Hemorrhaging fuel and leaking a trail of atmosphere, Armchair emerged from the spatial corridor produced by the mass relay. With his flightpath unstable and his mass core just barely together enough to generate a minimal impulse speed, he directed his course toward the large metallic object that his one remaining sensor could pick up: the center of the galactic government, the Citadel.

Onboard, Jack and Sjdath looked out a cracked window as Armchair shuddered and lurched through space, barely managing to hold his body together as he approached the enormous space station.

“Come on,” said Jack, to herself. “Come on, just a little farther…”

“Incoming transmission,” said Armchair. “Docking protocols…need assistance…”

“I’ll take it.” Sjdath opened her omnitool and produced a holographic screen. On it was the face of a turian, an operator from the docking platform.

“Attention geth vessel,” he said, his large eyes glittering against the muted tones of his gray, semi-metallic skin. “You are not approved for landing. Repeat, not approved. Geth are not welcome here.”

“This is Sjdath, salvage operator,” said Sjdath. “I’m requesting an emergency landing. We have wounded in need of immediate medical attention.”

The turuian looked confused. “I’m having a hard time understanding…I was addressing a geth vessel.”

“Yes, that’s us. We’re on it.”

“You’re on a geth starship? How?”

“Are you going to authorize our landing or not?”

“No. At present, the Citadel has a no-vorcha policy to reduce the risk of infestation. You are still not authorized to land.”

“Give me that,” said Jack, grabbing Sjdath’s arm. “You listen here, you arrogant, power obsessed little three-fingered butt. I don’t care if you’re using this job to compensate for your tiny turian genitals, but two of my friends are dying. One of them’s a friggin kid. If you don’t let me land, I swear to whatever sick god did this to them I will RAM this ship into your goddamn Citadel!”

The turuian’s eyes widened, but he just gaped.

“Did you hear me?”

“It’s- -it’s you,” he said. “Jaqueline Naught- -Subject Zero! Holy crap- -ahem, excuse my language, Ms. Naught, but I- -I didn’t even think you were still alive- -I have all your comic books, I mean, well, they’re not yours but- -”

“Am I gonna have to slap a turian?”

“N- -no, Ms. Naught. No. Land- -landing approved. And when you get in could I get your autogra- -”

Jack cut the transmission, and Sjdath took her arm back.

“I had no idea you were so famous.”

“You don’t spend time with John Shepard and not get a little fame. It’s one reason I left this hole. But if it will help Zedok, I’ll deal with it.”

The ship docked uneventfully, opening its central loading bay to the Citadel. Almost as soon as the immense bay door pulled open, two groups rushed in with stretchers. One immediately went to Fenok, who carried Zedok to them. He had managed to stabilize her condition, but she was weak and still badly injured. Her injuries were covered in a number of bandages that were soaked with drying purple fluid.

“We’ll take it from here,” said one of the paramedics, a salarian.

“She needs immediate intravenous injection of gene-matched medigel,” said Fenok, quickly. “If we can get her to a reconstructive apparatus we might slow the scarring- -”

“We can handle it.”

“I’m going with you.”

“Sir, you can’t- -”

“I said I’m going!”

“Are you seriously going to argue with the krogan?” said the other paramedic, a human.

“No, no. Put her down, but stay out of the way.”

Fenok nodded and set Zedok gently on the stretcher and followed it as she was taken away.

Meanwhile, another pair of paramedics were loading Si’y onto a stretcher. A drell doctor was already attending to him.

Sjdath approached the drell. “Is he going to survive?” she asked.

“These are gravity injuries,” said the drell. “Hanar are invertebrates, they are exquisitely sensitive to high gravity. His injuries are grave.”

“Will he survive?!”

The drell looked her in the eye. “The Citadel has one of the best hanar treatment centers off of Kahje. If Arashu is willing, we will make him Whole again.” She opened her omnitool and began taking readings, and motioned for the paramedics to take Si’y away.

Sjdath fell backward, hissing in anger- -not directed toward the drell, but toward herself for allowing this to happen.

“It’s okay, Sjdath,” said Jack, approaching from behind. “He’s going to be okay. They both will.”

“Forgive me if I lack confidence in the regenerative capacity of failed species.”

“Hey, I once knew a man who once came back from the dead. Not ‘clinical’ dead, either. Hit a planet from orbit with his face kind of dead. If they could fix him, they can fix Si’y.” She pushed past Sjdath. “So come on.”

“Come on? Where? Why?”

“We have business to attend to. You two, Lyra.”

Lyra, who had been resting on a tall crate and watching the proceedings with characteristic disinterest, stood up. “Wait, why me?”

“Because when you go onto the Citadel, you have to go in threes. I can’t take Armchair, and I can’t take Arachne. So you two, on me, now.”

“Fine,” said Lyra, jumping down.

“I don’t feel comfortable with that,” said Sjdath. “I mean, I’m a vorcha, I don’t think I am welcome- -”

“Move, now.”

“Alright, alright! But if someone sprays vorchacide on me, I will blame you!”

She adjusted her gas valve compulsively, and then hesitated before finally following Jack and the teal-haired pony out onto the landing platform.

It was much more roomy than the ones on Omega, and cleaner too. Several technicians were already waiting outside, staring up at Armchair.

“So that’s a geth starship?”

“I’ve never seen one up close!”

“Sweet Mara, look at that damage- -I can’t believe they got it in like this.”

“Hey you!” said Jack, approaching them. “Are you for hire?”

They all looked away from her. “Um, you should probably be wearing a shirt,” said one of them.

“Are you for hire or not?”

“Yes, I guess- -”

“Good. We have an engineer in there working on fixing the core. Go help him.”

“Sure, but…” one of the human technicians looked down at Lyra. “Um…is that a blue unicorn?”

“Green,” said Lyra, defensively. “I am green.”

“Um…Joe, did you spike the drinking fountain with ryncol again?”

“Maybe…”

“Just get to work,” said Jack, pointing. “Charge it to the vorcha’s account.”

She walked away, leaving the techs to get to work fixing Armchair. As they left, she turned to Sjdath. “What, no complaints about the cost?”

“I’m already in lethal debt. What’s a little more? Besides…”

“Besides what?”

“It’s kind of…my fault.”

Jack stopped. “What did you do?”

“While I was looking for buyers for that scrap…one of them was that blond android.”

Jack frowned. “Let me get this straight. You tried to sell an unknown alien ship. To Cerberus?”

“I didn’t know he was Cerberus at the time! Or an android!”

“You were trying to sell the EQX?” said Lyra. “You do realize that’s Equestrian property, right?”

“I salvaged it, it’s mine!”

“I don’t have time for this,” said Jack. “Sjdath, I’d give you a beating, except you’d probably like it. Just…no. I can’t deal with this right now.”

She stormed off, and the other two followed.

“Where are we going, anyway?” asked Lyra.

“I never thought I’d have to do this,” said Jack, stepping into an elevator. “But they took Starlight. I can’t get her back on my own. I have to ask for help.”

The last time Jack had been to the Citadel, she had barely been out of childhood. Rebellious, angry, and young. She was now only two of those things. The Citadel did not feel familiar to her, though, nor did it feel welcoming. Back then, she had hated it, seeing all the wealthy and prosperous people walking around ignorant of what was really happening in the galaxy. That, and it reminded her of Shepard. She had decided never to come back, if she could avoid it. Upon returning, she found that she still hated it.

“Jack, they’re staring!” said Sjdath, looking around nervously at the passing citizens.

“Well, if it’s any consolation, it’s probably going three ways,” noted Lyra. “The ugly shirtless alien, the cyborg unicorn, or you. Hey, all these aliens are wearing shirts…is that something you’re supposed to do here?”

“If you’re human, yes.”

“Shut it,” said Jack. “I don’t care if people are staring. Let them. It’s not my problem.”

“Unless you wanted to be inconspicuous, sure.”

Lyra paused at a railing and looked out one of the enormous windows that showed a view of the Citadel’s cityscape. “Impressive,” she said. “This thing is huge. We have megastructures in Equestria, but nothing like this. Probably because it’s not really logical to build something like this when, you know, you could just put it on a planet.”

“We didn’t build it,” said Sjdath. “It’s been here for millennia. Whoever built it in the first place is long dead.”

“Oh,” said Lyra. “Sucks to be them, I guess.” Lyra’s eyes fell on a passing elcor as the large quadruped lumbered by- -specifically on the ends of its front legs. “And does every species here have hands?”

“All except the hanar.”

“Damn. Why did evolution screw me like this?”

“Your body’s robotic. Couldn’t you just build yourself a pair of hands if you wanted them?”

Lyra paused and stood wide-eyed as Sjdath walked past her, following Jack. “Why didn’t I ever think of that?”

“Lyra!” said Jack. “Hurry up!”

“What, you don’t trust me alone?”

“Yeah. I don’t trust the violent, unstable, irresponsible…oh. I sound like Miranda. Damn.”

“Where exactly are we going?” asked Sjdath. “There’s nothing here except overpriced shops that sell pointless craps. What even is a ‘space hampster’?”

“A hamster that lives in space?” suggested Lyra.

“I have a friend here. I think he can help us.”

Sjdath stopped walking. “You have a friend?”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“It’s YOU.” Sjdath shook her head. “I hate to think of what kind of person this friend is…”

High in the Citadel, Garrus Vakarian sat in his office, leaning back in his chair and slowly scrolling through the extranet looking at the prices of rifles. He knew that he was supposed to be working, reviewing yet another convoluted trade proposition from the volus designed to skirt the sanctions around the Alliance- -but it was just so boring.

It did not help that he had been given a terrible office. The walls were gray and dull, with a number of windows roughly equivalent to a pre-war geth frigate. There was a port on one of the walls where keepers would occasionally congregate, especially at night, taking up what little space there was with their weird mute presence. In addition, Garrus had been specifically placed below the other Councilors, something intended as an insult. It might have worked, too, if Garrus gave a varren’s butt about traditional turian political maneuvering. In all his time on the Normandy, he had actually come to like relatively dark, windowless, warm places. Ideally places filled with things to calibrate.

Garrus turned toward his secretary, Valena. The narrow-featured turian woman was typing away on her stationary computer consul, as she always did, setting up meetings, handling scheduling, and helping with the mountainous volumes of paperwork that was required to just about anything in the government.

“Hey, Valena,” he said at last. “I was thinking of getting takeout for lunch. What do you think of that new elcor place down on level twenty three? I just heard they’re starting to serve dextro food now.”

“I’ve been there,” said Valena, not looking up from her computer. “It’s okay. If you don’t mind your food taking six hours to prepare and tasting like unsweetened particleboard.”

“Well it can’t be worse than that hanar place out near the docks. I’m pretty sure they accidentally served me one of the chefs.” Garrus leaned back in his chair. “You know what, I wonder if that place down near reactor seven is still there. I haven’t been there since my C-sec days, but damn, they had good donuts.”

“Rons? You know you’ll get levo poisoning from that place.”

“With those donuts, it’s worth it. No wonder so many humans are fat. You want anything?”

“Tea. With extra turian milk. I’ll have someone- -”

“No I’ll go get it.”

“Councilor?”

“How am I supposed to do this job if I don’t talk to my constituents?” That, of course, and the paragraph of volus legalese he had been reading for the last four hours was giving him a headache.

Garrus closed down his computer interface and started to put some of his folders away. Just as he was finally ready to go, he looked up and saw the door to his office ignite with blue light. With a powerful explosion, it tore off its hinges and fell inward into the office.

Valena and Garrus both jumped out of their seats, drawing pistols and pointing them at whatever was coming through the door- -which turned out to be an extremely angry, tattooed, shirtless woman.

“Jack!” cried Garrus, lowering his weapon and motioning for his secretary to do the same. “What the hell! You could have been shot!”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” she said.

“And what is with it with this door?” Garrus sat back down in his chair, his heart racing. He realized that it had been a long time since he had actually seen real combat, and it showed. “I just had it replaced! Last week, it was Ashley, and before that…” He turned toward his secretary. “Was it Grunt that time?”

“No,” she said. “That time it was Urdnot Wrex. Grunt was a month prior to that, and before that it was the prothean.”

“Prothean? Which prothean?”

Valena gave him a look that he had become accustomed to from her. “Oh.” Garrus looked up at Jack. “It’s not like it’s locked! You could have just opened it like a normal person! And for crap’s sake, put a shirt on!”

“You didn’t complain when we were on the Normandy.”

“You were twenty years younger back then! Tattoos do not count as clothing!

“So you’re implying you appreciated the view back then?” noted Valena.

“I didn’t- -I mean that’s not- -”

Two more followers entered. One was, of all things ,a half-naked vorcha with a breathing apparatus. The other Garrus did not intitially focused on- -until he realized that it was a small armored quadruped.

Garrus’s looked down at the creature, recognizing it from Aria’s security footage.

“You know what, I’m not even going to ask.”

“This place is so clean,” rasped the Vorcha.

“Not anymore,” growled Valena, flopping back into her chair and returning to her typing. “I’m going to have to schedule a cleaner now. You know vorcha aren’t permitted on the Citadel, right? It might breed.”

“Excuse me,” said the vorcha, crossing his- -or her, Garrus could not tell the difference with vorcha- -arms. “I am vorcha, not a human.”

“This place just gets better and better,” added the unicorn. She looked up at Valena. “How the hay do you type with six fingers?”

“Carefully.”

“So let me get this straight.” Garrus rubbed his temples. “You knock down my door and come in here with a vorcha and a horse…and the horse had better not ruin the carpet!”

“Excuse me,” said the unicorn, angrily. “I lost my intestine in the war. How about I pull yours out for the sake of your precious rug?”

“Please refrain from threatening to disembowel the Councilor,” said Valena, sounding bored from having to repeat that line surprisingly often.

“To be honest, I was expecting Vas’Geth this time. What do you want, Jack? That’s the only reason anyone comes to visit me anymore. Or to yell at me.”

“I need help.”

“What did you do this time? Crash another space station into a moon?”

“You crashed a space station into a moon?” said the unicorn.

“ONE time. ONCE. And I don’t regret it. But no. Vakarian, Cerberus kidnapped one of my friends.”

That got Garrus’s attention. He leaned forward onto his desk. “Cerberus? They haven’t been active in years. I mean, we’ve known they still exist, but with the state Earth is in- -”

“They are still real, but they’re getting desperate. Garrus, you know what they did to me. I don’t want them to do the same things to her, and I know they will. Please, Garrus. You know how much I hate asking for help.”

“I just don’t think there’s much I can do. I’m a politician, Jack. And, well…”

Jack stiffened. “It doesn’t concern the Council, does it?”

“No, Jack. That’s not what I- -”

“Actually, it does,” said the unicorn. “The ‘friend’ that they stole was critical property of the Equestrian government.”

“Starlight is NOT property!”

“That’s not the point. She was engineered to serve as a power source for a FTL vessel.” The unicorn turned her oversized eyes- -one of them milky and blind- -to Garrus. “She is what you primitives call a biotic, but on a scale that even we can’t fully fathom. If Cerberus found a way to harness her power, the effects could be devastating.”

“How devastating?”

“Remember how I crashed that satellite into a hanar moon? Replace the satellite with a small moon, and the hanar moon with Palaven.”

“That’s imposible,” said Valena.

“I once saw a human take down a Reaper leviathan with a rocket launcher. I’ve also seen a geth dance. Weirder things have happened.” Garrus looked up at Jack. “I believe you.”

The vorcha looked surprised. “You actually believe any of that?”

“Jack doesn’t usually lie,” noted Garrus. “If she wanted to manipulate me, she’d do it with violence.”

“My kind of strategy,” added the pony.

Garrus looked down at her. “I’m sorry, I just can’t get over the pony. A green unicorn talking to a turian? That is just too ridiculous. I mean, who comes up with this stuff?”

“So are you going to do something, or just push papers?” said Jack.

Garrus groaned. “I can dispatch a spectre to investigate- -”

Jack slammed her fist into Garrus’s desk. “A spectre? They could be forcing Starlight to kill right now, and you just want to send a glorified detective?”

“There’s not much I can do! I’d sent the whole Council fleet if I could, except that you don’t seem to know where Cerberus took your friend. That, and the fleet is currently engaged.”

“Engaged in what?” asked the vorcha.

Garrus looked at Valena, and then back at Jack. “This doesn’t leave the room, okay? But I just had to send most of the fleet to deal with an alien fleet that showed up in geth space. They blew up a mass relay and everything.”

Jack paused. “Wait, you mean THAT ship?”

Garrus looked up at her, and then groaned. “You were there, weren’t you? I should have known…”

The pony pushed past Jack. “Wait a minute- -that ship’s the Harmony. You’re sending your fleet to engage THE HARMONY?!”

“Um, yes?”

“Recall them, now.”

“I’m not going to take orders from a small horse.”

“No, you don’t understand. That’s the Equestrian flagship! If you try to engage, you’ll be slaughtered.”

“It’s just one ship- -”

“It’s a carrier! And with your current level of technology, you won’t be able to even dent it!”

“It’s like seventeen years ago all over again,” said Jack, softly.

“No, it isn’t,” said Garrus. “Because this time, we know they’re coming.” Garrus stood up from his desk. “If this isn’t enough to convince Diagador, I don’t know what is. We’ll need to reinforce the fleet- -”

“You don’t understand,” said the pony, blocking Garrus’s exit. “Pony technology and magic is far more advanced than ANYTHING you’ve ever even seen.”

“I’ve seen a lot of things.”

“But not this! You have no chance of winning! And a one hundred percent chance of starting a war.”

“I’m not trying to win. I don’t even want to have to fight. But we have to be ready. I’m not going to sit here managing sanctions when we could have the new Reapers knocking down our door!”

“But what about Starlight?”

“She’ll have to wait. We’re on the verge of potential galactic conflict- -”

“She can’t just wait, Vakarian!”

“She’s going to have to. Look…Valena, give her the database on known Cerberus locations.”

“Councilor, that’s classified information.”

“Well I’m unclassifying it. Almost all of them are empty anyway.” He turned to Jack. “You know Cerberus better than anyone. I want to help, I really do, but I’m not young anymore. You’re going to have to do this on your own.”

“Fine by me. Thanks for nothing, Vakarian.”

“Don’t give me that, Jack. You know I’m doing what I can.” He stepped over the broken door, which was no laying in the center of his office, and grumbled. “I just calibrated that door too…”

As he left, Lyra looked up at Jack. “He’s charming, isn’t he?”

“He sure is,” said Valena, not taking her eyes off her computer. “Beat cop to vigilante to war hero to one of the most beloved politicians in history. Not to mention that face. And…reach. Damn. If he asked me to, I’d let him bend me over that desk with all three of you watching and lay his hero eggs, but noooo, he has it in for the ardat yakshi…” She looked up, her mandibles clenching. “Crap…I said that one out loud, didn’t I?”

“Turians lay eggs?” asked Sjdath. She looked down at Lyra. “I know I lay eggs. Do ponies lay eggs too?”

“No, we grow up from the ground like potatoes.”

“Oh,” said Sjdath, not grasping Lyra’s sarcasm. “What is a potato?”

“Kartoshka,” said Jack, stomping out of the room.

“Oh. Oh! That does explain a lot.”

“Have the data sent to me,” said Jack, not looking at Garrus’s secretary. “If all my so-called friends are abandoning me, FINE. I’ll get Starlight back myself.”