"You have a gift with children," the Blue Suns captain observed flatly.

"Fuck off, bird-legs."

Shepard cleared her throat. "Hey, Liara," she called, a little louder than strictly necessary. "Any progress?"

Liara's voice surprised them all by responding from just outside the room. "Significantly more than I expected," she said as she let herself in. "This whole operation is... extremely confusing. Certain aspects must have required split-second timing and extensive arrangement, and yet others are astoundingly sloppy. It is almost as if they are following only half of a plan. I would suspect a trick, but... I honestly cannot see how one would be possible. They have left a great many fingerprints."

The turian captain stirred and nodded to Shepard. "Commander," she said, almost politely, before letting herself back outside. Jack figured she didn't want to know too much. Maybe she was smarter than she looked.

Shepard turned to Liara. "So you found something?"

Liara's smile was almost predatory. "Several somethings, in fact. I am still missing several key elements, but the details are much less important than Miranda's location, and I believe I have found that with reasonable certainty. Aria was correct about one thing; she was taken off Illium on a passenger vessel called the Meteor less than an hour after her abduction. That was the part of the operation I found worryingly professional."

Shepard's eyebrows went up. "You cross-referenced the ship that fast? Aria made it sound like it'd take a lot longer."

"No," Liara smirked. "I used surveillance footage from the lot where the ambulance was abandoned to acquire the registration number of the taxi they took, and sent an anonymous message to... discuss the matter with its driver. It was much faster and, ultimately, Aria's method would not have worked."

"Liara..." Shepard sounded resigned.

"I had no desire to hurt the man, Shepard," Liara chided. "Nor did I have a need. His memory of the event was greatly improved by the reward I offered for the name of their ship."

Shepard shook her head and sighed. "So we track the ship?"

"The ship itself is on the Citadel," Liara informed them. "Which is why I am glad I chose the method I did; it arrived exactly where and when it was scheduled to. Following it would get us nowhere. I thought at first I would have to go through even more surveillance footage, but I discovered something much more interesting in the Meteor's docking report to C-Sec. Apparently, there was an alarm en route—a faulty fire alarm, it was determined. The end result of this is that the escape pods unlocked when it went off. None were fired, and yet upon arrival at the Citadel one of them was missing."

Jack scoffed. "Getting an escape pod to detach isn't exactly hard, Blue. Engineers make 'em so they won't fail. Too much security on those things on a passenger ship would be missing the point. I could probably hack one if I had to."

Liara smiled. "Precisely. The Meteor has established that no passengers were missing, and as such have determined it would not be worth the effort to track down the missing pod. I expect that all passengers being accounted for means whoever is behind this has a contact on the Citadel, capable of inputting false arrival information. Again, not an unduly difficult assignment. If their contact worked in arrivals it would even be undetectable. I will have Glyph run background checks on commercial arrivals personnel when this is over, just to be safe."

Jack really wished she had a knife or something to fiddle with. Eezo nudged her leg, and she shook him gratefully by the frill. "And in the meantime?" she demanded.

Liara looked up and nodded to her. "I tracked the Meteor's course from Illium to the Citadel and approximated its location at the time of the alarm." She glanced at Shepard, looking frustrated. "I wish I could go with you," she complained. "We have no way of knowing what you may find at these coordinates."

"Yeah," said Shepard. "That's not happening."

"Of course not," Liara agreed. "This is... frustrating, that's all. I worry, Shepard. Can you blame me?"

Jack was grateful the kids arrived when they did. Gave her a distraction from the mush going on in the corner.

She had to admit, her guys knew when to get serious. She nodded to Prangley when he came in; the others were fanned out behind him on instinct, with Rodriguez directly to his left and mostly behind him, Hanson on her flank—a solid, protected position where she could focus without being exposed too much. They all knew she wasn't as powerful a biotic as the others. No shame in that. And Rademaker was right where she belonged, at Prangley's right hand. She was their default rearguard. Second-strongest biotic in the group; not much of a leader and didn't have Rodriguez's head for strategy, but she was solid as a fucking rock even with just the one arm.

She couldn't help grinning a bit when she noticed what they were wearing. "Grissom Academy uniform, guys? Really? Why the hell did you even bring those things?"

"Nostalgia?" offered Bellarmine.

Prangley added, "Gets us in the right mindset, ma'am. More focused."

"Good." Shepard had apparently finished her thing with her bondmate over in the corner and was getting back to business. Liara was tucked against her side doing that dopey smiling thing again, but just squeezed Shepard's hand and nodded to the others before she went back to her little lair. Maybe they could do something now. "All right, guys," she said, and Jack and the kids straightened up automatically. "Liara's gonna keep an eye on things from here and let us know if she finds any more information on what's going on, but we've got a starting point. Jack, you ready?"

Jack stood up fast enough to make Eezo jump. "I've been ready for five fucking hours, Shepard! Are we going or not?"

Shepard nodded toward the door. "All right, then. Let's move."

There wasn't anything there. Of course. That would be too fucking easy.

Shepard acted like she'd expected this, because of course she did. At least they were probably closer here than they'd been before. But 'here' was basically just 'floating dead in space' as far as Jack could tell, and her patience was running out. She hadn't had much of that to start out with; she was inches away from ripping holes in the bulkheads just for something to do. She'd vented her frustration by shredding an old couch at Liara's place—they'd be finding pieces of spring for ages. But that was hours ago, and she wasn't fucking okay right now.

"They wouldn't stay in a high-traffic area," Shepard pointed out. "But they dropped the escape pod here. There must have been a reason."

"Not necessarily," Rodriguez said quietly. Shepard looked over at her, surprised, and she glanced nervously around before realizing they expected her to continue. "I... I mean... if it was me, I'd arrange a random place to drop the pod, and then have someone with a ship pick me up and get as far away as possible. That way the pickup would be almost impossible to ever track down."

Shepard looked over as Jack's grip tightened on the edge of her bench. Fuck her perception, anyway. Jack still didn't know how she understood all this emotional crap so well, but it got on her fucking nerves sometimes.

Prangley squeezed the girl's shoulder. "Maybe they're not as smart as you," he said.

Shepard smiled at Rodriguez. "Wouldn't surprise me."

One of the batarians nearby cleared his throat. When they all turned to look at him, he said awkwardly, "Uh... could be both." He glanced around and coughed again. "I mean, we all sort of overheard you guys talking and I know the whole thing happened pretty quickly and all. But pickups like that can take time even if you've got the resources. You want to do the thing without attracting attention you can't signal for anything, and space has got a lot of room for an escape pod to disappear. To have it go smoothly, you'd need to arrange a time and a place."

They all sort of looked at him for a few seconds.

"Thanks," said Jack.

Shepard looked like she'd had an idea, though. Her eyes were sharp and focused, which made Jack pay closer attention. "What kind of place are you talking about?" she asked.

The batarian shrugged self-consciously, adjusting his bracer. "I'm not sure exactly where we are," he admitted, "but we do our bit of smuggling. There's boltholes and caches everywhere, this close to the border between Council space and the Terminus Systems. Most of 'em are claimed and defended, though. Blood Pack controls a lot of the deep-space ones; us and Eclipse run bigger loads through bigger ports, so we usually use ground caches on colony worlds. But any decent smuggler has a general idea where other people's claims are. Get too close and... well. People get, uh, touchy about their claims."

Shepard nodded slowly. "You'd have to move fast," she said, like she was working it out in her head. "Especially if you were breaking in on the Blood Pack. I know Aria doesn't exactly stop slavers, but I don't think she usually helps them out either." She paused. "And if she's started kidnapping my officers, we are.. gonna need to have a talk."

"Heh." The batarian grinned. "Nah, Aria keeps to goods. We figure slavery's too messy for her. Too many variables. 'sides, Omega's not a great place for it anyway."

Even through her mounting frustration, Jack could spare half a smile for that. "No shit," she said. "That kinda thing might work on Illium. Omega, some asshole tries to buy a slave he better watch his back. They'll just grab a pistol and shoot him and nobody'll give a shit. Nice place. Kinda miss it."

The batarian gestured to her like see, this chick gets it. "Red sand's cleaner anyway," he said. "And the profit margins don't even start to compare. Aria's a smart lady. Invest in where the money's at. She pays her raiders, too, let me tell you."

Shepard shifted her grip on the overhead guide rail, bringing the conversation back on track. "So you think there might be one of these boltholes nearby?"

The batarian shrugged. "Probably. You know where we are? I don't fly this thing." Shepard brought up their rough location on her Omnitool, and his eyes widened. "Oh, definitely. Yeah. There's one not far from here, actually—tiny little abandoned space station. Within escape-pod range, easy." He got a fond smile on his face. "We call it Old Rusty. It's a shitty old unclaimed thing, not enough room in the cargo bay for more than a few dozen crates. Nobody wants it, so you get a whole bunch of newcomers to the business who think they're the first ones to find it and stash their goods there." He chuckled. "Easiest salvage in the galaxy."

"Shepard," Jack said urgently.

Shepard held up a hand. "Yeah. I'm on it." She crossed over to an intercom panel on the wall. "Captain?"

The intercom crackled, and the turian chick's clipped voice answered. "Can we move?"

Shepard rolled her eyes at the ceiling. "I think so. Our friend here was just telling us about an unclaimed cache station nearby. Uh... 'Old Rusty'?"

"You're joking."

Shepard sighed. "It's as good a place to start as any. You're stuck with us anyway, right?"

"Point. ETA five minutes, Commander. Prep your boarding party."

Jack stood, grabbing the guide rail as the ship hummed to life under their feet. "Amp check, guys."

Prangley rolled his neck. "Running hot, ma'am." The others echoed him. Good. No surprises. She was... glad they were here, actually. If it'd just been her and Shepard she'd have thrown a couple of mercs out an airlock by this point. Stupid kids were making her responsible.

The batarian cleared his throat again. "So, uh," he muttered. "Couple of the boys and me might come with you. Been a while since we saw some real action is all. Wouldn't mind seeing you in a fight, either."

"That's generous," said Shepard with a straight face. Then she really did smile, and punched him in the arm just hard enough to hurt. "We'd be glad to have you. I don't know what we'll be up against in there."

There was a buzzing noise, and Shepard looked down in surprise as she answered the call. "Talk to me, Liara. We think we have a lead."

"Shepard." Liara's voice was distorted, but they could still hear the urgent note in her voice. "My agent on Illium has been going through the fake ambulance. I'm afraid there was not much there to find."

Shepard sighed. "Remember when the mercs would just leave datapads full of their plans lying around? And Cerberus putting their logo on anything that stood still long enough? I miss that. Made the job a whole lot easier."

Jack could hear Liara hesitate on the other end. "I... well, about that. We did find a datapad. There was no useful information on it, only a list of departures from Miranda's dock. The information itself is not why I called you—did you say you had found a lead?"

Shepard glanced at their new batarian friend. "Maybe. We'll let you know. What's going on?"

"Be careful, Shepard," Liara said insistently. "The information on the datapad was useless, but it was watermarked..."

The ship shuddered as maneuvering thrusters kicked in, and Shepard grabbed their guiderail again. "Spit it out, Liara, we're about to dock." Liara didn't respond, but after a second an icon flashed on Shepard's Omnitool, and she brought the file up in holo mode.

"Oh, hell no," muttered Hanson.

Rodriguez balled her fists, a haze of blue starting to swirl around them. "I thought those guys were dead!"

Bellarmine gripped her shoulder. "They will be soon," he said darkly.

Jack didn't say anything. She just crossed over to the nearest weapons locker, hung her pistol up, and replaced it with something a lot bigger. Then she walked over to Shepard and closed both their call with Liara and the shimmering Cerberus logo floating over their heads.