"Welcome to the team. God help us all."

"Say that again." Shepard growled. "Slowly."

The away crew had assembled in the briefing room, making it fairly cramped. Vaya was crouched by some consoles in the back, only her gleaming eyes and small visor-aid visible, giving her a nearly perfect vantage point. Garrus, by comparison, was right behind Shepard, glaring straight ahead. In the thick of it, by contrast to his actual typical battle position. Or, at least, from Shepard's 'recent' memory.

Kaidan and Davisson were side by side nearby, and she noticed that Davisson was frowning and glancing at Liara occasionally. The asari herself was leaning against the opposite wall, full attention on the Commander. A little too much attention; she was deliberately avoiding eye contact with the marine.

Jeddah and Tali seemed the most relaxed, the geth still as always. She'd had a brief opportunity to meet the unit just before the briefing started. Its vocal processors adopted as close as it could manage to utter awe and respect, and had simply said 'Commander Shepard'. While she was pleased that the geth had finally adapted to call her that in the correct order, it made her miss Legion. That wound was, from her perspective, still open.

EDI's body was still in the cockpit, as to avoid overcrowding, but her voice could easily transmit to the room if she liked. Renar had come in last, and his posture was rigid, almost as though he was nervous to be seen as anything but profe- ah.

Much to Shepard's surprise, Lokkan was also there, which she immediately questioned. Garrus and Renar exchanged looks she recognized even on turians as 'oh, here we go', and the weapons technician had laughed heartily.

"Lassie," He said. "I've been kickin' arse since you were a wee biter, time skip tricks or nae. I guarantee I've got reason ta shoot th' bollocks off whoever's tryin' ta take yer head off this week, and ya need someone who can fire a gun, aye?" He'd laughed again and taken a place beside Renar.

That had just left Harbinger, who naturally began the fiasco in the worst way possible.

"First order of business; where is this shield world?" She had asked moments before.

"I do not know yet."

Now she and nearly everyone else was glaring at the Reaper. She saw Liara starting to heat up some kind of biotic field in her peripheral vision, and Kaidan reach for a pistol.

A literal pain in the ass as always, Harbinger repeated himself, slowing his words down to a snail's pace. "I…do…not…"

"Shut up." Garrus advised.

"How can you possibly not know?" Shepard asked. "You're only alive right now so that you can point us to this place, and now you're all but telling us you're useless?"

"Do not presume to understand the meaning of my words, Shepard." Harbinger warned. "I require more information than I have at my disposal to locate the…'Mass Relay'. As you call them. This galaxy is not the same now as it was then. And your primitive technologies are incapable of traveling to darkspace devoid of assistance."

"Then tell us how to get this information so that we can find it more quickly." Liara said.

"All I require are a recent map of this galaxy and time."

"We can cut down on the time if we all work on this." Davisson pointed out.

"You would only slow the process. None of you have the slightest inkling of what you are looking for. I do."

There was a heavy silence.

"Let me kneecap him, Shepard." Davisson spoke up first, as Shepard found he was wont to do. "Just once?"

"No." Shepard said firmly. "I get to do it first."

"Working with inadequate mobility when it can be achieved is illogical."

"Stalling when the algorithms can be processed manually is illogical." Jeddah said. "Why will you not simply use mathematics to find the most likely location of the mass relay?"

Harbinger's head swiveled to look at the geth faster than Shepard thought was possible. When he spoke, it was in a tone of malice and contempt. "Your understanding is as limited as your programming, slave."

Tali's omni-tool hand flinched, but Jeddah kept calm. "You did not answer the question posed. Noted."

Lokkan guffawed. "Is this an AI pissin' contest?"

"Now I'm curious, Harbinger." Shepard said. "What is your answer?"

Harbinger turned slowly back to face her. "Space is constantly changing. This cannot be solved with thought alone."

"Acceptable." Jeddah stated.

"The thought that I would need your approval sickens me, sl-"

Tali 'drew' her omni-blade and took a step forward. "Call Jeddah 'slave' one more time and your entrails become varren food, bosh'tet!"

"Now just calm-"

"Crea-"

"Do not-"

"All of you-"

Shepard drew in biotic power and let it pulse outward. It wasn't much - a slight push - but it affected everyone in the room. And it shut them all up.

"Harbinger." She said firmly. "You will give my crew respect. That means everyone currently aboard except you, including Jeddah. Clear?"

She felt the resentment bubbling just beneath the surface even before he spoke. "Understood."

"And Tali." She said, more softly. "We don't threaten assets, all right?"

"Hmph." Tali spun away the blade and subsided into glaring silence.

"Okay." Shepard said calmly, looking around. "Harbinger, get to work on finding that relay. I hope you work well under stress, because the longer you take, the more annoying I make your life. Everyone else, dismissed."

"Everything go well, Commander?" Traynor asked when they all left. Renar took up a position across from her, working steadily on the consoles.

"As well as can be expected." Shepard replied wearily. "Any planets blow up while I was in there?"

"No, Commander, you're usually in the field when that happens." Traynor said cheerfully.

Shepard mock-frowned. "Specialist Traynor, I nuked one…okay, two…then there was the relay…but then…all right, if you- Ugh, you have a point."

"Safety regulations do tend to fail around you, Commander." Traynor noted.

"Of course." Shepard said casually. "I'm the one they send when safety regs fail."

"Catastrophically, at that." Traynor paused in her work, then looked up, puzzled. "And yet the Normandy only seems to endure most of its problems when you aren't aboard."

"The Collectors did destroy it and me once." Shepard pointed out. "Can't claim responsibility for their boarding party, though."

Joker's voice came over the comm system in their vicinity immediately. "Still not my fault!"

"Don't worry, Joker." Shepard assured him. "You and EDI get points for spacing them."

"Right, right. Let me add that to my cosmic pilot scoreboard, and after the minus two million for losing the ship…"

"As well as the minefield incident." EDI interrupted.

"You're never gonna let me forget that, are you?" Joker asked.

"No." EDI said simply.

"Don't forget punching a hole through Sovereign." Shepard said.

"Ah, that doesn't count, I had help for that one."

"You're never going to actually get any points if you examine them that deeply." Shepard told him.

"…Blowing up a Reaper, check…" Joker said after a brief pause.

Shepard glanced over at the secondary comm station and decided that she may as well start implementing her crew policies regarding new arrivals. That, and she was genuinely curious.

"Anything you need, Commander?" Renar asked, seeing her coming.

"Just checking in." Shepard said. "Acclimatizing well enough?"

Renar nodded, taking a moment to look around the CIC. "It's not that different from the Victorious, really, schematics and all. I remember hearing that the Normandy was a turian-human amalgam design, but to see it in person…It's impressive, to say the least."

"If you think this is impressive, you should see the drive core." Shepard remarked. "How are the comm systems?"

"Connected so far, and that's the worst I can say about them." Renar brought up five holographic files to midair that she couldn't quite make out and deleted them. "Your AI makes the transitions and runtimes seamless. Not to mention your crew; Specialist Traynor's already taught me more than a few things about management."

"Our work tends to be more than-" Shepard began, then stopped when she realized what he'd just said, then grimaced when she realized that she'd given it away. "You…didn't actually know that EDI was an AI before now, did you."

"Not entirely." Renar admitted. "Though I got suspicious when it started humming the first few bars of the theme song to 'The Primarch and the General' whenever I checked a security file."

"She does have a sense of humor." Shepard said, putting light emphasis on 'she'.

"Don't worry about her safety, Commander." Renar said. "After the Rannoch reclaimation, the Council relaxed its bans. The geth are one exception, and I've checked the ship's credentials. So is EDI."

Shepard nodded. "At least I don't have to worry."

"Well, there may still be some prejudice among individuals, so I wouldn't put it on the extranet."

She spoke soon after, to break the silence that followed. "What does Traynor have you doing?"

"Checking for signals, intercepting encoded messages from hostile crews, checking the mail…mostly the same, really." Renar deleted another few files and then looked one over critically. "You know, you've been listed as K.I.A. for five years, but they're still sending you advertisements. Most of which I don't think are anatomically possible, just from the titles."

"Won't stop them from trying." Shepard sighed. "But with the two of you, I doubt any of them will cause trouble."

Renar nodded, then was quiet for a time. He kept his eyes on his work as he spoke. "I used to wonder about Admiral Vakarian's crew policies. Now, though, I'm starting to see where he got it."

"Oh?" Shepard asked.

Renar nodded. "The first day the Victorious was commissioned for active duty, he came to the main decks and spoke to each crew member personally. Got to know them. After the Cabals it was…a culture shock, to say the least."

"They're more strict than the mainstream military, I take it?"

"That's…a mild way of putting it." Renar said cautiously. "Then again, you need more discipline than usual when a team is composed of biotic loose guns."

"I'm having trouble picturing you as a loose gun."

Renar shrugged. "Believe it or not, I suppose. Their methods of 'inspiration' are…frightfully effective."

Shepard's expression grew concerned. "You want to talk about it?"

"Not…" Renar hesitated. "It's hard to explain. We were exposed much more readily than normal soldiers to the worst of war. Spectres are essentially black ops, you probably know what I'm talking about. After the war ended, there were still messes that needed to be taken care of. Reaper forces, Cerberus, opportunists; the hierarchy didn't exactly discriminate, even as weakened as we were.

"Most of the Cabals were lost in the initial strikes, so my team was regarded as more valuable than usual. Less chance of suicide missions than other operatives. Even so, we had to be the best to take the best. Nothing hones your skills like the heat of battle, I guess.

"Our leader, Corbis, had our fringes in an iron grip. It was hell at the time, but looking back on the records, we only lost two men in all of our engagements. Wish I had his presence of mind."

"What do you mean?" Shepard asked.

"I've made some mistakes before." He kept his eyes firmly on his work, but she noticed that his talons weren't actually moving. "It's part of the reason I ended up on the Victorious."

"What happened?" What had started out as a routine conversation was now beginning to draw some interest for her.

"It's not something I like talking about. He made a decision, and people paid for it. But because they weren't us, the hierarchy called it a success. And when I called him out..." He left the words hanging. He didn't need to finish.

"Can someone even be discharged from a cabal?"

"It's complicated. Usually they'll take your amp and give you normal service until your enlistment dates pass and then drop you on a colony. I was lucky; 'someone' convinced them that a frontline vessel like the Victorious needed unhampered assets for an impromptu boarding party." He sounded oddly bitter.

"You don't think they should have?"

"Don't mistake me, Commander, I'm glad for the exception itself. Biotics are a part of someone, like an eye or a limb. Cutting it off is worse than either. But I also hate the means. I wish that I had a chance to face my own choices rather than have the consequences just...vanish." His eyes stared off into space somewhat. "I love and appreciate my father and what he does, but stigmas and reductions just don't appeal to me."

"You feel like you should own up to a punishment if it's justified." Shepard summarized, shaking her head. "If it means anything, Renar, the cabals lost a credit to the turian military."

"It...does, Commander. Thank you."

"Do you still think Corbis was wrong for his decision?" Shepard asked.

Renar shook his head slowly. "Selfish as it feels to say it, I'm glad to be alive, at least. It's just…I might feel better if he had at least tried. But you can't save everyone. The war taught us that the hard way. I suppose I just hadn't learned."

Shepard felt a low, haunting feeling in the back of her mind when he said that. She remembered saying something very similar to Anderson once. In retrospect, those weren't the real reasons she even fought, those last few weeks. She might have liked to think that she was fighting for every unnecessary death, so that countless others could live, but that wasn't it. Not really.

Her motives were, in the main, altruistic, certainly. But her true motivation in the end was spite. She would not allow the Reapers to win, and damn the consequences. In the end, that was what she needed to win. But it sickened her to think that she'd fallen so far.

That thought in mind, her need for conversation slackened significantly. "I'll let you get back to work."

Renar nodded politely. "Commander."

She thought grimly that she may as well make sure her gear was like she remembered. If not, target practice couldn't hurt, and she was curious as to what advances had been made as yet.

She had completely forgotten, in fact, that there was already someone in there.

"Commander Shepard." Corporal Vaya greeted her, rifle in one hand and saluting with the other.

"Corporal Vaya." Shepard replied, returning the gesture. "I didn't realize this was your station."

"It isn't." Vaya said simply. "But until I have a permanent assignment, I thought someone should be here. The new weapons expert should, but I think he might still be drooling over the Thanix."

"I don't have any problems with it." Shepard said. "But let me know if you notice anything unusual."

"Of course, Commander." Vaya returned to her work, which apparently consisted of examining the weaponry.

Shepard took a Phalanx and noticed that there appeared to be a detachable clip in the handle. "Actually, maybe you can help me, here. What's changed about guns since I've been out?"

"Well there are the magnetic additions, for one." Vaya explained. "In addition to the heat sinks and eezo method of firing, most modern weapons have a backup. You can unhook and restock a magazine of shells. Hard in flight, brittle on impact, and simple to fire. They don't hit as hard, but it helps if you run out of clips in a firefight. The sighting VI's automatically swap types when they detect that you're going to overheat."

"Handy." Shepard indicated the magnetic slide. "So this is like gauss weaponry?"

"In a sense, but it's also easier to disable than the main firing system." Vaya said. "It's also why armor is more hard-packed now. The magnetic shells are a lot slower than your usual biotic cluster fire."

"You mean the main system doesn't use electromagnetics anymore?" Shepard asked.

Vaya shook her head. "It's more like a miniature biotic impact wave. A piece of metal locks into the chamber and a small eezo core causes a contained chain reaction. They make purely biotic barriers less effective, too. Like a warp with every shot."

"You still use thermal clips, though?" Shepard asked.

"More or less." Vaya said noncommittally. "They're less for the purposes of containing heat emissions - the buildup is contained and then released when you reload - and more a recharge unit for the element zero core inside. The setup is generally more powerful than older technology, but you also typically have fewer shots to use."

"Ammunition enhancements?" Shepard asked casually, taking aim at a target.

"Those can't be used with the magnetic backups. But otherwise, essentially the same."

The sound of three sequential gunshots resounded inside the room, echoes bouncing around inside the ears of the two for six long seconds.

"Nice." Shepard commented, setting the pistol back down. "At least they aren't more complicated than aim and fire."

Shepard ran her hands over the armaments a few times, getting a feel for their inner workings. Eventually, she lifted her gaze again. "So, tell me about yourself, Corporal."

"That's a long list, Commander." Vaya glanced over. "Is this an official request?"

"Does it have to be?" Shepard asked.

Vaya shrugged. "For some things, yes. At the least, I can paint you a picture of what it is I do. I am a scout, first and foremost. Happiest when the enemy doesn't see me. When that fails, my technological experience, marksmanship, and martial arts training do not."

"I've been wondering about that, actually. Are there any turians who aren't snipers?"

"Yes." Vaya said seriously. "They're called politicians."

They shared laughter, Vaya's voice being more subdued than most, as though even here she felt she couldn't afford to not be quiet.

"Truthfully, it suits us better than most." Vaya admitted. "Gives the enhanced eyesight better things to work on."

"Enhanced eyesight, really?" Shepard asked, intrigued.

"We evolved from avians, Commander." Vaya reminded her. "Good eyes are invaluable on the wing or on the scope."

"True." Shepard conceded. "I'll have to s-"

"Commander!"

Damn it, why is he always calling me over the comm in panicked tones? "What is it, Joker?"

"Distress call from Tuchanka, pretty sure it's for you."

"Patch it through to the FTL link room, I'll see it there." Shepard nodded to Vaya as she left. "We'll talk later."

"Commander." Vaya said simply as the door closed.

Shepard wasn't expecting a situation so soon. Nor was she expecting to be speaking to a krogan when she reached the link room.

As far as Shepard could tell (she really needed to learn more about different species' gender characteristics) the female warrior krogan, strange as it seemed, was under fire and trying to get the message out at the same time.

"Really hope this is getting somewhere!" She shouted over an explosion. "Because we're in deep shit!"

"This is Comman-" Shepard began, but was quickly cut off.

"If this stupid thing is transmitting properly, don't waste your breath, we can only get a one-way call, and Solus made me send it into space." She looked behind her at allies just out of sight. "Get behind some cover, you stupid fucking pyjaks!"

A grenade sailed over her head, but she paid it little mind. She raised a pistol in one hand and blasted it at whoever was shooting at her without bothering to spare a glance at them. "I'm transmitting our coordinates, for all the good it'll do me. Whoever you are, get down here and blow these Reapers into deep space before we're bones, huh?"

Shepard was quiet for a long time after the message cut out.

"Joker." She said, fully aware of the irony in her choice of words. "Send Harbinger, Lokkan and Davisson to the shuttle. Then take us in, fast and quiet."

"This mission just got a lot more complicated."