Disclaimer: Everything recognisable is Bioware's. Everything else is mine.

A/N: Welcome to the chapter everyone! Just a quick note before we get started: 'God' to Shepard is Admiral Hackett. It's what she and her mum call him (remember waaaaay back in chapter 10?), and it's just kinda stuck :3

All the best as always.

L.G.

Eden Prime

An acquisition and a message impact the war effort

In the Normandy's CIC a tense beat passed before Thane, seated by a bank of computer screens that displayed, in real time, the investigation of Cerberus' presence on Eden Prime, let out a slow, controlled breath. His view came courtesy of the tiny suit-mounted cameras the Commander had installed to let him take in the action; to advise and watch her surrounds with an assassin's eye as she did the same with a soldier's. The setup had proved workable to this point, but as things grew dangerous planet-side Thane couldn't help but wish he was there with her; able to keep her enemies within range of his bullets, not simply provide milliseconds-early warnings of their presence and extrapolations on their strategies and movements across the battlefield from his vantage point in orbit.

Shepard had elected to journey with Liara and Garrus for this, one of the first Priority-1 missions she had received from someone she called God. On screen she moved under a cloud-dappled sky on cobbled, rocky earth; grey metal structures, domiciles and laboratories, stacked around her. The agrarian world looked saturated, like a rain had recently come and gone. But for occasional comm. chatter between the travelling threesome and the background hum of the planet's insect life, all was presently silent; hence Thane's relieved exhalation.

One more firefight had been navigated successfully.

One more of who knew how many until she would return to safety.

Adjusting his position in his seat, the watchful Drell leant towards the largest of the screens before him - that which showed the viewpoint of the Commander's front-mounted camera - and watched as she knelt beside a fallen enemy to better examine what remained. What he saw intrigued him.

"They are female?"

The Commander's head cocked slightly at the question. She and Thane shared a closed comm. channel, keeping his observations from distracting squad mates unused to a fourth voice on three person missions.

"Seem to be" she replied, gingerly shifting the departed sniper's arm with the barrel of her rifle to reveal a rent, bloody chest piece – her doing. This same person had clocked her with a slug from 400 yards; Thane's hissed warning and her own lightning response to a flash of red in her periphery the only things that saved her from taking it in the head instead of the shoulder. Blessedly it was her shields that evaporated, not her scapula.

"Ordnance?"

Shepard's focus shifted to the weapon draped across the fallen woman's lower body.

"Looks like an M-13 Raptor" she commented, tapping its charred remains – charred because its user, faced with certain death, had decided to dispatch herself as the Commander's bullets tore through her. "But it doesn't fire like one. The Raptor's semi-automatic, just like this thing, but this." She tapped the weapon with her rifle's barrel, glancing up at Garrus as he strode past checking their perimeter. "This hits more like a Mantis, M-92."

"An M-98 more like" the Turian drawled off screen. "Seeing how it knocked you on your ass."

Thane didn't catch the profane gesture Shepard flipped her comrade in response, but heard his rumbling laughter as she snapped, "THAT was a defence roll!" and moved off to take their investigation further. Turning briefly from the action, their Drellish observer tapped at a small subsidiary screen beside him to check whether the information Liara had managed to forward to the colony's resistance movement had at all impacted their radio chatter. Unwilling to sacrifice the ears he had on Shepard and her team, Thane gave the interface a second tap; turning the transmissions to written words that cycled as new content was broadcast. A moment's focused attention there revealed voices of dissent and disbelief beginning to stir amongst the populace, and he relayed this to Shepard..

"A rebellion seems to be building"

..in just the same moment as she noted..

"Huh. Hydroponics"

..about her environment. The surprise in her voice turned Thane's gaze back to the main screen; the view dominated by a room which was itself dominated by a clutch of tables topped with potted foliage that was being watered by ceiling-mounted sprinklers. She spoke again as she moved out of the building, her team trailing her.

"We winning the hearts and minds game?"

"More intelligence would be helpful" he replied, glancing between the screens. "But your efforts have not-"

A movement on the stairwell directly ahead of Shepard caught Thane's eye and stopped him short. His warning – "HOSTILES" – sounded just before a shot rang past the Commander's head, a Cerberus operative decked out in blacks and oranges bellowing "ENGAGE" to the waiting ambush.

Shepard's commands came quick and sharp as she pressed herself to the nearest protected wall. "GARRUS, KILL THEIR SHIELDS. GET UP HIGH, SNIPER! LIARA, KEEP 'EM AT RANGE. WE'LL PICK 'EM OFF!" Then she was moving; vaulting the rail on the stairwell and trusting to her shields the barrage of gunfire loosed by the black and orange clad ambusher. She dispatched him -

"TURRET, TWELVE O'CLOCK!"

- and hurled herself into cover at Thane's warning. A hail of bullets whistled past her hiding spot, the turret and at least two aggressors unloading clips at her as the latter pair in turn ducked behind cover adjacent to the turret and –

"One body moving to your right; building seven."

Thane's observation came mid-reload, Shepard's glance over catching the second operative before she fired back towards the turret and the man crouched near it. With backup engaged elsewhere, the Commander punctuated her return fire with a Frag grenade; the blast sounding a second prior to her making a break for the building, gun high. Isolated, the man within was quickly mown down, as was he who'd been disorientated by the Frag blast that'd killed his mechanical protector.

A call then from Liara over the comm. "Clear!"

And one from Garrus. "Clear! Shepard?"

"All clear" the Commander confirmed, pinching a grenade off the belt of turret man to replace the one she'd tossed. As she straightened, Thane shared a thought with her.

"A relatively small force."

Far be it for her to question him, but she'd swear she could hear stress in his voice.

"I'm almost disappointed" she replied, reloading her weapon blind when a comment from Liara about the nearby lab drew her gaze away. Moving off towards it, she let the discovery-driven Asari lead the way and shared a musing of her own with her mate. "Any thoughts on this Prothean find?"

Thane's response came after a contemplative pause. "Tactically, I wonder at Cerberus' need for a live Prothean beyond mining him for the secrets of his race. What they might do with him otherwise does not bear contemplation. I recall too well what you told me of the soldier on Mars."

Shepard grimaced faintly, the ghastly image of the warped and broken once-human still clear in her mind. "Implanted with Reaper tech."

"Precisely. Such may be their plan for him, but it matters not for the moment. Unless he falls into their hands –"

"He won't."

Behind his console, Thane managed a smile. Her faith in herself and her cause soothed him in ways little else could. He gathered breath to respond, but found his attention diverted by the sight of a static filled screen before he could put his thoughts to voice. An attempt to apply his skill with languages to the flickers he could make out through the white noise failed; Liara and Garrus appearing likewise stumped from what he could hear of them off camera. His Siha though, silent for over a minute despite his calling out to her, was not.

Shepard watched with focused horror as the message relayed crystal clear. Reapers dove down from a leaden sky; Capital ships; Destroyers; others. They dove and rained destruction down on a city that, if she squinted, could've been that she was held in during the end of her world. The images flickered, showed her ground troops massacred; let her hear the Reapers' unearthly roar before they changed and she saw a soldier fighting with a decision she dreaded ever having to make – to sacrifice those who remained outside assigned safe zones to preserve those he and his fellows had managed to gather; to protect. Collectors – what she understood now to be Prothean husks - broke through then. The soldier, all bronze-gold eyes and mottled skin, bared ferocious teeth and drew his rifle. And then she was free. Blinking back into the room on Eden Prime.

"I've got the signal" she said, resolve, rage that wasn't only hers and weariness colouring her words.

Liara's shocked, "You understood that?" did nothing for her gathering temper.

"You didn't?"

"No. All I saw was static." The Asari thumbed her chin thoughtfully, oblivious to the Commander's pique. "Cerberus was trying to make sense of it…without success. The Prothean cypher you received on Feros…It lets you see the images as a Prothean would…and understand their language."

"Whatever it was" Shepard clipped, moving around Liara and forestalling further academicing about her proficiency with Prothean. She took up her weapon - disconcerted that she didn't recall putting it down prior to watching the video – checked its clip and strode for the door. "I've got the signal they used."

The Asari spoke again, "Now we just need to figure out how to physically open the pod", and the team was moving back out into the courtyard they recently cleared, Shepard's experience let lie but for a quiet aside to her ever watchful beau;

"Fill you in later."

She didn't deign to speak to Thane again until the first vestiges of civilian lives destroyed were found. Four settlers gunned down 'while they were watching the game'; the faint scent of decay and gun oil; N7 sheets. As her comrades fanned out in search of materials and evidence that might further swell the budding resistance, Shepard touched a gauntleted hand to what had been fresh linen; the insignia she wore with such pride upon her chest creasing beneath her fingers. The people here admired the rank; what it meant and those who carried it. These human beings, innocent civilians, with their lives and families, aspirations and dreams, would've been made up to see her had they not been put down.

"Kalahira.."

Thane's voice cleaved through the black rage that had begun to engulf the Commander. It was steady, even, and she felt –

"..Goddess of the ancient depths.."

– as he spoke –

"..You have in your care now the souls of countless persons from across the galaxy; all deserving of remembrance and mourning. This day though, I pray you turn your sight to Eden Prime.."

– that even though she was not by far as devout as he –

"..Grant these men and women, these children the rest and succour their lives and honoured deaths have earned them. Let their peace be eternal, and their rewards great, and let their families find peace in the knowledge that their sacrifices were not in vain, and will never be forgotten.."

– his prayers did real good.

There was a pause as the moment came and left, the calming atmosphere the prayer brought touched again by the mission's aching tension. Shepard drew breath to respond, to thank Thane for his devotions, but he continued before she could.

"Arashu, protect your Siha from danger. Amonkira, make her swift; guide her hand and forgive her trespasses."

Gone was calm with those words. Purpose gripped her; made her surge to her feet and out into the open air once more. An entrenched pocket of Cerberus forces lay in wait beyond, the topography letting Shepard and her crew rain hell down on them until the moment came for the biotics-assisted application of soldier to opposing soldier. It wasn't something the Commander enjoyed doing – having biotics at all being thanks to the fucking Illusive Man and his meddling – but it took the opposition down a size and left her unscathed, if a bit arse-about-face in terms of geography.

She moved -

"BEHI-"

- and a bullet streaked over her left shoulder; her keen-eyed Turian sniper popping the last remaining hostile in time for Thane's warning to be obsolete before it was finished. The silence that followed was as deep as his voice could get when suffused with enjoyment; four sets of eyes set to scanning the area and locating their next objective – a second lab where Cerberus had studied the Prothean popsicle they'd left by the dig. After navigating through buildings two and nine, the console and its encrypted message took no finding.

One touch upon the keys and she was there again; the dying world and its falling cities; fleeing populace. As if she serving beside him, she met the soldier she'd seen before; watched him dismantle wave after wave of Collectors. When the rifle he wielded gave out he turned to something akin to biotics, a powerful wave hurling adversaries into a towering wall. An AI then – Victory he called it – was called upon to seal the soldier and those who remained with him in a secure bunker.

"Approximately three hundred thousand life pods" had been destroyed, it told him.

"A third of our people" he replied, aghast; pained.

The AI again, wrenching the soldier from his reverie: "Alert, north-side bulkhead cannot be sealed. Hostiles detected."

Duty became him. There was no time to mourn. "Then all forces to the north!"

Only when Liara spoke did Shepard fully come back to herself.

"..You understood that one too?"

She was in no mood to be questioned on it. Biting out a terse, "Yes", she made for the open air again; needing to work out the adrenaline that'd flooded her system seeing all that she had for a second time. The door had barely slid open when two Cerberus shuttles soared over the site.

Turns out those two shuttles were the starter for ten. Opposition forces sprang up everywhere, closing ranks all the tighter as the Commander and her squad struggled back across the compound towards their goal. They'd made it within viewing distance of the pod when they hit their biggest snag yet. The assholes had retracted the bridge between compound and platform making the direct, seven steps and we're there approach impossible. And then there was the intel problem.

"IS IT GONE YET?!"

"ALMOST, JUST A COUPLE MORE SECONDS!"

"HOW MANY'S A COUPLE T'YOU T'SONI?!"

That was Garrus, crouched beside and covering his Asari counterpart as the final piece of the intelligence puzzle was transmitted from squad to resistance. The first two had gone without a hitch, but Cerberus had started getting wise; blocking signals to try and stamp out Liara's efforts before a full scale revolt blew up beneath their feet. For more than a minute she'd been tucked away against one the metal containers that littered the area, her fingers flying over her Omni-tool as she fought their codes and data streams while Garrus and Shepard did their bullets and guns.

"LIARA?!"

"ALMOST!"

Finally though –

"IT'S GONE!"

- her persistence and expertise won out. Liara spun out of cover long enough to let Garrus take her place in it, and put all her might into a biotic wave that crashed over the right-most portion of the field and sent Cerberus forces toppling in its wake. So powerful was it that Shepard, a good twenty metres ahead of them, was knocked forward a step as she cleaved her way through the few adversaries that remained. With her second in command on her six – especially at a distance – she felt invincible in battle, and it showed in how she only disappeared into cover for long enough to let her shields regenerate before moving on through. Their coordination was almost preternatural, her rifle fire backed up with his-

"HEADSHOT!"

"Fuck sakes Vakarian!"

Shepard's retort came through a huff of exertion and mirth both, the way finally clear now that the mandibled shit had turned what would've been her seventeenth successfully eradicated threat into his eighteenth.

"Been out of the game too long, Commander" Garrus replied, bare-toothed grin on display as he rose from his position along with Liara and gave the area a once over while the group reformed and got to searching for alternate routes to their objective. They were given the run around by the area's layout at first, turning in circles in the silver and rocky terrain before the hydroponics lab Shepard had passed comment on earlier came into view. From there they were able to establish where they had and had not yet explored, and managed, with only a touch of vertigo, to navigate a path along the dig's crumbling edge that led them back to the pod.

Under Liara's almost pleading gaze, Shepard activated her Omni-tool. "I'm transmitting the signal" she said, tapping in the needed commands before glancing at their surrounds; ever cautious in the field.

The Asari beamed, moving in and scanning the pod; monitoring its occupant closely. "Perfect. It'll take a few moments for the lifepod to process it."

A few moments they didn't have. Garrus' retort - "They as long as your seconds, Liara?" – had barely left him when Cerberus mustered another offensive push; two shuttle's worth of bodies laying siege to the trio. They emerged from the right, open ground between the tall silver buildings and the low walls surrounding Shepard and her team. Seeing the gaping hatch on the side of the nearest shuttle, she wished she'd added a rocket launcher to her loadout for this mission. Next time, she promised herself. Next time. For now:

"GET T'COVER! EYES, ALL OF YOU!"

"TWO ENGINEER CLASS, THREE O'CLOCK. ALL MINE!" the Turian offered, his second shot ringing out as punctuation. "SHUTTLE UP TOP!"

"THAT'S MINE!" Liara cut in, hurling a singularity into the open hatch Shepard had wistful designs on filling with a missile and trapping three would-be threats within its swirling mass. She had her SMG raised and firing a moment later, two of the three dispatched by her bullets and the third by the fall from the shuttle when the singularity holding him up flickered out of existence.

Her team working like a well-oiled machine, the Commander cleared the bridge between compound and pod; determined not to be cut off from the main complex. Thane's voice came again as she emptied a clip over the edge of a large container..

"L-shaped building on your left. Open on both ends."

..and she allowed herself a smirk and a murmured comment. "I love your memory."

She took a deep breath then, switched channels and threw the volume up to maximum to bellow, "HOLD THE BRIDGE", before pulling a 180 and filling the building she more or less flew into with offensive fire. She found a pair of sneaking Cerberus grunts in there - both too shocked by her sudden all guns blazing appearance to put up much of a fight – and bolted out of the building's opposite end as quickly as she'd entered it and in much the same fashion; shoot now and as questions later; fuck conserving thermal clips. It was a ballsy move that had Thane clutching the arms of his chair as he watched it unfold onscreen, but it worked like a charm. The enemies trying to close in on her companions, shields high and impenetrable from the front, had their backs to her and crumpled like marionettes with cut strings when blasted from four feet shy with a shotgun; their counterparts in the near surrounds doing little better when the carnage-washed Commander rounded on them, switched out her shotgun for her assault rifle and clamped her finger down over the trigger.

Only when the last one fell and a reprieve seemed to come did Shepard realise her ears were still ringing from discharging her weapon in what amounted, thanks to those damn body-length shields, to a confined space; that she was caked in gore in places and had taken damage on her right side. It was nothing a quick field patch job and an hour in the armoury wouldn't fix, and she thanked Garrus as he stepped close to guard her as she worked a glob of Medi-gel into her exposed skin. His murmured response sent her hackles right up.

"That's not the last of them."

The Turian's entire focus fixed on a point in the middle distance, his head cocked slightly as he listened. Her side pleasantly numb, Shepard followed his line of sight and hoisted her rifle up to glance through its scope. Beyond Liara moving slowly forth in her field of vision - scouting ahead and comfortable in the knowledge that her companions had her covered - she saw nothing.

"How many?"

"Ears aren't that sharp."

Shepard hummed a soft acknowledgement, watching Liara skitter up the field and disappear out of sight around a corner. "Careful T'Soni" she cautioned, following along after her at a fair distance. "I'm comin' up on your six. Garrus. Rough guess?"

"Maybe six on foot" he replied, easing into cover; his rifle raised and ready. "They've got a shuttle. Closing fast. And somethin-"

An explosion of activity cut him off; Shepard pulling a whiplash turn and bolting back towards him, Liara on her heels. They'd made it not three metres when the transport he'd heard roared close enough over their heads that they felt the heat of its thrusters before it levelled out into a hover to drop off those it carried. Foot soldiers emerged from the shadows moments later, some felled by the Turian's bullets and others by a biotic pulse from Liara. And following them-

"HEAVY MECH! GET BACK TO THE POD! DON'T LET IT GET CLOSE!"

Shepard peeled off from the retreat the moment she'd done speaking so she could face the mechanical Goliath head on. She'd just found cover and pitched her stolen grenade at the lumbering thing when Thane cut in, his words toneless and flat -

"Tempered front window the easiest breach point. Repeated precision strikes needed."

– and let loose with her rifle in the hope that a bit of the old semi-targeted spray and pray technique might buy Garrus enough time to repeat his earlier head shot performance before she ran dry on clips. Though resource intensive, the tactic wasn't as reckless as it'd sound if she had to justify it to God. The soldiers who'd emerged from the shuttle were scattered in pockets behind the Mech, and three of them fell to the volleys of bullets the Commander blasted their way as her companion picked his moment. Those left were swept up by one of Liara's singularities, and their loss to the opposition gave the trio enough time to focus fire on the Mech and wring from it a dying roar; an explosion that had the Commander's ears ringing again and sent her vigilant beau, still clinging to the arms of his chair and watching her with hawkish intensity as she stumbled back towards the lifepod, newly rigid where he sat. He remained thus even as Joker, who'd materialised by his side without so much as a by your leave, finally spoke up after minutes of quiet observance.

"You're lookin' tense, Krios. Glad to be back?"

If looks did murder, he'd have dropped where he stood. As they did not, the grinning pilot remained upright and much too amused for Thane's rapidly diminishing patience quotient. Unwilling to snap, he returned his attention to the screens before him and, confused by the blur of motion he was met with, called out to his mate.

"Shepard?"

For Shepard, the world was gone again. The Prothean had woken not seconds prior, the same soldier she'd been following through his messages the entire mission long, and much as she imagined she would if faced with his situation, he'd panicked; hurled her eight feet back without laying a finger on her and made a dash for the open sky by the edge of the dig. For a moment she'd worried he'd nose dive into the pit, but he didn't. He stood and stared, jaw slack, mind likely whirling. Then she'd laid a hand on his shoulder, and the world was replaced with his at the end times he'd managed to live through. There were soldiers left, he argued – howling defiance at the coldly calculating Victory who replied, and she'd never forget the words:

"Their sacrifice will be honoured in the coming empire."

It was a sentiment the Prothean had conveyed to the VI before, and that was used back at him now that his world was ending to get him moving.

"Preparing neutron bombardment. Get to your lifepod now."

She watched him as he ran, encased himself in the pod she'd just cracked open, and felt his world fall down around him with a deafening roar that rose and rose in pitch until it reached its crescendo, then died away into an even more deafening silence. He lay there, shock warring with disbelief and unspeakable, unspoken grief as Victory addressed him again.

"The bunker is secure, Commander Javik."

But the remainder of his people, it turned out, were not. It happened so quickly Shepard struggled to keep up, but talk of security morphed to words like power shortage, triage and shut off, and even watching she could feel the panic that choked the stalwart Prothean..Javik..who, listening to Victory, was to be the voice of his people.

"I will be more than that" she heard him resolve.

And then the world returned to normal with a lurch and a flash. Javik was on his knees, gathering himself after what'd passed between them and Shepard, dazed herself and warring with the wave of borrowed emotion brought on by seeing what she had, fared little better. She wobbled in place a moment, fighting the urge to sink down on a knee as the disorientation passed and her vision cleared. Thane's voice reached her before she could give in, breaking the moment with a concerned:

"Shepard?"

Javik's came not a beat later. "How many others?"

His question sent her cold; drew her away from her mate's loving concern. The answer was difficult to muster without condolences, but she knew, having seen the kind of man the Prothean was through his messages, that such things would not be welcome.

"Just you."

Though they whirled inside him, Javik gave no great expression of anger, or loss, or anguish. Instead he released a rasped exhalation and sat up a little straighter on his knees, as though he was gathering himself to rise to his feet. Shepard paused long enough to give him the chance, but when he moved no further she spoke on; changed the subject.

"You can understand me?"

"Yes. Now that I have read your physiology, your nervous system. Enough to understand your language."

Understanding came with his brief explanation, of what she'd seen and how she'd seen it. The ability was like nothing she'd ever heard of before, and for the briefest moment she understood why Liara, who was hanging back but obviously desperate to speak with the kneeling soldier, was as fascinated as she was by him and his kind.

"So you were reading me while I was seeing.."

"Our last moments." Javik rose in one smooth movement, giving the Commander his back as he finished for her. While clarification was unnecessary, particularly one laced with self-recrimination, he allowed himself one moment, two words, through which to dwell. "Our failure."

There was time for no more.

The Commander had barely spoken of his people's heroism and of her need for that self-same commitment in the present when a new voice crackled through her transmitter. Close to her ear though it was, Javik's own were keen enough that he picked up the message..

"Shepard, whatever you did got Cerberus interested."

..and he wondered, as words were exchanged between the woman and the message bringer, on what he'd seen through her in their brief moment of contact. He knew what Cerberus was, and that the scourge of his time had returned again to raze the galaxy. He knew Shepard was seeking aid in fighting them, and was certain, though not because of the moment of synergy they'd shared, that she and those she managed to gather to her cause would fail. If his people were doomed to fall, what hope did the galaxy have now that Asari, Humans and Turians were fronting the war effort? He drew breath to ask this of the gawking pair who approached during the Commander's moment with the radio – a pair he branded primitives openly, along with their leader - but she turned back to him before he could.

"It's not safe here" she said, newly gripped by urgency. "Will you join us?"

Javik answered with a statement, the answer foregone. "You fight the Reapers."

"Yes."

"Then we will see."

The relief in her face was ignored as completely as the hand she extended was. Disgusted by the thought of further physical contact, Javik instead moved off in the direction the tongue-tied Asari and the suspicious Turian did. If they and their Commander were warriors of the calibre the brief moment he'd had to read her implied, he would accompany them for as long as it took to complete his mission – odds stacked against them or not. If they were not, he was certain there were other races, other people better suited to his needs.

"Comin' back, plus one. See you soon."

"Of course, Commander."

The channel cut off with a soft static burst leaving Thane, exhausted despite his lack of physical exertion and blessedly sans Joker, to carefully extract himself from his station. He doffed his headset before he rose, the screens before him blank now, receiving no input since Shepard was effectively out of the field. He had much to tell her – particularly about how the resistance movement she'd helped get started was steadily growing - and made haste towards the elevator so he might catch her fresh off the shuttle and deliver the good news.

Unbeknownst to the swiftly travelling Drell, the day's events had not all been positive. In the War Room, Primarch Victus was hunched, still hunched, in front of a recorded message he'd received earlier in the day from one of his most trusted friends and allies – General Relik Tsvalla. Raising a talon, he pressed play..

"ADRIEN PLEASE!"

..then paused the vid again and let out a bone-deep sigh. He'd known Relik all his serving life, and had never heard him anything close to this desperate. Given the circumstances – the invasion – it was understandable, but it shook him still to witness so usually composed a man so wracked over his decision to move him and his small pocket of the Fleet away from Palaven. He unpaused the vid..

"WITHOUT US, PALAVEN WILL BE DEFENCELESS!"

..then stilled it again, regarding his friend's panicked face. There was something personal behind Relik's eyes - something Victus recognised after a moment of close inspection as the anguished love of a father, parted from his children by war – that almost made him rethink his strategy. Four of the man's five daughters served in the military, while the last, Sahlyihree, was an emissary for the Hierarchy who spent most of her time either on the Citadel or otherwise off-planet. Spirits only knew where she was now, but the serving four, Victus guessed, were fighting like hell to defend their embattled world. Planet-side, where Relik couldn't protect them.

He unpaused the vid..

"WE WERE BROTHERS BEFORE YOU WERE PRIMARCH! I WON'T ABANDON OUR PEOPLE, EVEN ON YOUR ORDERS! WE NEED MORE TIME! RELIK, OUT!"

..then let it close as it's runtime elapsed. After a long moment of quiet, the once-soldier closed his eyes and counted back from ten. He couldn't act in the interests of one combatant in war. He would push to move his old friend's portion of the Fleet away from Palaven; to spare his best from the massacre their unaided troops were going through on-world. But he'd push Shepard too – for the support his people needed. She'd given her word that she'd find him soldiers. It was about time she delivered.

And now!

Coming in the next chapter

Pressure from Primarch Victus brings an old face and a new one to the Normandy.