Gerty Pradesh leaned back against the side of his small ship, taking a momentary break after having unloaded a few boxes of supplies from his cargo into the docking bay. Tugging out a cigarette and propping it on his lip, he activated his small charge lighter and touched it to the tip. As he bent his head to do so, part of his dark hair fell away from his neck, momentarily exposing both the curl of a tattoo, and a tiny glowing dot. The tattoo was of a dragon, 3D, and had been cleverly applied so that the glowing dot formed the eye of the beast. Even so, he almost unconsciously gave his head a shake, making the hair fall and cover it again.

If one were to look at Gerty, they would see a man who was most likely a merchant or even a pirate- and they wouldn't be far off the mark. Gerty ran supplies and merchandise on his small ship, the Lily Fire, and in his younger days not all of that merchandise had been legal and above-board. He'd put smuggling in his past, however, and no matter appearances he operated now strictly above board.

Mid-thirties, he was tall but looked taller thanks to his skinny build, no matter how he slouched. His father had been from Bangladesh, his mother from Edinburgh- he'd inherited his tan skin and dark hair, but her bright blue eyes and rather noticeable accent.

Bringing food and supplies to the Oasis Research Base had become one of his favorite runs. It was fast, it was easy, it paid decently-

He glanced over as a commotion at the entrance to the supply dock drew his attention. Dr. T'Soni, a travel case in one hand and a smaller locked case in the other, bustled in with her assistant on her heels. King seemed to be flustered about something, both women harried and hurrying. Gerty narrowed his eyes thoughtfully at the asari as he straightened from his lean.

-and it's not terribly hard on the eyes.

As the pair drew closer, what King was saying became audible. "-will take nearly two days before we have enough of a charge to take another look. Surely the information can be transmitted-!"

"I would not trust information of this nature to a transmission, no matter how secure the channel," Irie replied. "And we cannot delay. Once the scope is recharged you need to gather more information. Look at the dwarf galaxies. LMC, Boötes, the SMC- the entire local group if you can. Then simply send a response to my omni-tool-"

"You don't trust transmitting information on highly secure government channels but you want us to send it to your omni-tool?"

"All that needs to be sent is a simple 'yes' or 'no'. No further details are required. Captain Pradesh, thank the Goddess you have not yet left. I need passage."

Gerty lifted his brows slightly, drawing the cigarette out of his mouth and scuffing it out on the side of his ship as he let out a lungful of smoke. "Passage? With me?"

"Yes. I cannot wait for other transport, I need to leave for the Citadel immediately."

"The Citadel? I've got a repair supply bound for Praxita-"

"I will see that they get their supplies through other channels, and pay you twice what you would have made for the trouble," she said without hesitation.

"I don't know-"

"Three times."

He scowled faintly. "It's not the money that's an issue, ma'am. I have a reputation. I deliver my goods on time and as agreed."

"I understand, and I would not ask this of you, but this is incredibly important. I must speak to the Council immediately."

She did look very flustered and troubled, and behind her violet eyes he could see real fear. It was carefully schooled, but it was definitely there.

He glanced from her to King. Her fear was far less schooled. She looked almost ready to vomit.

"All right, all right," he said. "Just keep in mind I'm not set up to carry passengers, and the trip to the Citadel is going to take a couple of days-"

"I am hardly concerned with luxury at the moment. Thank you Captain."

"C'mon. I'll show you on board."

Irie turned to King. "Do as I ask, Leanne. Check them out, and send me that 'yes' or 'no'."

"Should I contact your sister?" she asked.

"N-no, not yet. I believe she is engaged on a mission for the Council at the moment, near the Traverse. She needs to concentrate on that. She will no doubt learn of this soon enough."

She turned and headed after Gerty, who was waiting at his open cargo bay. He directed her inside, glancing momentarily toward King who was already rushing away back toward the main facility. Hitting the command to close the bay he directed Irie up to the small common area. Beyond a tiny mess and a cockpit, there was only a single set of quarters and a lavatory.

"Some excitement going on, hmm?" he said as emerged into the mess. "You ok? You look a little…shell-shocked."

"I am…I am still reeling a bit," she said. "I will be fine. It is just…a lot to process."

"I'd ask just what is a lot to process, but given you don't trust transmissions I'm gathering telling a poor merchant off-hand is not a priority on your list. That's fine. I do have to ask though- no chance of me catching some weird plague or anything, is there? I'm not entirely sure what it is that you do, just that this is some kind of a research base."

"N-no, no, no chance of that. We do not do that kind of research. We are astrophysicists."

"Curiouser and curiouser," he said with a smile, then blinked as she visibly startled, staring at him.

"Do not say that!"

"I'm sorry, I was just quoting-"

"I know who and what you were quoting!" she said sharply, then let out a breath, shaking her head. "I am sorry, I should not have snapped. I just…have bad associations with Lewis Carroll, and Wonderland in particular."

"You are just becoming more and more fascinating, aren't you?" he said with an affable grin, then gestured around. "That's the lavatory there. It's not much more than a toilet and a shower, but it gets the job done. Pantry should be plenty stocked so help yourself to whatever you want. I grew up on Indian and Scottish food so you'll find a lot of curry and potatoes- sorry if that's not to your taste. There's only the single bunk. You're welcome to it."

"I did not intend to put you out of your bed-"

"Don't worry about it. I've fallen asleep more than once at the helm. I have no problem crashing there. It's more comfortable than it looks. Make yourself at home. I'll get us in the black and on our way."

He headed up to the front, powering up the controls and releasing the docking clamps. Intriguing as it was to have a gorgeous asari stuck on his ship for a couple of days- and an incredibly famous one at that- her clear fear and troubled demeanor worried him.

Astrophysicists? What could a bunch of eggheads possibly have discovered that would put her in such a fright? And what is it she's brought on my ship?

He believed her when she said it wasn't any kind of contagion, but that didn't necessarily mean it wasn't dangerous. She clearly thought it was important enough to rush off to the Citadel frantically rather than rely on secure transmissions.

You wouldn't think anything could scare the daughter of-

He broke off mid-thought, horror coming over him. He'd completely forgotten. He set the auto with a stab of his finger and surged out of the chair, hoping to warn her. As he got through the door into the small mess, however, he saw it was too late.

Irie was standing in the doorway of the living quarters. She had clearly been about to step out into the mess again, when she came face to face with his hard-light VI. The look on her face-

He groaned internally. "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry, I completely forgot. She's set to power on the moment I activate the helm. She's fully integrated, my only 'crew'. I can't shut her off without shutting down the computer, but I can alter her settings-"

Irie lifted a hand in his direction, an almost delicate gesture to hush him. Her brows knit, her eyes aqueous though she had managed to school her expression. She did not look away from the VI standing silently in front of her.

Though most VIs were gold and amber in color, shimmering and clearly artificial- even with their hard-light forms- Gerty had clearly put a lot of work into his. It presented in natural colors, looking like a real human woman- if real human women could emanate a soft bluish-white light. It made her look ghostly, angelic.

Perhaps if she had been visibly artificial like other VIs, even ones of this kind, Irie may not have had the reaction she did. Seeing one so modified, her emotional state already in turmoil, she could feel her resolve crumbling.

It felt like some kind of omen, a solidification to accentuate her already troubling discovery. Lifting a shaking hand, her fingers hovered over its cheek a moment before she crumpled back. She caught herself on the door frame with one hand, the other covering her face as the tears began.

"Go to the helm," Gerty ordered in a firm voice as he hurried past the VI to her side. "Go to the helm!"

The VI turned and walked off toward the helm, but he barely noticed, taking gentle hold of the doctor. Steadying her, he guided her over to the chair at the small mess table.

"Here. Here, sit down. I'll get you some water. I'm so sorry. Damn, I'm so sorry. It was careless of me to forget. I'll change her settings immediately."

As he turned to fetch a bottle of water and a napkin, he heard her speak.

"I thought they were illegal."

"It's...kind of," he said apologetically. "Modifying one to look so…real-well, I'm risking a stiff fine for that. Just having one of…well, her…isn't illegal, just a bit frowned upon. Most people think it's insulting to her name, a mockery."

"Then why do you have her?" Irie asked, anger coming through as he approached, water in hand. "Why make her look so real?"

"I'm not a creeper if that's what you're afraid of," he said. "There's nothing…weird going on. She's just my VI-"

"You could have any kind of VI that you wish! You picked that one on purpose, you modified her to make her look real on purpose! What was your reason?"

"Hey." He set the water and napkin down in front of her, then crouched as he only had the one chair. "I feel like shit, ok? I'm sorry I forgot. I should have warned you at least. I'm just a pathetic human, that's all. The War…she…happened so damn long ago from my perspective, and I keep forgetting that there are real people, here and now, that knew her."

"Knew her, cared about her, loved her!" Irie said furiously. "And who do not wish that she be mocked like this!"

"It wasn't my intention to mock," he said. "Look, I grew up on stories about the War. Everyone did. She was my hero when I was a kid. We used to play 'Shepard and Collectors' in the colony when I was a little boy. Or, we'd pretend we were soldiers battling Reapers, each one fighting to be 'Shepard'. I watched all the vids, read all the stories. I came upon the old VI a few years ago in an Elcorian market. It was shit, old and buggy and nearly broken. There's not much for a single person to do on long supply runs, so I used the time to fix her and integrate her to monitor auto and the rest of the systems- give me a hand on occasion. I got her working again, but she said the most stupid shit, so I fixed her voice and her speech protocols. Then I found a black market upgrade program and kept tinkering with her."

He sighed, shaking his head. "Look, this is embarrassing, ok? But like I said…it's easy to get bored out here. I'd have her narrate her old news stories or the books written about her…just to hear a voice, you know? To feel like I wasn't out here by myself. I mean, I normally keep to myself anyway. This ship isn't big enough for an actual crew and I do like my solitude. But everyone gets lonely at some point, and listening to her telling my favorite stories from when I was a kid…it was just a comfort. That's all. I didn't do it to mock her and I didn't do it for some weird fetish, and I certainly didn't intend that she upset you."

She looked at him silently, before she almost studiously wiped her cheeks. Searching her face he said, "I will change her interface. Make her look and sound completely different-"

"If you do not mind, I would like to see her," she said softly. He lifted a brow briefly, before he shook his head warily.

"I'm not sure that's a good idea-"

"Captain Pradesh, I am an asari of matron years, old enough to have seen your great-grandparents in their swaddling clothes. Please. I would like to see her."

He looked troubled a moment, before he sighed and straightened to his feet. "Fine. Whatever you want."

Going to the door to the helm he opened it. "Come back in here please," he said. The VI stepped back past him and walked over to the center of the mess, standing silently. Irie stood up, apparently composed, but Gerty didn't miss the way one hand stayed firmly on the table, bracing herself.

Unwilling to leave her, he stayed in the helm doorway, looking toward the ship controls so as to give her at least some semblance of privacy. Apparently this was not enough, for after a moment she looked at him and spoke softly. "Can you leave us for a moment?"

He scowled, then nodded. "Yeah, all right. I'll be up here."

As the helm door shut behind him, Irie looked at the VI ghost of her father. Other than the shifting blue-white light under its skin, flowing slowly like water through a lazy stream, the resemblance was spot on. The damned thing even stood the way she had.

Irie had long ago come to terms with her father's passing, and had dealt with her grief. But grief was a strange thing…it never really left you, you just learned to make it quiet and- in time- even forget it was there. Pictures and smells and songs would bring it back sometimes, dragging nostalgia and love along with it, but for the most part it stayed asleep.

Yet when she'd stepped out of the room and come face to face with this facsimile, Irie had been unexpectedly struck. For a moment, it was as if it truly was Shepard's ghost standing before her, that the woman had dragged herself back from whatever lay beyond this life for a fight that now, it seemed, may still not be done.

In the wake of her discovery of reapers around Andromeda, and then coming face to face with her dead father, Irie's soul had been shaken to its core.

But it is not her. It is just a copy. A very good copy, but a thing all the same, unfeeling and insentient. A poor ghost indeed.

Even so she felt the tears rise in her eyes, her voice shaking ever so slightly as she spoke. "Do you know me?"

"According to extranet files, you are Dr. Irie Miranda T'Soni, noted astrophysicist, popular musical artist, and heir to the T'Soni House of Thessia."

The voice. The voice was perfect as well, if a bit formal. Irie let out a bitter, sad little laugh. "Yes, 'according to extranet files'," she said softly, then felt the tears spill. She took a shuddering breath, wiping her eyes.

"Bába, I have found reapers," she said in a low, trembling voice. "They are around Andromeda. No one has-…no one has been able to get a close, real-time look at Andromeda, you know- because of the speed of light we have only been able to see it vaguely, as it was 2.5 million years ago. But I changed that. I…it is not important how, I suppose, but I was able to create a way to see it much closer, and much closer to real time. Only a few years parted from the present, instead of a few million. And they were there. They were there, surrounding it, just…"

She covered her mouth, shaking. "I do not know what to do, Bába. I do not know why they are there. Are they dormant? Are they on their way here? Was everything you fought for…was it all in vain? Or are there people and species we do not even know, millions of years away from us, fighting and dying and suffering through Cycle after Cycle the same as we did? Can we help them? Why are they doing this? The Reapers…why are they? Why are they? I…"

She shook her head, choking back a sob and steadying herself again. She bent of the table, hands pressed to the surface as she braced herself, then shook her head again. "I do not know what to do. Tell me what to do, Bába."

"I would need more information to process a suitable strategy."

Irie let out another bitter laugh, straightening and wiping her cheeks. "Look at me," she said softly to herself. "I am over three hundred years old. I am a widow with a grown daughter. I have four degrees in astrophysics and mathematics, and I am talking to a VI as if it were my dead father…as if it can really give me advice. How ridiculous is this?"

"I do not understand the query."

"Just…it is not important," she said, waving a hand dismissively, before hugging herself tightly, staring at a point in the middle of the empty table. After a long pause she said, "Could you do me one favor, VI?"

"Ready."

"Could you just…tell me it is going to be ok?"

A moment, and then she felt a hand rest gently on her shoulder.

"It's going to be ok, Irie," her father said kindly, just as she always had when Irie was a child and lost in the turmoil of growing up. "I promise you. It's going to be ok."