A/N: I'm baaaack! I have quite a few chapters written, now. So I should be able to post a little more regularly. I love you all and this story is probably going to go in a slightly unforeseen direction. Just a warning. Hold on to your hats. And your sidearms.

Shepard's First Mission

The survey of major trade and transit routes took about two weeks. The Normandy was on constant alert, all hands at battle stations ninety percent of the time. Shepard and Kaidan had purposefully placed themselves on opposite shifts, stealing a kiss when one of them left the Loft for duty and the other went to collapse in bed. Shepard began to walk around without her cane, prompting Chakwas to mention clearing her for fieldwork in passing, which meant that Shepard almost demanded it if it meant some return to normalcy.

The last day, then, of their tour was a major day for both Shepard and Kaidan. Shepard was cleared for future ground missions, provided she was closely supervised, and they celebrated the same way they celebrated everything else.

As soon as they cleared the last relay out of the Terminus systems, Kaidan and Shepard hailed the Council. They didn't have a chance to report.

::We have an assignment,:: Sparatus said, by way of greeting.

::Hackett has informed us about Echidna. This is troubling.:: Apparently Tevos, and the rest of the Council, was not wasting time. ::As you are very familiar with their predecessor organization, you are the logical choices to pursue them.::

Shepard and Kaidan traded a glance, then both looked over at Hackett. He shrugged. "We already have a few leads," Shepard said finally.

::Excellent. You'll begin immediately, then,:: Velarn said.

"We will," Kaidan replied. "Reports should be along shortly, but the relays appear to be clear."

As the terminal cleared, Shepard leaned on her husband. "There's an old Cerberus base on Chasca," she said. "EDI and Traynor have said it's transmitting again. It's a good place to start."

"Sounds good." Kaidan kissed the side of her head and turned. "I'll tell Joker to set course."

#

They remembered the smell of the planet more than anything else.

Five years ago - had it really been so long? - they'd cleared out this base personally. And as Steve landed the shuttle, and Shepard jumped to settle her armor, she smiled. This was what she was, not a politician or an intel worker, but a soldier. She hadn't realized just how much she missed it until her weapons were weighing on her back, coupled with her armor and her HUD blinking in her helmet.

"I'm feeling a little exposed out here," Steve said, glancing over his shoulder. "You'll hurry?"

"Fly around a bit. We'll call you when we need you," Kaidan said. Shepard nodded in agreement as she stepped out onto the planet, rolling her neck. They'd brought five of the ten-person marine complement on the Normandy, and the marines filed out after them.

"Remember this base?" Shepard asked, as the shuttle lifted off behind them.

"Yeah," he replied. "Crawling with thorian creepers, if I remember correctly."

"Yeah. Cerberus killed the entire colony when they went berserk." She unsnapped her shotgun, another Graal that Kaidan had painstakingly repainted once during his downtime. "After you, Major."

"All right. Stay together and check your corners," he ordered, pulling out his own assault rifle. "Shepard, try to not charge a guardian, if we see one."

"Aww, first groundside mission and I can't even charge a guy with a shield," she replied. He half-glared at her through his helmet, and she grinned.

"Ignore Major Shepard's desire to charge everything that moves and keep your eyes open for hostiles. Ready?"

There was a general nod, and Shepard tried to ignore the tingle in her limbs as Kaidan and the other marines prepared to open the door and she settled down with the other marines, gun ready. Kaidan slammed his elbow into the lock, and as the first pair swung in no one appeared.

"I don't like this, Alenko," Shepard said quietly.

"Neither do I, Shepard." He nods. "After me. Come on."

Shepard brought up the rear of the group, trotting next to a young marine named Kebelson. The young woman looked over at her and smiled. "Pleasure to finally be working with you, ma'am."

"Likewise," she replied, as they cut through the wide front room of the base. They cleared the next door, and Shepard jerked back. "Grenade!"

Kaidan tossed out his hand, almost casually, and a shimmering field covered the small disk as the grenade exploded safely away from them. That gave the marines time to roll into cover, Shepard finding her own behind a supply crate. She craned her neck over, and Kaidan held up five fingers and flashed them. Ten. Then . . . one turret.

She watched as he flew through the orders, pointing Kebelsen and one of their other techs to hack the turret and for he and Shepard, the unit's only biotics, to pull people out into the front room. She nodded, and he gave the sign.

Shepard hadn't tried to move anything larger than a chair for some time. Kaidan had unofficially taken over with her biotics re-training, helping her deal with the implants she'd needed re-installed during her recovery to replace the ones that had been irreparably fractured on the Citadel. So when she reached out and grabbed a plainly-armored man from the far end of the hallway, she probably over-focused. He flew forward, a scream sounding out of his throat before he slammed into the far wall with a nasty-sounding crunch.

"A little lighter on the pull, there, Marra," Kaidan shot back, pulling his own to collapse in a heap just on their side of the hallway, one of the marines gunning him down.

"Very funny, Kai," she retorted, trying to do the same to the man operating the turret. Their sniper, Leschkau, sent a round through his skull before she could pull him out. Kaidan motioned, and another man flew out of the hallway.

"Got it!" Kebelsen said triumphantly, omni-tool flared around her wrist. At the end of the hallway the turret slumped, sparking.

"Blow it," Kaidan replied.

That was when Shepard felt the first tingling around her that signified she was being pulled in by another biotic. It wasn't the first time she'd felt this - Jack had pulled her off the Collector Base when she nearly hadn't reached the Normandy after being shot in her calf during the escape, and Javik had pulled her out of the way of a sneaky banshee once - but to the untrained eye the blue glow would only barely clash with her personal biotics' green.

"Don't," she snapped. If there was another biotic she was being pulled into the hall, and . . . Kaidan had barely turned to look at her when she flared a brilliant green and charged.

Whatever the other biotic - sneaky, hiding behind the turret - had expected to do when he'd pulled one of the enemy biotics, likely not knowing who it was, it wasn't for her to turn the momentum of his pull into a full-scale biotic charge.

Shepard flew down the hallway, and in the split second before she impacted him she heard Kaidan's aggravated groan over her commlink. Then she was slamming the enemy biotic back into the wall with a crunch before barely stopping herself.

There were five humans left, all looking a little shocked by the sudden appearance of a fully armored and armed Alliance vanguard in their midst. They recovered about the time that Shepard straightened herself out, and in a flash she moved and took the force of a second charge through her arm and straight into the ground.

There was a flash of blue to her right, and one of the men snapped back into a wall. Another fell, a round from Leschkau slamming perfectly through the center of his forehead. Kebelsen overloaded the turret again, and Wickham, the other tech, rendered a third's rifle inoperable. Shepard swung her shotgun, blade-first, into his neck, nearly decapitating him with the force.

Kaidan stuck his hand over his shoulder, catching one of the two remaining combatants in a solid stasis. Shepard spotted the man coming up behind him and quickly rolled, coming up in front of him and blasting point-blank through his face with her gun.

For a moment there was little more than panting in the hallway as Kebelsen and Wickham hurried forward to make sure the turret was deactivated completely. Kaidan checked the woman held in stasis and turned to Shepard.

"I told you not to charge," he said quietly.

"They had a biotic and he caught me in a pull," she replied. "I don't think that he knew who we were, specifically. I had to do something."

Kaidan nodded, and gently reached out to brush her arm. "You're all right?"

"Yeah." She nodded, then glanced down at one of the bodies. Turning him over with her foot, she drew her knife. "Let's see if what Aria was saying was right."

"These look like common pirates," Kaidan said.

"Mm," Shepard replied, then jammed her knife straight into the corpse's skull. The marines winced - neither Kaidan nor Shepard seemed phased, even when she worked the knife down and around the eye socket and pried it loose. "Optical flashbang. Cerberus-grade." She let it fall, then checked inside the man's mouth. "False teeth. Probably cyanide pills." A few deft motions pulled off his rough breastplate, and she nodded. There were scarred over holes, where what may have once been cybernetics and tubes would have crossed his chest. "Reaper tech, if I've ever seen it. He was a Cerberus operative." She stood, wiping her hand on her thigh. "We should see if there's scientists here, or if it's just a functioning base at the moment. Griner, sedate and stay with the prisoner." The gunnery chief nodded, and Kaidan waited for him to do so before letting her out of his stasis field.

They cleared the living quarters - two large bunk rooms surrounding a mess hall - and prepared to enter the labs. The first room was full of nothing but laboratory equipment.

When they opened the door to the second room, they promptly fell back behind the door. A group of scientists were huddled in a corner, and Shepard and Kaidan nodded to one another before swinging out with their guns ready.

"D-don't shoot," the first one called, hands raised.

"You're Cerberus?"

They traded a glance at Kaidan's question. "W-we were?"

"Is this your idea of surrendering?" Shepard queried. They nodded vigorously. "All right. Up. On your feet." The group of four scientists hurriedly did so, hands upheld. "What are you doing on Chasca?"

"E-Echidna thought this would be a g-good established base." Obviously this poor scientist had been selected to be the spokesperson, by the way the others were huddling behind him. "N-no need to rebuild and all the l-labs are already here."

"And what's your connection?" Kaidan asked.

"W-we were Cerberus, like I said. Pure research. Easy stuff."

"Like what?"

"G-gene modification, biotic augmentation, t-things like that. N-nothing like indoctrination o-or Reapers or -"

"All right, so just . . . run of the mill stuff?" They nodded vigorously. Shepard lowered her gun, and turned her head slightly.

"We'll arrange a meeting with Hackett," she said quietly. "Get a ship to take 'em back to headquarters on the Citadel. They can be interrogated and put to use or otherwise dealt with by the Alliance."

He nodded. "Agreed. And the other?"

"We'll work her over a bit ourselves. See if we can't get a lead. I doubt these guys know anything."

Kaidan eyed the scientists, then nodded. "Leschkau, Wickham, secure these men. I'll look for an information terminal-"

"Next room, right on the back wall," one of the scientists helpfully supplied, her hand wavering when she pointed.

"And Shepard, make sure they get secured on the shuttle. Kebelsen, with me."

Shepard couldn't help but cast him a small smile as she helped escort the scientists back towards the entrance.

#

The Alliance had strict rules on interrogation.

The interrogator was supposed to maintain a respectful distance from the prisoner, and physical contact was not supposed to be made. It kept them from complaining about mistreatment in a prisoner-of-war situation, and kept the Council and the Alliance happy.

Spectres, on the other hand, had no such requirements.

Once the myriad of suicide devices were deactivated or removed under anesthesia, their captured operative was handcuffed to a chair in the remaining side cargo hold. The scientists were being watched in the cargo hold, calmly questioned by Kebelsen and Griner using proper Alliance protocol. Kaidan and Shepard, meanwhile, waited for the woman to wake up.

When she did, it was obvious that she took one look at the duo and attempted to find a suicide method that hadn't been compromised. They watched, and finally Shepard cleared her throat.

"None of them will work," she said pointedly. The woman's head jerked up. "We deactivated or removed them. Yes, including the flashbangs."

"Go to hell," she said.

"Been there, done that," Shepard replied. "Who are you?"

She sneered. "Don't see that that's any of your business, Shepard. Don't look surprised, everyone knows your fucking face."

Shepard and Kaidan traded a look. Neither of them looked surprised. She rested her hands on her knees, meeting the woman's eyes.

"A name," she said, slowly. "Or I'll give you one."

The woman straightened up. "Carius, Europa," she started. "0-"

"Stop," Shepard chided. She knew EDI was already running the name. "You're an Echidna operative?"

Carius bared her teeth. "What's it to you?"

"Stop being an idiot," she retorted. "Who's behind Echidna? What are their goals? What were you doing on Chasca?"

She remained silent. Shepard straightened, and sighed. "If you know who we are," she said, pointedly. "Then you know that whatever you learned about Alliance interrogation no longer applies. So I suggest you hurry up and answer me."

"What's he here for, then?"

Kaidan shrugged. "I'm here to ensure you keep what's left of your teeth," he said pointedly.

"Now," Shepard continued. "Talk to me, and I won't start pulling your fingernails off."

"What?" Carius asked, going pale. "I-"

"But, that's right," Shepard continued. "Cerberus operatives were trained to resist standard torture methods. What else can I do, Alenko?"

He shrugged. "What do you feel like today?"

"I don't know. Maybe . . . Hm . . ." Shepard made a show of drawing her knife out of her boot, testing the edge against her sole. "You know I can skin people with this."

"I'm sure you can," Kaidan replied, noting how big Carius' eyes had gotten. She must have been a fairly new operative to Cerberus, probably recruited from Sanctuary in favor of not getting brutally murdered or turned into a husk. Likely not even enough time to be completely indoctrinated. "She won't do it, you know," he continued. "Trust me, last time she skinned someone . . . it wasn't pretty. We were washing blood out of the floors for weeks." Her eyes widened again. "So if you just tell us what you know, we'll let you go. Or, we'll at least hand you over to the Alliance."

She licked her lips, then looked back over at Shepard. She was watching her with a pensive look. "I could always feed her her own spine," she said, a small green corona beginning to wreathe her. The operative swallowed.

"Look, I don't know anything. We don't know who the new leader is. And it was just run-of-the-mill stuff on Chasca, the scientists could tell you more. I was just doing security . . ." She shakes her head. "We saw how well that turned out," she mumbled.

Kaidan studied her for a second, and then glanced at Shepard. She was telling the truth. And if the new leader was anything like the Illusive Man, she wouldn't know. Shepard caught his look and nodded.

"Well, I suppose I can let it go this time," she said. "But . . . any other bases that you know of?"

"Yes!" she replied, eyes lighting up slightly. "There's a base on RXDN9 in the Horsehead Nebula. I-I have the system name. I'll give it to you."

"Excellent." Shepard looked at Kaidan. "When are we rendezvousing with the Alliance?"

"Another hour or so. We'll keep her with the scientists."

"Will you take her down?" Shepard asked. Kaidan nodded, and she waved her hand when he gave her a look she knew well. "I'm looking for food."

Shepard got into the elevator and made her way to the mess, leaning on Gardner's station. She was thrilled to have the mess sergeant back - the Normandy hadn't been the same without him. "You made anything?"

Gardner glanced around the mess, almost conspiratorially. "Here," he said, reaching under his counter. "Made 'em this morning."

Shepard bit into the brownie. God, Gardner made the best brownies. "These don't have anything in them."

"No ma'am. I'm on an Alliance ship now, gotta keep my nose clean." He tapped it, as if to prove his point. She grinned, and he handed her a sandwich and a cup of coffee. "Here you go. Figured you and the Major would be coming up here about now, looking for food."

"Biotics," Shepard said. "Like clockwork."

As she sat down with the sandwich, she shook her head. Something about it was offputting, if she had to be honest.

Which was strange - she loved food. Loved. With a passion. But . . . she didn't know what it was. But her metabolism demanded she not turn down a sandwich made by Rupert Gardner, and so she started to force it down.

"Hey." Kaidan. She glanced up as he rubbed her shoulders, thumbs working over her back. "You feeling all right?"

"Yeah," she said with a small smile. "Get your food."

A/N:

Lara: Oh god, no pressure ... :D Thanks so much. That means a lot to hear.

Thanks to everyone for reviews, favorites, and follows. It means a lot to me, especially now.