The human picked up his machine gun and began to lay a hail of fire on the armature. This gave Tali and Keenah enough of a diversion to assist, scrambling to find a control console. Come on, Tali thought, these things are always nearby. Where is it..?

"Keenah, it's Burke," the human captain said over the radio, "my team has split up; if you see either of the others, keep them safe."

"Roger, Burke," Keenah replied. "I think one of them found us already. Let's just say this armature's pissed."

With the armature focused on Burke's soldier and Keenah on the radio, Tali kept fumbling for a console. From there, she could-at the very least-disable the war machine's kinetic barrier, which would give the human a fighting chance. Geth are efficient, she reasoned, but they aren't that bright. Hiding something like that would be difficult on the off chance they aren't housing more than fifty programs on each platform. She came to a crack in the wall where, incidentally, a monitor was housed. Jackpot. She began to work the keyboard, inputting various codes and sequences into the server. Within a couple of minutes, the behemoth's shields went down, leaving it vulnerable to gunfire.

Well, relatively speaking. Fact is, armatures have some extremely tough armor (but you probably knew that already). So, it was still going to be some time until the walker was actually destroyed.

/-/

Shepard barreled through the corridor, filling each geth patrol he saw with holes as he let loose his anger. A few piles of scrap metal weren't going to be enough to stop him; not now that they were so close to human colonies. They had already drove Tali's people from their home world, and he wasn't going to allow them to terrorize another.

Pretty soon, he came to a door. It was fairly simple, durable too, but it was also unlocked for whatever reason. Every part of Shepard's rational mind screamed that it was a trap, but it was drowned out by his rage shouting "Kill the bastards!" So he opened it, coming to a big room with boxes strewn about. He looked around, calming down just enough to figure out that there weren't geth here. He radioed Burke. "This is Shepard," he said. "I've come to an empty room with one door leading in. How copy?" He received no reply. "Captain, are you there?" He switched off the radio, muttering sarcastically, "Well, that's just fantastic…"

The door locked behind him. He raised his rifle, scanning the room. The seemingly randomized crates burst open, allowing eight geth infantry to reveal themselves. They aimed straight for the Lieutenant. You were wrong, Mitra, Shepard thought, they're able to crouch. Shepard glanced around, hatching a plan to escape the hole he'd wound up in. There were eight guns around him pointed right at him; if they fired all at once, he'd likely not live long enough to shoot back. If he fired at any of them, they'd have no trouble killing him. One of them buzzed, and he felt something blunt hit him in the back of the head. He quickly lost consciousness.

/-/

The human, who easily was not Shepard by Tali's memory, slid under and behind the massive walker. He ground its aft-right leg with a hail of gunfire, making it kneel. Climbing on top of it, he proceeded to decimate the machine's head and neck. The armature gave one last dying buzz before dropping permanently. The giant man stepped away from his handiwork, turning to the quarian team with heavy breath. "That was easy…" he said, stowing his machinegun. He shook Keenah's hand, introducing himself, "Commander Hendel Mitra, Alliance Navy SSV Britannia."

"Keenah'Breizh vas Honorata," the quarian captain replied. "You're one of Burke's men?"

"Right. We split up about ten minutes ago back the way I came."

"I understand there are three of you?"

"Affirmative. Myself, Burke, and a rookie-turned-Lieutenant named Shepard. We're all supposed to confirm our status in another ten minutes via radio."

"Shepard is with you?" Tali asked, relieved that her information was correct. She promised herself that, the next time she went to Noveria, she'd thank that officer if she saw him. "John Shepard?"

"Yes." Mitra looked puzzled. "How did you know his first name?"

"We've met before, under significantly better circumstances. I'm Tali."

"Well, it's nice to meet someone we can trust, Tali."

A thought occurred to her which forced her to ask, "He's a Lieutenant now? Last time I heard, he was in training, though."

"These things happen. He showed strong will, determination, and compassion for his fellow soldiers. Not to mention his ability to live through fighting a geth prime and a hunter in the same day. It's an extremely rare honor for somebody to be promoted a full seventeen ranks at once."

"That is impressive. When I met him, he didn't even want anything to do with the army."

"Is that so? Well, I wonder what must have changed his mind."

Keenah cleared his throat. "Commander Mitra, if I may, I was speaking to your commanding officer while you sorted out the armature. He said that he couldn't reach your Lieutenant Shepard. And somewhere along the conversation, I heard gunfire as well, just before the signal went dark."

"Why did you wait until just now to tell us, Keenah?" Tali shouted. "We have to find them!"

"Agreed. Come on, back this way. We can track them through the tunnels."

/-/

Mitra led the quarians to the crossroads where he and the others had separated. They stopped, with three branching paths before them. He turned around and explained the directions, "Going left will take us back to the surface, where the Mako should be parked. I strongly urge you not to go that way, it won't help us. Straight on will put us on the path to finding Captain Burke, and right should take us to Shepard. This is all just assumptions anymore; there could be thousands of branching paths along the way."

"Tali and I will go right," Keenah suggested. "We can locate your Lieutenant and see him back safely."

"I'll go and look for Captain Burke. Radio me or him once you've found Shepard. Make sure he's alright."

"I wouldn't like anything less," Tali replied. Mitra nodded and left them, setting off to locate Captain Burke. They, meanwhile, hung right and followed the path Shepard took. As they delved deeper and deeper, Tali began to feel uneasy. "I almost feel like this is a trap…"

"Nonsense," Keenah assured. "The geth wouldn't side with humans, not even to get rid of us. And the humans likely don't want anything to do with the geth either."

"Still though…" They came across a destroyed geth infantry full of holes with its head crushed in. "I almost feel bad for the geth." This earned a curious look from Keenah, to which Tali clarified, "I said 'almost.'"

They came to a locked door. Having seen no branching tunnels along the way, Shepard had to have come through here. "I don't hear gunfire," Keenah noted, "meaning that, if this is a dead end, he's going to be right inside. I'll see what I can do about this door, so get ready."

Tali nodded. It's been nearly seven months, and she was finally going to see him again. She felt giddy, even considering what was going on, and she brainstormed what she was going to say as Keenah worked the lock. Then she began to wonder what her father would think, but quickly cast the thought from her mind. She waited anxiously for Keenah to open the gate. Forget it, she thought, I'm just going to do whatever comes first.

"Just…about…there!" Keenah stepped back as the door's access panel turned from red to green. "Would you care to-?"

"Just open the door!" Tali yelled. Keenah raised his hands in surrender and complied. The pneumatic entrance swooshed open to reveal… "Nothing…?"

/-/

Shepard woke, groggy from the blunt-force trauma he'd received. "You're awake?" spoke a voice, just out of sight. "Good. You won't want to miss this."

"Huh..?" The Lieutenant looked around for the person the voice belonged to. It didn't sound human, but it sounded damn close. It definitely belonged to a woman; that much he could discern. "Who's… what…" he couldn't form sentences, try as he might, and it drove him mad.

Across from him, Captain Burke sat tied to a boulder. He seemed to be completely awake and well aware he was in danger. "Shepard?"

"Burke..? Ugh… Wha… What happened..?"

"I was trying to reach you. Bastards were probably jamming us. You wouldn't believe me if I told you what was happening."

Shepard gazed around the room. They were in one of the caves-which one, he didn't know-and a lone white geth trooper stood guard at the wall. He tried to stand, but was strapped to a stalagmite. His weapons were gone, tossed into a pile on the far side of the room alongside Burke's. What's going on here…? I could swear I've heard that voice before, but where?

"I'll be honest," the voice said, "I didn't expect you to handle my geth so easily. If I'd known how strong you were, I would have simply killed you on the Britannia, along with that ill-mannered Jack Clyde."

"…D'mones…?"

She chuckled, coming into view. "That's who you know me as, so sure, why not?" Shepard got a good look at her. It was definitely Melin D'mones, but something was off about her. This wasn't the persistent private Shepard had trained with. She was colder, more wicked. She wore a black jumpsuit atypical of Alliance marines, and had an eyepiece ala sci-fi villain characters everywhere. "And little Lieutenant," she stepped toward him with a grin, "I figured out what you were leaving out. My geth have been tracking a team of quarians since the armature in section six went down. They seem awfully eager to find you; especially the female."

"Tali's here?" He looked at Burke, who simply shrugged.

"So her name is Tali." She tapped her eyepiece, presumably opening a live feed of her. "Cute girl. It's a shame she won't ever see you again. At least she'll get to watch the fireworks." She looked at the white geth. "All units are to set charges throughout the base. We're leaving."

"Already in progress," it replied. "Charges have been set. They will detonate in T-minus 29 minutes, fifty-three seconds. Prophet K'salna, our orders were-"

"I know what our orders were!" She snapped. "And as long as they don't, we can find another place to carry them out!"

"We apologize. T-minus 29 minutes, 46 seconds, to detonation. Warning: utility and excavation units in sublevels 13 through 19 will be trapped or destroyed under resulting explosions."

"Then move their programs to the data banks in Section Two." She and her admin-bot left as she muttered something about "worthless machines".

/-/

29 minutes, 20 seconds to detonation

"How can there be nothing here?" Tali asked, riddled with fear. "Mitra said that Shepard had come this way, and there aren't any other paths branching from this tunnel."

"There's obviously something going on," Keenah theorized. "These geth are more organized than the ones we faced in the Perseus Veil centuries ago. Something or someone must be commanding them." He switched on his omni-tool-a handy, all-purpose tool issued to most everyone in Citadel space used for everything from watching extranet vids to decrypting military data, based on the device itself-and began to scan the room. "It looks like something was in here recently. There are geth footprints leading away from those crates… Do geth crouch? I can't remember. They started behind the crates; then a human came in through this door, probably Shepard. The geth ambushed him and likely carried him off. There are more tracks behind his that don't match geth, quarians, or humans. That person must have come up behind Shepard and attacked him without his knowing, since there aren't any signs of struggle."

"You got that all from a quick scan of the room?"

"Mostly. There aren't geth corpses, so he didn't take any of them with him. But I'll bet we can find him by following these new tracks."

"Good idea. And if we're lucky, we can find who's responsible for all this."

/-/

20 minutes, 19 seconds to detonation

"It didn't occur to you to find out who was on Keenah's team?" Shepard asked. They had a half hour to be strapped to rocks; he might as well make the most of it with small talk.

"He just said he's taking a team of himself and one other," Burke stated innocently. "He never specified who, and I don't pry normally."

"Not even as a precaution? What if his 'one other' was an infamous quarian terrorist or something?"

"She turned out not to be, though." Burke furrowed his eyebrows and asked, "How important to you is this girl exactly, Shepard?"

"She… I…" There was no way to say his answer without Burke thinking he was kidding. "…Captain, you wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"I probably wouldn't. But, why don't you go ahead and humor me?"

"She, ah… kind of… She and I, we're…"

"Together," completed the one voice Shepard could never forget.

He tried to turn around to see her, but he was tied to a spike of rock protruding from the ground. "Tali?"

"John!" She ran over to him, embracing the incapacitated Lieutenant. "I thought I'd never see you again!"

"Captain Burke," Keenah greeted. "Lieutenant Shepard."

"Keenah'Breizh," Burke answered. "Say, you mind giving us a hand? We've got about… Hm… twenty minutes to get out now."

"An asari named K'salna tied us up and rigged the entire base to blow. We're all going to go up in smoke if we don't leave ASAP." Shepard watched as Tali severed the cables holding him to the pillar. Even though the whole room was in a state of panic, he couldn't help but admire her. "So," he said casually, "how have you been since leaving Mindoir?"

"Fairly good," Tali answered. "Have you been receiving my letters?"

"Letters? I didn't know you were sending me letters. Did you get mine?"

"No, not one."

"Really? We've been sending each other letters and not receiving any of them. How weird is that?"

"Uh, can you two have this conversation some other time?" Burke asked. "We've got about nineteen minutes to leave."

The crew ran silently for about two minutes before Keenah spoke up. "So, Tali," he said. "You never explained how you met the Lieutenant."

"You know, now you've got me curious, too. One of you, fill us in." For the next four-and-a-half minutes, Shepard and Tali broke down the events leading up to now: Tali leaving her birth ship, her crash on Mindoir, all that good stuff (and you should know where to find it all, so I won't patronize you by listing every last thing). "So, Shepard," Burke asked. "You joined the Alliance because of Tali?"

"Well, yes and no," Shepard answered. "I joined the Alliance because I had a change of heart over my opinion of the galaxy. Tali just so happened to be the person who brought it on, so she played a big part in my decision, yes."

"Burke," Keenah spoke, "which way do we go now?"

"Uh… I was unconscious for a lot of the way." He tried to think, every second ticking away from them. "Left!"

Burke's foggy directions made the team wind up in a very large chamber. Geth patrolled in intervals of ten feet from each other, crates and data banks sat about on the lower platforms, and in the middle sat a spacecraft of sorts. To Shepard, it resembled an insect-maybe a cicada-and synthetics were loading their banked comrades onto it. The group knelt behind boxes on the upper level, investigating. "Nice directions, Captain Burke," Tali whispered sarcastically.

"This must be Section One," Shepard guessed. "That means K'salna is in here somewhere."

Keenah pointed to a door on the lower level as it opened. "She is now, at least."

Sure enough, the former Melin D'mones stepped into the hangar, her administration geth trailing behind her. She barked orders to the troopers as her secretary alerted, "Warning: T-minus 14 minutes, 14 seconds to detonation. Prophet K'salna, we humbly advise leaving as soon as possible."

"What do you think we're in here for, Chermak?" she stated coldly. "We aren't exactly planting roses in the hangar."

"We apologize." Chermak paused, looking straight at Shepard and company. "Warning: tracking four unauthorized organic bodies on upper level."

"Shit," Burke said.

K'salna looked where Chermak mentioned, giving an evil grin. "So glad you could see us off," she called. She turned back to the white geth, commanding, "Activate the colossus."

"Activating. Caution: colossus-class walker is still in prototype. Further testing required."

"Override, sixteen-sixteen. Authorization K'salna." She blasted the crate away from the group, stating, "Why don't we test it on these intruders?"

"Acknowledged. Colossus boot-up sequence initiated. Warning: T-minus 12 minutes, 16 seconds to detonation."

"It's been fun, Shepard, but we really must go. I hope whatever deity you follow has mercy on you."

A mass of metal dropped from the geth ship, charging power from seemingly all non-geth sources. It was almost big enough for its head to reach over the upper-level edge just by standing. It looked at them, and gave a low buzz. K'salna laughed. "I suppose since these will be your last minutes anyway, I should answer at least one question. Go ahead, shoot. I promise only honesty."

Shepard felt confused, being put on the spot by the villain in their predicament. "Uh…"

Burke decided to ask instead, "Did you tell a single truth while on the Britannia, Kiss-a-llama?"

K'salna twitched. "First, it's 'K'salna'. Second, yes; as a matter of fact I did. I wasn't lying when I said my father was Alliance; a sweet, loving human woman, who received the honor of dying by my boss's hand."

"You're a monster!"

"Warning: T-minus 11 minutes, 6 seconds to detonation. We strongly advise leaving as soon as possible."

"And that's not a question! Colossus, exterminate!" She, Chermak, and the multiple guards on the lower level filed into the ship, taking off to God-knows-where, leaving them with a massive hunk of metal built solely for killing.

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6 minutes, 2 seconds to detonation

"We need to get out of here!" Burke exclaimed.

"How?" Keenah asked. "The door is locked!"

As the colossus charged its main gun again, it was bombarded by EMP grenades from behind it. It turned, firing an electric missile at an empty platform as it stared at the nuisance. Down below, Shepard saw the militant hair that had recruited him. "Commander Mitra!"

Mitra chucked another grenade at the giant walker, decimating its kinetic barriers. "Am I alone on this or what?" he shouted.

Burke and Shepard quickly realized that they indeed had their own grenades on hand. They looked at each other. "You take that side," Burke ordered. "I'll take this one."

"Sounds like a plan, sir." Burke ran to his destination. Shepard stayed a moment to talk with Tali. "For the record, nothing happened while K'salna was D'mones. We were on the same-"

"Shepard," Tali interrupted, "I don't know what you're talking about, and I don't care right now. Can we please just take this colossus down?"

"Uh… right." Shepard collected himself. "We could use some help once its shields are down. Keenah, can you shoot?"

"Yes," he answered. "So can Tali, for that matter."

"Great." The Lieutenant casually tossed an EMP at the colossus before heading to his defined position.

The giant geth walker continuously turned, trying to decide on a target while its shields deteriorated. When it finally was down to its armor for defense, it lowered its head. It curled its legs up under itself, ceasing all secondary functions. "…Did we kill it?" Mitra asked, joining the group up on the balcony.

"I hope so," Burke answered.

"No." They looked at Keenah. "The colossus is basically a bigger armature. That being said, armature-class walkers enter a sort of sleep mode where they repair themselves, and they don't take very long. Now would be our best chance for escape. Captain Burke, how long do we have?"

"Uh… F-Five minutes or so?"

"We need to move, then!" Tali shouted.

"Where?! In case you've forgotten, we're locked in here with a literal killing machine!"

"Sir, with all due respect," Shepard said, "I have to ask you not to raise your voice to Tali."

Burke breathed. "I-I'm sorry. I just get a little claustrophobic sometimes. And it doesn't help that we're going to die when that thing wakes up. Or that we're going to be vapor in just under six minutes."

Mitra pointed to a hole in the ceiling. "What about there? That must lead out."

"Mitra, that's more than fifty feet above us." Shepard informed. "We'd have to fly up there!"

"…The radio," Burke suggested. "If we have signal in here, we can call a shuttle!"

"Burke," Keenah said, "that's the best idea I've heard all day."

The human captain tapped his radio. "Romeo Station, this is Burke. We need a shuttle." They heard the colossus begin to start back up. "Right now!"

"Capt-…said you-…shuttle, over?" came Ferris's voice over the com, garbled but understandable.

"Yes; a shuttle! Our coordinates! Quickly, Ferris!"

The colossus stood, buzzing as it revved its main gun again.

"Shuttle on its way. T-minus two-…over."

"How long until we're dead?" Tali asked.

"Three minutes," Burke answered. "But we've got a shuttle coming in two."

"So, we just need to stay alive until that point," Shepard clarified. "I hope Riley knows what the hell he's doing."

"Shepard," Tali said, "I just want you to know how much I love you. If that bosh'tet shuttle doesn't get here in time, just know that there's nobody I'd rather die beside."

"I love you too, Tali," he replied. "But we're not dying today." The group took aim, pounding the walker with five variations of weaponry. Its kinetic barrier went down in a flash from the concentrated fire, forcing it back into sleep mode.

They continued to keep it down for a full two minutes before it must have decided "Fuck it, let's kill them." It got back up, no longer waiting to repair itself. As it charged a shot, the team could hear the whoosh of a shuttle coming in from above. To keep their ride safe, Burke threw his last EMP at the giant, stunning it so the transport could land. They scrambled inside, and the Captain immediately approached the pilot. "Get us the hell out of here! This place is going up in less than a minute!"

He complied, closing the door and taking off as fast as possible.

Shepard watched out the window as the entire network of caves collapsed, leaving a 10-kilometer-wide pockmark in the side of Syided. He felt many things: betrayed, exhausted, happy, but he mostly felt relieved. Relieved that the mission was finally over; that everyone got out safely; that Tali was safe and secure next to him. He looked at her and smiled. She looked back at him, and slapped him across the face. "OW!" he shouted. "What was that for?!"

"That's for lying," she answered. "Not just to me, but to yourself. You said you didn't want to join the Alliance!"

"Not true. I said I didn't want to throw my life away in the Alliance."

She stared at him for about twelve seconds, but finally gave up. She pulled him in and pressed her visor against his mouth. Still not quite a kiss, but it was all they could manage at this time. They enjoyed their pseudo-kiss for the rest of the ride back to the station.

When they got back, while they were decontaminating, a thought occurred to Shepard. He asked Burke, "Didn't we take the Mako down to the surface?"

"…Shit."

/-/

Afterword:

So, Tali and Shepard were reunited. This, however, did not leave them time to stand on ceremony, as Tali still needed to complete her Pilgrimage. She was unable to join the crew of the Britannia, unfortunately, and Shepard was not allowed to join her on the Honorata. Thus, they parted once more, in the hopes they would see each other again.

In the months to follow, Shepard would battle to hold the line during the Skyllian Blitz, which would go down in history as the second most heroic thing he's ever done.

Note I say "second".

What, you thought Syided was where we would leave the story? That's only the tip of the iceberg, what with an asari mercenary running about the galaxy. But that's another story.