Interstitium 2

by AssaultSloth

MORE flashbacks, interstitial scenes, and backdoor dealings. An AU retelling of ME3 focusing on characters and worlds, big and small.

4. Chapter 4, Echelon, the Batarians

Echelon – the Batarians

---

–

Orlash had not been a slave since he was six years old, but now he found himself saying slave words and thinking slave thoughts.

He knew that most of the cloud of satellites that orbited Khar'shan were decoys, meant to trick distant observers into thinking the planet was more populous than it was. He knew that when the spaceport controllers welcomed them to 'Tunghusk, Grand Capital of the Hegemony, Land of the Golden Tundra, Hallowed Mortal Territory of Gansai's Warspirit, and Immortal Dwelling of the Deathless Army', they really meant 'Tunghusk, Grand Capital of the Hegemony, Land of the Gray and Mostly-Lifeless Tundra, Territory of the Spirit of Loudly Articulated Batarian Vanity, and Immortal Dwelling of the Innumerable Dead Among the Unimportant Lower Castes'. He knew that the Grand Families that claimed leadership of the Hegemony had only existed for a few hundred years, not 'eons beyond counting', that the 'fields beyond dimension of Khar'shish wodtgrass' actually only extended a few kilometers beyond the city limits and were more than half occupied now by alien crops from Earth or Sur'Kesh, and that the 'Most Ancient and Grandiose Fortress of Prince Shilik'ash, He Whose Foundation Extends To the Planet's Core' had in fact been built atop the remains of a temple which had collapsed in a groundquake during Orlash's own lifetime.

He knew all this, and yet as he stepped out of the Cosharc into the frosted hangar within which he had landed it and saw that one of its walls was painted with the jagged sigil of the Goalett Family, it took all of his willpower not to fall down and grovel before it.

The humans paid it no such reverence. "We'll keep the charges loaded for now," the human called Solheim was saying, directing the others as they hurriedly unloaded the equipment from the forward shipping container. Between them, the eight of them carried a veritable armory – a sleek white assault rifle for each of them to match their hardsuits, and a heavy weapon on every back but Solheim's. Orlash himself carried one of their portable turrets and enough grenades to threaten a mudcrawler tank. "Until we have a better idea where they're needed, we're better off on foot."

The hangar was little more than a cave in the side of a rocky cliff, open on one side to the wind and snow, and small and inconvenient enough to only be fit for use by servants. Nonetheless, it was one of many servicing Prince Shilik'ash's fortress, and as such it had been decorated in rich style, with great red olbull-wool tapestries hung over each wall and loading ramps paved in polished stone. Still, all of its trappings could not disguise an underlying bleakness. Wind howled against the open wall and sleet pooled on the stone floors.

Orlash swallowed his reservations and did his best to appear like he knew what he was doing. He followed the Solheim human's instructions, splitting up a case of medigel packs between each human. The last few were for the Leng human, the brooding one who had shown the others such disdain. Leng had already separated himself from the rest of the group, and was tending to his own counsel at the far end of the hangar.

Orlash approached, medigel in hand.

He froze at the sight of the dead batarian sprawled at Leng's feet.

Leng fixed Orlash with a cool look as he stooped to wipe his blade on the slain guard's uniform. He said nothing.

"M-medigel. Sir," Orlash managed, and thrust the supplies out to the human. He could not help but stare at the body. By the sigils on the breast of his armored coat, the guard had been a minor member of the prince's Goalett family – de facto royalty on Khar'shan – and the bloody outrage that his death would summon was stunning for Orlash to even comprehend. When they found out what had happened to him, the Goaletts would see that every drop of the guard's blood was diluted in a drum of their enemies'.

Orlash felt the bile rising in his forestomach.

"Keep it down, kid," Massani said, voice warning as he came up from behind.

"There will be others," the Leng human said to the others, sheathing his blade in his gauntlet. "Wait here."

Orlash couldn't keep it down anymore. He vomited into his helmet, staggering away from the corpse.

"Jesus, friend," the human Candace said, laughing and stepping away from the mess. "A bit queasy today, eh?"

Orlash steadied himself against the wall, coughing and resisting the urge to throw his helmet off. He felt a hand on his back.

"Hey. Glancing," Shepard said.

That was him. Terrance Glancing. He had to remember that. He was Terrance Glancing, a human working for some asshole human gang who called themselves Serbaris. Not Orlash. Not a slave.

"Come help me with something on the ship," Shepard said.

When they were safely inside the ship, Shepard helped him pull his helmet off. "I'm sorry," Orlash said, wiping his mouth on one hand. "I… I c-can't."

"You can, Orlash," Shepard said, voice quiet. He shook the worst of the mess out of Orlash's helmet, along with a tiny piece of polymer paper that had been attached to the inside rim and read 'The Batty Fleet is made up of garbage scows'. Shepard crumpled it up and tossed it aside. "You have to. It will be hard, but you will get through it." He handed the helmet back.

"Because of the Reapers," Orlash finished for him. His mouth burned with the taste of vomit as he looked at the human. "Why?" he asked. "Why must we come here? You tell me you do not wish for batarian deaths, but you let them happen. You let these killers come here."

"Because we need to know what Cerberus is after, why they'd commit so many resources to this. I need to know what their next move is, Orlash, or I can't stop the one after that."

Orlash frowned at him. "I want to trust you, human." And oddly enough, he did. Orlash had come to the Normandy thinking little enough of humans. He had heard of Commander Shepard, who had so famously shamed a fleet of batarian pirates on Elysium. That these had been only casteless brigands, contemptuous to batarians within and without the Hegemony, mattered very little – they had still been batarians, and their disgrace was a stone around the neck of the entire species. Shepard had become a pseudo mythological figure among the batarians – simultaneously a pitiful impotent worthy of scorn and a dire threat to every batarian on every world. Orlash had half expected Shepard to be three meters tall, with eyes that glowed like burning coals and blood like molten iron.

But though his eyes did glow, he had only two of them, and he was only a slouch taller than Orlash, and if his blood was molten iron, it at least did not burn when he'd shaken Orlash's hand.

He was… not that bad. And yet he had refused to let Orlash destroy the Blue Suns' mining charges, and had come here to Khar'shan with a gun in hand. "I want to trust you," Orlash repeated. "But you say Reapers, now you say Cerberus. You say worse will come later if I don't help you. But these humans you have brought here mean to do terrible things now."

"I won't let that happen," Shepard said. He fumbled under one of his armor plates. "Here. Take this." He held out a small object. "Keep it hidden and safe. It's the only one."

"What is it?"

"It's the detonator for the charges. I want you to hold onto it."

Orlash peered at the little metal object in his hands. A pair of buttons, protected beneath a hinged case small enough to fit into his palm. Only a faint pulsing diode on the side gave any hint as to the immense power at its command.

"I am not here to kill batarians," Shepard repeated. "You have to trust me."

Orlash nodded. "I will… try."

–

Outside, the Leng human had already disappeared. Orlash rejoined the others at the hangar door, helmet back in place and Shepard's detonator – and the power to wipe away half of Tunghusk with the press of a button – safely tucked into his softsuit. Snowdrifts lay in piles waist deep, and the sky was crystal clear but as pale and frozen as the ground.

They marched out with Solheim at the lead, following the trail Leng had left in the snow.

Ahead loomed the sharply-pointed mountain to which the humans' coordinates had led them. The mountain overlooked Tunghusk city and the flat plains of farmland and landing strips and vast undeveloped Hegemony lands, and served as an imposing rear wall for Shilik'ash's fortress. It jutted out of the horizon, its unusual symmetry and ugliness betraying the presence of elaborate battlements built into its side, and its cap bristling with watch towers and gun emplacements crusted with white. A stinging wind whipped against the mountain's sides.

Three hundred meters up they came to a tunnel entrance that burrowed into the mountain's side to join a long utility corridor, packed with cables and pipes so densely they had to climb it in single file. Lit only by strings of red emergency lights, it was difficult to see where to place one's feet, and Orlash nearly tripped when they came to the next body. The humans stepped over it without a second glance, but Orlash could not help but stop to look closer. This one had belonged to a slave soldier – shod in a crisp gray uniform but with the gangly physique and slit nostrils that identified it as an uncooperative slave. His head had been all but detached with a powerful sword blow to the back of the neck – clearly he had died without ever having seen his attacker.

Orlash mouthed a quiet prayer to the Tollmaster, beseeching him to place the slave's soul in a good star with no masters while it waited to be put into its next body, and hurried on after the others.

Their route was decorated with other bodies, maimed and silent and dripping in the darkness. Two sat at the base of a heavy steel airlock with their chins on their chests like they had fallen asleep at their posts. The airlock gaped ajar. Three bloody footprints showed the Leng human's route.

They were winded by the time the corridor finally flattened and led through a last iron gate into a tangle of prefab buildings built into the stone of the mountain. The cold of the weather could not reach so deep underground and the complex oozed with a stifling heat. Condensation clung to the folds of the collapsible plastic hallways that connected each room, and what few windows they passed that had not been plugged by steel panels opened only into packed black soil and rock.

The guards at the complex's security checkpoint had met the same fate as the guards in the corridor, but otherwise, the rooms were abandoned. One room was full of crated equipment stamped with Hegemony military code – not the gilded chests Orlash would expect for a prince's personal palace but bolted steel cases for protecting sensitive equipment.

"Two minutes rest," the Solheim human said. He gestured at one of the others. "See what you can find on that console. A map, if possible."

There was no map, and when two minutes had passed, they continued. Their boots echoed ominously on the steel grating underfoot. Even through the echo in his helmet, Orlash felt he could hear the distant murmur of voices. His people. They knew nothing of the threat that had come to their world, the one he had helped bring.

The glow of proper lighting kindled at the far end a new corridor and they came at last to a laboratory made from four prefab shelters connected together in a line. The room hummed with strange machinery and a malevolent red glint from a single window. Long rows of cubicles had been sectioned off with portable walls – every cubicle had a workbench, with microscopes and laminar flow hoods and centrifuges and instruments with functions Orlash could only guess at.

And at each bench was a batarian. They stared at the humans in stunned silence.

"Go!" the Solheim human snarled, and the squad followed him in. Orlash was last, and the Zaeed human closed the door behind them.

Inside, the room pounded with a dissonant hum that made Orlash want to vomit again. Everything seemed to move at one tenth speed, like it was sinking in oil. The red light from the window made every shadow seem to pulse.

The slaves remained paralyzed under the humans' guns. Run, Orlash willed them. Run now! Do not shout, just run!

"On the ground!" the Lowell human bellowed, grabbing the nearest slave and throwing her to the floor. She cried out in alarm, and was immediately rewarded with a mind-numbing strike with the knuckles of his mechanical hand. There was an audible crunch and she was still. "Quiet! All of you! On the ground!"

"So-aq!" Orlash shouted, hardly recognizing himself. Down. The command came rolling out of Orlash's forestomach from somewhere deep in his memory, and it made the slaves snap to attention like they'd been struck. "So-aq!" he bellowed again, loud and furious. The word was Khar'shish, the conjugation high Khar'shish, and it had an immediate effect on slaves who had toiled under it their entire lives.

Almost as one, the slaves dove onto their bellies and pressed their foreheads against the ground. They froze, trembling in place.

The humans' helmets hid their facial expressions, but none of them could have been as astonished as Orlash himself. He had not been a slave in long years, but all the same in all that time he had never risked speaking high Khar'shish aloud. It was a master's language, and forbidden to slaves under punishment of having their tongues torn out.

"Well done, Glancing," Solheim said.

"Th-thank you. Sir."

Lowell had his boot on one slave's back. The slave's hands, flat against the flooring, were pale and shaking. "What do we do with them? Kill them?"

"Too noisy," Shepard answered, before Solheim could speak. "Look for something to tie them up. We can lock them in here. Better than risking detection with gunfire."

Lowell drew a knife from his belt. "Who needs gunfire?" He bent to slit the slave's throat.

Shepard pushed him off the slave's back with a neat sweep of his foot that sent Lowell scrambling for balance. He caught himself against one of the lab benches with a loud bang. "Fuck was that, Gunn!?" he snarled.

Shepard tossed the man's knife aside. "Get a grip on yourself, you psychopath. Every person we kill here is one more body that could give us away. Look at them. They're only a threat to us if you make them into one."

"Both of you stop," Solheim said. "Look at this." He stood by the window that was emitting the sickly glow.

"Jesus Christ."

The mountain was no mountain at all, just a hollow shell of soil and rock built overtop a massive pyramidal cavern. As high as they had climbed, the artificial mountain's ceiling still loomed impossibly far overhead, so tall that a layer of wispy clouds could be seen gathering near the peak. Steel beams thicker around than the ship they'd flown in on criss crossed like the fibers of a mesh around concrete pillars that made the center columns on Omega look like grass stems. Mass effect generators of the sort that would be overkill on a military destroyer had been installed together in bundles at each column, and gave the artificial sky a sickly blue-white tinge in parody of the real one outside.

It would have been by far the largest enclosed space Orlash had ever seen, ever heard of, if it had not had a Reaper parked in it.

Curled in the belly of the mountain was a massive black form that seemed to drink from the shadows around it. Scaffolding had been erected up the length of jointed legs that clutched at the false sky like starscrapers. Its pointed mantle dwarfed the city of prefabricated laboratories and warehouses and barracks that had been built along each side like parasites. Even through his helmet's optics, just looking at the fallen monster made Orlash need to blink like he was staring into a star.

"Jesus fucking Christ," one of the humans said again. "How'd they get it in here?"

"It's moving," Shepard pointed out, voice hollow. He pointed towards the machine's resected belly, where massive saw-like excavators ground into its side, the red hot glow of their blades visible half a kilometer away. Huge pieces of black armor had already been removed to make space for a road to be built into the monster's interior – a trail of gigantic loaders waited in line, bumper to bumper, to enter and be filled with excavated stone and metal for hauling out of the mountain. One of the Reaper's legs had been partly disassembled, its outer layers chipped away to reveal the gargantuan machinery that controlled its movement.

And Shepard was right – the leg was moving. Faintly, weakly, like the last twitches of a dying animal, and on such a vast scale that it was hard to process. But it was moving.

"They must have managed to restore power to part of it," one of the humans said. "Like putting an electrode on a dead frog."

Orlash did not know what a 'frog' was, but he knew what 'dead' was, and this Reaper was not it. Now that it had been pointed out to him, it was hard to imagine how he'd not noticed it immediately. The entire vast machine seemed to breathe.

"The target is in the ventral segment, near that excavator," Solheim said, peering through a tiny pair of half quadrinoculars. "Well off the ground. There's no proper access to it like a normal ship, but the Chandana data has a groove in the armor that a human can fit through and get close." He adjusted his viewport and swept it down to the opposite end of the chamber. "Looks like the batarians have vented out the central chamber. If we can sneak in undetected, we can just climb down the thorax plate and rappel back up. Secondary openings on aft side look pretty ragged. Probably existing damage, not excavation. Could be backup routes if the central chamber is too busy." He grimaced. "Fucking Leng might have told us which route he was taking."

"What are we doing about indoctrination?" Shepard asked. "Or are we just supposed to pick off a piece of Reapertech with our bare hands?"

Solheim patted the hard case that he carried on his back in lieu of a heavy weapon. "Leave it to me, Gunn," he said. "You just get me there." He summoned a program on his omni-tool. "Cover your ears," he said, tapping in a command. "I'm detonating the ship charges."

"You can't!"

Orlash's eyes widened behind his helmet as he realized he had spoken. The humans stared at him.

"Plans change, Glancing," Solheim said. "We didn't know they'd buried the thing under a fucking mountain. We don't need the charges to get inside anymore, and we'll never get through them hot. This'll draw them to the docks while we get what we came for." He tapped a number into his omni-tool. "We'll just have to commandeer another ship on our way out."

"How will we get offworld?" Candace asked.

"By following orders," Solheim said. "Here we go." He typed a last command.

There was, of course, no boom. The room was quiet.

Solheim retyped the command. Still nothing.

"That's not good," the Virden human said.

"No," Solheim agreed. He tried a third time. The charges were silent.

Orlash could see Shepard looking at him. "See?", he seemed to say. "I told you you could trust me." Tucked safely into Orlash's undersuit, the detonator – the real detonator, that Shepard had given him to carry – almost seemed to burn his skin. Shepard's helmet tilted, ever so slightly, towards the window and the massive black beast beyond it.

Back on the Normandy, under the blue glow of two huge, empty aquariums, Shepard had explained what he and his team had learned about the Reapers. How the massive ship that had attacked the Citadel had not, in fact, been a geth destroyer, but something altogether more menacing. How the fate of every species in the galaxy – human, batarian, and everyone else – depended on stopping more of the same from arriving from dark space.

Orlash had been half convinced it was another human lie, another gambit they'd come up with to sell their ugly imperialism to a Council that cared more about trade deals with the Alliance than honoring their agreements to the batarians. Humans were more comfortable fighting with numbers and words than with anything approaching honor, and inventing a monster that only they could stop seemed entirely within their character.

But now Orlash could see. The Reaper outside was entombed in steel and rock, and yet it seemed to burst with a staggering potential energy that might be unleashed at any moment. It was like a vast reservoir of water held back by an aging dam – trapped, but dripping through every crack. It could never be contained, not forever. It would find the weak spots and press through them if it took a thousand years. Orlash could feel the pressure on his head.

Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip.

The Reapers were coming, Shepard had said, and now Orlash believed.

Solheim gave a quiet curse when a fourth attempt at his omni-tool still produced no explosion.

"We'll do without," he finally said. He made a fist gesture and swept it towards the door. "Let's move out," he said. "Quietly."

"The slaves?" Lowell asked again.

Solheim hesitated. "Kill them."

Lowell set to it. The first slave barely grunted as the blade was pressed into his spine. He gave a pitiful whimper and his life poured out onto the floor. Orlash imagined he could see the slave's spirit leave him. Lowell moved to the next one.

Orlash looked away from the grisly work, forcing his stomach to settle and gritting his teeth so hard he tasted blood. The mission. The mission had to come first. Shepard had told the truth. Shepard had given him the detonator. Shepard was not here to kill batarians, but to stop the Reapers. Orlash could not interfere with that, even if it meant standing by while his own kind were butchered. The mission was more important than a slave, than a hundred slaves, than a thousand. Orlash had to see it through, for his family, for all batarians, for everyone everywhere.

There was another ugly shick sound, and another slave was dead.

Orlash found his gaze settling on a wheeled tool rack, covered in neatly organized metal handtools and rock samples. It would make a great clatter if it fell. He could knock it over, cause a distraction. Maybe give the slaves a chance to run. He could pretend it was an accident.

No, no. He looked away. He couldn't. Pantheon forbid him, he couldn't, not if it could risk the whole –

The tool rack hit the ground with a resounding crash that sent pieces skating across the laboratory's smooth floors. The sound made everyone in the room jump except Shepard, who toppled after the tool rack with his arms wheeling as if he had leaned against it by mistake.

"Shit!"

There was a long pause, and then everything seemed to explode. Solheim's assault rifle chattered and the slave who had taken advantage of the distraction to pull an alarm lever spattered the walls, but it was too late. Alarm klaxons warbled down the halls.

There were shouts, and the stamping of feet, and then gunfire.

Given how little resistance they had faced so far, it was astonishing how rapidly the situation turned. Orlash dove for cover as one of the tempered glass walls that divided the lab into cubicles exploded in a hail of powdery shards. He buried his head under both arms – even through the snug human hardsuit, he could feel the ping of shrapnel raining down. Assault rifles boomed overhead.

"Shit! Fuck! Shitfuck!" one of the humans was shouting into their comms, but if he had anything more articulate to say it was lost under the torrent of voices that flooded the channel as dozens of guards simultaneously reported in. The mountain seemed to shake with sudden awareness of its intruders.

"Intruders on toplevel" a voice roared into Orlash's ear, in the formal diction of an upper caste officer. "Guards, forward! Slaves, So-aq! So-aq!" This time, Orlash joined the slaves, cringing on the floor to match their posture like he was a child again, living in terror of the master.

"Left side!" Solheim was shouting. "Gunn and Candace, get to that door! Massani, right side! Glancing, get on your feet!"

Belatedly Orlash remembered that he was Glancing. He fumbled for his weapon as he lurched to a kneeling position. His fingers seemed to have hardened to wood. Behind him, a case full of glassware exploded as a glowing hot harpoon of extruded steel pierced it to bury in the wall. One of the humans – the thin one they'd called Virden, sprouted a matching harpoon from one shoulder and was hurled bodily across the room, his gun flying.

"Another pair of guards coming up on our right," Zaeed's voice growled. "Gunn, help me out."

Orlash felt a crushing grip on the back of his neck. "Get UP," Lowell snarled at him, dragging him to his feet. "Bloody help us, fool!" He shoved Orlash towards one of the laboratory airlocks, which opened and closed feebly, though its doors had been reduced to shards. Down the corridor, Orlash could just make out two slave soldiers armored in gray and red steel. They alternated firing harpoons into the lab at a steady pace. Lowell took position at the opposite side of the door, darting around the corner in the brief pauses between harpoons to return fire. One of the slave soldiers fell and died.

Orlash numbly hefted his assault rifle and fired. His shots went wild, illuminating the corridor. The gun threatened to leap out of his grip, but he held the trigger down until the barrel started to glow and the heat ablaters protested. He did not know if the fatal bullet came from him or Lowell, but the second slave soldier gave a grotesque jerk and fell back in a spray of brown blood.

The gunfire echoed and died down. The comms continued to crackle with shouted orders, and Orlash thought he could feel the pounding tread of boots coming through the floor, but a stark silence flowed in to displace the roar of battle.

"Great fucking job, Gunn," Lowell spat, breaking the silence. "You've fucking murdered us all. You've f-"

"Is Virden alive?" Solheim interrupted, panting as he typed the detonator code into his omni-tool again. It gave yet another uncooperative beep.

"Not for long," Zaeed said, kneeling beside him. "Kishok nicked his neck." He'd pulled Virden's helmet off and had a hand pressed up into the ugly gash that had opened the man's jaw and collarbone, but blood flowed thickly between his fingers and Virden gasped ineffectually at the air.

"Put his gun back in his hands and leave him," Solheim said. "We split up. Gunn and Massani – you come with me. We'll try to catch up to Leng at the primary objective. The rest of you set up turrets in here and then move back to the big gate to the lower level. Hole up there and delay them as long as you can."

"How are we getting out?" Candace asked.

Solheim didn't answer.

–

Ten minutes later, Orlash fumbled at the turret, his fingers thick and useless. The corridor they had climbed to enter the mountain was still empty but for the bodies. The wind howled against its open end, sending eerie moans echoing that chilled the blood as much as the air. At first, Orlash had felt a faint relief to be away from the lab and the dead slaves and the dying god peering through the window, but now even two hundred meters of stone did not seem to be enough to muffle the Reaper's otherworldly presence. He felt a buzz settling in the back of his head that seemed to sap the energy from his limbs.

Between the cold and the fear and the Reaper's onerous gaze, Orlash's body seemed to have abandoned all pretense of obeying his commands. He had nearly dropped the turret as he'd removed it from his back, and when he'd tried to splay out its tripod legs and place it beside the airlock like the humans had directed, he'd found he could hardly summon the strength, and had to press it against the floor with his body weight until the legs locked and the turret started to initialize.

Lowell was watching him. The tenseness of their situation had filled the man with a manic energy that had only grown as he, Candace, and Orlash had pushed their way back to the security gate, and now that there was a moment of relative quiet, he seemed to fill up the room. The human had left his cracked helmet in the lab with the bodies of the slaves, and so Orlash could see the furious suspicion in his eyes. His mechanical hand whirred quietly as he flexed and unflexed it.

"There's movement down there," Candace said, peering through his assault rifle's scope down the dark length of the mountain corridor. "I think they'll be on us soon." The Blue Sun's voice was stretched thin with worry.

"Yeah…" Lowell said, unconcerned. He continued to stare at Orlash.

Orlash's turret finally gave an ominous blat and started to rotate. He climbed to his feet, eager to be away from it. "Turret… turret is deployed," he said.

Lowell nodded.

Then, without a word of warning, he plucked Orlash's helmet from his head.

Four eyes met two. Lowell shook his head. "I fuckin' knew it." His knife was in his hand.

"W-wait!" Orlash said. The human's mechanical fist flew up to meet his face and he found himself crashing backwards, vision blurred.

Lowell gave Candace an ugly look. "We told you Suns we wanted humans on this job, eh?"

Candace shook his head. "I… I told 'em that too. I told 'em, I swear!"

Lowell stooped to close his metal hand over Orlash's throat. "I fuckin' knew," he whispered. "I knew something was off."

"Th-th-they – I mean, the Suns – we ran out of humans to send," Orlash tried. He pulled at Lowell's hand, but to no avail. He tasted blood, though whether it was his own or the blood of the slain slaves smeared up the human's arms, he did not know.

"No, no, no," Lowell said. "I suppose all that shit Massani and Gunn said was a crock of shit too. Who are you people?" He tightened his grip, ever so slightly, and Orlash's vision started to wilt. Spots blossomed in his peripheral vision and his heartbeat sang in his ears. "Who sent you?"

"The S-s-suns," Orlash repeated. He could hear the cartilage in his throat crackling as Lowell's vice continued to tighten.

Lowell grinned. "I'll bet." He fingered the communicator in his ear. "Solheim, you still read me? Solheim? If you can hear me, mate, the ship crew ain't who they said they are. This Glancing asshole is batarian. You reading any of this?"

One of the turrets gave an eager whirr as it pivoted to face approaching hostiles.

"Lowell…" Candace said. "Looks like we've got trouble."

"Just a moment," Lowell said. His hand gave another click and Orlash felt a rivulet of blood – this time unambiguously his – run down the collar of his undersuit.

Then there was a crash and Orlash's lungs filled with sweet air. He gasped desperately for breath and the world seemed to spin around him so fiercely that he could barely register the sounds of a furious fight. He saw a flash of orange and it took his mind several seconds to process that it was Shepard's omni-blade, and by the time he had, Lowell was in two pieces. The human gave a shocked sputter and called out for Candace, but Candace was too busy being garroted by Zaeed to offer any help.

–

---

Distant alarm klaxons made the banquet room vibrate, and the intricate decorations drawn into the layer of sugary liqueur atop Director Qesh'ash's dinner twisted and blurred. The meal, which had taken his slaves three days to prepare, was a great contraptious confection, an amalgam of every type of decadence arranged with a care that would have seemed patently ludicrous even to many of the most pampered Khar'shish princes. The centerpiece was a ceramic vessel – glazed with images of Qesh himself as a young, virile warrior, the hands of his enemies piled up before him – filled with pale crystals of green sugar, from which grew young shoots of wodtgrass, kobambo reeds, coiled purple drinkvines hanging with glimmering fruits full to bursting with a mildly hallucinogenic aphrodisiac. Tundracrab claws hung from the tallest plants like seed pods, below a platter of baked lioto birds, their bodies still glistening with the buttery antulnut curry they had been drowned in.

New alarms joined the chorus of klaxons as the panic spread from the false mountain, down to the fortresses on either side, to the guards of Prince Shilik'ash's palace, to the city proper, but Qesh paid it no mind.

It was not that he did not care. In fact he cared very much, for he was responsible for no small part of the Leviathan operation. But he was too grand a figure to allow his meal to be disturbed. It would not do for him to be seen hastening to the sound of every trouble like a servant. And so even though some part of Qesh – of who he had once been – was nearly overwhelmed with curiosity, he remained at his table, admiring his princely meal.

"Beitha," he said, waving a ringed finger in the air beside him. The slave, having anticipated his master's need, appeared at his side holding a red silk pillow in one enormous scarred hand, and Qesh examined the half dozen glittering stones arranged atop it. He considered for a moment. "Hmm… I think tonight I shall try the slate and ruby." Beitha set the pillow aside and plucked up the chosen gastrolith – a knuckle-sized cluster of ruby and polished black slate encased in an intricate cage of soft silver wire – from with a pair of comically tiny tongs. Despite his huge size and strength – not to mention the fact that he was obliged to use only his right hand when not in battle so to keep his left resting on his weapon's pommel – Beitha worked quickly and deftly. He placed the stone in a steel tumbler with tama mint leaves, liquor, crushed thurann horn, and an oily spiced dressing, gave the mixture a vigorous shake, and handed it to his master. The mixture filled Qesh's throat with a pleasing burning sensation, and the stone was a gentle weight inside him.

Qesh began to eat and faithful Beitha stood watch over him, while in the background booted feet rushed to the sound of shouted orders. The ruby and slate gastrolith rolled back and forth in Qesh's forestomach, simultaneously helping to grind his food and massaging him from the inside. He ate the lioto birds, dipping their crisped bodies in honey and popping them whole into his mouth, and took care to crunch the bones into splinters before swallowing. He ate the drinkvine fruits and most of the frilly yalaw quince cake that decorated the meal's base, and picked his teeth with one of the kobambo reeds. Only when he felt his stomach begin to press up into his chest did he signal that he was finished.

He rose to his feet and accepted his walking stick and left the banquet room, his huge shadow trailing behind.

The meal, all told, had cost him nearly eight hundred dreons, which in most cities in Khar'shan would buy a single-seat hovercar, pay a year's wages for a team of artisans, or buy the contract for a semi-decent house slave. It was far above what Qesh's pension could reasonably afford save perhaps for the rarest special occasions, and yet he made a point of splurging similarly every few days. In fact it had been only the previous night, at the wedding celebration for scion Sor'shak's second son, that Qesh had spent nearly double that on rare drinks to advertise his good taste.

And it was not only food and drink – Qesh's wardrobe was spectacular, his personal hovercar palatial, his gifts to friends and allies lavish. His slaves wore matching deep purple uniforms of filigreed fiberweave and golden bands at each cuff. Most magnificent of all was Beitha, who was no ordinary slave, but a genuine Qoh'col warrior and gladiator to whose previous owners Qesh had paid two hundred and forty thousand fuldreon. Beitha was a spectacular specimen, as tall as a krogan, with fists like wine casks and a gruesome array of scars from a hundred victories in the fighting pits. The sword that hung from his belt weighed thirty kilograms and yet he wielded it one handed like it was no more than a fondue skewer. When Beitha preceded him into a room, its occupants were hushed almost against their will by an awareness at just how quickly a word from Qesh could end their lives. Beitha was magnificent, and thus the batarian who could command him with such easy indifference could only be still more.

All of this opulence had strained Qesh's resources, and he was now half a million dreons in debt to the Usurer's Guild, but it was all necessary, for one could not become a prince if one did not look the part. Qesh's expenses seemed like frippery now, but they were investments towards the grand future he foresaw for himself.

He and Beitha emerged from the grand apartment's main foyer to where his hovercar awaited. The vehicle sank half a meter with a warbly whine when Beitha stepped into it and closed the door behind them. "The Leviathan," Qesh said, in the manner of a deity willing things into existence, and the car began to move. It was time he attended to whatever the trouble was. Clumps of snow sizzled against the deflector field that contained the car's ceiling, and above the sky was filled with aircraft – not just the usual cargo drones but troop ships and gunships and sleek courier ships carrying ministers and scions and bureaucrats eager to insert themselves into matters of import. Qesh wondered which of them he'd run into – some would need to be treated with respect, others calculated disdain. Outside, tundra flew past the windows in a grey-white blur that Qesh once would have called beautiful but now only bored him. He belched and gestured to Beitha, who produced a tray and held it beneath his chin for him to spit the ruby-and-slate gastrolith onto with a clack.

The hovercar arrived at the ramparts at the foot of the false mountain, where a dozen free guards bowed and waved him through a set of steel blast doors. The last leg of the journey proceeded under red emergency lighting, and finally they emerged into the great hollow at the mountain's core. Above and ahead the Leviathan of Dis clenched at the artificial sky, while all about its bulk soldiers and workers and drones buzzed like carrion flies. Klaxons wailed in every direction, until the echoes seemed to blend into one continuous note.

The fortress that was the project's main headquarters was a snarl of concrete walls and razorwire built around the base of the largest of the columns holding the Leviathan in position. By the time Qesh had fully exited his vehicle, a nervous free soldier was stuttering through an explanation, but over the alarm klaxons Qesh made out only the word 'intruders'. He climbed the staircase into the fortress without acknowledging the report. The headquarters was marginally quieter, the chaos outside muffled under stone and steel and bulletproof glass, but soldiers and workers and scientists and slaves scurried about and shouted questions and orders and gestured at flashing control panels.

The panic could not seem to penetrate Qesh's skin, and he did not deign to offer anyone guidance. He lumbered past the confusion into the freight elevator at the fortress' center, flashed a badge in front of an angry yellow VI, and palmed the door controls. Motivators whirred to life and the elevator began to rise with a lurch.

Scaffolding whipped past the narrow window in the elevator's side, and beyond that, the noise and the chaos fell away. It remained a matter of debate how the Leviathan's crew had been meant to navigate the ship's enormous interior, for Qesh's scientists had yet to identify clear entry hatches, living areas, or life support. The closest they had found to a bridge was the Homunculus chamber, a cavern near the Leviathan's heart wherein many of its systems seemed to converge, and into which Qesh's scientists had built the centermost of their labs. The rest of the science facilities sprouted out from scaffolds and bridges, far above ground level and only accessible via elevators.

The elevator slowed and stopped and the doors opened to the first of the labs. Here, buffered from the rest of the world by yawning space and packed stone, Qesh reigned in the way he intended to reign everything else one day, and when he shouted for the alarms to be stifled technicians went scrambling to obey him. He stood impatiently by the first quarantine airlock and waited.

Finally the klaxons stopped and something approaching a quiet fell.

"Intruders, sir," the guard at the first airlock told him, bowing. "There was a firefight down in the Golo lab. Personnel were killed. Not clear yet how many intruders there are, or where, but Scion Kek'osh has implemented lockdown procedures. We've started moving out the samples, and-"

"Open the door," Qesh said.

"…Sir… lockdown procedures ha-"

"Open the door or Beitha will pull your head from your shoulders."

The guard eyed the enormous sword at Beitha's belt and the mural of scars on the underside of his tree trunk of a left arm. "…as you command, sir."

Intruders. Qesh shook his head, irritated. To what end? They would be caught, and they would be punished.

Luckily the guards in the next lab did obstruct him further. Qesh and Beitha made their way past computational banks and freezers and vacuum chambers and every type of scientific instrument – not just batarian but asari and salarian and volus and even human-made. They passed the scientists' dormitories, then the luxurious climate-controlled pod that contained Qesh's personal office and the voluminous notes he had taken in his years heading the project. Past that were rooms full of samples, fragments of broken circuitry or chips of black armor or residue scraped from one part of the Leviathan or another. A holographic map of the monster's structure filled one room – transparent blue as if to contrast with the overbearing red light that filled the false mountain. Glancing at it one could see all of the compartments Qesh and his team had been able to map over the years in fine miniature detail, and others – less well defined – that they had yet to breach but could guess at the shape of with the right instruments.

Soon they came to another airlock that opened out into the hollow mountain again. Beyond the windows, rock dust made the air turbid enough that the glow coming from the next lab could barely be seen.

"Director Qesh! Sir!" came a voice, and Qesh paused at the threshold to see one of his subordinates approaching with a datapad clutched in soot-smeared hands. He had just come from outside, and still wore a jumpsuit filthy with sweat and dust over his lab clothes, but beneath the grime Ensha's eyes were alight with excitement. He bowed respectfully. "Sir, I have excellent news! May I ask your opinion on an engineering matter?" Qesh favored him with an irritated grimace but did not refuse, and Ensha launched into a feverish explanation. "I have had the workers you acquired for me working on dorsal compartment fourteen, just above the third leg, and this morning we finally opened it!" He triumphantly thrust a datapad of scan data under Qesh's face.

Qesh raised three brows. "How?" The matter of opening any new part of the Leviathan (aside from the enormous wound left by the mysterious weapon that had disabled the great machine in the first place) had long vexed them, for the somehow-luminous black metal from which it had been constructed was reinforced by some sort of non-projecting mass effect barrier that stiffened it harder than Silaris steel.

Ensha beamed with pride. "The defense fields, sir. They're powerful, but they're still mass effect fields, and I reasoned that with a sufficiently strong projector positioned to interfere with them, we could weaken parts of the carapace enough to cut through them, and it worked! We burnt out three plasma torches before we found the right spot, but I think with a stronger projector we could get one of the larger compartments open. We're setting up the microdrones to scan, but-"

"You cut the latch?" Qesh asked, filled with unease. His frown deepened, his stomach tightened, his ears hissed. "You're making my head ache," he said, baring teeth. His anger rose without account. "You want more money, do you? For a stronger projector? Cah! Submit a proposal, as you well know how, and stop pestering me!" Ensha looked crestfallen, but Qesh was well beyond caring. "Get my guard a mask," he snapped, striking Ensha with his cane. "A mask that fits properly! I'll not have him breathing dust!" Beitha was precious to him, and far more precious than any relationship he might have once had with Ensha. If his great champion, this living ornament for whom he had paid so much, was going to die, it would be in an arena fighting for his master's glory, not of a rotten lung, and hopefully not for many years yet.

Ensha returned with a mask which could be loosened enough to fit over Beitha's huge head. Qesh donned his own (the four lenses were treated smoke glass and rimmed with pearlescent makti-ivory – four hundred thirty dreons) and stepped into the airlock. He pretended to have forgotten Ensha entirely, but he did not miss the morose look the younger batarian cast his way as the doors closed behind him. It was a look full of regret for a friend who had changed beyond recognition.

As he stepped out onto the windy catwalk that led to Center Lab, Qesh felt a fleeting pang of regret. He had changed, that was true. He had once been a scientist – and quite a good one, even. He had been working on the Leviathan of Dis for sixteen years now, and though it was a very well-funded project and a source of great interest and anxiety for the ruling party, it had never done much for his own advancement. Being a xeno-technologist of any sort was no sure way for a batarian to rise through the Hegemony ranks, for it was a great balancing act between his people's hunger for every advantage they could acquire and the righteous pride that required they look at other species only from above. Qesh had sought the thankless task only from a genuine love of the work and a fascination with the galaxy's secrets.

But lately he thought of little apart from his ascension. He had stopped enjoying the work, the company of his colleagues, the comfort of his wives' embraces. He'd gained weight – not across the chest and shoulders like he'd always wanted but in the gut and gullet and groin. His sleep had suffered terribly for weeks on end until he was jumping at ghosts in the periphery of his vision. His head pounded at the merest annoyance.

But he was not unhappy, for under all of that gestated ambitions that had never occurred to him before, and he had grown addicted to contemplating them. He was no longer content to be a mere scientist of a minor house like Ensha was, comfortable but undistinguished. He wanted the money to buy the loyalty of anyone he wanted. He wanted a legion of Beithas. He wanted so many wives and concubines he need never see one a second time. He wanted a pleasure barge that would make the Destiny Ascension look like a bath toy. He wanted to be loved, feared, obeyed. He wanted to found his own family name, a dynasty that would precipitate a new Thousand Years of Might. He wanted the Goaletts, Prince Shilik'ash, Tunghusk City, Khar'shan, the Citadel, the galaxy to tremble.

And why should he not have that? Did he not know things that no one else knew?

He knew many important things, for – though he did not care to use it the way he once had – he had a quick and shrewd mind, a mind for noticing the connections that went unseen by others. He knew, for instance, that Sam'eden Karash was not, as was supposed, the scion of the Corin family, but in fact a bastard born to a lower caste merchant. He knew that the irascible Grand Weathered Treasurer Thuseqqa, who had managed the Goalett family's finances for so long, was near death and would soon need replacement, courtesy of a poison that had been snuck into her belly painted on a jeweled gastrolith, and he knew also which one of her undertreasurers had delivered the fatal stone.

But most importantly, he knew that the Leviathan of Dis was not entirely dead.

The great mechanical monster was the batarians' prisoner, trapped under the weight of an artificial mountain and the strongest field projectors on Khar'shan, dissected and picked over and built upon and cut at by hundreds of workers for more than two decades. Qesh had been allowed to see the footage taken by the survey team that had discovered the Leviathan crumpled in a crater on Jartar, and the immense salvage operation that had rushed to retrieve it before the salarians could do the same. The dreadnaught Master's Prerogative was still the largest vessel in the Hegemony's fleet, and yet it had been dwarfed by the Leviathan it towed behind it like the shed tundracrab shell.

For twenty years it had lain in its tomb, its limbs only moving when innervated with electricity enough to run half the planet. The first time they had made the Leviathan bend its leg it had brushed down a concrete support tower and collapsed half a square kilometer of the false mountain atop the workers, and all involved had agreed the experiment should never be repeated. Then the failure at Terra Nova had inspired Qesh's superiors with a new eagerness and the funding had materialized to expand the mountain and raise its peak by a few hundred meters. The Hegemony had rehomed more than sixty thousand batarians to lighten the load on Tunghusk's energy grid, and still the glow from the city would flicker and dim when Qesh pulled the switch, all to coax the slightest flutter out of the Leviathan's enormous leg.

Now it slowly clenched and unclenched at all hours, like the twitches of some giant dreamer.

It was not dead, Qesh knew. Only waiting.

It had allowed itself to be moved. As it had allowed itself to be buried. The mountain was reinforced concrete and steel and a million tons of icy granite, the fields holding it down designed to stabilize the orbits of moons, and yet it would all fold like paper the instant the Leviathan desired its freedom.

Of course that could not be allowed.

Still… the idea had a dark appeal to it. Didn't the Pillars of Strength say that chains chained those too weak to break them and no one else?

–

---

Center Lab was built around what the team called the Homunculus, a mysterious cluster of machinery perched near the Leviathan's heart and shaped – for reasons no one could fathom – as if to resemble the skeleton of some huge twelve-limbed animal. It was a hideous, malicious looking effigy, simultaneously armored like it had been built to fight but also hanging with fragile exposed innards as if to evoke the image of a flayed corpse.

Just what sort of creature's corpse it was meant to evoke was unclear – the researchers who worked on the catwalks erected around its chamber were amicably divided between hypotheses put forward overtop a hundred cafeteria lunches. Dr. Pashara championed the idea that the Homunculus had been built by the mysterious arthropoid race that had once inhabited the Han system, and who had famously carved the moons of the gas giant Farcrothu into immense self-portraits. The resemblance was undeniable, and the idea that a species with the means and desire to make such stupendous sculptures had also been responsible for the Leviathan did have the ring of plausibility to it. It was true that the Homunculus had twelve legs and the Farcrothu moon sculptures only nine, but that discrepancy might be regarded as within the range of artistic license. A second train of thought was Dr. Goan'theth's hypothesis that the Homunculus was meant to represent the nao-ret worms that could still be found on space stations throughout the galaxy, which had twelve legs and a black and red carapace that matched the Homunculus' dirty-gray construction almost exactly. The problem was, of course, that nao-rets were not sentient, nor even particularly smart as worms went, but Dr. Goan'theth dismissed that criticism as evidence only that the nao-rets had degenerated over time, like the keepers of the Citadel.

For her part, Casippa did not find either argument particularly persuasive. It seemed to her that the Leviathan's origin could only be too dark to be arrived at over lunch. Of course the question was only an academic one – whichever creature had inspired Homunculus' appearance was almost certainly long extinct, for if the radioactive dating results were correct the Leviathan was hundreds of millions of years old.

Casippa adjusted the settings on the tunneling microscope and started the imaging program again. The instrument would have looked enormous in any other lab, but perched on a platform next to the Homunculus' hundred meter form it might have been a matchbox. The microscope's conducting tip made its slow journey back and forth, and bit by bit its VI stitched the read voltages into a rendered image of the piece of nanocircuitry Casippa had been studying for the better part of a year.

She was alone in the lab apart from the guard Lomta, who stood at attention at the airlock built to control its only entrance.

And, of course, aside from the Homunculus. It leered down at her.

In time there was a click and the micrograph was done. Tiny layers – nanoscopic – striated every surface of every component of the Leviathan, from the thickly curved plates of its carapace to the rictus, skeletal Homunculus to the hexagonal corridors that criss-crossed the ship's interior. Casippa – formerly Dr. O'tseh Casippa of the Great Khan Academy, until a death in her family had severed their last critical marriage link to the nobility and they had reverted back to slaves – had been ordered to discover why.

She thought she knew now.

Center Lab had been built into the large chamber at the Leviathan's heart, which had – or so the team hypothesized – once contained the ship's central controls. Whatever spectacular weapon had felled the Leviathan had put a great fissure across that heart, and twisted metal beams and crumpled consoles bore witness to the violence of the blow. The damage had been a boon and a curse both, for while many of the Leviathan's most critical components had been ruined beyond the point that any analysis could reveal their functions, the fractured parts and melted edges gave the researchers access to interiors that the strongest plasma cutters could not have penetrated. The Leviathan's mantle was burst open wide enough for a gunship to fly all the way from the motivators that drove its five legs to the field projector banks set in pairs along the dorsal hull and, though it had required the construction of nine towering scaffolds to hold up the laboratories they needed, by now the scientists had easy access to dozens of chambers representing almost thirty percent of the Leviathan's volume.

They had set every tool available to batarian science to the task of studying those chambers for years now – remote drones to explore narrow spaces, spectral, rheological, and chemical analysis of materials, reverse thermo-transfer simulations to reconstruct what the melted parts of the machine might have looked like when it was intact. With scans and micrographs and tap-echo measurements and readouts from every other conceivable instrument they had reverse engineered large parts of the Leviathan's circuits. They'd simulated the field outputs of the machine's six enormous mass effect projectors. They'd run electricity through every wire. They'd compared the ship's construction to devices built by every sentient species, to archeological digs from across the galaxy, even to anatomical diagrams of creatures from a hundred different biospheres.

Every test got them closer to the secrets, and some of those secrets were alarming.

Casippa heard the grinding warning buzz from the airlock and the loud sweep of the doors opening, and she rose from her chair. It was Director Qesh, who strode into the room with his gladiator butler in tow. Casippa's heart pounded harder for more reason than one as she copied the newest render from the tunneling microscope onto her omni-tool, gathered up the datapad with her notes, and hurried to greet them.

"Director Qesh," she said, descending the gantry.

Director Qesh pushed past Casippa to stand, as he always did, immediately in front of the Homunculus. It loomed over him with nothing in its dead eyes, but he seemed to see some comfort there. He did not look away from them. "You have an update?" Qesh asked Casippa, waving an impatient hand to beckon it out. "You've found more?"

"Ahh… I have finished the images we discussed yesterday of the…" Casippa had to pause for a moment to recall the proper conjugations for the jargon in the low Khar'shish that slaves were obliged to use, which still did not come naturally to her, "the nanocircuits in sample two twelve. We decided I should try a lower concentration of the gold emulsion, but with additives to make it more volatile."

"Yes, I remember. And? Were you able to translate anything?"

"Well… no. But the images were much clearer. I can certainly transcribe the information, but I don't know what it means."

"Caaaah," Qesh said. "Show me."

She summoned some of her newest work and handed him the datapad. The images she had been taking were near atomic resolution, and further confirmed everything they had been speculating. The Leviathan was a dreadnaught of spectacular power, but that was not all it was, for every plate and rivet and wire down to the tiniest piece was suffused with information. The nanoscopic structures on every surface preserved data – and truly mind-numbing quantities of it – in tiny mass effect fields which overlapped or interfered in intricate patterns, and could be read only under the most spectacular technological magnification.

The Leviathan was a hard drive.

Qesh stared at the image, grim concentration in his eyes, as if he might be able to translate it through sheer force of will. He couldn't, of course – Casippa thought the data were probably binary, but untranslatably old, untranslatably vast, untranslatably alien. Even if one could read the nano messages, where would one begin? Did the message repeat, or was every single bit crucial to its meaning?

Casippa chewed her upper lip, steeling herself. "I made another observation," she said finally, but the director did not look up from her datapad. "Sir. I… remember when we talked about the risk of signals in the laboratory overwriting the data? I did some tests. Electric fields from the lab equipment don't seem to affect it, not even up close."

"Good," Qesh concluded.

"Yes sir, but…" She hesitated – not only because she did not know how he would react, but because she wasn't certain she believed it herself. "I think biological signals can disrupt the patterns."

Qesh finally looked at her. "Biological signals? Neural signals, you mean?"

"Yes sir. I have not verified it completely yet, but it seems to me that…" there was no other way to say it "it seems to me that the data written on these nanostructures changes in response to nearby neural activity."

"Thoughts? Surely you don't mean to suggest that the message changes just when someone thinks about it?"

"Yes sir. I… I think that is what is happening." She had tried it herself – imaging two identical armor fragments, sealing them in vacuum chambers on opposite sides of the lab, thinking about one of them for half a standard hour, then imaging them both again to compare how they'd changed. She'd secreted five fragments beneath her cot in the dormitories, set at different distances from her pillow, and in the morning had been able to persuade herself that the closer a sample was to her head the more her dreams had shifted its contents overnight. She did not know how or why, but it was seeming ever more likely that the mysterious materials from which the Leviathan had been made, which were so durable to temperature or electricity or any sort of damage, were sensitive rather to the minds of animals, which left echoes written into them like a magnet dropped into iron shavings.

And if they could read thoughts, was there a chance that they could write them?

Qesh was quiet for a long moment, pondering her words, and for a moment Casippa thought he might be rifling through – as she had – all the myriad dangers that might be inherent to working inside of a colossal pile of psychic metal. Then his brows knit tight and he scowled. "How much data has been contaminated?" he asked, voice a low hiss.

"Contaminated? Sir, I don't th-"

"A billion year old message written across every scrap of this place and you are telling me we've overwritten part of it with your thoughts? A slave's thoughts? How much have we lost?"

Casippa could not find her words. "I…"

"Be silent!" Qesh snarled, sparing her the need. "Stay away from the samples, well away, until I can think of some means to protect them from your clumsiness! Count yourself fortunate I do not have you flogged!" He waved her away with a fat hand.

The injustice and the sheer stubborn irrelevance of the chastisement stung, but Casippa could do nothing but nod her head and retreat. She returned to her desk, mind astorm with angry thoughts.

The other researchers had assured her so many times that it had to be true that Director Qesh had once been the intellectual and moral core of the team – a consummate scientist, a loyal and fair employer, and a guiding hand. He had studied the Leviathan from the first days, back when the Hegemony had been too cautious to give him a team of potential security risks, and working alone had lain the foundations for all of their work. It had been Qesh who had discovered the nanolaminar structures, Qesh who had worked out how the Leviathan's fuel circulators had been oriented to produce warping cross-fields, Qesh who had worked through the logic of dynamic center of gravity calculations that had theretofore insisted the machine could not have flown without tearing itself apart.

But whatever he had been before, in the time Casippa had worked for him, Qesh had been exactly like every other minor noble she'd ever met – corpulent in body and spirit, wheedling to his superiors, domineering to his subordinates, and concerned always and only with his own comforts. Perhaps worst of all, even as he had progressively destroyed any good will the other researchers may have felt for him, the director had taken an inexplicable interest in Casippa's work on the Leviathan data-drive hypothesis, and rarely let a day go by without having her brief him personally as to her progress. At first she had attributed this to a lustful infatuation – for indeed in her first week on the job the director had loudly speculated to the group about how much it would cost him to purchase her from the Ministry of Science and make her a concubine – but in time it had become clear that it wasn't thoughts of her that drew him to spend so much of his time in Center Lab.

He came to stare at the Homunculus.

This was, of course, an immense relief to Casippa, for if she was going to be a slave she much preferred the Hegemony own her than a fat, pompous, pustule only a few short rungs higher on the social hierarchy than she was. Nonetheless the attention the director paid Casippa had not made her many friends among the other researchers, and she had found it difficult to be productive when he spent so many hours every day standing rapt in front of the Homunculus, never speaking but seeming to commune with it all the same. He was doing it again now, staring up into the dim sockets of its eyes and muttering as if trying to commiserate with the gruesome statue about the difficulty of finding competent slaves.

There was the creak of a heavy booted footstep and Casippa turned in her chair to see Beitha looming over her. The director's bodyguard was huge in proportion but with a tiny, soft voice that he only rarely used. He did not use it now, only looked at her with his four liquid brown eyes and reached out to set his right hand palm-down on the desk next to her console. Beitha's hand was, like every part of him, huge and scarred and thick with callus.

He took it away, and a tiny sprig of fruiting lichen lay on Casippa's desk. The bloom was a vibrant red – not the omnipresent pall of freshly-spilt blood that permeated the Leviathan, but the vital pinkish red of flourishing growth. Casippa could smell the tang of rich soil and petrichor and tundra moss rarely disturbed by batarian boots. She remembered being a girl and riding with her family on a distant cousin's pleasure-dromond, and leaning over the gunwhale to see vast pink plains covered in blooms.

Beitha smiled at her, and she reached out to give his hand the briefest grateful squeeze. Neither of them spoke, and neither of them needed to. For months it had been their secret ritual to share whatever silent reassurance they could offer one another. They both knew well that nothing could or would come of their relationship, but the rare moments where they could meet eyes and some flicker of private comfort could pass between them had sustained them through cold and chaos and calumny. Just to see Beitha brought a calm to Casippa's heart, and to sit in his presence – as she often did when Director Qesh came to contemplate the Homunculus – she could feel warm and protected despite herself. Center Lab was not quite so dreary, the threat of mind-altering metal not quite so bestirring, the chitter of scanners not quite so irritating.

Minutes passed in comfortable silence.

But no quiet moment could stretch on forever. Casippa was still rubbing a fingernail over the lichen bloom when there came a sound she did not recognize – some sharp hiss from the lab's paneled ceiling. She stared up, puzzled. Lomta the guard called out a warning, his harpoon gun in hand, and Casippa saw the pale sclerae of Beitha's eyes as he scanned the rafters for the source of the noise.

"There!" Casippa called, pointing to a hot glimmer in the center of a ceiling panel that had not been there before. It grew brighter – red to orange to glowing white, bright enough to be seen through the curtains of acrid smoke that began to roil away from its edges. The ceiling was melting. Droplets of liquid metal and burning thermite rained atop the consoles Casippa used to control the room's dichrometer, followed by a circular disk of sizzling steel that caved in the instrument like an aluminum can.

Things happened very quickly after that. The room filled with the smell of burning plastic. There was an earsplitting alarm as fire suppression systems activated and showered the lab in flame-retarding foam. A metal object dropped through the new hole in the ceiling, bounced clanging against the grated floors and rolled to a stop not two meters away from Casippa's desk, trailing a shimmering yellowish fog. She stared at it in dumb confusion for a long moment before she recognized that it was a gas grenade and leapt stumbling from her seat in terror.

Then she felt huge hands scooping her up. Beitha held her to his chest like a child and dove for cover behind a nearby vacuum chamber as gunshots shook the lab walls. Over the hiss of gas Casippa heard shouting and the sharp crack of a harpoon launcher, then a horrid, strangling cry as the guard Lomta fell. Her mind was still reeling to catch up when Beitha stuffed her under a desk and jammed an overlarge gasmask over her face.

"Beitha! What is it?!" she called, forgetting herself, as he tightened the straps on her head. The mask gave a hiss and fresh air was pressed into her lungs.

Beitha set a hand on her shoulder. "Careful," he said, and he turned to attend to Director Qesh.

He had not made two steps towards the director when, in the midst of the opaque clouds that were already filling the room, there was the slither of steel against steel. Casippa called out but it was too late, and a blade flashed through the murk and opened a gash in Beitha from collar to hip. The slave warrior stared in stunned silence at the dark fountain of blood that welled from the wound, and at the black-clad human who had materialized in front of him.

The human wore an unmistakable grin of triumph as he dropped into a crouch, raising his bloodstained blade to strike again.

Then Beitha struck the human with a tooth loosening backhand, and sword and swordsman went flying with an audible crunch of bone and cartilage. The human struck the chamber wall hard enough that for a moment the work lights strung throughout the room flickered out.

Even as blood poured down his belly, Beitha planted his feet and drew his own sword from his belt with a furious growl. He charged into the fumes after his foe.

The air grew ever more turbid as the gas grenade continued to slough sickly yellow smoke from one end, and the pumps in Casippa's gasmask hissed and an LED inside the bottom left lens began to flash red in protest of the sudden load on the filters. On the far side of the room, there was a clatter as two swords met, and the crash of equipment tossed aside by Beitha's wrath, but already the fumes had grown so thick that Casippa could not see the lab's opposite wall.

The grenade. She had to deal with the grenade.

Almost without thinking, Casippa found herself scrambling from her hiding place towards the center of the maelstrom. The mass spectrometer was one of the instruments directly beneath the thermite charge the human had used to burn through the ceiling, and plastic vapor curled from a dozen melted holes in its case, but Casippa only needed the waste container that collected its effluent. Liquid sloshed inside as she wrenched it out of the instrument and dumped its contents over the gas grenade, which sputtered but did not seem to fully die until she had upended a garbage bin overtop it as well.

Her hands were burning by the time she finished, and even behind her gasmask her eyes watered violently. It was only by happenstance that she looked down and spied the second human. He was standing on the lab's lower level next to the base of the Homunculus, almost within arm's reach of Director Qesh, who stood staring at him in stupefied silence. This human was armored in white to contrast the swordsman's black, and bore an assault rifle and a mysterious case. When he opened the case, he was bathed in an alien blue light by the device inside – no device Casippa had ever seen. It was a curved piece of black metal – clearly made from the same mysterious material as the Leviathan – but leashed to a human-made control panel by a thick snarl of wires. The human pressed the device without any particular aim into the machinery at the Homunculus' feet.

Almost immediately the room seemed to react. Lights that had been dormant as long as Casippa had worked there sprang to life, and there was a violent tremble that shook the lab until her bones nearly hummed.

Casippa's eyes went wide in astonishment. He was controlling it. Somehow he could control it.

The Leviathan was waking.

She finally found her voice. "BEITHA!" she shouted. "Down there! Stop him!" She was running, now, too, tromping down the stairs three at a time. All around her black machinery flickered to attention from long eons of stasis. "Director Qesh! Beitha! Help!"

The human jabbed commands at the buttons on his control panel until a compartment near his feet finally slid open. He dropped to one knee and thrust an arm into the mechanisms within, pulling components free and cutting wires with an omni-tool torch.

Finally Beitha appeared, his sword gone and body painted in blood, and immediately he saw the second human. He eschewed the stairs entirely and leapt from the upper catwalk to land on the floor next to the man with a booming crash. The human fumbled for his gun and managed to fire off a few shots, but his aim went wide and Beitha was upon him. Beitha slammed a massive fist into the man's stomach, caught the barrel of his gun, and tossed it contemptuously across the room. Almost instantly the human had drawn a knife, but just as quickly Beitha had broken his wrist and kicked him down the catwalk like a boloht ball.

Then there was a furious shout and the swordsman reappeared, leaping from the catwalks above as Beitha had. Beitha whirled to meet him. The human's sword was broken off at its mid-point but the snapped end remained sharp enough to do damage, and he dropped onto Beitha and buried it into one of the gladiator's massive shoulders. A second, shorter blade whirled for Beitha's eyes only to scrape harmlessly off of the console behind him.

Beitha flipped the man off his back and whipped him violently against one of the bulletproof glass viewports in the floor. There was a chilling snap and the swordsman went limp. Beitha's boot came down on his unconscious body hard enough to snap ribs and send cracks meandering through the glass beneath. He stomped again and the cracks multiplied, then finally a third time and the entire pane shattered. The swordsman disappeared out the window in a shower of broken glass and was swallowed up by the vast chasm of the Leviathan's mantle below.

A breeze whistled against the open window, and far below the klaxons seemed faint over the rumbling of stone and steel. The lab continued to shake.

Beitha was flagging now, his breaths coming in great ragged gulps. The defenestrated swordsman had been no match for one of the Qoh'col, but had taken his dues, and Beitha bled from a dozen wounds. An ugly flap of skin and fat hung bloodied from his side, and the human's broken sword still sprouted from his shoulder. He panted, swallowed, and caught Casippa's eyes.

She forced a smile. You did it.

He nodded and turned to finish off the second human. The gunman had staggered back to the compartment he had opened with his mysterious device and was yanking desperately at something inside it with his unbrokenl arm. Beitha's footsteps thumped heavily on the grating. Finally the man drew out his hand with his prize – a tiny piece of the Leviathan, small enough to fit in his palm. All this, for that. Even as Beitha descended on him he was closing it inside his case and locking the latches with trembling fingers.

Beitha raised a foot.

A shot rang out and the back of Beitha's head was reduced to a red black mist. He stumbled, took half a step, and collapsed to the ground dead.

For long seconds no one was able to react.

The human stared blankly at the dead batarian who had been so close to killing him.

Casippa's breath hardened in her lungs.

And Director Qesh still held the human's gun out before him, arms frozen and face twisted in a delirious confusion.

Finally the human limped to his feet and ran for the airlock with the case under his arm.

–

---

Orlash slumped in the pilot's chair of the Cosharc and tried not to think about the end of the galaxy.

His throat hurt terribly where the Lowell human had crushed it – taking any more than the shallowest of breaths sent fire down the length of his neck, and swallowing risked making him pass out with the pain. He appreciated well how near he had come to death – a few more seconds, perhaps, and the cyborg would have broken his neck – and yet somehow the near miss did not trouble him.

It was the Reaper. He was back in the hangar, now, with rock and steel and distance between him and the great, evil machine, and yet he still tasted it on the back of his brain. He wondered if even escaping Khar'shan would be enough to wash it away.

For the twentieth time he glanced out the ship's slit-shaped window, hoping to catch a glimpse of Shepard and Zaeed returning.

"Wait for us at the ship," Shepard had said back in the airlock, once Lowell and Candace were dead and Orlash had stopped wheezing. The human had worn a determined frown that had nonetheless not entirely eliminated the worry in his lonely two eyes. "Have it ready for takeoff. Hopefully Zaeed and I can still catch Solheim, but if he beats us back to the ship, you have to make sure he doesn't get on it. Scuttle it if you have to."

"Just lock the doors on him until we show up to shoot his ass," Zaeed had added, grimly helping himself to Candace's remaining grenades. "Rather not be stranded here."

"Ideally," Shepard had agreed. "But do what's necessary, Orlash." He'd stared meaningfully at the pouch where Orlash had concealed the detonator. Orlash had understood. Better they all die than Serbaris get offworld with what they came for.

The two humans had left him, and Orlash had staggered his way alone back out the way they had come. The bodies the Leng human had left had still been there, stiffening in the frozen air, but Orlash had no longer felt so distraught by the sight of them as before and had passed them without pausing. He had nearly been detected by a pair of freshly-arrived guards at the checkpoint inside of the entrance to the false mountain. He had been able to hear the panic in their voices as they shouted into their communicators to report the bodies, but in the chaos they had struggled to get through to an officer. Orlash had snuck by and counted himself lucky.

Now he sat and watched for Shepard and fiddled with the detonator in his hands. The ship's drives were primed, secondary landing clamps released, systems idling and ready. The seconds snuck by disguised as hours.

Orlash started when he saw movement outside the window.

It was a free soldier come up from the fortress. No, five soldiers, actually, armed with harpoon launchers and wearing Prince Shilik'ash's colors. They were searching. They stopped to crouch by the corpse of the hangar guard, the lesser member of the Goalett family, whose dark form had been half buried by snow blowing into the hangar door. The soldiers argued amongst themselves until one of them stood, wiped the blood from his gloves onto the sides of his armored coat, and scanned the horizon. His gaze stopped on the ship. He pointed and said something to his compatriots.

Orlash watched the soldiers with a strange detachment. Even as they started towards the ship he found himself unable to summon any genuine alarm. His mind conjured images of horrendous torture, of enslavement, of being pushed into a fighting pit to be torn apart by a shatha or a kyskk-cat, all the things he had been so afraid of just a few hours before, and yet somehow all of it seemed small now.

How could anyone fear a few soldiers when one had lain eyes on a Reaper?

Orlash found himself thinking about Omega and the life he had lived there – brutal, ceaselessly hard, and yet for all that a gift. He had been lucky, he realized, to escape slavery at such a young age, for many never escaped at all, and even some who seemed to be free still wore their shackles on the inside. He and his brothers and father had once been the property of Master Den'harah, who had flown them about the Terminus Systems in the dark belly of his ship The Unsettled Sun. The Master had always taken pains to keep his property healthy, and rarely had cause to discipline them, and so he had been in the grander context almost as ideal a master as a slave might choose, but they had hated and feared him with equal fervor.

Then the master had disappeared, and his slaves had been left to rot in darkness in drydock for ten long days. When Aria's minions had finally discovered them locked in the ship's hold, they were so weak with hunger and disease that many could not walk unassisted.

They'd been brought before Aria herself. To this day, the Queen of Omega was still the most beautiful creature Orlash had ever seen, even though she'd looked down from her throne at him and the other slaves with unconcealed revulsion on her face. Her guards had dragged Master Den'harah from some hidden dungeon and forced him to prostrate himself before her and explain why he had neglected to inform her that her ship – for the Unsettled Sun had been lost in a wager with one of her bodyguards and immediately 'gifted' to her – had contained perishable cargo. The Master had blubbered and cried and pleaded for mercy and explained that he'd thought them beneath the notice of one so powerful, so wise, so beautiful, and ever so merciful.

She'd broken virtually every bone in his body before she was done, and Orlash and the other slaves had worshipped her for it. Orlash still remembered the ugly thrill he'd felt seeing the bejeweled corpse the Master had been reduced to. The Master was only meat.

When he was dead Aria had set the slaves free on the streets to fend for themselves. A few – those few with the skill or strength to fight – she allowed to join her gangs, but most of them ended up absorbed into the batarian community in the Zeta district. Life had been hard, for they had had nothing, and they lived in fear that one of their master's family would come to gather them up again. Orlash's father had spent the rest of his life hoarding what meager wealth he could earn as a welder to make a gift to placate his new master when the time came, but then he'd caught a pox from the dust and had died, and Orlash had donated the hoard to the community that had taken them in.

Orlash's own job working as a cargo technician kept him fed and sheltered. He'd started the process of courting a wife and had decided that he would be happy with just the one. He had not thought of himself as a slave in long years. Omega had become home – more than Khar'shan had ever been.

He heard pounding on the outside of the ship. "You inside! Open!"

Orlash swallowed (and immediately regretted it, for it felt like swallowing broken glass) and headed for the hatch. He had discarded most of his Serbaris hardsuit, and he briefly considered discarding his gun as well, the better to look as unthreatening as possible, but thought better of it.

He was no slave. He was Orlash Thekatur and he was free.

He opened the hatch.

The soldiers huddled impatiently in the doorway, their breath coming in steamy puffs from their nostrils. Behind them, the false mountain was hazy with falling snow.

"What is it?" Orlash asked them, planting himself in the entryway to the ship, which was still faintly stained from when Zaeed had closed it on one of the disguised Blue Suns back on Omega. Orlash's voice was hoarse and ragged under his bruised neck, but he adopted as fierce and confident a glower as he could manage. "What do you want?"

"This hangar is off-limits for civilians," the leader of the soldiers barked. "Who gave you clearance to land here?"

"I paid all the fees," Orlash lied. The lie came easily to him. "My name is Corash Del'hahdah, free batarian of the merchant caste." The batarian propensity for transparent lying made aliens look down on them as a species of dullards who could be convinced of anything. Aliens never understood that to a batarian lying was not about genuinely misleading a person about reality but rather asserting dominance over rivals. If you insist the sky is red so loudly that others agree with you, it does not matter if the sky is not actually red.

"Del'hahdah…" the officer said, plainly unconvinced by the lie.

Orlash stood sentinel atop it. "Del'hahdah," he confirmed. "My contact told me this hangar would be open."

"And who was your contact?"

"A noble," Orlash said. He met the officer's gaze without flinching. "No one I am ready to betray to you."

A flicker of doubt crossed the officer's face as he weighed whether or not he was willing to risk angering someone important. The indecision seemed to anger him, and his frown deepened. "There's a dead scion in the guard post in front of your ship," he said, waving a hand towards the body. "Tell us why."

"I didn't kill anyone."

"Who did?"

"I know nothing. I've been sitting in my cockpit for hours and I haven't seen anything but snow."

The officer growled. "We'll need to search your ship." He took a step forward.

Orlash stepped into his path, blocking him. "Not without my contact's permission."

The officer's patience reached a sudden end, and he turned to the others. "Grab him." One of the soldiers darted dutifully forward and grabbed Orlash by the arm. When Orlash pulled away, another struck him with the butt of his gun. Orlash's vision seemed to spark, and for a few blurry seconds he lost track of the world. When it came back to him, he was kneeling in the ship's entranceway, and one of the guards was fitting a pair of manacles over his wrists.

The fight was already over. Too late Orlash tried to recall where the detonator was.

But the soldier hadn't quite closed the second manacle when there was a spectacular sound from the false mountain, so loud that it shook loose the layer of snow that had been accumulating on the Cosharc's back. A boom like Orlash had never heard before – a thousand times louder than the largest ship's drive – echoed across the tundra in a visible shockwave.

The top of the false mountain was gone. Orlash and the soldiers watched in stunned silence as the peak crumbled and disappeared, falling into the vast hollow space concealed beneath. Rock and concrete and steel tumbled in a wave. A fortress redoubt bristling with turrets and no doubt garrisoned by tens or hundreds of the prince's guards seemed to shatter into dust as the mountain slipped out from underneath it. It fell, only to strike a huge object rising from within and roll to one side in a torrent of pulverized stone.

They had a glimpse of the Reaper emerging from its tomb, coalescent with cruel red energy, and then the sky filled with dust. A great wave of debris hurtled towards them with astonishing speed. It struck, and the Cosharc – its secondary landing clamps disengaged – slid two or three meters across the hangar floor, nearly tipping over by the force of the impact. The soldiers went sprawling.

Orlash saw his chance. He leapt to his feet, manacles hanging from one wrist, and punched the control panel to close the ship's hatch with a thud. He was plunged into darkness. For a few seconds he heard the soldiers shouting and pounding on the door, but he was already running for the cockpit. He fingered the communicator.

"Shepard!" he yelled. Fear gripped his guts so tightly he did not notice the pain in his throat, and shouted as loud as he had ever shouted. "Shepard! What's happening?"

There was no answer.

"Human! Shepard!... Gunn!?"

The communicator crackled. "…edical att… can't open y… …orwar…"

"What do I do!?"

"…rman…"

"Shepard!?"

"…c…"

The soldiers had stopped pounding. Outside the sounds of falling rock did not drown out the booming, mechanical roar of the Reaper, which seemed to come from everywhere at once. Through the window, all Orlash could see was an opaque wall of dust.

The sky was red.

"Do what's necessary," Shepard had said, and Orlash knew what it was.

He took hold of the flight controls.

–

---

Codex entry: Select news-in-brief articles, December 2185-January 2186.

–

BREAKING – Possible Meteor Strike at Khar'shani Capital
ANN Dispatch Brief #877184, December 2, 2185

Tragedy strikes as multiple outlets report a massive explosion near the Khar'shani capital of Tunghusk. Tunghusk is the political capital of the Batarian Hegemony and home to the largest port in the Harsa system, as well as the former site of the Citadel's embassy prior to the Hegemony's exit from the Sholkadta Agreement. Citadel census-takers estimated its population in 2131 to be approximately 770,000 batarians and fewer than 3,000 non-batarian immigrants. Heavy casualties are expected.

–

100,000+ Dead in Suspected Terrorist Bombing
ANN Dispatch Brief #877267, December 4, 2185

Details continue to emerge from Hegemony space regarding the disastrous explosion at the batarian capital of Tunghusk. Hegemony officials have yet to release an official statement on the cause of the incident, but publicly available ongoing incident reports released by the Salarian Union Special Tasks Group confirm that the explosion was not, as previously reported, the result of a meteor impact, but rather an intentional detonation. Reports from batarian merchants suggest that key Hegemony leadership figures were among the more than 100,000 casualties resulting from the explosion. No group has yet publicly claimed responsibility for the attack.

–

Comm Tags Implicate First Human Spectre in Deadly Blast
Westerlund News, December 9, 2185

The Citadel Council is facing heavy criticism this week as public communications recovered from Khar'shan's comm buoy network place the Normandy SR2 – believed to be the personal craft of human Special Tactics and Reconnaissance agent John Shepard – in the Harsa system at the time of last week's devastating attack. The explosion – now believed to have been an act of terrorism against the Batarian Hegemony – resulted in the deaths of at least 300,000 batarians, including Grand Scion Prince Shilik'ash. Telescopic surveillance data suggest that the resultant firestorms continue to burn across thousands of kilometers of the Thuladask Valley.

Independent analysts have cast doubt on whether the Normandy SR2 was equipped with high-yield weapons capable of causing such a large explosion. Based on damage patterns, a likelier scenario appears to be that the explosion resulted from the detonation of a large improvised explosive inside of a low-flying ship. Witness reports about the involvement of a dreadnaught-class ship – possibly similar to the geth dreadnaught involved in the 2183 attack on the Citadel – are so far unconfirmed.

It is unclear at this point whether the Normandy SR2 ever departed the Harsa system, or if it was destroyed in the attack. Alliance officials have refused to comment on the whereabouts of the ship.

The crew, allegiance, and activities of the Normandy SR2 have been the subject of considerable speculation ever since Citadel Council representatives refused to confirm or deny the death of John Shepard to a geth attack in the Amada system in late 2183. Private salvage operations conclusively confirmed the destruction of the Normandy SR1 later that year, but conflicting reports fueled speculation that the ship had been scuttled as part of a deep cover operation.

–

Batarian Revolutionaries Take Credit for Attack on Human Colony
Frontier Living, Issue #4398, December 21, 2185

Batarian extremists have attacked the human colony of Demeter in a brazen act of retaliation. 38 human colonists are dead and at least 200 feared captured after a batarian raid on humanity's oldest extrasolar colony. Multiple warships descended on Demeter's Cody Spaceport early in the morning of December 18, 2185, destroying defensive emplacements and seizing two civilian craft before fleeing the system. Systems Alliance pursuit craft recovered one of the hijacked vessels near the system's heliosphere. It is unclear at this time how many of the crew and passengers were aboard.

Ka'hairal Balak, leader of the batarian terrorist organization Thrice Blessed Khar'shan, claimed responsibility for the attack via a recorded message sent to multiple news outlets within Citadel and System Alliance space. Balak called the attack "a small part of recompense for humanity's brazen warmongering" and promised further attacks would follow. Thrice Blessed Khar'shan is believed to have also been behind the attempted asteroid attack on Terra Nova in 2183.

While representatives of the Delta Pavonis Foundations Colonial Affairs Office have emphasized the small scale of the Demeter attack, the colony's close proximity to Sol has resulted in heavy criticism of the speed of the Eighth Fleet's response.

–

Alliance Officials Formally Charge John Shepard
ANN Dispatch Brief #874472, January 2, 2186

The Systems Alliance Judge Advocate Courts have announced formal charges against Cmndr. John Shepard for dereliction of duty, voluntary disobedience of orders and regulations, espionage, and aiding and abetting known enemies. These charges come three days after investigators for the Systems Alliance Council on Extrasolar Justice revealed that John Shepard was wanted for questioning relating to ongoing investigations into the terrorist attack on Khar'shan, and are believed to relate to events that occurred on the Citadel in January.

Representatives for Systems Alliance Admiral David Anderson, who resigned his position on the Citadel Council in October shortly after reports surfaced of the upcoming judicial action against Shepard, refused to comment. Interim councilor Donnel Udina refused to comment on specific cases, but confirmed that his office was making the extradition of John Shepard from the Hegemony a top priority.

At press time, John Shepard is still believed to be a prisoner on Khar'shan.

–

Spectre Jondum Bau Assigned to Khar'shan Diplomats
FFC News, Emily Wong, January 3, 2186

Citadel Council representatives today announced that Special Tactics and Reconnaissance agent Jondum Bau would accompany the emissaries of the joint Council/Systems Alliance embassy to the Batarian Hegemony. The move – interpreted by many analysts as a de facto reassertion of the Council's support for the Spectre program – comes in the wake of calls for reform into how Spectre agents are chosen and monitored.

Though the Spectre program has been contentious since its founding in 693CE, the program has come under harsh scrutiny in recent years after a series of prominent incidents precipitated by rogue Spectre agents operating under what critics have called "dangerously immaterial oversight". The decorated turian Spectre Saren Arterius' alliance with the geth and subsequent attack on the Citadel in September 2183 and the so-far-unclear involvement of human Spectre John Shepard in the Tunghusk bombing in November have been only the most visible examples of a long string of scandals involving Spectre agents accused of conflict of interest, excessive force, and extrajudicial overreach.

The embassy to the Batarian Hegemony is expected to take place in late January. Discussions are expected to center around the relief of economic sanctions and the extradition of John Shepard.

–

"Shili'kash and Burn"
"Tic's Take, the Official Virtu-Blog of Media Maven Zizi Tic", January 4, 2186

It's another day, Zizi-fans, and it's time for another Tic's Take!

We've all heard about the disaster on Khar'shan by now and I think it's safe to say nobody wants to see justice for those poor batarians more than me, but am I the only one who is tired of hearing all this misdirection about Shepard? Hellooooo, the man's been dead for six months, and even after all this time I am the only reporter with the courage to cover the real story of how he died.

Geth attack? Deep cover mission? Collectors? Try sex cult mishap. Try Hallex parties at Councilor Tevos' secret mansion on Cyone.

Do I really have to be the one to say it again?

Try elcorphilia.

The heart wants what it wants but it's a dangerous job and he didn't have the bones for it. Here's hoping the next human Spectre can control his lumber fever.

So we all know that if the Council really wanted to find Shepard, they'd be checking under an elcor starlet's toenails, but as usual the mainstream media won't cover anything that doesn't fit their so-called 'narrative'. We've been over the evidence before, Zizi-fans. I won't rehash it here. But it does mean that the blame game the Council is playing is yet another distraction.

Here's my take: The real Khar'shan bomber was none other than famed "You Had Me At First Contact" superstar Andre Kaygn. Seem unlikely? It's not.

Kaygn used to be a heartthrob who routinely made it to the top of Tic's Picks – my Celeb-Watch list of who's anyone in Novatown – but ever since his split from Lady Lava he's been swimming in the still part of the pond, if you know what I mean. Kaygn walked off the set of "YHMAFC 7: Xeno-felonious Love" earlier this year in protest of the studio's decision to recast batarian actress Madt Shash's character, and at this point it's seeming like fans may never see a conclusion to the series. For years Kaygn has driven controversy for his unusually close personal friendship with and vocal support for the otherwise vehemently anti-human Grand Scion of the Batarian Hegemony Prince Shilik'ash, who was one of those who died in the November attack on Khar'shan.

While the precise nature of Kaygn and Shilik'ash's relationship has never been admitted by either party, my sources tell me they were very close. For those of us with the Novatown know-how, it's an open secret that Kaygn had been inside more batarians than the Butcher of Torfan. Did Kaygn's long-concealed love affair turn sour? Did Shilik'ash find out Kaygn had found a new lover with four youthful twinkles in his eyes? Or was the whole affair an Alliance-backed trick to assassinate Shilik'ash from the beginning?

Keep your eyes open, Zizi-fans.

–

---

A/N: I'm aware that people don't read fanfiction to read about OC's, and so I will understand if this chapter is boring to some, but I really like batarians and always felt it was a missed opportunity that the games did not explore them more directly.

So, on ME3: I love this series and I know you do too, but I confess there were many things about ME3 that did not live up to its predecessors for me. Part of this is my own fault – I built up quite a lot of headcanon in the process of writing Interstitium, and of course much of it ended up contradicted – either in detail or thematically – such that some disappointment was probably inevitable. But I also think the game made some mistakes that either stood out to me at the time or have crystallized in the years since. I mean to write Interstitium 2 as a sort of AU of how I wish the game's plots had gone, keeping the parts I liked and changing the parts I didn't.

So which were those, you ask? You will have to read on to see, but in the broadest possible terms, I think the parts involving Earth, Tuchanka, Menae, and Thessia were mostly right. I think Rannoch is easily fixable. Leviathan was great. (Citadel was even better but I think better treated as semi-canonical and I don't imagine much/any of it will appear in Interstitium 2). I thought the new characters were excellent, in particular Javik who is as good as anything in the previous games. James, Traynor, Cortez were all likable. Some returning characters were well handled – Kaidan, Joker, Thane, Grunt, Wrex, Mordin, Anderson. Mostly Liara and Jack. I admit I liked EDI's plot way better than I feared I would (though expect my version of it to be pretty different all the same).

But I think the Reaper and Cerberus plots – arguably the two main plot threads of the series – need drastic changes, and therein lies the rub. I will try to be clear in the story and in author notes after each chapter when I change big things.

To that end, these first couple chapters actually don't represent material from ME3 at all, as you've probably noticed, but rather are a reimagined version of the Arrival DLC for ME2, which acts as sort of a bridge between the two games. I don't have strong feelings about Arrival either way – I think it was forgettable but didn't break anything – I just wanted to write about batarians and I thought this was the logical place to do it.

So major canon change #1: the redshirt Bahak system and its relay are not destroyed by Shepard to prevent an incipient Reaper appearance. Instead, a huge explosion is caused on Khar'shan itself, due partly to a Cerberus operation to retrieve the Leviathan of Dis' IFF.

Very broadly speaking, my plans for Interstitium 2 involves four semi-independent plotlines centered on the Reapers/Cerberus, the galaxy's war against the Reapers, the resurgence of the krogan, and the Evening War. These four plots will variously intersect as necessary. The reason I say this is because realistically I'm not going to get to all of it, so if there is something in particular that you'd be interested in seeing, I'd be interested in hearing about it.

Thanks so much for reading! If you feel so inclined, please leave me a review – feedback, be it positive or negative, helps me improve and motivates me to keep going.