Horizon, the Collector ship leaving

The Mechanic ran out, shouting at the escaping Collector vessel, "No! Don't let 'em get away! They've got Egan and Sam, a-and Lilith!"

Jane Shepard watched the plume of fire arcing overhead, "We were lucky enough to stop them from getting the entire colony."

"They gotta have half the colony in there!"

She looked around, then at the poor Mechanic, "I don't have a fleet backing me up. My one ship can't stop them. At least, not yet."

Another Human male in Alliance regulation armor calmly entered the conversation, "Maybe one day, Shepard."

Whirling around again to Jane, the Mechanic recalled, "Oh, that's rich. The alarmist who got a lot of screen time on the news, then got a lot of Humans killed saving that worthless Council ship."

Jane tilted her head, "You know, the Destiny Ascension has a crew of around ten thousand."

He waved his hand dismissively as he left, "I'm done with you Alliance types."

"Someone sent me a note nearly two years ago. Something about a retrieval." Kaiden Alenko shook his head, "This... this is so far out of my train of thought of how we would meet again."

Shepard removed her helmet, letting her bouncy hair loose, "We talked about air support for days on end, Alenko."

She had gotten a chuckling grin out of him, "Yeah, well... all I could manage was a lousy, broken GUARDIAN system."

Miranda and Jakob looked quizzically at each other and shrugged.

Jane dropped the formality and said to Kaiden, "Command doesn't send a lone soldier with sealed mission orders to support or supplant a colonial defense project."

Alenko sighed, "Ya got me there, Captain."

She scolded him, "You were here to check on me."

He held up his gloved hands in defeat, "You know full well I can't talk about what I may, or may not have been ordered to do." Relaxing his body, Kaiden said instead, "All I can say, is that I will be telling Anderson that you're in damn good shape for a dead woman."

Back on the SR-2, Engineering, Jack's Hidey-hole

Jumping from her bed, Jack wass startled as she heard Jane ask, "Jack, find your old past yet?"

The former prisoner gritted her teeth at Shepard, "How the hell are you that quiet?! Nobody's that quiet!"

"Ask me again sometime." Jane slid her hands into the pockets of her open, Alliance-blue track jacket.

"Sure. Whatever." The biotic warrior briefly mulled over the first question, "I'm still finding out about me. Thanks for letting me look through all this."

Jane gently asked, "What have you found?"

"Your friends at Cerberus are into some nasty things. I'll find something I can use, I just know it."

"What if the answers aren't what you expect?"

Jack snapped her gaze to Shepard, "I'm not looking for answers. Names, dates, places."

Jane leaned shoulder-first against the support pole at a corner near the end of the bed, "And what will you do with that information?"

"I go hunting." The biotic's expression darkened, "My enemies pay. Their friends pay. The galaxy's gonna be a lot emptier when I'm done."

Omega, Blue Suns forward operating base, Recruiting Archangel

Jane typed some commands into her omni-tool, setting up a covert communication link to the YMIR mech, "EDI, set this mech to go defend the far end of the bridge after activation, and IFF parameters to favor our team."

"Understood. ... done." EDI kept the volume down, and off the radio link.

Before the blue-armored Turian could take off his helmet, Jane was already grinning, readily presenting herself to hug an old friend, "Garrus!"

A high-pitched ping from Miranda's omni-tool rang out, "Shepard, team two has repelled the infiltration teams."

Garrus took a seat on the couch and pulled off his helmet, "Here I thought keeping three merc gangs busy was a full-time job, and you come back from the dead. Touche`."

Starcraft Cemetery, Korlus, Blue Suns Research base

As another biotic detonation rang out in the distance, Garrus and Zaeed sat along the top of a wall overlooking the vast ocean of ruined vessels. The Turian turned his head towards the Human, "There weren't even enough Blue Suns soldiers to take down one of Okeer's rejected Krogan."

The consummate mercenary pulled his cigar from his lips, "It sure was a damn short fight for all the posturing they did over that goddamn loudspeaker."

Garrus lit his own dextro-cigar with his omnitool and took a puff, "Between our accuracy, Shepard's brutality, EDI's hacking, and a few good distractions, these guys never had a chance."

Zaeed grunted in agreement, as he got back to enjoying the flavor of his cigar and the industrial beauty of crashed, decommissioned starships.

Back onboard Normandy, Starboard Cargo Storage

A dazed, confused super-soldier Krogan in light grey armor held Jane Shepard against the wall, "Human. Female. Before you die, I need a name."

Jane was, once again, eerily calm, "You don't have one yet. Technically, you were just born."

The Krogan thought over his short existence so far, "I am trained; I know things, but the tank... Okeer. His words are hollow. Warlord, legacy... grunt. Grunt was amongst his last. It doesn't mean anything. It'll do." He returned his gaze to meet Jane's, "I am Grunt. If you are worthy of your command, prove your strength and try to destroy me."

Shepard lifted an eyebrow at him, "You want me to try to kill you?"

He took a breath, "The imprints never asked what I wanted. I was made strong, made to fight, to find the strongest. Without a reason of my own, one fight is the same as any other. Might as well start with you."

She responded with a slight grin on her face, "I have a powerful ship, a strong crew, and a stronger left hook. Our enemies are many, and some are colossal. You'd make it stronger."

He warned Jane, "If your actions or choices are weak, I'll have to kill you."

The grin Shepard bore only grew, "Then, we have an accord."