A Crazy thing happened on the way to the Citadel

There are odd things you get used to, accustomed to, and take for granted in life. I'd been relatively lucky since Traveling, in that I was generally always at a location of my own species, or one close enough to. Then you are reminded of little, and not so little differences between the species of the galaxy.

"State your name for the record."

"Hiram Abiff."

Take the Turians for example. One thing you generally don't consider when dealing with them is the difference their physiognomy has on their furniture, and how uncomfortable it is for anyone without digitigrade legs and Pangolin-like scales. The chair I was sitting in was a prime example.

"Is there a problem?" The Hierarchy Lieutenant in front of me, Grumpus or something like that; he was my fifth interviewer today.

"Oh, there's a whole punch-list of problems; none you can really do anything about."

The Lt. flared his mandibles slightly as his frill buzzed. "If you say so. Let's get down to it then and maybe we can cut down on those problems a bit. So," he leaned forward and steepled his talons over a peculiar looking tool, one I had constructed not too long ago, "how exactly did you and your friends end up in the aux command of a slave frigate?"

I leaned back and started into my umpteenth (redacted) recitation of the last 24 hours.

"I'm the engineer, or was, on the Marvin, a free trader ported out of Amaterasu. We were delivering a load of electronics to Cyreen."

We'd only been back on the Spirit a day after the Normandy refit and were gearing down for R&R when we, as well as nearly every other Retrieval team on post, were retasked to deliver Delphi Probes to a dozen different relay systems each; all to try and track down the EA Bird of Prey.

We jumped through the relay into 'nameless numbered system whatever'. "Alright hermanos, one more probe to drop off after this and we're home free."

"Yeah, yeah, I gotcha El Jefe." I headed to the airlock and suited up to wrangle our payload of Delphi pods which had basically been strapped onto the hull in baskets, rather than coupled like our assigned Delphi Mk. 2. Once out on the hull I untethered one of the last two pods, while El Jefe jockeyed it away from us using the Canadarm.

Be free, little birdie! The Brothers were as tired of this job as the rest of us, but still tried to make it as pleasant as possible.

I had just made it to the Command module without changing as the pod made its initial FTL burn, when two ships blue-shifted right on top of us: a well worn Batarian Frigate, and another Bird of Prey with red highlights.

"Mierde!"

"Shit!"

"Go-go-go!"

"I'm fucking going!"

The Marvin lurched into motion as the two unknowns moved to block our Relay approach.

"Hiram, rig up a shot on the EA ship!"

We still had some charge in the capacitors so I readied our beam drive to fire on the BoP. Just as we were lined up to shoot, she fired a brace of missiles at us. Hans managed to juke us out of its path and still keep me on target, while our two 'IR Dumps' maddly blasted at the oncoming missiles. Our engine fired just as the lone surviving missile was flying wide. The shot hit right where the bridge would be on the TOS version, and the ship continued on a ballistic course rather than turning to give chase.

That didn't save us though. The missile detonated in a bright blue flash and suddenly most of our systems shut down, while my analogue controls indicated our capacitors were at a near critical overload. The Batarian then fired what I suppose was a warning shot, though that warning took out one of the hab units. Emergency seals shut to keep us from popping like a balloon or losing all our air, but now we were ballistic and tumbling, with no real way to defend ourselves.

"So you arrived in system, and a Batarian Frigate jumped you for no reason?" Grumpus raised an eyebrow.

I snorted and crossed my arms. "Oh, they had a reason. And I'm pretty sure you know what it was, or you wouldn't have been patrolling this far of the major trade lanes."

"Just because a Batarian Frigate was in system-"

"A Frigate that fired on us, tried to board us and had over thirty sapients in shock collars in their hold. You're the one who called it a Slave Frigate first, remember?" I gave him a deadpan look. "I'm sure if you search the area you'll find the wreckage of our black box somewhere."

Grumpus cleared his throat and tapped the table. "So; damaged and adrift?"

We could see the Batarian nosing towards us cautiously as we rolled.

"The fuck are they doing?" Frans groused as he tried to bring systems back up on secondary power.

Juan looked up from his flickering screen. "Probably trying to figure out if it's safe, considering we just beheaded that Mujahadeen." He looked over at me. "We can't let them have the ship."

I nodded. "Whatever the BoP shot, it supercharged our capacitors. I think I can rig them to fry the Marvin. You get the CM ready to detach."

I headed into the darkened connector to the Service Modules. It was a slow and unsettling trip; I was accustomed to the Marvin's normal creaks and buzzing, not the ghost-ship derelict groan she was now giving out. I grabbed a hull breach kit as I passed into the engine section. The contacts for the supercapacitor banks were glowing and sparking. It was a matter of minutes to rig the capacitors to dump into the stellarator control magnets, which all but guaranteed a spectacular end to the Marvin.

I had just turned around when the ship bumped. I could feel grating through the hull and rhythmic thumps as someone tried to come aboard. I set a timer on the makeshift Self-Destruct, then headed back into the SM connector. I saw a quick jet of sparks as someone cut through the universal airlock, and I clipped myself onto a safety ring, readying the hull breach foam gun.

The Airlock was finally smashed open by a Krogan, and followed in by three Batarians and a Turian, all in what I could best describe as 'Pirate Chic'. None were in Hard-suits, or even Pressure Suits, but all I had was a hull breach kit and one of the daggers I'd collected on my first day in universe. They jabbered amongst one another as they drifted and bumped around. It was apparent most of them were unaccustomed to Zero-G. They also seemed to ignore me, as I must have looked like drifting detritus in the dark.

I waited until they were all facing away from me, then fired the foam-gun. The recoil pinned me to the engineering bulkhead, but the effect on them was very satisfying. The quick setting binary ballistic foam hardened in seconds trapping nearly all of them in a resin gum ball.

Nearly all of them. The Turian had twisted out of the worst of it, though his pistol was trapped in the goo. He spun to face me with a sneer.

"Very clever, monkey." He chuckled as I discarded the spent tool and drew my less than impressive dagger. "You've managed to even the odds in a single shot, and removed my weapon advantage." He drew a wickedly curved fighting knife and flashed it through a flourish that seemed to compliment his weightlessness. "But I supposed you didn't know; all Turians who served in the Hierarchy Marines are trained to fight in microgravity."

I shifted my dagger into a reverse grip. "I didn't know that. Did you know that this ship's pressure hull is only 2.5 millimeters thick alluminum?" His eyes widened in shock and he kicked off the foam mass just as I smashed the blade of my knife into the hull.

He was nearly on me when the SM popped. Air rushed out dragging me and the Turian with it. I was still tethered to the SM, but he sailed into and bounced off of the hull of the Frigate that had docked to us. I caught a glimpse of him flailing as he sailed into the void while I pulled myself back onto the ruined ship.

I crawled over the hull to the front of the CM and looked through one of the portholes. Juan, Hans and Frans were frantically gesticulating in their desire to know what was going on. I pulled out a grease pencil and a plastic note sheet, and let them know they needed to detach and maneuver to the far side of the Batarian ship. I clipped onto a safety ring near the CM connector hatch, and held on as the module jettisoned and began to move close to the Batarian's hull.

We had just reached the opposite side when my timer reached 0:00. There was no 'Earth-Shattering Kaboom' for Marvin, though the force of the detonation and the resulting EMP did kick the Frigate enough for us to feel it.

"Your ship exploded from a glancing hit by a Batarian Frigate?"

I shrugged. "Not that glancing of a hit. What do you expect? The Marvin was a freighter, not an armored cruiser."

Once I was sure we were not in any immediate danger, I moved back to the porthole. Juan had a message for me. He also wrote that he wanted me to find a hatch so we could board the Frigate before it started maneuvering again. I glanced over the ship's hull and saw two hatches: one looked to be a mirror to the shipway that had connected us on the other side, but the second looked more like a service hatch. When I let him know, he showed me the emergency survival bubble. I understood his plan, even if it seemed like a bad one.

We maneuvered the CM as close as we dared to the service hatch, then I tethered the two together. The CM hatch opened with a puff and the line went taught as three opaque bubbles bumped their way out. I jockeys them into position, then set about opening the manual hatch. It took five minutes without the proper tools, but I finally got it open, then stuffed the three of them and myself in and slammed the hatch shut.

I had just managed to get the air regulator open in the inner hatch when the lights flickered on and normal gravity returned. I unzipped the three bubbles and opened my helmet for the first time in what felt like days.

The brothers tumbled out gasping while Juan dusted himself off. "That was positively the most insane thing I have ever ordered someone to do." He looked at us all. "Is everyone all right?"

We all nodded and chuckled and turned to the inner hatch, just as it opened to reveal a frazzled and tired looking Salarian. Juan was first on him, wrestling the Salarian to the deck and breaking his neck in very short order.

"Jesus, El Jefe!" Hans choked out. "What was that?!"

He dragged the body fully into the lock as I stuck my head out to make sure nobody else was there. "Mexico City PD. You Gringos had your 'War on Drugs', while we were at war with the Cartels." He pried an Omnitool off the corpse and slapped it on his wrist. "Alright, let's see what's what."

He fiddled for a few moments, but the machine wouldn't work until Frans grabbed the Salarians hand and tapped the controls. Once open, I reset access permissions like I had back on Illium, and we soon had our link to the Pirate ship, such as it was.

He growled in frustration. "Is it too much to ask for some basic layout?"

I rummaged through the basic tools the Salarian had on him. "Doesn't matter who made it, these ships are all laid out the same: gun in the front, engine in the back, bridge up top, and hangar at the bottom."

He sent me a sour look, then pursed his lips. "What do you have?"

I laid them out: a little pry-bar about 20 cm long, what looked to be a small welding torch, and a spray can that had a universal sign for hull-patching. I ended up with the club, while Hans and Frans took the torch and the sealant. We made it to the catwalk above the midship holds before we found our next living person. Several in fact, all in cages with self-lit collars, as well as several guards with shotguns.

Juan laid a restraining hand onto each of our shoulders. "We can't do anything just charging down there. We need to control the ship, and we won't do that with brute force."

We sullenly continued to crawl until we found a maintenance terminal. Juan traded the Omni for the crowbar, and I managed to locate an aux control center one deck below us.

"Alright, there's a few people between us and it, but I think I can create enough of a diversion to clear a path." I waited until Juan nodded and the Brothers were ready to run, then activated my diversion. The entire deck lit up with radiation alarms, sending pirates scurrying away. We rushed into the opening, ducked into the control room and locked the door behind us.

Hans and I sat in the engineering and navigation stations. "Okay, looks like the Py-rats are getting ready to jump." He glanced at me. "I'm gonna send you our coordinates, then dump their nav-logs so they can't find their way. You keep their engines looking like they're in overload so they don't get Froggy."

I handed the Omnitool back to Juan while Hans and I stalled the bridge with endless 'faults'. Juan and Frans worked on saving the ship's master logs onto the Omni and getting the Comm system ready to go.

"Alright," Juan heaved a breath, "Vaya con Mio." He hit the command to wipe all the ship's data and temporarily lock out the bridge's command, then activated the main laser comm and pointed it at the system's relay. "Mayday-Mayday-Mayday! This is the captain of ISV Marvin, RSS 22825. We have been attacked by pirates at the following coordinates. Please send assistance immediately."

He set the controls to keep the broadcast going as a loop as long as it had power. Once main control was locked out, we smashed all the controls in the command room, welded the door shut and waited.

"Bruh, I really wish we still had our kit." The brothers said as one.

I glanced at the Omnitool on Juan's arm. "El Jefe, I have an idea if I can borrow that for a moment?"

He printed up a disc with the Omni's memory then handed the tool over. "Whatever it is you're going to do, make it good."

I set to work making a series of modifications I had become very familiar with over the last years; I was the reigning Medieval European Sword Champion on board the Spirit after all.

The crew began banging on the door, then hammering on it, then cutting through it. Juan and Frans alternately beat or torched any appendage that managed to create a hole while Hans filled up the gaps with sealant spray.

The torch gave out first, then the spray ran dry. By that point, I was done. "Get clear, and get ready to grab whatever weapons you can." The nodded and moved to the sides as another bull Krogan ripped the doors open.

"You little pyjacks ready for the worst day of you-"

I thought my "X" cut with my brand new Omni-Zweihander was delivered quite well, though I'm certain Sachico Hime from Finance would lecture me about my foot work; I'm the Spirit's European Sword Champion, not the Swordchampion. Still, the effect of having an armored Krogan collapse into four different piles at the feet of a 6'1" human with a 4' glowing orange sword shocked the rest of the crew long enough to let me waylay the team at the hatch.

"And that's where you found us," I gestured to then now inert Omni-Greatsword, "holed up in the aux command center fending off the pirate crew."

Grumpus' mandibles twitched In what I guessed was incredulity. I haven't learned all, or even many facial expressions for the more inhuman non-human aliens.

He rested his talons on the hilt and sighed heavily. "Alright, I suppose that's enough for now." He tapped a control on the table, and two guards came in to take me back to my cell.

Lt. Grathus of the Black Watch paced down the corridors of the Frigate "Bright Talon" until he reached the bridge. He strode in to see the Captain watching the superluminal energies wash over them. "Anything?" The Captain didn't take her gaze from the view in front of her.

Grathus buzzed in resignation. "No ma'am, just more of the same; the exact same. If it weren't for the wreckage we saw on site, I'd say it was a complete lie. As it is, they've all rehearsed their story until they can tell it in their sleep."

She glanced sideways. "Your opinion?"

He gingerly held the handle out and away, then activated it causing a four foot glowing orange blade to spring to life. "Much more resourceful than a simple freighter crew, and more disciplined; but not as disciplined as a proper military intelligence unit." He rolled the weapon in his talons, impressed and alarmed at the nimbleness of the strange anachronistic weapon. "Intelligence contractors perhaps? Some deniable asset the SA sent out to snoop on the Terminus." He shut the weapon down. "If we'd have gotten there an hour later, they likely would have seized the ship and been gone."

She sighed. "And what of the disc?"

He stood at parade rest. "It's in a coding format our techs aren't familiar with. It is likely that it's specifically human, so we may have to... reach out for assistance in decoding it."

She hummed. "Well, I suppose it's for the best we've come to the one place where such assistance is readily available." The swirl of FTL collapsed into a violaceous cloud surrounding a slowly spinning five pointed station. "If it can't be found on the Citadel, it can't be found. Contact our people in C-Sec; let them know we are bringing guests."