Lieutenant Jeff Moreau let out a lengthy yawn and stretched languorously like a cat. He felt discomfort creeping up from a dull ache in his bones. His eyes were drawn to the looming site of Metaponto which hung ominously in the viewport overhead. The gas giant's hydrogen-helium atmosphere gleamed in shimmering periwinkle interspersed with swirling tendrils of Catalina and Midnight blue.

The Normandy coasted listlessly, its systems in idle as they waited on the far side of the hulking Jovian planet. Aquila's distant star cast a dim hue upon Joker's control console, creating an oddly relaxing mood in the Normandy's cockpit. Yet the pilot didn't share the mood. Joker struggled with the idleness and the drowsiness it brought on. He emphasized blinking in an attempt to clear the sleepiness from his eyes.

"How long are we going to do this?" Joker asked. He cracked his back and readjusted himself in his seat. His eyes remained fixated on Metaponto.

"As long as it takes," Lieutenant James Vega, the Normandy's interim commanding officer, replied tightly. He sat, clad in armor, in another seat closer to the cockpit's entrance.

"It's been three days," Joker reminded him. "Think they're still going to show up here?"

"We did the math." Meaning Specialist Traynor. "This is the only operable fuel depot in the vicinity of their projected direction of travel."

Joker yawned again. "I just wish they'd show up already."

"You have somewhere else to be?"

"Well, when you put it like that…"

"Look, this is the mission, Joker. This is what it takes to get Shepard back," Vega stated directly, attempting to shroud his slight irritation over being questioned.

Joker mimed Vega's words in a contorted, clownish face. "And what if he's on the other ship?"

"Then we go after that one," Vega responded sharply. "Until we find the Commander."

"Here's to hoping he's on this one then," Joker remarked peevishly.

"Is there a problem, Lieutenant?" Vega questioned with sudden aggravation in his voice. He felt his spine straighten, as if the assumption of a command tone demanded the rigidity.

Joker scratched errantly at his beard. He felt hopelessly bored and struggled to deal with his new commander's lack of dynamism. Jeff Moreau always possessed a healthy disdain for authority, but it had evaporated under Shepard's command. He felt it creeping nefariously up from deep within under Vega's leadership. Maybe it wasn't the Marine's fault—maybe it was the sorrow of EDI's loss manifesting itself in some strange way, but Joker had trouble thinking of it that way. Vega was brutish and lacked Shepard's charisma. And the pilot certainly didn't like sharing the cockpit with the bulky Marine for hours on end. He was okay in small doses, but this was ridiculous. He'd insisted on being there for nearly every waking hour in order to best get the jump on the ship when it arrived. If it arrived.

"No, sir," Joker replied almost mockingly. His eyes were still fixated on Metaponto. He felt the sullen emptiness deep within his heart. A piece was missing, a piece he would never retrieve and it was affecting him more deeply than he realized.

Vega cranked up an eyebrow, his gaze studiously fixed on the back of Joker's chair. But he said nothing. He had no words for the pilot and wondered inwardly if Shepard had struggled to corral the pilot's cocky, sarcastic genius. Since Vega had told the crew Hackett had put him in command Joker had been aloof. As time went on it only got worse.

They remained silent for the next several hours. Vega sat patiently, sentinel-like in his position behind a monitoring console—the controls of which were beyond him. He thought about the scheme of maneuver. His plan was a wild one, straight out of Shepard's book. Although the Commander had never done something like it, the daring associated with it were certainly characteristic of him. It seemed only fitting.

When Liara heard she was going to be excluded she stormed down to the hangar deck and argued passionately with Vega. He reasoned she was too emotional to go aboard the old ship and continued by saying her current state was proof of that. The verbal battle had gone back and forth for several minutes before Vega laid down his authority for the first time since being put in charge. When he leveled his command upon her he did so with unexpected force. The authority was evident, his voice was lined in it and he would brook no further dispute over his decision. Liara, frustrated by the exchange, stormed out. Vega was left wondering if he'd handled the situation properly.

Now, with Joker's own discreet bucking, he wondered if he was driving a wedge between himself and his crew. Leaders often tread a fine line between tyrant and inspiration. Vega could remember his days in recruit training. When the Sergeant said 'Attack the hill' the only response was 'Attack the hill, aye, sir!' Obedience to orders was drilled into every recruit. You were told never to question a superior—to do so had deadly consequences. The military's system was completely predicated on obedience. Of course as his career progressed he learned it was more than just expecting robotic compliance to commands. A leader had to have certain qualities. Vega knew respect was earned, never given. As a young Marine he'd looked to his leaders for an example. He took pieces of those he believed to be truly good leaders and left the undesirable traits he felt weren't useful.

The circumstances and the challenges of leadership were more complex aboard the Normandy. It was a challenge unlike any other. No two people aboard the ship were alike. There were non-Alliance personnel with deep ties and a history with the Commander—whom they now sought to rescue. If Vega didn't measure up how could he expect them to follow him? How could he expect obedience to orders when he was found wanting? Certainly they must have been measuring him to the only metric most of them cared to use—Shepard's otherworldly performance in command.

Vega sighed, but redoubled his determination. He was right in this. Liara was a liability. She was overly emotional and her biotic outbursts could prove costly aboard the freighter once they made their attempt at getting aboard. And for all of Joker's talent there was still a certain degree of professional courtesy that was extended to the commanding officer. Whatever had Joker acting prickly took a backseat to mission accomplishment and Vega would address it later.

"Lieutenant," Samantha Traynor materialized in the cockpit, her chest heaving. Her slender fingers gripped the edge of the wall near the entrance. "Vega. A vessel matching the Vesuvala class freighter's heat signature has just entered the system and its projected course is right on the money for Metaponto's fuel depot."

Vega leapt to his feet. "Tell Garrus and Tali to ruck up," he told her immediately. Then he turned to Joker. "As soon as they're coupled up with the depot we're going to move in."

Joker unhurriedly punched in a few console commands in anticipation of getting the Normandy into position to board their target ship. They'd been drifting passively, suspended in orbit thanks to Metaponto's gravity well. Joker only had to fire the Normandy's thrusters at carefully calculated intervals in order to maintain their orbit. Still, heat was building up within the ship's lithium sinks and he was feeling apprehensive about maintaining the IES system much longer. This was what the Normandy excelled at, but Joker was not amenable to the thought of being cooked alive inside her hull.

A few minutes later Vega stood near the airlock just aft of the cockpit adjusting his gear, sealing his helmet and performing a final function check on his weapons. His N7 Typhoon and N7 Crusader Shotgun were clean and functional, the sights properly zeroed. He could feel the slight tremor that ran through the superstructure of the ship as Joker deftly piloted the Normandy into position behind the docked freighter.

Garrus strode up the corridor from the CIC, Tali wasn't far behind him. A turian phaeston was clutched in his talons. His face was obscured by the jet-black faceplate of his hard-suit's helmet.

"You ready for this?" Vega asked, his voice a tinny echo from behind his own combat helmet.

"As ready as I can be," Garrus assured the Marine lieutenant unconvincingly. "What's one more suicide mission?"

"C'mon, Scars, don't say it like that," Vega pleaded with a grunt.

"Relax, Vega. I've done worse things… I think." The Phaeston rifle shifted into its compact form and Garrus slipped it into position on his shoulder. The turian glanced at his paramour and attempting some levity asked, "Any last words Tali?"

She scoffed. "You don't grow up on a quarian fleet without spending a lot of time swimming in the vacuum. Doing flash repairs and patches in an EVA environment are an important part of everyday life in the Migrant fleet. I could do this with my eyes closed."

"Well I'm glad one of us can," Garrus remarked wryly.

"Let's get this show started," Vega muttered.

The three of them stepped up to the airlock's interior hatch. It ratcheted open with a hiss and mechanical clank and they stepped inside. It sealed behind them and each of them adjusted their stance inside the silent chamber. "You might be as crazy as Shepard," Garrus joked grimly as they stepped up to the exterior airlock door.

"Thanks… I think," Vega glanced over at the turian and gave him a nod. His hand reached up to the side of his helmet. "Joker, are we in position?"

"Ten seconds."

"Copy."

Vega felt his heart beat increase ever-so-slightly. Was he crazy? No. Surely not. Extravehicular activity was as old as man's presence in space. And N7s trained for EVA combat all the time. This was a popular method of covert insertion, but James Vega was not really an N7 and didn't have any zero g training let alone any vacuum combat operations experience. But then he wasn't looking for a firefight in space. He was looking for a sneaky way to get onto the ship.

"3…2… 1…"

The outer airlock hatch slid open, bathing the trio in the Aquila's distant light. The massive bulk of the tramp freighter coupled alongside the spidery superstructure of the fuel depot came into view with a slight peak off the deck's edge. Joker had positioned the Normandy as close as he could along the dorsal axis of the freighter. It was only a thirty meter 'jump' from the Normandy to the target ship, but it was nerve racking. The enormity of the Jovian giant Metaponto hovered in the background, its enormous bulk unfurled across the breadth of their vision. It was a terrifying reminder of how miniscule they truly were in the grand scheme of things.

The trio peered over the edge. The freighter wasn't particularly big, but looking down on it from their vantage point it seemed like a massive stretch of characteristically stout volus design. It was squat in the aft-section and sported a trio of stubby anti-proton thrusters which lay dormant. The underside, Vega knew, was where the meat of its design existed—a gargantuan belly where ample cargo could be stored. Forward of the aft section was a thick corridor that led to a slightly larger structure where crew quarters and common areas would be located. Ahead of that was the cockpit. From stem to stern she couldn't have been more than eighty meters in length, much smaller than the Normandy. But Vega could feel a softball sized object lodged in his throat. The thought of careening off her hull and into space, grabbed by Metaponto's gravity well and then summarily crushed by it after a slow drift to destruction was at the forefront of his mind. He swallowed with some difficulty.

"You sure you want to do this?" Garrus asked, an audible gulp was heard through the radio transmission.

"Yeah," Vega hesitated momentarily. "This is easy."

"You first then."

"We should go at the same time," Vega suggested dubiously. It felt as if his stomach was floating weightlessly among the rest of his guts. A bead of sweat rolled down the side of his cheek.

"No, no," Garrus stated after some hesitation. "You should definitely go first."

Vega shook his head with some dismay. "Fine." He glanced down again and felt a sense of vertigo even though he wasn't exactly above the ship. It would only take a slight push off the Normandy to make it down to the freighter. But that fear wouldn't retreat from the surface of his mind. He didn't have the right training for this. The anxiety was hard to buckle down. He struggled to focus.

"Going or what?" Garrus questioned impatiently.

"Yeah. Easy does it, Scars," Vega advised as he edged his toes off the Normandy's deck. "You better be right behind me."

"Keelah!" Tali blurted. "I'll go first." She shuffled up to the edge and without hesitation disappeared off the deck's surface.

Vega watched her fall. She was graceful, her arms spread out to either side as if she were a descending phoenix. She was utterly in control and completely confident. Before long she was down on the outer hull of the ship—the magnetic coupling on her boots were active and she stood rigidly in the weightlessness of the vacuum. She glanced up at the still hesitating turian and human and offered a hurried wave.

And then Vega was falling, or jumping, or floating—he didn't know what it was—only that the size of the freighter expanded in size as its surface gradually advanced to meet him on his approach. His heart was in his throat, beating more rapidly than he would have liked. His jaw was set, teeth clenched. The feeling of dread as he closed the distance with the ship was difficult to contain. His intestines felt like they were coiled around his stomach, tightening like a python.

And then he was on the ship. His first steps were uncertain and he started to rise again from the surface before his magnetic coupling engaged, forcing him back onto the hull with a clunk that must have resonated inside the ship. The silence surrounding him was shocking. He could hear his heart beating and the sound of his own blinking within the confines of his helmet.

Garrus landed nearby in a squat as if bracing for some severe impact. After his boots locked onto the hull he glanced over at Vega, his eyes still hidden behind the reflective plating of his helmet. "That wasn't so bad," he said over the radio.

"Speak for yourself," Vega chirped back. The softball-sized feeling of his still-rapidly beating heart hadn't left his throat. "Let's get inside before I lose my mind."

They moved forward, slowly at first while Garrus and Vega got their bearings and then more hastily. Tali took the lead as they went. The fuel depot, much larger in size than the freighter, towered over them on the port side. It cast protracted, slender shadows along the surface of the freighter.

"Can't beat this view," Tali commented as she looked out at the colossal blue orb that hung portentously nearby. The group neared an emergency exit hatch just forward of the thickset aft section. According to the class schematics it would drop them into the corridor which led to the common areas.

"I'm sure there's a better one on Normandy's observation deck," Garrus retorted evenly as they clustered around the hatch.

Vega ventured a glance 'up' at Metaponto. The sudden thought of losing his bond with the ship's hull and tumbling toward the tremendously large Jovian planet left him with a cold sweat. He struggled with the lump in his esophagus and he felt like he might cough up his heart. He shook it off and swallowed heavily. "Let's get inside."

Tali took a knee over the hatch. The ever-familiar glow of her omni-tool appeared and she began to tap into her hacking program.

Vega expected to hear the thrum of the Normandy's engines, or the sound of the fuel depot's refueling mechanisms churning. He knew space was silent, but it felt incomprehensible to accept now that he stood out in the open completely naked to the myriad of dangers that existed out in the gloom. He spent most of his adult life rocketing around the galaxy and now that he was fully surrounded by it he felt the same awe Yuri Gagarin must have felt when he made it into orbit as the first human being in space. The galaxy and its properties were mind-bending—at least to Vega. Funny what you take for granted. But exposed to it now, in its infinite splendor and terror, Vega could at least appreciate it.

"Got it," Tali spoke up happily. A rush of air left the space between the outer hatch and its interior counterpart. "Ready when you are, boss." She glanced up at the human Marine.

He gave her a nod. "Let's go get the Commander."