The next three days passed quickly for Charlie and Grace. For the majority of the time they were alone and confined to the medical bay. Well they were always confined to the medical bay, but occasionally they had visitors. Captain Victus came by once a day to check on Charlotte. He asked her quite a few questions about her training and how she had received it. He was also very concerned about what she planned to do now and strongly encouraged her to join the military, though he understood her apprehension about leaving Grace alone. Cecilia Modius came by during her off hours and Charlotte found her to be a friend. Lia claimed that she was only there to practice her English, but Charlie could see that it was Grace that had stolen her heart. Garrus Vakarian only came to visit her once more, but he stayed for five hours.

"What are you working on?"

Charlie jumped and fell out of the bed. She did not hear the turian's approach. The damaged leg was healed by now so the fall didn't hurt her physically, but her pride was severely wounded.

"Oy gevalt, don't you knock?"

Garrus lifted one mandible and offered her a hand. Wait, was he smirking at her? "I believe if I had knocked, you still would not have noticed. Are all humans so ignorant of their surroundings?"

"Are all turians such asses?"

"No, I believe that would just be me, but it is a nice specimen." He paused and shook his head. "I apologize. I do not know how we ended up in a verbal sparring match."

"Probably, because you know you'd lose a real one." She smirked at him and Garrus raised his eyeplates at her, visibly restraining himself from retorting. Charlie raised her hands. "Alright I'll stop. I'm sorry."

He gave her a wary look. "Well if you are done. I did ask you a question. What are you working on?"

Charlie gave him an appraising look, before letting out a frustrated sigh. "I'm trying to get into this." She tossed the data pad at him and he caught it.

"I believe the catch is right here." Garrus unfolded the pad.

"Oh well I'm glad you were here to show me. Whatever would I have done without you?" Charlie gave him a mock angry glare.

Garrus chuckled and turned on the device. "Is it yours?"

"Yes"

"Then all you have to do is enter the pass code."

Charlie turned the glare into horribly construed innocence. "What if I forgot it?"

Garrus tossed it back to her. "Well I would say you are out of luck. So who is the original owner?"

"I told you it's mine."

"And I am the Primarch."

"That explains why the turians allow such a schlemiel on the ship."

Garrus laughed in spite of himself. He had never spent much time with humans, but he could understand why so many turians found them infuriating if they were anything like this female. "What does that word mean?"

"Schlemiel? Oh, so your farkakte translator can't keep up with Yiddish. This is good to know."

"Is that a language?"

"No, I'm making up words to fuck with you."

Garrus raised a hand to prevent the smile that was threatening to form. "Knowing you, I would not doubt it."

"Alright, yes it is a language. Well it's a mix of two languages really. Schlemiel means idiot."

"And the other words mean?"

"You can't expect me to give away all of my secrets so soon? Buy a girl a drink first."

"Do I have to buy you a beverage to get you to tell me who that Tevolge 9 data pad belongs to?"

Charlie opened her mouth for a retort than realize that her face already given her away.

"That is a very specialized piece of equipment. I have only seen one once before. Of course that is not surprising given how tightly the salarians tend to hold onto their technology." He noted the surprised look on Charlie's face and then continued. "So given all of that information, I am going to guess that this does not belong to a young farm girl with a smart mouth and that you have no idea what this device is?"

Garrus was rather pleased with the way he had made Charlie shut up. However that pleasure only lasted for about 30 seconds before Charlie looked back up to him. Her large eyes had narrowed and though she was wearing a large smile there was no humor in her face. Wait, was she giving him an evil grin?

"You might be correct. This could be a Tevolge 9." She idly bounced the data pad in one hand. "You could probably confiscate it from me and you might even be justified in doing so." Charlie held the pad out to Garrus and waited for his arm to move to take it, before snatching it back. "However, the second you leave I will call the captain and let him know that you are on your way to bring it to him. I somehow doubt that a mere lieutenant, whose only job is cleaning the mud off the ground vehicles, would be put in charge of decrypting it. Much less looking inside of it."

Garrus' face turned very dark, as he narrowed his eyes and drew his mandibles tight to his face. She had him, damn the spirits. How she had found out his post he would never – Lia. Lia told her. Damn all of the spirits. Charlie held the pad out, as if daring him to take it.

"Or?"

As quick as the evil grin had appeared it was replaced by a genuine smile. "Well your second option would be to help me break into it and by 'help' I mean you show me how, none of this going too quickly for me to follow crap. Once we both have our curiosity sated, then we will both bring it to the captain. I imagine you might even get a promotion. Deal?"

Garrus didn't want to smile, but his face betrayed him. "Deal."

That is why Garrus spent the next few hours in the medical bay and missed his dinner. He tried to convince Charlie to let him take it and continue working on it alone, but she was having none of his excuses. Garrus found her to be delightfully infuriating. He wanted to hate her annoying habit of correcting him or calling him some word he didn't know or how she would harass him endlessly when he made a mistake, but he just couldn't. Garrus instead found himself doing all the same things back at Charlie. He kept expecting her to get annoyed with him, but instead she would laugh and throw it back in his face. She could take as well as she could give. Charlie was woefully ignorant with many basic technical skills, but she was a very quick study and Garrus wanted to show her more techniques than were necessary with the project. Eventually they were able to break into Ian's personal files.

"Well this is disappointing." Garrus grumbled.

They had just opened the only other communiqué that had not been wiped. Charlie was staring at Garrus like he was an idiot. "What?" He asked.

"This is disappointing? Ian, or his pseudonym Charon, just mentioned that he is part of Cerberus! Cer-ber-us, Garrus that's pretty bad."

"Is this a human thing?"

Charlie slapped her face. Maybe no one knows about Cerberus, yet. "Sure, let's just say it's a human thing."

"Okay, well what makes them so bad?"

Charlie had no idea what to say. She knew what made them bad, but all of that happened in the future, or well it happened in a game. "They're … xenophobic terrorists … or, at least, that's what I've heard."

Garrus drew his plates above his eyes down and stared back at the message. "Well this message does not tell us very much; let us look through his programs."

The rest of the information was a very odd mix. There was an entire folder that was filled with topological maps of the region the colony was in. It appeared that Ian was very interested in what lay beneath the settlement. However, there was no information about what that could be. There were also records that a large shipment of element zero had recently been sent to Mindoir, but Charlie didn't remember that happening, nor had the Argo found any. There was one program that was very disturbing; to Garrus at least, Charlie didn't understand it. The program had been partially erased, but Garrus was able to salvage enough of it to understand its purpose. It was a highly specific piece of programming that would allow the user to gain full access to the environmental controls of an asari ship. Garrus let loose a curse that his translator did not pick up.

"I'd ask you to teach me that one, but I'd probably butcher the harmonics."

"This is bad."

"I believe it is your turn to elaborate."

"I probably should not discuss mission specifics with a human."

Charlie gave him a look and propped one hand on her hip. "Honey, we are way past that." She held a hand out and beckoned to him. "Give."

Garrus sighed and decided to ignore all of his inner voices shouting reasons that Charlie shouldn't know about the Malindra. "Fine, about two weeks ago the asari cruise liner, Malindra, was attacked by batarians. Almost all of the asari are missing and everyone else was slaughtered. It could have been a biological attack, but that does not explain why the rest of the levo-amino aliens did not appear to have been affected. Also there was the problem of how the batarians were able to gain access to the environmental controls so quickly. We were chasing the batarians responsible for the attack … "

"When you came to Mindoir." Charlie finished for him. Garrus nodded his head.

Charlie paused for a moment as she put the information together. "There is another thing. A little birdie told me that there was supposed to have been a platform orbiting Mindoir and you didn't find one. Those photos were satellite images. If the platform was missing …"

"The batarians could have taken it or Cerberus could have taken it after they picked up your friend."

"If he helped in the attack on the Malindra, and it certainly appears that he did, then he is no friend of mine. Also nobody came to pick him up. I saw him during the attack, he was definitely there."

Charlie suddenly chuckled, "Actually he was running back to the Hoover, when I saw him. He was probably looking for his data pad."

Garrus grimly nodded his head. "I think it is time we showed this to Captain Victus."

"Agreed."

Grace had already fallen asleep, as it was quite late, so they left her in the room after asking a nurse to keep an eye on the girl.

The trip up to the Captain's quarters should have been unexciting, but Charlie was almost bouncing to see the inside of an actual spaceship. She kept trying to peer into every open room they passed. Eventually Garrus was forced to promise that he would take her on a tour later, to keep Charlie from slowing them down anymore.

They were finally standing in front of a rather inconspicuous door and Garrus was nervously shuffling his feet. "I should have sent him a message, before just showing up here unexpected."

Charlie sighed and mumbled, "Do I have to do everything?" before tapping the call button.

"Yes?" A voice called from inside.

"Umm." Garrus found that his voice had decided to take a vacation.

"Charlotte Nacht and Lieutenant Vakarian, uh, sir." Garrus gave Charlie a terrified stare to which she replied, "Big baby".

"Come in."

They entered the room and saw a stern Captain Victus wearing only loose pants that were slit up the sides to accommodate his spurs. "It is 0100 hours; this had better be important Vakarian."

Garrus ran a nervous hand over his fringe and gave a expectant glance to Charlie, however she was going to let him take the lead for moment.

"Well?"

"Sir, we have found some evidence that links a colonist by the name of, Ian Rodriguez, to the attack on the Malindra and also to a human organization by the name of Cerberus."

Victus furrowed his eyeplates and shifted his gaze to the beaming Charlie. "Explain."

Assuming that he was talking to her, Charlie told him the tale of decoding the tablet. She left out the blackmail and implied that she had "tricked" Garrus into helping her break into the security. For the most part Charlie focused on the information they had discovered. When she finished her recitation, Victus was sitting in his desk chair with one ankle propped up on his knee, a hand slowly drumming on the desk, and the other stroking a mandible.

"Well this is both good and bad."

"Sir?" Garrus spoke for the first time since coming in.

"It is good, because now that we know who to turn our attention on we might be able to avoid war with the batarians. It is bad, because now we know that we have a new powerful enemy and we might still have war with the batarians. You said you knew of this Cerberus?"

"I've heard rumors, captain, that's all" Charlie answered, suddenly very shy.

"What rumors?"

"That Cerberus is a xenophobic terrorist organization and that their reach is longer and better funded than we would all like."

Victus nodded his head slowly. "Well good job to both of you. I have a few calls to make and you should get some rest."

The pair turned to leave and Victus added, "It is a good thing, that the tablet did not have an 'erase if tampered with' protocol. If it had, this meeting would have gone differently and I do not believe either of you would have wanted to be responsible for the loss of this valuable and, possibly, life saving information."

Charlie and Garrus gave each other wide-eyed glances and quickly left the room looking properly chastened.

Victus would have actually chastised them both, especially Vakarian, but he was too caught up in the implications of this information and truthfully he was proud that a member of his crew had caught it. He wasn't lying when he said he had a few vid calls to make, but he also had a letter to write.