Chapter 27

Kevin woke up slowly with sleep still hanging heavy in his eyes. Sluggishly, he sat up and let his legs dangle over the side of the bed and let his head fall into his hands as he struggled to bring his alertness into check. His eyes lifted up enough to get a glimpse at the clock to see how long he'd been out. Nine and a half hours. He groaned at himself and let his hands fall down to his lap. A second gaze towards his desk caused something else to catch his eye – an all too familiar scorched emblem. He stared at it for a while, bringing his groggy mind out of the depths. When he finally considered himself awake and alert, he got up, equipped his usual effects and left the room. As he strode his way towards the bridge, he shook the lingering remnants of sleep from his mind. By the time he had reached his destination, he was ready to work.

He found that just about everyone had already found their way there, but Kevin didn't remember any sort of call or announcement. The only one missing was Riik. He pondered the possible reasons, but not for long. He could hear that everyone was quietly conversing whilst staring out the viewports. Almost like a briefing, but with the viewports as the visual focus instead of a presentation or holographic image. When he walked into the bridge, several heads turned to observe and acknowledge his presence, but the conversations did not pause.

"- we could, but since we don't know the makeup, that's a risky move," Tosh finished.

"Morning, everyone," Kevin greeted just after entry. "I didn't hear any calls. I feel uninvited."

"Apologies, Folner," Tyr began to explain. "We knew you were resting up from the previous fight. We didn't want to wake you prematurely."

"Am I the only one who sleeps around here?"

"They didn't call me either," Arla noted. "I just woke up a little under an hour ago."

"We all slept, but you always seem to be the last one up," Ralik said. "Is it a human thing?"

"It's a biotic thing," Kevin proudly answered before finally taking a good look outside.

He wasn't sure what he was looking at. The viewports were filled with a dark, murky, thick cloud. It didn't emit any light, nor did it seem to reflect any of the light from the galactic disc, but was visible only by the lights on the front of the Kellius focusing their illuminating power forward.

"What's this?" Kevin asked the collective group.

Ralik released one of his hands from their crossed position over his chest to point out to the viewports. The hand bounced as he struggled to find a proper answer. "We're. . . Not entirely sure yet. It looks like a nebula of some sort, but doesn't follow the conventional nebula description. It appears to be a dense cloud of dust and gas, but we're unable to confirm that."

"It's the source of the static we noticed before," Kar said. "Even up close, we can't get any readings on it. It just eats all of our scans."

"There are many possible explanations for such behavior, such as various forms of ionized gases typical of some nebulae. The problem is, most ionized gases emit something, usually in the form of visible or infrared light or radiation. This. . . It emits nothing. To be more precise, it seems to absorb everything other than physical matter."

"How did we end up with static if it absorbs everything?" Kevin asked.

"If we knew that, we'd have a much better idea of what this was," Tosh avoided. "It seems attributed to the specific scan technology that we used to find it, but even still, all it returns is static."

"More curious than that is it's shape," Kar noted while tapping on his terminal. The main screen he sat in front of, visible to all, rendered a blurry, three dimensional shape that was missing an entire side. "I took several small deviations to our direct flight path so that I could try and get a better idea of what the shape of this strange anomaly might look like. From what I gathered, I rendered this. It looks like a very loose parabola or catenary with the top of the arc facing the galaxy. So loose that up close it looks like a wall, but at the distance we were at, might appear to be a shield."

"Perhaps remnants of some sort of explosion?" Kevin thought aloud.

"That might explain it's supposed shape, but not anything else," Tosh replied.

"Does the Kellius have any probes or remote scanning devices?" Arla asked.

"This isn't a scout ship, so no," Kevin declined.

After a slight lull in the conversation, Kar spoke up again. "What we were discussing when you showed up was whether or not we should try pushing through it."

"I'm against it," Tyr quickly spoke out. "Nebulae have a history of varying internal densities, massive sizes and electrically disruptive makeups. We know nothing about this one, so it would be tantamount to suicide to try and pass through it."

"Tosh and I both want to sate our scientific curiosities by getting an internal look, but we do have to agree with Tyr. Without knowing anything about this nebula, we could be setting ourselves up to fail catastrophically."

"We have nothing else to look at," Kar put forth. "We might as well take a look-see. There's no evidence that it will harm us, either."

"It completely neutralizes anything we use to scan it. There's no telling what else it will neutralize if we fly inside," Tyr countered.

"How big is this thing, at least as far as this side's surface?" Kevin inquired.

"There are two dimensions we have enough data to speculate on," Tosh answered. "Without any other form of reference, I am using the galactic disc's orientation to base which is height and which is width. Height-wise, the distance is finite. From our current location which is near the 'bottom', it would take us about six hours at full FTL to reach the edge. Width? It stretches farther than our scanners can detect."

"It's your call, Kevin," Tyr said. "In the captain's absence, you have authority over the Kellius."

Kevin pondered for a moment, but his decision didn't take long to make. "We go around."

"But-" Kar objected.

"We go around!" Kevin said, his voice raised enough to cut Kar off. "I'd rather spare a few hours rather than risk cutting our mission unthinkably short."

"U-Understood. Plotting FTL course to the edge of the nebula."

With that decided, the group that had stuffed themselves into the bridge began to exit to find something to do until they reached the edge of the nebula. Amongst the mass exodus, Kevin and Arla found each other.

"I suppose now would be as good a time as any for some lessons," Kevin suggested.

"I was just thinking that myself," Arla concurred. "After we grab a bite, though. I don't know about you, but I'm wasting away, here."

Kevin didn't have to say anything to agree with her – the timely growl from his empty stomach heard through his suit did that well enough. After a quick but hearty meal, they headed to engineering for tech lessons. They both sat down at the workbench as they usually did, but this time the experimental drone was absent.

"Today we're stepping it up a notch," Arla informed. "I'm going to start teaching you the art of re-engineering – something we quarians have mastered. Most times, this will challenge you to pull skill and knowledge from everything we've gone over so far, so it only gets more interesting from here."

"Let's do it up, then," Kevin said eagerly while cracking his knuckles.

"Re-engineering starts with a mentality, not so much with just skills. You have to believe that every piece of junk tech can be used for a different purpose, so long as it is not so damaged that the parts have become literally unusable. Old tech, salvaged parts, even parts thought ruined – with the proper know-how, it can be combined to do things they weren't originally built for, unless your goal is refurbishing."

"Okay. Do we have anything I can work on?"

"I-" Arla paused. It seemed she hadn't thought before hand about what possible tech he could use to work on for this lesson. She tilted her head while staring at him before jumping up and heading for the door into the cargo bay. "Hold on, I have an idea."

Several minutes later, Arla returned from the bay with three weapons in her arms. She had a pistol, a submachine gun, and a shotgun, all of which were old weapons that were replaced when they grabbed the Rosenkov armaments from the Cerberus boarding team. She placed them on the bench and sat down. Once seated, she simply stared at Kevin.

Kevin looked down at them in confusion. "Alright, old guns. What can I do with these? We've already got better gear."

"This is your salvaged tech. Say you just pulled these out of some wreckage. What do you do with them?"

"Junk tech can be used for other purposes, huh? I suppose I'd keep it. . . But without knowing what to do with it, that'd just make me a hoarder, not a re-engineer specialist."

"And that is where the learning begins. If it helps, reducing the salvage to its basic parts either physically or in your head can help you figure out what you can do with it."

Kevin nodded and prepped his omni-tool for disassembling the weapons. He started his work by disassembling each gun to its most basic components. Not a difficult task, since he had been working on taking apart guns of that age and level of tech for a long time. He noticed that as he labored, Arla was paying minimal attention to his work and more to him. Not surprising, really. This was the most mundane part of the project, and she was now more interested in what he did rather than how he did it. Even still, it didn't stop Kevin from feeling awkward. It was like she was watching over his shoulder with the sole intention of making him feel unnerved.

After several minutes, all of the weapons were fully disassembled, their core parts carefully spread about the table. They were grouped together gun per gun in case that Kevin found that he'd have to reassemble one at a later point. All that was left for him to do was come up with an alternate use for it all. Surely if he stared at it for a while, an ingenious creation would come to him, right?

And so he stared. And stared.

After a while of inactivity, he noticed Arla tapping her fingers. That was her unconscious gesture of impatience. There wasn't much he could do about it – he was drawing a blank. He picked up a couple of pieces to make it look like he had an idea of what he was doing and started placing them together in the empty space on the workbench in hopes of sparking some useful ideas. After each rearrangement, he'd stare at it for a moment and rearrange it again. Something had to work.

"So all this time you had biotics and you didn't tell any of us?" Arla asked, shattering the silence as well as Kevin's fabricated concentration.

"I didn't see any need to. Besides, Ralik knew and he didn't say anything, which means he didn't see any reason to either."

"That's a tired dodge tactic, Kevin."

"Alright, then how about this? In Grissom Academy, an education facility specifically designed – physically and in the curriculum – to teach biotic human children how to handle being a biotic, they drilled into our heads that we should be discrete about being a biotic."

Arla's head slid back in surprise. "Why is that?"

Kevin absentmindedly shifted the parts on the table. "Biotics among humans are still extremely rare, Arla, and though we seem like a relatively unified race, we have troubles like everyone else. Biotics are seen as 'different', and human social standards still have underlying problems with anyone that can be considered outside the norm. Some people just think it's not fair that we're endowed with the ability to do things that the vast majority of the human race simply can't."

"I see. . ." Arla said as she trailed off in thought. "Alright, so I get why you didn't say anything. Why didn't you use it to win the fight with me, then?"

"The dark energy manifested by a biotic is no toy. It can't be precisely controlled to a decimal point in terms of output and location like eezo related machinery can. More likely than not, if I had used biotics to win that bout, you'd have wound up dead or very, very broken. I'm not saying I don't have control. I just think that turning you into a bloody mess of suit pieces, bones and sinew on the far wall was not what I wanted to achieve in front of your squadmates in the event my concentration twitched." Again, he reorganized the parts into another obscure pattern.

Arla gave Kevin a look that was difficult to read behind her helmet. He guessed it was probably one of mild disgust at the thought of that outcome or one of disbelief in the face of his ego-building description of it.

"It's like carrying a gun around unshielded, unarmored civilians. You never, never point it at someone you don't intend to kill. Why take the chance that something might not go wrong?"

"But you can also use it defensively, though. I saw plenty evidence of that on the geth ship."

"Using a biotic barrier in that fight would have proved more counter-productive than useful. I can't get through a biotic barrier that you can't, and I needed to press my attack to keep you on the defensive." He paused. "You don't know much about biotics, do you?"

"I've never really had personal contact with a biotic before."

There was a moment of silence as the conversation lost momentum and died out. Arla wasn't quite willing to let it die completely, though, and shot out one last powerful inquiry.

"Why didn't you use your biotics to save captain Kortel like you did me?"

Kevin stopped dead in the middle of shifting some parts and sighed. "Why do you guys keep. . . It's not that simple. If I could just erect barriers, shove geth and create singularities on a simple whim, we both might have made it. By the time I even had any chance to gather the dark energy to do anything, the captain was already down with injuries! I couldn't-"

"Kevin!" she interrupted. "I wasn't accusing you. I know you did what you could. I just wanted to hear your side of the story. You didn't get any chance to explain, and I figured that would be weighing on you. . ."

"It doesn't matter," Kevin shot back, shrugging it off. "What's done is done. Either way, the captain was right. She said that if I stayed to help her or go back to get her afterwards, we'd all be dead. She called it, Arla. I abandoned our captain to die, but she knew I wouldn't have a choice. And she was right."

Arla went silent. All she could do was stare at the workbench.

Kevin did as well, only to end up realizing that after all this time, he'd not gotten anywhere with his lesson. "Sorry, Arla, but I think I'm failing pretty hard at this re-engineering thing."

Happy to help change the subject, Arla looked up to Kevin. "You're still learning. I suppose it was a bit ambitious of me to expect you to piece all this together while you're in the middle of lessons. I can't say that these parts were the best for an intro to this subject either."

Kevin pushed the mess of old gun parts to the far side of the bench, frustrated.

"We'll come back to this at a later time, Kevin. Maybe – for now – we should move on to combat training?"

After looking over the amorphous pile of parts one more time, Kevin drew in a breath and nodded. "Sure. At least with that, I know I can perform. Should we try to get these back together?"

"I suppose. I'd rather get this cleaned up now than have to deal with it next time."

Kevin grimaced. He was hoping otherwise. As they struggled to reorganize the parts according to their original gun specifications, Kevin was the one to start up the conversation. "So. . . Since you're the only remaining officer of the squad, does this mean you get bumped up to captain?"

"No. In quarian society, a captain is much more than just a military rank. An officer only gets named captain when her superiors and direct subordinates believe she is ready for such a demanding position."

"That seems a bit odd. How does a ship function in times of crisis if it has no central authority?"

"Taking command and ascending to captain are two very different concepts, Kevin. If you mean to ask whether or not I can take command, then under normal circumstances, answer is yes. But. . . We're not operating under normal circumstances."

"No superiors to give input and someone on the ship who actually owns the ship itself. Sounds like quite the gray area."

Arla put down a finished weapon. "I don't know if I could handle it, Kevin. Siri was such a strong, levelheaded woman. I'm not sure if I could ever fill her suit, you know?" There was a hint of nervousness in her voice. A bit of vulnerability that Kevin already knew was rare, and he wasn't going to let it get away by staying silent.

"Then use that to set a goal for yourself, Arla. If you let it get to a point where you fear it, you'll never push yourself to be better than Siri was. Sooner or later, you might get the opportunity to become a captain yourself."

"But I'm not so sure that's even what I want. I never envied Siri's position as captain. I know about some of the impossibly difficult decisions she had to make. Like leaving her injured crew to die." At this point, Arla had trailed off in her work assembling the weapons. She was merely holding two parts, tapping them together.

"You think you won't have to make tough decisions before we get back?" Kevin put some parts down and turned to look Arla straight in the eye. "It's a reality of galactic life that we all have to face. The high rank military folks just have to do it more often and involve more people. You might as well push to be the best captain you can be and ready yourself to accept the position when it comes." He resumed his work right as he finished.

There was a lapse in the conversation before Arla chuckled and shook her head. "Keelah. I never thought I'd be getting a pep session from you."

Kevin put the last completed gun down next to the others and stood. "What can I say. I like being unpredictable. Now come on. Let's get working on that combat training or we'll get cut short."

"Right," Arla agreed and she stood as well. The two left the reassembled guns on the workbench and promptly exited engineering.

Up in the entertainment room, Arla removed her armor alone as she waited for Kevin to return. He had mentioned having a plan to help him analyze her progress and provide visual examples for her learning experience. A few minutes after her armor was already off, he showed up. In each hand he carried a kitchen utensil – a mixing spatula and a big spoon – and he had water bottles tucked in the crease of each arm. The spoon was coated in some form of reddish powder and the spatula was coated in blue. He walked right over to Arla and offered them both to her.

"Hold these, please," he said.

Arla took them as instructed, but not without questions of her own. "What are these for?"

Kevin began to remove his armor pieces. "These are our weapons of choice for today. The powder you see on them is some dried food coloring I found in the kitchen. It will mark our suits if we come into contact with the 'weapon.' We can track hits, slash direction and length of the hit this way."

"Will this stain?" Arla asked, wary. She unconsciously gripped the hem of her hood.

"I have no clue," he replied as he set the last piece of armor on the floor. He stepped over to her and took the red-tinted spoon from her hand. "Ready?"

Arla nodded and the training began. Like every training session before, conversation between the two duelists was minimal. Occasionally a playful insult or snappy remark would split the sound of scuffles and clashing kitchen objects, but otherwise it was limited to instructional advice and related questions. All business. Once in a while they'd stop and they'd search each other's bodies for colored slash marks. Often Kevin was without and Arla was marked well. Kevin stuck to his constructive criticism approach whenever he explained the marks she had received, since that seemed to work best for her.

He was quickly learning what Arla's flaw was with her ability in weaponized melee combat. Because of her experience with hand to hand, she didn't quite grasp the concept of prioritizing her attention to where the weapon was. She seemed to follow combat the way she normally would in a bout, often gaining slashes on her arms and legs as she attempted to block his strikes without using her own weapon, and would-be fatal stabs and slashes whenever she miscalculated the reach of the weapon beyond his arm length. Kevin was aware of these flaws, and was trying to subtly point them out during any explanation break. After a few hours of this stop-and-go object oriented combat, they retired to the side of the room to wind down and rest a bit.

Kevin sat down close next to Arla and popped his food-tube so he could sip at his drink."Why do you carry that knife around with you if you've never really used it for combat before?"

Arla, distracted with patting herself down to remove the lines of powder, took a moment to respond. "Utility, mostly. I suppose, in the back of my mind, I always figured I could use it in a fight if I got pushed into a tight spot. You showed me otherwise." She popped her tube as well and took a long, satisfying drink. "You couldn't just let a lady win, could you?"

"Would you want me to let you win, or would you want me to show you how a man wins his fights?" The arrogant tone he held was more playful than insulting.

She backhanded his shoulder, causing a bit of water to splash out of his bottle and onto the floor. "Pff. You're lucky tech doesn't rely on someone beating the crap out of another to prove superiority."

"I agree. I'd be splattered on a wall if I fought you with. . . Er, tech. Knowledge. Knowledge of tech. Which is why I'm learning. So there's no splattering. I'd rather be beating you to death with a spoon." Kevin picked up his spoon, which was relatively clean around its edges.

Arla picked up her spatula. Not so clean. During the few hours they spent practicing, she had failed to land a solid strike on him with it. Any powder lost during the lesson was a result from them smacking the cooking tools together. Despite this, she didn't look ready to give up just yet. After another long sip, Kevin watched Arla stand up and step back to the center of the room, brandishing her spatula. Such a preposterous scene made Kevin laugh, and though it was obvious that Arla was serious in wanting another shot, she couldn't deny the silliness of a quarian officer showing off a threatening human oriented cooking tool.

"Again?" Kevin asked, surprised. She had never gone on beyond the end-session rest. He did happen to notice, however, that nobody had called them to the bridge yet, meaning they still had some time to kill before Kar considered them effectively beyond the nebula's bottom edge. He looked up to Arla who was eagerly waiting for him to continue. He smirked and started for the center of the room. "Alright. You've got me for a second round."

"Can we do the slow motion combat where we pause for each maneuver again? That really helped me grasp some fundamentals last time you tried that."

Kevin tilted his head and thought about it. That was the first time since they began that Arla really expressed enough interest in a particular method to specifically ask for it. For some reason, that made him smile a proud teacher's smile. ". . . Sure. Ready?"

Arla nodded and Kevin immediately stepped in for the first strike. The moment that Arla parried, they froze. "Where to from here?" Kevin asked his student.

"I. . . Go here." The combat resumed with a snap when Arla used her advantageous position from the parry to cut in towards Kevin's chest. Kevin was ready for that, though, and slid to the side and back enough to go beyond the reach of her weapon. He countered by using his open hand to press her arm against herself after her swing was complete and brought his blade around to get her in the side. She dodged it by using Kevin's push against him, falling back away from the blade and ready again. Once more the combat came to a planned screeching halt.

"And now?" Kevin responded.

"A different approach!" She shouted as she went in low this time.

This type of combat went on for several more moves. Each time, Arla was able to make it through without taking a hit, but she was continually losing ground to Kevin's more aggressive maneuvers. Several moves later, Arla was effectively backed up against the wall. Kevin was watching her like a predator, but he was impressed that he had thus far failed to land a single hit.

Arla, whose heels were pressed against the wall behind her, was looking nervous. This was a very, very bad position to be in in terms of melee combat, and she knew it.

"What's your next move, Arla?" Kevin asked, having given her some time to analyze her situation.

"This," she stated as she swooped in to strike. She aimed for a strange angle she had not really tried before, going for that unpredictable nature that Kevin was always preaching to her. It almost paid off. Kevin expected an attack that she had used before and his preemptive stance would have shrugged such an attack off with little effort. This unexpected angle forced him to switch tactics in a split second, which nearly cost him a hit. He wasn't caught completely off-guard, however, and he was able to properly, if barely, parry the attack off to the side.

With Arla already backed up against the wall, there wasn't any reason to continue the training in this fashion. The bout was over, and Kevin executed a complicated suppression move from his military days that spun Arla one hundred and eighty degrees and pressed her into the wall. Her weapon was hooked from her hand, and the disarmed hands were forced together and jammed against the wall above her head and held in place by Kevin's free hand. Arla was kept from retaliating by Kevin's collective body-weight, also pressing her into the wall. Kevin's rounded spoon was pressed against Arla's side, simulating a potentially deadly suppression hold.

Kevin leaned his head in so that the mouth of his helmet was juxtaposed to Arla's head and he whispered into her ear. "Close, but not quite. I win, hot stuff."

At that very moment, the door opened up and Bela stepped into the entertainment room. "Kevin, Arla, Tyr told me to come get you and bring you to the bridge so that. . ." Bela's statement trailed off to silence as she observed the scene in front of her. She tilted her head as she stared.

Kevin and Arla, bodies pressed together against the wall turned to look at the sudden intruder. Quickly realizing how the scene appeared, both froze in withheld embarrassment, seemingly waiting for Bela to react. Instead, Arla spoke up. "T-Tell Garloh that we will be up in a minute. We're wrapping up combat training. Combat training, Bela."

Bela's tilted head straightened back up. "Combat training. Riiiiiight. Ahem. Well, I'll go tell Tyr, then." Bela backed out of the room slowly, swinging her hanging hands back and forth. When she finally stepped beyond the threshold, the door shut.

Kevin felt heat in his face. Enough to kick the suit's automated anti-sweat systems up a notch. Looking back to his. . . 'Restrained' student, he drew in a breath. He expected Arla to protest the inexplicably maintained position without hesitation. Strangely, she did not. In fact, the two stayed there for another minute or so before either said anything.

"Okay, um. Today's lesson is uh. . . is done." Kevin finally backed up off of Arla and stood uneasily off to the side.

Arla cleared her throat and rolled her head as she worked to speak. "To the bridge, then?"

"Yes. To the bridge." They both started off towards the door immediately. Only upon reaching the door did they both stop at the same time and look at each other.

"Armor," they muttered in unison. Their frantic race to get their armor on did absolutely nothing to clear the awkward air in the room. They finished in silence and headed for the door.

"Why. Why did it have to be Merni?" Arla nervously thought aloud. "She can't keep her trap shut about normal things. Now everyone on the ship will think. . ."

"Think what?" Kevin asked, trying to keep agonizing silence from retaking its ground.

"Will think. . . Will think that we were, you know. . Fooling around." Arla's hands were flying about in conversational gestures as she spoke. This only happened when she was nervous or distraught.

"But we weren't."

"Right. We weren't."

"It was only combat training. They all know that's what we were doing, anyways."

"Of course. Bela's rumors will fall flat on their face, right? Nothing to worry about."

Kevin nodded, but he knew for a fact that they were trying hard to convince themselves more than each other. Why were they suddenly so worried about what Bela might say? Since when did he care? Kevin's face scrunched up with uncertainty as he walked through the hall. There were feelings surfacing that he thought he had forgotten. He was not really surprised, yet at the same time it caught him off his guard. He was honestly unsure about how to handle it, which meant that he was – in the end – unsure of himself. With Nor, it was decided quickly and with surety. Their decision ran off of the momentum of their time together. It had ended just as fast, and left him frustrated with himself. With Arla, anything he might feel or has felt has been slowly approached with caution. Why? Following Nor's death, he walked the well worn path of other men who had fallen into similar fates and branded all of it a trap that could only lead to unnecessary negative emotions and a stark lack of productivity.

Emotions. One of the most complicated aspects of sapience. It turns out he couldn't leave such a human thing behind after all, no matter how in control he tried to appear or how many lives he ended.

When the two duelists made it to the bridge, it was already populated with the rest of the crew. Outside the viewports was the same old deep darkness that they had been viewing since they jumped through the relay. The terminals in the bridge were all alight with data. It seemed Kar was a busy bee.

"Now that you two are done pounding the dark matter out of each other, we can discuss what's been going on," Tyr lectured. He had a way of speaking like he was a firm but fair instructor at all times, even when he wasn't giving advice or debriefing.

"We're passed the nebula?" Kevin questioned expectantly.

"Indeed. Welkas, please continue."

"We've been passed the bottom edge of the dark nebula for almost two hours now. Initial scans I took upon leaving FTL show some puzzling details. For starters, I've concluded that the nebula we spent hours going around is only about one point four million kilometers thick. That's a hair thicker than your home system's star, Kevin."

"That's- Wow. That's pretty thin for a nebula," Kevin replied. "Almost suspicious. Considering the overall shape is arcing towards the galactic disc, it doesn't seem a little anomalous to you guys?"

"Impossible to determine," Ralik interjected. "We're traveling far beyond what anyone else has ever explored. To say something out here in the fringes of dark space is anomalous is jumping to absurd conclusions. We simply don't know enough about how this has come to be to make any deductions. That said, I won't dismiss the strange nature of the nebula."

"Like the fact that it appears uniform from end to end?" Tosh asked Ralik, intentionally spurring on debate and discussion.

"For starters. It's not wispy or bulbous like most. It's not anything."

Tosh leaned on the back of Kar's chair with his elbows. "Think about it. This nebula's very nature masks not only its own presence from the prying eyes of galactic life, but anything behind it as well. Intentional, perhaps?"

"Focus," Tyr stepped in to end it before the conversation derailed. Tosh and Ralik did as told and ceased. "Continue, Welkas."

"Actually, chief, they make an interesting point. Observe." Kar switched the focus of the several terminal screens to show scans of something in the distance. "LADAR picked this up an hour after we cleared the nebula's edge. According to these readings, it's about three hours worth of FTL travel to reach it."

The stunned silence on the bridge by itself was enough for Kevin to lean in like the others to take a look. What he saw surprised him as well. He raised his right brow and instinctively brought a hand to his helmet-covered chin. What lay beyond the dark nebula passed the furthest known reaches of the galaxy?

A lone star system.