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.

22. 1-15: The Look on your Face

A/N: Sorry I've been slacking on the A/N recently, but hey I'm celebrating hitting over 1k followers. Really? That many people are that interested in this bog-standard fanfiction tale? Oh you give me too much credit. Don't you know I'm the type of writer to fundamentally ruin everything the longer I go on?

Anyway, few review responses:

Parker59 asked "Does JD have a ODST flag in-between his armor? Or for that matter any other objects from his Universe? I can't imagine he didn't have at least one photo or object in his pouches/Helmet, as many warriors have always done."

JD brought over two things that fall within this lien: A picture of Dawn in a sundress, and the flag of his original ODST Unit. Both are kept in his locker, and will be brought to question when I think it'll be right.

As for Mai, the necklace of her Wheel of Dharma is her own keepsake.

Alyr Lin said "Our Tali sure is growing quite vicious isn't she compared to canon?"

Generally, yeah. There's a clear line I'm drawing from what she was/would be, and what she is now/will become. She is becoming sort of a... reflection? If that's the right word, of what other ME stories tend to do when they get this "advantage" from exposure to the Halo-universe or an OP humanity. She'll be clashing with her canon-self and the self she is becoming in this story in such a way that'll really be interesting when we get to what would be ME2. I might be taking the liberties of her devotion of her people a little OOC, but it's in line to her being the way the Quarians are presented in ME1 via her, as their sole representative.

Francisco914 said "You love to recycle your characters don't you? I'm not saying it's a bad thing... I just noticed. Esp ones from Manifest Destiny."

Ah I have to keep 'em on tap, or else I get rusty with them, especially if I'm rewriting MD. That being said if you did read MD, you might notice a particular, charming, cowboy missing from Hitman...

In General:

Feros next chapter. Me shaping Liara up. And then after Feros, back to Altis. And then we're actually a little over halfway done with ME1? Huh. Well in that case time/progression might get a bit more freeform. A good way to view this is just, like, playing ME1 and the amount of sidetracking most people do, because that is what my Shep is doing as well. Gives me some wiggle room.

I want to properly communicate SHep is doing this with the Normandy and just hitting side missions like a motherfucker, building assets and connections offscreen, so I might have to dedicate something to that, but also I'm trying to not drag this shit out...

Oh well, we'll see.

By the way, coming clean, I'm the writer, among other things, for a videogame called Project Wingman right now, so if you're wondering what I'm doing that's where it is. If you're a fan of the combat flight action genre, check it out, otherwise, well... wishlist us on Steam? That helps us out.

Anyway, read and enjoy. I'm currently writing a Christmas fic and a Deltarune Krusie story right now as well, so there's that, along with the aforementioned Manifest Destiny rewrite.

---

1-15

The Look on your Face

---

It was a different experience, being held by biotics without the pretext of restraining. The Normandy had held its hover over the rather arid planet Shepard was tasked to. Not too far away from Feros, all things considered.

Jumping distance, flashbacks of Eden Prime crossed JD and Mai's minds as they peered over to the flat sands below. Kharakon II. Attican-bordering planet. Recently discovered in the last few months by some miraculous trend of the Alliance Survey Corps finding planets out of nowhere. Fresh water basin on the far side of the planet, but a bit too inhospitable for colonization outright.

Only the most desperate found themselves here.

That's what Mai remembered of this world.

It was the same now.

Shepard remarked a survey beacon went down, last recorded activity was tampering.

"Why would anyone shut down a survey beacon?" Corporal Loke had been one of the Hitman tasked. Five man team. No more or less by Shepard's insistence. She asked with a hint of annoyance that she was being ordered to go out on something below her.

Shepard shook her head. "Well it didn't get shut down. We did that. Beacon was running after the tampering." The Commander gestured over her shoulder to some vague something. "Batarians out this way try to hack into our beacons to jack into the Alliance info net. Unlikely, but if that's the case we gotta go chase 'em off."

So with that Mai had been slowly, slowly been let down the two dozen or so feet onto the ground. Kaiden's biotics had felt more as if they were hoisting her by her armor as opposed to her entire being, stopping her on the way down from gaining too much momentum and putting a crater.

Both of Kaiden's hands had been up as if conducting the swell of an orchestra on the lip of the Normandy's well deck, a procession of Marines and crew members looking, taking bets to see if Mai could be hefted like that by Kaiden.

"If I tickle ya right now, Ell-Tee," Ashley had almost threatened to do so to Kaiden as he concentrated roughly on keeping Mai up. "What would happen?"

Kaiden grit his teeth. "You get to clean up Chief Gul's body."

JD grimaced, hoping it didn't come down to it as the last few feet Kaiden had let go, letting Mai drop on her own, hitting ground. Swiftly she had turned around, giving thumbs up to a crowd of half-disappointed Hitmen and half-slightly richer examples. Kaiden turned to the shock trooper. "You're up Durante."

Peering down, it was a jump that, if he did manually, he probably would've been able to do anyway. Might bruise, might break something, but he could do it. God knows he had dislocated many a bone during his drops in another life. With Mai it had been different, Kaiden much more hands-on with her as he had picked up her entire form and dipped her down. With JD he could afford to be a little more off light on the touch.

There was a certain anxiousness that JD had, now, looking out from the Normandy to a relatively blue sky, but it was always the inbetween of mission and deployment that got him on edge, no matter how marginal it had been.

"Take a jump. I got ya."

Those who were looking were impressed by how easy JD had taken to the fall. Some might've taken it as simply JD outright trusting the biotic, however, it was much simpler than that. JD was not afraid of falling. Tali's eyes had bugged out as, for a split-second, it seemed that Kaiden would not hold onto the Shock Trooper, but JD found the pressure beneath his feet, softening and slowing his fall until he had hit ground painlessly next to Mai.

He had taken it as casually as he could, shouldering his gun, but finding nothing but a Spartan standing at ease in front of him.

"Hey." He had said softly. He would take their alone time, small as it was.

She returned a gentle nod back.

"Ah, I don't like this." The Hitman known as Doc had grimaced, sweat on his bald head shining as Kaiden simply pushed him for his troubles, going down chest first as he too was also carried down. Loke had more grace as she shared a reassuring nod to Tali. The two had become friends, oddly enough. So she had stepped off as if going into a pool, feeling Kaiden grab her and bring her down to earth simply. All that was left had been Tali, however she had hidden none of her apprehensions as she realized she was next, a slight jitter in her knees as she peered over the lip, hands on her legs.

"Keelah." It left her lips as a curse as her voice broke. "Ah uh, forgive me. I'm not used to biotics and, heights, and uh, ahhh-" For all her recent training and drills, courage over the base fears of intelligent creatures had been something she hadn't mastered yet. The fear of falling was as natural a fear as they came. At least in the Mako she could pretend nothing of the sort was happening.

"Hey, hurry it up, the Normandy doesn't like hovering." Joker whined over the intercom, and even Kaiden had an annoyed look on his brow. In reality he could've probably just picked her up without her consent, but there was a process to this. Ashley had walked behind her, frightening Tali almost, but the Marine kept her distance.

"It's not that bad. The Lieutenant here just did it with Chief Gul, of all people, I'm sure he can handle a little thing like you." Ashley had chided on casually, but Tali didn't have any of it as she tried to step forward onto nothing again, but reeled back.

Looking up from the ground, JD had immediately pegged it. He had stepped besides Mai, tapping her arm as she instinctively looked at his hands: index finger hooking. Private comms.

"You've dropped before, right?" Dropped. A particular word for something that was as violent as an ODST deployment. She nodded. "Any training?" She shook her head.

JD remembered another rookie, during one of his deployments. ODSTs were never given training drops. Trust in the equipment was hard coded into each recruit in training, but even then, when the pods were swung out from their bays and nothing but a hundred-mile drop was beneath them? Some had thought otherwise. The rookie had tried to pound his way out of the pod moments before the drop, forgetting that any violent force impulse from the inside might've derailed his pod's ejection. He disintegrated on the way down, poor bastard screaming all the while. JD only remembered that dreadful sound as Tali struggled to take that magic step over.

"Come on, girl, you've been shot at already, ain't much more scarier things than that." Doc had rumbled to himself as both he and Loke also looked up.

Inches, Tali kept creeping toward the lip, and inches she would reel back. She had almost hopped when she felt a grab her arm, and pull her back. She was going to curse in extreme Quarian at whoever did it, but she only found the look of Shepard herself and her entrancing gaze.

"You good, Tali?" Shepard cocked her head, red bangs slightly swaying.

She blinked a few times behind her visor as she felt the electrifying touch of Shepard through her suit. "Ye- Yeah. I'm just getting my nerves together."

"I feel you." Shepard let go of her, coming to the edge of the Normandy's bay and, almost surprisingly, sitting down and throwing her legs over the edge, sitting. "Don't trust my good Lieutenant yet?" Shepard motioned her shoulders at Kaiden, the man standing down, knowing that this was one of her bits. It was a nice and reassuring bit, but a bit nonetheless. In the short time he had worked with her he had known of Shepard's particular motivation style throughout the crew: something so personal it was intimate almost.

"No. No. It's not that. Lieutenant Alenko is more than capable. I just saw him do the same to them." Tali gestured down at the waiting fireteam. "It's just, well, hard to beat back instincts."

Shepard peered down herself, wondering if she was still in practice enough to call forth her own powers and soften her landing. She was half-tempted to try, but she was due back on the bridge to deal with another fireteam being sent out as this one did its mission.

"You particular scared of falling?" Shepard asked. Tali shook her head almost immediately.

"I mean. Heights aren't really a thing on the Flotilla. I'm just unused to it. Even the Citadel gave me some vertigo."

Shepard had drawn her legs back up, almost hugging them as she spoke out, not necessarily at Tali, but she had been drawn in, all the same. "I've seen you training, all this time during your free shifts. That make you feel better about taking on the Geth?"

"Feel better?" Tali said slowly.

Shepard stared out as she stood up again, drawing back from the edge. "Can't really train for that feeling: contact with the enemy. You can train about what you'd do, about the motions of the fight, but there's no way in hell we can actually train for it. Same way we can't train for things like this," her hand motioned out the bay. "But despite that, you train anyway, because it does make you feel better, does it?"

Why did Tali become the way she had been, with them? Perhaps it had been so simple as seeing what another woman, trapped in a suit, could do. Inspiration by way of proximity, poisonous, toxic, seeped in through the skin that had never felt fresh air.

She nodded once. "Right…" Again, she felt Shepard's hand on her shoulder, so light, and yet on fire. It was no secret that the Quarian people as a whole had been touched starve inwardly, and outwardly, the population of the galaxy had given them that berth of xenophobia. Shepard held no such barriers.

With a contact so gingerly, she had reassured her. "You've done this time and time again in the Mako. Ain't no sweat."

Imbued with her strength, transmitted apparently by touch, Tali found her footing as she closed her eyes and took the step forward and everyone got ready. A yelp came from her throat as she felt no footing beneath herself, but then the reassuring hold of the ghostly grip.

It was Kaiden, mostly, but there had been more as Shepard sucked in her breath and felt, within herself, the powers she had been blessed with, reaching out with one hand and steadying Tali on her way down.

When she touched down, Shepard's warm smile didn't leave her, a satisfied look coming over her as she turned away and the well deck door closed.

Garrus and Liara had been left watching, their proximity natural, if only because of their status as aliens. As the rest of the crowd dissipated and the flew to the next point of interest in system, they remained, their gaze remaining on Shepard.

"So does the whole pep talk thing you do come with Alliance training or…?" She could tell if Garrus had been sarcastic with her as Liara glanced at him, the Turian moving a talon behind his head to scratch.

Liara had noticed something however in that whole display, seeing the unseen aura that only biotics could feel through their hidden sense, ghosting around Shepard's hand.

"You don't use your Biotics often, do you Shepard?" She asked.

Shepard had known what she saw: how particularly unrefined her own Biotics use form had been compared to Kaiden in that vague way. She simply licked her lips and shrugged. "Preference, Liara. Preference."

"Preference?"

Shepard had felt the implant slot behind her ear again, the urge to scratch it their. "Ah, it's nothing. I'm just not a fan of this privilege."

---

Loke had been one of those rare, fiesty sort. JD knew the type among the ODSTs. Raring for battle; only in the thrill of combat did they truly feel alive and worth something. He might've been the same way if Persei had gone better. His first time engaging Covenant had been full of sound and fury, signifying victory as an Elite was gunned down in the jungles by his Battle Rifle. A simple existence to be sure, but it had filled him with satisfaction. Only the horror of surviving a Glassing righted him.

Corporal Loke would not have that sobering experience. It would not be possible in this galaxy it felt. Still she was a dangerous sort altogether. She didn't wear a helmet, relying on kinetic barriers by herself, letting her barely regulation-kept hair out, a purple keffiyeh around her neck contending with the metal rim of her armor.

Cute, maybe, if it hadn't been for the fact she had seen her battles, got a curve on her brow that spoke to her fierceness. That was JD's read of her as she glanced him and Mai a look.

"Which one of you is ranking, anyway?" She asked. JD tilted his helmet at Mai, and she nodded to affirm. A sour look came and past her face, but it was non-consequential. "Fine."

"Ease up Loke," Doc had readjusted the way his rifle was held by him, visually sweeping the LZ. "Emerson ain't here. You know how Ryder was always… overly particular about his threat assessments."

Loke had given a glance at JD again, thinking over Doc's words. Hitman's last order from Ryder had been to watch over Shepard and her two VIPs, but as things turned out, they didn't seem eminently a threat to her. They were subservient if anything. That and JD had seemed relatively normal, if not just normal outright. Quiet, yes, disturbed with nightmares, but then again what SOF operator hadn't had their own horrors in their head. She knew she had her own.

Mai had stood as a statue, within her helmet, tuning them all out as she concentrated on the mission at hand. These missions, if any of her ONI-handlers were present, might've been liable to say that these missions were wasted on a Spartan. She had no preference, so she would do it however. It wasn't as if she hadn't been in this situation before. Innies often got handsy with UNSC Intel assets.

Doing it with a fireteam however?

"I'll scout ahead."

Mai had said fast. Faster she had moved off toward the direction of the beacon. They had landed an hour and a half-ruck out. For Mai that had meant maybe forty minutes. JD didn't have quite the heart to stop her as she had marched off without a word, her grey armor a sore thumb in the relatively clear day.

That arid planet had a breathable atmosphere at least, Doc taking off his helmet and hooking it to his belt.

The Normandy was already a faraway blip as they looked out to it, Mai's rather impressive tread already putting her quite a bit away as the fireteam settled from the kicked-up dust. The rest of the fireteam had stayed in place, waiting on JD's go, of all things. He had waited for her IFF-tag to peter out, the peculiarities of their HUD software still yet to be toyed with.

"You mentioned, back when we first met," JD had started one day. "You knew your way around mechanical stuff?"

"A bit."

"How about software?"

She had blanked for a moment, uncomfortable with admitting she hadn't, and that was that.

"You know I've never seen classified medical records like her." Doc had stated as she became a blip in the distance, JD twisting his head at him in a question. "No, ain't like that. Just was wondering if she needed supplements like the Biotics onboard." Doc had, unsurprisingly, taken double-duty with helping Chakwas in the Med-Bay, so he had access to those records.

JD shook his head once, shifting his shoulders, ushering them to follow, only barely noticing Tali had used a slung shotgun this deployment. Not exactly the prime environment, but slugged ammunition, especially out of a Krogan shotgun, had seemed, in theory, usable. He had an old squad lead who had sworn his life on his M90 shotgun and the six different shells he kept handy. Surprisingly, as morbidly as it had been to JD, he had been one of the few ODST who he had served with to still be alive.

There was a slight weightlessness in their steps; this particular planet's gravity not 1:1 to what they were used to. If any of them had taken a hop there would've been some fun in it: any sand that had been cooked up floated a bit further than expected, as if in slow motion.

"You're up to snuff though, medical record wise, especially that amp in the back of your head." The neural lace. He had seen Mai's own, in glances and in low light, whenever he had caught the back of her head. It wasn't noticeable to most, only the stark reminder that he had his own did it lead him to wonder what her own looked like. While his had been no more than a slit at the bottom of his skull, hers had been more elaborate, albeit covered up by her hair. It was like the cover of processing units, silver, carving out an unnatural, square like piece of her head and over it like a chip, recessed.

He remembered what it was for, when she came clean about the Spartans to him, the first weeks they had been together. For all of her enhancements and modifications, this had been the one most illegal, most reprehensible in that galaxy.

JD wondered if Tali would vomit if told what it had been.

Ryder's men and women would've understood.

They walked in a messy line, wide, following the sandy footsteps of Mai, she already gone.

"Don't talk much, do ya Chief?" They had been walking for a while in silence before Loke had commented finally, fed up of not even conversation. He shook his head at her as an answer, she not expecting any less than that. "Figures."

"He's in the rucking zone, Loke. And so was I." Zoning out while marching had been a way to pass time, if anything. "Besides he makes great conversation, right Tali?"

The Quarian seemed a little spooked when she was drawn into the conversation, but she did. "I mean, uh, not really." That had gotten a reaction out of him at least, taking his hand and raising it up at her, head tilted. "Well to be fair Garrus likes hearing himself talk, so we usually just let him go on, during lunch."

"Ah, right, Vakarian. He don't talk to us none." Doc remembered that a Turian, of all things, had been on the ship still and now. He didn't hang out in the Well Deck often enough to see him.

"Well it doesn't help you talk about killing Turian mercs so loudly." Tali's chastising had only been met with a laugh between the two Hitmen, and she really wish it hadn't been. "He's nice, if you get to know him. Even Wrex. I turned out okay, didn't I?"

By consequence of Tali training so much with the Marines, she had become the most normalized, even beyond Gul and Durante. Though there were always justifications. "Well you're our little own NBK, Tali, killing Synthetics out of the goodness of your heart." Loke had only come back to give Tali noogies, at least best she could, rubbing her knuckle on her visor as she waved her off. "You're the ship's favorite. Commander Shepard gets all maternal about you if anything."

Indeed, even Shepard had been softer on Tali than most, but it mostly just stemmed from the fact that she had been, starkly, barely in her twenties.

"Well I think that's just the Commander. Compared to Ryder, I've personally never had it any better." Doc had spoken, exasperated if anything. Everyone there knew what he was saying however.

For 45 people on her ship, Shepard had taken the effort to talk to, and touch base with, every single one. Of course, she gave preference to the aliens, those not familiar with their operations, but generally Shepard had been the human resources holy grail that everyone there didn't know they wanted.

She had "rounds", as the crew had pegged now, always expecting Shepard to swing by at some point during a shift. The trap of having the Normandy that small comparatively, pleasantries, and even certain ranking, hierarchal formalities, just were tossed asides. She would actually talk to her crew, beyond their mission, their roles.

It was liberating at some point when Shepard would join a debate held on the deck, and subsequently join the shouting match (that particular example being whether or not the breakfast MREs were the best of the entire inventory).

"Feels like I'm back at college, somedays on this ship." Loke admitted.

"Well, I'd rather think about that then all this Reaper bullshit the Commander is whispering about with Liara." Doc fired back.

Loke rolled her eyes, adjusting her scarf as some sand got kicked up by a gust of wind. "As if Liara hasn't talked to Commander Ryder about it before."

"The Reapers are a legitimate threat." JD had finally opened his mouth. The idea of extinction level threats seemed to strike a chord with him for reasons that went far beyond his permission to express. Though there was a stark reality to Shepard's visions, talked in hushed whispers by the crew behind her back in doubt, that Mai and himself had their own personal horrors about. One that they shared with Alliance Admiralty that had realized that Shepard's visions were confirmed within themselves.

For in her nightmares of the Reapers, so did come the nightmare of something true: the repressed memories Mai held within herself. Something that did happen.

The Reapers were real, but to explain would to open a can of worms. Still the alternative at the moment had been this, because everyone was still processing it: The Apocalypse was real. The Apocalypse was coming. The Apocalypse was one of many secrets the Alliance had been keeping.

"Yeah Chief?" Loke chided. "Don't think Shep's gone cuckoo?"

Perhaps, he thought to himself, but he shook his head. "She doesn't seem the type to lie."

There was a hostile, snarky chuckle to that from Loke. "You'd know about that business, wouldn't ya? Lying and stuff?"

He'd be more annoyed, more ticked off at Loke's, and Hitman's open disrespect of them if it hadn't been for the fact he had been on the other side of that paradigm. The ODSTs and Spartans had this same relationship, and he understood, he thought, before he met Mai. Even if he had never met a Spartan, and if he didn't care about it, he understood why some of his ODST squadmates would keep that bravado to them. So he let Loke keep it.

"Can't lie if I don't say much, Corporal." Referring to people by rank, it felt weird to him, in this fashion. He had heard Tali huff amused. "Besides, I ain't that much of a spook. I'm just the guy who pulls out people who don't exist."

That was his cover story anyway: SAR for SOF who had gotten up to their neck in shit in places that they shouldn't be.

"I think Garrus would've tagged you on it anyway, JD." It was nice, hearing Tali so casual, holding a shotgun. It was also nice to hear that banter backing him up. "With him being a cop, and all."

"What would I lie about?" It surprised JD to hear himself speak with a gruff to his voice. He sounded like his father. "The fact I think shitty coffee tastes good?"

"You make the case for it, seeing as Chief Gul has taken to it, apparently."

"Well she takes after me anyway." JD had wanted to shut his own mouth the second those words left him. Why he had wanted to say that, and did say it, was beyond him. Though it was true; was he not offering himself as a platform for Mai to bounce off of? In learning, and in knowing? In feeling even? Thinking back to her own possessiveness of him, or, at least, aspects of him, there was something to think of himself to her then too. There was a possessiveness he had declared, then and there of her.

"Do you guys, like, like each other?" Their feet had been moving on their own, but Loke's question had almost caused him to stumble.

Loke didn't see JD grimace behind his helmet as the two slid down the slope on their asses, shifting the sands. He used the short slide down to form some sort of answer. He didn't want to even think about what Loke meant with that, still, she wasn't going to let it go as he had righted himself at the bottom of the dune, slapping his own ass and getting the sand off of it. "How do you mean?"

"Look. I've served with Doc here about, four years now, right?"

"Probably?" The older man affirmed.

"And I don't even like him." Doc had barely seemed hurt by it, but it was probably said in jest based Loke's shake of her head. "But the thing is, you Black Ops people, you must have the choice, right? Even with Captain Anderson's requisitions and requests, you guys seemed like a packaged pair."

Yes. They were.

"And…?"

"That for a reason?"

JD ran the actual answer in his head. Because we're both extradimensional refugees and our separation means that one would be violently at risk of committing a lonewolf genocidal campaign at behest of her new masters and the other would be completely alone in the universe.

He used another answer: "We synergize well."

No one had noticed, but Tali had gone reflective, her eyes glazing over as she thought about the topic of conversation.

Loke went on. "Well, we're all professional here, but we can still act beyond that capacity while still remaining professional."

Hitman had been a family. Stories that predated the Normandy, Shepard, and their entirely new situation had been within them, and even Shepard respected that. For her prying nature, there was something organic in Hitman that she knew she would never be a part of. Something that Ashley had failed to see, with how she tried to gum up with them somedays.

"Are you guys fucking?" To hear the older man, Doc, say that, it had surprised all of them. Loke bit back a laugh that had gotten halfway out. "Like I gotta know for medical purposes, I swear. I just found out like, four people on the Normandy are sexually active and I've gotta get the proper things for it requisitioned."

"What? No." JD had seemed almost disgusted by the sudden proposition. "Chief Gul she's a… Reserved." Conservative? He didn't want to imply that of her nature, but it wasn't as if she had one at present. She never had that opportunity, out of all things, to explore that particular part of Human nature. "Besides I have someone else."

He almost trembled, stumbled, saying those words. Not putting Dawn in the past-tense. Surely Humanity, at least, had held Reach, right? After what they did, surely, they must've bought Humanity a few months. Dawn must've still been alive. He prayed for that at that second.

Tali had recoiled a bit out of sight of everyone. Hadn't she just backed up JD on not being a liar?

"Ah, oh." Doc and Loke had shut up at that. Loke still pushed on though, albeit reeled back. "You guys still seem close though. Closer than people are, usually."

Their relationship was professional first. It had to be. It felt wrong to think of a relationship with Mai any further than that, knowing what she was: A Spartan. And yet, distantly, he thought wouldn't that be a reason to think of her much kindlier? To be kind to her and nice and warm in a way she was deprived of. In a way he knew? If he did, if she reacted… Was it not an aspect of him, as a socialized, normal man, taking advantage of her?

"Well-" JD started to explain part of that, but he had been stopped. Stopped by Tali's voice of all things.

"I know you two are close. Even if you won't say." The entire group had turned to Tali at that moment, pausing, and with that attention she had figured to go all the way, her three fingers anxiously tapping Wrex's shotgun for a moment. "I've been meaning to ask…" Tali was slow to start, but there was determination in her voice: a casualness now brought on by being with Marines nowadays. "Chief Gul. She's been in that armor all her life, hasn't she?"

JD tilted his head and Quarian knew he had asked a question. When she answered however, that's when a simple fact of Tali's life was made known, and made apparent. Of anyone there who would know what it was like to be in a suit their entire life.

"How can you tell?" JD asked back. He answered it inside his head the second the question left his mouth. The difference had been the very thing he was wearing right now, in the broad sense.

Tali touched upon her visor for a moment, fingertips tapping it once. "I don't know if I can read Human faces as well I can read Quarian, but the way she emotes herself through her face, the way her eyes move, it reminds me of Quarians without families: Those that would not show their face, truly, to anyone for perhaps decades on end."

They were all hyper aware now of this truth: No one on the Normandy had known what Tali's face looked like. Perhaps, under certain lighting, the hint of a humanoid nose would poke out from the polarized visor she had; the burn of her luminescent eyes, however nothing past that. Her face was her helmet's visor, and everyone on the Normandy had taken it at that.

"She kinda has a stone face, Tali. Resting bitch face, if anything." Loke gestured to her own face, making the point, Tali nodding.

"I thought so too, at first, but there were the little things that clued me into it."

"Like what, pray tell?" Doc had been intrigued, as were all of them.

Wrex's shotgun rested at her hip, courtesy of the sling as Tali moved her own hands again back to her visor, gesturing. "She stares a lot, for one. Not like, looking kind of staring, but just staring. Uncomfortably so. With a helmet on it'd be easy to conceal the fact you might or might not be looking at something, but without one on it's very obvious."

"Hey why don't you become a cop? Body language reading is a skill." Doc had mused, but Tali waved him off before squaring her vision with JD.

"She's very aware of it, I've noticed, when it comes to you JD." Without the regimen of military life, to hear someone else other than Mai nowadays call him his preferred name had been pausing for him, but Tali had no reservations. They had been friendly now, if anything. If not Mai, he often had lunch with her or Garrus. "She treats you.. hmm." Tali tried to find the word for it, remembering her first delving into that messy situation known as feelings and matters of affection. Perhaps her particular affinity for engineering came from her need to find quiet spots on the Rayya to explore more particular parts of herself (and other people) in peace. Still, in that messy zone, she drew an answer that wouldn't outright humiliate her new friends (Yes, she had decided, JD had become a friend). "She is nervous around you, and yet respectful."

"Nervous?" JD had said the word aloud.

The answer Tali gave had been the same answer she had wrestled herself when she first dealt with feelings of the heart. "There are just things about you, I think, that she doesn't know what to do about."

---

Mai had gotten far enough away from the fireteam that JD's IFF tag had disappeared. Her first true time alone since Reach it felt like. Not that she particularly minded sharing her solitude with JD, but it was just a state of fact that this was her first time back in what had been the element she existed in for years. This was the normal she had left behind.

The silence that had once defined many a mission for her, it returned, and if she had concentrated hard enough, ignored the unfamiliar weapon in her hand, the stars in the sky, or mission, she was back in her old life. She was back hunting Insurrectionists or Covenant alone, with nothing but a planet between them.

This was as normal as she had felt in a long time, and so she had rolled with it, selfish as it was to move off from JD and the rest of the fireteam. Intel on the ground didn't say much for danger anyhow. If anything, it would just be, Shepard had recounted a mission from her earlier years as part of a Marine QRF Officer, space monkeys taking apart some components.

Mai had only thought of the one time she had fought the local fauna before Reach, and to be fair the Insurrectionists had weaponized them. On Reach the Guta's, the troll-like behemoths she encountered uncovering the Solace's stealth generator, had been a shakeup.

She remembered the last time she was here on that planet in her universe, a sniper rifle on her back and a carbine in her arms: tasked with taking out an Insurrectionist cruiser that had been using the planet as a place to hide from UNSC patrols. She was to lay in wait and take them out when they landed.

She did.

She had a few kills on ships to her name, but this one had been a bit more personal than anyone would imagine. Personal meaning she getting onto the bridge and personally splattering the crew on every inch of the walls.

That was on the other side of the planet however. Here she had been met with nothing but sand dunes and distant mountains, the visage of some greenery out in the distance breaking up the monotony of her ruck.

The ebbs and bows of sand dunes had kept her climbing and descending, however eventually the sand had turned into nothing more than arid dirt as she approached the site of the beacon. It was only after the crest of one last sand dune however, she going onto her stomach instinctively, crawling up it. Not even months after Reach and she had been again doing this sort of stuff on behalf of another Humanity. Having sniping support from another Spartan had been nice, she admitted. Jun had reminded her of the Headhunters made in her image, competent, clandestine; lacking the bombast of the Spartan-IIs. All she knew was that it would've been nice to have a full blown sniper rifle as she found the edge of the crest, peering over and down.

Alliance Survey beacons were, simply, nothing more than satellites that were instead embedded into the Earth, using its sensors to scan the planet wherever they would fall. Cheap, not entirely the most accurate solution, but a good way to get a head on the general statistics of a planet. Hundreds of these beacons had been sent out recently, and Mai wasn't surprised. She was the reason why a metal probe, blocky, almost as if a jet engine, had been wedged half way into the dirt, erect. She wasn't the reason why a Kodiak had been parked right next to it, a tarp bridging its roof and connecting to the upper portions of the beacon making an impromptu shelter. Through the magnified optic of her rifle she saw thick cabling connected to various points of the beacon, all leading back into the Kodiak. Civilian-trim as far as she could peg; not the blue of the Alliance.

Movement. She peered further into her optic: a white garbed figure. Human-shaped. Perhaps Human outright. Moving out of the shadows the figure had adjusted some of said cabling before retreating back into the shade. Mai didn't see a weapon, and they didn't look dangerous outright, but what they were doing had been of course of note.

Shepard had outlined ROE, on missions like this, shortly after the Normandy left the Citadel.

"To engage, you must be engaged."

Rules of engagement. To think she had fallen under one after all these years. Mai had shaken her head internally. The Covenant and the Insurrection had no niceties… but then again, it wasn't her prerogative to go against orders, even if it was so easy to just aim at the figures head through the tarp and then pull.

Killing was easy.

Everything else? Well she wasn't trained for it.

She glanced back behind herself, seeing no trace of the rest of the fireteam.

Of course, she could've radioed in. She should've, but she was always good alone. Nothing had changed. It wasn't as if she was going to kill in cold blood anyway, she thumbing the switching behind one of her fingers and seeing her own form dissipate like the vision distortions in the distance due to the heat.

If one had any way to track the Spartan, it would've been from the way she left her tracks, the movement of the rocks as she walked her way down the slope to the level of the beacon. Not rushing, not running, but particularly aware of the foundation of her steps, trying to not make any noise as she approached.

The active camouflage grafted onto her armor had been one of many systems reverse engineered from the Covenant, but as for maintenance on it? It was a bit beyond her. Still, for as long as it worked, she would've used it. Just like now; just as how she had rounded the beacon and the attached shuttle and visually cleared the site, only to see that lone, white garbed figure sitting in a camping chair and lazily typing into a console. What view she did have into the open Kodiak spoke to someone who had made it their home.

The active camouflage let her in close, circling the site once or twice, that figure not moving as they typed away. The skin of her fingertips had shown, tanned, but otherwise telling. They were human. Their entire body had been covered in white garb, probably to shield from the sun. It was almost as if they were camping out here, the only threat at it all it looked like had been the older rifle laying by the side of the shuttle. A Mattock; a hunting rifle used by civilian frontier people.

Nothing there looked military as far as Mai could tell, and she had been working on turning her near encyclopedic knowledge of militaria to current relevance.

What that meant simply was…

Mai had purposefully kicked up some rocks, and the figure had twisted as if struck by lightning, trying to pivot in their chair, only for it to tip over, disheveling the wrap around their head.

A woman. Caucasian. Blonde. Early 30s perhaps. In a heap of trouble by Mai's account as she turned off her camo. There was no bolt on her gun to slap, no foley to intimidate with. She wasn't used to this part: not opening fire. Still, she did what she thought would be pertinent. "Identify yourself."

At gunpoint, on the ground and at her side, the woman had whimpered as she twisted about trying to find the source of that voice, only to settle on the grey metal monster that approached her with a gun. "Don't shoot!"

Not her name. "Identify." Had put more stone in her voice as she stood yards away, the tip of the shade casting itself over her as she finally got a glance at the console she was using: telemetry data perhaps.

"Kelsie! Kelsie Oruma."

It was something, glancing at the whole affair, the cables and shuttle attached to the beacon. "This is Alliance property." All this had been new ground for Mai to break, a part of her wishing she did wait for the rest of the team. Still, there wasn't any need to put a round into her.

Yet.

The woman was skittish as she set down her hood onto her shoulders. She seemed thin, tanned, of course, given the location, but she didn't seem… well. Well, not in the health sense, in regards to any illness or such, but rather she had seen better times. She was dirty, and finally, Mai had pegged, impoverished. She rubbed her hands over each other as she took in Mai's words, eyes darting left and right, trying to find something; an excuse.

"I'm- I'm sorry." She eeked out, biting her lower lip.

Mai had only let her gun down now, but it had hardly eased off any of the tension there. "What are you doing?" Mai tipped her head up at her. She had tried moving back to close the console, but Mai twitched her gun up again. There were other things on the table asides from the console: a cup of water, a data pad, a framed picture of-

Mai didn't look. She couldn't. She wasn't supposed to make that mistake.

"I'm a hacker. Former Alliance Colonial. It's, well, complicated." Kelsie gestured to the console, holding her hands again.

"Again. What are you doing?" Mai spoke in such plain tones, defined only by the growl behind it, she didn't seem human. It was like talking to a VI. "I could kill you."

Well that was true with just about anyone, but of course Mai meant it different than how she had wanted. Even she caught that mistake as the woman whimpered. "I'm just trying to find survey telemetry. I don't know who hired me, but private corps like to get ahead of the pack when the Alliance finally allows colonization, it's not the first time I've been asked something like this."

Oil. This planet had oil. For the UNSC, oil had been only a tertiary energy resource, but for the Insurrection, without the widespread infrastructure to keep fusion reactors always running, Oil had been something worth digging for to power, at least, colonies to reserve the fusion reactors for the ships.

"Who hired you?"

"I- I don't know. I received the assignment and export address remotely. Could be anyone, from the Shadow Broker to the Blue Sons, ExoGeni, or hell, even those Collectors I keep hearing stories about." Not a lot of loyalty, but then again mercenaries being paid to hang out like this weren't always cut throat. Then again calling this woman a mercenary seemed… off. Still, she was doing something illegal. "I'm harmless. I swear. Are you Alliance?"

Mai had nodded once. Kelsie had looked around, to be met alone by a single soldier, it seemed odd. "Are you a VI? Some sort of synth?"

Mai shook her head, thumbing the side of her helmet, depolarizing, her eyes seen behind it for a split second before it went back. "Look, I mean, I told you I'm not really doing anything bad here. No one's getting hurt, just, some, I dunno corporate espionage or something like that. If you could maybe, let this slide I can-"

"No."

How many times had Insurrectionist mercenaries begged her for their lives by paying her off? What did money mean anything to her?

"Come on! You Marines usually take it once I show you the data. It's completely harmless! And the Alliance is sending hundreds of these beacons out recently. Just one won't kill anyone."

Mai twitched. To think of UNSC Marines being swayed. It annoyed her.

"You need to stop what you're doing. Now."

Kelsie's eyes had dropped, realizing that who she was dealing with hadn't been normal. The enormity of Mai had only just registered as she approached, fully into the shadows, all of the almost seven feet of her brought to bear in a metal chassis that spoke of warfare. When she glanced at her rifle by the shuttle Mai had only taken one step further. She was a giant, choking the woman out by presence alone.

"Are you… taking me in?"

Another one of Shepard's ROE implications: Kaiden had asked one day, after an op regarding pirates. They had a survivor. Shepard had been on the fireteam that day.

She ran them off, disarming him. "Not enough room on the Normandy to maintain a brig. This is the next best thing."

"How about executing them?" Wrex sniffed, the conversation in the well deck.

Shepard shook her head disappointed that he even asked. "We're not monsters."

Mai played by her rules for now.

"Pack up. Or I start breaking stuff. Breaking you."

"You're serious?" It was certainly an odd exchange. One that implied Alliance types never went this far to deal with something that seemed so minor in the grand scheme of things, but Mai wasn't about appropriate reactions. In Mai's experience, the amount of people prepared for death when it actually came for them, she could count on her hand. She would know; she was death more often than not. Here, death came for Kelsie Oruma for something that wasn't much more than an infraction, and death looked like a cruelty befit from the Devil. A sinner in her hand; fit not to just be turned over, but rather crushed. There was no playing games here.

What did you die for? What did you live for? Questions that some would ask themselves when they finally peered over that line.

"I have nothing else in this world. You must know how jobs are, this far out…" Kelsie started, a sincerity in her voice she didn't quite know where it came from. "I have a child to feed, off world. And, and, this is all the work I can find."

Mai responded all too naturally. "It's a security threat. We don't know who you're selling this data too."

"Please, just understand. Wait! Here, let me show you a picture of-" She went for the picture frame, but Mai had belted out.

"Stop." Mai's voice was low, dropping like concrete as the young woman reeled back. "I'm not letting you stay."

"What would you do for your daughter? Please."

It wasn't often that Mai remembered that she had been a woman. Ideas of her self-identity, of gender, her name even, who she had been before a Spartan, they were on the fringes of her memory and mind. She kept them there, on purpose, not quite gone, but not quite there. It was a liability to even explore them. Though like battle and gunfire, she was forced to see them, somedays.

Speaking to a maternal instinct, something shared between them inherently as women.

"I don't even know who you are." Mai growled.

There was a choice here. Red and Blue. Order and Chaos. Moral choices. But she wasn't a woman who made choices. She was the object by which choices were carried out. It was easier that way.

Kelsie stood there, anger and frustration coming over her face as her white garb fluttered in the faint gusts. Maybe it was easier for her to just be hit, to be broken, to be killed. At least she didn't have to know they had failed their child.

Failing their child. Was that what happened to herself? Mai felt the burn of her necklace beneath her suit for the first time in ages, pausing her, pausing them all until it became unbearable.

"I won't ask you again. Go." The steel in her voice, the way she had been faceless behind her helmet, they did nothing to protect her from this:

"Damn you, woman. Damn you."

Mai had slightly adjusted her rifle up, but she had stormed off, the croak in her voice showing tears she could not hide. How much work had been cut off because of her arrival?

It hadn't been a particular arduous or long task: seeing her dismantle the mini-site she had made for herself, gathering cables into the shuttle as she refused to even look at Mai. It didn't take more than ten minutes, messily.

She grabbed her rifle by its carry handle, pausing, but Mai had been looking at her already. There was no way she could do something, even if she wanted. With that finality the rifle was just tossed into the shuttle unceremoniously. It had kicked up dust seconds later, its thrusters activating, but Mai had been undeterred as her shields, for a moment, kicked in as dust and pebbles were thrown toward her and the shuttle scooting away, out into the blue sky.

---

They had slipped down the slope down to the beacon shortly after, all too aware that they had seen a shuttle take off from it.

"Status?" JD had asked, not over radio, but as he approached her, the rest of the fireteam idly securing a sector, seeing the imprints left behind by someone that had set up.

"Some hacker trying to grift data. Ran her off."

Loke and Doc shared a look, familiar with the situation.

JD had nodded in response. He had meant to gesture to Tali, but it wouldn't probably be for the best for a Quarian to take a look at Alliance meta-data. "Corporal Loke. I hear you know a thing or two about this stuff."

She got the implication, holstering her rifle behind her back and interfacing with the beacon in short order. Tali had looked the beacon up and down in short order, setting the shotgun down by her foot as she seemed to pout behind her mask. "I was promised more Geth."

Doc knocked his fist against his armored crotch twice as he took a knee and scanned the surrounding area. The beacon landed in a recessed area, sandy, arid slopes surrounding them. Not exactly the best place to be if fighting popped off.

Loke had tapped in to the beacon, the slight electronic whirring of it starting to heighten. "It's resuming its processes now." She read off her data from the omni-tool. "No damage, far as I can tell."

"Is that it?" Tali wondered aloud about their mission here. A short walk and then flipping a switch.

Loke had hung her head back for a moment, looking up at the sky as she and JD held a gaze. "Should stick around for a hot minute. Make sure whoever it was doesn't circle back." Loke offered, only for JD to nod.

"The hacker?" JD turned to Mai.

"Single woman. One gun. Shuttle didn't seem to be armed. Apparently, she was hired from a third-party."

JD had considered for a moment. "We'll stick around until the Normandy calls in, she might be going for backup. At least until the Normandy calls in."

"Oorah."

"Anything more specific we can do?" Tali seemed antsy.

For all her snap, Loke was still a professional. "I can go ahead and see what she was scanning for. Double check the encryption to make sure nothing was left for us, but it'll take a bit."

"We have any other taskings on this planet?" Doc had suggested, he was more than happy to just sit on his ass for a bit. JD and Mai shook their heads once.

"Do it." Mai settled.

"Aye ma'am." Loke hadn't been exactly happy taking those orders, but they were taken as she started the process of her own data scanning.

---

If one had approached Usze Tahamee and told him, in his future, that he would be transported across universes, told to make peace with a humanity, have his face marked by a Demon, and then subsequently begin training of a force meant to retake the Sangheili homeworld from an AI menace, he would've killed them for blasphemy. Then again even the Prophets themselves could not be a prophet of that nature, to have predicted how his life turned out.

The largest fleet he had ever seen had been over Altis when he had arrived back from the Citadel. Far larger than even Thel Vadamee's, intended for the human bastion world of Reach. If the Solace, even in its wrecked state, had been the largest space faring object in that galaxy, then the Migrant Fleet had matched that measure by its numbers alone, blotting out the sky itself as they settled over Altis. A glorious sight, given that the Quarians had become allies overnight.

Most of them, that is.

His thoughts as he stood on top of the Solace, its topmost decks normally considered its hull surfaces now smoothed and flattered out, transitioned into landing decks and staging areas nearly the size of all human settlements on Altis itself. The Engineers, if he had interpreted their ever-anomalous chirping correctly, had found pleasure in such interesting circumstances.

He was by no means inexperienced, but that veterancy he did have in the war against the UNSC was by no means directly translatable. Not that it mattered. The Quarians weren't expected to be the ground forces come for the invasion that was in their future, however some Quarian Marines had expected to be on ground when the first boots hit soil. It was only right, Destiny had agreed, as the first Quarian Marine units stepped onto the Solace.

They'd become the first individuals from that galaxy to step foot on the Solace that hadn't been Covenant, and their eyes had been wide with awe once they realized the scope of that downed ship. Once or twice Usze had heard out of the corner of his hearing about Marines recollecting about their Pilgrimages, and how the discovery of something like the Solace would've changed everything.

To be fair, the Solace did change everything.

Usze's foot had blasted against the midsection of a Quarian Marine as the others with their omni-blades tried to surround him. Though this was child's play as he had ignited his own weapon. The burn of an Energy Sword had its nuances. Enough that even an older model such as his own still had a lower power setting. One that wouldn't lacerate the Quarians entirely.

How easy it was for him to dictate the flow of this sparring match: him versus five Marines. They all encircled him, orbiting, as he simply took his steps, watching them each react as they tried to block him in.

Watching from an observing Phantom had been no less than the military commander of the Covenant now: Seylu Karonee. Her cape had floated in its exposure to air, looking down, specifically, on Usze as he had held out his sword, widening the circle as the Quarians were unsure of how to proceed.

"You are weak." Usze spoke to all of them, cruelly, sword cast down. "Why do you not press the attack?"

None had answered as their omni-blades glittered at him, all of them looking at each other. The Quarian combat doctrine was that of self-preservation, and there was enough pointy and sharp bits that Usze had at his own disposal to slick a hole in any of their suits. Usze knew this, answering his own questions.

"Is there not glory in knowing you are so fragile? And yet you fight?!" Usze had recited his teachings of Ascetic warriorhood to them, as a younger Quarian stepped forward, holding his blade across him as he squared up in front of the Elite. "To burn in battle is one of its bounties."

Pain, scars. Elites sought these out, Usze had tried his best to find his. Beneath his armor, on his skin, the pits and the marks of a hundred battles and fights had painted on his skin. Though there was one on him that rose above all others: one that gave him a new name amongst the uninitiated.

"Come on, Scarface."

Uninspired, perhaps. The first few times he had heard it from Alliance Marines it was an odd translation, perhaps words of scorn. He had been used to such things from Humans. When the Quarians started saying it however he had adjusted his translator and looked up the meaning. A Human cultural artifact to be sure; dishonorable given its origin. Though to those that knew where he had gotten it, it meant something. To be marked by Demons gave Usze weight that the crew put on.

The Quarian Marine yelled at him as the two collided, sword to sword, but Usze had the size advantage, thrashing himself at the Quarian and slamming him to the floor as he immediately swung his sword back, catching a Marine who sought to throw himself on his back.

That was that. No one else would dare take him as they all deactivated their training weapons. Something more pressing had come up as a Phantom landed in one of the clear landing spaces next to the training affair. On that same, massive platform, on the edge, Wraiths had been being used by Quarians, cross-training its operation, sending artillery rounds harmlessly out toward the ocean. Elsewhere Elites and Grunts had been using Mass Effect-based firearms, familiarizing with the galactic standard.

He regarded no Quarian in particular as he broke out of the circle. "Keep sparring."

He heard the mean mutterings of those he left behind, but it was no matter. The Phantom had hovered above the flat surface, those present giving it its berth as training and logistics operations went on. The remaining hangers of the Solace had become a train of shuttles, ferrying personnel and supplies out and in. Food and fuel in, weapons and war out.

The Solace itself had been buzzing, fuel collection efforts going well enough that it could operate on a semi-normal basis. The fact remained the Solace hadn't been whole, and would never be again.

Out from the bottom of a Phantom, a silver-clad Elite had floated down. The Ranger, Ke Nazhumee. New second in command of the Spec Ops forces on the Solace and, perhaps more chiefly, one of the main point of contacts between the Sangheili and the Quarians.

"Commander." Ke had regarded the younger Elite as he approached. How many ranks had, provisionally, Usze gone through at this point? It had made his head spin, and he really paid no heed. His responsibilities were still the same, but if Destiny wanted to be vain, he had no opinion. As of current he held the rank that his mentor did: R'tas Vadumee, Special Operations Commander.

It was a lofty title, befit for an Elite who commanded the Spec Ops throughout the whole Covenant, but here, it did mean that same thing. For as long as they were here, and the reality of it was that it was permanent, this was the entire Covenant.

"Am I being summoned?" Usze asked, holstering his sword. Ke had nodded once, only then gesturing with his head at the group of Quarians he had left behind.

"Shall I?"

Usze looked back at them, still recovering. "Weak and feeble creatures… but, they have heart."

"Go easy on them, Usze." There was an unspoken connection between the two Elites, perhaps out of age difference and experience, but there was a relationship there that had been easy, as a bond between warriors was. "Were we all not children on Sanghelios at some point? Weak and feeble?" There was snark and sarcasm in Ke's word.

"Hmph." Was Usze's response as he stepped into the light of the gravity lift and sucked up into the Phantom, Ke replacing him training the Quarians.

When he had entered, his feet finding metal purchase, he had found a mostly empty bay, save for one Elite and her staff.

"Shipmistress." He regarded Karonee all the same, and she had dipped her head once in recognition. Her golden armor had been donned again by her, the mark of a Shipmaster. Her half-cape: the mark of a Fleetmaster.

The outer flaps of the Phantom had been open, exposing the view of the Solace below as the Phantom moved up and out into a holding pattern above, revealing the full enormity of what had been happening on the Solace, and on Altis: the full preparation for a military campaign.

She beckoned Usze forward, and as he had stepped forward, she had let one of her fingers trace the scar on his face. "For a young Elite," she said as she felt it once before letting him back off. "Your scars do not heal easy."

He folded his own claws behind his back. "Admittedly I have not had time to reconcile and recover, Shipmistress."

"Hmph. Were it so easy to believe such a thing exists for us now." Again, with her hand, she had beckoned Usze to stand besides her as they both looked out of the Phantom at the arrangements below, only barely regarding the white dome that had covered the wreckage of the human ship that had done this to them. "This galaxy is telling us that this kind of military preparation is not common."

"For us, it is." He had remembered more and more of Seylu Karonee's service to the Covenant the longer he had served directly under her. She, more than anyone, would know what it took to invade a planet. She was called to Reach after all.

"Reach was to be my greatest triumph. With Supreme Commander Barutamee and Supreme Commander Vadamee." She recounted, looking down on an ostensibly Human planet. "But it was not my only. I have glassed worlds, painted the marks of our Faith as if I an artist… My greatest triumph then, shall now be, the reclaiming of our homeworld. A homeworld I did not think I have lost."

Irony, absurdity, surrealism. All were in her words as she said so slowly, seeing Banshees fly in formation beneath them. Brute pilots had been being trained, to shore up reserves. The Brutes had been given more and more responsibility in response to all of the personnel losses. Usze, among many Elites in command positions, had been speaking out against such a radical change, but Destiny had assured them that the Brutes could be charged with such a responsibility.

Apparently, the High Prophet of Regret had also been, recently, confiding in such wishes for the Brutes. The Human idiom: Desperate Measures for Desperate Times. But… the war against the Humans had not been Desperate… had it?

No matter. That war had been behind them. A new one was in front of them against a "Synthetic" menace.

"I am preparing a contingent for the Ardent Prayer's voyage. No more than a month or so. Using patrol routes recognized by the Council so as to find our footing in this galaxy." Usze remained silent, his head barely tilting as she looked into him, ordaining if he knew where this was going. He did. "I would like for you to organize a Spec Ops Lance of your Shadows to accompany us."

Usze clacked his mandibles once, respectfully, a moment of consideration. "Are we expecting to be deployed, Shipmistress?"

She shook her head. "No. But as you know, circumstances are never as they seem."

Fair, he glanced back at the Solace below and the army being trained and prepared. "Shall I draw from the Spec Ops corps exclusively?"

His Spec Ops division on the Solace had yet to be full strength yet, but it was fieldable. Most, if not all, were pre-disposed with training both Quarians and qualified Elites however. There was talk of even allowing Brutes and Hunters into the division which had been, at least in his participation, exclusively Sangheili. As if Brutes could be Special Forces, he thought.

"I'd a measured, but varied Spec Ops Lance. We cannot afford to be… picky. Even the Prophet of Destiny has provided us with his Prelate."

Usze's eyes had widened momentarily. The San'Shyuum, rare amongst their kind, that had been charged with combat. Genetically modified, given artifacts from their Holy Gods with such great, terrible power… It was odd, certainly, that Destiny had one assigned to him on the Solace. The majority of them had been on High Charity, charged with the protection of the High Prophets and Council. He had never seen one in battle, but starkly, Rtas Vadumee had spoken to him once having seen one in combat.

"Strange, is it that we only use Demon to describe the Human devils." Usze had heard Rtas's non-sequitur as they rested after a sparring match. "Does that disavow those that are among us?"

"When do we disembark?"

"As soon as we are ready. As fond as I am of the Quarians… this current state of affairs is…" Karonee looked up at space and the cacophony of the Migrant Fleet. "Stuffy."

Stuffy. Scarface. Usze had mused. Having translators for the Human language had been a deadly affair if even they were using them now. All things change, but what that meant especially for him though, it gave him thoughts. Dangerous ones.

"What becomes of us? After?"

"How do you mean, Commander?" There was intrigue in her voice as he asked.

"What becomes of us, without a war?"

Perhaps, deeper than that, what Usze really asked with that had been this:

What is my purpose?

Karonee and him had stood there, silent, letting that question sit in the air, unanswered. Unanswered as it had been for thousands of years. Unanswered as it had been in the history that had become of their home reality. Unanswered now, in the new lives given to them.

---

"So, basically, think of every cone of vision as a sector. You hold that sector, and try not to overlap. You've gotta rely on your fireteam to cover you, and your fireteam is gonna have to rely on you." Doc had been more than happy to continue Tali's training on planet as they all sat or stood idle, looking out from the beacon for… anything that might come their way, directing her on how to stand and look menacing.

The threat that had been that hacker circling back to either take up shop again or come with reinforcements was real, however even when they did lead Loke had a plan.

"Feed them false data. Lead them down a particular path if someone tries to hack into it so they think they've got it, while also sending a tracker to whatever system their using." Loke explained as she got to it. "I prefer being a pointman, but I majored in systems design in college."

"How'd you end up a Marine?" JD was honestly interested.

"Companies kept outsourcing to Salarians." She shrugged.

So Loke had made her degree in Systems Design and Security worth it that day as they sat, for roughly an hour, and waited for her to layer security onto the beacon. It was a calm that had becoming lulling, if anything, the gentle wind flowing across the sands serene in their own way.

Half an hour in Tali had her stroke of genius for the day, thumbing her omni-tool as a spherical hardlight drone manifested in front of her. It glowed in the bright light even, its hardlight channels hinting toward a combat use. Tali had a more inspired idea as she sat on it.

"Her name's Chatika vas Paus." She referred to the sphere. "Drone I designed as a kid. I've been gradually upgrading her and upping the voltage. My own little attack pet."

"…Can you talk to it?" JD had asked on his side of the perimeter.

She referred to it even as it held her up, running her hands over the light resistance of the hard light. "No…?"

It had taken a moment to think that perhaps a "VI" companion for a Quarian might've been a dangerous taboo.

He himself always wanted a pet, but keeping it contained in their apartment on Luna seemed cruel.

That and dogs never took to low gravity well.

"Hey, Tali." Loke had sat cross-legged in front of the beacon continuing to work, focusing on an internal panel and her omni. The Quarian looked back, "For your Pilgrimage, would data from something like this make the cut?"

She stared at the beacon, wondering that very question, the light in her respirator making half-blinks, as if she had been saying words beneath her breath. "More… material things are appreciated, nowadays. And I don't think-" She paused. Pilgrimage. Such a thing didn't exist anymore. Not in the last week. Every Pilgrim has been told, not to return to the Migrant Fleet, but rather Altis in Alliance space. For the first time in history, and probably the last. Everyone had known what was happening, what was about to happen when that Quarian message was sent out and every single one of its sons and daughters and told them the first standing orders of a final journey. "It doesn't matter anymore, does it?"

Because of the Covenant. The realization in her voice was translated across to all of them there. "Why aren't you off? Didn't Shepard ask?"

Mai had turned over her shoulder, looking at Tali, unmoving at Loke's question. Shepard did ask, but just as she told Adams, she had told Mai, and Garrus, and Liara, and all those that had asked. "I relayed to the Fleet I was already engaged with the Geth. I am exempt."

Exempt by connection of course. Her father granted her such discretion, not that she felt any good about it.

"Really not in the mood to go back to your family and stuff, girl?" Doc asked.

"It doesn't feel right." Tali answered, bitter almost. "I don't think our way lies with the Covenant, with the Sangheili."

Mai and JD took a glance at each other, uncomfortable, and yet, reassured. Tali's distrust of the Covenant had settled their own hearts for moments at a time. For once in that galaxy someone else didn't take in the Covenant so well. For all of what was revealed to them about the Covenant with their current state of affairs, the reason for their war against the UNSC was dead simple, and something they all had known for decades: they were vermin to be stamped out.

They saw none of that rhetoric come from the Covenant in regards to the Geth. It was a face that was denied to them and it hurt. That the war against Humanity had not been some mistake, or fluke; rather it had been done in full consciousness.

"I mean, isn't it something though? To have someone else to share your plight with?"

"I wasn't aware the Covenant, the Sangheili, were Quarians?" Tali asked with a hint of malice that almost mirrored Loke's. "They do not share our collective fate. They will never understand what lives we have lived, and are not entitled to what we are owed because of it."

She sounded like an Insurrectionist. Mai knew the type of language, years, it felt like, of tuning into Insurrectionist radio frequencies to track target made it so she had to listen. JD knew the sort if only because of High School. That identity that spoke to some sort of radicalization. It seemed so disconcerting out from Tali; someone who seemed and sounded like suck a plucky young woman otherwise. There was hatred, seething from her voice, held back.

A sensitive topic then, Loke reeled back, going back to her work.

More silent minutes had passed before Loke spoke up again to the Chiefs. "Well, found where she was trying to route this data too."

"Go ahead." JD coaxed.

Loke had started reviewing what she had pulled out again from the data stream. "Hackers trying to grab stuff from beacons aren't totally unusual, and most of them we can track by finding their output locations. If I'm remembering my comm buoy locational data correct, she was sending data out to a place not far from here, out here in the Attican… It's weird though."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Not an often-used satellite, and a pretty barebones output node. Usually hackers send these things along nodes that are trafficked by private comm lines, but, well, this one seems bare, and this satellite isn't one used by any of the major players in the region."

JD was trying to make sure he was tracking. "So she was sending data to nowhere?"

"Perhaps. More than that though, it seemed like this request came from nowhere, if hacker SOP is the same."

Tali had perhaps laxed a bit in covering her sector, between going back to the sour thoughts of her people and the fact she had been sitting, however her gaze did catch the quick bob of a shape crest of the hill. She might've been quick to write it off as some visual artifact, a speck of dust floating in such a way to fool her vision, but more and more shapes had appeared a second after that, she going for her shotgun as her voice involuntarily yelped. "Hey!"

Not exactly a clean callout, but it was distressed enough that everyone on perimeter duty had turned.

For Mai it was a turn fast enough to see about five rockets be shot downward toward her.

Time slowed, a huge breath sucked in as she tried to beat rocket propelled ordnance. The rest of the fireteam had barely had time to shoulder their guns and aim up at the crest before she had hopped forward, almost as if diving over the explosives. She hadn't seen the explosives, with surgical precision, blast where she had stood and turn the sand to glass. She had only felt the heat, the crack of concussion through her lower body and the force of the blast outwards propelling her as if she was picked up, throwing her forward through the sky. A sky that belonged to a planet with slightly lesser gravitational pull then they were used to.

This time a Biotic hadn't been there to ferry her.

Tali had been sure that her teeth had been cracked the way she tried to shoulder Wrex's shotgun, firing off the first shot toward the crest of the dunes they had come from, toward those shapes. She was thankful she had a sling now, it bucking out of her hands as it slammed back into her visor.

Doc and JD had been faster on the draw, Doc wielding his Avenger and judiciously opening fire as he moved toward the beacon for cover, Loke getting her rifle out by the time JD had done as he was trained: Push up.

The shapes had glowing eyes, and their silhouettes had been distinctive.

"Contact! Geth!" Doc yelled out as Mai had landed quite a distance away, almost in JD's path if anything. The shock troopers plan had been to go back where they came, using the downward slope as cover before he moved back up to meet them, face to face. That changed when he had seen Mai plant face down, he sliding to her on his knees as Loke and Doc opened up in a slurry of concentrated fire up, Tali's sprinting behind him assuring him that she had roughly the same idea.

She wasn't dead, that much the IFF in his HUD had indicated, however she hadn't taken it well as she creakily rolled over as he took one of her shoulders, with all his might rolling her over, only now noticing her kinetic barrier had been shorted out and golden static was all over her armor. Her shields had also taken a hit.

It'd been a long time since she had been thrown like that, the shock of pain through her body amplifying and subsiding as she felt herself get turned over to a blue sky, only to see an ODST having taken a knee by her, his weapon held up at the firing line making sure none pulled a shot down at them.

The drone of her shields kicking back in had been reassuring, but JD hadn't known, not as its recharging vaporized some of the sand that was thrown onto her form. Landing that hard had buried her somewhat, albeit barely. Only some particles had remained on her visor as she shook herself, grabbing JD's arm, it remaining on her shoulder as if waiting for her to respond, to say anything, to confirm her status. All he had gotten was a squeeze at his wrist as she found her rifle still attached to her, her other hand grabbing onto it.

He wiped his index and middle finger over her dirtied visor, almost as if running his fingers across her cheek. He meant nothing of it but to clear her view, he had gone already as he continued on the firefight with Tali in tow, but just at that moment Spartan Time had kicked in for her again. She never had it done to her, never did it to any other Spartans, but she knew of the move: the language that Spartans spoke only to each other. Of language without words and meaning made of action. She'd never seen this particular one done like this, but it was a tightly held to the heart of the Spartan-IIs. It was a secret Kurt had barely revealed to her, the last time they had ever seen each other. She was to be deployed separately from the rest of Beta Company, for a task that would begin her journey to become the Lone Wolf. Before that however, just as she was loaded onto the Pelican, Kurt had reached up with his index and middle finger to gently, gently, with an almost sad expression on his face, paint an upward curve across his mouth.

That was his goodbye to his greatest student.

The best way she could describe it was a smile.

Her inner thoughts left her as the medigel in her suit activated for the first time, the canals that once channeled biofoam where it needed to be channeled now let out the rather different sensation of this galaxy's standard. It was more cooling than she anticipated, spreading out on the side of her body she had landed on; sticking and coating itself as if a shell as it numbed. She could work with it, standing up, shouldering her rifle again after reclaiming it on its sling.

JD and Tali had pushed up the steep slope, JD already tossing grenades over as more concussive thumps went out.

"Hitman to Normandy. We are currently engaged with the Geth."

"Copy all Hitman. We're coming back now, ETA five minutes."

Comms were in her head as she returned to full combat, sand streaking off her like a buried corpse as her legs propelled herself in JD and Tali's wake.

A Geth had tasted its own medicine as a grenade tossed over the line threw a piece of it over the slope. Tali had another idea:

"Chatika, go!"

The holographic drone was called for again, beaming itself into existence by Tali from her omni, only to disappear back over the slope, a volley of fire directed at it hinting at its fate. It was no worry though, the drone's operating system had been stored in her omni, after all. All it did however was offer a distraction as JD peeked over the side and saw a patrol of Geth: The typical affair, used rocket launchers by their feet as they were distracted by Tali's drone.

He hadn't gotten a shot off before Tali did: a giant hole appearing in one of the trooper, the recoil actually sending her back down the slope. More grenades had come before JD ducked back down, opening up rounds and breaking the kinetic barriers on one trooper before the entire handful turned back to him.

A Spartan had leaped over him, rifle in one hand, knife in another. As she went over, so did he, clambering over as they did a dance they didn't even know they knew.

He reacquired the one Geth he had broken its shields, burning the rest of his SMG's heat tolerances as he made scrap of it, drawing his pistol as Mai had used her DMR to pump and close the distance toward another Geth trooper before slamming into it, knife first.

Tali reappeared as the two focused fire on another Geth together, JD dropping its shields as Tali clambered over, putting another slug in a Geth, it going down in a metal pop as Mai had already moved on in her dance of knives.

When Loke and Doc had climbed up, that had been that with the Geth. The machinations of organic combat forms at such close quarters were never something the Geth could calculate; not when paired against the premier Geth fighting force in the galaxy at that point. The violence of action was still in the Normandy crew's favor, time and time again when the Geth engaged them.

Still, something had changed.

The last Geth had gone down by Mai's account, five shots lacerating its neck and head as its final shots harmlessly bounced off her kinetic barrier, the Geth bodies around them self-destructing already.

"Clear!" It came from Mai's voice far deeper than usual, as if from the very bottom of her throat.

"Clear!" Repeated again and again, for all of them.

Two minutes, perhaps. Six dead Geth.

Panted breaths.

The rocket launchers of the Geth remained last, only self-destructing as Tali approached them, glancing at Mai as she wiped her knife of fluid. "They were aiming at her first." It flowed from her mouth as fast as it came from her head, no one really hearing it. "They really are learning, aren't they?" Just like father said.

It was emphasized by Alliance and Spectre intelligence: the Geth were capable of learning, by what measure was yet to be learned when it came to combat now, but the very fact that they had singled out Mai…

"Chief Gul?" It was Doc, walking up to her. "You good? You took quite a hit."

"My armor has medigel dispensers. I'm fine." Her answer came fast and hard.

"Helluva armor." Doc was surprised by how easy that answer came, Mai nodding, panting as her entire form breathed in and out, her shoulders pulsing up and down for a few moments before, all at once, she stood as if nothing had happened.

It was redundant, but JD had wanted to ask again as the barrel of his SMG smoked, walking up to her, rounding her and facing her, chest to chest, feet apart. His head bobbed, up and down, once.

She only nodded at him once.

Yeah, she was good.

"Pretty bog-standard contact, nowadays. Didn't know Geth had been here though." Loke vented her assault rifle as she glanced at Doc, the man cursing at himself for not putting his helmet back on. "Never seen them concentrate so much on the first shot though… Jesus, Chief Gul, when was the last time you engaged the Geth?"

"Therum." She answered. It bothered her too, more than she admitted.

Very few times the Insurrectionists or Covenant knew that she had been in the area before she struck. So many resources she had known were dedicated, solely, toward making her the prey, instead of the predator. This felt of that. The Geth had a shot of opportunity, and they took it.

The brush of death, she felt it in her teeth, the adrenaline returning to her and washing out, leaving her cold.

This was the feeling she adored.

"You do what you need to do with the beacon?" JD asked, peering around Mai.

Loke nodded. "Yes sir."

"Alright, we're extracting."

Mai had barely moved as they waited, her arms folding across each other, standing on the edge down, seeing what the Geth were looking down on and that beacon. Her mind had been elsewhere though as the Normandy reappeared above them, Kaiden and several of the Normandy's biotics there, about to rip them back up with their powers.

Before they came back to the Normandy, Mai had decided to do something. JD's shoulder was held onto before he stepped up and waited to be dragged up. He turned to her, head cocked, a silent question asked.

Suddenly, two fingers of hers, gloved in armor and suit, touched the face of his helmet along the crease of his visor. Like a swipe, slow, dragging along the surface where his mouth would have been, she traced a curve. Sand had been dusted on the surface of his visor, leaving behind what she had done. Without words she had done it and started floating up by Kaiden's grace, leaving JD with the ghost of a smile on his face.