All it took was the vaguest mention of a Remnant starship to coax Peebee back onto Elaaden's surface.

It made for a cramped ride in the nomad- Sara, Jaal, Drack and now Peebee- but Sara was grateful for the company. With the krogan situation growing more volatile, Drack had decided to make full use of his role as cantankerous old geezer and Jaal seemed to get more and more tetchy with each step they took toward Milky Way drama and away from the kett and Meridian.

Peebee was blissfully oblivious. She floated above it all inside the nomad, and flitted from conversation to conversation while Drack drove with an abandon that would give their engineer ulcers. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough room in the nomad for POC and that seemed to be the primary talking point the asari kept cycling back to.

"...all I'm saying is that it might have been nice to have an actual piece of Remnant tech inside a Remnant ship."

"There's going to be plenty of Remnant tech in there already," Sara said. "It's a Remnant ship."

"Yeah," Peebee groaned. "But it will all be shooting at us."

The lonely, bald palm trees that dotted the Paradise had given way to nothing but long stretches of sand. When Sara looked at the view sensors, she could see dips in the sand as they flew past, some cavernous, some with the stripped remains of smaller vessels. She stopped looking at the view sensors after that and decided to trust that Drack, with his knowledge of Elaaden, would safely navigate the nomad.

Rationally, Sara knew the starship would be big, but something about driving up to it as opposed to flying around it had skewed her perception. It was big, and not transport or even Tempest-sized big- it was city block big. Drack steered the nomad through the arch created by the hull and wing of the ship that had sliced into the sand. By what would have been the loading bay, Remnant milled on the surface aimlessly.

"Well," Peebee chirped. "Plenty of Remnant. You said so yourself."

"Great!" Sara drawled. "We don't know what we'll find inside. Let's try not to be reckless."

No sooner had the words left her mouth than Drack pulled a hard right with the steering and parked the nomad directly on top of a bot.

"What was that?" Peebee snickered.

Sara sighed. "Okay. Plan B: Don't die."

"I like that plan!" Drack declared as he reached for his rifle.

Not dying was actually pretty simple when Sara's team consisted of a krogan, an asari and a sniper. What sounded like the introduction to a corny joke translated into a murderous biotic maelstrom that Sara would hover behind while leaving enough distance for Jaal to pick off whatever Peebee and Drack managed to miraculously miss. The fact that Nakmor Morda had also made exploratory ventures to this particular area, had also worked wonders for thinning out any threats.

The krogan handiwork was evident the moment they entered the ship. The entire loading area had been cleared of Remnant bots and there were abandoned demolition charges outside of the main blast door. Sara appreciated the obvious indicator of dented, but immovable, metal that told her they'd be entering untouched territory. She stepped past the pitiful carbon scoring along the doors and synced up with the console.

No wonder Morda was pissed about the krogan lacking a Pathfinder. They were greeted with a gust of cool air as the blast doors opened.

Inside, it was a ship. Definitely alien to anything Sara had ever seen outside of Heleus, but there were obvious structures necessary for any spacefaring vessel. She only wished the obnoxious trait of flooring appearing when summoned via command console was a feature to dissuade would-be-looters from the vaults and not a typical aesthetic of all things Remnant. Apparently, whatever species the Remnant were, had no need of safety protocols. With as old and damaged as this crashed ship was, large sections of the tiled floor simply didn't raise up when called and instead left gaping drops into the innards of the ship. So, jet boots and a prayer it was! Barring that, Sara could hope one her friends would ragdoll her useless form across with their biotics.

"What do you suppose happened to them?" Peebee mused aloud.

"Probably came across the Scourge and took a dive," Sara muttered.

Peebee shook her head. "No, I meant where are the crew? There's no sign of them anywhere."

"I don't know." Sara said, her palm grazing another console. "The ship took a lot of damage. Maybe we'll find them if we don't watch our step."

"Where do you think the Remnant came from, anyway?" Peebee continued, any innate caution overtaken by excitement. "This ship is obviously big enough for long range travel. What if they're not native to Heleus, either?"

"Maybe they came from the Milky Way," Jaal suggested dryly.

"Nah," Peebee laughed. "The Milky Way didn't have this kind of tech."

"Not six hundred years ago," he replied.

"You really think so?"

"No."

Peebee clapped her hands. "Ryder, you've got to watch this one! He's funny, but only if you pay attention."

"Sorry, I'm thinking I'd rather pay attention to finding the drive core right now," Sara murmured as she tested her weight on a floor tile before she took a single, cautious step.

"You really don't wonder at all?" Peebee continued as she hopped tiny little dancing steps after Jaal. "This is your home."

"My needs are more immediate than the luxury of wondering," Jaal said.

"That's an awful lot of words to say boring."

That stopped him. "And for someone who talks so much, you say very little." There was a sudden heat to Jaal's voice that made Sara flinch. "I think you purposely skate on the surface as to appear witty while avoiding anything of substance that could create conflict over a differing opinion."

Peebee blinked. "Well, yeah. Who wants to get all deep and philosophical when it's just casual conversation to pass the time? I don't know you well enough yet for that."

"You-!" Jaal frowned. "-have a point. Perhaps you should visit me sometime in the tech lab and rectify that."

"Yeah?" Whatever puzzled expression Peebee wore gave way to a slow-growing grin. "I think I'd like that."

"Great, it's a date!" Sara chuckled uneasily. "Can we save it for when we're not collecting a radioactive drive core?"

Ug. What did she just witness? And did Sara sound like that, too? That would explain all the raised eyebrows after Kadara. Neither Peebee or Jaal appeared chastened by Sara's comments and Drack had already forged ahead, almost faster than Sara could raise flooring.

She hoped that despite its quirks, and lack of any Alliance safety standards, the Remnant's floor plan would be at least similar to any known ship. They breezed past what looked like the bridge and circled down to the engine room. The more she thought on it, the more Sara hoped that if raised flooring was a typical feature of Remnant tech, that the fiery sanitation procedure that followed vault reactivation was not.

The drive core should have been in the engine room, but when they made it down there, they were met with nothing. Trace levels of radiation that trailed to a hole in the side of the hull from a cracked and empty terminal casing was all that was left behind.

"That's what we get for coming in the right way," Drack groused.

"Makes a lot of sense," Peebee commented. "When ships crash, there can be a lot more holes than just their designated doors."

Drack had already stormed to the opening torn in the wall. "Flares," he said as he picked one up and threw it against the terminal. "Flares aren't Remnant. They're Milky Way."

"SAM says it's fresh," Sara announced, because it was more productive than whining about some unknowns beating her to a find. "The air's radioactive where they took off with it."

Drack sealed the visor to his helmet. "So we can track it, you mean."

"When you say it like that... yeah!" Sara whipped out her omni tool and commed the Tempest. "Hey, Cora. We need some help tracking a radioactive signature so scavengers don't sell off a bomb to Kadara or something."

"Or something?!"

"Yeah, yeah," Sara continued as she wandered after Drack through the hole. "Do you think our engineer or science whatever can do something about that?"

"Their names are Gil and Suvi," Cora sighed. "I'll see what we can do."

"Thanks." As she crawled out of the hole in the ship, she was momentarily blinded by Elaaden's sun. Going from the artificial cold of the starship to the overbearing heat seemed to short out her suit's sensors and she attempted to blink her eyes into functioning so that she could locate some shade before her systems remembered they should be shrieking.

"I can tell you it wasn't Morda," Drack said. "She wouldn't have been trying to beat down the front if she'd known about this entrance."

"So that was one person it's not on a planet of scavengers, good, good," Sara drawled. "I'm going to hold position here and try not to melt. Mind swinging around with the nomad?"

Peebee shrugged at Drack. "Want to race?"

The krogan just laughed and propelled himself through the sand with a burst of biotic energy.

Sara shuffled under the shade of a ship wing and slumped to the ground. Jaal joined her, but stayed on his feet and surveyed the horizon.

"Is this normal?" she asked him. "All the setbacks? Or am I just unlucky?"

"I don't know," he said. "My time with you has been unusual, but I wasn't sure if it was the cultural differences or you specifically."

"So unlucky. I'm unlucky." Sara let her head fall back until she heard the clunk of her helmet against the side of the ship.

"Not according to Liam. He says you get lucky quite often."

That brought her out of it, trading one sourness for another. "Jaal. You're only going to be able to ride on translation confusion for so long."

"I know." He smiled, avoiding her glare.

"We all have universal translators!"

"Maybe mine is broken?"

"It is not broke- you're laughing!"

"Yes." He politely coughed away his laughter before he looked at her, amusement brimming in his eyes. "You are too easy."

Sara groaned, exasperated. "We've established that, yes."

"To rile up, I mean," Jaal explained. "It's not a bad thing, to be so free with your emotions. It's rather angaran."

"It's more human to repress all the hard emotions until they burst out unexpectedly in unwanted forms," she countered. "It makes for an interesting slew of unhealthy coping mechanisms."

That drained any remaining glee from his gaze. "You seem to be very insightful about your issues and failings. If you're dissatisfied, why not change?"

Sara laughed to the point of cackling, only stopping when she realized he was serious. "When you say it like that, you make it sound easy."

"Isn't it?"

"No, it's not and you know it isn't," she snapped before she let her head knock against the side of the ship again. "It's comfortable. I'm familiar with all my passive-aggressive dissatisfaction and all that it brings."

Jaal shrugged. "All those emotions are part of your true self," he said. "They find a way out eventually, one way or the other. Better to free them immediately so that you can be free of them."

"And that works for you?" she asked.

"I may be better at the theory behind it than actually practicing such ideology," he snorted.

Sara nodded. "So it's not just me, huh?"

"I suppose not."

If Jaal was going to add to that, he was interrupted by the nomad's engine as it roared toward them, its wheels kicking up sand with each revolution. It skidded to a halt and Drack popped his head out.

"Looks like you two could use a ride," he barked.

"Yeah," Sara said, her eyebrow raised. "It's what we sent you for."

She could hear Peebee groan from inside the nomad. "I can't believe you said that."

"What?" The krogan frowned. "I said exactly what you said I should."

"Yeah, but not like- never mind!"

Jaal looked to Sara quizzically, and she rolled her eyes.

Their expedition into the desert was an interesting one. Inside the thick plated body of a speeding nomad with an even faster Tempest soaring within the planet's atmosphere made for disjointed conversations and information on both sides. On Cora's end, Sara could hear their pilot complaining in the background about why couldn't Suvi just make her calculations from a stationary position with Suvi agreeing and then asking, "but could you fly over here for me all the same?"

On her end of things, Sara's issues had more to do with the exchange of information. Since Drack was driving the nomad at record-breaking speed, often they'd fly past a plateau or dune they'd been instructed to drive along. How much time was wasted as Drack doubled around to backtrack? Sara didn't feel up for asking, because she wasn't sure if they'd survive him attempting to drive even faster than he was already.

She was beginning to understand more and more why the Paradise was called Paradise. The sparse landmarks they could see were dilapidated and sun bleached. They had charming names like, "Languish" or, "The Flophouse" and lacked any roads or pathways. Just sand to clog up engines and blinding, murderous heat to turn any unlucky idiot into mummified jerky.

Fortunately, on a world so barren, it was relatively easy to pick up unique readings. Aside from the obvious Paradise and New Tuchanka, the only thing that interfered with the radioactive signal was the scattered pods of Natanus's fallen. Suvi and the Tempest led them to a lone warehouse with surprisingly sturdy doors.

"I don't want to kick them down, because that might give anyone on the inside a headstart," Drack declared. "But I'll kick the doors down if you think it's a good idea."

"The console is passcode protected," Sara told him as she frowned at the ten numbers and the numerous possibilities. "Give SAM a minute."

"Try one, two, three, four," the krogan replied. "It's what I always use."

Peebee scoffed. "Nobody's going to be that stupid when they're trying to keep tech like that safe-"

"It's one, two, three, five," Sara announced. The door opened to a darkened room.

Drack laughed, approving. "See? Sometimes people are just that stupid."

"There's life signs inside, so heads up," Sara muttered, letting the krogan breach the doors first.

And there were life signs. A few hired scavengers and some others keeping sentry. It was the others Sara was more preoccupied with, because the others were krogan. For as much as she loved having a krogan on her side, it sucked just as badly to go up against one.

One of the krogan was Strux's girlfriend, which left Sara with questions. Drack didn't hesitate in throwing the girlfriend into the wall and unloading a clip into her face which answered a few of those questions, but simultaneously created more. Sara decided she would ask them when it was safe to raise her head above the cover provided by shipping crates.

"Why are all of Strux's people here?" Peebee hollared over the cacophony of bullets. Her biotic shields rippled blue as she expanded them, pushing them outward, shoving and funneling everything they came in contact with toward Drack.

"Don't know," Drack called back. "But I can't wait for his explanation."

Whatever the curiosity, it didn't stop everyone inside the warehouse from shooting at them, nor did it deter Drack from hoisting a freshly commandeered rifle up in his free hand to dual wield. Sara winced at the kickback and his sudden lack of aim. If she'd tried something like that, her arms would be black and blue for weeks.

Jaal dropped down next to her behind the crate. "They're not going to leave anyone for us."

"With luck!"

"How many are left?" He seemed to be deciding between a pistol or knife.

Sara shook her head. "I don't know, I've been watching the exit."

Jaal snapped his head toward her. "The way we came from?"

"Someone has to watch our backs."

"By turning your own back to a firefight?" He settled on the pistol. "Skkut! Keep your head down, sholoan."

Maybe Jaal's translator was actually broken. Sara giggled nervously in her space adjacent to the fracas as SAM scanned their databases for a meaning to the word. She took a chance and craned her head around the crate.

Four attackers- five, if she counted the krogan at Drack's feet who hadn't yet admitted he was dead- remained. As soon as Sara managed to numb the adrenaline that froze her into place, it almost looked like a darkly comical team sport, Peebee hefting bodies at Drack and him "catching" them with his fists, feet, rifles, whatever was available. Jaal hopped from body to body ensuring that none would be up for a surprise round when least expected.

Sara waited for the rifle fire to die down and for Drack's throaty chuckle to rise up into the air. She waited for SAM to offer old war propaganda that suggested infusions of turian blood would give her military prowess and courage. She waited for SAM to immediately interject that any hypothetical courage and prowess received was immaterial to the known outcome of hives and other more severe allergic reactions involved with injecting turian blood into human beings.

"Ryder," Jaal called. "We're all clear."

Sholoan. It was the diminutive form of the word for an adopted sibling. Or orphan. What the translation didn't explain was if the term was being used simply as an identifier or if the speaker was being endearing or derogatory. It was a lot to second guess when she should have been responding.

"Let me get to a console," Sara told them. "See if I can find out why Strux would do this."

She stood up, walked around the crate and stepped over a dead scavenger on her way to the center terminal by the drive core. Strux's motives were frustratingly opaque. There weren't any purchase agreements or credit transfers, anything to signify a reason.

"Well," Sara said finally. "I've got nothing. Drack, let's hold off on telling the krogan about this until we can talk to Strux and Morda directly."

"Makes sense," he agreed. "I want to hear his excuse. What about this place?"

"SAM will reset the passcode at the door," she replied.

"Let me guess: one, two, three, four?" Peebee snickered.

Sara smirked. "No. Four, three, two, one."