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

Author Notes: I am back from my unscheduled hiatus. But I won't bore you with the saga of the miserable year I've had so far, so without further ado, please enjoy the episode.

Episode 78: Die Another Day [Part IV]

Shepard was no expert, but she could still tell the storm bearing down on them was a genuine supercell. Then the lightning flashed, their comm to hissed like a mad cobra, and the fork hit the highest jagged point one of the ruined buildings, causing the point of impact to glow. The sight of that was as good as a promise death and destruction to whoever and whatever was caught in the storm's path.

One Shepard left the partial shelter offered by the ruins she had to run with the wind blasting into her side. At the top of the steps down toward the sand-covered plaza, the gusts registered at eighty kilometers an hour, a fast-moving river of air, likely the outflow from the storm's forward downdraft.

The sheer quantity of sand it whipped up into the air brought visibility down to the point that she could only make out the vague dark shape of the collapsed tower section where their Kodiak was parked. The tiniest particles also triggered her kinetic shield while the larger bits passed through to dig, tug, and pick at the weave of her suit. She reached, turned off her external microphone, turned on her helmet lights, and began down the steps. Worse yet, such gusts were definitely enough to send debris flying like knives, and their shields would not stop anything bigger than a fleck of paint.

At the base of the steps running became outright impossible due to the shifty, uneven ground and wind combining to increase the risk of falling into the sand. That would be dangerous, as the dunes could conceal debris that would at best only gouge her suit and at worst cause an injury.

Some meters away from the steps she stopped momentarily to catch her breath and glance back. She could just about make out the lights cast by her team through the haze, with Legion's sensor suite as the brightest of the bunch. Javik and Nihlus' armors contrasted with the haze, making them stand out as phantoms in the gloom, but Saren blended into it almost perfectly. "Legion, come up front with me," she stated.

"Acknowledged." The geth replied as their light began to drift toward her.

Shepard watched them for a second, momentarily envious of their steady gait. "We'll be the navigation beacons, I don't want anyone getting lost."

"Probably a good idea. Legion is a good proxy for a light-house," Nihlus replied.

Shepard opened her mouth to tell him not to make jokes like that, but then she realized that for once he was not joking. Then Legion stopped at her side and turned to stare into the oncoming storm. Even they did not feel the need to reply to Nihlus, so she decided to let it go.

Suddenly the lightning flashed bright enough to cast shadows on the sand and the thunder all but exploded overhead, drowning out the comm hiss, as her HUD flashed a warning of a momentary spike in radiation. Any thought of further conversation died right then and there. She whirled and resumed her push toward safety.

Crossing the open space between the steps and the ruined tower section took twice as long as the first time around, despite the fact that they did not need to dash from cover to cover or check for enemies. Shepard stopped at the line of the first intact floor slab to give herself a few moments to breathe. She was practically swallowing air as her lungs burned. But even if she was not winded, talking would have been impossible as the lightning flashed and the comm link fuzzed with ever-increasing frequency.

Legion stopped right next to her and turned to stare into the storm.

Shepard closed her eyes and forced herself to inhale deeply. Once her diaphragm stretched out to the limit the stitch in her side faded a bit. She held that breath for a second and let it out, only to take another.

"Shepard are you alright?" Nihlus asked in a moment of calm.

"I'm fine." She would rather be guilty of lying than show any sign of weakness right then. She opened her eyes, inhaled one last time, as deeply as possible, squared her shoulders, and resumed her trek. With winds this strong it was safe to bet that they would not be going anywhere until they were clear of the storm. Maybe she could even take a catnap.

She got maybe twenty more meters down the side of the building when lightning flashed overhead and she saw her own shadow on the sand. The thunder cracked and rolled almost immediately afterward, drowning out the hissing of the comm and the whine of her radiation meter. Before the fuzzing could clear, a tiny drop of water landed and slid down her face-shield. "The rain! We're out of time!" She called, without glancing back.

"Affirmative," Legion replied.

The other three replied with hums and rumbles rather than anything verbal.

Suddenly the sky opened up with a torrential, wind-accelerated rain. The water rapidly began to sluice across her face-shield, quickly obliterating the last shreds of visibility the sand had not. Shepard grit her teeth and pressed on with a renewed urgency.

It took another ten minutes to reach the edge of the fractured floor slab flanking the break in which the Kodiak sat, and by then the stitch in her side felt more like someone had jammed a hot brand between her ribs. Her momentary relief was obliterated when she made her next step and the sand shifted, taking her balance with it. Shepard caught herself before she could face-plant by grabbing onto the edge. But before she could right herself, a three-fingered hand wrapped around her upper arm, and then its owner pulled her back upright. Shepard inhaled deeply and turned her head, "Thanks, Legion."

The geth nodded and their hand dropped away.

Shepard saw movement out of the corner of her eye and turned her head. Nihlus emerged from the murk, with Javik behind him and Saren bringing up the rear. Had he seen her stumble? Now was not the time to argue about it. She turned away and rounded the floor slab and pressed on. By now her body was near exhausted by the effort, so she was running on stubborn determination alone.

The Kodiak was still where they left it, and seemingly no worse for wear. The pillars underneath it held up, but the wind had piled sand against its front, forming a sloped dune that looked like it would keep growing. When it detected the proximity of her suit, it flicked on all its outboard lights. With safety in sight, Shepard called upon at the last of her endurance, but it was still the longest two minutes of her life before she could actually touch the shuttle's side, triggering it to open its doors, and another ten seconds before she could grab the hand-hold and pull herself up inside.

A moment later the Kodiak give a perceptible shift when Legion climbed in behind her.

Shepard turned sharply and looked down at the pillar immediately under the Kodiak's hatch. Was it about to crumble away? Or was it merely shifting because the wind and rain had moved the sand around it?

Legion's emotive plates flared in a facsimile of a startled expression.

Shepard shook her head, "Sorry, Legion… I'm a bit jumpy."

"Understood."

Ultimately the Kodiak was not in danger, because even if it tipped a few degrees to one side, it would still take off. She looked up just in time as the others drew near.

Javik was in the lead, with Nihlus and Saren behind him. They were clearly worse affected by the wind at their back, and Saren was outright slouching, something hitherto unknown for him. However, Shepard did not get any time to think on that as Javik's biotics materialized as a green flame around his body, bright enough to pierce through the haze of sand and rain.

Instantly Shepard understood what he was about to do. She stepped back, practically pressing herself to the bulkhead between the Kodiak's cockpit and passenger compartment. "Legion, clear the door."

"Acknowledged."

As soon as the geth moved, Javik's biotics flashed, and a moment later he ran up the sand pile and essentially launched himself into the shuttle, landing without making a sound or bending a knee.

The word 'showoff' came to the tip of Shepard's tongue, but she decided not to go there, and instead turned and made her way toward where she had stashed the water bottles and the ration bars. By the time she opened the supply crate, there were two more light thuds behind her. Javik appeared in her peripheral vision and reached into the crate to grab a water bottle for himself. The Kodiak's hatch hissed as it began to close.

"Shepard, I am heading for the cockpit, do you need me to do something?" Nihlus asked as he came close enough to grab water and a dextro nutrient pack for himself.

"No. I'll join you in a bit. I want to use the Kodiak's sensors to get some readings on the storm," Shepard replied.

"Sounds like a plan," he replied, straightened, and turned toward the cockpit.

Shepard heard it open as she grabbed a water bottle for herself and two packets of nutrient paste. When she straightened, her gaze landed on Saren. He was simply too quiet. Even with the noise cancellation on their shared link, there should have been a very faint rasp of his breathing in the background. But there was none. Had he disconnected the link without any of them noticing? Why would he do that?

The cockpit hatch hissed shut. Shepard decided to test the waters, as it were, "Make yourselves comfortable, we are not going anywhere until the storm passes. Helmets stay on. Decompressing repeatedly is not a good idea, and it'll use the shuttle's power. The water and nutrient packages are compatible with universal helmet feeds."

Javik made a sound in the back of his throat and slumped into the nearest seat.

Saren remained silent by the door.

So did he disconnect the shared comm link to conceal something? It was hard to tell. She was not about to believe that crossing was easy on him. Ultimately he was at least a decade older than her, his age should show, right? To be sure his armor looked darker than normal, with a faint glimmer in the areas where the under-weave peeked showed between the ceramics. Her own armor was probably no better off. As soon as the rainwater dried both of them would start shedding metallic sand all over the shuttle.

Just to confirm her suspicion she glanced at her HUD readout. The radiation level inside the craft was not zero, but the computer was not flagging it as dangerous. A small mercy there. "Nihlus, access to the shuttle's logbook. Mark it as due for thorough decontamination. We tracked quite a bit of sand in, and that's standard protocol."

"On it," he replied.

Shepard glanced toward Legion. The geth now stood by the opposite hatch, as far away from Saren and Javik as possible. It did not surprise her to see that Legion's arms and legs looked like they had been dunked into a glitter bath. The geth was due for a thorough decontamination too. "Legion, how are you on power?"

They turned their sensor suite to face her, "Our power reserve is down to seventy-five percent, Shepard-Commander. Addendum, we will not attempt to recharge from the reserves of this craft. We are preparing to engage low-power stand-by mode."

"You're not the only one thinking of taking a nap," she murmured with a grin.

"Understood."

With the status of her team taken, she finally turned toward the cockpit, and it opened without the need for her to touch the control panel. She slipped past the door as soon as the opening was wide enough for her.

The cockpit area was dimmer than the back. Shepard smiled when she saw that Nihlus had already powered up the craft's sensor systems and set the readings to show across the front transparent panels. He had them dimmed as dark as they would go, but every flash of lightning still cut right through, dulling the image. Paradoxically that was almost as good as any sensor reading at telling her that it was nasty out there. They had gotten a bit lucky to make it to the shelter of the Kodiak before the very worst of the storm crossed their path.

"You might all want to strap in, the storm will pass right over us," Nihlus stated grimly.

Shepard slipped into the co-pilot's seat, set her water and food in her lap, and reached for the harness. The Kodiak's sensors displayed the storm's projected course relative to the shuttle, so unless it suddenly turned forty-five degrees, its rotating core would pass right over them. "Don't increase our apparent mass. The pillars might not take it," she said.

"Yes, and I know you are also concerned with our power reserves."

Shepard hummed. Nihlus sounded tense and wary, and there was a note of resignation underneath. That was not something she was used to hearing from him. Not that she could blame him, the Kodiak had calculated the wind speeds in the storm's core to be at least one hundred and fifty kilometers an hour. "The Kodiak will survive this," she declared.

Suddenly the Kodiak began to shudder as if it had chills. A warning flashed on the screen, the storm's leading edge had reached them.

"The leading edge is now right overhead." Nihlus announced. "This turbulence will not subside until we are clear. But at the speed it is moving... I should be able to fly in an hour."

Shepard would defer to Nihlus' expertise on the matter. If he said they could take off in an hour, they would take off in an hour. She reached for the nutrient package in her lap. She would have her meal, such as it is, and then take a nap, as uncomfortable as that would be with her helmet on.

Shepard woke with the jolt that ran through the Kodiak as its eezo core powered up. "Is the storm gone?" She asked, biting back the urge to yawn audibly.

"Yes. I started on the pre-flight checks," Nihlus replied, without stilling his hands as they danced over the instrument controls.

Shepard noticed that the shuttle's front panels were completely covered with sand, blocking any hint of light from the outside.

"It is as bad as it looks, but it will probably slide off when the shuttle rises into the air," Nihlus added.

"That's good," she mumbled. It would be a few minutes before she could ditch the sleep inertia. Getting an hour of sleep was not refreshing, but it was enough to make sure she remained functional for a while longer. She turned to the sensors and pulled up the weather readings.

The back end of the storm was almost five kilometers away by now, so the Kodiak was clear of the precipitation and rear downdraft zones. The wind had weakened with the distance, with the worst gusts registering as a scant sixty kilometers per hour. It would be a little bumpy, given the Kodiak was essentially a brick with thrusters, but there was no obvious reasons to delay their flight. "Did you plan out your route?" She asked.

"The storm is moving south of where we need to go. So I plan to fly a straight line."

"Hopefully we don't end up lost. Ilos is a big planet."

Nihlus turned his head to face her, "I remember where the spaceport is, relative to the city. I guarantee we will not get lost."

For a split of a second Shepard was tempted to tease him about the bragging, he was practically asking for it. Still, there was something of the truth there, what sort of pilot got lost because they could not remember directions or the salient points of a map? She turned back to the sensors. "Just get us there in one piece, that's all I want."

"Can do," he replied, his smug grin very much audible. "By the way, all systems are operational. We can take off whenever you like."

"No time like the present," Shepard replied.

Nihlus turned back to the controls and began to input commands.

Shepard reached up to reconnect her suit with the open communication channel that the rest of the squad used. It was officially time to get back to business.

A moment later the Kodiak shuddered. The caked-on dust on the front panels cracked, allowing a thin beam of waning light to filter through. Nihlus tapped at the side of his helmet, "We are clear to fly, and I am about to bring us up."

"Finally," Javik grumbled in reply.

Saren rumbled a wordless assent.

Shepard froze for a moment. Saren was back on the shared link? Good to know. She tapped a few keys on her half of the controls, to bring up the video feed from the back to the bottom corner of the central display. Javik and Saren were both seated across from each-other on one side of the craft. Legion was on the opposite side, seated and strapped in, their head lowered so that the underside of their unlit sensor-suite touched their chest plating. To her they looked like a corpse strapped into the seat harness, but she knew that she was being ridiculous.

"Shepard, show me the roof and sides. I need to see if there is sand that needs to come off," Nihlus ordered.

"Give me a moment," Shepard replied even as her fingers danced on the controls to bring up all the external camera feeds while leaving the image from the back as an inset box.

"Alright, here we go," Nihlus said. The pitch of the humming from the shuttle's eezo core changed and a moment later, as if coming unstuck, it jerked into the air. The sand across the shuttle's front slid off all at once, like an avalanche detaching from the side of a mountain. The shuttle's roof camera was half-buried, but as the craft pitched up and began to gain altitude, the caking began to slide off in clumps. Their sides were already clear, seeing as they were vertical with nothing for the sand to adhere to. Soon enough, the shuttle was left merely dusty rather than completely encased.

"The roof and sides cleared, good," Nihlus said, mostly to himself, as he flicked his hand across the controls, turning the external feeds off, thought leaving her internal feed inset alone. "I do not have to give the eezo core additional power to compensate for any added mass."

"And you don't have to do anything to shake it off," Shepard added.

Nihlus chuckled as his hands continued to move across the controls. "You sound relieved."

"No offense Nihlus, but now's not the time to experiment with whether the Kodiak can be made to shake itself like a wet dog," Shepard stated blandly.

"Spoil my fun, will you?" Nihlus muttered even as the shuttle's droning shifted ever so slightly. "Course set, we should get there in less than two hours." The Kodiak turned on the spot and accelerated forward.

Shepard turned her attention back to the internal feed. It was then that she realized that the back compartment was eerily silent. Javik or Saren had not uttered a single word in that whole exchange. That was peculiar. She would have thought that Saren would not miss the opportunity to chime in with some reprimand over the exchange she just had with Nihlus. But no, there was a lack of his usual acerbic comments. Something was definitely off with him.

She glanced at Nihlus. Had he noticed it too? Or was all of this simply in her head? She could not ask though, because doing so would draw attention to it. Sometimes the best intentions could do more harm than good, and Saren was the sort who did not enjoy when people butted into private affairs, so she had to stay silent.

"Spirits. That storm still has not lost any power. They should weaken with time, but not this one." Nihlus murmured, seemingly to himself.

Shepard glanced at the weather radar. Now that they were flying, the sensors were once again flagging the storm as a hazard. "Kaidan did mention very high lightning activity. For all we know, this is normal for Ilos."

"You have a point," Nihlus replied.

A silence fell over the shuttle as it flew toward their next destination. Shepard was still feeling a bit groggy from her all-too-brief a nap, Nihlus was concentrating on flying, and the other occupants were not a chatty bunch either. After ten minutes of silence, Shepard closed her eyes and before long she was again oblivious to the world.

"Shepard?"

She started awake and blinked a few times, momentarily disoriented.

"The spaceport is in visual range," Nihlus finished.

Shepard was not going to pretend that he had not caught her napping. But just when had she nodded off? No. That did not matter. She turned to the front screen. Right then the Kodiak was flying over a seemingly endless sea of grass, both green and yellowish, broken up linear cuts that may have once been roads. Yet just over the horizon the fields ended abruptly, and the gray of multiple ruined structures took over. The facility they were flying toward, if indeed the spaceport, was almost exactly in their immediate flight path, just as Nihlus had promised it would be.

It was another couple minutes before the shuttle got close enough to the ruins were more than just a line on the horizon. Then, one good look confirmed that the place was indeed an air or space port. The port was a very long rectangle, with its long sides aligned almost perfectly along the north-south axis. Shepard could still discern the runways and the landing pads, as they easily dominated half of the footprint, running along the long side on the far, western edge of the port. All of them were riddled with large cracks and gaps, both damage and age-made, and loosely covered by patches of short grass. Nature was making a valiant effort at reclaiming them, but the polycrete paving was clearly not about to surrender quietly.

"I told you I knew where I needed to fly," Nihlus murmured, his grin very much audible.

"I never doubted you. This you'd have to know." Shepard replied blandly without looking away from the ruins.

Nihlus laughed quietly, "You are welcome."

She pretended she did not hear him as she glanced down at the sensor panel, to check the radiation readings. "Well, there's good news. The radiation level is about a tenth of what it was in the city. Our suits can handle it. Also, I can't see any Heretic craft of units right out in the open."

"Our prospects are looking up," Nihlus added.

"Yea, I suppose they are. We have all the time in the word to search a giant haystack for a tiny needle." And for once that was more factual than metaphorical. The grasses looked pretty parched in places, so there was some resemblance to hay.

"Another delightful human expression?" Saren asked.

Shepard almost started, those were the first words out Saren in what must have been hours.

"It is an appropriate one, referring to an annoyingly bothersome -but doable- task. If the needle is metal, a magnet would work, and if not that, it should sink in water while the hay floats." Nihlus explained.

Shepard grinned to herself. Trust a turian to go for the most practical solutions. "He's got the gist of it. Basically, we're looking at a facility about ten square kilometers. Though we can probably ignore the landing pads, strips, and the hangars. No one would hide anything in or underneath them." She listed off as her eyes roved over the compound. Then they landed on the fractured, jagged stump of a hexagonal tower located between the runways and the buildings that dominated the north-eastern quarter of the rectangle. "The control tower is also a no-go. It received at least one direct hit. Only its base is still standing."

"I think we should start with the biggest buildings," Nihlus suggested. Seemingly to punctuate his point he put the Kodiak into a slow turn northward, so that its nose would point right at them.

Shepard hummed her assent, but then sighed, "It's as good a place to start as any."

The port's biggest building was also a utilitarian rectangle, with three floors above ground, and almost impossible to miss. It was both noticeably bigger than any other, and also easily the most damaged. Its roof was heavily cracked, fractured, and partly-collapsed to the level below, creating ramps, piles of debris, and stakes of exposed jagged armature. The sun had long ago bleached the polycrete, so there was no way to determine what caused all the damage, but it definitely looked to have been caused by kinetic bombardment or firebombs, but it had to be one of those. Time would not have done that damage, as the exposed polycrete on the first and second floors looked relatively intact, albeit running with rust. The winds had also blown in enough topsoil and seeds to allow grasses and bushes to grow on every horizontal surface. "The Oravores definitely hit that building hard."

"And no one does that without a reason."

"Indeed. Suffice to say, if anything survived in there, it will underground again," Shepard finished.

The ruins told the story of what happened here as vividly as a survivor would have. The worst part was that the Oravores were the sort of sick freaks that enjoyed watching people suffer. They would probably relished the panic of their victims as much as their deaths.

"Before we land, I am going to fly us right over the buildings. Make it look like I am picking a landing spot. While I do that, Shepard, see if you can find our Heretic friends."

"Going straight for kicking the hornet nest, huh?" Shepard asked.

"I do not want to clear these ruins in the conventional way," Nihlus replied. A moment later the Kodiak emitted a faint whomp followed by a second hum from the craft's nose section. "The kinetic shields and weapons are online. Let them come."

Shepard nodded mutely. She thought it unlikely that the Heretics would step out into the open where the Kodiak could shoot them. But pointing out the obvious would not do her any good.

Nihlus input a few commands, adjusting the Kodiak's heading, establishing a circular holding pattern.

From the navigation controls before her, Shepard knew it would take them right over the biggest buildings. Three of them were arranged in a U-shape around a courtyard or a plaza. The biggest was the northernmost of these. In all likelihood it had been some administrative facility. The other buildings were probably office spaces for the officers, and the smallest buildings further south must have been living spaces for the soldiers permanently stationed here.

By the time Shepard had reconfigured the sensors for the relatively delicate work she needed them to do, they were drifting over what used to be a parking lot south of the plaza, between it and the smaller buildings she assumed were the barracks. It was still strewn with the remains of vehicles, now nothing more than mangled heaps of badly rusted and twisted metals sticking out of the patchy grass.

What caught Shepard's attention was the sheer quantity of mangled wrecks. They seemed to be everywhere, breaching the perimeter of the parking lot, and out onto every other available square meter in the vicinity. Some were pushing into the south end of the plaza, though the majority of it was taken up by a now-bone-dry reflection pool, still discernible despite the sea of grass surrounding it. Others spilled out both west, toward the hangars and the control tower, and east toward the port's perimeter gate. The sheer number of husks made it clear that they did not belong there. They must have belonged to those who could flee here after the city was bombed.

"Anything on the sensors?" Nihlus asked.

Shepard blinked, and realized that she had been distracted. In her defense, there was an evident absence of movement and lights in the ruins. She glanced at the signal readings to confirm, but she was pretty sure that there was no welcoming committee here. "Not a thing. They're either not out in the open, or not here."

"It appears that there is a limit to Nazara's incompetence after all," Saren mused out loud.

"That or Harbinger is done letting Nazzy cause unnecessary destruction of its limited personnel," Shepard replied.

"Who would have thought," Nihlus rumbled, openly barely holding back a laugh.

"Land this thing. Now." Saren stated.

"Sure," Nihlus replied automatically, amusement gone in an instant.

Shepard opened her mouth to speak.

Except Saren cut in, "And Shepard, think. You are normally better at that than most. We are wasting the shuttle's power reserves searching from the air when your pet synthetic can detect its kind, and has its own power source."

Shepard had to admit, Saren was right about that. She just wished he would not use that tone on her. It was as smug as it was patronizing, as if he had everything figured out and it was so obvious that a first grader should have understood it. It did wonders for her ability to feel empathy or worry for him. There was no way that he was feeling unwell if his acerbic tongue was back in such fine form.

The shuttle dipped as Nihlus brought it about. "Alright, I am setting it down in that water feature. In front of the biggest building. It is the only spot within walking distance that is flat, clear of debris and old vehicles, and will not ignite. The Kodiak's shields will protect us if there are any geth in the structure."

"Let's just hope that your instinct is right about this building. Otherwise-" Shepard murmured.

"Big haystack, tiny non-ferrous needle," Nihlus finished.

"To say the least."

The Kodiak's ventral thrusters ignited as it shifted from flying to hovering, and then began to descend. Shepard switched the sensors off and focused on the view through the front view-port. She was tempted to tell Saren that while a bit of levity was good, they still should never dismiss the enemy, especially someone like Nazara. After all, look what happened the last time he dismissed it as a non-threat. But she would not allow herself to go there. She could maintain vigilance without making such petty comments.

As the shuttle came down to rooftop level, the angle allowed Shepard to peer into the shadows between the floors. The structures were entirely utilitarian, polycrete slabs supported by a multitude of evenly-spaced columns and load-bearing walls. All of it was easily three times as thick as their analogues in the city. She could see many large cracks in the pillars that supported the big building's damaged roof, but on the floor below that, they turned into mere hairline fractures. The ones on the ground floor were, rust runs aside, almost pristine. The lack of penetrative damage clarified what the Oravores had hit the building with. Kinetic rounds would have gone right through the floors, but firebombs could only reach so far.

The shuttle touched down right on the center of the reflection pool. Nihlus emitted a rumble as his hands flew over the controls to shut off the thrusters.

Shepard suspected his sudden urgency had to do with the fact that the grass was merely meters away from the intense heat generated by their thrusters. "Still no sign of Heretic activity," she stated as she undid her harness. "Nihlus, don't leave the shields up. They'll consume energy."

"Are you sure?" He asked.

"I'll be willing to bet on it." Shepard replied as she got to her feet and circled the co-pilot's seat toward the door separating the compartments. As the door opened she spoke the words she knew would get a reaction. "Legion. Time to wake up." As she stepped through, she heard a burst of geth chatter, and as she turned her head, the geth's sensor suite lit up and their head rose for its dead hang against their chest.

A moment later they had undone the harness and rose to their feet. "Shepard-Commander-"

"You weren't really sleeping, I know." Shepard cut in with a grin. "I also know you were aware the entire time." There was just no way that they would trust Saren and Javik not to get ideas. Neither was exactly subtle about their dislike of them.

"Affirmative. We will scan for Heretic activity as soon as we exit this craft."

Shepard nodded, "Alright then, also make sure your ammo stocks are topped up." She turned and moved toward the supply crates, intending to replenish her own. She crouched down, opened the ammo crate under the bench seat, and began to pack clips into the pouches behind her back.

The cockpit hatch hissed open behind her, "I am ready when you are," Nihlus said.

Saren's crossed arms dropped away and he rose to his feet without saying a word.

Shepard grabbed the final clips, shoved them into the pouch at her lower back before slamming the crate shut. It was hard to miss the fact that apparently she had been the only one lack about replenishing used ammo stocks. When she straightened it was as if a signal went off.

"I am ready as well," Javik announced as he got to his feet and laid a hand on the rifle behind his back.

"This platform is operating at optimal capacity. We are ready to execute the next stage of the operation."

Shepard grinned, Legion was only a salute short of following Alliance protocol. She nodded and moved to the hatch opposite of the building entryway. As she tapped at the control panel, triggering the hatch to open, Legion moved to stand at her side. As soon as the door opened, she stepped out and pressed her back to the shuttle's side. Legion followed without saying a word.

The air moved at a languid ten kilometers an hour, but it was still enough to stir the vegetation. Without waiting for the others she slid along the shuttle's side toward its front and peered over it into the space between the floor slabs of on the other side. Thirty seconds later she frowned. There was no movement and the only noises she could hear were the rasp of her own suit, the faint buzz of the comm link, and the sounds of familiar footfalls on the ground behind her.

Were they in the city, she would have called that a good thing, but here? That still did not feel right. Ilos did not look like it had lost its ability to sustain life. If there was flora, there should have been some fauna as well. Their absence in the city was explainable, but here? Was their arrival enough to scare the critters silly, or were there no critters here to begin with? The latter possibility felt off. Such a ruin on Earth would have formed a simple, but complete biome.

Legion stopped on her right and turned to stare into the shadows over the Kodiak's nose. Their sensor suite light dimmed and the iris opened wide.

Shepard recognized that configuration, they were using their infrared vision. She waited a good ten seconds before she asked, "Anything, Legion?"

"Negative. We are not detecting any active platforms within our range."

"Is it possible they've finally ran out of platforms to spare for guard duty?" Shepard wondered.

"The probability of that is above zero percent. Addendum, we do not have sufficient data to calculate the precise percentage."

"That's fine. I've worked with those sorts of odds before." She turned her head to face the others.

Nihlus was in the lead, just behind Legion, forcing Saren and Javik to stay behind him.

"It is more probable that they learned not to present themselves as easy targets for you or the Geth," Saren replied blandly.

That was indeed a very real possibility. "I am known for my aim," Shepard murmured.

Javik stepped around Saren and right out into the open. "If you are done… I might know where we need to go."

Shepard thought he did it intentionally, and the lack of shots from the ruins actually proved his point. She sighed, "Take the lead." She knew he would take the lead regardless of what she said.

"Is it possible that the Heretics already came and went?" Nihlus wondered.

"Certainly possible, but maybe improbable. Was their head-start good enough? Also, what are the odds that Nazara or Harbinger would surrender the opportunity to take potshots and then gloat?" Shepard asked, mostly rhetorically. She figured she already knew the answers. It would never happen, especially after what Saren did to Nazara's proxy.

"When you put it like that-" Nihlus began.

Javik made a noise in the back of his throat, rounded the shuttle's nose, and started toward the building.

Shepard opened her mouth to order him back but stopped. By the time Javik reached the point halfway between the shuttle and the building, with no one taking a single shot at him, she decided to let it go. Instead she reached down to turn on the twins and followed him. A pool of light moving along the ground at her right told her that Legion had followed her.

Javik went right to the building's main entrance as if he was a hundred percent sure that no one would stand in his way.

Shepard followed behind at a slower pace, impulsively scanning the gaps between the floor slabs for signs of activity as went. But when she stepped into the building, the transition momentarily rendered her blind. "Anything, Legion?"

"Negative. No contacts."

"Alright," Shepard replied as she reached up to turn on her helmet lights. There would be no adapting to the low light levels for her. Javik did not seem affected as she could see his armor lights moving deeper into the atrium. She followed, as a fraction of his pace, sweeping the atrium with her lights as she went.

The space was outright claustrophobic with its multitude of load-bearing pillars. The ground was hardly strewn with many various-sized chunks of twisted and rusted metal as well. Some of that debris was surprisingly recognizable as the legs of chairs or the panels that at one time had topped desks. Other bits looked like the remains of frames, and here or there she saw a badly corroded spring. But there was a myriad of other material too, scattered right in the alleys, clustering so tightly that it was near impossible to figure out what it had been. There were no elevators in the atrium. Either the building did not have any, or they were scattered about the structure elsewhere.

Javik stopped and seemed to shudder as his biotics flickered about him.

Shepard stopped about two steps behind him. "Javik? Is-"

"This space… saw a lot of death," he murmured.

Shepard remained quiet, there was no real point in asking for specifics with that.

Javik turned to his left, rounded another pillar, and then abruptly stopped.

Shepard followed him around the pillar, but stopped there. Her helmet lights fell on a pile of debris. The majority of the pile was metal, four stubby legs and a corner of a cabinet, a desk that had rusted away almost to nothing.

Javik moved around it and crouched.

Shepard made two more steps and as she stood over what had been the desk, her lights illuminated a collection of fragments behind it. These were mostly rusted bits of metal mixed with chips of polycrete, but among them were darker bits that looked almost ceramic. The former was arranged haphazardly, but the latter was in an unnatural relatively rectangular configuration.

Javik slowly extended his hand toward the pile.

Realization hit Shepard all at once. "Javik… are these-"

"Fragments of armor. There was a body here, yes," Javik replied. His fingers made contact with the largest fragments and his whole frame went rigid.

Shepard waited as unbidden, the questions materialized in the back of her mind. What was what was an unmoved body doing in the atrium? Was this individual killed when the building was hit? That would have been an easy assumption to make, but the rest of the evidence did not align with it. This floor was barely damaged by the impacts that had caved in the roof, and they had been wearing armor, so their suit would have protected them partially. So how could someone down here sustain a fatal injury from that alone?

"What is-" Saren began.

"He's using his ability," Shepard replied, cutting across the question.

Javik's hand lifted away, "Those filthy mistakes of evolution," he hissed in Prothean, rising to his feet. "This soldier was not killed during the initial attack. There were so many refugees from the city that they had to set up a berth room here. This space was full when the Oravores sent down their kill squads."

Suddenly the frames and springs Shepard saw made sense. They had been cots, moved here for the refugees who would have had little more than the shirts on their backs. Shepard was stunned. There was really only one way to understand the words 'kill squads'.

"The imprints survived?" Nihlus asked as he came around the same pillar.

"Dying a violent death tends to record some of the strongest impressions," Javik replied.

"I see," Nihlus murmured.

Shepard stepped in, "Was sending in the kill squads something the Oravores did often?"

"I told you, they viewed all other species as inherently inferior. So yes." Javik replied, but then his tone took on a hissing quality, "They enjoyed it, in the same way that some of your kind enjoy sport hunting."

"They were nothing more than xenophobic sociopaths with an all-too-high opinion of themselves." Shepard muttered.

"It is good that they ceased to exist," Saren stated.

"Yes." She wordlessly added this piece to her mental timeline of events. "The question then becomes… they attacked the city, sending survivors fleeing here. But it took them hours to attack the base, why? It was long enough that the-" she stopped cold as she realized where this particular trail of conjecture led to.

"What is it, Shepard?" Nihlus asked.

She turned to the others, "They were intercepting the communications between this base and the city! The commander drew attention with his request for permission to move the survivors. They held off attacking because they wanted to know the where of the move. They probably knew that there was an ark on Ilos, and figured maybe they could get its location if they held back a bit."

"Except the permission was denied," Javik stated coolly.

Shepard turned, and it took her a moment to find Javik again. During her exchange with Nihlus he had resumed moving about the space, clearly looking for additional remains. "That is when they attacked. But… somehow I don't think they ever found the Ark in the end. After all, we found the places they attacked. None stood out as peculiar for being both in the middle of nowhere and heavily bombarded." She would not have been surprised if they dropped another giant nuke on the ark, had they found it.

"Your conjecture is probably close to the truth."

Scant praise, but she would take it. "Found anything else?"

"I found four more places where a soldier died," Javik replied.

Shepard almost asked whether he could pick up any civilians, but given what she could see, the answer was probably no. Textiles did not survive long exposed to the elements. There was conspicuous absence of bones as well, Javik was reading traces left on the much hardier armor ceramics. Instead, she watched Javik continue his survey, and it was another two minutes before she breached the silence to ask,"What are you looking for?"

"One of them. I will force the truth from their filthy bones."

"That would solve a few of our problems," Shepard agreed. If Javik did find one of those monsters it would also tell them that the Prothean last stand had not been one-sided.

"Shepard, you do remember that not all of us understand Prothean, right?" Nihlus asked.

"Sorry." She shook her head. "Javik is looking for Oravores remains."

"I couldn't find even one of their carcasses," Javik announced as he appeared from behind one of the pillars.

"Well, they would have had the time to collect their dead," Nihlus stated.

Javik growled quietly, the sound barely carrying across their comm link.

Shepard spared Nihlus a glare he would not see. He did not need to say it, because that was as obvious as sunshine. The Oravores had been the victors here, and to the victor went the right to bury their dead while leaving the vanquished where they fell.

"His kind may have conquered the stars, but in many ways they are still beasts," Javik stated with derision dripping from his tone. "You can do better than someone like that."

Shepard froze and opened her mouth to ask what he meant by that, but Javik turned and walked away.

"The spaceport's network is in the basement, and now I know where the closest access point is," he announced.

Shepard decided to let it go. "Legion I want you up front with me," she stated, turned, and followed the Prothean.

"Acknowledged."

Shepard glanced to the floor and caught sight of the halo of Legion's light swaying on the polycrete. Saren's heavier footsteps followed behind, but as she could not hear Nihlus, she assumed he chose to take up the rear.

They had to make their way through a labyrinth of decayed furniture. She was sufficiently good at estimating dimensions to loosely calculate how many cots this room could house, based on Javik's height, and thus how many easy victims the Oravores found here. The numbers made her very, very uncomfortable.

The thought of someone killing so many unarmed civilians disgusted her on a visceral level, but worst of all, the only good company she had right then was Javik. Legion could probably calculate the numbers even better than her, but they would not grasp why she was bothered. As Saren and Nihlus, they were Turians. The Hierarchy practiced a particular doctrine, a legion would issue its enemies an ultimatum to surrender, and if said foe refused, then all bets were off. They would descend on them in numbers and purge them to the last individual. The practice went back to their bitter Unification Wars. Aside from that, even if Nihlus made the attempt to display some sensitivity, Saren would not. She did not want to hear any disparaging remarks. He would not like the result of her hearing them. So her silence was, in a twisted way, a small mercy for him.

At the right side of the room there was a set of heavy double doors laid out on the ground, still recognizable enough. Beyond was a corridor lined on both sides by a number of small rooms, none of which had windows to admit sunlight, plunging the space into total darkness.

Javik stepped over them, his biotics bristled about him, but he did not make a sound.

Shepard suspected that he could feel more residuals than he let on. Perhaps these were nothing more than echoes, but if what he said was indeed true, even those might just be clustered in groups, growing stronger if no more distinct. That just could not be pleasant. As they walked, she glanced into each of the first four doors, two on each side. These were small storage spaces, barely bigger than a prison cell, lined with broken metal shelves and piled with unidentifiable debris.

Beyond the large broom closets there were six doors that opened onto larger rooms. There was no way to know what they were intended for, but there were bits of metal furniture strewn about in all of them. It looked like the soldiers had allotted every available square meter of habitable space to the refugees fleeing the city.

At the end of the corridor there was a large pair of double doors, likewise on the ground and badly corroded. The space beyond was much larger, spanning the structure's width, with openings to the outside on both sides. Like the previous chambers it was scattered with broken, rusty remnants of furniture.

Javik had stopped about three paces into the room and his fists closed. "There were more deaths here," he stated.

Shepard bit back her sigh, there was nothing she could say that would not come out wrong. Instead she glanced to her side, "Legion, anything?"

"Negative. There are no active Heretic signals within our detection range."

"Good. All they manage is to waste our time," Saren stated.

Well, Shepard would be lying if she denied thinking the same. She just would not have said it out loud. "Well, Nazara is less a strategist and more a brazen opportunist. As for Harbinger, it seems like a set-objective-and-let-the-workers-figure-it-out type. Neither is winning a prize for effective leadership." She just hoped Saren would not be able to tell that she was maintaining neutrality.

Saren snorted, "Not one of your best, Shepard."

Just like that her hopes crashed and burned, but she chose not to react outwardly. Instead she turned away and found Javik again. He had crossed the room and was now standing at a large opening to another space on the other side. "We better catch up to him," She said and moved to follow.

Legion soundlessly followed her, their sensor suite light swaying across the floor at her feet.

"Right behind you," Nihlus replied.

Saren hummed, but did not say anything.

By then Javik moved deeper into the small room and vanished around a section of wall.

Shepard stopped just inside the entry into the smaller space and looked around. The furniture here seemed to be have been mostly metal, fragments of badly corroded cabinets still clung to the walls. There were also metal chunks suspended off the ceiling in the center of the room, and a few rather high vertical legs, one with a piece of counter still attached right below. In the back, she could see the remnants of pipes running along the walls. The biggest bit of remains was some sort of large machine with a conveyor belt made up of many tightly-spaced rollers.

However, Shepard only realized what she was looking at when she saw the bottom half of a badly rusted industrial pot. The diameter of its base hinted that it had been truly gargantuan, easily two hundred liters, if not more, depending on how high its sides had been. There was no way for her to mistake this space for anything other than a food preparation area. Thus, the bigger room must have been a mess hall.

She moved deeper into the room and found Javik, right at the back, standing in another doorway that had been hidden from view by an inner wall. This door's fragments were some meters away from the frame, clearly blasted off with more explosives than necessary. Beyond it, the corridor ran another short section with a few more rooms terminating in a dead end.

Javik shifted his weight and raised his hand.

Shepard instantaneously and instinctively turned to look where he pointed. What she had written off as a door, with helmet lights, revealed itself to be a gaping elevator shaft. Its outer doors had been corroded so badly that she could have slipped through without prying them open. Beyond, she saw some rust runs from above, but overall the polycrete looked free of obvious damage.

Javik turned ever so slightly to point the next gaping doorway, barely three meters from the elevator. "These stairs should descend right to the lowest areas. Once there, we will need to double back and head into the opposite wing."

Shepard nodded. If there were enemies in this structure, they would be waiting closer to the secure area. It was better to take a slightly roundabout way, so as to not stumble into the middle of the ambush. She glanced at Legion, who stood practically next to her. Their sensor suite iris open as wide as it could go, but their emotive plates were at rest. They were still not detecting anything.

"I am going down there first," Javik stated, turned, and passed through the door into the stairwell.

Shepard gave a flick of her hand toward Legion, a command for them to follow her, and moved toward the stairs practically on Javik's heels. One through the doorway, she saw that the polycrete steps had survived in usable shape, albeit running with rust, but the railing that once guarded the edge was nothing more than jagged fragments of metal over a steep plunge. She stepped almost right to that edge, anchored herself, and looked up. At the top of the stairwell she saw a chunk of sky, visible through a gap in the damaged ceiling. She knew what that meant. "Keep an eye on your radiation readings going down. The roof over the stairwell is breached, and we have no way of knowing when it happened." With luck, it was long after the nuclear fallout had stopped raining, a collapse due to decay rather than a direct impact.

"We are not getting a break, are we?" Nihlus asked.

"Nope. But that's Ilos' charm, no? Having this many hazards is bound to make this place a thrilling tourist destination," Shepard replied, not bothering to hold back on the sarcasm.

Nihlus snorted and chuckled.

When Shepard looked, Javik was already on the landing below them. She followed him down cautiously, wary of the possibility that the steps were not as sound as they appeared. On the third underground level the walls abruptly turned from bare polycrete to familiar metal cladding, resilient enough to withstand the passage of time. Also there was a shallow puddle immediately underneath the breach in the roof, but no water or rust stains on the walls, and certainly no ring to suggest long-term standing flooding. Her radiation sensors did not even twitch.

Ominously, the door leading into the building stood ajar, but otherwise undamaged. Rainwater had filled the slots in the floor where its locking mechanism was supposed to engage with the frame. That was as good as announcing that the door had been opened first, and the rain had come after. "The Heretics might have come in through this very door."

"We are not detecting any Heretic or Proxy activity in our immediate range," Legion stated.

"Still?" Shepard asked.

"Affirmative."

She hummed, turned off her lights, put her back against the wall just beside the door frame, and peered into the void beyond. It was pitch black as far as she could see, which probably was not particularly far.

"Shepard, how many times do you suppose using your synthetic against them would actually work? The Geth adapt to whatever is used against them." Saren stated.

Shepard had to concede that he made a valid point. All the same, she could not see anything. Even if it would take a good couple minutes for her night vision to manifest, the Heretics produced enough light just from their smaller status lights that they would be visible in total darkness. She turned her head to look Saren in the eye, "Legion hasn't detected Heretic or Proxy activity. Even if the Heretics cease outward communication, the proxy cannot."

"Realize that the Commander's trust in the machine will only be broken by its own actions," Javik stepped in, sounding annoyed.

Shepard saw Legion's emotive plates flicker, and for a brief moment they appeared pensive, as if mulling over the Prothean's words.

"We are wasting time," Javik continued as he stepped past Shepard, through the door, and into the gloom beyond.

Any other time, she might have called that act reckless. But Javik, while clearly impatient, was hardly a fool. To be sure he had a point, they were using up their active time. "Legion-" the rest of what she would have said died on her tongue as the get moved before she could finish speaking.

They stopped right in front of Saren and their emotive plates drew down to hood their sensor suite. "Spectre-Arterius, it is inadvisable for you to caution Shepard-Commander of the treachery of others. It has been our observation that in the majority of cases organics do not take advice that is perceived to be hypocritical."

Shepard could only follow Legion with her eyes, frozen in shock, as they moved past the Spectre, past her, through the open door, and into the gloom. When she glanced back at Saren, she noticed that he stood ramrod straight. The helmet prevented her from seeing his expression, but there was no way for him to misunderstand that open accusation against him. In the interest of not fanning the flames, she turned, turned her helmet lights back on, and passed through the doorway, using that to conceal her smile.

"So the machine does have a limit," Javik murmured in his tongue.

"Everyone does." Shepard replied.

Shepard found herself in a long, narrow corridor with a low ceiling, eerily similar to the facility underneath the administrative center. Much like that place, there was also a series of closed doors on either side, all of them closed, identified by etched plates bearing numerical designation riveted on them. Javik was quite a distance ahead, visible by the lighting on his armor.

A moment later a familiar light beam, cast by Nihlus' shotgun, appeared almost right next to her. Shepard did not break her silence, instead she began to make her way down that hall, and Legion followed on her left as soon as she passed them. Every footfall down here echoed down the walls. Like this, even she could not hope to approach the Heretics with stealth, but it worked, because they would were completely incapable of it in turn.

The lack of an immediate response to the noise they made was just one more thing feeding into Shepard's mounting suspicions. The only way Legion would not detect anything was if the Heretics had already come and gone. Their resources on Ilos must be running thin, and Harbinger would know that getting at the Ark would require effort on the part of its loyal servants. As such, it probably could not afford another ambush. Then, the issue of timing became a non-issue if she considered that there was no real way of knowing how long Nazara had been waiting for them in the city to begin with.

Walking through near-total darkness caused the distance she had to cover to seem longer. Ahead of her, Javik paused from time to time to touch the wall, though these moment did not last long, and then he would move on without speaking. After the third time she heard Saren make a sound that was a cross between a hum and something vaguely exasperated, but he did not break the silence.

After what felt like a day short of eternity, Javik stopped in front of an open door and shifted to inspect something on its face.

Shepard accelerated to close the distance between them, to see for herself just what had caught his attention.

"The machines had been here. They shot the locking mechanism through," Javik announced.

"Let me see," Shepard said as she shifted around him. A horrible sinking feeling began to develop in her gut. Javik slid out of the way, then Legion's light illuminated the damage, and just like that her theory was all but confirmed. The lock was just gone, pulverized to non-existence. "This is a proxy's work. And it was down here alone, because had it any Heretics with it, they would've cut the door out. I have a horrible feeling about this."

Without waiting for any reply, Shepard stepped through the door and into the room beyond. It was not a terribly big chamber, but it was full of server cases that looked similar to the ones they had seen in the city, albeit none of them showed any sign of activity through sound or a twinkle of light. Legion followed, and when the beam of light cast by their sensor suite widened, Shepard stopped dead cold.

Every server case the geth's light touched was riddled with bullets. The proxy must have stood right in the center of the chamber and emptied both of its arm machine guns into every piece of machinery on which it had a direct line of fire. It likely did not stop firing until the guns went into cool-down, and maybe one more such volley after that. "We're too late," Shepard hissed through her teeth.

Author Notes: What a twist! The Mad Machines finally got one over Shepard, and she's not going to be happy about it! Do feel free to pity Harby and Nazzy, just a little, because they're not going to like Shepard when she's not happy about their actions.

But now, I do want to say something brief about the nasty year I've had. Work keeps me super busy, my winter was fraught with too much stuff to do, and not enough time in the day. Then, in May, I had an episode of Colic due to gallstones. I spent a day in the hospital. Since, I've had to adjust my lifestyle, because I am not eager for removal surgery. But all of that took even more time and for a while, tanked my mood because of the food restrictions, effectively slowed down my writing.

General Notes:

Nothing here...

Chapter Notes:

Season Extension – This was indeed supposed to be episode 26 of season 3, the finale episode. But as I started on this arc, I realized I was overrunning it. Rather than truncate it, paring down on the "environmental storytelling" that I wanted to include, to add more brush strokes to my canvas of the Prothean-Oravores War, I decided to go ahead and run longer. I'm my own producer, and I sign my own budget checks, so to speak, so I can do that.