A series of scenes accounting for the Kepesh-Ardate's time hiding from the spectres.

Tynus corporation mining facility. Martus asteroid. Cargo dock 04. 6/9/2211

The mining foreman cast a nervous eye over the heavily kitted out mercenaries walking towards him down the loading ramp. Their leader, a stocky one eyed asari with one arm in a sling, pulled off her helmet then extended a hand in his direction. He shook gingerly. "Jesus, are you lot carrying anything that can't kill me in a blink?"

The asari laughed heartily. "Well I did strangle a guy with a pair of panties once so no. They weren't mine by the way. Karla D'mel; I understand you have a job for us."

"Name's Jake Bishop, I'm the foreman and I do. I just didn't think you would be bringing so much firepower along."

"You can never be too careful right?"

"So, um, is there anything you need to get settled in?"

Karla draped her good arm around the human's shoulder and maneuvered him away from his men, to the edge of the hanger.
"Actually there are a few things we could do with. First: not to make a bad first impression but we ran into a bit of trouble on the way here and I'm a little messed up, as you can see."

As politely as possible foreman Bishop removed Karla's arm. "I understand, we have a doctor and two full time nurses in our medical section. Anything else?"

"Before we get to that I want to make it clear that my men are fully capable of defending this facility even with my current injury and I'm no slouch myself. Remind me to tell you about the time I took down a rampaging biotic krogan."

Bishop just sighed, it was late by station time and his shift was meant to have ended an hour ago. The sooner he could get these mercenaries set up the sooner he could drink.
"I'm sure the company wouldn't have hired you if they didn't think you were capable D'mel. Was there anything else you needed?"

Karla started counting off her fingers. "My techs will need access to your server or computer room, if someone could show us to where to bunk up that would be great." She paused, suddenly looking slightly nervous, though she covered it well. "And I would like to ask a favor."

"Since you'll be keeping us safe from pirate attacks I'm sure I could do that for you. What do you need?

Karla pointed to the shuttle where the last of the Kepesh-Ardate personnel were disembarking. "We do actually have a couple of special cases with us. Do you see that girl, the redhead? And the turian? If all goes well you won't see them again. We'll keep them out of your way but if you see either of them wandering around just let one of my men know. They will help make our operation here much more effective but they are not regular personnel so please ask your miners to steer clear of them."

Bishop's eyes narrowed. He was no longer just trying to get out of here as quickly as possible, he smelled trouble. "That's all real specific. This girl dangerous?"

Karla shrugged. "Isn't that why you hired us? I'll put it this way; if shit hits the fan you will be really glad she's on our side.

Check up
Tynus corporation mining facility. Martus asteroid. Medical level. 6/13/2211

Patient details:

Name: Karla D'mel. Sex: N/A. Race: Asari. Date of Birth: 8/18/1838

Tynus' chief medic was nothing if not thorough. He had told Karla that she would need to pass a medical examination before being declared fit to protect the facility. 'His facility' as he had put it. She had expected him to look down her throat and in her eye then give her a clean bill of health. Not so. Now she was stripped down to her vest, underwear and eye patch standing on a set of electronic scales as the bars of a deep tissue scanner played up and down her body. She shifted uncomfortably.

"Please remain still director." Said the doctor.

He was sitting across the examination room from her, behind his desk. The man looked as if he had not moved from his chair since he got the job, though she supposed he was handsome in a round, chinless sort of way. Nice eyes. Using all her willpower Karla focused on her tapping foot and managed to stop fidgeting. "How much longer?" She asked. Before she had even finished speaking a ding sounded from the desks built in holo terminal.

"There we go, all done. You can step off the plate now." She did just that, padding over across the cold tiles on bare feet as the doctor called up the results. Karla could clearly see the screen from over his shoulder but he started reading aloud anyway.

"Fresh break of the right arm. Historical fractures to six lower ribs, left forearm and pelvis. Scar tissue hinting at past lacerations to the collar bone, abdomen and left aural vent. Bullet wounds to right shoulder blade and tricep. Mild burn scars across both buttocks. Fourth toe on the right foot is missing."

Karla grunted and crossed her arms across her compact, muscular frame. "Well this might come as a surprise to you but I already knew all that."

The doctor looked up at his client with obvious annoyance. "Please let me finish director. I like to build up a full medical profile of all my regular patients."

"Well I'm glad you take your job seriously but I'm hoping not to become a repeat customer. Besides I really only need you to look at my arm."

He ignored her, instead staring intently at the scan. Manipulating it with a fingertip he zoomed in past the dermal layer to the brain beneath and squinted at the display for a few seconds.
"Do you ever suffer from migraines?"

"Ever since I was a kid. My mom took me to see a specialist in Etheai city who told me that I have Indron's disease."

"I'm not familiar with the condition." His deepening frown hinted that his pride barely let him confess his ignorance.

"I'm not surprised. It occurs almost exclusively in asari and very rarely in biotics of other species. The eezo bits in my nervous system didn't form properly."

"Eezo bits?" Said the doctor with a mockingly raised eye brow.

"Screw you! I'm not a doctor, I don't know what they're called. Anyway most non-asari that get it die but we just get headaches and occasional biotic outbursts. I've never had those before though. I was injured on a job a few years ago." She pointed to her eye patch. "That only made it worse so I try not to use biotics at all these days."

He made a note in her file. "Interesting."

"So about my arm."

"Oh it will be fine in a few weeks. It is healing nicely, not much to do but wait. I can give you some painkillers if gets too painful but otherwise there's not much I can do. It was a clean break at least." Sensing the examination was coming to an end Karla walked over to the chair she had hung her suit on and began redressing.

"How did you say it happened again?"

Karla fixed the doctor with her single brown eye. "Skycar accident." She said.

Bar fight. In which lieutenant Martin Ferrier lets slip a racial slur
Tynus corporation mining facility. Martus asteroid. Iridium Nugget saloon. Later that day.

"Got something to say?" Growled the hulking batarian.

Martin stepped drunkenly out of his chair and squared up to the miner.

"Maybe I do. What are you going to do about it?"

"Sit down you arse, you're drunk!" Hissed Claire.

"It's alright baby I'm never too drunk to impress a lady." That was a particularly insufferable statement even for him. Claire fell silent, suddenly a lot less invested in saving him from himself.

"The bar is for employees only, you'd better leave."

Martin smirked. "Oh I'd better leave had I? Make me." Claire could only put her head in her hands.

Martin threw the first punch, with exactly zero effect. The batarian must have been struggling to control himself because he really went to town, raining blows down on the inebriated human. Martin's impaired reflexes caught up and they began wrestling in earnest. Before Claire had a chance to intervene a flash of purple caught her eye from the crowd that had gathered round the combatants. Karla had arrived. The boss waved Claire back into her chair with a slicing motion of her palm. 'I'll deal with it' the gesture said. Martus was only home to around four dozen miners so Karla was known amongst them, the crowd parted before her, however the grappling pair where too caught up in their struggle to notice. She strode swiftly up to them, gripped the batarian by the scruff of the neck and slammed his head off the table, once, twice. He lay still.

There was total, eerie, silence as everyone stood frozen in place. Claire clutched her beer bottle having just snatched it up in time to save it from the batarian's forehead. Martin was stupidly posed as if someone had stopped time and removed his opponent then neglected to tell him. With simmering rage burning in her good eye Karla turned on him.

"You don't start fights in this company Ferrier you finish them. You are suspended and if I catch even a whiff of alcohol on you for the rest of the contract consider yourself terminated. Out." She punctuated her statement by giving him a short sharp shove to the chest that sent him tottering towards to exit with a confused frown on his face.

"Tell Daniel that he has been temporarily promoted." Karla said to Claire who nodded and hurried after Martin. She just wanted to leave; the only customers that weren't glaring daggers at them looked like they might actually attack. Karla clearly noticed that too.

"Back off! That guy might be a little shit stain but unfortunately he works for me. I won't have people assaulting my staff. If anything happens to him I'll know where to start looking. Rest assured this will never happen again. I'll deal with him myself." With that she turned on her heel and strode after Claire and Martin.

Mornings.
Tynus corporation mining facility. Martus asteroid. 6/14/2211

Karla

Karla was up at seven fifteen for a jog. She had a meeting with Foreman Bishop about last nights incident at nine and she wanted to clear her head beforehand. Clad in a nylon vest, shorts and a pair of expensive running shoes she warmed up in her tiny quarters before setting off around the viewing gantries that ringed the upper reaches of the cavernous cargo docks where they had arrived five days ago. It only took fifteen minutes to do a circuit so she did two more before heading to the saloon for a large glass of water. Normally the Iridium Nugget was closed during shift hours but Karla had spoken to the foreman who had arranged to keep the cafeteria open around the clock to accommodate the mercs diverse patrol patterns. The bar would remain closed but after last night nobody was complaining, tensions were high between miners and mercenaries.
Not that the bartender seemed to mind having a customer, the young human man looked Karla up and down as she pushed her way past the old fashioned swing doors and into the gloomy interior.

"Keeping busy?" He asked conversationally.

Karla was still slightly out of breath but smiled anyway. "You know how it is: once you're in your three seventies you stop being able to rely on your natural fitness."

The bartender stopped what he was doing and smiled back. "Yeah... well no actually but I tend to divide asari ages by ten in my head when I'm trying to work it out. Is that about right?"

"I guess. Can I have a glass of water and-" She paused to riffle through her pockets for a credit chit. "Your cheapest sandwich."

Claire

It was after ten thirty by the time Claire rolled out of bed. While she was waiting for her brain to unclog she looked up the weather on her Wall mounted vid screen, then remembered that there was no weather in space. Feeling slightly more awake she browsed the Earth Baseball League results from the previous week. The venerable Chicago Cubs had hammered the Cairo Nomads but their star player had taken an injury, without whom the Cubs had been annihilated by the Brisbane Bandits.
Terra T'fino was the first asari (or alien) to be allowed to compete on the grounds that her father was human and she had spent her whole life on earth, she even held a dual american/serrice citizenship. As asari had no genders in the traditional sense she competed in the male only globe spanning Earth League. With her as the cubs star hitter they had been catapulted to the heights of super stardom despite accusations of biotic tampering on T'fino's part.
Claire could almost hear her dad's laughter in her ears. The last time they had spoken he had argued that the cubs were just fortunate; taking advantage of injuries on rival teams and lucky match ups in the league. Claire on the other hand had countered by saying that the cubs current lineup was nothing without T'fino.

There were four things Marshall Perry loved above all else: beer, his kids, history and being proved wrong by superior logic. Not necessarily in that order. Marshall had been an aviation historian before his retirement and had often been called out to obscure places to examine old planes left behind by the invention of mass effect technology. He had always brought his two kids (Claire and her little brother Will) along with him. Regardless of which country they were visiting their trips always had one thing in common, a baseball game. They had never been abroad without catching at least one. To this day it was the basis of most of the conversations between father and daughter. At heart Claire knew it was to avoid talking about her work, he had been so proud when she had been accepted into the Australian police academy but now it seemed all he did was worry since she had gone to space. His only acknowledgment of her job was the constant question 'isn't it about time you retired?'

Doing her best to shake off her sudden melancholy Claire sprang to her feet and walked into the bathroom to have a shower. Regardless of who was right or wrong her dad would just be pleased to see the Cubs taken down a peg by what he considered a 'real team:' the Bandits from his childhood hometown of Brisbane.
The older she got the more Claire found herself valuing the little things over the sweeping bigger picture. She preferred it that way, it made it harder to loose sight of what really mattered to her.

Shepherd

Shepherd was still getting used to the notion that she needed sleep to function properly. Some days she would try and do without only to burn out and find herself passed out on her bed as a result. Luckily she was getting better at setting a consistent pattern, by the third day on the asteroid she was waking up an 8am on the dot. At 8.15 she would sit up cross legged on the bed and continue the mental exploration of her new body.

Back on Ilos she had discovered the ability to exert conscious control over the synthetic fibers that were intertwined through most of her muscles, now she was searching for any other surprises, namely traps or failsafes left by Liara T'soni. On the fifth day she was satisfied that there was nothing sinister left to uncover and also found a sizable mass of element zero in her chest cavity. As Shepherd was still confined to her room she passed the time testing her new biotic abilities. Elizabeth Shepard had been a forceful biotic with vanguard specialization training but there was simply no way to attempt to learn to perform a biotic charge in the cramped confines of her newest cell. The mercenaries had made every effort to make her comfortable but had also been very clear that they would not allow her to leave, for her own safety.

Truth be told she was content to while away the days for now. The longer she spent living at an organic level the more she remembered what it had been like and the less appealing life in the mindscape became. It was still there, throbbing in the back of her head, reminding her who she was. Through that faint connection she could feel the crucible orb she had gifted to Liara all those years ago. Perhaps if she could find it she could restore herself. Or free herself. These were all interesting options but to do any of that she would need power so she practiced her biotics, day after day. Always stopping whenever a mercenary delivered her meals or came to check on her. They saw her as a helpless human to be guarded as they raked in the credits, all the better for her. Her biotics were getting stronger. Perhaps soon she would not need the Kepesh-Ardate. The thought of shedding them and confronting those who sought to control her personally filled her with a warm feeling.
Shepherd made note of the moment: her first conscious feeling of hope. Or was it rage? These organic emotions were so similar, all mixed together and convoluted. Either way it felt nice, like something worth repeating.