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Gane struggled to maintain concentration as Reagan spoke, fumbling with his weapon and finally dropping it as blood poured from a pair of wounds, one on his upper left arm and one through his hand. Another round had pierced the flesh between his right shoulder and neck, and a fourth grazed the space below his eyes and across his nose. As an experienced combat medic and special operator, he was accustomed to evaluating and treating injuries, but rarely his own. He attempted to stand and move towards the medi-gel canister, but collapsed, evidence that a fifth round had taken out a part of his right knee. He clutched his leg tightly, seized by intense pain, which, blissfully, had failed to kick on as he sprinted towards cover moments earlier. Gane dragged himself back into his previous position, unable to move fast enough to risk enemy gunfire for the medi-gel. He reached for the pistol at his side, and began letting off rounds at the enemies downrange, aiming for the nearest to compensate his lack of combat ablility at the moment. Gane judged he had enough strength left to last until the foes had been dispatched.

Reagan, noting that Gane was in really bad shape, got up and ran for the MediGel container.
As he stood up he took a round to his right thigh, but kept moving.

Using what little biotic power he could muster, he heaved the three hundred pound crate back to his former position.
"There you go-" Reagan was cut off as a sniper round tore through his kneecap,
almost taking his leg off in the process and forcing him to the ground with a sickening thud.

He crawled back to the readout and started applying MediGel to both himself and Gane.

Gane groaned as Reagan applied the gel. "Aghhh... That's good enough for now, we- we need to take care of those enemies!" He winced in pain. "S--t! Give me one of those adrenaline shots!" He tore off the cap, and rammed the device into the vein on his neck, afterwards giving it ample time to act. His senses heightened and the pain somewhat dulled, Gane once again took hold of the sniper rifle, and this time his grip remained solid. He took aim at the sniper who had been giving them so much trouble, lined up the shot, and pulled the trigger. The man's head exploded in a red, syrupy cloud. Gane pulled back into cover as the sniper's nearby allies opened up on him with automatic fire.

Kayla continued to fire on the mercs as the Turian lay wounded on the floor. She was pretty certain by this cop's mannerisms that he wasn't Harkin, but corrupt or not, he was currently her only chance at safety.
"Look out!" she cried as a merc sniper fired on the group below, shaking them from their attempts at patching up the Turian. She sent a round flying into the merc's head as punishment.

Gane made the mistake of exposing the front of his weapon, and was reminded of his training as an enemie's round struck the weapons barrel, tearing it from his hands and into the open. He painfully extracted the pistol from his side, and readjusted his position, resting against a large crate with Reagan next to him. He continued firing blindly, exposing his hand for only moments at a time, and wiping blood from his face in between shots.

Reagan tore off one of his jacket sleeves and tied a tourniquet around his useless limb.

And just as all hope was lost to him, a welcome sight appeared in the sky above the open air warehouse.
"GUNSHIPS!"" He yelled with exuberance. "C-SEC GUNSHIPS!"
His brow furrowed when he saw the distinctive yellow hexagons on the two attack VTOL's,
unsure of their meaning. "Watch yourselves..."

But he had no complaints when they took the liberty of peppering the mercenaries with
a volley of heavy machine gun fire and cluster rockets.

Within moments the mercenary threat was pacified.
The two gunships then set down on a landing pad not far from Irodax's ship.

"Well, we're going to have to wait for our rescuers to come to us..."
Reagan commented, noting his shattered leg and Gane's Swiss cheese like appearance.

Four heavily armed and armored troopers bounded towards them,
their black and yellow color schemes making them seem like giant wasps when coupled with substantial blood loss.

"You're lucky to be alive. Just be glad you have something we want."
The trooper said with what Reagan swore was a smirk through his tinted faceplate.
His imposing powersuit raised his stature to almost seven feet tall.
Two of the troopers picked up Gane and Reagan, another bade Kayla and Irodax to follow,
and still another began to load the Geth casket onto Irodax's ship.

"Okay, okay," Kayla called out as the soldiers beckoned her over. "Don't need to tell me to get off this station twice."

Reagan couldn't help but feel as if these troopers were somehow familiar.

Then it dawned on him. "Oh, goddamnit..." He limply struggled to escape the trooper's arms,
but the if the power armor was lacking anything it wasn't strength.

"I see you remember us, 'Operative' Toll?" One of the troopers said, in a feminine voice.

Reagan thanked the Lord that he had no sense of pain. Torture was going to be hell otherwise.

The woman laughed. "Relax, Reagan. If you must know we had no intention of following you after you left the fold."
She chuckled. "It would have been a grievous waste of resources.
Although running to the Shadow Broker for a new life was not a very inspired move."

Reagan wished he wasn't where he was, to say the least.

Gane struggled to remain conscious, confused by the arrival of the two gunships. His surroundings became a blur as someone picked him up, and he finally gave in. His head tilted back as he lost consciouness, blood streaming down his face, coating his teeth and draining into his mouth and throat.

The trooper that was carrying Gane set him on the ground and began work on stabilizing his vitals.

Irodax followed the heavily armoured Humans, making sure they loaded the Geth cask properly. He was unsure of who they were but the fact that they saved his and the Humans lives was enough to make him consider their help. But even with that he pivoted his eyes around, monitoring their behaviour.

Jeez, I've been gone a day and a half and everything has changed.

I've read over almost everything, but is there any major things I should pick up on to join the main story?

Gerdon, still a bit confused at what just happened,but glad that something interesting was happening, took the disc and went to the room he was given, he played the disc on his Omni tool.

A incoming message buzz was coming from the comm-station in the strange ship.
The navigator activated the recive button on the Comms panel...

''Deep-Strike Charlie Five-Three, This is Captain Lawson, Have you found the target?''

The Navigator replied.
''Captain, Five-Three.. We have scanned all transmisions and have found him, he is in the Med-lab here on Citadel Station, and has been there for two days, we arrived just 5 minutes ago, making a 'quiet' approach to an un-used part of the Wards. Unfortunatly, a firefight was in progress as we were landing. We have disabled all combatants and taken prisoners. We have apprehended an Intact Geth. I repeat: We have apprehended an Intact Geth. We will await further instructions. Five-Three Out.''

The Navigator finished as his crew and their 'cargo' got aboard.

Gerdon's omnitool gently accepted the OSD it had been offered,
and in return it relinquished a hastily recorded video file.

A balding human in a civilian uniform, presumably in his late 40's, appeared on a 2d projection.
The recording device must have been an extranet camera, due to the rendering's low quality and high buffer rate.

He picked up a bottle of cheap whiskey he had probably just opened moments before,
and downed the whole beverage in a matter of seconds.
"Commanding Officer's Log, Systems... Alliance Merchant Marine Texas Winter."
He struggled to say as he dropped the bottle on the ground behind him,
the shattered glass plainly audible even over the static caused by the low quality recording codec.
The seasoned gentleman looked exhausted, and was badly in need of a shave.

"It's been, on my best guess, two weeks since we've been dead in the water."
He adjusted the camera, shaking the perspective and temporarily distorting the image.
"Some of the crew almost set up a mutiny, but we've had to ration power and almost
everything else after the fusion core mysteriously shut 'itself' off."
The man smirked, obviously thinking about the improbability of an artificial star just going out like a candle,
without some sort of nuclear explosion. "I've got reason to believe there is a fanatical saboteur on board,
'fanatical' meaning he or she knows they're going to die, and 'saboteur' meaning that when I find them I'm going to kill them."

He reached under the desk he was sitting at and pulled a large revolver out from one of the drawers.
"Its a shame, really. This gun is older than I am by about 250 years." The chambers gently shifted as he cocked and dry fired the pistol.
"It's a piece history. Just like this ship is gonna be when someone finally finds this."

"Just thought I'd try to set matters straight before I met the maker."
He stood up, and set the revolver on the desk in plain view of the camera.

"About a month ago, we received a distress signal from a Quarian vessel.
We were having a few issues with out propulsion systems ourselves and we figured we could use some skilled extra hands."
The man laughed. "Those Quarians might be a bunch of beggers and theives,
but they sure do know how to break the law of matter conservation just to get your
mass effect core to squeeze out a few thousand more Newtons."

"But I digress. When we arrived at the derelict flotilla ship, we picked up three survivors and a... Synthetic."
His face took on a serious expression as he uttered the last word. "But it wasn't any old VI Mech.
This thing claimed to be over 300 years old. 'Bout as old as this revolver."
He waved a hand over the gun, but refrained from picking it up.

"Upon retrieving the surviving Quarians, a few of my crew decided that they weren't worth rescuing.
They tried to space the poor [&@%!], but luckily their enviroment suits were EVA worthy."

The screen on Gerdon's omnitool temporarily cut out, but the message resumed after a couple of seconds.
"When we got them, the Quarians, back into the ship, the perpetrators were confined to quarters.
But the Synthetic was nowhere to be found. We did notice that one of the escape pods on the
Quarian ship had been jettisoned, but they assumed it was just a hardware error."

In the background, Gerdon noticed a Quarian female folding what he assumed were human style clothing.
"So anyway, the Synthetic is missing and I think it was in the cargo pod.
I bet the Quarians are lying about what happened to it, but it really isn't much of a concern right now anyway."
The man looked behind him, obviously noticing the Quarian in the capture preview screen of his laptop.

"What are you doing in here?" He said in a gentle manner.

"I was just trying to 'push my weight'." the Quarian said, doing her best to mimic the human expression.

He sighed, and stood up. "I'm sorry, I was just a bit drunk earlier. Well, I'm still drunk, but a better sort of drunk."

"So I see." The Quarian said.

He shook his head, and sat back down. The Quarian placed a small datapad in a small wall compartment and left the room.
"Anyway, my engineering team and the Quarians have been working on trying to get the fusion core restarted.
We've taken some of the fuel and resources from the Quarian ship, unfortunately we can't exactly share food rations."

He wrote "DEXTRO AMINO SUCKS IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE" on a sheet of paper and held it up to the camera.
"But that might actually be a good thing, seeing as how my crew can't complain that they're eating our food."
The man crumpled the derogatory message into a ball and threw it into a waste receptacle on the wall.

Suddenly the lighting in the room was intensified by a generous magnitude,
and an audible crescendo of power further elaborated that the fusion core was back online.

"Well, I guess the saboteur isn't going to have their tongue removed and turned into a serving spoon after all.
Judging by the navigational computer, we'll be arriving at The Citadel within the hour."
The man stood up and yelled into an intercom just off screen.

"DRATHAN, GET YOUR DINOSAUR ASS UP ON THE BRIDGE! DOUBLE TIME GERVAISE!"

After the video was over, three dossiers appeared on the screen.



Name: Drathan Gervaise
Age: 22
Species: Turian
Occupation: Merchant's Apprentice

Name: Reagan Toll
Age: 24
Species: Human
Occupation: C-SEC Officer

Name: Zeke
Age: Unknown
Species: Human
Occupation: N7 Operative

The trooper worked with highly trained precision to save Gane's life.

Using several applications of Medigel, a special security shunt designed to lock down power armor,
and a medical epoxy used to create instant casts, Gane was rendered motionless and incapable of reopening his wounds.
Three of the troopers then led the party onto Irodax's ship, while the last one returned to the gunships to pilot one of them
and turn the other over to a VI Autopilot. "Now, I want to know how a turian cop, a young human vagrant,
a krogan scientist, and a former Cerberus operative ended up fighting a bunch of mercenaries for an intact Geth platform.
Cooperate, and you'll be free to go when we deem it safe. Resist, and your stay in our private detention ship will be less than satisfactory."

A small bump was felt as the ship left The Citadel's small artificial atmosphere above Tayseri Ward,
and headed for an almost abandoned section of Zakera Ward. Through the cockpit window a large
and seemingly derelict freighter loomed freighter into view, quickly followed by darkness and then
a large amount of light coming from a docking hangar's opening.

The ship landed in the well lit hangar, and just moments after the landing ramp opened several humans
wearing conventional composite yellow and black armor with light kinetic barriers escorted the group to a large holding cell.

After the troopers and guards left the room, the large security door swung closed,
sealing them in a vault like room roughly twenty feet by twenty feet.
The spartan accommodations they were given consisted of four beds,
with one sophisticated looking medical slab where a couple of remote
controlled robots worked to remove Gane's restraints and render further aid to his injuries.

Septimus and Erold turned to Eerak.

"So, Eerak... Do you need help on your mission?" Septimus asked. "Well... another quarian might come in useful... especially Halli. But... wait, no! No, you can't help me! Why would you even want to?"

"For fame... honestly. Besides, I have my father's ship, that he gave me. We could travel the galaxy together, and find a planet hospitable for the quarian people!"

Erold interjected. "This one is sorry for interrupting, but he was a query. Do the quarians not want to retake thier home planet? Was that not their goal from the beginning?"

Eerak shrugged self conciously. "Well... it's about half and half. But Admiral Davas keeps Project Homestead up, this top secret mission."

"Even the other quarian?" Erold asked.

"Yes. Even my bretheran."

"Then how, if you don't mind this one asking, does Admiral Davas explain the dissaperance of thirty quarian?"

"Admiral Davas choses at random thirty different ships out of the 50,000, and one quarian from each chosen ship goes. We are announced missing to our kin, and we set off."

"Do you not want to return to your mother? And father?"

"Of course I do!"

"Then will you not take our help?"

"Arrgh... if you will really help me, I'll take it. First, we need to hack into the Citadel files and search their data for hospitale planets. We need to hire a tech expert."

When The message Finished, Gerdon was immediately set with Curiosity, but also frustration, It was his Leave, and he was going to go on this? Well, he had to, his curiosity was piqued, and it might lead to something interesting. The message looked like the Ship had made it to the Citadel, And the people in the dossiers would know what happened to it, he decide to go find this Reagan Toll, Him being C-sec officer though, he'd have to be careful.

Gerdon Decided he might as well be straight forward about this, after all, it was'nt like any of his usual buisness. He went to the C-sec offices in Zakera ward.
"Good evening sir, how can i help you?"
"I'm looking for a C-sec officer, he's a friend of mine, Reagan Toll?"