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.

36. 1-29: Mantle of Responsibility

A/N: I think I'll roll over this chapter's notes into the next one, but let me just say I expect this chapter to be controversial and not well received because I did not have fun writing this as it's one of those "Direct translation of gameplay segments into writing", which sucks. That is also why it took so long.

---

1-29
Mantle of Responsibility

---

She's not the same woman as she used to be. Shepard knows that. It is the procedure of being broken down and broken into the mold of special forces that have turned her into what she needs to be. Questions were asked, expectations were made, and at the end of the day, Shepard had gained little insight into what it meant to be a follower of Matriarch Benezia and Saren Arterius himself at the end of the day. This was the closest she could get so far to understand the sickness inside of the rogue spectre's head and, perhaps, maybe her own. She and Saren had gone through the same Prothean mind-bending experience, and, for better or worse, there was a shared thread between them.

"Why, Ayaine, why?" Liara is before Ayaine's feet, having returned with Wrex to that seedy, dirty shop where the Normandy's people had made their base for the mission ahead. "You were my tutor for so long, I thought you would know better."

Ayaine is the last one to finish but the first one to break.

The other two spat back, said their piece, said nothing until they were spilled out on velvet carpet. That was the process of enhanced interrogation. Officially no such standard or procedure exists in the Alliance military handbook, but this was not war, and Shepard was a Spectre.

Ayaine's nose runs red, and Shepard steps back into the shadows; having done her job, the information gained tonight is substantial. There is a more pressing issue back at Peak 15 regarding Benezia, which would be dealt with in short order; however, there is much to think about. Shepard taps her reddened knuckles against the door, and she is let out to let Liara and Ayaine speak one last time.

Emerson emerges from one of the other doors from his critical questioning, an empty gallon jug of water in his hand. "It's easier, you know. When they're not Human."

Shepard sniffs in the air, and there is no fresh scent to be had in that dark place. There are people in the galaxy who have their moral battles with the type of questioning she just did; however, it's a battle all for naught when Shepard is the same type of person to kill in the name of duty. "I think that's just you, Emerson. Rally the troops with Kaiden, we're moving out as soon as we're ready."

Emerson nods, knowing that work is on.

However, work has already been done to Ayaine as she sits limply but still wills her mouth to speak, even as it drips with herself.

"Liara… You were right. All those years, all your theories. They were right."

Liara being right was the worst truth discovered.

The Reapers were coming, and they hadn't enough time. "This is the only alternative, Liara. What Saren wants to do. It's the only way."

"No. No…" Liara has spent her entire life looking and trying to find the truth through thousand-year-old carvings of metal and history. When the truth finally came for her in the shape of a woman, much like herself, who she had known all her life, who she had been raised by in some form, it was a truth she could not have or hear. It never speaks to her, so she grinds herself into the very ferment of its existence to see what the answer may be.

"The Reapers are coming."

"Stop it."

"By being useful to them, it's the only way-"

"Shut up!"

It is said from history, no one learns from history. This is the truth that Liara sees that night as Wrex pries it from another.

In another room, it is he that handles the questioning after a single thing is said, alluded to:

"You're betraying your own kind, Krogan, by being here." Wrex was content to just see Silka waste away beneath the interrogation by the Humans, standing in the dark as Hitman worked her over every time until she gave an answer that didn't reek of the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. However, Silka saw him in blurred vision, between the blunt force trauma and the blood on her face, rubbed in by those Shepard had called hitmen.

It was a challenge, a call. Wrex stepped out of the shadows in that pelted, red room, and the two Hitmen who had been assigned to Silka had stepped back. His methods, gained after centuries of fighting, they imagined would do something they couldn't.

He stood in the light before her as she was bound to a chair.

"You're going to tell me what you mean, welp."

One of her teeth goes from her mouth down the floor with the rest. "I've said it all. Saren is going to save the Krogan. He's going to save all of us. Don't tell me you haven't found it odd that you've been fighting other Krogan, working for him."

He remembers the battle master back on Feros and dozens in between, hunting Shepard on distant worlds. They all fought like Krogan; they all died like Krogan, even if their reasons weren't entirely clear outside of that natural blood rage. There had always been a hint of something more, however. A clue that led him here.

Wrex is disgusted by the thought. "The only people who can save the Krogan are ourselves. Not some rouge Spectre; a Turian, no less."

"How many scientists and doctors do you have, Krogan? How many are able to look into your very DNA and see what you are inside and mend it? Saren, he found a way. Aren't you worried you're going to damn your people…. No, this Galaxy! To extinction?"

"Worrying is for the weak, and where I'm standing, it doesn't look like I'm the one that should be."

His red armor almost melts into the room, leaving the face of the beast floating, looking down on her. And yet, even she still balks.

"If there's one thing you should be worried about, it should be the Covenant." She flares her nostrils, looking away from him as she jeers the threat.

He retakes his first step toward her, out of the light above, and his footsteps make the rug sound like metal, cracking beneath his boots.

"Explain, welp." He growls like the animal he came from.

She sounds like Saren, Silka tells herself as she shakes her head and looks down on her knees, her arms too far gone to even help her out of this. Like all who follow Benezia, who follow Saren, death was merely an inconvenience, and even a luxury, compared to what was going to happen. "Oh, you'll know. You'll know."

His people were made for war and, more than that, for pain. Both in giving and dealing. He is perfectly fine with being called a monster because he does not deny what he is.

He tells her in his simple language, from his complicated life: "All around us are dirty people, Asari. Dirty people, doing dirty jobs, for dirty money. It makes me sick. It does. I'm no hypocrite. I've done the same stuff during my time. But one day someone's gotta clean all of this up." He moves into her space, his stomach is against her face, armor plates and all, so when he talks, she feels it through her cheek, through his skin, right down to her bones as alien eyes look down on her. "Do you know what we did to dirty cops on Tuchanka?"

She doesn't ask, but she is made to understand.

---

Deep down in the dark, the Lone Wolf and Cerberus square off, a man in the middle.

"You want us dead?" JD breaths, glass of sake in his hand. The other hand is at Mai's back, dragging her a little closer as she begins to shoulder her PDW, low ready.

"We want you to understand." Miranda speaks instead. She raises one hand about mid-level, making a slashing motion as the Cerberus and its many heads put their guards down and await. The Cerberus operators appear out of the dark, tables made cover, shadow made concealment, all in the shapes of men and women in suits, with guns, waiting for the eventuality.

Mai does not stand down, but it is in her nature.

"Your existence proves Cerberus right. Every fear, everything that Cerberus has ever done, is justified."

Stories, out of Shepard's mouth and out of the words of those that told them, one piece at a time. Secrets born of horror in the name of Mankind, for all Mankind. JD knows the feeling that washes over him when he learns of them. It was the same feeling that he had when he learned of Mai and the nature of Project Spartan.

"Mai Gul." Miranda says her name, her full name, and she turns over her shoulder to look at this perfect woman.

"I'm like you Mai. I understand you. My reflexes, my strength, even my looks- they're all designed to give me an edge. We were built from the ground up to be the best. Anyone who doesn't let us do that is worse than an enemy."

"You're not like me at all." Anger. It is anger that drips from her tongue, and for JD, he has never heard it before. He has listened to her aggravation and disappointment, but never this fire red emotion that keeps grits her teeth and strains the grip of her gun as she holds it.

Mai knows who is like her.

Dozens of names, dozens of numbers after them. Each of them is her blood brothers and sisters from their sacrifice and circumstances, all to defend Humanity.

Mai knows she is a Spartan, and she knows who is and isn't. It may not have been her birthright, but it is her right by battle and blood.

Miranda's eyebrows furrow. "You won't know that truly. And at the very least, our interests, and yours, your true beliefs, are shared by us. Cerberus isn't as evil as you might think. In fact, Cerberus and the UNSC, this ONI, of yours, from what we understand we were very similar."

"You're terrorists." Mai shoots back.

It barely fazes Miranda as she rounds the corner of the bar, coming to them. "A very pointed word, Spartan. It may be true that some of our elements may be more inclined to undesirable tactics, however they all answer for it in the end. And besides, that's a very bold claim to make from you, of all people."

"You know nothing about-"She's never been cut off before in her life the way Miranda has done it to her, the ice-cold seeping through her as she sees eyes of pure belief.

"How many Human colonies have you stamped out, Mai? How many assassinations? How many have you killed that were innocent of everything save for wanting to live their own lives? With Cerberus, you can serve all of Mankind instead of crushing out its splinters." What has she done? And are these questions that JD has posed to her before the long way around? They are; her contradiction was one of the very first things JD had known of her. He regrets, finally, bringing it up as Mai, this Mai, the Mai that has lived this life with him, faces down a question the Mai of the UNSC would simply give no regard to. "What are you responsible for, in the name of Earth and her Colonies?"

In another life, she would've, after doing her duty, been swarmed by hundreds of Covenant, stabbed in the gut, and left to die on a burning planet. This wasn't that life, but she knew, somehow, something like that was going to happen to her. And all for what?

"Shepard will be busy with Saren, and we in Cerberus are quite sure she can stop him. She doesn't need you to finish her mission. She never has. She needs the Turian, she needs the Krogan, she needs Benezia's daughter, and she needed the Quarian. But she didn't need you two."

It was JD's turn to view the scene, a possible battle plan already too far into a battle to enact truly. At least twelve hostiles, shotguns, rifles, pistols. He had no gun and only a last resort kinetic barrier standard for any Alliance personnel out of port without gear. In the end, all he had to rely on was Mai. Even so, he had felt compelled to step in front of her as she fought inside her mind, still clashing between herself and holding herself ready to kill everyone in that room.

He asks as if there wasn't a fireteam ready to pump him and Mai full of holes. "So, what's your play? You want us to come with you? Right now? Become terrorists in the eyes of the galaxy just because you know who we are?"

Because we have killed hundreds of aliens trying to kill Humanity, and that is what we still want to do and what they want to see.

"It'd be wonderful if you did, Mister Durante, however we can be more graceful than that. We can organize happenstance; have Shepard deploy to a planetoid in some far-off system where you two can disappear under extenuating circumstances during those away missions she loves going on. We truly understand that the Covenant is a threat. The rest of the Galaxy, the Alliance, would rather sit on its hands and let the Covenant trickle down its secrets to them. We know that this is just poison. They don't belong here."

Wouldn't it just be so easy to do what they wanted? To kill who needed to be killed and then disappear from history altogether?

"Yeah, well, neither do we." JD shrugs, head shaking. It's true. What has happened to him, he can't divine as destiny. It was a fluke, a mistake. She walks away towards the door that is the only entrance to that club, and JD is about finished looking at her ass this time around.

"We can give you a mission, and a new life that is truly yours." She poses, and Mai feels something in her indoctrination tick like a clock, winding up again.

JD answers back. "We're already on a mission. One that matters."

"All while letting a war, come so, so much closer." If what they believed was right, why didn't they tell Shepard already? Breaking confidentiality? Surely it must've been worth it, and Shepard would've understood. Surely things could've been better than this, being propositioned by the Commander's enemy. Miranda cocked her hips, her men and women standing ready, frozen in time, waiting to strike. "At best, you can be hailed as heroes, saviors of Humanity. At worst, you can be told that you let it happen when you had the chance to stop them… Do you know what happens to them after they reclaim one planet? Their knowledge of planets yet to be tapped by this galaxy far exceeds your own."

Another Covenant Empire. That was the threat here. It was only natural that the Covenant had partnered with the Quarians so closely. They needed their ships.

"We're already predisposed." JD answers like the spook he is told he is.

Loyalty to the mission: it's what made soldiers who they were, right or wrong. The two of them felt both right and wrong there, but they held their ground, fists curled. "We're not going anywhere. We know who you are." JD speaks of Shepard's past, of classified missions and Human horror in the name of Human existence. He knows exactly what to feel because it's the same disgust he felt when he came to know of the Spartans.

"Hmph." Miranda wasn't quite so convinced. "Do you agree with him, Mai? Could you tell me why? Can you truly think for yourself here?"

She was more machine than man, and her choices were divined to her by other people who were more Human than her. JD included. Shepard included. "Mai…" Her name out of his lips quietly. What for, even he couldn't say.

"I…" She barely managed to get out, her stone-cold gaze going soft, going distant. Her fingers rubbed along her knuckles.

Miranda continued, arms crossed. "Spartans kill Covenant, we are offering a chance for you to do just that. In a month, we can organize an action on Altis. We can provoke the Covenant to quit their charade and lash out against the Alliance, letting them let you do what you do best. You know it's what is right."

She knows that it is right beyond all of her years and training; she knows that she is made to kill Covenant. Yet, like all things, there is denial in her now brought to her by a new life she has been given.

"I cannot leave." She says, smaller than she is.

Miranda cocks her head, eyebrow raised. "But why?"

It was a self-fulfilling prophecy for one of JD's squad, one campaign on an industrial planet where the only color that existed was brown and grey or some variation of that. His last name was Hegel, and because of that, he learned that ancient philosopher's words and lessons. Of all those lessons, Hegel had told JD this one day, washing down from oil-drenched battles and rust-filled firefights where the splatter of hydraulic fluid from machinery torn asunder from Covenant artillery left only the whites of people's eyes out from their coating.

"The human being is this night, this empty nothing, that contains everything in its simplicity—an unending wealth of many representations, images, of which none belongs to him—or which are not present. One catches sight of this night when one looks human beings in the eye."

Mai's answer is not one that she tells Miranda, or even one that she would admit to, say aloud; however, she gives it when she looks at JD with her piercing blue eyes, and he looks back with his.

Eyes were windows into the soul, and her answer was summed up in silence as JD realized what it was.

Miranda's men and women had all slowly backed their way to her. It was what it was.

The two of them weren't going anywhere; even Miranda realized that. Getting in contact was enough, however. No need to burn all bridges and make this messy.

"The bottle of Sake is yours." She said once, one eye scowling. "One day, this Humanity will have to call upon you to be who you were, and when that happens, know that it could've been stopped." She paused before leaving out the door, considering her thoughts as if they were in the air above her. "And one last thing."

"What?" JD was trying to usher her out verbally, fists curled, shoes digging into the stone floor below.

"The Ardent Prayer has gone missing. It's more powerful a ship than any in this galaxy and the Covenant now knows this. Even we don't know where it is. Should Commander Shepard and the Normandy find it however, tread carefully, it's captain wishes to prove themselves in this galaxy before they return to Altis and that Prophet."

She left, and those in black followed her until the JD and Mai were the only ones left. They left without a sound, weapons in hand, draining the room of light. JD always had his deference for darkness, but he could see clearly, crystal, with what had transpired.

"Cash…?" He spoke aloud.

The speakers beaming in music buzzed, and his voice came through after a presumptive hack. "Howdy."

"You get all that?"

"Mm." He affirmed warmly; however, he had waited for a beat, something on his matrix of a mind. "My professional opinion as a former secret agent is to keep lips tight about this with Shepard. Ain't nothing happened here today, because nothing will come of it, am I right chiefs?"

"Strong recommendations." JD breathed out, all the stress in himself flowing out.

Cash gruffed at the rebuff. "You rascals were lucky enough to get paired with an AI based off of a spy. Take my recommendation with as much brevity as you please, just don't let it bite you in the ass."

"…Right."

"Shepard is calling back people to the rally. Get there. Mister Vakarian and Miss Zorah are already off." The two of them could swear they could hear Cash tip his hat as he signed off. It was very easy not to be bothered when he was removed from mortality and the literal situation. It was what was expected of an AI, however.

Mai had kept frozen, however, SMG in her hand, unable to let go until JD had reached up to her forearm, touching her, easing her down. He flashed a thumbs up at her, and a breath she was holding was let go in its dry sting.

A choice of a mission. Even JD knew that was a rarity for her, if not the first time she was offered.

Eventually, he did say something, holding onto her arm. "You were considering going with them."

She had gently moved his touch off of her. "You presume too much of me, JD."

Perhaps he had, but he felt his intuition was right here. "I know, though."

Her eyebrows furrowed down on him. "Why?"

"Because I wanted to, too." They were who they were: an ODST and Spartan. Despite it all, they cannot trade years lived in exchange for a newer life without prejudices, experiences, rights and wrongs, and pure beliefs. The silence between them was always full of what they could not speak or articulate without the fear of something more. This moment was no different. If they were to talk about It, it was for a different day, on a different mission, at a different hour. "Come on."

Finally, her weapon fell upon her sling, and she was brought out of the knife's edge of her danger high. She nodded, slowly following JD. Before they had left the room proper, however, they had passed the center of that space.

At the sleeve of his suit, he felt a tug, and it had been Mai.

"JD… Can- I…." Her words failed her, eyes down to the ground as he turned to see her. With her words failing her, she moved onto a language of hands, of gestures: of a hand halfway reached out to him as if wanting to grab him. His eyes slowly widened up at what she was asking, having been surrounded by dancers all night, while she looked on as a less-than-a-human piece of scenery.

In the time in between trying to learn of Saren, of any leads to anything that would be useful to him, he did spend the night so far at a rather recreational affair, sipping champagne. She deserved just a little bit of that whimsy.

Just a private moment, a moment they hardly get, buried deep beneath that cold planet's ground.

He could never say no to her.

She had spent the night watching people dance, so, when JD nodded, his palm up gingerly to offer, she had reached out and took it and hoped she had still been as fast a learner as Joker said she was as she learned the Normandy's control surfaces.

There was no music, just the slow, steady taps of their shoes against the stone ground, mineral and microcrystals reflecting what little light there was a twinkle, a sparkle of stars. Steps, going with the music in their mind as JD led. For Mai: it was a cacophony of silence, of thought missteps and measurings of herself wondering if she was doing it right. For JD: it was the muteness of his life. This was a silence he knew and had gotten used to.

His right hand had roamed up to her shoulder, holding onto it as his fingers had assumed a mind and intrigue of their own, running the tiniest of circles beneath their pads into the knot of hard muscle she had been covered with. For as small as pressure as it was, she had melted into it, her head slightly drooping toward it.

"Mm." Out of her throat, quietly reverberating. Her thin mouth had seemed to crag, unsure of what kind of line to make as she closed her eyes. His thumb wandered still, finding the bump caused by the rope necklace.

He wondered when was the last time she had been touched like this.

He wondered what he meant when he thought 'like this.'

It was her hand that had no self-control as it reached from the side of his arm to his face, her thumb tracing the shape of his jaw, his beard. She had seen an Asari at the party do such a thing with a Turian, and she wondered if that was just how people danced.

It wasn't, but JD said nothing to the contrary as she did, feeling hands that have killed thousands grace his cheek in absolute reverence.

The reason she hadn't taken Cerberus's offer was because of him.

Was the idea of leaving JD alone to his own devices so repulsive or anchoring to her? Or was it the fact she had been hard-wired to lash out against anyone who hadn't stayed within the bounds of command?

Too much to think about, all underlined by a fact that Miranda had reminded them all of: She was a Spartan.

He had stopped his sway, their dance, together after the longest few minutes, his hand raising to grab hers after a sufficient amount of touching. He opened his mouth to say they should go, that they were wasting time, and that this wasn't the time and place. For them, however, it would never be the time and place. She opened her eyes as he momentarily weaved his fingertips under hers to let them drop off, and she had felt every ridge of his fingers, and every scar and deviation from a battlefield survived.

Licking his lips, she deserved to hear this at least:

"That dress."

"?" She made another noise out of her throat, quiet.

"I think you would've looked good in it."

ODSTs weren't meant to hold defensive positions, so his feet had moved him to the door before he could see Mai's reaction. He peaked his head out the door, nothing but the stairway that they had been left with down. Her response, however, had been what she needed. Those words, she wasn't quite sure what they were supposed to mean; however, they were words from JD, and that had to mean something.

They were words that would tide her through the night and into the tragedies that were to come.

---

"Last two are here." Harris had nodded at JD and Mai as they returned, gesturing at them to get inside with his LMG, JD already with his suit jacket and tie off. He could wear the rest beneath his ODST armor. He's always considered himself a little squeamish, taking clothes off clothes in the presence of other people, and it's not the worst he's worn below his BDU. He feels a little extra weird taking off his clothes in a strip club.

There are hints even now about the veterancy of Shepard and Hitman together as they walk into the forward outpost. Forward outposts can be anywhere on the battlefield: from diners to schools to mansions and everything in between. The forward outpost that Shepard has made for herself is in the middle of a strip club, and he knows the type as the darkness bakes over them in black and red.

"Stuff is over there, spooks." Emerson thumbs over his shoulder to where the rest of the gear is. "This fell out of your locker, by the way."

The remembrance of the past today doesn't let up. Not when Emerson shoves the folded flag of JD's first ODST unit into his arms. It's a unit that doesn't exist anymore just because it was wiped out, the survivors folded into other ODST groups. However, for that, JD has carried the flag ever since, a just-in-case item for quick memorials and recognition for other Helljumpers. Even he has his morale to keep up.

"ODST?" Emerson asks; the dark man has his eyebrow raised.

All JD can do is nod as he folds it over his arm and pushes with Mai to their lockers, donning their gear as they always have. The same old procedure is played out, right down to Mai getting naked of her clothes and putting on her tech suit.

The novelty of seeing the woman strip in the club is a silent observance. One that even Kaiden comments on into Shepard's ear as she is washing her hands with a wipe. "She ain't really one to pick up on cues, is she?"

A Cerberus raised orphan not getting social cues? "It's… understandable." Shepard speaks for her silently. She doesn't often get to look at Mai suit up, often squaring things away on the command deck before heading down for an away mission. It's because of that that she sees JD deposit a bottle near his belongs.

Mai was getting faster, at least suiting up, her tech suit compressing with a hiss as JD had been immediately there with her leg armor, fastening them up in well-practiced form. Every time that they had done this, it looked like they were building a machine. When her helmet returns onto her, the reds get deeper with Cash, and the dark gets blacker.

"Saddled up." Cash reports to her from inside her head.

"All three Asari are knocked out." Kaiden moves on to report, unable to look Shepard in the eye as Doc is quiet, rearranging his medical supplies out of the hallway where the VIP rooms are. "Should be out for twenty-four."

"Good. We'll leave them. Let security know what's going down and not to touch." Shepard says promptly, adjusting her armor. Even in the dark, the red stripes that go up and down her gear denote her as special forces burn brightly, almost to a painful degree.

"Trust the local police?"

"Not really. But it's temporary." With one finger up, like signaling a trained animal, all those present perk up to Shepard's presence and go to her as she spins her finger into a small lassoing motion. "I called in a favor from another Spectre. She's inbound now and will take care of them."

"Shoulda told that to Wrex." He's behind the bar, washing his hands over, the sound of teeth dropping into the sink, pittering and pattering.

She sighs deeply, and for the first time, she feels the cold of Noveria truly. "Kaiden, you're a fine man on reminding me of our improprieties as soldiers."

He sniffs. "I do my best, Commander."

One by one, they all return around her. Red-eyed Liara has steeled herself, patting away tears as the reality is upon her: that they are moving on her mother tonight. Perhaps it is cruelty that she is being brought with Shepard to confront her. Maybe it is only fitting. There's a little amusement that Shepard gets, going to the central stripper pole and its elevated platform to talk, holding onto the pole for balance before realizing what it looks like. "Yeah, yeah, eat it up."

Ashley whistles out a mocking appreciation as one Hitman makes the witty comment of saying he's looking for his wallet.

Mai doesn't quite get it, tapping JD's elbow as they arrive at the outer circle of the gathering.

"We'll tell you when you're older, Little Lady." Cash answers for him, and it's perhaps one of the first times that JD is glad that Cash is around in her head.

Tali and Garrus are already out of their formal clothes, having gone back before JD and Mai. The two of them appear by their side, and only now the stark difference of being more familiar with Mai in her armor than she is plain-clothed is felt to the two aliens.

Doing one last overview to verify that everyone is there, Shepard begins as she usually does: her voice throwing out her confidence upon all those present. "First phase of this op is complete. We grabbed the HVTs and we've gotten some pretty important info from them that we'll need to decompress when we're done here tonight."

"Beating the shit outta' some goosed up Asari is usually how we ended ops with Commander Ryder ma'am." Hitman's Bannon had to comment on all of her barely restrained bloodlusts. "Shame we had the best upfront."

"At ease, Sergeant," She shot a glance of authority out there again. What they were doing was serious. "Our prerogative is Peak 15 and anything related to Binary Helix. We've got entry codes, clearance, cause, and about a hundred other different reasons to go knock on their door and offices here in Hanshan."

"Full force?" A stray voice from Hitman. Shepard shook her head.

"Alpha and Bravo team will remain in Hanshan. Alpha will keep this club, as well as the ingress and extraction clear while Bravo goes kick in doors of Binary Helix offices present. Rest of us are gun up into Peak 15. Chief Gul, Chief Durante, you'll be our heavy hitters, oorah? When the situation is done we'll circle back and rendezvous here, and then head back to the Normandy."

When they were beneath their helmets, that's when they were the most silent as each only returned a sturdy nod, weapons at the ready.

"Lieutenant Alenko? You have Alpha. Sergeant Emerson, you're Bravo."

"Aye ma'am."

"Seize any funds and drop it to the routing number that I'll have Cash forward to you. Miss Parasini was real helpful in helping me set up an account here." It only took getting the Salarian Anoleis booked on corruption charges. "I'll ring up your section leads if necessary. Let's go people."

"Yes ma'am!" Everyone had rung out, and it was on, dispersing for final gear up and assignments as the crowd broke around toward Kaiden and Emerson.

With Hitman being Alpha and Bravo, it naturally meant that, as usual, all the "Specialists" were left for Shepard. All the aliens with Mai and JD rolled in. It was a familiar match at this point. Maybe it was the point, after all, to be familiar, and Shepard had done her job well as a matchmaker.

"Where'd you and Chief Gul go anyway?" Garrus whispered into JD's ear, handing him his rifle as JD motioned over to a strap on his assault pack to be tightened. Garrus had obliged with a tug.

"Got drinks."

"Didn't even invite me..."

"Next time, Garrus."

The thought of Mai even casually drinking didn't quite sit right with Garrus, but who she had been with, Mai had been a whole different person compared to how she was with anyone else. So if JD said she drank, she drank.

"Garrus," Shepard had stepped off the dancing stage as Alpha and Bravo teams split off to organize on their own, leaving the rest for her. The Turian perked his head up. "You mentioned when you came back that JD had mentioned something about chemical shipments being sent up to Peak 15?"

"Yes Shepard." Garrus nodded with JD's agreement. "Ain't much more than that."

"My suit and Mai's work as HAZMAT as well if it comes down to it." He was forever thankful that of all the ODST BDUs he carried with into this galaxy, it had been the armored version meant for fighting where even ODSTs could get bogged down in. When he was in it, he was locked off from the outside world, much like Mai.

Shepard had a different consideration, though. "I don't think it's something like that, JD. Crazy as it is, I think chemical weapons are small game for Saren, all things considered." A second of consideration was all they needed collectively to figure that checked out. "JD, Mai, you're gonna be on point with me. We good?"

They both nodded as they did, and for the first time, both of them depolarized their visors to her, their faces revealed beneath the otherwise matter surfaces. Shepard's eyes fall upon JD's.

"Where'd you get the sake?" She gestured to the bottle, finally identifying what it was.

He had frozen up for a moment. "Complementary bottle."

It was true enough to her. "Don't mind if I take a sip at some point? Didn't spent too much time in Japan during my travels."

He nodded, and that was that.

Fully open carrying in Port Hanshan had been a powerful prospect, but privileges had always been afforded to them now.

If one didn't look past all of the armor, guns, and kit of military operation, one might've thought that Shepard had her very own multi-species special ops squad with how they formed around her. One day, she mused, she might've had a Salarian, or a Drell, or maybe even a Volus as a squadmate. Perhaps, just perhaps, even a Covenant. But that thought had still brought fire into her lungs, and she was glad that today was not the day she had to see that opportunity.

This far in, however, except for one, they all looked ready. Even Tali, her mother's utility poncho over her shoulders like an armor of its own.

The armor around Liara was one of Shepard's own, adjusted for the Asari's measurements. Far from anyone to say whether or not she would look the part of a soldier, but, the aura of her, the way she existed in it, even Liara knew best: This was simply not what she had meant to be. This isn't what she wanted to do.

Shepard didn't need her words to confide in her trust: a hand on her shoulder drawing Liara's eyes up and seeing the faith of one of those rare people in life who knew they were living in history and making it.

The sound of weapons powering up and deploying had echoed through the room, Kaiden, and Emerson already on the way out. "We'll keep you posted." Kaiden had parted with that, all but a choice few Marines holding down the fort here.

"We should go." Shepard had gestured to the rest. "We'll link up with Alpha all the way to where the VIPs entered and then head out to 15."

---

The way over to the hangar bays where ground transport had been located had been a winding concrete pathway through pathway, interlinking with residential and commercial sections of Hanshan. It was claustrophobic if only for the over dozen party which Shepard had whipped up, clad in combat gear, walking through Hanshan as if they were taking over.

"Bravo to Hitman 1-Actual." Emerson had been in her ear as she kept flashing Spectre credentials and Anoleis's clearances to security as they passed on. She did not lead; instead, Kaiden took the foot convoy out and deflecting most curious.

"Go ahead Bravo." She answered.

"Tons of offices are destroying hardware."

"You're letting that happen?" She raised her eyebrow as if Emerson could see her. Surely office lackeys couldn't stop a bunch of Marine Raiders.

"Well. I mean, generally, ma'am. We're starting to get to the Binary Helix offices but every other company in this section of the port think that we're coming after them." The sound of monitors being smashed and datapads being destroyed in the background of Emerson's radio had been cathartic. Everyone on this planet had been guilty of something and, more than that, thought themselves worthy of Shepard's time.

She smirked behind her helmet. "Right. Proceed as fragged."

"Heh. Bravo out."

Entourage was a word, if not a heavily armed example they made as they entered the access halls of the ground hangers. Hanshan security had already been on site.

"We figured you'd swing by." One of them, a Human male, had breathed out tiredly as he stepped asides with his Turian compatriot.

"Keeping the place warm?" Shepard had pushed herself to the front, flashing her credentials.

"Weird stuff happening today." The Turian answered. "We'd like to at least be on top of the mess as it happens."

"My apologies gentlemen." Shepard had nodded as the revolving door rolled open, and a singular hanger with a Mako had been parked, ready. Dressed in Binary Helix colors, it had been the ride over for the Asari.

Benezia had been there in the weeks prior, traveling back and forth between Hanshan and Peak 15 with cargo, such crates still there.

Questions asked, and answers taken are still fresh on Shepard's mind, and Benezia would help clarify them. How normal the three Asari had been, at least, average in terms of what they were and how they were treated. This interrogation hadn't been for military or tactical intel about terrorists or pirates, however. It had been on info that was larger than life: on the Reapers and Saren. A weird dissonance sat in Shepard's mind as her entourage walked in.

Kaiden had retaken point as with a hand signal, his section of Hitman had been guns up, scanning down the hanger before all at once moving forward to clear it.

"I'll drive." And with that, the hopes and dreams of a night without vehicular-related back pain had been quashed as Shepard announced as such. Her team had groaned in each their own way, wary of a Mako not tuned by Garrus's calibrations to Shepard's driving. "JD, you're on the gun."

Doc from Hitman had been one of those present with Kaiden's detachment, swinging his pistol over some of the crates halfway down the hanger toward the metal doors that separated civilization from the elements of the planet. An astute, curious man, if only by his trade as a combat medic, he had seen details that others did not. The Marines had kept rolling forward, guns up, clearing like any other sector that needed to be cleared. His eye had caught on the crates, however. It was dusty everywhere else in that hanger, but none of the ambient particulates had seemed to have disturbed the white containers, about the size of half a car.

"Clear."

"Clear."

"All good."

Affirmatives had rung out, the room visually cleared for hostiles.

Curiosity killed cats, as the saying went, but then again, most cats were not heavily armed and armored.

The combat medic caught the eye of another Hitman, gesturing to look at the nearest crate to them as they approached.

One by one, Shepard had ferried her people into the Mako. Privately owned Makos weren't the norm, but anyone who did business on Noveria and needed the transportation would've been wise to have one.

Whenever the Mako was brought out on away mission, Shepard had usually led and driven it over. Most of them were more for survey missions, the Mako's speed in use more than its armor and gun, but even then, the gunner slot needed to be filled, and JD had been a fine enough gunner that he had always been first up to man it. Maybe in his heart, he'd always prefer the Warthog, but the Makos were acceptable replacements, if not technically better.

"Master arm on." He reported Shepard clambering into the driver's seat below him in the cockpit of the vehicle. One by one, her fireteam had settled in, the weight of Mai sliding usually the last thing heard before the hatch had been closed off.

Some left behind makeup wipes had been on the seats.

Doc had moved forward, gesturing for his comrade's breaching crowbar; it had been tossed over, but guns were down, and no crowbar was needed for the cover of the crate to come off.

This far in, staring down a Geth hadn't been unusual. The context had been different.

"Contact!" It was the hard-wired scream of enemy encounter that left Doc's mouth instead of a scream as a Geth Destroyer rose out of its compact box to stand taller than him and look down. He had only been at the apex of his swing with the crowbar as the Geth reached out and punted him to the closest wall. Out of similar boxes, blown open, Geth, a half-dozen at least and then more popping up like spiders to the roof, all in a flash of a second.

"Mai!" Shepard had yelled as she settled inside the Mako's driver seat. The Spartan had already been back out the hatch on top of the Mako with her rifle as Hitman scrambled to get into fighting positions. Kaiden had dragged back to nearly the entry doors with a pull from his biotics, his pistol out and drawing the attention of the Destroyer that did it.

The two Hanshan guards had busted in as well, wondering what was happening and getting their answer very apparently as a rip of Geth gunfire tore above their heads.

"This is Alpha, we have Geth contact!" One of the Hitmen present yelled into their comms, running back over to Kaiden as their kinetic barriers flared and broke, a single pulse shot slicing through their arm for the first time in a long time; Shepard's invincible team was touched. The Hitman had stumbled to the ground, Shepard looking through the onboard camera and seeing the Destroyer that had kicked everything off in front of her.

She gunned it, white-hot rage in her eye as those in the Mako were jerking forward. On top of the Mako shooting down, Mai had clamped down with the magnetic locks on her boots as the Mako made contact with the wall of the garage, the Destroyer between them gushing its hydraulics.

As Hitmen ran to cover, the injured were pulled out of harm's way as cacophony broke out.

The Mako's gun swiveled back toward the fight, and Mai knew she had to get out of the way. How so wasn't her choice as a Geth Stalker leaped at her, tackling her off the Mako.

"Shepard!" Tali had been up and ready in the Mako's confines, shotgun primed.

"Stay in!" She yelled back, gesturing to JD and the mechanical hum of the turret above. "Not yet!"

"Get clear!" The instinct that JD had to fire a high explosive cannon round indoors was inspired, to say the least, as he aimed at the forming Geth taking cover as opposed to the rest of Hitman. Mai's suit could take the overpressure as she grappled with the spider-like Geth at her throat, the woman readily able to take out her knife and start stabbing at its artificial muscle.

When the shot rang out, it had been like a bell, metal bouncing explosive sound off as part of the hanger was rocked, blown-in black soot, pieces of metal men sent asunder in shrapnel that Mai was more than willing to contribute to, the body of her stalker sent and thrown leaking into the same area.

In the mess of broken boxes and makeshift cover, JD had sent a line of coaxial machinegun fire across the messy scene once more, just as a precaution as Mai and Hitman reconsolidated and pushed forward.

Just as soon as they had gone into the Mako, Shepard's fireteam had gone out, guns up and pointing down from their perch on top of the Mako.

"This must've been what Benezia had been signing off on." Tali had said the most likely reason for this Geth encounter was as JD had shuffled out from nearly between her legs out of the entry hatch. Garrus had been on his ass following him back toward the entrance and the wounded as the rest followed in Mai's wake, this time seriously clearing the hangar. Boxes broken open and preemptively fired into much to the horror of the Hanshan guards. They could say nothing, however, given what had just happened.

"What do you feel?" JD had slid behind cover as the two wounded had been hunkered down. "Doc?" Hitman's combat medic had been self-treating, a syringe already in his side as he grit his teeth.

"I'm fine, check on Ortiz."

Ortiz had been one of Hitman's bread and butter riflemen, average build for a solid man; he had been bleeding out his left arm, the armor over said arm already broken down exposing the reddened uniform beneath it. A tourniquet had already been just above the wound.

JD hadn't exactly gotten the practice of being a corpsman like he had wanted. Still, gunshot wounds were not unfamiliar territory to him, and among the first taught for combat medics that he wanted to be someday in another life as an ODST. The combination of packing bandages and medigel had already been out as he observed the wound.

Clear cut, simple, in and out, half already cauterized due to the nature of Geth ammunition. A flesh wound, really; no bone broken.

The bodies of Geth had done their usual post-battle schtick: their self-destruction into granular pieces of mecahnica could not be stopped, and each pop echoed in that hangar as this time, it indeed was-

"Clear." Mai had sent out, her boot having already tossed over the last untouched crate only to reveal lab equipment in it, broken by her force.

Short, violent fights were better than any coffee, and that liveliness in Shepard's eye as she approached the two Hanshan guards had made them feel that same jolt as well. "Benezia has some strange bedfellows, don't you agree?"

The Turian nodded. "We'll start backtracking any packages of hers still in Hanshan."

With a sleight of a salute, she had sent the Hanshan guards off, transferring her attention to Kaiden, glancing over at JD applying aid. "We'll hold down here, and assist Bravo and Hanshan security as it comes up."

A wider smile had gotten rid of the face she wore in battle, patting Kaiden's shoulder. "Remind me to provisionally make you a captain at some point, Alenko."

"Shepard." Wrex had beckoned her from on top of the Mako, obviously waiting. This was just an impromptu slideshow.

"Yep. JD, finish up let's go."

"Thanks, spook." Ortiz had groaned through a haze of pain as JD had finished the last smearing of medical, nodding as he took off back to the Mako and back in with the rest.

---

It was Mai's insistence that she ride the Mako from the top. She'd be more combat effective up there, and she, even against the odds of Shepard's driving, could more than likely hold on off the side.

"Some real action hero shit." Shepard commented as she had been going about half as fast as she usually gunned a Mako. This hadn't been the Normandy's Mako, without the merciful adjustments, not that she would notice as the snow muted all. Through his gunnery cam, JD could agree as Mai stood on top of the Mako as they made their way down that winding path of Noveria proper.

Geth had lined themselves up in firing positions along the side of the mountain path, and every once and a while, they'd make themselves known, only to be shot back with pinpoint precision courtesy of Mai's DMR or from the more freely fired Mako cannon JD had been responsible for. The beat of machinegun fire or cannon rounds had been the tick of a clock to those else being transported, guns between their legs and waiting for the transport.

"Active engagement." Garrus let slip from his tongue as a few dinks of gunfire impacted the side. No one had been bothered. They knew the Mako could take worse. "You ever fight in a blizzard, Wrex?"

"Fighting Turians, yeah, I have."

It's a testament to the mission they're on that Wrex saying such a thing isn't a threat anymore as much as it is just a statement on that, yes, he is old/battle-hardened/has probably killed entire solar systems. It's now a pretty charming thing for him to say as even he knows it, rolling his eyes as Garrus nods to himself as if there was going to be another answer from him.

"Don't think I've shot a Turian yet… Would've liked to, back on the Citadel, but not yet." Tali tapped her chin through her visor, thinking about the idea of just single-handedly killing all those that ambushed her on the Citadel, not more than a few weeks ago. The Tali of the present, however, could've probably done that she imagined.

"It's not really anything special." Garrus tried to dissuade as he looked around at the company of the Mako and found no one else to act as a completely sane man with him.

Again, another burst of gunfire ran along the armored side, but it was soon met by JD pulling the turret around and pulling the trigger to a volley of cannon fire as what hadn't been killed was Mai's issue.

Almost silently, he could hear JD call out targets for both Shepard and Mai, falling back into the language of military encounter as they sat removed from it in that armored shell. For Liara, though, as he saw, blankly staring between her legs at her SMG as given to her, it was the calm before the storm.

Another cannon shot from JD was followed by Mai outside, yelling out a positive effect on target.

"You good, Liara?"

Everyone inside had turned to her, and even then, it took a choice few moments for her to realize she was being spoken to.

"I don't know." she breaths in, and her eyes are honest as they look at Garrus. Blue on blue, really: his markings against the glow she gives off of her skin.

Above, the sticky sounds of a Geth Stalker attach themselves on top of the Mako; however, before those inside can comprehend what it is, a sizable dent has been put into the roof, courtesy of Mai, smashing it into the very metal.

The odd feeling of serenity and peace that comes knowing that Mai is with them is a feeling that even Wrex has not felt in centuries: the trust in someone's combat ability is so absolute that nothing could touch them.

JD was a lucky man, Garrus often thought to himself.

"I killed my father." Wrex says, and it bounces back and forth in the metal chamber. The words sit in the air as all eyes are on him, and the words are so stark it brings Liara to attention. "Dove a dagger through his heart, and I watched him die."

"Why?" Liara asked for an answer.

"He betrayed me." Was all Wrex would give. His father betrayed him. Betrayed his people. Betrayed any hope that maybe the Krogan were worth saving. Still, Wrex goes on. "I've travelled a lot. Done many jobs from fathers who want their sons dead and vice versa. Whatever you're feeling, it's something that's written into history, constant. And I know how you like your history."

She would not be the first to be betrayed by their mother.

She wouldn't be the last.

But it mattered because this was her, and she was Benezia.

"There must be a reason." That is all Liara can say in return.

"Will it be good enough for you?" Wrex asks back, and at that moment, they are reminded that in that warrior body of his sat a man who had lived more lifetimes than any of them.

---

When Mai drops down from her perch on top of the Mako in the shadow of Peak 15 and its massive structures, jutting out from the mountain, she is more or less a walking ice hazard. Just as it had in her last time here on that planet in another reality, the wolf gray of her armor is caked by ice and snow. Any bare flesh that would touch her would get stuck immediately.

Geth walkers and anti-armor troops had been standing guard along the path to Peak 15 as if it had been expected, and there had been a higher avalanche risk now that JD and she had done a number into the path by returned fire and explosive rounds.

"You said the Geth were spotted in this system?" Garrus had been half sarcastic and half indignant about Alliance intelligence.

"Geth are everywhere nowadays." Was the sarcasm and answer back from Shepard. The Mako had taken its hits, rounds embedded and carbon scoring marring it, but still workable.

These buildings built into the mountains of snow and ice were hardly ever built with outright aesthetics in mind. Despite all the money of these corporations, utilitarianism necessitated where they were always won out in the end. Nature itself always won out in the end. Helmets and armor on, they all stepped out of the Mako, JD the last to do so as he was guns up, greeted with a Mai more akin to a frost giant than the Covenant Demon she was otherwise.

"Stack." Shepard ordered, two fingers pointed at Mai and JD toward the side hanger door. The hanger itself had been trashed, the entrance blocked by snow and debris. The two SOF personnel appeased, going on either side of the door.

Fist up, JD had offered.

One, two, three.

Rock and rock.

No time to go again; only an asynchronous breach followed.

"Tali, pop the door." Behind the cover of the Mako, Tali had popped up from Shepard's command.

The door had slid open in its glassy electronic hum, and Mai had been guns up first through it.

The magic of a military breach was without equal from two who had done it, sometimes literally, in their sleep. Slow was smooth, smooth was fast, and their slow was faster than anyone else's there as they were greeted with the inverse of the hanger they had left in Hanshan. A flickering light had been the difference, and the lack of Geth, but inwardly, everyone in their gut knew that was going to be rectified.

Shepard filtered in with the rest behind her, guns up, spread out. Mai and JD had stood forward in that hanger: red emergency lights flashing, an indistinct voice speaking out about said emergency.

"You think those girls were the last to leave?" Wrex had posed the question in the air, the shutter door closing behind them. "Benefits for their sins?"

"Weirder things have happened." Shepard advised her assault rifle up, letting the silence fill in amid the background noise.

Was there any other alternative after a pass full of Geth other than more Geth?

The sound of their metallic bodies emerging from the catwalks above, from behind boxes and crates. It was another dance that they showed up to and one that they were far more intimately aware of as another firefight was on.

Mai usually soaked up the fire, intentionally standing in place and drawing it toward her as the rest moved off and made for their cover. Movement without fire was suicide, and fire without movement was useless, and that was a lesson made across Shepard's fireteam as a wave of gunfire erupted from them as they made their way into a safer position.

JD lingered, as was his nature, soaking up several rounds into his barrier before diving behind another crate, SMG smoking, pistol out and ready.

Contact had become a regular occurrence, a firefight as usual as lunch and dinner. For JD and Mai, this had been their normal for far too long.

Anyone who could get a gun up did, sending rounds downrange at emerging Geth, a game of whack a mole and chicken, kinetic barriers flaring and biotics going. Liara had done well, putting up a barrier half-cover for a better firing position for Garrus as he held down his assault rifle, Wrex and Tali filling in the difference with shotgun slugs. It was JD and Mai that had been a bit more precise in their potshots as return fire came and peppered the wall behind them.

"Destroyer!" One of them called out.

They were a common Geth to see nowadays wherever the Normandy went: the synths that were larger than even Wrex rushing toward them with Olympic class speed, all while keeping fire down on them. It was Mai that was the answer to them as she had darted out in front, finding one of the crates left in that bay and clambering onto it swiftly. Her agility, her mobility, had been a rarity to see at its full potential, and what she did know was only a hint of it: Stepping off the crate, she had jumped up fully airborne toward the Destroyer. Her body weight did the rest, right fist up left hand still holding her rifle as metal gauntlets descended upon the war machine, shattering its head as she made contact and dragged it to the floor.

JD had pushed up, suppressing fire naturally made as she recovered.

"Same ole' dance." Shepard muttered to herself, patting Garrus's shoulder to stack on her as they moved up the left side. Wrex had done the same, mirroring the movement as Tali was brought along with him. It left Liara, SMG up and out, holding down the same sector JD and Mai were covering.

It was a tactical move meant for flanking and assaulting; however, Mai was more brunt than that, again in her armor. Pushing all the way forward to the end of the hanger, her DMR had been blazing hot, eternal in its rhythm as Geth focused fire on her, kinetic barriers and shields flickering, giving her the distance needed to sprint up to the closest Geth, her arm punted outputting an elbow sized hole in its chest as she throttled through into the next. A grenade had been in her hand, already tossed behind her to those Geth she had been ignoring as again she had put her arm through the synthetic, ripping it out with hydraulic fluid, hand coating the foregrip of her DMR as a Geth she had peppered on the way in was drilled several new holes in its head.

The grenade popped off, Liara flinching in the back as JD looked back at her, hand beckoning her to move up with him. She followed, her body listening while her mind was in a daze.

Mai snapped around, DMR burning. A familiar burn, less sharp than the plasma heat she knew from scavenged Covenant weapons, but it was a burn that kept her coherent, in the moment, as she dropped it on her sling and drew her sidearm. All the Geth had fallen in bits and scorched pieces, and she had ended up aiming at Tali on the other end.

Frozen in time, deer in the headlights, her head right above the front sight post.

A twinge of a hint of animosity remained, just because she was still alien.

Mai moved off, aimed at the door leading to the hanger bay.

Cash had chimed in at that moment on the topic of friend or foe. "Alrighty let me just fix this before I forget."

All around her, the IFFs of Shepard and the team were finally turned green. JD noticed the same as Mai, glancing at his motion detector, seeing tags that had been only above Mai for the time he had been on the Normandy multiply and then change above every squadmate finally.

SHEP

GVAK

TALI

WREX

LIA

Mai had still been SIX up until that moment. It had changed instead to MAI.

"Might as well. Right?"

JD hadn't said anything as he had caught up to Mai, touching her elbow as everyone regrouped at the end. The heat off of Mai's gun had been palpable in the air as she stared straight through her pistol at the door still.

"Garrus, Wrex. You're up." Shepard had ordered, and the two followed up to the door, stacking up. Shepard went to join them, but not before pausing by Mai. "You know, I would say I wish you were at Torfan, but I think it's in bad taste, all things considered."

She did what she needed to do. The same way that those that sent the Spartan-IIIs off to die in their missions had done what they needed to do. Mai knew her history, both in their home universe and this one, and Torfan was perhaps the same type of mission she would've been sent on if she hadn't been deemed unique.

"You did what you had to do." Was the Spartan's answer as Garrus looked back to Shepard for the go-ahead. She nodded, and they were through, guns up, the boom of Wrex's shotgun echoing against metal.

"Ladies." Liara and Tali were appropriately called up by Shepard, and they had fallen behind her as a hand signal sent Mai and JD on their way up with Garrus and Wrex, joining the fight as resistance forced its way down the halls.

Standard battle chatter, suppressing fire and moving up followed by the distinctive whack of Mai either slamming a Geth into the metal or breaking the shields of five at once. A red carpet treatment, more often than not.

Pushing their way into the entrances of Peak 15, glassy windows showing off inner ecosystems, fighting had been seen. Geth, Krogan, and then… Something. One of the entry hallways had been greeted with turrets. Non-active ones that still, for their troubles, one had been blown up by Tali as the fireteam peaked the door. They entered when no return fire came through, going right up to the turrets in the glassy hallway aimed at them and in the opposite direction. With a swift hand signal, Shepard pushed her fireteam through, but JD had paused in the middle of them.

He couldn't help but run his gloved hands over a standing turret head. They were long offline but still standing at attention. Tali had been a little more directed at her tinkering with the turret, flaring her omni, and seeing what she needed. "You thinking the same?"

He wasn't psychic, but he could guess. "Keep people in, and out."

He had once been dropped on a planet that hadn't been UNSC once. A leftover from the Insurrection, neither UNSC nor Innie. The director of the colony, now dictator, had done its conscription down to the bottom of the barrel. Old men and young children holding the line against the Covenant had been preferred over calling out to the UNSC. When the UNSC came, the planet had become a tactically advantageous position to hold on the galactic front. When he had dropped onto the planet, he had seen turrets meant for keeping deserters in line rather than the enemy out.

And despite this, the planet fell.

JD had jerked his head, getting Tali to fall back in line with Shepard and the rest.

---

The Rachni had been a part of galactic history: a galactic level threat that made the Citadel raise an army of beasts of its own to fight. Every deal of the devil came with its clauses; however, it was a deal that needed to be taken to save the galaxy from a swarm of arachnids threatening the extinction of all civilizations save for its own.

Saren had been digging up the past in all of its aspects, it seemed.

First came Tali's scream, and then the hail of gunfire and endoskeletons breaking with the gelatinous blood splattered on cold steel ground. If it bled, they could kill it, and they did as they broke in, further and further into Peak 15.

"Pretty Covenant of him," Cash rattles off the second the first swarm dies down in its scratchy screams with Shepard and her fireteam up against the wall, Mai and Wrex withstanding, she knee-deep in the bodies of bugs and Wrex inheriting some primal right within him as flaky skin of Rachni fall from his grip. "To keep recruiting species for his end war."

If there is any opposition to him hiding in plain sight, none could be said to protest between the only two that could hear him.

"I'll run some history checks. See if there's anything we should be worried about here." He checks in and out at a whim, omnipresent, a figure over all of their shoulders.

The body of the Rachni is like a pile of fallen branches, an insectoid carcass that is more alien than most. Comparisons to the Covenant Drones are inevitable; however, there's more threat to these. They seem more feral, wild, going off instincts instead of intelligence: even Drones, even Grunts, attack like beings with lives and calculations.

After the combat drains out of them, the facility continually warning them that something has gone very wrong, a breath is breathed out, and they all walk forward to the killing field of that room they found themselves in, the white sheen of snow blasted rocks surrounding them where the mountain has broken into the facility itself.

It's just like any other facility there on Noveria, constantly fighting against the cold.

JD pokes the "head" of it with his SMG, and it topples over, its undersides not a kind image to look at with its fibers and oozing sludge that it calls blood dripping out.

Tali almost vomits, looking away as Liara is more intrigued. "Every once and a while out on digs, I'd find remnants of the Rachni Wars." She touches upon it with a gloved hand. "How close we were, apparently, to becoming extinct because of them."

"You're welcome." Wrex growls out, shotgun at the ready for more.

Shepard's AR is burning hot, fighting against the ambient cold. "Geth and then Rachni. Saren is certainly inspired." She grits through her teeth, and, for once, she is half amused. "What did I do in a past life to get caught up in this type of shit."

No one there is surprised outside of having to work out in their mind how to fight more of them. This was just another step on the way to Saren.

Moonlight filters in above, and it creates moonlit corpses.

Mai's boots have organic something in their grooves, and they slip out eventually as everyone recomposes.

A thousand different thoughts are going through Shepard's head, but only one through Mai's: Where's the target?

It's a question she continues to ask herself as they move on and off from there, fighting bugs, fighting Geth, fighting Krogan in the deteriorating remains of a company that did gene modding and went against the natural world. There's always a commander, an HVT, someone that they could kill so that it all comes apart. Her old ways are so prevalent when the bugs that they pump lead into sound so much like Drones when shot.

Turn on the memory core, reroute power, repair a tram. The tasks and the objectives go on as her old habits return in her head. Single-minded focus, which grates against having a team with her, only alleviated as the every-once and a while a Geth patrol is seen within those halls, and they need to be killed.

She is annoyed, frankly speaking, but she keeps quiet because orders are orders. Here is proof that someone like her was needed in this galaxy: the Rachni, and she finds some comfort in it.

They find a VI, Mira, who says, through Shepard's expert inquiries, the exacting information of what they need to do to find Benezia. At the very least, they know Benezia is alive in all of this, although like any good VI, their information is limited. It's Cash's first time fully confronting one of his counterparts.

"Well, I reckon the more things change, the more they stay the same." As Shepard talks to Mira about the purpose of Binary Helix and its trade, the two chiefs look at each other, signaling for Cash to go on. "It's like looking in one of them refractive mirrors, distorting an image. This may look like an intelligence, a personality, but it's… broken."

For the rest of the team's credit, they do well to break off and cover each sector of a room, all areas of ingress and egress. Even Tali takes a knee, aiming back at the door they came through in case of any followers.

Liara, however, stays glued to Shepard's side, like a child in her shadow.

---

Little survivor hold-outs are among the most tragic visages and the most resolute: men and women steeling themselves against the dark of their situation. Shepard is more than willing to impart the compliments on the Security Captain as a repaired tram takes them far, far away from Peak 15 to another facility, ran by Binary Helix, away from even the eyes of Port Hanshan. The tram over is coated with ice and snow, but it allows the team to compose and think about the certainty going forward.

Someone important was going down today. Someone related.

Miranda's words, however, echo in Mai's head as they continue. Shepard didn't need them there. She could've done this mission herself. Her talents are wasted.

Still, they follow her because following Shepard is one of the easiest things to do.

Even in a laboratory meant for building bioweapons and atrocities of nature, Mai still imposes her form.

The story as they've gathered from survivors, all nestled near Binary Helix's labs, far away from any help or relief: A "weapon" got loose. More specifically, Rachni, recovered from a derelict ship adrift in space for centuries, had broken their chains and lashed out against those that raised them. A word soup of names: Saren, Matriarch Benezia, researchers, and doctors who are traumatized with having their creation turned against them or those who, even in the middle of dire straits, wish to keep their jobs.

The Security Captain, Captain Ventralis, greeted them as they came from the tram, and immediately, all eyes were on Mai. She looks down on all of them, and she sees, faintly, a hint of something else. More orders beyond keeping people alive? She doesn't know how her intuition exactly picks it up. Maybe it's the way the other guards try to inch their way around her, looking at her to find a trick to take her down. Perhaps it's the way they shrink back, realizing that, maybe, if a fight came, the Rachni and Geth would be the last thing they needed to worry about. She looks down on Ventralis and looks past that mask of being a good soldier, and Shepard obscures the impression of darkness she puts out in front of her.

It sends Ventralis spinning, his collar feeling too tight, as Shepard's fireteam moves past him and begins to administer what help they can to the survivors.

"She's close." Liara says, glancing at an Asari doctor that survived, supposed "meditating." She says to no one, but Wrex is near enough to listen as he looks at Tali trying to repair a turret that has had some acid damage while Garrus takes a look at some weapons that have overheated.

Shepard is shaking people down as Mai remains upfront with Ventralis, occasionally burning out the vents to the entrance of the labs, keeping them safe.

Wrex sniffs at the air as if that would help, but he knows what Liara means. It's just the slightest bit of weight in the air that he feels on his biotic lobes, it both clearing his mind and intensifying his senses. A strong biotic is near, and who else could it be? He nods at her, his body finding itself looking off in the distance of the Hot Labs.

JD's medical skill comes in handy still as he attends to the guards that have taken on Rachni and Geth for, apparently, the last week. It's surprising, seeing as Benezia's girls just arrived at a dance well dressed no more than a few hours ago; however, the assumption now is that they were just keeping up appearances. He doesn't know what they told Shepard in their interrogation, but Shepard has another weight on her tonight that goes beyond her responsibilities as a Spectre. He sees it in the way she incredulously asks as a Hanar merchant who had survived why he was practicing his trade even in the middle of a survival situation.

"Heh." It's a half-laugh, half-groan as JD uses a small omni scalpel he had just created from his tool to cut away at necrotic flesh. His helmet is off as if it would help the precision of what he's doing on the forearm of a guard who tried to block an acid spit from the arachnid enemies. "Here I was thinking that going away from the Alliance was a good thing."

JD has no comment, the man's arm numb from an injection of anti-pain agent and the doubtless pumps of stims that all the guards are running on. The flesh is gone, and it has been for longer than it should. It's stewy, covering a great deal of his forearm, down to the bone, the infected site spreading like a green cloud over the man's pale skin. At least wounds from Covenant weapons are always cauterized. This type of natural damage was an ugly experience that JD had to cut away at, a plastic bag below him marked for HAZMAT holding pieces of Human flesh.

"You alright, Halloway?" It's a Turian flange behind him, over his shoulder, and he freezes up a bit, even as he's cutting through flesh. Another security guard comrade, asking how his friend is doing. It doesn't help that they showed up behind him like that, JD kneeling before the man on a cot.

"I'm about to lose one of my two favorite arms. That's what." Halloway groans, his free arm covering his face. He hasn't looked down at the whole treatment JD is doing, and that's for the best.

It's when the Turian reaches down and grabs JD's shoulder that he finally freezes up, the blade frozen in Halloway's flesh. Thanks to the numbing agent, Halloway doesn't react, but slowly, a long line of red drips along the scalpel, dripping onto the bag below. "You're doing good work, doc."

The Turians says to JD, and it goes right into his spine, his breath held, as, after a merciful few seconds, the Turian goes back off and away.

"So, am I losing this arm?" JD is frozen as Halloway takes a glance, trying to see the shock trooper's face through his glazed visor.

Deep breath.

In, out.

Think of Garrus.

They can't all be that bad.

JD shakes his head and continues as he takes his pound of flesh from a man to save him.

---

Shepard can be sly. She used to be a teenage dirtbag, and a part of her Will always be. She doesn't regret having those parts in her anymore than she regrets having been put in hundreds of situations where she's had to kill. Of the thousands of bodies she's had to put down in the ground, she regrets them all, if only for the better lives that they could've lived: a waste of potential.

She goes back and forth between the secured sections of that lab, working out issues preventing her from checking out the secure labs. The suspicion is born from the fact that she is not allowed in, which is never a good move with Shepard.

However, there is more that calms Shepard to this treachery amongst survivors, and it is immediate as she passes the mess hall where the survivors are mostly clumped together. She catches the view of the lone Asari doctor.

Submitting Asari to torture tonight had its benefits.

Wrex's shoulder is tapped, as well as Garrus as she makes her way through, idly walking by and continuing her dig for information amongst the survivors of Binary Helix. She whispers orders in their ear, and they understand. So, on the next time through, the Asari, Alestia Iallis is approached. Shepard has her smile on, the one she uses when approaching new people.

"I'm so sorry to bother your meditation." Alestia raises her eyebrow and opens her mouth, but before she can say anything, Shepard has tackled her against the railing of the room. Wrex's shotgun is pointed down on her head as Garrus deploys his AR, covering behind them. The survivors there are taken aback, those closest backing off immediately. "Your friends gave you up." Shepard whispers into her ear as she wriggles on the ground, the damping of her powers seeping through the Asari.

Upfront, Ventralis turns as Mai hears the commotion through the walls. "Wew. Alright, Mai, Shepard is currently tackling an Asari in the mess. I think it might have to do with every security guard here and her being personally employed by Matriarch Beeswax."

Information that would've been nice to know but makes sense now as Ventralis turns away and makes a fast pace to the mess, leaving two guards with Mai.

The sling on her DMR loosens, her head craning to both of them, on either side of her. By curling her fist alone, any idea of taking her down is dissolved instantly. The fear in their hearts keeps them frozen as Mai turns to follow, silently, Ventralis.

"You're an Asari Commando. Benezia's cohort. Saren put you here personally and you KNOW who I am, don't you?!" The way Shepard's voice raises it's like a train, oncoming, or the way a waterfall sounds when a boat is careening toward it. It raises because it is a disaster, Alestia's neck crushed by her knee. "She's on the other side of that door, right?! Right?!"

"I ha- ve no idea what you're talk-!" She is not given another opportunity to speak as Shepard presses her knee deeper into her throat.

The violence of action is how the military gets its way, and Shepard shows her background with aplomb. It's not a coincidence that Shepard wanted Tali to fix some of the turrets, for, in just a swipe, all of them are converted over to their side. The guards, at ready, raising their guns to address the situation, freeze in place as Ventralis arrives to see Shepard very brutally holding down, on the one hand, someone innocent, and on another, someone in league with him.

"What is going on-?!"

A gloved hand is at the back of his neck, big enough to hold it like a cup, and he feels the pressure from her palm. It's Mai.

Shepard speaks for Mai, and they are words that Mai never needs to say to make the exact point: "You take us on. I'll kill you all. We'll kill you all!"

JD finishes up bagging the infected flesh before throwing it into an incinerator, his handiwork with the wounded men done as he listens to what is happening outside. It's not for him to get involved until the shooting starts, and if the shooting starts… He looks out across the wounded men and women, his hand on his SMG…

"Sit tight here, Jonny-boy." Cash tells him in his ear. "Ain't nothing brash I think you need to do."

Hopefully not.

Shepard's helmet is off, and her bun has come undone, her red hair framing her face and swaying down like a banshee, her fiery face only for the Asari to see. "You're gonna let us into the secured section, and when we deal with Benezia, we are all leaving to Port Hanshan. You can either sit here and be good, or I can put you in the ground and feed you to the bugs."

"She's here, isn't she?" Liara kneels beside them both, and Alestia finally recognizes her. With no voice, Alestia can only nod her head, grinding against the floor. There is a pity in her eyes, though, looking at Liara for what she is about to do.

"Do you all want to live?" Shepard asks aloud, to those innocent, to those guilty. There is no discrimination in there. "I won't make that choice for you."

Ventralis has his voice caught in his lungs as Mai's hand palms the back of his neck, right over his spine. At least in battle, the bullet that kills is never felt, seen in advance. Now, here, with Mai pressing, he is given that luxury of knowing what would kill him.

"Shepard will take care of you." Wrex says aloud. "Don't you worry about it."

Alestia looks up, burning eyes through Shepard that are barely regarded as Shepard lifts her knee from her neck.

She reaches up with her hands, but she dies for it. Liara screams before the response even comes.

A single gunshot, right through her head, splatters everyone near. Wrex's shotgun smokes as Shepard and Liara kneel on or by a faceless woman who tried to carry out her orders. There's hardly a shriek from the onlookers.

Mai's hand presses down harder on Ventralis. "Make a decision." Mai finally speaks.

He does. "Okay! Okay! We'll… We'll hold down the fort. Just don't- don't kill us!"

Mai lets go, and Ventralis stumbles forward only to be confronted, chest to chest with Shepard, Asari blood splattering the bottom of her face. Liara is on her ass, eyes wide, seeing another one of her mother's compatriots attack them. Shepard moves on faster from the dead like nothing, seizing Ventralis's arm.

"Gather the wounded. We'll be moving for the tram… Your access keys?"

He is silent as, reluctantly, the data is pushed from his omni. "Turrets are keyed to us." Tali reports. "No funny business."

It's only by Shepard's hand does Liara finally move again, being so close to flesh and blood. She is dragged up by Shepard's Will: "We'll be back, and this'll all be over."

---

Perhaps the correct words Shepard should've said was that there was no going back, making their way through maintenance sections and halls all before they're deposited in the classified area of the labs. It's a large room, more akin to hanger than a science lab, but it's immediately apparent why: In the middle, a giant creature, a bug-like organism like the rest. If Wrex had hair, they'd be standing on their ends as he feels and recognizes the long call of an ancient war. The survivors had told them straight that yes, these were Rachni, and they had been born for the sake of warfare.

Two queens there, technically, on a platform overlooking the glass tube that tank sized lifeform:

Matriarch Benezia. One had to imagine that all Asari elders dressed like witches, or maybe, this was just how Benezia manifested herself.

In their travels, the crew of the Normandy has known the feeling of associating with someone that they know has changed the Galaxy: Shepard. Here an opposite force is felt.

For Liara, however, she recognizes simply as being in the presence of her mother.

She looks down on all of them from her perch.

Shepard has to get the first word in. "Matriarch Benezia, by the authority of the Council, we're placing you in custody."

"Hm… For what? Shepard?" She speaks in her haughty tone as if she ruled that world.

"Conspiracy." Is all Shepard says. "Please come with us. It doesn't have to be this way."

The older Asari furrows her eyebrows, her gaze falling. Maybe, maybe not; those thoughts cross her mind, and she knows that Shepard is right, even in the literal sense. Things did not have to be this way. Her eyes fall, however, onto her daughter, clad in the armor, so like Shepard. Liara cannot meet her gaze.

"You do not know the privilege of being a mother." Clad in the light of lab instruments, it's a statement of scorn. With a slight wave of her hand, her fireteam is at the ready, spreading out, each of them visually finding their own cover. What thoughts did each of them have? None that fell outside tactics, with the hint of tragedy. "There is power in creation. To shape a life. Turn it toward happiness or despair."

"You have no idea." There is a wound in Shepard's voice as she responds. There is grit and insult in it, and it grates on the ears of everyone. Benezia is taken aback, really looking at Shepard. She was really hearing her words. The words slipped out of her like blood from a wound, and Shepard could've done nothing to stop it but let it go, let it fly, and let it sit on the air as the giant lifeform, a Rachni no doubt, skittered silently in its enclosure. "Look at you, saying something like that, and making that things offspring fight for you. That was the plan, wasn't it?"

"Your words have no meaning here; nor does anyone you have brought."

It's the day of many first for Benezia, looking on, seeing her daughter, seeing Shepard, and, most of all, seeing the two Humans from another reality, her gaze lingering on them and their armor. Saren's plot, it seems different with the truth of the Covenant, of the Spartan and ODST on their mind. The idea that there was another universe where the Reapers never mattered, where a civilization's own undoing was themselves, felt so freeing. Maybe there was an escape plan there: with Slipspace, or perhaps it didn't matter. There always seemed to be universal constants, and the reality that came to their own had yet to discover their Reaper, their downfall. Maybe, Benezia had had to think since when she first met the Covenant as part of First Contact, that things could've been different with the Covenant's help.

It's too late, however, too far gone, too far in. There is already a Sovereign, and it tugs at her mind.

"Mother!" Liara finally screams out. "You have to stop! This isn't going to go the way you think. Not for you."

"You've never been able to wield foresight, Liara. You don't know what's coming, and what needs to be done."

"This?" Shepard palm flatly goes to the imprisoned Rachni. "This is going to save the Galaxy? You'd put your own daughter in danger and enslave this thing to save us all?"

"This goes beyond any of us, Shepard. Enough talk. You either submit, or die."

Mai has her gun up first, but Benezia's biotic powers were well studied; they were like second nature to the Matriarch. With a flick of her wrist, a biotic wave is sent down upon them, and the three biotics of Shepard's fireteam, staggering, raise their own wave to block it off.

"Doors, far end, just opened up. Infantry coming through." Cash had advised, JD echoing his words for the AI as all hell had broken loose. The Matriarch had fallen back as Asari Commandos from her reserves come up and forward, firing down on them, their faces blank, relentless in their action. It was a fight, like any other for everyone else. For Liara, however, this time, it was against her mother. So she stood there as the fighting started, shots landing beside her as people ran into cover. It was only JD that grabbed her by her midsection, dragging her to safety as the rest returned fire, that moved her finally.

Crates started levitating, grenades being tossed over, shrapnel bouncing.

None of this Liara noticed as she stood, wide-eyed, something that JD had seen so many times from UNSC grunts, overwhelmed by war. She had dropped her weapon in the middle of the fight, leaving her with nothing.

There was never going to be a right time to deal with the absurdity of this, the horror of it, so JD had only done the next best thing and patted her roughly on her shoulder as his SMG cooled down from a suppressive burst.

A lesson, from one survivor to another as JD had handed her his SMG. "Kill, or be killed." His pistol had been up, her shoulder grabbed, and she brought up into cover, into the fight.

In nature, amongst the animal kingdoms, she knows that many mothers send their children into nature to fend for themselves. Even as high up the ladder as she, an Asari, may be, she is still subject to it. Kill or be killed. Her hands grip the handguard of JD's SMG, and like everyone else, she lets it rip as warfare comes to that steel block of a room.

---

"Coming out of slipspace in 3… 2… 1." Seylu Karonee's navigator reports as the Ardent Prayer removes itself from slipspace quietly, its active camouflage turned on with expert precision.

"All shipboard systems are green. Slipspace jump completed with minimal variance in condition. Active camouflage activated."

"Confirmed. Planet dead ahead is Virmire."

On her left, the leader of her ground forces on the Ardent Prayer: Usze. On her right: her XO, the Brute Mercaius. They stand ready and at attention as she sits in her grav chair and sees a planet, so much, so beautiful like Earth, emerge out of the dark of space.

"I need general observation scans and analysis." The shipmistress ordered, and the crew echoed a response. "Did we know of this planet during our Crusade?"

One of the Jackals assigned to her navigation chittered to itself before looking over and shaking their head. "No. This planet was in the opposite direction of the Human front. My people would've had territorial claims over this place."

"Noted." Karonee looked over to Usze as he stood, arms crossed. She did not know his mentor, R'tas, personally, but she liked to imagine that Usze assumed some of his mannerisms. The crimson Elite stood, eyes glazing over the planet through their view screen as if ready to take it on himself. "Quite a beautiful world, is it not?"

"I am not one to be qualified to give such judgements, Shipmistress."

"Hmph." Karonee had been amused by Usze if by his adherence to the old Sangheili martial dispositions. Of course, he did belong to an Ascetic sect that espoused a specific older theory of what it meant to be Sangheili; however, that was no more or less her problem in this Galaxy, where they could define what it meant it meant to be who they were. "Sensors?"

"Element Zero concentration rate far below average."

So not an exactly high degree of space traffic, but below.

"Isolate the newest streams."

The sensor crewman had responded to Karonee's command as the three of them continued to look at the planet, led to them by a data point left to them by dead pirates.

"And what say you, Mercaius?" Mercaius, in his blue armor, gravity hammer at his side like an eternal weight, had looked over to Karonee. He sniffed.

"Too beautiful for my blood, shipmistress."

Her two commands on the Ardent Prayer had been colorful types, more alike than they would both like to admit. The old Sangheili and Jiralhanae rivalry still exists, very much seen between Usze and Mercaius. They wouldn't even look at each other, and Usze had been the first to protest against a Brute of all people being assigned a command position while there were other qualified Elites ready.

A test of faith, Karonee posed back to Usze.

"As if our faith is not tested enough as is." Usze had been bitter in his dismissal over it, but, like any good Elite, he had resumed his duties.

"Have you ever been there, on the Jiralhanae homeworld, Usze?" Karonee asked, her arm propping up her head on her gravity chair. "A bombed-out world, only better off than the Humans because they were never glassed." Usze shook his head. "In truth, I prefer it."

The two men on her arms had both, in their way, tilted their heads in confusion.

"Shipmistress?"

She explained, eyes going over Virmire with a fine comb. "You find so often that our civilizations each have tried to create perfect worlds and societies throughout our histories. But you see, that is a contradiction."

As so often with Sangheili like him, Usze's mandibles clacked together slowly, considering the thought of an Elite he sometimes forgot had been his better in rank and combat experience by right of command.

"Paradise, physical perfection, cannot be achieved. It is by the Will of our gods that is our path to perfection, no way else." And it was because of that, every paradise had its secrets, and she had burned many Human heavens in her time to the ground. The only perfect factor was the reliability of what temperature it took her plasma arrays to turn dirt into glass. "The Brutes, at least they never fooled themselves into a perfect society."

Mercaius huffed a laugh, unbelieving the praise of an Elite for his kind.

"Shipmistress. Data on screen." The sensor chief had said out as a holographic of a line of Element Zero trace curved across a trajectory over the planet in an augmented reality display, touching down on the planet, with no rebound up. Benefits of having a ship whose current capabilities put it a few centuries forward of the existing tech. However, the data was raw, with no one willing to share the granular signatures of particular eezo readings or ship specifics. "One more."

Another eezo reading, blipping just barely in orbit of the planet, before accumulating eezo by idling and then disappearing.

"A large signature as well above that, but can't possibly be a ship." The sensor chief referred to the giant blob above the accumulating site. "Maybe some sort of waste dumping."

"Do you have a timeline?" Karonee asked.

The sensor chief breathed once, shaking his head. "Indistinct. I'll see if we can determine any of them are of Quarian pattern, but it will take time, Shipmistress."

"I see. How about the planet?"

More of her bridge crew had just reiterated details they had run over in the journey over. This planet was an ideal colonization candidate save for the fact that it had been deep in the Attican, too dangerous to settle without a hundred different pirate and extra-government forces pressing down on them. Reasonably similar to Altis even, but somehow even more bountiful, with more landmass to pair with its water. This planet was passed over during the crusades, and, distantly, Karonee could only wonder how many of these paradises were left behind.

The Ardent Prayer was a small ship by the standards of the Covenant, and its attached active camouflage systems had been overtuned for a ship much larger. Still, even then, there was no way to be invisible for any meaningful length of time. "Deploy recon probes over the planet, and make heading for the moon. We'll use its shadow to conceal ourselves, but keep up observation in the meanwhile. We can afford to lay in wait for the meanwhile. Perhaps our missing Jackals are now using this place as a hideout. Those coordinates from the other planets did lead here, after all."

"Yes, shipmistress." Came the resounding affirmative as the Ardent Prayer started deploying its recon implements, shifting toward Virmire's moon.

The idleness of observation did not sit well with the young Usze, but he had to hold his tongue like many other times in the last few months. Karonee knew, however; from the disappointment in his face to the anxiety of his strong stance, there was no mistaking that Usze thought there was something better to do. However, there was no more war. No more conflict that they could throw themselves into for the sake of following their warrior honor. This was the next best thing.

"And then what, Shipmistress?" Usze had to ask.

Karonee's chair pivots to Virmire and all of its luster. "Then we get involved."

---

The firefight goes on forever, it feels, at least in terms of those who knew how long fights went on. It was a slugfest of grenades and biotics being thrown at each other from behind cover made of lab equipment, all while an ancient being looked on, waiting for its judgment. For every push, there was a pull, and for every glancing blow, another was returned.

When one Geth goes down, an Asari Commando takes its place, and vice versa. They come from the walls, the doors, crates, and crannies, all for the sake of making a fight.

Even Mai could not force her way through, not with Benezia's biotic powers slowing her down, addressing her. All she could do was stay back and shoot. Even with a full fireteam, there was never enough to cover every angle or to get in every firing position.

There was another weapon, however, one that only Liara knew how to volley out in between gunfire.

"Mother! I know! I know about the Reapers! About what's coming!"

Never in their lives did JD or Mai have to consider an actual conversation as they continued to open fire, his palm very much feeling the sting of thermal burn. Indeed, the entire firefight seemed to pause, waiting for Benezia's volley back.

"You know nothing about the horror that awaits this Galaxy! There are those among you who understand, and yet they squander their knowledge! I will not!"

Who had she been talking about? JD didn't want to think about it, not as he rounded the corner again and let another burst rip in the general direction of Benezia. Did she know? Did she know about their secret like Miranda? And if so, she needed to be killed immediately for it. Of the many secrets she held, that was one that she could not act on. That right was only for the Spartan and the ODST to do.

Benezia hadn't even picked up a gun, her blobs of darkness sent out, only to clash with those sent back up by Shepard or Wrex. Liara could not. Not against her mother. Was she weak at this moment? No one would say aloud, not when she was shooting at everything but her, the barrel of the SMG smoking red hot. Every burst came with a scream against cruel fate and its matchups, anger, sadness, some sort of fight against destiny.

"We can do this all day, lady!" Shepard had vented her assault rifle after a burst, barely flinching as Geth plasma fire ricocheted above her and Garrus's head. The man had gone prone, peeking out the side of their turned-over crates, peeking with his small angle as Wrex occasionally dashed between cover. His deceptive nimbleness had kept him alive along with his fireteam. Any prodding at even thinking about moving up, getting a tactically advantageous position, put down immediately in a hail of gunfire. It was true vice versa, and only because they saw themselves worthy of sacrifice did Geth and Asari die.

An Asari had popped out of her cover, tracking Shepard's voice, but as she rounded her cover, gun up, her throat had been shot out, and she dropped to the floor in a spasm. The body against steel was deep and loud, but not as loud as her surviving compatriots kicking her body in the put below the walkways to make room. Tali had taken that shot, venting her shotgun as her eyes leered in combat ferocity.

"Stupid shit about this," Cash was ever the spectator, the commentator to his captive audience. "Is that I know the Little Lady can just wipe the floor off these chucklefucks if it ain't for this darn space magic."

"Hmph." The bare response JD could give him as another Geth peeked its ocular above a railing, the glowing target cracked by a shot of his pistol, but returned in kind as a box, picked up, levitated, had immediately been thrown at him. He ducked behind the locker he was hiding behind, the clatter of whatever was in both objects unkind as another exchange of gunfire ran through.

A minute here, a minute there, a standoff intolerable as Mai sat plinking from her position in the back. She knew what she had to do. She did. Same as always, but it wasn't the way Shepard had liked her fighting.

"Saren! How will he save this Galaxy?! He is killing the innocent!" Shepard yells back, blood and fire on her teeth and her voice going hoarse.

"No Human is innocent! And their lives are a small price to pay in exchange for salvation!"

They waged their private holy war on Noveria, the Rachni looking on, intrigued, glowing eyes seeing the same conflicts of eons past play out.

"This is not you, Mother!" Liara screamed out again. "This is not any of you!"

How many Asari lay dead? How may Asari were sacrificed tonight?

Another crate flung by a Biotic had come as Wrex and Shepard volley'd their own attacks; however, none could address it save for Mai. Her solution was more kinetic, the steel crate crumpling with an opposing shoulder charge. She flew through the air to meet it, cracking it in two, landing by Shepard.

"Shepard." She was wordless as she landed; her form as a titan of her trade reminded of Shepard as she looked up and saw the impossibility of her.

Shepard knew what she was asking.

"If you go out there-"Nothing could ever be promised in combat, and Shepard didn't make promises she couldn't keep.

"Let me do it."

"I can't-!" Shepard had tried to say, to tell her, but not enough time was given.

Tali had learned too much from Mai not to develop a certain streak. That certain streak meant entirely going out into the open of her cover to get a definitive shot on Benezia, in the back of her lines by the control center of that room. "Chatika!" Her drone had manifested in the air as it was thrown their way, a handful of grenades summoned from her poncho, thrown up and out.

"Tali!" Shepard had yelled out her warning too late. Garrus and Wrex had opened up regardless if they saw targets or not, suppressing fire, trying to avoid the grave mistake of many impatient soldiers: The best firing position was never the safest, and it was one Tali learned as in an impossible second her kinetic barriers were down in a hail of Geth fire. It was an exchange she made for a cluster of grenades thrown out, landing behind the main line of cover, but it was an exchange signed in blood.

"Arghk-!" Her pained yelp came before the way she fell to the ground, a clean line of gunfire ripping through her ankle as she fell.

JD was already running to her before it happened, one hand on his pistol and the other already reaching out forward in his crouched run, fire going over his head as he reached Tali, dragging her backward into non-ideal cover: one that could've been broken through with any amount of concentrated fire.

"Shepard!" Mai was not asking. She was letting her know.

"Fine!" With one hand signal, Wrex and Garrus saw Shepard's motion. A play was being made. With those same hands, she committed the same sin, turning into blue, fists clenched, her gun dropped to the floor unceremoniously as- "Wrex! Fuck up this field!"

They call it a charge, the way someone primes their arms back like a runner, head first.

It would've left her in the middle of the enemy, this technique, suicide. But sometimes, hail maries were called for when, otherwise, everyone was dead anyway.

Wrex, in all his years, knows the perfect complement, a roar through his throat, gathering his strength as the equivalent of a star is in his hands, black like darkness itself. Thrown out almost everyone and everything that isn't tied down feels a certain pang of weightlessness.

"I don't think so!" Benezia steps forward from her cover, past some of her Commandos, a similar charge formed into her hands, thrown out before Wrex can throw out his Biotic nova. He has to pull it now because of it, tossing it over, the two balls colliding as gravity erases itself and then rematerializes. It brings people up off their feet, tugging up in their chests toward the ceilings. The cover wasn't much better off, flung up in the air leaving no one safe; Mai, alone has her feet settled with her magnetic boots, ready and primed as Shepard, fast as light, smears across reality headfirst, purple energy around her.

Everyone knew it was the cue; even as Garrus floated, still in his prone position, he gave the orders. "Concentrate fire! Mai! Go for it!" Asari Commandos, not anticipating the weightless chaos, had barely been able to respond to gunfire from those floating, Tali's leaking from her ankle streaming out like bubbles as she, in the haze of pain, brought her shotgun up to fire still. Each shot sent her off a direction, but it was no matter. All they needed was the wall of fire to precede the great piercing explosion of Shepard herself in the middle of the enemy line. The break of bones and steel came with Shepard appearing, her entire form decompressing around her in an explosive burst, before her form, in the momentum, landed at the feet of Benezia.

The body of Commander Shepard is the distraction that Mai needed as she followed her in a dead sprint. Benezia looks up and sees the last sight many people have shared with her. Magnetic footsteps are thunderous, and each step of hers threatens to rip the boarding beneath her feet up with her.

An unstoppable force meets an immovable object. The room cracks because of it. Floating Asari and Geth are picked off in the air as Shepard's fireteam fires up into them even as they find themselves off and up. Wrex, he on his knees due to the exertion, holding enough to keep himself grounded. Liara fired as well, into bodies, alive or dead, floating like museum pieces, hoisted in the ceiling. She fires because, not to kill them, although she does, because she sees their wasted potential, their wasted lives, their changed ideas, and how she once knew these people in another life. She fires even as the guns recoil threatens to topple her over, distracting her from what Mai is doing.

Only JD, holding onto Tali, is lucid enough to see how Matriarch Benezia is dealt with:

With the last of his mental control, Wrex returns gravity to the field, and they all drop.

In the split second that Cash gives Mai to process it all, the biotic wave followed through right to Benezia's foot; she sees Benezia's eyes glaze over as death has come for her in the form of two hands at her neck. She tries to raise her own to fight back, but it's too late, contact is made, and Mai is carried through as they both hit the glass. Barely, just barely, the strain does not crack it. Her headdress tumbles off, clattering to the floor, and all at once, Mai can see where Liara has come from. Benezia is an alien, but Human-esque enough for Mai to recognize that this was Liara's mother. The curl of the nose, the shape of the eye, are Liara's, and right now, they show her fear.

Everything that was left unsaid, undone, never fulfilled as Mai goes through the motions, as she cannot stop. Not when she was an active threat. Not when this was a fight. She presses Benezia against the glass more as her fingers tighten, and Benezia knows what will happen next as the rest of Shepard's fireteam, still able to fight, moves up behind Mai, picking themselves off the floor and killing Benezia's support.

"Liara. Little Wing, I'm sor-! "At her final second, she is free and given clarity to see herself die.

There is no explanation. There are no tremendous final words or rites given, explaining away her sins. There is only combat and the victors.

Death comes in the shape of Mai Gul as the muscles in her hands, her arms, her fingers crush, crack, and then kill. Death comes in the way her neck snaps. Death comes in the way her eyes go wild and then empty, as her body goes limp.

Guns are dropping to the floor, steaming and clattering, metal and against metal. Too hot to handle, and for some, like Liara, they want nothing to do with it. She runs, all of them do eventually, to Mai, frozen in place with her hands around Benezia's neck.

"No!" Liara screams, and her fists are pounding at Mai's armor. "No! No! No!"

How many mothers, how many fathers has she killed before? Benezia was just one in a line of hundreds, thousands, and she takes no joy in the knowledge. Only the execution. Here and now, however, there is mercy as Mai moves one of her hands to sweep beneath Benezia and hold her, the other free hand cradling her head as she is held in her arms and laid down onto the floor. All the while, Liara's fist futilely slams into Mai's back, and nothing changes; nothing happens as the tears come down. Before Shepard can intervene, she looks at her fireteam. Their gloves are smoking, and they are covered in Rachni pieces and Asari blood. Despite this, they are alive, if not bruised, bloody, and scarred. Verifying this, she returns to a better state of mind, one that isn't an officer in charge.

Swooping in, Garrus takes Liara by her midsection from behind as the woman struggles in her iron grip. "She didn't have to die! She didn't need to be killed!" She screams at cruel fate and combat necessity. She screams the truth of the Galaxy's indifference to mercy, refusing to believe paradise was a real place they could go to.

One day, maybe, Shepard thinks. But not while they were all there, mortal, living their lives. Shepard is silent, Garrus holding Liara as she thrashes to wriggle out her demons and the demons in front of her.

Wails of a banshee bounce off glass and steel, and the Rachni Queen looks on from her cage with blackhole eyes.

The rest can only be witnesses.

This was worse than war.

Liara knows war. She does better than most. She knows war through ancient texts and battle hulls scarred from unsung wars millennia ago. She sees the bones and the left-behinds of greater people than her, brought to the common universality of death in war. The greatest equalizer in all humankind, history, and any kind there was: war. The big picture that came with the towers of Feros or the dig sites on Eden Prime was so grand in their scale that they left out the micro, the iota of dust that they stood above: people like her and their individual tragedy, screaming out with soundless voices. Benezia had begged for forgiveness in her final breath, and her voice, Liara knows now, joins the trillions dead that this Galaxy was built on.

She screams, and the Rachni Queen echoes, joining in a song that has been sung since the very beginning of time and memory itself.

---

He's not quite sure if the operating procedure on Quarians is the same as Human, but JD does his best for Tali, packing her skin and her suit with packing bandages and medigel. It's all he could do as Tali mutters her pained thank you's, only to try and hoist herself up to a stand. She can't, but JD offering his arm for her to throw herself on helps.

Treating Tali is the distraction from upfront, in the main observatory where Benezia and her allies fought and were assaulted into. If it hadn't been bolted down, it had been thrown around, strewn; Hurricane Shepard had come to town, and she had only just picked herself up off the floor.

"I hate being a biotic." Her words come out as she has her hands on the ground, pushing herself to a wobbly stand, knees weak, head light, blood in her throat. She feels lightheaded and lightweight, even though she knows she's wearing easily fifty kilos of gear on her. She was out of practice, but sometimes that lack of refinement meant something: like a biotic explosion that drained her and sent the entire field crazy.

Wrex wasn't any better, he panting as they all reconnoitered in that observatory above a giant alien brood mother. Even in his state, he could afford to stare death at it. It looked back, with glowing eyes, waiting expectantly for them to finish what they've done.

Mai alone stands above Matriarch Benezia's body, her neck imprinted with where Mai grabbed and crushed. A dirty, ruthless move, but death was still death in the end.

"Put me down by Liara." Tali whispers in JD's ear as they approach, the Asari mourning, on her knees, by her mother, face first in her chest and crying aloud. Gently, quietly, JD does, letting Tali slip into as best of a sit she can with a bum leg. Shepard is quick to look between her and JD, settling on JD as he gives the nod. Tali has been treated as best she can right now, and for that, Shepard gives her silent thanks as she leans against a console above the giant Rachni. Mai stands ever vigilant; she and Garrus are the only fully capable ones at the moment. Garrus does his job with discretion; his bedside manner has never been excellent, but they are on a mission, and this isn't the first dead body they've seen: combing through the tables, the desks for Benezia's items. Data pads here and there, handwritten notes, correspondences, and intelligence that should only help compound what they grabbed from the surviving Asari Commandos they caught earlier that night.

"Millions, Shepard." Everyone turns to Wrex save for the mourning. "Millions of my people died because of things like that." If he could've reached through the glass walls into that tank to do the same as Mai did to Benezia, he would've. "Acid tanks," he gestures to the containment pod and various tubes attached to it. "Set them off."

"One god damn moment." Shepard says it through her teeth, the Rachni looking up at her, Wrex shoots his daggers at Shepard now with his eyes, but she only deflects, gesturing to Benezia and her daughter. He's not pleased, but he relents. "Let me think."

Silently, Garrus to copying data, consolidating it into his omni-tool. The cop inside of him yells internally that he shouldn't be so handsy with the evidence, but this wasn't on the job, and this was no ordinary crime scene. Mai has her feet planted, unmoving, looking down on Benezia and Liara. This was what she did, and who could blame her?

One by one, JD makes his rounds in the minute downtime they get after the roar of combat.

Tali, he's already checked out. A pat on the arm with Garrus and his friend tells him that he's okay. Shepard is also the same, but the paleness of her skin betrays her. She doesn't protest when JD draws a syringe and puts it into her neck. A combat stim, emergency usage especially for biotics who drew themselves too far out. It hisses as it enters her, and she cringes, but in the end, she thanks JD anyway.

"You're going to have to give me five of those, Human." And he is just about to, but Wrex's dark amusement at the moment drains him still. It's unneeded, and JD doesn't want to pick a fight with Wrex at the moment, everyone on that wire's edge.

There are two more after that, but in the end, there is no need. He can't provide anything Liara needs right now, and Mai's vitals are wired into his HUD. If there's any pain for her, JD can't see it, and Cash won't tell him.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry Liara." Tali's hand rubs into Liara's back, speaking to her an apology that would never be enough.

He should be feeling something right now. JD tells himself he should. Tonight would be the night that changed Liara forever, he knows. It was when fate took her own blood, the woman who she called mother, away from her. Tonight, she would cry herself insane, dead tired, and go on until she could not anymore and collapse as her body took her away into the darkness of exhaustion for her own good. He knows that this will happen because he's seen it so many times before. He knows it will happen because he knows what it is like to lose a mother.

"Just kill me now. Just kill me now." Mai's hearing picks up Liara's whispers, begging her.

She is an alien, yes, and she deserves to die. That was Mai's mantra all her life, and her one is begging for death… and yet she feels nothing of that unbridled rage. She feels sadness, pity. She mourns, even as Benezia's warmth is still fresh on her fingertips.

Just kill me now.

At least she had left a body, Mai thinks. A clean body. No gunshots, no blood. It looks as if she's sleeping instead, not dead.

The impossibility of Benezia opening her eyes as Mai looks down almost makes sense enough that the split second she doesn't do anything is excusable. Though she is dead, she knows it. She felt her neck snap beneath her hands.

It explains nothing as her eyes open.

Every biotic feels that twinge in the air at that moment, and Liara, she feels it most, as she looks up and sees Benezia staring at her as she lays on the ground. "…Mother?" It sounds so hopeful, its cruelty destroys.

Just as Shepard's body radiated in her charge, Benezia's body does the same thing as the impossibility that she is alive comes forth, her head lolling onto one side; however, like a phantom, she rises.

"Boots!" Cash yells into Mai's ear, and already she is planted onto the ground magnetically as the rest of the fireteam looks on and realizes too late about the great inward draw, and the great exhale:

Again, biotics explode in that room, and everyone but Mai is caught off guard as they are sent, wherever they are, to the sides of the room, slamming up against them. Mai can read only JD's systems, but it's clear as day: he's knocked out like the night the second his head slams into the wall, the same as everyone else still standing. Even Wrex, the dent in the wall from his impact barely greater than the one that comes from him falling to the ground. Shepard, Tali, Liara, their bodies like ragdolls, are thrown, bruised, and knocked out all the same.

Mai alone, having weathered the storm like a tsunami on Altis, is left standing before the gruesome sight of Benezia.

Already her rifle is halfway up her chest and pumping three rounds, dead center, into her, but they go through, no damage done even as splotches of blood eat through her flesh and dress.

"I know who you are." It is Benezia's voice on her sheared head, but it is not Benezia. It speaks through echoes and hollowed words and in the background: the Rachni itself. "Through the memories of this one, we saw, as it saw unto us."

"Acid controls on that console. One press and it's goodnight to the roaches." Cash advises, but Mai stands. She had read somewhere that Benezia and Saren had been among the first contact groups for the Covenant, but this was not Benezia speaking. "Got dang everyone else is out cold."

"You are a Demon who walks this world. Born from flesh and blood into steel and gunmetal." Mai is silent, listening, hearing the voices. Benezia, her body shakes, is held up by an unsteady string. "We… We fear you."

"Who are you?" Mai finally asks. She doesn't know if she should move, her eyes glancing to JD. His body is still, but it's in a relatively safe place.

"We are the mother." A mother in the body of a mother. "We sing for those left behind. The children those of this Galaxy thought silenced. We are Rachni."

"You know who I am?" Mai asks.

"Spartan. Demon." A Covenant view of it, but not a lie.

"The Rachni, they were hostile, coming in." It's so weird, and she knows it's Shepard's influence on her: having an actual dialog with an enemy. "You're hostile. Now and historically."

"We have locked away here. They do not hear our song. They are lost to silence."

The mysticism of an alien race is not lost on Mai. Not everyone and everything falls into the neat categories that they call society. These are aliens in the most extreme way. They're not like the Elites or the Brutes. These are creatures. Monsters.

"They were stolen from us, before they could learn to sing. We are… sorry for our children. They do not know." She sounds sad through Benezia, mourning more than just her children, but remorse does not bring back the dead.

It's the same story, even across universes: children taken from mothers and forced to kill. But Mai tells herself she is not like them. She is not a monster. She is a killer of monsters.

Step by slow step, magnetic boots as a safety measure, she makes her way to the console before that great bug beast. She doesn't see any of the history embedded in this world and the Rachni. She doesn't see the horrors of war that Wrex has in his very DNA; she doesn't see an entire history of galactic politics based around the idea that once before, there had been an extinction war that had to be fought. All she sees is an enemy that can be eliminated entirely, and like so many of her enemies in that Galaxy, she knows what must be done.

She is not Shepard. She is a Spartan and willing to kill the enemy.

Benezia turns to her on the Rachni's behalf. "Please. Do not send us into the silence." It begs, but Mai is not the saint that Shepard was.

"You're dangerous," Mai answers, finding herself before the console, looking down through it to the beast. "You're an animal. I know what you're like."

"But… We were not responsible for the suffering of the past. We are not them."

It's a quick option to let the acid out. The scientists studying them knew best that if they needed this Rachni gone, it would've needed to have been swift.

Mai has decided this long ago. If not specifically for the Rachni, but for all people who stood against the UNSC. If it were in her power, she would do it. It's how they raised her as a Spartan. "It's in your nature."

"And what's in yours? Holocaust?" They accuse her of.

She is heir to bloodlines that fought the oldest conflicts of humankind on holy land, on Earth's Middle East. Risen now she fights against another holy war, and she was supposed to die in it. Her birthright is that of prejudice through elimination.

She is a Spartan super-soldier, and she is heir to a galaxy of death.

There is no option with her, the Rachni realizes, and it begins to thrash around in its cage, trying to get out, trying to avoid cruel fate. Mai cannot feel pity, for she only thinks of the millions of innocent dead that have suffered because of beings like them.

She's not bloodthirsty, but she has a blood rite. The Galaxy has finally given her an option that makes sense to her.

Enough.

She presses a button, and as she hears the screams of the last lifeform of a destructive race fizzle out in the scratchy pops of acidic frenzy, she muses on if only if, back in her Galaxy, if all she needed to do to kill all of the Covenant was just to press a button or turn a key.

Benezia's body drops to the ground, blood pooling on steel ground.

If only.

But it's a fanciful thought, and not one she imagined that would've been available to save all those that had been left behind. So instead, her thoughts wander as the screams die out, to the words of earlier that night:

"What are you responsible for, in the name of Earth and her Colonies?"