Sometimes in the mornings, Ezmay wished the Normandy was one of the gigantic dreadnoughts that her mother had served on in times past. It was hard to get a good workout on the sleek, little Normandy. If the ship had been much longer and wider, she would have run from stern to bow and been much happier for it. Instead, she had to content herself with stretching out in the privacy of her quarters, and then circling the cargo bay over and over again, like a hamster on a wheel. A thought about finding some space to run on the Collector base came and went. Running there, she'd be pestered by Cerberus officials about interviews on interspecies relationships. Here, she could run in peace, because hey…no one really gave a shit that she was humping a turian.

Endlessly, she circled around the cargo bay. Didn't stop until she was pouring sweat and she could barely draw breath anymore. Then she claimed a piece of the cargo bay near the doors that was illuminated by a single floodlight and sat down to fold herself into stretches. The muscles flexing and then releasing felt good. She'd been pent up for far too long.

When she'd been in the Alliance, and back before her death, she'd used this time to reflect and meditate. Sometimes she'd thought about battles past, and tried to find strategic loopholes. Sometimes she'd thought about Elysium, about the family home, about her mother, about the coming visits back home. Now, she thought about Garrus. Always Garrus. Unconsciously, she grinned as he came to mind now.

He liked to tease her that she snored and drooled on her pillow. But she really didn't see how he had any room to talk, sprawling over the bed as he did. There were plenty of times she'd woken up and he was face down in a pillow with his spindly arm wound behind his back, or the sheets got tangled in his fringe. He flopped around in bed like a fish out of water. This morning he'd absorbed her space in the bed after she'd risen, and by the time she'd dressed to run, was positioned much like he was jogging in place in bed. She'd taken a moment to pat his ass- only slightly bigger than her own and built with so much muscle it made her tremble- and had been on her way. She chuckled, remembering.

And then there was this troubling pull from her uterus. There was something primal inside her that was demanding to be mounted and impregnated-Jesus Christ…Ezmay Gabrielle Shepard….a victim of the Baby Rabies. Her friends in the academy would have laughed themselves bloody. She twisted her legs into the proper positioning for Dove pose, and turned to stretch out her back. What would a human-turian hybrid look like anyway? She struggled to imagine it. Truth be told, all she could conjure in her mind's eye was a grinning skull

Of course, the biological imperative to reproduce that was still messing with her insides brought the previous day's conversation with Mordin flooding back. She felt her lower gut constrict with anxiety. What was more important, the good of the many or the good of the one? It had come to this.

'Every cycle focused around the Reaper reproduction.' The beady eyes were searching her face for comprehension; his spindly hands and fingers were both shaking and gesturing ecstatically. The understanding was dawning on her, but Ezmay wanted Mordin to explicate it for her. To confirm it so that she wasn't the only one having wild ideas.

'We're impeding Reaper procreation.' She said hesitantly. Mordin seemed taken aback. She never displayed hesitancy.

'Yes. Citadel always seat of galactic civilization.' This, Mordin knew from Ezmay's conversations with both Sovereign and Harbinger. Short though they were, they were informative. 'Permanent fixtures of advanced technology. When civilizations reach galactic travel, will naturally gravitate and flourish near mass relays and Citadel. Easy for Reapers to find when reproduction cycle starts again.'

Ezmay didn't say anything then. Just looked at Mordin. There must have been a horrified expression on her face. She didn't need to continue talking.

'Why females more deadly members of each species? Because of biological imperative. Biological drive to reproduce, to protect offspring. Males impregnate, move on.' Ezmay's stomach churned unexpectedly at Mordin's words. 'Females raise young, protect, nurture.'

'Sovereign and Harbinger weren't females.' She said.

'How do you know? Lower voices? Lack of breasts? Female turians and salarians look exactly like males. Secondary sex characteristics not always long, blonde hair and massive breasts.'

That…was actually a good point. Ezmay shut her mouth. Better to keep quiet and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt…

'Thing is, not known if Sovereign and Harbinger female or male. Doesn't matter. They are protecting their reproductive cycle. You killing human Reaper same as getting between a mother bear and cubs. War with Reapers inevitable.'

And that made the world filled with much more grey than black and white. She was fighting for the survival of all galactic races; the Reapers were fighting for their own survival through procreation. It made the duty no less important, but it also made the enemy more human.

She hated moral grey areas. She palmed the deck of the cargo bay and pushed herself up out of Cat & Cow and into Downward Facing Dog.

No sooner had the breath went out of her than two long-fingered hands slid over her ass cheeks. She yelped and her knees buckled.

Ezmay jerked her head around, to see who the offender was, half-knowing already. Garrus stared down at her with a feral look in his eyes. My god, that look… she thought, even while electricity was crackling from her heart down to between her legs.

"It's my favourite way of seeing you…." His voice was gravely, like he had a frog in his throat. "…sweat-covered, breathing hard. Gods help me, it's sick, but when you kill, in the middle of battle..."

She turned towards him while he spoke, eyes raking over his body suit, over the noticeable swelling lower on his body. He was crossing the distance between them, joining her on the slim mat she'd spread out on the deck.

"When I see you like that, I remember going through the conduit on Ilos, and you pulling me out of the wreck of the Mako on the Citadel. You just burned with this light. I never thought a human could have that kind of spirit..."

Ezmay craned her neck, pressing her mouth against his neck as he crawled over her on all fours. He leaned into her lips, nipped on her shoulder. She hissed in breath, and then slid her arms around his ribs as the warmth on her shoulder began to flow. He collapsed down on top of her then.

There were few places she could think to make love on that would be more uncomfortable than the deck of the cargo bay. The yoga mat afforded some comfort though, as Garrus pressed her down against the deck and began to peel her clothing off of her. Her shoulder blades pressed into the mat, ground against the deck as he stripped her panties off of her and buried his face in her stomach. She reached down and slid her finger under his fringe. He moaned against her tummy.

"You smell like…I don't know. Like an after-dinner snack. Like I could eat you for dinner."

She knew what he was saying. She knew what he was experiencing as he licked between her breasts. She might have experienced herself as salty-tangy; to him, it was cloying, light on the tongue, like sampling some effervescent drink that bubbled in your mouth and left you refreshed. She felt the same way when she put her tongue on him. He was metallic, but underneath that, like he was made of sugar. His arms went around the small of her back and he surged against her, tongue still exploring the place where her chest met her abdomen. He filled her, not stopping to give her a moment to accommodate him; she cried out in the empty space of the cargo bay. No one would find them back here, out of the way.

"And you…" She gasped as he began thrusting into her. "Burning."

"Burning." He growled in confirmation. Now his claws were woven into her hair. His voice was almost beyond speech; Ezmay was so overwhelmed by arousal that she was merely content to cry out in pleasure as he buried himself in her.

Across the great distance between the Collector base and Palaven, video feeds did not carry so well. If it had not been for Cerberus's much-boosted communications capabilities, Garrus would have been spared the dubious pleasure of conversing with his father.

Yet here he was, staring at the old, silvered turian on the holoscreen of Ezmay's private terminal. Once again, he thanked his lucky stars that their shifts had fallen opposite today, and Ezmay as stuck in the CIC while he was on his off-hours.

If only there was more static… Garrus thought. But no dice. The comm. channel stayed open. And they were at precisely 2 minutes and 54 seconds of silence. Garrus stared at Evandus. Evandus stared at him. Eventually, the old turian should start fidgeting. Garrus's father did not like silence, and too much of it made him twitchy. It was an adolescent trick, but it was all he had to go on right now. Garrus shifted in the chair, laying an ankle on his opposing knee, and leaned back. On the holoscreen, he heard his sister Solana chastising an errant child in the background. Evandus coughed. As predicted, he broke the silence first.

"Bonded."

"Yes." A simply reply to a simple reiteration. "Like Actayon and Fleming."

Evandus shuddered. "And you didn't even have the decency to reach the rank of general first."

There had been quite a furor when some of the best and brightest salarian minds had proved the existence of a human-turian bond in scores of Shanxi turians. The most well-documented case had been between a general named Alkimos Actayon and a human psychologist, Rossignole Fleming. It was quite a love story, when one got down to it, but a story that the Hierarchy had tried very hard to treat as unimportant. Eventually it had faded to obscure knowledge and was only referenced in brief in the military codex.

Garrus gritted his teeth. He could see the codex page in his mind's eye. & - Cautionary, fraternization with species homo sapiens strongly discouraged. faced disciplinary action up to/including demotion from rank, placement in 2nd Social Tier. The human failed to successfully integrate into Turian society, having never advanced past 1st Social Tier.

"I think we both know that I was never going to make the rank of general." His voice couldn't have gotten any more acidic.

"You might have. You might have ran C-Sec if you had buckled down and stopped pushing your luck." Evandus had curled aged, shaking talons around a cup that Garrus knew must contain his nightly cup of tea.

"Look, Dad, it's pushing the Normandy's resources to be making an out-of-system call like this."

"Very well. What do you need?"

"Dad, I need some help." Garrus took a deep breath. "I suspect some treachery."

"What is it?" The old turian sounded impatient, but he was paying attention. That was a good sign.

"Ezmay…." Garrus ignored the flare of mandibles that signaled disgust. "…was given an assignment to infiltrate the Shadow Broker's network and take it down. She was given classified human information and was publicly fired."

"You're sure that was the reason?" Evandus prodded him.

"I was there."

Evandus grunted and raised his cup of tea to his mouth. He's your father. Garrus told himself. Putting a bullet in one's father's head is frowned upon.

"After she was fired, we went to collect the data…."

"You said that she was given the data." Evandus narrowed his eyes at Garrus. Even over the comm. channel, through the light years that separated them, Garrus felt the urge to shrink away. He steeled himself, gritted his teeth.

"Let me finish. We destroyed the copy that she was given, found out that there was a second copy. We went to get it." Ended up in the godsforsaken desert in the middle of godsdamned nowhere. But he wasn't going to tell his father that. Just another lecture Garrus'd just as soon avoid. "There's someone named Lightener that's chasing after us. After the same thing."

"And you're working for the Shadow Broker and Cerberus. With an assassin after you as well." Evandus shook his head. Greying, withered fringe caught the light.

"C-Sec had deep cover operatives out and about too. It's the same thing." Garrus said.

"Not quite the same." Evandus had moved his cup of tea to the side, and was tapping at a datapad. "Let me see what I can pull up for you. You realize, of course, that I'll want you to pay me visit in return for doing this for you."

Fucking Hell and Damnation. One of Ezmay's more colourful curses came to his mind. Of course he would want you come home for a visit in return for help.

"Fine." Garrus bit out the words. "I'm not sure if it'll be soon, but I will."

The old turian signed off and left Garrus sitting there, clenching and unclenching his talons. This entire situation was so damned complicated and he knew there was something that he was missing. Something that he hadn't seen yet. If only this were on the battlefield. It was so much easier to see tactical advantages in buildings and doorways. This cloak-and-dagger bullshit….he wasn't so good at it. Even Ezmay out-excelled him at it and it was not because she planned ahead. In fact, it was probably the fact that she was a blunt instrument that helped.

He sighed, got up. It was almost time for him to come on shift, and the godsdamned Thanix would likely need to be calibrated yet again.

At least after the shift was over, he could sleep.

"Commander, you better get your ass to the CIC, stat!"

The panic in Joker's voice was still ringing in Garrus's ears. Several decks above him, his mate was running the CIC with ruthless efficiency. Information was filtering down and flashing on his display screen. It appeared nearly as fast as it was dismissed by him, and all of it went to figuring his firing solutions. EDI was a godsend; there was no way he could have kept the Thanix firing as rapidly as the computer did. The thought popped into his head that he ought to tease Ezmay later, about what a good team he and EDI made. Leave you for the computer. It was a cute thought; it would never happen.

How had this happened? They'd been lounging, idling in their cabin. While Mordin was skipping and frolicking through the Collector base, arm-in-arm with Montecchi and test tubes, the crew of the Normandy was running half-time. Donnelly's jury-rigged still was working to capacity. There had been more than one poker game in the galley. It did not bode well that half of the crew was running the Normandy drunk. If there was any time that one wanted the crew sober, it was in a combat situation.

His fierce mate had jerked up underneath his claws, suddenly all business, already out of the bed and getting dressed while she queried EDI on what situation was requiring her presence in the CIC. He'd trailed her, hurriedly zipping his bodysuit and pulling a tunic over his head, but then broke away when he saw that they were being fired upon.

Combat. It got the blood pumping in an altogether different way from sex. His place was in the forward battery, monitoring the canon, confirming targets, and adding notches to the Normandy's kill count.

Garrus yanked his mind away from the ruminations, and focused more sharply on the firing solutions EDI was presenting him.

A collision alarm blared behind him. If he hadn't been prepared by a warning message that EDI had flashed on his HUD, the sound would've nearly made him piss himself. Garrus wondered what exactly the battle outside was looking like. If the targeting information and the collision alarms were any indication, the shit had royally hit the fan. A sharp, brief stab of anxiety went through his gut, and then he wrenched his thoughts away from Ezmay. Too much to do down here. Garrus widened his stance, and braced himself against the targeting console. Even with preparation, when the impact came, it stumbled him. He staggered to one knee, and then launched himself back up.

"Holy hell…" Garrus muttered under his breath. Over his link to the ship-wide intercom, he heard Tali rattling off a damage report. The other ship had hit the Normandy in the ass end; it would have been a full-on crash if Joker hadn't jerked the ship up out of the danger zone. Luckily, they'd lost only whatever was stored in the cargo bay, plus Donnelly's still. What a shame.

"Brace for impact!" Ezmay's voice was both grim and sharp over the intercom. The collision alarms had just a moment to chirp at him, and he was in the process of kicking his legs out into a wider stance once more when the world turned upside down. Whereas he'd been staggered once before, now he was knocked down. His fringe was crushed beneath him uncomfortably, and his visor went skittering across the floor. The ship, the very skeleton of the Normandy, seemed to groan. Wall panels twisted, broke, and fell. Sparks flashed out from damaged electrical conduits and the lights flickered and went out. The doors to the forward battery suddenly malfunctioned; he could see pots and other debris rattling around the galley. His heart started pumping harder, even though he had no time to react or to feel anything else

Suddenly, the ship seemed to lift, even though his brain was screaming at him that there shouldn't be a lifting sensation in space because there was no gravity to lift away from. Garrus felt his stomach roil even while exhilaration raced through his bones.

Fuck me. The thought popped into his head. That was Ezmay's thought, and his own were interlacing with it. They must be ramming us over and over… he thought, even while Ezmay's consciousness was rattling into his…godamn bastards, thank God Joker's got this, that last hit would have killed us if he hadn't jerked back as he did..

"EDI, the gun!" He was being tossed around like a toy. The Normandy needed to keep firing, and he couldn't do it. If the gun could even be fired at all.

"I have the Thanix.." The AI told him. "Artificial gravity is failing. I suggest you find a safe spot so that when it is fixed, you are not crushed by debris."

And even as EDI was saying it, Garrus's body became weightless. In the red emergency lighting, he saw the few cargo containers beginning to float along with him. It was then that he realized that EDI's warning must have been meant for the lower decks, and that he had heard it echo in the area outside his door. Of course, the upper decks would be strapped in, or surrounded by small things like datapads and keepsakes. There was no need to avoid having a two-ton crate of supplies crush your head.

Even as he was fiddling with his omni-tool, and turning the mag locks in his footwear on, he touched base with his link to Ezmay. As always, the rush of emotion and thought was disorienting. Other turians, when they spoke in hushed tones with their children before a joining ceremony, spoke of a buzzing, a general feeling of empathy that overwhelmed one and made two sets of emotion into one. With Ezmay, it was like diving headfirst into very cold water. It knocked the breath out of him and for a moment, he not only forgot to breathe, but fought the need to draw air. Turians only bonded once a lifetime. Research done on the link was clear. It was only with humans that turians could hear thought. And apparently vice versa. Right now was one of the times that he wished he couldn't catch specific thoughts. It came disjointed, like a transmission over a broken radio. Her heart was pumping and her adrenaline was up. Just as his was. He watched as his visor floated away, reached out for it, and missed it. It floated away, taunting him by turning end over end. The doors to the forward battery were opening and closing. Garrus ducked as a shell crate floated over him.

If whoever was attacking them was down to ramming them, then he'd best be prepared for decompression. His helmet was up top, in the room he shared with Ezmay. So was his rifle, and for whatever reason, he was itching for it. Garrus cast a worried glance at the targeting display and found that EDI was handling the Thanix as well as he could. He shifted his gaze back out into the galley, and at the lift.

He really wanted his gun. His gut was bothering him; up in the CIC, Ezmay was worried about something.

The turian didn't have time to ponder it further. The gravity kicked back in, suddenly, and jarringly. Crates crashed to the floor around him. Garrus keyed his omni-tool and released the maglocks in his boots. It was too soon, though. The gravity stuttered and went back out. This time, Garrus let himself float. Fuck it. He was going to get his helmet and rifle. He could move faster by pushing off the walls in zero-G.

Ezmay's voice came abruptly over his earpiece. This was a private channel, one that was encrypted and more secure than the shipwide channel.

"How're you doing down there?" She was trying to sound amused, solicitous. He could tell she was vibrating with nervous energy. Her nerve endings must have felt like they were going to explode.

"Haven't done the zero-G thing in a while." He had to laugh at himself; he was like a baby flailing in deep water. "Am I right in suspecting that we've sustained some serious damage?"

"They were doing their best to crawl up our ass. We lost gravity. One of the hits came up right under you. Scared me." Garrus thought of the impact just before the gravity went the first time; that must have been it. Ezmay's voice was tight when she mentioned it. She didn't have to clarify that she'd been terrified for him. "EDI estimates that she can get the gravity back working in two hours or so. The Normandy's in freefall; the fuckers knocked out some of our thrusters. We had some fires…" Her voice went distracted, as if she were reading aloud from a list. "Decompressed cargo bay, damage in engineering, uncontrolled lateral spin…"

"Is that all?" Garrus pulled himself into the elevator, and tapped the button for the loft. "Get a rubber mallet, knock the dings out..."

"I didn't even tell you the best part! Jack is of the opinion that we're to be boarded. We've been pulled away from the Collector base, and the enemy ships are circling. Once the thrusters are fixed, and the gravity's good, they're going to come in."

"Sweet." With a grunt, he pushed off of the back wall of the elevator and went flying to the door of their quarters. Christ….the hamster was going to be floating around in there somewhere.

"Where are you?" She asked.

"I want my helmet. And my gun."

"You're going to need them. Jack's got the security crew taking off floor panels so they can rig traps. You got any tricks up your sleeve?"

She referred, of course, to his days bagging baddies at C-Sec. Omega was a training ground for guerilla warfare. He ruminated on that as he floated through their quarters. His helmet was sort of near where he'd left it- next to hers on the desk. He snatched it up, along with his trusty rifle- spared a couple seconds to lovingly caress the grip- and was up and out of their room. The hamster was still at large.

"We got any kind of nerve gas? We could all go full decompression gear and just gas them."

"I'll get one of the boys on that. I don't know when they're going to board us, but I want a coordinated plan that we can put in place as soon as they start cutting through."

"Might want to weld EDI's doors shut. They last thing we need is them prying out the AI core." Garrus said. Ezmay made a thoughtful noise into the mic. He cocked his head at the sound of it.

"Ezmay?"

"I think we're going to lose the Normandy again."

"Of course we won't. I'm your mate and you won't even let me have half the blankets at night." He chuckled into the mike and felt liquid gold roll down her spine and warmth unfurl in her heart. Of course, she must be alone in the conference room, or the rest of the people in the CIC were running around with their hair on fire and couldn't hear her. She wouldn't dare admit weakness in front of her crew. "As if you're going to let some clown from the Shadow Broker's organization take the keys to your car."

"I have an idea." She said.

"Yikes."

She ignored that. "We're already in zero-G. When they cut in, they'll be in full decompression gear, but at some point the helmets are going to come off."

Garrus already knew where she was going. It was impossible to live around someone who was insane, without absorbing some of the crazy yourself. Boarders would have a hard time breathing without oxygen on board to do so.

"It could work." He told her.

"Get the team and the section chiefs in the conference room in ten minutes."

The engineers and the architects of the Normandy SR-2 had never really designed the ship to be operated without oxygen on board. It wasn't unheard of, really; ships were decompressed all the time. Never intentionally.

Ezmay was betting that the Shadow Broker and his army hadn't gotten the memo on how EDI had spanked the Collector's asses when the AI'd gotten control of the ship. They also likely didn't know that Jack had their number when it came to thwarting a hostile boarding.

"We're going full decompression gear." Ezmay said. Already half the assembled crew was in breather masks. "I trust everyone still remembers their zero-G combat training?"

She saw Donnelly throw Daniels a look. Shit. Had the engineers even been trained? Surely Cerberus ran their operations better than that? Luckily, Miranda put Ezmay's mind at ease.

"It's like riding a bike, Commander. The Lazarus Cell completed full zero-G combat sims. Should we expect to be fighting in vacuum?"

"Maybe. As most of you already know, we're in an uncontrolled spin. Once that's corrected, we can expect a hostile boarding." The atmosphere of the room went tense, as if the stomachs of everyone in the room contracted at once and in unison at the words. Ezmay fought the urge to giggle- a product of adrenaline- and continued. "We will outline our plan here, and section chiefs are to inform those under you."

Jack cleared her throat, touched a holographic key on the conference table, and began stabbing her finger into the hologram of the Normandy.

"They'll come in here, behind the cockpit, and here, in the airlock by the emergency pods. It's where I'd board, and the smartest places, really. You don't want to send a whole squad in; they'll be expecting traps."

"We'll be in here." Multicoloured dots blinked to life, in between decks, scattered over the Normandy.

"Between decks?" Tali sounded confused.

"We've sustained a lot of damage. There are a lot of holes that would be open to space if we didn't have protective fields up. We'll wait until they've got their parties on board and then EDI will decompress the ship." Ezmay told the assembled crew. "If we're lucky, a lot of them will be blasted back out into space. Maybe some of them won't get their gear back on before they pass out or asphyxiate. It'll be blind, broke, and bedlam in here. Let's see if they can find us with the lights out and no air to be had."

God help them all, Jack actually smiled at that. Donnelly laughed behind Miranda.

"We need to be in the skeleton of the ship. Unless you're near any of the damage, you're less likely to be sucked outside. It'll make it easier to pop out and ambush them." The tattooed girl announced.

"Donnelly, I want you and Daniels to weld the door to the AI core shut. They may have a good tech expert that can patch in through a console and give EDI a bloody nose, but they can't fully eliminate her from the equation if they can't get at her core. It'll take them time to cut the doors open, and that'll give us time to take out anyone attempting to do so. Shoot to kill."

Daniels blanched; Did she squick at the sight of blood? No, surely not. Ezmay felt incredulity ripple through her, knew it was Garrus surprised at her left hand. The question was answered for her though.

"Commander, I can't speak for Kenneth, but I don't think me and him'll be enough to keep EDI safe."

Hm, the girl raised a good point. Damn. Her first choice for this particular job was off trying to impregnate half of Tuchanka. "Jack, I want you down there. The AI core is precious…"

"Got it. EDI's about the only other bitch on this boat that I actually like besides you."

Miranda glared at Jack, but Ezmay was already moving on.

"Tali, Legion, they're most likely not coming exclusively for the Normandy's tech, but I want you working with EDI to be as big a pain the ass as you can. I want you two keeping them out of the computer system as much as feasible. EDI, keep it dark in here. Don't let them find the light switch. No one knows the ship like we do; the dark will give us an advantage."

Tali nodded, and Legion's vocals crackled in the affirmative.

"What can I do?" Came a voice from the door. Thane…just barely hanging on. He could barely stand, let alone walk or fight. Miranda tossed her hair back and gave a snort.

"What can you do? You should be in bed." She turned to face Ezmay, as if to ask Seriously? "He needs to be tucked some place safe."

"I'm standing right here." The black eyes closed, both sets of lids blinking, and then Thane looked to the Commander as well. "Siha, my body is giving out, but I can still be of some use."

Ezmay deliberated; God, she wanted to put Thane to work. She really did. Hell, he was a better shot than most of the Cerberus crew, and he wanted to help so badly. How terrible it must have been to feel your own weakness and know that you were of no use in a combat situation.

"He can come with me." Garrus' voice startled her. She blinked, looking up at him. "This kind of situation, I'm not going to be sniping anybody. Thane and I can do the most damage with hit-and-run strikes. He's better with stealth anyway. I'll be his hands."

The silence in the room…..it weighed a thousand tons.

"Of course." Ezmay threw Thane a crooked grin. "Keep our XO safe, would you?"

"As you will it, Siha."

She watched as her crew began to file out, Thane leaning on Garrus's shoulder for strength. It was time to go to her own hidey-hole. Jack had wrenched off the ceiling plates above her perch in the CIC. She would be in the perfect place to drop a few grenades and disable the Normandy if she had to.

The Illusive Man had lied to Ezmay. The thought of it made Garrus grind his teeth together and angry bile rise in his throat. Cerberus was the only one that had the Reaper IFF technology. And yet, here were Broker vessels, uncrushed, whole, and unharmed after passing through the Omega 4 Relay. That meant Cerberus was dirty, or someone in the remaining crew was dirty. Garrus's money was on TIM himself.

Thane let out a grunt as he was bumped into a doorframe, and sharply reprimanded Garrus.

"If your mind is not with us, we stand no chance of victory!"

And now the double-damned drell was lecturing him. Garrus cursed himself under his breath. The weakened man had insisted on holding out in engineering. Next to the AI core, the drive core was critically important. EDI and Donnelly had collaborated on some creative sabotage that prevented the engines from firing up without a critical piece. That self-same piece was burning against Garrus's carapace. He knew how to insert it, power up the engines at a moment's notice. Joker had a private line to his earpiece. Thane lowered himself to Jack's cot and caught his breath. If not for the emergency lighting, he would have been invisible in the shadows of the lower decks. Garrus unclipped his helmet from where he'd slung it over his back. Once the locks were secured, night vision kicked in and the gush of cool air from his breather tanks washed over his face. Now with the world cast in sickly green, he could see the drell placing a breather mask over his mouth, and keying a field that would envelope him totally.

"Forgive me, but how are you going to be able to fight?" The question popped out of Garrus's mouth before he could think better of it.

"What is the human expression? 'Oh, ye of little faith!' Appearances can be deceiving." A smile ghosted over the drell's lips. "You just do what you do best. I will give you what opportunities I can."

The sniper rifle wasn't really right for the close-quarters combat they were about to see, but Garrus still clipped it to its favoured position just at hand. He paced. Didn't know he was anxious until Thane started to talk.

"I know you and your mate keep count of fallen enemies as a kill count. I have often entertained the notion of challenging you to the same contest."

Garrus stopped, cocked his head at the drell. "Why didn't you ever ask?"

"As if I am going to step between you and your mate." Again, that enigmatic smile. "It is an intimate game between you two. But I confess that I think I shall die today. I think it would be a fun way to go."

Godammit to hell and back. "Anybody ever tell you that you can be incredibly morbid at times?"

"Once or twice." Again, that same smile. It hit Garrus just then, that all the times he'd thought the drell was being smug in the past. No. That smile was mournful. How did that slip past him?

Thane lifted his head, cocking it to the left in that odd peculiar way he had. "You better find a place to hide. The sound of the engine just changed."

And indeed it had. It hadn't been until the power on the Normandy had been knocked out and switched to emergency generators that Garrus had noticed the hum of the drive was gone. Now it soothed him, ebbing through the steel of the Normandy's frame once more. No sooner had he registered it, and then Ezmay's voice came over the intercom. She was in his ear, just as she was in everyone's ear. They were getting ready to board.

"Five minutes to full decompression. Those in engineering secure your breather apparatus and find your places. They're swinging up alongside us. No mercy. Let's show these sons of bitches what a bunch of amateurs they are."

Thane was already crouching, tucking himself into the guts of the Normandy; Garrus did the same. He was conscious of the slashes in the hull, just to his left and back. Here, hidden amongst the pipes and conduits, wedged into the infrastructure, it just might be enough to keep him from being blown out into vacuum.

From the darkness to his right, a whispered prayer went up. The voice was silk in the red-soaked murk.

"Amonkira. Lord of hunters. Grant that my hands be steady, my aim be true, and my feet swift. And should the worst come to pass, grant me forgiveness."

Garrus hissed into the pitch black. "Thane. Shut. Up."

A low chuckle answered him, and then all went silent.

The wait between Ezmay's announcement and the initial clangs of metal against the Normandy's hull felt like an eternity. The metal groaned in such a way that Garrus could only guess was the result of an umbilical tunnel being connected. Ezmay and Jack had been right. They were coming in two places. Any moment, engineering would be flooded with them, and they'd be down here, crawling through the conduits and trying to repower the drive. The control key burned against his plates. It was the essential piece; the field drive could not power on without the connection of power from the master control panel and the catalyst. The Normandy's engines were unique; a new control key would have to be crafted. Tali's engineering expertise had seen to that. The field drive had stopped being standard once the quarian had had her way with it.

Thane's hand came down on his forearm; Garrus had heard the voices overhead too. The footfalls of armoured feet on metal walkways. Any moment they would be down here. He tightened his grip on his shotgun, imagined Ezmay sweat-covered, breathing hard, and in that work-out gear that left her waist conspicuously exposed. This was what he had to lose. They would take her; they would kill her. He could already taste the blood in his mouth.

Boots on the stepways, coming down. He waited. He was right where they wanted to be. They would check beneath the field drive first, to see if it was a matter of power being knocked out. He chambered some rounds.

Flashlights swung in, over the place where Thane had hidden and apparently vacated. Over the pipes that concealed him, over the scatter of datapads from Jack's Cerberus research. Two of them broke off from the group and came deeper in, close to where Garrus waited. These were the engineers. In any other organization, they'd be little more than grunts with an armed contingent, just down here to fix the engines. Within the Broker's organization, he could take no chances on whether or not the grease monkeys could fight. EDI's voice came hushed in his ear.

"Decompression in five, four, three, two…."

He barely heard 'one' because the Normandy groaned and then began to roar. All at once, he was pulled in sixteen different directions, and was suddenly thankful that he was wedged in and strapped to the pipes around him, with maglocks on. Even as it was, he was barely able to withstand the force that was tearing at him and trying to suck him through the conduits in different pieces like it was a cheese-grater. Bodies were sucked away, banging against conduits and walls, shooting out the hole in the hull that he and Thane had had to circumnavigate on their way across Jack's hidey hole. In front of him, the engineers were in a panic, maglocks on their boots kicking in. Garrus raised the shotgun and fired four times at chinks in their armour. The pressure subsided as the last of the air escaped from the ship.

There was no sound. Small tufts of oxygen from the enemy's waists let him know his shots had hit true. Beyond them, there was slowed movement that must have been Thane taking down what remained of the engineer's armed escorts. He didn't have time to ponder the dynamics of the situation though. His hand shot out as fast as it could in the weightless environment; the knife gripped tight in his talons met with purchase. The blade sank into flesh and he was rewarded with round, quivering gobbets of blood floating past him in zero-G.

How much time passed? He didn't know. He did know that he stabbed and lashed out and dodged a plasma cutter that came within inches of slicing off his arm. He fought with a fury, and when the last enemy was dead, Garrus found himself swinging to where Thane had been last. The drell was turning to face him too. They shared a nod of congratulations, a bravo to each other for not getting their asses kicked or not ending up spinning end over end out in the great void of space.

Did they have more coming in? He couldn't tell. He didn't hear anyone coming into the engineering area or down the steps again, but he could hear distant shouting, gunfire. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask Thane if he fancied helping some of the others, but the drell seemed to anticipate his question.

"The drive is essential. We should stay here. Even if the others are taken or killed, they will not have the Normandy if we are here."

Anyway, neither Ezmay, nor EDI or Joker, had given them the all-clear. Garrus prepared to hunker down once more. Or, he was preparing to just as EDI was in his helmet once more.

"Kinetic barriers re-established. Life support back online."

The hiss of air was all around him. Jubilance! They'd kept the Normandy.

He turned to smile to the drell, but when he turned, Thane's eyes went wide and focused on some point behind Garrus's head. He reached out, seizing Garrus's forearms, and pulled. The roar of rising heat came hot on his fringe; Garrus instinctively bent double, and threw his weight forward. He wasn't fast enough, however, and when the blackness engulfed him, he was glad for it. The last thing he saw was a sliver of metal impaling Thane's throat, and the greenish-red sheen of drell blood welling out around the steel.

Just breathe...He told himself before he slipped into blackness.

Just breathe….

Her finger tightened around the trigger. The crate drummed behind her as the bullets pounded into the steel. It pounded against her back. Banged her shoulder blades, bruised her ribs. There was wetness on her cheeks. She knew dimly that it wasn't blood.

The link was silent. It was cold inside her. She was dead. Her world drooped and went gray. She wanted to lie down and die. She didn't want to be here anymore, crouching in the CIC, reloading while Miranda blasted biotics towards the elevator. Once more, the hot tang of adrenaline coursed through her.

In slow motion, her eyes popped open. She turned, hoisting her rifle, and leveled it down the hallway. One of the little bastards ran right into her sights and she took the shot. The goon's black- clad head exploded into a wonderful blast of gore.

"Scoped and dropped." She whispered. Tears suddenly stung her vision. Ezmay had to swallow hard. Every shot she fired, every bullet she put in someone's head, it was for him. He would have been proud of the way her shots were landing. She turned to the right, burrowing against the crate, hugging the wall and trying to shield herself from the rocket blast that clipped past her.

Once again, her ears started ringing, and her hearing muffled and died away. The blare of the Normandy's collision alarms was drumming into her skull. Sound waves reverberated through the hull and up her skeleton into her teeth. Ezmay gritted her teeth, bared them, and screamed as she hefted the scope to her eye once more. Shouting came from down the hall as the sound washed back in. One of them threw a stun grenade past her. She knew she should get out of the way, but this was done. It didn't matter anymore. The only thing that that mattered was spilling as much blood as possible. She plugged two shots into the gut of the grenade-thrower, and then took him in the throat. Another thug went down, clutching his knees. She ignored every second that passed.

The blast threw her forward, head over ass, tumbling. Somehow…somehow….she managed to keep a grip on her rifle.

How had this all happened? Her head bounced off of the floor as she landed and righted herself. The pain made her rage, took the grief in her heart and refracted it a thousand times. Even as the Broker's goons swarmed around her, she fought.

At least, she had. There she had been, fighting as if her life had depended on it, acceptance of the cold, dark bond tying her to a dead turian flooding through her. He was dead, and there was nothing left for her in this world. That's how it had been. How it had been for him, and how it was for her while the fists and gun butts rained down.

Then the bond had blazed alive within with a brilliance that would have blinded her if it had been something she could have seen. She was awestruck; the knowledge, the certainty that she was wrong, that something had happened and that he was okay after all.

The joy overwhelmed her.