"Why me, ma'am?" Jenkins asked as they cleared the docking tube, and the crush of people going and coming on the docks swept them into their current. "Is it because you don't consider me a flight risk?

Shepard chuckled then winced at the stench. Omega smelled like a combination of diesel fuel, outhouse, and dead bodies. The smell burned its way into her head and took root somewhere deep enough she wondered if she'd ever get rid of it. "Richard . . . Rick . . .?"

He flushed a little. "Richard, ma'am."

"Okay, Richard. Call me Jane. Most men don't call their girlfriends ma'am." She smiled and slipped her arm a little further through his. "I chose you because C-Sec constantly gets me in trouble, Nihlus and I should never be in the same place at the same time in case of disaster, and Sparky would spend the entire mission glowing like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer's nose. Besides, this gives us a chance to get to know one another a little better." She opened a channel. "Okay ladies, my boyfriend and I are clear. Have fun shopping."

She guided Jenkins in the general direction of the marketplace. Along the walls of the docks, little illegal oases of colour and life bloomed amidst Omega's browns. Sellers scrambled and called out, using every trick in the hawker book to make some coin before people pushed past into Omega proper and took their credits to the legal stores and sellers. If the authorities happened by (namely whatever merc group controlled that section of the docks), the brilliant garden of kiosks could disappear into grey-brown piles of crates in under twenty seconds.

"Sparky, Wrex, you have eyes on?" she asked, subtly opening a channel.

"Roger that," Wrex answered. "It looks as though they're buying Pinky some girlie human clothes."

Shepard grinned and made it look like Jenkins had said something entertaining. "At least they aren't buying her hanar clothes."

"Hanar don't . . . oh. Wrex out."

Looking around, Shepard spied the two ladies at a kiosk, and nodded for Jenkins to move toward a drink stand opposite. "I've got eyes on," she reported to the other teams. She ordered two bottles of water, then led Jenkins off to one side. "So, what is there to know about Richard Jenkins?" she asked, giving him a wide smile. "Your folks doing okay? You talked to them in the last few days?"

He nodded. "Yes ma' . . . Jane. Our house came through okay, so they're taking in anyone they can find room for. Mom loves looking after people, so I'm sure she's busy cooking for most of the colony." Chuckling, he shook his head and flushed a little. "As for me, there's not much to tell. Eden Prime was so quiet that all I did was dream about leaving, finding adventure." He met her eyes and shrugged. "Guess it's a case of careful what you wish for, huh?"

Shepard let out a little huff of agreement. "Nowhere is safe enough." She drank down half her bottle, feeling like Omega had coated the back of her throat in sludge. She glanced over to see Ash purchasing a dress, sweater, and slacks.

"Yeah." He shook his head, an empathetic scowl on his face. "You'd know all about that." After a moment of silence that hung like an ugly pinata between them, he took a whack at it. "Um . . .." He cleared his throat and offered her his elbow again as Ashley and Tali moved on. "Elysium was the reason I joined the military." He flushed and ran his hand over the collar of his armour. "You were my hero."

She looked up and gave him a sad smile. "Richard," she said, sighing as she squeezed his arm, "Elysium wasn't short of heroes, but I wasn't one of them. I just did what I had to do. Of course, the brass have their heads stuffed too far up their asses to care about that. They needed to shine it up so colonial development wouldn't lag. It's smart when you think about it. Grab the small female officer who led the resistance, and slap a medal on her. Of course, buried under medals or not, the truth is the truth."

They stopped and pretended to go through a jewelry kiosk. Everything felt slightly tacky. Shepard shuddered and resisted the urge to wipe her hands despite wearing gloves.

"I don't understand, Jane." He held up a necklace with a pendant that looked like a lynx or bobcat. "You held off the pirates until help could get there. You did an amazing thing."

Shepard sighed and closed her eyes for a moment. He was going to make her tell him after all the work she'd done to wall it up behind metres of emotional brick and mental mortar. When she opened her eyes, she let out a long, noisy breath. "You tell anyone this story, I'll have to kill you. Well, unless some day you have a child or grandchild who falls in love with the romance of being a hero. That day you can tell it without fear of Shepard's wrath."

The ladies moved on, pushing through the crowd. When Shepard straightened to follow, she caught sight of Nihlus. He cut her a curt nod, then turned to speak to Garrus. Tugging lightly on the corporal's arm, she eased them back into the flow of pedestrian traffic. Wincing a little at the noise level, the constant buzz of conversation and roar of machinery, she reached up and turned down the ambient on her implants.

"I was on leave after clearing out a small slaving operation." She smiled, her lips curving softly, and shook her head. "There was this kid from the capital. Martin Weaver. Good kid, super sweet, super eager to escape Elysium, find adventure and excitement." Tip of her index finger tapping her bottom lip, she turned to him with a thoughtful frown. He laughed. "Hmmmm." Giving him a gentle push, she said, "Sounds familiar somehow. Can't quite place it."

"Anyway," he said, clearing his throat.

Shepard's smiled widened. "So cheeky." Sighing, she forced herself back on track. "Yeah, anyway . . .. " She looked back to Ash and Tali, watching them buy food. "He followed me everywhere. I had no idea why; he just latched on." She took a long drink from her bottle, then over-handed it into a bin as they passed.

"Illyria's a fortress," Shepard said, pausing to look up at the gates that separated the docks from the industrial area. She blocked the setting sun with a raised hand. "What's the deal? Keep pirates out or have I accidentally decided to take my leave on a prison planet?"

Martin laughed. "It does feel like a prison sometimes. There are gates between all the districts for defense." He pointed. "The wall is actually the back wall of the businesses or homes. Almost half the population isn't human, so security is always tight."

Shepard shuddered. Mindoir had been open farmland around the urban centers. The odd Alliance look out or check point, but nothing compared to the maximum security prison of Elysium's capital. "I can see why you want to escape, kid."

He ran ahead through the gate into the industrial area, then turned to walk backwards. "You hungry? I know a great place to get burgers. The farms here have cows, so it's actual meat, not that vat crap."

"Sure, kid, I could eat. Lead on." Shepard hoisted her duffel higher on her shoulder and followed him through the gates, looking up at the coils of razor wire along the top. Another shudder gripped her. Trading freedom for security . . . a fine line that she was pretty sure Elysium had crossed.

The burger place served a great cheeseburger. It had been so long since she'd eaten a real, fresh cut french fry, that she worried she might embarrass herself for a moment. Actual chocolate milkshakes and pumpkin pie pretty much convinced her that she'd found junk food nirvana. She watched Martin scarf his meal down, only coming up for air to ask her questions about the Alliance around mouthfuls of food. She answered them the best she could, envying him his innocence.

Pushing her dessert plate away from her, she sighed. "I need to get to my hotel room so I can pop the button on my trousers," she said, lacing a weak laugh through a heavy groan. "I ate three days worth of food in one meal." She thanked the waitress and swiped her credit chit, paying for both their meals.

"Thanks, Shepard." Martin jumped up and bounded into the street, all the energy and coordination of a yearling colt. She wanted to grab him, sling an arm around his shoulders, and tell him to slow down a little, enjoy his fresh, beautiful view of a tarnished and dark galaxy. Of course, he'd never listen. She wouldn't have at his age.

"It's no wonder the kid is stuck to you, Shepard, you old softy," she grumbled to herself as she followed Martin up the street.

Her hotel happened to be right next to the massive gates into the retail section of Illyria. She traded a ground floor room for one on the top floor. It never paid to have windows anyone could crawl through.

"This is where I leave you, kid," Shepard said at the elevator. "Thanks a lot for the tour. It's been fun."

Martin bounced a little, his hands stuffed down into the front pockets of his jeans, his shoulders up by his ears. "I could take you out tomorrow if you like, show you the mountains." He grinned wide and ingenuous. "We're not called an alpine paradise for nothing."

Completely charming. Lord, save me from the charmers.

She chuckled and nodded. "Sure, but let me sleep in, okay? I'll meet you down here at noon." She hit the elevator and rode up, flopping across her bed as soon as she walked into the room. "Thank you, baby Jesus. A real mattress. All those things I've asked for . . . it's okay, this is all I need."

"My feet are killing me. Bad case of new boots, old feet." Shepard chuckled, steering Jenkins over to a booth at a small cafe. Ash and Tali sat a couple of tables away, eating lunch and chatting like they'd been best friends their whole lives. She grinned as her companion's stomach growled. "Go ahead and get something to eat. We'll be here for a bit by the look of it." After looking around, she winced. "Unless you're into exotic forms of food poisoning, make it something in a wrapper, though."

He ordered a giant, honey-glazed pastry. When he opened the donut, the honey-soaked, browned-dough smell made her stomach growl as if threatening to climb out and maul him for it.

"Damn, doesn't that just drown out the wretched stench of this hole?" She moaned, staring at his snack as it raised to his mouth. "The madness of the donuts is the lure of the abyss. Sirens lurk in the dark depths of the honey-glaze as they lurk at the bottom of the sea, that I know for sure - but I have never encountered them, and I am searching still for the profound and plaintive pastries in whose depths I might be able, like Hamlet redeemed, to drown the Ophelia of my desire." Watching him take another bite, the moan upped to a groan. "Oh, sweet baby Jesus." She turned to the proprietor and ordered one of her own.

Jenkins stared at her. "Jane?"

She laughed. "Why is it the second I quote literature, you all look at me like I'm a crazy woman?" She shrugged and waggled her head. "Okay, I bastardized that one a little. It's Jean Lorrain from his novel Monsieur De Phocas."

Glaring at her warily, he turned a little to guard his food. "No, I was afraid that you were going to take my arm off to get to mine."

She nodded, eyes narrowing as she teased him. "It could happen." She ripped hers open and took a bite, the sweet, sticky, doughy goodness prompting a soft moan. "Oh yeah. Oh yeah, sing your sweet siren song to me, yeast, flour, and sugar. Ophelia of my desire, consider thyself drowned." She swallowed the bite, then opened her eyes. "Okay, I'm back."

Jenkins shook his head, still looking both alarmed and confused. "So you just got to your room and crashed?" he asked, cranking the steering wheel to swerve her back on course.

"Yeah, I was beat." Shepard nodded and picked at her donut. "I woke up hours later, still in my clothes, my room door not even locked. The sky outside was a scary, absolute black." She stifled a shudder, unable to stop her skin from lifting into gooseflesh. "I sat up on the side of the bed, trying to find the light and figure out why the alarm in my head felt like exploding cacti. Then I felt the whole room vibrating. The air changed, making my ears pop as I heard the thwump thwump of low yield explosives hitting the ground." Setting the pastry down on it's wrapper, she swallowed hard, the dough stuck in a wad in her throat. "Martin burst through the door, screaming senseless panic gibberish. Scared the living shit out of me. Good thing I wasn't armed."

Five minutes after waking, Shepard ran out the hotel's front door, Ingrid and Roger securely seated on the back of her armour. Martin ran into her back, then headed for the gate, but she grabbed the collar of his shirt and yanked him back. "Stay here."

She shoved away her erratic heartbeat and the knot tied into her guts. Balling her hands into fists then stretching out her fingers, she forced blood and warmth down into them. She needed to think, needed to move and fast. Scanning the gates, she spotted stairs leading up the nearest wall to a guard house. She raced up, grabbing a set of binoculars off the table, then ran out onto the rooftop to look down at the docks. A soldier stood a couple of metres away, doing the same thing.

The unmistakable orange, fiery plumes of explosions rose up into an already thick, black cloud of smoke over the docks. Looking up at the sky, she searched for any sign of the Alliance fighting off the raid. The Agincourt was up there, she knew that for sure. She'd come in on the Juno, but it might have already left. Sure enough, just above the northern horizon, meteorite-like streaks of fire showed debris entering orbit. At least the Alliance knew what was going on.

"We've got to get to the base," the soldier called, looking over his shoulder at two others. "All our comms are jammed."

"How many of you are on patrol in this district?" Shepard asked.

"Six, ma'am. Six more in the residential district. The LT is on his way down to the dock gate." For a moment, she thought he might just bolt after his lieutenant, but then he straightened and his feet rooted to the rooftop.

Shepard walked to the edge of the roof and looked down. Civilians wandered in the street, their faces confused and numb. She needed to get them into shelter and protected. No way in God's great galaxy would she let Mindoir happen again.

Thank you sweet Lord for Elysium's paranoia.

"Get this and the residential district gates shut and block them with sky cars, whatever. Make sure that a tank can't just ram them and get through." The lights and thunder from the docks drew her eyes back. "Whatever this is, it's big, and our first priority has to be protecting the civilians."

"Those are our people down there," the Marine screamed in Shepard's face.

She gripped him by the shoulders, balling up two handfuls of his uniform. "Yes, and these are your people up here. The Alliance personnel can take care of themselves." She had to crane her neck to meet his eyes. "Our duty is to the folk who can't. We need to keep these people safe until help comes. Weld this gate shut."

For a moment, he looked as though he'd argue, but then he nodded and grabbed his two squad mates and raced for the gate.

Shepard looked to the crowd of people gathering, shivering in the chill early morning air and called down. "We need to barricade this gate. The wire will slow down ground troops, but we need vehicles and heavy equipment to keep them from ramming straight through if they try to batter it down with tanks or blow it with rockets."

She ran over to the guard station and descended the stairs, stopping on the lowest landing. "We need guns, radios, food and water, and we need people to man the barricade once it's up. Wall patrols will be vital." Her eyes scanned the crowd, her hands gripping the railing as she leaned forward. "Anyone willing to organize the wall patrols, get people up watching for squads trying to breach? Someone know the walls and their weak spots?"

An older man in camo held up his hand. "I helped build them, I can organize the patrols and sentries."

"Excellent. We'll need at least two people per post who can use a rifle and some cover for them." She looked back to the crowd. "Okay. Volunteer for fire control?"

A woman raised her hand. "Well, since I'm the fire chief, I guess that would be me."

Shepard gave her a wide grin. "Excellent, you'll have that well in hand, then." She looked up. "We need to close the gates to the residential district and have vehicles ready to block it. That will be our fall back. If whoever is attacking the colony starts getting through these gates, we fall back, barricade ourselves in there. Make sure the children, infirm, and elderly are all up there to start with. Get them into the most secure parts of the district and start fortifying them the best you can." Her eyes sought out the wall patrol leader. "Make sure those walls are ready to be defended, and that we have eyes anywhere they might try to flank us and come in behind."

He nodded and ran off.

"Okay, now, we need scavenging teams. Clear out the sporting good, hunting, military surplus, and hardware stores. Need some people organizing supplies, loading weapons and making sure they fire." She looked down at the fire chief. "It's safe to say you know these people well?"

"Yes, ma'am. I'll find team leaders for those tasks."

Shepard nodded. "Okay, let's get these gates secure. We don't have much time."

Martin raced up to her, breathless and flushed with excitement. "Shepard! What do you need me to do?" The kid practically bounced on the spot.

"Stick with me. You can run messages and pass out supplies." She grabbed the front of his shirt in her fist and pulled him in so they stood nose to nose. "Whatever you do, stay with me. I'll keep you safe. No running off to do anything crazy, understood?"

He saluted, a indecently wide grin on his face. His wished for adventure had arrived, and it made her eyes sting to see the innocence in his excitement. "Yes, ma'am."

"How long did you have before the pirates made it to the gate?" Jenkins asked between licking the sticky icing from his fingers.

"Don't do that. Germs, man, germs." Shepard passed him a wet napkin. "An hour and a half. Long enough to get things locked down fairly well, get people on the roofs with rifles. As I figured, they rolled up with a couple of tanks. We managed to thin the herd pretty well while the tanks battered at our blockade, but it was inevitable that they'd get through. I called for the retreat after about two hours. We'd taken quite a few casualties, sent the wounded back to the closest school, left the dead lying out at the back of the roofs where they'd fallen. Hated to do it, but we just didn't have time to worry about the dead with more than a million living bodies to defend."

"Martin lost that excited spring in his step about the same time one of the Alliance soldiers took a bullet to the head, covering the poor kid in blood. He dug deep and found his guts though. He kept going. I admired that in him."

Across the cafe, Ashley and Tali stood and headed back into the throng. Shepard watched the crowd, searching for quarians or anyone showing an interest. Nothing. The two ladies might as well be any of the faceless thousands. "Damn, this isn't working," she grumbled as she stood. "Come on, boyfriend o' mine, let's see what other trouble we can get into now that we have a sugar rush going."

They held hands and drifted with the tide of people, catching sight of the other two teams now and again, both reporting seeing nothing out of the ordinary going on.

"How did the retreat back to the residential gate go?" Jenkins prodded after a few minutes passed.

She sighed and squeezed his hand, a silent warning to rein in the eagerness. "As much like clockwork as one could expect with the resources at hand. Most of the gun hands I'd kept behind until last had been Alliance or mercs at some point, so they held the line together pretty well. We took a couple of injuries, but nothing major."

A sigh cut through her words like a scalpel. "However, I didn't know that a group of teenagers had snuck away from their families, grabbed rifles and decided to be heroes. They got the wise idea to try to take out the tanks with hunting rifles."

"Martin, get your ass through the gate." Shepard kept Roger moving, dropping targets as she backed toward the blockade, trying to buy time for the civilians to get themselves organized.

Movement along the rooftops alerted her to snipers, and she sped up. "Get ready to weld those gates shut!" she yelled back over her shoulder. Just as she reached the narrow opening in the gates, six bodies hurtled out the front door of one of the stores.

"Wait for us!" they screamed in a chorus of panic. Shepard stopped, keeping Roger in motion. Three shots into one target, switch, three shots, switch; pounding the pirates to slow them down, buy precious seconds of time.

Run faster, dammit.

Screaming with metallic death, the gates into the retail district crumpled under the weight of two tanks. For a moment, the Grizzlies reared up, seeming about to tip over as they climbed the barricade of skycars behind the gates.

Please, baby Jesus, let them go over backwards, let them go over backwards.

She held her breath as the tanks hesitated, but then their noses dropped and they rumbled over top of the barricade and down the other side. Batarian and human pirates clambered over the pile, the trickle of bodies from before turning into a flood. Shepard let out the breath and glanced behind her. Eight minutes, maybe, to get the gates welded shut and barricaded before the running bodies and tanks poured over them. Her eyes flitted back to the small group of fleeing teens.

A dry, thunderous crack split the air and one of them fell. Shepard sighted a sniper on one of the roofs and brought him down, but the group had stopped to help their companion. Pirates closed in on the teenagers far faster than they got their wounded comrade up and moving.

They're taking too long. Dammit.

She backed through the gate, her eyes burning and supper from the night before sitting just behind her tonsils as she sealed their fates.

"Shut the gate! Weld it shut!" She closed her eyes. "Sweet baby Jesus, hold them close and keep them safe. I pray this in your Father's name. Amen."

(A-N: Because I missed last Wednesday due to illness, I will be posting Chapter 25 on Saturday and then Chapter 26 on next Wednesday. Posting will be once a week on Wednesday from that point on. So sorry for missing last week.)