"Stars and skies light our way."

For someone who had been weakly limping around the Tempest days earlier, Sjefa hid it well with her back arched and chin held high. The crowd at the port ate it up and cheered back at her raised arms.

"Stars and skies light our way!"

"She certainly knows how to play to the crowd," Sara muttered

Jaal chuckled softly. "She is the Moshae."

Paaran Shie marched up and greeted Sjefa, locking their elbows as she murmured, "welcome home."

"I never thought I'd see it again." If Sjefa relaxed her weight against the mayor, it was subtle. She gazed up the gangplank and smiled. "It will take me some time to prepare the vault. You are all welcome to enjoy Aya until then."

That was all the invitation Peebee needed. She bounded down the gangplank and disappeared into the crowd. Everyone took that as their cue to venture out, Drack lingering by the gangplank and Vetra quizzically studying the business at the port.

"I'm going to try to find a nice quiet spot where we can talk," Liam said as he brushed past her.

"Maybe we could set up an embassy here?" Cora suggested. "Put in a good word. I'll see to it that everyone behaves."

"Maybe just relax a bit?" Sara replied. "You've been cooped up in that ship a long time. Consider this shore leave."

It earned her one of Cora's now famous placating smiles. "You're the boss."

Sara watched the other woman "meander" away from the port and was convinced she'd never seen a stiffer display of ease. She turned to Jaal. "Well?"

"Try to have fun, Ryder," he told her. "Not everyone gets access to Aya."

"Right," she exhaled. "Fun."

Five minutes away from the Tempest and into "fun," Sara regretted wearing her jacket. Warm as it was beautiful, the air of Aya was carried by a breeze that tickled the loose hairs that escaped her ponytail. Citizens seemed divided into those who gawked and gave her a wide berth, and those who ignored her existence completely. Sara was beginning to sweat.

Past the arched gateway from the port led to an open market. Fruits in all sizes and grilled meats on sticks, their smells drifting along the air. One vendor insisted they were "closed" despite the sound of sizzling grease fires and Sara literally observing him hand a skewer to a customer behind her, while another beckoned her to his stand with oblong fruits displayed like peach-colored jewels.

She didn't get far before Liam had returned and laced an arm around her waist. The smell of sweet and oil and spice was quickly overpowered by his own heady scent. "So, I was thinking," he said.

"Were you?" Whether Sara meant it skeptically or conversationally, she'd leave for him to decide.

"The angara have been here a lot longer than us. They know things." As he spoke, he led her away from the market, his arm around her more to steer than be affectionate.

"Do they know where you're taking me?" she asked.

"Tavetaan," he replied without slowing. "Kind of a bar, maybe cafe."

"Okay..."

"I have a friend in the angaran Resistance, Verand," Liam explained. "She wants to help us out. Make an alliance."

Sara thought she knew what he was implying, but it was hard with how rapidly he spoke in circles. "So, this Verand is waiting to speak with us at the cafe?"

"Tavetaan," Liam corrected. "And no. It's just a nice open spot where I can enjoy your company."

"I thought you said we needed to talk." She removed his arm from her waist as they reached the Tavetaan. Little more than a bar surrounded by stools, it reminded her of a tiki bar because of the open air setting. Drack was perched precariously on a slender stool and doing his damndest to ignore the both of them.

"I'm getting there, I promise." Liam laughed. "Look, we all know the ones in charge, they're not 'on the ground.' That's why I got some names from Jaal and reached out. It's what I did all the time back in crisis response."

"You were in crisis response?" She had to laugh. Talk about a booming business.

"Heavy Urban Search Terrain 1." He nodded as he relaxed against the bar. "HUSTL just read easier on the badges. But Verand is on the ground. Good for exposure, because it'll be a while before they trust us."

"I'm not going to expose myself in the middle of a market," Sara said more because he wasn't making an ounce of sense.

That got another laugh and Liam smiled that gorgeous smile with his teeth straight and white. "This is their home," he told her. "They know how to live here. Take a walk. Enjoy the market. Let SAM do his thing and scan some stuff."

She felt her eyes narrow. "Scan some stuff?"

"Generators, refrigeration units..." Liam shrugged. "Whatever. Verand has pinpointed some helpful tech."

"Couldn't you just do that yourself?" Sara asked. "Why do you need my help?"

"You're physically connected to SAM," he said. "And this way, I can keep an eye on you. Watch your back."

Of all the things that didn't add up, there was one thing consistently clear. It didn't matter how fabulously delicious Liam's cologne was, it would never be strong enough to drown out the reek of his unending bullshit.

"Why do you need to watch my back when we're among allies?" Sara demanded. "Why can't Verand just send us a transmission of those schematics?"

"I tried going through proper channels." Liam straightened away from the bar, his smile still lingering on his face as if unsure of the next suitable expression. "Got stonewalled both ways, so I did what I'd do back in HUSTL: bend the rules."

"Bend?" She wouldn't call completely disregarding the proper channels when they said "no" bending, but her confusion toward the entire ordeal won out. "Why? We have generators, we have tech."

"Yeah, but what about know how for increased crop yields?" Liam asked. "Things that matter for survival."

"So you set me up to be the patsy for you stealing their tech?"

"We're not stealing. We're not competing companies. I can understand them being cross, but it's not illegal." The more he spoke, the more he seemed to realize he couldn't smile away her agitation. "Look, we can't go back. This is home. We have to make it work."

Sara stared at him. How was it the more he spouted nonsense, the more she felt like she was the one losing her mind? "You have an excuse for everything, don't you? How does your brain even work?"

Finally, it clicked. The smile was gone. "The Nexus, Aya, they all said the same thing," Liam growled. "'Can't take chances with outsiders,' I didn't come here to be a goddamned outsider!"

"But we are outsiders!" She could hear her voice raising in spite of herself. "And we will continue to be outsiders if you do stupid things to jeopardize that. Crop yields! You're a scientist now? Turians don't even eat the same things we do and we're from the same galaxy! Do you even know if any of this is edible to humans? Asari?"

"I'm trying to make a difference!"

"No, you're trying to feel important!" And now there was a small crowd gathered. Sara was positive that Tann on the Nexus was just stricken with an unexplainable shiver down his spine. Ambassadors! She took a deep breath and brought her volume down. "The reason you were blocked is because it's beyond your expertise. You are crisis response. I assumed that you would respond to already existing crises, not try to create them."

"I can't talk to you when you're angry," he said pretty fucking angrily. Liam pushed himself away from the bar and stalked off with a muttered, "I need some fresh air. Clear my head."

Sara just watched him go and chuckled uneasily. When she glanced at the bar, the bartender was holding a drink out for her.

"I've heard this is a favorite of the humans on Kadara," he said.

She accepted it and sat down on the stool. "Thanks." A quick scan from SAM agreed with the bartender's assessment. "Sorry about that back there."

"No worries," the bartender replied. "Emotions are healthy. It's good to air them out and deal with them before they make you ill. You humans are too stoic for your own good."

"Stoic is not a word I would have used," Sara murmured into her drink. Sweet, almost cloyingly so, it made her disappointed there was no twisty straw spiralling out of the glass.

"Persistent pains in the ass!" Drack suggested. Since Liam's departure, the krogan had casually inched his stool closer to her.

"I like to think I give up pretty easy, thank you," Sara replied.

"I don't think you all realize how thin your skin is," Drack groused. "How close your fluids are to the surface! Do you know how easy you are to kill?"

"And yet, I'm still here." She waved to the bartender. "What do I owe you?"

"For this show?" he snorted. "On the house."

Sara wandered a bit after that. She realized that no one thought to tell her where to find Evfra or the Moshae. It was easy to be swept away by the bustle of a people she couldn't exactly interact with just yet. She spotted Cora, who had stepped outside of the stream of people so she could quietly observe. Sara waved and fought against the current of traffic to join her side.

"This place is something else," Sara said.

"Beautiful." Cora nodded. "But all the stares remind me of Thessia when I was the only human."

"Yeah? Any advice?"

"Be yourself," Cora replied. "But your best self. You're representing more than just you."

"So no pressure whatsoever," Sara muttered. "Great."

"I can't imagine you doing anything to top your little lover's spat with Liam in the commons, so I wouldn't overthink it." Cora kept her eyes on the crowd, but the corners of her mouth twitched.

"You heard about that, huh?"

"Everyone heard about it. New aliens screaming at each other over drinks is exciting gossip."

"Liam's heart is in the right place," there wasn't really a polite way to word it, so Sara just rolled with it, "but his head is unfortunately rammed right up his ass."

"I'll let you explain that one to Director Tann." Cora chuckled softly. "I do wish your dad was here. I wish I knew what he was thinking. I could really use his take on things."

"He'd probably make my heart stop with a look and then praise the charter we signed that required all of us to be on contraceptives for the first five years out of cryostasis," Sara replied with a shrug.

It was said offhand and facetiously, but the comment attracted SAM's attention. While the AI could only hypothesize what Alec Ryder would do in new and unknown situations, he did have access to select memories of Alec's that had been recorded and stored within SAM's databases.

Pieces of her father, more tangible than his music collection. She felt a chill of panic. SAM just had this information and was casually sitting on it? So fortuitous of him to share it with her, now. Was there any piece of Sara that the AI felt worthy of collecting for a future Pathfinder?

Cora seemed oblivious to Sara's now elevated heart rate.

"I know he would have been frustrated by the hoops we've leapt through to access Aya's vault," Sara quickly offered.

Cora huffed a laugh at that. "That goes without saying. No, I just meant, well, everything."

"What? You don't think he would have agreed with all of our choices?" Sara could already pick out a handful that Dad would have objected to. But that was okay. Dead men didn't get to choose.

"I think he had a reason for everything he did," Cora replied. As she glanced over, her features smoothed. "But some of those reasons might have gotten muddled or misinterpreted."

"You're probably right," Sara said. "But we'll never know for certain."

"That's true," Cora agreed. "Evfra and the Moshae are at the Resistance headquarters. You should probably go check on them."

"Yeah, yeah." Sara started to walk backwards toward a central staircase. "You sure I shouldn't have one more public outburst?"

"I recommend saving that until after an embassy's established." Cora shook her head.

"Vault, embassy, outburst. Got it." Sara offered a final salute and hopped up the steps.