The Effect of Liberation: Book 1

by ecarden

The Liberator and her crew (well, some of them) escape the dystopia of Blake's 7 for the somewhat better universe of Mass Effect. Here's hoping things go better this time around.

12. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

I do not own Mass Effect. There's some dialogue here lifted from Mass Effect 2. It's not mine either.

We're going a bit more off-canon now, as you may have noticed. As I mentioned earlier, there's no canon (or at least none I'm aware of) for the events of this period. The other main reason for going off canon is because the actual cross-over part of this cross-over (which is, I swear, coming) will negate Mass Effect 2 from occurring (the events of Mass Effect 3…well, we'll see). Since many of the characters I want involved in this story are Mass Effect 2 specific, I was faced with a bit of a conundrum.

So, why do it this way, asks the curious reader. Why not bring them in later on in the timeline? Maybe speed up the actual cross-over part of this alleged cross-over?

Because, dear reader, I want to limit the number of new people that Shepard has to meet once the cross-over occurs. There's another reason I'm sure you'll be able to spot by the end of this chapter, dear, patient reader.

Comments and reviews are always welcome.

2177 CE Kithriki Bar, Huuuge Station

The bar, like every gathering place on the station was packed to the gills with off-duty marines and sailors, Captain Mikhailovich's rescued prisoners and residents of the station, no more than half of which were working.* An encouraging sight, Shepard thought from the door, before slipping into the throng, pausing long enough to congratulate them by name, thank them for their service and buy them a drink, but not long enough to put a damper on their celebrations.

*Prostitution was a major industry on the station, and one of the few which did not rely upon piracy and the proceeds of piracy. As a result, Shepard had decided not to do anything at all about the prostitutes and to order Hassan to arrange matters so they didn't need to worry about the legality of their business. That was easy enough, as it wasn't within the System's Alliance territory. The bigger problem was handling soldiers of Project Overwatch who chose to spend their cash on those prostitutes, as they were bound by the UCMJ, regardless of the location. Shepard had decided to simply not enforce those prohibitions, though future commanders might take a different position.

Captain Mikhailovich sat on the upper balcony, near enough to ensure a certain degree of propriety and that everyone kept their clothes on, mostly, in public at least, without interfering too much with their partying. Shepard nodded to him and got a nod back before he turned his attention back to the Asari matriarch he was chatting with. Shepard chose to head for the other tiny pocket of calm in the writhing, shouting, dancing mass of people celebrating victory and survival, the one not currently talking to anyone.

The captain deserved to be part of the party, he and his had done a fantastic job, far exceeding her expectations. The rescue of the kidnapping victims before the Batarians could enslave them, that she'd expected. Planting the device to destroy the station on Loki when the Batarian shuttle arrived, and, not at all coincidentally, the Batarian shuttle, was what she'd hoped he'd do. After all, she'd ordered him to, but it was nice to know that he would obey her orders to take actions which might be construed as an act of war against the Hegemony.

What had surprised her was planting the two stage device. The first shaped charge had blown up, taking out the base and the shuttle, without disturbing the second, more massive explosive planted underneath it. The Batarian cruiser, in a fit of madness* had chosen to close in on the destroyed base and crashed shuttle, trying to close to a range where his ship's sensor's would work even through the nightmare that was Loki's atmosphere and radiation. He must have had an extremely skilled pilot to get a cruiser as close to the surface of Loki as he did without crashing.

*Unbeknownst to Commander Shepard, the Batarian captain's son had led the expedition down to collect the soon-to-be slaves.

That pilot was not good enough to handle a nuclear explosion going off a hundred feet under his ship, cracking it open along the cruiser's main gun, the spinal mounter mass accelerator that ran the length of the ship. The landing team had salvaged some few things and confirmed there were no survivors. It was a damn shame about the two dozen slaves, both Batarian and non-Batarian who'd been on the ship, but Shepard shed no tears for the rest of the crew.

She'd been concerned that Hassan would hit the roof when he heard about their addition of explosives to what he'd known the original plan to be. But when it came out that the Hegemony ship hadn't been transmitting a Hegemony IFF, or any IFF at all, he was inclined to take the view that this had been an anti-pirate operation, followed by perfectly legitimate salvage. They had no actual knowledge that the ship was a Hegemony ship when they took their actions and it wasn't like the Hegemony was going to come out and state that they'd been trading with pirates so much that the Alliance should have known it was one of their ships.

As she walked over to Hassan, sitting alone at the bar, nursing a single drink, she considered how much work he'd put into the report explaining that (and why the Project shouldn't be cancelled) to the Admiralty and the Ministry, and the Legislature and felt a little bad about not giving him a heads up. On the other hand, there were several hundred people who hadn't been turned into slaves here, celebrating that fact, so she didn't feel too bad about it.

"Shouldn't you be off celebrating?" she asked, taking the seat beside him.

He grinned at her, "Shouldn't you?"

"I think they'll have more fun without their commanding officer looking over their shoulder," she said, glancing over her shoulder at the throng. Enough of the locals had come around to viewing the Human conquest as a positive thing (or at least something not to be resisted, not with the opportunity to take their credits), that there were plenty of locals interspersed in amongst the soldiers and rescued prisoners.

"And they'll have more fun with their lawyer looking over their shoulders?" he asked.

"No offense, but most of them don't know you're a lawyer."

He snorted. "Fair point. Guess I'm just not much of a party animal."

"No, a non-party-animal lawyer?" the sarcasm was thick on the ground.

"Hey, there were some wild parties in law school! I just didn't go to them, because I was studying. Or sleeping. Or something."

Shepard laughed, glanced around the room, noting a cluster of Asari looking at them. "Well, you're not studying, or sleeping, or anything right now and it looks like you have some admirers."

He flushed slightly and shrugged. The Asari giggled. "Ok, so, there's a story about that, if you want to hear it, but it's a stupid, stupid story."

"Oh?" she encouraged.

"So, you may know that I did a good-will tour amongst the Asari, as Humanity's it-boy, what with being so brilliant and," he posed slightly, "gorgeous."

"Right," she said, flatly.

Hassan grinned. "So, my handlers thought that I shouldn't reveal that I was gay, because it might hurt my popularity."

"Ah."

"But, since I wasn't hired here for my beauty," he paused and looked at her, teasingly.

"Indeed not!"

He managed a single eyebrow raise, which Shepard found impressive and she blushed slightly, realizing one potential implication of her indignant response. A moment's thought made it clear that there was nothing to say in response to that which wasn't either insulting or inappropriate, so she remained silent.

Hassan nodded, a little grumpy that she'd spotted the trap. "So, I decided I could tell Porra over there," he jerked his head towards the cluster of giggling Asari," when she made a pass at me. Based on her reaction," the Asari glanced over at them again and blushed a darker blue, their giggles reaching truly epic levels, "I think my handlers may have been mistaken that such a revelation would reduce my popularity."

"Yeah, straight men, maybe?"

"Yeah."

She laughed. "Well, you could always go over and join the justicar's worshipers," she waved over at where Samara was seated quietly watching the party. Dozens of younger Asari had gathered around her, along with various others drawn to the grouping, or to Samara. The justicar wasn't encouraging them, nor was she discouraging them.

"I'm avoiding her until we have some answers to her questions. How's that going, by the way?"

Shepard shrugged slightly, as if she wasn't entirely aware. In point of fact, it was going extremely well, due mostly to the efforts of Yal'terra, the Quarian engineer Mikhailovich's people had rescued. He'd been spared the worst of the abuses of his fellows, as assault was ineffective through a suit and rape was almost certainly a death sentence, but he still wasn't in the best of shape. Shepard had felt bad about letting him work on the problem, but he'd volunteered. A remarkably skilled engineer, he was slicing through Parte Divi's security systems as fast as he could connect up the supercomputers and run the cracking programs.

The Quarian was on his pilgrimage, searching for something to aid the Migrant Fleet's survival. That was all fine, even if Hassan hadn't been entirely convinced that her authority to recruit included authority to recruit people from outside the Alliance. However, a few arguments later, he'd concluded that she was allowed to hire contractors, such as Yal'terra, though the pay had to come out of their personnel budget, which required her to sit through a lengthy discussion with him regarding transferring funds into their personnel budget. That was probably his revenge for making the decision without talking to him, thus forcing him to justify a post-hoc decision.

What she hadn't mentioned to Hassan was that everyone knew that Quarian pilgrims reported back to Migrant Fleet, as best they could. That had been a strikingly awkward conversation, but she'd finally managed to convince Yal'terra that she didn't much care about him talking to the Migrant Fleet, so long as his communications weren't intercepted. What they were doing wasn't particularly secret and if there was one point where the Migrant Fleet and the Alliance were in complete agreement, it was what to do with pirates. "I do not care what you tell those who should be our allies in this venture, but I care a great deal about being lied to by people working for me," had produced an honest response. She was pretty sure it had, anyway.

And her own engineers had set up a secure communications system, which her people would be watching for anything which they might actually wish to keep secret from the Migrant Fleet. Yal'terra was probably aware that they could review the transmissions, but wasn't aware that they would be monitoring it at all times. He was a skilled engineer, but not in any way a tactical, or political thinker, which was what had gotten him sold.

Apparently there was a leak between Ilium's indenturing system and the far less regulated Hegemony slavery system. Steps would need to be taken about that, but Shepard was still trying to figure out whether the leak needed to be plugged, or the whole indenturing system on Ilium needed dealing with. Instinct said something needed to be done about Ilium generally, but Ilium was no backwater which could be overawed with a couple of platoons of troops. Its own police numbered in the tens of thousands, its corporate oligarchs had substantial numbers of armed ships to ensure their trade with the Terminus systems was not interfered with and they had powerful connections to the Asari Republics. Taking on Ilium directly was simply unfeasible. At least at this juncture.

She might try to use the existence of the leak to argue against the practice of indentured servitude, however that would require a great deal of time, which could be better spent elsewhere and would put her at odds with the powers at Ilium. Better to just get them to plug their own leaks. It left a bitter taste in her mouth, however. That was what Hassan had argued for, as had Mikhailovich, but, looking back at Samara, she couldn't help wondering what the justicar would suggest and how she would react to the knowledge of what she was probably going to do.

"Keep me in the loop on that, we'll want to handle her pretty carefully. I made some inquiries, she's been a justicar for centuries and is an Asari matriarch. Major league scary if we mishandle this."

"Really? Major league scary?" Shepard teased.

"Oh, I'm sorry, do you prefer something more like biotically and physically extremely skilled, an expert in single person tactics, essentially a walking weapon of mass destruction?" he asked, pulling out his lawyer voice. Shepard grinned at him and opened her mouth to respond. "Not that that makes her unique in this crowd."

Shepard laughed. "Well, I'll leave you to lurk in the corner. I've got some work to do myself," she paused for a moment, then grabbed a drink, "but I have time for one drink."

She glanced up at Mikhailovich, saluted him with her glass, but chose to leave the man alone. The run back from Loki had been rough, with all three ships packed to the gills with scared, traumatized, and frankly, stinky passengers. The ships had been red-lining their life support systems to ensure that they got all of the prisoners out and everyone had been packed in like sardines, even the senior officer had been forced to share his quarters. Idly, she wondered if that, and the stories told under such circumstances, might have affected the captain's decision to be even more extravagant in his treatment of the Batarians than she'd ordered.

And she recalled that the matriarch he was currently speaking so intensely to that he'd missed her salute was one of the former prisoners, a leader amongst them. She trusted the captain wasn't up to anything inappropriate. Especially when the owner of Kithriki Bar joined him. One of the few Batarians on the station who'd remained after Shepard had mentioned that she was a survivor of the raid on Mindoir. She was also one of the few Batarians who didn't make Shepard's skin crawl, probably because she was exactly that, she. Batarian women just weren't seen outside Batarian homes, or at most, off Batarian worlds, all except the lowest castes being closely confined.

Of course, Shepard knew from first-hand reports of freed slaves, that confinement did not generally render them hospitable to the slaves brought into their household. Quite the reverse in fact, as many of the most brutal tortures were inflicted by Batarian House-Mothers on their slaves. But to see one out in the universe, working for a living and now, apparently, socializing with other species, if the laughter of the group was anything to go by, suggested Kithriki was no ordinary Batarian, to the extent such a thing exists. Shepard had people looking into her background, but for the moment she was prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt, though not to turn her back on the Batarian, or any Batarian, ever.

Shepard very carefully was not the first person to leave the party, but she was among the first, and grateful for the opportunity to get back to work. The mission had been a complete success, with only half a dozen casualties and no fatalities. The vast majority of the residents of the station had surrendered upon hearing the Stationmaster had died. In that sense, the shift in tactics had actually been useful, as she'd originally placed a higher priority on gaining control of systems than eliminating the leader. In retrospect that was a mistake created by her training focusing on opposing sensible militaries, where the removal of the person at the top might create a bit of confusion, but certainly wouldn't result in surrender of the forces.

A quick visit to the recovering soldiers and granting them what pleasant rewards the doc said they could take and then she was back in her office, preparing a message to the Ilium authorities telling them about their problem and that they should clean it up, or she would, using explosives.

That put her in a terrible mood, which probably affected her decision to respond to the news that they'd found the quarry Samara sought by taking the justicar there personally on the Mindoir.

2177 CE HRS Listara, Paz System

The corporate research occuring on the nearby planet of Garvug provided a useful cover to bring in all the materials they needed and a source of Krogan prisoners to be experimented on. Maelon didn't need many and hadn't asked for any more than had already been provided to him, but the location made sense. He walked down to meet the arriving shipment. The HRS* Listara was receiving supplies irregularly, in order to aid in their concealment.

*Heplorn Research Ship. Most Salarian vessels, if not in the service of the Union itself (in which case they are referred to as the Salarian Union Ship, or SUS), adopt prefixes based on the Dalatrass who owns them.

In theory they were simply a ship doing research into the damage done to Garvug during the Krogan occupation of the planet, seeking to compete with the corporate interests already on the planet. The corporate interests on planet were attempting to terraform the world to undo the damage the Krogan had caused, requiring extensive genetic engineering, though on bacteria and plants, not higher life forms. That was the niche the Listara was theoretically trying to fill.

As cover stories went, it wasn't particularly good. Fortunately, no one believed it, imagining instead that it was an STG or Dalatrass led espionage operation, aimed at the corporate interests on the planet. Supplies came in irregularly in order to prevent those same corporate interests from either sabotaging, or spying on the Listara in turn. It was irritating, but it did mean that he had an excuse to go down to the airlock and check that all his stuff had come and been unloaded, given the time before the next shipment came in.

The cover story for the cover story even had the benefit of being true. The crew the Heplorn Dalatrass had sent was indeed spying on the corporate research taking place on the planet, relatively incompetently, to be honest, as secrecy wasn't part of the goal, the Dalatrass hadn't sent her best operatives, but rather her best soldiers, in order to keep the situation under control.

It wasn't a bad idea, but it did explain why Maelon had been able to set up the systems necessary to destroy his research and/or every Salarian on the ship, without getting caught. Maelon was not STG, but he'd learned enough to outmaneuver those who thought skillful deployment of violence excused them from subtlety. He considered it, sometimes, when one of the lab techs thought they could leapfrog over his slow, steady research with a spot of vivisection. Lacking the authority to stop them, he'd simply ensured their efforts had failed and got them reassigned to janitorial. As far as anyone else knew, it was payback for trying to make Maelon look like a fool, not punishment for torture and murder.

But, the scientist had to admit, he was running up against his own problems, as the Dalatrass was demanding results. It was too early for live Krogan trials, the cost in lives would be horrific at this stage, but the Dalatrass didn't care. She had a plentiful supply of Krogan on Garvug and a ship full of heavily armed soldiers to go kidnap them. So far, he'd been able to stop that by convincing her he was a perfectionist, of course he didn't care about their lives, but if she wanted someone who'd blunder his way to a possible answer atop a pile of corpses, that wasn't him. He was a scalpel, not a sledgehammer. That argument appealed to her own sense of pride and characterization (mistakenly in his view) of herself. So it was working.

Maelon worked himself around the clock, trying to solve the problem before it stopped working. Or, worse, the Dalatrass died, in which case this whole project stood a good chance of being flushed out the airlock, along with all the personnel who worked for it, avoiding any chance of the Heplorn following the Lystheni into exile.

That was, in fact, what he assumed it was which led to the ship unloading not heavy cargo containers, but rather a wave of grenades and slugs, sending the guards and crew scurrying in all directions, or thrashing around on the ground in pools of green blood.

Some part of his mind wondered why the new Heplorn Dalatrass wouldn't simply destroy the ship, but only part of his foolish mind was obsessing over the issue of who and why, while the rest of his brain and body sensibly send an overload into the hatch and fell back towards the lab, where he would free the Krogan prisoners and head for the shuttle.

Of course, that would be a tricky proposition as he hadn't told any of them of his true intentions, so getting them off the ship without having them rip him into Salarian bits was going to be a neat trick. His mind screeched to a stop when one of the escape pod hatches blew in right in front of him and a smoke grenade popped through the hole. Maelon scampered into hiding behind a stanchion, the M-77 Paladin falling into his hand, a gift from his once-revered, now-hated mentor, Mordin Solus, the pistol was easy to conceal and had enough stopping power to slow even a Krogan.

The schematics for the ship unfolded behind his eyes and he realized he'd stepped the wrong way to make it to the lab. Now he either had to go back through the main cargo bay, which from the sounds coming from behind him was an open war zone, or through the smoke in front of him. If he'd rushed forward, the instant the grenades came down, he might well have made it through without a fight, but he couldn't have been certain they were smoke grenades, not explosives, so he didn't feel too bad about the error—

The figures coming slowly through the smoke stopped that thought. They were not Salarians. It was possible for the Heplorn Dalatrass to have hired mercenaries, or pirates, but it seemed unlikely, too much risk of information leakage, unless this was a double-cross of the pirates too. And then, of course there was always the possibility that this was, in fact, exactly what it appeared, a pirate attack. The Terminus systems were always vulnerable to such. But his time with Mordin and the STG had left him paranoid about seeming coincidences.

For several long moments, he was trapped in the world of what might be and lost track of what was. Then his mind snapped back to the present. The figures he saw were too large for Salarians, too small for Krogan, too masculine for Asari, had the wrong legs for Quarians or Turians and were wearing helmets, which probably meant they weren't Batarian, given their absurd predilection for leaving off their helmets, even when going into battle (something about the how impressive it was that they had four-eyes). It was just barely possible it was a group of Drell, but it was far more likely to be Humans, or mostly Humans, given the small number of Drell in the galaxy and the fact that they mostly stuck by their Hanar saviors. All that flashed through his mind in a moment, accompanied by information regarding Human vulnerabilities, genetic, biological and psychological, though he was far from and expert in the latter two and the former was not of a great deal of assistance in these circumstances.

He could kill his subjects now, it might be more merciful, but if he could get to them, arm them, he might be able to get them all out, get them all to safety, do something good. Steeling himself, he waited until a figure slid through the smoke, then hit it with an overload, the electrical attack froze the larger man for a moment and Maelon rushed forward into the slowly dissipating smoke. He grabbed a grenade from the man's armor, the same as the ones he'd seen earlier and dropped it to add to the confusion and fired once, into the Human's leg, drawing a scream from the paralyzed figure. The wound wasn't fatal, well, not if his recollection of Human physiology was accurate, but taking care of the man would slow their advance, far more than a copse would. As he raced towards the holding cells, he wished that he'd acquired a tactical cloak as Mordin had suggested.

Immoral and amoral the old man may have been, but he was a survivor and Maelon desperately wished he'd paid more attention to those lessons. The holding cells were built into the lab, so he could rescue his subject and his research at the same time. And the labs were designed both to keep the subjects in and any invaders out. It was the most secure part of the ship, which was why he was very surprised to hear non-Salarian voices coming from ahead of him as he approached. Terror drove him into a nearby storage closet and he automatically ran a comm check, to see where the voices were coming from.

There was another team ahead of him, their comms were secured, but not well enough to keep him out, not once he put the supercomputers in his lab on the job. He listened in, trying to figure out what was going on. Some parts of the tactical picture were obvious from circumstances, or from the passing attention he gave his own comm system. The enemy had attached shuttles to the life-pod hatches and were cutting their way in all over the ship, though they weren't having it all their own way as the GARDIAN defenses were still active on the rearward and lower parts of the ship, meaning any shuttle which attempted to approach from that direction was shredded. With the ships attached at the airlock, they weren't going to fire on one another, and neither could get away without the other releasing its docking clamps, unless they wanted to rip their own guts out.

Apparently their attackers had radically underestimated their ability to survive a straight-up fight and had lost the battle for the cargo bay, with the guards there pushing into the enemy ship, but there were teams of boarders all over the place. Despite his earlier criticism, placing elite soldiers on the ship had obviously paid off and he was prepared to admit, he was very grateful for their presence now. He would have been more grateful if they had been more immediately present, but at this point he would take what he could get.

Especially as the squad ahead of him was talking about the fact that this enemy was looking for him. They were, in fact, waiting to ambush him and capture him alive, should he show up. This was not entirely a surprise, the ship didn't have anything except him, his research and his assistants that was worth stealing, but it did at least rule out the possibility of this being a mere opportunistic raid. It also probably ruled out the Dalatrass cleaning house, as he'd be high on the list of people who most definitely were not wanted alive by her in those circumstances, though, thinking about some of the STG boys he'd known, he admitted the possibility that everything he heard over the com was intended to mislead observers, or create a record that would be used for some other purpose, like covering up his 'accidental' death.

Their communication suggested that the squad was mostly waiting in the cross corridors. Except for two inside the lab itself. The fact that they'd overcome the security on the lab was worrisome indeed, though it may well have been the idiots in the lab who let them in. He certainly wasn't picking up any communications from them, though that might just indicate they were being held hostage.

Maelon was no engineer, but he could use a computer system and his computers had enough processing power to bull their way through any firewalls and lock out any attempt at overrides, so a quick set of command locked the cross corridor hatches down and unlocked the main door at the same time. Maelon raced forward, weapon in one hand, omni-tool on the other ready to send an overload into the waiting troops.

The overload missed, which was embarrassing, but a round from the Paladin sent the troops scurrying into cover and their need to capture him alive was as good as a powerful shield. Maelon moved around the room, using the lab equipment as cover, always heading towards the pen release controls. A dozen Krogan, even if some of them were heavily sedated, would resolve this problem quickly. Then it was just a matter of making sure that resolution didn't kill him, but the truth would probably solve that problem for him. If not, then a blow from a Krogan fist would solve all his problems.

The explosions from outside the door were loud and briefly encouraging as he imagined support was coming. However, a moment's thought made it clear that it was far more likely to be the enemy troops he'd trapped in the cross corridors blowing their way through. That moment's thought was stretched over about a minute and a half as he skittered around, avoiding their attempts to either pin him, or disarm him.

Maelon finally reached the control console, which had been isolated from the ship's systems for security reasons which had seemed perfectly valid at the time and undoubtedly would seem so again at the point when he wasn't attempting to retake control of his own lab. He went down under a pile of armored bodies before he could do more than activate the controls.

Suffocating under a mass of armored Humans was not how he'd expected to die, but it was a very real possibility, until he dimly heard a man's voice shouting for them to get off him. Or at least, he assumed he was the 'frog' to which the voice, whose hostility was clear even through half a dozen layers of armor and flesh, was referring.

The Human pile slowly dispersed, hands remaining clamped on each of his extremities. The pistol had escaped his grip when he'd been tackled, which was probably a good thing, as in the tight quarters, someone undoubtedly would have been shot and he had no desire for that someone to have been him. His omni-tool was ripped off and the man who removed it shrieked as the tool shorted out and exploded, sending a burst of electricity into the man's shields and a consuming burst of plasma through his clutching hands to burn fruitlessly against the deck until there was nothing left of the device. The man's left hand ended at the palm and his right ended in a cauterized sump where his palm had been.

His screams were echoing around the room until a medic raced forward and applied medigel, which mostly quieted the crippled Human, at least in the sense that he stopped screaming. An impressive stream of profanity came out of his helmet. The medic slapped the back of his helmet and told him to shut up, on the theory that they'd get him patched up with prosthetics and clone-grown parts, he'd be good as new in a couple of months if he just shut the hell up. And he'd take a bludgeoning if he didn't. The man shut up and an officer retook control of the situation, snapping orders.

Bruised and dripping green blood from small cuts everywhere the unarmored skin of his body had impacted a rough edge of armor plate (which felt like damn near everywhere), Maelon was dragged to his feet and efficiently, though not without puns (which he didn't understand) and laughter (which he did) frog-marched him out of the lab and away from both the cargo bay and the bridge, certain centers of opposition. The laughter was insulting, but useful, if one of the STG team had been injured in that fashion, none of them would have found anything amusing for a good long time, probably not until the people responsible were dead. Whoever these people were, they weren't a team, for all that they worked together.

A shuttle was still attached to the life-pod launcher they forced him into, though forcing their way aboard had destroyed the life-pod itself. The seal wasn't very good. Emergency foam had been sprayed around, but air was leaking through the imperfect seal between the life-pod and the shuttle. For a moment he contemplated trying to break the foam seal in this brief moment when he was mostly unrestrained in order to slip through the narrow confines of the temporary airlock. He didn't. Partly because he still had moral objections to suicide (which amused him infinitely considering his lack of moral standards elsewhere), partly because everyone but him was wearing a helmet, so he couldn't take any of the assholes with him, partly because he happened to know that he couldn't break the seal with a kick, partly because he knew even if he somehow did, they'd pull him out before he could suffocate, but mostly because of his own damnable (literally, if he had followed the theistic faith of almost half his clutch-mates) curiosity.

He wanted to know who had found him and what they wanted. If it turned out to be too painful even for his self-punishing state of mind, or if they wanted something he would not give, the STG had provided methods, both artificial and completely natural, to end his life painlessly. But he would not give them that, not while it would be a victory for them. Only if his death would be a victory for him would he give it.

The shuttle broke away, somewhat overloaded with personnel. It was standing room only, except for him, as he was webbed into a crash seat to ensure him the greatest possibility of survival.

There was nothing to listen to, or see on the ride, as the shuttle lacked windows, so Maelon spent the time trying to discipline his scattered thoughts, to meet this new challenge at his best, for all that it might exceed his ability to handle even then. Walking through the corridors with his arms widely spread, each held by a large Human was awkward, but the ship he was on (he couldn't even tell if it was the same one that was attached to the Listara or if the assailants had brought two vessels) wasn't that large, so the walk was relatively quick. Somewhat to his surprise, he was taken to the bridge, not the brig.

A female Human turned to face him. She was dressed in a white and black outfit that was form-fitting and too thin to be serious armor. Unlike the Humans who surrounded him, she wasn't wearing a helmet. Impractically long black hair hung down around her shoulders. He evaluated her as Mordin had taught him. The muscle development and the pattern of callouses made it clear she was a biotic, with at least some other martial arts training. Even through their armor, he could tell that the Humans were looking at the woman's chest, or hips, the way some of his clutch-mates had looked at Asari. She must be attractive, by the standards of Humans. He'd never seen the attraction and he didn't now. Besides, there was something off about her.

Maelon was far from an expert in Human genetics, but you couldn't come up in the university system when he had without learning something about the topic, as Humans were the hot new thing on the scene when he'd been in school. Every other student had been picking at some piece of the Human genome, or the modifications they'd made, or for the less competent, medi-gel or some other Human invention. Many of the studies had been focused on inherited traits, which she was not displaying the right patterns of. Inconsistent, incoherent patterns, in fact. His eyes narrowed. Chimera. That's what she was, a degree of genetic modification wildly illegal in Citadel space. Interesting indeed.

Then his eyes widened as he realized that she was studying him to almost exactly the same degree that he'd been studying her. They stared at each other for a surprisingly long time, testing the patience of the men who surrounded him, who began to shift their wait, tap a foot, shrug their shoulders, but neither Maelon, nor the woman twitched. Finally she spoke, as she had to, as she had other responsibilities and he did not, not any longer.

"Maelon Heplorn. Cerberus requires your services."

Maelon opened his mouth to respond, but at a signal he couldn't make out, it could have been a muscle twitch, a sub-vocalization, or triggered by word choice, but regardless, images were projected into the air around her. Images of his clutch-mates. His favorite clutch-mates, going about their daily business. The images weren't real time, but from what he could make out, they was very recent.

"Do I need to make threats, or do you understand your situation?"

"I am in the custody of an organization named Cerberus, which I've never heard of, and I'm being threatened with harm to my family in an attempt to induce my cooperation and prevent me from committing suicide, even though we both know that should I do so, you will not in fact follow through with your implied threat, because the risk of exposure and drawing STG attention would far outweigh the benefit to you reputation for mercilessness," Maelon countered.

"If you've never heard of us, then how would you know what we will, or will not do?" She asked.

Maelon shrugged and his guards yanked his arms back, drawing a tiny yelp of pain from him and an annoyed look from his interrogator. "You're obviously organized and at least minimally competent."

"The fact that you haven't heard of us would seem to indicate more than minimally competent, STG Member."

He actually laughed, "By the Wheel, you Humans are so fucking provincial. There are a dozen times as many Volus as there are Humans in the galaxy. Do you know anything about the dozen different Volus movements looking for either independence from the Heirarchy, or complete assimilation into it?" the woman didn't react, "All my lack of knowledge indicates is that you're very new, very small, and very irrelevant to my areas of expertise. No one knows about everything and my interests are very far from Humanity, Chimera."

That shook her, though she hid it very well. One of the guards shook him, "What did you call her, frog?"

The woman waved a hand, "Out, all of you, leave the prisoner to me."

The guards left, the one who'd spoken dragged by one of the ones with more ornate armor, presumably a more senior member of the group, who knew his interrogator well enough to recognize her annoyance at the guards stupid attempt at chivalry.

"You're right, of course, we wouldn't bother killing them. The whole Salarian Union is tied together by STG unit ties that cross bloodlines. If we started wholesale slaughter of your clutch-mates we'd draw down a dozen units on us and I doubt even we would survive that. Not," she waved a hand and the photos vanished, "that I could admit that in front of the rank and file."

"Of course not," Maelon straightened slightly.

"Which is why I would instead destroy the ship you were just on, with all its prisoners left on board. After all, without you, they're useless."

"What would I care?" Maelon asked, trying to project honest confusion.

"Oh, is it only Krogan females you object to killing?"

Maelon didn't flinch, didn't show any sign at all that he was shocked. His complaint regarding the death of the Krogan females in his last mission to Tuchanka had never made it into the official STG mission report. The only way she would know about that was if someone on the mission had told her, or she had access to the raw records. Either was terrifying. He'd never heard of this Cerberus group, that was true, but if they had that sort of access to the STG, then it wasn't because they were penny ante.

Despite his best efforts he saw triumph in her eyes as she read something in his reaction. Or, he cautioned himself silently, so he believed.* He shrugged. "So what is it you want me to do?"

*Cross-species body language is always tricky to read, even for experts. Within his own area of expertise, Maelon was very aware of this, as he'd studied the early records of the Salarian-Krogan interaction. Even when they were allied, there had been trouble as Salarian attempts at courtesy were read as condescension and Krogan overtures of friendship, or gestures of respect, were read as direct threats. Perhaps the most famous of these miscommunications was misreading a Salarian's trembling as fear, rather than adrenaline hitting a system already running on the edge of metabolic overload. If a Salarian was trembling, it meant that his body believed that the edge the adrenaline would give him was necessary. It meant that the Salarian was in do-or-die land.

"Is that agreement I hear?" she countered, sweetly.

"Would you believe it if it was?"

"Not before you know what we're asking of you. It's nothing terribly complicated, or even necessarily counter to your interest. We want something not dissimilar to what you were working on here. Not the immortality. The Illusive Man is too smart for that. He sees immortality for the trap it is. However, the other Krogan advantages…those we want for our soldiers."

"As you want the Asari and Salarian advantages? Though the Turian ones must provide a bit of technical problem with their genetic structure? I'm sure you have other teams working on that."

"That's hardly your concern."

"No. It's not."

They stared at each other for a moment.

He broke the silence first this time. "I assume your elusive man in farsighted enough not to want his troops sterilized any more than my dear grandmother wants that for her daughters?"

The woman went even more flat and unresponsive than usual. Maelon couldn't determine what that meant. Irritation flared to life as she forced the emotion to cover up whatever he'd accidentally triggered. "It's Illusive, not elusive."

"Whatever distinction you're trying to make is not translating," he went flat himself, rather than respond to her irritation with his own.

The woman paused for a moment, then shrugged, "It hardly matters. You will not be speaking with him."

"Good to know. Now are you going to answer my question? Do you simply want additional traits, or do you want additional traits plus sterility?"

Again she went flat, but this time she answered. "Just the additional traits."

"Then I'll need my test subjects and my research, before you blow the ship."

"We can take care of that. Do we need anything additional to get your files?"

Maelon's hands flexed in moderate irritation. "Well, you need my omni-tool."

Her eyes flicked to his bare hands, though she'd noted the absence of his omni-tool when he entered. "And you programmed it to melt down the moment it was removed from you? Without any way to regain your data?"

She was incredulous. Despite everything, he laughed. Hey light eyes clouded and he managed to speak. "Sorry, you looked just like Mordin, then, when I'd done something particularly stupid."

"Well, you did—" actual, unforced irritation filled her words.

Maelon interrupted her, humor draining out of him. "No, I didn't," his voice low and venomous, as he spoke to his mentor through his captor, "you and Mordin both have causes for which no crime is too vile and which must be served, even after your death. I don't. You kill me, you get nothing and neither does my dear Dalatrass, which is why I'm willing to take the deal you offer."

"If it's still on the table, you're much less valuable if you have to redo a year of research."

Maelon shrugged, "Your call, there's nothing I can do about it, well, unless you happen to have a blank Lithobar omni-tool?"

"Why would you need that?"

"It was the model I used. Of course, I remember all my binding codes, with a blank one, I might be able to recreate it."

"Those codes are approximately ten thousand randomly generated characters," she pointed out.

"And?"

She nodded as if he'd made a fair point. "You can recall that, but not your research?"

"Of course I recall the research, but the data collected was vast and what I looked at was the results of the analyses I had the computers run. I remember those, but I have a dozen other analyses still to run. It's gathering the data which will take the time."

Her lips curled slightly, but she believed him, because he was telling the absolute truth. "I happen to have such an omni-tool."

"Really? Few humans buy from Lithodime Industries, their products are optimized for Salarian physiology," he smirked, "few humans could handle that."

She just smirked back at him.

"Interesting, I do wonder how extensive your genetic modifications are. You could be a useful test subject yourself for the back-end of the project, introducing the genetic modifications into a human population."

Her eyes were ice and wisps of biotic power flared between fingers which very deliberately resisted the urge to clench into fists. "That's not your problem, isolating the Krogan traits from the influence of the genophage is your responsibility."

Maelon shrugged, noting her apparent loss of control at the notion of being made a test subject and leapt to the wrong conclusion, namely that the woman had been a test subject somewhere before being retrieved by Cerberus, or was a test subject of the organization itself and unhappy at the reminder. That information was useful, but false, which was, of course, the whole point. "Fair enough. I'll need a tech and some time, then access to the data-port."

"Not a problem," she spoke into a comm unit and the doors opened, bringing in a pair of guards and an unarmored woman who must have been the technician.

"Take him to engineering. I'll send the omni-tool down to you," she spoke to the tech, ignoring Maelon, as if his words had offended her.

"Excellent. Oh, since I will be talking with you, what should I call you? The evasive woman?"

"Miranda will do," she extended a hand, a deliberate olive branch.

Maelon took it without a second's hesitation, but neither of them believed they had a real deal. Figuring out how to get out of their hands was going to be a great deal more difficult than with the Dalatrass's troops. Still, as Mordin always said, 'Challenge fosters growth.' The only question was what direction would this challenge force him to grow in?

2177 CE SSV Mindoir, Dakka System

"Anything interesting in this system?" Shepard asked. The trip had been horribly dull. The sight of the Mindoir, broadcasting her full ident freely, had turned one hijacking into a headlong flight that had outpaced the Project Overwatch ship. But that had been when they'd made use of a main relay and dropped into the last system, before the FTL cruise to the Dakka system and discharge the drive core mad they still had another cruise before they made it to Chalkhos and Samara's target. Coming along had seemed like a good idea at the time. After three boring days and with another week to go, she was wishing she'd sent Samara off with Captain Mikhailovich and Hassan rather than coming herself.

"I've got a standard repeating Come Save Me* from a shuttle. Looks like a freighter is responding. Or, has responded, about fifteen minutes ago, correcting for light delay," the scanner tech said.

*Come Save Me, is how spacers refer to the standard Computerized Safety Message beacon installed on all ships constructed within the Alliance. It activates automatically under preprogrammed circumstance, which novice spacers might easily trigger, meaning that any experienced spacer has seen dozens of such warnings, most of which were the result of people skipping a step in their flight checklists.

"Is it near our discharge point?" Shepard asked.

"No more than a light second out."

"Pull the freighter's registration."

"It's the IMS* Trafficker** no known criminal violations listed in Citadel space, but it hasn't been anywhere near Citadel space in the last two decades."

*IMS stands for Ilium Merchant Ship. This is the standard registration for ships which expect to trade in both the Terminus and Citadel Space, both because it's extremely cheap registration, with minimal regulation and because Ilium's own position as interface between the Asari Republics and the Terminus provides some degree of legitimacy.

**This name was an accurate translation, but it didn't have all the right implications, as the Batarian name which was being translated didn't have quite the same negative implications, of smuggling and illegality.

Shepard nodded. "We're broadcasting as the MSV* Mallum, right?" Hassan had almost had a fit about that, but when she agreed to ensure that the registration was shifted back to the SSV Mindoir before launching any attacks, he acquiesced, especially after seeing the difficulties flying under their own identity caused.

*Merchant Space Vessel.

"Yes, commander. Are we planning to intercept the ship?"

"I think so. Lieutenant," she turned to the pilot, "plot a course which gets us to the discharge point, but also gets us close enough to that ship to be able to have a conversation and maybe pay them a visit."

"Aye, aye, sir," the pilot acknowledged the order.

"How long until we're in position?"

"Two hours, commander."

"I'll put together a nice boarding party and a nasty one," she muttered to herself. "You have the bridge, XO," Shepard said with a sloppy salute to the senior lieutenant who ran things shipside as she went out and shot things.

"Aye, aye, sir," the lieutenant said, but she didn't take the command chair, instead, she very loudly asked the scanner tech where the shuttle had come from, before Shepard could make her escape. It was the nicest possible way of letting a superior officer know she was about to take action without asking a necessary question.

"Unclear, sir. No additional ships are showing up and our records show no recognized colonies. Though pirates, slavers and smugglers have been known to use Pragia, the fourth world, as a stash point. That would be my best guess, lieutenant."

"Understood," the lieutenant sat down in the command chair.

Shepard took in the new information and gave the XO a sharper salute and went in search of Hassan, to put him in charge of the nice boarding party. It took longer than she expected, because he had an absurd tendency to question everything and he really wanted an explanation for why they were bothering with this. He was not inclined to accept 'because I'm bored,' as an answer, so Shepard went with the argument that these were either good people trying to rescue folks who might well be pirates, or who might be innocent. If the former, they would need help, if the latter, it was all to the good that Project Overwatch make allies amongst the good people of the Terminus. Alternatively, if they were bad people themselves, the people they were rescuing might need rescuing again.

Samara volunteered to go along with both boarding parties, for all that Shepard could tell the justicar wanted to go on to their destination. Given the woman's usual impressive unreadability, it was equally clear that whatever was wrong was unusual. The justicar hadn't chosen to explain what her target had done, but it had to be fairly terrible, especially given what her engineers had reported finding in her previous target's files. The experiment on sentients necessary to perfect the weapon he'd used to incapacitate the justicar and her escort had produced a number of corpses and as many people rendered into vegetables.

On their closest approach, Shepard informed the ship that she was sending over a boarding party to assist with rescue efforts. The ship attempted to argue that that wasn't necessary, but as the Mindoir had switched registrations immediately before making the communication and had revealed all its concealed weaponry, which the Trafficker was well within the range of, they chose not to resist and they were too deep in the gravity well to escape.

After a moment's thought, Shepard attached herself and Samara the nasty boarding party, leaving command of security for the nice one in Lieutenant Jennifer "Jennie" Rycroft's capable hands and sent both shuttles out. The lieutenant had worked well with Hassan previously, even if she found his methods annoying, they seemed to work effectively together. Shepard had quite a bit of confidence in the lieutenant as they'd gone through N-School training together. The lieutenant had been one of the first she'd selected for Project Overwatch, as she was a solid non-political officer who'd been trapped in a dead-end posting on Earth, for years.

Shepard and the nasty team, geared up with the heaviest weapons on the Mindoir, were met by the scruffiest looking Turian Shepard had ever encountered. The woman's fringe was unpolished and untrimmed, growing in jagged edges and her uniform was so covered in old stains that Shepard couldn't tell patches from original fabric and the ship patch was obscured. The shift in body language as Shepard's troops secured the area around the airlock was fairly amusing. At first the Turian had clearly been intending not to be impressed by mere soldiery, but upon seeing Shepard and Samara, the woman's body language practically screamed fear as her eyes slipped from the Bastion of Elysium to the Asari Matriarch.

Her voice didn't shake, much, as she demanded that they withdraw, stating that they had no right to be here. On the other side of the ship, Hassan was doubtless making some argument about why they had a right to be here, probably something about them having been granted permission, even if such permission had been induced by the implied threat of being blown up. Shepard would have usually simply taken the view that the presence of a squad of heavily armed soldiers was all the authority she needed, but with Samara right beside her, she concluded that a little disingenuity was necessary.

"We're here to assist in the rescue efforts," she explained.

"There aren't any survivors! There's no help to be offered! And the shuttles are legitimate salvage!" the Turian's exclamation points were as obvious as her terror. She intended to continue on along that line, but the announcement system screamed to life in a manner which suggested it hadn't seen much use in the last few centuries.

"All personnel, as a courtesy to the System's Alliance, we are going to show them around the ship and the salvage and corpses. We have nothing to hide, what with everyone on the shuttles being dead. It's a real shame that the survivors tried to hijack our ship and we had to defend ourselves, but it's hardly our fault and we have nothing to hide. So don't resist and answer any questions so we can just get back on our way."

The captain's voice had the rumbling tone of a Batarian, which, quite naturally put Shepard's teeth on edge, as did the very obvious attempt to get everyone on the same page.

Her own comm system squawked in her ear. "Commander, I've gained the cooperation of the Captain. I'm heading to the bridge to pull the records of the rescue."

"Pull their personnel records as well. I want to know how many people are supposed to be on this ship and where they all are," Shepard ordered.

"Yes, commander."

"Let's start with the shuttles," Shepard had noticed the plural that the locals had been using. Only one shuttle had been spotted, but it had been screaming for help, missing a second, more controlled shuttle was entirely possible.

"We took them into the cargo bay."

"Lead the way," Shepard ordered.

The Turian did not disagree, as Shepard was surrounded by enough firepower to simply blow her way through ship and crew alike until she found what she wanted. The ship was in terrible shape, with cluttered corridors, what appeared to be bloodstains and a combination of battle damage and a complete lack of maintenance. When Shepard asked, the Turian claimed that none of their boarders reached this area, which made the battle damage a bit of a mystery.

The cargo bay was a disaster. There had most definitely been a battle. Three cargo containers were shattered, two by grenades and one by some sort of heavy weapon. A glance around revealed a ML-77 Rocket Launcher lying beside one of the corpses. The bodies had been pulled into a line, half a dozen Humans all killed by weapons-fire, but showing signs of injuries that had been treated before the battle. Shepard moved forward to examine them more closely, waving the squad's medic forward to join her.

Samara moved away, examining the room, recreating the battle in her mind as the Turian blithered on about what had happened. From what Samara could make out from the battle damage, she was, broadly speaking, telling the truth. There were clusters of fire where the ship's crew would have taken cover and some specks of blood. The crew of the shuttle hadn't gone down without a fight and the fight had happened in the cargo bay, rather than within the shuttle-craft as she would have expected if the ship's crew had launched an unprovoked attack.

She slid into the shuttle to confirm that and saw a standard shuttlecraft with room for eight passengers and two crew. Six was running light, but since she didn't know where they'd come from, she couldn't determine what that meant. A glance around revealed signs of occupancy in six of the passenger seats and the pilot's seat. Odd that. A less experienced eye wouldn't have noticed that the blood marking the seats was not smeared from casual contact, but pooled from someone sitting in each seat for a long time with minimal medical treatment. It was possible one of them had got up during the flight and taken another seat upon returning, but none of the bloodstains were in exactly the same place.

While Samara was examining that, Shepard had finished examining the bodies. They were wearing good quality clothing, light armor in fact. White and black, with a patch she'd never seen before on their arm. It might have been a ship badge, or a corporate one, but her HUD didn't identify it, so it was from the Terminus of the Traverse.

"Did you lose anyone?"

"Alucius was caught in the blast from that damn missile launcher. He's in the waste disposal."

"Why didn't you dump them?" Shepard asked.

"We wouldn't do that—" the woman's voice faltered under Shepard's state and continued more honestly, "not when their might be a bounty on their head, or a reward for returning them to whoever they work for."

"Fine. Justicar, are you ready to head over to the other shuttle?" the Turian grew even more anxious at the sound of Samara's title.*

*That wasn't terribly surprising as more than a millennium of alliance and the Asari cultural dominance had left the Turians and Salarians with a surprising amount of familiarity with Asari culture.

"Yes, commander," Samara said, walking out of the shuttle.

"This one came in with only one Human in it. He was dead when we got the shuttle open. His head was bashed in," the Turian explained, leading them to the other cargo bay quickly.

Samara kept her eyes on the Turian and stopped suddenly when the woman's body language changed from 'scared because she's surrounded by heavily armed strangers' to 'terrified that those heavily armed strangers are going to find something.'

She glanced around, walking slowly as everyone else stopped and stared at her. Her own eyes remained on the Turian as she circled the group. There wasn't much room, because the cargo bay was packed with cargo containers. The others stared at her, but didn't ask any questions for a moment. When the Turian's body language announced that her terror had hit a peak, Samara raised a hand, biotics flared and the container ripped open.

Samara saw the flash of a blade, held by a large Human, near the throat of a smaller, bound, Human. He opened his mouth, "Back off, or I'll cut her—"

Samara moved before he could finish his threat, let alone carry it out. Her hand still raised, it flared with biotic power and she pulled the knife out of his hand. The blade hit the bulkhead behind Samara with some force, as the pull which would have gently lifted a sentient, ripped the knife across the way at significant speed, though not enough to have been a threat to any of the armored soldiers.

He lifted his hands, stepping away from the smaller Human and Samara stepped forward, sliding between the man and the woman. He backed further away and she grabbed his shirt, powered by fury and hundreds of years of exercise, hurling him out of the cargo container.

Shepard had moved so she could see into the cargo container about the same time as the voice and the knife had come out of it. Her dark skin paled slightly in rage as she spun on the Turian, while two of her guards grabbed the large Human who'd slid out of the cargo container.

"What the ever-loving fuck?"

"Okay, that looks bad," the Turian said, stepping back in the face of Shepard's tone. "But there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for this."

"Right," Shepard's voice was low and cold. "One moment." She didn't kill her external comms, as she called up Lieutenant Rycroft. "Jennie, take the ship."

The Turian tried to object, but was silenced by a knife-like glance from Samara, who was examining the prisoner, keeping her armored body between the restrained girl and the onlookers. After a moment's thought, she tried again. "Yes, there was one survivor, but she attacked us just like the rest. We didn't kill her because she's just a child. And we didn't tell you about her because we didn't know how you would treat the poor child."

"Very convincing." The Turian made a move to speak and Shepard spoke over her, "except for the fact that she was tied up naked. That's what makes your whole story a little suspicious," the venom in her voice pushed the Turian back another step, and another until she was stopped by a bulkhead.

Samara examined the prisoner. She clearly hadn't reached full maturity, though it was difficult for an Asari to estimate the age of other sentients; her hair was cropped shorter than most of the other Human females Samara had seen, to expose a port at the base of her spine. The metal implant was scratched and an array of small scars surrounded it, awkward, clearly self-inflicted as she attempted to remove the port. Her arms were restrained, as one would with a biotic, which the pattern of muscle development and callouses made it clear she was. Thin and wiry, the girl's other scars were worrisome in number, but not the sort you would expect to see on an abused child. There were some medical scars, straight lines from scalpels, centered on the most likely spots for Eezo to migrate in a Human female's body, but others were like Samara's own scars. Injuries inflicted by biotic combat. Unsurprising on an Asari Justicar, surprising on a Human child.

The girl was clearly awake and pretending to be asleep, an attempt at cunning which was doomed to failure by Samara's experience and her own inexperience. Samara was certain of that, for all that Human body language wasn't a perfect analogue for the Asari, the girl was simply not a good actor. For a moment she considered speaking to her while she was still restrained, but given the girl's obvious mistreatment, talking to her while she was restrained seemed like it would send the wrong message. Samara completed her examination in a few moments, then turned her attention to the girl's bonds.

After puzzling out the restraints, Samara unbound the girl, whose eyes snapped open the moment she was unbound and struck out at her, biotic power swirling around her fist. The power was a warp, intended to rip Samara apart, but the justicar reacted instantly, summoning a warp into her own hand to ensure that like energies deflected one another.

The girl's other hand launched a powerful blow at Samara's midsection, automatically launching a throw, which would have detonated the warp had the attack landed on her. Samara summoned her barrier instantly and the hand which had blocked the warp wrapped itself around the girl's free hand, holding onto her as the throw bounced harmlessly off her defenses, not even managing to stagger the justicar. A barrier leapt up around the girl as well, intending to absorb that explosion. Samara was impressed. Not with the tactic, as it was a standard one for any biotic adept, but everything happened in no more time than it took the woman to launch the combination of physical blows. The sheer speed of the attacks was better than most matriarchs could have mustered, and the girl had as much power as Samara herself could have mustered.

The justicar pulled the girl to her feet and flicked her further into the cargo container and away from the conflict outside. The whole thing was over before anyone outside the container knew anything had begun. And the girl paused for a moment, as she began to realize that Samara was not affiliated with the man on his knees behind her, held at gunpoint by armored soldiers. Soldiers not in the armor of those she feared and hated. Or hated and feared, to put the words in the right order.

Torn between shielding the girl and clearing her path to the exit, so it was clear Samara didn't intend to keep her trapped, she took two steps out of the way, and kept her hands extended from her sides. "They will not hurt you," she said in her most calming tones. Her words were entirely true, if it was necessary to harm the girl, she would do it herself. It would be horribly unpleasant, but Samara had done harder things when it was necessary under the Code.

"That's why! She's a powerful biotic and used her clothes in her biotic attacks on us!" the Human burst out. The Turian gave him a look of such utter contempt that Shepard almost didn't bother to respond to that stupidity.

"You know," she said, lifting a hand and letting biotic power flare around it, in full view of both members of the ship's crew and their former prisoner, "I've only been a practicing biotic for a little more than a decade, while Samara has what, a millennia of experience as a biotic?"

"Somewhat less, but closer to that than nine hundred," Samara said, eyes not leaving the trembling, naked girl in front of her. The trembling was from cold, not fear, she was sure of that, mostly because the girl was staring at Samara with something approaching awe. Probably because Samara hadn't even been moved by an attack which would have flattened most adepts. Or, it could have been her age, non-Asari sentients often found that extremely impressive, or disconcerting. In her maiden days, several of her lovers had found it extremely off-putting that she was older than their parents.

"I've never used my clothes in biotic combat. Have you?" Shepard asked, her voice low and cold.

"No," Samara's gaze never wavered.

"I've never even heard of anyone doing that. Have you?" Shepard asked, rhetorically.

"Yes. But it was an ancient martial art which did not survive the development of modern body armor composites and is currently only practiced as a matter of tradition," the girl's eyes flared with interest at the discussion of a biotic art she was unfamiliar with. That was useful to know.

"Huh. Interesting," Shepard said. "Now, let's try this again. Do you want to tell me what happened, or should I just ask her and write you off as a bunch of lying, kidnapping assholes, in need of a bullet in the head?"

Words spilled from the Turian's mouth as Samara slowly approached the girl, hands spread, clearly empty, but prepared to defend against any strike. She was careful to leave the girl a way out, if she wanted to take it. When she was close enough to converse casually, she politely asked the girl's name, offering her own.

The girl's gaze was suspicious. "They call me Subject Zero," she shrank back slightly at those words.

Samara caught the nuance, just in time, "And what do you call yourself?"

The girl didn't look down, but Samara caught a hint of nervous defiance and a hint of just plain nervousness as the girl confessed to the name "Jack." She seemed to expect some sort of reaction from Samara to the name, but since she didn't know why, or what was expected, she simply nodded politely.

"Jack. I am Samara, a Justicar of the Code. They are soldiers with the System's Alliance. Can you tell me what happened?" Samara was surreptitiously beginning to look for some clothing for the girl, but the cargo bay was understandably short of outfits and everyone on her side was wearing armor which simply couldn't be handed over.

"Here? These assholes jumped me on the way off the ship. They were all soft words until I unlocked the hatch, then…" her voice drifted for a moment, then strengthened. "There was no biotic juice on the shuttle,* so I couldn't refuel after fighting my way out of that hellhole," she waved in the general direction of downward.

*This was true. The shuttle had a full set of standard emergency supplies, including rations. Unfortunately, they weren't anything like the food which Jack was used to and they were stored behind the universal symbol for emergency supplies, which Jack did not know. Indeed, her reading skills were generally weak, though they were strong enough to hit the buttons for emergency takeoff and autopilot. That training was back when they were thinking about using her as an agent, as well as a guinea pig. That plan had died, along with most of her non-biotic training and all forms of personal interaction in the first escape attempt.

"What hellhole?" Samara asked, barely controlling the urge to shoot a dark and threatening look at the crew of the ship.

Footsteps behind her and the shift in Jack's attention warned Samara that someone was behind her. She automatically stepped between Jack and the approaching person, and turned to face the entrance. It was one of the soldiers in Shepard's escort squad, carrying clothes looted from the crew quarters on Shepard's orders. A woman, because though Shepard didn't know why the girl was naked, she had her suspicions and no survivor of Mindoir could fail to be aware of how to deal with a suspected rape survivor. And not sending a heavily armed man to her was high on the list.

The woman tried to close the gap, but a hand from Samara brought her up short and had her pass over the cloth bundle. The justicar did not approach the girl, or toss it to her, as either might trigger an automatic and violent response. Instead she simply extended a hand holding the clothing and waited for Jack to decide how she wanted to get the clothing.

The girl approached slowly and snatched the clothing, then pulled it on awkwardly, always keeping one hand free to attack. Someone else approached from behind them. Samara turned again, still positioning herself as Jack's protector.

"We pulled the memory cores of the shuttles. They're from a base down on Pragia."

"We will need to deal with that," Samara said instantly, though the tension of delaying her mission was clear in her body language.

"It needs to be dealt with," Shepard said. "Do you want to go back there?" she asked Jack.

"Never," Jack snapped, as she finally got fully dressed. Her short cropped black hair had gotten stuck on the collar of the shirt, which she'd handled by simply pulling quite hard and ripping out a couple of hairs, to which undeniable pain she simply hadn't reacted. That fact was somehow almost as disturbing as the fear in a girl who'd reacted to being tied up naked with fury, not fear.

"Do not worry, Jack, you can stay on the Mindoir, while we handle it," Samara said.

"Justicar, is there some reason you have to go down there?" Shepard asked politely.

"We can't let them get away with what they've done," Samara said, furiously.

"Of course not, but we have two ships and two squads. From what we found, the facility was mostly destroyed before the flight. One squad of troops is plenty. Besides, we said we'd get you to Chalkhos."

"You only have one ship," Samara countered.

"No, we took this one, remember when I told Jennie to do that? It's ours now."

"Oh," Samara considered that under the Code. Confiscating the property of criminals was acceptable. Indeed, most of her own weapons had been taken from criminals who attempted to kill her. Usually they were dead, however. On the other hand, she could feel Jack's presence behind her. She had no doubt that they were criminals. Loss of their ship was the least of the punishment they deserved. A point she intended to make, forcefully, when the opportunity arose. And as for any survivors down in what Jack referred to as the 'hellhole' there would be consequences.

"You really don't have to do everything yourself, Justicar."

"Indeed not. I have spent so long working alone. It is…pleasant to work with honorable warriors."

"It is indeed, Justicar" Shepard agreed, her gaze on the justicar.

"Call me Samara."

"Of course."

"Will you come with us, or lead the team down to the planet?" Samara asked.

"I'll let you know," Shepard said, thinking.

That question had been bothering Shepard since she realized they'd need to split their forces. The Mindoir had to take the prisoners and should remain here to deal with the base on Pragia. Though it was supposed to be basically uninhabited, the command ship's heavier weapons might well be needed if it was not, while no ship based weapons should be needed when finding a single criminal, no matter how much Samara was concerned about her.

She wasn't going to fall into the same trap Samara had, of believing she needed to do everything. From what Jack was now explaining to the justicar, it seemed clear that the facility was intended to house biotics, so Jennie might do as well as Shepard could, perhaps even better. More crucially, given that all those who had assaulted the ship were Human, it seemed that this was not merely a strategic problem, but quite possibly a political one as well. Especially since Shepard had a hard time believing that any of the independent colonies had the ability to put together an operation like this.

Fortunately, she had someone forced upon her for political reasons, who could handle that. She would head to Chalkhos, handle the criminal, maybe do a bit of studying and training with a thousand year old Asari justicar, maybe try to help out an abused, but powerful adept, maybe do some good, not just destroy some bad…

2177 CE Chalkhos

Jack had been left on the ship, over her strenuous and repeated objections. The girl did not like to be left alone and she did not view the crew of the ship as interesting, or acceptable company. Shepard was generally leaving the girl in Samara's hands, because the justicar's patience was infinite and Shepard's was not.

Samara had explained at some length why Jack wasn't going, then she'd explained to Shepard a different reason. Specifically that their target was apparently able to influence people when they got close enough. Jack under the influence of a centuries old mass-murderer was not something any of them wanted to see, especially as Shepard was somewhat embarrassed to discover a pubescent girl was more powerful than her.

The discovery that their target was Samara's daughter made Jack's absence even more explicable, at least to Shepard, who'd watched the aged justicar training the girl. Shepard had tried to get the woman's location out of what passed for the planetary government, with no success, however, when Samara arrived, the locals had instantly provided her all the assistance she requested. It was hard to tell if it was fear, or awe which inspired their obedience, but Shepard couldn't deny its effectiveness.

Their target was holed up in a small farming village. They had to use the shuttle to get there as the planet had a distinct absence of infrastructure. It was not a subtle approach, so it was not a surprise that a greeting party met Samara and Shepard as they approached. It was something of a surprise that the entire village was Asari* and that they had turned out to the last woman, if some of the tiniest amongst them could even be called women, rather than girls.

*Though Morinth took her prey from all different species, when she took followers amongst the Asari, she insisted that they mate only with other Asari, because she hoped to create others like her.

Shepard had not truly believed, not in her bones, the power an Ardat-Yakshi could have over her followers. It seemed like something out of a bad fantasy story, mind control, vampirism, magic…

But seeing the throng there, armed with farming instruments, prepared to kill, or die for Morinth, even against a justicar, especially after seeing the rest of the planet damn near kneel at Samara's booted feet, now she could believe it, though not feel it. Not until Morinth stepped out onto a raised platform in the village square, clearly visible, though the Asari wall of bodies prevented any move towards her, even the charge Shepard had been considering before she felt Morinth's presence.

The force of the lives the woman had taken gave her an astounding presence, as if she was denser than the surrounding universe. "You know, mother, dear, you might, just might have been able to get through these," her hand waved in casual patterns, "my worshippers, on your own. Still, you were wise to bring an ally, but so very, very foolish to bring a Human," Morinth's attention turned from Samara to Shepard and the vanguard shuddered under the weight of that regard. "See me. Know me. Love me. Obey me. Kill her."

Shepard shuddered, hands twitching toward her weapons, despite her best efforts to stop them and she managed a single word. "Fire."

Morinth's beautiful eyes narrowed for a fraction of a second and then her head exploded, releasing Shepard. The throng of her worshippers turned as her body hit the ground, as the snipers Shepard had dropped off on the way in were too far out for them to hear the simultaneous shots that shattered barriers, flesh, bone and brain alike. Every single soldier who was sniper qualified had been brought and dropped off. The remaining few troops were guarding their ship. Heavy sniper rifles, fired with full targeting assist at a stationary target, were not going to miss, even at the range of half a mile out to two miles that the soldiers were firing from and neither barriers, nor shields, nor helmet (had she been wearing such) would stop such a barrage of fire. She would have stood some chance of survival had they not been coordinated to fire in sequence, based on proximity, to ensure the rounds impacted the target at the same time, so that the first impact didn't knock her out of the way of the remainder.

Shepard had intended to let Samara talk to her daughter, try to talk her down, or just get say goodbye. That hadn't happened. The heavy pistol came off her hip and halfway up towards the throng of worshippers who had now been denied their goddess. Samara stopped Shepard's rising hands and then walked forward. With Morinth dead, they just gave ground, in shock. Samara ignored them completely, kneeling before her daughter's body. Shepard saw no hesitation as the justicar produced an inferno grenade, slid it under the woman's body and walked away. She was careful to make sure that none of the shocked throng of worshippers were within the blast zone and stayed clear. Everything by the book, Shepard thought. Then she corrected the thought, no, it was everything by the Code.

Her dark eyes didn't leave her daughters corpse, even as the grenade went off and melted it to ash, leaving not even genetic residue, nothing that would permit anyone to gather genetic material of an Ardat-Yakshi.

Shepard had agreed to destroy the body, if Samara wasn't able to, in order to prevent exactly that threat, but there was something wrong with that…

The Ardat-Yakshi were ill. Why wouldn't every medical institute in the galaxy have samples of their DNA, so that a cure might be worked on?

That question was driven out of her mind by the shriek of a distraught child as the force of Morinth's personality dissipated, turning the mob into just a group of frightened people, who scattered from corpse and heavily armed strangers alike. Some frightened children were shielded by their parents, others, braver, were pulled back by parents equally protective. Whether it was standard behavior, or reaction to how close they'd come to sacrificing their children in service of a monster, Shepard couldn't say.

Shepard stood in silence, not impatient, mostly because when Samara stopped staring at the spot where her daughter had been, she'd have to talk to the justicar and she really wasn't sure what to say. Shepard had done the "I'm sorry your child died under my command," letters and conversation, but it was a bit different when she hadn't died under your command, but at your command.

"Let us leave," Samara said.

Shepard couldn't not ask, her early conditioning was better than Jack's, but had left indelible marks on her, despite the impact of marine training and N-school training, she was still a polite woman and so, despite the stupidity of the question, it just slipped out. "Is there anything I can do?" She had managed to not ask if Samara was all right, which was what her instincts suggested.

"Shepard. What can I say? What do you want me to say? I just killed the smartest and bravest of my daughters. There are no words. I will try another time. For now, show mercy on a broken old warrior and let us leave."

Shepard nodded and they went back to the shuttle in silence. A series of sharp looks kept the soldiers silent on the way back to the ship.

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