A/N: Lots of stuff to set up for the Therum landing; it took extra brain power and a lot of wasted (thrown away) writing.

*** Matriarch Benezia ***

Joker gestured for his console's SVS Mode. "Aye Aye sir." His seat rose and tipped forward, isolating him from the ship's gravitational plane as the ship lurched subtly. "Clamps are detached and retracting." He could see around the ship in all directions, and smiled to himself. "We are free to maneuver."

"I'll be…moving into my quarters," Shepard turned and moved aft. "Message me if anyone needs anything." That's what Captain Anderson always said, he thought.

"Taking us out," Joker said for the flight recorder, "Maneuvering astern; accelerating to eight meters per second." Outside the viewports, the station dock began to slide silently away from them.

"Normandy, Alliance Control. You are cleared to relay exit corridor Bravo," said the comm speaker.

"Cleared to corridor Bravo," echoed Joker. "Thank you, Alliance control." Moving his hands precisely, he began to execute a two-axis rotation before being completely clear of the dock, pitching up and yawing to starboard as the ship slid astern. His wireframe view of the dock glowed red; it would set off an alarm on the traffic controller's PVR.

The console speaker continued, "Normandy, Alliance Control. You are not clear of the facility. Please correct your course."

Joker grinned; his view of the in-corridor wireframe switched from red to green as Normandy's prow slid clear of the Kiggs field. "Alliance control, Normandy. Did not receive your last. Please repeat?"

Knowing that there would now be nothing to report or correct, Joker held his course, simultaneously aiming his index finger toward where he knew Kaidan would be sitting at the FCO station. "Got 'em. You owe me ten."

Kaidan checked out his viewports. "Hm. Maybe. If you don't get a Field Board."

Joker ratcheted his grin up another notch. "Pffyeah. They had their chance. First they have to find me." He looked around his SRS view, grinned to himself at how powerful it made him feel, and nudged the control that sent additional milliwatts of power down each strand in the the array of transposer circuits.

The resulting charge was distributed precisely across the thousands of element zero pellets arranged in Normandy's drive core, which bent spacetime just enough to reduce the realized mass of the entire starship to less than a kilogram. Shipboard gravity wavered as the MEFGs responded to Joker's commands.

Fuel accelerators in nacelles Two and Three fired aft, igniter rings burning in neon hues, turning the result into tons of thrust on a vehicle that now had the mass of a can of beer. Sensors and automation flashed data to the ship's main computers, which calculated the resulting effect on the ship and sent commands adjusting the pitch of the gravitational plane forward in an accurate-to-eight-places battle against the vector so that loose items were not hurled aft. The main drive accelerated Normandy gracefully toward the Citadel Relay…

…at 3.4 kilometers per second.

Joker continued, "Then they have to catch me."

Kaidan just looked at his console again, smiled and shook his head.

Instrument noises competed softly with the whir and hum of the engines.

"Well what do you know about that?" Pressly looked up from the results of the VI's inquiry to the bulkhead holodisplay. "Serrice University just sent the location and contact information about the dig site." Looking forward from his console, he added, "Just now. And that was…ten minutes ago we sent the RFI?" He tapped and swiped his way through the interface for a few seconds. "Heh. Well, whatever. Course design complete and in your tray, Flight." He shook his head with a chuckle. "Never seen a reply come back from an asari organization so fast."

"Maybe because we have a Council Spectre on board now," Kaidan speculated.

His console interrupted, "Fire Control, Gunnery. Underwing cannons secured for jump."

"Thank you, Gunnery." Kaidan touched a holographic key, confirmed the report. "FCO declares Go For Jump."

Pressly shrugged agreement. "Hm…maybe."

# # #

Though still unsure what had prompted her to summon all the contractors to kill Shepard at once, Benezia knew it was the mistake of an amateur; she would not make it again. The ensuing chaos had reduced what should have been a superior force to a flurry of money-crazed mercenaries, firing on each other to claim the bounty. She had suspicions about who had started it, but they were now irrelevant.

Since realizing her mistake, Benezia had been researching which of their contractors were still alive, sending self-destruct commands to the custom-built ePET devices of those that didn't respond. The handheld communicators had obediently melted themselves harmlessly into unrecognizable slag. She kept working the console even after finishing her analysis and damage control so she would not have to bear the brunt of Saren's reaction.

"We still have two contractors on the Citadel," she said gravely. "Frizbee and Choobik-Ahz have responded."

The turian's armor rustled as he turned abruptly. "Is that all?"

"So far."

Saren made a grinding sound.

Benezia pressed on with a question to which she well knew the answer, "Have you integrated the message from the beacon?"

"Of course not. The asari are the only species that was remotely civilized when it was encoded." He turned away again. "I will not risk your life for that, and your acolytes are too young to be capable."

True, Benezia realized. Not one of them is even as old as…

"Liara," she said aloud.

Saren looked up. "What?"

"Liara. My youngest. I raised her myself; she shares much of my tishar…my spirit-of-training. She could accomplish this."

Saren's onboard VI looked up Benezia's daughter, converted her age to something meaningful to him, displayed it on his ARA. "Mmmh. Still very young for an asari."

"It is enough, and I am confident in her ability to integrate." Benezia looked across the cabin severely. "We have few other choices." She lit another tile, pulled information to it, pruned out options. "She is on a solo dig in the Artemis Tau cluster. We can have geth there within hours; she could be here tomorrow morning."

"And then what? We wait for Stockholm syndrome to set in? She would not help us after being kidnapped, not even if we had time to make her understand the billions of lives at stake."

The asari frowned in thought. "Wait…Dr. Kulkarni told me recently that he can reliably indoctrinate in a matter of days."

"Kulkarni?" Saren shook his head. "No. He has become…unreliable." The scarred turian rose from his seat, paced the length of the Musky's cabin toward the cockpit. "I have a new technical lead for that operation, an asari. Rana Thanoptis, from Malaven University on Ilium. Still, a low-level indoctrination might be sufficient." Claws behind his back, he ground his talons against each other as he paced. "There's no way we can use the cipher first, buy some more time?"

"Every receiver first enciphered befouls the message. We've even tested this on other asari." Benezia's frown deepened as she recalled the disorientation that never seemed completely gone. Or maybe it was the indoctrination? Something inside her mind clamped down hard and fast; it was almost as if the earlier thought had been random. She looked up at Saren again.

"Then your daughter will have to do." The turian looked down and away in thought. "Send Grodis. He should be able to locate and acquire her."

The asari frowned. "Grodis? The degenophaged krogan? I do not think you appreciate the site Liara is exploring. It was a prison, and is renowned for its examples of working technology. Its sturdiness is fortresslike. And she will know it well, know its secrets, and be able to exploit them."

"What are you saying?"

"We need the geth. They will be able to use the technology immediately, use it against her." She sneered, "Your krogan will just try to eat it."

"And you know so much about this site because…?"

"Because my daughter is a public figure. An obscure scientist, but hardly a secretive one. She has published on this site four times since she began working it. I know almost as much as she does about it."

Saren did not like the feeling that Benezia knew something she was keeping from him, considered how to regain control of the situation. "How many geth will Grodis need?"

"How many geth can Grodis take? They are tools; you might as well ask how many bullets he will need. Think of the geth as ammunition...and use them so."

"Sovereign barely tolerates the geth. What do you see in them?"

"They are technically proficient, the krogan are not. They can produce troops on demand, the krogan are organic, born ignorant, requiring months to become even barely combat-ready. The geth can overwhelm her with sheer numbers without needlessly damaging her."

"Their only job is to deliver her to our base on Virmire."

"And they will be facing my daughter. She will probably be working alone, and will have much automation at her command. VIs for every imaginable task, particularly security. I taught her well. She will know when anything moves from orbit that could be a threat. At close range, she is also a proficient biotic."

Saren sat at his cabin desk again. "Then you direct this operation. Contact Grodis, send him with geth if you must. But get your daughter to Thanoptis."

Benezia nodded as Saren turned away. "Of course."

She almost didn't notice the moisture of a tear until it was halfway down her cheek.

She brushed it away.

# # #

Since being awarded her doctorate at the remarkably young age of 61, Liara T'Soni had wasted little time on anything but the Protheans. Thirty-nine field seasons at thirteen Prothean sites, both well-established and recently-discovered, had established her reputation, and her mentor - the noteworthy Shanda Hannell - continued to be a close contact and fellow researcher.

The universities' dual acceptance of their proposal to investigate the Prothean ruins on Therum again had been both a surprise and a disappointment; Liara had continued to work closely with Professor Hannell since their respective universities had co-sponsored the 2181 "dig" at Artemis Tau, Knossos, Therum site 121, usually referred to as AT-K/T121. Their papers, written independently but published jointly, had both offered significant evidence that the Protheans had undergone a major change in culture during their final three centuries. Both investigators had – in their jointly-written epilogue – taken the Prothean research community to task for assuming this was necessarily a cause of their downfall, rather than merely an effect. It was at once disheartening to study, and thrilling to find significant evidence that supported the hypothesis.

Still, they had not finished their research of the site. There was almost certainly more to be discovered.

The disappointment had come with the invitation for another expedition to AT-K/T121 because Liara would have to go alone. Professor Hannell had developed Wontamir's Complex, and although it had been detected early enough that she would probably experience a full recovery, the therapy required that she miss most of the 2183 field season. Liara would have bet the finance departments were secretly pleased because it would cost significantly less with interstellar travel from only one planet instead of two.

If there was a silver lining to this, it was that Liara would have at her command an array of remarkable tools, some of which were unimaginable even for their previous expedition. In particular, a late-model mining laser that, once fully modified, would be capable of picometer Doppler ignition at ranges of up to 420 meters. A license had been granted by the designer for a reduced cost, and on-site fabrication had been started by equipment left behind for preproduction of just this sort.

Normally, no archaeologist worthy of the name would dream of using a mining laser at an archaeological site of even the slightest significance, but Professor Hannell's collaborators in the Transoptical Engineering Department had found a way to non-destructively extract atom-scale information through solid rock with it. While it had the disadvantage of massing almost eight tonnes, if it worked as simulated and tested, the device would make it possible to tease out forensic detail of unprecedented depth; in the case of Prothean technology, the equivalent of reading fingerprints from a holographic interface.

But the crown jewel of the equipment was the VI "consortium" that made such analysis possible. Built around a group of nine fully-isolated VIs, each with its own YSM analysis engine (first compiled as part of the No Regrets full-immersion PVR game,) it took vast amounts of seemingly unrelated information and created between two and six most-probable scenarios. In a real-world application, it had been used to analyse crime scenes, providing leads where none had been immediately noted. One of Liara's own students, an undergrad who also happened to be part of Alpha Gamma Sigma dormitory's Self-Patrol, had learned of it from the campus police tech and seen potential uses in archaeology.

It was a synergistic melding of technologies that Liara was only too pleased to be part of. If it worked as well as she hoped, it would secure tenure for her, patents for the Transoptics Engineers, and a game-changing understanding of the Prothean Extinction.

Since arriving on Therum, Liara had spent over a month on the laser, getting it fully assembled, setting up test targets, making sure it didn't melt down or blow itself to bits when run at 80% for nine hours, but mostly making the required iterative modifications; as the device was updated, it required more design work and further changes. Ultimately, the Engineering Department came through: By the time Liara was finished, she had practically turned an industrial-grade X-ray mining laser into a precision, medical-grade neuronal assembly scanner.

Even with solid rock in the way, the retuned laser would have been lethal to organic matter at any range under seven kilometers. Previous studies had shown that the crust of Therum was far too volcanically active to harbor even the most hardy of endolithic life yet, so there was no need to take precautions against damaging local ecology. Liara had set up an interstellar link to allow Professor Hannell and Dr. Fusan of Transoptic Engineering to "attend" the device's final test firing, and they had toasted the event in three-channel PVR (audio, video, and surface kinetics only).

It was a very good day, but even with telepresence, it left Liara feeling very alone.

Fortunately, she still had a lot of work to do, and not much time left to do it. Another twelve days of setup had been required to "drive" the cylindrical laser down the tuberamp to the actual site, set up the necessary scaffolding and a lift, and then crane the laser down to the chamber floor and onto its VI-steered platform.

Scan One had completed without any errors, but had taken three restarts and then much longer to complete than expected: Almost eight hours. The laser had scanned all the well-defined areas of AT-K/T121 at a relatively cursory millimeter resolution. Once it was finished, Liara had driven back to the site from her "safe distance" on the other side of the planet, and set the VI network to the task of computing which areas – surfaces that were still fully covered by igneous rock, in particular – could produce the most valuable data.

With little else to do while in therapy, Professor Hannell had logged into the local network and monitored Liara's progress. Although there was just enough bandwidth for operational monitoring, downloading the entire dataset would have taken weeks or months.

The data precrunching for Scan Two had taken over twenty hours. Realizing she was within days of pickup, Liara began to pack her extended support structure for transport, and had one of her VIs begin to develop findings (not the least of which was that the mounting for the laser had to be faster, or the laser itself had to be smaller, preferably both.)

The Scan Two had not gone any more smoothly, but Liara was confident it would be worth every iota of effort and frustration. When it reported completing its marathon six-hour session, she had been on her way back when her Security VI had reported two ships on approach. With their transponders off, the Long Range Scan VI had at first assumed they were scavengers, and sent the normal University greeting, notifying them of the expedition's presence, and issuing the usual warnings against illegal activity, enforced by the Council and the Republics.

They changed course…heading toward the "dig" site.

Once notified, Liara was at first puzzled, and then hopeful. Was it Professor Hannell, finished with therapy already? If so, they would be able to celebrate when the third and final sweep was completed. She hailed the ships by voice.

Silence.

Transponders off, heading for me, not answering hails, she thought. The VI greeting may have been a mistake.

# # #

Shepard had meant to hurry, but as he walked aft, several of the crew looked up from their stations and nodded, smiled, offered a thumbs-up, or otherwise expressed approval. His smile broadened in spite of his attempt to carry himself seriously.

I suppose I'll have to settle for just being myself.

Pressly saw the Commander approaching down the port side of the CIC, and touched his left index finger to the console to hold the display in place. "Congratulations, Commander. Hell of a day."

"And a hell of a surprise," Shepard agreed. He stopped near Pressly. "I'm going to need a first-class XO. As a Spectre, I don't know how much time I'll have for normal CO responsibilities. It's going to be more than the usual amount of crap details."

The Navigator almost laughed. "Sir, I was the Ops Chief aboard Fuji before this. That was a life-eater…with a crew of 3400, and you could lose a frigate like this in the hangar. When Captain Anderson offered me the Nav seat here, I actually thought he was joking. This is a posh posting, sir, and it'll be an honor to make your job possible." He extended his right hand over his left.

"I take it you're accepting, then?" He took Pressly's hand and shook it.

"With bells on, sir."

"Outstanding. Glad to hear it." Shepard pointed forward to the bridge. "You already have a station forward, but that's just for Nav. You want the left seat for a desk?"

"No chance, sir. Too much ionizing radiation." He tapped his forehead and grinned. "Melts your brain. Also makes people ugly and mean."

"I think Joker might disagree."

"Moreau's the one who warned me. Said the projector only covers the center seat well, and Alenko was the second worst case he'd seen."

Shepard knew when he was being baited; he nodded thoughtfully. "I'll keep that in mind; thanks."

"Any time, sir." Smiling puckishly, Pressly nodded and turned his attention back to the console.

Shepard continued aft, taking the port ladder. As the section hatch closed behind him, his ARO popped up a notifier: Incoming call: CPT H. Shepard, SSV Kilimanjaro

He stopped about halfway down, put two fingers to his ear to accept the call. "Hi, mom."

"Stephen, where are you? Can you talk?"

"I'm aboard Normandy. Uh…give me a minute, I'll be able to talk more." He continued down, keeping his hand to his ear as a sign that he was on a call. "You can talk while I'm on my way, though. What's up?"

"Somebody asked me at dinner tonight if I was related to the new human in the Council Spectres. I told her I didn't know there was one, and she said it had just happened. Said she saw something on The Washington Post, but there was no footage, just a newsbit on the scroller. So I wanted to call you before I turned in and find out for myself..."

Shepard had made it as far as his stateroom door; it read his ID and opened. He quickly gestured for 6x acceleration, pausing to note that he was stepping into his own private quarters for the first time. The acceleration gave him enough time to see that it was now even emptier than the way Captain Anderson had kept it. Bed neatly made, desk empty and semi-glossy, chairs neatly arranged around the small table.

And there was one precisely-folded handkerchief on the right side of the desktop. Simultaneously a personal touch, and a joke between them about a common experience, it made Shepard smile as he remembered Gunny Ellison and his "professional expertise," as it was imparted to each of his boot camp arrivals.

Hannah Shepard continued, "Is that you?"

He shook his head and sighed. He'd had hours during which he could have sent a simple message, but there was just too much to do; he had forgotten.

"Yeah, that's me. Sorry I didn't tell you yet; the ambassador had his hair on fire about getting us started on the mission, and there was equipment to pick up, and contractors to bring aboard, and have I mentioned that I ate only because I had a new crew member lunch?" He moved to the desk and sat down; the main display lit. "Hang on a sec, let me add video." He moved fingers on his left hand to summon a motion icon, pinched it with his right and held it toward the display.

The image of Captain Hannah Shepard – his mother – appeared. Short brown hair cut to her jawline, anxious blue eyes, and simple pearl earstuds. A genetic tendency toward smooth skin, and getting practically no sun kept her looking remarkably young for her age. She'd have had no trouble finding a partner even after Shepard's father had been killed, but instead, she maintained a strange sort of "dance" with David Anderson: Neither had made any public overtures, but there was clearly interest.

Shepard was fairly sure she kept a torch burning for her dead husband. He had never actually told her it was okay with him for her to remarry, though he very much wanted her to not be lonely. He was also sure she deliberately kept herself busy enough with work that she "simply didn't have time" to look. Thinking about it always made him frown; there were support groups and PVR forum sites that she could have turned a VI loose on and found someone. It hurt to think of her so alone.

He didn't realize she had the same thoughts about him.

The display above the desk showed her sitting in her office/quarters aboard the dreadnaught. Barely visible behind her was the bridge, fading to black as the smartglass wall switched to privacy mode. "I'm sorry, honey; I'm not trying to be a nag; it sounds like they've really got you running. But when did you find out about this Spectre thing?"

Shepard sighed and shook his head. "Sorry, mom. It's been a busy couple of days. I didn't know they were even thinking about it until we were on descent to Eden Prime. You probably heard how that suddenly turned into one big emergency."

She leaned forward. "Stephen, you were there? I was just watching a report about that. Are you okay? Was anyone hurt?"

"Well, sort of. Just as I thought we were leaving, I…uh…got hurt. Not bad, I think, but it knocked me out for a few hours. When I woke up, we were on approach to the Citadel, and the Council was trying to shake their collective finger at us and say we had been bad."

"What did you do? I thought Normandy was the only ship there in time!"

"No, I mean they were trying to say we – humanity – shouldn't have had that colony on Eden Prime. Anyway, long story short, they said, 'Okay human, you think you can fix it? Go find the guy who did it.' Then they turned me into a Spectre without the training, pulled Captain Anderson upstairs, gave me command of Normandy, and drop-kicked us into the nearest mass relay." He tried to shrug carelessly. "Like I said to Pressly, 'Helluva day.'"

"Are you all right? Is David? What happened to the rest of the crew? Where are you going?" Motherly concern was traded quickly for Alliance decorum. "Um…if you can say."

"Don't worry; I am fine. So's everyone else. Current mission is to find that guy, and there's a contact who may be able to help us. We're on our way there now." He glanced left at his ARO's display of the ship's status, happened to see his left arm, and smiled. "Which reminds me, now that I'm a Spectre, I'm sporting the very latest in armor and weapons. Even worked out a deal to get a Savant omnitool. A Seven. Can you believe it?" He held up his left wrist, illuminating the device's signature indigo holographic gauntlet.

She raised her eyebrows as she looked, "It's lovely, dear…but don't let it go to your head. You're still my baby, and I'm going to worry about you until I see you again myself."

Lowering the omnitool, he nodded almost wistfully. "Yeah. I know. Me, too." He glanced at an adjacent display with its growing list of triaged tasks glowing in red letters. "Aw, I'm sorry mom, but I've got heaps of stuff to get worked out before we hit orbit. Might have a chance to talk more after we pick up this contact, though."

"That's my boy, always working hard. I know what you mean, though; I do, too." She paused, smiled at him. "Take good care of yourself, Stephen. I'm proud of you. And I love you."

The display went dark as she ended the call.

Shepard leaned back in his chair with a sigh. "Love you too, mom."

He stared at the blank display for a moment, until pre-jump exchanges crackled from the PA system. Joker's voice announced, "Citadel relay in activation range, all stations have five seconds to declare NoGo for jump. Initiating transmission sequence."

Gladstone's voice replied, "Connection is good, link is secure."

"Calculating transit mass and destination," said an engineer's voice.

Shepard rose from his seat. I should be there, he thought. He stepped toward the door and stopped. No way I'd get up there in time, he realized.

Get good people, and then trust them to do their jobs, Anderson had said. Now was clearly the time to implement that bit of wisdom. I still need to get moved in, Shepard thought. He moved to the section door, stopping briefly to look back into the room. His new quarters. It was a bittersweet thought.

"Relay is hot, approach vector is locked in." Joker's voice continued over the PA.

"Board is green." said the engineer's voice.

Joker's voice again: "All stations, secure for transit. Approach run started…we are in the pipe. Hitting the relay in…two…one..."

As Shepard pushed off the bulkhead, the universe seemed to lurch. There was a pause; he knew the bridge crew would be exchanging status reports.

"Jump complete," Pressly announced over the PA system. "All stations secure from jump, and resume normal operations."

As he removed an armful of his personal equipment from the locker, a message arrived, C. Pressly: Cruising for Therum, Knossos system, ETO 62 hours. Records indicate it has no local government, so there's no Planetary Traffic Control; CFLR applies. We should have preliminary LRSA in two hours.

Though his arms were full, Shepard touched his left thumb to the tip of his middle finger. "Thank you, Pressly."

# # #

Several trips later, his personal effects were scattered across the table and bed. It was more gratifying than he'd expected, having the extra space and arranging his things in it. It was also a lot of busywork. Drawers and cabinets covered the walls seamlessly; they displayed icons for usage – open, lock, hide, transparent – at their control edges as he moved his hand near them. Obviously a turian thing, but he liked how functional it was.

As he began to arrange his new space, the room VI kept asking seemingly unrelated questions, When did he prefer to sleep? What did he want for breakfast? Could it have access to his service record? To his DisplaiD account? Did he have a preferred color or pattern for his bedclothes? Were there any duties he expected to delegate consistently?

Then it started setting up its Administrative Autonomy, asking for approval of duty rosters, supply requests, and levels of control that he was willing to delegate to it. Some of the questions seemed a bit alien. (What Service Unit icons did he want displayed for which visitors? What guest foods did he wish to have available?) If he had no answer, he simply brushed them aside.

I suppose turian involvement affected the design of this, he thought. Hopefully we kept the best of both worlds.

Slowly, he found himself working more from the desk. There were operational manuals to read, supply levels to establish, paperwork to push through (including the request for Jenkins to be transferred back to Eden Prime's new Alliance base, which had now come back to him as Normandy's CO) and updates to his p-net VI and its attendant processes that would make his job easier.

But it all took time to set up. It was nearly 0145 by the time he realized he should sleep.

He gestured open the omnitool interface, selected a generous 5 hours with personalized REM cycling, and then dialed it back to 4.5 hours. That would be enough (three full sleep cycles,) and they had a long trip ahead of them, even at Normandy's cruising speed of .84c; plenty of time to handle the settling in.

Unlike the Eden Prime relay, their current location was a cluster of four stars, each 500-900 AU from each other. Far enough to have unique planetary systems, but close enough to be gravitationally bound to each other, and putting all four systems with rocky planets within reach by the use of FTL drives. This had proven generally true of most relays currently open for use. It made the conspiracy theorists worry about why it was so, made the Earth bigots of Terra Firma certain that their planet was special.

Shepard was of the opinion that it was simply an engineering problem. Building relays in clusters made the most sense because it gave the most access for the same investment. If eezo had to be found in large quantities to build the relays, it made more sense for the Protheans to have prioritized systems with multiple nearby stars to increase the chance of finding it, and then set about building relays at single stars that showed the most promise for habitability, resources, or whatever the Protheans had considered valuable. Though it was a bit of a puzzle how the Solar System had been selected over others for its own relay, he had wasted little time worrying about why it was so, even after being reminded that it was.

Surely that information had died with the Protheans.

# # #

Master Fabrication Officer Doyle Gomez had nearly dropped the nanotex weaver when he saw WO-2 Talitha Draven step out of the elevator with a quarian.

A quarian?!

Civilian Contractor Tali'Zorah nar Rayya: Anti-geth Technical Specialist-2, said his HUD. The tag was appended with Draven's DisplaiD, so he accepted it as accurate.

But she's so little, he thought. Are they all like that?

As Draven and the alien stepped into the starboard engineering accessway and out of sight, Doyle turned back to his console and found a notification had just arrived from the Draven twins that there was a new quarian contractor, but that only some of the dextro supplies were going to be usable. Attached was a prioritized list of equipment to be ordered, fabricated, or repurposed, with task time estimates, along with an apology and thanks for the extra time that this would probably take.

He turned and flashed a confident grin at the picture of his own little girl, Sylvia. As far as she was concerned, he could do anything, and the adoring smile he saw always gave him a boost. He leaned to his right and reached for the DCE terminal; a quick selection started the download of fabrication specs for every piece of potentially relevant quarian equipment available on MilComReq. Bandwidth while docked was quite high, and he hoped it would not take long.

It didn't; he started all three "MMaker" fabbers working immediately on some of the high-priority equipment: Extra scrubber stage for the atmosphere recyclers, a water distillation PPT inspection system, and a waste process chelation rectifier.

Though the command transfer ceremony had provided an interruption, all three fabbers were running even with no one there; the time was hardly lost. (He wasn't surprised, either; putting someone like Anderson in charge of a frigate was clearly done only to impress the turians.) Expecting not to return to the Citadel, he was annoyed that he would be unable to pick up an overpriced trinket for Sylvia.

About three hours later, he got another message that two more contractors were coming aboard; a turian and a krogan. He put a hand to his hat and shook his head in disbelief. What's with all the aliens? The list of Re/Fabbing changed again, and after adding more equipment to the download queue, reprioritized some of what remained so he was more likely to have approximately equal amounts of gear for each species.

As parts began to finish, he watched the activity around him with some interest. Loadmaster Kobunde had once again managed to pack the hangar without making it feel like a warehouse, but what interested Doyle most was the simply enormous crate just forward of the FWS that had replaced the turian Spectre's gear. It might as well have been the same one: Gray, Council-marked, and seriously locked.

The downloading continued even after they had jumped to Artemis Tau, as the comm buoys were within a megameter of the relay, and bandwidth was still high enough for maybe 20 full-spectrum PVR streams.

MMaker Two chimed: Components for the new printheads for the mess had finished. He casually scooped them up and stepped over to the elevator, folding and twisting as advised by his omnitool. His omnitool also informed him that MMaker Two was now starting on filter scrubbers and a few consumables for the quarian's suit. He waved approval at his gauntlet.

Assembling the new printheads as the lift ascended, he realized he should make it obvious that the printer with the new reverse-chirality heads was not for use by most crew. Though his omnitool was capable of making what he wanted, a glance at his pocket showed he was carrying his trusty ReFabber.

Stopping in front of Printer Three (portside aft,) he tapped a Workspace key on his omnitool. A wave of his hand marked out the safety clearance he needed for technical work with a red-and-black holograph. Yeah, welcome to the 22nd century, he thought. I'll be done with this by the time the warnings are in place.

Rather than wait for the holograph to be in place before starting, he powered the printer down, pulled the 6U device out on its rails, opened the top service panel and lifted out the old printhead assembly. Fitting the new one into place, he slapped the service panel closed, elbowed the printer back into the wall, and pirouetted in place, ending with his fist in the air.

"YeahBOOM," came a voice from the nearest mess table.

Doyle grinned as he twisted the printer's front panel off. Someone who recognized the dance move – and the song that had popularized it – had noticed. The markings on the uniform indicated the woman was an engineer.

"Oh yeah, yer done." Doyle did a bit more of the distinctive dance as he moved to the other seat at the table and sat. The faceplate from the printer klunked to the table. "My little girl loves that song," he shook his head and smiled. "I guess I don't think about how much I think about it."

"My nephew thinks it's hilarious when I do it. But you do it pretty good. Gonna do that at the party?"

"Party?"

"Yeah, for the CO. Lieutenant Alenko's arranging it."

Doyle shrugged as he worked his omnitool, setting up the ReFabber control app. "Didn't hear about it. Might be for officers only."

The engineer shook her head. "Nope. All crew. Tomorrow, 1900. Don't tell the Commander."

"Hm." He rolled the ReFabber cylinder back and forth across the panel; words gradually appeared as the faceplate's color changed to distinguish it from the other printers. "Me dancing will probably depend on how the party goes. And what they're serving."

# # #

Having messaged the Archaeology Department Chair of her situation, Liara prepared to close the site and get as far away as her ruggedized skycar would take her. The VI cluster was not itself valuable, but the data it had made possible was; Liara was concerned about the possibility of having to leave it behind. She started the precrunch for Scan Three, and set the VIs to compressing Scan Two's 3D map of the site down to 700 exabytes, hoping it would complete before she actually needed it. If this all turned out to be a false alarm, she would have to wait for another day before being able to run Scan Three, meaning the pickup would arrive before the final scan could be processed. She would have to perform the deep analysis after returning; still, that was not even unusual; she was still far ahead of schedule thanks to the new mining laser "scanner."

Estimated Compression time: 06:15:30

Three vehicles on approach, noted her VI. Large vehicle orbiting. Two smaller craft have detached from [Unidentified #1] and are in formation with [Unidentified #2]. Her VI added a graphic representation to her ARA.

Incoming call: Matriarch Benezia. Liara stopped where she was, looked around in confusion, and set down the crate she had been carrying. She gestured to accept the call. "Mother?"

A window opened on her retinal display, showing Matriarch Benezia. Liara winced, tried not to let her reaction show. Her mother, once a celebrity and champion of the asari, looked grim and determined; black lipstick and eyebrows matched her headdress and expression. At least she's not wearing that facecloaker, Liara thought, but why does she still cover her le'ku?

At best, it suggested her mother was vainly ashamed of the slight asymmetry typical of matriarch le'ku. Though the asari body was capable of significant regeneration; over time – and particularly with the use of amplifier technologies – this ability waned. A slight asymmetry was not unusual after most of a lifetime of biotic activities, but such things were treatable with over-the-counter therapies.

At worst, it meant they had become discolored and even distended, which would almost certainly mean she had been attempting to enhance her biotic powers with genetic technologies that would make them bleed and scar...but could make her powerful enough to force her will on another sentient.

It was almost too horrifying to consider...so Liara didn't.

"Liara, I know we have not spoken much recently, but I need your help desperately. Lives are at stake. Will you come to me?"

"Mother? What…what is it? What is happening?"

"I need you here with me…dear one. Your expertise with the Prothean ontology…I need you here. Quickly. Will you come?"

Something is very wrong. "I am…" Liara looked quickly around the site, hoping for some inspiration about what to say. "I am on a dig. I have perhaps two more days of work, three more to pack, and then the pick-up flight is scheduled to arrive. But someone is on their way here–" She stopped as she realized, "Is that you on your way here now?"

"No, they are geth. They are our allies. I sent them to you as soon as I realized I needed your help."

"Geth?" Liara squinted as she recalled, "The geth that tried to destroy the quarians?"

Benezia shook her head. "Of course not. They are the geth that were nearly destroyed by the quarians. But they are our allies if we are to save billions."

"Our? Who is…is it that turian? Are you still with him?"

"Liara, you simply haven't given him a chance to explain himself. He is doing very important work, and…" She shook her head, "and we need your help. Only you know enough about why the Protheans were destroyed. No one else would understand. I must not say more on an open channel."

"Mother, he is dangerous. If he were really trying to help others, he would not have to be so secretive!"

"Liara, I very much want your help, but I will not accept 'No" for an answer. When the geth land, go and greet them; they will bring you to me."

"I still have work to do; I cannot simply leave a sponsored expedition. If they can just wait for two days…!"

"Come now, Liara. Time is of the essence. Do not disappoint me."

The image disappeared, replaced by an ETA for the geth: They were just under four hours away.

*** Glossary ***

ARA: Augmented Reality Appliance

ARO: Augmented Reality Overlay

CFLR: Council Flight and Landing Rules

DCE: Distributed Computing Environment

ePET: encrypted Personal Extranet Terminal

ETO: Estimated Time to Orbit

Field Board: Short for an Alliance Fleet Operations Evaluation Board. A convened meeting (or series of meetings) to consider if an active flight operations officer's professional behavior is up to Alliance requirements. Flathatting, failure to meet advancement goals, or substandard operational practices are examples of behaviors that may result in such meetings. They usually end badly for the reviewee.

FWS: Fabrication Workshop

Le'ku: Asari head crests, sometimes called "hair tentacles" by the unenlightened. About 40% flexible cartilage, le'ku have subtly different performance attributes that expert biotics use to "tune" a biotic effect

LRSA: Long Range Scan and Analysis

MFO: Master Fabrication Officer

MilComReq: Military Common Requisition: Named before the inauguration of the Alliance, the MilComReq started as a site for NATO countries to exchange fabrication and procurement data with the militaries of other nations. It was also instrumental in demonstrating an early NfoX structure.

No Regrets: A max-channel full-immersion PVR game that uses public and private records (and cross-correlating data from other users) to build a reconstruction of the circumstances of user's lives, allowing them to actually live the experience of "if I knew then what I know now," and "if I could do it over." Initial setup can take several weeks, during which the VI "host" will interact with the user, asking specific questions, and requesting discrete record access (rather than carte blanche access.) As a single session can last anywhere from a few minutes to weeks at a time, the return "crash" from a game can be bad, but it has prompted some users to retire into it, leaving their bodies in the care of automated trusts. This has sparked a backlash from people who had lost relatives (and the resources required to support them) into it, and been threatened with shutdown by numerous parties, both within and without government. The main servers and storage are incorporated on Ilium, thought to be owned by a salarian group, largely funded by asari with connections to the Preservers.

PPT: parts per trillion

Preservers: Officially an asari NGO committed to saving species on the verge of extinction

PVR: Polyphase Virtual Reality. An immersive VR technology 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 heavy users

RFI: Request For Information

Stockholm syndrome: a stress response wherein a hostage sympathizes with their captors, to the point of cooperating with them

Wontamir's complex: An affliction of the nervous system unique to biotics that results in an attenuation and eventual loss of normal motor nerve control. Motor control is still possible, but only with the use of biotics. The deteriorative process feeds on itself, becoming rapidly worse. Found more often in bioics with amplifiers who do not use them than with biotics who both wear and use them, and not present at all in non-amped biotics. Mild stigma of technology-users so afflicted disappeared when nearly all asari biotics were using amplifiers, circa 1400-1100BCE. Named for the volus researcher whose bondmate was the first reported case.

YSM: [Judy] Yu, [Matthew] Salazar, [Steven] Marsh, authors of an algorithm designed to interpolate information from non-linear and seemingly unrelated facts. Even its early releases were so accurate that it was several years after its first applications that media finally stopped calling it "surveillance technology"; essentially an instrumentalisation of Solomonoff induction that describes the past based of data in the present (Ray Solomonoff had proposed such an inference system circa 1960 that could correctly predict any computable sequence with only absolute minimum data; the perfect future-prediction algorithm)