I think this all makes sense? Sure someone will tell me if it doesn't.

And yes, don't forget that the next bit will be me copping out just doing a Q&A for shits and giggles. So if you've got anything nagging at you that I haven't made clear best pipe up. Or else it'll be real small and kind of embarrassing.

If you know what I mean.

EDIT: There was actually meant to be a break between the two bits here but the formatting took it out, whoopsie. Put something else there now and hopefully it'll stay there.

Also, I don't know what "More meat less carrots" means but I assume it's like "Make this less boring" which is, you know, fair.

Some time passed. Not a whole lot of time, but some passed. Enough for events.

A ship from Shepard's third-party backers - Cerberus, Jarrion learnt-stroke-remembered they were called - arrived and a deal regarding their access to the Collector wreck was quickly hashed out. Money exchanged hands, science teams shuttled over and all proceeded without incident. Everyone was happy. Jarrion especially, being the one making money just from having destroyed an alien vessel. If only all life were so directly rewarding.

"They're planning on overstepping the bounds of the agreement," Loghain said to Jarrion just after the negotiations. She'd sat in on him because she was basically his shadow these days. Jarrion rolled his eyes.

"Oh?"

"Yep. They'll be trying to remove technology from the xenos wreck above what was allowed. They're very interested in our technology as well, point of fact. You might discover a few things going missing that you don't expect."

"Things always go missing. Most of the ratings have light fingers," said Jarrion.

Jarrion liked calling them ratings from time to time. Made him feel extra naval. That reminded him, come to think of it - stuff had gone missing during the recovery of the colonists. Small items yes and nothing really serious but it was the principle of the thing. There needed to be floggings. He made a mental note.

"If I had eyes I'd roll them. And don't think I didn't know you did. I noticed. Okay, expect more things to go missing. They're going to be taking advantage of our apparent generosity. Just thought you should know," Loghain said.

Jarrion sighed, but did make sure to sure to message the crew still onboard the Collector vessel to keep an eye on the newcomers and to keep their equipment close. Paid to be safe.

After this one of the ship's officers was picked to stay behind at Home Away From Home to keep an eye on things and with that done off the Dauntless went - places to be! Things to do! Colonies to visit and win over.

Steps to be taken in furtherance of Jarrion's modest plan to carve out a nice little, profitable niche in this fresh new galaxy, for the greater glory of the Imperium and - as a distant afterthought, of course - for House Croesus.

And so it was that the Dauntless found itself running down the list of nearby human colonies, appearing in-system, entering orbit, scaring the locals briefly before descending to greet them and say that if there were any problems they were here to help.

And that if there was anything they needed that they were sure some sort of agreement could be met. Jarrion was, as ever, very reasonable.

This worked splendidly. While the colonies all shared Horizon's friendliness - which is to say, they didn't have any - they all had their own problems and issues which needed resolution, sometimes in the form of supplies that Jarrion just-so happened to have or be able to procure or else in the form of immediate, practical concerns that they couldn't quite manage to handle on their own but which Jarrion was just-so able to handle for them.

Because he had a whacking great spaceship and a lot of men with guns.

And Jarrion was more than willing to help them out, of course in exchange for the paltry recompense of, well, let's call them future favours, eh? We're all friends here, aren't we? What's a few scraps of paper bestowing exclusive future rights to this or that between friends, eh? It's not as if you need to worry about it this moment anyway, is it? And it's not as if I'm telling you what to do! I only want to ensure that you get whatever it is you want and need! A businessman through and through. Help me help you, friends!

And so on.

It rapidly became apparent that a proper logistical system was going to need setting up. Top to bottom. Jarrion wanted these colonies being supplied either by himself or by someone who he was paying. The Dauntless was not designed or intended for running cargo and there was only one of them.

Local assets were going to be the answer, again. Why not? He got Torian to set up a scheme to either buy or startup some sort of shipping company, among other things. It would be perfectly feasible after all, especially with all the capital he'd got from that Cerberus chap. He'd been right, money hadn't been a problem. Jarrion could see it all coming together.

All pipedreams for now, but Jarrion was giddy with the possibilities. There was just so much opportunity here! And the dangers were next to non-existent! At least compared to back home.

It wasn't safe, sure, but it was hardly dangerous! Most of these colonies would have been eaten alive by now back home, but here? Water shortages, aggressive local wildlife and occasional marauders. And not even especially numerous marauders. It was like someone had turned the volume down for what Jarrion had been doing before. He couldn't have been happier.

One incident did stand out though.

A colony had had an issue and that issue had been this: there was a space station in its system orbiting a gas giant. So far so normal, at least going by what Jarrion had come to expect.

The station - which was said to provide most of the fuel for the colony, extracting gasses and such from the planet it orbited - had apparently been recently overtaken by Batarian pirates or somesuch. Jarrion was not particularly concerned about the details beyond aliens being a threat, something he confidently told the colonists he would be able to resolve.

Armsmen had been sent in mob-handed and a very, very brief skirmish had followed. Once the all-clear had been given Jarrion went over himself, to see and be seen. He, Thale and Loghain took a lighter and nipped across to the station, arriving in short order and striding past saluting armsmen on their arrival.

"-I mean, who calls a laspistol a blooger, really? That's just silly. I'm not even sure what the etymology of that could be. Now-"

Jarrion was stopped mid-anecdote as he came upon the area where the armsmen had been hauling the corpses of the aliens. Something about them caught Jarrion's eye and he paused, one foot still raised in front of him, mouth still halfway wrapped around whatever it was he had been saying.

Slowly, he put his foot down on the deck.

Looking over the alien bodies stacked up against a station wall and the light weaponry and equipment heaped up beside them, Jarrion felt a suspicion starting to sharpen into a definite set of conclusions in his head, none of which made him happy. He frowned, tucked one hand under his chin and pointed to the corpses with the other.

"Very lightly armed for pirates, wouldn't you say?" He asked.

Loghain tucked a hand under her own chin.

"Hmm," she said.

"I mean, you could make the argument that these are merely the lightly-armed technicians they left behind to operate their ill-gotten station and that the actual pirates are presently elsewhere, but that doesn't really track. Pirates - in my experience - would use the already-present labour under threat of violence. So I would have expected some captive humans and some armed, alien pirates. And yet, all aliens. Mostly unarmed," Jarrion said, gesturing to the corpses as he spoke and he spoke another was slung onto the heap by a pair of armsmen who trudged off once they'd done this. Loghain just nodded sagely.

"No humans, eh?" She asked.

"Not a one, not according to those dead bodies there. Maybe they're hiding but somehow I doubt it. Certainly, you'd think they would be happy to see their captors shot down by their fellow man. Wouldn't they have come to welcome us at this point if that were so? And yet here we are, unwelcomed. Hmm."

"Hmm indeed. Again," said Loghain.

Jarrion stroked his chin. He had had to deal with a few situations similar to this back home, though he was willing to admit the possibility that piracy operated differently here. Still, something in his waters told him this was probably not the case. The colonists had seen an opportunity and had grasped it. Admirable, though also highly insulting.

"Feeling used?" Loghain asked as Jarrion's silence carried on enough to tell her he wasn't going to say anything else unless prodded. Jarrion sighed and shook his head, finally turning from the corpse-pile.

"The story of my life, Inquisitor. Were I of a suspicious turn of mind I might imagine that, oh, the local colonists were in some manner of disagreement with the non-human owners of this particular station and have used our arrival and our offer of assistance to settle it violently, something they themselves were not in a position to do and are now at least some deniable distance from."

"What diabolical mind could conceive of such such a thing?" Loghain asked, pressing her hands to her face in mock-horror. It was difficult for Jarrion not to smirk at this. Difficult, but not impossible.

"What diabolical mind indeed? Oh well. The galaxy is hardly going to be a worse place for the loss of some aliens. More pressingly I am displeased at this lack of honesty. Had they wanted this they could have just asked. I'm open to this sort of thing, but I am not a catspaw," Jarrion said, sounding a lot calmer than he felt. He'd done this out of the kindness of his heart! And they'd felt the need to hide their true motivations. That was just rude.

"Why do I sense revenge brewing?" Loghain asked.

Jarrion scoffed.

"Revenge indeed! No money in revenge. No, no. Something else. Not your concern, Inquisitor. I shall resolve this. You should probably head back to the Dauntless. In fact I'm not even entirely sure why you accompanied me over here."

"With you running your little errands all across this galaxy - which has been incredibly tedious, can I just say - I've been at a bit of a loose end. Was hoping this might offer me something interesting. I was let down. How are those tech priests getting along with investigating how we arrived here?"

"I do not know. I am sure you can ask them once you get back to the ship. Sure they'd love a visit from an Inquisitor."

"Ha. Ha ha. Ha. Alright I'm going, I'm going. You plot your revenge. I'm going to wait in the lighter."

And off she went. Nodding to Thale Jarrion then set off to try and find Pak.

The more of the station that Jarrion saw the more adamant he was that he had been played. He saw las-scoring from his men but next to no signs of return fire from those curious projectile weapons the locals favoured.

A little here and there as might be expected of the light resistance encountered, but nothing as much as Jarrion would have expected for a station that had been seized twice over now, none of which he saw.

Incidentally he had insisted that the boarding party use lasguns as opposed to the more traditional boarding weapons they might have utilised. The mind-boggling prevalence of those kinetic barriers Shepard had mentioned - something Jarrion had now seen several times first-hand - was proving an issue. Not an insurmountable one but enough of one to make the preference of las weaponry just a sensible choice in Jarrion's opinion.

And, really, on a standard setting a lasgun didn't have that much of a chance of damaging a vital ship or station-based system anyway. If you were lucky.

But that was all by the by. Jarrion was looking for Pak. He asked armsmen for directions as he passed them and worked his way deeper into the bowels of the station.

Pak had come over with the initial boarding parties - without telling Jarrion - seemingly just so that there was as little time wasted as possible when it came to having a look at the station and its systems.

This whole jaunt had revealed a side of Pak that Jarrion hadn't really seen before. He'd known that Explorators could be an idiosyncratic bunch even by Mechanicus standards but back when they'd just been touring the Croesus colonies Pak had been positively sedate.

Now though they seemed at all times to be seized by some sort of ravenous energy and a constant desire to see everything there was to see and, if possible, take it apart and put it back together again.

It was a little alarming, frankly.

When Jarrion found them the magos was hooked up to what appeared to be at least three separate systems of the station, free mechadendrites roving about, feeling for additional access ports and teasing open loose panels to examine the insides, all the while Pak's actual hands were working across a keypad.

What they were actually trying to accomplish was unclear but Jarrion assumed the tech priest knew what they were doing.

"Ah! Pak! Fancy seeing you here," Jarrion said, walking up to a nearby bank of consoles and standing before them, hands on his hips. Looking at them he had no idea what any of them were for. This technology was just bizzare looking. "Now Pak...I have a request."

Pak, obviously, said nothing, and Jarrion turned back around to face the Magos, finding them still tapping away at the keys but also having looked up, presumably listening.

"I know that you're probably excited to have a look at the technical side of this installation and you're more than welcome but I have a favour to ask of you while you do so."

Pak stared, silently. Unsurprising.

"Would it be possible for you affect sufficient changes to the systems of this station that we would have no choice but to leave behind a small team to run the station in lieu of the colonists taking control themselves?" Jarrion asked.

Pak just kept on staring. Jarrion continued, waving a hand:

"The damage from the firefight, you see? We had no choice and had to act quickly to prevent further catastrophic damage or possibly even the loss of the station and - while we know it's unfortunate that they'll be unfamiliar with the technology and unable to properly operate it - those personnel we leave behind will be more than willing to co-operate and assist in maintaining production? For a modest increase in transaction fees to cover the complexity of continued operation, of course."

Pak was still staring, though their head was starting to tilt. Jarrion just let what he'd said hang in the air for a few seconds. Pak's head slowly tilted back to level again, and eventually they nodded. Jarrion beamed.

"Marvellous. Nothing too extensive. Just enough for it to be believable if any one of them feels like coming to visit, something which we should dissuade them from doing but which they'll probably try anyway. And enough that they could not operate it on their own, of course."

Pak nodded again.

"Oh, and a booby trap or two never hurt, eh? Make it look like an accident, Pak. And be sure to make sure the crews know about them."

Had Pak been able to chuckle darkly they would have done here. As it stood, they just sort of made a buzzing sound and lowered their head again.

By the time Jarrion worked his way back to the corpse pile it had grown, as had the heap of arms and equipment next to it. Loghain had come back too and was just watching some of the armsmen at work. The armsmen, for their part, were obviously incredibly nervous being under Inquisitorial observation. Jarrion felt this was pretty cruel.

"This isn't waiting in the lighter," he said. Loghain shrugged.

"I was a little bored. And I was curious to see if any human bodies showed up. None have. I think you might have been right," she said.

"I think I was, too. But don't worry, the situation is under control."

"Glad to hear it."

There was a clatter as another handgun was tossed onto the pile and upset it, causing a minor slide of the things. Jarrion frowned and nudged aside a small sub-carbine sized weapon with his foot.

Already onboard the Dauntless there was a fair amount of other such guns and armour, among other various items that the tech priests had decided were at the least benign. The spoils of Jarrion's efforts so-far.

The amount of inter-species trade in this galaxy had led to a lot of technological crossover, it seemed, making it rather difficult to work out what was human handiwork and what wasn't. None of it acceptable for Imperial use, naturally, but all deemed acceptable to flog to the locals.

Well, strictly speaking the tech priests had decided most of it was worse than rubbish and had wanted to scrap it all and stop taking any onboard but Jarrion had reminded them that, as a Rogue Trader, he was loathe to squander anything and had to right to not have to.

"We're going to need a market contact for all this, I think. Think there's a planet nearby where we might be able to find someone to oblige us. Illum? Lillium? Something like that. We're amassing quite the collection of such items, and one imagines that we'll only be amassing more," Jarrion said, bending to pick the sub-carbine up and turning the thing over his hands. Seemed a little on the flimsy side to him, but they worked well enough. This he'd seen.

"Oh?" Loghain asked. Jarrion tossed the gun back onto the pile.

"The galaxy remains, as always, a less than friendly place. Though it's always that little bit friendlier once I've passed through it. One way or another."

One of the corpses turned out to be not be quite as dead as it probably should have been and groaned, trying to crawl from the heap. The nearby armsmen put a stop to this abruptly and then - at a very sharp glare from Thale - started double-checking the rest of the bodies.

"Pax Imperialis, eh?" Loghain asked.

"I wouldn't go that far. I'm not a naval patrol. Just doing the best I can to bring the light of His will to a galaxy unfairly denied it. In my own little way."

'Little' was a comparative term when the person saying it was a Rogue Trader.

"How noble of you," said Loghain.

Jarrion gave a bow.

"Why thank you."

+++MEANWHILE+++

I don't like Illium. Lots of reasons. Start with it being freakishly clean and just go from there.

Oh, and that whole 'It's not slavery honest look how neat and legal we made it' thing kind of gets under my skin as well. Not a fan.

Sit me down and spend twenty minutes talking me through how you've managed to define a duck to not legally be a duck and I will not impressed. I'll just be twenty minutes closer to death and a whole lot closer to wanting to punch you in the throat. If you make it so the rules are such that you can do what you like, the defence 'Well we're not breaking any rules' doesn't really have the same punch, you know?

Guess it's a sore spot for me.

Anyway, there was a reason I'd dragged myself to this sorry spot on the galactic map and the name of the reason was Miranda - she'd asked a favour of me, and I am nothing if not accomodating for the welfare and wellbeing of my crew.

Oh, and the dossiers. Two of them were on illium as well, as chance would have it. Some assassin and some fancy Asari. But those could wait a hot minute. Miranda had done alright by me, for as much as I mess with her, and she was on the team so it was up to me to look out for her.

She had explained to me before her, ah, unique family dynamic and now it turned out she had a sister, a twin in fact. This sister had been living safely on Illium, she said, hidden from her father's attentions and living a peaceful life. Only now dad was closing in and so action had to be taken and sharpish.

Cerberus was handling the details on moving the blameless family, Miranda said, but she wanted to be on the ground to make sure that everything went smoothly. Her father was, apparently, persistent. He sounded great.

So yes. I was going to go on down with her, meet her contact and just make sure everything went smoothly.

I saw firefights in my future. But then I usually do. And I'm usually right, too. Nothing is ever simple and very few things get resolved with a nice, pleasant conversation. Sometimes! Just not often enough.

Not that I'd turn down a firefight. This was to be the inaugural field outing for the laser that Jacob and EDI had turned out. Imagine my excitement!

This was the mark three version, apparently, the first two having been lab-only proof-of-concept prototypes or something like that. Whatever. I got my hands on it now and get to see how it works in the real world against real targets.

Also, here's an aside question: whatever happened to my HMWA X anyway? I know I lost it when I died, but how come I can't get another one? I'd been to Spectre requisitions, nothing. Like they all just disappeared in the two years I was gone.

And whose bright idea was it to retrofit these thermal clips into everything? I had all my gear set up perfectly, heatsinks for days. Could fire basically forever if I kept myself under control. Or even if I lost control. I have fine memories of holding the trigger down on Virmire and just watching Geth wilt away like I was hosing mud off a patio.

Now? Now sometimes I'm left standing around unable to do anything at all! Because I haven't picked up a clip in the last five minutes! Reduced to harsh language and angry looks!

If that's progress I want to go backwards.

But that's getting off-topic and besides, I got my laser now so I'm happy as anything. Even if it is likely to be gobbling up those thermal clips like nobody's business if what Jacob told me was anything to go by.

The gun was a hefty beast and kind of looked about as much as I might have expected it to look, which is to say like a slightly cruder, we're-not-sure-what-we're-doing copy of the gun that Thale had had. Big backpack with the generator in it, big armoured cable - an actual, physical cable! - linking to the gun and then the gun, which was mostly just a massive cooling system wrapped around a laser.

I was chuffed, I was. I felt more lethal just standing next to the thing.

And about twice as heavy as I normally was when I actually put it in. And that's saying something because I'm not exactly light as a feather since they put me back together.

Anyway. I know that the plan was actually just to go in, meet contacts and oversee what should be a totally smooth and problem-free exchange but I was still going in tooled up. As was Miranda. We're smart cookies, we know how these things tend to go.

We go down from the Normandy. We meet Miranda's contact at some bar. Miranda's contact tells us that someone named Niket has warned her that Eclipse mercs have been sent in by her father. None of this is good news, though none of it is really what I'd call enormously surprising.

"Do you want to bring in any of you other Illium contacts Ms. Lawson?" Asked the Asari contact.

"No. You and Niket are the only ones I trust on this," Miranda said after a second's thought.

"Who's Niket?" I asked Miranda.

"He's a friend. He and I go back a long way," she said. I could buy that.

"Alright. It's your sister Miranda, how you want to play this?" I asked. She thought again, just for a second. Good at working on her feet was Miranda.

"We'll follow Niket's suggestion. Shepard and I will take the car and attract their attention. Have Niket escort the family to the shuttle. Give him full access to the family's itinerary, just to be safe."

"Understood Ms. Lawson," the contact said, fiddling about with their omnitool.

"So we get to be bait? I love it. I have experience being blown to bits."

"Eclipse will be under orders to take my sister alive. They won't risk anything that could kill us."

She had a point. Mercenaries were at least predictable in some respects.

"Point. But I doubt they'll all come running after us. You want to send this Niket chap any backup?"

"Niket can handle himself. Besides, any armed backup just draws attention to him," Miranda said.

"Again, point. Alright, no time to waste eh? Let's get going."

"Thank you, Shepard. I appreciate this. I hadn't planned on Eclipse...but they never planned on you."

Flattery will get you everywhere.

We took an aircar and I felt very exposed indeed. Rightly so, as it turned out, as we hadn't been up for five minutes before we suddenly in the company of a couple of Eclipse gunships. They blew on past and started dumping troops out into the cargo bays. That wouldn't do.

We made to put in behind some crates but then some of the mercs who'd already dropped opened up and that unarmoured aircar and down we went. Made for a bit of a harder landing than I'd planned on.

I've been in worse crashes.

Someone must have given the order to hold fire after that thought because we were not greeted by a hail of gunfire after climbing out, instead just a whole heap of mercs with one guy in tech armour stood out in front. The one in charge.

Miranda was already advancing.

"Since you're not firing yet, I trust you know who I am," she said.

"Yeah they said you'd be in the car. You're the bitch that kidnapped our boss's little girl," said the engineer - I assumed he was an engineer, tech armour and all that. Not that Miranda was especially moved by what he'd said.

"Kidnapped? This doesn't involve you. I suggest you take your men and go," she said.

"Think you've got it all lined up, huh? Captain Enyala's already moving in on the kid. She knows about Niket. He won't be helping you," he said.

This was going South fast. So many things to ask about! One detail did stand out though:

"Kid? What? You said twin -" then it clicked. "Oh I get it. You said twin and we're meant to think, like, another you but actually she's younger? Designer babies, right? Ah, clever. Nice. I get it."

Kind of felt like I'd heard that one before somewhere. Jumping to conclusions I know but, well, I've seen some weird stuff. You expect the worst. My mind goes to strange places sometimes.

"This crazy bitch kidnapped our boss's baby daught-" the guy started saying but I didn't have time to hear him out.

"Yeah, that's great. I'm not really concerned. Miranda's with me, what she wants to happen is going to happen. If you're standing in the way of that, well, I can't see it ending well."

Seriously, when has that worked out well for anyone? Not to blow my own trumpet but I'm kind of a force of nature.

The guy just folds his arms.

"Captain Enyala ordered us to give you one chance to walk away. But this whole time we've been talking, my men have been lining up shots," he said.

What a prick. Well he's also a prick who's made the mistake of getting within arm's reach.

"Look at the big brains on this guy!" I said. That smug look of his became a bit more of a confused look.

"What?" He asked.

One uppercut and one broken neck later and the very dead, very floppy engineer toppled back and hit the deck. If I'd tried a little harder I'm pretty sure I could just punched his head clean off. Pretty sure.

Miranda didn't waste any time either, plugging the merc who'd been standing behind the engineer and who'd clearly been taken off-guard by me just killing the guy on the spot. I then caught a flicker of movement out further back and behind - those men the now-corpse had mentioned. I also noticed them manoeuvring underneath what looked an awful lot like a fuel tank.

Ah. Love it when that happens. Feels like the universe clicking into position just for me.

Feeling that adrenaline coursing, see time slowing down, raise the gun, sight, wait one step two step three step and fire.

Tank falls, tank explodes. A good chunk of the opposition disappears. Ah. Wonderful.

I should probably feel bad about the murder - and I will later, I know I will - but at that moment all I feel is a detatched sense of amusement. Suppose it's important to love what you do. Even if it's, you know, unpleasant by most people's standards.

Hey, they knew the risks.

Things went downhill from there and it was back to gunning down mercenaries, which was something that took up a lot of my time these days. Weird, since I was meant to be stopping aliens from stealing humans, but there you go. It's all for a good cause.

The shooting and the killing was all pretty standard. Hiding behind crates, flanking, advancing. Miranda proved very handy, yanking chaps out of cover, knocking them over, swiping crates aside and leaving mercs exposed - very handy.

Kind of wish I'd brought someone else but we did very good the two of us. Chewing right through Eclipse like nobody's business.

"Enemies everywhere!" Someone yelled and I was struck with a sudden, fierce sense of deja vu. Weird. Shot them anyway when I saw them pop up and try to run for cover further back.

You'd have thought that professionals would have put up more of a fight but then again I suppose they were up against a hyper-lethal billion-credit cyborg and a super-duper ultra-perfect biotic woman par-excellence so perhaps the game was rigged from the start.

The laser was already doing a fine job of cementing itself in my affections, too. Sure, it was a sweaty bastard and was chewing through those thermal clips as quick as I could pick them up and that powerpack wasn't exactly the easiest thing to be lugging around but other than that? Beautiful.

Barriers? Shields? Nothing. Armour wasn't doing a whole lot either. And any shot to centre mass was another dead person to add to my total. And let me tell you, I got a frankly sickening total of dead people to my name at this point. Hell, count limb shots too why not? I'd be shocked too if a laserbeam out of nowhere blew most of my arm clean off. I'd want a lie down and a quiet bleed to death after that.

When EDI had said the thing had been tuned for power they hadn't been kidding. Guess everyone's going to be regretting skimping on the thicker armour once more of these things start getting out there. Which they will. That's just how these things happen.

Speaking of armour, personally, I wanted a T5-V. That's what was on my Christmas list. Or something bigger, if they made something bigger. If it's worth doing it's worth overdoing, you know?

Anyway. Murder continued. You'd think at some point people might start paying attention to my reputation and try to talk things out. I'm always willing to talk things out! I'm also always willing to shoot people in the face if they think throwing down is a good idea.

If I was presented with those choices I know which I'd pick. Life is a lot easier when you're just talking, in my experience. Maybe I'm in the minority.

Me and Miranda had a bit of banter as went too. Discussing the ethical considerations of nabbing children from their parents if their parents are, you know, monsters. It wasn't really my place to say. If Miranda was of the opinion that her sister - who was genetically also kind of her? - didn't deserve to go through what she'd gone through then I'd believe her.

She also picked up one of the Eclipse radios. Again, handy - handy lady!

The more we went on and the more I overheard though the more misgivings I started having about this Niket chap. I know that Miranda swore up and down that he was on the level - her oldest friend, her only real friend, one of the few who knew what her father was truly like and all that - but I wasn't so sure. This whole thing seemed a little too neatly set up for me.

And it turned out that that, yes, Niket had betrayed Miranda. Or at least it damn well sounded like he had. That made things a little tense.

"Did Niket know about the, uh, taking your sister as a baby part of this whole deal?" I asked in the lift we were taking down to dock ninety four where - apparently - Niket was preparing to switch the family over onto the Eclipse transport. Which wasn't what we wanted to happen.

Miranda didn't look happy.

"No. It was too personal to involve anyone else. I never really thought about it, but maybe...no. He'd have to understand why I did it. He knows what I went through."

"You know the guy, Miranda. Guess we'll find out."

The lift arrives, we step out and I get to see what Niket looks like at last because he's there talking to some dock worker. Finally saw this captain Enyala we'd been hearing so much about as well. Looked pretty much as I might have expected. Asari, cranky, real nice shotgun.

Claymore, looked like - pretty impressive to see an Asari waving one of those around. Less impressive to see her use it to shoot a fleeing civilian in the back - that dock worker who tried to make a break for it on seeing us arrive.

I doubted me and this captain were going to be getting on.

Anyway, long story short Niket was pretty unhappy about the 'taking the baby' thing and that was kind of the root cause of the whole issue. I guess I could see some merit in his argument but, personally speaking, if the guy had sympathy for Miranda's plight I'm not sure why he'd think that her sister would have had a better time of it.

But I wasn't there so what do I know? I was probably missing some important context. I'm not an especially subtle person.

Things were actually starting to work out alright though. Bit tense when Miranda tried to shoot Niket but I nipped that in the bud. The better solution was just to draw a line under the whole thing. Her father didn't know, you see, it was all just Niket running the show, so all he had to do was say that we'd got there first and nabbed the kid and that would be that. Not exactly parting on the best of terms but it would resolve things.

Only then that Enyala shot Niket in the back. She's a fan of that.

It looked like she was going to say something afterwards, too, and I'm sure it would have been rivetting but I really didn't have a whole lot of patience left so I shot her in the head just as she opened her mouth. The result of this was that she stopped having a head.

Should have worn a helmet, really. Not that it would have helped much but, you know. It's just sensible. Did people forget that?

Unfortunately the laser chose this point to finally give up the ghost. Guess it was still a work in progress and it had done well to last as long as it had but the timing could have been better anyway. Had to resort to using the Phalanx and my bare hands. Worse things had happened.

By then it mostly just mopping up anyway. With their captain gone the fight really went out of most of the remaining mercs. A few of them straight-up made a break for it, pulling out. The others were worked through, one after another.

I got in close after a sprint and blew the knee out from under one guy - a heavy - before putting one through the side of his head. A good kill in my book but I had pretty stupidly left myself low on shields and open to my side and the dead guy's buddy got me with a few rounds. Last of the shields took some, armour some more, I took the rest.

Thank God for heavy skin weave is all I can say. And the bone stuff or else I'd probably be the proud owner of a freshly-broken arm. As it stands I was just left in pain and angry, which isn't new for me.

Would have got the guy back for it but Miranda beat me to it and by the time I'd brought my aim up he was hoiked off his feet and sent screaming over the edge of the platform and out of sight.

Happy landings, I guess.

"Thanks for that," I said, giving her a thumbs up. Could feel that medigel kicking in already. Thanks again, heavy skin weave.

That pretty much wrapped it up, too. Certainly no-one was left shooting at us after that.

MIranda was worried about more Eclipse near the shuttle so on we hustled, taking yet another lift meaning we were trapped in for yet another conversation.

"Why didn't you let me kill him?" She asked point-blank after a few lines about her still not believing Niket had betrayed her. I shrugged.

"Heat of the moment. You would have regretted it. He might have sold you out but you still liked the guy. Well, went behind your back, he didn't exactly sell you out per se. If things had gone like they should everything would have been fine. I should have been quicker to stop that lady from taking the shot."

If I'd done that everything would have been great, actually. Urgh. Regrets.

"No, no...you're right. He was the only part of my old life I hadn't cut out, the only link back to my father. And he knew that and he used it. It's always been like this. My father gave me everything I ever wanted but there was always a hook, an angle for his long-term plan."

Alright Miranda, Jesus. Calm down.

"I threw away everything he ever gave me when I ran. Except Niket. Weakness on my part," she said.

"You know if you get rid of everything that's important to you just because of him then he's still kind of running your life. Just saying," I said.

Again, not the sort of thing I have much experience with.

"It's okay Shepard. My father hurt me, but he didn't break me. As much as he tried to turn me into exactly what he wanted...I'm my own person."

Well snaps for you, Miranda.

And not long after this we're standing there in public with no Eclipse to be seen, awkwardly watching her little sister - Oriana? - and her family. Miranda's happy to see her safe, obviously, but then she just wants to leave! After all that!

No dice. I tell her it wouldn't hurt for the girl to know she has a sister who loves her. She doesn't need to go into the details. And so off Miranda goes. It's quite cute to watch, actually. Not a side of Miranda most people would get to see, I'd expect, even at a distance.

I give her some time for that. Least I could do. Eventually the family leaves. Miranda and I watch the shuttle take off and that, as they say, is that.

Could have gone better. Could have gone a whole lot worse. Story of my life. At the least it had been a bonding experience. I felt that me and Miranda's relationship had taken a definite boost.

That and I liked to think I'd done a good deed. Or helped in someone doing a good deed. Anything to make the galaxy that little bit brighter, you know? It all adds up. Even if an alarming number of people had to die in service of it.

And with that done I really, really wanted a lie down in a quiet room with a stiff drink and some medigel. I thought that it wouldn't be that much to ask, personally.

But then who should I see coming towards me from across the dock, smiling ear-to-ear, but fucking Jarrion. No-one else wore that much gold braid. Hell, I doubted anyone else owned that much gold braid.

How, exactly, had we missed that ship of his? Where was he hiding it? Or had he just arrived? So many questions, foremost amongst them being 'Seriously?'.

"Is that-" Miranda starts to ask, but I'm there before she finishes.

"It is," I say.

"Commander Shepard!" He said, beaming, coming to a halt just before the two of us, holding his lapels and rocking on his heels, giving Miranda the nod of someone who's forgotten your name but doesn't want to admit it. "Some days I swear I feel the hand of the Emperor himself guiding my steps! How else might it be that I run into you here and now?"

In his defence the odds are fucking insane. Doesn't make me any happier about it.

"How indeed. What are you doing here?" I asked.

"Business!" He said, waving a hand back behind him. I couldn't quite see what he was trying to draw my attention to at first, but then I caught sight of that really old guy he had hanging around alongside some other very obviously Imperial crew. All of them looked incredibly uncomfortable at being there and were eyeing any and all passing aliens with burning suspicion.

The group of them in turn being gawked at by just about everyone else around them because, well, they stuck out like a sore thumb. Loghain was there too, still blind and still somehow able to tell I was looking because she waved at me. The whole scene was just bizarre.

"That so?" I asked, looking back to Jarrion again.

"Oh yes we've been very busy but I shan't bore you with the details. How goes your own mission? Or was that ship we blew up the last of it?" He asked.

Couldn't quite tell if he was joking or not about that.

"There's still a few things need tying up," I said, tactfully, and Jarrion nodded as though he understood what it was like.

"Anything I could help you with? I'm not one to move against providence and me being here and you being here does seem to speak of a higher purpose at work, don't you think?"

Now that was a terrifying thought.

"Uh, that remains to be seen I guess. And no, I think we're fine. Just wrapped something up, actually, kind of need a break," I said, twisting to show off the fresh holes in my armour. He winced in sympathy - but not too much sympathy.

"You should probably get that looked at, Commander. And if you're quite sure. Going to be planetside long?" He asked.

"Couple of days. Why?"

"Ah, good. Myself and the Dauntless are set to be here a few days as well. It might be worth catching up, if you'd like. I had a chat with that benefactor of yours," he said lightly.

That gave me a jolt.

"The Illusive Man?" I asked and Jarrion raised his eyebrows.

"Is that his name? Very enigmatic!"

"What did he want with you?" Miranda asked and from the sound of things she didn't know anything about this. Jarrion just kept on smiling like he always seemed to.

"Nothing particularly important. I am sure we'll get into it when we next bump into each other. No need to rush it! Simply message the Assertive and they'll pass it onto me. At your convenience, Commander! At your convenience."

And just like that he was gone again, heading back to his group which then carried on towards whatever the hell it was he was here to do, trailing a few curious onlookers in their wake.

"Is this bad?" Miranda asked.

"Well it's not good," I said.

Life is never simple.

Thought for the day: Only the insane have strength enough to propser. Only those who propser may judge what is truly sane.