Over the days it took for Kenn to fit the pirate's mass effect generator in the human dreadnought, he'd gotten to know a few of the various different officers on the ship. The Chief Engineer, Haynes, didn't like him much, or more accurately didn't like what he was. That was all fine and dandy with Kenn, because he didn't really like Haynes much either. The man snubbed him at every available opportunity, and went out of his way to exclude Kenn from important discussions on the installation on the drive. He couldn't tell if this was just stubbornness, pride, or protectiveness, but he didn't care to find out.

Rowley, the XO, was a little nicer, though very formal. She didn't really speak to Kenn all that much, save for ensuring that he had everything he needed, and that Haynes wasn't being overly obstructive. It all seemed very performative to Kenn, though, like she was doing all of that out of a sense of obligation rather than legitimate concern. Perhaps 'polite' was more accurate than 'nice'.

Fuchs was a strange character. He seemed to struggle with the English language that they'd defaulted to in conversations, and though Kenn assumed that he was competent (else how would he have made it to becoming the captain of a warship this big), the translation software gave off the exact opposite impression. Kenn didn't really like talking to Fuchs, not because he was particularly mean or anything, but because his stilted speech made the whole ordeal an exercise in frustration.

The last human Kenn had really talked to was Brooks, and he was… jolly. In stark contrast to Rowley, the man was about as informal as anyone could get away with and not be thrown into the brig. He would laugh, joke, and ask questions without reservation, while the rest of the crew maintained a respectful distance at least. Kenn liked Brooks, if for no other reason than he was someone who he could actually talk normally to, rather than having to struggle around a language barrier or worry about whether or not the innocent question he was asking about the ship was going to turn out to be rather less innocent in the eyes of his hosts.

That was just a sideshow to why he was really there, though, and that was to fit in the engine. Looking back, it would've been far easier to scrap the pirate's ship and just make a new drive from scratch than trying to transplant their drive into the dreadnought. Fortunately, the human's drones were able to do a lot of the heavy lifting (literally and figuratively). Even the Stormtroopers, who Kenn had come to understand were some sort of elite military force in powered armour, had pitched in to help where they could. He'd been assigned a pair as helping hands and bodyguards, and they were very diligent, never once leaving his sight and working without rest.

The combined efforts of an experienced quarian engineer and an entire dreadnought's worth of drones and support personnel had managed to get it all done in only a little over what Kenn had originally predicted, and everything had gone to plan. They now couldn't kill him and be done with it, at least not without seriously compromising their ability to make use of their new mass effect drive, and without any real knowledge of the rest of the galaxy, they were reasonably reliant on his judgment to upgrade to a proper drive rather than limping on the one from the salvaged frigate.

Kenn wouldn't just return from his Pilgrimage with a third of the eezo from the freighter, he'd also return with a dreadnought flush with the other two thirds looking for a full refit. Of course, the former would be enough, but the latter was just a nice extra - something that certainly wouldn't hurt his standing within the fleet, and if he went to have a private chat with the admirals, he might even end up with a slight commission for the recommendation.

It had all gone perfectly to plan, but that didn't change the fact that none of this sat well with Kenn. What exactly would he do when he returned to the fleet? Assuming he could get a commission, he could retire on the spot. Maybe even buy his own ship, drown his sorrows by allowing only the most attractive women onboard. As amusing as the idea was, it didn't really help. Six years ago, he would've leapt at that opportunity, but those six years has changed him. He wasn't the man he once was, and after cruising around the galaxy for so long, you couldn't easily leave that behind.

He was tired, emotionally and physically, but the allure of the stars never once dimmed. Maybe returning to the fleet would remind him of why he wanted to go home in the first place. Quarians don't deal with extended isolation well, after all. He couldn't return to the life he led on the Citadel, not even with the riches he stood to potentially gain.

There was only one way to find out, of course, and that was to return home. Standing on the bridge with the humans as the dreadnought, mirroring its master's caution, slowly aligns itself with the relay.

"So you're sure this gravity field will hold?" Rowley asks from her chair, where following proper regulations, she was secured. The other humans on the deck, down from the captain to the lowest ensign, had all secured themselves to the ship in one way or another. Not a single one of them trusted this supposed mass effect. After all, they might not have any better choice, but they have every reason to distrust FTL technology.

"I'd stake my life on it." Kenn said confidently. From his current position standing beside the XO, he could see out of the bridge's window, in which the sight of the relay grew. Seeing the outline of the ship beside the relay gave a sense of scale that Kenn hadn't had previously. Just like seeing the freighter next to the dreadnought contextualized the sheer scale of the ship, so did seeing the dreadnought next to the relay contextualize it's scale. The massive structure dwarfed the dreadnought. It really was a wonder of engineering that the Protheans had left for them.

"You might well be doing just that." Brooks cranes his neck back over his chair to look up at Kenn. "I mean, if that and the inertial dampening fail, you're going to hit the window like a missile. Saw that happen to someone once. Not the inertial dampening part, but the hitting the window like a missile and breaking all the bones in their body part."

"Shouldn't you be talking to that thing, Brooks? We have to make it through two of these relays before we can refit this ship, and I don't want you to end up ruining something on our first jump." Rowley drummed her fingers on the chair's arm as she chastised the Lieutenant. "I often wonder what we pay you for."

"That should all be handled, if Kenn's worth his salt." He flashes another smile at the Quarian, then looks thoughtful. "You do realize that we're not getting paid anymore, right?"

"Just do it, Brooks."

"Aye aye, Ma'am."

As the ship aligns itself for the final approach, the signal is given and the relay begins it's work. The familiar azure lightning crackles and strikes the ship as the bound energy of the swirling vortex demands release and the arms of the relay begin to spin faster and faster. The humans look uncomfortable, but Kenn remains unperturbed, and the calm becomes infectious. Clearly space lightning was normal. The activity reaches its apex, and space is suddenly distorted at the bow of the ship. With a sudden lurch as the inertial dampening systems fought with the acceleration the ship was under, they were underway.

Blue light played across the sky as they sped towards the target. The awed look of the crew proved more interesting than the light show he'd seen thousands of times. He'd almost forgotten how beautiful it looked. Before they could get used to it, however, it was already over. Space before them stretched again before rebounding back like an elastic band. Inertial dampening once again fought with the acceleration, but a cursory glance around the bridge revealed that… everything seemed to be intact. There was another relay in the distance, another star, and a few twinkling dots that could be planets.

"Damage report. Also, someone please check that we aren't in another galaxy. The past week has been exciting but I'm not eager to repeat it, thank you." Fuchs demanded. Of course, Kenn only heard half of it, but it was enough to get the picture.

"We're in the right place, at least according to the maps that we lifted from the codex, sir." The navigation officer replied. Despite having had over a week, Fuchs hadn't actually learnt his name as he had meant to. The man on his right remained a vague figure that he knew existed, and little more. Now that he thought about it, Fuchs really hadn't done anything the past few weeks but read and be slightly concerned that he had been less convincing than he'd hoped and that Rowley was planning a mutiny. No mutiny had materialized, but he had taken to sleeping with a handgun, just in case.

"Excellent." He nodded in Kenn's direction in approval, a gesture he returned. Another person that he had wanted to get to know was this alien. By the sounds of Brook's report, these quarians could actually turn out to be very useful allies. Being natural engineers and outcasts from the galactic community, they were perfectly suited to bring the Epimetheus up to local standards, but as Rowley had warned, Fuchs had to think longer term. A colony might be a good idea, and using the quarians as intermediaries and trading partners could help support that endeavour. They'd also be the ones most interested in a trade for technology, should they end up deciding that that was a good idea. Remaining on good terms with them could prove useful, and getting to know one of them personally might've been a good idea… if they could talk. Fuchs had half a mind to order Brooks to come up with some sort of translation package for Hyperian, that way they could communicate without resorting to hand gestures, but he had better things to do.

For the moment, anyway, hand gestures would have to do.


The second jump is completed without incident, though despite the Chief Engineer's protests that the drive was moments away from falling apart. Of course, it probably was though it did hold long enough to get them within range of the Migrant Fleet. Kenn imagined that he could almost see the Fleet in the distance, though they were far, far out of visual range. The sensors could pick them up, of course, though they'd need to approach much closer bef-

For the first, and Kenn hoped the last time, he saw the human dreadnought enter full combat mode. The lights of the bridge dimmed, and faded away to nothing, and an ominous red glow was all that illuminated the crew. Alarms sounded, displays were brought up, and a map of the system was quickly drawn. All this and they had barely popped out of the other side of the relay.

"General quarters, general quarters, all hands brace for acceleration." Fuchs spoke into the intercom, his voice echoing throughout the ship, though he seemed more focused on the tacmap, which had decided that the various contacts of the Migrant Fleet were either inexplicably hot rocks or hostile warships.

"It's alright, it's alright! That's the Fleet!" Kenn would recognize the formation of the contacts on the tacmap anywhere, liveships near the center, the rest of the fleet in a cordon around them. "You don't need to panic, just hail them!"

"This is just standard procedure, until we can positively ID them." Rowley explained, barely even flinching despite the panic. The stars in the bridge window began to violently jerk around. The dreadnought was taking evasive action. "A couple of ships, we go on heightened alert. A fleet? This is the response."

"It seems a bit excessive." Kenn muttered, slightly less panicked now that it didn't seem like they'd be opening fire. "You really should hail them sooner rather than later, though, especially if we absolutely have to move like… this." He gestures out the window, the view being somewhat naeusating. Seriously, how did the humans manage to deal with space combat without inertial dampening?

"Already on it." Brooks announced. "It's just… we should be able to figure this out… There we go! Captain, you've got the horn."

"Seriou-?!" Fuchs startles, almost dropping the intercom before realizing that he was now speaking directly to the alien fleet. "Ahem. This is the HNC Epimetheus, requesting permission to… dock, I guess. I mean, that is assuming that you have something that can take us, and- oh wow, you've got some big ships. Jesus." He rambled into the mic, and all of it in Hyperian.

Kenn couldn't just watch the to-be trainwreck evolving in front of him. Walking over to the captain, he holds his hand out, gesturing towards the mic. It only takes him a few seconds of staring at Kenn with a blank expression to figure out what he meant, and to hand over the mic.

"This is Kenn'Dannah nar Rayya, requesting permission to dock with the…" Kenn took a moment to think. Pretty much no ship would deny him access with the load of eezo he had. Not that he really needed to choose now, but it sure would be easier if he had the humans drop him off at the doorstep of the ship he wanted to live on. He liked the liveships, they had greenery and some open space, and it wouldn't mean a massive change in lifestyle from his childhood, so at least it'd be familiar. "Shellen."

There's a silence from the other end that probably indicated confusion. "To clarify, this is the… 'HNC Epimetheus'?"

"That's correct."

"Please hold." There's a click from the other end.

The alarms had stopped, and the ship had slowed it's maneuvering to a relative crawl, presumably in response to learning that the Migrant Fleet wasn't going to ambush them. At least not immediately.

"What was that?" Kenn looked up to find Fuchs' face uncomfortably close to his mask.

"Er… Oh, right, you don't have proper translation systems. You know, I could probably put something together for you if you just gave me a language package, it wouldn't even take that long." Fuchs takes this news about as well as he'd take a sledgehammer to the face, recoiling with the force of his own idiocy.

"Why the hell didn't I think of that!" He slapped himself on the forehead hard enough that some crew members turned around thinking that someone had been punched. "Brooks, can you send him a goddamn language package? I'm fairly sure that we've got a dictionary loaded into the system somewhere."

"It's not just the words, sir, it's syntax and-"

"Can you do it or not?"

"Sure. I figured out how to transfer between our two systems, and we can just use the codex as an-" Fuchs silenced him by raising a single hand, while gesturing to Kenn with the other.

"Just send it."

Brooks sighs, and returns to his console. After a few seconds of furious typing, he reaches under the 'desk' and pulls a thumb drive out of a slot. "Hey, Kenn, do you have that codex thing on you? I think I left the, er, thingy in there." He asks, hopping out of his chair and approaching, brandishing the thumb drive.

"The thingy?" Kenn asks as he fishes the codex out from his pack. The 'thingy' was some sort of adaptor device, between the human's data transfer system and the council standard. It was crude, all exposed wires and green PCBs, but it did the job. "Oh, the adaptor?"

"Yeah, that's the word I was looking for." Without further question, Brooks slots the thumb drive into the codex. "So, you should have the language suite on that datapad. I don't know how long the rest'll take, but for both our sakes please get the captain one ASAP."

Fuchs only half understood the proceedings, but understood enough to know that Brooks was probably calling him an idiot again.

Fortunately, before they could start bickering again, Kenn had gotten to work. The translation systems were designed to digest this exact sort of information, and Kenn had no problems updating his own. He cast his mind back to the past week, and wondered exactly how much easier it would have all been if he could translate the language that the majority of the crew used. He suppressed a groan.

"Alright, testing, testing. Can you understand me?" Kenn was happy to see that Fuchs' eyes lit up in recognition.

"Perfectly!" He chuckled. "Wow, that was entirely too easy." Then, his face suddenly went dark. "Do you mean that we went the past week barely understanding each other when we could've solved that problem in less than thirty seconds?" The sudden realization that Fuchs had come to was followed by the exact same expression that Kenn's face had worn only moments earlier.

Brooks, however, found that utterly hilarious, and laughed all the way back to his station.

"Pretty much. That aside, it won't be very helpful if you actually want to talk to anyone else. I've had my system on speaker the whole time, and that system won't work unless the person you're talking to also has the language package, which they're pretty unlikely to have." Kenn explains. He enjoyed explaining technical matters, especially when his audience were as emotive as Fuchs.

"Alright, I get it. So do I need one of those translator things for myself?"

"You will. I should have enough omni-gel to print one out." Putting the codex away, he pulled up his omni-tool (another seemingly mundane thing that impressed these humans) and checked the omni-gel reserves. Finding that there was enough for something so small, he checks through his library of schematics and finds something that should work. It was built for the local humans, who might've been a little smaller and bulkier than these ones, but their heads were still roughly the same shape.

What Fuchs and Kenn saw were two different things. Fuchs saw something like a miniaturized nano-forge print complex electronics in a moment, and Kenn saw an omni-tool make a pretty simple translator system. Fuchs wondered whether it was nanobots or not while Kenn inspected it for flaws. Seeming sufficient, he hands the small headset. It was flexible, wiry, and most important of all, cheap.

"It looks good enough. Should come pre-charged, but frankly it's not like it really needs much in the way of power. I'm guessing it should be pretty obvious how you wear it."

Fuchs had taken off his hat, and was halfway through the process of putting the translator on. "Yeah, it's simple enough. How do I turn it on?"

"It's already on." Kenn switches his translator back to the normal mode with a few button presses. "You should be able to understand me?"

"I can. Interesting." Fuchs replaces his hat, snug against the bracket keeping the translator intact. "I'm guessing it's a one way thing?"

"Kinda? It depends, you can change how it works as and when needed." Kenn flicks through his omni-tool to check that everything's functional. "For now, given that you're the only one with the 'Hyperian' language package, I've set it to a mode where it'll translate quarian speech, then beam your response to their translators in quarian."

"Couldn't we just give them the language package?" Fuchs asks as he batted the mic.

"They're probably not going to accept random data packages from an unknown ship. The Fleet are pretty paranoid when it comes to cyber defence."

"You know, it's all well and good that you two are getting along, but you are aware that we actually can't understand what our guest is saying now?" Rowley leans towards Fuchs, who had temporarily forgotten that he had a crew.

"Oh, right. Yeah, I suppose it's probably for the best that you keep it on speaker mode for now, Kenn." Fuchs admits.

"Sure. I'll put something together for everyone else before we board. Hey, actually, they haven't gotten back in touch, have they?"

"Nope. They put us on hold. Pretty convenient, actually, given that the captain couldn't actually talk to them until now." Brooks answers from his console. "Why do you think it's taking them so long, anyway? Is this normal?"

"They'd try to ID you, but being that the ship won't be on any local records, they'll come up dry. Right about now, they'll be deliberating on whether or not they should refuse entry, but I'd bet they'll let us in, though they'll want me to give a code to confirm it is actually Kenn'Dannah nar Rayya and not a pirate pretending to be me."

Fuchs sighed. "Even in a new galaxy, I'm on hold."

The comm crackles. "Sorry for the delay. We cannot identify your ship. Kenn, please verify."

"After time adrift among open stars, along tides of light and through shoals of dust, I shall return to where I began."

"Permission granted. Transmitting docking coordinates now. Welcome back." The controller replies, a sense relief clear in his tone. They were probably an inch away from opening fire. After all, an unknown ship just jumped into the system, began making evasive maneuvers while hailing them and spewing nonsense at them. Kenn would be on edge too.

"We'll need a security and quarantine team to meet us. Our ship is… not clean." A shudder runs up his spine at the memory of the shower room.

"Understood. Modifying coordinates now, approach exterior docking cradle four."


Actually docking with the Shellen was a difficult matter. For one, though the liveships were huge, about twice as long as the Epimetheus and significantly more massive, the dreadnought was still too large to make docking a quick and easy process. Further complicating the matter was the fact that the Epimetheus didn't adopt the local 'universal' docking clamp system. Fuchs wondered why he didn't just offer to take a shuttle, but by that point it was already far too late to suggest that and not feel like an idiot.

Still, awkward though it may be, the docking was finally completed. It did take a few engineers helping the docking arm attach to the outer airlock of the Epimetheus while in full EVA gear. Fortunately, though, they were able to confirm that the arm wasn't about to vent them out into space, and the ship reluctantly cycled the airlock.

Standing in the doorway were Kenn, Fuchs, Rowley, and a half dozen Stormtroopers. Though Fuchs knew it would be astoundingly stupid to start any trouble with a dreadnought stuck to a quater of your civilian population, that went both ways: The Epimetheus was surrounded by quarian warships, a squadron of which had escorted the ship in.

Rowley, for her part, had taken the whole thing rather well, at least as far as Fuchs knew. Normally she would've raised far more complaints about flying into the middle of an alien fleet, but she seemed to accept Fuchs' call. He wasn't sure whether that was because she actually placed faith in his judgement, or because she was waiting for him to get himself killed so she could take over.

"So, any last minute pointers?" Fuchs' speech was muffled by the mask which he wore. Not only was that demanded by the doctor, but by Kenn too, though for opposite reasons. One was worried about him leaving viruses, and the other about him picking some up. Him (and anyone else boarding the ship) needing to wear a mask was one thing they agreed upon.

"Don't worry, I'll be brokering the deal, so I can do a lot of the heavy lifting, diplomatically. All you need to do is look non-threatening." Kenn looks back through the docking arm at the towering humans in military regalia, with a figure that looked more like a quarian writ large than humans scaled up. Behind them, their Stormtroopers loomed over even them, with strange exotic weapons in their hands. "That shouldn't be too difficult, right?"

"Not difficult at all." Fuchs chuckled as he walked past Kenn, heading for the end of the arm. "I'm the picture of non-threatening." Striding on, he comes to a crashing halt before the other side of the airlock. "How do I open this?"

"Just wave at the green hologram." Kenn steps forward, waggling his hand through the hologram projected out from the airlock door, and it slides open with a whirr and a hiss.

The inside of the quarian ship looked odd. The immediate inside of the airlock had nets, boxes, and other ad hoc storage solutions filled to the brim with… stuff. As far as Fuchs could tell, junk. It reminded him a little of very early spaceflight, where acceleration was carefully planned and space was at even more of a premium than it was now. Every surface that could be used for storage was.

Rounding a corner, large glass windows illuminated a long corridor, with a handful of other quarians with guns standing at the ready with another quarian in a red, black, and white suit front and center. The armed ones seem to tense at the appearance of the Stormtroopers clanking their way through the corridor, only a few steps behind Fuchs, Rowley, and Kenn, though the one in the center remains as calm as can be.

"Kenn'Dannah nar Rayya, I take it? One hell of an entrance, I must admit. Few people return from Pilgrimage on a dreadnought." The quarian takes a step forwards, approaching Fuchs with his hand out. "Admiral Rael'Zorah. I take it that you're the captain of that ship?"

"Commodore Elias Fuchs. I'm the captain of the Epimetheus, yes." He took the offered hand and shook it. A firm, crisp handshake. Fuchs breathed a sigh of relief when he realized that he wasn't about to get into another handshake war.

"Admiral. I'm surprised you came down here for this."

"An alien dreadnought that we don't recognize blows into the system, starts performing evasive maneuvers, then hails us and shouts gibberish down the line, all the while we're on high alert owing to Geth activity? I think that warrants an admiral's presence. Besides, I was on the ship when you hailed us. I'm not going too far out of my way."

Kenn looks at Fuchs. Fuchs couldn't see his eyes, mouth, or any other facial feature, but knew that if he could, he'd been saying "I told you so."

"So, I take it that you didn't bring some humans back to the fleet as your Pilgrimage gift. I imagine you'll be talking to one of the captains once we clear up this situation, but purely out of curiosity, what are you bringing?"

"Well, the humans are part of it, you see I was out on a freighter, when suddenly pirates attacked and…"