"Here we are. Welcome to Project Base" Kenson declared to Shepard as they stepped off the shuttle. Above them was an imposing screen displaying a countdown.

"What's this?" Shepard asked.

"That's our countdown to Arrival" Kenson replied. "When that gets to zero…"

Shepard looked to the screen counting down that displayed forty five minutes and 27 seconds remaining and felt fingers of cold clench in her stomach.

"…the Reapers will have come" Kenson finished gravely.

"They called it Object Rho" Jax told Garrus. "A Reaper beacon, millions of years old, left here to guide the Reapers in from dark space, letting them know exactly where they need to go to reach the closest mass relay. Hidden the asteroid field it was nearly impossible to find. It was only dumb luck, one in a million odds that they did. But whatever the signals it was sending out to the Reapers, it was affecting the people too."

"We constructed this base as a think tank to discern ways to stop or at least delay the Reapers' arrival" Kenson told Shepard. "Our only viable solution was to destroy the relays. We had planned to use our largest craft as a fireship, loaded with explosives to destroy the relay."

"Only it wasn't going to work" Jax continued, "the relays are millions of years old and constructed by a civilisation far more advanced than us, no destructive capability we had was even going to come close to scratching the thing, so we had to come up with a new plan."

"Upon Mister Weaver's suggestion, we cannibalised all the ships," Kenson explained, "mounting their engines to the asteroid itself and using the flight guidance system to guide it. Any predictive models we could use are of course all theoretical but in practice, we'd be hitting the relay with a small planet at incredibly high speed. I don't think the math for what that would do even does exist yet."

"Everything was in place" Jax said, "the question no longer was 'could we' but 'should we'? We were ready to hit the button but Kenson said we should take a patrol to check what was between us and the batarians. That if there was a warship that could disable the engines then everything we worked for may have been for nothing. It made sense," Jax shook his head, "but now I see she was just stalling me."

"How are you so certain Object Rho proves a Reaper invasion?" Shepard asked.

"It gave me a vision" Kenson told her. "I don't know what to compare it to, but it didn't seem dissimilar from what you reported of the Prothean beacon on Eden Prime."

"How did you avoid being indoctrinated by the artefact?" Shepard asked as they approached the room Object Rho was housed in.

"They didn't" Jax replied to Garrus. "They claimed to be experts and know what they were doing, to stop me from pressing further. We took the shuttle out and the space was clear. That was when they made their move, when I realised what Object Rho had been doing to them."

"You have the Reaper artefact just sitting here… out in the open?" Shepard asked incredulously, staring, "Kenson, this is not good."

"Give it a moment Shepard" Kenson bade, "it will give you the proof you need."

"A Reaper invasion" Jax said cynically, "they could still see it but Object Rho made them love it, made them desperate for it. The group attacked me, Kenson then spoke but it was something else… like she was a conduit, a voice for them directly. She told me I could not stop the Arrival, and the group were going to kill me and put me out the airlock."

"What did you do?" Garrus asked.

Jax shook his head. "The only thing I could, I opened an open communication to the batarians, transmitting my location."

"You did what?" Garrus echoed.

"I figured I was dead anyway but the batarians could stop Kenson, that maybe if we were killed, someone might hear about what happened and could come in the two days we had left to finish the Project" Jax said with a shrug. "And then you came."

Shepard slid over a crate and into cover as a rocket flew overhead, detonating behind her. She rose quickly and loosed a burst of gunfire in return, halting at least one for the moment. The surge of Kenson's men seemed to be endless, anytime she killed one, another was there to take his place. She lined up a soldier with a flamethrower and targeted the canister on his back. He and the two others around him died without so much as a scream, charred corpses falling heavily to the ground.

"You cannot stop the Arrival!" Kenson declared, channelling the worst thoughts of something far greater and more terrible than Shepard had ever faced. Sovereign's voice had been accepting, prophesying humanity's downfall because it was simple fate. This voice Kenson was a conduit for demanded humanity's extinction because it wanted to exterminate human life, it was insulted by it. Shepard killed two more, the second at point blank with her pistol as her assault rifle ran dry. He fell down, blood pooling quickly as her bullet vented his head. She opened a communication channel but there was only static. She needed to warn the Batarians, she needed to call in the Normandy. The Project had to succeed, the Batarians' colony world had to be sacrificed.

"What about the prison?" Garrus asked.

"Thra'ash A'garn" Jax said, "we told ghost stories about that place when we were kids on Omega, I never believed it to be real. They kept Kenson, threw me and the rest of the crew into the Hellpit to die."

"The others?" Garrus asked.

Jax shook his head. "All dead. Lost one down a crevice to burn, bad way to go. The varren came for the rest of us one by one. Removed so far from the Project, the others seemed to get some semblance of their minds back. We tried to fight back but we still took losses exactly the same. In the end it was just me, I had to be smart."

"The dirt you were covered in…" Garrus mused.

Jax nodded. "To mask my smell as best I could. I took the skull of the varren we killed and jury rigged it to make a trap under the body of the last survivor besides me, only I didn't expect Grunt to be the one to step in it."

"And then Shepard took Kenson right back to the Project" Garrus realised in horror.

Jax nodded. "They have dozens of guards, mechs, they were prepared for the eventuality that the Batarians could find them."

"Can they stop the Project?" Garrus asked.

"The course for the relay is locked" Jax said, "once the engines are activated there's no stopping it. Unless…"

"Unless what?" Garrus demanded.

"Unless you deactivated the cooling system for the eezo reactor powering the engines" Jax guessed. "Once the engines reached critical temperature, they wouldn't shut down, they'd vaporise the asteroid entirely."

"Guaranteeing the Project's failure" Garrus muttered darkly.

"We have to make sure that doesn't happen" Jax said, "where's Shepard now?"

"At the Project Base" Garrus said. "But we don't know exactly where it is."

"What?" Jax asked. "Aren't you tracking her?"

Garrus shook his head. "Her suit's bio-tracker doesn't have a strong enough signal to make it out of the asteroid field, and we can't go in without a proper heading or else we'd be shredded."

"What about the shuttle?" Jax asked.

Garrus' head dropped lower, realising Kenson had played the situation perfectly in front of their noses. "They took the Batarian shuttle, not ours. We can't track its frequency because we don't have it. I don't suppose you have its coordinates?"

Jax shook his head. "Never needed them, Kenson flew me there herself. The asteroid the Project Base is on could be in a million different places now."

"Then it's up to Shepard to stop the Reapers now" Garrus finished.

Shepard picked up a thermal clip off the ground from Maxwell's limp dead fingers and pushed it into her assault rifle, reloading the weapon. She had survived the onslaught of indoctrinated troops and resisted the sheer domineering power of Object Rho, pushing forward to the Project control room. From there, she would be able to activate the Project and postpone the galactic apocalypse. Despite all of Object Rho's indoctrinating force, the crew seemed less and less willing to stop her as she carved a bloody way through every Project guard that came up against her, an unstoppable force of sheer will strong enough to resist even the Reapers.

Shepard stepped over their corpses, cautiously looking around before approaching the control panel, activating her omnitool.

"Project activation in progress" the VI responded as Shepard touched the command prompt. "Warning; collision with mass relay is imminent, behind evacuation procedures." The room shook around her as a coughing rumble escalated into a couching roar. Shepard looked out the nearest window at the spec of blue in the distance. The mass relay was in reach. A sharp rumble of thunder shook the base again as the Project crashed through another asteroid in its way; nothing would be able to stop this now.

"What's that alert?" Garrus asked, seeing the flashes on one of the holographic panels in front of Joker.

"I have detected a noticeable heat spike from a number of emission sources" EDI replied. "They appear fixed to a singular asteroid in the belt."

"And it's coming straight at us" Joker said. "Project Base is moving, detecting a definite power source down there."

"It's Shepard" Garrus said, craning his neck to see it properly through the viewport. "Well done Commander."

"We aren't out of this yet" Joker said. "We still need to get Shepard and get the hell out, ETA until that thing wipes out the system is thirty minutes."

"Unless Kenson wipes out the Project first" Jax said grimly from his station, sending the results of a scan to Joker's terminal. He had driven Chakwas into a fit ripping out his IV line and following Garrus up to the CIC. "Thermal scans; the engines are channelling heat back into the eezo core. The Project is going to have a few minutes before the core temperature goes critical and annihilates the entire asteroid."

"How do I stop that?" Commander Shepard asked the VI.

"All automatic safety protocols have been overridden" the artificial voice replied perfunctorily. "To stabilise the core, manually insert Cooling Rod A from this control station. Manually insert Cooling Rod B from the Control Station B ."

"No time to lose then" Shepard muttered as she pushed the cylinder in and twisted. Kenson's tortured ravings were still in her mind, because of you, I will die never having seen the Reaper's blessings. Kenson had been hand-selected by Hackett to lead this group, she had doctorates from half a dozen of the most prestigious universities in the galaxy, knew of the Reaper's actual existence and yet still had been totally proselytised by the Reaper's indoctrinations into nothing but a single-minded devoted slave. This was their power, and it was why they needed to be stopped.

The next guards fell quickly, Shepard's gun perpetually leaking smoke out the barrel as she constantly scavenged enemies for more thermal clips as a macabre looter. One thought he had her trapped in maintenance, Shepard showed him the error of such assumptions quickly. Kenson was throwing waves of followers at her to slow her down, but for what purpose? Surely by now, the force controlling Kenson knew it couldn't stop her with manpower, so what was it accomplishing by delaying her?

Kenson's objective hadn't been to destroy the secondary cooling rod as the last solider in the room died, his finger still clenched around the assault rifle trigger as it clicked uselessly with an emptied thermal clip. Shepard closed the second cooling rod, nodding with a breath as the VI informed her a core meltdown had been averted with temperatures stabilising.

"You haven't won yet!" Kenson screeched. The indoctrination effect on her didn't seem to dominate her by the Reapers so much as it did infatuate her with them, her rage was making her sloppy. "I can still override power to the engines. Try and stop me!"

"If you insist" Shepard muttered as she commanded the elevator to take her to the core. She entered through the next door to see Kenson, facing away from her, hands desperately to her head. In front of her was the core's control panel, a few prompts away from instigating a total meltdown. "Step away from the reactor" Shepard commanded, switching quickly to her pistol.

"You've ruined everything" Kenson seethed bitterly. "I can't hear the whispers anymore." She grabbed onto the console with both hands, sinking deeper into her tortured ravings, she was wildly unpredictable.

"Turn around now!" Shepard warned.

"You've taken them away from me" Kenson scorned, "I will never see the Reapers' Arrival." She pulled out a detonator from her belt, making Shepard flinch. "All you had to do was stay dead" she said loathsomely, "none of this had to happen."

"Kenson, you don't have to do this!" Shepard pleaded, lowering her pistol gently. "We can get off this asteroid!" Kenson had given up on the override, her intention was to simply vaporise herself and Shepard. She had a moment, as if time suddenly slowed, an opening. Kenson was distracted in her agony, her thumb off the trigger. One precise shot could end this, maybe. But would she take it?

Never compromise Shepard thought, that was the difference between her and the people she fought against. Taking the easy option as a way out would not be her way.

Kenson looked back at the Commander unflinchingly. "No" she said simply, "we cannot" and pressed the trigger.

Shepard was lifted off her feet and thrown backwards as a fireball enveloped Kenson and the doctor disappeared. Shepard slammed into a wall and landed limply, debris scattered around her. She tried to get back up but the effort was beyond her and she fell back to the ground, her gun slipping from her grasp.

"Shepard? Come in Shepard! Are you okay?" Garrus demanded through the communication systems.

EDI had managed to hack into Project Base's sensors which had alerted them to an explosion in the core room, and now there was no activity of any kind to be reported. "Project Base has lost the capability to accurately self-diagnose compromised systems" she reported, "it may be Shepard is not answering because the base does not have the functionality to receive our hails."

"Or maybe she's busy with a firefight" Jax said. "They still had dozens of men left in that base, Shepard is hardly one to keep her eye out of the scope."

"I don't like this" Garrus said. "We're cutting it too close."

"We managed Ilos" Joker said, "and we barely had fifty metres when we needed two hundred. Collision with the Alpha Relay is set for six and a half minutes, I've got time to fry an egg while we wait."

Garrus knew the confidence was to play off Joker's own growing gnaws of doubt but he appreciated the effort nonetheless. Joker was keeping the Normandy steady with the asteroid, the engines on the back working harder and harder as they warmed up. Pieces of the asteroid were being torn off and thrown back, forcing Joker into evasive manoeuvres to keep the Normand safe. Joker steadily accelerated the Normandy to keep up. "Now that thing's really picking up speed. That mass relay is going to take a hit that will make what killed the dinosaurs look like a flea bite."

"Then we keep hailing" Garrus said grittily. He re-opened the channel back to Project Base. "Shepard? Come in Commander, are you there? Please damn it Shepard, respond! Are you okay?"

Shepard scrunched her eyes, trying to focus through the pain. There was a voice, for a brief second Shepard hoped it would be Garrus' but its artificial nature was no substitute for his gravelly softness.

"Warning; Collision imminent" the Project VI recited.

Shepard pulled herself back up off the ground, clutching at her head. The world was still spinning around her as she tried to recover her bearings. She ran to the console and tried to open a channel, knowing the Normandy would be out there. "Joker, this is Shepard" she said urgently, "I need a pick up, now."

"Communication system damaged" the Project VI informed her.

You couldn't have told me that earlier? Shepard groaned internally.

"Evacuation protocols are in effect" the VI continued, "all personnel report to escape shuttles."

That could work. "Where can I find an escape shuttle?" Shepard quizzed quickly. The VI gave her directions to a lift that would take her to the shuttle pad beside the communication tower. It was her only chance.

"Shepard! Come in!" Garrus blared again. He had nearly yelled himself hoarse trying to reach but still, there was nothing. "Tell me you have something?" He asked, looking desperately at Jax.

Jax shook his head. "ETA until Project completion is less than six minutes. Unless anyone has something, we may need to consider a horrible decision."

"Ah actually, I might" Joker said. "Picking up visual contact from the shuttle pad, looks like a firefight's broken loose."

"It's Shepard" Garrus said, "it has to be."

Jax nodded. "Everyone else on that rock is indoctrinated, no reason they would start fighting each other."

"Can we get closer in?" Garrus asked.

"Does a turian have a stick up his ass?" Joker asked back, powering the Normandy's engines further. The dust from the asteroid whipped past the cockpit windows, giving them a visible indicator of the speed they were racing at.

"My scans indicate the last remaining shuttle has just lifted off" EDI reported. "It is likely that Shepard remains on Project Base."

"Your scans also include a heavy mech on that platform" Jax noted. "Can Shepard destroy that alone in the time we have?"

"Joker" Garrus said, leaning forward. "How steady do you think you could keep the Normandy in relation to that pad?"

"I can handle the Normandy but it's not just me to consider" Joker replied uncertainly. "That asteroid is coming apart, different engines are in flux, the thing is shaking about like a bug on top of a thresher maw nest. The dust winds aren't exactly helpful either. Why are you asking?"

"Because," Garrus said, taking the co-pilot's seat and linking into a system. "I know exactly how well I can calibrate."

Shepard tried to duck tighter under the crate as the YMIR heavy mech ran through another cycle of machine gun fire from its arm. While the last of the Project guards had died easily enough, the mech's armour and sheer quantity of fire was keeping her well suppressed. There was also the problem that it was standing between her and the comms tower. She burst out of cover and let loose a hail of fire as the mech braced itself, sliding back into a new position as the rocket it launched just flew past. She had no crew members to launch an overload strike, or distract it with a drone. She was alone, excellent at suppression but against a mech with three quarter inch thick armour plating, it may as well have been a dreadnought. Her team was her strength, coordinating them and rallying around them to become something greater, but she was entirely alone. The Alpha Relay was growing larger and larger as the Project pushed closer to its final destination, the blue energy dominated the light.

The mech went to begin another firing cycle at her but hesitated suddenly, tracking a second target. The roar of the Project engines and the quickening swoops of the nearing mass effect rings fell away as another sound rose in their place, the all-too familiar humming of the Normandy's engines, her team. I'm never alone Shepard realised as the Normandy angled itself a fraction, and then fired a single shot straight at her. Shepard dived for cover as the shot narrowly cleared her, blowing the mech apart with a terrific bang. Shepard looked up and saw the result, grinning as she realised what the plan had been, and then ran to the edge of the pad, activating the comm tower beacon for pickup. As she opened the external communication channels though, while she was sending out one signal, Project Base received one coming in. Shepard opened it cautiously as a golden shadow emerged.

"Shepard" Harbinger's voice breathed, emanating raw power and magnificence. "You have become an annoyance."

I'll become much more than that Shepard vowed.

"You fight against inevitability" Harbinger continued. "Dust struggling against cosmic winds. This seems a victory to you: a star system sacrificed. But even now, your civilisations are doomed to fall, your leaders will beg to serve us."

Shepard was sick of Harbinger's mockery, of its self-assuredness. Surviving on Earth as an orphaned child, repelling a batarian assault on Elysium, Eden Prime, Saren, Sovereign: every obstacle in her entire life she had never had the odds on her side to overcome them but every time she did, and it was because she fought. Harbinger would not make her beg, and it would never see her cower, no matter what battlefield or the odds because she knew the stakes. "Maybe you're right" she told Sovereign, staring defiantly at up at his image. "Maybe we can't win this." Her voice lowered to a deadly edge, knowing full well that despite the power of the Reapers, even they could be killed. "But we'll fight you regardless, just like we did Sovereign. Just like I'm doing now. However 'insignificant' we might be, we will fight, we will sacrifice and we will find a way. That's what humans do."

"Know this as you die in vain" Harbinger announced, "your time will come, your species will fall. Prepare yourselves for the Arrival." Shepard stood undaunted as Harbinger's image faded back into the shadows from whence it came.

"…pard… Come on Shepard!" Garrus voice suddenly exploded in her ear. It was the sweetest thing Shepard could swear she'd ever heard. "We're inbound for pick up, the system is about to die, we have to go, now!"

Shepard moved, faster than she knew she could as the Normandy rumbled through the interstellar shoals of dust, emerging from the waves like a beacon of hope. Joker deftly navigated the Normandy in and Shepard made it in with a single leap. The door closed and Normandy took off, racing ahead as the asteroid closed in behind them, a lifeless rock lumbering towards the relay. Shepard bypassed quarantine decontamination protocols, rushing straight for the cockpit. "Get us out of here Joker!"

Joker narrowed his eyes as he stayed uncharacteristically silent, engaging the mass effect core as he pushed the Normandy further, a streak in the dark of the shadow of the Project. He keyed in a random destination far from Batarian space, the first tendril of energy jumping from the relay and charging the core. There was a moment of inertia where everything seemed to stand still for a heartbeat, and then they were launched far into space.

Behind them, the Project loomed over the relay. Bolts of energy leaped from the relay through Project Base but there was no stopping the asteroid as it slammed into the relay with insurmountable force. The relay struggled to hold the energy stable as it fragmented, the force tearing it apart as millions of years of architecture and the perfection of civilisation succumbed to destruction, and the entire system was bathed in white.

"They're gone" Jax said, watching the nav computer alert as it lost connection with the Alpha Relay. "They're all gone."

"That's the price of victory" Shepard said, taking a knee as she finally let herself catch a breath. "And we will be forced to pay it again soon."

"Hopefully not this soon" Joker said. "Boys in blue are calling Shepard, looks like Hackett."

Shepard nodded, an entirely system annihilated seemed like something Hackett wouldn't want to wait to talk to her about. "Put him through."

Joker shook his head. "They're not hailing us; they're requesting to come aboard."

"If he wants to meet you, he can bloody well wait!" Chakwas said sternly, "you were on that base with an exposed Reaper artefact and in sustained firefights, what is even the bloody point of having a doctor on this ship if damn nearly everyone on this crew neglects a medical check-up after every mission?"

Shepard suppressed a smile. "Easy there Doc, I'm on my way."

Shepard did not have to wait long to give her debrief to Hackett as she sustained scan after scan; the door hissed open to reveal Hackett's regal figure swathed in dress blues, golden stripes adorning the epaulettes of his shoulders. He marched in authoritatively. "Looks like you've recovered" he said in a voice so grizzled it could have passed for being turian.

"Admiral" Shepard greeted, surprised Cerberus would let such a high ranking officer walk so freely on their ship. Then again she remembered, this was her ship, these soldiers were loyal to her.

"Sounds like you went through hell down there" Hackett noted, "how are you feeling?"

"I'm fine" Shepard said quickly. "No more visions if that's what you mean" she clarified. "I'm wasn't expecting to see you here."

"Amanda Kenson went out there as a favour to me. That was before the mass relay exploded, destroying an entire batarian system and all the intel I've got tells me you were there." His voice hardened. "What the hell happened out there Commander?"

"I confirmed Doctor Kenson's proof" Shepard told him. "The Reapers were coming and destroying the relay was the only way to stop them. She tried to kill one of my crew members two days ago. I started the engines with little more than an hour left. I tried to warn the batarian colony…" She trailed off, dropping her head. "…but time ran out."

"The Batarians report no survivors from Arotoht" Hackett informed her, "but at least you tried." His eyes turned grave. "I won't lie to you Shepard; the batarians want blood, and there's just enough evidence for a witch-hunt. We don't want war with the batarians, not with the Reapers at the galaxy's edge."

Shepard's eyes narrowed. "What are you saying?"

"You did what you had to do" Hackett quickly excused, "but there were more than three hundred thousand batarians in that system. All dead."

Shepard felt insulted. "They died to save trillions of lives. If I could have saved them, you bet your ass I would have."

"You're preaching to the choir Commander" Hackett told her. "If it were up to me I'd give you a damn medal. But not everyone else will see it that way." He kept talking and Shepard shook her head. Hackett had made his name as a soldier but the way he quickly got onside with her, pointed the blame at unknown voices, there was more than a touch of a shrewd politician there too.

"I'll stand trial when this mission is done" Shepard finally said, giving him what she knew he'd come to hear.

"You've done a hell of thing Commander" he told her, leaving.

And been repaid with blame, condemnation and scapegoating Shepard couldn't help but think. No amount of dress blues would cover up that level of bullshit. This was exactly the type of backlash that made people so eager to join outfits like Cerberus, ironically created by the Alliance to begin with.

"Are you all right Commander?" Chakwas asked, re-entering now that Hackett had left.

"I'm fine" Shepard told her, "I'm just sick of people trying to give me a noose and calling it a medal."