* * * Happy Memories * * *

Shepard was in his stateroom, "resting" per Chakwas' directive, but in fact had nothing remotely physical to do until he had permission from the CFS. The other two missions from Hackett were still on his ToDo list.

He brushed his right ear with two fingers. "Pressly, have you read the MDP from Hackett's office?"

There was a pause as the message was routed.

"Read it while you were on the ground, sir," said Pressly's voice in his implant; it always sounded much clearer than through an external speaker.

"How fast can we get aboard Ontario?"

"We're still at Charon station just now, sir; supplies were delivered to us from Admiral Hackett, and they notified us as we were inbound. Doctor Chakwas and her team were anxious to get some of that stuff, and they're trying to help Gomez, but I think he'd rather be doing it by himself."

"Any idea how long until we clear the relay?"

"I still wanted to hear from you about destination, sir."

"The Admiral has asked that the Ontario situation get priority; there's a hostage."

"Farinata system, then?"

"Assume best speed."

"At best speed..." The navigator tickled the console before him, studied the results. "Looks like we can make that…about sixteen hours after we get through the relay. I'll order up a LRSA at two hours out, or when we first acquire, though I doubt we'll get a lot more than the MDP already shows."

"Excellent, thank you. Shepard out."

At the sound of the connection closing, Tali's helmet popped in through the open door. "Hello!" she said brightly.

"Hi, Tali; come on in. What can I do for you?"

As the quarian approached, she extended a hand to grab a chair and drag it to the desk where Shepard sat, but was practically stopped by the chair's resistance to being moved. "Oof. I didn't know you would have your antiplaning set so high in here."

"It's the ship's default; Earthnormal. I saw no need to adjust it," Shepard explained.

Tali grabbed the chair with both hands and hauled it over to the desk. "I assume this will still stick to the floor even if gravity goes out?

"It does. It's even sensitive to when that happens, and will hold on more tightly. Unless you toggle it off; that switch near the base."

Tali glanced at the toggle, nodded, and sat facing him. "Just making sure."

"That the newcomer humans have learned how to build starships? We did have help from the turians on this one." Even Tali's Human Interaction VI couldn't tell whether the man was being snarky, or just having fun with her. At least until he smiled, giving it away. "So what can I do for you?"

She held up a holographic token that Shepard's ARO tagged as Tali's Happy Memory Share.

"Did you open my memory yet?"

He sighed and shook his head. "Sorry, haven't had a chance."

Tali withdrew her hand, the icon disappearing as she closed her hand around it. "Well, it's quite a brief memory, so if you wanted to spend 27 seconds or so on it, I wanted to talk about it…and a few other things, too." She waved her hand in a circle toward him, "Go ahead, I don't mind waiting."

Shepard's VI displayed a representation of the holotoken in his field of view; he grabbed it and tossed it on the desk, where it exploded into an immersive Tali's-eye view of a closed door; the change in his inner ear informed him she was riding upwards in a lift. Shepard paused playback and looked around quickly to get oriented, recognised he was seeing the inside of the Citadel/C-Sec lift in particular (the transparent section of the floor gave this away.)

He was a bit surprised to see himself in the elevator with her; she was talking, "There's a lot of prestige being in one of the military ships; it almost always means you're really good at what you're doing."

He had missed that this was a compliment to him when he first heard it.

The lift stopped, and the doors slid open.

It was a little weird to have Tali's small frame walking for him, and yet he felt her stride and breath, the unfamiliar pressure and weight distribution of her devices and suit systems.

As she walked directly out of the lift and along the dock, Tali continued, "There are a few types of animals that we keep on a few of the liveships, but they are relatively space- and resource-intensive. We have enough flora and fauna on ice to colonize a planet, but we've never been able to find a planet available to colonize."

This time, his own thoughts were missing; he was living Tali's experience. She had turned to look where she was walking because she was excited, and walking ahead of him, and had to act like she knew at least partly where they were going. The integration of Tali's experience (what she had actually seen and heard) with the computed (what the simulator had gathered from other resources about the place where she was at the time of recording) allowed him to look around and see the environment as she had without being limited to it.

And then her eyes fell on the shiny new Earth Alliance warship.

Shepard felt Tali's heart race - his did sympathetically - and it almost felt himself drawn forward to it.

He'd not yet experienced anyone else's 6-channel output, only his own. Though it was touted as a "brain data" channel, he had never considered that it would include kinesthetics or autonomics. Apparently his own system synched with the output, made it visceral and immediate.

It was as immersive as PVR had to offer, and he didn't encounter it often; clearly she had the same tech for recording.

Mouth open, eyes wide, she nearly stopped in her tracks, and then sprinted across the walkway toward Normandy's prow, slamming against the rail at full force; she leaned out over it and pointed. "Keelah, is that your ship? It's…it's beautiful! I've never seen anything like it! It hardly looks like an Earth ship…or anything else I've ever seen!" She looked over her shoulder at him, pointed at Normandy's prow, "That, right there. Is that your ship?"

Her exhilaration, her euphoria, was his own; he almost didn't know whether to laugh, sing, or leap into the air.

Disconcertingly, he heard his own voice distantly say, "Yes it is. I think Normandy is the Alliance's newest ship. So new that we haven't even had a proper mission yet; we just got back from our shakedown."

Tali's VIs and sensors drank as much as they could; her HUD filled with data callouts, identifying systems, capacities, pulling data from her NetBite and correlating it with what she could see. She switched the display to clear the data and studied the ship hanging lightly from docking clamps.

Shepard's experience of Tali's euphoria did not change as she turned and looked over a shoulder at the human again, just standing there smiling indulgently, almost seeing it through her eyes. He heard Tali ask, "When can we go aboard?"

He watched himself point confidently at the docking arm. "Right now."

The weird part was feeling her/his heart leap at the answer. Tali started toward the gangway; she practically ran there.

"Wait wait wait," Shepard's discorporate self jogged to catch up. "Security will want to see me there, and I'll identify you." He trotted past the end of the covered gangway, and strode to its end. Looking over his shoulder, he waved her over.

At that, the experience wavered and ended. His stateroom dissolved out of the shimmering effect.

He shook his head, laughed once. "It's so funny to see myself from your perspective. I look so tall and massive in armour from your view." He shook his head again. "That alone was worth the trip, but to have your experience of first seeing Normandy…well, that was just a delight. I've never expered a candid 6-channel source, so this was kind of a surprise for me."

"You have it, but you don't use it?"

Shepard waved a hand dismissively, "It's just a novelty. Sure, it makes it more immersive, but – except when it's something like this – I don't need it; it's more of a distraction most of the time."

"Why'd you bother to install it?"

"Didn't want to do it later, doesn't use enough resources to exclude it, would have taken too long to unthread all the associated stuff."

"You could have just tasked a VI with that."

He shrugged, "I thought I might want to try it later, but figured I'd get a bunch of updates and patches before that happened."

"Well you've had one now. I hope it made the experience as much fun for you as it was for me. I particularly wanted you to have that so you know just how much it means to me to be here, and how thankful I am that you were willing to let me join your crew. I am so happy, and everyone has been so nice to me."

Shepard wasn't sure what would be an appropriate response. He could not see her smiling, but he could certainly hear it. He said, "Thank you so much for that; I've never had anything quite like it. It was exhilarating, and to have seen that through your eyes. It made me feel more…optimistic than I have in years."

She stood, extending both her open hands, palms up, to him. "When I first came aboard, I offered my Captain's compliments to you through one of your officers."

Shepard stood as well, facing her, not exactly sure what to do; apparently his VI didn't know, either.

"But now I offer you my own, Commander Stephen Shepard hod Normandy. I offer my services to you and your fair ship, Keelah Selai. May our efforts lead us home." At that, she bowed slightly, and Shepard's VI finally caught up, displaying on his ARO how to perform the acceptance of her compliments and offer of service.

He brushed his hands over hers, as if scooping away what had been offered. His VI prompted him, "Thank you, Tali'Zorah. You are home while you are here."

Before he could fully draw his hands away, she reached up and lightly grabbed his fingertips, shaking them madly, "And you bought me armor, and upgraded weapons, and I just don't know how to thank you!" She was almost quivering, "So thank you very very very much!

"Ah!" she gasped as she let him go; she sat back down. "I'm sorry, I can get so carried away sometimes. Now, I don't want to take a lot of your time, but I have a few questions. Have you ever watched Fleet and Flotilla?"

It seemed such an abrupt topic change, Shepard almost laughed. "No. Should I?"

"Well, you should if you want some helpful insights into what life is like on Palaven, not just in our Flotilla or their navy. It'll tell you a lot about turian civilian culture that your Alliance may have just glossed over. Even if it doesn't affect their lives every day, it influenced their lives growing up, and it's what they go home to when off deployment. It's who they are under the armour and pretense. You may think they are all rigid and militaristic, but they're often quite passionate and driven. It's the drive to succeed that gets channeled into a drive to make the larger group succeed, they are often too willing to give up personal lives in doing so."

"I thought it was really a romance between a turian and a quarian."

"Oh, it is, but…and it has lot of simply poetic dialogue that I love to work into conversation. You can learn a lot about turians…and quarians…from watching it.

"Anyway, the reason I ask is because I noticed you call your crew by their first names, but Garrus by his family."

He sighed quietly as he thought. "I suppose it's a lot to do with his being a C-Sec officer. I'm trying to be respectful. As an Alliance officer, I work for most of the humans I meet, so it can take me a while to become informal with them, especially civilians. It's also the only way I have ever addressed turians; I was deployed with a unit of them for a few months last year. But for the crew? We're on the same team, so it's…I suppose it's like family. 'Band of Brothers,' you know?

"Captain Anderson started me doing it years ago, and while it varies by assignment, it's always the CO's call. Now that it's my command, it would seem wrong to do it any other way."

He smiled, "Actually, I think I've just about got him sorted in my own head. But thanks for recommending Fleet and Flotilla, I really didn't know much about it before." He paused to respond to one of the facts his VI had displayed on his ARO, "Do you think I should watch the whole show, or the four-part miniseries?"

"Oh, watch the show if you have time, speedwatch it if you don't. They cut out a lot of the stuff from the show for time reasons, but they put a few new things in. They do a really good job showing the differences between them and us…though it is aimed mostly at turians." The quarian shrugged visibly, "Which is probably because they have more honors-level graduates every year than we even have kids in school. But there were some quarians involved in writing and production, and so they almost never miss a nuance. If you have a Social Interaction VI, it can really help you see what you're being shown. If you don't have one, or don't want to leave it installed at the time, there are even standalone plug-ins for use on any HUD that will do it for you." She bobbed her head awkwardly, "You know…if you don't mind using a HUD.

"Oh, that reminds me; I saw you moving like you have a full ARO. I've seen some data on your HUD layer, but you hardly use it. Not many humans have or use AROs. Are you partially psychic, or do you have cybernetics in your brain like me?" She tapped her head.

"I have a neurological implant from when I was a kid," he explained. "It was because of an accident, but I make the most of it. You can tell that just from...how I move?"

Tali nodded, mostly to herself. "Well, I have a Human Interaction VI that told me. ThoughI did investigate how it reached that conclusion." She leaned forward suddenly, "Okay, so what Garrus is trying to show you is that he trusts you, and that's why he wants you to use his first name. It might even make him sad that you haven't yet. So don't be shy. You might go talk with him and find out about him. My mother always told me that it's hard to dislike someone once you get to know them. Sometimes we don't talk to people because it's easier to keep a known enemy than start an unknown friend. And that's a tragedy.

"But I never really understood it until I saw you and Garrus. I mean, I know about humans and turians."

Shepard chuckled, "Turians aren't my enemy. As I said, I was even assigned to a turian group for a while."

"A professional relationship can be a good start. But…um…didn't your father get killed by turians?"

He sighed thoughtfully, and then shrugged. "Honestly, I don't know. I always assumed it was batarians. I know it was during the First Contact War, but…I suppose part of me never wanted to know."

"Oh." Tali seemed suddenly unsure of herself.

"Where did you find out?"

"Um…I watched a video link. That someone gave me. I also found out you won the Star of Terra, the Alliance's favourite award to give to dead guys."

Shepard nodded knowingly, smiled with a faraway look in his eyes. "Award for dead guys," he repeated, "Oh, that's…" – using the word 'funny' might be inappropriate – "insightful. I had never thought of it that way, but you're probably right."

"And you've actually fought geth?"

"Yes, on Eden Prime. Just a day before you came aboard. Even salvaged one of their weapons. I'd let you have a look at it, but I turned it in at the Citadel."

Tali waved him off. "That's nice of you, but we've collected geth weapons for years. Our military knows practically everything they've fielded since they showed up again, and makes sure everyone else in the flotilla knows about it." As she was speking, her omnitool lit, and she flipped past a few images to an assembly diagram of the assault rifle Shepard had recovered. "Was it this one?"

He nodded, "That's it."

"It's their most common weapon. It has an interesting innovation…here." She zoomed the image in, popped it out into full 3D, and highlighted an assembly. "Practically every 'small arms' weapon in production today uses a linear accelerator, but that requires a chamber that seals only one end at a time." Reaching a hand into the projection, she zoomed in precisely and pushed parts aside to reveal -

"This," she put a finger into the holo and pointed to parts as she explained, "is what gives the geth assault rifle such a high cyclic rate. This little thing that looks like a race track? It's not a track, it's a woven cerametallic webbelt. Each of these little scoops digs a fragment off the ammoblock, and the ammoblock actually moves as it's firing. Gives it that insane cyclic. We think they think that the side that throws the most bullets wins, so they don't care if they're smaller than usual. They're trying to defeat us with math."

"Interesting," Shepard nodded. "Well, I must admit I like the idea of math being the determining factor, and I suspect they can do math better than we can, but I'm not sure it works that way." He smiled, "This has been really enlightening."

"Oh, good." Tali stood quickly from the chair. "Okay, that's all for now. Thanks!"

Shepard watched her go, shook his head. He hoped she hadn't felt kicked out when he said it had been enlightening.

# # #

Tali had almost run away in guilt. After the interaction between their DCEs on that last mission, Tali's rogue VI captured accessways to Shepard's datastores, including unsecured savegames. And in the middle of their conversation, it had popped this information up on on her HUD.

She was mortified. Had he seen the displays? Would his ARO detect and translate them, and tell him what she knew? She had practically bolted from the room after dismissing the information from view.

It wasn't until she was back in the relative comfort of Engineering that she allowed herself to look at it.

As a gamer herself, she slowly realised it could be interesting to see what sort of games humans, and particularly Shepard, played. Though she struggled with guilt, she found herself drawn in, not because she wanted to hurt him or exploit this knowledge, but because she wanted to give him something back. Something as significant to him as all he had done was to her.

The last game he had played was ancient, relatively speaking, but it was known to her, albeit distantly: Calico Jack 3: Jack of All Trades. It had been released in 2157, 26 years earlier. I was just into my first suit, and we were still living in Bay 9's portico. Father was just starting in trainable VI development, and mother was helping Captain Nima's family.

She thought briefly of the Nima children, her playmates, Tiban and Zeth, before returning to her investigation of Shepard's game. The savegame listing showed this was the last game he played, and that he had played it for days at a time for years. At least through the mid-2160s, which was practically forever, even for a procedurally-generated game. And he'd never actually stopped playing it. He had last played it for about six hours a month ago. Her VI had even pointed out that he had an active poster of it on a wall that was easy to miss (unless you were looking for it.)

It looks like he just spent his life here, she realised. Especially through 2163. But he still plays it, and when he restarted, it's almost always from one particular save:

Date - 23Dec2157
Game location - Serrice Arrival
PCs - solo
NPCs - private
Pending story events - meet Talia, investigate asari
 Branching - full extrapolative

The quarian read it three times: this game character had her name, but with an "a" appended to the end. Does he like me because of this?

One of her VIs located a running NfoX with the game; she synched her environment, loaded the savegame, touched the START icon.

Already in PVR, the transition was one she was used to: the one environment blurred and crossfaded into another. Her first impression was that she was standing at the outer door of an airlock, open to the world she recognised immediately as Thessia. Though she had never been there, it was a location frequently used in storytelling, and its daytime sky, a faintly aqua-tinted cyan, was a giveaway. Her HUD added a callout that confirmed this.

A glance back showed that the airlock was in fact merely a hatch on a tiny escape pod, and it didn't seem to have fared the landing very well; smoke belched from several places on its bent surfaces. It looked comically inadequate to Tali's technical eye.

She looked out again; a lone asari – and a very attractive one by any measure – was approaching from a landed skycar. Tali could tell at once that it was an older skycar, but that fit with the age of the game. Beyond her was a city, with a well-developed skyline with the typical "soaring tent" architecture. It was hard to tell if the pod had "landed" in a park, or simply very close to the city itself. There were riparian woods and grasses typical of equatorial Thessia as far as she could otherwise tell.

The approaching figure wore gossamer robes in red and magenta, though belted, they flowed as she moved. "Are you all right?" The asari was still far enough away to require a raised voice, "Do you need help?"

"Um…yes," Tali volunteered, "I seem to have crashed my escape pod, and I don't really know where I am. I don't think I'm hurt, but…um…I could sure use some help." She smiled mischievously to herself, "Do you know how to fix escape pods?"

"I'm very sorry, I do not. But perhaps we can find someone who can. Do you have any personal belongings that should come with you? You are welcome to stay with me until you know what you must do."

Tali ducked back into the pod, looking quickly for anything obvious. There was a small handcase, an open and mostly-empty aidkit, some tools scattered about the floor and other seat. A thin jacket hung from a proturbance near the overhead. The one open storage door in the bulkhead looked like it was barely large enough for the aidkit.

Glancing at herself, she saw she was now a human, with bandages applied liberally.

It wasn't a jacket, it was a blouse, she realised. Tali quickly grabbed the shirt and pulled it on.

"I wasn't sure anyone had survived that landing," the asari was getting close enough to talk in more normal tones, "And you look like you're in better condition than your pod. Is anyone with you?"

Tali looked into the tiny 2-seat pod once more. "No, just me."

"I am a healer, so I must ask: do you know the nature of your injuries?"

Tali looked down at herself, amused to be wearing a body that surely resembled Shepard's when he first started playing the game. It wasn't nearly as hairy as she'd been told humans were, which made her smile more. "I do not. I know I used a lot of bandages and tape, but I'm hoping it's all superficial. Nothing feels broken."

The asari stopped just short of where the hatch had apparently flopped open; she raised her left hand and held it slightly forward. "I greet you and your goddess, in the name of my own, Athame. My name is Talia. (she said it "Tah-LEE-ah.")

"That's very kind of you," Tali said, and caught herself before answering. The game's extrapolative branching might be affected by her using a different name than had been used so far, but she could only assume Shepard would have used his own. "My name is…Stephen Shepard, and you may call me Stephen." Tali stopped herself from offering a traditional onboarding greeting.

The asari closed her hand and pulled it back self-consciously. "You are not biotic?"

Tali shook Stephen's head. "I'm sorry, I'm not. I hope that isn't a problem."

"Not at all. We know that some…do not have biotics, but Athame instructs us to have compassion for all who come in peace."

Tali glanced at the pod again and smirked to herself. Stephen's in-game body did the same. "Well, I think I came in pieces."

At that, Talia smiled fondly, "Well, I certainly admire your robust sense of humour, Stephen. It will serve you well. Since we can return here later if you wish, perhaps for now, we should take you to my home, and I will determine if you would also be served by healing. If that case is all the more you possess, would you bring it? Let us see how much help we can locate for you."

# # #

Shepard was standing before the CommCon holo, using it as a design board, planning the mission when Kaidan entered the room and strolled up behind him with a fragrantly-steaming cup of coffee. "Hey, you got a minute? I wanted to try to sell you something."

Shepard, who was feeling a bit out of his element trying to design an assault against a bunch of well-entrenched biotics, welcomed the change. "What is it?"

"I've been looking over the MDP, and I know there are a lot of knowns, but a lot of unknowns, at least for you. I wanted to offer some recommendations. As a biotic."

Without looking away from the holo, Shepard replied, "Whatever it is, consider it sold."

"Not so fast. I actually have a big thing to suggest, but I think you're not going to be thrilled about it."

Shepard looked at the biotic warily. "Yeah?"

"Well, first, the obvious stuff. At least as far as I can say. Realise we'll be dealing with first-gen L2s, like me, but that either have only the damage, and not enough of the power to go pro, or people who are actually more powerful than you'd expect, but who washed out of the programme for lack of discipline or whatever."

"That sounds dangerous."

Kaidan nodded, "Exactly. The other thing is, we simply don't know what abilities they'll have. One of them throws a singularity at us, even Wrex and I are going to be in for it. And if they're working together well, one with a singularity, and someone else with a good strong throw or warp, they can detonate it. Small arms will be helpful, but only if and after we can neutralise their biotics."

"And there's more to not like?"

"Only Wrex and I are biotic." Kaidan rubbed his forehead, the way he did when he was having a migraine. "I can do lift and stasis, which means I can neutralise three…maybe fourif I can generate a large enough field and get lucky enough to catch more than one in it. Wrex can do warp, throw, and stasis, which means he can only neutralise one at a time without killing them.

"But between us, we just don't have good crowd control."

Shepard had an inkling. "Liara? She knows how to do a singularity, doesn't she? She did it on Therum."

Kaidan nodded and shrugged. "No getting out of it. If you really want this to work, you're going to have to put her in that Phoenix armor and flank her…probably with Ash and Garrus with ARs. Wrex and I can take point, but being able to call in a singularity if we find a bunch of them behind a barricade or something could be critical, and it seems like this is more likely to be one of those times."

Shepard nodded, looked to the holo as he spoke, "We're boarding a standard Kowloon freighter, probably fighting fanatical amateurs. But all the stuff I know about the situation hasn't been helping because I simply don't know enough about effective biotics. It's never been an issue before. We've never had to fight biotics in an enclosed space." He pointed at himself. "I've never had to fight biotics."

Kaidan smiled as he sprang his trap. "Here's an idea. Redivide the tasks to the most experienced. Give me that," he reached and took the stylus from Shepard's one hand, "and that," he took the datapad, and pointed over Shepard's shoulder at the holo of the freighter plan. "Now I will work up an initial plan for how to board and take control of a drifting Kowloon freighter full of crazy biotics."

He folded the stylus safely into his hand and poked a finger on Shepard's torso, "And you go below and see if you can convince Liara to help." Shepard started to object, but Kaidan held up a hand to stop him. "Now wait. I know half the stuff you're going to say: 'She's not a professional.' That's okay, she'll be fully armored and well-covered by us. 'She's not being paid.' Neither are any of the rest of these 'contractors,' at least not much, and not yet.

"And here's something I'll bet you simply can't appreciate because you haven't spent much time with asari: You have saved her life, and she will go to crazy lengths to try to repay you for it. It's just a part of the culture, about give when you have been given to. 'Reciprocity' is a similar human concept, but it has a lot whole lot more pull with asari than just hearing about it will ever let you understand.

"In fact, I'll bet you lunch anywhere in the Council Space that you won't even get halfway through an ask before she will practically throw herself into whatever task you are still in the middle of proposing. And just so you understand, she will probably feel like you're trying to hurt her by denying her the opportunity to do it…though she would never say so to you directly."

Shepard turned and looked out one of the fake windows at stars sliding by. "Seems there's no getting out of this," he muttered. "All right, I'll go ask, and then I'll be back to help plan."

Kaidan pointed forward and below. "We're only a few hours out, and that LRSA report will probably drop in an hour, two at most. By the time you get back from getting her fitted out, we should have more intel to work from, and there will probably be time just enough time to have a briefing." He pointed out the door. "Now git."

* * * Glossary * * *

27 seconds: Because of their three-digit hands, quarians math is base-3; 27 seconds ( 3) has a single-syllable word in keelish, which contributes to its common usage by quarians. Tali simply read the translation rather than convert it to its nearest human (base-10) analogue

AR: Assault Rifle

Best speed: Also "cruising speed," the speed at which a ship's engines are most fuel-efficient. Normandy's cruising speed is slightly over 0.84c (251,853,464.72m/s)

CFS: Chief Flight Surgeon

DCE: Distributed Computing Environment

LRSA: Long Range Scan and Analysis

MDP: Mission Data Packet

NfoX: Information Exchange; a technology/protocol first used by research organizations and universities for scientific research data collection and dissemination. Pioneered on Thessia, popularized in the Alliance by Husseinomica (which built and sold them as linkable modules following its semi-merger with the Venus Project 2.0) after the Prothean discovery on Mars, acquired by Alphabet (Google) in 2173

PVR: Polyphase Virtual Reality; a total-immersion VR technology with between two and five channels of data that stimulates multiple regions of the brain, allowing for a nearly complete reproduction of environments or experiences. Because it is a demanding, high-bandwidth technology, it became a measure of network capability, particularly among users who depend upon it. PVR games can be very addictive, particularly to the young.

A/N: Happy Christmas!