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

Author Notes: Thank you for your responses, they really help. Here it is, the second part of this series' first two-part episode.

Episode 3: Poltergeist and Spectre [Part II]

Sunset was a truly spectacular thing, no matter the planet, or how eccentric, and Zealand was eccentric. Not only did it turn clockwise on its axis, it only took twenty-two hours. The sun set in the east, and total darkness settled quickly. The sky shifted colors seemingly by the minute, showing practically every color in the visible spectrum in narrow bands. Half an hour after the sun's disk vanished below the horizon there was near-full darkness, broken only by the pale light from Zealand Beta, just peeking over the horizon. It was then that Shepard motioned for the group to move.

She paused on the very edge of the depression and kneeled to look down. The Eclipse base was set at the bottom of what looked like a sinkhole of epic proportions, with the steep vertical rock faces revealing their geological strata. There was only one way up from the base, a narrow shelf-like roadway, barely wide enough for a vehicle, winding up the eastern side. It looked like Eclipse had used explosives to blast it out, and then tossed the refuse down the side. It was a natural bottleneck; no wheeled vehicle would be able to navigate it at any speed other than crawl.

The mercenaries obviously were not worried about the rocks around them coming down, and efforts to conceal their base were limited to its location. The whole compound and the surrounding bits of terrain were brightly lit with floodlights, and essentially wide open. Shepard reached over her left shoulder for Vincent. "Not a tower in sight, what a shoddy way to secure the grounds."

"It's like you said, they're undisciplined." Ashley said.

Shepard raised Vincent's scope to her eye, using the magnification to see the details. The rifle's normal snow white housing had been colored grey long ago, a way to camouflage the rifle when half-buried in the snow. Its muzzle was dipped in white paint, to diffuse the muzzle flash, though right now it glowed in the moonlight. "Well I'll be… they got mechs patrolling, four LOKIs and two FENRIS on the south side."

"Same on the north side," the Spectre said.

Shepard grinned, a plan fast forming in her mind. The external security had rather obvious gaps she could just strut through. "Shooting them is out. We have a window every time they are on the long east and west sides of the base. We go down, and you see those fuel silos? I don't see cameras on them. Their shadow will conceal you four while I go in for the camera over the door and the door. The camera sweeps, but it has a blind spot right under it, and that's all I need." She got to her feet and tucked Vincent behind her back again.

"You'll have thirty seconds a sweep, can you hack it that fast?" Kaidan wondered.

"Don't need to." Shepard replied, "The cables are exposed at the back, I'll yank the signal cable. We hit the security room fast enough after that and it won't matter. They'll run diagnostics before they send someone to look at it." She chose not to loop it, as that would require the precise timing of the LOKIs. If she got it wrong, the flaw would be a dead give-away that someone was messing with them, more-so than a single camera losing signal.

"Let's move," she motioned to the dirt road, "Space out and hug the cliffs, we don't want to cast too big a shadow. We take it nice and slow."

Once on the vehicle access road, she marveled at just how narrow it was. There was absolutely no safety equipment on the edges, not even little lights. A vehicle would not be able to use this path at night without serious risk.

She led the column down, watching for any sign of movement from the base, but also at the top. Without running lights, there was the constant danger of not seeing the edge. As long as they kept one hand on the cliff, they could be sure to minimize it, but the change of direction always came as a sudden hairpin, and judging from the rocks skittering down, the cliffs were also somewhat unstable. It took a good twenty minutes to get down at a stealthy but steady pace, the gradient had to be at least twenty degrees, and so going up without a vehicle would not be easy on their legs.

Once down, Shepard held up her hand, back to the marines, indicating they stop. She was dimly aware of the silent Spectre standing next to her, and hoped that the signals were universal enough for him. Ahead of them, the line where the floodlights reached was stark. Right now, they were in the deep shadows beyond the beams, but they would have to move through some light to reach the silo's shadows.

A group of LOKIs came around the southeast corner, making their passage across the wide side of the complex. Shepard motioned with two fingers for a slow advance as she began to skirt the base, heading south, toward where the shadows of the silos were longest, where fleeting through the light would be briefest. She heard the clicks as her marines drew their rifles.

When the LOKIs turned to the north side, Shepard jerked her hand, and all five of them made a dash for the twin silos on the southeast corner. Their tall bulk was a blind against the camera mounted on the building as well as the second group of mechs making a passage along the south side. Once there Shepard pressed her back to the cylinder and scooted around as far as she could. The base was about twenty meters of open, floodlit space beyond.

"I'll wait for the LOKIs to turn the corner, that'll give me the most time to hack the door." She whispered. "Once I get it open, I'm going in to check for other cameras on the inside. When I figure that out, I'll tell you. Wait for the LOKIs and then make a dash." She glanced back, looking at the four of them. The marines nodded their heads; the Spectre's focused look was just as good.

The LOKIs and the FENRIS drew near the silos. "Here we go," she whispered. The machines had rather poor detection sensors; the silos were probably just far enough that the FENRIS mechs would not smell them. Nevertheless Shepard's hand slipped down to grip Sin. She watched them for any sign of detection, sudden stops or falters, anything that would indicate their cover was blown.

As the FENRIS turned the corner, she rolled her wrist and her omni-tool flared. The last LOKI stepped around the corner. "Going Geist," she muttered, the omni-tool flashed, and she felt a familiar tingle as her kinetic barrier turned off and the tactical cloak activated. As soon as it settled, she was out from behind the silo, dashing in a straight line for the target side door as the camera panned right, passing the angle where it would stare right at the silos.

At the end of its cycle, the camera paused for a split second and then began to pan left. Shepard slipped into the blind spot under it just as it turned right at the silos. She pressed herself against the wall and looked up. There were two black cables going into the back, one thicker, one thinner. She reached up and yanked it out until only the tip was still inside. No leaving obvious signs of tampering, like dangling cables. The camera kept moving, but the solid red status light above the signal socket began to blink.

She scooted across the wall and slipped into the slightly recessed alcove around the door, raising her arm, bringing up her omni-tool as her cloak turned off, going into recharge. The decryption program was already up, and she got to work. Time was short, the LOKIs would make a passage soon, and now she was too close. If they came up on her from behind, they would detect her, and the gig was up. The lock was not terribly sophisticated, but it would not do to trip any alarm, silent or otherwise.

"Skipper, the LOKIs," Ashley whispered on her comm.

Shepard did not reply, talking now might expose her. The lock panel turned green, she slapped her hand on it, and the door began to open. Her finger slipped to her cloak controls, hitting the actual button to activate it. She slipped in the door just as the LOKIs entered her peripheral vision.

The door closed, Shepard stopped just beyond it, listening for any sign of detection. She had to be between two prefab rooms, and so it created a short narrow passage which led to the main ring hallway. There was no camera aimed right at the doorway on the inside.

Shepard inched along the short passage to the intersection with the main hallway and glanced down toward the security room, there was a camera scanning from the corner where the two hallways met at a ninety degree angle. A quick glance in the other direction told her there was another on the opposite corner. What more the two cycled in such a manner that the hallway was never unwatched. "Alright wait for the window, and come inside and hold position. I'm cloaked, keeping an eye out for security on this side." She whispered.

"Roger that," Kaidan replied.

Two cameras, she could not knock them out without it looking suspicious, so her options were limited. She would have to slip into the security room alone and kill the guards; there was no other way to get four uncloaked people to that room without a security triggering an alarm. As it was, just opening the door behind them might make them jump the gun.

The door opened behind her, but the footsteps were so light that she barely heard them at all. It was then that she ducked back into the blind hallway and turned off her cloak. "We have a situation, two cameras on this hallway, one on each corner, and they have no blind spot. I can't get you guys to that security room without being spotted."

"So what's the plan?" Kaidan asked.

"I'll take care of it." There was no other way, as far as she knew she was the only one there with a tactical cloak. "Stay here and keep an ear out for someone coming from the other side. We need to keep our stealth here, this is the only way we can do that."

"As you wish, Commander." Kaidan said.

Shepard nodded mutely, even as she noticed the cool look the Spectre gave her. He was clearly not happy to be told to hold, but Shepard really did not see many other options. Still, he was taking orders, she could be thankful for that. She did not need issues of command structure on top of everything. "Alright, I'm going in." She raised her arm and scooted as close as possible to the corner before activating her cloak.

As soon as it settled in, she was around the corner and making a hasty, but silent dash toward the security office just around the base's southeast corner. Even from a distance she could see the door was merely closed, not locked. Shepard took a deep steadying breath and drew her knife before laying her palm on the mechanism.

The door mechanism hissed as the two halves began to slide open. She was through almost as soon as the gap was wide enough. The room beyond was semi-dark, lit up only by a bank of monitors and two tube lamps above. Seated at the console in front of her were two guards in garish yellow and white armor, a human, and a salarian.

"The hell… the door just opened," the human looked up as his hand groped for the rifle resting by his side.

The salarian turned in his chair, one hand still on the virtual keyboard, his big dark eyes briefly staring right where Shepard was as she crept up on them, knife up, but rendered invisible by the cloak. "First camera. Now door… something is wrong," he said.

"Who'd be nuts enough to come here?" the human wondered as he got to his feet, rifle in his arms.

Shepard skirted around as widely as the space allowed and shifted her knife to an overhand grip. One large step brought her right in front of the salarian.

"Shit!" The human shouted.

Shepard knew he must have seen the faint mirage-like ripple flaw of her cloak, a clumsy refraction of multiple light sources, visible only up close and while she was moving. But it was too late; she grabbed the salarian by the front of his armor, and shoved her knife into his side where there were no armored plates, just the undersuit. The weave gave way to her hardened alloy combat knife.

She heard a gun's safety disengage as the human turned his gun on where she stood. Shepard twisted the knife ninety degrees once, back, and yanked it out and let the salarian drop to the floor. His green blood welled up rapidly, which was all the evidence Shepard needed to know her blade found its mark in some major blood vessel.

"Overload charge!" She commanded. Her omni-tool lit up, glowing right through the cloak as it began to charge.

The Mercenary's finger slipped to the trigger, but Shepard slammed her glowing hand on the weapon. Her omni-tool gave a loud crack as it dumped the overload pulse right into the weapon. The rifle's status lights lit up bright red, thermal clip instantly at capacity, and then it begun to click where it should have normally fired.

The mercenary's eyes bugged out behind his eye shield. Shepard smiled, stepped in, and grabbed him by the front his armor. He grabbed at her hand but Shepard was still faster and shoved her knife into his side, aiming up under the ribs into his lung. One twist, then back, and she yanked the knife out. He dropped to the floor, gasping, blood flying up onto his lips.

Shepard watched him as he tried to reach for his rifle, but the blood filling his lung rapidly made breathing difficult once it was up in his upper respiratory tract. "Eyes on me," she whispered into his ear. The phrase was also her cloak's voice command shut off, and as the cloak fizzled, his eyes widened. It was a comical how most never saw a woman killing them in cold blood. Then again, the gender ratios in the army were still skewed, so there was some truth there.

She knew the exact moment he began to fade out of consciousness, so she let him slump to the floor as she raised her left foot onto a vacated chair and slipped her knife back into its sheath. The guard would be dead in less than a minute more. Only then did she raise her hand to the communication controls at her ear, "Security room is clear. You can come in." She would have liked no one to see her handiwork, but it was unavoidable. The consolation was that they would not know exactly how she did it. She turned to the console and found the small image on which she could see her team and watched them move.

The door opened about thirty seconds later, and Shepard could also pin the exact moment when they saw the bodies. The look on Jenkins' face was wide-eyed. Ashley grimaced. Kaidan averted his gaze from the bodies outright. The Spectre's eyes were locked dead on her, calculating. Shepard looked away; right now her most disturbing skills were showing. "As I said, no alarms."

"You alright, Skipper?" Ashley asked.

"Yes." Shepard replied coolly. "The computers are all yours Spectre." She motioned to the console. "I'll do the lockouts on my end." She turned to the monitors, scanning the collage for a view into the hangar bay. When she spotted it, she keyed in a code to enlarge the image.

The hangar was not terribly big, probably only room enough for three vehicles at the best of times. Right now it was stacked full of crates, but in the furthest corner of the room was a shape she wished was not there. "They got a gunship alright," she announced. The black craft stood next to a brown troop carrier truck. Ideally she would have loved to take the truck, but the gunship had missiles, they would not make it up the road before it blew them to bits.

"Lock out the bay doors, but we will take the gunship when we exit." The Spectre said next to her.

"Huh?" Shepard glanced at him. He had one hand on the haptic interface, his omni-tool active on his left.

"The road is unsafe. The best way out is the gunship. I will pilot it." He explained blandly.

Somehow he sounded vaguely like he was talking down at her, or was that just her imagination? Sure, he had his own ship; so he very likely knew how to pilot a gunship, so it was not an issue of skill. "Alright." She turned back to her console to access the security protocols. She would have to trust him that far. Somehow she wanted to think his decision to fly them out was indicative of some camaraderie forming. They were not just Spectre and Alliance, for this mission they were a team.

The room was quiet and cool; she could hear the occasional clink of armor as the marines shifted around. Right now they were safe; the mercenaries had no way of knowing that there was anything wrong going on. She had the alarms locked out; the codes scrambled, and moved on to the hangar bay doors.

"I cannot get sufficient access to their network from here," The Spectre announced.

"Then our next stop is the server room after all," Shepard mused. She raised her own omni-tool and input a few commands. "Alright I've locked out their security and the hangar bay, let me route the camera feeds to my omni-tool and we can move on." Her omni-tool blinked, and just like that she had remote access. She flicked cameras until she came up on the one in the server room. "There is no one in the server room or the hallway outside. Let's move."

The marines straightened instantly; Shepard nodded to them and went for the door. "I'm going ahead. There should not be anyone there, but I take no chances. Going Geist!" She felt the cloak settle over her as she stepped out the door and already moving down the hall.

"Meant to ask you about that word, what sort of spirit is that?" she heard a flanging voice in her ear over the communicating link.

Shepard listened to her surroundings; she could not use her omni-tool while cloaked, as it glowed right through. Convinced that there was absolutely no one out in the halls for now, she chanced replying. "My people once believed the dead left imprints behind, ones bound to a location, sometimes visible, sometimes not. Seemed fitting, what else would you call my vanishing act?" She explained as she moved down the hall toward the server room. It was also shortened from her ICT call sign, 'Poltergeist', given to her because she could be every bit the malicious ghost that moved things, made noises, and harmed people it deemed unwelcome. Her team thought they were being cute.

"I see."

Shepard disconnected her cloak and turned to the server room door lock. "How you guys holding up? Not boring, I hope," she murmured.

"We're fine with this sort of boring," Kaidan replied as he drew near.

"I'm not bored; this is awesome, real spy stuff. Like something straight out of Blasto or something." Jenkins added.

"Keep your head on Jenkins. Besides… we all know how realistic Blasto is, don't we?" Ashley asked.

"Erm… Spectre Kryik, sir, there are no Hanar Spectres, right?" Jenkins wondered. Ashley's comment deflated him.

"Not to my knowledge."

Shepard chuckled, "Careful, he might think they're so top secret that even another Spectre doesn't know." The lock turned green and the door opened. "Let's get some data," she said as she breezed into the room. Hearing Jenkins actually speak to the Spectre for the first time seemed to affirm that this was doing something to ease the tensions.

This room was colder than the rest of the base, darker as well, with very spaced out lighting fixtures. It made sense, no use lighting a room full of server hardware. The computers were organized in two long rows, splitting the room into three aisles. Here and there one of the cases jutted out like a tooth, and there were gaps that connected the three aisles, but it was a straight through and through. At the furthest side were more computers and a long desk with two terminals.

The Spectre passed by her on his way to them, but Shepard lingered to glance back. She did not need to say another word; the marines already knew to take up guard positions by the door. She turned and joined the Spectre as he got to work on the data.

As she watched him work at the network security, the irony of the situation hit her fully. What she was doing on the orders of Admiral Hackett, he was doing similarly on the behest of the Citadel Council. He was a real deal Spectre, she was assigned Spectre tasks in everything but name. The machinations of people in power really did have only one universal language.

The Alliance big-wigs wanted in on a club that really did not offer anything past a fancy name. Did they even realize that a Spectre would not be their marionette? The Council would be pulling the strings. Sure she could see how it would mean respect, but in her mind the points did not connect. Having a Spectre was not a magical shortcut to Council seat. The club was quite exclusive, and they wanted to keep it that way. The Volus practically systemized the galactic economy and they were a client race to the Turians. If that was not enough to get you a seat, what was enough?

The sound of the door opening jarred Shepard out of her musings. She looked back sharply; in the doorway was a salarian in Eclipse armor. He stepped into the room, looked up from the datapad in his hands, and his eyes widened. His free hand immediately shot to his sidearm.

Shepard reached for Sin, but Kaidan was closest, and suddenly he was glowing blue. Before Shepard could say a word, the lieutenant raised his hand yanked the mercenary deeper into the room. The Salarian shouted instinctively.

"Damn it!" Kaidan cursed as he swung his arm, slamming the salarian right into a wall. When the field vanished, the mercenary slid down into a sitting position, but remained sitting, he was out cold.

Shepard grimaced, but said nothing. She knew full well that the blame was more her own, not theirs. She turned right back to the consoles, meeting the Spectre's gaze. "Are you getting anything?"

"I am still running decryption." the Spectre replied.

Shepard turned to her camera feeds. Why had she allowed herself to be distracted? She should have been monitoring feeds the whole time. If she had, they would not be in this situation. Of all the people there, she should have been the last one to screw up.

She turned to watch the Spectre work; the Eclipse had quite a few layers of protection on their system. Idly she wondered if she should trust him, reveal EDI. The AI could hack this system in an instant and download everything.

Her eyes turned back to her feeds, and there she saw a group of Eclipse troopers in the barracks hurriedly gathering weapons. The decision made itself. "Stealth has just gone out the window. Lock and load!" Shepard reached up to her earpiece, "Normandy come in, this is Shepard, EDI you there?"

"Of course, Commander."

Shepard raised her omni-tool, keying in commands as she spoke, "No offense Spectre Kryik, but we're on the clock. EDI I'm linking you into the system, give Spectre Kryik full access to all the files. Also download a copy of everything they got, just in case." Shepard passed her omni-tool over the console.

"Accessing…" the AI replied. The monitors blinked, shifting to raw code.

Shepard lowered her omni-tool and drew the twins, shifting them to disruptor ammo mode, ducking behind one of the server cases.

"Decrypting..." EDI announced. Code scrolled by so fast that Shepard could not hope to make heads or tails of it. She saw the Spectre's mandibles spread wider and lower, somehow there was universality to a slack-jawed expression of complete surprise.

Shepard met the Spectre's gaze and shook her head; hopefully this would not come to bite her in the ass later. "Focus on the data; we'll handle the welcoming committee." Maybe it was not obvious that EDI was not a person but an AI. She could hope, right?

"Access granted…" EDI announced. Shepard saw the Spectre's omni-tool blink as well. His shock vanished instantly as he turned back to his task. EDI had not high-jacked his tool, though she could have, effortlessly. This way he could not say the data was tampered with. "Downloading…"

At that moment the door opened and four eclipse troopers walked in, sweeping the room with their assault rifles. They saw the Salarian, and one of them moved to check for life signs.

The marines had scattered about the room, taking cover where they could. Shepard inched around the case she was hiding behind to get a better angle to cover the Spectre, her back to two of the aisles. To her right Kaidan had similarly leaned his back to the other row of computers, watching two aisles. Where were Ashley and Jenkins? Shepard could not see them, so probably both were in the right aisle. As she looked over her shoulder down the center, she saw the mercenaries scatter.

"Two are going to Jenkins." Ashley whispered.

"You got him?" Shepard whispered back.

"Yea."

The silence hung, Shepard could hear faint footsteps drawing near. She looked back at the Spectre. Right now he was an objective; she would not let the mercenaries harm him as long as she was there.

The rapport of an assault rifle cut through the silence from the right side of the room. She heard Jenkins shout something that got cut off by another burst of gunfire.

"Jenkins!" Shepard called.

A third burst of assault rifle fire followed.

"We got this." Ashley announced a long heartbeat later.

Footsteps echoed somewhere to her right. Shepard craned her neck to listen, but then there was nothing. Whoever it was, had stopped. In that moment, she had a different priority than waiting for a mercenary to work up the nerves to come and face her. "You okay, Corporal?" She wondered after a few seconds.

"Yea, I just… I'm fine." He sounded rattled, "I got one, and the Chief got the other."

"Commander, your nine!"

Shepard whirled, saw the trooper, and raised Dex instinctively as she sidestepped. Bullets peppered the computer case where she had just been, Shepard pulled the trigger. Dex's round shredded his shield, she raised Sin and fired. The mercenary jerked as the round entered his forehead, and then he collapsed.

"Thanks," She replied.

Kaidan nodded and stayed put.

Shepard glanced down the left aisle, "Now where's that fourth one?"

As she inched along the row of servers, the silence lingered, which was not something she wanted right now.

Suddenly she heard it, a click somewhere behind her. It seemed the last mercenary had two brain cells to rub together. Shepard turned, gun whipping up, fully expecting to see the merc behind her, but there was only air. Or was there? She bolted back toward the consoles, the sound had come somewhere behind her, but it could have also come from the other side of the hardware cases, from the middle of the room.

"Spec-" An assault rifle cut off the rest of her warning, and then a single thunderous crack pitched lower than anything any of their weapons could produce. She came around the row of computer cases in time to see the mercenary hit the ground and the Lieutenant and Spectre lower their weapons.

"We got him," The Spectre said blandly.

"Yes… yes you have." Shepard lowered her guns. The mercenary never stood a chance, Kaidan's shots ripped his shields, but the shotgun obliterated his chest armor, he was probably dead before he hit the floor.

"Stealth has gone out the window," Kaidan noted wryly.

Shepard looked back at the monitor; the Spectre had turned back to the data, slipping the shotgun behind his back again as if nothing had happened.

"Download complete." EDI announced as the screens blinked off. The AI had pulled out of the system as smoothly as she had got in.

"You're the best, EDI."

"Your gratitude is appreciated, Commander." The AI replied, her tone as pleased as an AI could be.

"I have what I need," the Spectre announced, shut off his omni-tool.

Ashley and Jenkins appeared from the right aisle, Shepard was glad to see that Jenkins looked no worse than mildly rattled. This was the first time he probably encountered a tough situation like a hold order when every instinct told him to shoot first. She could pat him on the back later.

Shepard turned to her feeds, "They know they're under attack. I'm seeing mercs arming. But half the job's done; our goal is the power core room. We exit, turn right to the corner, then left, cross into the second ring, and take the eastern passage again. The hallway between the rings is a bottleneck, so mind that." It was still eating at her that it was entirely her fault that stealth had gone out the window, despite all the assurances she gave them that they could do this. Had she been watching the feeds, she would have seen the mercenary coming and acted accordingly. She had to tell herself that there was no use bemoaning it now, she had to adapt. "Let's go!"

Shepard was the first one out of the room. She did not feel the need to say it, but right now they could not afford slow and steady, now was the time for a blitz play. They had to get to the power core room, and after that, it was only a matter of getting to the hangar, they would have to shoot through if needed. It was like the Spectre said; the barracks were on the west side of the second ring, too far away for a swift response, and the mercenaries were far from a disciplined bunch, they did not don their full gear and line up for action in under ten minutes.

As they turned into the eastern passage of the second ring, the Spectre fell in step with her, shotgun at a ready. She raised her omni-tool and brought up the scrambler, a few taps and a hand passed over each doorway scrambled the locking mechanisms. If the Eclipse had mechs there, they could not summon them.

She could have done that from the security room. Hell, she could have scrambled all the doors, locked the mercenaries in their barracks, but it was somewhat a cowardly thing to do. To blow up people, even criminal mercenaries, locked in rooms like cattle; that was not in Shepard's playbook. Locking mindless, VI-driven mechs in storage rooms was crowd control, not murder.

Suddenly the Spectre held up his hand, mimicking her earlier wordless command. "Mercenaries around the corner, I can hear them." He whispered.

Shepard turned to the camera feeds; the hall in front of the power core room had six guards, three of whom had their guns pointed to the other passage. "Quick play. I am going for the three aiming for the other passage. Ashley, when I deliver the opening strike, blitz the one closest to you."

"No problem, skipper." Ashley replied, reaching for her sniper rifle.

"Kaidan, Jenkins, when she does, that's your cue, take another two."

"You got it," Kaidan replied as he cocked his rifle.

Shepard nodded, pulled out her knife, and activated her cloak. The cloak settled and then she was around the corner running.

As she darted past the first mercenaries, she saw them jerk. "Cloaker!" One human trooper shouted.

"Where?"

An assault rifle fired somewhere behind her, but the bullets hit the wall on her left, the mercenary missed.

"Don't fire! You'll hit me!" a third called.

"Shit, lost him. Look for a faint ripple!"

Shepard shifted her knife to overhand, and lashed out, embedding the blade in one of the mercenaries, twisting it, and twisting it back.

"Shit! There!"

Shepard was already moving, knife abandoned in the trooper's side. The assault rifle came to life again, bullets peppered where she had just been, the dying mercenary's shield flared, one or two rounds flew by her. She drew the twins and turned.

There was a crack; one of the troopers went down, a neat heart shot from Ashley's sniper rifle down the hall. Jenkins and Kaidan appeared. The troopers split, two turned to the marines, two to her. Shepard raised both her guns on her pair and pulled the triggers; up close there was no shield in existence capable of halting disruptor rounds from a Carnifex. As the mercenaries lost their footing, Kaidan and Jenkins opened fire as well. The other two tried to return fire, but their shields fizzled first, and after that the Alliance-issue rounds found home in their bodies.

Shepard holstered her guns and disconnected her cloak. Then she bent down to retrieve her knife, and slipped it back into its sheath. The others were already gathered around the power core room when she brought up her decryption software. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Kaidan and Jenkins turn to one side, Ashley and the Spectre to the other.

"I can hear mechs," the Spectre announced.

"Almost got this lock." Shepard replied.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Jenkins raise his rifle, and just then a LOKI appeared around the corner, a FENRIS bounding at its feet. Two assault rifles opened fire, an auto-tune whine, a small explosion, followed by another, and parts rained onto the floor.

"Got to reload." Jenkins announced.

More scampering, another FENRIS, a burst from an assault rifle followed by an explosion. She focused on the lock, and with a few final strokes of the keys the lock turned green. She slammed her palm onto the mechanism.

"We're in," she called. "Go! Go!" She drew her guns, and sidestepped, allowing Jenkins to slip in, followed by Kaidan, Ashley, and finally the Spectre.

More LOKIs rounded the corner; Shepard raised both her guns and opened fire. Two shots a kill on each one, four kills and the twins began to smoke. She practically flew into the core room. "There's more, grab cover, and hold the fort. I need time to get the charges in place!" She was barking, and she knew it, but now was not the time for calm.

She ghosted her index fingers on the clip releases and flicked her wrists to eject the glowing hot thermal clips, stuck both guns into their holsters, and reached behind her back for a fresh pair. With practiced symmetric ease she slammed the cold clips into the exposed receivers, the twins closed with clicks, but she did not draw them again.

The core room was the largest single prefab unit the Eclipse had, split between two levels. They were currently on a large ring walkway that surrounded the small fusion core that dominated the room. Cables and pipes spanned from the core, some vanishing into the ceiling, some into the floor. Pipes brought in coolants, helium-3, and deuterium, while the cables were conduits that distributed electricity to the base. The core was just large enough, quite possibly repurposed from a ship, to supply a base this size. Still, that meant that causing it to go haywire was a matter of knowing what to do to it.

"You could reach the core from here," a flanged voice teased.

Shepard stopped, looked up at the Spectre, eyebrow raised. He returned the look with a by-now somewhat familiar grin-smirk flicker of his mandibles.

There was limited cover here, but the mercs and mechs would be bottlenecked through the door, so the four of them should be able to handle it. "I'm going for the controls," she announced, dashing around the walkway. The control booth was at the back, away from the door. With the core as it was, she only needed demo charges on the right pipes to take out the fuel regulator and cooling lines.

With no coolant the fusion reactor would begin overheating. When the emergency shut down tried to choke fuel, the busted regulator would prevent shut down, and the reaction would run away. The beauty was the fuel was helium and hydrogen. The latter was quite explosive, but neither was radioactive, so there would be no atmospheric contamination or fallout. The explosion would be spectacular, but Eclipse had built the base at the bottom of a rut, which would help contain everything.

Some would quibble over how much this was wrong, but at the end of the day, Eclipse was a ruthless mercenary band that would do anything if paid enough. They victimized whoever they could. If she left the base standing, they would come back, and there would be hell to pay. They would know the colonists called for aid. No, the base had to be erased from the face of this planet.

Her fingers barely landed on the engineering console to bring up the core schematics when she heard gunfire erupt. She looked up, tracing the pipes with her eyes when the shooting died. "What's going on?" She wondered.

"We're holding, nothing to report." Kaidan replied.

Shepard turned back to the console and tapped a few more keys, "Good, I am going to need to time. To create a runaway reaction I need to destroy the coolant lines and jam the fuel regulators, both are on the level below." Shepard explained as she exited the control booth and moved to the maintenance ladder that led to the base of the core below.

"Door!" Jenkins called.

More gunfire erupted as Shepard gripped the edges of the ladder, planted her feet on the sides, and slid her way down. The main coolant pipes were labeled with nice blue labels; she reached for her special pouch and popped it open.

The demo charges looked like little crabs, big round head and four metal legs that could either grip on something, or stick into it. She tapped at their heads to pop open their pincer legs, and then twisted the cap to arm, before clipping them onto the coolant pipes, one charge on each coolant pipe, double checking their flip up covers to see that the hidden status light underneath was blinking. These little wonders would not be noticed from just a casual scan of the core room, but they packed a shaped charge that would cut right through twenty-five centimeters of solid rock, never mind pipes full of liquid. The pressure breach would crack the pipes open even more.

More gunfire erupted from above.

"I think they're massing outside," Kaidan said.

"I have something for that," she replied as she brought up her omni-tool. Her additions to the core registered nice solid green signals; she could trigger the charges at will. "The coolant is ready to blow, now the regulators." She moved over to the big wall-mounted panel under the control booth. Safety demanded that there be an independent override system for the fuel regulators, in the event that a glitch with the main controls prevented an emergency shut down.

There was another rapport of fire from above, but she ignored it as she brought up her omni-tool and passed it over the console, a quick series of taps and her scrambler program found the VI controlling the switch and brought it offline. With no VI there would be no recognition of unsafe circumstances and no emergency fuel shut off. Shepard honestly thought they would have been safer with a good old fashioned lever. It would have taken longer, and she would have had to get creative to jam that solidly enough. "Core sabotaged. I'm coming up." She announced, moving over to the ladder. Once on it, she clambered up as fast as she could.

"So how are we breaking out of here?" Kaidan asked.

"Give me a second," Shepard replied as she came around the walkway to the doorway, eyes already on the camera feeds. "Well I've got good news, and bad news. The bad is that I see ten LOKIs, as many mercs, and one's an Asari."

"And the good news?" Kaidan wondered.

"They haven't got an YMIR."

"I fail to see how that's the good news, skipper." Ashley said.

"YMIRs are much harder to hack. They're about to learn that turnabout is fair play." Shepard replied. This is was as good a time as any to use Party Protocol. The LOKIs were throwaway and weak, but in numbers they would probably cause just the right amount of chaos. Their strength and flaw was exactly the same thing, their ease of use. Most people networked their LOKIs so that orders could be passed down quickly with one press of a button. However the base model also had rather horrible firewalls installed, it did not take much to access their controls. The simplest, quickest way to mess with them was an IFF definition change. Tell them that their masters were the intruders and stand back.

With a few taps she found their network, and from there it was a matter of getting in and accessing the IFF protocols. She worked as fast and as accurately as she could. Once in, she changed the IFF to designate Eclipse armor transponders as enemies, saved the settings, and initiated reboot.

For a long breathless moment there was a silence as her omni-tool reported the control signal had gone down, but was coming back up. Then suddenly there was a whine, and then the gunfire and shouting started, quickly climbing to a thunderous crescendo of assault rifle, shotgun, and whatever pistols and submachine guns the LOKIs had.

"Turnabout huh?" Ashley asked.

"That's bordering on cruel and unusual." Kaidan agreed.

Shepard shrugged. All was fair in love and war.

Within half a minute the firefight began to fade, and in under a minute there was a final whine and something thudded against the door, three quick shotgun blasts followed, and then silence.

Shepard turned her omni-tool back at the camera feed. "The asari is hurt, but she still has her barrier. Two other mercs are still alive, though hurt, LOKIs are gone. Let's go before more of them show up. Going Geist." Shepard slapped the door mechanism even as her cloak settled over her.

"Commander!" Kaidan called, but she was out the door already, dodging to the other side of the hallway.

She heard footsteps trail behind her, followed by a blast of a shotgun and a thud of a body hitting the ground.

The asari rose to her feet shakily, hefted up her shotgun, and fired. The recoil jarred the wound in her side, most of the shot went well left of where Shepard was, but her cloak rippled and fizzled, a moment later she felt a slight sting at her left elbow, as if bitten by a bug. The asari saw the flicker and turned her shotgun. Shepard grabbed the housing with her left hand and shoved the gun's barrel down; the second shot hit the floor in a shower of shrapnel. Shepard drew Dex with her free hand and brought it up just enough to fire a single tap, point blank into the Asari's chest. Her shotgun dropped to the floor, and the asari followed.

"Did she hit anyone with that first?" Shepard wondered as she holstered Dex.

"Nothing shields didn't stop," Kaidan replied.

"She hit you."

Shepard blinked, and the Spectre motioned to her left side, and it was only then that she realized that the stinging sensation was not her imagination. She turned her arm; there was a tear in her undersuit at her elbow. The gouge was bleeding, but it was not deep. The asari's first shot had actually grazed her, and since her cloak could not work in tandem with her shields, there was damage.

"It's a flesh wound."

Nihlus did not look amused, but Shepard was not the type to care. This was what she did best, if at the end of the day she had a few scratches and bruises, so be it. This whole thing was partly her mistake, and she would fix it.

She turned and led the group back the way they came from, past the locked out storage rooms, to avoid the other passage where the barracks were. As they rounded a corner at the juncture between rings she saw a pair of salarians, both stopped cold, eyes widening, Shepard grinned. Their hands instantly flew to their omni-tools, drones deployed. The glowing orbs shot at her. The salarians raised their handguns.

A hail of bullets flew past her, and one drone exploded before it could even come close. The salarians fired, Shepard saw her shield flare. She raised both guns, but a black and red blur shot through her peripheral vision. The Spectre's shotgun gave one crack, and the second drone exploded.

Shepard ghosted her thumbs over the back of the twins, laser sights activated as she shifted her aim. The dots stabilized on target and she pulled both triggers. Their shields exploded, but the salarians still had tech armor.

The shotgun cracked in echo, right into the chest of one, shredding the armor and flesh underneath. The other salarian recoiled, eyes widened. Shepard raised Sin's muzzle a few degrees, the laser dot pointed between the salarian's eyes, and she pulled the trigger.

Suddenly the Spectre turned, "Mechs!" he called.

LOKIs appeared from the hallway leading to the hangar; "Shoot them down!" Shepard ordered.

The Marines opened fire. Shepard turned and raised her guns, but just then four more Eclipse mercenaries appeared from somewhere behind the mechs. Shepard cursed silently, just how many of them were there? Well it no matter, she was not out of tricks yet. Ashley and Jenkins's spray had already brought down two; Shepard knew she had a moment at best to pull this off.

"Kaidan! Throw an intact LOKI between the mercs, now!"

She could tell the exact moment Kaidan saw the mercs. A breathless instant later his hand snapped up as his whole body ignited blue. One of the LOKIs rose off the ground, flailing and whining in its auto-tuned voice. With a flick of his arm Kaidan sent the mech back into the wall at the end of the bottleneck between the rings. Shepard raised Sin and focused down its sights, ignoring the laser, and pulled the trigger. The LOKI's head exploded, and the rest gave a loud whine and began to beep.

"Grab cover!" Shepard ordered as she hurried to get out of line of sight in the bottleneck.

The mercenaries shouted in alarm, and the LOKI blew thunderously, like a grenade in a tiny room.

"That's a hell of a shot, Commander." Kaidan said, awed.

"Using a LOKI as a grenade… now I've seen everything." Ashley affirmed.

"Lots of practice on flying holo-targets," Shepard said as she holstered her guns.

Silence reigned, and Shepard dared to hope those were the last of the mercenaries. The Spectre ejected a hot thermal clip from his shotgun and reached behind his back for another. Shepard opened her mouth to order them to move out when out of the corner of her eye she saw a shadow slither along the floor from the bottleneck corridor.

Shepard looked up and saw a mercenary in tech armor stumble out of the bottleneck, clutching at her side, Carnifex raised. The woman focused on the first target in her line of sight, the Spectre. Shepard saw where the merc was aiming, and suddenly knew a warning would be too late; she just charged, bodily knocking the Spectre out of the way. The gunshot echoed. Shepard heard the Spectre stumble, even as she did. Something hit her from the back, sending her to her knees, and just like that her blood was on fire. She shut her eyes and ground her teeth together as the pain washed over her body like a tidal wave.

"Commander!" Ashley shouted. An assault rifle beat a single staccato burst.

Shepard raised her left hand to her right shoulder, and it was like someone took a hot poker to her flesh. A shadow kneeled in front of her and a three-fingered hand landed on her left shoulder. She whimpered. "Shepard is hit!" a flanging voice called close over her ear.

"Williams, Jenkins, finish whoever is still alive back there!" Kaidan barked, close now.

Shepard felt another hand lift her shoulder guard, the movement caused fresh pain, and she hissed. At that moment she could only count her breaths and hope she would not to pass out. Then there was a faint hiss from her armor and the spreading cold touch of Medi-gel.

"That was the last of them." Ashley reported.

"Good," Kaidan replied, somewhere behind and on her right.

The pain receded little by little, replaced by spreading numb coolness.

"How bad is it?" the gunny asked next.

"Right shoulder, from the back, through and through. It missed major blood vessels." Kaidan replied. "Medi-gel's deployed, it should stop the bleeding."

"I've… had worse," Shepard said as she opened one eye, only to see the Spectre kneeling in front of her. "Just… just gimmie a sec."

"That was reckless, skipper. You could've died."

"Could've." She repeated, "Spectre would've. Shoulder's in Medi-gel."

"Are you really alright, Commander? Jenkins wondered.

"Yes." Shepard replied. Geez, so her shoulder was Swiss cheese. It was more embarrassing than anything. Just one more on the long list of times she screwed up today. Feeling fairly angry with herself, Shepard forced her body to its feet to punctuate the point. It sent a jolt of pain through her shoulder, but her second step was more careful and then she could walk just fine.

However when she attempted to wiggle her fingers, they did not respond past a few spasmodic twitches. Her arm hung useless at her side. The Medi-gel had numbed it so thoroughly that only looking confirmed that it was still there.

The Spectre was on his feet as well, looking no more convinced than he was about a minute before. Her embarrassment only compounded. "We have to move," she said, looking down to check that the twins were still in their holsters.

"Let me take point," Ashley volunteered. "Come along, Jenkins."

"Ye… yes!" he replied and hurried after the gunny.

Kaidan stood there, worry clearly on his face. Shepard shook her head and followed Ashley. The Spectre followed, leaving Kaidan to walk to take up the rear.

"Not one of my finer moments. Did I hurt you with that tackle?" she asked the Spectre.

"Perhaps it was not one of your finer moments, but I will live with being tackled," he replied.

Shepard nodded. If he had been trying to make light of the whole thing, she could not muster amusement.

They passed by the bodies of the mercenaries. The exploding LOKI had done its job, the damage was truly horrendous. Shepard thought Eclipse really ought to rethink the cannon fodder mechs, but she would not educate them. Their reliance on the shoddy-made disposable tin-cans worked for her a few times over.

Beyond a final left turn, the hangar bay doors were larger than any other set in the base, her lockout was still active, the mechanism glowed bright cheerful red. "Watch my back," she ordered as she raised her right leg, catching her useless arm on her thigh, and braced her knee into the wall, so she could bring up her omni-tool. It was clumsy, undignified, but it got the job done. First thing she did was access her armor's systems and lock her right arm's exo-frame joints in that position, which allowed her to drop her knee. Then she brought up decryption and got to work on the door lock.

"It's too quiet," Jenkins noted. "Did we really get them all?"

"I hope so, but don't let your guard down. There might be some in the hangar," Ashley replied.

The door lock flicked green; Shepard turned and pressed her back to the wall, drawing Sin. Sure one of her arms was no good, and she had only three shots in Sin, but she could make those shots count.

The door opened and the Spectre took point, Kaidan and Ashley entered next, followed by Jenkins, and only when she was sure that no one was on their six, did Shepard follow them. The Hangar mercifully proved to be empty save for the forest of cargo crates. Some might contain offline LOKIs, but there was probably no one left who could activate them.

"We're taking the gunship?" Kaidan asked.

"It is the best option," the Spectre replied as he moved across the hangar.

Shepard met Kaidan's gaze and nodded. Right now, she was incapable of driving up the access road, even if taking it was the best damn idea ever. He shook his head in resignation. Shepard followed the Spectre. She could not believe that what should have been cakewalk ended up going sideways this bad.

Then again, she preferred a perforated shoulder to someone getting hurt worse. Maybe Ashley was right and what she did was reckless, but in her head, even with her aim, she would not have had the time to kill the merc before she shot the Spectre. Sometimes one had to choose the least of two evils and roll the dice. In the end her roll had come up a relative winner.

She turned, Ashley and Jenkins were set on keeping an eye on the door, and Kaidan was keeping an eye on them. She approached the console that controlled the main bay doors and got to work decrypting her lockouts. Something behind her hissed and Shepard turned her head; the Spectre had opened the gunship's rear hatch and climbed inside. She turned back to the console and in the next minute the bay doors began to rattle open.

"C'mon people, let's get the hell out of here!" she called as she moved toward the gunship. The rear ramp was down, she stepped aboard and moved forward to climb into the co-pilot's seat. It took her about half a minute to figure out how to snap the four-point seat belts shut without jostling her numb arm too much. Having settled into the seat she stretched out her legs and just watched the Spectre run through pre-flight checks. As the marines filed inside and strapped in she reached for the hatch switch.

"We are good to go," The Spectre announced. The gunship gave a shudder and there was the unmistakable hum of an eezo core powering up. "I do not suppose you will be keeping the gunship, will you?"

"What for? We have a shuttle."

"It could just take us straight up," he stated.

"We have nowhere to stow it. The colonists can come pick it up. Who knows, having one might deter more mercs. At the very least it'll make a passable flying crane for setting up light prefabs."

The gunship gave another shudder and then it was in the air. Shepard reached over and tapped at the central console to bring up the infrared combat scanner. The gunship moved, slipping quietly past the hangar doors. As soon as they were clear it began to rise. "Can you hover just over the rim?" she asked, bringing up her omni-tool.

The gunship rose effortlessly, at the top of the rise the Spectre brought it about, nose pointing at the base below. The IR scanner was showing a very pretty black and white FLIR picture, but it was going to get prettier. Shepard keyed in a sequence on her omni-tool, the green signal indicators on her screen shifted red and began to blink. She pressed the final button.

"Did your charges go off?" the Spectre asked.

Shepard watched the IR scanner, her eyes on the roofline of the second ring of pre-fabs. "Tool says yes, but that's why I got the infrared up, I want to double check. If it doesn't work… well we have what… sixteen rockets?"

"Twelve," the Spectre corrected.

"They'll do."

The Spectre hummed a quiet sort of assent.

Suddenly there was a whine from the sensors and she saw an unmistakable white spot form on the sensor image. "We have fire. Go! We got maybe two minutes before the core goes critical and blows." Shepard shut down her omni-tool and leaned back into her seat as he brought the gunship around. A moment later craft accelerated rapidly, pinning her to her seat.

She reached up to her ear, "Shepard to Normandy, come in."

"Hey Commander. EDI picked up a heat spike from the base, and wow… it's climbing."

"I sabotaged their reactor, it's going critical. Mission complete. We borrowed an Eclipse gunship, have EDI send the colonists a message about picking it up at our LZ, maybe they need a crane. Also tell them about the base, I don't know how much useable material will survive, but it will do as recycled salvage."

"Will do."

"Shepard, out." She let her hand drop and sank further into her seat as her head fell back on the headrest. She sighed deeply and let her eyes close. The flight was absolutely rock steady and smooth, and the vibrations felt nice. She could not help but smile when she thought what Joker's reaction would be if he knew that she was admiring someone else's piloting. Joker would declare a feud with the Spectre on the spot if he knew. The possibility was amusing, but very unlikely since in a manner of a day or two at most they would part ways.

The adrenaline rush was fading, and without it there was absolutely nothing to keep exhaustion at bay. She was going to crash on the medbay cot tonight, even if Doctor Chakwas let her out after treatment.

Tomorrow morning she would need to write up a report for Admiral Hackett, and she could not sugar-coat that she let the Spectre on board. Hopefully the Admiral would not have her head; it was a humanitarian job. Right now the Spectre was paying that back in dividends.

Author Notes: This episode posed quite a bit of a challenge to "choreograph". Action scenes have always been a bit of my bane. The title is very much an allusion to both Shepard and Nihlus, the "ghosts" that they are. I saw quite a few similarities between the sorts of jobs they do and how they do them. This was very much my way of introducing my portrayal of Nihlus, which is a little different from what I seen others do.

Chapter Notes:

Zealand's Rotation – The great majority of celestial bodies rotate "counterclockwise" on their axis, Earth and most of the planets in our solar system are like that. Zealand would be the odd duck in that it rotates clockwise. Venus and Uranus do that, though Uranus is doubly eccentric in that its axis of rotation is turned 90 degrees, it turns sideways.

Call signs – For the uninitiated, these are typically used as radio aliases by pilots in military craft. Interestingly enough, they are often decided by the pilot's "friends". Most of the time there is a story behind them, and getting a "badass" name is atypical. Your first might very well be insulting. Most range on puns with your name (E.g. calling someone with last name Gillette "Razor"), something you did (E.g. CYNDI, short for "Check You're Not Dumping, Idiot!" – The pilot in question had a fuel dump valve open as he flew over a carrier's deck), or appearance (e.g. calling a redhead "Carrot").

Helium-3 Fusion – Helium-3 is an isotope, containing two protons and one neutron in its nucleus. It is not radioactive, very stable, and when fused with the nucleus of a deuterium (hydrogen with one proton and one neutron) atom releases no radioactive by-products, and is highly efficient. Helium-3 is released by most stars, carried on the solar wind. Earth's atmosphere filters it out, but a lot of it has gathered in the sand on Luna's surface. We just haven't figured out how to contain the heat/pressure required for the fusion. Still, as far as theoretical power sources go, this one is more possible than most Sci-fi franchises go for.