Interstitium

by AssaultSloth

Flashbacks, interstitial scenes, and backdoor dealings. A companion to ME2 focusing on characters and worlds, big and small.

19. Chapter 19, Cerberus, the Crew

Cerberus – The Crew

---

–

Ken Donnelly's reflection looked back at him with a dour face, brows furrowed in determination. "You… are a man on a mission, Mr. Donnelly," the reflection said, and puffed out its chest. "You are not afraid. You're gonna go down into that cave and you're gonna talk to her and you're gonna come back. Alive." I hope.

"You're not really gonna do this, are you?" Gabby asked, looking back at him with that face she'd honed and perfected for so many years. That face that meant 'You are getting ready to embarrass yourself and I'm going to laugh when you do.' She was quite good at it, really.

Ken turned on her, leaving his braver reflection behind. "Yes I am, Gabby. It's a good idea. And nobody will listen to me."

Gabby just snortedindelicately. She sat on the edge of the walkway that led to the ship's eezo core, her legs dangling over the edge as she adjusted magnetic crampons over her uniform's usual boots.

Ken persisted. "I'm serious, Gabby. We work hard, we need a way to unwind. Garrus says the turians do it all the time. He's even down there already."

"Yeah, down there alone, Kenneth," Gabby said, like she was talking to an infant. "Shooting a gun." Indeed, with Miranda and Shepard both planetside on Tuchanka, Garrus had been in charge for days. He'd spent most of that time, however, locked in the hangar venting his anger at the krogan's most recent attack. "I don't think he wants to play soldier with you. He'll probably just mash your face again."

Ken touched the top rim of Garrus' blue shell chestpiece resting on Tali's workbench. The pits and scars it'd taken on Omega still made themselves known on the polished surface, but they paled next to the crack up the left side where Grunt's forearm had squeezed the turian up against the wall. "He's just pouting over the armor."

"So finish fixing it instead of trying to start a brawl."

Ken eyed the innards of the armor. As far as he was concerned, it was a lost cause, sentimental value to the turian vigilante or not. Might as well toss it. But Tali had been working on and off to restore it for days, stitching circuits and shield panels back together with almost microscopic precision. "An' risk messin' up Tali's work?" Ken asked, tapping one exposed circuit board with what must have been three thousand connections on it. "She'd rip my guts out."

"And Jack won't?"

Ken frowned. He usually maintained a policy of giving Jack a wide berth and a half – by any definition the woman was uncomfortable to be around, to say nothing of dangerous – but now he needed her help. He was pretty much stuck banking on the idea that she wasn't as evil as she pretended to be. "Listen, Tali'll be done with this in a few hours," he said, tapping the armor again. "For the time bein', the best I can do for Garrus is to distract him before he shoots a hole in the hull."

"And you think starting a fight between Jack and Garrus will distract him for you."

"You make it sound so… insidious, but yeah. She's the only one stupid enough to rile 'im up."

"One of the only ones," Gabby corrected.

Ken shrugged. "Eh. I'm hopin' she gets the worst of it. If he tries to kill me I can always say she threatened me into it." He fixed his co-part with a toothy grin. "And come on, you can't tell me you aren't at least a little curious to get in that hangar and see what a turian looks like with his shirt off."

"Like some kind of turkey turtle?" Gabby guessed. "Don't think I want to know. Besides," she said, pulling her comically-oversized goggles over her eyes. "I've got fuel lines to clean." She clicked her tongue, gesturing to the straps on her back. Ken dutifully helped her hook in. His hands adjusted each line and buckle with a well-practiced swiftness, tightening the harness while she fiddled with her heavy gloves.

Despite all of the innovations that mass effect fields had brought to space travel, ships still needed to burn fuel, and the fuel lines still had to be maintained. "Clean" was holdover jargon from atmospheric craft design – modern ships like the Normandy had field systems installed to keep what dust and grime and water vapor the crew could produce out of their sensitive engines and so their parts only needed to be truly cleaned every few years. But antiproton reactors produced a lot of heat and built up a lot of charge, and given time even components made of the strongest Asari steels warped and bent like plastic in an oven. Metal gas would condense on cooler parts and efficiency would drop, and so from time to time somebody had to rappel down past the mass effect core and replace what needed replacing with newly-fabricated pieces from the armory. Joker had had the engines cooling for the past two days so Gabby wouldn't vaporize, but still it was dangerous, filthy work.

"Tell me again why I'm the one doing this?" Gabby whined.

"'cuz for once you didn't trick me into it?" Ken suggested, pulling one of the straps and tucking it in so it wouldn't catch. "'cuz you're the propulsion specialist?" he added, for once happy to admit her superiority in the field if it meant he didn't have to spend the shift down below. "You're the engine master, remember?"

"Then maybe I need an apprentice."

"I could do that," Ken said. "I could… tighten your toolbelt," he cinched the belt tighter around her hips. "Or… steal you food from the mess?" He thrust a hand down one pocket and pulled out a ration bar he'd nicked that morning. "Hungry?"

Gabby almost growled behind her rebreather mask. "Starving." Gabby had been fasting since the previous night for her stint down on the fuel lines – she had to drop right past the core to reach them, and every engineer worth his salt had learned that stepping within a foot or two of a decent sized eezo core with food in your stomach was recipe for an instant mess.

Gabby just scowled, fogging up her mask. "We can't all have an iron stomach, Kenneth. I eat that, it'll end up all over the core and you'll have to clean it up."

Ken laughed and tossed the bar on her console for later. "I'll take that as a kindness then." He gave her the thumbs up as he tugged the safety line one last time. "Good to go," he said, patting her shoulder. "Watch yourself down there. An' if the core spikes, remember, turn into the well."

"Yeah, yeah," Gabby grumbled, backing down off the ledge, her gloved hands clenching the safety line brake. "Thanks Mom."

"Be safe."

"You're in more danger than me," Gabby said, and dropped out of his view.

–

Gabby was right, of course. They were both descending into the Normandy's underbelly, but all Gabby was liable to find was glowing-hot vacuum tubes and hydrogen fumes.

He had to face something much worse.

Still, Ken Donnelly was not a man to be dissuaded. He supposed that was why Gabby never tried to stop him when he told her his plans. He was a Donnelly, he'd told her once (maybe just a little drunk at the time) and he was going to man up and do what he had to do no matter what she said! She hadn't stopped him from getting drunk and toying with the accelerators on the fighter pilots' school flight simulators, but she had shown up to bail him out of jail when he got caught. She hadn't stopped him from telling off the Alliance brass for what they did to Shepard, but all the same she'd come to his hearing and practically bullied Admiral Hackett out of court martialing him.

The memories made Donnelly smile. Gabby had always been something of a safety net for him, even if she was the kind that let you break a bone or two before it caught you.

Even so, as he descended the staircase into Jack's lair, he wondered if this time Gabby couldn't have tried a little harder to be the regular kind of net. Her usual style of wait-until-later help wouldn't be worth much if Jack killed him.

Donnelly hadn't been down into the storage deck since Jack had moved in. He'd always figured repairing whatever damage she'd done to it later would be better than confronting her about it now. But he'd never quite anticipated how much damage she would do. As he stepped off the last step onto the thick steel grating of the lowest deck for the first time in a month, all he could do was stare.

Jack's lair was dark. She'd knocked out most of the red emergency lights, wreathing the storage deck with eerie silhouettes but nothing more. It was black and silent, but that didn't hide the mess of broken crates and equipment she'd strewn about her hole. In the dim lighting Donnelly could make out what looked to be a nest, a bed made up of what he guessed were foam pads torn from the insides of flotation jackets. The smell of sweat and blood and chemicals Donnelly didn't want to hazard a guess at filled the air.

His heart started to pound.

Donnelly cursed as he felt something fragile break under his boot. Bones, he imagined. The bones of the last engineer to come face her. "H…hello?" he called, straining his ears for a response or even an echo. There was neither.

He took another step. "Hello?"

"What do you want?" Jack's voice came from the dark. Thick and grimy from disuse.

Ken squinted and looked around, trying to catch a glimpse of her. Nothing. That wasn't creepy at all. He cleared his throat and muscled on. "Ahh… well. I had a… proposal for you… Ma'am."

"You're in the wrong place, little man," Jack said, and Donnelly saw a glimmer of the spider's fangs in the gloom. His heart roared.

"Well, I was lookin' for you, actually. This place looked about right to start," Donnelly tried. He managed a weak chuckle. "Dark. Scary as all hell. It suits you." His eyes had started to adjust to the darkness and he could just make out the woman's form, her hundreds of tattoos serpentining through the red light.

"What do you want?" Jack repeated, and she disappeared again.

Donnelly took a deep breath. Now or never. "Well… I… was going to ask if you wanted to join us. See, a few of the other crewmembers and I are gonna get the turian to let us turn the hangar into a fighting… arena… thing. Strictly non-lethal, you know. Jus' tryin' to let some steam out. Maybe air out a few grudges. Have a little fun before Miranda comes back."

Jack growled (she actually growled, for Chrissake).

Donnelly prattled on, even as his voice rang out stupider and stupider in the darkness. He didn't know what else to do. "I just… thought perhaps you'd enjoy that… sort of thing. Show us some moves."

Jack emerged from the darkness so quickly Donnelly barely had time to recoil in horror. In an instant she was on him, a wicked looking knife pressed up against his throat and an animalistic snarl on her lips. "I'll show you a move," she hissed.

There were a few white seconds where all Donnelly could think of was whether or not his heart had exploded out of his chest or if the pieces of it were still bouncing around inside of him. When a few seconds proved that she'd only frightened him into one of the normal, non-exploding kind of heart attacks, he found himself eyeing the blade at his neck. He gulped carefully, looking at it shine in the red light. He was pretty sure Shepard wouldn't let Jack have a weapon at all, knife or gun or biotic amp. He supposed she'd stolen it from somebody. Zaeed, maybe. "Ahh… yes. Did I mention no knives? Non-lethal, I think I said."

Jack's upper lip wrinkled in distaste. He could see the sweat beading on it. He'd always thought the unstable woman had a beauty to her, like if she only took a bath she might give even Miranda a run for her money, but he supposed he'd never been much turned on by women who held him at knife-point. "Quit your fucking jokes," she spat, digging the knife a little closer. "I'm not a joke."

Donnelly ignored the bead of blood he felt trickling down his neck from where she'd nicked him. "Didn't say you were," he said. "I think I'm just a bit of a smartass, to be honest. Always have been. Coping mechanism, see, for dealing with…" he gulped again, "unmitigated terror."

"Funny way of showing it."

"Gotto deal with it somehow. Dad used to say it takes a man to start a fight sober. I figure walkin' in here counts as startin' a fight. Thought I was sober too, but I'm havin' second thoughts, I admit."

Jack actually laughed at that. Some of the tension seemed to leach from her shoulders. "Fuck, little man. That tightass turian said you could fight?"

"It was his idea," Ken said, laughing nervously. " Turian thing, apparently."

Jack looked away, a far off grimace on her face. "Fuckin' turians," she growled. "Fuckin' fights." She leaned back into him, until their foreheads almost touched. "You want to hear a story, little man?" she asked, barely above a whisper.

What could a little man do but nod?

"Cerberus used to put me in fights," she said, voice taking on a sickly sweet tone. "Set me against the other fucking experiments. Made me kill them. Drugged the shit out of me and watched me tear them apart."

Donnelly felt his second heart attack coming on. Suddenly talking to Jack seemed like a very stupid idea indeed. "I didn't mean to bring up bad memor-"

"I loved it," Jack purred. "Every second of it. Still feel it when I fight. Still see the looks on their faces."

"I did say non-lethal, right? Just throwin' that out again."

"This is my kind of shit," she said, leaning back on her haunches. "Doesn't sound like Vakarian, though. He's Shepard's little butt buddy. He wouldn't hit you if his life depended on it."

Donnelly chuckled nervously at the memory of getting a turian fist in his face. Garrus looked subdued until he didn't, and then he looked like a frickin' dinosaur and hit like a truck. "I've had a fairly compellin' experience that says he would."

Jack stared at him, eyes narrowed. "He's gonna fight?" she asked, not quite keeping the note of interest out of her voice.

Donnelly smiled. "He doesn't know it yet, but I hope so. That's kinda what I need you for." Garrus and Jack had mostly left each other alone since she'd nearly brained him on Purgatory, but betting pools on the ship gave ten to one odds she'd be the next one to piss off the turian enough to get Archangel-ed. "You go down there and convince him to let us spar," Donnelly explained. "He gives in, we all get to do it too. We need to have fun an' relax, you need to feel your little…" he crossed his eyes "crazy thoughts, he needs a distraction. Why not?"

Jack paused for a moment, as if teetering between gutting Donnelly or not. After a very long few seconds, she lowered her knife.

"Fuck it, he needs an ass-kicking. I'll do it."

She turned and stalked back into her pit.

–

Garrus did look something like a turkey turtle without his armor.

Donnelly had never considered himself unduly intimidated by aliens. They were strange, yes, but what part of the universe wasn't? He'd had marine friends back on Earth who had little good to say of turians or – later – batarians, but he'd spent his enlisted time deep in some engine room or another, surrounded by his own kind. He hadn't seen friends die to them. He hadn't been there for the Blitz. If he was aware of a battle loss at all, it was almost always in the impersonal stage of ship-to-ship warfare. It was hard to identify a turian ship with the turians themselves, especially when so many human ships drew technical inspiration from turian designs.

But a turian outside of his ship was a very different animal, and so was a turian outside of his armor. Donnelly couldn't help but stare.

Garrus' keel-shaped chest was as shingled as his head, but clean and unscarred. Even without his trademarked blue shell, the alien was still hardened head to toe, the soft tissue of his deceptively-long neck anchoring inside of a thick collar of bone like a tortoise. No longer muffled, his breathing seemed unbelievably loud, every intake thrumming like a speeder vent and causing his plates to shift and slide to accommodate the expansion of his lungs.

Armor had a way of smoothing out the differences between species. With it, Garrus might have been a man in a mask with a funny way of walking. Without it, he looked impossibly nonhuman.

Still, he had a very human look of aggravation on his beaked face as Donnelly overrode the lock and stepped into the hangar. Heatsinks riddled the ground at his booted feet, most cold but dozens still glowing like embers. "I did say I wanted to be left alone," he said, ejecting another sink from his gleaming incisor rifle. It bounced across the smooth floor before coming to rest at Donnelly's feet.

Donnelly shrugged. "Yeah… I know. But you've been down here for two shifts straight now, and I have work to do," he lied, pretending to head over to one of the access panels.

Garrus arched an armored brow, gently setting his gun down next to four or five others he'd arranged on a crate. He lifted the next in line, which extended fearsomely in his grasp. "You're off-shift," Garrus pointed out, his taloned hands adjusting the rifle scope with rote familiarity. "Tali's shield upgrades are on hiatus until we can berth and shut down power. You have nothing to do until tomorrow's attenuator maintenance."

"Ahh… true," Ken admitted, scratching the back of his neck.

"I am keeping a bead on things," Garrus said, leveling the rifle and taking aim at a target he'd set up across the hangar. With drum rounds and a magnetic suppressor loaded the rifle was little more than a BB gun, but still the report came as a magnificent boom when he fired. The target – which couldn't have been more than a few centimeters across – disappeared with a bouncing clang.

"Sorry," Donnelly said, feeling a little stupid for being caught assuming Garrus did not know his shift schedule. There was some unvoiced debate aboard the Normandy as to whether Garrus or Miranda was Shepard's true second in command, but unlike Miranda, the turian had made no efforts to assert himself as such. He seemed more than willing to step aside and let things fall as they would. Still, Donnelly knew that with some prodding, Garrus had a great deal of value to say, and spoke with a straight faced honesty that felt worlds safer than Miranda's sly language.

Garrus gave a satisfied sniff and set the rifle down on his armored foot. "I just need some time to myself." He did not add until my armor is fixed.

Donnelly, having ensured that that alone time was about to end courtesy of an ornery biotic criminal, felt a new urge to change the subject. "How're you holding up?"

The turian craned his neck to the side, revealing the black bruises where Grunt's arm had crushed him, along with part of his fringe conspicuously missing the last few inches. He'd clearly sanded down the ragged edge but it still looked cracked and broken. It matched the rest of his face. "Nothing I haven't suffered before," he said. "Hurt my pride more than anything."

"Still mad at Shepard?" Donnelly asked, remembering well how the turian had shuddered with anger as he'd stared down their commander overtop Grunt's unconscious body.

"Yes," Garrus said, turning back to his guns. "But I'll get over it. It's not the first time we've disagreed." He rolled his shoulders in their bony sockets with a few impressive cracks. "What do you want, Donnelly?"

Donnelly didn't hesitate. "A few of us want to do what you said the turians do. When things are getting stressful." Garrus' beady eyes stared at Donnelly without blinking, and he found the words tumbling out without any real order to them. "Fight, you know. Blow off steam. The hangar's plenty big enough for a few sparring arenas, and the krogan's gone. We could never do it with him here."

"He'd want to play," Garrus agreed.

"Aye, and that'd hurt."

Garrus was silent for a moment, thinking. His mandibles fiddled in their sockets. "It will hurt anyway," he said at length. "It's not a good idea. Especially with Shepard and Mordin gone."

Donnelly gritted his teeth. He had hoped Garrus would be more amenable to it. "Why not? Chakwas is here. An' you said it worked for the turians."

Garrus sighed. "It does work for turians, but this is a human ship. Turian recruits are trained in hand to hand combat, regardless of what they end up assigned. Engineers, medics, gun crews, everybody. We know how to fight without getting hurt." He looked down at Donnelly. "I don't think this crew will get much out of it."

Donnelly felt a prickle of resentment at that. "We might not all be badass alien snipers but we aren't children, Garrus," he said, crossing his arms across his chest. "I bet there are humans on this ship that could give you a run for your money. Jack or Zaeed or Jacob. Hell, Iwent through boot camp." He dropped into a fighting stance, raising his fists in front of his face. "I'll fight you. You can kick my ass and I don't care. I'm not scared."

"I didn't say you were scared, I just-"

"I've got a gun in my locker," Ken added, mocking a few quick jabs. "Hell, I was going to be a marine 'till my dad convinced me it was a waste of my talents."

Garrus' mandibles flickered. "Donnelly, I-"

He was interrupted by a crash and the door slamming open.

"TURIAN!" Jack called. Her boots thundered on the hangar floor. The biotic was dressed for battle (as dressed as she got) and had a fearsome look on her face as she marched towards them, something (Donnelly sighed with relief that it wasn't the knife) clutched in her hand. "I got something of yours!"

Donnelly took a step back, watching Garrus' mandibles flicker in curiosity. Jack stomped up to the turian and glared up at him, unafraid.

"Little man here says you wanted to fight me."

Garrus fixed Donnelly with a bemused glare.

"Ahh… Those weren't my… exact words, Garrus," he said, taking a step backwards

"He said you needed an ass-kicking, and he thought I should give it to you," Jack announced, grinning wickedly at Donnelly.

Donnelly's eyes widened, suddenly more aware of the hundred pounds or so of weight difference between the turian and himself. "Those definitely weren't my words."

Garrus ignored him. "I don't want to fight, Jack," he said, voice even. He turned back to his rifles. "No one is fighting, play or otherwise. Go back to your quarters." He turned back to Donnelly. "Both of you."

Jack reintroduced herself to Garrus by way of her knee in his unarmored side. Deactivated amp or not, Donnelly saw the flash of blue and heard the solid whump against Garrus' thick skin. The turian stumbled to the ground with a snarl, Jack bounding after him. In a second, Jack was on top of him, straddling his deep, bony torso and staring down with a sharp-toothed grin.

"Thought you might say that," she purred, staring down at Garrus, whose face flickered somewhere between astonishment and fury. "So I brought you something." She held out her tattooed fist. Dangling from it, strung on a crude lanyard, was the missing end of Garrus' broken head-fringe. The finger-sized piece of bone swiveled and pivoted in Jack's grip.

"Is that supposed to anger me?" Garrus asked, flanged voice smug. Now he just looked amused by Jack's bravado.

"Nope," Jack said, looping the macabre necklace over her naked shoulders so the broken bone fell to rest between her breasts. She cocked a grin and smacked a blue-spiked fist down into the turian's bruised neck. "But that was."

Jack laughed.

She stopped laughing when Garrus' uncovered talons raked across her stomach, sending blood lancing across the floor. The turian was up in a flash, tossing her off of him as if she weighed nothing at all. It was her turn to stumble, especially when Garrus caught her with a plated elbow in the gut. A low, throaty growl erupted from somewhere in Garrus' bellow chest and he lashed out, raptor-quick, catching Jack on the chin and sending her tumbling towards Donnelly so fast he could hardly get out of the way.

Jack skidded to a stop, smiling under the blood trickling from her forehead.

"You alright Garrus?" Donnelly asked, watching Garrus' head lock low in his shell, eyes fixed forward. The turian's shoulders were heaving with rage, his clawed fingers twitching in their sheathes.

"Yeah Garrus," Jack jeered, stepping back into a fighting position and smearing the blood on her chest in like it was nothing. The necklace dangled tauntingly. "I thought you didn't want to fight."

Garrus had a gleam in his eye. He stared at Jack with a predatory intensity, his frustration and better judgment clearly grappling for dominance. There was a long pause. "Fine. No weapons, no biotics," he said finally. "No claws to the face," he added, flicking his talons. "First one to bow loses." His voice was quiet.

Donnelly let out a joyous whoop that echoed in stark contrast to the battle-fury on the faces of the two combatants. He did it! He managed to pull it off without anyone getting murdered! "I play winner!"

They stopped. Jack gave a snort of laughter.

Donnelly frowned. "What?"

---

–

"Access granted." EDI's voice was as neutral as ever.

So why did she sound so disappointed? Kelly almost turned back as the door to Shepard's quarters slid open. Of course, it didn't make any sense – EDI was on Cerberus' side, not Shepard's – but still the yeoman couldn't help but feel guiltier knowing the AI knew what she was doing.

On the morality of re-bugging Shepard's room, however, EDI was silent.

Kelly took a steeling breath and passed the threshold, set on getting her task done as quickly as possible.

The Illusive Man's second message had appeared just like the first had, inside her omni-tool's startup screens. It had been just two words – go now. Kelly had wasted no time, leaving the fun in the hangar under pretense of going to the bathroom and stopping by her bunk just long enough to grab the new bugs she'd had pressed into her hand on Illium.

She stooped to a knee next to Shepard's desk and peeled out the first of the bugs from its wrapper. The even-faced man who'd given them to her had told her that they were cutting-edge fiber circuits, and hid their transmissions inside of signals they detected around them, but Kelly would be amazed if anyone could find them either way – they were clear as glass and less than a quarter centimeter across. It didn't hurt either that since disabling all of the cameras Shepard had let his quarters fall to mess – Shepard had lost his first Star of Terra when the SR1 had been destroyed, and the replacement Cerberus had made for him was meeting the same fate under a sea of datapads, paper, and plastic trays from the crew deck.

Kelly found her eye drawn to the silver glint of the medal all the same, and before she knew it she'd pulled it out of its tomb. It glowed like the treasure in a cheesy adventure movie, reflecting glittering light onto her face as she slid her fingers down the side of the case. For gallantry and selflessness beyond the pale of regular man, read the engraving along the bottom, awarded on behalf of the Systems Alliance and the colony of Elysium, September 2176.

This was the man she served.

She'd read the reports, of course. Heard how a plainclothes Shepard and a turian drifter had coordinated the defense of a starport full of civilians for two days before reinforcements could arrive (that the Cerberus report devoted pages to the turian where the Alliance's had regulated her to a footnote had told Kelly all she needed to know about Cerberus' reputation of bigotry). He was Commander Shepard, and even as she opened the case and touched the medal's cool surface, those letters seemed to echo in her head.

He had saved Elysium – her home. While she'd been screwing around, coasting through her private school classes without ever opening a textbook, he'd been on her home planet shooting batarians in a spaceport terminal with a borrowed turian rifle. Protecting her family, her friends. Her whole life only existed because he did.

But holding the medal in her hands made it all seem more real. Shepard was a larger-than-life figure whether he wanted to be or not. He had friends willing to die for him. Friends who loved him even without him having saved their home planets. She almost wished she could count herself among them.

But she wasn't.

Kelly slid the bug into the velvet padding and closed up the case.

She moved on, recalling the Man's instructions perfectly. His diagrams had told her where each bug would go, down to the tiniest detail. One in the desk, another under a panel pried out of the terminal. Another inside the power coupler. Two in the bed, one in the fish tank's pump, one more on the inside of the bathroom's drain. She placed each one in its proper spot.

Kelly hated to think she was betraying Shepard's trust. The commander had been nothing but sweet to her during her entire time on the Normandy. Even though she saw how he veiled his distrust behind smiles and easy charisma, she saw too the genuineness behind that. He wanted to trust her, trust Cerberus. And Kelly believed with all her heart that he could – that he should.

It was why she'd resolved to ignore Miranda's demand that she seduce Shepard if she could. It wasn't that she would put up much resistance if the oblivious man showed any interest, but Kelly wanted to be the commander's friend more than she wanted to jump his bones – she wanted to show him it was possible to be a good person in Cerberus. It was possible to be honest and loving and valiant and all the things Shepard wanted to be and still wear the uniform.

And as hard as that was to buy while she was sneaking in his room and bugging it while he was away, Kelly knew sometimes even good people had to take measures. That was what Cerberus was all about. The Illusive Man had saved millions by manipulating the batarians into only enslaving colonies they couldn't hold rather than those they could. Jacob had broken more skulls in the name of peace than anyone she'd ever met, and regretted it the whole way. Kelly was a good person but she was a good liar too. It would be wrong of any of them to waste their potential.

The Illusive Man needed her to help him keep an eye on Shepard? She would. Because it was for the best. Because she had to. If she had to put up with the guilt of listening to herself rationalize it just like all the patients she'd seen do the same, well… that was the price.

Job done, she got out of Shepard's quarters as fast as her feet could carry her.

–

The elevator gave a smooth click as the doors closed behind her and Kelly let loose the breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. She'd done what she had to.

As the elevator started its descent, Kelly went through her old ritual. She breathed deeply, eyes closed as she sorted her thoughts into their proper boxes. Back in her college days, when memories would keep her up for days on end, she'd been so desperately tired she'd considered getting a medical graybox interface to help control her hyperactive mind. She counted herself lucky that the doctors had convinced her otherwise. She'd just needed a little discipline, and while it was still a struggle sometimes, today Kelly felt her worries compartmentalize away in a flash. The tingling, guilty feel of the leftover bugs clenched in her fist disappeared.

The elevator jerked to a stop on the main deck. Kelly did not quite keep the surprised yelp out of her voice as her eyes shot open to see the ship's pilot staring at her.

She found herself in an instant. "Joker!" she said, sliding the bugs into her rear pocket.

Joker snorted and batted her hands away when she tried to help him limp into the elevator. His voice was even when he said her name, but she could see the suspicion in his eyes as they searched her, as if he was looking for the veiled insult on her face. Joker had not responded well to Kelly's prodding, however subtle she'd tried to be about it. It seemed like he took everything she said to him as a verbal trap she was laying. Like he feared she would ground him again if she knew everything about him – like she'd take the Normandy from him. Still, Kelly was convinced Joker needed her more than anyone aboard did, and so she persisted. "Why aren't you down in the hangar with the others?" she asked, smiling.

Joker shrugged, leaning against the rear wall as the elevator resumed its descent. "Never been much one for fistfights."

"What are you one much for?"

"Dueling," Joker said, not missing a beat. "You know. White gloves, swords. All that. More elegant. Not a fight without some good bureaucracy, I always say."

"I could see you with a sword," Kelly said, tapping her chin in feigned deep thought. She wasn't sure where she could find one for him. Perhaps Kasumi would know.

"Also going to the bathroom without having to worry about being run over by an alien," Joker grumbled.

Kelly laughed. "That would be a problem," she said.

Joker just shrugged again, burying the smile she just knew he felt. "Shepard just radio'd," he said. "Said they'd be back inside the hour. So I gotta get all my hobbling out of the way before that." The elevator slid to a stop on the crew deck, and Joker started for the door without another word, steadying himself on the frame.

"Bye Joker!" Kelly said, waving at his back. He gave a non-specific grunt which made her titter again.

She thought that was that until she turned towards the shared crew quarters and almost ran into Joker's outstretched arm. "Wait a minute, Chambers," Joker said.

She turned and met his eyes, cocking one eyebrow. Her practiced look of total innocence did nothing to lessen the squint in Joker's gaze.

"What were you doing up there?" Joker asked, gesturing up at the ceiling with his chin. "On the top deck?"

Kelly's mind rifled through excuses at a mile a minute. Some part of her wanted to tell at least part of the truth – Joker had already guessed she wasn't really the ship's yeoman, and would probably write her off as an insignificant threat to Shepard. And even if he did start accusing her of sneaking, his words would probably be written off as his usual contrariness. Still, as sure as she was that Joker would jump on a chance to validate his dislike of her, Kelly knew the truth would destroy any chance she'd ever get of earning his trust. She had to lie.

It only took her an instant to come up with something, but Joker's expression made it very clear it was an instant too long.

"I was trying to figure out why Shepard's room terminal doesn't notify him of new messages," she lied, deciding to joke the joker. "Tired of sitting right there and telling him every time he gets some new spam. Ya know?"

Joker's eyes narrowed, searching her for dishonesty.

She just smiled.

Joker relaxed. "You are the yeoman," he said.

Kelly faked another laugh as the pilot turned back towards the bathroom, adjusting his hat with an indignant tug. "I'm like a VI but cheaper!"

Joker had nothing to say to that and Kelly bid her retreat.

–

Kelly sighed as she entered the crew quarters and found her way to her bunk, feeling glummer than she'd felt in a long time.

Joker knew. He hadn't bought it. He knew she'd lied to him. He'd tell Shepard and Shepard would tell Garrus and the rest of the crew and they'd all feel so betrayed and it was all her fault.

Some psychologist. She was going to lose her patients, all because she was trying to help them.

She hopped up on her bed, pushing aside the great stack of datapads Garrus had delivered to her the previous day (he was in charge while Shepard and Miranda were away, he'd told her, but that didn't mean he was doing Miranda's paperwork. He'd left that behind when he'd left C-Sec). While she hadn't been afforded the same extravagant accommodations as Miranda, she'd been given a top bunk to herself, which she'd taken the time to adorn with a lavish plush blanket and pillow – neon orange – that she'd bought on Elysium. She found that reminder of home dearly needed now, and as soon as she'd tossed the leftover bugs in the little lockbox she kept shoved between the mattress and wall she buried her face in her pillow and breathed deep, trying to remember the sweet smell of the fruiting grasses that grew on the hills north of her home, or the pleasant way the colors popped under the thermal sails.

Her mind travelled absently, trying to decide if she should head back down to the hangar to take part in the fun. As soon as Donnelly had rushed through the crew deck with the news that he'd convinced Garrus to let them spar, all of the crew's previous reservations had disappeared and they'd flocked to the hangar to take advantage of some time off. Kasumi had broken out her impressive stash of alien alcohols and Kelly had been delighted to see the crew manage to relax in each other's company for once, even if they were doing so by beating each other to a pulp.

It had been fun, but now Kelly felt like she didn't belong there. Like perhaps she should just lay in bed and let the crew have their fun without her.

A beep from her personal datapad interrupted her self-pity and she sat up, pulling it off of her shelf and flicking it on.

It clicked to life. The message the Illusive Man had left her was gone, a new one in its place

Good work, the screen said.

"That is just creepy," she breathed, glancing around for the camera. She could see none, but considering how subtle the bugs she'd placed were, that wasn't so surprising. "Can you hear me?"

The words changed. I can hear everything on the ship again. Thanks to you.

Kelly frowned. Thanks to her.

The Illusive Man must have guessed her thoughts (he really was creepy), because the screen updated again.

You did the right thing, Chambers. I promise.

"I hope you're right."

The Illusive Man didn't say 'I'm always right' like she expected him to. She supposed it didn't need to be said. Of all the people she'd met, she'd never met any as unusual as him. The Man was so focused he came off as distracted. If he said the sky was red, he said it with a calm conviction that made you wonder if you'd just been looking at it wrong. Still…

"I think Joker knows."

He doesn't.

"He knows something. He'll tell Shepard."

He won't have time. There's been a development. Shepard will be back on the Normandy in a matter of hours. When he returns, tell him to contact me with all haste.

Kelly nodded.

But until then, I have another job for you, if you're willing.

As if she could say no.

You'll like this one better.

The screen did not wait for an answer, but returned to the view of her parents that was her desktop. In the middle of the screen, however, sat a new document. Kelly opened it and watched as the datapad bloomed with diagrams and blueprints. She smiled as she committed each one to memory. She did like this one better.

She left the room with the leftover bugs back in her pocket.

Bugging Shepard's room? She'd do it if she had to.

Bugging Miranda's room? She'd do that with a smile on her face.

---

–

It was a fact of the galaxy. It didn't matter how complex the universe got. How many spaceships and superweapons and twiggy aliens they met. How smart the computers could be made.

Somebody had to wipe the table off at the end of the day.

It might as well be him.

Gardner worked quietly and thoroughly. He'd already loaded all of the dishes into the autoclave (the days of soap and water were long past aboard a spaceship, and it only took one low-gravity spill to convince you that was the right way of things). The uneaten food was in the waste ovens having the moisture baked out of it.

He was alone, the lights from the medbay casting long shadows across the floor as he scrubbed the table surfaces long past clean. It was technically only second shift, usually a busy time of day, but with both the Commander and Operative Lawson down planetside, most of the crew had decided to take a personal day. For many that had meant sleep – and real sleep, not just the few hours of refreshing-but-not-quite-enough chemically-induced sleep in the pods – but that was before half the ship had flocked to the hangar to watch the spectacle there. The turian versus the convict. Gardner wasn't sure who he wanted to win.

He cleaned in silence.

Gardner was a quiet man when nobody was around.

The timepiece in the galley ticked over, signaling the start of third shift, just as he finished putting everything away. The mess was still silent but for the muffled cheering coming from the lower decks. Normally he'd see a rush of traffic at his galley as the second shift was relieved of duty, but he had his doubts anybody would be patronizing his services today.

He had more to do. There was always something. The holoconsole box from the crew quarters needed fixing, and with the Saturn Bowl approaching he knew he'd never live it down if he didn't get it back together.

But for now he took a seat at the table and closed his eyes, happy, for once, to just let his mind go blank and appreciate the quiet. It was a rare moment of solitude on an otherwise crowded ship, and he savored it. He liked people – he really did – but it was a backwards fact of the universe that going out into outer space meant fitting into very little of it. It didn't matter if it was a two-man skiff or a space station the size of the Citadel, there just wasn't enough room for everybody. It made you go crazy, stay out long enough. A man wanted to be out in the open.

An empty mess would do for now.

Gardner did not keep a cross with him, but that did not stop him from bowing his head to pray. He was not a man to ask God for too much, just the strength to keep going another day. Just protection for those he loved. Just the wisdom to understand.

It was hard, sometimes, to be a praying man in the sort of galaxy that would take his life from him. It would be coming up on two years next month, two years since his great shift in perspective. Two years since he'd been pulled off the eezo line and told his home had been burnt by the raiders. Two years since Abby and Sara and his brother James and…

There was a point to it all. If Gardner knew anything it was that. But sometimes that point… sometimes it was hard to see.

A sudden raucous bout of cheering echoed from downstairs, and Gardner felt the solitude closing in around him. The silence was suddenly very loud. He stared at the elevator for a moment.

What the hell.

Grabbing his datapad from under the sink, he typed out a quick 'make it yourself' and threw it on the counter. He washed his hands, thrust a thermos of coffee into one pocket, gathered up his toolbox, his glasses, and the broken leftovers of the holoconsole, and made for the lower decks.

–

"Safety first," they'd always joked back in Gardner's mining days. "Safety of the rig, then safety of the eezo, then safety of the cutters, and then safety of the miners." It hadn't been until Elcot had named him in charge of enforcing safety that he'd realized how true it was, how all of the walrus-mustached man's bellowing about 'protecting the machine' and 'layin' down your lives' had been meant earnestly.

He and the other miners had been cogs, pure and simple, and the Cord-Hislop company wouldn't have given half a damn if they'd all died so long as the equipment was safe.

Obviously Shepard was not Elcot and Cerberus was not Cord-Hislop, but Gardner had never been able to shake the feeling that he was the only one looking out for the people around him. The only one who gave a damn if they were hurt.

So he watched the sparring with unease. He sipped his coffee from a makeshift crate-cum-table in one corner of the hangar, picking at the insides of the broken holoconsole and trying not to intervene as the crew attempted to punch each other's lights out.

It was harder with each round. Gardner knew there was some tension among the Normandy crew, some grudges that needed closure, some petty rivalries to work out, but watching his coworkers spar made Gardner think a few more needed to be selected for the ground team. There had already been three bloody noses and countless sprained wrists and ankles by the time Gardner had found the source of the holoconsole's problem. But he kept his mouth shut and let them have their fun.

Nearly the entire ship had come down to watch the festivities, and were crowded around a pair of arenas they'd ringed with great shipping containers of Mordin's lab equipment (what the salarian would think to see his expensive gadgets being used for such a purpose was anybody's guess). Everything else had been cleared out of the way, leaving plenty of space for drinking and gambling. Unsurprisingly, Kasumi was right in the center of both, calling out bids at a mile a minute without ever a misplaced syllable. The crew alternately cheered and booed as each pair tried their luck in the ring. Money and booze flowed freely (and, as far as Gardner could tell, the only reason Kasumi was providing the latter so generously was because she was scooping up so much of the former).

Most of the crowd was cheering at what was apparently round six between Vakarian and Jack. Gardner couldn't help but wince at the rapid-fire impacts of armor on skin (or at the numbers Kasumi was calling out) but the two combatants seemed to notice neither, and only fought more viciously with every jab, like they couldn't decide whether they were fighting or screwing. The other ring had changed out more often – at present it was Donnelly and Hawthorne, Ken shirtless and flaunting it while his fully-clothed opponent circled around him.

Gardner returned his focus to the broken console. A few connections had been knocked out of position. A simple fix. Opening up his toolkit (not the fancy one Cerberus had afforded him, with three thousand gleaming tools he'd never heard of, but the well-worn set he'd carried with him for more than a decade. Simple tools for simple problems) he set to work replacing the bent connectors. It surprised him sometimes how specialized the young men and women around him had become. He'd seen for himself how smart they all were – half the words said on this ship went right over his head, whether it was talk of impact attenuators or inferometers, heuristic runtimes or transgenetic markers. Still, break their video screen and they were useless. Couldn't snake a drain, couldn't fix a jammed door. Knew what a sphygmomanometer was but had never seen a hammer.

But then, he supposed they didn't have to know as long as he was still there.

"Not planning to join the festivities, Rupert?"

Gardner almost jumped at the doctor's voice. She was in full uniform – as she so often was – and smiled at him.

Gardner smiled back. "Doctor! Naw, not the fighting sort. I'm no soldier." Gardner had understood that about himself a long time ago. "Besides," he said, pointing to her medbag as she dragged over a crate to take a seat next to him, "I doubt you need more folks to worry about."

"Oh, it's not a bother," Chakwas insisted. "It's a relief to occasionally treat a wound that doesn't involve alien neurotoxins or vacuum exposure." She sounded genuinely more content than Gardner had heard her in a long time. Indeed, the doctor looked tired but Gardner couldn't help but notice a hint of excitement in her eyes as she watched the fighting.

"Maybe you should go a few rounds," Gardner joked, grinning.

Chakwas looked at him with a half-smile. "Maybe I will."

Their laughter was interrupted as EDI materialized nearby. "Cerberus safety protocols allow for crewmember physical recreation in specified areas," she said, voice apologetic, "but require that at least one medical professional remain on standby in case of emergency. With Dr. Solus away, Dr. Chakwas is the only available medical professional."

"I was just kidding, EDI," Chakwas said, waving a hand. "I'm happy to let the younger generation take the hits, thank you very much."

"Of course, Dr. Chakwas." EDI disappeared.

Gardner always felt marginally unsettled by the AI, but now he found his mind stuck on the doctor's words. "They are young," he said, shaking his head as he was again reminded just how very young they were. Discounting a few of the aliens, he, Chakwas, and Zaeed were the only crewmembers past forty. Medical technology was such that they each probably had a half century or so left to them still, but somehow all of those years looked small next to the years that separated them from the younger men and women they served.

Chakwas nodded knowingly. "Aren't they? Practically children."

"Don't remember when ships flew slow."

"Or when nobody called themselves 'human'," Chakwas added.

"Or when everybody knew that the galaxy was dangerous. Not some playground to play soldier in." Gardner shook his head. Watching them clobber each other made them seem all the more foolish to him with every passing blow. He had seen how skilled the crew was – any one of them, young or not, eclipsed his meager education by a mile. Cerberus had asked for the best and they'd gotten it. The kids had skill and precision and drive. They knew their trades, and they wanted the collectors dead.

But they didn't want it like they should. They didn't know what it meant. Didn't know how it had felt to tune your television (not holoconsole) with the rest of the world to watch the first ships go through the relay. Couldn't tell you where they were when the news of First Contact had come through. Didn't remember the way it had felt knowing they were at war with another species, temperament and abilities unknown.

Chakwas gave his knee a reassuring squeeze. "Well, we'll just have to be there to remind them, then, won't we?"

–

It was Gardner himself who chose to end the festivities. EDI had announced that Shepard's ground team was minutes from returning but it had only been after Gardner had stood up and started bellowing threats of stew-ladling duties that the miscreants had been convinced to evacuate the hangar.

The away team had come back to a hallway full of smiling faces, even if half of them were smiling behind bruises or bloodied lips. Turian or not, Gardner had been able to see how nervous Vakarian was as Shepard's gaze had turned to him, then back to the makeshift arenas and betting parlor, then back to him. (Donnelly, just behind and with a spectacular shiner over one eye, looked more nervous still).

But then Shepard had laughed and the tension had bled out and everyone had gone back to their posts except for one intensely jealous krogan and one very filthy Cerberus operative.

It would have been a good ending to the day if the news of the disabled collector ship hadn't gone out ten minutes later.

–

Gardner was on his hands and knees, scrubbing a bloodstain from the hangar floor, when he heard the clomp of boots.

"Funny time to do some cleaning," Zaeed observed, staring down at him. The grizzled mercenary was in full armor, suited up and ready to go with an assault rifle in his hands and a flamethrower tank on his back. None of the beastly scars he'd displayed so proudly when it had been his turn to spar were visible, but the deep dents and missing paint on the armor did the job well enough on their own.

Gardner grunted and kept scrubbing.

"Not gonna go look at the ship?" Zaeed asked. There was a painful screech as he dragged a heavy crate over to sit on. "It's pretty big. Same one we saw on Horizon. Just floatin' out there." He gestured out past the far hangar wall with one hand.

"I saw it," Gardner said. Like the rest of the ship, he had flocked to the viewing screens to see the great disabled hulk that Shepard's team was about to try to infiltrate. Half of the ground squad was still in the Illusive Man's fancy communications room arguing about their plan of attack.

Zaeed raised a brow. "Not impressed, then?" he asked absently, fishing a pair of cigars out of one of his pants pockets.

"Not my job," Gardner said. "The ground team has to tackle that. I just clean floors."

"Ha!" Zaeed barked. "I like that attitude, Gardner. Do your goddamn job and everything works out. Wish the rest of you Cerberus fools had half that discipline." He lit the cigars on the igniter of his flamethrower and held one out to Gardner without explanation.

Gardner shook his head. "No one ever tell you smoking's unsafe?"

Zaeed just shrugged and shoved the second cigar into his mouth next to the first. "Not half as unsafe as stormin' collector ships," he grunted. "Though I got a funny story about that, actually," he said. "Arms dealer I ran into a few years ago, see, he-"

"Some other time, Massani," Gardner interrupted. Gardner had never minded Zaeed so much as some of the crew did. By and large people gave the grizzled mercenary a wide berth, but as far as Gardner was concerned, Zaeed was one of the only people aboard with his head on straight. He was quiet and grumpy but he didn't carve out a territory or eat weird things like all the aliens Shepard had cobbled together. He was just a man, a man old enough not to be offended when you cut off his story.

Zaeed puffed quietly on his cigars, two-colored eyes fixed on hangar wall as if they could pierce through to the ship that still floated out beyond it. His expression didn't betray a thing, but Gardner knew he was planning. Preparing himself.

"Your loss on the cigar," Zaeed said after a moment, puffing them again for emphasis, "but I still think it's a bloody stupid time to be cleaning, uhh…" he paused to look, "blood off the floors. Go get a snack. Hit up the little princess for a drink. Take a nap. Might be your last chance before we get blown out of the goddamn sky."

Gardner shrugged. "If I went to take a nap I might just sleep through that," he said. "Besides, wouldn't do to have one of you slip and break your necks on your way to getting yourselves killed out there."

"Wouldn't be your fault," Zaeed said, grinning. He pointed to the stain with a boastful gleam in his bicolored eyes. "Pretty sure that's Donnelly."

Gardner stared at him. "So it's your fault." He remembered well the thwap of Zaeed's fist against Donnelly's face. The engineer had had it coming, of course – nobody else had been stupid enough to challenge the merc to spar – but considering Donnelly had been coming off the adrenaline high of a few lucky victories, one would think Zaeed might have gone easy on him.

"Damn right," Zaeed said, looking immensely proud. "You should be thanking me for instilling a little respect for the elderly."

"He's just a kid. You could have let him have his moment."

Zaeed nodded. "Coulda," he agreed, face contemplative. "Coulda let him take out Big Bad Massani, let him show off for the girls a little instead of just breaking his face." He laughed. "'Course, his girl wasn't there. Daniels. If she was I mighta considered it."

Gardner grinned despite himself. "You're a saint, Massani."

Zaeed gave his usual lopsided smirk, lopsided-er than usual around the girth of two cigars. "Hell yeah I am. Makin' a difference every day. Just like you."

Gardner sighed. "Yeah. Just like me."

Making a difference, one clean floor at a time.

---

Four hours later…

–

She might have chosen a better time to kick off her boot, Gabby mused, than half a second before the ship's artificial gravity died. Said boot had been sent flying across the hall trailing the ash and soot it had picked up down in the fuel lines. Now it was floating above Zaeed's doorframe, drunkenly swiveling about its toe in a shimmering cloud of ash. It might have been beautiful if Gabby had cared to look.

As it was, however, she found her attention focused on not passing out. Despite its romanticized portrayal in movies back on Earth, modern spacetravel had long ago left behind the concerns of zero gravity. The advent of mass effect fields had made artificial gravity trivial and relegated big, bouncing spacewalks to a quaint relic to be enjoyed as a novelty. Gabby remembered taking a space cruise with her family shortly after her father had won the Asimov Prize and going into the zero-g playroom with all the other kids to climb on colorful monkey bars that wound their way around the ceilings and walls.

She hadn't liked it then either.

She thought she'd repressed that embarrassing incident away, but the feeling of her ears trying to swallow themselves as the normally-omnipresent hum of the Normandy'sfield generators died away to a crushing silence brought it all back in a nauseating rush. Gabby clenched her eyes as tightly as she could and fought to stop from retching out the ration bar Ken had left on her console. She was dimly aware of bumping into the ceiling alongside her shed boot – it wasn't a hard bump but it sent her reeling, bouncing back down the hall in a slow motion dance, disturbing the floating halos of ash and grease.

The ship's lights had died with the gravity, and now only the calm glow of emergency lighting remained. No alarm had been raised – EDI's usual warning klaxons were eerily silent. Something had happened on the collector ship. Something that knocked the AI and the rest of the ship's systems out of commission.

"E…EDI?" Gabby asked, not opening her eyes. She found herself cringing in anticipation of silence – if EDI was truly down, they might be in very great danger.

EDI's answer came quickly but her voice was flat. "Emergency protocols have been engaged. Cyberwarfare suites in use. AI functions restricted to mission critical inquiries. Non-mission critical inquiries will be addressed as resources allow. Please stand by. Please stand by. Please stand by. Please stand by."

Gabby grimaced. "Great." At least EDI wasn't dead. She drifted into the door to Grunt's storage room and felt her knee settle into part of the doorframe. This time she didn't bounce but fell into a twisted pirouette, rooted sidewise at the knee and spinning, hair flailed about like a hungry anemone.

She'd been trained for this, years before, and now she screwed up her forehead trying to remember the rules. Don't move. That had been one of them. Or, no. Think before you move. The rules are different in zero g. The Alliance forced all its naval personnel to go through a microgravity course in case the unlikely ever happened, but Gabby and the rest of the engineers had treated it like a game. Now she found herself regretting not having taken it more seriously. She forced her eyes open and almost immediately shut them again when she saw the hallway spinning around her.

"I really should have gotten the ear dusting," she groused to no one in particular, working up the courage to open her eyes again. The ship still spun silently around her, like she was the center of the universe and it a wheeling galaxy.

She grabbed for the door frame to stop the spinning and ended up accidentally pushing off the door with her one booted foot. That slight shift made everything worse, and she found herself floating away again. A scrambling grip on part of a dead light fixture got her spinning the other direction, still mockingly unstable.

She bit her lip and tried again. Think. Think before you move.

Gently this time.

With as much patience as she could muster, she managed to hook her socked toe around a cable and slowly, slowly reel herself in, coming to a stop in one of the corners. She continued to twist until she had wedged herself up onto the ceiling, pushing her back against the bulkhead and pinning herself in place. The corridor finally showed mercy and came to a stop.

"Ken!" she shouted.

The ship was strangely quiet – Shepard had taken his entire squad aboard the collector ship – and Gabby heard her partner-in-crime's voice echo from the engine room.

"Ya alright, Gabby?" His voice was a blessed comfort, even muffled and nasally as it was under the broken nose Zaeed had given him during his little arena games.

"How do you think I am?"

"Gainin' a new perspective?"

Gabby rolled her eyes. "Very funny, Kenneth. EDI's not talking. Can you see anything from where you are?"

There was a few seconds of grunting. "Aye. Managed to wrap myself up in Tali's console. Looks like secondary systems are down throughout the ship. Had some kind of power spike."

"It was a trap." Joker's voice filled the engineering deck so suddenly Gabby almost lost her grip on the ceiling. He managed to make the proclamation sound almost casual, though Gabby could hear the distraction in his voice over the chattering of instruments in the background. "Frickin' bugs tried to blow out…" he paused for a moment, muttering something foul Gabby did not catch, "our grid. EDI pushed it all through nonessential systems."

Gabby felt her grip slipping and another wave of vertigo, like she was leaning over the edge of a very long fall. It was good to know life support was still on, at least. "Nonessential?" she whined all the same, "I think gravity's pretty essential!"

Joker actually laughed. "Not compared to the peripheral dampener systems."

There was a long beat of silence. Gabby couldn't see Ken, but all the same she knew they wore the same shocked look. "She didn't..."

"She did," Joker confirmed. "Apparently EDI considered them nonessential too."

Kenneth voiced what they were all thinking. "Without dampeners we can't jump."

"Sure we can," Joker said.

"…Not without being liquefied..." The ship's inertial dampeners were the least obvious but perhaps most important of the ship's many mass effect fields – without them, Joker could hardly toe the engines without sending the crew whiplashing into the lower decks at Mach five.

"There's always a catch, isn't there?" Joker quipped. "Ground team'll be safe in the Kodiak, maybe some of the crew up on the command deck too, but I guess EDI and Timmy figure the rest of you can end up smoothies if you gotto." The pilot's levity made his words almost surreal – Gabby almost thought he'd shout 'gotcha' and laugh at the looks on their faces, but she knew the pilot well enough to know how serious he was. They were going to die. The computer had decided it would sacrifice them along with the other nonessential systems.

Ken's voice had a new steel in it. "How long do we have to fix it?"

"Don't know," Joker answered. "Until Shepard gets aboard and I have to get us out of here."

"You wouldn't just let us die," Gabby said. They'd had some disagreements with the ship's cantankerous pilot in the past, but Tali had always spoke glowingly of him. Even as grumpy as he acted, it was hard to imagine him sacrificing anyone.

"No offense, but I sure as hell would," Joker said, and his voice was dead serious for the first time since Gabby had met him. "As soon as we barnswallow that shuttle I am pressing the button, dampeners or not. You either float your asses up to the command deck and take your chances or you fix the dampeners. But I am not letting this ship go down again. Or Shepard."

The two engineers were silent. It was clear from Joker's tone that he meant it. Run and hope most of the crew could get to the main dampeners and survive the jump or risk trying to fix the peripherals before Shepard got back aboard and maybe save everybody. It was no choice at all.

"Then we have to get into the hangar," Gabby said finally, shaking her head as she risked a peek down (up?) through the hangar windows. The power spike had knocked out the fields that kept the hangar's atmosphere contained and its contents had blasted out into the cold vacuum. A few scattered crates clung to the ceilings and walls like flotsam but otherwise what had been a makeshift fighting arena only hours before was now cold and airless. It looked impossibly deep. "…without proper spacesuits."

"I'll keep the belly turned," Joker said, back to his mock cheer. "So your skin doesn't get baked off."

Gabby gulped. There was something dearly wrong with that man.

"…you know. As fast," Joker finished.

–

Gabby would try to strangle him if she didn't think she'd end up bouncing around Jack's cargo deck.

"An' the eleventh reason this is cool is because now I don't have to stand on one foot. I can just float." Ken wiggled his injured foot in midair, causing him to roll backwards. "No pain."

Gabby yanked the lid off of another storage crate (it went spiraling away). "You wouldn't have hurt your foot at all if you hadn't tried to fight Zaeed, you damn fool." She stared dourly into the crate – more tools and specialty parts their fabricators couldn't make. She pushed it aside.

"An' that reminds me of the twelfth reason," Ken said, ignoring her. "I would have totally kicked his ass in zero G. I am a natural at this."

Gabby would have argued if it wasn't true, but Ken had picked up the subtleties of zero G movement a lot faster than she had. He was almost graceful, monkeying around on walls and ceilings, apparently without the head-splitting waves of seasickness Gabby felt every time she shifted position. He seemed to have no problem settling on any surface he chose, while Gabby had remained stubbornly biased in favor of the floors, gravity or not. "For someone who's about to die you're awfully cheerful."

Ken fixed her with a look that managed to be exasperated even under a nose bandage and a black eye and red emergency lighting. "We're not gonna die, Gabby," he said. "I am tryin' to cheer you up if you'd stop bein' so dramatic."

Gabby looked away. "I don't want to be cheered up. Just help me find the parts, okay?"

"Best squadmate to have here, right now?" Ken said, changing the subject, "Tali. Definitely Tali."

It was true – Tali's built in spacesuit and ridiculous technological acumen would be a blessing now. Of course the quarian had gone with Shepard. If she were here she'd probably already have fixed the dampeners with a paperclip and half a flashlight and be well into lecturing them on proper maintenance or something. "Oh screw her for not being here," Gabby griped. For once she'd welcome the lecture.

"No fair. You always yell at me when I talk about screwin' her."

Gabby couldn't help but laugh at that. "Shut up, Kenneth," she said, grinning despite herself.

"Yes ma'am."

The two of them fell silent as they continued to search the upended cargo for the supplies they needed. Technically they were lucky – Gabby had already pulled out their store of personal oxygen tanks and tack-boots for the morning's work on the engines. It had been a bit of a chore to catch them from where they'd migrated all around the vaulted ceiling of the core chamber (though the residual gravity from the core's pulsing mass effect field had made it at least a little easier to right themselves), but they'd managed to suit up well enough for brief space work. It wasn't as good as a real spacesuit, but at least they wouldn't suffocate or float off into the abyss while they were working.

Still, what they had to do to get dampeners back online (they hoped) was little more than a giant fuse change, and they needed some giant fuses.

Ken's silence didn't last long. "Worst squadmate?" he started again, "Grunt. Think he's good at crushin' you normally?"

Gabby rolled her eyes and ignored his chatter. The thought of her looming death weighed heavily on her mind. This was exactly the sort of thing she'd claimed she wanted when she was a girl (though the wiseass Scotsman was new). She'd been her father's shining star, his little math whiz, and he'd cultivated in her the same prodigy that had made him so successful, but she had refused to follow him into building ships for industry. She shared his love for ships but she wanted excitement, she'd told him. A little danger. Not just staring at blueprints.

He'd been upset – he hadn't said anything but he'd given that little sniff that made his moustache twitch and meant he ever-so-disappointed in her – but he'd ultimately helped her get into the Alliance's engineer corps, where indeed she'd found all the excitement and danger (and, again, wiseass Scotsmen) she could ever want. He hadn't even complained when she'd changed her surname to avoid letting her superiors coddle her when they learned she was his daughter.

And now it was a bit too much. But she'd been too stubborn, too willful to spend her life drawing blueprints from the safety of an orbital shipyard. She supposed that's why her father had ended up the one to build the SR2, and she might just end up the one to die on it.

Still, if she hadn't joined the Alliance she would have never met Ken. She stole a glance at her happy-go-lucky counterpart as she dug out the next crate in the pile. Ken was still talking to himself and she could not help but smile at his usual goofiness, at his ability to continue being a wiseass even with a mashed face and the very real possibility of having a mashed body inside the next hour or so. She knew he was laying it on thick for her benefit, playing her foil like he always did when she needed it, and it had rarely meant so much to her.

She found herself opening her mouth. "Ken… I…" She realized too late she didn't really know what she wanted to say. Ken looked at her, one ruddy eyebrow creaked up on his face. "Thanks," she blurted.

Ken smiled. "You got it, Gabbster. I'm changin' my mind, though. Now I really dowant to see Grunt try this. Probably couldn't even stand up. It'd be like a dog in a hovercar."

"Ken, Joker could push that button at any time. Are those reallywhat you want your last words to be?"

"Not really," Ken agreed, opening yet another box and peering inside. He smiled. "How about… 'I found 'em'?"

"You found wh-" Gabby stopped as Ken held out an open crate for her to see. Indeed he had found them – a quartet of new fuses, each as big around as her arm, rested in cast foam holders. Ken grinned like the magnificent bastard he'd always fancied himself and Gabby was forced to concede the comparison, if only this once. She almost wanted to get liquefied now, if only to see the look on his face melt under ten thousand times standard Earth gravity. But she let him have his victory, and followed him as he crawled along the ceiling, crate dragging weightlessly behind.

"One last thing, Kenneth," she said.

He stopped to look.

"Jack would be way worse than Grunt right now. Look what we did to her hole."

Ken nodded, grinning at the mess they'd made. "Look what gravity did to her hole."

–

There was no sound in space. Gabby knew this, of course. Sci-fi nerds the galaxy over – Ken, for one – loved to cry foul at the explosions and laser blasts and rumbling engines to be found in just about every space action movie ever made – only the 'artsy' ones bothered to capture the crushing silence and emptiness of the void.

But the funny thing was that all the action movies were right. Gabby stared out the open hangar bay doors at the vast bulk of the collector ship and her brain went right to work providing the necessary sound effects for her. Constellations of clicky tones popped as lights flickered to life across the ship's vast flank. Panels moved and slid and twisted and whooshed as Gabby watched the pitted, gravelly surface awaken. Worst of all was the roar from the great arc of yellow that had kindled in the sleeping giant's maw – the energy weapon mentioned in the files the Illusive Man had provided, no doubt.

Gabby had been in the Battle of the Citadel, had faced Sovereign, but she'd done it from safe within the belly of the Perugia. Seeing the alien bulk rumble beneath her was the second scariest thing she'd ever seen.

The first was the last fuse floating out towards it, just out of finger reach.

The first three fuses had gone in fine. The dampener projectors were built under the hangar floor for ready access, and while it had taken some trial and error to get them to extend without power, Gabby had managed to wire the power unit on one of their welders to deliver enough juice to pull open the hatches. Unscrewing the blown fuses from their cases had proven the biggest challenge – once the wrench was set, any torque on it would just cause them to twist, not the bolts. They ended up having to double-team it, bracing themselves down on either side of the fuse and painstakingly passing the wrench over and over until the fuse came loose.

It was exhausting work and coupled with the lack of a proper spacesuit Gabby felt her temperature soaring. Space had so many ways to kill her, she knew, but it seemed today it had decided on boiling her alive under her own body heat. Still, by the time they'd finally moved to the fourth projector they'd figured out their rhythms well enough and it went quickly.

And then one of them had reached for the fresh fuse and bumped it.

It spoke to the severity of the situation that neither one remembered who did it.

"Well… shit," Ken panted, staring out at the fuse meandering its way away towards the backdrop of the vast alien ship. His face looked defeated behind the thick fog on his mask. "That's…" he paused, for once at a loss. "Hmm…"

Gabby was closer, and cinched her safety line back as far as she could, until it was at the end of its slack. She climbed up on the projector, bracing herself against its safety panels and strained like a dog on a leash. The blackness of space seemed to boil up around her, and she was suddenly keenly aware of just how far there was to fall if her line broke. She reached out all the same, straining until she could feel the line's elasticity come to an end.

The fuse hovered just outside her reach, her fingers paddling uselessly just centimeters short. It continued spiraling away, ever so slowly.

"Shit, Kenneth. I can't reach it!"

"Never thought your shortness would get us killed."

Gabby turned down to look at him. "This isn't funny Kenneth!" She almost had to duck to avoid a wrench that went hurtling past her head. The thrown spanner helicoptered past, narrowly missing the floating fuse before bouncing against the far wall with a silent impact. "Kenneth!"

Ken was already taking aim with the next wrench. "What?"

"Don't throw stuff at it! You're just going to knock it farther."

Ken stopped mid-throw. "Good point."

"What are we going to do?"

Joker's voice crackled in their masks' earpieces. "Whatever you do, do it now! Ground team is on its way!"

Shit shit shit shit shit.

"I got it."

She looked down at Ken in time to watch him detach his safety line, the only thing keeping him attached to the Normandy. The cable started to float immediately, tentacle-ing its way out into the empty hangar. "Ken… What are you doing?"

Ken just grinned behind his mask. "Catch me."

He jumped. Towards the open airlock.

Gabby almost missed him. She was so struck dumb that she almost let him sail on past and out into the collector ship. It was what he deserved, the fool. But sense caught up at the last moment and she found herself jumping too, scrambling to grab at his trailing line before it was too late. Her gloves found the line and she yanked hard, ignoring the wave of nausea as she reached the end of her leash and was pulled back into the floor.

Both engineers tumbled down in a tangle of limbs and cables, Ken holding the snatched fuse aloft in victory. Gabby was vaguely aware of Ken pushing her aside like a furious, seasick balloon, diving for the fuse's socket and slamming it in (her brain provided a dramatic click).

And then came the biggest relief of her life as she felt a pull at her stomach and came crashing to the floor in a torrent of sweet, sweet gravity. Stars swam in front of her eyes. She didn't even mind when she felt Ken fall down on top of her back, nor when the Kodiak came slamming into the hangar not a meter away from them.

The two engineers just lied there, listening to the sound of EDI pumping air back into the hangar and the roar of the Normandy's engines as Joker sped them away, leaving the pursuing collectors in the dust. Gabby relished the feel of the floor – and it was wonderfully, unambiguously the floor this time – against her stomach.

Ken's voice was muffled. "We… did it."

"Kenneth?"

"Yeah?"

"Your nose still broken?"

Ken sat up and pulled off his helmet, tossing it aside. He felt at his nose with one gloved hand. "Pretty sure, yeah."

"Tell me when it heals so I can break it again."

Ken let out a weary bark of laughter and twisted around to wrap an arm around her neck and squeeze her to him in a rough hug. "You got it, Gabby."

---

–

Dr. Chakwas sipped her coffee, pinky finger extended like she was at a fancy party, and just about managed to keep the amusement off her face as the beverage floated out of the cup and attempted to flee to the ceiling in little shimmering globes.

She remembered the days before artificial gravity – her first space voyage had been on one of the old STL supercruisers. Nine months to Mars, nine months of residency at the single Martian hospital, then nine months back home. All of it spent with her hair floating and her every meal a logistical nightmare. It had been a trial by fire and she had passed (and, incidentally, was one of the last doctors-in-training to do so before the Prothean ruins made microgravity obsolete.)

So when the Normandy had given a shudder and the surgical tools she had been preparing for the ground team's return from the collector ship had started to float, Chakwas had calmly packed them up, returned to her chair, strapped herself in, and poured herself a drink. It was a silly game – pretending to be utterly unruffled – but it had made her smile and remember old times.

And when the gravity came back on and the sounds of the Kodiak barreling into the hangar had shook the ship, Chakwas calmly returned to work.

–

Holographic panels filled the medbay windows as EDI tabulated the injuries attained on the collector ship. Chakwas stared at them, a feeling of dread in her stomach but face dour as she mentally triaged them into their proper place.

She read them one by one. Burns. Contusions. A few cuts and bruises. One crewmember had had his armor ignite (Chakwas skipped that one – Grunt's list of injuries always read like more like a stack of autopsy reports). Dozens of small shrapnel wounds. Worst off was Mr. Massani, who'd taken a few glancing shots to the right leg.

She reached the end of the list. No life-threatening injuries. No casualties.

Chakwas breathed a sigh of relief. A good day, then. Considering the danger involved in storming a colossal alien ship, a single gunshot wound was very fortunate news indeed (and she was sure Zaeed would love the chance to add another story to his lineup). Chakwas hated to think about the day when she would again see someone she loved on that screen (and she knew it was a matter of when, not if) but that day had been pushed back once again.

She readied her burn kit and a few surgical tools, a couple strips of gauze, an analgesic patch, and a few tubes of T-grade medigel sealant, then set back to cleaning the mess of fallen tools and equipment the ship's gravity adventures had tossed about her lab.

–

Slam.

The noise seemed to shake the whole deck.

Chakwas did not know how you could slam a pneumatic door, but somehow Shepard managed to do just that. She stood to watch as the better part of the ground team came pouring out of the elevator in a tangle of angry faces and exhausted bodies. Shepard came at the procession's head, face resolute in ignoring (who else?) Miranda, who followed with an equal expression of exasperation, shouting about something. Tali and Garrus were not far behind.

"Dr. Chakwas!" Shepard bellowed, stepping into the room reeking and filthy from battle. Chakwas knew immediately that something was very wrong. "Prep for surgery." He did not bother waiting for a response, and turned. "Mordin, you're fit to work?"

The salarian looked a little droopy but unhurt, and nodded. "Indeed."

"Then I want you to take care of any injuries."

Mordin nodded and turned, but not before tossing Chakwas a ponderous look, the intelligence lurking behind his enormous eyes bidding her be careful. As usual, however, he did not deign to tell her how to do her job, and exited with a nod, dragging a limping Zaeed along behind him.

Chakwas was momentarily blindsided as her lab filled up with soldiers, but all the same immediately headed for her surgical tools. "What kind of surgery will I be performing, Commander?" she asked, pulling a sterile gown out of its autoclave bag.

Shepard was already pulling his gloves off. "Eye surgery," he said. "I'm done." He pointed dramatically at his glowing eyes. "These are coming out." His face was dead serious. "Now."

So something had gone wrong on the collector ship. So much for a good day. Everybody was shouting, then, but Chakwas just sighed. So it had come to this. She had hoped Shepard would have made his peace with Cerberus by now – not because she agreed with them, but because she didn't think the man needed anything else on his plate. Still, he was the commander. If he thought getting his eye cameras deactivated was worth the risk, she was in no position to argue.

"There are sterile wipes on the shelf at your left hand," she directed, gesturing past him. "Rinse in the sink and then use them to clean your face thoroughly. And I'm going to need access to your chest." Shepard complied without hesitation, yanking off his heavy chestpiece and letting it drop to the floor without a thought. She pulled out a fiberglass case of surgical tools and set to preparing the anesthetic gas.

Chakwas seemed the only one ready to let him go through with it. "You can't do this, Shepard!" Miranda was demanding, grabbing at the commander's arm and leaving a streak of soot and dust (most of it from Tuchanka – the poor woman hadn't had a chance to clean since returning from the krogan homeplanet). She looked wild – almost desperate as Shepard dunked his head under the sink and vigorously rubbed the filth out of his hair.

"I am doing it." Shepard said as soon as he'd surfaced, dripping all over the floor. Chakwas handed him a towel and he dried, hopping up to sit on one of the gurneys. "The Illusive Man has gone too far this time. I won't be thrown into traps whenever he has a hunch."

"It was a calculated risk, Shepard," Miranda insisted. "No one was hurt!"

Shepard ignored her, fastidiously wiping the rest of the grime from his eyes and cheeks with one of Chakwas' wipes. "Samara." The asari stepped forward from where she'd been lurking in the doorframe without a word, a nexus of calm in the anger around her. "If you would escort Ms. Lawson to her quarters, please. I'd like her to remain there until further notice."

Samara nodded and grabbed for Miranda, who looked positively stunned. The woman turned to Chakwas. "At least let me help, Doctor. I can help you!"

Chakwas said nothing.

"It is time to go," Samara intoned, and grabbed Miranda by the arm. Miranda yanked her arm away, glaring daggers at the asari, but Samara was unmovable. The Normandy's XO found herself without ally, stuck between the commander and his loyal biotic. She stared at each of them in disbelief but no one would be dissuaded.

Miranda said nothing as she stormed out of her own accord, Samara following behind. Most of the others followed without complaint, until only Garrus and Tali remained.

"Listen," Shepard said, as soon as the door slid closed and they were alone. "All of you."

They listened.

"This is it," he said, and he sounded weary again. Wearier than he wanted Miranda to see him, no doubt. "I'm not going to let this happen anymore. I'm not going to let Cerberus put my team in danger. Even if it means fighting back." He stared at each of them. "If they're going to throw us into traps, we can't work with them. Simple as that."

"So we'll get off," Tali suggested. "Get Joker to drop us off on the Citadel and go back to the Alliance. You don't have t-"

"No," Shepard interrupted. "We need this ship. We need EDI. It has to be us." He paused, and Chakwas knew he was right. "I'm ending this," he said, waving at his eyes. "All of this. But I don't know what Miranda will do. What Illusive Man will do. What any of them will do." He paused again. "If they try something, I want you to fight back."

"Shepard…"

"Fight back," Shepard repeated, staring at Garrus. "Do what it takes. We need this ship. Can you do that?"

Garrus had a determined sheen to his eyes. "Of course, Commander," he said.

Shepard smiled and slapped Garrus on the back. "You're in charge then," he said, smiling. "I'll try to heal fast." He turned to Chakwas. "How long will I be out, Doctor?"

"That will depend on what you want me to do. Either way we'll need to drill behind your eye sockets to get at the implants' antennae. It'll be a few days out of commission, at least. But if you actually want the eyes removed? A week. Two weeks. Frankly, Commander, I think we should wait until we have replacements to put in their stead."

Shepard frowned. "No," he insisted. "We're doing it now." He turned to Tali. "Tali is going to help you turn these off." He grinned at her.

Tali seemed to shrink, eyes widening. "N… no, Shepard. I can't. I can't do it."

Shepard sighed and leaned back on the gurney. "Alright then," he said, waving a hand. "Scoop them out. I'll just be blind for a while."

Chakwas nodded and helped him slip the breather mask over his face. The gas gave a pleasant hiss. He shut his eyes behind it and breathed deeply as she adjusted the valves for the anesthetic.

"Nonononononono," Tali wrung her hands. "Shepard! Don't... you shouldn't…" She looked up at Chakwas, her glowing eyes pleading for help, but Chakwas offered none, instead watching Shepard's pulse as the commander began to slip away. It was mean, what the commander was doing to the quarian girl, but it wasn't her place to sabotage him.

Chakwas opened her case of gleaming obsidian scalpels and Tali stifled a squeal, staring at the wickedly-sharp blade Chakwas selected. There was an almost audible snap as the poor girl's nerves broke.

"I'll do it I'll do it I'll do it I'll do it I'll do it!"

Chakwas and Garrus looked at her for a moment. Tali was breathing hard, like the choice itself had winded her. "Clean up then, Dear," Chakwas said, smiling behind her mask and shooing the turian away. "We have work to do."

–

Three hours later…

–

Chakwas pulled off her mask and leaned over the sink, feeling the cool water speckle her forehead. Little rivulets of blood from her gloves traced reddish streaks down the vacuum drain. She felt she had very nearly sweated half her weight away. Her sterile gown felt like a parka. Some part of her wondered if the ship's power surge hadn't knocked down the climate control, or if she was simply feeling the flush of adrenaline that always came with delicate surgery.

She was most assuredly not an ophthalmologist. She was well versed in plugging gushing arteries, mending torn skin and sinew – she'd even reattached a limb or two in her time, but the delicacy of eye surgery (even when there was no actual eye to operate on) was a rare challenge and she'd held a knot of tension inside her ever second longer it took to complete.

But it had gone fine. Shepard was fine. The eyes' antennae had been clipped, and everything had gone back into place without any unresolvable complications – there'd been a tiny bleed when Chakwas had drilled a little too deeply under Shepard's left eye, but it had done more damage to Tali than to Shepard.

Chakwas felt the knot releasing.

She turned, wiping her forehead with the back of her arm. Tali was still perched overtop of Shepard's sleeping form, a pensive look on her mask. Her knot had most assuredly notreleased yet.

Chakwas felt for the poor girl. Shepard had pushed her somewhere she didn't want to go, manipulated her with the loyalty he knew she had. It hadn't been a nice thing to do. But he had been right and she'd come through for him.

Tali almost jumped when Chakwas set a hand on her shoulder. "He's fine, Dear."

Tali's gaze returned to Shepard's bandaged face. "My omni-tool can't reach his eyes' diagnostics," she mumbled. "I'm not sure if they'll still work."

"Then he'll be blind until we can get him to a proper facility to repair them," Chakwas said, squeezing Tali's shoulder. "Don't worry. You did great." She stopped and pulled off her gloves, tossing them into the biohazard box. "A lot of people are nervous around blood," she observed. Tali had kept good control over herself – even with her shoulders shaking her hands had been rock steady – but Chakwas could see even through the mask how much effort it was taking her not to dump the whole bottle of disinfectant onto Shepard's face.

"It isn't the blood," Tali said. "It's the… openness." She looked around the medbay with a tone of disgust that might have been offensive coming from anyone else. "It's so open in here. And dirty. Quarian surgeons never enter the same room as their patient. It's just… I forget humans don't have the same problems we do."

"We do, Tali," Chakwas assured her. "But not in a proper facility with state of the art life support."

Tali nodded. "The speculums are creepy though," she said, shaking her head.

"Shepard's a healthy man," Chakwas said. "And he's been through a lot worse than a metal lever in the eye. All he needs now is rest. The drugs should keep him down for another few hours. I figure that's the only way to make him sleep." She slipped out of her gown and pulled out her hair tie, feeling the blessed feeling of air on her scalp. "I, however, am simply dying to get out of this lab."

Tali didn't move. "Can I stay?"

"You don't want some fresh air?"

Tali's breather gave a sarcastic hiss. "I want to stay with him."

Chakwas gave Tali's shoulder one last squeeze and nodded. She turned for the door, but stopped at the threshold to look back at the quarian. "I notice you left the eyes' glowing intact," she observed, not quite keeping the grin off her face.

Tali looked at her toes. "…I like the glowing…" she admitted.

Chakwas smiled. "He's lucky to have you, Miss Zorah."

–

Chakwas stepped out into the cooler air of the crew deck and stretched. It was crowded, most of the crewmembers still hard at work cleaning up the damage done by the gravity failure. Gardner's food stores had been particularly hard hit, and the mess sergeant was overseeing the cleanup with all the fire of a drill sergeant. She supposed it must have been a treat for him to get to lecture computer prodigies and shipwrights about the proper way to clean a floor.

Chakwas felt a great presence loom behind her. Grunt stank of blood and smoke, but it was something in the sound of him – perhaps the great thud of his footsteps or just the thrumming of his hearts in his armored chest – that made him seem to fill up the room.

"Chalk-haired Doctor," Grunt rumbled, and Chakwas turned to look up at the massive krogan. She took a reflexive step or two back, but if Grunt took offense he gave no indication.

"Dr. Chakwas is fine," she said, eyeing the great reptile with no small wariness. She had seen what he had done to Garrus.

"Dr. Chakwas," Grunt amended. "How fares the Battlemaster?"

Chakwas smiled. "He will be fine, Grunt. He will have to rest for a day or two."

"His vision," Grunt asked. "It is intact?" He stared intensely at her.

"It should be."

Grunt nodded, satisfied. "Good. He will need his eyes. Here." Grunt held out a massive arm. Clutched in his fist was a bottle of room-temperature water and what Chakwas suspected was the rear half of a frozen chicken, still frozen but raggedly bit off through its midsection.

"What is this?"

"Food and water," Grunt said, eyeing her expectantly. He dumped the gifts into her grip and gave another satisfied nod. At her confused look, he gestured to the medbay. "The Battlemaster trusts you," he explained. "You are my krannt."

Chakwas stared at the half-eaten chicken with amazement. "Umm… thank you, Grunt."

Grunt stared at her expectantly until she opened the water bottle and took a swig, tucking the chicken's remains under her arm. He beamed. "There is more," he announced.

Oh boy. "Oh?"

Grunt nodded. "Tactical advice. I have been scouting. The Cerberus troops are preparing for battle," he said, clearly immensely proud of himself. "The female, Miranda. She is speaking to her krannt. The dark skinned one and the hidden man."

Chakwas' face fell. "Grunt… that doesn't mean-"

"That one," Grunt continued, gesturing towards one of the computer specialists, who was stooped over, collecting fallen ration bars. "He is spying for her. A scout." The indicated specialist did not look any different to Chakwas, but Grunt stared at him with unconcealed hatred. "Do you speak for the Battlemaster?" Grunt asked, eyes not leaving the man. "Should I kill the scout?"

Chakwas' eyes widened. "No… no!" She stared at Grunt, summoning the strictest face she could. "No, Grunt. Keep… keep tactical observation on him," she suggested. "For now. Perhaps he will…" She paused, thinking, "perhaps he will lead you to other scouts."

Grunt grinned and nodded. "Yes. That is clever. Very clever, Chalk-haired Doctor. I will let him spy for now."

"Don't make a move without Sh… err… the Battlemaster's approval. He's the Battlemaster for a reason, you know."

Grunt nodded, utterly convinced. "Of course. I will wait."

Chakwas let out a quiet sigh. This was getting out of hand already. War was brewing, and Shepard had only been gone for two hours. Whatever he'd done to Grunt down on Tuchanka seemed to have worked, but now he had a krogan lieutenant who would apparently interpret Cerberus' scheming as an attack and respond in kind. It was not a good time for the only person who could control him to be under anesthesia. It could only go poorly.

"Thank you for the food," she said, raising a hand to pat Grunt on the shoulder before thinking better of it. "Stay… stay vigilant." She wasn't sure if it was the right thing to say, but Grunt seemed to like it, and returned to his post outside the medbay, blue-white eyes still whirling to follow every move the crew made.

As soon as she was confident the krogan was not looking, however, Chakwas made a beeline for the XO's quarters.

–

Thud.

From her position on the floor, Miranda had to look up to stare at the ragged half chicken Chakwas had dumped on her desk. If the bird hadn't been cooked before, it certainly was after the sweltering gaze the ship's XO gave it.

"What do you want?" Miranda demanded, returning her attention back to the floor. Contrary to Grunt's suspicions, Miranda was in fact not in conference with the Illusive Man or her lieutenant, but instead on her hands and knees, feverishly scrubbing her floor.

"Samara let me pass," Chakwas said, calmly taking a seat. "Are you alright, dear?"

Miranda said nothing, moving on to scrub a tile Chakwas was sure she'd already been over. The room was spotless, like it had never lost gravity at all – Miranda had apparently already restored all of her fallen datapads and other belongings to their proper place – but she remained hellbent on polishing the floor until it shined. Chakwas watched the woman clean and knew it had very little to do with dirt.

"What do you want?" Miranda repeated when she'd reached the end of one line and started on another.

"To ask you a favor," Chakwas said quietly.

Miranda didn't look up.

"Stop this," Chakwas continued. "Please."

Miranda looked up. "I didn't do anything," she growled. "The Illusive Man left me out of his little plan too."

"Then you are as mad at him as Shepard?"

"No," Miranda snapped, "I'm not. It was a calculated risk. If the Illusive Man had told Shepard it could have tipped the collectors off in any number of ways. It's how Cerberus does things."

"It isn't how Shepard does things," Chakwas said.

"No," Miranda agreed, gritting her teeth as she scrubbed with renewed vigor, until Chakwas almost expected the flooring panels to come off under her fingers. "No, Shepard chooses to play his little power game and take himself out of commission at the Worst. Possible. Time." A lock of her freshly-cleaned hair had come out of place and hung ignored in front of her face, giving her a crazed look.

"I don't know what to believe," Chakwas said. "I wasn't there. But I have served on a great many ships, and I do know what a disaster in the making looks like." She sighed. "Perhaps you think you are entitled to Shepard's loyalty. Perhaps you are. But Shepard is ready to go to war with Cerberus. He means to fight you. You need to know what that means."

"We saved him," Miranda insisted.

"I know. And I thank you for that every second of every day. You have sacrificed so much to bring him back to us. But he is a stubborn man and he will fight until he dies again if he is convinced that is what's right."

Miranda ignored her, face drawn in what Chakwas was sure was supposed to be an unconcerned expression, but that instead came across as very much at the end of its leash. The woman clearly needed some rest. A vacation, even – she'd been in the field for the last several days and had skipped the crew's shore leave on Illium. Who knew how many months it had been since she'd had a day off?

Chakwas found her eyes drawn to the trashcan by Miranda's desk, where a few neatly framed (and obviously doctored) photographs of her in a wedding gown, arm in arm with a tuxedoed Mordin Solus had been broken and discarded. She hated herself for wanting to smile at that – Kasumi's work, no doubt – but managed to hold it in. Miranda had done a great deal to burn bridges with Shepard and those loyal to him, but it was hard not to feel sorry for her as she was now, locked in her office and scrubbing like a madwoman, her allies dwindling and a prepubescent krogan waiting outside trying to think up all the ways to kill her in Shepard's name.

"Miranda…" Chakwas said, voice quiet.

Miranda moved onto the next row of tiles, purposefully turning away.

"I don't want you to be hurt," Chakwas finished. "I don't want anyone to be hurt."

"People get hurt, Doctor," Miranda spat.

"Only if we let them. I beg you. Please. Make peace with Shepard. Compromise. Stop this before it's too late."

Miranda said nothing.

"He'll forgive you, Miranda," she said. "You can still find an ally in him," she said.

"Or my worst enemy," Miranda interrupted, her hands finally stilling. Her head drooped. "I know."

"No," Chakwas said. "Shepard doesn't have the heart to be your enemy. Not really." She stood up to leave. She paused, weighing her next words. "But perhaps Grunt does."

–

---

Codex Entry: Select communiqués from the terminal of Operator Miranda Lawson, head of Lazarus Cell and current XO of the SR2.

From: Corporal S. M. Walker, SSV Marathon (smwalker(at)SEC-SebtL719_ali)
Sent: 1.2.2184 4:22:02 EST
To: Admiral S. J. Hackett, Arcturus Station (ahackett(at)SEC-GedaL005_ali)
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Honorable discharge for EM Kenneth Donnelly, #113824
–

You won't, sir. I'll make sure of it.

Corporal Walker.

–
ORIGINAL MESSAGE:
From: Admiral S. J. Hackett, Arcturus Station (ahackett(at)SEC-GedaL005_ali)
Sent: 1.1.2184 13:10:26 EST
To: Corporal S. M. Walker, SSV Marathon (smwalker(at)SEC-SebtL719_ali)
Subject: Re: Re: Honorable discharge for EM Kenneth Donnelly, #113824
–

Don't make me regret this, Corporal.

Hackett

–
From: Operator Miranda Lawson, Lazarus Cell (solheim(at)020NLaz_ext)
Sent: 1.14.2184 8:10:10 EST
To: Operator Samuel Harrison, Hephaestus Cell (sharris(at)020NHeph_ext)
Subject: Request denied.
–

Operator Harrison,

While we appreciate your work with Hephaestus Cell's recent SR2 and Atlas projects, I am afraid we cannot terminate Gabriella Daniels from the SR2 engineering crew at your request.

As you know, we employ only the best humanity has to offer, and your daughter comes very highly recommended. Until her recent resignation, she sported a near spotless performance record in the Alliance Engineer Corps. She received official commendations for excellence of service after the battle at the Citadel and was considered first in line for promotion to chief engineer on the Perugia. Were it not for her disciplinary record I am sure she would have gone far, and I firmly believe she will flourish in Cerberus, where her history of breaching authority and independent thinking will be a boon rather than a liability.

While the SR2's mission is dangerous, I assure you the ship is well equipped with the latest safety technologies – after all, you designed them yourself.

It goes without saying your request for Kenneth Donnelly's exclusion for the mission is also denied.

Operator Miranda Lawson, Lazarus Cell

–
From: Operator Miranda Lawson, Lazarus Cell (solheim(at)020NLaz_ext)
Sent: 7.30.2184 19:19:45 EST
To: Operative Jacob Taylor, Lazarus Cell (jaytay(at)020NLaz_ext)
Subject: CMO recruitment
–

Lieutenant

The plan is in motion. At approximately 0800 tomorrow your ship will experience a nonlethal hull breach in orbit over Mars. The captain will make an emergency landing at the Alliance hospital in Lowell City – we have arranged for Helen Chakwas to be on shift. You will take Mr. Moreau to her under pretense of a physical checkup for decompression sickness. Get them talking about Cerberus. The Illusive Man believes he will break his NDA and mention project Lazarus to her without undue prompting. If not, take Moreau back to the ship and proceed as before.

-Miranda

(PS: And try not to let your conscience get in the way again, Jacob. I'm not asking you to lie, just keep your mouth shut. You can do that, can't you?)

–
From: Operator Miranda Lawson, Lazarus Cell (solheim(at)020NLaz_ext)
Sent: 5.18.2185 10:59:02 EST
To: Operative Jacob Taylor, Lazarus Cell (jaytay(at)020NLaz_ext)
Subject: Final crew list

Please see attached the final crew list. I expect your clearance checks on the new additions to be complete by the end of the month.

Also, please re-investigate Ms. Chambers.

-Miranda

–
ATTACHMENT:
–

Final crew roster for SR2 project – 31 total, excludes ground team and any necessary ground team support staff, to be added at a later date.

Command personnel -
Commanding officer (CO) – John Shepard
Executive Officer (XO) – Miranda Lawson
Chief Helmsman – Jeff Moreau
Chief Medical Officer (CMO) – Helen Chakwas
Security Chief – Jacob Taylor

Security personnel –
Joshua Gibbs
Burt Tennard

Engineering personnel -
Ken Donnelly (aeronautical – antimatter annihilation reactor power, mass effect fields, shielding)
Gabriella Daniels (aeronautical – propulsion)
Kate Winsip (weaponry)
Gi Breen (weaponry)

Administrative/logistical personnel -
Mess Sergeant – Rupert Gardner
Yeoman – Kelly Chambers

Payload specialists -
Connor Bryon
Karl Hass
Aidan Nelson
Marta Orell

AIE instrumentation specialists:
Patel (Darwinian AI programming/AI psychology)
Anna Curie (Navigation)
Lawrence Hadley (Heuristic scanners)
Yasir Abraham (AI-assisted targeting/threat recognition)
Andrew Kappel (AI systems networking/PAVLOV/damage sensors)

Operations technicians:
Martin Wheelok(Intranetwork and communications)
Kelvin Rolston (Intranetwork and communications)
Nathaniel Hawthorne (SR2 copilot, Kodiak operations)
Marie Goldstein (Life support - atmospheric)
Asma Alvarsson (Life support – water and waste)
Vinay Tyler (Life support - heat management/climate control)

Other specialists:
Cailin Cote (Planetology, exometeorology)
Louis Matthews (optics)
Geoff Kleid (Fuel chemistry, nuclear power)

–

---

A/N: Another chapter!

So, insert all my usual 'I love this character' gushing here. I think one of the things ME2 really had over ME1 was the more believable Normandy, which was in large part due to these five here. I hope to see them come back with even bigger roles in ME3 (especially the two engineers, who are an especially fun pair). Given unlimited time and patience I would have written a whole chapter for each character here. Hopefully what I have written does them proper justice.

You'll note Joker isn't here. There's a reason for that, of course.

So... Chapter 20 is huge. Like stupid, stupid huge. And complicated. And, as aforementioned, splits perspectives between twelve characters. I've actually been working on it pretty hard since I released chapter 18 and it still took me more than a month to write. I'm gonna try to start writing more manageable chapters if I can. I think this chapter's length is about right (or even a little on the long side).

Considering how much text I just sent him to work on (surely approaching the LD50 value for writing), this seems as good a time as any to again give my sincere thanks to my beta Angurvddel, who has remained enormously helpful.

And then you all, the readers, the reviewers, the PM'ers, and everybody else!

(PS: Some people reviewed the last chapter with questions that I would have loved to answer, but had PM-ing disabled. My apologies if you didn't get a response from me!)