Chakwas adjusted the light filter, swiveled the mount 180 degrees toward the nearby window, and angled the telescope up sharply. To anyone passing by, she might have seemed like an amateur astronomer, searching for the few constellations bright enough to shine through the Serpent Nebula. This may be true on a planet, but this was the Citadel: when you looked up, you were actually looking down on another arm of the station. And while it was a telescope, it had certain features not available on any civilian model, like a VI-controlled integrated display and the infrared module that she was currently using. The scope was focused on a certain area of Kithoi Ward, the 1100 Blocks, right down onto the roof of one of the skyscrapers, which was tall enough to stick out from the nearby buildings. Just as the rest of the team came into focus, the view turned black. This annoyed the doctor somewhat.

"Team, hold position," she said over the radio. "We've got a ship overhead." She received an affirmative in response and waited for the vessel to pass by.

Thanks to a recent tip from Kirrahe and the Direct Action Group, Garrus discovered that Sumia Janirix, the captain of the ship that initiated first contact, had holed herself up on the top floor of one of the ward's skyscrapers. A bit of surveillance on the doctor's part showed that she was constantly surrounded by a team of hired guards. Although he couldn't be sure, Garrus figured that the asari had realized that her cover was blown. His gut feeling told him that the asari was planning to depart from the station soon. He needed to move before that happened.

"Alright, the ship's passed. There's no sky-cars around either. The coast is clear," Chakwas announced, prompting Garrus to place the breaching charge on the skyscraper's roof. He and the rest of the team retreated to a safe distance.

"Ready?"

"Ready," Shepard confirmed. Garrus noticed that she was wearing a cloak over her hardsuit. It was matte grey and had a strange plastic-like sheen over it, and to Garrus, it looked like a garbage bag without the wrinkles- but he quickly shook that thought away. Now was not the time to criticize human fashion sense.

He trigged the detonator, and the charge exploded in a flurry of sparks and dust. Though they were in space, the immense shockwave reverberated throughout the building, up the body, and into Garrus' helmet, disorienting him for a moment. Things were much worse for the guards on the other side. The blast was followed by a loud whoosh as the air rushed out of the cracked floor below. A pair of turians flew out, carried by the pressure wave, squirming and clutching their necks due to the lack of air. From their ragged face paint and style of clothing, Garrus pinned them as members of one of the small-time gangs that festered on the station. They were way over their heads. He felt a pang of guilt for condemning them to a horrible fate, but this surprise assault made his mission a lot easier. The guards were expecting an assault from the ground floor, not the top.

Shepard, Tali and Garrus hopped down the breach into the room below. It was used by the gang as a makeshift security room: a computer terminal was placed on the table, accompanied by a few screens that were tapped into the building's security cameras. Tali hopped on the computer and swiftly navigated to the elevator control panel. A series of status lights hung above each elevator connected to the top floor. One keystroke, and they all turned from green to red.

"There, none of the elevators can arrive on this floor now," Tali said. "This should buy us some time, but they'll find a way to override it eventually."

Garrus nodded. "Then let's move."

Unfortunately, the advantage of surprise and the vacuum was not in their favor in the main hall. Though their earlier breach had started the building's emergency evacuation procedures, ridding them of any civilians, it had also triggered emergency containment fields on nearby doorways. Garrus knew that they wouldn't impede movement, but the fields kept the air in and the mercs in the apartment suite alive. He could hear noises from behind Sumia's apartment door: panicked shouting, the soft whirr of guns unfurling, and the thump of furniture being kicked over. The gang members were going to mount a vicious defence. Garrus hooved it to the next position, intent on breaking that defence before it solidified.

Chakwas' voice called out the targets in the living room. "Four targets, two in the back corner, two to the left of the door. There's no guards in the connecting bedroom, just a single heat signature. It's probably Sumia."

The trio paused before the door. He checked his gun and gear, then spoke to the rest of his team in hushed tones.

"Here's the plan: I go in and stun the first mercs I see. Shepard, I want you to finish them off. Tali, back me up with tech attacks if we need them." His two partners both nodded in response.

Garrus opened the door and stormed in. The room was arranged just as the doctor said: two salarians in the back corner, standing behind an overturned couch. A concussive blast detonated between them, smacking their bodies to the ground. He quickly turned to the next threat. No time to finish them off- that was Shepard's job.

He raised his rifle and turned to the back of the room. He saw two other salarians with lighter toned skin. One stumbled backwards, face twisted in surprise, the other was raising a submachine gun. He drove the sights to the imminent threat. A squeeze of the trigger, a blue flicker of light. The salarian's shields were holding.

A high-pitched beep came from behind him, followed by the angry crackling and the sizzle of electricity. An overload, no doubt Tali's work. The enemy's blue glow was gone, but the sound of two pistol shots came from his direction. They thankfully missed. He squeezed his own trigger. A quick zip-zip-zip, and a blood smear grew on the wall. The last salarian was beginning to raise his shotgun. Garrus charged and pinned him to the wall. A few gut shots from his pistol finished the job.

Letting the guard fall to the floor, Garrus briefly checked behind him for any missed threats, and breathed a sigh of relief when he found none. Only a few seconds had passed, and all four guards lie dead.

The final door flew open, and the trio shuffled into the dimly-lit bedroom. It was luxurious; the full-sized glass planes that surrounded the room presented a grandiose view of a large section of the Citadel's exterior. The bed frame and light fixtures were exquisitely crafted, and the walls held a few large paintings that oozed luxury. Several pieces of clothing and a few empty food containers lay scattered around the floor- the evidence of a messy owner.

Shepard carefully walked in, carefully tiptoeing around the garbage. She looked around. "Huh, the asari's not here."

"I got her on thermal," Chakwas chimed in. "To your left, Shepard."

Garrus turned to the object at that location, a walk-in closet. Now that the gunfire had subsided, the faint sounds of whimpering and fast breathing stemmed from inside.

"Sumia, is that you?" Garrus called out. "Come out, we just want to talk."

The closet door slowly slid open, revealing the asari in question. Not only did she look scared, but the wrinkles on her face hinted at many sleepless nights and stressful days.

"Did you fight your way in here? Did you kill Jeff?" She clawed at Tali's harness. "Please don't say you killed Jeff!"

"Woah- hey!"

Garrus, surprised by the asari's pleading, took a moment to pry the asari off Tali.

"Relax," Shepard said. "We didn't shoot any humans getting in here."

Sumia turned towards the window and put her head into her hands. "Oh, thank the goddess! None of this is his business. He only came here to talk to me, to try and convince me to leave. But they overheard what he said and took him away. Said if I try to flee, they'll kill him."

They weren't hired guards, Garrus realized, they were captors. He walked towards the room's exit and looked out. The hallway was quiet. There was no yelling, no sound of an approaching merc team. He pulled his head back inside and cleared his throat, doing his best to put on his 'friendly neighborhood C-Sec officer' voice.

"First we need to know who kept you here. Only then can we protect you." He motioned for her to sit on the bed. "Do you know someone called the 'Marshal?'"

The Asari nodded. "From what I overheard, the Marshal is a high-ranking Shadow Broker agent… at least he used to be. He's making his own moves now, as a Terminus warlord."

"Neither this 'Broker' or the Marshal seem like good people to be involved with. Why did you deal with him?" asked Shepard.

Sumia sighed and paused. "You wouldn't understand." Seeing that her rescuers were unconvinced, she continued.

"Most asari maidens look up to the great Asari explorers. Take Cynthia T'Gami, who led the team that first contacted the Salarians, or Arythea, who inducted the Turians into the Council. Pictures of them were framed in every school, every museum in Asari space, on the walls of the Citadel Tower. If you have the chance, you should go there and check them out for yourself."

"Discovering a new race was my life goal. That's why I worked my way up to becoming a captain of an exploration ship. And when I stumbled upon that human outpost, I thought: 'Wow, I'm so lucky. I'll get to put my portrait up there in the Tower, right beside my idols.' It was a dream come true."

She collapsed onto her bed, balled her fists, and raised them in the air. "Then I got the news. The Council, the Republics, they both betrayed me. The message said that it was 'for the good of the Asari spirit of cooperation and harmony,' or some other shit. My name was going to be scrubbed from the records, replaced with someone else. A new, sanitized version of first contact would be distributed to the media instead."

"Why would they do that?" Garrus asked.

"I don't know for sure, but my guess is that once the Council realized that humans weren't some young primitive race, but were powerful enough to rival them, they tried to paint themselves as faultless. If the galaxy knew how bad they screwed up their meeting with a new galactic superpower, it could cause a number of problems for them down the line."

Shepard nodded. "…and if the Council wasn't going to pay you lip service, then you would get it from all the galaxy's pirates."

The asari nodded with her head slumped. "I wouldn't be known in Council space, but in the Terminus systems, my name would still live on as the one who ushered in a new age."

"Shepard, how can you agree with her?!" Garrus stammered.

"I'm not agreeing with her," Shepard replied. "I just understand where she's coming from. For some people, the greatest insult is to be ignored."

Sumia croaked out an apology. "By the time I realized what I did was wrong, it was too late. Like I said, one of your kind, a man named Joker, was helping me build the translation matrix for your language. When he figured out what I did, he came here to convince me to get away, to hide somewhere. Then they took him away- I heard them mention 'Torfan', though I don't know where that is."

Garrus fought hard to contain his seething rage. Selling a secret that allowed pirates in the Terminus to easily capturing human ships… just to have your name remembered? It sounded like a sick joke, but he could question her on that later.

"Do you know anything about Marshal's attack on the Citadel?"

Sumia suddenly shifted from solemn to confused. "An attack?"

"Yes!" Garrus spat. He was getting impatient.

"That's terrible! I would have never went to Uriam if-"

A chirp on the radio interrupted the heated conversation. "Chakwas here. I'm seeing a heat signature move up the building."

Suddenly, a slight noise jolted Garrus out of his thoughts. It seemed to move from a corner of the kitchen, to a wall in the main hallway, to somewhere in the ceiling.

Shepard went and opened the door. She was greeted with the zip of a suppressed gun and a high caliber round zipping toward her head. Her extra-strength shield (Garrus had insisted on it) was still active, and it caught the bullet in time, but the shock of getting hit sent the commander skittering back into the room. Her shield flickered, then disappeared.

"Contact!" Garrus put blindly fired out the door as Shepard scrambled backward deeper into the room. When he thought it was safe, he slammed the door shut.

"Oh, goddess! The Marshal sent his assassin after us," Sumia exclaimed. She was wide-eyed and on the verge of delirium.

Garrus realized that the situation was beginning to unravel. The assassin had the only exit to the room covered. Well, there was probably a fire escape somewhere, but Garrus guessed that this 'Marshal' fellow only hired professionals. He briefly thought about simply blasting through the bedroom window and climbing onto the ceiling, but the realization that Sumia wasn't in a pressurized suit canceled that train of thought.

There seemed to be only one way out: through.

Garrus moved into cover beside the door. If the assassin opened the door came in, he would be ready for it. "Okay, listen up. We're going to have to fight this guy. Shepard, get your shield up to full strength. I'll be right behind you. Tali, you'll be rear guard- make sure Sumia is safe."

He pulled out a 3D floor plan of the building up on his omni-tool. "We're going to have the doctor call in a sky-car to the building; there's a landing pad three levels down. The assassin isn't going to face us head on, there's too many of us. So he'll probably strike and retreat as we make our way down. I want everyone to move quickly, but carefully. Clear?"

An uneasy chorus of acknowledgements came in response, with the last one meekly following a few seconds later. It came from Sumia, who was beginning to calm down.

"Let's go."

The first one out the door wasn't Shepard, Garrus, or Tali. It was Tali's combat drone, Chiktika. The floating holographic sphere bobbed down the hall without resistance or incident. Garrus listened carefully for any shots from either the assassin or the drone and breathed a sigh of relief when there was none. The coast was probably clear. The team streamed out of the door a few seconds later, making it down the first flight of stairs before the first hints of trouble showed.

Tali manipulated her omni-tool, and the drone floated ahead into the next corridor. Suddenly, the door connecting the two rooms closed, cutting off the drone and the team. The overhead lights gave out; the team immediately switched to flashlights, but the assassin still had plenty of places to hide.

"What the-"

In Garrus' periphery, he could sense movement. It was too dark to see, but he reflexively swung his rifle over to the shadow where he sensed it and was rewarded with a swift kick to his gut. He fired, but an unseen hand swatted his rifle to the side. The brief illumination by his muzzle flash gave him a brief picture: two beady eyes, a face covered with scales. He felt a force push his legs to the side, causing him to stumble.

A wisp of air sent the turian into a panic: the assassin was ignoring him, making a break for Sumia. "Stop him!"

The ignition of Shepard's mercury torch bathed the room in a blue-white glow, allowing Garrus to see the assassin's outline: tall and lanky but lacking the proportions of a salarian. The only other species that could fit those features - tall, skinny, beady eyes, scales - were drell. There were less than a million of them in the galaxy, and the most famous of them were remorseless and efficient killers for the hanar.

Shepard stood in front of Sumia, bracing herself. The drell tried to duck and weave around her, but the commander backpedaled almost as fast, making sure to always keep herself between him and the asari. Garrus approved. It was an acceptable tradeoff; she was losing ground fast, but her job wasn't to defeat a highly-trained drell assassin, it was only to stall him long enough for Tali and Garrus to get their bearings.

The drell lunged at Shepard, trying to force her out of they way, but the commander pivoted her body and brandished her cloak, lifting up it to her face. It instantly began to glow and flash rapidly in every color of the rainbow, with a luminosity that forced Garrus and Tali to look away. Somehow – Garrus didn't quite understand – it caused the drell to leap sideways, as if avoiding a speeding skycar. He collapsed to the floor, if only for a second.

Tali shot at the drell sporadically, making sure to not endanger Sumia or the commander. Her shots grazed the top of his back, causing him to scamper out of the way. Realizing that his moment of surprise was over, the assassin threw down a grenade. Thick smoke flooded the room, allowing him to vanish.

Garrus slowly got to his feet. He didn't waste time looking for the drell; he knew he was long gone. Tali rushed to the downed pair. Shepard was doubled over, exhausted from the ordeal. "Are you two okay?"

"Yes, I'm alright," Sumia responded. The two glanced at Shepard, who threw up a hand, begging for a few more seconds.

"What the hell was that?"

Garrus couldn't decide if Shepard was smirking or simply queasy from the close encounter. "Just a little gadget I had. It's based on the hologram technology you saw me on my ship. Can really disorient people if they aren't expecting it."

"Glad you brought it. Just warn me next time- I think I looked at it too long."

A few feet ahead, he took an aggressive stance, ready to push through the next corridor. "Let's move. The longer we wait here, the more time he has to set up another ambush."

Before the team reached the next floor, a series of explosions rocked the building. As soon as they exited the stairwell, they were greeted with a series of atmospheric containment fields criss-crossing the whole floor. Large holes were torn into the side of the main hallway, exposing those sections of the floor to space.

Garrus inwardly swore. It was a trap; there was no way to get to the next stairwell without exposing oneself to the deadly vacuum. Again, it was no problem for Shepard, Tali or Garrus, as they came with suits, but they would have to leave Sumia behind if they didn't come up with something quick.

"Chakwas, change of plans. Take the sky-car to the floor above. There's a hole in the wall to fit through."

A short pause. "I'll try my best. I'll be in contact when I'm close."

All that was left was to hold position and wait. While the assassin had trapped them, he also made their position more defensible, since any avenue of attack was easier to see. There were only three entrances to the room: back through the stairwell, the side door leading to the dining hall, and the giant hole blown in the room's inner wall, covered with a low-powered kinetic barrier. Shepard was sent to watch the forward door, her strange hologram device providing a meager amount of concealment for the rest of the team. Tali covered the back door with her shotgun. Garrus faced the blown-out wall, and the drone hovered in the center of the room's ceiling. Everything was covered.

The team held position for a few tense minutes. Silence reigned, save for the noise of broken machinery and crumbling concrete. There wasn't a single hint that the drell was here, somewhere, stalking them.

Garrus noticed that Shepard was becoming more uncomfortable with being placed in the most exposed portion of the room. He mentally kicked himself- of course she would, she only had a small amount of training, and it only covered firearms, not the other aspects of combat. She slowly shifted to the side, opening a gap between personal shield and the door.

He was about to address it when the he heard the welcome sound of an approaching sky-car.

The vehicle flew in, though it was more of a sky-van, since its boxy frame barely fit through the gash in the outer wall. It haphazardly landed with one end sticking through the hole in the wall, in order to allow a door for Sumia to enter through the atmospheric barrier. The door opened with an audible hiss. Chakwas' head poked out.

"Sorry for the delay," she yelled over the sound of the car. "When you told me to get a sky-car, this guy appeared behind me. Said that he knew you, and he had a vehicle ready." She motioned to the front seat- a certain black speckled salarian was there, humming to a tune on the radio without a care in the world.

Garrus was incredulous. "Kirrahe? How did you know?"

The salarian shot him a look that screamed I'm STG, stupid. "Get in. My team has a safehouse you take the asari."

Garrus signaled for the team to fall back from their positions. Tali helped Sumia up from the furniture she was hiding behind. The asari ran to waiting vehicle as fast as she could, stumbling slightly when she climbed into the sky-car.

"There's someone else you-"

The sentence was cut short by a single pinprick of light coming from the front doorway, through an angle that Shepard left exposed. The round struck her side, and she collapsed clutching the wound.

It was the drell.

Chakwas immediately went to work, quickly but carefully pulling her further inside to make room. "Get in, now!" Garrus barked, as he watched for the assassin to show himself again, rifle spitting bursts at the location where he expected the assassin to be. The remaining two members broke into a sprint for the air-car.

As they climbed in and the Kirrahe took off, Garrus turned to Chakwas, who was examining the wound. Her hands were a flurry as she worked to apply pressure and a bandage- it was all she could do, given her unfamiliarity with alien medicine. Her face hinted at a grim condition.

"The shooter used polonium rounds. Highly toxic-"

"-and highly illegal," Kirrahe added.

Everyone watched as Sumia jerked erratically in her seat. She tried to lift her arm to her eyes, but it flopped back down uselessly, with only violent shivering to show for her effort. The blue skin around her face was slowly becoming pale, and her head to the edge of the seat.

"Listen… listen to me. Find Joker… please. He's a decent guy. Don't let him pay for my mistakes." Her words slowly trailed until all that was left was the sound of erratic breathing, and soon after, even that stopped.

There was a short moment of silence after she died. The only sounds in the car was the soft whirr of the engines and the barely audible typing of Kirrahe at the controls of the sky-car.

Eventually Shepard spoke up. "I'm sorry," she pleaded. "It was my fault. I didn't cover the door closely enough." She sporadically looked away and wiped her eyes.

If Garrus was being honest with himself, he didn't feel sad at failing the mission. Nor did he feel angry at Shepard's perceived mistake or Sumia's betrayal of her people. He simply felt… numb.

Another death.

Another failure.

"No, it's my fault. I ordered you to move back too soon," Garrus replied absently, though he found himself not believing his own words.

No one dared to speak for the rest of the trip. All that anyone manage was look to the skycar's left, where just outside, several warships of the Citadel Defence Fleet, including the Destiny Ascension, were massing in a half-sphere in front of the Citadel. The red lights on their hulls blinked in tandem with one another like a school of bioluminescent fish.

Kirrahe tuned the sky-car's comm system to pick up their radio chatter. It was encrypted, but the volume of noise quickly increased- they must be excited for something, Garrus thought. The chatter suddenly spiked. An inky black cloud appeared some distance in front of the fleet, from which an ominous figure emerged out of.

The human fleet had arrived.

Authors Note:

Hey everyone! I'm still working on the story, though it's going a little slower than I expected. I wanted to make sure that I have a tangible idea for the plot before moving forward. So these next few chapters might be a bit rough before I hone in on my new idea.

In other news, Frontier announced their showcase for the Fleet Carrier expansion. Finally. They were what I was imagining for the Quaterson back in the previous chapter, so if you want to have a better idea, you can look at the new screenshots.

Until next time,

mi1