Mass Effect 1. Chapter 1

**AN:- **Oh my god this marks the official complete end of the Mass Effect 2 storyline! Only ME3 to go now!

**Chapter One: Aratoht**

"I don't like you going in alone Commander."

"This isn't up for debate Garrus." Shepard checked the scope on her Widow rifle and then folded it down to carry-mode. "The doctor is being held by radical extremists and there's some sort of Prothean technology on the line as well. If we get caught then a lot more will be compromised than just the ship. I can go in alone, bring her out and retrieve the artefact before anyone even knows I'm there."

He grabbed her elbow as she made for the door to the armoury and she turned to glare at him. "I know it's been hard for you since Miranda and Jack left, but you're not alone in this Shepard."

She shook him off. "This has got nothing to do with my feelings Garrus, whatever they might be. The mission requires I go in alone, so I'm going in alone. This isn't the first time I've been on solo ops."

"But it is the first time that a solo op has included an extended stealth mission in hostile enemy territory."

"I've done those before as well, before the Normandy."

He followed her out into the CIC. "I've done a few of those myself, and I know how helpful it can be to have backup on hand to keep a rescue window open."

They were passing the CIC and heading for the cockpit now. "This is a batarian prison. The more people involved the greater the chance of detection and you know that. I can slip in entirely unnoticed, make my way to Kenson and free her before anyone even knows I'm there. Then we just organise a rendezvous time for the Normandy and you pick me up." She held up a hand to staunch any more argument. "I've made my decision Garrus. This is how we're going to do this and that's final."

They came into the cockpit as Joker was activating the stealth drive. "We should be able to slip in right under their radar Commander."

"Good work Joker. Once I've made the drop you get yourselves out of any identifiable detection range. No radio contact, just in case they're monitoring that as well. You wait three hours and then you come to the rendezvous spot I've assigned. That should give me time to get in, get Kenson, and get out to the location."

After examining the map she had picked a remote location that seemed to be nothing more than a hard hike away from the prison. It would serve perfectly for the shuttle to land. "If I'm not at the rendezvous, you send a single short wave transmission to my omni-tool. If you don't receive a response wait another hour before sending a second burst. After that you high-tail it out of the system and contact Hackett."

"I don't like the thought of leaving you there Commander."

"If I can't get Kenson and or myself to the rendezvous in four hours then I'm either captured or dead, and it won't do you any good to get spotted in batarian territory." She rested a firm hand on his shoulder. "You have your orders Joker. Let me know when it's time for the drop."

"Yes Commander."

She turned to find Garrus giving her his best disapproving stare. "Even if a team was the sensible option you still can't walk." She gestured to the cane he was carrying. "You're staying."

"Fine. But if you're not there at the rendezvous point I'm coming in to get you."

"You'll cause an inter-system incident."

"That's usually what happens when you burn a place to the ground." He met her glare with an even look. "You get yourself out alive Commander. Damn the hostage if you have to."

She nodded and stepped onto the elevator. "I'll see you at the rendezvous."

"And not a minute later."

The doors slid closed and she was on her own.

/|\

It was raining heavily when she set the shuttle down outside the facility, pounding on the windows and obscuring her view. The sensors brought the shuttle in to a neat landing though, and she stepped out onto solid rock. As she set the shuttle on return-to-base mode she looked back to see hints of mountains and forests through the haze. The facility loomed out of the hill before her, sleek wet metal.

She made her way to the sealed door and checked the access panel. It had been fortified against hacking attempts. For a fleeting moment she wished Tali had come, but she pushed that aside and examined the door. There was a power cable leading round to one side, and she found a computer terminal on the wall nearby. It was much easier to hack into, and when that was done it was child's play to disengage the power to the door. It slid open and she stepped inside, her boots scuffing slightly on the stone floors.

To her left she saw metal bars, slightly bent but clearly meant to keep out the larger animals and creatures that were common to Aratoht. Possibly they were usually electrified as well. She drew her pistol and moved down to the right, catching the sharp smell of varren blood. To her left were more bars, and a dead varren slumped beyond them. She went right again, hugging the wall and stopping to check for unusual noises or movement.

Ahead was a hole in the ground with a makeshift bridge in place. She checked the controls but they were sending sparks of electricity across the floor. She decided not to risk activating it and causing an explosion. There was a door to the left with a ramp leading down that would bring her further in anyway. She headed down, hearing the tell-tale panting of another varren just out of sight. She set the incendiary charge on her pistol, then stepped out and fired a single shot into the beast's eye. It burned to a crisp in seconds and she stepped out into an empty cavern just beneath the hole.

_They let the varren inside._ She kicked the burned body to one side and examined the space. _The batarians must send their prisoners down here to die. I have to find Doctor Kenson now._

There was a narrow tunnel that led off one side of the cavern, but she didn't trust it, not if there were more varren inside. A gunfight in such an enclosed space could alert the batarians. But on the floor she saw a corresponding bridge control that looked undamaged. She activated it and above her the bridge slid into place, the indicator lights on either side glowing green to show a good purchase.

She headed back up and drifted across the bridge, spotting another dead varren ahead. The path went right and she came to the bottom of asset of stairs, a dead varren at the body. Apparently some of the prisoners put up a fight before they went. Or else it was the batarians clearing out the lower levels to prevent an infestation.

Up the stairs she heard a varren growl and pressed up against the wall for cover, glimpsing out to try and spot her prey. There was a narrow corridor beyond, and a laser trap midway down. She couldn't see the varren, but she could see the power controls for the trap. Cautiously she stepped out and began to work her way down, pistol before her and eyes on the shadows.

There was an intersection she hadn't noticed, and the minute she reached it a varren came skidding round the corner, howling at her and pouncing forwards. She managed to get her arm up in front of her face and its jaws clamped onto her armour, failing to penetrate. With her enhanced strength she barely even felt it, and before it could disengage she brought her pistol up and put two bullets right into its head. It dropped off her arm with a whine and collapsed to the floor.

Standing again she went to disengage the laser trap, but the floor had fallen through here as well. _This place is run down. Even for a prison._ She went down the intersection the varren had come from instead, seeing the tell-tale glow of another laser trap ahead.

A voice echoed around the corridor and she dropped into the cover of a corner, listening intently. The voice was batarian. "Take the human into questioning."

A second voice followed it, female and defiant. "Get your hands off me!"

Shepard waited another moment to see if they would say anything more, but there was only the hum of the lasers ahead. She moved further in, but there was no sign of the power source for the second trap. A door was beyond the trap and for a moment she considered trying to simply duck under the lasers, but they were moving, erratically enough that she couldn't be sure where they would move to next. She didn't fancy losing an arm and there was an untrapped corridor to the right anyway. She followed it down to find more varren bodies, and at the very end a boxy looking power supply.

There was no other way to go, the end of the tunnel had collapsed entirely, spreading rubble across the floor. She shrugged and sighted her pistol on the power source, putting two rounds into it.

The effect was instantaneous, blowing a hole in the pipe which ran along the roof. _Not exactly what I had in mind, but it'll do. _The gas valve was right next to her and with a hard shove she twisted it round, shutting off the fires.

Round the corner there were more gas valves which she activated in sequence to reveal what was obviously someone's private quarters. It was in just as much disrepair as the rest of the prison, though at the very least the occupant had brought in a clean table and locker. She activated a datapad left on the table and a harsh batarian voice came from it. "I hear humans are scurrying like vermin in the asteroid belt. I say we arm a mission to flush them all out."

_What a pleasant man._

She went back out and used her knife to scratch a deep cut in the wall, signalling that she had been done that way. The tunnels were a practical maze and she didn't want to spend ages simply trying to find her way. She backtracked a little way and found a corridor she hadn't taken, following it to find a short ramp with a door at the end. She held her pistol ready and activated it.

It opened to reveal a much cleaner room, with no sign of the wear and tear of the tunnels. _This must be the real prison, not just the execution tunnels._ It seemed that she was in some sort of storage room, though the shelves were empty of anything that might have given her a clue about the prison. A set of stairs at the back brought her further in.

At the top of the stairs she froze as more voices came to her from above.

"They wanted to slam an asteroid into the mass relay." She thought she recognised it as the guard from the datapad, but then she had always had trouble distinguishing batarian voices.

"Can they even do that?" The second guard sounded younger.

"What difference does it make? We caught 'em."

Their footsteps moved away but she stayed where she was, wondering about what they had been talking about. _Why would a group of scientists want to destroy a mass relay?_ She had a sudden flashback to the mission above Nova Prime and shivered. _The amount of destruction that would cause… The batarians might never recover._

Surely they had to have been mistaken. Admiral Hackett would have warned her about something like that. She knew he had made some difficult choices while on missions but she couldn't imagine him knowing about a potential terrorist attack and not warning her. So either the batarians had been wrong, or there was a lot more going on here than even Hackett knew about.

Pushing all of those thoughts to a corner of her mind she finished climbing the stairs and came out into a small kitchen area. It looked like any other kitchen in any other corporate office, and there was no sign of where the guards had gone. She activated the door on the other side of the room and was surprised to find that it led her back outside. It was still raining, and she was grateful for the cover it would give her.

She moved slowly across the courtyard, ducking from cover to cover among the scattered junk that had been left there. She could hear two batarians talking on one side and deliberately slipped closer to listen in.

"They've still got her down in the prison."

"I'd just kill her. Interrogating a human's a waste of time."

There was no response forthcoming and she didn't need one. Kenson couldn't be expected to stand up to torture for very long.

It seemed as though the only route out of the courtyard was past the two guards, but she couldn't be sure of eliminating both of them without alerting them of her presence, and if they didn't report in she would be found out anyway. She scanned for something that might help her and her eyes lit on another laser trap, this one keeping people from reaching a platform on the far side of the courtyard. The power cables led to an obvious control panel and she hurried over to it, boots sinking slightly in the mud.

Once again it was an easy job to disengage the power, and once she had checked to make sure no one had noticed she clambered up onto the platform, thankful again for the pounding of the rain to cover any noise she made. There was a door on the wall that brought her into another living area, bigger than the first but just as sparsely furnished. She moved through it silently, noting through the window that the guards were still watching the way ahead.

Out of the corner of her eye she noticed another way out, back outside and onto the other side of the courtyard she had found. When she went to check it out she saw stairs and another door into the facility that was completely unguarded. Grinning a little she hurried up to the top and opened the door, slipping inside and out of the rain.

Inside again she paused to take in her surroundings. It was the same drab metal that made up the rest of the facility, a couple of supply crates piled up against the corner. As she moved a little further in she heard two more guards talking, just beyond a window, and pressed herself up next to it to listen in.

"No way it would have worked. Relays can't be damaged, much less destroyed." They seemed to be discussing the supposed plan again.

"Those humans will do anything to destroy us, I swear."

"We have to make this one an example to the others. We can't respond kindly to terrorists."

She crouched down and tried to work her way through the options. Any way she looked at it though, Kenson and her team were not coming off well. The batarians had to know what a damaging political statement they were about to make, and despite the specie's reputation they weren't stupid. They had to know that the humans would respond badly to an execution, and they would need solid proof that Kenson and her team really had been planning an attack of that magnitude.

_I have to get to the Doctor. Maybe she can explain this. Somehow._

She stayed low past the windows, staying out of the guards' line of sight. She found the door round the corner and risked a quick glance. Both guards were looking out through a window on the other side of room from the door, possibly overlooking some sort of holding area for the prisoners. It would be almost impossible to get past them without being spotted.

Just before Kasumi had left she had finally shared the secret of her marvellous optical camouflage, and Mordin had been able to improve on the design even more before he left. Shepard now activated the shield, feeling the electric tingle as it washed over her. The effect would only last for a few seconds, but that was more than enough to get past the doors and duck into the deep shadows afforded by an unlit corner.

A voice came over the speakers overhead. "There's a shuttle incoming, clear the hanger bay." She filed the information away and kept moving, heading for the only other open door she could see. Beyond she found some sort of warehouse area, with a crane and a flatbed truck. The only other door was voice-sealed, but she could see a way down onto the lower floor. Hopefully there would be a door down there she could use.

As she made her way down the crates she overheard another pair of guards, possibly the same two on patrol.

"I heard an artefact was found in the asteroid belt. Think the humans got it?"

"If they did, they'd have swarmed in and put flags all over it."

She rolled her eyes at that and finished her climb. There was no door at the bottom level but she could now see a vehicle lift next to the flatbed truck. Activating it dropped the truck through the floor, revealing a room below that seemed to be empty. Hearing footsteps approaching the upper level door she lowered herself onto the cab of the truck and slid down to ground level, the lift sliding back up into place just before the door opened.

_Too close._ There were more boxes in this lower room and she leaned against one for a few seconds, breathing deeply to calm her nerves. She had always hated close-in stealth insertions, much preferring the long range missions suited to snipers. Maybe Garrus had been right, she could have used some company.

**AN:-** So I went into this deciding to write the whole thing in one go. And I basically managed it (spread across two days, but I also had to do the actual playing across two days)

I actually really enjoyed writing this. Its's nice to show Shepard getting a chance to show off her skills as an infiltrator. Given how much of the games are just 'run to a place and shoot da manz' having a chance to do some skillful sneaking is fun.

It is however, very tricky to write a long section with no dialogue. hopefully the descriptions and musings made it bearable to read.


	2. Chapter 2

**AN:-** All in one, all in one, all in one...

**Chapter Two: The Doctor**

The lower area she now found herself in was similar to the tunnels she had first entered, constructed from rough stone that was scuffed and marred with age and wear. Water dripped from a crack in the wall by the door and a pipe bellowed steam, heating the room until it was uncomfortably moist. She went through the door quickly and found a small office just off the corridor. There was another moving laser trap ahead but she could see the computer in the office that surely controlled it.

Also on the computer was a log from one of the prison guards. She activated it and listened while she worked on the laser trap. It sounded like any police report the galaxy over.

"Our comm buoy intercepts paid off. We picked up a message to the Alliance coming from somewhere in the asteroid belt. We listened to the feed until we discovered an operation run by a human named Kenson – smuggling engine parts and guidance systems into the system from Omega. We intercepted Kenson's vessel and took her and her people into custody. Interrogation has produced nothing but frenzied rambling so far."

She finished with the laser trap but stayed a moment to sort through the information she had just heard. Kenson and her crew had been rambling? That didn't sound right. Unless of course the batarian officer simply didn't understand what the scientist was saying to him. She had known some scientists who it seemed they spoke a whole other language when they got going on whatever topic was nearest and dearest to them.

But even discounting that the evidence was mounting up. What need would Kenson and her team have for smuggled engine parts and guidance systems? Especially when an Alliance requisitions drop would have been faster and more secure. It sounded almost as though they wanted the Alliance kept out of it. The only other option was that Hackett had lied to her, and Kenson and her team really were deep cover operatives who had to maintain plausible deniability. In that case sending her in to rescue them would help to maintain that cover.

But did she want to help them maintain the cover? If the guards' other assertions were true they had been planning an act of what could only be described as terrorism. She would just have to hope that when she found Kenson the doctor could explain everything.

Finished with her deliberations she headed into the hall and past the deactivated laser trap. Almost immediately she had to duck into cover behind a large crate as she heard two batarians talking. One of them she recognised as the officer from the report. The other she didn't know.

"This one's apparently the mastermind."

"If she doesn't talk, kill her."

She snuck round the edge of the crate until she could look into the small side room they were in. There was a large window that they were looking through, and just beyond it seemed to be an interrogation room. Computer monitors were hung from the ceiling relaying information about the prison and prisoners but she couldn't make out details.

She wouldn't be able to stage a frontal assault and maintain her cover, that was for sure. Instead she continued down the hallway, finding bloodstained cells. One of them had a sheet on the floor, covering a body. Her blood ran cold and she almost ran straight back to the batarians but then she realised that the blood on the wall formed an all too familiar shape. A handprint next to the image told her that the man dead on the floor had likely cut himself deliberately to use his blood to fashion the image of a Reaper on his cell.

She took a deep steadying breath and stepped back out of the cell, casting an eye to the body. _What the hell were you doing?_

She had to get answers, and for that she needed Kenson. Some of the batarians troubles were making a disturbing amount of sense now. Frenzied rambling, a plan to destroy the Mass Relay. Either the scientists had gone mad, or they had real evidence that a Reaper was going to come through, and had been trying to stop it. Neither was an appealing scenario.

The hallway went round to the left past the cells, and she found another open door at the end of it. Pressing up against the wall she triggered the door lock and it cycled open to reveal the interrogation room.

_Alright._ She thought as the batarian inside turned to looked at her. _I guess stealth is done then._

There was a human in the room with him, strapped to a metal rack, her limbs bound and her head forced into place by a neck brace. As Shepard watched a device swung down from the ceiling and came down in front of the woman's head. Before it could do anything she walked into the room and slugged the batarian hard in the face. He went down like a sack of bricks and the machine stopped moving.

No alarms had started blaring yet so she could only assume that the two guards outside had stopped watching for some reason. She still had little time though, going up to the doctor and beginning to work on the bonds. As she worked Kenson began to stir.

"Who are you?" She groaned, trying to look back. "What are you doing?"

"I'm Commander Shepard. I'm here to get you out."

She was waking up fast. "Commander Shepard? I'd heard you were alive. Hackett must have received my message."

All of the bonds were unlocked but she still needed to open them. Shepard stepped in front of Kenson and met her eyes. "We're not safe here. Can you walk?"

For answer she reached up and grabbed hold of both sides of the neck brace. With a single wrench she pulled herself free and fell to the deck, steadying herself and remaining upright. Shepard raised an eyebrow at that. She had expected the doctor to be incapacitated by pain and exhaustion, not able to pull apart iron bars.

"Just give me a moment," she said.

Shepard bent down to collect the guard's pistol and handed it to her. "We have to go. Now."

She accepted the pistol and checking it, still talking. "If we can find a console, I can hack security. Make us an escape path."

The alarm began to sound. Shepard cocked her head to the door. "Then we'll find one. Go!"

Kenson took one more moment, going to the batarian on the floor and stamping down on his neck hard. When she turned back to Shepard her eyes were hard. "Ready."

Shepard went to the door and glanced down the hallway. A batarian guard was making his way towards them, his pistol out and ready. She stepped out and put a bullet right between his eyes, dropping him to the floor. The hallway beyond had been blocked by bars, cutting off the way she had come by. She turned back to see Kenson already hurrying down a flight of stairs just past the cell.

At the very bottom they found a cellblock. Most of the doors were sealed but there was a short set of stairs to their right which looked clear. Kenson headed for it, muttering to herself. "There should be a security console here somewhere."

Through the door at the bottom of the stairs they came to a wide open space, built from the same grimy rock as the tunnels. To their left was a drop off, a gigantic circular space with cells lining every inch of the wall. They were on a walkway that ran nearly the full way around the circle, and ahead of them Shepard could see a security terminal, shielded behind blast screens.

She ducked for cover as half a dozen guards ran out from the terminal and opened fire on them. Automatic fire blasted chips of stone all around her and she hunkered down further. She looked up and saw Kenson, her legs braced and the pistol held out before her. The fire on Shepard's position lessened and she glanced over the top of her cover to see four of the guards on the ground while the other two were retreating for cover.

Rapidly revising her opinion of the doctor Shepard stood and shot the last two batarians down as well. They waited a moment to see if there were more reinforcements incoming but they seemed to be alone in the cell block. Kenson led the way to the booth, hurrying inside and finding the computer console in seconds. "This shouldn't take long. Keep them off me."

Shaking her head at the doctor ordering her around Shepard went to bunker down by the entrance, checking her heat sinks and clearing her head. There were a lot of unanswered questions that she had to ask the doctor, but it wasn't the time for any of them. For one thing, she wanted to know quite how this scientist was able to take on so many mercenaries and guards without breaking a sweat.

Over the comm she could hear one of the guards issuing orders, and knew they were about to face resistance. Sure enough a moment later three batarians came running from the same door Kenson and Shepard had entered through. Three pistol bullets blasted their helmets apart and they dropped. She reloaded and scooped up a spare heat sink from a nearby body.

"We need to close the door we came in through. Keep them out."

Shepard ran for the door without bothering to answer, drawing her SMG on the run. Another three man team was coming through as she arrived and she opened fire in one long burst that sent them scattering for cover. One of them went down with a dozen holes through him as she slammed into the wall and triggered the door to close. She reloaded and emptied half of it into a second batarian on the floor. The third one made a run for it, limping badly, and she used the rest of the clip on his back.

No sooner had he dropped than Kenson was yelling at her again. "Other side, go!"

Sprinting across the room she saw them emerging from the opposite side door, another three man team. The one in the lead had a kinetic barrier up though, and was holding a shotgun rather than a rifle. She switched to draw her AM Rifle off her back and opened it up, not bothering with the scope as she put a bullet right into his head, overpowering the kinetic barrier with the force of the round. Blood and brain matter hit both of his teammates, who stopped and stared as the body crumpled. She took advantage of their surprise to put a pistol bullet to each of them.

It was much easier than any of the battles she had fought in a long time. They didn't seem to have equipped most of the guards with kinetic barriers, and their armour was basic light armour, suited for civilian use, not military-grade firepower. She slapped the lock on the other door and returned to her position in the middle.

Kenson shouted through from the console. "Unlocking all doors to the hanger. Still need more time."

Shepard didn't see any more insertion points but there was a whir of an elevator from nearby and she was surprised when a bullet sparked off her barrier. She ducked behind a column and triggered her motion tracker to see three blips behind and to the left. When she looked out again she saw an elevator with three more guards crouching behind cover. She switched to her rifle again and leaned out, finding the tops of their helmets in the scope almost at once. The meagre protection of the elevator guard rails was nothing as she shot the first one and took the entire top half off his head off.

The second tried to run but she caught him with a second bullet when he was a step away from cover. The third emptied an entire clip from his assault rifle at her but hit nothing in his panic. She drew her pistol one handed and shot him twice in the chest. Kenson appeared behind her, still wielding her pistol.

"I brought down their orbital tracking network. There's an elevator that leads right to the hanger bay." Even as she was speaking it locked into place in front of them. "That's it, let's move."

As they rose up to the upper levels the comm unit came on again.

"Get to the hanger, do not let them escape."

Kenson seemed completely unconcerned at this announcement. "One last thing. The hanger doors are hard-locked. We'll have to get those open the old fashioned way."

Shepard shook her head. _Couldn't have told me before we got into the hanger? _"Leave that to me," she said, drawing her SMG and sprinting forwards towards the shuttle.

Three men were in her way, all brought down easily and she was at the power cable for the right side door. A quick burst from her SMG severed it and the door creaked open, revealing the rain-soaked precipice beyond. She ducked round the side of the shuttle as another three men entered. From somewhere behind she could hear the steady crack of Kenson's pistol and the batarian leader shouting orders to his men to flank them.

Activating an incendiary charge she found a gap between the shuttle and the wall and slipped through, coming out right behind the guards. Only one of them had a shield, and she almost felt bad as she dropped it with a shot from her Carnifax. He spun to face his new foe and she shot the incendiary charge into his gut, shooting one of his men in the face as the leader burned up. The third man dropped as Kenson shot him from behind and she ran to the shuttle door.

"Time to get out of here," Shepard said, cutting the second power line. The hanger doors were fully open, letting the wind rush through, dousing the fires and tugging at Shepard's hair. She ran round to join Kenson boarding the shuttle just as another volley of bullets reached them.

She didn't bother to engage the enemies, running to the cockpit instead and powering up the ignition sequence. In the rear-view camera she could see the prison guards rushing to position, and with a grimace activated the engines. A torrent of fire engulfed the men and they began to rush about, trying to pat out the fire. She brought up the boost control and another gout of fire covered them. She didn't see any more as they powered out of the hanger and up into the sky.

"Thank you for the rescue Commander." She turned to see Kenson at her shoulder, watching the landscape rush past them.

"I think," Shepard said, engaging the autopilot and manoeuvring out of the seat, "it's time you gave me some answers."

/|\

"We should be well out of range before they get their security measures unscrambled."

They were sitting in the crew section of the shuttle now, Shepard watching Kenson carefully, her arms folded but one hand close to her pistol, just in case.

"Do you think they'll come after you?" She asked.

"I'm not taking any chances. Batarians don't take kindly to humans who plan to destroy their mass relays."

Shepard kept her face carefully neutral. "So the charges against you are true." It wasn't quite a question.

Kenson shrugged. "Well to be fair that's about half the story. My people and I were here investigating rumours of Reaper technology out in the fringes of this system."

"I guess you found something."

Kenson nodded. "We found proof that the Reapers will be arriving in this system. When they get here, they'll use its mass relay to travel throughout the galaxy." She gestured out of the shuttle window, where the relay was in sight beyond the horizon. "We call it the Alpha Relay. From here the Reapers can invade anywhere in the galaxy."

"So you decided to destroy it."

"Exactly. Doing that would stop the Reapers' invasion. Even at FTL speeds it'll be months or years before they get to the next relay. We came up with what we just called 'the Project'. A plan to launch a nearby asteroid into the relay and destroy it before the reapers could arrive. Of course the resulting explosion would probably wipe out the system."

It sounded simple enough in theory. She already knew from experience how little was required, relatively speaking, to move an asteroid. "I've always heard that mass relays are indestructible," she said.

"I've heard that too, but I think it's more that nobody's willing to find out what happens when one is destroyed. And, well… we planned to slam a small planet into the thing at very high speed. By our calculations, that's more than enough."

"Why do you think destroying the mass relay would destroy the entire system?"

"Mass relays are the most powerful mass effect engines in the known galaxy. The energy released from a relay's destruction would probably resemble a supernova. This is a remote system, but just over three hundred thousand batarians live on the colony where they held us. The explosion would undoubtedly kill them all."

_Time for the million credit question then. _"Is the Project still operational?"

"I… I imagine it is." She didn't seem too thrilled at that thought. But then it was a deeply troubling proposition. "We were one button press away from launch when the batarians arrested me."

"How were you caught?"

"We've been smuggling starship parts from Omega. Thrusters, guidance, an aftermarket eezo core. The batarians thought that looked suspicious. A few days ago I took a few of the men on a scouting trip, and the batarians pounced on us. They never found our actual base."

Shepard noted again that she mentioned smuggling parts. She still had yet to receive a decent explanation for why they hadn't just told someone. "I still don't see how you learned about this supposed invasion."

"The evidence came from what we call Object Rho. A Reaper artefact we discovered among the asteroids near the relay itself. When we get back to Arcturus station, I'll explain everything and provide copies of all our notes on the artefact."

Shepard shook her head. "The stakes are too high. If you were willing to destroy a whole system over this, I want to see your proof."

"I guess I can't argue with that." She stood and activated her omni-tool. "Give me a moment. Kenson to Project Base." Someone responded, but Shepard couldn't make out the words. "Affirmative, and I've got Commander Shepard with me." More talk, agitated. "Tidy up the lab. The Commander needs to confirm the artefact." She ended the transmission and turned back with a smile on her face. "All set, just sit back and relax, we'll be there in no time."

She proceeded to suit action to words, leaning back in her chair and closing her eyes, her breathing easy and deep. Shepard watched her for several minutes, but she gave no indication that it wasn't an entirely genuine sleep.

Kenson was beginning to seriously bother her. Hackett had described her as a scientist and a doctor, but the way she had handled the gun, and seemed able to cope with the torture she had endured screamed commando. Then there were her easy explanations for what they had done, and been planning to do. Most ordinary people would experience a lot more existential questioning before making such a hard decision. And would show more angst over it afterwards.

But Kenson seemed to be quite genuinely at peace. And that set off every nerve Shepard had. She tried to send a shortwave message to the Normandy but they were still out of range. Another two hours sat least before they got back in contact with her. She sighed and tried to relax. Whatever happened next, she would just have to deal with it on her own.

**AN:- **Seriously did anyone trust Kenson?

Like she's just been tortured, but she can physical rip apart her restraints without any noticeable help, is a viable combatant and is running around and joking

that ain't normal.

REVIEW! YOUR REAPER OVERLORDS COMMAND IT!


	3. Chapter 3

**AN:- **Just keep writing just keep writing just keep writing

**Chapter Three: Object Rho**

Project Base was a standard research station, dropped onto an asteroid right in the middle of the belt. The asteroid was bigger than she had imagined, more the size of a moon than an asteroid. The shuttle put down in a grimy hanger bay that was entirely deserted. In most cases that wouldn't have been too suspicious, but she was already on high alert from all the other strange things which had happened.

Kenson's eyes sprang open just after they put down and she stood, opening the door and waving her through. "Here we are. Welcome to Project Base."

It was identical to any shuttle bay on any station anywhere, but as she looked around she saw one thing that stood out. Just above the door to the main station was a giant clock counting down. It had a little over two days left. There was no indication of what it was marking though. She waved up at it. "What's this?"

"That's our countdown to arrival. When that gets to zero, the Reapers will have come. Just over two days and counting." A smile crept onto her face. "Puts things in perspective doesn't it?"

"How do you know that's an accurate countdown?"

"It is. The artefact has been giving off pulses at definite intervals since we found it. The intervals have been decreasing at a steady rate. The artefact is reacting to the Reaper's proximity. In just over forty-eight hours, the pulses will become constant, and the Reapers will be here."

It sounded like an explanation, but she hadn't explained how she knew that the pulses and the Reapers were connected. Shepard decided to simply add it to the pile of questions instead of pushing. She might get more out of Kenson if she played along. "You're saying the Reapers could be at earth in two days? There's no time to waste."

Kenson brightened immediately. "Then let's show you that proof. That door exits the hanger. The artefact is in our central lab area." She opened the door and waved her into the corridor. "Go through the door at the end of that corridor to your left."

There were two men directly ahead of them in the corridor. Two men dressed in combat armour who stopped talking the moment they saw her. Both of them gave her an appraising look, then returned to the conversation. She tried to brush it off, but her skin was prickling with the wrongness she felt.

She followed Kenson to the left towards another door. Trying to cover her obvious discomfort she asked, "so what would it take to get the Project back up and running?"

"Everything was in place when we were arrested. It wasn't a question of 'could we' but 'should we.'"

They emerged into a common area where half a dozen people were sitting around. Most of them seemed to be in armour as well, lighter than the men in the corridor but still suited to weapons fire rather than simple EV suits. Once again conversation stopped abruptly when she walked in and every eye turned to give her the same hard look she had received before. From guards or military personnel she would have expected it, but most of these people had to be the scientists and crew, not soldiers.

If Kenson saw anything strange in their behaviour she didn't mention it, leading Shepard over to the right where another door cycled open. This was some sort of observation area, and through the window to her right Shepard could just see the tips of a strange object. A soft light came through the window, reminding her a little too much of drive cores and mass relays. It almost looked as though the artefact was just sitting in the middle of a room, but that couldn't be right.

"What alternative do we have?" She asked Kenson as they walked to the other side of the room.

"The Reapers will reach this system, regardless. But the Alpha Relay is their shortcut to the rest of the galaxy. If you want to keep the Reapers at bay, this relay must be destroyed."

Despite all the other strangeness going on, it really did sound as though the threat was real, and the solution for stopping it just as real. Shepard wished they had spoken to someone earlier. With more time they might have been able to come up with an alternate solution to the problem. All she could hope for now was to warn the batarians in time for them to begin evacuation. With two days to spare they should be able to evacuate most of the population, as long as she could convince them of the danger without being blamed for it.

_Looks like it's time to play diplomat again,_ she thought bitterly as she stepped onto an elevator with Kenson. _My favourite._

There was a small hallway at the bottom of the elevator, packed with people. In combat armour. She wondered why quite so many of them were so close to the object, rather than spread out throughout the base. She covered her worry with another question. "We have to get the Project running again. It's probably the only chance we have."

Kenson stopped before a locked door and held up her omni-tool. "One sec, let me get the door." The lock changed to green and the door cycled open to reveal a large open space with a bulbous object sitting right at its centre. "Commander Shepard. I give you Object Rho."

It squatted in the middle of the room, dense and solid. Blue pulses emanated from its inside, the energy leaking out the open top. As she examined it further it seemed almost like a flower, petals unfurled to the sky. Multiple stems that curled and coiled around each other. Her first impression was that it was beautiful, but then she felt something, like a scratch on the back of her mind, and she saw the ugliness underlying it. That fundamental wrongness that surrounded everything of Reaper design.

She turned to see Kenson staring at it with an expression close to awe and felt her paranoia ramp into overdrive. "You have the Reaper artefact just sitting here… out in the open?"

"When we found it, it showed me a vision of the Reaper's arrival."

Shepard's hand strayed to her pistol. "Kenson, this is not good."

"Give it a moment Shepard, it'll give you the proof you need."

She looked back to the artefact, focusing on the pulsing energy.

She felt it.

Fingers scratch her face, tear at her armour, rip it open and expose her to the harshness of the vacuum. Shepard looks down and see the relay below her, a hundred thousand black shapes appearing in sync. Their numbers blot out the sun, obscure every planet as they swarm to the Alpha Relay. Then they are gone, but she sees the impact of their arrivals in a hundred different systems, a thousand different worlds. Beings scream as the life is ripped from them in a hundred thousand ways, each more torturous than the last.

Shepard shook her head and looked back to see Kenson standing over her with a pistol in hand.

"I can't let you start the Project Shepard. I can't let you stop the arrival."

_Enough of this._ Shepard exploded off the floor, knocking the pistol aside and grabbing Kenson's arm. She squeezed hard and heard the doctor's wrist snap. She screamed and dropped to the floor but before Shepard could subdue her properly two commandos raced in from the other side of the room and opened fire, forcing her into cover.

She drew her pistol and put both men down easily, turning to see Kenson already running from the room, cradling her arm and shouting to the people outside in the hall. "Take her down!"

Shepard sprinted for the door but it slammed closed before she made it through. Bullets sparked off the door around her and she scrambled back for cover, looking over to where half a dozen commandoes were dropping in from the control room she had seen earlier. _I hate it when I'm right._

Switching to her SMG she kept them back with a sustained volley, retreating further into the room, where tables and chairs would provide her better cover. Two of the men tried to storm her position and she put both of them down with her pistol. They might have been wearing the armour and wielding the guns but they were not combat trained. She could easily hold them off if she had to.

Ducking for cover behind a couch she reloaded and scanned the position. She had range on them, and she had a height advantage given from a small set of stairs they would have to climb to reach her. That would funnel them almost to single file, easy pickings for her SMG, let alone her other weapons. She also had the advantage of them being raging lunatics who didn't seem capable of forming actual tactics, preferring the standard 'screaming charge' she had seen from other indoctrinated and husks.

In the second before she would be forced to open fire she let herself feel sorry for them, forced into doing this by Reaper control. They weren't responsible, they were victims of something evil. But she didn't have another option for subduing them. They were too many and too well armed. All of this passed through her mind in a single second before she opened her eyes again and opened up with the SMG

Two on the stairs died instantly, their light armour no match for the disrupter slugs she had on tap. A third went down screaming as her bullet punched clean through his leg, breaking the bone and sending spurts of arterial blood everywhere. A fourth tried to make the same assault, pounding up the steps with no thought given to his fallen comrades. She put a controlled burst into his chest and he collapsed against the railings before sliding back down to the lower level.

The fifth and sixth at least learned a little, covering her position with assault rifle fire while they made their advance. But their shots were wild and untrained, barely troubling her cover or shields. She dropped the bigger one, who fell against the smaller and sent them both stumbling, where another short burst finished them off.

Ten seconds, six men dead, and not even a full clip of ammunition expended. She ran through her options. Reload and hope she could find more ammunition or risk needing to reload at a more difficult time? She had no idea how many they had to attack her wit and she didn't want to waste a single heat sink.

Before she could finalise her decision another six enemies burst into the room, three coming over the side of the command booth while the other three came in through the main door. She set the SMG down on the table in front of her and drew her pistol instead. Capping the last one through the door in the faceplate. His head snapped back and he collapsed in a heap. The others didn't even notice his death, coming at her with their guns blazing.

Either they were more skilled or they had learned from the first wave, because they split up, two of them keeping a steady hail of fire on her while the other three made for the stairs. It would have been a good tactic if she hadn't been on a higher level. As it was the covering fire was mostly blocked by the low level guard rail around her platform, or by the table she was behind. Three more pistol bullets dropped the three on the stairs, down but maybe not dead, and she picked up her SMG again.

The two men firing on her position broke cover and ran for the stairs, firing as they went. She swept the SMG across them, expending the rest of the clip in one fluid motion. The closest man went down with half a dozen holes in his chest while the further one simply fell to one knee, an arm wrapped around his stomach. She stood fully from cover, picking up the pistol, and put a bullet into the very top of his helmet. He jerked and fell to the floor.

One of the men on the stairs was getting back up, bleeding badly from his shoulder but still able to raise his assault rifle and fire it. She cursed and ducked behind cover, waiting for his gun to run dry. The fire stopped and she whirled round, bringing her pistol to bear on his position. But instead of trying to reload he had simply grabbed one of his fallen comrade's rifles and was bringing it up as well. She centred and fired as fast as she could but as the bullet blasted through his neck his finger depressed on the trigger.

Her shield caught every bullet from his dying volley, but as another group rushed into the room she realised it had overloaded. A bullet caught her in the side and she hissed, feeling it burn as it exited somewhere on her back. Not a mortal wound, but a stupid mistake on her part. She ducked behind cover again and reloaded her pistol and SMG, hoping for a lull in the attack.

Footsteps on the stairs and the men providing covering fire ran empty. She stood and fired with both guns, using the SMG to keep them pinned while her pistol sought out targets. One female soldier with a shield up and a shotgun in hand got two shots to the face. A man trying to ready a flashbang she took with a shot clean through his shoulder. He dropped the grenade and she ducked again as it went off, her ear filters closing entirely to keep the noise out.

The fire on her position stopped entirely and she popped back out to see every one of them reeling from the flashbang's effects. It was an easy matter to hit each of them with a single headshot each and another eight bodies joined the pile at the bottom of the stairs.

They were beginning to adapt though, and were sending greater numbers now. She reloaded quickly and grabbed the rim of the table, heaving at it until the bolts which secured it gave way and she was able to plant it firmly down, giving her maximum cover while still allowing her to fire around on either side. The chairs would still give her cover from the sides, and the heavy metal table had so far proved more than adequate to resist their bullets.

Metal clanged and a dozen soldiers raced into the room. She snatched her sniper rifle first and shot one of them in the centre of the chest. The bullet passed clean through him and hit the commando behind in the neck, dropping him as well. Rather than reloading she dropped the rifle and switched to her SMG, raking fire across their front line. Every one of them dropped for cover, but she scored a couple of solid hits that would definitely incapacitate.

Her next job was the three on the far side of the room armed with rocket launchers who were moving to get a lock on her. She reloaded the rifle one handed and drew her pistol in her other hand. Two shots caught one of the men in the stomach and throat and he fell to the floor. She shifted to the rifle and shot a second man through the head. His finger jerked on the trigger and a rocket slammed into the wall, the shockwave forcing the final one out of cover. She used the rest of her pistol's clip dropping him, then turned back to the main room.

Six of them were up and firing, with a seventh trying to crawl for better cover. She switched back to her SMG, popped the sink and reloaded. Two on the stairs caught half a clip each and she reloaded again, her shield beginning to flicker and fade under the constant fire. The table was absorbing a lot of the fire but there were too many of them and she couldn't afford to give them an inch. Four men, two moving to flank her with covering fire while the other two moved for the stairs, running from cover to cover. They both had shields and were smart enough to wait for the covering fire before moving.

A bullet finally overloaded her shields and she fell back cursing, grabbing her pistol and rifle and reloading them as fast as she could. In between bursts of fire she could hear the two men climbing the stairs and knew she had seconds before they came round the side of the table. She primed an incendiary charge and attached it to the pistol, then took her SMG in her left hand and breathed deep.

A foot emerged from behind one side of the table and she fired the incendiary shot into it. The man screamed and leapt back as the fire spread up his leg. She ignored it, already turning to meet the other man who was coming from the other side of the table. Her SMG opened him up from head to foot and he dropped into a puddle of his own blood. She fell onto her back and found the first man, still alive with most of his leg entirely gone. He had fallen against another table and was trying desperately to crawl away from her. One last bullet put him out of his misery.

Too late she realised that the two who had been providing cover fire had taken advantage of the distraction to mount the stairs. Bullets poured into her shield and overloaded it in seconds as she tried to scrabble back to cover. Two bullets got through and her shoulder exploded with pain, making her cry out and drop the SMG. The second bullet had caught her somewhere in the stomach and made her gasp with every breath.

She made it to cover and desperately loaded up her medi-gel, but they were already on her. She swung her pistol round and emptied it into the first man, knocking him back into his partner, who simply shoved the corpse aside and took careful aim. With a flick of the wrist she threw her pistol at him, distracting him another crucial second as she leapt for her sniper rifle, snatching it up and bringing it round in a heartbeat.

Her vision narrowed, the world slowing the way it did when her implants took over. She still seemed to move in real time though, and knew that her enhanced muscles were pushing her past human limits. The rifle came down, braced against her body while her elbow locked to keep it steady. Her left arm was useless, but he was barely two feet away, taking aim again. She wouldn't need the scope, she barely needed to aim before she pulled the trigger.

The rifle bucked hard, pulling itself from her grip, but the AM round caught him in stomach and blew him entirely in half. His legs dropped immediately while his torso was sent back half a foot from the force of the blow. Both parts landed in a huge pile of gore and blood, his head now facing the top of his own waist.

Shepard's head dropped back against the table and she spat blood onto her armour. Somewhere along the way she had bitten her lip hard enough to make it bleed. She forced herself up, locating her weapons and sliding them into cover. Surely they couldn't have many more to send against her.

A voice echoed in her head, filling the chamber. She recognised it, despite having never heard it before. It didn't have anything to say that she hadn't heard before.

"Do not resist, give yourself over and be spared."

She reloaded, looking over to where Object Rho sat, malevolent and pulsing with sickly blue light.

"Give me a minute," she said, racking her final heat sink home. "I'll be right out."

No more commandoes had come to attack her, and the intercom was finally silent of Kenson's demented ramblings. She stood, pistol in hand, and faced the artefact. "Now how about you shut up?" She said.

The door whirred open and she heard a mechanical clanking from beyond. Wincing with every movement she turned to face it, raising her pistol and focusing on the noise. She shouldn't have been shocked when a YMIR mech walked into view, but it did at least get a sigh out of her. "Come on, seriously?"

The massive cannon arm came round to focus on her and she sprinted back for cover, firing as she went. The pistol bullets barely even dented its shields as it opened up with a gatling burst of fire that tore holes from the floor around her. She vaulted over the railing and onto the upper platform, heading for her makeshift barricade, making it just as a rocket whizzed over her shoulder and exploded against the far window.

She dropped the pistol and grabbed her rifle instead, priming another incendiary charge. She would only have one shot at taking it down, before her injuries did the job for them. The table was beginning to shred under the heavy assault gun and she knew it would only be seconds before it had another rocket ready to launch.

The moment there was a lull in the firing she sprinted from cover, trusting her enhance3d muscles to take over and propel her forwards. Her legs powered under her and the world seemed to slow to a crawl. She watched as the blue emission trail of the rocket poured from the YMIR's arm and she was already in motion when the black-nose of a missile emerged from the centre of the fire. It was moving at several hundred metres a second but she had already made her move, launching herself up and planting one foot on the railing.

Her jump carried her clean over the rocket, the jetwash burning her legs even through her boots as she sailed through the air, locked on target with the YMIR. It tried to bring its assault gun up again but she was already landing on its shoulder plating, finding her balance through sheer luck. The world was beginning to return to normal speed as she brought the rifle down and pressed the barrel right up against the top of the YMIR's head plating, underneath the kinetic field.

The rifle was wrenched from her hand again as the powerful round cracked straight through the plating and blasted the head apart, burrowing down through into the chest cavity, expending its incendiary payload as it went. She followed her rifle, springing off the back of the mech and flying past Object Rho. The mech was groaning as it sank to its knees and she snapped back to realtime with a crash as she skidded along the floor, rolling several times and coming up against a desk.

She gasped and coughed and yelped as the pain in her stomach intensified with the impact, rendering her little more than a quivering ball of pain as she struggling to make her limbs respond. The mech blew with a nuclear blast, heat and shock slamming her against the desk and floor again. Her head spun and she vomited what little was in her stomach.

A second pulse undercut the first, dense blue waves that washed over her and overpowered any mental defences she might have previously had. She finally lay still, unable to fight anymore. It had left her her senses though, and she was able to see the far door open and three people enter, their eyes burning orange as they knelt beside her. She heard Kenson's voice, overlaid with the Reaper that controlled her.

"Take her to the med bay and patch her up. We want Shepard alive."

Blackness claimed her.

**AN:-** I used to write prophecies and visions in first person, back in the ME1 novelisation. Continuity!

Isn't that fight fun? I ended up planted behind a desk emptying everything I had in a desperate attempt to survive.


	4. Chapter 4

**AN:- **Nearly there...

**Chapter Four: Awakening**

"…like Shepard was waking up a moment ago."

Consciousness returned all at once with a voice and a light in her eyes that stabbed at her senses. She kept a groan in and struggled to open her eyes fully. It was easier than when she had awoken on Lazarus Station all those months ago, although her surroundings were much the same as back then.

She ran through a full checklist of her body as she simultaneously registered everything about her surroundings. Her wounds were healing, though not fully capable. Her head still stung from the sedatives but the pain of Object Rho's attack had cleared. She was dressed, though not in her armour. She remembered everything right up until Kenson had ordered her patched up. To her left, nearby, someone was still talking.

"But it could be a glitch in the system." Shepard sat and enjoyed the look of panic in the doctor's eyes. "No glitch! The sedative aren't working!" She sprinted from the room as Shepard sprang off the bed, feeling strength course back into her limbs as the last of the sedative wore off. _I'll have to thank Miranda for the upgrades sometime._

"Security!"

Two guards ran in but she was already bursting into action, snatching a laser cutter from the table next to her medical bed and swinging it up under the first guard's chin. The tool made short work of his neck seal and her feel with a fountain of blood spraying from his neck. The second guard tried to get her in his sights but she feinted twice and drew him in closer before slashing the scalpel across the back of his wrist.

Combat hardsuits often had weaknesses that were exploitable with the proper know-how. In particular light armour of the sort they worse often had very little protection at the joints, where the armour plates didn't cover. The tool in her hand sliced right through to the skin beneath and the guard dropped his gun with a scream.

She finished her work, bringing her blade across his throat and letting him drop. When she turned to scan the room though she saw that the doctor had locked the bay down. _No problem._ Her mind was laser-focused now, finally clearing away the doubts and misgivings she had been harbouring. The path was clear now. Get Kenson, launch the asteroid, stop the Reapers.

A terminal to her left proved no difficulty to hack and she found that most of the base's subroutines were all run from a central network. In specific that meant that she could access the LOKI mech's programming from here. She reckoned it would be a good thirty seconds before anyone even noticed her intrusion, let alone managed to lock her out. _Never pays to underestimate an infiltration specialist._ She set all of the mechs to aggressive mode and entered her own signature as the only friendly pattern. Then she inserted several lines of looping code that would keep them from a simple reprogram. The only way to undo the damage would be a complete reset.

Gunfire outside the medical bay told her her attack was successful as the doctor was shot clean through the window, providing a way out at the same time. Shepard climbed over the desk and walked between the LOKI mechs as they moved out on their search and destroy pattern. There was an armour locker was close by and she opened it up to find that none of her equipment had been tampered with.

Kenson's voice came over the speakers as she was pulling on her chestplate. "Shepard's escaped, all available personnel to the medical wing."

She ignored that. There was nothing they could do that would bother her for long. Her mechs were still moving, which told her that someone was probably trying very hard to rewrite her program instead of just shutting them down. She looked around the room and spotted another one of the countdown clocks. There was barely an hour left.

She managed to clamp down her shock. They had kept her sedated for nearly two full days. _Okay, no time to panic. Have to get this asteroid moving and get the hell out of here_

There was only door out of the medical bay, and the mechs had already opened the way for her, two bodies outside showing their success. The mech's numbers had been cut down from nearly a dozen to five though, and she knew they would do little else in the coming fight. She followed their path through a circular glass tunnel that ran along the outside of the station and came out into the living quarters.

Ahead of her the mechs were already engaged in a gunfight with a small squad of humans, who were winning pretty definitively. Only two mechs were left standing, one missing an arm and the other smoking from several gunshot wounds. Shepard drew her pistol and snapped off two shots that dropped one of the men. The other three spotted her and ducked down under cover, but that left the mechs free to advance again.

Shepard moved to flank them, letting the mechs take the forward approach. They didn't do much more than act as a distraction, getting shot down easily by the soldiers. But they had done enough, and all she needed to do was draw her SMG and pop out from cover, perfectly in position to empty every shot into the side of the three remaining men, who all dropped.

Another tunnel led out and around again. She could look out to the side and see the dust cloud being kicked up by the movement of the asteroid, but they were still a long way from the relay.

At the other end she found a woman sealing a door. The woman ran when she saw Shepard but a single pistol shot dropped her. It looked like a mess hall, though most of the tables had been shoved up against one wall to create a barricade that sealed off another door. One exit remained, so she made for it, changing course when a man armed with a flamethrower emerged.

She found herself in the kitchen, ducked behind an oven as the flamethrower spat at her and another two troops came running from the door to pin her down with SMG fire. She growled and drew her pistol. She had the feeling that they probably weren't aware of the vital weakness of the flamethrower, and when she leaned out to make her shot they were all crowded together. One shot blew the tanks and all three men went down screaming.

Running past them she burst through the door they had come through and found herself in a short corridor. Reloading her pistol she sprinted to the end and came out in some sort of laboratory. Here she could see the real signs of indoctrination. Reaper symbols were carved into the desks, and on one wall they had painted a gigantic representation of Sovereign. She resisted the urge to waste a bullet on the image and hurried across the lab.

Before she made it another squad ran in and she dived for cover behind one of the desks as bullets hit her shield. She had seen at least three people, one of them with a shield and a shotgun while the other two were armed with assault rifles.

_You'd think they'd learn._ She thought as she primed an incendiary charge and lobbed it over to them. The charge blasted a hole in one man and set his friend on fire. The shielded woman broke cover and charged her, shotgun blasted and a war cry on her lips. Shepard shook her head and brought the shield down with a quick burst from her SMG. Before a shotgun round had even come close she put a pistol bullet into the woman's nose and she dropped.

"She's almost at the control room!" Kenson was shouting again. "Stop her!"

She went through the next door and found herself in a huge wide open room, windows all along one wall and a circular console in the middle projecting a holographic display of the asteroid. The room was full of soldiers as well, who all opened fire the moment she entered. Her shield flared blue and dissipated almost at once but she was already in motion, heading for the console. She skidded down behind it and drew her SMG.

The display sparked and the hologram disappeared as the amount of fire that hit it destroyed the circuits and ripped half the panels away. She hunkered down further as the relentless fire continued, tearing chunks from the floor around her as well. Finally it abated and she stayed low, listening as they shifted around the room.

"Is she dead?" She heard one man ask, and pictured his location in her mind.

"Go and check," another voice said.

Two targets. She grinned and sprang out from cover, her pistol barking twice and taking both of them in the head. Before anyone could return fire she brought her SMG up with her other hand and opened up as she charged forwards, leaping over the console and coming down with both feet on a woman's chest, forcing her to the floor.

Half of them still hadn't even managed to reload, so she focused on the ones who had, snapping off shots from her pistol that shattered helmets, or punched through chests and necks. Her SMG ran dry and she dived for cover again, tackling a big man with a shield up and spinning so he was between her and the return fire. His shield disappeared and a dozen bullets burrowed into him, punching through the other side to spark off her shield instead.

Rolling to a stop behind cover she kept moving, crawling along the floor as she reloaded her pistol and SMG. They didn't seem to have realised she might move, focusing all their fire on where she had landed. The resistance in the room had been cut by maybe a quarter, it would still take a lot of work to end the fight.

She popped out of cover in the perfect flanking position for three guards and shot them all in the head, dropping out of sight again and reloading her pistol. The fire shifted to her new position so she rolled back the way she had come. This time they were smart enough to blanket the whole area in fire though, so there were few safe spots.

Waiting for another break in the firing she activated her shield and vaulted the low wall, sprinting clear across the room. If anyone heard the sound of her footsteps they didn't respond and she made it to cover behind a column, next to a locked door. She watched as they reloaded and opened fire again, the roar of the gunshots echoing in the enclosed space

The rest of the fight was over in seconds. She was behind them and they were too preoccupied with reducing the wall to rubble. A single headshot went into each of the troops, and it was only when she was down to the last two that they realised the amount of fire had diminished. Both of them turned to shoot her but she had come right up behind one of them, using him as a shield while she jammed her pistol under his chin and pulled the trigger. His body continued to absorb bullets as she leaned out and shot the final woman through the head.

Silence fell in the room, as sudden as the gunfire had earlier. She stood for a moment to breathe, checking herself for any new wounds. Nothing seemed to have got through though, and there were plenty of heat sinks around for her to reload with. Finished with that she made her way to the computer console by the wall, which was thankfully undamaged.

"Welcome to Project Control," a cheery VI voice greeted her.

"I want to activate the Project."

"Warning, activating the Project will result in an estimated three hundred and five thousand casualties." The number flashed on screen, delivered in the same cheery voice. "Do you wish to continue?"

_God forgive me._ She had never even considered prayer before. But if any act warranted it, it had to be this. "Activate."

There was no grand ceremony from the computer. It flashed an affirmative green and the asteroid shuddered as the thrusters began to fire in unison. The countdown clock was moved to one corner of the screen as a second timer appeared, counting down the time to impact. There was barely five minutes difference between the two.

Shepard slumped against the desk. Covering her face with her hand. _Please, let this work._

"Project activation in progress. Warning, collision with mass relay is imminent. Begin evacuation procedures."

She snapped her head up and found the communications channel, opening it and grabbing the mic. "Alert, all colonists living in the Bahak system. This is-"

The screen changed and Kenson's face filled it, raging down at her with tears in her eyes. "Shepard no! Do you have any idea what you've done? You leave me no choice. If we can't stop this asteroid then it must be destroyed!"

She tried to trigger the communications link again but it had been disabled from somewhere deeper in the station. White hot anger filled her and she returned to the main page. "Tell me where to find Doctor Amanda Kenson."

"Doctor Kenson is travelling to the reactor core module."

Kenson's face reappeared. "An eezo core meltdown should do it. Because of you, everyone on this rock will be obliterated."

Shepard drew her pistol and glared up at her. "Not if I get to you first."

The transmission cut off and she turned to see a door opening and two men running through. She shot both of them before they could even take in the damage and ran past them. She raced through the tunnels at top speed, slipping through two doors, ignoring everything she came across.

She burst into the reactor core and saw Kenson immediately, standing right by the core itself.

"Don't try to stop me Shepard, I have to do this."

"I've already activated the Project. We can still escape this rock!"

"There is no escape." Kenson turned to her, tears still streaking down her cheeks. "There's no redemption for what you've done. I will die, never having seen the Reaper's blessings. And you will just die!" She sprinted for the far door as two more men came in to cover her escape.

"Dammit Kenson!"

She shot both men and headed for the far door, jamming her omni-tool into the panel and uploading one of Tali's special programs. The hologram disappeared and a shower of sparks fell from the door lock as it opened. Beyond was an elevator which took her up to one of the control station. Inside were another three soldiers who went down with a single shot each.

_It can make them loyal,_ she thought as she went to the computer. _But it can't make them soldiers._

"How do I stabilise the reactor core?" she asked the terminal.

"All automatic safety protocols have been overridden. To stabilise the reactor core: manually insert Cooling Rod A from this station. Manually insert Cooling Rod B from Control Station B. Doing so will stabilise the reactor core."

She gripped the cooling rod and eased it into position, twisting it to lock it in place. Immediately it started to hum and she saw power cables light up on the reactor core. The computer spoke again. "Cooling Rod A reinserted. Reactor cooling process has begun."

She could see the second station just across from her, and the door that would lead her round to it. She raided the bodies for heat sinks and reloaded everything she had before stepping through to find another elevator.

The corridors led her to a plasma venting room which she easily ran through, then on to a maintenance area with two guards inside. She killed both of them and deactivated the security in the area to continue on. Another elevator led her up to a small living area where she found more heat sinks scattered around. Clearly the occupants of the station were using it as some sort of staging area. At the far end another elevator brought her back up to the level of the control station.

The remaining few people had clearly decided to make their stand in the corridor just outside the Control Station, a makeshift barricade constructed from packing crates stood in her way and five men on top were shooting down at her. She stayed in the cover of the doorway and drew her AM rifle, regretting the necessity of what she was forced to do. But her omni-tool was beeping, reminding her of the ever increasing time pressure.

She leaned out and shot one man in half, then reloaded and shot the woman next to him. The other three scrambled from the barricade to rush her but she simply switched to her SMG and unloaded the entire clip into them. All three twitched and jerked and dropped to the floor as they died. She reloaded again and ran forwards, drawing her pistol and shooting the final woman who was trying to sneak up on her.

Inside the cooling station was one final man, who swung a pistol up to hoot her. She dodged the shot and grabbed his head, slamming it as hard as she could into the screen behind him. The bullet proof glass actually cracked, and when she took her hand away his head had been deformed by the force of the impact. Directing every curse she could think of at the Reapers for forcing her hand she slid the second cooling rod into place, locking it down and waiting for the computer to confirm.

Kenson's voice came over the speakers, as she had known it would. "You've done nothing Shepard. I can still override power to the engines. Try to stop me!"

Shepard drew her pistol and headed for the elevator down to the core level. It opened and she walked in to see Kenson right by the control panel, fixing something to the underside. Shepard raised her pistol and trained it on Kenson's back.

"Step away from the reactor." Her voice sounded dull, even to her ears. There was little way of getting through to her now.

"You've ruined everything. I can't hear the whispers anymore."

"Turn around. Now."

Kenson turned and her eyes were still filled with that insane rage. "You've taken them away from me. And I will never see the Reaper's arrival." She brought her hand out from behind her back to reveal she was holding a stick detonator. "All you had to do was stay asleep. None of this had to happen."

Shepard lowered her gun and shook her head. "Kenson, you don't have to do this, we can get off this asteroid."

"No, we cannot."

She saw it coming a moment before it happened. Too fast for her to react. All Kenson had to do was depress her finger and the explosives she had strapped to the console detonated. Shepard caught a split second glance of the doctor's body coming apart, and then the shockwave hit her and she was thrown back against a pillar, hard enough that her suit went into automatic lockdown to prevent injury. The heat hit her next, her face burning as flames filled the room.

Unconsciousness wasn't any more fun the second time around.

**AN:-** Not a great deal to say about this one.

THE REAPER OVERLORDS COMMAND YOU TO REVIEW!


	5. Chapter 5

**AN:- **Short chapter then the epilogue.

**Chapter Five: Arrival**

Her alarm was beeping. Shepard reached out a hand to swat it but connected with solid bulkhead instead. She sat, rubbing her eyes and trying to clear the fog from her brain.

"Warning, collision imminent."

Not her alarm. She looked around and realised she was still in the reactor control room of Project Base. Still presumably heading on a collision course for an asteroid. She forced herself up as the computer continued to chirp out its warning. A glance to the console told her that the Project hadn't been stopped by Kenson's bomb. She also saw the remains of the doctor. Or at least the larger chunks of her remains.

Turning away she raised a hand to her comm unit. "Joker this is Shepard. I need a pickup, now!"

"Communication relay system damaged."

"Dammit!" She could only imagine what was happening on board the Normandy. They must have spent the last two days tearing the colony apart trying to find her. Or maybe they had followed her instructions and left the system to bring their report to Hackett.

That left only one other option. She had to find her own way out. And fast. Stumbling to a wall terminal she found the computer network still in operation. "Evacuation protocols in effect," it told her. "All personnel report to escape shuttles."

"Where can I find an escape shuttle?"

"Escape pods are located at the base of the communications tower."

She was halfway to the elevator before it even finished giving her directions. It took her up and to another living area, but this time through the window she could see the relay, impossibly close.

She put on a burst of speed, coaxing energy from her tired muscles to make it down a hallway and into a stairwell leading down. Outside she could now see the edge of the communications tower, and a sign for an airlock to her right at the bottom of the stairs. She unfurled her helmet on the run and hit the airlock open button, overriding the security with another of Tali's handy gadgets.

Atmosphere vented into space as the doors opened to reveal a metal platform bolted onto the side of the station. Ahead was a relay tower, stretching up into space. Boxes and crates were scattered around as well, and she saw half a dozen men racing for the comm tower.

_Oh no you don't._

She drew her pistol on the run and opened fire, hitting two men and dropping them. Switching to her SMG she focused on a third man, most of her bullets going wide but one knocking his shield. He turned to see her charging towards him and she saw his eyes go wide through the helmet a second before she caught him with a shoulder barge that threw him hard against a packing crate. The crate fell on top of him and she was on to the next man.

This one was fast enough to get his pistol out and even get off a couple of shots that were stopped dead by her shield. She hit him hard in the stomach and he folded in half. A rabbit punch to the side of the helmet laid him out flat and unconscious. The fifth and sixth had noticed her and turned, opening up with their own pistols.

She rolled behind a cargo crate and reloaded her guns, snapping off a couple of shots to keep them back. Even as she prepared her next move she saw a shuttle go overhead, racing for the relay. A quick scan of the network told her it was the final shuttle. _Well shit._

She leapt from cover and clubbed the final two men to the ground while they were lamenting their comrades leaving without them. Her only hope was that the crew had disobeyed her orders. So actually a fairly good chance. They had to have noticed the asteroid in motion and had probably guessed it had something to do with her.

She activated the comm tower and opened all the frequencies. "Shepard to Normandy. Joker do you read me?"

Movement flickered at the edge of her vision and she turned to see a hologram appearing. It manifested into the shape of Harbinger, looming over her with typical Reaper posturing. She stepped away from the console, setting her message to repeat. They would just have to home in on the signal. She wanted to see what he big man had to say.

Shepard.

As always his voice echoed in her head without any need for amplification. It wasn't a shout like Sovereign's had been. Harbinger's voice was much calmer. Much more dangerous.

You have become an annoyance. You fight against inevitability. Dust struggling against cosmic winds. This seems a victory to you. A star system sacrificed. But even now, your greatest civilisations are doomed to fall. Your leaders will beg to serve us.

She shrugged. "Maybe you're right. Maybe we can't win this. But we'll fight you regardless. Just like we did Sovereign, just like I'm doing now." She looked up at the Reaper's image and found she truly had no fear of it. "However insignificant we might be, we will fight, we will sacrifice, and we will find a way. That's what people do."

Know this as you die in vain. Your time will come, your species will fall. Prepare yourselves for the Arrival

The hologram faded. He hadn't sounded impressed by her statement. She was turning to watch the relay grow closer when a signal hit her helmet. "Commander Shepard. Normandy inbound for pickup."

She looked over to see it swooping round the edge of the asteroid, coming right for her position. By her guess they had barely a minute until impact. The airlock was already open and she could see Garrus and Tali inside, dressed in armour and holding out their hands. She ran for it, hurling herself off the platform and into space.

They caught her and hauled her inside, Garrus slamming the airlock closed the moment she was aboard. She felt the deck shift beneath her feet and knew Joker was taking them for the relay. The inner airlock opened and they ran for the cockpit.

"Get us out of here Joker!" Tali shouted as they saw te relay loom large ahead of them, the asteroid still casting a shadow over the cockpit.

"You think?"

His hands danced across the console and they hit the relay, a spark of energy catching them and accelerating them to FTL speeds. Space around them disappeared and they saw nothing of the explosion. Wordlessly Shepard brought up a star chart on the navigator's console and they watched as it struggled to interpret the readings from Bahak.

The system glowed red, then disappeared from the charts.

"Did anyone get a signal to the batarians?" She asked quietly, turning back to her crew and taking off her helmet.

"You might want to talk to the man in charge," Joker said, nodding behind him.

She turned to see a man in full Alliance blues marching up from the CIC. She noted the Admiral's rank on his chest and snapped to attention, only then seeing his face as well. "Admiral Hackett." She saluted on instinct. "What's going on?"

His face could have been carved from stone. "I think you might want to give the explanation Commander. And it had better be a good one."

/|\

They ended up holding the debriefing in the medical bay. Shepard's wounds needed to be tended to, and Chakwas insisted on making sure she was free of any contamination or mental degradation after her ordeal.

Hackett was there the whole time, pacing the bay.

"You went out there as a favour to me. So I decided to debrief you in person. Then the Normandy comes out of FTL space and says you're nowhere to be found. We arrive back in Bahak to find an asteroid on course to destroy the Mass Relay." He turned to face her and she felt the full force of the Alliance's authority in his glare. "What the hell happened out there Commander?"

She decided to take the cautious route. "Have you received any Intel about what happened?"

"All I know is I sent you out there to break Amanda Kenson out of prison, and now an entire system is destroyed. I hope you could fill in the leap of logic between those two events."

She nodded. She had hoped she wouldn't have to be the one to tell him about Kenson's indoctrination. "I confirmed Doctor Kenson's proof. The Reapers were coming, and destroying that relay was the only way to stop them. Kenson and the other researchers had been indoctrinated though. They kept me sedated me for almost two days. I started the engines with little more than an hour left. I tried to warn the batarian colony, but…" She couldn't bring herself to tell him that Kenson had been the one to disable the communications. Not now. He would read it in her report later. "Time ran out."

He brought out a datapad and examined it, she suspected to give himself time to formulate a response to her incredible story. "The batarians report no survivors from Aratoht." She closed her eyes and felt her jaw tighten. Three hundred and five thousand people. All now weighing on her conscience. "At least you tried. And you believe the Reaper invasion really was a threat?"

She nodded. The one thing Kenson hadn't lied about. "No doubt about it. We literally had minutes to spare."

He regarded her coolly, then nodded. "I'm sure all the details will be in your report. I won't lie to you Shepard. The batarians will want blood. And there's just enough evidence for a witch hunt. And we don't want war with the batarians. Not with the Reaper's at the galaxy's edge."

She had known as much. "What are you saying?"

"You did what you did for the best of reasons. But... there were more than three hundred thousand batarians in that system. All dead."

"If I could have saved them, you know I would have. "He was impossible to read, but surely he remembered the things she had done under his command before? "They died to save trillions of lives."

He sighed and nodded. "You're preaching to the choir Commander. I know you. And if it were up to me, I'd give you a damn medal. Unfortunately, not everyone will see it that way."

"So what do you suggest?"

"The evidence against you is shoddy at best." _Except for the fact that I definitely did it. Only the reasons why will exonerate me._ "But at some point, you'll have to go to Earth and face the music. I can't stop it… but I can and will make them fight for it."

She shook her head. "I caused that destruction. Those deaths are on my head. I'll gladly stand trial."

Once more she faced that unreadable gaze. She couldn't see a hint of pride, or condemnation. "Glad to see working with Cerberus hasn't stripped away your sense of honour. Do whatever you have to do out here. But when Earth calls, you make sure you're there with your dress blues on, ready to take the hit." She nodded and he finally showed a hint of emotion, giving her a nod in return. "I don't need to see your report to know you did the right thing. You've done a hell of a thing Commander."

And without a further word or salute he turned on his heel and marched from the bay.

**AN:- **I made quite a few changes to Hackett's dialogue in this one. I prefer him as a much more aloof character. He's a military leader, not a father figure like Anderson. He might congratulate his subordinates, but it will be wrapped in a reprimand and harsh reality.

Just the epilogue left.


	6. Epilogue

**AN:- **Time for a nice cheery ending I think. Minor language warning.

**Epilogue: The Parting of the Ways**

"So what's the verdict Shepard?"

"You've been learning human expressions again Garrus."

"Just trying to fit in."

"Well then this news may come as unwelcome." She braced herself against the briefing room table. Only four people were in there with her. Tali and Garrus at either side, Chakwas and Joker further up the table. "We're about to be recalled to Earth. My actions must be accounted for. I have to stand trial for the destruction of the batarian colony."

"That's bullshit Commander, all due respect." Joker had the only seat in the room, next to Tali. "You just stopped the damn Reaper invasion. Gave them time to prepare for it."

"Three hundred thousand people died because of what I did, a choice I made." She shook her head. "I don't deserve to be let off for that. I need to face the consequences."

"In war sacrifices are often justified," Garrus said. "Can you not argue for the greater good?"

"I can and I will, when the time comes for trial. But in the meantime we need to decide what to do with the crew."

Tali's head quirked in confusion. "What do you mean?"

"This ship can run with only Joker and EDI. Everyone else on board is a former operative of Cerberus. If we return to Earth they will be tried for crimes associated with that organisation. Even if I didn't believe they had reformed, we will need them in the coming war. So they have to be allowed the choice of whether to come to Earth and face justice, or whether we let them off at the nearest system and wish them well."

"And let me guess." Garrus knew what she was avoiding saying. "Tali and I can't be on this ship either, when the time comes."

She nodded. "Two aliens, the only two left. On a Cerberus vessel. You with your history in particular Garrus. If we go to Earth you may escape trial, but you'll have no place. I need you where you'll do the most good."

"What are you saying Shepard?" Tali sounded as uncertain as she had all those years ago when she first boarded the Normandy.

"It's time for Garrus to return to Palaven, and for you to go home to the Migrant Fleet." She held up a hand to stave off protests. "I know how much this must hurt, and it must seem as though I don't want you. Believe me I would have you at my side to the gates of hell if need be. But you will do no good in the care of the Earth governments. And you might do a lot of good helping to prepare your people for what's coming."

"I understand." Tali folded her arms. "I don't have to like it. But I understand."

"Doctor. We'll let you off on Ilium, if that's agreeable to you?" Chakwas inclined her head gracefully. "I think it's highly unlikely you would stand trial, but until we know for sure you can do some good wherever you see fit."

"If I might be allowed to prepare Commander?"

"Of course, go ahead. We'll say a proper goodbye later."

Chakwas left, and Shepard couldn't help but see the symbolism. The room which had once been crammed with the amount of people, now diminishing one by one in the space of a single meeting. She met Garrus' eyes and saw the same mood in them.

"I can depart at Ilium as well," Tali said. "It won't be difficult to get to the Migrant Fleet from there. And you shouldn't delay Earth."

"I think most of the crew should probably depart there," Garrus said. "Ilium's a good port, they'll be able to get to a lot of places from there. And the local government don't ask too many questions." He crossed his arms as well. "I'd like to follow you further though Commander, if that's alright?"

Not this time Garrus. You get off at Ilium with the rest. Make your way to Palaven. You know your people, you know how to do the most good for them." He went to speak but she interrupted him. "This is not a goodbye Garrus. This is 'until next time.' Once I'm done on Earth I'll come pick you up again. Assuming the Reapers haven't already invaded."

He held her stare for a long time, then finally nodded. "Fine. I can help organise the rest of the crew who choose to leave."

"So if we're all agreed we can present this to them tomorrow at first shift breakfast. Any questions?" There were none. "Meeting adjourned then."

Garrus and Tali left, but Joker stayed right where he was. "I notice you didn't mention me."

She nodded. "I need you and EDI to run this ship. Which means you're coming right to Earth with me. Sorry."

He shook his head. "Hey, I'm with you Commander. 'Til the end of the line."

"That's what I'm afraid of. They will want scapegoats, and if you're the only crew member coming back with me you'll be in the perfect position for them to draw and quarter. Might want to start working on your 'only following orders' defence now."

He shook his head violently, standing and facing her down. "Not a chance in hell Shepard. I've been with you since you took command of this ship and I've seen the sort of people who use that as an excuse. I knew what I was doing every step of the way and I'd do it all again exactly the same." His expression softened. "You're the captain, I'm the pilot. We go down with this ship together."

She nodded and stepped around the table, holding out her hand and shaking his. "Then lay in the course. Because I have a feeling that one way or another, we're about to run out of time."

The End

**AN:-** And so this is how it ends. That was happy wasn't it?

The whole point of these DLC bits was to show how the team falls apart. bit by bit, not all at once. This is just the final breaking before ME3.

I really wanted Joker's little speech at the end. It's very important. Not only because it's important to show Joker's loyalty, but for the narrative thread in the Mass Effect stories. Not counting the opening conversation of ME1 Joker is the first person with lines, he's the first teammate to come back in ME2. He's always there. 'Til the end of the line.

I will probably take a while before doing ME3. I want to get a bit of a buffer and try and find the voice before I start uploading it. I haven't even started it yet. And especially doing these two DLC bits in one go has kind of burned me out a little bit. But don't worry. ME3 is coming.


End file.
