* * * Ontario * * *

Shadan had not been born a biotic, but he had lost an older brother and sister to an "incident" involving an eezo-powered spacecraft. It had almost certainly affected his development, and when Conatix officials had checked on the family around the time of his eleventh birthday, they had declared him a "potential subject," pulled him from his class, and whisked him off to a facility that was by turns a school, a laboratory, and a prison.

When his biotic abilities stopped advancing, they monitored him for another three months before sending him home without further explanation.

But in the year before his delayed high school graduation, he saw a documentary exposing Conatix, and began experimenting on his own. His biotic powers began to develop again, and he found an online group that seemed to have a lot of other people like him. When Conatix returned, claiming an NDA violation, his parents declared him an emancipated minor because it was the best way to protect him: It gave him legal powers to file a civil action against them.

It prevented them from taking him to their "new, advanced facility" against his will, but it didn't stop them from tying up his life. He had to keep his powers hidden to have anything like a normal life, but no matter where he went or what job he applied for, Conatix was there (or showed up shortly after,) claiming he was a danger without their "Acclimation and Temperance Training."

His parents did what they could for him, but the government-backed corp was too powerful, and had too many lawyers to throw at them, neutralising their attempts to help.

Shadan had been living on the streets of Yalova when he first heard from Lawrence Kyle, a former Systems Alliance marine who had taken up the cause of first-wave biotics and their families.

Kyle tried to be the face of the advocacy group, but he was not a biotic himself, and this lent a legitimising air of knight errant to the man and his cause. But Shadan found himself often working with Ken Roupe, a former Alliance soldier who helped him acquire and reinstall a working amp, and learn how to use it. As the pair would drill together, Roupe also became something of a mentor to him.

But when they had boarded Ontario, Shadan had been overwhelmed with actual life-and-death combat (during which two of his fellow biotics were killed) and accidentally killed the pilot with an overpowered Throw that had also managed to knock out the navigator.

He was less upset at the blood on his hands than he was that none of them knew how to operate the Kowloon freighter, and the ship was so extensively modified that standard control procedures (which could be downloaded) provided little help.

Now we're stuck, and it's my fault.

Fang – the most technically-proficient of the group – had figured out how to deploy and connect the nonstandard PV arrays, but not how to operate the fuel generator while drifting. He wasn't even sure it was possible; the ship's VI seemed to be seriously malfunctioning.

They still had power for life support and comms. Roupe and Fang had taken to broadcasting messages that they fully expected to bring authorities in response, but that might also make more first-wave biotics and victims aware of the group.

They had planned to immerse Burns in the human cost of Conatix's wanton greed, incompetence, and mismanagement. Now they had plenty of time to do it, but were suddenly on a different timetable. Ken banishing Shadan from being in the same stateroom as Burns had been helpful, but not knowing what Shadan was up to made Ken nervous.

Worse, their boarding had been violent; Burns' bodyguard had unknowingly provoked Prawn (who was already unstable,) and the resulting fight had resulted in the deaths of Sola Heiplik and Tammy Flan, biotics who had been under Ken's direction, Jasmine Ying, the pilot/owner, and Kelvin Baudelaire, the MP's bodyguard/PA. The co-pilot/navigator Jacob had been left comatose, and Julia – a passenger working her way to another system, but who seemed to have become quite enamoured of Jacob – hysterical. Fang, who had only his BLS certification, knew enough to follow the instructions provided by the ship's VI doctor to stabilise Jacob until they could get him proper medical attention, but little else.

Julia had at first been happy to have Shadan to help, then suspicious of ulterior motives, and then glad again once he explained that he could spell her, give her a chance to sleep, he could be there in case Jacob awakened, he could get her food and water as needed, and that he was a good listener.

But Shadan still liked time on his own; when he needed to rest, he had prised open one of the lighter cargo boxes, removed its contents, and curled up inside it, using a few bags of Earth-grown cinnamon he'd found as a sort of mattress. The smell distantly reminded him of home, and the crate unofficially became his quarters. He used his omniwatch to write his name on a piece of RIPtape, and stuck it on the crate: Shadan's Crateroom.

He'd seen other crates opened and knew they were occupied, though they had grouped their selections on the other side of the forward bay ("Cargo A, port.") Shadan was perfectly happy with this, as he liked having his own space.

When the ship was boarded, Shadan had been asleep in his crate ("Cargo B, starboard.")

His omniwatch vibrated for a tenth of a second, displayed a message from Gem: we've been boarded! the police are here! what do we do? (followed by some animated emoticons that showed her youth)

there omnitools aren't on network, Prawn texted manually to stay silent, cant eavesdrop whats happening

Shadan's right hand danced across the text stars. cn U get 2 Ken? if we can hear whats happening, we can help

A map of the shadow maze appeared on his omniwatch.

Meet here, Prawn's writing swirled on at one of the intersections.

One of the deck plates creaked. Shadan froze.

He heard the boarding party talking, but couldn't hear what they were saying. He kept quiet. He had no weapon, and it wasn't until the noise had stopped that he realised he needed direction:

Ken, what do you want me to do?

# # #

Kenneth Saratoga Roupe had been born on Earth, and enlisted in the Alliance as soon as he was old enough.

He had started in Supply, switch-shifting into Maintenance as he began to discover he liked fixing things; it gave him a lot of satisfaction to put working equipment back into the hands of the front-liners; he especially liked the feeling he could help them by repairing armour, powersuits, weapons; anything not in the Motor Pool. Every time they came back safely, his sense of value in this field grew.

Until the day his team's equipment came back universally damaged or destroyed. He sprinted to the Garage proper and barged into the Staff Office, almost hysterical to know why and how the equipment had been returned if the team had not.

Lieutenant Sung was smiling, seemed amused. "The team did come back, they're the ones who brought it back. It was a hairy scary fight all right, one of the toughest I've seen, but we have biotics now!"

At first, Ken thought it was a new type of equipment. Then he found out they were people; three of them, added to the unit.

Suddenly, to Ken, biotics were magic, a treasure beyond reckoning. They were heroes, able to save lives with actual super powers.

Anything to do with biotics, Ken was there. He celebrated their victories, learned to understand their hardships, became a champion. Had it not been for Major Lawrence Kyle, he would have re-upped to keep doing it.

Major Kyle was on the last of his assignments as the Alliance pushed him to yet another post, hoping to find something productive he could do before his impending mandatory retirement; not because he was old, but because he was so badly damaged.

He was also an advocate for biotics, but not for the same reasons. Ken had been coordinating his extracurricular work with the Major, knew about the impending retirement, found himself taken into the Major's confidence about a plan to help biotics, and was Honorably Discharged two months before Major Kyle.

It hadn't taken long for Ken to notice the psychological damage that Kyle had suffered, and wanted to provide some balance to his work in support of biotics, even to the point of protecting it from Kyle himself. But the man had done so much, and could do more, and Ken knew it was important.

Their attempt to intercept Ontario, ride with the MP on his way back to Earth, talk to him face-to-face, tell him their personal stories, even to function like lobbyists, had gone from bad to worse. He and Kyle had designed a "mob takeover," thinking that the sheer number of biotics would overwhelm the freighter's crew and the MP's staff, and it wouldn't require that they overtly commandeer the freighter, only that they "outvote" the crew. Keep the pilot and crew busy, lock themselves in the cockpit.

Getting their charter to set them adrift in an escape pod had been expensive and difficult, and then boarding the freighter had cost the lives of two of his people, and two of the five people aboard, including the pilot.

Fang had tried to save them, but didn't have the resources.

# # #

Fang spent as much time as possible on the bridge, reading through DIY guides and historical instruction manuals for the old Kowloon. I should be able to do this, he thought. How hard can it be?

He knew Ken was managing the MP, and so he practically lived on the bridge, focused on getting control of it, but becoming convinced the ship was out to get him.

Long Range Passive detected a ship on approach from the port side; it was still half an hour away. He pushed himself out of the pilot's seat, shouting, "Ken, we've got an inbound! Looks like we've got maybe 30 minutes until they get here!" He dashed out of the bridge, repeating this loudly until he found Ken, but alerting everyone on the freighter.

Ken – as the senior ex-Alliance member – was as surprised as everyone else. He wasn't sure their efforts or the absence of one third-rate Earth MP would attract enough attention to rate any sort of response at all, certainly not an Alliance frigate, let alone so fast; they had only brought consumables, to allow for a month-long "mission."

He started in the aft, airlock #1, where Julia kept watch over Jacob, told them to wait there. That quadrant of the ship had been closest to the relay, and he had always hoped to forestall a forced boarding by having anyone who boarded meet the injured first.

But he was on his way forward through main cargo when he felt the thumps and jostles of a docking.

His first thought was, How do I protect the biotics?

Then, What's happening to starboard?

He realised, I can't let the MP get hurt. He turned and bolted forward again, to the stateroom, where he found the MP sitting at the small table with Paolo and Freya, just watching videos on Paolo's omnitool.

"We're about to be boarded," he interrupted, "Chairman, will you help me? Me and the biotics, we're nothing, but you're the power player here, and your actions can actually help people like these…Freya, Paolo, and Gem…"

Shadan had disappeared again, and by the time Ken got his message, the police – or whoever it was – were already aboard. Ken realised he had failed to tell them of his intent, and now they might fight and kill someone else. He didn't want to kill MP Burns; Ken was fairly confident they had changed his mind. Now they had to make sure he could get back home and change his vote on the reparations bill.

As he took the ammoblock Ken was offering, Burns was still incredulous, "You want me to do what?"

# # #

In his haste to get them docked, Joker had not lined up the floorplanes of the two vessels; the mismatch wasn't compromisingly awkward, but it required a thoughtful step when first boarding onto a deck at a thirty-degree angle. The gravity fields were at odds as well, but two steps into the airlock got that sorted.

"Mind your step," Kaidan was the first to board. With his suit's VI sensing the misaligned fields, his boots switched briefly into maglock mode. Though the airlock was only large enough for three, the next room in was clearly meant to function as a staging area for cargo transfer.

Wrex looked around at the crates and containers that littered the anteroom, and then over his shoulder. "Airlock's secure. I'm not even sure anyone's home."

Shepard's voice spoke over all their comms, "Tali, have you found a node? Can you do more with their network now that you can touch it?"

"Yes, I'm working it now. Give me a minute."

Kaidan stuck a thumb over his shoulder, "Good. Williams, Garrus: Tighten up on Liara. Everyone, make sure you have combat radar active."

Shepard was looking ahead with the aggregated combat radar data. "Coordinated doesn't show anyone close, but there's motion on the bridge and in the forward compartments."

Wrex toggled his helmet open, turned his head left to right once, sniffing quietly. He reached forward, poked Kaidan's smartpak, spoke softly. "I can smell biotics, the whole place reeks of damaged runts. I'd tell you to eat them before they reproduce, but…I think your people don't do that. Let me scout out ahead. You and the turian follow with the asari."

"You taking point again?"

The krogan turned his head enough to look over his shoulder at the human. "It's what I do. Fights are fun, but first blood is funner."

Kaidan nodded, "Keep me in sight, make for the bridge." he directed the krogan forward with a gesture. "Garrus, Liara; with me. Williams, rear guard."

"Rear guard," Ash echoed.

Tali grumped over the comms, "They're locked down pretty well for humans. But the ship VI is helping; it's…unusual. And unusually smart."

Shepard asked, "How can that affect us?"

"I don't know yet," she snapped. "I just got into the system. Give me a…oh."

"What? What is it?"

"The pilot is dead. Killed by the boarders. Jasmine Ying. She was doing…um…she had a VI that would probably be considered illegal in most of Council Space."

As they advanced, Kaidan was noticing that there were no branching passages, no doors. "Seriously?"

"Yes," Tali said, "And it…um…wants revenge. So it's feeding ship data to my mission VIs directly, and telling me how to bring the internal systems back to remote control, and how to –"

"Stop a moment." Shepard could see where the team was, and there was an infrared source nearby that was looked human-sized. He interrupted, "MDP said they boarded with nine; I only have locations on four so far, but I think number five is behind one of the crates that Kaidan just walked past. They may be hiding, so watch your backs."

"It's these damned crates," Ash said. "They probably have EM shielding, and it's doing crazy things to combat radar."

Liara, who currently had her sidearm holstered, touched her omnitool interface and reached to her left, scanning without falling out of step with Kaidan. "Yes; this one is sub-nanometer shielded; I assume most of them are as well as a way of protecting them from gamma radiation."

# # #

Jasmine Ying had bought the old freighter Ontario at auction. Jacob Hawthorn, a merchant marine with experience on Kowloon engines, had teamed up with her to buy it. The ship didn't have a mass effect FTL drive, but it did have a relay drive, and Jacob owned an SSTO vehicle they kept docked at the spine ring amidships. This effectively limited them to transporting between planets that had a mass relay within the same system, but Earth was one, and so far, most colonies were, too; it gave them more immediate access to the relays for both telecomm and travel.

What most people didn't realise was that the colonies traded with each other at least as much as with Earth. Planets of the Solar system were fairly well-developed, and good sources of raw materials. With the rarity of elements varying from one system to the next, and often from one planet to the next, shipping "rare earth" minerals between planets was a good source of pay.

And so were vanity tourists. Martin Burns, a Canadian MP (Member of Parliament,) had purchased passage with aboard Ontario before, attracted by the ship's name. Jacob, who had served three years in the Alliance Navy, had previously tried to persuade Jasmine not to use "the" before a ship's name, but only after transporting Martin Burns did the practice acquire enough significance for her that she started doing it all the time.

Because every voyage had costs, every voyage had to pay for itself somehow; charter ships like Ontario used a variety of on-demand transport apps and networks to coordinate with potential cargo and customers at their destinations while they were en route. As Ontario could be configured for 'bulk' or 'break bulk' cargo, she carried a supply of shielded containers to protect cargo that needed it.

When not in use, the crates were arranged into a "shadow maze," a configuration that had allowed Jasmine to partition off areas within pressurised cargo modules as if they were small rooms, and then rearrange them to have different rooms for different functions, or even to separate two parties in the same bay that were inclined to fight. Among other things, she had hidden the starboard airlock, and most of a meter of the starboard side of Main Cargo. Sliding one rollercrate stack effectively hid the accessway from view, and few people without the spatial intelligence to notice the lost meter of width realised the illusion was in use.

But the starboard airlock (in practice designated #2 because the portside docking had been largely standardised across Council space) had most recently been used for a shipment of perishable medical supplies and biobrick feedstock ingots (which had been kept well-distanced from an "official" from a Terminus world that Jasmine had suspected was not above trying to pocket a few.) While Jasmine thought the Terminus folks were mostly crazy, she also had found them to be good for steady pay, and had not reconfigured the maze after transporting that one between planets.

Consequently, to get from the starboard airlock to anywhere else in the ship required going all the way forward along the starboard outer bulkhead of Main Cargo. It simply hadn't been important enough with the other airlock available, and almost the only one used.

So the Normandy team found themselves herded up a narrow accessway toward the bow to a dead end; the rollercrate was still in place from before Jasmine had been killed.

"What's this?" Wrex stopped short of the "hallway" end. "A dead end?"

"No, it's a…it's called a shadow maze," Tali read from her HUD. "You might have to work at it, but the crates at the end can be moved aft; they're on low-friction sliders."

"The corridor is pointed to port at its end," Kaidan checked his combat radar, "Does that mean the ones forward, or to port?"

"Port," Tali said quickly, "the actual end of the corridor. Um…it says here that it's a sort of trick. From the inside of Main Cargo, it looks like there are crates stacked against the bulkhead. It's something smugglers used to do before there were cheap Doppler scanners. But the cameras are coming back online, wait for just a minute and I can tell you where everybody…ah!" Tali pointed into the space before her at an image only she could see on her HUD, "The cameras are back on." She flicked her wrist, flicked it again, and again. Finally, "There. Your MP is in the portside stateroom, just aft of the flight deck." As she looked up and pointed forward, Kaidan's map updated with Tali's new information.

Shepard shook his head. "I can't see it; is the ship feeding it to you directly?"

Kaidan asked, "Is the MP by himself?"

"Maybe so, um…Commander," Tali answered Shepard first. She switched to the camera view inside that stateroom. "Um…no, there's three others. They all have weapons, but…they don't seem to be threatening your MP. Yes, that's definitely the Burns official you showed us. He's the only one sitting down. Wait, they just had him stand up. One of them is taking the chair away." She inhaled loudly. "Oh, this looks bad."

Shepard agreed, "Kaidan, advance to the stateroom ASAP. You've got a hostage situation."

Kaidan slid the crates to his left; it was a surprise to see them move so easily. "Remember; if you see the MP, stay with him, be ready to put him in Stasis."

# # #

Shadan had received no reply by the time he quietly opened his crate and rolled out.

Leaving the cover out of the way, he crept across the large cargo bay to the other "crate-rooms," hoping someone had had the sense to hide in them. Only three: Fang, the team's #2, Gem, the first actual mind-reader Shadan had ever met, and Prawn, a hulking guy with jet-black hair whose real name Shadan didn't know.

The circles under Prawn's eyes verified that he had slept through the initial attack as well, though it was very probably the synthetic melatonin he'd gotten from Ken; he almost couldn't sleep without the stuff.

"Someone's aboard," Shardan whispered, pointing forward, "I think they're in there with Ken and the MP."

"They got aboard before we had a chance to prepare," Fang looked where Shadan had pointed, "If I know Ken, he'll try to negotiate, but we've got to get up there and back him."

"How can we do anything?" Prawn pointed aft to a tiny, round "porthole." "Have you seen that ship? It's huge, and fast, probably military. We try to fight them, they'll wipe the floor with us."

"We have to get to Ken before the cops do," Gem started moving toward the bridge, "At least then, we'll all be together, and Ken will know what to do."

He moved with her, but put a finger to his lips. "Wait, stay quiet," Shadan whispered, "and at least pick up something. I think they already got past us, but I might be able to capture them in a Singularity, and we can get in the MP's room and help Ken!"

As quietly as possible, Shadan crept through Main Cargo toward the bridge. Pausing to pick up a 40cm spanner, he got as far as the entrance to the forward module when he saw people down the accessway; a soldier in heavy armour was at the rear of a small group of what Shadan assumed were more soldiers.

"Movement behind us!" As if knowing he had approached, the human had already begun to turn and look. "Hey, what are you doing there?"

Shadan's eyes got huge; there was nowhere to run, nothing to duck behind.

The human started to lower the weapon that was pointing his way. "Wait, stay there. Everything's going to be all right." An asari turned and peeked out from behind the human soldier toward him.

# # #

It was the most-often repeated lesson that Shadan had heard from Ken:

"Always be willing to drop a weapon. Because you will always have a weapon. You are the weapon."

Which he promptly did: He opened his hand, letting the spanner drop to the deck with a clang-kadank. He thought, I should have gotten instructions from Ken before moving in.

But these guys might already have him locked down, he realised. No choices now. With his palms facing the attackers, he clicked his wrists together and exhaled as hard as he could, generating a Singularity and propelling it down the accessway before leaping into cover behind the bulkhead.

Shadan tumbled into a space now occupied by Gem and Prawn.

"Ken told us to hide here," Gem seemed desperate to stop the fight, "He's negotiating with them!"

Shadan yanked his arm from her hands, "Too late! Come on, we have to get past them; Ken's in the MP's room!" He pointed to the largest, heaviest tools he could see on the adjacent workbench, then looked quickly around the corner and down the accessway again.

# # #

Kaidan, farther down the accessway toward the bridge, heard the biotic flanging as the vaguely spherical blue blob crawled down the accessway toward them. "Singularity! Get behind me!"

Ash had already started to feel herself lifted from the deck, and instinctively grabbed at exposed ribs of the corridor as the rest of the team advanced forward toward the bridge. The blob slow and stop near the door on her right.

It took a moment for Kaidan to realise she was gripping the bulkhead across from the stateroom hatchway to hold herself in place. Banshee in her right hand, Ash's finger contracted impulsively on the trigger.

# # #

At the sound of gunfire, Shadan smiled at his prescience at withdrawing behind the bulkhead. "There's only three or four of them. I think."

Julia had heard the noise from forward, had run up to join the other three. "What are you doing? It felt like we docked."

"Here!" Gem extended the jemmy she'd been handed by Shadan.

Julia looked at it. "What's this for?"

"To defend yourself," Gem replied. "Somebody boarded this ship, but I haven't seen them yet." As Julia hefted the steel bar, Gem took a step away from it.

"We can do this," Shadan said. "The Singularity should hold them long enough for us to get past them to Ken, come on!"

He leaned around the corner again, expecting to see the soldiers helplessly drifting around his Singularity. Instead, one human soldier was gripping the exposed structural rib.

# # #

Ash had squeezed her weapon's trigger briefly before recalling that she shouldn't.

Her Banshee, firing a little to the relative left because of the biotic energy it had been exposed to on Eden Prime, was also reacting to the biotic energy of the attacker's Singularity. "Whiskers" of carbon metamaterial had grown out of the ammoblock and started to take root in the barrel, mostly on the left, and the result was twofold: 1) an "anti-clockwise" spin (when viewed from above) and resulting curve to the left, like a 'hook' in golf, and 2) feeding biotic energy to the Singularity, allowing it to persist for longer than it would have on its own.

All four rounds missed Shadan, blew through the crates all the way aft to the engine compartment. The first one clipped the main drive's fuel lines portside aft; the tiny amount of remaining pressure sprayed the inside of the compartment with a few millilitres of fuel still in the system; the air was blown out of the engineering compartment. With the fuel pumps off and the fuel exhausted, the slow leak of remaining fuel simply formed into beads along the line.

Kaidan called, "Chief! Lateral off the bulkhead toward me!" It was a ZG manoeuvre that would have Ash put her feet on the bulkhead and push off as hard as she could; it would probably have gotten her away from the singularity, but she would need to tuck and roll once she was out of its pseudogravity.

Ash had enough confidence in Liara's briefing to know the human-generated Singularity would not be a serious threat. She could feel the gravitational distortion pulling more strongly on parts of her body that were nearer to it. "Too late!" She tightened her grip on the exposed truss.

"Do it now! They could detonate it!"

As Kaidan spoke, the Singularity faded and shrank, disappearing with a gentle foomp.

"Or not," Ash released her grip and stood again with a smirk. "Guess this means we're not dealing with asari." Before she could shout down the accessway for their adversaries to throw down their weapons, Shepard's voice sounded over the comms.

"Liara, get a Singularity at the aft end of the corridor; they're all there!" His view of aggregated combat radar showed four people grouped at the end of the accessway.

The asari stepped past Ash, the blue glow of biotic energy radiating from her entire body; Ash took a step back and out of the way, returned her Banshee to her SmartPak, and then backed up even closer to the cockpit.

As she was doing all this, the asari had her full attention: The alien seemed to reach to both sides with her arms, as though gathering energy, and then appearing to hurl something aft down the accessway. The blue nimbus focused between her shoulders and then to move rapidly along her arms like a high-voltage travelling arc, forming into a beach-ball-sized sphere of blue that moved at the same apparent speed, sliding down the accessway.

Liara pulled her arms back toward herself, and the blue blob stopped in place, undulating for half a second before she pulled her left hand back, and pushed her right hand forward, turning her right hand up, and closed her fingers into a fist; in response, the blob contracted almost down to a single point of light, and then explode back into a white-blue translucent sphere about two meters across.

Several yelps of surprise came from the people caught within its reach as they were lifted off the deck. Ash could see flailing arms and legs.

Shepard wasted no time. "Williams, take Wrex and Liara aft; I want you to secure those guys as they fall out of the Singularity. Alenko, you've still got an active hostage situation; get in that stateroom safely. Garrus, you're with him. Tali, get to the bridge and assume control of the ship."

"They're not moving," Tali said. "It looks like they're just waiting for you."

Kaidan activated the control with the butt of his pistol; the door opened and he found himself aiming into the room at a man kneeling on the floor with his hands behind his head: MP Martin Burns.

Another man held a shotgun to Burns' head from behind. "See how it is? You write letters, and everyone ignores you. Force is the only thing people appreciate. So how about I kill Chairman Burns and finish this…charade?"

Burns: "Please! I was trying to help you people!"

"Okay, negative on Stasis while the MP has a weapon pressed against his head," Shepard held his finger in the PTT key holo. "Kaidan, hold your current position, give me three seconds, and telepresence me in there."

Kaidan holstered his pistol and adjusted his omnitool. "Alright, weapons slung." Garrus returned his assault rifle to his SmartPak; a full-size holograph of Shepard, standing and facing the MP and his attacker, was projected by Kaidan's omnitool. Shepard's ARO presented Kaidan's forward camera view.

Shepard held his palms toward the man. "I'm Commander Stephen Shepard, commanding the Earth Alliance SR-1 Normandy. Let's not do anything we're all going to regret."

"Why not?" The dark-haired man stood from the table and took a step forward. "What have we got to lose? Since the Chairman here decided that we don't get reparations, we've got no control thing left to live for."

Burns didn't move his head, but his eyes looked to the right. "But I've changed my mind! Seeing you all, hearing your stories, it's clear that you all deserve…"

The man with the shotgun interrupted, "You had your chance. Some L2s are nearly crippled from side effects of the exposures, but you voted against reparations, or even laws to protect us from Conatix. We can't even bring actions against them because we're all considered freaks and wards of the state."

Shepard looked briefly at Burns, then up at the man that DisplaiD had identified as former Alliance Ken Roupe. "Think about this. Burns is the one man who can help you."

Burns nodded anxiously, "Yes! If you release me, I can bring the matter up for review, have the committee reconsider the matter. I'll even vote for it myself!"

"What, we're supposed to trust you?"

Kaidan put his free hand to his torso, generated a barrier that engulfed him in the blue-purple glow. "I'm an L2, like you. Trust me. The Commander will make sure Burns follows through."

The girl at the table shrugged. "Sure. You promise us freedom, and say everything will be fine. I haven't even held a gun. But as soon as we surrender, you'll double-cross us."

"I'm not promising to let you go, all I'm saying is I'll remind the MP to be true to his word. Right, Chairman?"

Burns turned his head a little to the left, "Absolutely. I had no idea the L2s were so desperate, or why. If I had known…" He sighed. "The reparations will come. For whatever it's worth, I promise you that."

There was a long, uncomfortable silence as Ken considered that Burns knew Ken was not himself a biotic, and breathed a sigh of relief. Now he could surrender. "You're right. I don't want to die. Maybe something will happen this time. We surrender." He raised his omniwatch to his mouth. "Okay, everybody, this is Ken. The Chairman is going to sponsor the bill into committee; we got what we wanted. We may to have to do some time, but we're done here." He passed his shotgun to his right hand so he could hold it by its muzzle and extend it toward Kaidan.

Kaidan nodded toward Ken as he took it. "You're doing the right thing."

Ken pointed aft. "There's an injured guy – Jacob – in the aft compartment; his girlfriend's with him, she's kind of…got issues. Will you make sure he gets proper medical attention?"

"Of course," Kaidan said.

"Ash, they've got injured in the aft compartment," Shepard said over the comm.

"On it," she answered.

# # #

Gladstone still had his left hand to his ear as he looked across the CIC walkway; the CO was standing at one of the centre consoles, starboard. "Commander? Nepneu base says they've got a tug on the way out to us, it'll be here in a couple of hours, and they'll be able to rig for towing. They've been informed of the skipper's death, so they're calling in an investigation team.

"But Trident says the Kodiak will be here in under an hour. They want to evac the MP."

Shepard selected controls. "Alenko, Trident has an FTL shuttle on the way. When you're able, return with Burns."

"We've got a damage situation here with the ship," Kaidan replied after a pause. "Tali is going outside to try to patch it, but we're going to be another hour getting this all done."

"Sounds like you'll have enough time to get the team on it and get it under control before the tug arrives."

"Can I send him back with Liara?"

Shepard checked a display on the console. "You've got about seventy-three minutes, but I want Burns aboard Normandy before that Kodiak gets here."

"Will do, sir."

# # #

"Regardless of the fact that they had held him at gunpoint, the MP could not be persuaded by me to press charges," Shepard dictated to the mission debriefer. "Not only that, he refused to board the Kodiak without at least one of the biotics accompanying him to Earth. He didn't understand why they couldn't all travel together, and since they were all citizens of Earth or of various Earth governments, I was already mostly inclined to agree.

"But the ship's ERDs showed that one of the biotics was directly responsible for the death and injury of Ontario's two crew. We don't have camera data on who killed the MP's bodyguard or the other two biotics who had attempted to take over the freighter, but a former Alliance member of this group – a fellow named Ken Roupe – kept trying to take responsibility for the actions of this guy.

"On the one hand, I'm impressed: The man isn't a biotic himself, and he's still doing his level best to have the worst of this fall his way. On the other, the culpable biotic seems to need some help; I don't understand the dedication on the part of former NCO Roupe, but the pilot of the Kodiak said you were in her COC, and you expected this – which explains why she got out here so fast – and she's going to Arcturus first, so your office will have to sort it out.

"Oh, there's another thing: One of our contractors found the recordings of the boarding. She's working on them now, so I don't know exactly what you'll find. But I've persuaded the MP to take the most harmless of the biotics that I and my own biotics could agree upon.

"I appreciate you having your office handle a lot of the paperwork on this, sir, but I suspect it's because you are wanting me to get to Major Kyle ASAP. The freighter was slightly damaged during our sortie, but one of my contractors effected repairs before the tug from Nepneu Station arrived.

"Personally, I don't envy that Navigator when he wakes up and finds out his pilot is dead." He shook his head. "Still, I can't get bogged down in the details; there's too much to do."

* * * Glossary * * *

ASAP: As Soon As Possible

BLS: Basic Life Support certification offered by the American Red Cross; training on how to operate AEDs, and how to manually provide CPR and direct bystanders to summon First Responders

"Bulk" versus "Break Bulk" cargo:
"Bulk" cargo is usually a raw material or resource substance, such as liquids, ores, grains, or occasionally gases. Coal or crude petrochemicals, for example, used to be loaded from a hopper or tank directly into the hold of a freighter or tanker. "Bulk" cargo usually doesn't have its own container; often dispensed from the shipper directly into one of the section or half-section cargo holds, or supplied in its own "mate-ready" (ready-to-attach) cargo module. Ontario had been bought with three modules, but could accommodate up to six (three on the same side of the ship's "spine" that allow direct access from the cockpit and "main pressure" areas fore and aft, and three that were either unpressurised, or had their own environment provisions.
"Break bulk" cargo has been individualised, often in the form of protective packing or containers for easier stockkeeping. It includes such things as finished products (everything from live animals to individual gemstones to engine parts to fruits,) packaged for sale, crated, drummed, strapped, bagged, or palletised, or even complete but large items like skycars, cryocontainers with their equipment, or components that were more cost-effective to manufacture in one place and then ship offworld.

COC: Chain of Command

DIY: Do It Yourself

Eezo: "element zero," the magical spaaaacce technology of the Mass Effect universe; its properties, when electrified, seem to include the ability to reduce the effective mass of an object for the purposes of acceleration. How this helps with brushing teeth is probably more plot device and in-joke than realistic application for such a technology, if you ask me. Which you didn't. So there. :-P

EM: Electromagnetic

FTL: Faster Than Light; even though only relay travel is actually faster than light, eezo-powered spacecraft are so fast in comparison to mere chemical rockets that they can seem to be faster than light; it doesn't hurt that there are measurable and detectable relativistic effects

HUD: Heads-Up Display

MDP: Mission Data Packet

MP: Member of Parliament

NCO: Non-Commissioned Officer

NDA: Non-Disclosure Agreement, a confidentiality agreement protecting one party's secrets when they are provisionally made known to a second; it restricts the release of this information by the second party

PA: Personal Assistant

Re-up (re-upping, re-upped): to enlist for military service again, though the term is also applied to officers

SSTO: Single-Stage-To-Orbit

"whiskering": A phenomenon which occurs in electrical devices when metals form long whisker-like projections over time. "Tin whiskers" were noticed and documented in the "vacuum tube" era of electronics early in Earth's 20th century in equipment that used pure, or almost pure, tin solder in their production, but most metals will "whisker" in the persistent presence of charged eezo (such as a biotic-capable soldier, or a highly charged biotic field.)

VI: Virtual Intelligence, task-specific ("narrow") AI

ZG: Zero Gee; microgravity or no gravity