A/N:

Hey gang.

I managed to get another one out, because I didn't feel like going into work today. Not a lot of energy to get up and do much of anything really. Hopefully some of you guys and gals out there can get some entertainment value out of this. I did my best shot at cleaning the typos up on this one, but who knows what I missed. Thanks for all the reviews and PMs letting me know you are still thinking about me.

Some non-Shepard stuff is coming soon.

While I certainly have no intentions of following canon, starting the show with the usual placeholder seemed an interesting way to re-purpose the bullshit that was Freedom's Progress, and also explain why the colony looked like a pile of suitcases.

Reviews are always welcome.


'...what in the actual fuck?'

- Spectre Jason Delacor, upon seeing the wreckage of the Vetra-sath war robot on Freedom's Progress


Shepard glanced around the communications room as she entered, the glowing sphere of Vigil bobbing slightly behind and beside her. She'd been in the middle of discussing ways to utilize the war robots when the voice of Miranda came over the comm system, saying the Illusive Man was calling. Given that his usual communications occurred only at announced and specific times – namely, the beginning of each day – a sudden call was probably urgent.

She'd run most of the way to the comms room, knowing it was likely that a colony was under attack.

Still, she slowed her speed as she entered, letting her usual stride take its place. She wasn't even close to sure she fully trusted TIM, but she had definitely decided she didn't like the idea of him seeing her as one of his operatives or anything similar to it, and part of that meant keeping cool. She came to a stop at the sight of the faintly glowing image in the middle of the QEC device, folding her arms. "I'm here."

The Illusive Man was usually very difficult to read, his voice too slick and polished to find cues in and his facial expression like ice, but even she could detect a hint of excitement and anger in his voice. "It is time for you to justify the expense in bringing you back, Shepard. We've just lost all contact with the monitoring drones we have in place around Freedom's Progress, one of the more heavily bankrolled if somewhat less populated independent colonies. Given that we lost contact fifteen minutes ago, whoever is attacking is no doubt still there."

She turned to Vigil. "Wake up Joker and Tali, get the Normandy's core online and be ready to move." With a thin smile she glanced back at Harper. "I don't think taking the full fleet is wise in this instance, since we don't know what we're up against, and the stealth capabilities of the rest of the ships is only a fraction of that of the Normandy."

The Illusive Man nodded, lighting a cigarette, holographic smoke fading sharply as it rose into the air. "A wise precaution, for multiple reasons. Assuming there are survivors, they won't be likely to be agreeable. Freedom's Progress was an old penal colony, taken over and controlled by separatist groups that were once terrorists on Earth. They are a fractious lost, but had a great deal of support from certain corporations and the planet, while not terraformed or well developed, had several orbital defense platforms, GARDIAN towers, heavy ground defenses, and a literal army of LOKI mechs."

He exhaled smoke. "And despite all of that, whatever took out the spy drones I had in orbit did so fast enough that we have no information on the threat, and the one remaining FTL drone I have in the system is not picking up any weapons discharges." He paused, taking a sip of a drink to his right.

"Given that Freedom's Progress was the most paranoid and heavily defended of the wildcat colonies and populated mostly by those well acquainted with defending themselves, the concept that they were taken without a shot is … disquieting. Caution is certainly warranted."

She frowned at that. "We'll go in careful and focus on gathering information, not a fight. Anything else I need to know? Any reason in particular this one colony would be hit, compared to the others?"

The Illusive Man took a drag from his cigarette, then blew it out thoughtfully. "Possible. Freedom's Progress is a contentious settlement, as I said, given its background – especially in the eyes of the Systems Alliance. Miranda can brief you on the politics and history of the colony. I doubt strongly, however, that the politics play a role here, aside from the fact that it is a colony of humans not associated – and defended – by the Alliance."

He gave a thin, narrow smile. "One more thing. According to my information, the planet recently contracted a quarian technical support cohort to assist with their terraforming equipment. We've seen inconsistent results when asari are on the planets being hit – the earliest attacks killed them all, later ones simply left them unconscious with zero memories of what happened. Quarians have never been on an attacked world before. If the quarians are still alive – and unaffected – they may have useful information."

She curled her expression into a distasteful sneer. "After how the Flotilla treated Tali and Joker, can't say I'm all fired up to rescue them."

The man leaned back. "I am not really concerned if you rescue them or interrogate and execute them. My only concern is that they may have useful information. What happens to them is up to you."

She arched an eyebrow. "You don't care?"

Harper gave her a level gaze, swirling his drinking in hand before taking a sip. "The difference in working for me rather than the Alliance, Shepard, is that the methods don't matter as long as the job gets done. I merely provide the information – it is up to you to use it as you see fit."

He glanced at something to his left. "The only other thing of note is that the colony was one of a number of wildcats that took a series of .. loans and grants from the Vol Protectorate – ones my research show were backed by the Shadow Broker. In fact, every colony hit so far has had this same pattern. There may be a connection – find out what you can."

She nodded. "And if don't find anything of use? No hints of who or what did this? No survivors?"

He shrugged. "Then withdraw without leaving any evidence. Being unable to find anything will dictate a different path for us to follow. We can discuss your next targets – or how you plan to move forward – when you get back. For now, go to Freedom's Progress and determine what you can."

The QEC flickered and died, and she gave a huff of irritation before turning on a heel, marching out of the room.

Vigil bobbed behind her. "Your ship is powering up. I have alerted Zorah and the pilot to make haste. I have also loaded thirty war robots in the cargo hold, in case you need ground support to offset your general incompetence."

She nodded, ignoring the AI's usual verbal barbs, stalking back to the main corridor. From there it took her almost two minutes to get to the armory, and she pushed the doors open to find that Taylor was there, fiddling with something on one of the omni-foundry tables. "Jacob, find Miranda and tell her to get to the Normandy ASAP. Freedom's Progress just got hit."

The black man nodded, straightening and dropping the barrel of whatever he was working on. "Sure thing, ma'am." He rushed out of the room as Shepard walked to a locker and began pulling out her armor.

O-TWCD-O

Joker's voice rang across the CIC. "Hitting solar boundary in two minutes, Shepard."

From her chair in the CIC she nodded, glancing over the status repeater overhead. The trip from the asteroid base she was using to the system had been fairly quick – less than three hours in FTL and a single jump. Freedom's Progress was only habitable planet in the system, along with a pair of gas giants with borderline-quality HE3 and a massive iron-core planet in close orbit around the star.

The colony had an interesting background – if Horizon was the capital of the wildcat colonies in terms of population and culture, Freedom's Progress was the financial and political center. Its wealth came from the mines on the surface, worked by mechs – polonium, cadmium, and one of the highest-grades and purities of platinum in the entire galaxy were mined, as well as a host of other minerals and low-quality but cheap HE3 from the gas giants. Despite its wealth, the colony's actual construction was still mostly collections of colony modules and duraplast panels lining roughly hewn cave systems due to the survivalist and minimalist culture of the world.

People who came to Freedom's Progress hated the Systems Alliance and everything it stood for, and prided themselves on a certain stark lack of material luxuries.

The colony, according to Miranda, had been established over thirty years ago, and was currently lead by a man known as Kenneth Logain, the great-great grandson of the founder of EAGL, George Lincoln Logain, who had been the most virulent and difficult to defeat of the many enemies opposing Victor Manswell in his unification of Earth. Even decades of hard-line repression and Commissariat persecution had not stamped out some of the fire from certain citizens of Earth, and Freedom's Progress had begun life as a penal colony, a place to dump the disaffected, in the years before the Commissariat had become so overwhelmingly powerful.

During the First Contact War the SA abandoned the inhabitants to whatever doom awaited them, much like had been done with Horizon, and as a result Logain's people had managed to take over, seizing control of the weapons and equipment left behind, including the defenses. They'd dug in hard, hacking the mechs that worked the mines alongside them to a more militant spec, and declared themselves 'free'.

By the time the SA got around to trying to re-secure the colony two and half years later, the colonists had already bartered some of their new found mineral wealth to the various volus and salarian traders in the area for much more effective defenses and a large host of salarian multifunction mechs, useful for both mining and defense. Rather than reconquer the place, the Commissariat suggested writing the colony off and using it as a place to ship dangerously revolutionary types off to. This had faded in the years since the formation of the Penal Legions, of course, but it left Freedom's Progress as a very rough-and-tumble place, not peacenik farmers or Luddites.

Shepard was not surprised that a place like Freedom's Progress had been hit. The SA would hardly lose sleep over it and the isolationist bent of the inhabitants meant that few would miss them. And if the colony went missing someone would be more than happy to take over the rich mineral wealth.

She sighed, grimacing at her trend of thought, and then glanced down the nearly empty Ops Alley. The Normandy still was not fully crewed – Miranda and Ezno were still doing some final checks on the personnel needed to man the ship – but the handful of people on board were doing their jobs well enough. She slid her gaze to the science station, a spike of hurt flashing across her features at the thought of Liara, and set her jaw.

"Alright, we've been in system long enough for the sensors to give us a look-see. Report."

The science tech, an almost painfully thin woman known as Jennifer Goldstein, frowned at the sensor panel before pushing her mass of white-blond hair to one side of her face. "No ships in orbit, ma'am. There appears to be an orbital defense platform...no power emissions. No signs of FTL transit. No combat wreckage. Minor particle traces, very exotic..."

Vigil's voice lanced out. "Typical, even your sensor scans are substandard. Shepard, that 'particle trace' your sensors are barely detecting is the result of what the Inusannon defined as jump drives. Reaper technology. Since there are clearly no Reapers in orbit, whatever is generating them must be landed on the planetary surface, or has already departed. The signature is not defined enough for a full Reaper, or even a lesser war-form. Caution would be advised."

Shepard arched an eyebrow. "Battle stations, full stealth. Joker bring us into low observable orbit, near the main settlement site. Chambers, any communications?"

Kelly manned the communications panel, being capable of performing that task given its relative simplicity. "None at this time. I haven't sent any messages, but I'm not even picking up baseline landing guidance beacons."

The Normandy dipped, and as they got closer to the orbital defense platform, Goldstein gave a low whistle. "Damn. Ma'am, the station got hit by something very powerful." She tapped her console and the galaxy map was replaced by a digital image of the station, a good third of it completely gone and large sections melted and deformed."

Shepard's eyes narrowed. "Analysis?"

Goldstein frowned. "Some kind of … iron slurry?"

Shepard exhaled. "Do detailed scans and send a probe droid to take physical sample of the slurry. Reaper weapons leave that kind of residue."

She nodded. "It's in a shitty orbit, destabilized. Probably will hit atmo and burn in another few hours."

Vigil pulsed. "Thus, leaving no evidence. Clever."

Shepard rubbed her chin. "While that's happening, scans of the planet?"

Goldstein shrugged. "Minimal power emissions from the main settlement, and none from the outlying mining sites. GARDIAN towers are … functional but not drawing any energy. There are some minor power sources near the outskirts of the colony, but they could be anything from fuel cells to private vehicle motors."

Vigil pulsed several times, then rose into the air. "I am unable to make contact with any of the computer networks in the settlement. They've been … destroyed … for the most part by some kind of polymorphic VI attack, similar to the ones I use on our enemies. I suspect the defenses were hacked and deactivated even as they blew the defensive station apart. There's some activity on the ground near the colony center, but it is disconnected from all hardlines. If you want that hacked you'll have to go in on the ground."

Shepard nodded. "Any sign of ships, Reapers …. giant melted holes in the ground from landing? When Nazara landed on Eden Prime it looked like a plasma bomb had blown up."

Goldstein scanned for several minutes. "Ah. Yes, ma'am. Northern side of the main settlement, half a click from the settlement itself. Heat signature is fading. About thirty feet across...at the rate it looks to be cooling, whatever did that has been gone for at least an hour and a half."

Shepard shrugged. The Normandy had gotten here as quick as it could, within four hours. It would be another day or two before anyone else noticed the colony had gone dark. "No point in hanging out up here, then." She tapped her comm. "Miranda, you and Jacob suit up, please. Prep two shuttles and fill one with war robots, have it land first and establish a perimeter. Tali,meet me in the shuttle bay." She paused, then clicked the comm again. "Doctor Sedanya, also please suit up and head to the shuttle bay.

Chambers gave her a somewhat surprised look. "You are talking the XO, the doctor, and Tali?"

Shepard nodded, pushing back from the command plinth. "Tali held her own when she fought with me, and there may be quarians down there that need medical attention. Plus, there may be hints that only a doctor or an engineer would see. We can't afford to stay here long or leave any kind of evidence that we were here."

Kelly shrugged. "Who is in charge while you, the XO, and the Engineer are off the ship then?"

Shepard rolled her eyes. "Vigil, of course. Have to stroke its ego somehow."

The sphere pulsed. "Ungrateful zombie monkey."

O-TWCD-O

Freedom's Progress was a militant cubist's wet dream.

The colony itself was built into an ice-shelf, which was the source of water and electrically cracked oxygen, as well as hydrogen for fuel cells and power. The shelf was pared back in neat, long strips, surmounted by or impregnated by boxy colony modules. Heavy durasteel bunkers and barricades, set off with omnigel stiffened sandbags and carefully tended fire lanes, dominated every ground approach.

GTS missiles and GARDIAN towers bristled over the main colony stack, towering a good six hundred feet into the air and armored with thick slabs of star-ship hull material, omnigel and plates of dark iron. The stack broke at its base into a a broad crescent of more boxy colony modules around a landing area, with heavy machine-gun nests and sniper towers sprinkled about liberally. The entire colony was surrounded by a fifteen foot tall, four foot thick wall of rubble, scrap iron and other debris smoothed over with a covering of heavy omnigel and topped with kinetic barrier projectors ever forty feet.

Taking the place by invasion would have been a bloodbath. Yet there was no signs of any fighting. The front gates, the massive doors from an old Lancaster-class transport's cargo bay, were open, the heavy guard shacks built out of spare duraplast panels empty and unguarded.

Shepard bit her lip inside her helmet, moving forward slowly and carefully. She'd launched a sensor drone of her own to accompany the one Tali had put up, and had turned her reflex settings as high as they would go to allow her to react faster. Doing so gave her unpleasantly ugly shivers and a slight dizzy sensation as she moved, but it was worth the increased reaction time.

The ground was snow-covered and icy, the crunch of it below her armored boots making the footing a bit tricky as she panned her Harrier rifle around. Behind her, Jacob walked just as slowly, hulkingly large in his custom-built Devastator armor, a lance cannon clutched in his massive hands.

Miranda and Tali held the flanks. Miranda's combat armor was little more than a series of omni-armor plates over her armored form-fitting suit, but Tali had additional bolt-on shielding systems and plates on her own suit, along with the omni-shield generator. Miranda was keeping her self in a loose stance as she scanned with her free hand, while Tali monitored the take from the drones, her Reegar shotgun clutched tightly.

In the back, Doctor Sedanya walked along calmly, one hand ready with a biotic shielding invocation if needed. Her field armor was much like Miranda's, minus the extra scanning gear but augmented by a heavy pack of medical support equipment. Her eyes flicked about nervously, and the clear faceplate of her helmet revealed her tension.

The place was eerily, utterly silent.

They walked through the massive front gates, seeing slushy melted tracks in huge numbers against the snow-covered metal decking. Shepard exhaled slowly, tapping her commlink. "Vigil, status."

The ringing voice of the Inusannon AI came across the comm system in her helmet. "My first group of mechs is approaching the landing site now. It appears that a great deal of foot traffic lead to the area, bu the heat of the landing has eliminated any tracks closer to the landing spot itself. I have not seen any evidence of a firefight or resistance, and chemical analysis reveals no accelerants. My second group of mechs is circling the colony walls looking for anything of note. I am picking up intermittent energy emissions from somewhere within the colony."

Shepard nodded, flicking the safety off her Harrier. "Keep the formation tight. Vigil is picking up energy emissions."

Tali nodded. "So am I. Weak, but up ahead." She gestured towards the right side of the colony proper, and Shepard lead them in that direction. They passed by a series of colony module cubes, the glass fronted windows of each showing the insides, and Shepard frowned as she stepped into one, the door hissing open quietly.

The cube dwelling wasn't large – fifteen feet by twenty – and split with simple metal barriers into a sleeping area with four beds, a mixed food prep and eating area, and a corner with an entertainment system, low couches, a rack of data slates, and a rack of rifles. A thin panel door was cracked open revealing a bathroom.

Three cups of coffee sat on the narrow bar near the food prep unit, along with a data slate still turned on to the morning's news. A half-eaten bagel sat quietly on the plate. Three of the beds were made, one was rumpled, the sheets flung to the foot of the bed.

Miranda glanced around, frowning at the weapons rack. "None of the guns have been taken down."

Jacob eased the door of the bathroom in, and grunted. "Someone didn't flush the toilet, and there's shaving foam on one of the towels. Sink's full of water. "

Shepard nodded. They backed out and headed down the narrow, metal-grated path, past a series of sandbags bunkered around a turreted set of Hachimi light machine rifles. A data-slate lay on the ground, still in the middle of a comms text call with someone, with eight minutes of unanswered messages on it.

Next to it was a doll, half buried in slush, and three sets of small environmental boots, set aside. Shepard frowned as they walked down the path further, finally coming to the main plaza area.

The plaza was as deserted as everywhere else. An aircar was crashed into a wall along the right half of the plaza, its doors open, the windshield crazed with cracks. Heavy long lines of drag marks trailed from each of the many doors in the plaza towards the landing site.

The omni-tool on Tali's arm flashed and beeped."Shepard, energy signatures rising. From the west."

As she nodded, a heavy cargo crate shuddered. They all turned to face it, weapons swinging upwards, when the sliding metallic front of the crate was hit from within with a horrible clang, then separated violently into metallic slats that flew a dozen feet away.

Stepping out of the crate and rising to full height was the heavily armored, night-black form of a brand new MJOLNIR heavy combat mech. The red cyclopean scanner eye blazed to life as the thing scanned the plaza and faced them. "Adjusting target profiles, engaging hostiles."

"COVER!" Miranda screamed as she dove to her right, behind a heavy concrete wall framing one of the colonization cubes. Tali ducked behind another cargo crate, while Jacob flung himself backwards into a roll, coming up in a firing position next to a different colonization cube. Sedanya flash-stepped backwards twice, crouching behind the sandbags near the turrets.

Shepard kanquessed up and back, coming out of her charge on top of the colonization module Miranda had taken cover behind. "Taylor, take it down!"

The ex-Corsair fired, the heavy beam of light striking the mech clean in the chest. The kinetic barrier protecting the mech shattered, but the armor under it was barely dented as it stomped forward, optics flaring, lifting its left arm. The hexagonal mini-missile tubes there exploded into fire, six missiles flashing out to detonate across the area. Jacob grunted as his cover crumbled and he was staggered, even as the machine lined up its heavy mass accelerator to finish him.

Shepard snarled and fired, drawing its attention. Miranda scowled and tapped her comm. "Vigil, heavy war machine on the ground! Need backup!"

The AI responded coolly. "I have noticed. The entire mech contingent is now activated, someone is still down there hacking the system. I cannot override them. Whoever is in control is clever – they've shifted the mech's wireless systems off and instructed them to open fire on anything that moves. My own mechs are busy holding off the mass of other mechs from the main defensive station."

Tali opened up with her omni-tool, hurling explosive plasma blasts, as Shepard moved through the kanquess in flashes almost too fast to follow, coming out in mid-air twice to hit the MJOLNIR with heavy bursts of gunfire before diving out of the machine's targeting arc. The mass accelerator on the mech's arm fired anyway, blasting a four foot wide hole in one of the nearby colony modules, and Miranda hissed.

"Shepard, we don't have the weapons to take that thing out! We need to fall back!"

Shepard, for her part, only smiled, throwing herself into a biotic assisted jump to elude missiles. She lashed out with her biotics, flinging a shear into the nearby stack of construction equipment next to the machine, then a hard push field to shove it all at the mech's feet. The heavy tubing and sacks of plascrete made it shuffle for its footing, and when it did Shepard kanquessed behind it, almost on top of the thing.

Dropping her Harrier as she came out of the charge she snapped her ODIN out, using her biotics to anchor herself to the back of the machine. The MJOLNIR swiped at her ineffectually, even as she shoved the barrel of her shotgun into the gap between the armored sensor unit and the main body and opened fire with a full burst. The machine staggered, smoke erupting from its innards, and she pushed off. Landing with a exhalation of breath she focused all her power into a single warp strike at the missile arm, even while she threw a pull at it.

The warp energy ate into the arm and then there was a biotic explosion, followed a moment later by a larger explosion as the ammo in the arm cooked off. The resulting blast sent the heavy mech to the ground, tearing away long stripes of armor and exposing the machine's internals. Shepard landed in a graceful flip and immediately flung an EMP grenade at it, stepping well back to make sure she wasn't caught in the blast of blue-white energy.

The machine gave a heavy mechanical whine and then shorted out, even as Shepard calmly picked up her dropped Harrier and placed it on her back. "C'mon, Lawson. I was bitchslapping geth primes out of my way even before you turned me into the Bionic Woman. It's just a goddamned mech."

Jacob looked at the now wrecked machine, then at Shepard, and then back at the machine. "Shepard, the MJOLNIR is rated to take out light tanks and entire squads. It bounced a round from my lance cannon."

Tali shook her head. "You get used to Shepard doing things like that." She helped Sedanya to her feet, then tapped at her omni again. "More incoming signatures, Shepard."

The next twenty minutes was mostly, from Shepard's point of view, tedious. The mechs that assailed them were mostly lightly armored humanoid models with light rifles and the occasional 'robo-dog' suppressor units, nothing that was even worth her bothering to use her ODIN on. A set of hovering rocket drones was no match for Miranda and Jacobs' combined biotic attack, and the rest of the omnidrones generated by a beefed up AESIR repair unit hacked into some kind of combat control system were taken out by Tali's own drone swarm.

As they got closer to the main colony stack, they could hear heavy fighting from the south and west, where Vigil's own mechs were clearly clashing with the colony's mechs. Miranda scowled, and reminded Vigil that they couldn't afford to leave evidence of their presence behind.

As they were passing yet another colony cube, they heard loud shouting and pounding on the door. This particular cube had no windows and a heavily reinforced door, one blocked by a big cargo crate shoved against it. With a frown, Shepard used her biotics to shove it out of the way, and a moment later the door was shoved open from the inside.

Three quarians stumbled into the open. Two wore the lighter civilian suits of engineers, but the one in the lead was taller and bulkier, with armored panels. None of them were armed, but they looked around in confusion before staring at the party of humans, asari and Tali.

The lead quarian spoke first. "...not to be rude for freeing us, but who exactly are you? You aren't any of Logain's people." The voice was deep, rough, and sounded familiar to Shepard.

Tali immediately stiffened, and tapped her private comm channel while muting her own speaker. "Shepard – that's a Migrant Fleet Marine Strike Captain. The reik patterns of the other two are from the Rayya, the core live-ship of the Flotilla."

Shepard grimaced behind her mask but kept her voice neutral, cutting in the voice modulator of her helmet. "Greetings, quarians. No, we are not associated with the forces of Logain. The entire colony appears to have been … abducted, and the defense mechs are attacking."

The lead quarian shook his head, folding his arms. "Well, that's just great. I'm Strike Captain Kal'Reegar vas Moreh. We're part of the Quarian Mobile Engineering group, called out to help with Freedom Progress' mining mechs. There were nine of us, but I'd sent all but four of us back just yesterday to obtain additional parts."

Shepard nodded. She smiled at the sight of the now familiar Kal'Reegar, but was glad he didn't recognize her altered voice. "I see. How did you come to be locked in the crate?"

One of the other quarians, a female, gave a hard bark of laughter. "Two of our party, Veetor and Prazza, were working on the other side of the colony. Veetor had a suit accident and was delirious, Prazza was sent out to get him. No idea where that ended up, but as we were working on our suits in our colony module here, we hear screaming from outside."

Kal'Reegar nodded, unfolding his arms. "We didn't have our suits assembled – the colony module is a clean room and we had our filters out. By the time we got ourselves ready to move, the door was locked. Not long after that we get a transmission from Prazza about "monsters" and he starts screaming and then gets cut off."

The big quarian marine glanced around. "We're still trying to hack the door open when we hear mechs moving and something big and heavy thumps down outside. Then we hear Veetor on the line, saying the monsters are coming. The kid's recycler unit was shot before all this, he's probably half delirious from contaminants by this point. No telling what he's up to."

Shepard glanced at Miranda. "You have no information on what hit the colony? Prazza didn't give any descriptions of these monsters?"

Kal'Reegar shook his head. "No, ma'am. He was a pilot, really, not a soldier." He shifted his weight. "And while I'm happy you got us out of that cube before we ran out of air or starved to death...what exactly are you doing here?"

Shepard let her amusement color her voice. "Investigating the disappearances. I was convinced it was something besides the slaving pieces of shit I've been disposing of for the past few weeks."

The other quarian, a male, suddenly took a step back. "Oh Idenna's Mercy, you're the Butcher!"

Shepard inclined her head. "Nice to be recognized."

Kal'Reegar scowled. Having been stuck with escorting around civilians was more of the shit jobs he'd been stuck with since the Tali Incident, when he'd been responsible for not properly securing the girl and ended up getting her father shot. As a result, he'd been away from the Flotilla proper for the past few months, and was more than aware of the wild stories and fearful mutterings about the Butcher.

The grisly rumors and frankly melodramatic gushing on the extranet aside, he didn't want to tangle with this group. The asari in white armor was known to be extremely dangerous, but something about the eerily smooth way she moved set his quills on edge. The other asari, in the back, was clearly watching them for some kind of trouble, and the two humans looked ready to fight as well, one clad in what looked like powered armor and clutching a lance cannon.

The quarian with the group was the most disturbing, as the reik the female wore was completely unfamiliar to him – the pattern didn't even look quarian. The black-tinted faceplate and heavy cybernetic arm was clearly the sign of an exile, but the vicious and clearly upgraded Reegar shotgun in her hands looked too expensive for an exile to own. The fact that she had said nothing at all when greeted with her own people reinforced the idea in Kal'Reegar's head that this was probably a dangerous exile and had no love for them.

This group looked extremely lethal. The last person Kal'Reegar had seen who had made him feel this out of his depth and inadequate was when he'd fought on the Citadel alongside Shepard.

The big marine folded his arms again and gazed at the figure in white armor. "I'm certainly not going to miss the slaving bosh'tet types that infested the Traverse, but that doesn't tell me why exactly are you here."

Shepard chuckled. "As I said, I've had my suspicions that whoever was vanishing human colonies wasn't slaver groups. This is all too neat, too spotless to be slavers. I need to find more clues or evidence before I'll be taken seriously. The mechs of the colony appear to be hostile, but someone is controlling them, which is getting in the way of my search. I've already had to drop a MJOLNIR."

Kal'Reegar whistled and nodded slowly. If they were powerful enough to stop a MJOLNIR mech, he wouldn't want to fight them even on his best day with a full squad. "It is very likely Prazza'Mal is dead, but Veetor is almost certainly alive – he is a brilliant programmer and our lead mech interface tech, and the mechs attacking might be something he did. Very possibly he used the mechs to seal us away from whatever … took … the colonists." He sighed. "If he's as crazy as I expect, the mechs are probably programmed to kill now."

She nodded. "What kind of resistance could we be facing?"

Kal'Reegar sighed. "We … weren't only here for mining operations. Times have been rough for the Flotilla, and we take a lot of side jobs to make ends meet, some of them sort of shady. The colonists here had gotten some prototype mechs for testing from the Salarian Union, and we were working to adapt them to the colony network. Veetor had all the access codes and overrides for the mechs, including at least three more MJOLNIR … and the Vetra-sath heavy battle unit."

Miranda shook her head. "A twenty foot tall war robot designed to counter battle-suits and heavy armor. It's literally bleeding edge technology – we just started getting reports on it last month. What in God's name was Freedom's Progress doing with this kind of military hardware?"

Kal'Reegar shrugged, but the female quarian behind him snorted. "Who knows? It was all mostly recent stuff – the MJOLNIR mechs we saw were still in the shipping crates, they'd just been purchased a few weeks back. Most of the mechs had been snapped up in the past two months – Logain … had his ideas about who was behind the colony disappearances. He feared it was the Systems Alliance."

Shepard shrugged. "Alright. So we have a possibly crazy quarian tech who has probably coded the mechs of the colony to kill everything. I could probably shut all this down by having my ship blow the defense center to bits, but that would kill your friend. . . and any chance of him having seen what caused this mess. Ideas?"

Kal'Reegar straightened. "Frankly, at this point, my only concern is getting my people safely back to the Flotilla – including Veetor, he's an admiral's nephew. We only have basic weapons – nothing that could match a heavy mech. Your people are clearly more prepared for this, but we can certainly help out in reaching Veetor – hacking, taking down drones, adding our firepower to yours. If we assist you in finding your evidence, can you help us find Veetor?"

Shepard paused, turning to look at Tali for a long moment. The quarian girl groaned and tapped her omni-tool, shifting her voice to a deeper timber and trying to sound more like Kiala. "I'm re-configuring the drones to look for quarian life-signs, which will be difficult given the density of the colony modules and the shielding inherent in our suits."

Kal'Reegar gazed at her, taking in the clearly artificial arm half covered by a shoulder-pad. "You have not introduced yourself, fleet sister."

Tali's eyes narrowed and her voice took on a level of vitriol Shepard had only heard from her when talking about geth before. "I am not your fleet sister, tuho." She turned back to Shepard. "Fragmentary signals from the north, possibly just outside the main colony stack."

The female civilian quarian engineer nodded. "That's the main mech control and repair center, makes sense for Veetor to be there."

Shepard tapped her private comm circuit, killing her helmet's speakers. "Vigil, can your mechs clear us a path to the following location?" She transmitted the scanner reading, and Vigil's smug voice sounded in her ear a moment later.

"Of course. I sent an avatar down to the surface, and am in the process of reprogramming the mechs I've downed so far. I'll use them to police up the scene once we leave. I'm also monitoring comms arrays – several people have tried to reach the colony since it went dark and the Systems Alliance just got word that they can't get a response from the FTL comm relay. You have about five hours before elements of the nearest scout flotilla hit the system." A pause. "Amusing. The nearest scout group appears to be your old battlegroup.

She snarled. "Great." Clicking off, she slung her Harrier and drew her ODIN. "We have a deal. Your people stay behind mine, try to use your info-war systems and your drones to take out incoming drones and light mechs. We need to move fast, the Alliance is aware of the situation and … well, they're not likely to want news of this getting out. No idea what they might do to your friend."

Kal'Reegar nodded, drawing a light rifle from its anchor point on his back. "I'd like to think the Alliance was a better ally than that, but … the faster the better. Veetor can't have much longer before he goes into shock. We'll tag along behind you. Have you fought with quarian marine forces before...ah, what should we call you?"

Shepard tilted her head. "Just call me Butcher. Who I was before this is … dead. And yes, I have." She turned away, towards the command center, and the rest fell in.

The next ten minutes went more swiftly as Vigil rerouted his remaining war mechs to cover the group's advance. The few mechs they did run into were swiftly deactivated by the quarians, who seemed to be very good at remote hacking using omni-links rather than wireless systems. Miranda passed the time quietly asking questions about what other defenses they might face, as well as what modifications they'd made to the colony mechs.

Kal'Reegar's voice was grim. "Mostly repairs and augmentations to allow them to do double duty as mining mechs or military ones, but the Vetra-sath robot had augmented kinetic barriers and a Kaurkai Hailstorm assault gun replacing its lower left arm. We upgraded the servos and hydraulics on it and Veetor was tinkering with the onboard VI."

Jacob cursed. "Boss, a lance cannon has a bad chance at dropping a MJOLNIR, but I might as well be throwing spitballs at a VS. That's the kind of thing you bring a couple of HAMMRHEAD tanks or a full lance of Agamemnon battle-suits to fight."

Shepard ducked past a fallen set of power conduits and made a dismissive wave of the hand. "Meh, sounds like I'll finally get a fight. Aren't you guys confident of what you did with me?"

Miranda groaned. "I'd rather not determine just what your limits are...do you have any idea how much it costs to refit damaged blueware? You are not invicible."

The mirror-faced helm turned to face Miranda over one shoulder, and Miranda could almost feel the feral grin on Shepard's face. "It may be big and tough, but you have clearly forgotten who you're fucking with."

Tali's voice was dry. "Nice to see you haven't lost any bravado. I was wondering when you were going to do something to get us all nearly killed. Again."

Shepard found herself laughing.

O-TWCD-O

The area near the base of the main colony stack – a conglomeration of the core parts of several colony vessels, thick power conduit mains, stacks of colony modules and thick plates of armor – was surrounded by several low slung hardened plascrete bunkers, each one with heavy kinetic barrier shielding over them. Two of the bunkers had holes melted in them – the only battle damage Shepard had seen thus far – and the generators atop each were slag piles of now cold metal.

Kal'Reegar stopped at the sight. "Those were capital-ship level barrier generators! The bunker on the left was the primary armory, and the one on the right was where the colony leaders met for official business. Whatever melted them..."

Shepard sniffed. "Wasn't fucking around. Check. What about the main stack?"

The female quarian engineer, who Shepard had found out was named Forzan, spoke up. "It was almost entirely given over to the power generators, omni-foundries and the like – I admired the colonists for being almost quarian in their re-purposing of equipment from the colony ships. It was also part of the old penal colony, and not many people lived there..."

Shepard shrugged. "Alright. Which one is the mech control center?"

Kal'Reegar gestured to the right, towards a building with a series of antennas atop it. She nodded and moved forward cautiously, stepping into the semi-circular plaza area around the base of the colony stack.

As she did so, she saw an appalling splatter of quarian blood and bits of what looked to be quarian armor, a moment before a heavy clanking sound echoed through the thin air. Stepping from behind a tall stack of cargo crates nearly as tall it it was, a heavily armored machine emerged, covered in thick golden armor and emblazoned with bold, splashy salarian script along the torso.

Unlike a human mech, the thing stood on three heavily armored, cocked back legs shaped much like a salarian's legs. It had no head, two wide bands of sensors crisscrossing the armored chest, and the shoulders hulked higher than a human mech, to make room for the four arms. Each arm was tipped with an omni-shield covering a different weapon – a mini-gun of some kind, a multi-barrel grenade launcher, a heavy mass cannon, and a weapon of four oval barrels surrounding some kind of triangular opening.

Metal decking splintered or crumpled under its massive weight as it stomped forward, a string of salarian speech in a dull tone erupting from its speakers. Shepard's omni-tool translated it a moment later.

"Obtaining targets. Obliterating."

Shepard immediately kanquessed forward and then threw herself into a diving roll, snapping out a pair of EMP grenades. They burst with a flash of white light, but the robot ignored them, arcs of electricity crackling over its surface.

Shepard tucked up against another cargo crate, tapping her comms. "Kal'Reegar, the thing is EMP hardened?"

The quarian's deep voice took on a slightly sheepish tone. "Em, yes ma'am. It's built to take on...well, pretty much anything."

Shepard sighed. "Alright. Have your people hit it with plasma and tie it up with drones. Taylor, see if you can't use your lance cannon to weaken the omni-shields over the weapons, and you and Miranda try keeping it tied up with biotics. Sedanya, stay back and use your biotics defensively to protect everyone."

Tali spoke. "And me?"

Shepard snorted. "You're with me. Watch for my opening and hit it with your strongest attacks."

Miranda's voice was thin and tense. "Sh...Butcher, this is not something we can take out with conventional weapons! The entire main body is composed of Silaris armor!"

Shepard snorted. "I've got a lot of anger I haven't gotten out of my system yet, and this thing is going to get it." She shipped her weapon – Lawson was absolutely right about the damage that they could do with that – instead prepping two hi-ex grenades and shifting her power allocation to speed and reflexes.

She'd been playing with the kanquess, realizing she could control it much more sharply with the blueware integrated into her bio-amp. She took a deep breath and shifted her reflex controls to her cybernetic eyes.

"Try to keep up."

Kal'Reegar had seen some very impressive feats of arms over his career, from Admiral Rael'Zorah taking out a geth ravager in hand to hand combat to the psychotic mess aboard the Citadel during the Benezia Incident with Shepard and her people. He'd seen powerful asari use their biotics before.

Watching the Butcher was on an entirely different level. She flashed into the air with a biotic charge so fast it left nothing but a blue streak in the air, snapping out grenades and warpfire, then another, and another – moving between each charge in mid-air, like she was teleporting.

The machine opened fire with everything, missiles and streams of fire soaring towards her. She pushed off the ground biotically, flipping through the fire without even taking a hit, arching her back to slide over a missile that missed her by inches, to come down right in front of the thing before it could re-target its weapons. A blinding flare of biotic light erupted and the machine's entire front exploded into blue warpfire, the sheer force of it sending the Vetra-sath staggering back. Only its tripodal stance kept it from crashing to the ground.

The Butcher flashed away again, and immediately the two humans behind Kal'Reegar erupted into their own biotic attacks, waves of light washing over the machine, which was still covered in slow burning biotic fire. There was a violent humming sound and then two heavy, shuddering explosions that sent it staggering back yet another step.

Kal'Reegar launched his drone program then, along with his two fellow quarians, hammering the machine with micro-missiles, as the bigger, male human stopped his biotic attack to fire the heavy lance cannon at the lower arm.

The machine steadied itself, smoke rising from the armor plating, and raised both upper arms in an X-shape. Heavy omni-fields projected from its arm assemblies, shielding it against the storm of missiles, while the lower two arms began tracking and firing.

A single blast of mass accelerated flechettes, glowing white hot, smashed out, tearing a cargo crate in half and blasting the hastily erected biotic shield the asari the back threw up. That narrow blue wall only held for a moment before sundering, scattering burning metal in all directions, but it broke the inertia behind the attack enough that when it struck the team's cover they all survived.

The male engineer quarian howled in agony as a splinter of decking impacted his leg, denting the suit armor and sending him to the ground. Jacob stammered out curses as his barrier came apart, flechettes pinging off his armor for the most part, but a few nicked past the thick plates of metal to draw blood.

Miranda hissed as her own barrier shattered, tucking herself back further into cover as the flechette tore wide, angry holes into the decking and plascrete walls around her. Tali used this moment to finish a program on her omni-tool, a blast of plasma flashing out to not hit the machine but strike a series of glowing power conduits overhead.

An explosion rocked the colony stack as hundreds of pounds of ionized plasma fell upon the machine, overloading its kinetic barrier in a single flash of white-red power. The Vetra-sath stomped through the slurry, ignoring the molten metal the decking under its stomping feet had become, but sections of the armor over its torso and right arm were glowing white hot, while the upper left arm slumped into a mass of sparking, slumping metal that slowly sloughed off the robot's side.

The machine continued to move forward, and Tali cursed. "Fall back! We need cover!"

Shepard grimaced and focused, pushing her will and biotics onto the heavy cargo crate she'd landed behind. She put all her force into a throw field and launched it.

A moment later it felt as if her entire nervous system exploded, and she fell to both knees gasping in agony. Alarms and warnings flashed across her artificial vision as she coughed, droplets of blood and something else spraying across the mouthpiece of her helmet.

The calm voice of the onboard VI medical system sounded in her ears, which were ringing. "Warning. Power failure, biotic bridge components six, fifteen, nineteen. Automatic shutdown initiated. Tissue damage."

She shook her head as she tried to clear her vision, her whole body shaking, and managed to look up.

The cargo crate she'd hurled was some fifteen feet long and five wide, heavily loaded with raw ore. She'd thought she'd be able to shove it across the ground, tripping the machine up. Instead she'd lifted the entire thing off the ground and flung it, striking it directly in the chest.

The neat white stenciling on the now deformed cargo crate read "1000 kilograms, crushed iron ore". The war robot had been smashed all the way into the base of the colony stack, one leg sheared off instantly, much of the robot's center mass smashed inwards.

Not taking any chances, Tali had been the only one capable of overcoming her shock and awe enough to spray plasma over the mess of spilled and crushed iron ore and splintered armor, melting it over and atop the critically damaged war machine. A moment later she stood up, running nimble fingers over he omni-tool.

"...I think you killed it."

Shepard winced as an agonizing bolt of pain tore across her skull, as if someone had slammed an ax blade into her forehead. She coughed weakly and shakily got to her feet. "Y-yeah."

Miranda and Sedanya both hurried to her side, the asari reaching to stabilize her. "You need to sit down. Goddess of stars and sun, how Athame's name did you do that? A Priestess couldn't lift that container, much less hurl it through the air!"

Miranda frowned, her omni getting information from the onboard telemetry in Shepard's suit. "This isn't good. You completely blew out the power-links and limiters from your bio-amp to your blueware! If you'd pushed any more power into this you'd have fried your own brains!"

Shepard nodded weakly. "Yeah I … think .. I over did it. Having some problems seeing, static in my vision."

Miranda's expression was both worried and furious, but she took a calming breath, and nodded back. "Very well. We can't do anything to fix it here, we need the med-bay back at our base. Can you walk?"

Shepard nodded. "...pretty sure I can."

Kal'Reegar slowly walked over to the crushed form of the VS robot, a sixty million credit machine that had taken down multiple tanks and even a pair of gunboats in a test demonstration. It had hundreds of pounds of pure plasma dumped on it and had pretty much walked it off.

And the Butcher crushed it with a biotic throw.

The quarian strike captain swallowed carefully, his quills rigid, and measured his tone into guarded respect. "...what in the name of the ancestors are you?"

Shepard paused, the elongated helmet with its blank face plate tilting to one side, before speaking a single word.

"Complicated."

O-TWCD-O

The interior of the mech control center was darkened, flashing telemetry screens and security camera feeds flitting around a semi-circular plinth of controls.

As Shepard continued to lean on Tali'Zorah's arm, she glanced around. The room was dominated by the rows of racked computers, a bank of vacuum-accelerated picosystem computers comprising the core of the system. Bulky cases of various mech parts lurked in the shadowy corners of the room.

Sitting in the middle of the displays, shaking and tapping various controls, was a slender quarian. His mask had a hairline crack across the faceplate, and the heavy pack on his back was blackened and melted in several places. His movements were frantic, but almost clumsy, and he swayed in place several seconds as he looked up.

Kal'Reegar stepped forward, hands empty and held wide. "Veetor'Nara, it is me, Kal. Are you alright?"

"Kal? No, no no. All dead. Monsters coming. Seeking. Stinging. Won't find me, no no no. Positron flow emitters to shield, increased electrical discharge five point two seven nine nine six...can't find, won't find, coming back. Must hide."

Jacob gave a sigh. "Maybe the whole six-pack is there if he can hack mechs, but clearly the little plastic thingy holding it together is missing in this guy."

Shepard found herself smiling at that, faintly, before stepping forward herself, shaking off her dizziness. Static erupted across her vision for a second but she kept her voice steady. "Veetor'Nara. We need your help. We aren't here to hurt you."

Something about her cold, hard voice reached him.

"Are you ...Human...no no no. All humans gone. Taken. Stinging. Not human. How did you escape?"

Shepard folded her arms. "We weren't here. We came after. Nothing is going to harm you. We need to know what happened here."

The quarian shuddered. "Monsters."

Kal'Reegar frowned behind his mask, his faintly glowing eyes narrowing. "That's what Prazza said. What happened, Veetor?"

Veetor touched his omni-tool, and the large display screen behind him leapt to life. "Monsters. I was here, power conduit blew up. Hit my support pack, cracked helmet. Fell out. Called for Prazza. Then the VI collapsed. Never seen it … hacked so fast...whole network gone. Gone."

Shepard glanced at Tali, who gave a slow shake of her head. Shepard spoke. "This looks to be a powerful system...how was it taken out so fast?"

Veetor's voice was shaky. "No way to know. Too fast. Tried to turn on defenses, wouldn't work. No responding. All the mechs shutdown. Had the manual reboot. Tried. Then the monsters came."

Tapping another control, an image appeared on the big viewscreen. It was a large, cylindrical ship, sheathed here and there in spars of rocky material, loops and whorls of hard, dark metal forming a support for the core. Flaring energies lashed out at the ground with surgical precision, then a dark cloud erupted from it as it began to land.

Veetor's voice fell to a whisper. "They came. Freezing. Stinging. Insects. Took scans. Tried to, readings made no sense. No sense. Too much energy, too much power." On the screen the clouds of darkness broke into what had to be millions of what looked like fist sized winged insects of some kind. They flowed like a wave over the colony, and every time they touched a human a flare of some kind of greenish energy washed over them, freezing them in place."

Sedanya leaned forward. "Fascinating. Some kind of … stasis? Is that biotic? It can't be projected, there's no energy source..."

Veetor's voice rose. "Dark energy. Swirls of waste heat, spikes of dark energy – recorded on my omni-tool, manually patched the main surveillance cameras. Kept trying to reboot the network. Got a few mechs to respond. Tried to help. Shut my people in clean room, keep them safe."

Kal'Reegar looked up. "That was you? Why?"

Veetor pointed at the screen, where the figure of Prazza could been seen staggering, waving at the insects. The bugs flowed over him as if the quarian didn't exist, until he pulled out a weapon and started firing at them.

Then two flares of light erupted from behind him, revealing tall beings in heavy drapes of black, hexagonal patterned cloth. Hard carapace like skin and bunched, heavy muscles moved, and the two figures literally tore Prazza limb from limb in a matter of seconds. Yellow glowing eyes glanced around, as more of the things descended on what looked like vast wings.

Miranda's voice was filled with horrified awe. "Those are Collectors. Dear God, the Illusive Man was right."

Shepard frowned at Miranda's thoughtless statement, but the quarians did not seem to have noticed, horrified at the sight of Prazza's brutal murder. Veetor's voice was quieter, even as the figures began collecting the humans and piling them into organic looking hover-pods of some kind.

"They subdued the colony so fast. Stinging insects got everywhere, into everything. I stayed here. I hid, didn't moved. Insects came in, left. Monsters took everyone. Hundreds of them. Some piled into the pods. The rest..."

Shepard could only watch as mass of paralyzed humans not gathered up began to move, jerkily. While hundreds, perhaps thousands were being loaded into the pods, the humans that were ignored slowly got to their feet and began to walk to the ship.

Shepard's breath caught along with Tali's when they saw the skin of the humans begin to shrivel. As they staggered along like zombies, their flesh began to contract and writhe, dark blotches of corrupted matter erupting over them. Their eyes exploded in sprays of vapor and burning blue dots erupted into each set of sockets, as their flesh grayed from moment to moment.

"Husks. They turned most of the colonists into fucking husks. Motherfucking Reapers."

Kal'Reegar stared and then turned to Shepard. "...wait. I know that term! That is what the geth did to the humans of Eden Prime!"

Shepard nodded grimly. "Yes. Yes it is."

Kal'Reegar's voice grew hard and grim. "The collectors are allied with geth?!"

Tali's voice dripped with hatred. "Worse than geth."

Veetor's hands touched another omni-tool control, the images shifting. "They took them all. Marched them to the ship. Hauled away the bodies. Insects ate up the blood, ignored me. Then they left. Rebooted the mechs...yes. Set the defenses...killed the wireless so the monsters couldn't hack them. Safe now. But they'll be back for us. No one escapes. No one escapes..."

Kal'Reegar slowly approached Veetor, carefully taking a hold of the smaller quarian's arm and gently pulling him away. "Butcher. Veetor needs...medical care. Assuming our ship is unmolested, we can take care of him there. You are free to take whatever data you need from this place, and I'll copy whatever Veetor has on his omni and give it to you as soon as we stabilize him."

Miranda's voice was cool. "We might need to ask him more questions..."

Kal'Reegar's voice took on a pleading note. "Ma'am, he's not in any condition to really answer much of anything. The longer he's like this the more of a chance he'll go into toxic shock and die."

Tali's voice was as cool as Miranda's. "There is more at stake than the life of one quarian. Doesn't the Flotilla still fill your heads with the trash that the many are more important than the few?"

Shepard held up a hand. "That's enough. Kal'Reegar, take your … nutjob friend and go. Vigil, can you copy Veetor's omni from where you are?"

The smug voice rang out across the open comm. "Already done, primitive. And here I thought human programming was sloppy...quarian data integrity is appalling."

Kal'Reegar gave a confused look at Shepard, then at Veetor's omni, which flickered and flashed red as it showed it had been compromised. "How in Idenna's name – "

Shepard's voice was almost amused. Almost. "You really, really don't want to know, Kal'Reegar. Like I said, we got what we needed. Take your people and go."

The big marine almost said something else, but the male quarian engineer laid a hand on his armored shoulder. "Kal...can we not antagonize the asari who just crushed a trht'a war machine with her mind? Veetor needs help now."

Kal'Reegar exhaled. "Of course. Thank you... Butcher." He paused. "I … fought briefly with Sara Shepard on the Citadel. I can't help but think she might approve of what you've been doing, but she was more than just a killing machine."

The laughter from the Butcher was ironic, cold, and terrifying. It wasn't a fun sound, full of pain and something darker, something worse, something not entirely sane. "Yeah, and look what that got her in the end?"

Kal'Reegar nodded, hooking an arm around Veetor and lifting the delirious quarian over his shoulder. "All the same...I thank you for helping me to save Veetor's life...and for saving ours. We would have died in that crate when we ran out of air otherwise. Keelah se'lah."

The other two quarians bowed shallowly, following Kal'Reegar as he left. With a sharp exhale of breath, Shepard shook her head. "Tali...I know that probably wasn't easy for you...I appreciate you keeping it together."

Tali nodded sharply. "That at the end wasn't easy for you either, Sara. And Kal'Reegar … wasn't a bad person. But when my father hurt Jeff, he acted to … restrain me instead of my father. That, I won't forgive him for, ever." She shook her head. "Doesn't matter. Let me download this from the system … do we leave it here or wipe it?"

Shepard looked at Miranda. "Thoughts? Cluing the SA into who is behind this shit might help us down the line."

Miranda nodded slowly. "True. But we've let the quarians go – they'll tell their bosses the Butcher was here. I don't know if they'll buy that pieced together video of Veetor or not."

Jacob folded his arms. "What do we have to lose by letting them view it?"

Shepard shook her head. "Nothing. Jacob, Sedanya, Miranda, get back to the shuttle and bring it here. I'm going to record my own message for them while Tali copies everything. Then we pull up stakes."

Miranda frowned, putting her hands on her hips. "Shepard..."

The woman in white armor just turned away. "My show, my rules. Right?"

O-TWCD-O

"Captain Delacor, we're here."

Humanity's only Spectre nodded from the command chair of the SCV Kazan, grimacing as he awaited the reports from the sensor probes. After being in command of Shepard's old task force for the past two years, he was beginning to wonder if he should have turned down being a Spectre.

They paired him with the irritating traitor-bitch made into an officer, Ashley Williams, who seemed to dislike him on some intense, internal level he never understood – that was when she wasn't distracted by her toddler son, Kaisen. The woman was a good solider – a great soldier, actually – but intolerant, too religious for his taste, and constantly comparing him to Shepard.

The idea of someone seeing Shepard as a better Spectre – or anything else – than him was as infuriating was it was darkly amusing.

As he watched the science team examine their data, his eyes slide to the stiff, disapproving form of Commissar-Colonel Jiong. Another one of Shepard's old people, the stiff-faced Commissar was constantly watching Delacor for signs of disobedience.

He'd been informed right after being tapped for Spectre that the Commissariat knew about his links to General Rachel Florez, including how he was sabotaging Shepard's career on her orders. He'd protested that he was indeed following orders from a superior, orders he agreed with given Shepard's mental issues before she'd become a Spectre, but Jiong had sneered and looked as him as if he were road fungus.

Two years of being under the spotlight. Two years of people comparing him to a woman they'd turned into a saint, ignoring her past, her bloody-handed murderousness, her cruelty. For a while towards the end of her life he'd softened his views on Shepard, but two years of being told that despite surviving everything he'd gone through – a dead wife, dead family, dead world, dead unit, and every misfortune possible – that he was not even good enough to truly fill her shoes had infuriated him.

The fact that they just recycled everything that she'd earned to give to him was even more insulting. Admiral Ahern outright hated him, and Citadel Councilor, Udina, rarely if ever gave him the time of day. The battle duty officer Cole still served on the Kazan, but was requesting a transfer to Eden Prime – and the weapons officer, Colms, who had survived the destruction of the Normandy, had surrendered his commission and become some kind of goddamned Shepard fan-boy.

The apologetic voice of the science officer spoke. "Sir...we have some initial signs on the surface of combat, very fragmentary. Looks like something huge must have landed north of the colony...there's a few wrecked mechs here and there, but not enough to account for the expected mech population...and no life signs whatsoever."

Delacor nodded. "Comms activity? Defense networks?"

The comms officer, a mousy looking lieutenant named Traynor who always looked like someone had kicked her puppy, gave a morose sigh, then frowned. "...there's an incoming signal."

Delacor straightened, as did Jiong. "Primary screen."

The view of the galaxy map flickered, showing a shadowy room filled with computer equipment. Light filtered down dimly from above, casting the figure standing in the middle of the image into a jagged half-light of hard angles and shadowy recesses.

The voice that spoke sounded vaguely familiar somehow, with a ringing contralto that had a hint of anger and something else in it. "I can only presume that our cousins in the Alliance will eventually show up to investigate the vanishing of more humans from one of your independent colonies. I am sorry to tell you that no waves from this shore will ever see the sea again."

The figure stepped into the light more clearly, the bone white armor and asari-style helmet instantly recognizable. "I am the Butcher. As you no doubt have discovered by now, I have been cleaning up the mess in the Traverse for the past few weeks. I was thinking the colonies were taken by slaving filth, which I put to the fire and blade in the manner that would make a Justicar – or our lovely Commissar cousins – proud. The guilty, as I believe you say, must burn."

Jiong smothered a small grin. "I like this Butcher."

Delacor rolled his eyes. "You would. Quiet."

The Butcher folded her arms. "Sadly, the criminals here are not some band of vile batarians or honorless turians. A quarian engineering team was on the world and one of their members captured video of who took your colonists. I have made copies of it – I have my own mission to complete – but I left the originals on the computer banks here. I have no doubt your own experts will need to verify they aren't fabrications, but the quarian party here was with us when we found the data. The person in charge of that party was a Strike Captain Kal'Reegar vas Moreh – he can verify that what we found is … very real."

The woman raised one hand. "I am aware – more than you are – of the nature of your human government, of the dissonance between the acts of the public eye and the true power of your version of the Thirty. I am aware your people suppress a great deal of the truth – as do the asari, and the salarians, and no doubt every other race. But this threat goes beyond your pitiful politics, or your paranoid worries of survival. Did not your Victor Manswell say 'Some threats are worse than that of death'? This is one."

The figure leaned forward. "The ones abducting your colonists are the Collectors. And they are using Reaper technology. If you don't know what that means, notify Fleet Master Dragunov – assuming the vile bastard is still the Fleet Master – and President Huerta, along with the High Commandant. The threat is dire and cannot be ignored."

The Butcher leaned back, glancing at her omni-tool, and amusement and something darker colored her voice. "By the time you get this we'll be long gone, don't bother trying to track us. I'm sure your masters are worried about me, but you have an entirely more serious problem on your plate right now."

The figure tilted its head. "I made a bit of a mess down here, but there's a prototype salarian war droid just outside the place where you'll find this message coming from. Tell the Salarian Union their shit is weak and I've taken harder shots in a bar than from this thing."

The image flickered out. A moment later, Ashley Williams covered her mouth to hide a smile. "I gotta say, Skipper, for someone 'play-acting' at being as hard as Shepard was, she's got the lingo down.

Jiong coughed. "Quite. That was very nearly as Neanderthal as something she might have said herself." His expression dropped into sadness for a second before blanking and turning to face Delacor. "I presume you will wish to communicate this to the Admiralty?"

Delacor sighed. "Yeah. First, though, let's get down there and see what we can find. Have Cole and Chief Engineer Patrick meet me at the pinnace with Beta Squad." He grimaced. "Let's go, Williams."

She nodded, as did Jiong, and Delacor headed for the lift. He had a bad feeling about this.