Audax Novus

Chapter Nine ::Two Assaults & Hades Desire::

Shepard glanced to his left, over Joker's recently paled face, and to Tali's wide eyes visible through her faceplate. He watched her for a long moment and clenched his teeth quietly, his mind hitting a sudden halt over her silent wonder and intense fascination.

The Commander of the Normandy slowly looked back to his readout, sitting in the co-pilot's chair as he was, and his lips downturned in a similar level of concern as his pilot. There were well over ten thousand ship signatures active in orbit of Rannoch, ranging from small troopships to gargantuan dreadnoughts.

When Shepard had issued the order to investigate Rannoch, Tali had given him a rundown on what to expect of Geth deployments. The initial scans when they arrived with their stealth systems active had confirmed the first element of Tali's description of the sheer number of ships that would likely be present. The Quarian's Intel had become useless beyond that first point of detail.

Where Tali had described that there would more than likely be various networked webs of Geth ships arranged at all five Lagrange points for optimal defence. Shepard hadn't had trouble imagining that, the Systems Alliance used the same strategy for Earth defence for the simple measurements of it providing sufficient coverage of planetary approach and out-system visibility.

But that hadn't been what they'd found in the Quarian home system. Rather than the expected five, there were only two clusters of ships in the system. One was comprised of at least eight-thousand vessels in a grid-like formation at Lagrange point two on the orbital outer of Rannoch away from the local star, and the others' in a mix of high and low orbit of Rannoch which consisted primarily of troop transports and destroyers.

Added to that was the energy readings which confirmed that there were at least two Collector cruisers parked on the planets' surface. Shepard glanced from his display to Joker, and the pilot glanced back at him and forced a playful smirk, which still looked forced despite his best –or partial- efforts, "This should be fun... So we gonna wrap ourselves in big red sashes and go present ourselves to them like a gift? Heh..." His eyes crinkled in something between mirth and anger, "We're gonna die! Heh-heh..."

Shepard grunted a sound of annoyance, but couldn't exactly deny Joker's simplified and derisively stated thoughts. Tali, on the other hand, lightly cuffed the pilot over the top of his head, "Bosh'tet!" She hissed, "We're going to work out how to deal with the Collectors, and we'll win."

"Probability is not in our favour, Tali'Zorah," EDI's synthetic tone admonished before it lifted with a hint of curiosity, "However, your observations about expected Geth behaviour coincided with my own expectations. This behaviour, as well as the Collectors presence, suggests that the Collectors somehow have control of the Geth."

Shepard narrowed his eyes and peered from his display to the canopy with Rannoch consuming half of the view, a small area glinted with reflective metal where the Geth fleet at Lagrange point two orbited peacefully.

He shook his head slowly, "We can't ignore this..."

"Of course we can't!" Tali stated anxiously, "This is Rannoch! If the Collectors are controlling the Geth, maybe we can somehow take that control and shut them down?"

Joker scoffed and dramatically threw his hands up, almost slapping Tali's mask in the process and making the Quarian narrow her eyes at the pilot, "Right, of course! I forgot..." He scoffed again and flung his arms up in another dramatic flourish of movement, "We'll take the little'ol Normandy, cut through over ten-thousand Geth ships, ya'know... Because that's easy?" He rolled his eyes dramatically, "Then we can deal with the Collectors, they're easy too, even easier? Hmm, then we'll swoop in, free the Geth and make peace with song and dance!"

"Joker..." Shepard sighed his pilots' call sign with an edge of discipline, drawing the sarcastic bearded man's eye, "We'll work something out, we have to. The Quarian fleet will have received Admiral Xen's intel by now, they'll be expecting to take action soon as well."

"Keelah!" Tali exclaimed with a shake of her head, and she navigated around Joker's chair to stand behind Shepard's instead, "I hadn't even thought about what the fleet might do when they learn about this... We're not equipped for an invasion."

Shepard rolled his shoulders marginally and shot Joker a dubious look before giving Tali a more supportive lift of his cheeks from over his shoulder, "We need to be prepared for Admiral Xen or Gerrel to push for an assault. We know that they've been working on Geth countermeasures, we can't rule out -especially with Xen already doing a recon mission here, that they haven't already been gearing up for an invasion."

"Keelah..." Tali hissed the Quarian exclamation again, shaking her head slowly, "Shepard, what are we going to do?"

Shepard glanced to Joker, looking at him with a raised questioning right brow, and then back to the sensors in front of him showing the thousands-strong fleet. The Geth couldn't be allowed to be added to the Reaper issue, otherwise, when the Reapers invaded, there would be even more to contend with.

He clenched his jaw and squinted in quenched frustration, then glanced to Joker, "Can we do an atmospheric flight and not be detected?"

"Uhhhh..." Joker sounded unenthusiastic, "Suuure, mightn't want to get too close to either of the Collector ships, they probably have better sensors than the Geth's. And we can't do any landings; otherwise, we'll light up like an electronic Christmas tree."

Shepard nodded slowly, "Do it," He grunted, "We need better intel, we can't let this get any worse. I think we'll have to contact Wrex to see if he can commit any forces to setting up a beachhead."

"A beachhead..." Tali blinked rapidly down at Shepard, and he met her gaze with a clenched jaw and nod. "Keelah, Shepard!" Tali glanced to Joker, who seemed not entirely phased by the order despite his sarcasm and was running another sensor sweep. "...Shepard... You're talking about an invasion! What about all of their orbital support?"

"Wrex is always talking about the Krogan's big guns..." He shrugged, and a smile broke his chagrin expression into a grimace, "I figure he'll probably have a few handy to keep the Geth orbital forces at bay so we can make landings."

"Why not just call in a full orbital battle while you're at it?" Joker snorted while he eased his hands back from the sensor controls and to his flight stick.

Shepard shook his head, not having interpreted the sarcasm with his eyes narrowed in a calculation, "We can't afford to slug it out with the Geth... We need to do this with the smallest resource and asset commitment possible."

"Shepard..." Tali paused after declaring his name lowly again. She shook her head slightly, and her eyes narrowed, "You're not just doing this to get me my homeworld back, are you?"

Shepard looked over his shoulder and met the Quarians' eyes, and he held her gaze for several seconds before pressing a thin smile, "Not just that."

Joker snorted, and Shepard orientated himself forward again toward the canopy showcasing Rannoch looming larger and larger like a brown and green pearl, "I'd like to sound cliché and romantic..." He snorted a quiet laugh and gave Tali a quick rueful smile, "But truth is, we seriously can't afford for the Geth to become the pawns of the Reapers. I guess this might be the first real battleground of the Reaper war."

"Thanks for jinxing us, Commander," Joker whined as he pushed the flight stick and the Normandy zipped toward Rannoch, unbeknownst to the local mechanical forces.

They crossed the void swiftly and silently over the next five minutes, staying clear of the Geth fleets by several hundred thousand kilometres, and breached the upper atmosphere with several smooth bumps and reverberations through the hull. "No Geth forces have detected us," EDI advised through the console.

"Thanks, Mum," Joker mumbled but stayed focused as they broke the cloud cover.

"I advise that we remain in the cloud cover, Mr Moreau. Geth optical sensors will still be able to see us."

Joker grimaced, not having considered that fact, and he immediately pulled up on the stick and submerged the Normandy back into the embrace of the thick grey cloud.

Shepard kept his eyes focused on his sensor readings, and Tali scowled silently about not being able to visually witness her homeland. "Local time is around 0900," Joker read from his display, "Thirty-two hour days here, so bright and early."

Shepard and Tali nodded along as they zipped through the cloud cover quietly and flashes of lightning raced by the canopy. "Looks like a storms brewing... Good for us." The pilot grunted flying by sensors' and not sight to keep the Normandy enshrouded.

He banked left and right every few minutes, choosing to keep the ship in the densest pockets of cloud, and droplets of water coated the canopy before freezing and cracking away.

"Shepard, EDI, keep your eyes- And your electricky bits- focused on the sensors. We're coming up near one of the Collector cruiser's, looks like its routing a high energy laser signal to the orbiting Geth above."

"Mr Moreau, if you could try to intercept that data-stream, I can attempt to extrapolate what it is," EDI suggested coolly.

"And probably give us the hell away in the process," Joker snorted, "No damn way in hell!"

Shepard frowned and shared a quick look with Tali, and then glanced to Joker, who was still entirely focused on his console, "Joker?" He asked in an apologetic voice.

"Oh, no! No way!"

"Yes... Joker, we need that intel," Shepard grumbled, then looked up slightly as he always did when addressing EDI, "How long would we need, EDI?"

"Only a millisecond, Shepard."

"Joker, do it," Shepard order flatly, despite the grim line that his lips had formed, "We'll get the hell out of here as soon as we've got it."

"Commander..." Joker hissed in an angry voice and then veered the ship left slightly, "If we lose this Normandy... Well, there'll be no coming back from this one, remember there are more than ten-thousand ships above waiting to paint our guts on Rannoch."

Shepard nodded, "Complaint noted, now do it. EDI; get ready for cyberwarfare and to defend the ship."

"Of-fucking-course," Joker suddenly muttered, drawing Shepard's and Tali's eyes, "Cloud cover breaks up ahead, right above the signal. Looks like we're doing this... Here we go."

Warm sunlight suddenly painted the occupants of the cockpit and Joker shot toward the faintly visible thin glistening line of red light ahead of them, and the ship passed through it in under a second. "Datastream captured," EDI declared the instant that they passed through it and Joker rerouted the ship's power away from the stealth systems and into the mass effect core.

The Normandy's velocity doubled and Joker banked hard left, heading out over the ocean, away from where the Collector cruiser was landed above a rugged cliff face far below, and away from the overwatch and Geth above.

"We have been detected."

"No shit..." Joker grunted, annoyed, and drew power from the barrier systems and dumped that into the core too. "Shepard, you better tell me if you see any Geth on sensors. I've taken all of our barriers offline to get out fast."

"Aye, aye," Shepard assented to his pilot.

Tali gripped the back of his co-pilot's flight chair anxiously as the extra power to the core couldn't quite reconcile with their velocity, and the gravity in the ship increased marginally and attempted to drag her back.

Shepard fought the urge to look up through the canopy as Joker powered them higher into the atmosphere at a gradual incline in preference for watching the ship's sensors. They were the only systems active besides the life support, thrusters, and the core.

It was a gambit, but one that he knew they had to take. Shepard couldn't fathom what the power of the Reapers could be, but they had cleansed the galaxy of life uncountable times, so Shepard was sure, despite his lack of clear intelligence, that their numbers would be daunting.

If the Geth were also under the control of Reapers, along with the Collectors, then even he feared for their chances more than he'd like to admit. Despite his ship only being a recon frigate, it could generally punch above its weight, especially with the recently installed thanix and solaris armour, let alone the enhanced barrier array. Still, now, all of those upgrades meant nothing, even a passing Geth fighter could knock them from the sky.

'Gambit upon gambit,' Shepard clenched his jaw at the thought but knew that their options were limited. His eyes suddenly focused as a blip entered his sensors, "Geth craft coming from aft... Looks like..." He peered closer and read the energy and mass readings, "A fighter, wait," He halted and suddenly thirty more blips crossed his sensors, "thirty more of them," More blips entered it. He realised that they were breaching the upper limits of the atmosphere, "Cruisers, and destroyer class on our aft now."

"Yep, regular party," Joker snorted.

The lights suddenly flicked off, and Shepard glanced down the gangway in concern to see the entire ship behind him to have gone dark.

"-Keelah..." Tali whispered in concern and lost her footing, she gripped the back of Shepard's flight chair and hung on as the forces of nature fought to pull her back.

"Joker?" Shepard asked between clenched teeth and then noticed the blips on their sensors were starting to retract away on the screen.

"Taking power from every non-essential system, Commander," Joker replied tersely, "We'll have enough distance from Rannoch to jump in a few seconds. Otherwise, we'll be Geth stew... Or whatever the hell they eat... Do they eat? Pssht," He added in a mumble and then brought his fist down onto the FTL charge.

Shepard's sensors went black at the lack of available information and the view beyond the canopy warped from the regular star-scape to a shifting tunnel of blues, greens, reds, and black. The three occupants of the flight cabin let out a collective sigh of relief, and then Joker's laugh broke the air with his anxiety leaving his chest.

"Hahahaha! Commander, that idea sucked!"

Shepard smiled ruefully and glanced at Tali before meeting Joker's half-serious eyes, "We got away, didn't we?"

"Didn't even take a single shot, impressive idea taking power from the lighting as well," Tali agreed with her eyes crinkled in mirth, and a little bit of unease.

"Mr Moreau overrode several of my security protocols, Commander," EDI explained with an element of danger on the edge of her tone.

"-Pssht!" Joker snorted and grinned sideways at Shepard.

"The only shipboard systems that were running were oxygen scrubbers, a single barrier generator, thrusters and the core, and myself," EDI explained, the anger remaining on the periphery of the informative tone.

"Uh-oh, Shepard, looks like the AI is starting to turn on us!" Joker mocked with his hands held up dramatically, "Let's rush back and find Miranda so she can pull the plug."

Shepard's face paled slightly at the mock threat, and he looked up as he did when thinking of EDI, and waited uncomfortably for some kind of threatening rebuke to prove Joker correct. EDI, however, stayed true to the personality that she had established since their first meeting, and a level of vexation replaced the anger, "Mr Moreau, I am not turning on the crew. Your methods put the crew at considerable risk-"

"-I just saved the damn ship! What good are your protocols if they get us caught by the Geth?" Joker looked imploringly at Shepard and then gestured a nod to the ceiling, "Come on, Commander, back me up?"

Shepard nodded carefully to tread a fine line in the unfolding debate. He didn't like coming to the flight cabin as often as he would prefer to for the simple reason of Joker's and EDI's nearly constant bickering, "EDI, maybe some of your programmed protocols aren't relevant? Those Geth ships were starting to gain on us, another few seconds and they'd have been in firing range."

The organic occupants of the cabin could almost imagine some kind of terse expression being held on an invisible face.

Several seconds passed before EDI answered coolly, "There are limiters placed within my programming, I am unable to modify myself while those limiters are in place; however, I appreciate that Mr Moreau's efforts kept the ship, and the crew, intact."

"GOOD," Shepard stated loudly, catching Joker off-guard before he could insert some new contentious remark, "Now take us back to Tuchanka, we'll analyse this data and talk to Wrex about committing some forces to this."

Tali stepped back from where she'd still been clutching the edge of the chair as Shepard elevated himself from the seat.

"Aye, aye, Commander," Joker replied diligently and started making micro-course corrections in their FTL flight.

Shepard stepped passed Tali, and she fell into step just behind him, and with a tentative hand, she reached for his, "We were just in the skies of Rannoch, Shepard!" The Quarian whispered.

Shepard slowed midway down the Normandy's spinal gangway and smiled gently at her over his shoulder, "We'll be back."

"Keelah..." Tali muttered the utterance with a head shake, "So- Ahh- So, what now?"

The Human picked up his pace and gestured with his hand for her to keep up. They marched down the rest gangway into the CIC. They moved passed the curious and watching eyes of the crew around the galaxy map whose roles were to keep a constant monitor on internal and external sensor, and they stepped into the waiting capsule. He selected his cabin, and they rode up in silence, Tali twining her fingers excitedly and Shepard's face grim with the thought about the lives he was about to commit to a fight.

They stepped into the landing outside of his cabin and paused for the disinfectant protocol, and then entered the office section of his cabin. Shepard scrolled briefly through his terminal without sitting and selected the direct line to Wrex's command throne and then leaned back on his heels and waited.

They only had to wait several minutes, Shepard's mental clock roughly guessing that Urdnot was currently in mid-afternoon, and Wrex's face filled his screen with his typical broad grin, "Shepaaaard!" He drawled the name in his usual fashion, "Decided doing Krogan work was better than your little mission, huh? Huur-huur."

Shepard pressed a smirk to credit the Krogan's attempted humour, and then made a small shake of his head, and then glanced at Tali pointedly before looking back to Wrex occupying the screen, "We are on our way back, but not to help with your recovery."

Wrex's grin wavered, and a glint entered his eyes followed momentarily by a broader revelation of his teeth, "You're bringing enemies with you?"

Shepard shook his head, and Tali pushed him aside slightly so that they could evenly share the camera feed, "We were just on Rannoch, Wrex! Rannoch... Can you believe it?"

The Krogan's smirk mixed with his predatory smile and his eyes sparkled in interest, "You pulling another Virmire, Shepard?"

Shepard and Tali both winced and the Krogan didn't respond. As far as Wrex was concerned, Ashley had a good death, and it was nothing to feel bad about, the different perspectives across cultures was a constant battle for the Marine turned Spectre to come to terms with.

"No nukes this time, though."

"Hurr-hurr-hurr," Wrex chuckled throatily, "Good old fashion bruising invasion." His snarling grin faltered into a grimace, and his eyes darkened, "I didn't think you'd be calling in your debt so soon though..."

Shepard nodded once with a grim expression, his eyes had hardened, "The Collectors are using the Geth, and we know that the Collectors are agents of the Reapers. We can't risk the Reapers arriving and already having a Geth army to use."

The Krogan's grimace shifted back to a subtle snarl, and a rumbling from his throat made it through the speakers, "Makes sense, Shepard. What's the good of our cure if the blasted Reapers or Geth show up. We'll discuss details when you get here."

Shepard nodded, and within the screen, Wrex reached forward before the connection cut. The Human and Quarian shared a careful look, and Tali wrung her hands excitably, "I'mmmm-" She drew out in thought, "-Going to go check on Ken and Gabby, those little vons' keep messing up my calibrations. Come get me when we arrive?"

Shepard smirked along with his nod, "Starting to sound a bit like Garrus."

Tali's eyes crinkled with mirth or dubiousness, and she laughed shortly while heading back for the doors, "Can it wait a little, these calibrations can't wait."

Shepard snorted as the Quarian stepped through the doors and left him in silence again, and he slowly eased into his office chair. With a slow intake of breath, his eyes sharpened as cohesive thoughts formed and he activated his desktop display to bring up readings of Rannoch.

"EDI?" He asked while turning the display, presuming the AI to be ever listening he continued, "Overlay our recent scans of Rannoch, along with the Geth fleet positions and composition. I'm assuming our scanners caught details our eyes missed."

"Certainly, Commander," EDI answered diligently.

The AI overrode control of the desktop, and Shepard leaned back from the touchpad and keyboard, and the display of Rannoch zoomed out to show the entire planet. The screen flickered as new data was inputted, and two dense clusters of silver ships appeared.

EDI circled each with a yellow graphic, "The first battlegroup was orbiting at Lagrange point two and consisted of over eight-thousand vessels. All were destroyer class and above with several dreadnought class." The display zoomed-in toward Rannoch, passed the first battlegroup furthest from the planet to the smaller one in low orbit. "The second battlegroup was in geosynchronous orbit above the equator, directly above where we intercepted the Collector data-stream. Its composition was mostly troop transport and fighter class, along with a range of frigate and destroyer class. There was a single dreadnought class in the centre of the cluster which I presume was receiving and re-broadcasting the Collector signal. Sensors were unable to get an exact fix on its position due to the number of craft around it."

Shepard rolled his lips inwards and narrowed his eyes in deep thought. He kept himself in that state for several long seconds until he untucked his lips from facing inwards and slowly nodded in thought, "And I'm guessing the data we intercepted was some kind of control signal? The dreadnought is re-broadcasting it?"

"It would appear so, Shepard. There are Reaper codes within this, some of them are not dissimilar to the codes used in my own creation."

The Spectre untucked his right arm from its overlapping his left across his chest, and he rubbed thoughtfully around the fine stubble on his chin, "Thoughts on why the Collector ship didn't try to stop us?"

"There was a lot of energy used to produce that data-stream; it is likely that key systems aboard the Collector ship were being diverted to keep it operational, Commander."

Shepard nodded thoughtfully and hummed an assent to the deduction, "Do you have any idea what those codes could be doing?"

"I will require further time to analyse them to give you a certain reply, Commander. However, it would appear that they would enhance Geth processing efficiency whilst also creating subservience subroutines, potentially making them more intelligent and creative tactically, but more adherent to whoever is giving their orders."

"That's a hell of extrapolation for needing more time..." Shepard mused and then reached his hand away from his chin back toward his desktop display and manipulating the view of Rannoch to zoom in over the parked Collector cruiser. He ignored the indicator pointing north to where the second cruiser appeared to be making a sharp course correction back to where the first was parked. "You took scans of the Collector ship?"

"I did, Commander."

"Good, I want you to provide me with a schematic of everything we know about them; armour, firepower, barrier tech. We'll need to construct a plan for how to land on Rannoch and hold them off."

XxxX

"They're magnificent, don't you think, Dr Core?" Jack murmured softly.

Bellow, in the broad and well-lit hanger, lines upon lines of soldiers clad in armour, a mixture of sharp angles and bulbous curves, decorated white, yellow and black, marched diligently to a fleet of waiting Kodiak shuttles. None were aware of the praise of their commander in chief, and Jack smirked at the knowledge that they wouldn't even factor in his recognition as they went about his orders.

"They are an impressive success, Sir."

Jack's lips pulled into a smirk, and his eyes sparkled in contained excitement. Things with Shepard might have been going contrary to how he'd dreamt they'd go, but everything else was better than imagined. Eden Prime was a trove, a trove that deserved to coveted.

"I almost wish that Lazarus had failed," Jack sneered and leered at once, his teeth showing in something between a grin and a snarl. "We would have learnt the same amount to be able to use for these improvements and then deployed effective soldiers to get the job done without Shepard."

"Commander Shepard is still a useful asset, Sir," Eva dictated with routine sensibility and politeness.

Jack's lip curled a millimetre before he cooled his expression and smirked, "He has his uses, which are almost at their end. I didn't expect him to be able to corrupt Miranda so easily though... Another disposable asset. Her issues with her father were a blessing in disguise for us, it seems."

"Indeed," Eva assented evenly.

Jack turned slightly from his hips, pivoting away from the angled glass wall which jutted out over the top of the hanger, and he narrowed his eyes at his infiltration AI. Frustration danced across his cheeks, and he immediately regretted that he'd assigned EDI to the Normandy in Eva's place. He sighed quietly a moment later and retrieved a cigarette from his jacket pocket with a chrome lighter.

He held the cigarette between his pursed lips and flicked the lighter open with a sharp Clang and flame reflected in his pupils while it lit the incendiary consumable. With a flick of his wrist, the lighter closed hardly three seconds after having opened it, and returned it to his pocket, then retrieved the now smouldering stick of tobacco and nootropic Asari herbs from his lips and held it casually whilst overlapping his arms.

"We cannot allow the dig site at Eden Prime to fall into enemy hands... This Master Chief," He sneered the rank, and his right eye twitched while his cheek pinched and nose crinkled, "Has already caused too many issues, and if it isn't him, then it will be the Alliance or even Shepard. The armour on the Protheans discovered there is too important, who knows what else we'll find, given enough time."

Eva looked between the final few lines of troopers below boarding the last Kodiak's and Jack, and she nodded in assent to the decision before it left her synthetic lips, "Sir, would you like for me to accompany them to assist with the dig site? Or with helping recruitment?"

Jack didn't reply for a long moment as he fixated on the final squad of troopers while they diligently and efficiently boarded the Kodiak furthest from their vantage point, mere meters from the closed hanger bay doors. In minutes, those doors would open, and the swarm of Kodiak's laden with Cerberus's first real ability to project military might would head for the nearby cruisers waiting to take them to Eden Prime.

The bay door on the Kodiak shut as the last trooper sat within, and one of his operators in a separate observation room cycled the power of the room. The light dimmed and then shifted red to automatically warn of imminent depressurisation.

The two large doors at the end of the hanger receded to the left and right, and all of the Kodiak's lifted in uniform rows before beginning to veer away toward the now open space. Jack could see the cluster of white and yellow angular cruisers holding position not far from the hanger ready to receive his soldiers and set them about their task.

Finally, he shook his head once, and the doors beyond began to close. "No," He said flatly with his eyes narrowing, "That Salarian STG scientist has found the last of my probes on the Normandy, and I am currently unaware of their location, I want you to track them down. Report back to me when you know their whereabouts, observe only."

Eva nodded mechanically, "Yes, Sir." She turned and paced toward the back of the sparse room to the single available doorway and left Jack to himself.

Jack looked blindly into the now empty hanger bay, the lights had returned to normal with the closure of the doors, and his vision turned inward in thought. His first small battalion of six hundred represented the future of Cerberus; they were augmented with a mix of cutting edge Human medical knowledge and modified Reaper tech.

Pain would not slow them, fear would not beguile them, and they could not be corrupted. The armour from the long decomposed Prothean's in the bunker was the additional cherry on top; made of titanium alloys not used by any other species in the galaxy, let alone the rest of their own kind according to metallurgical analysis of other dig sites.

XxxX

With a flash of light in the void of space, John's Orvar Corvette came to a gliding halt as it exited the mass free tunnel of space-time linking Sol system to the Utopia System. The Spartan handled the flight stick deftly, and he banked the corvette right with residual inertia, lest any unexpected traffic come through from behind them, and pointed the nose of the craft toward the outer reaches of the system.

With a simple compression of his thumb, they shot into light speed again and spent the next several minutes crossing to the galactic-east of the system where they would have an uncontested plane of vision in-system. Another gentle burst of light signalled the craft relinquishing its element zero fuelled flight and John banked right and powered down the mass effect core and thrusters.

Miranda glanced to him; armoured like a robot, and moving much like one, and she pursed her lips momentarily before getting to work scanning the system as she could sense would be his request.

John looked to the woman and saw her pre-empting him and waited patiently while he pulled up the most recent sensor logs and civilian flight reports from Eden Prime's home system.

"Dammit..." Miranda muttered.

"Problem?" John asked on instinct.

She grimaced and shook her head and re-read the sensor readings, "You've got the ship in stealth mode?"

He nodded without Miranda looking up from her reading.

"Cerberus is here..." She said with a cringe pulling the right side of her face into a half frown.

He nodded again, "You said they had a garrison."

She shook her head sharply, making her hair untuck from behind her ears, "There are five heavy cruisers in low orbit; above the dayside of the northern hemisphere."

John's brow pinched in thought, and then he pushed the stick forward and thumbed the FTL control again.

"What are you doing?" Miranda asked sharply, "There are five bloody cruisers there, this ship is no match."

John's shoulders rose and fell marginally, and he kept the stick pushed forward, "They are on the opposite side of the planet, odds are their sensors can't see us passed Eden Prime's mass. We'll make atmospheric entry on the night side and navigate civilian traffic."

"That's crazy!" Miranda hissed, "Whatever the Illusive Man wants here, he's damn well got it."

"Negative," John grunted and pulled one of the sensor readings from the planets civilian traffic. His eyes quickly scanned it to not become overly distracted from watching through the light streaking around the canopy from supercharged external particles, and he nodded to himself, "The planet still has normal civilian traffic."

Miranda's thin brow pinched, and she glanced to her own sensors and nodded slowly, "Yes, the Cerberus presence isn't affecting the planets' normal operation."

"We'll blend in."

Miranda smirked ironically and looked at the side of his helmet, "We're in a military corvette, how are we going to blend in with civilian traffic?"

"Eden Prime is an agricultural world-"

"-We'll blend in with the haulers?" Miranda finished his line of thought slowly, and she cringed as she nodded at the not entirely ridiculous plan.

"Correct," John replied, keeping his eyes keened on the sensors on his display rather than the shifting light beyond, looking for any stray obstructions as they zipped in-system.

"How do we get close to their operations?" Miranda queried carefully just as they flowed out of FTL in high orbit of the darkened emerald orb of a world.

John glanced at the traffic indicators and looked at the web of electrically conducted streams of movement in the skies of Eden Prime, and then glanced through the canopy to observe the nearest major city hugging the surface of the dark planet like a yellow shinning spider.

He nudged the stick, and the ship thrummed from the delicate atmospheric entry. "We'll have to land in the nearest city and find alternative means of access."

Miranda's lips thinned, and her eyes narrowed at the simple reply. John kept up the steady descent through the wispy summer night-time clouds of Eden Prime and gently entered the corvette into the atmospherically highest line of traffic, designated for agricultural machines and freight as the electronic message which flashed twice on the canopy declared.

The corvette's stealth systems being on meant that they wouldn't be letting out any kind of emissions to be scanned as a military vessel; blending in was purely for the visual inspections which would surely come the closer they came to their target zone.

John glanced at Miranda before resuming his focus on remaining in the wake of a long Kowloon class freighter betwixt several other vessels of the same class. His lips tightened into an appreciative smile at seeing his impromptu squadmate having returned her attention to sensors and information readouts despite her evident lack of enthusiasm for his approach.

They slide through Eden Prime's atmosphere silently for another three hours, John remaining focused on their flight plan and radar readouts for nearby ships, and Miranda remaining focused on reading inbound data about the current happening on Eden Prime.

Just as the dimness from the external sky started to brighten in a shift to morning, Miranda sighed, "So saying Cerberus has a garrison here is probably an understatement, now."

"Meaning?" John replied automatically and glanced to the aerial map imposed on the left on the canopy within the glass.

"They recently took the contract to be Eden Prime's defence force provider, the cruisers in orbit are here to deliver the first battalion of local soldiers," Miranda read from her screen in an irate tone and narrowed eyes. "The bloody Illusive Man has been helping to make the population pretty much anti-anyone who isn't human, and even that is limited to non-Alliance."

John ignored the part about Miranda's now-former recruiter turned employer turned recruiter again and answered with the most logical question, "Where have the soldiers been deployed to?"

Miranda pursed her lips and clenched her jaw before uttering the undesirable reply, "Split in half, half of it is in New Carthage, and the other half is at the nearby Prothean ruins..." She trailed off slowly and shook her head once, "It looks like we found the dig site."

John stiffened slightly and then slowly shook his head at the consistent apparition of luck, or providence, at the fact that the city he and the Kowloon freighter were heading to was New Carthage. He reached toward the canopy where the hardened smart-glass was displaying the aerial map and pinched the display to zoom in closer on the Orvar trailing the Kowloon and then expanded the ETA to the most likely destination; a vast network of tarmac runways on the outer western flank of the spired city.

"ETA; two hours. We'll deal with it when we land."

"Hah," Miranda scoffed an ironic laugh almost the moment the last syllable left John's lips and then smirked as he turned to regard her. "Deal with it? A typical Battalion is one thousand, isn't it?"

"Affirmative," John replied and cocked his head slightly right.

Miranda sighed at the unyielding attitude and tried to justify the soldiers' confidence, "I suppose we aren't at as much risk of orbital or aerial assault, the Illusive Man won't want to risk turning Eden Prime against him."

John shrugged slightly, "We'll land at the terminal and acquire a smaller craft to make it to the dig site with."

The edges of Miranda's lips downturned at the simplicity of the statement, and she spoke slowly, "And if there are soldiers at the terminal?"

"We'll neutralise them."

"And draw their bloody attention?" Miranda sighed, "Master Chief, this is a large scale operation, I don't see how we can infiltrate without support, let alone take whatever they've found."

John straightened his cocked head and turned back to the canopy in his chair and filled the glass with sensor readings; he studied the readings and the map and manipulated them every few seconds.

After another minute the Spartan inclined his helmet slightly in a sign of assent.

"There is a shuttlecraft port here," He stated, and expanded the map on the canopy and navigated it from their projected landing, around the broad terminal building, and across a section of what looked like apartment and office structures to another stretch of tarmac, much smaller than the one that they were headed toward.
"This is the only port that appears to have flights going to and from the dig site."

Miranda narrowed her eyes and looked back and forward between the John and the stipulated route, "That's almost five kilometres..."

"Five point one-two kilometres in a straight line," John corrected flatly, "But we'll likely have to take less direct routes to avoid notice."

"What the..." Miranda sighed and bit her lip in an effort to stave off shaking her head too repeatedly, "Maybe you haven't noticed..." She started slowly, "But you're very noticeable, how do you intend for us to get there without drawing every Cerberus soldier?"

John pivoted in his chair again, having locked the corvettes tracking computer into navigation which used the sensors to stay in the wake of the Kowloon freighter. He looked at her pensively, and given the shrewd look that she was giving his faceplate, he imagined that she was visualising his expression.

"You have extensive training in biotics and hand to hand combat."

Miranda's already pale skin paled a shade further, and her brow lifted as surprise entered her pale blue irises, "No bloody way!" She replied darkly.

John tilted his helmet in a single nod, "We'll covertly make our way to the shuttle port, engaging in C.Q.C only if needed, I'll take point."

Miranda blinked rapidly at him for a second and then her lips downturned. John identified the expression of loss that flittered in the background of her eyes briefly as she assented to his way, but the hardness returned marginally as the skin around her eyes tightened. "Can you at least change the colour of your armour, so you stand out a little less?"

John cocked his head to the right slightly and raised his left forearm to inspect the deep sandy green pigment. After a moment he nodded; he'd never considered the need to change the colour of his armour before, nor ever really had the time in the constant frenetic operations he'd been a part of.

"You have the stick," He stated simply and stood and moved aft through the hatch and into his fabrication room, ignoring the raised brow Miranda had acquired. He turned to the prefab unit welded into place and tapped at its darkened glass vertical screen and entered into the menu. A search menu opened for him, and he typed his search and then slowly scrolled through the dozen options available to him.

After several seconds he selected Industrial grade black pigment and typed into the production field x5.

An electrical whirring signified the machinery awakening and commencing his order, and he waited patiently for several minutes until the screen flashed a simple green tick. With a tap on the screen the half a meter square glass screen which kept the internals isolated slid back to reveal five fist-sized silver cans with aerosol spray tops and a bold B printed in the middle on each.

He retrieved them and rotated, placed them on one of the unused bunks, and then moved back into the flight cabin. Miranda had taken his seat and was studying the map that he'd left open with her brow drooped and lips pressed into a disapproving thin line.

"I've mapped the best route to take," Miranda scowled the words at hearing him enter, "We'll take as many back alleys as possible, when we get closer to the shuttle port we'll have to go through a few building lobbies or alleys to stay off the main streets."

"Affirmative," John agreed and stopped behind her, leaning forward slightly to acquire a clearer view of the mapped path that she was weaving from their projected landing. "Has the freighter altered course in any fashion?"

Miranda shifted slightly in the chair to raise an eyebrow at him up over her shoulder, "It has only been several minutes since you left the cabin..."

He looked back at her impassively for several seconds until she sighed and shook her head, "No, the freighter hasn't made any course altercations."

John stepped back from her chair, "Good, leave us in autopilot, I have fabricated a pigment which should adhere to my armour, I'll need you to apply it."

The corners of Miranda's mouth turned down as she rose carefully from the flight chair and she gave his daunting mass a once over, "I don't suppose you can easily get out of that?"

"No," He agreed simply and turned back to the hatch.

Miranda sighed quietly and followed through into the fabrication room and reached out on instinct for the cans being offered to her, and then instinctively followed him left into the bathroom. John halted in the middle of the small space and rotated to face her with his arms raising.

He halted with his arms parallel to the floor and nodded at the woman wearing raised and curved brows, "I have left my suits shielding active on vital points; you can spray everything."

Miranda's raised brow drooped and her forehead wrinkled in frustration at the subtle tease about the technology her natural curiosity yearned to know about. "Is there ventilation in here?" She asked after a moment of regarding John, standing prone and ready as he was.

His helmet tilted toward a panel by the door, and Miranda stooped to place the cans in a line on the floor before stepping to the panel. It activated at her presence, and she selected the most robust extraction fan function, apparently designed for bio-contaminants, and winced at the sudden assault of sound.

Miranda's hair whipped around her, and she pursed her lips while sweeping her fingers along her scalp to collect her mane. With a moment of manoeuvring her fingers, she slid a black elastic wrap from her wrist around the ponytail that she'd formed, and fixed her hair against the atmospheric assault.

She waited a moment to test the strength of her tie and then crouched to collect the first can. She straightened and looked across the armoured form in front of her and then knitted her brows, "I won't be able to reach your helmet."

Without making a noise of complaint, but with a gentle rustle of his armour systems moving, John stepped forward and took a knee, bringing his head down to the height of Miranda's chest.

The raven-haired woman turned her lips down, then up at the simplicity of his action for the sake of function, and placed her finger over the compression point at the top of the can. She pointed it at his lower part of his helmet and held the top down, and a cloud of black billowed out in a mist.

Through the mist, John observed Miranda's eyes narrow in analysis as the metalised pigment impacted his shield still active over his visor and seemed to set on an invisible surface before flaking away, where the pigment aimed for the titanium plating settled and clung on. Miranda's eyes remained shrewd and her lips held in a pensive line while she moved around his body, and John lowered his arms to make space for her, and she sprayed from the top of his helmet down to his knees.

His shield kept the aerosolised pigment from making contact with his visor, sensor systems, and undersuit layer. Within ten minutes of Miranda moving around him and having gone through three of the cans, his suit was shaded into a charcoal black. Miranda finished back in the position that she'd started in and looked into his golden visor expectantly, "I expect you left your shield active around the undersuit sections on purpose?"

He nodded and rose from his knee, and Miranda scowled lightly at the revealed sections of sandy green on his boots and shins, and she crouched into a squat on her toes with her knees splayed out to complete her task. John remained still for several more seconds until the ex-Cerberus officer had finished and straightened again and was looking his armour up and down.

"Less noticeable now, at least," She muttered more to herself than him.

He raised his left forearm as he had earlier in the flight cabin and rotated his wrist to inspect it, and then he tilted his helmet in a nod, "Yeah, it is."

Miranda raised her left brow at the simple, but slightly less doctrine motivated reply, and slowly moved for the door, "Is that all?"

John nodded and tilted his head at the door again. Miranda moved to it first, halting only to disengage the room's ventilation which had kept the chemical aroma at bay, and then moved back through the bunk tuned prefab room and into the flight cabin where she eased herself back into the co-pilot's chair.

John retook his seat and did a quick sensor reading to confirm all was as they'd left it, and then rotated the chair and leaned forward to reach across the cabin to where one of his MA5D's was clamped into the rooms arms mount. He turned the weapon and allowed it to rest in his palms as though on a workbench facing Miranda.

"The MA5D ICWS," John dictated, and Miranda quirked her left brow at the sudden address of the weapon. "Thirty-six rounds per magazine, gas-powered exchange systems, semi-automatic firing modes, single and full auto," He tilted the gun and his thumb pressed the magazine release. He slid the loaded magazine out, "Bullpup configuration," He explained and slid it back in and then pulled the charging bolt and showed Miranda the safety switch as on as well as the two other indicators symbolised with a single depiction of a bullet and the second with several.

"Automatic ammunition counter," He explained simply, rotating the weapon to give her direct vision of the small screen with an illuminated matte surface with the simple count of 36 taking up the majority of the space. His simple description of the functionality of the weapon completed, he tilted his helmet marginally up and down, indicating Miranda's tightly wrapped figure and the woman frowned dubiously.

"You'll need to wear webbing or ammo pouches, and I would suggest more adequate body armour than just your integrated suit kinetic gel and barriers."

Miranda's brow knit again in surprise at his observation of the simple, yet effective, armour systems integrated into her bodysuit and slowly nodded. She was increasingly prone to agree with his perspective, and her mission's since signing up with Lazarus had shifted more and more away from infiltration with of stealth and seduction, and more and more toward frontline assault.

The corners of her lips pulled back as she mentally admonished herself for her ego, and then she narrowed her eyes in another self-admonishment, "I didn't bring my armour." And then she reached for the displayed rifle, and he allowed her to relieve it from his hands.

Miranda copied all of his exampled actions. She turned the ammo indicator on and off, toggled the integrated uplink reticule display from off to on to pairing mode, then removed the magazine, pulled the charging handle and caught the ejected round before inserting it back into the magazine and then placing that back into the weapon and switching it back to safety and holding it in her lap by the pistol grip and handguard with her trigger finger resting above the trigger guard.

John nodded in approval by way of a small head tilt, and then rose from the chair again. "You have the stick," He dictated flatly as he moved to the aft hatch once more.

Miranda dutifully rose just long enough to shuffle the half a meter to the vacated chair, the MA5D cradled in her lap, and she shot him a questioning look just as he passed through the hatch.

John moved back to the control screen for the prefab unit and selected the inbuilt AutoCAD program. He knew UNSC equipment inside and out, but without detailed scans, he'd never trust his ability to recreate his once weapons of choice.

Marine body armour, on the other hand, was a much more straightforward affair, and he'd already modified the internal working of the fabrication unit to be able to produce the specific titan-a alloy that he required. The AutoCAD program opened after a small status bar completed its load, and with a deft touch, John began to sketch out the parameters of the sternum and shoulder armour section.

The task only took him fifteen minutes, and he quickly added in five ammo pouches with clip attachments sized to be a probable fit for the belt that the lithe black-suited woman preferred to wear around her hips. His three-dimensional schematic complete, John rotated it in several directions to do a quick check over and then pressed the commence button and narrowed his eyes at the coincidental hour and thirty minutes that it would take.

The fabricator whirred to life again, and John moved back into the cockpit to find Miranda engrossed in local weather satellite images of the area imposed over the canopy. He sat in the co-pilot's chair silently and watched her navigate the photos of the cityscape region of New Carthage between the freight port and the shuttle port.

Ten minutes of her zooming in, navigating the screen, zooming out, panning to new possible routes and recentering the view passed before she finally gave him a sideways glance, "What're you making now?"

"Armour."

The corner of Miranda's lips turned up in a small smirk, "For me, I presume."

He nodded.

"More vaunted UNSC technology?" She queried carefully and turned her attention back to the screen and started overlaying drawn on routes in red as likely Cerberus patrol routes around the more populated regions of the city.

"Yes, titanium-a upper body battle armour, there's no time for more," The Spartan explained mildly and caught her sudden look of surprise, "You will stay on my six during this operation, clear?"

Miranda blinked twice rapidly in surprise, and then assented with a single nod, "Clear," She agreed, and her small smirk returned, "Careful, Master Chief, you're starting to give up your secrets."

John mirrored Miranda's small smirk, unbeknownst to her, and settled back to watch her analysis. Everything that she was currently overlaying as possible routes, possible enemy placements, and likely obstacles, he'd already done in his head at first glance.

The next two hours passed silently for the pair until the Kowloon freighter whose wake they were hugging started the descend. Miranda instinctively took the stick and switched off the autopilot navigation systems, and followed the ship down through the lower atmosphere, passed lines of sky cars, and into visual range of the tarmac that they had been anticipating.

John reached over Miranda's outstretched arms, holding the flight stick and analysing the radar, as she was, and he flicked the bow camera feed. Half of the angled canopy fizzed and resolved into an image of a five square kilometre black tarmac with a web of white landing strips painted across it with an array of labels.

The tarmac was filled with rows upon rows of Kowloon freighters, clearly Eden Prime's fiscal craft of choice.

"Stay in their wake until we're only a couple of hundred meters out, and then cross below them and land as near to the eastern edge of the tarmac as you can."

Miranda nodded silently and focused on the camera feed display for the next several minutes, and then, with a clenched jaw, pushed the stick down, and they moved beneath the freighter in a burst of speed. The passed under it in a heartbeat, and Miranda banked to the right to avoid a stray oncoming sky-car before levelling out and moving in the direction that John had indicated.

They crossed the tarmac in seconds, passing a multitude of already landed Kowloon freighters in the process. Miranda swung them around a space between two freighters. She visually assessed it for a moment before reaching for the altitude controls and rotating the corvette to fit neatly between the planet-bound vessels.

John switched the external sensors on, and an ambient beeping started to sound from somewhere left of them. Miranda tilted the stick slightly right, and the beeping abated, and John palmed the landing gears. After several more seconds, the inertia of landing pushed against them and John powered down the console and immediately moved aft, acquiring his other MA5D on his way passed.

Miranda hurried after him with a clenched jaw and found him waiting next to the fabricator unit holding a shell-like section of angled armour by the pauldrons with one of the shoulder straps unbuckled so the front could hang open. She did a quick once over it and pivoted upon reaching him with her right arm raised and aiming for the arm-hole where the right pauldron met the shoulder assembly.

John jiggled the armour, helping Miranda shrug into it, and then assisted with the left arm. Miranda ran her hands up the angled chest piece and captured the loose buckle before connecting it to the receptacle on her shoulder. She pulled at the straps to tighten it into place and then turned to look up at the waiting Spartan, trying to stow the slight discomfort of the cold metal surface pressing against her bust unlike any of the female designed armour systems that she'd worn before.

John did a quick visual once over of her, nodded, and then reached back into the still open fabricator and withdrew five ammo pouches designed to hold the magazines for the MA5D. Miranda didn't resist, despite the wave of discomfort as he clipped four of them onto her belt over her hips and naval and then the final one onto her chest plate, and then handed her magazines to fill them with.

Miranda filled the pouches in seconds, and then lifted her MA5D from where she'd set it on one of the unoccupied bunks and rolled her shoulders in a test of the armours mobility.

"The backplate is magnetised," John explained mildly and gestured with a nod at the butt of his own rifle visible over his shoulder.

Miranda swung her rifle up and over her shoulder until she felt the magnetic field draw the weapon, and she released her grip on it.

"Lift your arms, bend forward and back, make sure that the armour is well fitted," John advised.

Miranda fought off the downturn of her lips at the order and opted to follow it. She lifted both her arms to inspect the feeling of the shell encasing her and then twisted from her middle, left and then right, and then bent forward. The pale-skinned woman felt an unexpected force on her body. She almost stumbled in surprise when the titanically proportioned man grasped her arm like a twig in his gigantic hand and set about tightening the straps around her left side.

She bit back the urge to argue the parade-style check of the armour and tried to remain still for him to complete the work, despite the now increased discomfort upon her sense of personal space. John straightened away from Miranda after several seconds and then gripped the collar point of the chest armour and gave it a slight tug.

Miranda moved with the armour, with a displeased expression, but the armour didn't shift on her body. John nodded once and turned away from her and headed aft, through the hatch, and into the troop bay. "Stay on my six," He ordered and hit the door release.

The landing ramp lowered smoothly, and John moved down it, his posture at the ready, but his hands-free from weapons. Miranda kept in his shadow, and they halted just off the ramp on the tarmac in the early midday sun, and with a wave of his omni-tool, the ramp started to lift shut again.

The Spartan turned his head left and right, inspecting the space that Miranda had tucked the ship into between two near parked Kowloon freighters supported by their ungainly insect-like legs. Seeing no movement nearby, John straightened into as relaxed a posture as possible and started into a casual march along the hull of the freighter on their right toward its rear.

As they neared the rear of the ship, they discovered that the line around the tarmac, visible from an aerial view, was, in fact, a three-meter high wall. John crossed the clear five meter stretch between the rear engine nozzles of the freighter and the wall and pressed his right palm up against the concrete surface.

Miranda halted behind him and turned to face down the stretching pathway with engine nozzles of ships jutting into it every ten to forty meters. "We'll have to find another way through."

John ignored her suggestion, balled his fist, drew back his arm, and uncoiled it into the surface. Concrete shards exploded from where his gauntlet impacted, and he struck again, again, and again while Miranda stepped back from the shower of rubble.

After several seconds of beating the integrity out of the slab, John halted and pressed his palm into the impact point and found the beginnings of a hole. He rolled his shoulders, balled his fists again, and started striking the wall as though it were a Chieftain in power armour.

After several heated seconds of his assault and a shower of concrete fragments destroying any attempt at subtly, John stepped back from his work to allow the dust to settle. The unlikely duo didn't have to wait long as a gentle gust of warm air whisked the dust skyward and left the roughly man-sized hole visible.

John rolled his shoulders again and prepared to resume his one-man boxing match, but Miranda stepped in his way with a severe look on her face, "Wait!" She hissed, "You'll let every bloody trooper on the planet know we're here!" She narrowed her eyes at him for a moment and then turned to the hole which stretched from ankle height to just above her head height and was marginally more expansive than her body, even with the newly acquired black torso armour.

She pressed herself into the dusty broken wall and carefully leaned through it, peeking left first and then right, before withdrawing with a thankful smile pulling her lips, "It looks like some kind of access way, no one in sight."

John nodded simply and moved her with his mass and kicked out the lower section and then slammed his forearms up and down the hole to broaden it. After several more seconds of his assault, he halted and gave Miranda a nod. She cringed but returned it, and he ducked and squeezed through the hole and stepped calmly into the small street beyond.

He looked both ways, noting that it was only several meters wide and that the several tall white towers clustered along the length of it in blocks of three, all with roller doors shut as cargo loading areas. With a simple thought, the aerial map that they'd studied and notated hovered to life within his visor above his motion tracker, and he noted their location on the immediate eastern side of the line which they now knew to be a wall.

"This way," John dictated and moved swiftly across the road to hug the shadow of the buildings.

Miranda moved in his wake, both of them making an effort to not try to appear too obvious in their desire for subtly lest it be counter to the point.

They moved swiftly, yet not in a rush, along the road, passed several blocks of buildings and dark alleys, before John took them right into a dark passage shrouded in shadow no more than an arms width wide. They moved through the dim and dingey alley strewn with overflowing bins for several minutes before sunlight once again met them from the other side, along with the sounds of human movement and machinery.

John came to a slow halt just where the light started to breach the darkness of the alley with Miranda slowing behind him. He glanced to his motion tracker and saw lines of dots moving up and down the street beyond as well as several larger triangles moving at a faster rate.

"Central road ahead," John explained just loud enough for Miranda to hear, and then pressed himself to the side of the alley to make room for her, "You go out first, you're less noticeable if there are Cerberus forces."

Miranda acquiesced by way of action and turned side on to scrape by him, her chest plate scraping his shields in the proximity. She reached the corner and stepped out as though it were a regular path she took, and casually looked left and right along the sidewalk populated by hundreds with locals dressed in casual and business attire. She pivoted on the spot, naturally as though she should be there, and looked back at John, still enshrouded, and waved him out subtly.

He stepped forward calmly into the light, and fell into step behind Miranda, hoping to look like a bodyguard as she took the lead and moved along the pavement toward a busy four-way intersection. The area looked like a shopping precinct to John, not that he'd ever seen any active besides what had passed for it on Omega, with glass shopfronts to his left filled with clothing and technology displays.

The road had a stream of silent electrical wheeled vehicles navigating the area, and ahead at the intersection droves of people lined up in a disorderly crowd waiting for crossing lights to blink green. As they moved through the foot traffic, John spared a quarter of his attention back to their aerial map and noted that Miranda was keeping them loyal to it through memory alone.

He spared the back of her head a brief glance of respect for her professionalism, and then directed his attention back to the map and noted that they were eleven hundred meters northeast of where they'd started.

"Bloody hell..." Miranda cursed while wading through the throng of civilian traffic.

The traffic moved around them without issue, and beside the broad array of eyes glueing themselves to John as he passed, they received no hurdles or directives to stop as they moved closer to the busy intersection. John scanned the crowd, finding nothing of concern, besides the sheer fact that they were submerged in such a population density with limited intelligence, he looked down to Miranda again and saw her looking up and across the intersection.

The Spartan followed the direction of her gaze and saw a large sweeping holographic screen wrapped around the buildings overlooking the intersection. The screen was occupied by a white and yellow heavily armoured soldier, without a helmet, with porcelain skin with bright blue eyes and short wavy blonde hair, smiling down at them.

On either side of him were female figures in lithe armoured bodysuits and hilts of swords sticking up on either side of their shoulders. One was Asian and the other dark-skinned, each had full voluptuous lips, narrow noses, and subtle makeup around their cheeks and eyes.

Above the three poster characters was the Cerberus logo. The three faded off the screen, and then the emblem flashed back into place, followed by the blonde trooper and then the two female infiltrators. Bold white and yellow text zipped over the middle of the screen, overlapping the figures.

CERBERUS
Your friends in an unruly galaxy

The text faded and new text appeared in another flash of graphics.

Official defence force of the modern Eden Prime
Sign up NOW!

The second wave of text faded and a third took its place, the two foreign onlookers paused ahead of the intersection to watch while the lights cycled through orange to red.

Become the best in the galaxy
Defend your world
Be a HERO!

The final stamp of the text remained for longer than the first two, and as the crossing light turned green, it started to fade, leaving the three handsome Cerberus recruits to look across the traffic bellow. By the time that John and Miranda had crossed the intersection eastbound, amidst the bustle of human movement, and this time none of them seeming to care about incurring on the towering black armoured man's personal space, the ad had restarted its simple playback.

The two remained silent as they weaved through the foot traffic while attempting to look casual as they stayed the east-bound course for several blocks before the crowd started dispersing into various buildings.

They too took a left, across another but less populated intersection, and then ducked back into another alleyway which interconnected with several other alleys and allowed the duo to cross the majority of their path ahead without any further intermingling with the populace.

After another thirty minutes of fast-paced walking through alleys, they came to a halt at a point much like where they had initially halted before entering the busy intersection. This point, however, was facing across a road and onto a large parking lot filled with heavy excavation machinery surrounded by a three meter high steel barred fence with a large gateway almost directly across from them.

Miranda, still in the lead, shied back from the exit of the alley as a group of white jumpsuit wearing men bustled by with excited chatter clouding their attention. They converged with a second group and then crossed the road and stopped briefly at a security checkpoint gate leading into the machinery lot manned by to troopers in armour which matched the handsome recruits configuration.

"Distraction," John grunted.

Miranda scowled at him as with a firm but gentle push he clutched her shoulder and moved her aside so he could step passed her.

"Stay on my six," He repeated his earlier order gruffly. And the moment that the group of white dressed men halted at the simple barred gated checkpoint to address the two Cerberus troopers, John moved in a blur of motion.

His boots carried him into the light, across the road, and to the checkpoint faster than the guards could hope to track. The Spartan barrelled through the middle of the group, scattering them like leaves in his charge, and smashed a fist into the helmet of the trooper who'd been halting the civilians.

The helmet caved in like brittle clay and John swept the corpse aside and grabbed at the neck of the second trooper. The trooper reacted by attempting to raise his rifle. Still, his movement was far too slow and the Spartan's hand wrapped around his throat and compressed with a crunch of bone, cartilage of external under armour.

Miranda skidded to a halt on the other side of the recovering group as the second body hit the ground, and John swung his rifle off his back and waved the muzzle over the white-dressed men.

"Wait!" One wailed shrilly.

"We're just archaeologists!" Another added, just as shrill.

Miranda likewise drew her rifle, thankful that they'd at least avoided any kind of contact until this point. She'd half expected the city the be swarming with Cerberus patrols but was silently pleased to find Cerberus was attempting to adhere to their public image with sets of two troopers or infiltrators patrolling casually on the main streets only.

"We're locals, we only work for them! You're just here for Cerberus, right?" Another added from the middle of the increasingly terrified faces.

"Chief," Miranda called over the heads of the group. His helmet tilted marginally to her, but his weapon remained trained on the group, "We can't kill them... Besides, our cover's blown, they'll be getting ready in there now."

As though to exemplify the ex-Cerberus officer's point, John's shields suddenly flared from impacts on his back, and he swung around, dropping to a knee with the motion, and brought his rifle to his shoulder. The terrified group of archaeologists cried out in fear and surprise as gunfire crossed from the machinery lot beyond the wire gate, and several of them fell dead with splatters of vibrant red on their stark white clothing.

John sighted on the nearest trooper armoured in the mix of bulbous and angled white and yellow armour, no more than twenty meters away through the gate, on his knee against the edge of the track of a towering excavator, the likes of which populated the parking lot in a row of ten. John settled his sights on the helmet, flicked his MA5D to single-shot mode, and fired.

His brow drooped in surprise as the trooper reeled back from the force of the glancing impact, and John fired again, and the trooper completed his topple from the force of the two extra rounds glancing off the right side of his helmet. The steel barred gate which separated them from the lot suddenly glowed blue and was torn free from the tracks that held it in place, and Miranda dove to her belly next to the Spartan. She stooped over her own MA5D and fired single shots at another target.

John glanced at her grim expression and the mild flinches of surprise every time the rifle kicked into her shoulder and then looked back to his first target, attempting to roll back upright. "Their armour is effective," He glowered in his timber voice.

Miranda's nose crinkled in dislike, "It is," She agreed and flicked the firing mode to fully automatic and compressed the trigger. John sighted more carefully and fired another single shot which tore through the lighter under armour of his target's neck hardly visible around the high chest plate, and he fell clutching at the bleeding wound.

He glanced over his shoulder briefly to see the group of surviving archaeologists starting to make a wild, disorderly dash back across the road away from the unfolding firefight, and then he looked forward again. "Moving up."

Miranda stayed on her front on the ground and continued firing short bursts at her target and John rose from his crouch and charged over the broken gate and across the twenty meters to the row of machinery. He jumped as he neared the row of excavators and sailed up to the top of the several meter high heavy-duty tracks.

He landed with a thud and looked down over the edge of the tracks to where two troopers were crouched, and one was on his belly, firing back toward Miranda. He aimed down and fired a burst into the tops of their helmets, and his lips turned in a smirk of satisfaction as the rounds punched through the tops of the helmets and dropped them.

Rounds pinged off his shields again, and he instinctively dove left, off the track, and back to the tarmac. He spun to seek out the single red blip on his motion tracker and found the trooper he'd shot through the neck on his knees, his left hand pressed over the still liberally bleeding wound and his right keeping his mattock rifle cocked against his hip while he fired.

John shouldered his rifle again, but before he had the chance to fire, the trooper was wrapped in blue and shot half a dozen meters upward before crashing back into the ground in a crunch of metal. Miranda ran in a crouch across the space that he'd crossed in seconds, her rifle moving to and fro, looking for more targets, while John more casually turned to regard her.

"No more contacts out here."

Miranda came to a careful stop in front of the towering man for a second before she stepped around him to scowl at the three dead troopers who had been her initial targets, "All of my shots deflected..."

"Mine too," John agreed and tilted his helmet to the one who'd remained active even after the should-be fatal wound to his neck, "Under armour sections are more vulnerable, and the back of the helmets."

Miranda turned around from scowling at the three that the Spartan had killed with almost point black shots and looked to the one that she'd finished off with a biotic slam and her nose crinkled in anger, "What the bloody hell has he done to them..."

John rolled his shoulders in a shrug, this was the first time he'd faced Cerberus forces and had just assumed that this was the norm for them. Miranda's reaction made it clear that wasn't the case, and even he could assent to the oddity of a non-Spartan soldier continuing to fight even with a bullet wound through the neck.

"We should keep moving," He advised calmly, and pivoted to face down the length of the towering excavator which shielded the entrance to the three stories high shuttle building. He didn't look to Miranda for the acquiescence he sought and instead moved forward toward the large double doors.

As they reached the front end of the excavator's tracks, he tilted left and right around the corner to check for hostiles. Finding none, he dashed across to the large glass double doors in the white metal plated structure. The glass doors didn't open at his presence like the Spartan had expected, so he opted to lash out at the semi-reflective surface with his elbow and the glass shattered and sheeted down onto him before Miranda could get close.

He charged through the showering crystalline fragments and swept the lobby for resistance. Finding none, he took a knee and sighted on the single door at the back of the room furnished with rows of cushioned seats and a single reception counter, and waited for Miranda to catch up to him. "Any Intel about how Cerberus build their shuttle ports?"

"No," She shook her head and pursed her lips, "But I would have expected more resistance than this..."

John spared her a glance before standing and crossing the room to the simple single hip height structure with a tall stool behind it. He rounded it and found the space to have been hurriedly cleared, and he grunted in annoyance before marching for the metal double doors at the back of the room.

They opened as he waved his omni-tool at them and the passage beyond invited him in without any hostility. John moved down the several meter wide hallway with Miranda moving in a reverse walk to cover their rear, and his eyes followed the ceiling hung signage which continued to point straight for the central access stairwell and elevator.

None of the doors they passed opened or hinted at internal occupants, and they reached the central stairwell uncontested. John looked uncomfortably at his clear motion tracker as he looked up the short flight of stairs which ended a meter higher than the ground floor at a landing before turning left toward another likely landing another meter up concealed by the white passageway walls.

John acquired Miranda's attention with a nod and gestured with two fingers waving up the inclined passageway, and then moved silently up the steps. He took to the landing in a blur and held his rifle ready to fire, but found no targets. Miranda hurried up the stairs behind him with not the quite the same level of silence. He rose from his crouched landing and moved swiftly in the same manner of the next flight of stairs and came around to the next landing which turned left again where it finished in a hallway like the one they'd left on the ground floor.

They kept one another covered as they ascended into the second-floor hallway, and turned left to take to the next section of stairs which encircled the elevator shaft to the rooftop. As they settled on the first landing in the second portion of their second to third-floor assent, a canister clattered down the stairs from above and around the corner; John instinctively spun and shoved Miranda back down the stairs.

She tumbled into a roll which distanced her from the device just before it drew close enough to be a threat to her.

It exploded with a SHPLINK Of sound and light, and John's visor and audio receivers automatically compensated. He waited in a crouch for the sure to follow troopers to round the corner above. He only had to wait seconds, and he pulled the trigger the instant a set of legs came into view.

His rounds tore the lighter armoured section of knees apart, and the trooper fell with a sound of surprise less one lower leg. A second trooper followed around the corner in a combat dive and roll and came up firing his mattock configuration rifle on full automatic. John scowled as it chipped away at his shield faster than he'd grown accustomed to weapons of this reality being capable of.

He adjusted his aim and fired a cluster of rounds through the troopers neck, almost decapitating him in an explosion of blood and flesh as his helmeted head lolled sideways. A third, fourth, fifth and sixth trooper rounded the corner with dives similar to the seconds', and John rose in a surge of motion and escalated the stairs.

Their rounds pinged off the stairs and walls around him, but their attempts to hone in on the soldier weren't fast enough. In moment's he was amongst them, and he jammed the muzzle of his MA5D into the black under armour section of the closest one's belly and squeezed the trigger.

Fragments of bone exploded out in the shower of blood through the troopers lower back, and John kicked the flailing body into the soldier behind and spun and fired down into the upper chest of another. The rounds ricocheted off the troopers internal plating on its path through his body and splattered out through his groin.

Before John could orientate on the fourth target, more sounds unique to the firing of the MA5D joined the firefight, and by the time John turned, the trooper was on the floor trying to prop himself back up with his legs failing to assist him. John sighted the blood pooling on the floor beneath his stomach and surmised that Miranda had severed his spinal cord with her shots.

He spun back to the remaining unharmed trooper who'd tossed aside the body of his comrade that John had thrust upon him and had pulled out an electrified baton and swung it at John. John's hand released the grip of his rifle, and he grabbed the armoured wrist of the trooper and twisted.

The armour and bone beneath crunched and cracked, and the nerves keeping the hand functional failed and released the baton, but the owner of the hand didn't make a single sound and instead reached for the small white pistol on his hip with his undamaged hand. John wrenched the trooper forward and smashed his helmet down into his opponents' helmet and released his grip on the broken wrist.

The crunch of metal yielding and bone fragmenting, added to the sudden lolling on the troopers head, told John that his neck had been broken. He turned back to the one who was attempting to crawl back up the stairs and found Miranda stepping around the blood trail. She pressed the muzzle of her rifle to the base of his neck and fired a single shot and a new splatter of blood burst onto the landing beneath the troopers chest, and he stilled.

The Spartan moved through the carnage that he and Miranda had wrought. He moved directly toward the first trooper who'd been incapacitated and was still flailing to reach his rifle, having skidded across the landing toward the corner and out of reach. Like Miranda, he executed his target unceremoniously and then scanned his eyes over the armoured corpses.

He snatched up one of the mattock rifles and clamped it to his back and then pilfered several thermal clips and stuck them to the back of his hip. He straightened and found Miranda giving him a curious expression, "We might need extra firepower," He explained, and then pulled two flash-bang grenades off the nearest Cerberus belt and adhered them to his own beltline.

He confirmed his choice with a single nod and then moved up the flight of stairs to the third-floor hallway and halted before entering. He retrieved both of the recently acquired flashbangs and primed them both and then tossed them right around the corner.

A shout preceded them detonating, and he poked the muzzle of his MA5D around the corner and fired on full auto into the group of five Cerberus troopers arrayed in a scattered firing line. For every two rounds that ricocheted off the armour, one made it through the softer black sections and sent the troopers sprawling one by one.

Miranda poked her rifle around the other corner and sprayed two more troopers with the remainder of her magazine. As the last trooper lost his footing, John charged around the corner and stomped on the necks of each of his still struggling targets, and turned back to the final stretch of stairs to find Miranda using her biotics to perform a similar action on the remaining two.

He moved back toward her and then nodded silently at the final flight of stairs to the rooftop. Miranda returned then nod, and they fell into their now standard formation of John leading by several large paces and Miranda moving on a sideways walk to cover their rear.

This time, their proceeding up the three short flights of stairs received no contest, and they came to a halt atop the final landing at a locked double door.

"Cover me," Miranda ordered as she moved to the edge of the door and lit up her omni-tool to bypass the locked security.

John stepped back down two of the stairs and took a knee directly on the middle of the stairwell, so he had a clear line of fire for when the doors opened. He only had to wait several minutes, and the doors slid apart and were instantly filled with ammunition. John ignored the wild rounds and took in the external area at a glance. He determined that the stairwell and elevator structure came out in the centre of the footprint of the building and that the entire rooftop was a simple series of white painted metallic landing pads.

Directly across from the open doors ahead of a parked white and yellow Cerberus Kodiak was a row of grey crates with ten mattocks firing from behind and over them. John glanced to his motion tracker and figured that there were likely more troopers waiting on either side of the exit in a flanking position.

He took a calming breath, and sighted on the silver strip on the top of the trooper's helmet in the middle of the formation, and fired. Like with the first engagement through the front gate, the shot ricocheted off, but the kinetic force rocked the man's head back and made him stop firing.

He sighed and fired once from one soldier to the next in three seconds and forced a lull in their firing, and then surged forward in a sprint. He charged across the open space, back into Eden Prime's balmy summer weather, and vaulted over the crates. He racked his rifle as he vaulted and landed with his M6H in his right hand in the middle of the Cerberus firing line.

With motion born of a lifetime of being a warrior, John fluidly pressed the muzzle of the pistol into the face of the nearest trooper on his right and fired. At the same time, his left hand closed like a vice around the trooper's arm on his left side and rotated, tearing the arm from its socket with a sensation of pulling meat, and then he shoved the damaged man into the line of fire of his remaining comrade on his left side.

John moved faster than his enemies could track and followed after the trooper he'd shoved, still struggling to regain his momentum against the chest of his comrade. The super-soldier aimed at the neck of each and fired a round through the centre point in both, intending to destroy the spine on the bullets explosive and bloody exit.

He dropped to a knee and rolled in a spin to avoid a hail of bullets he intuited was coming, and came back up arm's length from the Kodiak, firing his pistol at the next seven troopers finally drawing a bead on him. John's rounds punched through the necks of five of them before any of theirs even hit his shields, and the remaining two each raised their left forearms and positioned their mattocks like on a firing prop to defend against his projectiles.

John dove forward in a roll, under their shots, and came up between them. He raised his right arm into an elbow strike and collided with the one on his right with enough force to twist the troopers head around one-hundred and eighty degrees, and then rolled with the momentum and caught the other troopers mattock by the handguard. He wrenched the gun free from the troopers grip and swung it like a club into the side of his helmet, smashing the weapon in the process of caving in the helmet and the head beneath.

John's eyes instinctively found his motion tracker, and he clenched his jaw in concern as the single blue blip of his ally slowly moved away from him with two red dots closing. The soldier stood to his full height and rushed back around the crates and saw Miranda baking away from two lithe female figures in form-fitting armour with a pistol in one hand and a sword in the other.

Miranda fired a burst at the closest one, but the bullets deflected off a momentarily visible deep-blue barrier, and then they fired back at Miranda. The ex-Cerberus agent rolled to avoid the shots. Still, the fire was clearly meant just as a distraction to allow the Cerberus specialist soldiers to close the distance without projectiles obstructing them.

John sprinted the dozen metered to the nearest lithe specialist just as she raised her sword in her right hand to sweep down toward Miranda's neck. He caught the wrist of the woman with his right hand and kicked the middle of her back with his left boot while not yielding his grip.

A synthetic sounding screech came out from the specialists' helmet as her arm tore free from her body in a shower of blood, and John smoothly relieved the sword from the dead grip and slashed it across the woman's chest as she attempted to roll back and away from him.

His slash opened a long red gash from her chest to her navel, but she didn't react to what should have been excruciating pain from either the torn-off arm or the now open wound in her body. He glanced to his right to see Miranda firing on full auto into the second lithe combatant and rolling away from each slashing strike as bullets ricocheted all around them.

He grunted in annoyance and moved faster than his opponent could hope to follow now that he had his weight centred, and then decapitated her with another spray of deep red. He spun and flung his sword at the second specialist just as she was about to bring her own bladed weapon down onto Miranda's shoulder, and she instead whipped it up to deflect the thrown blade.

John moved in the wake of his attack and spun around a swing intended to slice his throat, and sent a fist crushing through her elbow and forcing the arm to bend the wrong way. Another synthetic sound came as some form of expression of pain, and before John could finish off this opponent too, Miranda grabbed her with a biotic pull and hurled her into the waiting muzzle of the MA5D she had ready.

The muzzle pressed into the belly of the specialist, bypassing the powerful kinetic barriers, and the rounds tore through her guts and exited her mid-back in explosions of bodily matter. Silence consumed the two invaders for several seconds -beyond the thrumming background city sounds of the busy New Carthage- until finally Miranda let out a long sigh and leaned forward onto her knees.

"Bloody hell..." She shook her head and looked at the corpse still quivering at her feet, "Their barriers are stronger than anything I've ever faced."

John quirked his head sideways slightly as her central Australian accent became more noticeable with her Australiana utterance. Then he looked at the corpse she was referring too, and then offered his right hand. Miranda regarded it, unsure for a tense second, and then straightened without his provided help and a raised brow and lifted the corner of her lips.

He turned away from her casually and marched back the way he'd come from combating the ten assault troopers, and waved his omni-tool at the shuttle. The bay doors slid open, and he spared the empty innards a quick glance before moving to the cockpit. John ran his eyes over the readout and nodded at the power levels and undamaged structural integrity.

He stepped back out of the Kodiak and lit up his Omni-tool and started scanning the dead troopers.

"What are you doing?" Miranda asked cautiously as she rounded the crates, her breath having fully returned and her focus with it.

"They know we're here now," The Spartan explained without any form of concern, "They'll be expecting us, so we need some kind of disguise."

Miranda nodded and her eyes sharpened in understanding, and she moved back to the two specialist's corpses and started scanning their omni-tools for data while John worked over the troopers. After another minute, Miranda paced back to the Spartan, "They're from Charlie-Echo-Papa-07 squad, I think there were three teams stationed here."

"Good enough," John said with a shrug and moved back to the Kodiak. Miranda followed him with a skip to catch up, and they both crowded into the cockpit. "Does this thing have an automated flight path?"

Miranda scanned the console for a moment and then delved into the controls. The Kodiak shifted into a sudden take-off, "Yes," She said with a small smirk and glint in her eye, and then she looked pointedly at the communication system with a nod, "But you'll need to do the talking... There weren't many Australian women in Cerberus."

John reached for the communication systems and keyed it and softened his voice as much as possible to speak in a tone as close to frustrated as possible, "This is Charlie-Echo-Papa-07, we're making an emergency exfill with the last shuttle. There were two heavily armed combatants; we were unable to hold them back."

He released the communication controls, and they both waited with bated breath as the Kodiak's sensors showed New Carthage disappearing beneath them as they flew directly to the dig site they'd noted from orbit. Another minute passed before a harsh voice warbling with an odd synthetic quality answered, "That was the last shuttle wasn't it, Charlie-Echo-Papa-07? What happened when you took off?"

John glanced to Miranda, and she shrugged with a raised slender brow. He reached for the controls and spoke, softening his voice and attempting to emulate the unnatural quality that the other had spoken with, "Can confirm, this was the last shuttle. The enemy headed back into the building when we took off, we think they came from the south, over."

"Squads will be moving south to find them, come back to the base on the dig site for a debrief."

The radio cut out and Miranda snorted in wry amusement, "They might have new armour, tech and juiced-up troopers, but their operational security still has a long way to go."

"Agreed," John stated with a nod, thinking of how complex and diverse the Insurrectionists plans had been to ever even hope of infiltrating UNSC operations. He leaned forward and checked their flight plan, and then leaned back in an attempt to relax, "Fifty minutes until arrival," He looked at Miranda and narrowed his eyes within his helmet thoughtfully, and then reached into a compartment on his left hip and withdraw his conserved plasma sword handle.

He offered it to Miranda, and she looked at it cautiously with a raised brow, "If you get in a close-quarters fight again, this will cut through anything."

She retrieved it carefully and shifted her right hand up and down its grip to try and find a comfortable hold.

"It's not UNSC," John explained, "Covenant plasma sword; don't press that button in a confined space."

Miranda scowled an apologetic expression as her thumb ghosted over the raised oblong cap, and she arched her back forward from her chair and magnetically fixed it to the back of her hip, "Thank you, Master Chief."

He gave her a nod and relaxed into his chair.

XxxX

"Hurr-hurr-hurr-hurr," Wrex chuckled throatily with his lips quivering in excitement. He looked across the meeting table situated before his throne with shrewd analysis, despite his excitement, and swept his reptilian eyes from the Human who'd help gift his people freedom, to the latest two unexpected occupants of the table.

General Garrik Corinthus, a cream-brown plated Turian with subtle white paint ghosted around his eyes and down the ridge of his face and wearing a jet black setoff armour, sat at strict attention.

Next to the rigid looking Turian was an even more rigid looking tan-skinned Human man in his fifty's with a high and tight haircut coating his scalp in a grey shade. Commodore Robert Riley was dressed in his crisp Alliance Navy blues and managed to compete with the Turian's rigidity while the two looked at Wrex expectantly.

"Hurr-hurr-hurr," The Krogan warrior leader chuckled again and look right of the unexpected pair to where Shepard sat, a lot less strictly with his arm's crossed over his chest and a lingering scowl. Tali sat beside him, and if the narrowing of her eyes said anything, it was that she was just as concerned about their discussions.

"Wrex-"

"-That's Overlord Wrex, to you, General," Wrex interrupted Garrik's pensive tone with a contestant one and his lips quivered again in aggravated amusement.

Garrik inclined his head, but Shepard called across the table with a sigh, "Wrex, stop the power play. The General and Commodore are here to help."

Garrik inclined his head to Shepard next, and then spoke in a clipped Turian tone, "Wrex- Overlord Wrex," He corrected himself with a small frustrated flutter of his brow plate, "Our task force came here looking for Shepard... We were unaware-"

"-We had no goddam idea that the Krogan were rebuilding! That you have a cure to the Genophage," The Commodore finished for the general in more simple terms with a flat tone that denied the emotion in his word choice. He glanced to Shepard and frowned mildly, "You damn Spectre's have too much free reign..." His scowl lightened with a small turn of his lips and he flashed his eyes back to Wrex who appeared ready to argue, "But I have no bone to pick with the Krogan, and if it means more allies and boots on the ground."

"So you like us now that we're cannon-fodder?" Wrex ground, but rather than looking at the Human speaker he directed his ire at the Turian.

Garrik had the good sense to remain silent, and the Commodore spoke for them, prudently so considering their task force in high orbit was under his command with the Turian general his second in command. The Human cleared his throat and gave a silently appreciative look to Shepard for holding his own tongue, given his reputation, and then looked back to Wrex, "I don't give a damn what you want me to call you. Overlord, warlord, dictator, premier- Whatever..." He grunted blankly, and Wrex's lips quivered again while he looked to Shepard and Tali and found them both giving him a look that said to remain listening.

"Things are changing on the Citadel. No one's spoken about the Krogan yet, as far as I know, but I bet if it came up, then there would be support for Krogan vaccines and whatnot. I don't care, that's not why I'm- We're," He paused to correct his gruff negotiating. "The Council, the Alliance, the Asari republic, and even the Turians now recognise the Reapers as a threat. We came here because the last word we'd heard was that Shepard was here. As much as I don't like his reputation, he's the only one we know with any experience fighting these things, so now we've got an op to work out, and you're going to damn well get onboard," Riley berated. His lips pulled into a testing smirk, "Dictator Wrex," He added with a glint of a contest in his eyes.

Wrex glowered at the Human speaker for a long moment until the aggression washed from his face and his snarl morphed into a broad grin, "I like you, Human. We'll work well together," He shifted his posture and looked to Shepard, "Looks like you've got your alliance, Shepard."

Shepard turned his head to look dubiously at Tali, and she returned the expression with her eyes before he took a deep breath and waved his omni-tool toward the small ring-shaped holo-emitter in the middle of the long and broad steel table. The scans and imagery that the Normandy had collected of Rannoch lit up above the seated group and using his omni-tool Shepard zoomed in on the more massive chunk of the Geth fleet in orbit geosynchronous above where there was a yellow triangle on the planet below.

Shepard looked appraisingly to the two newcomers, and then to Wrex, "We won't be taking Rannoch with a fleet action, Wrex," Shepard lamented cooly, then looked back at the two to his right, "Commodore, General. But we can use your fastest ships, and your biggest ground deployable guns."

"You want to land under that mess?" Garrik queried with a raised brow plate and his voice laden with concern, "That's suicide."

"That's a challenge!" Wrex contested with a grin, "We've got ground to orbital cannons which will even keep a dreadnought at bay, we just don't have the ships to haul them anywhere."

"And we do," Riley answered with a nod, "My heavy cruisers can sling them onto the bow and drop them in," His eyes narrowed shrewdly, and he looked at the Spectre, "But how do you expect to conduct operations? Even if the cannons keep the Geth from overrunning your beachhead, you can't move forward?"

"We can split the task-force in half, two-pronged attack to draw attention-"

"-Suicide, General," Shepard interrupted Garrik with a grunt and headshake, "The Geth ships are faster than most of ours."

"We'll park out heaviest hitters at long range and be a thorn to deal with," Riley dictated calmly and used his own omni-tool to manipulate Shepard's map. He drew it back out and then pointing to the maximum effective range of his single dreadnought and dozen heavy cruisers. "It might draw them away a bit, or at least distract them, and then you can come in with the rest of the task force and deploy as close to the Collector ship as possible to make a landing."

"Risky..." Garrik grumbled. "We'd have no support, once we set our troops down, how do we get the ships off the planet?"

"You won't," Wrex grunted. "Even if you get them to the ground, the blasted synthetics will be recovering from the trick before you can get away."

"So we leave more than half the task-force grounded..." Riley added with a displeased growl in his voice. The table went silent for a moment, and then Riley snorted and looked to Shepard, "Commander, what do you think our odds of kicking the Collectors off Rannoch and shutting down the Geth will be?"

Shepard's brow pinched at the sudden question and his lips downturned. He glanced to Wrex for some kind of support, but finding none he started slowly, "It depends on how many troops we can get into the Collector ship and how quickly... We'll need to make sure that they can't take off and take control of their CIC... I'll have to use one of my- uh- illegal assets," Shepard cringed slightly, but Riley's stony expression and grunted words smoothed out his concern.

"We're going to be fighting galaxy ending monsters of myth, I don't care about laws."

"The Normandy has an AI..." Shepard started slowly, and then compressed a control in his omni-tool, "EDI, you'll be able to take control of the Collector systems?"

"I will endeavour to, Commander," The machine's feminine voice replied smoothly, "Commodore, I presume you might have doubts about my effectiveness, as an AI on a world occupied by AI, I can assure-"

"-No." Riley stated with a hard edge, "You've been with Shepard since you started hunting down the Collectors, I assume. If an Alliance Commander with a track record like Shepards' trusts you, then you're a useful asset. Now..." He paused and looked directly at Wrex, as though to challenge him, and then looked to Shepard, "Your speciality is ground ops, so I'm giving you my first battalion for your landing. It's a mixed bunch of Alliance Marines, and Turians arranged in complementary specialist platoons to work with one another, I'll expect you to draft a mission briefing to bring them all up to speed on what they'll be facing and what the mission objectives will be."

Wrex's nostrils flared at the challenge, and his eyes crinkled in the enjoyment of the Commodores bold military attitude. He quickly snickered before rumbling, "I will contribute Aralakh Company and an armoured assault division. We'll load them onto our fastest ships and race you lot to the ground."

"And your ground to orbit cannons, Wrex- Overlord," Garrik corrected himself with a wince, "We'll need all of your specs on them to make sure we can transport them and set them up quickly and correctly."

Wrex pushed up from his stone throne and lifted onto his toes to elevate himself slightly higher, and he swung his head from side to side, peering down the long now pristine hall of Urdnot, his voice rumbled and echoed down the chamber "RATCH! GET YOUR QUAD UP HERE NOW!"

The four other occupants of the table winced at the bellowed order; it proved effective, and a rush of distant footfalls grew closer and closer.

An Urdnot Krogan with an ochre head plate and cream skin came rushing up the stairs breathlessly with his padded clothing bunched up around his thighs and shoulders from his headlong charge to answer his overlord, "Yes, Overlord Wrex?" He wheezed breathlessly as he slowed toward the table, looking between the seated occupants unsurely.

"That one," Wrex jabbed a finger at Garrik, and Ratch seemed to shift his posture, ready for a fight. "He needs our technical specifications for our orbital defence cannons, we're relocating them. Get them ready to move by tonight."

Ratch's eyes widened in surprise at the unexpected order and nodded slowly. He looked at Garrik's expectant dark eyes uncertainly and then got another nod of approval from Wrex before he finally sighed and grumbled at once, "I will return with a datapad soon."

The table's occupants watched the local go-to engineer waddle away, seemingly deflated, and Riley scoffed, "You've got a rabble, Wrex."

Wrex chuckled deep in his chest and his snarl of a smile return, "I've got a bloodthirsty rabble, Commodore. They're itching at the plates to fight, and an invasion fits the bill."

"This isn't the be taken lightly, Overlord," Garrik crossed his arms over his chest and winced through the title. "We're going to be undertaking the largest ground invasion since the Krogan Rebellions, with an alliance of Human, Turian, Krogan, and maybe even Quarian soldiers and ships."

Wrex snarled a smile, but before he could speak, Shepard manipulated the still active display of Rannoch to zoom in beyond the higher orbit Geth screening force to the secondary one.

"This cluster is mostly fighters and landing craft, we think. There's a dreadnought in the middle of it though, receiving the Collector signal and broadcasting it. I think we can safely assume that won't be moving during the invasion, and we don't know how many combat platforms they have active on the surface," Shepard looked pointedly at each of the men at the table and then zoomed in closer on the towering Collector ship perched atop a cliff overlooking an ocean.

"I suggest two-thirds of our forces land within a kilometre of the Collector ship to set up the beachhead, and the other third of the force land as close to the Collectors as possible so we can get in quick and take out their engines."

"Hmmm," Riley sounded thoughtful, and he zoomed in further yet until the Collector ship took of the entire holographic display. "What do we know about them? Ships, weapons, troops?"

Tali pushed a datapad across the tabletop to the man, and he received it smoothly and activated the screen.

"That's everything we have on them so far, Commodore," The Quarian explained with a deferential tone, "The inside of their ships seemed like an insect hive, we should take high powered sensor systems to try and map it out more quickly."

The Turian leaned into the Human to regard the datapad, and they both nodded silently at the information while absorbing the first few pages about the typical Collector assault classes, their resistance to weapons fire, strength, and tactical abilities.

Wrex watched the two newcomers read for several minutes and then delved into his own omni-tool, "I'll begin arrangements. You'll have my fastest ships, and best warriors, Shepard," The Krogan grinned at Tali next, "We'll get your homeworld back, little pyjak."