Chapter 15
Calm Before the Storm
It took Kevin a considerable amount of time to come to, or at least it seemed that way. Several times he'd woken, but with his body numb, his vision all but a scrambled mess, and ears perpetually ringing, he quickly found himself more than exhausted and he'd gone right back out.
How many times am I going to cheat death like this? His thoughts seemed to echo endlessly as if shouting into a cave.
After coming to for the… seventh? Eighth time? He has lost track of his brief jolts into consciousness, but eventually he managed to hold onto it. When he was conscious enough to make the mental note that he was conscious, he tried looking around. Surprisingly, he didn't feel any pain. He felt half-numb, but it wasn't the agony he was expecting. His suit and armor were off and, with vision clearer than it had been for a day, he saw that his leg had been patched up quite well. Well, at least I can take that emergency off of the list.
As he sat up on his bed—he was in a med-bay of sorts—and after the head rush left him, he found himself attached to a few machines. One looked to be giving him an IV of some clear liquid. Probably because I was dehydrated as hell. The other looked to be a very steadily controlled drip of medi-gel. Pain killers and muscle repairing medicines. No wonder I don't feel like I'd just been sat on by a krogan.
He turned to let his legs dangle off of the bed at the knee and winced as a stab of pain reminded him that he had been shot in the leg. The medi-gel was doing its work, but even that miracle of medicine couldn't repair a hole in your flesh in… Wait, how long has it been?
He looked to a nearby clock, but realized it did nothing to help him figure out how long he'd been there. He certainly didn't know what time it was when he'd been thrown aboard the ship, so he'd have to ask someone. It was then that it finally struck him that no one was there. The only sounds were the light, almost soothing beeps of the machines he was hooked up to and the increasing whir of the engines.
"Hello? Is there anyone who can tell—"
He was quickly cut off by the feel of the ship heaving this way and that, as if trying to navigate an asteroid belt at full thrust. Inertial dampeners could only do so much. Anything in the med-bay that wasn't locked down heaved with it, toppling or sliding with the slow motions. Kevin quickly laid back down and gripped the sides of the bed to stay still on top of it; he absolutely did not want to fall on his leg a second time.
This went on for a few minutes before he felt the sudden slight vertigo of the ship being blasted into FTL via a mass relay. After that, silence. After that constant noise down on Taetrus, this level of quiet was positively unnerving. More, even. It was like holding your breath while waiting for the executioner's shot to pierce your head.
Sitting back up and looking around, he spotted a number of quarians filling all of the remaining beds and some were even on the floor. All appeared to be sleeping, though if not for the machines telling their vital status Kevin might have mistaken them for corpses. Most of them had grievous wounds and there was blood marking each of them as clearly combat ineffective. He'd seen far too many corpses lately and suddenly the room felt far too small. I have to get out of this damn room.
He pulled away the various monitor nodes stuck to him and grimaced as the machines using them whined with the alert of someone who'd gone flat. "Damnit," Kevin cursed audibly as he'd realized the mistake he'd made and continued to remove his medical tethers. He'd already set off the alarms, might as well finish the job.
He turned with the intent to slide off of the bed, but he hesitated. He knew his leg had been hit, but if the shot went through his bone, the last thing he should be doing right now is trying to stand, even with a crutch. He had no way of telling for sure, either. No documents lay sitting anywhere, no screens with visible scans still up, and his wounded leg was numb almost to the hip. With a sigh, he resigned himself to his medical prison for the moment, at least until someone could tell him how he'd fared in those last moments.
"I'm so sick of medical beds," he told the air as he ran hands down the length of his face. "I swear I just got out of one."
"Considering what we just stepped out of, a medical bed is preferable to being spaced towards the Homeworld," one of the quarians in the room said. A woman. She sounded familiar, but definitely not Arla.
Looking around, he searched the room for a quarian that wasn't sleeping. It wasn't until a quarian woman lying on a bed at the far side of the room reached up to adjust a tube at the back of her helmet that he knew who it was. He saw an emergency suit patch on her left shoulder. "Sorry, didn't think anyone was awake."
"That's alright. It's nice to know I'm not dead." When she finished fiddling with her suit, she turned her head to look in Kevin's direction. "Strange that a human should be on one of our medical beds when so many are on the floor." Her tone was rather neutral, as if simply making an observation and having no opinion on the matter.
Kevin scratched at the back of his head. Five fingers. "Yeah… I didn't really have a choice in that."
"I know," she said flatly. "I don't know what's more of a shock to me, though. The fact that you're alive, or the fact that you're alive."
"…What?"
She tried to sit up, but grunted and decided against it. "Those bosh'tets were out for your blood. I don't know what you did, but they had a kind of mindless fury in their eyes in trying to get to you."
"How do you know that?" Kevin asked simply as he raised a brow.
"I was the one who called the captain and that other human over to help after you got shot, kid. I was standing right there. They weren't interested in me, not as a target and not as a threat. I was just an obstacle to getting to you."
Kevin's eyes widened slightly. "Oh…"
"You're taking that rather well." She grunted again in another vain attempt to adjust her position. "If I'd known that a massive unstoppable army of cybernetic monsters was spitting blood just to get at me, I think I might have soiled my suit a few times."
Kevin rubbed at his temples. He didn't want to think about that right now. "Okay, so that covers surprise about being alive. What about being alive?"
"You weren't even supposed to be alive in the first place." She coughed, likely beginning to take on some minor infection. Kevin could almost hear her grinding her teeth from the resulting pain.
"What does that even mean?"
"You're Kevin Folner. Everyone knows you died out beyond the Melkanis relay in the fiery crash of the Kellius. The same one that took my daughter."
"Daughter?" Kevin thought for a moment. There was only one woman aboard the Kellius when it went down. "You're Bela'Merni's mother," he stated, partly surprised.
She nodded once slowly and fell silent, staring at the ceiling. After another minute or so, the door opened and Ralik, Tyr'Garloh, and Maela came bursting into the room looking straight in his direction. Upon finding him sitting up on the edge of the bed, they all stopped and heaved a slightly irritated sigh of relief.
"I told you he's too stubborn to die," boomed a krogan's voice from the hallway.
Maela half-turned as if to tell him to shut the hell up, but she gave up on that before she even began and quickly looked back to Kevin, fists on hips. "Well, that solves that emergency!" Looking more miffed than before Targold said anything, she stormed out of the room.
"What did I do?" Kevin asked with confusion on his face.
"Who knows," Targold commented as he stepping to the room, ducking under the door frame to avoid getting his hump caught.
"If I understand a woman at all," Jiah'Merni started, still unmoving on her bed, "it's probably… well, it's complicated."
"That helped," Kevin quipped.
"What are you doing up?" Ralik asked, seeing the critical chance to change the subject.
"I feel well enough to sit up. So I did." Kevin shrugged. "Pulled the monitors off before my head was clear enough to think it through first. Whoops." Another shrug.
Targold chuckled. "I told you. This kid could give krogan survivalists a run for their money."
"You don't have to tell me twice," Tyr'Garloh said with a hint of wonder. "The kid managed to survive a damn crashing frigate that he couldn't possibly have survived. At this rate I'd be willing to count him made of ablative plating under that skin of his."
Kevin suddenly realized that he was beyond famished. So much so that he retched on the spot from hunger pangs, drawing nothing up but bile. "Damnit. I feel like my gut's eaten a hole in itself."
"I'll find something for you to eat," Ralik noted with a wry smirk as he turned to leave. "Three somethings. I'll assume you don't want it pre-annihilated."
"Thanks Ralik. So where are we heading now? I can't imagine we're still hanging around Taetrus."
"We just left," Tyr'Garloh put in. "It took us a few hours to find a way through the reapers and obliterated ship scrap surrounding the relay."
"The response fleet…" Kevin muttered somberly.
Tyr'Garloh nodded and continued. "We're hopping relays to the Far Rim relay as we speak. As far as I know, the Migrant Fleet is outside the star system preparing to launch an attack on the geth surrounding Rannoch."
"The hell?" Kevin asked with a start. "The quarians are going to war with the geth? Now? Do they have any idea that a reaper slaughter-fest is going on around them?"
"Not likely," Tyr replied with a sigh. "They've been on this course for months now and if the reapers haven't stopped them by now, Han'Gerrel is likely readying the heavy fleet to get in formation for the first push to retake system surrounding the Homeworld."
Kevin sighed, shaking his head. The quarians have the biggest fleet in the galaxy. If what Telius told us before about them outfitting all of their ships with dreadnought-class weaponry is true, then they're the most formidable spacefaring force in the galaxy next to these reapers. "Sounds like madness to me."
"Sounds like progress to me," Jiah'Merni added.
Kevin raised a brow at the quarian and Tyr must have read his mind with how quickly he began to explain. "The fleet is still divided internally on whether or not we should be going to war with the geth. It's only gotten worse since the flotilla began to move to the Far Rim. The problem is, once the admiral commits the heavy fleets to the battle, we're all committed. Everyone knows admiral Han'Gerrel won't back down on taking back the Homeworld, so we're all in this together whether we like it or not. And just enough of the admirals favor his side to count for us all."
"That doesn't sound messy as hell or anything," Kevin commented with mild exasperation. The last thing he wanted to deal with was the entire quarian race imploding in on itself right in the middle of a reaper attack. Somehow he knew he was going to have to deal with it once they linked up with the Migrant Fleet no matter what he did.
Tyr'Garloh nodded in solemn agreement. "We'll cross that threshold when we get to it."
Ralik returned with some meals then. The kind that didn't need to be cooked, but it was food all the same. When Kevin opened the packages, he couldn't visually identify what was what, but it smelled like the most wonderful comfort food in the galaxy to him right then. No words were spoken on his part—he dug in immediately. He didn't even care how amused everyone else looked.
After a few minutes, Ralik revived the conversation. "We have a few hours before we reach our destination, so I'm going to head to engineering. Kevin, come find me when you're well enough to walk."
Kevin nodded once, mouth too full of food to reply otherwise. After Ralik had gone and Kevin's mouth wasn't quite so full, he repeated, "A few hours? I should take a look around then. I thought I recognized the ship, but I could have been imagining it for all I know with how messed up I was by then."
"You did recognize it," Tyr answered as he went to check Jiah'Merni's vitals. "This is the same frigate we took from Cerberus when they boarded us. It was registered as the Accretion back then."
"Retrofitted? I remember we—you took all the guns off for the Kellius." He put his plate and empty cup aside and tried to slide off of the medical bed to test his legs. It was a shaky endeavor and he had to wave off the sudden attempts to 'catch' him, but so long as he kept his weight on his good leg, the other wasn't too bad.
Tyr nodded, and once he saw that Kevin had steadied, he explained. "Two disruptor torpedo bays, four GARDIAN laser arrays, and the original mass accelerator canon. Gunnery Sergeant Jiah'Merni here oversaw the installations herself. No IES3, though. We don't have the resources to attempt to recreate that system, especially without Tosh'Rolush's understanding of its inner workings."
"He didn't leave any notes?" Kevin asked almost as a joke as he leaned back against the bed with hands on the edge to keep upright.
Tyr shrugged. "They were on his omni-tool, last I'd known."
"Yeah, I imagine the last thing on his mind by then was leaving a legacy of discovery," Kevin muttered with a sigh.
The room fell awkwardly silent then. It was more than Kevin could stand and he suddenly had the urge to be moving now that the food in his stomach had begun replenishing his energy. "Where's Ar— where's the captain?" He'd have to get used to calling her that now.
Tyr turned away from Jiah'Merni to answer. "She's been holed up in her quarters since we managed to get away from the reapers in orbit."
"Might be best to let her be, kid," Targold grumbled. "If I know anything about women, it's that you leave them alone when they want to be alone. Krogan women will generally just put a hole in your chest on principle."
Kevin nodded to that sagely advice. Like hell I will. "I should at least try to move around, get my blood moving again. If I stay still too much I'll probably lose my mind. Make sure one of those quarians on the floor gets my bed, Tyr."
Targold ducked out of the med-bay to indicate that he'd walk with Kevin and Tyr'Garloh moved to help Kevin with his first few steps. "Take it easy on that for the next couple hours. I'm told that it won't be fully healed for a while, but you should be combat capable by then if you don't do anything stupid."
Kevin graciously accepted Tyr'Garloh's help and took a few cautious steps towards the door. There was a dull ache in his leg that was suppressed by the medi-gel in his system and he disconnected the IV, deciding that his current dose would suffice. He knew enough about medi-gel that he knew that he didn't need a steady stream of it anymore. "Thanks Tyr, I should be good now."
Tyr'Garloh nodded and let go of Kevin, stepping back a bit to give the human some room. Kevin hobbled as he moved, a limp quite evident, but given what had happened he was happy to have a leg at all. With one last nod to Tyr to indicate that he was good, he headed out the door after Targold.
Out in the hallway, Kevin stopped as the door closed behind him and he looked around. He didn't quite know the layout of the ship much more than the major hallways he and the quarians used to clear the ship back when it was under Cerberus colors. Targold noticed the confusion on his friend's face and stopped as well.
"Something wrong?" he rumbled.
"Looking for the way to the captain's quarters."
Targold gave Kevin a flat stare. It was an odd thing, seeing a krogan do it. "Best not tempt fate too many times in one sitting, Folner."
"I need to see her, man. I have to. I just… I don't know, things feel all bent sideways right now. I need to know how she stands on… on us."
Targold continued to stare flatly at Kevin for at least thirty more seconds before he shrugged. "Hmph. It's your hide. You do seem to have the damn cosmos on your side though, so who knows."
"Your votes of confidence are always appreciated," Kevin replied with a mild grin.
Targold merely scratched his chin. "Just don't expect me to come save your ass when it's over the fire, kid. That's the one kind of battle I do not get involved in."
"Duly noted. I'll see you in a bit, then," Kevin said, determination strong in his voice. With that, he turned from the krogan and began hobbling up the hall. He went about two strained steps before he realized he still hadn't gotten directions to the captain's quarters and he turned to ask the krogan before he vanished.
"X-O's quarters, from what I've been told," Targold replied over his shoulder before Kevin could ask.
"Ah." Kevin turned back around to continue. He knew where this office was from his last visit to this ship—back when it was the Accretion under Cerberus command—just up the hall. He passed by a few quarians on the way, some busy and looking it, others not so much, and some taking their recent losses very hard. Very few of them spared him a second glance. Without his suit, he was just a human to them. It was likely that most wondered why a human was on the ship since Kevin was not known without his suit, but most were too wrapped up in duties or coping with the recent slaughter so many of them hadn't escaped. It made the atmosphere oppressively somber for having just escaped certain death by reaper invasion. His short walk even saw a few quarians sitting down with their backs to the wall, knees hugged up against their chests, quite possibly crying quietly beneath those obscuring helmets. He couldn't blame them. A lot of people died in a very short time, and quarians are tight knit as a rule.
He noticed, as he neared the Executive Officer's room, that quarians were pointedly avoiding that door. None loitered around here like they did in other areas of the ship. As he stopped in front of the door, marked as unlocked on the console next to it, a pair of Xelvas'taersh hurried by. They stared in his direction and he guessed they were glaring at him for intentionally looking for the captain. There seemed to be an unspoken rule about bothering the captain after really bad missions, and that mission was far worse than bad. Nothing was said, however, and they kept waking anyways, so Kevin headed for the console.
Telius interrupted that process however, when Kevin collided with the distracted turian. "Ooof. Sorry, Folner, I wasn't… ah… I wasn't paying attention." He ran a hand over the length of his fringes, a surprisingly awkward gesture from him.
"No worries, you managed to miss the shot-up leg." Kevin grinned at his stoic friend to show no harm had been done. "You look oddly distressed for one having just walked through hell and will live to tell about it."
Telius sighed. "Now that we're outside the reaper's jamming, we've been getting comms traffic from all over." He took a moment to lean back against the wall next to the door to the X-O's quarters and crossed his hard arms. "It's a mess out there, Kevin. The extranet's in total chaos and from what I can tell, entire systems are falling one after the other starting from the outer regions in."
"Given what we just saw, I believe it," Kevin added in as he leaned against the opposite wall to keep the corridor clear for quarians moving to their places.
"It gets worse. The Batarian Hegemony is all but obliterated. Palaven is under heavy attack from all sides and just about all of the fleets have been recalled to defend the homeworld, leaving token fleets to try to hold the other theatres of war. We even lost our Primarch, Fedorian. I have no idea who our new Primarch is, which will make reporting the status of my mission… complicated. The asari and salarians are just coming under attack now and last I'd heard they were more interested in pulling their collective forces back to their home systems and refusing to mount any collaborative effort."
"Well… Shit. The galaxy is tearing itself apart even before the reapers do."
"The Citadel is beginning to overcrowd with refugees, too. People are too afraid to mount a counteroffensive. Even the Hierarchy is shaking in their plates with how efficiently the reapers are wiping us clean out." Telius looked to the floor and shook his head. "And the worst part is… I can't do anything about it out here."
Kevin tilted his head slightly. "What do you mean? You're doing your assigned duty in the face of impossible odds."
Telius shook his head again. "I'm turian, Folner. I don't do politics very well. I need to be with my people fighting the most important, and possibly last war of our lifetimes, not out here playing liaison to the quarians." He flicked a hand in irritation at the notion then clenched it into a fist. "It makes my blood boil just sitting in here waiting, knowing Palaven is on the brink of destruction."
Kevin nodded, understanding. "Think of it this way, Telius. If the quarians finish what they set out to do, you'd probably be first in line to make requests of the largest armed fleet in the galaxy." Assuming the reapers don't show up on their doorstep like they did on Taetrus.
Telius paused a moment. "…You're right. I hadn't thought of it that way." He looked down at the floor again in additional thought. "I have a lot of coordinating to do. Thanks… for keeping a forward eye." He stood upright off of the wall and nodded to Kevin once before heading off down the corridor and disappearing amongst the somber quarian traffic.
He sighed to ready himself once again and stepped up to the X-O quarters door. He made himself press the chime button to call the captain's attention before his mind changed for him.
Nothing happened. He waited another minute and he hit the chime again. Another pair of quarians walked by, glaring, and he sighed. He pressed on the chime a third time, and once more, no response. He was beginning to think that no one was in there and had begun to turn away when Arla's voice came over the sound emitter on the console. "Enter," she said flatly. Kevin opened it and stepped inside.
The room he'd entered into wasn't nearly as large as he was expecting. Perhaps he had been spoiled by the more-than-ample space his old quarters in the Kellius had. He'd forgotten that, while this ship wasn't military-built, it was certainly built to be of similar function and specification. A small, almost separated room at the back held the XO sleeping arrangements and personal space, while this room—the larger of the two—served more as an office and information center. The lighting was so dim that it reminded him of the geth constructs they'd once explored, which seemed years ago. Furniture was sparse, likely because the quarians had stripped the ship of such when it was originally brought to the Migrant Fleet. As it was, the only space for anyone who wasn't the executive officer to sit was on the thick windowsill that looked out into space, awash with the undulating flow of blueshifted energy.
Arla sat behind a sizable desk at the back-right of the room, working tirelessly at a terminal, the orange glow bathing her corner in warmth that was starkly lacking everywhere else. When was the last time she slept? Kevin wondered. She has to be exhausted. He took a few steps into the room to let the door shut behind him and he moved his hands just off to each side in a 'look at this' gesture. "Permission to come aboard, captain," he said awkwardly paired with an equally awkward smile, not knowing how else to initiate conversation. It was meant as a lighthearted joke, given that he was already onboard, but it did nothing to lift the dark chill in the room.
She continued working on her terminal for a good ten seconds before she looked up from the screen, only to look back down at it after a few seconds more. "Granted," she said flatly.
He limped into the room a little further, wishing there was a chair to rest on. It seemed the exhaustion he'd accumulated hadn't fled from him entirely and the ache in his leg came back to remind him of its existence more frequently than he'd have liked. He settled for leaning against the wall near the door. "How… uh, how are you holding up?"
Arla stopped working to look up at him this time. She stared at him for what seemed hours with what he could only interpret as a deadpan glare; the sort that people picky about ceremony give those who breach the most simple, yet important of rules. It made Kevin's stomach twist into knots.
After a long, agonizing silence, Arla let out a long sigh that almost seemed to have been held inside for days. She then rested her helmet into her open hands, her hood poking through the holographic terminal screen before it shut itself off. "I… I don't know. We made it out—and got our objective in the process—but…" She fell quiet again, and then looked up at Kevin. "Keelah, Kevin, I lost two-thirds of my first Xelvas'taersh command. Two-thirds." Her voice was shaky, noticeable even under the modulation of her helmet.
"Come on, Arla. You know just as well as I do that you must have pulled off a hell of a miracle back there to get anyone out alive. You did better with your quarians than a great deal of turians in that city did. That's saying something."
Arla hardly acknowledged Kevin's words, staring off at the wall across from her desk for a while. Eventually she got up and started towards the huge viewport that dominated the wall to Kevin's left. His eyes followed her, unable to keep from noticing the way her hips swayed when she wasn't even trying. I want her even when she's half a galaxy away in her mind.
"I thought things were bad when we'd lost nearly all the crew of the Forverna to the geth back when we'd crash-landed. I thought I'd never have to truly know the… the overwhelming sense of loss that Siri'Kortel had felt that day you showed up." She hugged herself, the undulating blue glow spilling over her more than the internal lights were. The black shadow she cast across the blue-soaked room was suffocating somehow. "Tepka keelah… How Siri must have agonized over it… My only drive to keep from stepping down is in knowing that Siri took that responsibility on her shoulders and pushed on. She taught me that captains don't fall apart in the face of total destruction because she still had a duty to her people."
Kevin kept quiet as she spoke, letting her work through her own feelings. Was this a habit she'd had to teach herself in his absence? When she'd gone silent for a while, he felt safe enough to speak up. "You fought reapers, Arla. Again. And this time, it wasn't as much on our terms as it was before. I think Siri would be far more than proud to see you wearing those pauldrons right now." He gestured towards the metal cupping her shoulders with the sigil that signified the rank of a ship captain etched into them.
"Sometimes I still wonder if I could even fill half the suit that she did…" She sighed again and looked back towards the terminal still hugging herself. She seemed to dread the work that waited for her there, and not due to monotony.
"I think the fact that we're all alive right now it testament to that," Kevin said, almost casually.
That seemed to give her pause, and she thought on it a while in silence. After some time, maybe a few minutes and an internal reconciliation, she turned towards Kevin. She stared at him a while as he leaned against the wall with arms crossed, seeming to look him up and down. "Where's your suit?"
Kevin shrugged. "Somewhere in the med-bay, probably. They had to take it off to address my shot wound."
"I feel like you're naked without it," she said in pure seriousness. Nevermind that he was 'naked' with her in her room.
Kevin hesitated. He had no idea what to say to that. His usual muse for witty comments had failed him again. After a good thirty seconds of verbal failure, he just started to laugh. A good, hearty laugh that shook his whole body and caused his wound to send jabs of pain in response. Arla followed suit, breaking out into a similar, yet slightly more awkward laugh of her own.
Once they'd both calmed down, they went back to staring at each other. All those months knowing she was dead… And here she is.
"I saw you die, Folner. I… I saw the Kellius…" Her voice was steady but she was still unable to finish the thought. "How…?" Her arms were still wrapped around herself, more than before.
Kevin looked to the floor for a bit. He did not like bringing those memories back to the surface. "Yeah, I was on the Kellius as it went down. I managed a strong enough biotic barrier around myself to keep from getting pulverized, but I couldn't save the others. We'd gotten separated when the ship split and I blacked out at impact. I woke up after the pieces had come to rest, buried in rubble. I managed to get out, but that's when I saw that the tent that Tyr'Garloh and Ralik were keeping watch over you in had been obliterated in the crash." He drew in a breath, steading himself. Those moments were burned hard into his mind, and even the discovery that they'd all made it out alive didn't put them away. "I knew you all for dead right then. How could you have possibly known that the ship would streak from the sky right onto our camp?"
"Keelah… You really did survive the fall of the Kellius…" Her head tilted to the side in thought as she stared at him as if she still couldn't believe that he was alive.
They spent the next half-hour exchanging stories on getting back to the galaxy and what had happened since that fateful day. It amused Kevin to no end that the only thing that had prevented either side from proclaiming the other dead was mere happenstance. It was a moment of quiet reflection, but Kevin couldn't help but notice that Arla had not moved any closer. She maintained a very specific distance from him. It felt like an entire galaxy sat between them.
Still, Arla explained how things turned out after the crash of the Kellius. After their return to the flotilla, Arla'Tavval, Tyr'Garloh, and Ralik Dolannus had become the senior members of the newly formed Xelvas'taersh that they had handpicked. They became known as Xelvas'taersh Zero, whereas every new recruit was part of Xelvas'taersh One, and altered sigils had been made for the new team.
The ship that they had all acquired back when Cerberus boarded them, the Accretion, was still docked and being worked on by then. Admiral Han'Gerrel vas Neema hadn't decided on what assignment to give the brand new hunter-seeker frigate until he promoted Arla'Tavval as official captain of the Xelvas'taersh. The new team needed as ship, and the freshly re-registered Peravaash suited the needs of an elite group admirably, though they had to pull guns from a few other vessels to get it properly outfitted.
The new Xelvas'taersh needed to be tested, so Arla'Tavval and Han'Gerrel conferred on a number of missions of various goals to see how well the team worked. Over the first couple months, and much to their delight, Xelvas'taersh Zero and One exceeded expectations. Arla had been preparing them to make a flight into the Far Rim to scout and set up a decent forward base of operations for the fleet, when the news of the quiet deal between the admirals and the turian Hierarchy had reached her. Seeing this as far more important to the Migrant Fleet's overall preservation, she declared they would see the package brought safely to the flotilla.
And so that's where they came together, oddly enough. They were there waiting for a few days for Telius to arrive with the software suite when the reapers attacked and blew everything to hell. It took Kevin a little while longer to comprehend the chances of him meeting up with Telius to hear out about the surviving Xelvas'taersh in the first place.
After both had caught each other up, Kevin cleared his throat. There was a very different topic he couldn't put aside any longer. "So… This Lan'Karthal."
She stared at him. "He's squad leader of our scouting teams and helps with engineering on the ship," she quickly explained. "He's also my second outside of Tyr'Garloh and Ralik." She looked away from him. "A knowledgeable and driven man. Struggles with hand-to-hand, but knows more about moving about on planets than most others in the Xelvas'taersh. Aside from Ralik, of course, but I need him for more important tasks usually."
That was it. She'd moved on. Somehow Kevin had known it, but it still cut right to his core. The way she talked about him was different than a captain taking stock of a soldier's skills. There was something more there. He knew right then that he'd never be able to get along with this Lan'Karthal. Suddenly he felt hollow. Empty. Like half of his soul had been ripped away and cast out the airlock. He didn't understand why; he thought he'd reconciled his feelings for Arla in knowing her dead. And yet…
He couldn't really blame her. He was gone as far as she knew, and she had every right to move on. Hell, he'd almost gotten himself attached to Maela. And still it cut deep.
He never realized that his gaze had fallen to the ground until Arla asked if he was alright. "Oh. Y-yeah." He cleared his throat again. "So you and Lan'Karthal. Are you two far along in your relationship?"
She gave Kevin what he could only assume was a flat stare but she didn't deny it. "Lan… He's…" She sighed, seemingly buying time as she searched for the right words. "He's eager. He pushes boundaries but does everything he can to be there for me."
Kevin barely managed to suppress the dryness in his throat. "Ah. Well. I'm, ah… I'm glad you two are working out." He likely failed entirely to keep his face serene.
There were several seconds before Arla replied, half in question, half in unfettered shock. "Wh-what?"
Kevin found her reaction impossible to read and he shifted his feet back and forth as he forced himself to come to terms with the painful reality of things. He supposed that she was surprised he would be okay with that reality. Pushing forward with this train of thought, he began to explain himself. "I've been dead for months, Arla. I don't have any right to be imposing on any relationship you've forged because of—"
"No!" Arla yelled suddenly, cutting Kevin off.
"What?"
"You… You tepka bosh'tet! Shut up! Just shut up!" She hugged herself tighter as she shouted at him. Her voice was angry, but her body language was all about awkward dismay. Her knees looked like they were about to buckle on the spot.
Kevin, naturally, fell silent as he stood upright and adopted a look of shock himself. He opened his mouth to reply, but the words never came in time. His back hit the metal wall behind him after Arla had shoved him half-heartedly.
"No, shut up! I… I agonized over you! I wept more tears in a month than I had in my entire life! You haunted me for weeks! I heard your voice when I woke up at night!" Her stance was more congruous with her anger now. "I had a void in me that I couldn't escape because of you, and I knew, I knew, I would live with it the rest of my life!" She took a few steps forward and poked a big, iron finger right into his chest. "And here you show up out of nowhere to completely… to completely fuck up my head all over again by walking back into my life?"
She paused. Kevin didn't dare retort.
"Just so you can tell me that the angry scout leader trying to get into my suit is okay for me? Bosh'tet! Tepka bosh'tet!"
It hit Kevin right then and he stood up straighter. Quietly he asked, "What do you want from me, Arla? I expected you to move on. You're the strongest woman I've ever known. The moment I realized you were alive, I knew that you'd have put me aside. How could you not?"
"Would you have put me aside?" she asked, the anger and most of the volume having fled. "Did you?"
"No, I…" Kevin sighed. A long, deep sigh that seemed to leak out of his very soul. "I couldn't. Even when…" Maela popped into his head then, all her enthusiasm and bold claims of taking him 'for real'. He couldn't bring himself to finish the words.
She gave him a look then, and he could have seen it through a planet for all the good her visor did in obscuring it. It screamed 'So what makes you think I would?'
Silence fell for a short while after that and they simply stared at each other.
When it didn't seem evident that either was going to break that sudden hush, Kevin took a few steps towards Arla to stand directly in front of her. She… She still wants me. She still wants us, he thought as she looked up at him. Slowly, Kevin reached up to the chin of Arla's helmet with both hands. Gently, she pressed her chin into his palms and he moved them towards the corners of her jaw where the clasps holding her helmet on sat. Her hands came up to rest on his and he paused a moment, giving her a chance to respond.
"I miss this…" she whispered.
Kevin unhooked the clasps holding the front of her helmet and slowly lifted it away, her hands drifting with his. Visor gone, he stared into her starry, pale eyes. It was those beautiful pools of moonlight that he could remember completely drowning in, and he was drowning in them again. Her expression was… nervous. Anxious. Full of trepidation. She looked as though she worried he might vanish right in front of her.
Kevin found himself breathless. Those eyes, that midnight hair, the smoothness of her wondrous skin. He'd never truly forgotten her splendor, but seeing it again after so long hit him like a cruiser. His hand moved on its own and cupped her cheek and he felt her shiver. She closed her eyes and leaned into the warmth, nuzzling his hand as she stepped in close enough to put her hands around his waist.
He could feel her breath coming faster on his wrist, and when she opened her eyes again to look deep into his, he couldn't help but lean in immediately to kiss her. The kiss was passionate, delicious, and seemed to last an eternity. All of the hunger and longing they'd both endured these past long months surfaced then, and the kiss grew more passionate and intense with each passing second. By the time their lips finally parted, both were panting and trying to recover their breath.
After a brief moment of recover, Kevin said, "So does this mean you're mine again?"
"You bosh'tet," she said playfully with a half-hearted smack on his chest. "That never changed."
Good god it was good to hear her voice pure and clear again. It was the most soothing music to his ears. "So… all that cold shoulder I got back on Taetrus?"
"I had a role to play, Kevin. Not only was it not the time or place to be thinking about romance, but I had to be seen as solid and unyielding to my people. I'm a captain now, remember? I have to be as strong as Siri'Kortel was, and fawning over you the way I wanted to was… not a possibility at the time."
Kevin had to nod. "You have the right of that. And you did that very well."
"My heart is still trying to catch up," she admitted, her voice shying a little and her eyes dropping to look at the floor.
"I know what you mean. So much to think about, to reevaluate. We both thought each other dead for months."
Arla looked back up into his eyes as his hands fell to her perfect hips. She smiled, and that smile brought life that Kevin had thought he'd lost to the galaxy.
Senik's voice rang in Kevin's head. "Never leave each other behind…"
She leaned in to kiss him this time, and he met her half-way. Their passionate entanglement was interrupted by Lan'Karthal when he walked into the captain's room without knocking and immediately started rattling off some statistics from his omni-tool. He got about four steps in after the door shut when he stopped, having spotted Kevin and Arla in their affection. Lan'Karthal's voice trailed off and he froze. Kevin and Arla barely noticed him enter and only broke off the kiss after Lan had stopped dead in his tracks.
"What… The hell?" the quarian yelled as he shut off his omni-tool.
Kevin turned his head to look at Lan'Karthal and smirked.
"Captain, your mask! You'll get infected! The humans… Their kind are filthy! You'll…" He trailed off, too angered to complete his own thought. Kevin could see his fists tremble.
Kevin's brow furrowed slightly, more because of the fight he saw looming. Is this going to turn into another Riik'Votis? he wondered. "Filthy?" he replied casually. "You wound me, Lan'Karthal. I only just got out of a reaper slaughter field, cut me some slack."
Lan'Karthal wasn't amused. He began to approach, a menacing look to his gait.
Kevin gave Arla a look, silently asking if he was really going to have to put Lan'Karthal down. Arla replied by looking to the indignant quarian and saying, "Careful, lieutenant. Kevin is twenty times the CQC specialist you will ever be. If you want to know where my skills came from, look to him."
Kevin wasn't so sure things would turn out great for either of them. His injury would cripple him in a fight from the very start.
It still gave the lieutenant pause, but it did nothing to sooth his fury. "You dare touch our captain like that? At all? Do you know who she is?" He pointed an angry finger at Kevin as if he hadn't worn the Xelvas'taersh sigil himself a few hours ago.
"Better than you ever will, Karthal," Arla said icily. It seemed she'd had enough of his presumptions. "Kevin and I were lovers before you and I ever met, Lan. It's why I can take my mask off around him—my immune system has adjusted to him and him alone. It's best you come to terms with this before we get caught under fire again. You two will likely be watching each other's backs."
Lan'Karthal didn't seem to have any words for such a blunt blow at first. After he'd taken a bit to recover, he looked between the two. "Why?" he asked barely containing his incredulity.
"Why what?" Arla asked, mildly irritated. It wasn't her first time hearing this question.
"Why do you choose this… this… human? He knows nothing about our people! You can't even share food or…" He stopped himself for a brief moment, but realizing that he'd come this far, he plowed forward. "Or have children."
"I'm not going to justify all of your curiosities about my personal life, Lan'Karthal," Arla stated coldly. "You're on thin ice as it is. I will tell you that Kevin knows more about our people than you'd think."
"Do you think I was wearing that modified quarian environmental suit for kicks and giggles?" Kevin questioned as he pulled Arla just a little closer. "That suit saved my life several long months ago, and I've been wearing it since. I may not know the life of a quarian, Lan'Karthal, but I know it better than any non-quarian out there."
Lan'Karthal bristled at that, as if the very mention that Kevin knew anything about quarians was insulting. He didn't seem to have anything else to say, however. It was them against him, and his very own captain was one of them. She clearly loved him, and there wasn't a damn thing he could do to change that.
"Lock the door on your way out," Arla'Tavval told the other quarian, dismissing him. Lan'Karthal stared at them for a few seconds before he straightened up, turned, and left. Arla sighed. "That'll be all over the ship in a matter of hours."
"Good," Kevin said, giving her hips a squeeze. "Let them all know. They need to know where we stand else we'll have Lan'Karthal all over again at every turn. With the reapers tearing the galaxy apart, we can't afford that kind of confusion."
"You're right about that." She sighed again and looked back up into his eyes. They seemed to get more beautiful every time he looked into them. "What a day…"
Kevin drowned in those glowing pools and he could feel his body responding. He glanced towards her bed with a smirk on his face and he saw her follow his gaze. "So… how long until we reach the flotilla?"
She smirked right back. "A couple hours," she replied as she let her fingers slide down his chest. "Keelah, I've missed you." The gleam in her eye just then spoke volumes.
Kevin hesitated. "Shouldn't we… help the others? I'm sure you have enough of a workload to—" He trailed off as Arla broke eye contact to look at the floor.
"I need this… I need you. Keelah do I need you." She paused and looked back up into his eyes. "The others can wait. We may not survive our fight with the geth, and I need to feel you again."
Kevin leaned in for another passionate kiss and she met him halfway, hungry for the taste of him, the feel of him, the heat of him. As one, Arla leapt up to wrap her legs around him and he pulled her to himself to hold her there. Kevin grunted and he immediately feared his shot leg would give out under him and sabotage the moment, but he did his best not to bite her tongue off and somehow managed to keep upright. As they made love, Kevin shakily walked her to the bed where he playfully tossed her down then jumped on after her.
She was breathing heavily by then, crawling back to line herself up with the pillows. "Keelah. When did this suit get so… constricting?" She immediately and almost frantically began to work at her omni-tool, shutting systems down and preparing the suit to be opened. Kevin didn't wait for her to finish, though, and started unclasping the latches that physically held her suit in one piece. By the time she'd gotten her suit's systems properly shut down, Kevin was already beginning to open her suit.
"Goddamn these suits of yours," Kevin complained as he helped her slip out of the envirosuit. His lips immediately found the first of her exposed skin to lavish her with kisses. She gasped from the sensations and her eyes and smile widened. She couldn't even finish pulling her suit off before her arms were wrapped around her lover, unable to concentrate enough to conjure the dexterity required. Kevin was more than happy to finish the job for her, of course. Writhing in his hands, Arla was eventually stripped of her exosuit. Grinning mischievously, she tackled him to reciprocate.
The galaxy shrank to him, her, and the bed they played upon. He soon lost himself in her flesh, her scent, her warmth. He felt like he lived an eternity without her and had been viewing the galaxy around him in various shades of blurry grey. She brought the color back to his life, and sure enough, they were both soon seeing colors. He rode her like it was the very last day of their lives and she rode him just as vigorously. Kevin was glad that sound didn't pass through the walls, as Arla made no attempts to hold her tongue as she loudly confessed her deepest desires right into his chest or neck.
Time lost meaning for them both. He took her as many ways as a man can take a woman until neither of them knew where Kevin ended and Arla began. It was bliss, and for just a while, the troubles and woes of a burning galaxy were nowhere in their minds.
It was a couple hours later when their fun came to an abrupt end. Sweaty, panting, and coming down from their last climax, Kevin and Arla nearly fell off of the bed when the Peravaash jolted as if it had flown into something big and solid. The sound of the ship firing weapons certainly didn't give them any cause to relax.
"What the hell?" Arla said, half in alarm and half in irritation.
"That sounded like disruptor torpedoes," Kevin remarked as he began to disentangle himself from his quarian lover.
Arla sprang up and activated her omni-tool. "Garloh? Dolannus? What the hell is going on out there?"
"You best get up to the bridge as soon as possible, captain," Tyr'Garloh came back over the comms. "We're under attack and things just got a lot more complicated."
"Damnit," Kevin cursed with a grin as he sat on the edge of the bed. "I like you naked. You can't go naked onto the bridge."
Arla shot him a mischievous glance as if she were seconds away from tackling him again while she bent down to scoop up her empty exosuit, intentionally giving Kevin a grand view. "Likewise. But a captain can't live in that bliss for too long or she might get a little numb."
Kevin began to gather up his clothes as well. The urgency of the situation still hadn't quite sunk in, though he was used to getting dressed quickly. Human clothes. Where's my exosuit? He had himself clothed in less than a minute and was already pulling on his boots. He then sauntered over to Arla to help with her suit, but three-quarters of the way there, the ship rocked violently a second time, causing Arla to stumble into his arms. He looked to Arla and she looked to him, and they finally realized that they should be moving a hell of a lot faster. It took another few minutes to get Arla's suit on properly, even with Kevin's help. Her suit had barely finished booting by the time she was heading for the door.
"Arla!" Kevin shouted to her as he tossed her visor to her. She twisted around and had just enough time to spot the flying gear in the air to catch it and latch it on before the door opened behind her. Kevin was hot on her heels on the way out the door, looking as if they'd done nothing but talk for those hours—save for the fine sheen of sweat on his skin from their intense love-making.
Outside, quarians were moving everywhere. Clan colors of vast varieties flew by left and right as they moved speedily by. It seemed like chaos with the way they were scrambling about, but Kevin knew the Xelvas'taersh better than that. Chaos, but measured, controlled chaos. Everyone has a purpose here or Arla wouldn't have brought them on board. Unfortunately, these ship corridors were never meant to support such a large flow of bodies at the same time, and groups stepped aside to let Kevin and Arla go by, giving their captain priority in the traffic.
When they finally made it to the bridge, they found it crowded. All the seats were occupied by quarian pilots and co-pilots, and standing behind them were Ralik, Tyr'Garloh, Lan'Karthal, Telius, and Maela. He wondered why Targold wasn't up there, knowing he'd want to see the action first hand, but he wouldn't be surprised if the Xelvas'taersh told him to stay in the cargo hold.
The ship rocked again as Arla stepped up behind the pilot. "Report."
Her command seemed aimed at the pilot—a quarian woman in brown, grey, and pastel blue—but she was obviously quite busy keeping the ship in one piece so Tyr'Garloh stepped in to answer for her. "Second to last relay jump until we hit the Far Rim and we were ambushed as we were lining up our vector for the next jump. We haven't been able to identify the orb-like profiles, but we think they're larger versions of the spheres we saw back on Taetrus."
"Reapers?" Arla asked as she checked a few terminals to see the data.
"That's them, alright," Kevin said direly as he nodded towards the forward viewports where a pair of oculi was trying to break the chase. Some GARDIAN lasers from the underside of the Peravaash took them out right quick.
"That's the last of them," the pilot announced, her voice filled with relief.
"Nicely done, Tira'Selh," Arla praised.
"So… my guess is there are reapers on the far side," Tyr'Garloh stated, crossing his arms. "It's our only chance of getting back to the flotilla. Will we take that risk, captain?"
All eyes turned to Arla'Tavval and a momentary hush fell. Arla's eyes turned distant behind that visor as she weighed the critical facts of the moment against their necessary goal. A tough decision that might lead to the slaughter of her entire crew and failure in the mission the Migrant Fleet sent them on in the first place.
To muddle up the process a little more, Tira'Selh announced, "Captain, we're getting reports of battle joined around the drop zone. Turians and humans, I think."
"The hell are they doing all the way out here?" Kevin asked no one in particular. No one in particular answered as well.
"We go," Arla finally announced with stark determination in her voice. "Perhaps we can assist them along the way. If they're fighting reapers, they'll sure as hell need it." She tapped on a nearby terminal a few times and a chime played across the entire ship. "Attention all hands: to your battle stations. We're about to enter an in-progress fight against the reapers on our way to link up with the Migrant Fleet. I know you've all given everything you have over the past few days, but I need just a little more from you all." She cut the intra-ship comms and took a step back as the sounds of the nearest quarians saluting, both physically and vocally, washed into the bridge.
Arla stood up straight and crossed her arms. "Tira'Selh, take us through."
