* * * 61 * * *

A/N: Delays, delays. This was supposed to be a single chapter, but it had to be longer to make it all work. I've also been doing a lot more writing ahead (mostly Feros.)

But the real time-eater has been the game itself. I got "Legendary Edition," but had let it sit for months. In November, I happened upon a YouTube clip of the already-recorded audio for the Virmire debrief that was never part of the released game, and learned that some dedicated soul had produced an actual, working game modification for it. (I haven't modded a game since Doom, and had incorrectly assumed that current games didn't allow for fun of that sort.)

So now I've added a crap-ton of mods to LE and started playing it. It's a wonderful new game all over again. Aaaand it's not…letting…me…go. ("Argh…sun…in eyes. Must…talk…like this!") If you're playing it on PC, you are in luck (or maybe not.) If you haven't started a playthrough with the Diversification Project installed, you are missing out on the game that EA couldn't release due to hardware limitations of the time (15 years is officially a long time in computing.) But if you're playing on PC, and rocking a modern video card, go to ME3Tweaks dot com, download the mod manager itself, and then go to NexusMods dot com and browse for mods by game. Be sure to select the appropriate version of the game you have (Original or Legendary.) Drag-n-drop the mods on the manager, and start the game from the modification engine...and behold the game you always wanted to play!

When the first one worked flawlessly, I started browsing the list of mods available, and just kept piling them on. (ME3Tweaks shows I have over 100 already.) Once I started playing, I fell in love with the story all over again, because now the Citadel's got a walking elcor, female turians, other ships in/at the docks, Emily Wong dressed like a professional, and patients at Dr. Michel's clinic. The game can have a better-performing Mako, orbital scans to tell you what's on the planet surface to care about, uniform consistency (remember, the whole story arc spans less than four years,) dead bodies that don't bury themselves, an easier time persuading Ethan Jeong, a bushel of bugfixes, a restoration of the Pinnacle station that Bioware opted not to recreate for Legendary, a grenade fabber by your locker aboard Normandy, a remastered Tali with face animations, and a hundred others, not least of which is being able to play a lot of it in first-person. (I know...you're probably already bored.)

What can I say? It ate my life all over again, and I'm delighted; this is as close to a new game as I think I can get before a port to UE5 or NeuraLink VR. (And LE natively supports 4K, so it looks gorgeous.)

Still haven't finished a playthrough of ME, so I can hardly wait to see all the improvements in the other two games. But for now, I've "caught up" with where All in the Details has been published.

The good news is that it's easier to manage now. And I have a lot written ahead, so I might be able to release chapters on a more regular basis. (FWIW, the working corpus for the 3-story arc is over 840K words; there is so much yet to tell!)

# # #

Okay, here's a situation I can't help but be annoyed at and feel the need to apologise for. The M-35 is clearly more tank than APC, but as noted previously, the canon movie "Paragon Lost" shows it functioning as an APC with no fewer than eight passengers (not counting crew.) While its actual (apparent) size makes that unrealistic, an APC that holds three isn't an APC, it's all tank. So because it has been shown as canon and because it's indispensable for my purposes until Normandy gets a UT-47, I have to make this concession to story rather than keep my fic as hard as possible. So…sorry, team; the Mako still seats the whole ground force plus gear. If there's good news in this, it's that it really only needs to accommodate four passengers plus a crew of three (Lizbeth Baynham can sit on Garrus' lap or something; he'll like that.) Still small for an APC, though a crowded fit in something the size of the M-35 we see in-game.

* * * Presrop: Landing * * *

"Good morning, everyone; thanks for being early." Shepard was already fully armed and armoured, but his helmet was retracted as he stood in front of the Mako's portside hatch. "No helpful intel updates about the drop, but I would be remiss if I didn't remind you all that we'll be dealing with civilians here. Don't hurt 'em if you don't have to; subdue and de-escalate whenever possible.

"Aside from overpowered personal shields that you should have gotten from Mister Gomez," he pointed to his left with his right hand, "we are going to be heavily dependent upon biotics. Kaidan, Wrex, Liara; you should all be ready to put up barriers at any time. It's my understanding that a barrier can be projected, creating a sort of barricade that can protect others as well. To the extent that you can generate a larger field without compromising its ability to be a kinetic barrier, do so.

"Stasis and Lift are your go-to biotic moves; Tali, Garrus and Kaidan, overload or sabotage their weapons as soon as you see any, and everyone stay behind Kaidan, Wrex, or Liara as much as you can. Those barriers won't just protect them. Keep weapons fire to an absolute minimum.

He turned left and started walking aft, pointing briefly at Kaidan as he walked, "Now it happens that Lieutenant Alenko here was contacted by these guys a couple of weeks ago.

"Because it might be kind of intimidating to have an M-35 deposit an armed fireteam at your door, when we land, we're going to hold for a couple of minutes so they have a chance to see us just sitting there quietly presenting zero threat.

"Then Kaidan is going to get out – by himself – and go ring their doorbell, or whatever they have as a way of admitting new arrivals." He looked briefly at Kaidan, "I don't like the idea of sending you in alone, so assuming they answer, I'd like for Doctor–" he corrected himself with only the slightest hesitation, "Liara to join you." He turned to the asari, "If you are amenable."

"'Together, we may succeed,'" she quoted, "'What shall I do?'"

"Keep him safe." Shepard pointed at Kaidan. "If things go south, I'll send the rest of the team in. We do not have enough intel to tell you more. But you're the least likely to be perceived as a threat by a bunch of human biotics, so I'm hoping they'll see you as something of an ally. Mostly I want you there to help and protect Kaidan if he gets in trouble while he's trying to negotiate Kyle out. If this turns into an actual fight, use your barriers, or put him in Stasis…whatever. If it becomes necessary, I am also authorising you to use firearms. I'm assuming...at least I'm hoping...you'll refrain from doing so until there's no other option."

Though Ash had been giving her full attention, her jaw tightened as she heard this; Shepard noticed without having to look directly at her. "I do this with my authority as a Spectre, not an Alliance navy officer."

He turned and spoke directly to Kaidan, "I'm also sending you because you're a biotic yourself – and they offered – but because I know you'll do your best to do right by them. I'm not concerned with what you have to tell Major Kyle to get him to come out without any casualties. If he's the smartest guy in the room, we might need to involve Colonial Affairs later, but that's not on you.

"It would of course be great if you could just convince him to come out. If we can get him aboard the Mako peacefully, we extract to orbit: Best possible outcome. But if we need to come in and get you, it could get ugly."

He turned and spoke to the whole team, "I've had Rich put a supply of POWlocks in the Mako so we can keep any potential hostiles neutralised as we proceed; clip a couple on your gear as you exit the Mako. I'll keep you stocked from the door if they have more than ten people there.

"LRSA and OIS show the compound to be three drill-ins, and one ADP. I assume the prefab is the main entrance; for some reason, it doesn't look like they have the drill-ins connected to each other. There are reasonable logistical explanations for this, but at the moment, I'm going to go with 'Incompetence,' because it doesn't look like they oriented the drill-ins so they could be connected in the future easily.

"Besides the fact that this mission is a lot of question marks, I am being directed by the CFS to stay out of any firefight. She refuses to take my word for it that it won't become one, so that's why I expect to stand outside and send in consumables and emotional support."

"You poor bastard," Wrex guffawed with a sorrowful shake of his head.

"Yeah, yeah." Shepard waved him away. "All right, let's get down there and see what it'll take to get this guy up here." Grabbing the handle above the hatch, he ducked in, and pulled himself up into the Mako.

# # #

With Shepard piloting, the M-35 set down at the south end of a range of low, craggy mountains; the sort of valley that resulted was mostly in shadow. They trundled across the bleak landscape at a leisurely 24KPH; the distant stars hardly wavered.

Tali noticed Liara looking around at the inside of the APC; here an aidkit, there a striplight, and it seemed like everywhere there were black-and-yellow stripes marking potential hazards, arrows, labels, and covered manual buttons. Wrex simply dominated the space. Tali also noticed when the asari looked her way as if in search of a friend amidst all this technology of war. "Would you like to see outside," she asked brightly, "Kaidan showed me how to access the exterior cameras."

The asari looked around quickly, realised there were no windows. "Yes, please. It is a very small space."

Tali flipped at her omnitool, and extended a holoicon to the other side of the cabin. Liara pinched it and placed it on her own omnitool, where it sank away.

As her ARA mapped the camera data as Augmented Reality, Liara gasped almost immediately. "Oh! Look…to the sky…on our left! You can see the Scar on Klendagon!"

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"Is that where we are?" Garrus worked his omnitool, connecting to the exterior cameras. "Spirits, I didn't know it was so big."

"It's our perspective," Tali explained. "Presrop orbits Klendagon so closely that it reduces the amount of surface area we can see. Which makes the Scar look like it's larger relative to the planet."

The turret servos whirred as Ash steered it to port and zoomed her view using the turret's telescoptics. "Hm. That's big all right. But it's…just a big canyon. Isn't it?"

"Probably not," Liara continued. "There is very good evidence that the planet was struck by a massive object moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light. It is suspected by most researchers that whoever did so used a mass effect-derived technology."

Ash remained doubtful. "But it would take a projectile the size of Normandy to do it."

"Almost certainly larger," Liara said. "This moon – Presrop itself – has essentially the exact mineralogical composition as the surviving material on Klendagon. The most well-supported hypothesis to date is that Presrop is composed of the debris that survived the impact, but did not reach escape velocity.

"After the impact, the debris likely settled into a ring system, though that probably only persisted for a few hundred thousand years or so, using your calendar. Because there were large pieces of debris, it didn't take long for the smaller pieces to accrete into an orbiting body; perhaps half a million years, again, using your calendar. The moon has been spherical for long enough that it has itself been impacted, develop its own landforms, and so on.

"Also notice that the Scar itself has a bend. It is hypothesised that the impact actually cracked the planet, but not enough to shatter it."

Ash pointed up toward the image of Klendagon that she saw on her HUD. "But that looks like several things hit at almost the same time."

"The initial acceleration may have fractured the projectile, or perhaps it broke up while in flight. It may have entered the system on the ecliptic, performed a slingshot around the stellar primary. It may even have entered the star's convection zone with the resulting annealing causing it to fracture, but the breakup only had a few minutes to develop before its impact with the planet. Ahm…or impacts."

Tali was intrigued and had some ideas, "It seems counterintuitive, but…maybe solid objects become more brittle under mass effect acceleration as solid cross-section increases? Capital ship accelerators have shown signs of that kind of thing when they try to refit the same accelerator to throw larger slugs. If you tried to fire something the size of…I don't know…maybe an APC like this one, it would flex enough to return to its original shape, but a solid slug of depleted uranium – or even supermatter with sufficient calibre – would shatter under the acceleration because the force isn't applied evenly; it could be a function of current mass accelerators that might be solved in the future."

"Yes! Exactly!" Liara's excitement fed off the quarian's. "Whoever fought this battle fought it long ago…ahm…though the error bars are large. Even so, the level of technology they had may have been appreciably more advanced than we have today.

"And in the time since the impact, the planet reconstituted and thus the chevron shape. The fact that Klendagon's orbit is highly eccentric adds further credence to this theory."

"But…keelah…you'd need an accelerator the size of a planetary orbit to do it," Tali said.

"Or an extension of mass effect theory that is lost to us," Liara agreed. "Again, simply more advanced technology than we have today. This is one of the more obvious pieces of evidence for my Extinction Cycle Hypothesis; whatever it is that wiped out the Protheans has been a repeated, traumatic event for the galaxy. The disappearance of these two species and their technologies just happens to be another, previous instance.

"Whatever it is, perhaps we are simply fortunate that so much of the Protheans' technology survived; we may be able to build up sufficient knowledge to help us withstand it."

"Yeah…but hold on," Kaidan objected, "it would take…millions of years to re-form into a sphere as regular as that planet, let alone this satellite."

"Yes, exactly. Thirty-seven million years, to be exact. The site has been dated by multiple expeditions."

Garrus' fringe flexed inside his helmet. "What if it wasn't an accelerator round the size of a capital ship, but an actual capital ship? What if it was an attempt to ram another ship…that missed?"

"Hmm," Tali looked to the turian with a growing respect. "That's certainly happened before. Kinetic barriers are usually able to stop or at least slow a mass accelerator slug, but sometimes there's no alternative. Though I've only ever heard of smaller ships in desperate circumstances doing so to much larger ships.

"But that results in the destruction of both ships; this would require that the ship – or fragments of it – hold together long enough to transit through a great amount of planetary crust; thousands of kilometres of it. Smaller pieces, particularly of the kind that compose ship frames and armour, would abrade or ablate away, leaving both shorter trails than what we see here, and distinctive trails of isotopes that would contaminate the site for…well…a long time, right?"

"Actually, the reason we are confident it was an ingot of some specialised material rather than a ship is because a ship would break up far too quickly to leave a formation like this one," Liara was speaking quickly now, "It would have simply left an elliptical impact crater, or obliterated the planet altogether. The decay rate of multiple materials would make it significantly easier to determine the date of the battle, but only older isotopes of lighter elements have been discovered to date; carbon, lithium, silicon. It is their interactions with the planet's native composition that are marginally more helpful. If we could date the impact exactly, we could essentially 'wind back the clock' of the planet's orbit and calculate where the shot came from, and when."

"But you'd have to compute the motions of stars along that potential path," Tali objected, "Which pretty much means computing the whole galaxy back all those millions of years. And what if it was fired from a ship the size of a planet? Or if it came from outside our galaxy altogether?"

Liara nodded. "Yes, that is also true. But the astrophysics are well understood and comparatively simple; it could be computed. It would not be nearly as complex as computing…ahm…events within and choices of a brain, for example. But my ignorance about who might be working on it now does not mean it is not a work in progress somewhere."

Garrus held up a claw, "Wait a minute. You have to put all this in the context of the galaxy. A projectile launched half a million years ago from one side of the galaxy at half the speed of light would only now have been able to cross the entire galaxy. You need to know muzzle velocity and firing time plus location and direction."

Tali leaned toward the turian even though both were still "looking out the virtual window" at the battered planet. "Yes, but it's always working backwards. As more evidence is located and incorporated into the simulation, it becomes a matter of induction. Determining variable A with certainty constrains B and C. Which gives you an approximation for D. Which limits potential values for A, and so on."

"Have you looked for debris on other planets in the system?" Kaidan couldn't help but be curious. "Or gotten isotopic dating on them?"

Liara paused, seemed to be thinking. Her right hand danced across her left forearm. "Yes; a joint series of expeditions from a collection of institutions." She brushed a hand at data only she could see, and looked surprised. "They found shrapnel matching that found in the Scar, the locations of which should also provide data…" She lapsed into silence as she read from her ARA.

Ash spun the turret slowly around, looking at its view of the landscape. "Is this the nighttime?"

"Technically, it's early morning, but whoever lives here may be staying underground," Kaidan read from his sensor displays. "Besides having practically no atmosphere, the local rotational period - day length - is a hundred and eighty hours. However, DMS reports from Normandy show this to be an…interesting rock.

"I see healthy deposits of gold and uranium within two kliks, and LRSA showed automining hardware in place. They could have what it takes to make this place be self-supporting, but they look a little lean on the kind of infrastructure needed to make it profitable."

"Is that the settlement ahead?"

Shepard decided it was just before Kaidan said, "Yup, that's it."

Steering to the left, and then a wide circle to the right, Shepard brought the Mako to a stop under the cantilevered "car port" offered by the prefab.

Assuming that the inhabitants of the settlement would have sensors capable of detecting the status of the Mako, he shut down the APC one externally-obvious step at a time, completely postflighting it as if planning to stay. Finally, he sat back in the pilot's chair, turned his head and nodded to his EIO.

"Here's where you save the day, buddy."

"Yup." The biotic extracted himself from the starboard forward seat with a grunt. "Wish me luck." He touched a key on his gauntlet; his helmet assembled itself into place. Kaidan's preferred visor had round eye holes that usually showed part of the AR view provided inside his helmet, but if the power failed to the helmet, they defaulted to transparent, allowing him to see the real world on his own.

Ash reached down from the elevated turret chair and smacked his shoulder, "Go get 'em, LT. Hoo-ah!"

"Hoo-ah," Kaidan didn't sound quite convinced as he thumped the oversized Hatch Open button, hopped down and out on the Mako's port side.

Even a 12 percent cut in gravity is a big boost, he thought.

There was only one entrance, and it had clearly been marked by someone with a portable arc torch and an attitude: Biotics only. A comms panel glowed in yellowy-orange on the adjacent wall.

Kaidan linked his comms to Shepard's.

Shepard looked over his shoulder at the team. "Kaidan's connected. Synch on me." The cabin lit briefly as omnitools were adjusted.

Meanwhile, once the comms panel showed a green CONNECTED light, Kaidan mashed its PTT key. "Hello? Anyone here?"

There was a pause; presumably someone had to get to where the hail could be answered. "This is a private sanctuary. Outsiders are not welcome here."

"My name is Kaidan Alenko. I got your message. I was invited." He looked down at his omnitool, switched to his mail app, selected the message in question, and held it up to the camera.

Even after all that, there was no reply.

Finally, "You're Alliance, aren't you? Father Kyle wants nothing more to do with the Alliance."

He waved the message at the camera, pointed at it with his other hand. "You're seriously going to dangle this invitation, and then reneg because I'm a professional?"

Another pause.

Kaidan added, "And if Father Kyle was in the Alliance, how does he get to be here?"

Another pause, this one longer.

"How do we know you're a real biotic?"

"I assumed you sent it to me because you already knew I was." Kaidan shrugged a barrier into place with a gesture that looked like he was lifting a traditional shield in front of him with his left hand. The biotic glow was obvious and unmistakable.

A much longer pause followed. Tali lifted her omnitool, pinching and flicking at its interface. They're arguing, she messaged to the rest of the team.

"How did you get that tank?"

Kaidan had been considering what to say to such a question since Shepard had made him the front man for this operation, and had cleared the lie with Shepard, "It's not actually mine to keep; I requested a 48-hour leave to check this place out. My CO is really understanding, and asked if I needed a ride. I'm within a month of re-upping, and wanted to find out if this Shangri-La is for real." He dropped his barrier, returned his hands to his sides. "I'm only using it for this landing. I have to return it when I RTB."

The human biotic folded his arms and addressed the camera directly, "Now how about you let me ask a few questions: Is this a community-property thing, and I have to give up all my personal possessions and money? If it is, then I'm outta here. If it isn't, I have a lot I could teach other biotics from years of personal experience. I've been in the Alliance for almost 10 years, and I'm an O-2."

There was another somewhat lengthy pause. Finally, a different man's voice said, "Sorry to make you wait. We're still kind of setting up, and the people in charge aren't in the room. Uh, no, it's not really a commune, it's more of a cooperative. We're trying to start a little colony and research station, but we're kind of self-funded. We do biotic research, but not the exploitive kind like Conatix or Brite. Therapeutic stuff; I'm one of the researchers, and I'm investigating the use of biotics in medicine."

There was a brief pause. Kaidan smiled at the idea he'd also pondered during his time working at a medical ward. It'd be about time someone started investigating other applications. The asari are already way ahead of us on this.

"Uh…are you alone?"

"No, actually. But the exposure out here is bad, and I'd rather she stay in the Mako until I know you guys are for real. But if we can come in…and talk like real people..."

"Wait. Hang on." Kaidan heard the comlink click. He lifted two fingers to his right ear and said, "Liara, are you suited up? Can you come out? Remember to leave the door open."

In the Mako, Liara looked at Shepard, then at the starboard hatch, and back.

Shepard, looking over his left shoulder, nodded once, pointed at the asari with his right hand, then pointed out the portside hatch.

Meanwhile, Kaidan continued, "How many biotics do you have here? Can I meet them and talk with them?"

At first, there was no answer.

A different voice came on, and said, "Good day to you. I'm Vinidia Rossignol and I'm responsible for the security of the people who have sought sanctuary here. What is your name?"

"My name is Kaidan Lawrence Alenko." He smiled, thinking it was potentially helpful that he shared a name with their leader. It might make negotiations go better, and it was a fact that could be readily verified.

There was a pause; Kaidan assumed they were checking.

"You're...a Lieutenant, MAETF Fleet Division 7, Fireteam 1073, assigned to SSV Normandy under Lieutenant Commander Stephen Shepard?"

Kaidan nodded confidently into camera, his hands behind his back. "That is correct. For the moment." I have to keep throwing signals that I'm on my way out, he thought.

# # #

Major Lawrence Kyle had been as badly damaged by the Torfan mission as Shepard, but in different ways. When Hackett had "given Shepard a Free Pass," Kyle had first imagined Shepard to have been acting under orders to stop the batarian raids at any cost, and later convinced himself that Shepard had been ordered to do so but leave no other survivors (so his story could not be contradicted; it also gave Kyle a way to cope with having lost the whole team.) That Kyle himself had survived, he considered a stroke of luck; Shepard had been unable to reach him, and therefore lost any opportunity to kill him.

And now Shepard had tracked him down to finally silence him.

By the time Kyle had reviewed all these oft-repeated thoughts, he was trembling. He dared not expose his children (he'd had none of his own) to the dangers that Shepard posed.

"Shepard?! Good god!" His mouth open, Kyle leaned away from the comms panel. "Could it really be him?"

Vinidia lifted her finger from the PTT key and turned to Father Kyle. "You know this person?"

The dozen people in the bunker-style drill-in had gathered around the soft glow of the communications console and racks; none of them spoke.

Kyle looked briefly at the woman who had asked, then back at the door camera display. "I…thought I had. Once…long ago. We were on a mission together, though I'd never worked with him before that. He murdered prisoners of war, almost a hundred of them; defenceless…and left the rest of our team to die. He's…a psychopath…he could do anything - kill us all - without a second thought." He shook his head as if to clear it. "We'll have to…do something, we've got to stop him ourselves."

On Kyle's other side, Jim shrugged. "Told you, you shouldn'ta killed those guys."

"He's got a tank," Vinidia tapped the image of the Mako shown on one of the other camera views.

"A tank that was dropped from a warship," Jim added. He leaned over and held down the PTT key.

# # #

After a pause, a new male voice asked, "Tell me, Lieutenant; did Lieutenant Commander Shepard put you up to this?"

Kaidan scoffed quietly. "Not a bit, sir. I received the message you sent, I assume because I'm a biotic, and my post-Alliance career options are limited if I don't want to go be a lab rat at Conatix. Motivations aside, we happened to be in the cluster, so I asked permission to visit, got a 48-hour leave, and here we are."

Another voice broke in on the comm: "We won't let you take Father Kyle away! He protects us. We need him!"

By now, Liara had exited the Mako, and was standing just behind and to the left of Kaidan.

There was another momentary pause, and then the first voice asked, "Who's that?"

Kaidan turned and looked over his shoulder. "This is Doctor Liara T'Soni. She's an archaeologist we rescued on Therum. When I told her where I was going, she asked if she could come see. Or is this a humans-only place?"

"Uh, not at all. Asari are all biotic, and their culture is built on it. But it's still new to humans, and most people treat us like freaks, or like we're…radioactive."

"That is true," Liara said, "Kaidan would not say so himself, but he has faced this prejudice bravely for decades. But as he said, he and his shipmates rescued me; I have not yet had opportunity to restore balance between us."

The man's voice spoke again, "I don't know, Lieutenant…this all seems pretty improbable..."

"Hey, you guys invited me," Kaidan interrupted. "And it seems to me that what you were offering was also too good to be true. But I came to find out for myself; maybe it ticks all the right boxes. So since I still have a month to decide whether to re-up, I wanted to find out if it's time to join the private sector."

# # #

The question about handling Shepard still hung in the air. The co-op members looked back and forth at each other, waiting for Father Kyle to speak. One of the advantages of mining a lifeless rock was that they didn't need to defend themselves against wildlife, and had brought few firearms. The first Alliance visitors had been killed by Kyle himself. But even the Alliance weapons those people had carried were biometrically secured to their users, and useless to the co-op.

Mo, who was snarky and bitter more often than he realised, grumbled, "Do something about this guy? He'd have to come down here."

Jim pointed at one of the holographic tiles hovering above the console. "He probably did. That tank is bright in the infrared; it's probably full of troops."

"Or they're just keeping it warm," Vinidia replied. "The sun is just coming up; it's a hundred below out there. If that tank is normally parked in a hangar at room temperature, it's still cooling down."

"Once they get the door open, they'll storm the place," Mo fretted.

"Only as many as they can get in the airlock," Jim countered.

"Until who comes to rescue us? It'd be a siege. They'd just starve us out."

"Biotics can work through walls; Shockwave, Singularity…"

"Gentlemen, please. We are not trying to start a fight; we are avoiding it if we can." Vinidia had to stop this conversation before it got really crazy; she shook her head, looked to her right. "Father Kyle?"

Kyle shook his head again. "It may be time for the winds of Justice to…" He stopped suddenly, gasped. "But then I'm as bad as he is!" He buried his face in his hands.

Kyle took a breath to compose himself. "Then I must do this thing alone." He looked quickly around at the attentive faces. "You must all be safe, you must all watch out for each other. I had hoped to help you to…create a better place, keep you safe, but it may not be possible. My past has come back to haunt me." He reached to his right, patted Jim on the shoulder. "If this does not go well, you must press on by yourselves. Remember, there are many biotics out there who need our help. There are also biotics who do not want it; never force yourself on them."

"So…Shepard is here, too?" Kyle stood and started to exit the room, his mind on what it would take to deal with Shepard. "Vinidia. Tell them…to come down here…together. We will have to…speak in person." The pressure door closed automatically behind him.

# # #

The silence had been very long.

Finally, the woman's voice returned. "Head to Building Two at the far end of the compound. He'll meet you there. And you should come down…'together.'"

Kaidan was surprised. "You…want me to bring Commander Shepard in with us? Really?" He glanced at Liara. "What for?"

"Father Kyle only said you should come down together."

Kaidan felt like there was something he didn't understand about how this was evolving. If Kyle was actually inviting Shepard in, maybe he knew the Alliance meant business. It was fine by Kaidan; the he didn't have to negotiate with lives on the line. Hopefully Kyle didn't want to bring trouble to his people, just as the biotics who had taken over that private freighter.

After a meaningful look at each other, Kaidan and Liara returned to the Mako and climbed aboard; Shepard had already run through the Ground Operations Checklist by the time the two biotics had returned through the tiny Kiggs field and closed the hatch behind them. He pulled straight through the "car port" style structure and trundled slowly to the farthest drill-in, stopping in front of its entrance.

# # #

Kyle had not kept many items from his days with the Alliance, but the disc-shaped turian grenade was not a technology of which the Alliance needed yet another example; Kyle had kept it from years ago as "combat salvage."

He unwrapped it from the packing and slipped it into a pocket, intending to rid the universe of a man as dangerous as Shepard, even if it meant he must sacrifice himself to save his children. And he'd have to wait until Shepard was too close to miss.

Kyle found himself becoming afraid and regretful. There were so many things he had to do, things that would help biotics everywhere. But they could not happen while Shepard's malice threatened to undo all they had accomplished already!

When he returned, both Mo and Jim recognised the bulge in Father Kyle's pocket; the convertisuit was normally almost skin-tight. Both men were ex-Alliance, but neither was willing to challenge the Major.

Kyle crossed the room to his wall-desk, sat in the chair, and rotated it to face the door.

Mo was particularly sensitive to the foreboding of Kyle's I must do this alone statement. At the same time, he was amazed and excited at the thought of another ex-Alliance biotic joining them. As his eyes wandered around the room, he noticed the official record above Vinidia's console, focused briefly on the picture of this 'Alenko, Kaidan L.' and noticed that his experience included including six months at Dryden's medical ward as a biotics liaison. He turned and focused on it, read it again more closely. The man even had a secondary specialisation in medicine.

He thought excitedly, I have to get this guy involved.

Since starting the Biotic Sanctuary Project, Kyle almost rarely spoke people's names, and mostly spoke with people only while making eye contact. In his "Father Kyle" persona, this was relatively easy; these people looked to him not merely for general guidance, but because they trusted him. They were – most of the time – actually looking directly at him so they could be told what to do.

Kyle, his thoughts still filled with dread and fear of Shepard, looked toward Mo. "Would you please escort our guest here?" He pointed to the left of the door, towards the airlock foyer three rooms away.

"Yes, Father!" Mo turned and dashed down the accessway, grinning like a maniac.

Kyle continued to look after Mo even after he had disappeared from sight, then wiped his face with a hand. "You must all be strong," he said, his voice faltering, "You must all be there for each other. Always." He licked his lips nervously. "Now please clear the room; I must deal with these Alliance people myself."

It was what he had said last time, too.

* * * Glossary * * *

ADP: Auto-Drop Prefab [image link]

APC: Armoured Personnel Carrier

AR: augmented reality

CFS: Chief Flight Surgeon (ship's doctor)

DMS: Doppler Mass Spectrometry

EIO: Electronic Intelligence Officer

LRSA: (frequently spoken as if it were an acronym, "LUR-sah") Long Range Sensor Analysis

LT: Lieutenant

MAETF: ("MAY-tef") Marine All-Environment Task Force

OIS: Orbital Imaging System/Sensors

POW: Prisoner of War

POWlock: handcuffs on steroids; mostly they're a one-meter bar with shackles on either end for constraining hand and foot movements.

PTT: Press To Talk

RTB: Return To Base (a phrase also used with ships)

Telescoptics: telescoping optics