Chapter Nineteen – Asari Space

Jules stared out at the void of space. Distant stars shimmered in the blackness, silent and still; there was nothing strange about the sight, nothing overwhelming or out of place. In all honesty, asari space looked… exactly like every other section of space – black, empty and disappointingly normal.

She didn't know what she'd expected. After all the build-up, the journey through the relay had felt like a leap into some otherworldly domain, like they might emerge into a different dimension or a brutal battlefield. In reality, it just looked like space.

Ereba's hands were hovering over her console, awaiting orders. Jules found herself breaking the continuing silence by tapping softly on the back of the pilot's chair before she finally sighed and spoke.

"Are there any other ships in the area?"

"No," Ereba replied.

"And no one followed us through?"

"No one," she confirmed.

The HTA fleet hadn't been able to put up much of a fight against foes they couldn't see and all four of Tevos' ships had made it through unscathed but they had found nothing waiting for them on the other side except silence and stillness.

"Strange…" Jules muttered, "I'd expected this side to be guarded too. Seems odd that there would be no one."

"According to the HTA, no one ever leaves asari space so no one ever uses the relay."

"Hm," Jules mused, "I wonder why."

The comm bleeped and Ereba looked down, "It's Tevos."

Jules nodded and Ereba put her through.

"Shepard. It's time we split up," she stated, bluntly, "I'm sending Grunt to the Ialessa System, Aria will cover Vernio and Tomaros and I'm going to Orisoni. I want you to stay here in the Parnitha System to find out all you can."

"This is the system with Thessia in it," Jules stated, not that she imagined Tevos needed reminding.

"Yes. Though she's not your main goal yet. We've detected signs of civilisation on several of the other planets and moons. Try to find out what you can about the society here before you go near Thessia, we need to handle this delicately. Don't tell anyone who we really are or why we're here."

"What do you think we'll find?"

There was a pause, "I have no idea."

Jules watched Ereba shift in her seat. As daunting as the admission was, she felt her own heart quicken. There was nothing more enticing than a mystery to solve.

"Good luck."

"And you. Stay safe Shepard."

As the comm cut off, Ereba studied her console, "They're moving away," she reported, "looks like we're on our own," as she frowned down at her map of the system, she seemed suddenly overwhelmed, "where do we start?"

For a moment Jules just gazed out at the stars, and the emptiness that held so many secrets, "Get a full scan of the system." she decided, "Let's see what we can see."

She left Ereba to it, aware that the rest of her crew were probably in need of some reassurance after what they'd been through the past few hours. She remembered vaguely that she used to be good at that sort of thing. That felt like a long time ago now.

The light on the Janiri was just as irritating as the light on the Armali had been. The pale blue glow that filled the corridors was already giving Jules a headache, dim enough to strain her eyes and yet somehow bright enough to make her squint as she traversed the winding passages until the sound of voices led her to the mess hall.

It was packed, it seemed the whole crew was there. Uncertain murmuring filled the room but as Jules entered it petered out and everyone turned to look at her, worry glimmering in their eyes. Jules stopped dead for a second as the hush descended and found herself looking to Liara, who was lingering by the doorway with a datapad in her hand.

"Is this everyone?" she asked softly, casting a glance around the room. Liara looked up at her and then shook her head.

"We left five behind. Three analysts, a comms officer and one of the nurses," she passed Jules the datapad and she saw five names she vaguely recognised all highlighted in red. She nodded slowly and looked back at the room. The mostly-asari crew were still looking at her, waiting.

"Ah hell," Jules muttered, quiet enough so only Liara heard her, "it's been a long time since I've had to do this," she passed the datapad back and gratefully registered the encouraging smile Liara was giving her before she stepped forward and cleared her throat.

"We're now officially on our own," she began, then instantly realised that it probably wasn't the best way to start a rousing speech as several people shifted uncomfortably and looked down at the floor. She continued regardless, "Tevos has assigned us to the Parnitha System, our goal is to collect all the data we can and work out exactly what has been going on in asari space for the past two centuries. I know we had to leave in a hurry, no one got the chance to pick up any personal belongings or say any goodbyes. But the ship's well stocked, so long as we all pull together, we've got more than enough to complete our mission."

She looked around at the glittering pairs of asari eyes, all on her. Their stares were intense, narrowed in concern. They wanted more from her. Reassurance. Confidence. Inspiration. Commander Shepard would have been brimming with all that.

She clenched her fists as she tried to mentally kick herself into shape and remember what the hell it was she had back then that had made people follow her. As far as she could recall she used to tell herself to speak from the heart. She'd always been so sure what was in her heart back then, now things were a bit muddier.

She glanced back at Liara.

"Thessia was never my home," she started carefully, "but I fought to save it, like I did every home world, and every colony. I only visited it once, during the war, when the reapers were in the last stages of their assault. I've always regretted that I never got to see it before then."

A memory flitted back to her, quite unexpectedly. Her and Liara face down in a pile of rubble where they had dived to avoid a Harvester's missiles, coughing through hot smoke and the stench of burning wreckage, "This city used to be beautiful!" Liara had spat, half choking on dust and grit as buildings crumbled around them. Cuts had marred her face, leaving violet tear tracks of blood down her cheeks; barely contained anger was making her shake as she slammed a fist against the rubble and struggled to her feet. Jules had never seen her like that before, she had caught hold of her by both arms, wanting a way to keep her friend grounded amongst the chaos.

"We'll rebuild it," she had assured with a smile, "after all this is over, we'll come back and we'll rebuild it."

People said stupid things like that all the time, mostly they were meaningless. But when Commander Shepard had said something it was more than a sentiment, it was a promise.

As she gazed quietly at Liara now she wondered if the asari still remembered that conversation.

"I made a promise after the war," she found herself continuing out loud, "that we'd rebuild everything the reapers took from us. Every home. Every city. Every planet. I seem to have taken a break from that promise over the last hundred years. But now I'm back and it looks like there's still work to do. So!" she turned back on the gathered crew, making them jump slightly and straighten up, "Whatever is happening on Thessia, whatever reason the HTA have for keeping people away, we are going to find it and we are going to get Thessia back."

She saw, with slight surprise, that the crew were smiling, reflecting the hope that now shone in their eyes. It looked like she could still inspire a room, even if she didn't entirely believe what she was saying anymore.

"Let's get to work," she finished, "we've got a lot to do."

The crew dispersed and conversation filled the room as preparations started. Jules felt Liara sidle up beside her.

"That was well done," she muttered in her ear.

"Yeah, well," Jules shrugged in reply, "I made you a promise didn't I? Two hundred years ago, in a pile of rubble."

"I remember."

Jules slapped her softly on the arm, "Well you could have reminded me!"

"I knew you'd get round to it eventually."

…

The next few hours were chaotic to say the least. Their hurried departure meant that nothing had been organised properly, half the computer systems weren't set up yet – which was giving the tech teams a whole string of headaches – the supplies were all still in the cargo bay waiting to be unpacked and nothing like a rota or a shift system had been put in place yet.

Another big problem was that no one had been assigned their rooms. There weren't enough cabins on the Janiri for everyone to have their own and most would have to share in twos or threes. It was all meant to have been sorted out by the commanders long before they left but since that hadn't happened the task had instead been dumped on Barbet's shoulders.

The batarian wasn't entirely sure why Shepard had given him the responsibility. Maybe it was some kind of test of his patience. It was certainly turning into one.

At first he'd thought it would be easy. Apart from him, Rhys and Shepard the crew were all asari so he didn't have to worry about putting different species in with each other, or different genders come to think of it. But as it turned out, asari were unbearably picky about who they shared a room with.

The requests and complaints came in droves as he sat in the middle of the mess hall, surrounded by the bustle of the crew as they ran back and forth, exchanging datapads, coordinating tasks and generally trying to organise the chaos their sudden escape had left them with. Barely one of them passed by his chair without stopping to make their preferences known.

"Barbet, don't put me in with Maia, I can't share a room with someone six-hundred years older than me."

"Barbet, I won't share with any of the nurses, they smell of antiseptic."

"Barbet, find me someone who works opposite shifts to me."

"Barbet, can I have my own room?"

"Barbet, I can only sleep if I'm on the starboard side."

"GIRLS!" he finally shouted, bringing a sudden halt to the activity in the room as everyone froze and looked at him, "You will go wherever I decide to put you and I will not have any arguments!" startled eyes widened and looks were exchanged and Barbet realised he sounded like a stressed-out father tired of reasoning with a band of unruly daughters. He was starting to feel like one too, "Now get back to work!" he ordered and the crew dutifully went back to what they were doing, albeit a little more subdued than before.

He heard Kyla's soft cackle and looked up to see her standing in front of him, arms folded, "Didn't I warn you, old man? If there's one thing we asari are good at, it's petty squabbling. That and sex."

He snorted despite himself, "Makes me wonder how the hell you managed to become the most powerful race in the galaxy."
"Like I said," Kyla shrugged, "sex. It's amazing the things people will do just for the promise of it."

Barbet decide to ignore the fact that she had just degraded her entire species to nothing more than a race of gorgeous seducers, something he had never believed even if others did. Instead he sighed and tossed her a key card.

"I've put you in with Egret, room C7."

Kyla took the card and gave it a cursory glance before shrugging and pocketing it, "Fair enough."

"Really? No complaints? I thought you'd hate having to share?"

"Why?" she scrunched up her face as she shrugged, "It's better than sleeping alone," she gave him a wink that made him grimace.

"Don't get any ideas, kid. Aside from being centuries younger than you she's also spoken for, remember? By a very large krogan."

"Urgh," Kyla rolled her eyes, "don't worry old man, I'll behave."

He slouched back in his chair as she wandered away, wondering exactly how much trouble she was going to get herself into during this mission. He'd known Kyla for a while now and he knew that attracting trouble was a particular talent of hers. One she often exploited deliberately.

He spotted Shepard across the room and straightened up as she made her way towards him, "How's it going?" she asked, nodding at the datapad in front of him.

"Getting there," he told her with a fake smile she wasn't meant to fall for.

"Good."

"Er, there was one thing I needed to ask you," he cleared his throat, wondering how exactly he was going to broach this, "I'm… assuming you and Liara will be… in the same room."

A smile twitched on Shepard's lips, "Ye-es, I'm assuming that too."

"Right," he nodded, "it's just… the captain's cabin is quite small, only built for one…" he bought himself time with a cough, "the bed might be a bit… small for two."

The smile broke fully now, dazzling in Shepard's bright eyes, "Oh don't worry about that," she leaned in over the table and beckoned him closer as she whispered, "we don't mind cuddling up if we have too."

Barbet blinked, "Right. Good."

He was really starting to wonder what the hell he had gotten himself into by signing up for this mission.

…

Since the Janiri wasn't built for combat, there wasn't a CIC or even a command centre. As a consequence, Jules spent the first few hours in asari space aimlessly wandering the decks, trying to find somewhere she could stand where she actually felt like she was in command.

There was a main room in the heart of the ship that was packed full of screens and consoles where analysts would spend hours sifting through the reams of data that the survey scans would produce. It even had a central, oval console and a galaxy map like the Normandy's CIC had. But it lacked both the drama and the finesse of the Normandy and somehow Jules couldn't picture herself giving orders from there.

There was an observation dome at the top of the ship that afforded a magnificent view of the stars and everything going on around. It was also constructed entirely of glass and therefore a massive structural weakness. Legion wouldn't have approved. You certainly wouldn't want to be standing in it if the ship was attacked.

Most of the ship was corridors with comfortable little rooms tucked away between them, serving a range of purposes from store cupboards to lounges to computer rooms. There was nothing that really screamed 'I'm in command!'

In the end she settled for joining Ereba in the cockpit again. There was only one pilot seat but as she leaned on the back of it and gazed down at Ereba's console she could see Ereba was getting a constant rundown of pretty much everything that was going on both inside and outside the ship, making this easily the best place to command from. Shame it was a bit cramped.

"Find anything interesting yet?" she asked.

Ereba was leaning back in her chair, watching the reams of data coming in with an impassive gaze, "Tevos was right, there's life signs on a lot of the planets and moons that were colonised before the war, some of them in the billions. I've tracked quite a lot of ships too and more than a few skirmishes. The HTA weren't lying when they said this area of space isn't safe. None of them have detected us."

"What about Thessia?"

Ereba's reaction was telling in itself as she cocked a brow and leaned forward over her controls, "I was going to call about that," she tapped the console and zoomed in on an area of the map in front of her, "that is Thessia, or at least that's where it should be."

The area she was pointing to was a complete dead zone. There was no planet, but that wasn't the strangest thing. There was no anything. No background radiation, no radio waves, no comm signals. Nothing.

"Our scans are being blocked," Jules muttered.

"Yes," Ereba agreed, "I did a more detailed scan and I still can't detect Thessia but I did find these," an image came up on the screen of what looked like a satellite, though Jules hadn't seen the design before.

"There's a whole network of them," Ereba explained, "thousands of them in orbit around the planet, they're blocking everything both in and out. Scans, comms… everything. I've seen ships going in, they just disappear off the map."

Jules raised an eyebrow, "Do they reappear again?"

"Yes. But I've no idea what they do down there."

"You ever seen anything like those satellites before?"

Ereba shook her head, "They're very advanced, more so than anything I've seen since the war."

"What the hell are they hiding?"

Ereba looked round, "And who put them there?" there was a moment of silence and Jules was aware of Ereba's eyes still on her, "Are we going to go and take a look?" she asked eventually.

"Not yet," Ereba gave a steely nod and turned back to the console, Jules smiled sympathetically, "I know you want to know what's going on. So do I. But like Tevos said, we need to find out everything we can before we go wading in on Thessia."

A bleep distracted them and Ereba looked down, "Distress signal," she frowned, "it's coming from a ship… looks like a freighter."

"Are they under attack?"

There was a pause, "I think they were. The engines have been shot out but there's no other ships in the area. No life signs either, they might already have been rescued."

"Or killed," Jules pondered for a moment, idly tapping on the back of the chair, "how far away are we?"

Ereba considered, "I could get us there in thirty minutes."

…

Kyla meandered through the corridors, hands thrust in her pockets as she looked for the right door. She had managed to skilfully evade most of the frantic activity that was going on and instead of helping to unbox food supplies or set up software she was planning on testing the comfort of her new bed through the method of a long overdue nap.

There was no point in getting in everyone else's way, by the time she woke up everything would be sorted and no one would have noticed she hadn't been around to help. And even if they did, she didn't really care.

She whistled happily as she passed rooms C5, C6 and came to C7. She flicked the key card over the lock and the door slid open. She was about to stroll through but stopped halfway; the jaunty tune paused on her lips as her eyes fell on Egret.

The younger asari was cross-legged on one of the two beds that were crammed in on either side of the ridiculously tiny room. A datapad lying in front of her showed a disconnected comm link and wet lines down her cheeks indicated that she had been crying. Actually she was still crying.

She looked up at Kyla and then quickly ducked her head and wiped away the tears, she obviously hadn't expected to be disturbed.

"Bad time?" Kyla ventured, flicking her thumb back towards the still open door to show she was happy to leave again. She could always find somewhere else to nap. She was a bit of an expert at finding dark corners to doze in when she was meant to be busy. Maintenance ducts, store rooms, empty crates, she could sleep anywhere.

But Egret sniffed and shook her head, "It's okay. I was just talking to Grunt," she gestured vaguely to the datapad and Kyla nodded.

"Ah. Yeah. It's rough when you don't get to say goodbye, eh?" a soft frown creased Egret's brow, like she was wondering if she'd heard right and Kyla felt her nerves bristle, "Oh don't look at me like that! I'm not a fucking monster! I do know what it's like to care about someone!"

Egret flinched, taken aback by the outburst. It was a reaction Kyla was used to, she'd always been too brash for most people to handle.

"Sorry," Egret mumbled, "I didn't mean…"

"Forget it," Kyla swaggered over to the other bed, letting the door slide shut behind her as she threw herself down onto the mattress. It bounced back beneath her, springing her a millimetre or two into the air. It wasn't very roomy but it was comfy enough, better than some of the places she'd slept in the past. It was also one of the rare occasions that she was grateful for being so short, most asari would have struggled to stretch their legs out in this bed but it was the perfect length for her.

She tested the pillow with similar vigour before settling her head on it and deciding that this would do well enough for her. She glanced over to see Egret staring quietly down at the bedsheets, she could practically hear the girl's brain whirring as she tried to think of something to say. The silence might have been awkward but Kyla was usually oblivious to that sort of thing. Eventually she sighed.

"Look, babe, if we're going to share this room you're going to have to learn to ignore most of the crap that comes out of my mouth. I forget I've said most of it and the rest I probably don't mean anyway."

There was a pause as Egret frowned. Kyla watched her knotting the sheets between her fingers and when the girl didn't speak, she cleared her throat.

"Although… having said that; I realise that I may have neglected to thank you when you smashed in that idiot's skull before he could put a bullet through me, so… er… thanks."

She tailed off, frowning critically at herself. She was shit at this kind of thing.

Egret shrugged miserably, "You'd have done the same for me."

She snorted ungracefully, "Sure, if I was paying enough attention to notice," she winced even as the words came out, "see, that's where a normal person would say something like: 'sure babe, you can always count on me'."

She heard a strangled sort of gurgle and realised Egret was laughing through a nose bunged up with residual tears, "What's so fucking funny?"

She swallowed and shook her head, "Normal people lie a lot, at least you're honest."

"If you mean I say the first fucking thing that comes into my head without thinking then sure, I was born without a filter."

"Let me guess," Egret smiled, "your father was a batarian?"

"Oh no. Trust me, babe, I get all this from my mother's side."

She settled back against her pillow again and closed her eyes.

"What are you doing?"

"Taking a nap, it's been a long day."

There was a pause, "Aren't we meant to be out there, helping?"

"Yup."

Another pause, "Nobody else is getting to take a nap."

"I should hope not. If we all skive off someone might notice, no one's going to miss me though. I reckon I've got at least four hours before I even have to leave this room."

It was almost like the universe had a sense of humour, why else would it have picked that exact moment for the comm to bleep and Shepard's voice to break into the room.

"Kyla, meet me and Barbet by the airlock in ten minutes, I've got a job for us."

The only thing slightly more annoying than the irate bleep of the comm shutting off again was the stifled sound of Egret giggling.