"Keelah! What was that?"
Hann practically jumped onto a stack of crates full of dried varren meat when the small mechanical critter raced by his feet.
"Even after I welded patches over the gaps in the walls and ceiling," Dahlia said, "vermin were still getting into the warehouse, so I've been using scrap electronics to cobble together this 'mouser drone.' It tracks down small lifeforms within the confines of the warehouse and stuns them with a short range electrical pulse."
"When do you have time for all this? Don't you sleep? You've patched the warehouse, repaired the gate controls, improved the efficiency of this place's wiring, and you're building drones, too?"
"Hann's just mad because you're making him look bad in front of Orsk," Elsai explained, wielding a metal stick to pick up the unconscious carcass of some kind of scaly rodent caught by the mouser.
"Why don't we just bring Dahlia back for our Pilgrimage gift?" Hann asked, tentatively stepping down from his perch. "She's clearly the mechanical genius that everyone here thinks we're supposed to be."
"Bringing me back to the Flotilla would be like pickpocketing an admiral then saying 'Hey, did you drop this?' I don't think it will work," Dahlia said, using a thin layer of logic to disguise the fact that she was banned from returning. "I must admit, though, after only a week on this rock, I miss the fleet more than I thought I would."
"I don't see how you could," Elsai snorted. "Omega's nowhere near as cramped as our ships back home. I actually get moments of privacy around here. Plus if something breaks down, it doesn't mean that hundreds of people could die."
"While I wouldn't look at it so dramatically," Dahlia said, using gloved hands to fill the tray Hann held with some sort of vegetable with blood red leaves, "that is part of what I miss. Serving on the Helash's maintenance teams kept me busy, and I actually enjoyed it."
"Wouldn't you rather be inventing new starship drives or weapons like your father did?" Elsai asked.
"I guess the galaxy will never get tired of hearing me say 'I am not like my father.' He was the visionary, imagining problems that didn't exist yet and developing solutions. I'm a problem solver. I see the problem first, then I fix it."
"There's no shortage of problems around here to be fixed," Hann said. "Orsk makes that clear every time he yells at me."
"Something's different here, though; something's off. Like Elsai said, if something breaks down here, it's no big deal. On the Flotilla...I don't know - it felt like my work really mattered."
The quarians did not realize that Dahlia had a similar conversation with Pepper the previous night - or at least when she was going to sleep. Without a sun or sky, Omega hardly had day or night cycles. One of the reasons why Dahlia held her tongue during the journey with Imani was because she did not want to reveal how bitter the exile felt, even before it truly began. When she became a teenager, Dahlia discovered the pressure the galaxy heaped upon her parents. Her dad was saddled with trying to live up to the inventive legacy of his own father, a man Dahlia never knew, and the onus of failure he bore every time his work was eclipsed by alien competitors. As for her mum, she had struggled to keep Stark Industries afloat, and then it was her duty to convince her husband to let go and sell the company to Jormangund. Afterwards, the real Pepper had to grapple with Jormangund's corporate intrigue and prevent her husband from sliding back into alcoholism.
"Based on my information about your parents, perhaps you were the variable that kept them going," Pepper said.
Dahlia hated when the A.I. said that when they discussed the past. The notion stirred too many emotions within her. Dahlia felt guilty that her parents had suffered so much on her behalf. She felt cheated that there was no one to similarly motivate her. Most of all, the feeling she desperately wanted to escape was shame and failure. Her parents' last accomplishment was saving her, and Dahlia worried that she'd squandered their gift of life. Being able to help her shipmates aboard the Helash at least made her time seem meaningful.
However, when Pepper suggested that Dahlia enjoyed having others depend on her, she began to shiver. The idea, frankly, terrified her. Dahlia actually snapped at her digital companion - using hissed whispers to avoid waking up Elsai and Hann in their nearby bunks - and ordered Pepper to shut down. The exchange left her very sleepless, and Dahlia spent the rest of the night working on the mouser drone after hearing the squeaks and scrabbling of rodents.
It took a lot of focus to keep awake while working with the quarians, at Orsk's beck and call to keep the market running during another busy day. As her eyelids became impossibly heavy and her senses faded in and out, the same nagging thought continued to creep back into her sleep-deprived mind just as easily as Dahlia tried to chase it away. When she let herself accept and focus on the idea, her mind buzzed and it became easier to stay awake.
"I want to build them," she muttered aloud to keep herself awake.
"What?" Elsai asked.
"It's kind of a long story. I recently unlocked some encrypted files my father left behind. They include designs for inventions he never got to fully develop. I don't know why, but I want to try to build them."
"Designs from Tony Stark?" Hann gasped. "That would be amazing! Imagine bringing those back to the Flotilla."
"Don't get ahead of yourself, bucket boy," Dahlia warned, using the nickname that Orsk had coined. "I don't have much left of my family, so I'm not eager to give anything away. Besides, my father would never debut an unfinished, unproven project, so no one gets anything until I put the prototypes through their paces."
"That's not fair," Hann whined.
"I've told you before, Hann: the Pilgrimage is meant to be difficult," Elsai scolded. "We can't just expect hand outs."
"You're right," Hann sighed through his helmet speaker. "That's why so many people think quarians are thieves and freeloaders. No way I'll prove them right. Dahlia, we'll help you any way we can."
"Um, I wouldn't exactly throw ourselves in just like that. Then again, I always knew someone would take advantage of us in this wretched place, and it may as well be Dahlia."
The quarians' enthusiasm surprised Dahlia. It caught her so unawares, she couldn't help but want to share a bit more with them before starting on this project.
It had only taken a few days for Dahlia to understand just how much of a mistake it was to work for Orsk. He styled his techniques on the business culture of Earth, but his research seemed to have focused on the era of the tycoons and robber barons in the very early 20th century. He expected his employees to either be working or sleeping. He offered no time off, no break periods, and even stops to go relieve oneself were begrudgingly tolerated. At least his mercs and guards got paid. His grunt labor was given a bunkhouse built from a shipping crate, two daily meals of nutrient paste, and roughly seven hours per day when they were not required to work.
"The Flotilla was never as bad as this," Hann bemoaned while again rubbing his sore joints. "While we were expected to pull our weight, we at least had some leisure time."
Dahlia and the quarians laid in their swaying bunks, letting the exhaustion of the day drift away. Dahlia shifted feverishly, unable to ever get comfortable in the hammock-like bed.
"Orsk seems to believe that sleep counts as leisure time," Elsai said.
"This is why we need to find something to bring back. We need to get back home as soon as we can."
"It was your idea to come to Omega," Elsai said to Hann accusingly. "I'm glad to see you finally agree with me that this place is awful. If only you could have admitted it weeks ago."
"Well, we'll help Dahlia, she'll build something amazing, and we'll all return to the fleet like heroes."
Elsai and Dahlia shared a groan, unaware that they were both reluctant to return home for their own reasons.
"But, um, what exactly will we be building?" Hann asked.
Dahlia fired up her omni-tool. She had already introduced them to Pepper, describing her as a personalized V.I., so there was no surprise when she appeared. However, Dahlia herself was somewhat surprised by how Pepper responded to her summons.
"Oh, you need me now ma'am? What can I do for you?"
She hoped that the kids did not notice the sarcasm in Pepper's voice. The A.I. resented being dismissed so angrily the night before, something a V.I. should be incapable of. Dahlia did not hate that her companion was capable of talking back to her. Just like her father had needed the real Pepper to keep him in line, Dahlia programmed the A.I. to be blunt with her. Starks often needed a verbal kick in the rear.
Dahlia could not apologize now, lest Pepper's true nature be revealed. She had to hope that Pepper would cooperate for now and wait until later for Dahlia's penance. For now, she politely asked Pepper to cycle through the holographic schematics of the arc reactor, repulsors, and other devices - alternating between technical, exploded, and rendered prototype views. If she suspected the quarians of being crafty, she might be worried about sharing such important information with them. For better or worse, though, she trusted that they were sincere, honest, and naive. They would be easy partners, but Dahlia feared she'd be left with regrets by the end after lying to them.
For now, they were very much baffled by what they were looking at. Over the days they'd toiled together, Dahlia learned that Hann and Elsai had primarily tended the hydroponics bays on the liveship Shellen since coming of age, becoming old enough to wear their first suits and do real work. The machinery they were used to was probably much simpler, more robust, and far less experimental. She explained the technology as best as she could, and after Hann failed to hide his amazement, she also had to describe the reasons why the devices had never hit the market.
"My father always thought big, perhaps too big. Part of why I've been so obsessed with this lately is because I may have a new angle...a new application for these devices. I've been thinking about going...smaller. The arc reactor may not be able to compete with eezo reactors in large scale applications, but if we miniaturize the arc reactor it can be a superior power source for survival suits, mechs, omni-tools, and other personal-size devices."
"What about those repulsors?" Elsai asked. "Are you thinking about scaling them down?"
"Actually, yes. The Alliance and some merc companies have been trying out jumpsuits for their commandos to allow for aerial deployment or jet-assisted jumps. They depend on chemical fuel with limited power output and poor energy efficiency. Pairing personal-sized repulsors with an arc reactor power source, though, could provide a person with full flight capabilities. The conventional jumpsuits use chemical rockets in the boots and backpack. We could replace those with repulsor emitters. Hmm, but controlling yaw and pitch would be a problem."
"Yaw what?" Elsai asked, puzzled.
"Aerodynamics issues. Essentially, how would we keep the user from just blasting out of control in a random direction? Hell, I imagine someone trying out repulsor boots would end up catapulting themselves into a wall or something. Short, jet-assisted jumps are one thing. Sustained flight is more difficult."
Hann was evidently simply impressed by the prospect of flightsuits. Restless, he had jumped out of his hammock and was mock flying through the bunkhouse with his arms outstretched. It was so childish, Elsai threw her head back into her hammock in frustration. Dahlia was too amused to look away.
"Hey! How about putting repulsors in the gloves? Would that at least make you go faster?"
"Hann!" Elsai snapped, bolting back upright, "That is...Dahlia, I don't know anything about aerodynamics. Is Hann being an idiot again?"
"No," Dahlia said slowly, surprised. "That might actually work. A pair of palm-mounted repulsors could be used to stabilize the suit's flight, providing yaw and pitch control as well as maneuverability."
"You'd have to be careful, though," Hann said. "If you wave at someone or try to shake hands, like humans do, you could seriously hurt them."
"Unless you actually want to hurt them," Elsai added. "Sounds like it could be an effective weapon."
"By limiting the energy output, it could be a strong but non-lethal weapon," Dahlia said, impressed by the brainstorming session's progress. "This is actually coming together."
"Now we simply need to find enough credits and parts to assemble experimental, possibly military-grade hardware out of shipping crate."
"All three of us are veterans of the Flotilla," Hann said defiantly. "Who knows more than us about doing a lot with very little?"