The shuttle gave a particularly harsh lurch at the turbulence, and Tali reached up to one of the handles on the ceiling to steady her body.

She took a deep breath so that she might steady her mind as well.

Even with many successful missions under her belt, she never could face the prospect of combat without at least a little trepidation.

John always could, she thought.

Just as she had said to Vaelar, the first thing she had noticed about him was how calm he seemed. And while she learned later that the broader implications of their mission weighed heavily upon his mind, combat itself could never touch him.

He'd throw himself into every firefight the same, efficient and focused, but as it would go on he would seem to lose himself in the fray, almost enjoying it, occasionally giving a laugh or a whooping holler when he or anyone else would land a particularly impressive shot.

And while he said later he regretted taking any pleasure from something so serious, he could not deny how fully he was consumed by the chaos of battle. Felt almost at home in the fight, he had said.

She gave a brief shake of her head as she realized she was reminiscing.

I might have made the choice not to forget what was, but I have the here and now to occupy me right now.

She chided herself, before drawing herself up and moving to examine her equipment for the…fifth time that day?

She could not recall, but it could never hurt to do it again.

Bringing her shotgun up, she inspected the elegant metal surface and ran her checks. Testing the electronics of the trigger and optics group and finding them in working order, she popped open the breach to ensure the ammo block was still present, and that there were no jams.

It would have been pretty difficult to forget something as simple as putting in a thermal clip, but she examined the exhaust port all the same.

Satisfied that her beloved buckshot-spitter was in good shape, she looked over the rest.

Bandolier over the shoulder with yet more thermal clips and a few concussive grenades, light pistol at her right hip in a black leather holster, kinetic barrier generator running at the small of her back. All seemed to be there.

Just to be sure, she asked Lieutenant Vaelar, standing just behind her.

"Vaelar, would you test my barriers for me again?"

"Sure, Tali." He said, bringing up his omni-tool and running the testing procedure whereby the device's internal fabricator would forge a microscopically small particle to be flung at a subject, to simulate the shot of a bullet.

Her barriers held, and crackled brightly in response to the stimulus.

"Thank you." She said simply, and he gave a small nod in response.

The pilot's voice sounded overhead, informing them that they would be touching down in two minutes.

She considered addressing the marines, to ensure that none had any questions about the mission, but she stopped herself. It was as Vaelar had told her. His team were the best the flotilla had to offer. They would not forget the briefing, especially not when they had so few details to remember.

It was a simple rescue mission for a young quarian on pilgrimage, Veetor, from a human colony that had gone dark. Preliminary scans showed that there were no heat signatures indicating any of its inhabitants remained, only some security mechs.

They didn't anticipate any real trouble, as her and her squad were merely chosen for this mission by being closest to it at the time. But still, a whole colony disappearing did not exactly inspire confidence about one's safety in being there.

And while Tali was as curious as the rest of them about what had happened on the planet, she tried her best to curtail it. They had one task, and she would not allow her curiosity to get her or anyone else on her team hurt.

She almost thought back to a human saying John had told her once about the dangers of curiosity, but she restrained herself, now hardened in her focus on the mission.

It was with another brief lurch that the small craft set itself down on the surface of the planet, and the heavy bay door opened a moment later with a slight metallic groan, though it was much quieter than most quarian craft, being much newer and less makeshift in accordance with the elite status of Vaelar's team.

Taking point and half-raising her shotgun, she stepped down the ramp and set foot on the colony of Freedom's Progress.

She cast her eyes around the darkness, crouching down to cover the landing zone as the rest of the marines followed her out.

Eerily quiet, she thought to herself.

Her ship had set them down just outside a small settlement, and while it could only have been home to a few hundred people, could never have held anywhere near the hundreds of thousands of humans that had lived on the planet, the expectation for some sort of sound to come from it was there, and for it not to be met was disheartening.

Glancing behind her and seeing that everyone had joined her, she stood and turned to face them.

"Alright, everyone. Let's get moving. Remember, we're here for Veetor. Nothing else." She said authoritatively.

They moved out, settling into formation quickly as they proceeded toward a breach in the low outer wall to enter the settlement.

In spite of the lack of any inhabitants, the power grid still seemed to be operational, as there were a few large lampposts still lighting up the clutter of prefab buildings which made up the town. She was grateful for them. They had arrived at night, and the lights improved visibility significantly.

She had never worked with Vaelar and his marines before now, but she could see from where they had garnered their reputation. As they made their way through the streets, they operated as a single unit, each one seeming fully aware of the others' positions and sightlines, so that there were no blind spots, no avenue left uncovered.

Many soldiers would have grown impatient and undisciplined in the absence of any immediate threat, but in spite of the eerie stillness and complete lack of danger, they remained as ready to respond as if they were onboard a geth station.

It reminded her a lot of her time fighting with the Normandy crew, only now, it was her at the head of the wedge, guiding their movements through the winding streets of the small settlement.

As she led them into a large, open plaza, Vaelar spoke off to her right.

"Eyes peeled. No cover out here." He said lowly, most of the men grunting or nodding in response.

They proceeded into the middle of the plaza, now at their most vulnerable.

Something in Tali tensed up then, the sixth sense she had acquired over many missions sounding off in response to some odd hint she could not consciously describe.

Turning to her right, that intuition was proven sound as a battered old door on the far end of the plaza creaked open and a large group of LOKI security mechs came marching out in lockstep, weapons already raised and faceplates shifting as they acknowledged hostile targets.

"Contacts, right side!" she yelled, crouching to one knee and quickly sending out a burst of code to override the friend-foe recognition on one of the mechs, causing it to begin dumping rounds into its fellows' backs.

Her men responded instantly to her callout, dropping to their knees and forming a firing line, proving again their unit cohesion as each chose their own targets, no two shots striking the same mech.

Though the bright blue flash of kinetic barrier impacts flashed from several of the marines during the fight, the clunky mechs were simply no match for the elite team, and they were reduced to a sparking pile of metal and electrics in hardly any time at all.

Yeah, those are LOKI mechs, she thought to herself, a little amused.

The cheap robots had never been overly effective in combat, in her opinion and by general reputation, mostly only useful as cannon fodder or in very large numbers. She wondered why they were so popular for companies and governments to purchase.

A series of light pops sounded from the marines' weapons as they ejected and replaced their thermal clips almost in unison.

One of them, a tall, lanky sergeant named Keenar, spoke up.

"Any idea why these mechs attacked us, Specialist Zorah? I know we're not humans, but aren't we close enough for them not to shoot us?" he asked, nudging the remains of one with his foot.

"I don't think not being human has anything to do with it, sergeant. These mechs are usually programmed not to shoot a member of any sapient race if they're not on high alert or directly provoked. It could've been a programming defect if it was just one, but for this many…No, they were hacked. I'm sure of it." She replied, kneeling to examine one with her omni-tool to get any sense of the kind of hack which had taken place.

"But who would hack these mechs? Could it be the ones that did away with all the humans?" asked another.

"I don't think so. I recognize the type of hack that was done here. Same type I was taught to use on this kind of mech." She told him.

"Hmm…so you think the kid did this?" Vaelar asked to her left, rifle held at his shoulder.

"Most likely. Maybe Veetor did it to protect himself from whatever abducted the humans here?" She replied.

"Yeah. Sounds like him. Met him once or twice before. Seemed jumpy, scared of his own shadow. Everyone said he had a talent for programming, too." He recalled.

She rose from her kneeling position and pointed to the far side where they had been heading before the attack.

"Let's keep moving. And I know these mechs were no true threat, but stay alert. There may be others that are." She announced, before setting off again with her men behind her.

They made their way through the rest of the compound in similar fashion, encountering many lower-level threats, including waves of LOKI mechs as well as some more agile rocket drones. And though her team proved themselves exceedingly adept at neutralizing these threats, the mission had not left them entirely unscathed.

One man had taken a round in the torso, and though it seemed the suit had sealed off the pierced section well, he was swimming in antibiotics and stimulants just in case. Another had sprained his ankle after the force of a rocket had knocked him a few feet into the air and he had landed on it poorly.

But a man with a sprained ankle or a hole in his abdomen was better than a dead man, she thought.

They were getting close to the sole life signature the atmospheric scan had picked up, the signature they hoped was Veetor. Approaching a wide gate, Tali set herself up near the control panel while the marines formed up around it, prepared for whatever might be on the other side.

She pressed the button, revealing yet another open plaza with a small security station at the far end. This one had more cover than the last, but not a lot.

"I don't like this. Everyone, take positions at whatever cover you can find. The lieutenant and I will go to the security station." She ordered.

The men silently moved off to crouch behind crates and lampposts and power nodes, rifles raised.

She and Vaelar set off toward the security station where they thought Veetor was hiding, stepping carefully and quietly across the rocky ground.

A soft dread hung in the air, and all seemed to feel it, fearing what might come next, thinking that the clunky LOKI mechs and handful of light drones they had fought seemed almost too easy, too little for the eerie stillness of the night to throw at them.

As it turned out, they were right.

Off to Tali's left and around a small bend, a massive bay door slid open with an ominous metallic groan and spat out a few more LOKI mechs and rocket drones, as well as a towering, hulking titan of metal and ballistic polymer.

A YMIR model mech, renowned and feared for its effectiveness and its durability both.

And she was standing in an open plaza.

Beside her, Vaelar reacted instantly, pressing the button of a small infra-smoke charge at his grenade belt and tossing it in front of them to screen their escape.

"Run!" he yelled, already taking off toward the meager cover at the plaza's entrance, Tali right beside him, overtaking him just a little.

Though a large explosion sounded off behind them, it seemed the smokescreen had done its job, and the only thing she felt of it was a bit of heat at her back.

The mechs had already rounded the small bend, and the marines had begun unloading a torrent of fire onto the small army of security robots by the time she reached a stout crate, vaulting over it and ducking her head down just in time as a bullet whizzed over it.

She peaked up over the crate to get a sense of what was happening. Though the light drones and LOKI mechs were falling with predictable ease, the heavy mech easily shrugged off her team's fire. From the blue flashes she could barely make out amidst the chaos, they had not even pierced its barriers yet.

It had been unloading heavy machine gun fire into their cover to start, but, apparently sensing the ineffectiveness of this approach, it set itself into a wide stance and readied a missile to fire at the two marines at the far side of their line.

She screamed a word of warning, but above the fire it seemed the men could not hear her.

A streak of bright orange arced across the dimly lit plaza, glowing almost beautifully, before it came to collide with the heavy group of crates they were hiding behind it, and it seemed for a moment that daylight had returned to the town for how brightly it exploded.

Once the smoke and the fire cleared, she could see one of the marines staggering to his feet while the other lay still, his visor an awful spiderweb of cracks around a central gaping hole, shrapnel having torn straight through it like it was not there at all.

Fear and rage filled her to see it, and she brought up her shotgun above her crate to spit a wave of buckshot at a pair of light drones that had hovered too closely to her, the little things exploding as they fell to rubble on the rocks below.

Vaelar came sprinting over to her cover, loosing a few shots from his rifle before ducking down to face her, yelling.

"Tali! You're the tech expert! Any ideas on how to deal with the big one?"

Her mind whirled at the chaos of the fight and at the fact that she didn't, really, have any good ideas on how to deal with 'the big one.' The mechs were built for durability. Their thick armor plating and shielding prevented any hacking attempts from afar, so heavy ordinance was usually required to put them down. Ordinance they just didn't have. The few explosives they did have were mostly light fragmentation or concussive grenades with nowhere near the blast yield required to do any real damage to the hulking behemoth.

Her eyes had fallen from his as she considered the possibilities, before the purple sparkle of her ring, now smudged with dirt, caught her eye.

What would John do?, she asked herself. He always had a plan. Probably something gallant and stupid that would somehow work, she answered herself wryly.

And then she had an idea. Gallant and stupid was the only way out of this. She had to be like him, no matter what it meant for her, personally.

"Yes, I have a plan. Give me your grenade belt." She ordered, voice now steely as she realized what she had to do.

He complied, unbuckling it from its place at his waist and placing into her hand, but his head was tilted in a question.

"What do you need it for?" he asked.

"Order all your men over to the other side of the plaza. I'll stay here. You draw its fire and I'll flank it, get close enough to detonate this under its shields, close to a weak point." She explained frantically, voice shaking in spite of her resolve.

He popped above his cover to fire another volley, before descending and extending his hand, twitching his fingers a bit in urging.

"Seems like our best bet. But I'll be the one to do it." He said.

She peaked up to let loose a few shots from her own weapon before coming back down, shaking her head emphatically.

"I'm faster than you! It should be me!" she cried.

"Maybe so, but I'm still-" he began.

"I have to do this!" she tried again.

"Tali, just let me-"

"That is an order, lieutenant!" she yelled.

He seemed a little shocked at her invocation of her authority and at the steel in her voice, but he recovered quickly, giving her a quick nod before reaching a hand out to grip her shoulder.

"Quite a thing you're doing, kid. Give 'em hell." He said, with an air of respect…and of resignation.

Resignation to what they both knew such a move would likely mean.

And with that, he dashed off to his right, sending off a wild burst of fire as he ran, leaving her alone.

Since her plan hinged upon her remaining undetected, she did not move to contribute any more to the firefight, slumping tiredly against her crate as the reality of what she had decided to do really sunk in.

She was going to die.

Even if the mech did not kill her on approach, the blaze of glory her grenades were going to kick up surely would.

Bile rose in her throat as it truly sunk in; her heart quickened, thumping almost painfully in her chest, and a cold sweat beaded on her brow.

She felt sick in a dozen different ways.

Despite having faced harrowing combat situations before, against enemies greater even than this towering robot, death had never seemed so near, so certain, as it did now. Only once before had she ever been so afraid.

But then her eyes fell once more on the ring at her finger, the mesmerizing gemstone at its center calming her and the words inscribed within it filling her with resolve.

She had to do this. She would not falter. This was what John would have done.

I'll make you proud, she thought to herself with a sad little smile.

And though she wasn't really sure what she thought about whether an afterlife was real or not, part of her held out a little hope that, if the universe was kind, they would see each other again.

Peeking to the right side of her cover, she looked first from where the mechs came, finding that all of the YMIR's comrades had been reduced to sparking wrecks, leaving only it for them to focus upon.

Her gaze then panned over a bit to a large wall at one end of the plaza behind which the rest of her squad seemed to have retreated. It was currently being peppered by the titan's heavy machine gun fire, but seemed to be holding for now.

Now or never, she thought to herself, raising herself to a crouch, taking one last deep breath to still her racing heart before she broke from cover in a dead sprint toward the back of the mech, her spry legs using every ounce of power they had to propel herself toward her goal.

At the last second, the mech seemed to notice her presence there, but by then it was too late.

Bunching up her muscles, she gave a last leap upward, hands grabbing onto the gap between two armor plates to heave herself up until she reached the upper section of its back plate and sighting her target.

It had its exhaust coil stuck out of its armor in order to vent excess heat into the air. She knew destroying it would not only ensure it would cease functioning in the long run by overheating, but that the release of that much heat would likely warp its electronics enough for her team to kill it.

Unbuckling the grenade belt as well as her own bandolier from where they hung over her shoulders, she flung them up to wrap around the coil, then reached up to press at the activator of one of the small metal devices.

She let out the breath she had been holding to see the telltale red flash beneath her finger.

Knowing she had no time to run away, she just hung there from its back, closing her eyes in resignation.

The mech had staggered around a little as it felt her clinging to its back, before finally flinging its hulking form in a wide arc, dislodging her from where she hung.

The jerky movement sent Tali flying a few feet away, and her head struck the stone roughly, disorienting her.

Her whole world was set spinning by the blow as she looked dimly up at the mech, just as the explosives on its back exploded in a brilliant plume of blue and orange, shrouding the titan for a moment in light and smoke and putting an awful ringing in her ears.

But then it cleared, revealing that the mech, though moving more sluggishly than it had before and with a large chunk torn out of its back, was still very much operational.

Her vision was blurry and indistinct, but even despite this she could see the behemoth staggering towards her, raising its left leg high to crush her into the ground.

But while she might normally have despaired over such a thing, now she felt only a quiet peace. She did not scream, or raise an arm in defense. She had done her best. She had done what she had to.

She drew in and let out one last breath, just as she welcomed one last thought into her mind.

I'm coming, John.

But it was not to be. Just as the titan was about to bring its leg down on top of her, a supernova of blue energy collided with its center and knocked it back from where she lay, momentarily blinding her as she weakly brought up a hand to shield her eyes.

Exhaustion tugged at her eyelids and the edges of her mind, but even so she took a moment to dwell on how strange it was.

Biotics? But my squad has no biotics…

Part of her knew that this was significant, but she could not bring herself to focus on it long.

Her ability to think left her, just as her vision dimmed, and she slipped into unconsciousness without a struggle.