Chapter 3

Sigurd's Cradle, Padovan cluster, Freedom's Progress, Outskirts of capital settlement – 05.06.2185

"Sooooooo, how's tricks?"

Hands clenched, knuckles whitened, teeth were ground, and then Jane took notice of Harry Potter's approach and began to react.

Harry and two very familiar and… perturbed… figures flanking him had made their way through the sprawling refugee off-loading effort to her position on the steps of the capitol building. The governor's square was the biggest open space they had inside city limits to coordinate relief efforts, at least while still taking advantage of existing colonial resources. It had been hours since Jane had assumed control of the alien vessel and cleared it out, traveling with her crew down through the ship to ensure it was powered, stable, and secure. Also so she did not have to even look at Harry or his ship again.

She had set up shop in a small crater on the steps, where they were still going through the pods that had been dragged out of the ship, ensuring each was empty and rescuing people wherever they could. The grand effort to actively pull people from the ship was slowly spinning up even now.

A lot of cases of sunburn, for some reason. Jane had a pretty good idea why.

"I wish you were dead."

"So do I luv, but if wishes were eezo cores, well, the migrant fleet would be a hell of a lot bigger."

Tali's simmering anger diverted briefly, "Hey!"

Looking over his shoulder at her, and taking in the aggressive postures of his favorite laborers, Harry visibly bit back his first response, "… well it would," turning back to Jane he continued, "But seriously! How's things! What do you need, we've been stocking supplies like good little doomsday preppers so we should be able to get you nearly anything you want."

Jane could clearly see Liara's eyes behind the man, and she could make some pretty reasonable conclusions about where Tali was looking based on how her nice, new helmet's faceplate was oriented. Their gazes seemed to be focused on the cracks in the paving stones, and the trails of burn marks where the ceramacrete of the building facade had ablated away, leaving slag and a nasty smell.

Briefly she looked to the hole she was in. A line of that same scarring they were looking at was traced through the ceramacrete that made up the whole plaza to the hole at her feet, which, on second examination, looked like it had been formed by an explosion. She had chosen for it's commanding view of the plaza, and for how it was flat enough for her to stack monitors and computer equipment lifted from inside the building. It was also just close enough to the building to run data lines, since they needed access closer to the crowds but were still having trouble with wireless for some reason.

Her eyes narrowing in suspicion, she asked, "What happened here?"

Harry smiled widely, "Trouble!"

Liara stepped past him, elbowing his side as she approached, "After sending the crew of the Normandy off with bits and pieces of his experiments, he wanted to combine everything he learned into one single ship because," she said grinding her teeth, "he was tired of facing landing invasion forces and wanted to try boarding parties for a change."

"The party is right there in the name, it has to be more fun than an invasion. Don't be mad at me because you spent the better part of two years telling me I was crazy and that everything would be fine! I told you, I told you all! If it wasn't some kind of jumped-up pillbugs it would have been the Turians again, or some of those weird d'suls you had me plant."

Forgetting her original point Liara turned around, pointing an accusing finger at Harry, "The d'sul is a hearty root which grows quickly and without significant chemical soil requirements, it is bio-compatible with the digestive systems of every race in the known galaxy save the Quarians and Turians, and it is a staple of Asari cuisine!"

Jane looked on, torn between frustration and curiosity. It was clear this was an old argument as Harry responded.

"That may well be, but by human reckoning it's scoville rating is a cool 2.5 million, which makes it a half-step away from being a chemical weapon. I wouldn't give one to a Krogan, and the bloody things look shifty, I'm telling you!"

The blue woman growled and stamped her foot, "Just because your voodoo makes stupid things like beets and turnips come alive doesn't mean everything works that way!"

Around the now-shouting argument, the rescue efforts fell to a standstill. Asari were enough of an oddity to attract attention in human space on their own, but seeing one shouting at a man about voodoo peppers was enough to offer a welcome distraction from the events of the day, which cast a very literal shadow over the Governor's Square in the light of the twin moons. Spotlights set up over the area cast brilliant circles onto the crowds of people still trying to get blankets, bottles of water, and teddy bears, but couldn't dispel the darkness cast by the massive ship that still stood over the city.

Jane clapped her hands, cutting across the argument to address the crowd, "ALRIGHT, SHOW'S OVER, GET MOVING! GET MOVING!"

A chastened Liara and an unrepentant Harry turned back to her.

"I'll ask again, what happened here?" she raised a single eyebrow as she stared the pair down.

Tali pushed through between them, an optical storage disk in-hand, "The truth is we don't know either. We started final preparations on the ship when the deep space comm arrays went down, and missed some of the stuff on the colony. The local government didn't do much more than send civilians into the shelters, but the Alliance outpost seemed to know something everyone else didn't. We've spent the last few hours combing through what was left of the outpost after the bugs ran through it. They were hiding disks with their sensor readings all over the base, this one," she said indicating the human behind her, "found an intact OSD beneath the backseat of an aircar."

"You can have that, I scanned it briefly after we found it," Harry said "They left the sensor readings unencrypted so anyone could get at it, but they did leave a brief video log under Alliance encryption."

Jane accepted the disk gingerly, "What, you couldn't crack it?"

"I could, but it's less illegal if I get a proper Alliance officer to unlock it for me," he said leadingly.

Almost against her will, she turned and plugged the disk into the console she had dragged out. The care and feeding of all their refugees/kidnapping victims could go on without her. They had virtually the full governments of six colonies on hand after all, even if some of them were still on ice. Somewhere out in the tumult of the crowd Ashley was helping distribute supplies, Jane would fill her in later.

The disk recognized the colonial system it was plugged into, she entered her command authorization and navigated into the drive. Alongside a CV for an Ivan Drekslaw, and a lot of tax of tax information for the same, were sensor logs and an encrypted video file. She hit play, and a window popped up revealing the face of the former Commander of the local garrison.

"This is Saul Sheoban, commander of the Alliance presence on Freedom's Progress. Pursuant to standing order omega-violet-four-three, I am declaring a Collector invasion of Freedom's Progress and the Padovan Sector. I will repeat, I am declaring a Collector Invasion of Freedom's Progress and the Padovan sector."

Through a frosted glass window behind him people were rushing around a crowded briefing room, files in hand and Omni-tools lit. The Commander, Saul, visibly released the steel from his spine. He seemed to lose three inches in his chair as he let the stress go from his frame.

"This makes us the fifth officially confirmed colony hit. I don't know why Earth is just letting this happen. I hated it before they were coming down on my men, and I'm sure I'll hate it after too. The decision to boost Alliance outreach to these bootstrappers out here isn't nearly enough. This should be splashed all over the news, we should be lobbying for Citadel aid, damn whatever those kitty-birds on the extranet say about the rebuil-."

An aide barged into the general's room, "Sir! The copy command is set and we've got Charlie waiting to act as runners, two minutes before the ship crosses into the atmosphere."

Saul waved the aide away, and as the door closed he looked back to the camera, "I've told my men enough for them to understand what is coming. I don't expect anyone to find this. I'm not better than Xhaing or Bart, and both of them have already gone down with their colonies. They would have had the same ideas I did, and we haven't seen any recordings of them. If you find this, we went down fighting. I've deployed my men with as hard of a bio-weapon block as I can arrange. I'm not going quietly. They'll need to build a new bunker to make this place look as barren as the last few. Hopefully these sensor logs are worth something. Sheoban out."

The sounds of the crowd filtered back in to the group as they took a moment to work through the message.

"We found and disarmed an explosive device he had readied beneath his bunker. Well," Tali said, her hands nervously clasping one another, "at least we can assume it was his bunker, there were more than a few dead soldiers and bugs, the frosted glass and office door fit, it explains his final message and the strange equipment the bugs brought with them…"

"Bringing construction equipment to a battlefield in advance is a bold move. Too bold. Fuck these guys, I'm going to kill them."

Jane looked up at him and scoffed, "You're just going to go kill them, you, your two conscripts-"

Liara made to interrupt with a, "Hey!", while Tali shrugged, but Jane ran right over them both, "You three and your singular cool ship are just going to go out from here with no legal authority to kill a race you've just heard of? How in the hell do you think you're going to do that?"

Harry smiled wide, some trick of the light making it seem sinister, "Simple. I know a few people, and I'm getting the band back together."

Arcturus Stream, Arcturus System, Arcturus Station, Office of the Military Advisor to the Human Councilor – 05.11.2185

David Anderson looked out of his window, and frowned.

The freighters passing through transit line Angels-3 Secondary were shifting off their path, again.

This fact upset him, because it meant that not only was another group of macro-transports heading to the Serpent Nebula cutting corners, again, but it also meant that the traffic controllers who he had chastised, chastised again in stronger terms, and then had replaced, were once again failing to corral their charges. He would never tell them that their job was easy, but he would demand that they do it.

He sighed.

That fact also upset him because it was yet another piece of evidence that he had been here, in this office, for far too long. He could chart the entire Angels traffic layer in his sleep. He had to stop himself from tracing them in dry erase markers at least once a week.

The death of the Citadel had spelled the death of a truly centralized galactic government. Oh the Citadel was still alive and kicking as a treaty organization and as an economic power, all that taxation and all those appropriations contracts couldn't just disappear over night. However, with communications interrupted by the central axis about which the relay comm system spun being shorted to the tune of a few tera-volts, there stopped being a good reason to keep everything out there in space when it could just as easily be back home. Operating expenses were lower there, after all, and with the Volus reigning their presence back in to Irune and Turian territory, banking expenses trended lower in home systems too.

The Asari councilor had been called back to Thessia first, then the Salarian Councilor had been called back to Surkesh, and with only Sparatus and Udina left floating through gravity-free hallways and meeting in former storage rooms, the whole thing had eventually been called off. The Citadel, which had boasted a population of more than 13 million, was now down to a rotating group of less than 500,000 scientists researchers, and contractors.

Repair estimates, something which typically didn't involve a giga-credit R&D component, were still only trailing upward. It had only been in the last eight months that politicians were waking up to the fact that they were better off building their own space station, or better yet series of space stations, rather than trying to repair something their galaxy-unifying forebears had failed to understand.

He had been here, in this office, acting as a military advisor to a man he couldn't stand the sight of, for more than nineteen months. He hated it.

But, and this lay at the core of his complaint with the traffic controller covering the Angels-3 traffic layer, as much as his job was hard he was still going to do it.

His intercom buzzed, drawing his gaze away from local traffic patterns, "Sir, I have Lieutenant Commander Jane Shepard on a voice only line for you, she is repeating a condition Omega-Violet-Four-Three, and I have verified that she has gone through her normal chain of command and has been debriefed already."

That was new. Tension he hadn't known he was still holding fell away. She was a protégé, a friend, and she had been among the first to disappear. Even after a year he still thought of her on his morning jogs around the station's 'Donut Lane' on the outer edge.

"Put her on," he was proud of how calm he sounded there, this was a voice he hadn't thought he would ever hear again reporting a status that he wasn't sure would ever make it through the inevitable comm blackout leading up to it.

"Lieutenant Commander?"

"Sir! I've been on the line for three and a half hours, you have no idea how glad I am to hear your voice."

He could almost taste the exasperation in her voice, it met the relief he felt in magnitude.

"It's… good to hear your voice as well. After P3W-451 I thought we lost you."

"You almost did sir. I've come to understand that we were one of the first colonies hit. After Alliance command picked up on the pattern and started pushing for local garrisons, the Collectors stopped trying so hard to take military prisoners."

His hands tightened into fists in his lap, he asked,, "Do you know how many-"

"I don't know anything sir. We've been trying to put together the pieces from people's scattered memories. We have survivors, victims, from six colonies. We also have survivors from a LOT of random traffic. Command will have to look back at a lot of losses that were probably written off as piracy…"

"Jane, what happened over there? You've been off the grid for damn near two years."

"Is that him?"

"Shut up!"

He closed his mouth with a snap, a migraine making itself quietly known at his temple.

"Jane. How did you escape the Collectors?"

"I want to talk to him, he knows me, c'mon!"

"I swear to god, Potter. If you don't step back I will shoot you. You don't need functional knee caps to fly this ship."

"You don't know that! This baby is full custom! Bespoke knee-based controllers for days!"

BLAM!

"Sir," she continued in a bland voice, her tone not reflecting the gunshot or moaning he could hear in the background, "I regret to inform you that I have met Harry Potter again."

There it was.

"I…," Jane was audibly screwing up her courage, "I am requesting reassignment to act as a military advisor to Former Spectre Harry Potter-"

"Hah! I knew you loved me! Ow goddamnit…"

"He's… well… He's made something. The Alliance left him alone too long without a minder. He's got his own version of the Normandy sir, but enhanced by his pagan nonsense. It's… we need someone to reign him in, Sir."

David had his head in his hands, the migraine having spread from above his left eye across his whole brow, "Shepard, before his blood-magic on the Normandy completely faded two G7 technicians at Arcturus evaluated the ship, and one of them had to be entered into the psychiatric ward because he couldn't stop talking about the 'Gaunt Sigil', and how it stood exhausted but proud, groaning with purpose. Before they had to stop working, they determined that the structural steel not only had no effective upper limit on it's hardness or tensile strength, but also had some kind of regeneration factor."

"Yes sir."

"He's had two years out there."

Jane was silent, and he needed a moment to wrap his head around what she had just said. His imagination, a tool which only saw use these days in the creative phrasing of dispatches to try and aim the Human councilor in anything resembling a helpful direction, was running wild with ideas he didn't want to consider.

"This is much, much worse than that, isn't it?"

"Yes sir."

The headache was only getting worse. Taking a hand away from his head, he sent a quick message to his secretary, sending off for aspirin, or an anesthesiologist.

"Is First Sergeant Williams still…," David dropped off, afraid to finish his question. He would need to read her debriefing, and as great as hearing from her again was, they had lost a lot of good men. It wasn't the dregs of the service that they threw out into the unknown, she was proof of that.

"She is with me Sir. We both made it through."

"Good, very good," he let out another breath of relief.

This would have to be handled delicately. She wouldn't have described it as a version of the Normandy based on nothing. Humanity had a new goddamn problem, one whose picture might be found on the galactic codex next to the Human idiom 'Loose Cannon'. No wonder the buck had been passed up to him, regardless of his connection to her.

"I'll speak to the Admiralty. Consider yourself re-assigned immediately. We'll expect as consistent and immediate reporting as you can offer. If you can talk Mr. Potter into an Alliance drydock, I think I can arrange for a QEC."

"You know I'll do my best, Sir."

If he had the talent for it, he could have written an opera or painted a landscape based on her tone alone. The self-doubt, frustration, iron-hard discipline, and sense of duty, peppered by motes of disgust and fear.

"I know you will."

"I'll forward appropriate contact information your way as soon as I can… It is very good to hear your voice again Sir."

Injecting as much warmth in his voice as he possibly could, he responded, "God-speed, soldier."

He could hear that she understood how he felt, that she could feel the esteem with which he held her, "Thank you, Sir."

"Now, having said that, I do have a small favor to request on his behalf…"

Arcturus Stream, Arcturus System, Trans-Eunomia Gulf near the Mass Relay, SSV Ryokinjono Tsukumogami – 05.13.2185

"Freighter Glorious Chest Muscles of Thundering Harsa, this is the ninth time you have made transit into this system in error, and for the last time, we can read the irregularities in the signature of your drive core from here. You are in violation of the Citadel General Maintenance Statute, and are hereby ordered to heave to and submit to boarding."

Jeff Moreau honestly suspected that if he rolled his eyes any harder he would end up with detached retinas. Maybe if he had been born one of these too-dumb-to-live Batarian assholes he would have been in the clear there. Then again, they tended to kill children exhibiting genetic deviations as strong as his, so maybe he wouldn't.

Not that he let that fact color his professional interaction with these suicidal eezo bulk transports.

Definitely not.

"If it's so damn important to you apes then you're welcome to come on board and re-calibrate my core connections yourself! But you'll do it in motion, this load is due at the Citadel in sixty hours, I don't have time for your bullshit today!"

"That's… not how this works, Glorious Chest Mus-"

Turning away from the sensor reports on his view screen to the captain of the corvette that embodied his current sad state of affairs, he quickly asked, "Do I really have to say it every time? It's bad enough that I have to look at the massive Batarian tits he's got painted on the side of his ship, do I actually have to say it every single time?"

Captain Mira Seif of the Ryokinjono Tsukumogami was unmoved by his plaintive tone, in fact she did not even look up from the tablet she was scrawling something on, "You do, and you know it. Get to it."

Joker sighed, and if slouching wouldn't put undue stress on a fairly critical portion of his spine, he would have done that too, "That's not how this works Glorious Chest Muscles of Thundering Harsa, you have been given your final warning as required by the Citadel Statute the last time you tried to make transit, 27 hours ago by my clock. We are no longer required to humor you. You will heave to and present yourself for boarding, or your ship will be disabled as a clear and present danger to yourself and all nearby relay traffic, and then boarded."

Based on attempts one through eight, Mr. Chest Muscles would get all silent and huffy for a while and then comply with their requests, or just turn his ship around and get the hell out of their system. Why these Batarians thought passing through Arcturus was a good idea, he would never know. It was both cheaper and faster to pass through Sol, transit duties here were at least 3% higher, and they still had to pay transit duties through Sol anyway.

You would think whichever idiot passed for a navigator over there would figure that out after attempt number four got them punted back into the Exodus Cluster, but nooooooooo. They were still here, interrupting what should have been prime 'sleeping with my eyes still open' time.

"I've had just about the last of you sub-evolved apes hassling my legitimate business. Not everyone gets your fancy recommended maintenance, or all the parts to their engine attached like the diagrams say. You've already cost me half a million credits, I'm already going to be late, you'll-"

"So do we get to actually fire, Boss Lady, or is this just going to be another shift with a bunch of Batarians shouting at me and no fun whatsoever?"

"So do we get to actually fire, Captain. If I wanted someone to call me boss lady I would have joined Uncle Hakim's construction business. I did not do that, I do not want that," she said, continuing to not look up to her pilot, "We are permitted a single shot off his bow if he moves more than 15,000 klicks from his designated course."

Joker sighed irritably, and tuned back in to today's fourth rant, "-tra fees! Furthermore, I will be contacting my embassy and demanding that they get everyone in this sector fired. You'll be scrubbing recycling plants on your hands and knees for a century before you pay back my restitution! Do you hear me you inbred offspring of a blind lemur! I looked up what a lemur is just so I could shame you with one of your not-so-distant ancestors!"

"Freighter Glorious Chest Muscles of Thundering Harsa, If you do not shut down your drive core and heave-to in the next," Joker broke in to the rant as he matched distances and speeds quickly, "four seconds, we have been authorized to fire."

"You won't do it! I bet your guns don't even work!"

"Three seconds."

"Your ship is so small, what're you going to do, vent air at me?"

"Two seconds"

"I've made a decision, your tin can doesn't even count as a naval ship, I think you're actually two VIs in a converted storage cannister!"

"Sweet Christ. Guns, just fire," Captain Seif said, still not looking up.

With great relish, Jeff Moreau turned and watched as the mechanical live-fire switch was pressed, and they took their one allowed shot. While the Batarian had been yammering away and their nearly-absent captain had been expressing her distaste, the weapons officer had been checking his field of fire and plotting his shot. A ferro-magnetic slug departed the Ryoukinjono Tsukumogami at a cool 3,000 meters per second and, traveling across a virtually frictionless medium, it crossed the bow of the Glorious Chest Muscles of Thundering Harsa in 10.254 seconds.

10.254 seconds was just enough time for Joker to ask, "Can we give'em the old razzle-dazzle?"

And for the captain to finally remove her gaze from her tablet to say, "Yeah. Why not."

The slug, having reached the venerable operational lifespan of 10.25385 seconds, encountered it's first real obstacle. That challenge took the form of a microsecond burst of coherent infra-red radiation fired from the GARDIAN arrays of it's parent ship.

The laser instantly heated the face of the slug, where fractionally differing thermal expansion coefficients across dozens of micro-scale imperfections on the surface and inside the body acted against each other, causing the slug to burst apart. A single pellet became a shotgun spread, the slug shedding it's black-on-black camouflage to glow incandescent against the backdrop of space.

Captain Seif got the visual she was looking for, the sudden and deadly firework in space, a cone of brilliance shooting across the bow of the latest idiotic aggressor, and she returned to her tablet.

"Ma'am, I'm reading some heat build-up in the mid-modules," came the call from the sensor tech at the rear of their cramped bridge.

"Different from the heating in the drive compartment then?" Joker snarked.

The tech made a frustrated noise, and replied, "Ma'am, these reading look almost like weapons warming."

"Isn't that interes-"

Seif was interrupted by the walls of the mid-ship storage containers of the Batarian ship flipping along their axis, revealing a pair of twin linked already-rotating autocannons. Thankfully of the two people in the cockpit zone, at least one had eyes on the freighter. Tracing his fingers along his display like a conductor stretching before a performance, Joker lit off their drive and fired their emergency reaction thrusters. The thrusters mixed miniscule amounts of trihydride tetrazine and hydrogen peroxide in a specially fortified chamber, and the resulting explosion slammed the ship onto a new course, and allowed them to 'duck' under the first shots from the freighter's improvised armaments.

The corvette's inertial compensators, even had they been set to an emergency readiness state, weren't up the task of cancelling out that much force applied that quickly. The tablet in the Captain's hand leapt, it's screen shattering across her forehead, knocking her out in one clean blow. In the remainder of the cabin behind them a few coffee cups joined pens, papers, and other unsecured detritus on the roof. There was a sickening crack as an ensign who hadn't been belted in snapped their collarbone on a protrusion from the bulkhead above their station.

The compensator caught up almost immediately, not fast enough to have stopped the action but fast enough that everything came crashing right back down.

Before the ensign could even groan upon hitting the floor, Joker was off. The Ryoukinjono Tsukumogami corkscrewed wildly through space, burning as hard as it could to get around the ship to it's reverse side. Fire from the autocannon thundered out, each shot invisible against the backdrop of space, but visible in the damage chewed into the bystanders in the transit line that had been behind them.

Joker was able to avoid the first salvo, and the first few follow-up shots, but when his wildly curving course brought the scattering civilian traffic lines past the forward viewscreens, he realized he couldn't let that much fire go freely into traffic. It wasn't like they could just take the hits personally either, Alliance corvettes weren't meant for much more than toll booth duty, they were thinly armored, thinly shielded, and had an especially cramped ten person crew compliment. The autocannon that their deceptively painted friend had aimed at them would chew through the canopy sections and vent the ship to space, the remaining crew were all still getting themselves back together after the emergency burn, no one had engaged battle alarms or configured the internal air-shields to stave off decompression.

Risking taking his hands of the wheel, Joker hit the alarms, and got the life support VI properly jumped into emergency mode. Before he could get his station back to full flight mode, the autocannon had caught up with them, piercing the shields and hull with contemptuous ease. Behind his air-shield he could see the same coffee tubes and papers that had just been thrown into the air being pulled around by the rapid flow of oxygen out of their crew compartment.

Joker shook his head and got back into the game, unable to deal with whatever took place behind him. If they all got to their decompression safe zones, great, getting shot up more because he diverted his attention again wouldn't help anyone. He had very limited controls over counter measures, and no control over guns, the weapons officer was probably still trying to stop the world from spinning, too busy to engage the Glorious Chest Muscles of Thundering Harsa in return. He had been saved only by knowing the movement was coming, and his custom flight seat's back-up inertial compensation. He had never been more thankful for the allowances made for his stupid shitty bones.

Using what limited control he had, he dropped flares and popped what little ECM they had. Nothing he did stopped or even paused the incoming fire, the Batarian turrets were probably being aimed manually by the same jackass that had been sassing him earlier. Their corvette was a lot faster than the freighter, but not fast enough to beat it's ability to turn on-axis and keep them in the field of fire. The nearest back-up was minutes away, and it was everything Joker could do to stop them from springing more leaks.

What the fuck was a Batarian Q-ship doing out here anyway? In fact what were the Batarians even doing with Q-ships? Was this just a pissed off captain, pushed too far by basic maintenance standards, or were the Batarians trying someth-

Without warning the enemy guns fell silent, as Joker eased the ship around to get a better view of the situation he saw that the autocannons were now just so much space debris, and the engines on the Glorious Chest Muscles of Thundering Harsa were utterly slagged, still glowing, radiating the waste heat of laser fire off into space.

Eclipsing the distant pale dot of the sun was a very familiar shape.

The Normandy.

What?

"Uhhh, SSV Normandy, please respond? Thank you for the assist."

The answering call raised more questions than it answered, expressed as it was by the dulcet tones of the one person he knew with a proper British accent, "Joker! Excellent! I was hoping that was you! I'm always willing to take shots at anything with a Batarian registry, but if it's in defense of a friend that just makes it all the sweeter!"

"Right," he responded, removing his cap and rubbing the back of his head. Turning his head, he really took in the damage behind him.

Everyone had either already been inside an air shield or had made it to a safe zone, but the reaction thrusters had done more damage than he had anticipated. The Captain was still bleeding, and the whole crew was still moaning and trying to get their heads on straight. The ensign had collapsed, trying not to agitate his break. Debris from their normal operation was scattered everywhere, and sparking wires from breached conduits made for interesting accent lights.

It even looked like the air frame of the ship had been bent a bit.

"You got a doctor on board, Boss-man?"

"Funny story about that!"

Omega Nebula, Sahrabarik System, Omega Station – 05.14.2185

"I don't like this."

"Oh, don't be such a cancelled stamp."

"There's a plague, the local weather forecast unironically says 'It's raining vorcha', and you read the Alliance intelligence report that the Big Three are banding together to assault a local vigilante."

As the airlock's outer door parted before them, Harry Potter, Jane Shepard, and Liara T'Soni were greeted by the free-est air in the galaxy. It smelled like strippers and vomit. Harry smiled.

What passed for customs and border enforcement on the largest functional space station in the known galaxy blinked it's four eyes, and offered to them as they passed, "You'll be wanting to see Aria."

Harry nodded knowingly and they made their way out into the station proper.

For anyone docking on the central level of Omega, coincidentally where anyone looking for actual docking clamps or not looking for a warehouse had to go, every path into the station leads directly to Afterlife, the nightclub/bar/brothel/occasional cock-fighting ring belonging to the de facto ruler of the station. Waves of mercenaries, slavers, and tourists such as they were, break across the entrance to the club before dispersing into the surrounding markets or transport hubs to do whatever dark work they called their own. This serves not only as a security measure, where piles of garbage and shoddy masonry hide surprisingly advanced sensors along the choke point leading to the club, but also a sort of pre-emptive dick-measuring contest on behalf of said de facto ruler. Anyone with any kind of significant business on the station could expect to wash up in Afterlife at the feet of Aria T'loak, one way or the other.

The irony of an undying man paying his respects at Afterlife kept Harry's smile up as they were waved past the line for the club. A familiar throbbing beat vibrated in their chests as they passed through the foyer into the club proper. Neon holograms and scantily clad Asari dancers abounded. Groups of uncomfortable looking mercs were jammed into booths next to equally uncomfortable clients all around the open central area and it's surrounding dance floor, which appeared to hold a tastefully curated crowd of attractive youths dancing to the beat.

They skirted around the bar and the dance floor, making their way to the rear of the club where they could apply for a short time slot in Aria's busy social calendar. A bare-faced Turian blocked their path, but was brushed out the way by a pair of hulking Krogan dragging an unconscious and bleeding Salarian between them into a back room. With a dirty look at their retreating backs, the Turian focused on the three people in front of him.

Harry held himself back from simply brushing past the Turian bouncer as well, and immediately regretted it, "She wants to see me."

"I'm sure. Who are you and what do you want?"

"Tell her I know where she keeps her dry cleaning, she'll know me."

"Do you have any idea how many people come to me saying 'Oh just tell her we took Spanish together', or 'It's about the tentacle wax, she'll know'? You know, she cut an arm off the last guy to come in and say 'It's about the taco stand, she'll remember me'."

Harry glanced at his companions, Liara was visibly steeling herself, trying to appear collected against the storm of stimulus inside the club, and Jane was properly affecting an uninterested look while caressing the grip of the pistol set in a reverse grip at her waist.

They had places to be.

"I'll take my chances," Harry said.

"On your head be it, Human," activating his omni-tool he sent some signal, and received confirmation. With a wordless gesture they were directed up the staircase to Aria's audience chamber.

Aria sat on her throne, elegantly positioned on an exquisite klixen leather sofa. It was said that Aria had gutted the beast herself, and the reason for it was displayed clearly by the Asari in a sexy maid outfit wiping blood from where it had pooled on the cushion. If klixen hide could resist the acid of thresher maws in their native environment, Salarian blood was hardly about to leave a stain.

She was affecting an air of regal disinterest, as befitted the pirate queen of Omega, deigning only to say, "When we last met I could have sworn I told you I never wanted to see your face again. My desires have not changed, but I am feeling gracious so I won't have you thrown out an airlock. Beat it, Human."

With an easy grin, Harry slipped onto the freshly disinfected stretch of cushioning, "What, right here? If you want a private show I'll let you know right now that I expect a generous tip."

As if she could feel the sheer weight of annoyance Harry was capable of delivering, or perhaps because she knew better than to risk bringing it down on herself, she rolled her eyes disgustedly and gave in, "What is it now?"

"I've only just heard that you have a rather famous doctor on-station. One who is perhaps a touch too qualified for your domain. I want him. I also hear you've got a vigilante problem, this fun little fellow have a nom de guerre?"

She opened her omni-tool with an irritated flick and initiated a file transfer, "Mordin Solus, he's fun, but honestly more trouble than he's worth, take him. Though I'll expect you to see his current project through to it's end," she looked over to him, steel in her gaze.

Ignoring the flare up of his own omni-tool, Harry acknowledged with a nod, "Fair enough, it's only a matter of time until your little viral issues jump species to the Asari after all. And your own personal Batman?"

Aria snorted, "He goes by the name Archangel, Turian by the look, but we've had a spate of people using armor mods to make themselves look like other species lately, so no one could prove it one way or the other. Whoever they are, they're good. Strategic hits, all ambushes and drop point seizures. They had a small crew, but rumor is a merc turned one of them and they got all but the Archangel himself in the resulting ambush. They've been making enemies across the board, and keeping the usual suspects in check, which is respectable in it's own right."

"Neat," standing, and rejoining his squaddies at the door, Harry made to leave, "Well I'll just grab my new doctor and be on my way then. Pleasure doing business with you once more."

Before he could exit, Aria called out to him, "It was real cute with the dry cleaning. You're dancing around the line of our agreement. Be sure you don't cross it, Potter."

"Aria, luv," he said, spreading his arms wide, "We couldn't betray each other if we tried."

Making their way back down into the thumping bass and smell of sweat and sleaze, Harry steered the group to a corner. Casting a short muffliato, he turned to his compatriots, "The good doctor, or our mysterious friend the Archangel?"

Jane, perching herself so that she could keep an eye on the crowd, answered, "Why do you even want this Archangel guy?"

"I like underdogs, and more than I like underdogs, I like anyone that can do more to disrupt sentient trafficking in nine months than C-Sec has done in forty years. You read your intel reports before you shared them, whoever it is has forty-eight hours at best before this recruiting push hits whatever critical mass it needs to roll over Archangel like a tidal wave," Harry said, nodding at the private room across the way, cordoned off by men in the colors of the Blue Suns, the Eclipse, and the Blood Pack, "I could use someone who knows how to lay a good ambush."

"Based off the report from Mother's friend from the Promenade, the plague isn't going to be going anywhere for a while yet. No one has made a serious effort at breaching quarantine, and for all her shabby glory, Aria has cordoned off the area well," Liara added.

"Cool. Archangel first, the good doctor after?"

At their nods, Harry led the group over to the merc recruiting station. They were grudgingly let in by the man wearing Blue Suns colors, only to find that the recruiting station seemed to totally be a Blues Suns operation. The Blood Pack and Eclipse outside seemed like window dressing for the 'unified front' they were putting up against the Archangel. With a few subtle compulsions charms they were each promised 500 credits at the end of the day, and given coordinates for the camp outside the Archangel's base of operations where the attack was in progress.

There was no way that Harry was letting some no-name merc punk drive him to an unknown third location. He had minions for that.

Jane took the wheel of a lightly used and only mildly stolen air car also flying the Blue Suns colors, and they headed in. As they coasted over the edge of the camp zone, heading in for a landing at the designated drop-off, Harry got a good look at the approach to Archangel's base. He reached one very important conclusion.

"Blimey, this looks like a lot of work."

Jane hmmmed agreement as she settled the air car down to the deck.

They stepped out into the enclosed hallways of the attacker's camp, and quietly found another corner to speak in. Other freelancers and a few Blood Pack Vorcha were firing assault rifles wildly down a hallway in the direction of the Archangel's approach, ostensibly keeping up a suppressive fire. As they watched, one of the vorcha took a shot to the head from a very high caliber rifle, and fell nearly headless behind the waist-high barrier it had been taking cover behind.

Harry looked on with mild interest, any rifle that could behead a Vorcha like that was worth keeping an eye on. This Archangel fellow had some pretty real firepower.

"What do you think? This looks like it could become a problem quickly."

Almost on his word a scuffle broke out between a group of other freelancers, and it grew to engulf the members of the Eclipse and Blue Suns who had come over to put a stop to it.

Looking at the corpse of the Vorcha in disgust, Liara swept her gaze over the area, "Sabotage? We could drop some grenades on timers on these barricades. If the Eclipse are here we can bet on some mechs in the area, with a deployment of this size they might have a few Ymir mechs with them."

Ever the voice of reason, Jane chimed in with, "As much as I don't want to fight dozens of pissed off mercenaries and gangsters, is setting modified grenades all across an active battlefield where we aren't known to, or necessarily friendly to, either group the best decision we could make? Particularly on a warehouse docking arm of the least up-to-code space station this side of Karshan?"

Her comments were well received, Harry and Liana looked thoughtful. They spent a moment really considering the implications of their actions, right up until an important looking Salarian came out of a cross-hallway to shout at the Eclipse punks who were still harassing a few members of the Blue Suns and the group of freelancers they were protecting.

"You aren't being paid to fight over freelancers, stand at the barricade or get back to unpacking the mechs, there's no need fo-"

As the Salarian took a single step into the central hallway another shot rang out, the projectile ricocheting off an overhead beam and a structural column to hit the Salarian right in the back of the head. Arterial blood and brain matter sprayed across Harry, Jane, and Liara, giving them all a fine green coat of paint.

As the member of the Eclipse rushed to the now-dead Salarian, grabbing the body and asking, "Jaroth?" in a weak voice, Harry wiped dead merc from his eyes.

"I am now the butt of someone else's joke. Someone I know. God damn it, this won't stand," gesturing to his companions, he turned and begin making his way back to the air car. With a shared glance they exchanged very visible misgivings, and turned to follow their captain back the way they had come.

"Potter to Fortitude, Fortitude come in."

"This is the Fortitude, we've got you loud and clear boss-man, what's the score?"

"Fortitude, coordinate with Engineering and get me a damage assessment on this area and a life-signs scan. I want to know what would happen if this warehouse section were to undergo sudden decompression."

"Hold one, Boss."

The trio reached their air car and were sitting inside, at his unspoken insistence Harry was in the drivers seat. From the passenger side, Jane looked at the wizard with a furrowed brow and suspicion in her eyes.

"Harry."

Opening his door and struggling to pull something from his pocket, Harry said, "Yes dear?"

"What are you thinking about doing?"

"A bit of this, a bit of that. Maybe a curry for lunch. Remind me to kidnap Mess Sargent Gardner, would you? That man could really make a chicken vindaloo."

"No, I meant what are you thinking about doing right now?"

Liara looked over the back of the driver's seat in fascination at the strange shot-glass Harry pulled from his pocket and set on the ground. Jane was leaning over the central console of the air car, looking on with a considerably greater degree of concern. The volume of general gun fire in the background seemed to be picking up, and the sergeant in a Blue Suns uniform that had been at the landing site had disappeared. They were alone in what looked like on exceptionally dingy car park.

Rather than answer her question, Harry called over the radio again, "Any word, Fortitude?"

"Engineering insists that they are a ship-board engineer, not a civil engineer, and that these are totally different roles. In her words, 'You tell that bosh-tet that he could sever the whole docking arm if he its the wrong support beam.' I am directed to confirm your receipt of that message."

"Confirmed, Normandy. If, for the sake of argument, I was to ask engineering to highlight the support beams that I should avoid most strongly?"

Harry could read the sigh between his leading question and the reply, "Hold one, Boss."

"Harry," Jane said insistently, looking intently at the tiny device in his hand, "what are you thinking about doing right now?"

"Engorgio, Well, I was thinking. This whole thing looks like kind of a hassle, and there are a lot of mercs here that, honestly, I'm not terribly attached to. What if we set off a small bomb, not very big at all, and using the teaching of the late, great, Gustav Bloem, poked a bit of a hole in the station to let all the bad people out? Engorgio."

The shot glass became a soup bowl, and the soup bowl became a serving dish. With a few more spells the serving dish became a satellite dish, and the satellite dish became the size of their air car.

"That's not small, Harry."

"It started out quite small, and I've heard that the best things come from the smallest beginnings. Engorgio."

Liara's eyes were growing wider and wider with alarm, "Gustav Bloem is your Saphalia Rafii, isn't he? That's a shaped charge."

The cone had grown to roughly the size of the hallway that the mercs had been barricading, the edges of the confining tamper at the rear were digging into the cheap plasteel of the car park's floor, and the edges of the wide conical head were beginning to move parked air cars out of the way.

"It turns out that it's really easy to make a nearly perfect shaped charge at a small scale. Bespoke micro-scale production and machining leads to incredibly high quality, scale up is always the problem. Engorgio. I can kind of cheat my way around that."

"Fortitude to Potter, Boss, Engineering has input their best understanding into your safety system, which reports a green light if you rotate three degrees clockwise around your vertical. Also that you will need to get the hell out of there when you light that thing off."

"Noted Fortitude, if you would be so kind, see what kind of scans we can get on the clinic location and operational status of the good doctor. Our exit may be a bit rushed."

"Fortitude copies, will do Boss."

With the use of a few crude measuring charms, Harry made the required adjustments to his device, and motioned Jane and Liara back tot heir seats in the car.

With a grinning, "You'll want to buckle up, our landing might be rough," Harry pulled the car up and away.

As they curved out of the car park towards the sounds of a strained gunship engine and an intensifying firefight, Liara's eyes were still glued to the outline of the massive explosive charge they left behind, barely visible through the malfunctioning lighting and clutter of the landing zone.

Harry gunned the engines, heading around the immediate warehouse area to the relatively open skies surrounding the Archangel's last bastion. Dozens of bodies littered the Bridgeway between the camp they had been in and the building he controlled, from above the colors of the freelancer's armor mixed with Eclipse yellow and the traditional shade of Blue Suns blue to paint a macabre tribute to sentient anger and greed. A smoking gunship was pouring fire into the upper level of the building, an occasional shot of return fire lancing out to snap a piece off the hastily improvised armor covering the ship.

Harry came screaming down on the gunship from above, executing a tight vertical turn to slam the gunship with the belly of their car. The move slapped the ugly ship from the sky, it's kinetic barrier taking the brunt of the impact, sparking out in just enough time for it's airframe to pancake on the ground below.

The trio's air car was hardly unscathed. It hadn't been in great repair in the first place, and ramming maneuvers were basically guaranteed to invalidate the manufacturers warranty, even out in the terminus systems where such things were interpreted very loosely. On the engine's last legs, Harry crashed their car directly into the windows the gunship had been firing into.

Both crashes had knocked all three of the car's occupant's around, but having been warned by the maniacal laughter from the driver seat, everyone had braced enough for their armor systems to take the edge off the impact. Popping the front wind screen off, Harry jumped out of the wreckage, followed by Jane and a Liara that was rubbing her jaw.

In front of them a blue-suited Turian was firing a very familiar looking sniper rifle at a very high rate of fire into an open courtyard-like space, holding back a mass of screaming Vorcha with a combination of panache and projected lead. As they watched, every shot seemed to pierce through the horde trying to charge through a doorway on the lower level, drawing distinct lines of death through the crowd.

Harry took in in the new sights, shaking his head. A wizard's constitution was nothing to be ashamed of, and his own colorful history had lent him a bit more strength than most wizards could have boasted, had any been alive to make the claim. With a shrug, he pulled his pistol off the mag-lock at his thigh and added his own fire to the situation. As she reached her own equilibrium, Jane joined in. Liara, still unused to these kinds of efforts, sat on a broken chunk of masonry and continued to rub her jaw.

"So, Vakarian, how has life been treating you?"

The blue helmeted figure looked over, "The rifle?"

"I can think of a handful of small arms that can bounce a shot in the galaxy, and that shot was not performed by a Graal or a Kishock."

"Well," Garrus tightened his grip on the rifle and squeezed a shot out, bursting containment on a flamer unit and clearing the doorway with the resulting explosion, "You can't have it back. I researched Human gift-giving customs just in case, and I am declaring no take-backsies."

Beside Harry, Jane piped in with a smile, "You're a strange man, Garrus. But it is great to see you again."

Garrus looked away from his gun, meeting her eyes through the visor of his helmet and giving her a solid nod. More catching up could wait for later.

"Hey, so is there anything else you really need to do here? Anything pressing you want to take with you, for instance, or that you would mind being hit by a jet of near liquid, super-compressed copper? Just for the sake of argument, mind."

As the mass of Blood Pack troopers began boiling behind the dwindling firestorm, Garrus looked over to them, "That is suspiciously specific, but no. I got what I needed," ticking off his gauntleted talons, "You saw Jaroth, you just flattened Tarak, and Garm is down there somewhere, probably shouting and ruining someone else's day. Sounds like you have that covered though?"

Turning back to the incoming wave of Blood Pack mercs, he began firing again, "I do notice that you crashed your car, is there another exit?"

Harry walked over to the Turian and placed a hand on his shoulder, "Gather round kids, this one will be a little rough."

Jane rolled her eyes, but moved closer. With a rather forceful final step, she put her foot on top of Harry's and continued firing at the mass below them. Liara hopped to her feet and walked over.

As she put her hand on Harry's shoulder, she said, "Ooo med me bith muh tung!"

As he apparated away, Harry seriously wondered who programmed their translators to include a bitten-tongue lisp. What a dumb use of incredible talent. That thought prickled his subconscious as they all winked out of existence aboard Omega, and re-appeared just behind Joker in the cockpit of the Fortitude.

"JESUS Christ, warn a guy, Boss. You can't just appear in the cockpit with guns drawn like that, what if I had been doing something!"

Harry stepped away from a retching Asari and two intensely uncomfortable looking soldiers, "I believe in you! Why do you think I kidnapped you!"

"You got me transferred, that's not kidnapping."

"This is my pirate ship, I am the Captain, and if I say you were kidnapped, you were kidnapped!" Harry returned in a childish tone.

Spinning on his heel he turned to Garrus, who was just unhooking and removing his helmet, "Tell you what, I stole your kill on that Tarak fellow," he brandished a detonator which blinked the insistent red of 'Armed', "Hows about you take care of Garm and we call it even?"

The Turian stood stock-still for a moment, his mandibles flexing as he came to terms with the radical change in his circumstances, "I probably should have called you, shouldn't I?"

Harry took a moment and wiped the mild mania he had been channeling all afternoon from his face, "I'm good for more than bespoke weapons manufacturing, you know."

Huffing a laugh, "Yeah, you might be at that," nodding to the detonator still outstretched in his hand, "Will it be good?"

Without turning Harry said, "Joker, if you would be so kind as to point the forward cameras at our former position."

"Roger."

Garrus took the blinking box from Harry's hand, and stepped around him to get a better look at the displays across the front of the cockpit. Joker obligingly opened additional panels and set the viewscreens to 'cinematic'. Liara spat a bit of purple into a handkerchief rescued from a pocket in her armor, and did the same. Coming up behind him, Jane put her own hand on the Turian's shoulder in solidarity. Without ceremony, Garrus depressed the button.

The Fortitude had undocked from the station while the team had been off gallivanting around, and now lay stationary relative to the warehouse they had been occupying, a few thousand kilometers away. As the detonator activated, they watched a column of fire and debris blossom from the side of the arm. Harry's shaped charge had blasted a hole clean through the side of the whole structure, carrying a few thousand tons of debris and the bodies of hundreds of dead and now dying mercenaries, in one move gutting the active-duty manpower of the Terminus system's most significant chapters of the Big Three.

Harry let the moment rest for a second. He could see Garrus' jaw clench as they watched what use to be his hideout coast out into space, bits and pieces already being caught by the automated harbor-tending craft that constantly fought the losing battle against trash in the crowded space lanes of Omega.

"So, who wants to help me kidnap a war criminal and cure a plague?"

Garuss didn't turn from the view, but Liara did, giving him a dirty look. Jane sighed. She gave Garrus' shoulder a squeeze before turning around and moving back to Harry's side.

"Joker, you got the location of the good doctor? I need a vector."

"I'll do you one better Boss, vector information should be coming up on your HUD shortly."

"Good enough. Jane, my dear," Harry said, offering his arm.

Jane gamely folded her arm into his proffered one, "You never mentioned he was a war criminal."

Harry cast a point me and a few measurement charms, verifying the precise coordinates in front of his eyes, "I don't bring up every war crimes tribunal I've been a part of, it's just not something that comes up in polite conversation."

"It should have come up in the pre-mission briefing, or on the flight over, or during any of the discussions that brought us to this sector of space," she returned, squeezing his arm with all the strength special forces training and a good suit exo-skeleton could offer, "just like the fact that you have shaped charges on you at all times, and the ability to make them the size of an APC without compromising functionality."

Harry gulped, "Yeah, come to think of it, I probably should have mentioned that. In fairness I can't remember everything all the time, it just comes to me, I'm flighty!" he paled at the glares coming his way, "It's part of my charm?"

There were long, probably pointed conversations to be held in his near future, he could tell. Ugh.

"Well this be will be easy, actually according to plan, smash and grab, in and out, five minutes."

Somehow the grip around his arm tightened. She probably wasn't buying it. With one last look at Garrus, who was still staring blankly out the viewscreens at the spreading debris field, Harry twisted the pair of them through space to a landing in front of a neon-pink holographic sign that read simply 'CLINIC', set against a cross and an arrow indicating down the hall.

A quick walk down a poorly lit hallway brought them to a security checkpoint where a Human security guard spotted them immediately, "No funny business once you're in the clinic, unless you want to deal with the mechs."

Harry and Jane, who was still holding his arm in a crushing grip, gave the indicated Loki-style mech a professional once over. Despite nominally being from the same manufacturer as the more standard fare they could find in any given Eclipse camp, these looked a cut above. Their necks didn't give that slight tooth-grinding whine, and it look like someone had performed maintenance on them recently, and actually meant it.

They passed through the checkpoint to the clinic proper, where two harassed looking nurses gave them a once over. No active bleeding, minor bruising, intact armor, and visible weapons? Not actively brandishing said weapons?

The closer nurse opened with, "Mordin's around here somewhere, go talk to him. We can use all the help we can get."

With a bemused look Harry said, "How do you know we're here to help?"

The Nurse's face tightened, "If you weren't here to help, Mordin is still around here somewhere, and you would still end up speaking to him."

"Fair enough," Harry said with a calming wave, and they moved deeper into the clinic.

There wasn't much space in the place, which was a blessing. The less searching they had to do to find their target, the better. The clinic was clean, and as well-lit as it got on Omega, but it was clear that the plague in this sector had already taken a toll. Between damage caused by the pathogen, and damage caused by the infinitely more common looter, there were bodies in various states of disrepair spread throughout. As they passed by, a Turian laid out on a stretcher reached out and snagged Jane's wrist.

"He saved me!" the Turian said, eyes rolling and mandibles splayed out in the characteristic signs of a Turian high off his ass on painkillers, "I owe him anything! Everything!"

Jane let go of Harry, prompting a sigh of relief from the man, and tentatively took the Turian's hand off her own. Gingerly she lifted the sheet covering his torso, revealing that he had been shot six times, in a line across his chest, each puncture had been expertly sealed and dressed.

"A war criminal, huh? Just what kind of tribunal was this?"

Turning back to Harry she caught the grim look on his face as he stared at the slowly healing wounds, "I'll show you. You'll wish you hadn't seen it, but I'll show it to you. Later though. Either trust me enough to follow me through this, or respect me enough to do what I say, but lets go."

Dropping the sheet, Jane lifted her hands in a gesture of surrender. Harry was a son of a bitch, but he'd earned enough credit for her to stand by and see how this played out. She would be sure to remind him later to not keep his cards so close to the vest, but it was clear that he'd been affected by the sights and sounds of the clinic as well.

They continued on through, until they heard raised voices coming out of a room at the end of a hall.

A Human male called out, "Professor! We're running low on Cipoxidin."

Only to be answered by a male Salarian, "Use Malanarin. Plenty on Hand. Almost as good. Cause cramping in Batarians. Supplement with Butemerol."

"Malanarin and Butemerol, got it."

Harry brightened, the mania of twenty minutes ago seeping back into his manner. A human left the room, not looking up from the inventory list in his hands, they stepped around him as he rushed down the hall. Entering the room they found a Salarian in a red and white reinforced lab coat pacing, debating some kind of chemical exchange with himself.

"Professor Mordin Solus?"

The man in question looked up at their approach, and met them before they could enter too deeply into his lab space, "Humans. Curious. Don't recognize you from the area. Too well armed to be refugees. No mercenary uniforms. Quarantine still in effect."

He turned away from them, heading to a few pieces of active equipment on a side bench, "Here for something else. Vorcha? Crew to clean them out? Unlikely, Vorcha a symptom, not a cause," turning off the equipment, he proceeded to the other side of the room to apparently do more of the same, "The plague? Investigating possible use as a bio-weapon? Too many guns, not enough data equipment. Soldiers, not scientists."

At that, Harry cut in, "Relax, Mordin. We're here because Aria and I have an understanding, and she'd like this whole plague thing taken care of before some one breaches quarantine and it begins to affect business."

"Interest of Aria understandable. Intervention of Aria unlikely. Surprised she would make any effort to assist," Mordin said, finally turning back to them after shutting down all of the equipment in the room.

"We have a special arrangement, and frankly I like helping the little guys," with a smile Harry continued, "Do you have a solution to our little viral issue?"

Lighting off his omni-tool, Mordin said, "Already have a cure. Need to distribute it at environmental control center. Vorcha guarding it. Need to kill them. Too busy here at clinic to have already done it."

"I can take care of it," Harry stated with confidence.

As the words left his mouth the light dimmed, and the background hum and rattle of the room's ventilator died off.

"Vorcha have shut down environmental systems. Trying to kill everyone. Need to get power back on before district suffocates!" Mordin said in a rush. Well, he said everything in a rush, but with the shutting off of life support he grew more frantic.

Raising his hands in front of him, Harry said, "Calm down! Calm down! I can handle it. Pass me the cure and the two of us will be there in a jiff."

Taking a deep breath, Mordin did just that, indicating a small vial on his bench and offering an omni-tool dispersion profile meant for interface into the environmental control system.

"Excellent. Too much to do here in clinic. Have to look after patients!"

Harry nodded, and rubbed at his jaw, "Good to hear, I'll have to see if I can guilt a few friends of mine into coming out here and helping out. One last thing, Doctor."

Mordin had already turned away, his attention somewhere else, "Yes?"

"Fortak sends his regards."

The Doctor froze for an instant, before his hands moved directly to the gun at his waist. Before he had gotten halfway to raising it, Harry had him stunned. With a flick he transfigured the doctor into a tin of Spam, helpfully marked by a bright green label that proclaimed, 'Now with a hint of Salarian!'.

Harry walked over and picked up the tin, tossing it between his hands before shoving it into a pocket on his armor in which it shouldn't have been able to fit.

From where she stood next to the doorway to the room, unmoved by frantic Salarians or the causal violation of reality, Jane asked, "Fortak?"

"An old friend. Both in the sense that I've known him for a while, and in the sense of that fucker being as old as dirt."

"That's an interesting name. Could be Batarian, could be from one of those fringe Volus colonies. Most of them use family or clan names though. It could also be Krogan."

Taking his own fortifying breath, and giving the now empty lab a second look through, Harry said, "You don't have to be coy, I know you have reports to make. Mordin here should be one of the last links in a few plans, so it's safe to share a bit. Fortak would never admit to it, but the man is the Krogan Da'Vinci. Officially he's a weapons scientist and engineer, but, well, did you know that Krogan basically don't die of natural causes? They just get older and meaner until some young buck, or particularly angry thresher maw, finally get the better of them. Fortak has been alive since well before the genophage, and you don't get that old by being stupid."

"And how did you meet what has to be the oldest Krogan alive?"

"Two things," Harry said as he picked up the plague cure from where it at on Mordin's lab bench, "One, he's nowhere near the oldest Krogan alive, at least I'm pretty sure. And two, not all Krogan are brain-dead heaps of muscle. Some of them could spot a trend, see where their culture and species would go following what amounted to forced sterilization. A couple spread feelers out into the galaxy, seeds dropped by generations of Krogan mercs who went out to live the blood rage. I got caught by one of those seeds, and we became pen pals," Harry held the cure up to the light, peering through it, "But we've also got work to do, we can play twenty questions when we get the air back on and this little miracle circulating through the sector."

Krogan Demilitarized Zone, Aralakh System, Tuchanka, Unnamed Capitol Settlement – 05.16.2185

"Powerlord Urdnot Wrex! My god man, you look younger every time I see you!"

Harry shouted, with a smile on his face, as their party entered the throne room of his good friend and the preeminent warlord of their time. Despite the traditional wisdom that one should minimize their ground presence on Tuchanka, and that they should limit the number of council species they brought along with them, the whole crew was there. Jane helpfully bringing up the rear, and keeping an aggressive eye on the small crowd that had formed and was following them from the space port.

When the whole troupe had properly entered the room, and a pair of particularly large Krogan in a strange livery that she had never seen before barred entry behind them, she turned from the rear-guard and gave the room a look.

She could see Harry Potter's god damned finger prints all over it.

Wrex, that wily old bastard, was sat upon a gigantic throne whose presence overpowered the room. It stood at the top of a set of stone steps, and looked like a titanic slab of obsidian, trilliant cut, with a chair cut straight into it. The only feature of the chair, the single thing keeping it from perfect symmetry, was a cut out on the right arm rest for a shotgun to be set.

The rest of the room was new, and spotless. She'd seen Tuchanka from orbit, and she'd seen pieces of it on the way down. Krogan architecture ran the gamut from more engineered structures with struts, columns, and supports, to what might be called brutalist architecture. Whatever new world order Harry and Wrex had concocted was clearly leaning more toward brutalism. The room was well lit, but it was also massive, open, and filled with flat ceramacrete planes. Inset lights and ventilators gave the false appearance of window openings at the edges of the ceiling.

"Human. I see Turian, Asari, and Quarian with you too. You are not supposed to show your face here until unless you've got a Salarian with you in there somewhere," leaning out from where he had been reclining against his throne, he pointed an accusing finger and smiled, "You're not turning your back on our covenant, are you?"

"You wound me sir!" good god, Potter was hamming it up, "I have, right here in this very pocket, the architect of the renewed genophage!"

They had come into Wrex's apparent throne room during what appeared to be normal business hours. There were rows of ceramacrete chairs, lesser than the great throne but still significant in comparison to the otherwise flat and unforgiving ground. Maybe ten Krogan in widely differing armors were sat in them, each a small island separate from the others, and each surrounded by assistants or functionaries in similar garb. The whole group, forty or fifty Krogan in all, hissed and booed in what felt like a ritual manner.

"Bring him out, Human. The Krogan have some business with this Salarian."

At that, the Krogan in the chairs began laughing, and a large Krogan in some new and concealing form of dress came out from around the Great Throne, exiting some hidden room to walk to Wrex's side.

Harry removed the can of spam from his pocket, displaying it in his palm to the Powerlord and his retinue, only making them laugh harder. He set it down on the floor, taking care to position it just so. Brandishing his wand, the wizard transfigured the can back into a concerned and decisively acting Doctor Mordin Solus, whose gun was promptly plucked from his fingers.

The doctor took a quick step away from the wizard, disoriented by the change and even more by the disarming. Taking deep breaths and with wide eyes, he took in his surroundings.

"Clan Drau. Clan Nakmor. Thax. Wik. Weyrloc. Kariss. Jurdon? Unexpected," as Morin finally turned and looked up to the Great Throne and it's occupant, he continued, "Urdnot Wrex. Exploits well known. Could have ascended to headship of Clan Urdnot. Chose not to, following betrayal by father. Good candidate for wider scale Krogan leadership. Clearly successful in some capacity."

Wrex stood from his throne, and descended a few steps toward the floor, "Allow me to present to you, my council, Mordin Solus. A genius geneticist, a notable professor, holder of multiple doctorate degrees, and by all accounts a fair singer," the chuckling continued, and Wrex gave another wide and horrific Krogan smile, "He saw before even our shamans did that the Krogan were finally beginning to overcome our neutering, and secure in the belief that we are the monsters his people so dimly remember from the rebellion, he devised a new genophage and began it's deployment himself. Three thousand kilometers from here, near the Torrash Scar."

From next to the Great Throne the late comer spoke up in a softer voice, "He was right."

Jane was surprised, and while her training kept that surprise from coming out in the form of a gasp or even the raising of an eyebrow, her crewmates weren't so disciplined. They had all probabaly been working under the same assumptions that she had been up to this point, that Krogans were all sort-of pod people, and that Krogan females were like girlfriends from Thessia or Neo-Nigerian princes, they weren't real. Intellectually she knew of their existence, but hearing one speak and seeing one step down from a position of high honor on the Great Throne's dais behind Wrex was strange and new.

As she arrived again at Wrex's side, placing her hand upon his shoulder, she said, "He was right. We weren't ready. We weren't ready when the Salarians uplifted our people to fight their war with the Rachni, we weren't ready for space, and we weren't ready to coexist with each other, to say nothing of soft and opinionated aliens."

Wrex continued her thought, "But now, here, where we shed blood together, and where we set in stone the foundation of our new covenant, our great Union, that is no longer true. And our small friend here will be the end of the old ways, and the beginning of the new."

Mordin stood to the side, halfway between the chairs of Wrex's council and the first step to the Great Throne. He held his hands at his side, and while Wrex and his companion spoke, he had been examining the room and the Krogan filling it, just as Jane had been.

It had definitely taken her a bit of time to catch the details. Krogan cuniform traced the bottom edges of all the walls, from the translations supplied by her implants she gathered that it was likely the basis of this Union. Clans were named, rights were established, and most importantly the delineation and authorization for doing violence seemed to be set out in pretty clear language. The Krogan were building themselves a culture. The guards at the door wore uniforms in colors that mixed those of all the clans present, at least in some small way, and the sigils on their shoulders and on their chests were representative of the Great Throne, a triangle representing it's shape with a line bisecting it through the center.

Mordin saw it as she did. She made note of it all so she could write another stunning report for her superiors, she was sure that if she had any less support from on high she'd have been drug tested and brought up on charges. He was making note of it all and, and if the records and depositions she had read were true, he was probably revising his own estimates.

This could all be faked. Maybe.

She wasn't exactly an expert on Krogan genetics or culture, the good doctor was far closer to that, but even she could tell that the crowd in front of her were each from different lands. The wear on their armor, the way they held their gear, the scarring on their crests, and even the paint on their humps. All that while saying nothing about faking the precise appearances of the clan leaders themselves.

It would be very, very difficult to get these people into this room together without a lot having happened leading to this moment.

Ashley and Tali were somewhat awestruck by what they were seeing, the last they had seen of the big guy was Harry giving him his parting gift, the Boom Stick, and him taking a shuttle down for the planet. Garrus and Liara had a better idea of what they were actually seeing, of what had taken place here, and they both seemed even more blown away for it.

"So, Punk. You're ahead of schedule. There's more work to be done here, more… heh… Unity… to be spread," at that, the chuckling amongst the council continued again, "Our job was to handle the work within, your job was to handle the work without. You have more work to do before our covenant is complete. Why are you here?"

At that, the chuckling settled, and attention shifted back to the wizard. Harry rubbed the back of his neck and looked a bit sheepish, "Something a bit personal came up. The collectors have been coming to our side of the Omega-4 relay, and they've been taking humans back with them by the hundreds of thousands. They attacked my land, ruined another one of my farms, and long story short, I could use a bit of muscle. I was hoping you had a few enterprising young lads who could use some experience abroad?"

Wrex gave another one of his terrifying smiles, "Now, now, Human. That wasn't the deal we struck. You can't call on Tuchanka for assistance until our covenant is complete."

Taking his time, Wrex crossed to Mordin and rested a huge hand on his small amphibian shoulder, "You're ahead of schedule, though. I suppose we can meet you halfway. As we clean house, we've been running down old leads. We thought for years that Warlord Okeer had come crawling back here, and had set up his shop again in some lost corner of the planet. We tracked him and his new gene engineering program off planet. Go do your thing, I'm sure you can find something to help you there."

"Better than I had hoped for. I'll take it. You'll give my love to old Fortak? He's doing well?"

"More angry than I've ever seen him. He's busy planning utilities layouts for the hospitals for the workers for the factory for his latest tomkah mounted weapon design," Wrex shook his head fondly, "The best gunsmith we've ever had."

Eagle Nebula, Imir System, Korlus – 05.18.2185

Aboard the Fortitude, in orbit over Korlus, with the blood of scores more Blue Suns on his hands and dozens of Krogan too young and inexperienced to even understand what had happened, Harry Potter got a call. He took his head from where it was pressed against the glass of one of the biological containment tanks filling the room to call up to the cockpit, "Joker, set a course for the Iera system, Shadow Sea cluster. Horizon's gone dark."

[A/N]: Here, finally, is chapter three. I hope you enjoyed it!

Based on the reviews, my last chapter was not especially well received. That's fair, though I will say that I warned you that it would be different. I have this thing in mind for how the overall story will go, and it is a very real possibility that what I have in mind is bad. I'll ask you all to bear with me for a bit. If it's especially bad, and I'll probably be the first one to know on that mark, I can re-organize things and split things away into different stories. For now though, I will ask for your patience.

As far as this chapter, I have a LOT of story ground to cover here, and I'd like to do so in a way that expresses what I want without being exhaustive. I think the jumps here do it well enough, hopefully keeping things a bit fresh. Changes to cannon are propagating forward, we get some more implications about what exactly it is that Harry does with his free time. I really do hope you like it.

You may note that the description of the story has changed. In writing this chapter I had to review a lot of plans and notes, changing where I initially thought this would go. The new description should be more in line with the actual story.

Before the author's ramblings, this chapter weighs in at 13,438 words. I welcome all reviews and PMs, though you get more points if your comments are constructive in nature.