A/N: My apologies; it's sure been long enough. I had essentially two flashback stories to tell, and that previous chapter was one of them. I had mistakenly assumed that the other would fit in two or three chapters; it's looking more like ten. [Update: it's seven chapters recounting the Torfan mission, two of debrief. For those who want to stay with the story and not bother with flashback, I suggest jumping straight to Chapter 48, so at least you can be aware of the direct fallout of the mission (Hackett and Kyle debrief, plus some other expositional dialogue with Dr. Chakwas.)]

In addition to being more complicated, it was also challenging to write something that fit into the ME universe of 2174, which had to have technological relevance and scaling to 2183. I wasn't comfortable releasing early chapters until I knew what needed to be in place for later chapters…which was fortunate because it kept changing until I had enough of the story in place. Now that I've figured out where I'm going, I can tell the story of how we got there.

There's also been a lot of personal chaos. That's not an excuse, but perhaps it will serve as an explanation.
Again, sorry for the delay. The writing doesn't pay yet, and good writing demands good planning. Good planning takes time.

References: wiki/List_of_Alliance_Colonies (Sathur, and Mindoir, colonies in the Traverse that were attacked in the events leading up to Elysium.)
wiki/Leviathan_of_Dis

*** Torfan, Landing ***

April 2175

Satisfied the official business was handled, Anderson nodded. "Sounds like we have our tasks. Good meeting, everyone. You're dismissed, except for Shepard."

On Shepard's 2D display, five of the six open channels chunked to dark, Anderson's image growing larger until it filled the display space. Shepard looked back into the pickup. "Do we need to switch to kiewcryption, sir?"

"No, I just wanted to check in. We haven't had a chance to talk since you got back from Rio. You feeling settled into your new quarters?"

Shepard looked around his larger quarters, thinking. "It, uh…actually makes a bigger difference than I expected. Chandra keeps telling me I should get one of those Outer Space Hamsters, but frankly, sir…" he shook his head, "they just talk too damn much."

Anderson smiled broadly, chuckled. "Need your peace and quiet, eh?"

"I'm sure that's it, sir."

Anderson looked into camera, spoke directly to Shepard, "Seriously, how are you holding up, Stephen?"

His reply was immediate: "One day at a time, sir. Best thing I've found is keeping busy. Rio was good, but the Live Fire Exercise was the best. Longest White Moment I've had to date; I really felt like I was in my element. I just want to…put it behind me."

"Interesting. I'm being nagged that you haven't had any counselling. Weist and Romsa from PHS both say you've turned down appointments from their offices. Are you feeling okay? Do you need to devote some serious time to healing?"

"No." Shepard caught himself before he really snapped at the one man who had actually tried to help. "Please don't send me on a bereavement leave, sir...at least not yet. I'll sit around with nothing to do and get all depressed. You saw the email from Earth, there's nothing for me there."

"Is this to do with your implant? You've told me how it enhances memory." He looked uncomfortable. "Is that it? You can't get it out of your head?"

Shepard had to think for a moment about how technical to get. "At this point, I just need time to get my mind off it. Put me in a high focus operation to keep me busy. Threaten my life, or threaten the lives of my team. But keep me focused on something else, anything else. Buy me time to heal."

Anderson nodded. "That's what I thought. I just got notified of an operation that you might want to get in on, and involves the team that were with you on Sathur. It'll last a week, maybe two. Fast, surgical strike and then a lot of on-site CFA busywork. You interested?"

Shepard sat up with interest. "When's the briefing?"

"Not 'til next week. But I want to talk with you in person before adding you to the roster. As a new N7, it'll be important that you really make it happen, and I've got some new tech you might want to consider for the mission."

# # #

Batarian slavers were still a problem in the outer colonies; worse, the attackers were getting bolder, and better equipped. Even five years later, the single word Mindoir still evoked horrific tragedy; Colonial Affairs had been suggesting that the cost of moving the colony to a closer system would be a better investment than another year of no new arrivals.

Alliance DSI was highly confident that the raids were being launched from Torfan, a low-density but large moon orbiting a gas giant. Several installations had been built by a variety of groups, most of them buried deep under the surface to make them as undetectable as possible, and to control access.

Marine Major Lawrence Kyle stepped into the briefing room at its front. His omnitool illuminated at the same time as the display behind him; he spoke without introduction. "Good afternoon. I'm going to have to make this quick because our schedule has been moved up. The colony at Terra Nova has gone dark."

Several of the soldiers exchanged glances. Kyle flicked at his right wrist; the wall-filling display behind him changed to show the navigation overview. "At the moment, both Terra Nova and Elysium are undefended, and we have intel that they're threatened. So Tokyo is dropping out of FTL long enough to get us away before continuing on to the Elysium system to investigate. We're going to be on our own for this one, for at least a week, maybe more."

As the display at the front of the room continued to show its animation of Tokyo's approach and slingshot through the planet's gravity well, there were a few moans of exasperation. Kyle turned and walked to the other side of the display.

"That's the bad news. The good news is that we don't need to take the whole moon." The display behind him changed, showing relevant video, stills, wireframe, maps, and spreadsheets as he spoke. "The operation is smaller and simpler. One surgical strike at this base here, and then assist with analysis while we wait for pickup." He shrugged carelessly. "We'll take along more consumables, and maybe some PVR gear."

One of the soldiers, a wiry little engineer, had her hand up. When Kyle looked at her and nodded, she asked, "Is this still a Navy operation, sir?"

Kyle grinned and shook his head. "All right, you got me. Nothing about our mission profile has changed; so yes, officially, this is still a Navy op. But now that it's much more specific, it would have been a Marine mission if it had come down the chain like this in the first place. I'm still your MCO, Perling is the XO, you're operation comms, Shepard is in charge of tech, Fergie is ordnance…" he waved his free hand in a circular "et cetera" gesture, "none of the roles have changed."

Kyle turned back to the wall display. "The location is here. We're heading for the fourth planet of the Neliptris system." He pointed into the display, which had designated it N-IV(a)y. "The planet is just another alnummed gas giant, but this one moon is large enough, and far enough out of the magfield to be home to at least six pirate bases. Most days, they leave each other alone; Torfan is ideally situated for mischief in the Traverse, orbits a gas giant for easy drive discharge, has relatively low gravity, and is far enough away to discourage going out of our way to harass, especially with the bases so deep under the surface.

"Well, not anymore. DSI is confident that this particular base was the one that launched the attack on Elysium, and it's worth the detour on our way to the relay. The original op was to take them all out from orbit with autodrill weapons, probably helter-skelters. And then we'd drop in and mop up, get forensic. But with the new intel, the brass at Trident are now wanting to send a message: 'We know exactly who you are, and you will NOT fuck with Earth colonists.'"

And equipping a strike team like this will cost less than a dozen drill/shrapnel missiles, Shepard thought.

One of the Alliance marines loudly smacked the table before him with an open hand, and barked, "Hoo-ah!" It was immediately echoed by several others in the briefing room.

Kyle turned and pointed at the display. "Our new target is this base on the north inner face of this range. DSI calls it 'Quicksand.' The entrance we're using is on the other side of this crater wall, on the other side of the base from the landing platform.

"Without a mass effect drive, we'll be nearly impossible for them to spot. Initially we'll be coming in south of the ecliptic, braking with a deplumed chemical drive with a drop tank. We'll be real hot, too, and after the braking burn, we'll be using the gas giant for aerobraking; Ferguson and Knecht will be dropped in freefall on first approach, and then have six hours to touch down, deploy and launch a ballistic weapon that will appear to come from one of the rival bases. While they're doing that, Team Two aerobrakes around the gas giant and approaches Torfan from the other side."

"We will also be aiming the drop tank at them, using the back half of it as a heat shield while the front half will separate on first approach and fragment like a MIRV. Each of the eight ballistic segments should yield on the order of 5-10 kilotons, which should be enough to bring down the base shields without leaving just mangled wreckage. After that double-whammy, we arrive while their sensors are still recovering from the blasts.

"We'll set down away from the landing platform, which has more potential points of entry, but this will give us a chance to get in through the far entrance. It has a Haliat AA-3 semi-automated sentry emplacement – bought and paid for by your friendly neighborhood batarian military – so it should be relatively easy to disable, destroy, or invert. Knecht, that'll be on you. You and Fergie should have at least two hours to get there after launching the distraction."

"We'll get it done, sir." The Technical Demolitions Specialist nodded confidently.

Kyle continued, "While DSI has been able to tell us who did it and from where, they don't know anything really useful about the inside of the base, except that, to support a destroyer-sized ship, it almost certainly has a staff well over 30, and possibly even over 50. Clearly it's deep underground, and has some spaces large enough to service a ship, at least light cruiser sized. Torfan's gravity is so low, you could practically land a dreadnought on it long enough to service it; DSI thinks they could actually dock their ship there, whatever it is."

He pointed at the wall display. "Here are some stills we've gotten in the past week. Notice the landing platform keeps moving around. Probably sloppy work hiding a launch silo, but we've never been able to catch them with it open. Either they're just lucky, or they're landing the ship only when the base is closest to the gas giant. I'll bet you lunch that it's not a dreadnought, but its lateral cross-section could be that big. Whatever it is, we think they're landing it tail-first and lowering it into the silo, and then sliding this landing platform back over it."

"Even so, sir…dreadnought displacement? Aren't these supposed to be just another bunch of fuckin' pirates?"

Kyle glanced patronizingly at the soldier who had asked. "The batarian hegemony has funded 'free agent' bad guys for decades. It's like they think nobody knows or cares; certainly the Citadel Council doesn't. I think it's one of the reasons the brass finally greenlighted this operation. The landing platform is probably to make us think that's all the bigger their ship is, but they hide their real attack vehicle under it. Whatever they're launching could have a beam the size of a dreadnought's.

"Assuming there was a dreadnought there, the original plan had probably been to get hard evidence and nail them to the wall with it." He looked away briefly, smiling at a pleasant thought, "I'm sure you can appreciate the beauty and artistic elegance of a 200 Gigajoule helter-skelter being dropped through their mockup landing platform, burrowing a 20-meter hole through whatever's parked there and shredding everything else on the way down.

"The problem is that we'd be left with confetti and smoke for evidence. We may be the aggressors for this, but we have to be able to show – to the alien Council's satisfaction – that this is retributive. Prove to them that this was who attacked Elysium, Mindoir, Sathur, Sirona, and probably Tiptree and others.

"At worst, we'll stop future attacks. At best, the alien Council will have to finally sic the turians against an overtly hostile government attacking colonies in Council space, or at least get ready to try to stop an interstellar war between two non-Council governments."

And about damn time, Shepard thought. He spoke up, "But we're not on the Council, and neither are the batarians. This will be another local squabble as far as they're concerned."

Another soldier asked, "Isn't Mindoir in the Traverse, sir? Sort of a free-for-all, at least as far as who claims or settles what?"

Kyle waved a hand at the map on the wall. "The exact lines change almost daily. When we founded Mindoir, it was still in Council space, and we had Council permission to settle it." He pointed to the map again. "But that's for politicians to fight over. For today, we know they're launching from here, and it's our job to make them stop."

The soldier pressed, "So if we're really lucky, their damned 'pirate ship' will be there, and we'll scuttle it, sir?"

Kyle nodded. "Right. Whatever intel DSI has, it's either being ignored by the Citadel Council, or it's finally stung the brass enough that they're moving on it; probably both. I suspect that because the Citadel's been treating this like it's our problem, an Admiral or two has decided to take the Council at their word and wipe these guys out. And not just a railgun attack at range, or even a single drill missile. They want us to completely own the base, extract whatever intel we can about who's pulling the strings, and I mean JAG-level Fair Witness evidence. Then we tear the place up." Kyle eyed Shepard curiously. "Shepard, you're the freshly-minted N7. Can you splash a capital ship in her slip?"

Shepard didn't even pause to think. "Yes, sir; I can do that." He noticed the yield estimates his omnitool VI was putting on his ARO. "Frankly, sir, if they've actually got anything the size of a destroyer in there, we could crack that moon. So we'd better be good and ready to bug the hell out when I do. Even if it's just a frigate, the only thing left will be a smoking bowl crater five kliks deep. The alien Council won't care if we bring in a JAG unit to do the analysis. So I think you called it, Major. The intent would be to get all the evidence recorded that we can, and then send a message that can't be misunderstood. We'll have the JAG-quality evidence if they want it."

# # #

On the way in, it seemed like nothing was going right.

The launch was delayed by technical problems with the two vehicles. Major Kyle consulted planners at Trident and pushed both braking maneuvers deeper into the atmosphere to make up for lost time (a launch from closer to the planet required faster deceleration.) While this gave the team almost enough time to prep for launch, it would mean less time on the ground. Five weapons turned up critical errors, the kind that made them explode instead of fire, and had to be replaced. A fuel filler jammed and the task had to be performed manually.

Redesigning their course on the fly, Tokyo launched the first, tiny LV around one side of the gas giant, and the larger one around the other as it passed.

About ten minutes from landing, the two-seat vehicle lost contact with Tokyo.

"They were using LC!" In the LV's tiny cockpit, Perling looked to Kyle. "Could the pirates have seen them coming?"

"God, I hope not; they have a smaller EMS than we do." Kyle checked sensor data being relayed to them from Tokyo. "But there's no missile trail or ME firing signature from the moon, and no other bogeys on scope."

Perling checked his sensor displays again. "Could they have used a directed energy weapon? Do they have one powerful enough? Would that even show up?" He worked controls on the LV's navigation system. "We're just entering the atmosphere for braking, sir. If you want to abort, you've got about three or four minutes to figure it out."

"They're a bunch of batarian pirates." Kyle was dismissive. "Even their government isn't going to have an R&D programme for something like that. With these single-use LVs, it wouldn't surprise me if their LC failed. We're still GO."

"You said they were being funded by the hegemony, sir. Would that give them access to SOTA research?"

"Hell, the Alliance has been researching that stuff for decades, and as far as I know, we haven't fielded a DEW yet." Kyle raised two fingers to his ear. "Team Two, Team One may be having problems; their diversion may be compromised or delayed. We are continuing the mission."

# # #

The batarian Lady Bundoo was in her quarters when the Sensor Technical begged audience. "I listen," said the base commander.

"Mighty-born, an enemy has passed this way. It was a human vessel, and it is already gone, but they think to use a pincer attack with two smaller craft. The nearer one is small enough to destroy with the new weapon."

"The energy weapon? Yes…" Envisioning the potential destruction, the mid-ranked batarian noble nodded. "Yes, that should be amusing, and it will allow us to report on its effectiveness. Also…" She paused in thought, studying the tiny fruit she held between two fingers. "Allow one of them to land safely. We will wait for what they will do."

"Which one, My Lady?"

She paused, looking at the tiny fruit she held, and squeezing it until it started to leak juice. "We will test our accuracy by destroying the smaller one."

"It shall be done, Mighty-born." The Sensor Technical bowed and backed out of the base commander's private chambers.

Bundoo consulted her own equipment. She smiled thinly at the brass-entombed enemy skull, commemorating how the Hegemon had taken full advantage of the discovery on Jartar, removing the ancient corpse of a genetically engineered starship to the safety of Khar'Shan for study. The starship had proven to be a treasure trove of advanced technologies in materials, biotech, weapons, and sensors.

Her own Mother had been one of the discoverers, and had been quick to salvage and repair some of the equipment, even demonstrating the capability of the shielding by using it to withstand direct fire from a mass effect weapon. She had been awarded a position in the nobility, and her daughter had inherited the title, even being awarded the position on Torfan to harass the cursed humans.

Research on the starship corpse continued, but their scientists had already used it to produce a Directed Energy Weapon. Bundoo Senior had argued that if it failed, using the "pirate base" as a testing location would keep the shame of any failure from blemishing the Hegemon. And though relatively small, if it proved effective, it would be easy to scale up for use in the Hegemon's capital ships.

Presently, the Lady Bundoo gifted the Operations Centre with her presence, activated the VI that would fire the weapon. On the high-powered optics, they watched as the human craft that was its target practically dissolved; only the tiniest bits of shrapnel remained.

Oh yes, she thought. This is most worthy. I shall deliver the news to the capital myself.

After I finish toying with the other attackers.

# # #

The Alliance LV's weaponised aerobraking shield fragmented as its design intended; the base's defensive shields held, but were nearly depleted. The resulting destruction provided cover for the LV to set down on the far side of a mountain peak, a little over 300 meters from an entrance to the base.

But no ballistic weapon came over the horizon.

Kyle looked up from the comm board. "Team One may be down," he said for the record. "We have no telemetry, no LC, no visual." He paused, grimacing at the display on his HUD, then clicked the official recorder off, switched to LOSI. He grabbed a pair of overhead handholds, pulling himself out of the pilot's seat and twisting over the console. He put two fingers to his ear, stepped toward the LV's starboard door. "Team Two, assume we are on our own. Tech, you're out first; I want those auto turrets disabled in ten or less. Squad One, you'll head straight for the entrance, Squad Two, you're with me going the long way around the ridge to the left."

He elbowed the door release, gripped his assault rifle with both hands. "Tech, go."

Shepard and Jordan jumped out, their boots stirring tiny clouds of dirt as they low-gee hopped across the surface. Shepard went right and forward, sniper rifle leading the way to a reasonably well-hidden perch. Jordan turned left, almost perpendicular to Shepard's path.

"Whaddya got?" asked Jordan.

Shepard's scope view was enhanced on his helmet HUD. "Nothing. Just an undefended door. No turrets, no traps, no troops." Callouts winked on the HUD as Shepard's VI suite continued to analyse the scene, identifying power and logic lines, EM emissions, and systems.

"Bad intel…really?" Kyle shook his head. "Why would they have seen a turret that isn't there? Okay everybody, eyes sharp. I need to know what we're actually facing. If DSI screwed up again, it for damn sure shouldn't be in our favor."

Now stopped, Jordan worked her right-hand omnitool. "Not seeing anything else from here, sir. But I can crack that door at range."

"Wait," said Shepard. "They've got a camera." He adjusted his scope to add in EM3. "Two cameras; the one on the right that I can see is a 360PS. They're both focused close, got the door covered well, but way too close to see us."

"If you can't overwrite the camera signals, spike 'em, don't shoot 'em," Kyle said over LOSI.

"Can do, sir," Jordan swiped and gestured at her left-hand omnitool, glanced at her right. "They're using H\14. I'll have 'em watching cartoons in a minute."

"Nothing inside that I can see on passive," Shepard continued. "No guard, no other sensors, just a dead end airlock garage."

Kyle switched to the squad channels. "All right squad, light 'em up. We're out the door."

Shepard had been continuing to glass the piles of debris between the lander and the airlock. "The stuff between us and the door looks like a garbage dump…like they're just throwing this stuff out the door." He checked his sensors, frowned, and then checked them again. "I'm not seeing any functional electronics to speak of, but I've got radioactives, and some implosives. Marking it on squad DCE."

"Got the cameras," said Jordan. "Shit, that was easy. Security from King Tut's palace."

Kyle continued to watch his battlefield display, "Shepard, are we still clear?"

1LT Shepard panned the rifle carefully from one side to the other once more. "Nothing above, no electronics I can see; the field looks clear."

"Squad One, go. Squad Two, ready cover." The four soldiers in matte black armor jumped out of the LV, racing across the debris-strewn field with weapons in hand. The second team exited behind them, taking up positions around the lander, their weapons searching for threats.

"Jordan, go with Team One, get that door working."

"On it."

It took almost five minutes for Perling's squad to cross to the airlock. A single red strobe illuminated the area regularly from its position atop a 4-meter mast.

"Team One, in position," Perling said over LOSI. "Airlock still looks clear."

"Team Two, let's go." Kyle led the way around the field's encircling ridge. "Keep your guard up."

Team One had arrived at the door, taken up positions around it, and was searching with passive systems as Shepard lit up his ASP. It was a potentially compromising move, but necessary. Using an array of sensors that operated on a variety of frequencies allowed him to "see" and evaluate hidden systems, materials, structures, and so on, to keep the team aware of what they were dealing with. Limiting the output with VI control minimized the time that his emissions would potentially reveal his location.

He performed a "burst" scan, which would look like a random static discharge to an enemy operator, and his suit's Combat VI informed him that it was analyzing the results. With a grunt of effort, he started across the littered field with his Gorgon-3 anti-materiel rifle in both hands. It was a massive weapon, large even when compacted, and right now, his pack was bristling with electronics; carrying it was easier because it balanced his load. "Analysis underway," he reported. "But the accessway to the airlock is too long. We're not going to get anything...mmh" he grunted as he pushed off a large piece of debris, "rgh...truly informative until I can get closer."

"Jordan, how's that override coming?"

"Done, sir." Shepard's counterpart had compromised the airlock controls after isolating them from the base's network and logic systems. You can't do this to an Alliance system because the power supplies vet the control systems, and vice-versa, she thought confidently.

Shepard arrived at the airlock a few minutes later. He signaled his VI to connect privately to Kyle. "Sorry, sir. Because it's effectively on the other side of this mountain range, the base proper is out of range. I'll run it again when we get inside. What little I could see had a lot of dark. It may be the composition of the moon, or the construction materials. But I can tell you there's no camera inside this airlock."

"Good. We're maybe fifty meters from your position. We own the airlock yet?"

Shepard tilted his forearm so he could see his omnitool display of Jordan's status. "Looks like another minute or two, sir. There's a ground car just inside, but I think we can all fit inside without having to move it. That'll get us all in with just one cycle."

The three-meter outer door clanked and opened, hinged at the top.

Shepard continued, "Also, I've populated their local network with ERFID identities matching our impostor idents. If they're using RFID doors or anything, they'll work for us."

"Sierra Hotel," Kyle grunted as he leapt. As Mission Commander, his comm took priority, transmitting to the whole team by default. "Team One, get in there. Save some room for us."

The open ground car had six wheels, but only seated two and some gear. It also looked like it was not of batarian design. Shepard's omnitool agreed. He stepped as far into the garage as he could. "Too many burst scans might give us away, but I don't think we're close enough for another scan to show enough to make it worth the risk," he said. "I suggest waiting until we're out of vacuum. But for now, I can tell you there is a branching corridor from this one. It's near the door that opens to the silo."

Jordan connected a cable to the control box at the inner door and started to work on it as the members of Team One stepped into the garage airlock and began re-checking their equipment. Team Two was right behind them.

While waiting, Endo checked his omnitool. "Looks like they're suckin' point nine five gees in there. You know this is batarian."

"Yeah, we were all pretty sure about that, thanks."

A medicine-certified demolitions expert named Landers wondered aloud, "So how'd they get all tough if they have wimpy gravity?"

Negaard – who had lost family to slavers – growled, "Who cares? Kill them all and let god sort them out."

Kyle's voice took over the channel, "Shepard, get in there. Scan if it's appropriate and advise. Jordan, stay with him."

"Yessir." Jordan had been squeezing her way past the other soldiers to the inner door already, gave Shepard a friendly bash to the shoulder. "Come on, you." She lit her right-hand omnitool and signaled the inner door to open once pressure was equalized, then checked her left-hand omnitool for signals from the door to the internal network that it had been opened. She squinted confidently when it remained blank.

The base was positioned on the other side of a small line of mountains; the airlock they had come in was connected to it by a long tunnel. Its intended use seemed to be for emergency exit, and the pirates there had simply taken to using it to throw garbage out. On either side of the unlit tunnel were storage compartments, apparently made from a single design that had been mass-produced and installed in long rows that made the tunnel look even longer.

Shepard had been scanning for electronics or anything of interest, but the trip down the corridor was simply tedious. "Major, there is a whole lot of nothing in this corridor. I'd recommend you start on down here, or we'll get there and be waiting five minutes for you to arrive."

"Copy. On our way."

The door was still 200 meters off when Shepard signaled for a halt. He scanned with enhanced optics, read the results, and shook his head. "This side of the door – connecting the base with an airlock – doesn't have a camera or any active security. Are they really that stupid, or are we walking into a trap?"

# # #

The Sensor Technical signaled the XO. "Mighty one, it is indeed as you said. The alien technology works as we were told. The invaders that we did not destroy have landed and entered from the dump."

"How many are there?"

"Mighty One, they are fourteen."

"Armed?"

"Mostly assault rifles and grenades. Some ordnance, but nothing unconventional."

"They must still think us privateers," the XO mused. "Send me your knowledge. Well done, my Worthy."

"Mighty One." The vidcomm clicked off.

A few seconds later, the report appeared on the XO's display. He studied it closely, issued orders to the troops, then contacted the Base Commander. "My Lady, the invaders have almost reached the inner door. Your troops stand ready to greet them with strength."

"Leave the alarms unsounded. Allow them to enter. Do not attack until they have committed entry. If they indeed enter from the sewer, that is appropriate. The Golezh is docked in the superior slip, is it not?"

"It is, my Lady."

"Then use exploding missiles, kill them all, and swiftly." The batarian base Commander stroked her favorite pet, smiled privately. "But give them two fesar before attacking…and then obliterate them. Yes…I will even give them three fesar for the sake of mercy."

# # #

Watching over Jordan's shoulder, Shepard saw the status of the door change; they now had control. He gestured for a link to Kyle. "Major, the scan from this end of the accessway is what we needed. The underground component of this base is huge. The main displacement is more than enough for two cruisers side by side. There is only one ship here now. Map compile is working, I'm relaying general layout to you." As his VI transmitted the partial map to Kyle, Shepard pulled a collapsed drone out of his T-3 battlesuit's left leg pocket, snapped it open, and tossed it inside the door with instructions to stay camouflaged, and to hunt and kill all cameras it could find.

"The bad news is that there are large areas of the base that I can't read." Shepard continued to study the 3D map as he spoke, "I'll have to use drones to scan manually. It's not poor signal, or exotic shadows, but like they're deliberately cloaked or masked somehow. I can see beyond them, but not inside them.

"And sir, I'm not getting a read on any personnel. And a ship like that should always have crew or port staff present. We might be dealing with some new stealth technology."

"Sounds like they're shielding the areas that are heavily crewed, and your tech can't read through it. What about the ship? Can we crash it?"

"Yes, sir. That's a plain-vanilla ME core just waiting to be sent critical."

"You're not getting a read on any personnel in the dock itself?"

"Negative, sir. No one but us shows up on my sensors. I've sent two AWDs in to take out any cameras."

There was a second's pause as Kyle gestured the troops into the corridor behind him. "Crap. Can you and Jordan get in there and get hunting?"

"Will do, sir." He pointed at the door ahead of them, toggled his comm to his channel with Jordan. "It looks like this lets directly into the silo, but most of the ship is below us. You gonna be able to transfer control to the rest of the team?"

"Just waiting for confirmation, sir."

"All right, do it." Shepard checked the drone's progress on his ARO, and also noticed that Jordan seemed to be moving along fairly quickly. "Follow me when you're done." He stepped quickly around the corner, flattening himself against the wall and trusting the active camouflage to blend him in with its colouring before continuing along the encircling balcony.

The interior of the base was almost bigger than anything he'd seen in an underground facility, and most of it was below him. A sleek, curvy and obviously batarian cruiser, painted to look like a red, snarling animal of some kind, stood on its tail, almost certainly suspended by its own continuously-powered mass effect field. No vehicle of that displacement could park or dock with that orientation without some kind of external supply. Bathed in spotlights, and parked on the far side of a space large enough to hold two such vessels, nearly the entire ship was visible.

Shepard looked the thing up and down. Someone is investing a lot to make this happen.

Jordan stopped at the door. "Control transferred. You want me to go left from the door?"

Shepard didn't look back as he continued around the silo. "Affirmative, go left."

They moved in opposite directions, the batarian ship reaching over three hundred meters to the floor distantly below.

Jordan was scanning as she crept along the encircling balcony, which offered only a few places to hide. Though the balcony was a simple rod-and-girder design, it had been added to and modified over time. The camouflage on her armor stayed in motion almost continuously, but it was effective. "Where the hell are these guys?"

"You better find them before we get in there," Kyle's voice said over LOSI.

Shepard continued to study the cruiser, reading from his suit's enhanced vision HUD. His ARO had switched to a low-bandwidth mode to prevent confusion, now displaying only data unique to his omnitool. "Sir, they've got a cruiser in here that matches the e-sig we have of the ship that has been attacking the colonies. But it's not a small ship with a big core for speed, it's a big ship using a relatively small core for deception. And they do have it parked on its tail.

"They have a slip for another ship of similar displacement, and it would also have to stand on end. The base itself encircles these slips, and is relatively large, and they seem to have enough power to drive the MEFGs needed to do all that. They must have powered cloaks we've never seen before. There must be a huge generator in here somewhere. I'm getting more confident that this operation is much bigger than we thought." Shepard was using his VI-enhanced scope to search for hostiles. "I hate to do it, but can you hold there while I circle around and get another sounding?"

"You've got two minutes."

Knowing it would take more time for his suit to analyse the burst scan, Shepard double-timed along the balcony, using a technique to keep his footfalls quiet, and continuing to search for signs of personnel. Doppler Infrared was still showing no personnel at all, and it was making him nervous. He only got around two thirds of the circumference before firing another burst scan. "Okay. Jordan, I can see you on that one. Do you have any bad guys on passive?"

"Negative."

"Then stay where you are. Continue glassing and scanning, call out any targets."

"Wilco."

Shepard was getting desperate. The high-intensity ASP that he'd had to invoke his N7 status to get, and trained for weeks to fully master, had utterly failed him, and the whole team was in danger because of it. As the ASP's VIs processed, he continued to work his way around the silo balcony. When he could see that he was on exactly the opposite side of the cruiser from where he had done his first scan, he stopped. "Major, you need to hold your position until I have good data. We need more intel before we go any further."

Kyle signaled the team to halt. "We're already out. You want us back in the tunnel?"

# # #

Rodzen and Gautur had their single-use seeking missile launchers trained on the two Alliance invaders.

"Hold fire. The Mighty-born has given them three fesar of life," whispered Gautur. He closed his lesser eyes in disapproval.

Rodzen peered through the scope at the human with the smaller backpack. "Mine has stopped."

Gautur followed his target briefly and then noted that the second invader had also stopped.

"There cannot be only two," Rodzen said over the radio. "Do we kill only these two scouts, or wait beyond three fesar for the main force to arrive?"

"Patience." Gautur continued to watch his target. "They may solve our dilemma for us. But when we fire, the two will run. They are under us, so track yours, do not let it run free."

They waited. Two fesar came and went. When the door to the dump opened again, more Alliance humans began to enter the base.

As they waited and watched, young Hammanusk joined them, carrying a third launcher. He whispered, "Gom Gautur, they affront us!"

"Indeed," Gautur swung his missile launcher toward the larger force. He had a clear shot, far enough from Lady Bundoo's cruiser that no damage would result. "Ter Hammanusk, train your weapon, but be very still for now. You will fire a second salvo. We will move off and continue our defence with rifles."

"If it runs left, it's dead." Rodzen carefully lifted his standard-issue assault rifle off his back and decompacted it manually so as to remain silent, set it down quietly on the plasteel balcony floor.

There were six humans on the ground-level balcony when Gautur realized that two seeking missiles might not be enough to kill them all; more were still coming through the door. "Make ready. Ter Rodzen, target the group center left of the door." Without taking his primary gaze off the humans, he was able to look to his right with his lesser eyes; Rodzen had the missile launcher fitted to his shoulder and was clearly focused on the enemy.

Gautur nodded. "Missile ready…fire."

*** Glossary ***

360PS: camera with a 360 degree view, Pan-Spectrum ranging from near infrared to near ultraviolet

Alnummed: astronomical feature with only an alphanumeric designation (e.g., "NGC6822") rather than a proper name (e.g., "Barnard's Star")

ARO: Augmented Reality Overlay

ASP: Advanced Sensor Pack; in use by the Alliance until about 2178, when omnitech became sufficiently advanced to provide the same function without the required mass, an ASP was a backpack with miniaturized active sensors like radar, lidar, mass spcectrometer, gas chromatograph, VI-optics and an enormous amount of compute to integrate, correlate, and extrapolate the data into a coherent whole.

AWD: Autonomous Weaponized Drone, in this chapter, TRW AID-31s, about 6cm across, 5-motor, VI-controlled

CFA: Catalogue, Forensics, and Analysis; Post-facto data gathering, Bayesian comparison, and interpolation to maximize information fidelity, mostly for removing bad data from a data set, but used by every unit from JAG to Medical to determine critical facts when only "secondary" facts are known

DCE: Distributed Computing Environment; VDI systems evolved into entire computing environments as data storage and active memory merged with the advent of memristors, and then with an active computing storage model using "computronium," atomic-scale computing/storage with multiple levels of redundancy

Deplumed drive: default chemical drives have a signature plume of exhaust that lights up like a beacon, making it easy to spot with optics; a "deplumed" drive's exhaust does not glow in the visible spectrum, whereas advanced deplumed drives also do not emit in the infrared.

DEW: Directed Energy Weapon, such as an X-ray laser or particle beam

DSI: Deep Space Intelligence

EM3: Electromagnetic metamaterials

EMS: Electromagnetic Signature

FTL: Faster Than Light; it technically isn't, but because it still incurs relativistic effects, it's a better use of the term than for jumping through relays, which is clearly faster than light, but transpires in subsecond times.

ERFID: Encrypted Radio Frequency Identification

H\14: A batarian wireless standard already well-understood and crackable by Alliance techs

Helter-skelter: Short-range "missile" that slows just before impact, converting most of its forward inertia into lateral spin, at which point it burrows into its target before fragmenting, hurling shrapnel perpendicular to its line of entry; unusually expensive, but not as messy as nukes

HR: Human Resources

JAG: Judge Advocate General; the Alliance version of lawyers

LC: laser comm; originally a laser-based ship-to-ship comm system, but by 2170, it used other carriers to provide redundancy; relatively short range and most effective with line of sight, but practically impossible to intercept

LOSI: Line of Sight Intersuit; a telecom protocol used by the Alliance to allow fireteams to communicate with each other over short distances without having to worry about interception; primary mode of data exchange is optical, but the fallback radio component is also scrambled

LV: Landing Vehicle

MCO: Mission Commanding Officer

ME: Mass Effect

MIRV: Multiple Independently-targeted Re-entry Vehicles

PHS: Personnel Health Services (devoted to mental health, but still part of Medical Corps rather than HR)

PVR: Polyphase Virtual Reality; a total-immersion VR technology with between two and six channels of data that stimulates multiple regions of the brain, allowing for a nearly complete reproduction of environments or experiences. Because it is a demanding, high-bandwidth technology, it became a measure of network capability, particularly among users who depend upon it; PVR games can be very addictive, particularly to the young

R&D: Research and Development

Sierra Hotel: Congratulatory phrase acknowledging exceptional work ("shit hot")

SOTA: State of the Art

VDI: Virtualised Data Infrastructure

XO: Executive Officer