"Ow, ow, ow!" Ali grumbled as she tried not to flinch with every careful move Etsile made as he slowly removed the shrapnel from her leg.

"Would it not have been simpler to knock her out?" Ben deadpanned. Ali glared at him.

"I try not to unnecessarily medicate my patients," Etsile replied nonchalantly, eyes never leaving his task. "But would it not have been simpler to wait until I've finished before you have your debrief?"

"Unfortunately time is not on our side," Grey said.

"That's an understatement," Ali scoffed, wincing again as Etsile removed another sliver of metal. "Whose arse is getting kicked into the next millennium for a bomb getting past their security arrangements?"

"Right now, no one. S-Core are happily taking credit that the only casualty of the blast was one of the perpetrators."

"Right, because they've confirmed Petra died? Any body would've been vaporised at that distance, but she's a sneaky botut who I would not be surprised if she escaped," Ali said with a certain bitter respect.

"Like you said, unless she turns up again, we won't know either way," Ben agreed. "Sam's currently working over the security detail from the event - not that they've realised that yet - but so far hasn't turned anything up."

"Well if Petra was 'officially' undercover, couldn't she just have pulled some strings in the name of not compromising an ongoing op?" Rila asked. "It's what I'd do."

"I'd like to think that even S-Core would draw the line at operatives bringing in explosives to a formal, civilian event," Ali muttered. "Do we still have the one you disabled, Wood?"

Ben flashed her an apologetic look before saying, "S-Core confiscated it, and if we were going to get out without them following we had to chose our battles."

Ali nodded to herself, that made sense. The blast - or her flight down some stairs - had knocked her out cold so she hadn't been privy to the decisions made to extract their team in the chaos. "Claire at least punched Witworth for us, right?"

"Ali…" Grey warned as Rila nodded conspiratorially out of his line of sight, but in Ali's.

"Yeah, fine, okay, professionalism." No one commented on any of the barely there grins at the idea of Ali maintaining an air of professionalism when her friends and crew were under threat.

"What's our plan then?" Rila asked.

"I hate to say it, but I think we need to dig up whatever skeletons Bert left behind," Ali suggested. "After a base on Tuthu IV, then both Tihud and Petra mentioning Bert specifically…"

"And if it's a ploy to make you think that's the link?" Ben asked. "Neither had any reason to be honest with us."

"True, but what would Petra gain from lying to us?" Ali countered, the defeated, brief arch of his eyebrows indicated his acceptance of her point. Ali sighed before wincing again as Etsile cleaned one of the deeper cuts. "We can't rule it out yet, so we treat it like we treat all unverified information."

"You mean keep S-Core out of the loop until we know who to shoot?" Rila suggested. Grey and Ben shared a look as if to ask each other if she was joking, or if they should be worried. Ali shook her head in hopeless amusement.

~-x-~

"Dammit, Spud, open this door or I swear I'll hack my way through!" Ali yelled as she kicked the bulkhead that separated her from her best friend in frustration with her good leg - the one that had escaped most of the shrapnel.

She waited for a moment, almost holding her breath as she listened for the tell-tale sound of the lock being undone. Finally, when she was about to get into all sorts of trouble and probably a night in the brig for running roughshod over the Endeavour's security systems, the control released and Ali hit it to let herself into Spud's quarters.

"I don't want to talk!" The engineer snapped from where she was curled up on her bed, chin resting on her knees and her dark purple hair splayed around her shoulders in a mess.

Ali could see the tear tracks on Spud's pale face as she sat down next to her. "I'm not here to make you talk," she promised as she wrapped her arms around the smaller woman's shoulders, tucking her up against her as she felt her tremble as she gave up holding the emotion in in front of someone else.

They lost track of how long they sat there together, as Spud cried her heart out into her knees as Ali hugged her tightly. Their tetnar allowing Ali to feel everything Spud was and take some of the edge off it and remind her of happier memories, a bittersweet feeling now but better than just sorrow. Prompting and listening to anecdotes without saying a word.

Eventually Spud finally raised her head again, wiping at her face with the back of her hands, Ali relaxing her grip enough to let her move. "Tell me you brought a bottle of that kentarian tequila?"

Ali chuckled. "Right now, I think that's a bad idea," she said, but in all honesty she had considered doing exactly that. The lopsided, watery smile Spud gave her suggested the engineer knew that. "I'm sorry I couldn't convince her to walk away."

"Don't be," Spud replied with a sniff. "Of course I'd rather she hadn't done it, but she'd made her decision the moment she went for the bomb instead of the exit." Ali offered Spud a sympathetic smile as she brushed some purple hair from Spud's face and behind her ear. Spud sighed and muttered something too quiet for Ali's translator to catch, but from the unfiltered emotion flowing across their tetnar she knew that Spud was grumbling at Petra for doing it at all. "I know you're going to tell me I'm just looking for the good in her, but I don't think she was lying."

"About S-Core's reaction about the info Bert gave her?"

Spud nodded. "She never lied without a reason, what did she have to gain from telling you that when she was about to blow herself up?"

"To distract us from something?" Ali asked with a weary shrug of her shoulders. "Right now I'm not assuming it's truth or lie either way, not until we can corroborate it."

"Thanks for believing in her that much," Spud whispered.

~-x-~

Ali stared at her drink before knocking back the last of it. "What can we do against someone powerful enough to have S-Core on their books?"

Grey sighed from his desk, a drink in his own hand that he was loosely swirling as he contemplated their situation in the privacy of his ready room. "We keep working."

"Sir?" Ali asked as if she couldn't believe what she was hearing. "We have nothing, we can't even expose the corruption because any evidence we have will be called fabricated and we can't rely on the usual channels to verify it whilst those same people are trashing our names. Even if we release it publicly and freely."

"I know, but it's all we can do."

"No it's not," she replied quietly, as if even she couldn't believe she was saying it out loud, and the almost guilty expression on her face gave away her meaning to Grey.

"Ali, we can't -"

"Why not? It's not just our careers at stake here. It's our lives, the lives of our crews and the lives of everyone in the sector," Ali said firmly, lifting her eyes from her glass to her friend, the man who had taught her everything she knew about leading. "You don't have to be a part of it, but Rila and I have the experience."

Ali knew Grey knew what she was alluding too. Her stint as a freelance often working with mercenaries was common knowledge, and he was aware of enough of Rila's background to know that she spent some time with gangs before joining USEP. "Okay, but we keep this quiet and only bring in those necessary for the plan."

"Agreed."

From there things moved impossibly quickly and Ali found herself in the building almost incomprehensively quickly. They had discovered Tihud had an appearance scheduled at a conference and they planned to make the most of it. Ali and Grey were on watch, Grey in the crowd and Ali wandering corridors with a faked security pass. Rila was making her way to the vantage point they'd found with a sniper rifle.

Grey radioed in to confirm he had eyes on the target shortly before Rila confirmed she was in place. If Ali thought it was all going too smoothly then she was proven right not long later when Rila relayed that she'd been made and she was going to create a distraction. Ali replied to say that she'd cover her and changed direction to make her way to Rila's previous position. Ducking into a side corridor to avoid detection but soon found herself finishing assembling the sniper rifle they'd smuggled into the venue in pieces.

Ali knew she wasn't the best shot, especially for something that required the precision a sniper rifle did, but she was competent and that would have to do. She found herself a comfortable and stable position to wedge both herself and the rifle into so that she could line up the shot and focused on her breathing. She didn't recognise the current person on the podium, but she could just about make out the words where Grey had left his comm open, introducing Tihud to thunderous applause as the kentarian walked onto the stage and towards the podium.

Ali planned on waiting just long enough to learn Tihud's mannerisms enough to predict the small movements he'd make as she spoke, but just as he started his speech Ali's attention was diverted as someone burst into her hidey hole and ordered her to drop the gun. She turned with shocked and unhappy eyes as she recognised the voice. "Ali?" Ben asked, sighting down her along the barrel of his rifle.

"I…" Ali stuttered for a moment, closing her eyes to hide her internal conflict. "Just let me shoot first, then you can shoot me or arrest me or whatever you need to do."

"You can't be serious," Ben muttered more to himself than her. Ali swallowed. "I can't let you just murder someone!"

"You know what he's planning, this way at least we can stop it."

"Ali, put the gun down, please. I don't want to shoot you."

"You've shot me before." Ali's voice was certain yet fragile.

"Not like this," Ben replied, his own eyes betraying the conflict they found themselves in. The impossible choice. Someone needed to pull the trigger, but whoever assassinated the target needed to face their own punishment. Ali wasn't supposed to be the assassin, but of course she'd step up when the original plan feel through. Ben would never have agreed to this plan so he hadn't known - Ali and Grey had both insisted upon that - that way when he found the perpetrator he'd arrest them in line with any security officer. No temptation, no conflict of interest. But the original guard had made that impossible.

Ali glanced away from him to see what was occurring down her scope, and her body automatically tensed in anticipation as she felt his finger tighten on the trigger. She didn't dare move a muscle, yet she knew she had to. "Ali…" It was barely a whisper and halfway between a warning and a plea.

"You're asking me to risk thousands of lives on the off-chance we'll find a better way."

"No, I'm asking you not to become something you hate. To not become Barker."

Ali turned sharply to glare at him for that. "I'm not Bert!"

"Aren't you? You're scared - I get that, believe me - but assassination isn't the answer and you know that! If Petra was right, this is exactly why Barker turned terrorist and you spent years stopping him because you knew that murdering your way to a solution isn't right!"

"Of course it's not right! You think I want to do this?" Ali demanded. "If I wanted to do this I'd have already pulled the trigger."

"Then why are you even here?"

"Because how else can we stop it? I've done the maths, we don't have anything and we probably never will because they've weaseled their way into many organisations to ensure that they're never held accountable for the unethical experiments they've already done, let alone to stop them doing more! Or their ultimate plans!"

"Then what does killing Tihud change?" Ben challenged. "What's to stop someone else coming in and carrying on? Any scrutiny brought about by this will focus on the murder itself, and if your reasoning is ever debated you'll be written off as mentally unstable, as proven by the fact that you killed him in cold blood."

Ali swallowed as she considered the point. She had made peace with the fact that she'd be locked up in a cell with the key thrown away, possibly in some kind of institution, but she was taking a gamble. Tihud was currently the mastermind, with him gone there would be some kind of leadership vacuum that might take some time to resolve, the investigation into why Ali did it might at least force them to stay quiet for a while to allow others to come up with a longer term plan.

But what if Ben was right and she would actually be undermining any efforts to uncover the whole sordid affair.

Ali hadn't even realised she was crying as she let go of the rifle, her jaw clenching in frustration as she gave up their chance in the hope that they'd find another solution that was more palatable.

Ben moved to confiscate the sniper rifle from her out of disciplined habit to ensure safety and protocol, before yanking her to her feet and wrapping her up into a hug as she sobbed into his chest.

She wasn't quite sure exactly how she woke up, other than to find herself curled up in her bed and sobbing to herself as she pulled her cover tighter around her. The emotions from the dream - or was it a nightmare? - spilling over and into real life. She felt like a failure, like she'd wasted their one chance to resolve it, yet knowing he was right that Bert's tactics weren't the way forward. You did the right thing, Ben promised.

It doesn't feel like it. Ali didn't even think to question how he knew.

It will, we'll keep fighting and we'll find something.

You can't promise that.

No, but I'll settle for you not becoming a ruthless killer.

Ali let out a bitter laugh at that. And just how many people have we both killed already? She could feel the wry amusement from Ben at that. Did you know it wasn't real? She asked instead.

There was a pause. No, I don't think so. Yeah, Ali thought, that felt about right. Did you?

No. Ali admitted.

Do you regret not pulling the trigger? Ben waited for a response that Ali couldn't give, because part of her did, and she couldn't admit that. Even to him. Ali, you didn't fail, and even if we don't win, that's not your fault. Ali wished she could believe him when he said that.