Spoilers: obviously content from the games including the Ending.

For the most part this will follow ME lore, just adding and adapting.

Rated M since i don't want to limit what i can and can't do as the story progresses.

Council

She looked over the reports again.
They hadn't even found 5% of Hammer's ground forces, and most of those they had found where dead or dying. If she just knew if he was alive or dead, maybe then she could finally find some rest but the uncertainty that was to much for her. But he was still listed as MIA.

She took a deep breath, maybe she should rest the battle had been long and the next few weeks would be a whole different kind of war. She started walking over to her bed but before she could even think about laying down for a moment someone called over the intercom.

"Ma'am priority message from Admiral Hacket."

"I'll take it in my quarters." Maybe they found him, she almost didn't dare to hope.

She spun on her heels and activated the terminal. "Admiral, what can I do for you sir?"

"Admiral Shepard, I need you over on the Destiny Ascension. Meet me at the temporary Embassy. Oh and you might want to grab a coffee or two before you come over here." Hacket sounded tired, well probably everyone was tired by now not like anyone had much chance to sleep.

"Yes Sir. Might i ask if there is any news from my Son?" She hoped he would be one of the first to know.

A sad look passed over the Admirals face. "Nothing, new Hannah. I'm sorry."

"I should go." She added with a salute.

Well no sleep it seems. Quickly she changed into a fresh uniform and grabbed a can of coffee. On her way to the shuttle she informed her XO that she had to leave and to see to it that everyone got at least some sleep.

She had drank 2 mugs of coffee before the shuttle even reached the Destiny Ascension. As soon as she stepped aboard a Salarian greeted her.

"Admiral Shepard it's an honor meeting you, I'm Mayor Kirrahe. Admiral Hacket asked that i escort you to the meeting." The Salarian offered he a hand while she exited the shuttle and guided her through the ship.

She silently followed the Mayor through the ship. But she kept wondering why would Hacket sent a Salarian to greet her. Something was strange around here.

Finally they reached the conference room, someone had tapped a note on the door 'Council meeting in progress' Kirrahe opened the door "After you ma'am."

Wen she entered the room suddenly fell silent, all eyes fell on her. The silence was making her feel uncomfortable. Well until a large Krogan came up to her and grabbed her by the shoulders.

"Ha, so this is the female that gave birth to the best battle master in the universe!" The krogan roared. "You must be the proudest mother in the universe then!"

"Everyone sit down please and Wrex please leave the Admiral in one piece. No Head butting!" Hacket Raised his voice just a bit, but it was enough that wrex finally let her go. "Everyone lets get directly to business shall we?"

Well at least she would find out what was going on sooner rather then later. After she sat down Hacket continued to speak.

"Everyone the reason we are here is simple, we have no idea what happened to the council. They where on the citadel wen it was taken by the Reapers. Since we need to assume the worst we are hereby forming a new council to organize the salvage and rescue operations. The reason each of you is chosen is simple, You all had ties to Commander Shepard in the past. Furthermore you all saw the need to prepare for the future and for the reapers wen the previous council ignored them. So who better to stand for this new age as those who believed. So introductions are in order and if anyone has questions now would be the time, there is a lot of work to do."

So that was it, Hannah couldn't believe what she was hearing, a new council, but why was she here? But Hacket had already seen the question in here eyes before she could even ask and immediately interrupted her.

"Councilor Shepard, I'm going to be blunt. I need a Human councilor i can trust after what Udina did. Since both your son and Admiral Anderson are MIA we need someone that never doubted him. As an added bonus you are the only person I can think of that everyone will accept immediately without the need for lengthy debates."

So there it was she was the new Human councilor. " Sir just one question? Why me and not do it yourself?"

Hacket spoke without a second of hesitation. " Because someone has to keep the alliance together since HQ was the first thing to go in this bloody war and honestly I hate politics."

After a moment of silence Hannah stood up took a deep breath. "I am Rear Admiral Hannah Shepard of the Alliance. Commander Shepard is my son." Her voice was a bit shaky but it should do.

The Krogan stood up. "Urdnot Wrex, Clan leader of clan Urdnot. I united the clans to fight the reapers after Shepard healed the Genophage. I fought at his side wen Saren was working with the Reaper Sovereign."

The Salarian was next: "Mayor Kirrahe Salarian STG, I held the line on Virmire where Saren was breeding an army of indoctrinated Krogan for the Reapers. I held the line wen Cerberus attacked Sur'kesh."

"Admiral Zaal'Koris vas..." The quarian paused. " ...vas Rannoch, I lost 2 ships in this war. We should really rethink our naming conventions now I guess.
Anyway I lead the Quarian civilian fleet, Shepard saved me on Rannoch and help broker the peace between the Geth and Quarians. Which seems to have been in vain since sadly the Geth just stopped working the same moment the reapers stopped."

"Primarch Victus, Shepard helped my son to accomplish his mission and gain the respect of his men." The Turians voice sounded a bit sad.

"Matriarch Aethyta, I actually didn't have anything to do with Shepard except serving him drinks and let me tell you that man could out drink a Krogan. Well except that Lia.."

Hacket interrupted her "No but you where outspoken in your opinion to build new relays and that is to some degree one of the tasks before us. So anyone any questions before I start the briefing?"

Hannah couldn't wait anymore she had to know. " Just one sir, what about my son?"

Hacket took a deep breath. "Admiral Shepard I'm sorry we have no idea what happened exactly after he entered the beam. What we have is Anderson and Shepard went up to the Citadel must have found a way to open the arms. Wen the crucible was docked it didn't fire. I personally told the commander it had to be something on his side. His last words where 'I'm not sure how to' after that communications broke down. Eight minutes later the crucible fired."

She could barely hold back the tears, yes they where searching but she knew that the chances where slim of finding him.

Wrex suddenly stood beside her, she hadn't noticed him right up to the point where he pulled her out of her chair. "I believe this is what you Humans do to comfort each other." He just stated mater of factly and grabbed her in a tight embrace. "Now stop worrying, we both know that Shepard is one though guy to kill, hell the reapers already killed him once and what did it get them? He got angry and kicked their asses back to dark space."

A knock on the door saved her from being crushed by a 700 pound Krogan. A young marine stepped inside.

"Councilors, Admiral the latest reports. Also we thought you all could use some coffee and snacks" He quickly pushed a cart inside and left the room.

Hacket started reading the new reports while the new council grabbed a snack. This was going to be a long first meeting and they all knew it.

After a few minutes that seemed like ages Hacket stood up and walked through the room nervously pacing up and down. "Okay, first things first. The obvious 18 hours ago the crucible fired. For what we now up until now all reapers just stopped, no signs of movement or life. At that exact same moment the Beam in London vanished and the Geth stopped just like the reapers. The quarian scientists are trying to find out what happened to the Geth since for the time being we can't risk anyone going inside an actual reaper. As long as we have no idea if the reapers might still be active in some way, we can't risk losing people to indoctrination."

"At that exact same moment the Charon relay got hit by that crucible beam and the relay got damaged. All communications outside of the Soll system are down and it seems that we are stuck here. Some parts of our fleets managed to jump the relay before it got hit and we can only hope that they made it through to their respective home worlds. Among these ships that took a jump is the SSV Normandy. Matriach Aethya for all we know your daughter was aboard the Normady wen they hit the relay."

He took a large sip of coffee before continuing. "Now to the rest of the problems, The Citadel is in low orbit around earth. Since the reapers stopped the Citadel is on a slow descent towards earth. Should it crash on the planet just by the sheer mass of the citadel it would most likely destroy the planet. We need to find a way to stop the citadel from crashing. Furthermore space throughout the system is full of wrecks. Not to mention that these also might start crashing into the planet. Travel through the system is difficult for anything larger then a shuttle.
Last but not least we need to arrange food and medical supply distribution. The biggest problem however is while we have large stockpiles for all the Levo's the problem is the system never had much dextro based supplies so we need a solution to feed the Turians and Quarians."

So there it was no relays communications a big pile of rubble and short on supply's, Hannah thought this must all be a bad dream. No to top it all of she was just made councilor and should now sift through the broken remnants of their civilization.

Admiral Zaal'koris was the first to speak. "Well it seems it's a good thing Shepard brought the Quarians to this war then. Some of our Liveships are here in the system. If we ration properly we should be able to feed both our people and the Turians. Though they won't be to happy with a vegan diet they won't starve. Also might i suggest we drag the debris to one stockpile and try to salvage as much as possible."

Hacket quickly brought up a map of the system. "We could use the earth moon, just drop the debris on the dark side there isn't anything there anyway."

Zaal'Koris looked over the data "should work, low gravity, we could just throw the smaller debris from space until it hits and use it as a salvage yard."

Matriach Aethya pointed at a spot on the map. "There, see that spot near Mars? That's a empty Lagrangian point."

Everyone looked at her confused "Yeah so? What's so special about that?" Wrex sounded a bit confused.

"It's a parking spot in space. They are locations in space where gravitational forces and the orbital motion of a body balance each other. Normally they are used for satellites and such but if we place it correctly we could park the citadel on that one and only need minimal coarse corrections."

"Matriach Aethya, that might just work." Hacket was relieved he had picked the right people for the job.

Hours later they had a list of plans how to tackle the problems of a post reaper galaxy.
The former crucible scientists would start working on the Charon relay. A few Salarian ships would travel to Arcturus and see if the relay there was still operational. They should be back in 6-7 days with news, if the relay there was operational they could send messages through the comm buoys If not a team was to stay behind and start repairs. Everyone hopped that the other relays where still operational otherwise their task would be much harder.

The latest of the new reports had finally some good news. Commander Bailey and Aria T'loak had survived on the citadel together with a few hundred civilians. Bailey had sent a message that they had found tons of medical supply's at C-Sec customs and Aria had declared herself Queen of Purgatory. Some survivors where found here and there and some of Aria's mercs where already scavenging the presidium for anything useful. Bailey had promised they would all keep an eye out for traces of Shepard. The only bad news in his message was the Keepers had stopped moving.

After the most pressing matters had been addressed the council had voted to all take a few hours of rest.

But being alone was worse then being overworked her thoughts kept circling back to her son. Hopefully he is alright.

I really like to mix in some actual science to go with the fiction.
Lagrangian points are "space parking spots", as an example the Herschel space observatory used the Sun Earth L2 until yesterday (29/04/13). Also space junk is already a problem these days, just imagine all those death and destroyed reapers in orbit.