34 - SSV Normandy: July 12th, 2183

It felt good to be in zero gravity again. Normandy may have been built to tolerate atmospheric flight, but it was truly a creature of the stars, a vessel that was happiest when there was no up or down to cramp its style. The corridors and passages felt less cramped and somehow even friendlier, as if the ship was simply in a better mood now. Even Wrex seemed to loose up now, no longer needing to duck through passages and free to push himself feet-first through the ship in what was apparently the default Krogan style.

The Citadel, in all its splendor, was slowly falling away aft as the ship accelerated, and the Widow nebula spun around them in all directions as the ship raced towards the Arcturus Relay. In three days' time they would reach the Exodus Relay, and from there a three months' flight to Feros, where the local Alliance forces were reporting still more Geth reinforcements making planetfall. Shepard privately doubted that the colony would even still be there by the time they arrived, but it wasn't the colony she was interested in, after all.

She was also privately beginning to doubt her own sanity. There was a time, not too long ago, that the idea of the Geth slaughtering a human colony would have filled her with pain and dread. That the thought of dead civilians would have made her physically ill, and the notion that someone out there was butchering innocents would have filled her with rage. Something of that was still inside of her, but there was something else within her too. A voice, almost foreign to her, that latched onto the image of dying civilians and whispered Their sacrifice will be honored in the coming empire.

On some distant, almost subconscious level, she knew the words had come from the Prothean Beacon. She didn't know how she knew that, nor did she know what the words meant. The words weren't even memories, just symbols, a new dimension of meaning. This is what death means to me. This is what death is.

And as this thought found a landing place in the front of Commander Shepard's brain, she knew exactly what she needed to do.

"Commander," said Lieutenant Moreau as Shepard floated into the bridge. He glanced back at her over his shoulder, as did Lieutenant Alenko in the operations seat next to him. "I heard what happened to Captain Anderson. Guy survives a hundred battles and then gets taken down by backroom politics."

Sheppard snorted, "They say war is just politics by other means."

"No shit," Moreau shrugged, "Just watch your back, Commander. This operation goes south, you're next on the chopping block."

"This operation goes south, it's all of our heads. You know that, don't you?"

Moreau nodded, "Everyone on this ship is behind you, Commander."

Shepard nodded back, and then said, "One Em Cee."

Normandy's VI head the words, and the "1MC" holographic screen appeared in the air in front of her, the intercom line from the bridge to the rest of the ship. Shepard tapped the center icon to open the channel and let that alien voice inside of her shape her words. "Attention crew of the SSV Normandy. This is your Commander speaking. We have our orders: find Saren, and bring him to justice. I won't lie to any of you, this will be the most difficult mission any of you have ever faced. The combined forces of the Citadel Conventions and the Spectres are closing in around Saren, and we are the tip of the spear. Our opponent knows we're coming, and as we pursue him through the Traverse, Saren's followers will be waiting for us. But we will be stopped, and we will not be intimidated! We're not doing this just for the friends we lost on Eden Prime, or even for the colonies currently under siege. We are doing this for every species in Citadel Space. Saren must be defeated, and we will stop at nothing to bring him down." Shepard tapped the icon in the center of the screen and closed the channel.

"Well said, Commander," said Lieutenant Moreau, "Captain would be proud."

"The Captain gave up everything so we could have this chance," Shepard said, turning to leave the bridge, "We're not about to let him down now."

"Damn right, Sir," Lieutenant Moreau focussed his attention back on his instruments and then opened the 1MC from his own console. "Arcturus Prime Relay is in range... initiating transmission sequence..."