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.

14. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

I do not own Mass Effect. Events are beginning to speed up now, as we race towards the actual meeting of canons.

2177 CE SSVMindoir, Caleston Rift Cluster

"How long will it take for a message to get to Arcturus?" Hassan asked the communications officer.

"If we give it highest priority? Ten days."

"And as many back?"

"Unless they send a courier vessel, that could get back here as fast as five days."

"Even if we head for the Merchant's Union Station?*"

*The Merchant's Union handles the traffic in the Terminus which has to get where it's going, as they have contracts with all the main mercenary groups. They're more expensive than a tramp freighter, but far more reliable. They are a major player in the Terminus, one of the few which spans the territory of multiple warlords and gangs. They also proclaim themselves a court of universal jurisdiction over the laws of space.

"Yes."

"Thank you," he said and left the bridge.

Lieutenant Jennifer Rycroft intercepted him on the way back to his quarters. "You have a moment to talk?" She asked.

"Just writing reports, I'd welcome a distraction," Hassan said, opening the door and waving her into the small office that he'd set up in his entrance hall.

"Thanks, Hassan," she said, politely waiting for him to sit down and wave her into a seat across the desk from him.

"What's up?" he asked.

"I'm putting together my own AAR* and, well, I'm just trying to get my head around what we saw down there. It's hard to believe…"

*After Action Report, outlining the actions taken and reviewing decisions made.

"We have vids, recordings, documentation, prisoners and eight rescued kids. Be a bit hard to fake."

"I wasn't actually questioning if it was real," Jennie said, leaning back in her chair and waving a hand dismissively. "Just hard to believe people could do that. And to kids."

Hassan nodded, "Maybe I'm just jaded from law school and working the criminal side of things. Nothing convinces you people are gross like studying torts, except working on criminal cases."

"So what are we going to do about it?" Jennie asked.

"File our reports, get the ball rolling. What else? Unless you know something about where this…Cerberus is operating?"

"We do have to trust the chain of command," Jennie agreed.

Hassan shrugged. "I didn't say that."

Her eyes narrowed slightly. "Well, whether we trust them or not, I guess we don't have any other choice."

"Not on what our first step has to be," he muttered, looking down at his filed.

"Hassan…what are you talking about?"

He looked up and hesitated for a moment, then shrugged. "Well, it won't be a secret. My report states then I intend to release the full information regarding Cerberus's activities on Pragia, unless I receive countermanding orders."

"There's no way command's going to let this get out. They'll be running an internal investigation and won't want to warn these bastards we're coming."

"Which is why I will be releasing the information in twelve days unless I'm ordered not to," Hassan explained.

"What does that cha—" the light dawned in her eyes and she paused for a moment. "Can a message even get her from Arcturus that fast?"

"Not when you include the time it'll take for the message to get to them," Hassan said, pulling up the report and adding the timeframes and checking the listed date was correct.

"So, you're just going to unilaterally reveal this to the galaxy? How the hell do you think the Citadel Council's going to react that?" Jennie asked, rising to her feet and looming above him.

"I doubt it will come to that. Twelve days is less time than it'll take to get to them. They'll have time to release the information themselves and when given no choice, they will do so rather than be publically embarrassed in that fashion."

"So you're strong arming the entire Alliance?" Jennie asked, leaning over his desk, hand coming to rest on the old style wrought iron picture frame, which surrounded the physical photograph of Hassan and his family.

"I prefer to view myself as playing the role of Jiminy Cricket."

"Don't you think you should talk to the Commander about this first?" she asked, plaintively.

"And put the responsibility for this on her? No. Better to maintain plausible deniability. A silly mistake by a bureaucrat who failed to understand the realities of modern communications. Unfortunate, perhaps fire-able, but no more than that. And, unlikely to rise to any sort of formal action, as it would be extremely difficult to explain once they'd released the news."

"Command doesn't need to do anything formal to transfer your ass to a Lunar training base where you can spend the rest of your career dealing with trainee idiocy!" Jennie argued.

"And? I've been in for almost ten years. If I want to retire, I give my notice and I'm out within the month. After that…well, I've got a standing offer from the Polari University School of Law on Thessia," he laughed quietly, "and from the way some of the Asari have been staring at me, I might also do very well as an importer of gay porn on Thessia. There are worse fates."

"Seriously?"

"Probably not. They've got the extranet there. So, I'm sure they've got plenty of free porn, of all varieties. How did we get on the topic of porn? I'm going to be lucky if I don't have to defend myself in front of the MJ-CRC.*"

*Military Justice-Civil Rights Court.

"I meant are you serious about flushing your career down the disposal for this?"

"I'd hardly have told you if I wasn't," he said with a grin. "I'm not looking to be talked out of it, if that's what you're thinking. Now, if you have an actual reason I shouldn't do this. Something I haven't considered over the last week, I'm happy to hear it."

"Well, did you think of the fact that this Cerberus is probably not going to be real pleased with you and they've got the resources to build a base out here, kidnap more than a hundred kids from Alliance space and secure a base with twenty guards and twice as many researchers. You think they won't decide to blow your brains out?"

"No, I don't think they will, as the moment the information goes out, killing me becomes a thoroughly pointless, even counterproductive endeavor."

"Fair point," Jennie straightened, suddenly cheerful. "I'm starving, come on down to the mess, join me for lunch and we'll see if we can come up with an idea that doesn't end with you flushing your career down the toilet."

"I really don't think that's necess—"

"Come on," she punched him in the shoulder. "Humor the woman who saved your life a dozen times." The shift from the aggressive, but collected soldier to this amusing and playful woman was surprising. It might be that she'd caught the reference to his sexuality, that sometimes produced a response somewhat akin to this one, but he didn't think so. The same training and instincts he used when questioning a witness niggled at him.

He covered his concern well, laughing as he stood up. "I don't remember it being a dozen times."

Jennie stepped aside and waved him past her. As Hassan passed, he felt something else, instincts that he'd honed on Akuze screamed at him and he reacted. As he jerked forward, he felt a hand punch the side of his neck, knocking him to the ground. Jennie's arm had tried to go around his throat, but his sudden movement had turned that into a blow. The lawyer snapped upright as she approached, swearing, dropping the injector she'd been holding in her free hand.

She'd been going to incapacitate him, then inject him, he concluded in an instant as he swung to the side to avoid a savage kick that hit the wall where his chest had been. The second he moved, he realized he'd been herded back towards the desk and away from the exit. He got his hands up in time to absorb the pair of fast, light blows that drove him back against the wall. There was no way he was going to win this fight, not against a graduate of the N-School. Especially as his brain was focused on the question of why exactly she was trying to kill him.

For an instant, he considered trying to bull rush her. He was bigger than her, heavier, though not by all that much. Brain overriding machismo, he instead feinted forward and retreated into his bedroom, keying the door shut and locked, just in time. The door wasn't going to stay shut for long. Jennie was no engineer, but she wouldn't have to be to dump omni-gel and processing power into overriding the lock. It was just a civilian model as the engineers hadn't gotten around to updating the internal locks to military grade and it was low on the list of fixes for the converted pirate ship.

He brought the omni-tool to his mouth and keyed the comm system to life, then swore to himself as it gave him only static. He'd automatically turned on the privacy shield when he went into his quarters. It was intended to ensure security for his meetings and maintain privacy for any privileged conversations he had.

A quick glance around the room and he saw the comm unit by the door was still live. He had to override the privacy settings, but that was just a matter of inputting his password. The unit was connected directly to the comm officer, who would use it to send out announcements in the event of an emergency and it could work the reverse direction as well, which would save him, so long as the comm officer wasn't in on this. He heard the door starting to whine as the lock fought the hack.

There was nothing to lose and everything to gain from making the attempt. If nothing else, it might leave a record that an investigator would find and, as he'd dodged the injection, an investigation was likely. Especially since his body couldn't simply disappear, not onboard ship. There would have to be an explanation and whatever one Jennie had planned would no longer work.

He opened the channel and talked over the comm officer. "I need security in my quarters. Lieutenant Rycroft is trying to kill me." There was a sputtering response, but he just kept going. "This is not a joke. Security is needed immediately. Armed and armored. She is N-Series. Be prepared to—FUCK—"

The door opened and Jennie swung the picture frame like a club, almost catching Hassan's hand and smashing the comm unit. The picture frame was the only sturdy, unsecured object in his office, warships not being big on things which would turn into ballistic missiles if the gravity failed. Hassan dodged back, caught his foot on the edge of the bed and fell back, bashing his head on the wall, sending sparks around the edge of his vision.

Jennie closed in and Hassan managed an instinctive kick that drove her back a step, though her instinctive block brought the picture frame hard enough against his leg to leave him numb from the knee down. He managed to make it halfway to his feet and snapped into a roll across the bed avoiding the other wall of the narrow sleep cubby. With a little distance, he tried for the exit, only to have to dodge back to avoid Jennie's blow. The marine had claimed the doorway, blocking any escape, but if she tried to advance, he could retreat to the other side of the room, the bed providing a useful barrier.

Or at least, it did until she hit the control for the bed, which had been by the comm unit, but not smashed with the comm unit and sent the bed back into its recessed compartment in the wall. Hassan swore silently, hands rising into a defensive posture as he tried to remember the basic self-defense training he'd had a long time ago and wished he'd paid more attention to. At the time he'd taken the view that it was irrelevant given firearms and body-armor. That had proven true up until this exact moment.

Realizing that his combat skills were insufficient for the task at hand, Hassan opened his hands, spreading them. "You want to talk about this, Jennie? Tell me what the problem is. You can't seriously be Cerberus, right?" It was the only thing he could think of, though there was little thought involved, it was merely a matter of words spilling desperately out of his mouth. "You aren't the type to go around kidnapping kids. You're a soldier, not—"

She ignored his attempt to talk and instead moved forward, launching a quick series of blows. Hassan, hands spread wide, was almost defenseless. He managed to evade the blows that were slowed by the heavy cast iron picture frame, unfortunately Jennie used that to drive him into the wall and a nasty series of blows from her left that left him stunned and stumbling.

Hassan responded by lowering his shoulder and rushing forward, Jennie dodged, dropping the picture frame and grabbed Hassan by the shoulders as he passed, kicked him behind the knee and yanked him back, landing him flat on the ground, picture frame digging into his back. With her main weapon lost, Hassan curled into a tight ball, arms shielding his head.

Blows rained down on him, powerful kicks trying to force him to uncurl, but he held tight, until the blows stopped, then it occurred to him that if she went for the injector, this might still end very, very badly for him. Uncurling cautiously, he looked up and got arms between himself and the stomping kick that would have flattened his face. Instead it simply knocked him backwards, but before he could get into a protective curl, Jennie was on top of him, sliding into place so her legs locked his shoulders down and her hands found his throat, choking the life from him.

Hassan arched and struggled, bringing his legs up, managing to knee her in the back, which didn't do a damn thing, as he lacked sufficient leverage to do anything except help her press down on his windpipe. He tried to jerk himself upwards, but lacked the muscles necessary to do a sit up with a hundred and fifty pounds of woman sitting on his chest. It occurred to him, odd though thinking it was at that moment, that he really wished he'd taken the mandatory exercise period more seriously. He'd focused on cardio, assuming he'd be able to run away from his enemies, which was very definitely not the case with her kneeling atop him. All his efforts accomplished was to drive his throat further into her grip. The whole time his hands had been pounding on her thighs and stomach, but without being able to move his shoulders, the blows were almost completely ineffective.

It takes a surprisingly long time to choke someone to death, especially as Hassan's writhing did get him a little slack every few moments, enough to get a fraction of a breath. But Hassan's vision was blurring and his writhing, mostly futile struggles were weakening. He did not see his life pass before his eyes, a fact for which he was obscurely grateful. Nor were his thoughts resting on any particular unfinished business, or family, or love.

They rather circled the rather prosaic point that this was bloody embarrassing. He was being murdered by a comrade-at-arms, in his own bedroom, helpless and a failure. Some part of him tried to be ashamed that that was going to be his last thought, tried to think of family and friends, tried to feel guilty about not thinking about them, but his overwhelming irritation at the situation ate it all as darkness ate his vision, mind, self…

As the darkness swallowed him, the door slid open and two fuzzy figures swung through, grabbing Jennie, one on each arm and ripping her off him.

Hassan curled up, coughing and gasping as his lungs and brain tried to gather enough oxygen to make him functional again.

Jennie for her part was fighting hard against the pair of armored guards. They had not, in fact, brought weapons, which was good, as Jennie managed to break out of their grip, but without any ability to penetrate their body armor, even her superior skill wasn't much use. Her hand had sought the common weapon anchor points, to no avail. If they'd had guns, she would have taken them, but as it was she couldn't hurt them at all.

It took a little longer for them to corner her than for him get up, though the lawyer had the sense to not interfere with combat amongst the actual soldiers. Finally they managed to pin her down, as another pair of guards showed up. Finally they hauled her off, one of them on each of her limbs, carrying her struggling self to the brig that was occupied by the pirates and the surviving Pragia staff members.

Hassan was in the medbay, getting the doc to examine the rapidly purpling bruises on his throat and, quite frankly, the rest of him. So it was that he was sitting in his underwear when Lieutenant Aliyev arrived to ask what the fuck had led the senior marine onboard to attempt to murder the JAG Officer. The naval lieutenant was not pleased to discover that Hassan didn't know (suspect was not the same as know). And he did not believe in internalizing that frustration.

The doctor, no shrinking violet, made it through the cursing and the turning bright red, but when the lieutenant added throwing things to his repertoire he ordered the older man out of his sickbay until he'd finished treating Hassan. One look at the doc's stern gaze and the lieutenant wilted slightly and went off to yell at his own subordinates.

Patching Hassan up didn't actually take that long, most of the time was spent lining the various scanners up with the lawyer's various visible bruises and running quick check to make sure there wasn't any unexpected (or expected, for that matter) internal bleeding or swelling. There wasn't. A quick check of the injector, retrieved from his quarters at his request,* revealed a fast acting and fast metabolizing neurotoxin, which, when combined with a tiny dose of medigel would have made it look like Hassan had had a stroke and healed up the tiny injection site wound, leaving apparent natural causes as the cause of his narrowly-avoided death.

*As a JAG Officer, Hassan was outside the chain of command and had no authority to issue orders.

The unpleasant medical part over, it was time for the unpleasant professional part to begin. Hassan took his time dressing (once he'd gotten back to his quarters, as taking his time dressing in front of the very nice, but far too serious young doctor would have sent entirely the wrong message) sliding into his most formal court uniform, ribbons properly arrayed, the high collar hiding almost all of the bruises, save one livid one, left by her thumb, right above his Adam's apple. The insignia of his service went above the ribbons, claiming him for an attorney. A man of words and thought. So really, the fact that he'd nearly gotten murdered in his own bedroom wasn't embarrassing at all.

He glanced in the mirror and tried very hard to convince himself that was true.

After giving it up as a bad job, he grabbed the completely decorative cap, which he would be carrying everywhere, as you didn't put it on indoors, but had to have it with you, and tucked it under his arm.

Having done all that, he promptly reconsidered. This was no trip to court, nor was it visiting a client, he was not going to speak with her as a lawyer at all, but rather as a member of Project Overwatch. And so, he got dressed for the fourth time that day, feeling more like the clotheshorse his cousins were so disappointed that he was (usually) not, and walked down to the brig in his everyday utility uniform.

The soon-to-be-former-Lieutenant Rycroft had a cell* to herself and she sat on the cot in the corner of her cell, neither beaten, nor broken, for all that her wrists showed bruises from where she'd tried to rip soft flesh from unyielding gauntlets. Glistening sweat stood out on her arms and neck. It wasn't from their fight, though he'd sweated plenty from that, no, while he'd been figuring things out, she'd been exercising, keeping herself in top condition. She was waiting for her moment, certain it would come. The cells were well designed and two marines had been assigned to guard the cells. One was standing outside her cell at all times, as Lieutenant Blanchard, formerly her XO, was taking no chances with an N-Series officer.

*The Mindoir, formerly a slaver's vessel, actually had extremely high quality cells. It had not taken much work to make them Alliance standard quality. In fact, most of what had to be done was the removal of various devices illegal to use on prisoners under Alliance law. Neither Pavlovian conditioning by electric shock, nor gravity torture was accepted Alliance practice and the less said about the…distasteful placement of "security" cameras, the better. Still, they were high quality and completely transparent, the better for potential buyers to view the "product." A prisoner's privacy rights were strictly limited, but still, this was pushing it, and so Hassan had given strict orders that no one without business in the brig should be there while it was occupied and to keep the cells separated from each other with privacy screens.

Hassan was pleased to see the marine was keeping his distance and had not activated the system which would let him communicate with the prisoner. He did not think she had any allies amongst the other soldiers, or crew, else she would have used them to cover for her, but at this particular moment, he didn't trust anyone else and wouldn't until he distributed the news about Cerberus to the universe at large. The more he'd thought about it, the more certain he was that it was the news that he planned to reveal Cerberus's Pragia operation that had prompted the attempted murder, for all that she'd had the means to carry it out with her before hearing of it. Then again…

Hassan turned to the guard and requested a full medical check on the kids and prisoners they'd pulled off Pragia and a full technical check on their quarters/cells. The guard passed that along to Blanchard, who asked why that was needed. Hassan argued that if Rycroft had been prepared to kill him on Cerberus's behalf, then what about the actual evidence of their wrongdoing? The marine was irritatingly contrary, but he had no desire to lose anyone under his care, or explain that to the world and his superiors.

A push of the button and he could talk with her. After circling the cell once and noticing that she didn't react, at least visibly. "What is your rank?" He asked, trying to catch her off guard.

"Rycroft, Jennifer. Lieutenant. N-4. Serial Number—"

"That's for when you're a prisoner of war. Are you stating that you are at war with the Alliance?" He interrupted her, cool and precise.

She winced at that, then recovered. "No, I was just answering your question."

"How helpful. Now, as a usual matter, this investigation would be carried out by internal security and you would have an attorney of your own. Unfortunately, the commander has not agreed that the Project needs more than one attorney," he flashed a smile at her, as if they were just shooting the breeze. "And, obviously, regretfully, I cannot represent you. Do you wish to hold off on this discussion until an attorney can be sent to us, or you can be sent to a station with more than the one attorney?" He was sure of the answer of that. Having been willing to murder him to prevent his actions, she had to be willing to talk to him to attempt to prevent his actions. Even a tiny chance was better than no chance. And in so doing, she would reveal information, she would have to.

There was no need for her to know that he'd already sent the report in. There was no reason to tell her that there was no way to change his mind any longer and there was every reason not to. The die was cast, but he might still gain information in what was obviously going to be an ugly internal conflict with this Cerberus.

"No need for lawyers," she snorted and rose with a fluid grace that he couldn't help but compare to his own stiffer movements. A smirk crossed her lips, "Well, no other lawyers."

"I'm so glad to hear that." He let sarcasm edge his voice with acid. "When I asked about your rank, I meant your rank in Cerberus." There was lengthy pause, so he chose to fill it, "Ms. Rycroft." The absence of her rank was a deliberate slap in the face.

"I'm still a lieutenant in the Systems Alliance Navy!"

"Which, again, wasn't what I asked. Or is it just that the big, bad N-4 lieutenant doesn't want to admit to being a rifle carrier for a terrorist organization?" His mockery was aimed at provoking a response.

"Cerberus isn't a terrorist org—"

"No. You're right. At least terrorists announce themselves, their motives and their actions. You cower in the shadows, kidnapping children."

"I didn't have anything to do with that! I didn't even know they were claiming to be Cerberus until we were down there!" She stepped forward to the cell wall. "Cerberus is all about protecting humanity, they wouldn't have done that to other humans."

Hassan's dark eyes narrowed. "You don't see the contradiction there?"

"Huh?"

"If they're all about protecting 'humanity' then of course they'd be willing to do that to other humans, if it served that purpose. A bit of infant sacrifice, for the greater good."

"I'm no recruiter, or lawyer and you can twist me around with words all you like, but I know what I know and I know what Cerberus is and what they've done."

"Convince me," he said, hiding the smirk that wanted to rise there. A part of him wanted to argue further, to point out that they could either be as successful as she believed, or framed, as she believed, but probably not bothm but that wouldn't get him the information he wanted.

She didn't, but she tried real hard, giving him a hell of a lot of information on how Cerberus recruited and what at least some of the rank and file believed, as well as more than a few hints about what she'd done for the criminal organization and how she'd been recruited.

Then, resisting the urge to tell her that she was a dupe, or that he'd already taken the action she was trying so hard to convince him not to take, he said he would consider it and walked away. He didn't think she had any allies still amongst the crew, but better not to trigger a violent response if he could avoid it. Hassan's bruised throat and equally bruised ego wanted him to tell her how he'd tricked her, how he was going to see Cerberus destroyed, but that would be tactically unwise. Better to let her think she was convincing him, take full advantage of their control over her knowledge of the outside world and manipulate her to gain more information.

A fact he ended up having to explain, repeatedly and at some length, first to Lieutenant Blanchard, then to Lieutenant Aliyev, then to his own files and reports, to ensure that the ship crew, the marines and the rest of the Alliance wouldn't think he was actually open to being convinced to join Cerberus.

Fun stuff.

2178 CE Knossos

Liara T'soni was depressed. The article was mostly done, and the last two rounds of external review had produced exactly opposite feedback,* so she was ready to send it off. The thing was, that though the dig was as productive as could be hoped for, it provided none of the information about Prothean society she truly wanted. Every time she worked on an article, she ended up having to review the newest literature on the topic, only to discover that everyone's version of Prothean society was simply a reflection of their own desired utopia. Salarians almost uniformly imagined it as an advanced scientific paradise, Turians a mighty military empire, Asari an endless peaceful union, Volus a wealthy corporate state and on and on. Every time she read such things she worried that her own theories were merely shadows of her own desires and her life's work was mere fiction.

*Not merely in the substantive comments, but also in things as minor as word choice and which pictures to include. Nothing was quite as infuriating as being told to expand a section you'd just summarized, in response to other comments. Well, at least at this stage in the Asari maiden's life, nothing was that annoying. Life experience would change that, but not for a while.

Instead of providing more edits, she was playing with her biotics, sending little sheets of tracing paper flying around the room, chasing one another. When she'd accidentally shredded about a dozen sheets, she gave it up for a bad job of a distraction and went with her other usual means of dealing with a bad mood.

Dear Mother,

It's been a month since my last letter. I apologize for taking so long to write, but I've been finishing up my paper and been handling a few minor administrative problems with the dig crew.

Liara paused for a moment, thinking about that. She didn't want to restart the argument she'd had with Benezia about the dig staff. Her mother's insistence that Liara be in charge of the dig as a condition of her funding it had created a great deal of strife amongst the dig's academic sponsors. Eventually, rather than oppose the powerful matriarch, they had backed down. And then, every Asari intended to be on the team had backed out rather than follow a pureblood maiden.

Liara had been left with a group of exchange students who didn't have any objection to following an Asari four times the age of the oldest of them, who was top in all her classes. Especially since they didn't have any idea that pureblood was an insult, as to most of them it sounded complimentary.

It did leave them rather short on muscle, as most of the senior Asari were adepts of significant skill, while most of the transfer students were…students of no particular combat ability. Benezia had responded by calling in a favor and a company of Hierarchy engineers had been sent to set up a landing station and listening post, coincidentally keeping an eye on Liara and her fellow archaeologists.

Liara had not particularly wanted to be in charge of the dig and responsible for the lives of two dozen fellow archaeologists.* However, Benezia had taken the view that her daughter needed to begin preparing to lead, at least as long as she completely refused to follow any of the traditional paths a maiden might follow.

*Not even Benezia's influence was enough to get Hierarchy soldiers assigned to the command of an Asari maiden, or, really, anyone who wasn't a higher level Hierarchy officer.

And what Benezia wanted, Benezia got.* Still, there was no point having the same fight in slow motion over a dozen letters, so rather than complain about the fact of her authority, she complained about the substance of those she had authority over, which would resonate with Benezia as the matriarch rode herd on a massive network of voters and affiliated commercial activity.

*This was Liara's theory, at least. Though an unbiased observer might point out that Benezia had very definitely not wanted her daughter to be a, as she put it when very furious, frigid academic.

Farn Po has continued to send files to her clan, apparently she believes that there is some economic value to the information. Or she's just trying to convince her clan that there's economic value here. I appreciated it that you had the Turians intercept her communications so I can review them. There's no sign that she's found anything without reporting it, but you were correct, the precaution was wise.

The Volus was a good archaeologist, for all that she worked through half a dozen drones, rather than using her own, clumsy, suited hands. This had earned her a great deal of trouble at University because most of the professors had taken the view that hands, with their useful nerves were key to properly handling a dig. Liara was rather more encouraging, because the Volus worked at twice the speed of anyone else and recovered as many artifacts as you would expect. Honestly, most of the archaeology professors could be incredibly archaic, viewing even the technology of their youth a millennium ago as far too advanced to have any place on a dig site.

Proctis Dection has continued to be distracted. The quality and quantity of his work has continued its decline. His attempts to cover up the failure by constantly hanging around me in order to increase his visibility are painfully obvious. Especially given the presence of so many other Turians, but he just hangs around me.

He obviously realizes how close he is to being sent back to the university, as he can barely manage to string together a sentence when we speak. He can't even look me in the eye while we talk. It's getting ridiculous. And every time I say that we have to talk, his subharmonics make my inner ear ache and he runs off. Honestly, some people just aren't up for fieldwork. There's nothing wrong with it, but you'd think a Turian would understand not doing things you aren't suited for.

Liara would not figure out that Proctis was actually a perfectly competent field archaeologist when he wasn't distracted by the woman who he was absurdly obsessed with, until she fell in love herself. Which, despite her age, was still quite a while in the future.

Our supply problems resolved themselves, however, so all is basically under control.

I love you mother,

Liara T'soni

Liara would never learn that her mother had had a word with an Eclipse commander and that was why the raids on her supply shipments had stopped.

The archaeologist glanced at the message, then sent it off before she could talk herself into revising it further.

2178 CE Citadel, Qrund's Table

Urdnot Wrex dug into the food that had been dumped in front of him. What the Table lacked in ambiance it made up for in ambivalence towards its customers' business. And the food was just like that he'd gotten at home. Barely edible, even for a Krogan and almost, but not quite free.

There was not, in fact anyone from Clan Qrund running Qrund's Table and hadn't been since Wrex had had a disagreement with the original owner about a century back. The Krogan had completely failed to take the hint when Wrex had referred to himself as a battlemaster and instead chose to try to lean on Wrex, claiming he still had to pay for his meal and the half dozen shots of ryncol he'd ingested before he could leave. Everyone knew that you paid as you went at the Table, but the big Krogan had thought Wrex was drunk enough, or dumb enough, or weak enough to pay twice. He was not.

The smarter patrons had scattered when Qrond had grabbed Wrex's shoulder. The dumber patrons had fled when Wrex shook it off and shoved the other Krogan away. The deaf patron didn't notice until they actually crashed through his table and sent his food sliding across the room. He took himself out rather quickly after that.

They'd ripped the place apart as they fought. Wrex was too drunk to get his biotics working and the Citadel had been on high security after a then-recent incident between Volus Separatists and a pair of Spectres had resulted in three docking bays and half a district being blown to hell and a weapons ban on the Citadel. That left them with hands and kitchen utensils. It was damn hard to kill a Krogan without serious weaponry. Even without weapons and about fifteen sheets to the wind, Wrex was winning the fight, having taken away several knives and planted them in the other Krogan's body, trying to aim for organs, though given the double-vision he wasn't always successful.

They'd still been scrapping with each other when C-Sec had turned up and Qrond had been so lost in blood rage that he tried to continue the fight, despite the presence of half a dozen armored C-Sec officers, armed to the gills and sent to deal with crazy Krogan.

They'd shredded the poor dumb bastard and kicked Wrex off the Citadel before he even sobered up. He'd woken up on a ship heading to Tuchanka and had to jump ship, 'borrowing' a shuttle, in order to avoid going back there. Ever after, when he'd been on the Citadel, he ate at least one meal at Qrond's table.* Partly because it continued to be the only source of Krogan cuisine on the Citadel, partly because he owned it these days and partly as a reminder that Citadel assholes would blow away any Krogan, any time, given the slightest of provocations.

*At least when an employer, or Wrex himself, had arranged for him to be permitted to be on the Citadel, as those times when he was "unofficially" on the Citadel, he did not go anywhere where Urdnot Wrex would be expected, or might be recognized.

Wrex had taken a seat in the corner, placing himself under the screen playing the Citadel news, and giving him a clear view of both entrances, as well as placing him near enough the back way out. Above him, the Asari newscaster was talking, at a volume he could barely hear above the sound of his own chewing.

"Systems Alliance Elections will begin in thirty hours and the last of the Citadel News proprietary polls are in! The big story is the collapse of support for Terra Firma. Never a major player in Human politics, it was, however, the largest of the minor parties. It's believed that this is a result of the recent revelations about Cerberus. Despite the plea issued by Terra Firma's press office that they should not be "tarred with the same baby-stealing brush as those terrorists," voters are not seeing a significant difference between the two organizations. Breaking the results down by colony—"

Wrex grunted and got up, whacking the screen hard enough to force it to jump channels.

"This is Geeya Mydo for Thessia News Service, I'm standing on the farming colony of Trilvun, deep in the Terminus Systems. I and my camera crew have been embedded with a unit of mercenaries out of Eclipse for the past three months. Two days ago, they accepted a contract to defend the colonists as they were evacuating in the face of assaults by an organized band of Terminus pirates known as the Silent Sun. Yesterday the pirates launched an assault," video sprang to life behind the pretty Asari reporter, showing disorganized pirates assailing fixed defenses manned by drones and mechs, while commando teams of Asari and Salarians hit the attackers from the sides and behind. Wrex paused, slightly impressed by the skill the other mercenaries showed. "Though the Eclipse mercenaries easily outmaneuvered the pirate ground forces, the real victory was secured," the video snapped to space, a pair of small warships flanking a larger transport, facing down the small Eclipse transport/warship, "in space, with the intervention of a task force from Project Overwatch." Half a dozen motley ships appeared in the far distance and began decelerating, firing as they came, clearly the video had been edited to appear clearer to an audience unfamiliar with the realities of space combat, but the pirate ships coming apart under a salvo of fire was difficult to misinterpret, "destroyed the pirate assault force. The Project has gained a massive increase in funding and responsibility following their revelation of Cerberus activity in the Terminus systems and has gained allies and bases throughout the Terminus Systems through actions such as this. For the next six weeks, I'll be embedded with the Project's Task Force Sectoid as they continue to—"

Wrex whacked the screen again and a Salarian replaced the Asari. "Meridian Medical's stock has continued its collapse. The company, long dominating the Citadel emergency medical equipment market, has been losing market share ever since the introduction of medi-gel. Its most recent attempt to get the substance banned has just been dismissed, leaving the company in desperate straits, despite its high level ties to the Asari and Salarian governments. Emergent Emergency Technologies, Meridian's main competitor issued a statement that what mattered was saving lives not—"

Another whack brought a human male into focus, brilliant smile dimming as he transitioned topics, "Lieutenant Rycroft will not attend her court martial today, as she was found, dead in her cell. It's unclear whether the suspected Cerberus agent committed suicide, or was poisoned by her alleged colleagues. Either way, her death while in the custody of the Systems Alliance is another indication that the criminal organization has infiltrated the very—"

Wrex casually ripped the screen out of the wall and sat down. "Humans," he muttered, "suddenly they're everywhere. Hairless pyjaks."

"I'd have thought you were in favor of anything that destabilized the current situation, battlemaster," a female voice said from behind him.

Wrex did not jump, nor spin, despite the fact that he hadn't heard the woman approach, nor had any of his electronic detectors warned him of her presence. Still, he turned slow and smooth, "Vasir. What's the job and what's the pay?"

The Asari vanguard smirked up at Wrex. "All business these days, eh?"

Wrex gave her a toothy* smile. "When a Spectre of the Council accuses me of wanting to destabilize galactic society, I choose not to answer, because they wouldn't let me back on the Citadel for a century after the last time I crushed a Spectre's skull," he leaned over her, "and the Citadel's got the best shopping around and a merc needs bleeding edge gear, unless he wants to be the one bleeding."

*When a Krogan shows its teeth, it is likely an aggressive, not a friendly gesture, though given that aggression and friendship are less opposed in Krogan society than in most other civilized societies, it can be both.

Tela didn't flinch, or retreat from the looming Krogan. Regardless of the fact that Wrex was pretty sure he could take any Spectre he'd ever met, he had to admit, he'd never seen one flinch, or cower. "You sure you want this to just be business," Tela teased. "We've certainly had some fun in the past."

"Indeed, I don't think I'd ever blown up an insurance company's headquarters before. The irony of that amused me. And I was absolutely hysterical when I discovered our attack have been categorized as an act of the Goddess, leaving them no recompense." Tela's lips tightened slightly. "Oh, were you talking about something else?" He asked innocently.

"I guess not. The job's simple. Someone has been stealing money from the Citadel Scientific Grant Foundation. We traced the funds to Centurion Bank. They won't answer any questions and are hiding behind Ilium's bank secrecy regulations. Now, usually I'd just go in and take the records, but Centurion does money laundering for those Asari who like to dabble in the Terminus trade and if I go in like a Spectre my shockwave will trigger more than one biotic explosion."*

*An Asari expression roughly equivalent to kicking over an anthill, or opening up many cans of worms.

Wrex's grin turned more genuine. "But if there was just, say, a bank robbery, well, that's the risk of being on Ilium?"

"Exactly," Tela purred, hand coming to rest on his arm. She was teasing, mostly, for all that if he'd ever said yes, she would not have backed away if he chose to now.

"I'll need the details."

"You'll have them."

"And a million credits."

Tela's laughter was the peal of a golden bell. "This job should pay for itself."

"In that case, what do I need you for?" Wrex countered, unmoved by her, obviously false, amusement.

"To get away afterwards."

Wrex's laughter was the growling of an alpha varren. "Do be serious."

"Fine. How's this? I'll buy whatever you steal at face value, no discount for the fact that they'll be as hot as an O-class star,* sound like a deal?"

*The hottest type of star, exceeding 30,000 degrees Kelvin.

"Add in expenses, mine and the pay and expenses of a team of three other mercs, and we have a deal."

"Done," she shook his hand politely. His grip tightened, testing her with his strength, as he always did. She grinned as she matched his iron grip with a barrier protected one.

Wrex gave an actual smile and released her. "We've bartered, now we feast!" he sat down and pounded on the table for more food.

Unappetizing slop was dropped in front of him and the seat that Tela could take. She winced and sat heavily opposite him. During their first meeting, she'd tried to weasel out of 'sealing the deal with a meal,' as he'd insisted on putting it, only to be met with what she'd mentally dubbed the Krogan death stare. After that, she'd just made sure she swallowed a handful of anti-nausea meds before meeting with him and toughed it out. But this time would be different.

Wrex lifted the large plate and let the entire mass slide down his throat without having to taste it, much, or feel its slimy texture, mostly. Then the Krogan swallowed the glass of ryncol, burning away the flavor and the texture alike. He smirked at her and waited.

Tela slid a spoon into the muck and lifted it, then paused and smirked right back at him and put the spoon down. "No thanks, but, this, I'll take" she said, grabbing the second shot of ryncol the waitress had delivered and swallowed it down in one gulp, enjoying the burn and the buzz without the unpleasantness which usually would have come from an Asari drinking ryncol, thanks to the meds she'd taken before coming to this meeting. She coughed once, despite herself and concluded with a whispered, choking, "this, thanks."

Wrex stared at her, actually shocked. "I thought—" he began, far more weakly than he usually did.

"Really? Because I thought you made everyone eat that slop in order to deal with you, but then I run into Liopa Bin and she flat out laughs when I'm complaining about you. Apparently she's hired you at least three times, never having to choke down barely edible food!"

After a moment's pause, Wrex decided laughter was the best available response to the furious Spectre. He could have tried to explain why, specifically his extreme distaste for the majority of Spectres, being Turian or Salarian, making it too risky to indulge his sense of humor, lest it end not with nausea, but with explosions. Given that any real explanation was likely to provoke the vanguard in front of him into a charge, which would certainly destroy his restaurant, though probably not him, it just wasn't worth it. Instead he just laughed until her stern expression began to fade and a few coughs of laughter escaped her rigid control. When he actually fell out of his chair, she began to laugh more seriously.

Wrex managed to pull himself back, most of the way, upright, with two hands and main force, but even braced on the table, his shoulders were shaking slightly. A slight roll and summoning ugly memories and he managed to stop laughing. Mostly. With a smile on his face, he said, "All right, now, let's plan a bank robbery. Should be fun!"

2178 CE Eden Prime

"Williams! Front and center!" Lieutenant Marlene Chigiyal was a former drill sergeant and had the voice to prove it. In fact, the soldiers under her command had a whole series of jokes dedicated to the woman's alleged inability to speak in a normal speaking voice.

Corporal Ashley Williams moved as fast she could through the underbrush towards the lieutenant's location. Eden Prime's thick backcountry forest was a mix of native vegetation and invasive species humanity had accidentally unleashed, resulting in barriers that were impassible to anyone without an M29 Grizzly. Though the lighter M35 Mako's had been temporarily deployed on Eden Prime, after one had had to be airlifted out due to getting stuck, the APCs had been transferred to other fronts, leaving the 2nd Frontier Division with the older, heavier, Grizzlies. That suited Ashley just fine. Certainly better than a pain in the ass lieutenant with a stick up her ass about Ashley's last name.

"Get lost, corporal?" the lieutenant asked acidly as Ashley broke through the overgrowth, sheathing the combat blade she'd blunted on vegetation.

A sharp salute and a "No, sir," were her only response, despite a desire to test her combat blade's remaining edge on the shorter woman's face.

"Of course not," Ashley didn't lower her gaze from the point she was staring at approximately ten inches above the woman's head and so could not see, though she could hear the sneer in the other woman's voice. The old Williams curse. But Chigiyal wouldn't have called her over just to snipe at her, not in the middle of a search and rescue. "And that's good, because you're going to need quite a bit of navigation skill to join 2nd squad's search of the swamps."

"Yes, sir," Ashley said, grateful for the fact that unlike her officer, she was wearing her helmet and so her expression could not be seen.

In either mercy, or sadism, Chigiyal briefly explained that 2nd squad had managed to drive their Grizzly into their own sergeant in an attempt to pull the mired man out of the swamp in which he had become stuck. The sergeant was mostly fine, thanks to his body armor, but his leg had been really stuck and he'd fractured his hip, requiring his squad to pull him out of his armor and medivac him. Ashley was to take his place in searching the horribly unpleasant grid least likely to hold the missing teenagers they were searching for.*

*Chigiyal had not assigned Ashley's squad to that squad originally because despite her clear attempts to drive Ashley out of the marines, she knew that Ash's 3rd squad,, mostly consisting of recruits fresh out of basic, were really not up to conducting a search and rescue mission in that terrain. Indeed, 2nd squad's more experienced troops hadn't been up to it. Swamp search-and-rescue not being something that they generally had much call for.

Ashley did not move. Chigiyal had previously reamed her out for leaving without being dismissed, even in circumstances where the dismissal should have gone without saying. Of course there was no winning with an officer in a bad mood, let alone one who was deliberately out to get you, so the lieutenant's response to this courtesy was to demand to know why Ashley was still there.

A ground-eating jog took her towards where her HUD told her third squad was clustered. A snapped order over the comm system had them spreading out back along the search grid again, each scanning for heat or motion at the widest range their suits could manage, as the 212th was short on drones and VI support and it had all been assigned to the more likely zones and areas where the simpler programming of the search and rescue programs could function, unlike the densely wooded marshland that blocked scanners and ordered deployment.

A quick set of orders and her armor synched with her new squad's, bringing up suit and medical information for her half-dozen* charges. Some were showing higher BP than she would have expected from so minor an engagement. But that was probably just concern over seeing one of their own injured, due to massive stupidity. Few of the New Eden garrison had ever seen anyone injured, even so minor an injury as a leg broken so thoroughly that bone was sticking out of the flesh. Or, as the privates had said on a comm channel they believed unsupervised, "the sarge's leg looked like a fucking drumstick, with the bone sticking out!"

*A full combat squad consisted of a sergeant, two corporals and seven privates, but 3rd squad's senior corporal had been promoted to sergeant over in the 211th, while the injured sergeant was being escorted back to the base by the junior corporal, grateful that the lieutenant was giving him an escape from the swamp and a private to drive the Grizzly.

The next three hours were horrible. Fortunately her helmet's seals held up, unlike poor Private Otto, who she was forced to send back after his filters failed and he began to vomit uncontrollably from the sheer stink of the Eden Prime swamps. Another of the soldiers had to almost carry him out, leaving her even more shorthanded. The swamps were infested with gasbags, their low hanging tentacles scrapping through the stagnant water, scooping up insects and fish. Unfortunately the damn things kept tripping both her movement and heat sensors. The complaints of the others filled her comm channel along with jokes about the native animals and increasingly creative, then increasingly furious and finally dully annoyed threats regarding improper use of Alliance military equipment and orifices which the animals in question did not, in fact, possess.

Finally something out of place slid through the comm traffic, catching Ashley's ear. It was chatter about a heat signature, too high to be background heat and too low to be an animal. Private Jinga was going to ignore it, until a command and a minor burst of profanity sent the private scurrying* over to check it out. It was a swarm of Lankers, warm-blooded predators living under-water. A large group of them had heated the water noticeably. The next two they checked out were also mere oddities. The fourth, however was the rapidly cooling tail-fin of the crashed aircar the idiots they were looking for had taken for a joyride, after disabling the tracking system so their parents couldn't find them. Whether it had retained heat from the crash which had ripped its way through some of the canopy, or was simply absorbing the heat of sunlight slanting through the canopy and bouncing off the metal was unclear and irrelevant, though either way Ashley was inclined to view it as providence.

*Scurrying is not an accurate description of the movement the marine made through the swamp, but there's no word for faster-than-is-safe, incredibly-awkward, desperately-trying-to-keep-from-getting-stuck motion.

Ashley called it in and began looking for a way to get the vehicle out. There were no tracks around other than their own. The teenagers hadn't made it out of the vehicle. Neither space-rated nor military-grade, it wouldn't have much in the way of survival gear. They'd been gone for hours, they might well have suffocated before she arrived, but she'd be damned if they died under her feet while she stood there and did nothing.

An armor piercing round created a handy anchor point in the tail fin, through which to thread a piece of the high-tensile rope they were carrying, They didn't have the Grizzly, which usually would have been used to pull it out, but a quick call had the air team rerouted to their location, with Chigiyal's blessing, even if she did keep the other teams searching on the theory that Ashley could have found any old lost vehicle.

While the heavy duty lifter* was rerouting, she had her squad gather and try to pull it out. They got it about three inches out of the gripping sucking mud before the lifter arrived. There was no nearby clearing large enough for the lifter to land,** or get close enough to pass the rope up. Private Jinga offered to lose the armor and climb up, but given the nausea which had crippled Private Otto, that wasn't a good idea, so instead she tied the other end of the rope to a pry bar and hurled it up. The first throw proved not even the strongest of their people could throw it high enough, so a sharp order and the pilot used the Eezo core to increase the density of the ship and force its way down through the thick branches, until it scrapped a trunk, then pulled back into the space its dense bulk had cleared.

*Eden Prime didn't have a network of roads, yet, so transport was by Eezo cored vehicles. Personal vehicles would be full aircars, while heavier cargo transports would consist of a single heavy carrier which would pull a number of large trailers with tiny Eezo cores just barely capable of decreasing the weight of the cargo pod enough to let powerful air-cushion engines keep them off the ground. Barely.

**The crashing aircar had been far smaller than the heavy lifter and though it had ripped its way through part of the canopy as emergency systems had increased density and survivability, the vehicle had clearly hit a large tree and bounced, then impacted the swamp, crashing and sinking quickly as its artificially increased density forced it deep into the water.

It took three throws, before the engineer hanging out the open door caught it and climbed back to wind it through the winch on the back of the heavy cargo aircar. Then it was just a matter of using engines intended to pull a dozen trailers in ground effect mode to rip the car out of the muck. The rope held no problem, but it was beginning to cut through the mostly decorative fin that Ashley had put a hole in.

The vehicle slid out with a disgusting slurping sound and snapped into the air, driving the heavy lifter forward before the driver got control of the lifter. The aircar was so covered in muck that Ash couldn't be entirely sure it was the right one, it would be bad if this was just some old crash. It swung on the end of the rope like a giant pendulum, almost crashing into Private Jinga, but Ashley tackled the stunned and staring private out of the way and snapped an order sending the rest of the squad to scatter, as the car scattered mud everywhere. The driver released the winch, letting the vehicle down as easily as he could manage.

Ash was on her feet by the time the vehicle was set down, combat knife in one hand, she rushed forward and smashed her way through the back window. Though aircars weren't designed to be airtight, the thick coating of much and mud had probably rendered it airtight, leaving the idiots to suffocate, unless she moved fast.

The heavy blade was steel, not the silicon-carbide of the most modern round of combat knives, but when driven by gene-modded strength and the full weight of her body and body armor alike, and it could (and did) shatter the back window, the one least likely to harm the occupants if broken.

When she didn't hear coughing, or vomiting, she knew the occupants were dead. It would take time to get the doors open, so she forced her way in by dint of ignoring the sound of safety glass scratching on body armor and pushing very hard. It was a tight fit, but she managed to get an armored hand on the bare necks she could see in the front seats and tried to trigger medi-gel. Her suit wouldn't release the valuable compound as they were both dead, as she'd known they would be.

The trip out of the swamp was easier, with the vehicle properly stowed they were able to hitch a ride with the heavy lifter's crew, for all that they wrinkled their noses at the soldiers' stink, they didn't leave them in the swamp, for which the part of Ash which was responsible for the rest of her squad was grateful. The rest of her was just thoroughly depressed by the fact that they were carrying back bodies instead of the rescued teenagers she'd hoped to find.

Lieutenant Chigiyal met the dispirited group of soldiers at landing zone, nose wrinkling at the stench and poked her head in the car, holding her nose and breath. The corpses were relatively fresh, at least when compared with the overwhelming odor of the swamp. The Lieutenant turned back to Ashley, who stood sharply at attention and called her squad to order as well. A snapped order from the officer had helmets off and they stayed in their ranks, despite the stink twisting stomachs and faces alike, at least until the officer made it clear what she thought of soldiers who made faces at her.

Chigiyal stalked back and forth in front of them, mad as a cat doused in water. The reaming started with their appearance, the laxness an exhausting day of trekking through the swamp had inflicted on their usually precise stance. Finally, she reached Ashley and began lodging her less insane complaints. Ash had not gotten them moving fast enough, had tolerated too many breaks, had lost two more of her squad, slowing the search, on and on, the implication being that but for her actions the teens might have been rescued alive.

The corporal's face slowly grew paler as she stood at attention and was screamed at by a lieutenant with the instincts of a sergeant. For the ten minutes it went on, she said nothing except 'No excuse, sir,' over and over again, though she never accepted responsibility for the failure, as that would have given the lieutenant a half-way reasonable excuse to run her out of the service. Fortunately, the screeching at the others had given the rest of the platoon enough time to gather the vehicle and corpses and clear out, leaving Ash to be 'disciplined' in relative privacy.

Finally Chigiyal turned from her and back to her soldiers and continued her rant. "But I can't blame Miss* Williams for the original disaster that lost you idiots your Grizzly and three of your number. That was the fault of idiots screwing around when they were supposed to be engaged in a search and rescue mission. I hope you all had a good look at those bodies so you can see what your rough-housing called. But since I rather doubt any of you had the stomach to look at the consequences of your actions, you can all march back to the base. Do hurry, the bodies won't be released to the families until you get there, look, remember and apologize to them for your failure and the dishonor you have brought upon the the 212th. Now get out of my sight."

*The absence of her rank was a deliberate insult, one which did make Ash twitch, but fortunately the lieutenant was not looking at her.

Ash led them out at an easy loping pace, enjoying the muttering that, for once, was not directed at her, or about her, or about her ancestor. At least this time the horrible treatment striking everyone in her squad had not been her fault. Probably. The patent unfairness of the officer's behavior drove the soldiers onto her side. It almost felt like a new beginning.

It felt even more like a new beginning when they arrived back at the base and were informed that the lieutenant had been quietly chewed out and reassigned by Major Duale, upon witnessing her absurd overreaction to discovering that despite her orders the bodies had been released to the families. The major didn't much care for Ash, but after reviewing the complete incident, he did recommend her promotion to sergeant.

2179 CE Omega

"I still don't know how you got Aria T'Loak to agree to host this meeting and guarantee the safety of participants," Shepard asked.

Hassan gave her a smile that his scars twitched into a smirk, "All you have to do is ask."

Shepard shuddered. "Given her reputation, I don't think I want to know."

"Who could say no to this pretty face?" Hassan joked, gesturing at his scarred mug.

"Not me, which is why I agreed to this meeting. I still think this is stupid. Half the attendees are too weak to do anything and the other half are criminals."

"But not slavers. Slavers are, in fact, their competition. We use that to gain a foothold and try to start up some legitimate trade. If we can make it profitable then people will do that rather than be criminals, since," he flicked a glance at Jack, trailing Samara through the corridors, bursting with enthusiasm, eyes taking in every new thing with an eagerness undiminished by three years of travel, "most people don't enjoy getting shot at."

"We'll see, just don't give away our refueling rights and I'll be happy."

"Come on, commander, you've got to give the speech opening this wonderful convention."

"I don't think I can top the one Aria gave."

"Well, obviously you'll just have to refer to yourself as the empress of Omega," Hassan snarked at her.

"Only if we're feeling melodramatic," Shepard countered.

"Aren't we always?"

Shepard glanced back at Jack who was juggling a handful of odd looking fruit she'd bought from a street vendor, using her biotics to make up for the bobbles in her physical dexterity.* Samara's smile was less serene and more amused than she'd seen in the first year of their acquaintance. "Not always."

*The Justicars trained in both biotic and physical combat and with Jack under Samara's wing, she was learning many things Cerberus had not bothered to train their ultimate weapon to do. This, in fact, raised questions about what exactly the point of the project was, as a weapon needed to be sane and controllable and Jack was neither.

"Good. Now channel that heartwarming sap into your welcoming speech!"

"We still have time."

"Which could be used to prepare."

"Nah, better if I just wing it," Shepard countered with a grin.

There was no arguing with that, despite how much he wanted to. The one time he'd convinced her to write out a script and use it as an actual guide had ended with them getting shot at by pirates. That wouldn't have been too unusual if not for the fact that the people she'd been talking to hadn't been pirates at the start of her speech.

Shepard glanced over at where Jack was watching an Asari ink an elegant tattoo on a Batarian forearm, turning their caste mark* into an elaborate and beautiful image of a broken pillar. Jack was asking what it was and Samara was explaining Batarian beliefs regarding the various pillars that hold up society and that the one being tattooed on the man's arm was the Pillar of Respect, which, in Batarian meant basically knowing your place.

*Caste marks, as the name suggests are markings tattooed on the forearm, indicating the Batarian's caste status. The more elaborate the tattoo, the higher the caste, as historically movement between castes was feasible, at least, upward movement was feasible, as downward motion resulted in enslavement. Slaves have no status and no rank and, historically, no arm if they'd been enslaved after having risen to possess a caste mark, as tattoo removal was not feasible. This historic mobility has stagnated and caste advancement is only possible under extraordinary circumstances, while enslavement is reserved for extreme cases, born slaves and those outsiders captured in raids.

Shepard remembered Jack walking in on her in the communal shower, asking about the tattoo on her back. Explaining that she'd had an image of Mindoir tattooed on her back, so she could carry it with her wherever she went and it couldn't be taken from her the way so many of her fellows had been taken from it, only to discover the girl had been asking what a tattoo was. There were the oddest gaps in her knowledge and it was always awkward to stumble over one of them.

"Doesn't she need permission from someone to get a tattoo?" Shepard asked, watching Jack hand over her allowance to the Asari. Someone needed to teach her to negotiate, but it certainly wasn't going to be Samara, and Shepard's own idea of negotiation tended to be a sinuous stretch that showed off her N6 designation and her weapons, maybe with a little flare of biotic energy as well, so she wasn't really up for it.

Hassan shook his head. "Not on Omega."

"And elsewhere?" It was an old argument about looking for Jack's family, or doing anything to get her away from Project Overwatch and the explosions they attracted with alarming frequency. This time Hassan had a different answer for her.

"I asked. She doesn't know and wouldn't volunteer a DNA sample to run the check."

"I'm sure she's scared of finding out if her family's alive, but that's hardly—"

"That's not what she's scared about," Hassan interjected.

"What?"

"There've been six different attempts to steal her DNA, or medical records. A lot of people are interested in seeing if Cerberus's project produced any results. Fortunately, it really does look like the project was mostly incommunicado, so the rest of Cerberus doesn't know who Jack really is any more than we do. But if we go looking—"

"Cerberus might get there first," Shepard said, understanding.

"Or Aldrin Labs, or the Sirta Foundation. Figuring out how to enhance biotic abilities in Humans would be a trillion credit industry."

"You've got a fun mind."

"I wish."

"Huh?"

"That came from Jack. Or at least the Cerberus part did."

Shepard's eyes flicked back to Jack, the girl grinning as she took a seat in front of the Asari tattoo artist and begged Samara to do something. A second later and the Asari Matriarch ran her hand over Jack's head, biotics flaring and melting her short black hair without even touching her head. "Shit."

"Yeah."

"Remind me again why we need to keep bringing those assholes in alive?"

"Because—"

"Sooner or later one of them will talk. You've been saying that for a year and a half. I'm starting to think that what we need is not more of them talking, but more of us shooting them."

Hassan shrugged. "Can't kill 'em if you can't find 'em. Just like they can't threaten her family* if they can't find them."

*This was, in fact, most of the reason he hadn't gone looking. The rest was because, if he didn't know she had family, then he wasn't legally obligated to reach out to them and they didn't have any rights over her. Jack's reaction to being away from Samara had made it clear that any relationship which interfered with that would have negative consequences for the pint-sized biotic. And anyone around her.

"They also can't threaten her family if we turn them into chunky paste."

"Easier said than done."

"Speak for yourself," Shepard countered, flexing a hand that flared with biotic power. She glanced back at Jack who was wincing slightly and holding Samara's hand as the artist began pressing the ink into her scalp.

"I'm surprised Samara's okay with Jack getting tattooed. Isn't she still freaked out about how young she is?"

"I think she's mostly over that and accepts that Humans age faster than Asari, so long as we don't mention our ages to her, she's good. Besides, she recognizes that for a lot of trauma survivors tattoos are a way of reclaiming control over their body."

Shepard could feel the weight of a world pressing between her shoulder-blades and gave Hassan a glare. "You know, for a guy who makes his living with words, sometimes you say the dumbest shit."

Hassan had no response to that.

2180 CE Porton, Sinora

"And in stunning news out of the Terminus Systems, more than forty different minor governments, mercenary bands, shipping guilds and other groups have signed an agreement granting Project Overwatch numerous rights and privileges, as well as responsibilities for mediating amongst the groups. Though they represent only a tiny fraction of the powers of the Terminus and none of the major players except Aria T'Loak signed on, this is still a shocking development in the notoriously uncoordinated sector. It came only after Commander Shepard, Project Overwatch's commander, single handedly obliterated a combined Blue Suns and Eclipse force attempting to blow up the meeting. There's already talk that the Commander will be—"

Captain Harald Braun turned off the weeks-old news report, which had finally made it to their current location, deep in the Terminus systems, with a grunt. His second on this mission, Lieutenant Kaiden Alenko frowned at him. "Honestly, sir, I don't get what your problem is with her."

"She's a showboat. The real work gets done in the shadows, by people whose names are never known and want it that way."

"Then what's the problem? She can be a big shiny distraction for the rest of the galaxy, while we get the job done of sorting out these Cerberus assholes," Kaiden offered, responding to his words, not the dismissive tone his superior adopted when speaking of anyone who wasn't Alliance Intelligence.

The other officer grunted and got up, leaving without another word. Kaiden was never sure if he did that because he couldn't think of a response, or he just didn't care enough to bother trying to convince the younger man of anything. On the other hand, since Kaiden had been sent on this mission, as he was informed, because he was a biotic, so he ought to be able to deal with those crazy blue biotics on Sinora, he couldn't entirely criticize the other officer for not respecting him.

And it was even true. The Asari did treat him better than Braun, or the others on his team, though whether that was because he was a biotic, or because he lacked the Intelligence officers ingrained blandness and paranoia (and, he thought to himself, just a little ashamed of it, he was better looking than they, as Intelligence preferred the unmemorable) it would be difficult to say.

A wave of his hand activated his omni-tool and a few quick commands brought up a map of the Terminus Systems, a network of lines marking the Mass Relays and another highlighted the areas Shepard now had support in. They clustered around the relays connecting directly to Hegemony space, which wasn't really a surprise. They were the ones most in need. Another tapped command brought up the major players in the Terminus Systems. The Coven filled four clusters and a dozen worlds, including Sinora.

Those systems were shaded an identical red, proclaiming it a single power, but that was simply false. For all the Coven would pull together against an outside invader, the Coven eschewed the e-democracy of the Asari Republics, for a gerontocracy.* And if getting a society to agree was hard, getting ten thousand matriarchs to agree on anything besides 'kill the invader' was unlikely.

*Gerontocracy: Rule by elders. In point of fact, even amongst the Asari Republics, it was inevitably the Matriarchs who shaped all the options which were voted on. However, in the Republics, unlike amongst the Coven, flaying a Matron or Maiden with your mind was not an acceptable way to respond to an argument.

Most of the major powers of the Terminus were far away from the borders, as for some reason* any Terminus power attempting to form near the border of Citadel space inevitably imploded. They were, therefore, well away from Shepard's operation, so their lack of involvement shouldn't be too crippling.

*Spectres. The reason was Spectres.

After six months on this rock, Kaiden was starting to wish he was nearer the action. Theoretically they were there to keep a covert eye on the Cerberus compound they'd located on the planet. However, since they were basically the only Humans (except for Cerberus) this deep in the Terminus, keeping that eye covert was basically a pipe dream. Originally disdainful of Shepard's tendency to recruit from amongst the natives, even Braun was beginning to consider its benefits.

As Kaiden idly considered whether he had the energy to get up and go down to the little Thessian restaurant on the corner, or if he should order delivery, a sudden explosion of alarms, followed quickly by an actual explosion sent a burst of energy through him and slammed him to his feet. In moments he was at the observation station, manned by a tech who was flicking through a dozen different recordings.

"What the—report," he cut off the profanity laden question he had intended and replaced it with military efficiency.

"Four shuttles on descent to the main port just veered off, fast. One upped its mass all the way and dropped on the Cerberus barracks. That was the explosion. The other three are landing. A quick wave brought up an orbital view of the compound from one of the borrowed Coven surveillance satellites.

The compound was Asari built and Cerberus modified, so it was all curving architecture. However, the Terminus had effected it enough that there was a quite sturdy wall with reasonable gun emplacements and the compound's four interconnected buildings were set far enough back that most car bombs detonated outside the wall wouldn't scratch the inner compound. That was little help against an airborne assault. For that they relied upon the AA guns placed on the top of the barracks.

Unfortunately for the Cerberus personnel, those had been intended to take out stealthy infiltration drones, gunships, or other assault craft, not a fully loaded cargo shuttle dropping down from low orbit, with its mass run up as high as the eezo core would allow. Only the sturdiness of the Asari architecture and the fact that it collapsed inwards, instead of exploding outwards prevented the entire compound from going up.

"Hit the barracks from orbit," Kaiden glanced at the time in the corner of the tech's monitor, "right during shift change while they were debriefing in the barracks." He whistled.

The tech nodded. "Someone knows what they're doing and what's going on in that compound. I estimate three quarters of the guard contingent was wiped out."

Braun stormed in and took in the situation in an instant. The Intelligence officer swore loudly and in three languages, one of which Kaiden's translator was unable to process and the other two of which the auto-censor left him with nothing but a series of hanging suffixes. Kaiden, who knew from long experience that he could curse creatively, or do his job, but not both, focused on the other shuttles. They'd been further along their descent before breaking off, but were still almost two minutes out, as diverting from their flight path before the cargo shuttle arrived, would have set off every alarm in the place.

As it was, it should have drawn AA fire from the port, as Sinora did not like visitors making trouble. The fact that it hadn't meant that this was either a local operation, or someone's palm had been greased. Braun was already snapping orders, sending the team which was at the port trying to get trackers and bugs into the latest shipment of gear* for the compound scurrying away to find out what was going on. A second command sent Kaiden off to mobilize the half dozen other Alliance personnel on base.

*The Cerberus compound's security was top notch, leaving the Alliance with passive observation as their best bet for gathering information. As their first attempt at covert infiltration (and all subsequent attempts) had been detected and casually neutralized, it was clear that the terrorists knew they were under observation. They trusted in the unwillingness of their observers to bring down the wrath of Coven matriarchs upon them and their allies to keep them safe. This hadn't proven a bad bet, until now.

If the compound was going down, then they would have to get their intel more directly. Of course they had plans in place for a breach, but those did not include shuttles full of unknowns dropping into the compound. The squad scrambled into their armor as fast as possible and snatched up weapons which hadn't been used for anything more rigorous than training. Within five minutes they were moving out, though that meant the attackers were down before they even left their hidden base.

The squad moved out under the cover of the tech's electronic warfare and the heavy damage if the enemy assault. Preplaced heavy weapons took out the two turrets with a line of sight on the portion of the wall they went over, then they began to leapfrog forward, half the team covering as the other half advanced.

They were halfway to the compound when the tech sent a tactical update to their omni-tools. The soldiers kept their heads on a swivel, ignoring the new information while Braun and Kaiden pulled it open. The satellite imagery had highlighted the points the shuttles had come down, one landing on the roof of what they believed was the main lab complex while the other two had landed outside it, each sending a team in and digging in around the entrances to keep the remaining guards out. That was old news, though Kaiden noted that one of the shuttles was now a smoking wreck, indicating a Cerberus heavy weapons team had survived.

The new news was that another team was approaching the compound from the other side, having used a car bomb to blow their way through the outer wall, they'd taken out the auto-turrets with an airstrike and currently had a pair of gunships racing ahead to provide cover as they advanced. The tech didn't have any idea who they were, but they were definitely not Coven and were heavily equipped. Given that their gunships ran a strafing run on both Cerberus and the unknowns, they obviously weren't on the same side. The interference of a fourth party just made this situation so much better. Braun snapped his omni-tool shut while Kaiden was still absorbing what little information the satellite imagery and their spy cameras had provided on the new assailants. An unruly cluster of Krogan, Asari and Vorcha, they advanced fearlessly, certain in their air superiority.

As Braun ordered them to renew their advance, one of the remaining shuttles rose to challenge the gunships. Heavy mass accelerator turrets emerged from recessed compartments and began spraying fire in the direction of the gunships. The dedicated atmospheric combat craft broke off their strafing run and began to pound on the shuttle, easily evading its return fire. The break in air support let the remaining attackers fall back into the main lab building, sealing the doors, and undoubtedly digging in behind them, though even set to thermal, the satellite couldn't see anything inside.

Kaiden almost tripped over a purple twining root as he tried to advance while keeping one eye on the scene unfolding ahead of him and the other on the overview unfolding on his omni-tool. Braun caught him and dragged him into cover. Before the more experienced officer could tear a strip off him, the tech's voice came over their comm systems. "Sir, report from the port, Coven forces have arrested the officers in charge of AA and are redeploying multiple platoons towards the Cerberus compound. I've got similar movement from the city SWAT team, finally,* and a squadron of air-superiority fighters from Fort Destiny Falls are also being scrambled, with a reinforced squadron of gunships and troop transports to follow. You'll be hip deep in Asari within thirty minutes."

*The police response had been delayed by Cerberus electronic warfare. They were undoubtedly also disrupting the local military response as well, but whoever was in charge of the garrison at the port was extremely competent and got her commandos moving fast and was willing to use civilian communication channels to convey orders when denied any other route.

"This is going to be fun. Everyone cover Yelchenko. He's gonna be in charge of getting the intel we gather back to Command, if we end up getting cornered. We're not here to start a fight with the Coven."

Kaiden nodded. Yelchenko was the squad's infiltrator and had the best chance of slipping the cordon which was undoubtedly about to be set up around the compound. Their original infiltration plan had depended on using one of the several secret exits, or the Screamer* Cerberus kept in the garage building. With a full scale military response, escape for the full team was unlikely. Especially given that the Coven was about to have full air superiority.

*Screamers are relatively rare, being built on the chassis of a pre-eezo rocket, but with the addition of an eezo core. The combination is noticeably useless at everything except getting from the surface to orbit faster than anyone else, quite possibly even faster than AA fire pursuing you.

After a moment's thought, Braun had them divert around the encircled main lab and head for the garage instead. They reached it and ducked inside about the same time that the second assailant force reached the rear of the Cerberus line attempting to fight its way into the main lab, having blown in the doors.

With the gunships engaged in an aerial duel with the shuttle, it was up to those on the ground. As Braun was hijacking an M29 Grizzly* heavy combat vehicle, Kaiden kept an eye on the fight. An Asari had tossed a powerful barrier on a ridiculously large Krogan, who simultaneously triggered his armor's fortification pack and rushed forward, brushing through the Cerberus lines, shotgun a rolling thunder as he flattened the lightly armored Humans who stood in his path. Weapons fire from a dozen men and women tried to burn through the biotic and technical protections swirling around the giant alien, doing nothing more than irritation him.

*Though the Mako had replaced the Grizzly for most Alliance mobile forces, the more heavily armed and armored vehicle was still in use planetside and much respected for its ability to survive a pounding and keep on ticking.

Without pausing, the Krogan continued forward towards the blasted doors and stubborn defenders. Cerberus troops poured after him, through the hole he'd opened in the lines, desperate to take him out. This reaction, though understandable, was extremely foolish as it opened them up to withering fire from the Krogan's support troops, coming up from behind.

Braun finally got the vehicle started and moving, snapping a quick order for the rest of the squad to follow him. Braun was no V-Series,* but he knew how to drive one of the old style Grizzly's with a certain panache.

*V-Series soldiers handle the Alliance's Armored Fighting Vehicles. Though most** marines could handle military vehicles on basic maneuvers, as they were designed to be as close to idiot proof as possible, it took a V-Series soldier to truly make them dance.

**With the noted and notable exception of Commander Shepard who had literally never managed to drive a vehicle without crashing.

Not that it took much in the way of panache to drive into the wall, after firing a dozen rounds to weaken it. Braun had chosen his location well, punching through into an external lab. Braun was out before Kaiden and the rest of the squad made it in. They made it into cover about the time a massive fireball lit up the sky to the east, nicely framed by the shattered buildings. Kaiden was no rookie, but this was starting to get ridiculous.

The comm unit screamed to life as the poor tech started screeching about an orbital strike being launched at Fort Destiny Falls. The whole place was gone, along with the gunships and transports that were supposed to put an end to this little squabble. Other Coven forces would doubtless be deployed, but not until the ship in orbit was dealt with. Ships on patrol duty were already moving to intercept the Q-ship* as quickly as possible, but it was going to be a while. Someone high up in the Coven navy had been bribed, suborned, or was simply incredibly incompetent and the tech wanted to find out which.

*Q-Ships are heavily armed naval vessels, designed to appear like merchants (or just merchants with a lot of hidden guns bolted on, depending on design preference), usually used as pirate/raider bait. However, pirates, smugglers and raiders will often use similar designs, if they can afford them.

Braun ignored all that, it was irrelevant to their current situation and goals, a sharp order had everyone maintaining comm silence on peripheral issues and focus on the problem at hand. They needed to get the intel. Based on external observation, the largest power users and heat generators were three floors beneath them. From the sound of the firefights coming from all sides of the lab, none of the factions were giving up without a fight and the Alliance team was heavily outnumbered.

Braun waved Sergeant Samantha Powers forward and pointed at the floor. The explosives expert grinned and began to place heavy explosives to blow her way through the floor. They made it through a second floor that way, before running into resistance. Fortunately, the LOKI mechs Cerberus was relying on as last ditch security were not programmed to handle having the ceiling blown in atop them. Half of them went down to the explosion and the remainder were taken down by the Alliance squad, firing from the floor above.

When they dropped down to the next floor, they spread out to guard the entrances as Sergeant Powers prepared the last of the explosives she'd carried in. After that they'd be limited to those she could fabricate on her omni-tool and those wouldn't be smashing through the materials of this compound.

Doors slid open Kaiden fell back into cover, dropping a singularity across the opening to catch any infiltrator. He didn't see anything, but the door remained open, despite the distinct lack of anyone or anything nearby, except the singularity which should not have triggered the door's sensors.

He dropped a second singularity across the entrance the instant the first one exploded outward, only to be tackled backwards onto the ground. A Salarian decloaked on top of him, pistol pressed against the weaker armor of his throat. "Human. Standard System's Alliance armor and equipment. Identify yourself."

"Lieutenant Kaiden Alenko. Identify yourself," he countered as the rest of his squad bracketed the Salarian.

"Jondum Bau, Special Tactics and Reconnaissance."

There was no list of Spectres. They didn't* know if Jondum was truly a Spectre, but they believed it. Partly because there were few other reasons for a heavily armed Salarian to be running around a Cerberus base, partly because few people were crazy enough to draw the attention of real Spectres by falsely claiming the status, but mostly it was because it saved their pride. Despite being set up on the door, Jondum had still made it through and taken down one of their number, who he could kill with a twitch of his hand, while he was still at a distance from the remainder, wearing heavy armor and standing a good chance of surviving their counter-strike. If he was anything but a Spectre, they were pathetic, if he was a Spectre, then they were naturally outclassed by one of the best in the galaxy. "Good. Which of the attack forces topside is yours?" Kaiden asked, waving for the squad to stand down. They looked to Braun who nodded and lowered their weapons, spreading back out to secure the room.

*In fact, there are several ways Spectres can prove their identity. However, C-Sec and Spectres hold most of them and the others are held by people at a level far higher than a lieutenant or captain.

"I don't have any forces, I was just infiltrating alone. How many forces are attacking this place?" Jondum asked, face displaying shock, though he rose, removing the pistol from Kaiden's throat.

"Two topside," Braun explained, "one came down from orbit, used a shuttle to blow the barracks and dropped about sixty troops on the compound. Another force came out of the surrounding neighborhood. Coven forces are closing in from all sides as well."

"Wonderful. Your target?"

Braun gave him a glare.

Bau nodded, "I'm here to gather all available intelligence on Cerberus and its connections with the Coven."

"Us too. And I assume most of our attackers as well. Fortunately, there's no reason we can't both get what we need." Braun kept his eyes locked on the Salarian, watching for some sign of deception, scheming, or betrayal. If it was there, his training in cross-species body language wasn't up to detecting it, which it might not be when dealing with a Spectre.

"No reason at all," Bau agreed.

That statement was rendered somewhat less comforting as it occurred mere second before Powers set off the last explosion, blowing them a nice hole in the floor. It was almost certainly a coincidence, but it lent his words a certain unpleasant note of menace, or insincerity. Dropping down onto the bottom floor, they landed in a bathroom. Powers had burst through several pipes, so the place was flooding.

They'd outpaced the other invaders, who appeared to be attempting some sort of systematic search of the facility, without blowing large chunks of it apart. Given their numbers and apparent willingness and ability to keep Coven forces out of the way, this was less insane than Kaiden had originally thought. It still wasn't an option for six, well, seven infiltrators.

With scanners mostly jammed by the material of the compound and no massive explosion to cover their entrance, they instead fell back on standard breaching tactics. One soldier hit the door, Powers dropped in an omni-tool generated flashbang, and the rest of them stormed the place. A flashbang wouldn't do much against a properly equipped force, but it was better than nothing. If they'd had a proper team for this, they could have breached behind an omni-shield wielding trooper, but none of their unit were trained to use the new devices and Alliance brass were being touchy about deploying the things anywhere they might be captured. Seemed pretty pointless to have a weapon you were unwilling to use, but Kaiden wasn't brass and was glad not to be.

Still, their breaching technique did a good job of frightening the bejeezus out of the maintenance woman walking over to see what had happened to the bathroom. Fortunately no one shot her, though it was a close run thing as she was wearing a Cerberus outfit and everyone was a bit wired.

A few quick questions made it clear that the woman was either simple, or very good at pretending to be simple and he either didn't know anything, or was capable of pretending to be long enough for their infiltration to be detected. Braun gave up on him and used his omni-tool to generate some restraints while the squad's medic stepped forward and sedated the woman.

The next two rooms went the same as the first, only without any people in them. The third was the room most of the power conduits were running into. If there was going to be a defense, it was going to be here. They entered with the flashbang, Jondum slipping past them, faster than anyone else, cloak slipping over his skin as he raced ahead.

The Salarian Spectre almost bounced off the massive, but unarmored form of a Krogan wielding a heavy pipe as an improvised melee weapon. The cloak was less help than it should have been, as though a Krogan's eyes were more resistant to flashbangs than most other species, the engineers who programmed Alliance omni-tools accepted the risk of blinding other races more permanently in exchange for blinding even Krogan.

Blinded, but not disabled, the massive alien swung the pipe in desperate blind arcs, which Jondum's momentum almost ran him into. However he managed to twist desperately and dive under the swing. Racing forward, he ignored the berserk Krogan and examined the rest of the room. The lab had another entrance on the opposite side which the Alliance had breached. Half a dozen small cells filled one side of the lab, all but one holding a Krogan prisoner. The rest of the lab was filled with scattered tables and lab equipment. Its only other occupant was another Salarian, dark red skin and bulging eyes, panicked and blinded by the flashbang, his pistol was out, but he had enough presence of mind not to fire it blindly, in a room filled with friendlies. Or experimental subjects, depending on your viewpoint.

The Spectre overloaded the shields of the other Salarian and tackled him. A quick blow knocked the pistol loose and trapped the Salarian's hands. Omni-tool generated restraints snapped shut around one wrist and a powerful yank flipped the man over. It was a dead classic takedown and when it was over, Maelon Heplorn's hands were cuffed behind his back. Again.

Braun ordered the Krogan to stand down. Loudly. Then realized the stupidity of that, with the alien deafened by the flashbang. A wave of a hand sent two of the squad to secure the computer terminal and begin downloading its files and another pair to check on the Salarian Spectre. The last of them, including Kaiden, separated and took up covered positions far enough away from the Krogan to be able to dodge away if charged, but with clear lines of sight.

All of them had the good sense to take cover in places which were also shielded from the door they'd entered through. Though they'd set up various traps on their way down, intended to protect the holes they'd blown in the base, as they'd closed in on their destination, being able to maneuver had taken priority over security and their small numbers made any significant rear-guard impractical. Still, anyone who burst in after them wouldn't be able to unload on their backs. First they'd need to blow through some shoddily constructed lab equipment, then they could unload on their flanks.

There was a tense, awkward silence while everyone waited for the Salarian and the Krogan to recover. Well, everyone except the team working on the computer, as they were busy trying to figure a way through the STG grade encryption on the computers without turning them into melted piles of slag. It was not going well. The pair of them were skilled combat engineers, but that did not equip them to crack encryption. The tech back at the base was their best shot, but it was taking an embarrassingly long time to set up the high bandwidth data jack, not because the task was difficult, but because the lab was littered with jamming devices intended to prevent exactly that* action. Disabling them was tricky as the lab was setup to melt down in the event that they were sabotaged. That problem, at least, the engineers were trained to handle.

*In fact, they wouldn't have had any chance of success if not for their good fortune in that the first set of raiders hadn't shredded the main jammers during their drop. Those were the ones which had blanketed the entire area and would have blocked even the Alliance's high-frequency comms. Though lucky, this was not coincidental as the raiders had very clearly targeted the jammers, including those the Alliance hadn't been aware of.

Though the Salarian had been screaming, his words finally began to make sense as he recognized that he was pinned by another Salarian with two humanoids, not in Cerberus armor standing behind him. "Don't hurt her!" he shrieked.

Given that the Krogan recovered at almost the same time, her superior regenerative abilities counteracted by being a lot closer to the flashbang, his plea was almost immediately drowned out by the Krogan's roar and charge towards one of the scattered soldiers. This rapidly demonstrated that the Humans had underestimated the alien's resistance to small arms fire as she rushed through the burst of automatic weapons fire and smashed through the flimsy lab table, sending the soldier using at as cover sprawling. The pipe rose over her head for a massive two handed blow that would have either shattered armor, or the pipe itself, neither of which would have been good for the soldier.

Fortunately, Kaiden finally acted, a little late, but fast enough, the biotic pull ripping even the massive alien off her feet and sending her tumbling towards him. A roll brought him clear of her path and his assault rifle rose, tracking the floating creature as did the rest of the squad. Fortunately for the Krogan, the others were so busy being distracted by seven hundred pounds of floating alien muscle to bother firing at her.

"Firka, Firka, don't do anything stupid! Don't hurt her!" the Salarian screeched.

Bragus Firka glared at them all, including the pinned Salarian. "Don't whine, Maelon, it's pathetic. Try to die with a bit of dignity," she grinned in a manner which had nothing to do with humor. "And a weapon in your hand. Even if it is just a scalpel," she grunted, "scientists," the word was somewhere between a curse and an endearment.

"We aren't here to kill you!" Kaiden said, putting all the sincerity he could into his voice. Braun let him do things like that, on the basis, as he'd explained, that Kaiden's boyish naiveté made people believe him. Especially since he was such a patently bad liar.

"No, I'm sure a bunch of Humans broke into this heavily fortified underground base to let me experience zero gee for the first time in four centuries," the floating Krogan said with unstereotypical verbosity and entirely stereotypical venom.

The next five minutes were awkward as Kaiden wasn't about to let the Krogan down until he was sure she wouldn't make another attempt on their lives and she wasn't eager to give them any such assurances. Maelon's pathetic attempts to either command or convince the woman did not carry the day. Braun's explanation that they could just blast her to bits did not carry the day either, though it did draw a pipe hurled like a javelin with sufficient force to knock the intelligence officer flat, though it was not quite fast enough to trigger his kinetic barriers.

As Braun lay there, gasping for breath, the doors on the other end of the lab opened and a flashbang flew into the room. The rest of the squad responded automatically with a barrage of omni-tool generated grenades* and dives for cover, as their helmets automatically went black and audio inputs blanked out all external input. Kaiden misjudged the distance and accidentally slammed hard into his chosen piece of cover. Braun managed to pull himself behind something as he tried to breathe.

*Fortunately, the Krogan women were in cells intended to restrain Krogan and were therefore fully capable of surviving omni-tool generated grenades.

Firka hit the floor with a solid thump and grabbed the nearest heavy object which was some sort of, undoubtedly expensive, piece of lab equipment. Before she could decide who to bludgeon with it, the doors opened again and a Krogan rushed in,* biotic barriers, mass effect shielding and a fortification pack shielding him from the storm of fire he expected.

*The flashbang had given them a chance to deploy scanners to get a look in the room without getting shot, but they'd had to wait out the soldier's automatic and violent reaction.

It would have come indeed, if their IFF systems hadn't screamed warnings at them that they were about to fire on friendlies. Their integrated weapon systems wouldn't fire on friendlies unless overridden, which no one could remember how to do in the face of a gigantic, furious Krogan. This was why hacked IFFs tend to lead to one-sided slaughters.

Fortunately, the system had not been hacked, or the Krogan would undoubtedly have shot them down while they stood there being surprised. Even more fortunately, the Krogan was a disciplined soldier, who, despite fighting his way through the underground complex, had not succumbed to blood rage and retained sufficient control not to fire when his armor's systems bleated warnings about blue-on-blue fire.* Well, either that, or he couldn't remember how to override his weapons automatic safeties either. It took several tries for him to remember what the words meant, but with no one firing he didn't bother charging either.

*Blue-on-blue is an archaic term for friendly fire. It is still used by the Alliance for reasons which aren't entirely clear.

Braun recovered first and demanded to know who was over there.

"Gatatog Nexor, Project Overwatch Auxiliary Commander. Identify yourself," the Krogan answered with a grunt and a betrayed look at his shotgun. Behind him, a scarred Asari, missing half her scalp tendrils, moved to guard his back, wearing the light armor of a biotic adept, with a heavy pistol in one hand, but carefully aimed downwards.

Braun stepped out of cover, barely, clearly ready to dive back in if anyone fired on him. "Captain Braun, Alliance Intelligence."

"Seriously?" Firka asked, staring from one group of soldiers who owed their allegiance to the Alliance to the other. "Did anyone who isn't working for the fucking human government break in here?"

"The Shadow Broker's forces did," Nexor snapped, tension draining out of him as a slim blue hand came to rest on his hump. The Asari moved with the usual grace of her ilk, but slight changes in her body indicated that she was at least a Matron, if not a Matriarch. Other than perhaps the Krogan, she was the oldest person in the room by half a century, at least.

"Cerberus was already here!" Braun said at the same time.

The female Krogan snorted at that. "Like they don't work hand and glove with the Alliance."

Braun ignored that comment as Kaiden sputtered angry denials, turning his attention to Nexor. "You're sure those are the Shadow Broker's forces?"

"Can't be certain, but I recognized a couple of the Shadow Broker's favorite mercs and it has all the signs of one of the Broker's* direct actions. Overwhelming force and a complete lack of concern for collateral damage, as well as flawless intelligence on the target and the use of a large group of disposable mercenaries and a smaller core of more reliable agents."

*Though some speculate the Shadow Broker is in fact a consortium of intelligence operatives, especially given that the Broker has existed for as long as the Council, those who have had dealings with the Broker are generally confident the Broker is a single person. However, the Broker's heavy use of voice modulation and English's lack of a single-person neuter pronoun make discussing the Broker somewhat difficult for those who seek to avoid falling into the trap of believing they possess knowledge regarding the mysterious figure which they do not. Even something as simple as the Broker's gender.

"He'd have taken us out before launching an attack," Kaiden countered.

"I kept our location strictly need to know. And no one off-world needed to know. The Broker wouldn't know where we were," Braun interjected, giving Kaiden a look which shut the younger soldier up.

Maelon gave a little mewl of distress at the idea that he might be captured by the Shadow Broker. What the information broker did with captured agents to make them talk wasn't known, because the STG had yet to recover any of them alive. However, the autopsies indicated some form of brain surgery, as well as more traditional means of information extraction.* Regardless, he was pretty sure it wouldn't be fun and absolutely certain it would be lethal. Unlike the STG and Cerberus and other powers, the Shadow Broker didn't bother to invest in R&D, as theft was so much easier and more profitable.

*For some reason, even most hardened intelligence operatives don't like to refer to it as torture when it's their side doing it, as if the fact that they believed their actions were just meant that it was not torture. This is most amusing because it presupposes either that the meaning of words changes based on who speaks them, or that most people believe their opponents not merely to be unjust, but to be knowingly unjust, a remarkably uncommon trait amongst the species of the galaxy. For the one thing they all share, for all their differences in biology and culture, is an unimaginable capacity for self-delusion and justification of their own actions.

If the Shadow broker got him, he wasn't looking at a new boss, but at the end of the line. Side chosen for him, again, Maelon became a font of information, though he only had very limited information about the facility as Cerberus hadn't been stupid enough to let the former STG operative access to anything outside his lab and quarters and Maelon was a geneticist and a biochemist, not a cracker or a hacker. The few tricks he'd picked up with the STG didn't help as the Cerberus data core wasn't connected to the lab computers. He was pretty sure their computers were somewhere on the same level as he was, for the simple reason that it was the most secure level of the compound. Moreover, he'd seen guards heading to and from a location somewhere to the south of his lab.

To show good faith, he unlocked his own files for Braun's troops to download. Not that they'd do much good, he was still trying to unravel the Genophage from the Krogan genetic structure it was built into. Cerberus had been pushing him to attempt Human and Krogan testing on the prisoners they already have, or were offering to get. Maelon had just been talked into beginning Human* testing when this all happened.

*He'd managed to convince them that the difficulty of getting additional Krogan females meant that Krogan testing would have to wait until they could see how successful Human testing would be. Given that there were a lot more Humans and they were easier to kidnap, this was a reasonable, if amoral position. Maelon had been quite surprised at the ease with which he'd convinced members of the Human-Supremacist organization to kidnap fellow Humans to be experimented on by an alien who, it had to be said, bore a disturbing similarity to the earlier Human conceptions of kidnapping aliens. When asked, they'd explained that they'd just be repurposing certain assassinations into kidnappings. That was less encouraging than he'd anticipated.

"Why do we think the files are still intact after four separate incursions?" Kaiden asked.

"Four?" the Asari put in.

Bau introduced himself and both of the Project Overwatch auxiliaries tensed up at that. Before they could work themselves into a panic attack in the face of one of the legendary Spectres, he answered Kaiden's question, turning their attention back to the issue at hand. "The question isn't why would we think the files are still intact, but why would the Broker think they would survive the assault. The Broker triggered this situation, so it was the Broker who ensured the files would survive it. Or failed to do so."

The Alliance soldiers didn't have any real response to that, so they all agreed to head off and grab the files. Or fail to do so in some gloriously impressive manner. Unfortunately, they also needed to get Maelon, his files and the half dozen civilian Krogan (or as civilian as Krogan get, which isn't very) out of the middle of a compound under siege.

Displaying the sort of brilliant strategic thought that had made him a Captain in the Alliance Military. Braun turned to Kaiden and told him to handle it. The Lieutenant was not thrilled by this order, but would do his best to carry it out and as the only biotic amongst the Intelligence team, he was also the only one who the Krogan women couldn't simply crush. Well, unless they took him by surprise.

Nexor, taking pity on either his fellow Krogan, or the irritated junior officer, assigned him a pair of Asari maidens to act as support.

After breaking out a supply of weapons for the prisoners, Kaiden led the way, as best the half-a-dozen angry, formerly imprisoned Krogan would let him. Amusingly, the Shadow Broker's troops kept the Coven forces off them. Three brief fire fights, a stolen shuttle, two crash landings, three "borrowed" aircars, four blatant lies, one called bluff, a high speed chase by Cerberus's forces, an embarrassing ditching of all their equipment after discovering the bugs, an even more embarrassing explanation of one naked Human male and eight naked alien women to Coven forces and one worrisomely affecting kiss later, they managed to pull into one of Braun's safe-houses.

Discovering that Braun, Bau and Nexor had beaten them back to base, with the intelligence they were looking for,* because all available forces had been decoyed into chasing them, did not make Kaiden happy. Swallowing rage, he saluted politely and went in search of a bathroom and a bed. Neither of which was easy to find in an overrun safe-house. Firka and her cohort were less inclined to swallow rage and more inclined to throw things. That did not make it easier to find a bathroom or a bed.

*Apparently the Shadow Broker had compromised one of Cerberus's techs, but the woman wasn't able to get the information out. When the Broker's forces attached, she prevented the automated systems from flushing the server's data and used a program he provided to hack the automated defenses and use them to prevent Cerberus's confused and assailed troops from overrunning the server.

The intelligence coup of the year and Kaiden missed out on it. As he was surrounded by people whose lives he saved, he didn't complain too much about it. Especially when the Asari decided they found him more interesting than a safe-house with no extranet connection and that, since he'd claimed a serious open space by virtue of grumpiness and aroma,* they would join him. After that, his grumpiness basically evaporated.

*The others had even had time to shower, which had made Kaiden even grumpier when denied access to the bathroom. Fortunately for the rest of his night, he did manage to shower, after claiming the only bedroom with an attached bathroom.

Wow, that was a bit longer than expected...

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