Prologue

The waiting was the worst part. Every time the SSV Normandy passed through a mass relay, he held his breath and didn't release it until they were clear on the other side. Every jump was a leap into the unknown. Technology had advanced remarkably since the discovery of Prothean ruins on Mars over thirty years ago, but there was still no detection system capable of looking through a mass relay to see what lay in wait on the other side. This last cruise had been relatively uneventful. The few geth ships they had encountered had been easily dispatched by the Normandy but Commander John Shepard still couldn't shake that foreboding feeling that the worst was yet to come.

"You're exhausted, Commander. When was the last time you had a full night's rest?"

The statement had been phrased more as an accusation than a question. When Shepard had been unable to answer, Doctor Chakwas had given him a sympathetic squeeze on the arm, then dismissed him from duty, putting the ship under the command of Navigator Pressley.

"If anything comes up on the scope, I want to know about it immediately."

Shepard thought Navigator Pressley had given him his assurance a little too quickly. Like much of the crew, the monotony of the cruise had lulled Pressley into a false sense of security. Shepard suspected his attempts at keeping the crew from complacency were starting to wear thin. He might have been a Council Spectre and a war hero a dozen times over, but they were only human. After six long months of chasing the rogue Spectre Saren Arterius all over the galaxy, then facing and defeating Sovereign and his geth in the horrific Battle of the Citadel, the crew of the Normandy just wanted to believe it was all over. Shepard had no doubt they'd follow him to the gates of hell if he asked them, but without concrete objectives and a real enemy to fight, it was difficult even ensuring they would devote their full attention to their duties.

Why can't I relax like everyone else? I've earned it haven't I?

Shepard absentmindedly rubbed his hand along the side of his jaw, feeling the coarse texture of several days' growth of stubble. He couldn't even remember the last time he'd shaved.

Because you've seen it with your own eyes. The Reapers are coming.

The Normandy had a good crew. All of the men and women serving under him were among the best the Alliance had to offer. But there would be casualties. People would die and he would sit here behind this desk, writing condolence letters to the next of kin long into the night.

Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko's face, killed on Virmire in the quest to stop Saren, appeared in his mind. Casualties had been light on that cruise, the only dead being Alenko and Jenkins, but it didn't make it any easier for him to accept. He was their commanding officer, responsible for leading them into the fires of battle and bringing them out the other side. And he had failed them.

You know that's not true. The mission always comes first.

Shepard had long since lost count of the number of missions he had commanded since becoming an Alliance Marine, but he could remember every last man and woman he'd lost. At the Academy, they'd instilled in every Marine officer the importance of putting the safety and survival of their men above all other considerations and he'd bought wholeheartedly into that creed but since Torfan, he'd realized how naive that was. First as an N7 special forces operator, then as a Spectre, he'd been assigned missions of such gravity and importance that even the possibility of failure was unthinkable. Completing the mission was not just the most important priority - it was the only priority. If that required the sacrifice of his men, he had to do it. And he had done exactly that on more occasions than he wanted to think about.

Walking over to the liquor cabinet beside his desk, Shepard took out a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black and poured himself a glass. In his time as a marine, he'd traveled all across the galaxy, sampling a broad range of strange and exotic beverages, produced on a hundred different worlds. Some he had enjoyed, others not so much but in the end, he always returned to the familiar bottle with the diagonal black label. He'd first acquired a taste for it as a raw recruit on Titan and its distinctive flavour was one of the few things in his life that remained unchanging. He knew it may have sounded strange, finding stability in a bottle, but for him that kind of familiarity was comforting

Shepard tossed back his glass and poured again. He doubted Doctor Chakwas would approve when he was supposed to be catching up on sleep, but he was off-duty and there was nothing the Doctor could do about it. Shepard sighed. If he wasn't going to sleep, he might as well as catch up on some paperwork. As he sat down, he accidentally knocked a mission report he'd been reading off the desk and bent to pick it up. Grabbing the dataslate off the floor and setting it back on his desk, his eyes fell on a holopic sitting in the corner. He picked it up and let his mind wander back.

At least a dozen marines were crowded around a table, most of them already drunk or at least well on their way there. In the centre of the group, a boyish-looking lieutenant was holding a funnel over the mouth of a young female marine with one hand, pouring a bottle of scotch into the funnel with the other. It had been Private Paulson's nineteenth birthday and Major Kyle had secured offbase liberty passes for most of the platoon so they could celebrate by doing what young marines did when given time off – consume copious amounts of alcohol and cause headaches for the brass. In an attempt to minimize the damage, Kyle had sent one of his junior officers to accompany the platoon.

A smile crept over Shepard's face. Things didn't quite work out as the old man had hoped, did they? A completely besotted and semiconscious Staff Lieutenant John Shepard had been dragged back to base the next morning by two Alliance MPs, one of them sporting a shiny new black eye, as the rest of the platoon staggered in after him, the whole lot of them smelling like a brewery. Kyle had immediately had the entire unit thrown into the brig for the next two days to sober up.

Shepard's mood darkened. The Battle of Torfan had begun two weeks later. The final assault had won Shepard the attention of the Alliance's top brass, immediately putting his career on the fast track but it had come at a cost. Most of the marines in the holopic he held in his hand had been killed in that assault.

A wet sensation in his lap shook him from his thoughts and he realized he was pouring scotch all over himself, having missed the glass completely. He couldn't even remember beginning to pour and it bothered him. Cursing, he grabbed a t-shirt off a nearby chair to wipe up the puddle that was forming on the floor. As he got down on his knees, the Normandy suddenly shook violently, throwing him off his feet and driving his head into the corner of a dresser. Red lights began flashing and a klaxon blared.

"All hands to battlestations, all hands to battlestations..."

Feeling blood dripping down his face, Shepard slowly climbed to his feet, only to be knocked down again as the Normandy shuddered from another hit. The feminine voice of the ship's VI sounded over the intercom.

"Warning: Hull breach in engineering. All personnel are recommended to vacate the engineering deck immediately."

Shepard hurriedly strapped on his armour and slammed his fist against the intercom.

"Pressley, I want a sitrep! Now!"

A woman responded instead of Pressley.

"Commander this is Chief Williams, XO Pressley is KIA. We're under attack by some sort of ship Gunnery can't identify. Kinetic barriers and primary power systems are down. Joker can't release the emergency beacons."

Grabbing his helmet, Shepard linked up his suit to the ship's intercom.

"All hands, this is Commander Shepard. Abandon ship, I repeat, abandon ship!"