"Retrieval Team Jawa, please report to Mission Briefing. Retrieval Team Jawa, please report to Mission Briefing." A voice said over the PA.

Hans glared at his brother while Juan and I started cleaning up our cafeteria trays. "Bruh! Jawa? Seriously? I thought we were gonna go with 'Team Wrekd'!" he exclaimed.

Frans just puffed his chest out. "Hey, I won the coin toss so I picked the name."

"What, so we're a bunch of little brown dudes talking gibberish and rummaging through trash?"

Frans gave his brother a severe look while glancing at Juan. Said "brown dude" was angrily firing off a string of Spanish as we walked to the Personnel Section.

I sidled up to Juan and said, "I know I'm not fluent in Spanish, but that sounded suspiciously like a Catholic Catechism."

He snorted. "Anything sounds like cursing if you say it in the right tone of voice." We both chuckled as Hans and Frans caught up while rattling off apologies.

We walked into the briefing room just as Fire Team Ajax and Retrieval Team Waldo were leaving. We were greeted by our Case Officer, Bene Said. "Good Morning gentlemen." She said.

"Good morning Senorita. What's on the docket today?" Juan asked. Having risen to the rank of Lt. in the Mexico City Police Department, he was the de facto commander of our team.

She pushed a button on her podium, showing a hologram of what looked like a wagon wheel. "We have reliable intelligence of a spin gravity station orbiting a gas giant in the THX-1138 system. And before you start in, this is the translation of the Citadel Council designation." We all groaned and chuckled at another of this universes little absurdities. She typed at her console and the Wheel was replaced with a circuitous navigation map. "It's on the edge of what we know as Terminus Warlord territory, so you'll be taking the scenic route to get there. We have no Ghost Teams for support, but both Arc and Dr. Helix feel this is worth the risk."

She stepped around the podium. "Due to the expected duration of this mission, you'll be assigned one of the Star-Bugs, the Marvin." We all raised our eyebrows at that. The Star-Bugs were the first independently designed ships in the GST's growing fleet. "FO Latoya will meet you at Docking Bay Three. Grab your gear and head out."

We headed to the armory and checked out our various mission Hardsuits in their crates and wheeled them out to the embarkation docks, where Flight Officer Latoya was waiting.

Through the observation window, we could see the Spirit's growing arsenal of auxiliary craft. Among them was a sleek black delta winged ship. One of the newest designs to come out of Dr. Helix's Skell Techie workshops, the "Longsword" was a menacing sight to behold, and the pride of the Ghost Fire Teams.

This however, was not our ship. The Star-Bug "Marvin" could be seen on the end of a Shipway gantry. It and her sister ships were more akin to the "Discovery" from "2001: a Space Odyssey". Each was a 60 meter spire with conical command module (CM), a pair of 15 meter retractable booms in the middle for spin gravity, and a 15 meter wide engine block and heat management plant at the other.

In between were several modules ranging from Apollo style landing and launch capsules, to detachable sensor systems, to Canadarm manipulators and cargo holds.

The design's claim to fame was her engine system. A pair of 5 MW Stellerators were used as Nuclear thermal rockets using spent reactor fuel for re-mass. They also powered a central charged particle beam at the heart of an X-Ray Laser Engine for FTL travel. There was even a rectifier tied into the Eezo core's capacitor banks, allowing the stored charge to power the ship. This meant her operational FTL range was only limited by her stores. The system was incredibly efficient, using a quarter of the fuel and Eezo of ships half her size. Star-Bugs were also notoriously cramped and uncomfortable ships, but there was no small amount of pride at the independant design.

"Morning Jawas!" FO Latoya grinned as she greeted us, even as Hans groaned. "Marvin's stocked and ready to go. Your course is already programmed in, so you should just need to push the button and relax for the ride."

Juan shook his head. "As close as we're going to be to the Terminus, I don't think we'll be relaxing at all this trip."

Frans clapped him on the back. "Come on Bruh! Where's your sense of adventure?"

Juan snorted and punched in the code for the airlock. "Blown off by the same bomb that traveled me here." He turned to Latoya. "Anything we need to know?"

She pointed to one of the conical modules attached to the ship's length. "She's been equipped with Dr. Helix's new Delphi system. You're briefed on it, right?"

I barked a laugh. "Everybody heard about it. The good Doctor was cackling like 30's pulp radio villain, going on about, 'they said it could never be done!' But yeah, we got trained on it."

She nodded. "Alright. She's all yours." She saluted us as the airlock opened.

We returned the salute and headed down the microgravity Shipway to the Marvin. Several techs were finishing loading supplies once we were aboard. An Asari in Deck Officer Green was managing them. "She's all set boys; two months' supply of food, water and Deuterium tanks are full, and the algae tanks and scrubbers are fresh. You bring my baby back without a scratch, you hear?" Nobody was certain whether Rex was from Wisconsin or Canada, but their friendly demeanor belied a deep resentment at being a man trapped in an Asari's body.

Hans lightly clapped the deck officer on the shoulder. "Don't worry Rex, we'll bring her back safe and sound."

Rex nodded, then whistled to the rest of the crew. With short controlled bursts of Biotic power, they made their way to the Shipway. Once the techs were out of the way we stowed our gear and headed to the CM at the prow of the ship. We had another hour of checks before the ship was ready for launch. Hans and Frans, as the only truly certified pilots among us, were settled into the pilot and navigator stations, while Juan and I were locked into the sensors/communications and engineering/environmental control stations.

Juan keyed up the com system. "Spirit Traffic Control, this is Marvin. We are locked and all systems green; standing by."

"Marvin, this is Spirit Traffic Control, standby for Shipway and umbilical disconnect." There was a thump from the middle of the ship and we began drifting. "Umbilical and Shipway clear. Standby for magnetic kick." The ship lurched slightly as electromagnets pushed the Marvin away from the Spirit. "Marvin, this is Spirit Traffic Control, you are clear and free to navigate. God-speed."

"Vaya con Dios, Spirit. Hans, take us out." Micro gravity became three G's as our nuclear torch drives were throttled up, and we were on our way.

...

The tradeoff for efficiency was speed.

Star-Bugs were not fast ships. The trip to THX-1138 which we intended to rename "George", both in honor of our remembered creator of the film "THX-1138" and the orange giant star itself, took three days alone. Contrary to popular culture, long duration space missions were not monotonous slogs, as there never seemed to be enough time to get all our work done simply maintaining the ship. After navigating the Relay network and avoiding being observed, we arrived at George.

"Alright hermanos, let's drop the Delphi at one AU above the target and see what's what." Juan called out.

It took a good hour to get into position and release the Delphi probe. They were laughably simple devices; essentially just Comm Buoys with a large collapsible Radar and a 1 meter aperture telescope in addition to their laser com. They had an effective real-time sensing and communication range of one light-hour.

Why nobody else was using them was chalked up to a combo of the Cargo-Cult mentality, and possible Reaper influence.

It didn't take long to spot the station orbiting the gas giant. It looked to be about 500 meters across, but even with the Delphi we were too far away to see more than the shape and size.

Frans was floating over Juan's shoulder. "Well, there it is el Jefe. Shall we get in there?"

Juan kept staring at the image. I looked over my shoulder at him. "LT? Something wrong?"

He licked his lips nervously. "Yeah, but I'm not sure what."

"Should we abort? Just tell Spirit, 'We came, we saw, we were creeped out and left'?" Hans asked from Navigation.

He pursed his lips, and then shook his head. "No, we go in; but not straight on." He widened the view until the entire 'Jovian system' was on the monitor. "We'll leave the Delphi here on overwatch. Bring us in on the far side, by this moon here and orbit to the station. We'll take a closer look with Marvin's Big Eye and see what's going on."

We gave a chorus of "Ayes" and we were on our way. The planet's system of moons was less congested than either Juipiter or Saturn, but still required finesse to navigate. Once on the station's side of the planet, we turned Marvin's 3 meter aperture telescope on our target.

"Mierda!" We all looked at Juan in surprise. "It's just junk lashed together in a big ring!"

Hans and Frans spun around. "What?!"

I was madly bringing the various power systems up to full. "It's bait for a trap; get us outta here!" The brothers had just started swinging us around when the Big Eye spotted something detach from the junk wheel and turn towards us. It looked like an older model of Turian frigate.

A Turian's flanging voice was translated over our comms system. "Unidentified ship. You will power down and prepare to be boarded. Failure to comply will be met with deadly force. You have 30 seconds to comply."

"Shit Bruh! It'll take us that long just to get up to speed!" Frans looked at Juan for guidance until he saw me still working my controls. "What are you up to Hiram?"

"Getting ready to teach them the 'Kzinti Lesson'. Get our ass pointed dead center on them and standby for a kick!"

Frans' eyes lit up. "Juan, help me aim!"

Juan did as asked with a puzzled look. "What are we doing?"

Frans nodded to me. "This." I pressed a button, and the ship shuddered as the ME Core capacitors all simultaneously discharged into the FTL driver beam. My adjustments to our mass effect field emitters created a gravity lens that turned our X-Ray laser engine into a short lived, high intensity X-Ray laser pulse. A bright purple flash appeared on the hull of our opponents ship.

All was silent for a moment. "So be it." We all started to panic until the frigate was rocked by an explosion and began slowly tumbling.

Hans gasped. "Okay, before I have to stress puke, what just happened."

I got out of my seat and floated towards Juan's station. "Can you focus in?" The image of the ship zoomed in. We saw a gaping hole on her spine. "Nice aim Frans, it looks like we hit her right in the middle of her gun."

Juan nodded in understanding while Frans whooped and slapped his brother's back. "So when she tried to fire on us, the gun blew. Very quick thinking." He turned to consider me. "I'd say give more warning next time, but as we didn't have any time..."

Hans had his breathing under control. "Okay, we know what this is. Can we go now?"

Juan was nodding when I shook my head. "We know what, but not why or who. That was too disciplined a response for some Terminus backwater warlord." I nodded to the construct. "Someone went to a lot of trouble and effort to lay a trap, and we; all of us need to know if it was meant for the GST."

Hans and Frans looked pleadingly at Juan, but he shook his head. "Hiram's right. We came here for answers, so let's get some. You two stay with the Marvin. Anything happens, you bug out and let the Spirit know." He unbuckled and floated to the CM's hatch. He looked at me. "You and I are taking the Dinghy over."

...

The 'Dinghy' was our non-atmospheric excursion module. They were nearly identical, on the outside, to a Soyuz orbiter. Inside they were more heavily armored, with slightly more room to accomodate most hardsuits. Mine and Juan's were not 'most'. His had been patterned after a more streamlined EOD hazard suit, and was significantly more bulky than most.

Juan docked us at a service hatch near the Drive Core. "First, we make sure she isn't about to blow up, then we see if she's salvageable. If she is, we take her to site Beta with us and let Shultz have her. If she isn't, we strip her computer and anything useful, and then scuttle her. You're on point."

I nodded as we opened the hatch. I always went first since my PA/X-Ray cannon had both the most punch, and the most intimidation factor. There were lights and gravity, but the ship's tumble made everything feel like she was listing. We both pulled out a handful of micro-drones and set them to map the ship.

I looked around, panning my gun as we went. The interior was in significantly better shape than the outside. "This is a lot of effort to keep the corridors looking nice, but let the hull go to pot."

He nodded, his own MP-7 based submachine gun held at the ready. "Yeah, almost like they want people to mistake the ship for a pirate vessel."

We arrived at engineering and found our first casualty: a Salarian floated motionless inside the inert ME core. I patched into one of the consoles. "It's all in Turian. Gimme a second." I loaded a translation program and let the system update.

He came over to the monitor. "Alright, 'Para espanol, marke numero...' you pendejo son of bitch!"

I cackled and cleared the gag message as he thumped my shoulder. I then read off the logs. "Okay, looks like the reactor auto-scrammed when the gun blew. If I'm reading this right, the space frame was torqued in the blast. We're not moving this pig without a tug. She's carrying..." I whistled in appreciation, "2 tons of Eezo for core operation, 32 tons of Deuterium for the reactors and 105 Kg of antimatter."

Juan chuckled at that. "That alone could almost make the trip worth it. One second." He typed for a few seconds. The ship was rocked with a series of muted thumps. "Marvin, this is LT. I just jettisoned the ships fuel stores. Send the drone over to pick it up. We're moving to CIC."

"Copy LT."

He shouldered his sub-gun. "Come on pendejo, let's keep going."

We were halfway to CIC when one of the drones detected movement before going dark. I glanced at Juan. "Looks like we have survivors. One deck below, port side."

Juan thought for a second. "Note it, but keep moving. Marvin, we have movement. Standby." Hans and Frans remained silent, though they pinged their receipt.

We came to a T junction just before the CIC when Juan tapped me. I paused and looked where he was pointing and saw a small piece of metal sitting at an angle. A dim red light blinked from underneath. I noted the location and thought it would have caught anyone just before they got to the T junction, or just as they pulled back from it. It didn't look like there was a good line of sight on it from either leg of the T.

He gave me a very basic signal, one we had drilled: cover me while I work. I took up position in the middle of the corridor. It offered no cover, but gave me the best sightlines available.

It took him slightly more than a minute to disarm the mine. I was about to advance around the corner when he shook his head and made a few gestures at the bomb, the plate, and the hallway. It took a moment to figure out what he wanted, which seemed to be to fashion the plate into a tube to direct the bombs blast down the T in both directions.

My Omni-tool made short work of the task, and two minutes later we had a double ended shotgun with flechettes. He rigged his own Omni as a remote trigger, and then rolled the tube down the hall into the junction. There was a curious noise just before he detonated it.

Our own helmets blocked out the worst of the concussion and we rounded the corner, sweeping fire for three seconds straight. Once we stopped we ducked back behind the T and waited. After ten seconds with no sound we rounded the corner again to survey the area. There were two more bodies. The first was another Salarian, but it took me a moment to reconcile the tattered, faintly glowing purple cloth strewn about as having been a Hanar. "Alright, this is officially not pirates."

Juan nodded but didn't say anything, simply tapping my shoulder and gesturing forward. We finally arrived at the sealed double door to the CIC. The control panel had been smashed, with exposed wiring sticking out. I signaled Juan to watch over me and secured my gun.

I connected my Omni to the wrecked controls and built up a bypass with two buttons.

I pantomimed to Juan that one would open the door a little, the other a lot. He got behind the bulkhead with his finger over the "little" button and waited. I prepared my cannon and nodded. When the doors opened slightly, I swept fire back and forth.

Juan opened the door the rest of the way and stepped in. We were both peppered with fire as we lurched back into cover. A grenade clattered out, which Juan kicked back in. We stepped back into the doorway after the grenade went off. Two Turians were bleeding out on Juan's side of the room, but we were both fired on from mine. I swept fire across the shooters, causing another Turian and an Asari to duck behind consoles. We retreated back out when a warp was launched my way.

"I know I hit both of them! That is not, pirate, armor!"

"Use AP!" Juan shouted. I disabled the laser systems and readied the gun to fire as a light-speed charged particle cannon. He ducked in to fire a short burst to keep the last two undercover while I stepped around. I then fired a shot into the console.

Contrary to popular culture, charged particles and plasma are not slow moving blobs you can track with the naked eye. They aren't even something you should look at with the naked eye. It is something anyone from a terrestrial world is familiar with. A purple-white flash connected my gun to the console for an instant before it vomited sparks and fire everywhere. The Turian lept one way, gun in hand, while the Asari jumped the other, landing on her belly.

I tracked and shot the Turian first. The arc of light-speed electrons overwhelmed the shield of his armor before scorching a small hole clean through him.

The Asari was just standing up and readying a biotic attack of some sort when I turned and fired on her.

In our primer on Eezo, we were informed it was unwise to ever, ever discharge a charged particle beam into anything with more than .5% Eezo by volume.

I found out that Asari are greater than .5% Eezo by volume. She shrieked for a split second as the lightning bolt charged every Eezo node in her body.

The result was very messy.

I was startled out of my daze by a short burst of weapons fire. I saw Juan standing in the doorway, his weapon at the ready. The Turian who had apparently been less dead than I thought was sprawled on the floor between us. "Hiram, report!"

"I'm good." I swept the room one more time. "Room secure." He stepped in put a hand on my shoulder. I looked him in the eyes. "I'll be fine once we get back on the Marvin."

We swept the computers only to find they had been wiped, either before we had boarded, or sometime after. No one was carrying an Omni-tool. There was an armory report on a damaged console stating there were twenty Disruptor Torpedoes in the magazine.

I glanced at Juan over my shoulder. "Do we salvage the data core and see what Shultz's people can make of it, or go for the torpedoes?"

Juan was looking at an evacuation plan map on the bridge wall. "Data Center is right next to the magazine, so we take both. We jettison all but two missiles, and use those two as a scuttling charge."

I stepped away from the console. "Right. You get the data core, I'll rig the bomb."

He sputtered for a moment, then threw a bit of something at me (which I hoped wasn't Asari). "LT to Marvin; we're about done here. Have the drone ready to collect a dozen and a half torpedoes. We'll be close behind."

"Good to hear from you. The light show was a little concerning. Something broke away from the ship during the ruckus. Delphi tracked as it went for the relay. Drone's on its way now." They replied.

There were no more complications, though it did take us another two hours to finish up. Juan came over and grabbed one of the data cores in a rush. "Come on pendejo, we've got five minutes until this place blows!" he shouted.

"What?!" I exclaimed, my heart racing in a panic.

"Bwahahahahahah!" I could only glare, since my arms were full. "Relax, I set it on a two hour timer. Let's get out of here." He said, dropping the fake alarm written on his face.

Once we arrived safely back on the Marvin, we stuck around long enough to watch the mystery frigate go up. The blast shredded the ship, and the gravity wave sent the wreckage and the trash wheel falling into the gas giant.

We then turned for home, our holds filled with war supplies, but our minds filled with questions: who was looking for us, and what did they intended to do if we were ever caught?

A/N: Another great chapter by Ian the Mechanic.

Like I said earlier, I am still taking submissions for the GST side stories.

I don't expect you guys to follow any one theme beyond being semi-realistic sci-fy set in Mass Effect. Just don't go nuts with your story, and try and stay away from comedy in general.

Ian, as you can see, follows the more science aspects of this universe with his stories; while I follow the more action/political drama parts of this universe.

The code to my discord server as of this posting is /Pv2bv88; to any future readers, just check my profile for the code, as I try to keep that link regularly updated once the old ones get used up.