The funeral came and passed rather uneventfully. Charlie had buried people before. She had been to her mother's funeral as a young child and her bubbe had passed on a few years ago, but none of them felt as empty as Cody's did. Maybe it was the lack of Rabbi Applebaum or maybe it was that he was replaced by the loud preacher Rev. Stilton who was going on and on about sin and redemption. It felt so out of place and insulting. It's not like she had been Cody's biggest fan, but his main flaw was that he liked her too much and he deserved more respect than this. This music was nice though, kind of unusual compared to Jewish funerals, but it was still nice. Even though it would have been grossly inappropriate, her hands ached for prayer book to offer Cody peace. It was the comfort of tradition that kept Charlie going in this future. That even though everything may have changed, she still had the traditions of her people to keep her sane.

Sometime after the service Charlie asked Deborah for some lessons in basic first aid. The days seemed to move more quickly now. Like the universe was rushing them towards some event and couldn't be bothered to wait for the hands of the clock to finish their silent march. Charlie took on more and more responsibilities. She had firearms practice, which she was getting much better at, though her rifle training was still subpar. Jungle patrols with Ethan were still regular and he let her take the lead more often than not. Charlie was still excelling in hand-to-hand combat and eventually worked her way to just under Ethan in the imaginary rankings. One day she actually pinned him and he tapped out, but she was pretty sure that he could have broken her hold if he really wanted to. First aid training was slow going, but eventually she learned the basics of simple injuries. Unsurprisingly most of the instructions included pour massive amounts of medi-gel on the wound and pray.

Ian had pretty much run out of things to teach Charlotte about the Hoover, without her earning a engineering degree first. So instead he started teaching her things like how to break security systems, encrypting methods, decrypting methods, and other odd bits. She loved it. Charlie loved it more than sparring. This was a task she could really sink her teeth into. To say that Ian was impressed with her knack for writing complex algorithms would be putting it mildly; if he didn't know better he would have sworn that Charlie had a degree in mathematics. Charlie was happy to have something that she didn't start out woefully ignorant about. There might be quite a few more branches of math then when she started studying, but the theorems she knew stayed the same. The method might change, but logic was eternal.

Thus her days passed each one came bearing new challenges to lie at her feet and she welcomed them all. Charlie's nights stayed the same, as well. Each night started with her clutching her ID, closing her eyes, and waiting for Cody's scream to lull her to sleep. Each morning she was greeted by a smiling face full of brown curls and bright eyes.

January 2170, The Argo

Lieutenant Garrus Vakarian was not in a good mood. Now just because, dear reader, you have only seen him in bad moods, does not mean that he doesn't have a good day. The past few months Garrus had been in a wonderful mood. The best of moods, in fact; the kind of elation that can only come from getting regularly laid. Cecilia Modius was a little minx between the sheets. Garrus and Cecilia had known each other since boot camp and had played the game for such a long time that Garrus had been starting to wonder if it was only a game to Cecilia. Cecilia had happily proven him wrong. It wasn't just the sex, though that definitely helped, it was Cecilia. She was a worse turian than even Garrus. Everything was a joke or a game to her; there wasn't an ounce of stoicism beneath her plates. To Vakarian there was nothing more attractive. His father would hate her. Not just because of her mentality, though that probably wouldn't help, it was her lack of colony markings. Cecilia Modius was a bare-faced turian. Garrus didn't care about that though. If anything it made her more appealing, because it meant she was a blank canvas for his own Vakarian blue. It wasn't like he gave a salarian's cloaca, about moving up in social rankings. So he found himself stalking the corridor heading towards his station, with Cecilia Modius' bite marks still tender under his armor. Not even his reminder of the last night's encounter with his beautiful turian female could help his mood though.

This time the cause of his ire was not directed at the Gunnery Officer, it was directed at Captain Victus. It might help if I explained the situation. Last week there had been a batarian attack on the asari cruise liner, Malindra. The Malindra was on its maiden voyage and had been on the long trip to Ilium when the attack came. The asari government was furious, to say the least, and no one had any answers as to what could provoke the batarians to attack such a prominent target. Ilium was a trade hub and brought the batarian government not inconsiderable profits. However, Garrus was more concerned with the "how" the batarians had managed to take over a ship of a thousand asari, not the "why". Asari are well known for their biotic prowess and no one in their right mind would attack such a target, let alone board the ship and take prisoners.

However, that is exactly what the batarians did. The Argo received the distress signal, while on their patrol through the Attican Traverse, and was among the first to arrive at the Malindra. Garrus would never forget the carnage they found within. Most of the bodies were the few non-asari that had been on board. The boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, and wives; the picture that was painted was grim. The bodies were left where they fell and the halls were painted in blue, red, purple, and green. The weapons that were used against the batarians were mostly make-shift arms. A piece of pipe, a decorative sword, or a broken chair leg; there were very few actual firearms to be seen. It wasn't surprising that the guests weren't allowed guns, what was surprising was that the armory was untouched. Garrus' squad had reached the security station and found only a couple of bodies there, a human and a turian. It was obvious that they were attempting to hack the door control when they were killed. Garrus had to move the human female away from the door before they could open it and he saw that her hand was still on her omni-tool that was running a very basic hacking protocol. The woman had almost made it, the thought brought bile to his throat. The armory, itself, was pristine. Clearly no one had been in there. The stacks of firearms seemed to mock the dead passengers.

As the teams steadily made their way through the ship there was a growing trend and that was the lack of asari. They only counted 24 dead asari, which was staggering compared to the 245 other dead species on board. Somehow the batarians must have incapacitated the asari before taking the ship. That was both worrisome and strange. As far as anyone knew, there was not a drug available that solely targeted the asari, without causing death, and ignored the other levo-amino species. In the end, the ship left them with more questions than answers and the hierarchy informed the Argo that its new mission was to hunt down the batarian ships responsible for the massacre.

However, this was still not the reason Lieutenant Garrus Vakarian marched into the cargo hold and kicked the Mako's tread. You see, after they were given the new mission, Garrus and the rest of the crew were ready and eager to send the batarian bastards back to whatever spirits hollow world they crawled up from; but that's not exactly what happened. It appeared that after the successful attack on the Malindra, the batarians had scattered and were now attacking every far-flung colony that bordered the Terminus Systems. The Argo always seemed to be one step behind them. The one time that they had gotten close enough to catch up with one of the ships; it had made a jump through an Alliance controlled relay. Now the Argo was waiting for permission to follow it through. That is why Garrus Vakarian was in a bad mood. They had them in their sights; all they needed to do was go after them, but the stupid bureaucracy was preventing them. At best they were stopping the Argo from seeking vengeance for all of the lives already lost, at worst they were keeping them from saving innocent lives; and that was far too much for Garrus to take. So he had made a trip up to see the Captain and told him as much. Even though Victus agreed with Garrus, he couldn't admit it to the lieutenant and instead ordered him back to his station.

"All hands brace for relay jump, in 5 … 4 … 3 … 2 … 1."

As Garrus steadied himself against the Mako he let a cold grin spread across his face and hoped he would get to lead a ground team.

Charlie could feel the sweat starting to trickle into her eyes, she really wanted to rub them, but her hands were currently very occupied.

Slip the pin in. Reattach the barrel. And slip the slide back on … shit shit where's the slide.

She fumbled around the table, wasting precious seconds searching for the slide.

Got it … and it's attached … reload and

"Time!"

She raised the corner of the blindfold and peeked at Ethan, who was slowing shaking his head and looking at his watch.

"That bad, huh? Well I mean I guess I can't be good at everything."

Ethan laughed at her, "Actually it wasn't bad, you definitely still need practice. I mean I can't believe you lost the slide, but it's a fully functioning gun so that's an improvement."

"Laugh it up, big guy. A student is only as good as their teacher and", she gave Ethan an unimpressed once over, "this is all I have to work with."

"I know you well enough to avoid that bait."

"Oh come on, Ethan. You know that I crave our banter." Charlie gave him a half smile. "Well fine. Was the time good enough for that story you've been promising me? I seem to recall that we had a deal."

Ethan gave her an exasperated sigh, "Fine. Tonight."

Charlie pulled the half-smile into a full blown grin. A few months ago, after weeks of nagging, Ethan had told her that he would give her the colony's back story when she could field strip her handgun blindfolded. Of course, he was mostly joking about it and had been concerned when Charlie offered him a hand and called it a deal. Ethan was a man of his word though and a deal was a deal.

"So what do you have this afternoon?"

"Actually I'm free. I thought I might steal, er I mean borrow, Ian's tablet and work on some hack-, I mean programs. Just normal programs … that do … things."

"Programming things, I take it?"

"Well obviously." She flashed him the most innocent smile she had in her arsenal, however it fell decidedly short of its mark.

"Uh huh", Only Ethan's eyes betrayed his amusement. "Well as fun and wholesome as that sounds, why don't you take the rest of the day off? Everyone else is. Go out, eat too much food, and bribe James into letting you get drunk on his outpost."

Charlie rested her hand on her chest and opened her mouth with feigned shock, "Ethan Wallis what kind of a girl do you think I am? Cavorting with drunkards, really, I am a lady."

He shook his head at her, reached over and pulled the 'lady's' blindfold the rest of the way off her face. "Alright, alright I'll pretend I don't know anything, as usual. However you should really take some time off."

"Is that an order?"

"If I ordered you to do it, I doubt you actually would." Ethan left a giggling Charlie in the room.

Charlie really was going to go have fun the rest of the day, but she thought she might as well take Ian's tablet just in case she got bored. That tablet was Charlie's favorite toy, I mean tool. It had loads of programs and fantastic software available for her to write her own. Also it could wirelessly connect to pretty much any system, provided she could hack it. It was Charlie's favorite proof of the future; if only they had the internet it would have been golden. The most delightful part of the future was how easy software writing had become. Well easy was the wrong word, but it was more elegant, readable, and intuitive, than she remembered.

Charlie had just settled down in her favorite spot nestled in the back of the Hoover and was fixing some typos in her current program, when she heard the sirens. She folded the tablet up and slipped it her pocket before running back to the armory. She had only heard the alarms twice before. The first time, there had been a fire in the corn field. Thankfully they had gotten that under control before too much damage had been done. The second time was during the slaughtering the pigs, Charlie had decided that trying to keep kosher was insane on a planet that's main source of protein was pork; anyways the smell of blood had encouraged a small group of raptors to brazenly attack the barn. They had fended of the attack without much bloodshed. Both of those times, though Charlie had known what was going on before the sirens even started. This time she was caught flat-footed.

Charlie was almost out of the rows of houses when she saw the ships. They reminded her of the Hoover, except they were each about three times the size of the old shuttle and there were four of them. Where the Hoover reminded her of a hovering brick, these had rounded edges and they were bright red. There were some markings on them, as well, but she didn't have time to study them. Charlie was glad that they were landing behind her instead of coming between her and the armory.

A hand roughly grabbed her arm before she could start running again.

"Charlie you need to get Grace and leave." Ethan was shouting over the noise of the vehicles.

"No, I can stay here and help." She waved an arm in the direction of the ships. "Who are they?"

"Batarian slavers. You are going to get Grace and stay in the jungle. Trust me." His eyes held Charlie's and she could feel the fear edging his voice underneath the commanding tone.

"What about Debbie?"

"Everyone knows their job. This is yours. I know you know what the batarians are capable of and I won't have Grace find out."

"What do you mean I know? I have no idea what you're talking about, but I'll do it."

Ethan gave Charlie a confused look and looked like he was going to ask something, but he turned the look into relief when she agreed to his request.

"Keep your head down, move quickly, and check your corners."

Charlie nodded her head, changed directions, and bolted for the house; by the time she got to the door she heard the first gunshots.

"Grace! Grace!" Charlie bolted for her room first to grab her always ready backpack. By the time she had it secure, Grace and Debbie had found her.

"You coming too?" Charlie asked the woman, who was dressed in a similar fashion to herself. Charlie was wearing her usual black shirt, cargo pants, boots, and canvas jacket.

"Of course."

"Good," Charlie gave her a tightlipped smile. "We gotta move. We're going to make a stop at the armory on our way. I don't think they knew where it was, because they set down on the opposite side of the colony."

Debbie just nodded her head and let Charlie take the lead. It was a strange sensation to actually be in charge and Charlie realized that she hated it. Ethan or Ian or, hell, even Debbie was supposed to be in charge. Charlie didn't have the luxury of time to ponder what batarians were, but she sure knew what slavers were; and if Debbie or Grace captured or, God forbid, killed the blame rested solely on her shoulders.

By the time they were out the door the gunshots painfully close.

Sounds like a full-auto. Assault rifle?

Probably, be glad it's not something with more accuracy.

Charlie followed Ethan's careful instructions on their way between the houses. Debbie was holding Grace, who was being uncharacteristically silent. They stayed low and tight against the houses, when they would reach a corner Charlie would carefully lean out and check for hostiles, before signaling for them to run to the next cover. Her hands itched for a gun, but they were all locked up in the armory. The sounds of gunfire and screams were painfully loud and once she could hear both of those noises coming from inside the house they were pressed against. There was nothing she could do though so they avoided the windows and kept moving.

The last corner, before the dash across the small field to the barracks was the first obstacle they came to. Charlie could see the shadow of a man standing just to the left of the corner, she could also hear a woman crying, the unmistakable sounds of fists meeting flesh, and she could hear the laughter. It was a deep bass laughter and Charlie wasn't sure she had ever heard a voice quite that low. Charlie's blood boiled to rip the throat out of whomever's voice that chuckle belonged to. However, Ethan's lessons forced her to stay calm and keep her head. She glanced back at Debbie who was shaking, but staying silent. After signaling the woman to stay back, Charlie lowered herself to the ground and belly crawled to the corner to appraise the situation.

There was definitely a man standing at the corner, but his back was to her as he leaned against the wall and watched the other one. The other man was beating a woman who was lying on the ground. It was that bastard with the rumbling laughter that churned her stomach. He was treating the woman like she was a toy; a kick to the ribs while she down, then a jerk of her hair to force her to stand, and then slap to the face to force her back down again. Biting her tongue to prevent the stream of expletives that was threatening to slip her lips, Charlie carefully reversed her way back to Debbie.

Alright we need a plan.

Right what do we have?

We have a combat knife. The problem is that they are wearing full armor.

Where did Ethan say that armor is weakest?

Armpits, back of the knees, back of the elbows, and the throat.

Ok, so you slit the first one's throat. He's about your height and you'll have the jump on him. What about the other one?

I don't know. I don't have a gun and I can't risk him killing the girl.

You don't have a gun, but the first guy does.

Good point.

With a tentative plan in hand, she reached Debbie and silently informed her of the situation. She motioned for her to stay down, then raised herself up to a crouch. There is a huge difference between knowing that you have to kill someone and then actually doing it. There are no save files in real life; and movies and games cannot prepare you for the sensation of adrenaline flooding your system, your palms sweating with apprehension making the blade's handle stick to your flesh, and your mind constantly pouring over all of the possible flaws in whatever fool plan you have dreamt up. So much could go wrong. The first man could hear her approach, maybe the armor would be thicker around the neck than she thought, or maybe there was a third man in the house watching everything. So there was a slight pause as Charlie hid behind the house with her blade drawn. The girl's scream and wretched pleading spurred her into moving; she recognized the voice, it was Jess.

Charlie smoothly stood up behind the first slaver and in one fluid motion she sliced deep into his throat. Her earlier fears of the armor being too thick meant that she sliced too deep and her knife was now wedged in his spine, so she let it stay there as he dropped. However the thick gurgling noise attracted the attention of the second slaver. As Charlie fumbled at the catch for the assault rifle, she heard a pistol being fired behind her. Debbie was firing at the slaver. Her stance was horrible and Charlie didn't have the time to wonder where the woman had gotten a gun from.

The second slaver seemed to think it was funny, as Debbie's shots either went wide or were absorbed by his shields. He casually reached down, drew his gun, and shot Jess. Charlie knew she was out of time with trying to get the rifle clear of the body, when the laughing bastard started firing at them. She grabbed Debbie's hands that clenched the gun, pointed the weapon at the slaver, and sent the remaining three rounds into his chest. It was an awkward position as the doctor was screaming and Charlie was being rather rough with her, but she didn't really have any other options. The batarian's shields flickered and he had to duck behind the back stairs to wait for them to charge. Charlie whirled Debbie around and threw the woman behind the house near Grace with an angry grunt. The fool woman almost got them killed. If Debbie had given Charlie the gun to start with, she could have handled this situation and maybe Jess would still be alive.

Charlie was livid and not thinking clearly which was why she decided to make the next foolish decision. She ripped the rifle off of the dead batarian, unfolded it, and bolted for the stairs. When she neared the stairs she jumped up on them, pointed the barrel at the slaver on the other side and unloaded the entire clip. It was overkill and she knew it, but she couldn't bring herself to care. The batarian was now a barely recognizable pile of orange flesh.

For a brief moment, Charlie indulged in the euphoria of simply being alive. She had faced down two fully-grown, armored, women-beating slavers and she had beaten them. Insane giggles were threatening to escape her throat, when she remembered that the cost was Jess' life. That sobering thought brought her completely out of her reverie and she searched the bodies for spare ammo. At least they would not need to go to the armory. With clips filling her pockets, a bloody pistol awkwardly fitted in her belt, and her knife back in its sheath; she made her way back to Debbie and Grace. Charlie was going to give that woman a piece of her mind after they got to safety.

She found Debbie lying on the ground where she left her. Debbie Wallis' chest was a blossom of red. Grace was patting her mother's face trying to wake her up. Charlie wasted no time in sinking to her knees and groping the woman's neck to find a pulse she knew wouldn't exist.

"No, no, no." Charlie's panicked whisper broke Grace's silence and the girl started crying.

Charlie looked at the little seven-year-old who had her mother's blood on her hands and listened as sirens continued to ring and the sounds of gunfire slowly faded. She scooped the child up, settled Grace on her left hip and ran for the tree line.

Charlie didn't stop running until the sounds faded away.