Man off the Moon

by FiendLurcher

A rusted hero let loose in a galaxy of myriad grays, walking the familiar steps and seeking answers beyond death at the end of that long, ever-winding road. (Currently editing ch22, took a break last month cuz of flu&brainfog)

14. Approach Vector

Miranda looked up, eyeing the passerby through narrowed lashes and a thick curtain of hanging dark hair.

Her eyes raked his silhouette; took in the color and condition of his skin; his poor slouching posture and the way he walked, favoring one side slightly over the other—one limb being slightly longer; an accident? Bone break poorly reset? Or the common epigenetic defect from the sigma-2 gene care package?—and the way his hair seemed to be already thinning despite his relative youth told her all she needed to know about him.

Poor genetic base - does not take care of himself either. Inferior in all regards.

She sniffed, the analysis lasting less than the blink of an eye before she went back to reading on her omnitool. The past few days had been less than pleasant and not only due to the usual incompetence and inability of others to fall in line. It had been 48 hours of nothing but waiting and re-reading the material and intelligence reports that she already knew by heart, even as the window of opportunity continued to narrow precipitously.

The Citadel would only wait so long.

She had been given a mission and it was one which she intended to accomplish without fail. Just as she had succeeded in accomplishing every other mission before now. Any task set before her, she could handle. Any problem given to her, she could solve. Any role expected of her, she could exceed.

Unfortunately, even she could not do it all by herself.

Oftentimes, such as now, a team was necessary.

Something which was proving increasingly difficult for her to maintain her stellar performance in; the insecurities and failings of others always threatening to pull her down with them. It was fortuitous that their downwards spirals never caught her along, as no one seemed willing to work with her more than once, run too ragged by merely keeping up with her standards.

Miranda sighed, closing the omnitool and flicking away her dark hair as she stood up.

If no one is available, then I'll just have to do it by myself, no matter what the mission parameters are...

Looking around the park, eyes following the contours of the majestic trees and the perfectly-level plane of evergreen grass, she smiled.

At first, one might think that building a park of this size in a settlement—even one the size of Luna's capital—was sheer lunacy. That it was a frivolous waste of precious space, especially in a settlement built as early as Armstrong had been into the first forays into space - long before the discovery of element zero. And it was right in the middle, where the dome above was tallest and thus the capacity for building up would have been the greatest, making it prime real estate. Yet even so it had all been dedicated to this green park, with its rustling green leaves overhead and babbling brooks of crystal clear water below.

For such thoughts decrying its opulence were shallow.

This seemingly extravagant beauty hid a deeper meaning just beneath the surface. Something, which she thought rather similar to herself. That function did not precede form, rather they walked hand in hand as intertwined and bound as could be.

The main reason she liked this place so much, really.

Even from a merely practical standpoint, the benefits were many and varied.

As one considered the needs of a theoretical human habitat, it would be obvious soon enough why this place was necessary. One might think it was purely for the fresh air, as the great forests and jungles on Earth had more than once been described as the planet's lungs. And it was true, that oxygen generation was a great priority for off-world settlements, but it was not the only one: water purification, waste management, food production, creating compost and laying the foundation for more life to come...

But those had only truly been true for their time, now long in the past.

While the almost-weightless seeds had been crucial in allowing all those functions the be realized at a fraction of the cost a similarly performing mechanical or chemical solutions could provide at the time, today they all fell far behind what could be achieved without this large and wasteful park.

As had been argued many a time by short-sighted and visionless people.

As yet still, none of it had been removed.

Many a settler would swear that the park's air was twice as good as the 'fresh' air that was created artificially, even if by all scientific metrics available there was nothing that truly elevated it. There had even been placebo tests to that effect, proving it beyond a shadow of a doubt, too.

Thus it was not the thing itself, but the image of it which made the difference.

If asked, she would answer that it was because beauty was necessary for the human mind, creating meaning of its own.

Indeed, the orchards on the moon were still a well-known and celebrated visual imagery from the early history of human space exploration, right alongside the first flags and ships. This park created a space wildly different from the artificial design and structure of everything else built here. It gave contrast, giving the mind and body a place to relax.

Miranda knew, that as the first true settlement on another celestial body, Armstrong had been something of a social experiment as much as it had been a symbol.

To see if living off of Earth was even possible for human beings.

In the early days of space flight—well over a century before the discovery of element zero—mental health had been a silent problem for those who left the confines of Earth. Depression, anxiety, hallucinations, feelings of worsened mental performance, and various personality disorders were rife among those first few who spent extensive periods of time off-world.

Not enough to be a truly pressing problem, but a concern nonetheless.

Enough, that time and money had to be allotted to maintain their mental health.

Those who had been in space for extended periods of time before Armstrong's construction were the cream of the crop - the best of the best. There was sufficient time, funds, and interest to have each and every one of them screened and psychologically profiled to make certain of their mental fitness for the rigors of space. It was practical to have professionals monitoring their psychological health, as those up there were few and those below were many.

But that wasn't necessarily the case for an outpost.

It had to house people, not just the top percenters of any given field. Humans from all walks of life came there to live. Where time, space, and interest were too scarce for someone to be monitoring everyone's mental health at all times. They could not have a settlement where everyone had to have a personal psychiatrist.

That was simply not possible.

Thus, as with many things, they sought to remove the problem its roots: prevention is always cheaper than treatment, as the old adage went.

One of the first things to have been done in Armstrong, as soon as the dome was built and the terraforming process could begin, was the planting of a single tree in the first soil. Right in the middle of the domed crater. She looked out, able to see the tree even from where she stood, towering over the others.

It was of a lesser specimen by all metrics today, far surpassed in all regards by later strains, but it was a symbol of this settlement. To this settlement. Planted into the soil to prove to everyone that it was possible for life to exist here. According to early—and classified for many years—reports, many of the early settlers had spent all of their free time around it in the first years that passed. Some psychological reports made predictions that the entire outpost's success could hinge on that tree.

Even when it had become defunct and obsolete, it remained. Such was the importance of symbols to humanity.

Miranda knew this fact well.

She was not only physically superior to the vast majority of humanity, but she was also intellectually superior. Or rather, she had the whole package. Be it strength, endurance, agility, reaction time, intelligence quotient, overall health, and life expectancy, she was not only a cut above the rest - she was in a league entirely of her own!

Such a being would without fail garner the envy and resentment of those around it, thus it was necessary for her to not only play the part but to look the part as well. For one so well-versed and rounded, ironically their one failure would become their defining trait, rather than all of their abilities.

Thus, rather than being a 'monster', she preferred to be seen as a 'goddess'.

Beautiful did not even begin to describe her.

She knew it and she flaunted it. It was her tree. To look in the mirror every day and know that no matter what she faced, she had been born, bred, and raised to surpass them all.

She inhaled deeply, looking at the pollinating bee flying past her into a flowerbed in full bloom.

The park also served as an ecosystem for those living here. At first, during the early days of space exploration there had been some worries about weakened and atrophied immune systems. But among the myriad concerns and physically debilitative conditions that prolonged stays in zero-g tended to bring on, it seemed a relatively minor concern.

But when experts realized, that there was a very real concern for settlers to become utterly vulnerable to all Earthly diseases after mere years of isolation were the Armstrong outpost to be constructed as a purely artificial and sterile environment, it became a much greater concern. If it was to ever be a living, breathing, and long-lasting settlement for humanity, it had to have an ecosystem. Something, which could keep the immune systems of those living on the settlement awake and ready. Something, to give the immune systems of the settlement's inhabitants a kick every once in a while, to keep them on their toes.

People were envious of her looks, her intellect, and her talents. Having long since grown accustomed to that, she took it all in stride, considering it a public service - a reminder that there was always someone better. They could not be her, but they could strive to be their best in emulating her.

She smiled at that thought. She couldn't help it, usurping experts in their particular fields with ease when she only put her mind to it.

Her eyes following a couple jogging past her on their own, she sighed again.

Their children will have his eyes and her ears... The nose is a toss-up.

The distraction pulling her thoughts free from old tracks, she returned to the matter at hand. The mission.

She had done all the research she could while waiting here on Armstrong. The mission had to be done, regardless of whether she had the necessary manpower, and could be pushed back no further. If she had to do it alone, she would do it alone. If nothing else, it would look splendid on her record.

He would certainly appreciate her hard work, she knew.

Turning around to walk back, she took a long route through the park and domed settlement, before she arrived at the edge of a building. It was one of the industrial high-risers built at the edge of the crater, where the prices on land weren't as high. On paper, this building and its offices belonged to a shipping and delivery company, but in reality aside from the bare necessities for a cover, it was a meeting ground for Cerberus Operatives.

She blinked as she arrived by the door.

Someone was waiting there, just behind the door in the lobby.

A tall, dark, and handsome man.

Eyeing him as she approached, she noted his lean muscular build, his long powerful limbs, and those sharp eyes that took in everything. His physique was impeccable, she thought. Perfectly lean and balanced, with nothing excess. Like a machine trimmed and optimized for nothing but performance and achieving the peak of aesthetics as a mere byproduct.

Here was someone who did not slack off as so many others seemed to make their calling.

He was wearing simple, dark clothes—something that you could have bought in any store for a dime and then be lost in a crowd in—with an open jacket that could have been concealing a pistol or three the way it hung from his broad shoulders. The way he kept his back to a wall without actually leaning against it, standing straight and with his eyes open and looking around without making it too obvious, told her all she needed to know.

A soldier, or someone who has seen combat.

His dark, almost pitch black hair was sticking up and brought out his honey-colored eyes as they locked gazes. She smiled, raising the corners of her lips just enough for it to be construed as something more. She waited for the spark of realization to appear in his eyes, to see how he reacted, wanting to draw him in just a little.

He looked at her for a moment, then turned to look away from her as if he hadn't seen it. She almost stumbled in her step - but she didn't. Hiding her frown, she walked through the front door, moving past him without turning and into the lobby.

The secretary by the rear of the entrance stood up to greet her. "Welcome back, miss Lawson. You have two messages, and a gentleman waiting to see you."

Without stopping, she nodded. "I'll be in my office."

"Very good, miss." The secretary nodded, understanding that to mean she would send for the visitor once she was ready. Or rather, once she felt he had waited long enough.

She continued walking, straight into the elevator that opened up without waiting for her to arrive, allowing her to step right in. The doors closed and she turned around, allowing it to carry her up all the way to her office. It was nothing more than a place for her to work, with a view of the park and the city overall. It wasn't connected to the cover firm in any meaningful capacity, but it gave her a background she could use if she needed to.

Sitting down, she turned on the terminal and opened it to read the messages.

One predictably was from the man downstairs. A formal introduction and inquiry regarding a position in the company. She read the whole thing in ten seconds, finding all the markers and hidden keywords she needed to know, noting that it all checked out. He was a Cerberus operative from another cell, sent to her.

With the clandestine nature of Cerberus' operations, secrecy was paramount.

Every cell remained isolated from each other, with only the officer at all aware of anyone else in the organization. Usually, they only reported to their direct superiors, but her position had been quite unique in that regard. She had worked with half a dozen cells and knew just as many more undercover operatives, which put her in a rather special position within the organization.

A fact which many of those she had worked with found more than a little aggravating, she knew.

The only question was...

Who could have answered her call?

She had sent out a blanket request using the media contacts, which meant every officer in the system had been informed of her specific needs, as long as their VI could pick up on the content. It was a system put into place decades ago, allowing Cerberus cells to covertly communicate through steganographic messages in news articles and adverts. Simply put, it was something like 'if you see a specific phrase used in a specific way in any newsfeed, it meant X'.

It was a very complex secret language, which was why it was delegated to specialized VI to translate automatically.

Of course, Miranda knew the three steganographic standards she was aware of by memory, so she only needed the VI to crawl through all of the daily articles to compile them for her to read herself. Technically she was not supposed to know two of them, but she had seen enough samples to unravel them during her many assignments and had proved herself useful enough that it had not become a problem so far.

Besides, it was only a matter of time until she was made an officer, so why should she wait until then to know what was going on?

But she could not think of anyone among her previous colleagues who would honestly aid her; she hadn't made many friends or allies in the half a decade she had been working with Cerberus. Well, she would find out soon enough. Once she called him in, she would be able to find out everything she needed to know.

Then again, by the looks of it, he was just dumb muscle and nothing she would have need of in the mission.

He could wait a while longer before she sent him away.

She opened the second message. It was nothing more than a string of numbers, but she smiled as she saw it. The mental arithmetic for the encryption took her mere seconds, leaving her with a few keywords with pre-designated meanings. She knew the three methods Cerberus used, but that did not mean those were all that she knew: she had her own secrets as well. It was an update from one of her informants, someone unrelated to Cerberus.

So she's going to the Citadel, too.

Miranda closed her eyes and inhaled slowly, savoring the moment and almost considering arranging a meeting with them, before wiping away the smile and putting away the message. Opening up her work portfolio, she went through the case one more time, reading and taking the time to re-check everything she knew.

Finally, after half an hour did she press the comm button by the desk.

"Send him in."

She put away most of her files, taking out the message from the man again. She eyed it a second time, running the list of keywords and phrases through her mind as she eyed to see if she had missed anything. As expected, she hadn't.

A grunt. I asked for infiltration specialists and hackers, and someone sent me a grunt.

She could smell the insult. The man himself would not know a damn thing about the words he had been instructed to use, but the officer, whoever it was would have chosen them carefully. Veiled insults in the form of patronizing assumptions of her capabilities and obviously sending someone who was a mere extra.

Miranda sighed, leaning back to wait for the man to arrive. She checked her pistol beneath the desk—a mere routine precaution, nothing more—before settling to wait. The man entered, amber eyes scanning the room before coming to a stop before her desk, standing ramrod straight.

"Good day, ma'am."

She almost sighed. She asked for people who could pass unnoticed; someone who could infiltrate and subvert not only secure facilities but also public events. But before her stood a man so obviously military, that she would not be surprised if he didn't fall into marching step with pigeons when he walked down the street. The wide stance, the rigid formality, the polite language, the way his eyes locked onto something without staring, his general ram-rod attitude as if someone had shoved it right up his...

She did sigh, then.

It would stick out anywhere but on a military base.

"How was the weather in Canada?" she asked casually as if making small talk.

Then again, she already knew she did not particularly want this man by her side, so why bother?

"'There have been reports of polar bears coming down for the summer,'" he replied as if reading from a script in comparison to her.

Abandoning the rest of the facade, she figured she might as well get this over with. She knew this man knows who she was and what this place was already - that much was obvious. He was so rigid she could already see him repeating the other three security phrases before she even asked the questions.

She had no reason to play along and waste anymore of either of their times.

"So who sent you?"

Besides, she wanted to see this man off-balance. His stoic demeanor was annoying her, for some reason.

Just as she wanted and predicted, he seemed to mentally stumble on the deviation in the supposed script. He blinked, staring at her in confusion.

"...Ma'am?"

"Call me that one more time, and I will throw you out the window." The faintest flare of biotics around her form punctuated her promise. "The building is in the shade and we have a disposal unit right downstairs. No one will find you," she further promised with a smile, looking up at him as she crossed her finger on the desk at his blinking, the first nervous tell peeking through. "You're Cerberus, I'm Cerberus, we're all Cerberus here. Who sent you?"

"I don't know what you are talking about, I apologize for wasting your time, ma'—" He almost spoke the word, but seeing the glint in her eyes he paused as if every survival instinct in his body screaming out for him to shut up. "—dam."

He finished lamely and she raised one corner of her mouth into a sultry smile, acknowledging the save. That cool indifference from the lobby was all but gone, the mask removed.

She preferred him like this, though a certain part felt disappointed at how easy it had been.

"Yes, yes. 'Reveal yourself to no one', 'do not betray Cerberus', I'm more than familiar with the rules. But let's not waste time here - you were sent to me. By whom?" she asked, smiling as she leaned back in the chair. "And none of that 'madam'-calling, either. It's now on the list."

He licked his lips, half-inhaling as if gathering courage as he stepped forward and handed her an optical storage device. She eyed the thing, before taking it and plugging it into her omnitool. Normally, simply accepting and plugging in such a device was the height of stupidity when it came to cyber-security.

However, Cerberus gear ran a completely unique operating system that was developed entirely in-house. Certainly, a virus or other malware could penetrate the first layer, which she used as she performed her everyday tasks with the omnitool. But that was merely a virtual machine being run with a more common operating system used as a front. Every time she activated the haptic interface, it would shut down and fresh reboot the virtual machine.

By Cerberus' tests, nothing should be able to pierce through that security to reach the encrypted data stored within. Not without an array of super-computers and a decade to waste, at least.

She plugged in the OSD, eyeing the data with a raised eyebrow.

Cardotin? That can't be. The man positively loathes me, she thought with wonder.

Having worked with the 'good doctor' on a few occasions, the two had never gotten along at all. She suspected it was due to the envy on his part, being something of a designer baby himself as well. To know that you had been designed from the ground up to be the best you could, but to then see someone else who easily soared above the glass ceiling you were stuck against due to the legalities of gene modification...

She imagined it must have been frustrating. Her father had spared no expenses and cared for no laws when it came to her creation, after all.

Which must mean that this man is someone Cardotin sent to sabotage me or someone he wanted to get rid of.

Miranda looked up, noticing that the man before her had used the time she had been reading to collect his calm. But she had cracked it now - she had a handle on him. She considered the message again lightly, trusting not a single word of it.

Sent out, flying by Earth aboard a cargo ship, a week ago. Former marine; M5. Category 6 discharge for assaulting a superior officer. Distinctions in small arms, first aid, urban combat, and driving—Just as she had thought: a grunt.

"Do you have any idea what you were sent here for?" she asked, looking up.

"No, m—" he hesitated, managing to keep the word in.

She smirked, leaning forward as she eyed the rest of the document quickly. Just a basic history of when, where, and how the man had been recruited after being kicked out of the marines. He was too square - absolutely nothing she could use or rely on.

Sighing, she closed the file and pulled out the OSD, shutting down her omnitool's virtual machine to reset it as routine.

"Well, it looks like you came for nothing. The vacancy just closed, thus your services will not be needed. Send Cardotin my regards," she said politely, her smile anything but as she uttered the name.

The man before her blinked, before nodding.

"Ah, I see. I should have assumed that - since your, ah, assistant seemed a little strange," he replied, smiling a little as he relaxed.

She blinked and looked at him for a second, not quite understanding what he was implying. Or why he was reacting with such relief to her dismissal, for that matter.

He blinked and seemed to realize she didn't know what he was talking about at all. "I mean, the person in the air vent above us, right now. Good ambush position."

There was a moment of utter stillness.

A person in the—

She exploded into motion, biotic barrier snapping into place as she drew her gun and raised it up at the vents. Looking now, she realized that there was a slight deformation at one spot as if someone was lying on the thin sheet of metal.

How!?

Miranda didn't stop to think, even as she realized that he had been right.

She pulled the trigger four times, shots punching through the metal and echoing queerly through the empty vent until one of them hit a kinetic barrier. She put three more rounds into that spot until a shout interrupted her. In front of her, the man she had been interviewing had pulled his own pistol and was aiming up, though he was not firing yet.

"Hold your fire!" a voice called out and Miranda exhaled as she stopped firing. Someone had been in the ventilation duct, above her this whole time. How had she missed it? "I'm coming down, don't fire."

It was a female voice she noted as she stepped back in case the person dropped down a grenade, all while preparing her biotics with her other hand. The ventilation duct was kicked out, landing with a clatter. Miranda inhaled, feeling her annoyance growing.

Her office had been infiltrated—she hadn't realized a thing—who could have—infiltration specialist—no one had answered her blanket call—sounded young—had to be—Ah, it's that person.

"Hold your fire, I'm on your side," a slim woman said again as she landed on all fours, rising up with hands casually going to dust herself off rather than remain upraised to show that she wasn't armed.

It is her, Miranda thought, recognizing the voice, yet not lowering her pistol quite yet.

She wanted to see how this played out. By watching their behavior for micro tells, she was sure she could judge the relationship between these two accurately and come to the truth of the matter. Now, whose man are you?

The female infiltrator was wearing an all-black body-fitting light hardsuit, with a mesh hood rather than a hardhat-type, without any marks or symbols of allegiance. There were no hard parts of plates, nothing that would make noise during an infiltration, she noted as well. Calm, confident, amused by all of this, rather than panicking at being found out.

Too confident.

Miranda's mind ran a mile a minute, eyes shooting between the two before her. Cardotin wouldn't 'piss on me if I were on fire', in his own words. He wouldn't risk helping me even if it was to get rid of someone. That must mean you're her man, sent to grow closer to me while I am suspicious of her. The right hand keeps my attention while the left hand slips the blade in between my ribs, is it?

Her gun twitched, considering whether she should be pointing it at him as well. Revealing her like that would be a bold play, but one which she wouldn't expect me to expect...

A secondary scheme they had agreed on in case she outright refused him the way she had?

"Hands to the wall!" he barked out, gun pointed squarely at the woman.

There was a hint of annoyance in her body language at the shout, but it wasn't conclusive enough for Miranda to say whether it was genuine or a 'tell' for her benefit, in some layered ploy to sell this antagonism.

"Come now, there's no need for that. Just as miss Lawson said, we're all Cerberus here," she replied, and Miranda could hear the wink as she turned to look at her for a moment.

The man, still one hundred percent military, did not care. He advanced on her, intent on subduing the woman.

Oh, he will try to wrest her down, she will show off her own abilities while downplaying him as a threat. Then when I invite her along, she'll ask to bring him as well, thinking it will fly below my radar and that I will underestimate him. Miranda analyzed. It won't work, but this should be fun to watch—

He entered her range, she moved.

Miranda blinked. And it was over in that instant.

The female intruder tried to disarm him but missed, as he simply wasn't where she moved, and then suddenly she was on the floor in a joint lock. The sound of all the air in her lungs rushing out of her as she belly-flopped sounded somehow unreal to Miranda. The man held his gun to the back of her head, holding one of her arms so tightly behind her back, that Miranda wouldn't be surprised if it would pop out of its joint any second now.

Not slowing down for a single second, he began to manhandle her and search for weapons and hidden tools, with her arm wrapped around and held down by the back of his knee as he pressed down with his weight, the other hand still holding his pistol against the back of her neck. Already her omnitool had been taken and thrown to the side.

"Ouch, this...really isn't necess—" The woman tried to start, but he didn't let her as he pressed the gun harder into her neck.

"Speak when spoken to. Failure to comply will result in pain."

The woman tried to speak, but the muzzle pressing into her neck cut her short and she merely nodded to show her understanding.

He reached up with his hand and began to undo the seals on her hood, revealing the face beneath. Dark skin, dark hair. Large brown eyes and full lips, frowning as she expressed annoyance and bewilderment that could only be genuine.

The man looked up to Miranda, having glanced at the face quickly.

"Friend of yours, ma'—"

She raised an eyebrow and he realized that she intended to keep her word if he finished that sentence.

"—demoiselle?" He finished lamely and she had to smile. Not bad, he's a quick thinker. He was beginning to grow on her, but that did not mean that she had dismissed the possibility of all of this being some convoluted ploy to gain her trust.

Miranda put away her pistol, dropping the biotic barrier as she walked up to the two in a display of confidence—not trust. Her high heels made clicking sounds against the floor as she came to a half before the woman's head.

Looking down, she smiled pleasantly.

"I can't say I've ever met her before, no," she proclaimed thoughtfully, arms crossed as she pouted, as if trying very hard to remember.

"Shall I take her to disposal then, downstairs?" he asked promptly, reading her script like a natural. Playing the hard ass to her reasonable and willing to discuss, following her cues perfectly.

She smiled. Perhaps he wasn't so bad after all; dumb muscle was fine as long as it could be predicted and used reliably.

"No, that won't be necessary. Will it, 'Rasa'?"

The woman on the floor scowled, then smiled as if her entire being could be turned around at the flick of a switch. "Haha, I guess I've been caught. You really are all that they say you are, miss Lawson. And for the duration of this mission, if you will have me, it's 'Dianne Hope'."

She considered the woman on the floor for several seconds, before smiling.

"Well then, welcome aboard Dianne. Please, call me Miranda." She looked up to the man, smiling at him in a way that was all but patting him on the head, as praise for his handling of himself so far. "You may let her go, now."

He nodded with a blink, before looking away as if abashed. Letting go of Dianne, he stood up and offered her a hand. Rolling over, she accepted it and as he pulled her up, she stumbled just enough to end up in his arms against his chest.

"Oh, oh my. I'm so sorry. You were a little rough with me, so I'm still feeling a little weak," she said, half a whisper as she looked up at him.

He blinked, swallowing before he pulled himself back while steadying her with his arms. "Apologies. I should not have acted so hastily, ma'am."

"Call me Dianne, it's fine, it's fine. I expect you will defend little old me with just as roughly in the future? I'll feel so much safer knowing I have a big strapping man like you to protect me." She smiled up at him, using every trick Miranda could think of to make herself look small and vulnerable while getting her hooks into the man.

She's livid at him, huh. Well, as long as she doesn't cause problems for the mission, it won't matter, Miranda thought with a raised eyebrow.

"Well then, Dianne. If you would step aside for a moment, I am still conducting an interview here," Miranda spoke, before looking at her hardsuit. The fabric was coated in dust from crawling in the ventilation shafts and it was falling in clumps onto the floor. "You can freshen up in the bathroom down the hall."

Get out of my office.

Dianne laughed, curtsying as she picked up her hardsuit hood and her omnitool, and moved out with a smile that revealed nothing.

Turning her head to look at the man before her, Miranda inhaled slowly.

"Well, then. Tell me about yourself. How did you get out of the military? A man of your talents and discipline seems like a perfect fit," she falsely prodded, sitting down behind her desk again. She had already decided that she wanted him. This was all just a game now.

He hesitated, before exhaling lightly and speaking. "After a field exercise, I was taken off the combat rosters. Following that, and an altercation with a commanding officer, I was out of the Navy in the blink of an eye. No pension, no benefits, no nothing."

She blinked slowly, nodding. It fit with what Cardotin's resume had told her.

"Then I met Cardotin. At first, it was going smoothly enough, but I objected to his methods of interrogation. He didn't take it too well," he finished lamely, looking away.

"He never could handle criticism, that man." She nodded along. His methods were overly reliant on his technology and drugs. It was based on the VI being able to gather enough data points to make conclusions, but it was too rough and destructive a method to gather information in her opinion.

There were much better ways, usually. But Cardotin wouldn't have any of it, rather playing around with his toys and his drugs. She half thought he had only joined Cerberus so that he could experiment with as of yet unreleased and untested substances on human subjects to satisfy his own twisted desires.

A petty and small man.

"And here you are," Miranda concluded, considering him. She hadn't detected any obvious falsehoods in his words, even if he was obviously holding things back and not giving any details. She raised her hands to the desk, interlacing her fingers again. "How would you characterize Cardotin as a team leader?"

He blinked, considering it for a moment.

"Sloppy."

Miranda smiled, his words echoing her thoughts exactly.

She could definitely work with this man. He was rough and rigid, but predictable enough that she could use him. Build a strong working relationship, based on a promise of something more. Help him grow into something considerable so that she could then poach him for her own team when she was inevitably made an officer.

Miranda stood up, walking to him as she extended a hand. "Well then, welcome to the team. My name is Miranda Lawson and I will be the leader for this operation."

He took it, shaking it firmly as he smiled just a little; a pleased micro-expression showing that he wasn't just smiling to be polite, but was quite satisfied with this result. He had a good stoic face, but the most minute of expressions could not be that easily hidden. Yes, I can definitely use this man.

"A pleasure to be working with you, I'm Emil Nguyen," he said, veiling a pleased smirk behind a polite smile.

---

;

---

The hardest thing about all of this was dying my eyebrows and lashes black, Emiya mused as he followed after the dark-haired woman who had introduced herself as Miranda earlier.

Having walked in through the front entrance to this place, he had settled on a cover story and personality, with a plan to just stick around long enough to get to the Citadel. Technically, he could have just shipped himself there, with how things had panned out, but he figured he should take everything he could get.

At first, he had walked into this building as a spirit, but on realizing just how huge this place was, he had given up on that approach. Most of the computers and personnel here did seem clean enough to leave no obvious trails to follow. He had thoroughly searched through the first six floors and found nothing incriminating, despite the omnitool clearly stating that this was a Cerberus base.

It was like searching for a needle in a haystack, thus he had settled for a more direct approach.

He had materialized and acquired some normal clothes and gear. Taking one of the pistols and an omnitool, he had forged a message to be delivered using the media as Cerberus usually did. He figured that even if Cardotin was dead, that the excuse of lag between a message first being sent and the article being published could give him some cover in that regard. Then he had forged an encrypted personnel file for himself that would let him infiltrate this place.

So here he was, walking after a Cerberus operative, infiltrating their organization as a supposed infiltrator. There were levels of irony at work here that only he could fully appreciate.

He tried not to stare at her swaying behind as she walked in front of him, but given that she was obviously putting on a show and that her outfit left very little to the imagination, it was rather difficult actually. But he had something of a grasp on her personality and type already, and why she was doing it, which made it somewhat easier.

An overbearing control freak with inadequacy issues that she projected hard onto others, if he put it in the least charitable terms he could think of.

Inhaling and focusing on something else to distract himself, he noted again that his hair was still easy enough to color and that projecting contact lenses wasn't exactly difficult either, completing the effort of hiding his most unusual features had taken a minute at most.

While white hair and gray eyes were normally rather uncommon in the world—especially together—they were in turn very easy to color over and disguise, his hair not even requiring any bleaching first - something he had made plenty use of back when he had still been alive. It was the eyebrows and eyelashes that required care and attention to detail to cover, as magical albinism didn't limit itself just to the head.

Once he had gotten access to the omnitool, he had been able to piece together quickly enough what he was looking for; a front company acting as a base of operations and staging ground for Cerberus, located in Armstrong just as he had suspected earlier.

The organization seemed to work using isolated cells, that worked alone with minimal contact to avoid being caught and implicating one another. The basis for this infiltration had come in the form of an unread message from a woman seeking assistance for a mission heading out to the Citadel.

This contradictory and temperamental woman, as it was.

Finding that several days old unread message in the folder labeled 'that fucking bitch' had been just what Emiya needed. The message had been sent to a bunch of people, apparently. Or rather, it had been decoded by the VI from various news articles and announcements, that used key phrases and words to hide a secondary message for all Cerberus Officers. It was somewhat worrying to realize that half of all the news sources in the Alliance seemed to be more or less compromised in this manner.

It lent a lot more credence to the theory that this organization was backed by the Alliance.

There had also been direct mail in the same folder, from about a year prior. And given the previous exchanges, he could read between the two, he could gain glimpses of what kind of relationship Operative Lawson and Officer Cardotin had had.

It hadn't been very cordial, to say the least.

But that was good.

She would never think to call up and ask about him, he reasoned.

Not that it would change anything: Cardotin was already dead. Normally, that would have been an obvious problem, leaving him a very suspicious person in her eyes, if she found out about that fact. But the files which he supposedly had no access to, requiring omnitool clearances he should have lacked, all stated that he had been sent out days before Cardotin's recent and unexpected demise.

If she even knew about it yet.

Once he had the cipher to the encryptions, changing the data and metadata in the files was easy.

Of course, given that he was already a fairly known entity to this organization, attempting to infiltrate them at such a suspicious timing should have seemed like suicide.

But as his white hair denoted he was here in his Servant body. Anyone being able to correctly connect him with himself was highly unlikely. He could have been standing next to himself and he was fairly certain that no one would be able to guess that they were actually related, much less the same person.

The benefits of magical self-mutilation and burnout, I suppose, he thought dryly.

Thus as his current appearance had darker skin, was older and taller, and packed an additional 15 kilograms of muscle on his frame, he reasoned that it was safe enough to simply audaciously walk in through the front doors. With his rather common complexion and features, placing his origins at a glance would be next to impossible. Dark hair, tan skin, brown eyeswere the mix that had seemed most common in the Navy, too.

A strangely fitting combination with the unusual name he had picked up from the encrypted files to use as his cover identity.

Next to him, the woman who had identified herself as Dianne Hope—but who had been first called 'Rasa'—walked with smooth and sinuous steps. If she found her earlier treatment at his hands objectionable, she did not show it one bit anymore.

She was all smiles and flirty behavior.

Which only served to put him more on edge. She was obviously an experienced spy of some kind; just the kind of person who would be able to out him if he spoke the wrong word somewhere.

Their eyes met as he glanced at her and her eyes sparkled with delight.

If it wasn't for that one flash of genuine hate when he had taken her to the floor, he might not have been able to know whether or not she was faking it. But now he could still recognize those embers of anger burning, deep within. This woman could nurse a grudge for years, most likely, waiting until the most opportune moment to slit someone's throat and get away with it.

Just the type he didn't know how to handle outside of a fight.

Maybe he had overreacted there? It had just been instinct at first when she had tried to grab him, but everything after that had been improvised to appeal to his new boss. Already he was feeling like he should have just not bothered with this plan. Well, hopefully, he wouldn't be around for whatever the scorned woman was plotting. He wasn't going to be sticking around for long if everything went well.

"Well then, how about you share with the rest of us what we will be doing?" Dianne asked as Miranda walked up to an elevator.

"Not yet. Downstairs," Miranda answered coolly, motioning for them to enter and then pushing the button for the basement level.

His eyes narrowed, realizing that he hadn't been there yet. This was a different elevator than the one in the lobby, thus he hadn't even realized that there was a basement floor. Should have used Structural Analysis, he chided himself. Being able to walk in undetected as a spirit was making him sloppy.

Emiya considered what he had done until now, as he waited for the elevator to arrive at the bottom; how he had ended up infiltrating this Cerberus base of operations in his Servant body.

Once he had sent off the skycar on a one-way trip to the ocean floor on Earth, Emiya had taken his body and begun to run towards the nearest settlement. He hadn't chosen the location he had stopped at simply on a whim: it was one of the hydroponic farm complexes, where corn and beans were produced to feed the nearby settlements.

As the fresh install of the Virtual Intelligence worked out and he gained access to all of the encrypted data stored within, he realized he needed to return to Armstrong, after all.

Just as soon as he had put himself on ice, he had reasoned.

The thing he had realized about his condition was, that it would not help him one bit if he thought of it as having a certain number of days left to live. He would not be able to get anywhere in time if he did and there wasn't much he could do about it.

Traveling took time and there wasn't much he could do about that even with his spirit hacking.

But in dealing with the strange flow of time inside the omnitools when he dove in, he had gained an idea: rather than thinking in terms of one or two days left to live, he should think in terms of operational hours or even minutes left to him that were contained in that remaining time and which could be paused.

By changing the resolution, his working parameters changed.

Assuming he had 48 hours to live, as long as he leveraged something like 5 minutes at a time from those two days to simply reset his Independent Action-skill, then he could in theory stay active for nearly two years as long as his magical energy lasted. Of course, that was an ideal scenario and one he doubted he would be able to pull off. For one, he really only had his body to acquire magical energy, which he still expended even with his class skill.

But it might work to buy himself a little bit of time. A buffer. Even a single day more was a net profit, he reasoned.

Thus, he decided to put himself into cryogenic sleep.

One of the things he had prepared and gotten ready back in Armstrong Control, was a substance known as a vitrificant solution. Simply put, it was something used for cryogenically freezing living things, allowing them to be frozen alive and thawed out without too much harm being caused by the process. It was a rather rare process to perform on humans, but he had lucked out in finding a facility on the moon that specialized in it anyhow.

Freezing living things, that is. Not humans specifically.

Fresh 'moon rabbit' was apparently a rather popular product back on Earth, despite its exorbitant price, as the tenderness of meat grown in such a low-gravity environment was apparently unmatched. It wasn't a very large business, but when serving to a select few with enough credits, something like that wasn't a problem.

The people who were buying such products never so much as looked at a price tag to begin with.

Normally when a living being was frozen, the water crystallizing would cause massive damage to the cell membranes, and would without fail kill most warm-blooded creatures. Some cold-blooded creatures had developed special extracellular protein matrices on their cells, which allowed them to resist the damage this process caused, and through research into this, a vitrificant solution was developed. Originally intended for use on human beings who wished to cryogenically freeze themselves so that they might be one day revived or for long space voyages before the era of eezo, in today's world they were mostly used in preserving live animals over long distances in space.

Simply put, it prevented the water from crystallizing when it froze, allowing the body to be frozen without taking damage. One would think that its ability to keep people alive in an inanimate state would be considered valuable, but apparently, the matter of taste was much more important on the free market.

Well-marbled tender moon rabbit apparently went for 13,000 credits per kilogram, far outweighing the production and shipping costs.

Upon stumbling on this ranch, he had immediately bought some of their vitrificant using a forged account with the money he had stolen. They had plenty and it had other uses as well, thus it wasn't too unusual a purchase.

After getting his hands on the solution he had bought, he Projected a triple-layered steel box around himself to act like a thermos can or an icebox. Making it airtight, he prepared to remove his environment suit. He had plundered some ice from the nearby glaciers and had it in the box with him, keeping the temperature at -200 Celsius, since heedless projection wasn't an option anymore with his source of magical energy being tapped off. He needed to conserve all of his reserves for as long as possible.

He had actually been worried that the oxygen he was breathing might turn liquid before his body could freeze over, but luckily the canister had held as he opened them by hand. Finally, he had injected copious amounts of the vitrificant into his body as he began to remove the environment suit to remove its protective layers from the chill he needed to be seeped in.

The cold had struck him immediately and about as viciously as a hammer to the face.

According to astronomical reports, the shadowed craters on the south pole of the moon were some of the coldest spots in the entire solar system, even surpassing Pluto in how cold it was.

He could attest to that the moment he had removed his helmet. It had been freezing. Words could not describe the sensation properly, as he exposed himself to temperatures that no human could normally survive. Halfway in taking off his environment suit, his limbs had stopped responding to his movements, something which he found more than a little unnerving.

Freezing to unconsciousness in that dark box had been one of the most nerve-wracking experiences in his entire existence—life and afterlife combined—only made possible by his ability to act independently of his body as a Servant.

He hoped it would work, but there was no way to know until he needed to wake up again. Once he thawed out, his body might already be dead as it warmed up from the damage the process had wrought. Stepping out and observing it from the outside, he couldn't see anything wrong with it, but that had done little to assuage his worries since he had never before successfully frozen and re-animated anyone.

After that, he had found some work in his Servant body, putting his repair skills to good use, and made himself some clean money. As it turned out, his carefully forged repair licenses were worthless and the one heater he had managed to fix in five minutes was worth the world to those he had talked to. He had made 5520 credits in two hours, a fairly hefty sum that gave him enough to get started.

They threw him some strange looks, no one quite knowing where exactly he had come from, given that there hadn't been any arriving shuttles or starships. But ranchers were practical people. As long as he could save them money, they didn't ask too many questions or care.

After that, he had made it back to Armstrong on a shuttle as he called in, shipping his body and his excess gear in sealed steel boxes separately. In using the regular transports to return to Armstrong, he had had plenty of time to go through the omnitool he now had access to. He had learned a lot of things from the VI, some of which were of immediate use, and some of which might be of massive value somewhere later down the line.

One of the immediate uses had been in regards to a 'project gateway', which was a Cerberus operation to establish credible fake identities both in Alliance space, as well as the other Citadel territories. It included both the identitag and medicards necessary for passing as a citizen in nearly all territories. Not just fakes that would pass through a quick inspection, but a method to insert and replace data as necessary in databases where information was stored.

Cardotin had had several identities, several of which had never been used before. Emiya had taken the liberty of crafting himself a new identity using one of those as a base by editing the local files.

Hence, Emil Nguyen. He was a new man.

For now, anyway.

Any database check would see through it in an instant since it had been constructed for another face and another genetic background.

But it was a start, something to get his foot in the door. If he wanted to truly slip out of the Alliance's and Cerberus' radar, he needed to figure out how to create new identities himself. Right now, he just had access to something that had been created before. If he truly wanted to be able to disappear, figuring out how this 'project gateway' functioned would be a major step in the right direction.

The easiest way he figured, would be to see the process himself.

Replication is almost always easier than invention.

Thus, he had decided to face the extraordinary risk of being found out and went for the attempt at infiltration for infiltration, so that he might find out more. Of course, he could at any time simply spiritualize and return to his body, so it wasn't like getting found out would be entirely disastrous. He had even decided to use this front company to ship his body to the Citadel. That way, he would be relatively close by to it the whole way and make sure nothing happened to it.

The trio arrived at the bottom, the elevator making a slight 'ding' as the doors opened to reveal the basement.

Emiya blinked, as it looked like they had stepped into an entirely different world.

Right next to the door lay an open crate with dozens of rifles stacked in staggered rows. Unmarked, black weapons that did not look like anything he had seen so far. They're supplying their own weapons? That requires an infrastructure beyond just some black ops funding...

And behind it, he could see folded and packaged hardsuits, easily dozens in just the pile he could see. If all of these boxes contained more, he reckoned there was enough to outfit an entire platoon, just lying around as if it were commonplace materials.

There were dozens of workers scurrying about, using mass effect field generator forklifts to move around boxes and crates, loading up prefab storage containers that would be moved up into the floor above, where they could be attached to starships. Some looked to be entirely mundane and legal, but most of it was high-grade weapons and armor.

Emiya carefully controlled his face as he stepped forward to follow after Miranda. This isn't just some small wetworks operation I've stumbled into, is it?

---

;

---

"Docking now; attaching static banks. Try not to touch any metal surfaces if possible. It should be fine, but let's be careful just in case."

There was a strange sound, like a bolt of lightning in the distance followed by a rumble. Kolkkonen exhaled slowly, rubbing his brow with a dry hand. This is why I hate space...

"Thanks, the build-up is evening out now. Any idea on what caused this?" Ashford asked over the comms, looking out the window at the much larger Alliance cruiser that had come to their aid after they had suddenly become stranded.

They had been hurrying back towards Earth, having received a hit on the all-points bulletin put out on a person of interest.

But suddenly, at the last stretch between Mars and Earth, their flight VI had suddenly and unexpectedly thrown all of their engines in reverse to facilitate a stop while throwing various warnings and alarms at them.

When it came to traveling through the void, there were usually several concerns and difficulties that had to be observed.

Travel time was one of the oldest and still most challenging ones, but mass effect fields had allowed that to be mostly circumvented. Fuel was always another, as there was only so much you could bring with you out into space from a gravity well. Space and weight were always a concern, too. The heat generated by the engines was another, usually handled by radiator fins or special material plates to allow the heat to dissipate after it had built up to the ship's specific capacity. Food and water had to be thought of as well, of course.

But one of the most difficult and often unexpected difficulties of space flight with mass effect technology came from static build-up.

Simply put, the larger your mass effect field or the faster you went, the more static electricity would build up in your eezo core. If left alone, this could result in a catastrophic discharge into the hull, which could result in the total annihilation of the entire crew and destruction of all electronic equipment aboard the ship.

Needless to say, that was a rather undesirable outcome.

To prevent this from occurring, it was necessary to ground out this build-up of static charge in the core by turning it off and parking somewhere close enough for the electric discharge to bleed out. In the vacuum of space, this was not possible, thus it was entirely possible to become stranded in the void without mass effect fields.

Just as they were, right now.

Certainly, they still had their conventional antiproton drives for propulsion - a powerful and reliable system that functioned by the reaction that occurred when anti-protons were allowed to come to contact with matter inside of a magnetically shaped nozzle at the end of the starship. This violent reaction where both antiprotons and protons annihilated each other gave the shuttle considerable acceleration, even without a mass effect field.

But it was no FTL travel, leaving them essentially stuck despite the distance to Earth being only minimal, at least according to conventional thought in the age of interstellar travel.

All because of too much static electricity.

It wasn't an entirely understood phenomenon, but it was well known that where you flew could affect it just as much as the other factors could. Flying in an atmosphere was one such example, but since speeds approaching c had other issues in such densely packed environments, it was rarely a problem. Biotics often suffered from excess static energy, resulting in painful shocks after prolonged use of their powers.

The heliosphere was another; it was something akin to the atmosphere of Earth or the rings of Saturn, but to the sun. It was the area affected by the waves of solar wind, extending outwards from the star, reaching somewhere around Pluto before somewhat petering out.

It was also known that flying through certain gas formations and nebula could accelerate the build-up, but too little information still remained on the subject.

"No idea. Though the nerds are pretty sure it's not from the drive cores, but from the hull building up a static. Earth Control is looking into it, but there's no word on why yet. People've been talking about solar wind or a gamma-ray burst, but that's already been dismissed as idle speculation. The 73rd flotilla was mobilized to help out vessels that might have been stranded, like you. There's been a few ships that've had problems, but no fatalities, luckily," The helmsman of the SSV Moscow reported.

Kolkkonen exhaled slowly through his nose, clenching his fist slowly. They'd lost hours with this delay, forcing them to call to the Alliance Intelligence Agency branch office on Earth, to send someone out in their stead while they called for a towing. Which meant that the cat was out of the bag. One field team could keep a secret. The entire local branch could not.

If someone had been cleaning house or plotting something on Mars, any chance of figuring that out was gone, now. All because of some unexpected damn static build-up.

"Any word on the skycar?"

Ashford shook his head. It was just as he had feared; someone had leaked the information and now their lead was gone.

Kolkkonen sighed again. This is why I hate space.

---

;

---

Emiya closed the door behind him, hearing the click and hiss of a hermetic seal behind him.

By the big table in the middle of the room, Miranda and Dianne had already sat down. Moving towards them, he remained standing as if he was not expecting to be a part of the meeting in any meaningful capacity and simply wished to be out of the way of those who would.

He knew it would cause Miranda to chastise him, having something of a grip on her personality already, but it would serve as another reference to the personality he was trying to project, fortifying the personality he had assumed. A stick in the mud, a man taken out of the military but from whom the military had not yet been taken out.

Miranda looked up at him, smiling with a raised eyebrow yet saying nothing.

He affected sheepishness, just as she wanted him to. There was a startling capability for non-verbal communication in her, despite the strange distance held herself at from others. It was as if there were two completely opposite personalities in her, waging for dominance. He had to wonder how someone like her ended up in Cerberus.

He coughed, sitting down and she nodded with satisfaction.

"Alright then. We don't have much time, since the freighter will be leaving in two hours. so I will keep this brief," she began, crossing her fingers on the table. "Two weeks ago, there was a break-in on Gagarin Station. Someone managed to get in and out of a Systems Alliance laboratory that was under top-level security during the night. Nothing was seemingly taken or touched, but one of the sensors insisted that there had been a break-in."

Miranda brought up a picture of what looked like a general office area, somewhat subverting his expectations of the place as he had expected something different for a 'laboratory'.

"Alliance Investigators arrived within hours. They performed their investigation but found no evidence of anything aside from the initial sensor alarm, and while a pair of investigators remained assigned to the case, it has in effect been labeled a cold case by now, as no new evidence has turned up," Miranda continued explaining.

"Until now, I suppose." Dianne nodded. "What changed?"

"In 36 hours Synthetic Insights will be hosting their annual ball in the Citadel," Miranda answered, before looking at Emiya. "Are you aware of what that is?"

Emiya considered it before shaking his head. "I haven't heard of Synthetic Insights either."

She nodded, not at all bothered by his ignorance—one of the biggest advantages of the persona he had chosen—pulling out her omnitool's display.

"I'll send you a basic dossier and I expect you to memorize it by the time we arrive at the Citadel - but suffice to say for now, they are one of the largest companies in the galaxy, owning several industrial planets and with annual profits that regularly exceed the combined output of the System Alliance. Not all too surprising, given that they have been on the galactic scene now for more than two hundred years. Their primary corporate holdings are on Illium and Noveria, but they still have large offices on the Citadel, where the ball will be hosted."

Dianne nodded, turning to look at him. "Having offices on the Citadel—the Presidium especially—is a major status symbol."

Miranda paused, letting her finish before she continued again.

"Indeed. They manufacture and sell everything related to omnitools and information technology, including VIs and even some AI-related research. One of the four corporations given license by the Citadel Council to research Artificial Intelligence, actually."

Emiya listened and glanced at Dianne, who seemed to be listening in just as intently.

"The ball is an annual event, where they flaunt their wealth and affluence, and they have often unveiled new products and services there in the past. It's become something of a weather vane in terms of what to expect for the new year, where most if not all of the major companies and interests send one or more of their representatives to attend."

"Okay. Big tech, bigger party," Emiya summarized.

Dianne huffed and Miranda smiled, indulging his simple description with a nod. "Yes."

"So whoever broke in at Gagarin Station is going to be showing up at the party?" Dianne continued, smiling at Miranda who narrowed her eyes at the dark-skinned woman for interrupting her again, sensing the power-play forming.

Emiya carefully chose to keep his mouth shut, pretending he wasn't noticing anything.

"Yes, or so Cerberus believes," Miranda said, sniffing finally when Dianne looked away. "The invites for the ball were sent out a week ago by Synthetic Insights, but through some as of yet unknown method, a second message was sent alongside each and every one of those invites."

"Wait, aren't those handwritten asari calligraphy? Individually sealed and sent out by hand? That would require quite a bit of work for someone to subvert for their own use," Dianne cut in again, changing her tone.

It's like those two at the Clock Tower all over again...

Miranda nodded, slightly less irritated. "Yes. The message stated that there would be an item procured from the Systems Alliance on silent auction during the party. There is no direct connection with Gagarin, but..."

"Has the Alliance announced anything about the break-in? Any proof of this connection?" Emiya asked, considering what he was told and playing to skepticism.

"No, but their Alliance actions speak louder than words right now. They are hastily sending in an intelligence specialist for the first time to the ball. He is attending under the cover of seeking to procure some of the new grayboxes in bulk for the Alliance, but Cerberus intel suggests his primary reason for attending is to retrieve the stolen goods at any cost," Miranda clarified.

"So it is a silent auction, then? Has Synthetic Insights issued any statements about someone using their party as a soapbox to sell stolen goods? I can't imagine they're happy about being used like this." Dianne asked.

"They've denied sending out the messages, going so far as to send out a second invite without them."

Dianne whistled. "Those calligraphists don't come cheap."

"But the Alliance still thinks it's going down," Emiya repeated with a frown. The ghosts and trends that data analysts and intelligence operatives chased should seem like complete guesswork to a former marine like the him of right now.

Miranda nodded, a slightly patronizing look in her eyes betraying her inner thoughts.

"So what are we doing? I was assigned for this team by a certain someone, and I can't imagine he would waste my talents on just any snatch and grab." Dianne asked, raising an eyebrow.

For a moment it seemed as if Miranda had been surprised by something she had said, but before Emiya could quite catch the nuance in her expression, it was gone. She frowned and inhaled, carefully trying to keep her face neutral.

"We are to either acquire the item on sale for ourselves or failing that, ensure that the Alliance guest receives it. It must not be allowed to fall into anyone else's hands. If it comes down to it, we must track down and erase all who might have had access to the item to prevent a leak," Miranda stated, looking Dianne straight in the eye.

"It's that sensitive?" he asked, breaking the stare-off and Miranda nodded without looking his way. "Understood."

"This should be fun, then." Dianne concurred, smirking as if she had won something just now.

These two are going to be trouble... he thought, without occluding his troubled thoughts.

'Alpha bitches' reveled in creating social waves, allowing him to downplay and disguise himself more effectively if he pretended to be just a little afraid of both of them, making them focus that much more on each other. So long as they didn't tear each others' throats out, that was perfect.

"Well then, let's go over the venue for the party. Since it is on the Presidium, we will not be able to bring along much equipment, but in regards to that..."

Miranda began to talk, pulling out all kinds of maps and plans. It was obvious that she had been busy, compiling eventualities and possibilities while she had been waiting for them.

Even so, Emiya's mind drifted.

He had no real interest in this operation, beyond some curiosity as to what everyone was looking for and to see how Cerberus operated. Still, he might as well play along for the time being; as long as he got to the Citadel he could simply vanish and leave all these people and troubles behind.

But optimally, he would have a chance to see them use the 'project gateway' first, which would allow him to learn how to create new identities himself.

How well that panned out, remained to be seen.

---

;

---

"It does not match any known database, then."

He exhaled, narrowing his eyes as he leaned back in his chair. Behind him, the star illuminated the darkness of the room he worked in.

That was sort of to be expected. For someone of that mysterious man in black's talents, spoofing or entirely forging a palm-print readout in a haptic adaptive interface was entirely possible. Even expected. But given the nature of the print, he was inclined to believe it was real. It was nothing more than a gut feeling, but one he could not deny outright.

Something about it told him that.

Handprints were unique to individuals, this went for aliens and men alike. Though not all species had similar differences, they all had unique distinguishing features that made each palm-prints unique. Thus they were used as an identification standard all over Citadel space. There were ways to physically alter those prints, either through scrubbing the skin, burning deep enough or by using chemicals. But permanently altering a print enough that it could not be identified was difficult and made it unique in other ways.

This man had apparently achieved such. It was as if the skin had both been burned from the inside and as if the skin had been worn away continuously. It was nearly impossible to get a clean readout, thus he had forwarded it to a specialist on Cerberus' payroll.

In the woman's words, 'these are the hands of a bricklayer who washes his hands with acid and dries with sandpaper', apparently. Still, she had done her best and he had gotten some results back; the palm lines and the outsides of the left thumb seemed to be in relatively readable condition.

But even using just those enhanced results, he hadn't been able to find anything on record. It had been a dead-end, after all. Probably a red herring, despite his gut feeling arguing against that.

"No matter," he said, reaching for his whiskey glass and pulling out the next item on his list. Sipping at the amber liquid, he smiled with satisfaction. "So they managed to retrieve it whole before anyone else arrived."

That the Alliance Intelligence team had been grounded—or rather, the opposite; spaced—and could not catch up to the lead they had discovered, had been a blessing. Not only did it give him another trail on the mysterious entity that had taken out Cardotin's entire team, it also let him recover the Cerberus property before it could be investigated by another party. The tracking software had been disabled somehow—and there were people looking into that right now—but it would have still been embedded in the system.

He still couldn't believe that the skycar had managed to make it to Earth. But somehow, it had. And now he had to figure out how that was possible.

First, he had pulled in all the data he could find from Earth Control—the facilities which monitored all local system traffic—and sent it forward to a team of analysts who could make sense of it for him. The information had quickly enough been summarized for him to digest.

Earth Control had to track and monitor millions of objects orbiting and flying around Earth's immediate vicinity, at all times. With the advent of kinetic barriers, the old problem of scattered debris in Earth orbit had somewhat been solved. But due to contact welding and the passage of time, a lot of those objects had managed to fuse together into larger objects which could pose a considerable risk.

Deflecting a chip of paint was one thing. Deflecting a twenty-kilogram projectile moving at several dozen kilometers a second was something else altogether. Thus most preferred to simply dodge such debris if possible at all, which required information as to where such objects were and how to avoid them. There had been petitions to clean out Earth's orbit several times, but nothing had ever gotten off the ground since it would be such a costly operation.

Thus, Earth's monitoring systems were quite advanced, to be able to track and warn of such objects. Even so, they were still held back by the limits of sensor technology.

For one, objects moving at FTL could not be perceived until after the light came after the object arrived. It was faster than light, after all.

But once the light did arrive, spotting an object traveling at FTL was quite simple; it was like finding a car driving at night on a highway with all of its lights on. It could be seen for light-years, even with antiquated measurement devices, bleeding off a variety of unique radiation markers, glowing against the darkness of the void like a bonfire. The faster one went, the more strongly these markers would show up.

But only after it had passed by, the nature of FTL meaning that the object would have been long gone by the time it was detected.

There had been concerns regarding FTL vehicles being used for space-to-planet bombardment, as such objects could not possibly be detected in time to be prepared for. To counter such, FTL navigation systems were hard coded with certain restrictions, and communication with vessels capable of FTL was always heavily monitored and kept in constant communication, in one form or another.

But that wasn't always enough.

Which meant that a sphere of sensor satellites had been pushed out at various points around the planet and solar system. If any of them detected a suspicious starship, they would send an FTL-tightbeam back to Earth with the information. This meant that it was in fact possible to detect most, if not all FTL traffic within the solar system.

But that was for vessels able to fly at speeds faster than light.

Something which the skycar should decidedly not have been capable of. Even upon exiting Mars' immediate vicinity, the mass effect field scans showed that its eezo core remained incapable of such feats. It was a commercial land speedster, something that would have taken weeks to get to Earth, normally.

Certainly, that would have helped it avoid being noticed by the sensors to a degree, like a bicycle riding down the highway at night would not be noticed by cameras on the lookout for drivers going over the speed limit.

But even so, since it had reached such speeds it should have been detected.

So how had the skycar—which should not have been able to travel at faster-than-light speeds—travel at faster-than-light speeds and remain wholly undetected by the trained expert personnel whose biggest job was to know about everything in motion within the solar system, during all of that time?

The answer was rather simple, actually.

Virtual Intelligences.

There was simply too much information for any number of humans to practically filter through at every second, when it came to space. Even just the local system, a relative backwater on the larger galactic scene—as much as it galled him to admit—was still a terrifically huge region to monitor over constantly. Even assuming that it was possible to track everything, the amount of data to sort through every second was immense.

Thus it was all shunted onto VIs, that could sort through data with immense speed, efficiency, and accuracy. It was a well-known fact that VI were better at recognizing patterns and medical VI were known to be much more reliable than regular medical personnel at reading the first signs of disease from various scans. Due to that, in most professions including Airspace Control, the use of Virtual Intelligence assistants was not only commonplace but something of a necessity.

But there existed a problem with that reliance.

Simply put, Virtual Intelligences did not know how to fail gracefully.

When a human stumbled on something they weren't entirely certain about or an entirely new circumstance, they would grow cautious and careful. Generally at least, depending on their training and experience. A VI did not - it would simply shunt the result into its algorithms and throw out a result which it thought would work without an instant's hesitation or afterthought. Certainly, they could be given failsafes and checklists to run through, but all of those required that the people who coded and created the VI knew everything that could happen and could predict every possible outcome before it had happened.

That was simply not possible, just the same as watching every little rock flying through the solar system wasn't.

This meant that when a VI failed, they failed spectacularly.

According to the records he had acquired, the skycar had started out relatively normally.

It had flown out of Mars and set a Hohmann transfer orbit for Earth, which while unusual still made some sense. The VI had thought it peculiar, but nothing too problematic; the fuel and distance calculations had not exceeded safety limits, thus it was still entirely possible for the skycar to have flown back to Mars under its own power for the duration of the skycar's existence on Mars' records. It was filed under 'aberrant behavior - small vehicle' and never brought up to any human attention since it posed such a small risk on all metrics. Not until it would become stranded in space, at least. Then an Alliance patrol vessel would be notified and they would attempt to contact the skycar.

But then the skycar turned off everything.

After that, the various VIs began to draw conclusions that no one could make heads or tails out of. According to one model following the entire incident, the skycar must have split into seven distinct entities and then collapsed back into one as it began to slow down near the moon without traveling the distance between the seven points it had been in at all. One of the Earth Control analysts had suggested a probability drive of some kind, based on superpositioning or something, but he had been dismissed entirely since quantum mechanics decidedly did not work like that. The analyst had been demoted since then.

Though it had been flying dark, predictive programs were quite efficient and while the footage of it was unclear, the VIs were adamant that it had kept going the route and velocity it had for another ten thousand kilometers at least. But then something had changed again.

There was a flare, nothing more than a three-frame flash of light that did not fit any existing models, followed by the skycar vanishing. The trail had somehow been lost, due to the new heading and acceleration the vessel showed, and its trail had only been later assumed through connecting it to where something was spotted later on. One of the Cerberus analysts noted that the new heading reflected a renewed Hohmann transfer orbit which would reflect a new greater acceleration, assuming it was still heading for Earth.

But since the trail lacked all the regular radiation markers of FTL-travel, leaving just a bright patch of indefinable nothingness for the VI to analyze, nothing conclusive had been arrived at.

But the assumption was that the skycar had been flying on that path. Since it had arrived at Earth, somehow.

There, supposedly it had begun to leak a trail of vaporized water, causing the VI to conclude that there had been some form of endothermic ice asteroid that had suddenly appeared in the solar system from nowhere. At least until its calculations returned FTL speeds for how fast it had been going, despite all mass effect field sensors returning a zero reaction response. Analysts were relatively certain that this 'asteroid' was in fact the skycar, except for the fact that the amount of water it shed was over four times the mass of the entire skycar when it had left Mars.

Absolutely no one knew what to make of that.

Given the rated engine on the skycar, it shouldn't have been able to lift off with such a load, much less get out of Mars' gravity well. And that was without addressing the six unidentified phantoms that had been moving on a parallel course at barely sub-luminal velocities, spitting Cherenkov radiation everywhere as if a catastrophic mass effect field breach had occurred, until they completely disappeared sometime later.

As that information reached various officials, a dozen starships had been scrambled for immediate rescue attempts, to search for any survivors in what was presumed to be a tragic accident.

Of course, they had found nothing.

Since last he had checked, three major nations had all formed independent committees just to investigate that phenomenon.

Another conclusion the VIs had drawn was that the skycar's eezo core had suddenly exponentially increased in size, to account for the sudden increase in acceleration. This had been dismissed by his analysts already, as just like the VI had noted the skycar lacked almost all of the FTL markers. It was as if the skycar had been moving at FTL, without moving at FTL. None of the known radiation or expected signals that should make it stand out against the nothingness of space was detected.

Even biotics had these markers—the 'blue flare' of dark energy fields fluctuating—when they applied their powers. With hovercraft such as skycars and shuttles, it usually remained indistinct and controlled for optimum efficiency. But at higher velocities and especially at FTL it should light up like a bonfire.

Always, without fail. Until now apparently, that is.

By the time the skycar had been detected by Armstrong Control, none of the VI in the heliosphere network knew what to do, resulting in no one being informed of the strange state of affairs as the entire network kept bouncing around the conflicting data and churning out junk results and causing unexpected lag all over the system.

Earth Control had only realized what had happened after an Alliance Intelligence all-points bulletin had been put out on the skycar, and the VI were questioned on the matter. Logs were reviewed, questions were raised and no answers could be found. It didn't help that a strange magnetic storm seemed to be raging in the region that had been traveled through. Several ships had been brought to P-static saturation suddenly by flying through the region, with more than one being stranded and unable to discharge the static build-up in the middle of space on their own, necessitating rescue operations.

No one knew what was going on and everyone seemed to be looking for the skycar for one reason or another as they scrambled to figure just what the hell was going on. Had the skycar been found by anyone else, they would have torn it apart and found all of the evidence pointing at Cerberus when they did.

It would have been a disaster of unmitigated proportions for him.

His own men had already hauled in the skycar and begun to investigate it, but so far nothing unusual had been found, beyond the various firearms in the back and the expected wear and tear from the flight itself. With the crash landing into the ocean, it had taken considerable damage to the front of the chassis, but he was confident that if there was something unusual with the skycar, they would find it.

His terminal beeped and he glanced at it; a message from Operative Lawson, stating that she had assembled a team and would be leaving shortly. He considered dealing with it, even knowing it was a low-priority message.

But he was exhausted.

Looking at the time, he noted he had been working close to 45 hours now. Enough being enough, he decided he would continue tomorrow after a good rest. With a swipe of his hand, the terminals closed and the already dim room fell into an even deeper darkness.

He inhaled, trying to forget all the data for now and frowning as a strange thought popped into his head. It's as if someone was trying out a new kind of FTL drive, or something. Shaking his head, he pulled out his cigarettes only to notice he had run out.

"Damn it."

---

;

---

Emiya looked up, taking in the massive freighter looming ahead.

It was big. Bigger than any other vessel he had boarded or seen until now, short of the gargantuan seafaring freighters back on Earth, back when he had been alive. Like a giant flying whale, it was already huge as a vessel, but from what he could see, a lot of additional cargo could be attached to the hull and to further increase its transporting capacity.

Just how much could it balloon further?

The Brigadoon-class freighter; the MSV Demeter.

It would be their ride to the Citadel. For both body and soul, for Emiya. He could see the package he had paid to have shipped to the Citadel from where he was standing, but he refrained from looking lest he betrays his interest to anyone who might have been looking at him, or might look him over later on recorded footage.

Carrying a large suitcase, he inhaled slowly.

He had geared up earlier, taking equipment as necessary. Miranda had told him to take anything he thought he might need since he had 'left behind' all of his gear when taking civilian starliner to get to Armstrong, and had nothing more than a pistol and his civvies right now on him.

Accepting her 'generosity', he hadn't held back. Taking two hardsuits—one of both sizes for himself, since no one was looking—along with guns, grenades, and any other equipment that caught his eye, he packed up and was now carrying a rather considerable armory with him.

"Hey now, we're not going to a war zone. What's with all the stuff?" Dianne asked cheekily, walking up to him from behind.

He turned around to look at her, controlling his expression to contain his wariness toward her, modulating it the appropriate amount she wanted to see.

"I probably won't be of any use inside of a fancy ball. Means I'll be waiting outside, in case we need to put someone down. With the level of security we're expecting, it will probably be a suicide mission if it comes to that... But I might as well go in heavily armed and buy you two another few minutes if that is the case," he fibbed on the fly.

She hummed at that, her eyes narrowing.

I'm just big, dumb muscle playing chivalric for the ladies; plot how to leave me behind and don't think too hard about why I want so many toys now...

Miranda walked up to them, carrying a smaller but still considerable suitcase of her own.

"Emil, you will be attending the ball with me. Dianne, you will be infiltrating the compound through the service access as noted before, as outlined in my original plan - I expect you to hack into their feed and give us a secure comm channel to keep us updated on the inside," she said, glancing at Emiya as he reached to take her suitcase.

Saying nothing but offering him an acknowledging smile, she let him take it from her.

"That's..." Emiya hesitated.

It hadn't been in the original plan for him to actually be attending the party.

That would make it marginally harder for him to leave, but arguing too strongly now would be bad. Well, maybe he could work it to his advantage. I should raise my background as a concern, see if I can't get them to reveal how 'gateway' works.

"Is that really wise? After all, I am a cat-6 discharge... I will probably stand out."

Miranda smiled at that, satisfaction at having thought ahead of him plain to see as she handed him a datapad.

"Congratulations Emil Nguyen, you're now an up-and-coming electronics investor. Or should I say, mister Durana? You've become a rather wealthy man in the space of an hour. A true nouveau riche."

On the datapad was a picture of him which he didn't remember having given them, with a new name next to it. 'Emil Durana'... Damn, when did she have time to do all this? At this rate, I'm going to lose track of who I am, he groused internally. Then again, I suppose it's fitting for someone 'nameless', he thought with a mental adjustment to his identity.

"Is it a complete identity?" he asked.

If she had been able to make a foolproof fake identity this quickly, then it should be fairly easy for him to make one himself, as well.

As long as he could figure out how she had done it, anyhow.

"Not quite. We'll have to finalize it on the Citadel. But it will hold to C-sec scrutiny, at least," she answered with a knowing smile, as if sharing some private joke, and he nodded without smirking.

Bingo. Just a little more, then.

Emiya made to glance at Dianne, making a quick scan of the sealed box his body was in with his sweeping gaze.

It was being loaded in now with all the other goods. As expected, among all of these boxes and packages being shipped out into the Serpent Nebula, his hacked order would simply disappear, leaving behind nothing more than a single line of data in some database.

All of the containers and boxes that had been on open display in the basement floor—with their numerous eye-catching and curious contents—had now been thoroughly sealed and hidden away here at the 'ground level' where the starships docked, readied for shipping. He doubted that even if someone could find the data trail of his smuggled body, that it could be found after the fact, given the levels of obfuscation all the other goods would be under.

His body would vanish into the same murky depths of forged shipping manifestos and falsified orders as all these other illegal goods.

It was a little startling to see on how many levels Cerberus operated on, some of which appeared completely legitimate but for the work they did in covering up and supporting the rest of their operations. He had to wonder just how many people actually know about the organization as a whole and how many were simply hired to do normal jobs. Regardless, it spoke of an old and well-entrenched movement - like a cancerous growth that had metastasized and begun to fully take over the host body.

Would it threaten Shepard?

"Time to go. The crew is doesn't know about our mission, so don't go talking to them unless you have to. We don't want anyone asking questions or able to answer any meaningfully later, so keep that in mind," Miranda said and began to walk as the freighter's side opened to let them inside.

Emiya nodded, following after her, carrying the two suitcases. They boarded the freighter along a long walkway that was tilted so that boarding the starship was rather easy, even with a large container. Next to them, several hovering forklifts were busily moving containers and boxes in, losing no time.

He felt like he was walking inside the yawning maw of some great whale, eyeing the almost skeletal support structures inside of the ship. 'Barebones' was the only term Emiya could describe the décor with, as the priority had obviously been to minimize the starship's weight so that they could maximize the amount of cargo that could be transported.

Workers glanced at them, but no one came to stop or question them as they boarded.

Arriving at an elevator—little more than a cage attached to the pulley system, really—they began to ascend beyond the ceiling of the vast belly of the freighter, into the 'spine' of the whale. The doors opened and they continued, walking through the dull bare steel surfaces without pause until they arrived at the bridge.

A man standing by a terminal turned around and frowned at them, but said nothing.

Miranda was all smiles as she walked up to him and handed him a datapad. "You'll find all our information there, captain. I trust there will be no problems or delays? We are in something of a hurry."

He grumbled, accepting the datapad and taking a quick look at it, before punching in some adjusted numbers into the terminal. Presumably to account for the weight they added to the ship.

"There are empty cabins by the starboard side, one stair down. The trip won't be long but you can rest there," he answered, turning around obviously hoping they would leave.

"You heard the man. I will stay here and oversee the proceedings," Miranda addressed them, glancing at the captain who seemed to sigh at her decision to stay.

"I'll take a look around. Familiarize myself with the ship. Don't worry, I won't be seen," Dianne replied with a saccharine cheer, turning around and walking out without waiting for anyone to acknowledge her words.

Emiya nodded, turning around and following her.

He'd take the bags up to one or another empty cabin and then take a walk around himself as well. For one, he had to make sure his body came along as scheduled. For another, it was a good chance to get a closer look at a proper starship. As a lot of what he had done on the way to the moon had left him with open-ended questions, he decided that this was an opportunity he didn't want to miss.

Finding the engine room wasn't particularly difficult, even if those working on the ship kept questioning his presence there. He waived them all to take it to the captain, which seemed clear most of them off his back.

Being a commercial freighter, it used the economy ion engine model of propulsion, basically creating propulsion through positively charged ions being accelerated with electricity. It was a rather old but cheap method of propulsion, whose biggest drawback was that it only worked in vacuums given its weakness. But it was reliable and most importantly, extremely cheap.

There wasn't much he could learn like this, without the freedom to experiment and take apart the system to test the different pieces individually, but he still took the time to go through it all. Whereas the shuttles' and skycar's eezo cores had been small enough to be reasonably carried by a human being, the dense ball of element zero used for the FTL drive on this freighter was the size of a school bus.

It also wasn't one whole piece, in the sense of the grain quality being uniform. Probably a cheaper manufacturer than for a luxury skycar or military shuttles, then.

The combined literature for mass accelerator guns and hover-capable transports he had read was all starting to slowly click in his head now, matching what he had experienced and observed. During his flight from Mars, he had noted several things happening, the two most important of which had been the build-up of heat and static electricity. As he had remembered during his near-disastrous flight to the moon, those two things were major concerns for all starships and had been well documented and researched.

Heat was a rather easy thing to understand; everything, from the engines producing energy to the crew breathing and walking around, caused some amount of heat to build up. This heat would in normal circumstances disperse and not be a problem, but since the ship existed in a vacuum it had nowhere to go.

It was like putting a powerfully exothermic reaction into a thermos bottle, though with starships something usually failed before the hull exploded.

There were means of keeping this under control, the most common of which being radiators and heat sinks that could be let loose. For the former, various designs existed but they all placed a hard cap for how long the ship could operate before everyone inside was roasted to death. The rate of heat radiated simply did not exceed the rate at which heat was generated with modern technology, necessitating that after intense output that the ship stops and cools down at minimal output. For disposable heat sinks, there were material concerns and costs to consider, making them rather unreliable for long-distance travel.

His solution had essentially been the second, in using water in the form of ice to disperse the heat and get rid of it in the skycar. Water had a fairly high specific heat capacity and had been used to cool down many things back in his time and before as he remembered, from glowing hot steel to the fission reactions in nuclear power plants. The latter a strikingly unpleasant memory, even to this day.

But those were down in gravity wells, where water's heaviness and liquidity wasn't as much of a problem.

It didn't seem feasible in space, on a starship. At least not without completely reworking every major heat-generating system to have a cooling system beside it, which given the premium of space probably wouldn't be practical or cheap. The repairs alone if a single pipe burst... No, much easier to simply allow the free-floating oxygen and ventilation systems—which were both necessary anyhow for humans—to double duty as heat control, he imagined.

Thus, radiators of various designs seemed to reign as the standard, like the refrigerators he had so often tinkered on and repaired.

The second problem of static was not quite so simple. Emiya had at first thought it was simply a matter of the triboelectric effect, that of static build-up due to friction between two different materials. It was what happened when an inflated balloon was rubbed up against fabric or hair, for example. In contact, electrons from one material would be taken into the other, causing it to become statically charged, which would then be released in the form of a static shock once a threshold was exceeded.

It had been a problem even back in his time, he vaguely remembered. Airplanes could build up a charge due to friction with the air, and the old American space exploration agency NASA had had specific rules in regards to their spacecraft when it came to that problem as well.

It was no longer the sign of good luck on a voyage, as St. Elmo's fire had been to sailors before.

He had looked into this and had found that 'P-static' was still a problem in aeronautics, marking certain regions of space dangerous to fly through, as it could cause various problems with communications and other sensitive equipment. There was even the possibility of the static charge building up in the hull just like it could in the core, though usually it was detected before disaster struck and the vessel could be brought to a halt before that.

But it wasn't what he had experienced.

The research was crystal clear on that; precipitation static was a problem—and under the right circumstances it could cause similar problems—but it was not the same thing as what happened with eezo cores building up a static charge of their own. He hadn't found any detailed explanations on that difference, only the difference was clear according to everyone who had looked into it.

'As positive or negative electric current is passed through an FTL drive core, it acquires a static electrical charge.' was the official explanation for the problem, necessitating regular docking wherever it was possible to discharge that build up.

But that felt strange.

If electrons in the form of a current passed through the eezo core, then how did it build up as static? It was a contradictory statement. Certainly, with electricity passing through regular metal conductors, things like eddy currents and internal resistance could cause some of the voltage to be transformed into heat, but all the electrons still passed through the material eventually. That was merely a matter of energy charges evening out, with the carriers remaining in their closed-loop system: the electric circuit.

So where did that static charge in the eezo core come from?

Emiya had spent a good ten minutes simply examining the freighter's eezo core as he had tried to reason out how that explanation worked, but no matter how he looked at it and what he had learned from the other eezo cores remained true.

The designs of all were such that a direct current went through—without any electrons being shed or lost along the way—as it continued on in the closed circuit. If the eezo core worked as explained, then it would have been something like a half-capacitor, or something, and the number of electrons in the circuit should be dropping as the eezo core built up an according to how all of them had been built, it was obvious that the number of electrons going in equaled the number of electrons going out.

The official explanation did not make sense.

It was like a water wheel that spun in a river but also somehow created water out of thin air for no discernible reason. It was baffling and it was obvious that much of the literature on the subject skirted that fact without going into any detail on it.

As if no one wanted to admit to the problem.

He found it fascinating. But it was obvious that he would not be able to figure it out here and now. After half an hour, he decided to return to the bridge, as the workers seemed to be preparing for take-off now and he was starting to be in their way regardless of where he stood.

Arriving at the elevator again, he stepped inside and turned around, only to come face to face with Dianne. He blinked, realizing he had not heard her following him, meaning she had been in wait for him to return.

She smiled up at him, stepping into the elevator. "Going up?"

Emiya nodded. "...Yes."

She nodded in return, pressing the button as she settled next to him. Was she watching me the whole time?

The reason he had spotted her earlier was due to intent flaring as she had been listening in on him and Miranda. If she had been watching him the whole time he had been walking around, did that mean she had figured that out? That she could suppress her self that strongly and blend in with her surroundings?

That kind of mental discipline does not come easy, this woman is dangerous.

He listened, counting her breaths and heartbeats now.

"Did you have fun looking around?" she asked as if ridiculing his hidden suspicions with her friendly face.

"I am familiar with this starship now," he answered blandly.

"Hmm... I see." She tilted her head as she listened to him, waiting for him to continue. When he didn't, she decided to press on. "I didn't take you for the engineering type. Your service record didn't have any mentions of it."

Emiya carefully kept his face and breathing under control, turning to look at her with a raised eyebrow.

He wasn't sure what she meant by mentioning the files he had given Miranda. Nominally those existed solely on his and Miranda's omnitools, so unless their boss had seen fit to share them with this woman—something which seemed unlikely—meant that Dianne had hacked one or both of their omnitools at some point.

But he wasn't supposed to be smart enough to draw such a conclusion as his current self.

"Engineering?"

She didn't buy his act for a second, but the face she put on only refused his denial with a playful look.

"No need to be shy. I saw you down in the engine room, staring at that big FTL drive. Any girl would feel jealous when a man looks at something that's not her with eyes like that."

Emiya blinked, mentally shifting gear in the moment as he inhaled slowly. She was baiting him, trying to get him to flirt with her. But that way lay incautious words and veiled truths. Deny, deny, deny.

"Erm... I don't get it," he returned bluntly, and as she was about to continue, he spoke again. "I mean, the drive core looks pretty big. I was just wondering how many guns you could make out of it."

Play dumb, admit nothing, never answer anything directly.

She pouted at him, not breaking character at all.

It seemed like she had settled on an avenue of attack against him and wasn't going to pull back now.

Miranda was the distant and cold type, only hinting at something more to string men along to get them to do her bidding as additional leverage to her existing authority, whereas Dianne appeared more experienced with both the more direct and subtle methods. If Miranda was playing the 'distant, unreachable' woman, seeming like an easier catch in comparison would probably reel in most men who were cowed or rejected by her. Or so he reasoned that Dianne was thinking; he wasn't the most experienced when it came to matters of seduction and social manipulation.

Then again to Emiya, their raven-haired leader seemed more like the type who did not actually know what she wanted and even once she got it, she would have no idea how to handle it - the type who wished to be swept off her feet but could never trust anyone in such a position.

Regardless, he wasn't going to play any games with Dianne. For various reasons, not the least of which that her breathing and heart rate had remained perfectly stable this whole discussion. Not merely at the levels of relaxed calmness, but of someone intensely focusing and using methods to sustain that intense focus - she was completely amped up, yet appeared not at all.

Like one who could erase their presence from the world and become completely transparent for the sake of their objective. Like he could.

"Fine, be like that." She pouted again, looking away.

He inhaled, turning to face the door of the elevator as they continued to rise. A sudden urge to look at her - to just glance, gnawed at him. He tried to ignore it, but for just a moment his curiosity overtook him as the new intent continued to dig at him.

Emiya looked to his side.

Their eyes met. She smiled at him as if they were sharing a secret. He quickly looked away, before he could think about what he was doing. He knew he had lost something there, even if he wasn't sure what it was. The elevator doors opened and she strode out with a spring to her step, looking over her shoulder at him as he followed.

She's definitely planning something horrible, he thought with grim exasperation, recognizing that she had already changed tactics to something he didn't immediately recognize.

Making it back to the bridge, Miranda glanced at them returning together with a narrow gaze. Dianne smiled as if nothing was wrong while Emiya sighed on the inside, studiously pretending that he hadn't noticed anything. So it was as much to mess with Miranda as me, then.

"Excellent timing, we will be taking off now," Miranda said with an imperious tone—probably resorting to her authority, having perceived some loss in femininity—without even bothering to glance at the captain sitting on a chair a few meters to the side.

He was slumped over, as if accepting his powerlessness in this situation with sullen silence, and had resigned to simply let her get it over with so that he could go back to his normal schedule. If not for the flickering gaze and tapping index finger, Emiya might have mistaken him for being asleep.

Emiya held back a sigh and looked out the bridge window - a strange addition to the starship in his opinion, given that it was nothing more than a structural weakness.

It wasn't like you could see anything with the naked eye, anyhow. Even his superhuman eyes had been mostly useless. You flew by instruments in space or you didn't bother at all, as he had already learned from his own short jaunt through the void.

Well, there was a certain romanticism attached to the bridge, so maybe that was why.

The bridge view showed the outside, as the starship had only been backed into the side of the skyscraper's hangar so that it fit as the seal on the inside. That way they didn't need to fit the entire thing in and could work without worrying about the lack of atmosphere.

As the crew began to prepare for take-off, Emiya moved to the side to keep out of the way while Miranda remained imperiously in the middle of the bridge as if she had become the captain of the ship. The crew eyed her curiously, but seeing the actual captain silent, none of them said a thing despite the odd mood.

And then the ship lurched and was freed.

Rather than taking off, it felt like it began to float. If the shuttles and skycars that functioned with fusion torches for propulsion acted like small rockets, then the freighter was more like a hot-air balloon as it began to rise. There was nearly none of the small shaking and micro-vibrations those had had, or what one might expect from turbulence against liquids or gases in a vacuum as they were. Slowly, it began to move forward and to the right as it banked away from the domed city behind they were leaving behind.

As the freighter began to ascend at an angle, the ship's captain looked up at Miranda.

"It'll take well over—"

"Five hours for us to arrive at Pluto, yes. I am aware. Well then, good job everyone," Miranda declared, nodding as she turned to walk away with a satisfied smile.

Emiya frowned, glancing at the bridge crew who were throwing questioning glances at her back as she left.

"Dianne, Emil. You may do as you wish, but upon arriving at Charon Relay, I expect you to be here again," Miranda said to them, before walking off the bridge.

"She sure knows how to make an impression, doesn't she?" Dianne commented, looking with raised eyebrows at where the brunette had left, knowing full well she had partly egged on the woman.

Emiya kept his mouth shut, moving to get out of the way of the crew on the bridge. Behind him, he could still feel her gaze on his back.

---

;

---

Emiya settled down in the cabin with the suitcases he had brought along.

Having some free time, he began to read on his omnitool. It was one of the ones he had taken from the Cerberus grunts, with a complete wipe and fresh install done to make sure nothing would link it to its previous owner beyond what would add credence to his own disguised role; the basics without which he could not pass off as who he was supposed to be, along with some reading material he had recently downloaded.

Assuming Dianne had hacked into this omnitool using some imbued backdoor access method, it was likely that it had been just those titles that had tipped her off about his interests earlier. A relatively minor blunder, but one nonetheless. And one he could only forge on through.

But he couldn't get his mind into reading, his mind too awhirl with thoughts.

If he could have, he would have dived into the omnitools of his two new companions right now, but he wasn't sure if it would be detected. Moreover, the moment he spiritualized, his hair-dye and clothes would fall off, undoing his disguise, which would be a bit troublesome to reapply again.

But...

Sighing, he closed the omnitool and stood up. He needed to get his mind off of things. There wasn't much he could do, aside from trying to fish for more information right now, but he wasn't sure if he could actively try to discuss things with either of the two women he was now supposedly working with. They were both too smart for him to risk it, and the more he talked the greater the chance was for him to say something that would out him.

Later on, when it would be too late to change course, it might be alright to pose risky questions but until they had arrived somewhere where he could actually disappear if he was discovered, it was better not to take any such risks.

He grabbed the larger suitcase he had brought along and opened it. Reaching for a hardsuit, he closed the case and set it aside. He had only worked with the Onyx light armor he had received in the Alliance Navy before, so getting a closer look at this would be good.

Opening the clear packaging material he ran a hand over the hardsuit. Unlike his previous suit, it was much more rigid. At a glance, it looked black but on closer inspection, he could see it was actually a very dark shade of green. Out of the package it also immediately became obvious that it was asymmetrical in design, made so that the left side was a bit thicker and tougher, the most obvious piece of which was the left shoulder having a small shield-like pauldron which if he were to shoulder a rifle, would cover half his face to give him additional head protection.

Overall the design was obviously based on the Aldrin Labs' Onyx line hardsuits; the helmet, collar, torso, and limbs all used similar basic designs as the first layers, but with additional material used on top for added protective value without compromising on the basic mobility. The material also felt to be of higher quality. He wasn't sure what exactly it was, but he was fairly certain it was of higher quality than the synthetic materials of his time.

I wonder how it stacks up to my gear... I might have to update soon.

The prospect of another project of such magnitude filled him with equal amounts of excitement and dread. Making new gear was difficult and time-consuming, but also often very rewarding.

He couldn't find any markings anywhere on the hardsuit, which he supposed made sense for a black ops armor. Looking it over, most of the design seemed familiar enough from his time in the Alliance, but he wasn't quite sure about it all. There were pieces and electronic components he had not seen before and he wasn't sure if the addition was due to the upgrade to medium weight-class, or if it was something Cerberus specific.

As before with his previous Onyx armor, it was something completely new and thus lacking anything he could reasonably read for pointers through Structural Analysis.

An awkwardness that could very well betray his cover, should either of the two notice it.

Only way to figure it out is to just try it on, then...

He shrugged and began to undress.

While you could wear clothes with the hardsuits, it was optimal to wear them on bare skin or specially made underclothes, as he had while still in the Navy. It was a matter of feedback from the sensors being accurate enough for the Heads Up Display's readouts and for other statistics to be accurate, as a faulty reading could in theory cause a fatal malfunction with the medical systems.

He began to put one leg in, figuring that while he wasn't familiar with the system he would learn quickly enough.

It was different enough that he would probably need a few minutes of messing around with it before he got it properly on, which might be bad if someone saw him hesitating with a suit he should be familiar with from before.

So better to fumble around alone before it came to that.

Which was when the door opened with a woosh. He looked up at the sound, still crouching with only his feet in the suit and wearing nothing but the hardsuit around his ankles.

Miranda blinked as their eyes locked.

Emiya blinked, taking in the strange situation he was in.

"Ah..." She hesitated, obviously as bewildered as he was at having walked in on him nearly naked. Or rather, very much naked.

He kept eye contact, standing up as he drew the hardsuit up to his knees, and then looked down and began to put it on as if nothing unusual was going on. His mind accelerated to its maximum, as he considered the puzzle he was trying to wear; assuming the base design of an Onyx armor—this had to go there—but that meant the arm had to—but only if—so he would have to, and so forth.

Emiya without a word, with apparently perfectly calm and unhesitating motions put on the hardsuit. Finishing the last seal; only lacking the helmet, he looked at her. She was still standing by the door, having frozen still as she looked at him. Had she intentionally come in? Had he passed her impromptu inspection?

"Was there something?" he asked calmly and causing her to blink as if snapping her out of a trance. She swallowed, frowned, and then looked up at his eyes from where she had been eyeing his torso.

"No, I..." She shook her head. "You certainly seem experienced with the Skunkworks hardsuit. There weren't any mentions of you having seen black ops missions requiring its use. How surprising."

Emiya blinked. Had he put it on too quickly in trying to appear casual?

Damn it.

"Ah..."

"No matter. You shouldn't be needing it at the ball. I actually came by to get your measurements," she said with a tilt of her head. She smirked, raising an eyebrow. "So you'll have to strip again, I'm afraid."

Emiya cleared his throat, obviously not stripping as she looked at him.

"Measurements?"

She nodded, a gleam in her eyes now. "We'll be attending a party, won't we? You'll have to dress to fit the part, so I'll be having a bespoke suit made for you at the Citadel. It will be ready by the time we arrive. But I'll need your measurements."

"I see," Emiya answered, nodding back. "Then I'll use the hardsuit's internal sensors through the omnitool to send over the exact sizes."

She half-scowled at him, obviously aware that they could have done that just as well. Did... she want me to strip for some other reason? Is she still wary of me or is this another powerplay thing?

Emiya ignored such thoughts, turning on the omnitool and hooking it up to the hardsuit. He ran the basic diagnostic and analysis, before running the custom fitting program.

It was as if he had been wearing an airtight plastic suit, which was suddenly connected to a vacuum that sucked out all the air. The joints and limbs reeled in excess material and stretched out to accommodate his body and physique. Moving around his arms and squatting down a few times, he let all of the measurements finalize until the omnitool let out a satisfying ping with all of his data.

It fit him like a glove, now.

The hardsuit turned slightly stiffer again, but it was much more comfortable now. He had had to repeat this process often enough for it to become almost habitual as he had had to trade in his Onyx hardsuits in the Navy, as they eventually all become too small for him.

Hopefully, that was over for the most part now, his recent growth spurt having almost caught up with his real height.

"Here you go," Emiya said, sending over the data through the short-range comm to her omnitool. At the same time, he took note of the address it listed and saved it into his contacts. With that, he should be able to track it later and attempt a dive if he got the chance.

She half-glared at him, accepting the data packet with a sniff. Eyeing him for a few more seconds, she shook her head and turned around to leave.

What was that about? He shook his head - it didn't matter.

She stopped just by the door, looking over her shoulder at him. "We'll be arriving at the relay soon. On the other side we will be taking a private cruiser to the Citadel to make it in time, so be ready to depart as soon as we are through."

"I thought that the party wouldn't be starting until tomorrow?"

"Yes, but we will have to do some groundwork first."

Emiya blinked, before nodding. "Understood."

She left, the door closing behind her and leaving Emiya to frown in the cabin alone. Damn, that means I'll be separating from my body.

He still had well over 15 hours of Independent Action-insured life left, but who knew how long it would take for the freighter to arrive at the Citadel if they separated now? Should he abandon the plan, simply vanish and stick by his body instead as a spirit? No, that would reveal that he could disappear off of a starship in transit to Cerberus, and all the effort he had expended to infiltrate them so far would be wasted.

The freighter should catch up soon enough and he could dive into the system to return here anyhow...

Probably.

Besides, he was kind of curious as to what Cerberus was actually after on the Citadel, and reading up on Synthetic Insights had been rather promising. He would have to get into contact with them—or someone like them—either way. It was a good way to get some more information if he stuck around for a while longer.

He was fairly certain he could tough it out for another day, even without the help of his Class skill, but it wouldn't be easy. But for now, I need to reset my Independent Action. Every hour counts.

Which meant that he needed to do it now before it became a problem. He sighed, knowing that he couldn't wait much longer. Placing a hand on the floor, he extended a minute amount of magical energy. He couldn't detect any people, cameras, or sensors here, thus it should be safe enough to do it.

Opening his eyes, Emiya grabbed the hair color kit again and took off the hardsuit. Walking into the cabin's bathroom naked, he closed the door and locked it to give himself another layer of privacy.

"Alright, let's make it quick," he told himself and spiritualized. His hair-dye and contacts fell to the floor, as being physical objects they did not disappear with him. If he appeared again right now, his disguise would be completely gone; his white hair and gray eyes immediately apparent.

He went through the floors, appearing in the massive cargo hold where he knew the steel box containing his body was being stored. He found it quickly enough, even without having to project the blade to locate its partner and his limb.

Closing his eyes, he crouched inside the box. Its outside surface was cool to the touch, but nothing really unusual. But inside of it, he could sense the deathly cold keeping his body in stasis. He exhaled, extending his hand.

"—Trace, on"—begin projection;

The sword of glowing red, like molten steel made solid despite the contradiction in states, appeared instantly. It began to melt the ice even without any excess magical energy being pushed in. Vapor began to fill the steel box, quickly beginning to heat it up and raise the pressure. This had to be quick. He inhaled once, before possessing his body again.

It was dark.

The terrible cold assaulted him immediately as he had dived in; the absolute pain of being dead without having died. Pain.

Cramped. Cold. Painful. Death; even nonexistence would have been preferable to this, but he ignored it all. His heart wasn't beating. His lungs weren't working. The blood in his veins felt like solid iron—so cold—even if it hadn't frozen over completely. His brain was frozen through, yet he still felt some semblance of his mind and soul exerting itself as he focused. Cold. His body was utterly frozen, each and every nerve screaming at him, the hundreds and thousands and millions of frozen little knives cutting him apart inside, cell by cell.

Cold. He ignored it, willing minute amounts of magical energy to circulate within his body to force life. Agony.

Time seemed to stretch on for eternity, his only companion being suffering. It was fine, he told himself as he repressed it all through sheer force of will.

It was sluggish, but within a minute he could begin to sense something beyond the absolute cold.

He focused on the warmth—painful beyond words—he could sense and—

—thud

Emiya's heart beat once.

He immediately canceled the ember sword and stepped out of the body, appearing in his spiritual state next to himself. Panting, he closed his eyes and shook his head. His Independent Action had been reset, but he hadn't been able to acquire any magical energy. In fact, he had wasted a little bit of it with this effort. Shaking his head to dispel the ghostly sensations still crawling up his limbs, he projected three swords made out of ice to cool the icebox down again.

It would not do if his body continued to warm up: he needed it to remain in stasis.

And I'll have to do this every day until I fix this...

Without having to worry about not being found out, as he did right now, it would probably be easier to figure out some method of handling this more cheaply and painlessly, but for now, it couldn't be helped. A little bit of pain was fine.

Making sure that his body cooled down back into a stable state, he exhaled and turned around to leave.

Returning to the cabin he should be in right now, he looked around. Nobody seemed to be snooping around or to have noticed his disappearance.

Materializing in the bathroom, he exhaled. Looking into the mirror, steel eyes stared back at him. He frowned at his white hair and eyebrows, knowing that it would be a pain to get them colored again. Still, at least he had thought to bring the dye along.

"What a bother..." he grunted, reaching for the bottle.

But he hesitated. Well, while I'm at it...

Every time he spiritualized, he would have to re-do the disguise anyhow. So might as well make the most of it right now. Exhaling, he turned around and leaped out through the walls again.

He found Miranda quickly enough, sitting alone with her omnitool. She obviously wasn't reading up on anything in regards to the mission, as she was simply looking at a scant few lines of numbers with a small smile on her face.

Emiya hesitated for a moment, not certain why, but feeling like he was intruding on something private like this. Shaking his head, he extended his hand, looming over her in his spiritualized state. Focusing on the omnitool, he spoke the soundless words.

"—Trace, on"—begin insertion;

Opening his eyes, he found himself in that dark digital ocean once again, blue grid, starfall and all. He inhaled slowly as he continued to be submerged. Looming over him, like a great star, was Miranda. She was still smiling lightly, her private small joy frozen in time.

Scowling, he closed his eyes and flipped as he landed on the blue-grid plane. Ignoring her, he looked around and made note of everything.

Like this, he could tell that the encryption key was based on the owner's DNA along with a 32-key password that specified which part of the genome it was supposed to be reading. There were also voice passwords and codes for specific functions.

Well, he was just after data right now, so he focused on copying everything he could get his hands on. At a glance, he could pretty much confirm that she didn't really have anything more interesting than what Cardotin had had since she wasn't an officer in the organization yet. Still, he took what he could get.

Even looking around and checking the cache, he couldn't find any traces of how she had generated his new identity. She had three other identities stored on the drive, all with seemingly complete histories and backgrounds. It was probably some kind of external service, then. Feeling annoyed that he had managed to miss it before when she had made the identity she had handed him, he continued looking around.

Gathering anything and everything interesting looking, he copied it all as best he could into a pile of unsorted data. After going through everything he had been able to find, he looked at the compressed ball of 'data' he had in his hands, frowning.

"Now how am I supposed to get this out of here, again...?"

He was pretty sure he couldn't just dive back out with this thing since it wasn't actually anything real. It would probably just disappear the moment he was outside, or more like not even make it past the threshold of reality. He was fairly sure the thing he was holding did not have any physical component, not like bits stored on a computer were or anything like that.

Shaking his head, he connected himself to the starship's network and jumped into that system without diving out. Noting that he was still holding the ball, he created a folder of sorts in an empty and unused sector of the memory drives and placed it there. He would have to figure out how to get it later, but for now, it would have to do. As long as the starship did not perform a complete scan on its own drives, it probably wouldn't be found out either. And as it was, he doubted it would appear as anything more than junk anyhow.

Diving back out, Emiya appeared on the bridge in his spiritualized state. Looking around, he shrugged and returned to the cabin where he was supposed to be right now.

Materializing before the mirror he exhaled, staring at his gray eyes with some exhaustion at all of this running around.

"Sheesh. Alright, now to fix my appearance."

---

;

---

Emiya arrived at the bridge, looking as if he had just taken a shower and nothing more as he stopped.

"Hmm?" Dianne made a sound as she looked at him, her eyes raking his body and taking in his wet hair.

"I'm not late, am I?" he asked, knowing he certainly wasn't early.

Miranda glanced at him but said nothing.

"You took a shower? You should have asked first," Dianne said, looking at the bridge window. In the distance, you could just barely see the Charon Relay as a small speck of light against the darkness of the space between stars.

Emiya blinked. "I apologize, I did not know I needed permission. It will not happen—"

"No, I just figured we could have shared and saved on water," she continued, smiling coquettishly up at him.

Emiya blinked.

Someone on the bridge coughed. It might have even been the captain.

"...Right. Duly noted. Waste not, want not," he answered, squarely pretending she hadn't said anything unusual.

She grinned. "It's a promise."

In front of them, Emiya thought he could see Miranda glaring at them from the corner of her eye, but it was gone before he could make eye contact. Glancing at Dianne, it was obvious that she had seen the same thing, given the satisfied smirk on her face.

I really need to get away from these two before they decide to kill me over this.

Studiously ignoring what had just happened, Emiya stared at the approaching mass relay.

It was huge, even from millions of kilometers away that much was obvious. And the warp and pressure it exerted on the fabric of space-time put his teeth on edge. It was something he had no frame of reference for, even with everything he had experienced so far in his undoubtedly unique existence. It was said that the mass relays were nothing more than highly advanced and upscaled mass accelerators, but that could not possibly be the whole truth.

Emiya inhaled slowly, trying to keep his trepidation from showing as they approached the Charon Relay.

It had been discovered soon after the Mars ruins, laying near Pluto on the outer edges of the solar system.

Shaped like a massive tuning fork with a glowing core and spinning gyroscope-like parts to it, not even having been encased in massive amounts of ice and being disabled for who knew how many tens of thousands of years had managed to put a scratch on it.

Even with the current FTL technology available to humanity right now, practical travel to any other solar system was not possible. Even the closest system, Alpha Centauri, was too far away and poor in resources for anyone to want to go there with any regularity. No, the things which made the interplanetary galactic society of today possible were the mass relays that had been left behind by the Protheans.

Massive machines, powered by obscene amounts of element zero and technology no one quite understood. They functioned like instant jumps between two distant systems, accelerating ships to speeds even beyond what the fastest starships could possibly manage on their own.

Travel between these two points was essentially instantaneous and without any time dilation. A fact which had been considered wholly impossible in Emiya's time, according to all understanding of physics. Standing here, even at this distance and sensing the unreal power this one mass relay exerted on reality, that fact seemed to finally sink in.

There was something about mass effect technology that should not be possible. It broke too many laws of physics, even according to the careful attempts at making sense of the world today, by all the greatest minds the galaxy had seen since the first races discovered eezo.

No one quite understood it, even if everyone had built their civilizations around it.

Emiya let out a shuddering breath, considering something for the first time which he had been studiously ignoring until now.

What the hell is element zero even...?

"First time seeing a relay?" Miranda asked and he suddenly realized she was standing right next to him.

He hesitated, before nodding.

Nothing in his file should necessitate him having left the system, so there shouldn't be anything wrong with admitting it.

She smiled at him reassuringly. "Don't worry, you won't feel a thing."

He nodded. But I already am.

But he said nothing as they continued to approach the relay. Even with the massive distance still left to cross, the freighter had long since stopped using its engines to accelerate, and in fact, had already begun to slow down a little bit so that they would not be arriving at too high a velocity at the relay.

They slowed down and ahead the massive structure loomed. It was easily over fifteen kilometers long and somehow he could feel a headache building up as they approached further. It all pressed down on him like some massive drum, the rotations of the central rings and the pulsating light in the core drawing his senses in.

He realized again—finally fully—that it was made out of something so far beyond his understanding that he almost retched then and there. Controlling his breathing, he swallowed his nausea and focused.

Miranda put a hand on his shoulder and he almost jumped, but controlling himself he merely turned to look at her. He ignored the pounding forge right next to him, a thunderstrike assaulting him with every rotation and a burning pressure pushing at him as they drew ever nearer.

"Are you alright? You're pale," she asked, pointing out his pallor.

He made a little huff as the right corner of his mouth rose up a little. "Just nervous. It's... big."

She smiled at him, almost maternally amused by his reaction but accepting his stoic front nonetheless.

Emiya felt like he was standing on the precipice of a cliff, on the edge of the sun, or looming just outside of the reach of a black hole. Like reality was fraying at the edges. He half wanted to escape this thing, but another part of him wanted to jump through the front of the freighter and get his hands on the thing looming ahead.

"Never seen anything like it..." he mumbled.

Miranda next to him made a sound of agreement.

"It's quite something, alright. Thinking that someone once built these... It's amazing. One day I hope to be able to make something that'll leave as great a mark on the galaxy."

Emiya blinked, tearing his eyes away from the relay. Looking at the brunette next to him, smiling wistfully as she watched the mass relay, he considered her silently.

Shaking his head, he turned to follow as the bridge crew began to prepare for using the Charon Relay. It was apparently quite a simple process, requiring little more than making contact with the relay on the comms and flying alongside it.

Realizing that they were about to enter, he inhaled slowly. But before he knew it, the was a spike in the fabric of reality and then they were in motion. The relay simply vanished to his senses and he looked back with furrowed brows. Eyes seeing nothing but the dull metal walls of the bridge, he blinked.

Looking around, he could see a blue corridor of some sort around them as they moved. It doesn't feel any different from regular FTL, huh...?

He didn't know what to think of that. Well, at least it worked and he was on his way to the Citadel now.

That was something, at least.

---

;

---

I kind of wanted to do something more with Armstrong, since I was beginning to realize how awesome the place was, but it didn't pan out since I have a timer on Emiya's head.

Thanks to Wuolong77 for correcting me on cryogenics and mammalian cell structure, among other things. Fine gent, that. Thanks to the stupendous PseudoSteak and Tactical Tunic for proofreading.

3.11.2021 edit notes: the past few chapters were kicking my ass. Complete slog to read through. 12 was good, but until the scenes with Miranda in this one, I didn't like any of it at all. But well, better now I hope.