Audax Novus

Chapter Fourteen:: Alpha - Omega - Promises ::

"I AM OMEGA!"

Slender ocean blue hands with palms and fingers paled by callouses fiddled with an omni-tool, and the device bleated an almost angry chirp.

"I-I-I-I-I-I AY-MMMM-A O-O-O-MEYGA!"

The voice shifted from its initially confident and commanding tone and distorted into a comical squeal, and it brought a toothy smile from the owner of the omni-tool from which it played.

Months earlier, if she had dared make Aria sound like a fool on Omega in public, then she would more than likely have ended up dead and tossed into the Eezo processing vats. But Omega - a modern renaming as an ode to romantic elements from Human culture - now had a suitable alpha to complete the name's Human adage.

That suitable alpha was the very reason that she was here once more, and the same reason why she could dare to, enjoy to, even, make Aria sound like a fool.

When the Master Chief, saviour of Omega, had departed quietly, so had she. Theia had jumped back to Thessia and found herself entirely sick of the burgeoning bureaucratic systems that she hadn't realised she'd grown to hate so thoroughly.

So she had done what many Asari dreamed of, but few ever thought prudently enough to do. She had given up her city life, given up striving toward some kind of long term future, and moved to one of the few remaining agricultural reserves on the homeworld to work the land like her ancestors had.

Her personal world had evolved the moment that she stepped foot onto the Serrice agro reserve district soil. Of course, Theia hadn't known to what extent, at the time, she had just thought that she had given up the trappings of her city, and technological, livelihood.

History was hidden in plain sight in Asari culture. Theia had never known that the agro-districts' permanent residents made up the majority of the remaining Athame worshippers. All Asari referenced Athame in everyday speech, and they all held the religion in its rightful place of respect for being the source of doctrines which had evolved into Siari. However, less than one per cent of the entire species still claimed to be Athame worshippers.

Theia had heard tell that the Asari Councillor on the Citadel was raised as an Athame worshiper, but had opted for a more neutral religious mindset later in life. Going by that knowledge, she had always just assumed that Athame worship dotted her peoples' populations across the galaxy randomly.

Of course, Theia had been incorrect in that presumption. When she had been welcomed by the local agricultural workers in the vineyards and shown her communal lodgings, the locals had explained their religious concepts in great depth and with startling alacrity.

Her initial fear had been that they would be trying to convert her – and maybe they had been... In a way, but it was on day three of her orientation into her new and much more placid life that she had firmly decided that she would not convert.

Her defiance toward shifting her ideologies was not due to any part of the local women's behaviour or beliefs; she had, after all, heard a smattering of their beliefs all through her life. Like most older religions of any species across the galaxy, it revolved around a wondrous entity which guided and protected, that entity contrasted something evil and dark, and to top it off, there was, of course, a saviour to come.

That was the long and short of what Theia knew of Athamiam religion, and she had ruefully admitted such to her hosts. They had almost condescendingly told her that she was yet to truly learn the legends of where Asari learnt to love from.

The result of that particular conversation had led to her being taken into their local temple on day three. Like most of the buildings that made up the small city, the temple was a simple affair and made of timber, rather than the Asari modern preference of plasticized concrete and steel composites.

Had the temple not had the carved ornamental surfaces adorning its exterior, Theia could have mistaken it for one of the grape crushing and processing sheds. Still, she'd walked in, escorted by the local Matriarch Neffajie, with her mind merely open to learning about the locals' ideals.

What she had learnt, however, was considerably more confusing and troubling. Theia was undoubtedly not to know that the Asari Councillor was to make the same connection not long after herself.

The temple was a simple long room, shaped like an extended hexagon, apparently a design drawn from the original ancient temple. In the very middle of the room was a statue of a female figure without any crest or clothing, and it put Theia in mind of some of the Human mannequins that she'd seen in clothing outlets.

It was female, but the lack of crests gave it a neutral look, and it was painted a deep ocean blue with white dotted streaks running up the body, with a gentle curving face set in a calm smile. The depiction of Athame was entirely unlike any of the city and media bound depictions that Theia had seen throughout her life, and Neffajie explained it as the oldest known depiction of their spectral eternal mother.

Theia had only to shift her gaze upward for her nerves to tingle, for her brow to furrow, and for her confusion to blossom. At the far end of the hexagonal room, painted in a way so that anyone entering could see the figure looming like a silent protector beyond the statue of Athame, was the Master Chief.

Theia would have been remiss to outright describe the painted depiction as the extra-dimensional Human whom she had hosted on Omega; it was far from a photo-real depiction. The form's silhouette was an eerily close match, however, and the golden face, the visor, set betwixt the sandy green band from the bottom and top of his helmet, almost made Theia jump in surprise.

Ever since she'd met the Human from the different reality, she had developed a tendency to question almost everything before her to a greater extent. The truth wasn't quite as approachable as she'd once thought it to be.

Somehow... Somehow, he was here, and somehow, he had something to do with Asari religion. The idea boggled Theia's mind, and then Neffajie had assisted in boggling it further by catching her interest and bestowing him with three notable religious titles.

The Master of Chiefs, Demon to unholy Covenants, and Warrior of the fore; the latter titles didn't mean anything to Theia, but the first title struck Theia as a name far too coincidental to be anything other than a reflection of the truth.

The Master Chief was a figure in Asari ancient religion, and she had no idea how or why, but she did know that staying here in this simple life wouldn't begin to answer the questions that now churned in her mind. Within a week of that discovery, and after many recently brewed ciders to justify the trip and brief stay, Theia had said her farewells and returned to Omega.

Like just about everyone across the galaxy, she had heard of Aria being routed out. The asteroid colony was unified under a democratic system, so she was relatively sure that it would be a place to return in safety. She was also relatively sure that it would be the most likely place to meet the Master Chief again.

Upon returning to Omega, Theia discovered that she'd accrued a certain level of notoriety for being associated with The Hero of Omega. She'd even discovered that her likeness was used on the Omega Defence Force recruitment posters with the Master Chief front and centre.

Finding a job had been far more straightforward than finding Red Sand once was on the decreasingly dingy streets. Nyreen Kandros, the Arbiter of justice on Omega, had quite simply asked her to elect the position that she wanted, and she got it. Theia had always feared too much of a good thing, so she'd selected something that was in line with her experience, something practical to her wanting to be the first to speak to the Hero of Omega again.

"Dock Master, we've got an unexpected contact coming in."

A nasally feminine tone drew Theia's attention away from both her thoughts and her snickering at how she had been warping a recording of Aria – if the job wasn't going to continually amuse her, and there was no one above her to dole out discipline. She'd just have to entertain herself.

"What kinda contact?" Theia straightened somewhat from her slouched position in the large cushioned chair in the thin room over twenty meters long with a single long pane of glass running its length looking down onto the primary docks.

The dock controller directly in front of Theia at one of the many identical stations running the room's length swivelled and dragged a holographic control from her station up to the glass. She released it, and it expanded into a holographic camera feed depicting the space beyond their docks.

The view was no different than Theia had become accustomed to it being lately. There was two dozen cruiser sized ships in sight of various make, painted in Omega's colours with the Human symbol "Ω" for Omega emblazoned in red on multiple points around the hulls.

There were flights of Mantis gunships sitting around the cruisers they escorted, and the usual array of freighters and shuttles meandered to and from the station. After a moment of the display looking typical, the dock controller delved into her console's controls. A distant Kodiak shuttle expanded to take up the majority of the screen.

Theia's lip curled and her nose crinkled, "Cerberus..."

Omega had an excellent and healthy history of hate, and until recently, it had been all directed in the wrong way, but now, hating Cerberus seemed wholly justified. They were an organisation that had meddled in affairs across the galaxy against anyone who wasn't Human. Theia had it on good authority that they had also done a lot of damage to a lot of Humans.

"Call the closest Mantis flight after them, no invasions or spies today, thanks."

"Yes, Ma'am," The dock controller said.

The display drew back, and within moments Theia could see the closest wing of Mantis fighters speed toward the incoming Kodiak.

XxxX

John twisted his right wrist with his hand firmly gripping the flight stick, and his left hand stayed atop the mass effect core power controls, and the Kodiak rolled whilst also flipping forward end over end. The way he was controlling the shuttle's mass didn't grant him the benefits of its usual inertia free movement, and he hardened his senses against the G's pulling against him and focused his gaze.

One of the attacking Mantis gunships zipped across his display while the Kodiak toppled and rolled, and then just as a second started to enter the top of his view screen he pulled the trigger on the flight stick. The hull shuddered as two shots fired, and John caught the wing exploding off the side of the gunship just before it left his field of vision. He diverted a different sequence of power into the core and jerked the stick back and then twisted left to make himself an even more challenging target of the flight of ten – now nine – active gunships.

John would never boast, but he knew himself a capable pilot, apparently more capable than most in this reality. A UNSC flight instructor would be exceedingly disappointed in any training regimes that any military practised here. Still, he could only do so much in the unwieldy shuttle against multiple attackers designed for attack.

"Master Chief to Mantis flight, call off your attack, I repeat, call off your attack!"

John's voice strained against the G's, and he twisted his wrist right again as a stream of tracers flashed passed.

"Miran-" He caught himself asking the name and internally reminded himself that she wasn't here to assist him.

He scowled lightly and swiftly released his grip of the mass effect core controls and swiped them across the radio controls to broadcast to all channels rather than the standard tight beam communications that he had previously set it at to talk to the inbound flight who had clearly blocked his signal from the beginning.

The hull rattled as rounds crossed it, and John put his hand back into the controls and thrust the Kodiak into a forward spinning topple with occasional bursts from the thrusters to make himself an even more erratic target.

"Master Chief to Omega docks, call off the Mantis flight, I seek permission to dock – Peacefully," He added as a grunted afterthought.

He wanted to yell the request as more of an order, but he had no authority in Omega space, and the G's were increasingly tugging on his focus.

"Chief! That's you- By the goddess!"

More tracers spat passed his view screen, and John gritted his teeth while the voice changed from surprise to anger over the open line.

"Call them off, dammit! RIGHT NOW!"

A new voice spoke over his radio link suddenly, this one notably Turian in octave quality and excited yet perturbed, "Mantis One to Master Chief, we're pulling back. Ahh- Welcome back to Omega, heh, Spirits, don't curse my family."

John breathed a sigh of relief, pulled the power out of the core, turned it back to the default power settings, and ceased the toppling spin before reorienting to face Omega.

Omega's local orbital plane was a scene much the same as the one he'd left, but this time with a defence screen all sporting the same colours, despite being of scavenged hulls that hardly matched in shape.

The Mantis flight that had been assaulting him moved off ahead of him toward one of the nearing cruisers, and two small capsule-like ships ejected from the cruiser and headed toward were John thought the Mantis he'd disabled must be. He took a deep breath before exhaling and replying to the second voice.

"Good to see Omega has a defence screen, Mantis One, fly safe," He then switched the radio control back to the channel that the docks had spoken to him from, and his brow dropped a millimetre as he realized he knew the voice, "Theia?"

"Chief!" Her voice answered in tight excitement. "Ah, welcome back! I've cleared you for landing right next to the docks elevator bay."

"Noted," He answered strictly and nudged the power input feed to increase his acceleration into the red-lit Omega docks.

Ahead, left, and right, ships and shuttles all made way for him, and a Mantis took off from the spot that he thought Theia had suggested just as he pulled into the cluttered and huge docking area connected by a maze of causeways. His face morphed into curiosity and confusion with his left brow arched and his right dropped, but with a curious downward quirk to his lips, he piloted the Kodiak in, rotated it to land facing back the way that he'd come, and set down.

The usual routine followed; he powered down the ship, locked the flight controls, and stepped back with a wiggle and duck through the small hatch into the troop bay. He palmed the controls to the troop bay door, and almost took a step back in surprise.

Theia was a step away, dressed in a baggy-black bodysuit with angled red lines crisscrossing it with the new Omega symbol stamped over her left breast. Her fists were on her hips, and her eyes were narrowed in what John thought was a mixture of suspicion and mirth with a small smile revealing her teeth.

But it wasn't the curious expression on the gentle curving face of Theia, nor her presence, which surprised John; it was the literal crowd of hundreds who'd seemingly dropped their tasks and crowded around her, back another couple of meters. Their were faces of all species; Human, Asari, Salarian, Turian, Batarian, Volus, Krogan, and even Vorcha, and they all looked awestruck.

John's mouth turned into a tight smile, and his eyes narrowed in the sense of pride that the so-far silent greeting invoked in him. Of course, he'd always been proud to be a Spartan, and over time he'd become increasingly proud of what that had meant to the UNSC and Humanity as a whole, but these weren't his people, not his UNSC, not his mission, and yet, they were in awe of him for something he'd done – He couldn't deny the wave of humility that it struck through him.

"Where've you been?"

Theia's question seemed out of the blue, and John snorted audibly at the oddness of it amongst the setting, "Trying to get home, but now, I'm fighting the Reapers."

Theia's brow arched, "Master of Chiefs? Been doing that for the last fifty thousand years?"

John cocked his head slightly in curiosity, Theia had clearly been through her own series of experiences since they'd parted ways. Many of the onlookers within earshot likewise sported confused looks and glanced amongst one another. John ignored them and kept his visor fixated on Theia; she was his closest contact here, after all, not to mention, potentially the first ally that he'd had in this reality.

"You went to the temple of Athame?"

This time she sported the confused arch to the brow, and then she furrowed it and shook her head once, "Not the temple of Athame, just one of them in the agro-district near Serrice... They kinda' worship you, did you know?"

John scoffed, unbidden, again, and nodded his helmet once, "I discovered that recently- I- I did arrive when you found me. My comrade arrived much earlier."

"I see..." Theia mused and looked up in thought – John doubted she really did see, but he was also sure that she trusted his word – "Well, I am the Dock Master here, now, and you are THE Hero of Omega, so... What can we do for you?"

After several silent seconds, where the crowd continued to watch in awestruck interest, John finally turned his visor away from Theia and looked across the amassed crowd in closer inspection – more for their benefit than the need for him to analyse them.

He watched pulses increase, eye widen, nostrils flare, and hands tighten in excitement as he looked across them. His wave of pride and humility suddenly morphed into one of expectant desire – perhaps finding the support he needed would be a lot easier than he'd feared that it could be.

"I need financial support – I have a way to stop the Reapers," He winced as soon as the words left his mouth, and his eyes found Theia's again. It wasn't the full truth, more of a hint toward the possibilities with the right input, but the fact could be expanded upon in more detailed discussion, and once more his eyes swept the crowd, and his expectancy dimmed.

While awestruck by him, and sure to be generous to him, John doubted that their elected leaders would spare him the full extent of resources he required given the needs of Omega as a developing society.

"I will be open to a technology and research agreement with Omega if you support me," He added carefully with his lips pinching as soon as he finished. John had protected UNSC technology from reaching alien hands for so long that he felt like he was betraying the heart of his people, but as Cortana had put it, he was in a bold new world.

Theia's curved lips puckered for a moment, and she took her fists off her hips and overlapped them over her chest and shrugged with a smile, "I'm certain that the Chancellor will hear your request- Heh, if he says no to hearing you, we'll just depose him so that someone else who will listen to you can be put in charge."

John winced at the cavalier statement, but finally stepped out of the Kodiak troop bay so that only a single step separated him from Theia, and two from the rest of the crowd. "I'll speak to whoever the elected leaders are," He said calmly while looked down at her.

Theia smirked and looked back up at him, along with the rest of the crowd, many of whom were closest chuckled at his reply. John didn't know whether they thought his response was somehow a joke, or if they felt it honestly laughable because they would do as Theia had suggested.

Either way, John would insist on only talking to elected officials if he were to attain the assistance of Omega; a fragile political system was far too significant a risk for him to bear given the unfolding mission ahead. He needed finances, he needed manpower, and he needed military might. A corrupt system that wanted to bend to the will of a didactic dictator wasn't likely to be the most stable of companions for his fledgeling recreation of Reach.

"Come on, Chief, Mr religious saviour, follow me, and don't mind the cameras, these people need a hero."

Theia smirked up at him again, and then turned and struck out toward the elevator that he had become so familiar with in months gone by. John cocked his helmet again and blinked in a moment of nostalgic confusion at the coincidental choice of words and set of characters present, just as omni-tools turned into camera mode, and some onlookers even produced Eezo powered floating cameras.

The silence that had held the crowd under control finally dissipated, and cheers, whoops, and screams of affection started to fill the docking bay, even while the crowd parted to give John and Theia their path to the elevator shaft. He followed after the Asari Dock Master, caught up in several long strides, and couldn't resist the small smile that owned his lips.

This was different from when he'd been of Cairo station with Avery Johnson, and unlike then, he appreciated it more fully now. "Folks need heroes, it gives them hope," He parroted the late Sergeant Major under his breath, and nodded along with his line.

Theia just glanced up at him, and smiled softly along with her own nod, "Just don't die, like all the other heroes, alright?"

John scoffed once more as they stepped into the elevator capsule, and Theia interacted with the controls, sealing them from the exuberant roar of the crowd, "I'll try not to."

Theia's tight-lipped smile morphed into a relaxed one and her cheeks dimpled, "You've changed since you left Omega, since when were you so introspective?"

John almost wished that Theia could see his small amused smile and interested eyes, and he caught himself on the thought as proof of her statement. Making him ironically wish she could see his expression to validate her observation and his own curiosity toward comradery with the Asari, "I suppose finding out I'm stuck here for the long haul and finding new friends has changed a few things."

"Hmmmm," Theia sounded with a twinkle in her eye, but otherwise remained silent for the next thirty seconds of their ascent until the doors to the elevator opened.

The primary entertainment hub of Omega was the same, yet different. The lights that illuminated the walkways and chasms beyond were no longer low luminosity and flickering in dilapidated areas. It now looked like daylight. The once piles of trash were gone.

They walked around the causeway toward Afterlife, and John wanted to scoff again, but this time held it in. While Omega developed, it would clearly always hold onto the trappings of its origins.

Afterlife's main floor remained the club that it was renowned as, however, cleaned to a shiny brassy finish. Everything above had been externally painted white with a single large red symbol for Omega adorning it, below the emblem was a single line making it ultimately clear what the upper floors of the club had been converted to:

OMEGA SENATE

Theia paused with him to give him time to take in the changes. The lines of foot traffic – clerks, entertainment workers, locals headed in and out of Afterlife, and salespeople – all moved more slowly when they recognised the armoured figure, but maintained a respectful distance, as much as they could while quickly snapping photos from their omni-tools.

"It's something, isn't it?"

"It's something," John agreed and took a single step toward Afterlife to prompt Theia forward.

Theia took the prompt casually, and she picked up her pace, and they crossed the bridge into the airlock section of Afterlife. The inner door remained shut as they entered, and Theia took them immediately left into where a new elevator had been cut through the ceiling and wrapped in a white glass tube with ornate swirling etchings.

The tube slid open at their approach, and John stepped onto the two-meter diameter steel pad after Theia.

"Senate reception," She verbalised in a clear voice, and the glass slid back around the tube to seal them in before the circular pad began to rise smoothly.

In moments, the tube was opening again, and they were stepping back out of it into a room that John thought would have fit in on the Citadel. The surfaces had all been painted an off-white tone, the footprint of the room was the same as Afterlife below, and directly ahead of them was a polished wooden desk.

Two slim and yet exceedingly buxom Asari waited behind the desk with smiles that John would be hard-pressed to differentiate between being seductive or prideful.

Theia didn't seem to react to their expressions, and she marched directly up to them, "You know who he is," She pointed her thumb at him over her shoulder, "So we'd like an audience with Chancellor D'argo."

The closest Asari to Theia - who John noted to be taller than average - looked down at Theia for a moment before looking up at him and batting her lids twice. Then while assuming a look of cautious interest with a momentary bite of her plump lower lip, she smiled, "Of course, the Hero of Omega will receive an audience with the Chancellor, Dock Master."

She shifted her posture slightly and narrowed her eyes at the second receptionist, who was of equal vertical posture and physical nature and gave the order with her face. The second receptions interacted with her omni-tool for a moment and then spoke into it in a musically silken voice, "Chancellor D'argo, the Master Chief has come to have an audience with you, would you like me to tell him to wai-"

"-ABSOLUTELY NOT, LECEBRA!" A surprisingly gruff and anxious voice growled over the omni-tool link, "I'm already on my way, extend my apologies for my lateness!"

Both Asari receptionists winced mildly over their calmly seductive smiles, and the one with the active omni-tool bit her lower lip and answered, "Chancellor, I do believe that he can hear you over my omni-tool."

"Curses! I'll be right there..."

The Asari who had first responded to Theia interlocked her fingers and settled them bellow her navel just above her groin. The pressure of the gentle placement of her hands pulled her formfitting bodysuit taught, and she smiled casually at John, "Can we do anything to keep you occupied while you wait?"

"No thank you, Ma'am," He answered strictly while holding off the scoff of amusement at their seductive attitude and subtle attempts to draw his attention in a way that a lot more personal experience would be required before he could possibly give.

The Asari seemed flattered the response to her, and her pale blue skin darkened to an almost red-purple across her cheeks, and Theia snorted, crossed her arms, and spun to face John. With a roll of her eyes, she told him that this wasn't the typical behaviour and that it was something purely for him; the Hero of Omega.

John rotated slightly and stood at parade rest and looked across the large circular room. A pathway ahead of them crossed directly through the centre to another glass elevator tube at the far end. A second path crossed the room in the other direction with an intersection in the middle, and curving desks splayed out from the middle of the room. They were all occupied by beings dressed in their myriad choices of professional attire, all of them making a failing effort to ignore John and remain on task.

After another two minutes of silent waiting, a pad bearing a single individual slid to a stop in the glass tube at the far end of the senate reception room, and the individual marched hurriedly across the chamber floor with swinging arms and long stomping strides.

John blinked in surprise but didn't let his thoughts otherwise show as the Batarian man dressed in a vaguely Human-like black suit with a white V-neck undershirt came to a near-breathless stop two meters away from him into the circular room.

The Batarian seemed unsure of the appropriate greeting for a long moment, and his posture trembled and his four eyes all blinked rapidly before he finally shakily offered his right hand with his fingers splayed. John reacted to the gesture smoothly and wrapped the smaller aliens hand with his own, and he was again surprised to feel the Batarian grip firmly and attempt to initiate the shaking process.

John allowed it and then released, and the Batarian revealed his predatory pointed teeth in a trepidations smile, "Master Chief... I- Ah- Well- Welcome back to Omega! It's- Ah- Well- It's changed- You- Ah- Well- We're a democracy now- Ah- Thanks to you."

John swept his gaze around the room again, finding that none of the occupants were attempting to pretend to work and had all affixed him and the Batarian Chancellor with curious eyes. He looked sideways through his visor and found the two Asari receptionists still batting their lids at him and gently chewing their bottom lips, and Theia was looking at the Chancellor with an amused curve to her lips.

"Chancellor D'argo, I presume?"

"Ahem!" The Batarian cleared his throat forcefully and blinked rapidly again, "Curses! Sorry, Master Chief... Yes, I am the elected Chancellor D'argo- I know it might surprise you to see a Batarian as the Chancellor- But- Ah-"

"-No, Chancellor," John cut off his nervous reply. After a brief pause he reached up and lifted his helmet free from his head and looked down into D'argo's jowly and pocked face with his piercing blue gaze while tucking his helmet under his left arm, "If you are elected, I don't care what species you are."

He looked right, to Theia, and let a small smile tug on his lips; revealing his face seemed the appropriate respect for those he saw as allies. "We'll be working together, so we should know each other."

Theia's jaw slackened slightly at the sudden gesture, but after a moment she assumed a rueful scowl and her eyes twinkled.

"Looks like I win the betting pool 'bout you being Human."

John quirked his left brow at her muttered chuckle before resuming calm neutrality and looking back into the dark almost black sclera eyed Batarian whose jowls were twitching in what John thought was nervousness.

"I'll be blunt with you, Chancellor, I'm here because I need funding..." The right side of John's face winced, "I need a lot of funding-"

D'argo winced too, either in response to the straight-up request, or to his own expression, John couldn't tell, but John halted as D'argo's lips trembled around a failed sentence.

The vocal space gave the Batarian Chancellor nerve, and he cleared his throat, "Ahem- I- Ah- Omega, we will all be honoured to help you, Master Chief, please, come up to the senate chambers, there are several district governors and the secretary of defence already present, I am sure that they would like to be a part of this discussion."

John just nodded once professionally, and D'argo looked expectantly to Theia; she shrugged, and D'argo nodded to himself and turned and started back through the large circular room. Clerks remained fixated on the three while the passed, and it wasn't until the three entered the elevator tube on the far end and turned to face back did the workers all put their heads back down.

The pad within the tube slid upward without inertia, and in several seconds they had flashed by three other levels before coming to a gliding stop at the floor level of the fourth. The tube slid open, and D'argo stepped out first in the room of similar off-white colourisation as the lower floor.

Unlike the lower floor, where it had been a simple circular room with curving desks to match, this room was tiered downward from where they were. A line of steps led down onto curving pathways until they stopped at the lowest point of the room where a podium with a chair sat.

John looked left and right, noting that on each several meter wide tiers there were banks of bench's on the inner edge so that anyone seated there could look down into the middle without contest for view; several of the lower tiers were occupied and heated, but not aggressive, chatter floated up to them.

D'argo led, once more, and paced down the stairs, "Ahem!" He cleared his throat loudly and forcefully, and the chatter stopped dead.

John and Theia followed a step behind the Batarian, Theia giving John an expectant glance and arch of her slender white browline, and John remained focused on the back of the Batarians dimpled head.

"Senators, Secretary, we have an esteemed guest."

The two dozen beings that had been discussing politics and economics all stood the moment that their eyes landed on the unmasked towering human whose helmet tucked under his arm and distinct armour advertised his known identity.

"Spirits..."

"By the Goddess..."

"It's him... He's back..."

"Holy moly and shit on a cracker!"

John allowed the slightest downturn on his lips in a smirk at the last muttered line, and he found the lone Human face in the chamber immediately. John's bright eyes met the bald elderly man's dark brown, and then the older man lifted his clean-shaven chin higher, and his eyes twinkled.

John identified the look of pride quickly, and let his tiny smirk shift into a slight smile, and then swept his eyes across the other beings – they were as he'd expect for an elected senate of Omega. The twenty-four present represented all of the Milky Way's known species, and all were dressed in what would have been neat dress clothes and dresses. Still, all looked appropriately dishevelled for senators who had been cast with the challenging task of bringing Omega into a modern democracy.

D'argo led John and Theia down to the lowest point, stopped just shy of the podium, set a single step above the concaved floor several meters across, and gestured with a hand for John to position the speakers' platform.

"Sir, we will hear what you have to say."

Within John's mind, he found the Batarian's words to be perplexing in its differences from all the others of his kind he'd witnessed thus far, but externally, he just nodded once in thanks and took the podium.

"Dock Master, would you like to sit with us?"

It was less a request and more a politely given order. Theia inclined her head once and followed the Chancellor back up the flight of stairs several meters before he took her right onto one of the curving paths with unoccupied seats next to where the others present were already located.

John watched them take their seats, and he looked across his audience again; Omega was a long way from being the small and hostile world that he'd cleaned up. All of the faces looked awed and interested, and as his eyes passed over them, he saw them all grow more firm in their resolves.

John's inspection finished on D'argo, seated just shy of the stairs with Theia on his left, and the Batarian's lips split in a reserved smile, "Master Chief, we will not interrupt. If you pause, we will ask questions."

John declined his head in a single nod, "Senators, Chancellor, I don't know what your political stance is on the Reapers, but I believe that there is substantial evidence about them being real... I, we," He paused, and his lips twitched as he thought of Miranda and his acquired team of scientists back on Caucasus, his Reach reborn, "We are preparing for them, but we don't have enough resources to do much. I have technology that can destroy them, just not the equipment or workers to build it. I propose a research and defence pact; if you supply us with what we need to begin building, I will pledge our forces to the mutual defence of Omega, and I will allow your researchers access to my technology."

None of the Senators answered, and John's brow dropped marginally before he lifted it, cleared his throat, and continued bluntly, "I estimate several trillion credits worth of resources will be needed to begin equipping and building our first ship."

As though he'd pulled a trigger for the action, foreheads ridged through the small audience, but none exclaimed in anger or shock. Several minutes of awkward silence followed before an unusually muscular Asari dressed in black cargo pants and wearing a tight black leather t-shirt leaned forward and looked along their curved table to see if anyone else would speak first.

D'argo noticed the Asari, and spluttered in surprise, "The Senate recognises Omega's Secretary of Defence, Tutela Proelium."

She gave him a single nod, and then stood to be seen; further unlike any Asari John had yet met, she had little breast tissue to speak of, and had she been any more muscled, John would have figured her to be taking performance enhancers. Her eyes narrowed shrewdly, and the floral-like black lines that rolled around her eyes rippled with the motion, and after briefly pursing her lips, she licked them and then spoke carefully in a measured and firm tone.

"Master Chief, you said 'your forces,' does that mean that you've developed a standing army?"

"No Defence Secretary," He shook his head, "I am Caucasus' forces, as of now."

Tutela blinked twice rapidly in surprise, but then smirked knowingly and nodded, "Well, that is more than most worlds have... As to your query about the Reapers..." She paused and looked back along the seated Senators who were looking to her for her end of the exchange, "Omega is in agreement that the Reaper threat is real- However," She winced and crossed her arms over her chest while meeting John's eyes below.

"We are only just building up our own defences now... Our army is- It's- How would you put it-"

"-A friggen shit-show?" The older Human snorted derisively from several seats left of Tutela.

The Asari winced and set her square jaw, but nodded, "Our ships are mostly crewed by former local Mercs, there are very few individuals serving here who have formal military backgrounds, we are spending almost all of our budget on specialising our forces and-"

"-I can train them," John stated flatly.

Tutela blinked in surprise again, this time it lasted a second longer, and every person in the room sat forward in wonder and looked between John's calm expression, Tutela's surprised one, and D'argo's enraptured one.

After another beat of no one replying further John met Tutela's perplexed eyes again, "I can train volunteers on Caucasus, you can supply me with resources."

Her brow creased as it dropped, and she looked to D'argo for permission; the Batarian gave it with a quick nod, and she looked back, "What are you wanting to build, exactly?"

"Ships, orbital structures, ground-based structures."

Tutela's dark almost-black lips pursed, "What tonnage? Class of ships?"

"By your standards..." John started with his eyes narrowing as he did the math for the first class of ship that he had in mind, "By tonnage, heavy cruisers and super dreadnoughts."

Tutela paled, "Our standards?" She queried slowly and looked back down the line to D'argo, who also shrugged nervously.

"My people built ships to different tonnage standards than yours," John explained simply, "By my peoples' standards, the dreadnoughts here are heavy frigates."

Tutela paled further and pinched her lips before speaking again, "I think I speak for all of us, Master Chief, we want to help you... But how can we? What you're asking for is..."

"-It's doable," Theia interjected, and all eyes turned onto her. She shrunk from collective gaze for a moment, before, like Tutela, she pursed her lips and steeled her nerve in front of the figures of authority and carefully stood from her chair.

"There are six new dry docks in orbit, we haven't started using them yet, and they're loaded up with auto-forges, they're fully crewed, they just need to know what to build and how to build it..."

"Errr- But- We need-" D'argo stumbled over his words and coughed away the nervous phlegm in his throat. John looked at him in contained curiosity for a moment and figured that he must have an idyllic rapport with the citizens of Omega to have been voted into power.

"They cost us more than half of our budget," Tutela answered with a latent scowl, "That's a lot to give away."

"I need crews, as well," John added simply, and then pursed his lips in a moment of thought, "The hardware can belong to Caucasus, but they can be crewed by your forces, but they will serve my command and will be signed onto a defence pact with Omega, you will not be undefended."

"Goddess..." Tutela hissed between pursed lips with a head shake, "We'll need to pump out more recruitment posters for this..." She looked back at D'argo again, who was chewing his top lip nervously while his eyes darted around. "Master Chief, if- If you can promise us that you'll stick to your word, then you've got a deal."

"His promises are pretty solid..." Theia muttered under her breath.

John nodded, "I promise."

"Ah- Master Chief-" D'argo's gruff Batarian-typical voice halted, and as John was learning to see as a habit, he coughed to clear a phlegmy throat, "How do we ratify a deal like this? I ah- well, we've made political contact with the Citadel to try to get an embassy there, and- ahh, we've been looking for you- Nyreen Kandros recommended that we find you and award you a privileged position here- But... Well, eh, we heard that you were part of the Alliance now?"

John's right eye narrowed in something between a wince and a motion of thoughtful calculation, but after a beat, he turned his head in a single shake, "I am associated with the Systems Alliance, but Caucasus is my base-"

"-So you're aiming to be a new colony world, a republic?" Tutela interrupted, her brow ridged in confusion.

Both of John's brows dropped slightly and then knitted in thought, he narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips briefly before speaking slowly, "My mission is to neutralise the Reaper threat, Caucasus is my base of operations, and the Alliance do not fund me-"

"-So you're founding a republic?"

John's lips twitched, and his pinched brow remained pinched, and he thought that Miranda would be better suited to this kind of conversation. Caucasus was growing, and it would continue to grow, if it were to become the base it needed to be for him to make it a functional bastion against the Reapers, but he had no intention of founding a colony...

"Maybe-" He halted and looked at the white metallic floor in thought briefly before looking back to Tutela who looked confused and interested, "-In time, maybe, but for now, it'll just be a military stratocracy."

Tutela pursed her lips, snorted quietly, and glanced down the faces to D'argo. The Batarian looked back and winced, and Tutela grunted again before wincing with a narrowing of her eyes once more, "Master Chief... I'm not going to lie, we're desperate. Most of the Merc's you killed left all their gear here, but Aria's forces left with most of the experienced fighters, and the best hardware- Heh! You know, we probably need your alliance more than you need ours... But, you know that Omega was essentially a stratocracy before you wiped out the gangs and the people ejected Aria? It feels-"

"-Frightening," D'argo grunted from next to Theia, and finally seemed to find an element of steel as his eyes hardened, "How do we know that you won't just depose us from power and take what you want? Take Omega?"

John's brows knit and rose slightly, and he looked to Theia for confirmation of their line of thought, and she huffed and shrugged quietly, leaving the increasingly perturbed Spartan to look back to D'argo and then after a moment back to Tutela, "With respect, if I wanted to kill you and take what I wanted, then I would have already, and I wouldn't have come here in a Kodiak."

Tutela scowled for a moment and then snorted a sound of derision, seemingly directed to herself as she looked down, and then nodded, "Right, it's hard to remember that we're talking to someone who's literally a supersoldier... Ahh, Chancellor, Senators, I propose that we draft an agreement to present to the Master Chief, it will be ratified by his signing it-" She looked down the line of perplexed, excited, and anxious faces, "-Agreed?"

"Agreed," D'argo answered.

John gave Omega's unlikely Chancellor a nod of thanks, and then a chorus of "Agreed," came from the rest of the seated Senators.

XxxX

Keelah, they were so close! They were so, SO, SOOOO close! Tali snarled behind her mask, her lingering sense of shock entirely washed away by the rage that gripped her. Her finger pulled the trigger of the M-8, and a line of armour piercing tracers stitched up the abdomen of the Collector drone a half meter in front of her.

It's brown-green blood exploded out its back, and Tali struck her leg forward in a kick to remove the obstacle from her view and changed her target to the Collector another meter away. This one was firing passed her, and Tali sighted on its murky eyes and pulled the trigger again.

The insectoid features were reduced to mushy pulp, and Tali swapped the thermal clip out with her right hand while she summoned her attack drone to move forward with her left. They were in the centre of the ship, and it was precisely as populated by the enemy as they feared it would be. Still, the invaders had all converged here, minus Kasumi, who was apparently wiggling her way back to the Normandy through the ducts.

The control room was roughly spherical with humps and lumps emerging from the walls like growths, and dozens of bridges emerged from large doorways in the spherical chamber to lead down to the single central platform fifty meters across in the middle of the chamber.

In the middle was a pylon that went directly up through the chamber and into the ceiling; it pulsed with electrical current, and it was their goal. But the platform was dotted with thigh height defensive barriers, and each one had at least three Collectors behind it.

To Tali's right, Shepard was down on a knee and firing careful, but quick shots into the heads of any Drone that even dared look in Tali's direction, and around the edges of the platform the rest of the squad were evicting the locals and taking positions behind the defensives barriers and providing cover fire for the allied platoons to move across the bridge and assault the chamber.

While the war that Tali had been submerged in externally on Rannoch had beaten her ears with constant thunder of massive cannons; the sheer volume of small arms fire taking place in the spherical room had Tali hearing nothing but the shrieking clatter of rifle fire.

Her eyes briefly scanned to Shepard's name on the HUD of her visor as it flashed, signally that he was speaking to her. Still, she went with the rage that was mobilising her forward and helping her ignore her shock and fear. She zoned out his words amidst the background clatter of noises and ran ahead while firing into the face of another Collector until that too was reduced to fleshy pulp.

She ducked around the dead Collectors body as it started to fall to the ground, and a line of energy missed her by a hairsbreadth and scorched halfway through the Drone. Tali gritted her teeth and dived forward over the barrier and rolled back to her feet, firing into a group of five Drones sighting on her from over the next set of obstacles several meters ahead.

Tali's rounds glanced off suddenly active kinetic barriers, and then her barriers lit up in response to their fire suddenly consuming her. The Quarian's mind struggled to keep up with the pace of events as a streak of blue exploded into the group's middle. Then a slight energy wrapped figure lodged a shotgun on the midsection of one. It fired, blasting half of its abdomen off, before dropping to a knee and charging the shotgun mechanically between shots that decimated the creatures that had very nearly ended the Quarian's rage.

Tali grunted a raw sound of anger and ran to the barrier and rested the barrel of her M-8 on top of it and started firing at the next closest group of Drones. The energy wrapped figure toppled over the barrier next to her, and Tali stooped to remove herself from the line of sight of the next bank of defenders.

"You're fucking crazy, you know that, right?" Jack wheezed breathlessly and lay on her back for a moment, "Since when were you the crazy one? I thought I was the fucking pyscho on board, not the nice little prissy Quarian who likes good boy dick."

"Good boy dick..." Tali's brow knit while she parroted it, and then she scowled and looked at the recovering biotic with narrowed eyes as she put the meaning together- Humans and their slang... "We are on Rannoch, Jack," She hissed in a clipped tone, "We can defeat the Geth... Forever!"

Jack slid her back against the barrier, pushed herself a little higher with her heels and glanced over the wall before dropping back down. A streak of fire flashed through where Jack's head had been, and she snorted derisively, "Hey, I get it. I don't care that they're sentient creatures and all that... One evil alien race is as bad as 'nother, just, ya know, don't get us killed in killing them."

Tali scrunched her face together and pinched her lips into a tight pout that made her nose crinkle, "Gah!" She sounded in frustration and slapped in a new thermal clip. However, before she could rise, Shepard slid against the barrier next to her on his stomach from a dive and pulled himself onto his knees.

The strip of his visor fixed onto Tali's faceplate, and he tapped the side of his helmet to indicate comms. Tali narrowed her eyes and bit her lip in a moment of guilt and nodded, "My comms are good."

"So you just chose to ignore me then?"

She chewed the inside of her cheek again and clenched her eyes shut. Tali needed to focus on her anger if she was going to get through this, and if she was going to liberate her world. A break in focus on her hatred of the Geth was already making the sound of gunfire thrum through her essence rather than deflect off her mindset.

"Never mind, we don't have the time..." Shepard grunted, "Squad, sound off."

"I've got Zaeed, and Mordin, Shepard," Jacob's voice came out tired and throaty, "We're back one row from you to your left, there's a bunch more of them over here, I count fifty, we're keeping them off you."

The arduous chatter of rifle fire and the thud and boom of explosive and biotic detonations joined Jacob, and Tali winced with a jolt going through her shoulders.

"The Justicar and I are covering the Krogan coming across the bridge to the right of where we entered, Commander," Thane explained calmly.

Tali and Shepard both turned and raised their heads slightly to peek back in the direction that they'd come across the large platform dotted with barriers. They spied two figures to the far right of where they'd touched the platform from the chrome bridge that crossed the divide to the path that went directly back to the Normandy up an inclining series of passageways.

The two professional alien operators were each holding a Mattock and firing between one anothers shots, forcing the Collector drones on the platform's right flank to keep their heads down or lose them, making safe passage for Grunt and his troops to charge across their bridge toward the platform.

"We've taken covering positions with the Alliance platoon, Shepard," Garrus added, "We'll help cover your exit if we need to get out in a rush."

"AND I'M CHARGING!" Grunt roared in excited joviality while charging the final few paces across one of the bridges with his shotgun blaring in his grip along with a dozen other Krogan.

The air suddenly buzzed with a sound almost like static, and a cloud of Drones descended from a hole in the spherical ceiling far above and started shooting down at their positions.

Jack glowed blue and reached out with her biotic senses, an airborne Drone glowed blue in response, and it was torn from its formation and was smashed against one of the walls, "I'll smear all'a you motherfuckers!" Jack growled and grabbed for another.

Tracer rounds and particle beams honed in on them, and Shepard grabbed Tali by her forearm and crouch-walked to his left, across an open space between two barriers and to the second. Tali stumbled along with him and dove around his body just as a biotic detonation went off in the position that she'd been in, and Jack launched herself back over the barrier and glowed in rippling blue power.

She stretched her arms out wide and then clapped her hands together and launched herself forward as though she were a kinetic round. She hurtled over two lines of barriers and smashed into a group of ten Drones and was firing her shotgun on autopilot while lashing out with combination biotic strikes.

"Jacob, move up, right now! Stay on us."

Tali crawled back to her feet and kept her M-8 held to her hip while she fired and vaulted smoothly over the barrier and dashed to the next line to support Jack. Her shots hailed down on the Collectors who were in the process of whittling down Jack's biotic barrier, and they turned to fire on her instead.

As they did, another blue streak flashed by Tali, and suddenly Jacob was in their midst, "I got you, Tali!" He shouted in exertion, "Get to the pylon! Ahhh!" The biotic commando cried in sudden pain and dove to the floor, leaving a trail of blood while he went.

"Shit, Jacob!" Shepard yelled and doubled his run and vaulted the barrier into the group of Collectors' trying to bring their weapons to bear on Jacob who was holding his left arm close to his body while still firing up into the group with his right. "Tali, move up! Mordin, go with her, get to the damn pylon."

"Shepard, there are more coming!" Garrus called into the comms.

Tali glanced up and paled at the swarm of Collectors descending from above. An almost equal mass of tracer rounds rose to meet the newcomers from the Alliance squad, but before any sense of hope could settle in, a haunted wailing sound filled the air.

"HUSKS!"

Tali ducked and rolled right, and then launched herself over the barrier behind Shepard. The Spectre was laying into the group of Collectors with the butt of his rifle and automatic fire every time he had enough space to level it, and suddenly a new weapon started firing from next to Tali.

The neat pinprick sounds of the tempest submachine gun preceded Mordin's clipped tone, "Tali, we must get to the pylon, end this, escape, now! Quickly!"

The Quarian simply gritted her teeth and nodded once while vaulting over the final barrier that separated them from the pylon. On instinct, she sent her drone forward into a shadow looming around the far side of the broad structure that took up the middle of the platform.

Two Drones came around the corner and startled at the arc of electricity from Tali's drone, and before they could recover, both she and Mordin fired a single salvo of rounds and reduced their craniums to mush. Tali rounded on the nearest and brightest holographic control on the pylon; a sizeable yellow disk with strings of data symbols swirling around it, set amidst squares of green holograms.

"Would you say that this is the control signal?" Tali queried carefully and then ducked as shots went overhead.

"Yes, yes, must be!" Mordin agreed, "The green controls, I know these, Collector control systems, some for the ship... The yellow control, I can see Khelish in there."

Tali nodded quickly along with the Salarians assessment as her eyes caught the same detail, and she lit her omni-tool and started scanning the disk of data. She went over it several times in half as many minutes while the chamber grew louder and louder and the wails of the husks drew closer.

"TALI?"

It was Shepard's voice, he was calling to her, but she ignored it.

The baseline code in the system was Khelish; the original baseline code of the Geth that they had never truly modified out, and there was a band of modified Geth code acting as a conduit between the Khelish and the inserted Reaper code that was linked into the behavioural and logic centres of the Geth's data processing systems.

"Looks like the Reaper code is overriding the Geth code and going straight to the original baseline code to reduce the Geth back to servants..." Tali mused slowly, "What do you think?"

"Yes, yes, I agree. Two options, withdraw the Reaper code and free the Geth from their control, or wipe all data-"

"-Kill them, you mean," Tali interrupted and shot Mordin a hard look through her faceplate. She looked back to the disk and analysed further before entering a string of codes into her omni-tool and simulating the response.

"Yes, all Geth on Rannoch would be killed, likely the best option. If we free them, they may still attack us."

Tali nodded, "If we free them, they get to live..." Her voice grew thick with anger, and she looked over her shoulder to where Shepard was firing back into a charging horde of husks while Zaeed worked over Jacobs form on the floor. She looked at Shepard for a moment before her nose crinkled with a scowl, "I'm wiping all the data."

"Most sensible choice," Mordin agreed.

"Most sensible choice," Tali muttered it in assent to herself, then rechecked her simulated line of coded shutdown and data wiping orders in her omni-tool. The analysis completed in seconds, and with a firm nod, she pressed her glowing orange device to the yellow control on the pylon.

The yellow controls flickered briefly before bit by bit they starting to turn orange. Tali pursed her lips for a second and then shared a look with Mordin through his faceplate, and a tiny smile tugged his amphibian lips into a look of achievement, "Mission accomplished, Tali'Zorah."

"Keelah... Mission accomplished," She agreed haltingly with several head bobs to herself to drive the idea home. More shots whizzing passed her shoulder brought her suddenly back to their reality, and she looked sharply back to Shepard who was shooting out the gnarled legs of the husks to drop them rather than kill them.

"Shepard, it's done, Keelah... It's done!"

"You heard the lady, squad, everyone fall back to the Normandy!"

Tali and Mordin dashed back to join Shepard, and Zaeed hauled Jacob back to his feet, "Here, Doc, you take 'im, err, I did my best."

Tali instinctively helped stabilised the unbalanced lightly armoured biotic soldier and Mordin did an immediate assessment, "Left hand removed at the forearm... Burns, particle beam? Yes, must be," He glanced to the floor and nodded and then back to Jacobs missing appendage, "Blood loss from only partial cauterisation, medi-gel application suitable for a wound like this for no more than ten minutes."

"Grunt, get your Krogan moving back to the Normandy, you're our vanguard!"

"Hur-hur-hur, sounds fun, Shepard!" The Krogan rumbled happily over the comms in reply. From further along their left flank, The Krogan started charging toward the same bridge that they'd entered from all the while shooting back at the swarm of Collectors above and husks emerging from crevises around them.

"Alliance platoon, move, NOW!" Shepard continued to order, "Squad, get there with them, we're right behind you!"

Tali bit her lip for only a moment in a wash of concern, and then folded her M-8 down and lodged it onto her back and took her Canifex in her left hand while wrapping her right around Jacob's middle. Mordin copied the action from the biotics' other side, and they started rushing forward with their comrade.

Shepard and Jack fell in behind them and fired back at the pursuing Collectors and Husks, and before long they'd crossed the platform and its barriers and were stumbling over the bridge.

The path they had taken through the Collector ship hadn't been reinforced since their passing; the local forces all apparently converged on the central control room. The run back through the inclining passageway was entirely uncontested besides the Collectors and Husks that chased directly after them.

Tali and Mordin moved further to the front of the retreating group as the leaders slowed to help cover the retreat, and within five minutes they stumbled back into the blasted open chamber that the Normandy was still resting within. Tali and Mordin scrambled toward the open hanger with Jacob growing increasingly limp, and Kasumi came sprinting toward them.

"What happened!" She called hotly in sudden concern and pushed Tali out of the way to take Jacob's left.

"Collector beam, left hand removed at the forearm, needs medical attention immediately."

Tali halted briefly as the sound of gunfire moved from the passageway to the chamber as the group's rearguard fell back and started sprinting toward the Normandy's hanging in groups with four stopping at a time to fire back the way they'd come to cover the retreat of the next four.

However, no Collectors joined the fray, and moving walls of necrotising flesh and technology lurched after the retreating invaders.

"EVERYONE ONBOARD, NOW!" Shepard's voice roared through the open channel.

Tali heeded the order and ran after Kasumi and Mordin, hauling Jacob between them just as they reached the top of the ramp. She followed them up, but rather than keep with them through the hanger, she stopped and took a knee and faced back into the chamber increasingly filled with immobile flesh.

She sighted on the closest husks and took a calming breath before firing. The husk that was mere meters from the backs of the furthest retreating Alliance soldiers dropped with the top of its head splattered into a cloud of mist and flying matter. She moved to the next one and fired, and the next, and the next, and in moments the rest of the Normandy squad was formed around her providing elevated cover fire while the remnants of the Alliance squad and the Krogan berserkers charged up the ramp.

Their numbers were halved from what they'd entered with, but Tali had been growing increasingly accustomed to seeing death, and the calculating element that was currently controlling her actions within her mind justified it as a fair trade-off for a permanent defeat of the Geth.

"Joker, everyone's aboard, get us the hell out of here!"

"Aye, aye, Shep- This place gives me the heebie-jeebies."

The ramp started to raise in the same instant as the Normandy began to lift from the floor, and they were exiting the hole blown through the hull by the former Krogan destroyer in moments. Before the ramp entirely closed and gave them a reprieve from the onslaught they'd been embroiled within, the sound of thunderous explosions from the battle in the plains and skies outside barged through the open crack, and Tali bit lower lip harshly in concern for her code having failed.

XxxX

Two thorned roses were propagating in his garden, designed as it was to be entirely thornless and easy to harvest the beauty and richness from them. One such rose was a known quantity, and was called Commander John Shepard; Jack had always expected the good Commander to turn on him and go about things in his own way... However, never so soon and never with such a strange rippling effect on elements that he had trusted, such as Miranda.

The second thorn was called the Master Chief. As far as Jack could tell, the soldier, perfect in his capability, was a total enigma, and an ever-increasing issue. In the beginning, when Jack had heard of the now largest of the thorns on Omega, he had found it very interesting, but ultimately a non-issue – something to be ignored for more pressing matters.

The Master Chief had quite quickly become a pressing matter, strangely at the same time as Shepard going rogue from his Cerberus connections, and he had shown up on Eden Prime, with his wayward former confidante', of all people. As though the best of Cerberus meant nothing to him, he had cut his way efficiently and brutally through the entire first battalion on Eden Prime, taken Jack's most promising local scientists from the Prothean dig site, and then vanished as though into thin air.

As far as Jack was concerned, the vanishing element meant that he had acquired whatever he had gone there to get. While Jack would have been remiss to not have assigned a small research team to the dig, just in case there was indeed more to be found, he had already cut a majority of Cerberus' vested interests from the site.

He placed them onto something a lot more controllable and a lot more pertinent to the thorn he could attempt to redirect.

"Doctor Core, progress is going well, I assume?"

The holographic screen in front of Jack, which separated his eyes from an unobstructed view of the undulating red giant beyond his observation screen, fizzed and then the familiar face resolved onto it. The all too lifelike lips pursed and the faux skin around the eyes tightened marginally. Jack briefly had trouble deciding if Eva was attempting to emulate Human expression and draw a reaction from him, or if she was genuinely developing the organic behaviours.

His own eyes narrowed marginally as he decided that she was merely mimicking, and those full lips that he was proud to say he'd had a hand in helping to develop parted to allow her firm and authoritative voice out.

"Yes, Doctor Archer has yielded a breakthrough, all we need to do now is track down the Geth and capture them."

Jack's lips twitched, but he remained otherwise neutral until humility took the place that it should in his persona, "Not yet, we will be repositing Cronos base to the Typhon system, along with our several dry docks. It is not yet clear whether this Master Chief has the support of the Alliance, and we can't afford to have a military power focusing on us."

"I understand, Mister Harper."

Jack's lips twitched, this time in subdued pleasure. His name was one of his greatest secrets, not that it would yield anyone any real power over him at this point, but he had a direct hand to play in crafting Eva and her magnificent body, so it pleased him to hear her address him in a deferential manner.

"Would you like for me to inform Doctor Archer that you will be having the local units mobilised to be utility and construction drones?"

"Yes, that would be ideal, Eva, please do that," He said and narrowed his eyes in thought, "Also, reach out to our contacts, find out what result we might expect from Shepard's little foray onto Rannoch."

"Of course, Mister Harper."

Her plump and curving lips pulled into a professional smile and then the screen blanked and disappeared, and Jack sighed and leaned back in his chair and let his head relax onto his shoulder while looking at the obsidian ceiling above. Things couldn't be better, but things also couldn't be worse – his plans, some of them, were enfolding better than imaginable, but others were so askew that he wished he could turn back the clock on them.

Constructing the twelve dry docks that he had was a huge investment, and the four active cruisers that he had, as a result, were operating on strict orders to not risk close range engagements. His armed to the teeth heavy cruisers were no more than well armed ferry's and only effective against an enemy that they could overwhelm for all intents and purposes.

Subverting the politics on Eden Prime years earlier had helped in that regard, and still was helping. Nevertheless, unlike the typical cover companies he ran, he couldn't simply funnel everything out of Eden Prime if he wanted to maintain a ready pool of idyllic Human scientists, researchers, or candidates for the optimisation program.

While the Master Chief's and Miranda's invasion of Eden Prime had dealt him a stunning blow with the loss of specialists from the dig. It also dealt him an invigorating pledge of support from the locals who saw the two-person invasion as an attack on their independence and a push of foreign interests onto their world.

There was nothing to be done about Shepard, not yet. Difficult as the Spectre was, Jack still considered him the tip of Cerberus's spear's interests against their most pressing enemy, whereas this Master Chief... This figure who he'd just learnt to somehow be an integral figure to Asari ancient religion, he was something else entirely...

Jack scowled lightly and then made his lips vibrate with a forced exhalation – there were no underlings present to make him hide his frustration. The Master Chief seemed to be serving Human interests, in a way. Still, he was too unknowable, and his interests had already crossed Jack's own twice now, even if those same interests had already helped deliver the plans for the Crucible.

Jack's scowl deepened; the Master Chief was an enigma – somehow, he had even subverted Miranda to his cause, beyond what Shepard had even managed, and in a much shorter time. He was a military asset head and shoulders above everything else the galaxy fielded. Still, he also seemed to operate with a strategic and intellectual system that made him hard to track.

What would Jack find, if he tracked the elusive soldier full of mysteries?

Would a Cerberus cruiser arrive on his homeworld only to find it full of others like him? Was he indeed from a long lost and displaced Human colony? Perhaps a remnant product of ancient Prothean meddling – which could explain the historical likeness recently connected with the figures in Athamiam religion.

What might happen then?

Was this Master Chief simply a forerunner? Was he a scout? An apparition of his people to keep his own world at arm's length from the rest of the galaxy?

"Mmmm!"

The sound that rumbled up Jack's throat was a sound of frustration, and it only made his scowl deepen. He knew the landscape that he had to tread with the Alliance and every other major power in the galaxy, and he didn't consider any of his tactics and treatment toward them to be fearful or submissive.

Cerberus would always fall back if it must, he wouldn't tread on the toes of the giants while they had time and reason to look, but he would subvert their control and use underhanded strikes. This Master Chief... He was too capable and too unknowable, Jack hated the feeling of unease that it delivered him.

"Brrrrr."

His lips thrummed again at the forced exhalation, and he clenched his eyes briefly, pressed his lips into a thin line, and brought his hands up to rub tiredly at his face. His artificially bright eyes opened again, and he nodded; there was far more of a silver lining than there was dulled exterior.

What the Alliance called the Crucible, and with the Citadel, seemed unwilling to build, was now in Jack's hands. The name Crucible was a telling ideology of the Alliance, a vessel in which metals are forged. Jack had since renamed the plans since his scientists had analysed them and shared their prospects on constructing it; Ascendancy – A far more fitting name for something that he believed could serve the Reapers into the lap of his control.

It was no longer time for Cerberus to be scattered and distracted, it was time to consolidate power, build, and grow, but without earning the galaxy's attention. One way or another, the Rannoch campaign was soon to be over.

The rest of the galaxy would either flood into Geth space, or the Geth would have lost, and the rest of the galaxy would do just as Jack was doing, and begin to consolidate power and shore up defences.

Aite was the correct destination for Jack to move all of his production, science, and manufacturing. Everything in one place might make it all too possible for it to be wiped out in a single invasion, but separated, Cerberus assets would be even more vulnerable.

XxxX

If Miranda could have somehow gleaned the future mere weeks ago, she would have said that her current circumstances were more alien than the idea of a Reaper having sphincter.

She had thought that all too often recently, and she was growing tired of the idea. Her changes had enamoured her toward them, her advancements in character, she realised, were entirely dependent on having another individual that she knew that she could trust implicitly.

It made her feel both strengthened and more vulnerable than ever, but so far, the feeling of strength outweighed her sense of vulnerability, and she simply had to stay the course.

Her nostrils flared out a heavy breath and her lips pursed in effort.

"Woo! You can do it! Go on, Commander!"

Miranda clenched her eyes shut and resisted the urge to roll them; that would be far more distracting than the unfortunately enthusiastic voice already was for her wellbeing. Her desire for poise evaporated, and rather than trying to breathe neatly through her nostrils, she slackened her jaw and sucked in a deep breath.

Her lungs expanded, her chest rose, and she carried the barbell lower until it touched the underside of her breasts, she held the bar there for a second and then mustered her strength and pushed upward with her jaw slackening further and her lungs forcing the exchanged air out.

The flood of oxygen through her muscles assisted the lift, and her arms stopped just shy of straight for the twelfth time this set. Miranda held the bar above her chest for another second before carrying the weight back and letting the weight rack's grips take the weight, and she exhaled again before sitting upright on the bench and rolling her shoulders to relieve the tension.

"Woooooooo! You should totally compete!"

Miranda did roll her eyes this time, but she hid it by shutting her lids and snorting, "Right, maybe after the galaxy isn't ending?"

She opened her eyes again, and the unusually young Asari's pale blue to the point of almost being white skin darkened across her cheeks. The purple leaf-like patterns that fell from her eyes like autumnal fall crinkled as she shot Miranda a dirty look.

"Huh, thanks, Flo," Miranda cringed while she softened the blow and forced her breathing to even out and rolled her shoulders again.

The cool breeze kissed her damp skin under the shade of the long awning set up around the hull of the freighter that stretched from the hull out twenty meters in every direction.

The day following John's departure, Miranda directed the team of scientists, Human and Asari, to use some of the tools that John had ferried from the base on the bluff. They cleared the plains grass to be more alike to a lawn, and then they had gone about erecting a fence to surround the freighter in with a single large gate facing toward the river.

Naturally, the fence had been electrified in case of the plains' forewarned predators, or the territorial herbivores, deciding to take an interest in the newcomers. After the fence had been erected, relatively efficiently under multiple engineers' guidance, Miranda had led the charge in having them work even harder yet.

They had picked up spades and started digging up an earth barrier for a single and vitally important purpose. The dig had taken up the rest of the day, and by nightfall with electrical conduits running from the freighter and providing ample illumination to the fenced-off area, gunshots started filling the air.

Before Miranda had ever arrived on Caucasus, as it turned out, John had fabricated an ample stockpile of his MA5D rifles, M6H pistols, and their matching ammunition, and having the scientists equipped and knowing how to defend themselves and one another was essential.

Miranda had overseen their weapons handling training for the next morning until several of the Asari had revealed themselves to be former Commandos. They had become familiar with the Human extradimensional weaponry quickly and had taken the reigns in handling the simple weapons safety and handling lessons.

The ex-Cerberus operative was left with remarkably little to do after that; the scientists didn't have the equipment to do anything at all productive in their specialities and were either on their small range, studying the flora and insect life inside the fence, or were simply in small groups socialising, and apparently enjoying the idyllic weather under the erected awning.

So Miranda had decided that the best thing to do would be to follow the still compressed path in the grass across the valley that John had left two days earlier and head to the base on the bluff. The trek in itself had taken her the entire day, and after a long rest in the upper story kitchenette, she had gone about raiding the onsite inventory.

As it turned out, and only logically by what Miranda assumed to be common sense, the inventory was equipped with an element zero powered dolly, so she loaded it up with everything that she thought could be pertinent to time down in the freighter encampment.

When she had seen the weights equipment on one of the lower shelves, along with boxes of Alliance PT gear and clothing, she had mentally assessed her former performance with John and critiqued her physical capability. Much of how she had trained previously had been a call back to her childhood training under her father.

Miranda Lawson was swift, strong, and deadly, but not at the cost of being seductively lady-like. She realised that she'd carried that mindset since escaping from her father, and now it just wouldn't do. The weights equipment ended up dominating the dolly. Miranda found trekking downhill with the thankfully mass nullifying technology to be no more than a casual stroll. The industrial-grade dolly even had a function to provide a gentle thrust, which helped her across the river without getting wet or losing her payload.

Miranda had arrived back into camp by lunchtime on the third day and made a stack of her haul on a blue carbon pallet, informed the small community that they could have at whatever they wanted from it, and then had gone about unboxing and constructing the squat rack, the inclinable bench that came with it, and stacking its rungs with weighted plates, which once relieved from the dolly reminded Miranda what the whole point of the bloody things was.

That had been when Flo had introduced herself – it was a meeting that had Miranda entirely intrigued, but not wholly distracted from assembling her training equipment.

Miranda had never met an Asari younger than one hundred, let alone one with a skin tone less vibrant than an ocean. As it happened, the galaxy-wide intrigue over Human genetic diversity had already started to cross genetic divides; Flo was a half Human. Apparently, the Human part of the genetic code had, at the very least, affected her skin colour.

Being half Human, her parentage had broken the Asari mould of being bound by Maiden's typical Asari cultural divisions to Matron to Matriarch concepts, and Flo's ideologies sat something between what Miranda had come to expect of an Asari Maiden and a twenty-five-year-old university-educated Human.

"Are you finished yet? I can't lift that much, so it doesn't make much sense swapping the weights between sets, right?"

Miranda smiled knowingly at Flo sitting on a low white composite crate half a meter away, her slender jaw slackened in interest and her thin, but curving lips pulled into a curious smile. The thirty-year-old Asari was looking for a mentor, and along the way, was flirting.

In the day since Miranda met Flo, she had seen the behavioural and cultural divide that existed between the young Asari and her people, and the reason why the young Asari had shifted her personal interest back and forward between Cathryn Hales and herself.

"Yes, I'm done, do you need me to keep an eye-"

"-No, no! I don't want to be a bother! You're the Commander here, you probably need to go and check on everyone," Flo bit out blithely and then downcast her eyes and smiled bashfully, "You probably wouldn't find watching me exercise very interesting..."

Miranda fought the small smile that lingered on the corners of her lips and tugged her white singlet straight around her body. The clothing hugged her curved figure where she'd sweated during the full-body session and made the fabric cling to her skin and advertise her shape to the unexpectedly interested Asari.

She stood up, un-straddling the bench, and like she'd corrected the position of her singlet, she also corrected the twist that had occurred in the tight-fitting thigh-length black training shorts that she'd acquired, the effects of them had likewise caught Flo's eye. As flattered as Miranda was in the interest, it wasn't entirely her cup of tea.

"Eye's up here, Flo," Miranda snorted mirthlessly and pivoted to swing herself around the bench and face where the barbell was racked. The locking collar came off easily, and Miranda gripped the ten-kilogram plate and slid it free.

She deposited it onto its appropriate rung with several other ten kilogram plates, and then moved back to the bar and took the remaining twenty-kilogram plate off and placed it back in its proper spot before stepping around the back of the rack to do the same on the other side to leave the twenty-kilogram barbell free from excess weight.

Miranda was keenly aware of Flo's gaze lingering on her figure as she stooped, lifted, turned and stooped again. In different circumstances, she would consider reprimanding the interested young woman, but Miranda had no clue how long she might be in the close company of the joint science team, and a less tense relationship would be preferable.

A second later, Miranda crossed her arms over her chest and arched a brow at the slender faced pale Asari, and Flo blushed darkly again.

"Ahh- Sorry! It's just- Ah- Well... You know... Right?"

Miranda kept her brow arched, but let her left cheek dimple with a partial smile.

"Right... Well, ahh, I'll do the same workout you did... Don't know how long we'll be here, so might pay to get into better shape- Ahh, what did you do again, I wasn't paying that much attention."

Flo had been watching Miranda since she'd started a little over an hour earlier, and had declared it as a safety precaution. For spotting Miranda in the event of dropping a dangerous weight – of course, Miranda knew that hadn't been Flo's reason for wanting to watch.

"High bar squats, hack squats, deadlifts, good mornings, calf press, pull-ups, chin-ups, overhand row, reverse grip bench press, flat bench press," Miranda smirked as she listed the exercises she'd performed, and Flo started the blanch, "No less than four sets per exercises, and no less than twelve repetitions per set, unless you are doing a strength range, then you can do six repetitions," She explained with her voice turning silken to tease the Asari who she could now see felt the weight of an anxious expectation to perform that.

"Here, I'll help you set up for squats, I was doing ninety-six kilos, would you like to start with that?"

Flo blanched a little further to the point that she could have been mistaken for a caucasian with odd blue dye on her skin, and she shook her head quickly, "Goddess, no! No way! Ahh, how about fifty?"

The warmth returned to her skin in a blush of embarrassment, and she downcast her eyes. Miranda fought the small smirk at the success of her teasing and hid it by turning to the rack and pulling the bench free to start repositioning the grips that held the barbell so that it would be high enough for a squat.

"If you want to do fifty," She assented and then became suddenly self-conscious about her back facing Flo and the presumably hungry eyes that would be on her if she bent from her hips to lift the lowered barbell up to the new grip height.

She smirked to herself and crouched down instead and deadlifted the bar back up, against the protest of her recently exercised and wobbly muscles, and then rolled the weight in her grip and placed it back onto the rack.

"You grab a fifteen from that side, I'll do this one."

Flo hurried around the bar, almost tripping on the support foot of the full rack in the process, and she hefted the desired plate from its rung with a wince of strain while Miranda did the same minus the wince. Once the bar was loaded, Miranda stepped back around the rack and faced the bar while Flo stepped under it.

The Asari performed the same routine that Miranda had before starting and tugged her tight knee-length pants out, rolled and shrugged her shoulders around taking some deep breaths and jiggling her Alliance supplied grey singlet, and then stepped under the bar.

Flo's shoulders pressed against the metal and her hands wrapped around the shaft a handspan down, and with a grunt and exhalation she stood straight a hefted the bar off the grips and took a careful shuffling step back. Miranda had made sure to lay the heavy high-density rubberised flooring that had come with the exercise equipment to ensure a more stable footing, and the matting being anchored by the rack remained taught and straight.

Flo shuffled her feet until she found the right spacing, took a deep breath, and then lowered herself down before pressing back up loudly. Miranda watched her perform the increasingly shaky set and smirked to herself.

If the girl was intent on watching her, a little too blissfully, then Miranda would redirect that energy into punishing her with exercise – it somehow made the same exercise feel less mentally tiresome on herself as well.

Flo finished the set, stepped shakily from under the bar and then leaned forward onto it and drew ragged breaths, "So- Ehh- That's enough- ehh- right?"

"An hour more, and you should be good to-"

"Ahhhhh! Noooo-" Flo moped lamely and looked over her shoulder.

Miranda suppressed the smirk and replaced it with her neutral smile. While her own sweat and discomfort had faded, Flo's was just starting, with a line of sweat beading down her temple.

"Fine, Goddess, there's got to be a good reason to do this..."

Miranda let the tiny smirk return as Flo looked back to the bar and then repeated the process. The workout continued for another fifty minutes, Miranda helping set up the next exercises, and Flo restricting her speech to short bursts of complaints and proclamations to the universe. When they finally finished, Flo flopped away from the single rack toward the grass and dropped onto her back.

"Goddess, and I only did two-thirds of what you did! Why?"

"Why, what?" Miranda asked back, standing with her hip cocked and a bemused look on her face, arms crossed over her chest once more to deter Flo from ogling her a little too much.

"Look at you!" Flo propped herself up on her elbows and made an exaggerated point of looking up and down Miranda's form, "You're... You're... Well, you're athletic and beautiful! Why are you doing this?"

The bemused look on Miranda face morphed into a small scowl, and she bit her lip momentarily before nodding away as much of the doubt as she could, "John- The Master Chief," She clarified, "He needs someone who can keep up with him, at least a little. I know that I can bloody-well do better, so I will."

"...John," Flo tasted the name on her lips and then scrunched them up and twisted her face, "All the good ones are taken!"

Confusion washed across Miranda's eyes and brow for a moment before she snorted as the Asari's meaning dawned on her, "Anything but, but unfortunately..." She smirked ruefully and stepped forward to offer her hand down to Flo, "...For you, I am not on the market."

Flo scrunched her lips together again, then chuckled lightly before taking the offered hand and rising back to wobbly feet, "Sooooo... You're not into men or women?"

Miranda expelled a breath of laughter at the persistence, "Hah! No, it's not like that. Jo-" She winced using his name so openly again, and despite feeling more comfortable with the idea of calling him that to his face, it felt somehow wrong to talk of him by name to others, "The Master Chief, he just needs help, he bloody-well needs MY help... And, he's helping me be more than I thought I could be, in a way, and we might be able to save the galaxy..." Miranda's eyes crinkled and she smiled away the foreboding thoughts and looked at Flo who was making no efforts to prevent her silvery eyes from looking at Miranda's chest, "You're bloody incorrigible! Bugger off and go find someone to help!"

Flo darkened at being caught and chuckled nervously, "Eh, sorry Commander, message received loud and clear! So, ahh... See you this time tomorrow?"

Miranda glanced at the midday light cast on the nearby plains for a sense of time, and nodded, "I'll be training again tonight if you want to join me, but if not, then I will see you this time tomorrow."

Flo paled and shook her head, "...This time tomorrow, I'll be helping Dr Hales on that data module schematic that the Chief gave us to build, for the rest of the day."

Miranda nodded, "Make sure you get it right, I think it's a conduit system for the rest of his data- I... Ahh, I think it will change everything- when we can access it."

Flo's brow arched, "If you say so," And she turned and trotted on unsteady feet back toward the nearby open loading bay in the side of the freighter, and Miranda followed her briefly and found a collection of male scientists giving her much the same looks as Flo had been giving her.

"Of course..." She muttered and huffed a sigh before marching toward the freighter as well. As she passed them, the scientists all made a notable effort to look occupied and busy, and she hurried around the hull and up the ramp that connected into the vessel's neck.

In moments she was in the command quarters and stripping down to blast herself with cold water in the small ensuite before patting herself dry, brushing her hair neat, and redressing herself in the single black combat bodysuit that she'd been wearing since leaving the Normandy.

Her bright eyes made a point of not looking at the scuff marks and damage on the suit as she quickly checked her appearance. Finding herself to be looking suitable, Miranda stepped to the door before halting and looking back at the sternum armour sitting at the foot of the bed and the M6H pistol in its holster.

She pursed her lips in thought briefly and then nodded in assent to the voice of authority in her head, and she lifted the armour up to strap around her figure, along with the holstered pistol. Miranda didn't expect any kind of trouble, but she could see how wearing the armour would help give her that extra air of authority to make sure that the scientific crew kept on viewing her as the Commander.

Miranda moved back into the high ceilinged spinal passageway of the freighter and followed the grating down toward the cargo bay with donned the armour. When she entered, the large space was surprisingly quiet. The Prothean stasis pods had been arranged around the walls of the room to make room for everything else, except one, near the centre of the room for closer study, and with a bank of tables set up in the middle was Cathryn Hales and six others, two of them being Asari.

Miranda commanded her years of leadership experience and an edge of her still marginally present haughtiness and moved with purpose in her stride. Cathryn looked up as she approached and immediately pursed her lips into a thin line and narrowed her hazel brown eyes.

"This data module... It's to copy data from that device he got from the AI, isn't it?"

"Cortana."

John hadn't described Cortana much, and she didn't know much of their story together, but she did know that John cared for the AI and that in his reality, AI were cherished, not outlawed. Having the individual with the intellect of an entire galaxy referred to impersonally as, 'the AI,' seemed imprudent.

"Cortana," Miranda repeated the name after a beat and arching her brow at Cathryn, "And yes, I believe it is. He didn't explain it to me, I just know he looked through the freighters schematics for the necessary materials-"

"-Yes –Right, I keep forgetting that he's not just a killing machine..." Cathryn bleated tiredly and palmed her face, "Who would have guessed that we have the joy of joys of working with a supersoldier from a different reality who's also a technological genius?"

Miranda's brow coalesced, and she crossed her tired arms over her armour, "Doctor Hales, perhaps you're forgetting your recent history..."

Confusion sat on Cathryn's smooth complexion for just a moment before her expression darkened.

"But you were willingly working for Cerberus, and you did have armed Cerberus loyalists in your team without your knowledge, and we... WE saved you. Now, how many scientists in history do you think would jump at the opportunity to work with advanced Human technology from a different reality?" Miranda's explained coldly with narrowed eyes. "We have been nothing but hospitable and helpful- so you feel bad that we executed those Cerberus agents from your team, but do you think they would have bloody-well felt bad executing you?"

The darkened expression washed from Cathryn's face as Miranda's tone grew firmer, and she pinched her lips sideways and averted her gaze back to the slowly coming together parts on the bench in front of her. "The design is groundbreaking... But, also quite elegantly simple." Cathryn started slowly, still keeping her eyes down, and Miranda holding hers narrowed and keen.

Flo entered Miranda's field of view from around a stack of crates five meters aft of the work station, looking freshly showered and dressed in the same comfortably fitted white shirt and soft blue pants that all of the scientific crew were wearing. She moved with a mild limp and gave Miranda an enthusiastic wince before shuffling into the group on the opposite side of the benches from Miranda.

"I can see that he has adjusted the schematic slightly to work with what was available... Their technology must be revolutionary compared to ours..." Cathryn drawled to herself, and then caught herself with a bashful smile and nodded at the halfway assembled device.

"The top layer is made up of the organic-polymer crystalline lattice that we use to repair external viewscreens on ships with fibre-optic lattice modules housed every hundred nanometres, arranged almost like a neural network, that in turn connects into our solid-state drives which are liquid-cooled to handle the amount of data processing- I, ahhh, I wouldn't be surprised if the original system was a mixture of nano-built or grown crystalline structures throughout... That crystalline device he recovered looks entirely crystal, I wouldn't mind taking a closer look at it."

Miranda huffed a half-laugh, "I bet you wouldn't, but I don't think he'll let anyone take too close a look at it until it can be safely replicated."

"I don't blame him!" Flo nodded fervently, "Tech like that... It must be able to hold Yottabytes of data! Not even the Prothean beacon on Thessia had more than a sliver of crystalline data storage, and-"

"Flo, SHUT IT!" One of the older Asari stepped threateningly into Flo's personal space, and the younger Asari blanched. "What have you been told about opening your mouth about our assignments!"

Miranda, for her part, smirked mildly and arched a brow, "So, what beacon might this be? It's funny, how the mighty Asari wouldn't have a beacon on Thessia on the public record, don't you think, Doctor Hales?"

Where Miranda found the unexpected revelation ironically amusing, Cathryn Hales immediately slipped into outrage, "WHAT! The galactic Prothean discovery edict was a law pushed by the Asari!" She blinked, and her anger grew, and the three Asari present backed up a step. Miranda's amusement slipped into concern that this unexpected slip of an enthusiastic Asari's tongue could be the first spanner in the works on her all too simple posting.

"You... YOU... Asari, so ageless and superior, now we know why! You've been hiding discoveries on Thessia this entire time! It must have made your skin crawl for a Human to find the most significant discovery ever right below your feet-"

"-Doctor," Miranda closed the space between them with a step to assert her interruption.

"-I thought you saw him as nothing more than a killing machine," The older Asari who'd tried to reprimand Flo bit back in the same instant as Miranda trying to draw there attention.

Cathryn's smooth face contorted through a mixture of anger, embarrassment, and guilt before her glare turned icy, "The Master Chief is the pinnacle of Human evolution, apparently, and the Asari are jealous, the mighty Asari-"

"STOP IT!" Miranda slammed her balled fists down onto the bench, and she winched as it made the half-constructed device jump. She ignored the potentially hazardous result of her demand for attention, and she glared coldly at the increasingly contestant behaviour between Cathryn and the older Matron who Miranda hadn't yet been introduced to.

"Am I surprised that the Asari have a hidden beacon?" She looked at Cathryn for a second before looking shrewdly at the Asari, and then briefly to Flo, who cast her eyes away in shame, "Not one little damn bit! Am I surprised that the Asari Councillor strapped an Asari team to this? Of course not! Am I surprised that the Master Chief allowed it..." She paused, and her nose crinkled briefly in thought, it was something that she hadn't entirely addressed in the quiet of her own mind yet, "Of course I am, but you know what?"

The group looked at her, and Miranda glanced back to Cathryn briefly before fixing her eyes back on the Matron who's thin lips were drawn in silent anger, "He could have said no, and there wouldn't have been a thing that any of you could have done about it. It was his AI that helped give your species knowledge and the edge of your superiority, and look at you now, what do you think he'll think of this information when he gets back?"

The anger bled from the Asari's face, and she paled at the resulting thought.

"The Master Chief is trying to build an alliance here, something to stop the Reapers, and you want to bring your damned politics into it?"

Silence settled over the group, and Miranda cooled her racing heart and narrowed her eyes. She allowed her anger to be worn on her face with cold calculation while the scientists mulled over her unexpectedly heated outburst.

Several tense seconds passed before Flo cleared her throat, and she gave the Matron a cautious look while keeping her face downcast before taking a small sidestep away and closer the Cathryn. Then she looked up carefully into Miranda's shrewd eyes, "There's a beacon in the Temple of Athame, inside the statue of Athame... Some of it functions like a normal beacon, but there's a crystalline chip in it, kind of like the Master Chiefs', and we haven't been able to work out how to interface with it. A lot of its normal systems are blocked by the chip."

"So, what's in the beacon? Why hide it?" Cathryn queried with cautious hope.

"Schematics, mathematics, star charts, mostly," The Matron sighed and crossed her arms. "It was the key to the Asari's rapid technological development, there are a lot of legends about it too, but only the scientific institution of Athame and the ruling Matriarchs know about it."

"And your team, here, are the scientific institution of Athame?"

Flo pinched her lips left and glanced cautiously at the Matron before looking back to Miranda from her enquiry, "We're half of it..."

Miranda sighed, "And let me guess, you've been sending them data?"

Flo glanced at the Matron again before nodding, "We shared this schematic with them, but that's it!"

Miranda narrowed her eyes at Flo for a second before ushering up as much calculated anger as she could into her expression and looking at the Matron next, "Round up all of the Asari," The Matron scowled and took a small step back. Miranda let her right hand untuck from her crossed arms, and she rested it over the large UNSC made magnum on her thigh, "I'm confiscating all of your omni-tools- You'll still be able to send your reports, but it will be under my supervision from the cockpit, clear?"

The Matron's scowl deepened, and she took another small shuffling step back, and whisps of blue started to coalesce around her.

Miranda grasped the grip of the oversized pistol but kept it holstered, "Are. We. Clear?" She stopped between each word to drive it home, and when the Matron still didn't reply, she triggered the magnetic release in the holster and lifted the M6H free from the clasp, still without elevating it.

The second scientific Matron present glowed a more vibrant blue suddenly, but turned on the first and raised her palm at her comrade, "Lentale, I think it would be sensible to do as Commander Lawson requests- Our mission here is to learn, not to start a war and make new enemies."

Lentale, the more resistant of the Matrons, froze and scowled deeper for a second before finally, her biotic power ebbed away. "Fine," She jutted out her left arm and pulled the small piercing nodule from it that contained the omni-chip which housed the devices CPU, "I'll bring the others here momentarily... Human."

She stalked off toward a gap in the stacked crates that led toward the open bay doors, and the other scientists all released a sigh of relief.

"Sorry, Commander," Flo admonished carefully, "I- Ahh- well, Maybe I partly wanted to let that slip?" She shot the other Matron a rueful smile, and she looked back with her lips pressed firmly together, "So... This whole alliance business seems fun- Hah!" She laughed nervously, and Miranda holstered the M6H again and resumed her crossed arms and assumed an unimpressed expression.

"Please tell me that the Master Chief will not hold some kind of execution for this?"

Miranda openly rolled her eyes at the question from the second Matron, but it was Cathryn who snorted a mirthless laugh, "I don't think you have that to fear... He's actually... Well, I think he's fair."

Cathryn and the Matron shared equally curious expressions before Cathryn sighed, "Maybe we should just get back to work, I do enjoy your expertise, especially yours, Flo."

Flo beamed enthusiastically, and swiped her own omni-chip out and tossed it across the bench before stepping up and rearranging the device, "We'll get this done by tomorrow, Commander."

The Matron nodded and added her chip to the two already on the bench, "Commander, with Flo here, I don't think we even could keep secrets, so don't worry about us."

Miranda pursed her lips and looked at the Matron shrewdly. She kept her thoughts reserved, however, and merely nodded, "I expect results by the morning," She said blandly and ushered up a shade of the old Cerberus-Miranda to impart the expectant order before giving the team a final icy look and turning to make her way port toward the open bay.

She patrolled around the ship next and tried her best to ignore the comfort of the seemingly idyllic world and its equally idyllic weather in preference for keeping her attention focused on the scientists who were seated in small groups chattering amongst themselves.

After half an hour and a dozen rounds of the freighters hull, and nothing of note occurring, Miranda sighed and stopped when she crossed the open gate and lowered herself onto her rear and leaned forward over her knees.

The sun cast her shadow forward over her, and Miranda sighed a low breath of release while looking out across the vibrant green field to where the forest started beyond the out of sight river. 'What the hell is happening to you, Miranda? Now you're a Commander? You've pledged allegiance to a lone super soldier just because you feel insignificant next to him?'

She puckered her lips at the thought and shook her head, sending her hair waving across the face, 'What's so bloody wrong with admitting that you admire someone? Or that you feel humbled? What's so wrong with accepting my flaws and doing something about them? Dammit, even Shepard had me doing it- Shepard...'

Her mind froze as her until recently Commander's name crossed it, and then her brow ridged in guilty embarrassment at the fact that he had barely even come to mind since she'd headed to Eden Prime with John. Shepard had been headed into Geth Space...

She lifted her left arm and activated her omni-tool and shuffled on her rear so that she cast the device in her shadow to make interacting with it more convenient. Her fingers found the email function instantly, and she opened a new email screen.

From: Commander Miranda Eloquent Lawson

She smiled coyly to herself at the inclusion of both the new self given rank and the descriptor, thinking back to their last email conversations.

To: Commander Magnanimous Shepard

Subject: Condition of the mission

Miranda halted and let her bemused small smile slip into a puckered expression of thought, and she looked skyward for inspiration. Knowing Shepard, whilst in Geth space, he would have become embroiled in some kind of conflict. On her own end of events, she had her own ideas and issues to consider, but she didn't want to outright tell him that she was jumping from his ship in the event that his load was even more foreboding than it already had been.

Shepard, you're probably thinking; "Commander...? She's my XO!" But, things have changed for me here, and it will benefit your mission, I promise.

Miranda's cheek dimpled as she typed the closing proclamation to her opening sentence, it would have been unlike her, but she had just seen a fifty-thousand-year promise delivered. Her sense of the idea had grown and evolved in the recesses of her mind.

Are you still in Geth space? Is Tali alright? How is the squad? Is Jacob taking care of everything, accordingly, I mean? We spoke with Admiral Hackett and Councillor Tevos and found out about allied forces being cobbled together, has that affected you? When will you be heading through the Omega 4 relay?
We don't have much to spare here, but I'm sure that the Master Chief will be willing to help if you need anything.
My best,
Miranda
P.S. You will want to meet the Master Chief.

She stopped and looked back over the text once before hitting send, and then dropped back onto her elbows to look up into the billowing white clouds that looked to be no more than an arm's reach above the granite peaks of the mountains around the valley.

The cut grass that she sat atop saturated her sense of smell with sweet earthiness, and the air sung with the nearby rush of the broad river and the song of birds and insects, contesting the nearby sounds of people talking at a civilised volume. Miranda contented herself to flop back and catch the back of her head in her hands and let her eyelids slip closed to soak in the virgin Eden world that her comrade wanted to turn into a fortress in the stars.

She decided that she would ask more of him, more from him, without trepidation, but with respect for whatever path he had trod so full of turmoil that he had ended up here. 'Look what being humbled has done to you, Miranda...'

Her lips pushed her cheeks to dimple, and the cool breeze brushed over her, bringing fresh scents of pollen on the currents. Her smile settled into a gentle arch in her lips, and she eased her eyes open again to watch the clouds drift above, 'Who'd have thought I'd find the place I fit in with a man who I thought a machine, an automaton, on a world without civilisation, with a mission broader than anything that's ever happened in the galaxy. Hah, what would father have thought of how I am now?'

Her smile turned wry, and she forced the thoughts out of her mind along with the concepts of her own personal growth; there were still hurdles to be jumped, and one of her personal ones was that she was much more keenly interested in thinking of pressing external issues than she was in thinking of her own self.

Whatever secrets were held in the crystal data module John had acquired on Thessia were bound to change Caucasus, and the galaxy beyond, and she would continue to evolve with it all.

XxxX

The world was no longer being lit on fire, but it was still burning, and Jacob's dark eyes fixated on it to make a point of not looking at the missing point on the end of his left wrist in a sling held firming against his chest. He could still feel phantom senses from the missing appendage, but he tore his mind away from them by looking at the decimation.

Rannoch was free, and Jacob couldn't tell if it truly felt like a victory. They were back on the hilltop that they had taken off from that overlooked the plains toward the cliffs that the Collector cruiser was parked on. The cruiser was hardly parked; it lay in a fragmented state halfway over the plains from all the artillery that had been turned on it the moment the Normandy escaped.

None of them had known precisely what Tali and Mordin had done at the command console in the middle of the Collector ship, and when they had discovered it through witness, they had all been shocked. They had landed back on the hilltop within minutes of escaping the cruiser, and the ramp had opened with ample time for them to watch Geth ships turned lifeless blaze through the atmosphere and impact the earth in showers of stone, dust, and vaporised hull plating.

Geth drone craft had toppled from the sky like mindless missiles, and every single ground unit had toppled where it had stood. The salvos fired at the Collector cruiser from the ground to orbit battery's had only lasted minutes, and whatever device within that had been generating its mass effect field to keep it standing in the impossible position it was in gave out. With an earsplitting rent of metal, it had fallen and cast a cloud of dust and earth in all directions.

There had been a silence that followed that which Jacob was sure that he would remember for the rest of his days; this small war was over, this war that he had already heard Daro'xen refer to as the Evening War.

The Geth were no more, and Jacob felt hollow at the idea that he had been a part of making an entire species extinct, but not so hollow that Chakwas' cleaning his wound and sealing it up with grafted tissue hadn't provided him with pain. He gritted his teeth, forced a breath between them with the strike of phantom pain, and then became aware of a presence next to him.

"Eh, Commander-"

"-Take it easy, Jacob," Shepard grunted lowly and lowered himself down to the ground to sit next to the biotic specialist. He sat in the same position with his knees raised and his right arm sitting atop them, and like Jacob, was now only partially armoured with his face once more revealed.

They sat in relative silence for immutable minutes, the nearby sound of the triage set up beneath the Normandy the only distraction. Several other Normandy squad members were scattered around the hilltop, all looking out across plains of decimation in silent contemplation.

"...Did, ehh, did Tali, you know?" Jacob only glanced at Shepard as he broke the silence, and he refused to turn his head to meet Shepard's eyes when he looked back.

"No. No, she didn't."

Jacob could hear and feel the slow unease in Shepard's voice, as much as he tried to keep it in hand, and Jacob pursed his lips and clenched his jaw again.

"What were her options?" He tried after another minute of silence, "Did you speak to her-"

"-Yes," Shepard cut Jacob off sharply, and they both winced from it. "Yes..." Shepard reiterated less sharply, "Mordin confirmed, the choice was between freeing them from the Collector control or killing them... Not an easy choice."

"Not one to make in seconds..." Jacob agreed slowly, and they both sighed.

They were both soldiers, but genocide wasn't something they had ever thought of, besides perhaps against the Collectors and the Reapers. Jacob winced at the thought and then cleared his throat, "You know, Shepard... We're trying to wipe out the Collectors, because they're working with the Reapers, and they want to wipe out everything... Tali- the Quarian's, they hate the Geth, the Geth kicked them off their homeworld, can you blame her?"

Shepard grunted silently and clenched both of his fists for a long minute before he nodded once, "No, I can't blame her... But I don't have to feel good about it either-"

He halted as a flight of fighters screamed overhead and sped off across the ocean. Then a trio of Alliance and Turian cruisers became visible through the reddened and smoky early evening sky. Shepard's omni-tool blinked to life, and he instinctively raised it to look at, "I guess the systems jamming is gone... I've got messages. Oh, god, so many messages!"

Jacob snorted mirthfully, and then winced at the vibration it sent through him, "Being Commander Shepard, galactic hero and saviour spectre, that sure brings in a lot of spam."

Shepard's personal energy remained remorseful, however, and Jacob couldn't deny the feeling either. They fell into silence again while Shepard sifted through the backlog of messages until he finally coughed a laugh, "Hah! The illustrious Lawson has finally emailed me!"

"I guess she missed the fun part, ey?"

"Oh..." Shepard grunted, and Jacob looked to him to see the frown settling in. Shepard seemed to sense Jacob's eyes, and he glanced up and scowled lightly, "I'll read it to you- Ahem, From Commander Miranda Eloquent Lawson, to Commander Magnanimuous Shepard-"

"-Commander?" Jacob interjected in a thoughtful mutter.

Shepard shrugged and kept reading, "Subject- condition of the mission. Shepard, you're probably thinking, 'Commander...? She's my XO,' But things have changed for me here, and it will benefit your mission, I promise."

Both men shared a look with brows knit in curiosity, "Since when does Miranda make promises? Heh, I've never heard of it..."

Shepard shrugged lamely, and looked back to his omni-tool, "Looks like you'll be my XO for the long haul, Taylor... Mmhmm," He cleared his tired throat again, "Are you still in Geth space? Is Tali alright? How is the squad? Is Jacob taking care of everything, accordingly, I mean?"

They both smirked and shared a glance, and Jacob grumbled a chuckle.

"We spoke with Admiral Hackett and Councillor Tevos and found out about allied forces being cobbled together, has that affected you? When will you be heading through the Omega 4 relay?"

They shared another quiet look of latent trepidation, and then both glanced across the destruction in front of them, before Shepard sighed and continued.

"We don't have much to spare here, but if you need anything, I'm sure that the Master Chief will be willing to help. My best, Miranda. P.S. You will want to meet the Master Chief."

"The Master Chief..." Jacob tried the title slowly, and looked at Shepard with an arched brow, "Should we know this guy? How the hell does Miranda know this guy? Ah, I mean, I'm happy to stay on as XO, you know that Shepard, I'm in for the long haul, but... Are we just going to leave her?"

Shepard pressed his lips into a thin line and fixated on his omni-tool for a minute, and then nodded slowly, "I trust Miranda's judgement, but we'll find out what we can. What kind of mission must this Master Chief be on to draw Miranda's attention?"

Jacob snorted another ironic laugh and then winced again, "Hope whoever he is that he can handle her- bossy and manipulative, damn well knows what she wants."

Shepard snorted a laugh in reply, "That's the truth, here, let's get back to the ship, and I'll put Kasumi onto intel gathering. We'll gather the crew as well and get on the horn to the Commodore, see if he still needs us, are you up to that, XO?"

Jacob nodded several times, more for his own benefit than Shepards, and Shepard pushed to his feet and offered out his right hand armed at Jacob's intact hand. Jacob clenched his teeth and held his left arm to his chest while taking Shepard's hand and coming up onto wobbling feet.

Shepard steadied him by grasping his shoulder, and Jacob nodded with his eyes closed while a wave of vertigo went through him, "Here's to being XO, hah, do you know who will take my place when I go off on my own?" He joked.

"Tssk, Taylor, you're irreplaceable, now hop to, and then get some bed rest... Seriously."

Jacob nodded and took a stumbling step in the direction of the triage tents erected around the Normandy's lamps, illuminated now by temporary lighting and bustling with movements and quiet cries and groans of wounded soldiers being treated, "Seriously..." He parroted quietly and took one last look up into Rannoch's smoke-haze filled sky before clenching his jaw and moving forward with purpose.