The Mako came screaming down through the Conduit like a very solid shooting star, landing in the middle of the Presidium in a shower of splinters and sparks.

Fighting against the haze clouding her head, Jordan Shepard hung limp in her seatbelt, disorientation brought on by their jump from Ilos obscuring her thoughts. First impacts shook the Mako, jolted her awake.

Remembrance rushed back, ran red hot through her veins.

Saren. The geth. Sovereign!

Jordan groaned, attempted to suppress the deafening ringing in her ears that threatened to overwhelm her mind, fought against the urge to gag at the metallic taste in her mouth. She'd bitten her tongue at the hard landing, and spat out some blood. Speed was crucial. She scrambled to undo the seatbelt, gestures shaky, barely controlled by sheer habit and training, all while around her, the last surviving monitors flashed a hectic red.

Struggling out of the battered hatch was easier than anticipated given the Mako had struck a railing when they came down and hung lopsided. She slid over the hull, landed on her feet with a pained hiss. Somewhere on Ilos, she'd twisted her ankle, but there was no time to tend to the injury. She readied her pistol, its tell-tale click an assuring sound in between the groan of mangled steel and the fizz of broken power lines, and switched on her omni-tool, prepared for anything.

Behind her, Wrex wrenched himself out of the wreck with a grunt, squeezing the bulk of his body through the opening before hoisting his shotgun. Garrus followed, muttering something in Palaveni under his breath. At least they were okay. Jordan exhaled.

Orienting herself, she flagged the location they needed to go. Above, Sovereign's legs loomed, huge, pitch black, a thing of nightmares moving in slow motion, obliterating all she knew. The council tower seemed impossibly far to reach.

"Over there, elevator. It's quickest," Jordan panted over comm, her companions acknowledging her order with a clipped nod of their heads, used to following her without question. She'd led them well up to now, despite her own insecurities, the compulsion to question all of her actions. No matter what was going to await them, she knew she could count on them having her back, and that made the prospect of having the fate of the galaxy resting on her shoulders a little easier to bear.

Jordan scanned the surroundings. Her eyes flitted left and right, through smoke and flickering fires before coming to a rest on the reflective bodies of their enemies blocking the way to the elevator. There was no other way. They had to fight through.

While thinking about a plan, she sent her drone out to attract enemy fire. Anything to give them a little time. She'd tried calling the elevator from afar, to at least minimize the waiting time, but it didn't budge. Either someone had tampered with it, or its controls had been busted at the attack. Jordan tried again, but with every error message from her omni-tool, her heart sank more. She knew she was a good tech, but right now she was out of luck. They would never make it on foot.

Behind her, the well-known crack of a Punisher rifle boomed through the murky gloom. In a spray of sparks, a geth trooper crumpled, only to be replaced by two more, slowly advancing on their position.

"Heads down," Garrus' voice came to them over com, "they got an Armature!"

They barely had enough time to duck. A second later, a rocket disintegrated the Mako's rear portion, showering them in hot splinters and making their shields flare upon impact. An Armature was bad news.

Jordan peered around the corner, tried to suppress her thundering heart. No matter how often they'd faced geth walkers, taking them down on foot was different than when safely inside the Mako, relying on the vehicle's superior shields and armour. She had a few grenades left with her, but wasn't sure she was going to find enough accuracy right now to throw them correctly.

Wrex muttered something under his breath, too low to be picked up by her translator, before he sent a biotic warp towards the walker from behind their dwindling cover. The Armature stumbled for a second or two, then kept on.

We're fucked, was all Jordan could think about. She'd kept herself under control so well during the whole crazy hunt for Saren through the galaxy. This was a bad moment for her anxiety to take over the self-control she'd managed to wrangle into submission for most of the last month. They'd come so far, and she was by the gods not planning on being defeated by a couple of geth so shortly before the end. Unsure on how to cope, Jordan crouched, fiddling with one of the grenade clips at her belt, her motions increasingly jittery and agitated.

What to do, what to do…

A hand squeezed her shoulder, pushed down on her armour, grounding her. Garrus. It was uncanny how he was the only one who could, somehow, sense her insecurities. Jordan exhaled, her shoulders lowered as she relaxed, happy she'd chosen him to accompany her on this mission.

"C-Sec," was all Garrus said, and she knew by instinct what he meant. C-Sec had undoubtedly been set on high alert when the attack on the Citadel started. Garrus had contacts from his time as a detective. Maybe they could help.

A flicker of hope blooming in her chest, Jordan damped down some of the oncoming troops and readied herself to throw one of her precious grenades towards the Armature.

Garrus' call floated through their com channel. "Captain Bailey? Vakarian here with Spectre Shepard. No time for questions. We're trying to stop Saren. We need support at the Presidium Court. Now!"

The reply was drowned out by the boom of Jordan's grenade exploding, the sound dying out right the second she heard the crackle of a direct line being established to her.

"C-Sec Dispatch, Giuliani," the voice said, "Spectre Shepard, I'm listening." Jordan recognized the tell-tale vibration of someone trying to keep his vocal chords under control despite the adrenaline and the unknown situation, gave a short mental salute to this stranger she knew she was never going to meet again. Most C-Sec officers had never had to deal with a problematic situation of this scale. Riots, demonstrations, yes. Accidents happened. Sometimes threats against ambassadors, or shootings. But this… this was a different dimension of threat that put strains on the most thick-skinned soldiers and officers. Jordan herself was shook often enough after her battles. She didn't want to know what the pressure did to these young officers who had up to now been in the perceived safe environment of the Citadel.

"Roger, Giuliani. I need someone to rig this elevator for me! A good tech, a couple riot squad heavies if you can spare them. The geth are crowding in on us." She sent him all the information from her omni-tool, together with her coordinates. There were a few seconds of silence while the orders were processed before an answer came through.

"Copy that, Shepard. We're securing the perimeter. A team is underway. You'll get the best tech, I promise."

The following minutes stretched into what felt like hours. Jordan managed to disable the Armature with another well-placed grenade, but the two accompanying Rocket Troopers started targeting them, and not even Jordan's drone had been able to catch their attention for long. Her team's shields, and their energy, were running low.

With each new heat sink she clicked into place, Jordan's throat grew drier, her heart weighed down with dread at each slug that tore past her helmet or impacted on the Mako's increasingly brittle hull. Yet Garrus and Wrex worked as perfect extensions of her own powers, Garrus taking out the larger enemies at the back with precise shots, Wrex being bold enough to leap out behind his cover from time to time, taking on the geth from minimal distance with his shotgun and the one or other headbutt after she'd weakened their shields.

The minutes dragged on.

Two figures in C-Sec blue and black riot gear streaked past them, appearing like ghosts out of nowhere. The smaller one hurled itself straight at the Geth Trooper closest to Shepard, shooting it in the head with astounding precision before she ducked out behind a railing and rammed a new heat sink into her assault rifle. Somewhere to the left, a biotic flare scattered two more, accompanied by some creative Thessian blasphemies and the whine of servo-assisted armour under strain.

The two worked well as a team, Jordan noticed, relief running through her as she assisted them by disabling the geth shields before the officers took them out one after the other. Enemy fire started ceasing, at last.

"Get to that elevator, now! We're covering!" A human female voice, high, tense in concentration.

"Roger!"

Jordan Shepard might have been higher in rank than these officers would ever be, but this was their turf, their home, and she wasn't going to object their commands.

Inhale. Duck out from behind the Mako.

Jordan ordered her drone forward to give the two heavies a last bit of assistance, then dashed out towards the perceived security of the elevator where a turian C-Sec officer in slim tech armour was working on the controls, fingers dancing over the holo panel of his omni-tool with astounding speed, face obscured by his helmet. A low dual-toned rumble of concentration was the only sound coming through the com. He'd summoned his own battle drone, relied on the little thing to keep him safe while he tried getting around the security protocols.

Jordan felt a pang of mixed pride and pity at seeing him work away while around him, the battle for what could be the end of the galaxy as they knew was raging. But then, no matter whether they had finished their compulsory Hierarchy training or not; turians always managed to slip back into the mindset of serving and staying cool in the face of danger, and Jordan admired them for their steadfastness. All she was right now was a bundle of nerves barely kept together by the gut-wrenching fear of disappointing everyone she knew. Behind her, Garrus and Wrex backed the riot squad officers while keeping the geth from getting too close to the elevator.

Where her own hacking skills had failed her before, the turian seemed to know exactly what was needed to get the elevator to work. His omni-tool, undoubtedly a custom-built deck, flashed through its subroutines quicker than her eye could follow, while he acknowledged the results his machine spat out with precise punches to the display. Dispatcher Giuliani had been right. He had indeed sent her the best.

"Gotcha," the turian murmured at one point, then stood in one fluid movement, readying his pistol at the same time he nodded to Jordan's team. "Your ride awaits, Spectre Shepard." A hint of smugness shone through his otherwise tense voice. "Good luck out there."

The elevator's doors slid open agonizingly slow, with a cheerful 'ding' sound that mocked the battle and chaos raging around it. Jordan noticed she'd been holding her breath while she waited, inhaled in a quick, hungry gulp, fresh oxygen flooding her lungs.

"Will you be okay?" she asked the turian with a jerk of her head to the plaza, where his squadmates were still wreaking havoc on the remaining geth, one with well-placed singularities, the other with her assault rifle, taking them out one by one. From here, they looked comically unreal, the way their shields flared under impact, how they moved across the battleworn floor, their feet dancing an abstract rhythm between the debris.

The dark mirror of his visor didn't give away any emotion. For a second, he hesitated, but then he tilted his head to the side, a turian shrug. "Go. I trust these two with my life," was all he said with a hint of pride in his voice, before he hunkered down to assist his squadmates - his friends, Jordan corrected - with cover fire from his elevated position.

Just a snippet of time, she thought as the elevator took them up, the battle underneath dwindling in size until all that remained were muffled cracks and flashes in the darkness, almost invisible through the smoke. She sighed, wondered how those three brave unnamed officers were going to fare, defending their homes and values. Soon, they'd only be a footnote in history.

Again, Garrus' hand squeezed her shoulder. Behind her, Wrex rumbled something soothing. Jordan exhaled. No matter what was going to happen; they were her team, they had her back. Just as the C-Sec officers before had demonstrated.

Jordan didn't know what was going to await them at the Council Tower, or if they were even going to be quick enough to stop Saren's plan. But right here, with Garrus and Wrex, who had followed her to hell and back so many times already, Jordan knew in her heart that whatever was going to happen, they were in it together, and they wouldn't fail.