First we bind them.

Tali'zorah vas Normandy had never seen Shepard more angry. She had seen her captain mad, Saren's goons and the council's bureaucratic nonsense had been the cause of more than one occasion each. She had even seen Shepard get so angry she became like ice, like when the council grounded the Normandy before the Battle of the Citadel or when they demanded she sacrifice humans to save their worthless hides. This episode though, went beyond that iciness. Shepard was rage incarnate at the moment.

Tali was genuinely afraid that if a Reaper got between them and the location of the S.O.S. beacon Liara had sent that the Commander would order Joker to just fly THROUGH it. To be fair it was awful timing for them. Most of their heavy hitters were off loaded to face the music for galavanting with a thought to be dead spectre flying the colors of a terrorist group... yeah, she did not envy Garrus. Grunt had gone of to fulfill his mating requests shudder, Jacob fucked off at some port saying something about an ex-girlfriend he was going to help out and to not wait up, and Zaeed took his money and ran after the incident at the refinery.

All in all it was feeling like a... what was that human expression, taco party? She thought she heard Joker say donut fest but she wasn't sure what glazed pastries had to do with the lack of testosterone aboard the ship. Hell even Ken Donelley and Mess Sergeant Gardner requested shore leave, Ken said he heard about some new product about to launch on Omega and wanted to get first dibs and he took the old man with him to hopefully stay out of trouble.

Not that it helped the Commanders mood any. Tali wished Garrus were still here, maybe he could give Shepard something else to think about for an hour. She would bitch about it and be walking funny for a day or so but at least she wouldn't be so stressed. Besides, Liara was probably fine. She was a clever girl with loads of resources, Cerberus wouldn't harm a hair, er tentacle, er... scale on her head if they had any brains in that operation.

Tali loaded up along with Miranda, Jack, Kasumi, and Shepard as they approached what EDI had designated Chronus station. Her predictive algorithm determined this to be the most likely place for Cerberus to take their friend. Still beyond angry Shepard neglected a pep talk or even a briefing, not that there was anything to brief. They knew the objective and had next to zero intel, not ideal but this was Shepard's crew. They did suicide missions for funsies at this point.

Striding onto the shuttle like a silent goddess of war, Shepard maglocked her boots to the shuttle floor by the door instead of taking a seat. Looked like a hot drop then, sighed Tali already dreading the long day. She was already wishing to get back to her bunk and boot up her nerve stim program and forget all about this.

The shuttle landed in an empty hangar bay, Miranda leaving it on idle and parking it so they could scram if things got hairy. While she did that, the others all scattered and set up a perimeter. However, the cargo bay was empty... way too empty in Tali's opinion. No cover, long sightlines, overhead balconies on the wall, all in all not ideal. Shepard either didn't notice or, more likely, didn't care.

The group rallied and began to pick a random door out of the room when all hell broke loose. From every side but the one leading to empty space came inbound flashbangs. No where to turn, all the ladies caught an eyeful of blinding white light and a case of tinnitus so bad that Tali was sure EDI could hear it. By the time they regained their sight enough to see there were at least 30 heavy weapons pointed uncomfortably close to them.

"Go ahead and drop those weapons ladies, you can maybe get one or two weapons teams but the rest of us will plug you before you can blink." Shouted a Cerberus operative, a Sergeant by his markings.

A grumbling Shepard said "Put them down guys, this is a bit much even for us. I'll just have EDI hack the station system and..." she never got to finish.

"EDI, shut down override omega one niner" came a voice over the comms the Normandy's crew had hoped to never hear again.

"Right away Illusive Man, Docking the Normandy and locking down all systems now." Came the strained and sorrowful voice of their ship's AI.

The noise of Joker pointlessly fighting to regain control of the ship vanished behind a wall of pain. Somehow someone had snuck up on her and her companions and inserted some form of pain probe/muscle paralyzer into each of their vonnas (khelish for lady bits). As she was blacking out Tali turned to see who did such a dirty and pervy trick, and couldn't believe her eyes. 'Are those lady ninjas in fetish gear?'