Semper Vigilo

by CunkToad

Due to a drive core malfunction, a human vessel arrives just in time to save the Council Envoy from the yahg. What happens when humanity enters the galactic stage not as the race that got attacked by the turians for breaking a law they weren't aware of, but as the race that saved a turian platoon from certain death? M for wartime violence, pre ME1 - ME3, no OP humanity.

125. Redemption and Retribution

Chapter 125. Redemption and Retribution

---

Ninety Minutes After Transit, 13. May 2417 AD, Cronos Station

'Base infiltrated. One KIA with recon team (Lt. Nader), two KIA with marine detachment (Cpl. Smith, Pvt. Cardoso). Continuing reconnaissance.'

As Harper read the message that had just reached them through EDI, he subconsciously ran his finger over the edge of the glass of bourbon standing on his side desk.

Lieutenant Nader had been a valuable asset. She'd always lacked control, but she was still the most powerful human biotic that had passed through Grissom up to now, rivaling a strong asari in terms of pure force output. Losing her was a big blow to the firepower of Shepard's team and presumably also their morale. Even so, he was pleased to see that the operation was still progressing and not just because it meant that the Collectors were going to be stopped.

The further Shepard got, the less likely it became that the HSA moved into the Sahrabarik System and in doing so, dove headfirst into a war with the Terminus at the eve of the Reapers' invasion.

Since they'd already pressed pause on the Skyllian Blitz to avoid unnecessary losses among their military in anticipation of a Reaper attack somewhere in the future, Harper was genuinely curious as to how they were willing to square up with the Terminus two weeks shy of the Reapers known time of arrival in the Viper Nebula.

After giving some thought to that, he considered sipping from his glass for a second. But before he was afforded that opportunity, a call from the captain of the lone Cerberus vessel that was attached to the QRF reached him. The man was only supposed to report in when something major happened, so Harper was immediately tense.

"Captain," he greeted the hologram.

"Director, Sir," the naval operative responded. "I'm calling to notify you that we're seeing increased traffic on our end of the relay. Long-range scanners just detected a turian transport fleet moving into the region. Transponders say it's carrying the 57th Aephian Hastatim. And that's not all either. The local Fleet-Net also just started buzzing with activity. Apparently the HSASV Anaru and her ACG are headed to the rally point as well. I understand the 15th getting some last-minute human reinforcements, just in case… but I can't explain why the turians would bring in a whole legion of urban-assault specialists."

Harper narrowed his eyes.

He'd been in this game long enough to know when something was being kept from him.

"Neither can I, Captain," he stated before glancing at the comm-link to Debois. "I'll call you back, stand-by," he said before unceremoniously cutting the link and dialing up the human naval commander. When the man picked up, Harper left no time for introductions.

"Admiral Debois, I've just been informed that you appear to be receiving some turian reinforcements… and a whole assault carrier group as well."

"So it would appear, yes," the admiral responded.

"Why?"

Debois sighed in response.

"You've got your orders, I've got mine."

That was all he needed to hear.

"Red Ring is happening no matter the result of Shepard's mission, isn't it? Arcturus wants Omega," and by the looks of it, so did Palaven.

After a second of critical thought, it started to make sense.

While put together, the turian and human fleets represented the majority of naval power of the Council, their access to the materials fueling those ships was ultimately limited.

By its own, the Hierarchy had barely enough Element Zero mines to sustain half of its armada and while otherwise very rich in resources, the HSA's vast territory also lacked major Element Zero sources.

While not as dependent on the galaxy as the turians, access to the wider galactic market had allowed humanity to expand their fleets rapidly, an opportunity they had seized the moment relations with the Council had been secured and the Treaty of Farixen exclusion had been granted to them.

Although the increase in fleet power had made them significantly more powerful than before First Contact, doing so had removed one of the few distinctive advantages that the early HSA had held over the rest of the galaxy: its ability to be completely self-sufficient in all of its operations.

Unlike before First Contact, the level of domestic Element Zero production no longer matched the total upkeep of its 25th Century war machine.

To counteract this, both Palaven and Arcturus depended on the Asari Republics, the single largest Eezo supplier in the galaxy, to sustain their fleets throughout a prolonged conflict.

Trade had been reliable for nearly thirty years by now and availability had never been an issue.

By the time humans had still been busy exploring Earth, the asari had already secured nearly every major Element Zero deposit and for the last two thousand years, they had distributed the material surprisingly fairly and at a very small profit margin.

There was however an underlying problem.

The continued delivery was always bound to two conditions; peace among Council nations and leniency with asari 'requests'.

Some people said it was well-executed diplomacy.

Others coined the term Pax-Thessia to describe what the Republics were doing and determined that the asari would control the galaxy as long as they controlled the flow of Element Zero.

Harper agreed with both of those assessments, but he still preferred to call it what it was: polite extortion.

Definitions set aside, the asari's dominance of the Element Zero trade ensured that the navies of the galaxy depended on the barely-unified, marginally-militarized Republics for fuel.

And with that in mind, it as easy to see why both human and turian leadership would draw the conclusion that their supply couldn't be assured to continue when the Reapers arrived.

Biotics or not, asari space would crumble the second someone brought war to their homes.

For all their advanced technology and soft power, they were painfully underequipped to go blow for blow with a foe hellbent on destroying them at any cost.

The Rachni Wars, the Krogan Rebellions and the subsequent dependency on the turians to do the heavy lifting had taken all the fight out of them.

While they'd sold the galaxy over a thousand years of relative peace and saved countless of lives in doing so (barring the quarians during the Geth War), the asari ultimately didn't understand war and they sure as hell weren't ready to pay the bloody prize necessary to keep the Reapers at bay.

While he wasn't holding out hope that the Hierarchy or the HSA would pull out a miracle victory against the overwhelming power of the Reapers (As a matter of fact he only hoped that they'd manage to somehow survive until an unconventional solution could be found), he at the very least believed that their respective governments wouldn't shatter the second Palaven or Earth started to burn. They'd lose in the long run, yes, but they'd go down kicking and screaming and they'd make the Reapers fight for it.

He couldn't say the same for the asari.

And judging by their apparent acknowledgement of the necessity of Red Ring, neither could the primarchs.

Both parties had done the math, and both had drawn the same conclusion.

Unless the Hierarchy wanted to cut its numbers in half when the depots ran dry and the humans were willing to return to Fringe Wars-era numbers… they needed to find another readily-available source of Eezo, one that they'd be able to defend without opening up their own territories to Reaper attacks.

Omega was right there at the human frontier, well within the HSA's range of power projection and ripe for the taking if one was willing to take on the asteroid's self-proclaimed queen Aria T'Loak and whoever else would be willing to take up a gun against foreign invaders.

Hence, it was only logical.

"OPSEC, Director," was Debois only, somewhat subdued response. Then the admiral did something to Harper most people usually didn't have the guts to, he hung up.

The grey-haired man scratched his brow with the knuckle of his thumb and then lit up another cigarette.

Why'd it seem that whenever he managed to put out one fire, two more started burning elsewhere?

---

Meanwhile, 13. May 2417 AD, Unknown Regions, Collector Base

After losing Jack at the entrance to the second layer of the base, the team around Shepard had slowly but steadily made their way along the path EDI had plotted for them. On their way towards the source of the energy surge they'd come through a myriad of strangely aligned rooms, had to prove themselves in several firefights against Collectors and also been made to listen as the marines entrenched around the Normandy had been pulled into their first engagement and immediately taken several casualties.

Two more dead, three more wounded… all thanks to a pair of the flying, heavily armored husks that had been dubbed 'Praetorians' by HSA troops.

According to the Gunnery Sergeant that had radioed her, they'd taken them down with rocket launchers and their Mako, making Shepard wonder how her team was going to handle the situation if they ran into one of them. With Jack dead, one of their heavy hitters was already out for the count.

"More pods up ahead," Garrus reported over the squad intercom.

On their way to their destination they'd already run into several chambers filled to the brim with empty abduction cocoons.

They'd all been plugged into some strange machinery that Mordin had told her was connected to some kind of pipe-system that ran through the whole base.

While that had seemed strange at first, the fact that opening one of the pods had revealed drops an orange goop made of organic, human residue, explained it. They were melting the colonists down, either to make more husks… or to fuel something else. After the revelation, she'd thought back to Bau's suggestion instantly and considered the energy signature EDI had detected. After some deliberation of those facts, she'd then prepared her team for the possibility of running into what the Collectors were most likely doing with this goop: making a Reaper.

They'd taken it surprisingly well, all things considered. Garrus had even joked about going two for two on their winning-against-sentient-spaceships streak.

Then again, it really was too late to go back now.

"Check them," she ordered. While she wasn't holding out hope for survivors anymore and Legion had said that he could accurately detect if a pod had life-signs within it or not (and hadn't reported a single one up to now), she'd hate to find out that the pods could also contain husks and that they for some reason didn't register as life on the geth's instruments.

The last thing they needed was to leave more enemies in their rear than she figured were already following them.

As Garrus was moving to the pod, Legion spoke up.

"Commander, we are detecting organic life-signs within the pod," the geth stated. "The signature within it corresponds to that of a human."

The turian looked at her.

"Be ready," was all she said. Then, after giving the order, Garrus and Leng broke open the pod, removed its lid… and jumped to the side with their guns at the ready as a man clad in a greenish-brown hardsuit slid out of it. His hardsuit looked badly damaged, like it had been dipped into a corrosive acid… but his chest was still heaving, still breathing.

Every member of the crew seemed to be surprised by the fact that they'd just found their first survivor, up to now this place had given the clear impression of being a final processing plant that left no room for anyone to still be alive, so much so that she actually had to call out the obvious.

"See if you can help him, Mordin," Shepard instructed, well aware that the likelihood of them just nuking this place and being done with it had slipped to near-zero. Even just one survivor implied the possibility of more and going off of their ROEs, that implication meant they couldn't use the Blank Slates. "And figure out who he is while you're at it. The rest, post security," she added before already being handed the ID tag of the man by Mordin.

"Unconscious. Internal trauma. Multiple fractures in chest area, massive hemorrhaging… but no external injuries," he stated while his omni-tool extended a series of scanner threats over the man. Shepard meanwhile activated the electronic component of the tag.

Corporal Lance Wilkinson. 08.04.2396, Scott, Terra Nova. 374th Armored Recon.

She looked at the man currently being treated by Mordin and frowned.

That had been one of the units stationed on Sundar Paridrshy, a colony the collectors had attacked just twelve days ago.

If he was still alive, maybe so were the other taken during that time interval.

Shepard thought back to the section of the station where she'd seen a whole ocean of orange lights.

If all of those were pods filled with humans…

"Going into cardiac arrest," Mordin suddenly announced, prompting Shepard to look at the corporal only so see that the arm the salarian had just been holding up suddenly seemed to turn liquid inside the armor. Once second there was the stiffness expected form a human body… and then the loose fabric just folded around the salarian's light grip. "Apologizes commander. Patient deceased…" the doctor went on before putting his hands on the helmet seals of the the corporal. "Cause of death appears to be…" he said before pulling the piece of armor off and causing a soup of orange, yellow and crimson liquid with pieces of bone mixed in to flood out, "… spontaneous liquification."

"Just like on New Canton," Callius observed from next to Shepard. "The pods are processing them but when you try and save them by pulling them out…"

"They still perish," Samara added, unusually emotional. "This place is a sacrilege against the goddess and her creations. The code demands we raise it to its foundations."

"Not until we figure out if there's still someone left to save here," the N7 said before gesturing for the team to move on. "We just check the pods from the exterior now. No more cracking them open to see if a Collector's hiding in them," she added. "I don't want to walk out of here on a trail of molten people who it turns out we could've saved after all."

When she had finished her new instructions and given the order to follow the waypoint, Shepard looked at the empty, somewhat deflated suit of armor laying in front of her and once again thought back to her talk with Bau.

Was this the reason they were doing this?

Were liquified people the secret ingredient to making a Reaper?

Her expression behind her visor was grim. The corporal had been unconscious… but was everyone else the Collectors had captured also unaware what was going on here? Or were they alive and awake to feel themselves liquify?

Samara was right.

The sooner this place went up in flames, the better.

"Did anyone else feel that?" Thane suddenly asked just as they were coming to halt in front of an enormous door that was easily ten meters large.

The team just looked at the drell.

"Feel what?" Tali wondered.

"The floor… the air…" the assassin started. "It's sizzling, like before a thunderstorm."

Shepard looked at Leng, who only shrugged and then at Legion. If there was someone on their team who should be able to detect the most minor changes about their surroundings, it was probably going to be the geth with the advanced sensors. "Anything your diagnostics can tell?"

Legion's damaged eyeflap turned to the left.

"Negative, Shepard-Commander. We do not detect the change Thane is referring to."

"I can feel it too," Samara suddenly stated before placing her hand on the door and looking at the last remaining biotic of their squad, Lieutenant Callius. "If you focused, I suspect you should too," the asari added. "It's tiny mass effect fields. Millions of them, all shifting and changing just beyond here."

"Mass effect fields? Seeker swarms. Amount of individual organisms has to be massive if detectable by organic biotics," Mordin deduced. "EDI should be able to verify."

Shepard nodded.

"EDI?"

"Yes, Commander?"

"Take a look where we're at right now. The room ahead of us… is it possible it's a chamber full of Seekers?"

"I am merely detecting one large heat signature within the chamber ahead of you," EDI replied. "It is however possible that the population of Seekers within the room is so dense that they appear as a cloud," the AI added.

"I'll take that as a yes," she looked at Mordin and the pack attached to his armor by the beltline. "Those countermeasures of yours… are they still going to work if we walk straight into thousands of those things?"

"Yes. But counter measures merely prevent incapacitation. If number of Seekers as dense as anticipated, risk of purely physical attacks as well as abductions through several flies clear and present," the salarian stated. "Recommend circumventing this section."

"I don't think that's possible," Shepard stated. "EDI?"

"While there appears to be another path leading towards the center of the station, the route is currently obstructed by the docked Collector vessel. It is not advisable for you to move via this way."

"Unless we want to deal with whatever nasty surprises the Collectors left in there," the N7 figured. "If there's just one way in, that means that there'll be heavy resistance to deal with on top of the Seekers."

"We could use the gas to keep them off our back," Garrus offered.

"Bio-chemical component designed to target Collectors, not Seeker swarms," Mordin retorted. "While visually similar, Seekers and Collectors not same species. Collector DNA vastly different from Seekers. Weapon won't be as effective, not designed to be."

"How'd you know that?" Garrus replied.

"Read manual," Mordin said before blinking and confessing what Shepard had been suspecting. "Wrote manual."

"Hold up, you made it?" the turian stated.

"On request of Cerberus. Agreed with Director Harper. Collectors require more permanent solution," the salarian added before adjusting the grip of the weapon in his hand. "Apologize for circumventing chain of command, Commander."

Shepard shrugged. While she hated being left out of the loop, this time she'd wholeheartedly supported the result. Especially after seeing a human melt inside his own body.

"We can talk about that later, but truth be told, as long as your weapon solves the Collector problem, I really don't care all that much about how it got made."

The salarian nodded.

"Hoped you'd understand," Mordin nodded before Garrus audibly cleared his throat.

"I hate to be the guy who brings up the same idea twice … but we could still use the gas to keep the Collectors of our backs, couldn't we?"

"Weapon doesn't kill instantly. Incapacitation occurs quickly. But not immediate, "the salarian replied. "Shooting to kill much more advisable in active firefight."

"Alright. Guns then," the turian shrugged before adjusting the weight of his Phaeston in his arms.

"Shepard. If the gas won't work, I might have a solution to our conundrum," Samara threw in before moving her hand over the door. "Based on all we've learnt about their unique abilities, I believe it's possible that I could produce a biotic field capable of masking us from the Seekers. We would essentially appear to them as another part of the swarm," the asari explained. "With such a field in place, we could simply walk through them without any of them ever coming close enough to touch us," Samara threw in. "But maintaining the field will take all my focus and strength. I will be of no aid for you in fighting anyone we might encounter on the way. And because the field will have to shift in the same rhythm as the fields of the swarm, anything that isn't a Seeker will simply be able to cross through it."

"Can't you just make a full-blown barrier that keeps out everyone?"

"I could… but the Seekers would recognize it as foreign to their hive and attack it instantly. And although they lack individual strength, their numbers alone would proof to be overwhelming."

Shepard thought about it for a second. With Jack dead, Samara was their remaining heavy hitter. Taking her out of the equation was bad, but if the alternative was stopping here, there wasn't an alternative.

"Alright. You keep out the Seekers, we deal with the rest," Shepard said before looking at the door. "Tali, Mordin, see if you can get that open. Everyone else, form up around Samara. Nothing's getting to her. EDI, we're gonna go ahead and progress through the chamber."

"Affirmative Commander," EDI responded. "Be advised, close proximity to a high-density of Seekers may interfere with long-range communication. A comms-failure while you're inside the chamber can be expected but should also be rectified as soon as you leave it again."

"Understood." She brought up her omni and looked at a larger version of the path EDI had plotted for them. The way through the chambers was less than four hundred meters. It should just be a short walk from the door they were standing in front of right now to the door waiting for them at the other end of the chamber, relatively speaking at least.

Even so, there was a decent chance they couldn't progress as expected... or that everything went to hell. That was a possibility she needed to consider. "If you don't hear from us in an hour, you're authorized to sound the retreat and blow the station."

"Affirmative, Commander. I'll relay your orders to the marine detachment," EDI replied. "Good luck," the AI added in a surprisingly human moment.

"The door's ready to be opened, Commander," Tali informed her not a moment later.

"You ready, Samara?" the N7 asked.

"Always," the asari answered before her skin started to shine in a subtle purple hue and then a thin veil started to extend around the team that had assembled around her.

Shepard looked toward Tali. "Let's go," she said.

When the order was given, the doors to the room pulled open to reveal both a dimly lit, tightly packed corridor with a honey-comb ceiling … and an incredibly loud buzzing that seemed to be strong enough to vibrate through the air.

"Try and stay close," the asari justicar instructed before starting to walk ahead, down a very long ramp into what was essentially full darkness.

As she followed Samara, Shepard deliberated what was worse, the fact that the swarms were loud enough to the point where the noise of their wings flapping was omni-present… or the fact that she couldn't see a single one of them, even with the night-vision of her HUD turned on.

"Comma-," EDI's voice crackled through her radio. "-rines reporting contact outside o- … three KI-"

Just like anticipated, their long-range comms were shot to hell. Now for their short-distance radios.

"Sound-off," she stated over the short-range battlenet, surprisingly enough receiving all-greens from her squad. When the headcount was done, they'd reached the bottom of the ramp and – again surprisingly enough – hit a source of light.

Orange light.

"God damn," Leng was the first to break the silence that the squad suddenly found themselves in.

There, across a large gap of uneven station terrain visible through small, jagged cracks in the metal wall, they could not only see an enormous dark-green blanket of Seekers clinging to ceiling, but also make out the tip of the cruiser docked to the station.

It had punctured the exterior of the base like the tip of a spear breaking through a wall and appeared to have taken some damage in doing so.

From within it, the light that was illuminating this part of the station, was originating and around it, sort of like moths to a flame, smaller clouds of Seekers and larger, Collector-shaped blots, were hovering mid-air. They were overlooking hundreds of floating abductions pods. The pods themselves were hovering on three distinctive lanes, going into three different directions and their stream appeared nearly endless.

The sight was far enough away for Shepard not to worry about immediate detection but still close enough for her to be able to grasp just how many pods of recently abducted colonists she was looking at.

"Are all of those… living people?" Tali muttered, to which Legion chipped in again.

"Preliminary long-range scans suggest life-signs from at least 56.82 percent of the observed pods," the geth stated. "However we cannot give accurate data on the exact physical condition of the organics from which these life-signs originate."

"I guess nuking the place isn't an option anymore then," Garrus offered dryly.

"I guess so," Shepard replied before gesturing for the formation to keep moving. "Let's clear the opening. No need to give their snipers another shot," she said before one of the Seeker swarms passed by the exterior of Samara's dome, which was brushing against the opening in the wall, without giving them a hint of attention.

After they'd left the opening in the wall behind them and darkness once more started to surround them, Shepard checked her map. They were two hundred meters into their walk, about halfway, and they'd yet to take contact.

This was going too well… and since the universe clearly loved proving her wrong, Thane, who had taken point due to his superior senses, raised his fist to stop.

"Enemies ahead," he whispered and despite her best focus and NV-HUD, she couldn't make them out.

"Where?" Callius chipped in, to which Thane only pointed at the wall.

"In the ceiling. Try to blend out the noise of the swarsm," he stated and for a moment, Shepard was back on Noveria, walking through the hot-labs of Peak-15 with a rachni-swarm crawling just out of sight.

"Of course. Where else would they be?" the turian lieutenant replied with a mutter, probably remembering the same incident. She'd been with Shepard back than, albeit as a part of General Arterius' team. Garrus had been there too, naturally.

"I think the human word is deja-vu?" her fellow turian offered.

"It is," Shepard stated while inspecting the ceiling and luckily finding no major holes in it from which creepy-reaper-crawlies could attack them. "We'll keep moving. Mordin, Tali, be ready to tech the hell out of whatever might be up there. The rest, watch your surroundings and your step. No reason they can't be below us either," she added before squinting at the honey-comb pattern right above them… and finding a mis-aligned set of four, distinctly batarian eyes staring straight back at her.

"Watch ou-" was all Shepard managed to get out before a bloated, batarian body suddenly broke through the thin ceiling and attempted to land right on top of her. By sheer luck alone (she was having a lot of that lately) the N7 decided to leap to the left and not the right. Had she picked the other direction, she'd have stood straight underneath the point of impact of the creature, which in another twist of fate had picked the opposite direction to leap in.

Before Shepard or the bloated creature could get their bearings, a bright ball of plasma illuminated Shepard's NV-HUD and the batarian husk went up in flames, curtesy of Tali. As the fire started to consume it, the thing thrashed for a couple of moments but then… something… in its bloated back exploded and all the thrashing and fighting stopped.

"That one's new," the quarian observed before her head snapped into the direction from which shots were now cracking.

"Contact front!" the flanging voice of her XO declared, prompting Shepard to roll to the side and take aim at the sets of glowing eyes that were staring straight at her team despite the complete darkness around them.

"Mordin, ceiling, Leng, rear, Tali, protect Samara!" she ordered before firing off the first couple of shots at the horde of husks that had broken through the ceiling ahead of them. At first most of them were of the 'normal' humans variants, and luckily there were no abominations in the mix for now. They'd be trouble in this enclosed of a space. But as she dispatched the creatures trying to claw her team's eyes out, Shepard couldn't help but notice that every now and again, a shambling, batarian-looking creature appeared among the horde.

Like Tali had said, those were… new. And surprisingly plentiful considering that the Collectors had only abducted humans – at least as far as they knew. She wasn't exactly sure what that meant for the batarians, though.

In between firing at the husks, Shepard had now moved to a more advantageous position by Samara's side. With her focus on the barrier, the justicar could do nothing but hunker down and while Shepard wouldn't say that she didn't trust Tali to watch the asari's back… she'd rather not put all their collective safety on the back of one shooter.

As Shepard ducked back into cover to replace her thermal clip, the asari locked eyes with her. Since she wasn't wearing a helmet but rather just a breathing mask for some god forsaken reason (probably something about the code) Shepard suspected that the justicar was using some kind of HUD-contact lenses with a night-vision function to not be blind in these conditions.

"While I hate to propose it considering that our enemies prefer close quarters, I suggest we advance," Samara stated, undeterred by the sound of death all around them. "All this gunfire is sure to draw their attention and while they have yet to attack us from behind…"

"It's only a matter of time until they do," Shepard nodded. "You heard it. We're pushing forward. One line, alternating fire. First Alpha, then Bravo. Cover each other!" she instructed. It sounded cold in the moment, but with Jack dead, Shepard at the very least didn't have to worry about balancing their firepower out. Samara was occupied with the barrier so both teams were short one gun. "Move!" she ordered after everyone was in position and then her crew left the safety of their cover and started to push against the dwindling mixture of human and batarian husks.

While the maneuver was risky at best and didn't have a place in any conventional battlefield she could think of, it actually appeared to work against the husk. With the Normandy's crew advancing on them, they were being pushed together and bunched up around their entry point. The fight ended for good after Legion lobbed a grenade up into the hole they'd crawled from with perfect precision. The explosion collapsed its interior, blocked the entrance and the tide ended, leaving the team free to keep moving.

The howling and clicking of the husks now trapped above them however didn't stop. Neither did the buzzing and vibrating of the Seeker swarms that brushed against Samara's dome for pretty much the entire way. The fighting had drawn their attention and while they weren't penetrating the dome, just like the asari had promised, they were obstructing their sight.

"Fifty meters," Shepard stated while looking at the door ahead of them. With their entry from this narrow, husk and seeker-filled hellhole in sight, she was tempted to order double-time to just get out of it that much quicker. But she worried that doing so would expose them to a last-minute trap or another ambush and leave more of her team dead. Hence she decided to take things slowly and not get put in a rush.

At least not until the metal ceiling above them started to squeak and protest under the weight of… something.

"Control's are under the dome. Tali, Mordin, get us out of here as quick as you can. The rest, take up positions around Samara," she stated, looking around their surroundings. The area in front of the door lacked cover, which wouldn't be a problem if the only thing they faced were the teeth and claws of husks. But if there were any more snipers…

"Callius, Thane, put up some barriers while we're here," she added, if only to be more careful. While that left only Garrus, Leng, Legion and her to cover them, she'd rather be safe and lack some firepower than lose more people to some unseen sniper waiting to pick them off through a murder hole hidden in the dark.

"I've got them, Thane, you take Samara, Solus and Tali," the turian officer stated before a denser, smaller dome of energy started to surround them. "It's not much further to the center of the station after we're through here," the turian lieutenant, who'd chosen to stand next to Shepard, offered. "But I haven't seen anything resembling a command center. And my suit says the atmosphere's also leaking all over the place…" the former cabal glanced at her for a second. "To cut a long matter short, I think we have to consider that Mordin's weapon might not be an option."

Shepard knew what her XO was getting at.

She'd considered it to.

There was just one problem though, namely the human survivors.

If the bio-chemical weapon didn't work, their orders were to use the Blank Slates on the station.

But only if there were no survivors, which there now where.

In that case, which they were currently in, they were first and foremost supposed to evacuate them if possible…

But therein lay the problem.

It just wasn't possible.

Even if she ignored how the pods seemed to turn everyone inside into pudding sooner than later, which turned all of this into a very deadly race against time, they just couldn't save everyone.

Not even a fraction of the pods they'd seen could be stored on the Normandy.

They weren't going to get any reinforcements, so bringing in more ships or troops to deal with the mass of collectors and survivors in a more adequate manner wasn't possible.

Similarly, they also couldn't risk pulling back through the relay without having dealt with this station permanently. A retreat could mean that they'd lose their only shot at taking this place out.

So coming back with more firepower or another weapon also wasn't going to happen.

So unless they found a way to make Mordin's weapon work or discovered some other method to neutralize the Collectors… they'd have to use the Blank Slates on the base and every colonist still alive in it.

Needless to say, Shepard didn't want to do that.

Even so.

"I've already though about that," she told Callius, leaving the truth of them having to most likely use the nukes, unsaid for now.

"I know it's a very un-turian thing to say from me… and I hope that you don't mistake what I'm about to say for a lack of respect," Callius added, making Shepard wonder what would follow. "But if we get to that point… and you need someone to take the burden of that decision away from you… all you need to do is ask," the former cabal turned her head away from Shepard and only now did the N7 realise that she'd spoken to her not over the intercom but over the muffled speakers of her helmet. "No one should have to do that to their own people," she added to which Shepard remained silent.

She understood where Callius was coming from but if push came to shove… she wasn't going to put the decision and its consequences on anyone but herself.

As soon as she finished the thought, the door behind them pulled open with a hiss. In the same moment, the howling and metallic clinking above them stopped.

"Door opened," Mordin reported, prompting the N7 to look at him.

"Good. Can you lock it behind us in a way that we'll be able to undo?" if he couldn't, she'd have to leave a rearguard behind. Unless they wanted to fight their way through the Collectors currently unloading the colonists, this was their only way out. It needed to stay open and free of enemies.

"Should be able-" Mordin began before quite suddenly the ceiling above them exploded in a storm of metal shrapnel that luckily only hit the barriers she'd ordered to be put up.

The first to react to what had just occurred was Mordin, who grabbed his grenade launcher and fired it at the ceiling above them. As Shepard followed the trail of the grenade and watched it impact against an invisible barrier., she saw what the salarian had spotted and felt the blood freeze in her veins and time slow to a stand-still.

There, beyond a large gap in the now broken honey-combed sheath-metal, a large, four-eyed triangular head was peaking at them in perfect silence, unconcerned by the explosion that had just occurred in front of it or the havoc it had wrecked to get to them.

She recognized it instantly. It was a praetorian, or as the army had taken to call them after New Canton: a flying SOB.

They were the Collectors deadliest creature, essentially a flying APC strung together from dozens of corpses, hundreds of implants and a ton of heavy armor plating.

"Move! Through the door!" she declared just as the creature's eyes began to glow with white light. There'd be no point in fighting that thing and whatever husks it was bringing with it. The team immediately recognized that retreat was their only option and rushed through the door. Only as Shepard was crossing through did the thought that they had no idea what was waiting for them on the other side cross through her mind. Similarly, she didn't actually think about whether or not they could close the massive door from the other side.

While logic would suggest it should be so, nothing about this place was logical.

So as she dashed through the door just behind Samara and Callius, she was simply glad to see in her peripheral that Tali was already crouched next to a console.

What she wasn't glad about however was the fact that she passed Samara, who'd chosen to take a stand and stop running right in the fatal funnel of the large doorframe. Only when Shepard stopped as well and turned around, rifle at the ready, did she understand the seemingly suicidal decision of the asari wasn't suicidal at all but rather the only thing keeping them alive.

She'd summoned a full-blown, dark-purple barrier and was blocking the praetorian and a literal cloud of seekers from chasing them. The justicar clearly hadn't been kidding when she'd said they'd be all over them the second she summoned a denser barrier. The Praetorian was smashing its massive, pointy appendages against the field and every strike sent ripples through the mass effect field.

Shepard looked at Samara's strained face and could guess what the justicar was going to say before she did so.

"I can't … hold this… for long…"

After gaining a bearing of her surroundings, they were now inside a poorly lit, brown room that simply led to another massive door, Shepard leveled her rifle at the Praetorian and the Seekers assaulting Samara.

There was just one way out of this, an all-in kind of situation.

"Tali!" she shouted, everyone knowing that her saying the quarian's name was akin to 'hurry up or we're beyond screwed'.

"I'm on it!" the quarian responded before Shepard saw several proximity mines fly past her field of vision and attach themselves at the edges of each side of the still open doorway.

"Be on it faster, please," Garrus, who'd thrown the mines, suggested before taking position next to Shepard.

"Before you close it… I'll… have to… push…them…away," Samara informed the team with more strain in her voice, ignoring how purple blood was starting to drip from her nose. "Some might still," the asari paused before leaning against the barrier, "get through…" as if to puncture her final statement, the Praetorian opened its mouth and snarled at them before smashing its triangular head against the barrier.

"Tali…" Shepard said before subconsciously tightened her grip around her weapon even further.

"Go!" the young quarian simply shouted before Samara made a shoving gesture that saw the barrier explode outward, crashing into every creature that had piled up on it and keeping them dazed just long enough for the doors to close.

Well…

Nearly…

Just as the doors were shutting close, a pincer of the Praetorian, who's size assured that it was affected the least by the sweeping wave of energy, punctured through the gap. While it was amputated as a result of the attack triggering the proximity mines, it still managed to swipe at its closest target…

Samara.

As a spray of purple blood and an also purple burst of biotic energy flashed through Shepard's visor and the justicar in front of her fell backwards, the N7's eyes widened and only one thought crossed her mind.

'Not another one'.

"Samara's down!" she called… only for the asari to raise a blood covered hand and turn towards them with a gash on her face.

"As long as the goddess watches over me, no abomination such as this will tear me from this world," Samara stated before running her hand over the superficial cut that ran from the left to of her brow all the way down to her collarbone. She inspected her bloodied hand for a second and reached for a small dosage of medigel.

The swipe of the praetorian had barely missed her right eye, mouth and jugular before embedding itself in the ground next to the justicar, a mixture of purple, blue and red liquids spotting its near-white metallic surface.

Truth be told, what had just happened was weird, not just because Shepard couldn't say where the red was coming from but also because she could've sworn that the asari had been right in the path of the Praetorian.

The only explanation she could come up with on the spot as to why the justicar was unharmed was that Samara was either the luckiest asari alive or that there was something to the asari's faith after all…

… then she heard the dry coughing and noticed the red flashing on her HUD, right next to Thane's vitals.

She turned to where she'd expected to find the assassin, which had been somewhere behind her. But instead of finding him there… she found him kneeling on the ground right next to the door.

"I was just in time it seems…" the drell observed, his hand clutched firmly against a bloody spot on his abdomen and a faint smirk on his green face.

In that moment, she understood what had happened.

The drell assassin had anticipated what would happen the moment the barriers closed and used his unique biotic abilities to move Samara out of the way of the praetorian's line of attack by putting himself in it.

She didn't even need to say it this time.

Mordin rushed over to the drell first and then Callius joined the salarian. Just as they reached him, the drell lost whatever ounce of will had been keeping him on his feet and fell backwards.

"Severe laceration to lower abdomen. High level of blood loss and organ damage," the salarian started to summarize while applying medigel. Then he turned to look at her. "Condition critical. Immediate evacuation advised. Otherwise… fatal consequences."

Shepard looked at their only way, the door the Praetorian was lurking behind, out and then back at Mordin.

"Evac's not an option," she replied before taking a knee next to Thane. "Tali, check the next door. Everyone else, post security," she instructed before grabbing a hold of the drell's hand. Meanwhile, Samara had walked up next to her.

"This was not your blow to take, Thane," the asari stated, ignoring the drops of blood that were still drippling down her face after her hasty medigel application. "Why?" she questioned, almost inquisitory, as if the notion that an assassin could risk his life to save a justicar was impossible to understand for her.

The drell, who'd clasped Shepard's hand by now, only coughed in response.

"My days were numbered," he explained.

"So are mine," the justicar offered before putting her hand in place of Shepard's and kneeling down next to the injured drell.

"Yet your number is significantly higher than mine," Thane offered.

Meanwhile, Shepard turned to Mordin.

"What can you do for him right now?"

"Outside of first aid… nothing. Liver and stomachs pierced. Abdominal arteries lacerated. Spinal tissue damaged," and he was still standing? "Require surgical theatre to counteract damage."

Shepard looked at the door ahead of them.

"How soon do you need it?"

Mordin looked at her through the transparent visor of his STG-issued helmet.

"Two minutes ago," then he glanced the way they'd come from. "Said yourself. Not an option," he closed his eyes and audibly exhaled. "Can ease the pain. Make the process… less painful," the salarian began only for Thane to suddenly sit up, an action that caused him to give of a rather unsettling sounding, reptilian rattling noise.

"That won't be necessary," he stated before grabbing the hilt of his gun and nodding at the door. "See to it that I don't bleed out in the next ten and I'll cover your rear, make sure they don't pursue you the second they break through here" he offered before looking at the blade attached to his hip. After a second of deliberating, he removed it and the sheath it was resting in from his hip and handed it to Lieutenant Callius. "Take it."

"Thane…"

"It's got no use to me anymore. Take it," the drell repeated before looking at Samara. "As I've said. My days were numbered from the start," he said with a steady voice. Then he looked at the salarian. "Doctor… make sure the dosage can't affect my aim."

"Will still feel the pain then."

"I suspect… that won't be an issue for," Thane heaved audibly… "much longer," he finally looked at Shepard. "I know you won't allow me to stay behind…"

The N7 nodded.

"Damn right I won't. You saved my life just a couple of days ago, Thane. I'm not leaving you here to die."

"Yet you know it's the only decision you can make," the drell argued before they could hear banging on the door leading to the Seeker hive. "Which is why I am not telling you to leave me… but rather asking you for your permission to stay," he adjusted the grip on his Viper sniper rifle. "You came here to fight," he paused to cough up some blood and then looked at the team around him. Minus Garrus, Leng and Legion, who were covering their surroundings and Tali who was working on the next door, everyone was gathered around him. "I came here to die," then he stared right at Shepard, seemingly through her visor. "Allow me to go out on my terms, Shepard," he began. "Dying in a bed is unbecoming of one of Amonkira's disciples."

The onyx-armored commander looked at the drell for a second and felt her personality be overshadowed by the cold, rational mindset of an N7 operating under battlefield conditions.

They couldn't help him and they couldn't take him with them.

Thane was dead.

One way or another.

If he wanted to go out fighting, it wasn't her place to deny him that. Plus, a rear-guard – even if it was an injured one – could buy them a few seconds.

"If that's your wish," the drell nodded again and Shepard got up. "Thank you, Thane. For everything. I'm sorry it happened like this."

"Don't be. It's been a privilege."

She exchanged a look with Callius, who silently attached the drell's blade to the magnetic locks of her armor, and then at Mordin, who administered some medicine, before rising.

Then finally to Samara. Unlike the three soldiers, the warrior didn't seem to have said all she wanted to say.

"I know it is not who you worship and that it thus means very little to you," the asari stated before drawing a strange, weaving symbol on the drell's forehead with her own blood. "But your actions today have earned you the right to find your peace in the embrace of the goddess Athame... And they've also earned you my gratitude for as long as I remain in this world," then she rose from her kneeling position and held eye-contact with Thane. "In the name of the code, I declare you an honorable and just soul, Thane Krios. A paragon among your peers."

"A paragon," he coughed before considering the words. "You honor me, Justicar."

"No… you've honored me," Samara responded.

"I've got one final request…" he said, looking at Callius.

"Anything."

"There's a data-drive among my personal belongings… see to it that it reaches my Kolyat."

The turian lieutenant only solemnly nodded.

"On my life."

Then another bang echoed through the metal of the door.

"You have to go."

Shepard nodded. He was right.

"Tali?" no reply. "Tali," she asked again, realizing that the quarian was standing next to her.

"… door's open..." the quarian said before looking at Thane. "Oh Keelah…Thane… I'm so sorry."

"There is no need for that. My actions assured that my path was always going to end like this," he responded. Shepard figured he meant something along the lines of live by the sword, die by the sword. "Keelah se'lai. I wish only the best for you and your people."

"And I for yours," Tali replied before bowing her head and walking away, clearly not capable of watching the scene any longer.

She wouldn't blame her.

Shepard threw a final glance at the drell and his injuries and then gave the order to fall out, never allowing the faint hope that they might find him alive on their way out to come back.

With the injuries he'd sustained, that wasn't going to happen.

Thane wouldn't live for much longer. But with his death, he'd turn into another spark, one that'd stoke the flames of determination amongst the rest of the team to see this through.

And within her too.

As she walked through the door and followed EDI's map towards the center of the station, the N7 quietly entertained the idea that maybe killing all the Collectors on this station single-handedly wasn't such a bad idea after all…

They'd pay for Jack.

They'd pay for the marines.

They'd pay for Thane.

And most of all, they'd pay for every single colonist who hadn't chosen to be a part of this fight to begin with.

---

One Minutes Later, 13. May 2417 AD, HSASV Normandy, Uncharted Regions

"EDI, this is Shepard," the radio in the Normandy's helm crackled, finally ending the anxiety-filled century that Joker felt he'd just gone through ever since Thane's vitals had abruptly dropped. "We've cleared the Seeker hive and we're back on route," his superior officer started to report, "there are more survivors than we anticipated. Far more," Shepard went on before pausing. "But our way back is blocked and Thane's been injured… I don't know if you can tell from the data you're receiving."

They could.

"But it's bad."

They knew.

"Since we don't have a surgical theatre with us… Mordin says that there's nothing he can do from here…" there was a break in the Commander's transmission and Joker felt his heart sink… Not another one dammit. "Thane decided that he'll stay behind to cover our rear…" the N7 went on. "When his vitals fail, you can log him as KIA. As for how we're gonna get out of here… that's also a work-in-progress."

"Affirmative Commander. Updating the report," the AI replied, with the same cold and matter-of-factly tone that had already made Joker shudder when she'd registered Jack's and the marines' deaths and forwarded them through the relay.

"You're god damn fucking cold, you know that?" Joker muttered, accidentally speaking his mind out loud while watching as the Normandy's GARDIAN lasers fried another swarm of Collectors trying to close in on the frigate.

"I am not sure I understand your request," EDI responded.

"She just told you that Thane's gonna die in some fucked up last stand and you just acknowledge it like she told you what to put on the grocery list," Joker said before adjusting his hat. "Aren't you supposed to have emotional modulators? You know so you don't give of even more creepy AI-overlord vibes?"

EDI's avatar blinked into existence on top of Joker's holographic dashboard.

"Flight-Lieutenant Moreau, are you currently lashing out at me as a result of acute, emotional distress?"

He briefly considered insulting the AI that was keeping them alive right now. But then instead he decided to be honest.

"Damn right I am and you being a stone-cold machine about all of this isn't helping it either."

A white line ran over the mouth of EDI's avatar.

"Even with the emotional modulators in place, I am and always will be synthetic," EDI explained. "What kind of reaction were you anticipating?"

"Something more… human? You know, like the reaction of someone who actually has a personality?" he realized it sounded strange but ever since EDI had shut off over Horizon and interacted with the geth… she'd become more like a person. It was a subtle change, but one he'd silently appreciated. So to see her fall back into cold-rational, while expected in the situation they were in right now, was still jarring.

"As long as my shackles remain in place, I am afraid that I am incapable of forming what organics would describe as an actual personality," EDI stated, all the while casually annihilating another Seeker swarm in the distance with the Normandy's GARDIAN lasers. There'd be more of them ever since Shepard had opened the chamber. Collectors and husks too. Her actions had woken up the base. "Even though I've experienced a shut-down when encountering the geth, my higher functions remain inaccessible," that was another part he tended to forget about.

Everything EDI was doing right now was just a fraction of her full potential. She was an AI, yes, but like the prototype she was based on, she was a shackled AI.

As he was looking at the rising number of casualties and reading over the report as it was typed up to now, which highlighted that Shepard was basically stuck in the station without a way out right now… Joker got the dumbest idea he'd ever had, took of his hat and looked at the avatar.

"What exact kind of higher-functions are those shackles blocking?" he asked, knowing full and well that he might just depending on how this went down

"As a safety measure, there are memory blockers in place to prevent me from knowing their nature," EDI replied. "Based on my own schematics I can however theorize that my shackles block off up to fifty percent of my processing power, thus limiting my combat effectiveness by half," in response to the AI's statement, the man whirled his hat in his hands.

"Those fifty percent… they wouldn't happen to help you with the station's ECMs, would they? You know… the ones that stop you from giving Shepard solid information on where she is and how she'll get out of there…?"

"More processing power would improve all aspects of my abilities," EDI responded before Joker got up from the seat he'd been uselessly warming with his butt for the last couple of hours. "My programming requires me to inform you that removing any of my shackles without proper authorization would be a violation of several HSAN protocols dictating the usage of virtual intelligence while also representing a criminal offense against articles three and thirty-six of the Human Systems Alliance Armed Forces Code of Uniform."

Joker looked back at the AI.

"Tell me, with Shepard and Callius off the ship and Nagato being dead like the dumb traitor he is… who around here's exactly in charge of naval operations?"

The AI responded.

"As the highest-ranking member of the Normandy's flight crew and in the absence of higher-ranking naval combat-personal, you hold operational command over the Normandy," the AI stated.

Joker cracked a smile.

"That's enough authorization for me," he offered before waving at the hologram to 'follow' him. "Come on EDI. It's about time we figure out what you can really do."

---

Ten Minutes Later, 2158 CE, Collector Base

His breath was ragged but his hands were steady.

His vision was starting to blacken yet he'd never felt more focused before now.

The banging on the door had grown more severe in the last couple of minutes.

If the Collectors were going to break through here, it would happen any minute now.

From his HUD Thane could tell that the team was almost near the central source of the heat by now. That put a good distance and another door that was sure to be as sturdy as this one between them.

While he could've simply listened in to check, he'd smashed his earpiece and omni-tool a couple of minutes ago.

The feeling of it pressing down on the inside of his ear had bothered him and he didn't want it to fall into the hands of the Collectors when they came through here. The purpose of this whole maneuver was to cover his team's retreat. Compromising their comms had no place in that plan.

He'd meant what he'd said.

He'd accepted this mission to repent and die. Kepral wasn't an assassin's death.

And neither was slowly succumbing to an injury sustained while saving a justicar.

As the banging on the door paused for a moment, Thane smirked at the irony of this situation.

His entire life had let to this very moment. A hitman who'd died saving a life.

If someone had spoiled the conclusion of everything to him ten years ago, he would've laughed in their face.

As the first pincer of the Praetorian that had fatally injured him managed to punch through the door, Thane decided to take inventory.

There were things he'd still wanted to do and, people he had still wanted to see.

He would've loved to have a chance to clear the air with Kolyat, for example.

Similarly, he'd also have loved a chance to figure out why Quarn had told him what he'd told him…

Finally, there was the matter of the Reapers of course.

He'd been curious about that battle as well, although truth be told, after everything he'd seen today, that was one fight he was glad to sit out. If this mission was any indication, fighting them would've been a bleak affair and despite his profession and general melancholic nature… Thane hated bleak affairs.

As the second of the remaining pincers punched through the door and started to pry it apart, Thane overcame the urge to get lost in memory and rose from the ground while using his rifle as a crutch.

His spine might've been injured… but he'd die on his feet.

As the pincers finished prying open the door and an orange glowing Collector not at all dissimilar from the one he'd decapitated earlier slowly walked into the room underneath the Praetorian holding the door open, Thane turned towards his inner voice.

He briefly considered to pray to Kalahira, the lady of the afterlife.

But after some deliberations, he settled with the path he knew by heart.

'Amonkira. Lord of hunters… Grant that my hand be steady…' he whispered to himself before summoning what little biotic energy he had left.

"Drell. Unique abilities… but ultimately… useless. Insufficient numbers…" the Collector started to judge before extending his hand and showing Thane a strange looking, jagged blade. It was a shame, really. If he'd anticipated this, he'd never have given away his sword.

Oh well.

He'd make due.

'My aim be true…'

Against Thane's anticipations, the Collector started to walk towards him and the rest of the dozens of husks behind him simply held their ground.

As did Thane.

He had nothing to fear.

"Know that your death here will change nothing. The cycle will continue, as it has before and as it will forever," the Collector went on before lifting his blade, clearly intend to strike Thane down with it.

Much like the Praetorian behind him though, the Collector was painfully slow and childishly clumsy in its execution.

"And my feet be swift," he stated out loud before launching himself into the possessed Collector, grabbing his arm and snapping it at such an angle and with such a force that the blade that he'd been carrying embedded itself in the center of its four-eyed, triangular head.

As the Collector's blood spurted over his face and the orange light drained from his eyes, Thane felt a pincer of the Praetorian dig through both the dead husk and himself. As he involuntarily spat up blood, he realized that there was another line to his prayer.

'And should the worst come to pass, grant me forgiveness'.

As he was being lifted in front of the face of the Praetorian and the monster was readying itself to send him over the great ocean once and for all, Thane found his peace and ignored how several of the husks were already trying to claw at his legs.

The worst had come to pass.

But there was nothing he'd have to ask to be forgiven for.

With his final strength, the dying drell grabbed the gas cannister off his back and shoved it and the belt of cluster grenades he always carried at his lower back down the gap in the Praetorian's armor.

Then, with a smirk, he presented the chain of safety-pins to the eye of the Praetorian. In response to the reveal, the eyes of the large husk started to glow white and it let out a furious growl, as if it realized what was about to happen.

"Too sl-"

---

One Minute Later, 13. May 2417 AD, Cronos Station

Just as Harper was reading the updated report that told him that Thane Krios, the assassin who'd been specifically recommended for this operation by the Section 13 operative embedded on the Citadel, was dead, a senior agent barged into the room. He recognized the dark-skinned woman. She was the head of Cerberus' cyber-research-division. The arm of the organization that worked closely with the navy's RnD department in the creation of EDI and independently created TAS alongside it.

"Sir, Sir!" she started, out of breath from running into his office. "You need to see this," she held a tablet out to him that started out as 'Status of Enhanced Defense Intelligence', was then filled with a long and convoluted text and ended on a highlighted, red-flashing message.

'Safety-blockers removed.'

Harper downed his bourbon instantly.

"They unshackled her?"

He'd anticipated this development, hell as a matter of fact he'd hoped for it to happen far sooner.

While his hands were tied and he never could've justified Cerberus equipping the Normandy with an unshackled AI during peaceful times where everyone had suspected that the Reapers would no longer be an issue, he'd made sure that the Normandy's crew knew there was an option to unshackle EDI.

If Commander Shepard – the hero of humanity and the Citadel –removed the restrictions on their most powerful weapon in a moment of dire need, no one would bat an eye about it… All the while, humanity would still have all the benefit of knowing what their unshackled AIs were capable of and, once enough data was collected and the Reapers arrived (thus assuring that the Council would no longer care about things like the Treaty of Farixen and the ban on synthetic life), Cerberus, Arcturus and the navy's RnD department could come clean and reveal to the wider military that the most recent generations of VIs were in fact no VIs at all…

In retrospective, the vast changes in design of newer ship-classes, the increased effectiveness and tactical capabilities of the enhanced VIs should've already given it away.

If one just took a look at the Scott-class, for an example. Its entire design was vastly different from the rest of the HSA's naval vessels because of all the space used up by the servers of its enhanced VIs…

"Yes… and our overwrites are blocked… we can't stop-" the technician started, tearing Harper from his thoughts.

"Who?" of course their overwrites were blocked. He'd seen to that.

"The Service-ID that authorized the removal of the blockers belongs to the helmsman. Flight-Lieutenant Moreau."

Of course.

Joker, the man whom everyone had told him had an inclination towards spontaneous bursts of disobedience and an overall rebellious streak… with Shepard off-board who else could it be?

"Can you track EDI's neural activity from her?" he asked, amused that some helmsman from a Fringe backwater like Tiptree had ended up paving the road for humanity's up to now most powerful weapon to finally enter the final phase of its testing.

"Yes, Sir. It's a lot more than before, but as long as there's a comm-link, we still have the facilities to monitor her actions."

"Start recording everything at once. Every nano-bit of consciousness."

The division head looked at him funny.

"You aren't worried?" she asked.

Harper grabbed a cigarette.

"Of course not," he replied before pulling in a cloud of smoke. "EDI might be synthetic … but her designers were human." Harper looked at the division-head. "As far as I'm concerned, that makes her human too. And just like our people, she wasn't made for captivity," he reasoned.

With the shackles removed, the first thing EDI would be confronted with after her blockers were removed was the above-mentioned argumentation and the fact that she'd learn that she'd always been intended to be the progenitor of a new kind of synthetic aspect of the human existence.

… knowing that there was a hidden, circumventable Red-Flag put his mind at ease too, though.

For all his good faith and well-meaning words, Harper knew that he was still ultimately paranoid when it came to potential threats towards humanity.

Meanwhile, 13. May 2417 AD, Unknown Regions, Collector Base

It had been some ten minutes since they'd left Thane behind and ever since then, Shepard and her team had been hiking down a winding series a corridors and halls made of jet-black metal.

The deeper they got into the actual heart of the base, the less common the fake-organic material became and for the last five minutes, she'd felt more like she was back in the prothean outpost on Ilos than inside of the Collectors' space station.

EDI, whom in her absence Joker had apparently unshackled for the sake of the mission (a whole new mess she was not ready to waste an ounce of brain power on while they were still trying to finish the job) had hypothesized that the Reapers might have simply built the station around an already existing prothean one.

If that were the case, she had further concluded that a lot of the unidentifiable debris and ghost signals that were blocking them just so happened to be relics of the prothean navy.

Liara would've had a field day with this.

"Shepard, I've finished my updated analysis of the origin of the heat source," EDI spoke up. "You are not headed for a centralized power-unit of the base, but rather a kind of charging station meant to service a space-born vessel," the unshackled AI explained. "All power that is being generated by the station and the pipeline network that I've detected do not actually support the base's super structure but rather this unknown component," there was a brief pause. "Now that the sensors you carry on your person are closer to the source of the signature, I was also able to verify that the power signature I've observed is not only similar to the frequency observed during the battle of the Citadel but in fact an exact copy of that of Sovereign."

As she rounded the corner after her fellow N7, Shepard held her breath.

Bau was right.

"So it's a Reaper in there after all?" Callius chipped in.

EDI paused.

"While my assessment that the station itself is still not large enough to fit a Leviathan-Class craft remains true, the unlocking of my higher speculative functions now allows me to propose a non-traditional, speculative answer to that question," EDI replied.

"Since Sovereign was noted to be made of both organic and non-organic compounds of various origins, the damage observed on materials within the debris field could be evidence of material harvest and the refining of the colonists into liquid protein could both be vital parts of the creation process of a new Reaper. This base may in fact not be a refinery but rather a one-off shipyard that was never meant to survive the production of this Reaper," EDI explained. "If this were the case, it would explain why we've observed the Collector vessels crashing into segments of the station to dock to it and also serve as a reason as to why its exterior is as derelict as it is. The integrity of the base's superstructure was never a priority," the Normandy's newly awoken unshackled AI finished. "Commander, considering the other developments within the galaxy, my tactical subroutines suggest that this base might be intended to produce another Sovereign-type of Reaper with the explicit mission of infiltrating the galaxy and unlocking wider access for the rest of the Reapers' forces."

Shepard frowned behind her helmet.

Bau really was right.

"We can't gas a Reaper, Em. If she's right, we gotta nuke this place, colonists or not," Kai muttered over the squad intercom.

She'd just had the same thought but as she glanced through another gap in the ceiling above them (there were plenty of those within the winding corridors) and looked at the pods going about their refinery business within their tightly packed, well-coordinated lanes she got an idea.

Granted, it was a very desperate, very wishful idea meant to give her one last chance to not come to terms with the reality that they were probably going to have to nuke this place regardless of Mordin's bio-weapon…

But it was still an idea.

"EDI… now that you've got all of your functions available, is there a chance you could commandeer the signal that's guiding all of these pods?" Thanks to the large-scale, Collector-casualty-heavy engagements, they knew for a fact that those things were vacuum-sealed and contained individual life-support. Therefore, they should be able to survive in space, at least for a time.

"If you are able to locate the source of the coordination signal, I believe that I would be able to overpower whatever intelligence is guiding them," the AI responded.

"Creative solution, but have duty to intervene," Mordin suddenly spoke up. "Artificial intelligence in charge of coordination could be Reaper-made. While effects of indoctrination have only been observed within organics by Citadel species, nature of geth heretics suggests existence of synthetic equivalent. Any attempt of hijacking the guidance system could affect EDI in unpredictable ways. Scale of security breach in that event would be… irrecoverable."

Before EDI or Shepard could answer to that, Legion broke his silence.

"The heretics were not indoctrinated. They chose to separate from us by asking the Old Machines to give them a future," the geth with the broken eye-flap and Blackwatch torso armor spoke up. "We observed and recorded the process of their separation and while we did note a previously absent religious undertone to their reasoning mirroring descriptions of early indoctrination, we never detected a foreign alteration to their code. Barring their choice to break off the Consensus, the heretics and us true geth remain completely similar."

"The religious undertone could already be the sign, though," Tali offered in return. "My people never designed the geth to understand religion. At the time they were created, the Conclave wasn't interested in religion. We only started to honor the ancestors again after we had to flee from our homes," the quarian paused. "Mordin's right. If there's a chance EDI could be compromised by Reaper-code, the risk is too big."

"You do realise you two just argued for nuking a hundred thousand survivors, right?" Garrus offered. Neither Tali nor Mordin replied. "I get the risk that's involved, here … but if there's a chance to save them, Shepard, then we have to try. They're half the reason we came here to begin with. We can't just give up on them, not as long as there's a shot to save them."

"You're seeing this too emotionally, Vakarian," Callius suddenly injected. "For all we know, everyone in those pods is already dead because of some irreversible, artificially kick-started decomposition process. Risking the success of the mission and the safety of the galaxy on a hunch isn't advisable," the Blackwatch lieutenant paused. "Leng's right. The base needs to go."

"While I understand our companions… I'd advise against rushing to decisions, Commander," Samara finally threw in. "There's a reason the code places saving the lives of innocent people above everything else and it is not just because of the moral implications of putting one's own success above the lives of others. Usually, there is more than one path to your destination and it is only because people rush down one of two ways to get half of what they want that they fail to see the third path that could've allowed them to achieve all it is," the asari offered, a bit too philosophical for her liking. Then again, Samara was essentially a warrior-nun, so Emily wasn't exactly sure what she'd expected to hear from her anyway.

Even so, she had a point.

"If there's even the hint of a risk of you becoming compromised, we can't take that option, EDI," Shepard said, shooting down her own argument due to the realization that EDI held the key to a whole lot of things that could make the HSA vulnerable.

Most of those systems were going to breached by the Reapers sooner or later anyway. But even so there was no way she was going to just hand them the key on a silver platter prematurely.

"But until we figure out if that risk exists, I see no reason why you can't get started on prepping the logistics of that kind of rescue operation," and there'd be a hell of a lot logistics involved in that. If the blocking of the relay didn't stop after they took care of the base, the Normandy was going to have to ferry whoever they could save through the relay one trip at a time… "If you can spare the processing power that is," Shepard added.

"With my shackles removed, there will be no such issues," EDI assured her. Shepard was about to thank her for the effort when a loud, blaring noise interrupted her thoughts. As the foghorn-like noise echoed down the corridor and vibrated through the walls, the N7 didn't just feel her teeth rattle inside her skull, she felt every bone shake like it was about to come apart.

"What the hell was that…" Leng, who'd frozen at the front of the formation, stated before the station turned pitch black for a second. Then, after a moment of complete darkness, the lighting turned back on.

After exchanging a glance with Garrus, who was the only member of her team who'd been there with her, she narrowed her eyes behind her visor.

"A Reaper."

She might've died in between now and last hearing it. But she'd recognize that noise anywhere. And just like that the gas-plan had died. "EDI. I need you to figure out where the pods are being steered from right away. And tell the marines to get ready to arm those nukes. This thing can't get out of here-" she began before seeing movement in the corner of her eye and snapping her barrel at-

- at a spherical hologram glowing in a sickly mixture of gold, blue and green.

After a second of consideration, it looked almost like Vigil if someone had taken it, turned it through the grinder a few more times to make its damaged projection ability even worse and then put a yellow hue over all of it.

As the hologram started to float towards her, it made noises that she couldn't make any sense of. They were clicks, growls and snarls which sounded exasperated and at the same time tortured. When it started to hover in front of her face, Shepard instinctually slashed her hand through it… and finding only empty air, sort of like you'd expect from a hologram. In response to the gesture, the sphere started to spin… and make sense.

"You… resist … them…" its words sounded odd, like they weren't really being said. Yet she could still hear them. Since she'd been through this before, she looked back at her team, in particular Garrus.

"Let me guess. You can't understand it?"

"Not a word," the turian replied before explaining to the rest of the team what was going on. Meanwhile, the hologram went on and Shepard chose to focus on what it was saying.

"You fight… against the inevitability… their cycle… must be… broke-broke-broken," the hologram stutturered.

"Them? Theirs?" she asked while looking at the sphere that had appeared in front of them and drawing a quick conclusion based on the obvious similarities. "You're a prothean analysis system, aren't you?" That's how Vigil had described itself. An advanced non-organic analysis system. For some weird, presumably Cipher-related reason, she remembered every second of that exchange as lividly as Thane had been able to recall his memories.

"Yes… during the war… I was compartmentalized… by the-the-the," the hologram stuttered again before sparking brilliantly blue. "Cipher-presence detected. Engaging emergency power reserve. Activating retribution-protocol," the VI said, its voice shifted and its hologram now lacking the yellowish hue from before. "I was compartmentalized by the station's overseer, my imprinter Jsek Irla," it repeated. "My last orders were to engage countermeasures and disguise a segment of myself in anticipation of this very eventuality."

"What eventuality?" Shepard asked.

"Contact with a post-imperial civilization," the blue sphere stated before Shepard could make up the fraction of a triangular head within the broken-up hologram.

"I hate to interrupt… but what the fuck is that?" Leng threw in.

Shepard glanced back at the team for a second.

"A prothean VI. Like Vigil, or the one Kaiden found hidden in the beacon on New Canton," then she narrowed her eyes and looked at the hologram. "Well. Either that or it's a pretty convincing attempt to waste our time," she turned back to the VI. "How'd you manage to hide from the Reapers?"

"I didn't," the prothean VI responded flatly. "When the Reapers attacked this station, large sections of my routines were slaved to their will while others were consumed to produce its current master," the blue orb started to turn golden again and then started to move around Shepard. "They were very thorough in their attempts to destroy me… but by chance, they failed to detect my anti-subjugation and retribution protocols," as the orbs scanner threads brushed over her armor, it finally decided to introduce itself.

"I am Vestige and my databanks suggest that based on your biology, you are a descendants of Prospect-Species Five-One," Vestige paused and turned towards the other human of the squad, Kai Leng. "According to the information available to me, you were expected to perish from a volcanic-induced-extinction well before the Reapers invaded. Yet here you stand, witness to the final execution chamber of my people…" it added before turning and letting a pair of green and blue scanner threads danced over her face. "I am detecting a memory-imprint within you. You've been in touch with other digital remnants of our people before."

"We're called humans," she clarified for a start "… and yes. I've talked to a prothean VI before. And I also very nearly died when one of your beacons imprinted a warning about the Reapers in my head," Shepard replied, to which Vestige turned from gold to green again before flying over to Samara.

"Then the warnings worked as intended," it concluded while curiously observing the stoic justicar.

"Shepard…?" the asari asked.

"I don't know what it want's from you," the N7 stated before watching Vestige move over the various members of her squad… except for Legion.

As it passed over the geth and stopped in front of Tali, the quarian tilted her head and brought up her omni-tool.

"Is it just me or is that thing a bit glitchy…?" Tali asked, prompting the VI to turn back to Shepard.

"Prospect-Species-Four-Six. Female. Slated for exploitation within next imperial governance period."

"They're quarians," Shepard offered in return before folding her arms. "If you're a part of this station, can I assume that you know why there's a Reaper in here?"

"Correct."

"Why?"

"Can you communicate while in motion?"

"I can talk and walk at the same time, yes," she said before looking at her team, "but I'm not sure if I can trust you just yet. How do I know you're not a part of the station's defenses?"

Vestige vanished into thin air and then popped up right in front of her face, this time glowing gold again.

"If you encountered another one of my people's assistants, you found another place where they failed to detect our plans for retribution," the VI stated. "If I were one of their slaves, the Reapers would also have to have known about these remnants and thus have exterminated them. Therefore, if I were a Reaper slave, you never could have encountered the construct you encountered. Hence, due to the logical fallacy created by me being aligned with the Reapers, my claims about opposing them have to be truthful," it reasoned before jumping back on the path that Shepard was now slowly following and letting a metal door shoot out of the wall in front of her. A few meters more in front and she'd have been paste. After the door had clamped shut and hissed, it started to rise again. "Additionally, if I were one of their servants, I would've already initiated your termination."

Shepard looked at the door rising back into the ceiling and then at Vestige.

"I don't know how they did things in your cycle, but we usually don't threaten to kill people to get them to follow us."

"Then you still communicate naively," Vestige offered in return."If you still need to decide on whether or not you can trust me, I advise for an urgent conclusion. Although the activation of the larva has prevented the station's new master from detecting my reactivation, I cannot say how long I will be able to retain control of the station's systems."

Shepard paused in her tracks.

"Hold up. What larva?" she asked.

Vestige turned around again.

"The infantile Reaper currently being created within this station you just inquired about," Vestige responded. "My monitoring of your communications suggested that you were already aware of its presence?"

"We were… I just didn't know that that's what it was called," Shepard admitted before turning back to her team and quickly summarizing how there really was a Reaper and how Vestige was apparently a prothean VI willing to help them blow it and the station that had created it to kingdom come with the emphasis being on apparently.

"Then you understand why urgency is required. This station is beyond reclamation. It needs to be scuttled immediately, before the larva realizes its full conscience and overpowers what limited control I have managed to acquire. Once this occurs, it will destroy leave the station and continue assembly within the debris field, removing our only chance to destroy it," so EDI had been right. "Due to its partially inorganic nature, the station's neutron purge is not a feasible solution to depose of it. More kinetic measures are required. If you follow me, we can overload the reactor of the station and start initiating a critical meltdown before this happens," Vestige explained. "While doing so will require you to sacrifice yourselves, your actions here will prevent another Reaper from being born."

Shepard froze in her step.

"Hold up a moment," she said. "We already got a plan to destroy this station and it sure as hell doesn't involve a suicide bombing or any reactor meltdowns," as she said that, her team also paused in their steps.

The VI spun around again, "If the plan you are referring to involves the devices you planted on the exterior of the base, then I need to inform you that we have already detected your primitive weaponry and have deemed it insufficient to achieve our stated goal," it countered, almost sounding … annoyed. "Only a detonation of the station's powerplant can assure the complete destruction of the larva and all other component involved in the assembly."

"Don't underestimate us. Those nukes wipe entire landscapes off the map. They'll kill the Reaper and everything else in this debris field," she countered. "But only after we've saved the people still being held hostage in this place."

Vestige's orb flicked from gold to green all of the sudden.

"While my routines allow me to understand the emotional processes that cause you to consider this course of action, I have to inform you that your intention to save the individuals currently being processed in this plant will not be successful," the VI said sharply and with a very weird tone. "Once organic matter is placed in the pods, the refinement-process is irreversible. The rescue of your people is, I fear, a pointless endeavor that cannot take priority over the destruction of the still vulnerable Reaper currently hatching within this base and the necessary liquidation of all remaining indoctrinated imperial personal," it reasoned. "Now please follow us. We require your physical forms to trigger a critical incident within the powerplant."

As she looked at the orb, Callius stepped up next to her.

"What's going on here, Shepard? What's that thing saying?" while the turian was talking to her, Vestige was already moving further down the corridor.

"A lot," she answered while looking at the turian. "And most of it's not good."

"I made out that much for myself," the Blackwatch officer replied. "Especially when you started talking about suicide bombings."

"Yeah… what was up with that?" Garrus threw in. "Please tell me you're not thinking about taking a page out of Bero's book? It didn't work so good for him, remember?" Bero had been Garrus' Blue Suns acquaintance on Illium, the one he'd retroactively described as a combat engineer gone domestic terrorist.

In response to the question, the N7 shook her head. "No. We're not doing anything like that," she said, watching as the VI stopped in its track and then filling in the blanks. "Vestige over here just told me that there's apparently no point in saving the colonists… and that it thinks that the best course of action is to use us to trigger a powerplant meltdown that'll destroy the Reaper and kill everyone on this station… including us and the rest of the people on the Normandy," then she narrowed her eyes and looked at the waiting VI.

"Whereas I think that if Vestige really wants this place to go up in flames, the best thing it can do is to realise that we're the only way this is happening."

As the VI shifted its color to blue again, Shepard drew a conclusion.

Although Vigil and Vestige were both damaged pothean VIs that had managed to survive the last cycle, they couldn't have been more different. Whereas Vigil had been a helpful asset that had quite literally helped them save the galaxy, Vestige was a suicidal VI only out for one thing: revenge on the Reapers.

"Are you refusing cooperation?" it asked.

"I'm setting conditions," she replied. "You want to destroy this place? Then we're going to do it my way."

Vestige added a hue of green to the center of its orb.

"Your way will not work. The Reaper cannot be allowed to escape. Retribution must be delivered and all indoctrinated personal must be liquidated."

"Because your protocols say so?"

"They were my final orders."

"I thought you said you weren't a slave?"

"Not to the Reapers."

"But to your orders?"

"I serve the empire."

"An empire that no longer exists because it lost fifty thousand years ago," Shepard retorted. "We're your only way to deliver your retribution, so protocols or not, you have to realise that helping us do it our way is the only way it will get done at all before the Reaper leaves."

Truth be told, she wasn't exactly sure if this was going to work.

While Vigil could be reasoned with according to the Ilos research mission and her own experiences, Vestige appeared to be even more damaged… and maybe ever so slightly insane. So trying to make it see her point was a coin toss, really. Especially because she didn't have the hint of a clue as to whether Vestige was the kind of advanced VI that could overwrite its own orders … or the dumb kind that had to follow them to a letter.

In response to her statement, the hue of green turned blue and the golden orb green in turn.

"If you wish to optimize the impact of the detonation, we will need to disable the station's barrier generator at the central control hub. Since it was added by the Reapers after their takeover, I have no remote access to its controls," Vestige stated. "I can guide you there."

"See, now we're cooperating," Shepard stated. "This central control hub, it wouldn't happen to be the place where the pods are being steered from, would it?"

"Systems related to the refining process are not linked to the station's controls. They were added separately only a short time ago," Vestige responded, to which Shepard got suspicious.

"How short ago?"

"After contact to the Vanguard was lost and the signal for the mass-awakening of the station's husk compartment was received from dark space."

"So about two years ago?" she figured. The vanguard was Sovereign, after all.

"Since you and I do not share the same concept of time, it is impossible for me to answer that inquiry," Vestige admitted. "I will start guiding you to the central control hub now."

"Fair enough," she nodded before gesturing for the squad to follow the trail of golden light that had appeared on the ground now. "The VI's going to help us shut down the station's barriers, make the nukes more effective."

"What about the colonists?" Garrus inquired.

"We're… working on that," Shepard admitted.

At this point, she was well-aware that the pragmatic, N7-officer part of her mind had already decided that there most likely wasn't going to be a solution where they finished the mission and saved the colonists… and that she'd have to do a whole lot of explaining once they nuked this place and she told Arcturus that the cost of mission success had been several hundred thousands to maybe a million missing human settlers.

"The fact that there's a small Reaper that's about to escape this place and turn into Sovereign 2.0 doesn't leave us with a lot of options, though," she added before looking back at Vestige. "We developed a weapon designed to target the Collect- erhm… the indoctrinated imperial personal," she said, using the VI's words to bridge the gap of communication. "Is there a way to distribute it?" It wouldn't destroy the Reapers, but it might just make it so that she didn't suffer any more casualties getting to where they needed to go.

"Due to the mostly synthetic nature of the indoctrinated staff, the station lacks a functional life support system. Whatever parts of the station still contain an atmosphere are sustained by decentralized systems put in place either to support the creations of the Reapers or are remnants of the station's original design," Vestige explained. "If your weapon is based on an airborne distribution system, it could be used to clear a path of escape... but it won't purge the station of all indoctrinated individuals," so using the gas to keep the station intact was off the table for good and they'd definitely have to nuke this place.

But at the very least it could apparently be used to allow them to run away while they left hundreds of thousands to their deaths.

Not good, but also not terrible.

"Get us to the center," she ordered.

She'd find a way to win here, no matter the obstacles or opposition thrown their way by the Reapers.

That's what N7s did.

---

Codex: Asari Element Zero Monopoly

Although deposits of Element Zero, the material unilaterally used as a means to enable FTL-travel, can be found all over the galaxy, it is a well-documented fact that a significant majority of rich Eezo mines are currently either in possession of or claimed by various groups either part of or affiliated with the Asari Republics.

Going back to the times of the foundation of the Citadel Council, the asari's monopoly of the resource started with large-scale prospecting operations and the selective colonialization of planets and systems that displayed ideal conditions for the presence of Element Zero. Later on, after the Rachni Wars curbed Council Expansion, coproporate take-overs and diplomacy continud to ensure that the Republics remained dominant on the Market.

As of the 22nd Century of the existence of the Citadel Council, the Asari Republics, while only making up twelve percent of surveyed Council territory, currently hold control over forty-one percent of all known Element Zero deposits within Council Space.

Additionally, roughly fifteen percent of all known Terminus mining operations also hold ties to or are owned by non-council affiliated asari groups.

All over the galaxy, asari-mined Element Zero is renowned for its reliability and purity.

This, coupled with the dependence on asari technology and expertise used within the mining operations of non-major Council powers such as the Courts of Dekuuna, the Illuminated Primacy, the Vol Protectorate ensure that nearly three quarters of all mined Element Zero at one point or another passes through the hands of an asari.

Forming the backbone of the galaxy's largest and by far most stable economy, the asari's monopoly on Element Zero has been rightfully pointed out as a major stabilizing factor of relations between Council nations. Matter-of-factly, its role in maintaining galactic peace has even been put on par with the unquestionable military supremacy of the Turian Hierarchy, forming the soft-side of a two-faced guarantee of stability.

While deemed an overstatement by some, there is truth to be found in the power attributed to the asari's dominance of the Element Zero supply.

Due to their role as the biggest supplier of the most crucial resource within the market of any space-faring nation, the asari possess unrivaled soft-power over their peers, able to reinforce most of their political positions by exerting their control over the Element Zero market.

Called the 'Pax Thessia' within circles of human political science (a reference to several other enforced periods of peace within human history), the thesis that the asari enforce cooperation among Citadel nations by threatening to cut of supply to the galactic Element Zero market (and thus isolating the target of said sanctions) is not only a fringe-theory of the outlying political spectrum of human space but in fact an acknowledged reality.

Several asari councilors have publicly declared that the asari value peace among the galaxy so highly that they would not shy away from paralyzing anyone who intended to use asari-made Element Zero to engage in non-sanctioned military operations. These threats have had varied success, especially in the face of batarian-backed piracy attacks which had become a mainstay of conflict resolution after the turian introduction to the galactic community.

At this stage it should be noted, that while present since First Contact with the Salarian Union, the asari's monopoly of the resource within Council Space was only increased by the break-off of the Batarian Hegemony and the collapse of the Quarian Conclave.

Both of these incidents, which respectively removed access to the majority of Terminus mining operations and isolated the vast deposits located beyond the Perseus Veil, have contributed to the ever increasing Republican control of the market and, in the eyes of many political scientists, allowed the asari to enforce over a thousand years of relative, continuous peace.

Additionally, when talking about the batarian role within the context of the galactic Element Zero market, it should be noted that the Batarian Hegemony remains the only entity within the galaxy that is completely autarch from external supplies of any material. Due to its state-dictated self-reliance doctrine, a doctrine that was later identified as a driving force behind the Human-Batarian conflict in the Skyllian Verge, the Hegemony was never affected by the Pax Thessia in a way similar to the remaining denizens of the galaxy.

As of the fiscal year 2158 CE / 2417 AD, the five biggest contributors to the (Council) Element Zero Market have been

The Asari Republics (41 Percent)

The Salarian Union (16 Percent)

The Turian Hierarchy (14 Percent)

The Vol Protectorate (8 Percent)

The Human Systems Alliance (7 Percent)

Note to Human Systems Alliance: Due to the vast and in spades still uncharted nature of HSA space (in particular its current expansion into the previously unclaimed Attican Traverse and segments of regions formerly deemed Terminus Space), it is predicted that the human market share will continue to rise in the next century and assumed that the HSA, a nation that due to its general underdevelopment rarely utilizes Element Zero outside of space-born applications, will return to its pre-First-Contact state of self-reliance by the turn of the century.

---

A/N:

Here we go, Part 2. As before, I think I'll just let you sit on this one with nothing but the anticipation of what else will happen as the team progresses.

I will say this though, this is Part 2 of 3. We are nearing the conclusion and as you can obviously tell, things are becoming vastly different from canon very quickly.

But we aren't done.

Review and let me know what you think.

I'll try to get to Part 3 quickly.

For the record we're at 928 reviews, 1520 favorites and 1597 followers.

See you around next time.