Bringing the geth onboard had been a hard decision.

Zha'Ora was a quarian on her Pilgrimage. To be precise, she was a child of two exiles; so leaving a mostly functional looking geth behind would have been like flipping the bird to the Admiralty board. There was no way she would have been able to leave a price like that behind.

The geth had been left on an abandoned space station. Zha had come to the conclusion that all the habitants had been killed, the station had been floating around for who knows how long and there had been skeletal remains of what had seemed like human scientists. The young quarian had been looking for salvage and scraps, nothing special. Selling salvageable tech was an easy way to earn some credits if you knew who to sell to. She had most definitely not been expecting to find something of value, something to take to the Migrant Fleet just yet. But there it had been, laying motionlessly like a hidden treasure in a small room, a geth platform with no notable damage save for a missing leg and some scrapes and wounds to its synthetic muscle. Zha would have been out of her mind to leave it behind; those things were worth their weigh in gold! It was sure to buy her a way into the Flotilla, there was no way the Admiralty Board would turn this down, no matter the last name that Zha was forced to carry.

She should have known things never were that easy. Life wouldn't just shove a miracle into her hands, there had to be complications.

When VI-13, one of her many robotic crew members, had arrived to inform that their cargo had left the cargo-hold, Zha had been ready to have a fit. This wasn't possible! It had been offline! She had made sure of it, checking and double-checking. The geth had been as dead as a synthetic can be. 13 must have been malfunctioning!

Finding the geth crawling on the floor was quite a convincing proof, though. It was online and moving. It was slow, but moving all the same, one loud screech at a time. Once again her lack of better judgment had brought her more trouble than was worth.

She stared at the geth and the geth stared at her. She was just about to scream but the geth beat her to it.

The screech was so painful Zah was forced to turn off her suit's audio receivers for a moment. The moment the geth got her to its line of vision, it started to twitch and turn like an organic having a seizure. Zha was not able to do anything; she didn't dare to step closer to the convulsing synthetic. She watched with horror as it writhed on the floor, hitting its head against the floor repeatedly, cracking its photoreceptor's lens in the process. Then, just as abruptly it had started to mutilate itself, it shut down. All movements stopped as it slouched down.

For a long moment she was not sure what to do. It took her a considerably long time to just swallow down her shock. It had been offline when she brought it onboard! Or had it? It wasn't like she knew much about the geth – she had never actually met one in 'flesh' before. This wasn't… how they usually acted, was it?

VI-13 stood emotionlessly next to her. It was one of her best-built mechs and quite frankly one of her favorites. It had been painted maroon and had a sticker glued to its chassis. "Lucky thirteen," the sticker said.

"Call 14 and 15 here," Zha said with a slightly shaky voice. "Let's return our… the… well, that thing back to the cargo hold."

"Acknowledged."

She watched carefully as the mechs hauled the offline platform back to the cargo hold. Three mechs were probably a bit too much, but Zha wasn't willing to risk it. She dug out a handful of zip-ties and a roll of duct tape and restrained the motionless platform against the wall. The young quarian tried not to pay any attention to her shaking hands as she worked; her bots would not judge her terror. She was biting her lip hard while taping the synthetic down.

All right, she thought eyeing her handiwork. She had managed to cover nearly every inch of the platform with gray tape. Surely it wouldn't be able to move now, right?

Damn it all to Hell, it hadn't been supposed to move in the first place!

"Please ask Scribble to call up a meeting. I want everyone on the cockpit in five minutes. We need to… we need to discuss this."

"Acknowledged," came three monotone answers from three different mechs.

Zha'Ora was something of a rare case. Not many quarians felt at ease with robotic company due to the obvious set back in their common history. But Zha didn't mind, really. Especially in the company of her own little self-made crew.

She had built them all. One by one, slowly but carefully using whatever she had at the time. There were nine of them in total, nine of her loyal virtual intelligences that she had built and programmed. And they were all near and dear to her.

VI-02 was the intelligence of the ship and the second intelligence she ever programmed. It was also one of the two VIs that she had actually named. Nowadays it mostly answered to the designation Scribble.

VI-05 was a model built specifically for protection. It was sturdy, bulky and not pretty to look at but its programmed battle sequences had saved Zha a couple of times already.

VI-09 and 10 were repair bots, tiny spiderlike creatures built to keep her robotic crew in shape while dealing with sticky situations. They had been built after Zha had lost two of her robotic crew members while scavenging.

VI-14 and 15 were nearly identical, made from salvaged LOKI mechs and random spare parts. They were quite well designed and even had versatile vocabularies written into their coding, a trait that many of her mechs were missing due to the complexity of language programs.

VI-17 and 18 were the newest members of her crew and definitely most mismatched of the bunch. 17 had been put up together from pretty much anything and everything she could have reached and it certainly looked like it too. Its programming was simple; the mech was hardly even able to do everyday tasks, mostly just bumbling around as it went. Most of the time Zha was certain it didn't even register what was happening around it. And VI-18 had been a salvaged FENRIS mech before Zha started upgrading it with… well, pretty much everything.

And now all nine of her mechs were in the cockpit, waiting for her orders. Well, Scribble wasn't exactly there in a physical form, but that's nitpicking.

Zha was pacing around, trying to clear her mind with every step. It wasn't doing her much good but she wasn't stopping either. Her lifeless crew was following her movements with uninterested optics as she muttered to herself and kicked the floor with anger.

"It was supposed to be offline!" she said for the umpteenth time that day. "I checked! It was not supposed to start crawling around on its own, it was dead!"

Her crew gave her no answer. That was the down side of travelling with virtual intelligences; there was no chance for an actual intelligent conversation. And, at the moment, Zha was the only organic onboard.

"I want VI-05 standing by the cargo door at all hours. I want that damn thing under surveillance. If it starts acting up or tries something… funny… shoot to kill. Understood?"

"Acknowledged," VI-05 droned. It was the only mech armed around the clock, rocking the best gun on the damn ship. While the others had to carry crappy pistols that did more damage to themselves than the enemies, 05 had been gifted with a shotgun that actually could kill something. The battle-ready mech trotted out of sight to carry out its master's commands.

Zha kept stomping around the tiny cramped cockpit, biting her lip so hard she could almost taste blood. She couldn't take the damn thing to the Migrant Fleet now, could she? Bringing an active geth to the Flotilla would get her exiled faster than she'd be able to say: "But it was supposed to be offline!" But then again, terminating the thing might kick in its self-destructive abilities and all her efforts would be gone in a boom. There would be nothing to take back but charred unrecognizable pieces of trash. And that would not be enough. As her father had said: "Either you offer them something they cannot refuse or you don't bother going there at all".

"VI-05 has taken its place near the cargo hold," Scribble, VI-02, informed. Scribble was one of her earliest projects, one of the few childhood bots that had actually turned out working in the end. Zha wasn't sure what she had been thinking while programming the VI's voice. It was so cheerful it could have been covered with saccharine and no one would have known the difference. Sure, at the time when she had built her nearest and dearest Scribble, she had been in a great need of a friend, someone to comfort her and tell her everything was going to be okay. Her father might have stomped VI-01, but he had never known about Zha's other project.

"Has our… uh… guest come back online yet?" she asked nervously.

"No sign of it yet, miss Ora," Scribble said. It's high-pitched voice made Zha cringe behind her visor. She didn't have the heart to reprogram 02's voice into something a bit more… neutral, even if she wanted to.

"Okay well… keep me updated, will you?"

"Of course, miss Ora."

Zha plopped herself to a pilot's seat and let out a long sigh that fogged on her visor. Her environmental suit was not one of those fine high-tech suits that all the rich kids had, but a dull-colored one with more patches than original material. It was lacking in many aspects, including proper air conditioning devices. Harder breathing tended to fog up her vision on the most inappropriate of times.

"How come I was not informed that the platform had come online and started moving in the first place?" she asked, eyes trailing her robotic crew. "Scribble, we still have a camera in the cargo hold, don't we? You must have noticed it wasn't as dead as I'd thought."

"Informing you was not deemed necessary," the VI informed her. "Not until our cargo left its accommodations."

This was hopeless. Her VIs were hopeless! Zha groaned loudly, banging the back of her head against the chair. This sort of a lack of initiative was least of her problems at the moment but it did add to the general mass of fails on her day.

"Well, from now on I would like to know if something like this happens."

"Please define quote something like this end quote."

"Oh for the love of… Just keep VI-05 by the cargo door and make sure it informs you if our cargo starts doing something it isn't supposed to. And then you will inform me. 05 is not to leave its post unless the ship comes under attack and it has the permission to shoot the geth if it tries to leave. Are we clear?"

"Yes, miss Ora," Scribble said.

"Dismissed."

Her robotic crew let out a collective chirping sound and scattered, each moving to continue whichever task had been given to them. Most of them would just shut down and reserve power until they were needed again. They tended to shut down in the corridor, making it notably harder to move around the ship, but Zha didn't really mind. It made her feel like she wasn't actually alone, as crazy as that notion was. The young quarian twirled on her seat, turning to face the controls. It had been a long time since she had actually flown a ship herself.

"How long before we land on Omega?" she asked wiping some dust off from the keys.

"Approximately thirteen minutes. Landing on hanger H-45."

Zha hummed quietly. Omega might have been the armpit of the galaxy, but it had its good sides. Namely merchants who were willing to buy scrap without any uncomfortable questions. And with a handful of armed mechs at her side it wasn't all that bad as long as she kept on the populated streets and steered clear from the dark alleyways. And Zha needed the creds. That was why she kept going back.

No, that was a lie. She didn't need credits; she needed something to buy herself a place on the Fleet. And now that she had a geth on her ship, ready to be wrapped up in gift paper, she should have just asked Scribble to steer her ship to the flotilla's current location.

VI-10, one of her two spider-like repair bots skittered across the control panels, stopping to make a clicking sound – almost like a salute to its creator – and continuing behind the panel to work inside the ship.

Truth be told, the young quarian was in no hurry to retrieve her place amongst her kind. There were many reasons, Zha told herself, many good reasons to prolong her journey. But now that the geth was actually online, she should just go to the Migrant Fleet as soon as possible. Just one quick stop at the Omega and then she would go. Yes. Perfect. That was a sound plan.

Too bad she would be forced to terminate all of her nine VIs upon returning to the Fleet. Her kind had a history of disliking robotic beings. But that was a sacrifice she just had to make, there was no going around it.

Slowly she shook her head and tried to empty her mind of everything that had gone wrong lately. It wasn't like she had a record of getting things right anyway.