Pepper confirmed for Dahlia that the two quarian pilgrims had been on Omega for a few weeks already and they were unlikely to have heard of Dahlia's very recent exile. Being a clever girl, Dahlia knew that hiding such a secret from them would be a potential time bomb, but by the same token it was hardly a great icebreaker. Pepper asked Dahlia if she planned to offer the Arc Reactor and Repulsor designs to the Migrant Fleet as a peace offering, using the two pilgrims as an intermediary.
"That's giving me way too much credit. I never plan that far ahead. The way I see it, I've only got two assets to my name: you and these designs. I've been thinking, and I'm not too eager to give up either. However, I'm also not crazy about spending much more time alone on this rock. We'll be safer in a group, right? Let's just go make nice and see where that gets us."
Dahlia found the two quarians hauling cargo, loading small shipping cases onto a transport sled. The port buzzed with activity. Skycars hovered lazily through the thick, smoky air. Shuttles and a couple of small freighters dozed like hibernating beasts at their docking pylons.
A number of red, sunken eyes glared at her from within the burned-out shell of some former shop or small warehouse. Dahlia had never before seen vorcha in the flesh, but now they eyed her warily. She had kept her helmet on, not wanting to betray her identity or even distinguish herself. She assumed that her suit and rig - the same modified, evolved, and heavily repaired survival suit that once protected her from the destruction of her parents' ship - characterized her as a spacer or perhaps a mercenary. Even if they didn't peg her as an easy mark, she considered any amount of attention the wrong kind of attention.
Her own wariness made Dahlia conscious of her impression on the quarians. Presumably, they'd be nervous to find a dark stranger approaching them on Omega.
"Excuse me," Dahlia said, trying to keep her stance as nonthreatening as possible. It was futile because the male gave a quick, digitized squeal of fright, the crate slipping from his hands and clattering to the ground. The commotion drew many eyes - vorcha, batarian, human, and more. Dahlia and the female quarian both groaned through their helmets' speakers.
"If you're looking to rob us," the female said dryly, "You should be warned that this cargo belongs to a krogan. Also, I don't know where the bathroom is, and unless you're a fan of dextro-amino nutrient paste, I can't recommend a good place to eat."
Twelve years had taught Dahlia to read Quarian body language. The tilt of her helmet and angle of the faceplate suggested that she was curiously appraising Dahlia's own helmet and suit, which bore traces of the Flotilla in their parts and symbols.
"Actually, I'm a serial killer who targets quarians, and I incorporate pieces of my victims' suits into my own."
"Really?" the male squeaked.
"She's joking, Hann. She's either very bad at jokes or doesn't know how to stalk people properly."
"I'm terrible at both, honestly. My name is Dahlia. I just arrived on this rock after leaving the Flotilla, and I was hoping to find some friendly faceplates."
"You're from the Flotilla?" she asked, incredulous.
"Wait...I know who this is!" Hann exclaimed. Dahlia tried to quiet him down, hoping the vorcha were not still paying attention to her. "This is that human from the Helash - Tony Stark's daughter."
"I didn't think I had a reputation worth preceding me."
"You're practically a celebrity. What brings you to Omega?" Hann was gushing with enthusiasm.
"Same as you two: Pilgrimage." The false words left a bitter taste in Dahlia's mouth. She didn't enjoy lying, but she knew it had to be done - at least in the short term. "Obviously not in any official sense, but I figured that if I wanted to leave then the Admiralty Board couldn't imprison me for it. Of course, the downside was that it meant leaving without any of the usual gifts or helping hands so, to be honest, I was hoping you'd allow me to team up with you."
"Keelah. Help from Dahlia Stark? That would be like a gift from the ancestors. Yes, yes, please, we'd love your help."
"Anyhow, I'm Elsai'Rann nar Shellen," the female quarian interrupted to begin a proper introduction. "My babbling friend here is Hann'Koto nar Shellen. Unfortunately, we can't really stop to chat for long right now because we need to finish loading these cases for Orsk."
Dahlia's response was just to pick up the next case and lay it on the transport sled. Elsai wordlessly accepted the assistance, but Hann was more vocal about his relief.
"If she's helping, can I take a break? My fingers hurt like angry little boshtets. This is our third load today."
When the sled neared capacity, Hann hopped onto the last open spot. His three-fingered hands desperately worked to massage away their ache through the thickly insulated gloves, before alternating to rub each foot's pair of toes.
"Mass effect or not, I'm not pushing your lazy butt this time," Elsai declared.
"I came late to the party. I'll handle this load."
Dahlia activated the underpowered mass effect field generator on the sled. A negative electric current coursed through the miniscule amount of element zero inside, reducing the effective weight of the sled's cargo, including Hann. However, the contragravity drive - a hopelessly feeble version of the propulsion on a skycar - could barely lift the sled into a hover. Perhaps Elsai was right and Hann's rear was dragging things down because Dahlia was sure that the sled scraped against the ground as she pushed it along. Even though the Flotilla depended on salvaged equipment, the quarians took far better care of their machinery. Dahlia surmised that this "Orsk," presumably an employer for Elsai and Hann, tried to operate on the cheap.
As Dahlia leaned her weight into the sled to shove the cargo forward, she noticed the vorcha creeping closer. Their eyes aimed directly at Dahlia and the quarians. She cursed that not even one day had passed before getting into trouble. She also wondered if any of her new friends' pilgrimage gifts included a pistol or other weaponry. In a flash of regrettable insight, she realized that, even if they were armed, a pair of kids used to tending hydroponics gardens on a liveship probably were not very good fighters.
However, violence was not in the cards. Even as Dahlia's gloved knuckles tightened on the sled's rail handle, tensely anticipating a fight, the vorcha merely nodded with their nonetheless menacing grins and stood by the heaps of remaining crates at the dock. Elsai returned their nods with an idle wave of her hand; Hann did not interrupt his attempts to soothe his sore muscles. The vorcha drew their own pistols but caused no trouble. Three of them merely stood guard over the cargo.
The fourth took a position beside the sled and hissed, "Let's go."
Dahlia groaned inwardly, feeling foolish that she'd been afraid of what were evidently coworkers. She tried to move past the silent embarrassment and asked Elsai where they were hauling the crates.
Elsai's directions brought the troupe into a marketplace in one of Omega's quizzically named districts. The lights cast shades of crimson and orange across the ramshackle shops and stalls lining the crowded "streets" - hardly more than the space left between hives of pipes and ducts. The innumerable crevices, crawlspaces, and alleyways were tinged by shadows in deepening shades of gray and black. For all the sights surrounding her, Dahlia found herself struggling to keep her eyes from the vorcha guard. His...her...its own eyes were darting elsewhere around the market, on alert for threats. Dahlia had never encountered something so outright "alien" before, and she'd seen suitless quarians. Shaking her head, she tried again to focus on the other unfamiliar spectacles they passed.
Eventually they found their way to a large open-air vendor pavilion with a squat, reinforced warehouse at the rear. Countless people - young and old of practically every sapient species - swarmed the shop. The shelves, racks, and cooler units all contained foodstuffs. Crude, hand-painted signs declared what was dextro-amino safe, what was levo-amino safe, and all sorts of other interspecies dietary concerns. A number of other guards, bearing odd red facepaint, kept watch at key positions. They viewed every patron, even children, suspiciously.
The guards waved the sled towards the rear, one of whom dragged open a heavy gate leading into the warehouse. Inside, Dahlia was treated to yet another uncanny sight. Inventorying an assortment of crates, all containing food supplies, was a krogan wearing an enormous human-style business suit - necktie and all. The vorcha guard stayed outside, and the gate slid closed behind Dahlia, Elsai, and Hann.
"Hmm...Elsai, Hann, I don't recall asking you to bring back any humans with the cargo," the krogan mused. "I hope there won't be any need for unpleasantness."
"I'm a recent arrival from the Migrant Fleet, if you'd believe it," Dahlia said, cutting off the quarians before they could fill in any details better kept private. "I saw these two and wanted to help them out."
"I hope there weren't any promises of payment. That would have to go through me. Hann, get off the cargo," the krogan snapped.
"We didn't say anything about money, Mr. Orsk," Hann pleaded, hopping down from the transport sled. "She just offered us assistance on her own, that's all."
"I must admit, I am curious about a suited human from the Flotilla," Orsk hummed. "Then again, there's no shortage of curiosities on this station."
"Likewise, I'm surprised to find Omega's answer to a grocery store. Years of hearing that Omega was nothing but mercs, gun runners, drug smugglers, and fugitives overshadowed the fact that normal people live here, too," Dahlia said, glancing at Hann and Elsai.
"Basic necessities and everyday commodities may not carry the profit margins of weapons and narcotics, but the demand is just as constant," Orsk explained proudly. "In fact, whereas only a certain clientele are interested in Omega's more infamous goods, everyone needs to eat. Plus it paints a smaller target on my hump, but it still gives me a surprising amount of pull. No one wants to cross the man in charge of the food supply."
Orsk chuckled at his own humor, his scaly bulk shifting subtly beneath his roughly tailored suit.
"What exactly is your arrangement with Hann and Elsai?" Dahlia asked.
"They do odd jobs for me - hauling shipments from the docks, cleaning up after the crowds, some light maintenance - and in exchange I provide them a clean place to stay and purified dextro-amino nutrient paste on the house."
"No actual pay?"
"As I said, my profit margins are thin. I need to keep costs low. It's just good business."
"Don't cause trouble," Hann whispered, tugging Dahlia aside. "He may think like a volus, but he's really not that bad."
Overhearing her friend's not-so-quiet attempt at whispering, Elsai sighed to herself. She remembered Hann's earlier rant about quarian stereotypes. His obliviousness to the irony was more grating than endearing.
"I just wanted to know what I was in for if I asked for a piece of the 'action.' Any use for a human who redefines the phrase 'technical genius?'"
"Hah, I like your bravado! These kids," Orsk said, waving his beefy, dark-sleeved arm towards the quarians, "are dunces with machines. After seeing Hann hopelessly trying to fix the broken gate controls, I assumed the fleet kicked them out for being useless or, based on how badly Hann fried the controls, for breaking something important. Consider yourself hired."