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Eclipse Interviews Story (II)


Atalen Callennus examined himself in his omni-tool's mirror, adjusting the projected screen to check on his profile from the side. With a finger he smoothed down a pair of troublesome quills that always seemed to veer off to the left. His crimson facial tattoos were totally regulation, but he knew how females – turian ones and asari – loved a good set of quills. They even looked a little like asari head-tentacles, depending on who you asked. Running the edge of his finger over his jaw plates, double checking his teeth, he stood back and adjusted the roomy collar of his white hardsuit.

"Not bad, Callennus. Not bad."

Activating the door, he headed out for his appointment with Eclipse's Battle Matron.

Shepard.

It really was an exotic name, which meant it was also likely a fake name, but it was still something he could work with. Atalen still recalled, vividly, when he had first seen footage of the asari, back when a few choice vids of the fall of the Glorious Harsa had been released. Shepard had been quickly identified as the unknown and unnamed leader of the asari commando unit responsible. There was no doubt she was a fierce and formidable commando herself. A long time correspondent, reporter and tactical-consultant for Sarui magazine, Atalen had jumped at the opportunity to meet this fascinating woman.

Of course, those in the know had just laughed through their flanges when they saw his eager application to take part in the interview. He had a lot of cred in the magazine, and he'd done a lot of good work, which meant he had a lot of favors to check, but it was no secret he had a bit of a thing for asari. Turian girls were pretty, no mistake about it, and he could appreciate them like any other hot blooded turian male, but asari were so exotic. Even after being in contact with them for thousands of years that hadn't changed. You didn't see that many of them on most turian worlds and they had this allure: this strange sort of femininity that was, in some ways, the opposite of the traditional turian feminine.

Smiling to himself, Atalen waved to his escort – a gold armored salarian engineer – and walked off to his meeting feeling quite good. Not that he expected to hit it off with this doubly-exotic beauty, but there was always hope. Besides! It was his experience that matrons in her situation abstained from any sort of activity with fellow crew and especially subordinates. It might be she'd be up for a fling with a visitor who she'd probably never see again. Two ships passing in space, as the saying and the story went.

She met him just outside the armory.

"Atalen," the Battle Matron greeted him with a slight inclination of her head.

"Battle Matron," he replied, respectfully, and also dipped his chin in greeting. "May I call you Shepard?"

"That's fine," the tall asari answered and nodded to the salarian engineer who had been Atalen's silent escort; he quickly took up a position outside the door.

"Shall we?" Shepard then asked and sent along a digital key to the door using her omni-tool. "You wanted to see our armory. We technically have three on the ship, but this one is the most suited to our needs."

Atalen followed her inside, watching with interest as the armory's contents rose up from out of recessed racks in both the floor and ceiling. It was a far cry from some of the other "armories" he'd seen run by other merc bands. A few years ago, he'd done a feature on an up and coming asari commando band that just stuck their spare weapons in an unoccupied corner of their living area. In another, a primarily salarian group, every member had kept their own stock, frequently modified and tweaked to such a degree that no other commando knew just what his comrade was using or what mods it had at any given time. Some of the guns had been tweaked to such a degree they were largely unrecognizable.

The thing was, you could tell a lot about a merc group by the way they treated their equipment. Atalen's first impression of Eclipse, as he took in the extensive, uniform and methodically organized armory before him, was that it was an outfit that neither neglected nor fetishized their gear. There were no personalized weapons. Everyone seemed to draw from the same stock. The weapons were maintained, not just in the field, but even when not in use they seemed to be kept in very tight storage – either for security purposes or for maintenance or both.

One display caught his eye.

"Thermal clips?" Atalen asked, approaching the double rack. More than two hundred of the clips were stored behind some sort of crystal, neatly arranged in rows and bandoliers. Each one was marked with a serial number, and in a spot on the rack that fit that serial.

"Have you used them before?" Shepard asked, spotting his interest… in the thermal clips. She was still wearing the black and purple hardsuit armor from before as she settled her hands on her hips.

"I've test fired batarian arms SMGs and assault rifles using T-clips." Atalen's flanges spread wide when she laughed.

"It doesn't sound like you're too fond of the design!" Shepard observed, in good cheer. "I don't blame you! A lot of us here in Eclipse were wary, at first. Commander Thanoptis was often very vocal in expressing her frustration."

"The clips let you fire more rapidly, putting more rounds down-field in a shorter amount of time…" Atalen tapped the crystal glass that protected the rack of thermal clips. "That's very much a good thing, but in a sustained, low intensity firefight, that advantage can be turned around."

"We prefer a hybrid system," Shepard explained, and touched the crystal. A holo-display appeared around her finger-tip, allowing her to enter a key. "The clips supplement rather than replace the normal cooling system."

The rack's security screen opened over two sections allowing the Battle Matron to retrieve a pair of thermal clips.

"Take a look at these." She held out her hands and Atalen picked the clips up. Superficially, they looked identical: cylindrical with a wider cap, a metallic lattice over a slightly recessed core.

"This one's a little heavier," Atalen noticed, holding up the beefier T-clip to eye level.

"You're probably only familiar with the mass-production thermal clips made by our friends and allies in the Batarian Republic and on Camala," Shepard explained, taking her time to walk over to a rack of assault rifles. "Those do the job well enough, and the latest batch are so cheap they might as well be disposable… but here in Eclipse, we use high-grade reusable thermal clips in two varieties. The heavier one is more potent, obviously. Both are also able to cool when within the weapon's thermal sleeve. Replacement of a clip is only necessary during intense firefights, and every recruit carries several clips on her." Shepard held up a hand to correct herself: "Him or her."

"As an added bonus," she went on to say, "this means our weapons can function at full efficiency even where convection-cooling of an overheating weapon is impossible… hard vacuum, for example."

"You expect many firefights in vacuum?" Atalen asked with a chuckle.

Shepard, however, was serious. "Eclipse is always prepared to fight in any environment," she answered, fixing him with a humorless glare. Atalen shivered, but couldn't say he disliked the intensity in the woman's eyes.

"I was quite disappointed, actually," Shepard went on to say. "We were boarding a ship just a quarter-cycle ago. We cut the gravity and the entire ship's defense compliment had no idea what to do. Clearly most people here don't train for close quarters combat in micro-gravity."

Atalen walked up to stand next to her. "I suspect a few might once I relate that little story in our magazine."

"Only a few," Shepard guessed. She just finished requisitioning an assault rifle from the rack and handed it over for him to try. "This is one of our modified Avengers. You can see where the clips integrate into rather than replace the cooling sleeve."

The turian handled the weapon with practiced ease. The Ekloss Combine was responsible for the venerable M-8 Avenger, having produced the weapon in what could only be called titanic numbers. There were more M-8s in circulation than there were volus in the entire galaxy. While technically a Terminus firearm – since Elkoss was a Terminus based company with their own planet – most were actually manufactured in Citadel space. None of the major powers used them as a primary infantry-level rifle but they were otherwise ubiquitous on the civilian market. Everyone knew the M-8.

"You used M-8s when you took the Harsa, didn't you?" he asked, leveling the weapon at an imaginary target. Despite the modifications, the balance was just about right. Of course, the venerable M-8 was just the tip of the iceburg that was Eclipse's armory.

"We did," Shepard confirmed. "As you can imagine, our success in that operation allowed us to… diversify."

"Diversify, naturally!" Atalen carefully handed over the weapon. "So, I've been dying to ask: what's your favorite weapon, Battle Matron? Have you tried the new Phaeston variant?"

"We purchased a few Phaeston-Es on Korlus, though we don't have the license to fabricate our own copies." Shepard took a few long strides over to another rack, this one divided up into much smaller sub-sections. It was clearly meant for the weapons that Eclipse did not own or procure in bulk. A little bit of turian pride slipped out as Atalen saw a trio of Phaeston assault rifles in what had to be mint condition… except, just like all the other weapons, Eclipse had modified them to use the hybrid thermal clip system.

"From what I saw, and my own experience firing them, Phaestons are superb light assault rifles," Shepard said with a tone of approval. "Rugged, reliable, despite the fact that they look like they're made of glass, and probably the most accurate rifles in their weight and size range… all in all, very impressive… but our engineers found that they're exceptionally difficult to modify. They're also quite expensive and the Hierarchy isn't keen on releasing their license."

Almost anyone could buy a weapon, both in Citadel space and especially in the Terminus, but without a license and fabrication code most weapons were difficult or at least impractical to fabricate. For smaller groups this wasn't a concern. They could just buy X number of weapons for X number of men and women. For larger mercenary groups, though, a license was preferable. That way they could manufacture replacement parts and even entire weapons on-site and as-needed. Naturally, there were pirated versions of many weapons floating around, and a concomitant amount of corporate warfare to destroy those pirates and bootleggers.

Eclipse, it seemed, was being very careful to keep on the up and up. It was just another reason Atalen liked them.

"They asked for an observer to oversee any weapons fabrication and modification," Atalen guessed.

"A 'technical advisor' they called it." Shepard nodded. "We had to decline the offer."

"Your maidens have been seen using a Revenant variant…"

Shepard gestured towards a pair of racks, each one supporting three rows of M-76 Revenants, some in the original red color but most repainted in gray and white or green and brown. The Revenant was a big weapon, much larger than a normal assault rifle, with a distinct profile made up of a block-like body including the stock and butt, and a "tuning fork" arrangement for the barrel. They were expensive weapons to own and operate, too, well outside the range of the average mercenary. Everyone knew they hit hard, with a very high rate of fire but comparatively poor accuracy and high recoil.

"We like the Revenant as a standard rifle-arm," Shepard explained, letting her guest look over their inventory. "Because of the size of the weapon, we can fit multiple thermal clips into the integral liquid thermal sink and sleeve. Each one of these is fitted for three thermal clips, allowing us to maintain an impressive rate of fire for a surprisingly long period of time. Once you have the fire discipline down, anyway. The accuracy is a problem, though, even once you compensate for the recoil."

"You don't use any weight reduction?" Atalen confirmed, knowing his way around a Revenant, even just by eye. "And these are vehicle-type. No other Revenants have liquid cooling systems. They're too bulky."

"The weight isn't an issue for us," Shepard reminded him. "As everyone knows by now, we're much stronger than Citadel-asari."

"So we've all heard," the turian reporter agreed, showing a hint of teeth as his jaw widened in a grin. "How much stronger are you?"

"Enough for our purposes," the mysterious asari answered with a glance off to her right. "We've become rather well known for connections with krogan weapons manufacturers lately, but a long term goal is to develop our own weapons better suited to our tactical and strategic needs. Our partners on Camala have been very receptive to this. I know we promised your magazine a scoop, so why not take a look at some of our less well known equipment? I think you'll be impressed with what our engineers can do, melding quarian, krogan and… asari… designs and technologies…"


"What's your name, maiden?"

"Teeta Sitel."

"Now, you're Eclipse, but you're a relatively recent addition to the team, correct?"

"Yes."

Tikko frowned, having to deal with this latest asari. She seemed to constantly forget to smile and just stared at the camera as it took vids of her. She'd settled into a cross-legged position for her shoot and didn't want to move or deviate or try anything more risqué. They'd placed one of her preferred weapons, a Kishock Harpoon sniper rifle, either just in front of her or balanced on her lap. It was a vicious weapon, batarian-made, black and gray with just the right combination of jagged edges and smooth curves to give the impression of both surgical precision and Terminus brutality. It looked perfectly like a hunter's weapon, designed only for hunting other sentients.

Teeta was a bit more slight and slim than most asari, certainly moreso than most of the Bekha-Yakshi, with a thin and athletic figure and smooth mauve-skin. She was quite photogenic, all things concerned. She just didn't ever seem to smile! It was starting to get… frustrating.

"Miss Sitel. Smile?" Tikko gestured to his face and even slapped his cheeks as he put on his best grin. "Please? Show us a smile or two?"

A little haltingly, Teeta did as asked and smiled… though it was clearly pretty forced.

"So where are you from, maiden?" Lara asked, interjecting herself back into the interview while the floating camera clicked and adjusted its lights.

Teeta's smile remained plastered on, but her answer was a curt, "I'd rather not say."

"Well, can you tell us anything about yourself? We need a blurb for your page."

The asari sniper was silent for an uncomfortable couple of seconds.

"I suppose," she finally consented. "My father was batarian… he fled the Hegemony more than ninety cycles ago. I joined Eclipse to keep Camala and the other systems free from the Hegemony. I graduated fifth in my class at the Eclipse academy. Before the war broke out here, I was an apprentice-student in criminology and I'd planned to join C-Sec."

Her blue eyes followed Tikko, stalking him like a bird of prey.

"Is that sufficient?" she asked, speaking to both him and Lara vas Soan.

"Well… we'll see…"


Teeta Sitel
Rank: Sergeant 1st class "Scout"

Official Description: "A soft spoken sniper, Teeta Sitel had her eyes on a career in C-Sec until Eclipse took the Hegemony and Terminus space by storm. Now she sets her sights on fewer shoplifters and more slavers. In her down time, she enjoys reading mystery novels. Calm and cool under pressure, this is one maiden you'll never see coming!"

Personal Notes:
Not a very talkative maiden, this one. We had to threaten to pull her teeth to get her to smile. Probably that half-batarian upbringing at work. Couldn't coax a lot of details out of her. The blurb we have here should work fine, though. At least she isn't from some weird-ass colony no one's ever heard of with some crazy sounding name. I actually learned alongside a Teeta when I was younger. This Teeta and that one? Total opposites. But this girl's actually one of the higher ups among Eclipse's recruits. Might try and get more out of her later.

[addendum]
You don't see many asari-batarian children. Of course they exist, but it's always a surprise when you run into one. Teeta shows the usual signs of it in her facial expressions. I'm pretty sure her background checks out. We should be able to find where she came from by cross checking our registry of batarian political prisoners seeking asylum. She has a Verge accent, so I'd start with the asari colonies there. I'm betting you won't find much, though. The impression I got was that she's an only child, father deceased, mother probably the same. But that's just me.

So far no sign of the Matriarch in charge of things, but Lara's going to have another go at Shepard tomorrow. Try and work that grandmother angle that Thanoptis let slip. There's no way Dilinaga's still around but we might be dealing with her daughter or grand-daughter. I'll keep you up to date on whatever Lara digs up.


"B-Boss?"

Ilena power-walked past the two maiden recruits, a datapad pressed up to her chest. "Sorry. No time to talk."

"Boss!" one of the Eclipse maidens persisted, calling after her as she passed by. "I just wanted to ask about the planet we're orbiting and-"

"She's gone," the other grumbled, hands on her hips. Both were off-duty and wearing a plain Eclipse-pattern shirt and pants, a common casual uniform that originated with the B-Ys. "What do you think that was about?"

"Beats me." The first sighed. "Let's see if we can find Matron Chambers. She'll know what's going on."

"A prayer to the goddess that we get some leave down there. It can't be a coincidence..."

Ilena rounded the corner, out of earshot of her fellow asari, focused on finding just one sapient on the Tevura. That word was getting around the ship about their latest stop was no surprise. A lot of maidens, and probably a lot of humans, too, would be happy to hear they'd be going down to the surface of a planet for reasons aside from cracking skulls. Ontarom was a scenic but remote planet on (what the humans called) the Kepler Verge. Officially, they were going to visit just to take some pictures for Badass Monthly. Unofficially, the humans had some sort of interest in the planet.

Not that it mattered at the moment. There was a more pressing concern that needed full and undivided attention. A matter of Thessia-shaking importance! A matter, a crisis of conscience even, that cut to the heart of Eclipse itself!

"Shep!" Ilena entered the ship's gymnasium, enduring the looks from all the interrupted men and women within. While designed initially for the Bekha-Yakshi, all Eclipse members were encouraged to participate in physical conditioning.

Still, it was easy to pick out Battle Matron Shepard or most other secret-humans.

They'd be the ones lifting weights that would give a krogan a hernia. Alright, maybe that was a slight exaggeration, but Ilena could see Shepard across the room on a machine with a digital weight readout of two hundred kilograms. Only the fact that everyone in Eclipse had gotten used to the fact that the mysterious 'asari' were practically an order of magnitude too strong for their size made it less conspicuous. Settling the weights down behind her back, Shepard pointed to herself and Ilena nodded.

'Yes, you, Shep.'

A pinprick of what felt almost like annoyance elicited an insistent 'get over here' from the maiden Commander. Rather quickly, everyone else resumed their usual exercise, dismissing the interruption as anything significant. Little did they know! Across the room, Shepard sighed and started walking over in no particular hurry. Waiting impatiently, Ilena took a moment to listen to the music playing over the room's recessed speakers.

"Renia Ray?" she asked, perplexed, once Shep got close enough.

"She's apparently pretty popular among the younger girls in First Company," Shepard answered, straightening out her white top and tucking her hands in her pants. "Asari pop music. God help us all."

"Renia was awesome two decades ago before she sold out and became a matron…" Ilena violently shook her head. "Ah! Off topic! Not what I wanted to talk about!"

Shepard nodded, falling in next to her. "What is it then?" She also noticed the datapad held protectively up to Ilena's chest. "Ah. Something about the interviews?"

Her eyes narrowed.

"We don't have an information breach, do we?" Annabel asked, considering the seriousness of someone slipping up and passing on unapproved info to sarui abekha. They had contingencies in place just in case, but…

"We don't need to purge anybody, that's not it," Ilena quickly assured her and none-too-subtly nudged Shepard further aside to a quiet corner where they wouldn't be disturbed. "You just have to see it for yourself."

"A problem?"

"I'd call it a problem, yes!"

"Damnit. I knew this Badass Magazine nonsense was nothing but-" Shepard accepted the datapad and, no doubt, quickly saw the problem. Her eyebrows raised a fraction. "Ummm. This is…?"

"Daro'Xen's interview!" Ilena explained, and pointed to the transcript and holos – all of which needed her final approval. "Just look!"

She pointed to the header picture that was the opener for the article and interview. The title read "Daro'Xen nar Shellen, Drone Queen of Eclipse!" Below it was a picture of the quarian in question, bereft of her usual helmet, tendrils on full shameless display behind her, her natural photoluminescence lit up in softly glowing purple and midnight blue. She had her hands out and her lips puckered, mere inches from kissing the oculus of an Eclipse drone. Like all their pictures, the holo wasn't an entirely still-shot, but a super short video capture lasting about half a second.

Shepard blinked, a few times. "Huh."

"Huh? Is that all you can say?" Ilena interrupted, spinning around in place. "Look at how hot her pictures are! She's going to upstage us both! This is a disaster!"

Lara vas Soan's voice spoke up from the pad. "I originally sat down with Eclipse's new Chief Technical Engineer and Head of Research and Development to discuss battlefield doctrine and the strides Eclipse is making in warfare, but that was only the beginning. This ambitious young quarian also had a lot to say about politics, biology, pilgrimage, and the challenges facing quarians in Terminus space."

"Huh," Shepard said again.

"Don't just say 'huh!' Look at her posing with the top of her suit unzipped!"

Ilena pointed accusingly at another picture, this one taken in a lab somewhere on the ship. Daro'Xen was posed on a workbench, again with her helmet off, but also with one hand up to the front of her environmental suit peeling back the seals that kept it air-tight. Like all quarians, she was naked underneath her suit, and the result was a rather generous display of quarian cleavage and an exposed line of lavender skin all the way down to her belly button.

"Huh."

"Shepard."

"I didn't even know quarians had a belly button."

Ilena just glared at the human woman. "You don't see anything wrong with this."

"Well," Shepard mused, looking over the article some more. "I think we're going to get a lot of quarian recruits after this comes out."

Ilena groaned and buried her face in her hands. "You're hopeless!"

Shepard clicked another part of the interview to play it.

"The pilgrimage is an outdated institution, in my opinion," Daro'Xen's clear and commanding voice spoke from the article. She made no bones about her opinion being in any way a humble one. "It was born out of the newly created Migrant Fleet not having the resources to spend on young adult quarians, so they were sent out into the galaxy to scavenge up credits, ships, whatever to bring home and justify their place in the social order. I struggle to conceive of a more wasteful, inefficient or even dare-I-say immoral system. Our young quarians are a precious resource and we squander them in some sort of survival-of-the-fittest social experiment? I'd laugh at the ridiculousness of it all if not for the fact that it has cost the lives of untold thousands of young people. Lives lost to accidents, to slavery, to abduction and abuse."

"I take it you imagine an alternative system in place?" Lara asked. As an asari with a quarian father, perhaps she had a rather unique view of quarian culture both before and after the fall of Rannoch. She actually did seem to be enjoying the questioning by this point and her question was asked with a certain levity, like she couldn't wait to hear the answer.

"You bet I do," Daro answered with a huff so characteristic of her that Ilena could just imagine her quarian friend turning up her nose as she spoke. "The Fleet is right to outsource material commitments of a rite of passage like the pilgrimage but wrong to not follow up or supervise them! Once leaving the fleet for the greater galaxy, young quarians should be sent to proud and thriving quarian communities on planets or orbitals where they can learn a trade and build up their skills in safety. These communities, these enclaves, you can think of them as universities of a sort but less formalized. What we need are places where quarians can come into their own without the fear of being taken advantage of by predatory businesses, callous outsiders, or malicious slavers!"

"But the pilgrimage, as a rite of passage, has become a part of quarian culture as I understand it."

"Things change, Lara. Times change. People change. I couldn't care less if some quarians think it is a tradition. What matters is results. But if some fools want to have adventures and disappear without a trace into the Terminus systems or become indentured servants on Ilium or break their backs stripping dead ships on Korlus, then they are free to do so. My world and my offer will be extended to those with my vision of the future."

"It feels like there's a story here, behind all this. Something personal?"

There was only a moment's delay. "There is," Daro admitted, "I was very nearly a victim of a pilgrimage gone wrong. I know one of your questions is how I came to be part of Eclipse. I'll tell you. I was on my pilgrimage, planning to develop some technology to bring back to the fleet… I'd hoped to earn a seat on the research ship Moreh actually… when through no fault of my own the ship I was on was attacked. I was taken hostage by a disgusting band of criminals who kept me around only so long as I promised to keep their eezo reactor running. The moment it was repaired, I knew they would sell me to some slaver in the Hegemony to become a bed-warmer for any sick animal with a quarian fetish. I hear we fetch quite a price on the flesh markets… or we used to before Eclipse and our drones burned those markets to the ground."

Daro's laughter was more than a little sinister.

"I had actually planned to sabotage the reactor on their ship, you know?" she went on, sounding a little upset she never got the chance to pull off her escape. "The next time my captors stopped to discharge their drive it was going to flood half the ship with ionizing radiation. Ahhhh, I wish I could've seen it. But before I could make good my escape, I was transferred to another mercenary group… one led by Jona Sederis."

"It sounds like those pirates got lucky."

Daro chuckled again. "You'd think so."

"What do…?"

"I'd already sabotaged their reactor before I left. Without me there to input the right codes to reset the static boom… well. BOOM. It was originally a bit of insurance, a dead woman's switch if you will. In the end, it became my revenge."

"I... see."

"You seem uncomfortable, Miss van Soan."

"Yeah. I'm glad she's on our side," Ilena felt the need to add at that point.

"I'm inclined to agree," Shepard muttered.

"Some time later," Daro continued her story, sounding happy as you please. "Jona met with the asari you know as Shepard. That was when I met Ilena Thanoptis. There was a bit of a scuffle and we both took shelter behind the same box. You won't believe it, but Ilena ended up ending that fight and proving her mettle, especially to the Battle Matron. After that, Jona largely retreated into retirement and Ilena stepped up to take her place and form Eclipse. We would be a very different organization had things gone differently that day."

"You sound like you have a lot of respect for Miss Thanoptis. Is it safe to say you two are good friends?"

"I… suppose we are." There was a brief pause in Daro's interview. "I do not have many friends or peers. Ilena is one of the few."

"On a related topic, is there anyone special in your life?"

"Phphph-what?!"

"That's actually rather nice of her to say," Shepard thought aloud, terminating the interview recording with a swipe of her finger. "She didn't even call you an idiot."

Ilena had her arms crossed over her chest, but couldn't quite resist smiling a little bit. "Okay. Maybe it wasn't all bad. But she's still upstaging me! On my own issue!"

Shepard shrugged. "You'll live."

"Gee, thanks for the sympathy!" Ilena snatched the datapad back and tucked it under her arm. "Stupid forbidden-fruit quarians. She's totally taking advantage of her immune system mods, too. Itsnotfair."

"It isn't a competition, you know," Shepard said when Ilena turned away and began angrily stomping back to her quarters.

"I'll show her… once we get planetside I'll show them all!" Ilena roared, running off. "Just wait and see!"

Shaking her head, Shepard was about to head back to the gym when-

"Major!" Catherine Chambers rounded the corner with a datapad in her hand. The projected image of a drone with purple lipstick on the oculus only meant one thing. "You won't believe this! She's upstaging us in our own issue!"


Daro'Xen nar Shellen
Rank: Chief Technical Engineer "Combat Engineer"

Official Description: "One of Eclipse's founders and one of their most outspoken members, Daro'Xen is one quarian you don't want to underestimate! This ambitious engineer has no qualms about shedding some of the mystery surrounding her people, her opinions, her politics, and most surprisingly: her clothes! Blessed with what has to be the most robust quarian immune system in centuries, Daro'Xen bares all, from her harrowing experiences on pilgrimage to her opinions on Fleet politics, her favorite ammunition modifications, and even why they call her the 'Drone Queen' of Eclipse! Don't miss the interview that will shake and shock the Migrant Fleet!"

Personal Notes:
By the Goddess. I can't believe this. Can you say platinum mine? Can you say: eezo mine? I'm not even talking about the fact that we got a quarian to pose out of her suit and not in a UV sterilized clean room. She even said she'd be up for a beach-shoot tomorrow once we hit the dirt. Eclipse must have top-notch medical facilities for her to take a risk like this, or maybe she just doesn't care. Doesn't matter. This girl just spent four hours ripping into the Migrant Fleet and the Admiralty like a starving krogan at a Thresher Maw cookoff. Had to cut the interview down we had so much material. Exhausted. Exhausting day. This is going to make for an incredible article and a mind-blowing centerfold.

Also… I think dad would be really happy to read this. He never liked the direction the Fleet took after the war. He'd have loved this. Mom would've probably smacked him for staring, though. Haha. Gotta get this right, for him.

[addendum]
This crazy quarian just spent four standard hours hanging half-out of her suit. Not a big deal, right, except by the end she just zipped back up like it was nothing at all. No coughing, no sniffing, no immune reaction at all. I know basic quarian xenobiology and first-aid. I saw her enuea dilating every time she took a breath. There is no way in this galaxy that she did not get an infection during this shoot, even though we took the usual superficial precautions. I'm at a loss. She must've been pumped full of some sort of immune-booster. By the Dalatrass, I admit I'm no biologist or doctor, but I know something weird when I see it!

I'm not even going to get into her politics right now. Not in depth. She wants to ground whole elements of the Migrant Fleet in uncharted space and establish these "enclaves" on neutral planets. I've never seen such a gung-ho quarian outside the Fleet. The thing is, she's in the top ranks of Eclipse. How long before she basically has her own personal army? Her own personal navy? She's best fucking friends with Ilena Thanoptis. We have maybe ten cycles before she's able to de facto stake a claim to a planet in the Terminus or Traverse and just take it and it'll just be a coincidence when a hundred thousand quarians set up shop there and start calling it New Rannoch.

Of course Lara is just skipping on clouds with this quarian stuff. She had this big grin throughout the whole thing. Mark my words: this is a big mess just waiting to explode out of the egg. Just wait and see.