CHAPTER NINE
Interlude II

Kara brought the unconscious Liara to the Normandy's sickbay as soon as they were back onboard. She sat on the next bunk while Karin gave the young asari a checkup, watching the older woman's practiced movements.

Karin reported that the young asari's condition was a result of nothing more serious than two days without food or water, and that, with rest and the proper nutrition, she would recover completely in a day or two.

After asking that she be informed when Liara awoke, Kara descended to the armory. She had not paused to change upon their return, and after a good four hours her armor had begun to grow uncomfortable.

The room was empty when she arrived. She preferred it that way, silent, and private. She had always found the time to suit up, or shower, alone, not an easy thing in a barracks full of cadets, or on a cramped frigate. She had frequently resorted to jamming doors, a fact that had earned her several reprimands. They had not deterred her.

She removed the entire suit, checking each piece for damage before putting it away, then going through and checking that those pieces with power cells were properly connected and charging. The Council paid their Spectres well, but that would not get her access to advanced Alliance equipment. If necessary, she could purchase a replacement armor from the an asari manufacturer. Their Armali Council Cooperative produced gear of good quality, which they sold to reputable buyers, and would work for her female marines. The turians manufactured armor that would suit her the five men, and that was available on the open market, though not of the same quality. The better gear was available on the black market. That was not an option.

Such concerns were premature, as their reserves were still fully stocked, but it was never to early to consider the possibilities. The more important question was what to do next. Unless Liara could provide her with something, a possibility she now doubted, they had no leads. They could not simply wander about the galaxy looking for clues; they needed something to go on.

She continued puzzling over the matter while she walked to the shower room on the crew deck where-after jamming the door-she washed and dressed in clean clothes. After that, she went to the bridge.

Her new executive officer was checking a list of nearby ports when she arrived. "What's our status, Keyx?"

"We've just entered FTL, ma'am, and should be clear of Knossos in two hours. There's no sign that the geth are tracking us."

"Good," Kara said. It was a relief to hear, though he would have called her to the bridge had there been any pursuit. "You handled yourself well."

"Thank you, ma'am, but everything went smoothly," he said, sounding almost disappointed. A missed opportunity to prove himself to her, she supposed. "Except, there was a moment when we thought the geth had spotted us… Do we have a destination, ma'am?"

"Not yet." If the crew lost faith in her ability to get the job done, she would lose the ship. Even if she didn't have a plan, she needed to maintain the appearance of one. "Our new passenger should know something." If not, she had hopes that the Council might have discovered something new in the last ten days.

"So, were you able to contact Janine?" she asked, deflecting the conversation from further questions on the young asari. No doubt he too would want to know if Liara could be trusted.

His expression became troubled at the name. They were light-years off the nearest comm beacon now, well out of range of conventional signals. There were teams of scientists and engineers working on communicating by the exploitation quantum entanglement, but that technology was not yet ready for use. Clearly they hadn't talked since they left the Relay, but he'd expressed his concern before that. "Yes. We started arguing as soon as we finished saying hello. She doesn't understand why I didn't leave the Normandy when I had the chance."

"Right now, she's under a lot of pressure to condemn you, maybe even facing harassment from her fellow colonists," Kara said. The major news networks had probably finished their smear campaign against her, at least for the moment, but community-level attacks on dissenters would go on for somewhat longer. "If she doesn't get an answer from you, she's going to start believing what they tell her."

Keyx sighed. "I know, ma'am. I've seen the news vids about us, and I can't help but hope she hasn't. You're not a traitor, and neither am I."

"So why are you here?"

The older officer frowned, and fidgeted with his console. "It's complicated."

Kara smiled faintly. "The truth always is. That's why most people prefer lies."

"Well, ma'am, you know I grew up on Earth, in Athens. My family was well off, and I got a world-class education, with all the prospects my mother's connections could provide. I was young and stupid, and embarrassed by the thought of a woman setting me up with a job, so I did what most of my friends were doing and joined the military. I know you've heard the lines. 'Explore the Galaxy'. 'Maximum You'. 'Be More'. I think we all believe them, at first."

Keyx turned to look at her, as though expecting confirmation. She'd been used to push those lines, however unwillingly, after Elysium, but they were not the ones that convinced him to join the navy. She waited patiently for him to continue.

"I believed then, and still do, that joining the Council is the best thing for humanity," he said, frowning at her. "It'll bring more opportunities for joint projects, like the Normandy, for trade, and expansion. The Alliance's refusal to turn over the Normandy has isolated us on more than just a political level. I assume the Council demanded that you resign your commission?"

Another pause, and again she didn't respond.

"At first, I thought that was the reason. The Alliance would see your elevation to Spectrehood as a step towards a getting a seat on the Council, and would reluctantly accept your commandeering the Normandy. You're the Heroine of Elysium, after all. If anyone can get us through this alive, it's you.

"So, then I started thinking about everything that's happened in the last decade. Pirates, batarian slavers, and now Saren, all hitting human colonies. Janine's colony is no less vulnerable than Eden Prime was. I just don't think I could walk away from a chance to protect her. It doesn't seem like much of a reason, does it?"

"What reason would you consider good?"

"Well, ma'am, Sergeant Aoki said that she trusted you to do the job, and that you'd do the right thing. She and Handel know you, and what they might expect, but I only know the legend."

Of course. She'd been plagued with hero worshipers since Elysium, so it should not have surprised her to find at least one onboard the Normandy. More, if they believed Sayuri's stories. "Wanting to protect others is a better reason than chasing legends. Janine will agree, so tell her."

"Ma'am?"

"Tell her that you're fighting to protect her, and your daughter."

Keyx grinned. "Yes, ma'am!"

Clearly, he still believed the propaganda on some level, or he would not have responded so eagerly to what was pure cliché. As a heroine, the embodiment of military virtue, even her romantic advice was infallible. That ran contrary to her own experience with relationships, but even that would not matter to him. Lacking anything further to say, she let Keyx return to his work, and made her way forward, across the mostly-empty bridge to where Moreau sat at the helm.

"Good work back there, Jeffrey," she told him, leaning against the empty co-pilot's seat.

"Thanks, but wait until you see me run circles around a geth armada," he joked. "That'll be something to see."

"I'll look forward to it," Kara laughed. "I think."

It'd probably come down to that at some point, though she hoped they would remain undetected. Still, she was grateful to have at least one skilled pilot onboard. "I'm glad you're here."

"So am I," the lieutenant grinned. "I'd hate to think of that marine of yours in charge of my ship. She flies her like a whale."

"Sayuri? I realize flying combat shuttles isn't much like piloting a frigate, but she's the best we've got. Ajuna has even less experience."

"Which reminds me, do you think you could persuade Doctor Chakwas to give me some decent stims?"

Kara shook her head. "You'll just have to settle for being on call if that armada shows up."

"Good enough, Cap'n," he agreed.

Her stomach growled as she turned away. It had been six hours since breakfast, unusually long for her, and she had relied heavily on her biotics.

"Kara."

She turned to smile at Brynja. "Mm?"

"I was just about to break for lunch," the young blond said. "Would you care to join me?"

It was past fifteen hundred, ship time, and the ensign's shift had started at eight. Kara could only assume that she'd delayed her break, in the hopes of such an opportunity.

"Yes," she decided. "I would."

"My parents always said I was a sweet child," Brynja muttered around a mouthful of synthetic vegetables. "I'm afraid I remember things differently. I was always following Lúcía around for since I was old enough to walk. She was a couple years older than me, and loved anything that got her hands dirty; she could put together an engine by the time she was twelve, and she loved working in the garden, especially in the cold. She sort of looked on herself as my mentor, always showing me things she'd learned, and I adored her. You may not believe it to look at me, after a few years in space, but I know almost as much about weeding as I do about comm protocols."

Kara listened carefully to the young woman's reminiscing, while attending to her own meal. The quality remained spectacularly low, and she chewed each bite deliberately, glad to have something more interesting to focus on.

"She was charming, of course, and gorgeous. All the boys wanted her, and we made a game out of it. She'd goad them into ever more foolish displays, and we'd laugh about it, making up new tasks. It seemed like a lot of fun, then, but we were pretty horrible to them."

"Yes," Kara agreed. It would fall under the definition of bullying used by the Alliance Ministry of Education, which had the mandate of overseeing schooling in the colonies. "I agree."

"Well, it didn't take us long to get bored with it. When I was twelve, Lúcía and I started sneaking out at night. We'd sit under the stars and talk, or around a campfire. When we got tired, we'd curl up together against the chill, and sleep. My parents were always furious with her when she brought me home. I think they thought we were having sex." Brynja's eyes had held a hint of sorrow since she began, but it had only just reached her voice. "I loved her, but I never wanted her like that. Before you ask, we weren't one of those colonies. I knew about sex, and about gays."

Ah, yes; those colonies, always referred to with contempt. Some were awful, built by religious fundamentalists, fleeing the more liberal cultures of their home nation. They sought to establish nightmarish paradises on unspoilt worlds. They were primarily Christians, blaming secularization for the collapse of the West, but every other major religion had colonies of its own.

Also included in those colonies were the Greens. They were primarily upper middle-class emigrants, who set up low-tech 'green' colonies on out-of-the-way or resource poor worlds. They were generally an accepting crowd, though insular and somewhat snobbish. They blamed technology-rightly, in some respects-for the damaged state of Earth's biosphere, which earned them the derision of a society that continued to grown ever more reliant on increasingly complex equipment and VIs.

Brynja presumably meant the first type.

"We started to get into more trouble, those days. She once talked me into crashing the colony's mainframe. We were without power for a week, before they could reverse the emergency lockdown on the reactor. I hadn't realize before just how much we relied on electricity. No heat or light, no running water. Everything had to be cooked over open fires. I loved it."

Kara raised a skeptical eyebrow. "You did? Brynja, you're a computer systems specialist."

"And if it weren't for Ferrel's bunch, I'd be up to my elbows in mud right now, and enjoying every moment of it."

Kara smiled, as she struggled to imagine the blond in such a state. The relatively sterile environment of a spaceship, particularly the cramped quarters of a frigate, tended to enforce a sort of bland neatness amongst the crew, something already encouraged by their training, that set them apart from colonial garrisons, where exposure to daylight made for a darker complexion, among other things. "That is difficult to picture."

"There's nothing I can do about your sadly deficient imagination, sir," Brynja sniffed, looking down her nose at her companion. Her expression was mostly serious, as she met Kara's glare, but her eyes were alight.

"Discipline on this ship has gone to hell," Kara muttered.

"I'm on break. Can I continue with my story now?"

Kara graciously waved her permission.

"After they got the reactor up again, Lúcía and I started going off together. For longer, I mean. Sometimes we'd walk for weeks, all the way to the mountains and back. We'd take only a little food, and scrounge for what we could. Álfheimr had a variety of edible native plants that grew in our region. Some tubers, a few leaves, even some small nuts. I became quite the cook.

"There's something else I miss," Brynja sighed. "I haven't cooked my own food since I left home. Now I'm stuck here, eating this slop. What is this?" she inquired, staring down at her plate with fresh distaste.

"I've always thought they were some sort of plastic," Kara said, holding a segment of what was meant to be a carrot up, as though studying it intently. It was synthetic food, manufactured by the lowest bidders, but not reconfigured petrochemicals. At least, not so far as anyone not involved in the production line knew.

Brynja sputtered. Kara smirked, pleased by the blond's response. "Plastic?"

"I've heard that the actual composition defies analysis," she added.

"You're having me on," Brynja noted, but, behind a slight embarrassed blush, she appeared pleased. "I must be breaking through.

"Excuse me," she continued, standing, before Kara could ask what she meant. "I'm still on duty, Kara. I need to get back to my post."

Kara leaned back and watched the blond go. The young officer was clearly making an effort to be friendly, but what did she want? Certainly not romance. Friendship? Or information?

No, she decided. Such suspicions were beneath her. If Brynja wanted a friend, she would get one.

"Captain, Doctor T'Soni is awake and asking to see you."

Kara set aside her tablet. She had spent the last two hours turning the details of their mission into a report for the Council. It had been slow work, as she poured over her own observations, looking for any clue to Saren's activities that she might have missed. So far, nothing substantial had come of her efforts, which she supposed meant that a break would do her good anyway. "I'm on my way."

She took a moment to straighten her clothes, and finish her cup of tea, before the heading out into the mess. It was just after twenty-three hundred, and fairly quiet, with first watch waiting tiredly to make use of the sleeper pods as third watch—not yet fully awake—prepared to go on duty. She made her way past them in silence, though she did return a few acknowledging nods.

Ehigha was sitting at his desk, when she entered sickbay. She had only a brief look at his display, from a poor angle, but it looked as though he was studying asari anatomy. Unlike Karin, he did not have training in xenomedicine, but with a fourth alien onboard, she could see why he might wish to expand his knowledge of the subject. "How is she?"

"I don't know, sir," he said, swiveling to face her. "She won't let me get close enough to perform the tests Doctor Chakwas recommended."

Waking up in a strange place, after a series of unexpected—and unexplained—events, Kara could understand Liara's concerns. She should have been there to alleviate them, but she did not want to encourage the asari's infatuation. "Wait outside."

"Yes, sir," he nodded.

Kara let him go without observation, as she made her way towards the far end of the room, where the last bed was concealed by its privacy screen. She had updated the young asari's translation matrix from the Normandy's database, so there was no need for her to speak in Thessíe. "You asked to see me, Liara?"

A blue hand appeared at the edge of the curtain, brushing it aside, and revealing the asari. She had dressed in the Alliance uniform shirt and trousers that had been laid out for her, rather than her own soiled jumpsuit, or the medical gown Karin had wrapped her in. Though her expression relaxed slightly, her blue eyes remained cautious.

"How are you feeling?"

"I'm fine," she stated swiftly, but her eyes dropped, and her lips turned in a brief smile. "Hungry, Kara. Where are we?"

Kara sat on the next narrow bed. "You're onboard the Normandy, about ten hours out of Therum."

"Why—" Liara began, her brow scrunching uncertainly. "What were you doing on Therum?"

"Looking for you," Kara replied, smiling softly. She now expected the news she had to impart would horrify the introverted asari scientist, and had no desire to make it worse than it had to be. "Saren Artarius, the Spectre, has gone rogue, and I've been asked to track him down. We believe Benezia T'Soni is working for him."

"No," Liara breathed, sitting abruptly on her bed. Her blue eyes were wide open with surprise. Her horror and surprise were genuine, and removed any doubts that remained, as to her allegiance. "She wouldn't."

After just a few moments, she closed her eyes, and straightened her posture. Her breathing slowed to a steady rhythm, all outward signs of a common meditation technique.

Kara watched the asari in silence, seeing no reason to interrupt. Liara's round face had a soft beauty, even empty of expression. Dark flecks adorned her cheeks like freckles, and her crests swept back to meet at her nape, reminiscent of hair tied in a short ponytail.

The asari's eyes snapped open, settling on a sort of wary narrowness. "You're a Spectre."

"Yes."

"Am I under suspicion?"

"Not anymore," Kara said firmly. Unless Liara was truly adept at acting, she considered the matter closed. So did she attempt to recruit the young asari to her cause immediately, or wait? It would be nearly a day before they were even in range of a comm beacon, and longer before they made port. She rubbed her face tiredly. "I am curious about why you chose to visit Therum, though. All the previous teams reported finding nothing of value in the ruins."

"I was trying to prove a theory," the archeologist began, rising to her feet. "You see, for decades I've been trying to resolve certain incongruities between archeological sites attributed to the protheans. Obviously, one should expect cultural and aesthetic differences in any civilization, but a spacefaring civilization—or even a sufficiently advanced industrial civilization—must accept the need for standardization. Power outlets, data transfer protocols—"

"I read your paper, Liara," Kara interrupted, smiling at the asari's enthusiasm. There was something almost child-like about it, despite the subject—though, at over a hundred years of age, she was physically and mentally mature.

Liara offered a slightly embarrassed smile, in return, her eyes downturned. "Then you know that intact technology is rare, but still the basis for most species' element zero-based technology. There are discrepancies in core implementation of mass effect field manipulators that I do not believe can be explained by competition, and certainly not by culture. I do not believe that the ruins on Therum are of prothean origin for precisely that reason."

"But the language used on the controls, that was prothean?" Kara asked. She could have checked her translation log, but it hadn't seemed necessary.

"Yes. The controls on the Citadel did as well, and the technology there is superior to that found in any other ruins. Any civilization will manifest developmental strata, with degree depending upon the mechanism by which advancements are dispersed, but I've argued that the gap is too large to be natural."

On that point, Kara disagreed. On Earth, one could find countries where development had stagnated at mid-twentieth century levels, due to economic imperialism and the occasional military intervention by more powerful countries, making for a two century technology gap that included all eezo engineering, and significant advances in nearly every field. "Did you find anything?"

Liara gestured ambiguously. "The power system configuration is reminiscent of Citadel engineering, and the mass effect field geometry was highly advanced. I'm certain that the facility was more than an ore refinery, but I don't know its true purpose. I'm afraid I didn't find the proof I was hoping for."

Unfortunate—the knowledge might have helped define the threat posed by Reapers, and thus Saren's goals. That was just the kind of information she needed to anticipate his actions. "Well, that's enough for now," Kara decided, rising to her feet. "Let's get you something to eat."

Kara concentrated as her opponent attacked, blocking a series of quick punches. The attack spent, she stepped forward, nudging the asari off balance with her biotics, before throwing her first punch. Melée biotics were far more subtle than dragging objects around in a firefight, and far more dangerous for the unwary. It was like fighting a battle on two levels; the purely physical, and beneath it, manipulating the rules.

Liara was well trained. Rather than struggling to keep her place and her balance, she turned her fall into a roll, counter-attacking roughly with her biotics.

The riposte was not particularly difficult to dispel, but it forced her off the attack for long enough for the asari to regain her feet, and then they were at it again.

For an observer, unaware of the biotic aspect of the fight, she knew how odd they must have looked, as though the laws of physics did not quite apply to them—and they didn't. As she carried out a carefully-balanced punch, she felt her momentum shift unexpectedly, and became over-balanced. Rather than attempt to defensively secure her footing, she turned the change into an assault, and took Liara off guard. The asari yelped, and Kara pulled her arm up behind her.

Kara dispersed the biotic's attempt to escape, then released her hold. "You're not bad, Liara," she said, smiling, "but you're anticipating too much."

Liara nodded, her face flushed a darker blue, and her breathing quickened, which were both signs of light exertion. Her physical condition seemed fairly average, for an asari of her age and occupation. "Sorry. I've only had to deal with pirates, and they prefer to keep their distance."

Nodding towards the door, Kara led the young archeologist out of the circle, making room for the next match. Nearly a full day had passed since their first conversation, and she had yet to explain anything more about her mission. Liara would certainly be interested in her experience with the beacon, and might even be able to help interpret what she'd seen, if she could put it into words. The visions remained an incoherent mess of color and shadow, but nothing to justify the impressions of terror and death that it left her with. "You don't owe me your help, Liara," she sighed.

Liara lowered her head, her dark lips curved into a shy smile. "No, but I want to. Help, I mean," she corrected, her expression changed to a slight embarrassed frown. "Benezia and I were never close, Kara, but she taught me about the galaxy, and our place in it. I know, the Asari Republic is known for letting others mind their own affairs, but there are times when we have to act, as individuals, or as a people. I think this is one of them."

"Oh?" Kara muttered, raising an eyebrow curiously. That was quite a leap for someone who had little knowledge of the situation to make.

"My expertise is on the protheans," the asari explained. "Saren's connection to Benezia is no reason for him to send geth to collect me, unless they're involved somehow, and he expected my knowledge to help. The geth presence alone is disturbing. And then there's you."

Logical, though she was not certain why she qualified as a sign of the apocalypse. Sayuri must have been telling tales, again, or maybe the asari meant the rarity of Spectres from the Council-associate races. "Me?"

"Am I wrong?"

Kara sighed, and sank onto the nearest bench. She was actually lost, without direction. Her knowledge of Saren's operations was vague, at best; she knew he had an army of krogan mercenaries, in addition to the geth, and a secret base. She knew he was looking for an artifact of prothean origins, or potentially of another race that proceeded them, and that it would allow him to summon the reapers. "I just do the best I can. Welcome to the team, Liara."

The asari's smile widened, warmly, as she sat at Kara's side. "Thank you. Is there anything I start on?"

"Tell me anything you know about the Conduit, or the Reapers."

"Reapers?" Liara repeated. Her voice had lost its warmth, replaced with a cold mix of skepticism and concern. Kara had checked the term Benezia used in the recording recovered from the geth, and it had little to do with harvesting.

"Yes—"

The sharp tone of the ship's comm system interrupted her reply, followed by Brynja's light voice. "Captain, report to the bridge."

Kara frowned. They was not much that could reach then in deep space, while traveling at FTL speeds. "I've got to go," she said. "Look for Sayuri in the training room, if you need anything."

Note: Not sure why I didn't write up the scene with Liara recovering in sickbay the first time through. Probably felt I didn't have the time. Thanks to xt828 for finding something to say with the last chapter.

Thanks for reading and reviewing.