Disclaimer: I do no own Mass Effect, I do not claim to own Mass Effect, I am only doing this for fun.

Author Notes: If you are reading this, please review, so I know whether or not it is worth continuing to publish. Views are only really a tick of "opened", not actual readership. I realize some people will be intimidated by the length, but those who are not, please let me know.

Episode 2: Poltergeist and Spectre [Part I]

Shepard was seated on a couch in the Officer's Duty Room, enjoying her morning coffee and operational reports. The room was situated on the port side of the ship just aft of the CIC, connected via a short corridor to a science lab on the other side and the Communication-Conference room tucked behind the Normandy's sole elevator. Such a room was a standard feature of larger ships, so its inclusion on the Normandy was peculiar, but definitely welcome.

Its design was split in two by a half-wall just behind the door leading to the COMCON. The section closest to the CIC was an office space for the CO, complete with a desk and a private terminal. The deeper half was done up as a casual space with an L-shaped couch and a coffee table set under the large rectangular viewports. There was also a sideboard with refreshments: tea bags, packets of instant coffee, cups, and an electric kettle. In the very back was a tiny officer's washroom. The coloring was sterile, gunmetal-grey walls, black couches, and silver-grey furniture, but Shepard knew that on most ships the officers made it their own with additions. As the only officer aboard who would use this room with any frequency, she simply did not have the time to personalize yet.

Counting her and the marines, the Normandy only had twenty-four people, the smallest crew in the Alliance. Other frigates, even on skeleton, already had at least thirty. EDI's multitasking, a difference in design, as well as the Normandy's non-combatant mission parameters allowed for reduction of personnel. The AI was helpful, polite, and sometimes even engaged in short conversations. After a week Shepard was already mixing her pronouns. While it would have been technically right to call EDI an it, Shepard's tongue lapsed to she most of the time. EDI did not correct her either. The rest of the crew seemed more than alright with the AI as well.

Shepard was also happy to say she finished the documents Admiral Hackett gave her. She would be the first one to admit that engineering matters were wholly beyond her, so some of the material took a bit of background to grasp. A few conversations with her chief engineer, Lieutenant Adams and the ship's two other engineers, Donnelly and Daniels, and she was now sure in her knowledge of the Normandy's capabilities. It also helped that the three of them did not seem to mind her lack of knowledge and just how fast they could lose her in jargon.

Adams had a hand in the design of the Normandy's systems, while Donnelly and Daniels had worked together on a number of ships before they were hand-picked specifically for the Normandy. Due to the compact size of the Normandy's engine room and the turian-derived simplification of the core design, two engineers were deemed adequate to take care of the power plant and engines, and the Normandy got more than adequate. With Adams' supervision and expertise the ship would run at a hundred percent.

The first job Shepard pulled with her marines had been an easy one; a settlement in the traverse reported their supplies vanishing in the middle of the night. Shepard took all three of her marines with her to investigate. The four of them made quick work of tracking down the culprits, a band of Blue Suns that overstayed their welcome. Fixing the problem was even easier; even twenty mercenaries did not have the skill to match four trained Alliance soldiers, they did not stand a chance against her alone.

Despite how throwaway the job had been, it allowed her to get to know her marines and begin building the sort of rapport on which to build solid teamwork. It also allowed her to find her footing in command and learn things about her people that only a true combat scenario could reveal.

Ashley and Kaidan worked well together from the get-go, her skills with weapons complemented by his biotics and knack with tech, they supported each other near effortlessly. The two of them could also rein in Jenkins and his inexperience. Shepard noticed that Jenkins seemed to respond to Ashley better than Kaidan. It was hard to miss that the gunnery chief managed to establish her authority over him, and the corporal looked up to her as a fellow marine. Of course he also looked up to his commanding officer, but there was a difference. With Shepard he acted as if she was an authority figure, not a friend per se.

"Ugh… Commander?"

"Yes, Joker?" Shepard looked up from her report.

"Admiral Hackett is on the horn."

"Thanks, I'll take it in the COMCON."

Setting down her coffee and pad, Shepard got to her feet and made her way to the communications room. In the few days since departure she had swapped her officer's uniform for a set of dark grey fatigues that were more appropriate to a soldier than an officer, but they were more comfortable.

When she entered the COMCON, she made a straight beeline for the console, "EDI, if you will."

"Putting you through, Commander." EDI replied.

The COMCON was a simple room with the same gunmetal-grey walls and no decorations, dominated by a wood-topped conference table and chairs, enough to seat six, though there was also standing room for a few more. Buzzing picked up as the holographic projector at the center of the table came to life. As soon as the image of Admiral Hackett solidified, Shepard came to attention and then snapped a salute.

"Commander," the admiral greeted, "at ease."

Shepard shifted and clasped her hands behind her back. "What can I do, Admiral?"

"I read your report on your first mission. You did exactly what I wanted, a clean in and out, excellent job."

"Thank you, sir." Shepard replied, but she knew that this was more than just a pat-on-the-back sort of call, that could have been sent via text.

"Now, I have another job for you," the Admiral went on. "One of our settlements in the Zeta Cluster has had some mercenary problems in the past couple months. They only came to us because as of a week ago the mercenaries turned to overt extortion at mech-point."

The Zeta Cluster, if Shepard remembered her star charts, was an out of the way corner of the Attican Traverse. One system had a relay, but it was often a stop-over, because the whole cluster was poor in anything worth mining on any scale other than local use. "Who are we looking for, Admiral? There are a lot of mercenaries out there, almost as many as slavers and pirates." Shepard wondered.

"Eclipse. I am forwarding the relevant coordinates the settlers provided us. It is likely that the place is a staging ground as well as a depot for contraband. I want you to take your marines, get in, and make sure that whatever Eclipse have there, they lose."

"Understood, sir."

"I will remind you to thread lightly. This colony is on the edge of the Terminus for a reason. The civilians who contacted us have done so despite opposition. Some of them are willing to pay the protection fees rather than have what they call 'heavy-handed' Alliance interference."

"If Eclipse is there, Admiral, I'll serve them the eviction order."

"Good. Report to me when you get this done, Hackett out."

The hologram faded and the buzzing stopped. Shepard gripped the table as she ran through the possibilities. She would give the odds a fifty-fifty split; they could get there and find nothing. The fifty percent she pegged for the base actually being there divided in two again, thus twenty five percent odds of the base being too big for four marines to take on all by themselves. This was more ICT training run than their shakedown job. Fortunately they could even out the odds using the EDI's bag of tricks. Still, this would take recon and planning.

"EDI, I need to talk to Joker."

"Of course Commander," EDI replied.

"Commander?" Joker asked.

"You should have gotten coordinates from a data packet."

"Yea, they're here. Nu-Zeta, huh? You want me to get us there?"

"Set a course, Joker."

"On our way, Commander. Our ETA is ten hours."

The link beeped to indicate a closure. Shepard turned exited the COMCON.

Joker knew what he was doing, when the ship entered the system, he immediately rigged it for silent running without even a word from her. It took longer to make planet approach without using the main drive, but this way, unless someone had a damn good telescope pointed at just the right part of the sky, the Normandy was invisible to any conventional sensor net.

Shepard stood behind the pilot's chair as they approached and made synchronous orbit. Nu-Zeta had a system of four planets, with an asteroid belt dividing it in half. Of the four bodies, Howe, Zealand, Campbell, and Chatham, only the second, Zealand was habitable. A tiny garden world with an atmosphere a little bit thicker than Earth's and the temperature a few degrees warmer, but the gravity was comparable. From orbit she could tell why the settlers chose this little corner of the galaxy. The equatorial region was one giant desert, but there were pockets of greenery at higher latitudes. Virgin forests of alien trees, possibly even jungles and rainforests. The poles had no ice caps, but there were plenty of large water bodies, but only one she could call an ocean.

A group of a thousand human settlers made their home on the bank of a large freshwater lake, making up a single town. They were there for the clean air, the rural feel, and all the land they could farm and ranch on. New Wellington was a galactic frontier town, now complete with a band of outlaws.

"Commander," EDI spoke up. "I am detecting a coded distress beacon."

"From where? The colonists?" Shepard wondered, tearing her eyes away from the picturesque vista below them. Was the Eclipse mounting a raid on the poor town?

"No, the signal is coming from one of the planet's moons," EDI explained.

Shepard hummed as she pondered this; an encrypted distress beacon was not typical fare. Most ships in peril sent a call across all bands. Distress was a universal thing; few would compound someone's woes in such a situation. A coded beacon meant that the sender was sending for someone specific. EDI probably only picked it up because the Alliance had teams of cryptanalysts whose only job was to crack these things. EDI could probably detect many more encoded things because of background work by the crypto unit.

"Can't be civilian, Commander. They'd go for an open band," Joker said.

"My thinking exactly. Move us into the moon's orbit, Joker."

"Aye, aye, ma'am." Joker was already tapping the controls.

Shepard stood behind Joker's chair the whole way, watching the ship move. Unlike Earth, this planet had two rocky satellites. They orbited the planet on opposite sides, giving Zealand both a night and daytime moons. This particular one was the larger of the two, though still only half the size of Earth's Luna. Just to show how unimportant it was, the charts called it Zealand Alpha. It was just another barren rock with no atmosphere, heavily cratered and bleached almost white by cosmic radiation.

"EDI, what are we looking at here? What's its registration? How big is the ship?"

"Sensors indicate a personal craft, thirty meters long, registered as the Defiant, Hierarchy merchant marine, Port Cipritine."

Shepard hummed; this was getting more interesting by the minute, a personal craft transmitting a secure distress beacon, from the Turian Hierarchy merchant fleet, straight from Palaven? "Any idea what happened to it?"

"I am detecting a hull breach in the aft section; the damage is consistent with impact from a mass accelerator cannon projectile."

Shepard let her hands drop from the back of Joker's chair. "EDI, whatever attacked that ship might still be around. Keep an eye out." The ship that brought down this craft could not have been particularly big if the craft remained intact, but if they sneaked up on the Normandy, it could still get ugly. She did not want to have to explain to Admiral Hackett that she let some sorry lot put a hole in the Normandy a week in.

"What are the odds that we're dealing with real turian merchant marine?" Joker wondered.

"Out here? Unlikely. Is it a trap? Possible." Shepard replied.

"You're still going to investigate."

"Yea, I'm going to take the marines down there to look around. If this is a genuine distress call, then I can't just ignore it." It simply would not sit well with Shepard, even if the person in distress was a Turian.

"Bring me back something nice!" Joker called at her retreating back.

The Kodiak shuttle was being prepared as Shepard made the final checks on her N7 grade armor, making sure all the seals were closed and tight. Her armor was custom colored obsidian black and wine red, accented by crimson lighting elements she could turn off at will, her one true vanity.

The suit always took a bit of precise slotting to put on, as underlying the protective plates she had an exo-frame joint motorization system. The mechanisms showed in the gaps between plates at her shoulders, elbows, hips, and knees. Her model was not designed for heavy lifting, but it helped with hand-to-hand combat. Mostly, Shepard had it for the fringe benefits. When not giving her right hook added oomph, or making her kick like a horse, the system helped to redirect recoil and stabilize her arms under the load of a heavier weapon. This improved aim precision, and precision was her area of expertise.

Once the suit was on, she strapped on her webbing and peripherals. Most people used magnetic attachments for peripherals, but those could be demagnetized, so she went for reliability. Most being thermal clips, including a good thirty in the big pouch at the small of her back and another twenty in another pouch behind her right shoulder.

Finally came her arsenal, first she slipped her twin Carnifex pistols, Sin and Dex, into their holsters high on the outside of her thighs. Rigid accelerator rails for shot-after-shot precision and a flipped thermal clip receiver on Sin meant that the twins could no longer fold up for carry, and so adjustments had to be made. Then she passed Vincent the Mantis sniper rifle, her long-time partner, behind her back on its extra long strap. The final weapon, her combat knife, she slipped into a sheath on her left calf. While not a super hard monomolecular blade, what her knife lost in absurd sharpness, it made up for in resilience and utility value.

Her arsenal of choice consumed clips at an alarming rate, but as far as she was concerned the math was on her side. Three trunk bullets from the twins or twelve bullets from a rapid-firing assault rifle, still half a thermal clip, and really just as much damage as you could only kill someone once. A precision tooled weapon and practice shooting thirty to forty clips a day with each hand allowed her to put trunk and head shots with pinpoint accuracy with either hand. Add laser sights and she would do it akimbo.

"Alright people, let's do this," she called, moving toward the open door of the shuttle. "I don't expect any real trouble; but keep alert. We are dealing with what appears to be a Hierarchy merchant marine ship. We go in, look for survivors, and get out. This is a purely humanitarian."

"You don't think this could be a trap?" Kaidan wondered.

"The thought crossed my mind, but… it begs the question, who benefits? The colonists have nothing that could hole a ship. If it was Eclipse and they have a ship, I'd like to know what kind, and maybe where it is. It stands to reason we may find more of them than we'd like down on Zealand," Shepard explained.

"Coded distress beacons, Turian ships where they don't belong… something does not add up, Skipper." Ashley spoke up, suspicion clearly in her tone.

"No, it does not. Still, if someone out there is in need of aid, I can't just look the other way."

The Kodiak eased onto the moon's surface a hundred meters away from the grey, elongated ship, a safety margin should the ship be a trap rigged to blow. The four of them checked their helmet seals one last time before opening the Kodiak's side door to the void of space.

Shepard took point walking toward the ship. The moon's gravity was slightly above Luna's; it allowed them to walk at a brisk pace with limited bounce. The Defiant had crashed in the middle of an open plain, at a clearly controlled angle, leaving a long furrow in its wake. Still, it looked like it snagged something under the surface as it plowed along, leaving bits of hull at the bottom of the through. One of the ship's nacelles had ripped off and was now in chunks some distance behind the primary hull. When the ship finally came to a complete stop, its nose ended up partly buried, sand-like material settling over and partly obscuring the bridge viewports, its rear pitched up a few degrees. There in the ship's aft starboard side, above the stub of the amputated nacelle, was a huge gaping hole where the round had hit. The plating had buckled inward and was charred black by the heat the round carried. From what Shepard could see, it vented a large mostly open space.

As they approached what looked like a forward airlock, Shepard wondered just how much of the ship had vented by way of the bullet hole. She raised her right hand and brought up her omni-tool. The airlock interface lit up in response.

"Hah, lock is still engaged, that's a good sign." She announced, tapping away at her tool. If there was something Turian design could be relied on, it was hardiness, and layers of encryption on everything. As she worked, it occurred to her that maybe it even made sense that this ship would have an encrypted distress beacon, hailing allies, and not just random passer-byes. Still, none of this explained what a merchant marine vessel was doing so far outside Hierarchy space.

The lock finally gave way, and the outer door opened with tremendous difficulty, clearly damaged, or just fouled up by the fine, un-weathered, razor sharp material of the moon's surface. There was no rush of decompression; the dust at her feet did not even stir. Shepard was the first one up, followed by the other three.

When the outer doors closed behind them, the airlock did not cycle and inner door controls did not offer resistance. When they opened, there was no decompression into the voided airlock either. Shepard was the first into the pitch black cavern of the ship, reaching for Sin as she pressed herself to the bulkhead near the doorway. Kaidan and Ashley made entrance back to back, assault rifles up, flashlights lit, as they swept the long hallway spanning the ship. Jenkins brought up the rear, fleeting through Kaidan's beam to the other side of the ship, pressing himself against the opposite bulkhead.

Shepard tapped the side of her helmet, turning on her twin temple-level flashlights. The beams revealed a mess: wires and cables hanging everywhere, a few of them still sparked. A metal beam had come loose from the ceiling and was hanging off one side. The deck was strewn with an assortment twisted metal, chunks of stuff, broken things, and other fragments she could not hope to identify. There was also surface dust everywhere, shimmering ghost-like in the light beams. With the ship voided out, everything was silent as well; the only sound being the faint wheeze of her suit's breathing apparatus.

As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she became aware that the darkness was not absolute. The light of the system's sun penetrated through tiny gaps in the surface material over the viewports on the bridge. As she turned aft, she spotted an access-way to the deck below. There was also a pair of doors, one on each side of the long passage. The door on the starboard side was shut, but buckled outwards, with a ghostly beam of sunlight passing through a crack between its misshapen halves. Shepard knew without a doubt where the round had hit. If impact had damaged the inner doors, it was no wonder the whole ship vented out. It was a testament to Hierarchy engineering that the inner bulkheads withstood the impact as they did

"Alright," Shepard turned back to her marines, "Kaidan, Ashley, I want you two to sweep the deck below. Keep in radio contact; you so much as think that you're not alone down there… radio in."

"Got it," Kaidan replied.

Shepard watched them go toward the access way and when they vanished down the ladder she turned to find Jenkins still pressed up against the opposite bulkhead, his own assault rifle up, beam of light sweeping the darkness rhythmically.

"C'mon, Corporal. We'll check out this deck."

"Yes, ma'am!" he replied.

Shepard first made her way to the bridge, putting her gun back in its holster. Her light beams caught nothing more than dust and damage. More downed wires, signs of a minor electrical fire, but everything was largely intact. An experimental tap on the computer console caused a flicker, but the system was in a minimum-power state. Perhaps it was locked out, to conserve emergency power for the beacon. Most importantly, there was no one in the pilot's seat. The ship had clearly come down at a controlled manner; if the pilot was not slumped over the console then they were somewhere else, quite possibly still alive.

"Commander, all is clear down here. Engineering is surprisingly intact, but there is a breach in the bow section, I'd say ripped open during the crash," Kaidan's voice cracked over the radio.

"There's nobody here, skipper, and I mean no bodies either," Ashley added.

Shepard turned her head aft, her beams did not reach that far, but suddenly she had a feeling she knew where their missing pilot was. The faint beam of light penetrating the buckled door had shifted a little as the moon moved in its orbit. It now caught the edge of the second door across from it.

"Got it, I'm honestly glad you've found no one. Jenkins and I are on the bridge, but we are moving aft. It's the only place left to look."

"Roger that, ma'am. We're coming up." Ashley replied.

Shepard took her time, weaving around the debris and the part-collapsed beam, making sure not to touch it, who knew how secure its remaining attachment really was. Even at this low gravity, if it came down, it could seriously hurt someone. "Jenkins, mind the beam," she warned.

As she approached the two doors at the aft, she poked the console leading to the impact room. It was unlocked, and unsealed, had someone tried to open it? When she touched the mechanism, the door twitched, but it could not move more than a few centimeters, it was well and truly stuck. There was soot on the very edges of the crack, a fireball, now long extinguished by vent out, had raked the space after the round hit. There would be no one alive in there, but she could say she tried.

Jenkins was on her left, his rifle's light beam trained on the other door watchfully. Shepard turned around and tapped that door's console. It lit up red, locked. She raised her omni-tool and fired up her decryption program. At the edge of her twin light beams she saw Kaidan's royal blue, white-lined armor materialize from the gloom, followed by Ashley's more navy blue.

"This is the only room left, the buckled door is stuck," she explained.

"The engines were manually shut down and the ship's core is on minimum output." Kaidan replied.

"Well that's interesting. The ship came down in a controlled manner, then shut down the engines and put the core to minimum power to reduce heat output, letting the ship void and cool. The owner played possum. I just hope they're still playing, you know?"

The lock turned green and Shepard lowered her arm. She pressed her palm to the mechanism and the door slid open slowly, stuttering. There was more darkness, more downed wires, and more dust in the light beams. Shepard let her omni-tool turn off as she reached for Sin and made entry, casting her helmet beams into the corners in a wide but quick scan, making sure to hit the opposite corner on her immediate left.

When no one jumped out, Shepard moved further in, scanning the room slowly. This was a private cabin. The viewport blast shutters were closed, admitting no light. She inched along, scanning. The beams encountered a desk bolted to the deck. The chair that belonged to it was upright on its casters, more evidence of someone surviving the crash. On the opposite side was the small bathroom, she flitted inside, sweeping the corners, no one and nothing other than a big mess. Everything not bolted down had fallen in the crash. From the doorway she saw the three marines make entry, their light beams sweeping, moving deeper into the main room.

"Commander, we found the pilot." Kaidan voiced over the radio.

Shepard moved back into the main room, locating Kaidan only by the beam of his rifle's flashlight, a few centimeters higher off the deck than Ashley's. Both had their weapons trained on the bed, and there, on it laid an unmistakable shape of a turian in charcoal black and burgundy red armor.

"Is he…" Jenkins began, but trailed off. He hovered behind them, almost entirely invisible in his smoke grey armor, save for his beam of light.

Shepard raised her hand, her omni-tool flared to life; she activated her first aid scanner and passed her arm over the pilot. The readout made her smile brightly under her helmet. "He's alive."

"Wow," Jenkins breathed.

Shepard's light beams moved up. Turian beds were heavily padded to accommodate their carapaces, but with no atmosphere the padding deflated almost flat. The pilot was on his back, his head further supported by a sizable but almost ineffective square pillow block amidst a sea of conventional pillows. But Shepard spotted the unmistakable and familiar shape peeking out from underneath.

"Stay back, pilot's armed!" She commanded, reaching for the gun's butt with her right hand. Her fingers had just touched it when his right hand shot out and grabbed her wrist. "Hold you fire!" she commanded as she turned her wrist, attempting to slip free. His grip did not waver.

The beams of light from three assault rifles combined into an intense glare right on him, but the marines did not fire. His helmet faceplate was completely opaque, making eye contact impossible, but he had to be staring right at her. She hoped the marines realized he was possibly disoriented if not outright injured, and that did not mean he was dangerous, weapon or not.

Then, all of the sudden he let go. Shepard stepped back, taking his weapon with her. A hefty, powerful looking shotgun of a make and model she did not recognize offhand. The same hand that had been around her wrist now moved slowly toward the side of his helmet, tapping at it. Shepard heard a faint clicking buzz on her communicator; she reached up to tap the authorization button, allowing their suits communicators to synch.

"Who are you?" he asked.

Shepard could not help but raise an eyebrow he would not see. Someone was awfully commanding for being the distressed party. "Commander Shepard, Alliance Navy, and you are?" Shepard replied.

"Nihlus Kryik, Council Spectre."

Suddenly the pieces clicked into place, everything began to make sense: the ship's identification, the coded beacon, the weird location, and even the unfamiliar weapon in her hand. A Spectre! She took one more step back, to keep the shotgun out of his reach. Spectre or not, she was not taking chances. She could not see any other weapon on him, but who knew, the shotgun may have been peeking out simply because it was quite large, he could still have a smaller gun stashed away. At what point had he woken? Had his game of possum been good enough to fool her? It helped that she had absolutely no idea what a Turian's normal sleeping heart-rate was.

"My ship picked up a distress beacon," Shepard explained. "We came here expecting to rescue a crew from the Turian merchant marine, not a Spectre."

"I would not be a very good Spectre if my ship broadcasted it," He replied.

Shepard never took her eyes off him, even as she motioned for the marines to lower their weapons with her free hand. "Hmm… point." Shepard replied. "Alright, you want to get off this rock?"

"If you are offering. Yes."

"Weapons?" She asked.

He sat up and lifted the pillows to show her that he had nothing more hidden in the pile. "Just the one you confiscated. Most of my armory was in the cargo hold when Eclipse decided to use my ship for target practice."

In other words, most of it was at best spaced, at worst destroyed, either way that meant it was gone. If most of that stuff had been Spectre-spec then it might have cost him quite a bit. Spectres had to supply their own gear, or so the rumors went. Factor in the ship, which looked ready for the scrap heap, and suddenly Shepard realized just how big a disaster had befallen him.

The rifles trained on him drifted away, light beams scattered, flooding the room with diffused light. Shepard kept her helmet beams on him, but angled her head down slightly to prevent the glare from shining directly into his eyes, common courtesy was a thing.

"Well, guess that means welcome to the Normandy, huh? C'mon."

"Can I have my gun back now?" he asked, clearly amused, as he got to his feet.

He positively towered over her. Would the crown of her head even reach his jaw level? She was hardly little at one meter seventy-five, but he had to be over two meters tall. Shepard glanced at the shotgun and then up at him. She wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt; surely he would not turn on her with three marines in the room, right? She offered him the shotgun butt-first. He took it and clipped it to his armor at his lower back with practiced fluency.

"There are things I want to get before we go."

"Hopefully you have some food rations left. I'm not sure what, if anything, we have on board that's dextro." Shepard replied.

He paused, sparing her a look, and probably some sort of expression that she could not see.

"I'm being honest here," she assured.

Forty minutes later, as Shepard jumped down from the airlock onto the moon's surface, she raised her hand to her comm. "Shepard to Normandy, come in."

"Reading you loud and clear, Commander."

"Mission successful, Joker. We are coming back with a guest. Be in position to pick up the shuttle." She glanced over her shoulder as she watched the Spectre carry the final crate. Low gravity was really a good thing in this case, because those cases felt quite heavy even then.

With some effort and a cutting torch they managed to pry open the cargo hold doors and get a look inside, the whole cargo room had vented during the initial fire and decompression, but there were some empty flat-packed cargo crates still in their racks on the wall of the hold. Three of the most usable ones were packed with personal effects from his quarters.

The fourth crate came from the ship's galley and was full of emergency rations and some vacuum-packed foods from the cooling unit that survived exposure to the void. The only thing from his small pantry that survived was a large metal container, yet unopened, full of some sort of instant drink that vaguely looked like the dextro answer to good old coffee. Overall it looked like he had food enough for more than two weeks, which was more than long enough to finish their job here and drop him off at the Citadel.

"Any signs of other ships out there?" Shepard went on.

"Nothing so far, Commander. EDI is monitoring."

"Good, we'll be back on board in about ten to fifteen."

"Did you remember my souvenir?"

"I did. I got you a finger-nail sized shard of the projectile that hit the ship. Shepard out." As her hand dropped away from the radio, she realized that the Spectre was looking at her again; their links were still synchronized, so he could hear her half of the conversation. "My helmsman. Now you know why I was digging shrapnel out of your bulkhead with my knife, hope you don't mind." She explained and moved toward the shuttle.

"Does he collect trophies?" he wondered.

"He just asked me to bring him back something nice." She chuckled; let that teach Joker to be careful of what he wished for.

Ashley was already in the shuttle when the two of them caught up. Jenkins was checking on the straps that tied down the three crates already inside. Kaidan was still scanning the surroundings. The fourth crate was put on top of the others and tied down, and then all of them strapped into the seats.

The shuttle came to life as its door swung shut and sealed. The ventral thrusters ignited and shuttle lifted off. Then there was a light punch of acceleration when the drive thrusters kicked in, pushing the shuttle's nose up. A minute later she heard the first sound from outside, a series of loud beeps, which indicated the cabin had pressurized.

A quick glance at the wall panel to confirm pressurization and Shepard undid her seals and pulled her helmet off. She set it down in her lap and ran a hand through her hair to set it in a modicum of order and out of her eyes. She hated EVA work; the recycler never did a good enough job to keep the air from becoming stale, and then there was the absolute absence of outside sound. There were silent rooms, her domain, and then there was absolute void silence. Something about that total absence of sound unnerved her no matter how much she tried to ignore it. To say nothing that sensory deprivation of that sort could mess with the mind, EVA madness was a thing to those unused to it. When she looked up, the other three marines removed their helmets as well.

It was probably the fact that everyone else had done it that caused the Spectre to reach for his own helmet seals and finally take it off. Shepard could not say she was some sort of expert on turians; still, this one easily fell into the 'most striking' category. Dark mahogany plates, mocha skin, and linen-cream colored colony markings in a complex design that spanned from his chin and mandibles, over his face and forehead, and around up to the outer edges of his long fringe, with a central stripe running the crest's length from the diamond-shaped forehead plate right to the tip of the central spine.

The complexity of the design reminded Shepard of the facial tattoos of the Maori people she had seen in a history book. Yet perhaps the most arresting were his new-leaf green eyes which almost glowed against the backdrop of the dark skin around them. He seemed keen on something above her head and it was a heartbeat before Shepard realized it was the stripe of white in her hair. She grinned; it looked like they both saw something curious in the other.

Shepard glanced at the other marines; Jenkins was staring out the side viewport with a thoughtful look on his face. Ashley was sitting as far away from the Spectre as the shuttle would allow, across and in the other corner. Kaidan was staring at the deck plates, but he must have felt her gaze because he looked up. "Are you alright?" she asked.

"Of course, Commander." He replied.

Somehow, Shepard could not help but feel like there was a large pachyderm in the shuttle. The silence was far from comfortable or even relaxed. It had everything to do with the Spectre, but Shepard would not blame him, and she could not blame the marines for being out of their plates. As the shuttle continued to climb, a flicker of reflected light shone into the cabin for all of a second.

Shepard glanced out the viewport; the Normandy loomed beyond, the star's light reflected off the ship's arching back. There was absolutely nothing to do with this; it was her executive decision to go on this rescue mission, knowing full well that they would bring a turian aboard a top secret ship that was part built on borrowed-without-license technology of his people. That was even before she had known he was a Spectre.

She glanced at said Spectre out of the corner of her eye; he had turned to the viewports as well. Idly Shepard wondered just how obvious the borrowed influences were, but asking was absolutely out of the question.

When the shuttle landed back in the Normandy's bay, Shepard was the first off. Joker apparently spread the news of their new guest, as their arrival was met with three armed servicemen. Shepard dismissed them and the marines as well. The Spectre made short work of his cargo crates, but left them by one of the support pillars, so that the shuttle could be stowed away in its overhead gantry cradle. With that task done, Shepard personally escorted him to deck three. As they rounded the elevator, she made a beeline to the locked doors of the unused XO's cabin.

Mid-shift as it was, the mess area around the elevator was almost wholly clear, just Second Lieutenant Dean Matthews, who was in charge of the galley, and two curious, bleary nightshift crewmembers. It took about five seconds for them to take their fill of Spectre-spotting. Both got up and slunk off via the opposite way around the elevator. As if they could not have made their curiosity any more obvious. Shepard glanced up at the Spectre and caught his mandibles giving a flicker that almost looked like a grin.

"This is a nice ship," he said.

Shepard somehow thought he was commenting on the crew. "Still got that shipyard smell wafting from the ducts." She keyed the code to unlock the door. The lock turned green readily and the door swished open. The XO's cabin was an open room with a built-in bathroom, sitting area, office space, bed, and two viewports that right at that moment showed a vista of Zealand.

"This is yours as long as you're on board," she said.

"Thank you."

"Hah, you might want to hold on to the thanks for a moment. I do have a few… restrictions. I ask that you do not venture onto decks two or four. However you are free to use the observation lounges on this deck, or if the mood strikes you, the gym area in the shuttle bay on deck five."

"What of deck one?"

"That's my private cabin. Common courtesy applies." She could not help but smile. "If you do need something, and if we have it aboard, I'll do my best to accommodate."

"Understood," He moved deeper into the room, looking about.

"Are you alright… how many hours were you down on that moon?"

"Around thirty Galactic Standard hours." He stopped near the closest viewport and looked back at her. There was that 'looking through someone' quality to his stare that bothered her a little. "It is not enough to slow me down."

Shepard could not help but wonder if he was soldiering. His armor showed no serious damage, just the sort of scratches and paint chips that would accumulate with field work. She had no real medical knowledge, so her ability to pick up on signs of injury was limited. It was nothing short of a miracle that he essentially walked away from a crash like he did.

Though maybe it made some sense, all in all his ship was gouged and ripped by the moon's un-weathered surface. With inertial dampeners and low gravity, the momentum transfer inside could have been reduced. Still, there was nothing to do about it; she could not just drag him by the arm to see the doctor, so she would have to let it go.

"Just one more thing." Shepard figured a bit of formality might not be a bad thing. "You said Eclipse brought down your ship?"

He glanced back at her, "I was wondering when you would ask. I am curious what an Alliance vessel is doing out here."

He wanted quid pro quo huh? Well she could do that. "There is a settlement on the planet; the settlers requested we investigate mercenary activity. Eclipse has apparently resorted to extortion." A clinical explanation of what they were doing here, but it would do.

"Then our goals align. I was investigating Eclipse smuggling. The cell I am tracking has a base in this system. I would like to join you down on the surface."

Give a clinical explanation and get one back, quid pro quo. "I have no problems with that, but… " She wondered if that was entirely a good idea, given that most of his armory was now orbiting the planet. How would a Spectre even work with a squad of Alliance marines? She had no authority to order him around, and he had no authority over her either. Such a situation was a logistical nightmare under the best of circumstances. "How will this work? I am not in the position to defer command to you, Spectre or not."

"Normally I conduct my investigations alone, but in this case I am willing to let you lead, though I will collect my own evidence."

"When you say you are willing to give me the lead…"

"I leave the plan up to you."

Ah so he was deferring the tactical decisions, but he wanted to do his own snooping. "I can work with that. I'll be blunt with you; my orders are to stop Eclipse harassing our settlement." She shifted her weight from foot to foot, "I intend to go down there, cut through if I have to, and then I'm going to sabotage their power core. Best way I know to stop them."

"I would plant explosives on the power core. The explosion will be spectacular, and there is no guesswork involved." His tone was matter of fact, but there was that quick flick again, now she was sure it was a grin.

It took a long moment for what he had actually said to sink in, and when it did, Shepard could not help herself, she laughed. "Well, it's the way to go if expertise is in short supply. I happen to have certain… expertise." She did not know what possessed her to say that, but suddenly it was as if some sort of ice had broken between them.

"Fair enough."

"Either way, they're not going to be bothering those settlers ever again." Shepard affirmed. She just could not believe the direction this conversation took. Very few people discussed their methods of sabotage, mainly because they did not want to look like they enjoyed their work. She did not enjoy wanton destruction, but she was trained to be good at causing it. "Well I think I'll leave you be, I have no timeframe for this job, it can wait about twelve hours. Rest up, we'll talk later."

"Yes, we will talk later."

The tone of his voice had something in it that made Shepard wonder if he was indeed alright, still, there was nothing she could do. She turned, exited the room, and made her way to the elevator. "EDI."

"Yes, Commander?" The AI replied.

"I need your best scans of that mercenary base; could you have them on my terminal in the OD when they're done?"

"Of course, Commander."

"Thank you, EDI."

Right now though, she wanted out of her armor, after that a shower, and then a hearty meal. That would probably burn off an hour or two, and then she could take a good solid look at the scans.

Sixteen Terran hours later the shuttle was once again down on the deck. Shepard was with everyone going planet-side, buckling on her webbing, checking her guns and her kit. The final piece of equipment was a reinforced case that contained three demolition charges that she personally assembled and configured. She opted for the combined detonators, with both timer and remote detonation being an option.

The Spectre arrived in full gear, though his weaponry was only the shotgun he had on him. Shepard slipped Vincent behind her back and reached into the weapon cage for one of the spare Avengers and another Carnifex. She walked over to the Spectre and held out the weapons, "Spectre Kryik, here. It'll round out your ranges. Would you like one of our spare sniper rifles as well?"

"No, these will do." He replied.

Shepard smiled, "Gunnery Chief Williams knows her stuff, and so, while they're not Spectre spec they will serve you well."

"Thank you," he took the rifle and clipped it to the back of his armor at his right shoulder, the heavy pistol to his right side.

Shepard nodded, reaching for her earpiece, "Joker, we're about ready to go."

"The Normandy is already in position. Just say when."

Shepard turned to the three marines. "Alright people, hustle! EDI got us a thorough scan of the place, complete with layout. All of it should be on your omni-tools -that includes yours Spectre Kryik-" She tossed a brief glance at the Spectre. "We're going in there outnumbered, yes, but we're not blind, and we're definitely not stupid. They don't know we know the layout, they don't expect marines, and they definitely won't expect a N7 and a Spectre. We'll show those mercs that when it comes down to it, military discipline has no substitutes!"

"Oorah!" Jenkins cheered, pumping a fist in the air.

"Is there always a speech involved?" the Spectre asked.

"No, I save them for special occasions." Shepard replied, moving past him toward the shuttle.

The shuttle landed about a kilometer away from the base in a clearing surrounded by monstrous alien trees. It was about an hour before sunset on this part of Zealand. Unlike Earth, this planet turned in such a way that the sun set in the east, but everything else was somewhat the same. The air even smelled of wet soil and rotting leaves, familiar enough to a certain degree. Shepard was the first one off the shuttle. Sunlight barely filtered through the canopy to the forest floor, but she had a navigational lock on her omni-tool, so getting lost was impossible.

"Are we doing a night attack?" Kaidan wondered.

"Yes, I figured it'll give us the best entry. The base is in a natural lower area, and the only way down that does not involve rappelling harnesses is a vehicle access road. It is much too open without the cover of darkness; just on the off chance they have a sniper worthy of the name."

"Have you rappelled, ma'am?" Jenkins wondered.

Shepard stopped, glanced back at him, and grinned. "I've rappelled, rock-climbed, parachuted, flown wingsuits, and done base jumps, some in a wingsuit. Some of that I've done just for fun."

"That's… quite a list," Jenkins echoed awed.

"Haven't bungee jumped though, never saw the appeal. C'mon, we have ground to cover." Shepard turned and began to walk, turning to her omni-tool for the directions. She had started recreational parachuting before the Blitz, the dozens of jumps clocked by the time she entered ICT had allowed her to pick up those modules as part of her training. It was exceedingly rare that she got to use those skills, but she had the background on her record.

She was not at all surprised when the Spectre fell in step with her. "Wingsuits?" he wondered.

"Spectres don't do parachutes or long free-falls?" Shepard wondered, unable to help herself from teasing.

"No. Most of us prefer our feet to remain on something solid."

Shepard grinned but said nothing more on the subject.

The rest of the walk passed in relative silence, which bothered her simply because it looked like she was the only one who ever talked to the Spectre. Kaidan was merely aware of him being there, a temporary ally. Jenkins listened to their conversations with a sort of awe on his face, and he acted as if it was not his right to speak up. Ashley seemed to keep as much distance from the Spectre as was politely possible.

They stopped at a rock outcropping about fifty meters away from the top of the roadway. A dirt track from the top of the ramp-like feature led north, the outcrop was south from it, and so even if a vehicle came up or down the road, they would not be spotted easily.

"We'll hunker down here for an hour or so, until it's fully dark. Meantime we can hash out our game plan." This probably should have been done on board the Normandy, but discussing missions in the mess was not a good idea. The mess was a high traffic area, she would not ask her crew to sacrifice their space for even half an hour just because there was someone on board she needed to keep off the CIC. She would have liked to do this sort of planning around the coffee table of the OD.

As the five of them settled in the shelter offered by the rock cropping, Shepard raised her omni-tool and projected the base schematics into the space between them. The base was rectangular, with prefab sections of various sizes and configurations arranged in two rings that formed a sort of figure eight with the narrow sides facing north and south. "Alright, so, our final goal is this space here," she poked at the projection, indicating a big room almost at the center of the smaller ring of prefabs. "The core room. I have demo charges on me that will give us a delightful display of fireworks." It was her thing to put a bull's-eye on the final destination first, and then explain how they were going to get there.

"There are two main ways to get there," she glanced up, catching the eye of every team member before she went on. "Fortunately these clowns took the guesswork out of everything. Here along this one," she traced the eastern passage of the bigger, southern ring, "is their security office. We go there first and quiet; take out their alarms, cameras, and any internal defenses. We also lock down the vehicle bay if they have a gunship. Stealing a vehicle won't help us if they deploy it during the retreat phase; we have no cover anywhere here. Security offices are also a place to start on data mining. If not that, then further along that same passage they have a cold room that is likely the main server room."

"Whoever designed this wanted to be infiltrated," Ashley noted.

"Yes, their barracks are too far from the strategic locations likely to be hit first. It will delay their response even if we trip an alarm." The Spectre voiced.

"We do this right, there won't be alarms. This is Eclipse, they're undisciplined. That said they are also likely to have two mechs for every one of them, and a few biotics on top. The hallways will funnel us and offer no cover for prolonged firefights. We have to do this covertly." If this was just her, she would have used the ducts. There were never cameras in the ducts, and she could be at the power core before the mercenaries even realized they were compromised.

"What if they have patrolling mechs?" Jenkins wondered.

"Ever seen a LOKI have an IFF glitch, Corporal? If you know how to get into their systems, you can make them work for you." She called that parlor trick her 'Party Protocol'. Something she picked up from an engineer friend of hers who loved to get into systems just for the fun of it. You had to learn to exploit all opportunities if you were just one person facing uncertain odds. "Now, our entry point is here," she continued, indicating a doorway on the southern side. "We'll just have to cross this hallway here, and we're straight through to the security room."

"Looks simple enough," Ashley voiced.

"I'm leaving our exit strategy somewhat flexible. If they don't have a gunship, we will exit by the vehicle bay. They will likely have a something with wheels there. Now I'm going to open the floor for input, anyone?" Shepard finished.

"The important parts were covered," Kaidan said, and glanced at Ashley.

"I'm good with this." She agreed.

Shepard glanced at the curiously silent Spectre, of them all she thought he would have the input, but he just let her lay out the plan and said nothing. Was he deferring that much authority, or was her plan up to code? She met his gaze and held it for a moment, but then he looked away. It was as good as words.

Author Notes: There's Nihlus! I'm rather fond of him, despite the brevity of screen time. I felt rather bad for him, and for my story being AU, I decided that I wanted him as part of the main cast. I have my own sort of interpretation of him, and as you saw in this episode, he's not above playing games.

Chapter Notes:

Port/Starboard – These nautical terms refer to the side of the ship when looking toward the bridge. The left side would be called port, while the right is starboard.

Gun modifications – ME weapons use magnetic rails to accelerate slugs, like miniaturized rail guns. A folding weapon would need rails that can come apart into sections and fold up as well. When unfolding, micro-misalignments would throw shot precision off. Rigid one-piece rails would eliminate that, but prevent the weapon from folding up. Basically this means the barrels of Sin and Dex are fixed for precision.

Mirrored Receiver – Did you notice that when reloading in the trilogy; the spent thermal clip bounces out of the right-hand side? Sin, which Shepard holds in her left hand, has a fancy flipped receiver that makes it eject a clip to the left. There is a very logical reason for having such a thing. As with spent shell casings, thermal clips are hot when they come out, and no one wants one of those bouncing in their face. Shepard also uses a practiced tandem reload, if the gun was "regular" as it went into its holster on her left side, the receiver slot would not be "out" and ready to accept a new clip.

Chirality – Turians are a dextro-Amino life form, and thus would get no nutritional value from levo-amino based "human" foods. The allergy thing is debatable to outright wrong; as we consume dextro foods everyday (artificial sweeteners are dextro!), and they pass through undigested, but we don't die from them. I am going by that, a levo eating dextro (and vice versa) will not derive nutrition from it. Allergic reactions will be limited to the minority of cases, like a general food allergy.

Timekeeping – Humans still have their method, which we all know, now called the "Terran Coordinated Universal Day" in-verse. The Citadel (and by proxy Council Space) keeps to "Galactic Standard". It goes like this, [1 GS second = 0.5 TCUD second], [1GS Minute = 100 GS seconds], [1GS Hour = 100 GS minutes], [1 GS Day = 20 GS hours], and [1 GS year = 343.97 GS days]. Thus a GS day is 27:46:40 our time, and a GS year 398.114 TCUDs. The GS allows coordinating activities that are conducted across the galaxy. For example, the galactic stock market's GS-set hours would still be the same on Thessia as they would be on say Ilium, thus eliminating guesswork for transactions.