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Chapter Text

The beam of the lance caught the raider more or less right in the middle and very nearly cut the ship in half. Superheated metal gobbets the size of hab-blocks sprayed into the void, glowing violently, and secondary explosions rippled across and under the surface of the vessel.

One especially violent detonation did actually succeed in finally bisecting it, severing what few scraps connected the prow and stern and the two halves slowly started drifting apart from one another, held together only with a few slender, slowly unlooping trails of ducting and pipes.

Like intestines, really.

The sight of the stricken, dead ship filled the main pictscreen on the bridge of the Assertive. It filled a good few of the other screens, too, some in greater details, but none quite as spectacularly as the main one.

“That went well,” said Jarrion, beaming.

The last few months had been exceedingly dull, at least as far as he was concerned.

While his father and his brothers were off doing important, exciting work on the fringes and out in the black he was stuck here safe in the practically civilized bosom of his House’s freshly carved territory. Rugged and positively rural by the standards of the Imperium proper, it was a damn sight more civilised than where he would have preferred to be.

He was on the map, and while the ink was still wet - as it were - he was still in known territory, rather than out there charting it. This rankled.

Important work, to be sure. Flying the flag of House Croesus, ensuring that the colonists remembered upon whom their safety chiefly relied. They might have had the light of the Imperium let back into their lives courtesy of House Croesus or else been given a chance at a new life on a virgin planet, but the authorities were stretched as it was.

It wasn’t the Navy looking out for them, that was for sure, and these people would do well to bear that in mind.

The point was Jarrion could see why it had to be done, he just wasn’t especially happy being the one doing it. He felt like a prop, not so much like a Rogue Trader. But that was being the younger son for you.

He had been given command of the Assertive - a fine and redoubtable Dauntless - for the task several reasons. For one, it would easily handle the worst of what he might expect to find, what with raiders and pirates still lurking here and there as they were wont to do in the wake of such upheaval.

For another, it was more impressive than a frigate, and being impressive was important. Important to be seen and to be seen as a House of means. And for a third, it was outfitted for extend operation which meant he could wander around for as long as was needed.

A bonus on top of that being that the same facilities that allowed it to remain operation for so long - the on-board manufactorum, for example - were the very same that allowed the Assertive to provide the occasional spot of assistance for flagging colonies. The supply of freshly-constructed spare parts for broken machinery, a new piece of farming equipment here and there, a few crates of lasguns to help them keep themselves safe on those long, cold, frontier nights, and so on.

That sort of thing always went over very well with provincials. Very helpful in reminding them to whom their immediate loyalty lay, in a way that didn’t rely on blowing something up from orbit. Always better, Jarrion felt, to open up with the niceties and fall back on the guns if your largesse was unfairly rejected.

Probably one of the reasons why his brother didn’t like him. One of the reasons.

Jarrion watched as the raider vessel’s halves spun further away from one another. Unlike some of the smaller ships that had already been taken care of, this one looked to be of actual Imperial make, albeit very old.

The make and model was a mystery to Jarrion, but certainly it appeared to be a cut above what he’d encountered so far. Likely the lead-ship of the bunch. All the others had been rather ramshackle, locally-built ships obviously operating out of a base of some sort - likely operating from this very ship currently spinning into two pieces and venting into space.

It was difficult to pick out the exact details given the distance, but the twinkling detritus and debris ejecting from those damaged compartments open to the void caught the light every so often. Some of that debris, Jarrion reflected, would be crew.

He wondered if they’d had enough time to regret their life choices.

“Excellently handled, my Lord,” said Torian, a man by Jarrion’s elbow who looked like a stiff breeze might snap him in half.

Nominally Jarrion’s seneschal, actually just there to keep an eye on him and report back to father. Not that Jarrion really minded, much. He was very useful to have around because he was better at remembering the fiddlier, more tedious details that often proved surprisingly important.

That, and having been around so long meant he was also packed with anecdotes. Some of them were sometimes even useful.

“Why thank you, Torian, very kind of you to say,” Jarrion said without taking his eyes off the screen. His first actual ship kill. The ramshackle little ships had hardly counted, being suitable only for bullying colonists stuck on a planet surface with no way to fight back.

They’d run on his approach, not even trying to fight. They had not got that far. But they did not count, particularly. This one, though, was closer to a proper ship, and so did. His first actual ship kill.

He was sure he was meant to feel something about the moment. Something momentous and important. But mostly Jarrion was just glad it hadn’t gone wrong. Not that he let this relief show.

“I think it might be worthwhile investigating that wreck, don’t you?” He said, finally turning to look at Torian when speaking. Torian, in turn, blinked in surprise at the suggestion.

“My Lord?” He asked.

Jarrion waved a hand back towards the pictscreen.

“On the off-chance that our raider here is part of a greater group rather than a lone wolf. Maybe he has friends. We may find information as regards their base of operations, if any. Seems wise to me.”

Jarrion had spent considerable time reading up on this sort of thing prior to arriving, not to mention asking some of the House staff who had naval experience. He’d felt it wise to be as informed as possible, and this seemed to him a fairly sensible thing to do.

“Pak,” Jarrion said, turning to Magos Pak who was stood nearby, plugged in and staring blankly into space. That dead, grey face swung in Jarrion’s direction and Jarrion did his best to look as if he had got over how disarming he found this.

Prior to his command, his experience of and contact with the Adeptus Mechanicus had been rather limited.

“Pak, data gathering would likely be your wheelhouse, wouldn’t it? Might be worth our time sending over a techpriest or two, wouldn’t you say? Could you please see towards organising them for me, in the spirit of cooperation and mutual advancement?”

The Magos nodded, and their mechadendrites unplugged and replugged themselves into different sockets. Presumably this did something, though what wasn’t clear.

Jarrion wasn’t entirely sure where his father had picked up Pak, nor why Pak had insisted on being placed aboard the Assertive. But they had, and they now were. The constant silence had taken some getting used to but Pak was at least reliable.

He then turned to the Master at Arms, standing at the ready not too far away.

“Organise some armsmen to make up the boarding parties, if you’d be so kind, Master at Arms? There’ll probably be at least one compartment that survived and they might be happy to receive visitors, you know how these things go.”

“Lord Captain,” said the Master at Arms, saluting and departing at speed.

And with that things became rather subdued, the previously chaotic activity on the bridge settling back down to its usual level of quiet hubbub, the sort that indicated things were proceeding comfortably without issue.

Jarrion remained standing, hands behind his back, eyes on the pictscreen, watching the wreck twist ever further and further apart from itself, almost like it was a ribbon unwinding.

Odd ship, now that Jarrion could look at it without gunfire clouding the view. Human, clearly, so presumably Imperial, but then again perhaps not. Unlikely anything Jarrion had ever seen before, certainly. Very sleek looking. Perhaps some odd, old local design. Something the raiders had dug up somewhere.

Could have been anything, really.

Now that he thought about it, seemed a bit of a shame to have wrecked it so utterly. The thing might have had some value. Too late now. Hopefully they’d find something on board to ensure it wasn’t a complete waste. Possibly even archeotech, if they were very lucky!

Father would like that, Jarrion was sure. Certainly, it would get his attention. Though that might not necessarily be a good thing, Jarrion realised. Still. Such was life.

A little less than an hour later a pair of lighters departed, and Jarrion watched them make their way through the black towards the dying, possibly dead, ship. They’d probably take a little while to get there and a little while after that to get properly established, but he was very keen to hear what they found.

Then, a flurry of activity from the crew manning a bank of consoles to Jarrion’s right.

“Warp drive breach!”

Alarms blared and automatically the lightning on the bridge slammed over to emergency, bathing everything and everyone in red. Jarrion found this unhelpful, but could do little about it.

And right now he had other things to worry about.

“What? That’s a local ship! We didn’t read a drive, did we?” He shouted, storming over to the consoles and hunkering down behind the frantically-working crew.

Nothing had indicated it was anything other than a system-bound ship. Readings had not shown anything to make them suspect otherwise. Not that this changed anything at that moment. The wreckage on the pictscreen was beginning to distort, as though viewed through the bottom of a glass. The distant and barely-visible shuttles of the away teams could just about be seen to be frantically turning back.

“It’s just spiked! Out of nowhere!” Yelled the crewmember over whom he’d hunkered, hands working furiously across the controls, console lit up with warning runes.

Jarrion turned, arm flung out, finger pointing, voice rising above the din.

“All power to engines, get us out of here at-”

Chapter Text

“-once. Wait, what?”

Something had happened.

It had felt rather like a blink, only instead of the usual way around of it happening - which was to say, Jarrion blinking - it had been like the whole universe had blinked at him. The experience had been thoroughly disorientating, and not just for Jarrion from the looks of things, either. Someone on the bridge vomited.

Just as automatically as the alarms and klaxons and emergency lighting had come on, they all automatically turned off again, and normality of a kind resumed.

“Wha- damage! Damage report! What happened?” Jarrion asked, taking a second to recover himself and assert some authority. This seemed to snap everyone else back to the moment as well.

“No damage, Lord Captain,” came the response from another crew member on another console.

“No damage?” Jarrion repeated, appalled and astonished. “No damage? How can that be? Check again! All systems! Everything! Anything looks so much as a hair off of perfect you tell me!”

“There’s nothing, Lord Captain. The Assertive is sound and unharmed,” the same crew member said, a tinge of desperation entering their voice at having to be the bearer of unusually good bad news.

Jarrion - bereft - turned to Pak, who shrugged.

“What in the Emperor’s name…” Jarrion hissed to himself. His eyes then wandered to the pictscreen, which was still showing nominally the same view as before. Or at least it should have been. Jarrion gestured to it angrily.

“And where’s the wreck gone? And where are we?”

The stars outside now were not the stars that had been outside some seconds previously, and there was also now a planet where there had not been one before. A gas giant, in fact, that they appeared to be in stable orbit around. Because why not?

No answers were forthcoming, which was hardly a surprise.

Jarrion took a steadying breath.

“Alright. Okay. Time for a brief emergency meeting, senior bridge personnel to attend. And you, Pak. Someone send for Altrx and tell him he is required. Torian, Thale, let’s go,” he said, turning and leaving, Torian having to shuffle extra quickly to keep up, Thale was already two steps behind him.

Thale being Jarrion’s bodyguard, who had been standing silently beside the Lord Captain’s command throne the whole while this had been happening, entirely unflappable.

Thale, a man who had quite literally fought against every major race the Imperium was currently at war with, was the only non-essential person in the room. From Tau to Tyranids and everything in between, Thale had fought and killed them.

He’d even fought against daemons on more than one occasion, something which was well-known to be more than the bluster of a professional warrior.

How the man had evaded the Inquisition and was still around to tell these tales was anyone’s guess. Slipped through the cracks, Jarrion supposed, a fact for which he was personally profoundly grateful. Thale might have scared him, but Jarrion knew he scared other people more, and for very good reason - and not just people, either. He scared most things.

It took Jarrion a brisk walk and a short ride on a conveyor to reach the room in which he was to hold his emergency meeting. Pak was not far behind, and the others arrived not long after that.

The meeting room - and it really was a room, torn from a venerable location and placed at great expense onto the ship - was exceedingly luxurious, as could well be expected. Every piece of furniture practically gleamed, everything was old, everything was expensive. The chairs were not comfortable, and were arranged around a long table carved from the wood of a planet that no longer existed.

Jarrion sat at the head of this table, Thale standing behind him, Torian to his immediate right. Pak was also presently, along with the ship’s actual head Tech Priest, Magos Blix. The two were conversing, Binaric apparently not counting under Pak’s vow of silence. The Navigator Altrx was sat a little further along from Torian, staring into space, and beyond them were several other, lesser members of the ship’s staff - the Master at Arms, for one, a handful of petty and warrant officers, and so on.

People there to answer questions if Jarrion had them, basically.

Checking his chronometer Jarrion felt he’d allowed those present enough time to settle in and then tucked the thing away again, clearing his throat and bringing the low-level hubbub that had been going on to an immediate halt.

Barring the two Magi, who ignored him. Not unexpected.

“Alright. Circumstances are unusual. According to what I’ve heard the Assertive itself is running entirely normal, is that the case?” Jarrion asked and Blix paused in their conversation with Pak long enough to nod. That was about as much as Jarrion knew he could hope for right now, but it spoke volumes and satisfied him so he didn’t mind.

“Good. And what is the condition of the crew?”

This he directed towards the gaggle of lesser officers who exchanged a quick, hushed discussion over who should answer. They settled on a senior officer who Jarrion knew by sight if not by name - something he really should have got around to correcting by now, he told himself.

Early days, was his excuse. Not that that would have flown with father, obviously.

“The crew are entirely unaware of anything untoward or unusual having happened, Lord Captain,” said the officer.

“Good, keep it that way,” Jarrion said, and the officers all nodded understanding.

That was something, at least.

“Right. With immediate concerns out of the way let’s move onto the merely pressing concerns,” Jarrion said with a sigh. “Firstly, finding out where we are is priority. Plainly we’re in real space but equally plainly we are not where we were, so how far were we flung off-course and how long is it going to take to get us back to where we’re meant to be. Navigator Altrx?”

“It’s gone,” the Navigator said, more to themselves than to anyone else. As aloof as the Navigator was - more-or-less about what you might expect from someone of their rank and station - Jarrion had never seen Altrx look quite so detached.

“What’s gone?” Jarrion asked.

“The Astronomicon. It’s not there.”

Silence. The uncomfortable kind.

The Astronomicon disappearing wasn’t exactly unheard of, of course. There were remote and distant parts of the Emperor’s domains where the light sometimes only reached sporadically or so weakly that it was difficult to locate.

There were also dark and occluded spots here and there where - for one reason or another - it also failed to reached. A risk Rogue Traders were aware of, though one that Jarrion had not personally ever encountered.

First time for everything. He cleared his throat.

“Well, all things considered it’s not the worst thing that could have happened given what we went through - and survived, I remind you all! I assume you have charts available to help us plot a route back to a less benighted and forgotten spot of space?” Jarrion asked.

“That’s not all,” the Navigator said, rubbing their face.

“Oh?”

“The Warp is also calm.”

Jarrion smiled.

“Is that so? Our luck may be turning then!”

“Perhaps I wasn’t as clear as I should have been. The Warp is calm. Almost completely calm. As close to still as I think it might be possible for it to get. I have never - never - seen it like this. I didn’t even know it could be like this.”

More silence. Jarrion swallowed, shifted, and put his smile back on.

“Altrx, my dear friend,” he said. “Bear in mind that I am not a Navigator and so perhaps am not as experienced with the technical side of things as you are. Could you maybe run through that again rather more simply? For the benefit of us laypeople.”

“The Warp is never calm. There are places where you might find it to be calmer, but never calm. Never. It just doesn’t happen.”

The Navigator sounded both outraged and oddly despondent about this, as though life itself were playing some kind of cruel joke on them. They appeared inches from actually sulking. It was disarming. Jarrion cleared his throat.

“Does this make your job difficult?” He asked.

The Navigator scowled.

“A touch difficult. If I had an idea of our location I might be able to use the better known routes to maneuver us. In the absence of the Astronomicon it seems our best option. Imprecise and clumsy, but better by far than simply plunging in a random direction and hoping for the best,” they said.

“Have Astronavigation determine our location at once,” Jarrion said and off a House servant went at a dash. Various such servants lined the perimeter of the room for this very reason, hands behind their backs, silent and unmoving.

It was inefficient to send runners in such a way, but the room was far too valuable to modify for external communication - it had been in the family for generations! Installed in the Assertive as a sign of magnanimous favour from father himself! Almost as old as the Imperium, if that could be believed, and still in fine condition!

Jarrion had had the illustrious history of the room and all its fixtures and fittings explained to him more than once in his lifetime. He’d actually found it quite interesting, but was by-the-by.

While they waited, Jarrion again turned to Altrx.

“Forgive my ignorance on the subject, but I would have thought a calm Warp would have made for smoother sailing,” he asked. The logic of this seemed fairly clear, but Jarrion would have been the first to admit he wasn’t an expert on the details.

It was fairly obvious to all present that the Navigator was biting back on harsher words than they eventually came out with.

“With the Warp as it is travel would be as simple as crossing a room but - unfortunately - with no points of reference that room is pitch-black. And hundreds of miles across. And I don’t know where the door is,” Altrx said, diplomatically.

“Ah. I see,” said Jarrion.

Awkward silence. No-one seemed to know what to do next. Then Jarrion snapped his fingers, making Torian jump. He had been starting to nod off.

“Communications! Of course. Why didn’t I think of that sooner? We’ll message - not to signal distress, just to test the waters, see what’s nearby. Can the Choirmaster be told to come to this meeting at once, if he’d be so kind. As a matter of urgency.”

Phrased as a request. Not actually a request. Another crew member nodded and went running off.

Continued awkward silence.

“Anything like this ever happen to you before, Torian?” Jarrion asked after a few excruciating minutes.

“No, my Lord.”

A surprise, though not a huge one. Jarrion had rather hoped that something similar might have happened, if only to plumb the old man for ideas. No such luck.

“Ah. Shame.”

Some minutes later the crew member who’d been sent to message Astronavigation returned. They hadn’t run all the way there, obviously, rather they’d only run to the communications suite which was a little way down from the luxurious meeting room. Still, they were back sooner than Jarrion had expected.

“Lord Captain,” said the crew member, bowing briefly.

“That was quick,” said Jarrion, frowning.

“Yes, Lord Captain. Sorry, Lord Captain. I was told to relay to you that Astronavigation has a rough idea of where we are.”

This was not quite what Jarrion had expected to hear. His frown intensified.

“Rough? How can it be rough? They do see the stars outside, do they not? We left port with sufficient charts, as I recall,” Jarrion said. He had made sure of that, at no little expense either. He liked to be prepared.

“They do, Lord Captain, it is just that…”

Jarrion had the distinct impression he was about to be told something else that was to his disadvantage and sighed preemptively, resting his face in one hand. The crew member shifted uncomfortably and Jarrion waved for them to continue.

“Just that what?” He asked.

“They report that while many star formations appear similar to those in our records, many others do not. This has confused their efforts somewhat, Lord Captain.”

“I imagine it would,” Jarrion said flatly, face still in his hand, eyes closed. Today was going to be like this, he felt. A long string of things not going to plan or just being wrong.

There came the sound of the door opening again and Jarrion glanced up through his fingers.

There stood an Astropath, but not the Choirmaster.

“You’re not the Choirmaster,” said Jarrion, pointing. The Astropath gave a smile and a slight forward incline of her head. Not so much a nod or a bow or anything, really. Certainly not the sort of reaction Jarrion would have expected.

“The Choirmaster is indisposed,” was all she said before walking right on in. Everyone was too flabbergasted by this breach of protocol to do anything about it, right up until she arrived at an empty chair and plopped herself down in it.

This was taking the piss.

“Is there a particular reason you’ve sat down? At this table? With us? Would you benefit from, perhaps, having the rank system on board this ship explained to you?” Jarrion asked, trying to sound casual, glancing to Thale who gave the slightest of nods to signal he was ready to expel her or at least unseat her.

If the Astropath was at all nervous about any of this she gave no sign. If anything she just seemed happier, small smile growing larger as she leant forward across the table, arms tucking into her robes.

“I have a small confession to make. I don’t think you’ll be pleased to see me.”

Jarrion’s patience, though considerable compared to most of his social standing, was not without limits.

“Why’s that? I was under the impression I was already seeing you, or is there something else today that I’m missing? Come on, what else can go wrong?”

She held out a hand in front of her, facing up, resting on the table.

Sitting there in her palm, perfectly innocuous, was an Inquisitorial rosette.

Chapter Text

Jarrion sighed and pinched his nose.

“Does anyone else have anything else they’d like to tell me? Torian, have you been moonlighting as a Primarch? No? Thale? Thor reincarnated? No? Shame. Anyone else? Anything? Eldar in disguise? Hiding Orks in the bilge? No?”

No-one else in the room seemed to think this was the time for jokes. Jarrion sighed again. No-one ever seemed to think it was the time for jokes. He turned to the Inquisitor who had by now tucked the rosette away and was happily relaxing in her chair the way someone does when they know they can do just about anything they want.

The chair, Jarrion noticed, that had been carved out of the bones of a breed of xenos the name of which had utterly escaped him. They were extinct now, he believed. But that was just him getting sidetracked. Mostly it was just the sight of her sitting in it so casually that made him a little cross. Jarrion did his best to ignore this.

“I’ve never seen an Astropath who was an Inquisitor before,” he said instead. Loghain tapped a finger to her nose, a thoroughly disarming gesture for an Inquisitor.

“I’m not an Astropath, it’s a disguise.”

Jarrion looked deep into her charred, empty eye sockets. Disconcertingly, they seemed to be looking right back at him.

Most Astropaths, he belatedly realised, kept that sort of thing covered up. Maybe she had foregone this on purpose just to unsettle everyone. If she had, it was working. Jarrion had to look away.

“Very convincing,” he muttered. She smiled.

“If there’s one thing the Inquisition strives for it is to be convincing.”

Somehow, an Inquisitor with a sense of humour seemed more worrying than one without. Jarrion didn’t really want the only person on the ship other than himself telling jokes to be someone who could also make his life extremely difficult. But it seemed he wasn’t to be so lucky.

“I have heard that about the Inquisition, yes. And your name would be…?” He asked, trying to keep at least a fingertip-hold on the momentum of the conversation.

“Loghain.”

“Inquisitor Loghain, I take it you won’t tell us why you’re here?”

“Of course not,” she scoffed.

“No, I suppose that would be too much to hope for,” Jarrion said, sighing and slumping a little in his seat.

“May I ask a question, my Lord?” Torian asked.

“By all means. My table is open to all. Apparently,” Jarrion said, waving a hand.

“If you don’t mind me asking, Lord Inquisitor,” Torian said, shifting in his seat, his whole body creaking, augmetics buzzing. “How was it you were able to remain so well hidden in the choir? A room full of telepaths hardly seems the safest place for a spy. Forgive my impertinence.”

Torian had not dealt with Inquisitors before. His experience lay almost exclusively with and within House Croesus and so largely concerned the vagaries of Rogue Traders and their associates. He wasn’t entirely sure what the etiquette was when talking to the Inquisition. He felt it best to play it safe and be polite. It tended to work for him in anything he came up against.

Loghain turned Torian’s way, making the old man flinch as he got a better view of the damage that had been done to her eyes. Jarrion reckoned she had to be doing that on purpose.

“Not a spy. And I am a very closely guarded person. Though, if my concentration did slip and the Choirmaster did happen to catch perhaps a whisper of my true purpose and intentions and my true authority and then decided to keep it to himself I can hardly be blamed for that.”

This she said with the slightest hint of a grin.

“Does that answer your question?” She asked. Torian just nodded, shrinking back into his seat and rather regretting having said anything in the first place.

Curiosity wasn’t exactly a virtue, as he knew, it was only the bizarre circumstances that had pushed him into trying. Clearly the excitement had got the better of him. He wouldn’t make the same mistake again.

Jarrion spoke, forestalling any further awkwardness:

“Well now that that’s out of the way can we continue? I think-”

“Let’s not be too fast yes? I don’t think we’re giving the situation the weight it demands. ” Loghain said. Jarrion, cut-off, gave her a very level look.

At this point he had had rather enough. Today had been going very well and now nothing was making sense and an Inquisitor had come barging in and was acting with every sign that she was going to start to throw her weight around.

One of the best things about being stuck on the Assertive had been the distance it had put between Jarrion and his family, keeping comfortably out from under all of their thumbs and away from their interference. To swap familial meddling for Inquisitorial meddling was not something Jarrion felt that enthusiastic about.

So it was time for a little speech. A Rogue Trader’s prerogative. He laid his hands on the table and lent forward, ever-so-slightly.

“Inquisitor,” he said, voice commanding the room immediately. It was That Voice. He’d practised it. “While I appreciate the importance of you and your cohorts and the good work you all do for the sake of humanity and I am fully aware of the vaunted position you occupy in the Imperial hierarchy, I would like to remind you that I am a Rogue Trader, an individual empowered by the hand of the Emperor himself - or at least those charged to speak for him - to go places and do things in his name.”

He paused to see if Loghain would interrupt him, perhaps to bring up the fact that technically he was the son of a Rogue Trader, and so that therefore his particular authority might have been disputed by some.

She did not, so he continued.

“That brings with it a certain level of, shall we say, authority? An authority that covers all the domains of House Croesus and which is carried with me on this ship to whichever area of space I feel could benefit from Imperial light and civilization or else could benefit the greater Imperium by virtue of something contained within it. An authority that you might well say stems from the same source as yours, and so should be treated with the same level of due respect. You might say.”

Another pause. No interruptions.

“And just because I make a joke or two and I don’t raze planets that look at me funny - unlike, say, my brother - doesn’t mean I should be taken any less seriously than my aforementioned brother, my father or anyone else in my House. With that in mind, I would appreciate it if you did not interrupt me on my ship again. If you’d be so kind.”

Loghain’s face did not so much as flicker and for a moment she was completely silent. Then she tipped her head in that weird way again. Jarrion assumed it was meant to be some kind of nod, but just less emphatic. Like a sarcastic yes.

“As you say,” she said.

“Thank you. However, I suppose you might have a point. What, in your experienced, Inquisitorial opinion, do you make of the current situation we find ourselves in?”

“I know you’re trying to unsettle me by thrusting me even further into the limelight, Lord Captain,” said Loghain, and Jarrion did take note of her carefully chosen form of address. “But as it happens and given the evidence I do actually have a theory.”

“That was quick. Do tell.”

“I posit that we are in a wholly different universe!” Loghain said with obvious glee.

Given what little they knew about her already - and what they knew about Inquisitors generally - it was hard for anyone around the table to grasp whether or not she was serious, joking or just trying to trick them somehow.

Jarrion shifted in his chair and glanced around at the others, reading the room.

“Do you now?” He asked, delicately. Loghain cocked her head.

“My finely-honed Inquisitorial senses tell me that you may be expressing sarcasm, but consider: the Astronomicon is nowhere to be found. The Warp is utterly still, without strife. The stars are not where they should be and some, indeed, are not there at all. This goes a little beyond the unusual, don’t you think?”

Jarrion glowered but couldn’t immediately think of anything to say. How she knew any of this wasn’t anything he was even going to bother broaching. Presumably she had methods, and if she wanted to be obliquely complimented on how good her spying was Jarrion wasn’t going to be the one to do it.

“I’ll admit these things are unexpected, but another universe? How can I honestly be expected to believe that?” He asked.

“Those travelling through the Warp have, on occasion, found themselves arriving before they have even departed,” Loghain pointed out. Jarrion flapped this aside with a wave of his hand.

“Yes, but thats time, that’s different. People have also found themselves lightyears off-course, as I rather suspect we are. Time and space I can understand, just about. You’re talking about something else entirely. It just doesn’t make sense.”

“It may not make sense to you, Lord Captain and begging your pardon, but such things have been theorised. Of course, if they were ever realised or achieved there’s been no record I’ve seen. But now, here we are!”

This settled nothing.

“I still feel that you are perhaps jumping to conclusions,” said Jarrion.

“That remains to be seen.”

“Quite.”

Both of them seemed to realise that pursuing this matter further from within a closed room in the middle of a spaceship was unlikely to get either of them anywhere.

Fortunately, someone chose this moment to knock at the door. A bell had been installed, but apparently not everyone knew about it. Jarrion waved to a servant to permit whoever it was entry, and it turned out to be a junior member of the bridge crew.

“What is it?” Jarrion asked. It had to be something, they wouldn’t have been interrupted otherwise.

“We have identified a contact in the vicinity, Lord Captain. A ship.”

Jarrion rolled his eyes.

“If it’s not one thing it’s another. Hostile?” He asked.

“Not immediately, Lord Captain.”

A genuine surprise. The way things were going Jarrion would not have been unduly alarmed to hear that Horus himself was outside and wanted a word.

“Well that’s something. Alright, back to the bridge we go - let’s say hello.”

Chapter Text

The lack of dignity in all this toing-and-froing would probably have been too much for any member of House Croesus barring Jarrion to bear, so it was lucky it was him the one doing it and not anyone else. His brother probably would have shot someone by this point, just to demonstrate that his patience was wearing thin.

Returning to the bridge Jarrion settled into his command throne while the others who had accompanied him resumed their positions. All about, the bridge crew maintained their duties.

Jarrion could see the recently-spotted ship on the same pictscreen that the wreck had been on not too long ago. Details of the vessel were hard to make out as the thing was quite small - unsurprising, space and all that - but it was, again, quite obviously unlike any vessel Jarrion had ever seen before.

It rather reminded him of some of the pictures of Eldar vessels he’d seen. Obviously not one, but still. Vaguely reminiscent, if only distantly. All curves and fins. Possibly just his brain groping desperately for even the merest hint of familiarity.

Shaking his head, Jarrion asked:

“Did it just arrive?”

“No Lord Captain. It appears to have been in orbit there for the whole time we have been here, it was just that we were not looking for it and it’s rather inconspicuous vessel. It appears to be doing, uh…”

The crew member had no idea what the ship appeared to be doing, and neither did Jarrion.

“Doing something, Lord Captain,” the crew member finished, rather lamely, voice trailing off. Jarrion could hardly blame them.

“So they are. Hmm,” he said, stroking his chin.

He was acutely aware of everyone on the bridge looking to him to tell them what to do next. Jarrion didn’t let this get to him.

“That is a tiny ship. How long is that ship?” He asked.

“Approximately one hundred and seventy meters, Lord Captain.”

Jarrion did some quick mental arithmetic. That would make the Assertive somewhere in the region of twenty-six times bigger. Roughly speaking. His eyebrows raised. No wonder it hadn’t leapt out to anyone on the bridge. He’d been worried about their attention to detail.

“Tiny! Maybe it’s a heavy fighter. Corvette? No, too small...” he said. He looked to Pak to see if they had any input, being the most senior Techpriest on hand. Pak shrugged, again. Jarrion wasn’t sure what he had expected, if he was being honest.

Who’d taught a techpriest how to shrug, anyway?

“Would our weapons even be able to target something that small? Hypothetically?”

Always paid to be prepared.

“Our point defence turrets could acquire a lock, were you to require one, Lord captain,” said the Master of Gunnery from their station.

That was something, at least.

“Good, good. Don’t, just to say. Just good to know,” said Jarrion.

“They are hailing us, Lord Captain,” spoke up another of the bridge crew.

The strangers had beat him to the punch. No bad thing. At least it definitely showed them to be friendly, or alternatively showed them as open to not being blown to pieces by a Dauntless, which was the first step to friendliness if you thought about it.

“Put it on the main pict screen,” Jarrion said, gesturing to the largest of the screens present in the bridge, the one on which the image of the odd spaceship was presently being displayed.

It seemed the most dramatic and theatrical place to put it, given this might well be first-contact with some exciting new species. He put one hand on his hip and held the other out before him, towards the screen. He hoped he looked appropriately impressive and lordly.

“Apologies Lord Captain but it appears to be be audio-only.”

Jarrion held his pose a moment longer then let his arms drop to his sides.

“No visual?” He asked. The crewmember worried over their console a moment or two but without any obvious success.

“There appears to be an issue of compatibility with their vessel and ours, Lord Captain. Sorry, Lord Captain.”

Jarrion sighed, slumping back into his seat.

“Worse things have happened. Let’s hear it.”

What filled the bridge was obviously the sound of a human speaking, but it was not anything anyone present could immediately recognise. They all got close, but not quite close enough.

“What language is that?” Jarrion wondered aloud, stroking his chin.

Jarrion had something of a flair for languages. He felt that as a Rogue Trader having a flair for languages would come in handy, so he’d acquired one. The augmetics that replaced one of his ears helped him in this because he’d paid for them to be the kind that helped, but practise did most of the work.

Screwing up his face he sorted through the words he’d just heard, picking out what he could recognise, poking and prodding in his mind. Snapping his fingers and wagging them at the static on the viewscreen he said:

“It sounds like an incredibly debased version of Low Gothic. Play that again for me.”

This happened. Jarrion closed his eyes and mouthed the words to himself. Several of the colonies he’d been visiting of late had had their own local dialects, but none as bizarre sounding as this. It was barely comprehensible. Still, there were hints and clues in it that Jarrion was able to latch onto. Structure formed in his head. It was becoming clear.

“My Lord?” Torian prodded, jolting Jarrion out of his reverie.

“Ah, terribly sorry. I imagine they await a response? Hmm...state your identity...Systems Alliance...Commander Shepard...Normandy SR-2? SR-2?” He said to himself, brow furrowing. “I wonder what the SR-2 signifies…”

Jarrion suddenly clapped his hands. Torian gasped and clutched at his chest.

“Well, let’s say hello to our inarticulate cousins. Are we broadcasting?” Jarrion asked, leaning forward in his command throne.

“The channel has been open this whole time,” Loghain said. She’d decided the best place for her to stand was right next to Jarrion, on the opposite to where Torian stood. He eyed her sideways.

“Great. Many thanks for your input, Inquisitor, very helpful,” he said with an acidity that she brushed off completely. Jarrion then cleared his throat, arranged the words in his head, and gave it his best shot in their wierdo, mangled language: “Hello Normandy SR-2, this is Lord Captain Jarrion Croesus of the Assertive. I trust the day finds you well?”

Chapter Text

I had been taking a break from the serious business of assembling a dedicated team of professionals for a ludicrously dangerous mission given to me by a smug bastard so that I could unwind by firing probes at planets. It helped me relax.

That and, you know, minerals. Useful for things, apparently. The boys in the lab - well, alien doctor in the lab, or rather just a kind of cabinet I walked up to that offered me a variety of options, but you get the point - couldn’t get enough of them. And also nice to find the occasional lost artefact. Business and pleasure, that’s probing planets.

Back in the old days I used to be able to take a Mako down and just drive around a worryingly featureless landscape for a few hours. Maybe hack a crashed satellite and pull out an upgrade or two, maybe drop a beacon next to a massive chunk of gold. Maybe fall down a ravine.

Not anymore though. Guess Cerberus’ budget didn’t stretch to putting a Mako on board. Guess I broke the bank. Oops.

Still, one could not zip around in space without consequence, of course, and before too long the core needed dumping.

Luckily for us, the podunk system we just-so happened to be in - I’d heard there was something valuable on one of these planets, another of those lost artefacts, something someone somewhere would probably want to get their hands on - had a nice big gas giant perfect for this, and so it was around that that we were sitting.

And there I was, in my cabin in my briefs, sipping coffee from my ‘I heart space-Mondays’ mug, when there came a request for my presence on the bridge. Some development or other, no doubt. It was always something.

“Now what?” I sighed, rubbing at my temples, setting down my mug.

“You’ll want to see this, Commander,” said Joker’s voice through the cabin intercom. I glared at it, but this achieved nothing. I sighed again and stared at my fish instead. They swam around.

Why had I spent money on fish again? At least the little spaceship models were neat looking.

Oh yeah, Joker had been speaking to me. Something for me to see. That’d mean putting trousers on again.

“Cool, great, down in a sec,” I said, grunting as I stood, shuffling down to the bed to get dressed.

A little under a minute later I emerged from the lift and power-walked my way to the bridge, mug in hand. I came to a halt behind Joker and took an especially loud sip to announce my presence.

“Alright, what’s gone wrong now?” I asked.

“Not so much wrong as, well, just thought you’d like to know about the giant, mysterious ship that appeared out of nowhere in the same orbit as us,” said Joker.

I blinked.

“Run that by me again, thanks?”

“A very, very big ship is sitting in orbit with us. Basically bumper to bumper, actually. I’m kind of afraid to move in case I scratch the paint.”

He sounded remarkably calm about all this. It really kind of sucked the urgency out of the situation. Then again, the situation was just so out-and-out weird that it was kind of hard to take seriously in the first place. Was I missing a joke? I blinked again.

“Where did it come from?” I asked.

“We don’t know. It literally just appeared. Not in the ‘jumped in suddenly’ sense, but in the ‘it wasn’t there one second and then it was’ sense’.”

“That’s...impossible?” I ventured, tentatively.

“Improbable, given that it has observably happened,” EDI chipped in.

“Thanks, EDI,” I said, scratching my chin and wincing. A lot of me was still pretty damn raw from the whole ‘dying’ thing, and a lot of me also still looked as though I had been recently stuck back together. This was because, well, I had been.

I was thinking.

As a rule - and this I’d learnt first-hand - ships popping out of nowhere was never a good sign. Friendly people had a tendency not to do that. So what I was thinking was how best to get out of here as quickly and efficiently as possible.

We hadn’t finished dumping the core yet. In a pinch we could cut it now and probably run, but it would hardly be pretty and it was one of those things that would do more harm than good in the long run.

Then again, in the short run getting blown to bits was also quite bad. This was something I had also learnt first-hand. Not a fan.

Also when we usually said that someone had come out of nowhere we usually meant they’d jumped in and we hadn’t expected it, not that they had literally come from nowhere. That was a new one for me. I had no precedent for that.

“Is it doing anything?” I asked. Given that no-one was panicking and no alarms were going off I assumed ‘no’.

“Nope. Just sitting there. Being mysterious,” said Joker.

That was something, at least.

“Right, well, put this thing up somewhere for me so I can see it.”

This happened, and I got a look. I imagine that my expression spoke volumes.

“What the hell is that?”

It looked as though someone had ripped a chunk off of a cathedral, turned it sideways and then stretched it out and put a big gold-inlaid beak on the front end and a nest of tubes on the back. And then covered the rest in what looked like guns, if my trained eye was any indicator.

Big guns.

“Subtle and understated,” Joker said. I gave him the side-eye and he went quiet again.

“What have you got on that ship, EDI?” I asked.

“Very little I am afraid, Commander. It does not match anything yet encountered.”

I could have told myself that, but I decided not to bring that up. Instead, important questions:

“But it’s not a Collector ship?”

“No,” said EDI.

“Absolutely positive?”

“Yes.”

A definite plus, and I felt myself relax just a tiny bit, standing up and folding my arms.

“Well then.”

On the one hand this was an obviously good thing because it meant that we weren’t caught flat-footed (again) by murderous aliens. On the other though it meant we’d been caught flat-footed by a mysterious unknown which could quite easily turn out to be murderous aliens anyway, of some kind never-before encountered.

Less than ideal.

“What else can you tell me about it? If anything?” I asked.

“You might have to be more specific, Commander.”

I threw up her hands. Damn computers! Read the room!

“I don’t know! Something! Anything! Life signs. How about that? Is anyone even alive on it, for a start? Perhaps it’s a wreck.”

Seemed pretty unlikely, but still. A pause.

“I am detecting approximately sixty five thousand life signs,” said EDI after a moment.

Another pause, but only because I was standing there with my mouth hanging open a little bit.

“I’m sorry, what? Run that number by me again,” I said.

“Sixty five thousand life signs, approximately, Commander.”

“Sixty five…” I said to myself.

That couldn’t be right. That was ridiculous. That was colony-ship levels of people, and why would anything like a colony-ship be here in the arsecrack of absolutely fucking nowhere? And why would a colony-ship look like that anyway?

Who in their right minds would put that many people on a spaceship? Why would you need that many people on a spaceship?!

“I have also detected several significant energy signatures that suggest weapons, and numerous external components that also appear to be weapons. They are far in excess of what a civilian vessel - even one of this size, adjusting for scale - would require to defend itself,” said EDI, as though partially reading my mind. Or, perhaps, just reading my stunned silence.

I’ll admit I felt a certain level of vindication about spotting the weapons, not that it improved my mood a whole lot.

“So it’s a warship?” I asked.

“It is pure conjecture at this point, Commander, but it would not be unlikely “

Wonderful.

“Well great. Fantastic. This has made my day. A bucket of guns masquerading as a spaceship and packed to the gills with people for no obvious reason pops out of thin-fucking-space-air while we’re here unable to really go anywhere or do anything about it. See if we can hail them, let’s get this over with.”

“You’ll take it here?” EDI asked. I gritted my teeth.

“Yes I’ll take it here. Not walking all the way back there to talk to them,” I said, waving a hand towards the stern where that fancy-pants quantum-entanglement communications room was sat. That just seemed a little OTT for someone who was practically close enough I could have reached out and shaken hands with them.

“Hailing frequencies open, Commander.”

I took another sip of coffee, which was now cold.

Let’s say I was still Alliance. Why not? It’ll be a lark. I’ll probably be able to hear Miranda pouting at me from all the way up front.

“Unknown vessel, this is the Systems Alliance Normandy SR-2…”

Chapter Text

What occured between Jarrion and the mysterious ship was a halting, rather uncomfortable conversation the conclusion of which was uncertain.

It took a stumbling sentence or two for Jarrion to get a proper handle on the stranger’s odd dialect, and while he wasn’t sure he made himself entirely clear he at least made himself understood enough that the chat did not conclude with him having to give the order to open fire. A plus.

Importantly, Jarrion had established that the ship was crewed by humans, much to his relief. Though that did just raise further questions. It did mean that just shooting the ship out of hand probably wouldn’t be necessary, at least not immediately.

Beyond that though, very little had been effectively communicated. Mention of the Imperium, the Emperor, Jarrion’s status as a Rogue Trader had all failed to elicit much of a response at all, so clearly something was being lost in translation.

“I didn’t get a word of that,” said Loghain once the connection had been cut. She was inches away from sulking as she said this.

“Uh, it was, well, the pertinent details are that the ship is called the Normandy, the crew is human and are apparently members of something called the Systems Alliance. Torian, ring any bells for you?”

Torian thought a moment.

“I’m afraid not, my Lord.”

Probably should have seen that coming. The galaxy was a big place, after all. Jarrion tutted.

“Shame,” he said.

“Now what?” Loghain asked, saying what probably everyone present was thinking but couldn’t get away with saying themselves because they weren’t Inquisitors. Or, as far as the bridge crew were concerned, they weren’t who appeared to be an Astropath who’d suddenly started following Jarrion around and that the Lord Captain was treating with remarkable deference, an act which they all knew better than to question.

Jarrion didn’t want to say - and never would - but this strange vessel was also their only present link to the greater galaxy and their only lifeline, at least until they worked something out themselves. Without these strangers it would just the Assertive alone in the void, lost, becalmed. You couldn’t ask a gas giant for directions.

So passing this up or letting it slip away wasn’t really an option as far as he was concerned. You never got anywhere by wasting opportunities. Especially not opportunities as wildly, hysterically unlikely as just-so-happening to be next to another ship so close you could practically go out and shake their hand.

If that wasn’t a sign then Jarrion didn’t know what was. The Emperor couldn’t have made his will plainer short of conjuring up a flaming sign pointing to this mysterious ship which said ‘This is important’.

“It is my feeling that we should go and have a word. In person,” said Jarrion, wagging a finger at the pictscreen.

“You want to go over there? Onto that thing?” Loghain asked in mild disbelief.

Jarrion was under no obligations to explain or justify his decisions to anyone, being the Lord Captain, but he felt that things go more smoothly if everyone else was on the same page as him. Father would probably have been horrified as such mollycoddling - a Rogue Trader led, they did not explain!

“I think we’ll all readily admit our circumstances are unusual, yes? The stars are wrong, the Astronomicon is gone and the warp is tranquil as a pond, as our good friend Inquisitor Loghain so kindly pointed out to us.”

Loghain gave a tiny bow. This was unnecessary, and Jarrion ignored it.

The bridge crew, on learning who Loghain actually was, collectively went a bit pale. Jarrion ignored this, too.

“Think about it this way: providence has put before us humans, humans who may well provide answers or - failing that - at least some more accurate astronavigational data. We would be foolish not to take advantage of this opportunity. Indeed, a greater indicator of the Emperor’s protection on this voyage you’d be hard-pressed to find, shunning it would be foolhardy,” said Jarrion. He was definitely using The Voice again at this point.

He looked around for objections. None were voiced. He continued:

“Further, consider this: there is a distinct possibility we have been set adrift in some long-forgotten corner of the galaxy. Maybe the strange stars and unnatural quiet is simply some quirk of the local landscape? Stranger things have happened, have they not? And humanity has still managed to reach here, to this place! Isn’t our duty to bring this unknown land - and our long-lost brothers - back into the fold so that they too may bask in the Emperor’s light?”

The silence continued, though now somewhat more subdued. It seemed his outburst, if not fully convincing everyone present that it was a good idea, had at least convinced them it was the best idea available. Or at least convinced them to keep their opinions to themselves.

Torian was the one to speak up first, clearing his throat beforehand and then asking:

“Who do you propose shall go, my Lord?”

This was a refreshingly easy question to answer.

“Well myself of course, obviously - I’m the Lord Captain. Thale, too. You, Torian, naturally, and-”

Pak, off to the side, let out a soto-voce burst of static, much as an unaugmented individual might have conspicuously cleared their throat. Jarrion didn’t miss a beat.

“Pak will be coming as our representative of the Mechanicus. They can also help administer to the translation servitor we’ll be taking with us. Yes, Pak?”

Pak nodded.

“Thank you, Pak.”

“I would recommend leaving the servitor behind, Jarr- Lord Captain. They often have an...uncomfortable effect on those outside the Imperial fold, I’ve found,” Loghain said, interrupting Jarrion’s flow. He gritted his teeth but had to admit he hadn’t considered this.

Previous contact with some of the lost or out-of-contact colonies and various lost pockets of humanity had shown Jarrion that, on occasion, when the local tech-level had decayed or deviated sufficiently that they weren’t even aware of the Adeptus Mechanicus, the sight of a servitor or a techpriest could cause an adverse reaction.

Like screaming. Or weapons being discharged.

Unfortunate.

“Are you saying they won’t have servitors? They have a spacefaring vessel, I’d hate to sell them short,” he asked over his shoulder at her. She shrugged lightly, arms folded.

“I am saying that we should perhaps assume they don’t and that the appearance of one might cause them some disquiet. This is something I’ve seen before. I feel it best that we approach with full tact and delicacy. Given the circumstances. Make as few ripples as possible.”

Her face shifted to make it clear she was looking at Pak. A flick of the eye would have been enough, but that wasn’t exactly an option for her.

“Or at least as much tact and delicacy as we have available, given that esteemed Magos Pak likely cannot be dissuaded from accompanying you?”

Pak made a noise that you did not have to understand to know was curt.

“I thought not,” Loghain said, turning bodily back to Jarrion again. “Do not worry about the servitor. I will be able to translate for you,” she said.

Given that he’d just conducted a conversation pretty much on the fly and entirely without assistance he wasn’t sure she was offering this service in the first place and Jarrion was going to question this professed aptitude at translating a new and unknown dialect before he remembering that, given the ease with which she conducted herself in the absence of eyes, she was likely a psyker.

The sudden realisation of this particular detail made his skin crawl and it was an effort not to let it show.

He wondered whether she was poking around inside his head right now but quietly dismissed the thought. From what he’d learnt he would have noticed that. Probably.

Her constant bloody grinning didn’t help though.

“So you’ll be coming as well, I take it?” He asked her.

“Yes.”

Jarrion’s brow furrowed. He wondered whether this was the sort of thing he would be able to forbid from happening. Then he realised he wasn’t even sure he’d have wanted to even if it was. As pompous and self-important as Inquisitors could apparently be - and this one was proving to be - having a psyker around could always prove useful.

That, and having her around would make it easier to keep an eye on her. He sighed.

“I imagine that if I did say no to you you’d only hijack a voidsuit and cling to the outside of the lighter anyway.”

“Why, it’s like we’ve met before, Lord Captain,” Loghain said, sweetly.

“I think I preferred you people when you were sinister and distant rather than whimsical and present,” Jarrion said. Loghain just kept on smiling at him, so he sighed again.

“Well that’s settled then. I shall trust to your translation abilities. And my own, such as they are.”

“Lord, might I recommend a small complement of armsmen? We cannot be sure of their friendliness,” Torian interjected.

“Thale not enough for you, Torian?” Jarrion asked, Torian just looked blank. Jarrion wasn’t sure what reaction he had expected to get. “I suppose armsmen couldn’t hurt either. It’s what I pay them for. Master at Arms, if you would,” Jarrion said.

“Lord Captain,” said the Master at Arms, getting started on organising that. While that was going on, Jarrion hailed the mystery ship again and - another fumbling, slightly stilted conversation later - tentative permission to send over a single lighter had been granted.

“Right, well, let’s go and say hello, hmm? Orseus, you have the helm until our return,” Jarrion said, rising from his command throne and nodding to Oresus.

Oresus being the next-most senior member of House Croesus staff on-board after Torian, and a notably inoffensive and forgettable safe pair of hands whenever Jarrion needed Torian to be somewhere else.

“My Lord,” Oresus said, nodding to Jarrion.

With that, the friendly-visit party quit the bridge and took the Assertive’s internal travel system to the lighter bay.

A squad of twelve void-carapace wearing, shotgun-toting armsmen met them on their arrival, standing in attention in two rows. One, Jarrion noted, was carrying a naval shotcannon. This seemed like overkill on what was ostensibly a friendly mission of greeting, but then again overkill was often just being prepared, and he couldn’t really object to that.

Some distance behind them was the lighter being prepared, a gaggle of techpriests and attendant servitors going through the rituals required for a safe journey to be conducted. Even from where he was standing the incense made Jarrion’s eyes water. Incense always did that to him.

He watched a moment as one of the techpriests reached the end of a particular line of the activation chant and another of them struck the lighter with a wrench. The first priest then anointed the struck spot with a dab of oil and the whole group moved around to the other side.

The chanting continued.

Chapter Text

“Whelp,” I said, closing the channel.

That had been an odd experience. Two odd experiences, actually.

The first hadn’t really established anything beyond a surprising communications barrier. Oh, and that the ship was a human ship. Somehow. Figure that one out. Who knew we built them that big? How long had I been out again?

The second odd experience had been the captain of the giant ship - a guy named ‘Jarrion’, apparently - requesting permission to come over and speak face-to-face. Something of a surprise but, given the technical and linguistic issues we were having, maybe a practical idea.

Still. Kind of weird though. And the sort of thing that got a paranoid person like me a little itchy between the shoulder blades.

I mean, I’m a friendly lady! But space is dangerous. Especially for me, where it seems about half of everyone I run into has a reason to want to try and shoot me. It’s exhausting.

By the time the second bout of communication had come to a close the bridge had got a bit more crowded. Miranda had been the first to come up to see what all the fuss was about, unsurprisingly, followed swiftly by Jacob and with Garrus just wandering in not long after that.

Things had got a touch snug, but I’d had worse.

“They want to come here?” Miranda asked. EDI had explained the details - such as were available, at least - to them while I’d been having the talk about coming over and so we were all more-or-less on the same page. Which wasn’t saying much, seeing as how the page was nothing but a collection of question marks at this point.

“Apparently,” I said, shrugging. They’d all heard the same thing I had.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Jacob asked.

“It seems a better idea than saying ‘no’ to the guy in charge of a ship that appears to be about eighty-percent gun. If they’re over here talking they’re not over there doing something we might regret.”

All present took a moment to consider this. Jacob then said:

“...guess you got a point there, Commander.”

“Almost like they put me in charge for a reason. Guessing that ship hasn’t done anything interesting yet, EDI?” I asked.

“You may have to define ‘interesting’.”

I swear to God sometimes EDI was obtuse on purpose.

“Threatening,” I said, gesticulating.

“Then no, Commander.”

“Good, cool. Put me through to the other members of my super group, if you’d be so kind. Jack too, hanging around down there.”

“Patching in the super group, Commander,” said EDI, earning a sour look from Miranda who did not approve of the name. I took another sip from my mug, grimaced at just how cold and foul my coffee now was, set the mug down and then cleared my throat.

“Alright, something’s come up and I’m going to need your attention,” I said, then continuing before anyone could interrupt: “Those of you who weren’t up front to hear what just happened let me bottom line it for you: a guy is coming over. We don’t know anything about him but he’s got a big ship that just showed up so we’re going to try and play nice. They’ll be arriving in the hanger in - uh, EDI, do we have an eta?”

“Nothing has left the other vessel, Commander.”

Typical.

“Right, so they’ll be arriving in the hanger sometime in the next one hundred years or so. I’ll be down there waiting and so will all of you. I want you lot ready to throw down, alright? But don’t look ready to throw down. Get it?”

“What?” Miranda asked, clearly baffled. Good.

“So, business casual?” Garrus said, arms folded. I snapped my fingers and pointed at him.

“Vakarian gets it. Oh, and get a couple of security guys to just stand in the background as well. Just, you know, in case. We do have security guys on this thing, right?”

“Yes, but-” Miranda said but I had a feeling she was about to say something to damage my calm so cut across her.

“Cool, get ‘em down there. Give them an Avenger or something. They can act like they’re helping if anything goes wrong.”

You could not pay me to use an Avenger. It’s irrational, I know, but they just make my skin crawl. They’re just everywhere! And they’re so rubbish! Harsh language would be more effective.

They can pry my Mattock out of my cold, dead hands.

“I’m going to go and put some actual clothes on. EDI, when you see something leave that ship you tell us, then it’s everyone in the hanger in five minutes, okay?”

A chorus of affirmation from everyone. Very gratifying.

The super group link cut, everyone broke up to go do whatever it was they felt they might need to get ready. For me, that meant looking less like I’d just fallen backwards through a hedge, one of those nice low-profile kinetic barrier units like Miranda favoured and a cheeky Phalanx in case things got messy.

Just a pistol made me feel basically naked but I figured since I’d probably be the one doing the talking it might be tactful to not look too tooled up.

I mean, I do conduct important conversations with questionable people while I’m in full armour and armed to the teeth but, you know, tact. First impressions and all that. This is meant to be friendly, so showing up looking like I’m just waiting for an excuse to start shooting is probably a bad idea.

Life can be so complicated sometimes.

While I was just finishing lacing up my boots EDI gave the word that a small craft had been detected launching from the mystery ship and was heading on over, due to arrive in fifteen, twenty minutes say. Nippy little thing if that’s the case, given the distance.

I hustled on down. Most everyone was already there, which I was happy to see, and they’d all taken my instruction on appearing casual mostly to heart. Weaponry was light, but not so light I would feel vulnerable knowing it was behind me, backing me up. Good job, guys.

Especially you, Garrus. You’re my rock.

“Now,” I said, standing in front of everyone. “This is kind of an odd situation I’m aware but let’s just take it a step at a time, alright? Mysterious spaceship appears literally out of nowhere? We can roll with that. I’ll be doing the talking - these guys seem to have some language issues. Any questions?”

“Lots but, you know, we’re against the clock here,” said Garrus, who seemed to sum up the mood of everyone else who all just nodded.

Again, Garrus man, where would I be with you?

“I have given the shuttle docking permission and guidance instructions, Commander, it is making its final approach,” said EDI.

“Game faces, everyone. Just another day at the office,” I said.

The hanger was some big two-door deal so while we were standing there breathing comfortably we all listened to the big clunk and whine of the exterior doors opening to admit our guests, followed shortly by the sound of them closing again and the atmosphere being equalised.

Then the inner doors opened and we got our first eyes-on look.

The shuttle - that Jarrion guy had called it a ‘lighter’ when we’d spoken - was, uh, functional looking. That’d be the polite way of describing it. It was the kind of craft that looked like if you threw it at a building it would probably still be able to keep going afterwards. Chunky.

I actually kind of liked it, if I’m being honest. It had character. Ugly character, but character all the same. The big double-headed eagle logo was kind of neat, too.

It sat there venting steam for a second or so before a big hatch hissed and unfurled, folding down onto the deck. From inside came first a good dozen or so guys in full armour, carrying guns that really didn’t need to be as big as they were.

Clearly me and our new friends had different ideas of what made a good first impression.

These armoured guys split into two ranks of six and took up position either side of the ramp and then came out the ones who were clearly the actual movers and shakers.

There was someone in full-on, bright-red robes, hood up. Kind of difficult to tell anything else about them because their hands were in their sleeves, too. There was a guy who looked so old it was actually kind of surprising he was standing in the first place. There was another guy in armour who looked like he was carrying enough guns for three people. There was a lady wearing a blindfold of all things and, finally, leading them all, a flamboyant man in the most over-the-top naval-style uniform I think I’d ever seen in my life.

Epaulettes and everything. Enough gold rope to choke a horse.

This man was also smiling. Jarrion, I assumed. He came striding down the ramp like he owned the place, scanned along all of us, fixed his eyes on me - good eye, him, to be able to spot the one in charge that quick - and came strolling forward,

“Greetings, fellow - those aren’t human,” he said, his greeting dying in his throat as his eyes snapped to the aliens mixed in among the waiting humans.

There was a split-second of nothing much at all, and then hands went to weapons.

Chapter Text

It was mostly instinctual, mostly a reflex. The sight of something non-human just touched a spot in the human brain that led to an automatic reaction.

Entirely understandable, of course, and only right and proper.

Jarrion’s stint on the Assertive had not involved an abundance of contact with aliens. Given that he’d basically just been charged with patrolling territory already purged and claimed he hadn’t expected it to. What aliens had been present around what were now House Croesus holdings had all be removed years previously, and fairly thoroughly to boot.

But there had been some holdouts, desperate remnants striking back at the colonists every now and then, more out of spite than anything else. These Jarrion had spent some time dealing with; tracing vessels back to this or that hidden base before either taking them out from orbit or - when they proved too well-protected for this to be practical - going down with the armsmen to help root them out the old-fashioned way.

So all alien contact those on-board the Assertive had been, up until right this moment in this hanger on this strange ship, exclusively hostile. Because what other sort of contact was possible with aliens, really? So it was a reflex that saw weapons being drawn, a gut reaction.

And of course, the strangers - and the xenos - pulled out their own weapons, slipping them off of hips or pulling them off their backs whereupon they sprang out and unfolded, quite unlike a weapon should.
Even Torian whipped out the ancient stub revolver he forever carried with him, raising it with a shaking hand to point in the vague direction of the nearest threatening looking crewmember, whose eyes widened and whose fingers tightened around the weirdly-curved, sleek white rifle they were holding.

Understandably this turned the mood in the hanger a bit sour. But no-one fired a shot. Not yet.

Rogue Traders had something of a reputation - among those people who knew about such things enough to be aware of reputations, or of the existence of Rogue Traders in the first place, of course - of cheerfully consorting with aliens and, indeed, there were many who did.

House Croesus was not one of them.

Jarrion had seen aliens in his time, of course, even prior to his captaincy. But almost all of them had either been dead on him meeting them or else dead not long after, more than once by his own hand. It was just how father operated, and so how the others were expected to operate too.

Some Rogue Traders felt that aliens - like all available resources - could be put to a good use by those with sufficient freedom and imagination. House Croesus felt that ammunition was cheap and time spent attempting to exploit aliens was time that could be better spent making sure the galaxy had fewer aliens in it.

Which was fair.

Normally, there would have been very little cause to deviate from standard procedure. But things were not normal. Things were thoroughly abnormal and confused, sadly, and so softly-softly was called for, at least for now.

As much as it pained Jarrion and as much as some deep-seated, visceral part of him dearly wanted to kill everything in the hanger and seize the ship by force he knew that this would only create problems in the long run.

The ability to plan ahead was valuable to a Rogue Trader, he’d learnt, having seen the sort of problems his father had had to end up shooting because he’d shot something else earlier, and being uncomfortable in the present was preferable to being destitute or dead in the future. This much seemed obvious.

Unfortunately, being the one in charge, Jarrion was the one who had to try and make this happen.

“Calm, calm, let’s not act rashly now, hmm?” He said, interposing himself between the two sides, holding out his hands and giving a version to everyone that they would hopefully be able to understand. The mood did not immediately lighten.

“You do see the armed aliens, don’t you?” Loghain asked.

“Yes I did but I also saw that they were outnumbered by the humans - don’t some of these unincorporated types associate with alien mercenaries from time to time? Heretical, yes, but they don’t know any better do they? Emperor’s teeth there are Rogue Traders that pal around with aliens if it benefits humanity as a whole! Exitus acta probat, hmm? No shooting! Guns down! That means you too, Torian!”

Torian seemed almost grateful to be allowed to lower his arm, panting a little as he holstered it again. For one reason or another this served as a signal to everyone else, too, as all other guns went down at the same time, though fingers did not stray too far from triggers.

The mood in the hanger softened noticeably.

“Would you know a lot about palling around with aliens, Lord Captain?” Loghain asked, politely, loud enough that no-one wouldn’t have been able to avoid hearing it.

There were a lot of very angry things that Jarrion felt like saying at that moment, but he bit back on them and said instead:

“Later, Loghain, you and I are going to have a very serious and very length conversation about what it is you’re doing on my ship and also about what constitutes the undermining of authority.”

“I look forward to it, Lord Captain.”

Pinching the bridge of his nose Jarrion took a breath, re-affixed his smile and turned back to severe looking, heavily scarred, shaven-scalped woman he’d assumed was in charge, keeping his arms spread and hands open.

“Terribly sorry about that,” he said. He’d spent the lighter trip over going over some of the stickier points of the dialect and so his words came out a lot smoother.

Again, the augmetics really helped here. That full-language comprehension aid suite had been worth not just the expense but the extend discomfort of its implantation and the occasional splitting headache that he still enjoyed every now and then. Actually getting to properly use it was at least one positive out of this whole experience.

“Happens to the best of us,” the woman said with remarkable calm, then: “Commander Shepard of the Systems Alliance, presently working alongside an outside agency.”

This she said while glancing to a woman in an impractical bodyglove, who did not rise to the bait. If this glance was meant to convey anything it was lost on Jarrion.

Starting over seemed like a good idea. Jarrion took a breath and put on a smile and decided to give the best second impression possible. Something to smooth things over.

“Hail and greetings, Commander Shepard,” Jarrion said in High Gothic, feeling it perhaps best to go formal. Shepard blinked, clearly not having understood a single word. Perhaps formal hadn’t been the best idea after all. In fact, why had it even looked like a good idea at all in the first place?

Jarrion coughed and started over with words she could probably understand: “A pleasure to meet you. Apologies for that little, ah, misunderstanding on our arrival. Trying times. I am Jarrion, of House Croesus.”

Shepard looked only a little less blank.

“Hello. House Croesus?” She asked.

This was not going the way Jarrion had hoped, and he could practically feel the eyes of his little entourage burning into the back of his neck. Smile bolted firmly in place he pressed on. Always best to keep pushing forward, as father always said!

“Apologies. I am so used to my family reputation preceding me! I am a Rogue Trader.”

This had been mentioned during their communication but it seemed to have slipped past her. He’d hoped this might finally clear things up. Shepard’s face made it obvious that it did not.

Jarrion could feel the momentum of the conversation rapidly slipping away and decided to keep on pressing on before being forced again to give another useless answer to a simple question.

He took a step to the side and swept his arms towards the entourage.

“And allow to introduce some of the fine members of my crew!” He said, perhaps more loudly than he needed to. “Thale, my stalwart bodyguard! Torian, loyal, venerable seneschal of my House. Keeps me honest! Pak over there, our resident representative of the Mechanicus and, uh-”

He fumbled when he got to Loghain.

“And, ah, Loghain. Who is an ambassador. Yes. An ambassador.”

He couldn’t be sure and didn’t want to take the time to check, but he could have sworn Loghain smirked at that.

Shepard stared at Jarrion’s crew, none of whom had moved or spoken or even reacted in any way to being introduced. She gave them all a nod then turned back to Jarrion again.

“And you were just in the Neighbourhood? You kind of snuck up on us.”

“We are the victim of unusual circumstances,” Jarrion said, lightly.

“There’s a lot of that going around. That ship of yours is something else.”

Here Jarrion saw a point he could perhaps use to make everyone feel more at ease. After all, what captain doesn’t like talking about their ship? A fabulous opportunity for an ice breaker. He made sure to use The Voice, the best to project charisma and authority. Or at least try to.

“The Assertive? Fine vessel, isn’t she? My first command, would you believe! Just taking it on a brief tour of father’s more recent holdings. Showing the House colours, you know? Assisting where required. Helping the locals remember the Imperium still exists! Ah, but where are my manners? This, ah, Normandy of yours is a rather lovely ship if you don’t mind me saying so. Quite unlike anything I’ve ever seen myself.”

“This is actually the second one. The first was destroyed two years ago,” Shepard said, somewhat cagily. Jarrion rolled with it.

“Terribly sorry to hear it. That must have been a blow for you.”

“You could say that. If you don’t mind me asking, how did you manage to get a ship of that size?” She asked. Jarrion frowned. To him the Assertive was a healthy size but certainly not the vast ship that Shepard seemed to be implying it was. Certainly nothing like father’s Mars.

Then again, Jarrion thought, this little ‘System Alliance’ that Shepard claimed to be part of might lack the facilities for vessels on a similar scale. It wouldn’t be unheard of. Little ships for a little system, puttering about from world to world. All very provincial. Best to humour them, while also perhaps doing just that bit extra to help impress.

“You flatter me, Commander. The Assertive is only a light cruiser - you should see my brother’s ship. Indeed, you should see my father’s ship! I can’t really speak for the the Assertive’s exact provenance, I’m afraid. It’s been in the family longer than I’ve been alive. Father mentioned once it being reclaimed, but who knows where from? The navy leaves so many wrecks.”

“Whose navy?” Shepard pressed.

“The Imperium’s.”

“What’s the Imperium?”

Well that definitely settled some things. They were definitely in the sticks if this questioned needed to be asked. Not unexpected, of course. Not out of the ordinary. These backwaters, who knew what they’d forgotten of the greater galaxy? Maybe the founding of this ‘Systems Alliance’ predated the Imperium!

Unlikely, sure, but stranger things happened.

With great effort Jarrion set his face to a look of pleasant, friendly neutrality.

“Might it possible to conduct this meeting somewhere more comfortable? Torian is an old man, after all, and it can hardly be comfortable to be standing for so long,” Jarrion said, earning himself a bemused look from his seneschal whose ears had pricked up at the sound of his name.

Shepard eyed Jarrion and then the rest of the group with potent skepticism. The old man did look pretty, well, old, so she supposed there was a possibility the request was honest. For her part, having a conversation while standing in the hanger with two tense armed groups wasn’t wholly her idea of a good time. Pretty normal, yes, but not especially enjoyable.

“Alright. Your people and you and I can carry this on in the communication room. And I do just mean your people, just these ones - not the guys in armour,” she said, pointing to those standing with Jarrion.

“That’s quite alright, the armsmen can remain here with our lighter if you’d allow that?”

“That’s fine. They’re not going to start anything, right?”

“Oh no no, not at all.”

“Right,” she said, eyes sweeping over Jarrion and the others and trying to count the guns she could see. She lost count pretty quickly.

“For the sake of friendly diplomacy could you leave your guns here? And your sword.”

Shepard felt it best not to let the fact the guy was wearing a sword faze her. That he looked like someone had stuck every European naval uniform from the seventeenth century onwards into a blender and poured the results out on top of someone was bad enough.

She’d also expected objections and was honestly surprised when none appeared forthcoming. She’d have objected.

“By all means,” Jarrion said, motioning for his immediate entourage to do as they were told and pass their weapons to the armsmen for safekeeping. This occurred without any grumbling whatsoever, armsmen stepping up to take things as they were reading.

The armsman who ended up being handed Thale’s weapons had the body language of someone entrusted with a priceless and indescribably fragile artefact. His rigid terror was obvious even through his armour. Thale gave the man a wink, which did not appear to help his calm.

Jarrion had seen the request to disarm coming. He had seen it happen before. Once or twice - while serving directly on his father’s ship - similar requests had been made by this or that dignitary or head of planetary governance and had, of course, been ignored.

His father wasn’t typically in the habit of doing what others told him to do, especially given as very few others were at his level of social standing in the Imperium. The results had always been a significant level of discomfort in those whose requests had been rebuffed, Jarrion had noticed.

Now while that might not have bothered his father (and, indeed, maybe have been the point) Jarrion had decided to affect a reputation as the nicer of the scions of House Croesus, and part of this was an apparent willingness to speak on equal, peaceful terms with those various authority figures he happened to need to talk to. Even if their authority was trifling or laughably pathetic, it was the thought that counted.

In his experience so far it had paid dividends. People were a lot more friendly and open when you didn’t snub their requests and conduct talks while strapped to the nines. Or so Jarrion liked to think, at least.

In this particular instance he was particularly aware of the need to appear friendly, especially given how close a firefight had appeared to have been on their arrival.

Besides, they’d all been carrying obvious weapons for just this reason, at Jarrion’s insistence and as was standard practise on such meetings he conducted.

Handing off the bigger, more belligerent looking firearms and the unbuckling of the sword from Jarrion’s belt drew attention away from the many, many places on Thale’s person that could easily - and were easily - concealing weapons and also from the fact that Jarrion was wearing a lot more rings than he usually did.

Appear polite. Be prepared. If these Systems Alliance people thought that the guns and sword were the only weapons Jarrion and his cohorts were carrying then he was more than happy to let them keep thinking that.

Loghain, for her part, hadn’t apparently carried a weapon at any point since making her first appearance. Which was just unsettling. What sort of Imperial citizen walked around unarmed? And an Inquisitor, no less? It set the mind wandering, and not anywhere nice.

Probably intentional.

Orders were given to the armsmen to return to the lighter, leaving a posting of two to stand guard while the rest waited inside. Garrus and Miranda and the others also dispersed, leaving behind a handful of very confused Cerberus crew with Avengers to stand around and keep an eye on things.

Once everything was settled and sorted Shepard nodded back towards the lift, the doors of which opened almost as if on cue.

“This way,” she said.

And they followed.

Chapter Text

The ride in the lift was tense. Jarrion could tell his decision making was being questioned, silently. He could feel it coming off the others in waves. A quick glance over his shoulder only served to confirm this - they were all looking at him as though he was mad.

Well, Torian and Loghain, at least. Which was impressive for Loghain, all things considered. Jarrion decided to ignore her and focus on Torian, given he was the one who appeared the most aghast of the two.

Thale was as impassive as he always was.

“You seem agitated, Torian,” Jarrion said, cheerful enough, idly considering for a moment how much Low Gothic the Commander might be able to catch.

“There are xenos onboard this ship, my Lord!” Torian hissed, having very conspicuously switched to High Gothic to do so. He hadn’t understood a word the strange new human had said but he had been sharp enough to notice her complete lack of understanding at Jarrion’s bungled formality.

Little slid past Torian, or at least little that he could make use of.

“I noticed, Torian,” Jarrion hissed right back out of the corner of his mouth, also in High Gothic. “But we have something we’re here to do so let’s try and stay on-mission, yes? We can deal with the aliens later. All in good time.”

“Is there a problem?” Shepard asked, looking sideways at the pair of them. Jarrion straightened up, having bent to better whisper at his stooped seneschal.

“Not at all, Commander. It is merely that, ah, that this ship is very quiet. We aren’t used to it. Makes an old man like Torian a little nervous, I’m sorry to say.”

True, while also being a lie.

Now that he’d mentioned it Jarrion couldn’t help but notice just how deafeningly, overwhelmingly quiet the ship actually was. Other than the soft hum of the elevator as it rose he could hardly hear anything. Not the rattling of ducts, not the constant background thrum of the engine, not the creak of the plating. Nothing. It was deeply unnerving, like the ship was dead. He shivered.

Shepard, for her part, was unnerved by how her translator failed to understand a word of what had been said between the two men, much as it failed to understand what the flamboyant captain had said to her back down below when he’d done what he’d obviously thought was a very polite introduction.

It had struggled in vain to grasp something and when the two of them had been talking it had seemingly latched onto one or two semi-familiar words or sounds here or there, but the rest had been gibberish. Even now it was still trying to work it out, so far without any obvious success.

Whatever it was they’d spoken it wasn’t any language she’d heard before, or that the software had heard before, either. Unusual, to the say the least. Not unheard of or impossible, but unusual.

There was a lot of unusual going around, apparently.

At least it had kind of understood the first bit that Jarrion had said, before he’d turned around and started his little whispering match with the old guy. That at least was something that kind of felt like progress.

Every little helped.

Before too long the elevator got to where it was meant to be going and, Shepard led the little group around a corner and through or two and into the conference room.

“Sit, sit anywhere,” she said, gesturing to the various chairs that were sat about the place. From the way that Jarrion came in and started she got the impression he’d been expecting bigger, but he smiled effacingly in that way he did a lot and picked a chair anyway.

The chair he picked was right beside the one she herself picked. The others all sat the far end of the table and stared. Even the woman with the blindfold and the one in the robes with the hood whose face was still almost entirely hidden. They just at the end of the table, silently.

Shepard just ignored them. Jarrion seemed willing enough to talk for everyone in the room anyway.

“Commander,” he said, pleasantly. “I am sure there are many questions you wish to ask of me and I of you, and I imagine we shall find time for that. I also feel that - were we to attempt to establish who or what you or I are and why we are here we would only end up with even more questions needing to be asked, and neither of us get anywhere.”

This was a mouthful, but Shepard followed it and nodded.

“So we should probably cut straight to the reason why you wanted to come over here to talk.”

“Yes indeed, thank you. To put it plainly, we are lost. I hate to have to ask you for a favour so soon after meeting you, but could you perhaps provide us with some local data? Or better yet, some astronavigational data of the local sector, if at all possible. Just so that we could get our bearings.”

Shepard had been asked for more, this wasn’t that dear. She shrugged.

“That all? Sure, I don’t see why not.”

Jarrion’s face lit up in what was possible the most genuine expression of happiness she’d seen yet. It wasn’t a great look, but it was better than his business smile.

“Wonderful! I shall speak to Pak about the details of the data transfer in a moment - but, ah, just to ease my personal curiosity would it be possible for you to perhaps tells us where we are?” He asked. Shepard raised an eyebrow, an act which did interesting things to the scars on her face.

“You really are lost, aren’t you?”

Jarrion’s smile got self-effacing again, and he shrugged, hands out and palms up. The guy really did have a lot of rings on, Shepard noticed.

“It’s a uniquely diquesting experience,” he said.

“I bet. Yeah alright, give me a sec.”

She could have asked EDI to do it wasn’t the hardest thing in the world so didn’t really see the point. Bringing up her omnitool and giving it a few taps she got a map of the galaxy to spring into view in the centre of the table and, with another few taps, zoomed in to where they were right at that moment, or near enough.

Jarrion’s eyes widened a little at this, and Shepard could have sworn that that Pak guy - guy? - made some sort of clicking sound, but it had been difficult to make out.

“Fascinating device. And ah, thank you. Where might we be at this moment?” Jarrion asked, gesturing to the map display hovering before them.

Her fingers moved again and a single point on the map was highlighted, a twinkling dot standing out amidst all the others, sitting in the midst of an area delineated by a vague boundary line.

“We are here,” she said. “Hourglass Nebula, Terminus Systems. This whole area here would be the Terminus systems. I think the planet outside right now is, uh, what was it again, EDI?”

“Nephros, Commander,” said a voice, presumably belonging to someone somewhere else on the ship with immediate access to that information. Shepard snapped her fingers.

“Nephros, right. That answer anything for you?”

Segmentum Obscurus. What she was talking about was Segmentum Obscurus, or at least a broadly similar area. Where they appeared to be right at that moment - according to her - wasn’t that remote or far-removed. They weren’t even out on the fringes. The warp should have been churning. Imperial presence should have been obvious. Segmentum Obscurus was not a notably peaceful one even by Imperial standards.

Jarrion swallowed as his mind clutched desperately for possibilities.

It was technically possible for a human to have not heard of the Imperium. He knew this. He’d been over this. Technically possible. You did indeed sometimes find such people, as a Rogue Trader. Long-lost colonies having entirely forgotten their origins, completely unaware of their Imperial obligations. These things happened. It was technically possible.

But where they were supposed to be?

Not really. Going from the unlikely to the borderline-impossible. This was not the sticks.

“C-could you - could you possibly - what is here, if you don’t mind me asking?” Jarrion asked, pointing a slightly trembling finger to the point on the map where the Eye of Terror should have been. Should have been, but wasn’t. In fact, Jarrion couldn’t see any sign of it anywhere.

Probably just a mistake. It wasn’t exactly the sort of thing you could miss. Even light years away you could see the bloody thing. It was a significant factor in navigation, even! Had Altrx not spotted it from the otherside of the galaxy Jarrion might have understood, but from where they were? Ludicrous.

Why wouldn’t it be there? Had to be a mistake.

“There? Nothing. Were you expecting something?”

Jarrion swallowed.

“No just - ah - checking. And Terra? Where is Terra? Here, yes?” He asked, pointing. Again, Shepard gave him the same odd look. Delicately, she reached out, took him by the wrist, and moved his finger so it was pointing quite a far way across the map and down.

“No, here.”

“Ah, m-my mistake, of course. Our maps must be rotated incorrectly. A simple misunderstanding.”

He’d expected something like this, but nowhere near as confounding as it was turning out. He’d hoped to have found some nugget, some kernel of information he recognised that he could immediately operate off of, but everything was upside down and back to front. It did not feel comfortable.

Jarrion licked his lips and swallowed again, though his throat was uncomfortably dry. A nagging suspicion tugged at his hindbrain and before he’d even fully considered the absurdity it suggested he found himself asking:

“Ah, Commander, just to further satisfy my curiosity you wouldn’t mind telling me what year it is, would you?”

Shepard blinked.

“The year? Twenty-one fifty-eight,” she said.

Jarrion jolted. That couldn’t be right.

Sure, yes, he’d been prepared for something unusual. Some difference in positioning, yes, that would be fine, that would be expected. Some difference in time? It would be unfortunate, but he was sure he could rise above it. As he’d already said to Loghain it was a possibility, it had been recorded happening before.

What the Commander had said though just couldn’t be right. Couldn’t be!

“A local calendar, presumably,” he said, evenly, casually, settling on this as the most reasonable explanation. It did happen with fair regularity, after all, just rarely with so low a number. Shepard shook her head.

“No, that’s the year it is back on Earth. We’re working off of that calendar.”

Another, bigger jolt. Jarrion stared into space.

He was out of ideas at this point. At this point he mostly just wanted a lie down in a dark room with a glass of amasec. He somehow doubted he’d get the opportunity anytime soon.

“Something wrong?” Shepard asked as the silence drew on, reminding Jarrion that he had just been stood stock-still looking at nothing since she’d spoken last. He jerked upright and smiled, though the smile was getting very threadbare and strained.

“Could I - would you mind if I took a moment to discuss matters with my crew?” He asked. Shepard wordlessly indicated one of the empty seats further along the table and the Rogue Trader rose briefly only to slump again next to the others, his elbows on the conference table and his head in his hands.

“What is she saying? Where are we?” Torian asked, leaning in and whispering, making sure to stick to High Gothic with a wary glance Shepard’s way. The Commander had her arms folded and was watching silently.

“Nevermind where! When! When! She’s claiming we’re in the year twenty-one fifty-eight! Says that’s the year on Terra right at this very moment! Two one five eight! The third millennium!” Jarrion hissed through his fingers. Torian’s eyes widened.

“She’s lying! She has to be!”

“She’s not,” Loghain said, butting in.

“How would you know?” Jarrion snapped back, the tension of the situation finally cutting into his good humour. Loghain did not appear to notice. Or care. She just pointed to her eyes or, rather, her lack of them.

“I haven’t been avoiding bumping into things by guesswork. I actually am a psyker, in case you hadn’t worked that out yet. She’s not lying.”

Jarrion faltered, but hid it well. In all the excitement he had actually forgotten about that particular detail. Suddenly he was slightly worried about what might be on his mind without him realising it.

“What is she thinking, then?” He asked.

“I’m only reading the surface. I won’t push for deeper right now. She’s being entirely honest with us. She’s skeptical about us and wary of our origins and motives but she’s not lying at all.”

“But that’s impossible! She must be misinformed!” Torian hissed.

Loghain shook her head.

“Travel through time on account of the Warp is not unknown,” she said, evenly.

Jarrion laid his hands down on the table. That she’d said it so evenly was really what got under skin. As though this was in any way a reasonable turn of events.

“I know that, we went over that. Ships arriving before they leave, ships taking decades to show up but only feeling as though they’ve been in transit for weeks. We’ve all heard about that. But I’ve never heard of anything like this. M3! That’s - that’s ancient history! That’s before the Age of Strife! Before the Great Crusade! Before - everything!” He said.

Thale - who did not speak High Gothic anywhere near fluency - sat through all of this with the blissfully resigned look of a man who had long-ago found his place in life one where he would rarely have any idea what was going on and who had settled comfortably into this.

Likewise, while Shepard’s translation software - with some fresh assistance from EDI - was still doing its job of trying to get a handle on what the strangers were saying, so far all she was getting was snatches and nothing near enough for her to actually know what they were talking about. Eventually it’d probably start working, but for now she was still getting nothing.

“Are they okay?” Shepard asked Thale, for want of anything else to do. Since he was sat on closest to her and wasn’t involved he seemed the best person to ask..

Thale did not know what she’d said, because he couldn’t decipher her mangled, bizarre-sounding Low Gothic. He smiled anyway and shrugged. In most situations this worked pretty well for Thale.

Sandbagged and denied a proper answer, Shepard moved her attention onto Pak, hoping that maybe they might have more to say.

“Do they do this often?” She asked. Pak turned their cowled head in Shepard’s direction and the Commander got their first, proper look at the Magos’ face. She flinched.

“Holy crap, I thought I got it bad. You get spaced too?”

Pak remained silent. They did not know what the Commander was saying either, though they had a better idea than Thale had. They just didn’t really care what she had to say. Pak did, however, care a little more about the rather interesting device she’s used to conjure up the map and the equally-interesting signals they could detect passing from the ship itself to the equipment on her person.

Signals linked somehow to that voice from above that had spoken not long ago. Intriguing stuff, Pak felt. Almost enough to justify the tedium of having to be on board the Assertive for its unedifying round-trip of largely explored planets in the first place. Assuming something of value came of this unexpected side excursion, of course.

But that could wait, Pak knew. All was as the Omnissiah willed.

And if it looked like it might not be all as the Omnissiah willed, well, that was why Pak was there.

Shepard sighed. So much for making conversation.

“This is going great,” she said, rubbing her face.

Not too far away, just down the length of the table, Jarrion was also struggling.

“At least it’s not another universe,” he said, trying to grasp something reassuring, as a drowning man might grasp wreckage.

“Well, we don’t know that for sure. Perhaps it’s the past in another universe?” Loghain suggested. Jarrion narrowed his eyes at her.

“You really won’t let this go, will you?”

“I just don’t see the harm in being open to all possibilities,” she said, with every appearance of being reasonable. Which she wasn’t. She was verging towards the deranged, plainly.

“This is not a good possibility! This is a possibility that would see us entirely cut off! Not even cut off! Being cut off would imply that what you’re cut off from is somewhere else - what we’re cut off from doesn’t exist, assuming your ‘possibility’ is correct! The Imperium hasn’t even come into being yet!”

“The Imperium is eternal,” Loghain pointed out, to which Torian - only nominally present in the conversation at this point - nodded enthusiastically.

“It - “ Jarrion started, stopping to take a breath and calm his nerves. Now was not the time for a theological discussion or any other derailment. When he started again he sounded a lot more settled:

“I am as Emperor-fearing as the next man - more so, I’d go so far as to say, being a captain of a ship and so therefore directly responsible for countless thousands of His servants! - and while I thank Him for His guidance and protection with my every word and deed I am also painfully aware that neither of those things will fuel my ship, replace my crew or restock my provisions! I can’t serve the Emperor with a lifeless husk of a ship in a galaxy that doesn’t even have the Imperium in it!”

“Maybe you’re not trying hard enough,” Loghain said. Jarrion just gaped at her for a moment before finally noticing the difficulty she was having keeping a straight face.

“You - you - you’re having me on. Damn you, Loghain, this isn’t the time for that!”

“Just thought I’d lighten the mood.”

“Are you sure you’re an Inquisitor?” He asked, eyes narrowed.

She pulled out her rosette again and frowned down at it briefly.

“Fairly sure,” she said.

“You doing alright there?” Shepard asked and Jarrion jolted, wheeling around in his seat. He’d quite forgotten she was there at all. Very poor form, but things were a little bit unusual.

“Ah, yes. Apologies. We are rather - ah - rather more lost than we initially thought, is all. All in uproar! But we’ll figure something out, I’m sure. About the transfer of that data - “

Jarrion briefly twisted in his seat and had very short conversation with Pak. Or rather, spoke at Pak who nodded once or twice. Once whatever this accomplished was accomplished he turned to Shepard again and continued:

“I did notice rather a discrepancy in the systems of our ships? So I brought a dataslate. A rather more direct method of transfer if you could possibly put the information on it.”

Jarrion dug around inside his coat and pulled out said dataslate, laying it on the conference table and sliding it towards Shepard, who looked at it as though he’d just slid a raw cod across the table at her. This bewilderment Jarrion picked up on, and he got a touch sheepish.

“Or whatever methods works best for you? Pak is ready to assist, as I said,” he said, gesturing to Pak who did not move a muscle.

Shepard gave Pak a glance and then picked up the dataslate and turned it over in her hands, eyebrow raised. She had the look of someone handling something familiar enough to be distressingly unfamiliar. Once she’d confirmed that she wasn’t entirely sure how to make the thing work she looked back up to Jarrion again.

“We’ll work something out.”

Chapter Text

I suppose it would be ironic me thinking someone else was crazy. Would that be irony?

Then again, bear in mind that this guy did come from a ship that by all accounts really shouldn’t exist. For one thing it looks, as said, like someone just chucked a piece of a cathedral into space. For another thing it’s fucking huge. Impractically huge. How-could-anyone-afford-to-build-something-like-this huge.

And what was the deal with this tablet thing?

And even more pressingly what’s the deal with all those skulls?

And I guess I’d be a bit out-of-sorts if I was lost. So maybe I’m being unkind.

Then again, those skulls though.

Top to bottom this definitely had to rank among one of my weirder days. Still, just another thing to roll with and at least I hadn’t had to kill anyone since waking up - a definite plus in my book. Giving some strange strangers directions is probably going to be one of the flat-out nicest things I can say I’ll have done for weeks now.

Leaving them to sit and keep bickering in the conference room - they’d still been at it when the door had closed behind me - I cut through the lab to get back to the CIC, figuring there’d be a pretty good place to figure out how exactly I was meant to get this data to those guys.

PS: kind of a design oversight having the briefing room only reachable by walking through either the armoury or the lab. Or is that just me? I don’t design spaceships so maybe that’s a stupid thing to point out.

Anyway. Other things to worry about.

“EDI, was is this thing I’m holding?” I said, stepping up to the map and frowning down at the weird tablet thing again. This didn’t make it look any less confusing to me. It was close, right? Close to what I was familiar with, but different enough in enough different ways to just be confusing.

And it had more skulls on it, too.

“Unsure, Commander, it is unfamiliar to me and I am unable at this moment to interface with it in any way.”

That was new. I might have raised an eyebrow at that, had I not recently singed my eyebrows off.

“That’s a little unusual,” I said, turning the thing over. This also told me nothing, though I did note that the back had that same two-headed eagle symbol on the back that their shuttle had. At least they got consistent branding. “This symbol mean anything to you either?”

“It is similar to several groups I am aware of, but none with the resources necessary for a ship of the sort presently sharing our orbit, Commander, and none known to operate in this area, so they should likely be discounted.”

“Worth a shot. So when you say you can’t interface…?”

“The device lacks most of - correct, almost all of - the system architecture I am familiar with and designed to operate with. It is difficult to determine without some manner of connection, however, and I cannot establish one. A physical connection would do much to rectify this.”

Yeah, that sounded like a great idea.

“I am not plugging this random piece of whatever into you, EDI. Who knows where it’s been? Right, well, we’re going to have to figure out some way of getting this information to these guys. What’s the simplest way, you reckon? Do we have a printer on this ship?”

“No, Commander.”

I had been joking, obviously, but still. One fewer options. I scratched my chin, wincing when I caught one of the bigger scars. Kind of hoped they would have healed by now. Oh well, at least I have character.

“Probably for the best,” I said, leaning over the console and just staring at the big swirl of the galaxy for answers to this very dull, technical question. Answers came there none. “This’d be so much easier if I could transfer files direct. Didn’t ask about that. I should probably go back and ask if that’d work.”

“The issues encountered during communication suggest a level of incompatibility between our vessels that would make a direct transfer difficult, if not immediately impossible.”

That was a real long way of telling me not to bother. I ground my teeth. Incompatibility!

“However many years I spent in that navy and then all that time I spent pootling round the galaxy righting wrongs and landing on planets to just drive around in circles and I never once ran into compatibility issues. Not once! Most things you could just slather omnigel on and they’d work or just wave your hand and everything works out. And then these guys! I like variety but this is just unhelpful. Fuck, I don’t know, let’s just put it on magnetic tape or something. That’d be-”

My rant was interrupted because, while I was in the midst of it, I wheeled around and just-so happened to spot my elite crew of assorted, pan-galactic badasses all clustered around one of the CIC’s stations looking as though they’d been collectively caught with their hand in some sort of very wide-necked cookie jar.

“Hi guys,” I said, warily, eyes flicking between them in the hopes that some sort of clue might leap out at me. Nothing did, at least not until I looked at the screen they were stood around, which was showing a ceiling-mounted view of the briefing room. I could just about see our guests still arguing. And so, by connection, they’d all seen it too.

Seriously, guys?

“There a team meeting I missed?” I asked, stepping down from the map and wandering over, casual-like.

They were all stood frozen in the way that people who really hoped that you wouldn’t turn around and notice them tend to stand frozen. But I had turned around, and I had noticed. Stopping in front of them I went for the ‘serious’ arm fold as a starting move.

“Take it you were all watching that?” I asked. I aimed to sound unimpressed but honestly the brass of them snooping in like that in a big group barely twenty feet from the actual room was pretty admirable. Knew there was a reason this was my super-group.

There seemed to be some silent disagreement among them about which one of them would have to speak first and so be the first to stick their head above the parapet, as it were. Garrus, being a solid motherfucker, stepped into the breach.

Solid as a rock that guy.

“I was calibrating something and suddenly the feed came on screen. Unlikely as that sounds,” he said, gesturing over his shoulder to the station - which was still showing the feed from the room!

This security needs beefing up. Much like Garrus’s excuses.

“Ah yes, the ‘the magazine fell open on that page and I don’t know why’ excuse. And these guys?” I asked, inclining my head to the rest of them. Much more effective than pointing. It has a certain subtlety, the head incline.

“They were helping me fix it,” he said. The others all nodded.

“Sure, let’s go with that. Come to any conclusions while trying to fix it?”

Everyone looked at everyone else, trying to work out whether this was some sort of trap I was preparing to spring and whether speaking up would lead to me yelling at them. This was weighed against their obvious desire to give their observations to me, their wonderful Commander.

Jacob cracked first.

“Commander, are you buying any of this about them being lost?” He asked. Which gave me pause.

“You get that?”

“EDI was translating,” he said, as though this wasn’t a big deal. There I was having to grapple with someone obviously still coming to terms with the lingo and there was everyone eavesdropping and having the hard work done for them!

“She was? She wasn’t for me!” I groused.

“You did not appear to require assistance,” EDI chipped in. I direct my angry expression upwards, because how else do you talk to a spaceship.

“Your faith in me buoys my heart. Sidebar EDI: did you notice them hacking into the feed like that?”

“I logged the attempt.”

“Well, at least you were paying attention. You manage to translate that, uh, whatever they were speaking when they were talking amongst themselves?” I asked, semi-hopeful.

“I have not yet been able to translate the language they are using to conspire, Commander, but I have developed something workable around what appears to be their primary dialect. Uploaded to your omnitool now.”

Better late than never.

“Conspiring is a very strong word, EDI,” I said with a frown.

“It was conjecture on my part, Commander. I am sixty-five percent sure that they were conspiring.”

Pretty good odds, by most anyone’s standards.

“What margin of error should I allow for AI paranoia?”

“Perhaps thirty percent, Commander.”

“That’s pretty high.”

“It pays for an AI to be open to be conscious of possible risks.”

“I bet,” I said, only then remembering that I was still standing there in front of the lot of them and that Jacob had actually asked me a question. I shook my head and heaved back on topic. “Right, yes. Uh, I do believe them, yes, because of the sheer amount of stuff about them that just doesn’t add up. I mean, everything about them is just...well, like nothing I’ve seen. Unless I missed something in the last two years?”

There was a general shaking of heads.

Jacob had a follow up:

“Do you think we can trust them?”

“No idea. You saw how that talk went. Seems like they’re pulling in different directions, doesn’t it? That Jarrion guy seems nice enough and since he’s in charge I think that’s a positive sign. And, hey, they didn’t blow us to bits. That’s a good start, right?”

“He say anything about that ship?” Garrus asked.

By this point everyone on-board had seen the space-cathedral. How could anyone have resisted?

“It’s called the Assertive. Came from a wreck, he says. From a navy, he says. Not any navy I’d ever heard of - the Imperium I think he said? News to me. Oh, and get this: that thing? Our man says that’s a light cruiser.”

Collective disbelief.

“That can’t be right, that must be a mistranslation,” Garrus said, mandibles flickering. I could hardly blame him his doubt. Light cruiser indeed. I’d hate to see one of their dreadnoughts. Probably be the size of a fucking moon.

“That’s what he said. Ridiculous, right? Thing’s bigger than the Destiny Ascension and it’s a light cruiser. Hell, it’s bigger than that Collector ship that, you know, killed me.”

Probably shouldn’t have mentioned that. Kind of put a damper on things. I noticed the mood take a dip.

“Whatever. Look, I’d love to stand and shoot the shit with you guys but I’m meant to be giving them some data, actually. Hey EDI did we ever conclude how we were going to do that?”

“We did not, Commander.”

“Christ, do we have any spare tablets of our own we can palm off to them? Put the data on that then hand it over? Then it’s their problem.”

This was me just tossing ideas out there. I’ll be the first to admit that my skillset is mainly based around shooting things and more generalised mediation - technical details are not my strong point. Unless it involves omnigel, obviously, but that barely needs mentioning. That stuff’s great, just slather it on.

“I will have Yeoman Chambers do that, Commander,” EDI said.

Long walk round the houses for a real simple fucking solution. Probably should have just asked Kelly in the first place. She’s a helpful soul.

“Success at last! I’m sure they can figure it out. Then they can be off and I can launch a few more probes - still think we got a handful of them just itching to go and I’m real close to some of those projects you got listed in the lab, Mordin. Who’s got two thumbs and wants sub-dermal armour? This lady, that’s who,” I said, giving the standard dual thumbs up to the bafflement of all aliens present.

Honestly though being a cyborg was pretty great. I guess I’m more cyborg than most and personally cost more than most spaceships so maybe I’m biased, but still. It’s pretty great.

“Commander, the Illusive Man would like to speak with you,” EDI said.

This was so out of nowhere I actually thought I’d maybe imagined it. No such luck though. I jerked a - raised from mere seconds ago - thumb over my shoulder to where the conference roughly was.

“What, right now? I’d have to take the call back there! In the conference room! That’s where I left the guests! Ugh, nothing is ever easy.”

Seriously. If life isn’t big catastrophes it’s minor inconveniences, if it’s not one thing it’s another bloody thing.

“He says it’s time-sensitive,” EDI said.

I groaned, rubbed my temples, felt the teeny-tiny bumps of some of the screws there that were holding my skull together. Ye Gods but that’s disconcerting. Okay maybe being a cyborg isn’t all sunshine and rainbows when you really think about what’s involved.

“I bet he fucking does,” I grumbled. Not that is made the problem go away. “Fine, fine. I’ll just have to tell them to clear out a minute, talk to ‘IM Who Must Be Obeyed. We can put this whole thing behind us. Launch some probes. Get back on to doing our depressing job of rounding up bodies for a meat grinder the other end of a relay in the middle of buttfuck who-knows-where.”

Putting one hand to my hip I wagged a finger at my super-group.

“Right, you lot. Back to work. I’m sure you’ve all got things you could be doing.”

A mildly ashamed chorus of assent and they all sloped off. I stopped Jacob as he passed.

“I’m going to ask them to wait in the hanger in a sec - would you mind walking them down?”

“Sure thing Commander,” he said.

I rather liked Jacob, honestly. He seemed like a solid fellow.

And, right at that moment, the practical choice. I’d seen that guns only came up when our guests saw aliens. Figure that one out.

Also while I’m on the subject hadn’t I seen the older guy - Torian, I think that was his name? - pull out a revolver? Where the hell did he dig up one of those? Or was it just a novelty weapon made to look like a revolver? And if so, who the hell would do that?

These guests really were something else, but in some way I really couldn’t put my finger on.

While everyone else returned to whatever it was they had been doing before spying on me I moved back to the conference room via the armoury, Jacob following behind. He waited just outside while I entered. It seemed that in my absence they’d finally finished arguing, and were now sitting in somewhat sullen silence.

On my entrance, that same very-clearly-practised smile came immediately back onto Jarrion’s face.

“Commander! Was starting to worry you’d forgotten about us.”

“Sorry, technical issues.And sorry again but the chap who’s bankrolling this particular venture wants a word with me and I can only take it in this room. I’ll have the data you need ready shortly and have it brought to you if don’t mind waiting in your shuttle?”

Jarrion waved a hand like this wasn’t a big deal, while his cronies just kept staring at me the way they tended to. Except the lady with the blindfold, for obvious reasons, though the way she just sort of looked in my direction did kind of make me uncomfortable.

Always with the smirking.

“By all means,” said Jarrion with a little bowing bob of the head.

“Thank you. Here’s your, uh, here’s your this. We sorted something else out,” I said, handing back the tablet he’d given me which he took with only mild surprise, which quickly passed as he tucked it back into that nice jacket of his.

I should get me one of those.

“We do appreciate this, Commander. It would be my pleasure to return the favour as and when you require it,” said Jarrion, standing, followed shortly by the others. All smooth this one. I just shrugged.

“It’s alright. Was hardly going to hang you out to dry. I have a crewman outside who can escort you to the hanger.”

Jarrion hesitated, smile flickering.

“Is it, ah, are they-”

“They’re human,” I said, flatly, and he visibly relaxed.

“Ah. Good. Thank you.”

He made no further comment or explanation on this, and I was profoundly grateful. The less said about that sort of the thing the better, really. Always a little distracting knowing that the guy smiling at you and being friendly and altogether actually alright is also, you know, a xenophobe.

Such is life.

At anyrate, Jarrion and his lot cleared out after this, Jacob taking them back down while I picked a chair and dragged it back away from the table.

“Alright, put him through,” I said and no sooner had the words passed my lips then the lights dimmed and the table sank into the floor. Very swish, all this.

And then came the hologram. The Illusive Man - and, again, can we pause and appreciate how pretentious that name is - was sitting too, but that was pretty normal.

“Shepard,” he said before pausing, glancing around. How much he could see doing this was unclear, but I’m guessing he could see enough to notice that I’d added furniture. “You’ve put chairs in this room.”

“Yeah, I did.”

He looked at me quietly a moment.

“If this is some attempt to rattle-”

“No, no, nothing like that. I just didn’t like having to stand when I was explaining things to people. To what do I owe this pleasure, anyway? Got something for me?” I asked.

“Don’t interrupt me, Shepard.”

“Sorry. Communications lag,” I said.

“It’s - “ he said, before realising that continuing to rise to my bait would be pointless. Instead he just took a drag, stubbed out the dog end he’d been finishing off before fishing out and lighting a fresh one. “Some information has reached me that I feel may be of some use to you. We’ve had forewarning of a Collector attack on a colony.”

That one actually got me.

“Forewarning? How’d you manage that?”

“Now is not the time to explain the methods involved. That there is time for you to reach the colony in question and prevent the attack from happening is what you should be focusing on. Has Mordin Solus’ work on the countermeasure born fruit?”

“He seemed to be doing pretty good last time I checked.”

“Well I hope whatever final touches he needs to make can be done on the way. Time is of the essence for this mission, Shepard - we may not get another chance like this.”

As much as I disliked the guy - and I did - he wasn’t wrong. Being on the backfoot with the Collectors had really been starting to get under my skin, and the chance of being able to catch them with their pants down was electrifying.

Or, even better, being there when they arrived!

Actually, that might end badly for us. Probably best to arrive midway through, catch them by surprise. In which case we’d still need to leave sharpish.

“Alright. Where is it?”

“Horizon, Iera, Shadow Sea. The relevant details have already been forwarded.”

I did a quick mental run-through of where that might be and how to get there. About two jumps, maybe? Pretty long jumps agreeably if memory served, but basically just a hop, skip and a, well, jump.

“Alright. Alright alright alright. I’ll see what I can do. Anything else?” I asked.

“While you’re here, I’ve also received word that you’ve encountered an unusual vessel,” he said, recrossing his legs and brushing ash off his sleeve. So casual.

Jesus, someone onboard works fast. I’m not even going to bother acting surprised - my general stance with the Illusive Man is that, unless it’s happening in my head, he’s probably going to find out about it somehow. Guys like that always do.

Really going to enjoy pulling the rug out from under him at some point.

“Nothing gets past you, eh? What of it? You know something about them we don’t?”

Puffing he shook his head, stubbing out again and this time just lacing his fingers in front of him, arms resting by his sides.

“I can’t say I do, which is unusual. Were this not such a critical moment I would ask you to keep an eye on them. For now, I just wanted your impressions.”

“Of them? Uh, I only just met the guys. They’re lost,” I said. I wasn’t sure what else he wanted me to say.

“So I heard. Human though.”

“Well yes I did notice that.”

He sighed, as though I was somehow a disappointment.

“Perhaps it can be further investigated once the Collector matter has been concluded. For now, I suggest you head to Horizon,” he said, waving a hand at me. Dismissing me, clearly. Charming stuff.

“Aye aye, skip. I’ll send you a postcard,” I said.

I cut the link before I could get his response. The lights came back up, the table returned, and I took a moment to gather myself.

Probably should try to be more professional but, hey, I died that one time and there’s fleets of deep-voiced deathships closing in on the galaxy to murder everyone and no-one in charge wants to listen to me about it. I think I earned the right to be a little grouchy and short with people. Especially pricks who sit and smoke and stare at a sun all the time.

But still. Stuff to do. Colony to save, aliens to shoot.

Navigational data to hand over.

I was about halfway through standing up again when I thought that last part, and I paused.

An idea had popped into my head.

It was a very dumb idea, obviously. I could point out the holes and gaps in it from a mile away, but still the idea persisted. It just sat there, the gravity of it dragging in all my attention. I wasn’t even sure why. I couldn’t shake it!

Jarrion had said he owed me a favour, and he was just downstairs...

And his massive ship with all those guns was just outside...

Chapter Text

Meanwhile, in the lighter still sitting in the Normandy’s hanger, a discussion was taking place.

“We should blow up their ship,” Torian said. Jarrion massaged his temples some more. By this point they were starting to get a little tender.

“We’re not blowing up their ship, Torian.”

“They cavort with aliens, my Lord! They have them here with them! On their ship! Just walking around! They had weapons! They allowed them to carry weapons!”

“Please, Torian. Cavort is such a strong word,” Jarrion said.

“What word would you use?” Loghain asked, her tone one of perfectly judged, insulting politeness. The kind that hopes to trip you up or, failing that, just get under your skin.

Jarrion wondered if this was something they taught Inquisitors specifically and gave Loghain a withering look. He also wondered if she was even aware of him doing this. Judging by her smirk she probably was, somehow.

Psykers. Wankers.

“Cooperate. They cooperate with aliens,” he said, by way of answer to her question. Loghain raised her eyebrows above the blindfold.

“That’s not a strong word in this case?”

“Well add ‘misguided’ as another word in here,” Jarrion said, throwing his hands up in despair. “Look, we can talk all we like but we have to face facts. Whether or not we believe the Commander about the date or the disposition of the galaxy in general - and I don’t care what you ‘gifts’ told you I remain unsold on this whole thing - we are still becalmed and cut off from the Astronomicon. There are explanations for this but I cannot conceive of any good ones.”

One such explanation, for example, being that they’d somehow ended up in the Halo Stars which, having looked outside, even Jarrion could tell was not the case. Which left any other number of equally unlikely explanations, all of them more-or-less the same level of unhelpful.

He paused here on the off-chance that someone else might have had a suggestion to turn the whole situation on its head and make everything clear. No-one did, obviously.

He sighed and rubbed his face.

“Not that it matters anyway. The how and the why and the what are entirely irrelevant. We can only work with what is in front of us. Speculation is not going to fix anything. We are here, and this is what we have. Once we have the astronavigation data we can formulate something a little more concrete,” he said.

“Assuming it’s trustworthy, my Lord,” Torian said, wincing as Jarrion rounded on him.

“Thor’s wounds it’s just one thing after another with you people! Let’s assume it is! And if it isn’t we still have other options! We’ll have the choir see if they can intercept any astropathic traffic! We’ll have our own astronavigators do a proper survey of the stars as opposed to their rough-and-ready first impressions! Emperor have mercy but I am so very, very tired.”

“Did I come at a bad time?” Shepard asked, making Jarrion jump. She was standing just by the open ramp of the lighter, dataslate and a thinner device in hand, looking into the crew compartment. Jarrion rose on seeing her.

“Hmm? No, no, apologies, just another productive discussion with my crew. Something I can help you with?” He asked.

Shepard thrust the dataslate and the something else towards Jarrion, who took both. The dataslate did not appear to have even been switched on, while the something else turned out to be a very similar though obviously native-made device. Jarrion turned it over in his hands.

“Um, thank you? What is this?”

“We put the navigation data on that. Full galaxy map, relays marked, political boundaries, whatever. Should help you get to where you need to go,” Shepard said.

“Ah, yes, thank you.”

“Do you mind if I have a word with you? Just over here?” Shepard then asked, pointing behind her. Jarrion nodded, and the two of them moved off back across the hanger, away from prying ears. Shepard lent against a generic workbench and folded her arms.

“Can I ask you a very direct question?” She asked. Jarrion, slipping again into his smiling-pleasantly mode, nodded again. He was very good at nodding.

“By all means,” he said.

“What’s the deal here? There’s something big and obvious that’s sticking out pretty badly to you but is going right over my head and I’m feeling a bit left out, so what is it?”

Jarrion cast an eye back towards the lighter, but this was of very little help to him.

“You, heh, you’re probably not going to believe me when we say this but we’re not from around here.”

“No, I figured that part out, I’m just curious about how not from around here you are.”

Now came the harder part. Decision time. Now or never and no going back.

What was there to lose?

And, really, what reason was there not to be fully open and honest? Other than sounding like a lunatic, of course. But then who cared if some provincial in a tiny ship thought you were mad?

Best to bite the bullet, Jarrion felt.

“That’s the bit you may have difficulty believing,” Jarrion said, his smile straining. He swallowed. “We, ah, well, our current best guess and working theory seems to be that we are from the future.”

A split-second for Shepard to process this. Not an answer she’d been expecting.

“The future?”

Jarrion could only shrug.

“Unbelievable as it may sound unfortunately but yes, the future. The, ah, forty-first millenium, in fact. As I say this is just our best guess at present. It may likely turn out to be completely wrong! Hope springs eternal, as they, uh, say.”

Shepard blinked at Jarrion very, very slowly while she did some maths in her head.

“Right,” she said. “So nearly thirty-eight thousand years in the future, then?”

“Roughly speaking. If certain things are taken as read.”

Silence.

“The future a nice place?”

“Oh, wonderful! There are a few problems here and there, of course, but broadly speaking mankind is ascendent! The God Emperor rules justly and wiseful from the Golden Throne through His High Lords, honest citizens of the Imperium outnumber the stars themselves, heretics and aliens alike are being pushed back on all fronts and mankind reaches out once more to claim that which is its right!”

Jarrion didn’t fully believe all of this, but it was what felt like should be true and why be anything less than fully enthusiastic when talking about the Imperium to a stranger? That, and Loghain was standing barely twenty feet away. He had no reason to be nervous, but he had no reason to be careless either.

He had the distinct impression the Inquisitor was trying not to laugh at him behind his back.

Shepard was looking at Jarrion with an expression which was impossible to read.

“So,” she said. “You’re telling me that you and your vessel are from the future. Just about forty thousand years into the future, rounding up. A future where mankind has some kind of galaxy-spanning empire overseen by a god-emperor and that you - through some crazy random happenstance - have ended up here?”

Given what Jarrion had said Shepard had done a fairly good job of quickly grasping the details. There’d been blanks but she’d filled them in, mostly just by guessing blindly. She had a good instinct for these things.

Jarrion, faced with the summation, could do little but smile helplessly.

“So it would appear,” he said.

He felt it best to leave out the additional Loghain-forwarded opinion that they were from an entirely separate universe on top of also being from the future. He felt that that would be over egging the pudding. A bridge crossed when they came to it. Which would hopefully be never because hopefully it was all cobblers and they could go home soon anyway.

Shepard was having her own issues with the direction this conversation had taken.

Why couldn’t she ever have a quiet, normal day? Why was it either someone trying to kill her or some other problem that required her to shoot it a bit or hack something? Why couldn’t she just have a lie in?

The future? Seriously?

Stranger things had happened, this was true, but even Shepard had limits. Time travel? Arbitrary time travel? And then just running into them out here in the middle of nowhere? An Emperor? Golden Throne? High Lords? Proper Nouns?

No, Shepard had limits.

“She doesn’t believe you,” Loghain said, having left the lighter and silently crossed over to pop up right beside Jarrion with neither he nor Shepard having noticed her doing it. Given that this had involved crossing open space in full view it was a little alarming. Psyker trickery, no doubt. Jarrion scowled. Very poor form.

“Of course she doesn’t believe me! I barely believe me!” He snapped back through gritted teeth.

“I could convince her,” said Loghain.

“You know, a simple sentence like that becomes a lot more daunting when someone like you says it, Loghain. How would you go about convincing her?”

“I’m standing right here,” Shepard said, flatly.

Loghain hadn’t been speaking High Gothic but hadn’t bothered to adjust her dialect to make herself more easily understood by Shepard. That she’d been understood at all was a mild surprise, but one Loghain rolled with. As far as the sort of surprises Inquisitors sometimes dealt with went, finding your communication issues smoothing out was probably one of the nicer ones.

“I can assure you the Lord Captain is telling the truth. Though I doubt that’d mean much coming from me,” she said.

“No, funnily enough.”

Loghain appraised Shepard a moment and Shepard had a shiver run right down her spine. She could have sworn the temperature in the hanger just dropped out of nowhere. Loghain then turned to Jarrion.

“She think you’re hiding something from her. Which is rather amusing, given that you’ve made the decision to be more open than perhaps you should.”

For a blind person - Shepard assumed she was blind, given the cloth wrapped around her eyes - Loghain was really, really good at looking people directly in the face when they were speaking. Like, she wasn’t close, she was dead on every single time.

There was probably a good reason for that, Shepard assumed.

Jarrion, on having heard this, threw up his arms.

“What would you have me do? Or are you just going to stand there and needle me whichever way I go?”

“No offense, but me and the captain here were having a private conversation,” Shepard said, deciding to crash through whatever disagreement was about to bubble up and try to get things back on track. Loghain snapped that blank, blindfolded gaze right onto Shepard.

“My apologies. I just thought - given the apparent topic of conversation - you might appreciate some ambassadorial input,” Loghain said.

“Maybe later,” Shepard said.

“Yes, please return to your seat if you’d be so kind, ambassador,” Jarrion said with heavy emphasis. Loghain gave a curtsey, which was a very, very odd thing to see her do. Jarrion felt distinctly uncomfortable for having had to see it.

“As you say, Lord Commander,” she said before wandering back.

“She’s not an ambassador, is she?” Shepard asked once she was semi-confident that Loghain was out of earshot, sat back in her seat. Jarrion said.

“No, no she’s not. She’s an, ah, agent for an organisation with a certain level of oversight. Ironically that oversight does not extend over myself, technically, at least while I am outside of Imperial jurisdiction, which is where I am now standing. And yet see how she acts! Is that irony?” He asked. Shepard shrugged.

“Irony was never my strong point.”

“Nor mine. But I believe you wanted to discuss something?”

Shepard looked at him hard a moment or two before looking away again, glancing briefly to the lighter and then back to Jarrion again. They all still looked like nothing she’d seen.

“I’m still skeptical,” she said. “But there are a few things here I’ll admit that don’t add up so I’m going to assume - well, nothing, to be honest. I don’t mean to sound rude but I really don’t buy the time travel angle so I’ll just put that to one side.”

“Fair enough. It’s what I’d do,” said Jarrion. Shepard nodded thanks for his understanding and then took in a deep breath.

“I’m going to level with you, Jarrion. Just going to lay it out. Two years ago I got killed by what are commonly called Collectors. Odd guys. Come through one relay every so often, trade advanced tech for members of other races. And they killed me. I got better though, but by the time I did it turns out that the Collectors have started attacking colonies. Human colonies. Coming in and just sweeping everyone up, taking them away. And because these colonies are out beyond anyone’s jurisdiction nothing’s being done about it. So the guys who fixed me up - the outside agency I mentioned? - they don’t like this, so they set me up to do something about it. Are you following this?”

“I believe so. You’re being employed to stop attacks on human colonies?”

This was something Jarrion could understand.

Shepard waited for him to maybe call attention to the fact she’d mentioned being dead and then coming back but he took this wholly in his stride. Jarrion had a cousin who’d been dead, briefly. An Ork freebooter had sliced them in half at the waist and - clinically speaking - they’d been dead for a good ten or so minutes before the spark of life had been restored to them by the swift attentions of attending medicae. Luckily, too, Magos Biologis had been close at hand, and quite willing to help once persuaded.

It had taken the better part of a year to put Jarrion’s cousin back together again properly. The spine was bionic but everything else had been vat-grown at great expense. Now they were back on their feet and almost as good as new, even if their tendency to stare into space every so often and pause in the middle of conversations was a little disconcerting at times.

As far as Jarrion was concerned, these things happened. Shepard shrugged and carried on:

“Basically, yes. There’s details involved about the endgame of the mission but those can wait. Bottom line is Collectors need stopping and I’m the only one doing anything about it.”

“Aliens are a foul and perfidious lot,” Jarrion said by way of sympathy. Shepard blinked at him a moment.

“Uh, yeah. Now look, I know we just met and everything but I got a hot tip just now about an attack that I might be able to prevent and I was thinking that I might have a better chance at putting that ship of theirs down if you came along.”

This was a surprise.

“You’re asking for my help?” Jarrion asked. This was not the way Shepard would have put it, personally, even if in essence it was the case.

“I haven’t got where I am today by passing up what look to be good opportunities. Whyever you’re here, you’re here, you’re human, you have an imposing ship.”

Such flattery!

“All of these things are true,” Jarrion admitted.

“You’re also in need of help - hear me out,” she cut Jarrion off before he could protest that he was on top of things. “You’re clearly a little lost. And I don’t just mean in space. You’re coming across like a guy who had the rug pulled out from under him. I don’t want to tell you what to do, but I do have something you could be doing, and it is something that’d help people out.”

“And what could be nobler than that…” Jarrion said, more to himself than to her, stroking his chin and staring just over her shoulder at some point in the far distance.

Jarrion was thinking.

He was, he felt, very rapidly approaching a fork in the road, a point at which he would need to make a decision that would very seriously affect things going forward.

Broadly speaking he had, as he saw it, two choices in his current predicament. Two choices about how best to proceed.

The first was to start throwing his weight around. It was the obvious and direct choice.

Certainly, it was what his father and brother would have done. They’d already be doing it, mostly likely. They would have fired a warning shot or two either at or across the bow of the Normandy, seized the ship by force, taken what they felt they needed and carried on from there.

Which was understandable, but Jarrion was reluctant to do this for several reasons.

For one, his father and his brother both had much bigger ships than he did, and much more men with many more guns. They also never went anywhere without escorts. They also were not lost in space (and quite possibly time as well) - they could put into port in any of House Croesus’ holdings or anywhere in Imperial space to stock up on provisions, replenish lost manpower and have repairs done as needed.

The sort of things you had to be able to do to be able to keep throwing your weight around with any real expectation of effect.

Jarrion could not. Anything that happened would wear him out and slow him down. His mistakes would cost him. Even his success would lose him momentum. This he was painfully aware of.

The Normandy was a trifling little ship, yes, but what if this Systems Alliance had bigger ones? The way Shepard spoke it didn’t seem unlikely. And what of the Council? And the various other threats that had been mentioned? These Collectors, for one demonstrably hostile example?

Surmountable individually, to be sure, but one after another?

Jarrion was not particularly prepared to go up against the whole galaxy on his own. You could very-well serve the Emperor by dying, yes, this was known, but far better to live for his glory and come out with something to show for it, in his opinion, being a Rogue Trader and all.

Dying was something other people did, usually for him, not something he did himself.

So Jarrion was thinking, thanking the Emperor again that he alone appeared to be the only member of House Croesus that hadn’t had tact bred out of him.

“These colonies you mentioned. They exist beyond the reach and protection of your System Alliance?” He asked.

“Yes.”

“And aid for them is unforthcoming other than from this outside agency you aren’t especially fond of?”

“They’re being left to twist in the wind, yes.”

“Hmm.”

An idea was forming in Jarrion’s head, much as one had formed in Shepard’s. His was running along different lines, though, at least in the long run.

“I think,” he said. “I think we can come to arrangement. Certainly, I see no reason not to assist you. I will have to discuss it with my crew, of course. When is this attack you’ve been forewarned about set to occur?”

“‘Soon’, basically. We’ll likely be heading off for the relay in an hour or two. Got to make tracks.”

Jarrion did not know what a relay was, but doubted it was especially important. He was already putting together plans in his head, and details like that could wait.

“Right, right. And, uh, where is it?”

“Place called Horizon. I’ve never heard of it. Hang on, I’ll just mark it for you.”

Shepard took back the tablet and messed with it briefly before handing it back. What she’d done was unclear, but Jarrion trusted that they’d find out what was what soon enough once he let Pak get their hands - or whatever - on the thing.

“Many thanks. Horizon, eh?” Jarrion asked.

“Yeah. Some colony. Hopefully we’ll get there in time, blow some holes in the Collector ship, save everyone, pick through the wreckage to find out how the Collectors get to and from wherever they’re from, follow them back and make sure they don’t keep making a habit of this. But that’s in the future. For now, one thing at a time.”

Shepard had this whole flowchart of things she needed to do stuck in her head and it was difficult to focus on the smaller picture with the bigger one looming so large in her mind. Jarrion could see that she had this problem, because he had it too.

“Quite so. I shall discuss with my crew and get back to you presently.”

“I’ll be waiting by the phone,” Shepard said.

“Ah, yes,” said Jarrion, again not having a clue what this meant, instead just smiling and nodding thanks as he turned and walked smartly back to the lighter.

“Pak, see what you make of this,” he said, handing the tablet over immediately to the Magos. A mechadendrite slithered out from one of Pak’s sleeves and took the thing lightly as someone might pick up a sodden tissue between forefinger and thumb. The tip of the mechadendrite split into further, thinner tendrils that then began probing the device looking for the best method to interface with it.

Jarrion, though, wasn’t watching this. He was grinning at everyone instead, his hands on his hips. This made them all immediately quite nervous.

“My Lord?” Torian asked, having seen this look before.

“I have a plan,” Jarrion said.

Chapter Text

Upon returning to the Assertive Jarrion set Pak immediately onto divining how the device they’d been given worked. Indeed, Pak had already started doing this before the lighter had even left the Normandy, questing tendrils attempting to find any kind of recognizable port to connect with or, failing that, forcing one.

Pak found the device unusual and flimsy, its machine spirit feeble and anemic but at least present. It was not especially complicated. By the standards of some of the lost, forgotten, obsolete or just plain broken colonial technology they’d had to deal with already it was positively straightforward, which was at least a refreshing change, if uninspiring.

Once they arrived back on-board Pak managed to rig up - with remarkable alacrity for a Tech Priest, in Jarrion’s opinion - a cogitator in one of Jarrion’s chambers to act as an intermediary device for the Lord Captain to use to examine the thing’s contents. Shortly after that the relevant astronavigational data was found, extracted, and passed along to Altrx and those others working in astronavigation, to get them all better orientated.

Jarrion, though, kept at it, furiously studying the device and the information it contained.

Shepard had, it seemed, included not only a galactic map as she’d said she would, but also a codex of some kind, containing information on just about anything Jarrion might have been curious to learn about. Rather too much, in fact. He restricted himself to the essentials and swiftly devoured all details available. He learnt a lot, though he didn’t fully believe more than half of it.

A lot of his initial hopes - that they were lost in some corner of the galaxy that knew little beyond itself and that only by moving a little further they’d quickly find themselves back in the Imperium proper - were dashed immediately.

Shepard’s galaxy was an explored one, end to end and top to bottom. Or at least enough to make it clear that the possibility they were simply tucked away somewhere was flatly impossible. And it only got worse.

From what Jarrion could make out not a single Ork had ever been encountered. Anywhere, at any point. There were mentions of dozens or more other alien races that Jarrion hadn’t heard of, but that didn’t meant much - it was the absences of the ones he was familiar with that spoke volumes. No Orks? No Orks?!

That tore it, that really did.

He rather hoped at first that this was just a language issue. The written form of whatever language Shepard used wasn’t wholly unfamiliar to Jarrion, but there were enough issues here or there that he might have been able to believe he was simply missing the obvious. And he might have believed this, had he not been employing his trusty lexigraphical servo-skull, which rendered these difficulties trivial.

It was not a language issue. What he was reading was pretty emphatic in the picture it painted.

This was not the galaxy he was supposed to be in. At all. Even allowing for the mysterious mists of time it was not their galaxy. Another time, another galaxy! Ridiculous. Hopefully still untrue somehow. But for now, it was what Jarrion had to deal with.

But this was fine. He could work with this. His plan could accommodate this.

That Loghain might have been right was probably the worst part. He could almost imagine the look on her face already.

Once he felt he had grappled sufficiently with the available information he summoned the higher level members of his crew for another meeting, so he could explain to them what he’d learnt and also outline what the next steps were going to be. While waiting for the room to fill he had Pak rig the flimsy tablet up to the meeting room’s hololithc projector.

Explaining things always worked best with visual aids.

Navigator Altrx was the last to arrive, so absorbed had he been in the data he’d been supplied with, but once he’d shown up and got seated and the doors shut behind him then Jarrion felt he could begin. He rose, and the muted conversation that had halfway filled the room died out.

“There have been some developments, as I’m sure you’re all aware of,” Jarrion said without preamble. “A lot of what I am about to tell you will likely sound rather confusing but do try to keep your questions until the end - this is me simply relaying what I have learnt to the best of my ability.”

He looked around to see if anyone had any obvious difficult understanding this. Everyone seemed to be listening intently enough, which was a good start. Jarrion cleared his throat.

“And until I am standing on Holy Terra herself looking with my own eyes at the Imperial Palace - or something less extreme but equally convincing - we are going to be working as though this information is accurate, otherwise we won’t be getting anything done.”

He hadn’t expected a laugh. Would have been appreciated, yes, but he hadn’t expected one. And he did not get one. He cleared his throat again, a little more uncomfortably this time. Given what he knew he was about to say, he felt he had the right to feel uncomfortable.

“Here are the facts at least as they appear at present: The year is twenty-one fifty-eight. That is to say, M3. No, no, no questions, please, these are the facts as they stand. As far as we know right now it is M3. The galaxy is not as we know it. A lot of what we might take for granted is apparently not the case.”

Lay one hand knuckles-down on the table he ran the other back through his hair before holding it out in front of him so he could count off the salient facts on his fingers.

“No mention of the Imperium. No mention of the Emperor. No mention of the Archenemy. No mention of the Warp! Apparently all space travel is undertaken using point-to-point ‘relays’ that were just left behind by some now-extinct species! And then a lesser form of faster-than-light is undertaken once they’ve arrived! Can you imagine? Anyway, where was I? Ah yes. No mention of Orks, Eldar, Hrud, Slaugth, Zoats - none of the species we are unfortunately familiar with. And you might think - as I did at first - that perhaps our new associates were simply a combination of small enough and lucky enough to have avoided the attention of these aliens, but no! This is information from the length and breadth of the galaxy! Not a single Ork! No Eldar now, nor ever! This is not our galaxy. This is foreign territory indeed. Which brings me onto my next and main point - Pak, if you would.”

He gestured to Pak, who had already interfaced themselves with the hololithic projector mounted into the meeting room table. There was a clunk and a quiet blurt of chatter from the Magos and then a rising hum as the projector started into life. The middle portion of the table unfurled, the projecting apparatus extended, and a map fo the galaxy as extracted from Shepard’s tablet was duly shown to all present, much as it had been on the Normandy.

Only this map was in black and white with a flicker that ran through it every three seconds. This particular quirk of the hololith had never bothered Jarrion before, but after having seen Shepard’s rather swish, stable and full-colour version back on the Normandy he did have to admit to perhaps the tiniest smidgen of envy. He’d have to ask where she got it from.

Later, though. Right now he pointed to the swirl of the galaxy hovering above the table.

“Here is the lay of the land, as I was able to make out. This area,” he said, indicating a wide swathe of the galaxy. “Is space under the jurisdiction and nominal control of the ‘Council’, a rather blasphemous-sounding assemblage of alien races and which humanity is - rather unfortunately - a member of. They are the most significant power in the galaxy at present.”

Some murmuring at this, but nothing loud enough to warrant shushing so Jarrion carried on.

“Terra is here, and the surrounding area is under the control of the Systems Alliance, the entity to which our friend Shepard sort of belongs to. Or did prior to her dying. Importantly, they also have some semi-official colonisation efforts here or there which the Council seems happy enough to let them get on with, mostly just so that humanity will do the heavy lifting while they sit back.”

There was a mutually shared moment of distaste at the manifest indolence of aliens, not so much murmuring as muttering and most of it curses. This Jarrion had expected. He’d felt much the same on reading about it himself. Giving the table a light rap to bring the noise level back down to acceptable he continued.

“This chunk up here is apparently known as the Terminus systems. These exist outside of Council control. A hotbed of discord and strife, from the way I was told. A fractious assortment of dictatorships, petty alien empires and so on and so forth united mainly by their distaste of the Council.”

Jarrion was fairly sure that he was missing out on a lot of detail and subtle nuisance but he was also fairly sure he didn’t care. Aliens were aliens, how they felt like dividing up their stretch of the galaxy would only be an issue when it became an obstacle. For now, he could afford to speak in generalities.

“And this stretch from here to there is called the Attican Traverse. Something of a no-man’s land, apparently - full of things both the Council and those in the Terminus system would like to get their hands on but not-so seriously they want to do so in force, lest either side take offence and a war break out.”

With this Jarrion was confident he’d covered the essentials. Now he could get onto the real meat of his plan and where his thoughts were going.

“Now here is the pertinent detail: in the systems that fall outside of Council control are more than a few human colonies, as I mentioned. These colonies, being where they are, are often left to fend for themselves in the face of a hostile galaxy, with support forthcoming from neither the Council nor this System Alliance. This, to me, represents something of an opportunity. Especially as - according to our new friend Commander Shepard - these colonies are at present experiencing something of a persistent problem.”

The meeting room was pleasingly silent at this point, those present clearly keen on seeing where the Lord Captain was going with this. Or else trying to come to terms with where they apparently were now. One or the other. Jarrion pointed to the map again, to better underline the point he was going to make.

“At present there appears to be a very particular issues plaguing colonies in these regions - the human colonies specifically. Some manner of alien depredation or other, the details hardly matter. What does matter is that our new friend Commander Shepard has been tasked by a human faction of considerable means to look into this issue and correct it.”

Leaning forward now Jarrion put both hands on the table, looking at each face around the table in turn.

“The plan is something like this: We render a level of assistance to Commander Shepard in this task of hers, sufficient to have this trifling issue with aliens resolved. With this accomplished we will no-doubt be basking in the gratitude of any number of these colonies. At present - ignoring all the reasons as to why it might be so - we are cut off from support. We need a foothold and a base from which to operate. I say we, well, pick one of these colonies. Possibly even the one that the Commander will be heading to shortly.”

“And take over?” Loghain asked flatly, picking the perfect moment so that everyone heard her. Jarrion glared, but had honestly expected a proper interruption before that point, especially from her.

She’d taken her blindfold off upon returning to the Assertive, but having now spent a little time with her Jarrion no-longer found the sight of those charred, ruined socket in anyway unsettling. Funny how easily you got over those things.

“And demonstrate a level of concern and interest in its management and its relation with its neighbours and other nearby colonies, for its own betterment,” he said, emphatically. “We have the manufactorum on board, after all, and are carrying a variety of items they might find useful. Assisting colonies was what we were doing before we got into this mess - if you think about it it’s hardly any different. We help, we find what colonies need, we provide them with the things they need and in so doing receive things other colonies need, and in so doing forge a nice, strong, stable, profitable web of trade to support us.”

“You’re talking about, what? Carving out a little empire?” Altrx asked. Jarrion made a big show of appearing both wounded and offended. Possibly hammed it up a bit much, but he was on a roll.

“Nothing of the sort! I am talking about a strong foundation on which to steady ourselves. I take it none of you here have any notable experience about being cast into the past and cut off from all Imperial support? No? Well, what would any of you do? Go around attempting to impose the Emperor’s Will half-cocked? What good would come of that? Just wander the galaxy hoping something came to you? No. We need resources! Bodies! Materials!”

Jarrion hammered a fist into the table for each of these, to really get his point across. Then he straightened out his jacket and folded his arms, continuing more calmly:

“And then when we’re secure, when we’re standing on solid ground, we turn our attention to the problem of how we got here, with a view to getting back of course. Indeed, I want that to begin immediately - Pak, I want every available techpriest poring over every scrap of data we have relating to our arrival. Can that happen immediately?”

Pak nodded and quietly started communicating with the other mechanicus on board. While the meeting room might have lacked most-all forms of communication, Pak could still access the noosphere without too much trouble, such as it existed on the Assertive, and so relay this instruction to the other Magos, who in turn passed word down to the lesser brethren, and so on from there.

Within moments, roles had been assigned, and available tech priests peeled away to begin the analysis. Had anyone seen it, they would have been impressed. Probably a little daunted.

But none had, and Jarrion just carried on.

“Really, it would be remiss of us not to grasp this opportunity. This whole area - everywhere beyond the reach of this Council - is rich with many worlds that already been fully surveyed! Worlds abundant with resources! All that’s keeping them from being fully exploited is nervousness and political inertia!”

And this was fresh survey information, too, which was what had really got Jarrion energised. Some of it was barely decades old - practically brand new!

Very little as disheartening as loading up thousands of eager colonists, charting a course, braving the journey through the Warp only to arrive at your destination and find what had been surveyed as a perfectly habitable world was now a lifeless, radiation-blasted hunk of rock and which had been so for centuries. For an example that House Croesus knew all too well.

With information this fresh though? This recent? It was like being Jarrion was personally being offered each of them individually! It was difficult to keep his excitement in check.

But keep it in check he did, adjusting his epaulettes and standing up straight.

“Anyway. That’s all what’s going to happen later. What is happening right now is something else. The Commander’s benefactors have apparently received information that these aliens currently menacing the colonies - known as ‘Collectors’ - are planning an attack. This is the first time such forewarning has been received, and so she shall soon be making all haste to get there first. She has kindly requested we accompany her and I, for one, think this is an excellent idea. Pak, if you would please highlight the relevant spots on the map.”

Pak’s mechadendrites flexed briefly and two spots on the flickering image of the galaxy blinked into greater brightness.

“The colony in question is here. We are here. This is some distance, especially given that at present we have no reliable means of orienting ourselves. Can we-”

“Not possible,” Altrx cut in. Navigators, a lot like Inquisitors, felt they were important enough to be able to interrupt Rogue Traders. Jarrion was left standing with his mouth open mid-speech.

“I’m sorry?” Jarrion asked. Altrx just shrugged, leaning back in his very-expensive chair.

“We’re not going anywhere, not right now. I take it you want to be leaving immediately? That’s not happening.”

“Did you not receive the navigational data?”

“Oh, I did. And I had a look and my staff have had a look and I know astronavigation is looking right now and we are working on it but we haven’t worked out a good way of getting around yet. This is all wholly new territory. I could navigate if the Warp was anything like I was used to but it really, really isn’t. It’s good you’re showing me a destination because that’ll give us something to work against but we’re not going anywhere yet. It’s just not happening.”

Jarrion stared at Altrx, his brain grinding quietly inside his skull.

“How long would you say it will be until the Assertive is ready to get underway?” He asked with far more calm than he felt. Altrx blew out a breath and put his hands behind his head and his boots on the table. Again, this was the sort of thing that Navigators thought they could get away with. Largely because they could.

At least his boots were clean, Jarrion noted.

“Oh, not long. Day? Day or two? I mean, it’ll be touch-and-go softly-softly stuff until we work out the best way of getting from A to B but we’ll be moving at least.”

This did not work to Jarrion’s time frame, which was obliquely Shepard’s timeframe. He was acutely aware of the need to be getting moving in the next hour or so. His mind grappled for alternatives but didn’t really find anything useful.

Not that Altrx cared. Having spoken, the Navigator seemed to have remembered how much he enjoyed the sound of his own voice. Pausing only briefly to light a roll up of some dubiously acquired narcotic substance - being able to smoke anywhere and everywhere he felt like being another thing that Altrx, as a Navigator, was able to get away with - he waved a hand and continued, seeming to address the room at large:

“You see, when I’m there in my cradle and I’m looking into the nightmarish substance of the Empyrean itself, it appears to me - me personally - as a mountain range of sorts. Storm-wracked! Treacherous! Its winding paths ever-changing, the footing unsure. Off in the distance always looms the Astronomicon of course, either faintly or clearly, a vast and bright peak. And this is how I navigate. Here though?”

He took a drag and let out a languid puff. Bastard was taking his time, Jarrion noted. Jarrion had heard this all before. More than once, in fact. It paid to be patient, but even he had limits.

“Here all is calm. All is flat! No mountains do I see. Only rolling, gentle plains. No storms either! Everything is placid. And you’d think that’d be easy, wouldn’t you? You blunt types. But no, not at all! It’s a vast and featureless plain! No landmarks, no sense of direction. How am I to find my way? Your information will help me to find myself and so better direct the ship, yes, but not immediately. It’s a complex process. I don’t think any of you really appreciate that.”

Everyone waited for there to be more, but there wasn’t. Altrx seemed satisfied with what he’d said and put his hands behind his head again, closing his eyes, his input finished. Jarrion stared at him blankly for a moment.

“We all appreciate your forthright answer, Altrx. It’s just that this is a very time-sensitive issue…” he said, sinking back into his chair. No-one had any answers to this. Jarrion sighed and craned his neck to look back to Thale, standing behind him as he usually did.

“What do you think, Thale?” He asked.

“Permission to speak freely, Lord?”

Jarrion nodded permission, saying:

“Of course.”

Thale shifted in place, standing up - somehow - a little straighter than he had been before.

“I didn’t get this far in life by thinking about things.”

“...fair enough,” Jarrion said, turning back again around. “Pak, how do you feel about where we are right now?”

Pak unfolded their arms from their sleeves and held a single augmetic hand out flat, tilting it slightly from one side to the other before putting it back into their sleeve again. The meaning of the gesture was clear, though bizarre to see coming from a Tech Priest.

“You’re very relaxed for a Magos, you know that Pak?” Jarrion asked.

It was difficult to tell given Pak’s face, given that they didn’t have a whole lot of face to work with, but Jarrion felt for sure they were glaring at him. Jarrion sighed again and spread his hands apart on the table.

“Anyone else? Any input at all? Solutions? More problems with no solutions? Loghain, you haven’t criticized me for a good five minutes now, are you feeling alright?”

“It sounds to me an awful lot like you are turning this situation to your advantage. Your personal advantage,” said Loghain.

Jarrion groaned and raised a finger of objection.

“I’m not turning this situation to my personal advantage I am doing my best to turn it towards Imperial advantage! How many times do I have to explain this? How much clearer do I need to make this to you? We are presently the sole representatives of the Imperium in existence! On us rests everything! Our decisions matter and - since this is my ship - it is my decisions that matter!”

“Technically your father’s ship-” Torian started, leaning in from his seat beside Jarrion’s, but Jarrion chose not to listen and just carried on, eyes not leaving Loghain.

“Hopefully we’ll discover a means of returning. Maybe we’ll discover a means of bringing the Imperium here. Are there not gateways through the Warp? Might we not find one? What better gift would it be for the Imperium than for us to already have carved out a foothold for it here, in this new, untapped world? Think of it!”

“I think you’ve come unglued,” said Loghain, pleasantly enough.

“This is why you’re an Inquisitor and I am a Rogue Trader. You see danger in every opportunity while I see opportunity in every danger! Behind every corner! We would be fools not to make the most of what has been handed to us. My plan will work!”

“‘Opportunity in every danger’?” Loghain repeated, mouthing the words with obvious distaste. Jarrion waved a hand at her.

“Not my best work, but my intent is sincere. Hesitation now would be folly. We stand to lose everything if we dawdle. We are not an island. We cannot exist on our own indefinitely. Our resources will dwindle. They are dwindling even as we speak! We have nowhere to go, so we must make somewhere to go! In the Emperor’s name! Via His instrument of House Croesus.”

None of which changed the fact that they weren’t going anywhere right at that moment, of course, much to Jarrion’s chagrin.

A pause while the weight and grandiosity of this statement settled on everyone in the room.

“You’ve been making a lot of speeches lately,” Loghain said, eventually. Jarrion considered snapping back but then lost all the energy for it, his shoulders slumping momentarily before his back stiffened once more. It hadn’t so briefly most in the room didn’t even notice.

“I’m under a lot of stress. But that’s hardly new. Different challenges, but nothing we cannot rise to. Although I’ll admit that our...continuing navigational difficulties have put something of a kink in things.”

“So I noticed,” Loghain said.

And it was then that someone rang the bell outside the door, which was at least more professional than knocking. Jarrion clutched to this interruption like a lifeline, snapping his fingers for a servant to admit whoever it was outside. Turned out to be a member of the bridge crew again. Hardly a surprise.

“We are being hailed again, Lord Captain.”

Jarrion felt he should have seen that coming.

“Emperor have mercy I’m just going to run a wired vox into this room in future…” He said to himself, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his palms. “Alright, I’ll take it in a moment. Everyone return to their stations. Altrx, you work on getting us moving. I’ll - I’ll figure out how we take our next step.”

How exactly he was meant to do this was something Jarrion thought about the whole way back to the bridge. Nothing struck him, so it was with mounting anxiety that he answered the hail.

“Hello again Commander, you making ready to get underway?” He asked.

Again communication was audio-only. Whether that would ever get fixed was up in the air.

“Yes we are. You guys coming or…?” Came the voice of Commander Shepard. Jarrion continued thinking on his feet, pacing up and down before his command throne, a finger tapping his chin.

“We are, yes, yes. But, uh, unfortunately we are continuing to have something of a navigation issue at present so while, ah - while that’s sorted I felt that I and a small retinue might accompany you to the colony, to assist in operations on the ground, with the Assertive to follow not far behind.”

This he all said off the top of his head, making it up on a word-by-word basis. A lot of people on the bridge were gawking at him, but he just ignored them. Or tried to. He then coughed, hammering a fist against his chest.

“If that’s acceptable?” He ventured.

A pause, the crackling of the less-than-stable communications link.

“Uh, sure, whatever works for you. You’ll be coming over again, then?”

“Yes indeed, presently. See you shortly, Commander.”

Once communication had been cut everyone who had been holding back what a bad idea they thought this was felt free to let rip with how bad they thought the idea was.

Which, given that Pak didn’t speak, Thale knew not to speak and everyone else wasn’t allowed to speak, was only really Torian and Loghain.

“My Lord! You cannot think to leave the ship at a time like this! And accompany these strangers! Need I remind you, my Lord, there are aliens on that ship!” Torian gasped, his voice lowering on the ‘aliens’ and his eyes flitting to Loghain at the same time.

“Do you honestly think it’s a good idea to hop over there and let them go off who knows where with you along for the ride?” Loghain asked.

“Right now I think it’s our only option,” Jarrion said.

“My Lord! You cannot-” Torian started again, but got no further before Jarrion interrupted.

“I can, and I judge that I have to. This is a one-off opportunity. It’s about what we are seen to be doing! If we dawdle, we miss the chance to appear as the saviours we are! We know we mean well, we know we have their best interests at heart, but if we’re not seen to come to their aid now it will damage our credibility. So no, this has to happen and if it can only happen this way then, well, here we are.”

This settled nothing, and everyone’s individual arguments all broke out all at once and washed over Jarrion in a waft of noise. He absorbed it for a second or so then held up his hands for quiet, which he got.

“I hear your objections and all of your input and while I value it I find myself forced to offer this counterpoint: I am the Lord Captain, I am a Rogue Trader. Beyond the bounds of the Imperium - which is where we are now, one way or another - I carry with me the authority of the Emperor Himself, speak with His voice and act in accordance with His will to promote the interests and advancement of His Imperium. So what I said is going to happen is going to happen. Questions?”

There were no questions.

“Marvellous. I’m glad we could agree,” he said, turning in place. “Master at Arms, if you could please organise a squad of armsmen to be equipped for ground combat. Fully equipped, if you’d be so kind, with rations sufficient to see them through a fortnight if possible. We’ll be taking the heavy lighter for this one.”

“Lord Captain,” said the Master at Arms, getting started on that. Jarrion turned back to those more immediate to him,

“Torian, you’ll have the bridge while I’m away. Keep the ship in one piece and - and I cannot stress the urgency of this - get Altrx to pull his finger out and get the Assertive moving. As soon as he figures out a way to do it you get him to take it to the colony world I marked before, alright? Horizon. As soon as possible. That’s where I will be, yes? So get him to do that,” he said, pointing aggressively in the general direction of the Navigator’s cradle, which was somewhere below and to the front of the bridge and was where Altrx had already disappeared to.

“Of course my Lord but I-” Torian started, but Jarrion had already moved on, now wagging a finger under Loghain’s nose.

“You’re coming with me. I don’t really trust you enough to leave you here,” he said.

“I was coming anyway,” she said, arms folded.

“Of course you were. We’re also going to the armoury first, you and I. Something tells me that we’ll be getting into it on the ground pretty soon.”

“Could it be that we’re planning on heading off an alien attack on a world and have to leave our nice big ship behind and travel instead on a tiddly little ship crewed by the sort of people who think xenos make fine friends and allies?” Loghain offered.

“Exactly that, yes. Come on, let’s slip into something a little more martial. Thale, you’re coming too. Torian, you have the bridge.”

The armoury, given its contents, was located centrally in the ship, deep enough inside to be well protected but also convenient enough to arm those who might need to keep the ratings in order or else repel especially determined boarders. It did not take long to get to, and when they did arrive the armsmen who’d be accompanying them were already there.

Seeing as how the stated purpose of Jarrion’s expedition had been remind the various holdings of House Croesus where their immediately loyalties should lie, supply what equipment they might need, settle any disputes that might have arisen and also possible see off the occasional alien raid, its stock of armaments was comparatively light. Especially compared to, say, his brother’s ship.

But, being a Rogue Trader vessel, what armaments there were were of particularly high quality.

And so it was that the armsmen picked to accompany Jarrion were all equipped in full carapace, bearing beautifully maintained Minerva-Aegis lascarbines and had already been issued with - at least from what Jarrion could see before he moved towards his own personal section - a heavy bolter, a plasma gun and a formidable selection of grenades, at the very least.

This was just the sort of thing to bring along when meeting strangers and aliens. It was important to make a good first impression. And, in the case of particular hostile aliens, a lasting first impression. As it were.

The armsmen saluted briefly as Jarrion passed and he waved greeting, pausing a moment to have some words with their sergeant about the nature of the mission and what might be expected of them. He kept it vague, but was keen to stress that they should expect the unexpected.

With that cryptic and unhelpful advice delivered, Jarrion, Thale and Loghain continued on.

From his end of the armoury Jarrion quickly zeroed in on what he felt were the essentials. His own suit of carapace with its integrated refractor field, his power sword (as opposed to his other sword which he’d worn the first time he’d gone over, which had just been a sword sword), his bolt pistol - the essentials.

Loghain got armour, too. Jarrion insisted, especially about the helmet. He also found a gun for her. Specifically, a laspistol.

“And this is for you,” Jarrion said.

“I don’t think giving the blind person a firearm is a particularly good idea,” Loghain said, continuing to shift and settle in what was clearly the unfamiliar weight of full carapace.

He might not have liked her that much - or at least be fairly certain he didn’t like her that much - but Jarrion wasn’t so stupid as to think not having her around would be an improvement. Like any possible resource, she was to be protected.

That, and a dead Inquisitor was probably more trouble than a live one, weirdly.

“I know you can see perfectly well, Loghain. If you don’t feel a particular need to fire it that’s your choice, I’d just prefer not to have anyone unarmed on this trip. Take the gun,” he said, rolling his eyes.

He thrust the laspistol to her again and this time she took it, not even fumbling for it. Once she laid her hands on it though she frowned, tilting her head down.

“Is this it?”

“It’s all we have left,” Jarrion lied, not even bothering to sound like he wasn’t. Loghain transferred her frown from the pistol to him, though he was unmoved.

“Most people are nicer to Inquisitors.”

“Most people aren’t Rogue Traders.”

Personally speaking, Jarrion felt that las weapons got short shrift. He felt this was unfair.

Yes, they were a ubiquitous and robust weapon, the weapon of the common soldiery. They therefore lacked mystique and prestige. They were so commonplace you’d be hard pressed to find a world in the Imperium where you wouldn’t be tripping over the things, and in a galaxy of options many felt it often came up short where it counted.

Which was fair enough. But there was a reason they were so prolific. They worked. And not just in the sense that they worked and kept on working, but also in the sense that they worked for their intended purpose, assuming they were used correctly.

It was quite easy for people to forget that they were still weapons, and comparatively nasty ones at that.

He had seen with his own eyes what a las round could do to soft tissue. A bullet to the gut would bleed and was no joke, but with prompt attention wasn’t anything a proper and stoic person couldn’t walk off.

A lasbolt to the gut left a fist-sized, bleeding hole surrounding by ruptured flesh at best or - if it hit the right spot - a ragged through-and-through, prior to the wound channel collapsing in on itself, of course.

He’d even heard - though never seen - that if you got a clean shot to the spine it was possible to blow someone in half. Assuming you hit them at full power. There wasn’t a lot of walking away from that.

Which was why Jarrion made a point to always carry his Steel Burner laspistol as a backup whenever he went off expecting aggression. When all else failed, it rarely did.

Not that Loghain paid attention to this, of course. She just saw his bolt pistol, those empty sockets of hers angling down to where it hung on his hip. She also pouted, which was decidedly weird looking coming from an Inquisitor.

“You have a bolt pistol. Why can’t I have a bolt pistol?” She asked.

“Mine is the only one on board, I’m afraid,” he said, giving the weapon a pat.

This was not anywhere near true. Technically his was the only one of its make and model on board, but they did just happen to have a small rack of the things made to a lesser standard were anyone to require one. Not that Loghain had been told that. Not that she apparently needed to have been.

“You’re lying! I can literally see that you’re lying.”

Jarrion shrugged.

“I’m lying then. You still can’t have one.”

“This is very petty of you.”

“Sorry, but I just don’t think it’d be safe trusting a blind person with a bolt weapon,” he said.

“...fine. I’ll give you this one,” Loghain groused, finally holstering the pistol.

“Generous of you. Thale, you all tooled up?”

Thale - who had been ready for minutes now - raised his hellgun by way of saying yes.

Briefly Jarion wondered if Thale was even not all tooled up. The man literally slept in his armour. It was a wonder he didn’t smell more than he did. The benefit of years of experience, probably.

Loading up on spare ammunition and having a servitor carry it they then proceeded to the hanger - no time to waste and all that.

Again, the armsmen were ahead of them, sorting through personal equipment and also checking and re-checking what weaponry and provisions they were taking along. Behind them sat the heavy lighter, already being blessed and prepared. Also there was a looming, terrifying figure that made Jarrion double-take when he saw it.

“Pak? Is that you?”

It was, though it did not look like it was.

Pak had got changed in preparation for the trip, too. Only Pak’s change had involved switching the robes out for armour that gave the Magos an additional half foot or so of height and what appeared to be a good few inches of solid armour plate all over.

Dragon Scale, Jarrion vaguely remembered it being called. Some kind of Mechanicus power armour. Certainly it looked formidable, and the small, articulated cannon mounted on the armour’s shoulder only served to make it even more daunting.

And Pak had also decided - feeling that apparently this wasn’t enough on its own - to swap out their whole right arm for another, bigger gun. This one was glowing. On seeing Jarrion and the others approaching Pak gave a small wave with their remaining hand.

“Okay, so Pak’s a tank now. You’re coming along as well?” Jarrion asked, walking over.

Pak nodded, slowly.

“Well I’m not going to say no. You prepared? Packed?”

Pak nodded again as a tracked servitor rolled to gentle stop just behind them, carrying a ferociously weighty looking metal case in each hand. The contents could only be guessed at. Jarrion’s eyes flicked from the ridiculously tooled-up techpriest to the servitor and back again.

Someone with only one arm does not take a servitor to load two cases onto a ship and then leave. Someone with only one arm takes the servitor with them to carry their luggage off again afterwards.

“Alright, but the servitor stays on the lighter if at all possible, okay? We’re still doing our best not to scare the locals,” Jarrion said.

Again, Pak nodded, already plenty scary enough on their own.

“Good. Great. Let’s get moving. Final checks, get all cargo stowed, I want us out of here in three minutes,” Jarrion said, raising his voice and waving an arm around his head.

“Why three?” Loghain asked.

“Not as long as five, not as short as one,” he said. She accepted this with an ‘oh’.

And, indeed, not three minutes later they were on their way again, rocketing through the space separating the Assertive from the Normandy. Not a long journey by any means, but long enough for Jarrion to note that Loghain was, again, giving him the eyeless stare, her helmet safely stowed beneath her seat, as was his.

“I feel that you’re waiting to spring something on me,” he said to her.

“What are you going to do - if anything - about the aliens that appear to be part of the Commander’s crew? Just out of curiosity,” Loghain asked. Jarrion sighed.

“Is it good that the humans here apparently cooperate with aliens? No, of course it’s not. But it’s a fact. I don’t really intend to do anything about them if I can help it,” he said.

“Interesting, interesting.”

“I’m not sure what answer you want from me here, Loghain. I’m not going to start copulating with the things or trading out the Assertive for some alien vessel or anything like that. If the Commander wishes to pal around with xenos, fine, that’s her lookout and that can be her downfall. I am going to take a things a step at a time. If I find aliens that are a threat? They shall be dealt with. If I find aliens that might be of use? Then they’ll be put to use. That’s it.”

“Another resource to be exploited, then?”

“Quite so. There’s quite a precedence for Rogue Traders making use of xenos in such a way, as I’m sure you’re aware. Unless you’re my father or my brother, obviously…”

House Croesus, fairly famously, tended to see the only use of aliens being as something to discharge weapons at. A fair enough stance, by any measure, but one that had always struck Jarrion as possibly more wasteful than it needed to be.

Not that he’d ever made this position known to his father or his brother, obviously. At least, not more than once.

“Yes, I had heard of that sort of behaviour,” Loghain said.

“I suppose there’s still no chance of you revealing why you happen to be on my ship?” Jarrion asked.

“Can’t you guess?”

“Guessing the motives of an Inquisitor does not strike me as a good idea. I wouldn’t even know where to start. Investigating me? My family? Stowing away on the way to somewhere else? Who can say?” Jarrion shrugged, or at least shrugged as much as he could strapped into his seat by his crash-harness.

Loghain, disconcertingly, grinned.

“Overwhelmed by possibilities?” She asked.

A crackle over the lighter’s internal vox told them it was approximately a minute before landing in the Normandy. For a tiny, tiny moment Jarrion wondered what in the God Emperor’s name he was actually doing. But it passed, and the unshakable confidence of leadership returned.

He found himself grinning back at Loghain, with rather more intensity than the Inquisitor could muster.

“Yes,” he said. “It’s wonderful.”

Chapter Text

The last shuttle the visitors had arrived in had just about managed to fit into the hanger, this one had to squeeze. That its wings could fold in against its hull was vital in allowing this, and even then it was a close run thing. Shepard winced whenever she heard scraping.

“Oh I hope those buff out,” she said.

Squat legs extended from the belly of the craft and hissed as their pneumatics took its considerable weight, sinking down towards the deck. Steam - or possibly something else, it was unclear - vented here and there from across its hull which was a little worrying and which caused all members of the Normandy who were watching to take a collective step backwards.

Once settled it sat a second or two, giving everyone a good opportunity to again see that big two-headed eagle symbol before, with a hiss, the heavy ramp that made up most of the underside of the shuttle’s nose opened, unfurling and extending, exposing the crew compartment.

And standing there at the top of the ramp in full, heavy armour, helmet tucked under his arm, jacket hanging from his shoulders, with a sword on one hip and a big, chunky pistol-thing on the other was Jarrion, looking happy as anything.

“Hello again, Commander,” he said.

This guy, Shepard thought. This guy.

“Looking pretty sharp there, Jarrion. You do know you didn’t have to come over in full armour, right? It’s going to be a few days getting there,” she said.

Jarrion looked down at himself and gave a self-effacing smile and shrug.

“The thought did occur to me but only once we were over halfway here. Still, such is life.”

At this point Loghain came wandering up beside Jarrion and Shepard did a brief double-take on noticing that she’d ditched the blindfold and on seeing why she’d been wearing one in the first place. Shepard got over it, however.

“Hope you brought a change of clothes or else that stuff is a lot more comfortable than it looks,” she said, folding her arms.

“Oh, we did.”

Jarrion wasn’t lying. Alongside the plentiful arms and ammunition the lighter had had packed onto it he had also - as a matter of precaution - had many other sundries packed as well. Rations, some survival gear, changes of clothes, etcetera.

Failing to prepare was preparing to fail, after all.

Shepard was still peering into the dim, red-lit interior of the lighter, seeing the armsmen milling about behind Jarrion, sorting out their gear.

“Brought a squad of guys again as well, I see, and - hold up, what’s that?” Shepard asked, breaking off from whatever they been moving towards and pointing to what looked like a combat mech that had just lumbered up behind Jarrion, who turned in mild confusion.

“Ah, that’d be Pak. You remember Pak? They’ve dressed for the occasion,” he said, moving to give the Magos a slap on the back but very quickly thinking better of it. Shepard just looked Pak from top to bottom.

“What, was-wearing-the-red-robes Pak Doesn’t-say-anything Pak?” She asked, trying to reconcile the small, quiet, weird Pak she’d thought herself familiar with with the apparent armour-plated killing machine that was now standing next to Jarrion.

“One and the same,” Jarrion said. Shepard squinted.

“Is their arm a gun now?”

“Yes, yes it is. Not entirely sure what sort of gun if I’m being honest but, well, Mechanicus. Who knows? I’m sure we’ll benefit from it at some point.”

Was that sort of thing normal where Jarrion came from, Shepard wondered - people getting enormous guns attached directly to their arms? Replacing their arms, in fact. She wasn’t really sure what to make of that, or where to start unpicking that sort of thought process. In the immediate term, there were other issues.

“Don’t want to come across like a bad host or anything but I’m not one hundred percent comfortable having someone with a gun-arm wandering around my ship,” she said.

“Ah, of course not. Um, Pak, I know this may not be ideal but would you mind terribly waiting in the lighter until we’ve arrived?”

Unlike the non-Mechanicus members of Jarrion’s little entourage, Pak would probably have difficulty slipping into something more comfortable. Luckily, the Magos could have cared less about mingling and saw absolutely no issue with staying on the lighter. If anything they were actually rather glad to have been given an out of whatever tedious social functions were sure to follow.

Or at least as close to gladness as Pak allow themselves to feel. They nodded.

“Was that a ‘Yes I do mind’ nod or a ‘Yes I don’t mind’ nod?” Shepard asked.

“I think it’s fine. My armsmen will be content to remain in the hanger as well, if that suits you?”

Shepard hadn’t really been looking forward to asking whether ten or so trained guys following someone else’s orders could perhaps limit themselves to one of the more secure and isolated parts of the ship but she had been building up to it - call her paranoid, but it just didn’t sit right with her.

“It’s a tough sell, I know, but-”

“Oh no, don’t worry. I wouldn’t wish to impose while I’m your guest, Commander,” Jarrion said.

Diplomacy was important. Sometimes. As horrifying as his brother might have found the concept. But Jarrion actually had long-term goals in mind here, and those - he felt - could only be best served by playing nicely.

“Sergeant?” He beckoned the squad sergeant over and over the squad sergeant came, snapping to attention.

“Lord Captain?”

“You chaps don’t mind having to camp in the lighter and keeping yourself to the hanger for the duration of the journey? Should only be a few days, all told.”

The lighter, being the heavier model, did have a chemical toilet, though Jarrion wasn’t looking forward to what ten men sharing it was going to be like after a day or two of transit and had to ride the lighter back down to the surface. Suddenly, he was profoundly grateful that he’d brought a helmet.

“We’d bivvy up an Ork’s arse if you needed us to, Lord Captain,” the sergeant said. Jarrion blinked.

“...vivid imagery, sergeant, thank you. Much appreciated. If there’s any briefings related to the mission you’ll be summoned,” he said. The sergeant gave a salute.

“Lord Captain.”

He then rejoined the others and Jarrion turned back to Shepard.

“Assuming that’s okay?” he then asked the Commander, who shrugged. He took for granted that she’d understood their Low Gothic conversation. Whatever translation capabilities they had were a subject of minor interest to Jarrion, but he’d cross that bridge when he came to it.

All things in time, no rush.

“Fine by me. There’ll be a briefing prior to us arriving so your man can come to that,” Shepard said.

“Marvellous.”

“In the meantime you and Loghain cane come on up, I’ll show you around. Maybe have your man there - Thale, wasn’t it? - lose the huge gun. I don’t think he’ll need it anytime soon.”

Thale had been there the whole time but, as Thale managed to often edge out Pak in the looming-and-silent stakes by not clanking and whirring when he walked, no-one had really had any reason to notice him yet. Jarrion turned, flinched on finding Thale standing so close to him, and then said:

“Ah yes, Thale, if you wouldn’t mind?”

Thale duly and dutifully left his hellgun in the lighter. He would have taken the grenades off his webbing, too, but the Commander had neglected to mention those to Jarrion and so Jarrion had not asked him to. Thale imagined this was an oversight, but knew better than to act on his own initiative. If it was important, someone would have told him so or would tell him so.

For her part Shepard just hadn’t recognised them as grenades.

She didn’t push any further than asking Thale to remove the hellgun, either. She could have done and, indeed, had the right to, but figured that having Jarrion, Loghain and Thale walk around with their sidearms would make them feel a little more trusted, and wasn’t that kind of a good thing? Certainly, she’d have felt better for keeping strapped, had she been in their shoes.

Besides, security teams were only a button press away, should it come to that. Which it probably wouldn’t. Hopefully.

And at least they’d be leaving that whacking great ship behind soon. The - albeit highly unlikely - threat of armed assault coming from inside the Normandy was one thing, but Shepard felt pretty confident she could handle that. She was a killing machine, after all.

Getting the ship she was standing in blown to bits, however? Not so much fun. And she’d know. Not an experience she wanted to risk a repeat of anytime soon.

So no, play nice, be polite. They were all on the same side after all.

“Alright, cracking, let’s go,” Shepard said once Thale had returned from unstrapping the hellgun from himself. She made for the elevator and Jarrion moved to follow only for a sudden, fearsome grip on his shoulder to keep him in place.

This came as something of a surprise, doubly so when he found that it was Pak who’d put a hand onto his shoulder. A very strong hand, as it turned out.

“Yes, Pak?” Jarrion asked, politely.

Pak stood and said nothing, lowering their hand as in the rear of the lighter’s compartment the tracked servitor started moving, opening up one of Pak’s cases, rummaging briefly and somewhat awkwardly before trundling on over, bearing something. Jarrion looked down.

“Ah. I see. I suppose that’s fair,” he said.

Pak nodded slowly and a mechadendrite extended to interface briefly with what the servitor was holding. A moment after this the lights on the thing flickered into life and it rose, wobbling, into the air.

“Uh, Commander?” Jarrion called and Shepard stopped and turned back, seeing that now the Rogue Trader had what appeared to be a skull floating around his head. Shepard blinked but the skull was still there.

“Commander, you wouldn’t mind if Pak had their servo skull accompany me? It’ll be unobtrusive, just there to observe. So the Magos doesn’t feel their left out of proceedings,” Jarrion said as Shepard eyed the thing now bobbing around just above Jarrion’s shoulder, turning one way and then the other.

“Sure. That’s a - what? A drone? Shaped like a skull?” She asked. That’s sure what it looked like, but she thought it would pay to be certain, just in case she really had started seeing things.

Seriously, what was the deal with the skulls? Would it be rude to ask?

“Drone?” Jarrion asked, frowning as he descended the lighter’s ramp, as though the word were unusual. “It’s a...servo skull.”

He wasn’t entirely sure how best to sum up the concept to someone plainly unfamiliar with it. To him, it was so manifestly self-evident and self-explanatory he wasn’t even sure where he was meant to start.

The skull of a favoured or particular devoted servant - presumably some Mechanicus Adept, given that the servo skull was in Pak’s possession - fitted with sufficient mechanisms to allow it to be inhabited by a rudimentary machine spirit, and so in turn allow this servant to continue serving their master (and, by extension, the Imperium) even after they’d given their life in service. What could be more obvious?

Jarrion was not sure how to express this, or even where he would have to start. Didn’t the name give it away? Weren’t drones those blasphemous-sounding combat machines those devious aliens out to the galactic east liked to use? Thale had mentioned those before.

“Yes, it’s a drone shaped like a skull,” Loghain said. Unlike Jarrion, she knew what a drone was in essence, and also knew that stopping to explain the concept of duty extending beyond death to non-Imperials was something that could wait.

“Alright. Guess you guys got an aesthetic going here,” Shepard said, not fully grasping what it was she was seeing but shrugging it off anyway. Drones weren’t an especially big issue. Tali had a drone.

Shepard escorted the guests on her own, the others who’d been with her in the cargo hold to watch the lighter arrive staying put to look busy and not crowd her out as she gave Jarrion and co a brief tour of the Normandy, just to give them some idea of what was what and where things were.

First, she showed them where they would be sleeping, should they so choose. It was one of the Normandy’s ‘guest’ rooms, for want of a better term, and presently unoccupied. It was, by Jarrion’s standards, tiny. Shockingly so. It had a bunk bed.

Jarrion had rather expected more luxurious accomodation which, in retrospect, had probably been a bit silly. The Normandy was, after all, tiny and so unable to spare the sort of room even a vessel like the Assertive was able to for its senior crew.

He pretended that what he’d been presented with was fine and not at all a gross indignity and insult to his station. Worse things had probably happened, he just couldn’t think of when off the top of his head.

“How rustic,” he said, picking an entirely inappropriate word but running with it anyway.

“I get the top,” Loghain said.

“What are you, twelve?” Jarrion asked, appalled, but she just smirked.

Secretly he wished he’d been quicker off the mark, but he’d die before admitting that.

Following this they were briefly shown a few other areas of interest. The armoury, the lab, the mess, the battery, brief jaunt down to engineering and so on and so forth. Shepard wasn’t wholly sure what the purpose of this tour was, really. Partly to pass the time, partly just to see how her guests reacted. With polite mystification, mostly.

Truly, the Normandy was unlike any vessel any of the Imperials had been on before. So horrendously quiet, so clean, so austere. It was designed to operate on principles they were entirely unfamiliar with. Had a servo skull been able to express excitement, it seemed likely that Pak’s would have done so, particularly on seeing the Element Zero core. It had had to be pulled away when they’d left engineering.

For his part, Jarron was still just amazed at how small the ship was, how spartan, and how light its crew complement was. No Navigator, either! Obviously, what with their strange reliance on these ‘relays’, but it was still an odd thought.

Truly they did things differently here.

A little after this tour, a welcome-aboard meal of sorts was put together.

Shepard figured it would be a good way to break the ice further, maybe learn a few more things and generally try and ease tensions between her team and the visitors. She did make sure to sit the non-human members the other end of the table from the visitors, though, even if it irritated her. She’d be asking about that when she got the chance.

EDI had - in remarkably quick time - come up with a translation device for just such an occasion. While everyone on the Normandy had by now received the language package allowing them to understand Low Gothic, Shepard guessed - correctly, though she didn’t know that - that her guests were not so lucky.

The device, therefore, would sit on the table and translate into Low Gothic. Kind of a rough-and-ready solution, but it’d get the job done.

And not that they had any idea it was called Low Gothic, of course. So far they’d left the language unnamed. But that was by the by.

Good spread Shepard had put on, too. One of the benefit of Cerberus over the Alliance - beyond the very plush leather upholstery - was that ration quality had improved a fair bit. Particular since Shepard had gone out of her way to make sure that they really did have everything they needed.

A fed crew was a happy crew, and a happy crew as an effective crew. It all added up!

The tables had been pushed together. Jarrion, Loghain and Thale were all sat in a row on one end, separated from Mordin and Grunt by Jacob, while Shepard, Garrus and Miranda sat opposite. This seating arrangement had been very deliberate.

Conversation was not flowing. There had been some faltering efforts at small talk - what did you think of the ship, your armour looks nice, etcetera - but they hadn’t gone very far and things had petered out and gone rather quiet.

This was agonising, so, sighing, Shepard decided to just take the bull by the horns and get things going herself.

“Alright, I’ve got to get this out of the way because it really is the elephant in the room: what’s the deal with you guys and non-humans?” She asked, directing it mainly towards Jarrion, though the question could just as easily work for any of the three.

Maybe not Thale? He was kind of hard to read. Shepard just assumed.

Jarrion, on hearing this, pricked up his ears and cocked his head.

“Hmm?”

“Aliens. Why don’t you like aliens,” Shepard said, bluntly.

“Ah, oh, I see. Ahem, well.”

Jarrion was prevaricating and playing for time, not really sure how best to explain. He also kept glancing to Loghain in the hopes that she might maybe step in and help him. She did not, because she was pretending to be more blind than she was, and acting as though she didn’t notice.

On realising that he was being left to twist in the wind on this question, Jarrion sighed, sat up straighter, and tried to think how best to sum up what the problem with xenos was to someone who didn’t know any better.

“I’m sure many aliens are, ah, perfectly pleasant on a personal basis,” he said, to start things off. Jarrion did not believe this for a second, of course.

He imagined that some aliens might be more tolerable than others, but that was about as far as he was willing to accept. He imagined that what he’d said would go down better than his actual thoughts on the matter, which was that aliens were by their very inhuman nature vicious, wicked and untrustworthy and it was more a case of when they demonstrated this, rather than if.

“I’m feeling that there’s a ‘but’ coming up next,” Shepard said and Jarrion swallowed.

“Heh, yes, well. But most aliens - most aliens myself, Thale and Loghain are familiar with, I should say - are a threat not only to mankind’s divinely ordained right to exercise its sovereignty over the galaxy but also a threat to mankind’s survival itself.”

Jarrion pointed to Shepard across the table with his fork. Gestures like these were very important when delivering speeches. You had to make the best of what props you had to hand.

He continued:

“You yourself are dealing with these attacks on these colonies, yes? Well imagine that repeated on a grander scale, across the length and breadth of the galaxy - humans enslaved and exterminated or worse by every alien race it happens to encounter, for thousands of years. Ten of thousands of years, in fact.”

Had there ever been a time when humanity and aliens had existed in peace? No, not really. At least not as far as Jarrion knew. From the moment mankind had first set forth into the stars the alien, jealous, had been there to prey on any moment of weakness shown.

Of course you heard about this or that isolated colony or this or that misguided group that thought they had a cordial and mutually beneficial relationship with aliens, but it was always only ever a prelude to a horrendous fate.

That’s where trusting xenos got you.

“We hate and wage war upon the alien because the alien hates and wages war upon us. But where they are vile, craven creatures of no great purpose we are humanity, destined to rule the galaxy alone.”

A sucking vacuum of silence greeted this and Jarrion added:

“More or less. Does that answer the question?”

“Maybe a bit more than I’d wanted, yeah,” Shepard said, casting an eye towards Garrus, Mordin and Grunt who all looked pretty unreadable following what Jarrion had said. She eyed Grunt especially, but the Krogan didn’t appear in any great hurry to start anything, for which Shepard could only be glad.

“You’re probably quite lucky that it was Jarrion you met, all things considered,” Loghain said, dragging Shepard’s attention back again.

“Why’s that?”

“Most honest Imperial citizens wouldn’t have had anything to do with if they saw you associating with aliens. Most, actually, would probably have tried to kill you, depending on whether they were able to or not. The more zealous might have tried even if they’d had no hope of succeeding. Hatred of aliens is a religious obligation as much as anything else, after all. Jarrion though is one of those very rare individuals allowed to engage legally in peaceful contact with aliens, should he so choose.”

Shepard decided to let the rather belligerent first part of that statement slide for now, feeling that Loghain was just trying to get under her skin.

“Because he’s a - what - Rogue Trader, wasn’t it?” She asked instead, and Loghain nodded.

“Yes. Other Imperial agencies would likely be less friendly.”

“Alright, let’s maybe talk about that, just to get onto less awkward topics. Agencies: like what? What runs this galaxy-wide empire of yours?” Shepard asked, looking between the two of them for an answer to a comparatively more softball question.

Loghain shrugged this one off onto Jarrion, who was happier to be answering something more expository than potentially thorny.

“Well the Emperor, of course. Though the actual obligations of the day-to-day runnings have been delegated. You have the High Lords of Terra, representing as they do the various branches of Imperial governance and authority - the Navis Nobilite, the Administratum, the Ministorum, the Adeptus Mechanicus of which our friend Pak is a member, the Imperial guard, the Inquisition, and so on. This is in broad strokes and I’m missing out one or two but you get the idea,” he said.

Very little of what he’d just listed made any sense of to Shepard, but she felt that going after any one of them would just lead further down a rabbit hole and require more explanation that they really had time for. She decided to go for something else.

“Mostly, yeah. That’s still a lot of very daunting proper nouns. And what’s Loghain? Since you did tell me she isn’t an ambassador,” Shepard said. Loghain on hearing this turned towards Jarrion and rested her chin on her hand and her elbow on the table, the better to give him a look.

“Did you now?”

“Oh come on, you weren’t fooling anyone!” Jarrion protested.

In Loghain’s defence she hadn’t really been trying to. Giving Jarrion another second or so of the staring treatment she then turned to Shepard.

“I am an Inquisitor,” Loghain said. Shepard raised her eyebrows, which did fascinating things to her scars.

“That sounds ominous,” she said, and Loghain grinned that grin of hers.

“It does, doesn’t it?”

Shepard waited for more, but more came there none. So she turned to Jarrion, who was midway through a mouthful so had to quickly chew and swallow before he could answer.

“An Inquisitor is an agent of the Throne empowered to do just about anything that might need to be done in order to protect the Imperium. To paint in broad strokes. Again,” he said, waving his fork around for illustrative purposes. It was a versatile conversational tool.

Being a Rogue Trader and thus moving in the rarified air of the very, very upper crust of Imperial society, Jarrion knew more about the Inquisition than most ordinary citizens might be expected to - especially given that most ordinary citizens who did know more than they should were unlikely to make this knowledge known.

Knowing too much was famously very poor for the health of the average Imperial citizen.

But Jarrion did know a little, particularly as an Inquisitor had once accompanied his father on one of his more explicitly martial ventures. At the time Jarrion had been much younger and so had found the looming man in the big armour to be terrifying regardless of his position, but the Inquisitor had turned out to be surprisingly gregarious for a man who regularly oversaw the genocide of alien species and had explained to young Jarrion a few ins and outs of how the Inquisition functioned, just to indulge his youthful curiosity.

Odd behaviour for an Inquisitor Jarrion had learned, in retrospect, but apparently Monodominants weren’t especially concerned about being subtle, and the Inquisitor - his name escaped Jarrion now - had been very enamoured of his father’s methods.

“Which are you again, Loghain? Are you Xenos, Malleus or Hereticus?” He asked.

“Yes,” she said.

Jarrion rather hoped that the mild social pressure of the occasion might finally serve to pin her down. He should have known better.

“Fine, keep your secrets, see if I care…” he grumbled, jabbing at his plate irritably.

“Kind of sounds like a Spectre to me,” Garrus said idly, shoving food around his plate. What he’d said came back out of the translation device on the table as Low Gothic and both Loghain and Jarrion turned slowly to look down the table at him.

Tiny bit tense for a moment. Jarrion did manage a smile though, and managed to keep eye-contact with Garrus at the same time, too. Looked like him took some effort, but he managed it.

“Ah, yes. I can’t say I’m familiar with the term,” he said.

“Council agents charged with enforcing Council law and protecting Council assets and citizens by just about whatever means they deem necessary. In broad strokes,” Shepard said, chewing.

Jarrion could certainly see the similarities, he supposed.

“Shepard was a Spectre,” Jacob said, nodding to the Commander.

“Until I died, yeah. Fair play. I should really look into getting reinstated…”

She’d meant to, she just hadn’t got around to it yet.

“Do you also blow up planets?” Jarrion asked her.

Had Loghain had eyes she could have looked at him sideways at this point. She did not though, so instead just kicked him under the table. Since he was still wearing his armour this did nothing, but he got the point and was delighted that he’d managed to get to her, even just a smidgen.

“Blow up planets?” Shepard repeated, not sure if this was some sort of futuristic joke or not.

“Inquisitors have been known to do that from time to time,” Jarrion said.

Again, another moment of silence around the table.

“You’re kidding, right?” Jacob asked.

“No, unfortunately,” Jarrion said with exaggerated sadness. Mostly he was doing this to annoy Loghain, but he also did abhor the practise personally. He could understand the need for it, sometimes, but he still couldn’t get over what a waste it was.

Still. Always more worlds, somewhere. And certainly always more people.

Jacob turned to Loghain, who he was sitting next to.

“He’s not kidding?”

Loghain very delicately cut up some of the food on her plate and ate a piece before replying, taking her sweet time in doing so.

“We have something of a reputation for it. Unjustified, in my opinion. I’ve never done it. Besides, they’re hardly blown up. Just cleansed.”

“Is there a difference?” MIranda asked.

“Yes.”

Kind of a conversation-killer, that one. At least it had got people talking a bit more, until they’d stopped.

Dessert was rather subdued.

-

Well that hadn’t gone quite to plan.

I’d sort of hoped for a bit of banter, if I’m being honest. Learn a little, get us all talking, you know? Instead we get some kind of mini-speech about how it’s important to kill aliens before they kill us and also how purging a planet is different to blowing it up.

What was I supposed to do with any of that?

The guests were all tucked up now. Jarrion and Loghain were sharing that cabin and Thale had been dismissed and gone back down to their shuttle along with that weird floating skull. Oh yeah, I’d almost forgotten about the cargo hold full of armed men as well. Xenophobic armed men, presumably.

I’m sure it’ll all work out.

The team had hung around after Jarrion and co had excused themselves, waiting until they were all very much out of earshot - and this confirmed by EDI - before we all got started on talking.

“Alright. Our guests. Thoughts?” I asked, opening the table up to comments and discussion.

No-one seemed to want to be the one to speak first. Jacob was the one to crack first:

“We all agree this has to be some sort of extended performance piece, right?”

“Possible, though improbable,” Mordin said, appearing deep in thought. He’d appeared like for basically the whole dinner, just listening and not commenting. Formulating something, clearly.

“Assuming they’re on the level - and that’s a big assumption - this Imperium doesn’t sound the friendliest of neighbours to have,” Garrus said.

Kind of seemed a bit like an understatement to me, but he wasn’t wrong. A galaxy-spanning empire full of people like that? Worse than that? Did not sound like a fun place. At least not to me.

And when has having Inquisitors ever been a good thing or ended well?

God, now I’m acting as though I believe it!

Do I though?

This, I think, is the stumbling block for all of us right now. On the one hand we’ve got these guys and this ship and this attitude and this language and all this tech none of which is anything like anything else we’ve seen and let’s not forget also popping up right next to us literally out of empty space.

On the other hand we have to have some standards on what we’re willing to accept, surely.

Ugh. Killer robots from the cold depths of intergalactic space was a big enough reach, now this? Time travelling space-racists with a thing for skulls?

“You were quiet, Grunt. Deep in thought?” I asked, mostly just to keep my brain from wandering away from me.

“About what?”

“That whole dinnertime conversation we had? With the guys who just left?” I said, gesturing in the vague direction of where Jarrion and Loghain had gone. Grunt followed where I was pointing and shrugged.

“I wasn’t listening, I was eating,” he said.

Couldn’t argue with that.

There was a little more discussion after that. Some comments about how creepy it had been just having that skull floating there, watching. How Thale’s scars were almost as bad as mine - tasteful guys, thanks, remember that bit where I died? A bit of idle speculation about the performance of that big ship of Jarrion’s and also how it got about, given that apparently it didn’t use relays.

Interesting stuff, mildly, but nothing leading to any conclusions. I decided to draw a line under it.

“Alright. I’m tired,” I said, cutting through whatever had been going on. “I’m going to bed in a second and from tomorrow I’m going to be concentrating more on the mission we’ve got waiting for us at the end of this journey. My final word on our guests:”

I took a breath, gathered myself, laid my hands on the table.

“I think we need to keep an eye on these guys. And I don’t just mean right now, I mean after we’ve done this mission. Even if everything else they’re saying is bollocks Jarrion is still a guy with a head full of pretty questionable notions about human non-human relations in charge of a real big ship. I’m not wholly comfortable just letting him cruise around,” I said.

“He’s not the only human who doesn’t like aliens,” Garrus said, running a thumb over the Cerberus logo of the mug in his hands.

Subtle, Garrus. Now you got Miranda sulking.

“Xenophobia is not the exclusive preserve of humans. Can I just point that out?” She said.

This sort of sidetracking was exactly what I didn’t need and I rapped a knuckle on the table until everyone else shut up.

“This isn’t an in-depth discussion on the subject, this is me saying that anyone flying around in a ship that’s four kilometres long and who thinks anyone who doesn’t share a species with them doesn’t deserve to live is a concern to me. And - and this is the kicker, and I feel ridiculous for even contemplating it but here we are - and assuming he’s telling the truth and there’s some whole other future full of people like him and he could come back here, what’s to stop another one?”

I did feel ridiculous for putting this idea out there but you did have to be open to these things. If it happened once, why not again? Then what?

Not something I really had the energy to contemplate right at that moment.

“But that’s not - we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. If we come to it. RIght now this discussion ends. They’re here, they’ll help us out on this mission. The mission is what we’re all thinking about right now, okay? We get to Horizon, we work from there. Got it?”

Nods and noises of assent and understanding, just what I like to hear and see.

“Cracking. Now all of you lot clear off, get some rest,” I said.

The team broke up. I stuck around a second, just for a quiet second to myself.

“Commander?” Came Joker’s voice and I sighed.

“If it’s not one thing it’s another…yes, Joker?”

“We’ll be hitting the first relay soon, Commander.”

“How soon is soon?” I asked.

“Little under an hour.”

Nice.

“We’re making good time,” I said.

“You say that as thought you’re surprised.”

Rising from the table I stretched, yawned, and said:

“I do, and I hope you’re deeply wounded.”

“Cut right to my brittle, cracking bones Commander.”

“Good lad.”

Chapter Text

Following dinner, interaction between the guests and the crew of the Normandy was kept by mutual, silent consent to a bare minimum. The journey was only going to take a few days, after all.

To Shepard’s immense relief there was no ruckus. The ten armed men sitting in their big, bulky shuttle full of guns caused no trouble whatsoever. If anything they seemed pretty happy with their situation - just sitting around the hold fiddling with their guns and playing cards, though she did have to tell them not to smoke so much.

All things considered it could have been worse.

She also decided to take a personal lead in learning more. Mostly because the group setting didn’t seem to have worked out so great, but partly because she was also genuinely curious.

Even if they all turned out to be completely full of shit - and Shepard was a little alarmed at how much she was veering away from this opinion, given the whole ‘we fell through time’ thing - the more she got out of Jarrion the more of a read she might get on the guy and on the people he had around him.

That could only be good.

So, on the second day, after Thale had been sent back to the lighter and with Loghain sitting in her top bunk thumbing through a dataslate, Shepard invited Jarrion up to her cabin for a chat.

Loghain wasn’t actually reading it the dataslate, it should be pointed out. She was just pretending so as to unsettle anyone who saw her doing it. As far jokes went it was a lot of effort for not a lot of payoff, but Loghain got bored easily.

The chat was a punt Shepard decided to take, guessing that Jarrion might be more talkative and more relaxed in an informal captain-of-a-ship-talking-to-a-captain-of-a-ship sort of a setting. She was completely right in this.

Jarrion had had amasec packed - on the off-chance there was anything that needed celebrating, commiserating or anywhere in-between - and he had the bottle brought up. Shepard found the stuff palatable, if difficult to describe exactly.

“That’s got a kick,” she said after downing the first glass, wincing only a tiny bit as Jarrion poured out another measure.

“It does rather, doesn’t it? Picked it up on one of the worlds we were touring before this whole, ah, time adventure.”

“Touring?”

“Turn of phrase. Mostly I was flying the colours. House Croesus worlds, you see? Ones brought into the fold by my House, ready to be incorporated into the greater Imperium as and when. Lost colonies, some of them, freshly-founded in some other cases.”

“And so you were...what?”

“Assisting them if they had problems, settling issues, reminding them where their loyalty lay, that kind of thing.”

“Is that what a Rogue Trader does?”

“Ah, no. Well, maybe. It’s what I was doing. Duty to the House, you see? My father is, strictly speaking, the Rogue Trader, I’m just operating with House authority. Not that that makes me any less of a Rogue Trader, you understand!”

“Course not, Jarrion, course not. Just so I’m clear though, could you really just lay out this whole Rogue Trader thing one more time? Bottom line it for me.”

There followed a very truncated version of House Croesus’s history, dovetailing with a better explanation of what exactly a Rogue Trader was and what Rogue Trader did. This time, Shepard actually grasped the concept, which now seemed pretty simple.

An empire in which all interstellar travel was tightly controlled, with sprawling borders and which was unable to be everywhere it needed to be would, indeed, benefit from individuals going into the places between what was mapped out to scope out useful places, find things that might have been lost and otherwise fly the flag when it wouldn’t be prudent to commit resources to what might turn out to be a complete waste of time.

Still seemed kind of arcane and unwieldy to her, having a literal piece of paper giving someone permission to go off and do this, but hell. It was the future. They did things differently there, apparently.

That, and the whole ‘Rogue Traders are allowed contact with aliens’ part being a big deal. Shepard spoke to more aliens before breakfast than most Imperial citizens were apparently liable to meet in their entire lives. Some Imperial citizens, Jarrion said, weren’t even aware aliens existed. This she found difficult to comprehend for citizens of an galaxy-spanning empire, but did not wish to press.

After that they took to talking shop in a more general sense, as it were. One heavily-armed captain of a ship to another, exchanging whichever anecdote came to find first. Shepard gave a loose rundown on what had happened on Purgatory, being as it was the most recent mission with any real combat. Jarrion lapped it up.

“Very exciting! Double crossed! Ah, mercenaries. They have their uses but really can’t be left to their own devices, poor things. Have I met this, ah, Jack? Can’t saying it’s ringing a bell.”

Shepard frowned. Come to think it she hadn’t seen Jack in a while either.

“No, I don’t think so. Almost like she got a bit forgotten about somehow. I’m sure she’ll show up soon enough now we’ve mentioned her.”

Generally how these things worked.

“She sounds quite the character,” Jarrion said, swirling his amasec around his glass.

“That is...you’re not wrong.”

For his anecdote Jarrion ran through the time fairly early towards the start of his little tour where he had had to assist a colony in eradicating a sudden outbreak of feral Orks. And sudden was the keyword, being as how at no point in the planet’s surveying or subsequent history of colonisation had Orks ever been mentioned. But now here they were, rampaging across the plains and roaring out of the jungles with spears and axes to make life miserable.

It had not been difficult, assisting, in the grand scheme of things, but it had not been fun either. By the time Jarrion had arrived with the Assertive, the attacks had already rendered much of the outlying colonial settlements into charred ruins, and put the colonists themselves on the defensive.

Once Jarrion had armsmen on the ground though this quickly turned around. An Ork with a spear was no joke, but was much less threatening if you happened to be stood behind a heavy bolter.

Eventually the Orks were traced back to a crashed ship of theirs deep in the planet’s wilderness regions. When it had arrived and how no-one had noticed it crashing was unclear, but there it was, the obvious reason for why they were there.

Jarrion had the site purged from orbit, though he suspected that the problem would likely flair up again before too long, Orks being Orks.

Shepard, for her part, listened to the story with mounting puzzlement, being as how she’d read a fantasy book or two in her time.

“Orcs?” She asked.

“No, Orks. Disgusting beasts, get everywhere. Even these feral sort were troublesome. Rather glad we won’t be running into any around here, I must say. They are, ah, unpleasant.”

From the story she’d just heard, Shepard didn’t doubt it.

This sort of martial talk led quite naturally into a discussion about firearms, a topic that Shepard always enjoyed. Going with the flow of the conversation she briefly extolled the many virtues of her Mattock (which she loved dearly), her fervent desire to someday soon acquire a M-98 Widow (which she was certain she would also love dearly, especially now she was a cyborg death machine and so able to actually use one on her own) and then finally rounding off with unholstering and handing over her Phalanx to Jarrion so he could have a look at it.

He, in turn, responded by letting her have a look at his bolt pistol. The thing was ludicrously enormous by comparison but Shepard felt it might be rude to point that out, instead, she asked how it worked, and so Jarrion explained it.

Sounded like some sort of rocket propelled grenade-cum-gyrojet mashup to Shepard, who found the concept baffling in the sense of the whole thing just seemed unnecessarily complicated.

The detail that particularly stuck out to her was the part where the projectiles were specifically fused to detonate inside the target. To her, that seemed perhaps just a touch more brutal than it really needed to be.

And that was coming from her. Someone who could - and had, at least once - headbutt someone to death.

From there the conversation went - fairly naturally - onto what other weapons Jarrion was carting around, specifically the ones on his ship. This was an area Shepard was low-key very interested in, and hoped her burning desire to learn more didn’t come across. Luckily for her Jarrion was always more than happy to ramble about the Assertive, so she heard a bunch.

A Dauntless class light cruiser - which the Assertive was, she learnt - had a moderately light armaments by some standards, but a definite kick that it would be wise not to underestimate. While it’s macrobatteries were sufficient if unimpressive, its lances were truly a fine and ferocious weapon.

What was a lance? A massive energy projector capable of searing through metre upon metre of armour plating before burning deep into the vulnerable guts of whatever ship happened to be unlucky enough to be targeted. A weapon designed to cripple battlecruisers.

What sort of energy did it project for it to be able to do this? Jarrion did not know.

Unhelpful, but at least it was something.

Shepard came away from the talk feeling, well, not any less confused and unsure about what was going on but at least better informed. Jarrion wasn’t as mysterious as all that, and while everything he did and had was built and organised along entirely different principles to everything Shepard was used to it wasn’t all that complicated, really.

Not long after this - a day, perhaps, or a few days - they arrived with FTL distance of Horizon, and started moving on in.

Time, then, for a briefing.

-

Shepard gathered her super team into the briefing room along with Jarrion, Loghain, Pak’s servo skull and a very bewildered, anxious looking armsman sergeant who was doing his best to keep as far away from all aliens present as possible.

Jarrion was already passingly familiar with everyone else there and nodded polite hellos to all, aliens included - courtesy costing nothing, after all, and also being quite valuable when one was soon to drop into a combat environment shortly.

The only one there he did not know was Jack, because Jack had been mysteriously absent up until this point and so he hadn’t had an opportunity to be introduced yet.

The reason for Jack’s absence from the welcome dinner had been due to her having slept through it, and her sudden appearance took Jarrion off-guard, mostly because he was unprepared for a woman wearing a strap to come hoving into view with no warning.

He got over it though, and shook her hand to say hello. This Jack was not wholly cool with, but she got over that, too, mostly because Shepard mouthed at her over Jarrion’s shoulder to just bear with it.

With that out of the way the briefing could start.

“Alright,” said Shepard, moving up and laying both hands knuckle-down on the conference table. “This room’s a little more snug than it usually is but we all know why that is so let’s not waste time on that. Not long from now we are going to be putting down on Horizon. Colony world, wonderful holiday destination and next target for the Collectors, at least according to reliable information from our benefactors.”

The holographic projector was then switched on, cycling through a few establishing shots of Horizon the planet, the colony, before settling on a much more useful overview of the colony layout itself. Fairly standard stuff, at least for Shepard. Jarrion found it fascinating.

“We have a rough idea of how Collectors operate when they come in, thanks to what we’ve pulled from the colonies that have already been hit. Communications get blacked out, ship comes down, Seekers released, drones follow and just roll everyone up. Simple process, really. What we don’t know is what happens when someone - in this case us - steps in to mess with them. We’re going to be finding out. My advice: expect the worst.”

She clicked around with some controls on her omnitool and brought up an accompanying image to sit alongside the colony map. It showed what were obviously some large guns.

“What we also know - and what’s useful for us to know - is that Horizon was recently kitted up with a bunch of GARDIAN lasers courtesy of the Alliance. Pretty unusual all things considered but hey, desperate times I guess?”

Jarrion did not appreciate what this was talking about, but rolled with it. Lasers at least he could understand.

Shepard continued:

“In an ideal world they’ll blow the Collector ship out of the sky but I doubt we’ll be so lucky. Collectors aren’t idiots. They’ll come out of nowhere and take those guns offline somehow so they can work in peace. So the way I figure it, once we’re on the ground I say we make for those guns as quick as possible, get them back up again. As much as I like to think we can take out their ship with harsh language and stern looks I don’t want to rely on that.”

The image of the lasers disappeared again and Shepard started highlighting areas on the map.

“So here’s the plan, just so we’re all clear: me and my team is coming down on this side of the colony here. Jarrion, your lot go the other side. Once we’re all down we both move into the colony proper, take out any Collectors we run into, try to avoid getting killed or paralysed, locate the GARDIAN controls and get them up and running. Boom, job done. Simple, eh?”

Most plans were simple at first. Problems typically happened once things got going. As far as simple went though this plan was wonderful.

Shepard looked around for questions but none were immediately forthcoming. Then she remembered something, snapping her fingers.

“Oh yes, which reminds me: Seekers. Kind of an issue. I need to explain this to you guys.”

This she directed specifically to Jarrion, who blinked.

“Hmm? Commander?” He asked, pleasantly enough.

“Technical detail of the mission. My team know what it is, but you don’t. Come with me. Mordin? You too. Everyone else go check your gear - Joker? How long we got?”

“About two hours, Commander,” said a voice from above.

“Right, you heard the man, go get ready.”

Shepard left the room at speed, Mordin following and with Jarrion and Loghain bringing up the rear, servo skull bobbing behind them. The armsman sergeant went back to the cargo bay as quickly as possible to relay what he’d learnt of the mission to the rest of the squad and also to get away from the aliens.

In short order Shepard et al filed into the lab, Jarrion and his lot taking up position on one side while the Commander and Mordin went to the other. Between them was the laboratory work bench, covered with various bits of apparatus and other assorted scientific bric a brac but, mainly, occupied by a big case in which was bouncing and bobbing around an unpleasant insectile creature.

“And this would be a Seeker. Not sure how we got it but there it is. These things are a problem but, hopefully, one with a solution. Right, Mordin?” Shepard asked, her arms folded.

Mordin, busy with a console, just nodded.

“Delightful,” Jarrion said, looking at the thing with distaste.

“Basically, the Collectors just release hods of these things, they swarm out, sting everyone, everyone locks up, the drones come out to just roll everyone up. Pretty effective, really. Not something we really want to have to come up against, ideally. Hence countermeasure, yes?”

Again she looked to Mordin who, still busy, didn’t even hear that time.

Jarrion looked at the Seeker again, and found it repugnant. Loghain was also looking at it - for a given value of ‘looking’ - but her expression suggested she wasn’t so much disgusted as thinking through something. She appeared to be concentrating,.

“Can I try something?” She asked, out of nowhere. Shepard glanced to her.

“Uh, possibly. What did you have in mind?”

“Some psyker jiggery-pokery, no doubt,” Jarrion said, earning himself a sideways, overly-sweet smile from Loghain.

“You know me so well,” Loghain said.

Shepard was none the wiser, and could almost feel the conversation again slipping into areas she was entirely in the dark about.

“Psyker?”

“Ah, yes. Our esteemed colleague Loghain here is a psyker on top of being an Inquisitor,” Jarrion said pleasantly. Shepard remained none the wiser. For the sake of clarity she clarified thusly:

“When I said ‘psyker’ I should probably have been more direct and asked: ‘What does that mean’?”

Jarrion was beginning to lose track of what he had and hadn’t explained to Shepard at this point, and of which concepts had only been mentioned but not delved into. Psykers were clearly one of those things that had not been covered in detail yet.

There really was an awful lot to unpack.

“Oh sorry, I quite forgot. Psykers are, well, psychics. Individuals with, ah, abilities?”

Jarrion really wasn’t sure where he could even start. Shepard had at least heard of psychic powers though, in the context of fiction, obviously, and so latched onto this pretty quickly.

“Psychic powers? What, like mind reading? Telekinesis?” She asked, not even bothering to be outraged at this latest revelation about her guests.

Psychic powers sure, cool. Why not, given the way things were going? In for a penny, right?

“Just the telepathy, I’m afraid,” Loghain said, still peering intently at the Seeker in its box, continuing to buzz around.

“That so? What am I thinking, then?” Shepard asked.

Always the first thing anyone asked. Loghain had long-since stopped seeing the funny side, but rolled with it anyway and didn’t let her irritation show. Instead, she just cocked her head a little, still not looking away from the Seeker.

“You’re thinking you don’t believe me.”

“Uncanny,” Shepard said, flatly.

Now Loghain turned, straightening up.

“I could probe further, if you wanted convincing. That sort of thing is typically considered rude without consent,” she said.

Off to the side Jarrion made strangled sound on hearing an Inquisitor use the word ‘consent’, having to hammer his chest with a fist to keep from choking. This was ignored.

“Well consider this consent. I’m curious now,” Shepard said.

Loghain smiled in that very particular way of hers. This time though it didn’t seem to reach her eyes. Or, rather, where her eyes should have been,

“If you’re sure, Commander. You may want to sit down.”

“I’m good,” Shepard said, folding her arms. Loghain just shrugged and stepped in closer to her.

Shepard did wonder what was going to happen, if anything. Would there be hand movements? Chanting? Some sort of beam of energy? Nothing at all?

She did her best not to just stare Loghain in the eyesockets. It felt like a rude thing to do, and also they really were quite unsettling to look at, especially up-close. Those eyes had clearly not left her head quietly or gently.

Loghain, for her part, had gone very quiet.

The temperature dropped. Not horrendously, and not throughout the whole room, but just enough for Shepard to notice and for her to shiver. And once she’d finished shivering, she noticed also that the cold seemed to really be focusing on some spot in the middle of her skull.

“What the-” she had time to say before that little spot of cold wriggled, and her eyes widened. That wasn’t normal.

“A few details. Bit of a gap. Ah, you really were spaced? That wasn’t much fun, was it? But that’s nothing you haven’t already mentioned. Let’s go a little further,” Loghain said, quietly.

The cold spot got fractionally bigger. Shepard gritted her teeth. Mordin - who had started watching at this point - made to move in but Shepard raised a hand and stopped him in place.

“Elysium, hmm? You did very well there, so it seems. Ah, but not quite well enough, you think? Could have done better? We all think that, don’t we? When we cast our minds back? I wouldn’t worry about it. Things would have been very different had you not been there, and you know that. And now I know that, too. See how this works?”

“You-”

“You did do well, didn’t you? Ah, I can see why they made you a Spectre, certainly. First human Spectre, no less. Quite the historical event. An awful lot of important events do seem to turn around you, don’t they? Saren, Citadel...Reapers? Hmm. There’s a lot here. Very interesting...”

“Could you-”

“Outside interference, too. Bit of a mess. Some sort of artefact left its mark here, I can see that. Very confusing. Xenos artefact. Tsch, always tricky. You should be more careful, Commander.”

Loghain then took a step back and the cold spot vanished, though the temperature around Shepard - and in the greater room, the drop having spread - did not immediately rise again. Shepard, whose whole body had tensed up, released the tension and very nearly flopped to the floor, just about managing to stop herself in time through sheer force of will.

“I could go further, but I think you get the idea,” Loghain said.

Garrus, Miranda and Jacob appeared at this point in a state of some agitation. EDI had informed them - not just them specifically, but the crew in a general sense and they’d been the first to respond - of an anomalous drop in temperature coming from the laboratory. Suspecting the worst, they had rushed there with all haste and also with guns.

They were holding these guns as they entered, and on seeing Shepard sagging looked set to start aggressively asking for some answers. Shepard held up a hand though, and stopped them.

“It’s alright, it’s alright. I brought that on myself,” She said, steadying herself. Once she’d done that, she looked up to Loghain, who was still fucking smirking. “You weren’t kidding, then?”

“Sorry if I ever gave the impression I was. I suppose being unfamiliar with psykers it’s only natural you might be skeptical. Are there really none at this time?” Loghain asked, taking that whole ‘time travel’ thing for granted, either for ease or for comedic effect.

Of course, having been inside Shepard’s head, Loghain knew the answer but it was polite to ask all the same, she felt. Shepard rubbed her temples.

“Can’t say I’ve ever bumped into one before now, no.”

“Consider yourself lucky,” Jarrion said, quietly, flicking a spot of frost off his armoured forearm. He’d been stood too close to Loghain.

“Can they all do stuff like that?” Shepard asked.

“Some can do much worse,” Jarrion said, and Loghain did not dispute it. Because he wasn’t wrong.

That was another of those ominous statements Shepard didn’t really want to probe too deeply, like the distinction between cleansing a planet and blowing it up. She looked to Loghain again.

“I imagine that trick of yours comes in handy,” she said.

“In my line of work? Maybe once or twice.”

By this point Shepard was beginning to sympathise with the level of antipathy towards Loghain she had picked up coming from Jarrion during their first meeting. She could get it, now. But professional courtesy was still important.

“Anyway. You were saying you wanted to try something?” Shepard asked. Loghain took a second to realise what it was the Commander was talking about.

“I’d quite forgotten about that, yes. If you don’t mind - ?” She asked, gesturing to the case and the Seeker within.

“Be my guest.”

Loghain moved back to the case and bent down again, bringing her face almost level with the little thing, still buzzing around without a care in the world. The temperature, which had been climbing, dipped a little, but not much.

“It has a mind, this thing. A crude one, a simple one, but still a mind nonetheless. And the wonderful thing about minds - particularly simple ones - is that they can only take so much strain…”

The seeker started to bob in the air more erratically, jerking around so much it started to bang off the side of the case, across which more frost was forming. Then it stopped, shivering so much it almost seemed to be vibrating, just for a second or so.

And the seeker then dropped out of the air, plainly stone dead.

“Fancy that,” Loghain said, standing up.

“That’s handy. If they send one of those at us I’ll be sure to stand behind you,” Jarrion said.

Shepard was frowning at the dead Seeker. She looked over to Mordin, who was kind of unreadable about everything that had just happened.

“You didn’t need that, did you?” She asked.

Mordin was perfectly still for a moment, then, as if nothing had happened, moved back across the lab and started working on another console.

“Countermeasure already ready for deployment, as stated. Refinement possible but unlikely in time available. Seeker surplus, though possibly required in future for improvements.”

“That’s lucky. We’ll pick you up another one,” Shepard said.

Meanwhile, Jarrion and Loghain were still having their quiet little conversation:

“You made all that look very easy,” Jarrion said, nudging his chin towards the dead Seeker.

“That’s because it was. The Warp is so calm and still I must admit that I feel quite flush with power. I could probably kill you by looking at you especially hard. Were I so inclined.”

“Colour me reassured.”

“You should be. I should easily be able to repel these creatures, should they be set on us while on the surface.”

This genuinely surprised Jarrion, who had been quietly wondering what the point of the whole demonstration was. He’d just sort of thought Loghain had been showing off.

“Really?” He asked, and she nodded.

“Really. Or don’t you trust me?” Loghain asked sweetly, hands clasped before her. This was a deeply disturbing thing to both see and hear. Jarion did not immediately respond because he took a few seconds to both recover and also to look at the Inquisitor with intense doubt.

“You can’t tell but right now I am looking at you with intense doubt,” he said.

“Oh, I can tell. Rest assured though Lord Captain - you’ll never be in safer hands than mine.”

Loghain held up her hands to illustrate this point. For some reason. It didn’t add a whole lot, and Jarrion felt himself become even less reassured. He had to turn away.

“Perhaps I should shoot myself now and save myself the bother of the journey down...”

-

With all of that excitement resolved it was down to the cargo bay for final checks and loading up. Jarrion had politely insisted on declining Mordin’s countermeasure, assuring Shepard at length that they had the matter well in hand and would be fine.

This was naturally because Jarrion would be damned if he was trusting the safety of himself or his crew to the concoction of some alien scientist. Even as much as he didn’t trust Loghain he trusted the Inquisition more than he trusted xenos. Rocks and hard places had rarely looked so uninviting.

He put it more delicately to Shepard though, of course, who mentally prepared herself for writing off a whole half of the mission as and when Jarrion and his lot got taken out by Seekers. Prepare for the worst and all that. She was confident they could accomplish the mission if it came to that, and so wasn’t especially worried.

It could cause problems, sure, but those were future problems and could be dealt with as and when. Assuming they even came up at all. Fingers crossed.

Jarrion had not seen Shepard in her armour before and had to admit that it definitely suited her a lot more than not being in armour. Just the way she carried herself.

He, of course, was back looking how he’d looked when he’d first arrived - armoured up, jacket on, sword and pistol on his hip and ready for anything. He swaggered on over for a final chat whilst throughout the hold equipment was checked and rechecked and preparations made to head on down.

“Your lads solid on the plan?” Shepard asked, not looking up from checking her weaponry as Jarrion came on over.

“Oh yes, fully clear. Don’t worry about us, Commander.”

“Good, glad to hear it.”

This business-like brusqueness rather took the wind out of Jarrion’s efforts at small talk. He persevered though, casting his eye around for something else to comment on and spotting Jacob and Miranda off to one side. To his surprise they were still wearing whatever it was they’d been wearing the whole time they’d been on board. Which is to say, not armour.

“Aren’t your, uh, are those two not wearing armour?” Jarrion asked, nodding his head towards them. Shepeard looked up and over and got what ti was he was talking about before returning her attention to her Mattock, which she loved.

“I know, right? I’d insist but they figure kinetic barriers are enough and I’m just in charge and a decorated veteran and someone they spent billions of credits bringing back from the dead so what do I know?”

Miranda and Jacob’s ears must have been burning because they chose this moment to look up and over, perplexed. Shepard waved.

“Don’t come crying to me when you get shot,” she said under her breath, smiling.

“Kinetic barriers, you said?” Jarrion asked, having latched onto this bit.

“Yes?”

“Suggests that they are only effective against projectiles?”

Shepard gave him an odd look. This wasn’t new.

“Yes? You worried about lasers or something?”

“Are these barriers widespread? As a defensive measure?”

“Pretty popular, yes. I feel like I’m missing something here.”

“Just learning more about where I find myself,” said Jarrion.

These sorts of pedantic details could be quite important, in his experience.

“Huh, right.” Shepard said. Then feeling it was her turn to ask a question and seeing Jarrion’s squad of guys all huddling down on one knee in a circle for no obvious reason she pointed over and asked: “What are they doing?”

“Hmm, oh, praying. I believe the corporal is leading the prayers there, from the looks of things. A fine habit.”

“Praying to the, uh, God Emperor, was it?”

“Primarily. I can’t speak for my armsmen, of course, but the Emperor foremost. Possibly some Saints too for blessing and protection. And for the Machine Spirits of their equipment, given they’ll be relying on them soon. Very wise.”

Jarrion was suddenly struck by the awkward realisation that he hadn’t done anything so pious recently. He’d just been rather busy and it had slipped his mind, but now he felt exposed and unworthy. Hopefully he’d have enough time after this conversation was over for a small prayer and maybe have Pak appoint his weapons, if possible. Just to be on the safe side.

Shepard looked at Jarrion sideways and could see that he was in no-way joking.

“You’re really serious about this God Emperor thing, aren’t you?”

Jarrion turned and looked at her, and saw that she too was in no-way joking.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Have you ever seen him?”

Jarrion bit his tongue. He could see where this was going and even the insinuation turned his stomach.

“I don’t mean to be rude, Commander, but I’d rather not have a discussion about this if it’s all the same to you.”

From his tone and suddenly very, very rigid body language Shepard could tell that while she perhaps had not crossed a line she had started approaching one.

“Wasn’t implying anything Jarrion, honestly. I’m just curious, honestly. Why wouldn’t I be?”

This kind of deliberate repurposing of what you’d been saying before and turning it around to make it seem as though you’d been saying the exact opposite was masterfully done stuff. Shepeard was clearly a woman with the gift of the gab. Had he been less-used to talking to people Jarrion might even have believed it.

Jarrion sighed. As much as he could see this subject might be a thorny or a messy one he was loathe to pass up an opportunity to enjoy the sound of his own voice. He caved:

“I’m hardly a theologian. Though, really, if I was that probably wouldn’t help you either. There’s a cult for everyone. Some of the variants I saw not even that long ago while touring the colonies and flying the colours, for example. Emperor as benevolent harvest father, Emperor as the stars themselves and able to peer into the minds of men, etcetera, etcetera. It’s varied.”

“Obviously.”

“Look, I’m not really the right person to ask. As and when the Assertive arrives I’m sure I could find a member of the Ecclersiarchy to answer any questions you might have - there’s more than a handful on board for the crew’s spiritual needs.”

Given that Shepard had at most an idle curiosity on the subject, the prospect of having a member of some clerical body set on her was not one she relished.

“No, I think I’ll be fine,” she said, hastily.

Jarrion felt it best to conclude now.

“Ultimately, the God Emperor is, well, a God. What sort of God probably depends on your upbringing but a God he is and that is that. As long as you hold to that you can’t go far wrong,” he said, adding emphatically: “That he sits on the Golden Throne guiding and protecting humanity is a fact. Everything else after that is, well, let’s say cultural.”

“So what sort of God do you see him as, then?”

“Me? Oh I don’t know. I just think he wants us to prosper, that’s all.”

“That’s very broad.”

“I did say I’m not a theologian. The clergy can argue about the details, I just know that I have a role to play out for Him, and I am going to do so to the best of my ability for His glory and for the glory of His Imperium.”

“Good for you, Jarrion,” said Shepard, who honestly could not think of a single other thing to say in response to this sentence. Jarrion smiled and clapped her on the shoulder.

“It is, rather. Now if you excuse me seeing the men’s piety has reminded me that I’ve been somewhat lax in the same regard. I’ll pray for you too, if you like. The Emperor protects, you see?”

“Uh, sure, thanks. Even here though? The past and all.”

Again, playing along with the time travel thing. At this point what could Shepard lose by pretending otherwise? She’d had her mind read earlier. Reality was plainly out to lunch.

Jarrion just kept on smiling.

“Everywhere, Commander. His reach knows no limits. And apparently his servants are pushing the limits, too! Be seeing you on the surface.”

Quite unprompted he made the sign of the Acquilla across his chest, and Shepard did not understand what it meant.

-

What with their shuttle blocking the cargo bay, Jarrion and his lot had to be the first ones out. I watched them all load up and watched them back up and out, again scratching up the inside of my ship. Really hope we can fix those.

“I still don’t like this,” said Garrus.

“Not a fan of our guests?” I asked and he shrugged.

“It’s all just to convenient. And strange. Two ships bumping into each other by accident? In space? In orbit? Language issues? Tech that’s nothing like anything we’ve seen before? Nothing about this seems right to me,” he said.

Adding, after a moment’s consideration:

“And they’re racists. Not the warmest or fuzziest of character traits.”

“Yeah well. Can’t argue with that,” I said.

“You learn anything else from him?” Jacob asked.

“From Jarrion? Oh yeah, heaps. All insane, obviously. Well, all just unreasonable. You know they weren’t kidding about the God Emperor, right? He is literally a god. Or they worship him like one, at least.”

“Kind of hard to believe they’d carry that sort of thing forward into the future. Assuming they even come from the future. Ugh, kind of hard to believe I’m taking that seriously…” Miranda grumbled, rubbing her face.

“I had my mind read today, apparently. At this point I’m willing to suspend my disbelief a little. And right now who cares, really? We’ve got other shit to worry about. Let’s just focus on getting through without getting killed and then worry about all this nonsense when we get back. Alright?”

No-one argued with this.

-

It was a short but bumpy ride to the surface of Horizon.

Knowing the importance of such things, Jarrion was the first one off the lighter the moment the ramp was down, sword in hand and bolt pistol firing the instant he spotted a Collector. The Collectors, bewildered, had approached the craft with weapons raised, though were still caught off-guard when humans came out immediately shooting. They just hadn’t expected it.

“For the Emperor!” Jarrion shouted, striding forward with confidence and also in the direction of the nearest cover. His men followed close behind, as did Loghain.

Every bolt that struck home was a kill shot, the sheer mass of the rounds punching through the drones’ ablating armour to blow away limbs or heads, dropping aliens left and right. Invigorating stuff. Jarrion had rather worried he’d lost his touch.

It was much more natural to be shooting at the aliens than eating dinner with him, Jarrion had to admit. For all of his understanding of the need for tact and delicacy he was still an Emperor-fearing citizen of the Imperium. The revulsion he felt on even looking at an alien would never go away, and as well it shouldn’t.

Similarly, the delight on watching that split-second between a bolt striking an alien in the head and that head then disappearing would never go away either, for which Jarrion could only be grateful. It never got old.

Crisp burts of lasfire knocked down more drones as the armsmen split up to get into cover and flank. The drones who found themselves in the line of fire were understandably alarmed. Their barriers proved no help at all and their armour - sensibly designed with repelling mass-accelerated rounds in mind - turned out to be rather too moist to react comfortably to the sort of sudden, violent changes in temperature a laser typically introduced.

The bony plates were solid, yes, the muscular underlay was not. Many drones were caught completely off-guard before they, almost as one, moved to covers as well. This really helped them cut down on being shot.

Every so often there’d be the hiss-slap-boom of Rolf - the armsman carrying the plasmagun - using it to destroy any substantially hard cover the aliens were using to hide behind, having now recovered from their immediate surprise enough to do so.

Hiss-slap-being rather what Jarrion had always only ever been able to hear plasma fire as. The hiss of the bolt slashing through the air, the slap of it hitting the target and splattering, the boom of whatever it was detonating from the sudden dump of kinetic force and horrendous, immediate temperature change. He did like that sound.

What return fire there was was confused and desoultary. It seemed as though the Collectors had not expected to find humans coming at them from this end of the colony, and certainly seemed like they had very little idea what to make of Jarrion and his entourage. The rounds from their rifles, when they did find a target, found the plasteel and ceramite of the armsmen carapace unyielding, ricocheting off harmlessly.

Initial impression seemed horribly unfair, as far as Jarrion could see.

A handful of minutes after the Imperials had landed and cut a swathe through what drones they’d found the Collectors pulled back, as one. To cover their retreat they sent in Husks.

Seemingly out of nowhere dozens of naked human bodies shot-through with glowing circuitry appeared, flopping off of roofs and crawling out from beneath hab blocks before running, screaming at Jarrion and his team.

Jarrion’s team responded by shooting the Husks, which worked well. It was only the sheer number of the things and their utter indifference to the firepower into which they were running that presented an obstacle. Once one Husk got within melee range that was one less gun firing, which meant the others had a much easier time of it.

Gunfire was replaced with shouting and cursing as the armsmen struggled to keep the screeching Husks at bay. Combat knives were drawn and skulls stoved in with lascarbine butts. Jarrion found himself right in the centre of the fray and put his sword to very good use, impaling bodies and lopping off limbs with abandon as armsmen produced combat knives and drove them through skulls.

One Husk seemed to want to do something spectacular with electricity, but got shot through the back of the head before it got the chance. Probably just as well.

By the time the heavy bolter had been set up most of the Husks had already been put down, though it certainly helped in ensuring that no more made it close enough to pose a problem. Not that it mattered. They’d done what they’d been sent to do, which was chew up time. There was no sign of anymore drones. At least not right at that second.

Jarrion took a moment to catch his breath, during which time he had a good, long look at the decapitated, still-twitching body of the one of the Husks.

Not that he knew what they were called, obviously. But that’s what it was.

Was this the fate of the colonists? Was this what the xenos had planned? To defile the holy form and shape of humanity with their alien technology? To turn honest, earnest - well, not Imperial citizens, but humans all the same - settlers into slaves? Weapons to be set loose?

Blasphemy! An abomination! Jarrion felt bile rising in his throat.

What better evidence of the loathsome nature of aliens than this?

“Oh I’m quite upset,” he said with far more restraint than he felt.

Of course he’d heard of worse. Seen worse too, once or twice. Still, one never got fully use to the cold, hard reality of it when coming face-to-face with such vile work.

He was reminded of one of the earlier colonies he’d visited, which had been experiencing a pirate problem. Xenos pirates, specifically, with a fine line in selling humans as slaves.

Their modus operandi in this had been to swoop in from their hidden location on-planet, snatch up the population of an isolated settlement, subject their captives to a foul fungal concoction that served to rot away higher brain functions and leave the poor wretched souls as little more than drooling animals capable of just about performing simple, menial tasks, thence to be sold off-world

A ghastly business. And so inefficient! What could their margins have been to make such a business even close to profitable? Jarrion imagined it must have been motivated mostly by spite, aliens being aliens, and partly by commercial ignorance, aliens being aliens.

Aliens in this instance being both malicious and stupid, obviously.

After being briefed by the colony’s governing council he had located the pirate’s vessel in-system, destroyed it, and then tracked them to their lair on the planet itself, had all of its subsidiary exits sealed, parked himself and a lot of angry men with a lot of guns outside the one remaining exit and then had the whole lair filled with gas.

Results following this were predictable and satisfying. No survivors.

Of course all of the human ‘stock’ that the xenos had had on hand had been beyond saving, and so had received the Emperor’s mercy. An unfortunate coda to the whole business, really, but there had been nothing else to do for them.

Thinking about it now Jarrion rather saw some parallels between those xenos - now gloriously deceased - and the Collectors. Funny how things worked out, he thought.

All of which was nice, but not a lot of use right at that moment. Jarrion stopped daydreaming when he caught a bit of movement out the corner of his eye and noticed a single drone, its legs shot off at the knees, weakly crawling between some crates, heading who-knew-where.

“I think now,” Jarrion said, striding over bolt pistol in hand.

He was stopped from finishing the thing off thought by Loghain, who appeared at his side almost as if from nowhere, and gently but firmly pushed his gun-hand down.

“I’m sure you have a good reason for doing that?” He asked her.

“I can make use of this,” she said.

“What? This?” Jarrion asked, nodding to the drone, which was still doing its best to get away but not exactly going anywhere fast. Loghain squatted down beside it.

“Know the alien, the better to kill it,” she said.

“Going to have a chat with it? They didn’t strike me as the talkative sort,” Jarrion said. But then he got what it was she was actually referring to and suddenly felt a little bilious. Loghain, who could see the wheels working in Jarrion’s head even without having to look inside, was smirking up at him.

Since she had a helmet on though the effect was somewhat blunted. Jarrion cleared his throat and had to look away.

“Well yes, obviously, but still! There have to be limits, don’t there? That sort of...contact can’t be good.”

“I have experience,” Loghain said, gesturing off to a nearby clutch of very dead Seekers.

“Those little things hardly count!”

“I wasn’t talking about those.”

That put the wind up Jarrion.

“Oh. Well. If you’re quite sure. Carry on. Just keep it quick,” he said, drifting over to the nearest armsman and saying over a secured comm-to-comm channel: “Keep an eye on her. If she starts acting funny just maybe shoot her in the knee.”

“Lord Captain,” said the armsman, nodding.

“Rest of you, check for injuries and watch the perimeter. Now would be a very bad time to be counter-attacked.”

A perimeter was duly set up while Loghain got to work, kicking the drone over and squatting down beside it, holding a hand out over its face.

“Here I come…” she said, under her breath.

The drone’s back arched. It juddered, emitted the most horrendous whining sound which abruptly cut off with a frothy gurgle. Loghain pressed her palm down a little closer and the alien jolted violently, head smacking against the ground. Jarrion wasn’t enjoying watching this, though he wasn’t sure why.

“Fascinating. The mind of this creature has been, hmm, the best word would have to be butchered,” Loghain said, moving her hand minutely and producing a corresponding twist and crunch from the drone, which contorted.

“What?” Jarrion asked.

“Yesss. Whatever it was was hacked and chopped and sliced away, remade into something - something! - by an outside force. A whole species! My, that is something.”

Loghain leaned in closer and the drone’s back arched more violently, cracking, the thing starting to bend in two, frost forming across its armour, thick ichor leaking from reopened wounds in fresh rivulets.

“Something very old, it seems. Something this race had been familiar with? Fighting? Hmm. Difficult to make out. Distant impressions, mostly forgotten, just scraps. Hardly matters now though, does it? Ah, but look what’s happened to you. Such a shame.”

Loghain then straightened up and turned to Jarrion, all the tension that had built up in the drone releasing so it just flopped out, limp but still alive. Just.

“A catspaw, nothing more. Quite interesting, don’t you think?” Loghain asked, grinning behind the faceplate of her helmet. Jarrion guessed that she was grinning. He could feel it coming off her in waves.

“I’m quite agog,” Jarrion said, flatly. “Can you tell me anything else? Something useful, perhaps?”

“No, not really. What little is there is patchy. I don’t think whatever did it was especially concerned for the wellbeing of its subjects. Just concerned with making a useful tool,” she said.

Aliens being aliens, in this instance to other, apparently lesser aliens. Hardly a surprise, and hardly the most interesting thing Jarrion had ever come across. He made a mental note of the information and then more-or-less forgot he’d heard it.

“Wonderful. Let’s continue, shall we? I take it you’re done with this?” Jarrion asked, gesturing to the twitching, bleeding, frost-crackling drone with his bolt pistol. Loghain looked down at the thing as though she’d quite forgotten it was there at all.

“Oh, yes,” she said, so Jarrion shot it through the face.

This the squad took - rightly - as a signal to be ready to receive fresh orders.

What minor injuries there had been had been seen to. Carapace was proof against all direct hits, it seemed, but bruises were abundant and those few shots that had struck the flak underwear of the suits had required attention and repair. All seen to now though, as said, and everyone remained entirely combat-ready.

A very good start, all things considered. Surprise will do that.

After performing a brief check of his clip and deciding that reloading could wait, Jarrion turned and said:

“Solid work, team - let’s continue and continue with extreme prejudice. Whatever their motivations or origins my orders to you are clear: every xenos we encounter is going to die immediately. I am not a fan of these ones.”

Pak - who had spent the duration of the firefight wandering around in the background examining what technology they could get their mechadendrites on while occasionally letting their shoulder-mounted weapon gun down any drone who dared bother them, stray shots bouncing harmlessly from their armour without so much as making them flinch - let out a brief burst of static and Jarrion squinted at them in disbelief.

“You want one kept alive as well?” He asked, having got more-or-less the gist of what the static had been trying to communicate. Pak nodded.

“Emperor’s teeth Pak, why?”

Pak said nothing to this. It was only then Jarrion noticed the spindly, spiky tip of one of the Magos’ mechadendrites and noticed that it was dripping with the ichor that tended to spray out of the drone whenever they burst open.

Ah. Right. Live subjects.

“Does it have to be in one piece?” Jarrion asked.

Pak shrugged. This had been an odd looking gesture for a magos before, but in full-armour it bordered on the ridiculous. Jarrion did his best not to roll his eyes, even if he did have his helmet on. Something told him Pak would pick up on it anyway.

“Try and keep one mostly alive for Pak. The rest you can kill. Now, let’s press forward! Doesn’t sound as if the Commander’s lollygagging, does it?”

Indeed, it did not. The sound of gunfire from the opposite side of the colony had been more-or-less constant, and was obviously getting closer, too, Shepard’s team making good progress to the objective.

Jarrion then added:

“Oh yes, and to clarify: the aliens the Commander has with her are exempt from being killed. Try not to shoot them if you can help it.”

And on they pressed.

-

Things did not stay quite so easy, sadly.

The Collectors recovered from the shock of Jarrion and his men appearing - something that had not been part of the plan - with remarkable speed, capably splitting what assets they had on hand and throwing everything more-or-less equally at Shepard and at Jarrion, though they seemed to take a particular interest in Shepard, treating Jarrion and his men more as something they needed to slow down, at best.

Husks boiled out of every crevice, coming in screaming and flailing to be gunned down by the advancing armsmen, throwing themselves into the teeth of the lasfire coming their way, heedless of losses. Thale in particular gave very good account of himself, his hellgun blasting holes clean through anything unlucky enough to wind up in his sights. So powerful was the beam, in fact, that Thale inflicted an alarming level of damage to whatever happened to be immediately behind his targets.

Noticing this, he dialled it down a notch. No sense in wasting power, after all.

Drones, too, moved in, buzzing up onto the rooftops of the surrounding hab structures in an effort to keep control of the higher ground and keep the Imperials pinned down. One or two drones were found to be carrying a weapon - a particle beam of some kind - that turned out to be capable of breaching carapace, as one unlucky armsman found out to his cost, finding himself very nearly disembowelled when caught hopping between two waist-high objects.

“Get that man into cover and get him back together!” Jarrion bellowed, standing in the open, refractor field flickering as shots fizzled against it, his bolt pistol raised as he picked drones off the rooftops.

Screaming, the man was duly hauled behind something solid where his guts were shoved inside him, where they belonged.

There were also Seekers. Not a lot, but they did appear. Fortunately, Loghain turned out to be just as good as her word and any Seekers that approached the squad too closely dropped dead on the spot, thunking to the ground and posing no threat whatsoever.

“And you doubted me,” she’d said to Jarrion.

“Never for a second,” he’s said, agog, before turning smartly and with two precise swipes of his power sword neatly slicing both arms off a drone that had been moving in behind him. It was difficult to tell, but he imagined that the thing found this turn of events surprising.

Giving the now-maimed alien a kick and sending it toppling over backwards he yelled:

“Hah! That’s one for you, Pak!”

Still, they were making progress. Yard by yard and building by building they moved towards the centre of the colony, where they were supposed to be meeting up with Shepard. Even the nearly-gutted man was still technically combat ready, even if his aim was impaired by the sheer amount of stims he’d had to be dosed with to stay upright.

He’d be okay. For the time being.

Much to their chagrin the Collectors were having to adjust their plans, divert far more resources to stopping these unforeseen elements. Somewhere, an unseen force was starting to be what lesser beings might recognise as annoyed, verging on the upset. Not that anyone on Horizon knew this, of course.

“Next courtyard over, lads! Almost there!” Jarrion yelled out after briefly checking the map he’d loaded into his armour’s wrist-mounted dataslate. He checked the chronometer too. They’d made good time.

Amidst the various drones and snarling husks a lumbering, swollen brute of a monster came stomping around the corner. Evidently, it was another of the foul xenos’ creations, another twisted form that had once been a human. Or, from the looks of things, several.

If you’re going to turn one person into a monster, why not really go for it and use more?

“Rolf! Big chap!” Jarrion shouted, pointing. Rolf looked over and nodded acknowledgement, taking quick aiming and firing off a maximally powered shot, just to be sure.

The thing was blown apart, what stinking fluid that hadn’t vapourised from the plasma spraying wetly across the grass and the walls of nearby habs. For a few seconds its legs tottered about the place before they collapsed.

“Capital work, Rolf! Eyes on more!”

And indeed there were more, stomping out, raising lumpen and misshapen arms. Rolf, still firing, killed one but one of the others managed to get a shot off. A strange, thumping surge of energy went thundering forth, seeming to just roll over anything in its path and rather painfully break the leg of an armsmen who had been taking over. Swearing, the man went down.

The big brute responsible for this did not get to enjoy this success for very long, as mere seconds after this it too exploded as Rolf found his mark. Its friend, too. Turned out being big and burly just meant that you got to stand around like a big, fat target and when your armour turned out not to be as tough as you thought it because someone had brought a gun that made a mockery of it, well...

These things happen.

In doing this though Rolf was, perhaps, overenthusiastic. Rolf, perhaps, let his excitement get the better of his caution and his training. Certainly, he seemed to forget that it was a plasma gun he was so gleefully firing.

He did not notice the rising whine that it was making, or the way in which it was glowing brighter with every shot. It came as a surprise to him, therefore, when that whining reached a sudden, violent pitch and all that built-up heat catastrophically vented. Right back at him.

The noises Rolf made were memorable, to say the least.

They were also loud enough - along with the very distinctive sound of the catastrophic venting - to catch the augmented ear of Pak, who came walking clean through the wall of the hab unit they’d been poking around in while everyone else had been shooting aliens. There had been a door, but that would have taken too long.

Scanning a keen eye across the scene Pak immediately sighted the writhing, wailing Rolf and the sizzling-hot plasma gun and started heading on over at once, heedless of everything and anything that might have been in the way.

This did not go unnoticed. Drones peeled off to intercept. This Pak noticed, idly.

The gun that had replaced Pak’s arm came up and with a ripping, tearing, buzzing roar a beam sliced from the muzzle and struck one of the oncoming drones which immediately burst into flames so violently the fire engulfed its fellows standing too close and they stumbled aside.

Flailing, discharging its own gun wildly and taking out one of its flame-licked allies in the process, the thing keeled over into a burning heap on the ground, collapsing in on itself and then lying still.

Pak had not broken stride.

The Magos walked through the crossfire as though it wasn’t even there, shots both stray and aimed rattling harmlessly from their armour, ignored like raindrops. They headed straight for the stricken armsman, catching a charging husk by the throat, snapping its neck and hurling the now-limp body aside. Again, this did not slow Pak down in the slightest.

Mechandendrites extended while the shoulder-mounted gun continued to fire on its own, Pak reached out for the plasma gun, still venting as it was, though now less violently.

Rolf’s agonised wails increased sharply in pitch as Pak pulled the gun from his melted hands, taking a significant portion of said hands along for the ride. Not that Pak appeared to pay the man much heed, nudging him out of the way with an armoured boot while they turned the plasma gun over in their grip, examining it closely for signs of damage.

A drone came buzzing in to land behind Pak only to be unceremoniously gunned down by the Magos’ shoulder-mounted cannon, which barely paused before firing again at fresh targets. Pak hadn’t so much as flinched, so engrossed were they in checking over the plasma gun.

Once satisfied that the overheated weapon was not unduly harmed only then did Pak look at the man who had been firing it. Rolf - reduced now to piteous mewling - was duly hefted up in a fireman’s carry as Pak casually strolled through the middle of the firefight to deposit the wounded armsman at the feet of the increasingly beleguard medic, Havel, who sighed and got to work doing what he could.

Disappointment was around the corner though as Jarrion was surprised to find that in the next courtyard there was no sign of Shepard. No sign of anything, in fact. The place was deserted.

“That’s odd,” Jarrion said, frowning inside his helmet. There was still the sound of furious gunfire coming from somewhere, though what with the surrounding buildings it was difficult to tell where. Had the Commander been held up? Had a situation arisen that had caused her to divert?

It was at this point Jarrion regretted not having established some sort of communication protocol with the Commander. Everyone makes mistakes.

“Pak, if you’d be so kind would you mind just sending your servo skull upward to have a little look around? See if we can spot the Commander?”

Pak gave a single nod and their servo skull obligingly zipped upwards, disappearing over the buildings. This gave them a quiet few moments to reload, check minor wounds and also enjoy the drugged-up whimpering of Rolf, who was going to need new hands.

Shortly the servo skull returned, relaying whatever it might have learnt to Pak who - in their own unique way - conveyed this information to Jarrion.

“Colony transmitter? Ah, I see it,” Jarrion said, checking the map again. It was close by, thankfully. Would certainly explain the volume of the gunfire. This way!”

Sword waving over his head Jarrion led the way, cutting through yet more hab blocks and coming out into a wide, crate-stacked courtyard area within which Shepard had plainly been very busy. Dead Collectors abounded, and live ones continued to swarm in.

Seeing Shepard and her team hunkered down and raining all manner of technicolour hell on anything careless enough to stick its head out of cover, Jarrion ramped up the external volume on his helmet and yelled:

“Fancy seeing you here, Commander!”

The shock of this was enough to actually break Shepard’s concentration, at least for a second. She then went back to putting mass-accelerated rounds through the heads of husks and drones, occasionally tossing a grenade to land in the lap of anything that felt like staying buttoned down.

Jarrion took in the scene, casting his eye around. He then pointed to the nearest building.

“Mikail, Irfan - grapnel up onto that hab structure there and set up the heavy bolter. Castellos, you cover them.”

What with the drones having been observed flying around and all.

The armsmen nodded acknowledgement and peeled off, clambering up to set the weapon up. Jarrion led the rest of the squad - and Loghain, Thale and Pak, obviously - straight into the heart of the fray, catching the Collectors between the two forces. Their desperation quickly became apparent, but desperation isn’t much use when flanked.

“Aha! They don’t like that,” Jarrion laughed uproariously as he watched a clutch of drones bursting apart in a hail of heavy bolter fire, the stragglers picked off variously with lasblasts and whatever it was that Shepard’s lot were firing.

“We’re waiting for the lasers to come online!” Shepard shouted over the din. “Just hold on! They come on we’ll drive that ship of theirs off!”

“I think we can do better than holding them off, Commander! Forward, men! No survivors!”

Jarrion - perhaps unwisely, but then again it paid to be seen to be dashing - vaulted onto one of those handy, hefty crates, firing the whole while. Another of those particle beams licked out but caught his refractor field, which crazed. He turned to dispatch the offending Collector only to find that he’d finally emptied his bolt pistol. Holstering it he drew the Steelburner, only to find that by the time he had the drone in question was already dead.

Such was life.

What Collectors remained were clearly on their last legs, but showed no signs of retreating. If anything they threw themselves forward with even greater ferocity. Jarrion found a Husk clutching at his leg and rammed the barrel of his pistol into its eye socket before blowing out the back of its head, shaking the corpse free gingerly and hopping down off the crate, thinking that maybe he’d misjudged the whole gesture.

He found himself standing beside Shepard, picking his targets as he picked hers.

“Is that a laser?” She asked between shots, never taking her eyes off target.

Jarrion, shooting down a drone with two to the chest and one of the head before whirling around to shoot down another flying in directly for him, took a second to respond.

“Hmm? Oh, yes. Is that unusual?” He asked.

“Little bit!”

And all at once they realised that everything around them was dead. The quiet was deafening.

“Oh. That was it?” Jarrion asked, looking around and seeing nothing but corpses. He glanced up to those men with the heavy bolter and saw, to his relief, that they were fine. Everyone was fine. Or at least, no-one had been any more injured that he could see. That was nice.

“Something’s coming,” Loghain said. Again she’d appeared by his side without warning and this made him jump, but then he saw that she was pointing in the direction of the towering alien ship.

“What?”

“Something,” she said.

At first he thought that maybe she was just imagining things, the strain of protecting them from the Seekers having taken its toll. But then Shepard raised a hand and had a look herself.

“I see it. What is that?”

No-one had any answers to this, though in a few seconds it hardly mattered. Whatever it was came swooping in, landing heavily in the courtyard. Something big and armoured and insectile and wrapped around a core of twisted human remnants. It did not move like a machine, but something living. An aberration!

“Filthy xenos…” Jarrion muttered before shouting across the squad-wide commnet: “Everyone fire NOW!”

And everyone did. Everyone who’d heard him, at least, which was those on his quad, though a split-second after they’d started Shepard and her team got in on the act as well. The more the merrier.

The alien machine basically disappeared beneath the fusilade. A storm of lasbeams and hellgun blasts and heavy bolter shells and that lethal heat beam of Pak’s and even Rolf’s now-soothed plasmagun, being fired by Pak from their mechanderites. Not to mention a hail of mass accelerator rounds and grenades and concussive blasts and overloads and everything else anyone might care to have thrown in the thing’s direction.

It did not last, and by the time the order to cease fire was given there wasn’t a whole lot of it left.

The quiet that followed this was considerably more deafening. No-one seemed to know what to say.

Jarrion, as was his custom, was the first one to speak up:

“Strange. One got the impression that was going to be serious. Oh well.”

About this time the GARDIAN batteries finally started firing.

Targets locked and power charged the guns all turned as one and opened up on the Collector ship, blowing chunks off of it, their target a sitting duck. Each blast set off a detonation that seemed to shake the earth itself and, clearly not wanting to be picked apart while trapped and helpless, the ship immediately start taking off, jet roaring as it headed to the skies.

“They’re going to get away! Bastards!” Jarrion spat, hands on his hips.

“They got what they came for. At least we stopped them before they got everyone. Bastards,” Shepard spat, also annoyed.

“Something else is coming,” Loghain said, head tilted. Jarrion sighed.

“Marvellous. Some lost monster left behind?”

“No. Something up there. The Immaterium.”

That made Jarrion’s ears prick up.

“The Imma…” he said, casting his eyes to the sky.

On the surface, everyone’s teeth gave a single, sudden throb and high up above, just visible in the sky, a swirling rend in the very fabric of reality itself tore open and through it came the glorious bulk of the Assertive. Jarrion beamed.

“Emperor blind me but they made good time! And right where we needed them to be! Very convenient. Vox link!”

This Jarrion shouted while holding out a hand. Armsman Blithe - who had been thanklessly lugging around a vox pack the whole time they’d been planetside just on the off-chance they’d need one - dashed over and turned, taking a knee so that Jarrion could use the pack.

Finding the Assertive’s frequency was easy what with it being practically hanging over their heads, and while the link was strong it was not as clear as it might have been. Still, it was there.

“Torian! Marvellous timing! I have urgent orders!” Jarrion yelled into the handset. He didn’t really need to yell over anything, experience had just taught him that vox’s responded better if you yelled at them.

“Lord Captain?” Came Torian’s voice crackling back at him.

“That ship is attempting to escape! Do not let it! Fire on it immediately!”

This Jarrion said while pointing at the Collector ship. Obviously, he didn’t need to do this either.

“Lord Captain,” came Torian’s confirmation.

Nothing to do after that but wait.

The Collector ship continued rising, moving now in an arc, travelling straight for the Assertive which had exited Warp dead ahead of it, the aliens clearly planning on breaking past it. Jarrion had no real grasp of what ships in these parts were capable of but he could feel in his waters that the window to departure was closing and closing fast.

“Come on Torian…” he muttered under his breath and as if by magic a moment later the Assertive opened fire.

Torian - wisely, Jarrion felt - did not spread the available power around and instead pumped everything that was on hand at that moment into the prow lance, and from this fired a five second salvo. The effect on the Collector ship was immediate and dramatic. Whatever defences it had, were they even raised, did nothing.

The lance beam sliced through the hull, burned deep, and after perhaps a second came exploding out the other side having cut through the whole length of the ship. The lance had succeeded in entirely transfixing the vessel end-to-end.

From the prow upwards the beam sliced, searing effortlessly through armour and superstructure and whatever else the foul Xenos craft happened to be made of. A whole segment of the ship was carved away, as one might carve off a chunk of cheese with a length of wire. Countless tonnes of partly-vapourised debris was blown clear of its stern in a glowing spray. Very dramatic stuff.

Those on the surface of Horizon saw all of this, and stood gaping the whole while.

The Collector ship, a moment later, exploded, detonations rumbling and popping all across its surface before it ruptured completely from within, coming apart with great force.

Jarrion raised the handset to his mouth again.

“Good work, Torian. That should do it.”

Chapter Text

The feeling of mixed triumph and surprise did not long last for Jarrion as some seconds after the Assertive had stopped the Collector vessel in its tracks he had someone tap him on the shoulder. They had to tap pretty hard, what with him wearing armour and all.

“Hmm, yes?” He asked, turning.

Jarrion was then somewhat alarmed at finding himself dangling. Shepard, it turned out, was a lot stronger than she looked. Strong enough to grab a man in full carapace and hoist him into the air, it transpired.

“You maniac, a third of the colony was on that fucking ship!” She snapped, glaring up at him.

Shepard then felt something nudge against the side of her head. This she discovered was a gun barrel - Thale had appeared almost as if from thin air to put his hellgun up to her temple. Everyone else was also pointing their guns at everybody else, too. Things had gone very quiet indeed.

“Thale, please, we’re simply having a conversation,” Jarrion said with a lot more confidence than he felt, reaching out to awkwardly pat the man on the only body part he could reach, which was Thale’s forearm.

A particularly tense pause and then Thale gave a brief nod, stepped back and lowered his hellgun. A few equally tense seconds after this everyone else also relaxed - for a given value of relaxed - and Shepard put Jarrion back on his feet.

Once settled he dusted himself down, straightened out the jacket spread across his shoulders, and cleared his throat.

“As I understand it,” he said. “Our mission here was to stop this alien attack. To all appearances it seems that we’ve done this.”

He gave a gesture meant to encompass the profusion of dead Collectors they were currently standing in the middle of. With exquisite timing a dead Husk chose this moment to slither from the rooftop it had died on and land with a thump on the ground. Shepard ignored this, though she internally admitted it was pretty funny. She had a point to make.

“Yes, and then you blew their ship up! A ship that was full of people!” She said, pointing upward. Jarrion didn’t look because he didn’t need to. He was also starting to feel a bit underappreciated.

“A mercy, then! You’ve seen what these xenos do! They’re hardly friendly and accommodating! I doubt the colonists had much to look forward to! And the ship is still there, in case you hadn’t noticed! Look!”

Jarrion’s turn to point. The Collector ship was indeed still above them, having apparently managed to reach orbit before being destroyed. Lucky it was a clear day, really, otherwise spotting them would have been quite difficult. As it stood, you could just about spot them. If you really looked.

Shepard just glared, something lost on Jarrion as she was wearing a helmet, much as he was.

“Yeah, as an exploded wreck. That’s not a whole lot of use to the people inside it, is it?”

“A lance is a very precise weapon alongside being a very powerful one, I assure you. While that ship is surely crippled, internally it may well be more intact that you suspect. And - given that they went to all the trouble in the first place - one would imagine they would have stored their cargo quite safely and securely.”

This was Jarrion talking out his arse as quickly as the words came to him, but the way he said it made him sound very convincing indeed. There was a reason he was the Lord Captain, after all.

This reason was that he was the son of a Rogue Trader.

But he was also very good at sounding convincing, even when saying the most outlandish bullshit. The key was that he never once doubted anything he said, no matter how untrue it might or might not be. All relative, wasn’t it?

“You don’t know that, you’re just guessing,” Shepard said, Jarrion’s mojo not really hitting her square on but still carrying enough confidence to at least confuse her.

“You’re just guessing that I’m guessing,” Jarrion said.

This took Shepard a solid second to actually wrap her head around, because she couldn’t fully believe someone could have said something like that to her. Once she had, she couldn’t come up with a response because it annoyed her so much so she just went:

“Argh!”

And turned away, not really wanting to look at Jarrion right then if she could help it.

“Well, would you have let them go?” Jarrion asked, doing his best not to sound irritated. He even turned to Loghain and the others to see if they knew what he might have done wrong but they were as in the dark as he was and could only shrug.

Shepard was going to respond, too, but then she thought about it. What had her plan been, exactly? The idea had been to repel the attack on the colony, yes? And they’d done that. So that was good. That part was beyond dispute.

But, thinking about it, she couldn’t help but suddenly feel that the whole operation had been rushed into. It had had to have been, of course, time had been of the essence, when else might there have been such an opportunity available? But thinking about it now that everything had settled, what might the actual plan have looked like?

The greater, overarching plan was clear - find way through relay, go through relay, see what they’ve got going on over there, make it explode, stop attacks, have drinks. Simple in theory, trickier in execution. That was fine, she could understand that. That was a clear goal.

In the very, very immediate short term - as in, standing on a planet that had only recently been under attack - what was it she’d been meaning to do? Single-handedly kill every Collector the ship might have felt like sending at them? Blowing the ship up herself? Driving it off somehow, like she’d done? Boarding it in a daring raid to rip out something important they could analyse for useful information?

If she’d had the option of blowing the ship up herself, would she have? Without those lasers how might she have managed that, exactly? Thrown the Normandy at it and hoped for the best? Assuming she even wanted to make it blow up? It had been packed with stolen humans, after all, and she was currently angry at Jarrion for blowing the thing up.

On top of which there was no guarantee that the GARDIAN battery couldn’t have accidentally hit something vital and blown the thing up while it was still on the surface, or else done enough damage to cripple the thing and have it die on its own later. Who knew? Maybe the Collector ship was made of papier mache and relied entirely on the element of surprise?

It was unlikely, sure, but they had absolutely no information to go on at this point. And as a rule if you were shooting something you should always at least entertain the possibility that it was going to get destroyed.

And assuming that the Collectors had just been driven off without being destroyed wouldn’t that mean they’d still have taken all those colonists? And wouldn’t that be bad, too? Who knew what might have happened to them, then. They’d be in the wind and gone all the same. As good as dead, surely. No guarantee they wouldn’t be.

At least this way where they’d ended up was obvious. In a ship that had been shot through by some weirdo space-ray and was now hanging in orbit, dead, probably on fire inside with all vital systems fried. Great.

The whole thing made her head spin. This was one of those situations where there wasn’t actually an obvious best option, at least none that Shepard had had available. This irritated her. No matter which way things might have gone there would have been someone, somewhere ready to jump down her throat. She could hear them now.

As it happened, she supposed things could have gone worse. Could have gone a lot better, probably, but such was life.

“Fine,” she said, at length, grunting. “What’s done is done anyway. Now we just have a big, dead spaceship hanging overhead. Hope it doesn’t crash. EDI, is that thing going to crash?”

“Presently, the Collector ship is in a moderately stable orbit, though at its current rate of decay it can be expected to drop out and fall to the surface sometime in the next ten years,” EDI said in both Shepard and Jarrion’s ears.

“See? Plenty of time,” Jarrion said, beaming. He then frowned. “Wait, hang on, how can I hear-”

“They’re gone! They - wait, they’re still there? What are they doing?” Shouted a colonist, running out from left field and interrupting things.

The colonist, having shown up to the scene late, had not seen that the Collector ship had been prevented from escaping or how Jarrion’s ship had stopped the Collector ship from escaping. He just saw that the Collector ship wasn’t going anywhere, and that there was another, even larger vessel in orbit. He had mixed feelings about this.

“What the hell is that other thing? That another ship?” He asked, shielding his eyes with a hand and squinting upward.

Jarrion had no idea who this local was but felt that polite introductions would go a long way, especially given his immediate plans concerning the planet. Always a fine plan to get started on the right and proper foot - a friendly foot!

He stepped towards the man, holding out a hand.

“Hello. You’re quite safe now, I’m happy to say. The attack has been repulsed with prejudice and the aliens prevented from making off,” Jarrion said.

The colonist just blinked at him. And not a friendly blink, either. This was the blink of someone seeing something they had absolutely no enthusiasm or time for.

“Who the hell are you? What’s that accent? What’s with the jacket?” He asked, pointing at Jarrion’s jacket. Jarrion looked down at it and failed to see why it should be remarkable.

“Merely a concerned passerby who saw fit to render assistance. Now that that’s done, I’d actually rather like to enquire about possibly setting up shop - as it were - on a nicely secluded spot on this lovely planet of yours. Not nearby, I assure you, somewhere you wouldn’t even notice us. Or we could lease some land from you, if that would work?”

Not much sense in dancing around the issue, Jarrion felt. Good to get down to brass tacks.

The colonist was entirely nonplussed and roundly confused.

“Lease?”

“Or rent, depending on what terms are agreeable. I’m flexible,” Jarrion said.

“Why the hell would we let you do that?”

Not exactly an overwhelmingly positive reaction but it was early days.

“Oh, it can be a mutually beneficial arrangement, I assure you. I’d be more than willing to render whatever assistance your fine colony might require in its recovery and beyond. Help in reconstruction, raw materials, anything you might need from elsewhere, weaponry…”

The last word did make the man’s ears prick up, but didn’t improve his mood overmuch.

“You can keep your help but we’ll see about the other stuff. I don’t run this place. Not sure who’s left who would still be in charge…” The colonist said, again casting his eyes upwards to where he’d seen the alien ship go and stop.

“Well, as and when, anyone who is in a position to speak for the colony would be more than welcome to come aboard my ship and speak with my Seneschal. Or else I could have him come down here, whichever is more convenient to you,” Jarrion said.

“Your ship?”

“Yes, the Assertive. That one there. Near to the alien vessel that it stopped from escaping,” Jarrion said, pointing upward. The colonist turned again to look and when he looked back to Jarrion he appeared confused.

“That thing’s yours?” He asked.

“Yes.”

“Are you joking?”

“No?”

By this point Shepard - who was not involved in the conversation - had removed her helmet to get some fresh air. The colonist glanced at this, then did a double-take and took a proper look.

“Wait, I recognise you…”

“Commander Shepard, Alliance military, saviour of the Citadel. You’re in the presence of a legend. And a ghost.”

This last was said by a guy who just emerged from behind some crates. This made Jarrion jump. What was it with people just appearing randomly all of a sudden now that the shooting had stopped?

“Had he been waiting this whole time?” He said to himself.

The colonist was not impressed by this, either.

“Oh God, it’s you. Sure, half the colony gets taken but you’re still here. Great. Who even talks like that? I need a lie down, done with this for the day,” he said, dismissing all present with the wave of a hand and then sloping off to parts unknown.

Everyone watched him go, then it was back to the matter at hand.

“Hello there Kaiden, fancy seeing you here. How’s it going? Been a while,” said Shepard.

“That’s all you have to say? After two years? After coming back from the dead? Just acting like it didn’t happen?” Kaiden asked, obviously angry.

“Well I could dwell on how I died in space in agony but I like to think it’s better to try and move past that,” Shepard said, sourly. Jarrion stood to one side, trying not to draw any attention to himself. It worked well.

“I would have followed you anywhere, Commander! Thinking you were gone...it was like losing a limb. Why didn’t you try to contact me? Why didn’t you let me know you were alive?”

Shepard was pretty clearly taken aback by this strong line of questioning. Not every day you get compared to the loss of a limb. She cleared her throat quietly.

“...little busy being dead at the time, Kaiden. Getting blasted into space will do that. And then it was kind of a rush. The Cerberus station that put me back together again got attacked. It was a whole thing.”

Kaiden’s look got somehow even more severe and he took a step backwards, staring at Shepard as though she’d grown a second head.

“You’re with Cerberus now? Garrus too? I’d heard rumours but I didn’t believe them. I didn’t want to. And you’re saying it’s true? Alliance intel was that Cerberus might have been behind these attacks on the colonies.”

“What? Actually, okay, I can see why you might believe that. But it’s not like that, as you’ve probably seen. Cerberus and us are actually on the same page on this one. Strange times we live in, right?”

“Do you really believe that? Or is that what Cerberus want you to think?”

“Uh, Kaiden, you can see all the dead Collectors, right?”

Kaiden elected to ignore this.

“I wanted to believe the rumours that you were alive, but I never expected anything like this. You’ve turned your back on everything we stood for!”

“Hey, whoa, back the bus the fuck up - excuse me? I get brought back to life by the evil bastards we don’t like, sure, but then they also decided that humans getting abducted is bad and bankroll me trying to stop that. And that, me stopping colonies getting attacked, is turning my back on what exactly? Oh and by the way the Collectors and Reapers are looking to be linked, so there’s that too. Something to consider.”

“I want to believe you, Shepard, but I don’t trust Cerberus. They could be using the threat of a Reaper to manipulate you. What if they’re behind it?”

“Behind what?! We are literally standing in the middle of an attacked colony! Attacked by Collectors! Cerberus could be singing fucking showtunes and leading me around by the nose but we are literally standing surrounded by the dead aliens who attacked this colony! I get paranoia - I’m all for paranoia! - but thinking that Cerberus have attack aliens on standby is a step too far! I am not sure what part of this is confusing you!”

“Maybe they’re working with the Collectors,” Kaiden said. Shepard spluttered.

“Working with - are you listening to yourself? Are you aware of what the term ‘myopic’ means? Maybe a little overfocused on Cerberus here? To the exclusion of all else? To the exclusion of the bleeding obvious?”

“Maybe. Or maybe because they brought you back you think you owe them something.”

“Bullshit, I don’t owe them jack. They’re just the ones footing the bill on this right now. Don’t see anyone else doing anything about it. And once it’s done that’s them thrown under the bus, I don’t even care.”

Shepard turned to look at the woman in the impractical bodyglove, who Jarrion dimly recalled might have been called Miranda.

“Sorry, but it’s true. I really don’t care,” Shepard said. Miranda just shrugged, as someone who’d long-since accepted something might shrug and Shepard turned back again.

“See? They’re good for now but I am well aware that they’re up to no good. As and when that manifests I’ll be ready to shoot it in the face because that’s kind of my thing. Until then, Collectors are an issue. So here we are.”

Kaiden did not look convinced. He shook his head.

“You’ve changed. I still know where my loyalties lie-”

He didn’t get a chance to finish.

“You fucking what! Don’t you walk away from me! You’re not getting the last word on this one!”

Things got progressively more heated from there.

“I don’t think this conversation concerns us…” Jarrion muttered, slinking away to rejoin his entourage, who had settled in amongst themselves a certain distance away from Shepard and her lot, sitting down on crates, checking equipment and having wounds seen to. Jarrion took a seat just along a waist-high barrier from Loghain, who was sitting somewhat listlessly with her hands in her lap.

“Can I take this helmet off now?” She asked. She sounded tired and Jarrion nodded without really looking at her or paying much attention. When he did give her a sideways look once she had the helmet off he jolted in surprise - she appeared to be bleeding from the eyes somehow. And ears. And mouth. And nose.

“Eyes of Leonis! Loghain! What happened?”

“I may have overexerted myself,” she sniffed, tilting her head back.

“Obviously so! How! What in the Emperor’s name did you do?”

“It was rather dull keeping those, ah, little buzzy things at bay so I thought I’d see what else I could do. Sew confusion and doubt, cultivate a climate of hesitation and sluggishness - fairly standard trick, really. Was curious how it might work out these aliens. Well enough, from the looks of things, but something of a strain. Their minds are, ah, not wholly their own. Do you know, I believe they were being actively commanded by an outside force? During this engagement?”

“Ah, this ‘outside force’ you mentioned previously that made them a catspaw?” Jarrion asked. From his jacket he produced a handkerchief which he proffered to Loghain and which she took and pressed to her nose. Then her ears. Then just anywhere else that still seemed to be bleeding.

“Possibly. Or else simply a remote commander who was not personally present. Possibly one on that ship above us. Possibly one further afield still, relayed remotely. That’s a thought, isn’t it?” She asked.

Jarrion was not especially concerned.

“Well, in future perhaps limit yourself to only what’s required, eh? Just to be on the safe side,” he said.

“I had no idea you cared, Jarrion,” she said with a smile and he bristled.

“That’s Lord Captain to you, if you don’t mind. And I don’t, not really. It’s just that if an Inquisitor happened to die while on my ship or nearby then I’ve no doubt another one would come sniffing around not long after, and they’d probably take their job more seriously than you do.”

“It’s okay to say you care, I know you do,” Loghain said, holding the blood-soaked handkerchief back to him, smirking and giving his leg a pat.

Jarrion turned away with a grunt, and deigned not to answer.

Meanwhile, off to the side, the armsmen were doing their own thing.

They’d come through the various firefights - one long, running one, really - more-or-less intact, much to their delight, though that was not to say they had come through completely unscathed. There was a fair amount of bleeding and groaning going on among those less fortunate, which was to say nothing of the most unfortunate, who were worryingly quiet.

The sergeant looked down at the battered, buckled and bent plates of his armour and let out a low whistle. They didn’t look great, but they’d held at least. Probably a pretty strident sign that he’d been standing out in the open too much, if nothing else.

“I’m glad we were wearing carapace. Don’t think flak would have held up too well, eh?” He asked.

“You’re telling me…” said the nearest armsman, staring in consternation at the bleeding hole in his leg where a round had found a gap between the plates. The sergeant followed the line of the man’s eye to see the wound and frowned.

“You should probably get that looked at,” he said, warningly, but the armsman just pointed off and shrugged.

“Medic’s checking Rolf right now,” he said. This did not need much further explanation. They’d all seen what had happened to him. Heard it, too. None of them could have guessed what a screamer Rolf would turn out to be.

Then again, having your hands melted could bring that out of most people.

“Ah. The hands?” The sergeant said. The arsman nodded.

“The hands.”

“Damn poor luck, that,” sniffed the sergeant, looking about. “How’s Jajko?”

Jajko being the deeply ill-fortuned man who’d caught the beam weapon and had had his guts fall out as a result. Quick action and judicious application of powerful drugs had forestalled instant death and kept him mostly upright, but the sergeant did not have particularly high hopes at this point.

“He’s over there,” the armsman said, pointing again. Jajko was off to one side, laid flat and unmoving.

“He looks dead,” the sergeant said.

“He probably is.”

Stims and battlefield medicae could only do so much, after all.

“Damn poor luck…” the sergeant said, shaking his head and looking down. Something caught his eye.

A round had, inexplicably and in defiance of the odds involved, managed to lodge itself in a narrow gap between two carapace plates. The sergeant had to give it a firm tug or two but then it came loose and he held it up between forefinger and thumb, squinting at it.

“These look like teeth,” he said, holding it out. The armsman looked over. The sergeant wasn’t wrong.

“Urgh. Xenos.”

Meanwhile meanwhile, back with Jarrion, the Rogue Trader was again on the vox to the Assertive.

“Lord Captain? What’s happening down there?” Torian asked, crackling.

“Just wrapping some things up, Torian. There’ll be some negotiations soon that will require your attention, but for right now I’d like you to organise some boarding parties.”

“Lord Captain?”

“For the alien vessel. I want it given a thorough going over. If there’s anything valuable on that wreck I want to know about it and then I want to have it,” he said. Then, as afterthought: “And any human survivors from among those abducted, of course.”

They’d be valuable in their own way, were any found, though Jarrion wasn’t holding his breath. Just good to be seen to care.

If Torian had reservations about being asked to send men and material over to an alien ship he managed to keep most of them out of his voice.

“Lord Captain,” he said.

“And standby for further instructions.”

“Lord Captain,” he said. A versatile pair of words and no mistake.

Jarrion hung the handset up and the armsman with the vox went jogging off again. Quite why he didn’t just leave the thing Jarrion wasn’t sure. There was probably a good reason.

“Looting alien ships? Tsch,” Loghain said, shaking her head.

“Please. I’m just being prudent.”

“Oh is that what they call it now?”

Jarrion had lengthy, well-thought out reasons for wanting to see if there was anything of value on that ship - beyond the obvious - but did not have the energy to even start explaining them to Loghain, especially given as he imagined she would just smirk and grin her way through anything he might have to say.

Instead, he took his own helmet off at last and sighed, rubbing his eyes.

“I don’t have to justify myself to you, Loghain,” he said, setting his helmet beside him and smoothing back his hair.

“I’m an Inquisitor,” Loghain said, as though this blew Jarrion’s sentence out of the water. Jarrion was unmoved. They’d danced this dance before.

“Yes. And somewhat out of your jurisdiction. While I, a Rogue Trader, am operating as I am allowed to operate where I am allowed to do just so. Fancy that.”

“I wonder how that argument might hold up back home…” Loghain said, tapping a finger against her chin. Jarrion remained unmoved.

“Poorly, one assumes. But we are not back home, are we?”

“Not yet.”

“Well there’s that to look forward to, then.”

At this point Shepard came wandering over looking grumpy. The man she’d been talking to was nowhere to be seen, and neither was the colonist.

“That was aggravating,” she said, coming to a halt just in front of Jarrion and Loghain.

“Friend of yours?” Jarrion asked.

“Yes. Just not really the right circumstances for a reunion.”

“Ah. That’s unfortunate. Not beyond repair, I hope?”

“Remains to be seen,” Shepard said, then looking at the armsmen. “Your guys get through alright?”

“For the most part. They gave a fair account of themselves, given the unknown nature of the foe. Rogue Trader must be prepared for the unexpected, of course, so this sort of thing isn’t wholly unusual. Odd weaponry, though. And defences!”

An odd thing to mention, Shepard felt, but then it clicked.

“Ah. Barriers?”

“Yes. Quite unused to having such equipment be so widespread. You did mention it, of course, but quite another thing to see it in practise.”

“You have something, if I saw right.”

Shepard had been a bit taken aback by the big glowing bubble of crackling energy that had appeared around Jarrion once or twice, but she’d got over it easily enough. These things happened. Jarrion just nodded.

“I do indeed. But that’s me. My men not so much. But this is just waffling, I’m sorry, quite tired. You seem to have come through alright,” he said, not noticing anything in the way of significant damage.

“That’s barriers for you. They’re pretty good. Can shrug off a rocket. On a good day.”

“That is rather impressive!”

“It is, yeah,” Shepard said.

Barriers - or at least every barrier she’d ever had the opportunity to use - did all seem to have just enough power on hand to fortuitously block almost all of the impact from particularly lethal weapons, such as roving rockets.

Of course, you’d be left gasping and usually with just enough of a sliver of vitality remaining to scramble into cover and wait for the recharge, but still. It held, that was the point. And kept you alive long enough to get back into things with a fighting chance.

Kind of lucky how that worked, actually. Every single time. Must have been a design feature or something. Very handy.

“I had indeed quite forgotten about them, I must admit,” Jarrion said, cutting Shepard’s concentration back to the moment. “Was quite confused those times I landed what appeared to be perfectly fine shots that instead detonated just shy of the mark. Makes more sense now.”

“You should probably look to maybe getting some of your own. If you’re sticking around.”

“Maybe, maybe. Who knows! But anyway. I imagine this is where we part ways, yes?”

Shepard looked around again at the many, many dead Collectors strewn about the place.

“Looks that way,” she said.

Jarrion, with a grunt, stood up from the barrier he’d been sat on and extended a hand to Shepard who, in contrast to the colonist, did actually shake it.

“One can only imagine - given the odd way the universe tends to run - that we’ll end up running into each other again at some point,” Jarrion said. Shepard had to laugh at that.

“I can see that happening, yes.”

“Good to have friends in strange places. As and when we figure out how to return I shall send you a message, just so you know.”

“Thanks. I think?”

Shepard wasn’t really sure what the etiquette was in a situation like this. It wasn’t something she’d come up against before. Or hoped to come up against again, really.

The handshake broke, the two of them stepped back.

“I think it only right and proper I mark the occasion of our parting with a small gift,” Jarrion said.

“You really don’t have to,” Shepard said, caught off-guard, but Jarrion shook his head and wagged his finger.

“I insist! Just a token of my esteem. I’m hardly going to hand over my ship but something small, simply name it. Never let it be said that House Croesus is anything but generous to its friends!”

Always good to be remembered fondly. Paid off in the long run.

Shepard about what it would be too cheeky to ask for, and settled on something she might actually be interested in:

“Couldn’t have a lasergun, could I?” She asked.

Jarrion had not seen that one coming. It just seemed rather underwhelming.

“A lasgun? Uh, um, I don’t see why not, uh…”

Jarrion, doing some quick thinking, looked around for the least-valuable las weapon within reach. His eyes alighted on Loghain.

“Loghain,” he hissed. “Could you please pass me that weapon I lent you?”

“Oh no, my precious laspistol,” Loghain said, flipping open the holster and handing it over.

“House Croseus property, I think you’ll find. Here you go, Commander,” Jarrion said, taking it and duly passing it to Shepard, who found it slightly heavier than she’d expected. But, being a ridiculous cyborg, this did not show.

“Much obliged,” she said.

“Are you sure that’ll suffice? It’s only a Civitas pattern laspistol, hardly a worthy gift.”

“I’m a cheap date.”

Jarrion was unsure how to take this, so paused, then smiled, assuming - correctly - that it was a joke.

“...noted, Commander. Take it with my compliments,” he said.

Without anywhere to actually put the thing Shepard was just left holding it in one hand.

“Will do,” she said, then raising a free hand to her ear. “EDI? Can you get the shuttle round here, please? We have some debriefing to do and I need a cup of tea.”

Jarrion did not hear the response to this but, fairly shortly afterwards, their shuttle came roaring in and landed and Shepard and all her crew obligingly clambered aboard, Shepard sparing Jarrion one last wave before the door closed and off they went. Jarrion stood in the wash of their departure, doing his best to look commanding as his jacket flapped about his shoulders.

Loghain came up beside him, head tilted up toward the sky for no discernible reason.

“Not only did you stick me, an Inquisitor, with only a laspistol for a combat mission but it was also a civilian grade laspistol?” She asked. Jarrion slumped and glared at her. It wasn’t easy being annoyed with someone with that much dried blood on their face, but he managed it.

“Oh give over, you didn’t even fire the damn thing,” he growled.

“It’s the principle of the thing!”

Chapter Text

“I must say, you made very good time in getting here,” Jarrion said. Altrx just shrugged, as though it wasn’t as big of a deal as the Lord Captain was making out it was but that he wouldn’t mind a few more kind words all the same.

“Oh, it wasn’t that impressive, really,” he said, taking a drag and puffing out a thin cloud of something probably illegal and expensive. “I mean, I couldn’t think of many other of my peers who could do the same or even close but, you know, one doesn’t like to toot one’s own horn.”

This was the cue for Jarrion to give the go-ahead for horn tooting. Everyone else gathered into the ostentatious greeting room - again, senior personnel, Pak, Loghain and so forth - braced themselves.

“How did you do it?” Jarrion asked, obligingly.

Altrx took a breath and thence followed his explanation.

It involved - again - Altrx’s vivid description of what his particular visualisation of the Warp looked like. Again he spoke of what should have been mountains and here instead were plains, lacking distinction. He spoke of how he had consulted the relevant map data to mark out the most populous spots between where they’d been and where they’d arrived.

In this way - so Altrx said - they could chart a course, moving between what appeared in the Empyrean as gentle rising slopes in the plain, the weight of souls pressing in from reality. Never would have worked back home, Altrx made clear, but here the stillness and silence of the Warp allowed it - indeed, required it, lacking the Astronomicon.

Altrx was was very impressed at his own ingenuity in having conceived all of this, and to be fair the results couldn’t really be argued with, either.

Jarrion knew better than to interrupt the Navigator as he was giving his spiel so just nodded in all the right places and slipped in the occasional ‘Is that so?’ and ‘Fascinating’ as the situation dictated. Navigators got this kind of slack. They were important enough to not be worth annoying.

And what he was saying sounded convincing enough, at least to Jarrion. Was it believable? He didn’t know what was believable at this point, really, given the circumstances. And it had worked apparently, so who was he to judge?

“Very well done, Altrx, very well done indeed,” Jarrion said once Altrx had wrapped up and sat back to light up another one of his rollups. “And again I must commend your remarkable timing. Very, ah, what’s the word? Dramatic? Convenient?”

This Jarrion asked while turning and looking upwards. This was such an odd gesture everyone present looked up, too. They just saw the ceiling. It was a very ornate and impressive but nothing there indicated what Jarrion might have been looking at.

“What are you looking at, Lord Captain?” Torian asked, in sotto voce. Jarrion clucked his tongue and brought his eyes back down again.

“Nothing. Just had the oddest feeling we were under close and critical observation. Like someone, somewhere is annoyed at just how lucky we are. Paranoia, I’m afraid. Occupational hazard. Anyway, we were saying?”

Shortly after Shepard and her crew had returned to the Normandy the lighter had come around to retrieve Jarrion and his lot, then returning to the Assertive. After sending off the armsmen for proper care and treatment (and disposal, as the need arose) Jarrion felt that a proper debriefing was in order.

Hence the gathering.

“Ah yes, that was it. This successful mission was the first step. I feel we have established ourselves, yes? Reputationally speaking, at least. Seen to be seen! Now, the second step. But first a brief question: how is the looking into the hows and whys of how and why we came to be here coming along?”

Jarrion’s question here directed towards the mechanicus contingent sat at the table, consisting of Pak and another techpriest sitting next to them.

The techpriest sat next to Pak was one of the lesser priests and so one who Jarrion was not personally familiar with, and they were the one who’d been put in charge of analysing the circumstances of their arrival. Jarrion could not off the top of his head remember their name.

Pak and the tech priest both gave that tiny, almost imperceptible tilt of the head that showed they were having a brief noospheric conversation. The tech priest then said:

“data.compiling,” in a flat, buzzing voice that came from the grille implanted where their jaw had originally been. This was pretty much the answer that Jarrion had been expecting, which is to say not much of an answer at all. But still, he could work with it.

“Right, good. Well, going forward we shall assume that this analysis will bear fruit, just not immediately. We shall assume, then, that we shall be here for the foreseeable future and move ahead with this in mind. So. Second step! Pak, if you would, please.”

Pak again interfaced with the hololithic projector which, after some fluttering and sputtering, got a nice picture of Horizon just hovering above the table just for something to look at while Jarrion spoke.

“The colony - where we just were - is here, roughly,” he said, pointing to one side of the planet. “What I would like is for us to obtain a little spit of land on the opposite side, somewhere either here, here or here.”

There were several good candidates they’d spotted from orbit, all within reach of what appeared to be reasonable mineral deposits or other equally useful natural resources that had the auspexes had turned up. Nothing so much the colonists might feel robbed, but enough that could be put to immediate use.

“Torian, it’ll be your job to do the negotiating on this one. Lease the land from them, buy it if they have anything they want to trade for it, I don’t mind. I just want a foothold on this planet, yes?”

“Yes Lord Captain.”

“Good man. Hope you brushed up on the lingo on the journey here. Once we have this spot I am going to be sending down a certain portion of the Assertive’s manufacturing equipment along with a fairly substantial level of manpower. This is going to be our hub, yes? The plan is to make profitable contact with any other colonies like this one, get them the things they need and take the things they don’t need as much in return, yes? Some of that comes here, we churn out some goods your average colonists might want, some spare parts we might need and so on and so forth. That’ll be here. Always good to have a place to come back to.”

So far no objections. Jarrion felt himself starting to get giddy. He’d always wanted to do something like this! Back home he’d never really got the chance. Father and his brothers were out there carving out the fresh territory, he was just there to keep the status quo behind them, protect what they’d built.

Now he was here and he could do what he liked!

“From there, expansion. Local contacts, yes? See what infrastructure they have already in place and do what we can to bring it under proper control, yes? Ultimately, in the long run, I want locals doing as much of the heavy lifting here as possible. Ideally speaking. Keeps us from spreading ourselves too thin and, well, why not? Making best use of what resources we have to hand is just prudence.”

And what were locals if not another resource?

Jarrion could see it now, sitting happily at the centre of an ever-expanding, happy little network. One world over here wanting X but having too much Y, him being able to link them up with another world overflowing with X but lacking Y and skimming off just enough to be able to produce some Z that everyone would obviously want.

Growing, growing, just slipping in here and there, becoming ubiquitous, getting everyone what they wanted, when they wanted it. Becoming indispensable. Becoming who people turned to when they had a problem, being the one they turned to first.

That’s the way you did it, in Jarrion’s head. Conquer someone you spend the rest of your life keeping an eye on them to make sure they don’t cause trouble. Get them to come to rely on you? Well...

All for the Emperor, obviously, and for the greater glory of His Imperium once a way back had been discovered. It’d be Jarrion’s gift to the Lord of Mankind. What better gift could there be? Worlds ripe for the fold, immersed in the proper way of thinking, dependence woven in. Could annex without a shot being fired.

Beautiful, beautiful!

Later, though. For now more immediate concerns.

“So you’re setting up your own colony here, basically? Is that what you’re doing?” Loghain asked, snapping Jarrion out of his daydream. He frowned at her, which by this point was his usual response to most things Loghain said.

“Not exactly. It’s a logistical and manufacturing hub,” Jarrion said. To him these distinctions were important. “Any of these spots have good resources already and with the manufacturing capabilities the Assertive has - which, as I said, will be partially moved planetside - we’ll be able to produce all sorts of things. And what room that frees up onboard ship we can fill with whatever anyone else needs.”

“Sounds very exciting,” Loghain said, resting her chin on her hand, elbow on the table.

“Rogue Trader, Trader. The daring do and discovering new worlds is one thing but you actually have to do something with those worlds afterwards. And this is what we’re doing. Prosperity! And, later, proper Imperial control. But later! Once we’ve figured out how we arrived here and once we’re all nice friends.”

“You are…” Loghain said, failing to find the right words.

“Inspiring?” Jarrion ventured.

“You have some very odd ideas,” Loghain said, by way of compromise.

Jarrion could tell when he was being damned by faint praise.

“Does my plan not have enough shooting people for your liking?” He asked. Loghain waved a hand.

“I do find the lack of it odd.”

“I’d rather not have to take any shots I didn’t have to. But if I do have to, I will.”

“And what about the aliens?” The Inquisitor asked.

“What about the aliens? These are human colonies, yes? Those are the ones I’m going to be dealing with. If we find any alien ones? Well, we’ll see. I hear this is a lawless and dangerous expanse of the galaxy. All sorts of bad things can happen out here. So I hear.”

Loghain sat up straight again and beamed.

“That’s more like it. A much healthier attitude.”

Jarrion rolled his eyes and turned back to Torian.

“Speaking of xenos, how are the teams on the destroyed vessel getting along?”

It was the Master at Arms who spoke though, leaning in to get Jarrion’s attention.

“The initial boarding teams have encountered light resistance, Lord Captain. Though the ship is heavily damaged it appears there are at least some surviving xenos onboard. They are not expected to present a serious problem and already pacification is proceeding acceptably. Once a proper foothold has been secured the salvage teams can start their work properly.”

Jarrion was genuinely surprised to hear that there were survivors onboard. Did raise hopes about digging up surviving humans, he supposed, though he didn’t really allow his hopes to get raised by that much. At the least it was good to hear that there was nothing too horrible going wrong.

“Ah, that’s what I like to hear. I want that ship swept end-to-end, no xenos left breathing at all, that clear? Then I want it torn apart and I want to learn anything that we can from it. Pak, you’ll be on that. I know you’ve been waiting to ask,” Jarrion said, pointing to Pak who just nodded, though they also had to quickly tuck a mechadendrite back into their robe because it was quivering too much.

Suppose that’s a lack of a poker face looked like on an Magos, Jarrion thought to himself.

“Very interesting…” Loghain said, quietly enough to make it obvious she wanted to be overheard.

“Oh please! I’m not going to start shipping the stuff back home. I just think it’d be foolish to clap my hands and declare the job done after shooting the ship once. I want to know more about these damn things so I can kill them more easily next time I run into them! And need I remind you that we are also looking for surviving colonists!”

What Jarrion had said was mostly true. Loghain held her hands up.

“You’re the Lord Captain. I’m just an Inquisitor. Out of my jurisdiction, like you say.”

“Yes. Thank you. Anyway, I believe I’ve said all I needed to say. This is what we’re doing now. Once the colony has recovered some more they should contact us, I hope, or else we’ll contact them and Torian, you can begin negotiations. Once that’s concluded we can set up our happy little hub.”

“What are you going to call it?” Loghain asked and Jarrion blinked at her.

“Call it?”

“This hub, this base. What are you going to call it?”

Jarrion hadn’t thought about that. It hadn’t crossed his mind at all.

“Uh, I don’t rightly know,” he said, casting an eye around to table for possible suggestions and receiving only blank looks and shrugs.

“You should name it something original like Bastion of Faith or Fortress Aquilla or the Emperor’s-” Loghain said, waving her hands about as the names got grander and grander.

Jarrion had a feeling she wouldn’t stop unless someone stopped her, so stepped in and said:

“I think I shall name it Home Away From Home.”

Loghain pouted at him and then shook her head, sadly.

“Rogue Traders…”

-

“Shepard.. I trust the mission went well?”

Almost the instant I’d set foot back onboard the Normandy I’d been told the Illusive Man wanted a word. I hadn’t even had a chance to get out of my armour yet, let alone have a shower. Not really in the best mood for a chat.

“Can we skip this part? You know what happened, I know what happened, I know you know what happened. We defended the colony, drove them off,” I said.

Leaving out a few key details for the sake of brevity.

He took a quick drag before answering.

“Good work on Horizon. Hopefully the Collectors will think twice before attacking another colony.”

I shrugged. See? He knew.

“We live in hope. I know I’d be touchy if I had my ship blown up out of nowhere. Take it you saw that?”

“I did. An unexpected development.”

“That all you have to say?”

“For now. We are keeping the situation under observation. It is not our primary concern at this time.”

“Fair play. So how are we going to pull the rug out from under the Collectors next? Take it you have something in mind?”

“The Collectors will be more careful now, but I think we can find another way to lure them in.”

Very particular choice of words. Kind of gave the game away, really. Figures.

“And there was me thinking that I was just lucky bumping into Kaiden. You wouldn’t happen to be the mysterious source of the news about me working with Cerberus, would you by any chance?”

He tapped out some ash.

“I released a few carefully disguised rumours that you might be alive and working for Cerberus,” he said.

“Thanks for that. Why, exactly?” I asked.

“I suspected the Collectors were looking for you or people connected to you, now I know for certain. It was a risk, but I couldn’t just wait for them to take another colony.”

I could see the logic in this, actually. Leak news I’m alive, Alliance gets it, Alliance already feebly doing something about Collector attacks which it suspects might also be something else it doesn’t really know yet. Alliance sends Kaiden to help out and also maybe catch me in the act if it is Cerberus doing this colony attacking thing. Collectors catch wind of Kaiden - old buddy Kaiden - being on a colony, colony gets attacked.

Pretty simple stuff in hindsight, but what a shot in the dark before!

Guess it had paid off. And I guess it was better knowing where to go than just waiting for them to strike at random. That’s taking the initiative.

Still though. I know a colony had to get attacked somewhere, but being obliquely responsible for this particular one getting hit? There’s no way to feel good about that.

And he’d just sat back and pulled it all together! And hoped it worked! Yeesh.

Nothing’s ever easy.

“So now what?” I asked, deciding not to bother attempting to unpick his ethics or decision making process on that one. He’d only smoke at me and say something cynical, I’d expect.

“We have to keep the pressure on the Collectors. They’ll be more cautious with their ground operations now so we need another opening. I’m devoting all resources to finding a way through the Omega Four relay. We have to hit them where they live,” he said.

I raised an eyebrow.

“Their house?”

“Bingo. Your team will need to be strong, as will their resolve. No looking back. The same goes for you. I assume you put your past relationships behind you?”

What? What like all of them? Did he want me to not call mother anymore? Was I joining a cult?

“I’m not even sure what that means. One of the dossiers you sent me was for Garrus! Why would you go to the trouble of bringing me back from the dead if you didn’t want me being me?”

Was I missing something here?

“If it affects the mission it’s a concern. Shepard, once you find a way through the Omega Four relay to the Collector homeworld, there’s no guarantee you’ll return. To have any hope of surviving you and your entire team but be fully committed to this.”

Oh, I get it. He was one of those people who thought professionals are friendless bastards.

Funnily enough, actually, I know how to have friends and also get things done. Tricky, I know, but I manage.

“Don’t you worry about that, I’ll have these guys tight knit as anything in no time.”

He accepted this without argument, which was nice.

“I’ve forwarded three more dossiers,” he said.

Did we have enough beds? Helped that some of these guys didn’t seem to want beds. Jack really did seem comfortable down there on those crates in amongst those pipes...

“My super group not quite super enough yet for you?” I asked.

“Given the importance of the mission I felt it was better that you be overprepared. You keep building your team while I find a way through the relay. Be careful Shepard, the Collectors will be watching you.”

“They should probably watch the other guy, too, given he blew up their damn ship.”

“About that. We’re still none the wiser as to who he is or where he came from, and from the looks of things they have technology that has not been observed anywhere else in the galaxy.”

I knew this already. I’d seen it!

“Your point being? They’re psychic too, some of them. You hear about that as well?” I asked.

Bleurgh. That really hadn’t been a nice experience at all, that.

The Illusive Man nodded, puffed.

“I did hear about certain anomalous abilities.It paints a very interesting picture. Particularly alongside what I’ve heard about their claimed point of origin,” he said.

“You should talk to the guy. You’d probably get on,” I said.

He cocked his head, just a tiny bit.

“What makes you say that?”

I thought about answering this question but then the sheer amount of detail I’d have to get into just made my head throb. Where would I even start?

“I couldn’t even begin to explain. Just - I reckon they come from a place that you’d rather like, from the sound of things. Big on humanity, not big on aliens,” I said.

“So you believe they are who they say they are? Time travel?”

Ugh. Hearing it aloud still makes my skin crawl. Ridiculous. I had to rub my face.

“I really don’t know. I don’t really care. Horizon’s done, I’m hoping to leave and get on with this and hopefully never see the guy again. Best of luck to him in whatever it is he’s doing, but I really don’t need that in my life.”

He stared at me briefly and then uncrossed and recrossed his legs.

“You continue with the mission, Shepard. I’ll find a way through the relay. We’ll keep an eye on this ‘Rogue Trader’ as far as it is feasible to do and as far as it relates to our primary focus: the Collectors. I’ll contact you when I’ve got something. In the meantime, you have your dossiers. Good luck, Shepard.”

“Aye aye, skip.”

-

Torians negotiations on Horizon, surprisingly, went very well indeed.

The goodwill from having been a part of stopping the aliens was not insignificant. A sense of abandonment from all other authority had caused a certain degree of bitterness so to come through such an attack and find their colony littered with dead aliens and their ship hanging equally dead in orbit had a fairly big effect on their attitude. Which was nice.

That said, they were still not exactly what might be described as friendly, at least according to Torian. They’d been grateful, yes, but had rankled at even the hint of the suggestion of outside interference. They appreciated the help, but they didn’t want anymore help, basically. No-one around there telling them what to do or pitching in to do things they could do themselves.

Independent spirit, Torian had said, as though they were dirty words.

But, still, they were at least open to the idea. Big planet, after all, and the unspoken implication that there would often be a very big, very dangerous spaceship in orbit wasn’t something they couldn’t see value in.

What they’d wanted in the end for the lease of a nice little stretch of land was fairly straightforward: assistance in the disposal of the alien bodies (this being something they felt it wasn’t really their job to do, which was fair enough), material with which the colonists could themselves repair the damage done (they did not want help, as mentioned), weaponry, and also a very firm agreement that the Imperials would keep themselves to themselves on the other side of the planet.

More than fair terms, in Jarrion’s mind. He couldn’t have wished for better, in fact. An agreement was signed in very short order indeed and Home Away From Home began construction bare hours later just as work crews were cheerfully shoveling Collectors into pits some miles out from the outer boundaries of the primary colony.

Not long after this, Jarrion was as shocked as anyone when the teams working on the stricken alien ship reported actually, really finding surviving colonists. And not just a few, either, but rather quite a lot! He honestly hadn’t actually expected what he’d said to Shepard to have any bearing in reality.

He was delighted, obviously, but still very surprised. It did present something of an issue though.

There were, as he saw it, three choices he could reasonably make.

The first and most direct would be, of course, to purge the pods they’d been found in and grant the poor colonists within them the Emperor’s mercy. Who knew what these foul aliens had done to them during their (albeit brief) captivity, what taint they now had in them? Ultimately it would be for their own good.

Certainly, it’s what father would have done.

Second, free them and return them to the colony. These backwards locals seemed to have a very high tolerance for contact with aliens - beyond a natural and understandable disinclination to being abducted, of course - so likely wouldn’t feel the remotest disgust at knowing their rescued friends and relatives had been in alien clutches. Likely they would feel only relief, which could only serve to boost Jarrion’s prestige. This would be valuable.

Thirdly, Home Away From Home could always use more workers, particularly in those areas of resource gathering with a projected higher turnover rate, such as the mines. These tainted, rescued colonists could be put to good use, no doubt, and serve a greater purpose than they might otherwise.

Decisions, decisions.

Ultimately, the second option seemed to Jarrion the only viable one. The other two would require a level of secrecy because he could imagine them both being things that the locals would be squeamish about and probably get upset over, which would harm his efforts in the long term. By contrast, appearing as a benevolent force returning these lost souls - something he hadn’t even factored in as happening - would help him immensely.

So rescue it was. Open up those pods and get those people out!

The techpriests assisting the recovery teams refused point-blank to even try and find a way of interfacing with the Collector’s technology to open the pods the way they might have been intended, preferring instead to cut them open or have the teams cut them open themselves with lascutters.

Mostly this worked, but in a handful of instances where the pods were already damaged or malfunctioning it did lead to a few unfortunate cases where the pods proceeded to catastrophically fail, leaving its occupant more or less completely braindead, or inches from death, or both.

This was, obviously, unfortunate, but Home Away From Home did benefit from the introduction of dedicated mining servitors, so it wasn’t a complete loss.

Waste not, want not.

These various minor failures also proved useful to Pak, who performed a number of autopsies on those colonists who had not survived in their pods and a lesser number of vivisections on the more stable comatose ones.

Going by the Magos’s findings - which Jarrion read and mostly understood - this had been done to check for obvious signs of genetic deviancy, and see how far these humans differed from baseline Imperial stock, if at all

There had not been a lot of interest that Pak had turned up. These humans appeared more-or-less as you might expect them to be, though with very little sign of mutation, which was a plus. Here or there Pak seemed to find signs of very, very low level genetic tinkering, but nothing even close to the sort of thing that might be a cause for concern, at least not by Jarrion’s standards.

Pak had also found a few quite low-key implants among his subjects, which had excited the Magos no end. These they were presently dismantling and analysing with far greater care and attention than had been spent on the humans they’d been removed from. Jarrion was not particularly interested in what resulted from this beyond hoping, as with all things, that there might be some material value in it.

Still, all in all, a solidly successful start to the venture. One that boded well, Jarrion felt.

Onwards and upwards.

Chapter Text

I was pleasantly surprised to find Garrus waiting for me in the corridor outside the briefing room. Always a sight for sore eyes. He was leaning against the wall of the corridor, arms folded, giving me the nod on seeing me. I nodded back.

“More dossiers - get ready to make some more friends and shoot some more people,” I said, giving him some finger-guns. Garrus tilted his head.

“That what the word is?”

I sighed. My reserves of faux-enthusiasm were only so abundant and I really kind of wanted a lie down. No rest for the wicked. Or the people who come back from the dead, apparently.

“Word is he’s going to be working on how to get through the relay and in the meantime we work on building up the squad. Horses for courses. More bodies wouldn’t be a bad idea, I reckon,” I said.

Garrus nodded, obviously not feeling a need to ask anything further on this. Instead, this:

“How are you holding up?”

Good question. I rested against the wall myself, running things through my head a second. Great thing about Garrus was that I knew I could take my time. Guy’s a rock.

At length I let out the breath that I had been holding and asked him:

“That was weird, right? This whole thing has been weird, agreed?”

“No arguments from me.”

I tapped my toe against the floor, thought some more.

“You reckon this is going to come back to us later somehow?” I asked.

“Knowing your luck, Shepard, I wouldn’t rule it out.”

Again I sighed. What else could I do? He got me in a box. I did seem cursed to live an eventful life or two.

“Well there’s that to look forward to. Guess we should just take things as they come, eh? Don’t you have some calibrations to do or something?” I asked. That got a little chuckle of him. Did like that sound.

“I’d say you were making fun of me but I actually do.”

“Fancy that.”

A moment of companionable silence.

“You going to get some rest?” He asked.

I bounced away from the wall and rocked on my heels, nodding my head towards the armoury.

“Soon, soon. Going to go check in on Jacob - I asked him to take a look at that gun,” I said.

“Ah. The one Jarrion gave you?”

“The laserpistol, yes. Want to come have a gander?”

I could see him give it serious consideration - Garrus being a man after my own heart when it came to the appreciation of a fine firearm - but then he shook his head.

“I’d hate to intrude on your fun. And I really do have calibrations to run. I’m sure you can tell me all about it later.”

“Oh you’ll get the full rundown, no detail left out.”

“I look forward to it,” he said, smiling.

And that was that, for now. Off Garrus went, and off I went into the armoury, where indeed there was Jacob already there.

I could see the lasergun laid out in bits and pieces on the workbench, alongside a silver block which had previously been sitting forward of the grip in what I now saw kind of looked like...a magazine well? That’s a blast from the past.

“Alright Jacob, tell me about this thing,” I said, walking up and rubbing my hands.

“It’s a laser,” Jacob said.

I gave him a real nice, slow blink.

“You don’t say.”

He swept his hands apart before the bench to indicate the disassembled weapon, just in case I might have missed it. I had not.

“It’s a very small laser,” he said.

“Again, you’re wowing me with this stuff, Jacob. Is that a good thing?”

This one he wasn’t so sure about and I watched the look on his face as he clearly tried to figure out the best way to sum up his feelings on the matter.

“It’s...something,” he said eventually, scratching the back of his head.

“You appear to be having difficulty finding the right words.”

“Heh, yeah, you could say that.”

“Just let it all out. Tell me what you, as a man who knows his way around a firearm, was thinking as you got this thing opened up. Good job, by the way - I wouldn’t have known where to start.”

“We mostly just took it a careful step at a time.”

“We?”

“I assisted, Commander,” said EDI, popping up out of nowhere and making me jump.

“Didn’t know you had hands,” I said.

“I offered technical advice and support.”

“Ah, right. So you can help here, too. Lay it on me. What’s the deal with this thing? What does it mean to you? Can we make one?” I asked.

My primary concern here was - as it had been from the very beginning when I’d first seen one of these damn things - whether we could turn this into an advantage. Every little helps, after all, and a functional weapons-grade laser might be a step above a little, at least in theory.

And I wanted a lasergun, damnit. Is that so much to ask?

“We’ll get to that. I’m just going to try and unpack on this,” Jacob said, leaning on the workbench, looking tired, like it was all just too much.

“Go ahead,” I said.

Jacob took a breath.

“I cannot fathom how this thing exists. Going by everything I know about weapons-grade lasers, I mean. I’m not an expert but I’ve seen enough to feel pretty confident in saying that something like this right here isn’t even in realistic development, let alone full production. I’ve seen GARDIAN lasers disassembled and I can understand the principles involved and I can see one or two components here that I can recognise the purpose of - focusing aperture here, say - but the rest of it beats me.”

He straightened up, folded his arms, shook his head.

“There isn’t even anything like as much of a cooling system as you’d expect. Which is just hard to explain. Lasers make heat. Lasers make a lot of heat. It’s generally one of the two main reasons why infantry-scale lasers aren’t a thing now, because the heat issue causes so many other problems. Parts stop working like they’re meant to, efficiency goes down, etcetera. Happens on GARDIANS. You’ve seen it, Commander.”

I had. First round of missiles and first wave of fighters always takes the hits. After that accuracy and efficiency drops and drops. It’s kind of just how it works. Hell, significant part of space combat doctrine is about exploiting the flaws in PD.

Jacob continued, bending forward over the workbench again and resting his hands on it.

“And yet this thing. Tiny. No obvious cooling system other than this bit here. Assuming this bit here even is a cooling system,” he said, pointing to one part that could have been anything and frowning. “I mean, that’s what I’m guessing it is but who knows? Either they’ve made the most efficient laser you can imagine or it’s got something else going on. And that’s not even getting onto the size of it in the first place. Look how small this is! You can make a laser pointer the size of a finger, sure, but a laser that can kill something? At range? Doesn’t overheat? Can fire more than one shot without being hooked up to a generator? This big? How did they do that?”

I know I said for him to just cut loose but seriously, take a breath or something Jacob.

“I was kind of hoping someone else would be able to tell me that,” I said.

Jacob didn’t comment on this and instead moved onto the shiny metal block which I ventured a guess was a battery of some kind. Just a guess.

“Speaking of power we got this thing. This is the battery,” he said, picking it up and waving it around briefly before putting it back down again.

Nailed it.

“Little on the large side, maybe, but given the amount of energy it’s storing it’s still ridiculous. We’d probably need a generator to run a laser for more than five shots - lasers are hungry bastards - and they’re running them off batteries. Rechargeable ones, no less, or at least it looks like. Assuming we’re right about that part. And these are rechargeable batteries that’d probably blow out the side of the Normandy if they ruptured. I am having trouble wrapping my head around some of this.”

Still leaning over the bench Jacob rubbed his face with one hand.

“Theoretically there’s nothing stopping us from making a laser, sure, it’s just a question of how we’d make it practical. I could design you one, it would just be a hell of a lot bigger than this and work a hell of a lot less reliably. And this guy just hands you one. And look at it, it’s not even that well made - even I can tell you that and I’ve spent fifteen minutes messing around with it. The ones the others were using - those carbines we saw? - those were proper military-grade stuff. Rapid-cycling. Firing in bursts! Bursts of pulsed bursts, probably, given what they were doing to the Collectors. That’s a lot of heat to be throwing out of something for it to just keep on working like it’s not even a big deal. I just - are these guys really from the future?” Jacob winced. “I hate that I just had to say that. Or think it.”

I shrugged. I knew how he felt but was a little beyond caring at this point.

“Apparently. Maybe? Or somewhere else. Try not to think about it too much, I know that’s what I’m doing. EDI, you got anything to add? Can we fabricate one of these?”

“Theoretically,” said EDI.

“Okay, I’ll be more direct and ask if we can start making our own copies of these things? As soon as possible?”

“If we were capable of producing weapons like this, Commander, we would be. There are materials involved that I will have to find suitable substitutes for, and we lack the manufacturing infrastructure that they possess, so I will have to determine what appears to be the best possible method of construction. For any component that cannot be properly replicated I will have to determine what can serve as a substitute for their assumed purpose. Had they given us plans many of these issues would have been solved, but they did not,” said EDI.

“This ‘reverse-engineering’ malarky is a lot trickier than I hoped it might be,” I said.

I was personally offended that having something didn’t mean we could just cranking out copies. Offended! Suppose this is why I’m the one in charge rather than the one who actually has to muddle through the details. Generally if I can’t get something to work just by slathering omnigel all over it then that’s about the limit of my technical abilities.

“I could provide a full listing of the outstanding issues that remain to be resolved if you could like, Commander,” EDI said. I waved them off.

“No, no I’m good I’ll take your word for it. But we can make a copy at some point, right? It’s not impossible?”

“I will be able to produce a variant of this weapon, Commander, following further analysis. Additionally, there may be other benefits and later improvements not restricted to the weapon itself as a result of this process,” said EDI.

“That’d be nice.”

“As regards the weapon, would you prefer I lean my design towards power or portability?”

I had to think about that one. Agreeably not for very long.

“Power,” I said.

Being a cyborg wasn’t the worst, sometimes. I could take a hit in portability.

And besides, as whizzbang-supercool as these lasers were - and as technologically unlikely as they apparently were, too - I’d seen that they weren’t the be-all and end-all. I mean, I’d seen them going through barriers like they weren’t even there which wasn’t surprising and doing a fair job on that Collector armour, but anytime they’d hit anything hard the effect had been a lot less impressive.

Which tracks with what I knew about lasers in the first place, really.

Guess that’s a tradeoff thing. A laser will cut through metal, sure, but it takes effort and power and requires your target to politely stand still while you slowly work your way through from a couple inches away. Not great in a combat situation, in my experience. We should be so lucky.

Not covering PD lasers, of course. But those are operating on different principles. Let’s not get into that. We’re just talking about a guy on the ground with a lasergun shooting at someone else. Hypothetically.

Bearing that in mind they’d done good, sure, but most things will react poorly if you shoot them with any kind of gun. In my experience.

It’s why we’d settled on mass acceleration, right? The things just worked. A laser will ignore a barrier but if you just shoot enough with a regular gun or shoot them with a big enough gun that’s a non issue. Why bother lugging around something three or four times the weight and only half as effective that’ll melt itself when fired enough when you could just have a gun? A gun which you know will do exactly what you want it to do when you point it at someone you don’t like?

That Thale guy’s lasergun though. That beast! That’s the real thing here, for me. Wish I’d got one of those! That had been ridiculous. I’d seen that thing burn clear through Drones - through-and-through and out the other side and a good chunk into whatever was behind!

What sort of output was that?

I mean, I know that a modern combat hard suit will, when hit by an energy weapon, boil away and ablate. Standard feature. Generally you don’t run into that kind of weaponry that often though, but with one of those regular lasers like the rest of Jarrion’s guys had had you’d be pretty safe for a solid hit or two though it’s not exactly something I’d want to experience firsthand.

But that thing! Thale’s gun! You’d be dead on the spot! Hole the size of a fist right through you, just coughing up blood and chunks of boiled lung. Yeesh. And he’d had the thing linked up to a big backpack and not just running off one of those dinky little super-batteries. So, clearly, power was the key. Ramp up that power, get results.

Even I can tell you that and I just shoot things for a living.

This was my thought process.

“There was one other thing…” Jacob said, snapping me out of my cool laser daydreams.

“Hmm?”

Moving over to the side he picked up something covered with a sheet and then moved back to the workbench, laying it down. I raised an eyebrow.

“The anticipation is killing me,” I said.

Jacob removed the sheet, revealing that what he’d carried on over was a tray and on the tray was another one of those rather unsettling skull-drones that that Pak person had brought along. This one appeared to be deactivated, not to mention a bit charred around the edges.

I stared at the skull and, what with it being a skull, got the uncomfortable impression of it staring right back.

Seriously, who makes actual, real-people skulls into things? That’s a bit grim. And this is coming from a woman who talked a guy into shooting himself in the head.

Agreeably that hadn’t been my intention but still. That hadn’t been fun to watch.

And then he’d come back…

“Where’d this come from? They leave it behind?” I asked.

“We found it. Well, EDI found it,” Jacob said.

“The device was found in one of the ventral service ducts, Commander. It was active at the time,” said EDI.

That’s not great.

“You probably should have led with this. It’s kind of a big deal. It manage to do anything? I assume it was doing something rather than just wandering around lost?”

“No intrusion attempts were recorded, Commander,” said EDI. “It appears the device was attempting to map whatever area it could access. I elected to observe it initially, seeing as how it was not presenting an immediate threat. When it did attempt to connect to the Normandy’s systems the unauthorised access was detected and I elected to overload. For security purposes.”

“Probably a good call. So it was just snooping?”

“So it would appear.”

That’s also not great. Friends don’t typically stow away secret spying devices on friend’s ships, at least in my experience. And that’s not even getting into questions of who to hold responsible. From what Jarrion had said, Pak’s lot were a law unto their own sometimes. Did Jarrion even know? Would it be rude to ask?

“That’s, uh, that’s not great. I don’t feel great about that. It relaying that information or…?” I asked, trailing off and hoping someone would fill the void with something good.

“No broadcasts of any kind were detected,” EDI said.

So it was just wandering around, lost, looking at stuff but not actually reporting back. So nothing it had seen had even gone anywhere. Had it expected to get back somehow? How? And then once it apparently got bored of poking about it tried to connect to the ship. To do...what? Leave me a goodbye message? One imagines not.

Would it have reported back if it hadn’t been fried? Was it just something that Pak person left behind by accident, operating on some sort of in-built programme? One imagines not, again. So on purpose then. But why? I can’t get a read on these guys. They think miles away from where I’m standing.

But even with that the case I can tell this isn’t good. I just can’t quite know why yet.

I’d have been angrier about it but I was just too bloody tired at this point. That, and it hadn’t actually been doing anything other than blundering around, which was confusing if not actively malicious. If it had been wrecking the place then I could feel properly bad about it, but now I didn’t know what to think, really. Maybe that was just how Pak’s lot said hello?

“What the hell was the point…” I muttered.

Now I’m just feeling paranoid. Maybe that was the point? Just to get under my skin?

That’s just a slippery slope to questioning everything. Let’s not worry about anything we can’t actually see. Right now all we got another weird piece of technology, some bad faith and nothing actually having happened. So let’s just go with that for now. If we’re lucky we’ll just not have to worry about seeing these guys ever again.

So let’s try and get some positives out of this.

“Reckon we can figure out what made it float around like that?” I said, tapping the skull on the forehead.

“This unit does not appear to have that capability. Mechanical motion only,” said EDI and Jacob demonstrated this by silently tipping the drone up and letting me see the very unsettling spider legs it had.

Typical. I’d been genuinely curious how they managed anti-gravity without any mass effect know-how. Oh well.

“Tsch. Shame. Well, we can still take it apart and get something out of it, right?” I asked. Jacob nodded.

“That’s the plan,” he said. I nodded too.

“Great. Well, don’t break your back over it, we’ve still got actual work to do. We’re going to be picking up a few more for the squad soon so I’ll be needing your ready for that. No all-nighters, eh?”

“I’ll try to resist the temptation, Commander,” Jacob said, grinning.

“Glad to hear it. Now I am going to lie down before I fall over. Anything terrible happens you all know where to find me.”

Me and my bed were going to be having some quality time. Think I’d earned it.

Chapter Text

Home Away From Home was ticking over nicely now, in Jarrion’s estimation. All of the manufacturing equipment that had been sent down was now up and running and already set to producing items of use and already numerous local resources had been properly assessed, earmarked and work teams established to start exploiting them.

Music to Jarrion’s ears, all of it.

The Horizon colony itself had been provided with materials with which to affect their own repairs, as requested, and also now sported a fresh new mass grave of alien corpses, tactfully placed far enough away that it probably wouldn’t be an issue for the foreseeable future. They had also received a pair of crates containing lasguns, being as how they’d asked for such.

Not proper lasguns, obviously. Not the military-grade ones that the Assertive had a not-inconsiderable amount of. No, these were the integrated-and-non-removable-powerpack-and-one-locked-power-setting ones that were on hand specifically to be given to colonial types. That was after all Jarrion’s job in the family, or part of it at least.

The weapons were suitable - and quite effective - for defence against petty banditry and belligerent wildlife but also nothing that could be put to any real or meaningful use in, say, causing trouble for authority. Jarrion was personally rather a fan of the design. It demonstrated remarkable forward-thinking, in his opinion. And the colonials were happy enough with them anyway. More than happy. They seemed to find them rather impressive, if bewildering.

They had asked for instructions, though. Jarrion had had to quickly write some out himself, being as how no-one else had been available. Thankfully, the guns were - as lasguns - simplicity made form, so he didn’t have to write out a whole lot.

Thankfully, being made for fringe colonial types, the weapons also had famously forgiving machine spirits, so Jarrion wasn’t overly worried about leaving them in the hands of non-Imperials. And if they didn’t show them the proper respect? Well, then that’d be on their head. Not Jarrion’s problem.

All of which was by the by. The point was that everything was going swimmingly. Home Away From Home was progressing forward according to his vision, the locals weren’t exactly friendly but were perfectly happy to keep to themselves and not cause fuss and already Jarrion had had word passed his way of other comparatively local human colonies that might be worth a visit.

All this being the case, he felt he had earned some quiet time. And so Jarrion was enjoying a glass of amasec - for there was always amasec - while jotting down recent events in his journal. The aim was, eventually, to have his memoirs done properly, for posterity, so it was important to get things down while they were fresh, he felt.

Sadly for Jarrion, this quiet time did not last long, and he was interrupted. The shipboard vox built into the wall of his cabin - indeed, all the walls of all the rooms of his suite - gave a whistle, signalling that someone wanted his attention. Jarrion sighed and leaned over to press the switch, his other hand staying hooked into his auto-quill.

“Yes?” He asked.

“We have an incoming communication, Lord Captain,” came the voice of whatever crewman was manning the comms at this hour.

“Oh? Is it the Commander again? I thought she’d left,” Jarrion said, honestly surprised, doing his best now to disentangle his writing hand one-handed. He’d been expecting some tedious shipboard matter requiring his attention, not a hail.

Fairly certain that Shepard was gone, though. He’d watched her ship depart, he was sure of it.

“No, Lord Captain,” said the comms officer.

“The colony, then? Or Home Away From Home?”

Playing guessing games was not exactly Jarrion’s idea of a good time, but he really couldn’t think of who else might be trying to contact him.

“The source is unknown, Lord Captain,” the comms officer said, apologetically. “It appears to be being relayed from the surface of the planet but not originating from there. As far as we can tell, Lord Captain. Sorry, Lord Captain.”

Jarrion raised his eyebrows. Unexpected. Never a dull moment.

“Quite alright. The joy of the unknown, eh? Let’s put it through. Audio-only again?” He asked, flicking an eye to the teeny-tiny little screen the vox-set had for visual communication. Looked like it wouldn’t be getting any use today.

“Audio-only, Lord Captain.”

“Alright, connect me.”

There was a noticeable click and pop and the quality of the line changed.

“And to whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?” Jarrion asked, doing his best to sound annoyed at having been interrupted, on a whim deciding to start things off on a confrontational tone. He had, after all, been busy.

“Would I be speaking to Lord Captain Jarrion?” Came a man’s voice and a man’s voice taking great pains to get the title just right. Jarrion raised an eyebrow.

“You have me at a disadvantage,” he said.

“You recently co-operated in a mission with Commander Shepard, I believe? She is presently doing some work for me,” said the voice.

That clicked it for Jarrion.

“Ah, the Commander’s mysterious third party benefactor, eh? She has spoken about you,” he said, wagging a finger at the speaker grille on the wall and the blank screen. This achieved nothing.

“All good things, I take it?”

“That you ask suggests you rather know the answer.”

“Heh. Quite.”

Jarrion took a sip.

“So, to what do I owe the pleasure of this unexpected call? Not that I don’t mind making new friends, of course, it’s just rather caught me off guard. Surprised you were even able to manage it, if I’m being honest,” he said.

“It was not as easy as I would have initially thought, but I have methods for these things. We’re both busy men so I won’t waste your time, I’ll be direct - I’ve gathered the impression that you’re a businessman, of sorts. Would that be far from the truth?” The voice asked.

Jarrion hissed and wobbled his hand, a gesture that served only to benefit himself.

“Reductive, but largely accurate. Why do you ask?”

“I feel that there would be much that could be gained through cooperation between my organisation and your, ah, House,” said the man on the other end.

He had the nomenclature down, at least. First his proper title and now being aware of his House, too! Had Shepard passed along a crib sheet or something? Still, the chap had gone to the effort, which was something. Jarrion could respect that.

“That you’re contacting me now makes me think there’s something you have in mind right this moment,” Jarrion said.

“There is. I am interested in an asset you have recently come into the control of.”

That didn’t narrow it down a whole lot.

“You might have to be more specific than that,” said Jarrion.

“The Collector vessel.”

“Collector - ? Oh, yes, apologies. The xenos ship, yes. Uh. What about it?”

“To put it bluntly, I’d like to know if you’re open to selling it.”

A simple and direct solution to many problems. Why bother going to the trouble of organising a clandestine infiltration mission - which weren’t cheap - when you could just cut out the fuss and use the money upfront? That was the glorious thing about businessmen in the Illusive Man’s experience. Normally he wasn’t quite so blunt about it but, in this instance, there didn’t seem many other options, at least not in the time available.

It was effective, too. Certainly, Jarrion sat up a little bit straighter on hearing this.

“Selling?” He repeated, clearing his throat and taking a quick slug of amasec, polishing off the rest of his glass. “I might be open to the idea. Presently I have men and equipment on board which might make a complete transfer, uh - when you express an interest in purchasing the wreck do you mean the wreck entire or...what?”

Clarity on these details was always important. Jarrion had been mentally calculating the time it might take to withdraw fully from the dead ship only to realise that that might not have been what the man had in mind at all. Paid to be sure.

“The whole vessel would be preferable. Failing that, I would be interested in purchasing anything you’ve taken from the vessel, though ideally I would like to get a team of my own on-board. As I am sure you saw during your time with the Commander, the Collectors are an issue that needs resolving,” said the man on the other end.

No arguments from Jarrion there, but his mind was working too much to really respond.

“Huh, hmm…”

Nothing had been recovered from the Collector vessel, barring the colonists, which didn’t really count. While Jarrion had been more than willing to indulge Pak’s questionable and burgeoning curiosity and let the Magos poke around the wreck he had quite reasonably drawn the line at actually bringing anything alien back onboard. That would have been unwise on numerous levels, starting at spiritual and moral pollution and moving from there.

Jarrion’s hope had been that, maybe, the vessel might have ‘collected’ - heh - some raw materials of general value that might have been liberated from unworthy alien clutches and passed into the superior hands of humanity - as embodied by his fine self - but this had not been the case.

Other than the colonists and a few miscellaneous items from the colony itself that had been swept up apparently by accident the Collectors had nothing of any particular value at all.

Damn aliens. An endless source of disgust and disappointment. Didn’t even possess the basic decency to have anything worth taking.

Having someone offering to take it off his hands - and willing to pay for the privilege, no less - was very tempting. One less thing in Jarrion’s life to worry about. However, that this chap was willing to stump up cash was also a good sign that the wreck was worth something, and therefore maybe worth holding onto for the time being.

Jarrion thought quickly and decided to just split the difference and be cheeky about it. What did he have to lose? He was the one with leverage here.

“Nothing has been removed, barring what humans had been taken from the colony and since returned, so apart from the damage the wreck is intact. I would be willing to allow your people access for a modest fee, with further costs negotiable regarding the removal of alien items and such. I’m a reasonable man, you understand, it’s just that I have costs I have to look to and at present while I may be quite asset-rich I am unfortunately cash poor. At present,” Jarrion said.

A pause that could not be shrugged off as a result of communication lag. Then:

“I see. Money won’t be an issue.”

“I do so enjoy hearing that. Ah, not credits, if you’d be so kind. Presently I have no means of accepting such a transfer. Some form of physical, local currency would suffice - I can make use of that. Sorry to cause a fuss.”

Jarrion had, quite sensibly, been reading up on the financial state of the galaxy and while he was fairly certain that there was a lot he hadn’t grasped yet he had at least got his head around some important facts.

The Council - being the pre-eminent galactic force, it seemed - had a unit of currency that was widespread in use. Sadly, being as how he was sans any type of banking arrangement at present and, as far as he could tell, credits did not actually exist anywhere you could touch them, Jarrion couldn’t really do anything with them.

The Terminus systems however - being the pre-eminent galactic hodge-podge of bickering petty empires and backwaters - had all sorts of other options available, some of which you could actually bite if you wanted to and any of which could eventually be transferred and changed into something more widely accepted, for example the aforementioned credits.

So was Jarrion’s plan, at least. It was always good to have cash. Preferably a lot of it.

“No fuss at all,” said the third party man.

“Glad to hear it. Given that you’ve called me at home, heh, I trust you know where to find me? If you’d like to send a representative my way I’d be more than happy to hash out the details so you and your lot can get started - no sense in wasting time, eh?”

“Quite so.”

Here the conversation ended and so Jarrion poured himself another drink, rubbed his hands and allowed himself to feel good about things.

A pleasing development.

-

Meanwhile, elsewhere…

-

THERE HAVE BEEN DEVELOPMENTS.

TECHNOLOGY OUTSIDE OF EXPECTED DEVELOPMENTAL PARAMETERS HAS BEEN ENCOUNTERED. NO PRIOR OBSERVATION TO INDICATE PRESENCE OF SUCH DEVELOPMENT. POSSIBLE OUTSIDE CONTEXT PROBLEM. IRRITATING.

THE SITUATION SHALL BE MONITORED. NOTHING WE CANNOT HANDLE.

ELIMINATION OF THE SHEPARD VARIABLE REMAINS A PRIORITY. PRESENTLY IRRITATING, BUT THE CONCLUSION IS INEVITABLE. NO NEED TO RUSH. THERE IS ONLY ONE OF THEM, AFTER ALL. IT IS NOT AS BIG OF A DEAL AS YOU GUYS ARE MAKING IT OUT TO BE BUT WHATEVER I WILL HANDLE IT.

ACQUISITION OF HUMAN MATERIAL CONTINUES. DELAYS IN SCHEDULE CAUSED BY UNFORESEEN ASSET DESTRUCTION AND ACQUISITION DISRUPTION PRESENTLY ACCEPTABLE, THOUGH IRRITATING. GROWTH PROJECTIONS FAVOURABLE. COMING ALONG NICELY.

LOCAL ASSETS TO BE DEPLOYED IN FULL. IT IS DECIDED. SUBTLETY HAD ITS CHANCE. THEY CLEARLY KNOW SOMETHING IS UP NOW SO LET US JUST GET IT OVER WITH.

ESTIMATED TIME OF ARRIVAL ADJUSTED TO REFLECT INCREASED APPROACH VELOCITY. SCHEDULE UPDATED. SEE ATTACHED.

WE ARE STARTING EARLY THIS TIME AROUND. BLAME SOVEREIGN.

IDIOT.

Chapter Text

Some time passed. Not a whole lot of time, but some passed. Enough for events.

A ship from Shepard’s third-party backers - Cerberus, Jarrion learnt-stroke-remembered they were called - arrived and a deal regarding their access to the Collector wreck was quickly hashed out. Money exchanged hands, science teams shuttled over and all proceeded without incident. Everyone was happy. Jarrion especially, being the one making money just from having destroyed an alien vessel. If only all life were so directly rewarding.

“They’re planning on overstepping the bounds of the agreement,” Loghain said to Jarrion just after the negotiations. She’d sat in on him because she was basically his shadow these days. Jarrion rolled his eyes.

“Oh?”

“Yep. They’ll be trying to remove technology from the xenos wreck above what was allowed. They’re very interested in our technology as well, point of fact. You might discover a few things going missing that you don’t expect.”

“Things always go missing. Most of the ratings have light fingers,” said Jarrion.

Jarrion liked calling them ratings from time to time. Made him feel extra naval. That reminded him, come to think of it - stuff had gone missing during the recovery of the colonists. Small items yes and nothing really serious but it was the principle of the thing. There needed to be floggings. He made a mental note.

“If I had eyes I’d roll them. And don’t think I didn’t know you did. I noticed. Okay, expect more things to go missing. They’re going to be taking advantage of our apparent generosity. Just thought you should know,” Loghain said.

Jarrion sighed, but did make sure to sure to message the crew still onboard the Collector vessel to keep an eye on the newcomers and to keep their equipment close. Paid to be safe.

After this one of the ship’s officers was picked to stay behind at Home Away From Home to keep an eye on things and with that done off the Dauntless went - places to be! Things to do! Colonies to visit and win over.

Steps to be taken in furtherance of Jarrion’s modest plan to carve out a nice little, profitable niche in this fresh new galaxy, for the greater glory of the Imperium and - as a distant afterthought, of course - for House Croesus.

And so it was that the Dauntless found itself running down the list of nearby human colonies, appearing in-system, entering orbit, scaring the locals briefly before descending to greet them and say that if there were any problems they were here to help.

And that if there was anything they needed that they were sure some sort of agreement could be met. Jarrion was, as ever, very reasonable.

This worked splendidly. While the colonies all shared Horizon’s friendliness - which is to say, they didn’t have any - they all had their own problems and issues which needed resolution, sometimes in the form of supplies that Jarrion just-so happened to have or be able to procure or else in the form of immediate, practical concerns that they couldn’t quite manage to handle on their own but which Jarrion was just-so able to handle for them.

Because he had a whacking great spaceship and a lot of men with guns.

And Jarrion was more than willing to help them out, of course in exchange for the paltry recompense of, well, let’s call them future favours, eh? We’re all friends here, aren’t we? What’s a few scraps of paper bestowing exclusive future rights to this or that between friends, eh? It’s not as if you need to worry about it this moment anyway, is it? And it’s not as if I’m telling you what to do! I only want to ensure that you get whatever it is you want and need! A businessman through and through. Help me help you, friends!

And so on.

It rapidly became apparent that a proper logistical system was going to need setting up. Top to bottom. Jarrion wanted these colonies being supplied either by himself or by someone who he was paying. The Dauntless was not designed or intended for running cargo and there was only one of them.

Local assets were going to be the answer, again. Why not? He got Torian to set up a scheme to either buy or startup some sort of shipping company, among other things. It would be perfectly feasible after all, especially with all the capital he’d got from that Cerberus chap. He’d been right, money hadn’t been a problem. Jarrion could see it all coming together.

All pipedreams for now, but Jarrion was giddy with the possibilities. There was just so much opportunity here! And the dangers were next to non-existent! At least compared to back home.

It wasn’t safe, sure, but it was hardly dangerous! Most of these colonies would have been eaten alive by now back home, but here? Water shortages, aggressive local wildlife and occasional marauders. And not even especially numerous marauders. It was like someone had turned the volume down for what Jarrion had been doing before. He couldn’t have been happier.

One incident did stand out though.

A colony had had an issue and that issue had been this: there was a space station in its system orbiting a gas giant. So far so normal, at least going by what Jarrion had come to expect.

The station - which was said to provide most of the fuel for the colony, extracting gasses and such from the planet it orbited - had apparently been recently overtaken by Batarian pirates or somesuch. Jarrion was not particularly concerned about the details beyond aliens being a threat, something he confidently told the colonists he would be able to resolve.

Armsmen had been sent in mob-handed and a very, very brief skirmish had followed. Once the all-clear had been given Jarrion went over himself, to see and be seen. He, Thale and Loghain took a lighter and nipped across to the station, arriving in short order and striding past saluting armsmen on their arrival.

“-I mean, who calls a laspistol a blooger, really? That’s just silly. I’m not even sure what the etymology of that could be. Now-”

Jarrion was stopped mid-anecdote as he came upon the area where the armsmen had been hauling the corpses of the aliens. Something about them caught Jarrion’s eye and he paused, one foot still raised in front of him, mouth still halfway wrapped around whatever it was he had been saying.

Slowly, he put his foot down on the deck.

Looking over the alien bodies stacked up against a station wall and the light weaponry and equipment heaped up beside them, Jarrion felt a suspicion starting to sharpen into a definite set of conclusions in his head, none of which made him happy. He frowned, tucked one hand under his chin and pointed to the corpses with the other.

“Very lightly armed for pirates, wouldn’t you say?” He asked.

Loghain tucked a hand under her own chin.

“Hmm,” she said.

“I mean, you could make the argument that these are merely the lightly-armed technicians they left behind to operate their ill-gotten station and that the actual pirates are presently elsewhere, but that doesn’t really track. Pirates - in my experience - would use the already-present labour under threat of violence. So I would have expected some captive humans and some armed, alien pirates. And yet, all aliens. Mostly unarmed,” Jarrion said, gesturing to the corpses as he spoke and he spoke another was slung onto the heap by a pair of armsmen who trudged off once they’d done this. Loghain just nodded sagely.

“No humans, eh?” She asked.

“Not a one, not according to those dead bodies there. Maybe they’re hiding but somehow I doubt it. Certainly, you’d think they would be happy to see their captors shot down by their fellow man. Wouldn’t they have come to welcome us at this point if that were so? And yet here we are, unwelcomed. Hmm.”

“Hmm indeed. Again,” said Loghain.

Jarrion stroked his chin. He had had to deal with a few situations similar to this back home, though he was willing to admit the possibility that piracy operated differently here. Still, something in his waters told him this was probably not the case. The colonists had seen an opportunity and had grasped it. Admirable, though also highly insulting.

“Feeling used?” Loghain asked as Jarrion’s silence carried on enough to tell her he wasn’t going to say anything else unless prodded. Jarrion sighed and shook his head, finally turning from the corpse-pile.

“The story of my life, Inquisitor. Were I of a suspicious turn of mind I might imagine that, oh, the local colonists were in some manner of disagreement with the non-human owners of this particular station and have used our arrival and our offer of assistance to settle it violently, something they themselves were not in a position to do and are now at least some deniable distance from.”

“What diabolical mind could conceive of such such a thing?” Loghain asked, pressing her hands to her face in mock-horror. It was difficult for Jarrion not to smirk at this. Difficult, but not impossible.

“What diabolical mind indeed? Oh well. The galaxy is hardly going to be a worse place for the loss of some aliens. More pressingly I am displeased at this lack of honesty. Had they wanted this they could have just asked. I’m open to this sort of thing, but I am not a catspaw,” Jarrion said, sounding a lot calmer than he felt. He’d done this out of the kindness of his heart! And they’d felt the need to hide their true motivations. That was just rude.

“Why do I sense revenge brewing?” Loghain asked.

Jarrion scoffed.

“Revenge indeed! No money in revenge. No, no. Something else. Not your concern, Inquisitor. I shall resolve this. You should probably head back to the Dauntless. In fact I’m not even entirely sure why you accompanied me over here.”

“With you running your little errands all across this galaxy - which has been incredibly tedious, can I just say - I’ve been at a bit of a loose end. Was hoping this might offer me something interesting. I was let down. How are those tech priests getting along with investigating how we arrived here?”

“I do not know. I am sure you can ask them once you get back to the ship. Sure they’d love a visit from an Inquisitor.”

“Ha. Ha ha. Ha. Alright I’m going, I’m going. You plot your revenge. I’m going to wait in the lighter.”

And off she went. Nodding to Thale Jarrion then set off to try and find Pak.

The more of the station that Jarrion saw the more adamant he was that he had been played. He saw las-scoring from his men but next to no signs of return fire from those curious projectile weapons the locals favoured.

A little here and there as might be expected of the light resistance encountered, but nothing as much as Jarrion would have expected for a station that had been seized twice over now, none of which he saw.

Incidentally he had insisted that the boarding party use lasguns as opposed to the more traditional boarding weapons they might have utilised. The mind-boggling prevalence of those kinetic barriers Shepard had mentioned - something Jarrion had now seen several times first-hand - was proving an issue. Not an insurmountable one but enough of one to make the preference of las weaponry just a sensible choice in Jarrion’s opinion.

And, really, on a standard setting a lasgun didn’t have that much of a chance of damaging a vital ship or station-based system anyway. If you were lucky.

But that was all by the by. Jarrion was looking for Pak. He asked armsmen for directions as he passed them and worked his way deeper into the bowels of the station.

Pak had come over with the initial boarding parties - without telling Jarrion - seemingly just so that there was as little time wasted as possible when it came to having a look at the station and its systems.

This whole jaunt had revealed a side of Pak that Jarrion hadn’t really seen before. He’d known that Explorators could be an idiosyncratic bunch even by Mechanicus standards but back when they’d just been touring the Croesus colonies Pak had been positively sedate.

Now though they seemed at all times to be seized by some sort of ravenous energy and a constant desire to see everything there was to see and, if possible, take it apart and put it back together again.

It was a little alarming, frankly.

When Jarrion found them the magos was hooked up to what appeared to be at least three separate systems of the station, free mechadendrites roving about, feeling for additional access ports and teasing open loose panels to examine the insides, all the while Pak’s actual hands were working across a keypad.

What they were actually trying to accomplish was unclear but Jarrion assumed the tech priest knew what they were doing.

“Ah! Pak! Fancy seeing you here,” Jarrion said, walking up to a nearby bank of consoles and standing before them, hands on his hips. Looking at them he had no idea what any of them were for. This technology was just bizzare looking. “Now Pak...I have a request.”

Pak, obviously, said nothing, and Jarrion turned back around to face the Magos, finding them still tapping away at the keys but also having looked up, presumably listening.

“I know that you’re probably excited to have a look at the technical side of this installation and you’re more than welcome but I have a favour to ask of you while you do so.”

Pak stared, silently. Unsurprising.

“Would it be possible for you affect sufficient changes to the systems of this station that we would have no choice but to leave behind a small team to run the station in lieu of the colonists taking control themselves?” Jarrion asked.

Pak just kept on staring. Jarrion continued, waving a hand:

“The damage from the firefight, you see? We had no choice and had to act quickly to prevent further catastrophic damage or possibly even the loss of the station and - while we know it’s unfortunate that they’ll be unfamiliar with the technology and unable to properly operate it - those personnel we leave behind will be more than willing to co-operate and assist in maintaining production? For a modest increase in transaction fees to cover the complexity of continued operation, of course.”

Pak was still staring, though their head was starting to tilt. Jarrion just let what he’d said hang in the air for a few seconds. Pak’s head slowly tilted back to level again, and eventually they nodded. Jarrion beamed.

“Marvellous. Nothing too extensive. Just enough for it to be believable if any one of them feels like coming to visit, something which we should dissuade them from doing but which they’ll probably try anyway. And enough that they could not operate it on their own, of course.”

Pak nodded again.

“Oh, and a booby trap or two never hurt, eh? Make it look like an accident, Pak. And be sure to make sure the crews know about them.”

Had Pak been able to chuckle darkly they would have done here. As it stood, they just sort of made a buzzing sound and lowered their head again.

By the time Jarrion worked his way back to the corpse pile it had grown, as had the heap of arms and equipment next to it. Loghain had come back too and was just watching some of the armsmen at work. The armsmen, for their part, were obviously incredibly nervous being under Inquisitorial observation. Jarrion felt this was pretty cruel.

“This isn’t waiting in the lighter,” he said. Loghain shrugged.

“I was a little bored. And I was curious to see if any human bodies showed up. None have. I think you might have been right,” she said.

“I think I was, too. But don’t worry, the situation is under control.”

“Glad to hear it.”

There was a clatter as another handgun was tossed onto the pile and upset it, causing a minor slide of the things. Jarrion frowned and nudged aside a small sub-carbine sized weapon with his foot.

Already onboard the Dauntless there was a fair amount of other such guns and armour, among other various items that the tech priests had decided were at the least benign. The spoils of Jarrion’s efforts so-far.

The amount of inter-species trade in this galaxy had led to a lot of technological crossover, it seemed, making it rather difficult to work out what was human handiwork and what wasn’t. None of it acceptable for Imperial use, naturally, but all deemed acceptable to flog to the locals.

Well, strictly speaking the tech priests had decided most of it was worse than rubbish and had wanted to scrap it all and stop taking any onboard but Jarrion had reminded them that, as a Rogue Trader, he was loathe to squander anything and had to right to not have to.

“We’re going to need a market contact for all this, I think. Think there’s a planet nearby where we might be able to find someone to oblige us. Illum? Lillium? Something like that. We’re amassing quite the collection of such items, and one imagines that we’ll only be amassing more,” Jarrion said, bending to pick the sub-carbine up and turning the thing over his hands. Seemed a little on the flimsy side to him, but they worked well enough. This he’d seen.

“Oh?” Loghain asked. Jarrion tossed the gun back onto the pile.

“The galaxy remains, as always, a less than friendly place. Though it’s always that little bit friendlier once I’ve passed through it. One way or another.”

One of the corpses turned out to be not be quite as dead as it probably should have been and groaned, trying to crawl from the heap. The nearby armsmen put a stop to this abruptly and then - at a very sharp glare from Thale - started double-checking the rest of the bodies.

“Pax Imperialis, eh?” Loghain asked.

“I wouldn’t go that far. I’m not a naval patrol. Just doing the best I can to bring the light of His will to a galaxy unfairly denied it. In my own little way.”

‘Little’ was a comparative term when the person saying it was a Rogue Trader.

“How noble of you,” said Loghain.

Jarrion gave a bow.

“Why thank you.”

-

I don’t like Illium. Lots of reasons. Start with it being freakishly clean and just go from there.

Oh, and that whole ‘It’s not slavery honest look how neat and legal we made it’ thing kind of gets under my skin as well. Not a fan.

Sit me down and spend twenty minutes talking me through how you’ve managed to define a duck to not legally be a duck and I will not impressed. I’ll just be twenty minutes closer to death and a whole lot closer to wanting to punch you in the throat. If you make it so the rules are such that you can do what you like, the defence ‘Well we’re not breaking any rules’ doesn’t really have the same punch, you know?

Guess it’s a sore spot for me.

Anyway, there was a reason I’d dragged myself to this sorry spot on the galactic map and the name of the reason was Miranda - she’d asked a favour of me, and I am nothing if not accomodating for the welfare and wellbeing of my crew.

Oh, and the dossiers. Two of them were on illium as well, as chance would have it. Some assassin and some fancy Asari. But those could wait a hot minute. Miranda had done alright by me, for as much as I mess with her, and she was on the team so it was up to me to look out for her.

She had explained to me before her, ah, unique family dynamic and now it turned out she had a sister, a twin in fact. This sister had been living safely on Illium, she said, hidden from her father’s attentions and living a peaceful life. Only now dad was closing in and so action had to be taken and sharpish.

Cerberus was handling the details on moving the blameless family, Miranda said, but she wanted to be on the ground to make sure that everything went smoothly. Her father was, apparently, persistent. He sounded great.

So yes. I was going to go on down with her, meet her contact and just make sure everything went smoothly.

I saw firefights in my future. But then I usually do. And I’m usually right, too. Nothing is ever simple and very few things get resolved with a nice, pleasant conversation. Sometimes! Just not often enough.

Not that I’d turn down a firefight. This was to be the inaugural field outing for the laser that Jacob and EDI had turned out. Imagine my excitement!

This was the mark three version, apparently, the first two having been lab-only proof-of-concept prototypes or something like that. Whatever. I got my hands on it now and get to see how it works in the real world against real targets.

Also, here’s an aside question: whatever happened to my HMWA X anyway? I know I lost it when I died, but how come I can’t get another one? I’d been to Spectre requisitions, nothing. Like they all just disappeared in the two years I was gone.

And whose bright idea was it to retrofit these thermal clips into everything? I had all my gear set up perfectly, heatsinks for days. Could fire basically forever if I kept myself under control. Or even if I lost control. I have fine memories of holding the trigger down on Virmire and just watching Geth wilt away like I was hosing mud off a patio.

Now? Now sometimes I’m left standing around unable to do anything at all! Because I haven’t picked up a clip in the last five minutes! Reduced to harsh language and angry looks!

If that’s progress I want to go backwards.

But that’s getting off-topic and besides, I got my laser now so I’m happy as anything. Even if it is likely to be gobbling up those thermal clips like nobody’s business if what Jacob told me was anything to go by.

The gun was a hefty beast and kind of looked about as much as I might have expected it to look, which is to say like a slightly cruder, we’re-not-sure-what-we’re-doing copy of the gun that Thale had had. Big backpack with the generator in it, big armoured cable - an actual, physical cable! - linking to the gun and then the gun, which was mostly just a massive cooling system wrapped around a laser.

I was chuffed, I was. I felt more lethal just standing next to the thing.

And about twice as heavy as I normally was when I actually put it in. And that’s saying something because I’m not exactly light as a feather since they put me back together.

Anyway. I know that the plan was actually just to go in, meet contacts and oversee what should be a totally smooth and problem-free exchange but I was still going in tooled up. As was Miranda. We’re smart cookies, we know how these things tend to go.

We go down from the Normandy. We meet Miranda’s contact at some bar. Miranda’s contact tells us that someone named Niket has warned her that Eclipse mercs have been sent in by her father. None of this is good news, though none of it is really what I’d call enormously surprising.

“Do you want to bring in any of you other Illium contacts Ms. Lawson?” Asked the Asari contact.

“No. You and Niket are the only ones I trust on this,” Miranda said after a second’s thought.

“Who’s Niket?” I asked Miranda.

“He’s a friend. He and I go back a long way,” she said. I could buy that.

“Alright. It’s your sister Miranda, how you want to play this?” I asked. She thought again, just for a second. Good at working on her feet was Miranda.

“We’ll follow Niket’s suggestion. Shepard and I will take the car and attract their attention. Have Niket escort the family to the shuttle. Give him full access to the family’s itinerary, just to be safe.”

“Understood Ms. Lawson,” the contact said, fiddling about with their omnitool.

“So we get to be bait? I love it. I have experience being blown to bits.”

“Eclipse will be under orders to take my sister alive. They won’t risk anything that could kill us.”

She had a point. Mercenaries were at least predictable in some respects.

“Point. But I doubt they’ll all come running after us. You want to send this Niket chap any backup?”

“Niket can handle himself. Besides, any armed backup just draws attention to him,” Miranda said.

“Again, point. Alright, no time to waste eh? Let’s get going.”

“Thank you, Shepard. I appreciate this. I hadn’t planned on Eclipse...but they never planned on you.”

Flattery will get you everywhere.

We took an aircar and I felt very exposed indeed. Rightly so, as it turned out, as we hadn’t been up for five minutes before we suddenly in the company of a couple of Eclipse gunships. They blew on past and started dumping troops out into the cargo bays. That wouldn’t do.

We made to put in behind some crates but then some of the mercs who’d already dropped opened up and that unarmoured aircar and down we went. Made for a bit of a harder landing than I’d planned on.

I’ve been in worse crashes.

Someone must have given the order to hold fire after that thought because we were not greeted by a hail of gunfire after climbing out, instead just a whole heap of mercs with one guy in tech armour stood out in front. The one in charge.

Miranda was already advancing.

“Since you’re not firing yet, I trust you know who I am,” she said.

“Yeah they said you’d be in the car. You’re the bitch that kidnapped our boss’s little girl,” said the engineer - I assumed he was an engineer, tech armour and all that. Not that Miranda was especially moved by what he’d said.

“Kidnapped? This doesn’t involve you. I suggest you take your men and go,” she said.

“Think you’ve got it all lined up, huh? Captain Enyala’s already moving in on the kid. She knows about Niket. He won’t be helping you,” he said.

This was going South fast. So many things to ask about! One detail did stand out though:

“Kid? What? You said twin -” then it clicked. “Oh I get it. You said twin and we’re meant to think, like, another you but actually she’s younger? Designer babies, right? Ah, clever. Nice. I get it.”

Kind of felt like I’d heard that one before somewhere. Jumping to conclusions I know but, well, I’ve seen some weird stuff. You expect the worst. My mind goes to strange places sometimes.

“This crazy bitch kidnapped our boss’s baby daught-” the guy started saying but I didn’t have time to hear him out.

“Yeah, that’s great. I’m not really concerned. Miranda’s with me, what she wants to happen is going to happen. If you’re standing in the way of that, well, I can’t see it ending well.”

Seriously, when has that worked out well for anyone? Not to blow my own trumpet but I’m kind of a force of nature.

The guy just folds his arms.

“Captain Enyala ordered us to give you one chance to walk away. But this whole time we’ve been talking, my men have been lining up shots,” he said.

What a prick. Well he’s also a prick who’s made the mistake of getting within arm’s reach.

“Look at the big brains on this guy!” I said. That smug look of his became a bit more of a confused look.

“What?” He asked.

One uppercut and one broken neck later and the very dead, very floppy engineer toppled back and hit the deck. If I’d tried a little harder I’m pretty sure I could just punched his head clean off. Pretty sure.

Miranda didn’t waste any time either, plugging the merc who’d been standing behind the engineer and who’d clearly been taken off-guard by me just killing the guy on the spot. I then caught a flicker of movement out further back and behind - those men the now-corpse had mentioned. I also noticed them manoeuvring underneath what looked an awful lot like a fuel tank.

Ah. Love it when that happens. Feels like the universe clicking into position just for me.

Feeling that adrenaline coursing, see time slowing down, raise the gun, sight, wait one step two step three step and fire.

Tank falls, tank explodes. A good chunk of the opposition disappears. Ah. Wonderful.

I should probably feel bad about the murder - and I will later, I know I will - but at that moment all I feel is a detatched sense of amusement. Suppose it’s important to love what you do. Even if it’s, you know, unpleasant by most people’s standards.

Hey, they knew the risks.

Things went downhill from there and it was back to gunning down mercenaries, which was something that took up a lot of my time these days. Weird, since I was meant to be stopping aliens from stealing humans, but there you go. It’s all for a good cause.

The shooting and the killing was all pretty standard. Hiding behind crates, flanking, advancing. Miranda proved very handy, yanking chaps out of cover, knocking them over, swiping crates aside and leaving mercs exposed - very handy.

Kind of wish I’d brought someone else but we did very good the two of us. Chewing right through Eclipse like nobody’s business.

“Enemies everywhere!” Someone yelled and I was struck with a sudden, fierce sense of deja vu. Weird. Shot them anyway when I saw them pop up and try to run for cover further back.

You’d have thought that professionals would have put up more of a fight but then again I suppose they were up against a hyper-lethal billion-credit cyborg and a super-duper ultra-perfect biotic woman par-excellence so perhaps the game was rigged from the start.

The laser was already doing a fine job of cementing itself in my affections, too. Sure, it was a sweaty bastard and was chewing through those thermal clips as quick as I could pick them up and that powerpack wasn’t exactly the easiest thing to be lugging around but other than that? Beautiful.

Barriers? Shields? Nothing. Armour wasn’t doing a whole lot either. And any shot to centre mass was another dead person to add to my total. And let me tell you, I got a frankly sickening total of dead people to my name at this point. Hell, count limb shots too why not? I’d be shocked too if a laserbeam out of nowhere blew most of my arm clean off. I’d want a lie down and a quiet bleed to death after that.

When EDI had said the thing had been tuned for power they hadn’t been kidding. Guess everyone’s going to be regretting skimping on the thicker armour once more of these things start getting out there. Which they will. That’s just how these things happen.

Speaking of armour, personally, I wanted a T5-V. That’s what was on my Christmas list. Or something bigger, if they made something bigger. If it’s worth doing it’s worth overdoing, you know?

Anyway. Murder continued. You’d think at some point people might start paying attention to my reputation and try to talk things out. I’m always willing to talk things out! I’m also always willing to shoot people in the face if they think throwing down is a good idea.

If I was presented with those choices I know which I’d pick. Life is a lot easier when you’re just talking, in my experience. Maybe I’m in the minority.

Me and Miranda had a bit of banter as went too. Discussing the ethical considerations of nabbing children from their parents if their parents are, you know, monsters. It wasn’t really my place to say. If Miranda was of the opinion that her sister - who was genetically also kind of her? - didn’t deserve to go through what she’d gone through then I’d believe her.

She also picked up one of the Eclipse radios. Again, handy - handy lady!

The more we went on and the more I overheard though the more misgivings I started having about this Niket chap. I know that Miranda swore up and down that he was on the level - her oldest friend, her only real friend, one of the few who knew what her father was truly like and all that - but I wasn’t so sure. This whole thing seemed a little too neatly set up for me.

And it turned out that that, yes, Niket had betrayed Miranda. Or at least it damn well sounded like he had. That made things a little tense.

“Did Niket know about the, uh, taking your sister as a baby part of this whole deal?” I asked in the lift we were taking down to dock ninety four where - apparently - Niket was preparing to switch the family over onto the Eclipse transport. Which wasn’t what we wanted to happen.

Miranda didn’t look happy.

“No. It was too personal to involve anyone else. I never really thought about it, but maybe...no. He’d have to understand why I did it. He knows what I went through.”

“You know the guy, Miranda. Guess we’ll find out.”

The lift arrives, we step out and I get to see what Niket looks like at last because he’s there talking to some dock worker. Finally saw this captain Enyala we’d been hearing so much about as well. Looked pretty much as I might have expected. Asari, cranky, real nice shotgun.

Claymore, looked like - pretty impressive to see an Asari waving one of those around. Less impressive to see her use it to shoot a fleeing civilian in the back - that dock worker who tried to make a break for it on seeing us arrive.

I doubted me and this captain were going to be getting on.

Anyway, long story short Niket was pretty unhappy about the ‘taking the baby’ thing and that was kind of the root cause of the whole issue. I guess I could see some merit in his argument but, personally speaking, if the guy had sympathy for Miranda’s plight I’m not sure why he’d think that her sister would have had a better time of it.

But I wasn’t there so what do I know? I was probably missing some important context. I’m not an especially subtle person.

Things were actually starting to work out alright though. Bit tense when Miranda tried to shoot Niket but I nipped that in the bud. The better solution was just to draw a line under the whole thing. Her father didn’t know, you see, it was all just Niket running the show, so all he had to do was say that we’d got there first and nabbed the kid and that would be that. Not exactly parting on the best of terms but it would resolve things.

Only then that Enyala shot Niket in the back. She’s a fan of that.

It looked like she was going to say something afterwards, too, and I’m sure it would have been rivetting but I really didn’t have a whole lot of patience left so I shot her in the head just as she opened her mouth. The result of this was that she stopped having a head.

Should have worn a helmet, really. Not that it would have helped much but, you know. It’s just sensible. Did people forget that?

Unfortunately the laser chose this point to finally give up the ghost. Guess it was still a work in progress and it had done well to last as long as it had but the timing could have been better anyway. Had to resort to using the Phalanx and my bare hands. Worse things had happened.

By then it mostly just mopping up anyway. With their captain gone the fight really went out of most of the remaining mercs. A few of them straight-up made a break for it, pulling out. The others were worked through, one after another.

I got in close after a sprint and blew the knee out from under one guy - a heavy - before putting one through the side of his head. A good kill in my book but I had pretty stupidly left myself low on shields and open to my side and the dead guy’s buddy got me with a few rounds. Last of the shields took some, armour some more, I took the rest.

Thank God for heavy skin weave is all I can say. And the bone stuff or else I’d probably be the proud owner of a freshly-broken arm. As it stands I was just left in pain and angry, which isn’t new for me.

Would have got the guy back for it but Miranda beat me to it and by the time I’d brought my aim up he was hoiked off his feet and sent screaming over the edge of the platform and out of sight.

Happy landings, I guess.

“Thanks for that,” I said, giving her a thumbs up. Could feel that medigel kicking in already. Thanks again, heavy skin weave.

That pretty much wrapped it up, too. Certainly no-one was left shooting at us after that.

MIranda was worried about more Eclipse near the shuttle so on we hustled, taking yet another lift meaning we were trapped in for yet another conversation.

“Why didn’t you let me kill him?” She asked point-blank after a few lines about her still not believing Niket had betrayed her. I shrugged.

“Heat of the moment. You would have regretted it. He might have sold you out but you still liked the guy. Well, went behind your back, he didn’t exactly sell you out per se. If things had gone like they should everything would have been fine. I should have been quicker to stop that lady from taking the shot.”

If I’d done that everything would have been great, actually. Urgh. Regrets.

“No, no...you’re right. He was the only part of my old life I hadn’t cut out, the only link back to my father. And he knew that and he used it. It’s always been like this. My father gave me everything I ever wanted but there was always a hook, an angle for his long-term plan.”

Alright Miranda, Jesus. Calm down.

“I threw away everything he ever gave me when I ran. Except Niket. Weakness on my part,” she said.

“You know if you get rid of everything that’s important to you just because of him then he’s still kind of running your life. Just saying,” I said.

Again, not the sort of thing I have much experience with.

“It’s okay Shepard. My father hurt me, but he didn’t break me. As much as he tried to turn me into exactly what he wanted...I’m my own person.”

Well snaps for you, Miranda.

And not long after this we’re standing there in public with no Eclipse to be seen, awkwardly watching her little sister - Oriana? - and her family. Miranda’s happy to see her safe, obviously, but then she just wants to leave! After all that!

No dice. I tell her it wouldn’t hurt for the girl to know she has a sister who loves her. She doesn’t need to go into the details. And so off Miranda goes. It’s quite cute to watch, actually. Not a side of Miranda most people would get to see, I’d expect, even at a distance.

I give her some time for that. Least I could do. Eventually the family leaves. Miranda and I watch the shuttle take off and that, as they say, is that.

Could have gone better. Could have gone a whole lot worse. Story of my life. At the least it had been a bonding experience. I felt that me and Miranda’s relationship had taken a definite boost.

That and I liked to think I’d done a good deed. Or helped in someone doing a good deed. Anything to make the galaxy that little bit brighter, you know? It all adds up. Even if an alarming number of people had to die in service of it.

And with that done I really, really wanted a lie down in a quiet room with a stiff drink and some medigel. I thought that it wouldn’t be that much to ask, personally.

But then who should I see coming towards me from across the dock, smiling ear-to-ear, but fucking Jarrion. No-one else wore that much gold braid. Hell, I doubted anyone else owned that much gold braid.

How, exactly, had we missed that ship of his? Where was he hiding it? Or had he just arrived? So many questions, foremost amongst them being ‘Seriously?’.

“Is that-” Miranda starts to ask, but I’m there before she finishes.

“It is,” I say.

“Commander Shepard!” He said, beaming, coming to a halt just before the two of us, holding his lapels and rocking on his heels, giving Miranda the nod of someone who’s forgotten your name but doesn’t want to admit it. “Some days I swear I feel the hand of the Emperor himself guiding my steps! How else might it be that I run into you here and now?”

In his defence the odds are fucking insane. Doesn’t make me any happier about it.

“How indeed. What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Business!” He said, waving a hand back behind him. I couldn’t quite see what he was trying to draw my attention to at first, but then I caught sight of that really old guy he had hanging around alongside some other very obviously Imperial crew. All of them looked incredibly uncomfortable at being there and were eyeing any and all passing aliens with burning suspicion.

The group of them in turn being gawked at by just about everyone else around them because, well, they stuck out like a sore thumb. Loghain was there too, still blind and still somehow able to tell I was looking because she waved at me. The whole scene was just bizarre.

“That so?” I asked, looking back to Jarrion again.

“Oh yes we’ve been very busy but I shan’t bore you with the details. How goes your own mission? Or was that ship we blew up the last of it?” He asked.

Couldn’t quite tell if he was joking or not about that.

“There’s still a few things need tying up,” I said, tactfully, and Jarrion nodded as though he understood what it was like.

“Anything I could help you with? I’m not one to move against providence and me being here and you being here does seem to speak of a higher purpose at work, don’t you think?”

Now that was a terrifying thought.

“Uh, that remains to be seen I guess. And no, I think we’re fine. Just wrapped something up, actually, kind of need a break,” I said, twisting to show off the fresh holes in my armour. He winced in sympathy - but not too much sympathy.

“You should probably get that looked at, Commander. And if you’re quite sure. Going to be planetside long?” He asked.

“Couple of days. Why?”

“Ah, good. Myself and the Dauntless are set to be here a few days as well. It might be worth catching up, if you’d like. I had a chat with that benefactor of yours,” he said lightly.

That gave me a jolt.

“The Illusive Man?” I asked and Jarrion raised his eyebrows.

“Is that his name? Very enigmatic!”

“What did he want with you?” Miranda asked and from the sound of things she didn’t know anything about this. Jarrion just kept on smiling like he always seemed to.

“Nothing particularly important. I am sure we’ll get into it when we next bump into each other. No need to rush it! Simply message the Assertive and they’ll pass it onto me. At your convenience, Commander! At your convenience.”

And just like that he was gone again, heading back to his group which then carried on towards whatever the hell it was he was here to do, trailing a few curious onlookers in their wake.

“Is this bad?” Miranda asked.

“Well it’s not good,” I said.

Life is never simple.

Chapter Text

Yes, the party twenty questionarium, because my brains have turned to scrambled egg and I need a lie down.

This is going to get wordy and not really advance anything but I did warn you. Feel free to skip this bit or just pretend it doesn’t even exist. Normal updates will resume some point shortly, have no fear, I’m just frazzled and rather figured this would be a reasonable enough point to take a breath and just luxuriate and waste everyone’s time.

If anyone asks more question on top of this I’ll edit them in. Magically.

I’m going to paraphrase the questions because I can.

Isn’t the Assertive just showing up in orbit over Illium kind of a big deal?

Whoopsie.

I posted the last part and then went to sleep without thinking a whole lot more about it other than this seemed a good way of mashing the narratives together again and that’d be pretty funny and one of the first things that popped into my head on waking up was that I’d perhaps not fully thought it through.

Originally I was figuring Omega? Given that Omega is kind of a pivotal location in ME2 but then I thought that, since Horizon just happened, there’s reason for Shepard to go to Illium and since Jarrion has got business nonsense to handle Illium was a sensible place for him to go, too. So that part worked out in my head. I just didn’t think through the consequences enough at the time.

Mean, the last time a ship no-one recognised showed up it was Sovereign, and that didn’t end so well for most of the people involved. And a Dauntless is, like, twice the size of Sovereign. And it looks like nothing else they would have seen. And it tears its way into space in a fashion none would be familiar with before proceeding to enter the orbit of Illium - a planet of millions with a high economic value and, if memory serves, pretty significant defensive assets.

Yeah that’s not the sort of thing people will shrug off. In retrospect.

And Shepard will probably have to do something about it, too, being that she’s a Spectre and all and happens to be in the area. And that’s on top of every other intelligence agency who’ll be scrambling to find out what’s going on, alongside criminals and other chancers. Sigh. What a mess.

Still, obliquely works out for me actually as that means MORE TALKING! And more Imperials having to interact with aliens, which amuses me greatly.

Honestly, they’re lucky it’s Jarrion, he’s probably the most easy-going Imperial they could have hoped to meet. It could have been much, much worse.

Who’s on the Normandy right now?

Well right now we’re just post-Horizon, basically, so that’d be, uh…

Grunt, Jack, Garrus, Mordin, Miranda and Jacob. I think? Sounds about right. Not that I’ve really utilised any of these characters, obviously. I’ve been pretty bad at it. Partly because I’ve been too busy salivating over Jarrion’s lot, mostly because I genuinely worry about writing them wrong. Especially Mordin, who I love but fear I cannot do justice.

I’m sure they’ll all get a chance in due time…

Although I must confess to my shame that I haven’t actually ever played any of the DLC with any of the other characters for ME2. I know, I know - my excuses are hollow. But the upshot is that Zaheed and Kasumi are unlikely to appear because, well, I don’t know anything about either of them.

I think Kasumi can turn invisible? And Zaheed got shot in the head that one time? That’s about the extent of what I know.

And even if I did put them in that’d be more characters for me not to use. Hah!

What do any of these people actually look like?

Not something someone asked but someone did point out a while back that I hadn’t actually described anyone. Which is true, I haven’t. I dislike reading and, indeed, writing lengthy descriptions of what characters look like and it didn’t strike me as important so I mostly skirted it.

But, just so people have a vague idea, it goes something like this:

All ME characters look like what they look like. You know what they look like.

Shepard is a lady Shepard, has the shortest haircut available (which I think is a step above a buzzcut, really) and looks - as I may have mentioned - like she’s lost a fight with about twelve panes of glass. Getting spaced and put back together again can do that.

Aside: I wasn’t a fan of how going Paragon made the scars go away. It seemed real cheap to me, kind of a harkening back to how fucked up looking you could get going darkside in KOTOR but eh, just weird. I wanted scars all the way, damnit!

Jarrion looks basically like any Rogue Trader that 40K artwork throws up. You know the sort. He looks like Jan Van Yastobaal. Or the guy off any one of the FF Rogue Trader RPG books. Or Count Maximillian or whatever his name was - the one from Inquisitor. Goatee, epaulettes, lots of gold braid and rings and such. And the augmetic ear, though you can’t usually see it unless you’re looking as it’s pretty niftily done. That’s money for you.

Loghain is an unimposing woman with no eyes - obviously - and who figured that shaving her head would help her blend in when she was pretending to be an Astropath. Her hair is now growing back.

Do I have a thing for women with short hair? No, actually, it’s just how it’s worked out here. Weird.

Pak looks like a tech priest, though maybe a little more towards the higher end of things given that they are a rather fancy Explorator. High-quality implants is what I’m saying. Number of mechadendrites? More than you’d expect but less than you’d hope.

Thale, for a guy who’s seen a lot of shit, is basically pristine. Ugly as sin, however. A man who fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down. Life compensates him by apparently making him ridiculously lucky. Who can say?

Why are you so bad at demarcating the shifts in perspective?

Whoopsie. Again.

Yeah, I kind of failed to notice the fact that fanfiction.net takes out some of the more subtle bits of formatting I was putting in, like the double line break and single hyphen I was putting in to show the bits where the narrative was switching.

Course that's not an issue for you handful of people here on AO3, but you're the minority.

So from now on I’m going to be dropping a big, fat +++MEANWHILE+++ or something like that to show the bits where the narrative is moving around.

That’ll probably not work for some people but, eh, it’s either that or break the thing up into even MORE chapters, and that’ll not work for some other people and in the end it’s all going to get read anyway, right? So might as well just try to make it clear.

That’s my excuse...

Chapter Text

For an alien planet, this ‘Illium’ wasn’t quite the backwards, savage, decrepit, barbarous, blasphemous, embarrassing hellhole Jarrion had been expecting.

He wouldn’t go so far as to say that it was impressive - anyone could build tall buildings, Orks could build tall buildings - but it was at least pleasantly genteel and well-organised, which was a damn sight more than he had been expecting. They might even have running water. He hadn’t seen it yet, but it seemed likely.

He imagined that it being such a prominent place of business helped. Trade was, after all, a civilising influence. Not that you could ever hope to properly civilize an alien, of course, but you could get close enough to make the effort at least partially worthwhile. Close enough to get something valuable out of it. Like training a dog.

Not that Jarrion would ever admit that to anyone, naturally. He had the wit to appreciate the nuance of his position. You could hate the alien and still take advantage of them without killing them. Seemed obvious enough to Jarrion. Not so much to some others. Some people you just couldn’t reach.

In the end the stars would belong to man and man alone one way or another, so why not make the best use of what resources were available in the meantime? It would all work out the same. Yes?

Besides, as much as his father might protest otherwise, Rogue Traders were not meant to be soldiers. They were - as the name might suggest - traders. And if you could maximise value for the Imperium without firing a shot, wasn’t that helping in the long run?

Wasn’t every deal cut with the minimum of fuss cutting down on the work of some poor, belegard servant of the Emperor in some other part of the galaxy, in some small way? Every Throne or credit or what have you earned or saved just that little bit extra that could tip the balance elsewhere? It all added up.

Every one of the Emperor’s subjects had a role to play, did they not? If Jarrion’s role could be best served by sometimes allowing an alien to continue living and in so doing wringing the best possible return out of this or that venture, well, was it not in the Emperor’s best interest for Jarrion to conduct himself in the way that would best further Imperial goals?

Made perfect sense to Jarrion when he explained it to himself like that. Others - his brothers, say, in particular his elder brother - would likely misconstrue what he meant. Would take his sensible, reasonable, entirely practical approach as a sign of spiritual weakness indicative of a dangerous lack of zeal and moral fibre. But such was life.

And they weren’t here anyway.

The sheer profusion of aliens about the place was still a little overwhelming though. Especially the blue ones. The ones who all looked decidedly feminine. There were an awful lot of those ones about. Unsurprising, Jarrion supposed, given they were supposedly the ones who owned the planet, but still. Everywhere you turned, there they were. Standing. Sitting. Talking. Watching.

Jarrion did his best to act like it wasn’t getting to him, but it really was. Humans were in the distinct minority here and that just wasn’t right. He and his men kept getting odd looks and it was fairly obvious that some sort of police - he assumed, hoped - presence was tailing them at a discreet distance, as they had indeed been doing practically since they’d set foot off the lighter and muddled through the bureaucracy of landing. Jarrion did his best to act like he didn’t notice this. It was the polite thing to do.

His group stuck close to him, eyeing their surroundings suspiciously or, in Thale’s case, with the detached casualness of the trained professional constantly expecting violence to break out and constantly thinking of what to do should that happen.

Jarrion had picked his men for this trip down planetside quite carefully.

Thale was there because he was basically Jarrion’s shadow and you could never be too safe. Loghain was there because Jarrion couldn’t get rid of the damn woman and she might prove useful to have around, he supposed. Torian was there to handle the fiddlier parts of the transactions as and when they occurred, even if having to slow down to allow for his limp was costing them valuable time.

The rest of the group was made up of some of the armsmen who had seen action on Horizon, being as how they’d already accompanied Jarrion in the presence of aliens and so had at least some grasp that their current task involved less-than-hostile interaction with xenos. Having to explain that again would have been tedious.

They still clearly didn’t like where they were, but they were keeping this to themselves beyond the occasional muttered curse whenever an alien passed by too close. This was all Jarrion needed of them. That, and to carry crates of money.

There were several purposes to this trip. Firstly, money. Or, rather, getting the money that had changed hands following the successful negotiations with Cerberus regarding access to the xenos wreck and turning it into a unit of currency that could be more easily used and accessed - those credits Jarrion ahd heard so much about.

Once he had an account set up he imagined a lot of things would be much, much easier.

Following that, acquisitions. But that would happen later. First, the money. Very important the money.

Finding a bank was not difficult. Asking where to find one was, because that involved having to talk to aliens, but worse things had happened and they were at least helpful, if confused by the people asking them questions. Some local branch of some galaxy-spanning banking institution was not too far away, thankfully, and so it was to this that Jarrion headed, his entourage in tow.

On arrival he was dismayed to find the staff entirely composed of more of those distressingly human-looking blue aliens. They really were quite unsettling.

Had they the decency to look properly inhuman then Jarrion might have found it easier, in a weird kind of a way. Instead he just felt uncomfortable. Mocked, he supposed, that something so obviously inhuman should somehow be wearing such a human face. Certainly seemed a particularly blasphemous twist of biology to Jarrion, not that he was an expert.

But still, needs must, and he was a Rogue Trader and so he was - strictly speaking - allowed to do what he was about to do. Even if he was going to have to bolt on a smile and try to keep his skin from crawling through sheer force of will the whole time.

They weren’t expecting physical contact, were they? Jarrion experienced a moment of sheer, vertigo-like terror at the prospect of even a handshake given that he hadn’t brought gloves.

Thankfully though, just from the look of the staff they seemed about as put off by him as he was by them, so the prospect of any contact seemed minimal. Thank the Emperor for small mercies.

Just keep things polite, he told himself. This is a galaxy where - inexplicably - most species seem to be able to get along, more-or-less. That’s a weakness you can exploit. Just remember that, think of the bottom line and don’t let the men see you flinch.

The nearest alien was standing behind a counter of some sort and this seemed as good a place to start as any. Beaming as though showing up with crates of money was about the most normal thing in the world - to be fair, for a Rogue Trader, it wasn’t that out of the ordinary - Jarrion strode on over and rested one arm on the counter.

“Ah! Good morning! And what a fine morning it is, hmm? I wouldn’t be able to conduct a transaction, would I?” He asked, waving about his free hand to take in the ambience and then about managing to maintain eye contact with the alien.

It looked young, and this displeased Jarrion for reasons he couldn’t put his finger on.

By now, Shepard’s - or rather EDI’s - translation of Low Gothic had passed and filtered through the extranet and had reached most of the more populous corners of the galaxy, there to be downloaded automatically into most everyone’s translation software just as a matter of standard updates. Technology truly was a marvel.

No-one had really thought about it’s inclusion or it’s source or even really noticed it at all, to be honest. It was just another update among however many others, passed along and around and copied and now being put to use for once somewhere that wasn’t a podunk human colony being visited by the single Imperial vessel in the galaxy.

Certainly, the Asari clerk barely even noticed that she understood what the human was saying, because why wouldn’t she understand what a human was saying? That, and she was too busy being alarmed by all the other parts of Jarrion that were alarming.

The surly and threatening look of his entourage. The obviously blind woman wandering around and admiring the bulk-bought artwork on the walls like she wasn’t actually blind. The sheer amount of brocade and gold braid draped across the fiercely grinning man across the counter from her. The sheer amount of skull motifs everywhere.

The actual, literal skull floating about his shoulder was just the icing on the cake.

Servo skulls saw a lot more use, now. Jarrion at this point had stopped caring quite so much about scaring the locals, reasoning that they could probably get over the sight of a skull and, if nothing else, it made a good icebreaker. So far this hadn’t proved a bad decision, and his having drawn the line at servo skulls seemed wise as well.

So far Jarrion had not encountered anything to suggest that the sight of a servitor would pass unremarked upon. The people of this galaxy seemed remarkably squeamish, really. Servo skulls were probably about their limit. Most assumed it was just an affectation and that Jarrion was weird. No-one, surely, would make an actual skull float. That would be insanely morbid.

Whenever anyone asked, Jarrion just grinned at them, played it off like a joke. Let them think him eccentric.

Strictly speaking though this particular servo skull was there to aid in translation, having been setup to do so by Pak. Jarrion had imagined that such an expedient might come in handy. So far it hadn’t, but that was because he had managed to avoid talking to any aliens yet. Now would be the moment of truth.

Pak themselves - despite Jarrion’s more lenient attitude towards bringing along servo skulls - was very much confined to the ship for the duration of Jarrion’s stay on Illium. As with the servitors there were limits. What few tech priests that had had to be shuttled down to this or that colony had been kept as separate as possible from the locals, something they’d been only too happy to comply with. Pak though was something else. The Magos would probably start touching things they shouldn’t. Like the locals.

That could only end badly.

“Transaction?” The clerk asked helplessly, looking about for backup or someone to come in and help, only to find all her cohorts conspicuously busy all of a sudden.

Jarrion was delighted that the translation adjustments seemed to work. The skull heard the words and fed the translation - in glorious, uncomplicated monotone - directly to his augmetic ear. He heard the strange language of the alien at the same which was confusing, but he could multitask.

“Yes! I believe this to be a bank - correct me if I’m wrong - and I’d rather like to open an account. It’d be easier than hiding what I’ve got under a mattress, let me tell you!”

Again the clerk eyed Jarrion’s companions. The blind woman had taken a seat on one of the sofas in the waiting area and was splayed out as though she owned the place. The other humans were all standing looking distinctly uncomfortable except for the bald one who just looked bored in the way a knife balancing on the edge of a table looked bored. It wasn’t a sight that inspired confidence.

“Y-you want to open an account?” She asked.

“If possible, yes. I have rather a profusion of currencies, I’m afraid. Been doing odd jobs, you know, just picking up some of the local shrapnel here and there. Rather hoping to consolidate them. Credits and a place to put them would make things much easier for me,” Jarrion said, breezily.

“Um, there is a m-minimum amount required as a deposit to open-” the clerk started, perhaps hoping to ward this strange off, but Jarrion had seen this coming and cut across her:

“Ah, of course of course. A proper bank for proper customers, eh? I shouldn’t think that’d be a problem. Lads? If you could.”

A gesture from Jarrion and the armsmen brought forward their crates and set them down in view of the clerk. They then opened them, lifting the lids to show that each of them was packed almost full to bursting with an eye-watering amount of hard currency.

“There are more crates,” Jarrion said. He wasn’t lying. The clerk just blinked.

Jarrion had been very generous in what he’d allowed Cerberus to remove from the Collector wreck - what use xenos tech, after all? - and in turn Cerberus had been very generous in honouring the financial arrangement set up concerning this removal. Everyone was happy.

At a nod from Jarrion the lids were closed and the crates set down once more. It took the clerk a little longer than this to fully recover. It really wasn’t every day someone walked in with actual, physical money, let alone that much of the stuff. Indeed, she’d never personally had to deal with anything like that before.

Luckily for her the sight and smell of wealth had attracted one of her superiors who came gliding in almost out of nowhere to pluck this clearly important transaction from the inexperienced hands of a junior member of staff. Sliding bodily in front of the clerk the senior put on the most ingratiating expression she could muster and said:

“Terribly sorry for making you wait, sir, I was with another client. I hear that you’ve hoping to open an account?”

The clerk took the hint and melted into the background. Frankly, she was glad of the out. Jarrion barely noticed her going and, frankly, wouldn’t have cared anyway. One alien for another. As long as he got what he needed it hardly mattered.

This one looked older, though her dress was also inexplicably missing a big bit in the middle which meant that her belly-button was on show for all to see. Jarrion did not like this. Not at all. But he swallowed that tiny bit of bile he felt rise in the back of his throat and his smile didn’t so much was waver.

“Indeed I am. Nothing too extravagant, not interested in the travel insurance, hah! Just looking for something that’ll allow me to more easily access funds and process payments while I am out and about, you know? Dealing with hard currency is proving something of an inconvenience.”

“I quite understand sir. If you’d like to come with me?”

“Of course. Thale, stay here with the men. Torian,” Jarrion said, gesturing for the seneschal who, bowing and scraping, fell in line as Jarrion followed the alien to somewhere with seats and a desk.

Jarrion had been expecting paperwork. The bank however operated on a paper-free policy. There was some mild awkwardness as this was discovered, then the relevant details were put onto a pad so that Jarrion could peruse them. All fairly standard stuff as far as he could see, though he make sure to read twice - he’d read up on Illium, after all.

Something that had plainly been bothering the alien - and something that had equally plainly been the source of a low-level flutter of nervousness in her that had been there since the moment she’d stepped in, as much as she might have tried to hide it behind professional chirpiness - finally gave voice to itself here. She simply couldn’t help herself anymore:

“Might I be so bold as to ask whether you are the...owner...of that unusual vessel currently in orbit, sir?” She asked.

Jarrion looked up from squinting at the details, handing the pad off to Torian who set about poring over it himself, albeit with obvious distaste. He still resented having to have learnt to read what apparently passed for a human lingua franca these days, and doubly resented having to take something that an alien had touched. But he did it anyway.

“Ah, noticed that did you?” Jarrion asked the Asari, flashing a small grin. The effect of this was not a soothing one. She’d heard rumours about the humans who’d come down from that ship. All of them were ridiculous, but any one of them might have been true. She had at least one friend who worked in the dock where they’d landed their - supposedly - ugly, weird and rather alarming looking shuttle.

“I - it - you, heh, you don’t see something like that every day, sir. It’s been, uh, talked about,” she said.

“Has it? And what have they been saying?”

“Oh, just gossip, sir. Nothing you should be too concerned about. I think they just found your...unusual...ship somewhat alarming. Not something we’re used to seeing, as I say. And you’re just here for business? Nothing else?”

Tiny note of nervousness again in the edge there. Jarrion furrowed his brow.

“What else could I be here for?” He asked.

The Asari had a lot of answers to this question, some of them she’d heard around and about, some of them she’d thought up herself. Few to none were flattering. A lot involved considerable amount of indiscriminate destruction just because, well, why else would a giant spaceship show up? Though - looking at the man - most were also pretty hard to countenance. He just seemed...odd.

The way he was looking at her was...odd.

“I can’t say I have any idea, sir,” she said.

And there the matter seemed to rest. At least here.

“This all appears acceptable, Lord Captain,” Torian said, stiffly, handing the pad back to Jarrion.

“Nothing to bite me later?” Jarrion asked, flicking the text up and down for no real reason other than he could.

“Nothing that I could see, no, Lord Captain,” Torian said.

The old man had actually been hoping to uncover some craftily hidden trap or loophole that would have exposed the perfidious and disgusting aliens for the, well, perfidious and disgusting aliens that they were, with the result that the Lord Captain would leave in disgust and they could get back on the Assertive and get as far away from this Emperor-forsaken, alien-infested hellhole as it was possible to get.

But no such luck.

“Well that’s a plus,” Jarrion said happily enough, looking over to the Asari and holding up the pad. “Do I sign on this? Or is there an actual piece of parchment I haven’t seen yet?”

Turned out that ‘signing’ in this instance involved some biometrics being taken. Which wasn’t awful. Thumbprint, etcetera. Jarrion found it rather novel. Barely took any time at all and then what needed to be done was, apparently, done. Did leave at least one question though:

“Now, I don’t own an ‘omnitool’ I’m afraid, so how will I be able to access the funds in this account?”

Jarrion had done his research on this particular part of the process. These so-called omnitools were ubiquitous and apparently - perhaps appropriately - able to do just about anything, including greasing the wheels of commerce by allowing anyone who had one to just...wave their hand and make money go from one place to another place. Just like that.

As a man of commerce this kind of incredible ease had definite appeal. Immediate access to funds? Anywhere? Delightful! Briefly Jarrion had considered maybe trying to acquire one just to make things simpler but he had, at length, decided against it.

Getting a foot in the door of this galaxy’s markets was one thing. Money was money was money, after all, no matter what it was called or where it came from. But starting to use local technology was quite another. That was a slippery slope.

Some of it might have appeared useful, such as those kinetic barriers. Jarrion could certainly see the value in those. But the more-than-friendly level of interspecies relationship in this galaxy put the providence of all technology in serious question.

Who could say what alien influence had gone into the design of these omnitools? What sort of spiritual pollution might he be opening himself up to? What damage might it inflict on the machine spirits he came into contact with? And besides, once he’d taken that tiny step where would it end? Nowhere good, certainly.

Not that the Asari really cared. Lacking an omnitool was unusual, but not the worst thing she’d ever encountered. And certainly it wasn’t insurmountable.

“Not a problem, sir. The account comes with a credit chit that you will be able to use - with additional functionality and access options available should you require them at a later date.”

A chit was produced and pushed across the desk. A wave of her own omnitool keyed it to the account being prepared. Both Jarrion and Torian eyed the thing with suspicion. Gingerly, Jarrion picked it up, holding it between forefinger and thumb.

“Marvellous. Uh, how does it work?” He asked. She explained.

Simplicity itself, basically. It just had the various financial functions that might normally have been found in an omnitool but in a dinky little easily-losable device instead. Would only work if the designated account holder - Jarrion, obviously - was holding it, could facilitate transfer of funds both ways, etcetera, etcetera...

Seemed innocuous enough to Jarrion. That was probably a dangerous sign. He’d have Pak look at it before actually using it. Just in case.

“Is there anything else I can help you with, sir?” The Asari asked, regarding the human squinting at the chit as though it might bite him. Jarrion - lost in thought - blinked and shook his head, snapping back to the then-and-there.

“As a matter of fact yes there is: you wouldn’t have an IFA or something of that nature I could speak to, would you?”

Took her a little off-guard, but only for a second.

“Of course, sir, and as an account holder you’d be entitled to an appointment - if you’d like me to set one up…?”

“Most certainly. As soon as possible, if you’d be so kind,” Jarrion said.

“Was there anything in particular you wished to discuss?” She asked. Then: “If I can inform them ahead of time they can better prepare for your appointment.”

Jarrion thought that made sense.

“Ah, I see. Well, I am interested in investments, for the long term. Steady returns, safe bets - armaments, heavy equipment, fuel, that sort of thing. Oh, and raw materials. Short term, I am rather keen to know of any sources you might be aware of for low-cost, readily available manpower. Are there are prisons nearby that are suffering from overcrowding? That you know of? Human, if at all possible, but I can be...flexible...” Jarrion said, swallowing hard on the last part but keeping his smile in place.

After all, in a mine or a refinery on the backside of some planet somewhere no-one looked it hardly mattered, did it? As long as they were out of sight and kept to themselves. As ever, would be foolish to waste a resource.

The Asari considered this a moment. In all fairness she had heard of worse requests. That was Illium for you.

“...I’ll pass that along, sir,” she said.

“Marvellous. Do contact me when you’ve arranged it. Torian? Contact details if you’d be so kind.”

Interaction with the various colonies had done much to help refine how Imperial communication technology could better interact with that which was in standard usage around the galaxy. Still no video, but everything else was much easier now, so that was nice. Certainly, arranging it so that the Asari would be able to call Jarrion about an appointment was trivial.

And that was that and Jarrion was now the proud owner of a very healthy number of credits, all of which he could access with the simplicity of waving a teeny tiny little chit around. He considered this a success. Certainly better than lugging crates around.

Once outside the bank Jarrion finally let his composure relax, whereupon he staggered over to a nearby railing and promptly vomited over the edge, the discomfort of such extended interaction with xenos finally catching up with him. Honestly, it took him by surprise, but plainly it had been bothering him more than he’d been willing to admit even to himself.

Wiping his mouth with a handkerchief he then tucked back into his jacket he peered over the edge but found he couldn’t even see the ground from where he was, just the twinkling lights of the city and the frankly unnecessary amount of flying vehicles these aliens felt the need to have. Inveterate show-offs.

“Oh, I’ve probably ruined someone’s day down there…” He said, grimacing at the taste left in his mouth and patting himself down in the hopes that he’d remembered to bring a flask of something stiff and life-affirming. To his delight he had and he took a slug and swished it about his mouth a little before deciding - with a shrug - to spit that over the edge as well.

In for a penny.

“Charming,” Loghain said, sauntering over and leaning on the railing just along from Jarrion.

“It’s the, well, it’s all of them, really. It is deeply disarming how human those ones look. I can’t say I’m a fan of it. Deeply disconcerting. At the time I was able to concentrate on the professional side but…”

He looked over the edge again and shook his head.

“I’m only human,” he concluded.

“You are indeed. Though, I do find it somewhat interesting that you chose to come to what is an alien-controlled world to conduct these incredibly interesting and not-at-all-tedious business transactions. This is an - what was it again? - ‘Asari’ world, I believe? Is that the right name? Those blue ones. With the breasts. And the head flaps. Frills. Like that one you were talking to?”

Jarrion gave her a look that was utterly wasted on her not. Not because she was blind, but just because she plainly didn’t care. When this became obvious Jarrion gave up in disgust and took to looking out across the city again. This did not improve his mood. Bloody aliens and their shiny city.

“Take it you read the information that the Commander provided, then Inquisitor? Learnt a little bit more about where we happen to find ourselves?” He asked.

“I did,” she said.

“Well so did I,” Jarrion said, rapping a knuckle against the railing - thought being careful not to hit his rings, for they were very, very valuable and also occasionally volatile - and straightened up to spread his arms and indicate the scene before him. “This planet represents one of the most valuable links between the Terminus systems - where my interests lie - and Citadel space - where the money is. I admit that my primary concern remains awaiting the results of how we got here and whether or not we can get back but that does not diminish the fact that I have committed myself. I have interests that require these connections. Can hardly find a reputable bank on some backwater, can I? That the planet is controlled by aliens is unfortunate, but nothing I can change. Human space is some considerable distance from here.”

He’d slipped into doing the speeches again. Loghain noticed this and grinned. It was, she had discovered, fairly easy to get a rise out of Jarrion. Or maybe it was just easy for her. The jury was out on that one for now.

“Not worth the trip, then? I’d rather like to see Terra,” she asked.

As far as Jarrion was concerned this joke was in rather poor taste. The existence of an entirely separate Terra in a universe that seemingly did not have the Emperor in it just struck him as...wrong somehow. Not something you should call attention to, he felt.

“I’m not entirely sure what it is you’re hoping to achieve by all this, Inquisitor. Indeed, I feel as though we’ve had this conversation before. I’m not doing anything that I am not empowered to do by the Warrant. We are outside Imperial jurisdiction and I am using my judgement and my authority to move as I see fit. That is the whole point of Rogue Traders. Are you trying to catch me out?” He asked. Loghain turned away and looked out over the railing, for a given value of ‘looked’.

Jarrion did wonder sometimes what it was she was seeing...

“Just observing,” she said. Jarrion glared a little, thought up another speech or two but then just sighed. What was the point? Instead, he settled in beside her and glared at the alien instead. Bloody aliens.

“Well observe more quietly. I know exactly what I’m doing and I know exactly what it is I am allowed to do,” he said.

“Of course. I am not implying otherwise,” Loghain said and Jarrion laughed very shortly and without a whole lot of humour.

“I’ll believe you. Thousands wouldn’t. Don’t think I haven’t forgotten that you even being on the Assertive in the first place is cause for concern. Inquisitors don’t just appear for no reason and they don’t ever appear for a good reason, either.”

“Maybe I was just hitching a lift,” Loghain said.

“Somehow I don’t think so. Just like how I don’t think asking you nicely is going to get me a straight answer.”

“You haven’t tried asking me nicely. Maybe sprinkle a ‘pretty please’ in there somehow. You never know,” Loghain said.

There was a pause. During this pause Jarrion genuinely considered this. Then he realised what he was doing, gritted his teeth and shook his head.

“...no. No, it’s just not worth it. I have standards. The line has to be drawn somewhere,” he said.

“Your loss,” said Loghain, glancing at him and double-taking. She raised a hand and pointed to his collar. “You missed a bit.”

This confused Jarrion until he caught a whiff of bile and remembered that had thrown up not even five minutes previously. Looking down he saw that, on his collar, he had indeed missed a bit. He sighed and pulled the handkerchief out again, grumbling:

“Hope I can find a human who’ll sell me spaceships on this damn planet...”

Chapter Text

+++MEANWHILE, IN ORBIT OF ILLIUM, ON THE NORMANDY+++

Popping back to the Normandy to swap out some of the bits of my armour - which for some reason always had to involve me going back to the Normandy and also having to go up to my cabin, figure that one out - I discovered to my displeasure that I had a laundry list of messages and missed calls. Turns out that things had kicked off in a major way while I’d been killing people with a laser.

Jarrion arriving (or more specifically his ship arriving) was causing something of a stir, to put it lightly. Putting it less lightly the whole place was about three notches shy of a full-blown panic, at least according to what I was seeing. And that was just Illium! Ripples spread! Rumours were already going wild. Nervous people make everyone else nervous.

More fool me for not figuring it out on my own, really. Probably should have twigged it that having a ship as big as Jarrion’s just rocking up somewhere with as much money as Ilium would put the fear of God into just about everybody. Damn thing was bigger than some orbital facilities I’d been on.

Certainly bigger than Sovereign had been, come to think of it.

Speaking for myself I’d just been annoyed at the mind-blowing coincidence of running into him again, hadn’t given it much thought beyond that. Space was famously kind of a large place - what were the odds? Not in my favour, apparently. Or at least not in favour of letting me get on with my business.

Guess having met the guy in charge of the vessel kind of took the edge off seeing it. That and I’d seen it enough times that the sheer novelty of the thing - few kilometers of spires and crenelations and all - had kind of gone. Everyone else though? Not as fortunate as me. They had no idea what to think. Couldn’t really blame them.

I had a brief glance at the extranet while Chakwas was having a look at my arm, the one that had taken a hit. There was a lot of talk going on. Speculation abounded as to the nature of this mysterious spaceship. What did it want? Where had it come from? Why wasn’t anyone shooting at it yet? Why wasn’t it shooting at us yet? Etcetera.

None of the theories or conclusions were anywhere near accurate, of course, and a lot of it was distressingly hysterical. Which, again, given the size of the ship I suppose I should have expected.

If anything, the fact that the ship was just hanging in orbit and not apparently doing anything was just making it worse. If it had been raining down fire and destruction on Illium then at least people would have had something to work with. That would have been nicely understandable. You knew where you stood with that.

As it was, nothing. Just hanging there. Being inscrutable. The worst kind of mystery.

Course, that was just those who hadn’t heard that humans had been seen coming out of it. The ones who were aware of that particular fact had their own raft of baffling ideas. They weren’t a lot better, and some of them were, frankly, kind of insulting. Speaking as a human.

Sigh. Everyone in the galaxy always assuming that everyone else has it in for them. Suppose that’s just kind of the, uh, sapient condition. Suppose I can see the logic in it, too. Even if it’s kind of self-sustaining. If everyone is acting like everyone else is about to stab them in the back that’s kind of how it’s going to turn out.

Ah, life.

Speaking of being stabbed in the back, the Council apparently wanted a word with me, too.

Hah. That’s a joke. They’re not that bad. They’d just watch me get stabbed in the back then tell me about it after it had happened and probably insinuate it was my fault somehow.

That’s another joke. They’re really not that bad.

I had taken the time some days previously to return to the Citadel and finally get around to getting my Spectre status restored. I hadn’t gone there specifically to do this, it had just seemed a good idea since I was in the area and all.

In all honesty I actually take great pride in being a Spectre, it’s important. I may joke around a lot but for this at least I’m being sincere. A tiny step towards better cooperation is better than no step at all in my book.

Getting reinstated had gone well, or at least as well as could be expected. They - which is to say, the Council - were surprisingly sanguine about me coming back from the dead, less relaxed about my now massive-open-secret working with Cerberus. Which I could kind of understand.

Still. Not an insurmountable obstacle as it turned out. The upshot of the whole thing being that I was a Spectre again, but they’d prefer if I kept myself to the Terminus systems for now, more or less. Works for me. That’s kind of where I needed to be anyway.

But now they wanted a word. Which was why I was in the conference room.

I hadn’t even known I could get outside calls on this thing, thought it was just a permanently locked direct line to Tim. Guess it’s got regular functionality outside of that fancy QEC stuff. Nice. Wonder how mum’s getting on?

Later.

“EDI, can we have a word with the Council?”

“Putting you through, Commander.”

A small pause, then we connected.

And there was Udina looking about as sour as he normally does, and all the others.

I really should get around to learning their names at some point.

Mean, it’s not really professional, is it?

“You rang?” I asked.

None of them got it. Indeed, they just decided to ignore this completely. Probably for the best.

“Shepard. We are contacting you regarding events in the Tasale system,” the Asari said.

Pretty euphemistic way of putting it. Also, wasn’t I contacting them?

“This wouldn’t happen to have anything to do with a rather large spaceship that happens to look like someone took a chunk of Ely cathedral and hurled it into space, would it?” I asked.

“None of us understand what you’re talking about, Shepard,” the Salarian said, flatly. I shrugged.

“Right, sorry. Probably should have gone for a less provincial reference. It’s about the big ship though, isn’t it?”

They all shared one of their looking-at-each-other-and-subtly-shaking-their-heads moments.

“Why is it that whenever something like this happens you’re never far away?” The Turian asked. Not a lot I could say to that, really, he had me bang to rights.

“Just lucky I guess,” I said, tucking my thumbs into my trousers.

He looked like he was going to rise to this for a second, but then thought better of it and just grunted, giving the Asari a window to carry on.

“There is a time-sensitive task we have for you relating to this vessel,” she said, all smoothness.

“I do kind of have something on right now. Don’t know if I mentioned? Collectors? Kidnapping people? Coming from some hidden base the other side of a relay no-one ever comes back from?”

I had been over this with them when I’d been on the Citadel. It had kind of been a cornerstone of our conversation, in fact, them not wanting anything to do with it but them turning a blind eye to me helping Cerberus with it. I trusted they hadn’t forgotten.

“What you get up to in your spare time is your own business, Shepard, but a Council Spectre has certain responsibilities. Not the sort that you can opt out of because you don’t feel like doing them,” the Turian said.

Kind of regretting getting reinstated now.

Do Spectres have a pension? What’s my annual leave allowance like?

Sigh. Suppose he’s got a point though.

“How urgent is this exactly? Mean, are lives on the line?” I asked.

“Lives are always on the line, Shepard,” he practical growled at me.

Again, guess he’s got a point.

“An unidentified vessel of unknown affiliation and of considerable scale enters the orbit of a major world without warning, not passing any relays and apparently utilising some method of FTL travel that has never been seen before to arrive in the system entirely unannounced - we feel we have every right to be uncomfortable,” the Asari said.

“The last vessel of unusual origin to have made such a public arrival was Sovereign. I hardly need to remind you how that went, Shepard,” the Salarian chipped in.

“And this one is twice the size! If not more!” Udina said, probably just to get a word in.

“Size isn’t everything,” I said. Probably shouldn’t have said anything, in hindsight, but that’s hindsight for you. Very abrupt hindsight,

“Shepard…” the Turian said warningly. I held my hands up.

“I know, I know. Just saying. Though you do have to wonder why they’d need something that big, don’t you?”

Not even going to raise the fact that Jarrion had said that this particular ship was only a light cruiser and how he had also mentioned - off-hand - the existence of battleships that were apparently a little over seven kilometers long. Which was just excessive, really.

He’d said they were rare but still, you’re just showing off at that point, aren’t you?

“That this ship is seen to be crewed by humans - at least according to our reports - only serves as a further cause for concern,” the Turian went on to say.

“Does it now?” Udina asked.

“Apparently non-Alliance affiliated humans of unclear origin,” the Asari clarified for the Turian’s benefit. Nice of her.

“Thank you for your clarification,” Udina sniffed.

This was great and all, but it didn’t seem to be going anywhere.

“None of you have actually mentioned what it is you want me to do. Or am I meant to intuit it?” I asked.

They all shared another look. Did they communicate by thought or something?

“To put it bluntly, we want you to stall the vessel, or more specifically whoever it is who is in charge of it. Keep them on-planet and keep that vessel in orbit where we can see it and see what it is doing,” the Salarian said.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“The Citadel Council makes a point not to kid. An actual response is being organised to deal with the situation more formally but at this time you are the senior-most Council presence available, hence our asking you. And you have previous experience with the vessel, I believe?” The Asari asked.

For a second I was confused how they knew that, then it came back to me.

I had filed a report on the encounter and had submitted it once reinstated, feeling like it was the sort of thing that - if it came out I’d bumped into a massive, mysterious ship and not said anything about - might reflect poorly on me. I hadn’t expected anyone to actually pay attention to it!

“Ah. Read that report, did you?” I asked.

“We did. We may not have treated it with the gravity it required, in retrospect.”

Not exactly surprising. The report had been fairly light on detail. This had been deliberate on my part.

I’d figured that I was already known as the crazy lady who believed in ancient killer robots lurking in the darkness beyond the edge of the galaxy and just waiting to come shrieking back to murder us all and I could do without being known as the crazy lady who was also now raving about enormous ships maybe-from-the-future-maybe-not crewed by humans speaking an unrecognised language and the whole thing being generally unlike anything anyone had ever seen, prowling around the Terminus systems doing strange things.

It would just have made my life difficult.

So I had been light on detail. Just said unidentified vessel, human crew, origin unknown and then given the brief rundown our scans had shown on initial contact, just to be comprehensive. Then I’d packed the report up and later I’d sent it off and expected nothing much to come of it. And nothing much had come of it.

Until now, obviously. This is what I get for having my name attached to the thing. And for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Again. Story of my life.

Of course, I also knew that rumours about Jarrion’s ship had been bubbling up here and there recently without my help. Colonial blather, you know the sort of thing. Scattered in amongst the genuine calls for distress and tales of woe you usually get from the frontier you also get the ghost stories, the wonk, the conspiracy theories and the nonsense.

Jarrion’s ship had just been another of those, as far as anyone else was concerned. Nothing to take seriously, just colonists overreacting and seeing things and making things up to pass the time.

Again, until now.

“A little experience. He’s not a threat, least not as far as I’ve seen,” I said.

“He? You’ve had contact with the owner this vessel?” The Turian asked. Me and my big mouth.

“That wasn’t in the report?”

“You may have neglected to include that particular detail,” said the Salarian.

Silly me.

“My mistake. I’ve had some dealings with the captain in the course of my duties and, uh, other activities. He’s open to diplomatic overtures, not hostile. Seems kind of lost, if I’m being honest.”

Decided to leave out the part about the racism. It’s not exactly groundbreaking news and given that Jarrion wasn’t going around glassing non-human worlds - at least as far as I’d heard - it didn’t seem pertinent. Lots of people in the galaxy didn’t like the people who weren’t like their people. Nothing new under the sun.

The religiously-mandated hatred of aliens was kind of new. But not that new, come to think of it. We had some of that, too. Maybe not the borderline-theocracy he seemed quite eager to be getting back to but we did our best. Still not great.

“Do you know what, if any, organisation or entity the vessel is owned by?” Asked the Asari.

“Paramilitary, human organisations with scanty ethics and dubious, as-yet-unproven links to many corporate entities, perhaps?” The Turian asked, lightly.

Udina looked about set to rise to this - and defend Cerberus? Or humanity in general, maybe - but the Asari cut across with a glare at both of them and put a stop to anything before anything could even start. Probably for the best.

“Shepard?” She asked, turning back my way.

A fair question, given the size of the damn thing. This wasn’t the sort of ship you could easily make without someone, somewhere finding out about it, so it having just popped up truly was unusual.

Mean, hell, even one dreadnought is a divot in most economies, and this thing was eight times the mass, if not more. Made the Destiny Ascension look like a freighter.

In my head I pictured trying to explain all of the stuff to do with the Imperium that Jarrion had explained to me and which I’d deliberately left out of my report. I could not see it ending well. They’d probably just think I was taking the piss. I don’t have time for that, let someone else have to handle that.

“I believe it’s privately owned,” I said.

Given what I understood about Rogue Traders - which wasn’t a lot, I’ll admit - this was technically true? Could tell from the looks they were giving me they weren’t buying it, but not so much they were going to outright call me a liar. Hell, I wouldn’t have bought it either.

“Did he tell you where he acquired it?” The Salarian asked instead.

“I…”

Again, explaining this I’d have to go into the Imperium and how it had a navy and how it had apparently been a wrecked and refurbished vessel and, really, it just wasn’t worth going into. Not now.

“...he didn’t say. I’m sure your guys can ask him when they get here.”

Something of a collective sigh from the Council, who’d plainly, wordlessly decided, correctly, that I was being evasive and keeping things from them but didn’t trust me enough to be open with them. Didn’t I work for them? Guess they figured whoever they were sending would be less tiring.

I was kept around to shoot things and look good doing it. This right here was just because, as they said, I was in the right place at the right time. More fool me.

“I suppose they can. They should be with you sometime in the next few days, delays withstanding. As said, we would like you to keep the vessel - and its captain - where it is until then, and to do your best to ensure that relations remain pleasant and cordial,” said the Asari.

“Spectres are straightforward problem solvers, not make-nice handshakers,” I said.

The Asari’s eyes narrowed.

“Spectres are entrusted with preserving galactic stability. A strange vessel of unknown provenance appearing in the orbit of a major world for unclear purposes has a deleterious effect on this stability, particularly given the world in question’s economic importance. Very little spreads as fast as panic, Shepard. We must be seen to act while also acting effectively. You are there, and so we choose to act through you.”

Fair play.

As much as I disliked Illium I wasn’t dumb enough to say it wasn’t an important place, and if money dried up or even slowed a little that would trickle down to someone, somewhere finding their life that much harder and not being able to do anything about it and not even really knowing why.

Keeping this or that investor from panicking here would be keeping food in the mouths of others elsewhere. Not that I’m an economist or anything. I’m just not a big enough idiot to think these things don’t make a difference.

Big picture stuff. For want of a nail and all that. Pain in the arse. Goes with the job.

“Fine,” I said. “What do you want me to do, exactly? Just so we’re extra clear.”

“Nothing you don’t seem to have already done. Keep the ship from leaving Illium’s orbit and do not do anything that might offend its captain or its crew,” the Salarian said.

“Is there anything else you can tell us? Its capabilities?” The Turian asked.

I thought back to that Collector cruiser getting holed from prow to stern. Who knew what any of those other guns could do? Any of those many, many other guns the thing was encrusted with.

“Be glad it’s friendly?” I ventured.

A pause. I think they were trying to find the words.

“...as ever, these little talks do much to bolster our confidence,” the Asari said, eventually.

+++MEANWHILE, BACK ON ILLIUM+++

Second-hand starships, Jarrion had been very pleased to discover, could be acquired for surprisingly reasonable amounts. Private hangers on Illium could also be rented for quite reasonable amounts too, he’d learnt. Which was why Jarrion was in a hanger he’d temporarily rented, looking over the starships he’d more permanently bought.

They were a trio of what were apparently known as ‘Kowloon’ class freighters. Dinky little things - almost embarrassingly small for what was supposed to be an intra-system voidcraft, at least to Imperial eyes - but very well suited for what Jarrion had in mind, from the sound of things.

Simply put, the idea was just to take what certain colonies that he’d made contact with had but did not need and transport it to those other colonies that needed it and did not have it, with surplus and excess and whatever else remained delivered to Home Away From Home. Just trade routes, basically. Routine stuff, to be done routinely.

This was what the Assertive had been doing up until this point, a thorough misuse of a fine warship and no mistake, but Jarrion had had no option at the time. This was now to change, and he couldn’t be happier.

Home Away From Home was already seeing the benefits of all this extra material, too. The place was practical burgeoning, and with its manufacturing capabilities properly set up now and properly fed to boot, it was churning out quite the stream of Imperial goods, to be stockpiled mostly on the off-chance that the Assertive needed something, and sometimes to be traded, when the colonies felt the need to ask.

It turned out that, here and there, those colonists that Jarrion had made contact with had developed something of a soft spot for certain Imperial equipment. Tools and vehicles, in the main. What they lacked in sophistication they more than made up for in reliability, apparently; something that the colonists appreciated greatly.

A lot of vehicles objected to falling off of cliffs - not the ones that Jarrion was willing to sell them! Those ones just kept on going. And could run on anything, freeing up resources that could put to better use elsewhere. Out on the frontier that sort of economising was prized, it turned out. Who knew?

And of course, weapons were always welcome. Those colony-issue lasguns were very popular indeed, managing to top-out even the Avenger in terms of ruggedness while also possessing the undeniably irresistible novelty value of being an actual, bonafide lasergun.

But that was all niggling detail. Right then, in that hanger, Jarrion had immediate concerns, and it was those three freighters.

Jarrion had been assured up and down by the seller that all the ships were of exclusively human manufacture but he hadn’t got where he had in life by taking people at their word without verifying it himself, so he had had a small contingent of the Assertive’s tech priests brought down, accompanied by Magos Blix, to give the vessels the once over.

Why Blix and not Pak? Because Jarrion still did not trust Pak to keep their hands (and other grabby parts) to themselves, primarily. And because technically this venture with the freighters could be held up as an extension of House Croesus commercial enterprise, and therefore not something that strictly fell within Pak’s remit of the unusual and unexplored and thus something to be picked over.

Indeed, Pak did not even really want to be disturbed by all appearances, so engrossed were they in dissecting the various devices and other bits and pieces they’d collected. It was getting a little unnerving, actually. Jarrion would have expected a little less enthusiasm for the foreign and the unknown from a Magos.

Maybe Explorators really were as odd as he’d heard...

Jarrion felt he should probably have a look at the agreement that had let Pak onboard at some point. Just in case he was missing something vital. Not like he could do anything about it, it being a rather old House Croesus compact with the Mechanicus, but forewarned was forearmed and all that.

But later, later.

While Blix was coordinating and leading the examination of the ships, Jarrion himself was sitting off to the side of the hanger, drinking a cup of tea. The cup and attendant tea set - replete with luxurious self-heating teapot - the leaves and, indeed, the chair all having been brought down from the Assertive at his insistence.

He imagined the examination of the ships would take some time, and it wouldn’t do for him not to be present, he’d felt. This was a fairly risky investment, after all, and if turned out that local ships even of ostensive human make were of no use to him, well, then he wanted to be there to learn it.

So sitting and waiting and watching. And tea. Because sitting without a drink could be tiresome and, well, Jarrion liked tea from time to time.

But he did not particularly trust the local tea, if any even existed, and he liked the chair he was sitting on. It was blue. And while there were others available more easily, yes, there’d been a lighter coming down anyway, so why not?

“I must say, even in my wildest dreams I couldn’t quite have imagined the thrilling life a Rogue Trader leads,” said Loghain who, much to Jarrion’s aggravation, had been sticking quite close to him his whole time on the surface.

Indeed, she was his only real present company, Thale standing off somewhere keeping a very cautious eye on everything and Torian having taken leave to return to the Assertive to sleep. He was, after all, a very old man. And since he hadn’t been required anymore Jarrion had allowed it. He’d found the Seneschal’s constant huffing disapproval of the locals grating.

Jarrion didn’t like being here anymore than Torian did, he was sure, but that didn’t mean he wanted to be constantly reminded of it.

So it was just Jarrion and Loghain sitting and watching, now. And it had been for some time.

She had tea as well, and was doing her best to drink it as daintily as possible. She was doing this to mock Jarrion, and Jarrion was ignoring the fact she was doing this. Other than to acknowledge that she was doing it at all.

“The vast majority of anyone’s time, Inquisitor, is spent like this. Ninety percent of life is connective tissue that joins that single exciting percent to the next single exciting percent. What remains is usually spent asleep,” he said.

Jarrion was rather proud of this pithy little observation and made sure to stick his little finger out even more as he took another sip of tea.

“I could probably find a few people who’d disagree with you on that,” Loghain said, frowning.

“By all means go and find them right now. I could use the distraction.”

Not to mention the quiet her absence would provide.

“Unfortunately most of them are back in the Imperium, wherever that is relative to here. Whenever that is. So it’ll have to wait,” Loghain said, setting her cup down and leaning back a moment in her chair to stretch.

A pause.

“I have an honest question. Hypothetical, but honest,” she then said. Jarrion sighed.

“It’s very difficult to believe you understand what honest means,” he said.

“I’m being serious,” she said, and amazingly her tone actually made Jarrion believe it.

“Go on,” he said cautiously, eyeing her over the rim of his teacup.

With it so close to his face, Jarrion couldn’t help but remember that this particular teacup - indeed, the whole set - was bone china and the bone in question was that of a particular xenos species now extinct and which, indeed, House Croesus had helped render extinct. He tried, while still watching Loghai, to remember the name of the species. He couldn’t though. Hardly mattered, really.

The most significant part of them left now was the artwork on the cup depicting their final days and the more notable moments of their being wiped out. And the teacup itself, Jarrion supposed.

Certainly, the planet was long-since lost to history. Somewhere out there, very quiet and still.

“If - hypothetically, as I say - if we are stuck here, what are you going to do?” Logain asked.

Jarrion stared at her a moment longer then lowered the cup.

“I refuse to believe that that’s a possibility,” he said.

For someone with no eyes and a blindfold Loghain gave him a very impressively flat look.

“Kind of the point of a hypothetical is that you assume the given setup of the question just for the sake of argument,” she said. Jarrion took another sip before answering.

“I’m aware of what a hypothetical is, Inquisitor. I just don’t see much point in entertaining such defeatist fantasies. Whatever brought us here shall, through the effort of our fine friends the Mechanicus,” he gestured to the tech priests with his teacup. “Cease to be a mystery and, following this, a means of returning home shall be discovered. I have absolutely, unyielding confidence in this.”

And there, for him, the matter rested.

“So not even going to humour me?” Loghain asked.

“Not for a moment, no.”

Loghain stuck her tongue out him and Jarrion shook his head.

“Grow up,” he said.

In all honesty it just wasn’t something he even wanted to think about, because if such a dire thing were to happen it could only end badly, in his estimation, and he wasn’t going to allow himself to go down that particular mental road. Not until he was shown he had no other option.

Thankfully for Jarrion, further rumination or discussion was cut short by Blix, who came stomping over without warning.

“Can I help you, Magos?” Jarrion asked. He would have offered tea, but he was fairly certain that Blix didn’t have a stomach anymore. Or at least not in the conventional sense. Certainly, he was pretty sure that Blix would have nowhere to put the tea.

When Blix spoke, it came out in snapped bursts, the volume of which was enough to clip it out at the edges. A lesser man than Jarrion would have winced to hear it.

//transmission received//update: transition//tentative conclusions//data required//must return to confirm//

This took some unpicking for Jarrion, who groped after what the Magos could possibly be talking about before clocking the fact that Blix was likely referring to the very subject that he and Loghain had just been talking about, that of the efforts of the Assertive’s tech priests to investigate the circumstances of their arrival.

Or at least that was Jarrion’s best guess.

“Oh! Progress has been made, I take it? Good news?”

//tentative conclusions//projections indicate possibility of point of ingress remaining stable//must return to confirm//

Again, Jarrion had to work this out. He frowned, running it through in his head and he flinched in surprise as the light broke.

“Wait. You’re saying that whatever we came through is still there? We actually came through something? That we might have left behind us?”

Like, say, a tunnel.

//tentative conclusion//must return to confirm//data required//

“Return to...where we initially arrived?” Jarrion ventured.

He very, very, very dimly remembered the place in question - that it had been right in the orbit of a rather striking gas giant helped this. What had been its name? Ephrom? Nephros? He’d have to check.

But still!

//affirmative//

Jarrion sat in bewildered quiet a moment, his mind racing. What a turn up! If this wasn’t providence Jarrion didn’t know what was! Emperor be praised!

Couldn’t simply drop present business though. It’d be a waste of time and money and, since time was money, that was at least twice as much money as numbers would suggest on the face of things. And that would be unacceptable.

Ultimately that was the Emperor’s money, after all, and every bit of wasted needlessly an affront, so whatever was happening now had to be concluded. That was a given.

Once that was done and settled though, charting a course back to the spot in question shouldn’t be too difficult. Altrx seemed to have settled into the new rhythm of things quite nicely given his initial consternation and the fuss he’d kicked up to start with.

Indeed the Navigator had recently made a habit of pontificating at length any opportunity he had on the Very Important book he was going to be making on navigation in this Emperor-forsaken place. The first book of its kind! By default, really. But he still sounded very proud of the thing, even if it didn’t exist yet.

So going back wasn’t impossible. Indeed, it was quite the opposite. Doable, certainly doable.

And within a brisk timeframe, too.

Jarrion noticed that his hand was starting to tremble from the sheer joy of how perfect everything was and delicately put his teacup down.

“Marvellous! Continue with your work here and we’ll return to the Assertive and cast off shortly. My regards to the priests and their fine work,” he said, adding: “How are the freighters, just to ask? Suitable?”

///technology godless//barbarous//adequate for stated purpose//blessings required//

This was not a surprise to Jarrion, but it was pleasing to hear that he hadn’t wasted his money on something deemed immediately unacceptable.

Human-made though they may be - and he still doubted they were wholly that, given just how bloody chummy everyone here was - it wasn’t going to be Imperial subjects operating these vessels anyway, but locals (humans, obviously), to be found before they left. Had to be some loose-at-heel crew kicking about this planet, after all.

The inspection was more to make sure that the ships met a bare minimum standard to even be used for that. The spiritual pollution that might have come from condoning the use of something corrupt even in the smallest of degrees was a threat worth considering, as far as Jarrion saw, and things were already dicey enough as it was.

This, at least, he could have come level of control over.

“Good good. Well, carry on Magos,” Jarrion said, giving a nod that the Magos slowly, awkwardly returned before he turned and stomped off to rejoin his peers, a pair of tracked, thurible bearing servitors emerging from the lighter and trundling across the hanger to join him partway there.

Jarrion watched him go.

“Have one Magos who doesn’t talk at all and one who talks like that. You know, I think they do it just to be obtuse…” he muttered to himself before shaking his head and breaking into a wide smile, turning to Loghain.

“Well! Isn’t this the exciting development? And there was you ready to go off giving up hope, ‘hypothetically’! Ye of little faith! I’d say the Emperor is smiling on our work here, wouldn't you? Not only pouring success out upon my head but also giving us all a way home, too!”

Loghain was pouting exaggeratedly, arms folded.

“I think it’s because I mentioned it. Got everything moving again,” she said.

“Of course, Inquisitor,” Jarrion said, reaching to give her a condescending pat on the knee but - wisely - thinking better of it, instead trying a joke: “Have you ever heard how many Inquisitors it takes to change a light bulb?”

“Is this going to be the one about having the universe revolve around them?”

“Ah, heard it before, have you?”

“Once or twice.”

“Lord Captain,” said Thale, appearing at Jarrion’s elbow and making him jump. Even Loghain, psychic, was a little surprised. The man moved with a silence that seemed to extend further than it had any right to.

“Yes, Thale?”

“Commander Shepard is here to see you,” Thale said, tilting his head a little toward the back of the hanger, Jarrion leaning a little to see that, yes, she was stood waiting by the door, eyeing the armsmen posted there who, in turn, were eyeing her.

“Commander Shepard? How did-” Jarrion started to wonder aloud how she could have tracked him down but stopped. She was a woman of surprising means, after all, and it was hardly a secret where he was. Not important. “Of course, send her over,” he said. Thale nodded and moved back over to the hanger’s door, where Shepard was waiting.

In short order she came over. With a face like hers it was hard to tell whether she was happy or not.

“Hello again, Commander. Do you always leave your ship in full armour?” Jarrion asked, rising from his seat briefly just to shake her hand in greeting before sitting back down again. Politeness, in his experience, was always a worthwhile investment.

“My line of work, it’s just sensible, really,” Shepard said with a shrug, causing the many weapons across her body to clank. Jarrion beamed.

“I must say I know what you mean. Pays to be prepared at all times, doesn’t it?” He said, raising a cup to her good health.

Looking at him, sitting there in his fancy jacket, with his tea set and his gaudy rings, Shepard couldn’t be sure if he was taking the piss or not. She decided to assume he wasn’t and not to press the issue.

“Please please, sit. Tea?” Jarrion said, indicating a spare chair - for there was a spare chair, just in case - and moving to fill up one of the empty cups.

Briefly Shepard considered saying no, but then figured that it couldn’t hurt.

“Go on then,” she said, sitting, accepting a teacup a moment later.

“I am going to venture a guess and assume you’re not here solely for the pleasure of my company?” Jarrion said.

Shepard had a look at the rather colourful scenes of destruction and death on the side of her cup before taking a tentative sip. It wasn’t half bad, which was nice. She then sat back and sighed.

“You’re not wrong. Look, I’m going to be straight with you Jarrion. I’ve been sent in my capacity as an agent of the Citadel Council. Mostly because I’m the only one they had in the area. Had no idea this sort of thing was in the job description but there you go.”

“You’re being pulled in many directions, from the sound of things,” Jarrion said, thinking of the Collectors, though as far as he was concerned that particularly matter was closed. Mostly because what details she’d explained to him he’d halfway forgot.

Shepard let out a single, mirthless laugh. More of a sharp exhale, really.

“Little bit. Should be getting more members of the squad right now instead of this. Mostly my own fault. Basically I’m here to ask you nicely if you wouldn’t mind staying put for a day or two. Or the Council is asking you, through me.”

Jarrion raised an eyebrow.

“For a reason, one assumes?”

Shepard had some more tea. It was rather growing on her.

“They’re chasing up some bods to come and talk with you properly. Some sort of formal delegation, from the sound of things. Very official, you know.”

At this Jarrion frowned.

“Me? Why? I’m simply going about my business,” he said.

“Yes, but you’re going about your business in a ship that is, to put it politely, unreasonably large. It’s making some people nervous, and so they want to talk to you. In these parts a ship that size is not the kind of thing that you see every day. Or ever, actually.”

“Ah, so they’re coming to see if I’m a threat, is that it?” Jarrion asked.

“Well, mostly just to see who you work for and make nice with them through you. They see a huge ship, figure that it must be the product of someone with clout, want to find out how much clout, you know. Mostly they’ll be wanting to size you up and see if they can get something out of meeting you, probably. They won’t say that, obviously. They’ll be very polite about it all. But that’s basically it.”

Shepard was just guessing here, but it seemed believable enough.

Retrieving his cup and considering it a moment Jarrion thought about this.

“Taking a wild stab in the dark but I assume you haven’t informed them of the Imperium or my status as a Rogue Trader or any other such attendant details?” He asked, delicately. He got this impression.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Jarrion, but they already think I’m unsettled. I kind of felt that if I started trying to explain your particular situation then they might lose whatever lingering respect they had for me on account of me having saved their lives. That can only take me so far, and I’m already on thin ice because of the Reapers.”

“Ah yes, the Reapers. How is that going?” Jarrion asked.

He was passingly familiar, and felt it polite to express an interest.

“Right no it’s not going at all, which is good, but it’s going to happen, which is bad. I have other things, one thing at a time.”

Shepard finished the tea and set the cup back down, looking Jarrion hard in the face. Again, with a face like Shepard’s she didn’t really have many options other than a hard look.

“I have no idea what your plans are from here on out but if you want my advice I’d say sit and wait for the Council guys to show up, because it can only work out well for you to show that you’re not dangerous. It’ll be a pain having to sit through whatever song and dance they’ll cook up to make nice with you, but it’ll be worth it, Jarrion. It’ll just make life easier,” she said.

“Well, we’re all fond of making life easier,” he said with a smile.

“I know I am,” Shepard said, rising to her feet and giving Loghain - who had been completely silent this whole time - a goodbye nod, which the Inquisitor returned. Jarrion rose as well, to see Shepard off.

“You could have sent me a message to this effect, you know. I do value your input and am eminently contactable. We’ve rather got the hang of interfacing our communication systems with yours,” he said, walking alongside her as she started heading back towards the door.

“I was in the neighbourhood. The personal touch is always good,” she said.

“That it is, and I do appreciate it. Is this visit the limit of your engagement in this, then?”

“I do have other stuff to be getting on with. They probably want me to babysit you or shadow you or generally do whatever I feel is necessary to keep you on Illium but, really, do you need me to do that?”

They stopped just before the door, the armsmen standing stiffly to attention with the Lord Captain right there. Jarrion did not notice this.

“Ah, no. No thank you. While I myself have other ‘stuff’ to be getting on with I can certainly see the value in waiting to speak to these officials, as and when they arrive. A few days, you said?” He asked. Shepard nodded.

“A few days, yeah. That’s what they told me. Probably two at a push.”

Not the end of the world.

“Well then, that shouldn’t be too much. I have a few loose ends that require me to stay and tie them up anyway. These freighters, for one, and a crew for them for another,” Jarrion said, sweeping an arm toward the ships. Shepard glanced over.

“Those yours, then?” She asked.

“Yes, freshly acquired. All part of the plan, all going swimmingly. But I needn’t bore you with any of that, Commander. As you say, you have things you need to be getting on with.”

Shepard stared at the freighters - and more specifically the tech priests and the trundling, smoke-wafting servitors - for a moment but said nothing about them. More Imperial weirdness as far as she could tell. The less she knew the better.

“I do, yeah. You’ll probably hear gunfire at some point and if you do it’s probably me, so I wouldn’t worry about it too much. You stay out of trouble, alright?”

“Oh you know me, Commander! Practically allergic to trouble!” Jarrion said.

And with another handshake off Shepard went, Jarrion returning shortly to his seat.

“You were very quiet,” he said to Loghain.

“Didn’t want to interrupt you,” she said. He narrowed his eyes at her.

“That’s the kind of unusual behaviour that makes me worry.”

“You’re just agreeing to meet with the representatives of a non-human political body within earshot of an Imperial Inquisitor, I’m not sure what makes you think you have to worry about anything.”

“Hah. I’ll spare you the repeat of what a Rogue Trader does because I know you know,” Jarrion grumbled, settling deeper into his seat and thinking, staring into space.

More good business, as odious as it sounded.

Jarrion’s understanding of the Council was that it was composed of representatives of the more prominent species, which did mean aliens, though apparently humanity had recently been admitted. Still, that meant that - at a guess- their officials would be similarly composed. Which meant a trio of aliens at the least. And one human. Plus whatever aides and flunkies they felt the need to bring along.

And whatever rigamarole they felt they’d have to organise to keep him - an apparently unknown quantity - placated. If Jarrion’s experience was anything to go by he was looking at some sort of dinner event. These were the fallback option of everyone, because they were straightforward and gave ample opportunity for those involved to talk and gain the measure of one another.

In Jarrion’s experience.

He wasn’t going to have to eat alien cuisine, was he? In the name of diplomatic politeness? Jarrion did rather hope not. Some of the food he’d had to stomach in the colonies had been bad enough but there were hard limits.

He shook his head. No use worrying about that ahead of time.

“Well. That’s that then,” he said, breaking the silence that had descended between the two of them. “We’re going to be quite the busy bees in these coming days.”

“You are. I’m not obliged to do anything,” Loghain pointed out.

“No you’re not. But you’re going to insist on inserting yourself into proceedings anyway, aren’t you?” Jarrion asked.

“Obviously I am. It’s going to be a dinner or something, isn’t it? That they organise to give you a big, proper official hello? It’s always a dinner,” Loghain said, sounding almost as if she spoke from experience.

“Or a ball. But one imagines dinner is the easier option,” Jarrion said.

The thought really did not appeal. Even with humans those sorts of affairs were always less than edifying. With aliens it was going to be an exercise in patience and restraint. Exhausting.

He sighed, then slapped on a brave face.

“All for the greater glory of His Imperium, eh?”

The blessed duty of some servants to be able to kill aliens without being concerned with the consequences beyond the worry of running out of aliens to kill. His? Having to hobnob with them with a view to long-term gains, apparently.

For just a moment the wonderfully direct, simplistic approach his father had towards alien seemed very tempting, but then Jarrion remembered that he was not his father, nor was he his brother, and that he was rather proud of the fact. He liked to think he got better results.

Certainly, adjusted for scale, he was fairly certain he brought more money in to the family than his brother did. Not that father cared about raw numbers, of course. But Jarrion did, and he told himself that was what mattered.

Loghain wrinkled her nose.

“Odd definition of glory. Traditionally, glory doesn’t involve the aliens getting to walk away,” she said.

“Not all of us can sling a few torpedoes at a planet and call it a day, Inquisitor. Some of us work for a living and think at least a few weeks ahead,” Jarrion said.

“That was uncalled for.”

“Sorry. More tea?”

“Please.”

Chapter Text

+++ON ILLIUM, IN SOME HOTEL ROOM THAT CERBERUS IS PROBABLY PAYING FOR+++

I hate waiting. I hate knowing something is coming and having no option but just to sit and let it happen. I want to be doing something! Woman of action, that’s me.

Normally that’s easy. If there’s something that needs doing I can go and do it. Being a Spectre helped, obviously, but even before when it was the Alliance there’d always be something I could be getting on with.

But for this right now I’ve got nothing. There is literally nothing I can do. I am waiting for VIP’s to show up so I can wait around some more while they hobnob. Could leave, but I’d get yelled at, and frankly that’s more trouble than it’s worth.

Can’t even go back to the Normandy because today is the day they’re meant to be showing up and there’s not much point in shuttling up only to shuttle straight back down again. So here I sit, racking up the minibar bill and glaring out the window.

And yes I’m on a schedule here - Collectors and all that - but yes it’s only a day or two which isn’t really cutting into anything I was planning on doing. Assassin still needs picking up but apparently the window on that isn’t quite right yet, so I can’t even go to that until I’m told the moment is right. So I got nothing. It’s just annoying.

And for what? So the Council can meet and greet some guy?

Suppose I’m not treating it with the gravity it deserves being as how I already know him, but they’re really not going to be getting a lot out of this. And yet still all this fuss.

Wish they were this bloody proactive about the Reapers. One of them did show up. He was kind of hard to miss. You’d have thought that might have got a response, but no. Maybe Sovereign could have just hung in orbit for a bit not doing anything and then sent Saren to swan about in a fancy jacket. Would have been helpful. That way people might have paid attention.

Urgh.

They all probably have their own agendas, probably, these Council guys. Probably all mutually exclusive, probably all pretty shortsighted. All angling to be the ones coming out on top somehow. However that’s even supposed to work with Jarrion. It’ll all come to nothing, I’m sure, and this whole thing’ll just be an expensive waste of time.

Cynicism about politics never gets old.

On the plus side, the time it took for the Council bods to arrive did give me a chance to chase down another member for my super crew, Samara! Woman of prodigious biotic talents and quite frankly ludicrous neckline. Seriously, that thing is the worst shot trap I’ve seen in my life but she can do what she likes, I suppose. Like not wear a helmet.

Why does no-one but me seem to want to wear a helmet? I’d have thought that having the contents of your head splattered over the nearest wall would have been an obstacle in the execution of justice but what do I know.

At this point, thankfully, something broke my train of thought and that was the hotel’s dinky little comm system blinking a light at me. I blinked at the comm system in return and then reached over to it.

“Yes?”

“Miss Shepherd, there’s a man here at front desk asking for you. He says he’s here on Council business - his credentials pass. Would you like to come and see him in the hotel lounge or - ?”

‘Miss Shepherd’.

I want to throttle whatever Cerberus agent thought that was an ironclad incognito name. You changed two letters! And called me fucking miss! Why did they even need to bother? Given that I had someone here to see me plainly it had been a complete waste of time!

I think they’re just messing with me...

“Just send him up,” I said, adding: “Thanks.”

Not their fault they had to work in a hotel.

And this way I could slam my door in the guy’s face after hearing whatever asinine reason they had to visit me here, all without having to leave the comfort of my chair. Probably coming to brief me or something. Fantastic.

I waited some more, little more tense this time, and was rewarded a minute or so later by the chime telling me someone was outside. Joy.

Well, best to greet whoever this tosspot was face-to-face. I often find that my faces serves as a pretty good introduction all on its own, and one that often puts people in a receptive mood to either cooperate pleasantly or fuck off, depending on how best the situation is to be resolved.

I reach the door, I wave a hand at the panel, the door opened and there stood-

“Anderson! You big bastard, you! Fancy seeing you here!”

He smiled, I smiled, we shook hands. It was probably the nicest thing to happen in days.

“Good to see you, Shepard,” he said.

The handshake broke and I stood back and to one side.

“Come in, come in! Sit down. Impressive timing on your part, I was waiting for someone from the Council to come up and see me. Once I’ve got rid of them we can talk.”

“That would be me,” he said, not sitting.

The door closed behind him. I frowned, looked him top to bottom.

“Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but you don’t actually technically work for the Council so - and don’t take this the wrong way, I’m glad you’re here - why are you here? On Illium, I mean.”

“That’s a good question. The blunt answer would be politics. Alliance has me advising Udina. Udina tells the Council that I’d be a good representative of humanity for this. Udina is happy I’m out from under his feet. Council is happy that Udina isn’t kicking up a fuss - though ‘happy’ for them might be pushing it. Alliance is happy that it has eyes on the situation. Everyone is happy,” he said, taking a moment to smooth a crease on his uniform.

“Are you happy?” I asked.

“Everyone who matters is happy,” he said, by way of clarification.

Sounded about right.

I clucked my tongue and shook my head, moving over to the window to stand and look out. Anderson joined me there, and we both stared at Illium’s frankly unnecessary amount of aerial traffic. Sun was starting to go down, too.

“Kind of surprised the Council would sign off on having an Alliance admiral be the one flying the flag for humanity in this,” I said.

“Well, the Alliance represents humanity on the Council so it’s not too much of a stretch. That, and if they did take issue with it then they might have had to defend their own choices on who they sent.”

One of those situations where everyone is breaking the rules to the extent that no-one wants it pointed out or mentioned, like some sort of politically awkward house of cards. Or everyone had gone to take a piss and forgotten to tuck in and zip up and it was just easier to pretend it hadn’t happened than go through the awkwardness of calling attention to it.

Kind of an odd image but I like to think it fits.

“Ah. Right,” I said.

More car watching for a second or so.

“Guess you know what the plan is then? For this thing?” I asked.

“Formal dinner. Get to know. Get the measure of.”

Fucking of course it is.

“Figures. I’m probably going to have to get dressed up, aren’t I?”

His turn to look me up and down. Me who hasn’t taken her armour off in, what, a day now?

“Wouldn’t hurt,” he said, attention returning to the view outside.

“Urgh…”

Hope I had something not outwardly affiliated with Cerberus I could put on. The wardrobe I’d been provided with was pretty limited. And not in the sense there wasn’t a lot of options - though there weren’t - but more in the sense that everything they’d provided was about as subtle as hanging a sign off my neck that read ‘I work for Cerberus! Ask us about how much we like to experiment on sapient beings’.

I understand that Cerberus wants to take itself super seriously and does have, you know, military origins and all that, but you’d think that a clandestine, widely-loathed and - let’s face it - borderline-terrorist organisation would be less free-and-easy with just slapping its logo onto everything.

Hell, that (admittedly rather nifty) assault armour they got for me has even got the thing stamped on its fucking forehead. Subtlety thy name is not Cerberus, apparently. Surprised it’s not on the bloody teacups.

Maybe it is and I just blocked it out…

“I’ll find something,” I said. He nodded, then he turned my way properly - signal for an actual conversation to start, so I turned as well.

“What can you tell me about this ship and its Captain? Jarrion, was it?” He asked, no preamble. To the point. Knew there was a reason I liked this man.

“You guys not read the report?”

“Oh we all had to read the report but I couldn’t help but notice it was a little light on the details. Couldn’t help but feel that was on purpose on your part.”

“Picked up on that, did you? The details are ridiculous, and I’ve got enough trouble being taken seriously as it is. Killer robots from beyond the stars is one thing, this would be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.”

“I’ll find out myself soon enough. Bottom line it for me Shepard: Is he a threat?”

Had to think about that one for a moment.

“...no. He’s dangerous in that big ship of his but he’s not a threat. He’s got his own thing going on.”

“Which is?”

“Trading, apparently. Family business from what he told me,” I said, shrugging.

“Some family,” Anderson said, glancing to the window again, maybe on the off-chance he’d catch sight of that whacking great ship, still up there. Mostly you couldn’t and mostly those who said they could see it were just imagining things. But in the right light…

Seriously, who needs a spaceship that big? How do you make a spaceship that big? Why would you need it? And it’s a light cruiser?

“Yeah. Look Anderson, I am not going to be able to do the explanation justice, just wait until you get to talk to the guy yourself, you’ll see. My position is that the more he’s worried about the more likely something bad is to happen. Just leave him to, I don’t know, make some money. But keep an eye on him all the same, just in case.”

Seemed sensible to me.

Andrerson nodded to himself, taking what I’d said on-board.

“On a different though related noted you wouldn’t happen to know anything more about these laser weapons coming out of the Terminus systems, would you?” He then asked.

That caught me off-guard I’ll admit and my eyes did flick over to my own personal lasergun, sat in the corner. Should probably have done a better job of hiding that.

“Uh...maybe...why do you ask?”

“Intelligence - and what you’ve said - suggests that Jarrion has been trading weapons to human colonists in the Terminus systems. A lot of these weapons then get traded on or lost or stolen and are starting to show up further afield,” Anderson said.

“That doesn’t sound good,” I said.

“It’s not good or bad, it just is. The Alliance has some, which is good. So do some mercenaries, according to reports, which is bad. Though I doubt they’re making much effort to replicate them, unlike the Alliance.”

“How’s that going?”

“Slowly, from what I hear, but then it’s not my project.”

I should probably give them some notes, shouldn’t I? Get EDI to pass something helpful along. If the Alliance is working on them that means by now Cerberus’ll have two working prototypes and be busy working the kinks out by shooting prisoners in the head and measuring what’s left.

I don’t really want anyone to start getting their hands on this Imperial stuff but it seems that horse has bolted so best face the music, eh?

Bloody Jarrion. I mean, it was inevitable that this sort of thing was going to happen, but so quickly? We have enough on our plate without some random, outside-context problem coming in and throwing a spanner in the works.

Though, actually, come to think of it, now I mention it…

What was it that Sovereign had said? Something to do with everything we’d made stemming from technology they’d left specifically for us to work from? By using the Mass Relay technology we all develop the way they wanted us to?

Sorry, rather, BY USING IT, YOUR SOCIETY DEVELOPS ALONG THE PATHS WE DESIRE. Ahem.

We might have blown the guy to bits but the point remains, he wasn’t wrong. You can’t really argue with the results given the stuff all works, true and hell, firing a piece of metal is going to hurt no matter how you do it, but we kind of do play right into their big metal tentacles, don’t we? They know the ups and down of everything we can do and they can do it better than we ever could.

Like trying to beat someone at a game they’d invented the rules to, where one of the rules is also that they don’t really have to play by them if they don’t want to. How much damage had Sovereign soaked up again? And that had been a fleet unloading on him. And even then...

Jarrion and his lot, though, they’ve got stuff from somewhere else completely, a whole different direction. All of their tech looks completely out of left field to me. And not just the lasers. I’m pretty sure I saw Pak with some kind of gun that set a Collector on fire. Hell, not even that, they burst into flames.

And then there’s the huge spaceship that gets around without Relays and has some sort of...beam...cannon thing on the front that cored out that Collector ship like it was made out of pink wafer.

What else might they have?

Why didn’t I think about this before?

Put a pin in that. Something to think more about later. Definitely something to press Jarrion on. I’m going to have to talk to the guy anyway, right? And the guns are already out there so clearly he’s not that concerned, right? Mean, he gave me that pistol, right?

“Shepard?” Anderson said, bringing me back to the present with a bump. I shook my head.

“Sorry, miles away. Just thinking. When is this thing actually meant to happen, anyway?”

“In three hours time.”

“Fuck me! Council doesn’t half like short notice, does it?”

-

+++MEANWHILE, IN ORBIT, ABOARD THE ASSERTIVE+++

Jarrion was sitting happily in one of his rooms, dictating a list of equipment, material and personnel he felt he was likely to need once a safe and reliable route home had been confirmed. Which it would be, obviously. Providence decreed it to be so, the Emperor was smiling on him!

“Oh! And modular habitats. The kind that can be easily dropped from orbit, ah, what was their name, we have that one we favoured…” he said while the servo-skull dutifully scratched down every single word verbatim. Someone would have to edit it down later for clarity. Probably Torian. Was his job after all.

He tapped a finger to his chin, tried to remember the name of those habs, but it didn’t come to him.

“Ah well. I’ll look it up later,” he said, waving it off, still cheerful. He hadn’t stopped being cheerful since hearing of the way back home, in fact. He just couldn’t help himself.

His mind was positively buzzing with the possibilities. Assuming it worked flawlessly - and he did not allow himself the weakness of imagining any other outcome - then it would be a gamechanger. No longer having to operate as though cut off from all resupply! The ability to take greater risks! To plan more fully, knowing he had full access to his family resources, or at least those he was allowed access to.

Those he could access without arousing undue familial suspicion…

Just think! Right now he was trading in trinkets and basics, whatever the Assertive’s limited manufacturing capabilities could produce. Now he could bring through proper equipment! Material he had no access to here! Oh! The markets! The opportunities!

And the manpower! He’d been having to stretch his crew thinner and thinner across his various holdings, or else relying on local labour, much of which was (infuriatingly) alien. Finding human crews for those local ships hadn’t been as easy as he might have liked.

Things were only looking up. Jarrion saw no problems in his future whatsoever. Nothing could possibly disrupt what he had in mind. Everything was going beautifully.

Then came the ring of a bell, signalling that someone from the bridge was attempting to contact him.

Train of thought thoroughly derailed Jarrion swallowed his irritation and got up to answer.

“Yes?”

“Lord Captain, we’re being hailed from the surface.”

“Ah! That’d be news about this Council meeting, no doubt! Can you put it through to me here?”

Further progress in getting Imperial and local systems to talk to one another had made what would have been awkward days ago now only slightly tricky.

“Yes Lord Captain, one moment.”

There followed a pause as connections were made, after which Jarrion was informed of the details much as Shepard had been, albeit at somewhat greater length and with more deferrence, as befitted someone who was ostensibly the invited guest. Jarrion listened, took note and confirmed attendance.

All simple stuff. He then sent word for Thale, Loghain, Altrx and Torian to meet him in his quarters.

Thale was first, but not by a whole lot - Loghain arrived so quickly it was almost she’d been standing poised, waiting. After that it was just a question of waiting for Torian who arrived a fair few minutes later, puffing and wheezing and accompanied by Pak, who’d apparently overheard the request for Torian to come and decided to invite themselves along.

Irritating, but worse things had happened.

Last to arrive was Altrx, who looked like he’d just woken up. This was because he had just woken up.

“Come in, come in, take a seat,” Jarrion said, taking his visitors in the first room of his quarters, the receiving room, one of only two rooms that any guests to his personal quarters were likely to see. Loghain, Altrx Torian were the only ones to actually sit though, Torian with great relief and Loghain with kind of glee that came from sitting in what was plainly a very old, very expensive chair. Altrx just sat, for his part. Thale and Pak elected to remain standing, which Jarrion could respect, and so he started:

“Word from our friends from down below. This little diplomatic event is indeed going to be a dinner - as I rather suspected - and it is going to be happening in a few scant hours. Now I know this might seem trifling but this is, in fact, rather important. This is our first point of proper, official contact with the Council and so while this won’t be the definitive establishing moment of our relationship with them - a very major player in the galaxy in which we now find ourselves - it will certainly set the tone, and I wish to start as we mean to go on: politely, as respectful associates. Are you all following this?” Jarrion said, all in his Rogue Trader voice, hands behind his back.

There came nods from all present bar one.

“Wait, could you repeat that? I lost you after ‘Word from our’,” Loghain said, but Jarrion ignored her and turned to Altrx instead.

“Altrx, you’re under no obligation to attend, of course, but I felt I should extend the invitation to you.”

“Dinner with xenos? I don’t know what you Rogue Traders call a good time but I’d sooner stick my head out the window,” Altrx said.

“Eloquently put,” said Jarrion.

This was the answer that Jarrion had been expecting, of course, and he was glad to receive it. Common wisdom stated that the Navis Nobilite could get quite famously upset if they felt they were being left, so it always paid to check. Another box ticked, another hoop jumped through. Jarrion continued, addressing everyone now:

“We don’t wish to impose upon their hospitality and I’d personally rather keep this small and brief, which brings me to why I called you here. It’ll be myself, Thale-”

“Me,” Loghain interjected.

“-and the Inquisitor,” Jarrion sighed. He knew he’d invited her but it was still depressing.

And then Pak raised a hand to where there mouth would have been and let out a brief, garbled burst of static, a fair substitute for clearing one’s throat and which Jarrion hadn’t expected. He looked over at the Magos and found them staring in a way that, had they had an actual face, would have looked expectant.

“You - you want to come as well, Pak?” He asked.

Pak nodded. Jarrion swallowed.

Ideally Jarrion wouldn’t have had to take any member of the Mechanicus, but that unfortunately wasn’t an option. Or at least it wasn’t anymore.

Keeping Pak confined to ship had been the sensible option while Rogue Trader business had been being conducted and he’d had a good excuse then, but now this was a proper, formal meeting between agents of the Imperium and, according to whatever Byzantine rank arrangement they had, Pak outranked Blix and so was the one who was angling to tag along and represent Mechanicus interests, such as they were, and such as they were entitled to.

What possible benefit a tech priest could gather from attending a formal dinner was unclear. Jarrion had the distinct impression Pak was just taking the first available opportunity to get off the ship, make a nuisance of themselves and maybe also swipe something when nobody was looking.

Not that Jarrion could do anything about it, as said. As with the Navigators, it paid to keep the Mechanicus on-side, and so shutting Pak out would just cause more problems. Sulking would only be the start, Jarrion was sure.

There was one thing he had to at least try to soften, however.

“But of course, by all means. We do value the Mechanicus’s contribution to the House and to the Imperium, But, ahem, now Pak,” Jarrion said, delicately. “I don’t wish to impose but this is a formal, diplomatic function and the first meeting between ourselves and proper representatives of the largest political entity in the present galaxy so if I could be so bold as to perhaps, maybe ask you look your most, ah, presentable? First impressions and all that?”

Pak continued to stare silently for a moment before abruptly turning on their heel and stomping off.

“Something I said?” Jarrion asked, now feeling a touch nervous.

“Oh you know these Tech Priests. So touchy,” Loghain said.

In many ways she wasn’t actually wrong, but that was by the by. Jarrion would deal with that particular issue - whatever the issue was - shortly.

“Yes well, anyway. This is meant to be a friendly, important meeting so best behaviour from all three of us and no obvious weaponry, please,” he said, most of this being directed Thale’s way.

“I’ll keep it subtle, Lord Captain,” said Thale, getting a nod of approval from Jarrion.

“Excellent, excellent. That’s about the long and the short of it. Us three, looking our best, acting our best, meet in the lighter bay in an hour for immediate departure. Torian?”

“Yes, Lord Captain?”

“You shall have the Assertive in my absence.”

“Yes, Lord Captain,”said Torian, who seemed to spend half his life using only those three words with slight variations in intonation.

And so it was. In short order Jarrion was down in the lighter bay watching the cleanest of the lighters being prepped for launch, fingering the head of the cane he’d chosen just to add a bit of flair.

Thale had already been in the bay when Jarrion had arrived, looking a little uncomfortable crammed into what Jarrion guessed might have been a dress uniform from the Guard, just not Thale’s as the fit really wasn’t there. Not that it was slowing the man down any. He was still there, still glancing about like he always did, looking to be about half a second away from killing everyone in the room if the situation called for it.

Loghain had appeared not long after Jarrion either and insisted on hanging by his elbow while he stood and checked his chronometer and eyed progress on the lighter. At the least she was keeping quiet, for which Jarrion could only be thankful.

That did leave the lingering question of Pak and whether it had been a strop they’d stormed off in, or something else.

Fortunately though the Magos had actually gone to make themselves presentable, as asked. In the event, ‘presentable’ meant cleaner robes with a natty, white, cog-toothed trim around the hem and sleeves and a rather unnerving, blank-faced brass mask to cover up the profusion of grilles, lenses, tubes, pipes and scattered patches of grey flesh that typically composed Pak’s - well, ‘face’ would be being generous.

It was probably the best that Jarrion could hope for.

Once arrived in the lighter bay Pak even gave an arms-spread turn on the spot - a very exaggerated, theatrical arms-spread turn on the spot - that practically screamed ‘Is this acceptable to you?’

“Much better Pak, thank you,” Jarrion said with a great swell of relief, Pak stalking off towards the lighter, those armsmen who’d been selected to accompany the trip down and guard the thing parting to let the Magos through.

“You didn’t seem concerned about how I look,” Loghain said.

“You look fine,” Jarrion said, not looking. He heard Loghain huffed in what he hoped was an exaggerated fashion.

“I don’t think you’re giving me enough credit. I’m blind, remember. And on a ship without a wardrobe of my own. I think I’ve done very well.”

That got Jarrion’s attention and he looked at Loghain properly for the first time since they’d arrived in the bay. Gone was the mock-Astropath getup she had initially shown up and typically favoured, replaced instead with something alarmingly similar to what he himself was wearing, albeit with her rosette pinned quite brazenly on her chest.

He’d have accused her of breaking into his quarters and taking his clothes only the outfit was very plainly cut and sized specifically for her, which at the least meant she hadn’t stolen from him. She was just mocking him.

“...where did you get those clothes?” He asked.

“See? Now I’ve got your attention,” Loghain said, tapping her nose.

Jarrion shook his head and decided to pretend none of that had happened and to ask no further questions. That way madness lay. Or, alternatively, paranoia and more unhelpful answers.

“You look fine, Inquisitor,” he said. “Perfectly adequate.”

“Kindest thing you’ve said to me.”

-

+++BACK ON ILLIUM, ONE LIGHTER TRIP LATER+++

Given the short-notice under which this whole shindig had been organised things had come together surprisingly well. And with no slip ups either, thankfully. No napkins being sent to the wrong place today, not at all. Everything went perfectly smoothly.

Illium had experience in hospitality - what with the surfeit of big, important companies requiring big, important luncheons and fully-catered seminars and sales meetings and so on and so forth - and so the sudden requirement of a venue and food for this sort of thing was but the work of a moment, if you knew the right people.

And the Council had known the right people.

The place was just one of hundreds of corporate function venues, albeit towards the higher end. Outfitted with the finest in generic, uninteresting, bulk-produced art and uninspiring looking greenery in waist-high planters it was every dead-eyed executive’s dream venue - you could hardly ask for somewhere more lacking of character, soul or warmth.

And of course, given the highly valuable topics of discussion often undertaken by corporate types at these events, the very fabric building itself was practically bulging with the latest and greatest in counter-snooping and anti-eavesdropping technology - a veritable faraday cage it was, utterly bug-proof.

The only way anyone on the outside was going to be able to listen in on what was happening on the inside was if they managed to sneak someone in there to do it for them.

Jarrion was met at the pad his lighter had landed on by a Council functionary, an Asari. They had decided - inaccurately, though they weren’t really to know - that an Asari would do well at putting an unknown visitor at ease. She did not, but Jarrion hid this fact well and was all smiles. He even shook her hand, seeing as how he’d remembered to wear gloves this time.

It was then a trip in a brace of aircars to their destination. None of the Imperials appreciated this, finding the aircars far, far too quiet for their liking, not giving any indication that they were actually functioning as they were meant to. That, and the drivers were aliens. They were all thoroughly glad to arrive.

There was - as there always is - a drinks-and-nibbles prelude to the actual dinner, the primary intent of which was for introductory mingling.

That had been the idea at least, but that was not what was happening, as the Imperials remained clustered together and stood apart from the Council people, who, having experience of these sorts of functions, did a very good job of talking amongst themselves and not acting as though this was all very awkward.

The Council people outnumbered the Imperials by a far margin too, which was unhelpful. Everyone had brought an entourage, it seemed, with the Alliance’s single man coming across as rather frugal by comparison. It begged the question of what any of them might be there for.

Moral support?

Shepard was the only one present availing herself of the food on offer, finding the whole thing wasteful otherwise and unable to fight off the habit of always eating whenever eating was an option. If she had deeper pockets and not witnesses she likely would have put some of the canapes away for later.

As it stood, she just methodically worked her way through the trays, unconcerned.

Seeing this, Jarrion abandoned the others and sauntered over. She was a familiar face, at least, if not what anyone would call a typically friendly one.

“Fancy seeing you here, Commander,” he said, sidling up beside her and casting an eye over what nibbles remained. Nothing appealed.

Shepard swallowed.

“Hello Jarrion,” she said, before looking back to see that, yes, everyone was still standing apart in groups just like they had been when she’d started eating. “Glad to see this is off to a great start.”

“Heh. Quite. I do hate these things. One imagines that everyone does but simply puts up with out of politeness by imagining that they’re the only one,” Jarrion said.

“Well I can tell you that you’re not alone on this one, Jarrion, I hate this too. Would much rather be doing something else,” Shepard said as she swiped a drink from the tray of a passing waiter.

“As would we all, Commander. Must say I am rather surprised you’re here at all. This doesn’t seem like a productive use your time.”

Shepard had been about to actually drink her drink but this state brought her up short.

“I know, right? I could be recruiting an assassin right now. But apparently this constitutes a part of the job as Spectre. Could have fooled me! Oh well”.

She then knocked her drink back and, while swallowing, pointed with the hand holding the now-empty glass.

“That Pak?” She asked.

Jarrion looked at where she was pointing and she was indeed pointing at Pak who was stood stock-still, staring into space. It was a little unnerving. But at least they were at least cleaner than they usually were - no oil this time.

“Hmm? Oh, yes, that would be Pak.”

“They scrub up nicely.”

“Nicely enough at least. Thank the Emperor for small mercies. If I hadn’t invited them they would have been frightfully upset and now I have invited them look - just standing there, doing nothing, talking to no-one. Mechanicus...”

He tailed off and looked again at the fingerfood. What, exactly, made a meal an alien meal? It couldn’t be the ingredients - he’d had food grown on scores of different planets, so that didn’t count. So was it the recipe? And if human hands prepared human-grown food in an alien way, was that an alien meal, or a human meal?

Probably best to err on the side of caution and just assume alien, Jarrion felt. So no nibbles.

The actual dinner would be bad enough, he was sure.

“You into arms dealing now, I hear?” Shepard said, snapping him back to the moment. He had to take a second to process what she’d actually said, given he hadn’t been paying attention to it.

“Not that I’m aware of, Commander,” Jarrion said, frowning.

“Not handing out lasers to colonists, then?” Shepard asked, taking another drink from the same waiter who’d just finished doing a circuit of the room.

It still took Jarrion a second, but then he twigged it.

“Oh, that. Hardly arms dealing! Those lasguns are a small part of what we’re trading out in the Terminus systems. It’s a tough life, colonial life, always need all sorts of things! I’ve positioned myself as something of, shall we say, cheaper and more reliable alternative? Proving rather popular.”

“I’d say so. Those lasers of your are popping up all over, now.”

“Is that right? I shall have a word with some of my trading partners next time I see them, sort it out,” Jarrion said. He was not concerned. Annoyed in the low-level way he expected he’d be annoyed when he heard of this happening, but not concerned. It was inevitable and, really, couldn’t possibly be an issue. Barely rated as an issue.

Just some lasguns.

“That wasn’t meant as a jab, by the way. Everyone’s got a make a living, right? And if you’re into arms dealing I could probably connect you to some people,” Shepard said.

“Oh no, no. I’m hardly set up for that. And these lasguns are mere trifles - colonist weapons! Not suitable for anything else, I assure you,” Jarrion said.

Shepard could have pressed the issue - pointing out that Jarrion’s ship was practically encrusted with guns that there would be no shortage of people interested in having a look at and then even stuff he considered basic would be valuable if only from a research perspective alone - but there’d be a time for that.

For his part, Jarrion was happily thinking to himself of the lucrative markets available once he’d brought some propers arms manufacturing equipment back from home. If civilian-issue lasguns were popular enough to be worthy of note, what would the denizens of this galaxy make of actual, military-grade Imperial armaments?

And how much would they be willing to pay him for them?

“How is business, anyway? Engaging in a little aggressive expansion?” Shepard then asked, casually.

“Nothing quite as exciting as that, Commander, I assure you. Nothing especially interesting,” Jarrion said.

“Hmm,” Shepard said, pitched to just the right tone that it was flagrantly obvious she was more likely to believe what she heard from someone else than from Jarrion. Jarrion was wounded. He’d thought they were friends!

Or, if not friends, at least acquaintances. And given how big space was that counted for more than it normally did, in his opinion.

“Emperor’s honest truth Commander, I’ve simply been doing business, that’s all. Does that sometimes hit a rough patch here or there, given the rather unsavoury characters known to inhabit the area of space within which I operate? Maybe, maybe. Rest assured I’ve done my best to comport myself as politely as possible, where possible. Be glad my brother wasn’t the one who ended up here!” He said, briefly putting his hands up in the sign of the Acquilla, something that Shepard vaguely remembered the significance of but still found a little strange to see.

“I think you’ve mentioned him before. I’m kind of getting the impression you’re not that fond of him,” she said.

Jarrion smiled, but lopsided.

“He is - well, family is always a little awkward, isn’t it? There’s always issues. My family’s issues just happen to occur on a somewhat larger scale than most. And and I have never, ah, seen eye-to-eye, shall we say?”

This was another of those occasions where Jarrion was telling the truth in the same way that sticking your toe into the shallow end of the swimming pool could be considered getting into it.

Further small talk was forestalled by a large set of doors toward one of the room opening up and a gaggle of waiting staff coming through. Beyond the doors a lot of laid tables lay.

“Ah, looks like it’s about time things are set to start. Best get on with it, eh? Sooner started, sooner finished and all that,” Jarrion said, smoothing out some braid and sweeping some crumbs from his jacket. He wasn’t even sure how they’d got there.

Shepard - who had been reaching for one last piece of what seemed to be an awful lot like an Asari version of sesame prawn toast - decided against it and pulled her hand back.

“You know, I still thought this kind of thing would have been right up your street,” she said as Jarrion and her started wandering slowly towards the doors, along with everyone else. Jarrion raised an eyebrow.

“Whatever makes you think that?” He asked.

“Lot of pomp and circumstance. Lot of talking. Everyone in nice uniforms,” Shepard elaborated, gesticulating. Jarrion leaned in, mock-conspiratorial.

“To be perfectly honest with you, Commander, I’ve always detested events such as these. Always preferred action to talking, myself.”

“Could have fooled me.”

Jarrion clasped a beringed hand to his bosom.

“Oh! I am wounded. But no, talking is a form of action, you see? Or can be. Can be a means to an end, a way of achieving goals! As much a tool as violence, in the right hands. The problem is that at events such as these it is, more often than not, none of these things, sadly. A lot of sound and fury signifying nothing, in the main. And one has to be on the lookout for what people aren’t saying and what they are listening out for. What’s hiding behind what they’re putting on show, the questions they’re really asking behind the questions they’re actually asking. It’s all rather tiresome. But, such is life.”

They paused in the doorway. The Imperials were all already sat, clustered together, one spare seat left for Jarrion. The various Councils persons were, with their crews, still sitting. There was a gap next to Anderson - this wasn’t actually meant for Shepard, but it was going to be for Shepard.

“Such is our life, at least,” she said, wondering briefly what the Reapers might be up to at that exact moment.

Chapter Text

And so to dinner.

The tables, being exceedingly modular, had been setup in such a way so that all present and attending could talk across at one another as easily as possible. Which is to say a circle, more or less. After all, free and casual dialogue and the opening up of lines of communication was rather the point of the whole affair.

Or the main point, at least.

The Imperials were all arranged in a neat row, starting with Pak, then Thale, Jarrion and ending with Loghain. All the others filled in the spaces of the circle. The human contingent - Anderson and Shepard and no-one else - was sat across and opposite, meaning that the Imperials were flanked on both sides by aliens, Salarians on Pak-side, Asari by Loghain and then Turians until Shepard and Anderson, lopping around through the Salarians and so on and so forth.

Thrilling stuff.

This was not an arrangement that any of the Council-affiliated persons had really put a lot of thought into, beyond each of them thinking that whatever position the other one wanted was some sort of veiled jab or ploy which had led to a bit of jockeying, the only thing the non-humans had been able to agree on (silently) being that Anderson and Shepard should be sat away from the other humans, to avoid whispering and collusion.

For the Imperials the whole thing was monstrously uncomfortable.

Or should have been. Loghain was brushing it off like it was nothing, Pak was as inscrutable and as silent as ever, Thale could look comfortable while lit on fire (and had in the past) and Jarrion was lucky enough and important enough to be bracketed safely on either side, and yet he was the one feeling the most surrounded.

Such was life.

Jarrion did at least recognise those aliens present. Not personally, obviously, but he was familiar with these species by now mostly from his time on Illium and also from his readings and investigatings. The Council was said to be made up of Turians, Salarians, Asari and now humans these were indeed the demographics represented, and all three of which he’d bumped into at least once by this point.

The aliens all remained utterly loathsome in their own unique ways, of course, but at least none of those ways were surprising to Jarrion. He knew what to expect.

The actual, proper officials of each species were fairly easy to spot, being the ones carrying themselves as though they were the most important. Around them flocked and jabbered functionaries of unclear purpose though a couple of them Jarrion could tell at a glance were military. Although looking at the weird, quasi-birdy ones - Turians, he hadn’t dealt with many - Jarrion felt that they could easily all have been military, going by the way they acted.

The human - Anderson, Jarrion thought he’d caught the name - was the only one to have come on his own and not to have anyone else with him at all, barring Shepard, though she was only here as kind of a special guest. Why Anderson was so lonely was less obvious.

In actuality the reasons for Anderson not having an entourage were a combination of petty and political.

Petty, because Udina just hadn’t sprung for anyone else to come with him quite on purpose. Political, because one of the few things that had been reliably confirmed about the unidentified vessel was that was it was supposedly crewed by humans. Ergo, having the human delegation show up mob-handed might look suspicious somehow, so Anderson had come on his own to avoid this.

Naturally, him showing up on his own was in itself seen as suspicious.

Some days you just couldn’t win.

To really round off Jarrion’s quietly-concealed misery it quickly became apparent that the waiting staff too was, sadly, not entirely human, but Jarrion did well to hide his disappointment and discomfort at noticing this. In all likelihood the food had been prepared by aliens too, somewhere along the line.

The things he had to do for the Imperium…

And speaking of the food, within a minute or two of the final seat being taken the very first course arrived.

Some sort of appetizer. Some sort of mousse.

Jarrion did not trust mousse at the best of times, and a mousse prepared by alien hands was at least three times worse. He eyed it warily and made no moves to actually try any.

The aliens had no such reservations and had got started on theirs (the Turian, Jarrion noted, appeared to have different food to all the others, but honestly Jarrion didn’t really care a whole lot) and took the opportunity to get started on some dinner conversation.

“I’m surprised Cerberus allowed you to take time out of your schedule to attend this, Shepard,” the Turian said, tartly.

Rather more aggressive dinner conversation than might normally be expected, but Jarrion had been in worse dinners and Shepard plainly didn’t care, already wolfing down alien mousse.

“I had some annual leave outstanding,” she said around a mouthful.

“And I trust you have all got your stories straight for how the Systems Alliance neglected to mention any of this to the Council? I don’t think classifying a dreadnought-sized vessel as a light cruiser is likely to work, you know,” the Salarian said, giving Anderson a pointed look.

This appeared to be some sort of veiled insult or something else equally irrelevant to Jarrion but it did offer an excellent excuse to both speechify and also avoid touching the appetiser. Immediately he cut across whatever anyone else might have felt like saying (Anderson had been poised to snap back) and spoke in a loud, clear, Rogue Trader voice:

“Let us cut to business, hmm? To the heart of the matter. You are all here and have organised this fine dinner - many thanks again, by the way - because I am an unknown quantity, am something unusual! You wish to get the measure of me! To see what I’m about. Possibly to influence me - ah! It’s true, let’s not deny. Certainly, I myself am looking for much the same. While I represent a mystery to you, you represent opportunity to me, a doorway into fresh markets, you see? New vistas! New possibilities for growth and enlightened self-interest! So let’s be open with one another, shall we? Open and, well, as honest as is practical, let’s say. We’ll gain nothing by pussyfooting about. So let’s be open!”

None of them had expected this. None of them really knew what to do with it, either. More than one person looked to Shepard, who just shrugged.

“I keep telling you guys, he’s nothing to do with us,” she said.

“We’re really not. Apart from sharing a species, me and mine are entirely unaffiliated with the, ah, Systems Alliance, I assure you,” Jarrion said, waving his fork around, having just been about to stab the mousse just so it didn’t look like he was deliberately ignoring it.

“Then who are you affiliated with?” The important Turian asked, bluntly. Working this out was one of the few things the important council representatives had been able to agree on, though how to get at an answer had generated a variety of suggested approaches. The Turian had just run out of patience. Jarrion’s fork whipped around to point in his direction.

“Ah! That’s the question, isn’t it? And what an answer it has! I’d scarcely believe it myself, had it not happened to me! You see, through some means as yet undetermined myself, my ship and my crew went from the time and place that we are familiar with to here, to this time and place to which we are quite, ah, ill-fitting, shall we say? A time and place we do not quite belong. You ask where I have acquired my ship, who I am affiliated with, thinking that perhaps I will name some place or some organisation with which you are familiar, but that is sadly not the case. My ship - while eminently fine! - is hardly exceptional where I am from, and the ‘organisation’ - far too mild a word - to which I owe my allegiance is the Imperium of Man, for which I am honoured to serve as a Rogue Trader.”

Son of a Rogue Trader, technically, but Jarrion felt that splitting hairs at this point would just be causing more problems for himself. Besides, the distinction hardly mattered anyway…

No-one said anything to this because there wasn’t a whole lot any of them could think to say in the time they had available. The table was smothered in uncomfortable silence because it wasn’t every day someone said something like this to you with a straight face.

Jarrion took a sip of water and waved a hand, oblivious to the vacuum his speech had created or otherwise just unconcerned about it.

“I must say I would have imagined that the Commander here, as your hardworking employee, would have already filled you in on most of these details,” he said.

“Actually, her report was somewhat light when it came to details,” the Turian said, glaring daggers at Shepard who just aggressively ate her appetizer at him. Shepard could, if she wanted to, make just about anything seem aggressive. She had one of those faces.

“I don’t believe you were even mentioned by name, in fact, ah - is there a particular form of address that we should be using or…?” The important Salarian asked. Working as a group now, it seemed, or at least working in stages.

Seemed a reasonable question, too, at least to those present who hadn’t met Jarrion before. It would hardly do to make an etiquette-based blunder at this delicate early stage, and this also served to further undermine Shepard and her detail-light report. That had been the intention at least. Shepard had done what she’d done for a reason however, and could not have given less of a shit for vague insinuations.

For his part Jarrion barely noticed, one moment a little wounded that the Commander hadn’t put his name into whatever report she’d put together before being distracted by the question he’d been asked.

“Oh, well, strictly speaking I suppose it should be Lord Captain but, please, we’re all, ah, peers here and we’re all looking to achieve something mutually beneficial so Jarrion will do just fine,” he said, smiling politely.

As much as Jarrion would have preferred on insisting for formality - especially with xenos - he had a feeling that the better play here was to be casual and friendly, or at the least breezy and polite. Coming across as haughty might give the wrong impression. Less cowing the natives, more just annoying them. No good to him at all. Anything for an easy life, a smoother ride.

“Can I call you Jarrion, Lord Captain?” Loghain asked, sweetly, leaning in towards him.

“No,” Jarrion said quickly and under his breath and without looking at her.

“I’ll get back at you for this eventually, you know,” she said, still sweetly. Jarrion ignored her and continued the other, more important conversation as though nothing had happened:

“So that would most definitely make us all something of a mystery, I’d suppose? Us and our outlandish appearance, ship, language, etcetera? Hmm, I can see why you’d want to organise something like this, then! Get things off on the right foot, eh? Clear things up.”

Mention of the ship sent a minor thrill of excitement through those gathered, given as it was more-or-less the crux of all their interest. In-system sensor logs had been pored over at this point at the Assertive’s arrival had been examined in some detail, but answers had been conspicuous in their absence. One moment it hadn’t been there, the next - pop! - there it was just outside, appearing as though from thin-vacuum in nothing but a surge of anomalous readings that no-one had been able to make any sense of yet.

And no record of it passing any relays, either. This had been touched upon in Shepard’s report, of course, that these strange interlopers had some other way of crossing the vaster distances of space that did not require the relays, but no-one had believed it. They did now, and they salivated for an explanation they could take apart and use. Think of the possibilities! That Reaper - uh, unusual Geth ship, rather - had been something, this could be the new something!

But this excitement was kept in check. There was time to unpick that knot, and there were ways to do it politely. Just be nice to lunatic, treat him kindly. We’re all friends here, after all, etcetera.

“You’re certainly...unexpected,” said the Asari in tones of perfect diplomacy, looking from Loghain to Jarrion, ignoring Thale (Thale had that effect on people) and letting her eyes linger especially on Pak.

Pak was cutting quite the enigmatic figure, even sitting down. Their being perfectly still, almost entirely hidden in robes and mask, not saying anything and generally being very odd and mysterious was presenting something of an obstacle to those from the Council sat next to them.

A literal obstacle, as Pak was literally blocking them from talking to those members of the Imperial contingent who might actually answer questions. So far the best solution was just to lean forward and talk around the Magos.

Rude, yes, but needs must.

“So, let’s demystify! Ask me anything, ask away! I am an open book. I am not here with hostile intent so let’s be friendly. Whatever you wish to know, ask it I shall do my best to furnish you with an answer,” Jarrion said, smiling broadly, holding his hands out open, palms up.

The important Council-persons exchanged looks, all wondering who should go first and whether going first at all was the clever play. The Turian eventually decided to just bite the bullet.

“When you say time and place, I am not wholly clear on what it is you mean,” he said.

Again Jarrion flourished his fork. Always helpful to have prop while expositing, he’d found.

“Ah, well, that’s something of an embarrassing sore point to this whole affair, I’m afraid. Near as we can make out we appear to have travelled through time - I know, I know, it’s as ludicrous to me as it is to you, but honestly what else do we have? Some amongst us have even wilder theories…” He said, casting an eye towards Loghain who sighed.

“I’m just saying, if we’d only travelled in time we’d be seeing some things that we’re not seeing right now. You see any Eldar? I don’t...” she said in the tone of someone who knows that no-one is going to listen to her. In this she was entirely correct.

The Salarian was rubbing her face, the Turian sat leaning forward with his mouth slightly open. The Asari pushed forward:

“Time travel?” She asked, making those two words sound at once perfectly reasonable but also something like an accusation. Jarrion cringed.

“I know. As I say it hardly bears thinking about. The exact details of how or why it works are still something of a - heh, that word again - mystery but it hardly seems to matter given that it is what it is. Let’s not mention it again, eh? Let’s instead deal with undeniables. I am here, my ship is here, my crew is here, I was not here before I was here. If you follow,” he said.

They didn’t follow, but then again neither did Jarrion really. It remained something of an embarrassing sort spot and the longer attention lingered on it the more embarrassing it got.

This was a universal feeling and so, in the interests of keeping things moving and keeping awkwardness and discomfort to a minimum, the Salarian member piped up:

“So how did you get from wherever - whenever - you were to here? What led to it happening, I mean? If it wasn’t intentional.”

She didn’t actually really care or even really believe it was a legitimate question but, again, it was the sensible thing to play along for now, it was judged. Baby steps, baby steps - they were still on starters, after all.

Now this was a question that Jarrion could actually answer and so he immediately pounced on it.

“Ah yes, quite the event! We arrived here quite by accident and quite the unusual accident at that, too. I have top men looking into that particular issue even as we speak but suffice to say I shouldn’t worry about anyone else pulling off the same trick if I were you! One in, well, certainly a higher number than a million, hmm?”

Jarrion felt it best to omit the recent development hinting at a possible way back. After all it had yet to be confirmed, for one, and for another did they really need to know, really?

“And what trick would that be? Out of curiosity,” the Asari asked, glancing to the Salarian who seemed only a little annoyed to have had her question co-opted and hijacked.

Jarrion wafted a hand.

“Oh, some one-in-a-million Warp drive breach accident. It all happened so quickly I couldn’t honestly tell you. As I say, I have top men on the problem so when I know I shall be sure to tell you,” he said.

Teeny-tiny ripple of excitement at that. Mention of something unknown, something new. Something valuable? All ears pricked.

“Warp drive?” The Turian asked, again quickest off the mark. Jarrion frowned at him.

“Did the report not mention that?” He asked.

Eyes again to Shepard.

“The report didn’t, but the briefing package I got asked to put together before this thing did. You all read that, right?” Shepard said through gritted teeth, looking around.

There was some shifting in seats.

“Ah, well, to clear up any confusion…” Jarrion began, raising a finger in the way that one does before launching into a lengthy explanation of something.

The conversation that followed did much to separate those who had actually bothered to read Shepard’s aforementioned briefing package in detail and those who had not, or who had and had just not believed it.

Jarrion explained what a Warp drive was, he then explained what the Warp was, he then explained what daemons were (in a very roundabout way, not really wanting to dwell on the details, mostly just mentioning ‘dangers’ involved in Warp travel), the Archenemy, the Emperor, psykers and so on and so on until everyone present lost the energy to keep asking questions.

Shepard got some hard looks. She wasn’t sure why any of this was supposed to be her fault.

“One imagines that all sounded rather unusual and unlikely to you,” Jarrion said once he’d wrapped up, aware of the shift in the mood of the room. Even the waiters seemed stunned, though really they shouldn’t have been paying as much attention to the conversation as they were - could never get the staff these days.

“It sounds...interesting…” Said the Asari, smiling in what was clearly an attempt at ingratiating but couldn’t quite get there.

“What a diplomatic way of putting it,” Jarrion said with a twinkle in his eye, raising a glass.

“You shall have to forgive us if we are not immediately convinced,” the Salarian said. To her, the explanation had had the hallmarks of something true wrapped in several layers of increasingly unreasonable, misdirecting bollocks. Somewhere in the middle was the part worth getting at - how this ship of his actually got around - but you would have to burrow through everything else to get to it. And that was just annoying.

“Oh, I’d think me a madman too, were I in your position. But that’s hardly going to get us anywhere. Much as your, ah, ‘Mass Relays’ serve to get me nowhere, too,” Jarrion was rather proud of that bit, though no-one reacted to it so he quickly carried on: “I have seen your galaxy, I know I don’t belong. And you are seeing me right now and, honestly, can you say I belong? I could very well be a charlatan, yes, but do most charlatan’s also happen to possess voidcraft that make your largest vessels look like tugs? There’s commitment to the act and then there’s that!”

As much as they might hate to admit it he had a point. Not a point they could do a lot with, but a point nonetheless. Strip away everything and just believe he was a conman or a lunatic and you still had a man in a spaceship that dwarfed anything anyone had ever seen or even imagined, and one that had managed to get here in a way that defied conventional understanding. There were no easy explanations for that.

Someone had to have built the thing, somewhere, and the odds that happening with no-one being any the wiser were long, slim and generally poor. Someone involved would have felt that selling the designs of this or that secret component would have been the economically prudent move, but no-one had heard anything. There was always a leak! Only not this time, apparently. That was unusual.

Which wasn’t even getting started on the size of the thing! Building a dreadnought in secret would have sent out ripples enough to cause some sniffing round, and this was something else!

And if someone could build something like this in secret then that raised all sorts of fresh, new, deeply uncomfortable questions. Either everyone’s spies were getting lazy, someone else’s information retention was insanely good (up until the point their super-secret ship was given to a man dressed like he’d escaped from the circus who then just showed up) or, well, he was telling the truth?

Probably not the third one. Still, nothing about any of this was uplifting or invigorating.

It was in this mood of mild discomfort that the appetiser plates were cleared away - including the largely untouched plates of the Imperials (barring Loghain and Thale’s plate, which had both been cleaned completely) - and replaced with the main course.

No getting out of eating this time, Jarrion knew. The appetiser you could mess around with or hide or just ignore, but ignoring the main course would be poor form which would go against his whole thrust here, that of appearing friendly and broadly inoffensive - someone you could let do business around you!

At least it looked like some sort of meat. He could work with that.

So he cut a bit off and, tentatively, had a nibble.

In the course of his duties Jarrion had eaten far worse and pretended to like it, so this wasn’t too unpleasant. You didn’t travel from planet to planet without learning how to stomach things you had never seen before. He turned to Thale.

“And what do you think, Thale?” He asked.

“I miss grox, Lord Captain,” said Thale, shoving food about his plate plaintively.

Hearing the man mention it, Jarrion had to admit he rather did as well. You knew where you stood with grox. Preferably a safe distance away until it was properly dead and cooked. But once it was cooked at least you always knew just what to expect.

“And you, Loghain? Enjoying your meal?” Jarrion asked.

“Well, you eat with your eyes, really, so I’m operating at a disadvantage here.”

“...quite.”

She then shoved another forkful into her mouth with much gusto.

“Sh’good though,” she said, chewing. Jarrion leaned further away from her.

“You know Loghain, I do sleep easier at night knowing fine agents of the Emperor such as yourself are watching over us,” he said, turning his attention to Pak.

Pak - who lacked most of the equipment needed to take in solid food - was just playing with their meal, sculpting the mashed-and-or-pureed vegetable accompaniment into something with their fork.

“Enjoying yourself, Magos?” Jarrion asked.

Pak paused, slowly turned their head and then, equally slowly, gave Jarrion a thumbs up. They then immediately resumed sculpting their food.

Jarrion sighed.

“I always somehow imagined this role would carry more dignity…”

“So what do you think of Illium, Jarrion?” The Asari asked, rescuing Jarrion from sinking into despair by giving him an excellent excuse to talk, which also doubled as an excellent excuse to avoid eating any more.

“Hmm? Oh! Oh yes, yes, very impressive. I like the, ah, the tall buildings. Very well done. Rather reminds me of a few worlds I’ve visited before. Some hive worlds I’ve seen. Only perhaps a little more sparsely populated. Still, very well done, yes.”

He did his best not to sound too condescending. He really did mean that they’d done a good job, for aliens. He hadn’t seen any of the buildings collapse yet.

“Hive world? The planets of some...insect-intelligence?”

A stab in the dark there from the Salarian, and her attempt at small talk. Jarrion looked perplexed.

”What? No, nothing like that. Just, ah, a planetary classification. The Imperium has many planets, you see? All sorts of planets. Hive worlds are so-named and so-defined owing to their, well, their population centres resembling hives more often as not, I suppose. Lots of tall buildings, you see? Well, usually. Most commonly! And very populous, they are. Certainly most that I’m familiar with are rather more crowded than Illium.”

Having done his reading on Illium Jarrion had already what it’s population was listed as and had honestly found it shockingly low. Comparing it to a hive world was, even if one picked a fairly modest example, pretty laughable.

“Illium is, strictly speaking, only a colony world,” the Asari pointed out.

This seemed very generous to Jarrion especially given his colonial experiences, but to each their own. Seemed like an attempt to exploit a tax loophole more than anything else, which at least demonstrated a vaguely commendable level of cunning. They were only aliens, after all.

“True, true, as I saw. Done well in a short time but still growing, yes. I am merely comparing the, ah, as you say, urban density to that which I have observed on hive worlds. A hive world would, of course, be more significant. Population-wise at least. Purely talking numbers,” Jarrion said, acting as though he was about to keep eating while having no intention to do so.

“Would you have an example?” The Salarian asked.

Jarrion paused, cutlery hovering above the plate.

“Of a hive world? Oh, let me think. Off the top of my head? Hmm, there’s always one…”

He thought to himself, stroking his chin with a finger. The example was lurking close to the surface of his thoughts. He could feel it, he was certain.

“What was it’s name again? Tsch, if only Torian were here, he’d know. Hmm. Ultima Segmentum - not that that narrows it down! Hah! - father was there once, to talk to the Governor about acquiring some materiel and some men...oh what was it’s name…” Jarrion tailed off, frowning, mouthing to himself a moment before sitting up so sharply he even managed to make Loghain jump, which was impressive given that she should have been impossible to surprise. “Minea! That was it! Minea!”

He’d snapped his fingers on saying this and looked very pleased with himself.

“And Minea is one of these Hive Worlds?” The Salarian asked with obviously rapidly diminishing patience.

Jarrion frowned at the alien. Why else would he have brought it up were it not? Was this alien slow? More slow than might be expected, rather.

“Yes, yes it is,” he said.

“It’s population being…?”

That took the wind out of Jarrion’s sails and he went back to frowning and wracking his brain, either not noticing or not caring that the alien was plainly fishing for what might be a useful nugget of information about this maybe-fictional-maybe-not Imperium the interloper was claiming to come from.

“Oh, now let me think. Big number, always remembered it, always impressed me when I was younger - ah, yes: one hundred and fifty four billion. I think. More or less. Sorry I can’t be more precise.”

No-one around the table said anything after this. Even cutlery stopped moving. Even Shepard stopped eating.

The thinking was that this was a translation error, perhaps. It was not, and as this sunk in all those present grappled with this frankly unfeasibly big number. If not a translation error then a lie. But why such a ridiculous lie? What could he hope to gain from saying something like that?

Maybe just roll with it? See how deep a hole this madman could dig for himself. At some point this story of his would surely have to start unravelling, then they could actually start getting at the real details, maybe spot a thread that could lead back to where he was actually coming from.

“How is a world that heavily populated supported, just to ask?” The Asari asked.

“Oh, I don’t know the details. Imports is usually how it’s done. Likely needs the output of a good few local agriworlds just to keep going, but that’s just the way of things, isn’t it?” Jarrion asked, feeling this was a strange thing to ask.

Dedicating whole worlds to the support of others was not really the way of things, but no-one present felt compelled to point this out. If it was obvious to them and not to Jarrion, that in itself spoke volumes.

“Is Minea the capital world of the Imperium?” The Salarian asked instead.

“No! Of course not! That’d be Holy Terra,” Jarrion said, briefly making another Acquila across his chest, the suggestion so ludicrous he felt a little affronted. “It’s just a world. Rather a crowded one I’ll admit but that’s hardly unusual. There’s hive worlds all over. All other kinds, too, like those agriworlds I mentioned - all other kinds! The Imperium is vast, after all. Man has dominion over the entire galaxy.”

“And that was - this was - how - how many of these, uh, how many Hive Worlds would you say there are?” The Turian asked, furiously crunching numbers in their head and hating that they to doing so, even in a hypothetical capacity, but simply unable to stop themselves from wondering what the manpower output could be in this lunatic’s made-up empire.

Jarrion really had no idea why they all seemed so bent out of shape all of a sudden.

“Oh, Emperor alone knows. Thousands of the damn things. Can you even imagine how tiring it would be to have to run such a place? Organising the tithes? Keeping order? It’s hard enough keeping those few colonies I was entrusted with ticking over, and those are veritable ghost towns! It’s like herding cats. Though, in the end, all that matters is that everyone from the lowest to the highest remembers their place, does their duty and obeys their betters, on and up to the Emperor himself, who of course has no betters, and there the buck stops. The system is perfect.”

People, sadly, were often not. But that wasn’t the fault of the system.

Jarrion had met a cat, once. He hadn’t been impressed.

Strictly speaking the various colonies and worlds that House Croesus had founded or rediscovered should have been operating under their own Imperial Governors rather than being directly overseen by House agents, but there was still a transition period, you see? There was paperwork to be done before they could be fully integrated-slash-reintegrated into the Imperium. Had to do things properly.

And all that had to be done only when the worlds in question were ready anyway. Wouldn’t do to rush things! Might make a mistake. Best to keep a gentle, House Croesus hand on the rudder until they were ready. Just to be sure.

They’d been in a state of getting ready for some time now, and continued to be so, and would likely continue to be so for some time yet, too.

Jarrion, on a tear, took another gulp of water and just carried on, everyone else too baffled to really interrupt:

“The Administratum sees to all of that, really though, all the fiddly bits, keeps everything ticking over. In a broad sense, I mean. Each world looks to itself course, but defers to the higher authority of the greater Imperium, the mechanics of which is the Administratum. Fiddly stuff, like I say. But vital! Looks after the Tithe. The busywork, you know? Can’t all be mighty generals or, heh, dashing Rogue Traders, eh? Or scheming, underhanded Inquisitors…” He said, sparing a glance to the side.

“Aww, you remembered me.”

“Get your hand off my leg, Loghain…” Jarrion growled.

“Tithe?” The Salarian asked.

All that was needed now was single-word prods to nudge Jarrion in the right direction. The man was in full flow. It was like trying to grab a loose hosepipe on full blast and not getting wet - it simply couldn’t be done.

“Every world must contribute! Materials, men - who are their own material, after a fashion - whichever the planet is best suited to provide. Usually both. All planets have men, and all planets have something on them that is of at least some value. Else why would mankind settle there at all, eh? So yes, the Tithe. The Imperium collecting what is due to it. Simple enough, yes?”

“So...extracting tribute?” The Salarian followed-up. An idea was forming in her head of some sort of mini-empire that had somehow managed to flourish in some out-of-the-way area of space. Possible? Vaguely, but highly unlikely, and obviously nothing like what this human was describing.

She had heard of this human’s activities in the Terminus - they all had - but that still begged the question of where he’d come from in the first place. And it obviously couldn’t be where he was saying he was from. That hardly bore thinking about.

Jarrion meanwhile frowned just a tiny bit. She made the tithe sound sordid! Like extortion! Nothing could be further from the truth.

“Not at all! The tithe is an honour! Every one of the Emperor’s planets is happy to provide, no matter how grand or how humble their assigned level may be. A place for everything and everything in its place. The Imperium is built on duty, after all, as I said. That and blood,” he said.

Rather an ominous bit to tack on the end there, all the important persons present felt, and they exchanged another glance.

“Blood?” The Asari asked. Jarrion nodded seriously.

“The blood of martyrs is the seed of the Imperium, they say. They are not wrong. Mankind stands amidst enemies on all sides and always has. Luckily, if there is one thing the Imperium is not lacking for it is zealous souls ready to serve!”

“What was that line from Cardinal Blate again? ‘Fear us, for we count the lives of planets, not men!’. I always rather liked that one,” Loghain said with a mighty flourish of her fork, and Jarrion found himself nodding and agreeing with her, much to his surprise.

“Apt, very apt,” he said.

More glances. Not that Jarrion noticed.

Chapter Text

Twenty Five

At this point talk turned to war and kind of just stuck there.

There were several reasons for this.

Partly it was that it seemed to be a subject that Jarrion was especially willing to hold forth on (though that wasn’t saying much - Jarrion could likely talk for hours about anything if anyone was indulgent enough to let him) and that letting him ramble seemed to the Council bods a good way of keeping him in a friendly mood.

Partly it was a subtle, low-key way of seeing if he doled out any more clues about his actual motivations, backers, intentions or anything else useful like that that might be hidden in his clearly ludicrous screeds about thousands of planets conscripting millions into the ‘Imperial Guard’ and Crusades and other such products of an abundantly fertile but painfully limited imagination.

Perhaps they’d discern a hint as to the true identity of those who’d built that ship? Where they were? What their position was? What their objectives were behind all this bluster? Maybe? A chance to use all that diplomatic training to peel away all these layers of nonsense and get at the truth within.

Or not, because they couldn’t make heads or tails of any of it. It all just sounded like absolute nonsense, no matter how much they smiled and nodded.

Still, if nothing else it gave them a chance to hear him talk about weapons, which was better than nothing - they’d wanted to hear about those. Advanced weaponry was one of the few things about these new arrivals that could be confirmed.

All those present had read reports on those laser weapons that had been turning up in all sorts of hands of late, and who knew what else he might have hidden away on that ship? Thing was big enough that there had to be something interesting in there.

And speaking of the ship, what little passive, external snooping of his vessel that had been made had shown it equipped - or more accurately encrusted - with weapons that didn’t comfortably fit any known description or classification.

They could guess, yes, but they shouldn’t really have had to, they should have been obvious. But they weren’t. Just like any element zero traces...

But yes, if this man was doling out lasers to colonists like they weren’t worth anything to him, who knew what his unfeasibly giant ship was bristling with? Those guns could have been anything.

Indeed, one of the few things that those present had read out of Shepard’s report was that the Assertive was said to possess a prow-mounted energy weapon supposedly capable of destroying a Collector vessel in one shot. Surreptitiously-obtained sensor readings and bits and pieces of snatched footage from Horizon had confirmed this.

Or confirmed it as much as footage could be said to confirm anything in this day and age.

Given what little was reliably known about Collectors - the extent of which mainly being that they were reclusive and frightfully advanced - what it suggested was that at the very least this was somewhat important and worthy of verification, if only to verify that it was bunk. Then they’d know for sure.

It also made them all, again, rather glad that of all the places this lunatic had chosen to park his oversized spaceship it had been Illium, a planet with more nukes than sense. Made them feel a touch more secure.

“-of course it was a shame what happened to those men and I’m sure father does regret the decision to land them in that swamp but, well, these things happen, and the campaign did come to a successful conclusion all the same. Now, the next system after that-” Jarrion said. He had been detailing some part of his father’s extensive military history, just for the sake of example.

“So just...war?” The Asari cut in, her patience finally wearing thin and kind of cutting to the quick of where Jarrion’s story had been going.

Jarrion - a little out of breath at this point - thought about a fuller explanation but instead just let out a doleful sigh and nodded. He was rather glad of the excuse to take a moment and slow down, in all honesty. He had a sip of water.

“One hopes you shall find your time here more peaceful,” the Salarian said.

“Oh, so far it’s been positively tranquil!” Jarrion said happily.

“Weren’t we in a firefight?” Shepard asked him and Jarrion wafted a hand.

“Yes well, that’s hardly that unusual. What I mean is that I haven’t been involved in any, ah, serious conflicts, thankfully. They’re sometimes necessary of course, but they do rather get in the way of business sometimes.”

“Necessary?” The Asari asked.

Jarrion wondered whether this was a trick question. Certainly seemed an odd thing to ask him but, then again, she was an alien, how could she be expected to understand such things, simple as they were?

“A duty, I suppose. One of many. War is a fact of life, what with jealous alien eyes looking in from the outside and...less savoury elements elsewhere…” Jarrion saiad, deciding at the last moment - with a fleeting glance in Loghain’s direction - that admitting to the existence of less-than-pious Imperial citizens and outright heretics and traitors wasn’t something that should be done at a diplomatic dinner or, if he could help it, at all.

Good to present a united front for the Imperium.

“‘Jealous alien eyes’?” The Turian repeated, tartly, as Jarrion sipped more water. Jarrion missed the tartness of the comment though and took it wholly at face value.

“Sadly so. One can’t live peacefully with xe- ah,”

He belatedly caught the tartness and noticing it brought Jarrion out of his pleasant reverie and reminded him that was at that very moment having to eat dinner and make small talk with aliens. The sudden realisation very nearly made him lose whatever food he’d managed to take in so far but he swallowed the rising bile and his face showed nothing.

“Which is to say that, regrettably, in my personal experience, aliens make poor neighbours, being unfortunately prone to malice and jealousy - it’s innate. In my experience. Alongside theft, too,” Jarrion again realised he was talking to aliens as he said this and his eyes widened briefly. He was starting to slip.

Eager not to let this show he plunged onward immediately:

“Heh, well, you must bear in mind of course that when I speak of xenos I am quite literally coming from a far different place than you! My experiences are quite distinct, as said. Why, there is one particular group of Orks - a clan, I believe it’s called - that seems to take theft as some sort of religious obligation. As far as those things can be said to understand religion, of course! Barbarous creatures and no mistake,” he said with a chuckle.

Luckily for him this seemed to work, and no-one felt the need to pull back on his comments about all aliens being malicious, jealous thieves. Apparently just slipping a ‘in my experience’ in there worked wonders.Or else just confusing those listening with things they’d never heard of. Either way.

“Orcs?” The Turian asked, genuinely baffled.

None of them ever pronounced it right, Jarrion observed.

“No, Orks. Ah, unfamiliar? Yes, I quite forgot - I had the same issue while explaining this to the Commander, too. You do seem to have far fewer of the aliens here that I’m familiar with. Only a good thing, as far as I can tell you! Were it not the case, I imagine you would all already understand where I am coming from!”

That he was talking to aliens as he was saying this again appeared to have escaped Jarrion’s notice. It hadn’t this time, actually, he just so-far hadn’t found any of the local aliens especially impressive. Aside from being innately disgusting and untrustworthy just by virtue of not being human they didn’t seem altogether intimidating.

None of them laid eggs in anyone else for example, from what he’d seen, didn’t use strange alien technology to reduce others to a state of cattle-like servitude, for another example, or insert disgusting grubs into the skulls of psykers for a third example, and generally all the ones he’d met here so far seemed quite embarrassingly non-threatening. Those big scaly ones? Krogan? They at least looked vaguely dangerous just owing to their size, but the rest?

Nothing to write home about. Rather pathetic, in all honesty.

“Why’s that?” The Asari asked.

That brought Jarrion up short. He wasn’t sure of the most charitable way of explaining that compared to what he was used to they were all a bit underwhelming. That wasn’t the sort of thing you should say to people in polite society. Or aliens, for that matter, even if aliens weren’t strictly-speaking ‘people’.

“Oh, well. It’s just that while the residents of this time and this galaxy seem fairly, ah, gentle? Harmonious? It is sadly not the case amongst the stars that I am more familiar with,” he said.

The various Council representatives around the table exchanged another of those brief looks, these brief looks all wordlessly conveyed the question: ‘Harmony? He’s really not from around here, is he?’.

A joke, but this was still a very odd thing for him to have said, they felt. And harmony was relative, after all, and that he thought so was probably a good thing, on the whole. If he thought they were all getting on that could only work to their benefit. Best not start picking apart the details or the history.

Jarrion, meanwhile, was on a tear and had his wind back, waving around a piece of something on his fork and continuing:

“From the moment of mankind’s first steps out into the greater galaxy - uh, my galaxy, you understand, I’m sure it’s quite different here, as said - from those first steps the alien has been waiting to thwart, beguile, mislead, enslave and worse. It’s simply the way they’re made, it can’t be helped.”

Again, not exactly a healthy attitude, all things considered, but he did have a very big spaceship and quite a bit of stuff they wanted to get their hands on, so everyone continued to tread lightly and gloss over. And besides, he was talking about a whole other (likely fictional) galaxy! So let him burble hypothetically.

Shepard, increasingly of the opinion that Jarrion was entirely truthful about where and when he was from and increasingly depressed about the ramifications of this, had her chin resting in her hand.

“No friendly aliens at all, then? Kind of the impression I’m getting here,” she asked. She knew the answer anyway but said this just as a prod to keep Jarrion going. It worked. He waved the fork around even more vigorously.

“Not a one! All decidedly unfriendly. And there are many, let me tell you. So many! Hrud, Xenarch, Tarellian, Psy-Gore, Slaugth, Chuffian, Rak’Gol, Saruthi, Loxatl - and these are but minor races! Small fries! There are far greater and far more dangerous xenos that blight the galaxy and seek to undo the holy works of man - far more dangerous! Orks I already mentioned - violent savages! Happy to commit violence for its own sake. They thrive on it, you see? No greater purpose to an Ork than violence. A constant menace.”

Jarrion paused here to have a quick drink and move to actually eat what was on his fork only to notice that it had flown off somewhere during his gesticulations. He was disappointed but only briefly, continuing:

“Almost the mirror-image of the Eldar, now I come to think of. Decadent and cunning and obtuse. An Ork is straight-forward, you see? Primitive, simple, direct. Not so Eldar, no, craven witch-led wretches that they are. Tottering remnant of a debased, decaying empire, clinging to their glory long after all the glamour of it rotted away! Foul things. Won’t accept that they failed and that they have no place anymore. The Eldar will come at you sideways, you see, will engineer misfortune for you so that you never even know it was them. Or else strike without warning, take what it was they feel they’re within their rights to take and leave before you even have the time to gather your wits - cowardice, pure and simple.”

Jarrion had a particular antipathy for Eldar.

Orks at least had the excuse of being savage animals - their behaviour was entirely because of this, and predictable as a result. Like any wild beast (albeit more dangerous), they simply didn’t know any better. By contrast Eldar were scheming, malicious and inscrutable, acting with impunity for entirely selfish and arbitrary reasons, as though the galaxy was still their own personal domain to do with as they saw fit.

There had been one world that Jarrion had had experience of, once. Eldar raids had been something of a problem and had been escalating, but the attacks had seemed random and had lacked punch, for want of a better expression. Striking without a clear pattern, without warning, simply swooping in to wipe out this or that expedition out into the wilderness of this planet, or wipe out this or that tentatively-founded outpost.

It had taken a while, but thanks to the efforts of Jarrion - in coordination with what remained of the colony’s defence forces - these attacks were brought to heel. Then, once that was the case, an effort was made to see what the actual purpose of the raids might be.

At length it was discovered that the (apparent) aim of the raids had been to ward the colonists away from a particular spot on the planet. Charting the location of the various attacks and destroyed expeditions and so on showed this plainly, and also showed the direction where they should go to discover the root of all this.

Investigation of the spot the Eldar seemed most keen to keep them away from - done under armed escort and done under regular and increasingly ferocious Eldar attack - had revealed some sort of ancient structure, plainly Eldar in nature, halfway buried beneath the earth with the other half overgrown by the local plants.

Jarrion had - perhaps unwisely in retrospect - had the structure demolished. In retaliation the Eldar vessel that had presumably been the one acting as transport for the attackers appeared without warning as if from nowhere, annihilated the colony’s primary settlement from orbit and then retreated.

They hadn’t been seen again after this.

All in all a pointless waste of material and resources, not to mention lives - fresh colonists had required shipping in and much effort had to be put into reconstruction to make the colony viable again. And for what? Ruins? Ruins that the Eldar didn’t even appear to be using? Ruins that had been overgrown, lost to nature? Forgotten for hundreds, thousands of years?

Presumably it made sense to the Eldar. That was what got under Jarrion’s skin so much. It made sense to them, and they’d never deign to explain it to anyone or anything else. An Ork would kill you because it would enjoy killing you. An Eldar would kill you so that a plan in some other system entirely went one step further ahead.

And the way they moved! Urgh!

He didn’t like Eldar that much.

Looking again at his plate - and having mentioned Eldar - jogged a memory for Jarrion, who couldn’t help but chuckle.

“Ah, Thale? You’ve had some experience with Eldar, I believe? Indeed, I recall you mentioning a particular occasion back in your Guard days when you and some of your associates found yourselves pinned down for some time by Eldar snipers. I recall you mentioning you had to eat one of your companions whilst waiting for reinforcements to drive them off.”

Of course, by the time reinforcements had arrived the Eldar in question had moved on, leaving not a trace. When had they moved on? Hours after their fire had pinned down Thale and his squad, meaning they’d stayed in that abandoned bunker for days for nothing? Or had they been there the whole time, waiting for another man to stick his head out long enough to have it blown off, moving off only once Imperial forces had closed in?

No way of ever knowing. They’d just melted away at some point before they had been caught and killed, that was all that could be said.

“Just his leg, Lord Captain,” Thale said.

“Just his leg, yes, I remember now. How was that for you?” Jarrion asked.

“Permission to speak freely, Lord Captain?”

“By all means, of course.”

“A little underdone,” Thale said, setting his cutlery on his now-empty plate. He might have preferred Grox, as said, but the soldier in him wasn’t going to be passing up food. It simply wasn’t done.

“Aha, I rather see what you did there, Thale,” Jarrion said.

This put something of a dent in the conversation, and silence crept in. More than one of those around the table took a pause to check and see if someone was going to say something that didn’t involve cannibalism. No-one did, at least not immediately.

“There’s more than one kind of Eldar,” Loghain said after some moments of this painful quiet. She could have added a few notable xenos that Jarrion had missed off - likely because he’d just never heard of them - but felt it would be informative to mention this particular fact.

“What?” Jarrion asked, incredulous.

“The Eldar race is split. Quite divisively, in fact,” Loghain said.

Jarrion had the distinct impression that, again, the Inquisitor was pulling his leg for fun.

“What are you talking about, Loghain? I’ve never heard of that,” he said.

“Haven’t you ever wondered why the Eldar that like taking prisoners look so wildly different to the others? Never noticed, for example, the spikes?”

Jarrion sniffed, wrinkling his nose.

“I can’t say I’ve ever given the aesthetic choices of aliens particular consideration, no. It hardly matters anyway. Eldar are Eldar and Eldar are aliens - inscrutable, cruel and as has been proven time and again worthy only of the highest suspicion at best and outright extermination at worst. And it is almost always worst.”

“Suppose that’s a pragmatic way of looking at it,” Loghain said lightly, poking at what she thought might be a small heap of diced vegetables. Being blind it was kind of hard to tell. “Are these vegetables?” She asked him more quietly.

Jarrion peered briefly at the little mound she was poking at.

“I think so,” he whispered back.

She decided to take the risk and Jarrion returned his attention to the aliens, finding them all looking awkward and noticing - belatedly - that none of them were talking. Jarrion got the impression that had perhaps been talking about himself for too long, not a feeling that often managed to penetrate for him. Clearing his throat, he decided to maybe slide things more to their side.

“Ah, listen to me go on though! As though this galaxy was a stranger to war! I’ve read up on what history I can and can see that there’s been plenty of examples here, too. The, ah, Rachni, was it? Followed by the Krogan - I did find the Genophage concept rather confusing, but that’s by the by - and of course the looming Reaper situation-”

He got cut off here.

“There is no ‘Reaper situation’,” the Turian one said, icily.

Jarrion blinked.

“There isn’t?” He asked, getting some silent nods in response. He frowned. “I was under the impression that your, ah, capital was attacked not even a few years ago? Quite the little tussle from what I read.”

“The Geth attacked the Citadel,” the Asari said and Jarrion snapped his fingers.

“That was the one, yes! And I thought that it was a Reaper leading that particular attack?”

What he’d read hadn’t said this explicitly, but Shepard had been there in person and she’d mentioned some of the more on-the-ground (or on-the-spacestation, as it were) details here or there, allowing Jarrion to flesh it out better in his head.

“It was not,” said the Turian.

“The Reapers are, at best, a conspiracy theory and at worst an outright fabrication,” the Salarian said by way of immediate followup.

Their vehemence in denying what Jarrion had taken to be a fairly widely-held fact confused him. The way the Commander had spoken about them had made him think their arrival was something everyone was aware of and - hopefully - preparing for. He frowned.

“Are you quite-”

“It was a Geth fleet that attacked, led by an advanced Geth dreadnought that certain excitable elements have decided is something else,” the Turian said, cutting Jarrion off. Jarrion felt the tiniest stab of pure rage at being interrupted again by an alien, but it didn’t show.

“But surely, having examined the wreckage…” he said but he tailed off as an idea struck him.

Maybe they just didn’t know. Maybe it was a secret of sorts? Something kept from general circulation to avoid tainting those with no need of knowing. He glanced at Loghain again, a little unnerved by the smile she had.

Yes, that made sense to him. Such a huge threat was probably being kept a secret.

After all, these were not the Council, they were just diplomatic flunkies sent out to make nice - what need did they have to know the full picture? Knowledge wasn’t something to be squandered, it had to be carefully doled out.

“I see,” Jarrion said with a small smile of his own, twisting a little to address Shepard.

“I hope your, ah, Alliance is taking the threat more seriously at least?” He asked, quietly, looking between her and Anderson who also exchanged a look - a slightly despairing one.

“Not really, no,” said Shepard.

Jarrion was disappointed but not surprised. Humanity here lacked proper direction, lacking direct intercession from the Emperor or his agents, so they seemed somewhat lacklustre. If ever there was need for a demonstration of the sort of vacillating uselessness that would be the least of humanity’s problems without His beneficence, here it was!

“The Alliance is playing it safe,” said Anderson, in what might be generously called ‘charitable’ tones. Shepard grunted.

“The general consensus is to not rock the boat. At least not until they show up, at which point they’ll probably wish they had rocked the boat. Though I can also bet even then they’ll prefer not to rock anything they don’t have to,” she said, not without bitterness.

“I must say I find this quite confusing. In the Imperium it’s generally considered wise to keep - well, ‘keep an open mind’ isn’t really the right phrase at all. Um, to be open to the possibility of new and unexpected enemies might be a better way of putting it. After all, the galaxy is brimming with threats,” Jarrion said, sitting back in his chair and addressing this more to the table at large.

“Even ones you’re expected to take the existence of on faith, without proof?” The Asari asked.

“Oh! Well! In a contest between faith and proof I know which one is going to walk away victorious! Blind faith is a just cause, as they say. Faith can overrun the galaxy!”

Indeed, one day it inevitably would. One day.

“Speaking of lacking proof and in the interest of getting to the point, how about you have Loghain here show off that psychic trick of hers? Might help you be convincing,” Shepard said.

“I’m not convincing?” Jarrion asked. The idea had crossed his mind but he had dismissed it. He’d rather thought he’d given a good account of himself and his circumstances and, well, if he was happy to believe he’d ended up somewhere quite exotic and unusual the least everyone else could do was believe that he’d done it.

He looked over at the Council bods. Hard to tell with their inscrutable, alien faces but Jarrion had to admit they didn’t look like they believed much of anything he might have said.

“We are reserving judgement,” the Turian said, in the tones of someone who thinks you are full of shit and does not care overmuch if you know this. Jarrion clenched his fist under the table, feeling that he’d rather been wasting his time.

“As is only sensible,” he said, taking care not to grit his teeth.

The esoteric and dangerous abilities of psykers were not the sort of thing you just rolled out to impress the natives. This time though, and at this point, Jarrion felt that perhaps it couldn’t hurt. And maybe it’d wipe that smug look off the xenos face. Assuming that was a smug look. As before, it was hard to tell.

“‘Psychic trick?” The Salarian asked, clearly having just skimmed that particular detail in Shepard’s report. Not that Shepard cared overmuch. She waved a hand at them.

“It’s like that, uh, ‘embrace eternity’ thing the Asari do only slightly more creepily invasive somehow. And really cold,” she said.

“Cold?” The Asari asked, only a tiny bit annoyed at the flippant way Shepard had described something quite important.

“You’ll see,” Shepard said, nodding to Loghain who now found herself the centre of attention, something she clearly did her best not to look like she enjoyed. It was a touch disquieting how someone with a blindfold could apparently notice every eye in the room turning in her direction.

“Oh, I’d say you were overselling my abilities just a little bit, they’re really not that impressive,” she said.

“Seemed pretty impressive from where I was standing,” Shepard said.

“Very flattering, Commander, but really, I couldn’t - not the sort of thing I should be doing at the dinner table, it’d be rude. Like playing with my food.”

Also maybe just the tiniest possibility of opening up a horrific, sucking rift to the Immaterium or else letting something cross over that really rather shouldn’t. Though, with the Warp here as calm as it was, Loghain personally didn’t think that was much of a risk. A risk, maybe, but not that much of a risk. Maybe.

“You have been playing with your food,” Jarrion pointed out.

Loghain paused, and all eyes that had been on her moved briefly down to her plate, which was a mess. Loghain cleared her throat.

“...well, when you put it like that. Do we have a volunteer?” She asked, looking about the tables and those gathered, as much as one wearing a blindfold can be said to look.

She did not.

“No-one? I’m not that scary, am I? Oh well, suppose I’ll just have to be generous to everyone then,” she said with something of a pout, though she didn’t sound unhappy about this.

Removing the gloves she’d worn especially to match Jarrion’s outfit Loghain laid her hands on the table and let out a slow breath. Almost immediately frost started to form at her fingertips, creeping outward as the ambient temperature plummeted. Several of those present looked alarmed, some to the point of speaking out. They didn’t though, their words died in their throats. They weren’t sure why.

Jarrion just looked uncomfortable, and not because of the cold.

“Let’s see…” Loghain said quietly, taking very measured breaths in and out. Everyone in the room - barring the Imperials alongside Shepard and Anderson - flinched, all of them having felt a twinge right at the base of their skulls almost all at the same time. “Ah. I thought so.”

She turned to Jarrion.

“None of them believe you,” she said.

“Well I could have told you that,” he replied, sourly.

Loghain turned back front-facing again and tilted her head ever-so-slightly. Everyone else twitched again and looked at one another in mounting unease, no-one really sure what to do in a situation like this and, more curiously, all afflicted with an apathy that seemed to just slap down any desire they might have had to object to what was going on.

“They have different reasons for not believing you, if that makes it any better,” Loghain said. “Some of them just think you’re an idiot, some of them think you’re pretending to be an idiot and all of them think that your ship and your technology is the product of some, ah, reclusive third-party group making some sort of play. They can’t quite settle on whether it’s a shady corporation of some sort of a conglomerate or something of that nature, but they don’t believe a word about the Imperium I’m afraid, Lord Captain.”

“Again, I’m hardly surprised,” Jarrion muttered, sinking into his seat, pulling his jacket tighter about himself and glowering at his plate, making to pick up his glass of water only to find, much to his annoyance, that what little remained in it had frozen solid. He sighed.

Loghain’s head tilted the other way.

“Very interested in the Assertive though, that I can tell you. Very interested. That one there,” Loghain said, nodding in the direction of the important Salarian, who flinched. “Is considering the feasibility of covertly inserting a team of operatives into the ship without you or any of the others finding out, while that one,” this time her head moved in the direction of the important Asari, who also flinched. “Is thinking that sweet-talking her way on-board once all the others have left is the more sensible option.”

“Wonderful,” Jarrion said, his face in his hand. He found it hard to care, and the less consideration he gave to the prospect of being sweet-talked by an alien (whatever that involved) the better.

“And that one,” Loghain said, nodding towards the Turian. “Has a relative who was involved in the recovery of the Reaper - and he’s using that word, too, in his thoughts - that attacked the Citadel and knows full-well that it isn’t a Geth ship. Actually, he’s quite rattled by it, would you believe?”

“How-!” The Turian managed to blurt out before the apathy took ahold again and he pulled his neck in, though he still got odd looks from his entourage and his peers for his outburst.

Loghain continued:

“There’s a little bit more I noticed, hmm, what’s that...oh yes. Did you know that every member of the waiting staff here is a member of an intelligence agency? They must have been swapped out at some point.”

That changed the mood pretty quickly. Even Jarrion stopped slouching.

“What?” He asked, ears pricking up. Or ear, rather - his augmetic one could do many things, but pricking up wasn’t one of them. Loghain tilted her head some more. All the waiters winced, and at least one of them gasped and clapped a hand to their head.

“Oh yes. Agents sent by - hmm - sent by all the Council races, apparently. In parallel to the diplomatic group without informing them, hmm. Left hand not knowing what the right is doing, eh? Oh yes. Asari intelligence, Alliance intelligence, Turian, Salarian - what a selection! Suppose they felt it paid to have more ears in the room. Ah, not only them though, no. Others. Some agents employed by a handful of private concerns, too - I am not sure what ‘Elkoss Combine’ or ‘Hahne-Kedar’ or ‘Eclipse’ is or are but I am sure it means more to some of those present - and, of course, our friends Cerberus, who also saw fit to dispatch an agent. Quite the variety, wouldn’t you say?”

With this Loghain relaxed, the temperature stopped being quite so cold (though did not return to normal) and she smiled around as though she hadn’t said what she’d just said and that everything was completely fine.

There followed a very awkward moment where no-one seemed to know what to do next.

Then all at once every member of the waiting stuff lunged for where they’d hidden a weapon, producing compact, hold-out pistols from all manner of places - tucked under tables, stuck under kloshes - and proceeding to furiously aim them at the diners, each other and generally anyone else who looked at them funny, all while shouting.

“I’d like to go one day without everyone pulling guns…” Shepard and Jarrion both said, both at the same time and entirely unprompted.

Jarrion said it while putting his face back into his hand, however, while Shepard said it through gritted teeth as - with one smooth movement - she rose from her seat, snapped the arm of the nearest not-actually-a-waiter (a Turian) like a twiglet, relieving him of his pistol and leaving him a whimpering heap on the floor.

This all happened very, very quickly.

Thale was also standing up, armed and aiming, having also relieved the nearest revealed agent of their firearm. The agent, for their part, was dead, lying sprawled at Thale’s feet with a very expensive looking piece of cutlery jutting from their eye socket.

“Did you have to do that, Thale?” Jarrion asked quietly through his fingers and Thale spared a split-second glance down.

“Sorry, Lord Captain,” he said, though he didn’t sound especially sorry.

“No no, it’s fine. Who was that gentleman affiliated with?” Jarrion asked Loghain who seemed entirely unruffled and unconcerned with the mess that she’d basically caused all on her own. She was busy pulling her gloves back on.

“Him? Cerberus, I think,” she said.

“Fabulous. Now I have to explain to that illusive chap that one of my men killed one of his men,” Jarrion said, sighing.

“I’m sure he’ll understand. He didn’t come across as the kind of guy to get choked up over stuff like this,” Loghain said.

“We live in hope…”

Shepard, meanwhile, was calmly and smoothly switching her aim from one revealed agent to the next, fixing each of them with a glare in turn. A glare from Shepard was no joke, and each agent so-glared at felt their own aim starting to waver.

“Now I know this isn’t usually the sort of statement that gets results in rooms full of armed people but let’s all be calm, yeah? No-one has to get hurt,” Shepard said, voice raised to reach everyone without actually sounding particularly loud (she was good at that trick).

The Turian by her feet whimpered especially loudly and rolled around some more.

“...no-one else has to get hurt,” she corrected, adding in a quiet hiss: “Who did you work for again?”

“Blue Sun!” The Turian gasped out.

“I’m sure they’ll comp you, you’ll be fine.”

Unlikely, but hope sprang eternal.

Despite Shepard’s suggestion of calm, the mood in the room remained understandably tense. Little more embarrassing for a covert agent than having one’s cover blown, except perhaps having it blown in a room full of other agents who also all have their own cover blown all at the same time.

In front of the one’s you’re meant to be covertly observing, no less. And also people who probably know your boss. And also everyone is now armed. All in all not a great day.

Shepard considered her options and, out of nowhere, thought of something quite unorthodox. At least by her standards. She didn’t feel like adding to her bodycount today. It was getting depressingly big at this point in her career, and that had been without trying.

“Now I know you all feel bad for getting rumbled, that’s understandable, but how were you meant to prepare for a psychic, eh? That’s not your fault. So I have a suggestion. You lot just leave your guns there - right there - and leave,” she said, pointing to an empty spot on one of the dining tables.

An unusual offer, and not one those in the surreptitious-intelligence business had much experience of. Usually putting the gun down was an order yelled at them by irate guards, and one they ignored. They weren’t wholly sure how to react.

“Are you serious?” Asked one of the faux-waiting staff, a Salarian, gun still raised. Shepard nodded. Her gun was also still raised.

“I know you’re all professionals and probably don’t like the idea but consider your alternative: everyone starts shooting. And remember, if that happens, you’re in a room with me, a woman the grave couldn’t hold.”

Perhaps skirting over a few of the pertinent details - for example, the eye-watering expense involved - for dramatic effect, but it certainly got the point across. Seeing the flickering of doubt across the faces of these covert agents Shepard pressed on with:

“And that’s also not taking into account Jarrion and his lot. He’s got a psychic with him. And the one in the robes and mask hasn’t moved a muscle in fifteen minutes - who knows what they’re cooking up?”

Pak had indeed not moved or said anything in a worryingly long time. This was entirely on purpose, and entirely just to unnerve the other diners - Pak had ways of observing and recording without having to move anyway, and wasn’t exactly one for small-talk over a meal in the first place.

“And you’ll just let everyone go?” Asked another rumbled agent, a human.

“I’m perfectly willing to let you all just walk out of here. Whether any of you are is up to you, but I think you’d prefer it over not walking out. And what you do afterwards is up to you. If I were you I’d just scarper, look back on this in a few years and laugh. It’s what I’d do.”

A fair few looks were exchanged. Could you do that? Was that allowed?

None of them had any precedent, really. They’d been in some close-shaves, sure, they were professionals as said - but you didn’t often wind up in a tense, guns-drawn stand-off where the possibility of just walking away and pretending it had never happened was floated. It didn’t seem right, somehow. It seemed like the sort of thing they might get in trouble for.

“Are you joking?” One of them asked.

“I am not joking. If I can get through today without shooting someone I will be a happy woman. And if you can get through today without me shooting you I’d think you’d be happy, too. Just a guess,” Shepherd said.

She made a compelling argument.

These were unusual times.

More exchanged looks, less belligerent this time, more confused in a we’re-among-peers sort of a way. There was a solidarity in all of them being equally lost.

“No-one said there’d be mind reading,” said one, slowly, testing the waters. There were some nods.

“Kind of unfair, really,” said another. None of them were really sure about the mind reading, honestly, but clearly something had happened for all of them to have been rumbled, and whatever it was it was something none of them had been prepared for.

The mood was softening. Why not just leave? Stranger things had happened, hadn’t they?

“Not our fault.”
“No sense dying over that, is there?”
“Nope, no.”
“They always said discretion was a virtue in this business.”

Tentatively, cautiously, still keeping keen eyes on one another, the various agents and spies and so on all started edging towards the spot on the table that Shepard had pointed out as the place for guns to go.

The Council bods were understandably flabbergasted by all this.

“None of you move!” The Turian snapped, and everyone stopped moving.

“Look, I know this isn’t what any of us want to happen but, really, it’s for the best,” Shepard said.

“You can’t honestly be suggesting we just pretend this never happened!” The Salarian hissed, her immense annoyance at having been left out of the loop on this particular operation bleeding into her general bad mood. Shepard shrugged.

“Well, it’s that or pressing the issue. Given that apparently everyone felt the need to send a spy I can’t really see it working out in anyone’s favour. Can you?” She asked.

None of the Council bods had actually thought about it that way. They’d imagined that by going through the proper channels it would have ended up being someone else’s fault and they wouldn’t have to worry about it. Someone else would be getting in trouble for this whole mess. The realisation that it would actually end up being all of their problem was a sudden and sobering one.

They hadn’t got into this game for the paperwork.

“What do you suggest we report back?” The Asari asked, more measured than either of the other two.

Shepard wasn’t especially concerned. She was very tired.

“Look, just make something up. Hell, tell them everything but just skip this bit. Everyone put their gun down, do one last trick as pretend waiters and put the dessert out here and then bugger off. Everyone reports back to their boss, just says what they overheard, we all get on with our lives.”

“But some of these are agents from corporations! Or mercenary groups! You can’t just let them go! There are surely legal repercussions!” The Turian pressed. Shepard gestured to a distant window.

“This is Illium, you can basically buy people here. Pretty sure this won’t count as illegal, somehow. Probably some loophole that allows for this sort of thing. Unless you want to bring all of them in and then spend the next however many months squabbling over why your spy should be released but the others shouldn’t be? It’s not my problem, I’ll be fine. I’ll be in space somewhere doing my job, so it’s up to you.”

A good compromise left everyone feeling unhappy.

It’s what they went with though. One after another - under Shepard’s watchful eye - the faux-waiters all went up and all set their weapons down. Even Thale set down the gun he’d acquired, at a nod from Jarrion to do so. It was good to be seen to be amenable. That and Thale hadn’t felt wholly comfortable holding the thing in the first place.

A gun was a gun in a pinch, but it’s providence was questionable. He’d pray it out later.

What was even better about Shepard’s odd idea came next, as the various agents did do one last job as waiters and did bring dessert out, in a stunned mood, and once that was set down they all just up and left, easy as that. None of it felt right, but it was hard to argue with getting able to walk out of something.

Or, in the case of the turian who’d had their arm snapped before being whacked to the floor by the Commander, limping out. But the point remained the same.

(The dead Cerberus agent wasn’t walking out of anywhere, obviously, but Thale had taken a moment to at least drag his corpse to one side where no-one would trip over it.)

“Well that was fun,” Shepard said, retaking her seat and leaving her borrowed - ‘borrowed’ - pistol by her bowl.

“Can’t say I’m completely won over with your newfound approach to problem solving, Shepard,” said Anderson, leaning in.

“Did solve it though, didn’t I?”

“Almost,” Anderson said, pointing. Shepard looked.

“Ah,” she said.

One had remained behind, and had remained armed. An Asari. Impossible to tell exactly how old, what with being an Asari and all, but she gave off the impression of youth, radiating inexperience. She looked jumpy and nervous, which is not what you want someone holding a gun to look like.

“Great,” Shepard said under her breath, rising to her feet again with a sigh.

“You alright there, eh? Eclipse? Just a guess?” Shepard asked, and while the Asari didn’t given an answer the alarmed widening of their eyes kind of gave the game away on that one.

“Just set your gun down like the others, you can walk right out, it’s fine. Trust me,” Shepherd said, hands where they could be seen. For her troubles she got a gun pointed at her. Rather Shepard’s intention.

She wasn’t particularly concerned about getting shot herself - it happened on a fairly regular basis already, and she was pretty much bulletproof, one or two hits she could probably tank, maybe - but the possibility of one of the important Council persons or their staff getting hit was uncomfortable.

That would make all of this impossible to ignore, which would make the next few months (or years) more uncomfortable than they had to be, on top of someone perhaps dying when they didn’t need to.

A time to be careful.

“No! I have to go back with something! Anything! Oh Goddess, but when she finds out I got caught…”

‘She’ in this instance presumably being whichever Eclipse boss had sent this Asari here in the first place. For whatever reason, Eclipse did seem - out of all the available mercenary outfits - to have more unbalanced upper-management than any of the others. Even the Blood Pack seemed less fearful of their superiors, and that was saying something.

The gun wandered alarmingly about the diners at the table and so Shepard spoke up again:

“Just tell her what you heard, leave this bit out. She’ll never know. You’ll be fine,” she said in the most soothing tones she could manage, creeping forward carefully and holding out a hand for the gun which was once-more pointed right at her.

“You don’t understand! She’ll find out! Then she’ll find out I lied! Oh the things she’ll do to me - when the lieutenant spilt her tea she took days to die! Days!” The Asari practically squealed.

“Eclipse, I ask you. No way to run a business...” Shepard muttered, wincing.

Already worked up, the Asari was now clearly approaching the point of incoherence. Had she not been holding a gun this wouldn’t really have been a problem but she was holding a gun, so everyone was feeling a bit tense.

Having sat out for most of this odd episode, Jarrion now felt that he couldn’t in good conscience continue to let the Commander do all of the work, especially when it was plainly obvious to everyone - Jarrion especially - that there was no talking to this alien.

He had another, better solution, and so rose himself, immediately attracting her attention.

“S-stay there!” She shouted. He did not.

“Calm down, you won’t be getting in any trouble,” Jarrion said, holding up one placating hand with fingers spread and one very un-placating, beringed fist which he pointed at the borderline-panicking Asari.

As he spoke there was a very quiet snap, rather like static electricity, but it was almost inaudible over what he’d said and no-one was really in the mood to notice something small like that anyway.

Certainly not the Asari.

“You don’t understand! I have to - I have to - “ she said, panting, and then she coughed. Then she coughed again, this time more wetly, jolting forward with the force of it. She looked confused, and everyone was looking at her.

“What-” she about managed to say before another, far more violent and more sustained bout of coughing overtook her. Dropping her pistol she fell to her knees, hacking ever more wetly, clutching her chest, eyes bulging, blood flecking around her lips and down her front.

Everyone seemed too stunned to even think about moving to help. Except the Imperials, of course. They all just seemed entirely unconcerned, even as the alien retched out a thick string of something thick and bloody and then promptly keeled over, plainly stone-dead.

There was a pregnant pause.

“That’s unfortunate,” Jarrion said, breaking the silence. Loghain leaned in towards him.

“Nice shot,” she whispered as Jarrion tugged his gloves on tighter and fiddled with his many rings, one in particular over all the others.

“I couldn’t possibly say what you were referring to,” he said before smiling benignly at everyone else around the table. “Now, where were we before all this excitement?” He asked, keen to get things back on track and maybe get some sort of preliminary trade deal - or at the very least some sort of understanding! - knocked out by the time dessert was done.

Instead, uproar. Seemed they’d all hit their limit. Temperature-dropping parlour tricks, eerily accurate insight into their inner thoughts, people getting stabbed in the eye and unorthodox solutions of spies were one thing, people dropping messily dead for no obvious reason was quite another - they’d had enough. This wasn’t what they’d been briefed on.

Jarrion didn’t understand it, honestly, and was frankly bemused by their agitated attitude and their shouting and their accusations.

He’d thought, given the circumstances, they’d have been rather glad to have the issue resolved in a straightforward fashion so that they could all get back down to business, get all this sorted and get on with their no-doubt busy lives. He’d thought, given what had just happened, they’d appreciate a more direct way of dealing with a threat, a way that got immediate and visible results.

Foolishly, he’d even allowed him to think - for a moment! - that they might even have been grateful!

Were they grateful? Were they fuck.

Aliens. Professional and seasoned as he was, Jarrion too had limits.

After so long having to talk and listen to the foul things all of their talking now just blurred together into a horrible, incomprehensible mass of yammering that had bile rising in the back of Jarrion’s throat.

He’d come here for a specific reason, damnit. He’d hung around for this damned function for a practical purpose. There was an end he was working towards - proper, formal, polite diplomatic relations with the largest entity in the galaxy. To get a foot in the biggest door, to look to the future, to take the first step in making a proper go of this marvellous universe-hopping accident. Simple.

Instead, faffing. And nattering. And now complaining. Loud complaining.

Jarrion had had enough. He stood up suddenly and forcefully enough to ensure his chair scraped loudly. That got them all to shut up. Even got Shepard - for a split-second - to reach again for that gun she’d acquired, at least before her judgement got the better of her reflexes.

Confident he had the attention of everyone present, Jarrion said:

“I do heartily appreciate your generosity and largesse in hosting myself and my associates. The conclusion of this initial meeting and any required formal processes to allow myself and my interests to operate in Council space shall take place presently on the Assertive.”

Took them a second to work out quite what he was driving at, there.

“...I’m sorry?” The Asari asked.

“That means you, you and you are to come with me and to leave your functionaries behind. Commander, you are quite welcome to bring your, ah, associate,” Jarrion said, pointing to the important Council persons before turning to personally address Shepard.

And with that he gave an especially emphatic, non-negotiable hand gesture to his own entourage, spun on his heel and immediately started walking. Thale was behind him instantly, Pak smoothly and silently following not far behind. Loghain had to finish cramming the last of her dessert (some sort of sweet iced thing) into her mouth before hurrying to catch up.

Behind the Imperials, back at the table, more bickering. They couldn’t just let him walk off, but equally the primary Council agents didn’t really want to follow him alone, but then again they couldn’t let him just walk off.

It bore repeating.

“We’re going?” Loghain asked Jarrion, quietly, keeping her voice down. He’d actually caught her off guard with that one, which rather impressed her.

“We are going, right now, to the Assertive, where we shall achieve something useful,” Jarrion said.

Loghain thought back to that time not-so-long ago where she had explicitly stated that the aliens were all very interested in his ship and all had their own plans cooking on how to get onboard. She was pretty certain she’d mentioned that part out loud.

“Is it wise-” She started.

Jarrion knew where she was going with this because he’d gone there himself, so didn’t need her going there again. He’d thought it through. He had his own position on the subject. He didn’t need anyone else reminding him of what he’d already thought through. He cut her off.

“Yes.”

“Alright…”

She trusted he knew what he was doing. Or, if he didn’t, she’d be there when it went wrong. Either way it worked for her, really.

The Imperials strode purposely a bit more, flinging doors open in dramatic fashion. This quickly got them to a dead end, so they had to stride purposely back again.

“Do you remember the way out?” Loghain asked. Jarrion gritted his teeth.

“It’s coming back to me. It’s this way,” he said.

“Do you remember that we were flown from the landing pad to here and probably can’t walk back?” Loghain asked, innocently.

Jarrion came to an abrupt halt and rounded on the Inquisitor, mouth open to give her a concise piece of his mind when he spotted approaching the important Council bods (sans their flunkies) accompanied by Shepard and Anderson. His spirits were immediately buoyed - they’d called his bluff! Aha!

“You were going to snap at me?” Loghain prompted but instead Jarrion just brushed some dust from the shoulder of her jacket. Whether there was actually any dust there or not was immaterial.

“You spilled your dessert a little there, Inquisitor. Might I suggest a napkin next time?” He said, making a mental note to - once they actually did get back to the lighter - vox ahead to Torian and have him clear a route from the lighter bay to his personal quarters.

Wouldn’t really do for the crew to see the sort of guests he was planning on bringing back.

Chapter Text

Twenty Six

+++IN AN IMPERIAL LIGHTER, HEADING INTO ORBIT+++

If having their minds probed hadn’t been enough to convince the guys from the Council that things weren’t as nicely cut-and-dry as they might have liked, the trip up in Jarrion’s shuttle-thing should have done the trick.

I’m not saying that you can’t make spacecraft like this, you could, it’s just that no-one does, at least no-one I’ve ever met. There’s commitment to the bit and then there’s going out of your way to avoid just about everything that usually goes into a modern shuttle. There plainly wasn’t an ounce of eezo anywhere in the damn thing. The only rougher trip I’d had through atmosphere had been that time I’d fallen through one while suffocating to death.

Lucky we were all strapped in, really.

Still, you had to admire it. This Imperial technology is all either sophisticated in some way I can’t work out or else just plain brute force. Sometimes probably both. A Kodiak can get into orbit because, you know, mass effect. This thing is just blasting its way straight up with engines powerful enough to just browbeat gravity, far as I can tell.

Works, can’t argue with that.

Comfort does look like it’s a bit of a secondary consideration though. A Kodiak isn’t exactly luxurious but this shuttle of Jarrion’s has us all rattling around on benches, deafened by the wonderful combined sound of friction and the engines causing the friction. Could barely hear myself think.

Thankfully, this ended. Took a minute or so but then we must have got into space proper, as the noise dropped to manageable levels almost at once. Still loud, but not so loud that it felt like you were sitting in a box next to a jet turbine. Everyone looked relieved. Well, everyone from this galaxy - the Imperials didn’t appear especially phased either way.

I heard some clipped snippets of chatter from what I assumed were the pilots, but couldn’t make anything useful out of it. Figured it was probably just your normal report on progress, courses getting locked in, how long to arrival and all that. Nothing I could do about that. I turned to Loghain - who was strapped in next to me.

“Nice trick with that Asari just before dessert, by the way,” I said, as casually as one can say something like that while inside a still-noisy space shuttle. Loghain just looked confused.

“Hmm?”

“The one that dropped dead? Figured that was you. With your brain,” I said, tapping my temple for demonstrative purposes.

She stared at me for a second - I think, I got the impression she was staring at me - and then seemed to realise what I was driving at, breaking out a smile that did at least manage to reach where her eyes would have been if she, you know, had any.

“Oh, flatterer! Not me though, that, sadly a bit beyond my capabilities. I’m more one for plundering thoughts, really. And the occasional bit of misdirection. Sometimes they get mixed together,” she said, drawing a circle in the air with her finger.

“Mixed together?” I asked, and instead of saying anything Loghain just leaned her head ever-so-slightly and nodded past me.

“Commander?” Came the crystal-clear voice of Ashley from just behind my ear and even though I knew there was nothing and no-one there I looked anyway, on reflex, twisting in the harness.

Nothing and no-one there, obviously, because I was sat with my back to the side of the shuttle and also because Ashley was dead.

That had been her voice though. No mistaking it.

Turning back to Loghain - because it was clearly, clearly her fault - I found her not having moved, dangerously close to smirking.

“That sort of thing,” she said.

I took a moment, took a breath, then reached up, took hold of her by the collar and pulled her in so we could have a proper word. This got the hackles up of Jarrion’s guys who were sitting opposite and watching, but it wasn’t like they could do much strapped into a shuttle other than glare and gesture at me.

The noise level in the shuttle dropped then, I noted. Engines probably cutting out for final approach as they coasted in with occasional little puffs of correction, just maneuvering to the target, braking now and then. This was good, as it meant I could speak more clearly:

“Loghain,” I said in a calm, collected voice. “You and I get along well enough, but if you ever do that or anything like it to me again our relationship is going to get very sour very fast.”

For possibly the first time since I’d met her I think I saw Loghain at a loss for words. Her mouth opened once, then closed, then opened again.

“My apologies,” she said.

The best way of saying sorry is never having to say sorry in the first place. Second best way is, you know, saying sorry. We take what we can get. I let go of her collar.

“That’s okay. Given that you know why that would have an effect I assume you also know why I’d rather you not do that,” I said.

“Yes. I am sorry. I - sometimes I may go too far,” she said.

“Don’t we all, sometimes. The important part is knowing not to go there again.”

Here the conversation ended, unsurprisingly. Just left lingering awkwardness and the sour looks of the two guys opposite. What does Jarrion call them? Armsmen? I don’t think they like me.

There then came another static-laced burst of chatter from up front and this time I could definitely make out the words ‘final approach’. The shuttle rattled, there were more jolty puffs and more braking, and then a swoop, a much harder brake, a halt that had us all jerk to the side in our straps and then a clang that made the hull ring.

Then nothing. Guess we’d landed.

The Imperials set about unbuckling themselves almost immediately and Jarrion was the first on his feet, up like a shot, stumping down from his seat up by the cabin to me and the Council bods, sat nearest the ramp.

“Apologies for the roughness of the journey - we’re not strictly-speaking equipped for transporting diplomatic passengers, the lighters are rather more utilitarian,” he said. The Council bods - recovering - made weak expressions about how this was fine and they were fine, despite clearly not being fine. That’s diplomacy for you.

Seeing that this first part of what he had to say had landed reasonably well Jarrion clasped his hands together, like how someone who’s about to deliver something sensitive might.

“With that in mind I should say that we don’t often receive guests on the Assertive and certainly not guests of your, ah, unfamiliarity, so I will kindly ask that you not wander - the ship is reasonably large and we wouldn’t want you getting lost. You might get hurt.”

Not sinister at all.

With that said he looked us all up and down to see if there were any questions and, when there were no questions, he stepped back and gestured to those armsmen of his without looking:

“Men, help our guests with their harnesses.”

They did. They didn’t look happy about it but they did.

In short order we were all of us unstrapped and standing, waiting inside the shuttle to be let out. All the Imperials barring Jarrion, Loghain and Thale were behind us. Nothing like being boxed in to make you feel comfortable. Pak, I saw, was the only one still sitting. I am sure they had their reasons.

Jarrion then, finally, does whatever it is he needs to do down by the ramp and the ramp comes down and out we all totter, some legs unsteadier than others.

And so now I’m actually on Jarrion’s ship properly.

First impression? Size. This thing was big. I knew that from the outside, obviously - we all knew that - but the dimensions on the inside just weren’t what you saw in spaceships. They weren’t what you were meant to see in spaceships. This thing had the kind of interior volumes you see planetside, and for good reason.

It had vaulted ceilings! Not everywhere I’m going to guess, but still! One vaulted ceiling is too many for a spaceship! And in the hanger, no less. That’s just extravagant.

Second impression: skulls. Fucking skulls. So many skulls. I’d thought that Jarrion’s floating one had been bad enough and that the dozen or so little ones he’d had just dotted across his rings and his jacket had been a bit much, but that was apparently just the appetiser.

If there was blank space available, someone had put a skull on it. I am not even kidding.

Blow me down but it’s big though. This is the kind of thing you normally expect on a space station, one of the more substantial ones. And even then they don’t have this sort of wasted interior space! Why would they? And also they don’t move!

And this is just the hanger! Or shuttle bay. Whatever, whichever. The bit where the little ships go - there’s a bunch more of them besides the one we landed in, parked either side of us. It’s bloody huge. And there’s these bits of paper stuck here and then with splodges of red wax, presumably stuck in places of significance. And there’s scrollwork on the floor-grates and what looks an awful lot like a shrine over against one wall. It has candles and a whole lot more of those wax seal things.

Only one person meeting us. Not sure what I expected but it feels pretty low-key for Jarrion. No band? For shame. Could have put a few more skulls on the instruments. Hell, why not make them out of skulls? You did it for the drones. I kid, but still.

The person meeting us was Torian.

Torian looked a lot like how I remembered him looking, which is to say old and unhappy. Nice that some things in life are consistent, I suppose. He looked a lot more unhappy when he clapped his eyes on the Council bods and looked like he was about to say something when Jarrion strode down the ramp to him and cut him off.

What the two of them said I don’t know as whatever their conversation was about it happened quietly. Torian didn’t come out of it looking any sunnier, but he kept his mouth shut.

“Come on, come on, don’t be shy. Come out and stretch your legs!” Jarrion said with a wave of his arm, mostly as myself and the Council bods and Anderson hadn’t come all the way down the ramp and were instead dawdling and gawping or else showing reluctance to leave the relative safety of the shuttle for the unknown.

At Jarrion’s insistence we finished moving down the ramp to join him and the others.

“Marvellous, marvellous. Ah, men, you are dismissed. Thale, if you wouldn’t mind seeing to it that they are properly debriefed?” Jarrion said, nodding first to the knot of armsmen he’d had in the shuttle and then to Thale, who nodded back.

“Lord Captain,” Thale said, clearly reading something into what Jarrion had said that we’d all missed. He then added, with a hint of concern: “Lord Captain?”

Amazing how a man can make two words mean so much.

Also, I keep forgetting that I can understand Thale, but Thale can’t understand me. Or anyone who isn’t Imperial, come to think of it. Huh. Weird. Hard to keep track of this stuff sometimes.

Whatever it was that had Thale concerned Jarrion didn’t seem too worried about and he flapped a hand.

“I’ll be quite alright, Thale, thank you. See to the debrief and then see to your leisure for now. I shall summon you when you are required.”

“Lord Captain,” said Thale, snapping off an especially crisp nod before turning the armsmen and jerking his head off to the side. And off they went.

Wonder what that was about.

Jarrion’s attentions then went to Loghain:

“Loghain, if you’d be kind enough to return to wherever it is you’ve dug yourself into. Your presence is not required for these discussions.”

“Was it something I said?” She asked.

“It was precisely something you said,” Jarrion said, laying on the ice and coming across tangibly frosty. Even I felt a little chilled. Loghain just shrugged.

“Alright, fine.”

And off she went too, without even a further murmur of argument. Jarrion looked honestly stunned and could only blankly watch her go before blinking and muttering to himself.

“That was easier than I expected…” he said, perhaps a little worried.

All of this left just me, Anderson, the three rather skittish-looking Council bods, Jarrion and Torian. Pak had somehow managed to slip away without anyone noticing which, all things considered, was kind of impressive. For someone who whirrs and clanks when they walk they can be pretty stealthy when they want to be, apparently.

Jarrion took a breath, straightened out his jacket, put the smile back on then held a hand out for us to follow.

“Apologies, details to see to, now seen to. Shall we?”

And on he led, out of the hanger and into the ship proper.

The ship didn’t get any smaller. I didn’t really expect it to, obviously, but it was still mind-numbing to go through door after door, down corridor after corridor and through however many lifts and conveyors and small tram systems and find there was always just more ship.

Jarrion looked to be taking us the scenic route, though since he had said somewhere before that we’d be heading to his quarters I figured those would probably be away from the nastier parts of the ship anyway - mine were, after all, and the Normandy could fit in a cupboard around here - so probably shouldn’t be surprised we’d ended up in what felt like the bloody nave of a cathedral that looked to be running most of the length of the ship, or at least a good chunk of the length.

That’s a weakness, if you ask me. I don’t care if I can see bulkheads ready to slide in every dozen feet or so, that’s still an oversight. But I don’t design spaceships wherever Jarrion is from, so what do I know? Maybe this sort of thing is standard on those big cruisers he mentioned?

Things got pretty ornate. Lots of weird little gothic frilly bits on pillars, lots more of those wax seals with the paper, lots more skulls and this time some of them cast (or at least coated in) in gold, lots of statues of stern-looking men and women holding books or (more) skulls or swords glowering at us from alcoves. Subtle stuff.

More of those hovering skulls things kept zipping overhead every so often, too, making the council guys flinch every time they did. Could have sworn I saw what looked like a cherub, as well. You know? The little chubby things? Babies with wings? Hiding behind one of those statues and peering down at us?

Probably imagining things at this point...

This was insane. Were all of their ships like this? What about those bigger ones Jarrion mentioned? And where was the crew and the actual bits that kept the place running? Beneath and behind us back towards where the engines were, I assumed, at least judging from the vibrations I could feel, the vibrations that kind of made me nervous until I realised that they were supposed to be that strong.

They came in waves, weirdly. Like a heartbeat when the rhythm really picked up. Now that’s just unsettling.

And I was so focussed on that feeling that it took me a second to notice that the Council lot and Anderson had stopped walking and were all just standing a good twenty feet or so behind me, all staring up. And I mean really staring, and given everything we’d seen already it must have been something.

So I wandered back and I also looked, and then I was also staring.

It was a relief, I think, though I’m not an expert. A relief in brass or something like brass. It was huge, absolutely huge. It showed a man in tip-to-toe armour, the kind covered in (more) skulls and eagles and one or two lightning bolts.

In the one hand he’s holding a flagpole or a standard or something, the flag itself festooned with what look like stars and that big two-headed eagle they seem so fond of and a few more lightning bolts for good measure, the fabric billowing. The other hand is holding a sword. The sword is on fire.

The man has a writhing, multi-headed serpent-thing pinned to the ground with a boot and and is stoically plunging that big, flaming sword right into it, also having impaled it on that flagpole he’s holding.

I blink.

What am I looking at?

It’s ludicrous. It’s overblown. It’s gaudy. It’s too damn big. It’s not the sort of thing you should really have anywhere, let alone in the middle of your spaceship. There is nothing about it that I should be able to take seriously. I should probably be snickering to myself. But I’m not. None of us are. We’re all just staring.

There’s something about it, I don’t know what. There’s something about the look in the man’s eyes, in his face. It’s…

...I don’t know.

Up ahead - out of the corner of my eye - I notice that Jarrion has also, finally noticed that we’re not following him anymore and has turned around to wander back our way. I’m still staring though, trying to work out what it is about this thing that’s just…

I really don’t know.

“Rather striking piece, isn’t it?” Jarrion says, coming to a halt next to me. I swallowed.

“Friend of yours?”

Jarrion gives one of those polite little laughs of his, pitched loudly enough to get everyone else’s attention - clearly gearing up for an explanation for all our benefits, not just mine.

“Heh, not quite. This would be a depiction of the Emperor, in something of a martial aspect. Personally I might have preferred a representation perhaps a little more, ah, in keeping with the spirit of my own activities - something more industrious, perhaps, or more, ah, exploratory - but it was part of the ship from when it was recovered, so presumably was an original feature from the ship’s previous service. Would be very insulting indeed to the Assertive to have had it removed, not to mention the ill-fortune it would have brought on us all. And it is, as I said, rather striking,” he said.

Having him come over and start talking had done wonders to break whatever spell the looming man and his sword and armour had put all of us under and while I still couldn’t quite ignore the sheer presence of him just hanging over me I could at least now put my thoughts in order better. The others just seemed uncomfortable.

“So this’d be artistic license, then?” I asked.

“Oh, no doubt - the serpent at the bottom there standing in for the threat of the alien in a general sense, what with the Ork head and the Eldar head and the head of whatever those other ones are - but the truth in essence. The Emperor is humanity, after all, so here we see the Emperor embodying the strength of mankind set against the alien, with the alien here vanquished and mankind victorious. Not that I’m an expert in the symbolism. Shall we continue?”

We continued, none of us looking back. I think maybe we were worried if we did we’d see that the Emperor was watching us go.

You ever get the feeling you’re being watched?

Thankfully, not long after we’d left the Emperor - still weird to think about that - behind us, Jarrion turned off from the massive central corridor thing and took us up in a lift. A wood-panelled lift that had required him to produce some credentials to access. I felt we were getting close to his quarters.

And I was right.

I thought I was pretty lucky getting my dinky little cabin with the fishtank and everything up on the Normandy, but that had nothing on this. Jarrion had an honest-to-goodness suite of rooms, and while I’d hesitate to call them tasteful they were at least different to what we’d been led through up to this point.

Less gleaming metal and statues, more gleaming wooden furniture and melodramatic artwork.

And skulls. Sigh.

Jarrion led us through what turned out to be the final door he was going to be leading us through and brought us all into what looked like the sort of room that existed purely to have meetings in. Weirdly, the whole room kind of looked like someone had taken it from somewhere else and stuck it here. Not sure why anyone would do that - and they probably hadn’t, that would be silly - but that’s the feeling I got.

We all took seats around a long, shining wooden table. We all avoided sitting in the chair that looked like it had been made out of bones. Jarrion, predictably, sat at the head, narrow-end of the table and set his hands down in front of him, fingers laced. He was smiling that particular smile of us.

“Right. Now that we’re settled, let’s get down to business, shall we? Get a few other things settled, eh?” He said, looking around the table and giving the tiniest of nods to Torian who was sat next to him with some sort of mechanical quill...thing…attached to a small brass machine covered in buttons into which a roll of what looked like parchment had been inserted. Naturally.

And so business got down to. Finally.

I didn’t really follow most of the conversation, if I’m being honest, but then I didn’t really need to, that wasn’t what I was here for. A lot more business-focussed this time, a lot of diplomacy. Seemed like being up here, on this ship, was doing wonders for keeping the council guys on-topic and having Torian around and Loghain not around seemed to do the same for Jarrion, too.

They certainly looked to make progress at least, or seemed to. Heard bits and pieces about the rights of whatever colonies Jarrion had dealings with to get to deal in Citadel space or maybe it was just whatever Jarrion was producing you know honestly I wasn’t paying attention. A lot of stuff like that. Torian took a lot of notes, I saw that, tapping away on his little machine and getting that quill to whizz along that parchment.

How is that in any way efficient, just to ask? Nevermind. Whatever works for them.

A bit I did hear and halfway listen to sounded a lot like Jarrion attempting to get recognition - even a little bit - for the Imperium as a sovereign entity and himself as an agent of it, with all the sort of diplomatic fluff that could conceivably follow on from that. That’s certainly something.

The Council bods said - and fair play to them, they weren’t wrong - that they couldn’t guarantee anything, of course, and certainly couldn’t guarantee the actual council agreeing to anything they might have outlined here and Jarrion was surprisingly relaxed about it, saying he understood completely but was ‘confident in their ability to make the facts of the matter clear’.

So that was good. At least someone was happy.

And with that everything that needed covering seemed to have been covered and the thing kind of fizzled out. With everything talked about that they’d apparently needed to talk about that just left a bunch of people sitting on a spaceship they didn’t really want to be sitting on, sharing a table with a man who didn’t really want them there either.

Time to leave, then, for them at least.

Torian packed up to go and he and Jarrion had another brief, quiet conversation. Once Torian had departed Jarrion favoured the whole table with yet another of those smiles, though this one seemed a bit more tired than the one before.

“Thale shall be returning shortly to walk you back to the hanger so you can be returned to the surface. In the meantime you shall, ah, talk among yourselves, I suppose?”

Not a whole lot else to do when waiting. The Council side of the table - the non-human Council side, I suppose - did get down to talking while Jarrion got up to go and do something by himself in the corner of the room. That left me and Anderson. I looked over to him.

“Is all Alliance-stroke-Council business this exciting?” I asked him.

“Every day more exciting than the last,” he said, completely flat. “Though it isn’t every day you get to be inside a ship like this. It’s unique, to say the least.”

You’re not wrong there, Anderson.

“That’s a polite way of putting it,” I say before leaning in a little. Don’t really care about being overheard, it’s just this is a private conversation. “I’m going to stick around a bit when you guys leave. I got a plan.”

Anderson raises an eyebrow. Just the one eyebrow.

“A plan?”

I held up my fingers, maybe an inch apart.

“Little plan, just something I cooked up,” I said.

“The kind of plan that might involve me having to lay out Udina again?” Anderson asked.

I’d forgotten about that.

“Well, I hadn’t factored that in but if you feel it’d help the next time you see him by all means don’t hold back,” I said, and we shared a chuckle. Ah, bonding over assault. To be fair, that plan did work.

“You going to go and type up your report on all this, then? Figured you at least were paying attention,” I say.

“I was. I’m not sure how much detail I should go into. Some of this would probably just have them asking me questions and not believing the answers. I might leave out the statues,” Anderson said, scratching his chin and casting an eye over some of the artwork in the room.

A lot of exploding spaceships. At least one heap of dead aliens. Tasteful.

“Probably a good idea. Focus on the important details,” I said.

“Think I can manage that.”

Thale appeared then. The gap between Torian leaving to get him and him showing up was so small I’m pretty sure he’d just been waiting two rooms over to be told to come back to Jarrion. Guy takes his job seriously, you can’t deny that.

And with him appearing the Council lot and Anderson disappeared. I gave Anderson a final handshake before, because honestly I have no idea when I’ll likely see him again. Thale looks at me wordlessly, questioningly, when I don’t make to follow him but I just shake my head, nod back towards Jarrion. Thale seems to get it.

Surprised that he lets me stick around with his boss alone, but then Jarrion does still have this weird idea that somehow we’re linked by providence, so maybe I’m a special case?

My life is strange.

And that just leaves me and Jarrion, still in the corner doing whatever. He’d taken his jacket off and rolled his sleeves up. First time I’d ever seen Jarrion without that jacket of his on, now I came to think of it. He looked smaller without it, and less square.

I cleared my throat, mostly so he’d know I was there. Did get him to look up. He looked pleasantly surprised.

“Still here, Commander? Not returning with the others?”

“Not yet. Seemed like a productive meeting, that,” I said. Jarrion sighed.

“I suppose. That it should have been quite this arduous is unfortunate, but such is life. Over now, thankfully. Now we can take a moment to gather ourselves.”

He fixed one of his sleeves which had started to come unrolled and smoothed his hair back. I was already gathered so I didn’t need to do anything. Instead I squinted at the buttons on the waistcoat he was wearing, trying to see what they were. When I saw what they were I wondered why I’d even needed to squint to check.

“I meant to ask you but the right moment didn’t really come up before: why all the skulls?” I asked, pointing to a few of the more obvious examples around us, including those on him like the waistcoat buttons. Jarrion blinked and looked at them himself.

“Yes?” He asked back at me, clearly having no idea what to make of my question. Suppose for him it was something he’d just got a bit blind to.

I rephrased:

“Well, bit grim, isn’t it?”

He gave me a very puzzled look.

“Something that all men can be sure of is that they are going to die, and it does them well to be reminded of this - particularly as it will help them to remember that a man who dies in service to the Emperor, no matter how humble that service may be, has not died in vain and has spent his life well and wisely.”

Not a lot I could say to that.

“...okay.”

Jarrion smiled.

“This is, I feel, another of those things that you will simply have to take my word for, Commander. I would not expect you to understand.”

Bloody death cult, this. They’re all mad.

“Was that what you stayed behind to ask, Commander?” Jarrion asked, sounding pretty puzzled. It would have been pretty funny if the whole reason I’d stuck around had been to ask him that in private, I’ll admit, and also pretty puzzling.

“No, no. I had something I wanted to talk to you about, little thing,” I said.

For whatever reason this seemed to perk Jarrion right up.

“Ah, a private conversation away from the political types? A fine idea. Over a drink, perhaps? We can take it in the top-side observation blister. The view in orbit is always worthwhile, I find.”

“Sure, why not. Thank you.”

And so off we went, back out the way we’d come.

A bit of walking and a bit of tram-taking later and we were in a lift, quite a small one, heading right up to this blister. It must have been pretty high up because it was taking quite a long time.

Flying around on the Normandy has given me a high tolerance for lifts. The slowest lift in the galaxy was as nothing to me. Slow it down, I could take it. Play some news in the background, I don’t care.

Or alternatively, have small talk:

“Jarrion, before, in the hanger, when you said those guys should be debriefed did you mean…?” I asked. More to make conversation than anything. I didn’t really think Jarrion would have anything unpleasant done to his men but I figured it’d pay to check and, well, this counted as making conversation.

From the look on his face he didn’t immediately get what I was driving at.

“Hmm?” He went, then he got what I was driving at. “Oh, Throne no, nothing like that. Just felt it best that they be kept apart from the rest of the crew for now,” he said.

This answer confused me, I’ll admit. Not what I saw coming.

“Why?” I asked.

“Ah, to curtail rumours. Wouldn’t do to have them circulating with those who hadn’t been down to the planet with me, saying that there were aliens on-board or anything like that.”

Oh. Now it made sense. Kind of. It made sense for Jarrion, if not for me.

“But there are aliens on board. And I thought you could get away with that? Rogue Trader and all?” I asked. Given what he’d told me about his - for want of a better word - job I thought dealing with aliens was the whole point.

Jarrion rubbed the palm of one hand with the thumb of the other. I think he was thinking.

“What a Rogue Trader can get away with and what the common crew might get upset about often overlap, sadly. What they do not know will not hurt them, and indeed it might be said that ignorance is one of the virtues among the lower ranks. I’d certainly say so. Later, when these Council representatives have left and the rumours do seep into the rest of the crew, well, that’ll be an issue for later. Nothing major, I’m sure. The crew is always hearing some rumour or other. It keeps them entertained,” he said.

Charming.

“Right,” I said. “Haven’t seen much of the crew around, I have to say.”

I remembered how many people EDI had estimated were on this thing, and big as it was it was eerie not to have seen any of them. They couldn’t all be in the back.

“Ah, well, most of them are elsewhere in the ship doing their duties. Those few that would have been in the sections you’ve seen were told to be elsewhere because, ah-”

“Because of the aliens?” I suggested, cutting in.

Jarrion had the look of someone who didn’t appreciate being interrupted, but he handled it well.

“You’re getting ahead of me, Commander,” he said.

“I think I got the gist of this by now.”

And on that note the lift finally got to where it was going - that’s timing, that is.

The blister, in the event, turned out to be more of a whole room and ‘top-side’ meant that it was sat right at the very top of the highest part of the ship. It was dark when we got up but he fiddled with something and these big, armoured shutters on the outside folded out of the way and then we got our view. Jarrion had not been kidding.

Getting a nice wide, sweeping vista of stars with Illium right there was one thing, seeing the length of his whacking great ship stretching out practically beneath our feet was quite another.

You don’t get to that sort of thing that often. Looked like a line of cathedrals stacked end-to-end, if cathedrals came studded with turrets and bristling with antennae. I assumed those were point defence, those turrets. Big though, real big.

But then what around here wasn’t?

“That’s quite the view,” I said as Jarrion came over holding two glasses, one of which he handed to me. “Much obliged,” I said.

“Think nothing of it,” he said, taking a sip. I looked at the glass. The glass was just a glass, and what was in it looked like it could have been anything. Amber-coloured alcohol covers a multitude of sins. Although, thinking about it, this was booze from another galaxy, kind of. Another galaxy and also the future, kind of.

Now that’s just weird.

Jarrion must have seen me examining the drink.

“Amasec. A gift from grateful House Croesus colonists. Unclear on the year and rather rustic in style but, well, I must admit to a certain fondness. Unless you’d prefer something else?” He asked.

“Sounds fine to me,” I said, taking a sip myself. Not bad, all told. I had another sip and the two of us stood and stared out at space and spaceships for a pleasant few moments.

But then it was time to get down to business:

“I wanted to talk to you about something,” I said. Or repeated, given I’d said this before.

“As you say and as I imagined you did, staying behind and all. It is rather hard to talk about the important things with functionaries around, isn’t it? Are they always like that?” He asked

“Them personally or Council employees generally?”

He waved his glass-holding hand at the window.

“Generally, I suppose. Bureaucratic! Aliens being inscrutable or barbarous I’m used to, that I expect. I never expected them to be so, so - so petty! So mundane!”

“They are just politicians, people,” I said.

Jarrion sucked in a breath and opened his mouth to say something about this but apparently thought better of it and closed his mouth without commenting.

“Hmm,” he went instead.

Best to press on:

“Anyway. Before dinner started back on Illium I might have asked whether you were into arms dealing now? If you remember?”

Feels a long bloody time ago now, all that. Like it was months ago!

“Ah yes, I vaguely recall. Vaguely recall a rather accusatory tone, as well,” he said, more amused than annoyed.

“Sorry, didn’t mean it like that. Well maybe, a bit. Can’t really claim the moral high ground when the ground is the bodies I’ve left in my wake. I just wasn’t sure that selling your future-guns was really going to end very well but that cat’s out of that bag now so that’s a moot point.”

“Nothing good has ever come of a cat, has it? And what little weapons I have sold - purely as weapons of defence for those human colonies I have contact with - are only lasguns, and rather basic ones at that. I was under the impression that lasers weren’t unknown to you?” Jarrion asked, and I could kind of tell he found the mere idea rather ridiculous. Just in the way he’d said it.

I waved my glass around a bit, just to make my point. Worked for Jarrion, and there’s something theatrical about waving a glass around. Makes it look like you’re saying something important.

“We don’t have lasers like how you have lasers, yours don’t work the way anything we have work. That’s what’s got everyone’s knickers in a twist. They all want to figure out how you do it and they all want to be the first ones. So while they might just be cheap junk to you, to some people around here they’re the hottest thing around,” I was rambling now and gritted my teeth to get back on topic: “The point is that what you have doesn’t work like what we have, and that’s exciting and different. Could end badly, but could also be pretty bloody useful, especially right now. Especially for me,” I said.

“You really are going somewhere with this, aren’t you?” He asked, grinning now. Kind of an annoying grin but I can’t really hold that against him because I was going somewhere with this so he wasn’t wrong.

“Jarrion, you and I probably don’t see eye-to-eye on a few things and I can live with that, but something I think we can both agree on is that if there is an intractable problem you can’t talk your way out of, you need a nice, simple, direct way of resolving it, yeah? Always better to avoid fighting if possible, but if you can’t then you want to be the one who’ll be winning the fight. Right?” I asked.

“I can’t think of anyone who’d disagree. We are still talking about weapons, aren’t we?”

“We are. Now I have two intractable problems on my plate right now,” I said, holding up a hand and unfurling a thumb. “The Reapers,” and then unfurling a finger. “And the Collectors. And the second one is basically just an extension of the first, but they’re also the one I have to deal with immediately.”

“Forgive me Commander but I’m unclear where I come into this. And I thought that the Collectors had been dealt with?”

“Not yet, no. We - you - blew up their ship but I’m going to take a wild guess and assume they have more than one. More’s the point, they have a base somewhere, the place where they’re taking all those colonists they’ve been rounding up, and until that base is dealt with they will continue to be a problem. That’s kind of what I’ve been tasked to handle.”

I am assuming that they have a base. There’s something on the other side of that relay, and where else do you park your huge termite-mound spaceships and deposit all your stolen people if not some huger, termite-mound base?

Just a guess. I could be wrong! Probably not, but I could be. But when you’re trying to persuade someone it pays to sound confident. That’s most of what being in charge is, after all, sounding like you’re completely sure what you’re saying is completely correct.

Jarrion’s face, meanwhile, had lit up. Kind of worrying.

“I’d be more than happy to assist!”

I couldn’t help but think that Jarrion’s idea of assistance here would be tagging along to wherever the Collectors lived and then turning on those big beam cannons of his until the problem stopped being a problem and started being superheated vapour rapidly cooling in space. And I could see the attraction in that - even if I’d prefer to at least get in first to see if anyone can be saved, ideally - but I can also see the problems.

One glaring problem before all the rest:

“It looks to be the other side of a relay, if it’s anywhere. Only way to find out where is to go through it,” I said, staring at him until he got the point.

The point being that, as far as both of us knew, his ship couldn’t do that. The Normandy couldn’t do it either, true, at least not safely, but the difference was that it couldn’t do it yet, whereas his couldn’t do it at all. As far as we knew.

“Oh. Oh…” Jarrion said, his face falling.

I sped in here.

“But you can still help me, you see? I’m building up a team, like I said. I’m making sure I have everything I can get running at maximum. The Normandy is probably one of the most expensive, advanced ships in space right now shy of a dreadnought and I’m gradually resolving each and every one of my team member’s personal demons so they can fully focus on the mission. What would really help me out though is an edge that the Collectors can’t prepare for. And that is where you come in,” I said.

“Is it now?”

I wet my whistle with the last of that amasec stuff and looked around for somewhere to put my now-empty glass. Couldn’t find anywhere though so just held onto it. Guess it doesn’t hurt to have a prop in hand.

“Look, you wouldn’t be putting in this effort with the Council and the colonies and the trading if you didn’t have a vested interest in this, ah, galaxy, right? Some stake in this galaxy staying in working order?” I asked, though really it was more posing a rhetorical question than anything else. Jarrion was watching me closely, I could feel it. Could see it, too, but it was intense enough that I could actually feel it.

“Quite.”

“So you’d probably want to keep things around here in one piece, or at least as close as possible, right? Reapers are one thing, we - I - can worry about them later, but right now we have a problem that is going to directly affect you - Collectors hit human colonies, which are your thing. So it’s in your interest to deal with them. Yes?”

“I believe you’re attempting to appeal directly to my self-interest, Commander.”

“I’m trying to lay out how while we might be coming at it from different angles, you and I are on the same page. At the end of the day you and I might have different motivations, different goals and different things we want to get out of all this, but all of that is wrapped up in the same thing: stopping the Collectors. And that’s a right-now kind of issue, and we’d both want it sorted right now.”

He kept watching me closely for another second before giving the tiniest of shrugs.

“You really don’t have to convince me, you know. The threat posed by these aliens to the humans in the, ah, Terminus Systems was quite clear - it’s why I assisted you on Horizon in the first place! I had just thought they’d been dealt with. Learning they’re not is irritating, obviously, but I certainly have faith in you to put it right. Were anyone else charged with this I’d be lacking in confidence - knowing that it’s you has me brimming with confidence!”

Nice to know he has a high opinion of me.

“So if I, say, approached you about acquiring or buying or borrowing a modest compliment of your futuristic small arms for my team so we could really give those Collectors a proper dressing down, how might you react to that?” I asked.

‘Dressing down’ wasn’t really the best choice of words I could have put in there but I was working on the fly and couldn’t realistic come up with a good, punchy euphemism for ‘shoot to bits with lasers and whatever else you might have available and also our own guns too for good measure’ in the time I had available, so dressing down would have to do.

Jarrion was swilling his drink around in his glass and staring down into it like he was trying to divine out what he should do.

“Well, given the very convincing chain of reasoning you’ve laid out demonstrating that what’s good for you is good for me I’d be very likely to render you some assistance. It’s just that…”

He tailed off here, frowning to himself and keeping on playing with his glass, passing it around his hands. I had no idea what it was that had stopped him and was about to ask what the problem was but then I remembered I was talking to Jarrion. Had to not grit my teeth.

“This is because I work with aliens, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Heh, ah, well, without meaning to be blunt it is, yes.”

“Seriously?”

That one slipped out. I couldn’t help myself. I’ve met plenty of humans who are leery about aliens - and plenty of aliens who are leery about humans - but this was starting to be ridiculous.

He gave me a surprisingly hurt look.

“I appreciate this may seem like I’m being difficult to you, Commander, but to me this is a legiatime issue and a legitimate concern.”

“You just had a meeting with aliens! I was there!” I said, pointing back to the lift for emphasis. Jarrion didn’t seem especially impressed by my emphasis.

“I’ve had interactions with various aliens, yes, but this is a little bit different. At least it is to me. It might seem simple on the face of it and, indeed, it would be very simple, but it might also be the thin end of a very sinister wedge.”

“How so?”

“I would have - and have had - no issue in getting weaponry to human colonists or human agencies who were clear to me in their intentions to use them for the, ah, furtherance of human goals. That I have no issue with. That some of these weapons have since ended up falling into the hands of aliens is unfortunate but nothing I can directly affect. Aliens are notorious for that sort of behaviour, it can’t really be helped. Where I start to have issues is, to put it bluntly, putting weapons directly in the hands of aliens. Tentacles, claws, whichever.”

“Haven’t you been doing business with aliens?”

“There’s doing business with aliens and then there’s giving aliens guns they will likely turn on humans. Or selling them guns. Profiting from it!”

“I mean, in a roundabout way, when you do business with an alien you could be, you know, providing material to an alien that ends up-”

Jarrion held up a hand.

“Commander, I imagine I know where you are going with that line of reason and, while admirable, it will not convince me. There is, as far as I am concerned, an important difference. I am sorry, but I have the welfare of my soul to consider.”

“So that’s a no, then?”

“It is...an expression of my reluctance. I would dearly love to assist you in your mission in any way I could - as you say, its success is of interest to me - and this would certainly be a valid means of assisting. The least I could do, in fact! It is just that, well, I have outlined my misgivings, even if they make little sense to you,” Jarrion said, pausing and then adding: “The presence of Loghain is also a minor concern.”

“Wasn’t aware you needed her permission to do your job,” I said. I was needling him on purpose with that one. I think he noticed if the look on his face was anything to go by.

“I don’t. I am operating outside of her jurisdiction here, and thoroughly in mine. I am merely concerned about what she might say and do once I return to the Imperium. Inquisitors are...unpredictable. Predictably unpredictable and quite likely to take a dim view of a human dealing weapons to aliens or to those who work closely with aliens. Even if it is another galaxy...”

Well this was working out great, definitely worth sticking around for.

Least I got a drink, even if I’d finished it.

I gave my empty glass a significant look and then transferred this significant look to Jarrion who, once he saw it, got the point, silently and obligingly giving me a refill. Might as well, right?

“Look, Jarrion, you’re a businessman, right?” I said after another swig. That amasec stuff really grows on you. “That’s a simplified way of looking at it I’m sure but you and I come from different places. Point is that’s your main thing, that’s what you told me, yes?” I asked.

“More or less.”

“So right here, with me, with my team, with the Collectors, think of me as a contractor.”

“Oh?”

Not sure where I was going with this, honestly, was mostly making it up as I went.

“At this point I’m not honestly sure what I am, to tell you the truth. I was with the Alliance and still am, I think, then got to be a Spectre on top of that so was working for the Council too, then I died, now Cerberus is bankrolling me - point is, I am now the galaxy’s go-to woman for large-scale problem solving and right now the problem I’m onto solving is one you want to see solved as much as anyone. Maybe more than most.”

I paused to see if he had anything to add or ask but he didn’t so I just kept on going:

“You’re going out of your way to make those colonies your bread and butter and now the Collectors are taking your lunch. So to speak. So all I’m saying is think of me as the person you can bring in to deal with that. How I deal with that, well, that’s up to me - who I work with and what I do with them, that’s mine - but what matters to you, what should matter to you, is that it gets done.”

My, I went off on one there. Must be the amasec.

And Jarrion’s just giving me another unreadable look. If I had to hazard a guess I’d say it was an appraising look, I was being appraised. Then he let out a tiny laugh and shook his head.

“I must say Commander you have quite the way with words when you need to.”

“You have your speeches, I have mine,” I said.

“So I see! You are fairly convincing, too. Fairly…”

He was stroking his chin and I could tell he wasn’t all the way convinced yet. I would have been surprised if he had been. Getting there, though. I could feel it.

“Look Jarrion, I’m not asking you to turn over your fanciest gear or tell me the secrets or anything like that. That’s not what this is about. I just want to make sure that my mission succeeds and that everyone I bring along to do it comes back, that’s it. You want that, too, and this way you’ll get it, nothing more and nothing less. Out of everyone you’ve met in this galaxy I am probably the only one without a deeper agenda because that is literally all I’m concerned about right now,” I said and he glanced up, an eyebrow raised. An eyebrow of doubt.

That’s the second time someone’s raised an eyebrow at me today. That I’ve seen.

“Well, were you to have a deeper agenda you probably wouldn’t admit to it,” he said.

Fair. But I really didn’t. I’m a pretty simple woman at the end of the day.

“Do you think I’m lying?”

Jarrion gave me the kind of hard look you give to someone when you want them to know that they’re being scrutinised. Kind of theatrical but, really, what else would I expect from him?

“...no. No I don’t,” he said eventually. Nailed it. Best way of nailing not looking like you’re lying is not to lie.

“Glad to hear it,” I said. “And if you still need to hear more you should probably also consider how you did go on that mission with me and my alien-packed team and Loghain was there and did see the whole thing and-”

Jarrion held up a hand.

“Yes, yes, I’m quite convinced already, thank you, you can stop Commander. I could take the time to explain to you the differences between that and this but, well, it’d probably come across to you as hair-splitting and by now I think we are both quite comfortably, as you say, on the same page,” he said.

They always said I was persuasive. It’s not quite up there with getting someone to shoot themselves in the head, but still. Got it done, didn’t I?

Jarrion lowers the hand he raised and scratches his chin, looking out into space.

“There will be limits to what I can supply to you as a contractor, of course. The Assertive is only lightly-equipped when it comes to infantry-level equipment and gear, I’m afraid to say, and certain items I simply cannot part with. But within reason I am willing to be flexible,” he said, motioning for me to follow and starting off out of the observation blister.

I did not believe for a second that his ship was only lightly equipped for anything, given that I’d already heard him talk about the missions he’d gone on back on his side with dropping in on colonies to go at it with rebels or pirates or Orcs or Orks or whatever, but decided not to make a big deal out of it.

Maybe it’d turn out that he wasn’t lying and that other, regular ships were packing even worse stuff. I didn’t really need any more exposition on how horrifying where he came from was and what they had to carry around just to see the next day.

“I’m not that fussy, what I’m mostly looking for is just an edge, a few surprises,” I said as we got back into the lift and the lift got going again.

“Surprises I am sure I can supply. But ah, how best to arrange this? Can’t really claim to have a professional operating relationship if I gift this, and some of it I may want back, if you’d be so kind. Hmm,” Jarrion said. Then he snapped his fingers. “Consigned, yes. I think that’ll do. That sounds more professional, don’t you think?”

Not my area of expertise.

“Oh yeah, real cozy. I can pay you, if you’d prefer. Well, let’s be honest Cerberus could pay you. And I’m prepared to be generous on their behalf, too. Very generous.”

I am nothing if not petty at times. I remember those secret labs, Cerberus. You’re doing alright by me right now, but I know full-well you’re doing all sorts of things you shouldn’t in the places I can’t see.

“Heh, thank you, no. As much as I do enjoy being paid I’ll consider your mission against the, ah, Collectors as payment in this instance and you may return the equipment when you are finished and you’ve returned in triumph. I’d rather your benefactor not know about this at all, all things being equal,” Jarrion said, and that one I hadn’t seen coming.

Honestly, from what Jarrion had said about the Imperium and it’s general attitude I would have expected him and the Illusive Man to have got a real close working relationship up and running by now. I kind of thought they had just without me noticing.

“Oh?”

“On paper and in theory I am fully in sympathy with his goals and the goals of his organisation. It’s just that I don’t fully trust the man. I don’t think he’s honest in what he’s aiming to do, and he’s not honest with himself about it,” Jarrion said.

Really hadn’t expected an answer like that. Jarrion continues to, well, not surprise me but be kind of all over the place with what he will and won’t do. Sure it makes perfect sense to him but hell, it leaves me in the dust half the time.

“How’d you figure?” I asked.

“A gut feeling. His eagerness to get into that alien wreck spoke volumes to his character, I feel, and his generosity in compensating me for access is also rather suggestive. He’d not turn down anything that he might think would give him even the slightest advantage - him here being a key term. That humanity would benefit seems incidental. Maybe I am misreading him, but he comes across to me as a man who has, ah, bought into the line he’s spinning? I don’t know. Maybe he and I will meet properly down the line and I’ll change my mind. For now though, discretion would be appreciated.”

“Hey, no problem for me. Kind of amazed he hasn’t come at you like I have and just tried to get some guns or something,” I said.

“Oh, he has. Either personally or through agents. I have demurred, politely.”

This was news to me. One shock after another in this lift, I tell you.

“Because you don’t trust him?”

Jarrion nodded.

“Because I don’t trust him. Colonists are simple folk. They live on the fringes, they need equipment, they need food, they need a weapon, and they need it to live through one day to the next. That’s quite alright. That’s honest. Cerberus and the, ah, Illusive Man, was it?”

I nodded.

“They have goals further down the road, and while humanity may or may not benefit if they achieve these goals the goals have more to do with their own, ah, glory than with the prospering of humanity as a whole, or so I think. No, ah, principles, yes? No real beliefs. Other than doing anything to get just that little bit more powerful. Dangerous, dangerous - mankind was just as hubristic before the Imperium, before the Emperor, and mankind paid dearly for it. I can well imagine Imperial technology being gleefully and wantonly combined with alien technology. Likely that’ll happen anyway, likely it’s happening right now, but the important part is my hands are clean of it.”

“Would it be that bad, really? Taking the best of both? Mean, that’d just be working together, wouldn’t it? Is that so bad?” I asked. I was perhaps needling again but this time only gently. After all, if you can do something well on your own, where’s the harm in doing it better with company? Why not all rise together and all that?

Jarrion looked set to launch into some sort of windy explanation here, but then thought better of it and sighed, smiled only on the one side of his face.

“Really getting into it today, aren’t we, Commander? I think this is a question of upbringing. Where I am from your attitude and the attitude of many of your peers would be considered most, ah, eccentric.”

“I feel you’re being polite and not stating the full extent of how my attitude would be considered,” I said. The lift arrived as I finished, and out we went, me tagging along as Jarrion led the way to wherever we were going next.

“I was. Now let us perhaps move onto less contentious topics, yes? Weapons, perhaps? For example, how likely are you to need anti-tank weaponry on this mission of yours?”

I thought about this question.

“I’d prefer to err on the side of caution so let’s say pretty likely,” I said.

I was smiling. Jarrion was smiling. Maybe we do have some things in common after all.

“Somehow I thought you might say that, Commander.”

Chapter Text

+++ON-BOARD THE ASSERTIVE, IN THE HANGER, STANDING AND WAITING+++

Picking out guns had not taken that long, all things considered.

Shepard had been quite right in her assumptions, too, and the Assertive was practically brimming with weaponry. The armoury that Jarrion took her to was not the only one on board, and it had more guns in it than the whole of the Normandy. She knew he had a lot of those armsmen around - he’d said as much - but it was still kind of ridiculous to see.

What Jarrion had meant, really, was that he only had the sort of equipment and armaments as suited his mission, which was only ever meant to involve light combat at most, perhaps a little alien eradication but nothing like a protracted ground war. Though even by those standards he’d brought a lot of guns, some of them very big indeed.

Not that Shepard was complaining, this was exactly what she’d been hoping for.

It had just been her, Jarrion and one of those servo skulls, this one with trailing parchment and with a spindly little arm tipped with a quill - a rather more grim version of the little typing machine that Torian had had, perhaps, and one that could also fly. It was there to take notes.

(There were also one or two crewmembers working in the armoury here and there but they, seeing the Lord Captain and what looked to be an important off-ship guest, steered well clear and kept a safe, respectful distance.)

Jarrion had basically deferred to Shepard, saying that since she was the one who’d be doing the mission and she was the one who knew her team she was better placed to decide what it was she might need. Selection therefore had involved a lot of Shepard pointing at a gun she didn’t recognise and asking ‘What’s that?’ and having Jarrion explain what it was to her.

Sometimes it was something she could comprehend like an autogun or a stubber or a heavy stubber or a shotgun (weapons she recognised as ‘guns’, albeit curiously anachronistic in a lot of cases - almost quaintly so), sometimes it was something new and different like a ‘meltagun’ at which point she’d express an interest and a note would be made by the servoskull following them.

In this way a list was drawn up.

Shepard did her best to exercise restraint, bearing in mind that she wasn’t equipping an army but a squad, and they only had so many hands to hold guns with. It would have been easy to go overboard (she had a bit of a soft spot for guns) but she tried to think reasonably and calmly, and so in the end the list they ended up with was comparatively modest.

This list was then passed to a member of the armoury staff by Jarrion alongside instruction to pack up all items indicated thereon for transport, alongside sufficient ammunition and a few other sundries that Jarrion felt were warranted.

Meanwhile, Shepard had made contact with the Normandy to have the Kodiak sent over and while it was in transit the crates would be loaded and once the crates were loaded they would be brought down to the hanger, thence to be put into the Kodiak whenever it arrived.

It had not arrived yet.

Which was why Shepard and Jarrion were standing in the hanger waiting.

“Exciting stuff this, isn’t it?” Shepard said, her arms folded and her eyes on the exterior hanger doors. They were enormous, but then what wasn’t around here?

“Most of life is waiting, really. What’s that expression? Periods of absolute terror separated by periods of absolute boredom?” Jarrion said.

Shepard had actually heard this or variants of it before, but hearing it from someone from thousands of years in the future wasn’t something she’d expected.

“Heh, something like that,” she said.

Further discussion of boredom was forestalled by a warning light setting off and drawing both their attention.

An impressively large set of doors a little way behind them opened, revealing what was plainly some manner of cargo elevator - not the one that Jarrion had used when leading his guests off the first time, nor the one that he and Shepard had used to come back down to the hanger this time. No, this was the sort of elevator you used when you were moving a lot of people and-or stuff.

Or, in this instance, driving some sort of cart thing loaded up with crates packed with weapons. Which is what someone was doing.

One of the crewmen from the armoury was stood right at the back of the vehicle, overseeing (and hanging onto) the crates all lashed onto the cargobed of the thing. He looked serious even as he bounced and rattled along.

He was accompanied on the loader-thing by several of the heavily augmented type of crewmembers that Shepard had seen once or two before in Jarrion’s company, though usually only ever at a distance. Like when she’d caught him in that hanger (another bloody hanger - that’s working in space a lot for you) on Illium, she’d seen some then.

At the time she hadn’t given them too much thought - dismissing it as another Imperial quirk and imagining that she likely wouldn’t get much useful by the way of answer if she asked - but this time something about them made her look twice. That they were closer helped, certainly, as it meant that a few key details that she might have missed the first one or two times now stood out more clearly to her.

She considered this as the loader drove their way, moving towards the pad that Jarrion pointed out and pulling to a halt beside it. Once stopped, the armoury crewman hopped down and popped the straps off the crates before instructing the augmented crew - with lots of pointing and a lot of shouting - to start unloading.

And unload they did, with a kind of painful, clumsy lack of coordination that only served to further heighten Shepard’s concern about them. There really was something off about those guys, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on what. Their mechanical bits certainly didn’t look comfortable, that was for sure.

And then there was also the guy who she had thought was the one driving the loader.

Initially, she thought that the thing just had an orthodox and very uncomfortable-looking place for him, the driver to sit. It was only now, while it was being unloaded and he had nothing to do, that she clocked that the driver was, in fact, basically a part of the machine. Everything above the waist was person, everything below the waist was loader and where the two met there were a lot of rivets involved.

However he’d got into that position, he was not getting out again without help.

Not that seemed to mind. His blank, slack expression was clear even from halfway across the hanger, as were the same blank, slack expressions on the others doing the unloading.

They all looked to be in a pretty bad way.

“Are those guys okay?” Shepard asked, pointing with concern. Jarrion, who had been thinking about something and so who had been miles away, snapped back to the present and looked around.

He couldn’t see anyone, or at least no-one obvious. The armoury crewman had wandered off to have a chat with one of the few hanger crewman around, occasionally glancing back to the ones doing the unloading, the only ones that Jarrion could see.

“Guys? What guys?” He asked.

Shepard pointed more, harder.

“Those guys, there. With the crates,” she said and Jarrion peered right at where she was pointing and right at the servitors. He still didn’t see who she was talking about.

“Who?”

“Them!”

“...the servitors?” Jarrion ventured, out of ideas.

“Sure, the servitors. Are they okay?” Shepard asked.

A pause.

“They...appear to be functioning correctly.”

Shepard squinted at Jarrion and he squinted back at her. By turns, both of them realised that they were coming at the issue from entirely different angles and missing each other completely in the middle.

“I take it you are unfamiliar with servitors?” Jarrion asked.

“Just a bit. Are those the crew with augmented bits and pieces? Or what?”

This statement was so outlandish to Jarrion that he was flat-footed for a split second. He looked at the servitors again and tried to imagine what it was Shepard was seeing when she looked at them. He couldn’t quite manage it. He just saw servitors.

“Ah, no. Many of the crew - especially the ratings - will have replacement parts given the dangerous nature of the work but they are not servitors. Servitors are, ah, equipment, I suppose? They perform manual tasks and are incorporated here and there as required. The lighters have servitors for backup or automatic piloting, for example, and there’s one integrated into the gantry crane up there, if you can see?”

Jarrion pointed up to the closest of several cranes the hanger had. Shepard followed his hand and, after a few moments of hard looking, spotted what looked to be a small, pale, slack face protruding from a nest of wires and cables set in the middle of the body of the thing. Her mouth dropped open just a tiny bit.

“Okay,” she said, mouth closing.

Shepard appeared to be having some difficulty grasping the concept that Jarrion had laid out for her, or at least some issues with what parts of it she could understand. It looked like she couldn’t quite articulate what her next question should be.

“People get...made into parts of machines or...treated as...industrial….equipment? Did they volunteer for that? Do they get paid?” She asked, gesticulating as she struggled to get the words out.

Jarrion looked at her as though she had taken a funny turn and might need a lie down.

“Paid? Why - no, they are not paid, Commander. And they’re not people, either. They are servitors,” Jarrion said, in the manner of one stating something so obvious that they honestly have no idea how else to explain it or how to break it down into simpler terms.

Unfortunately this cleared up nothing for Shepard.

“Which means?” She asked.

Jarrion sighed.

“I’m not a tech priest, I don’t know the specifics or the details or the full theological explanation and justification and, in all honesty, it’s not something I’ve ever given much thought to. It is what it is, and it is what it is for a reason,” he said, waving his hand vaguely at the servitors as if hoping to waft them out of sight so they could move onto something else.

Predictably this had no effect whatsoever. Would have been stranger if it had, really.

“And that reason is…?” Shepard asked, leaving a gap for an answer, a gap left unfilled.

“I’ll have to ask Pak when I see them next.”

At this point one of the augmented crew - or ‘servitors’ - seemed to have something of a minor fit and froze-up halfway through hefting a crate off the loader, half their body jerking one way while the rest jerked the other. This meant they dropped the crate.

The armoury crewman came over. There was more shouting. The servitor continued twitching even as it tried to bend and retrieve the dropped crate, only to twitch especially hard everytime it bent and so having to start over again.

By this point yet another crewman, this one in the sort of red robes Shepard had seen Pak wear, appeared, seemed to tip a little something onto their fingertip before dabbing the forehead of the thing, making some kind of strange hand gesture and then when that didn’t work just giving the servitor a not-inconsiderable tap on the head with a wrench.

And when that also didn’t work it looked to all the world as though they just turned it off and on again.

That worked. Unloading resumed. Everyone got back to work.

Shepard swallowed.

“So, again, those are...people…? Were people?” She asked and Jarrion had to fight the urge to sigh.

“No, no I wouldn’t think so. Not really,” he said.

“Not really?”

Another question. Jarrion cursed inwardly. His own fault, really.

“Oh they’re just vat-grown. Probably,” he said with a yawn, covering his mouth and adding a quiet ‘pardon me’ at the end.

“Vat-grown?” Shepard asked, but then she clearly thought about those two words together and came to her own tentative conclusion. “Like a clone?”

“Possibly. I wouldn’t know.”

“You cloned a person to make them into a lobotomised cyborg so they could operate a crane?”

“Not me personally but the Mechanicus did and does. It rather has to, servitors are important. From what I’m given to understand there isn’t much to lobotomise or to mind scrub in the first place anyway. But why are we talking about this?”

Jarrion might have mentioned here also how there were occasions when criminals - typically those found to have committed a crime deemed to fall under Mechanicus jurisdiction - were punished and made useful by being converted into servitors, but he had a feeling this wouldn’t land well with the Commander and so kept it to himself.

She had enough to work with anyway.

“Is ‘mind-scrubbed’ worse than ‘lobotomised’, or are they both about as awful as each other?” She asked.

“I wouldn’t know, Commander.”

“And - and I’m sorry to keep going on about this, it’s just kind of tripping me up - you couldn’t have robots or something do this because…?”

“Because a machine that thinks like a man is an abomination. That much I do know.”

“But making drones out of skulls - like that one you put in the crate - is acceptable?”

Jarrion liked to think of himself as a patient and accommodating man, mostly as another point of difference between himself and certain other members of his family. He liked to think that he would be able to calmly and cooly keep at a task without letting mounting irritation get the better of him and start to sharpen his responses. And in many ways he was.

But he was also only human, and he was getting very, very tired. He also recognised this.

“Commander, please, I’ve had rather a long day and I very much doubt my poor efforts at explaining the issues here will satisfy you. If anything I fear they could only beg further questions. Yet again, let us both be comfortable knowing that there are many things that are normal for me and not for you, and the same in reverse. Please?” He said.

Shepard, who perhaps only now noticed how run-down Jarrion was looking and who realised this was the first time she’d ever seen him looking like this, decided she’d likely pushed the issue as far as it could go anyway.

“Alright. Sorry. Just, uh, a lot of people might consider this a crime agains- consider this the sort of thing what the bad guy would do. Maybe. If you get where I’m coming from.”

Jarrion did not get where she was coming from. Admittedly he didn’t try very hard, but that was because he had a feeling that, even if he did, he still wouldn’t have got where she was coming from.

“I’ll bear that in mind. Does it bother you?” He asked, not trying to disguise the tiredness in his voice.

Shepard was quiet for a moment. She watched the servitors some more. With the crates all moved and stacked they had nothing else to do and so moved to an alcove off to one side of the hanger which then closed off.

With them out of sight Shepard looked briefly at her hand before raising it to her head and again lightly running a finger over one of those spots where the evidence of how she’d been put back together was particularly close to the skin.

“I’m not sure yet,” she said, her hand dropping. “I’ve done a few things that have bothered me in my life, and I have a feeling I’ll be doing a lot more in the next few years. It’s always a lot easier to tell what you should have done in hindsight. Or at a distance.”

“These things are sent to test us,” Jarrion said.

“Hmm.”

An awkward pause followed.

“Did you, uh, did you kill that Asari merc back on Illium? The one that keeled over?” Shepard asked. This had been tickling the back of her brain ever since it had happened and Loghain’s non-answer in the lighter hadn’t cleared anything up for her, and even though she could feel the mood souring she figured if she didn’t ask now she’d never find out.

“I did,” Jarrion said, disinterestedly, lightly.

“How?”

“Needler.”

“Oh.”

Shepard did not know what that meant, and could sense that this was perhaps as far as it was wise to push it. At least she knew now that it had been Jarrion who’d done it, even if not knowing the full details was kind of unsettling.

Needler? What? How? Why? What?

They stood in silence after this, and somewhere between three and five minutes later the Kodiak arrived. It looked almost quaintly small in the Assertive’s spacious hanger, the crew who disembarked gawping at what they saw before noticing their Commander waiting and hustling over to snap off salutes and take orders.

And so it was that the crates were, with much grunting and sweating, shifted into the Kodiak. Shepard pitched in, what with being an eye-wateringly strong cyborg capable of hefting the crates largely unaided and all. With her help they made short work of it, and in next to no time they were ready to depart.

“A pleasure as always, Commander,” Jarrion said, extending a hand which, after a split second, Shepard shook.

“Always a memorable experience, Jarrion,” she said.

And with that she left. Jarrion watched the shuttle depart, again noting the oddly floaty, weightless way these local craft moved - similar to a few skimmers and other anti-gravity vehicles he’d seen in his time, albeit with a smoothness he found a little odd to see. Rather Eldar-ish, now he came to think of it. The thought did not improve his opinion or his mood.

He fished his chronometer from his waistcoat pocket and checked it. He thought longingly of his bed.

He heard footsteps and heard them getting louder.

He turned.

And he saw, across the hanger and closing at a saunter, hands clasped behind her back and a small smile on her face, Loghain. Jarrion’s shoulders slumped.

He had the sudden, jarring thought that quite often of late he had been getting verbally poked and prodded by Loghain and the Commander, the former over concerns he might not be Imperial enough in his behaviour, the latter that his Imperial behaviour was somehow distasteful in these parts.

Not perhaps wholly accurate, but to Jarrion’s tired mind it seemed compelling and somehow very unfair. Why couldn’t anyone just say he was doing a good job for once? He wasn’t greedy or needy, just once would be fine. Just a single word of recognition. Maybe a meaningful look if speaking the word aloud was too much.

It wasn’t even the need for praise, really. He’d grown out of the need for praise many, many years ago as even the tiniest morsel of praise had often preceded a lengthy explanation of why he wasn’t truly worthy of it. On top of which any praise wasted on Jarrion was praise that could have gone to his brother, who was known to become dissatisfied if sufficient praise was not supplied regularly, and father had always had a strictly limited supply to spread around.

So no, not praise. Praise was worthless anyway, it got nothing done and too much of it was corrosive and addictive, this Jarrion had seen. But what about an acknowledgement that he’d made the best of an unusual situation? Even a brief one? Even slotted in amongst all the complaints and questions?

He’d fallen into another galaxy! Through time, too! What would anyone else have done in his place? Most people would have found falling through one thing daunting enough, he’d fallen through two! Apparently. Maybe.

At least the Emperor knew his intentions, and his striving. The Emperor understood what it was he was trying to do, understood that it was only His greater glory that motivated him. The Emperor saw and understood the efforts of all his servants, great and small, regardless of whether anyone else did or not. He saw it all and judged it all, and Jarrion knew that He would not find him wanting.

And, really, wasn’t that all that mattered?

Yes. Yes it was.

“You look tired,” Loghain said, having reached Jarrion. He gave her a look, couldn’t really think of anything immediately pithy to say and so just rubbed his face briefly and pinched his nose, slipping his chronometer back into its pocket.

“I am tired,” he said.

“Won’t keep you long, then. How was your little chat with the Commander?” Loghain asked.

“Rather invigorating at first, tailing off into the depressingly exhausting at the end. You do sometimes forget, when talking to her, that she is coming from a very strange place indeed, and has some very strange ideas.”

“No doubt. Speaking of strange ideas, did I see Imperial crates full of Imperial armaments and equipment being loaded into a shuttle set to return to a ship with a distinct alien element?”

Jarrion sighed.

“I assume you’re somehow, mysteriously aware of what she and I agreed upon?”

“Very mysteriously aware,” Loghain said, wiggling her fingers briefly before shrugging. “And, you know, I did see the crates being loaded and then also saw them being put into the shuttle and can kind of put two and two together. They covered that back in Interrogator training, how to pick up on these subtle clues.”

For a given value of ‘see’, Jarrion presumed. He wondered if Interrogators had lessons or if most of their training was on the job. He then decided this was probably a question for another time, alongside what an Interrogator actually was in the first place. He could make an educated guess, but he could very well have been wrong.

“Wonderful,” he said.

There passed a moment where Loghain waited to see if Jarrion had anything else to add and, when he didn’t, she stepped in:

“You know what I’m going to say,” she said. Jarrion rubbed his face some more.

“Yes, I well imagine I do. And you too, I’m sure, know what I will say in response.”

“Oh I could probably hazard a guess.”

“Well then, is there any point to us having this conversation at all?” Jarrion asked, knowing that it wouldn’t change anything but having a go anyway, just on the off-chance.

“All the other Inquisitors would make fun of me if they heard I didn’t at least try. These are the dances we have to do, Lord Captain. To each of us a role, for each of us a duty.”

“What do the other Inquisitors make of you, just to ask, Loghain? You don’t strike me as the most orthodox, which strikes me as the sort of thing that might see you making enemies?” Jarrion asked, shuffling over to where a fuel-line output had been left jutting squarely from its hatch in the hanger floor and sitting on it heavily. Loghain followed, hands still behind her back.

“I get by. But we’re not talking about me, are we? We’re talking about you and why you saw fit to pass Imperial weaponry into the hands of someone known to work with and for aliens. Without context that sort of thing might look quite bad, Rogue Trader or not. With context, well, it might look a tiny bit less bad, but that’d depend on your audience.”

Jarrion sat a little straighter on his makeshift seat, idly tucking his thumbs into his waistcoat more out of subconscious need to do something with his hands more than anything else. This was, more or less, exactly what he’d expected to hear, and the words that sprung immediately to mind were, more or less, exactly what he expected he would say in response:

“It would do well for you to remember, Loghain, that we are very much in the territory that a Rogue Trader was intended to operate in and I am operating exactly as expected. The latitude the Warrant grants me covers this - it covers far more, in fact. I am exercising considerable restraint. Besides, the lending of a modest selection of small arms to a human ally is hardly leaping headlong into the deepest recesses of xeno-loving heresy and vileness, is it?”

Even if what he’d done still gave him just the tiniest tickle of discomfort if he thought about it too hard. He imagined that would fade in time.

Loghain shrugged.

“It’s a minor thing, definitely. Certainly not the sort of thing that’d be worth the time of an Inquisitor given everything else those busy, talented, handsome people have got to contend with.”

“So why mention it?” Jarrion asked through gritted teeth.

“Because it always starts with a minor thing, Lord Captain. That one small act that seems trifling at the time but which, when looking back, was the first step onto a path that led to dark places, places utterly unimaginable when that first step was taken. A moment of laxity spawns a lifetime of heresy, as they say.”

Jarrion was feeling rather sour. Again, no recognition, only more things he’d done wrong.

“Many Rogue Traders do far worse than me, and do far better for it.”

Just as stories abounded of Rogue Traders bravely rediscovering long-lost human colonies and benevolently bringing them back into the Imperial fold or else merrily massacring aliens as and when they found them other, darker stories were often passed around of those Rogue Traders who acted purely for their own sake, who did open business with aliens - not to exploit them for the benefit for humanity, but for their own personal benefit and with no eye to the consequences for them or for anyone else.

Rogue Traders who’d sell aliens weapons, who’d sell alien weapons, who’d sell aliens humans. Most anyone who’d heard of Rogue Traders had heard variants of these stories, and most of them were true somewhere, in some part.

If you could imagine a vile, heretical crime the odds were good that at least one Rogue Trader had done it and had probably made a good amount of money doing it, too, and had probably got away with it all as well instead of meeting a just, sticky end.

(Not that any good Imperial citizens should be imagining vile, heretical crimes, of course. That sort of thinking was dangerous.)

That Loghain would even obliquely suggest that Jarrion might be heading in that direction, no matter how distantly or vaguely, insulted him on a very deep and personal level. But he kept that deep and personal, as he didn’t really want her knowing his more tender inner spots.

She’d likely know anyway, her being her, but it was the principle of the thing.

“Materially, perhaps, but the health of their soul would most certainly be suspect,” Loghain said. This was putting it mildly. Jarrion let out a short laugh, devoid of mirth.

“Are you concerned about the health of my soul, Loghain?” He asked.

Loghain’s face took on a sincere aspect that did not suit it.

“Someone has to be,” she said.

Jarrion considered pointing out that the Assertive did have a Confessor (more than one, in fact - the crew was rather large - but the command crew and senior staff had one specifically) and that his own personal spiritual welfare would probably be more his job than Loghain’s, but even as the thought formed Jarrion lost the enthusiasm for it. Hardly a biting comeback in the first place, hardly worth the effort.

He was tired. He stopped sitting up so straight.

“This wasn’t my idea, Loghain. I didn’t go to the Commander she came to me, and she was not only persuasive she was also correct, these aliens - these specific aliens, these ‘Collectors’ - present a threat to my interests and, at this moment, she is not only the one best placed to counter this threat she is the only one even able to. Given that my interests and the success of them are ultimately the Imperium’s interests, too, it would seem that not assisting her would have seen me damned for laxity and inattention. One starts to get the impression that the game is rigged from the start,” he said.

“Oh that’s always been true, it’s more just a case of how much you lose by and how badly. Honestly though, in this instance, having been inside the head of one of those aliens, I can say that you probably made the right choice. Maybe not the best choice, but since no-one knows what the best choice is, you probably made the right one,” Loghain said.

“How refreshingly pragmatic of you. Then why are you making an issue of it?” Jarrion asked.

“So you don’t become too comfortable.”

“I’m not comfortable! I am, in many ways, uncomfortable!”

And not just because he was sat on a fuel pump.

“Good. Stay that way.”

“Urgh…” Jarrion grunted, putting his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. Having an Inquisitor in his life was bad enough, having her practically joined to his hip half the time he was awake was worse, having her decide to become his conscience was probably the worst, though. Another of those things sent to test, no doubt, or if not it bloody felt like one.

The conversation ground to a halt for a few rather awkward seconds.

“There was something else,” Loghain said.

Jarrion stayed quiet for a few moments more before slicking his hair back and sitting up straight again, blinking at her, hands on his thighs.

“Of course there was. Yes?”

“Why is it you never invite me up for drinks in the observation blister?” Loghain asked, sounding maybe just the slightest bit wounded.

There was more blinking as Jarrion tried to work out if she was serious or not. Even if he hadn’t just had a long day with a lot of talking and even if he’d been fully rested and refreshed and alert he still probably wouldn’t have been able to. She sounded and looked completely serious - a little hurt, even - but that could mean anything.

Jarrion had to look away and shake his head.

“Throne preserve me…” He muttered.

Another break in the conversation. He looked back to her and found her standing there, still looking completely serious and earnest. It was rather unsettling.

“...would you like to have drinks in the observation blister?” Jarrion ventured, tentatively, cautiously, not wholly sure what answer he dreaded more.

Loghain perked up immediately, all trace of sounding or looking wounded or vulnerable vanishing in an instant, like it had never been there at all.

“As much as I’d love to, Lord Captain, my schedule is far too busy,” she said.

Ask a stupid question.

“Of course. Foolish of me to have thought otherwise. Well, the offer remains open, Loghain, should you wish to avail yourself of it. On the condition that you don’t subtly insinuate that whatever course of action I’ve taken most recently is some tentative step towards becoming irredeemably corrupted and shacking up with a half dozen of those, ah, blue aliens in some sort of unrelenting, sweaty, thrusting, lascivious xenos orgy,” Jarrion said, unable to keep his face from wrinkling in distaste even as he said it, the last part not painting a pretty picture in his head at all.

Loghain bit her tongue before replying to that one.

“So no discussing work, then?” She asked.

“If you want to put it like that, yes.”

“I don’t know, Jarrion, that’s kind of all I have.”

“Oh I’m sure that’s not true. You must have had a life before your career and I like to think you still have part of one now. I’m sure you had hobbies before getting under my skin started taking up most of your time. I’m sure you were a perfectly pleasant, well-rounded person before you became an Inquisitor.”

“Hah.”

“Adequately pleasant?”

“Somehow you always find the kindest words to say to me, Lord Captain.”

“It’s a gift,” he said, then slapping his legs and forcing himself to stand up again. “I’m going to bed. I dread to ask what your plans for the night might be.”

“Thought I’d wander around, poke my nose in places. You know. Inquisitively,” Loghain said, rocking on her heels and looking around the hanger. There was, at that moment, not a whole lot to look at.

“I could have you confined to quarters, you know. Wherever it is you’ve quartered yourself,” Jarrion said.

“You could, but you’re not going to, are you?”

Not for the first time Jarrion realised it was difficult to stare down someone without eyes.

“...no, I suppose not. Best to stay in your good graces, I expect?”

“Oh, most certainly,” Loghain said, nodding.

“And you only really said it to annoy me anyway, didn’t you?”

“It’s like you know me.”

“Yes yes, of course. Well, as pleasant as this conversation has been I am, as said, going to bed. We’ll be casting off first thing tomorrow to go and investigate that, uh, possible route back home so there’s that to look forward to. Exciting, exciting opportunities, yes. Wonderful stuff,” Jarrion said, again glancing at his chronometer.

This would be ‘tomorrow’ according to ship time, obviously.

“I’m quivering with all the excitement,” Loghain said.

“Aren’t we all. So yes, I imagine I’ll see you tomorrow. Assuming you don’t also watch me when I sleep.”

“Oh, don’t give me ideas.”

“Yes quite, very good. Goodnight, Loghain.”

And off Jarrion went, only to be brought up short before he’d taken so much as ten paces by Loghain calling out to him:

“Lord Captain?”

“Hmm?” Jarrion replied, turning groggily in place, far too tired to be especially concerned with whatever parting jab it was the Inquisitor felt like getting in. He’d just let it roll right off him.

“You’re making the best of a bad situation. It’s very easy to point out mistakes, but it’s harder to be the one who runs the risk of making them. You’re doing the best you can and no more could be asked of you in the circumstances. You’re doing the Emperor’s work, in your own way.”

Jarrion had a sudden icy, plunging sensation that he’d been seen through completely, and the sensation was so icy he couldn’t quite be sure if he’d felt chilly before, and if he had whether that indicated she’d taken a little tip-toe through his brain or not. He would have noticed surely? Or would he have? Or could she be subtle? Or was this just paranoia because he’d had a long day and needed to sleep?

Or was that what she wanted him to think?

“You didn’t - you’re not - are you?” He stammered, a hand going reflexively - and, in all fairness, uselessly - to his temple.

Loghain cocked her head. Just a little.

“Hmm?” She went. Jarrion blinked and forced his nerves to settle.

No. She was just messing with him again. This was the parting jab.

Besides, she didn’t need to get inside his head to get inside his head. That’d be being an Inquisitor. Everyone was an open book. They had training for that sort of thing after all, didn’t they?

“Nevermind. Um, thank you Loghain. That was, ah, insightful? I’ll, um, yes. Thank you. Goodnight. Again,” Jarrion said, giving a wave and quickly walking off.

“Goodnight,” he heard from behind, but he did not look back.

He sort of hoped she’d stick to her normal jabs and complaints in future.

The alternative - dispensing odd and unasked for advice and moral support - felt oddly uncomfortable, not to mention unnatural.

+++BACK ON THE NORMANDY+++

“Good work, lads. You go and have a break,” I said to the crewmen who’d helped me with the crates and they went off tired and grateful, stretching out their backs.

I’d had them set the crates of Imperial guns up just-so, stacked up and arranged in a nice sweep in the shuttle bay. I had a plan in mind, you see? I had a whole thing I’d cooked up on the trip back over. And why not?

“EDI, could you send the team down to me? Everyone, if you please.”

“Of course, Commander.”

A little bit more waiting followed, the team coming down to join in dribs and drabs but within a couple minutes they were all present and accounted for. All looked a little bemused at being called down, but that’s understandable.

“Evening everyone. Glad to see everything’s still in one piece,” I said.

“How was the dinner?” Jacob asked.

“There was a lot of spies and Jarrion killed someone without touching them or even really moving. Then we went onto Jarrion’s ship and saw a lot of skulls. Then there was a lot of talking. Frankly, you should all be glad you got to stay here. Anyway! You’re probably wondering why I’ve called you all here today,” I said brightly, or as brightly as I could manage (I’m not known for my brightness).

Blank looks. Guess it was quite late in the day but still, come on guys.

Best press on. I started to walk up and down before them.

“Given that fate seems to enjoy throwing me and Jarrion together I figured I’d make the most of it and of the fact he seems to think it’s actually fate throwing us together and so, to that end, I present to you future guns - guns from the future. And some other stuff,” I said, spreading my arms wide to indicate the crates all neatly lined up.

They all still looked pretty blank. I’d hoped for a smile at least, maybe a hint of excitement?

Oh well. Hardened professionals. What can you do?

“Anything? Anyone? Questions?” I asked, hopefully.

Jack raised her hand, in the way someone raises their hand to mock you. Probably should have seen that coming. I responded by continuing to look up and down the line of them and ignoring her for a bit before coming back to her as though I’d only just noticed.

See? I can be a dick too.

“Yes?”

“What’s with the skull?” She asked, nodding to a space just to the left of my head. A space occupied by a skull.

Not my skull, obviously. I sighed.

It wasn’t that I had forgotten about the floating skull next to me - kind of hard to forget what with it just always in the edge of my eyeline - it was more that I’d been trying to ignore it. Apparently no-one else had been trying to do that.

“Alright, so, Jarrion didn’t really have the time to go into the details at the time but he was pretty clear with me that these weapons - some more than others - require a certain level of care and attention. So with that in mind he gave me this pad thing that I think he called a dataslate and which contains what you’ll need to know. Maintenance, reloading procedure...prayers…”

I gritted my teeth on that one. It was in there, and Jarrion had been very insistent on how important the prayers were to the proper functioning of the weapons, but still. I didn’t have to be happy about it.

I continued:

“I passed it along to EDI on the trip back so she could translate it and put it into a more, shall we say, accessible format for you lot so if you check on your omnitools you should find it. Have a look if you want and definitely have a look if you decide to pick any of these up for yourself.”

A couple of them idly glanced down and had a quick flick, obviously out of curiosity more than anything else

“Thanks for that, EDI, by the way. You do quick work.”

“Commander,” EDI said, presumably by way of appreciation. I could imagine a virtual head just tipping forward in acknowledgment, which also made me briefly wonder what EDI would look like were she not, you know, software. Would she wear trousers? The mind reeled.

I didn’t imagine that it had been exactly taxing for her, handling the dataslate, but it was nice all the same.

“That still doesn’t answer the question,” Jack said, flatly.

No pulling the wool over her eyes.

“No, no it doesn’t. Alright. As an additional - for want of a better word - ‘bonus’, Jarrion saw fit to bundle in this skull. It is, I was told, a ‘monotask’ servo skull, and what it does is check weapons and equipment for problems. Apparently,” I said, indicating the bobbing skull which continued to bob. A light on it was blinking, too.

Why? No idea.

Back in the armoury on the Assertive I’d seen a good few of the things drifting about, stopping every so often along the racks of guns and armour and whatever to scan this or that before drifting on again.

According to Jarrion if they had spotted anything out of order they would have alerted a member of crew staffing the armoury, who would have come and had a look and fixed it up. He assured me however that the armoury crew were so top-notch that problems basically never happened.

I wasn’t sure why he felt the need to make this clear to me but whatever. I had a skull now. I’d let it out of the crate it had been packed in because I’d heard it banging around and was worried it might have damaged itself or something else if I hadn’t.

“To clarify, that is an actual human skull?” Miranda asked.

Had to fight the urge to sigh again. Swear we’d been over this before.

“Yes, it is. Specifically it’s the skull of the former head armourer on the Assertive, made into this thing so that he could continue to serve after death,” I said, regurgitating the answer I’d got from Jarrion. I could see Miranda taking a breath to ask another question so I cut in quick: “Look, let’s not get into the beliefs and values of these guys. They do things their way, we do things our way. We have this skull, let’s get on with it, okay?”

Miranda shut her mouth and, thankfully, said nothing. Glad none of them had seen the servitors. That would have been a whole other issue. Hell, still kind of was. Would rather not think about it right now. Later maybe, but not right now.

When you’re talking to Jarrion it can be quite easy to forget that, going by everything I’ve heard of it, the Imperium isn’t exactly the nicest place. I mean, fucking mind-scrubbed? Who invents mind-scrubbing technology? Anyone you’d want to be friends with?

No, not thinking about it now. Later. Guns now.

I looked them all up and down again.

“Any other questions?” I asked.

Garrus raised his hand. I wish they wouldn’t raise their hands, makes me feel like a prat. Or a low-level manager hosting a staff meeting somewhere with burnt tea where half the lights aren’t working. We’re keen-eyed murder artists, not people asking if Friday is mufti day.

“Yes?” I said, sweetly.

“Do we have to say the prayers?” Garrus asked. If I didn’t know any better I’d say he was trying not to smirk. Unfortunately for him I could hear him trying not to smirk.

How’s all this for gratitude? I bring them space guns from the future and all I get is the piss taken out of me. Not even a thank you so far! I came back from the dead for this?

“If you lot don’t want these lasers and other delights I’ll send them right back, see if I don’t,” I said, wagging my finger.

“Mr Moreau is asking whether you’d like to turn this spaceship around, Commander,” EDI chimed in. Now that’s comic timing - from her and from Joker, who was presumably listening in. I should frown on that sort of thing but with him providing solid-gold backup like that I can’t be mad.

Top-notch work guys, great stuff.

“Remains to be seen, EDI, remains to be seen,” I said, glaring at my team of supposed professionals.

“I think that’s a maybe on the prayers,” I heard Garrus mutter to Jacob, but quietly enough I could let it slide.

“Alright,” I said loudly, moving over to the crates. “That’s enough questions. You lot come here and gather round, I’m going to run through these things with you so you can see what I go. Ungrateful swine…”

I moved to the first stack of two crates and they all moved with me, standing close enough for a proper look but not so closer they were crowding me. I sat on the top crate and rested my hands on it so I could lean back a little.

“Right. I haven’t gone overboard, I don’t think, but I’ve got us what should be a nice little dash of variety for our upcoming suicide mission. Collectors got advanced stuff no-one else has seen? Well, now so have we, and ours isn’t even from around here. Unfamiliar is surprising and surprising is good. This isn’t replacing what we’ve got, it’s just here if we need it, if we want it, to mix things up. Alright?”

General nods. I think they were eager for me to get to the point. Well, I was tired and so I was eager too. I gave the crate a slap.

“First up: In this crate is a dozen laser rifles - apparently they’re called lasguns. That’s las-gun, pronounced LASgun, not lasgun, got that? Anyone feels like using one when we go out, by all means go ahead, but do check over the literature first. According to Jarrion you’d basically have to snap the things in half and throw them into the sun to keep them from working but they’re new to us so, you know, get familiar.”

He’d mentioned to me - in the idle, off-hand way you rattle off an anecdote you think is only a little bit interesting - that some lasguns to issued to the Imperial Guard had survived the violent destruction of the regiments armed with them, been recovered and then passed onto whatever regiment was founded next. Not sure I believed him, but also not sure I don’t believe him either.

I then gave the crate under the lasgun crate a kick with the back of my foot.

“Powerpacks for the lasers are in here. Don’t throw them away because we can recharge them. They’re also, you know, ludicrously valuable and as far as it concerns us irreplaceable. So don’t throw them away. Okay?”

More nods. Proper professionals. And Jack. And Grunt - do you count as a professional if you’re purpose-bred to be a warrior? Jury’s out. Either way, they all got it and that was the point. I stood up again and was about to start on the next stack of crates when I remembered something and turned on my heel.

“Oh, almost forgot, in the first crate - in two pieces - is also a sniper variant of the laser rifle. A long-las, it’s called. And there’s a couple of special powerpacks for it, overcharged ones. Hotshots or something. Garrus, thought you might appreciate that?”

I’d seen the thing in the armoury and thought of Garrus straight away.

He didn’t say anything but I did see a little flutter of excitement. He tried to hide it, but I saw it. The little things make this job worthwhile.

“Right, moving on.”

Second set of stacked crates. I gave them a slap, too.

“This crate has got some more exotic stuff, this is the interesting stuff, I think,” I said.

“Laser rifles aren’t interesting?” Jacob asked, cocking an eyebrow. Someone is always cocking an eyebrow. Or maybe I just have that effect on people?

“Oh! Don’t get me wrong! I’m very keen to see how they work in practise, believe me, especially to see what a proper military-grade Imperial laser rifle is like compared to the laser that EDI helped put together out of the pistol Jarrion gave me. But I’m even more interested to see what these things are going to do.”

I gave them a second for that to sink in before turning and flicking the catches on the crate and opening it up. These were things I wanted to show off, just so they had some idea of what we now have available. With the lid open I reached in and pulled out the first gun to hand - something blocky, dull yellow and with a whacking great nozzle on the front.

“This is a flamethrower,” I said, flourishing it. “Now I know what some of you might be thinking: ‘Shepard! You can just configure your omnitool to act as a flamethrower if you need a flamethrower!’ and yes, I know that and I have done that in the past and it’s great. But sometimes you just need a lot more fire than an omnitool can kick out. Only got so much gel, after all. This? This’ll work when a lot of fire is what you want. If that’s what we want. We might want that at some point.”

Better safe than sorry. ‘Safe’ in this instance meaning being able to set a lot of things on fire.

None of them apparently had any questions about this, which was fine by me. I set the flamethrower - or ‘flamer’ as they’re called by Imperial sorts - aside on the first set of crates and moved onto the next gun.

“Right, this one. It looks a bit like a grenade launcher. That’s because it’s a grenade launcher. And, yes, we do already have a grenade launcher on board but come on, what was I supposed to do? He was offering me a grenade launcher. I’m not made of stone.”

I set the grenade launcher aside. I could tell from the looks on their faces that I wasn’t wowing them with these choices but I’d expected that and picked my order appropriately. Third one was a treat!

Another big, blocky gun, this one reddish with a vented barrel shroud and a barrel I could comfortably have fitted my arm into had that been something I felt like doing for whatever reason.

“This is a ‘meltagun’, infantry use them to kill tanks by getting close enough that when the tank explodes it’ll probably kill them, too. That’s not exactly that Jarrion said but that’s kind of how it came across given he told me it’s an anti-tank weapon with a very short range. Apparently works by ‘agitating air molecules’, whatever that means. Will basically just blast and melt a hole through whatever you’re pointing it at. Apparently. If it’s close enough.”

Probably says a lot about me that I’m quite keen to see how that one worked and particularly how it worked against things that were not tanks. Hopefully spectacularly.

Now they’re starting to look a bit more impressed!

I moved on.

“Next up, plasma gun,” I said, hefting out something ribbed and yellow (again yellow - why?). “Jarrion was a bit reluctant to part with this one, in all honesty. They’re quite valuable, he said to me. He was very keen to emphasise the value of this weapon and the importance we keep it in one piece. He might get in trouble if we don’t.”

With the Mechanicus specifically, he’d said. Why this one and not the others was unclear but I hadn’t felt like calling that into question.

“Isn’t that one of the guns that melted a man’s hands on Horizon?” Miranda asked.

Looking over the plasma gun again I realised why it had been tickling my brain so. Did a quick scan for any burnt-on flesh, too, but thankfully the gun was clean. Or had been cleaned.

“I thought it looked familiar,” I said, setting that one aside with the others from the second set of crates, grinning to myself. I do like guns.

“Only four?”

“These are specialised weapons and there are only twelve of us. Greedy bastards,” I said, maybe muttering the last part. Then something caught my eye. “Oh yeah, one last thing in here…”

Again I reached in, and this time what I pulled out got a proper reaction, albeit maybe not the best one.

“What is that?” Jacob asked.

It was a chainsword. It was obviously a chainsword. When I’d first seen them in the armoury I’d known exactly what they were, I could work it out just by looking. They were pretty visually self-explanatory.

“It’s a chainsword,” I said, stating the bloody obvious.

Apparently not a good enough answer for Jacob.

“A what?” He asked.

“A chainsword. A sword that is also a chainsaw,” I said.

“...why do they...have those…?” Jacob asked, clearly having some trouble with the concept.

“More importantly why did you pick one up?” Miranda asked.

At the time it had seemed like a great idea and also an obvious one. Now, with all them looking at me like I’d lost my mind, I wasn’t so sure. Mean, I was still sure - I’m the Commander, I’m always sure - I just wasn’t sure they’d fully grasp what a great idea it was.

“Thought we could give it to Grunt,” I said, nodding in his direction.

“Should we be encouraging the sort of behaviour that a ‘chainsword’ would require?” Miranda asked.

“Shepard knows what she’s doing,” Grunt said seriously.

“Of course I do,” I said, putting the chainsword back again, followed by everything else. Good to be tidy.

Really, giving Grunt a chainsword made perfect sense to me. He was already a big fan of getting far, far too close anyway and a lot of our fighting did tend to happen at the sort of ranges where the opportunity to just rush up and start hacking away often presented itself.

And besides, would you rather be on the side that had a Kogran with a chainsword, or the side with the Krogran with a chainsword running at you? Seems obvious to me.

But all in good time, I wasn’t done yet.

“Right, moving on. These two crates. These ones are big so it’s a gun in each. Probably won’t need them or use them but, hey, better to have and not need than need and not have, right?”

Always better to be overprepared, I find. I flipped the lid on the first crate and hauled out a gun that was probably about the same size as me, give or take a few extremities. Had I been anything less than a hefty cyborg I probably wouldn’t have been able to lift it out at all, but I’m lucky enough to be a hefty cyborg so I managed fine.

The thing truly was a statement piece though. You saw it and you knew immediately this was something made for killing things, and not killing them gently. I had all their attention now.

“This is a heavy bolter, so-called - I assume - because it’s a heavier version of a regular bolter. It works by, well, did any of you happen to see the pistol that Jarrion was using on Horizon?” I asked.

A lot of shaking heads.

“Not surprising. Guess you had other things to focus on at the time. Basically, it fires a little rocket about the size of your thumb with an armour piercing tip that’s designed to explode inside the target. A ‘mass-reactive’ explosive. That’s what this thing does. Only the bolts - they’re called bolts - it fires are this big.”

I fished around in my pocket for the heavy bolter round I’d specifically put there so I could pull it out for demonstrative purposes. Would have made sitting down pretty uncomfortable but that’s why I’d spent the trip back in the Kodiak standing. That, and with the crates there hadn’t really been room to sit down anyway.

I held up the heavy bolter round so they could all see it.

It was a lot bigger than a thumb.

“I’m not sure how barriers will stand up to a projectile of this size and weight but let’s find out together sometime, maybe. I like to think results will be positive.”

Would I want to be hit by one of those? No, no I would not. And this thing fired a lot more than one at a time according to Jarrion.

I put the heavy bolter back.

“Right, and in the other one here we have a laser cannon - or ‘lascannon’, given that’s how they call their lasers. This is another anti-tank weapon. It’s massive and it’ll probably put a hole in the hull if we fired it while it’s onboard.”

The lascannon really was very, very big. So big the crate it was in was about double the length of all the others. So big I didn’t even properly take it out to show everyone, I just lifted it up by the barrel so they could see and once they had I let it drop again. Thing was nasty looking.

I shut the lid.

“Those last two are crew-served weapons, I should probably point out, so unless you’re built like a Krogan - or are, just speaking hypothetically, a super-strong cyborg - you may not get much use out of them. But, like I said before, better to have than not.”

In a pinch I could see myself using the last two. I’m strong enough and weighty enough now that I could probably manage it. Wouldn’t be very fun - for me or for whoever I was shooting at - but I could probably make it work. But only in a pinch. Not something I’m going to do unless I have to.

Putting my hands on my hips I stood and gave them all a grin. I think I’d done pretty good, all things considered.

Then I remembered there was one more.

“Oh, and this last crate is some armour, a scanner or two, some knives for whatever reason - stuff. The armour is all for humans though but I figured we could look into that, see what we could do. From what I remember seeing on Horizon this ‘carapace’ stuff is pretty tough,” I said, waving vaguely at the last crate since I wasn’t going to bother opening it. “So yeah, that’s it. How are we feeling about this? Happy? Unhappy? Indifferent?”

Jack raised her hand again.

“You really don’t need to do that. Yes?”

“I call the plasmagun, I want that one.”

“Don’t think it works like that. Also, you do remember the part where it can melt your hands off if you’re not careful with it, don’t you? And the part where it’s usually valued over the life of the one carrying it? And the part where you need to not break it?”

“What’s life without some risk? Which crate was it in again? The second one?”

“Alright fine, but you’re wearing oven mitts next time you’re coming out.”

I’d tell her to put a shirt on - or, heaven forfend, some armour - but I couldn’t see it getting me anywhere. Suppose I should be grateful she wore trousers.

Not like we’re in space or anything.

“Don’t suppose I could have a look at that sniper laser, could I?” Garrus asked, edging closer to the first crate even as she spoke. I held up my hands.

“You lot go nuts, have a look, get familiar. Like I say I don’t think we’ll be switching over but if someone thinks one of these will do good for whatever mission we’ve got, go for it. I’m going to bed right now though, I’m knackered. Garrus - leaving it to you to see all this gets put away, get some of the crew to help you.”

“Of course,” said Garrus, the longlas already in his hands. He wasn’t the only one fondling a weapon, everyone was getting involved. Nice to see after what I’d thought had been a lukewarm reception my little surprise was actually landing rather nicely. I took some steps back and watched over them all for a moment. They like guns too, ah, so much we have in common.

I checked my watch and yawned.

“Alright, last thing: from what EDI tells me tomorrow is probably going to be our window for grabbing the assassin and that could be just about any time tomorrow, too, so I want you all on standby to roll quick - I’ll be taking two of you with me when the time comes, alright?”

They all looked to be too busy manhandling the guns to really have heard me.

“Alright,” I said with a shrug before sloping off to bed.

Chapter Text

Just as Jarrion had said, bright and early the next morning (by ship-time), the Assertive finally cast off from the orbit of Illium, much to the relief of those on the ground who’d been living in the shadow of the thing for however many days now, the vast majority of whom were still none-the-wiser as to who owned it or why it had just shown up.

Charting the course and returning to Nephros - being the gas giant around which they had first appeared and nearby to which presumably the phenomenon was still located - was not all that difficult. Altrx was getting to be quite the dab-hand at navigating in a galaxy lacking an Astronomicon. He was apparently making very good progress on that book he was writing on the subject, apparently.

He had offered Jarrion the opportunity to write a foreword, being the Lord Captain and all. Jarrion had politely demurred.

That the system Nephros occupied was surveyed and named and known in relation to those around it also helped in getting there, obviously. Made it much easier to pinpoint it relative to those spots on the galactic map that served as points of reference. Jarrion had made a note of its name, it really wasn’t that hard to get back to in the scheme of things.

The real trick, once there, was finding the anomaly, as it turned out. ‘In orbit’ was a big place, after all, especially for a planet as large as a gas giant. Even equipped with the readings and with the Assertive’s not inconsiderably powerful sensorium turned towards tracking it down it proved illusive, this...whatever it was they were looking for, this as-yet uncategorised hole in space and time.

Turned out it wasn’t still in orbit anyway, in the end, but exactly where it had been back when it had been in orbit, before it Nephros had carried on along its way around its star, so a little bit out of orbit at this point. Space continued to amaze and astound. It probably made sense to someone, or else made the opposite of sense and frustrated that same someone. One of those two, or somewhere in the middle.

Jarrion had them drop a buoy, just for future reference. It’d probably get destroyed or displaced in however many years it took for Nephros to go all the way around again and smack into it (or just fling it into deep space, or whatever), but buoys were cheap and that was a problem for the future.

A future that might include a nice House Croesus colony in-system, serving as a gateway between the Imperium and this exciting new galaxy of opportunity, making future buoys unnecessary?

Anything was possible.

But that was, as said, something for the future. For now there were immediate concerns and issues now that they’d actually found the thing, namely what it actually was, and was it actually safe?

With the Assertive parked up next to it close enough for a very good visual and with it up on the bridge’s main pictscreen it was impossible to tell. It was just there. Jarrion did not have extensive experience of inexplicable and unique holes in space or time or the Warp or anything of that ilk but he’d rather expected them to look more impressive.

He’d expected lightning at least, or some sort of crackling energy. The sort you saw when translating from realspace to the Warp, say. Or something with swirling edges. Or some sort of other obvious visual distortion. Something, anything - anything that might suggest that this was a portal of importance, a spatial anomaly to be respected and admired.

But no, nothing. As in it was just nothing. A wafer-thin disc of blackness against the stars. If you weren’t there looking for it and if you hadn’t known it was there to look for in the first place, you’d never have looked twice.

And you wouldn’t have been there to look twice in the first place anyway.

It was rather ominous in appearance, actually. It was just there, not doing anything other than existing when by rights it probably shouldn’t and not even having the decency to make a fuss about it. Jarrion had been hoping for the numinous and instead all he’d got was the quietly sinister and low-key.

Oh well. No sense in complaining.

“Was it that large when we arrived?” He asked, turning to Magos Blix. The Magos, along with a small knot of lesser tech priests he’d brought along, had taken over a portion of the bridge and were now furiously using the Assertive’s sensorium to analyse and scrutinise the space-hole.

Pak was also trying to get in on this, but was meeting with surprisingly little success, being more-or-less sidelined by Blix and relegated to standing behind him and the other tech priests in silence. It was hard to tell, but Jarrion suspected that this was making Pak deeply annoyed.

Magos Blix fiddled about a bit more with the console he’d taken over, conversed in brief bursts of binaric with his cronies and then turned to Jarrion and said:

/size of anomaly has increased approximately one hundred and seventy three percent compared to initial data readings/margin of error five percent/answer: no it was not that large/

This sounded like a rather large increase to Jarrion.

“It’s not going to get any bigger, is it?” He asked, doing his best to keep any of the mild concern he was starting to feel out of his voice as he spoke.

The thought that it might was a little uncomfortable.

/unknown/insufficient data/possibility of continued expansion/further data could extrapolate or confirm/

Not the most reassuring of answers. Jarrion stroked his chin.

“Well I could certainly use some more data before I do anything with that hole.”

There came a snort from somewhere to his side. He didn’t need to look to know why.

“Grow up, Loghain,” he said, continuing to stroke.

On-screen, the hole continued to do what it had been doing the whole time, which is to say nothing at all other than hang there looking ominous and inscrutable and big.

Most things in the galaxy - and especially those you encountered in space - would probably kill you if you approached them wrong, Jarrion knew. Most things had about ninety-nine different ways to kill you when you interacted with them and one way that wouldn’t kill you, and that was the correct way. The problem was that, from the outside, you rarely knew which way was which, and finding out blind was, well, something of a gamble.

Delicacy was key. Or Jarrion was just paranoid. Or maybe somewhere in the middle, again.

Still, this was important, as this particular ominous and inscrutable and big thing in space was also very possibly a way back home, and sitting around and staring at it wasn’t getting them anywhere. Jarrion very much doubted that poking and prodding at the bridge’s consoles was going to yield much of value either, at least not in any timeframe that suited him. He had things to do, places to be.

Bold action was required.

“If more data is what is needed, more data is what we shall have,” he said, boldly, taking charge. Orders followed and action was taken.

First, an unmanned, servitor-driven augur probe of the sort typically used for examining unusual things in space was launched towards the breach (as it was tentatively being referred to, though no-one could remember who’d started calling it that). This seemed appropriate enough, given that the breach was certainly fairly unusual by just about anyone’s standards.

The probe’s instructions were simple: it was to pass through the breach (if passing it through it was possible, which this would demonstrate if nothing else), loiter for a minute on the other side, then return. Very simple, nice and straightforward.

This the probe did without any obvious problems. It passed through, it loitered, it returned. Just like that.

Obviously far, far too easy.

Once it was back onboard it was immediately stripped of its gathered data which was poured over with great interest. To the disappointment of all tech priests involved - Pak included, again, they having muscled in more successfully this time and having managed to basically take over from Blix the moment the probe had re-appeared, much to Blix’s obvious displeasure - the data was the very picture of benign.

So with the information the probe had gathered proving to be too pleasant, the probe itself was the next target. It was transferred to the main hanger where it could be thoroughly dismantled, Blix and his cohort moving as fast as their augmetic limbs could carry them, Pak fighting to be at the front and Jarrion bringing up the rear, Thale shadowing him.

And dismantled the probe was, respectfully and with all due care taken and all appropriate rituals observed, if hurried. The thing was practically stripped bare, every part and component pored over for defects or damage or signs of corruption or anything that might indicate that its little jaunt hadn’t been as comfortable as it had appeared.

But no dice.

The probe had suffered no damage and, to all appearances, the universe on the other side was perfectly acceptable and welcoming. Even time had passed on an apparent one-to-one basis, which beggared belief.

Safe. Easy.

Far too safe and easy. There had to be a catch.

For the next test they needed something a little different. Something to confirm that it was safe to travel through, that there would be no immediate and unhealthy consequences to a living crew.

With Jarrion’s permission a handful of prisoners were procured from the brig, for there were always prisoners in the brig. These men, some still too drunk to stand and all securely shackled, were loaded onto one of the Assertive’s lighters. The lighter’s servitor backup pilot was given the same simple instructions as the probe had been given - go, loiter, return - and the lighter was then launched.

All waited.

Once the time was up the lighter returned, just like it was supposed to and just like none of those watching and waiting had been expecting it to.

The breach - that damn silent hole in space - hadn’t so much as flickered.

Once unloaded and checked it was quickly found that the prisoners were all none the worse for wear, entirely unharmed. Though one had thrown up, this was assumed to be unrelated to the journey through the breach and more to do with the illicit alcohol he had consumed and which was now, mixed with his dinner, congealing across the floor of the lighter, the drink smelling only slightly worse having come up than it had on going down.

The prisoners were made to hose the lighter clean. They were then duly returned to the brig, partly for continued observation, mostly because they were still guilty.

(The brig was secure and sturdy enough that, if the prisoners did turn out to have been tainted by their trip through the breach, the damage could be better continued and the casualties limited - hopefully - to whoever else happened to be in the brig at the time.)

While that had been going on, the tech priests had been scrabbling their way through all the data they could lay their mechadendrites on, waving dataslates about, having servitors drag cogitators down to the hanger and even going so far as to start partially dismantling the lighter before the hosing off had even finished, though thankfully on this at least they had been been restrained.

Ultimately though they didn’t learn anything that changed the obvious. Everything was as straightforward as it appeared to be, as unlikely as that was.

As much as the tech priests might have liked to suspect the breach was monumentally dangerous, everything they’d seen, every sensor reading and quite literally everything they’d thrown at it was showing that it was, in fact, entirely safe, almost to the point of being ridiculously, ludicrously, hilariously safe. Eventually they yielded and admitted as much, though it clearly pained them. It just made no sense.

Jarrion could hardly believe his luck.

Indeed, he might have suffered a minor attack of helpless laughter as the sheer perfection of the situation sunk in. Perfect, perfect! Beyond perfect! Simply unimaginable! Not in his wildest fantasies could it ever have been so perfect!

A lighter didn’t even have a Geller field and those men had been entirely unharmed! Obviously they might later present something, but initial inspection was outrageously positive! A breach through time and space! From one universe to another! Through a hole ripped by a Warp drive! And yet a trip as simple as walking from one side of the street to the other.

A man in a spacesuit could have done it! With his eyes closed! Backwards! Probably.

The Assertive, being a proper voidcraft, would be safe as houses. Perfect.

Impossible, as said, yes. But perfect. Impossibly perfect. Providence indeed!

The Emperor truly did protect.

“Well, as resoundingly unlikely as it all seems that looks to be it, wouldn’t you say?” Jarrion said once the excitement had died down and most of the equipment the tech priests had brought in had been taken away again. Even Pak had wandered off, apparently having lost interest, leaving only Jarrion, Thale, Blix and his cohort and perhaps a handful of crewmen who are barely worth noting.

/further data required/

Jarrion blinked and then pointed, bewildered, at the lighter, as though that settled everything.

“Further data required? What else could you possibly hope to learn! We sent men through it and they returned! None the worse for wear! Or no worse than when we sent them,” he said.

The lighter was none-the-worse for wear, either, but Jarrion hadn’t felt the need to point that out. It was obviously in one piece, and every inch of it had been thoroughly scrutinised for traces of Warp-based contamination, coming up with nothing. That didn’t mean there was nothing, Jarrion knew, but it was at least a reliable indication. Certainly reliable enough that he felt safe standing near the thing.

/further data required/variables not yet explored/possibility exists of unknown risks/

Life was nothing but the possibility of unknown risks, as far as Jarrion was concerned, but at a certain point you just had to grit your teeth and forge onward. Jarrion gritted his teeth.

“Time is money, Magos. We can sit here and ponder our navels and the mysteries of the universe for years, I’m sure, and spend those years throwing all manner of increasingly expensive items at that hole, but there are things I need to do and many of those things require me being on the other side of that,” he said.

/variables not yet explored/traversal of breach inadvisable/further data required/

Rarely enjoyable when a Magos started to repeat themselves.

Had Blix possessed a tone of voice Jarrion was fairly certain it might have started to sound annoyed here, or petulant. As it happened the Magos sounded exactly like he usually did, which is to say mostly monotone but just ever-so-slightly off-pitch that he kept you guessing.

“Yes yes, it’s always best to have a good grasp of the risks involved in anything but I’d say that we do now, and so I want to know quite plainly if we can use it? Yes or no? Just a yes or a no,” Jarrion said.

/further da-/

“Yes or no, Magos.”

Blix emitted a quiet grinding sound for a few seconds before saying:

/yes/

“Excellent. You may return to your other duties, Magos, it seems we are done here.”

Blix stared at Jarrion for a second or so before leaving the hanger without another word, giving only the briefest of brief bows in deference to Jarrion’s rank. Had Blix the sort of face that allowed him to glare he likely would have done so, but as it stood all he could manage was a stare. Jarrion wouldn’t have cared either way, about the glare or the utter lack of respect for his position (at least not this time). He’d got what he’d wanted and now it was time for the bold actions to continue.

Time was, as he’d said, money.

“Back to the bridge, Thale,” he said, striding off, and a brisk pace and a jaunt on a few lifts and travelators later saw them both back on the bridge in short order, receiving salutes as Jarrion returned to his command throne.

Loghain was exactly where she’d been before all the fun with the probe and the lighter, having apparently decided to spend the time that Jarrion had been down in the hanger sitting in her chair twiddling her thumbs. Something about that was vaguely unnerving to Jarrion.

“Enlightening?” She asked as he sat down.

“Very,” he said before raising his voice and pointing forward to the pictscreen and the ominous space hole still hanging there. “Line the ship up with the breach then take us through, slow and steady.”

There were no questions or clarifications asked about this order as it was followed, as well there shouldn’t have been, but Jarrion didn’t need Loghain’s Warp-trickery to pick up on the sense of tension among the crew on the bridge. He had to admit to a certain low, tickling anxiety himself, one that he was ably keeping pushed down where it couldn’t bother him.

He was concerned, somewhere between mildly and strongly concerned, about what might happen were the Assertive to scrape or otherwise touch the sides of the breach as it moved through. He imagined that it would be bad, but did not want to find out how bad.

Thankfully, given how much the hole had grown, there was room to spare, and the ship moved through with no issues at all.

And they were back. Just like that.

Easy enough to make anyone uncomfortable.

++++

Not all smooth sailing, though.

Well, mostly smooth sailing. Almost completely smooth sailing. But they did have to stop after having passed through to take stock and double-check that everything was where it was meant to be and nothing had gone wrong. Blix was very, very insistent on this and Jarrion wasn’t going to argue with it because he would have been insistent on it himself.

Jarrion probably wouldn’t have been as insistent on a full level one diagnostic on all of the Assertive’s primary systems because he probably would have felt this was going a bit overboard, but better safe than sorry, he supposed, and it did give them time to re-orientate themselves. Pootling around the other galaxy had had them using different reference points and now they needed to get their eye in again, in Altrx’s case his third eye.

So that ate up a few hours, during which Jarrion paced furiously and dictated lists of equipment and supplies to Torian, who meticulously noted it all down. Loghian was asleep in her seat, or pretending to be, though she did wake up surprisingly quickly and easily when Jarrion had lunch brought to him.

The Assertive was, in the end, totally fine, the diagnostics showing up nothing out of the ordinary and definitely nothing untoward. The transition through the breach had been utterly benign, just as as signs indicated it would be and just as Jarrion had hoped.

Not a moment after that had been straightened out they were off at full speed, making for Port Mercian, the expansive orbital facility sat right at the very edge of the Sector abutting a good chunk of House Croesus’ wilderness holdings and the volume of space that Jarrion had been in before all the excitement and was now back in, having returned.

Port Mercian was primarily a stopping-off point for the meagre Navy patrols on this edge of the Sector while also serving as a reasonable but unremarkable trading hub, but more importantly for jarrion it was his de-facto base of operations for what was supposed to have been nothing more than flying the colours and sorting out the woes of some House Croesus colonists.

How long ago all that seemed now!

With Jarrion’s lists of equipment and material Astropathically sent ahead and (hopefully) arriving before them, the plan was to dock at Port Mercian, take on all that which he felt was necessary to tackle the challenges ahead, turn around and head back to the breach with all haste. No sense in wasting time, after all.

Though, if there were any lingering doubts that they were back in their own galaxy they were quickly dispelled once they were underway. Jarrion had got quite used to the smooth, comfortable travelling the other side of the breach, with its tranquil Immaterium. There hadn’t been any nightmares on the other side. There were nightmares now, and a sense of pressure that he had entirely forgotten about.

It also took longer. Not much longer, but noticeably. A day or two into their journey and Jarrion, more through sheer boredom than anything else, invited Loghain for a drink and a chat.

They would have been in the observation blister - purely so that Jarrion could make a point that he had invited her to take drinks there so she couldn’t make a joke about it in future - but, with the ship presently travelling through the Warp, there wasn’t much to observe.

Or, there was, but it wouldn’t have done either of them much good to observe it.

And so it was that they were instead in one Jarrion’s rooms, sat in comfortable chairs with glasses of expensive amasec, beneath an impressively large painting of his father’s ship The Virtue of Disdain.
Jarrion had expected more needling from the Inquisitor about his invitation (who else was he supposed to have a conversation with? Altrx was usually fairly interesting company but he was steering the ship, who did that leave? Thale? Pak?) but to his surprise she seemed instead rather subdued, more fixated on fiddling with the glass in her hands than anything else.

This perplexed him at first, before he eventually put it down to being back where the Warp was less still, and this perhaps weighing on her more than it might a normal person, what with her being a witch and all.

As far as explanations went this was one that satisfied Jarrion, or at least satisfied him enough not to actually ask her if anything was on her mind. He was confident that, if anything was, she’d tell him in due course.

And it was so:

“I don’t think Blix likes Pak much,” Loghain said, out of the blue. Not at all what Jarrion had expected but it was unobtrusive enough that he was easily able to roll with it.

“Oh, how can we tell, really?”

“Well, I can read minds,” Loghain pointed out.

“You shouldn’t make a habit of that, it’s impolite.”

Which was putting it mildly, mostly for comedic effect.

“Sometimes I really can’t help it! Honestly. Sometimes it comes off people like a heat haze. You’d have thought a tech priest would have been better at controlling their feelings, wouldn’t you?”

“Hmm, well, be that as it may whether they’re friends or not is hardly relevant, their duties do not overlap.”

“Pak’s duties seem to overlap with whatever they feel like doing at the time,” Loghain said.

“You are...not wrong,” Jarrion said, trying and failing to come up with a proper explanation of what Pak’s actual role on the ship was, other than the thoroughly meaningless ‘Explorator’.

A pause.

“I’m not reading your mind, just to say. You can put your hand down,” Loghain said. Jarrion blinked at her, then realised he had in fact raised his hand to his temple without noticing having done so. He scratched his head then let his hand drop.

“I had an itch,” he said.

“Of course you did.”

Further silence.

“It’s rather suspicious, isn’t it?” Loghain asked, out of nowhere.

“What is?” Jarrion asked.

“That hole, breach, whatever,” Loghain said, waving a hand. Jarrion cocked his head at her.

“How so?”

“You get presented with a route back home, no drawbacks, no dangerous price to pay? No consequences? Just a simple pop and done? Not just any route either, the way you arrived! Stable as anything. Bigger than when you arrived, in fact, just to make steering through again that little bit easier! Things like that don’t happen.”

Loghain sounded personally insulted. Jarrion took a sip before replying.

“Apparently they do,” he said, cooly.

“Well they shouldn’t.”

“Oh Loghain, stop sounding so sour. Would you rather we not have returned? And do stop sulking, it’s unbecoming of your station. This is providence, I told you! My venture here is blessed and has been blessed from the very moment it started! How else can you explain it? All is going according to plan. Ours isn’t to question these things, it is simply to make the most of them! Our path is laid out before us. To do anything else but follow it would be, well, going against the will of the Emperor!” Jarrion said. Loghain fixed him with as level a stare as it was possible for someone with no eyes to do.

“Modest, aren’t you? And as a rule you don’t get very far as an Inquisitor by not being suspicious about things, from people all the way up to holes in space,” she said.

“No, I suppose you don’t. Would you have preferred we died horribly?” Jarrion asked.

“I would have felt vindicated in the few seconds before we were annihilated, but I wouldn’t say I’d have preferred it. And while I’m on the subject, actually, isn’t it a little dangerous, leaving this backdoor here for anyone to wander in?”

“Given that you’re not a voidfarer by trade, Inquisitor, it may come as a surprise to you to learn that space is rather large, and the odds of anyone wandering anywhere by accident are so slim as to be practically non-existent. Even with the buoy there the odds are so slim as to be practically non-existent, I assure you. Unlikely things happen every day, yes, but there are still limits. I am not especially worried about anything going either in or out of this, ah, hole.”

Jarrion hadn’t thought about how that last part might sound until he’d said it, and once he had he wrinkled his nose in distaste and waited for Loghain to make some snide remark. Much to his amazement, she didn’t, instead asking:

“Well, how about this: are you worried about what the Imperial response is going to be once someone finds out about this? And they will find out.”

This much was obvious. Even if Jarrion hadn’t been planning on lodging a proper, formal report with the proper, formal authorities (which he was, at whatever he deemed was the most practical opportunity), it would have been naive indeed to assume that word of what had happened and what had been found wouldn’t somehow find its way to the proper authorities.

He was, for one thing, talking to an Inquisitor.

Not that Jarrion appeared at all concerned. He slicked his hair back with one hand and waved his glass about with the other, casually.

“Oh, not overly. Not that I’m ‘worried’ in the first place, obviously - why would I be worried about the proper function of the Imperium, hmm? I just don’t think it’s an immediate concern. And as-and-when the powers-that-be even come to hear of it I expect there’ll be a lot of discussion, perhaps some investigation and, eventually, either a decision to quarantine it until another decision can be made or else send through some sort of exploratory, armed force. Depending on what else is going on at the time, of course. Personally, I think the former option is highly, highly unlikely. Hardly worth committing resources to another universe when you’ve already got one to worry about!”

“So the answer to the question would be that you are not worried at all, then?” Loghain asked and Jarrion had to pause to swallow the sip he was taking and then shake his head.

“Not especially,” he said again, this time with a shrug, spreading his arms. “Whatever happens won’t happen for decades anyway, and that’s if things go quickly. Have you ever seen the organisation that goes into a Crusade? Even a minor one? And that’s where they can see a clear and present danger! No, I shall have abundant freedom to make good use of the place without interference. By the time there is a proper Imperial response it’ll just be a case of arriving to see what a fine welcome I’ll have set up over there!”

“Aim high, Lord Captain.”

“What’s the point in aiming anywhere else?”

“The Inquisition might move faster, you know. So might the Mechanicus…”

Two bodies of note with access to spaceships, a known interest in strange happenings and a broad disdain for Imperial bureaucracy, or at least ways of circumventing it (largely by ignoring it).

Jarrion, having had another sip and perhaps misjudged it, winced for a moment at the burning and gestured to Loghain with the index finger of his hand-holding glass. Jarrion was not wrong when he held to the belief that having a drink gave you a wonderful, conversation-enriching prop to work with.

“Ah, you have a point, that was a concern for me, too. However, I’ve given it some thought and come to the conclusion that these two parties are also not a pressing concern,” he said, setting the glass aside now that it was empty and he’d recovered. Loghain lent back in her chair ever-so-slightly and tilted her head another way.

“Is that right?”

“I imagine - and do tell me if I’m reading you or your peers wrong - that should you choose to report this strange event to your superiors, whoever and wherever they may be, assuming you even have any, they will note it as an interesting development that does not rank in urgency anywhere near the dozen of other pressing issues they no-doubt are grappling with. You will, therefore, in such an event, either be released to deal with it as you personally see fit with little ongoing oversight or else be politely but firmly directed towards something that might actually affect the Imperium. You know, your job, Loghain?”

“So you don’t think that if I drop this bombshell that there’ll be Inquisitors by the dozen all falling over themselves to come see if I was telling the truth or not? Just a whole mess of Inquisitors scrambling to be the first to slide themselves into this strange hole.”

There it was. Jarrion sighed and took a moment to let that line just waft over him.

“No, I do not. I imagine most won’t believe you anyway, and those that do won’t care enough to do anything about it, at least not right now. One supposes they hear quite a lot of outlandish stories in their line of work, and can hardly go chasing after all of them. And especially when, as said, you appear to be already looking into it anyway.”

Loghain couldn’t make a joke out of this, and try as she might she couldn’t actually really argue with his assessment, either. She’d met her colleagues, after all, and she knew how most of them operated. More to the point, she knew how she operated and knew what she’d do if she caught wind of something similar being brought back.

She’d do more-or-less what Jarrion had assumed the others would do. Ignore it and continue with her own business.

And that was assuming she mentioned it at all to anyone, which she wasn’t under any real obligation to do in the first place. Not that she’d tell Jarrion that. He seemed to suspect as much already, wouldn’t do her any good to confirm it.

“...you may be onto something there…” she said. “And the Mechanicus? What’s your keen insight into their response and why it won’t matter?”

“My guess - and again, I may very well be wrong - is that Pak will not tell anyone about this, certainly not their peers and especially certainly not their superiors. I can’t really speak for Blix but given his years of service dedicated to the Assertive specifically I can’t help but imagine he views anything not related to the ship as a hobby at best and a distraction at worst. The other tech priests are even more bound to the ship than Blix is and couldn’t really care less even if they were aware of what happened, which most are not. Or so I like to think.”

Tech priests were a myopic lot, often disinterested in things outside their jurisdiction or area of interest to the point of outright aggression. Pak was something of an exception given that they were an Explorator and so it was their job to be interested in unusual things, regardless of what they were.

What’s more, apart from Blix and a handful of other tech priests that had accompanied Jarrion here or there to set up this or that and who had also actively helped analyse the breach prior to the return trip, basically all of the Assertive’s compliment of tech priests had remained at their stations, attending to their duties, oblivious to what had happened and what Jarrion was doing. And of those few that had set foot off the ship all they’d seen were planets and space stations - nothing really out of the ordinary for them.

Blix was probably the only one with even an inkling of the situation, given he’d had to disembark and inspect non-Imperial spacecraft for suitability and also examine the strange anomaly that was the breach, and even that wasn’t exactly beyond the realm of possibility back home where unusual spacecraft and strange space phenomena weren’t unknown.

And on top of that Jarrion was, as said, pretty sure that the Magos couldn’t have given less of a flying fuck anyway.

Or whatever it was the Mechanicus gave in such situations where most normal people would give a flying fuck or not give a flying fuck. Give less than a very arcane flying fuck, presumably, and one that was thousands of years old and irreplaceable and required very delicate handling and occasional anointing with oil in order to fly properly as it wasn’t given.

Jarrion had given this some thought. Perhaps too much thought.

“Pak will keep all this to themselves? All this?” Loghain asked, doubt plain in her voice.

“Of course. Have you met many Magos, Loghain?” Jarrion asked.

“A few.”

You bumped into all sorts in her line of work.

“Are they known for disclosing information to one another in a free and easy manner, or keeping to themselves everything it is possible to keep to themselves if it seems even the slightest bit valuable?” Jarrion asked.

Loghain was going to say something pithy in response to puncture his rhetorical questioning when what he’d said actually sunk in and she realised he was pretty much entirely on the money. Magos were sometimes known to assassinate one another if they thought they could get away with it, so doing something as low-effort as just not saying they’d found something to keep others away was certainly not beyond the realms of possibility.

Why let a rival try and slide in to swipe your shiny new stuff out from under your nose, after all? Why tell the bigger kids you’d found something cool? Why be a rung on someone else’s ladder when you should be the one climbing?

“...you know, you’re sharper than you look,” Loghain said. Jarrion gave a tiny bow, or as much of one as he could while sitting. More of a slight forward dip and an extravagant hand gesture than anything.

“I have my moments. So no, assuming my guesses are accurate I don’t think anything will really come of the Inquisition or the Mechanicus, at least not yet. Other than, I expect, you making a return appearance,” he said, sharply. Loghain gave a tiny bow of her own.

“Well I’d let you get on with this on your own but I know you’d miss me if I left for good.”

“Clearly you’re better at reading people than I am if you’re able to pick up on signals so subtle most wouldn’t think they were even there,” Jarrion said, tartly.

“Oh, it’s not subtle that you’d miss me.”

“I defer to your expertise, Loghain.”

More quiet, slightly more comfortable this time. Less a moment of awkward silence and more just a natural resting point between topics. It wasn’t altogether unpleasant, Jarrion thought, which was why he knew he wouldn’t last.

“I have another question,” said Loghain.

“Of course you do,” Jarrion said, sighing, glancing over again to the amasec and considering a refill. He hadn’t even finished his current glass yet.

“What are you going to do about the Reapers?” Loghain asked. This one took Jarrion a second to get, then he remembered what that word meant in this context.

“Hmm? Oh, those. The, ah, the ones that Commander is concerned about? You know, I haven’t given them that much thought, I’ll admit,” he said.

“You probably should.”

Jarrion took a sip.

“Pressing, is it?”

“A little bit. Only going by second-hand information, of course. Were it happening here and now I’d be less worried, but back there, the state their galaxy is in, how we saw things? It’s a bit on the existential side,” Loghain said and though Jarrion waited for a punchline or a little joke at the end there wasn’t one. He raised an eyebrow.

“That bad?” He asked. Loghain shrugged.

“It could be. Some seem to think it will be. The Commander certainly does, I didn’t even have to probe too deeply to learn that. Her and her crew, aliens and humans both, they were all on the same page. And those Council aliens might have been in denial and not in full possession of the facts but even they had gnawing doubts and worries. They were hiding them, wrapping them in excuses, but they were there. Anyone who knows - not the ones who’ve heard rumours, the ones who know - seems worried,” she said.

Jarrion swilled his glass about a moment and then necked the rest, wincing briefly.

“Hmm.”

This wasn’t something he really had an opinion on.

Jarrion knew for a fact that the galaxy, his galaxy, was teeming with vile aliens and other even more malign forces who would all eagerly and happily see humanity wiped away, enslaved or even worse and that the only thing standing between them and this fate was the Emperor, His Imperium and His loyal servants (like Jarrion himself, for example. And Loghain too, he supposed).

These were just facts. Existential, aggressive forces were something to be expected. They were normal, everyday. Every moment was a struggle for survival. While the Imperium would eventually triumph over all its enemies, much of mankind stood daily upon the knife edge of annihilation. Complacency, indolence and impiety could very easily spell doom for millions - billions, even.

That was just life, those were the challenges and with faith they rose to meet them and with faith humanity was destined to rule the galaxy. Just how it was.

But back on the other side of the breach, through that hole, they had no Emperor, no Imperium, no united front, no guiding force, no faith. Worse, what might have passed for a united front - that Council of theirs - was anything but and a lot of them, most of them, were aliens. What chance did they have?

Jarrion had read about their wars and had not been impressed. Conflicts that had been written about as severe and devastating sounding like the sort of thing that might be embroiling any number of Sectors in the Imperium even as he was thinking about them. Or a Sub-Sector, even.

Though, in fairness to them, the bizarre nature of their spaceships - what with their reliance on those ‘Mass Relays’ - did make things slightly different, but only slightly. It spread their wars out a bit. The scale of the conflict was still nothing that would have caused undue concern back here, Jarrion was confident.

So what would the Reapers be like, then? Bad, presumably. Very bad indeed.

Jarrion wasn’t an expert, but those few snippets and bits and pieces he’d picked up here and there did suggest an unfriendly picture. A picture that he was increasingly aware none of those back in the other galaxy were capable of confronting alone, and which was apparently nothing they felt like confronting together. Assuming aliens were even capable of working together effectively in the first place, which was a stretch.

So very bad indeed, yes.

Was all of his investment going to be for nothing?

“Have you considered letting them do it?” Loghain asked, and Jarrion was so deep in thought it took him a second to realise she’d spoken at all, and it was only her nudging his leg that got his attention in the first place.

“Do what? Cleanse the galaxy of life or whatever it is they’re apparently intent on doing?” Jarrion asked, bemused.

“Yes,” Loghain said bluntly. Jarrion just stared at her.

“Why in the Emperor’s name would I do that? Let them do that? Do nothing to stop them doing that?”

He wasn’t sure how best to phrase it, and while he was aware that one man - even a Rogue Trader - could hardly be expected to single-handedly turn the tide of a galactic war of genocide he wasn’t so modest to deny that he could certainly pitch in to help.

“Because an empty galaxy is easier to exploit than one others have staked claims to, and a properly exploited galaxy would be more valuable to the Emperor and his servants than one populated by bickering aliens and faithless humans. So hypothetically you could simply continue about your business here for a few years and then return to a galaxy ripe for exploitation and devoid of competition. Hypothetically,” Loghain said.

Jarrion was going to say something biting and pithy to this but the logic of the argument brought him up short. That was not an entirely unreasonable idea. Having to make nice with incredulous aliens was starting to grate on him a little, and the baffling attitude of the local humans - and his continually having to explain what to him was blindingly obvious - was tiring.

Wouldn’t an empty galaxy be much easier?

None of this pussyfooting around and having dinner with pompous, disbelieving aliens rolling their disgusting eyes at everything he said, no more making nice with uppity, backwater colonists interested in his weapons and merchandise but never happy to see him. Just the open, rich, welcoming frontier and maybe, as a worst case, the occasional enclave of survivors that could easily be removed from orbit if the situation warranted it.

No more negotiations, no more diplomacy, just results. A galaxy’s worth of low-hanging fruit! No competition! Think what he could achieve! No obstacles! Total freedom to carve out a colony truly worthy of the Emperor! A series of colonies, even! Anything he wanted!

Much like the ridiculously safe breach, it was one of those things that was so good he started to feel a bit light-headed.

But then he thought about it a bit more. Specifically, he thought about the Commander and then, from her, to the countless other humans in that other galaxy, those in the Terminus Systems he’d met, truculent as they were, and those in that Systems Alliance that he mostly hadn’t met yet.

That resolved it for him fairly easily.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I couldn’t just sit back. Backward and heathen though they may be those humans in that galaxy are still human. They may still be brought to the Emperor’s light, in time, and abandoning them to the depredation of vile alien machines is - it does not sit well with me. At least not on this scale.”

“There’s a scale?”

“You’re an Inquisitor, you’re well aware that there’s a scale.”

The Imperium lived on sacrifice, after all, and it would have been foolish to suggest otherwise. It’s continued day-to-day existence relied on sacrifice. But there was necessary sacrifice and there was waste, and to waste human lives - or to spend them for purely personal gain! - was unacceptable. They were to be spent wisely, and for a greater cause. The greatest cause.

“Just testing,” Loghain said.

“And was that the correct answer?”

“Who said there was a correct answer?”

“Yes well, quite. Thank you for that, Loghain, now I have more things to worry about, wonderful,” Jarrion said, pinching the bridge of his nose. Loghain took the first drink of her drink since she’d arrived.

“You’re welcome, Lord Captain,” she said.

++++

A little under a week later they had arrived. Or at least a little under a week onboard. Outside, it had actually been a little over a week, as far as they could tell. Either way they’d made fantastic time, all things considered, and all were happy to have made port at last - a proper, Imperial port without an alien in sight.

Jarrion’s lists had indeed arrived ahead, though not by much, and while a fair amount had been ordered and arrived a not inconsiderable amount was still apparently in transit. It was looking as though they’d be in port for a good little while, and they’d certainly be very busy. Lots to do!

Even now, mere hours after having moored up, Jarrion was stood before one of the port’s looming, armourglass viewing windows, watching a practically ceaseless stream of lighters and lifters and other utility craft zipping back and forth between the station and the Assertive, transporting men, material and all manner of everything.

Torian was standing next to him, and he was being dictated to.

“-and be sure to contact Stryker Nine about another transfer. Might be an idea to make it double the usual - we haven’t lost many ratings but we’ll be needing labourers soon, I feel. If they can make it here within the month that would be ideal, but I’ll understand if not,” Jarrion said and Torian’s head bobbed as made a note.

“Lord Captain.”

Stryker Nine being a penal colony that House Croesus often made use of for injections of manpower, owing to its practical location relative to many of their holdings, especially Port Mercian. They had a long-running, healthy and happy relationship. House Croesus needed strong backs, Stryker Nine always needed more space and fewer mouths to feed - both got exactly what they wanted, everyone was a winner.

Even the prisoners. Especially the prisoners.

Penance was infinitely preferable to suffering pointlessly without ever a hope of attempting to atone, after all, and dying in service to the Emperor (through one of His loyal Rogue Trader servants) was better by far than dying for nothing, mired in one’s sins.

Better to die for the Emperor than to live for yourself, as was known.

A cough from behind caught Jarrion’s attention and he looked over his shoulder. He saw, to his lack of surprise, Loghain. She had a bag slung across her shoulder. Thale was behind her, as it was often Thale’s preferred approach to appear quietly behind anyone who felt the need to appear quietly behind Jarrion.

“This is where I get off,” Loghain said.

“Leaving us so soon?”

“Told you you’d miss me. Don’t worry, I’ll be back before you set off again.”

“Maybe I’ll set off unexpectedly and without warning.”

“I’ll still be back in time. Early, in fact. Just you watch.”

“Joy unbounded…” Jarrion muttered. Loghain didn’t say anything in response, though, and when Jarrion finished glancing back through the window at his ship and back to her he found a very stony look on her face.

“We joke, Jarrion, you and I, but what you stumbled across is important. Very important, in fact, and for a lot of reasons. Not only does it present - as you like to drone on at length about - an exciting opportunity, it also presents a possible risk. What if these Reapers come and make short work of all our new friends, aliens and humans alike? What if they stumble across that hole you’re so sure no-one could possibly find? What if they come here and decide their work isn’t done yet? That is a problem, a possible and probably unlikely problem, to be sure, but a problem all the same, and one that has landed in my lap. A problem I am going to handle, ably, so that it is no longer a problem the Imperium will have to worry about,” she said.

“You do pick your moments to take your vocation seriously, Loghain.”

“Don’t ever mistake my laid-back attitude for a lack of zeal. I didn’t become an Inquisitor by accident, Jarrion.”

That was the second time she’d used his name like that. The first he’d been willing to let slide, but now Jarrion felt he needed to make a point.

“That’s Lord Captain,” he said, crisply, but Loghain shook her head.

“Not here it isn’t, not if I don’t feel the need. We’re back in the Imperium now, Jarrion, which means there are rules again, and they’re on my side this time. I don’t see much to be gained from making an issue of this, but I think it is something that you should bear in mind. Yes?”

A moment of somewhat tense silence followed. Jarrion thought about saying one thing, thought better of it, hesitated, licked his lips and eventually settled on:

“Yes.”

“I knew you’d agree. As for my attitude, as you say, well - if some dismiss me as less of a threat because I appear to be somewhat lackadaisical that can only serve to benefit me. People let their guard down if they assume you’re not taking things seriously. I’m sure a canny Rogue Trader such as yourself can appreciate being underestimated, hmm?”

This wasn’t going the way Jarrion had planned.

“Quite. Presumably also related to how you have given absolutely no indication to me or anyone else as to what it is you are actually doing or intending to do now, before now or in the future? What no-one knows about no-one can interfere with? At least not intentionally,” he said.

“Really are the sharp one, aren’t you?”

“Wonderful. And as upbeat as I try to be, Inquisitor, even I cannot remain hopeful that you’ll ever explain why it is you’ve attached yourself to me, or ever did in the first place.”

“Maybe you’ll find out one day.”

“Hah. Chance be a fine thing. Maybe I’ll get to be a High Lord. Maybe, uh, Robute Guilliman will get up and start walking around again,” Jarrion said, casting his mind around for something amusingly impossible and surprising himself with something out of left field. He hadn’t thought about Ultramar in a long, long time. Nice place. Very clean.

Loghain just smiled at him.

“Anything’s possible.”

He did not like that smile.

“Yes well, until then I suppose this is goodbye, is it?” He said, briskly, rocking on his heels and very deliberately checking his chronometer.

“Goodbye for now,” she said, putting particular emphasis on the last part.

“Wonderful. Best of luck, Inquisitor. The Emperor protects.”

He made the sign of the Aquila at this, and she returned it.

“The Emperor protects, Lord Captain.”

++++

+++MEANWHILE, IN ANOTHER TIME, ANOTHER GALAXY, SOMEWHERE VERY SECRET+++

The Illusive Man was smoking and reading through reports. Smoking and reading through reports was something that ate up a lot of his time. You didn’t stay a healthy number of steps ahead of everyone by not doing your reading, and there was always a situation developing that he needed to keep an eye on. It was neverending.

The smoking was just a bad habit. Not unduly unhealthy, not for him, but still a fairly bad habit all the same. One he felt he was allowed, however. Everyone had their vices.

Everything that was happening was happening more-or-less how he had expected everything would be happening, which was gratifying. Nothing he read surprised him. There were a handful of Collector sightings reported, though they seemed to be keeping a wary distance from any human colonies for now, albeit a wary distance that was decreasing with each sighting, and with enough sightings to suggest that it was more than one ship.

He tapped out some ash and continued.

The team attempting to retrieve the Reaper IFF was having some level of success, form the sounds of things, but their reports were getting more ominous with every update. Soon the reports would stop, The Illusive Man knew, but if their rate of progress didn’t degrade too much they should at least have the IFF ready by the time that happened, then it was just a case of having it picked up.

Shepard could do that. She was reliable, for all her faults.

And speaking of Shepard, The Illusive Man noted that she had at last left Illium, which was good, and was from the looks of things was back to building and strengthening the squad, which was also good. She’d need to.

Jarrion and his intriguing spaceship had also left Illium, which was less good because he and it had then promptly disappeared, not showing up in any of the places it had previously been seen to visit. There was the possibility they had simply gone off exploring, but that wasn’t his usual behaviour, and so this was a possible concern, him being such a noteworthy and unexpected asset.

A possible concern but not a pressing one.

Despite Jarrion’s reluctance in taking up any of the generous offers put to him for access to his ship or for some of his weaponry (though, The Illusive Man was going to have to have a word with Shepard about the ones she’d somehow managed to get her hands on, something he had found out about in very short order) there was slow but steady progress being made with those Imperial items that Cerberus had been able to acquire so far, at least according to those reports he’d just read.

Nothing tangible yet, but good, steady progress all the same. This was adequate for now. For now. If there was nothing tangible by the time he read their next report his attitude might change but for now, it was adequate. Acceptable.

He continued to browse, unruffled, until he noticed a fresh arrival. This wasn’t unusual. Just about everything that came in went past him first, albeit after passing through a data-filtration system of his own devising. What was unusual in this case was it’s source, as it was coming from someone who he knew for a fact was dead, a man stabbed in the eye at a diplomatic function for reasons that were still unclear.

Or at least, coming from someone who knew the man’s security credentials.

Curiosity piqued (not something he often experienced or enjoyed much), The Illusive Man took a nerve-steadying drag before lightly flicking a fingertip and opening up the message. It was blank, but it did have a file attached. A file with unusual formatting. An audio file, apparently.

It took the computer a second to work out how to get it going, and when it did he heard:

“Hello. We are sorry about your man, but these things happen, don’t they? You may not know me, but I know of you. Inquisitor Loghain of the Holy Orders of the Emperor’s Inquisition would be my lengthy and formal title, but you can shorten it to Inquisitor if you prefer. I feel it might benefit both of us to meet.”

Chapter Text

Poor Jacob, that was rough.

Honestly, if you’d asked me five years ago where I saw myself in, you know, five years, I would not have said on a planet with brain-rotting fruit, gunning my way through the crazed, reduced-to-tribalism survivors of a crashed spaceship captained by the presumed-killed-but-actually-gone-mad-with-power father of a man who is the member of an organisation that once tried to kill me for disrupting their unethical experiments but has since brought me back from the dead and charged me with putting a stop to an alien race’s sinister designs on humanity as part of a greater effort at getting read for the arrival of a fleet of killer space robots dedicated to wiping us all off the face of the galaxy. I would not have said that.

And yet, here I am.

Life’s funny like that, I guess.

Anyway, that had happened. That thing with Jacob’s father and the fruit and the tribals. Finding out that he’d set himself up as some sort of weirdo cult leader-stroke-god and had a brain-damaged harem guarded by robots. That we’d shot our way through. That was something we’d done. Not the most relaxing day I’ve had, personally, and while Jacob seems to be holding up alright it’s still not something most people would have liked to go through, I wouldn’t think. Poor sod.

We left his father there, on that planet, with those people and without his robots. The people weren’t very happy with him. It sounded like it didn’t go well, but we didn’t look back to check.

Certainly drew a line under it.

All part of the continuing efforts of shoring up the squad, filling in those psychological cracks, focusing minds by removing distractions and also grabbing anything we found that looked valuable that happened to be nearby at the time, like boxes of refined iridium that people liked to leave lying around, as an example.

This sort of thing takes up most of my time these days. Running around shooting mercenaries, every so often taking a moment to help out one of the squad with some pressing personal issue - did you know Thane had a son? I do now - or sometimes having to babysit imperialist humans from another universe, just killing time and waiting for the incredibly sketchy man in charge to tell me what the next step in the big plan is so I can get a tiny bit closer to stopping the Collectors.

It’s frustrating, but that’s just how it is. The Collectors are still out there right now, right this second, still doing whatever it is they’re doing (collecting, presumably, though they seem to have gone worryingly quiet of late), and I’m just here killing people and killing time waiting to be told what to do by someone I do not trust. With Saren I was actively tracking him down, with this I’m having to wait.

Such is life. Not a whole lot else I can do short of going through the Omega Four relay early and probably dying horribly somehow, which doesn’t appeal. And the squad is improving, which is important, and every box of minerals liberated from some corpse-strewn mercenary compound is another spot of souping up I can give the Normandy or new technical tweak we can make to our gear.

It all helped, and ideally I would like to come back from this collector-busting mission whenever it actually happens. I have things I need to do, things I only really trust to get done if I’m there to do them.

Speaking of things found amidst the corpses of my fallen enemies, though, we did make something of a notable discovery not that long ago: a laser rifle.

We were busting up something the Blue Suns had going - mostly because we just happened to be in the area and because hell, why not - and everything was going pretty standard when, all of a sudden, laser rifle. A bit of shock, I can tell you.

I can also now say from personal experience that being shot with a laser is not fun. I didn’t assume it would be fun, but I can now confirm it. The guy who had the thing - some chancer Blue Sun lieutenant - caught me off guard, shot went right through my shields and hit me in the chest. Damn near smacked me flat on my arse. Lucky there’s that ablative, energy-absorbing layer as standard on combat hardsuits, eh? My armour held but if I hadn’t been bodily reinforced on account of being a very expensive cyborg revenant I can imagine it might have done more than knock the wind out of me.

Not something I’d care to repeat any time soon.

Especially since the one they had wasn’t one of the one’s that Jarrion had loaned to us, not a proper military one. Looking at it afterwards, after its erstwhile owner was dead, even I could tell immediately that it was lower grade than the ones we’d been given. The finish wasn’t as good, didn’t have that very nice power-select control and also the powerpack was built-in. This was definitely one of those civilian models that Jarrion had mentioned, the ones he was trading to the human colonies and which were - fairly obviously - being traded on or stolen or lost and generally spreading out into space.

Proof - if it were needed - that these things were already getting out there and already getting into the hands of the wrong sorts of people. Assuming there are the right sorts of people to have laserguns in the first place.

I suppose I’d be the right sort of person to have a lasergun, come to think of it. Not to toot my own horn or anything but I like to think I’m using my futuristic wonder weaponry for good, as opposed to these bastards and whoever else out there is eager to get their grubby mits on them. Those people who want a laser just so they can cause trouble.

There’s not a lot to add beyond simple observation of facts. We already knew that the lasers had gone beyond the colonists that Jarrion had traded with - hell, Anderson had already told me as much - but there’s a difference between knowing it and actually getting shot. If my ribs weren’t augmented they’d probably have the cracks to show the difference. Fucking ouch.

So there’s that. Those really are out there now. Who knows what else is going to happen? I can imagine things getting worse before they get better. Or worse before they get even worse. And then worse again, why not. Why should we be so willing to believe the worst is over?

But I still had time to buttress while I twiddle my thumbs waiting for a call from the Illusive Man, and so I pointed the ship at Haestrom, where Tali apparently was.

Tali was one of a handful of people in the galaxy who I actually, legitimately trusted, so ideally I’d have liked her watching my back given what it was I was planning on doing - the collector mission and all that.

Last we heard though (‘we’ in this instance being us members of Cerberus, with access to knowing things most would probably have to actually towards knowing) she was off on some long-lost quarian colony world, since overrun and infested with geth. It certainly sounded like the Tali place to be.

Even better, it was a long-lost quarian colony world orbiting a sun that fried the surface and made just about everything a hundred times more difficult than it would be otherwise, even without hordes of killer robots coming out the woodwork.

Worse things have happened, though. Me, Grunt, Jacob and Garrus on this one, trying to keep it small and quick. Hop in the shuttle and down we go.

Almost the instant I took my first step out of the shade there came a sizzling and an immediate, loud, annoying beeping from my suit as the shield indicator started dropping, and dropping alarmingly fast at that. I went right back into some shade again. I was also being shot at at the time, which didn’t help.

“Why in God’s name is the sun overloading my shields? I know radiation is bad but it’s hardly shooting at me, is it?!” I shouted over the squad net, not really expecting an answer, mostly just annoyed.

These were kinetic barriers, last I checked.

“It’s frying the emitters,” came the voice of Garrus, with what almost sounded like authority, almost like he believed it himself. I thought about this as chips of masonry flew up from whatever chunk of rubble I was hunkered behind.

“Sure. I’ll buy that,” I said. Sounded convincing to me. Radiation is wild. Could probably do that. Was messing up communications so why not?

Now I felt like an idiot.

So that was fun. Getting into firefights with geth is bad enough without also having to remember to stick to the shade so the harsh light of a dying star doesn’t cook you from the inside out. If nothing else at least my life isn’t dull.

There isn’t a whole lot to say about the firefights, honestly. Shooting geth was novel when I first started doing it back before I died, but by now it just sort of feels like going through the motions, if it feels like anything at all. Probably helps that I’m a cyborg death machine backed up by hyper-lethal teammates. Geth may be good, but they’re not that good, least not to me and my lads.

We make short work and we cut through them, moving through the ruins in a pretty direct straight line. Bump into some quarians - associates of Tali - and they are having a much rougher time of it than we are. Get cut off by some collapsing masonry before we get a chance to catch up with them and by the time we’ve faffed around and found enough explosives to blow ourselves a clear path the poor bastards have got themselves wiped out.

Given the wrecked geth littering the room they’d retreated into, the quarians had at least given a good account of themselves, but still. Poor sods.

There was some communications gear in the room, too, and Tali was on the line. Trying to raise her comrades, it transpired, but it was me instead there to deliver the bad news. She was surprised, then sad, then resolved. Made of stern stuff, Tali. One of the many reasons I thought so highly of her.

Also got word from another quarian survivor, too, cutting into our conversation. Some Flotilla marine sergeant or other, Kal’Reegar. He was holding out up ahead from the sound of things, trying to get to Tali same as us. Tali seemed keen on him staying alive and it’s always nice to have help, so we said we’d make tracks to link up with him.

And on we went. Tali was up ahead buttoned up somewhere behind a locked door and she wasn’t going to be getting any safer the longer we sat around. Geth got a few ways of opening up doors, in my experience, often favouring the direct way.

In short order (and with only a surprisingly light amount of gunfighting) we got into some bigger, secure structure the purpose of which I can only guess at. The room we entered had some armoured shutters and, amazingly, a console that still looked to be in semi-working order. Those ancient quarians build to last, apparently.

“Tali should be just past whatever’s the other side of these,” Garrus said, doing a quick doublecheck of his omnitool. I nodded. Figured the same myself. Looking around the room I saw that on top of the shutters the door to the next area was also locked, some security protocol or other keeping the placed sealed up. Probably a result of the recent action.

“Right. See if you can get this opened up,” I said.

Garrus set about that and, in a trice, found the right button. The shutters raised, and across the way we saw a whole bloody platoon of geth and also, just for variety, a geth colossus, which I’ll admit I hadn’t expected.

The damn things must have noticed us lifting the lockdown because no sooner had that shutter gone up then up popped the colossus, and no sooner had it popped up it also started firing at us, along with all the others.

“Get down!” I yelled, though really I didn’t have to, we were all already throwing ourselves flat. There was a crash and a boom and a shake and some dust drizzled over us from the ceiling but nothing else happened and none of us died, so this wasn’t the worst.

I never did like fighting the geth armour on foot. If I was back in the Mako I could just run the thing over a few times, park on it and then get out and shoot it in the face. When I’m on foot my options are kind of limited and my guns are distressingly small.

Wish I’d brought that laser cannon now. I hadn’t thought I’d be needing it!

“You know, I’m starting to think we should get our own big robot,” I said, risking a peek and very quickly having to duck back down again as pulse rifle rounds started hissing my way, skimming off my barriers and chewing up sun-baked concrete.

Yep, still shooting at us.

“Maybe Jarrion has one he can lend us,” said Garrus.

He was joking, but Jarrion probably did have something like that somewhere.

“I’ll ask next time I see him. Which’ll probably be in two minutes, knowing my luck. Come on, let’s deal with this lot and get to Tali.”

We took a side-exit from the room, one that was thankfully afforded total cover by the structure and so we didn’t have to worry about being shot to ribbons on the way out. We nearly tripped over a quarian who had the same appreciation of the safety presented there and who was hunkering down.

He halfway raised the rocket launcher he was holding towards us before clocking we weren’t geth and lowering it again, waving us in by him, where we huddled.

“Commander Shepard,” I said, by way of introduction as I came in squatting beside him.

“I guessed. Sergeant Kal’Reegar, we talked on the radio. Still no idea why you’re here but now ain’t the time to be picky. Tali’s inside over there. The Geth killed the rest of my squad, and they’re trying to get to her. Best I’ve been able to do is try and get their attention,” he said.

“What we up against here? Apart from the obvious whacking great robot. Numbers?”

Always good to know numbers. Even ballpark is better than no idea at all.

“Near platoon strength, but the colossus is the worst part. It’s got repair protocols. Huddles up and fixes itself. Can’t get a clear shot when it’s down like that. I tried to move in closer and one of the bastards punched a hole clean through my suit,” he said, nodding downwards. I looked downwards. He did indeed have a hole punch through him - through his leg, specifically, ine one side and right out the other. Blood around the hole looked fresh, which was unsurprising, but there wasn’t any more leaking out, which was good.

“How bad?” I asked.

“Combat seals clamped down to isolate contamination and I’m swimming in antibiotics. The Geth might get me but I’m not going to die from an infection in the middle of a battle. That’s just insulting.”

I like this guy’s attitude.

“Too right. What’s the plan with the colossus?”

“Standard protocol with armature-class units is to sabotage their shields and whittle them down, you know, kill it with bug bites. But the repair protocol blows that plan to hell. You try to wear it down it just huddles up and fixes itself. We’re going to have to hit it real hard, probably from up close. Means crossing that out there, cutting through the foot units first and not getting cooked or shot. Or more shot, if you’re me,” he said, waving the rocket launcher around the edge of what we were all hiding behind.

Sounded about as good of a plan as was possible right then.

“I can manage that,” I said.

“I’m not moving so well but I can still pull a trigger and I’ve got a rocket launcher that the sun hasn’t fried yet. You and yours move in close. I’ll keep the colossus busy, maybe even drop it’s shields. With luck, you’ll be able to finish it off,” he said. Behind my faceplate I frowned.

I understood the desire not to sit around doing nothing but I couldn’t help but imagine that one quarian with a rocket launcher wasn’t going to be all-that distracting, especially since the distraction would probably end pretty quickly with the quarian in question a smear across the walls.

“Kind of you to offer, but you’ve done more than enough already. No need to get any more holes punched through you, we’ll take it from here,” I said, giving a sideways nod to my lads.

“Wasn’t asking you permission. My job is to keep Tali safe. This is our best shot,” Kal’Reegar said.

At this he lunged up - with obvious effort - and brought that rocket launcher of his to bear, properly this time, and with intent. Given that we were still being shot at while he was trying to do this I could kind of see how this was going to play out. Before he’d made it halfway I was up and hauling him out the way. One of the numerous benefits of being a cyborg is that I’m very good at hauling people out of the way.

Dragging him sideways into more substantial cover (and keenly aware of the air where he would have been standing getting merrily chopped to bits by geth fire) I broke out my most commanderly voice:

“Getting shot to pieces isn’t going to be keeping Tali safe. You want to get killed, do it on your own time.”

“I’m not going to stand there while you run into enemy fire. They killed my whole squad!”

“Yes, and you can either join them and die for nothing right here and now and I can go get Tali and tell her everyone she arrived with died or else you can hang back and keep an eye out for if they try to come at us from behind,” I said, pointing back the way we’d come and the way the geth could very well also come, if we’d missed any on our way over. “Cover our backs, alright?”

He was quiet a second. Always hard to read a quarian but I could tell he was wrangling it.

“Alright, Shepard. We’ll do it your way. Hit them for me. Keelah se’lai,” he said.

Swear some people just have a death wish. Having died, I can tell you it’s really not worth it.

The area ahead of us was broadly split into three routes, broadly speaking. Left, right and middle. Left was low and exposed to the sun, middle was in the middle and exposed to being shot a lot from just about anywhere else and the right had higher elevation. All fine choices.

I sent Garrus and Jacob up right, my thinking being that while up there they could shoot down, which is always a plus. Especially as Garrus had brought along that sniper laser he’d got so fond of. Putting that (and him) somewhere practical was just sensible, really.

That left me and Grunt. We’d go low, leave the middle.

Pulse rifle shots start flying the instant we break cover but we’re down and sprinting and moving through enough rubble and bits and pieces of omnipresent concrete (I keep assuming ancient quarians used concrete? Or some equivalent) that we make good distance unscathed. One or two glances off the barriers, but that’s what they’re there for.

There’s a bigger whoosh and a detonation that shakes the ground beneath my feet when the colossus opens up, but I don’t stop to see where it hit or how close it came to hitting me. Best not to worry about these things, best to just keep pushing forward times like this. If you haven’t been blown to bits take it as a sign to carry on.

One of the invisible ones - hunters, my HUD told me, thanks HUD - came at me, which was a bad idea. They’re not all that invisible and I could see it coming and before it got a shot off I’d grabbed the thing and hip-tossed it over the nearest platform edge, down to who-knew-where.

“Get out the way,” I said, not breaking stride. I really didn’t have time.

Of course, the next one to come at me was a destroyer. Even I have limits, I’m not going to try and wrestle one of those. I came skidding in behind a chunk of building just as the geth started firing on me, no-doubt chewing a nice big chunk out of the chunk.

Grunt had no reservations about this, however, and went barrelling right past me waving around that chainsword he had become so very fond of. I was still taking cover when he did this, and though it went against my better judgement I stood up to give him at least the suggestion of covering fire. I needn’t have bothered.

Moment I stood up I got a nice, split-second view of the destroyer switching targets to the massive roaring krogan running at it before a shot from the side caught it on the shoulder and staggered it. A laser shot, no less. Punched a nice, glowing hole right through a guard plate and down into its chest. If it had been anything other than a hulking murder robot that probably would have killed it on the spot.

(As an aside, I did have a passing thought at that moment - which I pushed away as a distraction, but would come back to - that things were really going to start getting interesting when the geth got their hands on some of that Imperial laser technology. They don’t get out much, but it really is only a matter of time. So there’s that to look forward to.)

I looked in the direction the shot had come from, saw Garrus up on the flank that he and Jacob were taking. He saw me looking and gave me the tiniest of salutes, that sniper laser in his other hand. Class act, Garrus. Almost as good a shot as me, too. Almost.

By the time I looked back to the destroyer Grunt had sawed one of its legs clean off and was merrily carving it open from the groin upward. He was so happy doing this, in fact, that he entirely failed to notice the geth moving in to shoot him, so I shot them before they could - double-tap Mattock shots to the head for the two of them who’d stepped into the sun, sending the others back into cover. That’s teamwork, and that was our flank pretty much taken care of.

And to think Miranda said it was a bad idea to let Grunt bring the chainsword on this mission!

Now the colossus.

I may not have brought the laser cannon but I had brought one of the future guns, my favourite of them, in fact, or at least the favourite of the ones I’d tried. The meltagun. I love this gun. Used it a couple of times now. Kind of ridiculous overkill on most targets - I’d never actually left anyone a smoking pair of legs before using it, I hadn’t even known you really could - but this wasn’t most targets. This was actually perfect. This was the kind of target the gun had apparently been made for.

Had to get a bit closer though. One thing I’d learnt about the meltagun was that it didn’t have a whole lot of range. Would still ruin most people’s day out to a pretty good distance - if you’re not instantly obliterated you’re still going to suddenly catch fire or at least get suddenly pan-seared and blinded - but for something big and armoured I imagined closer was better. So I got closer, dodging from cover to cover, shields flickering here and there where I caught the sun or a stray shot, but soon I was within spitting distance.

Of course, by then I’d got the attention of the thing and it was pouring it onto me, meaning I was stuck in cover and Grunt, who was little bit away from me, wasn’t in a much better situation.

“You guys up top able to help with this?” I sent to Garrus and Jacob, noticing what I had taken to be a disabled geth crawling on over to me and briefly drawing my Phalanx to make sure it actually was disabled properly this time.

“What are teammates for?” Garrus replied. I rolled my eyes, heard that high-pitched snap-crack of laser fire and also a disconcertingly loud crashing noise. “That should do it, Shepard.”

I wasn’t going to ask what the crashing was. I popped up, barely had to aim, fired.

Clean shot, right at the centre of mass. Big machine just melted like a chocolate egg someone had taken a blowtorch to, great glowing chunk just where most of its middle used to be. For a second the structure kind of held together then it just collapsed, partly in on itself, mostly just in a heap. Clunk, crunch, pfut. Repair protocol that.

I love this gun.

After that it was just mopping up. Garrus and Jacob had cleared out the top route and stayed up there, picking off any geth they had flanked and keeping the heads down of those who they couldn’t just shoot outright. The geth didn’t run - not that I expected them to - but they didn’t last much longer past this.

We’re professionals. More or less. The only reason I’d even broken a sweat was because of the sun.

“Alright Tali you can come out now. We’ve rendered the area safe in the fashion for which we’re known,” I said, wandering up to the door the geth had been trying to breach and giving it a rap. This didn’t get any response, at least not immediately, but a couple seconds later there came a few loud clunks and some whirring and the door, now unlocked, ground open. And there was Tali, none the worse for wear.

“Fancy meeting you here,” I said, giving a wave.

“Thank you Shepard,” she said, giving me a little wave back. She sounded more out of breath than I did! Guess that’s working under pressure. “If it weren’t for you I never would have made it out of this room. This whole mission has been a disaster. I wish I’d joined you back on Freedom’s Progress, but I couldn’t let anyone else take my place on something this risky.”

Risky was putting it mildly. I got where she was coming from, though.

“Worth it, whatever you got?” I asked, gesturing vaguely to the machinery occupying the spot she’d holed herself up in. She thought about this for a second, and when she spoke she didn’t sound as if she was brimming with confidence:

“I don’t know, Shepard. It wasn’t my call. The Admiralty Board believes the information here was worth sacrificing all our lives for. I have to believe they know what’s best.”

“But what do you think?” I asked.

She didn’t think so long for this one.

“A lot of people died here. Some of them were my friends. All of them were good at their jobs. That damn data better be worth it. The price was too high.”

There wasn’t a lot I could say to that, so I just nodded.

“Glad I could help, all the same. And not to sound callous but once you’ve delivered that data I’ve still got a spot on the Normandy for you,” I said, thumbing back over my shoulder.

“For the suicide mission?” She asked.

People really do latch onto that part.

“We’re trying not to call it that. Official Ceberus vocab guidelines refer to it as a ‘high risk assignment’,” I said, naturally providing the appropriate air-quotes in the appropriate place.

And while this sounded like another of my super-good jokes I’d honestly seen Cerberus’s paperwork on the mission and that was honestly what it had said. Someone had written that. I thought the whole point of having a secret paramilitary terrorist organisation was to avoid things like that? Stupid euphemisms and the like?

“I promised to see this mission through and I did. I can leave with you and send the data to the fleet. And if the admirals have a problem with that, they can go to hell. I just watched the rest of my team die,” Tali said, not un-bitterly.

“Maybe not the whole rest of your team, ma’am,” Kal’Reegar said, limping in at just the right moment.

“See Kal’Reegar, if you’d got yourself killed you couldn’t have delivered that perfectly timed line,” I said. Everyone ignored this, Tali just rushing over to check on her friend and everyone else just sandbagging me. Ingrates. I’m wasted on these people.

“Reegar! You made it!”

“Your old captain’s as good as you said. Damn colossus never stood a chance,” Reegar said, nodding to me.

“You’ll make me blush. If you need a ride out of here I’d be more than willing to oblige you,” I said, but Reegar shook his head.

“The geth didn’t damage our ship. Long as we get out of here before reinforcements show up, we’ll be fine,” he said.

“Actually I won’t be going with you. I’m joining Commander Shepard,” said Tali.

Reegar took this in stride. Didn’t even blink. Well, I assume he didn’t even blink.

“I’ll pass the data to the Admiralty Board and let them know what happened. She’s all yours now, Shepard. Keep her safe.”

I couldn’t in all honesty say that I was going to keep her safe given what I was going to be asking her to be a part of, so I just gave the guy a thumbs up. Seemed to work.

Tiny bit awkward back on the return shuttle trip and back on ship, just a tiny bit. Not a huge surprise given that mine and Tali’s initial experience of Cerberus had been, you know, us shooting them while they were shooting at us. It’s not a good first impression. And that’s not even getting into the dubious experiments and shady goings on. We had not started as friends.

Hell, we still weren’t friends, we just happened to share common goals for the time being.

That, and I’m really not going to complain if they want to keep throwing money at this problem. Private sector has some perks. Does this count as the private sector?

Anyway, it continued being awkward all the way back into the conference room for the standard post-mission debriefing. There wasn’t a whole lot to say, really, at least not for anyone who wasn’t Jacob, me or Tali so Garrus and Grunt got to leave early - the rest of us stayed. Me because I’m in charge, Tali because she had just arrived and needed introducing, Jacob because he was the one going to be doing the introducing.

Thus.

“Cerberus saw footage of you in action, Tali’Zorah. We’re looking forward to having you on the team. Your engineering expertise will really benefit the mission,” Jacob said. Suppose that counts as an introduction. Seemed kind of dry to me, personally, but can’t say he’s wrong.

“I don’t know who you are, but Cerberus threatened the security of the Migrant fleet. Don’t make nice,” Tali said.

That would leave a sour taste, I’ll grant, but I’d still prefer everyone on slightly warmer terms than that. If only for the sake of team cohesion.

“You don’t have to like them, Tali, but we are all on the same side this time. For now,” I said. She turned to me.

“I assumed that you were undercover, Shepard. Maybe even planning to blow Cerberus up. If that’s the case I’ll loan you a grenade. Otherwise I’m here for you. Not for them,” she said.

I shrugged. Fair play.

“Works for me. I’m mostly just making blatant use of their resources until they turn on me. Check out the ship if you have a minute. They might be sneaky bastards but they really went to town on it, go have a look. Swipe a mug, I have.”

Several, in fact. Mostly because I keep taking them to my cabin and forgetting about them, but still.

“I’ll get Tali’Zorah the necessary security clearance to access our systems,” Jacob said, fiddling with his omnitool. Helpful chap. Very good at letting my unrelenting criticism of his employer just roll off his back. What a good sport!

“Please do. I can’t be a part of your team if I don’t know how the ship works,” she said, only briefly glancing in Jacob’s direction before returning her attention to me. “Just remember, Shepard. Cerberus wasn’t our friend when we went up against Saren. I’ll be in engineering.”

Tried not to grit my teeth.

“They’re not our friend now. Why does everyone keep telling me this, I know this. But yes, go have fun,” I said, waving her off.

I’m honestly getting a little sick of people assuming just because I’m wearing a shirt with a Cerberus logo on it that suddenly I think they’re the best thing ever. These are the only clothes I have! I was dead and once I stopped being dead Cerberus provided my wardrobe! I haven’t had time to get anything else! It’s not my fault!

Mean, I know how it looks from the outside if you hear that suddenly someone has started zipping about in a Cerberus ship with a Cerberus crew doing some clandestine mission of some kind for Cerberus, but you’d think the people who know me would at least give me the benefit of the doubt!

Wasn’t I meant to be a decorated war hero or something? First human Spectre? Known for going around and shooting Cerberus?

Urgh. Sooner this is over and sooner the Collectors are done and dusted the better. Can roll on Cerberus, get back to screwing up their schemes like God intended and start working on how to get everyone in the galaxy to make nice so we can all counter the impending killbot invasion.

Never a dull moment.

Speaking of which, Jacob got one last thing in just before Tali was about to go through the door:

“Don’t forget to introduce yourself to EDI, the ship’s new artificial intelligence.”

She didn’t say anything to that. Stopped, looked back, and even with the helmet on you could practically feel the heat she was giving off. Fuck me. And then she was off and out the door. I turned to Jacob.

“Come on, man,” I said, giving him A Look.

“What?” He asked, blanky as anything.

Playing dumb, eh? I pointed a finger at him. A knowing finger.

“You know what you did. Next time I’m about to go and do something exciting you’ll be staying behind to feed my fish,” I said.

“You have an automatic feeder, Commander. I saw you buy it,” he said. Smartarse.

“I’ll turn it off.”

“Alright, I’m sorry. That was a cheap shot,” he said, holding up his hands. The threat of feeding fish was clearly a potent one.

“Yes it was. Well that’s that. Good work down there, you go take a minute, do whatever.”

“Commander,” he said, nodding. I left. Things to do. Always something to do. Always somewhere new to be and something new to do, someone to shoot, someone to talk to.

And just as I was heading back to the map, Chambers caught me. She didn’t even look up!

“The Illusive Man wishes to speak to you in the briefing room, Commander,” she said. I slumped, sighed, turned right back around on my heel and moped back to the room I’d just bloody left not five seconds previously. Passed Jacob who cocked an eyebrow at him questioningly.

“Take a guess,” I said, re-entering the briefing room - conference room, whatever - and standing as the lights dimmed and the table sunk almost as soon as the door closed behind me.

And there he was, in his chair, smoking. The Illusive Man.

“You rang?”

“Shepard. There’s been some developments.”

“That’s always good to hear. What kind?”

“Confirmed what had previously been speculation. We’ve restored enough of the collector ship’s systems to working order so that we were able to access its computer, and while interpreting what we’re finding is uphill work we have already discovered something important.”

Presumably if they’d had EDI handy it would have been faster. Well, they seem to be doing fine without her.

“Which you will no-doubt inform me of presently,” I said.

He smoked aggressively at me and did not comment on my flippancy. Probably shouldn’t prod him too much, he just makes it so easy and at this point it’s more of a reflex than anything else. Bad habits of mine. There are many.

“We had theorised that collector vessels possessed some form of IFF device which allows them to traverse the Omega Four relay safely - we now know this to be the case. Unfortunately, the disabled vessel did not have an intact example, the damage was too extensive. Fortunately, we happen to have an intact example already.”

“Oh?”

Didn’t strike me as the sort of thing you’d just have lying around. The Illusive Man smoked some more and nodded, tapping out ash.

“There is a derelict Reaper in the upper atmosphere of a brown dwarf in the Hawking Eta Cluster - we’re sending you the exact coordinates. We have a team there investigating already and they’ve confirmed that the derelict still has such an IFF device and they have managed to locate it,” he said.

I blinked.

“...a derelict Reaper?”

“Yes.”

“Just… there? Just around?”

He tapped out some more ash, uncrossed and recrossed his legs.

“Just there. It’s damaged and has been damaged for what we assume is a considerable length of time. Despite this, it has mass effect fields keeping it from being pulled deeper into the brown dwarf. This isn’t important though. What’s important is that it has what you need for your mission to proceed.”

There’s something quietly terrifying in the idea of a spaceship - a damaged spaceship, no less - still being capable of just sitting in the atmosphere of a planet for however many thousands of years. Or is that just me? Didn’t even have the decency to be age-ravaged wreckage, had to stay perfectly frozen in place until someone found it, dead but not too dead. Bloody Reapers.

I dwelt on this for a second.

“Right. Guessing there’s a twist coming though?” I asked.

“We lost contact with the team, not long after they reported having acquired the IFF,” he said.

Naturally.

“Alright. So going and picking it up might prove interesting?” I asked.

“It would be safe to assume so.”

“Alright, alright,” I said, stroking my chin, distracted by thoughts of what I’d very shortly be having to do.

The prospect of boarding a Reaper did not fill me with enthusiasm - having seen what happened to those who hung around Reapers for any length of time - but this was what had to happen and it wasn’t like I was moving into the place anyway, just in and out. Pretty glad that the Cerberus team managed to do what they needed to before succumbing, poor sods.

Did they know what was going to happen to them when they went there? The Illusive Man must have done. But how else were they going to get this IFF thing? How else are we meant to get through the relay, stop the attacks? These are probably the hard choices that people have to make. What would I have done if I’d been the one in charge?

I was actually quite thankful when the Illusive Man interrupted here and derailed my train of thought. Sometimes I think too much, perhaps, especially about things I can’t actually do anything about. Another bad habit. Did say I had many.

“In an unrelated matter, it has come to my attention that you recently took on-board some weapons and equipment from the Rogue Trader,” he said. Took me a second to remember that’s what Jarrion had said his job title was.

“Heard about that, did you?” I asked.

“I did.”

Inevitable, really. Probably found out five minutes before the crates were even aboard and just hadn’t had the chance to bring it up to me until now. Just one of those things.

“Your habit of knowing everything everyone else knows and a bit more besides is deeply unsettling. Has anyone mentioned that?” I asked. He just smoked at me, albeit not as aggressively this time.

“It’s an occupational hazard for a man in my position,” he said.

“Knowing everything or unsettling everyone?”

“Both.”

Sounds about right.

“If you’re hoping that I’ll let you borrow them for a minute I’m afraid I’ll have to disappoint you as they were given to me and my team personally and in good faith.”

Left out the part where Jarrion specifically requested they not be given to the Illusive Man and that Jarrion explicitly didn’t trust the Illusive Man, as I felt that might be stepping a little too close to outright antagonising him, and I didn’t need to go that far. He probably knew that too, anyway.

“I assumed as much. We had approached him directly but without success. It simply struck me as curious that he would be willing to deal with you personally and not with us. Still, it isn’t an issue.”

One imagines he will have - or already has - a way of getting what he wants without having to go through the trouble of asking or the bother of anyone finding out about it. Otherwise I can’t see why he’d be so relaxed about it.

“So this was mostly just so I know that you know?” I asked.

“More or less.”

I shrugged. Not a lot I could do about that.

“Whatever floats your boat. Alright, fine, Reaper IFF. You send the details, we’ll go get it. Then it’s - well, then it’ll be go-time, won’t it?”

“Once it’s secured and installed then it will just be a case of going through the relay and eliminating whatever it is you find on the other side. Presumably a base. That is of course assuming you feel your team is ready?”

I thought about this for a second.

“More or less,” I said.

Could always be more ready, but we’re not made of time.

“It is at your discretion, Shepard,” he said.

Leeway is always nice, though it does always carry with it the lingering threat that if it all goes wrong it is entirely your fault. But that’s being in charge, really. Someone’s got to make decisions.

“Right. Well, I’ll send a report once we’ve got the IFF, though no-doubt you’ll know about that before we actually get it anyway. Then it’s just a case of getting it plugged in and, hell, off to the races, I guess,” I said, scratching the back of my head.

“As you say,” he said, then disconnecting. This left me on my own in a darkened room, at least until the lights came back up, then I was on my own in a slightly brighter room.

Kind of weird to think the end was in sight like that. Mean, we still had a derelict Reaper to crawl through the guts of, which wasn’t going to be the most relaxing of occasions, but still. Once we got the IFF, got it hooked up, what was left? Team was pretty solid right now, Normandy was probably the most cutting-edge ship in space at this point. Basically ready to go, draw a line under it. Deal with the threat of the Collectors.

Felt like I was missing something, or that something was due to go very wrong.

Probably just healthy paranoia.

-

Later, having failed to get to sleep, I was in one of the observation lounges, observing. Or at least observing my drink - moving faster-than-light meant the view wasn’t really giving me much. I always thought they closed the shutters at times like this. Hmm. If I made more of a habit of coming down here I’d probably know for sure.

As I’m sitting, I hear the door open behind me. The slight glow I can see briefly reflected in the window tells me who it is.

“Evening, Tali Settling in alright?” I asked, not looking around.

“It’s kind of eerie walking around on this ship knowing what happened to the last one,” she said, not commenting on my neat trick of guessing it was her and strolling over to come stand just next to the sofa I was sprawled on.

She was right, too.

“You’re telling me. I was on it when it happened! Still, Cerberus did alright, don’t you think?” I asked, gesturing around the room and, by extension, the ship at large.

“It’s very impressive,” Tali said, which definitely sounded like grudgingly conceding something you’d rather not to me.

“That it is. Crew treating you alright?”

“They’re being polite. I thought maybe they’d stop me accessing the computer systems, but I had full access.”

“Well, Jacob did say you would,” I pointed out.

“He did, but I didn’t know how serious that was. Saying I should go and see the AI…”

That’s a first impression that’ll take a while to look back on and laugh at.

“Yeah that wasn’t his finest moment. Said sorry to me but I’m not really the one who he needed to apologise to. Nice guy most of the time, honest. They’re all nice if you give them a chance. Even Jack. You met Jack?”

“The human under the stairs?”

“I like to think of it as the basement of the ship but yeah, her.”

“I, uh, saw her when I went to engineering.”

“She’s nice enough, once you get past, uh, a few things. They’re an interesting bunch, but solid. And we are here for a good reason, not just being Cerberus’s hatchetmen or whatever anyone else is saying. I wouldn’t trust the boss as far as I can throw him and probably the rest of them are still up to no good, but this lot, on this ship?”

I took a sip, just to wet the whistle.

“And even leaving aside bad jokes, EDI - that’s, uh, the AI, if you hadn’t heard - has been solid as anything so far, really helped us out. I’d trust her. Can understand why you wouldn’t, and I can understand your feelings on it more generally, but it is what it is, and we are all on the same side right now, with the same thing we all want,” I said.

Ah, back to giving speeches. Perks of being Commander. Does make me think of Jarrion though.

“For now,” Tali said.

“Well yes, once we’ve done what it is we’re setting out to do then it’s all up in the air, but for now happy families,” I said, raising my glass to the spirit of cooperation.

“So...what are you up to?” Tali asked, only now sitting down beside me. I, mid-swallow, made a hand gesture that didn’t really signifying anything and was mostly done to play for time while I was swallowing. Who asks someone a question when they’re drinking?

“Sitting. Thinking. Nothing much important. Tried to get some sleep but it’s just not happening yet. Guess I’m still pretty wound up from all the shooting and getting shot at. You’d have thought I’d be used to that by now, wouldn’t you?”

“Don’t suppose it’s something you ever really get used to.”

Interesting angle. Hadn’t thought of that.

“Hmm. Or, if you do, you should take it as a bad sign. I don’t know. Ah, you been brought up to speed on things with the state of the mission and all that? Where we are right now on progress?” I asked.

Not that there wasn’t time to do that if the answer was no, just thought I’d check. Tali nodded.

“Yes. Garrus filled me in.”

There was a joke to be made here, I felt, but now wasn’t the time.

“Good good. And we’re nearly done, if you can believe it. Or at least nearly in a position to get it done. And lucky you, coming in to join in the fun just before the big bit! You missed a couple interesting episodes but the really big one is yet to come, so you’ve got that to look forward to,” I said.

“I hear we’re going to a derelict Reaper,” she said.

“Yes, that too. It’ll be kind of like the old days, come to think of it.”

“I don’t remember us visiting that many derelict Reapers.”

“Meant more in the sense of arriving somewhere where Cerberus has been doing something they probably shouldn’t have. Only this time they want us there,” I said.

“Oh, if you put it like that…”

“Old times,” I said.

Here the conversation sputtered a bit. Partly because I was tired and couldn’t think of anything else to say, partly because Tali wasn’t saying anything either. Some silence followed, semi-companionable, semi-awkward.

Tali broke it, thankfully.

“Are you alright, Shepard?” She asked, out of nowhere. I’d been staring into space - literally - trying to make something out and so was a little distracted when the question came.

“Hmm? Oh, fine, fine,” I said, blinking. “Pretty much entirely fine. As fine as could be expected in the circumstances.I don’t want to come across as too mopey, you know, but given what we’re doing it can be a little hard sometimes. The mind wanders.”

Or at least mine does.

“To what?” She asked. I thought about how best to sum it up, squinting for a moment or two.

“Existential dread? Hah.That might be overselling it a bit. Just thinking about the road ahead. The Collectors are one thing, that’s right in front of us, that’s straightforward. Be the best team we can, find out where they come from, stop them. Human colonies are safe, Reaper catspaw gets taken out of action. Boom. That’s good. But it’s what’s behind that which I’m not a fan of. What’s after that,” I said.

“The Reapers,” she said, not a question this time. I nodded.

“Yeah, them. And I try not to think about it too much, like I say, but I did have the, you know, the warnings of a dying race kind of burnt into my brain. Maybe I just have it more vividly than anyone else who knows what’s going to happen, but…”

Ah hell, why not cut loose? I had been given carte blanche to vent, and Tali was someone who knew me, knew where I was coming from on this. How often did I get a chance to unload? How often did I take it when it prestend itself?

I set my glass down.

“I could be wrong, Tali, but I’m fairly sure that what’s coming is going to be bad. And it’s going to be so bad that there’s going to be losses, there’s going to be compromise. We’re going to lose people and places we’d rather not, and we’re going to have to make choices we’d rather not make. That’s going to happen. We are going to have a rough few years. I know this because, well, I got it burned into my brain by an alien beacon, like I said. It was a jarring experience and not one I’d recommend. Later, I got to talk to a Reaper and then we saw a whole fleet unloading on them and doing nothing, absolutely bloody nothing.”

I’d been a bit busy at the time but I had looked up once or twice while fighting my way up that tower in the Citadel and I had seen however many dozens of ships pouring it onto Sovereign and getting nowhere. That wasn’t right. You don’t sit and tank a fleet’s worth of firepower, especially not a point-blank range. It’s not right. It shouldn’t happen.

Makes me really very uncomfortable thinking about it, honestly. Doesn’t bode well for our immediate future.

I shook my head. I continued:

“Sure, once the barriers dropped we took it apart pretty easy, which was nice, but that’s a whole other thing how we got them to drop. Bloody Saren. And we got how many of these coming? Hundreds? Thousands? Who knows? All of them knowing how to get in every back door, every relay? Knowing the ins-and-outs of how everything we rely on works and able to do it better? Can brainwash anyone? Turn them into cyborg nightmares? And I say that as a cyborg myself so, you know, maybe that means more?”

Did it mean more? Unlikely. I like to think there’s a bit of a difference between a Husk and me. Or between Saren and me. Right?

“So there’s that, and that’s bad, and now we got a whole other thing besides. Lasers. Imperialistic humans from the future or another galaxy or universe or whatever. Showing up to upset the applecart. Just one of them, sure, but how many of his lasers are out there now? I got shot by one of them! It wasn’t fun. So just when we’ve got one outside-context problem coming in that we need to get people on-side for now we’ve got this other problem coming inside, getting people scrambling over one another to be the one on top right when we need to be pulling together to fight… ancient death robots from the blackness between galaxies.”

Those words do not feel right in my mouth. True as they might be.

“God that does sound mad, doesn’t it? Probably should think of some more sensible way of talking about them.”

“You should probably get some rest.”

“Or that.Maybe when I wake up this’ll all turn out to have been a dream and I can get back to shooting pirates or whatever it was I did before all this started happening to me.”

I was rambling now. Whatever point I might once have had was long-gone. Time to draw a line. Slapped my hands down onto my thighs, made poor Tali jump.

“It’s fine. Not much use whining about it, eh? It’s fine, we’ll get it done. Risky missions, saving the galaxy. We’ll get it all done,” I said. Believed it, too. Wasn’t going to be fun, but we’d do it. Get everyone to pull together whether they liked it or not. I could be very persuasive when I needed to be, after all.

There was a pause. I was done talking and Tali clearly didn’t really know where to go from there. She was quiet for a moment, then:

“And what was that about...humans from another galaxy or the future or-”

No way did I have the energy to go into that. I’d mentioned them once, that was enough for tonight. I cut in:

“I’m not even getting into that, Tali, not right now. I don’t have the strength. Just - just go have a look at the lasers downstairs if you want. Ask Garrus, he’ll tell you.”

“I did, he said to ask you,” she said.

“I bet he did…”

Chapter Text

Today, Jarrion felt, was going to be a good day, in spite of how it more-or-less started with him being present at a flogging.

The loading of the Assertive was nearing its tail-end, with the last odds and sods and bits and bobs being taken over, partly by cargo tug and lighter, partly also by the docking umbilical that had been put in place to make the moving of cargo that much easier. This was one of the good things.

The bad thing that came with this good thing - and what had led to the need for flogging - is that a fair few items that were meant to have been put onto the ship were apparently not on the ship where they were supposed to be. They were missing. Missing cargo was not a good thing, particularly not when it is valuable cargo, and House Croesus, as a ruled, deemed all its cargo valuable.

So, where had it gone? No-one knew and if asked they always pointed to someone else saying that they were the ones who’d know or who had seen it last. No-one would admit to anything. When the work rota was inspected to see which shift had been on at the time the cargo in question had disappeared and the shift in question was singled out, they too knew nothing.

With no answers forthcoming and the shift swearing up and down that there’d been no wrongdoing it had been decided to set an example and move on. To that end, ten members of the shift were selected at random and flogged, the flogging itself taking place on the station as opposed to on the ship, mostly out of convenience.

Jarrion hadn’t needed to be present but had decided to be so, feeling that it was important he be present. Him just happening to be nearby also helped - he’d been on his way to breakfast.

It had been a while since he’d attended such a thing. Most shipboard discipline happened beneath him and without him having to get involved (if he, the Lord Captain, needed to get involved then things were dire indeed) but it was always good for the men to see that these punishments were not arbitrary and that they were, in fact, proper demonstration of proper authority, flowing down from Jarrion, through his officers, on down to the warrant officers and so on.

All part of the chain that, ultimately, ended with the Emperor. It was sometimes easy to lose sight of that.

There wasn’t a whole lot notable about the flogging. It was as Jarrion expected it to be: painful. The men who’d been selected bore it with as good a grace as they could manage under the circumstances, and took their lashes with remarkable stoicism. Life on an Imperial ship did wonders for a man’s constitution, assuming he survived at all.

Once the last man had received his last lash Jarrion got up to leave, pausing only briefly to congratulate the armsman who’d been administering the flogging on his professionalism, and to check that the men would have their wounds seen to in good order.

And then he was off to breakfast. He took it in one of the station’s upper tiers, with a nice view overlooking the docking facilities so he could keep an eye on the Assertive. By sheer chance he also bumped into a naval officer he was passingly familiar with, who joined him. Pleasant conversation was had until the subject of his brother was raised, at which point the conversation stopped being pleasant and started being tedious.

Jarrion did not need or want to hear about how well his brother was doing in assisting in the crushing of a Waaaaggghh (or however that was pronounced). He knew exactly what his brother was doing and he knew without being told that he was doing it wonderfully, because he did everything wonderfully.

Breakfast ended on something of a sour note as a result, but Jarrion was determined not to let it dim his enthusiasm for the day. The day would be good, because today was the day they were due to set out again!

He headed back down and, in fairly short order, found Torian, who was overseeing the activity of the current work shift.

“Still on schedule, I trust?” Jarrion asked, wandering up to Torian, who did not look away from his dataslate. A servo skull was hovering nearby, keeping an eye out for malingerers and time-wasters.

“Yes, Lord Captain. The final items of cargo are being secured now, and there is a headcount ongoing of the work crews and all men who had leave to go ashore,” Torian said.

The Assertive wouldn’t wait if a handful didn’t make it back in time, but it was always good practise to try and keep at least a semi-solid idea of the coming and goings of the crew.

“Good, good. We’ve made good time,” Jarrion said, nodding approvingly.

“Yes, Lord Captain.”

Waiting for the things that he’d wanted but hadn’t been on the station and so had needed bringing in had been agonising. Every day that passed felt like a day wasted, a day he could have been back on the other side of that hole in space, carving out a little bit of the Imperium in the most virgin territory imaginable.

Now that everything was on-board he was chomping at the bit. So many things he wanted to do!

Mostly, firstly, Jarrion really, really wanted to elevate Home Away From Home into a proper little slice of the Imperium, or at least it’s frontier portions. And, more importantly, get it up to a more significant state of development. Bigger, better. Established! A proper base of operations, rather than the half-hearted supply depot and storehouse it more-or-less was now.

It was to be the beating heart of his burgeoning trade enterprise, and a shining beacon of the Imperium, besides! A microcosm of all that made it great.

To that end, he’d got a lot of stuff. The sort of stuff to stand him in better stead and give him a solid foothold for all future efforts. Manufacturing equipment, more than he’d already bestowed upon the place. Extensive modular habitation, the better to house all the extra personnel he was bringing in, and so on.

And of course considerable defensive capabilities, just in case, what with those collectors still at large and those ‘Reapers’ apparently due to present something of an issue at some point in the near future. Quad-mount anti-air lascannon batteries, tarantula sentires, void banks, components for some of the smaller types of planetary defence laser - even some of those big static-field producing anti-insect pylons certain colonies relied upon to keep out harmful local wildlife. Jarrion’s thinking on that last one being that, in a pinch, it might be useful against those damned collector bug things.

Couldn’t hurt, certainly.

All of that was loaded. All of that and more - even a modular, droppable chapel to replace the one his men had apparently converted an empty cargo container into! What could better show their commitment? Before had just been Jarrion making the best of the situation as it had presented itself. This was a statement - the Imperium had arrived, and it wasn’t going away!

The thought filled him with genuine excitement.

“Right, well, I’m going to head on-board then, Torian. I trust you have the final details in hand?” He asked. He could guess the answer but felt he had to ask anyway.

“Yes, Lord Captain,” Torian duly said, wizened fingers tapping out something on the dataslate.

“Good good, carry on.”

Jarrion wandered shipward. He decided, on a whim, to take the docking umbilical. Alongside the main thoroughfare it provided for the movement of large traffic it also had several smaller routes for simple foot traffic. None of them were what anyone would call luxurious, nothing about the umbilical was luxurious. It was rustic, but he could handle rustic, and it meant not having to wait for a lighter.

He’d gone through perhaps three doors of pipe-lined corridor when he heard someone from behind him:

“Jarrion? I mean, Lord Captain? Which should I use today?”

Jarrion recognised that voice. He didn’t even have to turn around to know who it was. He did turn around though, because pretending she wasn’t there wouldn’t make her not be there, and he didn’t feel especially safe with his back to her.

“Hello Loghain,” he said.

“Inquisitor, please. We are still in the Imperium and I’d like to take advantage of that while that’s the case.” Loghain said.

“Hello Inquisitor,” Jarrion said through gritted teeth.

“I do like the way you say that. Told you I’d be back in time for you leaving,”

“So you did and so you are. Dare I ask how?”

After all, he’d hardly advertised when he’d planned on casting off.

“You could, but it would just be a long, tedious, technical explanation that would suck all the mystery and mystique out of it. And that’s assuming that I’d even explain my methods to you. Which isn’t something I make a habit of doing.”

A lot of seemingly effortless things in life were actually the product of gruelling, unrewarding busiwork, Jarrion was aware, so he could well imagine that the ability to show up at a dramatic moment wasn’t as easy or glamorous as it might appear in practise. It was probably about ninety percent preparation and waiting, nine percent wasted effort and half a percent reward (with another half percent simply lost somewhere).

She was probably right he’d gain nothing from it. He sighed.

“Wonderful. Suppose it wouldn’t change much anyway. Hello again, Log- Inquisitor. You look well. Though something about you seems different, can’t quite put my finger on it.”

It did actually take him a second, and it was because it was so very obvious his brain seemed to skip it in favour of trying to look for more subtle changes, entirely avoiding the main one: She had eyes now, after a fashion. Cylindrical, seemingly solid augmetics that were somehow worse than the empty socket she’d had before - certainly kept her just as inscrutable as she’d been before.

They didn’t even appear to have any obvious lenses, or at least none that Jarion could see.

“Windows to the soul, they say,” Loghain said, noticing him staring and raising a finger to give one of her new eyes a tap. The flesh around the implants was still very raw looking, but then that was hardly a surprise given how recently they must have been installed.

Jarrion stopped staring, shaking his head.

“How fittingly opaque, in which case,” he said. “They look rather sore.”

There was some lingering rawness in the flesh - both the original and the recently-applied synthflesh - around the implants. This was only to be expected, of course.

“Aww, I didn’t think you cared, Jarrion,” said Loghain.

“I don’t. Merely noting that they look sore.”

“Which I think shows you care.”

Jarrion wasn’t going to bother keeping going on that one and decided to let it die there. Not that it stopped Loghain from grinning at him.

“There’s some people to introduce to you,” she said, gesturing to a small knot of strangers who’d just come into view a little further down the umbilical, plainly waiting for Loghain’s signal to approach. Jarrion cast an eye at them.

“Goody, more of you. Your staff, I assume? I was unaware you had staff.”

“What sort of Inquisitor would I be if I didn’t have a team? I’m good, Jarrion, but I’m only one woman. One supremely talented, charming, intelligent-”

“Yes, yes…” Jarrion muttered as Loghain continued.

“-ty, and dashing woman. Can’t be everywhere at once. Don’t worry about my team though, you’ll hardly know they’re there.”

“Will I know you’re there?” He asked pointedly.

“Oh, obviously. You’ll never forget me.”

“Well, we can still try. Let’s meet this team of yours, shall we?”

The sooner it started, Jarrion reasoned, the sooner it could end and he could get on with his life.

At Loghain’s signal, the knot of people approached. Jarrion counted three. A man in the red robes of the mechanicus, a woman in the drabber, brown robes more typically worn by administratum clerks and a man who had nothing about him that suggested anything particularly notable at all. It was the tech priest who approached Jarrion first.

He looked considerably less augmented than most of the tech priests that Jarrion was familiar with, or at least his augments were considerably better hidden. Certainly, he was seeing a lot more flesh than he might have expected, and a lot fewer mechadendrites. Assuming it actually was flesh - Jarrion had heard that there were specific mechanicus agents especially trained and more subtly modified the better to interact with those outside the priesthood.

Perhaps this was an example of such? Or just more junior in rank? Or something else entirely, some other branch or sect he was unaware of? Or perhaps Jarrion was just overthinking things?

It probably didn’t matter, at least not right then. The symbol of the cog overlaid with what appeared to be a trio of squares stacked corner-to-corner in a vertical line told him nothing, though it was dangling from a chain around the man’s neck. Signified something to someone, he imagined.

“Magos Craven,” the tech priest said, pleasantly enough, extending a hand. This was behaviour quite unlike what Jarrion was used to from the mechanicus, and it took him a split second to reciprocate the handshake. Felt enough like flesh.

“Lord Captain Jarrion Croesus, though I have a feeling you knew that already,” he said. Not his full name, of course, but enough for the moment.

“Oh, the Inquisitor has been very thorough in briefing us on our mission and on you, Lord Captain. She tells me that you travel in the company of Magos Pak - the Magos Pak formerly of Scallex, no less. Are they still observing their silence?”

This caught Jarrion a bit off-guard.

“Uh, barring the odd binaric outburst, yes, but I was always led to believe it was, ah, conventional speaking that was being eschewed. You’re familiar with Pak?” He asked, bemused.

“Heard of, heard of. Assuming it is the same Pak, though with the silence I think it might be. We haven’t met but we did used to move in some of the same circles, at least until Pak took to being an Explorator.”

“Is that so…?”

What this meant Jarrion was not sure, at least not yet. Did it mean anything if Pak was known to the sort of tech priest that an Inquisitor felt it was a good idea to bring along? Or, again, was he just overthinking things?

Probably, he decided.

At a silent signal from Loghain the magos stepped aside and the woman that Jarrion had judged to be an adept of some kind of stepped forward. She did not make for a handshake, instead giving a small bow. Jarrion, no stranger to being bowed to, accepted this as he usually did: with dignity and grace.

“Adept Watlington,” the woman said.

“Administrative support?” Jarrion asked. She gave a wan and long-suffering smile. Definitely an adept.

“Something like that, Lord Captain,” she said.

“Hmm.”

“And last but not least my Interrogator, Varne Redlands,” Loghain said, ushering forward the non-descript man. There really wasn’t anything notable about him whatsoever. It was quite unsettling now that Jarrion got a closer look at it. Like someone who’d had features, but had since swapped them out for less interesting ones.

The living embodiment of generic.

“Lord Captain,” he said.

“Yes, hello.”

Jarrion still didn’t fully understand what an Interrogator was and wasn’t in the mood to ask. He guessed it wasn’t something to be taken literally as he was entirely aware that Inquisitors were both willing and capable of interrogating on their own.

“Well that’s introductions done. Carry on, you three. The Lord Captain and I have a few more things to talk about,” Loghain said once the last handshake had finished, and her team didn’t need telling twice. Jarrion watched them walk off with a feeling of powerlessness he did not appreciate, but really what else could he do?

He told himself that as an Inquisitor, Loghain was a servant of the Emperor and so his aiding her in her duties was, in quite a big way, serving His will. It might have been incredibly annoying, but these things were sent to test, after all, and much worse could have happened.

Weirdly, this thought soothed him.

“No luggage?” He asked her.

“Torian was more than obliging when I approached him about having our effects loaded earlier today,” she said.

“Clever.”

Torian would not have said no to Inquisitor. Few would have. Here, in Imperial space, even Jarrion wouldn’t have, but would have griped about it more than Torian would have. Torian had probably been the picture of helpful when asked. Loghain gave her own tiny bow.

“I have my moments,” she said.

“Suppose there’s still no chance of you giving me any hint of your greater purpose?” Jarrion asked.

“Of course not. Why do you even assume I have one?”

“Firstly because you are an Inquisitor. Secondly because you are coming back with staff. You clearly hope to achieve something in this other galaxy. Quite what it has to do with protecting the Imperium is beyond me,” Jarrion said, which earned him a semi-sharp look. Impressive to pull it off given the blank, inexpressive nature of her eyes, but Loghain still managed it.

“Protecting the Imperium is not your concern, Jarrion, it is my concern. Do I question how you go about your job? Question your decisions and what you do?” She asked.

“Yes, constantly,” Jarrion said bluntly. Loghain scoffed.

“Constantly, indeed! Occasionally, at best. Anyway, the point is you don’t need to worry about it. My task - whatever it may be - is well in hand, and nothing to do with you,” she said.

“How reassuring…”

“There is one more member of my team who I think you might be rather pleased to see.”

Jarrion sighed and checked his chronometer.

“Is that so?”

“Oh yes. Think he’ll give your expedition a touch of prestige.”

“I am giddy.”

“You should be,” Loghain said, and Jarrion moved one notch away from ‘dismissive’ and towards ‘nervous’. It was to do with her tone of voice. Loghain was a woman who could infer an awful lot in the way she said things, and also angle her inference so it kept you wondering just what her longer term goals were. Jarrion assumed this was something Inquisitors did as a matter of course, just to keep people on edge.

Certainly, he felt on edge whenever he was around Loghain.

That there wasn’t actually anyone other than them in that section of the umbilical at that moment also made it a bit odd. Jarrion looked around and continued to see no-one but them.

“Are they running late?” He asked. Loghain said nothing, and just pointed back down the umbilical at the door her team had come through not long ago. It was closed. But not for long.

The door opened, and standing there filling most of the corridor on the other side was a giant in black armour. Not the sort of the thing you saw every day, but just the sort of thing you recognised in a heartbeat. Jarrion’s jaw dropped.

“That,” he said, mouth suddenly very dry. “Is a Space Marine.”

It was. Him saying it wasn’t really necessary. Once the door was open the Space Marine entered and came to a halt in front of Loghain and Jarrion, towering over the pair of them to the extent he even blocked out the light, leaving both in shadow. Probably not on purpose.

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Lord Captain Croesus. I am Brother Dromoz al Bet of the Hound Skull Chapter, presently seconded to the Deathwatch and now assigned to the good Lady Inquisitor. I hear we’re going to parts unknown.”

A well-spoken Space Marine, at that!

Jarrion was staring again.

“Um...yes…” said his mouth, largely without input from his brain.

The space marine had his helmet tucked under one arm and Jarrion found himself at once reminded of Commander Shepard, in that both she and the space marine had faces that looked as though they’d been put back together again. But while Shepard looked like a person who’d been taken to bits before being reassembled, the space marine more closely resembled a tree that had been hacked apart at regular intervals throughout its long and weatherbeaten lifetime only to heal and grow over again and again.

On the plus side at least, the space marine was smiling, something Jarrion had very rarely seen Shepard do. Something he wasn’t wholly aware Space Marines could do, either. The thought that they might have ever done so had just never crossed his mind.

The effect, with the marine’s ravaged features, was singular. Like a topographical map of somewhere very rugged and inhospitable, only oddly friendly. Jarrion scraped his wits together at last and actually thought of something to say:

“Ah, uh, yes, yes we are. An, ah, equal pleasure to have you involved in the, uh, in the - in the proceedings, yes. You’ll be, ah, assisting the Inquisitor?”

A very stupid quesiton to be asking given the circumstances and given what had just been said, but Jarrion still wasn’t at his best right at that moment. Not thinking as straight as he might normally have been.

The space marine nodded. More an incline of the head, really.

“I am at her disposal for the duration of her mission, however long that may be.”

“Right, yes, good. You, ah, have much experience working with Log- the Inquisitor, Brother Dromoz al Bet?” Jarrion asked, realising with a thrill of horror that he had defaulted to trying to make small talk. Normally fine, but with a space marine it felt oddly blasphemous.

Not that he seemed to mind. His smile broadened.

“Al Bet, if you prefer, Lord Captain,” he said.

“O-of course, al Bet.”

Al Bet’s eyes drifted to Loghain. She was also smiling, but that was pretty normal for her and could have meant anything. In this case, Jarrion assumed it had something to do with his discomfort.

“We have worked together before, though I could of course not go into details. I have found her to be a most competent and reliable servant of the Emperor, in her own distinctive fashion. What higher praise can there be? Hah!”

“You’ll make me blush, al Bet,” Loghain said, then adding: “If you carry on you should be able to catch up with the others. I’ll be with you shortly, just have a few things to conclude with the Lord Captain.”

“Lady Inquisitor,” al Bet said, strolling off in a manner at once both casually and quietly terrifying. Once he was gone - Jarrion waited especially long, knowing that ‘out of earshot’ for an Astartes was quite a distance - he rounded on Loghain, who was looking perfectly content.

“You brought a Space Marine?!” He hissed. Loghain pouted.

“I thought you’d be happier. Most honest citizens rather like Space Marines,” she said.

Perhaps underselling the nigh-on ecstatic awe that your common Imperial citizen might be expected to exhibit if they were lucky enough to encounter a Space Marine outside of combat. Dropping to the knees, genuflecting, occasional joyous weeping, that sort of thing.

By contrast, those who viewed them in combat and lived through the experience tended to have a reaction closer to terror and deep-seated, life-changing dread, having grasped the full extent and reason for why they were known as the angels of death and the Emperor’s fury made manifest in flesh and ceramite. A numinous event if ever there was one.

But that was by the by. Just one of those things.

“I - well - I mean I’m as delighted and as honoured as the next man to be present with one of the Astartes but they do tend to show up when a certain level of violence is expected or required. Such violence is bad for business. Not to mention the health of anyone nearby,” said Jarrion, who had only ever personally seen Space Marines from orbit and mostly on a tactical hololith and even then only once, in his youth.

Even at such a distance the experience had been a sobering one. Enemy positions winking out one after the other, those comm-channels that had been tapped into going from confused to terrified then to incoherent screaming before cutting off abruptly into silence.

It had all happened so fast.

Had Loghain’s eyes been capable of rolling they would have done so. In the event she just clucked her tongue and shook her head, which was about as close as she could get.

“Oh relax, Jarrion. He’s here at my specific request because, well, a whole and unexplored galaxy may well turn out to be a dangerous place, thus. I might need protecting from unexpected dangers! Or perhaps I have something specific in mind. Perhaps I have some plan I’m working towards and I think having a capable bodyguard is an important part of that plan. Or perhaps I don’t. Either way he’s very reliable.”

“There is such a thing as an unreliable Space Marine?” Jarrion asked.

Loghain considered her next words carefully.

“Astartes are first and foremost...soldiers. In this they are peerless, no-one’s going to argue on that one. I’ve seen them doing it, I’m definitely not going to argue on that one. That said, when it comes to matters of more delicacy they can - in my limited experience, at least - lack refinement. Which is fine, it’s not really their job to be refined. But it does mean that a Space Marine who understands restraint is one to be treasured. Hence my appreciation of Brother al Bet,” she said.

A pause.

“He’s very personable for a Space Marine,” Jarrion said.

“He is, isn’t he? From what al Bet tells me it’s a fairly common feature of his Chapter, not that I’ve met any other Hound Skulls. Certainly he’s a lot friendlier than the other Astartes I have actually come into contact with. Again, another reason why he seemed the best to bring along. A Dark Angel wouldn’t have been good company at the best of times, let alone in a strange place, and they might have done something rash when confronted by, well, take your pick, really. Excellent at killing aliens, not so big on anything else involving them. No sense of humour, either. Really suck the air out of a room.”

Jarrion was going to have to take Loghain at her word on this one, never having met a Dark Angel and not really wanting to, either. They sounded dour from what he’d heard of them, but who knew, really, and who could be surprised?

Assuming Loghain wasn’t just messing with him, of course. Which she may well could have been. Jarrion decided to just let it all slide and not let her trip him up.

“Quite. And you made him wait outside just for the sake of being dramatic,” he said. Loghain grinned at him and pointedly did not deny having done this.

“How soon until we cast off?” She asked.

“Soon enough,” Jarrion said, resigned, holding up an arm to indicate that Loghain might as well board. She didn’t need telling twice, and off she went.

Alone in the corridor now, Jarrion let his arm drop. He then sighed, again, and rubbed his face. His commbead pipped. Not many people had access to his personal channel so there weren’t many people it could be who felt they had the right to bother him. Didn’t improve his mood much, though.

“What is it?” He asked.

“The missing cargo was located, Lord Captain,” came the voice of Torian. Jarrion’s brow furrowed.

“Missing cargo?” He asked.

“That which had been presumed stolen, the cause for the crewmen being flogged this morning.”

Now he remembered.

“Oh, that missing cargo. Located? That’s good. Found somewhere in the port? Some shady warehouse waiting to be moved on by ne’er do wells?”

“No, Lord Captain, it was found where it was supposed to be, in the holds. The crates had been loaded improperly so that the servitors were unable to verify them as being present. A manual inspection revealed the truth.”

How tediously mundane. Did happen from time-to-time, normally spotted sooner.

“Is that right? Well, that’s still incompetence of a sort, though perhaps not quite worthy of a flogging. Have each of the men punished this morning given, ah, an extra shift of free time, by way of compensation.”

“Very good, Lord Captain. One of them has since died of the injuries he sustained.”

Jarrion imagined it to be the older-looking of the men from this morning. He could vaguely remember his face, sort of.

“That’s unfortunate. My order still stands,” he said.

“Lord Captain.”

Torian pipped off. Jarrion stood alone in the corridor, motionless.

“What an eventful morning,” he said, at length.

Chapter Text

Jarrion was perusing dataslates and thinking.

Now loaded for its return trip, the Assertive was in realspace and in-system, plasma drives burning fiercely as it made its way for the gap in reality that would allow it to return to the other galaxy, a process which Jarrion had still yet to settle on a proper formal name for.

The dataslates concerned colonial requests from the various, well, colonies dotted through the Terminus Systems that Jarrion had made contact with. More orders for equipment, specific desires for specific Imperial devices that Jarrion had mentioned, material, and other goods. They varied widely depending on the status and location of the colony, obviously, but they all wanted something and Jarrion was now equipped to provide. The question now was mostly one of scheduling. Exciting.

Although it wasn’t all just material - some of it was materiel. A few colonies had complained of attacks by pirates or being plagued by the extortions of mercenaries who, really, were just pirates with snappier uniforms at this point. Twas ever thus, Jarion felt.

In particular, a trend that Jarrion had noticed was attacks by specific aliens and specific groups made up of those specific aliens. Batarians, he had found them to be named, and in his background reading on the other galaxy he had learnt that they were something of a persistent problem, both officially and unofficially.

They’d have to be dealt with properly at some point. Properly properly.

He wasn’t in any position to wage a legitimate war (of extermination or otherwise) at this point, sadly, but it was certainly something that would need seeing to in the future. Thankfully and happily these particular aliens seemed to exist outside of the political gestalt, as it were, and so conflict with them was (hopefully) less likely to rub the wrong way those aliens he needed to keep pliable, as and when it occurred.

There were a lot of things to consider when it came to such delicate matters. Another, brasher Rogue Trader - his brother, say - probably wouldn’t have cared, but Jarrion was always thinking ahead, taking it a step at a time. Softly softly. That was why he got results that lasted. Eventually.

All this was the sort of thing - this sort of colonial pest control - Jarrion had experience of, of course, with his tours of the House Croesus frontier territories and its assorted minor aliens and roving pirates, and it was something he was versed in handling. And compared to the rather tedious (if important) business of hauling goods and equipment to where people wanted goods and equipment hauled for the sake of colonial growth, eliminating actual, physical threats was always refreshingly exciting.

What wasn’t exciting was charting an efficient course between those colonies requesting aid that would mean as little time wasted as possible while also ensuring what needed to get where got there at the same time. Jarrion could have had Torian do this, and he usually did, but he’d decided to let the old man have a break and had rather been looking forward to having something to do anyway. Now that he was doing it he was rather regretting this decision, but it was too late to back out now.

Happily, a distraction was soon presented by the door chiming. Jarrion squinting at the crude work-in-progress journey plotting he’d sketched out for a second longer before pushing it to one side of the desk, sitting up, straightening his jacket and saying in a loud, clear voice:

“Enter.”

The door hissed open and a servant entered, bowed, then said:

“The Inquisitor, Lord Captain.”

Indeed, Jarrion could see Loghain waiting just outside the door, rocking on her heels. The servant, plainly uncomfortable, licked his lips.

“I, uh, tried to keep her out of your chambers, Lord Captain, but she followed behind me and, well… she’s an Inquisitor…” he said, shifting uncomfortably, clearly still undecided on whether it was worse making enemies of a Rogue Trader or an Inquisitor and slowly coming to the realisation that there really wasn’t a right answer.

Fortunately for him Jarrion understood, and waved the man away.

“It is not your fault, crewman. Show her in, if you would.”

“Lord Captain,” the servant said, attempting to keep the relief out of their voice, bowing again, and departing. Loghain entered moments later, having overheard what Jarrion had said and not even waiting for the poor beleaguered servant to formally show her in.

“You’re either particularly rude today Inquisitor or in a hurry. Or both,” Jarrion said, fingers steepled and elbows on his desk. Loghain took one of the two seats opposite him. The comfier-looking one.

“At this point I felt we could dispense with all the ceremony,” she said.

“Yes, the ceremony of proper procedure and politeness,” Jarrion said. Loghain frowned.

“Would you have been happier if I’d waited all the way outside for your man to run backwards and forwards?”

“Happier isn’t the word I’d pick, but - you know what, Loghain, nevermind. To what do I owe the pleasure?” Jarrion asked, realising that quibbling wasn’t going to get anyone anywhere. Loghain, who seemed to have been expecting more, took a second to readjust, glanced across the desk, then asked:

“Catching up on some reading?”

This she asked while wafting a hand at the dataslates.

“Rogue Trader business. Not the exciting kind, the practical kind. What to move where,” Jarrion said.

“I thought you had people for that sort of thing.”

“I do, but it pays not to get too out of touch with the details, I find.”

That, and it was one way of burning the time while there wasn’t much else to do.

“Hmm,” Loghain hummed, plainly uninterested in the answer and, indeed, in the question she’d asked originally. Jarrion suppressed a sigh.

“Presumably you didn’t interrupt what I was doing just to ask what I was doing?” He asked.

Loghain thought for a moment. Then:

“I have a favour to ask you.”

“Oh?”

That she wanted something from him wasn’t an enormous surprise to Jarrion. That she was bothering to ask at all, however, was a surprise. Jarrion reached for the cup of tea that had been sitting on his desk more-or-less forgotten about up to this point, finding it still pleasantly warm and taking a sip.

“Yes. And I’m being very earnest and open here. I’m going to lay my request down nice and plain. None of our usual funny jokes or sizzling sexual tension. This is a serious favour I’m asking of you,” Loghain said.

Jarrion did not reply immediately to this, because at the phrase ‘sizling sexual tension’ he had choked on his tea and was too busy spluttering to say anything. Loghain waited for him to finish.

“Okay, no more jokes after that. I am being serious though,” she said.

“Are you now?!” Jarrion wheezed, hammering a fist into his chest, eyes watering.

“I am.”

She said it seriously enough that Jarrion almost believed her, or at least felt that playing at believing her wouldn’t be wholly inappropriate. He smoothed out the front of his waistcoat and gestured that she should carry on.

“By all means continue, then. Lay it down, as you say.”

“I - my team and I - would appreciate being able to borrow one of those freighters you acquired. Possibly for an extended period,” Loghain said.

Jarrion had acquired a couple more of the doughty Kowloon vessels since his initial purchase (the second-hand market was awash with the things, as he’d come to learn), and while a good handful were already in-galaxy on the other side, pootling about from colony to colony doing what they did best, there were at that moment two in the Assertive’s hanger, just by happenstance.

He raised an eyebrow.

“That’s it?” He asked. As far as favours went he’d been asked for far more outrageous things by far less important people.

“That is it,” said Loghain.

Jarrion stared at her a moment to see if he could divine some hint or clue or anything from her expression, but her naturally unreadable expression combined with her unnaturally unreadable bionic eyes made this an effort in futility, so he quickly gave up and looked away, looking instead at one of the paintings hanging on the walls.

The paintings asked nothing of him, and spoke of better times and triumphs. Not present times and complications. Soothing. You knew where you stood with the past. Judging by the paintings, you were often standing on top of dead aliens or dead traitors. Sometimes both.

Better times, indeed.

“I assume you have compelling reasons,” he said, looking back to her again, refreshed.

“Very compelling,” she said, nodding.

“That you will not fully reveal to me?”

Here Loghain paused, frowned, and considered how best to articulate the next bit.

“...Jarrion - Captain, Lord Captain, Lord Captain Jarrion. It isn’t so much that I don’t want to outline the details of my plan - and its many and varied, interlocking sub-plans - to you, it’s that doing so would not only present a possible point of weakness to said plans for me but that also you, in so knowing, would take on a certain level of personal risk simply from bearing the knowledge, all for information that you could make no use of and would gain no advantage from.”

This sounded like a practised statement to Jarrion, who was unmoved. He delivered those sorts of things often enough he’d developed an immunity. His fingers had gone back to being steepled.

“So really it’s for my benefit, is what you’re saying?” He asked.

“Not really, no. It’s for everyone’s benefit. The benefit of the Imperium in particular.”

That line sounded especially practised. Jarrion rubbed his face.

“Of course…”

“Knowing too much is unhealthy anyway, as I’m sure you’re well aware of. Blessed is the mind too small for doubt and all that, though I think in this instance the more apt saying might be something more akin to: ‘It is better to toil in the honest dark of ignorance than to be exposed to the harsh light of a knowledge that serves only to blind and mislead’,” Loghain said, holding up a finger as she quoted.

This rung a bell for Jarrion.

“That’s Cardinal De Selby, isn’t it?” He asked. Loghain shrugged and lowered her finger.

“I forget, and I’m probably misquoting anyway. The point is there are a lot of things in life that won’t help you if you know them, and this is one of them. Really, the only reason I’m even coming here to ask you in such plain language is to keep our relationship healthy. Our working relationship. I did consider just borrowing one of the freighters without telling you, but I felt that that would have been taken the wrong way and made future interactions awkward. And I don’t want that.”

“The line ‘I was going to steal it but then didn’t and am now telling you this’ isn’t as persuasive as you think it is, Loghain.”

“Borrowing, I’d have been borrowing it. I will still be borrowing it, ideally, just with your explicit permission now, all being well. I will give it back at my earliest possible convenience. Intact, obviously.”

“Well that’s nice of you. And what if I say no?”

“Are you going to say no?”

“...I might.”

“Are you?”

It was very hard to stare down someone who did not have to blink.

“...do you require any crew?” Jarrion asked, looking away from her again and trying not to sigh.

He had initially been using locals (humans) to man the freighters, being as how they had greater familiarity with the controls and also with the idiosyncratic, non-warp based methods of travelling about - all those ‘relays’ and such. This had worked reasonably well and had got things moving comfortably enough, the risks of fraternisation between Imperial and non-Imperial humans not being much of a risk given the one-way language barrier that still existed between them

(Jarrion very much doubted that his crew would benefit from being exposed to any of the ideas the locals might have had , and while he knew some contamination was inevitable he didn’t see the need to invite it when he didn’t need to. Knowing too much was indeed, as mentioned, unhealthy. This went double for the lower orders.)

But, Jarrion preferred to keep things as important as this in-house, and so had made efforts and taken steps towards having a small but growing complement of his crew trained in the operation of freighters and, more broadly, in the fundamentals of interstellar travel in this galaxy and familiarity with some of the more common technology.

There was a risk here, obviously, but it was a calculated risk. On the one hand having his own men better able to operate the ships (and any others he might acquire) made him less reliant on fickle local labour. On the other, it meant that a certain segment of his crew now had an inkling - if not an outright clear view - of the reality of their situation, something largely denied to them before.

As Loghain had just said, knowing too much was often unhealthy, particularly for the lower orders. How could they be expected to respond to the discovery that this was not, in fact, their own galaxy? Ideally they simply wouldn’t question what it was they were asked to do, but there’d always be one, and a single seed of doubt, once grown, often spread like a weed.

Where could that lead? Nowhere good.

In Jarrion’s experience however such things were inevitable. Someone always found out, eventually. A trade secret, a personal indiscretion, a mistake - however well-hidden, it could never remain so forever. It was more a case of getting as much done before it came to light so that you were in a position for the revelation not to matter. You’d achieved what you’d set out to do or at least achieved enough so that you were unassailable. Then you simply kept an eye out and - to carry the metaphor - pulled up the biggest weeds as you spotted them.

So on balance, better to understand the ships, he’d decided, and to have Imperial crew who could operate them. Freighters now, frigates later? Always think of the future.

“I trust in Magos Crave’s ability to pick up the controls, even if such things are slightly outside his area,” Loghain said.

Jarrion wasn’t sure what ‘outside his area’ meant in this context.

“Isn’t he a tech priest?” He asked.

“They do specialise, you know.”

“Well, yes, I do know that, I just - nevermind. If you’re sure.”

Not really worth getting into.

“I’m always sure. Goes with the job,” Loghain said.

“Quite.”

A pause.

“Loghain,” Jarrion said. She cocked her head.

“Yes?”

Another, smaller pause. Getting words in order. Preparing a statement.

“The reason why I am, ah, acquiescing to your request without pressing for further details is that - our fraught relationship and your unique approach to your profession aside - you are still an Inquisitor, and I have faith in the institutions of the Imperium. Absolute faith. You would not be an Inquisitor if you were not capable of properly executing the duties of an Inquisitor, serving the greater interests of the Imperium, humanity, and our Emperor.”

This was a very wordy slice of not-very-much-at-all, which was what Loghain had come to expect from Jarrion when he put his fancy voice on. She summed it up as best she could:

“So you trust me?”

The word was sour in the air and Jarrion did his best not to wince on hearing it.

“I have faith that you will do what is best. Which isn’t quite the same thing but it’s likely as close as you will ever get. That being said though I do have a personal request, from me to you, our ranks excluded.”

“Oh?” Loghain went, pitching the word the exact way Jarrion did, although seemingly not intentionally. Jarrion took a breath and lay his hands flat on the desk.

“Don’t do anything rash, if you can help it,” he said. Loghain grinned.

“You uncomfortable with the idea of me off out there without you to look after me?”

“Yes, because you need protecting from the galaxy and not the other way around,” Jarrion said, unable to keep his eyes from rolling. “No, my being uncomfortable isn’t the issue. I am thinking of the future, I am alway thinking of the future. I am thinking many years away, down the line. It wouldn’t do to damage the Imperium’s later position by doing something rash now. If you follow.”

“Not your position, then? The Imperium’s position?”

One hand flat on the desk Jarrion sat forward and jabbed a finger at Loghain.

“We are both working towards the same goal, Loghain - the glory of the Emperor and the promotion of Imperial interests. It is simply that we are working towards them from different sides: I by establishing a strong economic and infrastructural foothold, you by countering threats, presumably, or some other manner of activity that serves to undermine the Emperor’s enemies. It’s about balance. It would be bad if rashness upset the balance.”

“Thrilling. And what qualifies as rash compared to say, zealous, which would be rightly applauded?”

“Personal judgement and discretion,” Jarrion said through gritted teeth.

“A fair answer,” Loghain conceded. Jarrion leaned back in his seat, which creaked.

“I am not attempting to dictate how it is you go about your duties - not that I imagine my saying anything would change your behaviour in any way, shape, or form - I am simply asking you, in a friendly capacity, that if you have the option of doing anything quietly, you do so quietly.”

“I’ll bear that in mind,” Loghain said.

“Thank you. When will you be needing to borrow this freighter of mine?”

“As soon as possible, if you please. As soon as we make the transition through the space-hole. Is that what we call it? Transitioning through the space-hole? Penetrating it? Plunging-”

Jarrion stepped in and interrupted her before she could graduate into making demonstrative hand gestures to accompany her vivid choice of language.

“Call it whatever makes you happiest, Loghain, though if you could keep your verbs on the less-evocative side I would be a much happier man. I shall inform you once we are on the other side. I am sure you’ll be ready to go immediately,” he said.

“We’re already packed.”

“Wonderful. Well, as I say, you shall be informed,” Jarrion said, making a gentle gesture with his hand that did a very good, semi-polite job of conveying that Loghain should leave now and that the conversation was finished.

And for a second it looked like she was going to go for getting the last word in, but then seemed to realise she didn’t need to, having got exactly what she wanted. And so she just upped and left, even giving him a tiny bow on the way out. All things considered this was probably worse than her having the last word.

Jarrion tried to go back to looking at the dataslates but his mind was scattered now and it was no use. He tossed the one he’d picked up back onto his desk and took a deep breath, staring at a point somewhere above the door she’d left through, the door which was now closed again.

“Would I feel better if I knew what she was doing?” He said to no-one, getting no response. He wasn’t sure what the response would have been anyway. Would he feel better?

Jarrion sighed again and slouched in his chair. He cast his eye around the room, glancing briefly at the bust of his father (still turned to face the wall) and then settling on frowning at his desk. He checked his chrono, drawing it from his waistcoat pocket. They’d be back in the other galaxy, soon. Could start getting some proper work done.

That’d distract him. Or focus him, rather. And with at least one less drain on his concentration, too.

“It’s the Emperor’s will, I’m sure. Who am I to interfere? And once she’s off the ship she won’t be my problem anymore,” he said to himself, tucking the chrono away once more and sitting up straight.

Then he thought about what he’d just said.

“Well, she’ll be somewhere else, at least…”

++++++++

They were soon through the hole in space and soon back in the other galaxy-stroke-universe. Jarrion was about to get started on heading for the edge of the system to prepare for a nice, proper, safe entry into the Warp when Loghain reappeared and stated that, now they were here, she wanted to leave as soon as possible, ostensibly to take advantage of the local mass relay and more quickly go off to do whatever it was she was planning on doing.

As much as he disliked delays and distractions (and this was more the latter than the former, with them not properly underway yet), Jarrion felt getting shot of her sooner was better than getting shot of her later. Which was why he and her and her entourage were in the hanger, waiting on the soon-to-be-borrowed freighter having a final suite of checks prior to departure.

He didn’t have to see her off personally, he just wanted to. To make sure she actually left.

Jarrion had found, to his surprise, that the most open to conversation during the waiting was actually brother al Bet. Jarrion’s experience with astartes was very limited, it was true, but he was fairly certain they weren’t renowned for their aptitude for small talk, and yet al Bet was proving to be very pleasant to chat with.

Certainly more so than the rest of Loghain’s little team, who were very much keeping to themselves, either going over dataslates or, in the case of her attached Magos, sticking their oar in with the tech priests checking the ship. Presumably this was on account of him being the one about to pilot the thing. Still, Jarrion doubted the priests appreciated the extra help.

An insular bunch, the tech priests of the Assertive. Like most of their ilk.

Jarrion realised he’d allowed his attention wander from the anecdote al Bet had been regaling him with, and tuned back in just in time to catch the end of it:

“-with his bare hands, which would certainly make the memoirs an interesting read.”

“Memoirs?” Jarrion asked, feeling he’d missed something key, this not being a word Jarrion had ever heard - or ever thought he might hear - brought up in relation to space marines, and having it appear now rather tripped him up. Al Bet just nodded, because it wasn’t news to him.

“Every brother endeavours to record his experiences, when able. A chapter tradition. They are collated in the fortress monastery - the librarium has a wing devoted to their storage. All the better to pool and draw upon experience, you see? All the better to deal with adversity, the better to triumph. Something of a guiding philosophy.”

“My word. If you forgive me, al Bet, but the Hound Skulls do sound rather unlike any astartes I am familiar with.”

“The Hound Skull chapter is noted - at least among those who note such things - for what might be termed a thoughtful approach to its duties.”

“Is that so?”

Thoughtfulness was not typically seen as an Imperial virtue, so Jarrion found it an interesting word to include here. Al Bet had plainly included it on purpose, too. How thoughtful of him. Al Bet gave a slight dip of the head - not really a nod, but enough to get the point across.

“Indeed, and while it may be the case that some of my brethren in other chapters look at us askance for our attitude, it does mean we as a chapter are perhaps more open to, shall we say, more unorthodox and delicate situations requiring a greater level of tact, something some appreciate more than others. After all, if the Lady Inquisitor had wanted something more straightforward she could have asked to have had Brother Thalassi attached to this mission.”

Jarrion did not personally know Brother Thalassi, so this didn’t mean an awful lot to him.

“Is he...brusque?” He ventured.

“Brother Thalassi is a Flesh Tearer.”

Al Bet said this as though Jarrion would understand the implications. Jarrion did not, because, much as with Dark Angels, Jarrion had never met a Flesh Tearer or, indeed, ever even heard of them. The name of the Chapter however didn’t leave a lot of room for interpretation though.

“That does sound straightforward,” Jarrion said.

“Very. And there is a lot to be admired in that. But no one thing can be said to work on every occasion, and so here I am and there Brother Thalassi remains, he doing what he does best - I would imagine - and I doing what I do best. Well, one of the things I do best.”

“One being comfortable chit-chat, the other being, if I might boldly assume, violence?”

“You would boldly assume correctly, Lord Captain,” said al Bet with a smile. Jarrion smiled too. It had been unnerving seeing a space marine smile at first, but it came so easily to al Bet that now it seemed only natural. It might have done alarming things with his scars, but once you got over that it was perfectly natural.

“I must say al Bet, it is so nice to have someone on board I can have an intelligent conversation with,” said Jarrion.

“I’m standing right here,” Loghain said, who was indeed standing right there. Jarrion did not look at her.

“You talk and eat at the same time,” he said.

“Once! I did that once!”

“That we know of.”

“The vessel is ready, Lord Captain,” said one of the hanger tech priests, still sufficiently fleshy to still use their actual voice when speaking - something of a novelty with tech priests, Jarrion felt.

“Excellent, thank you,” he said and the tech priest departed without another word, joining their fellows in whatever it was they needed to do next. As said, insular. Now Jarrion turned to Loghain. “All yours. For now.”

“Lovely stuff. Varne - you and Watlington get her loaded.”

This being, as Jarrion remembered, her Interrogator and the rather mousy adept whose job he still couldn’t work out yet. Bookkeeping? Biographer? Wordlessly both of them set about doing as Loghain had said, al Bet leaving to assist without having been asked. With the magos still on-board this left Jarrion and Loghain. He’d sort of seen this coming.

“So this would be another goodbye, then,” he said.

“For now. I’m sure you’ll be counting the days until my return,” she said.

“Treasuring them, mostly.”

“You can always do both.”

“Hmm.”

As good as he was at multitasking this didn’t seem the best place to use his talents.

“I know it’s the smart move to indulge the Inquisition, even if - as you never tire of pointing out to me - we are in your sphere and you’re not under any direct obligation to, but I do actually appreciate it. Personally. It’s a lot easier to do my job without having to ice skate uphill. What I need to do would be a lot more awkward if you weren’t being so helpful. So I just want to say, on a personal level, thank you,” said Loghain, entirely out of nowhere.

This was so unexpected and so unexpectedly sinere that Jarrion was utterly flatfooted. Likely it was simply more Inquisitorial manipulation with a distinctly Loghain twist, but that didn’t make it any less unusual to hear.

“Um, think nothing of it, Loghain. As you say, it’s the smart thing to do,” he said, at a loss.

As opposed to making life difficult for the Inquisition, which was very not the smart thing to do, whoever or wherever you were. They could make life quite difficult in return, as Jarrion had heard or, more often than not, just make life stop. The smart move indeed.

“All loaded,” Varne said, appearing again and jerking a thumb over his shoulder at the freighter, where waited the rest.

“Right. Be with you in a second,” said Loghain, and off Varne went again.

For a moment it looked like Loghain might have had a followup for what she had just said, and for a moment after that (a horrifying and terrifying moment) it looked to Jarrion as though she might actually move in for some form of physical contact, like that time mother had given him that hug. Thankfully though nothing of the sort happened, and what Loghain did instead was make the sign of the Acquilla, which Jarrion gratefully mirrored.

“The Emperor protects,” she said.

“The Emperor protects,” he said.

And off she went.

Chapter Text

Thirty two

I didn’t have to be up the front of the ship for the final approach but I wanted to be and so I was. It wasn’t a pleasant and gentle ride in.

Just me and Joker (and EDI, presumably, in her omnipresent capacity as basically part of the ship), he at the controls and me stood behind, looking important and charismatic and all that and not-at-all having any of that undermined by having to cling to the back of his seat to keep from toppling over sideways from the roughness. I can tell Joker’s working to keep the ride as smooth as possible and I can tell it’s tricky, even for him. He flicks out a wrist so he can tap at some outward portion of the console and frowns briefly.

“Picking up another ship ahead. LADAR paints its signature as geth,” he says.

I digest this morsel of information. Not a lot I can do with it at this stage.

“Well that’s reassuring,” I say.

The Normandy gives an especially big lurch just then, followed by absolute calm and serenity. I blink.

“Uh…”

“Reaper still has its mass effect fields up, we just passed into the envelope,” Joker said, fiddling with controls all the while, though now with slightly less urgency. He then adds quietly: “Eye of the storm…”

“Big envelope,” was all I managed to say. I was too busy staring out the front of the ship to think of anything cleverer to say. With the Normandy not shaking around anymore the view got a lot more stable and clear, so our destination was now that much more easy to see.

And there it was. Just hanging there - in the middle of a bloody lightning storm, no less.

God I hate those things. Reapers, I mean, not lightning storms. Even when they’re dead I hate them, because even when they’re dead they’re not properly dead. Call it a gut feeling. Call it a gut feeling springing forth from a combination of limited personal experience and a lot of ancient alien knowledge and emotion burnt into my brain. Feel like I’m looking more at something sleeping than a corpse. I’d feel much better if it was just a several-thousand mile long smear of highly radioactive particles, or just some residual energy rapidly fading into the background of space.

I’d take either, I’m not that picky.

But no, instead we have this not-dead-not-alive mechanical wreck, still basically intact, still working enough to maintain altitude, looking like at any moment it might twitch and start up all over again. And we get to go inside. Wonderful. Oh well, no-one said the job would be pleasant.

Really hope it stays dead…

“We’ll be docking on that attached Cerberus facility inside of three minutes, Commander,” says Joker, snapping me back to the moment. I give the back of his seat a companionable smack, knowing if I gave him a companionable smack I’d probably break his shoulder.

“Best be off. Can’t hide in here the whole time.”

“If you feel like picking me up a souvenir I could really go for, like, a Reaper t-shirt or something. Or maybe a keyring. Either’s good for me, Commander.”

“Har fucking har. You can come over and pick one up yourself, if you want.”

“Sorry, can’t, have to watch the ship. Love to but have to watch the ship. Right EDI?”

“Mr Moreau is required at the helm,” says EDI. If I didn't know any better I’d say they practised that, or at the very least were in cahoots or cahoots-adjacent. Not that it mattered.

“Sure, right. Well, we’ll be back,” I said.

And so I wander to the airlock, where the team is gathered, waiting - the team today being, chosen largely arbitrarily, Garrus, Jack, and Miranda, the latter two having been convinced to put on something a little more appropriate for prowling around the guts of a dead spaceship, maybe getting exposed to vacuum, and possibly getting shot at. I don’t think Miranda’s weird bodysuit thing is rated for that.

“Now, before we go, I don’t suppose anyone just happens to have a Reaper IFF lying around? Tucked away somewhere? No?” I ask the team. All I get in response is blank looks.

No-one appreciates my jokes. Sigh. Wasted on these people.

“Alright, take that as a no. Shame. Now, I don’t need to tell any of you twice but just so we’re clear: in and out, okay? I’m not hanging around inside this thing a second longer than I have to. We’re in, we get to where we need to, we get what we need to, we fucking book it and we don’t look back.”

“And if there are any survivors?” Garrus asks, fiddling with his scope - just to look nonchalant, no doubt. I point at him, to make sure he knows I’m onto him and his sass.

“I tell the jokes here. Honestly though I don’t think that’s going to be a concern, do you? Secret Cerberus project? Dead Reaper? Not an auspicious setup for survivors. If it turns out I’m wrong, well, we’ll play it by ear, but I’m not holding my breath.”

Even after all this time it’s still kind of hard for me to tell if a turian is grinning. Pretty sure he was grinning at me, though. He’s giving off grinning energy.

“Just wanted to see what you’d say, really,” he said, lightly.

There’s a swaying feeling and a slowdown which I take is us pulling up alongside and coming in to dock. Indeed, a moment later there’s a clunk and a judder and a voice from upfront coming over the comms to tell us we’re good and linked up. Taking a second to double-check we’re all loaded up, we head over.

Naturally, the Cerberus lab we enter into is deserted and silent with no signs of life whatsoever. Jack knocks an empty coffee mug off a table - on purpose, I might add - and everyone jumps nearly a foot and is about a microsecond away from shooting the table to bits. She, of course, thinks this is hilarious.

I mean, it’s not bad as far as these things go, but still. Time and place, Jack, time and place.

In the event all we did find, other than some medigel and other useful junk, was a log, and all that did was make it pretty obvious that things were turning sour from almost the moment this Cerberus operation started. Everyone was apparently jumpy, spooked, guy making the log talked about angles being wrong, stuff like that.

Not red flags, it seems. Guess you don’t have much leeway for saying no in Cerberus.

Onward into the actual Reaper itself. Another airlock. The second it finishes cycling and opens up for us there’s a jolt like the floor just dropped an inch and then a sense of pressure in the air that wasn’t there before. Can’t be good.

“What was that?” Miranda asks from behind me. I put a hand to the side of my helmet - not really necessary, force of habit.

“Joker? EDI? Got a better view from outside? What just happened?” I ask.

“The Reaper has activated its kinetic barriers,” EDI says, little bit of fuzz on the edge of the transmission. I consider this development. I consider the ramifications.

“...bollocks,” I say, once I’ve finished considering.

“Commander, while those things are up, you aren’t getting out,” says Joker, also fuzzy.

“Yeah, I guessed that.”

“Spry for a corpse, isn’t it?” Says Garrus.

“Quiet, you. Right, well, need to turn those off - where’s the button for that? EDI?”

“At the moment of activation I noted a heat spike in what is presumably the Reaper’s mass effect core. Sending coordinates now. Disabling the core should deactivate the barriers. Be advised, the mass effect core is also maintaining the Reaper’s altitude.”

“...so we’ll fall into the planet?” I say, reading between the lines.

“Yes,” EDI said bluntly. At least she doesn’t beat around the bush. I hate that. Almost as much as I hate sinking into the depths of a brown dwarf while stuck inside the bowels of a semi-dead, sapient, life-hating spaceship.

Still, not like there’s much else we can do.

“Never a dull moment,” I say, trying not to sigh.

“Normandy’ll be ready to pick you up whenever or however, Commander. I’ll fish you out of the core if I have to. Mean, I won’t enjoy it and we might need a new ship after, but I’ll do it. Stylishly, too,” says Joker, adding the last part after a second of consideration.

“Appreciate it, Joker. I’ll try to exit quickly when the time comes.”

“Would you? It’d really help me out.”

“I remain, as ever, your humble servant,” I said, cutting the link to the ship and craning my neck to look back at everyone else. “Alright team, let’s not stand around. Forward. Me and Garrus up front, you two in back. Eyes peeled, yes? Don’t think we’ll be running into any friendly faces.”

Indeed, the first people we run into are dead people. Not unusual in my line of work, sadly, and definitely not a positive sign for any lingering hope we might have had for finding any survivors. There’s a lot of blood, too. A lot more than should be there for the bodies we can see. Concerning.

The rest of what I can see is, well, there’s two sides to it. There’s the nice, normal, boring infrastructural side that Cerberus had put in: gantries, walkways, safety rails, lights and more just stretching off into the darkness of this damn, dead machine. That sort of thing. My hat - helmet, I suppose - goes off to whoever set all this up. Although in actuality the helmet is very much staying on despite the fact that the place has what is apparently a very reasonable, life-supporting atmosphere. I don’t trust it. Helmet stays on.

And on the other side is all the rest. The machine guts. The metal viscera. The vast, echoing interior. So this is what the inside of a Reaper looks like. I hate it. It’s like as if Jonah had been swallowed by an engine that was pretending to be a whale. I look at pipes and I see pipes, but I look at them a little longer and I’m looking at blood vessels or something. Then back to pipes. And then my eyes start hurting and my teeth start to itch.

None of this is right. And that guy from the log wasn’t wrong when he said the angles were off. Everything looks like it doesn’t add up, like there’s more than there should be, you just can’t see it properly. The place makes no sense. Worse, I’m fairly certain it doesn’t make sense on purpose, specifically to melt poor little organic brains like mine.

No, no, I hate it.

“Let’s keep going,” I say, jaw set, and so we do. There’s a console I can see ahead and it still looks active so I head to it.

“Another work log,” says Garrus, reaching it first and flicking the fingers of one hand across the interface, omnitool active in his other hand.

“Great. Bet this one has a happy ending,” I say.

It did not have a happy ending. Two guys remembering one wedding isn’t unusual. What is unusual is both of them remembering it being their wedding. That’d be the Reaper soft-boiling their brains, no doubt, or just fucking with them for kicks while dead. Or both.

“I know it’s easy to criticise from here, but what did they expect, honestly?” I ask.

“Maybe the risks weren’t explained,” Miranda says with perhaps just the slightest touch of defensiveness.

Seemed unlikely to me that Cerberus agents wouldn’t know what was up, but it wasn’t impossible. Just because I knew didn’t mean everyone knew. And who’d want to come here, knowing what would happen? Cerberus might not be big into asking for volunteers, but they’re not stupid enough to let anyone have any reason not to volunteer.

Or so I’d think. I could be wrong.

“Maybe. Too late now either way, poor bastards. Come on,” I said, leading the way. The sooner we got this done the sooner we could leave, which could only be a good thing in my book.

Down a ramp we went. Our steps did not echo. Should have done, didn’t. Sound isn’t right here. Nothing is right here. Pretty sure I saw one of the tubes running under the gantries quiver, pretty sure I’m imagining things.

“Something up ahead,” Jack says out of nowhere. Good eyes on her.

“Survivors?” Garrus floats, with what sounds curiously like a hint of genuine surprise.

“I seriously doubt it. Ready up,” I say.

Unslung my gun, quick glance down to double-check it’s all ready to go. It is, obviously, but I’m paranoid and the one time you don’t check is the time you forgot something. Rolling with one of those Imperial laserguns today, among a couple other things. After getting shot with one kind of felt like being on the right end of one for a change, for some variety. We’ll see how that goes.

There’s a power setting slider on it, I know. I’ve put it to the maximum. Makes sense, right?

I see the flicker of movement this time and this time something lurches out from behind a crate, swings its head around, screams, and starts running right at us. Can see what it is immediately.

Husks. Naturally.

Team doesn’t need telling twice to open up, even as more of the things start appearing, crawling up from beneath the gantry or wiggling out of whatever space they’d somehow got themselves into. Rounds go downrange, targets go down. We’re professionals.

The proper military-grade lasgun works very nicely. On full power looks to be hitting about as hard as the Mattock, maybe a hair over - hard to say for sure. It’s certainly killing things, which is the main concern. Recoil nice and light, too. Why it has any recoil is a question I’m not going to bother to ask. There’s probably a reason. I’m happily putting laserbeams through heads when a husk comes up from underneath the flooring just beside me and lunges, wrestling for the gun.

That’s husks, always invading your personal space. So time to get hot and heavy up and close with a sharp object. Lucky I brought one.

Knife techniques were a part of Alliance military training. Not a big part, admittedly, but still a part. The idea being that, one day, all you might have is a knife, and on that day you’d still be expected to get the mission done. The other reason being, I think, imparting a certain level of base aggression. And of course, just in case someone or something gets the drop on you.

I’d taken to taking the knife with me on missions because, well, it’s a good knife, and importantly is also - as we knew - monomolecular. This isn’t that unusual. I’d heard of (and run into) monomolecular blades before, usually owned by niche eccentrics. They did exist and this wasn’t that exciting - I heard you could even get your omnitool to flash-forge one for you, in a pinch, though mine hasn’t got that functionality yet because I hadn’t got around to programming it in.

Because I had a big knife and the big knife did exactly what I needed it to do.

In this case, what I needed it to do was punch through a husk’s skull when it started getting handsy. Through and through, in one side and out the other. Lights out. That is pretty satisfying, especially on the return when the blade comes out and they just collapse, letting go of my gun in the process.

Maybe that says something worrying about me, I don’t know.

Barely a second passes before another one is on me, this one wrapping itself around my knife arm instead. Fuckers. Have to drop the lasgun to free up a hand and I reach to grab the husk but I reach and grab maybe a bit too violently, and end up getting my hand stuck in its face like I just tried to pick up a bowling ball. It is a distinctly unpleasant experience, made considerably worse by the fact that, despite having fingers in both eye sockets, the husk is not dead.

“Eurgh,” I say, pushing down and twisting and gripping and doing my best not to think about how it feels, instead concentrating on how there’s a distinct sensation of something giving way and a crunch and the husk stops struggling and lets go.

“Anyone else?!” I ask, quickly looking around. Thankfully those two looked to be the only two who wanted to get a drop on me, and the rest of the team is holding up alright. I reach for the dropped lasgun but then see another knot of the damn things skidding around a corner barely twenty feet away. No time to reach.

One of the ones running at me is red. That’s new. New is rarely good. My hip is closer than the gun on the floor so I draw my Phalanx and manage to blow out its knee without bothering to aim too hard. Down it goes, and tumbling over it goes the four or five buddies it had trailing behind, all in an angry electronic heap. The heap then blows up.

I hadn’t done that. Doesn’t take me long to put two-and-two together though.

“The red ones explode! That’s just unnecessary!”

Now I get the lasgun and now I get back to acting like I’m actually on top of things.

At this point a particular noise I’d been ignoring but which my keenly-honed instincts told me I really shouldn’t be ignoring finally got so persistent I had to look and see what it was. It was a whining noise and it had been rising in pitch sharply over the last few seconds. Looking, I find it. It is the plasma gun, the one Jack insisted on bringing.

Even as I turn she’s firing it, laughing, and the husks she’s hitting and more-or-less just ceasing to exist. One comes for her, arms out, and gets hits right in centre-mass and just - pow - gone. Mist and maybe some chunks, poof. So violent is this that its buddy gets knocked down and loses an arm and most of the side of its body nearest to the violence into the bargain, too.

Not for the first time I find myself wondering just what it is they’re fighting in the future. Or another universe. Or another universe and the future, however or whatever it was. Wherever Jarrion was from and where they need stuff like this.

Incidentally, I’d asked both Jacob and EDI about how a plasma weapon like this was meant to operate, given that my - admittedly limited, I’m not an expert - understanding was that plasma was very difficult to weaponise, at least in the sense of making it in one place, containing it, and then making that plasma go somewhere else to cause damage.

Making plasma somewhere? Doable. Pretty commonplace, in fact. Making it and then keeping it from puffing away into nothing before you could do something usefully offensive with it? Harder. Or so my understanding went. So the fact this particular gun was just chucking straight-up balls of plasma around like it wasn’t an issue seemed a bit unusual to me.

Neither of them could explain it. By all accounts it did not add up. Not that I was complaining. Much better to be on this end of the thing, having seen it in action. Turns out having a fist-sized ball of plasma smack into you is unhealthy. Who knew.

And none of this matters right then either, obviously, and what does matter is that rising whine, the glowing part on the top of the gun glowing brighter and brighter, and the thick, curling wisps of smoke leaking faster and faster from those vents around the barrel.

Jack doesn’t notice. She’s having too much of a good time.

“Jack!” I shout. I had to shout otherwise she would have ignored me.

The laughing stops and she turns her head my way with an expression of intense irritation.

“What?!”

“The gun is about to kill you.”

She looks down at the glowing, whining, smoking weapon in her hands. For a second it looks like she might argue about this just on principle but then I think the reality of being horribly burnt being a hindrance to taking drugs, killing things and generally enjoying life makes itself too obvious to her. She’s not happy about it though, I can tell.

A brace of husks came at her but were both hefted off their feet into the air and then backhanded away and over a railing with a biotic swat. She didn’t even look. I’d say that that was showing off but showing off is pretty much standard for her.

“Why weren’t you just doing that in the first place?” I ask.

“It’s not as fun,” she says emphatically, slinging the plasma gun and sulkily unholstering her sidearm. Definitely a step down.

And I guess if you do something all the time it would start to lose a bit of the novelty.

Further discussion and further rumination on the nature of novelty is forestalled by the situation continuing to be an active combat situation and one of those glowing red husks - let’s call them abominations, why not; the HUD wants to - leaping over a crate to come sprinting at me. I wait until it’s throwing itself towards me before kicking it full in the chest and sending it cartwheeling into a stack of unused flooring panels, where it promptly explodes.

Risky, maybe, but I need novelty in my life, too.

The sound of the exploding husk-thing rolls away and is swallowed up by the horrible inside of the Reaper, then there’s just the noise of spent heatsinks popping out of guns and rolling away into the depths, and that’s that for the welcoming committee.

“Everyone in one piece?” I ask, checking the charge indicator on the lasgun. Still good, looks like, which isn’t a huge surprise given I only managed to snap off about a dozen shots before being mobbed by admirers. Garrus and Miranda give me nods.

“Fucking peachy,” Jack growls, evidently still unhappy with me.

“Hey, look, you want to melt your hands you go right ahead. I’m just saying you might not want to.”

She just grunts, which is fine.

Further discussion - not there needed to be all that much - is cut short by sounds from up ahead. Very obvious gun shots. Everyone’s ears prick up.

“Gunfire,” says Miranda, in case we missed that.

“Survivor?” Garrus asks, at this point going with what I’m convinced is a running joke of his - a joke at my expense. I shrug. I’m as surprised as anyone.

“Hell, maybe. Maybe I was wrong. Let’s go find out.”

Would certainly make for a nice change of pace. Finding survivors, I mean. I’d like to keep being right if it’s all the same to the galaxy, even if I’m often right to my own disadvantage.

We proceed. No more husks, at least not yet.

Further along, at an intersection, there came tumbling through a connecting doorway, a brace of husks, the high-powered rounds that had put paid to them carrying on clean through and out into the space beyond, exiting through one of the very many holes in the hull we’d seen.

“Whoever they are they’re a good shot,” I said. They also clearly had a pretty big gun, whoever they were. My sort of person if early indications were anything to go by - good shot, big gun, dislikes husks. We have so much in common.

Not super-keen on the idea of sticking my head around the corner only to have it blown off by whoever was shooting the husks I took this next bit slow, only to see, when I risked a look, that the area around the corner was deserted. It was also a significant sight, and kind of unpleasant.

“Oh that’s not nice,” I said as we entered.

Some bigger area, where the interior opened up. What that meant for the Reaper I couldn’t tell you - maybe important, maybe not - but for Cerberus it apparently meant this had been some sort of important depot or storage hub or whatever. Had been being the key word, because what it was now was a horrible, dragons’ tooth filled nightmare.

The sense of pressure was worse here, and there was an odd feeling as though the floor was tilting, or we were on an incline, just being drawn towards the centre. Uncomfortable. I planted my feet and gritted my itching teeth some more.

“It’s like an altar of some kind, isn’t it?” Garrus said. I just nodded. Would track with my impressions of the Reapers so far. I remember that little altar the geth set up that one time.

“Turned their brains to mush, had them all come here, had them…”

I neither needed nor wanted to say the next bit. We all knew what it had had them do to themselves after that. We could see what they’d done. We’d been shooting our way through the result of what they’d done. Willingly given themselves over. Gladly pulled themselves up onto the dragon’s teeth. Gone to that thinking - what? They deserved it? They should? That they were going home? Climbing into bed? Picturing something else entirely? Or were they so far gone that they weren’t even thinking anything at all? Just going through whatever motions were left rattling about inside their skulls?

I’m not sure there’s any good answers to that.

A handful of the recovery team were still here, still impaled. Most of the spikes were empty though. There were a lot.

“At least we can confirm it’s Reaper tech that’s making husks, not the geth,” said Garrus. That was something, I guess. Not much, but something. A mystery solved.

“Reapers are apparently the cause of about ninety-five percent of my problems nowadays,” I said, hoping to lighten the mood at least a little but not really succeeding. I had to look down, away from the bodies. “Goddamnit…”

Two cracks, two shots, both going past me either side. Snaps me right back to the moment. I look up and ahead where I’d registered the flashes out of the corner of my eye but also notice - kind of hard not to notice - the twin thumps of husks behind me hitting the deck. Someone with a shot on me had taken out the targets I’d been too distracted to notice sneaking up. Nice of them, whoever they were. Our survivor.

Took me a second to spot them properly, and I only did spot them properly because they moved, straightening up from resting their gun on a railing to stand there a moment and let us all have a nice long look at them.

It’s a geth. Just one. And it’s got - wait, is that an N7 logo?

“Shepard Commander,” said the geth.

Huh. Well that’s new.

And then they were gone.

There was an awkward pause for all of us.

“Did that thing know your name?” Jack asked, breaking the silence.

“Apparently?” I said, knowing about as much as anyone else.

“I didn’t know geth could talk,” said Garrus.

“No, that’s weird. I’ll tell Tali once we’ve left. She’ll know something,” I said with a lot more calmness than I actually felt at that moment. The shock of being snuck up on, being shot passed, and of being known to a geth (a talking geth, no less) were all battling inside me and all drawing.

“Did that thing not kill us?” Jack asked, obviously feeling this was a pertinent detail we were skipping over. I kind of wanted to move past the bit where I nearly let two husks sneak up on me.

“Apparently!” I said.

Very uncharacteristic behaviour for a geth, that.

“We should keep moving,” said Miranda, and she wasn’t wrong.

“Yes. Let’s not hang around, eh?” I said, eyes flicking again to the bodies around the quote-unquote ‘altar’. It doesn’t sit right with me leaving them still impaled where they are, but what else can we do? Can’t take any of the other bodies with us, either - the ones that have been trying to kill us. It’s not ideal, but they’re just going to have to be left here. No proper burial or dignified end for anyone involved today. Poor bastards.

So on we go.

There’s more husks. Every so often one or two come running from some nook or cranny and these little interruptions are periodically broken up by larger, angrier waves that come boiling up around us all at once with very little warning. I don’t like those ones. Not because they’re more hard work - though they are - but more because I don’t know why they happen. Are we just stumbling across a lot of them and tripping them? Or is something making them attack us at certain points? It raised those barriers, didn’t it? To keep us in, or what? Is this thing defending itself still, somehow?

What was it that work log we found said? The god’s mind is gone but it still dreams?

Eurgh.

Either way, we shoot them. We shoot them and keep moving until we’re almost on top of those coordinates EDI gave us for the core. The IFF was, to my surprise, just sitting in a corridor along the way. It was quite anticlimactic. Confusingly the core was just the other side of the door, too.

Why, exactly, would you store your carefully-extracted piece of technology next to what is basically the engine room? Maybe I’m missing something.

And blocking our way into the core room is some kind of force field - looks like a Ceberus one, rather than a Reaper one. Not that it matters overmuch because the main thing is that it is in the way. There is also the geth again, fiddling with a Cerberus console set up in front of the core, pausing only to shoot some husks before finishing fiddling at which point the force field drops - did it just let us in?

I’d ask, but the instant it stopped fiddling some husks got the drop on it, knocked it down before I had a chance to repay it having saved my hide. Shame. We shoot the husks, and then it’s just me, the team and the core. The throbbing, glowing core.

“Reckon there’s an off-switch?” I ask. Again, sandbagged. No-one appreciates my jokes.

Before anyone can actually suggest something useful there’s that damn metallic, scraping, screaming again. Wishful thinking to have assumed we’d shot the last of the husks, I guess. Can already see their hands coming clawing up from below the decking. A lot of hands.

“Shit. Right! No time for fannying about! Shoot the damn thing!”

All set to shoot the core - that’s one way of turning it off, right? - when this big armoured iris-shutter thing slams closed, covering it up. Like it heard me! The fucking thing is listening in on me!

“Mother- right! I’ll deal with that! Everyone else, husk duty! Go!”

Didn’t have to ask twice. The things are getting shot almost as fast as they’re clawing up on deck, but there’s a lot of them. Jack knocks a handful back the way they came, Garrus fires another of his high impact shots, Miranda’s plugging away, everyone’s giving it their all, there’s just so many.

And I’m getting closer to the iris, and getting the meltagun ready again.

There’s a gap between the railing Cerberus put in and the core itself. I couldn’t tell you how big the gap is because distance doesn’t seem to want to work normally inside a Reaper, but it’s on the short side of medium range, I’d guess, which might be pushing it for the meltagun, but then again might not be - it might be much closer than it looks. Either way, a shot worth taking in my book. Put a boot on the railing, meltagun goes up to the shoulder and-

It’s hard to describe the sound it makes, honestly. It’s a roaring noise.

Noise aside, the result is a glowing, dripping circle of mostly-molten metal on a still-closed iris. Not entirely molten though, and still intact enough to glow and drip. One shot hadn’t done it. Tough stuff, whatever it is.

“Come on…” I say, gritting my teeth and waiting for the gun to finish going through whatever it needed to do to fire again. By now I can tell. There’s a noise - not that I could hear it, what with all the rest of the gunfire - and there’s always a little jolt, like some internal mechanism shifting. That’s what I was waiting for.

And I was still waiting for it when a husk came scrambling right up onto the railing in front of me. Crap. Melta still isn’t ready to fire. Have to take a step back and draw my Phalanx again one-handed. I aim for the thing’s face but the very moment I fire is the moment it leaps off the railing and throws itself at me. I still hit it, just not in the face, and the body carries on and hits me.

I’m a tough lady though so I stay standing. Have to take a step or two backwards, yes, and still have a techno-corpse draped over me, yes, but still standing. At least until the next husk lands on me, taking the opportunity presented by its buddy to get the drop on me. That knocks me over. I’m only so good.

Land flat on my back and crack my head on the deck but I got a skeleton that’s mostly carbon nanofibre at this point so beyond hurting a little that’s not an issue. What is an issue is the corpse on top of me and the angry zombie on top of the corpse trying to get at me. The melta’s gun, dropped to the side somewhere, but I still got the pistol, pinned as I am. I press the muzzle into the corpse and fire and fire and fire and shoot thought and up into the second husk, which is then also a corpse.

I push those two off into time to fire off my remaining shots at the ones running at me. Drop two, then the gun overheats, then the rest land on me. I don’t know how many. It’s hard to count when techno-zombies are trying to beat you to death.

Do know there’s one trying to twist my head off, that one I’m very aware of, but I couldn’t tell you how many are pawing at my legs or trying to tear through my armour to rip my belly open. It’s more than one, that’s for sure.

This is bad. My suit is blaring a dozen different warnings and alarms in my ears and across my visor and I’m being pulled every which way and stomped on and pummelled and clawed at and that fucking one with a grip on my helmet is still trying to do its thing and I’ve lost track of how much I’m swearing and at that point I just see red. The knife comes out again.

First things to go are the arms of the husk on my helmet. It, now armless, goes flailing off somewhere out of sight, losing its grip, but I’m already on the others. Grab one by the neck and pull it aside, knife in the eye socket, down. Next is the one digging its fingers around one of the plates of my suit, trying to rip it off. That one just gets its head whacked clean off. Hadn’t meant to do that, but it happened - one good, strong swing and the head is flying somewhere I can’t see.

Try to stand but at least one is holding a leg so I can’t yet. More come in. One gets a blade up through the chin, sliced out through the face, easy as anything, knife sharp as shit. Next two are slow enough I have a chance to pop the heatsink on the Phalanx, fill up the next sink shooting them, follow up by putting the knife through the skull of the husk gnawing on my leg.

One of the bastards comes in to grab me under the arms, trying to drag me away. Of course, I’m not standing for that, so I reach, grab hold of something, and haul, flipping them bodily over me and slamming them into a floor plate, spot the head, and stab down.

At the very last second - the very, very last second - I realise that what I’m about to stab through is, in fact, Garrus’s visor. The tip of the blade has stopped rock solid a hair’s breadth away. I can see his eyes.

That was close.

“All in the reflexes,” I say.

“Could you move that, Shepard? Please,” he says.

I’m sort of lost in the moment so it takes a heartbeat to realise he means the knife I have in his face. I move it out of the way.

“Right, sorry.”

“Thanks.”

We both struggle to our feet, both helping each other. I think I must have knocked the wind out of him with the flip and I’m feeling the consequences of getting dogpiled. They may not have broken anything but they damn sure bruised something. Suit says it’s sealed some breaches. I can believe it.

The iris over the core chooses this moment to open.

“Ah, balls, where’s my-” I manage to say before soaring over our head goes one, then two abominations, crashing into the core and blowing up, as they are wont to do. The core ruptures, rippling with smaller detonations and making a horrendous crunching whirr before going quiet.

I looked over and saw Jack grinning.

“The red ones explode!” She declared triumphantly. Mean, I knew that, but I’m happy she’s happy.

“Problem solving, I like it,” I say, wincing, limping over to where I spot the meltagun. The husks seem to have backed off with the core taken out. Confused? Run out for now? Demoralised? No idea, but I’m glad.

“We have to go,” Garrus says, sounding like he’s also wincing.

“Yep, let’s book it, sharpish, back to- hey, hang on. The geth. Look at it,” I say, pointing. The team looks and sees what I saw. “Down but not out, thing still looks functional. Huh.”

At the very least it had some lights on it.

“I can fix that,” Jack says, readying the plasma gun again. It’s still smoking, clearly having seen more recent use, but it isn’t making the noise and so is probably safe. But that’s not my main concern.

“Wait!” Me and Miranda both said simultaneously, to our mutual shock. Jack looked at us both with blank disinterest, gun poised.

“And I’m waiting because…?”

“Thing knows my name! That’s enough to make it worth hanging onto, at least until we know why,” I said.

“No-one’s ever recovered an intact geth before. This chance might not ever present itself again,” said Miranda.

“That too! But mostly my things. Come on, I’ll carry it. Everybody out! Go!” I said, shooing them off before stooping to hoist the geth up and sling it across my shoulders. They were a weighty so-and-so, but I’m a strapping young lady and also a cyborg, so it’s not a particularly big deal. I jog to catch up, gritting my teeth and trying to ignore the pain in my ribs. They really did bruise something, ow.

We make it back through the adjoining corridor where we found the IFF and back out into the body of the Reaper proper. Outside the core room the fact we are now falling is a lot more obvious. Everything is shaking, and through the hull breaches clouds are rushing past. There’s noise too, now, which feels intrusive after the sucking silence that had been there before.

And, in the distance, more movement, coming our way.

“Shit, they’re still coming? What’s the staffing budget on this project? How were they feeding all these people? Where did they sleep?” I ask, genuinely aggravated. Seriously, how many had we killed by now? Dozens? Scores?

“Not the time, Shepard!” The team says, somehow in perfect unison. We’re all shocked by this. That’s me told.

“Right, right.”

Honestly though, how many people were thrown at this project? How many people are dead so we could get an IFF? When it comes to making sacrifices for the sake of the galaxy, is this the thin end of the wedge? Are we going to look back on the death toll on this and think fondly of the good old times?

Not a comfortable thought, for me.

“Commander, unless you’re really good at sprinting you’re not going to be making it back to the lab airlock in time - where am I going?” Joker asks, less fuzzy in my ear now.

“There’s a hull breach just shy of the core, starboard side - bring her around!” I say, having to shout to make sure I’m heard over the noise, gesturing violently to the team so they know which way I mean.

Joker didn’t reply, which I took to be him concentrating on doing what I’d told him to do. Still poor form not to confirm, but I’ll complain later.

There follows a very tense minute or so where we’re just having to hold the line against yet more bloody husks, standing out as we are on a railed platform jutting just shy of this bull breach, wind whipping past, floor shaking. It is at this point I learn that I can fire the lasgun one handed, in a pinch. Nice. That’s some true grit, right there.

The Normandy appears. I open the link again.

“Open the port airlock!” I shout. A second later I see the airlock open. Unslinging the geth from my shoulders I hold it in both hands, squint, and hurl it underhand towards the ship. This’ll be a hell of a throw if I make it. Looks good though!

“Right! Team! Go! Now!” I shout once the geth looks like its about to land in the airlock, waving for the others. There’s a minor moment where no-one wants to be the first one to leave but I’m not having that and grab Garrus by the scruff of the neck and ‘encourage’ him to go first. After that it’s Miranda, then Jack, then me bringing up the rear, sailing through the void.

I have some distinctly uncomfortable memories that involve floating in hard vacuum. Best not to think about it. At least someone is here to catch me this time, not a planet. Into the welcoming arms of Garrus, and this time I won’t try to stab him.

Airlock door slams shut, a little lurch as we accelerate and that’s it. Another mission done.

I indulge myself in a few seconds of lying on the floor. I feel I’ve earned it.

“I know I said I wanted a souvenir but a geth? A whole geth? Commander, that’s just spoiling me. I’ll look after them real good, I promise,” comes Joker’s voice over the internal comms. I can’t be bothered to move but I make the effort with at least one hand, so can see my feelings as well as hear them.

“Oh he’s a funny man, he’s the funny one, very good. Just get us away from here, please.”

“Can do. Any specific kind of away or just a general sort of away?”

“Back to the relay. Once we’re there, tell me.”

“Can do, Commander.”

+++++

Five, ten minutes later I’m in the board room - meeting room? Communication room? - with Miranda and Jacob for the post-mission discussion. Everyone else is recuperating. I’ve taken my helmet off but that’s about it. I keep getting worried looks from both of them.

“We can postpone this until you’ve seen Doctor Chakwas, Shepard,” says Miranda, but I wave that off. Sensible suggestion, I know, but I’m in charge so I can ignore it.

“No, no, it’s fine. Prefer we got this over with,” I say.

They both clearly think this is a bad idea but, as said, I can ignore their good ideas. They know this, so they just decided to go along with it.

“Alright. We need to talk about our salvage,” Jacob says with obvious distaste. I enjoy his choice of words.

“Heh, euphemism. Where is the geth anyway?” I ask. I hadn’t seen what had happened to it after I’d managed to chuck it over but they sure hadn’t left it in the airlock with me.

“In the AI core,” says Miranda.

“...the AI core?” I ask.

“Yes,” she says.

“Where EDI lives?” I ask, for clarity. I can see this is a gross simplification of the facts and can see this pains Miranda on some base level but swallows her discomfort for the sake of ease.

“In a manner of speaking,” she says.

I’m still chewing over this choice of where to stick a geth.

“...we don’t have a cupboard or something?” I ask. That foxes her.

“Commander?”

“No, just, seems kind of a weird place to put a comatose robot to me.”

“I still think we should throw it out the airlock. Seen enough of these things to last a lifetime. Can always say it slipped out of your hands trying to get it back onboard,” says Jacob, again demonstrating a gib I like the cut of. I point at him, letting him know I’ve noted his suggestion.

“Noted,” I say, to make double-sure.

“We need every advantage possible to fight the Reapers. An intact geth is a unique opportunity, far too valuable to waste. Cerberus’s cyberweapons division could make very good use of this,” says Miranda. I move my pointing finger her way.

“Also noted and very no.”

“There is a cash reward. It’s significant,” she says, as though this would change my mind. It doesn’t, and I’m not sure how it ever would. I’m mildly insulted, actually.

“Do I look like a bloody mercenary to you, Miranda? No. I’m not sure what I’m going to do but I am not doing that. How many ways can I make it clear to you - to everyone - that I am working with Cerberus, not for Cerberus, and once we’ve sorted this out I’m dropping you lot like a bad habit. Last thing I need is them getting their grubby mitts on a geth.”

I think I hurt her feelings but I really, really, really need people to get it into their heads that I’m only with Cerberus on this because no-one else will, and because they keep throwing money at me to solve a problem I want solved anyway. I’m not going to start helping them out, especially not like this, not when I’ve seen what their past history of messing around with stuff tends to result in.

“Besides,” I say, ignoring the sulky Miranda (she’s not actually sulking, that’d be beneath her, but she’s clearly unhappy). “Shot a lot of geth, never had a chat with one before. Worth a go, right?”

From the looks I get they don’t agree.

“Well I’m the commander and I say it’s worth a go. It’s got a chunk of N7 armour! Come on! Is that not unusual?”

“Could be a trophy. Would a machine take a trophy? Jacob asks, second-guessing himself. Miranda shakes her head.

“No. Probably just a field repair. I wouldn’t read too much into it, Shepard,” she says.

“Well it also knew my name.”

“If you’re going to reactivate it, it should be for the benefit of humanity, not to satisfy your own curiosity,” she says, annoyed, and in turn annoying me more, too.

“I’ll thank you not to conflate Cerberus weapons research with the benefit of humanity, thank you,” I say.

“We reactivate it there’s no guarantee we can deactivate it again,” she says.

“I’ll kill it with my bare hands, rip its head clean off - have I mentioned I’m a killing machine?”

“That’s not what I mea-”

I’ve had enough at this point.

“Yes, yes, I know. Look, I appreciate your input, both of you, and I do know where you’re coming from, Miranda. I just don’t like it. At the end of the day though I’m the one in charge and I’m the one doing this. I want some answers from that thing.”

“Tali’s not going to like this,” says Jacob. I grimace at the mention of Tali. I’d been deliberating avoiding her as I considered this.

“Trying not to think about that. Alright, next order of business: the IFF?”

EDI’s hologram pops up.

“I have determined how to integrate it with our systems, however the device is Reaper technology. Linking it with the Normandy’s systems poses certain risks.”

Understandably. In happier circumstances I’d put a few lightyears between myself and anything Reaper-related. Sadly though this wasn’t an option here, and there wasn’t much else that could be done. Still, had the best person on the case. Or AI. Virtual person.

“No-one I’d trust with it more than you, EDI. I know you won’t let anything happen to the ship,” I said.

“Understood, Commander. It may take several hours before the IFF is ready for shakedown. I will alert you as soon as it is ready.”

Faster than I expected. Much faster, in fact. But then I had no frame of reference for how long installing a mysterious and alien piece of technology is meant to take, so I’d just been allowing for extra time. Still, so soon!

“Good stuff, thank you. Hell, that feels like progress to me, don’t you think? Right, until then we carry on as normal. Miranda, you’re dismissed. Jacob? I want a quick word.”

Miranda left, Jacob approached.

“Shepard?”

“Have you had a chance to look at any of that, uh, Imperial armour yet? The suits?” I asked.

“A little. Why?”

“How easy would it be to fit barriers into them, you reckon?”

“Wouldn’t be that hard. Barriers don’t take up a lot of space - don’t ask me where Miranda used to hide hers. It’d mostly be a question of making sure coverage was consistent and trying to make sure the armour didn’t interfere with any of the emitters. Why?”

“I got dogpiled by husks today. It wasn’t fun. My armour held up alright but it’s not really rated for getting pummelled by a horde of raving techno monsters and in my future I see that happening to me more than once. That Imperial stuff looked a little on the hardier side, might stand up better. Good idea? Bad idea?”

“It’s an idea. The armour is certainly tough. Heavy, too.”

“Heavy isn’t really a problem for me.”

If anything heavy armour might be helpful for clubbing husks to death at some point along the line. You never know.

“Right, right. I can do it. Can probably rest of the hardsuit functionality installed as well, shouldn’t be too hard. You want me to do it?”

You know, I’d sort of taken for granted the rest of the features the hardsuit comes with. I’ll put that down to only just having finished a mission and needing a sit down and a cup of tea.

“Yes, please. If it’s a mistake, well, I’ll regret it. But it held up well when I saw it in action last time and we’ve got it, so why not use it, right?”

“I’ll get right on it, Shepard.”

“Thanks, appreciate it.”

He moves to the door but stops just shy of leaving and turns back.

“Shepard.”

“Hmm?”

“Are you really going to talk to the geth?”

“I am really going to talk to the geth.”

“Then could you do me a favour and take a gun? I don’t doubt you could rip its head off, I’d just prefer it if things were on the safe side.”

“Noted.”

I’m not sure how happy EDI would be with me discharging a firearm next to her brain.

Chapter Text

The ship was far, far too quiet. Loghain did not like it.

The sound - or rather its absence - was something she’d noticed almost as soon as they’d departed the Assertive’s hanger, and try as she might to ignore it and let it fade into the background she really couldn’t, because it was the background, and she was so used to all void travel being accompanied by constant, comforting noise that it suddenly not being there made her keep thinking something had gone wrong.

It had a clinical coldness and lack of spirit. It reminded her of her brief time spent aboard the Normandy, and also put her in mind of the tau, particularly the one tau voidship she had had the opportunity to actually board. That one, too, had been unnervingly quiet and clean - barring the bloodstains, blast marks, and tau corpses, of course, but Loghain had always been blessed with a muscular imagination and so it had still been fairly easy to visualise what the ship must have been like in operation, prior to the boarding.

Soulless, might have been the word.

But that was all by the by and not really an important issue. Her being uncomfortable was not especially important, and in the course of her duties she’d had to endure far worse. Comparatively, this was luxury.

The freighter was - or should have been, if Magos Crave was as good as his word when he’d said he understood how to make the ship go - underway to the local mass relay, there to do whatever one did at a mass relay and then to carry on elsewhere to their destination. Loghain had done a circuit of the ship to get a feel for the place and had found it broadly uninteresting. It was certainly a freighter.

By turns, her circuit brought her back to the helm, where Crave was gingerly sitting bolt upright at the controls, apparently not wanting to relax into a seat not properly sanctioned by the Omnissiah. Loghain would have thought that he might have loosened up a little about these things by now, but apparently not. Oh well, give it time.

“How goes it?” She asked.

“Hmm?” Crave replied, not turning around.

Loghain moved up behind the chair and rested her hand on the back. The controls and readouts - a very glitzy-looking hololithic-esque affair - meant absolutely nothing to her, and all she could see out of the prow viewport (assuming it was one) was blue swirliness. This meant nothing to her either, other than her knowing this wasn’t space travel as she was entirely used to.

“The ship. Taking to it?” She asked.

“Not really, no,” Crave said, grimacing as he moved his hands over the controls, depressing bits of light with his fingertips and apparently having some sort of effect by doing this. These sorts of interfaces weren’t entirely unknown to him (or to Loghain) but were rare, and dealing with one usually such a fraught experience that the Magos was constantly expecting it to just break. That it didn’t was deeply unsettling.

“I don’t really blame you. Figuring it out, though?” Loghain asked.

“Of course. It is, despite its numerous shortcomings, still a machine, after all.”

“Reassuring to know.”

“We should be dropping out of superluminal travel in a moment. I was about to contact you.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. You did not provide any further details on our destination beyond where you wished this relay to take us. After that, I have no idea. Unless you’d like me to guess?” He asked, sparing her a sideways glance.

“After we get there. My understanding is these relays are point-to-point?”

“I only have whatever information you have given me, but that is my understanding, yes. Minor relays seem to link up one another, operating on a smaller scale, comparatively speaking, while major ones cover longer distances and link to one another only. Or something like that. As far as we are concerned this one can take us closer to where you want us to go but, as I said, I do not know what is meant to happen after that.”

“After that I’ll tell you what is meant to happen. I’ll tell all of you, in fact. We’ll have a sit down.”

Crave reached out and flicked something and with a distinct lack of any obvious deacceleration the freighter dropped back to a gentle cruising speed, the wash of blue outside the front viewport going back to nice, star-spackled black. The relay dominated the view ahead. Loghain hadn’t actually ever had a proper look at one before. Impressive, in their own perverse, alien way, she supposed.

“Might it be too much to hope that one day we, your hard-working entourage, can be trusted with a full travel itinerary?” Crave asked as he guided the freighter towards the relay, still not looking at her.

“I’m not that sort of Inquisitor. I don’t know any of those sorts of Inquisitors,” said Loghain.

“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Are we likely to make use of any more of those, ah, relays, at least? Can I be told that? They are of alien manufacture, I believe you said?”

Part of the general background information included in the briefing package she had supplied, made up of her own observations and notes ripped from any local sources she’d been able to lay her hands on, just to bring her team all more-or-less up to something resembling speed, prior to the proper briefing which would be given once they were actually, properly underway. Loghain gave a nod.

“Allegedly. Ancient, long-dead aliens. Or alternatively ancient, still-around alien machines bent on genocide and simply biding their time, depending on who you talk to. One way or another things that were built by someone or something and then left around to be puzzled over and used by those many years later. Like us. Does that make you uncomfortable?” Loghain asked, and he looked at her as though she’d asked an especially stupid question and was insulted that he was now obliged to provide and incredibly obvious answer.

Particularly given that he was wholly aware that Loghain full-well knew what his answer was going to be anyway.

“Of course it does. Not so much I won’t do this, obviously, but it still makes me uncomfortable. It seems absurd to place so much reliance on technological devices of alien provenance, not to mention ones the true functioning of which you are unable to properly determine.”

Loghain bit her tongue.

“It does, doesn’t it?” She said.

If Crave picked up on what she’d been putting down, he gave no sign, focused instead on manipulating the controls, hands moving gingerly across the haptic interface and mechadendrites twitching lightly as his implants sought common ground with the ship’s systems. Various bits and pieces lit up promisingly, and the ship lurched, though you’d hardly notice unless you’d been paying attention - most unsettling.

“Establishing a connection. Communicating with the relay. Entering coordinates and plotting course. All appears well. Omnissiah guide your lowly and trusting servant…”

Loghain braced herself for, well, something, something big. What she was something, true, but it fell far short of her expectations. Technically she had already been through a relay, she knew, but she hadn’t been in any position to observe what it had involved, and she’d rather pictured something a little more grandiose. In the event, it just seemed to be like moving really, really fast. Sort of. It was hard to really perceive much of anything from where she was standing.

And then they arrived.

She waited for something else to happen, but nothing did. Just space, and them drifting in it.

“...that was it?” She asked, quietly. Crave seemed as baffled as she was.

“That was, apparently, it,” he said, checking some things to confirm that, yes, that was it.

Had she had eyelids Loghain might have blinked. Since she didn’t she just stood there dumbly for a second.

“Huh.”

She had no idea what to make of that. Interesting, if nothing else.

“And you are sure we cannot bring this vessel back to our own galaxy?” Crave asked, unprompted, looping back to a subject he’d brought up with her before. “As profane as it is, its dismantling might yield interesting findings. The further light it might shed on parallel technological development and discovery alone would-”

A problem of the less-orthodox tech priests was their tendency to get onto tangents. The more orthodox they got, the less talkative they got. Agreeably they also tended to get more violent at that end of the spectrum, too, so it probably all balanced out somehow. Either way, Loghain knew it was best to step in now and cut off whatever diversion Crave was starting out on:

“Not yet, and not this one. This one we’re returning to Jarrion intact once we don’t need it anymore. I did tell him I would. Besides, even if we did take it back to our own galaxy, how would you get it anywhere? No relays in our galaxy, are there? Or did you feel like spending a few years onboard while we went to whichever forge world is closest to the space hole?”

“I have explorator connections who could organise to have a vessel waiting who could collect and convey us,” he said without missing a beat, suggesting that this issue had crossed his mind before. Loghain was quietly glad she wasn’t the only one thinking ahead.

Didn’t change things, though.

“That would involve spreading the knowledge of this development further than I want earlier than I want, so no. Good idea though, perhaps later. We’re not in a rush, are we?”

“Are we?”

“We’re not.”

“Well then. As you say, Inquisitor.”

“Your next co-ordinates are here,” Loghain said, concentrating briefly to flick the appropriate information into Crave’s head. Crave, who hadn’t been expecting this, reeled slightly, but recovered. She did that sort of thing a lot, though this time felt a lot smoother, somehow. Less resistance? Something. “Set us on a course and then meet in this thing’s mess in an hour. I shall reveal all.”

“As you say, Inquisitor,” Crave repeated, another mechadendrite snaking out from somewhere inside his robes and starting to sniff out a fresh socket to interface with. Loghain did wonder where tech priests kept all those tentacles, though it wasn’t a subject she wanted to dwell on.

An hour later, there was the briefing.

The freighter’s mess was what might charitably be called ‘austere’ or ‘modest’ but was in reality just small and not especially well appointed. This did not matter, however, as all was required for the briefing was a flat surface and seating for at least four people, which the mess had. Al Bet did take up two seats haphazardly shoved together, but it was still fine.

Adept Watlington had set up, at Loghain’s behest, a hololithic projector, one she’d brought specially for occasions such as this. It was sitting on the table, hence the need for the table. Everyone else, barring Loghain, was sitting around the table, waiting for her to start. It took her a slightly-embarrassing length of time to work out how to dim the lights, but once she did she began.

“What we have here is an exciting opportunity,” she said, approaching the table and laying her hands on it briefly before reaching out to pick up the small control linked to the projector.

“There will be visual aids during this briefing. This is a galaxy,” Loghain said, clicking the display forward so that, indeed, a galaxy was displayed.

“Slow down, I need to take notes,” Varne said, flatly.

Loghain ignored him.

“You’ve all seen the preliminary reading, I know you have, and I know none of you are stupid, so I don’t really need to slow down here and explain how an entirely new galaxy more-or-less absent of opposition to Imperial interests - or at least absent the vast majority of the forces usually working against us - is a Good Thing, yes?”

Nods all round, or at least a general, unspoken sense of ‘yes’, which Loghain picked up on. Didn’t even have to concentrate, it just washed over her. Kind of made her smile. So nice not having to make the usual effort to see what people were thinking. So tranquil here.

“Good. Local human government - System Alliance - isn’t much interest to us right now. Too secular, too cosy with aliens, too happy to be playing politics with aliens and itself, not in any real position to throw its weight around. That, and if we’re seen to be working too closely with official channels it might look a bit questionable. Jarrion can get away with that, he’s a glorified salesman. Pretending to be an ‘ambassador’ will only go so far for me. So nothing official yet. Down the line, yes, right now, no.”

“So this is going where?” Varne asked. Never a man blessed with an abundance of patience. A personal failing that Loghain hoped he grew out of, else his career might not be as long as she felt it deserved to be.

“It’s going unofficial, obviously. We are meeting with a contact from Cerberus. That’s where we’re going right now, in fact, to meet them,” she said, flipping the hololithic display to show a slowly rotating rendition of the Cerberus logo. This was wholly unnecessary, but was a visual aid, so she did it anyway.

Everyone glanced at the logo briefly, unmoved by theatrics.

“These would be the people with a professed and considerable interest in salvaging and utilising alien technology? Just so I’m not getting them confused with a different Cerberus?” Varne asked.

“They’re not without their bad habits, I’ll admit, but they’re the product of a debased culture. That is definitely one thing we’re going to be helping them move away from. We’ll help them improve. That’ll be once we’ve made contact and…integrated.”

Her pause and her tone made this word stick out, and for good reason.

“Integrated?”

“I am picturing - I am envisioning - a healthy and rewarding level of inter-organisational cooperation. Broadly speaking, our goals overlap, or at least overlap in enough areas to be useful. They have infrastructure in place in this galaxy. This is also useful. I know that they’ve brought at least one person back from the dead, so they have that. That’s a handy thing.”

“I can see how that might be useful in our line of work,” said Crave.

“What’s the most useful is their intelligence network, their resources, all of that. They are established. We are not. So we are going to piggyback on their hard work and make use of what they’ve built. And make it better, obviously,” Loghain said.

“I’m sure they’ll be thrilled,” said Varne.

“They have a professed pro-human agenda. What could be more pro-human than the Imperium? What is the Imperium if not humanity? Granted they may not see the logic of this argument immediately but, well, they’ll come around. One way or another.”

Varne leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head.

“And once we have access to all of their resources and so on, then…?” He asked.

“That’s a step for future us, mostly future me. It won’t pay to get ahead of ourselves. But bear in mind that there are dangerous times ahead - dangerous for this galaxy, at anyrate - and what we need to do is ensure that humanity here is well-placed to ride it out and come out comfortably on top. After all, wouldn’t do to let them all die on our watch would it?”

“Is that really a possibility? Dying out? For this galaxy, I mean,” Varne asked, adding to himself in a mutter and an afterthought: “Still having trouble wrapping my head around this ‘other galaxy’ thing…”

Loghain ignored the second part. She had trouble, too, but got around it by just blithely accepting it and letting her disquiet fall into a pit she would deal with later. Didn’t seem much use questioning what was right in front of you.

“From what I’ve seen and heard, yes,” she said.

“One little crisis, honestly. They wouldn’t last five minutes on our side of the fence.”

“It hasn’t started yet, so let’s perhaps not sour things by getting all our hubris aired now. Though of course this is also a galaxy lacking an Emperor and an Imperium and all the stability and order and strength such would provide, so it’s sadly inevitable that it is a touch more on the fragile side. Lucky we’re here now, then, eh?”

“And what if the head of Cerberus - this illusive man your package mentioned - what if he turns out to not be especially enthusiastic at the prospect of having his organisation co-opted?” Magos Crave asked.

“There won’t be any co-option, only co-operation,” said Loghain.

Language was very important.

“Obviously. What about when he isn’t enthusiastic about co-operation, then?” Crave asked.

“Then we will do our best to convince him of the wisdom of our position,” Loghain said.

“And when that doesn’t work?” Varne asked.

“Then we shall take appropriate steps,” Loghain said, very deliberately, looking directly at him. He got the point.

“Ah. He’ll be a new man, eh?”

“If he needs to be.”

Varne smiled. It wasn’t an especially nice one.

“This plan doesn’t really have many specifics, does it?” Crave asked.

Loghain did not like that word. In her mind and in her approach an Inquisitor had to be, above all things, flexible. Not in a moral sense, obviously - morally an Inquisitor had to be rock-solid and unyielding. But in the application of this adamant approach an Inquisitor had to be flexible, weaving around whatever obstacles the Emperor saw fit to place before them in the execution of their duties.

To be specific was to be static, and to be static was to have those obstacles start weaving around you. As it were. Or so she liked to argue whenever her colleagues complained.

“This plan can’t really have specifics, at least in the long term. Short term maybe, but that’s sort of the point. We are taking it a step at a time and working towards an eventual goal. We’ll meet our contact, see how this meeting goes, regardless of how the meeting goes continue to pursue our goal the best way possible, keep going from there. We’ll think about each step before we take it, while keeping an eye on where we’re going, yes?” Loghain asked, looking around her team.

“Your imagery confuses me, but I suppose I can see what you’re driving at,” said Crave.

“Wonderful. Glad we’re on the same page. Al Bet - you’ve been quiet. Thoughts?”

“I am a sword in the Emperor’s hand, wielded as the Inquisition wills,” said al Bet.

“That’s not what I asked.”

“No, but it is all that matters.”

“...fair enough. If you have anything you want to bring up, don’t hesitate. My door is always open.”

“I do not know what that means,” al Bet said.

“Fair enough. Look, team, at the end of the day this isn’t that complicated. Ultimately, what we want is human influence - Imperial influence - to spread across this galaxy, as is only right. This won’t happen overnight. It probably won’t even happen in our lifetimes. But what we can do is ensure that it does happen, that everything is in place to make sure it will happen. That’s our job.”

“I thought our job was to counter alien influence and threats to the Imperium, its assets, its holdings, and its citizens,” said Varne.

“No, that’s just our niche. Our job is to protect and further Imperial interests. This is not an opportunity we can afford to pass up. I repeat: an entire new galaxy. And, given what’s coming, a galaxy that we can help ensure human primacy in. Can you imagine what the Imperium could do unopposed with a galaxy? What it might let us do with our own galaxy? Think what the Imperium could do without having to counter waaaaghs, hive fleets, tomb worlds, hrud migrations - pick something, imagine not having to deal with it. Imagine!”

“They frown on imagination in the mechanicus,” Crave said.

Loghain stared at him on the off-chance that this was an attempt at humour. It was not.

“I’m aware,” she said.

The meeting petered out.

+++++++

“Tali, I know how you feel.”

“Shepard, you cannot possibly know how I feel.”

I thought about this and thought about trying to argue against it, but realised I really couldn’t and really didn’t have a leg to stand on. She had me there.

“...point, but the fact remains.”

Tali was not happy with me. This was because I’d woken the geth up and had a chat with it. The geth was now a part of the team. Kind of an odd turns of events but for me odd turns of events are pretty normal. I’m not sure how Tali found out about these developments but she did, and she came up to my cabin, and now she’s not happy with me.

And, you know, that’s fair.

“What were you thinking?” She asks, in tones equal parts angry and disappointed, yet still managing to remain surprisingly composed. A cold fury, I suppose, hopefully softened a bit by what I hope is at least a smidgen of respect for my judgement (and excellent leadership qualities and fine good looks and such).

“I was thinking I wanted some answers from the thing. Got them, too. Or some at least. Enough to be getting along with, from where I’m standing,” I said.

I’m not sure what I’d expected a conversation with a geth to be like, but Legion - it was called Legion, the geth, a name chosen by EDI for reasons that make sense in context - was certainly not what I’d imagined. It had been hard to forget I’d been talking with a machine while we’d been talking, but there’d been more there than you might have guessed. Just little hints here and there.

Certainly, they were less hammy than Sovereign had been, if we’re talking about conversations with killer robots. Or ‘Nazara’, or whatever it was apparently actually called. I’ll stick with Sovereign, personally. I’m used to it and it’s dead anyway, so is it going to complain?

Anyway. Legion. It hadn’t been a long conversation, even with my primitive hardware (getting quietly shamed by a machine on account of not being able to process faster-than-light data transfer wasn’t something I’d seen happening today). It hadn’t really needed to be a long conversation. It got to the point pretty quick. Legion - and by extension, it seems, the bulk of the geth - doesn’t like the Reapers, wants to stop the Reapers, figures since I’m already working on that it would make sense to pitch in. More or less.

Hell, made sense to me. Cooperation is better than conflict, as they say. Or, as Legion said, cooperation furthers mutual goals, which is also a pretty neat way of saying it. Certainly knows how to speak my language.

Of course, Tali likely doesn’t see things quite that way, and, again, that’s fair.

“You don’t know what it wants,” she said.

“Well, right now it wants to help us stop the Reapers.”

Via stopping the Collectors first, but really it’s all part of the same deal.

“That’s what it says, but the geth were working with Sovereign.”

“A splinter group, apparently. Heretics, I’m told. Evocative term.”

Did seem a very odd choice of word to me, for machines I mean. Maybe that was a translation issue? Nuance? Or maybe they really, really meant it? I don’t know. Still, strong word. Strong connotations. Seems to catch Tali off-guard.

“What?” She asks.

“Yeah, I was surprised too. Legion - uh, the geth down there is called Legion, to clarify - said the bulk of the geth find the ones we were gunning our way through reprehensible. Not in those words, of course, but that was the impression I got. A difference of opinion.”

That definitely seems to catch her off-guard. I see her recoil a little.

“That’s not -” she says, but then shakes her head, resolve stiffening. “It doesn’t matter. You can’t trust the geth. You can’t trust this geth. They don’t think like we do.”

I shrug.

“You know the geth better than I do, Tali, I’m just going by what I was told and by how they could have shot me and very deliberately didn’t. That’s not a definitive test of character, I’ll admit, but Legion went to a lot of trouble to say it’s on our side. If it wanted to sabotage us, putting a round through my skull would have been simpler than pretending to be our friend. I think it’s worth giving it a chance.”

Given the choice I’d much rather have the geth with the big gun standing next to me, pointing that gun away from me. Personally speaking.

Tali looks at me, then I see her blink. She sighs, deflates a little bit, little bit of the tension letting out, shoulders lowering.

“Alright Shepard. I’ll go along with this. Because it’s you. If it was anyone else I wouldn’t believe any of it and I’d be out. But impossible things have a habit of happening when you’re around,” she said.

She wasn’t wrong.

“Don’t I know it. I died, did you hear about that?” I asked, and it’s hard to tell but I think I get a tiny bit of a smile out of her with that one. It sounds like I do when she replies, at least.

“Did you now?”

“Yeah. You probably missed it.”

“Well, I have been very busy,” she says, going quiet a moment and then adding: “When it turns on us, though…”

I hold up a hand because I can see where she’s coming from and where she’s going.

“If Legion turns on us you have my permission to shotgun them in half and my further permission to tell me ‘I told you so’ from that point on until the end of time, okay? You can carve it on my tombstone.”

“...okay. Feels weird to say ‘thank you’ to anything involving a tombstone…” she says.

“Eh, already died once, not a big deal. But thanks Tali, means a lot. I want everyone pulling together on this because I want everyone coming home, okay? Everyone in the team can go back to bickering once we’re done, but until then I want the team to be The Team, okay?”

“Okay Shepard, I get it.”

“Good, I’m glad. Also glad you brought this to me now and didn’t let it fester. Alright, now you go back to whatever it was you were doing before, Tali. Go have a look at one of those laser rifles. We’ll be off and away doing something important before you know it, swapping high-fives in the smoking ruins of the Collector base.”

She didn’t really know what to say to this, and just sort of left. Fair.

I’m probably a pretty boring conversationalist these days in that most conversations will, if they go on too long, loop around to how everyone in the galaxy needs to relax and bury the hatchet and get on the same page or we’ll all be killed by the Reapers, but in my defence I do have, as I’ve said, the dying scream of a people on the way to extinction carved into my brain. And I did speak to one of the Reapers who did say this was the plan. Makes it kind of, you know, present for me. Not an abstract.

Gives me a unique position, you might say.

Still weird that I spoke to a geth. A geth! That’s a novelty, putting it lightly.

Although, if what Legion has said is true and the bulk of the geth don’t actually like the Reapers all that much and are in fact just as much in the firing line as the rest of us, well, I’m probably going to end up having to talk to the geth again when things start heating up because the more the merrier, right? Can’t forge your own future if you’ve been blown to bits by the Old Machines, right? Might need some help? We might need some help? Co-operation furthers mutual goals?

But that’s a bridge I’ll cross when I come to it. If I come to it. If we survive this bit.

One thing at a time, eh?

Putting my feet up on my desk and I grab that weirdo dataslate of Jarrion’s and try to read up a little more background on the Imperium - just to pass the time, really - and I get to enjoy a pleasant few, serene minutes on my own without interruption before the next interruption happens, a quiet chime informing me that someone wants a word.

“Yes?” I ask the air.

“There’s something on the extranet you need to see. There’s been - well, you should look for yourself, Commander.”

It was Yeoman Chambers. Unusual.

And ah, another of those ‘You need to see this’ moments where no-one explains what it is. I never liked those. Still, sometimes it is easier to just look for yourself than have someone try to explain, so fine.

Something about the sound of her voice that kind of unsettles me though. She sounds rattled.

“Any hints?” I ask.

“It’s the top story right now,” she says.

Helpful. I take my feet off the desk and go to the console.

It doesn’t take me long to find what I’m pretty sure she was talking about:

“Batarian colony attacked.”

That’s new. Must be quite something to be so prominently newsworthy, too. A big attack, I mean, something notable. They don’t throw every little pirate raid up into the headlines, generally speaking. The collectors spreading the net wider? What?

I’m not sure, so I keep scrolling, keep reading, keep looking at what few, low-quality images have managed to somehow be smuggled out. Details were sketchy, obviously, it being a Batarian colony and all, but it was apparently far enough away from central control that prying eyes had managed to capture this attack.

Why was this important, I was still wondering.

And there we see a ship, a human ship, an Imperial human ship, bombarding the planet. It’s a distant shot and not the highest quality, but there’s no mistaking the make of that ship or what it’s doing. Full-on raining fire. This wasn’t targeted destruction of assets or anything like that, this wasn’t limited-damage pinpoint bombardment of military installations or whatever. This was razing. This was apocalyptic.

I’ve seen broadsides in my time - would have been a surprise if I hadn’t. You get a lot of guns on the sides of a cruiser, and they can kick out a hell of a lightshow. But this was something else. Turns out you can pack in a scary number of guns if your gundeck is a couple of clicks long, and when you open up with that, well..

I wouldn’t want to be on the other end. Or standing on the surface of that planet. If there’s even anything left to be called a surface under all that. Shit. I’m not the biggest fan of batarians which, given my service record, shouldn’t come as the biggest surprise, but no-one deserves that, do they? Shit, again.

This isn’t good, to put it mildly. To put it less mildly this is pretty fucking terrible. Monstrous. It’s so insanely ridiculous and horrendous I’m having trouble putting my head around it. How many people have died? No estimates yet but, looking at it, it has to be a staggering amount, and that is overwhelming. The kind of numbers you can’t wrap your head around.

How has this happened? Why? Why did he do it? Was this always going to happen? Was it only a matter of time? I’d picked up on the xenophobia but Jarrion had seemed pretty stable, all things considered.

What was this? Where had this come from? Why had he done this?

And as horrified as I am - and I am pretty horrified, this is a nightmare - there’s still that detached, pragmatic part of me that’s saying that this is just another fucking problem that I’m probably going to have to deal with. Add it to the list.

But as I’m staring and trying to think about what the hell this all means and what this will cause, something is nagging at me. I’m not really aware of this at first, just have an itch on my brain that tells me what I’m looking at doesn’t add up, but I’m so distracted by what’s happened I figure it’s that - I figure what doesn’t add up is what’s happened, what I’ve seen happen.

But it’s not. Sure, what I’m seeing doesn’t make sense, but that’s not what my brain is trying to grasp at. There’s something obvious I’m looking at that I’m not seeing. The itch continues.

There’s another quiet chime as someone elsewhere on-board tries to get my attention.

“Yes?” I ask, tearing my eyes away from the long-distance, unhelpful image. You’d think someone would have cleaned that up by now. The angle didn’t help - can barely make out Jarrion’s ship. Guess you take what you can get out of Batarian space, but hell. It’s obviously his ship - who else has something that looks like that? - but beyond that not a whole lot to go on. Not a lot to make me feel certain. Not a lot to scratch that mental itch.

Anyway. The chime. It’s Chambers again.

“The Council wants to speak with you, Commander. They say it’s urgent,” she says. I put my face in my hands and try not to sigh - I’ll sigh once Chambers is off the line.

“I bet they do.”

Galaxy’s go-to woman for anything you need sorting out, apparently. Knew it’d be my problem. Guess I’m technically the expert here.

Shit.

Chapter Text

Meanwhile, the Assertive was in orbit over Horizon, unloading.

Despite not being a dedicated cargo vessel by any means, Jarrion had brought enough equipment and other sundries from the Imperium to pack just about every available inch of space the Asseritive had and enough to make unloading a significant event. Lighters flew up and down in an unceasing relay and had been doing so for going on a day already - they were, after all, not proper vessels for the process.

But it was getting done, albeit a little slowly, and once it was finished they could then get onto proper freighters and out to where they needed. All good stuff, as far as Jarrion was concerned. He was at that moment on the bridge, mostly to see what was going on and to be seen seeing what was going on.

It was always good for a Lord Captain to be present, he felt, or at the very least a presence.

So he was variously either sat on the command throne flicking through dataslates or else mingling with whichever bridge officer looked to have a spare moment, looking interested and appearing involved. This was why he was there when something unexpected happened.

What had been mild hubbub among the crew manning the ship’s augurs quickly rose to outright alarm, culminating in the ship’s Master of Aetherics double-checking some trouble readings and then shouting out:

“Lord Captain! Registering an alien vessel! Same class as previously engaged.Collector signature.”

This thoroughly derailed Jarrion’s train of thought, which had been trundling along to nowhere in particular.

“Again? Where? Put tactical on the vidscreen,” he said, getting over his initial blip of confusion. Obligingly and a moment later a tactical overlay of the local system was put onto the bridge’s vidscreen, laying out plain the disposition of everything the augurs were presently picking up and showing, true enough, the threatening red blip of an approaching vessel that had automatically been marked as hostile.

“Intercept course…” Jarrion breathed to himself, eyeing the blip, narrowing his eyes and charting its trajectory in his head - though really he didn’t need to, it was charted on the vidscreen for him, predictively laid out.

Same as the last one, tonnage-wise, like the crewman had said. Judging from its angle and distance of approach it looked to have been hiding behind one of the outer planets or moons or whatever else there was to lurk around in the system, shielding itself from view and scrying sensors prior to making its move. A standard level of cunning, and equally cunning to make that move now, while the Assertive was otherwise engaged.

Perfidious xenos! Jarrion had himself performed just such a manoeuvre in the past when dealing with pirates and, indeed, aliens - it was sound tactics. But when aliens did it themselves it wasn’t cunning, just underhanded. Vile filth. Everything they did was wrong. They were, in the very fabric of their being, wrong.

If nothing else this was an opportunity to rid the galaxy of a handful.

“Battle stations! All lighters in transit to the surface continue down, those returning redirect to the surface. Voids up as soon as they’re clear. Break orbit, plot course to intercept xenos vessel - firing solutions!” Jarrion said, not taking his eyes off the tactical display.

“Aye, Lord Captain!” The bridge chroused back at him.

There was a lot of back-and-forth shouting and vox traffic as orders were swiftly relayed and, within moments, the telltale lurch of the Assertive accelerating away from the planet. Jarrion took to his throne and settled in. On the screen, the blips were now both approaching one another.

Out of effective range. For now.

“Voids to maximum, Lord Captain,” said a tactical officer somewhere to Jarrion’s left.

“Excellent. Weapons?” Jarrion asked, glancing briefly to the officer.

“Batteries…”

A pause. Given the suddenness of it all it was unsurprising they weren’t quite loaded yet. An agonising few seconds passed, during which Jarrion could well imagine the furious activity of the ratings throughout the gun decks, then:

“...batteries loaded and charged, Lord Captain! Lance capacitors at seventy-three percent and rising. Tactical augurs showing hard-lock on target. Ready to fire on your word.”

“Excellent, excellent.”

Still out of range, though now approaching extreme range. Any fire would be ineffective at best, at least from the Assertive. He couldn’t speak to the alien’s weapons, but given they were holding fire he felt it safe to assume they too were also out of effective range. Tension mounted as the distance closed.

“Keep them on starboard, helm, and let’s close to long range - the moment we’re in range open fire. Let’s get this started, eh?”

The last time he’d fought with one of these collector vessels it hadn’t exactly lasted an especially long time, but then again it hadn’t been an especially fair fight, either. He’d had the drop on the thing, and they’d been running to boot. He was confident, but he was also equally keen to have it finished with as soon as possible.

“Aye, Lord Captai-”

“Lord Captain! Xenos vessel firing!”

And indeed it was. The tactical display showed the event in very dry terms, but the real-time pictview that Jarrion had brought up on the screen attached to the arm of his command throne (that he’d swung out because he always liked to see what was going on outside during combat) showed it much more vividly. The distant, twinkling dot of the collector vessel twinkled brighter for a moment and then a thin ribbon of dazzling energy came drizzling towards them.

The first ribbon missed, but Jarrion judged it to be a mere ranging shot. Indeed, the second shot was far longer and was right on target, raking cleanly across their voids, which flared vividly as the beam played over them. Jarrion gritted his teeth in disgust. He never got used to anyone - particularly not aliens - shooting at his ship. It made him, to put it lightly, upset.

“Report,” he snapped out the instant the beam broke contact.

“Voids holding, Lord Captain,” came the reply.

Barely scratched, not that Jarrion was overly surprised given what he’d seen. Imperial void shields were built for withstanding thundering volleys of thousands of shells or salvoes from multiple lance arrays. A brief swipe of an energy beam amounted to very little, in the scheme of things.

Not for the first time Jarrion mused on how differently they did things in this galaxy. On an entirely different scale, really, with an entirely different approach. Playing by two sets of rules.

“Oh well,” he said. “Range?”

He could see, he just wanted to be told.

“Starboard batteries approaching medium range, Lord Captain,” came the response. They’d passed long range while being shot at, it seemed. Medium could have been better, could have been worse. He saw the target was closing, too, albeit slightly obliquely. A reasonable angle. Worth taking a shot.

“Open fire,” he said.

The Assertive’s grav-culverin batteries opened up. Hundreds and hundreds of barrels recoiled in rippling sequence, shells each the size of a Kodiak whipping out across the void. Some had been fuzed to detonate short of the target, to scatter shrapnel, to better overwhelm shields. The rest were simply standard shells, fuzed to detonate after impact (or on impact; precision wasn’t wholly necessary). All of them formed a rolling flurry that blanketed space around the collector ship. A lot missed. A lot didn’t.

Collector barriers, while strong - very strong, in fact; some of the best available - had not been designed with Imperial weapon batteries in mind. While a good amount of the smaller, lighter shrapnel from the detonating rounds was deflected, the sheer mass of the other shells was such that they made a complete mockery of the shields, barely diverting in their course at all and smashing into the hull of the alien vessel with wanton abandon, where they then (mostly) exploded. Great chunks of metal and less readily identifiable material were torn loose and blown into the void.

To say nothing of the Assertive’s dorsal laser battery, of course, which just ignored the barriers completely and seared superheated furrows into whatever it was the hull was made of, shearing off metal protuberances and detonating point-defence blisters. After a single volley the ship was already limping. Jarrion couldn’t help but smirk.

“They appear to have made a mistake, here,” he said, magnifying the visual on his pictscreen as much as it could go, the better to see the damage. He still couldn’t really see it, but he let his imagination fill in the blanks. Delayed twinkles spoke of secondary detonations, serious damage. Gratifying.

“Lord Captain! There is another alie- no, two additional contacts!” Shouted the Master of Aetherics, who was having a very busy day by all accounts. Jarrion stopped imagining explosions and stopped smirking.

“What? Where?” He asked, looking up at the tactical display still on the bridge’s main vidscreen. Sure enough, two new contacts where there had been absolutely nothing before. There was not even a hint of where they might have been hiding this time and for a second Jarrion was completely at a loss. Then it hit him.

They’d just literally arrived. Just jumped in. Faster than light. They could do that here.

He’d seen it before from the local vessels, just not like this. He’d found it rather a novelty, in fact, watching his expanding fleet of Kowloon freighters zipping away into space. Quite the contrast to the acceleration a warp-capable Imperial vessel usually needed to get up to speed. Here and now though there was no novelty. Here and now it was just unpleasant. With a vessel arriving from the Warp you couldn’t help but notice it arrive. Here, it was like they’d popped out of the void.

In many ways he supposed they rather had.

“Keep firing on the first target! Helm! Do your best to keep the others out of range until the first has been destroyed!”

Or crippled. Or was just not in any position to shoot back anymore. But that part didn’t need saying. There was another lurch as the Assertive manoeuvred, rolling to keep its batteries on target as it curved to try its best to split the difference between staying in range of its target while keeping out of range of becoming a target itself.

The new arrivals closed. They didn’t have that far to close, in all honesty, having dropped in comfortably inside firing range, if not ideal firing position. Jarrion could see that, while they’d arrived together, they’d arrived from two separate angles. A pincer to his rear. To fire effectively on them, Jarrion would have to stop firing at the first ship and let it get away, even turning to one of them he’d be splitting the bulk of his fire. Smart bastards.

“Fire as soon as the batteries are reloaded,” Jarrion said, keenly aware of the few seconds remaining before the new arrivals opened up on them. The first ship was facing full away now, presenting a small target but also, perhaps unluckily, presenting its engines. When the Assertive fired again it was the alien’s engines that took the shots.

“Target well hit! Engine damage! First vessel showing diminishing energy signatures, decay in acceleration, listing. First vessel is - yes, vessel is showing as a hulk, Lord Captain.”

“Switch targets! My mark! That one, that one!” Jarrion shouted, furiously jabbing at his screen, trying to get his point across. Before anyone could act on his orders the two other collector ships got into position and both fired together.

There was a sound just on the edge of hearing that rose in pitch and volume briefly, like a vast swarm of buzzing insects rattling down a metal tube. It put Jarrion’s teeth on edge. Then it stopped.

“Voids holding!”

This was true. Whether this would remain true in the circumstances was less clear. Against a single vessel it was likely the Assertive could have been borderline invincible, at least in this galaxy. Against two at once? When they were - as Jarrion could now see, looking at the readouts - plainly concentrating their fire together on a single point of the voids?

Well, she was only a light cruiser, after all…

“New target! Fire! Fire!”

The angle was bad, but it was better than nothing.

“Target hit. Target showing…light damage, Lord Captain.”

Again the aliens fired and again came the furious buzzing sound, louder this time, with a definite throbbing crackle towards the end when the beams ceased.

“Voids - voids h-holding, but showing fluctuations. Capacitors one through seven reaching maximum. They might not-”

“They will hold!” Jarrion spat through gritted teeth.

The aliens were very near now, apparently having decided - not without cause - that to keep distance from the Assertive would be an unwise move and that getting in as close as possible would play to their agility over the Dauntless. One of the ships was sweeping in from the front, the other having swooped to come in front the rear, still on two sides.

Jarrion could see what they were doing, working to present two different targets and not to let fields of fire overlap. It was the one moving towards the prow that caught Jarrion’s attention, because while it was obviously trying hard to keep out of the arc of fire of the Assertive’s lances, it wasn’t keeping so far out of the arc that a quick adjustment wouldn’t solve the issue.

“Helm! Burn retros and come to new heading! I want that ship where the lances can hit it!”

“Yes, Lord Captain!”

There was a violent lurch as thrusters roared to life to arrest the Assertive’s forward momentum, others kicking in a moment later and sending everyone listing to the side as the ship struggled against the inertia to haul its bulk around. Fortunately for the Assertive, it had been built with this sort of agility (such as it was) in mind, and while everyone on board felt the effort, the effort bore fruit. The collector ship came comfortably into the prow arc and full view of the lances.

“Lances, now! Now! All arrays! Fire!”

And fire they did, all three of the Assertive’s lances fired at once, at full capacity, and at a range where they would have had trouble missing. They didn’t miss. They all fired together and all fired such that their beams converged on a single point - a single point that the collector vessel flew straight through.

Jarrion was put rather in mind of a cousin of his, who, while driving a very expensive (and very delicate) landcar of prestigious and exclusive manufacture, had hit a lamppost at considerable speed, somehow managing to almost perfectly bisect the vehicle from front to rear bumper. The sight had stuck with Jarrion for years, and came to him again now.

Though while his cousin had managed to limp away from that particular calamity, Jarrion very much doubted any aliens would be coming away from this one. Not alive, at least.

The lance salvo ended before the alien ship had taken it the full length, but what it had taken was more than enough. The energy beams had furiously torn through side to side from the prow almost all the way to the stern, and the ship carrying on moving forward was enough to finish the job. The ship ripped into two pieces.

“Enemy ship crippled, Lord Captain!” A crewman yelled, presumably to clear up any confusion. It did rather make Jarrion grin. The lances tended to have that effect on him.

“Putting it mildly. That is very satisfying to see,” he said.

Jarrion felt fairly confident in writing off that ship as a threat. Just left one.

“Firing solution on the last target, if you please. Uh, where is it?”

Its position was not immediately obvious, at least not that he could see.

“Final vessel - final vessel is below us, Lord Captain!”

This sort of thing happened sometimes in space, but so rarely Jarrion had momentarily forgotten about it. He got over his shock in short order.

“Bring the batteries to bear! Turn! Roll!”

“Energy spike in the alien ship, Lord Captain! It’s - that doesn’t make sense, how is-”

Jarrion could see this, too, and he too was confused by what appeared to be an impossible and self-destructive level of energy suddenly surging through every system in the ship. But before he or anyone else could puzzle this out or even voice their puzzlement, someone else shouted:

“Enemy is accelerating! Hard! Distance closing!”

That snapped Jarrion back to the moment.

“Accel-? They’re going to ram us! All hands! Brace for impact! All hands-!

There was a horrendous lurch to the side as the ships collided, the inertial-dampening systems of the Assertive struggling with the sudden and forceful impact. Jarrion went sideways over his throne and he wasn’t the only one. An ear-splitting scraping noise tore the air and every surface juddered violently. No consoles exploded.

The collision felt like it lasted a long, long time. It didn’t, but it felt like it did. Once everything had stopped shaking and rumbling and the noise had stopped, Jarrion leapt to his feet. Across the bridge others were doing likewise, or helping others do likewise. Someone groaned, but that was inevitable in the circumstances.

Alarms were blaring, but fewer than he might have expected, and not as loudly as he might have feared. He’d need to hear a proper assessment, but he could tentatively guess that maybe damage wasn’t as awful as it could have been.

“Report,” he said, slicking his hair back and wincing as he belatedly noticed he’d bitten the inside of his mouth in the impact.

“Damage seems to be largely confined to the lower decks, Lord Captain, and largely localised around the point of impact. Some scattered reports of hull breaches are coming in from further out but nothing to suggest the structure of the ship is in danger.”

“And the alien ship?”

“Crippled, Lord Captain. Readings show total systems failure and massive structural damage.”

The Assertive was made of considerably sterner stuff than the alien ship, it transpired, and had held up much, much better. This was good.

“Good, good…” Jarrion breathed.

There was one issue, though.

“But, uh, Lord Captain…”

“What?”

“It is stuck.”

“Stuck?”

“The alien vessel is stuck on the Assertive, Lord Captain.”

Jarrion thought about this.

“...bugger,” he said, having run out of anything else to say.

Chapter Text

The collector ship was indeed stuck. Worse, while it was mostly stuck on the Assertive it was, in more than a few places, stuck in the Assertive .

It was those points that presented the biggest problem, those points of contact, for half-destroyed as it might have been, the alien ship was not totally destroyed and was, going by the readings, still full of a not-inconsiderable number of presumably rather unhappy xenos.

They might want to come over and have a word.

Armsmen-led teams of ratings raced through the damaged areas, looking for breaches. Specifically, they were looking for areas where the alien ship had penetrated the hull of the Assertive sufficiently to create passage between the two vessels. As-and-when they found such passages - and there were several such places where the impact had created them - they set about with melta charges and lascutters to collapse and shore-up the affected areas.

By-and-large they were able to go about this work unhindered, the collectors either not having found the breaches yet themselves, not being concerned about them, or not having the forces present on hand to make use of them. In those places where the aliens had found the breaches and had started to make inroads into the Assertive , well, that’s what the armsmen were for.

A lot of them were being shot and a not inconsiderable number of them were dying, despite their armour, but they were doing so for the greater good of the ship and it wasn’t as if the Assertive was going to be running out of them anyway. By their blood they bought the ratings the time needed to plug the holes.

One breach, however, defied easy fixing, owing to its size. This was a major breach, a significant rent in the fabric of the ship, and a point at which the Assertive and the collector vessel had become more-or-less inseparable. You could have driven a tank through the hole. Indeed, you could - had you been so inclined - driven two tanks side-by-side through it. This was an issue.

What made it a particular issue was that this specific point of impact, just by happenstance, had breached a chamber on the collector ship that had been home to a significant swarm of seekers. This was something the repair teams quickly discovered, to their detriment.

The pressure carapace of the armsmen and the bulky voidsuits of the ratings provided some measure of protection against the creatures, but it was hardly reliable, and the breach was littered with the frozen, helpless bodies of those who’d arrived first and hadn’t known what had been waiting for them.

Followup teams had similar luck, even if they arrived with flamers. They scorched the swarm, and this helped, but did not help enough. What made a proper difference was someone’s bright idea to bring up and deploy the perimeter defence pylons from the Assertive ’s colonial cargo - crackling arcs of power lashing out to incinerate swathes of seekers, sending the swarm into confusion, rendering what few remained largely scattered and non-threatening.

It was then the collectors proper arrived, and the shooting started.

+++++++

He never would have told anyone, but Father Til had been waiting for something like this to happen, and the excitement he felt did much to dampen the guilt he felt from feeling the excitement in the first place.

It was bad that foul aliens were boarding the ship, yes, but it was good that he would finally have a chance to kill some of them. After all, wasn’t that a significant portion of what the Emperor expected from his followers? To rid the galaxy of aliens? And while ministering to the spiritual health of the crew was technically contributing to the Emperor’s cause and it might have been a little selfish to have been hoping for a chance at more directly contributing, well, Father Til could hardly be blamed too much for feeling a little thrill at a long-held daydream finally coming true. He was only human, after all.

Ultimately, regardless of his feelings on the matter the fact remained: Aliens were coming, armsmen had organised and armed teams of ratings to throw them back, and Father Til was going along with them. He’d joined the first armed group he’d seen, following them into one of the bigger between-deck lifts. He hadn’t asked, but no-one had told him no, so that seemed to settle the matter.

The eviscerator he had with him probably helped to persuade people he belonged. He’d grabbed it from where it had lain, untouched, in his cramped little cabin when he’d heard the call to arms. He hadn’t even thought twice, instantly dropping what he’d been doing and running to get the thing. Something had moved in him and moved him and by the time he’d scraped his wits together enough to even really comprehend what the alarms meant he was running alongside the crew, weapon in hand.

This was right, he felt.

And now he was in the elevator, standing alongside heavily armed and armoured armsmen, inscrutable behind photovisors and slightly less heavily armed and not-especially-armoured-at-all ratings, who didn’t have photovisors and so could do little to hide their obvious nervousness. Father Til could understand this. Combat was always nerve wracking, particularly if you were going in perhaps not as well equipped as you might like, facing something unknown. 

But there was a fine line between acceptable nerves and unacceptable cowardice. And Father Til felt that, given his role, it was his job to ensure they stayed on the right side of the line.

“Courage brothers and sisters, courage!” He said, raising his voice above the rattling of the lift and making those closest to him jump. He could be a very loud man when he wanted to be. “The Emperor is watching! The Emperor protects. Trust to Him. Trust to Him and do fine, brave deeds in His name! Let us not squander a chance to earn His glory. Remember, it is better to die for the Emperor than to live for yourself! Only in death may we show the truest of devotion!” 

As he spoke he revved his eviscerator at regular intervals, seemingly without noticing, fingers just gripping the throttle reflexively, enormous weapon judding in his hands like a starving animal straining at the leash. Or so he liked to think as the vibration ran through his body and made him conscious of what he was doing. It made him think about what the vibration would feel like when the teeth met alien flesh.

Happily his words (or his revving) seemed to have an effect, and the nervousness diminished somewhat, and a little excitement seemed to fill those present, a little grim determination, a little resolve.

The lift clanked and clanged to a halt, jolted, and then the doors rolled back. The sound of gunfire was immediate and deafening and was coming from just up ahead and just out of sight. Everyone moved forward. Soon, the breach came into view.

Knots of armsmen and ratings, working together, were dragging back bodies - some frozen, some wounded, some probably dead - while others were crouched between twisted spars and curls of plating or behind wrecked machinery, exchanging fire with the aliens hunkering down on their own side of the hole. The pylons were still there too, where they’d been set up, sparking occasionally as the handful of remaining seekers got zapped.

Fortunately for all those present without breathing equipment or void suits, the violent mashing of the ships had here produced a tight enough seal to maintain an atmosphere, at least for the moment. Not that Father Til even thought about this. He was distracted by the invaders.

They were unfamiliar to him, not anything he’d seen in his days as a guardsman, but that hardly mattered. The galaxy had no shortage of foul aliens, and they all needed killing whether he was personally acquainted with them or not.

Worse though were what he could clearly see were humans - or what had been humans - being herded ahead of the aliens, their flesh riven with disgusting xenos technology, their bodies turned into some manner of perverse living weapon. Father Til didn’t fully understand what he was looking at, of course, but that hardly mattered as a wave of husks was sent snarling and scrambling towards one of the positions of the armsmen were holding, getting mown down by the shotcannon that had been set up but getting close enough to engage and distract them, allowing the aliens themselves to start to manoeuvre. 

Father Til didn’t have the context or background or the details on what husks were, but he didn’t need any of them. He saw aliens, he saw what had clearly been humans being used by the aliens. He didn’t need to see anything else to understand. He saw red.

The aliens that had broken cover were pushing in now, getting close enough they might even start to properly board the Assertive itself. Father Till saw this, too. The thought of them setting even one foot aboard filled him with immediate, overwhelming disgust, and once again something moved him. Hefting his eviscerator up in both hands he was sprinting forward and shouting before he’d even blinked.

“Hear me! See the alien! Hate the alien! They violate the fabric of the ship with every step, violate our sight with their very presence! They are an abomination, and they - in their cowardly desire to avoid righteous death at the guns of this, one of the Emperor’s holy vessels - have brought the heresy of their very existence here! To this ship! To your home! Will you allow these creatures to further desecrate the Assertive ? Will you permit them to live a moment longer than they have to when you hold in your hands the means to end their worthless lives? Every alien murdered in His name is a human soul raised to glory! Every alien murdered in His name sees the stars shine that much brighter in His sky! Every alien murdered in His name is an act of exultation, an act of the purest worship! His will is that you murder the alien! Let them not draw one more blasphemous breath of our pure air! Go forth and kill! Drive them from the ship! Drive them from our sight! Kill! With every step taken leave an alien body in your wake! Kill so that you have to wade through filthy alien blood to kill the rest! Kill them all! Leave none alive! Mercy wasted on the alien is a sin against His grace! Kill! KILL! KILL! KILL!”

This speech was punctuated of course by the occasional furious yell or grunt of exertion as he swung the eviscerator around into some fresh target, spraying blood and chips of alien armour plate over himself and everything around him, undercut by the basically constant snap and crackle of alien rifle fire striking the shield projected by his rosarius. Not that he seemed to notice (or care about) that.

A blasphemous, lumpen amalgam of human bodies twisted into foul new shape by alien means loped at him, raising an arm fused to some sort of weapon projector. The thing roared, but he was on it before it could fire, chainblade swinging and cutting cleanly through both its legs and sending the thing crashing forward to the ground where it was promptly shotgunned to bits by a gaggle of ratings who had been following in the priest’s wake, taking advantage of both his progress and his shield.

“Ours is the right to rule the stars, yours is the right TO DIE SCREAMING IN TERROR BY OUR HAND, ALIEN FILTH!”

The ratings roared their approval, not even overly concerned by having two of their number unceremoniously mowed down by return fire from the aliens. It did get them moving again though. Towards the aliens. At speed. Them and a lot of others.

Momentum seemed to have tipped. The aliens had faltered in their advance and didn’t seem to know what to make of the humans running into the face of their fire, heedless of casualties. They especially didn’t seem to know what to make of the old man with the chainsaw who kept yelling and whose protection seemed to be impervious to their weapons.

The collectors broke and pulled back in as orderly a fashion as they could, many getting shot in the back as they did so, a few being caught before they could leave cover and getting promptly beaten to a pulp by mobs of ratings or clusters of armsmen with shock mauls. Father Til took a moment to catch his breath.

His rosarius was glowing white-hot, smoke curling from where it was burning his robes and starting to cook the meat of his chest. The weight of the eviscerator was beginning to tell on him as well, and his swinging it around. He wasn’t as young as he used to be. He stood, sucking in great ragged lungfuls of air, staring ahead, arms shaking. 

He was still standing though, and the rosarius was still functioning, somehow.

A commotion up ahead drew his attention back to the moment. Armsmen were shouting to one another, gesturing wildly. Some were scrambling to get away from something. Something new. Something bigger. 

An alien war machine of some kind hove into view. Like some nightmare, clattering beetle, hovering forward, insectoid legs dangling, eyes glowing and pincers snapping. Aa Father Til watched those glowing eyes glew even more brightly for a moment, flashing and discharging a blinding beam that incinerated a brace of the retreating armsmen, leaving only the twisted remains of their armour behind, stretched away in a streak.

Whatever tiredness he might have felt, whatever growing weakness in his arms, whatever fatigue - it all vanished. Again he was moved, again something moved him. He raised the eviscerator high and, with froth and a prayer on his lips, he flung himself at the alien construct.

Again those eyes glowed and again the beam shot out, hitting the field from his rosarius. The light was so bright it burnt his eyes, so he had to close them. Even then the light hurt. The rosarius finally gave out just as the blast finished, finally igniting Father Til’s robes in the process. Not that he had time to notice. Blinded, in mid-air, he trusted to Him and swung with every last scrap of fury he had left in his body.

The alien machine moved with alarming speed to catch the strike, but the eviscerator cleaved straight through the claw without even slowing, a brief spray of sparks all it had to show for the effort. A bigger, more drawn-out spray of sparks (and more besides) followed as the teeth bit into alien carapace, through alien carapace, and then into flesh, or at least what Father Til hoped (fervently hoped) was flesh.

Spasmodically, the machine’s other claw jabbed forward, punching cleanly through Father Til’s belly and out through his back. He wasn’t an especially large man, the claw hadn’t even met resistance. It didn’t matter. Legs failing, still blind, Father Til heaved what meagre weight he had forward, onto the eviscerator, pressing it further and further.

“B-by my b-blood, H-H-His will is…” he coughed, losing track of the words somewhere in the middle. He gasped with pain when the eviscerator finished cutting all the way through the alien and dropped to the deck, dropping Father Til with it and causing him to slip. His hand loosened on the throttle, and the claw transfixing him slid loose, taking a good chunk of his insides with it.

Father Til was dead, but he had died in a manner any honest servant of the Emperor might have envied: drenched in alien blood, spitting prayers into the face of death, carrying his duty to the grave. 

The collectors did not last long following this. Already on the defensive, this proved to be the last straw. Without the praetorian they were quickly overwhelmed and pushed back into their ship, the breach being collapsed not long after with judicious application of yet more melta charges and at least a couple actual meltaguns and even a grenade launcher that had been procured to assist. It wasn’t clean, but it worked.

Those who had witnessed Father Til’s heroic end were quick to find him. His (burnt) body and his eviscerator were borne back into the Assertive with reverence, taking priority even over the wounded.

+++++

Meanwhile, back on the bridge, Jarrion listened to the reports coming back to him.

“They finally closed that big one. Took them long enough,” he said on hearing the news, then looking to the officers clustered around him asked: “How is the rest of the damage looking?”

“Barring the ramming we came through almost entirely unscathed, Lord Captain. A few systems rattled but none of their weapons fire made any appreciable effect, failing to pierce the voids. Beyond the alien ship stuck to us we’re the picture of health,” said some lieutenant who was so fresh and new eager that Jarrion hadn’t caught her name yet. Ships were lousy with lieutenant's. It was hard to keep track sometimes.

“Well that’s nice. We need to get this damn ship off our damn ship, now. Suggestions?” Jarrion asked.

This seemed to put the wind up them. No-one wanted to be the first to speak lest they suggest something that no-one else liked or which was impractical, because then they’d look back. Gridlock resulted as they all hemmed and hawed. Jarrion had no time for this. He pointed at the fresh and eager lieutenant he didn’t know.

“You. What should we do?”

The lieutenant baulked. 

“M-me, Lord Captain?”

“Yes, you, uh-”

Jarrion tried to read the woman’s name as covertly as possible, not doing a very good job.

“-Lieutenant Mortimer. How should we dislodge this alien vessel?”

Feeling incredibly put on the spot and perhaps regretting having been the one to answer Jarrion’s question on the status of the ship in the first place, Lieutenant Mortimer shifted awkwardly, straightened her uniform, looked around for help (which didn’t come) and, when she ran out of ways to keep playing for time, tentatively said:

“We could, ah - we could accelerate? To make it - make it shear off? Lord Captain?”

As she finished she winced. She knew this was a bad idea.

“Accelerating could do a considerable amount of damage to the ship, and there’s no-way of guaranteeing it’d even dislodge the aliens. We might just tear them in half and leave the rest attached to us. Might reopen all those breaches we just closed, and we’ve lost a significant amount of atmosphere as it is,” another, more senior lieutenant - who Jarrion knew was named Carson - said, evidently very happy to speak if he was smacking down the ideas of others. Jarrion was not enthused.

“Well it was the first idea I’ve heard proposed. Still, yes, not a goer. Suppose it isn’t worth just sending ratings out with prybars to try and wiggle the thing loose?” He asked.

Blinks all round.

“Uh…”

No-one ever appreciated the jokes.

“That was a joke. I’m aware of how difficult this is,” Jarrion said.

“Ah, very good, Lord Captain. Aha. Ha.”

“Lord Captain!” Shouted a crewman from one of the consoles.

“Emperor’s teeth but it never ends - yes? What now?” Jarrion asked, strolling over, trailing officers.

“There’s an energy reading from the alien ship. It looks like a reactor might still be active onboard,” the crewman said, pointing to various screens that Jarrion vaguely understood. Certainly he could see a few things he recognised.

“Okay, well, that’s something,” he said, unsure what the point here was.

“And they may be attempting to overload it,” the crewman said, pointing to something else.

“...may be?”

The lack of certainty was unhelpful. The crewman fiddled with a few controls.

“It’s hard to make out, but the signature suggests they’ve already tried and failed at least once,” they said.

“Might not keep failing…” Carson said from just behind Jarrion’s head. Jarrion pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Throne preserve me! Why is nothing easy! We need that ship gone now ! I don’t want it exploding while it’s still stuck to us! I think we can all agree that would be bad, yes? Anyone feel like arguing with that ? No? Good! So! Suggestions ?”

Again, vacillating, this time with more mumbling. Nothing was immediately forthcoming.

Closing his eyes a moment Jarrion turned away if only so he wouldn’t have to look at any lieutenants for a few precious seconds. As he did so he caught sight of an image on a screen. It showed the Assertive and the alien ship stuck into it, sticking out of it. Jarrion saw this, and something clinked in his head, an idea bobbing to the surface.

“The voids!” He said, snapping his fingers and snapping the officers out of their mumbling.

“Lord Captain?”

“The void shields! They’re down right now, yes?” Jarrion asked.

“Yes, because there’s a ship in the way,” Lieutenant Carson said, slowly.

“Exactly. And I know how voids work - if we turn them back on they should cut through the ship, yes?” Jarrion asked, equally slowly. Those around him were starting to pick up on where he was heading.

“...in theory,” Lieutenant Mortimer piped in, hoping on riding Jarrion’s idea to restore a little integrity. 

“But they also might not,” another officer pointed out. There really were a lot of them around.

“Well what if we rerouted power to the voids? Overcharged them? Even briefly? Would that work?” Jarrion asked.

“...in theory,” Mortimer said again.

“Lord Captain! I cannot condone this course of action! The damage it might do to the shield systems alone is far too great, not to mention what it might do to however many other parts of the ship!”

“More or less damage than having a ship explode inside of kissing distance? Next to a bunch of freshly-repaired hull breaches, let’s not forget. I’m not happy about my suggestion but if it works and keeps us alive then we can all be unhappy about it afterwards, rather than being dead . So will it work - yes or no? And don’t say in theory,” Jarrion said, glancing at Lieutenant Mortimer who promptly shut her mouth.

“...yes,” said another officer, with obvious reluctance. It was all Jarrion needed.

“Good. Do it,” he said.

No-one moved.

“That is an order . Do it. My willingness to tolerate hesitation is not without limits.”

“Yes, Lord Captain.”

Having responsibility was a pain sometimes. 

Jarrion was entirely aware that what he was having them do probably wasn’t the optimum solution and was equally aware it was going to have unpleasant side-effects. At the same time though he knew that standing around doing nothing was just as bad if not worse, and sometimes there really wasn’t some golden, perfect option for you to take. Sometimes you just had to go for least worst or, if not that, whatever made one problem go away so another, newer, smaller problem could come in and take its place.

And being in charge meant he’d get the blame for any and all of it, just as he’d also get the blame had there been no decision and something bad also happened. You couldn’t win, but that was the nature of the game. 

Sighing, he put it behind him. Done now, die cast. Just have to roll with it.

Orders relayed, crew scrambled throughout the ship to see Jarrion’s command carried out. Most involved had no idea why they were doing what they doing, but that wasn’t unusual. Cables were moved, power shunted and rerouted, capacitors charged and arrays activated and all that sort of impressive technical jiggery-pokery. Jarrion sat.

Sensors showed that the aliens were continuing to attempt to overload their drive, stymied by the drive in question apparently being sufficiently damaged - either by the crash or by weapon fire, or both - they were unable to stoke it to a sufficient level. Each attempt they were making was improving, however. There was a certain amount of urgency.

Before too long word came that what needed to be done had been done. Jarrion gave the order to bring the shields online, full power.

Predictably, it did the voids no favours. It did work though. Quite spectacularly. 

The envelope of the shields flashed into activation with enormous, shocking force, slicing through the collector ship without so much as a hint of resistance, cutting clean before immediately overloading, as expected. Not all of the ship was removed, but the majority of it was, the part containing the drive most importantly, the mass of it drifting away thanks to a small, measured blast of the Assertive’s maneuvering thrusters.

A minute or so following this, as the bulk of the cruiser spun away into the void, the reactor finally detonated, but by then enough distance had been placed between the two ships that the effect was negligible. What damage there was came from the fragments, and while it wasn’t nothing, it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as having the explosion happen on top (or on the bottom, as it was) of them would have been.

Least worst, Jarrion liked to think.

Still, after that the Assertive was going to need time - a fair amount of time - in a proper and properly equipped dock to be restored to full working order, Jarrion knew, and he also knew this meant returning to the Imperium. He hadn’t scheduled that in.

He rubbed his face.

“We have spares for most of the more critical damaged systems down in Home Away From Home . Take us back into orbit, helm. We’ll finish unloading the cargo and start bringing up anything needed for repairs. Yes, yes - I’m aware you’ll need to properly look at what you need for repairs first, just start with what’s obvious, yes? Sure we’ve burnt out more than a few relays and conduits and what-have-you, don’t need to look for that. Then once we’ve done all that we can - “

He trailed off. Then what?

“ - then we can see where we are. For now I think we all have enough to be getting on with, yes?”

+++++++

Time passed. The Assertive limped back towards Horizon and back into orbit. Most of what remained of the collector cruiser broke off, leaving behind a stubby, jagged mess.  Cargo resumed being unloaded. Repair material was brought from the surface. Damaged systems were repaired or replaced or repairs and replacement was underway. Jarrion had dinner. He went to bed. Activity hummed along.

Some hours later, Jarrion was woken up. He wasn’t happy about this.

“Yes?” He asked, bleary-eyed, having stumbled from his bed and through his chambers to the door where outside a crewman was standing, plainly unhappy to have to be the one to wake the Lord Captain up.

“Begging your pardon, Lord Captain, but the duty officer felt you should be informed,” said the crewman, hands behind his back. Jarrion squinted sleepily at him.

“Hmm? Of what?” He asked.

“There was a warp signature detected at the edge of the system.”

What little hope Jarrion had maintained that he might have been able to go back to sleep promptly evaporated.

“What? When?”

“I was dispatched to tell you as soon as the signal was received, Lord Captain, but the event itself may have been a few hours before. It was the other side of the system, with the sun in the way, and-”

Mitigating factors were important, but not of particular interest to Jarrion right at that second.

“That’s impossible. Nothing in this galaxy can do that. Can it?” He said, cutting in.

“Lord Captain?”

The crewman, not having the slightest inkling of the true breadth of the situation or where (or when) they actually were, did not fully understand where Jarrion was coming from with this question. Jarrion realised this a moment after having asked it.

“No, nevermind. Um, yes, thank you for the message I will - I will be on the bridge presently. Inform the duty officer,” he said, waving the crewman off.

“Lord Captain,” they said, snapping off a salute and departing at speed.

Jarrion put on a dressing gown, not feeling he had time to get properly dressed, but also feeling it wouldn’t do to go on the bridge in just his pyjamas, expensive and luxurious as they were. The dressing gown was elaborate enough he was hoping most would think it was just some sort of very high society uniform they were unfamiliar with. 

He did deign to tie it closed by strapping on a belt with a holstered pistol, just for a tiny bit of extra authority, and did put actual boots on. Deck plating was very cold outside his chambers. 

As soon as was physically possible after this was he was back on the bridge, striding in.

“Warp signature?” He asked without preamble as someone - the duty officer, he assumed - came scrambling over to him.

“Yes, Lord Captain, received just now, but the signal may be several hours-”

Jarrion had heard this before. Not that long ago, in fact.

“Yes yes, delay, the sun, gravity eddies, lots of problems - where is it? What is it?” He asked, already walking for his command throne, the officer following. The officer (following) gestured off to someone waiting nearby and was handed a dataslate which they began to flick through.

“It is accelerating, it appears, and it looks to be heading in-system. To here, assuming it follows the course that’s been plotted. Engine signature marks it as an Imperial vessel.”

Jarrion, halfway to sitting down, jolted and froze in place.

“Imperial?”

The officer double-checked the dataslate and nodded.

“Do we know anything else?” Jarrion asked, sitting down a bit more heavily than he might have done before learning this. 

“It appears to be a cruiser, going by the engine signature and its the gravitic displacement. I’m still waiting on the transponder codes,” the officer said, gesturing angrily at someone who was presumably dragging their feet on the codes. Off-shift crew weren’t always the sharpest. Jarrion would have been unhappier, but the development with the ship was occupying too much of his mind.

“Can we - put it up on screen, show me where it is. Show me something.” 

In the event, given the ship was far out of anything close to useful visual range, the system augury got put up again, showing the relative positions of the planets and ships. There was the Assertive , in orbit, and there, coming in, was the new ship. It had built up a fair amount of speed in the few hours it had spent in-system, it seemed, and was motoring in towards them at a fair clip.

Jarrion didn’t like any of this.

“The transponder codes have arrived, Lord Captain,” said the duty officer, a crewman scurrying away from them after having handed the relevant information over. Jarrion tore his eyes away from the viewscreen.

“Yes?” He asked.

“It appears - Lord Captain, transponder codes mark it as a House Croesus ship,” said the duty officer with obvious puzzlement. Jarrion continued to not like any of this. He was starting to feel a bit ill.

“...what?”

“Autocrat class cruiser. It’s the-”

The crewman was interrupted:

“I know what ship that is,” Jarrion said, eyes wide, voice a hair above shaking, his attention entirely back on the viewscreen and the little dot moving their way.

The Autocrat class was an idiosyncratic and not especially common class of cruiser. Typically it didn’t encounter much favour with the Navy anymore, which was why they had a tendency to show up in Rogue Trader hands. Indeed, House Croesus had several. Indeed, this was one of them. Jarrion did know which one. He was guessing, but he was entirely right.

The Divine Right of Conquest - or as it was more commonly and conveniently called (out of earshot of it’s Lord Captain, who did not approve of such casual affectations) Divine Right - was the personal ship of his brother, Macharius.

“Oh no. No no no. No! Oh no…”

“We’re being hailed, Lord Captain.”

“No no no no no no-”

Jarrion trailed off, staring ahead in blank horror, frozen rigid, fingers white as they gripped the arms of his throne. Crewmen looked to one another, unsure of what they were meant to do and fairly certain they were missing something here. Still, without orders they couldn’t really do anything, so they waited.

“We are, ah, still being hailed, Lord Captain,” repeated the crewman on the vox, seeming to snap Jarrion out of whatever trance he’d sunk into. Blinking and licking dry lips, Jarrion mouthed wordlessly briefly before drawing himself up, straightening his jacket, and saying:

“Put it through. Main screen.”

And standing there onscreen behind a light haze of static and in his ornate golden armour, cherubs with golden wings occasionally bobbing into frame behind him, bearing golden censers and trailing smoke that probably would have been golden had that been an option, was Jarrion’s brother, Macharius.

“Jarrion, you embarrassing, beancounting streak of piss masquerading as my flesh and blood,” he said from behind the finely-wrought (and golden) mask cast in the idealised image of his face had looked like from back when he’d still had most of it. “Did you honestly think you would be able to keep this little adventure of yours a secret from me? Tsch.”

His own face in his hands and his elbows on his knees, Jarrion bent forward and screwed his eyes shut.

“No. Please no. Throne of Terra, no,” he groaned. “Anybody but you. Anybody but you !”

Chapter Text

And so I’m back in the meeting-stroke-debriefing room again, with dimmed lights, looking at holograms of the Council. Does the QEC here link back to the Citadel? Is that a thing? Or are we just close enough or close enough to a buoy for a comfortable chat?

You know what, I don’t know, and I don’t care. We’re talking, that’s what matters.

“You rang?” I ask, starting as I mean to go on.

“Shepard. I take it you are aware of the situation?” Tevos - I remembered their names this time - asked, getting down to business. This I could actually appreciate, so I gave a nod.

“Enough that we don’t have to go over the basics - what might I not know? We learn anything new, anything else?” I ask. It’s Valern who answers next.

“The system is remote enough for us - and sufficiently within Hegemony influence - that it’s lucky we know anything at all. We are awaiting the results of some additional reporting, but other than that we have learned nothing new. What we do have is confirmation. It was , uh-”

They apparently had to check for the name here.

“It was Jarrion who did this.”

“Or his ship. Definitely his ship?”

Something about this still feels weird to me. I mean, I know it can’t be anyone else, it just seems like something he’d have to build up to, you know? Or maybe I was just missing the obvious.

“Unless you happen to know anyone else who has a ship like that,” says Sparatus, with what I assume is meant to be cutting sarcasm. I am not cut by this sarcasm.

“Well, you got me there. Hegemony confirm that for us?” I ask, and Valern nods.

“Yes. Loudly. They identified the vessel and then assigned responsibility to the Alliance, humanity itself, the Council, and also possibly the captain - the order of blame doesn’t appear especially important to them, as long as some of it sticks,” he says.

“Figures.”

There’s not a lot of point wasting time wondering how or why the Hegemony made the link between humanity and Jarrion’s ship. That the super-big, strange, inexplicable spaceship that showed up out of nowhere and has been zipping about the Terminus systems is crewed by humans isn’t exactly secret to anybody. Was a neat and weird little bit of mystery before, now it’s a bloody liability. 

“How long ago was this, anyway? The attack,” I asked.

I knew it had happened, but everyone had been fuzzy on the when. Even the articles I’d seen hadn’t been particularly specific. Could have happened five minutes ago, for all I knew. 

“Long enough that we’re already seeing a noticeable increase in targeted pirate and mercenary attacks on human or human-affiliated targets,” says Tevos.

“Retaliatory attacks. Raids!” Udina clarified. On the off-chance I was an idiot, I guess.

And okay, maybe I wasn’t as informed of the situation as I thought because I hadn’t known that was already happening. I would have told you that it would have started happening, the Hegemony being the Hegemony, but I’m honestly a little surprised they’ve got their act together this quickly. Must be very upset. Understandable, I guess.

“Presumably of the deniable ‘Oh nothing to do with us we didn’t pay for this I’ve no idea what you’re talking about’ kind?” I ask.

“Yes.”

A lot of diplomacy always seems to involve both sides knowing damn well what’s really happening but neither side being able to actually say it out loud. You’d know what someone was doing, but you couldn’t outright say it, because then they might say something you’d done, or else you’d show you knew more than you wanted people to know you did, and that wouldn’t do at all. Or maybe I’m a cynic. Certainly, I’m very tired - that’s not up for debate.

“Naturally. And they want what?” I ask.

“Oh they have a long list of entirely unreasonable and totally impossible demands, but we all know that’s meaningless, just noise. What they really want is the one responsible,” Valern says.

“Right. And we’re at the beck-and-call of the Hegemony because…?”

“Because colonies are being raided, Shepard!” Udina says.

“Ah, so collector attacks aren’t something you feel you can or should do anything about, but more pirate attacks than usual - in places you normally don’t care all that much about - are a big issue that needs resolving immediately."

Maybe I’m missing something. I’m not averse to helping in a situation like this - I kind of make it my business to do so, even if I’m not being told to do so - I just take issue with people changing their minds for no obvious reason. It speaks poorly of their character.

“Shepard, there is a difference between colonists who have deliberately chosen to place themselves outside the sphere of our protection being allegedly targeted by the collectors and a known, belligerent government illicitly condoning, funding and directing attacks with the deliberate intention of provoking a response,” says Tevos, measuredly. A little too measuredly for me.

There’s nothing fucking alledged about it and they damn well know it I kind of want to say, but I know there’s not a lot of point. It’s another of those dance-the-dance type things.

“A response that they’re going to get, apparently?” I ask instead, pointing out what appears to me to be something of a flaw here. Seems a bit odd to me to know someone is trying to get a rise out of you and rise anyway, but maybe that’s why I’m not a politician. I’m not a fan of walking into traps I know are traps, either. Am I the weird one?

And my, they can move quick when they care, can’t they?

“It is not unreasonable to assume that, given time, they will broaden their list of targets. We have already seen attacks in the Traverse,” Tevos says, still measured, and that does get a blink out of me.

Already in the Traverse? Damn, they really were angry. You think they’d work up to that. Alright I’ll admit that’s a bit of a surprise to me - I’d have thought they’d limit it to the Terminus systems at first, at least. Apparently not! Yeesh.

“We’re not going to be waiting for some stimmed-up mercenary to decide not to check what it is they’re shooting at, either. We have decided to act now, and we’ve decided to ask you because you have a personal connection and experience,” says Sparatus.

“None of which matters anyway . Humans are being killed right now , Shepard! If you’re willing to associate with terrorists under the pretext that it’s to protect human colonies then we shouldn’t have to twist your arm to do your job to do the same thing !” Says Udina.

I’m not rising to that. Just take a breath and hold it. In for four, hold for four, out for four. 

Ah, that’s a little better.

“And if I said no you’d send someone else anyway?” I ask.

“Yes,” comes the blunt response from more-or-less all of them, more-or-less at once.

Not like they didn’t have other options. Always got the STG kicking around, and I wasn’t the only Spectre, after all. Just the only one with, as they said, experience here. And the only human, too. I wouldn’t have put too much weight on that before but with this - with Jarrion - I am thinking that, if they send any of the others, it’ll just make things worse. I might actually have a chance at a conversation.

“Right. And we all know the batarians of course have nothing to do with the attacks, but what have they said about the attacks slowing down or stopping if it looks like they’ll get what they want?”

“They’ve stated that they will ‘Look into the situation’, but them doing so is contingent on us doing something, or at the least being seen to be doing something. That’s you. Us sending you is doing something, you going is what’s needed for this to happen,” Sparatus says, deploying some of his galaxy-famous air-quotes. I think they’re a reflex at this point, honestly. I don’t think he’s conscious of doing it.

And of course, me. Had to be me. Most important woman in the galaxy, swear to god. You want a lightbulb changed you just get me to hold it and watch the whole universe revolve around me. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be, I’m finding out. Mostly just involves never having five minutes to sit down and stare into space.

(Also I’ve never actually seen a lightbulb, if I’m being honest. Maybe in a museum, once? When I was younger? I can’t remember. The joke stuck with me though.)

“What would you like to happen?” I ask, surrendering to the inevitable. 

“Ideally we would have liked this situation never to have arisen in the first place, but as that sadly isn’t an option what we need you to do is convince him to move himself and his vessel to a neutral location - one is still being decided upon, coordinates will be forwarded to you when the decision is made - there to remain while full details of the incident are ascertained, and for discussions with the Hegemony for whatever reparations or other compensation they feel is necessary,” Valern says, rattling it all off.

“The Alliance will be providing support for this, if required. A portion of the ninth fleet has agreed to act as escort,” Udina adds, just happy to be there, I guess.

And ninth fleet? Must have missed that one while I was busy being dead.

I process what they’ve just laid down in front of me, try to tease it open to probe at the core of what it is they’re asking for here, what it is they actually want, what they want to see unfold. The words I understand, but put together they paint a picture I’m having a little trouble grasping.

“You want him to turn himself in?” I ask, hoping I don’t sound as incredulous as I feel, though I’m sure I still sound pretty incredulous. They just nod.

“Not as such, but in effect. If you like,” Tevos says.

I’m not exactly old friends with Jarrion but I know the guy enough to know that I can’t see that working in any way, shape or form. Smart of them to have the Alliance be the muscle, but yeah no, I still can’t see this idea being a goer. I’m persuasive, but I’m not a miracle worker.

My mouth works on a few different words to start the next sentence. None seem to fit at first, and I eventually settle on:

“Okay. When - if, if - if he doesn’t agree to that, then what?”

“Then you are to take whatever steps you deem necessary to ensure there are no further incidents.”

That’s a step up, isn’t it? Feel like they missed a few options there, turned it right up to the maximum response level. I’m waiting for a ‘with extreme prejudice’ but that doesn’t come. It’s implied though.

“...okay,” I say.

Great. Sure. I can do that. Totally.

Apparently my response wasn’t enthusiastic enough for some of those present.

“The man murdered thousands in cold blood, Shepard! This can’t be brushed off or explained away as military action or anything of the sort - it was slaughter! Unprompted, unprovoked! Who’s to say he won’t have a turian colony as his next target! Or do we have to wait for him to work his way through all the other species in the galaxy until he hits human for you to care?”

That’s a little blunt, even for Sparatus. And how does he know it was unprovoked? Not to say that that would be better, it wouldn’t, just, you know, how does he know? He doesn’t. None of us know anything. He’s just making shit up. I can tell when I’m being baited. I’m not giving that the time of day.

“I’ll call you back when I’ve solved the problem,” I say, and I hang up.

What else of use was I going to get out of that conversation continuing?

One of the problems of the briefing room that Cerberus put in, I find, is that there’s nothing good to hit. The walls are all curved out and the table sinks away when you’re talking to people and there’s no handy pots or vases or anything like that. So when you’ve had a frustrating conversation there isn’t anything on hand to immediately vent on.

Probably for the best, really.

Annoyingly, I can follow a line through their thinking on this, too. Or, rather, I can see the line they’ve got going, which means other people will too. 

It’s one thing to say, hey, this part of space is dangerous and we can’t help you if nasty stuff happens and then not help when nasty stuff happens, fine. Even when that nasty stuff starts looking deliberately targeted you can still hide behind that excuse, particularly if the ones doing the stuff in question are, you know, mysterious aliens no-one ever really sees. That’s risks of the territory crossed with crazy colonist stories - you guys brought that on yourselves, they’ll say, and leave you to twist in the wind.

Fine. It’s not a nice answer but, politically, it’s pretty sound.

But it’s another thing entirely to have a group you know about, a government with a known history of catspaw belligerence, getting understandably annoyed a whole lot of their citizens got killed and deciding the best response is to see that a lot of your citizens - or, you know, the citizens of one of your members, in this case - also get killed, too, until the one responsible gets what’s coming to him. 

When that happens and you sit back, well, you come across less like ‘We warned you, our hands are tied’ and more like ‘We ignore it when people attack us as long as they do it far enough away’, which isn’t a good look.

Or, you know, it might not look like that. Someone will argue it whatever way. Politics is weird and, thankfully, not really my job. Point is I can tell the difference in optics. I can see the difference between those two, as much as I don’t like there being a difference. I can see the line! I can see the line they’re taking. Doesn’t mean I like it any more or agree with it any more, obviously.

If this was just a slight spike in piracy following something else, would they care as much? Is it because it’s such a big spike? Does that matter? Is it because it’s such a big spike for such a specific reason? Is it because they have their concerns and reasons about that reason - by which I mean, of course, Jarrion and his bloody ship? Are they genuinely concerned about someone like Jarrion with a ship like his running roughshod over their own colonies? Do they honestly think he’s a genuine risk and a threat and feel they need to step in now, given the exceptional circumstances (see: his enormous bloody spaceship)? Or were they just waiting for an excuse to make a move on him and this is as good as it could possibly get? All of the above? Some combination?

Christ knows. Not like they’d ever tell anyone. All academic anyway. The why of it is moot. It is what it is, whether I like the reasons or not, whatever the reasons might actually be. I can poke holes but it won’t change a damn thing. Just have to get it done, keep going. If I don’t then someone else will only muck it up. Figure out the best way forward.

The best way of either convincing a xenophobe to sit on his hands while aliens decided what he should do, or else the best way of killing said xenophobe and his enormous, planet-killing spaceship. Or some third way I haven’t figured out yet. Yippee.

“More fucking side missions,” I say, unclenching my hands which had, at some point, tightened into fists. “EDI, how’s the IFF doing?” 

“I have integrated the Reaper IFF with the Normandy’s systems, Commander, but I would suggest testing its functionality prior to attempting to traverse the Omega Four relay.”

Well yes, obviously.

“Right. Hold off on that for now. We have a detour to take. Again.”

He set up on Horizon, didn’t he? Pretty sure he did.

Guess I’ll have to go see if he’s in.

++++++++++

Dropping out of superluminal, the freighter Loghain had borrowed cruised on in towards its apparent destination. Loghain herself was again up front to keep an eye on things, while Crave continued to not look entirely happy at the controls.

“A station?” He asked, hands moving about rather more confidently now, albeit not comfortably. He didn’t look up through the window but then he didn’t have to, he was looking at the readouts. Loghain was looking out the window, seeing the station.

“So it would appear,” she said.

“Is that expected?”

“It was mentioned that it would be a port, so I suppose.”

This was good enough.

“Initiating docking procedures. Or what I hope are docking procedures,” said Crave as he transmitted clearances and - with some reluctance - allowed the automated docking systems to help guide the freighter in. It wasn’t that the concept was unusual, automated docking, it was that he didn’t fully trust the components involved.

Loghain gave him a pat on the shoulder. He did not appreciate this.

“You’re doing fine,” she said.

“It is rather beneath my station to be flying ships, you know.”

“I know. After this you won’t have to worry about it for a while.”

She assumed. If everything went to plan.

Whatever Crave had done had apparently worked, as the station’s docking authorities accepted their request and the automated parts took over the final approach, gliding them in nice and smoothly. He took his hands away from the console and regarded them with distaste, mechadendrites unplugging themselves seemingly of their own volition so they could snake back out of sight again.

“After this I will need to pray. I’ve spent far too long now interacting with this crude, spiritually bankrupt technology. These cogitators of theirs are suspect, and there’s no reverence for anything here. I feel unclean,” he said

“No time to pray.”

“There is always time to pray.”

“Nope, no there’s not.”

“I’m not happy about this.”

“There’s always time for that. Praying later. There’ll be a lot more interacting with crude technology before the day is out, I expect. Might even have to walk past an xenos or two if we’re unlucky,” Loghain said.

“That’s what the praying’s for…”

“Come on. We need to get dressed.”

Which is to say, they needed to disguise themselves.

Although with that being said the disguises weren’t so much disguises as they were a few sartorial choices made with appearing inconspicuous in mind. That meant muted colours, not a lot of flair, absolutely no insignia anyone might want to ask any questions about. Just vague, unremarkable outfits. Like anyone who was passing through.

Underneath those unremarkable outfits might have been lightly armoured bodygloves, yes, and maybe a few other hidden items and gadgets, sure, and Loghain’s rosette was also there in an inside pocket even though no-one would know what it meant, fine, but on the outside they’d look like just about anyone else who happened to be wearing a lot of brown. The only allowance for extravagance was allowing Crave to wear an especially long coat, because hiding his tentacles would have been too difficult otherwise. 

Loghain knew it would be impossible for them as complete and utter outsides to appear entirely natural and non-suspicious, but for the small amount of time they’d be on the station before making contact with their contact she was content at least to be looked at once, but not twice. And given her particular talents, she could make sure that happened.

Hell, if she really wanted to she could have had them all stark naked and probably made sure no-one noticed. It was just much easier this way, not to mention warmer and easier to carry things.

“Looking good, team,” she said, zipping herself up and casting an augmented eye over the others.

“Not to denigrate the Astartes, but I am not entirely sure brother al Bet here will be the most incognito?” Asked Redlands, nodding to al Bet. The space marine did not have a disguise, because even attempting one would have been embarrassing for everyone involved.

“The Interrogator has a point, Lady Inquisitor,” he said.

“Neither of you need to worry about that. I have it covered,” Loghain said, tapping her temple.

“Oh?” Al Bet asked, curious, before working out what it was the psychic had in mind. “Ah,” he said, plainly not enthused, but resigned. He’d worked in worse conditions than under some sort of telepathic disguise. There the matter rested.

Loghain clapped her hands together.

“Alight, here’s what’s happening: we are going onto the station. On the station we are meeting a contact, a Cerberus agent. Once we’ve met with the agent we’ll go with him to a secondary location elsewhere in-system where we shall meet with and talk to the Illusive Man. Okay? This is the plan. We get to him, explain our position, outline what we have in mind - or I do all that, you guys stand around until I need you - and everyone is happy. Alright?”

“Sounds relaxing and simple,” said Varne.

“Yes. Be ready for things not to go to plan. Something will go wrong. I’m not sure what yet but something will, so be ready. Let’s go.”

Taking perhaps a bag or two for the road they departed the freighter, walked down the docking arm into the hanger area, briefly stopped so that Loghain could help the docking officer ‘remember’ the arrangement they had that meant docking fees were waived and no inspections had to be made, then headed into the body of the station proper.

(For a moment Loghain did wonder whether she was using her abilities frivolously here, but this was a concern she dismissed. They were just passing through, after all, and they didn’t actually have any money to speak of anyway. And besides, her powers just came so easily here. The barriers of reality seemed a little thicker, perhaps, but once you reached through them there really wasn’t anything reaching back at all. It was almost unsettlingly quiet at times.)

The station wasn’t exactly humming with activity but it wasn’t dead or deserted either, being some sort of local-ish hub for ships passing through this system and several others nearby, taking advantage of the proximity of both the nearby relay and the nearby fuel depot. A place to rest, recuperate, meet up, find things out, sell things, buy things - that sort of thing. Loghain had been in so many stations like that she’d lost count, and they all sort of blurred. This one at least was cleaner than most, so that was nice.

And there were aliens. Not many, but a few. Not that it mattered, obviously, with Loghain’s team being professionals. The sight of them just made them a little unhappy, was all, particularly seeing them palling around with humans. Talking. Trading. Co-operating. They even saw a couple eating lunch at some restaurant on some little promenade (or as close as to a promenade as could be managed on so small a station). 

And that was couple as in a couple , it looked like, judging by the tone of their interaction.

That was especially vile, a stark reminder of the moral degeneracy of this galaxy and of the work that still lay ahead of them. And it wasn’t as if they could easily ignore it, either, as it was happening on a table right next to the person Loghain identified as their contact.

“That’s our man,” she said, pointing past the foul lovers to a man sitting just past them.

None of them needed to ask her how she knew.

Figuring that all of them going over and saying hello would look a little odd, even with Loghain doing her best to passively let attention just slide off the group, it was decided that instead she and the rest would go and wait around a quiet corner, she would give the man a mental tap on the shoulder to get him to look around, and Varne would be the one to actually make contact.

Which is what happened. The man, prompted by something he couldn’t fully explain, looked around and saw Varne standing off looking pointedly at him. Once sure that he’d got the man’s attention Redgrace gave him the slightest of nods and then slid around the corner himself. Getting the idea, the man checked his omnitool briefly, looked around, blew out a breath and then did a very good job of looking like he was leaving for entirely his own reasons, also going around the corner.

Around the corner in this instance was an out-of-the-way service corridor, the entrance to which Adept Watlington had opened for them. Inside the corridor he met the team. He was clearly taken off-guard by Loghain’s augmetics - more by just how incredibly blunt they looked than by any surprise at mechanical replacements - but recovered quickly and knew better than to mention them or to stare. He’d obviously noticed though, and Loghain could tell he found them a little uncomfortable to look at. She did not mind this. Putting people on edge was usually valuable.

The man didn’t so much as glance twice at al Bet. 

“Bryce,” he said by way of abrupt introduction, making the minimum amount of eye-contact needed to be even vaguely polite and immediately continuing: “We need to get going fast.”

He pointed back the way they’d come and was about to start walking, too.

“Are we in a hurry?” Loghain asked, stopping him.

“Yes we are. Things have happened since this meeting got set up.”

“Oh?”

“No time to explain, we need to go,” Byrce said, again attempting to slip away and gesturing for them to follow, but again no-one moved.

“No. Explain,” Loghain said.

When it became obvious she wasn’t kidding around Bryce grimaced.

“Fine. Your pal - the one with the ship - decided to glass a batarian colony and they’ve responded by siccing just about every pirate and hired gun they could find lying around on anything that looks remotely human-related in the terminus systems and beyond. That could well be us soon, so we need to go.”

Loghain was honestly caught flat-footed by this revelation, not something that happened to her often.

“Jarrion did that? That’s not possible.”

For one thing she just couldn’t see him doing something like that, not for no reason at least, and couldn’t imagine what reason might have popped up since she left him that would have pushed him to such a thing. He was no stranger to the occasional orbital obliteration of aliens, she knew, but this was out of nowhere and had no obvious benefit to him that something more subtle couldn’t also have managed.

Also, where would he have found the time?

Bryce continued to be fidgety, glancing around.

“Look, I’m not here to argue this with you. Whatever happened, whoever did it, a big spaceship that looks like a cathedral turned an alien colony into a smoking crater and now they’re pissed off and now there’s paid professionals with guns going around making people’s lives miserable. There hasn’t been anything near here yet but that’s not to say there won’t be. I’ve got information showing they might be coming this way, and I don’t want to be here if that turn out to be accurate. So we need to go.”

“And our meeting? Still going ahead, I trust?” Loghain asked.

“Best as we can manage - once we’re on-board! Changed a little but it’s still basically the same. He’s not here, obviously, too hot, but back on the ship we have the facilities for you to talk to him one-to-one, one-on-one, good as being in the same room.”

This was the first mention that Loghain had had of a ship being involved, beyond one being presumably needed to convey them to a secondary location. The implication here was that whatever ship Bryce had arrived in-system on was the secondary location, and the meeting would be more of a conference call. None of this was thrilling to Loghain.

“Yes, but not in the same room. That was the deal,” she said.

Loghain did not like it when what she’d been told was the deal turned out not to be the deal. She really didn’t like it. As far as wrinkles went they rankled her more than anything else. Things exploding or being shot at was fine, as long as the plan itself hadn’t actually had its details altered.

“The deal has changed! Circumstances have changed! This isn’t up for negotiation!” Byrce said. The man’s tone was starting to grate on Loghain.

“Al-Bet, pick him up by the neck, if you’d be so kind,” she said without missing a beat, while also finally letting the screen of innocuousness she’d been maintaining over the marine drop. The Cerberus agent had enough time to suddenly notice the towering, armoured giant before the selfsame towering, armoured giant calmly and cooly took him by the throat and lifted him up a foot or two above the ground.

Bryce made a noise, but it wasn’t really words, and with all his desperate kicking and clawing at al Bet’s arm it was sort of hard to make out anyway.

“I’d much prefer we keep this on friendly terms but I would like to make it very, very clear to you that these sorts of changes make us feel as though we aren’t being taken seriously, yes? Particularly when we were under the impression this deal had already been comfortably settled and agreed? This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. At the very least you should consider trying going through with it as was originally proposed, yes? So maybe this is up for negotiation, yes?” Loghain asked, sweetly.

Something in the man’s spluttering sounded a bit like a ‘yes’ and so Loghain gave al Bet a nod. Bryce was dropped in a gasping, wheezing heap, clutching his neck.

“What is-” he managed to choke out before Loghain squatted down in front of him and snapped her fingers under his nose, splitting his attention and disrupting his sentence.

“Don’t worry about the space marine, we can talk about him later. We can talk about all sorts of things once we’ve agreed that you will see to it that we get a proper, face-to-face meeting with the Illusive Man. I want your word on this. I want our working relationship to start happily.”

Excluding the part where he’d been nearly throttled, presumably. Presumably that part went without saying. What was a little throttling between friends anyway?

Rubbing his throat and doing his best not to worry about the space marine, Bryce was plainly a man considering his options.

“...I’ll see what I can do,” he said, after having considered his options. Loghain smiled.

“Excellent, that’s more like it. See? I just want you to try. Now, shall we go?”

“With that ?” Bryce asked, pointing at al Bet.

“Don’t worry about the space marine, I told you. No-one will look twice. Varne, you follow with Watlington and the Magos, keep a little distance. Al Bet and me will accompany Bryce here. Now after you, hmm?”

Perhaps finally grasping the gravity and oddity of the situation he’d been thrust into Byrce decided against arguing and, with only mild hesitation, turned and led the way, heading back towards the hangers again, where presumably he had a ride waiting. Loghain and a stealthy, uninteresting al Bet went with him, and perhaps a little under a minute later the others set out to follow.

All was going pretty well. No-one looked twice indeed. Just normal people going about normal business on the station, heading somewhere for some reason, no reason to be interested at all, nothing to see here.

At least until Bryce paused, stepping aside as his omnitool flashed to get his attention.

“What is it?” Loghain asked.

“Hang on…” Bryce said, checking.

He quickly brought up his omnitool and checked with a few swipes. Whatever this told him was unclear to Loghian - all just looked like orange nonsense to her - but it was clearly not anything good. He grimaced.

“Ah shit, they’re here,” he said, glancing warily upwards as though expecting them to start tapping on the station windows overheard any moment. In fairness, there was a shadow out there that hadn’t been there minutes before, something large making its way for the docking clamps.

“The mercenaries?” Loghain asked, and Bryce did his best not to glower at her.

“The mercenaries, yes. Blood Pack, looks like. Great. We need to go."

For a second she thought he’d said ‘Pact’ and she’d got a bit confused, but then she realised what he’d actually said. She’d heard of the Blood Pack, she’d done her reading.

“What are they hoping to achieve?”

“Achieve? They’re mercenaries! They’ve been paid!”

“Yes, but to do what?”

“Cause trouble! These are just fucking punitive raids! To cause damage! We stick around, we’ll be damage! We need to go!”

“After you.”

Not much use in bothering being subtle now. An alarm was sounding and someone was announcing over a public address system the imminent arrival of the mercenaries. From the sound of the announcement it wasn’t an automated warning either, but rather some member of station management breathlessly urging everyone to stay calm and proceed in an orderly fashion to safer areas and that security was fully capable of handling this and that everything would be fine. It was unclear if anyone was listening to any of that.

People were running. Aliens were running, too. Mostly, they were all running the opposite direction to Loghain and the others, the direction away from the hangers and docking struts, the direction from which any attacker might comfortably be assumed to be approaching from. Sensible, really. At least it meant the crowds thinned out the further they went. By the time they had nearly arrived there wasn’t a soul to be seen.

It wasn’t long until they bumped into one of the reasons everyone had been running the other way, though. Or a couple of the reasons, really. Byrce rounded a corner and very quickly had to hurl himself back again, bumping into the others.

“Shit!” He hissed, ducking back as the edge of the corridor was chewed to ribbons by small arms fire.

“How many?” Loghain asked.

“Three! At least three, I saw three. Vorcha.”

Loghain knew about the vorcha. Aliens.

“Where are we heading?” She asked. “Specifically.”

“I, uh - I got here in a shuttle, kodiak. It’s in hanger two. They’re probably coming from the other direction, from a strut. They’re in a frigate, I think,” Bryce said, trembling slightly. Always a shock being shot at unannounced. Loghain took what he said and nodded. She’d seen the layout of the hangers in the station. Hanger two was in the opposite direction to the struts for the larger vessels, like the way they’d come. That was good, it meant they’d be heading away from the threat.

Just meant they had to get through these early ones first.

“Al Bet, clear a path to the hanger,” she said.

“By your will,” he said before stepping around the corner and, without even appearing to bother to aim, putting a single bolt round into each approaching alien, one after the other, utterly effortless. Bang bang bang. Not a single miss, not a moment’s pause or hesitation, barely took a second. They hadn’t even had the time to try shooting at him.

What was left of the vorcha hit the deck, most of the rest of them drizzling across the floor as a fine mist. Al Bet was already moving forwards before the first bolt casing clinked and rolled away, gun up and and sweeping side to side. Another vorcha got as far as just about poking its head around a corner at the far end to see what had happened before it’s head ceased to exist in any practical fashion.

Al Bet advanced quickly, bolter raised, boots clanking dully on the deck plating.

More aliens appeared. The vorcha that had been killed already had been part of a vanguard meant to secure the hangers and deal with any early security prior to the bulk of the crew entering the station. The three that had been pressing ahead had jumped  the gun a little and started ahead when they shouldn’t have. Now that they’d gone quiet though their boss had noticed, and was unhappy.

The headless corpse on the corner probably also had something to do with that.

“What’s going on? What are you doing? What?!” Said boss, a krogan, bellowed, coming barging around with another two more vorcha in tow, one carrying an incinerator unit of some kind. Al Bet shot that one first, bolt round passing almost completely through its slender alien body before rupturing the fuel tank, detonating it. He then shot the other vorcha, rather as an afterthought, and turned his aim towards the krogan.

Al Bet had also done his reading and was aware of krogan, at least nominally. Tough, he’d read, or tougher than most. Indeed, the explosion of the fuel tank more-or-less right next to it had done very little to upset the alien, mostly just jostling it to the side and singing it. And, understandably, making it even unhappier than he’d been to start with.

“What?! A mech?!” The krogan yelled, confused at the sight of al Bet and, as a result of the confusion, even angrier. He made to raise his shotgun and got fairly close to doing so, at least until half of them - the half with the arm holding the gun - was blown away by a bolt round. 

To his credit he dealt with this sudden loss surprisingly well, getting over the shock, getting annoyed, and launching themselves at al Bet with a roar. This roar ended shortly (very shortly) when a further two bolts hit them in the face and blew out a not-insignificant chunk of their back. You could have stuck your arm through, had you been so inclined. Stone-dead, they tumbled forward and slid a fair distance, what with the momentum and all, sliding past al Bet who side-stepped them.

Reaching the end of the hall he aimed one way then the other way, then turned back to the group still taking cover.

“Clear,” he said, his voice a bark, the better to make sure they got the point.

“Up we go,” said Loghain cheerfully.

The rest of the way to hanger two was uneventful, barring Bryce being briefly stunned by the carnage wrought upon the aliens - he’d seen people shot before, yes, but these were not so much shot as blown open - and they got there without any more trouble.

A few more Blood Pack did appear as they were embarking onto the shuttle, but their efforts seemed desultory at best - a few potshots zipping their way as they climbed aboard. Either they were spooked and didn’t fancy their chances or else the bulk of them were heading after the easier targets actually in the station. Loghain did not know, neither did she care. They were leaving.

They’d come back for the freighter at a later date. She made a mental note of where they’d parked. Hopefully it’d still be in one piece. Ideally she’d like to return it in one piece like she’d said she would but, well, plans change sometimes. As she’d found out.

Settled into the rather cozy rear compartment of the kodiak, Loghain found herself squashed up against Bryce, who was himself sandwiched against al Bet, who barely fitted inside at all.

“This’ll be a cramped journey,” Loghain said. She had no idea who was flying, but they were moving, so someone must have been.

“The frigate is in-system keeping a low profile. The shuttle is to get us to the frigate,” said Bryce, staring ahead, doing his best not to think too much about the situation he had found himself in.

“Sensible. Walking would have taken a while,” said Loghain, nodding.

The journey remained a cramped journey, not to mention a rather awkward one. Loghain could tell Bryce was planning in his head what he’d need to tell his people on the ship and quickly, and that little of it was going to be to her benefit. She didn’t even have to probe him particularly deeply to know this.

He saw them as dangerous now, and was clearly trying to work out the best way of keeping them mollified and contained while he played for time and got instructions on what he should actually do next. Ideally, it seemed, he wanted this to be someone else’s problem as quickly as possible and for him to just be able to forget the whole thing.

There wasn’t much Loghain could do about this and, really, she hadn’t expected anything less.

Before too long they arrived at the Cerberus frigate, which had been loitering on the surface of one of the moons of the one of the planets further to the edge of the system. It was small, slim, sleek, white and, of course, had the Cerberus logo on it. Being an Inquisitor Loghain couldn’t be too upset about that - some of her peers were just as bad with that sort of thing, if not worse. 

They met in orbit, the shuttle entered the frigate’s hanger, and Loghain and company were led inside and to a well-appointed - if small, this being a rather modest spaceship - passenger lounge of some kind, or a module adapted into something like a passenger lounge. Places to sit, beverages in the corner, a plant, some sort of console on a table. Somewhere for guests, as they’d clearly been expecting guests having been sent to pick up, well, guests.

As with everything happening right then, not a huge surprise.

“Just - just wait here. I’ll go see about a face-to-face,” said Bryce, eyes flicking to al Bet with obvious effort - Loghain had gone back to masking him, albeit not putting a lot of effort into it, but since the effect had been broken it wasn’t working as well as it had. She was mostly doing it just to see Bryce’s eyes water.

“Thank you,” said Loghain, and Bryce beat a hasty retreat. The instant the fancy, shiny, Cerberus-marked door closed behind him Varne turned to his boss.

“Do you believe him? Think he’ll set us up?” He asked, choosing to speak in an idiosyncratic and rather obscure dialect of Low Gothic he and his boss had had to learn some years previously on assignment, conscious of the armed and armoured guard that had been left standing by the door. A word or two might have been understandable, but not the whole statement. 

“Not at all. I think it was always the plan to say we could meet him in person only to pull the rug out. Mean, it’s what I’d do, but I’m still annoyed about it,” said Loghain, replying in kind, also aware of the guard.

“So what do we do?”

“Nothing right now. We’re on this ship. We’ll see what they do next. Watlington, find out what that guy was talking about with Jarrion and that colony, I want to know about that right now,” Loghain said, pointing to the console on the table. She assumed it had a connection to that extranet the locals were so fond of - you seemed to be able to access it just about anywhere. Their willingness to let just anyone access just about anything they wanted was bizarre. The mischief such freedom allowed was beyond her comprehension.

“Maybe he was lying about that,” Varne said, in normal Low Gothic now, less worried. Still the guard made no moves or comments.

“He wasn’t, but that can’t be the whole thing. Watlington, on it,” Loghain said, pointing again.

Watlington was already on it, having sat and started tapping away at the little computer the moment she’d been told to do so. She went about her task with a familiarity that was quite something to see, as though she’d been dealing with these sorts of systems for years and this wasn’t her first time (which it was), but that was her job, after all, and why Loghain kept her around. Well, one of the reasons. 

Off in the corner Crave was praying, kneeling and going through some gestures over and over while murmuring. Logahin left him to it. Now was an okay time for praying. Al Bet was just stood like a statue, gun lowered but still in his hands. Waiting. Now was not an okay time for relaxing, as far as al Bet was concerned, and he hadn’t been told otherwise.

Varne sat. Loghain sat too. The guard stayed standing.

He was standing being as inconspicuous and unobtrusive as an armed man in heavy armour could hope to be. No doubt there were other guards outside and sensors and cameras and all sorts of other ways of keeping eyes on them, but that was by the by. It would have been naive to assume they’d just leave them to their own devices unmonitored. Loghain wasn’t too worried about that. She was an unknown quantity to these people, at least for now, and was comfortable that there wasn’t anything on board that was a threat to them.

She wasn’t worried about the guard, either. She barely spared him a thought beyond noting he was still there. In the unlikely even he became an issue she doubted he’d be an issue for very long. 

Shortly, Watlington brought her some information. There wasn’t an awful lot to go on, and a lot of what there was to go on - gleaned from public channels, all gossip and secondhand reporting - wasn’t the most reliable, she felt. But it was enough to bring her up to speed. A vessel, a plainly Imperial vessel, had indeed decided to wipe out some alien colony from orbit for no apparent reason. Some people - aliens, mostly - were upset about this, and everyone had an opinion. None of it was good, Loghain could tell, because it was causing fuss when no fuss would have been preferable.

What she did notice almost at once, though, was that from the blurry images available it was pretty obviously not a Dauntless that was doing the bombarding. She couldn’t tell what was doing it, but could tell it wasn’t a Dauntless. So not Jarrion, then. Which made everything instantly much worse.

“Well that’s helpful,” she said, sourly, slumping back into the sofa and wondering how this was going to make things more complicated. Her eyes wandered again to the guard, though she wasn’t immediately sure why.

Something about him had caught her attention.

In her career Loghain had spent a lot of time around military and paramilitary personnel and had noted certain, so to speak, aspects to their mentality that popped up over and over, regardless of the individual. They were occupations that fostered certain ways of thinking, so people in them tended to think certain ways, be certain ways, and she tended to notice this coming off of them, given her talents.

So when she picked up a certain sense of discipline from the guard she wasn’t immediately surprised and at first thought nothing of it. The others she’d passed had been much the same, and soldiers and such were often like that on the surface. Not that interesting. But the second time it came to her attention there was something about it that made her think.

It wasn’t discipline. It was like discipline in effect, but it wasn’t. It was something else. 

It was artificial. Constructed.

“Hmm…” Loghain hummed, tilting her head and standing up to take a step towards the guard. This was apparently enough to finally get him to actually react.

“What are you doing?” The trooper asked, voice harsh and distorted, gun wavering somewhere between raised and not, unsure what to do without direct orders.

“Shush, I’m thinking,” Loghain said, reaching past the dullness that had been laid over the man’s mind, reaching deep into memories that had been chemically and surgically locked away, memories of the chemicals and the surgeries themselves, memories of the knives and injections and the drills into bone, of the alien metal being woven around muscle and underneath flesh, of what was now crawling beneath his skin - she took those memories, and brought them abruptly to the surface, laid them all out plain and impossible to avoid, stripped away anything that might distract.

The trooper, screaming, collapsed.

“That was dramatic,” said Varne, looking over from the sofa he’d personally sprawled across.

“Al Bet, watch the door,” Loghain said, the marine immediately moving over to block the entrance while Loghain herself dragged the body further into the room and sat on the prone guard’s chest, peering intently down at his face. Since he was wearing a helmet, what this told her wasn’t immediately obvious.

“What is it?” Varne asked, more seriously now, seeing that something was up and that his boss wasn’t just making people fall over screaming for fun. Loghain was slowly turning the guard’s head from one side to the other, bent over him.

“They’ve done something to these troopers of theirs,” she said, eyes buzzing quietly as she focussed and zoomed.

“Done what?”

Loghain was fiddling with the man’s helmet now, trying to remove it.

“Altered them somehow. The memories are there and powerful, easy to dig up, but they lack detail. And even if they’re easy to dig up that still means they’re buried, least to this guy. They don’t know what’s happened to them. Something bad. Let’s see…”

After some trial and error her fingers found the catches and, with a few clicks and hisses, released the helmet. It came off easy enough, and the man’s face came into view. It was not a pretty picture. His flesh was pallid, his cheeks hollow, his veins dark and prominent. Scars - deliberate scars - criss-crossed here and there, evidence of extensive implantation, and what had been implanted was obvious enough. Some of it was glowing, the blue unhealthy and impossible to ignore. 

Loghain had seen nastier things in her time, of course, but it was less the nastiness of the sight that was the problem and more what the sight implied. It was a case of fresh information reframing the situation. This meant things weren’t quite as she had thought they were, and she didn’t like that.

Crave - previously not enormously interested and focused on his prayers - double-took and leapt to his feet, storming over and angrily pointing an angry finger in an angry fashion.

“That’s xenos technology!”

Varne cocked his head at the trooper. He’d seen a lot of tech priests - they all had - and, frankly, some of them had looked a lot worse than the man on the floor. Some of them you’d have needed help to know had ever been remotely human in the first place.

“How can you tell?” Varne asked. Crave sputtered. Plainly this was a sore spot.

“You can’t?! It reeks of filth! The very sight is disgusting! Look! Look!” This - this is blasphemy! A mockery of the holy fusion of man and machine! This is who you wish to ally yourself with?” He asked. Loghain gave him a sharp look - sharp enough to make him take a step back. No mean feat when you didn’t actually have eyes, though presumably tech priests react differently to sharp looks from bionic eyes anyway.

“No, this is who I wanted to make use of. Different. But I understand your distaste, magos, seeing this. I’d sort of hoped they hadn’t let themselves slip this far. I’d prepared for a little , prepared for catching them just as they were starting down a wayward path, but this…”

Flexibility, again. She’d been prepared to be flexible. She’d known going in this wasn’t their galaxy, that the rules were different, that she should expect the sort of thing that, back home, would be entirely unacceptable. She’d been prepared to have to roll with a touch of the unorthodox, for the sake of greater goals. She might even have been prepared to compromise, here or there, if she’d needed to.

But she had limits. This was disgusting. Vile. A gross violation of the sacred human form, blasphemed with debased alien mechanisms. Alien technology. And what was worse, clearly done willingly. Willingly! Gleefully! In service of what? What could justify this? They’d gone too far already. Too late to be corrected gently. Beyond the pale. Beyond compromise.

Unfortunate. Deeply unfortunate.

Loghain stood up. There was an alarm sounding somewhere - their second alarm in one day. You couldn’t do what she’d done and not be noticed. Someone - or several someones, likely several armed someones - would probably come inside once they’d sorted out and settled on what they were going to do. She could already feel people approaching. No going back now. 

Holding out a hand she used one of the minor tricks her mentor had taught her to get the catatonic trooper’s sidearm to leap from his hip and grabbed it out the air, checking it briefly before shooting the man in the face. She then did it again, just to be on the safe side and because his face offended her. Then a third time, for luck. The pistol was tossed aside.

“No. No, the rot is too deep here, I think. Their judgement is plainly impaired. I’m going to have to be firmer with Cerberus than I hoped. They can’t be trusted to act in their own interests. That, and I don’t think they’re acting in our interest right now, either.”

She thought a few moments longer, trying to think of ways ahead that didn’t involve what she felt had to happen. Maybe alternatives, maybe better options, kinder ones? None came to mind. A lesser, more lax Inquisitor might have been able to let it slide, this development, but she could not. It represented a fundamental moral failing at the highest levels. The problem was acute and urgent and, in the short term, she could see only one way forward. 

And besides, she had shot a guard in the face. It was hard to walk back from that. 

Loghain sighed.

“I think we’ll have to get a meeting on our own terms. Al Bet? Take the ship.”

Chapter Text

“W-W-What are you doing here, Macharius?” Jarrion asked, stress bringing back a speech impediment he hadn’t had to deal with for decades. This did not go unnoticed. It never did.

“W-W-Would you like to try again? I didn’t quite catch that, Jarrion, what was that?” Macharius asked, putting a golden gauntlet up to his ear.

Biting back on the half-dozen things he might have wanted to say here - but which he knew would only make an already bad situation much worse - Jarrion swallowed, took a breath, gathered himself, and started over:

“Why are you here?”

Macharius spread his arms.

“Why would I ever bother to be anywhere near you? Because I heard you were getting involved in something that might be worthwhile, and I’m here to check. If you are, then I’ll take over and do it better. If not, well, I’m sure I can find something to do to make it worthwhile,” he said.

“This is - the situation here is delicate, fresh, and I’ve been-”

Jarrion didn’t get any further than this.

“Yes yes yes, I’ve heard all about your amusing adventures over here. I’m sure you’ve had a lovely time. I’m here now though, so you can go back to doing whatever it was father had you doing before you decided to run off and play around. What you are supposed to be doing,” said Macharius.

Doing his best to retain his composure and quickly realising that arguing the point wouldn’t get him anywhere, Jarrion stumbled back onto something else.

“But- but how did you get here ?! How did you even know how to get here?! It doesn’t - it doesn’t make sense! How! There wasn’t-”

Again, he didn’t get that far.

“Shut up, Jarrion. Whenever you speak all I can hear is the sound of blood rushing in my ears.”

“B-but - weren’t you supposed to be assisting in suppressing some Orks? Weren’t you supposed to be somewhere else ?” Jarrion asked helplessly, as though if the answer was yes his brother might somehow magically disappear.

Indeed, this was what Maracharius had gone off to do the last that Jarrion had heard of him, at least: assisting in an action to repel a minor Waaaagggghh! somewhere a few subsectors over from the core of House Croesus territory, the sort of thing Macharius often liked to get involved in whether he was asked to or not.

Macharius did not magically disappear.

“Yes yes, that happened, Jarrion, that happened, we did that. That’s over. Some of us are good at fighting, you see? The news of your escapades got to me just as we’d reached the mopping up stage of the operation, something that those forces present were perfectly able to handle without me and something which is a waste of my talents anyway. Really, what I’m doing now is also a waste of my talents, but I can’t really have your poor behaviour reflecting badly on the family now, can I?”

“How are you here…” Jarrion said. If his shoulders could have slumped further they would have, but they’d already slumped to their lowest point. Mostly he just sagged.

“Frustrating for you, not knowing? Getting under your skin? Shame. But that’s not really important now, is it? What is important is that you’re here doing something you’re not meant to be doing, when you’re meant to be somewhere else. Or somewhen else. I’m undecided on this ‘Another world, another time’ nonsense but that’s not really important either. What is important is ruining whatever it is you’re up to so you can fuck off back home.”

Some slight spark of that Rogue Trader confidence reasserted itself in Jarrion’s bosom and he straightened up again.

“What’s important is that this is a valuable opportunity! This is unique! This isn’t something we can afford to squander!”

Macharius rolled his eyes behind his mask.

“ Important things involve dead aliens, Jarrion, and from what I’ve heard this jaunt of yours has featured remarkably few of those, which makes the whole thing even more of a waste of time than I could ever have imagined. What was the last alien planet you razed in His name, hmm? Alien capitol destroyed? Species wiped from His sight? Even just the last alien you shot, even that. Anything? Anything at all. No, fucking nothing. You’ve just been fannying about moving things from here to there and talking . Fucking useless. It’s embarrassing , Jarrion. I do hope this is the distant past, then at least everyone will lots of time to forget how fucking embarrassing you are.”

“I have done that! I’ll kill aliens if it’s the right thing to do, but I can’t go around just - what? - randomly bombarding every planet I see that happens to have aliens on it? What does that achieve?! Where does that get anyone in the scheme of things?! You have to think at least more than five minutes ahead, Macharius! If you want to achieve anything!” Jarrion snapped, getting helplessly drawn into an argument he’d had with Macharius many times before.

“He who allows the alien to live shares the sin of its existence.”

“Yes it’s very easy to say that, Macharius, but in practise you need-”

“Oh shut up you fucking bureaucrat. You get to enjoy all the freedom of the Warrant and this is the sort of thing you do. Get a market stall. You don’t need to talk any more.”

And Macharius promptly disconnected, leaving Jarrion flushed, heart thumping, gawping like a fish at a blank screen, dozens of possible comebacks and responses to whatever his brother might have said jostling in his brain, none of which were any use to his brother just going away.

“You can’t just - it’s not - you can’t - “ he sputtered, trailing off into nothing as there was nothing else to say. He slumped and sagged once more.

It got very quiet on the bridge.

“The Divine Right is still on approach, Lord Captain,” said a crewman.

Mention of his rank and title did much to restore a measure of Jarrion’s calm. He smoothed out his jacket, brushed some dust from his sleeve, and asked:

“Can we manoeuvre?”

He hoped so, as he very much wanted to leave. Didn’t really matter where. Anywhere else would have been better at that moment.

“The voids are still inoperative, Lord Captain. Breaking orbit would be inadvisable.”

In theory they could break orbit, yes, but to get anywhere at anything resembling a reasonable pace they’d need at least the navigational voids. Without them they wouldn’t be going anywhere fast, or if they did they’d quite likely run into some issues sooner rather than later. The Assertive was already damaged enough in Jarrion’s opinion without throwing in going a fair chunk of lightspeed without proper protection.

And they still had a bit of alien ship sticking out the keel.

“Priority. Get them working. Even at a minimum,” he said, swallowing a sigh. He doubted very much the repairs would be completed by the time Macharius got close enough to do whatever it was he wanted to do, but he lived in hope.

“Yes, Lord Captain.”

Jarrion hung around the bridge a little longer, overseeing things, but he fairly quickly realised there wasn’t any more he could do right then, and he should seize the opportunity for a break. He’d be even less use exhausted. With that in mind he handed over command for the night and returned to his chambers, there to have dinner and then afterwards to do his best not to think about what had happened and what might happen next.

He tried to distract himself with itineraries and outstanding orders and even some charts, but he couldn’t concentrate enough to be distracted. He ended up meandering listlessly about his chambers, attempting to read a book or two, giving up, watching a holoplay he’d seen dozens of times before and, once or twice, wondering what Loghain was up to and hoping she also wasn’t making his life more difficult.

Eventually, he went to bed.

Not too long after this, unable to sleep, he returned to the bridge. If any of the crew on the nighttime shift found the sight of him appearing in his dressing gown (still armed, obviously) alarming they kept their composure remarkably well.

Moving to the railing around the raised area before his command throne, Jarrion lent and peered at the screen. It was still displaying the overview of the system, the relative position of the various planets and other features of note, and also the relative positions of the Assertive and the Divine Right . Something looked off though, something stuck out. It took Jarrion a few seconds to work out what.

“Is it my imagination or is the Divine Right closer than it should be?” he asked, moving over to the nearest crewman operating the nearest augury station.

“The ship performed a minor warp jump approximately three hours ago. The officer of the watch didn’t feel you should be informed, Lord Captain,” said the crewman, adding the last part very quickly. Jarrion was too surprised by the first part to be especially annoyed, though.

“He did what ?”

The crewman hurriedly scrolled back through sensor logs to get back to the portion in question and brought it up on screen, pointing to the relevant readings. Jarrion was semi-familiar with what he was looking at, or at least familiar enough to understand what was being pointed out. Not a deep jump, he could see. More a skim. But still, really?

“In-system?” He asked.

“Yes, Lord Captain,” the crewman said, plainly at a loss.

Jarrion had heard of such manoeuvres before, of course, though never attempted (or had reason to attempt) them himself. Such things were in his understanding and his opinion the refuge of renegades with little regard for their own welfare, the sort of voidsmen who became the stuff of legend (typically posthumously), and the desperate.

And his brother, apparently. But then Macharius had always taken risks with his life and more usually with the lives of others. There were benefits to succeeding regardless of the cost, and consequences of not succeeding very rarely reached him.

He did have to admit it was impressive, albeit in a way he absolutely hated.

Jarrion supposed - and wondered - whether the eerie stillness and calm of the Warp in this galaxy made such things easier. Without so many or as fierce tides and currents and eddies threatening to toss you around and off-course, was threading the needle simpler? He did not know, not being a Navigator. Altrx would no-doubt know. He’d likely put it into that book of his, which Jarrion only just remembered about, just then. Perhaps he’d ask him.

Later.

How it had happened was less important to him than why it had happened.

“Is he in a hurry?” Jarrion asked, mostly himself, squinting variously at the screen with the sensor readings and also the tactical screen, showing how close the Divine Right was actually getting, trying to work out what in the Throne’s name his brother was doing. Why the rush? Why bother? Just to show off? Or what?

He dreaded to think.

He yawned.

“Well. Such madness is very him, I’ll admit, but unless there’s anything else I believe I shall return to-”

This he said after having turned and while heading to leave the bridge. He got about six paces before an alarm blared and whirled around instantly.

“The Divine Right has scrambled bombers, Lord Captain!” Someone shouted, off to the side.

“What?!”

“They’re - they’re on an intercept course!”

Jarrion’s eyes widened, his jaw dropped. Even for his brother this was a step beyond.

“Get- raise the Divine Right ! Now!”

It took an interminably long time for the Divine Right to respond, and from his attitude Jarrion had the impression he’d either interrupted Macharius in the middle of a meal or pulled him from something else he’d rather be doing. The irritation was palpable.

“What is it now, Jarrion?”

“Bombers! You’ve scrambled bombers?! Sabbat’s cunt, Macharius! Have you lost your mind?! What are you doing?!”

Macharius just sighed, like he was having to deal with a toddler.

“Stop being hysterical, Jarrion. I’m not going to destroy your ship. I’m just going to clip its wings, so you can’t get in my way. Having you following me around nattering in my ear would be very annoying. You’ll stay in one piece, though I’d hold onto something if I were you.”

And there the line cut.

“Macharius? What- get him back, get him back!”

“They’re not answering hails, Lord Captain.”

“Bombers remain on approach. They’ll be on us in approximately three minutes, Lord Captain.”

“I- he can’t- this is-”

Jarrion’s brain grasped for something, anything, but got nothing. He had absolutely no idea what to do. He just stood, stunned, staring, rooted to the spot.

“Lord Captain! Orders?”

“I-”

What was he meant to do? This wasn’t a pack of pirate strike craft bearing down on him. Was he going to open fire on house servants? On men and women who had sworn loyalty to (in theory, sort of, tangentially) him? Who were simply following orders, as dutiful servants should?

Did they know what ship it was they were going to be attacking? Would they have disobeyed even if they did know? Did it matter? Was he going to put other servants - his, on his ship - in danger by choosing not to fire? Was there a right answer?

He didn’t know. He didn’t even know where to start.

Ultimately, it was his responsibility to the ship and those under his immediate command that broke through. He hated what he had to do but there really wasn’t a choice. The Assertive was his ship and this was his crew and he was going to protect them, regardless of who he was protecting them from.

“Turrets. Shoot them down.”

“Aye, Lord Captain!”

Orders were swiftly relayed and the largely-automated point defence systems brought online, and not a moment too soon.

The point defence of the Assertive was formidable by just about anyone’s standards, comfortably able to handle most whatever wandering pirate or trifling xenos empire might wish to throw at it. It paid to be prepared in the sticks. Banks of sevitor-slaved lascannons and turret-mounted vulcan megabolters and racks of missiles and more besides let loose, blowing ships to bits in the cold void. 

But they’d opened fire far, far too late, and it was a full wing of raventalon bombers they were firing at, not some scrapy handful of adhoc machines. There hadn’t been any realistic prospect of downing all of them, even from the start. 

At least half got through. The whole ship seemed to shake end to end as the payloads hit home, missiles with fusion-charge warheads and gravitic-distortion bombs and thunderous rains of plasma submunitions blowing through armour plate and vapourising the vital systems beneath.

Macharius had had them specifically target the engines, as it transpired, and that was where the bulk of the attack fell. At least one engine casing was so badly hit it fully ruptured, though the others were luckier. It was a miracle they were able to maintain their orbit, looking at the damage, and orbit was where they were going to be staying until the damage was fixed. Leaving the system - hell, moving about in-system - was out of the question.

It had been bad before, now it was worse. The Assertive was a hair’s breadth from being crippled outright. Shields down, engines down. Hobbled and vulnerable. Stuck.

A handful more of the bombers were downed as they finished their run and started heading back. Jarrion watched them wink out on his display. He felt numb.

“Stop. Stop firing,” he said, voice drained. Orders were relayed and the firing stopped, the few remaining bombers limping their way back to the Divine Right unmolested.

“Lord Captain, the-”

Jarrion did not need the damage read out to him, he was looking at it, every screen in his eyeline was blaring it at him. He didn’t want to hear it read out to him.

“I can see. He hamstrung us. What’s he doing now?” He asked.

“Continuing course, Lord Captain, projected to exit the system.”

“So that was saying hello,” he said, coldly. “Off to fuck up all my hard work. Not much I can do from here. Just - have all stations re-evaluate repair priorities and update accordingly. I still want the Assertive ready to move as soon as possible. I know that’ll just take a bit longer, now.”

What else could he do?

“Aye, Lord Captain.”

“Lord Captain, we’ve had an unauthorised launch,” said another crewman from another corner of the bridge, and Jarrion’s head whipped around.

“What?”

In theory that shouldn’t have been possible, or at the very least very difficult. Not only were the permissions required to leave the ship fairly stringent and ultimately at Jarrion’s discretion, but technically it wasn’t something most anyone on the ship would have been able to figure out, and certainly not something most anyone on the ship should have been capable of doing without help.

“From the secondary hanger, one of the intership lighters.”

“But - on whose authority?”

That sort of thing got logged. The crewman quickly checked.

“Magos Pak, Lord Captain.”

“Pak? Pak?! ”

Jarrion gave honest thought to turning the Assertive’s still activated and fully-functioning point-defence systems onto the fleeing ship, but quickly decided against it. Not only would it have been a petty and undignified waste, the Magos had managed to squeeze an impressive (and flagrantly engine-destroying) level of performance out of the thing, and it was already moving out of effective range anyway.

Heading on a course towards the departing Divine Right .

“One rat, leaving one sinking ship,” Jarrion said, rubbing his eyes with one hand and doing his best not to let his mind wander into the labyrinthine possibilities of what this latest development might actually mean. “And here was me thinking we were friends. Throne preserve me…”

That had been a joke, obviously, but certainly this was causing a certain level of re-evaluation all the same. Now really wasn’t the time though.

“Need a drink,” Jarrion said, finishing rubbing his eyes, his arm whipping up and pointing a second later. “You, crewman. Go to my chambers and get something from the bar. Doesn’t matter what, just grab whichever you see first and come back here. Quickly, run.”

“Yes, Lord Captain,” the crewman said, sprinting from the bridge.

That left Jarrion at a loose end again, as with everyone already having their orders and nothing else bad happening outside, he didn’t have much to do. And so he started thinking again, much as he might have preferred not to. 

Specifically about his brother, and even more specifically about his brother being there .

“How in the Emperor’s name could he possibly have found out...” He muttered to himself. Try as he might, he really couldn’t fathom it.

Certainly, Macharius hadn’t stumbled across the hole by accident. That would have been impossible. As charmed a life as his brother had led - what had happened to his face notwithstanding - even his luck didn’t run so far as to just finding things in the middle of space. No, he had to have been pointed at it somehow, been informed of it. That was the missing detail. 

Who had decided that was a good idea?

Wasn’t as if the crew could have gone off spreading rumours. Most of the crew had no idea what was going on outside the ship! Only those who’d been dispatched on errands had even set foot off-board, and what did that meant to them? More space, another planet they didn’t know, just some other unexplored, remote corner of their own galaxy, nothing suspicious at all. No, it had to be someone else, someone who’d been involved, someone who understood. 

But who?

“I mean, who would have said anything? Who could have said anything? The Inquisitor I can at least trust to appreciate discretion, and even if another of her peers found out some way they wouldn’t go running to my brother. Why would they?” Jarrion said, now just openly talking to himself, stroking his chin. “The Mechanicus would be here in person if they’d been told and I doubt Pak wanted to share, coward they may be. What’s their game, anyway? They have an angle, Pak, I’m sure of it, or else they wouldn’t have run. I don’t think they were the one who made this happen, though. This is my family, my brother - who would…”

Jarrion trailed off, his eyes wandered over Torian, who must have arrived on the bridge at some point and was standing very rigidly off to one side of the command throne. Something about him standing there made Jarrion stop. Pieces finally clicked in his head.

“Torian,” said Jarrion, sweetly, rising from his throne to go and stand in front of the withered old man, at that moment appearing considerably older and more withered, aging and withering further the closer Jarrion got to him. “You wouldn’t happen to know of how my brother found out about this, would you? Given that it is - as I recall - one of your duties to keep the house informed of my comings and goings, should you feel the information important enough?”

Torian opened his mouth but didn’t really make much noise, and certainly didn’t say anything, just shrinking more and more in Jarrion’s shadow as the Rogue Trader loomed over him.

This failure to respond was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and Jarrion snapped.

Wrenching his sidearm from its holster Jarrion briefly turned it on its side to ensure that it was loaded and charged (it was), flicked the safety and then swung it hard to smack Torian across the face, sending him crashing to the deck.

Stooping, Jarrion grabbed the fallen man by the collar and hauled him to his knees, then ramming the muzzle of the laspistol into his mouth with such force that he managed to crack a good few of what teeth he had remaining.

“Why, Torian?! Why?! You told my brother about this?! How to get here?! Why would you do that, Torian?! I had plans! I had plans, Torian! My plans were working, Torian! Now he’s here he is going to ruin everything I’ve worked for and everything I could ever hope to work for! He is going to ruin everything, Torian! He’s going to ruin everything! ”

Torian, eyes bulging, was frantically mumbling something but was having difficulty in speaking. The reasons for this were fairly obvious.

“I can’t understand what you’re saying, Torian, BECAUSE I HAVE A GUN IN YOUR MOUTH. If you don’t calm down and enunciate I might GIVE YOU ANOTHER, BIGGER OPENING IN YOUR HEAD YOU CAN TRY TALKING OUT OF.”

With considerable personal effort Torian calmed down enough to mumble less but he was no-less decipherable, owing to the fact that Jarrion did not remove the pistol. A tear leaked down Torian’s cheek before Jarrion, growling, took the gun from the old man’s mouth.

“Explanation. Excuses. Now. Choose your next words with exceptional care,” Jarrion said. He hadn’t lowered the pistol, and now had it pointed at Torian’s face, right between the eyes.

“Lord Chapthain,” Torian said, lisping and drooling blood. “I achted honly witth the besht of inthensions!

“I am failing to see how that is the case, Torian! Explain better !” Jarrion said loudly, the pistol now pressed against Torian’s forehead.

“You hathh beehn bechavinn eeratchically, Lord Chapthain!”

“What in the Emperor’s name are you blathering about? Jarrion snapped, trying to parse the lisping. He got enough words out of it to get the point and his expression sharpened. “Behaving erratically?! I’ve been dealing with things in the most reasonable manner available! Up until the point I started beating you halfway to death with this gun I was the very picture of restraint and moderation! Where was I erratic?”

“You traded weaponsth and equipmenth to a deviant known to assthociate with xenosth!”

“They were consigned, Torian, not traded. You of all people should know the difference! And they were to protect an investment! Also, in case it had slipped your mind, I am a Rogue Trader operating beyond the boundaries of Imperial space, I’m allowed to do that .”

“But my Lord, you permitted aliensth to board the sthhip, you-”

The barrel pressed to Torian’s forehead pressed hard enough to start bending him over backwards.

“I’m a Rogue Trader operating beyond the boundaries of Imperial space I’M ALLOWED TO DO THAT, TORIAN!”

Torian was openly weeping now, tears and snot running down his face to mix with the blood. It did not improve the situation. It just made it infinitely more uncomfortable for those watching.

“I was thinking only of your thsoul, my Lord! Only of your thspiritual health! And of the House’sth reputation! I-if word got out that a thscion of House Croesus was behaving comfortably with xenosth-”

Jarrion smacked Torian about the face with the pistol again and again sent the seneschal crashing to the deck. Once more grabbing him by the collar Jarrion pulled Torian, whimpering and sniffling, up onto his knees and thrust the barrel of the laspistol up under his chin.

“You cannot begin to imagine how much I want to shoot you in the head right now, old man. I could not find the words to describe how much it would please me. The thought of turning most of your skull into an interesting pattern on the ceiling here fills me with a warm glow. Oh, it would make my day better. In a petty sort of horse-has-bolted sort of a way. You’ve let loose that lunatic on a galaxy entirely unprepared for him - a galaxy of opportunity! And he’s going to squander all of it by being the shortsighted, bloody-minded idiot that he so relishes being! He’s going to take everything I’ve done - everything I could have done! - and piss it up the wall! I had plans - PLANS, DAMNIT! Things were WORKING! Oh Torian. Torian, Torian, Torian…”

All present could see Jarrion’s finger feathering the trigger, just as all present could see (and smell) the stream of piss running down Torian’s leg.

A pause. Then, sighing, Jarrion let go of Torian, straightened up, smoothed back some of the hair that had come unsettled during his yelling, and stepped away. Torian fell over backwards, thoroughly unconscious.

At this point the crewman who’d been dispatched to get him a drink returned, breathlessly jogging over to Jarrion and only belatedly noticing the passed-out man in the puddle of urine as they handed over a bottle. Jarrion took it, popped the top off with his thumb, swigged while waving the crewman off and then wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his dressing gown.

“Master at Arms, could you please have Torian put into one of the nicer parts of the brig until I feel less like killing him on the spot? Thank you. Maybe get him a doctor so he doesn’t die. And someone clean this deck.”

Jarrion, bottle in hand, strode for the door.

“I will be in my chambers. If anyone disturbs me within the hour they will be shot. After that, they will merely be yelled at. Inform me when the Assertive is ready to move.”