Michael handed Garrus the bottle with the blue lid, then took the one with a green lid for himself. Legion appeared to be entertaining himself running some kind of program. He'd just taken a second swallow when Grunt's voice came over the comm. "Snipers are not useless."

"Right then." All three of them shouldered their rifles and began rescuing their surrounded teammates.

The remainder of the fight took only moments. As soon as the cover fire created a window, their teammates were back in it and cleaning up. "And what have we..."

The comm chimed, signaling a message from the Normandy. Michael frowned. They weren't due back for at least a few more hours. He pulled up the message, and his eyes widened. "Everyone back to the shuttle."

"There are three more pirate -" Jacob started to frown.

"Shuttle." He started moving. "Now."

He already knew they weren't going to make it in time.

#

He found Joker sitting on the table in the meeting room. The pilot's head rested in his hands, but he looked uninjured.

"Everyone?" Miranda strode in behind him. You lost everyone and damn near lost the ship, too?"

"I know, all right?" Joker glared at her. "I was here."

"It's not his fault, Miranda." Jacob spoke up. "None of us caught it."

And someone damn well should have. EDI spoke up. "Mr. Taylor is correct. The harmful data in the Collector drive was even more sophisticated than the 'black box' Reaper viruses I was given."

"Joker?" Michael put a hand on his pilot's shoulder. "I know it got rough. How are you holding up?"

Joker exhaled. "There's a lot of empty chairs in here."

"We did everything we could, Jeff." EDI's voice was quiet. Jeff. That was something new.

"Yeah, thanks, Mom." Joker hung his head again.

Michael exhaled, then looked around. "The Collectors took my people." He made a low growling sound. "EDI, set course for the relay. We are getting them back."

#

Kaidan handed Brekker the wrapped present. When Brekker raised an eyebrow, Kaidan shrugged. "It's technically from Michael."

"Then I'm sure Mikey will love it." Brekker grinned. Then he looked Kaidan over. "You've got some circles under your eyes."

"Some of my students are on a dangerous run. And uh..." Kaidan sighed.

"No idea where he is right now?"

"He sent a message asking for a kid to be taken to the academy." He frowned. "But Hackett just let me know Michael and his team vanished right in the middle of dealing with some pirates and that..."

"Yeah, that doesn't sound like him." Brekker frowned. "You think they got a lead on these Collector assholes?"

"That's what I'm hoping, anyway." Kaidan nodded. "And I don't have to remind you..."

"Classified, yeah, yeah, got it." He waved a hand. "So Sandra and I talked, and as soon as its deemed safe, we are heading back out to the colony."

"You're sure?" Kaidan frowned. "You know you are welcome to stay -"'

"I appreciate your hospitality, Alenko, but uh..." Brekker smiled. "What you and Michael are doing out there doesn't mean a whole hell of a lot if we colonial types aren't there to do our part." He put his hand on Kaidan's shoulder. "You fight, we'll keep the home fires burning and the beer coming."

#

The ship was empty and quiet. Garrus frowned. He normally liked quiet, but this was too much. It... "Tali?"

She stood in the door to the battery. "It's too quiet in the engine room." Tali sighed. "Mind if I stay in here, with you, until it's time to..."

"Sure." Garrus smiled. "You can help me with the weapons check."

#

He was staring at the models on his desk when his door chimed. Before he could turn, it was opening. Jack strode in. "Shepard."

"I wasn't expecting you, Jack." She looked... Her eyes were wet.

"I was thinking about you and..." She shook her head. "Maybe you're right. That I need..." She swallowed.

A few years back, he'd have swept her into his arms. Told her no more questions and... Michael sighed. Then he pulled her to him, hugging her gently. "Sit." He guided her to the couch, then sat next to her, keeping his arm around her shoulders. "Talk."

Jack leaned into him, exhaling softly. "Murtock. A guy. Used me like the rest - for sex, for biotics. It was fun. And he ruined everything. We tagged a weapons frigate with a batarian escort and got separated. He had a choice: leave with the guns or come back for me. Idiot dumped the score and waded into the squints. I made the shuttle, but no way was he getting out."

He rubbed the top of her arm. "And?"

"I fly for a day or so and then the shuttle kicks out this recording. He set it to play if he hadn't checked in. He figured that would mean he was dead. Talked about the future we were supposed to have. How he had planned to set us up a home. How he -" She closed her eyes. "How he loved me, and he was sorry it wasn't going to happen."

"If he had left you, you would have died?"

She pulled away from him. "So what? You ever see me flinch? Or run? Death is easy. Fucking on/off switch." She shook her head. "But this, it just burrows in. Like those husks, you end up with nothing inside. I'm supposed to take that and say, 'thanks, dead guy?'"

"So, you shut it all down. You stop letting anyone in. You stop caring. Until..." Michael closed his own eyes, then sighed. "Until somebody picks you up and carries you back."

"I..." Jack turned to look at him.

"We're not alone anymore, Jack." He met her eyes. "You're right. Death is easy. We walk in its company every day. What's terrifying is..." He looked down at his hands, then looked back up at her. "Finding something worth living for and realizing you could lose it." He smiled. "And it makes you fight all the harder."

For several moments, she was silent. Then she gave a small smile of her own. "Do you ever wonder who we'd be if we'd been, you know..." She shook her head, then brushed at her eyes. "Had a chance to be normal?"

"I had a cousin, my age. She liked to cook, sew a little, run for pleasure rather than because something was chasing her, and a few other things." He twitched a shoulder. "She was normal. I wanted that." He met her eyes. "And she died on Mindoir, murdered by slavers because no one was there to fight them."

"You're saying if we were normal, we'd be dead?" Jack gave him a look.

"I'm saying..." He put his hand on top of hers. "That we can stop what happened to us from happening to others."

She squeezed his hand, then moved back to sit next to him again. Then she frowned. "It was that guy, wasn't it?" She looked up at him. "The one on Horizon, that said..." Her eyes narrowed before she stood up to start pacing his quarters. "I'm gonna kick his ass."

"Jack..." He found himself laughing.

"What's with these?" Jack paused at his desk, looking over the models he had on display. "You don't exactly seem like a 'playing with toys' kind of guy, Shepard." She leaned back, smirking at him.

Kaidan had once asked him the same thing, though he'd phrased it differently. He'd given Kaidan a full and honest answer without hesitation. Michael exhaled, then shrugged. "I got tossed in jail a bit before I turned sixteen." He walked down, then gestured at his sofa before taking a seat himself. Jack followed, then stretched out on the couch and put her boots on his leg. "The cop that arrested me went looking for my next of kin."

"That cousin you mentioned?" Jack tilted her head.

"Yes..." He still wondered sometimes, what his life would have been like had the dream of Mindoir come true. "They didn't have any idea I existed before he told them, but once they did, they offered to take me in, give me a place with them. Jezebel, she uh..." He looked down. "We had the same birthday. She sent me a package with a note saying she was sorry I had to celebrate alone, and that maybe we could get on the vid and we could open our presents together."

Jack shifted position so she could lean forward. "Did you?"

"I spent my birthday alone in a cell, staring down at the only birthday present I ever got in my life." He looked back up at her. "She spent hers being murdered, along with the rest of my family there."

For a moment, Jack was silent. Then she slowly nodded. "She sent you a model ship."

"That one, the one she sent..." He rubbed the back of his neck. "It's at Hackett's place along with a few other things in a locker. Stuff for a future, if there ever is on." Michael glanced at the other models. "I buy one every year on our birthday." He let out a small laugh. "This year it's a Athabasca class fighter. Haven't gotten around to putting it together yet. Probably should, might be the last chance I get."

"I could..." Jack opened her mouth, then seemed to catch herself. "Go get some beer or -"

"Couple beers might be nice." Michael leaned forward. "We could drink them while we put it together." He gestured for her to sit. "It'll be..." He shrugged. "Normal."

Her smile trembled, just a little.

#

He stared across the comm at the man on the other side. "Shepard. I wish I had more information for you. I don't like you heading through that relay blind, but we don't have much choice."

It's not like he'd be able to completely trust TIM's information anyway. "We'll deal with whatever we find."

"Despite the danger, it's a great opportunity. The first human to take a ship through..." TIM waved his cigarette. "And survive."

Michael wondered if TIM even cared about the Cerberus teammembers that had been kidnapped. "I've got room on the Normandy if you're that eager to see it." He knew the man wouldn't take him up on it. TIM wasn't the type to do his own work.

"It's a tempting offer. But it's not my place." TIM nodded. "I just wanted you to know I appreciate the risk you're taking. Regardless of your opinion of Cerberus. Of me. You are..." TIM shrugged. "A valuable asset. To all of humanity." TIM took another drag on his cigarette. "Be careful, Shepard."

#

The red color of the relay looked uncomfortably like hellfire. Everyone was at their stations, ready to go. For this part, he had to rely on his crew. "Let's make it happen."

Coming out of the relay into a debris field was not quite what he had anticipated. Fortunately, Joker was almost as good of a pilot as he thought he was. "These must be all the ships that tried to make it through the Omega 4 relay. Some look..." Joker's voice was almost reverent. "Ancient."

"I have detected an energy signature near the edge of the accretion disk." EDI's voice came over the comm. The collector base started to come into view. It was kind of ugly.

"Has to be the Collector base. Take us in for a closer look. Nice and easy." Something told him this would be neither nice nor easy.

"Careful, Jeff. We have company." Blips appeared on the screen a heartbeat before something started shooting at them.

"Taking evasive maneuvers." Joker began working the pilot console. "Now they are just pissing me off." He growled. "EDI - Take these bastards out."

The new plating held.

"Alert. Hull breach on the engineering deck."

"It's in the cargo hold."

Michael started moving. "Garrus, Grunt, we've got a trespasser."

#

The ship jerked around them as Joker did his thing. It made fighting the giant evil eyeball slightly more difficult. "I'm barely scratching it's plating." Michael growled as he switched his ammo. Then he thought about it again and grabbed his heavy weapon. "Grunt, Vakarian, find cover."

He stepped out, took aim, and pulled the trigger.

#

"That may..." Garrus looked around the cargo hold. Shepard's skin was slightly reddened from the blast. "Have been a slight amount of overkill."

"Not as much as Grunt punching it would have been." Shepard put the heavy weapon back. "We've got to get a couple more of those."

"Oh, oh, I want one!" Grunt bounced up and down like an eager child.

Shepard rolled his eyes and reached for his comm unit. "EDI, status report?"

"No casualties, Commander." Her voice responded. "Multiple core systems overloaded during the crash. Restoring operation will take time."

He looked around as his team began coming together. "We all knew this was likely a one-way trip." Miranda sighed.

"I'll do whatever it takes to stop the Collectors, but I plan to live to tell about it." Michael met Jack's eyes and saw her nod.

"I'm glad you're in charge." Joker exhaled. "What's next?"

"Let's go get our crew."