Guilty Sparks

by General Rage

Fleeing from the glassing of Reach in the belly of the Pillar of the Autumn, the crew of the SR-2 Normandy find themselves stranded with their UNSC allies on a strange Forerunner constructed ring world called Halo with the Covenant hunting them. But Halo holds a secret, one deadlier than both the Covenant and Reapers combined... and it's hungry.

22. Train to Nowhere

Chapter 21: Train to Nowhere

August 10th, 2185

Their handiwork was all over Khar'shan's news now. A tragic fire had consumed Heritage Fields, burning most of it to the ground. The news anchors and government approved online news sites remarked at how saddened they were by the news. They waxed nostalgic about how it was their favourite place to go as kids, how educational it was and how their own children were looking forward to next season when they could return. There were the usual suggestions that the park had been sabotaged by escaped slaves or other dissenting factions. The motive was the same for both of course, they wanted to make life miserable for children and destroy the cultural heritage of their people.

No one suggested it was the work of aliens though, that was all Liara cared about. It meant that they had covered their tracks. There was the chance of course that the Hegemony was just suppressing the news. To admit that aliens had successfully infiltrated Khar'shan would be most embarrassing. However, they had a line to the very heart of the batarian government itself. There was nothing on the Hegemony network that suggested they knew what was going on. So when Emperor Narvkel came on the holovision to address his people, they knew his words weren't a cover story he and his aides had cooked up.

"We are conducting a very thorough investigation concerning the fire at one of our most beloved entertainment attractions," he explained. "And if the cause of the inferno is discovered to be arson, you can rest assured that the perpetrators will be found, brought to a trial, found guilty and made to pay for their actions. As for Heritage Fields itself, well, don't you worry now. We'll begin rebuilding as soon as possible. With any luck, maybe we'll even get it done in time for the opening season. But whenever it's rebuilt, I'll be there with my own family among the first in line with everyone else. Because I may be your Emperor, but that doesn't mean I can't have fun."

The reporters laughed a little at Narvkel's down to earth persona and even applauded his seemingly genuine 'people's emperor' guise. Thankfully, Kayap shut off the screen with a grumble before Liara had to listen to anymore. Nel was the only one in the room who objected.

"Hey, I was watching that!" The turian bemoaned.

"Don't tell me you like this stuff," Kayap asked her.

"They were gonna show pictures of what's left of the park," Nel explained. "I wanted to see how much damage we caused."

Liara walked up beside Nel as she sat in her chair, arms still crossed as she did.

"I think you mean how much damage Vik caused," Liara corrected her. "He caused the systems spike that ignited the place, remember?"

"Don't give him too much credit, Doc," Nel told her with a sly grin. "You should've seen the state I left the main square in. That's way more impressive than a simple flipping of a switch like he did. A hands-on approach is far more satisfying overall. If you want, I could give you a demonstration."

Liara did her best to ignore the turian's perched eyebrow and suggestive tone. Why she still thought that was going to work was beyond the asari's understanding. In any case, it wasn't important.

"We should check in on Vik," Liara informed her. "He's with the others sifting through the network. He should have what we came for by now."

She walked off, hearing Kayap race after her. Nel wasn't far behind, although the plodding steps seemed to suggest that she was less than thrilled about having to get up from her seat. Perhaps being shot down so much was starting to get to her.

"Vik, Vik, Vik," she growled. "Why you always got to go back to the Wet Bucket? Is it because he's got the super awesome 'burn down the whole amusement park' skillz? Is that it? "

"Well, for one he's doing actual work and not lounging about watching holovision," Liara reminded her. "Also, he doesn't make constant advances on me either."

Nel didn't seem at all convinced by the argument though. Her mind instead went to less savoury places again.

"You know if you want to fuck him, fine," Nel told her grouchily. "I'm down with that. We can just keep his helmet on and as long as I don't have to touch him while you spread for me, I'll be good."

Liara shook her head with a sigh and looked back at the turian with a vehement glare.

"Love and romance are the last two things on my mind, Nel," she told her coldly. "We did not come here for some weekend getaway of intercourse and gunplay as you seem to think. We're on a serious mission."

"And this means we can't have fun doing it why exactly?" Nel asked innocently. "Besides, who said anything about romance? I just want some of the eternity embracing you blue babes hand out. I wouldn't be asking if it weren't so boring here, honest."

It took every fibre in Liara's body to hold back an exasperated scream. She simply rubbed her forehead in displeasure as she continued on her way. She no longer cared if Nel followed her or not. She exited the cabin and climbed down into the basement through the exterior cellar doors. After descending the small staircase, she found Vik and the others where she had left them, in front of Drothan's ShadowNet terminal.

It wasn't the same as Liara's bigger console on the Lucen, as it only had around four monitors to properly showcase all the viable information. The terminal itself had a slower processor and was built from older components. The Hegemony's totalitarianism didn't help either. Their attitudes towards the extranet and the access it gave to information they couldn't control had forced Drothan to take steps. He couldn't risk being discovered by someone intercepting his reports to the other information brokers in the ShadowNet. So he had to route the connection through several old communication relays that were no longer being monitored.

In short, the terminal wasn't ideal for their purposes. It had a lot of data to sort through on the Hegemony Network after all. Even siphoning the extra processing power from the Lucen's systems would only get them so far. Thankfully, Vik was used to working with old technology and Drothan had come by again to help him out. It was his set-up after all, he knew how to use it the best.

Despite the low quality of their terminal, they had managed to make it work. Vik had already sifted through several files in the past few hours. He didn't even appear all that frustrated with how slow the system seemed. He was far more impressed with Drothan's resourcefulness than anything else.

"I'm surprised you've managed this well," Vik congratulated the batarian. "Given your circumstances, I probably would've gone insane just trying to build this rig with the materials you had. But you've made it work."

"Too much time on my hands," Drothan admitted as he leaned on the side of the terminal, looking down at the quarian. "When everything on the holo sucks, you can't get decent extranet sites and there aren't any government approved vid games worth a damn, you resort to making up a hobby of your own. Mine just happened to be making my job as an information broker easier."

"Yeah, speaking of the lack of decent extranet sites," Nel spoke up as she approached the group, walking up just behind Liara. "You wouldn't happen to have any porn around here that doesn't make the Spirits of Leisure cry? Seriously, your old batarian girly mags are just sad. No offence to you Drothy, but your Hegemony approved centerfolds all have mournful tits, like the saddest boobs. Please tell me you can at least get a speedy connection to 'Legionnaire Sluts Online.' I'm dying here."

Liara didn't even bother to dignify that comment by telling her to shut up. She just hoped everyone would ignore her. Sadly, because he didn't know her as well, Drothan did not.

"You do realise your species doesn't even have boobs, in the technical sense," Drothan reminded her.

"That doesn't mean we don't place value on the chest," Nel informed him. "The bigger your frontal plate is, the sexier you are. Besides, I have exotic tastes."

Liara quickly sought to end this before it got any further. She stepped in between Drothan's and Nel's line of sight and walked up to Vik. All she cared about right now was getting what they came for and leaving Khar'shan. She had barely spent two days here and she had already had enough of it. They had a trans-dimensional communications relay to get to.

"Please tell me you've found something," she pleaded with the quarian.

"More than we could've imagined," Vik replied, his tone of voice sounding happier than expected. "Locating the government communication codes has opened up the entire network for us. The dummy account is holding up to security and we basically have access to every scrap of data they have on the network. That means everything on Khar'shan, in batarian space and whatever they got their claws in beyond it, we do too. We got defensive battery locations, troop deployments, estimates concerning ongoing state conflicts, and we even got credit transfer files linking them to several well known pirate and slave groups in the Terminus. And I've only scratched the surface, the more traffic I intercept, the more files I decrypt, the more I learn about what they're planning."

"All of that is potentially useful in the long-term, Vik," Liara assured him. "But I want to know about the Covenant and the Swords. What do we have on them?"

Vik brought up a few files on the screens to show her. There were several pictures of Covenant ships in secret docking bays, meetings between Hegemony officials and some sangheili, batarian scientists studying Covenant tech, research notes, blueprints, documentation, video and audio files recorded by Hegemony officials about their new allies, transcripts of meetings between the two factions and a number of star charts showing the build-up of Balak's "Swords of Khar'shan" unit across the galaxy. One particular document detailed the small, but devastatingly powerful, fleet of ships massed around the wormhole. Everyone gathered around the monitors to get a better look.

"According to what I've been able to read, the Hegemony and the Covenant have been allied for close to a year now," Vik began to explain. "That's way longer than we originally expected. At the start, the Covenant was slow to share technology openly and the Hegemony was cautious about trusting aliens. First contact was made by the Covenant, saying they were directed by something called an Oracle to seek them out, saying they shared similar goals."

"What's this Oracle?" Wrex asked. "More of their religious babble, I'm guessing."

Kayap was quick to field the answer.

"Oracles are ancient artefacts left by the Forerunners," he explained. "They provide wisdom and knowledge about the Forerunners that would've otherwise been lost. The leaders say they're meant to guide us on the Journey, but we've found very few."

"So then we're this mess because the Oracle led them here?" Liara asked confused.

"If they found one, they didn't tell the me or any of my friends." Kayap informed her simply. "Like I said, Vorsa told us what he said we needed to know."

Liara hoped Vik could provide the answer, that files revealed more. But the quarian looked to be just as unknowing as Kayap was.

"Don't ask me," He shrugged when Liara looked at him. "The Covenant were very stingy on giving details and the Hegemony didn't seem to care to ask for more clarification. Or the documents that do talk more about it aren't in this system. Either way, it's only called the Oracle in all the files I can access."

It was a strange piece of information, one that didn't sit right with Liara for some reason. It just felt off. Was this Oracle even real or just made up by the Covenant leadership to easily explain why they were here? And if it was real, how did a Forerunner artefact know about the batarians? Did these' Forerunners' come through the wormhole? She couldn't be certain. Another reason to contact Shepard as soon as possible, he probably had more answers than her by now.

Vik continued speaking about what they had found.

"At first, the Covenant only offered some advanced weaponry in exchange for a steady stream of supplies to fund their efforts in this universe," the quarian said as he pointed to some files detailing shipments to the Covenant. "As time went on though, the Covenant started demanding more and more from the Hegemony. Everything from the genetic experiments we saw to actual physical soldiers to help them fight their war back home. They even requested for the batarians to fund some archaeological expeditions, but to where and what for the files don't say."

"And by that time, I'm guessing the Hegemony started wanting more out of their deal as well," Nel presumed. "Like Sangheilis to fight their battles, Covenant ships to terrorise this universe, assistance in their own little schemes. You can't get something for nothing."

"For once you actually got it right," Vik replied matter-of-factly. "Both sides had their own demands added on to the initial agreement and that's resulted in a very tenuous alliance. The Hegemony seems to be in a weaker position, but the Covenant hasn't absorbed them into itself like they've done to other races. They're not forcing their religion on them or anything, just bossing them around a little more often. Despite the decent sized fleet they got guarding the wormhole, they realise forcing their point on the Hegemony would only get them noticed by the Council and they don't want that just yet."

At least that meant the alliance between the two wasn't as concrete as originally thought, as far as Liara could determine at least. They could exploit that to their advantage. Not to the point they could break it up of course, not yet anyway. The Covenant clearly had something else going on in this universe that they couldn't risk disrupting. The news about the interest in archaeology intrigued her the most.

"Obviously they don't want to get involved fighting four whole alien races at the same time while they're still killing the humans of their own dimension," Wrex fielded. "Still, they wouldn't be here on a 'crusade' of sorts if that wasn't an ultimate goal. What's taking them so long then?"

"Not sure, but I do know that the fleet guarding the wormhole is a new development," Vik answered. "Something must be preventing them from sending more ships. So they're either waiting to get more or trying to weaken the galaxy politically and militarily, working mostly through the Hegemony obviously, to even the odds. They could be doing both of course, but I don't have that exact information. With what we do have though, specifically these troop deployments and the bases they got set up around the galaxy; I think it's safe to say they're planning something big. Probably even several big things now that I think about it."

Liara looked at the star charts herself. The batarians did indeed have quite a few outposts for the Swords across the galaxy. There were some in Turian space, a number within the Traverse, a lot strewn about the Terminus and even a few in Asari space. It didn't sit well with her, as she could surmise that some of those bases probably had a few Covenant soldiers there as well.

At the moment though, she just wanted one location.

"What about the trans-dimensional relay?" She asked at last. "Do we know where it is now?"

Vik brought up a blueprint file from one of the folders. It detailed a large communications hub relay, too big for an ordinary satellite to house. It sported a long series of antennas, attached to large star shaped body. There were also wires and cables reaching below and above the hub. Directly in the center was some kind of dish pointed directly up. According to the specs, the device was several hundred feet wide and stretched up even taller.

"Behold, the trans-dimensional communications relay hub," Vik declared,

It was certainly a lot more sophisticated than Liara had first suspected. In fact, the enormity of the device was apparent to everyone on sight. Thanks mostly in part to the little batarian in the corner drawn in for scale.

"That thing must require a lot of juice," Nel observed.

"They've built an entire facility around it," Vik was quick to clarify. "In order to properly power the systems, they have to run enough energy through it to sustain an entire city. To even send and receive transmissions, they had to launch a satellite network over several worlds across six systems nearby. That's not even counting the extra comm. relays they've set up to direct the transmissions to the array itself. No one said broadcasting beyond the space and time barrier was going to be easy, I guess."

As suspected, the task ahead seemed a lot more complicated than what they were prepared for.

"How exactly are we going to use this thing?" Wrex asked. "We can't exactly just cart it aboard the Lucen and start using it obviously."

"We don't have to," Vik assured him. "We just need to hack into the central hub. Once we're inside, we can connect the ShadowNet to the array. We can overtake the systems from there and allow ourselves complete access to the hub."

"Okay, but how the hell do we defend it? How do we maintain it?" Wrex asked. "Someone is gonna have to operate this thing after all."

A good question indeed and Liara had already started to think about it. She suspected long before that keeping the relay would be difficult. She just wasn't sure how much until now. With the information they now had though, she could see ways of doing so.

"We'll obviously need help with that," Liara concluded. "With these plans, and perhaps even some components salvaged from the machine, we could build our own. Then we'd just have to secure it and connect it to the array ourselves."

"It all hinges on us hacking the central hub though," Vik reminded them all, turning away from the screen. "If we can't establish some kind of connection with the array we can't transmit on it."

"So where is it exactly then?" Nel asked.

"A small, relatively uncharted system within the Terminus," the quarian replied, moving back to the screen and bringing up a star chart. "Near as I can tell, they've set it up on a moon of the system's sole gas giant, partially underground to avoid detection and they've set up a small garrison of ships and orbital based defences to protect it."

That gave them a small advantage. Aria pretty much owned the Terminus, maybe she could help in taking the moon and the facility with her fleet. It would take a little convincing, but she and the Queen of Omega had an understanding now. She could be persuaded, especially if her dislike of the Covenant had not yet cooled. Liara would have to work on other assets as well though, even with a crime lord on their side this wouldn't be an easy fight.

"Is there a way to get past the defences?" Liara asked.

"Some ships have access to the fleet using a specialised IFF signal code," Vik said, sounding a little graver than he had before. "But that's not our only problem."

"What do you mean?" Liara asked confused.

Vik took a deep breath and looked back to Liara, his head shaking.

"I felt I should give you the good news first," he began. "I'm still decrypting everything on the network, but it looks like the Covenant have a separate network all their own. Like I said, they have a very tenuous relationship with the Hegemony. From what I've been able to find, only a few officials have been given access to the Covenant network. Mainly folks like Balak to contact people beyond the wormhole through the relay. Both the IFF signal code and the access code are handled by the Covenant directly. They maintain complete control over who is allowed, and who isn't allowed, to transmit to the other side."

"We could always use the stealth drive to sneak by the defences," Nel suggested. "Then you can just figure out the code on your own."

But Vik shook his head at the suggestion.

"Each code is specifically programmed into the mainframe and hardwired with a biometric lock," Vik explained. "Each one is different and specifically coded to a singular user. Even if I copy someone else's code, the computer will recognize that I'm not the person assigned it."

"So, what, you're saying you can blow up a theme park but you can't steal some DNA and a stupid password?" Nel asked confused.

"It's not that simple to get by a biometric lock," Vik informed her, starting to get annoyed with her. "This one doesn't just scan your eye or your thumbprint like the cheap crap you get off the market. It scans everything. I can't just swipe some blood and stick it in with a fake recorded voice playing on top of it. It looks at genetics, chromosome count, medical condition, it requires all that just to let you inside. It's going to know I'm not batarian, or at least not the specific batarian assigned to that code. And that assumes I could even find the code, which they've made it increasingly difficult to do."

Vik brought up another file, detailing security methods concerning the security of the hub and its users. He zoomed in and highlighted one particular sentence.

All users are to be aware that their code will rotate every planetary rotation, Khar'shan standard time. You are advised to be up to date concerning your current user code. Standard check-ins are mandatory.

"Okay, so I guess that's not gonna work then, huh?" Nel ask when she finished reading.

Vik nodded immediately. It was clear to Liara, and everyone else, that the Covenant had no intention of letting one of their most critical communication assets being compromised. Even if it fell to the enemy, they intended to make sure they wouldn't be able to use it against them. For religious zealots, they were far from stupid.

"We can't risk getting a code and being too late to use it because it's changed," Vik continued to explain to everyone. "And we can't hope to break a biometric scan that will be able to tell that we're not even the right species with such ease. I can't get into the hub without primary access. It won't even let any of us touch the console, it will lock us out. I can't circumvent that security measure with a virus or worm or any of my regular tricks. I can reverse the process to lock the Covenant and the Hegemony out by registering their biometrics as no longer void, but only if I have clearance myself. We need to install ourselves as users or we aren't getting in."

"And how would we accomplish that?" Liara asked, assuming Vik wouldn't suggest an idea without knowing how to implement it.

Vik turned back to the terminal again and brought up another file for the group to see. It was a detailed account of a certain batarian they all knew, Balak. It was his registration forms for being granted access to the trans-dimensional network. Vik ignored the technical specs about his medical record, the voice sample approval and other details. He focused on one element in particular, the highlighted words along the top that read, 'Codemaster Reference Form.'

"I cross checked the word 'Codemaster' with Drothan," said Vik as he started bringing up more files, each highlighting the word in question. "From what we've put together, they're the ones that assign, upload and change the codes within the hub's mainframe."

"So who are they?" Wrex asked.

Vik shrugged as he looked over to the krogan.

"Covenant intelligence officers, top of the line VIs, some super advanced Covenant created AI," Vik listed off. "Ancestors willing, it's neither the first or last ones, because our best bet is finding one and forcing them to give us access. Problem is their location isn't on the main network."

"Let me guess," Liara began, rubbing the side of her head in frustration. "The Hegemony wasn't stupid enough to leave such sensitive information on their main communication and intelligence channels."

Vik nodded sadly, to which Liara groaned in anger and aggravation. Drothan was quick to ease her troubled mind though.

"However, me and Vik here got a lead on things," he assured the asari. "We figure all the majorly sensitive information, the stuff that's triple top secret if you will, would be kept inside the most secure facility on the planet. That's the headquarters for the Hegemony's entire military, the longhouse of the warrior caste if you will, the Imperial Department of Security and Intelligence. I call it the Black Zone though, because no one even knows where it is or what's inside."

Liara was only slightly comforted by that bit of news, but she let Drothan and Vik continue.

"We've already been able to confirm through cross-checking that you get your access to the Covenant Network through headquarters," Drothan explained. "That could only mean the IDSI, we made sure of it."

"We were trying to find the 'Swords' main HQ after all," the quarian explained. "Once we had the codes, we just began tracing the signals back to their sources. I doubt the sensitive information is on a connected server, but we can find out where the IDSI compound is and using that information we can get a better idea of what we're up against."

"It wasn't as hard to trace it as we thought actually," Drothan explained. "The Network is filled with chatter about some upcoming summit taking place there. Sounds pretty important from everything we've read."

Something in Liara's mind triggered upon hearing that word "summit", and she soon realised she had heard it before.

"Wait, those researchers on that feed we intercepted from the VykurCorp lab we raided," she recalled. "They mentioned something about a summit too. I didn't think much about it at the time... Vik, what do you know about this summit? Who's attending?"

Intrigued by what she had just learned, Liara went over, leaning past Vik's shoulder to get a better look at the screen. Vik seemed a bit uneasy about the invasion of his personal space, his posture becoming shaky and pulling itself away slightly from the asari. He began making a quick search for references to the summit and soon pulled out a number of files concerning those who would be attending. Most of it involved extra security details in the building, transportation, escort to and from the summit, even a list of preferred drinks and foods, but the names of the people involved were the most important.

Many were high ranking Batarian military leaders, Generals, Admirals, Officers and the like. Others were representatives of the Covenant, all sangheili from what the names suggested. A few names and titles stood out more than most, there were high-ranking officers from the 'Swords of Khar'shan Black Ops group,' mainly strategists, political backers, trusted Lieutenants under Balak's direct command.

The same held true for the Covenant, including Vorsa himself along with his commanding officer, a one Zarvosh 'Yadromee. He apparently was in charge of the Wormhole fleet garrison. There were also members of the Blood Pack who were going to be in attendance, Trox being one of them. VykurCorp's Orukuri was another person in attendance, which was an even bigger surprise. Liara didn't expect to see him again so soon. He was also bringing a few of his own aides within the company along, so that was interesting. Maybe they could find out more about how deep this thing with VykurCorp went.

Out of all the big names within the files Vik had collected, two attracted everyone's attention more than any other. The first was Balak, and as the Field Commander for the Swords themselves, it was little surprise to find out that he would be there. But the second name... was Emperor Eskorik Narvkel himself. He was going to be at the summit with everyone else. As they all stared at this newfound information, Drothan could only whistle in amusement.

"A veritable hive of dipshits," he observed. "Sounds like a lot of fun."

"Your sarcasm belies the main point," Liara told him. "Much of the leadership for the 'Swords' and their allies is going to be at this summit. This could be our chance to strike a serious blow to their operations, discover the extent of what they're planning."

"Yeah, and return some of the love the likes of Balak and his friends up top had been dishing out," Nel laughed. "Boom, dead, problem solved."

Liara expected Vik to say something to a similar effect. However, he remained silent, staring at the list with an incensed looking glare. When Liara stepped back from the console, he snapped out of it. She wasn't sure what was going through his head, but she found it hard to believe he wasn't thinking something similar. He had made no secret about his dislike of the Hegemony. He wouldn't cry over their deaths certainly. The problem was, she wasn't about to let that idea get too far.

As interesting as this information was, Liara couldn't let it distract her from the task at hand. She needed to contact Shepard and she couldn't risk that goal for the mass execution of their enemies. Taking them down would hamper their operations, probably, but the opportunity to cut their communications off from the main Covenant force overrode that. That would help Shepard, and the Galaxy at large, a lot more in the long run.

Killing Trox, Balak or Vorsa and any number of their allies would help, but at the moment they weren't as dangerous as their designs. They were figureheads. Killing them wouldn't do much now, not when their respective organizations were still functional. Being the Shadow Broker had taught Liara one very clear lesson first-hand, that leaders could be replaced, a network could not. They needed to dismantle the Hegemony and Covenant Alliance first, before they cut off its heads.

That didn't mean, of course, that she wouldn't take the chance if it presented itself.

"We'll consider any of those directly linked to the 'Swords' or the Covenant as a target of opportunity," she stated matter-of-factly. "But we can't let it distract from the main objective. We need this Codemaster, everything else is secondary. Now, where is this 'Black Zone' of yours then?"

Vik remained silent, although seemingly less jovial than he had been before when speaking about the trace. He looked over the program he and Drothan had running to see what had turned up. Before long they had detailed floor layouts with the insignia of the IDSI in the corner. It was a screeching four-eyed native bird of prey called a Drugore, it's talons each clutching a sword while the star of the Hegemony was embedded into its chest.

Eventually more layouts were uncovered, along with defensive measures set up outside. Strangely enough, the floor plans seemed to get wider as they went down by floors and narrowed as the floors climbed up. Liara's brow perched slightly at the strange construction, confused as to what kind of building would be built like that. Then she remembered what kind and almost as if on cue...

"Hey, we got an exterior camera feed connection for the complex," Vik spoke up. "Let me jack the signal and see-"

On screen came the image of the Rakavekyon Tower, the camera pointing at it from across the street on a corner. The IDSI had been revealed to them all. It was Drothan who broke the silence.

"You gotta be friggin kidding me!" He shouted aloud. "That eyesore!?"

"They didn't bulldoze the place because they wanted to save face," Vik realised in astonishment. "The bosh'tets repurposed it to house their military's headquarters! I'm conspiracy nut, and I even I wouldn't have suggested that was going on!"

"It couldn't have always been there," Wrex reasoned easily. "Maybe they moved it to centralise their power base after the initial plan for the tower went belly up. Hell, what better place to hide your secret little base, but in plain sight of a supposedly abandoned construction project?"

"Waste not, want not I guess," Nel concluded, sounding slightly bewildered. "Seems a little excessive though, I mean why hide it at all?"

"So people like us won't be able to find it," Liara answered coldly. "Vik, what kind of defences does Rakavekyon have?"

Vik brought up the files pertaining to the tower's garrison. There were anti-air batteries around the base, several heavily armed guards on every floor and number of security checkpoints, lockdown doors, sentry turrets, and every other security measure one could think of. And all of that was going to be doubled for the summit itself.

"We don't have the ordinance to take this tower on," Wrex determined. "Even if we call in the Lucen, we don't have the firepower to break into that thing."

"Can we sneak in?" Vik asked, looking to Saya.

The salarian shook his head, unsure of their chances. It wasn't a corporate headquarters after all, it was a military installation. The defences around it blocked entry from the air and the garrison would make any fight up the building a slog. Liara, however, had a solution to all those problems. It was, admittedly, a rather simple solution.

"We don't have the firepower," she admitted, a grim look on her face. "But we can get it. Vik, pull up the locations the Hegemony is storing their acquired Covenant tech. Then find the closest one to us. We're going to use their new toys against them and hit Rakavekyon Tower hard."

---

When Liara exited the basement to let Vik conduct his new search, she was quickly joined by Wrex who bounded up after her.

"Are you completely sure about this?" He asked as he walked after her. "You do realise that this is pretty much terrorism, right?"

"You're a krogan, Wrex," Liara replied as she kept walking. "One I know all too well. Don't pretend a full out assault isn't something you'd prefer over stealth."

"Yeah, but that's my point," Wrex explained as he continued after her. "This is something I'd think up. Up until now, we've only being doing infiltration and small scale raids on lightly defended outposts. And now, suddenly, we're going for an all out offensive. I'd just like to know why?"

"Maybe Nelanax's action vid obsession is affecting me," she replied sardonically as she continued walking.

Wrex suddenly ran up and got ahead of her before she got any further.

"Would you just stop for a second and look at me?" He asked pleadingly. "You've been acting weird ever since you decided to come to this mud ball. You're upset about something, I know it."

"Krogan rage tends to be one of your greater assets in a fight, correct?" Liara asked, somewhat frustrated. "I don't see why I can't use it."

"Rage, yes, blood rage, no," Wrex informed her. "Anger and emotions must be tempered, focused, honed. You control and direct them, not the other way around. Don't try and make me out to be a hypocrite, T'Soni. If you really know me all too well, you'd know that's not how I operate."

Liara sighed greatly and shook her head about.

"Alright, I'm sorry," Liara answered. "That was over the line and I apologise, I know you're not like that. But I'm just a bit irritated that we have more work ahead of us until we can leave. That is all."

"It's more than that, Liara, I can tell," Wrex told her, unconvinced by her statement. "You don't have to hide anything from me. Just tell me what is wrong?"

What was wrong? How many things in her life were wrong? The fact her mother died before she could truly reconcile with her was one. That she had led her friends into danger was another. Her life had become almost totally involved in her work, with no personal time of her own. She couldn't seem to lead this team of outcasts, like Shepard had done with his own crew. The first man she had ever loved only saw her as a friend. She couldn't save this same man when he needed her most. She couldn't save Ben when he needed her most. Every single one of those was something wrong and they were only a fraction of all the problems that continued to pile up.

And when she looked at Wrex, she saw another thing wrong. The fact she couldn't decide what to say, what to tell him, what to do. He deserved to know, but sharing was harder than she expected. Was it because she knew too much now? Did becoming the Broker turn her into some kind of recluse after all? Or maybe, perhaps, she hated the idea of burdening him with her thoughts. It wasn't fair to project all that onto him, all her doubts and fears. She was the Shadow Broker, she could handle it. She had to.

But he had listened before, and she had been open before. Why stop now? Why silence herself now?

"Because it's not fair to him," she thought to herself. "He can't be your surrogate. Stop treating him like one. You'll only hurt him and yourself."

But not saying anything would produce the same results. She could see it in his dark red eyes that Wrex wasn't going to stop hounding her about this. He wanted to be there for her and if it was what he wanted, Liara couldn't deny him. In the end, she was trapped. And her need to let it out, all the wrongs, all the guilt, it was far too overriding.

"I need them to hurt," she blurted out suddenly. "I need them all to hurt."

Wrex seemed taken aback by the statement, his head lurching up as Liara's tone continued to rise.

"Balak, Vorsa and Trox, they need to hurt," she continued. "I've been trying to do that since Tuchanka and the prison, but they shrug everything off like it's nothing. They think I can't beat them, they think I'm worthless and they think they can use me against Wade! Well, I'm going to teach them they can't use me to hurt my friends and that they're not as smart as they think they are. I'm going to make Vorsa wish he ordered Bash and Blast to kill me and I'm going to show Balak he can't use me as leverage to capture Shepard! And I'll do it by hitting them where they live, on the day they think they're safe enough to gather together in one place!"

"And then what?" Wrex asked in response, regaining his stance. "Kill them all?"

"No, I'm going take a page from your book and theirs," Liara informed him. "I'm going to show them I could kill them any time I want, but I'll leave them alive if possible. Just to show them that I can hurt them much worse than they can ever hurt me."

Wrex stood back a bit, slightly shocked at the Asari's statement. He looked down, nodded his head and then looked up again.

"What happened to Ben wasn't your fault," he told her simply.

Liara scoffed in frustration, trying to walk away. As if that was all it was.

"I'm serious," Wrex insisted as he stood still. "You can't keep blaming yourself for everything that goes wrong. Shepard, Ben, you can't control everything! Trust me, I know."

"It was my idea to attack that lab and I wasn't careful enough when I planned it," Liara shot back with a glare. "If what happened to Ben isn't my fault, than whose is it? Besides, this isn't about revenge. It's about making sure we get as much out of his loss as possible."

"Really?" Wrex asked, sounding rather sceptical.

Liara glared at him for the accusation, that this was somehow not about that. How dare he suggest as much. That he would think so low of her. Then again, he didn't really know the full extent of it all, did he? Perhaps she needed to correct that.

"I lied to him, Wrex," she said, her glare softening to a saddened stare. "I told him we did it, I told him that the mission had succeeded, that his sacrifice had mattered. I told him that when I didn't know for sure, and then I found out we had actually failed. I told myself I did it to make his passing easier, that I couldn't have been sure at the time. But it was a lie all the same. I can't let that go and that's why this mission needs to not just succeed, but make an impact."

She hoped he understood that, that what she had told him about Shepard would help him see. His silence suggested he did, but she knew he'd say something eventually. She waited for some kind of answer from him, any kind of answer. But Wrex stayed quiet for the longest time. After about a minute of the two of just looking at each other, Liara begged him, within the confines of her mind, to break the silence.

'Just say something,' shethought. 'Say something. I need to know you understand. Please understand.'

Finally, he answered.

"I know how much this must mean to you," Wrex assuredly replied. "I know you want to wipe away that guilt you think you've built up for not being truthful. I've done far less noble things in my life I'd like to be forgiven of. If you think that this is the way to honour Ben, among others, I won't argue with you and I'll help"

Liara mentally breathed a sigh of relief, he did understand. That meant more to her now than anything. But she could tell he wasn't done. The krogan walked up to her, looming over the asari with his immense size. She kept her eyes locked on his as he spoke.

"But as a friend, take my advice on this one thing," he told her earnestly. "You're never going to feel like you've repaid your debts to Ben, Shepard, or anyone you think you've wronged, if you don't forgive yourself first. Don't let your guilt define you, Liara, let it go. It will kill you if you don't."

Liara looked down as he spoke those last words. Wrex then walked on by back to the cabin proper. She knew he was right. She didn't want to keep blaming herself, but she was the only one she ever could blame. Every screw-up was a result of her inaction or a lapse in judgement or some stupid decision she made. She wanted to forgive herself, but she couldn't. Not yet. She had to earn it.

---

August 12, 2185

Drothan's van had a bumpier going this time around. The poor districts of the city didn't have paved roads, workers and slaves had to make do with dirt and gravel. The Hegemony said that one's status must be reflected in his surroundings. To spend credits on better conditions for the lower castes was ridiculous in their minds. If they had just as good houses, just as good food and just as good roads, how would you justify placing them in bondage? It would be like, in the government's words, "inviting vermin to the table." Needless to say, the slums weren't much to look at as a result of this.

"Spirits, every block looks shittier than the last," Nel eloquently stated as she looked at the view screen.

Her blunt honesty was pretty much accurate. If the houses weren't dilapidated apartment buildings, they were run down shacks, repurposed cargo containers or tents. Those people were the lucky ones, some of the lower caste batarians were could be seen sleeping inside broken down old aircars. Meanwhile, others found themselves out in the cold with nothing, not even a blanket.

The slums in general were a dirty, wretched place. There was little in the way of infrastructure, save some of the industrial plants or spaceports in the distance. Beyond that, there were abandoned buildings on all sides, where there were even fewer people than before. It was hard to believe anyone lived within the confines of the shutdown shops, condemned cinemas and decaying dine-ins. However, there was probably someone taking up temporary residence. The weather forecast had suddenly turned grim, and rain was expected. Shelter was shelter, no matter how boarded up and left to rot.

"All these crumbling buildings suggest that this wasn't always a garbage pit," Kayap asked looking at the monitor. "Why's everything closed?"

"It never was pretty," Drothan admitted from the driver's seat. "But they've seen better days if you can believe it. Thing is, all business is nationalised here. Narvkel's administration started offering better locations and privileges for the Merchant class if they moved all their owned businesses inside the higher caste districts. So, they picked up, left and let the old buildings here just crumble to dust. All the laid off employees had to go work in the industrial plants instead, no more options. The Emperor calls it the 'Re-Diversification of the Castes' plan. I call it the 'Every Worker now earns below Minimum Wage' plan."

"At least the streets are mostly clear," Liara said, peering out into the shells of former businesses through the view screen. "That will make it easier to slip by undetected. We don't need any bystanders spotting aliens on their planet."

Another good reason she supposed that Drothan had a windowless van no doubt. There was no time to ponder more on the terrible state of the batarian people though. They had work to do.

"We best go over the plan again quickly before we arrive," Liara stated to the others. "Vik, are you sure this part of the underground is abandoned?"

"Yeah, I double checked," Vik answered. "Narvkel's administration shut down that portion of the track as soon as he came to power. He said the government needed to pull back spending on maintaining public works for military projects. Although I'd be more inclined to believe, knowing what we know now, that he had other reasons."

Vik pulled up schematics of the underground, specifically the station they were going to be entering. After tracing a red line through the winding series of tracks and tunnels they'd be taking, the schematics revealed their target. Between a series of walls was an unused set of tracks and stations that weren't on the actual floor plan for the subway line. They weren't connected to the public lines, only the military had access.

Centered within this secret portion of the underground was a storage bunker that housed an enormous amount of weapons from a variety of sources. There were stolen Alliance and Council manufactured arms, confiscated weapons from criminal gangs not on the Hegemony's pay roll, several crates worth of Hegemony military equipment and a huge arsenal of Covenant Plasma-based weaponry. The last of these were the most enticing in Liara's mind.

"They haven't been moved, have they?" Liara asked, referencing the guns.

"Not yet," Vik assured. "They're still being held in reserve until after the summit. Then they go out to every bosh'tet on the Hegemony's waiting list. Namely slavers, pirates, terror groups, anyone and everyone who will make life hell for the Alliance."

"Correction, they WERE going out to them," Nel added slyly. "Instead, we're taking them all."

It was the only way Liara could see them standing a chance. For the attack on the center of the Hegemony's military infrastructure to work, they'd need a lot of weapons. She could always gain the manpower by bringing the Lucen's onboard contingent of Urdnot Warriors and ShadowNet Operatives into the fray, but they'd need to be armed to the teeth. Also, for her plan to ultimately work, they'd need some very specific items. According to the itinerary Vik dug up, this bunker had everything they needed.

"Also, that train that was scheduled to show up," Vik reminded her. "It arrived a few hours ago along the private line like the itinerary said it would, but there was an unexpected last minute shipment. They still have it loaded on the car until they can make space for it."

"Then we just got something extra for our trouble," Wrex said optimistically. "We won't even have to load it ourselves."

It was fortuitous to be sure, but they'd need to take this new development into account for their exfiltration. They couldn't just ride along the private track after all. They'd just end up riding their cargo straight into an underground military installation. Luckily, they had already considered using the tunnels to get away with their spoils.

There were specific points along the underground that secretly connected to the public line. They were used to police the underground more effectively. Vik had mapped them out for them. Now, they just needed to direct the train they hijacked along the route until it found the connecting track. Then they'd continue down the public line until they reached an above ground station or some other offloading point they could use.

Liara had already pinpointed a few choice ones for their purposes on the map. Getting to them would be part of the challenge, but this new cargo could complicate matters. Thankfully, Wrex already knew this.

"What exactly is onboard, Vik?" Wrex asked the quarian.

"Just one item, I think," the quarian answered as he brought up the train's cargo manifest. "There's nothing here about what exactly it is, but it seems like a moderate size. The train car they carried it in on is constructed to carry a few metric tons onboard during transit in all conditions."

Despite the minor complications this could cause, Liara wasn't too concerned about the mysterious cargo. They'd find out what it was, and if it was worth taking, soon enough. For now, they had to worry about getting inside the bunker itself.

"What's the garrison like?" Liara asked.

"Still four or five squads of batarian soldiers," Vik replied. "But the train's brought some Covenant along according to the reports. They're not very big on the details about exactly what kind of Covenant though. They also have four platoons on stand-by on a military train just down the track. We'll need to watch out for that."

"The plan remains the same regardless," Liara told him along with the others. "We enter through the subway, make our way to the bunker, break in, kill any opposition and get as much ordinance as we can to the surface. We'll call in Drothan and he'll get the rest of my agents to our location to pick up the weapons. From there, they will all take separate routes to rendezvous stations I've designated. Most will go back to the Lucen on cargo freighters for our people to use in the assault. The rest will be delivered to our safe house for our own use."

"I'll bring an extra trailer for you guys so you can pick out what you want," Drothan added. "But you better have an idea already in mind when we show up. We can't stay for too long or we'll attract attention."

Liara had slapped this plan together as fast as she could the second Vik had informed her of the bunker. Calling up the agents, organizing smugglers to carry the merchandise out, informing the Lucen to get into a holding position, it had taken a full two days at this point. She would've taken more time to organize and plan this out, but they were on the clock. The summit itself wasn't too far away and they needed to be ready for it. That and the longer they stayed on this planet, the worse their chances were of getting caught.

"Once this is over, you and the others will have to go to ground, Drothan," Liara warned. "We'll do our best to wipe any evidence clean of what happened through the network, but we can't guarantee anything."

"No worries," Drothan assured. "I've done this before. Well, going to ground while the heat is on, I mean. Not the whole, massive smash and grab job we got going on tonight."

"Just be ready for my signal," Liara informed him. "This needs to be quick and clean."

When they arrived at their destination, the team piled out of the vehicle. They were blocked from the view of the street by the van as they hurried down the entrance tunnel and into the underground. They found it closed up by a metal door, intending to keep vagrants out, but only a minor roadblock to them. Saya wasted no time in using his sword to lay down some explosive gel on the lock. Once he detonated it, Wrex pulled the door away and everyone rushed inside.

"Night vision on," Liara ordered, as they entered the darkened tunnels. "Don't risk giving away your positions. Remember, we're not alone down here."

Everyone put on their visors, just as they had before at Heritage Fields. They soon reached the station floor at the bottom of the steps and each of them began to survey the line itself. The tracks extended along two lines each for two separate stations in either direction. Their target was further down the track, but this was the closest they could get to it from here.

"Winning this is going to require us hitting the bunker from multiple angles," Liara informed everyone. "So we're going to have to take different routes to the target from here."

"Splitting up in the dark was never a good idea in my experience," Kayap warned.

"Well that's because your squad mates sucked," Nel declared cockily. "You're rolling with us now, remember?"

Kayap's confidence didn't exactly seem to shoot up all that much from that remark.

"Vik, go with Kayap down the east lines," Liara ordered. "Wrex, Saya, you have west. Nel and I will take the station tunnels up the middle. Remember to watch for batarians and any Covenant that might be with them."

To be frank, Liara didn't want to go with Nel, but out of everyone here, she had the most control over the turian. Besides, she needed to keep a close eye on her and make sure she didn't do something stupid. Which she would, Nel was predictable like that at this point.

As they began to move out onto the tracks, they heard voices echoing from down the tunnel. Quickly, they all rushed into cover behind the structural pillars or the edge of the platform. Liara peered out into the darkness, seeing bright lights shining down track. Moments later, three batarians and three kig-yar appeared. Their flashlights illuminated the dank, dark underground as they walked along the edge of the track.

"They expanded their patrols to their outside perimeter," Liara presumed.

"Well, they do have a few extra hands now with the Covies here," Nel added.

"Just take them down as quietly as possible," Liara informed everyone through the radio. "We can't risk being heard."

She knew that wasn't really something she could expect of everyone, save for Saya, but she felt it needed to be addressed. Thankfully, the stealthier nature of this task had impressed upon her the need for silenced equipment. Silencers were hard to come by, unless you were a Spectre or in Spec-Ops, but Drothan had managed to acquire a few of the black market. They weren't very sophisticated, adding a sound modulator to the end of your gun barrel wasn't very high-tech.

Liara had heard of them being built-in for some small arms, but that was only a rumour. In any case, they didn't have to keep them from being seen. They just had to keep their shots from being heard in the next tunnel over.

Saya had already sprung into action upon Liara's words. He climbed over the platform between the two separate tracks and started following the enemy patrol. He didn't activate his cloak as it would be a waste of power. The darkness currently around them was all he needed. He managed to get up behind one straggler, the batarian at the back of the line. One clean cut through across the back of his neck and the six man patrol was down to five.

Saya held the body in his arms as he dragged it away, the sound of one of their friends plopping to the ground would be heard otherwise. As the salarian did this task, the others moved up slowly into position, putting their sights on the passing patrol. In theory, they could've just let them walk by, but they could risk having someone surprise them from behind once the attack on the bunker raised the alarm. No, they'd all have to die, as would any other patrols they'd encounter on their way in.

Once he placed the body down quietly, Saya went back on the attack, fully intending to remove another potential target. However, his next batarian seemed to notice they were short one flashlight beam. He turned and the salarian barely missed getting spotted by the light. He ran to the side as the batarian looked around the tunnel behind him. Only for an attack from the side, slicing into his neck, as Saya leapt at him from the left.

Unlike the first, Saya wasn't able to catch the body as it fell. The last batarian heard the sound of the corpse dropping and turned around to spot the salarian pulling his sword out of his friend's body. Before he could fire though, Nel lined up her sights and plugged two suppressed shots from her rifle into the side of the batarian's head.

The kig-yar were the only ones left now, and they seemed to only be armed with forearm shields. Liara and everyone else opened fire on them, intending to take them down before they started shooting back. Wrex managed to plug two into the shoulder of one and another shot along his mouth. Vik's pistol hit one of the kig-yar in the chest while Kayap fired a plasma pistol bolt directly at another. Liara hit one kig-yar's neck and Nel hit one in the eye.

They should've all went down after that, but they didn't. They remained standing, despite the bullet holes in them. Through their night-vision, they could see the kig-yar's wounds bleeding drastically, and then suddenly clotting and healing over just as quickly. The only one that remained horribly injured was the kig-yar Kayap hit, the burn mark from the plasma remaining. The implications of this development were felt by everyone regardless.

"Oh fuck, not more gene-mod shit," Nel grumbled.

The Covies let out low hisses and split their collective attention between Saya and the main group. They spread their arms out and two sets of circular blades popped out from their wrists. The blades then began to spin about like saws, squealing a high-pitched sound as they did. Liara decided not to let them show off for much more after that.

"Kill'em," she ordered.

Working on a hunch, Liara tossed out a warp attack, hitting one of the kig-yar as they began to rush towards them. The attack hit dead center and began shredding the Covie apart with its mass field. Nel took the opportunity to plug a few more shots into the kig-yar's head and this time the alien dropped to the ground and stayed there.

Wrex had also devised what was going on and switched his rifle to incendiary rounds. As he began to fire on the charging kig-yar, Kayap and Vik lit up his target as well. The unggoy hit the kig-yar with another plasma bolt, this one overcharged, while Vik fired repeatedly into the oncoming alien. The kig-yar did his best to avoid the hits, ducking and weaving with tremendous agility, but Kayap's overcharge found its mark. He took the full brunt of the shot, forcing him to take pause for a few moments. It was just enough for Wrex and Vik to finish him off with sustained fire.

One split from the previous two, attacking Saya head-on. The salarian was forced to block the swipes from the alien with his sword. The kig-yar eventually managed to get both his wrist saws to lock with the sword. He began pushing his spinning blades towards the salarian's helmet, intending to cut through the visor and tear into Saya's eyes.

Unfortunately for the kig-yar, he wasn't facing an ordinary sword. He activated the Shiakala's electrical current. It travelled through the sword, up the metal blades and into the kig-yar's body. The alien was forced back in tremendous pain, his whole body smoking. Saya cut his head off a moment later, intending to make sure he couldn't heal from his wounds.

With the patrol vanquished, the team dragged the bodies to a small dark corner in the station. Liara gave the kig-yar special attention. This was the second time they had encountered upgraded Covenant on Khar'shan, and the second variant of upgrades given to the kig-yar specifically.

"Charlan's research mentioned vorcha genes being mixed-in with the kig-yar," she reminded the others. "It looks like they were trying to give them their regenerative abilities."

"Mission accomplished it seems," Vik noted. "We can assume VykurCorp provided them with the saw blades like they did with their sword bearing friends."

Liara, stretched out one of the kig-yar's arms, but could see no leather flap of skin as she did.

"The saws or standard blades may be up to preference," she suggested. "But it seems the gliding capabilities aren't. Perhaps the gene-mods are incompatible with each other."

"Well, you can't expect to mess with someone's DNA and force in everything you want inside," Wrex surmised. "I can't think of any other reason why they didn't give their glider friends that little trick. I mean, if krogan could fly, I don't think we would've lost the rebellions. Just saying."

"Regardless, this, the gliders and the acidic spit all suggest that some of Charlan's projects managed to get into circulation among the Covenant before we put an end to them," Liara concluded.

"Or they've just set up shop somewhere else," Vik suggested. "Them or someone with a few of their research notes."

Vik's paranoia was showing again, but he did have a point. One way or another, this was a troubling development. However, they couldn't deal with it now as they still had a bunker to reach.

"We'll have to scour the network for any information on whether Charlan's projects are being continued somewhere else to be sure," Liara informed them. "For now, the bunker is priority. Radio in when you're in position, we hit the target simultaneously with each other. We can't give them a chance to react. They have us outnumbered down here. We need to split their focus as much as possible."

---

It was weird seeing in the dark like this. Liara had said these things were cheap, so maybe more expensive ones allowed you to see more colours than just green. At least he wasn't tripping over every little thing in his path like he usually did in the dark and he was with Vik.

While not as tough as the others, like Wrex or Nel, Kayap preferred being around the quarian. The krogan didn't think him such a burden any more, but Wrex's style of fighting wasn't in line with Kayap's. Neither was Nel's or Saya's for that matter. Vik, like himself, didn't attack head-on like most others. He preferred to use his equipment to his advantage, distract the enemy and try to get behind them. He liked to play defensively and that was just fine with Kayap.

Another reason was that, besides Liara, Vik was the nicest to him. He wasn't entirely sure why, but he wasn't about to argue. As long as he wasn't stuck with Nel he was fine. That turian scared him. Although he did feel bad that Liara seemed to know this and had taken on Nel as a partner because of it.

"You think Leader Liara is okay with Nel?" He asked Vik.

"If anyone can rein that lunatic in, Doctor T'Soni can," the quarian reassure him. "She has the biotic powers after all. She can just pound her into a wall if she wanted. Course, Nel probably would like that."

"Probably," the unggoy admitted. "I don't get aliens like her. She enjoys this way too much."

"She's too into her vids," Vik explained. "They've brainwashed her. All she can see is handsome turians killing scores of nameless henchmen and foreign enemies set to a bombastic soundtrack. She looks at those action stars and she wants to be them. That's how warped her brain is."

Kayap couldn't imagine enjoying all this. He had seen more than his share fair of violence in the past. He and his friends, all thrown into a grinder and forced to listen to orders he didn't understand. They'd go out into the field, race up to the enemy and, just maybe, some of them would come back alive. At least with Liara, she actually cared about his well being, as did everyone else to an extent. Her orders made sense, they were meant to protect each other, give them all a chance to survive. She didn't use him as a shield.

In fact, Kayap had constantly wondered if he could just stay on the ship. Liara would probably grant that request. He had done his best not to be a burden to the team, but he had always wondered if Liara felt her problems would be eased a little without him around. If she didn't have to concern herself with an unggoy, maybe she could take a few more risks.

But Kayap never once asked her if he could stay behind. Maybe for just that reason, to prove he wasn't useless, that his old leaders were wrong. That he could be more than fodder and that his people weren't just sacks of meat to throw into the fire. Perhaps that was why Liara wanted him to come with her so often. Why she never asked him to stay behind herself. Maybe she believed he could be more. He liked to think that.

As they continued along the side of the track, Kayap examined more of the dilapidated tunnel around them. It reminded him of the bowels of some of the ships he had served aboard, dank and dark, not to mention a little smelly. Even through his new mask and olfactory filters, the place still reeked of dirt, grime, oil and sludge.

The last one became even more pronounced when Kayap accidentally stepped in a puddle of some kind. With his new boots he didn't get his feet wet, but he could hear the sloshing. He looked up to find a broken down pipe leaking some kind of goop onto the ground. Kayap immediately shook the sludge off his soles.

"Ugh, I hate the underground," he bemoaned.

"We'll be out soon, Kay," Vik assured. "After we get some much needed ordinance."

"I could use some better weapons," Kayap admitted as he stepped over the puddle. "I wouldn't mind something that packed more punch than my pistol."

He always wanted something like a fuel rod cannon or the like. Not because he wanted to kill more things with it. He'd just feel a lot safer with a weapon that was more destructive than his measly plasma pistol or needler. It wasn't that those weapons was inadequate or hadn't saved his life more than once, but they were no plasma repeater or concussion rifle.

If the Covenant were more willing to share some of the better equipment with his people, they could probably stand a better chance in the field. They always made the excuse that it was pointless, since unggoy would die regardless of what weapons they were given. Why prolong the inevitable or field better guns to them that the humans would just confiscate from their dead bodies?

However, the quarians probably had just as many issues with their problematic immune system. That didn't stop Vik from being a valuable person in a fight. Maybe he wasn't deadly as Wrex or Nel, but he was pretty resourceful.

"What are you hoping to find in there?" Kayap asked him.

"Besides what Liara wants us to get?" Vik asked in return. "Some upgrades to my drone and turret would be great. I also wouldn't mind looking at more of the tech behind Covenant weapons either."

"I can point out the best stuff for you," the unggoy offered.

Before Vik could respond, they saw a pair of lights up ahead of them. They ducked behind some leftover construction equipment as the lights approached. It appeared to be two more batarians on patrol. They knew Liara's orders. They had to secure their flank.

"You hit one, I'll send out my drone to attack the other," Vik told him.

"Alright," Kayap agreed.

The unggoy waddled over to a nearby open space in the wall. There, he waited for the batarians to come closer. He did his best to cover the green illumination from the charging bolt. Vik had already released his drone to prepare the ambush from the other side.

When they walked into the line of fire, Kayap shot out a bolt. It hit the first batarian in the arm, depleting his shield. The second batarian turned to see what was happening, only for an electrical shock from Vik's drone to hit him. Vik then popped up as the batarian lurched forward and Vik fired two shots from his pistol into the four-eyed alien's head. Kayap fired another bolt at the first batarian, taking him down as well.

"I'm glad your plasma pistol isn't that loud," Vik told the unggoy as they regrouped. "Otherwise we'd have to call off the stealth portion of this mission."

"It's just nice not to be bait in an ambush anymore," Kayap chuckled.

It was then that they heard a moan from the batarian Kayap had hit. The plasma had ruined his arm and scorched his body, but he wasn't dead yet. He was also reaching for his gun just a few inches away from his burned fingertips. Vik quickly rushed over to him, stepping on his burnt hand and then his neck with both his feet.

"Not so fast," Vik told him.

The batarian was clearly in pain and close to death. Vik kept his pistol aimed at his head as he stared down at him.

"How many slaves do you own, I wonder?" He said suddenly, in a low bitter voice. "Quite a few I imagine. You warrior caste bosh'tets have several servants who manage their estates for you half the time. Even a regular Private in the army inevitably belongs to a family who owns their fellow batarians like cattle. Everyone, merchant class and up, has the right to own people."

The batarian tried to grasp at Vik's foot as it kept pushing down on his neck.

"Hurts, don't it?" He asked him viciously. "That's nothing compared to what you people do. You think you're given the right to control other people, tell them what to think, what to do, how to act. You hurt people daily and kill them when they're useless to you. You never consider that they have friends, or family... or... people who love them. They're just things to you, property."

Kayap stepped back a bit, as Vik continued to berate the batarian. The half burned soldier couldn't speak, couldn't breathe, he couldn't fight back. All he could do at this point was listen to the quarian standing over him. The situation wasn't lost on Vik.

"Well, now the 'weakest' alien species in the galaxy has you by the throat, lording over you, making you feel small and helpless for a change," he stated. "How does it feel when you don't have control over your life anymore, bosh'tet?"

Vik then lowered the pistol, kicked the batarian's gun away and stepped off of him.

"Don't worry," he told the downed soldier. "I'm not killing you. No, that's the easy way out for you. And you're just a cog in the machine, not worth the bullet. You'll die eventually from your wounds though. You won't be able to call for help at least. It's gonna hurt for a long while, but that will only be a fraction of the pain you've inflicted on others. I just wish you could feel it longer."

But Vik was wrong, for the batarian didn't have much longer at all. His head soon rolled over to the side, his arm curling up to his body. A few moments later, he stopped moving. Seconds later, he stopped breathing.

"Not nearly as long as he deserved," Vik muttered.

Vik started walking again, Kayap following close behind. He wasn't sure what to say at first, but he found the courage eventually.

"Are... you okay?" He asked.

Vik didn't answer for awhile and they kept walking for about good minute before he said anything. He didn't look back at the unggoy as he spoke.

"I'm tired is all," Vik explained. "Just tired of them getting away with everything they do. They never suffer as bad as the people they hurt. The galaxy is unfair, Kay. And I'm sick of it."

"Yeah, I know the feeling," Kayap replied, remembering the past. "But that's why we're here right? So they don't get away with it."

To be frank, Kayap had no idea where Vik was going with any of this. He just hoped their mutual friendship would overcome whatever was swimming around in his skull at the moment. Vik's posture seemed to ease at Kayap's comments though. So he tried to continue.

"I feel tired a lot too," he admitted. "Tired of the same things you mentioned. I always got beat up or spit on by others back in the Covenant. I guess that's why it was so easy to leave in the end when I got the chance."

"Couldn't have been that easy," Vik suggested sombrely and distantly. "You left a lot of your friends behind."

He remembered all too well. But in the end, despite the people he knew and were friends with when he switched sides, there weren't all that many left in the end. At least, no one important anymore, those people were all gone now. Kayap held back a sniffle, not wanting to show it as he continued to talk.

"I guess I would've taken them with me if I could've-"

"No, you don't have to explain," Vik cut him off. "You tried when you got the chance. You did what you could. It didn't work out, but you tried. That's more than I ever..."

Vik suddenly shook his head violently.

"Let's just keep moving, quietly," he told him. "There may be more patrols."

Kayap did as told and they walked the rest of the way in silence. It didn't seem like Vik wanted to talk anymore. So he left him alone in his thoughts, and wherever they were now.

---

Wrex stayed behind Saya most of the way. Mainly because the STG agent's helmet had better built-in night vision and that made him the better candidate to take point. However, it was also partly because his old instincts kept him from letting a salarian, especially one with a sword, walk behind him. Just old krogan habits, those always took a long time to die.

Saya wasn't much for conversation, not that Wrex had anything to say to him. He just didn't particularly like the uncomfortable silence that hung in the air whenever they were together. It wasn't a silence that existed because of Saya's condition, it was everything else. The way he kept ahead of Wrex. The fact he barely looked back at him as they walked. How every few seconds the krogan spotted the salarian reaching for his sword's hilt now and again.

It was clear the STG agent didn't want to be paired up with him and only barely tolerated being so close. At this point, Wrex didn't care. He may not have cared much for the salarians and how they treated his people, but he had perspective. No, he understood why his people got such dirty looks by the bug-eyed lizards. It was what motivated him to push his reforms through. He wanted to prove them wrong, to show they were better.

Saya, however, still didn't like Wrex. Despite all the fights they had been through together, the salarian just saw him as another krogan. His dislike of him showed in every little action the salarian undertook. It did not make for an encouraging partnership. However, Wrex knew Liara would at least want him to try.

"I'm wondering if the batarians have some krogan weapons in this bunker," he spoke aloud. "They were on Tuchanka for a good while. Who knows what they took."

Wrex didn't expect an answer, but he figured Saya would at least acknowledge the issue he brought up. Instead, he just kept walking, ignoring the krogan entirely. So, Wrex tried again.

"I'm guessing you're gonna fill Kirrahe in on what we find in there," he reasoned. "Along with everything else we've uncovered on this trip. I know no one considers the Hegemony a real threat. Think this will change their minds back home?"

This time, Saya offered a small token glance. Perhaps the reminder of his duty had brought something to the forefront of the salarian's mind. Wrex could only guess what though, because Saya offered no other gesture than that. He could've just been annoyed at the krogan trying to spark up a conversation with a mute salarian for all he knew. Truthfully, Wrex was starting to feel a bit stupid for that very reason at this point.

But, he still tried. If only in an attempt to prove that he could put differences aside and work with Saya.

"You know, I've thinking a lot about this summit that's coming up," he spoke up. "It must be about something really big if they're putting most of their best people in one room together. It must be some kind of strategy meeting. What do you think?"

Saya finally turned around and looked at Wrex. As he had feared, Saya blank stare through his helmet's visor showed he had grown exacerbated with the questions. Wrex had an idea of why he was reacting as such.

"I know you're mute," Wrex sighed. "But you can still send a text message or something to me through my omni-tool. All I'm trying to do is get your handle on the situation, nothing else."

That didn't seem to calm Saya at all. Instead, the salarian took the krogan's advice and began writing up a quick, to the point text message on his omni-tool. When it was sent and Wrex read it, he realised that he had been wrong about why Saya wasn't attempting to say anything back.

'You're no different,' the message read. 'Stop pretending.'

Wrex could only raise an eyebrow at the response.

"I don't get it," he said.

Mere seconds later, Saya sent a picture from a news article to Wrex. It was a very familiar one, although very old at the same time. It showed a slightly younger krogan, with a lot less faith and even less hope for the future. The picture itself was from the aftermath of an assault on a salarian outpost. Wrex didn't have to read to remember what the young krogan was after. He could easily recall the events.

"The job was to locate and recover something they stole from the client," Wrex recalled. "He made it very clear he didn't want it getting out. It was information that would've ruined his business and they were blackmailing him. It just so happened they were all salarians. It was just another job. I tried to negotiate first and it failed. That happened often, as I'm sure you probably know."

It didn't take long for Wrex to find a few more articles popping up on his omni-tool. All of them concerned his long mercenary career, the good days and the bad.

"I'm not proud of everything I did," Wrex admitted. "I'm not going to pretend I didn't enjoy some of it either. But that was in the past. Things have changed."

Saya didn't seem to care for Wrex's statements in the slightest. He only offered more vitriol through the text message function in response, staring at him all the while. Wrex wanted a conversation, and now he was getting it. At least the salarian was looking at him at last.

'Krogan violent by nature,' the new message read. 'Drawn to it. Mindless Killers All. You no different. Just better hider.'

"I'm not hiding anything," Wrex informed him, growing a little annoyed at the accusations. "As much as you want to convince yourself with these files and pictures, you need to realise something. I'm not that krogan anymore and I'm not your enemy either."

Saya jabbed his fingers onto his omni-tool's key commands, never breaking the vicious stare he was giving Wrex. While he couldn't speak, he could still punctuate everything he said with his fingers rather than his voice. Wrex, in the meantime, had to look down and away from Saya, just to read the message.

'For now,' it read simply.

Saya began walking away once more when he was sure he had been heard, but Wrex caught up with him. He wasn't about to let Saya have the last word on this. If nothing else, he wasn't going to let the salarian get away with calling him a mindless killer and getting away with it.

"I would've gladly killed the pirates who took your voice," he stated with a growl. "I'd have probably have done it for free too. They're the kind of krogan I hate, the reason I'm trying to reform my people. You can't go through life hating us because what one pyjak sucking bastard did to you."

Saya stopped in his tracks suddenly, and Wrex was worried he had angered the salarian again. When he started typing on his omni-tool again, Wrex expected as big mouthful as possible. Instead, he only got a question in return.

'You think it's that simple, do you?'

Before Wrex could ask for clarification, another message came in.

'It's not me,' it said. 'It's what you do to each other.'

Wrex was only further confused by that statement, not sure of how to respond. Before he could come up with a proper reply, they were interrupted by the sound of scampering feet in the shadows. Quickly, both he and Saya took up hiding positions around a bend, as a small group of kig-yar made their way down the tunnel. It seemed that Wrex would have to table this discussion for another time, they needed to deal with this problem now.

The kig-yar spread out along the width of the tunnel. There were five of them and Wrex suspected they all had regenerative abilities. They'd have to go for the kill shot right away. Wrex had already switched to incendiary rounds for his rifle, it had worked before. Saya, meanwhile, had moved back onto the tracks. He activated his cloak just to be safe this time. With the targets so spread out, the chances of appearing in their line of sight had increased.

Now invisible, Wrex's night vision couldn't pick the salarian out. He'd have to wait for him to make his move before he took a shot, otherwise he could accidentally hit him. Peering through the iron sights, he saw one kig-yar along the right left side of the room start to go off alone. It was good bet that Saya had zeroed in on him.

Sure enough, a blade suddenly cut into the back of the kig-yar's neck and up into his skull. Saya's cloak faded as he put the body of the kig-yar down onto the tracks quietly. He then started to make his move towards the next target. Wrex followed the salarian along the tracks as he moved to the right. He came upon the second kig-yar and brought up his sword to strike. That was when the Covie turned suddenly and popped out one of his saw blades.

"Crap," Wrex grumbled.

Saya managed to block the kig-yar's attempt to slash him with his blades, using his sword to block the attempt. He then kicked the alien away and got into a proper defensive stance, where he began to deflect a number of successive strikes from his assailant. After a few good parries, Saya hit the bird-creature in the neck with his open palm before hitting the side of his head with a spin kick.

Seeing that Saya was doing okay against a single opponent, and he couldn't get a clear shot anyway, Wrex moved towards the location of the other three. They had already heard the commotion and were running over to assist their beleaguered comrade. Saya could probably handle them, but Wrex didn't like the idea of a four on one fight. The salarian was an ass, but that didn't mean he had to be one in return.

He fired a burst of shots from his rifle, the sound modulator suppressing the noise. He got the first kig-yar in the head, scorching the alien's feathers, and the second kig-yar in the shoulder. They were hurt, and the incendiaries kept their wounds from healing over, but it would take a few more shots to take them down.

The kig-yar seemed to lock onto where Wrex was. Maybe they just had better hearing or vision than most. Either way, the two that had been shot were coming for him now. No sense in wasting time on them. Wrex prepared a carnage shot. They couldn't regenerate if their body parts were all over the walls.

Wrex had to duck into cover for a moment as plasma bolts hit the corner, but he soon poked his head back out again and fired. The blast rocketed through the darkness, hitting one of the kig-yar square in the center of his chest. His comrade rolled to the side as flaming bits fell all over the ground. He unhinged his saw blades made a mad dash straight for Wrex. The krogan let a shockwave ripple out and strike the kig-yar as he closed in. Then he let his rifle rip into the alien. Incendiary rounds quickly cremated the Covie before he even hit the ground.

That left one more kig-yar not yet engaged with Saya. Wrex turned back to the fight with his less than agreeable companion and found he was still engaged with the first kig-yar. Saya was landing a few good hits to the Covie's upper torso, but the alien was healing too fast. The salarian kept trying to go for the killing blow, striking towards the head, but the kig-yar always anticipated the event.

Finally, Saya found a way to exploit that. He aimed lower on one of his slashes and managed to slice clean through the kig-yar's arm. As the appendage fell to the floor, Saya followed up the attack with a slash to the alien's head, finally killing him.

However, as he was finishing off the kig-yar in front of him, the final one snuck up from behind. The Covie had circled around within the darkness and was now leaping at the salarian's back with saws out and ready. Wrex quickly targeted the alien with a throw, sending him hurtling back into a wall. He then rushed out and fired the rest of his magazine into the kig-yar before he could get back up. He didn't want to risk the chance he'd regenerate.

Saya turned to Wrex, still pointing the rifle in the direction of the desiccated kig-yar. He realised he could gloat, say something clever, remind him again he wasn't the enemy. But he decided against it. No, he'd let his actions speak for themselves. If Saya couldn't see it, then why should he care?

For the salarian's part he didn't respond with anything but a head gesture pointing back down their path. It wasn't a 'thank you' or a dismissal of what had happened. Wrex decided to just take it for what it was then, acceptance. They had a mission to do. It was best they get back to it. They continued walking down the path, this time a little more side by side, but still a few feet apart.

"It's an improvement," Wrex thought.

---

Nel was rather disappointed to find that no one had installed a vending machine before construction had ended on this place. She had hoped someone jumped the gun a little, but no. The central passage was completely devoid of anything to scarf down. She had quickly given up and turned to just trying to keep up with Liara.

She supposed getting to their objective would make up for the disappointment of the lack of vending machines, but it was still pretty damn annoying. She had nothing to drink and she had a sudden craving for Tupari. Although, she doubted that the drink would be sold on Khar'shan, but they had to have an equivalent here right?

She tried to get her mind off of it, focusing instead on what she wanted from the bunker.

"I hope they got some rocket launchers," Nel told Liara as they walked along, ever watchful for potential enemies. "Or at least some flamethrowers we could use. Oh, wait, maybe they have plasma throwers."

"I will just settle for anything that can keep us alive for an extended period," Liara replied as she moved from cover to cover.

Nel tried to follow the good doctor best she could, only looking at her ass once or twice. Although it was very difficult to restrain herself, asari had great asses.

"What about this thing they carted in?" She asked. "You think it's a mech? Maybe it's one of those variants you can drive I hear about. That would be great for an assault."

"We'll find out when we're there I guess," Liara answered.

"If it does turn out to be a mech I call dibs," Nel announced merrily.

She could hear the audible groan from Liara almost instantly as they kept moving. Nel realised she was probably annoying Liara, probably. She wasn't stupid, she just didn't care all that much. At this point, after being chewed for flirting and refusing to filter herself, Nel had decided to not even try. They were never going to be satisfied, no matter how much she toned herself down.

"So, how long do you think we'll have in there?" Nel asked her as they kept moving. "I mean, it's a lot of stuff. We can't take all of it with us."

"No, but I'm hoping loading most of it onboard will be easier," Liara told her. "They keep it well organized and use magnetic cranes. We should be able to get most of the weapons on the train with little difficulty. The real problem will be getting away."

Nel now looked around at the half finished passageway around them as they moved. She could see all the escalators to nowhere, the frames on the walls for the advertisements that would never be, even the spots marked out on the floor where the benches were meant to be set up. To think, if they finished it the place would've been another fully formed facade for the secret operation next door to it.

"You know," she began to think aloud again. "Between this place, the theme park and Rakavekyon, you gotta wonder what else they're using as a front."

"At this point I wouldn't be surprised," Liara admitted.

A thought suddenly occurred to Nel about that.

"Hey, maybe they just really like spy vids and were inspired by all those secret villain hideouts," Nel joked. "I mean, they had to get the idea somewhere."

"Again, wouldn't surprise me," Liara admittedly, stifling a slight laugh.

So, she actually got her to smile a bit. Nel could be happy about that. Maybe she was wearing her down, if only a little. At least she didn't sound nearly as annoyed as before. Perhaps she just responded to humour a bit better when it wasn't the lewd kind.

They soon approached another set of stairs leading down to another station platform. Their target was just across the track, within a small alcove and behind a door that would seemingly lead to nowhere. But thanks to Vik, they knew the dead end was actually just the wall of the bunker itself. The only thing standing in their way, were two batarian guards right next to it.

"We'll need to be careful with this," Liara cautioned. "We can't tip off our presence to the bunker now. We're so close to it, they're definitely hear any returning gunfire beyond the wall."

"So we can't let them shoot," Nel surmised. "Well that's easy enough to fix."

"That means no explosions either," Liara clarified suddenly.

Nel was a bit insulted by the accusation.

"Chill out, I was gonna try a knife, honest," she informed her. "I can be subtle."

"Just to be safe, I'm going to prepare to stasis lock them," Liara told her. "Make your move then, not before."

"Gotcha," Nel replied.

She dropped down from the ledge, landing in the nook between the wall and the stairs. She carefully moved out, hiding behind one of the support pillars as she did. She waited for the batarians to look away from her position before she moved out again. She rolled down onto the tracks and kept her head below the platforms. She crawled up into position, just a few feet away from her targets, right below them. Now, she merely waited for Liara's signal.

Seconds later it came, as both batarians were caught in two separate stasis fields, one after the other. Nel wasted no time in rushing up to them, knife at the ready. She got there just as the first stasis broke and then jammed her knife into the batarian's neck before pulling out quickly and turning to the second. She pinned the batarian to the wall as he broke from stasis and began stabbing him repeatedly until he stopped moving.

"Its days like this I wished our military wasn't so segregated," Nel noted as Liara made her way over. "I wouldn't have minded some super powered back-up in the day. Would've been a lot more turkey shoots. Don't tell the Wet Bucket I said that though, Doc."

"I doubt he'd believe me," Liara told her, rolling her eyes.

They opened the door at the back of the alcove and made their way to the "dead-end" where they'd breach into the bunker proper. Liara took the breaching charge they had acquired for this. The others would have a proper door to blow through with or hack into it. The wall required something a bit more extreme.

They had Drothan hunt down a turian military grade breaching charge. It was made back during the Krogan Rebellions, but was still in use today by the regular military. Turians had needed something big enough for their ground units to burst through the walls of krogan buildings, which were regularly really difficult to take down. With any luck, this bunker would be just as easily broken down.

"Team, Nel and I are in position," Liara said over the comm. as she placed the charge on the wall and armed it. "Where are you?"

"Me and Saya got to our door," Wrex replied seconds later. "He's already finished setting up his gel along the door. We're just waiting for you."

"I'm with Kay and the other door," Vik answered. "The lock is hacked and ready to open. Give the word, Doctor."

Nel placed herself along the wall, her weapon aimed up and armed with shredder rounds.

"Well let's hit this place then," she impatiently insisted. "I wanna crack some skulls already."

For once, Liara actually obliged the request and began the countdown.

"Attack in three, two, one..."

The charge cracked open the wall like the shell of an egg. Nel barely waited for the concrete and dust to settle before charging in, rifle blazing. Liara followed soon after, firing her pistol off as well. The turian spotted a number of enemies in front, batarians. She laid down a stream of fire as they started to scurry for cover, the bullets ripping into them with ease.

"Shredder rounds are a girl's best friend," she chuckled under her breath.

Out of the corner of her eye, Nel spotted Wrex moving up the line among the rows of crates and boxes. He fired a carnage shot that ripped a kig-yar to pieces before sending a throw attack that tossed a batarian half-way across the room. On the other side of the room, Vik had laid down a turret and had created a little defensive position for him and Kayap. They were effectively acting as the anvil for Wrex's hammer.

Saya in the meantime could be spotted here and there, cutting down kig-yar and batarians who cross his path, thinning their ranks. He managed between two batarians, for example, and skewered one through the stomach before slicing through the neck of another. One thing she could say about the frog, he had moves for what he lacked in personality.

Liara was singling out the kig-yar for the most part. Their regenerative modifications made them a prime target. Whenever she spotted one skulking among the crates she tossed out a warp, lighting him up for everyone to lay into with fire. Vik's turret raked one that stood atop a box, as biotic fields tore at his very DNA.

They were all pretty busy to say the least, which meant now was as good a chance as any. Nel found a little corner to hide in for a minute, away from the others. Quickly she pulled out her injection and got the vial ready.

It was then she thought of something. She could use one vial, but after the success of last time, why not just take a double dose now? Or hell, a triple? It had worked great before. She could easily take the extra doses without anyone noticing.

"What the hell?" She decided. "Bad guys are probably gonna be on our asses for awhile anyway."

Nel took two extra vials. She injected the first into her neck on one side, then another on the other side of her neck. The final one she saved for where her shoulder plate met her neck. Three almost simultaneous buzzes filled her brain. The overpowering sensation made her pupils dilate to slits and forced her to bite down hard on her lower jaw.

"Oh yeah, that's the fucking ticket," she said to herself in a dreamy sing-song way. "Fuck Tupari, this is all the juice I need."

Nel stood up and stared straight into the battle before her. She launched herself over cover, firing her assault rifle like mad. She aimed for the kig-yar, who had turned to strafe her as they ran across the tops of tall crates and roof of the train cars a few metres behind them. She had trouble in picking out their feet and blasting them out from under them. Their careful footwork, replaced with broken knees and blood curdling cries she could hear ever so clearly.

"Regenerate that, dipshit," she thought aloud.

As their bodies tumbled to the ground, Nel turned her attention to a batarian who was moving out of cover. In his world, he was going at regular speeds, lining up his shot as fast as a soldier could. In Nel's world, he might as well have been standing still. The turian locked her crosshairs onto his face, between his four eyes, and fired. Her shredder rounds cut through the alien's skull like it was tissue paper.

His buddy, who was just starting to move out of cover, was next. She trailed bullets along his arm as he appeared, leading all the way towards his neck. She then punched him to the floor as she ran past, her eyes already looking for her next target.

As she searched, Nel heard the distinctive sound of little talons running across the crates above. She turned at the last second to see the kig-yar leaping down at her with saw blades out. She had already armed a concussive shot though and fired it right into him. The alien tumbled through the head, landing in a heap in the middle of the room.

He got right back up of course and began racing towards her once more. Nel fired successive shots, but the shredder rounds weren't as effective against an alien that could heal itself like a vorcha. She decided upon a more direct approach. She took up her rifle like it was a bat and waited for the alien to get close. When the kig-yar got close, she struck him across the head, putting him down hard on the ground.

That wasn't going to kill him though. With her reflexes heightened by the juice, she was already on the kig-yar when he hit the ground. She then began pounding his face into the floor by grabbing his head feathers and forcing his head around so her fist could hit his eye with every blow. Blood splattered across Nel hands and pooled around the floor until the kig-yar finally stopped moving.

Nel was already up, her adrenaline on overdrive now. A batarian wandered into her range of sight, firing at something in another direction. Was it Vik? Wrex? Saya? Liara? Maybe even Kayap? Who knew, and Nel didn't care. All she saw was meat.

She took her knife and threw it at the square of the batarian's back. She then charged at him and pulled the knife out in a way that slashed it across his back. The scream sounded like some strange melody, music to match the chorus of gunfire around her. She turned the batarian around only to use her pistol to shoot him twice through the neck.

As she tossed his body to the side she started running down a corridor of crates. Her pistol still out as she walked forward. She briefly saw another batarian guard at the end of the row. He was firing at something as he fell back, only to be shocked by a blast of energy, followed up by a powerful biotic throw. Vik and Liara then appeared beside each other, firing at the direction the batarian had been flung. She momentarily wondered how well the others were doing. That was when her arm felt a slight burning sensation.

She looked to see her armour singed by plasma scorch mark. She only barely felt it, not that it hurt all that much. She turned see where the shot had come from. There were two kig-yar were closing in on her from the right, charging up their plasma pistols while they readied the saw blades in their wrists. Nel quickly turned and fired two shots into the lower hip of one of the kig-yar, forcing him to discharge his shot into the air.

The second kig-yar rushed in, his blades slicing her carapace slightly. She grabbed the arm and forced it back on the Covie and towards his face. She directed the back to the alien's head, slicing him in the eye. The kig-yar screamed again, once more it set something off in Nel.

She kicked the alien into a bunch of crates before turning to the one she shot and forced him into a support pillar. He had healed from his gunshot wounds, but Nel was too busy punching him in the gut constantly to care. The kig-yar tried to fight back by attempting to cut into her neck with his blades. Nel backed off as he tried to slash at her, the blades only cutting into her shoulder slightly. They managed to get through to her plates below and cut into them. She didn't feel that though, only rage.

"That didn't fucking hurt!" She shouted at him.

Pulling out her pistol again, she fired two shots into both the kig-yar's kneecaps. Wasting no time, she rushed over and grabbed him by the beak and pistol whipped him in the face directly. As she was doing so, the other kig-yar had pulled himself up off the floor and was preparing to cut into her head. But Nel heard him and turned into time to fire a bullet from her pistol right into his face. As the kig-yar crumbled to the floor, Nel turned back to his still living comrade. She then slammed him into the floor and smashed his head in with her foot.

"Now that fucking hurt!" She declared.

She took off again, moving towards the train itself now. When she got out of the maze of crates, she saw Liara, Vik and Kayap had managed to pin down some batarians among some metal crates. Nel was in the perfect position to take them out, but in her present state she chose the least safe method to accomplish said task. She pulled out a cluster grenade and tossed it into the mess of batarians.

When Nel's allies saw this, they ran for cover, but she stood her ground. The batarians didn't realise what was wrong before it was too late as the cluster grenade went off. The detonation wasn't limited to the batarians though, as the crates were blown open and their volatile contents ignited. The blue plasma fire burst into the air and Nel was thrown slightly back as the shockwave rocked the floor. Luckily, the explosion didn't spread to the other boxes, but only because the crates were more spaced apart.

Nel stared at the flames in a haze, unable to see anything else but the millions of colours dancing before her eyes. The only thing that brought her out of her stupor was Liara, stomping over to her and slamming her into a set of crates nearby.

"What the hell were you thinking?!" She demanded to know. "You could've set this entire bunker on fire with us in it!"

"Yeah, maybe," the turian replied almost laughing. "But those fuckers are dead and we're not. So it's all good. Yay us!"

Liara, not at all amused, let her go with a final push into the crates.

"You're pushing it, Nel," Liara told her in a rage. "I'm just about fed up with this. This is not a damn game for your amusement. You're the only person here who doesn't get that. You're just lucky I'm going to need everyone for the Tower assault or you'd be going back to the ship on the cargo freighter tonight. You keep this up and the second we're off Khar'shan, you're gone. Do we understand each other?"

"Why don't you just admit you want me?" Nel chuckled, almost oblivious to the question.

"Do we understand each other?" Liara asked again through gritted teeth.

That repeat got through to Nel's head this time and she was able to actually respond, although still with a grin on her face.

"Sure, you got it," she answered at last.

Liara walked away and turned to the others who had gathered around.

"Wrex, get her up," she ordered. "Everyone else, start looking for weapons and supplies we can use and load them onto the train. I'm going to see what our mystery cargo is."

Liara headed towards the train while everyone else started looking through the bunker's assorted weapons. Wrex pulled the turian to her feet and was quick to offer his own two cents.

"You got lucky," he told her. "You keep doing this crap and she'll get a lot more physical. And believe me, it won't be fun kind."

Wrex went his own way now, not even giving Nel a chance to make a witty comeback. Just as well, she was still a bit high on her buzz. It wasn't easy to hide her self-inflicted condition in these circumstances. Thankfully, everyone was more focused on getting the guns than about looking her over. They already accepted that she was naturally violent, so that end was covered too. For the moment, she just tried to focus on finding some guns.

With the firefight over, Nel could appreciate the amount of merchandise around her. Cracking open box after box, it didn't take long for her and the others to find the good stuff. There were several AT-12 shotguns, some of the best in the batarian military. Kishock harpoon rifles were stacked in box piles as high as their heads. Nel found a case of Firestorm flamethrowers as well, fully loaded. She tried one out, firing it into the air, just to see if it worked.

"This is the best shopping trip I've been on yet!" She laughed.

Those were only the local universe weapons. There were just as many Covenant weapons alongside them. Kayap was serving as a guide of sorts for the ones they weren't as familiar with. Plasma rifles and pistols were overlooked for being too common. For their assault on the tower, they would need the best equipment, so they were only interested in the top quality weapons stored here. Thankfully, so were the batarians because there were a lot of really powerful guns in the acquired arsenal.

"Plasma Repeater," Kayap said as he opened one crate with Vik. "Longer range, more bolts per second and doesn't overheat as fast. The sangheili only give them to their most elite special forces."

"Looks a lot more like a traditional rifle than most of your weapons," Vik observed.

"We could definitely use these," Kayap told him. "They can burn through shields faster than any other weapon I know of."

Nel's eyes fell upon one set of weapons in particular, lined along a wall on the right. They were rather big, bulky looking weapons, clearly some kind of heavy machine gun. Of course, its purple colour and sleek nature meant it was Covenant in origin, suggesting it was fired plasma and not bullets. Nel hefted it into her arms, grunting as she did. It was pretty heavy, even for her.

"What's this bad boy?" She asked Kayap.

"Type-52 Plasma Cannon," he replied. "They're usually supposed to be stationary, not carried around. Although, I have seen the sangheili do it sometimes when they get angry."

Nel swivelled the weapon around, trying to get a feel for the weapon. The weight wasn't as bad once she got use to it and while not as manoeuvrable, it did feel like it packed a lot of fire power.

"Well I'm taking this one, maybe a few of his friends too," she decided. "I'm gonna fry half the garrison with this bad boy."

As Vik and Kayap dug deeper into the pile of Covenant weapons, the unggoy opened a crate to discover a very special find. It was a hefty looking blue weapon of some king, with a scope on top and s similar stock to that of the fuel rod cannon. The barrel, however, was split into four and was far bulkier that the fuel rod cannon's.

"This is a Type-52 Guided Munitions Launcher!" He shouted with glee.

"A what?" Vik asked confused.

"It shoots plasma grenades that can track targets!" Kayap responded, rather excited. "Only the best soldiers in the Covenant get to have them! I always wanted to see one in action."

Vik was a bit befuddled by Kayap's sudden enthusiasm.

"I thought you didn't like fighting," he reminded him.

"I don't, but if I have to fight I'd like to have a weapon that will keep me alive," Kayap stated plainly "Especially against a lot of bad guys. This thing will be perfect for the attack on the tower."

"Yeah, just keep them away from Nel," Vik cautioned. "I don't want to know what she'd do with them."

Nel had already parted ways, dragging the case for her plasma cannon to the train. As she did, she saw Wrex positioning a number of crates below a magnetic crane, which soon lowered and grabbed the cargo. It then began delivering them towards the train itself for transport.

"Find anything cool?" She asked him.

"A few things," Wrex answered. "They got a lot of Revenant assault rifles, plenty of plasma grenades, missile launchers and I found this thing."

Wrex raised up a large yellow weapon with a very wide barrel and a radiation hazard insignia on its side. Nel didn't need to ask what it was. She was just shocked to see something like it here of all places.

"A Cain?" She said, taken aback by the weapon's appearance. "Damn, this bunker has everything!"

"That's not the only thing," Wrex told her. "Right beside it was a few cases of armour. This one was the most interesting."

Wrex opened up the box to reveal a dark black and silver set of krogan armour. The helmet sported a battlemask design scheme, with a yellow visor. Tubes attached the helmet to the main armour piece, which was layered with thick ceramic and kinetic plates. There were also a number of auxiliary shield and power cell generators on the legs and arms, which would boost the wearer's weapons and shields.

"The Battlemaster XII," Wrex announced. "Somehow the batarians got their mitts on it. It's probably a gift for the Blood Pack, Trox himself most likely. The helmet has a built-in amplifier system that boosts energy input and output to a biotic amp and the wearer's own abilities. That, along with the extra layers of protection and damage output, makes a krogan biotic even deadlier than he was before."

"I don't suppose there's more armour around here," Nel asked.

"Take a look over there if you want," Wrex suggested. "Better than becoming a bullet sponge I think."

Nel rushed over and began scrambling through the various crates, trying to find something that would work for her. It was mostly armour she couldn't wear though, designed for batarians and maybe the sangheili. The latter was closer, but not exact. The sangheili lacked the carapace around their necks, making all their armour impossible for her to get into.

It was then, just by chance when she knocked one of the cases over, did she find what she was looking for. Spilling out of the box was a large suit of heavy turian armour, but it wasn't your average armour. The carapace piece was higher than average, and the armour itself was as thick and sturdy as a krogan, but built for a turian. But it there was more it than just immediate appearance.

The helmet was swept back to accommodate a fringe, but was a lot more round than your average helmet. It all sported a thick sheet of tinted glass acting as a visor that had been shaped into a thick Y pattern. The suit itself was covered in extra armour plating, ranging from ceramics to kinetics. There were even some shield amplifiers to boot, both for the purposes of strengthening and recharging the shields.

Considering what this thing was for, it made sense there was such a huge emphasis on wearer protection. The suit was a turian-manufactured bomb disposal suit. It was made to counteract Separatist IEDs in various hot-zones across Hierarchy space. They had drones that could potentially do that, but the Separatists had gotten wise to it. A few of them were using some more complicated methods that VI systems just couldn't handle. In those cases, you needed someone with bomb defusing experience and they needed protection.

This one appeared to be a high-end military one, very expensive and very hard to get. Nel remembered seeing one back in the military once. The guy wearing it managed to remove the bomb placed along the convoy route and set it aside. Suddenly the timer started and the guy had to run for his life. The bomb exploded when he got ten feet away from it, but he only came out with a few bruises from shockwave hitting and throwing him to the ground. The armour undoubtedly saved his life.

If it could take a bomb then it stood to reason, in Nel's mind, that it could handle gunfire. If it could handle both of those then it most certainly could stand up to plasma bolts as well. She wasted no time in getting the armour back in its case and brought it, along with the plasma cannon, all the way back to train. She needed two trips of course, but she wasn't leaving here without either of those items.

When she got back to the train with both her items at last, she found Liara with Saya. They were undoing a tarp that was covering the massive secret item centered in the middle of the open train car. Whatever was under there was about twenty-two feet long and twenty-four feet wide, it also looked pretty damn tall. For a moment, Nel thought her Mech suit theory was correct, but the height proved deceptive.

When Liara cut the last chord on the tarp and pulled it down, it was revealed not to be a mech. It was instead one of the Covenant aircraft, the one with the little prongs as landing struts and the slicked back cockpit. Said cockpit was standing up, waiting for a pilot to hop in. Liara had encountered them before on Omega, Nel remembered seeing a few when she had still been working for them.

"Looks like we've just gained some extra air support," Liara noted aloud.

"Kick ass, death from above," Nel chuckled.

Kayap waddled over with Vik at this time. They were both carrying more equipment to be loaded onto the train in their arms. When they spotted the aircraft, Kayap nodded his head in contentment.

"Oh, Type-26 Ground Support Aircraft," he noted. "Or, if you don't want a mouthful, a Banshee. That makes sense."

"Cool, question though," Nel spoke up. "Who gets to be the pilot?"

"We'll figure that out when we're out of here," Liara answered. "The other train cars are partially loaded with some guns and ammo already, including several fuel rod cannons. We best start adding onto it quickly. We can't be certain how long we'll be able to stay here undetected and we need to leave while it's still dark on the surface."

So they got to work loading the train now, piling in everything they could find that they thought would help in the assault. They grabbed needle rifles, more Striker Assault rifles, Kassa Fabrication Locusts, M-29 Incisors, and a whole range of armour upgrades and weapons mods. The last one included a prized find by Vik, as it included upgrades for his combat drone and turret.

"I guess I can thank the Hegemony for one thing," Vik reasoned. "I now have a flamethrower mod for my turret and a rocket mod for my drone. Two things I never could've afforded myself."

"It seems we almost got everything on our list," Liara declared. "Has anyone found the explosives we need?"

"I think I got them," Wrex called over.

The krogan lumbered towards the train with a box under his arm. He threw it down onto the ground and lifted open the lid, revealing a number of high yield explosive charges. Everyone gave them a once over, Vik especially.

"Yeah, I think these will do," he said aloud. "We just need to plant them in the right spots. I've already mapped them out for our mission plan, so as long as everyone follows them we'll be okay."

Wrex looked at the quarian with a peculiar look.

"I guess we're pretty lucky to have someone with so much knowledge of explosives on board," he said.

Vik was rather quickly to pull himself away from the box of charges. He began to rub the back of his neck a bit nervously as he responded.

"Well, I guess I just learned a few things," he said, not looking the krogan in the eye as he did. "It's not too impressive, basic knowledge really."

Wrex just snorted slightly and heaved the explosives onto the train car.

"It's a good thing you found them, Wrex," Liara congratulated him. "If we're going to get away with this, we'll need them."

With everything seemingly squared away, it was time to get out of here. Nel moved up to the front of the train car with Liara, as she was about to start their little getaway. Saya was already at the bunker's door controls. They couldn't rightly get out of here with them closed after all. Starting the train up would take a little time though, so Liara figured they might as well get started on it. Nel was attempting to help, much to the asari's displeasure.

"Can I start the train?" She asked incessantly.

"No, you'd probably crash it somehow," Liara stated bluntly.

"Oh come on, that grenade thing was twenty minutes ago," she whined. "You're not still hung up on that are you?"

"Short answer, yes," Liara replied. "Here's a question, can you even drive this thing?"

Nel took one look at the controls, the various buttons, switches and dials on the main console. Still a bit buzzed, she wasn't entirely sure she could make heads or tails of any of it.

"Maybe you should figure it out then," Nel relented.

"Great idea," Liara replied. "You go keep watch with the others. Chances are someone is going to notice that this bunker has gone dark by now."

With Liara's warning, the turian quickly returned to watch, her words setting off a fire in her brain. Nel walked back along the train, exiting the cabin car and into the first boxcar. Further down the train were the flatbed and two more boxcars. Each of the boxcars had four doors, two on either side. She could see it all, just by looking down the line of the train itself.

Nel's juice did more than just increase aggression, motor skills and resistance to pain after all, it increased cognitive apprehension. She was already thinking of every place the bad guys could try to get onto the train. If only because she didn't want to screw up and miss a chance to do something badass. Also, say something badass, but she had mentally written up witty catchphrases to say when she heard they'd be hijacking a train.

She spotted Vik nearby the Banshee, making sure the locks tying it down to the flatbed were secure.

"You ready for to get this good old fashioned train robbery started?" She asked him slyly.

"Actually, I'm hoping that with any luck we leave the bunker without them getting here," the quarian told her. "That way I don't have to worry about a suit rupture for the rest of the night."

Just then, an alarm sounded overhead. It came from behind the train. Nel and Vik looked over to see the back door second track running through the bunker was starting to open up. That could only mean one thing.

"You better hold onto that needle and thread, Bucket," Nel warned. "You might just end up needing it tonight after all."

The alarm wasn't lost on any of the others. Liara poked her head out the cabin door and shouted over to Saya.

"Get the door open now!" She ordered.

Saya slammed his fist down on the console hard and their exit began to open up. Liara didn't even wait for it to fully rise up before she switched the train on full power. The cars jerked forward as the train began to pick up speed.

Already the second track's doors were opened wide and a second train began coming down the line. It was an armoured military train, as opposed to their pathetic little cargo one. It was loaded with batarians, all armed to the teeth, and they wasted no time in opening fire on their fleeing train. Vik ducked into the cover of the boxcar behind him, but Nel stood out on the flatbed and fired rounds from her Phaeston at the enemy train.

"Sorry guys, but we're not about to be delayed!" She shouted over the gunfire. "We have an appointment!"

The train's cabin just barely cleared the opening exit door. The sound of screeching metal was heard as the bottom of the door scrapped the roof of the cab. Saya jumped down from the door controls above and made a mad dash for the departing train.

"Final call for the Gun Run Express," Nel cried out to Saya. "All aboard!"

Saya managed to leap onto the flatbed, rolling into position. The turian quickly caught him before he nearly rolled over the side and pulled him back in.

"Next stop, wherever the fuck this isn't," she laughed as she pulled the salarian up. "Am I right?"

Saya was clearly not amused by the attempt at humour and even unsheathed his sword. Nel, smartly, stepped aside and let the salarian go on his way. In the meantime, she went to the back of the train with Wrex and Kayap who were digging through their stockpile for defensive weapons. The train was already rocketing down the line, speeding away from the bunker as fast as it could.

"I'm patching us all in through the open channel," Liara's voice rang in her comm. "Vik, how long until we reach the first checkpoint?"

"We need to make a left about two kilometres down," the quarian answered, his voice now ringing in her head. "Then another left a kilometre after that. There will be a dead end, but it's will open as soon as we switch onto the track. Then we'll be on the public line."

"Then we need to hold them off until then," Liara surmised. "Do not let them get on board team."

"Whatever you and your gorgeous ass says, Doc," Nel replied.

"Not now, Nel!" Liara screamed into her ear. "In fact, not ever!"

Well, she was obviously still angry about that grenade thing. Oh well, no time to think about it, bad guys to shoot. When she looked out the windows to the boxcar, she could see the armoured train trying to catch up to them. For a second, Nel thought they had some time to get ready. Then those hopes were dashed when speeding out of the tunnel were several smaller purple vehicles hovering along the ground. They were speedy little things with wide faces and they were all driven by batarians.

"They got Ghosts," Kayap observed. "They're the Covenant's main rapid assault vehicle."

"Well, I hope the Hegemony didn't put down too big a deposit on them," Nel stated with a snark.

Nel tossed out a cluster grenade among the oncoming Ghosts. The explosive smacked the front of one of the vehicles destroying. The extra explosions damaged the ones around it. Nel began firing at them as they scattered, leaning out of the doorway.

"Don't you fuckers know not to play on train tracks?" She yelled back at them with a grin. "Someone could get hurt!"

Her shots hit the chasing vehicles, but they didn't do much against them. Anticipating more grenades being thrown at them, the Ghosts broke formation and spread out along the tracks. Some even turned themselves sideways towards the train and strafed it as they hovered forward horizontally. Their attacks forced Nel to duck back into the car to avoid the plasma shots.

"We're gonna need something with more punch to beat these assholes off," she determined. "I can't get a good shot on any of their drivers."

Wrex was already on it. He stood in the back doorway and fired a carnage shot out at one of the chasing Ghosts, blowing the engine up and the vehicle along with it. As the Ghsot started skipping over itself down the track, Wrex got back inside and threw a missile launcher at Nel's feet.

"That should help," Wrex told her. "Now get back in there!"

"Yes, sir!" Nel enthusiastically answered.

She grabbed the launcher and took aim at one of the Ghosts. She fired twice from the weapon, the Ghost was able to avoid one with a quick boost, but the second rammed into the vehicle's side. The Ghost spun out of control, flames spewing from its side. The vehicle soon rammed into the tunnel's wall, exploding on impact.

"Look like he had a deadly case of tunnel vision," Nel laughed.

"Do you ever switch off?" Vik growled through the comm.

"Can't hear you, Bucket," Nel replied. "Killing people with big ass guns."

She fired another missile at the chasing batarians. This one hit below the Ghost, the shockwave toppling it over onto his back and tumbling down the train line several times before hitting a support pillar. Nel fired again, blowing open another Ghost that was charging across the tracks to try and ram into the side. Instead, the blast took off part of the Ghost's left wing and the concussion sent the vehicle barrelling into another, stopping both vehicles in their tracks.

Suddenly the whole tunnel shook from a massive explosion and Nel nearly found herself falling out of the train. She lost her grip on the missile launcher and just barely held onto the door frame. Bits of debris from the tunnel's ceiling rocked the train as it hit the roof.

It took awhile to figure out what had hit them, but she soon saw it. The armoured train was back, a few tracks over and far away from them, but it had caught up to them. Now it was aiming one of its smaller mounted guns on them, specifically the one attached to the forward cabin.

When the armoured train fired again, the shell exploded alongside the track. Nel found herself falling back into the boxcar. Kayap had already taken cover, curling into a ball, while Wrex tried to keep himself standing up.

"Well, at least they have bad aim," Nel said in a nervously optimistic tone.

"Don't count on it," Wrex warned. "We stole a lot of valuable stuff from them. I don't think they want to risk losing any of it. Problem is, they may change their minds and decide if they can't have it..."

Okay, Nel thought, so get rid of the fuckers fast then. She could do that. Or at least take out that turret, but she'd need a new weapon. So Nel quickly dug through the mess of crates until she found a crimson-coloured bulbous looking weapon.

"The fuck is this thing?" she asked, looking at the strange rounded weapon.

"Type-50 Concussion Rifle," Kayap said frantically poking his head out. "Fires explosive bolts of plasma. Good for knocking back bad guys and flipping vehicles."

"Could work," Nel shrugged.

Wrex had started firing over at the train from one of the windows. He wasn't about to expose himself to a mass effect field powered train cannon, so he tried to take shots at it with a grenade launcher he had pilfered from one of the boxes. He managed to obscure it's firing enough that the next shot went wide and hit one of the tunnel support pillars instead of them.

Nel in the meantime attempted make her way back to her own spot. When she arrived, she fired two shots out towards the train's car, hitting close to the cannon itself. At that moment though, her shields were pelted with plasma fire and she was forced to go back in. Two Ghosts were coming up fast on her door, the drivers joined by a second batarian hanging off the side. No doubt they intended to try and take back the train. Nel fired two shots at both Ghosts. The concussive blasts of red plasma sent one Ghost flying, but the second had gotten close enough that the batarian managed to jump free before the shot destroyed his ride.

He fell onto Nel and tackled her to the floor, gripping on her gun as they struggled.

"Tickets please?" Nel asked him.

She threw two good haymakers at the side of the batarian's face, hitting him in both of his left eyes and disorienting him. She then used that to get some leverage so she could kick him off her towards the door. He managed to grip onto the frame before he was sent flying off, but Nel had already trained her concussion rifle on him.

"No ticket, no ride!" Nel declared.

She fired the concussion rifle at the batarian sending him flying right out of the door just as the train turned left. The sickening sound of the batarian's body going splat against the tunnel corner made even her wince. They now found themselves in a smaller enclosed tunnel and could no longer see the armoured train.

"Hey, I think we lost our big friend," Nel said as she picked herself up.

The sound of more plasma fire, however, suggested that they hadn't completely removed their tail though.

"Sounds like we still have our little friends following us," said Liara through the comm. "Get to our back and keep them off us."

"Got this one," Nel assured Wrex and Kayap. "Trust me!"

Before anyone could argue, the turian was already barrelling through the train car doors and making her way to the back of the train. She passed even more crates, some so close together she needed to squeeze her way by them, before she got to the final door.

When she did, she found a string of Ghosts tailgating them and they were quick to open up on her. She got back into cover and when they stopped firing for a bit she pulled out a grenade while checking the ammo on her concussion rifle. She had a few rounds left, might as well use them.

"Time to shake some bitches loose from our caboose," Nel announced.

"Keelah, I hate you," Vik groaned in a most incensed tone.

"Only because you can't get with all of this, Wet Bucket," Nel answered back cheekily.

Nel tossed the cluster grenade out first and let it exploded among the line of Ghosts. Then she fired the rest of her concussive shots at the Ghosts, flipping over what was left of them and causing a pile up alogn the track. A twisted metal coffin for the batarians soon clogged the small tunnel.

A few moments later, after exiting the tunnel, the train made another left. Up ahead, a false stone wall slid open and the train rocketed through it. They were now in the public section of the train tracks, halfway out of their ordeal.

"We shouldn't be too far from an opening in the tunnels," Vik told everyone. "According to the map, there's a portion of the track that leads outside. We can stop the train there and have Drothan's people move in."

By now Nel had managed to get back to the flatbed car, anticipating their arrival at their destination and the end of their mission. Sadly, another ripple soon became evident. As the tunnel opened up, a bright light shot down upon them, almost blinding them. It was the armoured train once more, barrelling down a track a few feet to their right and catching up.

"Where in the hell did they come from?" Nel asked no one in particular. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say we were being attack by a ghost train!"

"They must've used one of the secret entranceways further down the track," Liara surmised. "It seems we're not going to get rid of them by outrunning them. We need to get rid of them the old fashioned way."

The armoured train fired at them once more, the round sailing over the flatbed, clipping the roof of one of the boxcars. The tunnel shook again as the shot hit the wall.

"And now they're trying to hit us," Wrex grumbled. "Looks like it's time to crack out the big guns."

As they waited for those big guns, the armoured train fired again. This time they shot part of the roof of the engine cabin. The Train rocked heavily, nearly tipping off the track, Liara and Saya were forced to lean to the right, lest their train go off the tracks.

"Wrex, whatever you're doing, it now!" Liara shouted.

Kayap ran out of the boxcar, a Fuel Rod Cannon over his shoulder. Wrex was soon behind him, holding the same weapon over his. Together, they took aim at the armoured train's gun. They launched two shots straight at it, scoring a direct hit. The turret was blown apart, rendered useless by the attack.

"We better keep hitting it," Wrex suggested. "Make sure they don't use any other weapons on that thing."

As Wrex and Kayap began finding more gun emplacements along the train cars, Nel did her best to assist where she could. The batarian soldiers aboard were opening fire at their train now, intending to protect their cannons. Nel made her way to the forward boxcar to take cover there and return fire. She managed to take down two batarians with some well placed shots, soon realising that the train looked like it was getting bigger. And then she realised that was because it getting closer.

"Uh, guys," she warned. "Why do they look like they're trying to get alongside us?"

It took a moment for Liara herself to see what was going on herself. When she did, she didn't like it.

"Prepare for boarders, team," she warned.

Nel quickly bolted for one of the AT-12 Raider shotgun cases and practically ripped the weapon out of its packaging. She loaded in some fresh thermal clips and moved back to the flatbed. As she did the armoured train switched to track right next to them. The batarians started jumping over and Nel let loose a blast at one of them as they landed. She fired another shot at another as he went for his rifle, but got blindside with a kick to her face from another batarian soldier. She managed to keep herself standing and avoid his follow-up punch. Pulling out her knife she rushed the bastard and gutted him before throwing him off the side of the flatbed.

"I think used my 'ticket' lines too early," she thought aloud.

She activated another cluster grenade and threw it onto the armoured train. The device managed to get inside one of the cars by falling through an open firing window. The subsequent explosion ripped the car apart from the inside. But even as smoke trailed from it, more batarians made the jump across to their little runaway train.

Nel saw both Saya and Liara at the front, trying to fight off boarders themselves. The salarian went through the car, slashing left and right at the four-eyed bastards, moving like lighting, cutting them down before they could even bring their guns to bear. He finally tackled one to the ground with a running stab, pulled out his gun and killed three more batarians as they tried to come up behind him.

Liara was sending shockwaves out to knock the batarians down before shooting them dead. She also popped singularities outside the boxcar's doors, pulling boarders both inside and coming aboard into them. One unlucky bastard ended up getting put in stasis during a mid-air jump. He fell onto the tracks below instead of reaching his target.

Trying to hold his own, and closer to Nel, was Vik. The quarian had surrounded himself with a drone to his front a turret to his back and a shotgun as a last resort. It was nearly as impressive as Liara and Saya's display, but it was effective and keeping the batarians back. The newly installed flamethrower option for the turret proved very effective as it set newly arrived boarders on fire almost instantly. They ended running out the very door they had jumped into.

However, it was not to last. One batarian managed to fire a shot that destroyed the turret. The miniature explosion knocked Vik down. He turned over on his back to fire at the onrushing batarians, no longer hindered by the flamethrower. He managed to kill two with a single blast, while another he managed set off a sabotage attack for the batarian's gun. The backfire blast knocked the four-eyed thug on his back and gave Vik a chance to get up and shoot him dead.

Nel figured she'd help out the stupid little quarian, since for once he didn't seem be nearly as big a bitch as he usually was. She dashed past him into the fray of two batarians who had thrown themselves onto the train. She tackled one into the back wall where she proceeded to punch his head in with a terrible beating.

"Welcome aboard the Pain Train, shitheads!" She told the batarian. "I'm your conductor!"

Another batarian tried to kick her in the back, but she caught the leg as it came in and pushed it back before delivering a kick of her own that sent the batarian careening into a pile of boxes. She then turned back to his friend she had against the wall, proceeding to grab his head and force it into her knee before throwing him out of one of the boxcar doors.

"And if you look out the left side cabin windows, you'll see a wonderful red stain mark that used to be some stupid dipshit," she quipped.

She turned her attention to the other batarian just as he was getting up off the floor. She grabbed him by the back of the head and bashed her hard skull against his. As blood dripped down his face, Nel placed him into a choke hold while she got out her pistol. She then placed its barrel up against his head.

"Next stop, Loserville, population you," She told him. "Thank you for choosing to ride with us, see you again soon."

She pulled the trigger and let the body drop to the floor. As she stepped over the body, giving it one last look, she fully expected to hear Vik complain about how awesome her catchphrases were. Instead, she just saw him frantically working on his omni-tool, the image of some kind of digital interface on his screen. His fingers were rapidly moving about it, switching a series of lines on screen while rapidly trying to boost the omni-tool's signal constantly.

"The hell are you doing?" She asked him.

"Hacking into the armoured train's pathway system to get it away from us," he replied. "I found the transmission signal the onboard computer sends to the track's mainframe and I've hijacked it. I was trying to finish it up before, but I got jumped. So, I guess a thank you is in order for buying me time. Now excuse me."

"Wait," Nel noted slyly. "Did you say thank you? To me?"

"Shut up, please," Vik pleaded.

Suddenly, the omni-tool made a ping sound and Vik clutched his fist in victory.

"Yes!" He cried. "I got it!"

The armoured train suddenly veered away from them onto another track. Vik quickly tried to lock their pathway system onto said track next. However, both Wrex and Kayap seemed determined to make sure the opposing train would never get the chance to correct the damage Vik had done. They raced up to the front of the train, past Vik and Nel and pointed their weapons towards the engineer's cabin.

"It's time for their choo-choo to go boom-boom," Wrex stated as he pointed the fuel rod cannon at the armoured train.

"Hey," Nel spoke up, somewhat indignant. "How come he gets to make quips without getting called on it?"

"Because he's earned it," Liara replied immediately.

Wrex and Kayap fired on the armoured train at the same time, As they did, they came out of the tunnels and into the open air outside. The armoured train's engine car exploded into a firey blast from Wrex's shot, but Kayap's had been undershot. He hit the train just fine, but hit the undercarriage. The superheated plasma of the fuel rod cannon melted the wheels. With its connection to the track utterly destroyed on one side, the armoured train ran off the tracks ahead of them and careened directly into their path.

"End of the line guys!" Nel shouted aloud.

"Keelah," Vik screamed at her. "We're gonna die and you're still making train puns!"

Liara quickly slammed on the brakes in the engineer's cabin and ran for the back of the train along with Saya.

"Brace for impact!" She called out.

Wrex grabbed Kayap and made a mad dash away from the point of collision with the unggoy in tow. Everyone else gripped onto the handrails along the sides of the box car where they could find them. They held on for dear life as their train slammed into the crashing armoured train, flew off the tracks, pass through the chain link fence like it was nothing, tore through several feet of trees and dirt and then smashed into something hard. Nel could feel the whole world turning upside down as they careened out of control. But through it all, she only had one thought on her mind.

'This totally wasn't my fault this time.'

Nel came to at last, in what wreckage remained of their getaway vehicle. The train was now upside down, with electrical wiring and cargo scattered all over the car. She quickly picked herself up, amazed she was still able to move. When her vision had cleared, she began searching for the others immediately.

She found Wrex huddled in a corner, holding onto Kayap in a bear hug, the unggoy doing the same. The krogan had taken most of the punishment. The worst injuries Nel could see were his arm, which was banged up badly, and an open bleeding cut over his right eye. His armour also looked pretty torn up, but nothing that couldn't be fixed. Kayap seemed fine for the most part, although he was shaking heavily and one of his protective eye pieces was cracked.

"I think you just saved my life," Kayap told Wrex shakily.

"You probably would've gotten your neck broken or something," Wrex told through tired panting. "Just, don't say something stupid like 'I'll be slave forever' or some crap. I'd instantly regret doing it then."

"No problem," the unggoy assured him as he let go of the krogan and tried to walk on his own two feet.

Vik tried to pull himself up as well, Nel helped him the rest of the way.

"Anything broken?" She asked him.

"I think I'm okay," Vik replied, sounding rather weakly. "Give me a second to see if I got a rupture and get back to me though. Is my visor cracked?"

Nel gave it a once over. She was surprised to see that it wasn't, all glass was in place. Although the quarian's hood was plenty ruffled and he did seem to be clutching his head a lot. He hadn't gotten out of this unscathed either it seemed.

"No the visor's fine, but I think you may have a concussion," Nel told him bluntly.

"Oh, super," Vik groaned weakly. "Bless the Ancestors for my continued luck. I suppose I'll survive that... I think."

Nel sat the quarian back down before she went off to find Saya and Liara. The Asari had managed to pull herself up, although she was clutching her arm. Saya's leg was trapped under a piece of metal, which she was trying to lift. Nel gave her a hand and lifted the beam off him. Liara quickly gave it a once over.

"I don't think it's broken," she said. "But I suggest not walking on it for a bit, just to be sure. It may be sprained."

Saya was also clutching his side, his hand over a nasty cut of his own. He hadn't avoided the same fate as Vik, as his visor was a little cracked. Nel could only imagine that the salarian underneath was sporting a similar set of wounds to his face like Wrex had.

"Nel," Liara said turning to the turian. "I've already called in Drothan. He's on the way. I need you to figure out where we are."

Nel nodded and made her way out of the wreck and into night. Rain was pouring from the sky now in buckets, obscuring her view for a moment. From what she could see their train was mostly intact. No doubt thanks to Liara's slowing them slightly before they hit. The supplies they had stolen were everywhere, but they were salvageable. Even the Banshee was okay, although thrown a few feet off the side of the flatbed. Probably a little scrapped, but it could fly... maybe.

The same could not be said about the opposing train. The armoured military train had crashed here as well. It was strewn out along the promenade in front of them like a gutted worm, bits of fire and fuel leaking out onto the pavement around them. At least they had taken it with them.

As for their surroundings, that was a little trickier to determine from the get go, especially through the drizzling rain. There were a number of smaller buildings which their train had crashed through. They had signs on them, there looked to be advertisements along some of buildings and in a few little ad terminals. They were all selling food, or clothes or shitty batarian movies. She could see stalls and class windows with stands holding items. Eventually, Nel was able to process where they were.

"Looks like we crashed into a strip mall," she called back to the others. "I think most of our stuff survived too, just so you know."

"Good, we may still walk away from this one as winners yet," Liara called out to her. "Help me with the others. We need to be ready to move when Drothan arrives."

"I'll be on my feet in a minute, Liara," Wrex promised. "You know me."

Nel made her way back to the wreck to do as Liara asked, but then she seemed sense something. She wasn't sure what, but she instinctively looked back to the armoured train. There, she saw number of forms crawling out of the wreck. Batarians, they had somehow survived their crash as well and they were pouring out of the carcass of their locomotive.

"Fuck," Nel said as she saw them. "We got movement!"

Nel ran back to the train, just as the bullets started to fly again. Everyone quickly moved into cover, trying to protect themselves from the incoming rounds. They all hefted their weapons up best they could, ready to fight, but they all knew they were in no condition.

"Oh, this whole thing is my fault," Kayap bemoaned sadly, beating his fist against his head. "If I was a better shot-"

"That doesn't matter right now, Kayap," Liara told him. "Things happen, that's just how it is. There's no sense in assigning blame now. We just need to hold out until Drothan gets here and we're in the clear."

"Well I hope he's not taking the scenic route then," Wrex grimly mocked over the constant sound of gunfire.

Nel realised they were in a real tough spot. Drothan was still a bit away from them at the moment and they probably wouldn't last long enough. If they could eliminate the batarians altogether, they wouldn't have to worry about that. A task easier said than done when there were enough batarians left breathing to start up this firefight in the first place.

But then she remembered the leaking fuel and she had an idea. She just needed some things. She still had the concussion rifle on her person and it was ready for reload. She spotted a Firestorm flamethrower on the ground as well, yes that would be perfect. She just needed to get close enough. She picked it up and turned to Liara.

"Cover me, I got a plan," she told her.

Liara's look suggested she knew what that meant.

"This isn't something stupid is it?" She asked.

"Do any of us have a counter idea?" Nel asked in return.

A single sigh from the asari was all Nel needed to get running. She raced out of the wreck once again as gunfire shot up the train. The others returned fire best they could, giving Nel enough time to get inside one of the demolished stores. It was some stupid women's clothing store, with all kinds of pink and bright colours. Even in the dark it made her want to puke.

She couldn't focus on that though, she needed to save the day and everything. She just needed a quick booster, just a quick one. She settled down near one of the demolished displays. She quickly pulled out her injector and plugged in one of the vials into her neck. The dulled buzz she had been feeling was quickly rejuvenated. She stood back up, psyched and ready to go. She wasted no time in running out the store, careening through one of the store windows.

She fired two concussion rifle shots at the line of batarians, hitting one right in the chest and sending him straight into the wreck he crawled out of. Two more were thrown on their asses from the shots. The batarians opened up on the turian as she raced to an advertisement stand. It had a batarian ripping off part of his flesh, revealing it to be a mask with a human eye under it. The tagline said, "How well do you know your neighbour?" It wasn't a propaganda poster though, it was a movie poster for a film entitled "Hidden Among Us!" It was rated R for being "Unsuitable for children and slaves." She suddenly punched it, breaking the glass around it and the pictured disguised human. She couldn't figure out why, just felt like it.

She ran out again, heading towards another store window. She fired her concussion rifle at the batarians once more, obscuring their view of her through a mess of red fire. She crashed through the window and brought out the Firestorm. She gave a look around the store, seeing she was inside some kind of electronics shop. It wasn't the best looking, since most of the stuff looked painfully outdated. She just wanted the train's engine car. Wasn't too hard to finding, it was sticking out of the damn wall.

She quickly found the fuel leak on the ground nearby, as well as the pool it had begun to form. One dangerous little spark and the train, along with everyone else near it, was going to get blown sky high. All Nel had to do was set the fuel ablaze. She spewed the fire out of the Firestorm, igniting the leak and sending it right into the engine.

She now quickly began to run out, knowing she only had seconds to get the hell out of here. Some the batarians had noticed what she had been doing and entered the store to fire on her as she retreated. Nel fired one last shot from her Concussion rifle to throw them back before she flung herself out of the store and back into the street.

"Get down!" She yelled over at the others in the adjacent wreck.

Nel herself ducked into the clothing store at the last second, as the train's engine went up in flames. The electronics store was obliterated and the armoured train soon went with it. Unexploded ammunition detonated from the newly stoked fires, fuel lines along the length of the train ruptured, flames engulfing everything nearby. The whole train, and every batarian close to it, was consumed by the erupting wreck and raging inferno.

Nel finally got up and managed to force herself to walk over to the others still in their own wreck. The rest of the team eventually piled out of the train to get a look at what Nel had done. They seemed, impressed, even Liara did.

"Well," the turian spoke up. "Looks like I blew their load."

And with that, whatever sense of approval soon vanished from Liara's face along with everyone else's.

"See it works on two levels, it's a double entendre relating to the fact I blew them up, but they were in a train carrying stuff. The detonation of which caused the explosion," Nel explained. "So I literally, as well as figuratively, blew their load."

No one responded for about a good ten seconds, before Vik pointed to her face.

"You have glass embedded in your plates," he told her. "Pretty much, all over your face."

Nel, perched an eyebrow and reached up to feel her head. She pulled out a significant shard of glass from her temple specifically. It was covered in blue blood.

"Oh, so I do," she realised.

"How are you not feeling that?" Liara asked her, arms crossed.

"Thick skin, I guess?" Nel suggested innocently.

"Thick skull is more like it," Vik responded.

Liara just shook her head at it all.

"Come on," she said. "We need to gather up the supplies we have left and get them ready for Drothan. He'll be here any minute."

---

The second Drothan and the other ShadowNet agents arrived they set to work. They were only momentarily shocked at the mess around them. They busied themselves with loading every gun, mod, piece of armour and explosive they could onto their vehicles. Nothing could be left behind, not if it could still be used. While they had lost a few crates worth of missile launchers and some of the needle rifles, the majority of their haul had been preserved. Liara could call the mission a success, despite the unexpected difficulties.

"Well, we managed to get everything," Drothan said walking up to her. "I think we've long overstayed our welcome though. This double wreck is going to attract a lot of attention soon. I suggest we head out quick."

"Do we have the high powered explosives aboard?" Liara asked him.

"Charges have been loaded, we got everything," Drothan assured her. "The only thing we can't do is that weird looking machine thing on the ground there."

Liara looked over to the Banshee which had been righted by Wrex. Saya was giving it a good once over with him.

"Not sure how we're getting that out of here," Drothan said. "We may have to leave it."

Then, Saya jumped into the Banshee's cockpit, closed the door and slowly but surely lifted off the ground. A message soon came on Liara's omni-tool from the salarian.

'Like flying an aircar, actually,' it read. 'See you back at the cabin.'

The banshee screamed off into the sky at that moment.

"You sure he'll find his way back?" Drothan asked.

"He'll be fine," Liara told him. "I trust the team has loaded their personal items into our transport."

"Yes ma'am," he answered. "We got the armour, the guns, everything."

"Then it's time to go," she said. "Scatter the convoy, get to the rendezvous points and lay low from then on out."

Drothan nodded and made his way over to the other drivers. Liara rushed over to their van, where most of the others were already waiting by now. There was a trailer now attached to the vehicle's back to accommodate the various weapons and armour they had collected for themselves, so everyone was leaning or sitting against that. Kayap still had his head down, looking at his feet. Nel was still rather bloody from her little escapade. Vik, in the meantime, seemed fed up.

"I should've aimed higher," Kayap said suddenly. "We could've avoided all of this and been home by now. I'm so useless."

"At least you didn't make stupid jokes the whole damn way," Vik grumbled.

"Bite me, Bucket," Nel scoffed. "I saved all your asses tonight. Yours included, remember?"

"Whatever... Vid Trailer," the quarian venomously stated.

Nel stopped leaning against the van and looked about ready to start something with the quarian. Liara was quick to put an end to that idea.

"Get in the van," she ordered the turian.

"He could try to be grateful," Nel argued. "I salvaged this shit. Where's the fucking gratitude?"

"In my experience, Nelanax," Liara informed her bluntly. "The galaxy doesn't owe you anything. You earn respect, not expect it. You saved the mission, no one can deny that. I'll even congratulate you on it myself, well done. But that doesn't change the fact you're a reckless, adrenaline junkie constantly seeking attention. And no one finds the joke funny anymore."

Nel just snorted at the asari. Liara's lecture didn't seem to do much in calming her ire.

"Fine, fuck you people," She replied. "You don't like how I run my life? Tough. You know, I thought you'd be different, Doc. Defying Council orders, stealing an Alliance star ship, giving the finger to the lefty dipshits on the Citadel. I was wrong, you're no better than the fucking military that kicked me out cause they couldn't handle me getting shit done. Well this time, you can't do that. I'm staying and you're stuck with me. So deal."

Nel flung the door to Drothan's van open and stomped in. Liara could sigh at it all. As far as she was concerned, she was done trying to placate Nel's crap. She now turned to Vik.

"You need to stop antagonizing her," Liara warned him. "I'm supposed to keep her in line, not you. You should know better than that by now."

"I'm fine," Vik insisted.

"You don't seem fine," Liara told him.

"I said I'm fine," Vik repeated once more, looking up at her for a short period before forcing himself up.

For someone who called his home Truth, he had a tendency to avoid it seemed. If Vik was fine as he claimed, then she was an Ardat-Yakshi Necromancer.

"You've been like this since we came here," Liara told him plainly. "And it clearly has something to do with the Hegemony. I'm not blind, Vik. I know you hate injustice, lies and everything their government represents, but I need to know if this is going to interfere with the mission. We're not here to start some kind of revolution."

Vik looked at her once, finally exhaling deeply. He then slowly walked over to the entrance of the van.

"It won't, Liara," he swore as he walked by. "I'm not much for fighting anyway, I run, more than anything. I always run."

The quarian paused for a brief moment before climbing through the door. It was a strange comment to make, almost out of nowhere. Liara didn't understand what he meant, and Vik wasn't keen on elaborating.

"I just want to leave this place, that's all." He promised. "The sooner we're done here... the better."

Vik's continued shut out was followed up by Kayap. The little unggoy was now at Liara's leg, tugging at her suit's tassels.

"I'm not sure how much help I'm going to be at the tower," he said. "If you wanna leave me at the cabin, I'll understand."

"I'm not leaving you behind, Kay," Liara told him. "You're a valuable member of this team. You made a mistake, it happens."

"But it was a big one," the unggoy reminded her. "I could've gotten us all killed. And this tower attack is gonna be twice as dangerous. I just... I don't want to get you guys killed liked that."

Liara shook her head at that. The sudden dip in confidence from the unggoy wasn't something she could let remain. Despite what Kayap thought, she did need him. They were all crucial players in her plan. Kayap hadn't let her down before, she was certain he wouldn't now.

"I know how daunting it can feel," Liara said kneeling down to his level. "You don't feel like you're built for this. I felt the same once too. I wasn't always a fighter. I defended myself, but I wasn't one for... all of this."

"But you have powers and stuff like that," Kayap told her. "How could you ever feel powerless?"

"Biotics don't make you strong and neither does size or bloodlust," she assured him. "It's something only you can create for yourself. In here."

She pointed to his head, but Kayap seemed a bit confused.

"You'll understand one day," she promised. "Now, get in the van, we need to get moving."

Kayap waddled over to the vehicle, Liara watching on. Wrex soon joined her by her side and walked to the van with her.

"Well, it may not have gone perfect, but at least we got what we needed," he tried to suggest.

"We can only hope the tower goes a lot smoother," Liara informed him.

As they neared the van, Wrex's worried look cast its gaze upon Liara's sullen expression.

"I know you're stressed," he told her. "You have a lot on your mind and a lot on your shoulders right now. I know the feeling. That doesn't mean you have to keep carrying it all the time. Have you thought about what I said before?"

Liara was silent for a bit, not directly looking at him. Of course she had thought about what he said before. But the fact was, she couldn't let it go. Not yet. Not now.

"I'll lighten the burden when I have the location of that Codemaster," she told him as she continued walking to the van. "And when Rakavekyon Tower is rubble."

She climbed into Drothan's van, Wrex following suit with a saddened disappointed look on his face. One thing was certain, it was going to be a long drive back to the cabin tonight. The only solace that anyone could take was that they were almost done. One final obstacle remained before they had their prize. And if Liara had her way, they'd give the whole of Khar'shan a sight its people would never forget.

---

AN: Well, things are certainly coming to a head here aren't they? I thought this chapter would be shorter, but sadly some elements boosted it up a bit more. Oh well, at least it's not as long as last time.

Happy New Year everyone and I hope you had a great Holiday Season. We're one more chapter away from the end of our big Khar'shan arc and it's gonna be a big one. Everything had been leading up to this, the key to finding Shepard as well as the culmination of a lot of plot threads. While not everything will be revealed, you're definitely going to end up seeing Liara and her crew in a new light after this.

I hope you enjoyed the chapter everyone, check out the profile for more detailed notes on this chapter, read and review when and if you can and do be kind enough to check out the TV Tropes page if you wish. Thanks again for your wonderful support and continued assistance in helping me improve my writing. You're the reason I do this. And don't worry, the zombies are coming, honest. They're gonna be awesome.