Later, on board the SSV Normandy SR-1:

"Terentin. Good to see you," Captain Anderson says. "How much have you heard about this mission?"

"You know no one tells me about anything until they want me to start doing something about it, Captain." A black ink spike peaks out from under her uniform gorget as Commander Teddy Terentin tilts her head. "But you also know the crew likes to gossip. Eden's nice, but usually a Council Spectre has more exciting things to do than observe the Alliance's maiden voyages."

The Spectre in question clicks his mandibles together in amusement as he walks into the conference room. "You're not wrong. I could give you the party line, tell you it's because this ship was built in collaboration with the Turian Hierarchy and I'm here in my capacity as a turian. But let's put our cards on the table, shall we? I'm here to scout you for Spectre membership."

"Well that's.. unprecedented," Teddy drawls, sounding more like she meant to say 'inevitable'. Wouldn't do to show how excited she is. "Wouldn't really be good timing on his part if he wants see me in action, though, would it, Captain? Given that we would just be doing stealthy little pirouettes around Eden. I guess Nihlus could watch me shoot targets?" She looks at the Spectre. "Sound fun, sir?"

At this he makes a noise that his translator decides to render as an actual chuckle. "Not exactly. This isn't the last mission I'll be accompanying you on by a long shot. But I thought it'd be good to meet you on a low-stakes mission. Well, relatively low-stakes. There is the matter of the prothean artifact."

"Which brings us to the matter of the artifact," Anderson says. "This part, we actually did manage to keep hidden from the crew: the colonists of Eden Prime have uncovered a fully functional prothean artifact - they've been calling it a beacon. I'm sure I don't need to tell you how valuable it could be to have a piece of working prothean technology to analyze? Usually, we find fifty-thousand-year-old junk. This is almost unprecedented - and what's more, preliminary analysis implies that the beacon is something like a networked data storage device. We found one of those on Mars and it catapulted human technology forward by a century or more. Imagine what we could do with another one."

"And by 'we'," Nihlus interjects, "he of course means the Council races at large. Due to the laws on the books regarding ancient technology, the Citadel is stepping in and taking the artifact into our safekeeping for analysis. The reason this ship is involved is that we want to be incredibly discreet. More discreet than has historically been possible."

"Okay, yeah, this is more my speed. I like that this is what you consider 'low-stakes'."

"Assuming all goes well, we won't see any combat. Less 'low-stakes,' I suppose, and more-"

"Uh, Captain?" Joker interrupts over the intercom. "We're getting a distress signal."

Anderson grimaces. "Put it up on the display, Joker."

The display is suddenly occupied by a vision of Hell.

Sleek robotic creatures gun down dozens of humans. Other humans are seized and impaled, still writhing, on telescopic spires. Whoever is filming is muttering "God, God, God" under their breath, but they have the presence of mind to turn their omni-tool up to the sky.

There's a ship. It doesn't look like it was constructed according to any known species' design philosophy. It's black, almost organic-looking, and it's making a horrible sound, like a biomechanical roar.

The omni-tool is wrenched from its current perspective down to face a woman, lightly armored, with an omni-blade on her wrist. "Give me that- mayday mayday mayday. Eden Prime is under attack by the geth. I know, what the fuck. We're taking heavy casualties and need evac. Repeat, heavy casualties, need evac."

There's the distinctive sound of a bullet entering human flesh, and the perspective slumps to the ground. "Fuck!" says the woman, barely audible. Then there's an explosion, and the feed cuts to static.

Terentin is up and out of the office before the woman takes over the stream, armed and kitted by the time the crew is chattering about the Geth, the Geth? the Geth, and pacing like a tiger on the bridge by the time the camera hits the ground. She snaps out orders as needed to keep her people from boiling over, but mostly she glares at them between occasional glances at her omni-tool. Her hand blurs over it even when she's not looking at it.

Geth. Robotic. She switches from majority-steel to majority-polycarbonate on her omni-blade. Unclear capabilities. She broadens the blade's design from the width of two fingers to the width of her hand. That'll be a strain on the field that contains the blade, but whatever. She's broken omni-tools plenty of times. She also sets a background program at constructing a model of the (Geth?) ship from frames where it's visible in the transmission.

Pace, pace, pace, turn. Glare at Joker. Pace.

Anderson joins her on the bridge. "Nihlus is going to go ahead solo, to secure the beacon as quickly as possible without attracting attention. He'll keep in radio contact. You, Halliwell, and Lieutenant Alenko will follow and clear a path through the geth, and reinforce him once he gets to the beacon. Any questions?"

Terentin commits her changes with several rapid pinkie-swipes and looks up. She's going to need to keep Halliwell close. You can divide Alliance personnel into 'kids' and 'not kids' and, well. The kid's a kid.

"No, sir. We'll watch the Spectre's tail. Mort, Kaidan, come on." She figured she'd either be teaming up with Nihlus or going alone, but, well, that's why she's not Anderson. Gonna be good to have a biotic along, at least.

"Yes, ma'- commander."

Mort follows them into the shuttle, babbling. "Gonna be weird seeing Eden Prime again. I mean, especially with geth on it, but I haven't been there since I graduated high school. Wonder if it's all still prefabs and soybean farms? Well, prefabs are kind of a given, but if we're landing near the port I guess soybeans might not be..."

"Could we keep the babbling on-topic, if you please." Terentin takes her seat and prepares to head out. The helmet she grabbed has a big scratch on the casing, by her temple. "Any wild theories you have about the geth, fun facts about our fancy new stealth systems, just not soybeans." Mort has a lot of drive but not a lot of steering, you could say. It would be counterproductive this close to go-time to shut him up, and it would also just be sad.

(Say what you will about Kaidan, but he can mostly handle himself.)

"Yessir. The geth, honestly, I'm - almost kind of perversely excited about this? No human's seen the geth - well, ever, that we know of, I'd be willing to bet the quarians are the last race to get a good look. Why they're here I've got no idea. It seems like it has to be connected to the Prothean beacon, right, but why would they be that interested - let alone how would they find out about it, I mean, this thing was unearthed what, two weeks ago? Workers dig it up, the science team steps in and tells them to keep quiet if they want to keep their jobs, from then on all comms are heavily encrypted and intra-Alliance until it hits the Council agents... who are, as far as infosec goes, a sieve. But that was days ago. And the geth beat us here? In a flagship that looks nothing like their standard cruisers? It doesn't add up, that's my opinion."

The door to the shuttle hisses open as they touch down. Morty twitches. "Oh! Well-timed, well-timed," he murmurs.

"No time to waste if we want to keep up with secret agent turians." Which she does. Obviously. If Teddy can't win a footrace against a veteran special forces dinosaur-alien with predator legs who has a head start, through a geth invasion horde, then she doesn't know why she got out of bed this morning. "Now it's time to test out our stealth systems, fellas. It's the three of us against a mob of evil robots. Personally I think we could win that fight, but we're not here for that. I want us to go through fast, which means I want us going through silent." She give Morty a moment to absorb that. "Guns are loud. We're going to keep going until they make us shoot, and then we are going to be accurate. Tell me you've got it."

Morty nods.

"Loud and clear, Commander."

Terentin puts a finger to her lips and hikes a thumb over her shoulder. Her pistol's in her other hand. Time to go.

They move ahead swiftly and silently. They pass by a number of fleshy jellyfish-like things floating through the air, one of which Mort pats as they pass by it.

There's a rustle in the tall grass. Mort's head snaps around, and he raises his omni-tool, but it turns out to just be another one of the floaty things, drifting through the stalks without a care in the world.

Kaidan suppresses a snicker.

Then there's a sniper-rifle crack, and a visible blue flash as his shields overload, and he staggers. Then the ratatat of an assault rifle, and he falls to the ground.

Half a dozen geth pour out of the trees ahead.

There goes our biotic.

Terentin cuts right and goes for several shots from her pistol, each at a different geth. She needs to see whether they respond to being hit, and how. If she can pick any off from this distance, great, but for now cover seems like a priority.

She and Morty both do their best work either up close or much farther away. The geth seem to want to go with 'up close', which suits her. She can grab Alenko's rifle if they try to get smart and stay farther out, but hopefully it won't go that way.

The pistol shots sink into the geth's shields, doing little if any damage to the machines themselves. They do seem to trigger some kind of threat sensor in the geth targeted, though, causing them to juke unpredictably and, in one case, put up a shimmering hexagonal shield behind which it hides for a second before advancing again.

Mort flings an overload pulse at a cluster of three geth, causing their shielding to flare and spark, then follows it up with a blast of superheated plasma, which slags two of them outright and leaves the last blackened and smoking. Then he flings himself behind a large rock, which is equipped to absorb any return fire at least for a few seconds.

Kids can be so mean. And such obvious targets for enemy fire. Which is an opportunity!

Terentin stalks in low, moving more like a sprinter than someone in Alliance body armor. A flick of her thumb signals in to the geth shields and randomizes whatever weird math they might be doing. It has a pretty satisfying effect on the hexes, at any rate. A second flick changes a setting on her pistol and a particular clench of her left hand makes Terentin vanish.

Geth don't have eyes on the backs of their heads, as it turns out. Not how she'd design a robot. They also melt like omnigel if you wrap your bullets in a disrupting jacket. Terentin jitters back into visibility as three more geth die. She needs to cool her gun off but that doesn't keep her from planting a boot in the charred geth's back and kicking it in Morty's direction.

"Halliwell!"

He shoots it twice in the giant lens on the front of its face with his heavy pistol. The lens splinters, spilling a thick white liquid, and the geth falls.

Total headcount: two humans left alive. Six geth killed. One human down.

Mort looks down at Kaidan, his expression unreadable. Then he looks back at Commander Terentin.

"Should I put up a beacon for us to pick him up later, or just let whoever's recovering the colonists' bodies do it?" he asks blandly.

Teddy would be creeped out more by Morty when he gets like this if she wasn't pretty sure she also gets like this. Has gotten like this. Is currently got like this. She dips a field pencil in geth blood and wraps it up, pockets it.

"We'll beacon him now and grab him if there's a chance." Terentin doesn't expect to lose Eden, but she can't rule it out as an eventuality and would like to grab Kaidan's body on the way out if they evacuate. "Dunno if you caught how the disruptor rounds affected their hulls. That's good." It's going to take active effort to keep disruption on once she pops their shields, but the results are worth it. "Let's go."

"I did." Mort takes about two seconds to manufacture a plastic signal beacon and puts it by Kaidan's body. 

Okay. If the geth have even the most basic radio technology then the two of them will be having more trouble getting through quietly than they have been up to now. That doesn't change the plan but it does adjust the timetable. They move as swiftly as before, but Terentin is expecting to get stopped up again.

When they're a few hundred meters from the reported location of the dig site, there's the sound of swearing, gunfire, and biotic explosions. 

"Fucking-" boom "-worthless-" boom "-machines!"

BOOM.

Teddy thinks oh, it's the hot woman from the video.

Terentin thinks there's our new biotic. She motions at Halliwell to stay put and watch her back as she heads towards the noises.

Commander Terentin pops disruptor fire at anything that still needs shooting.  And then whistles interrogatively, as explosions permit.

The woman turns to face her, an omni-blade extending from each hand and roiling blue energy cascading off her skin. Then she nods sharply, retracting the blades and allowing the energy to dissipate. "Military. N7? Nice. Zanna Shi, lately of Ravanor Kursak's Blood Eagles, currently unaffiliated due to Ravanor Kursak's Blood Eagles having been massacred by the fucking Geth, what the fuck."

"Commander Terentin, XO of the Normandy." She swipes her tongue over a canine. "This is a mess. If you can affiliate yourself under me for the next couple hours, I can make sure you get paid. Otherwise feel free to keep melting the geth on your own time, you're good at it." A biotic with double omni-blades is very nice. Hope she can fit in. Terentin signals Morty. "We're headed for the dig and we're down a crewman. Feel free to fall in."

It is more than just a token of her esteem that Commander Terentin actually came to a complete halt for this. The stopwatch is ticking. She goes.

Zanna falls in. "I do like getting paid. -are we headed for the digsite? The beacon isn't actually still there, the scientists moved it to the spaceport in preparation for your arrival. The digsite is still the right direction to get to the spaceport from here, though."

Terentin's cochlear implant buzzes. "The beacon isn't at the digsite - seems to have been moved. Tracks seem to lead to the spaceport. Heading that way now."

"And they say we can't beat Citadel intel." She engages her radio. "Copy. Int on site confirms." Switches it off. "That's you, Shi. You're the int on the site. A credit to humanity."

Teddy hopes that when she's a secret agent no one makes fun of her behind her back like this.

Buzz. "Good to know," Nihlus says drily.

The next encounter on their path is a set of the massive spikes from the video, each with... something impaled on it. Human corpses, withered beyond recognition, with strange cybernetics spreading almost organically through them.

"What... the fuck are those?" Zanna asks.

"Morty? Field report." She draws a bead.

"I don't recognize this at all. This kind of tech couldn't realistically have been developed without human test subjects, which means the geth have either been kidnapping boatloads of humans wholesale from the colonies or batarian slavers or something and nobody's noticed, or something intensely fucky is going on. I say we incinerate them and move on."

The spikes begin retracting. "And fast," he says, firing off a plasma blast at the nearest husk as it hops off its spike.

Okay, damn!

Incineration is not actually in Teddy's skillset. She technically could make burning plasma with her omnitool, but it would take her about half a minute to get the specs dialed in right. One must settle for more precise violence. As she fires rhythmically at the zombies (seriously, zombies?) a broad, flat, straight blade pours out of her omnitool. It's as long as her forearm, and when it stops glowing from the heat it's very nearly transparent.

She'll keep out here at range for now (these things don't seem to have, like, weapons) but it's nice to finally have her blade out.

Zanna, who started glowing again the second the husks started moving, adds in some kind of biotic fuckery, condensing and firing orbs of explosive energy at the enemy.

The husks don't last long.

"I guess we know what the fuck," Zanna says. "If not why."

"Anti-civilian scare tactic? I guess?" Teddy is still rushing but, well. Chopping at the spikes of undeath with her omni-blade as they pass seems strategically sound.

They appear to be impervious, at least to casual chopping.

"They don't scare me. I'm just mad. I want to give these fuckers a biotically charged suppository."

It doesn't take them long to reach the digsite. Recognizably Prothean, decidedly empty except for the abandoned mining equipment. There's geth corpses strewn around with holes blown through their flashlight-heads. One is still emitting plasticky smoke.

Things aren't allowed to be impervious. Disallowed. Kick. Moving on!

"Oh right, you're a civilian. Pardon me."

Teddy's glad for her face-shield with all of the plastic fumes once they're in the ruins. (Military's dangerous but not usually this carcinogenic, unless you're an engineer like Morty.) She's also glad for all the pre-killed geth. Fighting in a big crater of archeological import doesn't sound productive and so she's glad it didn't fall to her. Let the cool-guy loners of the world do it.

Where is Nihlus, anyway. Spaceportwards.

It's not hard to track Nihlus by the geth and husk bodies. "Looks like he's headed for the monorail station... sensibly enough, since that's how you get to the spaceport. Unless you've got a car. Which we don't."

Trek trek trek to the monorail station.

As they approach the platform, they begin to overhear the faint sounds of speech.

"-doing here, Saren? I have this mission under control. Not that it's not good to see you."

Oh, great, multiple people beat them here.

Terentin wants to radio in and interrupt the conversation but that's not 'necessary use only', so the posse will just head on in on foot. Trek, trek.

"The Council thought you could use a little help on this one, Nihlus. Why don't you just... relax, and tell me about the situation on the ground?"

"It's... not great. We weren't expecting the geth, and that means we're missing something. Unless - is there something the Council wasn't telling me? Is Sparatus or Tevos pulling some kind of mindfuck?"

"No! That's not what's going on. You always were a paranoid cloaca, Nihlus, don't get ahead of yourself."

Nihlus chuckles reluctantly. "There's something you're not telling me, though. I've known you fifteen years, Arterius, and frankly, you couldn't tag me with a paintball from heavy cover."

"You'd be surprised," Saren says softly.

There's a quiet pwip! sound, a splatter, then a thud as something heavy hits the sheet metal floor of the platform.

Then, footsteps, walking away.

Commander Terentin knows what that sound is.

"Watch my back," she breathes to her team, before she's off like a shot. Saren, whoever that is, hears footsteps in turn.

Nihlus' body is lying in a spreading pool of cobalt blood, and Saren is walking towards the monorail itself, but he turns and raises his pistol when he hears her on the stairs up to the platform.

"You? You were supposed to be - ugh. Humans and your fucking endurance predation. I don't have time for this."

She can make it quick.

The human racing towards him vanishes, though her pulsing footfalls against the sheet metal don't.

Saren's eyes narrow. He makes a sharp gesture, and a wave of biotic energy so pale it's almost silver pulses violently outward from his body.

Biotics should really have to wear special uniforms. Hats, maybe.

Commander Terentin is knocked into the air, and the violence her shield experiences is, well, pretty harrowing. The pain that's going to shoot up her knees as she lands in just a moment will confirm that her active defenses are down for the count. Hopefully her backup in right behind her.

But that's all happening later. Right now, hanging about four or five feet off the ground, what's happening is that she has the sights of her heavy pistol right... over... the bastard's chest. As her tactical cloak reluctantly fades and light starts hitting her again, Terentin hurtles towards the ground, firing.

The bullets hiss against his shields. He raises his own pistol -

- and a bolt of furious blue energy blasts into him, knocking him off-balance, and resolves into an equally furious Zanna. She slices and swipes at him with her omni-blades, leaving scratches in his heavy armor.

Saren hisses with irritation, makes another gesture, and flings Zanna into a metal wall. He raises his pistol again -

- but it screeches as it overheats, and a second later his shielding flashes into nothing with a burst of electricity.

Mort swears rapidly and fluently under his breath and fires off a plasma blast.

Saren lets out an avian shriek of rage as the plasma chars his armor and his metallic scales. "You - fucking - HUMANS!" he snarls as he hits Mort with an overload and a plasma burst of his own. "I have shit to DO!"

CRASH as two hundred pounds of space naval commander plus armor plus weapons comes down on the workaday surface of the monorail platform. Mostly on her knees. Ouch.

So it's through gritted teeth that she hauls all of that into a more elegant crouch, and keeps firing. He can complain all he wants. There's three of them and one of him.

Well, Mort's actually on fire right now.

Zanna pulls herself back onto her feet and flings herself back at Saren, only to be batted aside again.

Saren presses a button on his suit, and his shields spring back up.

Then he glares at Teddy, and gestures, and she can feel every atom of her body coming apart.

Well then. Agony. She keeps smashing into the floor, why the hell did they make it out of sheet metal. And upside-down. And inky black.

She wakes up to the feeling of medi-gel, cool and soothing and blessedly numbing, filtering through the capillary system in her hardsuit to her abused joints and nerve endings. 

Also, Morty is shaking her shoulder gently, which still kind of hurts because, while every nerve in her body is no longer firing at once, she can definitely tell that they were very recently doing so.

"-hear me, Commander? We need to get moving, there's not much time."

Hey, he's not on fire anymore. Good sign.

Additional hauling, less elegant this time. Just as effective. She's up. Big mysterious dickhead couldn't even kill her.

"Point me," she says, since the world is rolling under her a little and her internal compass is spinning. Ah, blood, that old taste.

Zanna's pitching a bit. "Good, you made it. Wouldn't want you to miss all the fun."

"Uh, sitrep is that we played dead after you went down; Saren thankfully didn't double-tap our corpses, just left us for dead; on the way out, he was on the radio with somebody telling them to set up some kind of bomb after he left the spaceport; I'm fine, medigel is great on second-degree burns, but Zanna seems to be mildly to moderately concussed and probably shouldn't be doing heavy biotics."

"What are you, my fucking dead mom?" the biotic in question slurs.

Do not grant angry people their premises. "He's a field medic who likes it when I don't get exploded. Speaking of which, bombs are bad. Let's go hack a bomb."

All aboard. Bye, corpse of a pretty cool guy who was going to take me under his wing.

Unfortunately for that plan, the monorail is full of geth preparing to evacuate the planet before they get nuked.

Unfortunately for that plan, the geth are clustered in such a way that Mort can hit them with an Overload-Incinerate combo and reduce them to slag. "This omni's probably fried after this mission anyway," he confesses, "might as well wring out a couple of overcharged blasts from it."

Mort fiddles with the monorail's drive console, and onward it goes, smelling like ozone and charred synthetics.

Zanna turns her rebreather on. "I'm blaming you if I puke," she tells Mort seriously.

"Have fun with that."

Commander Terentin sits down on top of a geth corpse. Surprisingly comfortable for a robot. Warm.

A small part of her brain that's more cutthroat and less woozy is enthused to have a Zanna weakness to file away.

Zoom goes the monorail. It reaches the spaceport in pretty short order.

Mort looks out cautiously before getting out. "It looks like most of the geth have already lifted out, thank God. We can find this bomb and get out of here."

There's a brief pause while Terentin sorts all of the dead people and ally weaknesses and various aches into their little compartments,

"Simple." She steps out ahead of Mort.

Now, if she were a bomb, where would Teddy be?

Mort helps the thinking process along with his omni-tool, which points them towards an open cargo bay. There is a nuke in there! Also, a large piece of Prothean technology!

"Oh hey, a nuke," he says. "Let me, uh, make that not a nuke, yeah?"

She does a sort of 'go ahead' gesture. Blind faith in Morty usually works. Any way to close off and secure the cargo bay once they're in it?

It's got a shutter door, which can be locked from the inside.

Zanna wanders over to check out the beacon. "So, all that trouble was for this thing?" she marvels. "Hardly looks worth it. It's kind of pretty, though, I guess..."

She leans in to get a closer look. 

The top of the beacon starts to glow. 

Teddy stands up from her door ministrations to see this. "Nope."

We are picking Zanna up and putting her someplace else.

Zanna is summarily lifted and put a few feet away, out of the beacon's line of sight.

Thus, Teddy is the one directly in front of it when it activates.

There's a bright flash of light, and suddenly, there's an enormous amount of information writhing into her brain all at once. A language - schematics for some vast machine - a warning, a terror, synthetic monsters devouring all thinking life in the galaxy. It's all fighting to get into her head at once, coursing through neural pathways not designed for this kind of strain, screaming into her long-term memory alongside her name and her mother's face and the feeling of a gun in her hands.

Distantly, Zanna is yelling. 

Compartments. Compartments, compartments, compartments. The sensation of shoving at a suitcase until it is forced to admit defeat and close.

Commander Terentin flexes her hand to find that the gun she feels in it is no longer there. The sensation stays even though she's staring at her open, empty hand. Flashes of death and fear try to reassert themselves overtop her palm, so she looks away. Behind her. Morty and Zanna, who is yelling... something? Trying to interpret the syllables threatens to reassert the vision. She burrows her eyes into Morty and points, arm spasming with stress and against whatever's holding her up, at the nuke. The order is in her eyes.

Then something, possibly some part of her brain, explodes. The yelling stops, which must be a good sign.

Something is beeping.

"Commander Terentin?" someone says in what is presumably an English accent. "-relax, dear. No abrupt movements."

Terentin's microexpressions: the relief unique to the unnuked; desire to abruptly move; decision to not abruptly move; annoyance at being told not to abruptly move after previous; obvious schooling of expression into something professional. (All of this without opening her eyes.)

"Yes, ma'am."

She lays peacefully on whatever it is she's laying on. She feels fine?

"Are Halliwell and the biotic woman that was with me alright?"

"They're entirely fine," Doctor Chakwas confirms. "Mister Halliwell was treated for his burns, and miss Shi was given a cranial injection which alleviated her concussion and knocked her unconscious, allowing me to pry you out of her arms so I could finally treat you. The hairline fractures in your legs healed up beautifully, and your biotically induced nerve damage was fairly simple to treat. Which made it all the more unusual that you remained unconscious for a full eighteen hours, completely unresponsive and with truly alarming brain activity. It only stopped a few minutes ago."

"Well you know. I'm always surprising people."

She sits up and

[DEATH]

and vomits.

"Oh God. I have a theory."

Dr. Chakwas hurries over, urgent but not distressed; with a wave of her omni-tool, she cleans up the worst of the mess and sprays the impact area with a pleasantly lavender-scented disinfectant. She generates a plastic basin on Teddy's bedside in case of further difficulties. "I'd love to hear it."

Commander Terentin explains, with a minimum of explosive hand gestures and coarse language, the fact of the geth, their zombie tech, the Prothean artifact, floating, awful fractured visions of myriad hellscapes, and the particular feeling of a boiling ocean being poured into the small ceramic cup of one's mind. (She gags only a few times and seems to regain composure as she goes on.) She figures this all accounts for any nega-comas she has had or might have going forward.

Chakwas takes notes on a datapad.

"My God," she says afterwards, somewhere between awed and grimacing. "I'd say it's a good thing your biotic detonated the beacon when she did - even if it was legally questionable, I value your brain remaining intact over any alien relic."

"Let's hope the Council sees it the same way," Captain Anderson says, entering the room. "I've got the reports from Halliwell and Shi, and now you're corroborating. Shi's testimony is worth as much as a concussed mercenary's ever is, and Halliwell has occasionally been... call it inconsistent... but you've got a spotless record. I hope that's enough to convince the Council. If it isn't... well, we'll figure something out. Saren has to be stopped."

Teddy lets him finish saying all of that before clearing her throat daintily: "Captain, please. Can't you see I'm discussing personal medical information with my doctor here?"

She heaves herself up onto her healed legs while everyone else appreciates her wit and good humor. It's breezy on the Normandy when you're in scrubs instead of armor. "If the Council doesn't take my testimony as fact then they should be recalled, or fired, or whatever. But they will. I'm very convincing, for one, and we also have the virtue of telling the truth about a completely inane situation. We'd be stupid to kill Nihlus or try to cover it up somehow, we'd be stupider to blow up a Prothean artifact unless it was actively killing me–" Teddy was handling it just fine but whatever– "and we would be truly stupid to try and pull something when the geth have appeared out of nowhere." Handshake offered to Doctor Chak? "So we're fine."

Chakwas shakes her hand, slightly perplexed.

"You're an eternal optimist, Terentin," Anderson says with an incremental smirk. "We've got an hour to the Citadel. Dress blues or armor for our meeting with the Council; I'd say armor, to emphasize that you're a soldier at heart, but they won't let you have ranged weapons in the tower, so be prepared to surrender them if you bring them. We're bringing Halliwell and Shi with us, make sure they know not to piss on the carpet. Oh, and I've gotten Shi on specialist payroll under your command; seemed like the thing to do. Any questions?"

It's nice when Anderson keeps her promises for her.

"Can I wear a baseball cap?"

––––––––––––––––––––––––

Ah, the Citadel. Teddy acts like she belongs there because, as far as she's concerned, she does. She's in her least-dinged armor (stiff competition) and she's done something with oil or marker or something that makes her tattoos stand out like ink on a resume letterhead. (Her hair, a similar color, is in a pewter blue silk wrap. Joker wishes he could.) This is likely the most put-together anyone has seen her. If she owned a mirror she'd be among them.

Zanna is also wearing armor, and has applied makeup that makes her look slightly more predatory than usual.

Mort looks approximately the same as always.

"Big place," he says, of the view from Ambassador Udina's office.

"Eh," Teddy replies with the assured doubt and practiced seesaw gesture of someone who implicitly disbelieves that things can be more than she is. "Greener than I expected. Like a mall." She's never been to a mall but there are magazines that have photographs of such things. She's seen magazines. "First time, Zan?"

"No, I've been before. Never to the Tower. ...never the Presidium either, come to think of it. But I've been to, you know, the superstructure. Bought a shotgun mod. Shot a batarian who was smuggling red sand, with said shotgun mod. That sort of thing."

"I've never been," Mort contributes. "Do you think we'll have time for me to pick up a replacement tool, between meeting the Council and... whatever else?"

Suzanna gets quirked eyebrows.

"I have no idea, Mort, but yes."

"Cool. You can get just about anything on the Citadel, and the taxes are lower than ordering online." He starts muttering about the Logic Arrest tool versus the Polaris, and which one would be better for his purposes.

"I see you brought your whole ship with you, Anderson," says a quintessentially snide voice.

"And good whatever time it's pretending to be to you too, Donnel," Anderson says. "Yes, I did bring the full ground team from the Eden Prime mission, given that the Council might request testimony from any one of them. I'm sorry to have crowded your ridiculous office with three people."

"Three soldiers," the ambassador says, his voice dripping with distaste. "It's too many to fit in one skycar, at any rate. I'll meet you at the Council Tower."

"Uh, what room?"

Udina looks at Mort with undisguised loathing. "The top."

Then he turns on his heel and walks out.

"I feel like it's too obvious to point out that he wasn't being very diplomatic."

It's maybe suspicious when she lets Captain Anderson leave the room first.

"So I'll just say he's a dick." If she could manage to steal his skycar she would.

She can hear Anderson snort from outside the door as he walks away.

Zanna pats Mort's back absently. "That guy's representing humanity? I wouldn't want him representing my skyball team."

"He does seem like he's probably good at playing hardball. Maybe not so good at... anything else."

The snort from the Captain joins one of many in Teddy's mental trophy case.

"The good ambassador has awful posture, Mort. I bet he couldn't throw a ball out of a wet paper bag." She wonders if she could get a Normandy team going if this Spectre thing falls through. "Do you actually play, Shi?"

"In college. I went to Edmonton, we were one of the first Earth-based skyball leagues. Competed against some snobby asari academy from Ilium and kicked their asses, then got disqualified from the tournament on a technicality so they wouldn't have to admit they lost to humans. But, to be clear, we kicked their blue asses. - I also did urban combat league, the seasons didn't conflict. Still follow the Blood Dragons when it's winter on Earth."

"I am surrounded by girljocks," Mort says solemnly. "Next you'll say you like American football."

Teddy is looking at Zanna like she's a nice new wardrobe you bought at an estate sale that turns out to have been filled with gold coins.

"If I knew mercenaries were retired college sports stars I would have hung around more mercenaries." She punches Morty on the arm; she limits herself to direct challenges or she'd be doing that constantly. "I used to be a runner until, well. Until they started assigning me to experimental stealth craft and stuff. Time conflicts." She misses running on ground, not that she hasn't technically done that recently. Mostly it's treadmills when you're in space.

Terentin cups hands around her mouth, and yells, "Not that I'm not thrilled, Captain!"

Regrettably, Anderson has already passed out of earshot.

"Oh, most of my compatriots had much less interesting lives. Underprivileged Earthlings, colony kids who learned to shoot hunting space weasels, disillusioned military brats... we got them all. I was the only Blood Eagle who played skyball."

"How many of you were there?"

"Sixteen. Most of them were idiots... but I'm still gonna rip Saren a new one for getting them killed. Fucker has a lot to answer for."

"You'll get your chance. Stick with me." She's glaring into space.

Mort clears his throat. "Should we find an aircar stand?"

>:l nod

They find an aircar stand with a waiting aircar outside the embassy building. Mort opens the back door and bows. "Ladies."

Teddy arches both eyebrows at Zanna and gives her an 'oh no, after you' gesture, stepping to one side.

Zanna sweeps into the aircar in a manner which suggests a ballgown while also making it incredibly obvious that she's wearing armor instead.

Teddy physically bumps Morty out of the way, which he was not in. It is even more clear that she's wearing armor.

Mort takes his place in the driver's seat, then passes his omni-tool over the console.

"Citadel tower," he says. "Top floor."

"Authorization required," says a condescending VI.

"Ugh. Commander, can you authorize us?"

"Yup. Commander Theodora Ndikima Terentin, Systems Alliance, authorizes the previous order." She pulls out a canteen from somewhere in the bulk of her armor. Sip.

The VI accepts this, and the skycar engages.

Mort looks out the windows as they rise into the air. "Man. I don't love the starfield view, honestly, kind of rather be fully enclosed, but the Presidium itself is great."

Sip.

"I don't have a problem with it, it's just really big nighttime."

Mort struggles with his words.

"It's down. I don't like that."

"Just do the gravity calcs in your head, it's what I do." It is not.

"...that might actually help. Huh."

He looks out the window, doing math in his head. "-yeah, this is better. Cool!"

"Nerd. Just excise fear from your soul like an adult."

Teddy is never surprised when a shot in the dark works. That would be unprofessional. But it's nice that it worked and that Morty gets some peace!

"I dunno, Shi, sounds boring. I'm supposed to, what, raise a single eyebrow when I almost get sniped? Ice in my veins? If I didn't like the fear then I'd have kept running track instead of..." She indicates her lap, the armor, the insignia. "This."

"Also why would Mort do things like an adult."

"Hey!"

"Hah. I guess I'll accept that. I get by on bloodlust, most of the time."

How promising! We are spreading our legs a little bit more companionably than rank ought to denote. 

"Takes all kinds. I just like to be present and mindful." Is Commander Terentin serious? Who can really say.

(:P at Morty in the rearview)

The skycar pulls into the loading area of the Citadel Tower pinnacle.

The pinnacle is an enormously high-ceilinged chamber, laid out like an indoor park, tiered with waterfalls and shallow steps. At the far end of the room, they can distantly see the Council platform.

"-stall them for time," a turian is saying to another turian a few feet away from their parking space. "Saren's hiding something, and I need to get to the bottom of it."

     "What you need is to stop wasting everyone's time," the second turian says harshly. "You want me to stall the Council? Get your head out of your cloaca and stop sucking your own dick, Vakarian."

"...understood, sir," the first turian grinds out. His apparent superior stalks off.

The turian gets a thorough, brisk stare, full of scanning eye contact and finished in just a few seconds.

"Don't tell me. Hard to investigate a spy who works for the people overseeing the investigation?"

He grimaces and nods. "How'd you guess. Commander Terentin, right? I'm Garrus Vakarian, with Citadel Security. I don't know why they even assigned me this damned case if they're going to shoot me in the foot."

"Someone hates you, someone wants you tied up, someone thinks you're bad at this, the other guy wasn't available..." She doesn't condescend to counting out the possibilities on her fingers. Do turians even count on their fingers? It doesn't seem like it would be worth the effort. "Or maybe Saren Arterius asked them to put you on it, as part of some obscure plan that will somehow also involve both a nuke and shooting me. If I'm going to keep guessing."

Terentin closes her eyes for just a moment. For herself.

"This is Mort Halliwell and Zanna Shi, my fellow witnesses slash my subordinates."

"My pleasure. I don't want to delay you getting to the Council, but..." He lowers his voice. "I do have some sources. Afterwards, you can find me in the C-Sec office, and I'll help you pin the bastard any way I can."

Terentin nods. She could kiss him. If he weren't a dude that she just met. Who let his boss insult him using his own dick. Still, though.

And now to walk into the Council meeting like it's someone else's execution. Positive mindset.

Udina and Anderson are waiting. "You made it," Anderson whispers, sounding exhausted. "They started the hearing early - it's not going well."

"This is absurd," Udina growls. "Do you think your own Spectre candidate is somehow being strongarmed by Earth's military? You've never met the girl - we tried to pull that kind of scam, she'd turn us over in a heartbeat!"

     "You're right," the Salarian Councilor says, flicking his nictitating membranes rapidly. "We've never met her. We have met Spectre Arterius, and we know that he's always done the right thing - not for the Turian Hierarchy, not for himself, but for the Council and the galactic community."

"Ambassador, if the problem was just that the Councilors had never met me," Commander Terentin starts to say, then just stops and gestures at herself. Well hello, says her posture. Don't focus on the guy who met me for the first time ten minutes ago and just referred to me as 'the girl', it doesn't bother with. If the Council wanted a good ambassador for humanity then they'd have gotten themselves one. "Should my unit not have attended today? If you've already come to a decision that Saren is innocent of all charges." There's no sarcasm in her voice and her head doesn't tilt an inch.

     "We have not yet come to our final conclusion," the Asari Councillor says coolly. "But the burden of proof falls to you, and so far it hasn't been reached. Your biotic was concussed in the geth attack, and enlisted with benefits hours after giving her testimony. Your technician has a rich history of the kind of psychological disorders to which humans are all too prone -"

"Councillor Tevos, that is an ad hominem attack and a racist-" Udina starts.

     Tevos sighs, clearly feeling very put-upon. "Fine, strike it from the record. Your technician's testimony is questionable for other reasons. It is, more or less, the word of a single human against that of a Council Spectre whose loyalty and competence have, almost literally, never been questioned... except, coincidentally, by members of the Systems Alliance. Such coincidences eventually grow tiresome."

"I'm grateful to the Council for providing me the benefit of the doubt," Saren says tartly from his holographic projector. "After all, I have only a lifetime of service, the telemetry of my shuttle showing I was nowhere near the colony, and the fact that the murder of which I stand accused was of one of my oldest and dearest friends to back up my case."

"Because of course you've never shot anyone in the back before, Arterius," Anderson grunts. "That would be completely inimical to your strong moral backbone."

Saren snorts. "Keep talking, human. This is a pathetic display of your personal vendetta."

     "Enough, both of you," Tevos says sharply.

Saren inclines his head minutely. "My sincerest apologies, Councillor."

A muscle is pulsing in Terentin's jaw, and it's because she is absolutely ignoring the fact that Saren spoke. It would not be good to launch herself across the room in front of the ruling arm of the entire galaxy and start attacking a hologram.

She lets the silence hold for just long enough that it might be chastening. Probably not.

"I don't have any evidence that you haven't already seen. I'll point out that telemetry logs can be faked– I could do it, easily, Halliwell here could as well, Shi could do it if I left her a page of instructions; that the Alliance is in the business of hiring good soldiers, especially right after a geth attack; that we blame Saren for the concussion that Shi took, not the geth, which she is fantastic at destroying. I'm not a prosecutor, though. I was not brought here to do your job, to determine what the truth is. I'm a reliable witness, I know what the truth is, and you have my testimony. I will answer any questions you ask, but first I'm asking all of you a question, Councillors."

She catches her eye on Saren. Damn it. He's smug.

"If your unquestionable, most highly skilled, most trusted Spectre wanted to murder someone, or commit treason, wouldn't it look exactly like this? Would you be able to tell?"

    Councillor Tevos clenches her jaw. The salarian closes his eyes for a full second. The Turian Councillor, thus far silent, makes a noise in the back of his throat and slams one claw into the interface in front of him. "This is a waste of everyone's time," he snarls.

"That would be you stating that you have no interest in questioning the only eyewitness to the murder of a Spectre?" Udina asks acidly. "For the record, Sparatus."

     "For the record, Ambassador," the turian spits, "I think she's an Alliance shill. She came across Nihlus' body, reported it to her commander like a good girl, and waited for him to tell her what to say. If she didn't kill him herself."

"You have astonishing confidence in the Commander's putative abilities. For her to willingly and fluently lie to the Council she'd have to have faked every psych assessment in her file, and now she's killing Spectres! A woman of such diverse talents is hard to find, even for the scheming Systems Alliance."

     At this, Sparatus actually hisses, a tearing-metal sound reminiscent of the birds of prey from which his species evolved. "Twist my words however you like, Udina, I've already cast my vote."

She'll show Udina 'abilities'. Later.

"Just keep Saren under your thumb until the dust settles." Her eyes are on the other two Councillors. Apparently, even the bigot and the policy wonk aren't as intractable as the quiet one. "Paid vacation at the Citadel. Shore leave. Make him go back over his paperwork for a week. Just don't let him run around free and clear." It is incoherent that she's having to beg for this. She's right.

     The Salarian Councillor looks almost guilty. "Spectre Arterius is on an important mission the details of which obviously cannot be disclosed. We know where he is, however, and if further evidence arises it will be little enough trouble to apprehend him."

Saren looks slightly hurt. "Really, Valern?"

     The salarian shrugs. "I try to keep an open mind. It's nothing personal, Saren, and I would think you of all people might recognize that."

     "Are there any closing comments before the remaining council members cast our votes?" Tevos asks.

"Each day that Saren walks free after the atrocities he has committed is an insult to humanity," Udina says grimly.

     Tevos sighs and casts her vote. "Noted."

     Valern casts his.

     "Two votes innocent, one abstention. The Citadel Council finds insufficient evidence to connect Spectre Agent Saren Arterius to the murder of Nihlus Kryik or the attack on Eden Prime," Tevos declares. "Commander Terentin, Captain Anderson, you are free to go, but remain on the Citadel until further notice; we may wish to question you further regarding the accusations you have levied. This session of the Council is concluded."

The tension drains out of Terentin's jaw like something punctured. She just knows there was a way to get this right, but she didn't find it. I mean, clearly.

Moving on.

She's going to contact that Garrus guy the first free moment she gets, but for now she's following Anderson and, again, editing Saren out of her mindscape to cope.

"Well, that was a shitshow," Udina says bluntly as they walk away. "I didn't expect Tevos to go for the throat like that. She's usually more conciliatory."

Honestly, that was so much concentrated delusion in the Council session that Teddy's estimation of Udina is rising a couple notches just from how frank this postmortem is.

"I didn't expect Captain Anderson to get into a slap-fight with the war criminal we're trying to prosecute." Usually he's kinda a dud.

Anderson sighs. "Sorry about that. He's always gotten on my last nerve in record time, but I should've kept my cool."

"Yes, you should. And I'm going to be making sure you don't get us any deeper. Terentin, you were damned good in there, and much as it burns me, I'd like to formally apologize for doubting you every step of the way both internally and externally. I'd like you to try to find us some solid evidence - something that proves the bastard's guilt. Do you have any leads?"

There is nothing in space more ideal than when someone believes that Teddy is the answer they're looking for. She gives Udina a handshake and a cuff on the shoulder.

"I've got an in with the guy running the investigation. He likes me." Very minor finger-twitching and a wire-thin minimum of holograms indicate that she's looking him up. She stays engaged in the conversation. "Everything else is my, well. My bone-deep certainty that horror and death is coming for the entire known universe." Twitch. Pause. Thumb-swipe. "Which isn't admissible, obviously. Does make me think that this was more than a crime of passion. And as I understand it, you don't just 'join up' with the geth... is there some other faction? That's more questions than it is leads, but that can change fast."

Terentin turns to her minions. "Hi, guys. Any theories?"

"Definitely worth checking in with Scales McGoodCop. Even if he's secretly a moron, he'll have groundwork - and he sounded like he was chasing down a lead or something, which implies he's not a moron."

"It is still weird that the geth would follow Saren. And for some reason I've still got that flagship on my mind. It doesn't match the profile of a geth dreadnought at all. I wish I knew more about the geth's fitness calculations. - I know this isn't directly relevant, but that whole thing kind of rattled me, I'm having trouble staying on task."

"Morty, you do actually have permission to focus on the question that I asked." Terentin sends him her been-rendering-for-close-to-a-day data on the Geth dreadnought, because Citadel wifii is free and good. It's more than likely that he has a matching data packet that he made himself, but she likes to feel like she's got one hand on his projects. "If the ship seems weird, then let's assume it is. Beat it up until a clue falls out." Or until his rigidly-enforced lights-out.

She texts someone who is, in her private hologram screens, named Scales McGoodCop that he can expect her imminently.

Scales McGoodCop: Right. I'll have my file ready.

God, what a nerd. Teddy minimizes most of her windows.

"Mort, I assume this would be a good time for you to go to the flea market or whatever. I would encourage you to take Zanna so that you don't get mugged, but I'm only literally the boss of you two."

Are the old guys going to try to come to her nerd meeting?

"Roger that, Commander. I do like not getting mugged. Come on, Zanna."

"Sure thing, Mort. You wanna grab lunch on the way? There's this great ramen place on Zakera Ward."

They walk off, chatting intermittently.

"It sounds like you have the situation well in hand," Udina nods. "Come with me, Anderson, I wanted to go over some comuniqués from Admiral Hackett."

"Nothing I'd love more," Anderson says, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

They, too, walk off.

Teddy comes to an understanding with an aircar. It's nice to be alone for a minute, even if she would prefer to drive herself instead of quietly letting the autopilot do its thing. She shuffles her brain files. There are some big angry new folders in there. Maybe Garrus will like them.

When she gets to C-Sec, she's greeted by A Scene.

     "I'm warning you, Ms. Yakhol," says a trembling officer. "You keep issuing threats, you're going to the lockup."

The krogan laughs like an avalanche, little chuckles leading up to a massive bellowing guffaw. "The lockup. Terrifying. You'll take away my hammer and my guns and my amp and my omni-tool, and then where will I be? Just a scared little krogan."

     "We can contain you," the officer says weakly. "The cells' kinetic barriers are tested against-"

"Yes, yes," the krogan says dismissively. "If you can get me into a cell, I'm done. The thing about that, though?" She leans in and grins, revealing teeth like tombstones. "You have to get me into a cell."

     "Get out," the officer says. "Out."

"I haven't spoken to Officer Vakarian," she says placidly. "I intend to speak with him."

     The officer shakes his head. "You don't have an appointment."

"And I'm first, anyway," Terentin says, strolling right up into the Scene. She has a hand on the officers shoulder, like it teleported there. Like if anyone gets to bully her new cop it's gonna be her. "Commander Terentin to see Vakarian. So you'd have to wait anyway." She looks the krogan up and down and continues to sense a kindred spirit. A big one. With a hammer. "I'd ask you to join me but he doesn't seem like a guy who has a lot of chairs."

The krogan turns and laughs. "Terentin. What a fucking coincidence - the woman of the hour. And I'm willing to stand. What if you ask Vakarian if I can join your little meeting of the minds? I'll wait patiently in this lovely antechamber."

The 'woman of the hour' appellation slides off of Teddy like water from a duck. (Every hour would be more like it.) She gives the cop a kind of, "See? Friendly!" look, and a pat on the arm. Dismissed.

"Sure, why not. Do I need to just say 'Miss Yakhol' or will he want more context, do you think?"

"Warhead. Yakhol Warhead. If he wants my birth name, he'll have to do more than ask."

Warhead, hot damn. Hopefully the Garrus innuendo is just innuendo. God, what if she's a fangirl?

Teddy pushes off the Citadel cop she's been manhandling and follows ambient architecture and body language to wherever Garrus Vakarian is.

Garrus's office is not super difficult to find. It's tiny, and it doesn't have a nameplate, but his door's open. He's sitting behind his desk, but he rises when Teddy enters. "Commander Terentin. I watched the Council meeting - you made some excellent points. Sadly, the Council needs its collective head removed from its collective cloaca with a crowbar. Hopefully I can help out with that."

("Collective cloaca" is going to be bouncing around Teddy's head for days.)

"If you've got something that'll work I want to hear it. When flailing gets you nowhere then you need to get some leverage." She sits. "You do have another visitor outside, though. Yakhol Warhead? Charming, has a hammer?"

"Yakhol Warhead? I've... never heard of..." His omni-tool flashes. "Sorry, priority message, one sec..."

He flicks through the priority message, then massages the place where his right mandible meets his skull. "Little late there, Von... uh, a contact of mine just got back to me saying he's got information I need for my investigation. Which is, officially, no longer going on. And that he sent Yakhol Warhead to drop it off. You don't mind if the charming lady joins us, do you?"

Military command structure tends to preclude this kind of banal back-and-forth miscommunication from reaching Teddy's desk, so this is charming in its own way. "Mind? Not even slightly." She swings out of her chair and collects her.

She's sitting daintily in a chair manifestly not designed for her bulk, demonstrating impressive core strength and even more impressive commitment to a bit that, frankly, isn't that funny. "Back so soon?"

Fuck off, that's hilarious.

"Yeah, your guy just forgot to hit send or something. Literally nobody knew to expect you." Teddy extends a hand out to 'help her up out of her chair' and leads her to what is sure to look like an even smaller office the second time.

It does indeed. One krogan is a crowd; two would be more of a stampede.

"Vakarian," she says neutrally.

"Yakhol," he responds. "Sorry about the kid at the desk. Doesn't know how to treat a visitor."

"Not the worst treatment I've gotten from C-Sec," Warhead says, in a tone daring anyone to ask what was.

Then she closes the door. "So," she says conversationally. "What made a nice boy like you turn to the Shadow Broker?"

Oh boy!

"Why does anyone go to the Shadow Broker? I needed information, and I wasn't getting anywhere through the usual channels. Are you threatening me, or is that just how you talk?"

"The latter. You've got a quad, going after Saren. The Broker likes that. And, as it happens, Saren broke a deal with them, and they've been itching for a chance to make an example of him. And you present them with an opportunity, as long as you don't fuck it up. They sent me to make sure everything goes down smoothly."

"Because nothing says 'smooth' like a krogan with a warhammer."

She laughs deep in her throat. "You'd be shocked. Anyway, we've got a source. A quarian girl set up a meeting with one of the Broker's agents, claiming she had intel on Saren. Regrettably, said agent is a double-crossing piece of shit, and he sold her out to the bastard himself. Barla Von found this all out about fifteen minutes ago. We need to find out where that meeting is happening, save the girl, and get the data. Got it?"

"Oh, where has loyalty gone in this galaxy?" Teddy deadpans. How hackable is the general class of 'Citadel surveillance equipment', she wonders? Tiny windows flicker into light-only reality around her face and hands. "I'm assuming we're looking on-station."

"Hah! You're a real go-getter, Terentin. I was thinking we'd find the traitor and beat it out of him, but if you can find one quarian out of the thirteen million people on this station, be my guest. Her name's Sal'Poma nar Marvan, lemme forward you the email she sent in case you can get a trace. Or something."

With a flick of her wrist, Teddy is forwarded an email.

Shadow Broker,

You don't know who I am, probably - I doubt you pay attention to random quarian teenagers, and if you do I'm disappointed with your priorities. But I have valuable information, information that implicates Saren Arterius in the geth attack on Eden Prime. I want to make sure it gets to the Systems Alliance and the Council, but they won't listen to a quarian teenager. You might.

Please respond ASAP,
Sal'Poma nar Marvan

Psh, this should be easy. She sets a cuddly little VI out to crawl for anything that looks like 'Quarian not around other Quarians' on whatever security feeds it can worm its little body into. Not a huge chance of pinging anything useful, but it's free and it's fun.

"Exactly what I needed, thank you, Warhead." The compliment doesn't hurt, either.

Terentin's main plan now is a little less fun, but just as free, and even lower-tech than the VI crawler. She tosses out an auto-email to Sal'Poma's address, coded to resend as constantly as local spam filters will allow. The email leaves behind a snail-trail in every part of the Citadel net that it gets routed through. Now they should be able to just follow it, at least to her general area. Ideally they'll catch the girl crossing from one router service to the next, but that's relatively unlikely. The end product of all of this hovers over her wrist, a single blue section of the Citadel in a horde of orange ones. A little timer ticks down until the next email ping in about four minutes.

"It's nice working somewhere with public wifi for once. I'd say there's a 90% chance she's in there somewhere," she says, indicating the blue zone. "She might have just dropped her tech, though."

(The email itself, for listeners at home, is a pretty standard Alliance recruitment flyer!)

"Nicely done. That wasn't even illegal, was it?"

(The isolated quarian crawler returns fifty results, then a thousand, then chokes. It turns out the quarians on the Citadel don't actually cluster together very much, for some reason?)

She gets a response to the flyer within a couple of minutes.

I'm kind of fascinated with how badly the human military designs its scrapers if you're spamming random quarian teenagers. I'm not even of age, guys. Thanks for the laugh, I needed it today.

"You'd basically have to arrest every corporation on the station if it was!"

–––

Oh, huh, an actual response. That wasn't in the cards. Nice.

"Well, she's probably alive. Unless Saren or whoever is good at roleplaying."

Hello, random quarian teen, Terentin's reply from her personal email reads. So! You've been betrayed by a Shadow Broker middleman! I need you to power down all of your personal electronic devices and go here, (she links a food court approximately midway between their respective locations) if you want to survive. I'll protect you, and buy you lunch if you want. Reply in the affirmative and then lights out, see you soon. –T

"I'm telling her how to stop anyone from doing what I just did. Anyone hungry?" Her holomap is predicting quarian walking speed, transit times, etc. "I dunno what your traitor-beating timetable is like, Warhead, but I would appreciate the backup if it can wait."

Shit. ...fine but if you're also trying to kill me I do have a shotgun.

Her signal goes dark.

"I don't have to do it personally," Warhead shrugs. "And I could eat. Lead the way."

"I should go with you," Garrus decides. "I want this done right."

He stands up from his desk and indicates willingness to follow Teddy.

Teen with a shotgun! Cute in a distressing way. More importantly, people are falling all over themselves to follow Teddy's lead. This rocks.

Thus ensues a montage of elevator rides and crowd shots. Teddy is assertive enough in crowds that it only kind of makes a difference that she's flanked by a cop and a krogan.

There's a quarian in the food court, looking around nervously. When she sees Teddy, she tenses and her arm comes up in the familiar manner of a woman who wants her omni-tool ready for self-defense if need be.

"Hello," she says in a smoothly artificial voice. "Are you actually with the Alliance? Can you give me a serial number or something to verify?"

"Yup!" A hologram the size of an air conditioner with Terentin's rank, name, date of birth, and so on floats slightly forward of her left shoulder. It has a pretty charismatic photo of her from several years ago, with a shaved head and no tattoos. She copies its askance smile pretty closely, for effect. "Do you really have a shotgun?" As if she can't tell; Teddy just likes asking symmetrical questions.

She nods. "I don't actually use it much. How did the Alliance even know I had contacted the Shadow Broker? Let alone been betrayed."

"Well, I'm Alliance. Dude's a Citadel cop, madame is a Broker loyalist. C spoke to B spoke to A, i.e. me." She gets everyone as seated as possible. "Who's here to listen to a quarian teenager. I.e. you."

"I'm not a loyalist, I'm a merc. Broker pays me. Important distinction."

"Right. Alright. If you're Alliance this information belongs with you anyway... though I can't say I wasn't looking forward to the Shadow Broker's payment."

She slides a doohickey across the table towards Teddy. "This is a geth data core. It contains audio data from the invasion of Eden Prime - Saren commanding the geth, mostly, and a conversation afterwards on the dreadnought. He's talking to a woman he calls Belara - he calls the invasion 'a major victory', and she says they're one step closer to finding 'the Conduit'. I don't know what that is."

A holographic drone pops up next to her. "Men with guns are approaching this location, ma'am," it chitters.

"Fuck!" She stands up and looks around wildly.

Terentin's first instinct is to grab Sal'Poma by the shoulder and shove her down, back into her seat. But her other first instinct is to palm the doohickey and stow it away safe in an armor compartment. She has two hands; she does both.

"Do we bolt or shove Sal under the table?" she growls, still enforcing the seated posture firmly. She likes Plan B, since she is actually here for food, but it's the done thing to poll the group when this much interdepartmental collaboration is going on.

"I vote we meet the mercs, drop them, and come back for lunch. You said you were paying, which I like."

"If anybody in that group can hack a camera, they already know Sal's here; hiding her won't do much. I'd rather fight them outside the civilian food court, or not at all."

Sal makes a squeaking noise as she's shoved down into her seat.

"Usually I'm the bloodthirsty one, guys." Well, not now that Zanna's around, she guesses. "Sal'Poma, if it wouldn't take you out of my sight I would tell you to hide under the table anyway. Don't make yourself a target, stay behind someone, and for my sake route that loud-ass hologram through your comms." Not that they'll be doing much sneaking with the possibly-hacked cameras, and with a big beautiful krogan in tow. "And patch them through mine while you're at it, I'm on point."

As Terentin leads the way, she calls back, "I'm mid-to-close range with small arms, melee with a blade. And I can melt shields. No biotics."

"Okay," she says in the same robotically neutral voice as always. "I can do that."

Her wrist glows and the drone vanishes. At the same time, what looks like a metal crossbow bolt loads itself into a slot on her omni-tool. "I'm best at midrange, but I've got the shotgun as a close-in backup. And I'm good against shields too."

"Long-to-mid," Garrus says, taking a sniper rifle off his back and letting it unfold in his hands. "If they get in close I can take care of myself, but it's far from ideal. I'm best against armor, but I can do shields too. If they've got a biotic, somebody else do something."

"Somebody else being me. I get in close and I pulp people. End of story. Unless they've got anti-materiel guns, I guess." Warhead takes the massive hammer from her back; it hums with energy.

"I have been on significantly worse teams. Sal'Poma, you're on guard duty for Garrus and his broomstick if anyone somehow makes it past Warhead and me." Terentin's hoping this all happens someplace with a lot of chest-high cover.

As they leave the food court, they may notice that there's a small cluster of men approaching! Three salarians, two batarians, two krogan, and a turian in the lead.

When they see the squad, they draw their guns.

This does not protect the turian from being smashed into the floor with a battle hammer.

"RrrrrrAAAAAAAGH!" Warhead roars.

One of the krogan engages Warhead on her own terms, while the other charges towards Garrus.

Sal'Poma brings up her omni-tool. There's a flash of ozone as the krogan's shields collapse; then she fires her bolt, which pierces the krogan's throat sac and vanishes into it. He continues charging for a good second, then topples to the floor.

"Nice shooting!" Garrus says, drawing a bead on one of the batarians. He fires, penetrating his shields and skull simultaneously.

Terentin leaves her conscious mind behind, which is now standing around and going, Did the kid just drop an entire krogan with a crossbow? The rest of her is out ahead of the back line, sliding-sprinting across the floor like it was just waxed, pistol low by her waist, tracking, tracking, tracking––

Three shots, three targets, separated more by her momentum than by aim. By the time the third disruptor shot has fizzled the third salarian's shields, she's aimed this time back at the first, flicked the disruptor setting off. Three more shots, like an afterimage. The salarians aren't definitely dead, but they're shot to hell. She slides to a stop behind a... plinth? Dry fountain? There's a lot of architecture. Her pistol vibrates in heat, so she sets to forging herself her classic all-metal omni-blade, the one that's rated for armor and, well, flesh.

The remaining batarian manages to get a bead on Warhead and start shooting. Her shields block the first few shots, but they can only take so much punishment; they collapse, and bullets start pinging off her armor and, in a few cases, sinking into her flesh.

She snarls, bodily lifts the other krogan, and throws him at his batarian comrade. They go down in a heap, and Warhead follows it up with a biotic shockwave that pounds into them like a freight train.

Garrus takes this opportunity to shoot the krogan in the face. He slumps to the ground.

     One of the salarians sits up and raises his hands. "Surrendering," he says rapidly. "Please don't kill me. Or my brothers, if they're alive."

"Disarm yourselves or we keep shooting. Quickly." Teddy says this as she sweeps past anyone who seems unconscious rather than dead, chucking away their guns and stomp-crushing their omnis as necessary (not great for their wrists, probably.) Her eyes are everywhere. If there's unrest she kicks it in the face.

Once things are a little bit more contained it seems the thing to do to ask Garrus if he'd like to do the questioning. Home turf and all.

Garrus nods and turns to the salarian who spoke up. "You're the leader?"

     "No, the krogan killed him. My brothers and I are just newbie mercs."

"Great. Does Saren have surveillance on you, or are you an independent team?"

     "He said we were independent but if you believe that then boy have I got some real estate to sell you."

"Yeah. Hmm... we should leave fast, then, but first, any notes on Saren's affect? Did he seem desperate, relaxed, friendly..."

     "Body language was calm and friendly, microexpressions were all over the place. He actually half-twitched for his gun a couple of times when there was an unexpected noise. Even the krogan probably noticed."

"Great. Any other questions before we get the hell out of here, guys?"

"We killing the frogs?"

Saren seemed so above-it-all in the Council meeting. Can she blame hologram latency or non-salarian social reaction time for missing the truth? Or maybe Garrus is just being told what he wants to hear.

"I think it's meaner if we just let the Lesser Garruses round them up. They were coming after you, though, Sal'Poma, any opinions on their disposition?" Teddy's not just gonna kill surrendees, but there's no need to argue about it unless, well, there's a need to argue about it.

"I would prefer we not kill them!" The calmness of her mechanical voice is belied by the frantic motions of her hands. "Let's let the cops handle it, and just get the intel where it needs to go, and not kill any more people than we have to."

"I was just asking."

Garrus pulls up his omni-tool and fabs some zip-cuffs, binds the surviving salarians, and inclines his head towards Teddy. "On to the human embassy?"

"Yeah, Sal, she was just asking." Sheesh, play it cool. Be like Teddy. Carefully avoid stepping in the fact that you killed a triplet. It's easy. It's like the other two salarians aren't even there. "Little Earth it is!" She leads the way.

The salarians seem more sullen than devastated, honestly.

Garrus hails a skycar and they pile in - even Warhead only causes it to bob slightly in the air. Garrus waves his wrist over the console and it ferries them towards the Embassy at top speed.

Top speed in a flying car is not insubstantial. They arrive before the silence has a chance to get more than marginally awkward.

Anderson meets them at the door. "Terentin! You found Vakarian, and - huh. Who are these fine folks?"

"Oh, are these not the mercenary and teen that you left me with."

"Huh."

"I'm not a teenager!" Mort says from inside the room.

"I'm technically no longer a mercenary! Not that I care. Welcome back, boss. These old men are boring as hell."

"Udina's guest console only has filtered extranet access," Anderson translates. "It's been hell out here, Terentin. -more seriously, who are these people?"

"Yakhol Warhead," Warhead introduces herself. "Woman-of-all-work, contractor for stubborn problems."

"Sal'Poma nar Marvan," Sal says with a cross-legged not-quite-curtsey. "Teenager. I have information connecting Saren to the geth invasion, which your employee discovered, then saved me from being murdered by Saren's death squad. I may or may not technically owe her my life."

"Employee" is absolutely sending Teddy. She's considering adopting. "I don't collect on life debts, Sal. It'd be like paying for the weather, you're all good." She smacks her on the arm not quite hard enough to set off any sensors on her quarian suit. "Yeah, Captain, so we're here regrouping basically." She does a complicated little movement of her arm that produces the geth data core from, well, probably from somewhere in her armor, you'd guess. "This is, apparently, the smoking gun. Or, well, a data core with a big glossy image file of the smoking gun, I guess."

Sal takes the core and brings it over to Udina's console. She uploads the data and plays the audio file.

"Eden Prime was a victory," Saren's voice says. "I wish I hadn't had to kill Nihlus, but..."

     "The Reapers would not look kindly on your failure," says a female voice. "What is at stake is far more important than one friend."

"Don't think I don't know that, Belara," Saren snarls. "I'd ask if you ever had a friend, but I already know the answer."

     The woman laughs, a discordantly crystalline sound. "Distractions have never suited me."

"And thank the Spirits for that. At any rate, the humans will be reeling, and the Council won't know what's going on until it's too late. We'll have plenty of time to find the Conduit."

     "Not worried about the human girl?" Belara asks with obviously false concern.

Saren scoffs. "She'll never convince the Council, and when she tries they'll keep her on the Citadel until the stars fade, asking pointed questions about who fed her confidential intel. Maybe before the Council falls they'll convict Anderson of espionage."

     "Very well. I'll see you on the other side."

"Until we meet again," Saren agrees.

Belara's footsteps recede.

"Bitch," he says, almost too quiet for the recording to pick up.

There's a sound of distant, tinkling laughter.

Terentin hisses something, loudly and involuntarily, in a language nobody speaks. Nobody includes her. It happens pretty much as soon as the woman Belara starts speaking.

She sits hard as the rest of the recording plays out, the low and sleek Citadel couch whumphing under her. Her elbows are on her knees, eyes darting, jaw set like concrete. "He's working for," her throat catches. "–the Reapers. The things I saw, from the monolith."

"Shit."

"Reapers? Monolith? The shit is that?"

Anderson turns to Teddy. "Terentin, do you trust these people? I'm assuming they're not working for Saren, but do you think they're worth reading in?"

"Well, Garrus is like vice president of the Hates Saren Club–"

Teddy blinks, pauses. She knows she puts up a good front, but it's always just a little surprising when people actually buy it and ask her to be a good judge of character. Part of trying to be better than everyone around you is, well. Assuming they're all worse than you? It sounds terrible, put like that. But, as hazy as her concept of 'other people's motivations' is, she does know one thing for certain. "If the other two aren't on our side beforehand, they will be once they hear it." She thinks back to hammerblows and crossbow bolts, and adds: "And we might as well buy them in, they're good in a fight."

Anderson nods decisively and pulls up his omni-tool. With a few motions, Teddy's report on the attack on Eden Prime has been sent to the three New Friends, including the usually redacted portion on the vision she received from the Prothean beacon.

Sal finishes reading first. "...he's... insane, then. A very high-functioning maniac."

"This is worse than I thought," Garrus grumbles. "And I thought it was pretty goddamn bad."

"This just got interesting."

"Glad you think so. Still not sure why the geth are involved." Terentin is unwinding by inches.

"The geth have always been confusing," Sal says. "Joining these Reapers isn't much stranger than them driving us off our home planet and then sitting there for the next three centuries doing nothing. They're AI; they don't think like us."

"Yeah, but even AI have fitness calculations," Mort says. "It's not like they're basing tactical decisions on a rand seed."

"Well, their fitness calculations apparently want them to exterminate organic life now."

"Well that was clarifying." Terentin's legs spread as she sits back. "Are we gonna hit up the Council again? See how many veiled insults they have for the new kid?"

"Yes, I think audio evidence of Saren betraying them plus mercenaries in custody qualifies as a reason to bring this to the Council's attention."

---

     Councillor Tevos looks grim. Councillor Sparatus looks enraged. Councillor Valern looks... oddly satisfied.

"You wanted proof?" Udina asks caustically. "Here it is. Or perhaps you would like a signed confession?"

     "No," Sparatus says. "Spectre Arterius is a traitor, and must be dealt with. He will be stripped of his Spectre status immediately, and all efforts will be made to bring him to justice."

          "I recognized the other voice in the recording," Tevos says. "Matriarch Belara... one of my former confederates among the asari government, such as it is. She's a powerful biotic, and her followers are numerous. She'll make a potent ally to Saren."

               Valern nods. "These 'reapers' Saren mentions," he says, blinking rapidly. "I don't suppose you have any further information on them?"

"Yes. We left it out of our initial report because, frankly, without corroboration directly from Saren it wasn't exactly convincing." Anderson forwards the unredacted report to the Councilmembers.

               Valern scans through it and blinks very slowly. "I see. Vast machine intelligences inimical to sapient life... yes, I can see why you would think so. But if Saren backs it up -"

     "Saren is clearly a madman," Sparatus scoffs. "If he thinks the Reapers are coming to destroy us all, why help them?"

"Probably doesn't think that at all. I assume he's been misled somehow. Securing an imaginary place in the new galactic order, or something. First Reaper Spectre. But whatever his plan is, he's frantic. Even when he had everything how he wanted it, he couldn't help complaining about what a waste of time everything was. It was the same when we were harrying him during the geth attack. Whatever the Conduit is, he's desperate to find it."

     Sparatus chews on this for a while. "Whether or not these Reapers exist," he concludes eventually, "Saren won't remain a threat for long. He's one man on the run from the Council - even if he does have support from some washed-up Matriarch. We can find him. Thank you for your-"

"Not good enough," Udina snarls. It's shocking how much vitriol the scrawny old bastard can pack into his voice. "Arterius razed a human colony, you denied it until we flung the proof in your faces, and you still expect us to trust that the Council will look out for human interests? Earth will want blood. I already want blood. If you think we'll roll over and show our bellies in exchange for a tossed bone-"

     "Are you threatening us, Ambassador?" Sparatus asks coldly.

"Do I need to?" Udina roars. "If I seem a bully, Councillor Sparatus, it is because at every turn, you have tried to quell humanity! You have pushed back and ground in and battened down against every request, every motion, and every reasonable attempt to get what we want and what we need. And so we demand. We demand that you acknowledge Saren and his geth as the threat they are, to humanity and the galaxy. We demand that you take serious measures, with human interests considered as a genuine priority. And we demand representation. Otherwise, you can expect us to take matters into our own hands."

      Sparatus clenches his talons into fists. "Humanity cannot make -"

           Tevos shakes her head sharply. "Enough, Sparatus. Ambassador, we hear you. We will reconvene, following a brief recess for private discussion."

"Very well." Udina turns and stalks back over to Anderson and Teddy.

Fist bump?

Udina almost chokes on a laugh. "Goddammit, Terentin, I have to carefully maintain my rage. If they see me break they'll rip me apart."

She whispers, "Not if humanity demands that they don't!" This guy rocks actually? But she schools her face into a mild and appropriate scowl. "I dunno how much I buy them finding Saren at this point. Unless he's secretly terrible at his job."

"I agree, and I can assure you he isn't. Udina's jockeying for them to hand us the reins... among other things. With the Normandy's stealth drive and Spectre authority - ideally they'll assign a Spectre to assist - we can fit through the cracks they can't. Saren knows he can hide from the Council, maybe even the Spectres. He can't hide from us."

"Permission to say fuck yeah, Captain."

She sends Zanna a rotating holo-image of Saren with a laser dot sight on his forehead. And a fake mustache.

"Denied for the moment. Looks like they're reconvening."

Mercenary Suzanna Shi: fuck yeah

Alright, levity over.

Grim-faced once again, Commander Terentin marches into what is, incredibly, the third Council meeting she's been to today with Anderson and Udina. She's beginning to feel like she should dye her hair grey.

"Commander Terentin," Councillor Tevos says, "please step forward."

Her favorite thing to do.

"It is the decision of the Citadel Council," Tevos says, "that you, Commander Theodora Ndikima Terentin, be granted all the powers and privileges of the Special Tactics and Reconnaissance branch of the Citadel government."

     "Spectres are not trained, but chosen," Valern recites. "Individuals whose service to the galaxy has proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that they are worthy of the position given to them."

Tevos clasps her hands behind her back. "Spectres are an ideal. A symbol. They embody wisdom, cunning, courage, and determination. They are the right hand of the Council: the instrument of our will."

          "Spectres bear a heavy burden," Sparatus says, clearly not enjoying himself. "They keep the galactic peace. They are our first and last line of defense. The safety of the galaxy is theirs to uphold."

"You are the first human to be granted this honor, Commander. This is an accomplishment not just for you, but for your entire species." Tevos is not quite smirking. "Your first mission will be to apprehend ex-Spectre Saren Arterius."

She salutes smoothly. "Thank you for your recognition. I won't fail." Inside Terentin is cascading, overflowing, breaking banks. There's external validation and then there's this. Is she even in the military anymore? The Citadel swoops out from under her, she's base-jumping like she used to on leave back in school. "Shall I begin immediately?"

     Valern nods. "We'll forward you the dossier on Saren. And we'll contact you with any further developments. This meeting of the Council is adjourned."

Udina follows Teddy out. "Fuck," he says explosively once they've reached the viewing gallery.

Beeline to Morty. Up. He's up in the air.

"Aaah! Wow, cool, I just got tossed by the first human Spectre!"

"- absolute fucking disaster - Terentin are you listening -"

"Give the girl a break, Donnel, it's good news."

"Anderson, you're a moron."

"Sorry, Ambassador," she says, lying, mid-high-five with Zanna. "Was that not a victory swear? Did you need to be a pessimist at me?" She beelines back over to him. Something about her is filling the room, pressing up against the walls even though CItadel architecture isn't exactly claustrophobic. "Explain the hideous political reality, I'm ready."

"Thank you. First of all, congratulations. Second of all, fuck. Tevos is screwing us so subtly and so profoundly I wouldn't believe it if I didn't just see it. What we wanted was carte blanche and a Spectre assigned to the case to collaborate with. We got it. Unfortunately, you're not a Spectre." He holds up a hand. "Yes, you are. But you're not a Spectre. You don't have contacts. You don't have clout. For god's sake, you don't have a crew, we're going to be kicking someone off an existing ship! They're giving us zero support. If you expect a dossier with more than 'we think he went that way' on it, you're wrong. They want us to spend a week searching the entire Goddamn galaxy, then crawl back to them and say that we weren't ready for a human Spectre. And I don't know how we can-"

"This a private pity party?" Warhead asks, muscling in. "Or can just anybody tell you why you're wrong and ugly?"

That all sounds bad, but since the problem he's proposing is 'Teddy isn't as good as X' she doesn't really feel it.

"No, go ahead, Warhead. Might keep it to the 'wrong' part though, let other people have a turn."

"Three words for you, Commander. Check your email."

:P

Just for the drama Teddy opens the message into a hologram for everyone without checking it out first.

She has an email from one "Barla Von".

Spectre Terentin,

Congratulations on your appointment. In the interests of a positive working relationship, my employer would like to remit into your care the following, free of charge:

One (1) HMWSR X class sniper rifle and modular upgrades.

One (1) HMWWP X class heavy pistol and modular upgrades.

One (1) Savant X class omni-tool.

Data regarding the actions and whereabouts of former Spectre Agent Saren Arterius and accomplices, fully indexed (3.27 terabytes).

The remaining time on the contract of Battlemaster Yakhol Warhead, mercenary (326 galactic standard days).

One additional service the nature of which we would prefer not to disclose over unsecured channels.

Our best wishes.

Sincerely,

Barla Von

"Okay, Warhead, no takebacks? I'm probably the worst person in the sector to bribe." She's flicking through the specs on the new guns, skipping over the omni-tool's while Morty's around to make puppy eyes at it. "Not that I'm not saying yes–" the rifle disassembles explosively into its orange-light components, then rushes back, "–but I don't do favors. This isn't leverage."

Terentin is now seated on some kind of potted lichen, cross-legged. "Not that you're in charge of any of this. I guess technically you're employed by the Council for now? Ha. But, you know, pass it along when you get the chance. Open to but immune to bribing." The Saren data gets sent to Udina, Anderson, Sal, and Garrus, in color-coded data folders. (Gunmetal with pink, black and gold, highlighter-yellow, and neon purple, respectively.)

"Hah. This isn't a bribe, it's an investment in Saren's untimely death. If you do end up a little more favorably disposed towards the Broker, that's a bonus."

"I'm totally bribeable, if anybody wants to give me a Savant X. - for, like, non-reprehensible things. Please don't try to bribe me with a Savant X to kill Commander Terentin or something, that would make me sad."

"We don't bribe minions, kid."

"Dammit."

When's Morty's birthday again... she sets a reminder on her omni. Which will be recycled soon. Oh well! Attachment is weakness! Porting over data is fun!

"Well, they didn't give us an entire mafioso starship, but free Warhead for a year plus Saren's dirty laundry gets us most of the way, right?" Terentin plops what would be a very condescending hand on Udina's shoulder if he wasn't so good at psychological chess that it makes him immune to such tactics.

"...yes, this changes matters considerably... I'd be more comfortable if you had a more robust squad, but-"

Sal'Poma runs up, mechanically-filtered breathing audible through her suit. "Your people were trying to pay me off and tell me to leave," she says without preamble. "I want to go with you instead. If you don't want me I don't have to come, but I don't want geth overrunning the galaxy any more than anybody else."

"What a coincidence," Garrus says, stolling behind her. "I was about to say approximately the same thing. I just left C-Sec, I'm joining your squad and kicking Saren's ass. Please."

"You guys!" Obviously the deadly teen and nerd detective, useful as they are, are hired on the spot.

Commander Terentin is going to insist on a highly awkward lunch meeting to discuss logistics. It's possible that Udina can steer it into a secure venue but her default setting is 'food court' and she can go full sheep dog and herd people, including ambassadors, if there's any obvious resistance.

Udina spends most of his effort trying to get out of it entirely, actually, claiming he has things to discuss with Anderson in private, but once it's clear this will not convince the Commander he acquiesces reluctantly. He's apparently got a room reserved at a restaurant on the Presidium, and he insists the meeting take place there rather than "in the middle of the damned Wards, with unsecured cameras everywhere, for the love of God". They make for an unusual dinner party, but this place is used to accommodating that.

Once they're seated, Anderson says, "He wants me to give you the Normandy."

"Anderson, you know it's -"

"And I agree."

"I. Hm. Wow. I guess if you two are agreeing about something then I should just say yes, no questions." Terentin gulps down ice water. "But: question: is this, like, a counter-bribe?"

"No. Or at least, not primarily. This is a lot of factors coming together. You'll need the Normandy's stealth systems if you're going to follow Saren into the Terminus Systems. You'll need a crew that you know, and the Normandy has one."

"And Admiral Hackett wants me behind a desk. Because I'm not getting any younger."

"David, it's not that you're getting old. It's that you're dangerously volatile and, with your service history, promotion is the only way anyone can dispose of you."

"Do you gentlemen need a minute?"

"Absolutely not, thank you Warhead."

Teddy's sad that Anderson won't be sticking around for the long haul. They're close, in a kind of militarily distant way. But she doesn't want to cry over her, well, whatever her food is? It's not exactly a human dish, really. It's nice that he's unclenching, a little, at least.

"I'll take care of her. Might take the opportunity to throw Joker out of an airlock, though, sir."

"Don't underestimate him. Boy grates on you like a steel file, but he had the best flight test scores in two generations."

"Am I the only one who likes Joker?"

"Yes."

On their way back to the Normandy, the party is stopped by an offensively young-looking man with his omni-tool glowing.

"Commander Terentin!" he says earnestly. "Valentin Saint-Martin - friends call me Tintin - please, can I have an interview, I swear I was going to ask about this before the Spectre thing but really -"

How can there possibly be two Mortimer Halliwells in the universe? She does actually double-take, just slightly. But this tiny frantic white man is a journalist. Terentin doesn't have much experience with civilian media. Growing up on a farm world and then going directly into intensive military programs has a way of putting the blinkers on your worldview. Meeting a journalist is like, hmm, like meeting a candle-stick-maker? She's suddenly looking all around, like there might be dozens of them approaching.

"Just leaving, actually. Need to catch a genocidal maniac, you know how it is."

"Ah! I do, actually. And it does sound like quite an adventure! Well, there's nothing for it, I suppose, I'll have to go with you."

He fiddles rapidly with his omni-tool and a tiny holographic dog pops up over his wrist. "Milou, have Nestor transfer my belongings from the Moulinsart to the Normandy. You don't mind, do you Commander? It's only that if you're going to win over the public, you'll need the third estate on your side."

"...wait, aren't you the kid who tried to plant a bug in the C-Sec air traffic control center? I thought you were still in jail."

"They released me when the story came out. Public outcry."

Commander Terentin doesn't need help winning anything, merci. But talk of jail time has her resizing 'Tintin' up. Is this kid armed like the last one was? Any notable scars? Are those platform boots, perhaps?

The dog is just silly, and is pushed beneath her notice.

Tintin bears a small heavy pistol at his hip. He has a small but noticeable scar on his upper lip, the kind you leave intact not because you had an injury that wouldn't heal all the way but because you would like people to know that you have been in fistfights. His boots, while sensible (and possibly steel-toed?) are non-platform, leaving him at least six inches shorter than the Commander.

He turns to speak into his omni-tool a bit more, revealing an N7 logo on the back of his shirt and a biotic amp in the base of his neck.

N-7? How has she not heard of this kid? Teddy's may not be plugged in but she's not from another universe.

"...It's possible that we do have things to talk about... Tintin..." It's a ridiculous name but do not accuse Commander Terentin of being the brand of military asshole who treats a legal name like a Protean relic. "So it's actually good that you just invited yourself onto my ship. Saves me trouble. What a lucky guess." She stalks past him, in a way that manages to be menacing without wasting any valuable time on eye contact. If he makes it onto the Normandy with his steamer trunks and whatever else before her team blows this joint, then maybe he'll have earned the interview. She leaves him to it.

"You won't regret this, Commander." Tintin sketches a bow and vanishes into the crowd.

"Well, that was... fast," Sal'Poma comments.

When they reach the docking bay, Tintin is somehow already there, wearing a large backpack and speaking with a burly turian. As the Commander's shore party approaches, he gives the alien a quick hug and sends him on his way.

"Commander," he says, turning to salute. "I wasn't allowed to embark without you, but your XO did graciously allow me to stay in the docking bay."

This morning she was the XO. Now she has one. Keep it moving.

"Backpack cramped your sneak, I guess." The salute is a nice touch, Terentin evaluates as she rolls past him. "At ease, fall in, don't touch anything." They can meet in Anderson's office. Her office. The Captain's office.

"Naturally."

Tintin walks in, hands clasped behind his back.