"Intruder alert! Intruder alert! All hands report to combat stations! This is not a drill! Repeat, this is not a drill!"

Tali jolted out of her bunk as the intercom blared. She banged her head on the low ceiling of her bed and she loudly cursed, furious at her clumsiness. Dazed, she kicked open the drawer at her feet to remove the shotgun and pistol that she always had at the ready. Double-checking to see if they were both loaded with fresh clips, she grabbed a spare bandolier before heading out the door.

The crew was running in one direction en masse. The overall tone was more panicked than normal which meant that Captain Danna was not playing around when he had shouted that this was not a drill. Something was definitely wrong here. How could anyone board the liveship? The Rayya was supposed to be protected at all costs, so what happened?

Geth, she thought, her blood temperature rising in hate. It was the only logical explanation. The fleet had been positioned too close to geth space and now they had sent an attack force to drive them even further away from their homeworld. She readied her shotgun as she ran towards the ladder, she would make sure that those damned synthetics would not accomplish their mission.

Tali's boots made harsh clangs on the metal floor as she reached the bridge. As one of the higher ranking engineers on the ship, she was given full access to all areas, including those manned by the senior staff.

"Captain Danna!" Tali cried out, "I heard the alert! What is-"

She suddenly stopped her line of questioning when she saw a red-suited figure turn from talking to her captain. His glowing eyes dipped meaningfully and Tali's shotgun was now in the grip of only one hand as her arms fell to her sides in surprise.

"Father? I thought you had gone back to the Alarei, what are you doing here?"

Rael'Zorah moved over and gently put his hands on his daughter's shoulders, "Tali! Thank the Ancestors you're still alive. I was worried that you…"

Tali didn't care that he never really answered her question because she was still stunned that he openly admitted his worry for her safety. Things really must be bad if he now showed this kind of concern, she noted.

She numbly patted her father's hand, "I'm…I'm fine, dad. But what's going on? Is it the geth? How did they get past our defenses?"

"Tali," Captain Danna interjected, "It isn't the geth. It's the humans."

Tali's jaw dropped from beneath her helmet. This wasn't right, why would the humans attack the Fleet without warning? This wasn't something that they were capable of. Shepard had previously indicated to her the overall mindset of humans, showing her that they weren't so different from quarians in their history and culture. What could they possibly gain from a move like this?

"That can't be!" she yelled, "Open a channel to the Alliance! Tell them-"

"It isn't the Alliance, Tali," her father said as he rushed to a nearby console. "Scans of their ships show their markings as Cerberus."

Cerberus. The name sent a chill down Tali's spine. She still had not mentally overcome the horrors that she'd witnessed from all of the sick and twisted operations that they stuck their fingers in. The sight of diseased and decaying bodies in a dilapidated lab were only the beginning of a slew of disturbing scenarios that almost made her vomit in her helmet.

One time, she and Shepard had dispatched the last of a series of remote outposts in the Terminus Systems when they came across a final room. In that tiny space, laid a solitary, water-filled tank which contained a human. The human's skin had been completely removed, the muscles glistening under the water as it was stained red. The man's eyes were wide behind the breather mask as green tubing ran from several slots in his body. The person was part of an experiment to determine the enhanced effects of thresher venom on the human body, the results of which turned out to be disgustingly potent. The man could not be saved in his state, so Shepard had to administer a lethal dose of the venom that had caused him the pain to begin with. She could never forget the look on her commander's face when he had to put him out of his misery, but she knew that he did the right thing.

"But why would Cerberus attack the flotilla?" She shouted as the deck now trembled, "What could they gain?"

"I don't know," Captain Danna said, "Only that they managed to board after they screamed through the relay. Our ships were cut to ribbons instantly, leaving them a clear path to board. They also took out our engines, which means that we can't retreat through the relay. We're stuck."

Tali stared out the window, managing to see a cluster of at least a dozen ships nearby. Painted white, these vessels carried no other markings than a strange black and gold insignia. The logo of Cerberus.

Tali cocked her head in confusion, "Why doesn't the fleet fire on the bosh'tets?" She waved her hand, indicating their foes.

"The ships are too close to the Rayya," her father sighed. "Any attack by the fleet could potentially damage the liveship. The humans figured this out beforehand and exploited this fact."

Kar'Danna slammed a fist down, "Abandoning the Rayya is not an option. If we lose this ship then we condemn millions of our people to death. We stay and fight." He turned to Tali, "I despise having to ask this of you but you need to get to the engineering deck. Reports indicate that we are being overrun at every turn and we need to get the engines back online. We don't need them at full power, just enough to maneuver us out of the firing line of the fleet. You do that and we can properly launch a counterattack."

"Got it, sir," Tali said determinedly. As she headed through the door, she waited for her father to voice an order of his own, perhaps in encouragement, she didn't know or care, just something. She didn't look back and it then occurred to Tali then that he wasn't going to say anything at all.

The jackhammer sound of the machine gun made Rukin wince as his ears became assaulted by the loud noise. He was going to get permanent hearing loss if this kept up any further. The narrow corridor that they were in wasn't helping matters much as the sound had nowhere to go except reverberate endlessly across the walls.

When the frigate had docked on board the liveship, the intrusion teams had gone to work instantly. Planted charges on the outside of the docking doors paved the way for the troops. The status reports from the rest of the teams were promising. The surprise attack had gone exactly as planned.

Dead quarians lined his feet as they advanced up the hall. Occasionally, a bout of small arms fire would materialize from a room ahead and down a trooper but two more would replace him and kill the aggressor. As low as their initial casualties were at this point, they were still going far too slowly for his taste.

Rukin pushed aside the men at the front as he brought his assault rifle to bear. Kai Leng and Rosun were right behind him and they covered the corners that he was unable to focus on. A stairwell loomed in the corner and Rukin waved for Rosun to head upstairs, to which the lumbering man gleefully complied.

Rukin smiled, upstairs was further away from the engineering deck, where Tali'Zorah was located. If he got Rosun further away from the target, then there was less of a chance that the imbecile would kill her in his indiscriminate bloodlust. Plus, getting the man out of his presence would cause him to keep calm for a little while longer.

The hallway burst out into an open courtyard which split into several different avenues. This looked like the makings of a grand market, a perfect site for an ambush.

Rukin waved to Kai Leng, "Take a team and scour the area. Let me know when you locate her or when he arrives."

Leng grinned, "He can't ignore something like this. He'll be along soon."

With that, the man rushed off with a small company, leaving Rukin with the rest. He made a motion with his head and they carefully maneuvered around the market. There was another stairwell in the corner, this one descending. Perfect.

With a war cry, several quarians popped out from behind shelves in the open area, unleashing hell with their weapons. Several troopers fell to the ground as their armor was shattered from the assault, their heads popping like ripe fruit.

Rukin threw himself behind a machinery stand, preparing a grenade in the process. When there was a brief lull in the enemy fire, he stood up and lobbed it into the center and ducked back again. The resulting explosion sent up a wave of screams and cries. Rukin sighed as the familiar memories of his pirating days wafted back to him. Music to his ears.

The quarian's counterattack was now staggered and disorganized. Rukin broke from cover and vaulted over the nearest enemy-held point. A quarian lay near the ground, whimpering as his arm spurted blood, blown off from the grenade. Rather than waste any ammo, Rukin kicked at the man's visor with his foot, the covering shattering from the blow. The quarian fell unconscious within a minute as the exposure combined with the shock took its toll.

Several of the aliens were now hastily retreating. Don't go now, the fun's only starting. Rukin smiled as he looked down the scope of his rifle, placing well-aimed bullets in every one of their upper backs, severing their spines, causing instantaneous death. He could hear the distant pops of his men's guns as they too were successful in repelling the quarians. But this was the exact kind of encounter he'd wanted to avoid. Even though they controlled the only way on and off this cursed ship, every second in which Tali'Zorah went by unfound presented another opportunity for failure. They had to grab her before Shepard arrived. The man would have definitely found out about the attempt on the flotilla by now and was most likely on his way to save his former crewmember. They needed a hostage if they were to control him, they needed Tali'Zorah.

Tali'Zorah yelled in alarm as an explosion tore her friends away, sending the catwalk that they were perched on crashing several flights below. She clutched at a guardrail to keep herself from joining their fate, but was completely helpless in this position as she saw several red beams poke through the steam, sweeping in all directions.

The damage to the engines had been worse than she thought. It turns out that the initial shutdown had been caused by an electrical interference rather than structural damage, a fact that would have rendered the engines easy to repair. Unfortunately, Cerberus had sent a salvo of missiles to the back of the craft, twisting the engines out of shape, rendering them completely inert. There was nothing Tali could do in her position. They needed a proper team to sort this out if they were going to get underway anytime soon. Right now, anytime soon was anything but.

Condensation dripped down from the oily pipes as steam escaped from holes in the bowels of the ship. The jumbled maze of equipment provided ample cover but the extra moisture made everything extremely slippery.

Several white forms burst out from the cloud ahead of her, on the other side of the ruined walkway. She frantically kicked her legs out, sliding backwards as she desperately tried to get away. It was no use, they had a clear shot.

Strangely, they didn't fire, with the one human in front turning to the man covering him. Even at the distance he could still hear him shout over the hiss in the air, "Is that her?"

The soldier nodded, "ID match, non-lethal takedown!"

What were they talking about? Non-lethal takedown? Why?

Not wanting to find out more, she clutched at her pistol and raised it at the three white figures. They froze, their weapons briefly twitching upward but stopping as they seemed to be conflicted in their orders. That was all the time she needed. Depressing the trigger several times, she kept firing until the clip overheated. She got back up to her feet and jumped across the gap, ejecting the spent clip as she approached the now bloody bodies, watching their vital fluids drip down into the depths below.

One of them was still alive, judging by how red liquid burst from beneath the man's helmet whenever he started to cough. Tali knelt down, pressing her knee on the human's chest as she ripped off the covering. She shoved the pistol into the frightened man's face as her voice was a deadly whisper.

"What were you talking about back there? Why are you here?"

Blood stained the man's teeth as his eyes widened in fear. His breaths were gradually becoming weaker as he continued to cough. Tali pressed the pistol against the man's neck as she snarled, "Answer me!"

It was no use, the man spluttered one last time and then he lay still. Revolted, Tali backed away from the body so she could lean over the guardrail. She fell to her knees as she started to heave, squeezing her eyes shut so she wouldn't have to see the bodies anymore.

This had never happened to her before, even when she was with Shepard. Tali had killed several times in the past, but it mostly was comprised of geth, husks, and plenty of mercenaries. All that time, Shepard was the one who had borne the brunt of the psychological blowback from these encounters. It had eventually occurred to Tali that he was just trying to shield her from the real terror that comprised this galaxy, the terror that encompassed the taking of life.

Now that he was gone, all of the bottled emotions were now free to hit her full in the face. She had seen the fear in that man's eyes as he lay dying right there, she had seen the pain that he had felt, the slow agony as that bullet had chewed into his chest, pulverizing his internal organs. She felt disgusted with herself for taking advantage of the man's pain, to shove the threat of death in his face as he was already dying. Shepard was right, the galaxy was a harsh place and there was no sense ignoring that crucial fact.

In that one instant, she felt ashamed that she had ever taken her Pilgrimage. She should have stayed on the flotilla and would have remained blissfully ignorant of the outside universe. She would never have known the pain that came from trying to survive on scraps, from having to kill rather than be killed, from having loved someone.

Stop this. You don't really mean that. You needed to go, it was all you ever dreamed about and nothing would have convinced you otherwise. Just look at what you've accomplished! The things you've done, the people you've met. Liara and Garrus and Wrex and Shepard…

Tali kicked the man's body in rage, ignoring the pain that shot up her foot. What was she to do now? She was just a girl living in the past, wishing for the impossible to happen when she should have focused on her current family, the one that needed her in that moment.

"Attention!" Her comm blared, "This is Rael'Zorah, attention! Cerberus has overrun the upper decks. We need all units to converge on the bridge and to push them back. Repeat, need backup on the-"

Tali whirled in all directions, trying to discern the closest staircase so that she could run for it. She could hear the accented shouts of the humans as they tried to penetrate the condensation that was obscuring everything. Spying a ladder, she raced towards it and began the long and arduous climb, ignoring the burn from her muscles as she ascended each rung.

The pain didn't matter, there were more important things to worry about.

I couldn't save Shepard, but I can save you, Father.

Rukin growled as the acrid tang of ozone bit into his eyes, the omni-sword effortlessly flowing through the enviro-suit of the quarian in front of him. Grasping at his intestines that were starting to push out of the gaping wound, the alien moaned before collapsing in a bloody heap.

Slashing to the left, Rukin took off the arm of a female as she approached to level an overloaded charge at him. She clutched at her stump in pain before the backswing knocked her head clean off, the helmeted head tumbling out of sight.

Still no Tali'Zorah. Goddamn it all if she isn't here.

There were no more quarians in the area. That gave Rukin a second to rest as he stumbled away from the disassembled aliens that were now strewn around the corridor. Strangely enough, resistance hadn't been as heavy as they'd expected. The meticulous planning and combat training hadn't gone to waste. Everyone was at the top of their game. Except that they couldn't find one single frigging quarian!

He activated the comm, speaking rapidly, "Leng, report. Any updates?"

Nothing on the line, were the quarians jamming them? "Leng, answer!"

Rukin waited five seconds before beckoning over a sergeant, requesting an update on the situation.

"Sir, all teams have checked in. No sign of Tali'Zorah."

"Fuck. You mean to tell me that we've spent half an hour here and not even one of us has seen her?"

"We've scoured the engineering decks but have not focused much effort on the upper decks."

Rukin ran a hand through his thick, uncontrollable hair, "Oh, that's just fantastic. If she's up there, then Rosun is as well. But why would she be up on the upper decks in the first place? There is no other reason to be there as she can escape with ease below unless…" A thought burst into his head, giving clarity to the quarian's point of view. He opened his omni-tool, disengaging the combat procedures for now as he brought up the map. He flicked through the first few floors until he spied something that he missed initially.

He pointed, indicating to the sergeant their objective, "The bridge. It's a few floors above us. It would be natural to assume that she would want to remain with the command staff if she's caught on to us."

"Do you want all units, sir?"

"I'll take a few squads while you remain here, just to be safe. We need to keep our bases covered and to tie up any loose ends until-"

"Colonel!" A new voice cried from the outside balcony where their floor was located. "Contact! I have contact!"

Rukin raced over to where a private was excitedly pointing. Following the man's arm, across the way on the other side of the liveship, was a quarian draped in purple, running towards the front of the ship along the catwalks. She was clearly in a hurry as she took the occasional staircase three steps at a time, her rate of velocity increasing with her desperation.

He didn't need to pull up her profile to match up the files on record. There was no question that this was Tali'Zorah. And she was headed towards the bridge, exactly as predicted.

Rukin turned back to the sergeant, "I'll be back with her. Keep your guard up and let me know when Shepard arrives." He quickly indicated a few men as he jogged over to the lift in the corner of the room, "You men with me! We've located the target! Pick your targets carefully, tight spaces all around, this is it!"

Soon I'll have you, you little bitch.

Tali ran as fast as her legs could carry her. She didn't even consider the danger of rushing headlong down an occupied vessel, she just wanted to get to the once place she knew was safe. She needed to inform the captain.

A Cerberus engineer accompanied by two grunts lined the door. The engineer was trying to hack their way open but Tali wasn't about to let that happen. Unhooking her shotgun, she quickly loaded the clip and slammed another one in, causing the men to turn towards her. The carnage blast that erupted from the shotgun turned the engineer into chunks of meat, spraying the soldiers and the door behind it.

The gun had cooled down at this point, allowing her to calmly burst each one of their chests methodically, temporarily ending the current threat. One small victory at a time.

The door took a moment to scan her authorization before it opened. She sputtered as the ancient contraption tried to cycle the motion of opening as soon as possible. Her impatience and fear were bubbling in a deadly combination, causing her to throw herself against the door, pounding it to open quickly. The agonizingly slow wait finally culminated as the door gently slid open, oblivious to the danger inherent.

Tali burst onto the bridge as she panted, "Engines…destroyed, Captain. Can't…repair them…from here."

The news was not pleasing to Kar'Danna, who let out a string of choice curses. "Damn it, Cerberus has us completely locked out."

Tali gulped in a breath of the stale air that her filters allowed her to breathe, "Have we…been able to alert…the other admirals?"

Kar'Danna shook his head, "Not after the initial assault. Cerberus is jamming us and any attempt on our end to board the Rayya is met with utter disaster. The ships blockading us are merely blasting the shuttles out of the sky as they try to dock."

Rael stepped forward, "It is with a heavy heart that I say this, Kar…but we must evacuate. We cannot destroy the Rayya, but that does not mean that we can leave it temporarily."

"Are you insane, Rael? Do you know how many quarians will starve if the-"

"We will ration our reserves as necessary, but this is only a minor setback. We have the edge in numbers and Cerberus can't hold onto it forever. They will slip up one day and we will be able to retake it."

Tali looked nervously back and forth between her father and the captain. They both raised valid points but she was uncertain of whom to back up. The thought of leaving a liveship to these…monsters felt wrong down to her core. But at the same time, the loss of life was getting too high and that to survive, they needed to fall back. They could return with a stronger force the next time, they would get the Rayya back, just like they would get their homeworld back.

"I can't believe you're asking this of me, Rael," Kar'Danna sighed, "I…I understand your position, but I just can't leave…"

"Kar," Rael tried again, "I know that-"

"Wait, Rael. I said that I'm not leaving, but you are."

"What? No, Kar. We're going together and I'm not leaving a friend behind!"

"You don't have a choice in the matter! It is the duty of the captain to be bound to his vessel and the Rayya is my vessel. And because it is mine I can give you this order: evacuate. Get out of here and go to safety. Bring back every ship you can to free us. I will wait here and-"

BOOM!

The captain was cut off as the door to the bridge exploded outward, pieces of shrapnel and red hot flame spewed everywhere. A few marines yelled out as the scorching metal punctured their suits, the breaches and the pain causing them to double over. Tali was knocked backward into a console but was otherwise undamaged. From her position, she was unable to see much, other than Kar'Danna clutching his head and her father groaning on the ground.

Her ears were ringing but were pulsing as a thumping bass vibrated the ground near where she lay. It took a few seconds to determine that the vibration came from a weapon, an assault rifle. Peeking her head up, she watched in horror as the three marines in the room fell to the ground for good, their chests burst outward as the bullets impacted with their fragile frame.

There were muffled voices in the air as she tried to crawl away. Tali's sense of direction had been completely distorted, she had no clue of where to go. Her vision was blurry and now her ears were ringing. She tried groping for her shotgun at her back but panic flared through her when her fingers clutched at nothing. When she reached down to her hip for her pistol she was met with the same result. She was weaponless, shieldless, and completely helpless.

Mumbling in disgust, she rolled on her back as she quickly sized up the room. There were no decent places to hide, she would be found within seconds. There were no guns in the shambles of the bridge, nothing in sight.

Tali heard a yell as Kar'Danna stood up in her peripheral vision. He was brandishing a shotgun and firing it quickly beyond the shattered remains of the door. She couldn't see what he was shooting at but gasped when he was knocked back from a round in the shoulder. He tried to rise, gun in hand, but his chest spurted blood as another bullet struck home.

A white armored human in a gold helmet moved in, she could now see. Without giving the wheezing captain the time to say another word or fire another shot, the human grabbed the quarian's head as a pistol was shoved to his temple. A hole suddenly appeared on the opposite side of Kar'Danna's head as blood and brains exploded out of it. Quickly and professionally, the soldier let the body fall to the ground where it then lay.

The armored centurion raised his helmet and his body language shifted, as if he was surprised, as if he recognized her. The odd choice of words immediately came back to Tali as the connection was made.

ID match…non-lethal takedown…

ID. Non-lethal. They had attacked the Rayya, they had thrown all of these troops at this one ship…for her.

As the centurion roughly grabbed her, she didn't even plead. She didn't cry out for help, nor did she even speak altogether. She didn't even know what to ask, she was so confused. But there was no reason for Cerberus to take an interest in her, she had done nothing. What was going on? Why did this have to happen to her?

The hulking soldier roughly threw her to the ground, where she could now see her father. To Tali's shock, Rael was situated on his knees, arms in the surrender position as a tall, built human male calmly pointed a gun at her father's face. The man smiled through a thick goatee as he indicated her with a nod.

"Get in contact with Leng. Let him know that the first stage is now complete." His head may have been aimed toward her, but the order was directed towards a subordinate. Another white trooper quickly walked up to the man who Tali now guessed was the leader.

"Colonel, several squads have reported engagement on the lower levels. Two bogeys, not quarian."

Rukin smiled and quietly laughed, "Now the real fun starts. Tell everyone to be on alert and try to take him alive. If he dies, it's no big loss. The Illusive Man only really wants the body."

"Yes, sir."

"Before you go," Rukin held up a hand, "We need to move them into a more defensible position."

Defensible position? Tali thought. We're being used as hostages. But for whom? Who is "him?"

"Both of them, sir?"

Rukin tilted his head in thought, "Good point. On second thought, we only need the girl. An admiral would be a nice catch any other day of the week but quarian laws make this sort of thing easy to work around on their end. Give them any notice that we've captured an admiral and they'll elect a new one, rendering his position completely worthless."

Oh, no…they…they can't…

The wild-haired man thumbed a control on his pistol and a yellow-green light engulfed it, "You can take her down now, sergeant. I'll catch up with you in a minute."

Tali desperately looked toward her father as he made one final glance. There was a conclusiveness to the situation at this point but she met it with acceptance. There was no question of what was going to happen, so she simply waited for her father to say the words she had been longing to hear all her life. It didn't matter who said them to her at this point, she only wanted to know…to hear… Her father wouldn't want it to end like this without acknowledging what they were. A family…a disjointed family but one who was bound by…by…

"Tali," Rael said serenely as she leaned forward in the grip of the centurion in anticipation, "Do your duty to the Fleet."

What? No…no! How could you, Father? How could you?

Rukin made a face and shrugged, "So much for sentimentality."

There was the loud boom of a gun, followed by the smashing of glass, and Tali screamed.