Summary: The relaxation of the short leave on the Citadel barely lingers before Nyx and the crew are thrown back into the mix. But this time around Shepard has to deal with the fact that the Alliance is not pulling punches. When an admiral from First Fleet calls in for assistance with a very delicate situation the commander must face the realization that there are times when orders will preclude her normal methods for team selection.

a/n: Thanks to Chy and LadyA-as always ladies you are fabulous help with this piece.

20 Blast From the Past

/1/

The bridge crew was regularly unnerved by Shepard's ability to move through the ship silently. She snuck up on just about everyone, not just the pilot, whose eyes were rarely directed toward the CIC. Often when she came to the helm her approach was quiet. When her presence was in an official capacity, her arrival and looming could go unrecognized as well. But that night her arrival was anything but silent or stealthy.

"Here."

Joker took the mug thrust at him and looked down at the fluffy white kernels brimming over the edge. "What is this?"

"Popcorn," Shepard replied with a look that suggested Moreau was pretending to be dense.

"I know that. I meant what are you doing in my cockpit with popcorn?"

"Whose cockpit?" The CO leaned her ear toward him slightly.

Joker sighed and rolled his eyes. "Fine. Your cockpit. Doesn't change the question."

"You forced me to watch that Blasto monstrosity, so I figure you owe me one."

"Oh for the love of …"

She quirked an eyebrow at him. "Don't worry your pretty head over it, Moreau. My taste in movies is leaps and bounds beyond yours. I'm even going to give you a little bit of say."

"Really?" he asked, popping a few still warm kernels into his mouth.

"I brought three."

Joker watched her hop into the co-pilot's station and shift, digging into the pocket on her left thigh. Shepard started losing time at the helm during the death watch just after Eden Prime. She would pop up every once and a while when Joker was at the helm overnight. She shuffled the disks and shot him that crooked smile that was playful tempered with a little menace.

"So would you rather pick blind or tick them down?"

"I'll take door number two, Commander."

The grin widened as she leaned on the arm of the chair toward him, holding up a disc and shaking it at him. "Silence of the Lambs."

"Too soon, Shepard. You cut it too close on that last deployment. I think I even saw Nunez looking up recipes on 'how to serve your fellow man,' if you get my meaning."

"Okay," she replied with a laugh. "Hellboy."

"Big red demon. Why would you want to watch something about Wrex's early years?"

The commander laughed lightly. "Fine, by process of elimination. This is your choice."

"Doesn't matter."

The commander slid the OSD into the console and Joker ran a quick systems check before the music started playing. He couldn't place it, but judging from the large blue letters floating toward the front of the screen he had missed the title. The music started and it sounded familiar, then he saw the next graphic: "Once upon a time warp…"

"Are you serious, Shepard?"

"What?" she asked with bright eyes, a Cheshire-cat grin, and a wiggle of her eyebrows.

"Spaceballs, really?"

"Somehow, I knew you'd know this one on sight."

"Well, it's a classic, right?"

"Hell yeah," she agreed with a silly laugh as she settled back into the chair.

In Joker's opinion, you really could not go wrong with satire, but it was a little strange that Shepard seemed so engrossed in the ridiculous film from a whole other era. Maybe that's the point, he thought as her bright laughter prompted his own. Though her interest seemed to die off about a third of the way in; the commander still laughed at all the best lines and would look up for what the pilot presumed were her favorite scenes. But mostly her attention was glued to the datapads she had brought up with her.

"Hey, Shepard, you had one of those as a kid, didn't you?" Joker asked just as Mel Brooks picked up Spaceballs: The Flame Thrower, a children's toy.

The mock-glare fell on him for a moment before she threw a few kernels of her popcorn at him as she giggled lightly. "Two actually," she told the work lying in her lap. Her eyes flicked upward to meet his as the mischievous grin lit her face. "Jerk."

"That's all you got."

A real glare suggested that might not be the door he wanted to walk through.

Joker slapped one of her dangling feet lightly as President Scroob grabbed Colonel Sanders, yelling about his inability to make a decision because he's a politician.

"God, that guy reminds me of Udina," Shepard muttered.

Joker snorted. "I bet. Did he ride you hard over the stuff with the Council?"

"Of course he did. He's got his head so far up their asses he couldn't find daylight with someone holding his hand."

Jeff noticed the wince tighten her features. "I know the drill. Need to know and all that shit," he replied, holding up his hands.

"And I thought you said pilots were chatty?"

Joker leaned on the arm of his chair. "We are. Just some of us are smart enough to know when to shut up and listen."

"Good to know, Lieutenant."

Joker nodded at her as the credits started rolling. Shepard tapped the interface and the disc slid out.

"Hey! Can I borrow those?"

"All of 'em?" she asked, stretching her arms above her head.

"Yeah. Crosby mentioned some of the natives are getting a little restless."

Shepard snapped the disk into its case then stood and dug the other two out of her pocket. "Let me know if they need more. I have a nice collection of weird old movies."

"I can tell."

"Watch it, Joker."

Moreau laughed. "Thanks, I'll get these back to you."

Shepard shook her head.

When she started up the gangway, Joker turned and said, "Take it easy, Shepard."

Joker chewed at the inside of his cheek for a few moments. The short visit to the Citadel might have eased some of the strain onboard the Normandy, but not even twenty-four hours off the station and Shepard was already mired back in it all. They all were, really. The ship was headed for the ass-end of the galaxy checking in on some weird activity in a sparsely populated system and Saren was still out there doing God-knows-what, devil-knows-where.

/2/

"Shepard!"

Pressly's voice echoed through her skull as she lifted her head off the table in her quarters. "Yeah," she replied, trying for it to not sound like the groan it was.

"Incoming message. Flagged priority. They requested you actual, ma'am," the XO stated.

That combination of words was among the few phrases that could instantly wake or sober the commander from whatever altered state she might be in. On her run across the deck she took a dangerous chance and slid into a turn that managed to turn out more slick than she expected. Honestly, she figured her momentum would be stopped by the wall with a graceless thud, but somehow she managed to pull it off. Giving the sweet move less than a moment of thought, she darted up the stairs and into the CIC. Though she slowed her pace on the upper deck, she still moved to the comm room at a quick clip.

As soon as she punched up the connection, Shepard regretted having fallen asleep without her blouse and not having thought to grab it on her way out of her quarters. She tugged at her white undershirt sharply, trying to make up for being out of uniform.

"Lieutenant Commander Shepard."

The mere sound of Admiral Ines Lindholm's voice made, Nyx's skin crawl and her jaw tighten. Straightening slowly, the officer clasped her hands behind her back, falling back into a habit that started in basic, tensing and relaxing the muscles in her arm when she felt the irritation bubbling.

"Admiral Lindholm," Nyx replied trying to keep her tone unreadable.

Even in transmission, Shepard could see the older woman's eyes move over her in that same judgmental way as always.

Just what I need.

The head of First Fleet and the first human Spectre had a history that started early on and just got worse through the years. Taranis Shepard had served on some of Lindstrom's early commands. The admiral saw the Shepard girl as a troublemaker, or so she had told Nyx more than a few times. Of course the admiral's dislike of the commander was cemented long before Shepard enlisted in the Alliance.

"Fleet Command would like you and your squad to look into a matter in the Voyager Cluster," Ines stated, coolly. The woman in the projection stood at parade rest, while Shepard stepped forward, crossing her arms over her chest as she waited for the rest of the information.

After a long silence, Shepard said, "You will have to enlighten me, ma'am. Or at least send over the reports and my X-O and I will handle the brief."

The shift in Lindholm's shoulder which accompanied her sigh made Nyx want to grin, but she bit it back. No need to ruffle her anymore than she is already.

"This mission and all information about it is to be limited to Alliance personnel only, Commander."

"Understood," Shepard replied before Lindholm could ask the question. Though she might not care for the caveat, Nyx was aware of some of the opinions in the Navy about her team; and, given her knowledge of this officer in particular, the order was hardly surprising.

The information passed over the transmission was scant, but clear enough. The reason for the human-only requirement became clearer with the revelation that the espionage probe, which had suddenly started transmitting its location, was armed with a nuclear booby-trap. Little explanation was needed after that, though Shepard got an earful, including suggestions about how to handle the device as well as the coordinates of where to rendezvous with the cruiser SSV London once the device was in hand.

Lindholm found it necessary to remind the commander yet again about the need for discretion with this mission and the order to keep need-to-know under a tight rein. The Alliance preferred not to have this mistake splashed all over the extranet or the galactic news. Most of all they did not want the turians or the Council to discover that the spy probes the Alliance had sent out during and shortly after the First Contact War had been rigged with powerful nukes. This was undecidedly a black eye that humanity could not take at a moment when they were seeking a larger role in the galactic community.

"Yes, ma'am," Shepard repeated for the last time. The admiral finally dropped the connection after at least the fourth repetition of confirming understanding of that primary concern.

Nyx always hated seeing this sort of blatant xenophobic directive come up, but to be honest, she expected it to come up long before it finally reared its ugly head. Non-Disclosure Agreements only went so far with military actions, and classified information on this level she knew only came to her because mission parameters would require the inclusion of tools to disarm the warhead before they brought it aboard the frigate. Of course, Shepard trusted all her crew, which is why she did not balk at inclusion of the alien team members, even when classified information might be involved.

Early on, Shepard noticed her team seemed replete with discretion before any of them were a team. Wrex had no problem detailing his mission, but practically everything else-personal and professional-he kept under his vest. Garrus' role with C-Sec and his investigation into Saren required care and consideration; his judiciousness seemed bred to the bone. Tali, without question, held confidence better than anyone Nyx knew, save for Caz, and she was the most discreet being on the Normandy. Even Liara managed to keep a lid on the work the team performed; perhaps due to the myriad of other topics her interest diverted into, which left her no shortage of topics to discuss other than her work with the squad.

In large part, the commander assumed some of her team's responses were due to the culture specific to military vessels-everyone knew their role and their part of the whole. Additionally, servicemen understood the nature of the trickle down of information. This crew, having been handpicked for this mission, likely knew better than most the necessity of need-to-know. It also seemed possible that it was also the reason Shepard rarely heard questions asked about missions, or perhaps Pressly's rein was tight enough to keep people's tongues from wagging about that.

Deep down Nyx felt it might be more than all those things. The very nature of her team's association and their individual encounters with Saren and his forces, early on and since, easily communicated the need for candor and prudence in all things. Arterius knew Shepard and the Normandy were after him. He likely knew precisely who peopled the human Spectre's squad. Dead certain that he had his ear to the ground for them, that he skulked in the shadows waiting for one misstep, that he anxiously awaited besting her team-Nyx knew the importance of discretion, and likely so did every person on board.

Trust. The key to so many things, trust counted for a lot with Shepard and officers like her. That she trusted the humans and aliens she worked with was enough for many of those she reported to.

Most of their mission directives came straight from Hackett, and he knew her better than all but one other flag officer in the service, which she attributed to Anderson's influence. Once she started commanding Arcturus' Team 7, David made sure that any time he could manage it, the captain got her in situations, both professional and social, with the brass. He was convinced she needed to know how to deal with them as more than just a successful operator. Though she learned to wade through that sea of sharks only suffering a few nips here and there, Shepard always fared better with officers who had actual field combat experience, of which there were shockingly few among the current admiralty.

Her fingers tapped absently against her thigh thudding lightly again the compact hardback book she stowed there.

"Pressly," she said a little more loudly than she had intended when she tagged the button.

The little catch in his response confirmed she had indeed shocked him as well. "Ma'am?"

"Bring me three copies of that data coming in from the admiral, please."

With his agreement, she shifted channels and told Joker to change their heading. After reading through the information sent over from Lindholm, the commander pulled up her omnitool and messaged Alenko and Williams. While she waited, she went through the schematics of the device again.

Three sections. Shit! It would have to be three. And you would have to be classified. Damn spies and their toys anyway, she thought with a laugh. She could not help the stray thought for her friend that she still had not heard from. Trying to push that thought out of her head she set the datapad on the floor between her feet and rubbed little circles at her temples as she stared at the orangish lines.

/3/

"What's up?" Ashley asked as she met Alenko at the elevator in the cargo bay.

The lieutenant shook his head slightly. "No idea."

Williams bit absently at the inside corner of her mouth as they waited. It was odd for Shepard not to call for the whole team when a mission came in. This worried the soldier for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that usual niggling doubt and her father's voice whispering in the back of her head: A Williams has to be better than the best, to make up for Shanxi.

When the elevator opened, she shook her head clear. The hand on her arm pulled her attention back to Alenko. He had the furrow in his brow that always seemed to appear when someone asked a question he did not know the immediate answer to. She chided him about it being his Encyclopedia Brown face, but she certainly would have preferred it not be turned on her in that moment.

"You doing okay, Chief?"

"Fine." Even she heard the sharp clipped nature of her voice. Taking a more even breath she said, "Let's go. Commander's waiting."

She jogged up the stairs and turned into the comm room, stopping cold two steps in when she saw her own face up on the big monitor in the center of the back wall. Ashley did not even get a moment to freak out silently over the fact that her CO was projecting her service record on the screen because Alenko was only far enough behind her to collide with her just inside the doorway.

"Mission briefs are on the chairs. Take a peek," Shepard suggested as she smirked in their direction and waved them into the room. "Williams."

"Ma'am," she replied almost defensively, stiffening as she came to attention, expecting the worst.

The atypical response drew Shepard's appraising gaze. The cock of her eyebrow suggested the chief might have been reading too deep.

"Not a lot of bomb disposal in your past, I see."

"No, ma'am."

The keen look was turned on her again. She noticed the commander's quick glance at the lieutenant and turned in time to see him shrug and shake his head once. Shepard just set her hands on her hips and shook it off. As the man took a seat to skim the material, Nyx walked over and set her hand on Ashley's shoulder.

"Relax, Ash," the commander said quietly before turning her attention to the other officer. "Alenko, check the specs in addendum 2a there and tell me if you think we can train her to diffuse one of those in a handful of hours."

Ashley laughed. "Yeah, right."

"Take a seat and read up, Chief." The order was much more gentle than it might normally have been, but it still held the same note of quiet authority that the CO's voice often held.

"Commander, if this is what I think this is-" Alenko started, looking up at the short blonde from the seat he had taken.

"It is."

"Shit," he muttered at the datapad in his hands. The staff lieutenant rubbed his hand over the back of his neck for a long moment staring at the thin screen. With a little groan of irritation, he stood and gestured at Shepard. "Pull it up on the big screen for me."

She did as he asked. Alenko moved toward the center of the room, arms crossed over his chest as his eyes traced the drawing that replaced Williams' record. The chief returned her attention to the mission parameters, and soon found herself staring at the same diagram that had Shepard and Alenko whispering heatedly on the other side of the room.

"You can argue the fact all you want. But unless you can convince Admiral Lindholm to let me bring the quarian, we're going to have to make this work," Shepard said in an even tone that oozed finality.

"There's no way." Manipulating the interface near the railing Alenko made a section of the image bigger.

"That's a lot of wires, L-T," Williams observed from behind the two of them.

Both officers glanced back at her sharply. Wrong time, right. Her intention had been to lighten the mood, but it had failed. She shrank back, even so far as to take a step away. The jargon was lost on her-wires, switches, power sources, redundancy, housings, and load ratios-it was almost worse than the mandatory engineering classes all marines took. Williams preferred concrete real world considerations like wind velocity and direction, trigger pull weight, scope mounts, and fire rate; those were the things she knew, that was the language she was most comfortable with.

In a pinch she could defuse a mine, maybe even deactivate one of the bombs like they happened across on Eden Prime, but she would not seek out that job. As much as she strove to be the best, Ashley learned a long time ago, the hard way, that part of that was knowledge of your own limits. Of course, another part was pushing past them, but demolitions was not the best place for trial and error, at least not if one had designs on keeping all their fingers and toes.

Shepard sat back on the railing and crossed her arms as she glanced up at the chief. "You only went through the basic course in explosives, right, Chief? Nothing I'm missing in your book?"

"No. That's all I've done on that front. Even at that it was never really my strong suit, always been better at blowing things up than disabling them."

The commander nodded. "I hear that, Chief."

Alenko shook his head.

"Think you can get two?" Shepard asked the man still staring at the screen. He did not answer at first, so the commander added another consideration. "Give me the hard one and you take the easy ones."

"There are no easy ones," he muttered. The crossness in his tone suggested the truth of his statement and his concern over the situation.

"Shepard, why isn't the rest of the team here?" Williams finally asked.

The commander pressed her fingers over her forehead as her lips pulled together into a thin line. After more than a minute, Nyx finally chose the answer she could give. "Orders. None of us are going to Agebinium, none of us are going to secure a non-existent Alliance espionage probe, and the Normandy sure as hell is not rendezvousing with a First Fleet cruiser to not deliver said fictional device."

"Ah."

Ashley read enough spy novels and watched enough movies to get where Shepard was going, but this was all new for her. Her time with the Alliance was spent on solid details on quiet planets, running drills with her fellow marines. Up until the geth landed on Eden Prime, the most dangerous thing she had come across in her career had been Gunny Ellison in boot and some wild varren that were skirting a little farming community outside of Constanti one dry summer. Missions like this and most of the others that had come to the Normandy were way beyond anything Ashley ever really thought she would get to see.

Part of her was glad that this was the reason only she and Alenko were called. Initially, her nerves had gotten the better of her, even more so when she saw her service record projected on the big screen. For a half a second she felt like she might be losing her spot. For another half second, she was worried the Williams family curse had caught back up to her. Or, worse, that Shepard had found out about the family secret that almost everyone in the service knew about-except the commander it seemed.

"Yeah," Shepard agreed with a nod. "And brass wants this to be military only. They'd like to avoid a potential black eye."

"I could see that."

The commander nodded. "So can I. But I don't like people making judgments about my team or their tact."

Valid arguments for both sides of that coin ran through Ashley's head. If this had come up earlier in the cruise, she might have just stood on deck with the orders. But now, she could not be that certain anymore. The rest of the squad might not be Alliance, but they were Shepard's crew. They were loyal, and they were not stupid or chatty where it counted. In the end it mattered little, the call was made for all of them somewhere up the chain.

"Have we got any scans on this planet?" Williams finally asked.

"No. Nothing more than the beacon suddenly coming back on line."

"That seems …"

Both officers glanced at her.

"Odd," Williams finished, eyes moving from Nyx to Kaidan and back again.

Shepard's crooked smile made the chief straighten a little. "Totally agree."

"These things don't just turn themselves on randomly," Kaidan said, still staring at the schematics.

"Who-?" Ashley started.

Nyx's head was already shaking, so there was no need to finish the question they all wanted the answer to.

"Shepard, if someone turned the beacon on, they could have tampered with the device," Alenko said over his shoulder.

"I'm aware. But can you do it?"

"Maybe."

Shepard raised her eyebrows at the unconvincing shrug he gave her as he turned and leaned on the railing.

"It depends," he acquiesced. "If they cannibalized it, sure I can probably figure it out. If it is still intact and they reworked it, I might still be able to. But I have to see what, if anything, they did. It could just be one connection that needs to be worked, or, if they left the failsafes, we are still looking at three separate disarms and two pairs of hands. No offense, Chief," Alenko added with an apologetic look.

"None taken." In this instance.

Ashley carried a heavy dislike of that phrase and others of its ilk. It was usually just a polite way of scraping someone down, but she was pretty sure the L-T was not doing that in this case. She got antsy around bombs, even if she was the one setting them. In basic, when they were training with mine setting, she was lucky they only used dead ordinance or she would have ended her career before it started.

"If we're somehow lucky and this thing is intact and untampered with, think you can pull off two before it goes live and turns us into crispy critters?"

Alenko winced and tipped his head from side to side for a moment. "I think I might be able to do it. The tail is the least complicated. You'll take the one at the nose. I'll get aft and mid. But, Chief," he turned and looked at her. "I'm going to need you to get this housing off here." Kaidan moved the image to the center of the device and manipulated it to focus on the spot. "Pop this panel, and yank all these wires out, carefully though so nothing gets loosened."

"You got it, L-T."

When both officers turned back to the image Ashley pressed her palm to her thigh. Crap. She was still on the ship light years away from that damn bomb and her hands were already sweating.

"We're going to leave you to it, Alenko."

He made a gruff little sound of acknowledgement as Ashley moved to the door. When she entered the stairwell, Shepard's hand on her back made her jump a little. "My quarters. Now, Chief," the small blonde ordered.

/4/

Nyx pulled out one of the chairs at the table as she waited for Williams to join her. "Park it," she ordered a little more gruffly than she originally planned when the younger woman entered the room.

The look was back, the one that Shepard noticed when the chief entered the comm room earlier. The one she knew from experience. "Something I should know, Chief?"

"No, ma'am."

Shepard watched her for a moment, noticing the subtle shift in her gaze and the movement in her arms that gave away the fact that the other woman's fists were balled up tight. Williams excelled at concealing, but then so did Shepard, which was how she was able to read it quite so easily. It was like looking in a mirror, only back in time. From skimming the chief's service record and the little more thorough training perusal done in the comms room, Shepard knew that this was the first thing anywhere near special operations that the young marine participated in. She also knew it could be intimidating, even if you were completely prepared.

"Tell me about the nerves. Is it merely the nuclear bomb you're worried about?" she asked in a tone she hoped might make Williams relax a little.

"Mostly."

"Ok. That I can understand. Not feeling so comfortable with that one myself, to be honest." Nyx slid into a chair opposite the chief and tapped her fingers on the table for a moment. "But that doesn't explain the look you shot me when you walked in here or into the comms earlier."

"I thought it was strange. You know? Just calling Alenko and me up top." Williams shrugged. "Got a little antsy."

"Why?"

"No reason really." The slow articulation of each syllable spoke volumes to the commander.

Shepard was not buying what the chief was shoveling. "Come on, Ash. Your book reads as good as the lieutenant's. Perfect fit reps, accolades, and your scores are off the charts. What gives?" Nyx leaned forward on the table, folding her hands together as she stared at her subordinate, her friend. "I thought for a while it was just nerves. New boat, new job, new squad. Different load than you were used to. Add in some aliens and a psychotic Spectre-Saren, not me," the officer added, being rewarded with an anxious, but amused snort. "You're doing shit hot here and still you looked at me like I was about to bust you back to private."

Williams crossed her arms then reversed the motion, shifting in her seat slightly. Finally, Ashley decided to stand and the pacing began. Nyx smiled, that was her own preference too when pressed.

"Let's just call it the Williams' Family Curse," the chief finally said, stopping for a moment and looking at the officer as she crossed her arms tightly over her chest.

"All right. I'll bite."

The wide-eyes Ashley cast on Shepard suggested the commander might be missing something.

"You really don't know?"

"Need a more specific question, Chief. There are a lot of things I don't know."

Ashley was in the chair again, arms on the table as she stared at Shepard with her brow furrowed. She opened her mouth once as if she was going to say something, but the brunette stopped before she did. Her lips ticked back and forth for a moment.

"You've heard of General Oberon Williams, right?" Ashley asked with an over abundance of caution.

With that name the realization struck Shepard in the face like a wet fish; suddenly everything became crystal clear. It explained a lot of what the commander wondered about where the chief was concerned. Nyx nodded slowly. "Yep."

"All my C-Os just seem to know. Thought you did, too, and were just playing it sly."

"No, I didn't know anything about it until now."

"That's why I was still on Eden Prime. Couldn't get anyone to look past my lineage."

Shepard nodded. That was not a problem she had experienced, but she was more than aware of the influence of family on someone's career. While her own name and her family's reputation had not hindered her, it had not exactly helped her along her chosen path either.

Ashley went into some detail about it. Despite the differences, the experiences still resonated for Shepard; and the clearer things became the more irritated she was. Politics were a pain in the ass regardless of the arena. And it was political maneuvering that had locked Ashley up tight for several years. Nyx could not help thinking that if other officers had not been so quick to judge the name, she and Williams might have been working together for years before Eden Prime. The skill, the dedication, and the drive were there, but Ash had literally been held back because of something utterly out of her control and completely meaningless in terms of her career, at least in Nyx's opinion.

"Dad always said a Williams has to be better than the best, to make up for it," Ashley said.

"You've got that covered and then some."

"Yeah, right," the brunette scoffed.

Biting her bottom lip tightly, Nyx stared at Ashley. Fine. I'll prove it. Shepard pushed herself up from the table and waved Williams over to the screen on the wall above her desk. In a few clicks, Williams' SRB was on the screen. "This is your last eval right? Marksmanship scores, physical performance results?"

The marine nodded.

"All off the charts by the way." Shepard's addition brought the start of a smile. "Better than my last performance review," the commander said, watching the younger woman's eyes widen.

"I … uh … Thank you, ma'am."

"Like I told you before. Nothing to thank me for. You did it, Chief. I'm just delivering the report."

"Permission to speak freely?" Ashley asked.

"Haven't we had this conversation?" Shepard replied with a raise of her eyebrows. All of her squad knew there were a few choice moments when her blanket permission to speak their minds was rescinded, and that involved the presence of flag officers typically.

Williams smiled. "I've never served under an officer that didn't take Shanxi into consideration."

"Well that's because sometimes officers are idiots. Ask Joker. That's his standing appraisal of most people who outrank him."

"That might be his opinion about most people in general," Williams noted.

"True, enough. But he's right. And for what it's worth, when this is all said and done, you'll have my recommendation. Don't know how much weight it will hold-"

The reaction surprised Nyx, not that it was the first time she had been ambush hugged during a conversation of this nature; she had merely not expected that reaction from the chief.

"Sorry, Commander," Williams said quietly, taking a step back after releasing her. "If it's all the same. I'm content with my current position."

"Glad to hear it. Selfishly, of course," Nyx said with a smile.

Ashley's voice started low, like she was being cautious. "Just like moons and like suns, / With the certainty of tides, / Just like hopes springing high, / Still I'll rise. / Did you want to see me broken? / Bowed head and lowered eyes? / Shoulders falling down like teardrops. / Weakened by my soulful cries," Ashley quoted calmly.

The commander knew the poem well. Maya Angelou's Still I Rise was a piece she whispered to herself more than once in her career. The corner of Shepard's mouth ticked up a little higher and with a chuckle she nodded at the chief, looking the younger woman in the eyes. "You may shoot me with your words, / You may cut me with your eyes, / You may kill me with your hatefulness, / But still, like air, I'll rise"

"Guess I shouldn't be surprised you know that one," Williams said with a brightness in her eyes.

"The Vorcha quatrains gave me away, didn't they? I can be such a softie."

The chief laughed. "Just a little bit."

"I'm a bit of a sucker for Maya Angelou, always have been really. She was one of my mother's favorites along with that particular poem. She really liked that one a lot."

"Still I Rise is how I got through being passed over," Ashley admitted, crossing her arms over her chest. "Every damn time. Stood there at parade rest and said it over and over in my head. Never heard the bullshit reasons they denied my requests."

"Oorah, Chief," Shepard replied.

The commander's fingertips tapped against her thigh as she watched her friend for a long moment, trying to come to a decision. With a nod, Shepard crossed over to her footlocker. She came up with a small red book and joined Ashley, who had returned to the table. This time Nyx sat next to her, holding the item between her palms with a telling reverence.

"This started with my mother's mother. She was a nurse. Tough work. And every once and a while she needed something to remind her there was more than death and suffering. Mom added to it later, inspirational things, whatever seemed to fit the mood of the moment."

Shepard slid the elastic from around it and turned the pages of handwritten words. Some pages were scrawled erratically in pencil, others held flowing careful script, then there was her mother's writing which was almost always in black, except for a section of about a few dozen pages in red, which Nyx skipped in order to locate her own precise block printing and concise script.

"There's one caveat. This isn't just a book to be read," Shepard said, offering it toward the chief. "You have to add to it once and a while, too."

"I couldn't," Williams declined, shaking her head and wearing a look that bordered on sorrowful.

"Oh, I'm not giving it to you. It's a loan. I expect it back. But sometimes it's nice to have something that reminds us that we aren't the only ones in these spots. Others have been there and lived through it. Even managed to strive and rise." Shepard took Williams' hand and placed the book in her palm.

The look on her friend's face was easy to read, and the commander looked away knowing the emotion there could too effortlessly sweep her up as well. Ashley stared at the pages, flipping a few, before her eyes darted to the ceiling. "I don't know what to say, Shepard."

"Nothing to say." The commander stood and sighed, tilting her head from one shoulder to the other. "We have a few hours before we get to this backcountry rock. Suggest you study up, or rest up, or … you know … whatever."

"Is that your version of last call, Skipper?"

"Yeah, I guess it is."

Ashley shook the book at the officer as she stood. "I'll get this back to you."

"Take your time, Chief. It's a good read. And I'm sure you'll have some great contributions."

"Commander, for what its worth, I think my Dad would have respected you. He wished most of his career for a C-O who thought like you," Williams said before she reached the door.

Nyx shook her head. "I doubt that highly."

"Nope. He would have counted himself as lucky as I do. And finding myself on the Normandy is almost worth all the rest of it."

The officer's voice was gentle when she spoke. "Get out, Chief, before you get me all teary eyed and ruin my menacing reputation."

The brunette laughed, but complied leaving the Spectre alone. That little red book had been a saving grace for Shepard during the few months she spent embedded with a turian Special Forces unit. There it was not so much that she was female that made that experience hard, it was just being human, and all that entailed in a turian unit, which was complicated by the fact that many of those she worked with simply saw her as some type of political power play. In a lot of ways it was harder than anything she had experienced up to that point in her service. The unit commander did not want her anywhere near his squad and often precluded her from participation in training. Eventually, she won him over, kind of, but she did not know it had happened until they met again under very different circumstances years later.

That little red book got her through a lot of things. No matter what was going on, there always seemed to be something perfect hidden in its pages. A little reminder that there was light, hope, strength, what have you, but there was always something left. On their current mission, she pulled it out a few times, seeking solace and occasionally finding it. But Ashley seemed to need a little guidance at that moment, and Nyx figured with their shared interest in poetry that precious gem might fit the bill.

Stretching her tense neck again, Shepard pulled up the schematics on the screen that had held Ashley's service record book earlier, and poured over the specifications for the trigger Alenko was counting on her to disarm. She would need to know this thing inside and out just in case it had been cannibalized.

"By the stars, I hope they didn't tamper with you," she whispered at the screen.

The situation was just too far off for that hope to come to fruition-or at least that was the assumption she made. It all felt too contrived. Everything about this just made her gut almost cramp in warning. Why did the signal come back up here? Why now? This system doesn't even have turian interests.

"By all rights, you should not be anywhere near here." Her hands traced one of the power lines to the core. "How did you get out here?"

/5/

An answer to that very question came nearly seven hours later. Nyx leaned on the disarmed device, her finger tracing over the frozen timer. 03:17. The numbers blazed red and she could not rip her eyes from them. This was too close.

"So this Haliat guy, you ever heard of him before, Skipper?" Ashley asked from across the room. She leaned against the wall putting as much distance between herself and the device as possible.

"Not before today. I mean we knew Elysium was the result of pirate factions with designs, but we never …" Nyx stopped and rethought her statement. "I never knew anything more than it was a pirate raid. I assumed it was just a large scale version of your typical snatch and grab-several smaller organizations combining for a big score. Apparently, there was a little more to it, but that was likely above my pay grade."

"He seemed pretty excited when he saw you," Alenko said over his shoulder as he worked on the locked door.

The shrug was instinctual and the answer entirely honest. "What can I say? My fan club is bigger than Saren and that sketchy blonde guy in the wards."

His gaze shot to hers and she noticed what she should not see there. Concern flashed in his eyes before he refocused his attention to the task at hand. Somehow, she knew that comment would come up again, though she knew she would not be the one to broach that topic.

"You think he's still here?" Ashley asked.

"Oh yeah," Shepard crooned, eyes on the timer again. "He's still here. He's waiting for the explosion. He wants to know it's done. A guy like Haliat won't be able to leave here without knowing he accomplished what he set out to. His psyche couldn't take the lingering question."

Williams scoffed. "Yeah, well, this is a check his ass can't cash. I'll be damned if I'm buying it in some damn hole in the ground in the middle of nowhere."

Shepard grinned up at the marine, who seemed to calm a little with the look.

"Finally," Alenko grumbled at the door. "Sorry about that, Shepard."

"No worries. We've still got a minute-forty to surprise him. Let's just hope he didn't go too far," she said as the three of them hurried up the shaft.

They exited the mine via the only remaining access point. Nyx could only guess that it had been left intact because Elanos Haliat's ego would require proof that his plan worked. His sense of self would require witnesses to his prowess, probably because there had been so very many witnesses to his failure during the Blitz, including her.

Rushing out of the mine and onto a windswept plateau, the marines moved at a quick clip. The Mako was a welcome sight, and Shepard halted them just back from the edge as she surveyed the scene.

"That is a lot of guys," she surmised simply and slowly while a plan of attack formed. "Ash, set up here and concentrate on that krogan. Get him down fast. I certainly do not want to dance with him. Alenko, you're with me. We're going to make a run for it, see if we can't get close to some cover before they get a good line on us."

"Why don't we just rush for the Mako?" Kaidan asked.

"What if she's wired?" Her pistol was in her hands. Her eyes dropped to the weapon as she readied it. Since Ashley had procured the powerful sidearm, Shepard had become quite partial to the reliable Rosenkov Materials' Karpov.

Both of her teammates looked at her, their eyes revealing that consideration escaped their notice until the commander voiced the possibility.

"Always think the worst of people in these sorts of situations. That's what Anderson always says. It might get you back home in one piece," Shepard said, turning her head toward the other biotic. He was steady and calm, as usual; in that glance she knew he was prepared.

"Ready, Chief?"

"Full of joy, Skipper."

Nyx could not stifle the laugh. There were times when Williams reminded her way too much of Chief Jensen. "Keep some distance, Alenko. I'd rather not give any sniper they have down there bragging rights on a two-fer."

"Aye aye, ma'am."

"Give me a few seconds, Ash. Then it's all you."

/6/

In the heat of it all, no one noticed the slip. On the ship, Shepard moved between rank and last name easily. Only when she and the chief spoke privately had the commander ever even called her Ashley, let alone Ash. But the moment the two officers jumped over the edge and made their run down the hill the thought flew out of the marine's head.

"Now!"

The command prompted the first shot. It was perfect. It might have even been the kind of shot that could make Gunny Ellison smile. The second hit the krogan before he found the sniper and dropped him to the ground. If she were lucky, a third would finish him before the redundant organs kicked in. Williams delivered a fourth shot to the head of the massive alien just in case; a riled up krogan was not something her squad mates needed added to their current bucket of armed and pissed off.

Ashley looked up from her scope to survey the field. "Oh shit!" she called over channel before she could stop herself. Williams had heard about the commander charging the lieutenant in some battle of the brains early in the cruise, but she had never actually seen it for herself. It was odd, and a little disconcerting even from a distance, but it sure as hell gave the commander the element of shock and awe.

"Two on your six, L-T," Williams warned as she noticed the pair of men moving toward his position. She swung the barrel his direction and with a single shot she took out one, just as Alenko tugged the other in the air. Then the black-armored commander popped into the field of view of the sniper's scope. The sound of the biotic detonation echoed off the rocks.

When Alenko suggested the chief watch the mission the three biotics went on, she had noticed the way their abilities seemed to react to one another. Like the hilarious chemical reactions her sister Abby would set off when they were kids-two seemingly innocuous things meeting and going haywire. That's what their biotics seemed to do, the abilities acted different elements coming in contact and violently responding to one another. Over the comms during that earlier mission, Ashley had even heard some of the explosive sounds, but it was nothing compared to actually witnessing it. The sound seemed to ring in her ears even with her helmet on and the shockwave was noticeable even from a distance. But Ashley had to admit, Alenko was dead on; maybe, if you were going to stack a basket, biotics was the way to stack it.

"I've got a bead on Haliat," Williams advised once the small force had been decimated by the trio. The smile crept across her face as she noticed him cowering behind the corner of their decrepit Grizzly.

"Hold," Shepard ordered.

The chief kept her sights on the pirate. Ashley was not going to lose her line on him. Then Shepard entered the edge of her viewfinder, taking slow, careful steps. The chief knew Alenko would be a few steps away from their CO, even if she did not have eyes on him.

"Haliat," the commander called out. "Looks like piracy might not be your strong suit."

"Fuck you, Shepard!"

"Yeah, I think I'll pass. But there might be some guys where you are headed that might be interested."

"You're not taking me, bitch!"

When the pirate spun from behind the crate, the man froze mid-stride. He shimmered just like Crosby had on the crew deck. As the commander moved forward, Alenko took a few steps and came into view. The blonde removed the weapon from the pirate's hands.

"Actually, I am. There is a tribunal with your name on it. And after your little admission earlier. I'm pretty sure the Alliance will be more than happy to find you a deep dark hole to rot in." The commander placed one hand on the man's arm and nodded at Alenko. When the field came down, Shepard reacted instantly, yanking the arm behind his back in a wrist lock that the officer used to guide the cursing man to the ground rather roughly. Nyx zip tied Haliat before he could even think to retaliate.

"Chief, care to join us?" Shepard said, kneeling near her target and waving a hand at the sniper.

"On my way," Williams responded as she rolled up out of her prone shooting position.

"Alenko, check the Mako."

"On it," the sentinel replied as he started off toward the vehicle.

Shepard rolled the pirate over and manhandled him into a seated position before walking toward the chief who was taking a more careful route down the slope than the two officers had chosen. Ashley never saw it coming, but then she had not been watching the pirate, her eyes had been on her footing at least until the shockwave bounced her off the slope forcefully, knocking her off her feet. Williams shook her head clear. The explosion seemed to take them all by surprise.

When she surveyed the scene before her, ears ringing brightly, she noticed the scorch pattern on the lighter accents on the back of the black armor. It was the stillness of the form jumpstarted the chief's brain.

"Shepard!" she yelled over the comms as she scrambled to her feet. Both the chief and the lieutenant rushed for the motionless officer. The blast had tossed her against the plateau's face with much more force than it did the chief.

Ashley felt her tight stomach churn when the commander's arm moved and the officer pushed herself off the rocks. "Fucking pirates anyway," the Spectre groaned as her squad skidded toward her position. "Guess he really did not want to be some batarian's new plaything."

Williams could not help but laugh, mostly in relief that Shepard was making really horrible attempts at humor.

"Yeah, guess your matchmaking skills just aren't up to par, Skipper," Ashley chided, as she laid a hand on the other woman's shoulder in an attempt to keep her from moving too much.

Alenko's silence concerned the younger woman. It reminded her of Eden Prime, when he had worried over the commander's unconscious body. The chief suspected that attempt to help had gone much more smoothly than this one would. Something told her Shepard was an easier patient when she was out cold. Of course, Ashley knew the same could be said of her.

"Did they wire the beast?" Nyx asked with a trace of strain in her voice.

"Yes," Alenko replied tersely.

Ashley knew him well enough to know that clipped tone. It usually came out when things went wrong, or went completely to hell.

"Well, did you disarm it?"

The exasperated sigh signaled the question was ridiculous.

"Good," Shepard replied, knowing the lieutenant's signs just as well as the chief. "Williams, raise the Normandy. Tell Pressly I need the marine detail down here armed and armored and let him know Adams needs to bring his twidget brigade so we can get this oversized paperweight back to the Alliance."

"Will do, Commander," Ashley replied, getting to her feet quickly.

When she reached the Mako, the chief heard Shepard chastising herself.

"Idiot. You knew better. Can't believe you did not check Haliat before you walked away. Acting like some damn rank amateur."

"Commander," Alenko interrupted, "you're on channel."

"Oh for-"

Williams need not hear the completion of the phrase to guess what Shepard said. The chief did as ordered, assuming that the commander's little personal diatribe likely continued in the privacy of her own helmet while the lieutenant checked her out. It was a sentiment the chief could understand; she herself had directed those types of derisive remarks towards herself or her reflection on occasion throughout her career. Though for her it happened a lot more often since she joined the Normandy crew, mostly because there were a lot of times when Ashley felt like she was too far behind the curve.

/7/

Like any medic worth their salt, Alenko kept a vigilant watch. Shepard suggested he and Williams head back to the ship, insisting, that after Adams and the team from engineering arrived, she could oversee the removal of the device on her own. But Nyx knew just as she would not leave her team on the surface alone, neither would either of them leave unless directly ordered.

With the tickle of the trickle, the back of her hand went to her forehead again out of instinct. The tap of ceramic on ceramic reminded her that while the breather helmet concealed a multitude of sins relief from that itchy sensation was at least an hour off. Nyx watched Kaidan, his eyes moved eagerly between her and the interface sheathing his forearm. The part most people would find pitiful was that the commander was fairly certain she knew exactly what the scan was going to say.

Her jaw tightened as the wave of nausea swept over her, the little flush and the light feeling were one she hoped to control because vomiting in a breather helmet was not something she wanted to repeat. The little vice-like grip of the headache that seemed to originate near the tickle on her forehead seemed to suggest she probably had a concussion, which meant she would not be sleeping for another eight hours, give or take, especially if Chakwas had any say in the matter. The pain that accompanied her breathing warned Shepard that her medical officer would also be checking up on the commander regularly in regards to whatever rib injuries Shepard had sustained, but Nyx was nearly certain none were broken, though they were bruised to all hell another painful ragged breath told her.

Shaking her head with a snort of a laugh, Nyx started to lean forward on her knees then groaned lightly as she straightened back up. Her ability to self-diagnose the injuries from an explosion of this nature might speak ill of her chosen profession. These were all afflictions the commander experienced before in the field. She did not have a thick medical record, by comparison to other Special Forces operators. Nyx tended to be more careful, though one would be hard pressed to know it by her foolish mistake with Haliat.

Tagging her comms again, Shepard merely said, "Hand."

With that Alenko stood and offered her the desired assistance that the commander really had been loath to ask for. Part of her preferred asking for help rather than looking like a turtle stuck on its back as she tried to battle bruised ribs and a concussion to get to her feet on her own. This was quicker and less physically painful and she knew the act of breathing would be less uncomfortable if she was standing rather than sitting.

"So, what's the damage?" she asked, trying to hold back any sign of the pain and momentary dizziness that struck her with the change of position. Thankfully, Alenko knew the symptoms as well as she; when Nyx got to her feet his hand tightened around hers while the other gripped her elbow to steady her.

"Concussion, major contusions, but no breaks I can see on a field scan. You really should see Chakwas when the ship arrives, get a full work up."

"I'm good," Nyx said with a nod, which caused the lieutenant to loosen his grip on her. "We need to get this thing off planet and back to First Fleet so we can get back to it."

"Shepard." The tone did not give him away; it was the look in his eyes when he took a half a step toward her. "That was a decent sized blast and you need a full scan. There is no way to know-"

"Nothing's broken and I don't have any chest pain. I should be good for a few hours while we get this done."

The shake of the head was a reaction she got from every medic she had ever met or worked with, though she felt there might be a little more to this reaction, which she could not fault him for. She figured there had been at least a shade of more than just her own typical protectiveness when she charged one of the men flanking him earlier. It had been the best option at the time, regardless, she reminded herself.

Setting her mic back to mute, Shepard took a long deep breath and held it for a while against the discomfort in her chest. So far, so good, she thought. As long as no shortness of breath cropped up, she would probably be back to her dangerous self before they reached the Armstrong Nebula.

When the Normandy arrived, Shepard again suggested her team return, no need for all of them to watch over the removal of the stages of the probe, but unsurprisingly neither took the offer. The ground team led the group from the ship back into the mine, then Shepard directed a McMillan and Niveda to escort one of the engineers through the part of the mine that had not been collapsed to check for anything she might have missed, while her own team headed back to Haliat's Grizzly.

"Lieutenant, would you be so kind as to get me into this relic?" she asked, tapping the nose carefully.

"I haven't seen one of these in years, Shepard," Ashley said with an appreciation in her tone.

Nyx ran her hand along the sharp lines of the nose. "Yeah, these things were beefy. Probably the only reason this one was still running. Hard to kill."

"Shepard."

Alenko's voice held an odd timber, and when she rounded the vehicle her sidearm was in her hands, though she quickly found it unnecessary when she entered the tank.

"They were clearly not expecting us to walk out of there," Ashley said from behind the officer.

The consoles were all lit up, and there was a live link through to Haliat's ship. Shepard rushed the length of the interior and leaned over the other officer. "I want it all. Name, location, everything," she said clearly.

"Already on it," Alenko assured.

Nyx leaned away and the pacing began. "Adams, I need one of your people who is good with systems. Alenko's going to need another pair of hands to strip this barge."

"Yes, ma'am," the engineer replied almost instantly.

Rather than make herself too much of a nuisance, Nyx stepped outside the tank and Williams accompanied her. A thin young man in a lightweight navy blue airtight suit rushed toward them at an awkward run. She tilted her head slightly watching his progress. To her surprise, the engineer stopped on a dime and snapped off a sharp salute.

"Ma'am, Specialist Asan reporting."

Shepard returned his salute then made a sweeping gesture toward the door of the tank. "Talk to the Lieutenant."

The commander paced as the two technical gurus pulled the drives, data, and every stitch of information possible out of the vehicle. Overseeing the removal of the device held more promise than she had anticipated, though Shepard would have preferred to be taking Elanos Haliat aboard to be transported back to Alliance custody. Her teeth ground against one another as she replayed it over and over in her head.

The stasis, disarmed, subdued, secured … except you did not secure him. She shook her head slightly as her jaw continued to move in a slow tight circle. How could you not pat him down? That's not even a rookie error, that's just a colossal fuck up. The brass are going to eat this up. Fucking hell, Nyx.

i Constant is the capitol city of Eden Prime.