X
Gritting his razor-sharp teeth, Raman Varelius dragged himself through the door of his safe house. His body was bathed in medi-gel, though that helped very little against the sensation of his skin melting right off his back. He had remained cloaked for too long in the past three hours since the assault on the had fort begun, and he hadn't had enough time or opportunity to let his camouflage device cool down; one of the four heatsinks had melted as Varelius had dragged himself across the airfield toward the city, and the other three were simply taxed way over capacity. The camouflage field projectors were so hot that they heated the backplate of his armor they were worked into to a temperature that was so high that the inner padding couldn't absorb it anymore.
When the door had shut behind him, Varelius began ripping his upper-body armor off, ignoring the pulsing pain spreading from a crippling wound at his right hip joint. He had suffered it when something had exploded in the fort; the combination of electromagnetic radiation, a shockwave, and an entire wall of shrapnel had stripped his kinetic barriers right off him, and a fast flying piece of debris had penetrated his armor at the hip, torn through the hip joint, and exited in the back.
On a brighter note, Varelius had already completed his mission by then. For reasons he could not fathom, the FTL comm buoy had been ready and responsive when he had installed the program on the first personnel shuttle. Of course the program had not sent the message that the naïve human lieutenant had given him, but instead an altered one directly to Councilor Sparatus, containing a detailed mission report. The Alliance wouldn't learn what had happened here until the device was safely in turian hands. It was a shame that Lieutenant Akiban probably wasn't alive anymore, he thought, because now she would never come to understand the scope of how he had been playing her all the time.
Not only had he tricked her into believing that he was fully cooperating with her, but he had also managed to get her to deliver his tech-bombs right to the device at the expanse of the lives of all Marines involved in the assault.
In addition to that, he had managed to initiate his evacuation. Since he couldn't afford to wait for Spectre reinforcements, he had summoned an automated cargo drone he always kept nearby. It would land on the airfield, drop its crates, and be on its way again, hopefully without the interference of the colonists or Marines. If they were smart, they'd just leave it alone so not make anyone who might miss it suspicious. Varelius intended to sneak aboard during the unloading process, but the drone's arrival was still several hours out.
So far, his plan had worked almost perfectly. Although Varelius had never trusted the quarians, he realized that he had clearly underestimated their resourcefulness and audacity. He had not expected them to actually try to steal the device and, on top of all things, succeed. They had used the stolen yacht as a battering ram, mowing down any resistance inside the hangar, and managed to load the device aboard and clear out of the area before the enemy had realized what they were targeting. Varelius had tried to get on board, but with his wound he had been too slow to reach the ship before it lifted off again, safely making orbit with the device on board; he had barely managed to tag the ship with a homing beacon from the distance. While not ideal, the beacon would at least connect to comm buoys whenever it could establish an uplink; he could track those connections and thus narrow down the location of the ship—a simple yet effective method, and one unlikely to be discovered unless one knew exactly what to look for.
After producing a medikit from a hidden compartment, Varelius removed a regeneration patch from it and applied it to the burnt spot on his back, fixing it with a bandage; it would regularly secrete small doses of medi-gel to support the healing process of the wound. His hip was another matter, though. The wound probably required surgery—until then he would have to make do with medi-gel. Substantial amounts of medi-gel.
For the first time in hours did Varelius allow himself to relax and dropped into the armchair in the living room. The mutilated human medic still lay on the couch where they had left him, heavily sedated. Slowly Varelius rose to his feet and recovered the assault rifle from his discarded backplate. It expanded in his hands. He aimed it at the unconscious Vinne and briefly pulled the trigger, placing half a dozen bullets in the human's head. With the security risk taken care of, Varelius returned to the armchair. It was now time to get ready to get on the quarian's heels before they did anything stupid with the device.
Under the pretense of requiring a new omni-tool Akiban had returned to the cargo hold and searched Keeran's body, but the tool was gone. When she had confronted Rynes about the missing omni-tool, the woman had pleaded ignorance and had instead offered Akiban a spare Ariake Technologies Logic Arrest. Suspecting that Rynes had made the quarian's omni-tool disappear, Akiban had reluctantly accepted the replacement, and after almost half an hour of tinkering with the new tool, which was significantly more sophisticated than the standard-issue Bluewire, had finally gotten it to work. With the armor dead, the omni-tool was restricted to its internal power supply, and thus to its basic functions, but it was better than nothing, and still more than Akiban needed.
Approaching Kela, Akiban used her new omni-tool to scan the quarian's body temperature. The girl was already showing first signs of fever, and upon closer inspection the medical scan indicated that the wounds Akiban had inflicted on her seemed to be on a good way to getting infected. Akiban suspected that it wouldn't be long until Kela's condition deteriorated enough to make the girl cooperate in exchange for treatment; she didn't think the quarian was ready to die for whatever information she was withholding.
Contently Akiban killed the display of her new omni-tool and walked up to stand behind Rynes, who was still attempting to somehow regain control of the ship at the nav station.
"Any progress?"
Rynes exhaled forcibly and shook her head. "No. Thirty-seven minutes to the relay."
"Wonderful," Akiban commented dryly and turned away. If Rynes was truly responsible for turning on the device, then she had a lot of explaining to do. Maybe it had all been an accident, but Kela was claiming the opposite—or maybe Rynes had nothing do with it to begin with. Sometimes Akiban had the impression that most beings in the galaxy determined their own value by the amount of secrets they held or shady plots they were involved in. In the end, with no hard evidence there was no point in confronting Rynes, as she could just deny involvement. Besides, Akiban needed her to fly the ship.
Pushing these thoughts aside, Akiban sat on the deck cross-legged and removed the shotgun from its weapon slot on her back. After inspecting it for a long moment, she started disassembling it. She felt the need to know what the condition of the weapon was and how it had been modified, what kind of upgrades had been installed, and so on—essentially, if she could rely on it in combat. Like most modern small arms, the shotgun was simple to take apart to allow in-the-field maintenance and repairs; unfortunately, that also meant that anyone with half a brain and a pair of hands, claws, or tentacles could temper with it. After the three bolts were removed from the weapon's main body, the upper receiver came off easily, exposing the shotgun's inner workings. At first glance the weapon looked relatively new, and an omni-tool scan confirmed that assessment. But even though she wasn't a weapon tech, Akiban could tell that some clumsy modifications had been made to it. The stock upper receiver had been hollowed out—instead of installing a custom one—to make room for a high caliber barrel, and a rail extension that didn't exactly fit with the barrel had been installed, as well. On a hunch Akiban checked the heat sink and saw that neither the sink nor the conductors had been replaced; that explained the weapon's rapid overheating.
"Kela, Kela, Kela," Akiban muttered. "Whoever sold you this shotgun pulled you over the barrel pretty bad. The heat sink is still stock. There's no way it can absorb the heat generated by those mods. Don't you kids know anything?"
Kela remained silent, but Rynes asked, "Is that going to be a problem?"
"That depends on how long we'll have to make do with this gun," Akiban said. "Below-spec heat sinks lead to the weapon overheating very often. Since most of the components are made of some alloy or another, it causes them to expand and contract beyond spec tolerance, and that can lead to micro-fractures. And when the heat sink buys it, the weapon will fire only one more time before ending its career as a firearm and starting a new one as a club."
"Let's try not to get into any firefights, then," Rynes concluded.
"Yeah, let's," Akiban agreed and started putting the shotgun back together. Without the possibility of linking it to her HUD, she had no way of monitoring the weapon's temperature or the heat sink's capacity. Therefore, she had no way of knowing if the weapon would fire another shot when she pulled the trigger, and that could prove lethal in combat. Wherever they were going, Akiban hoped they wouldn't end up fighting.
On the other hand, Akiban was starting to get bored; that was a sensation she was largely unfamiliar with because she was a rather patient type, and even in moments of utter inactivity she usually managed to occupy her mind with something. Maybe it was the aftermath of consuming the caffeine and sugar bomb Rynes called coffee, or perhaps the simple fact that she was neither tired nor hungry. Something made her restless. Her entire body bristled to spring into action. Only then did she realize that her right leg was twitching, the heel of her foot hammering the deck.
"No more coffee for you," Rynes called over her shoulder.
Akiban jumped to her feet, her muscles contracting like overstretched elastic bands released at their ends. She almost flew the few meters that separated her from the nav station and barely came to a halt so not to crash into the chair occupied by Rynes. "I'm bored."
"I hadn't noticed."
"How long until we hit the relay?"
"Thirty-two minutes. Ninth time you're asking. You know that there's a watch in that omni-tool, right?"
Akiban shook her head. "Sorry." She didn't know what had gotten into her. Usually she had herself better under control and never gave in to such physical outbursts. Scratching her head with both hands, she turned away from Rynes and started looking around the bridge for something to do.
"You said your name was Akiban?" Rynes suddenly asked.
"Yeah."
"How's that spelled?"
"A-k-i-b-a-n."
"That's a curious name. Where are you from?"
"Born in Johannesburg, Earth."
"You don't sound South African."
"That's because I grew up on Arcturus Station." Akiban began punching her right palm with her left fist. "Look, I appreciate your effort at engaging me in small talk, but I'm really, really not in the mood."
Rynes spun her chair away from the nav console to face Akiban. "You look like you're in the mood to kill something with your bare hands. Do you want me to give you something to calm you down? I've got meds."
"Don't you dare," Akiban said. She felt full of energy, incredibly alive, so much, in fact, that she had the feeling of bursting any second. Out of impulse she darted ahead and started running. The door that connected the bridge to the staircase that led to the habitat deck barely had time to open before she shot through it. She sped down the stairs in a few leaps and sprinted down the corridor as fast as she could, past all doors of the habitat deck, until she reached the cargo hold access. Ignoring the ladder, she jumped down the shaft that led to the lowermost deck and burst into the hold. Not stopping, Akiban broke left immediately and raced down the starboard bulkhead. She wasn't feeling the weight of her armor, didn't notice the burning of her lungs, and registered the depletion of energy in her muscles only factually.
When she reached the closed loading ramp, Akiban didn't break off but instead scrambled up the steep surface until the inertia of her dash failed her and she began sliding down again. She hit the deck, rolled over her right shoulder to dampen the impact, and resumed her run as soon as she was back on her feet. The deck blurred under her as Akiban sprinted along the port bulkhead toward the bow. At the bow end of the cargo hold she broke right and went for another round.
Not bothering to count the laps, Akiban just kept running. She knew that she had to be tired; at the pace she was setting her muscles should have been completely exhausted by now. But she wasn't tired, or at least she didn't feel that she was. Her skin was bathed in perspiration, which also ran down her brow and into her eyes, burning.
Akiban stopped near the port bulkhead about halfway through the hold and rubbed the sweat out of her eyes and wiped it from her forehead. Not that it helped much, but at least the burning slowly subsided. She turned toward the bulkhead and started punching and kicking it. The alloy was too hard to give way to her attacks, which came rapidly and at full strength, and only thanks to her armor did Akiban not break any of her bones as she hammered against the solid wall.
Akiban didn't stop until the coating that gave the bulkhead its bright gray color was gone from the spot she had made her target. Finally she slumped against the bulkhead, more mentally than physically exhausted. The urge to fight, to destroy something had yielded to fear; she was scared of what had just happened to her. After what she had been through in the colony, an exertion such as the one she had just put her body through was not humanly possible. Hugging her knees with her arms, Akiban pressed her armored legs against her chestplate. She felt like a little girl, scared, afraid of the unknown. She felt like crying.
Only minutes later, Akiban was standing on the bridge behind Rynes, gazing out of the viewport as the Ex Astris Scientia dropped out FTL transfer and approached the Juno Lagoon mass relay. Not feeling even a hint of her earlier fit of depression, she was now entirely focused on what was to come. The relay jump to the 1,523 lightyears distant Exodus Cluster would take only a few seconds. Then they would see where the quarian program was taking them. While Rynes had assured her several times that the yacht's comm systems were fully operational, Akiban knew that if the program directed the ship to another mass relay in the Exodus Cluster, any recipients of the distress call would potentially have only a few minutes to react and to intercept the yacht.
"Two minutes until contact with the relay," Rynes reported.
Akiban nodded silently, damning the simplicity of space travel in her thoughts. Large amounts of galactic ship traffic were fully automated, and even simple navigation programs could take a vessel from one side of the galaxy to the other with the assistance of navigation buoys that transmitted telemetry for approach trajectories and course optimizations.
"I'm really not looking forward to explaining this situation to whoever is going to pick us up," Rynes muttered.
"The Navy has patrols in the Exodus Cluster these days," Akiban said. "At least they won't shoot us out of space or sell us into slavery."
"Oh, that makes me feel much better."
"I love sarcasm," Akiban muttered, squinting at the growing speck of light that was now bigger and brighter than the pale dots around it.
"Sixty seconds."
The chances of getting intercepted by a Navy vessel depended entirely on how close it was and where the yacht was going. Akiban realized that at FTL the Ex Astris Scientia was faster than a Midway-class frigate because of its more advanced mass effect core and lower mass, but she suspected that the civilian ship had a lower tolerance for electrical charge and thus couldn't maintain high speeds for as long as a military vessel—for the luxury yacht speed was a nice perk, for a warship mobility could make the difference between life and death. Annoyingly, with the relays this close together, there just wasn't enough time to scrub the ship's navigation systems between the jumps.
"Thirty seconds," Rynes said. "The program just transmitted our mass to the relay."
The mass relay was now in plain sight, ahead and slightly to port as the yacht approached it at a flat angle. Fully under the control of the quarian program, the Ex Astris Scientia arced into the mass-free corridor generated by the relay and was propelled to several ten thousand times the speed of light.
Only seconds later, the ship decelerated again next to a secondary mass relay in the Exodus Cluster.
"Distress call, now!" Akiban barked.
"I'm on it," Rynes hissed in an irritated voice, her fingers dancing over the controls of the golden holo-display. "It's out."
Judging from the movement of the star-littered black of space, Akiban guessed that the yacht was slightly yawing to starboard and pitching up. "Where's the new course taking us?"
Rynes took a moment to study the navigational data scrolling down the displays. "Uh, looks like we're headed for another mass relay. A secondary that's aimed at the Horse Head Nebula."
"Great. Any response to our distress call?"
"Not yet."
"How far is the target relay?"
Rynes checked the charts. "A short FTL jump." Just as she had said the last word, the Ex Astris Scientia leapt beyond lightspeed again.
Akiban swore and rushed over to where Kela was tied to her chair. The quarian seemed to be sleeping, so Akiban took the time to run another medical scan. Although she wasn't an expert on quarian physiology, she guessed that the increase of the girl's body temperature recorded by her omni-tool indicated a considerable fever, though not severe by human standards—whatever that meant for quarians.
"Hey, wake up," Akiban ordered as she deactivated her omni-tool.
No reaction.
Akiban grumbled and gave Kela a slap on the side of her helmet. In response she was greeted by a sharp take-in of breath, coughs, and a gush of vomit out of Kela's mouth; some of it sloshed over the lower part of the girl's face mask and over her chest and right leg. Some of it remained trapped between the mask and Kela's face, which—disgusting as it was—made her gag and retch even more. Kela vomited again, and some of the stuff drained back into her mouth as she desperately tried not to breathe through her nose. Panicking, Kela rocked her head from one side of the other, sending splashes of vomit flying to the deck on both sides.
Glad that none of Kela's gastric reject found its way onto her armor, Akiban waited for the quarian to calm down, then said, "Sounds healthy.
"Listen, I know you're really busy with trying not to die and all, but to be honest, I don't give a damn. So how about you tell me where your little program is taking us, and I give you some medi-gel love in return? Maybe some antibiotics, too?"
"My people will learn of this," Kela managed to say with audible effort. "You will pay."
Akiban pursed her lips. "Okay, now we've gone from 'I will kill you' to 'my people will kill you,' blah, blah, blah. Just tell me what I want to know, and we can get this crap over with.
"And imagine this: If you can actually tell me how to turn off the program—on the off chance that you were lying when you said you didn't have the codes—I promise to nourish and cherish you until you're the same happy manipulative bag of shit you were before all of this. How's that sound?" Akiban tried very hard not to sound too sarcastic, but she guessed that wasn't working out too well.
Instead of answering, Kela craned her neck as far as the chair's headrest would allow and started muttering something Akiban didn't understand.
"We've dropped out of FTL again. Relay contact in two minutes and fifteen seconds," Rynes called from the nav station.
Akiban didn't bother asking if there had been any response to their distress call. Since they had accelerated to FTL, any ships tracking them would have to reacquire their bearing on the Ex Astris Scientia before they could do even as much as communicate.
After automatically transmitting the ship's mass to the relay, the yacht jumped again, reaching the Horse Head Nebula seconds later.
"How's it looking?" Akiban asked who had rejoined Rynes at the nav station.
"Still no control," the other woman stated, shaking her head.
"Where are we going now?"
"Can't tell. We're still maneuvering."
"Send the distress call again."
Rynes did as instructed. "It's out."
Akiban heard Kela cough and vomit again. "Come on Kela, if you insist on being useless as you are, at least do us all a favor and keep that stuff in. You got any idea how that's gonna smell in an hour?"
"I don't have any love for aliens, but you are one mean bastard," Rynes noted nonchalantly.
"Ah, well," Akiban said, folding her arms across her chest. "There's the blood of enough of my Marines on her hands to justify worse. She's lucky I'm not the vengeful type."
"She killed your Marines?" Rynes inquired.
"Let me put this way: Had she come clear from the start, neither of us would be in this mess right now. Instead of telling me that she had a ship that we could have used to communicate with the Parrin comm buoy, she preferred to pull off her stunt and steal the device while we were fighting for our lives. And before you ask, no, I didn't trust her. I just underestimated the scope of how badly she was going to screw me over."
"I see." Rynes seemed a bit absent-minded for a moment, but then she returned her attention to the holo-displays in front of her. "We're headed for one of the Horse Head Nebula's primary mass relay."
The Ex Astris Scientia accelerated to FTL.
"Where's it lead?" Akiban asked.
"Hawking Eta."
It took a moment to sink in. Hawking Eta... Hawking Eta... "Shit. The Terminus Systems."
"I'm afraid so," Rynes confirmed. "And still no response to our distress call."
Varelius awakened in the living room of his safe house. He had performed an emergency surgery on his wounded hip joint, all under minimal local anesthesia to minimize the effects of the anesthetic on his already weakened body. Only when he had finished did he finally allow himself to pass out.
Sitting in his armchair, he looked around. The contents of a field surgery kit lay strewn on a small table next to him. The air was thick with the smell of medi-gel and an undertone of blood. He rose to his feet and tentatively stepped on his right foot. When the pain turned out to be bearable, he swung his right leg back and forth carefully, grimacing at the sensation it sent through the entire right side of his body. It hurt, but the joint was largely functional again, and with it the adjacent leg; that was what counted.
Varelius removed the transfusion of synthetic turian blood from his left arm that he had used to counter blood loss during the surgery and gazed at the ceiling, starting to form a plan in his mind. In order to pursue the quarians, he had to get off world first and gain access to an extranet uplink to track the homing beacon on their ship. He checked his omni-tool and saw that the cargo drone hadn't arrived in orbit yet; it was supposed to notify him via tight-beam transmission as soon as it was in position. With any luck, the humans would ignore it and let it depart once it had dropped its cargo, ideally with Varelius on board. Once he was out of orbit, it was only a question of time until he found the quarians. Then he could finally wrap up this tediously irritating mission.
Carefully he put his hand on the backplate of his armor and was content to register that it had cooled down. He'd still have to go to the warehouse and replace the damaged heatsinks of the camo device if he wanted to sneak anywhere near the airfield, but that was a minor problem as he saw it. Varelius was back in the game.
"Welcome to Hawking Eta," Rynes announced dryly as the Ex Astris Scientia decelerated and immediately started maneuvering again.
"I don't believe this!" Akiban exclaimed and stomped her foot on the deck. "Where the hell are we going? Rynes, do you know where the Migrant Fleet is? Is that where it's taking us?"
"No idea, sorry."
Akiban pressed her right hand against her face until it hurt. The Terminus Systems. With the kind of people roaming this part of the galaxy, pulling the plug on the mass effect core was definitely canned. Helplessly doomed to inaction, Akiban and Rynes could do nothing but wait until the quarian program released its hold on the yacht's navigation systems.
"Should I send a distress call?" Rynes joked.
"Very funny," Akiban responded. "I'll go and roll out the red carpet for our pirate guests. Do you think they'll bring their slaver friends along? We don't want to run out of tea in the middle of the party, now."
Rynes chuckled and said, "We're accelerating again."
"Where to?"
"Primary relay, connected to Omega."
Akiban snarled. "This is just getting better and better. How long until we hit the relay?"
"About four and a half minutes."
"Okay." Akiban spun on her heel and once more approached Kela. The quarian's body temperature had increased by another degree, the fever making her groan and writhe in agony. She was pale, even for quarian standards, and her face had a sickly tinge to it.
"This isn't even funny anymore," Akiban proclaimed and slapped Kela's head to get the girl's attention. "In a bit more than four minutes we'll be on our way to Omega. You know what that means, right? It means that we'll all be pretty damn screwed; that includes you. A luxury yacht like this is a prime target for any pirate, and without nav control we can't even run." She slapped her again. "Hey! I'm talking to you!"
"Akiban! We've got a problem!" Rynes called from the nav.
"What is it now?"
"Come check this out."
Reluctantly Akiban turned away from Kela and walked back to Rynes. "What?"
Rynes pointed at one of the holo-displays. Akiban couldn't make much sense of the numbers, but "DRIVE CORE," "electric charge," and the indicator deep in the red where it said "critical" were quite self-explanatory.
"When did you last discharge the thing?" Akiban demanded.
"When I landed in Balance Point," Rynes answered. "But the core's been operating at peak output way longer than it was designed to; that's caused it to build up a significant static charge."
"How much longer until we get cooked?"
"I don't know," Rynes said. "Not long."
"Isn't there an automatic emergency shutdown or something?"
Rynes sighed. "Yes, probably, but shutting down the core won't make the built up charge go away. Besides, I'd rather get cooked than experience what usually follows floating adrift through the Terminus Systems. Finders keepers, remember?"
Akiban had to admit that Rynes had a point there, though she herself preferred to go down fighting.
"I also think that if the emergency shutdown was still operational, it would have already been triggered," Rynes pointed out. "I think the quarian program disabled it, which wouldn't be surprising considering there's a stupidly simple override."
"Do you sometimes get the feeling that the entire universe is conspiring against you?" Akiban mused.
"Sometimes," Rynes muttered in confirmation.
"Well, maybe the quarians are as smart as everybody says and they calculated speed, mass, and drive core charge to just get us wherever we're headed," Akiban said, trying to convince herself rather than Rynes.
"Ever the optimist."
Akiban locked her gaze on the drive core status display. "When will it fry us?"
"Anywhere between where it's now and the top of the scale."
"Very helpful." Akiban took a deep breath. "Is there anything we can do about it?"
"Not while we're in open space."
The urge to hurt someone rose up in Akiban again, but she suppressed it. If the drive core charge was already in the critical, then the ship wouldn't be taking them much further. "Does this thing have an escape pod?"
"Of course it does!" Rynes snapped. "Habitat deck, port-side hatch at the bottom of the stairs that lead to the bridge."
"All right."
"What are you planning? We can't just let the ship float through space with the geth device in the hold!"
"We don't need to launch the pod," Akiban explained. "We just need to get inside. If we seal the hatch, we should be protected when the core discharges into the hull."
"Are you sure?"
She wasn't. "Yes."
"Okay. I'll link my omni-tool to the ship's navigation sensors. Like that we'll at least know where we are before it happens."
"Good idea," Akiban said and ran to Kela. She cut the quarian loose with the laser scalpel, grabbed the discarded visor from the ground, and started dragging her toward the rear of the bridge.
They were halfway down the stairs when Rynes caught up with them. "Done. We'll be hitting the relay in about a minute."
"Right." After reaching the escape pod access, Akiban hit the control next to the door, opening it, and hauled Kela inside. Then she jumped in herself and waited for Rynes to follow.
When they were all inside, Akiban sealed the hatch behind them and powered up the pod. She had, in fact, no idea if the pod was sufficiently isolated from the rest of the ship to protect them from the discharge, but it was better than sitting on the bridge and waiting for the inevitable. As Akiban understood it, their survival largely hinged on two factors: The first was the design of the clamps that connected the pod to the yacht; since electrical currents always went the way of least resistance, the isolation of the clamps from the rest of the ship and the conductivity of the materials employed in their construction would determine how much of the charge would end up shooting into the pod's hull. And second, the design of the pod itself and how well the interior was isolated from the outer hull would decide how much current would ultimately flow through their bodies.
"Thirty seconds until we hit the relay," Rynes reported.
Akiban nodded and crouched down to arrange Kela in the corridor between the rows of seats. The floor of the pod was covered with a sort of mat that didn't look like it was very conductive. "Try not to touch anything metallic."
Rynes jerked away from the lateral bulkhead, scowling. "Shouldn't we release the docking clamps?"
Akiban shook her head. "No. That would only drop the pod to the bottom of the shaft and increase the surface of contact with the ship. We're better off this way."
"Good thing at least one of us payed attention in physics class," Rynes said.
"I didn't," Akiban mumbled.
"You're horrible, you know. You were supposed to say something along the lines of 'I've always loved physics and the only reason why I enlisted with the Marines instead of writing a dissertation was because I got fed up with academic bureaucracy!'"
Akiban shot Rynes a lopsided glance. "Hey, you're the scientist here, so shut it, will you?"
"Damn it, I'm an archeologist, not a physicist. When I need to know something about physics, I ask a VI," Rynes explained not too seriously.
Akiban rolled her eyes. "And I'm a goddamn officer. When I need to survive, I just pull something out of my ass and hope for the best! What matters is how confident I look about the shit I'm trying to sell for a plan."
"You weren't supposed to tell me that!" Rynes mock-complained and looked at her omni-tool. "By the way, we've just made the jump. Welcome to the Sahrabarik system."
"Great. Where to next?" Akiban asked, nudging Kela with her left foot. The quarian was lying on her back, her was breathing flat and rapid.
"Maneuvering... Wait. Here we go. We're on an approach vector for Omega."
"But I don't want to go to Omega!" Akiban exclaimed, mimicking the tone of a pouting child.
Rynes remained silent, staring at her omni-tool.
Akiban didn't know much about Omega other than that it was the de-facto capital of the Terminus Systems; and that was reason enough to avoid it. She had never understood the reasons behind the Council's tolerance toward the lawless space in the galaxy. The Alliance at least had the guts to expand into the Attican Traverse and slowly but steadily bring order to the chaos of thousands of solar systems that were mostly shaped by violence and crime. All things considered, Akiban didn't think that the factions of the Terminus Systems would be able to resist a joint effort by the Council races to pacify the area. If she were in charge, she would just clean the space of the scum that resided there planet by planet, system by system, and impose a demilitarized zone on the whole area.
"We're in FTL transfer again," Rynes said.
"That can't be good," Akiban commented.
"Maybe it can," Rynes countered. "If we make it to Omega, we can discharge the drive core there. And maybe the quarian program will terminate itself once we've arrived. Then we can get the hell out of here."
"Ever the optimist," Akiban teased.
They spent the next minutes in tense silence, which gave Akiban time to think. She wondered what she should do once they reached Omega. On the one hand, it greatly facilitated her plans to disappear from the scene. On the other hand, she couldn't just leave the device to Rynes. There was still the possibility that the woman was responsible for the events of Balance Point, and even if she wasn't, Akiban had the feeling that the device was still dangerous and needed to be destroyed. But then again, if it had been cooked by the turian's bombs just like the other electric equipment in the vicinity of their activation, then maybe it could still prove useful; perhaps a proper investigation would yield intelligence on how to help its victims.
The escape pod rocked under them, and Akiban and Rynes looked at each other. "We've landed," the latter announced.
Not hesitating, Akiban sprang into action. She activated the hatch release and jumped out of the escape pod, raced up the stairs, and entered the bridge. Everything was just as they had left it earlier, except that instead of the star-speckled black of space the interior of a small hangar was now visible through the viewport: A rich conglomeration of browns and grays in reddish light, the place had seen better times.
Arriving after Akiban, Rynes jumped into the seat at the nav station and immediately initiated an emergency shutdown of the mass effect core. Only when the core was completely offline did she allow herself to slack in the chair with a heavy sigh of relief. "It's down."
Akiban took a deep breath. "We still need to discharge it. How do we do that? I don't want to hang out here any longer than we absolutely have to."
"Give me a second," Rynes said as she operated the controls on the holo-displays. "This is strange. Usually when you land or dock somewhere, the ship's systems should establish contact with the station's computer and give you access to automated maintenance facilities like refueling or core discharge. But nothing seems to be responding here."
"Welcome to Omega," Akiban stated dryly.
"I guess we'll have to do it manually, then," Rynes concluded.
"How do we do that?"
Rynes spun her chair around to face Akiban. "There's a port on the starboard side of the hull. I'll open the protective cover from here, but you'll have to manually connect the conductor arm. You know what it looks like?"
"No idea," Akiban admitted.
"Okay, listen. What you're looking for is a mechanic arm, several meters long, probably with hydraulic joints and some sort of control panel. The arm itself contains an isolated conductor with a plug on one end. The other end should lead to a bulkhead or below deck. Got it?"
"Yeah, got it. Do you have something so we can talk to each other? My comm implant and the comm amp in my armor are toast."
"The locker where you got the scalpel from the medikit? There's a survival pack in there, too. Grab one of the comm links; it should already be set up properly."
Akiban took one of the palm-sized communication devices and left the bridge. With a quick glance into the escape pod she asserted that Kela was still where she had left her; in her condition, the quarian wasn't going anywhere. Almost running, Akiban made her way to the cargo hold and from there to the loading ramp. After lowering it, she stepped onto the hangar deck.
The hangar door must have closed after their landing because Akiban could see no space anywhere, only the monotonous shades of dirty and decaying bulkheads. As she started looking for the conductor arm, Akiban couldn't but wonder why they had landed in this particular hangar. She had always thought that, Omega being a major trading—or whatever else they did in the Terminus Systems—hub, the place would be somewhat busier. But the lack of contact probably wasn't a bad thing.
After she found something that vaguely matched Rynes's description—it was the closest match among all the things inside the hangar—Akiban made her way over to where the thing stood. It was a conductor arm, all right, and the wheeled cart it was on even came online when she ran her hand over where she suspected the activator of a holographic control panel. A bit of experimenting allowed Akiban to familiarize herself with the controls; they were in what she believed to be Vorcha, a fact that made her experiments turn into cautious button mashing and included a hopefully not damaging collision with a wall. When Akiban finally got the hang of it, she drove the cart to the starboard side of the Ex Astris Scientia and aligned it with the open port just in front of the starboard propulsion nacelle. She lowered the arm—and cursed.
Akiban produced the comm link from a belt pouch and commed, "Rynes, we've got a problem."
"That seems to be a popular theme," Rynes responded. "What is it?"
"It doesn't fit."
"What do you mean, 'it doesn't fit?'"
Akiban approached the yacht's hull and inspected the port. "The arm's plug doesn't fit in with the port. The plug's got three large triangularly aligned round pins, while the port seems to be made to fit with four horizontally aligned longish, rectangular pins."
"Let me check the manual."
"You do that. Akiban out." The day something will just work out, she thought, shaking her head. Thinking back to her short career with the Marines, Akiban wondered if plans that actually worked were something that existed only in military training and fiction. Whatever she had touched in the past twelve hours had gone from bad to worse, mostly due to lack of intel or other factors beyond her control. The question if all experienced officers knew that and planned accordingly forced itself into her mind, making her wonder further if it just had been her who had failed. Then again, she simply didn't know what she could have done differently, aside, perhaps, from having ordered the turian and the quarians shot on sight and been done with it. And of course she could have followed Ktenge's orders and cleared out of Balance Point.
"Akiban?"
"Huh?"
"There should be an adapter in an equipment locker on the port side of the cargo hold."
Akiban sighed. "All right." She trotted back to the loading ramp and entered the ship again. It took her a while to search through a number of equipment lockers until she finally found what she suspected to be the adapter. It was a disk of almost half a meter in diameter, handles on the sides, and what appeared to be an adaptable plug on one side and an adaptable port on the other. She uttered a silent curse when she lifted the thing, estimating its weight at something in the excess of thirty kilograms.
"Akiban, we've got a problem."
"God dammit," she muttered and set the adapter down. "Yeah, it was your turn to encounter one," she finally responded after getting her hands free to grab the comm link.
"Proximity sensors indicate that there are life signs massing outside the hangar door; we've got some twenty four on the far side right now."
"They could be here for any reason," Akiban said skeptically. "But considering this is Omega, they're probably not here to serve refreshments."
"You don't say!" Rynes exclaimed sarcastically. "What do we do now, oh military genius?"
Akiban had no idea. With the sort of resources at their disposition, and considering the numerical odds, a fight was out of the question. She walked down the ramp and turned to face the door, saying, "Hope they don't know how to open the hangar door?"
The hangar door parted and started opening.
"I hate irony so much," Akiban hissed, walking up the port side of the yacht.
Her decision to favor a diplomatic approach and leave her shotgun holstered proved to be the right call when a mob of armed vorcha streamed into the hangar. Akiban could see that they left two sentries outside as the rest of the creatures spread out near the Ex Astris Scientia's bow. She noted that they weren't covering the angles very well, and several of them were blocking the firing solutions of others. They were clearly used to operating as a pack and confident in their superiority; in spite of their lack of organization, Akiban knew that their confidence was justified, though. Vorcha were tediously hard to kill and fought ferociously with little regard for their lives. Once more, she was outmatched.
One of the vorcha shoved his way past several of the others to come to stand in front of Akiban, who had stopped just port of the bow.
He... She...—Akiban decided in favor of "it"—started talking in their language.
"I don't understand you," she said bluntly, trying not to look intimidated by the prospect of gruesome death.
It snarled and said, "Where are quarians?"
"You mean Kela'Van nar Rayya and them?"
"Where?" the vorcha hissed, stepping closer menacingly.
Obviously the vorcha had been expecting the quarians to arrive at this specific hangar; that meant that the quarian program had brought them here for a reason.
"The quarians are currently unavailable," Akiban explained. "But maybe I can help you."
Apparently the vorcha seemed uncertain, but the pack behavior demanded of the alpha to show strength and resolve the situation in spite of the unexpected circumstances. It paced left and right several times, then it turned back to face her. "Do you have it?" it finally asked.
"Do I have what?"
The vorcha hissed. "The machine!"
"The big blue machine with the lights and the arms?" Akiban asked.
"Yes!"
So that was what they were after, Akiban thought. They had expected the device to be brought here, and they had expected the quarians to deliver it. That meant that the quarians must have struck some sort of deal with the vorcha, which made the theft of the device the only reason for their presence in the colony.
But that hypothesis didn't fit with the quarians' need to return a gift to the Migrant Fleet. That meant that the vorcha must have promised them something in return. For a moment Akiban wondered if she could snatch that payment instead, but every alarm in her mind went off at that thought. She couldn't possibly let the vorcha make off with the device; who knew whom they had struck a deal with or what they intended to do with it.
"I have it," Akiban finally said.
The vorcha turned around and barked something to his pack. Most of them remained where they were, but two moved forward and started passing around Akiban.
"Wait!" she called. She had to stop them somehow. "I didn't know what we were getting into, so I rigged the machine with explosives." She raised her left forearm so all of the vorcha could see it and activated the omni-tool.
The alpha barked something, and the two others stopped dead in their tracks. Apparently they were buying the bluff.
"If you try to remove the explosives without sending the proper password first, they will turn this entire hangar into a small sun," Akiban continued. "I'll allow one of you to join me in the cargo hold of my ship. That one can inspect the device. When you're satisfied, we'll discuss transportation and my payment."
"You will give me the password and the machine now!" the alpha demanded.
"I will give it to you as soon as you've confirmed that it's what you're looking for. Then you can give me my payment. I'm sure a strong vorcha like you isn't afraid of one human."
It contemplated this for a painfully long moment, but then ordered, "Go!"
Akiban turned around and started walking toward the loading ramp. The vorcha was following her reluctantly, its assault rifle aimed at her back. Obviously it didn't trust her, but any more show of weakness and its days as the pack's alpha were numbered; Akiban had no doubt of that.
She walked up the loading ramp and entered the cargo hold. Carefully the vorcha entered as well. When it saw the device, it moved past her and toward it, staring at it as it approached.
Akiban slowly reached for her comm link with one hand and pulled her shotgun from her back with the other. There would be only one chance to do this right. "Rynes," she whispered. "Close the loading ramp. Now."
The vorcha spun around as the ramp started to rise, suspecting betrayal, only to end up staring into the barrel of Akiban's shotgun. She pulled the trigger and blasted the creature away. The vorcha went skidding across the deck, rolled several times, and jumped to its feet again. Akiban swore and darted ahead, seeking to close the distance to her target.
It had dropped its assault rifle and was now sprinting toward it, but even as it jumped for it, Akiban fired again, hitting the creature in the leg right below the hip. The loading ramp sealed with a hiss as the vorcha hit the deck next to the device. Knowing better than to fire her shotgun again, Akiban picked up the vorcha's assault rifle, aimed, and fired, riddling the creature with projectiles until the weapon overheated. She holstered both weapons on her back and started stomping the alien's head with her boot, again and again, until its skull gave way with a sickening crunch.
"Okay, why are they shooting at us?" Rynes asked as Akiban came running across the bridge.
"I think I pissed them off," Akiban admitted.
"Well done," Rynes complained. "Now we're gonna die."
"They wanted the device. I decided not to give it to them."
"They knew it was on board?"
Akiban nodded. "Yeah. They were asking for the quarians when I confronted them. Smells like the suitbags were supposed to deliver the device to the vermin that's shooting and hammering the hull now."
"That's odd," Rynes muttered absent-mindedly.
"What is?" Akiban asked and drank from her water supply. Through the forward viewport she could see that the vorcha had closed the hangar door.
"Vorcha aren't exactly known for having far-spread interests," Rynes explained. "They're pretty damn stupid and never operate in formations any larger than packs; and those are usually only concerned with their own survival. An interstellar plot doesn't exactly scream 'vorcha.' I think someone is employing them as proxies."
"Fascinating," Akiban admitted. She thought that what Rynes said made sense, but unfortunately it wasn't going to help them to get rid of the angry pack outside the ship. And while the vorcha and their small arms weren't a threat to the Ex Astris Scientia, they were also effectively trapping the ship in the hangar by preventing Akiban and Rynes from discharging the ship's dive core. Or maybe not.
Akiban put a hand on Rynes's shoulder. "Can you discharge the drive core into the hangar's atmosphere?"
Rynes bit her lower lip. "I don't know. Can I?"
"Look it up in the manual!" Akiban exclaimed, pointing at the holo-displays in front of the other woman.
"By the way," Rynes said as she was navigating her way through her yacht's file system, "I'm pretty sure that I'm back in control of the ship."
"Well, that's good," Akiban muttered. "Means we can get the hell out of this all-forsaken place soon."
"Ah." Rynes cleared her throat. "The discharge of the core into an atmosphere is done over the ship's outer hull. Basically, you release the core's charge into the hull and wait for it to dissipate into the surrounding gas from there. However, you need to keep the voltage below, uh, here, this much"—She pointed at the holo-display—"to prevent the generated heat from cooking the isolation between the inner and the outer hulls and flowing through the ship's interior."
"What's that down here?" Akiban asked, pointing at another passage in the manual.
"That's the electric conductivity of the surrounding medium," Rynes answered. "It's a value you need to know in order to release the proper amount of ampere from the core into the hull."
Akiban scratched her scalp. "So, can we cook the vorcha without cooking ourselves?"
"I don't know," Rynes said, burying her face in her hands, her words distorted as her palms pressed her lips against her teeth. "I suppose we could discharge the core at least partially, maybe even enough to fire up the mass effect fields again, but I have no idea how much current is necessary to kill the vorcha out there."
"Just discharge the maximum you can without frying us!" Akiban called.
"Yeah, and how much is that?" Rynes bit back. "I have no clue! Assuming the hangar is isolated—which it probably is—we can only blow so much charge into it before it stops absorbing electrons from the hull. Then the hull will heat up anyway, and at some point the isolation will melt—and you know what that means."
"I know, I know," Akiban said soothingly. "I just thought you had some sort of software to calculate—oh shit!"
"What?"
"Close the shutter!"
Rynes did as ordered and the shutters snapped close.
Akiban sighed. "They brought rocket launchers."
As if to confirm her statement, the impact of a rocket somewhere on the hull shook the bridge.
"I can't think when people are shooting rockets at me!" Rynes moaned.
Akiban had had enough. "Ah, screw this. Program the core to release two percent of its charge into the hull in forty seconds. That should give us enough time to get to the escape pod and seal it."
"Two percent? Are you crazy? If that much is released at once, the air in the hangar will turn into superheated plasma!"
"Well, that's kinda the point, isn't it?" Akiban shouted.
"You're crazy. You're completely crazy, you know that?" Rynes muttered even as she entered the necessary commands.
"Nobody in their right mind enlists," Akiban mumbled. "You done?"
"Give me a second... There. Done."
Akiban grabbed Rynes's shoulder and tore her out of her seat, setting her on her feet. The two of them hurried to the escape pod and sealed the hatch behind them. Kela was still lying on the ground where they had left her, breathing flatly but rapidly. Akiban took a moment to scan the quarian girl with her omni-tool; her fever had increased considerably.
Her own omni-tool up, Rynes checked the countdown. "Twenty seconds until discharge."
Akiban made sure she wasn't touching anything metallic and hugged her arms around herself. She didn't have the faintest idea if their plan was going to work. There were probably millions of factors they hadn't considered, and even if they had, neither of them would have known what to do with them.
"Ten seconds."
Maybe it would work out, or maybe they'd be dead in ten seconds.
"Nine... Eight... Seven... Six... Five... Four... Three... Two... One... Discharge!"