Kal'Reeger, Corsair Ship Perugia

"Track left," Xera's hand snapped on the right side of his helmet.

"That wasn't left," Kal grunted sulenly, his eyes shifting anyway.

"'Fraid it was," Xera snorted tapping at her omnitool. "How's your hearing? Any odd tones?"

Frowning, Kal blinked a couple times. It was...odd. He hadn't been hit that hard.

Had he?

It was hard to tell when the building around explodes, sending you pinwheeling through vacuum.

"Kal?" Xera said louder, snapping her fingers in front of his visor.

With a start, he jerked back, his helmet smacking against the wall behind him. Pain shot through his already pounding head. "Sterkre!"

"Dumbass," Xera snickered as she grabbed his helmet and pulled him back upright. He hadn't really noticed he had fallen over to his right side.

"AH! Keelah! You are the worst medic I have ever met!" Kal growled, his eyes squeezed shut against the pain.

"Technically I'm a doctor, not a medic," Xera verbally rolled her eyes as she went back to her omnitool. "You're going to be fine. Probably just have a nasty headache for a day or so."

"Right, doctor," Kal blinked, looking up at her. "You switch between the two when it's convenient for you."

"Of course I do," she nodded, not looking up. "I'm a professional."

"Well, 'professional'," Kal actually made the little finger quotes at her. "Can't you actually do something about the head injury? I feel like that is important."

"Heh, it sounds like the hit may have knocked the stick out of your ass," Xera chuckled with a small shake of her head before her demeanor turned serious. "Honestly, I don't have the time to devote to you. I have to get to the others."

For a long moment Kal stared at the ground. He blinked again, trying to push past the pounding in his head. "How many?"

"None."

"What?" Kal's head jerked up. "What do you mean? None?"

"Exactly that," Xera shrugged as she stood, moving for the door. "You want to know more, walk with me. Might do you, and the troops, some good."

"Right, right," Kal nodded, and stood. For a moment, the world spun as the pain in his head pounded harder, in time with his heart beat.

"You good?" Xera stood by the door, her head tilted slightly. For all her bluster. All her cursing and, well, rather horrible, bedside manor, she cared. She worried over her patients. Her words were always aimed to distract, or motivate. She was a good doctor.

"Fine," Kal said as everything came back into focus. "Mind if we walk casually?"

"I'm short," Xera shrugged as she lifted up a leg. "My half jog is about your average walk."

"Well, then you should have a headstart," Kal chuckled as he gestured to the door. "I don't know where we are going anyway."

"Come on then," Xera strode out the door, going back to her omnitool. "Human ships are interesting. They aren't as rigidly uniform as turian ships, but are still far better organized than say, asari."

Kal's head was on a swivel as he looked around. "I noticed. In the time I've been here, I've been through most of it. At first I would have expected more of it to be closed off to us."

"To who? Quarians?" Xera glanced back over her shoulder. Her eyes narrowed slightly in irritation. "You realize almost half the crew is quarian, right?"

"Yeah, I've come to realize that," Kal shrugged as they walked. They seemed to have been an awfully long way from the med bay…. "Still, old, well worn expectations."

"Fair enough," Xera shrugged in reutrn. "And yes. The med bay was full. That was an empty supply closet I had you in."

"I didn't say anything."

"Pff," Xera scoffed. "You have never been good at hiding things from me, and you know it."

"Alright, alright," Kal almost smiled as he watched the small woman in front of him. She was always a good friend. Always there when he needed her. Strong, smart, funny… Keelah! What the hell am I thinking?

"None of the team was killed in the course of the mission," Xera was saying as Kal's mind snapped back to reality.

"Wait… what?" Kal was blinking again. He was doing a lot of that. Probably the hit to the head.

"I meant what I said," Xera waved a hand as she continued on, forcing him to move quickly or be left behind. "Some injuries. Well...a lot of injuries, actually. But no deaths from the marine squads."

Kal shook his head in disbelief. Those firefights...that explosion… No deaths? That couldn't be possible! "Civilians?"

Xera paused her tapping on omnitool for a brief moment, but didn't break stride. "One. The one that was talking to you, interestingly. The one the batarian shot in the lung."

"Hrm…" Kal was silent for a moment. "And the Batarians?"

"No survivors, last I heard," Xera resumed her work, her voice taking on a slightly cold edge. "Not all accounted for, but then a capital ship mass round to the face does that. Nobody confirmation on the leader either."

Stopping short of the med bay, Xera turned to look at him. She looked him directly in the eye, and he was almost startled by the...anger? Fear? There was a strange cocktail of emotions warring in her eyes. None of them good.

"Captain Shepard has officially relinquished command of the Perugia and the Corsair forces. Currently Kalla'Koris is in command of the ship. I have no idea who is in line for the squadron," Xera held up a hand, forestalling Kal's questions. And he had a lot of them. "Captain Shepard did so voluntarily and of her own choosing. Stood right up from the tactical station and did it, I'm told."

"I see," Kal frowned slightly as he looked at the ground. He was honestly unsure how to react. It was an impossible situation. Millions of lives were on the line. Given the situation, Kal could really say what he have done.

"She is also the reason you are all alive," Xera sighed, her body drooping some as she allowed some of the walls to come down, the exhaustion slipping through. Now that he saw it, he realized she had been part of the emergency crew that had picked through the rubble for the team. Has she really been running this whole time?

"I don't follow," Kal said softly. He was worried about her. About Xera. More than his own people. That was...off putting.

"She is...broken. Someplace in her head," Xera tapped the side of her helmet for a moment. "She is brilliant. Her mind does some ridiculous things. She intuits ridiculous amounts of knowledge and data at once." Pausing for a moment, clearly collecting her thoughts, Xera tilted her head back, glancing at the ceiling. "She read the tactical data from the ship when she fired that shot."

"What does that have to do with anything?" Kal tilted his head lightly. "Of course she did."

"No, no," Xera waved him off as she turned her attention back to him. "I can't say i fully understand, I'm going off what the bridge crew told me, looking back on how long i have known her, the kinds of things she has done, and how….Kal...she scares me."

She was scared. He could see it in her now. In her body language, her voice…. Xera was frightened. "Tell me."

"She took the data from the ships tactical station," Xera closed her eyes as she leaned against wall. "But she was also watching the tactical cams on the team's suits. All of them. At once. She put that together, in her head! She pushed that batarian into losing his grip. She played him like a keppa. While she processed all that data. And she didn't even hesitate. Not a second."

"Keelah…." Kal struggled to process everything Xera said. But it was so much… "She always works for her people. She defends them at every opportunity."

"Exactly," Xera's opened as she stared at him. "Her people. Her's. I...don't think she feels. I think she views everybody as things that she divides into Her's and Not Her's. And things that belong to her is all she cares about."

"That..." Kal wanted to argue. He wanted to refute Xera's claims as ramblings of an exhausted, overworked mind. But, the more he thought about it, the more he understood. And he began to understand her fear. "But, what about her family? Her brother?"

"The only things she does care about," Xera ran a hand over her visor as she stood back straight. "I think she caters a lot of her behavior to fit how they want her to be, whether she realizes that or not." Xera started to turn away, but paused, glancing up at him. "I think whatever happened that made her the Butcher of Torfon…. Whoever she was before that, didn't come back."

Flickering. Darkness. Light. White slides up and down vision.

"...With us?!" Tali yelled. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

"Yeah, Boss," Garrus added. "Seems...unwise…."

"No time. Just do it."

"Alright, Legion," Emma frowned as she stared at the airlock. Almost like it had become something poisonous. "Boarding tube is locked on. When you head out we'll keep it depressurised. Nothing should be able to creep back without us noticing."

"Acknowledged," Legion nodded slightly. It was an odd gesture, but it seemed to put them at ease. "It is still recommended that you disconnect and move the ship away. We can signal you when we are ready to depart."

"Nope," Emma frowned at them, now. "We've been over this. We wait her unless something happens. This place is creepy as hell. So get in, do whatever you need to do, and get back so we can get out of here."

They turned to the airlock before pausing. They turned to look back at Emma. "Odds of some form of confrontation is high. Be on guard. The Old Machine may be dead, but there is something...We can almost hear it…."

"Oh, for the love of…." Emma rolled her eyes ands began to push at them. "Don't make this worse!"

Kasumi

"Shepard….I found something...off putting," Kasumi swallowed hard into the comm.

"Hang on...I'm almost….okay….got it. Continue," Shep was somewhere behind her. Not too far. He was weirdly able to keep up with her, for the most part.

"Well...you know those things on Horizon?"

"That doesn't help much, Kasumi," Shep sounded like a cross between amused and slightly annoyed. Normally that's what she aimed for.

"The spike things. That they put the people on," Kasumi shuffled forward slightly and leaned out from the top of the conduit she was crouched on.

"Okay...yeah," Shep came back encouragingly. "What do you see?"

Kasumi bit her lip as she took in the sight. There was some sort of platform that had been cobbled together from cargo crates. Old ratty cloth had been laid over the thing. Old in the ancient way. Like...over the years, as each ship arrived, more cloth was added. Cloth rotted as it waited to be recovered. Cloth that was stained in so many colors….

"I think I might know what happened to the science team."

High pitched whining. Snowy static. The smell of burned wiring. Dried lubricants.

"Weird…." Jac said quietly.

"..."

"Okay, you can't do that, Jac," Blake swivvled his chair around to look at the turian. :You can't just say 'weird' and nothing else when we are connected to a Ghost Ship."

"What?" Jac glanced up for a moment before realizing everybody was looking at him.

"What's werid, Jac," Emma sighed, rubbing her head.

"Right," Jac nodded turning back to his boards. "Well, I've been keeping an active look out, you know, 'cause we are attached to a Ghost Ship. Well, I was looking around, like you do, and thought I saw something."

"..."

"Dammit, Jac!" Blake growled. "So help me….I'm going to come over there and rip off your other mandible!"

"Jeez!" Jac slapped a hand over the mandible in question. "I already have a lisp! You want me to stutter too?!"

""Jac….just tell us what you saw," Emma was pinching the bridge of her nose now.

"Oh, well, I was looking around, and I thought I saw a heat bloom. You, know, like when a ship comes out of FTL. But just for a moment, then it was gone. I'm sure it was nothing though. There has been a lot of weird glitches in the time we have been here."

"There have?" Emma looked up at him now, a concerned look on her face. "Why aren't you saying anything?"

"Well, it's nothing big," Jac shrugged with a patronizing laugh. "I doubt there are many scorville in space!"

"Guys! Guys!" Lilly rushed onto the bridge, yelling. She eyes were wide as gasped for breath.

"Lilly? What's wrong?" Emma stood quickly, her hand going toward the small pistol she had picked up on Ilium.

"It's Tanya!" Lilly rushed to Emma, grabbing the older girl's arm and pulling. "C'mon!"

"What? What's wrong with Tanya?" Emma's brain kickstarted as she began her rush to the lift. Almost as an afterthought, she looked over her shoulder at the boys. "Keep an eye out, make sure no scorville, or whatever, start chewing on the power cables! I'll check on Tanya!"

"She's talking! She's talking!" Lilly yelled as Emma scooped up the younger child.

Turian Lexicon

Sterkre- Turian for a piece of shit.

Scorville: Aquatic reptile that lives in Palavan's acidic oceans. It has a smooth silvery hide that some compare to 'living quicksilver'. Analogous to earth's whales.

Quarian Lexicon

Keppa: Musical instrument that is shaped and played similar to a human saxophone, but with a certain pitch to notes higher than the human ear can hear. This makes it sound off to humans.

AN: I had been putting this off a bit, but my glasses broke and it's too hard to write without them, sorry! This isn't a bad break point anyway, at least. I should be up and going again in, like, a week, apparently.

Also...I have fan art! Like...legit fan art of Xera! So weird! I don't know how to show anybody though….