trooper" company in the Marines of the Alliance in quite some time, the last being from the Russian Federation at the turn of the 22nd century. Shock Troopers had been first assault infantry, if not behind enemy lines, their creation and usage meant a war of Blitzkrieg and attrition. A war that the Alliance didn't want to fight. The fact that JD had been one it was an interesting development to Shepard. She suspected Mai too had been one, but she was layered in more secrets, more training that went beyond her.

Went beyond JD disregarding cover entirely as he used the output from his submachine gun as his defense. Offense was the best defense, so as the training enemies ducked behind their own cover, they had missed JD rolling up to them, unprepared as he unloaded into them at almost point-blank range. The way he transitioned from target to target almost incredibly breakneck: as if he knew that it came down to miliseconds on the draw. Taking corners, holding angles, using the enemy's own knowledge of firefight doctrine against them… He had earned the title of Shock Trooper.

He was a quiet man, measured and collected. In battle though? Something inside of him screamed to let out as he knocked down a pile of crates on top of a simulated pirate, whipping his pistol out and popping a round into the man's head even as he was crushed.

He paused as he did it, frozen almost, looking down at what he had just done to the human pirate.

There hadn't been audio but Vidinos had yelled at Durante to get wise and keep his head in the game. The platform they were on was a hold point. JD had held onto his pistol, the several ways to enter their space a verging point for the enemy. JD had been remarkably proficient with a pistol as far as Shepard could tell, his shot placement and standoff capabilities telling the tale of man who had done this for a long time. According to what little biographical details, maybe his police father had showed him the ropes before he died.

Still that was a problem as the enemies piled up and rocket launcher wielding pirates showed up.

JD had seen a pirate aim his launcher at Vidinos, snapping around, taking aim from his cover and pulling the trigger. All Shepard had seen was the great exhaust of smoke come from it as he yelled at Vidinos to watch out. It had been too late as the rocket launched and he looked to JD to see what he said.

Vidinos had taken an incapacitating hit to his left as the pirate recocked his rocket launcher for another one, Durante doing nothing less, a grunt of anger emanating from his helmet, than throwing his pistol at the simulacrum. The hologram had twitched as the pistol phase through it, but it was enough time for the shock trooper to transition to his SMG and hose them down.

Vidinos had the winds and heart kicked out of him, he laying on the ground as JD completed on his own, the remaining eliminations they needed within the timeframe.

"Yeah, when the captain woke up, apparently, even with him finally getting back his record, wasn't too happy with Chief Durante."

Shepard had smirked at her once rival-of-the-month's form, collapsed on that simulated platform. "Carried over the finish line and with only a half-minute buffer between his record and mine? I figure old Vidy would be mad."

Kaiden, in truth, did not want to talk of Durante or Gul. He had been given Anderson's safety briefing on them, which had been summarized as: don't. Still he himself was still worried about them. Actively engaged with the Covenant? The fact they had to be restrained weeks ago? Something was up with them, and he figured Shepard had been engrossed. Still she was professional about it, sliding the video file to her personal folders and reconcentrating on the mission.

She looked across to her XO. "Kaiden, sectors big, and we've got several requests from the Admiralty and other officers about this region. Can you do me a favor and take the Normandy while we're planetside? Just scan and survey the sector. Take Hitman if you need to go planetside yourself. It'll do you good."

Kaiden nodded at the order. "Affirmative Commander. Will Pressly be an issue?"

She shook her head. "Well, you ain't Turian, Krogan, or Quarian, so probably not."

He had laughed once at that and Pressly's prejudices. It'd taken him sometime to grow okay with racist jokes. Racism hadn't been funny, but racist jokes he could live with as a Marine in a galaxy where Mankind hadn't been alone and humor was, generally, a baseline of social interactions. "Think he'd do better with a Drell or Salarian?"

"I think you know the answer, now get out of here."

"Aye ma'am."

"Good man. Dismissed." With a little more than a salute Kaiden had bowed out of her quarters, the flaccid face of optimism that Shepard had on dropped as her real one came out: She was tired. In truth her first night sleeping on an actual bed hadn't been well. If anything, she didn't want to go to sleep at all, not since her visions. There was a primal fear in her to not go to the darkness of her mind, to replay the visions that she saw: Of a machine tearing apart flesh for all eternity, or of men in black chasing her down in the urban industrial hell of a colony she had no idea existed. So instead of doing that she had spent time with those who also couldn't sleep.

She'd just recently spent time getting comfortable with Tali and Garrus, having walked down after setting course for Therum by way of Argus Rho and catching the group training her and accommodating her for field work, but before that, the night prior, she had chatted with each separately. Tali had been awake by intrigue alone, a passing comment by her letting Engineer Adams know that she had been more than technically proficient to work on the Normandy.

"She's not an issue?" She asked Adams that night.

"Hardly!" Adams said loud enough for Tali to hear, and she did, turning over from her console and seeing Shepard and him. He wanted her to hear. "I wish half my engineers were half as smart as she is. Give her a month on-board and she'll know more about our engines then I do!"

Tali didn't know how to respond, arms going up in a shrug. "Th-thanks?!" She shouted back to him. Tali had been headstrong, Shepard knew that the second she saw her toss a grenade at Garrus. Still settled down, there was still a young girl inside of her. To be running at all pistons weathered someone, and it seemed like working on a ship was calming. Shepard did wag one finger for Adams to lean in, and he did. "Is it really in our best interest for her to know?"

Adams grimaced. "You've gotta point."

Shepard leaned back, smiling instead. "Just keep it in mind Adams. I'm not worried." Moving over to Tali she tried to salute, but Shepard shook her head lightly. "No need, Tali, last I checked you don't got service tags."

Tali forced a few chuckles as she stepped away from the console, the drive behind her spinning smoothly. She was running diagnostics, finding patterns in the output spikes to increase efficiency. "I'm sorry, Commander, I just feel like I have to." She admitted as Shepard rose an eyebrow.

"You're a civilian, Tali." Shepard explained. "As far as I'm concerned, you're our guest."

Tali let her eyes drop down to her feet. "I suppose." As did her gaze, so did her voice.

"You alright?" Shepard reached her right hand across to her left, noticing Tali's tone.

"I really do thank you Shepard, I do. Travelling on this vessel is like a dream come true." Shepard went to say again, there was no need, but Tali went on. "If I was just on my Pilgrimage, any number of my people would kill to be here."

The Pilgrimage, the trial of Quarian right. The children of the Flotilla sent amongst the stars, only to come home when they became their best. Tali's was still on her own, and for her to save the Galaxy? Even that wasn't enough for her. They spoke, briefly, on the Pilgrimage, on Quarian culture and the composition of the Flotilla: why its ships were old clunkers and second-hand ships. However, their conversation that night before Tali's newly appointed shift ended had been of the Normandy itself.

"I'm used to seeing ships as homes, Shepard. And I don't think I'll get used to the Normandy."

"Oh yeah?" Shepard teased.

"No no!" Tali stammered. "The crew has been so nice to me, if not a little snarky," she thumbed to the doors leading to the bay and, most likely, Hitman. "But this ship, it runs so smoothly, so quietly…"

"Is it that packed on a Quarian ship?"

She shook her head. "It's not even that." She gazed at the drive core and how it pulsed. "I try not to describe ships as if living things, but, on the Flotilla, every ship hums, has a heart beat almost. To hear it silent means something has failed or shutdown, whether it be the core or the air filtration or something. Here, with this ship designed so smoothly, it feels…"

"Dead?" Shepard posed. It was a harsh word, but Tali nodded her head. "I know what you mean."

"Do you, Shepard?"

She nodded. "The most alone I've ever been in my life had a lot to do with silence," Shepard's own eyes gazed out, were empty, as she remembered her youth. "It was back on Earth, in the middle of a continent called Russia. All snow and trees and, well, I thought it was a good idea to hike across a land that made up over a third of the planet."

"Wow." Tali had brought her hand to her mask, over the blinking light that denoted her speech. Quarian translators were mounted in their suit directly. "I don't think I've ever walked even a city's length before I started my Pilgrimage. How old were you?"

"15."

"Keelah…"

Shepard had nodded, chastising her younger self, but still thanking her for having done it. "It was one night, during an important human holiday, that I was deep in the forest alone for what felt like the second week on end, and I had been unable to make a fire. So, well, I just crawled into my sleeping bag and rolled into a hole for warmth." The Russian Taigas were dead. Nothing but wood and snow and the stars above. "When I closed my eyes, I didn't see a difference between that and opening my eyes. I was just alone with nothing but myself and the silence."

There was a quiet moment between the two of them, standing, Shepard going to the railing and leaning as Tali remembered another thing. "They warned me about that."

"Hm?"

"Being alone." She started, recounting the last lessons given to her by those who had returned from their Pilgrimages. "The galactic community is not kind to Quarians, and we don't often keep up communications with others on Pilgrimage. They prepare us to be alone for a long while… Especially if they never find anything worth bringing home."

"Are there those who never come back?"

Tali nodded barely. A fear in her glowing eyes. She really did want to do her people proud, even if it meant going on a galactic adventure against a Spectre, with a Spectre.

There were those Quarians, frustrated, idealistic, or some sort of extreme, that saw fit to never return, or to strike out on their own from the Fleet. Some simply just wanted a home of their own.

"I promise you, Tali, we'll do our best by you. If there's anything you'd need, please tell me."

Looking at Shepard was like looking into the heart of humanity. Nuanced and unique, introspective and yet outgoing, she saw the galaxy full of, not aliens, but just people. Tali did not have much experiences with humans, and what so far, before the Normandy, had been bad. Though it had been enough to deduce that Shepard had indeed been a good woman.

She left Tali that night, hoping that Durante ordered extra bedding. Tali had her own fold out cot and she didn't want her to deal with just that. She would've checked too, but Gul had been in the shadows, leaning against the wall between the Mako and her and Durante's lockers. Shepard didn't quite have it in her tonight to see if she was sleeping in her armor. She had thought it had only been her armor at first, but when she saw the helmet tilt at her, she knew that Mai had not changed out.

Garrus had been her destination then, next, the man using an open bench on the opposite side of the bay. Upon seeing her he too had saluted, getting up from his squat and leaving an assault rifle half open. "Commander."

For Garrus it was different. He seemed set in his ways of military. He couldn't help it, he was Turian.

"What're you working on there, Officer Vakarian?"

Garrus relaxed, looking to his jumbled mess of a gun. "If you may Commander, I'm off duty right now, so Garrus is fine, and…" He motioned to it. "One of my buddies back in C-Sec gave me a mod for my rifle, I'm just installing it and swapping in for the new ammunition you ordered."

"I also take it you can't sleep?" Garrus's mandibles flared momentarily. "Yeah, me too."

Garrus had to admit in a breathy sigh. "Only Turian on a human ship? Chasing after a rogue Spectre? I'm a little stressed, admittedly." They spoke in hushed tones, Wrex flopped over down the way on nothing more than a padded mat. He seemed comfy enough as he snored like a beast. They didn't want to risk being the cause of him waking up

"Don't be." She motioned for him to sit down again and continue working, she pulling up one of Hitman's lawn chairs that they brought with them. "You seem to know a thing or two about weapon mods."

She had watched Garrus get back into it, his confidence in aligning circuitry and wires admirable as when he did complete the modification, it all seamlessly clicked back together, he turning the gun on and off several times as he verified, he did do it correctly.

"In the Turian Navy, they make us work our way up to Mass Effect-based weapons. Start us on our old, combustion rifles."

"Like that one?" Shepard thumbed at her hunting rifle, mounted above the lockers. Garrus nodded.

"Make us know ins and outs, how they work, why they worked, and why they were replaced. I had to get really damned good at calibrating weapons, and, I guess I just kept up with it into C-Sec."

"How old are you, if I can ask?"

"In human years? I think uh… I think the translator can interpret." His mouth moved and sound came out that didn't match. "Twenty-seven."

Shepard had chuckled. "You've kept your twenties awfully busy."

Garrus had rolled his head, putting the rifle back in his footlocker. "If I'm being honest, I'm just following my father's path a bit… The only problem is I never knew how he dealt with it."

"Hm?"

One arm of his leaned on the table, holding his head up, in the same move taking off the HUD unit on the side of his face and onto the table. Shepard considered using one of those, but otherwise she'd been tempted to not wear her helmet. He was tired and frustrated, but more frustrated.

"The red tape of C-Sec. It's why I'm glad to be working with you now, Commander."

He and Pallin had held rather similar view points, and yet they hadn't seen eye to eye. "Tape has to be there for a reason."

"Oh, trust me, I do know. We had to take down a corrupt cop just the other day." Garrus paused, looking blankly at that clear table, seeing instead his desk at C-Sec. "It was easier, when I had a beat."

"Yeah?"

Garrus nodded. "I had my route, knew the people on it, understood why I walked those streets. The rules were simple, and the laws I could understand. Everything above me was just politics and public officials."

"But you're no longer a beat cop?"

Garrus had sighed. He wasn't. "When you work your way from the bottom, you see the changes, inches at a time. See what bought out politicians influenced what laws, or what businesses benefitted from what ordinances. Some people were above the law inherently, and if brought under it, well, they were treated differently by us…" It was late, on the Normandy, at least in regards to shifts and their native times. "I don't see justice done nowadays. Not before my very eyes."

Justice. A word that Shepard fought for, beyond many things. She thought herself liable to it, but what she had done for it was the very reason. She called in favors, went borderline AWOL with a group of other N7s, and gunned down scientists related to Cerberus in broad daylight. All for what had happened to her at Akuze: for all the men and women she lost.

"The line's there for a reason, and, well, when you step over it, do what you think is right…" Shepard remembered a month and a half ago, gunning down people who had no chance to fight back. Her dreams and nightmares were of the looks on their faces. "You might not come back over the same."

"Someone has to cross it." Garrus had told himself.

"But not the Spectres?"

Garrus had chuckled. "Nothing against you, Commander."

Shepard had smiled in turn. Her new status hadn't felt changing to her, the responsibilities on her shoulders she would've borne with or without the Spectreship. "We do things, on this mission, by the book, by the rule of law, Garrus. It's how we become better than Saren."

"I know, Commander, I know. There's just something inside me that believes its simpler than that."

There was a conflict in every heart, between good and evil. Garrus Vakarian had it within his own. Shepard hadn't been naïve. She had fought this same battle before, and continued fighting it still. What she could only know now is that, maybe, Saren fought this battle and made him choose the Geth, the Reapers, over anything else.

"Any war stories?" She asked timidly.

Garrus shook his head. "Just patrols and pirates, and, well-" Garrus looked her up and down for a reason that eluded her. "Maybe when we're more comfortable we can talk more candidly."

"Of course. I do mean to get to know my crew."

Garrus had smiled for her, and she was glad he did as she left for the night. "I look forward to it."

---

"Any reason we're not hitting Therum first in the cluster?" Joker had asked his new boss as she sat on the arm of the empty seat that Kaiden had usually occupied in his off hours. Shepard had been running through reports on her omni, updating by the second it seemed.

"When a ship like the Normandy is allowed free reign of the galaxy, people tend to call as if someone won the lottery. Guess my number came up."

Admirals she had known in history and from reports up and down the galaxy had made themselves known in her inbox. Kahoku. Mikhailovich. Hackett. Lindholm and Singh. Flag officers of the Alliance fleets had reached out to her on wires both official and private. She felt like an errand boy, and, to be fair, it was known she never did have the heart to say no to helping her peers out. Even this far up the professional ladder it showed.

Joker had snorted as he simply set course for Athens, a system on Artemis Tau's north western edge. "I just figured that the Admiralty knew that you had better things to be doing."

Shepard couldn't complain that she had become the Alliance's go-to woman based on a technicality of her Spectreship. "Did you know that Ahern, back at Pinnacle Station, used me as a guinea pig for his simulations?"

Joker had been more concentrated on tapping away at the Normandy's controls, but he listened. "Let's say I don't know." He didn't.

Shepard nodded to herself, remembering. "There's a mission, in the sim, that replicates his real-life tasking during First Contact on Shanxi. Real dicey, no sane commander would ever put their troops in that position." No cover, a lot of enemies, and no support. "One day, my smartass told him that I could take it."

"I'm sure you could've Shepard." Joker had said in a deadpan.

"Set me up with no safeties, after I bet my life against it. He bet his apartment." Right now she had been getting quite a bit of personal income by leasing it out to other officers or N7s for either staging points for Ops or actual leaves, but it vaguely taught her that her particular peculiarity of saying yes to much of anything asked of her was advantageous when seen her way. "Point I'm trying to make is I like Admirals owing me a favor."

"And not doing it out of the goodness of your heart?"

"Ain't no moral battle I'm fighting when an Admiral wants me to check up on some survey transmitters. Especially when I know he has some N7s underneath his command."

"You building an army?" Joker turned to her finally, leaning further back in his seat. "My brittle bone butt not good enough for you?"

She had commanded three hundred men and women once. Spartans, as one of them liked to say. In truth they had been far away from those trained soldiers of ancient history and mythos. Spartans didn't exist anymore, and especially not on Elysium, where that many people had been the militia and off-duty soldiers she had been able to rally together to save the colony. Each one of them deserved the Star of Terra, but in the end, she was the only one who got the reward, the recognition. It was why a lot of her extra funds did go back to veterans' associations on Elysium.

"Any help we can get is needed, Moreau. Besides," She had gone to apt his shoulder, but pulling away for obvious reasons as he twitched to avoid. "I'm sure you'd just steal it if you didn't think I was using it best."

"Hey," he dragged out the word, rubbing his scruffy chin. "Stealing the Normandy is a one-time thing for me." As was how he got the position as pilot in the first place. "And besides, stealing is a strong word. I like to use the word "temporarily extracting"."

"Then I guess I'm just "temporarily extracting" some assets for us so we can make life a little easier for us."

She could've talked to Joker for hours, but then again that was more on her part than anything. Her genuine interest on the man's upbringings, his difficulties, and his perhaps less than well-timed humor had been lethargic as she started doing her rounds of the ship. Three decks were all she had to claim as her own, so it was, at least on her soles, relatively painless. Starting from the top down, she made mental note this was how she was going to do this. On her last ship she had reserved her rounds to only the Marine sections, but it was no matter to her here. Too many times an officer had lost touch of what they had been before commission, raising in the ranks and leaving the men that helped them behind.

It was a lesson learned in two parts: In one part, when she had been nothing more than a salt of the Earth lieutenant, still charging pirate positions and breaching doors with her men: seeing other officers leave her and their men behind. On another part however? Something more personal.

She glanced at the paracord on her left wrist. A bracelet, stolen, a long time ago, but only fairly recently officially, rightfully given to her. It had been her father's.

John Shepard had been steely man for as long as Jane Shepard had been alive. Cold, but not inherently so. He had been a veteran of First Contact, and, she had long known, whoever the man had been beforehand was not the same man that emerged. Still, distance had always been a problem to the Earthborn Shepard, she staying behind on Earth as her Father and Mother took to the stars with the Alliance, she taken into the care of a private school in California. Naturally, it was for her safety.

Still, and it seemed all so logical to Shepard as she approached thirty, that what she had done was a natural consequence of being emotionally distant from parents gone for a good portion of the year. That is what she liked to think, to justify her running away and travelling the Earth as a teenager.

If she had a child, and if she still served the Alliance with such dedication, she too would've probably left them on Earth, or, at least, planetside somewhere. For their safety: a safety they wouldn't understand.

Before she left, she had taken her father's paracord bracelet, left at their home, out of pure malice. Now she kept it just to remember that she had a father, and a mother, with a fairly repaired relationship. It was a reminder that if she was to be a mother to her men, she was going to be a good one.

"Normandy still doing good?" She stared out the viewing windows of the cockpit, seeing the stars go by.

"With me behind the wheel? Bet your ass, commander."

"I'm sure Adams appreciates it."

"Well, he's got that Quarian wiz-kid down there. And you sure about having one of them down there toying with the Alliance's newest toy?"

Shepard licked her teeth, hearing the same concerns parroted up and down the ship in hushed towns. Perhaps not in exact words, but in similar ones: Between Garrus, Wrex and Tali now, for some inexplicable reason, being here with them now on what otherwise would be a highly classified mission. She too still thought of it, but Udina had been worried long before her on this. So much so that he had already forwarded dossiers on each. What she had read had been more than enough to not worry.

As far as Alliance and C-Sec were concerned, Tali was no more than just a young woman, caught up in adventure. Even with someone like her the Alliance and C-Sec had more of a dossier established than Chief Durante and Chief Gul.

"You smoke, Joker?" Shepard went to the Extranet marketplace as she fiddled with her omni. He shook his head.

"I've got enough health problems before putting my lungs into it, why?"

"Chief Durante req'd some through me. And, well, I don't smoke. Was just asking for advice if you had any."

"Ah right, the spook." As far as Joker was concerned, whatever the deal was with them, he wouldn't stick his nose in it. "I think I've said like, two words to him, and that was back at the Citadel, him passing through the airlock for a smoke before we disembarked."

"Good morning?" Shepard guessed.

"Yeah…" Joker had known a few pilots who smoked. Most of them done so just because they were pilots: the idea, the image of a pilot, with a bomber jacket, smoking cigarettes like old American bomber crews during World War II still persisted, that far into history. He never had time in the academy for such vanities. Still, he knew what they smoked now that he thought about it. "Lucky Strikes are popular."

"Hm. I'll look into it."

"Why don't you ask the big one? They seem to be close."

"Chief Gul?"

"Yeah."

"Are they?" Joker had shrugged in his seat, bringing up the inside cameras looking at the bay. A few Marines at present had been giving Tali PT. For her worth, she on her stomach dead from pushups it looked like. She was serious about being trained, after running herself dry on pistol exercises. She wanted more. Wanted to be brought up to speed as fast as she could. So, she had gone on PT with the Marines. There was a thirst in her throat, and it spoke a language of combat. On the bottom corner of the view had been Durante and Gul. Joker had rewinded the footage, memorizing when he had picked up on some tics of them. He rewinded all the way back to a few hours prior, Durante on a bench fiddling with his weapon.

Gul had approached with a touch of the shoulder, her hand pressing on it as he looked up to her. He then fast forwarded to after that: "Very handsy, aren't they?"

Not in the traditional sense as Shepard observed. "That's sign language, innit?" Joker tipped his chin up, Gul and Durante tucked behind the Mako's shadows, close, almost knee to knee in their sit, as Durante made motions with his hands that Gul replicated.

"You usually peek on the crew like this?" Shepard had peered over Joker's shoulder. He again, apathetically shrugged.

"I'm responsible for a degree of the ship's safety, so if there's aliens onboard, I might as well have a look at them."

"Chief Gul ain't an alien, lieutenant."

"She definitely ain't human." For the next few moments Joker had fast forwarded through footage, of them sharing a language without words, of gentle touches of shoulders and bumps of arms. They kept to themselves, Durante coming out of the shadow of the Mako from time to time to teach help direct Tali and, at a certain provoking, keep up with PT standards with the rest of Hitman who were going at it. The area hadn't been large, but they made it work as Shepard could just begin to smell the sweat of Marines in her mind.

She wanted to be down there with them, truth be told.

"I mean, I guess it balances out. I've got glass for bones and she's built like a Krogan."

She chuckled. "Then come join us for PT, Joker."

"Someone's gotta pilot the ship." Parting words to Shepard as she stepped away, the moment she being out of the cockpit her new ship XO having come up her butt. She was in an interesting position: both CO of the ship and its Marines, but vetting for a new Marine CO would've taken time she didn't have. She glanced at the N7 comm channel again. In truth she probably could've picked any one of them to come along with her, but then again this ship had been too small for two. That and she didn't know if the Chiefs had been N-graduates at all.

"Commander," Pressly had started, meeting her half way through the operation's console hallway and to the CIC, walking with her. "Alliance command forwarded us some survey locations. Minerals and things like that. Should I add them to systems we're hitting?"

She'd seen the reports. Even the ones the censors didn't want her to. The Alliance had been building up arms and fleets like nothing else in the last month, taking out credit and loans for material and men. For what, she at first didn't know, but against it made her think of the Chiefs. They were the future. They had to be: creations of military theory that had, in the words of one of her favorite historical authors, become too weird to live and too rare to die. Prototypes for a new type of Alliance soldier that wasn't beat back by Turians or muscled by pirates.

"As long as I get our finder's fee on requisition spending, sure." Unofficial, but that far into her career she knew the politics of a ship captain finding something useful for the Alliance. Pressly went to open his mouth, but no sound came up, shutting himself up before he said something he might've regretted.

Rounding the center consoles she had found the commander's stand again, and, Turian as it was, she was getting used to standing there to input commands throughout the ship. "Feeling alright with me being captain Pressly?"

The older man had seemed off guard, coughing into his uniform's glove as he stood by his own console. Some of the crew members chuckled. Shepard had been so amiable compared to Anderson down to the point of conversation. Though that was her danger in a way that kept much of the crew working hard and to the letter as if Anderson had still been captain. To see Shepard angry was rare in that setting, whereas Anderson was always.

"I know you'll be more than capable, Commander."

"That's an assumption, not an opinion, Pressly." Coy as she was she had mounted the commander's deck for a moment, seeing estimated time for their current plotted course. Therum, after a few stops, would've been reached in about six days. As far as galactic time went no more than an afternoon out.

"Ma'am?"

"Come on, you speak freely enough when airing complaints about our guests, why not about me?" This was her language, as if she was flanking and pressing attacks in battle. She'd heard it from Pressly the moment the three aliens had been brought onboard. He had been the first to voice some apparent surface-level concerns that hid a more ethnocentric view on them, and he had made comments on them since they departed the Citadel. Racism on Earth had been so easy to overcome when the Turians started coming for them, at that point Turians saw humanity as, ironically, humanity did now: without division between race, gender, or ethnicity. They were all going to die anyway.

Common enemies, common goals, it unified people more often than not, that much Shepard had seen in her life. On colonies where families were divided like Romeo and Juliet, or farmers and homesteaders fought big businesses, those type of arguments and civil conflicts went away when the Batarians start landing.

In war, humanity was unified, and quite frankly Shepard thought it a deep irony. The wars and conflicts that defined people like Pressly, like Ashley Williams and her entire bloodline, like Anderson or Hackett, were the ones that had brought mankind closest, and yet set them apart and away from the galactic community.

"You must have concerns, knowing my record. You would know best Pressly." He was there. Over Elysium, answering Shepard's SOS call.

He did have concerns. Over the Butcher of Torfan. The prodigal daughter of humanity come to save the galaxy being his CO. "I'm an old man, Shepard. I might not be able to keep up with your pace, is all."

"Tempo." Was all she responded, softly, finger pointed at him in one stroke, before it bounced up again and again as if she was directing an orchestra. "Tempo. Tempo. Tempo."

"Commander?"

"I'll teach my song and dance, make it so we all can get it. Everyone has a part. Most people already know it, but…" She sucked in filtered air through her nose. She was doing that thing again. Where she spoke as if she was comfortable. A charismatic leader with scripts written for her by the natural publicist that was herself. Every word she spoke was ripe and right as rain. She spoke the Commander Shepard, and that hadn't been who she was. She held the sides of her console tightly. "I don't tolerate racism on my ship, Pressly. I deemed them capable crew members and any failings due to them or as a consequence of their presence here are my own. Judge them as you would anyone else. If that judgement is racial in nature then I presuppose you to reconsider."

The change of her voice, the tone of it, it made the midshipmen and crew pause. It made Pressly blink in consideration of his next words. They were crucial, he realized, almost as if he was underneath gunfire.

"I'm sorry if I gave off any impression of that Commander… It must just be old wounds."

She smiled sweetly at him. "Of course, Pressly. But you must understand why I might be coming off strong on this. We've got a long road ahead of us."

For some of them, far longer than they had realized.

Chakwas had been on the CIC deck, on her way back down after otherwise taking a walk to stretch her legs. She tapped her cheek appreciatively of Shepard, approvingly as Pressly's own gaze caught hers. With as much of a flash of an eyebrow raise, the doctor simply let him know that he was on his own.

"Yes ma'am. Of course ma'am." Pressly had hurriedly responded, and with that, Shepard had been more than pleased as she pulled her shirt straight, glancing at their current course.

"Hit those points of interests and report back to me. We don't want to keep Liara waiting too long."

"Aye ma'am."

She had stepped off the platform to find Chakwas waiting, "We going the same way Commander?"

"Appears so." Shepard offered a hand for Chakwas to take lead as they walked down the steps from the command deck.

Shepard had rubbed the back of her neck on the way down. In charge hadn't been the same as knowing what had been best, and, as far as she equated, any orders from a Doctor had been something that fell along the lines of best. Karin Chakwas was one of the few people in her life who knew how to give that best advice, and so she respected her, beyond what professionalism could be read on her dossier, from what she knew of her so far. "I apologize, Doctor, that I haven't introduced myself proper yet."

Chakwas could only chuckle, fingertips at her lips as they arrived on the crew deck, only to shortly slide back into her Medbay. The memory of Nihlus, a burnt body on one bed, as she laid unknowing besides him, had bombarded every sense that memory could use. Even that one: the one of her visions, the nightmare and horror of the Reapers. Even the Geth feared, if they regarded the Reapers like that: enough for Saren to manipulate them. She glanced at the trash bin, just in case the memories came back strong.

"Oh it's no issue, Commander. God knows that we've been occupied." She had settled herself back into her seat at her desk, Shepard, after a gestured ask, allowed to sit on the one of the bay's beds. "I could've gone anywhere in the Alliance, from a private practice among the colonies to one of our research labs, and yet, it seems I've come into the good fortune of remaining here."

There was no satire or sarcasm in her words. In a way, Shepard understood it. She too had never dreamed of becoming a lieutenant commander in the first place if it brought her away from her men and women. To trade in her combat rig for dress blues, it soured her thoughts everyday when she was offered positions among the Fleets.

"This crew, Commander, it's certainly the most interesting one I've ever been a part of…"

"Oh yeah?"

Chakwas flared her nostrils as a hint of a nod appeared, her eyes rolling a bit as if looking at a list above her. "Humanity's First Spectre, the renown Lieutenant Commander Jane Shepard, leading a crew made up of a special forces Marine unit onboard of a ship, first of its class, piloted by a man whose bone could very much be compared to glass, all while taking on companions whose only real relation to her is a sense of justice over the actions of one villain: Saren Arterius."

"You make me sound like a hero of a story, that way." Shepard would know. Documentaries and dramas based on choice sections of her career had made it to market. Not that she ever watched. Interviewed yes, in order to fit some narrative: making her out to be some plain Jane, any-man hero that anyone could aspire to if they reached inside themselves.

"I wouldn't know the feeling," Chakwas responded lightheartedly. "But it's better to aspire to that than anything else, wouldn't you say Commander? Admittedly you're living the type of life I imagined would come with enlisting."

"It's tiring." Shepard had curled her lower lip, considering asking the good doctor for some sleep aids at some point. "What kept you in the line?" In the line of duty that is, on active warships liable to be attacked at any moment.

Same reason Shepard was there. "Oh, I suppose some sense of duty to our servicemembers. God knows that for every one of Lieutenant Alenkos in the service, there are five Private Jenkins, and the latter is liable to be patched up every other day. The Alliance needs its doctors, especially if we're expanding at the rate we are."

Some maternal part of her, perhaps, the air of Naval service noble within Chakwas that made Shepard's own idealism measured. There was a fondness with Jenkins mentioned. They both were glad he survived Eden Prime, and, hopefully, he had known that all his excitement for his first mission was brought home to him, literally, to temper him.

"Well, got a read on our current crew, Doctor? Don't suppose we're all up on our vaccinations?"

Chakwas had moved some of her greying hair behind her ears, green eyes glancing at her computer. "I've been waiting on updated guidelines on Quarian procedures, just in case Miss Rayya is in need. However, communique from the Migrant Fleet has always been finicky at best, only now that our guests from Altis are among them."

"Ah. Good. I'm not quite sure on bringing her out on away missions, but we'll see when we pick up Liara."

Chakwas had been thankful that Therum had been, at least, days away. "And, asides from her… I do have medical dossiers and bios from the rest of the crew. Garrus had his file transferred from C-Sec, Commander Ryder sent them in prior to their arrival, and even Wrex had submitted to my inquiries more than willingly."

"I presume doctor-patient confidentiality is in place?"

Chakwas gave a smirk. "Of course, but rest assured all peculiarities in anyone's medical record here is well accounted for and within lines… Well, all except for two people that is."

"The Chiefs?" Shepard wagered a guess.

"Chief Gul, yes." Chakwas confirmed, the other name had surprised her however. "Sergeant Lavoie is being difficult, but I presume he has it well in hand."

"Lavoie?" Shepard had yet to be fully acquainted with all of her crew, but she knew who he was as Chakwas clarified.

"Decker, he was the man attending to Nihlus here, when you woke up if you recall."

She did recall a man inside of a bubble, suited up in all white tending to Nihlus when she came to.

"He's bald, correct? Pale guy?"

Gently, she nodded once. "Decker, or, rather, the Marines like to call him Doc, he went to university with me. Generally, we were both on the same career path but… Well, I don't know if you've gotten the time to look through their dossiers, but Decker went through some difficulties that might've stricken him as an irony."

"Would you mind if I inquire what?"

Chakwas only carefully shook her head. "Cancer."

"Ah."

According to statistics, Chakwas was halfway through her life, despite her age. She had a lot more living to go through, but, to see a colleague have his own expectancy curtailed, it gave perspective.

"We were both there for Shanxi." Shepard's eyebrow rose, surprised. "His treatment put him out of a degree in the medical field, took him out of academia a year before we both would've graduated, but he found his way into the Alliance eventually."

"Do you trust him enough to have him back in the lab?"

Chakwas had nodded softly. "He's certainly not out of practice. Whereas I work in medbays or field hospitals, his medical expertise has been out there in the field. He's just as competent as I, and, given our crew makeup, just what we need."

"Any particular reason?"

"Asides from the fact we are at capacity? Nothing in particular. I might be busy attending to Joker and his condition somedays, so having a spare medical professional on call would be more than beneficial. Add onto the fact that we now have several biotics on the field team that need their supplements and general checkups, well…" She drew off before returning. "I perhaps work best under pressure, with full hands, but having help will always be welcome."

That Shepard more than understood. As was why she had taken the new members of her team on at all.

"I presume he's fine then, being just short of a doctor?"

Chakwas had agreed, but had led the conversation on. "I still have to account for you, Commander. Keep you under the scope in regards to those… visions, you had after Eden Prime, to makes sure you haven't sustained any neurological damage."

"Is there much of a procedure to account for prophetic visions, Doc?"

"Hallucinations, maybe-"

"Hey, Doc, ain't none of what I saw was a hallucination." Shepard had been on the defensive almost too fast, Chakwas noting. The good doctor had conferred with Anderson on Shepard's vision, immediately prior: On the machine genocide and then the vision of men in black chasing her through a city unknown in the Alliance, and, surprisingly, Anderson had put his faith in Shepard. Those visions were something.

"Oh, I don't mean to imply that. I meant to say that you'd be liable for headaches, an overloaded brain, in laymen's terms. I can prescribe you some painkillers for that."

Shepard had realized how terse she had sounded at that moment, bringing herself back in with a cough. "Some sleep aids, would be nice."

Chakwas had kindly agreed, gesturing to one of the cabinets. "We'll start you out with Chamomile, Commander, before I prescribe any actual medicinal solutions." Tea. Something Shepard had wish she knew more of as she got the kettle and the tea packet out, readying it for a cup.

"Honey and sugar around?"

"Then you'd be ruining it." Chakwas had chided, leaving Shepard to brew a simple cup of tea.

---

A few standard galactic days had gone by for the Normandy as the Artemis Tau cluster had been picked through. Survey beacons sent out and curiosities of the galaxy brought up. A mineral deposit tagged by the Alliance surveyors confirmed and reserved for pickup by another ship, missing drones and beacons collected and verified with their data, and the mythology of the galactic neighborhood brought to bear.

A flag brought up, from Pharos in the Athens System, bore a mark Garrus had recognized after a survey drone had found an abandoned outpost on its tin surface. The cloth and fabric had been frozen stiff, but it was visible in its design:

"I recognize this. Magna. One of the colonies out here in this neighborhood." Shepard had stood over it as Garrus explained, "Few hundred years ago, just before we found the Citadel, the colonies of the Hierarchy became… distanced."

Mai had been in earshot on the other side of the Mako, on guard over JD as he had wrapped himself in his own arms against the wall and nodded off. There was simply nothing for him to do, past browsing the Extranet for the umpteenth time reviewing history. Just as he had in his old life, he had done so now: sleep.

"Distanced?"

Garrus had nodded at Shepard's question. "When you spread as big as you do, unchecked by the Council, the colonies furthest away from the core sectors tend to become disenfranchised. Back in the day, local chieftains saw fit to draw away from the Hierarchy. When the Hierarchy didn't let them, well, it became a Civil War." Garrus had seen his history before him in that flag. "I'd recommend jettisoning this in a cargo pod and leaving it with a beacon. Have one of our patrols pick it up after we send out a message."

"I'll see to it." She said promptly, that exact thing being done as, a few hours later, a Turian ship had sent its regards.

When it left though, it left behind thoughts for Mai. Humanity only had itself to compare to, the Covenant, for all of its genocidal might against the UNSC, leaving no real indication to their own internal operation as a galactic civilization. It comforted her, if only in understanding, that even aliens had growing problems she very intimately knew.

She wondered what that war looked like. She wondered if there hadn't been someone like her before in that galaxy. The Krogan Rebellions, the Rachni Wars, she had studied them, looked for patterns she saw in herself, but, in the end, came to the same answer now as she did in her old life: That she was alone. Perhaps not in physical attributes, for she was the follow up to the Spartan-IIs, and god knows that she wasn't the only Spartan who had made mincemeat of Insurrectionists. She was alone in circumstance.

Shepard had made to return to the command deck, but not before glancing over at Tali being run raw by PT hosted by the Marines of Hitman. Colorful bunch, even by Shepard's standards, but good. Good to her, and, apparently, good to Tali as she saw the beads of sweat drop on the inside of her visor as she was doing another rep of pushups before another go at sprints. Blood was on her tongue, but in a good way.

She didn't return up to the deck before, especially, finding an opportunity to talk to Chief Gul alone. Still in her armor.

Cloaked in shadows, the grey of her armor didn't help her figure form into a shape of a person. She glanced at JD, but Mai had almost instinctively leaned to obscure. "Commander." Mai had greeted, and Shepard had found her instead.

"Have you not taken that off since Eden Prime, Chief Gul?"

Mai shook her head. "I've been trained to operate with this armor system for months at a time."

Her voice. That's all that Shepard had to remind herself that Mai had been a woman, a human. It was a forced voice, it felt to her, not natural. It seemed too much defined by the sounds of military words and phrases, strong and punctual, deep in her throat. She wondered, frankly, what it sounded like if she laughed.

"You don't have to, Chief Gul. Last I checked the Normandy isn't currently engaged in combat action, and we won't be for another day or so… That is if it comes to that."

"Understood, Commander." Mai had offered no inroads to conversation, her arms held behind her back, the black visor of hers the only thing Shepard could look at. She wondered how many people had seen this as their last sight? She wondered many things, and she wanted to ask so much of this woman.

"You seem, uncomfortable, Chief Gul." Shepard looked around for the sheets that JD had requisitioned for her, but none were spread. "I really do recommend armoring out and off. I don't know where you've been deployed on, but we're in no hurry, and your armor system seems easy enough to take on and off, from what I observed."

Again, and again, she was told to just take the armor off, and yet it went against everything she had been comfortable with. She looked back to JD, as if he was to chime in, but he made no such comment. He was asleep, peacefully, thankfully, for once.

"Am I being deployed for the retrieval of Dr. T'Soni?" Mai posed instead, half turned to JD.

Shepard had considered that team. It would've been useful to have at least two Alliance personnel with her at the very least. "Yes, Chief."

"I'll de-armor then." A compromise.

Shepard pursed her lips with a nod. "Fair enough." Mai had hoped that Shepard would've left, but she still stood there, glancing at Tali go through her training.

"How do you think she's doing, Chief Gul?" Shepard posed.

If nothing else, Tali had been interesting to observe for Mai. There was certainly tenacity in her drive, the rocky start giving way to the pure need, the want, to know what to do when the shots starting flying and the bombs started dropping. "Yet to be seen, ma'am."

Her formality threw Shepard off, truthfully, but it was odd. Normally people had put up the front of professionalism, knowing who she was, intimidated by her, but with Mai it felt different. "You settling in okay?"

Mai drew her eyes behind her visor to the floor. The past few days had been a thoughtful routine for her, reading Extranet articles with JD down in the bay, almost shoulder to shoulder. She had never read so much in her life before those last few weeks, and the eye strain had been wearing on even her.

"I have no issues to speak of ma'am." Or issues she would speak of.

Shepard grit her teeth. She really was giving her nothing to work with. "Well, if you have any concerns or would like to requisition anything special, feel free to ask me. I take care of my people, Chief Gul."

Usually her superiors in the UNSC knew better than to wrong her, so this new perspective: of having to approach a CO with grievances, it was new to Mai. The one grievance she did have, it sounded insane to tell anyone: I don't want you to find out more about me.

"I know you do ma'am." Was that a question? It sounded like one to Shepard as she looked up and down her armor again. The paint was new, but the dents and cuts beneath? Testament to battles past.

"Hm. Let me know if Wrex gives you any problems, but, if nothing else, I should go."

She knew how Mai fought, she knew that Wrex wanted to know, but if they did fight, she would reprimand them both. Yet… She understood why he did. It was in her blood as an N7: the very nature of her being that rank meaning that she knew, more than anyone, to fight is to prove themselves. She wanted to prove herself to Mai, for some inexplicable reason. Out of the thrill of a challenge, maybe, but there was something more. Maybe Mai needed to be beaten? Maybe her quiet and withdrawn regard was her attempt at being better than the rest of the crew.

Shepard took in a breath as she bowed out, feeling the fire in her palms. She didn't like the fact she was a biotic, somewhat. The implant in her head was to control it, if anything, not to use it. As a rifleman she wanted to trust only herself and her rifle, not the space magic it seemed to her when she first manifested the usage of eezo as a child. She didn't want to be any different, to have an inherent advantage, over her men; as a child she didn't want to be a freak among her friends even. That stayed true today, but in her older age she recognized no harm could've come from at least exploring the possibilities as she had recently. She didn't want to rely on them.

If she herself were to fight Mai, maybe, she admitted, her abilities could've been the only thing that might've helped her.

She hadn't brushed her teeth in several days, but she remembered the Asari trick, feeling the odd, but pleasant feeling of the plaque on her teeth get rubbed away from a flick of her finger as she waited for the elevator.

When she announced the arrival to Therum had been within the next day, she did it, at least, with a clean breath.

---

Only a portion of the Normandy field team would be deployed to Therum, the rest would be utilized however, as was why she had ordered a mass gear up. By the time she had appeared in the bay already geared up, the rest of her people had been ready and waiting. Just as she ordered, the men and women of the field team had been rallied when mission time came.

"Commander on deck!"

A prim fit of Marines, two Naval SOF, and the special guests. They all appeared to her in the middle of the bay, geared up themselves.

"Commander," It was Joker over comms. "we are ten mikes out from Therum. Local weather disturbances over Dr. T'Soni's will make it a bit inadvisable for us to hot drop."

Shepard thumbed her comm piece. "Copy all Joker, put us close as you can, we'll take the Mako in."

"Aye ma'am."

As she approached, she eye'd her own weapon locker. Sniper rifle and a pistol would do her good today. If this was just a pick up on T'Soni then she figured nothing else was needed, still, she needed to be brief with the briefing.

"We green, Marines?"

"Always." Kaiden had answered for most of Hitman, the rest ra'ing.

"Good. Okay. While we're out here with the Normandy, the Admiralty and officers of the flag have seen it fit to ask us to do some errands. Some involve some probable shooty bits, the other intel work. I'll be taking a team down on Therum to secure Dr. T'Soni, the rest of you will fall underneath Lieutenant Alenko and clear out the sector. Can I get an affirmative?"

"Affirmative, commander." They all had repeated back to her. An easy day today, for sure.

"Seeing as we're out here, and because I am a Spectre, well, get used to it. My inbox is filling up every time I look at it, and, well, you try saying no to the Admirals."

"We can do that for you ma'am." Bannon had more than snidely cried out, the rest of Hitman giving her a laugh in agreement. Ashley had fit in comfortably with Hitman, giving her elbow to Bannon's side, which she took well enough. They were Marines, in every sense of the word, and as was Ashley. The remaining Marines of the Normandy hadn't been field team, but rather security on the ship, and they had been shrunk back against the personalities that filled out the Raiders of the Normandy.

"Maybe, maybe not." Shepard had given her a stern smirk in return. "Anyway, Garrus, Wrex, Tali, and the Chiefs. You're with me today." Tali had been anticipating this as she stood by Garrus, she nodding once to herself. She was more than ready, kitted out rather well on top of her suit. "Lieutenant Alenko, you and XO Pressly have the con."

Shepard didn't need to regard the Chiefs at that moment, they very well and away prepared. It was odd that Durante carried a pack at all on his armor, but he did, and it had been a hint to his training as well as he had waited for the Mako to open up its rear. They knew the drill, apparently.

Kaiden had taken the rest of the Marines back to the lockers and away deployment orders from him. He had a list of planets to hit, and it wouldn't take him more than a few hours to dart around and resolve any issues or assignments as forwarded to the Normandy. Many of them had been no less benign than a downed receiver relay or missing gear, but there had been some hinted at some sort of hostile element.

They could handle it, Shepard imagined.

What that left had been the guests. She pointed at the three of them, finger signaling them over to the back of the Mako. Wrex had been the first to arrive up, his shotgun already brandished. "How often you work in a team, Wrex?"

The Krogan had shrugged, nose up at the ceiling and the IFV he had wondered if it could fit both him and Gul. "I'm tough, but not stupid, Shepard. Remember, I did come to you, after all."

If Gul and Wrex had been monsters of size, Tali had been the exact opposite. The team had outfitted her well enough, a battle belt outfitted with weapon holsters on her waist as a bandolier was over her shoulders with a satchel of her own tools. She looked ready. "Why might I ask am I coming, Shepard?"

Shepard had waited for Garrus to walk up, his own rifle ready. "It's a simple pick up. Easy. Get us in the groove. I can trust my Marines to know how I work, but with you all? Well, I just want to get one drop under your belts. I know you're all perfectly capable, but hey, can't hurt."

"And I suppose bringing along other non-humans to meet an Asari whose mother is currently helping the galaxy's most wanted fugitive isn't a tactical decision?" Garrus had a hint of snark in his words.

"Hmph. Didn't think of it like that." Shepard had only threw her hands up, one of them going to the back of the Mako, omni-tool opening it up. "Ladies first." She meant them.

With nothing more than a huff, the three of them had gone into the back of the Mako, a day out with Shepard now in their future. Chief Gul and Chief Durante awaited for them to pile in.

"We good, Chiefs?" Gul said nothing, only giving a short nod as she ducked in, it was Durante that she stopped as he did the same and followed. He tilted his head at her, face hidden behind helmet, wondering why she had stopped him, halfway up the loading ramp into the IFV. "Good job on beating my record by the way, Chief Durante."

His head recoiled upward, surprised Shepard had known. "Forgive me, If I wasn't allowed to-"

Shepard's smile had been one of her best weapons, reaching out and only shaking the man's shoulder armor once. "You must've had good reason. Don't worry about it Chief."

Shepard was many things to many people. Gifted soldier, trusted diplomat, posterchild for the N-Program and the Alliance Marine. Still, of those things she exhibited in her confident stride, one thing she realized, as did all those present in the Mako, was that she was not a good driver.

Of anything.

"Does anyone else know how to drive a Mako…?" For as much as Mai had been a master of vehicle handling in the UNSC, both physically and piloting or driving, she didn't want to bet it here, on a world inundated with magma. Shepard had grated her teeth. "Uh, okay guess I'm up."

The erraticness of the Normandy going through atmosphere had been noted as the hatches of the Mako sealed up, Shepard assuming command upfront in the driver's seat. "Chief Durante. Get up here and get on the gun."

Learn as he went, that's how he'd always worked. From knowing the particular recoil patterns of a Battle Rifle to how to gauge new COs, he had his ways to work around problems. Getting to know how to work the gun of a Mako would be one of them.

He clambered up in the IFV, reminding him no less of a Pelican, the holographic viewports that acted as windows greeting him as he got up front. The gunner's seat was appropriately shotgun, and the joystick presented to that seat had made the gunnery view in front of him rather self-explanatory. As an ODST, vehicular warfare hadn't been his specialty. He'd ridden in Hawks and Warthogs, of course, hitched rides on Scorpions and gotten on the gun of a Gungoose during the more eccentric raiding missions on desert planets, but past that? The 155mm gun of the Mako would be the biggest gun he had ever handled.

"We do our homework on Therum?" Shepard had flipped the switches in the cockpit, the rumble of the Mako's engines turning on.

Garrus had answered. "Human industrial world. Sparsely populated by miners, otherwise untouched. It's an off season right now so I don't think any miners are here at all… I know Turian industrial worlds are the same."

"There's an apparent Prothean presence. As is why the Asari is here." Wrex had grunted out, shotgun between his legs, his armor barely fitting into a seat. "You know, I never did care much for them."

"Do tell, Wrex?" Shepard had been more than willing to listen to a Krogan who had lived long before her, and, chances were, more than likely to outlive her.

"They're dead for a reason, and only the strong can survive in this galaxy." He glanced at Mai during that. She was a war bundled up in the shape of a man, and Wrex had seen nothing more enticing than to fight. As long as that hadn't been satiated, she would be tested in other ways. Even now, being with a team, it was trying for her.

"Joker," Shepard called in. "Run by comms with the settlements one last time. If we're going in blind, least we could say is we tried."

"Aye ma'am. One moment."

The Alliance needed planets like this to fuel and to build itself: Therum, an eyesore by any other name, was a welcome candidate to be sucked dry. Mai knew the type of planets. Even the Insurrection had its fair amount of industrial power to sustain a two-front war: between the UNSC and the Covenant. Not enough to make a difference, but enough to make a dent. As was why she was tasked at all.

"No dice Commander. This side of the planet is pretty deserted."

JD's leg had been shaking, bouncing up and down from the pads of his feet up front. He was anxious. "Human." The low drawl of Wrex had him tip his head back. "What's your deal?"

JD had paused before answering, but there was nothing to hide here. "The in-between gets me." He was fine with being in a ship, fine with being on the battlefield. It was the drop in the middle that had him worry the most. "I'm fine."

"Don't look it." Wrex gruffed, shuffling his shotgun over to his hip. He had been definitely alien to the two SOF, but, yet, his personality was distinctly human. The gruffness, that confidence that could be easily mistaken for arrogance. The scar that ran across his face was but only one, and not even the deepest in his life. Rare, was it when Mai had found someone who had done more fighting than her.

Garrus had been glancing around the IFV, intrigued, his mandibles twitching, a tell-tale signature of a Turian in thought. "Humans have such an odd way with military machining. First your spaceborne fighters, now this… It's odd."

"How, so Garrus?" Tali had also been looking on the insides. The Migrant Fleet barely sustained a ground force, let alone an armored corp.

"Not enough armor to be a tank, and not enough armament to really do anything."

"Jack of all trades, master of none." Shepard had recounted her training with the Mako. "Handy for a ship like the Normandy. If we had an actual tank it means we're being tasked for the wrong mission."

Tali wanted to make a comment on the fact Mai was being brought along, and she herself was built like one, but didn't. Not when said woman was sitting right across from her.

"Approaching drop point one in thirty seconds." Joker had communicated, Mai feeling in her bones the Normandy breaking atmosphere.

They had no external view in the troop compartment, only the rumble of its engines giving them any sensory to the outside world.

"We're rolling out of the Normandy, so we'll be in freefall for a few moments. Brace yourselves." JD knew the procedure, remembering the first time he had ever dropped as an ODST. The viewport forward saw the Normandy's bay open, the red sky of a magma planet seen. "With Chief Gul in the back, who knows how hard we'll hit earth."

Whatever it had been, JD knew within himself what it felt like to hit the ground hard.

He found handhold at the corners of his seat.

"Start rolling Commander, I'll fling ya."

"Aye, see you in a bit Joker." Shepard held the control stick of the Mako and pushed it forward, the wheels of it lurching forward. Distinctly the takeup reminded Mai and JD of Warthogs. Everything about Shepard was doing felt wrong to them however as they felt the surface beneath them disappear and the Mako start dropping.

JD felt those familiar urges kick in. The want for him to take in breath through his nose felt as he felt gravity in his bones and balls.

Wrex had probably felt this before, he taking the event with as much casualness as a man over a millennium old could've had. Garrus and Tali however, they were shocked momentarily, a yelp coming from Tali as the two of them felt for handholds within the cabin.

The landing zone below had been shown to Shepard on the dash as she settled into the fall, feeling for the secondary pedal that was the only thing that stood between them and being preemptively buried six feet under and then some. She jammed her foot onto that pedal, the jets of the Mako kicking as the entire span of the drop took no more than ten seconds, the impact of wheels hitting ground causing the vehicle to bounce before Shepard locked the wheels in place.

Only then did she starkly remember her helmet hadn't been on. That risk of concussion kept her full aware as the Mako stopped shaking, off to the corner of her eye she spotting the Normandy jetting off.

"Hitman 1-Actual has touched ground." She reported scanning her surroundings. They landed surrounded by red and grey magma rock quarries, the deactivated and unused machines and tunnels that led into mines surrounding them in a corridor that led to their destination as they understood it: The only Prothean dig-site reported in the area.

Council intel had forwarded them some information from Thessia: Liara T'Soni had remained out on Therum for a good part of the year, funded by a fellowship out of Thessia. Apparently Therum had been the only planet they were willing to fund, Dr. T'Soni's theories on the Protheans not mainstream enough for them to get behind.

As was the life of Academia, Shepard figured.

"Copy all." Joker responded back. "Be aware we're picking some pretty gnarly readings at the dig site. It's nothing I've seen before, so heads up. Normandy out."

She looked back into the troop compartment. "We all good?"

Mai had hardly moved at all. She was used to this type of insertion. She'd dropped in an ODST a handful of times and, at worst, she had ridden down a Sabre prototype that was on fire and lost control. She survived that, she could survive this obviously standard insertion procedure. She looked around the cabin, reporting for them. "We're condition green, ma'am."

"Might not be after riding with me for a bit." Shepard had said under her breath fast, looking at the road forward. Not quiet enough as she saw JD give her that look of a confused puppy with his helmet. "Look, I spent all my time walking as a kid, I've never driven a car, sky or land-based, and I usually don't operate these things."

Before JD could respond he again was reaching for a grip as his ass went back into the seat, the Mako lurching forward.

---

The passengers chalked it up to, mostly, the terrain of Therum as opposed to Shepard's skill as a driver. JD knew better upfront, but he neglected to make any hint otherwise.

As long as they hadn't driven into the literal lakes of fire, they were fine for now as he eased off his own controls, no apparent need for the Mako's gun as they started the long drive.

"So, uh, any of us dabble in academics? Could help us understand Dr. T'Soni." Garrus had been more than willing to fill in the silence between them otherwise in the cabin. "I personally wasn't smart enough, so I've got no idea about how research expeditions work."

"Makes sense." Wrex commented, laying his head back as if settling in for a nap. "You Turians aren't known for your smarts."

"No need to be nasty." Garrus grit through his teeth.

"Oh, don't mind me. It's no truer than how I'm known for my good looks."

Ignoring the obvious vibes in the back, JD had instead peered through his viewfinder with the Mako's cannon. It wasn't a planet he had known back in his universe, but it would've fallen into the outer colonies if this was back in his galaxy. This type of planet, adorned with a rich mineral base, these types were coveted by the UNSC in the waning days of the war as more and more planets fell. Of the planets Mai had gave them, some had been valuable resource planets. Perhaps Therum had been one of them.

This wasn't by any means a concentrated mining effort on Therum they all noticed as they drove by. It felt like the ramshackle efforts of the old American Gold Rush, machinery and implements all worn down and haphazardly set to grab rocks from the hearth of the planet.

The Protheans were here for probably the same reason, all those millennia ago. The idea of Protheans, of a race of precursors whose decisions defined the galaxy even now, to JD, it had let him understand something that the Covenant had acted on: Gods. He understood now what Gods were if the gods of the Covenant were like the Prothean.

Of course, he wouldn't have had any knowledge of the Forerunners, unlike Mai.

Seen out of the corner of her eyes, her handlers sometimes told her to not outright look as she stumbled upon, behind Covenant lines, ruins or machines that went beyond her own understanding. The silver metal sheen and the orange glows of the left behinds of a race that came before. What had happened to them was perhaps a question she was not worthy to know. Maybe, just maybe, the Forerunners had their own Reapers which Shepard alluded to.

Half an hour passed as they continued down the path of mining stations and camps, all empty, not a soul present as the unkind driving on Shepard's part kept every moment of it a ride.

"Shouldn't have worn this armor." Garrus grumbled aloud, rubbing his backside. Tali had gone quiet, in her own thoughts. She thought their first drop was going to be more involved, and just as JD jittered his leg, so did she eventually.

Unlike JD, she stopped when someone noticed.

It was only right that someone who had worn a helmet for more or less her entire life was able to pick up the subtleties of even Mai. Under her gaze, quiet, and almost unknowable, Tali froze. This woman, she hadn't even seen her skin. She was no more, no less unknowable than the Geth it felt like, and that was the danger Tali felt as they locked eyes behind visors.

As a Quarian, she knew more than anyone the armor they wore protected more than just the body. Underneath that monster of an armor, what had Chief Gul, as she had known her, was protecting?

"Contact, IFF unknown, coming high to our six." JD's voice had rang out as he saw the radar attached to the gun's view finder. Shepard had immediately banged the Mako left into the side of a hill for any sort of cover besides a magma lake, the rumbling vibrating them all now as JD grabbed the control stick.

Mai and JD knew the feeling well: the familiar hum of a transport craft above them switching them into combat mode.

The shadow that enveloped them had been just short of the size of the Normandy, the curve, the purple grey aesthetics had almost tricked JD into thinking they had been back, tracking them.

Tali leaned to get a look out of the driver's view ports, and what she saw, she knew. "Geth!" She almost wanted to jump out of her seat. "Sit still! Their ships don't have windows so they probably won't spot us! Too much geothermal activity here."

Everyone had a gun unhooked and ready, Mai being just short of barging out alone, however Shepard had taken Tali's advice, cutting the engine as she observed the troop transport, shaped almost like a maggot, sweep forward of their path forward, pausing only momentarily to drop-

"Armatures." Tali had basically been upfront now, peering her head forward into JD's space, the man eventually just offering her the viewfinder. "Geth anti-tank and anti-infantry units. What's this gun rated for?"

Shepard remembered blowing open a house on her firing command on Torfan. "I'm guessing good enough… Shit, seems like we made the call, coming here first."

Wrex had thumbed grenades into his shotgun. "Shame I wasn't alive for the first Geth Uprising. The Krogan might've saved the galaxy twice."

"Anything I should know?" Garrus and Wrex hadn't fought the Geth before. Wrex exuded his usual confidence, however Garrus, he knew better, activating his rifle.

"Typical." The words from Mai had shocked Garrus. Every word out of her was a surprise. "You can take it."

Shepard glanced down at her omni at a map, peering at those armatures in the distance: four legged walkers with the head of a Geth unit on top of them. The transport ship had disappeared off into the distance, but only before dropping vague shapes beyond a hill. "There's a security checkpoint at the other side of this lake… Didn't know the Geth were smart enough to come track down Dr. T'Soni as well."

"They're a hivemind, Commander. On their own, their no smarter than a child. Perhaps Saren told them she was here." JD glanced down as Tali leaned over him. She had taken one of his SMGs for this deployment, and, he had only hoped that he and Hitman had given her enough of a crash course for her to be good.

"Chief Durante, on the gun. We're weapons hot people. If I tell you to disembark we're popping out and hot. We all good on that?"

"Use the Mako as cover?"

Shepard tapped the ceiling of the cab once. "It's what my tax dollars pay for."

JD had gotten back on the gun, tapping Tali's shoulder and sending her back as Shepard gunned the engine forward. He thanked his stars that the gun was stabilized as Shepard put on her impression of a German tank commander during the Blitz. As the yards closed in, there was only one thing JD could do but depress the trigger.

---

Any discerning Geth might've been otherwise concerned when the erected defenses of their captured security checkpoint opened fire. Being AI as they were, they didn't feel fear, not even as the rumble of explosions taking out those turrets silenced them, only to be followed by something rather illogical:

A flying tank.

JD had drops harder than this as the Mako with its jump jets had jumped over an erected security wall.

Moments earlier, Wrex had made some analogy, it being less than ideal to punch a monster directly in its mouth. The head tended to be the best target however as Shepard gunned the jets as hard as she could as they touched the ground, everyone bouncing up at least a little before Shepard had flung herself back into the troop compartment clawing to the hatch. "JD on the gun!"

He kept silent as the roar of the gun answered for him. The sound of gunshots impacting the side of the Mako dwarfed by a cannon going off.

Mai had been ready to go, barely having moved in the impact as Tali was still shaken. Of all things, it was advisable that she be on her feet first instead of Shepard.

"Ma'am." She said once as Shepard popped the exit hatch. It wasn't a question as much as it was a decision, Mai forcing herself forward and up before Shepard could protest. If she did however, it would've been vain. Who else but Mai to be on point?

She had just short of vaulted up out of the Mako, the Geth unloading into it as its kinetic barriers flared underneath the burden. It was that shield that Mai was protected by, but one she didn't need as she slid off the back and shouldered her rifle. Her motion sensor still hadn't been properly calibrated to hostiles in her new reality, but it told enough, everyone but JD highlighted yellow.

A dozen or so contacts surrounding her, all Geth, all troop strength judging on the volume of fire. Those Geth a few meters away hiding behind crates and boxes in the middle of that checkpoint only now focusing their oculi on her. Raising her rifle she had no hesitation about her position.

Four pulls of the trigger, typically. That's what she noticed on Eden Prime as the metallic flash of her gun went off, working her way left to right as the Geth she was shooting at focused less on the Mako and more on her. The Mako's gun continued to fire, dealing with the front sector.

The way a Geth died, Mai had to memorize it: the way white blood flew from its body from the killing shot as its ocular light flashed and went out, its body going to the floor, exploding, and then, seemingly, melting. How Tali had been able to secure one she didn't know, but props to her as she gunned down the offending Geth on that volcanic ground. Shepard had finally come out in the few seconds Mai had gotten her head start, then Wrex, then Garrus, and then finally Tali.

They all had their own shields, the accuracy of the Geth nothing Mai hadn't seen before from trained militiamen, so that immediate burst up and out had definitely, if the Geth had a function for this, surprised them.

Shields had taken away some level of urgency for humanity. Mai had been trained otherwise, but had come into her own given her privilege. JD couldn't be as quite convinced, secretly happy he was on the gun and making scrap of the Geth.

Garrus and Wrex, they had take a knee covering one sector almost immediately, but Tali, Shepard looked back to check, had stumbled, shadowing the two before realizing what they were doing, finding her own sector forward as Shepard passed behind Mai to check the other side of the Mako.

She had, in the rush of combat, knocked her first against Mai's shoulder, signaling that she had been crossing. The Spartan only upped her fire.

The eternal hunch Shepard had in her back in combat had been out of experience, trying to minimize her form as she brought her own rifle up to bear at more Geth, left without cover from their ill-advised entry method. The quality of quantity defined Shepard as she opened up with her rifle, transitioning to her stomach in prone as white fluid flew from targets hit.

Mai hadn't been used to operating with a team, lesser still she hadn't been used to operating to those not on her level, so she snapped her head right at the guests. Wrex had been remarkably well disciplined. He had stayed put and held his sector along with Garrus, and Tali, copying them, had done so as well, her shoulder seemingly locked to the stock of her SMG.

Another shot rang out from the Mako, perhaps closer than warranted, the shot landing and sending dust up, only for it to rain back down in the pitter patter of rocks.

With Mai having gone first, it gave Shepard ample time to put back on her helmet, and she was thankful for that as she felt the rapid pebbles bounce off her brain bucket.

She circled back around to the front of the Mako as JD swung the turret in a three sixty degree sweep. "Clear?!" He yelled out over comms.

Mai looked at her motion tracker, wondering if she or JD had mentioned that she possessed them at all. Around her: nothing. "Clear."

The checkpoint had been set up by whatever mining company took reigns here for various safety reasons, either bordering on miner uprisings or stolen equipment, and that had meant gates in the enclosure, leading to where they needed to go, all of them shut.

Two buildings had been on either side of the Gate that the Mako needed to go through.

Shepard had sucked in one breath before turning on comms. "JD, try for the Normandy, notify them that we're engaged."

"Aye ma'am."

"Chief Gul, hit the building on the right, we'll take left. Find the mechanisms to get that gate open and we'll move up and out."

As far as general MFDs and omni-tool interfaces went, operating comms on the Mako had been something JD figured out painlessly enough, holding his transmission and sending it. "Hitman to Normandy. Reporting engagement with Geth forces. Out."

Mai had already, in her stride, approached the building attached to the gate, the walls of the checkpoint reminding her of the security stations on human colonies. Even with her size she had outpaced the other group to the building.

"Wrex on point, Tali you're on our tail."

Tail, on point, sector, cascading, terms which Tali was not familiar with, but glad that the Marines had told her the language, she moving off of the lines as they stacked on the wall next to the open doorway, peering out and behind them. It was with that the Quarian was gifted the view of Mai performing the same breach and clear, albeit on her own.

Mai's motion sensor tracked three targets, she going for her belt for one of the saucer like grenades issued.

In her mind, at that moment, she remembered skipping rocks with JD back on Earth. She had been throwing grenades all her life, but the new shape of the standard in that galaxy, his advice came through: "Like a frisbee."

She didn't, but she was reminded, taking it into her right hand as she stepped off the wall and aimed at the door from an angle, the insides plain, sporting to her vision only a few chairs and tables for security staff. Like an underhanded push the grenade went flying in with a flick of her wrist, bouncing off the left wall and then out into the portion of the building she couldn't see.

It had been a flash grenade, testing whether or not visual stimuli could overload the Geth.

The metal bounce was only followed by the pop of the grenade, she sending herself forward, slicing the pie with her sights as she found three Geth units with guns up at the door, but paused.

The Geth were, amazingly, standardized at her height, but it was a step down from Elites she noticed, her rifle aiming at their eyes as they finally responded.

She felt herself wince by pure stimulus as one shot did hit her kinetic barrier, but the sound of three bodies hitting the floor had otherwise detracted from that one shot.

One shot was usually all it took for some people, but she had been too expensive for that to happen to her as she approached their bodies, their self-destruct contingencies activating.

On the other side of the gate she heard the gunfire of the other team.

"Clear." She heard from them first, from Garrus.

"Clear." Mai reported, glancing around the room.

"I can't go where you go Mai, do what you do. Not for the reasons you do."

It was her first moment of solitude for a while, in the middle of that room as the Geth dissolved and sparked away at her feet. Loneliness used to be her normal, and now, this was an exception to her new life. She didn't quite remember what her true idle thoughts were in her lonely moments, stalking Covenant or Insurgents on planets where she had been the only human alive. Everything, everything, had been about the mission, the way forward to her objectives. She didn't think too often of her wants or needs, of the next time she was going to shower, to sleep, or to eat good food. Those thoughts didn't matter to her, irrelevant to the mission. Her mind, simply, did not work that way then.

She was forced to look inward however. JD had done that to her.

He could do what she did, on a measure that she thought was more than tolerable. For him to be support, it would've been tolerable to her. He could clear rooms, kill Covenant, act in the context cases she was used to… and yet.

It took hours after he said that to her, she repeating the words in her heads when it was quiet of her thoughts, to know what he meant.

He didn't want to wage war for the rest of his life, not because he couldn't, but because he didn't want to.

He spoke not from an aspect of his capabilities and training, but rather from someplace else. Mai had thought for far too long, embarrassingly so, on where. When she figured, it was because she didn't understand herself.

He was only human.

"I'm pulling up now." His voice brought her out of her temporary reverie, Shepard had found the switch for the gate.

She glanced at her rifle. Prototype as it was it had some trouble venting heat, but she had flared its core with one button, letting it steam out as she exfiltrated.

"You really don't hesitate on killing Geth, do ya?" Shepard had asked of Tali as the other group mounted back onto the Mako and the security gate cleared open.

"Why should I?" Tali pressed her gun back onto her holster near her shoulder.

Shepard had clambered on top of the Mako, offering Mai a hand up, but she not taking it, climbing up herself. She paused a moment as she got on, Shepard reeling her hand back.

"I'm too heavy."

"Ah."

With that understanding they both went back in, JD transitioning back over to the gunner's seat.

Five minutes. That's all that took.

Wrex had settled back into his seat, satisfied at the moment. "You sure you don't got quads, Shepard?" He referred to flying into a Geth held base like they just did.

Shepard had shrugged as she passed him, back up front. "Violence of action, Wrex. I'll make the Geth understand that." Back in the driver's seat she had deactivated her gun again, mounting it in a slot in the cabin. "Nice shooting, Chief Durante."

Behind his helmet he nodded as he double checked the cooling on the cannon. Nothing too bad.

"They're not too different than any other person, eh?'

"You got kills to your name, Turian?" Wrex's value of a person seemed to be based on that: how much hurt, how much fight they could deal.

"Pirates. Mostly." Garrus answered promptly, almost ashamed. "I did my time in the Navy."

Wrex might've wanted to make a comment, a boast, but he was more insightful then that, even as that urge came over him. "It's odd. For machines, I expected more."

Tali had taken trail position during the breach, she snapping onto the side of the wall as they moved in and, promptly, dealt with a Geth that had popped out of its concealment. She was snappy on the draw, on the trigger pull, and more than judicious with the application of gunfire.

It felt good, pumping rounds into an enemy that had been so ingrained into their people's suffering.

Her leg stopped shaking.

"Yep." Wrex agreed to himself, glancing over at Mai, seeing her grey armor now with hints of red dust on it. "I expected more."

---

He should've been a Scorpion operator, with how his day was going. Admittedly gunning down Geth with a cannon had been less morbid than doing the same with even a Warthog's chaingun to a Grunt. Flesh versus metal, and he preferred seeing metal torn apart. Seeing the insides of his enemies, although useful a thought in his aggression, was by far harmful out of combat.

The Geth obviously hadn't anticipated Shepard as she continued onward with the Mako. The lone transport ship that had been bouncing between hiding and dropping support in front of them not armed itself, and what it could fight back with promptly stepped out by either cannonfire or, in this case-

Garrus looked at the floor, really looking past it and imagining what a Mako's suspension was like when pieces of Geth had been in it. "Someone's gotta take a look at that later."

Shepard had been giggling, almost, as she ran over several Geth units. "Hah, shit. You offering Garrus?"

He had nothing else to do. "Maybe."

It was all in good jest however, not like the Mako could go anywhere given the terrain forward. The Geth were defending the final pathway up to a set up dig site, once mining, now scientific.

"She had support staff, setting up, but after that? I think she ran it alone." Shepard pointed at the hints of machinery up past the hill, past rock outcropings she could jet over. "Alright, everyone disembark, we're rucking it."

Garrus was about ready to throw up, given her driving and then the added battle maneuvers, so he was glad to at least get what constituted as fresh air after the further half-hour of driving toward the dig site. He didn't mind taking point up and out of the hatch, seeing the bits and pieces of Geth that had gotten in their way. If he wanted to join Shepard to get results, here it was.

The size of the pathway forward, leading up to the digsite had been just big enough for people, and even then he doubted, looking at it, that Wrex might've gotten through. He had enough trouble getting through the Mako's hatch as Garrus offered a hand to him. He pushed it away however groaning up and out. "Save it, Turian."

Garrus held his word as the two slid off, the rest following, Shepard more or less locking the car behind them.

She wanted to make comment on how, after that one day, the Mako deserved a name and maybe some art for its service. She knew better as she heard the clicking of Geth communication further ahead.

"Cover, cover, cover." She chopped her hand in mid-air, talking to the squad, but more talking to Tali. "I didn't mean to throw you into the shit like this so soon, but here we are. Don't get killed for my sake."

"I can handle myself Shepard." Tali knew everyone had doubts about her, the aggravation in her voiced only now, cradling her gun.

"I know you can. But I've been doing this longer than-" Shepard glanced at Wrex. "Most of us."

"All it takes is one hit, Quarian." The Krogan grumbled, moving forward himself.

"Five meter spread if we can. We push up and up till we get to the dig site." Shepard ordered, the Normandy having yet to respond to comms.

The slowness of their walk up the path, guns at the ready, had been detestable to Mai. It was all done, surely, in the name of proper tactical procedure and readiness in the face of an active enemy, but safety was hardly something Mai abided by as she, left most on the wing climbing up that rocky path, pressed forward.

It was as much of a place to have a firefight as any as, from over the crest of the path, a squad of Geth pressed down. "Contact!"

Rocks big enough to hide people taking cover behind them had blessed both sides. Mai didn't remember seeing the Geth take cover at Eden Prime, but they had been doing so now as they contorted their bodies to take firing positions.

The nuances of Shepard's command to the average Alliance Marine was fully understandable, given human understanding. With others however, it made Shepard vocal, handsy, as she did what she was born to do apparently.

"Spread! Mai, JD! Left flank go! Rest of you find and angle and keep it!"

Tali cut a thin figure, she easily able to find a rock that hid her as she hunkered, the Geth, given the fact they saw a Quarian, opening up on her as Wrex and Garrus spread down from her, drawing their fire.

Eight-foot mobiles. Mai had counted as she vibrated her entire form, just on the need to do something more than just stand there. The Geth chipped away at Tali's cover, even she recognizing she needed to move as she sprang toward Garrus's rocky cover, however when she started, she stumbled, her shields flaring up as Garrus and Shepard saw, immediately exposing themselves for her sake as they opened fire back.

Tali had been panting as she found Garrus's back, dragging him into cover with her as she regained her composure, Shepard feeling her shield's break and cursing as her rifle ran hot.

"Commander!" JD had ground out, still holding his aim downrange as Geth tried to move, only for him and Mai to dissuade them.

"Stay put!" She looked over left at them and yelled, snapping back to Tali. "You alright?!"

"I'm good! I'm good!" She didn't sound like it, but Shepard didn't see her injured as she stood back up as held her SMG tight.

A concussive blast erupted from Wrex, his shotgun shooting a grenade, only to blow apart some cover as the Geth pulled back from it.

A few shots broke their shields, breaking into the synthetic skin, but none had fallen.

Hell with it, Mai thought, stepping out of her cover before Shepard could notice. JD could only follow her.

The Geth snapped their attention from the center, that much Shepard noticed as she popped out, but didn't see Geth. She twisted her head left and saw Mai's normal instead.

She ran sprinted left of her cover, flanking, a grenade in her left hand as she felt the impacts of fire on her shields, but she tanked it, ducking back behind cover as she let the grenade go behind the Geth's cover. The punt of an explosion made her run again, right into them, rifle firing all the way as another grenade was primed. A chest high rock had been barricaded between them and her, however it was no matter, not as she cocked her legs and, in a feat beyond anyone there, she jumped over it, shooting in mid-air all the while as she dropped the cooked grenade away from her. She landed on the ground right next to a Geth, but her right arm, still holding her rifle, brought her elbow up in a swipe, only to then bring the stock of the gun down on the Geth as her kinetic shields broke by being so close to the grenades.

What remained had only been her underused energy shields.

The Geth had either been outright destroyed or shattered, she making quick work of the rest as she rose her gun again and put them down.

JD puffed a breath of nose out of his mouth as he first of the group pressed forward to support Mai. He knew what this dance was, how Spartans really fought. The rest were left at awe of a woman who moved so fast, yet so powerfully, it kept them in stutters moving up behind her as more Geth came over the ridge.

Another grenade was in her hand as she tossed it at the clumped group, her rifle feeling warm even through her suit's gloves.

"Mai!" JD. His SMG had been in her hands as he passed in front of her into cover, exchanging out. Spartans had been known, when working with Marines, to simply trade weapons out of convenience. He traded his on his own presumption, and she had no complaints as she pressed forward without him.

Spartan Time kicked in for her as she ran at another group of Geth, trigger held down. This was her normal, her familiar zone as she ran directly into a Geth with her shoulder, laying on it as it was crushed and aiming the SMG to the rest as they tried to account for such a move. They all had fallen onto the ground with her as she finally arrived at the top of the hill, only, upon knowing what was there, slid herself down to JD, taking her gun back and he his.

Shepard had been quick behind them. "What the fuc-"

"Armature." Mai reported before Shepard could respond to her fighting. "25 meters that way. Support infantry."

She peeked over again before, like a dream, blue return fire in bolts came at them, reminding her too much of another war.

Shepard shook her priorities straight as they all rushed up to the crest of the hill and laid on their stomachs.

"Garrus, Wrex, covering fire when you peek above this! Mai, JD, push out on their go! Tali on my ass!" She yelled her orders and every one of them affirmed as JD psyched himself, drawing in breaths as he moved left of Mai in a roll, coming over her legs as he crawled up only to tap her shoulder. He was with her.

Garrus had laid some of his grenades from his belt in front of him, Wrex realizing what he was doing as he did the same with his own assortment, the Krogan motioning to Garrus with three fingers up, then two, then one, then none at all.

Half a dozen grenades came over the crest of the hill from them, popping off as Shepard got off her stomach and took a knee, Garrus and Wrex craning their guns over as they pulled their triggers with intent to suppress.

Mai had one fist on the ground as she threw herself over, JD behind her as they latched onto a pair of Geth who were trying to approach the hill's crest, only to be gunned down by the two as Mai's barriers again took hits, keeping the two of them safe as they found a walled scaffolding.

They had made it over the crest and had a better view of the field as return fire kept Garrus and Wrex down. "Hop over the hill Shepard, you have cover right in front of you. Steel crates."

Mai had gone to the corner of the wall, only to poke out with her rifle and see the Geth had their aim at them. She snapped back, but not before an unknown had been directly on top of them. JD had pitched it first, snapping up to the scaffolding they took cover behind, seeing a twisted form liable to be seen in nightmares. Geth did not need to abide by conventional biological standards, as was why there had been one, like a spider, bathed in a sickly white staring down at them and, evidently, charging its weapon.

JD snapped his gun up at the new contact, the unit darting away impossibly fast further down, away from their aim. He went to the other side of the wall, in line with the scaffolding as it moved away from them, transitioning his SMG to his left shoulder as another Geth unit had been trying to flank them.

He had been more than diligent to stop that as a storm of rounds punched through its shield then body, collapsing to the floor.

How many Wraiths had she taken out? All with nothing but a grenade and her own two feet in situations like this? Enough that she had considered her options, but not fast enough to account for Shepard. "Mai, hold your angle! That's an order!" There was some fierceness behind that, some anger almost as Mai ground her feet and stepped back from her cover, affording her a wider angle to shoot downrange at Geth behind their own cover.

At each sighting of them she had snapped, keeping them pinned as the remaining four of them crested over and into the crate cover, sliding, stumbling in Tali's case.

"Incoming!" Garrus had seen the bright flash of a rocket launched at them from the Armature, the group ducking down as the rocket knocked right into their cover, the only reason they hadn't gone was due to the fact that rocks and minerals rode in them. The crates shook as Garrus and Wrex pushed along further right behind more cover of either rocks or mining equipment.

"JD, keep pushing left! Draw fire!"

Without a word he had, snapping out of the wall and pushing forward, the covering of the scaffolding hiding him from direct attack from the armature.

The head of that spider-like Geth appeared again, out from on top of the walkways, peering down, it sending a burst of fire JD's way as he dived left unkindly into a ladder, and then behind some steel sheets. The shots had landed at his feet and over his shoulder, and as he crawled into cover he rolled onto his back, aiming up before taking a knee, hearing the spider scamper on the walkways above them.

He opened up into the walkways where the sounds were, using his motion tracker, the Geth unit flinging itself off in a graceful jump. It froze in time however as the blue fire of a biotic caught it. It was Shepard on her own back, still in cover, but able to catch it, reaching out with her hands. Mai aimed up at it, frozen in mid-air, but Shepard's hoarse voice gave her another course of action.

"Mai!" Shepard had yelled out at her, "Catch!"

The spider-like synthetic, frozen in its invisible grasp, was hurled toward Mai, the gun let go of and hanging on her sling as she took the Geth in her arms as if a bride, only to move her hands to a leg and an arm, stringing it out taut, and, as it clicked its synthetic language, brought down on her knee, torn in two as her grey armor was coated.

JD pushed forward continually, stopping each way whenever he had flanked Geth behind cover, only to duck behind his own when the armature saw him. Soon enough he had been panting, focusing on his own breath as he found himself just nigh in line with the armature, the sound of its legs moving like great piledrivers.

"All the way left, by the armature." JD thumbed his comms as he stayed hidden.

The Geth had noticed him, making his move, some of the infantry moving to intercept, but them moving had caused them to be in line of fire of Mai. Even the armature itself. It would've opened up a rocket at JD, had it not been for the mass of fire taken, shot by Shepard as she rested her rifle on the side of the crate and opened up.

"Rest of you keep pushing right and up! Take down that armature!"

Tali had flown from her side almost immediately, outpacing Garrus and Wrex as she found new cover forward, the group pushing the Geth back as the armature turned itself around to deal with Shepard.

Its shields were strong, that much Shepard knew as she distracted it, axillary fire impacting near her as the first few shots made contact with her shields.

Wrex had been pushing up fast and hard, breaking through some machinery just to crush the Geth on the other side, a biotic assisted push making that sound in a loud clash as Garrus and Tali dealt with any standing Geth by him.

JD held his breath. Stupid won fights. If he hadn't any idea what he was doing, neither would the enemy, technically. Behind the armature had been nothing but a flat rocky quarry, already mined out and flat. No cover, but enough room to-

JD pushed and ran out, one hand with his SMG waving it at the armature as it peppered its shields further, the armature, logically, deciding that he had been the easiest to deal with target, gradually turning its back to Wrex.

Shepard saw the opening. So did Wrex as he screamed out a cry, both of war and of triumph, running straight at the turned armature and bypassing any other Geth.

"Covering fire for Wrex!" As that was happening Wrex hadn't slowed down, finally making contact like a rugby player from Earth culture, finding one of the Armature's legs and throwing his weight into it, causing the machine to buckle and fall. Its head might've craned enough to use its weapons to attack the Krogan, currently trying to dismember it, but that wasn't to be as its eye was perforated as Wrex, by pure force alone, broke its shields. Perforated by a Creator

Tali had stepped out of cover on her own volition, SMG on fire it seemed as she trained her shots on it, turning it into scrap as its head erupted in sparks and white fluid. Her SMG overheated, only for her to drop it entirely and go for her pistol. How many times had the Marines, just for the sake of it, taught her to draw like that? Enough as Wrex finally tore one of its legs away and drew his shotgun, rapidly pumping fire into the Armature as it finally gave out.

Garrus went wide right, taking on the last of the Geth easily as they were distracted on the armature going down. The loss of an armature seemed to have affected a local combat hivemind.

Tali had thumbed her comms on accidentally during that last move, her panted breathings heard by all as she froze there, in her stance.

JD had pressed forward again as the armature fell, making sure they hadn't missed any, turning back around to Tali and making a slicing motion at her neck. She realized why immediately, cutting her comms. Only after that did JD offer an upward palm. The hell was that?

The same could be asked of him he realized.

"Clear." Shepard rang out as she too pressed forward, the word being passed by all. "You okay Tali?"

She looked at the pistol in her hand, holstering it, shaking her head. "Yeah, yeah, I'm fine Commander." Then the breaths of laughter came from her, amused at herself, remembering a story from home. When Shepard cocked her head at her, she could only give it up. "There was a story, a while ago, from one of the first Pilgrimages. A child of a Marine who had survived the Geth War… His gift to the Flotilla was…" She hesitated. Whenever boys had talked of perhaps using his example to complete their Pilgrimages, mothers often slapped them. "Killing as many Geth as he could."

The armature smoked as it broke itself apart like a self-building toy in reverse, horrifying the more anyone looked at it turn into dust. "Did the Flotilla accept him?"

Wrex thought of this dialog fondly. He hadn't been as proud of some other Battlemasters, but there had been one who wore the bones of his enemies. It'd been a while since he'd heard from Drack.

Tali silently nodded her head, looking toward the mine entrances around them.

"Chief Durante?" Shepard had asked, more curiously. "Hell of a move."

"I was covered." He responded simply. He could always rely on his fellow ODSTs, but now, that help manifested in Wrex, the Krogan locking eyes with him and giving a nod, appreciative of the recognition.

"Chief Gul." Shepard had sounded sterner as she addressed Mai, the woman moving up, rifle still at half-ready. "Mind telling me why you broke formation down there?"

Mai's answer was true, quick, snappy. "The Geth were pulling back, injured by the grenade from the Krogan," she hadn't even referred to him by his name, but he didn't mind, it was a treat to finally see her in action. "I saw an opening."

"You could've gotten yourself overwhelmed."

And yet… The rest of the team looked at Mai. Her? Be overwhelmed? The way she fought had not at all been like them and it yielded results. Hadn't she accounted for over half the kills?

"Affirmative, commander." Mai answered simply. No argument. Not here, not now.

Shepard sniffled, taking, finally a good look at her surroundings. Of the mining tunnels around, only one had been opened, and Geth footprints spoke to recent activity. "We should go. On me."

---

It reminded Mai of the sewers on some of the more built up Insurrectionist planets. Much of the human colonies throughout the UNSC had been built on the same standard planning and infrastructure support, most, if not all major colonies starting from a Pheonix-class ship. The large, circular piping leading down, down, further into the rock as the heat rose.

Harsh lights lit the way down, further smaller pipes and tubing pumping in "fresh" air to miners, presumably.

"If you want a war story, Shepard," Garrus had recounted as they moved their way down the pipes, JD taking rear section. "When you humans tried for Torfan, the Turian fleets also did their own pirate crushing."

"Yeah?"

"One of my first tours had me fighting in mines against pirates who took base in abandoned installations. Truth be told, this brings back, well… good? Yeah, I guess, good memories."

The heat was rising and their armor systems could only keep them so cool. "This don't feel good at all." Shepard was on point. "Sweating to all hell and back."

"Turians prefer heat. Don't get me started on swimming."

Shepard held out a fist up, the team freezing as she saw an ocular light at the end of the pipe-like tunnel. She dropped her assault rifle as she laid on her belly, going for the sniper rifle on her back. Taking in one breath, she held it as Mai made out what was at the end of the hall: a Geth infantry unit.

Dead by the time she herself raised her rifle, the sound of the shot echoing.

"Move up!" Shepard had holstered her sniper rifle, assault rifle up as the squad moved up front without her. Mai had, in her pace, made it up first, another Geth unit investigating what had happened as it met Mai instead, its body being pumped with lead dead as the exit of the tunnel exited to more walkways amdist a deep cavern. The walkway looped around and came under the exit, a Geth directly below her as Mai hopped the railing, knife out in the same motion, and impaled the Geth through its eye before the rest of the team figured what had happened.

"I swear, I just want to fight her more and more by the moment." It was a compliment, pure and simple from Wrex as Shepard shook her head in his eyesight.

"You'll break the Normandy before you two go down."

True, perhaps, as Mai wiped the synthetic fluid off her blade and wondered how the walkway didn't break beneath her for a moment, the team making the long way around to link up back to her. The cavern had been a rather vertical affair, on the far wall-

"This cave is not a natural formation." Shepard rattled off, leaning on the railing to get an eye full of what seemed to be stacks and stacks of shielded entry ways, the size of some hanger doors by her account. They shone blue from a silver, metallic structure, so unlike the reds of the rock, the rock itself seeming to have formed over the structure.

Tali agreed. "Seems those ruins came first, and the cavern formed around it."

The amount of time that would've taken for rock to overtake anything? A Prothean amount of time, perhaps. These were Prothean ruins. An elevator had lain at the end of the walkway, Shepard gesturing at it. With all aboard, Shepard had thumbed down on its controls, the squad looking across at each of those shielded compartments. Garrus had blinked several times as he had a thought.

"It reminds me of the archives. On the Citadel. The Council keeps historical artifacts there."

"We looking at a bunch of vaults, Turian?" Wrex prodded.

"Maybe." Garrus could guess. "Rather empty though."

"Miners took them, maybe?" Tali wondered as the elevator proceeded down and deep.

Shepard shook her head. "I doubt there was anything here," She looked over to JD. "If there had been, the Normandy would've been here instead of Eden Prime, eh?"

He shook his head in good jest, checking his weapon. He had enough of ancient aliens for his, technically, two lifetimes.

"I'm sorry, Commander." Tali started almost urgently, "I should've forwarded you my intelligence on the Geth. Troop archetypes, things of that nature. That spider like one you grabbed? I think we call it a Stalker on the Flotilla."

Shepard had nodded, thumbing the chin of her own helmet. "I noticed a few different versions. Color patterns, weapon types. I'd be glad to go over your notes when possible."

Mai peered over the windows of the elevator, looking down. Not a drop even she would want to try. At least Jorge had equipment for a drop from orbit. She also saw something else. "Drones." The elevator had come to a stop on a transfer walkway between it and another elevator.

Mai had stayed in the elevator lining up a shot as the rest of the team went to cover, a pair of drones rising up to meet them.

Against that much firepower, they were no-factor as soon as they appeared, one drone spiraling into the steel of the ruins.

"Sterile white." Wrex flared his nostrils. "Protheans sure knew how to make things homely."

"I suppose homely for you is Tuchanka?" Garrus had gotten in a jab to the Krogan.

"One day." Wrex sounded oddly reflective. "One day."

"Move up to the next elevator." Shepard motioned with her hands, the team going as the button was hit, their guns at the ready as they neared the bottom.

All them had their doubts their combined weights was healthy for the elevator, and all those doubts manifested in some sort of combined yelp as the elevator buckled as they approached the floor of the cavern and the last of the shielded chambers of the ruins. It hadn't been their weights that broke the elevator. Not as much as the broken railing of the elevator, the walkway beneath and intended for it buckled from some earlier collapse. The elevator had jerked to a stop just barely above the wreckage of the elevator's bottom frame, a tolerable enough drop as Shepard hung her legs out of an opening and fell forward onto the platform before the final ruin.

The rest of the team followed, clambering down destroyed walkway before standing face to face with two things: a blue energy shield, blocking their way into said ruin, and a blue alien.

The blue individual heard the elevator and called out before the team could make out who it was: "Uh… Hello?! Could someone help me please." Her voice had been sweet and kind sounding, but no less distressed as the wavy distortions of the shield gave way to someone very obviously in need of help: floating in the middle of the chamber, held in a bubble of some intangible energy.

She was coherent, looking at her would-be saviors past the shield on her end, craning her head down. "Can you hear me out there? I am trapped! I need help."

Mai had privately decided that all Asari looked the same, but Shepard could tell otherwise. "Liara T'Soni I presume?" She lowered her rifle.

Liara let out a breath of relief. "Thank the Goddess! I did not think anyone would come looking for me."

Without turning around Shepard had pointed at JD and Mai, two fingers held up, making a circle, before pointing behind her. Secure the area.

They understood, fanning out.

"This thing I am in is a Prothean security device. I cannot move, so I need you to get me out of it. All right?"

Shepard had her fair share of touching Prothean objects, she even hesitating to lean in to the shield. "How'd this happen?"

Liara had been more than willing to answer. "I've been here for the last half-year exploring the planet when we finally found this place. The mining company my fellowship paid for left a few weeks ago after all was done, and, well- the Geth showed up! Can you believe it? Geth beyond the Veil!" Quite frankly everyone there could believe it. "I tried activating the defenses, but, when I turned it on I must've hit something. I was trapped in here. You must get me out, please."

"Of course," Shepard left no doubt about that. "How long have you been in there?"

"Oh, it's so hard to tell… What's the date?" Shepard gave it. "Oh my. About a week and a half."

Given Asari's long life-expectancy, they, as far as human standards went, could survive without their needs. Not that long however, Liara more than thankful she was saved.

Wrex had leaned into Shepard's side, turning away. "You know, leaving her might be a good interrogation tactic, if she's allied with Saren and her mother." It was a whisper, but only by Krogan standards, Garrus hearing that full and well.

"Why'd they send Geth here then? They seemed to be attacking her." Garrus defended.

Shepard wouldn't have it. "She needs our help either way she whispered back." She turned back to Liara. "We'll help you out. Got any pointers?"

Liara tried to nod, but her being held in stasis was hardly accommodating. "Why yes, there's a control in here that should drop the defenses and the barrier curtain. I don't know how you're going to get here, but be careful, there's a Krogan with the Geth. They've been trying to get in here too."

Wrex's eyes opened. There was a sense that this was personal now.

Gunfire broke out from behind them all.

"Contact. Light resistance."

The sound of the synthetic metal of a Geth being punched through reverberated through the cavern, the entire fighting stopping in a burst of a few seconds. "If there's a Krogan, he's mine." Wrex used his comms, hoping JD and Mai would abide. Such a promise couldn't be made by them as Wrex charged off to see what was happening.

There was a small encampment, repurposed by Liara as her lab in the back, behind a larger mining laser. Briefly it had turned into a zone of firefighting, but Mai and JD alone dealt with them.

As if she was breaching a door, Shepard had looked at the rims of the blue barrier. No visible weakness she could see, looking down and around. This was the last exposed chamber it seemed. Looking past Liara it seemed to be a central access elevator shaft.

"I make no promises I'll keep this place in one piece." Shepard made that promise of Liara.

"Nothing's here! It's only an emptied storage vault as far as I can tell."

Garrus made an amused huff, his guess right.

"That mining laser been used yet?" Shepard thumbed over her shoulder.

"No, but using it this deep might be… ill-advised."

"We might not have a choice, Dr. T'Soni. We'll be back." Shepard led the rest of the team with her, down the walkways to the cavern floor to a waiting Mai and JD.

"Clear." JD had forgotten to signal.

"I can see that." Shepard passed them both, the giant, almost comically, drill-like laser emitter had held no secrets to its purpose: chipping away rock from the ruins. "Tali?"

"Yes Commander?"

"You think you can get this thing going?"

Confidence was in her voice. "One moment." There was a control console mounted to it, Tali opening her omni and, impossibly fast, going through security protocols as Shepard looked up at the drill: aimed right where they needed. Down and up was the plan. If these ruins kept continuing down Shepard had a hunch. "Ready when you are, Commander. If you want to fire it."

Shepard with her arms waved the entire group back, clearing the firing zone as Tali slid the controls on her omni to Shepard's. "Fire in the hole."

It was less explosive then they thought, the ground taking cover behind some rocks: a sheer line of lasers going right through rock that had already been liable to give way to a breach. The sound of further rock collapsing onto itself was all Shepard needed to know to quit firing the laser. The rumbling didn't stop when the laser ceased however, going on for a worrying amount of time further before settling. Being at least a mile down in rock, Shepard's nightmare of being buried alive had crept up on her, hurrying to the hole she just made and very much seeing another chamber, no shield present.

"Come on. I'd rather not wait here."

Before JD could follow the Commander and the rest in, Wrex had stepped in his way, Mai, on instinct, stopping as well for him. "You two didn't merc a Krogan, did ya?" They both shook their head. "Good. If anything, I just want to show them what a real Krogan looks like."

---

There was an elevator behind the chamber, Shepard had also guessed right. What had paused her had been the electronic signage on it, seen only once before by her. Deep in her mind, quarreling in nightmares. Maybe she had inherited knowledge of the Prothean language as well as she took a breath on the platform and reached out, the interface responding and sending the platform one level up: right behind Liara.

"You know how to read that, Commander?" Tali tilted her head at Shepard as she herself stowed away her own surprised face.

"I guess…?" Silhouetted against the blue of the barrier, it was a graceful image, somewhat, as they approached Liara from the rear, nothing separating them but whatever the security system kept her hoisted. "I tell the egg-heads all the time superior firepower works."

Liara forced a laugh, being said egg-head before souring, "I heard that rumbling, let's hope whatever you did didn't set off some seismic events."

There was another interface in the room alongside what the Prothean equivalent of a console was. One button from its outstretched interface seemed inviting enough, Shepard pressing it as her mind eased her. Was her subconscious translating the text of the interface for her?

It was no matter as Liara was freed, hitting the ground in a light thump. A squeamish grunt came from her, unused to walking after so long, but she found her bearings, finally turning around and greeting her saviors. "Thank you so much."

The entire squad had their way of saying no big deal. Mai most of all just not saying much anything as Liara's sweep of the crew lingered on her. In all her years she didn't think humans got that big.

"Elevator we took in is broke, you think that one back there will take us up?"

Liara nodded fiercely. "Yes, I believe so." She moved to greet them properly, the least she could do. She was as tall as Shepard, but it still put her below the height of the rest of them bar Tali. Handshakes exchanged, individual thanks. It was the least she could do at the moment. "Why'd you come for me? Did the university send you?"

Shepard shook her head. "Council business, Dr. T'Soni. I need your help and-" Again, rumbling, this time more rocks heard out in the cavern coming in. "And we'll discuss this more on the ship."

First impressions didn't hold much water, given the circumstances, but Dr. T'Soni came across like any number of scientists. In that mean galaxy, the unkind and the banditry tended to hunt for them, even without the threat of Geth or Reapers. Mai and JD certainly had no opinion, given the fact she, out of anything else, looked more or less human.

She was over a hundred years old, and yet she looked no older than her mid-twenties.

Still she was wise as the slight vibrations started turning much more ominous than natural, the entire group of them heading back to that service elevator. Liara stared at the controls for a blank moment before turning to Shepard. "You know how to decipher Prothean?"

Shepard didn't know the answer, "I'll explain later Dr. T'Soni." Punching the controls again, there was nowhere to go but up as the rumbling began to turn dangerous.

"You think some dumbass archeologist will dig us up in another thousand years and call us Prothean?" Wrex mused as he looked up, the elevator fast, but nothing felt fast enough in their conditions.

"Hitman 1-Actual to Normandy. You anywhere close Joker?"

Static, but the message eventually broke through as Shepard signaled. "On our way Commander, had to leave a team behind for pickup later."

When the elevator finally hit its top floor, a way out apparent, the shaking had become intolerable as JD was frankly reminded of a pod drop. Still, in their way had been someone who hadn't minded the shaking at all. Before they could open their mouths Shepard was about done, even with her rifle ready. "I don't know if you noticed! But this whole place is coming down!"

It was a Krogan battlemaster, by Wrex's mark, his face contorting into disgust. His scales had been green, his armor newer, better, and yet… Shepard hadn't realized how old Wrex looked until she found one who had clearly been younger.

"Surrender. Or don't. That would be more fun." Every Krogan worth their metal had fought for the fight, and this one before them, Geth in his support, several infantry units behind him, was more than Wrex was expecting as the two recognized each other. "It'd be a shame for Clan Urdnot to lose you, Wrex."

"Why are you working for the Turian, welp? You know what happened last time our people did that?" Wrex pointed up from the concave elevator platform up at the lip where the Krogan and his Geth stood. The combat seasoned had looked for cover as this went on, if Wrex was buying them that time.

The opposing Krogan tilted his head up once. "it's something you would've been behind, Wrex, with how you were in your younger years."

"What then?!" The sound of Wrex cracking his knuckles was more than telling.

The Krogan bared his teeth. "A future for our people. Hand over the doctor."

Shepard had stepped in front of Liara as she gauged the opposition. As long as everyone moved off their Xs, they had a chance. "Not happening." With one free hand she unhooked her pistol, handing it back to Liara. The scientist did a double take, moments passing before Shepard shook it, not even looking at her. At that prompting Liara had no other choice but to take it.

"Saren will get what he wants, human. Way I see it, you're just standing in the way of history."

Shepard had hooked Liara's arm as she broke left immediately toward a supporting column in the room. "Engage!" Her yell had been the order that triggered the fight amidst all the chaos of a mine very obviously shaking itself apart.

Shepard's team had outnumbered them, oddly enough, but their own hesitations made them break into cover. Even Mai. All but one had dove for a better firing position:

The way the Krogan fought against each other, it had always been personal as the two Krogan charged each other, not even shooting, colliding in a clash of armor and bone as their claws dug into the metal ground. Wrestling more or less as the battle around them proceeded out, Shepard more or less hovering over Liara protectively as the rest cleared the area. They would've taken a shot to help Wrex, the Geth falling all too easily, but Wrex's form was large, in the way, as he fought a battle he needed to with his own hands.

Seeing Krogan exchange punches had been about the same as two trains fighting each other other for the same track in opposite directions, each punch enough to dent the ancient steel they were standing on as each time one was beaten back, they collided again. And again, and again, as Shepard's team twisted around and surrounded the pair.

"If one of you take him down, I swear to god you're next!"

The Krogans had been grunting together, given their armor design, their faces taking the most of their separate pummeling.

"We have to go Wrex!" No one had taken a shot as the two rotated each other, arms at each other's head and shoulders as, at the lack of any other option, teeth were tearing into each other, headbutts that made the skulls rattle on those watching. The shaking hadn't gotten any better, almost critical. "Garrus, get Liara and Tali out!"

"Aye Commander, come on!" Everyone else had already been about ready to sprint out without Shepard's orders, when they went, they ran for their lives.

Shepard remained standing, observing the fight, trying to find an opening. "Chief's you too!" She ordered to her own.

Like hell they were.

If Wrex wanted to see Mai take on a Krogan, in any aspect, here would be the time as both her knives came out and she, in that mess of Krogan brutality and force, she inserted herself in as she reached in and grabbed the opposing Krogan's face, tearing back and out as a boot had been put to Wrex's midsection, forcing him away.

The Krogan battlemaster had been surprised, but a fight was a fight, and he rose his fists to fight the intervener. For their size his punches had speed, Mai deflecting one with her forearm down and away as her knives remained in her hand in fists. Her own hand came up as she ducked down, pulling all her force into a jab at where she thought the Krogan's throat was. She guessed well enough, punching into rubbery skin as she felt something snap, the Krogan croaking painfully as he was sent back.

The benefits of having a body able to lose straight up organs had come to challenge Mai as she continued her own moves, Wrex getting off his back and, as the anger of being drawn off drained out of him, he saw what he wanted.

Mai thought the Krogan had reached a hand out as if to stop her. That was before she saw the blue fire. Just as Kaiden had done to her weeks ago, this Krogan did to her now as she froze. The guns of the Krogan had yet to be drawn, but here, against a non-Krogan, it felt fair game as he went for it. Being frozen in her own body, Mai detested it with the rage of stars. She was frozen not just in her armor, but in her body itself down to her even blinking. She couldn't even tense her jaw to grit.

The Krogan had gripped his shotgun at his hip, but a combination of fire from the two other remaining humans had broke his aim, sending the shot over Mai's shoulder as she felt the biotic's stasis on her melt.

She flipped the knife around in her left hand, holding it by the blade as she threw it the several feet distance, nailing the Krogan in the eye. Surprisingly the Krogan didn't do much as his eye was bisected, a blade deep in their head. A testament to Krogan hardiness that Mai had to beat through as she closed the distance and, with her raining knife stuck it through the battlemaster's chin. Too thick, it didn't kill him, the knife only going through to his mouth as his hands came up to Mai's neck and squeezed.

Shepard and JD didn't know if they heard Mai growl like an animal as it happened, her helmet being sent forward as she was choked standing, headbutting the Krogan as she held onto the knife, the force of the hit forcing the knife back through and out, splitting the bottom of his mouth in two.

It was easy when she used her boot to put foot through a Krogan's face, but nothing about this was supposed to be easy as the Krogan finally felt pain in a scream, Mai returning as she held one of the flaps of his exposed jaw and tore that away in a rip. Even that sound was heard about rock and metal collapsing. In the same move Mai had retrieved the knife stabbed into the Krogan's eye as his arms, flailing, had enough control to deliver a punch to her gut.

It had been a long time since Mai felt the winds get knocked out of her, she spitting into her helmet as she was caught between breaths, stepping back.

"Fuck this!" At point blank range, Shepard deemed her sniper rifle as having enough punch to deal with the Krogan, she basically reaching out with its barrel and quickly snapping off a shot, a hole bored in its head as it fell back in a heavy slam. "Let's move it, NOW!"

JD had started running as Wrex took the time to kick the Krogan's body, passing by Mai as she felt her chest. His hand pressed the techsuit between her armor, finger pads pressing down, all he needed to communicate that they needed to move urgently. She responded only by, as he passed, taking his hand and drawing him in, he losing the footing on his feet as he found himself hauled over her shoulder. Shepard only yelped as it happened to her as well on the other shoulder. How fast they could run, Mai could beat by a far margin, racing over walkways as Wrex kept pace. Mai left Wrex to his own devices, but this wasn't the first collapsing cavern he had run out of in his life.

The servos in her legs had strained as the very apparent sound of collapsing behind her started, starting up another mining tube entrance as even she started panting, the natural sickly lighting of the planet seen at the far end soon encompassing them as JD closed his eyes and hoped when he opened the, he was free.

---

Mai continued running far after they cleared the facility, back down the hill to the Mako, her grip on her commander and her shock trooper tight, but at no true discomfort for her passengers. They wouldn't complain about being saved.

"Shepard!" Garrus had responded within the Mako, having settled back in, "How'd you make it out?!"

Shepard had patted Mai's back, asking to be let go and down. "We ran." She answered, full and well appreciative of Mai taking her. Out of breath out of fear for her life, Shepard had, when let down on the ground, held her knees, reaching up and patting her fist against Mai's chest. "Yeah. We ran."

Wrex had been winded, but taking it better. His lungs were big enough, staring back at the mine and seeing the great smoke and dust looming from a collapsed ruins.

JD had slid himself out, a little more dignified to not admit he had just been carried like a child out of danger, falling back to his feet, chest to chest with the Spartan. His hand went to his chin before going flat toward her.

She responded only by, as if taking his silent words out of thin air, taking it back within her with a flat hand turned up touching her chest.