Chapter 16 – In the Name of Justice

January 24th, 2211, 0559 hours – Aboard the SSV Hippocrates, Deck 7, Bridge

12 hours and 59 minutes after Outbreak.

Cade immediately rushed to Camilla's side and gently pulled her to her feet. "Camilla, are you alright?" he asked.

My friend made no attempt to mask the sheer amount of concern in his voice in spite of his earlier, vehement denial that anything was going on between the two. Honestly, I wasn't going to give him shit for it now. I was immensely relieved that both of them had made it out unscathed.

The Hispanic technician shakily pulled herself to her feet, arms wrapped around Cade for support. Camilla was a strong woman, that fact was uncontestable, but her close brush with such a gruesome death would break the mien of even the most stalwart and experienced of soldiers.

The shock began to slowly dissipate while in the arms of the turian Spectre and the full magnitude of what had just happened, what she had avoided only through the selfless actions of another, began to hit her in force. The first sob broke the seal, to be quickly followed by another, then another, and then a flood of tears.

Cade cradled the technician and hummed softly with his subvocals, a tactic many turian parents used to calm their children in times of stress. He gently rested her head on the undamaged portions of his chestplate and with a gloved talon began to softly stroke the top of her head, giving her silent support but otherwise opting to let her cry it out.

Percival tossed a pair of Corpser's off of him. His wound on his upper arm had opened up again, red blood flowing freely down his armored arm to mingle with the fluids that the creatures had left behind. With a nod to me he turned and began to aid Lieutenant-Commander Barthilus in rallying the remaining survivors. There were barely forty of us left.

A tall man in black, angular armor pushed his way towards me. He gently removed his helmet and rested it in the crook of his elbow. Captain Elias Murgen looked to have aged at least ten years in the short time since I had last seen him. He had just lost four of the twelve Jaeger's he had brought aboard the ship in less than an hour – men and women that he had likely known for years.

Accer and Teewin moved up beside him, the young biotic was pale and wan, but was otherwise in good enough condition to throw me a quick wave. His Predator pistol was still held in his one remaining hand. Teewin had removed his helmet as well and was currently running a bloody hand through his short, patchy brown hair, His M-76 Revenant slung on his back. Not a single, remaining ammunition block hung from the combat webbing or a utility pouch on either of the two Jaeger's armor.

Rake and his marines followed close behind. The gunnery chief was in relatively good shape. A massive bruise had sprouted up on the side of his face where the turian saboteur, Severus, had elbowed him, but otherwise his eyes were alert and focused. Soph shot me a tired smile, in contrast the specialists' eyes were tired, with bags underneath them. Fly and Jay brought up the rear.

The Corpsman had one hand underneath the armpit of the shorter marine, helping him along. Jay's armor was covered in the fluids what had to have been at least a Corpser from every species. The cross tattooed onto his neck was barely visible under the thick sheen of dried blood. He was bleeding profusely from a wound in his leg and like the two Jaegers didn't have a single spare ammunition block anywhere on him, but he seemed to be in relatively good spirits. He beamed at me and waved a hand in greeting and I nodded and smiled back.

I turned to regard Captain Murgen. He was staring pensively at the spot where his man had died, his helmet still under one arm, his other hand holding tight onto the collar of his chest-plate.

There was nothing there now, nothing but a few broken pieces of armor, some damaged plating, and a severed cable with scorch marks along its length. The force generated by the four grenades within my biotic barrier had destroyed any remaining organic tissue.

"I've known John for almost a decade," Murgen began. "He passed selection back in '01, after about four years in the Alliance marines. He was part of my team for the first five, spent the last five as my XO after my last one bought the farm during a retrieval mission on some backwater space station a band of pirates decided to take over."

Murgen sighed and closed his eyes briefly before opening them again. "He was one of the bravest marines I knew, the kind that the vids back home would have you believe would always survive to make it home in the end. He could outshoot me, outrun me and outfight me, I'd hoped that he'd outlive me in the field."

I moved up, skirting respectfully around the perimeter of the First Lieutenant's final resting place, careful not to tread on his remains.

I clasped a hand on the Jaeger Commander's shoulder. "First Lieutenant Johnathan Bradford might have just saved us all, without him we would have lost technician Martell and our way of destroying the creatures aboard this ship."

The captain nodded and I removed my hand. "Miss Martell had just finished briefing us on a possible way for us to destroy the ship when those things attacked in force. John knew that she was the only one who could pull it off, it didn't surprise me in the slightest that he kept an eye on her throughout the whole fight."

Murgen knelt beside the scarred and pitted deck and gently ran his gloved fingers through the sooty residue that lay on top of it. He gently rubbed it between his fingers, then clenched his fist.

"Lieutenant Burton,"

Accer clicked his heels together and saluted even though his commanding officer was currently kneeling in a pile of his friend's ashes.

"Sir?"

"First Lieutenant Bradford, Service Chief Terry, Specialist Deschamps and Specialist Delgado are KIA."

The biotic lieutenant nodded morosely. Beside him Teewin grunted angrily. All four of the Jaegers had been a part of their team.

"You are hereby acting commander of Jaeger Team Two, and my new XO."

Accer straightened up even further, every muscle fiber going completely rigid as he struggled to suppress his surprise at his new orders.

"Sir, yes sir!"

Beside the young biotic, Teewin gently nudged the smaller marine and nodded at him.

Captain Elias Murgen rose up from where he had been kneeling beside the remains of First Lieutenant Bradford and turned towards his new XO.

"I wish this were under better circumstances and I know you just lost most of your team, but I need you to step up now. John had the utmost faith in you, and I do too."

The Jaeger Commander slapped the marine biotic on the shoulder, right where the white knight was painted, and moved towards the remainder of his marines. A pair of them were sporting minor lacerations but the rest of them looked to be in decent shape. Likely the three casualties at the entrance of the bridge occurred because the creatures caught the highly-trained marines by surprise.

"Captain Murgen!" I called out.

Elias turned and looked at me. "Yes, Spectre?"

I gestured to the four marines I had brought from the Excalibur. I hadn't known them very well before shit hit the fan, but if the events of the last day had shown me anything, it was that each of them were brave, skilled, and dedicated. They were marines who I'd want at my back as I hunted down the rest of the saboteurs, their ship, and this individual whom they had called 'Mordred'.

"I've got four marines outside of their usual chain of command. With your permission, I'd like to put them under Lieutenant Burton's command for the time being – and by extension, your command. He's worked well with them and I'd sleep a lot better knowing Gunnery Chief Hinzo isn't in charge."

A look of feigned hurt instantly crossed Rake's face, but the smile he shot at me afterwards indicated that there were to be no hard feelings between us about my decision. He'd told me before that he hated being in command. He just happened to be the highest-ranking marine I'd brought with me from the Excalibur.

Jay, Fly and Soph all chuckled and began to quietly give their fellow marine as much shit as possible. Captain Murgen smiled wryly and nodded.

"Permission granted. Think you can handle it, Lieutenant?"

Accer nodded and gave a small smile. Despite his loss, his spirit was intact. "One hundred percent, sir."

"Don't let me down, Lieutenant. You too, Gunnery Chief," Captain Murgen saluted his two Jaegers and went to go check on the rest of his men.

Accer turned to the four marines I'd brought, a slight grin plastered on his face.

"Ladies and gentlemen, if I still had both hands you could be damned sure I'd be rubbing them evilly right now."

His left arm ended slightly below the elbow where Olivia had severed it, temporarily disabling his ability to use his biotics and nearly killing the young marine. His pistol, grenades, his combat knife, all of them had been moved to the right side of his body, giving him easy access and leaving him relatively combat effective.

"Gunnery Chief Sean Teewin will be my unofficial second-in-command. Overall command of the Jaegers still remains with Captain Elias Murgen, but in the event that we split up that role will fall to me. In the interests of galactic safety, I highly encourage you to follow any and all orders that Operatives Cloud, Percival, and Kitiarian may give you over mine."

None of the marines said a word of complaint nor cracked a single joke as Accer outlined what was what. A part of me was afraid that they wouldn't take his command seriously. I know that I should have had more faith in Rake and his team, but Accer was by far the youngest of the six marines that now comprised Jaeger Team Two.

There's no such thing as a one-dimensional marine in terms of personality. Even the most serious, professional marine was going to crack a smile once in a while. Accer was definitely one of the less solemn ones – always ready with a joke, always ready with a quip. That had allowed him to strike up a quick rapport and friendship with the marines.

But sometimes it could be hard to follow the orders of someone you saw as a friend and not your commanding officer. Especially if that individual was younger than you. Rake and Fly were both in their early thirties, and Soph and Jay and Teewin were all likely hitting their late twenties. It was natural and understandable for them to perhaps not see Accer as their commanding officer, but more as a friend and fellow marine. Orders wouldn't necessarily be disobeyed, but might be followed more slowly, with more hesitation. In the heat of combat with lives or the mission on the line, that could be disastrous

But as I watched them listen to the young Jaeger, I saw on each of their faces, in each of their expressions, the quintessential element that binded an officer to his or her soldiers – that allowed them to work fluidly and seamlessly together in a professional setting, regardless of how they might feel about each other. The element that guaranteed that no matter what personality that officer had or what relationships that officer had with their men, orders would be followed, the chain of command maintained, and the mission completed.

Respect.

They all respected Accer. The young biotic Jaeger had earned it with his affability, his approachability, the ease with which he struck up friendships, his fighting skills, his level-headedness in combat. He'd earned it when he risked his life to save mine back in the engine room, when he nearly, quite literally, single-handedly put an end to the deranged Doctor Devaris back in the medical deck.

Ha, I should have my own show.

Nonetheless, here was another individual who had been thrust into the clusterfuck that was this outbreak and had so far passed each test and trial with flying colors. With the possibility that these creatures could spread throughout the galaxy, more than ever the galaxy needed men like him to step up and assume the mantle handed down by those such as First Lieutenant Johnathan Bradford.

I remember watching Cade play a video game back when we had some downtime between missions. It had been a first-person shooter, a remaster of a remaster of a remaster. I remember during this one cutscene at the start of the game, the protagonist's friend, mentor, fellow soldier – whatever – had turned to him and said a line that really resonated with me, especially considering the profession that I had found myself thrust in and considering the kind of people that I found myself associating with.

"Folk's need heroes, chief. To give 'em hope."

January 24th, 2211, 0629 hours – Aboard the SSV Hippocrates, Deck 7, Bridge – Briefing Room 16-A

13 hours and 29 minutes after Outbreak.

"Fill me in, Rentea."

The asari doctor wiped a bead of sweat from her forehead and pulled a pair of blood-stained sterile medical gloves off of her hands.

"All injuries have been treated for now, aside from the KIA's all the other wounded had nothing more than a few light-to-moderate lacerations. I've used up the rest of the medi-gel we brought with us from the medical deck and I've given the synthstims to those with the most serious wounds to get them up and mobile. We should have no problem reaching the evacuation point, which I would assume to be one of the hangars."

I nodded at her. Lieutenant-Commander Barthilus spoke up next. The XO of the Hippocrates had a bandage around one eye where a Corpser had gotten off a lucky hit and the Predator pistol he had holstered at his waist looked like it had seen better days, but the turian bridge officer was still kicking. His coordination of the survivors during the attack had been impressive given the lack of ammunition and training that they had.

"We have about a dozen security personnel left, plus around twenty assorted crewmembers. Counting you three and Captain Murgen's Jaegers and the marines, we've got forty-seven survivors. Like the good doctor says, all of us can walk and all of us are very, very ready to leave."

"We've also got guns and ammunition again, thanks to you and your team," Captain Murgen chimed in, "Enough to give every survivor who can use one a weapon and an ammunition block."

I cursed. Forty-seven survivors out of a crew of slightly over a thousand, less if you considered the fact that Percival, Cade and I, alongside Rake and his team, weren't part of the original crew. The saboteurs had probably numbered around forty or fifty members, with maybe ten percent of them having made it off the ship.

That meant that more than 90% of the ship's crew had died in the last fourteen hours.

I pushed it to the back of my mind and turned my attention back to the briefing. "Where do we stand in regards to the ship's destruction? What did you guys come up with?" I asked.

Percival rotated his battered helmet again and again between his fingers. The big man's blond hair was matted with sweat and blood from where one of the creatures had landed a glancing blow.

"We can't enable the self-destruct from the bridge, the drive core components sustained too much damage for us to activate it, bridge and engineering VI's basically confirmed the fact afterwards."

He glanced over at Camilla and then back towards the rest of the group. "We can't enable the self-destruct, no nuclear weapons, no faster-than-light capabilities, and all four primary thrusters are dead, also sabotaged."

Percival stopped and gave us a charming, toothy grin. "But we have emergency thrusters."

Cade turned to me and shot me a small smile, one that I returned. What was the name of the red dwarf in the system that the SSV Hippocrates was currently floating in? It had been included in the original briefing but we'd dismissed it as non-essential information not pertinent to the mission at hand.

Theodore 108, that was it.

Barthilus raised his hand. "Spectre, I understand your intent but I don't see how it's possible. The emergency thrusters were designed to be fired in exactly that – emergency situations. They were designed for one-time use and require substantial maintenance and refitting before the ship's computers would allow us to fire them again."

The turian officer's mandibles flapped once as he tried to suppress his skepticism. His misgivings were understandable,

"This isn't one of those movies that Citadel production companies churn out every half quarter. We were moving at a speed of several hundred meters a second when the engines were shut down, we're still moving at that rate because that's how physics works. By my estimates, at the rate we're moving firing our emergency thrusters would just be barely enough to bring us to a full stop, but after that we'd still be dead in the water, hundreds of thousands of kilometers from Theodore 108," Barthilus finished.

Percival stepped back from the table we had gathered at and gestured for Camilla to step forward. Finding and saving the drive core technician had been a stroke of extreme luck on the part of Cade and I.

Had we not found her, the saboteurs would have likely succeeded in their shadowy, secretive objectives and this ship and its denizens might very well have remained intact, lying in wait for a salvage crew or a rescue operation to open its pandora's box of terrors.

If we died during this op they'd better remember that. God help me.

Camilla cleared her throat and brought up a schematic on her omni-tool.

"I can bypass the safeties on the emergency thrusters from here, on the bridge. It would allow us to fire the emergency thrusters in pulses – we'd have to wait for them to cool down between each pulse, but it should be enough to get the Hippocrates into the gravitational pull of Theodore 108."

She highlighted a portion of the schematic and expanded it for us to see.

Her slight Hispanic accent grew more and more evident as she became lost in her own explanation. "By my estimates, the emergency thrusters can handle a six-second burn, followed by at least ten minutes to cool down before we can fire it again."

"Theoretically we can then keep firing them until the thrusters literally fall apart, but in practice we might only have thirteen or fourteen pulses before they're done for."

Camilla pulled up a star-map of the system with two points marked on it. The first was marked with the symbol of the SSV Hippocrates, the second was a round ball in the center of the map labelled 'Theodore 108'. A dotted line that form a rough parabola with thirteen X's marked along its length connected the Hippocrates to the star.

"We will fire the thrusters a total of thirteen times, I'll program the VI's to make minute course adjustments after every pulse so that we stay on course and don't miss our target. After the thirteenth, we'll be in the immediate gravitational pull of Theodore 108 and gravity will do the rest."

She uploaded the map to our omni-tools, adding time notations beside each X to give us a rough timeline of when each pulse would occur.

"We want to be long gone before we enter Theodore's gravity well, so we should coordinate with your Flight Lieutenant to arrange for our evacuation. Bypassing the safeties on the emergency thrusters and uploading the navigational instructions to the bridge VI's shouldn't take me more than twenty minutes at most, so we should be ready to move by then."

All of us nodded. We now had a done and dusted plan to destroy this floating nightmare once and for all.

I raised my hand. "Any chance that someone could disable the bypass or the navigational instructions?" I asked the Hispanic drive core technician.

Camilla brushed an errant strand of hair behind an ear and shook her head. "No, the safeties will literally be destroyed, and unless someone has higher clearance than Lieutenant-Commander Barthilus our navigational instructions can't be tampered with either."

I nodded and crossed my arms. Thirteen burns with ten minutes in between amounted to a little over two hours, plus the time Camilla would require to actually make the preparations. Should be enough time for me to do what I had to do.

"Alright, go get started then. Lieutenant-Commander Barthilus and Captain Murgen, if you would, please start preparing the survivors and the rest of our forces for evacuation. Rentea, assist them if you can, I want us ready to leave when Camilla gives us the green light."

The people I'd named nodded and left the briefing room, leaving Cade, Percival, Jaelen and I. The salarian had been quiet the entire time we had been discussing the ship, such technical knowledge being outside his area of expertise. His input on engineering matters wasn't the reason why I had asked him to attend, however.

I uncrossed my arms and placed my palms flat against the holo-table.

"You've all watched the video I sent you, alongside Jaelen's notes, right? Or at least read the transcript?"

Morose nods all around. We stood in silence for a while as each of us considered what we had to say on the matter.

Jaelen broke the silence first. "Have examined tissue samples of creatures using DNA sequencer. Presence of both Reaper and unknown-origin DNA alongside hosts' original DNA. Composition strikingly similar to the DNA found in subset of Reaper cores by female investigator in video."

We all nodded in agreement.

The salarian doctor grabbed the medical container at his feet, the one filled with the biopsies and tissue samples he'd taken, and plopped it on the table. "Connection to phenomenon on Earth and Thessia a high possibility. Need to get samples to lab, need to perform further tests," Jaelen continued.

Cade twitched his mandibles and crossed his arms. "As much as I hate to think about it, there is every possibility that the outbreak on this ship is simply the accelerated version of what is currently happening on Earth and Thessia. Spirits, this could be bad."

"Not just Earth and Thessia," Percival added. "The Reapers maintained a sizeable ship presence on almost every major planet during the war, and when Shepard activated the crucible and destroyed them all virtually every ship remained structurally intact, even though the Reaper AI's that controlled them were wiped."

He pulled up a star map of the galaxy on his omni-tool and began highlighting systems and planets – Earth, Thessia, Kar'shan, Palaven, Taetrus, Hyetiana, the list went on and on.

"Reaper capital ships invaded almost every major colony in the Milky Way. Even more than two decades after the war many of those wrecks still remain. If what the woman on the video said was true, then perhaps not every Reaper core has the ability to trigger the phenomenon or an outbreak, but we still have no idea which ones can, and where those cores are."

I nodded in agreement and dug my fingers harder into the table. "The more populated a colony was, the more ships the Reaper's sent, and the more cores that were left behind when the Crucible activated. That means that we could have sleeping bombs dangerously placed in nearly every major population sector in the galaxy, waiting to trigger an outbreak. We could lose billions, maybe trillions, of people."

"We know there's likely a few on Earth and Thessia, but the galaxy doesn't have the manpower to clean-up all those wrecks, or else we would have done so by now," Cade added.

The turian sighed and rubbed his fringe with his hand. "We don't have the means to evacuate every planet that was invaded by the Reapers during the war, nor do we have the means to identify which of the cores are capable of starting an outbreak and which ones are duds."

I gritted my teeth. "We need to find a way to find those cores."

Jaelen nodded. "Agreed, Spectres. Have gathered as much evidence and data as we can. With a bit of research we can hopefully find a way to identify which cores have the aggressor DNA, maybe even synthesize a cure or a vaccine, reverse phenomenon on Earth and Thessia, stop this in its tracks."

Percival finally stopped spinning his helmet in his hands and clipped it to his back. "We need to get off this ship, take our findings to the Council, then stop this before it's too late."

"And make sure we do it before the saboteurs," Cade added. "Chalk it up to a twisted imagination, but I have a sinking feeling that what we experienced on this ship? What happened to the crew? This is the 'Transcendence' that they've been talking about, that they intend for everyone."

"That is fucked up," Percival groaned. "You'd think that someone would go 'Hey! It doesn't sound like what we're shooting for here is some kind of divine, spiritual salvation, in fact, it kinda looks like were turning everyone into mindless killing machines instead, maybe we should stop!', am I right?"

Cade chuckled and shook his head, amused at the portrayal of the immense level of delusion that one would have to be immersed in to go along with the saboteur's plan.

I refrained from laughing and instead looked at Jaelen.

"There's still one last piece of evidence aboard this ship, one that we can retrieve, recover, and use to figure out how to stop this shit," I said.

Cade, Percival and Jaelen all looked at me in confusion.

"The Reaper CPU."

Cade's mandibles splayed in alarm and he immediately threw in his two cents. "No, no way. That thing is still plugged into the Reaper core back at the Prometheus labs, and it should stay that way."

Percival crossed his arms. "I agree with Cade. There's already a high chance that the cores and - by extension the DNA - used to construct them are responsible for what's happened. There's no need to go on a suicide mission within a suicide mission to confirm what we already know. We have enough samples already, they contain the DNA. We don't need go back down there."

The turian Spectre's blue eyes glinted dangerously while Percival's were clouded with worry. On an awkward aside, I sometimes still found it hard to believe that all three of us had blue eyes. I guess in Cade's case it wasn't a recessive trait, but for humans it was considerably less common. My mother had blue eyes.

I looked at Percival, then Cade. Both of them had a look of apprehension on their faces. Cade looked ready to put me in a choke-hold were I to give off the slightest whiff of disobedience while Percival merely waited patiently my response.

I sighed heavily and relaxed my stance. "Fine. I would need a much better reason than that to go back into the Prometheus labs."

The ease with which I surrendered took both my friend's by surprise. Cade's mandibles twitched in shock and Percival looked nonplussed.

"Thank you," Percival sighed in relief. "I know you want to grab as much intel as you can, but you need to remember that you saw things we didn't aboard this ship, specifically in regards to the saboteurs. Your unique testimony to the Council could be more useful than whatever that Reaper CPU could tell us, if it could even tell us anything more than what we already know."

"I don't trust him." Cade hissed. "We should-,"

A loud trio of loud gunshots brought our friendly discussion to an abrupt stop. As one we all slipped our helmets on, whirled and made a beeline for the door with Cade in the lead, followed by me, then Percival. Jaelen grabbed the sample container and immediately took cover underneath the table, Predator out.

Out on the bridge the rest of the survivors were crouched around the perimeter, their hands covering their heads in fear. Some of them were sobbing while others were prone on the ground.

Murgen and his men, alongside the surviving security personnel, stood in a semi-circle with their rifles raised. The barrel of more than a dozen rifles were pointed at a pair of figures standing one of the terminals at the forefront of the bridge.

The first one was Camilla.

The second was Captain Jameson Farragut. The sorry piece of shit was still alive.

A Predator pistol was clutched in a sweaty, shaking hand, its barrel jammed against the temple of the struggling drive core technician. Farragut had his other arm wrapped around her neck, holding her between him and the rifles of Murgen's Jaeger's. Camilla screamed a litany of Spanish curses at the deranged bridge officer, her hands tugging furiously at his arm.

Cade and I shared a quick look and we both immediately activated our tactical cloaks. Percival pushed his way between the line of Jaeger's. Accer and Teewin shifted to give him room, but otherwise their weapons never wavered from Farragut.

Percival made a couple of cautious steps forward. He held out both hands away from any of his weapons and made an attempt to look as unintimidating as possible.

"Captain Farragut, talk to me, what's going on here?" he calmly asked.

The bridge officer was shaking violently. Beads of sweat ran down his nose and into his beard, his teeth were so tightly clenched that I half expected them to break. His arm tightened around Camilla's neck, cutting off her curses and causing her to choke and sputter.

Somewhere nearby, I could sense Cade tensing up.

"I won't let you destroy the ship," Farragut hissed. He pressed the barrel of his Predator pistol harder into Camilla's temple. To her credit, she didn't so much as flinch. Her eyes were dry of tears, devoid of fear, filled with nothing but pure anger.

The captain dug his arm deeper into her neck. "I know you need Miss Martell here to do it. I won't let you destroy this ship," he repeated.

Percival nodded slowly and calmly gestured for the Jaegers to lower their weapons. To their credit, every Jaeger immediately did so. Percival took another step, his calm, blue gaze taking note of Farragut's reaction at his attempts at de-escalation.

Now that there weren't a dozen guns trained on him, Farragut's breathing became noticeably less labored. He must have loosened his grip on Camilla a tiny bit because the drive core technician immediately took in a huge gulp of air. The barrel of his pistol however remained firmly pressed against her temple.

Percival tried to reason with the captain. "Jameson, you know why we need to destroy these creatures. You saw what happened less than an hour ago. Brave soldiers died – are dying – to stop these things. If we don't destroy this ship their sacrifices will have been for nothing."

"They knew the risks!" Farragut screamed. "We could have called for an evacuation! We could have contained the situation! I won't let you destroy everything I've worked so hard for!"

An icon lit up in my HUD telling me that I had received a private text message. I looked at it and blinked, opening it up.

[SpectreOp. CK] [06:47]: He's going to kill her

[SpectreOp.1C] [06:47]: Patience, trust in Percival.

[SpectreO. CK] [06:47]: I have to do something.

[SpectreOp.1C] [06:48]: Trust Percival.

Farragut's fingers tightened ever so lightly around the trigger of his Pistol. Camilla had stopped cursing, instead she seemed to be looking desperately around the room, looking for something, looking for someone.

I slowly moved into position, weaving my way between the Jaegers, careful not to accidentally nudge or startle one and give myself away. Slowly, deliberately, I pulled my own Predator out of my holster.

"Miss Martell here is the last surviving engineer, if I kill her you'll have no way to destroy this ship," Farragut snarled. He dug the barrel of his weapon deeper into Camilla's temple. My hand tightened angrily around the grip of my gun as I watched a line of tears begin well up in Camilla's eyes.

In an act that likely surprised everyone on the bridge, Percival dropped his hands and laughed. The non-threatening stance he had adopted vanished. The Spectre stood up straight and removed his helmet, chuckling.

"If you really think I need Miss Martell to accomplish that, you're dumber than I thought, Farragut," he smirked.

"I've been a Council Spectre for almost a decade," Percival said tauntingly. My friend then gestured at the bright red stripe on his right arm.

"See this? It means I'm also an N7. Graduated the Villa, three hundred tryouts and less than thirty made it to the very end. Of the thirty, I was top of my class and I was only 23 years old at the time, one of the youngest ever to complete the full course."

Farragut sneered at my friend's bravado and arrogance. "I don't see how that matters, what's it all supposed to mean?"

I watched as Percival smiled the smile he reserved for what he considered to be the absolute scum of the galaxy. Krogan pirate warlords, batarian slavers, human terrorists – it was a smile the normally humble, respectful, and dutiful marine reserved for those he was going to kill in the name of galactic safety.

"It means that even if you kill Miss Martell, I'll find another way. And if you stop that too, I'll simply find another, and another. Because that's what Spectres do, because that's what N7's are trained to do."

Farragut snarled and moved the barrel of his weapon so it was pointed at my friend. "Then maybe I should kill you instead!"

That was my moment. Cade and I both acted simultaneously – our pistols flew up, our fingers squeezed down on our triggers and a single shot erupted from each of our barrels with a bright-blue flash. The action de-activated our tactical cloaks and revealed our positions to the stunned survivors. The Jaegers immediately went on high alert and brought their weapons to bare.

One shot went straight into the body of Farragut's Predator pistol. The heavy round destroyed the inner mechanisms of the weapon and warped the barrel. It flew out of Farragut's hand, spitting sparks like a malfunctioning tazer, and fell onto the deck with a clatter.

Another went straight between the eyes of the Captain. His head snapped back and a fine, red mist erupted from a golf ball-sized cavity that appeared at the back of his skull. The console behind him caught the full brunt of the red mist, the display flickering as the bullet travelled straight through and embedded itself in its screen.

Farragut's eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed like a puppet with his strings cut. Camilla tore herself out of his limp grasp and ran towards Cade.

Cade holstered his weapon just in time to catch the drive core technician. He pulled her in a deep hug, then grabbed her by her upper arms and moved her slightly away. I holstered my pistol and nodded to Percival, who nodded back. No point checking for a pulse.

"Camilla, are you alright?" Cade asked.

Camilla nodded shakily and sniffled. She looked back at the body of the captain and spat at it.

A throaty roar erupted from somewhere in the crowd. Before we could pinpoint its source, a massive, grey shape crashed bodily into Cade, bringing the stunned turian to the ground.

My friend had some of the best reflexes I'd ever seen on a Spectre, his hand immediately shot to his Carnifex only to fall away as he realized who was attacking him.

A large, taloned fist crashed heavily into his face, slamming his head against the deck and eliciting a terrified scream from Camilla.

Another fist caught him in the upper right eye, quickly followed by another to his left mandible, yet still my friend lay there under the withering hail of blows, making no attempt to defend himself.

" 'Hero of Palaven', you're no hero!" snarled Sergeant Vidanor Mardinus.

Cade made no attempt to defend himself. If he had the Sergeant would have been dead by now. Instead he tried to open his mouth to speak, only for another fist to crash heavily into it.

"You killed your commanding officer during the Palaven Rebellions! You killed the commanding officer of this ship! You're no turian, you're a disgrace! A bare-faced mongrel without an ounce of honor!" Mardinus screamed at him.

The violent act of retribution from the characteristically stone-faced turian sergeant had caught all of us flat-footed, even me. Camilla let out another yell and made a move towards Cade but Galen pulled her back. Percival held out both arms in an attempt to keep the rest of the survivors calm. Accer and Teewin and all the Jaegers brought their weapons up and trained them squarely at the berserk turian.

Cade blinked blearily and coughed up a wad of blue blood. His normally-clear gaze was unfocused and confused. Mardinus grabbed him by the collar of his armor, lifted him ever so slightly, then slammed him hard back down onto the deck. My friend's head snapped painfully back but to his credit he didn't make a sound.

The heavier, bulkier turian brought his face within an inch of Cade's, his mandibles flared wide.

"You ruined the peace treaty! You killed your commanding officer – you killed your own father! Your own flesh and blood! You destroyed everything we fought for and they called you 'hero' for it! Because of you my friends died for nothing – because of you Palaven will never again be as it was before the Reaper War!"

My eyes went wide with surprise at the sergeant's accusation. Maybe this wasn't about the death of Captain Farragut.

The Palaven Rebellions had happened more than half a decade ago, a little after the Slaver Fringe Wars. The Seccessionists had been a faction of turians who had felt that the Council of Primarchs had spent too many turian resources and manpower to fix the galaxy in the wake of the Reaper War and too little on turian planets and colonies – Palaven especially.

They had felt a sense of injustice. Turian firepower and therefore turian casualties had kept the bulk of the Reaper Invasion forces occupied in the Trebia system during the war, allowing the rest of the galaxy to solidify their defenses. After the war, the Primarch had directed a large portion of what remaining turian resources they had towards the restoration of the galaxy as a whole, rather than focusing primarily on turian systems.

As a result, turian tax credits went towards asari and human refugees, krogan infrastructure, even batarian colonies, and many of the survivors remained homeless or starved. While many turian citizens saw their sacrifices as a necessary part of their duty as the galaxies primary peacekeeping forces, a sizeable portion felt that it was unfair – duty and loyalty to their people superseded their loyalty to the upper echelons of the Turian Hierarchy. They could not stand idle while turian colonies lay broken and their people fought for scraps of food.

Parts of Cipritine, Capital City of Palaven, remained broken and scarred even a decade and a half after the war ended. An iconic holo-photo of the city's ruins taken by a gifted turian journalist captured the spirit and the heart of how many unsatisfied turians felt about the decisions of the Primarch in regards to the needs of their people. When that photo began showing up on turian news channels, the dam broke. The Seccessionists wanted to leave the Hierarchy.

Eventually the Rebellions began in earnest sometime in 2303 on Palaven and continued on until around 2304. Hundreds of thousands of lives were lost as the Seccessionists engaged Loyalist forces on major turian colonies. What made the Palaven Rebellions so particularly brutal was the fact that the Seccessionists didn't fight for personal glory, or money, or power, or fame. They fought for what they believed was right, and that made them dangerous.

They simply wanted the Primarch to do their duty to their people. They wanted them to fix Palaven. And if he wouldn't, then they would leave and do it themselves.

Eventually, Secessionist leadership forces agreed to a cease-fire summit offered by the currently-sitting Primarch of Palaven. They were to discuss peace terms to bring an end to the terrible civil war.

Unbeknownst to the Primarch, the Blackwatch unit he brought with him to guard him had its own Seccessionists seeded within. One Koltira Kitiarian, 997th Commander of the Blackwatch, made plans to assassinate the Primarch and several other high-ranking Loyalist leaders. He made plans to detonate a bomb, martyring the Seccessionist delegation as well to make it look like the Primarch had done so, in an attempt to incite those with Seccessionist sympathies who had not chosen to take up arms to do so and to restore Palaven to its rightful glory.

He was stopped by one of his own. A young, bright-eyed turian, newly inducted to the Blackwatch. A talented soldier, a future Spectre — a son who wanted nothing more than to prove to his father that he could be a good turian, a true turian.

The Primarch, in an act of both wisdom and shrewd cunning, made the actions of the renegade commander public knowledge. He then decided to openly forgive all Seccessionists willing to lay down their arms and to immediately begin restoration efforts of all cities and colonies that still lay in ruin, to be completed within two decades. He also promised the best efforts of the turian councilor at petitioning Council aid for a reparations fund in light of exemplary turian service and the disproportionate sacrifices that they'd made during the war.

This mollified the Seccessionists, who were at heart good, loyal turians. They saw that their goal had been fulfilled and they were ashamed at the level of underhanded deception that one of their own would resort to. They immediately lay down their weapons and surrendered. Peace was restored, the bloodshed ended, and Cade was hailed as a hero before he was even nineteen years old.

Cade blinked back a set of tears that had began to form around his eyes. Not from the pain of Mardinus' blows – I'd seen him take bullet wounds without so much as flinching. The tears were for something else, something that even the hardest, most ruthless of us were defenseless against.

Every turian in the military above the age of 35 was likely a veteran of the Reaper War. I had guessed that the career sergeant was most definitely one of them. His attitude and cold demeanor towards Cade way back before we'd even left for the engine room had made me suspect that he had also fought on the side of the Seccessionists during the Palaven Rebellions.

Most turians had been Loyalists – Barthilus included. They practically hero-worshipped Cade, lauding him as the 'Hero of the Palaven Rebellions', single-handedly responsible for ending the civil war and halting the spilling of turian blood by turian hands.

Mardinus's actions and words confirmed that he had most definitely fought on the side of the Seccessionists. He had every right to be angry at Cade. While Cipritine and many other major cities and colonies were partially restored, they were not at their former Pre-War glory - might never be. Some were still upset, and did not consider their cause truly finished until Palaven and all of turian space was back to their former glory. Half a decade later, I am willing to bet that some wished that they had never laid down arms.

But maybe nothing they ever did would bring those days back. Maybe to attempt to do so was to disregard all that we had suffered during the war and all that we had learned from it about cooperation, unity, and hope. Some would argue that it might be better to let them stay ruined, let them stand as a monument to everything that the galaxy went through, together.

I don't know, I'm not a philosopher. All I know is that Cade is my friend.

I moved up and pressed the back of my pistol against the turian sergeant's head. His kinetic shields wouldn't stop anything at that range.

"Stop this, sergeant."

Mardinus looked at me and snarled. "He killed this ship's commanding officer, just like he killed his last one! He should be punished!"

I lowered my weapon and deactivated it. I holstered it and instead held out my hand to the angry turian.

He eyed my hand for a full ten seconds before grabbing it, the anger leaving his eyes.

I pulled him to his feet calmly told him the truth.

"Cade didn't shoot him, I did."

His eyes went wide and he immediately glanced at Cade, still on his back and breathing hard. Cade looked at me and then back at the turian sergeant, his eyes glazed with tears.

Mardinus looked back at me and flapped his mandibles in surprise.

"Cade shot the captain's gun, I shot him in the head. He was going to kill engineer Martell, and if he did we'd have no way of destroying this ship. The galaxy would have been put in danger and I cannot allow that to happen," I calmly explained.

The veteran sergeant mulled my words over. I could see them starting to sink in, begin to dispel his rage and fury. His overreaction towards Cade hadn't been out of some kind of misguided loyalty to his captain or in disagreement towards our plan to destroy the ship – it was likely a byproduct of his experiences during the Palaven Rebellions. Mardinus knew that making sure these creatures couldn't make it off was the right move.

Galen let go of Camilla who immediately threw herself atop of Cade. She pulled him to a seated position while Rentea dashed over with a roll of bandages and began to administer aid to my friend.

I ignored them and continued to calmly speak to the turian sergeant. He seemed to shrink with every passing second. This wasn't about the captain, Mardinus believing Cade to be responsible for Farragut's death was merely the last straw that broke the old turian's back. No, this was about old wounds.

"I know you fought in the Reaper War, I know you probably lost people in the Reaper War."

Taloned claws dug into the palms of his hand. Bright blue droplets of blood fell onto the deck.

Mardinus nodded numbly. "My little girl, my wife…"

He balled his fists even tighter and looked down at the deck. All that tension, all that anger had evaporated from his stances, his frame, leaving behind a broken old soldier — one who had lost his family in the war, one who had watched his government abandon the survivors of its own species in favor of helping the people of other species, one who had decided to do something about it and one who had had it all mean absolutely nothing.

I lifted a hand and pointed at my friend. Cade was uncharacteristically silent as I continued to speak on his behalf, his eyes drilled into mine for a second and in that split moment I could see nothing but trust and appreciation.

"He didn't kill your family, he wasn't the one who decided what could be repaired and what couldn't, who had food and who didn't, who had a place to live and who had to sleep wherever they could."

Camilla looked at Cade with eyes full of understanding, sympathy, and something more that I could not name. Cade looked at her and gently took her hand and squeezed it before bringing it to his mouth, kissing it gently.

"He had to shoot his father," I continued. "He didn't shoot him for glory, he didn't shoot him for fame, he didn't shoot him to destroy everything you fought for, to destroy everything your friends died for."

"He did it to save lives, the lives of his Primarch, the lives of his fellow soldiers, the lives of your Seccessionist leaders, and the lives of everyone else who might have died had the Rebellions continued. He killed his own father to do so."

I turned to my friend, now seated on the ground with the arms of who absolutely had to be his future girlfriend wrapped around him. He was a sniper, a womanizer, a soldier, a Spectre, a damn good friend.

"And they called him 'Hero' for it. They gave him medals and put him in the history books and told their children stories him. They called him 'Hero'. He then became a Spectre when he was barely twenty years old – the youngest to do so since Saren Arterius himself — and since then he's saved thousands of more lives."

"But you know who never, not once, called himself a hero?"

"Cade."