Chapter 30
The day following the discovery of the extra-system geth activity, Kevin got up a bit earlier than usual so that he and Arla could still get their training in before this new priority had to be taken care of. Despite this, they still had to shorten each session a bit to get it all done before the work began. They had short conversations about the differences between human and quarian culture, and they tried their hand at the visual chaos training once more. They finalized the day's trainings the usual way: with a hearty breakfast and chuckle-worthy story or two.
When they headed outside to start working, they found that only Tyr had started to gather the metal cables and huge locks. He looked up at the oncoming duo and waved them over to help. Each of those locks were heavy enough to require all of one's strength to move it, and the cables were not easily moved, either.
"About time someone finished with their breakfast. Those kids need to get out of the mess and out here doing something important."
Kevin and Arla looked at each other, confused. "There wasn't anyone in there when we ate a few minutes ago," Arla explained.
Tyr set the lock he was carrying down with a heavy exasperated sigh and activated his comms. "Rise and shine!" he yelled, causing Kevin and Arla to visibly wince. "We've got mission critical objectives to complete! The sooner we get this done, the sooner we can get back to sleeping in every day like a bunch of jobless exiles!" He paused for a minute before picking up his lock resuming his trek to the tent. "Can you two start getting the cable unraveled? Right now you're the only ones being useful, and I can't do this alone."
They nodded and quickly set to work. As expected, the thick, twisted metal cable was incredibly heavy and difficult to move, especially once it was all removed from the loading bay. The two struggled to drag the entire coiled bundle to the basecamp, and they only made it about half way when Ralik and Riik joined them. With their help, they were able to finish the trip to the tent and unravel it for use. To their surprise, there was enough to encircle the entire basecamp not just once, but twice. They decided to do just that and they ran the cable tightly around the outside of the tent. They crossed the cable over itself on opposite sides of the camp to create a pair of large X's. Two locks secured the ends of the cable to industrial strength stakes in the ground and two more secured the cables together where they crossed over each other to complete the lockdown.
By this point, everybody who wasn't already outside was walking down the loading ramp to find something to do. With the lockdown already complete, they all turned around and headed back inside after a condescending glare from the chief. After a few final checks and inspections, the working crew followed the others back inside to get the mission under way. The loading ramp closed up behind them and everyone headed to the briefing room for a rundown of the mission.
Arla gestured for Tyr to take the lead on this. He was the strategist after all, and was a lot better at handing out instructions than she. "Alright team, listen up. This is an investigation mission. We need to first figure out where the geth are headed, and since FTL will likely be involved, simply following a ship to the destination won't cut it. We need to locate a geth ship heading out of the system and find a way to track it. Any suggestions?"
"Tracking bug," Riik suggested as if the answer was obvious.
Kevin leaned in. "This isn't a scout ship, Ralik. There's no bugs or probes on board."
"Hold on," Tosh said. "We might. The Admiralty Board sent with us some small beacons. They were normally used to broadcast a homing signal to the flotilla so that they could track high value asteroids that were rich in metals and minerals. I could modify it to send suppressed signals back to the Kellius to show us where they stop."
Tyr nodded with satisfaction. "Good. How do we get it attached to a ship?"
"It can be clamped on or use magnetic pull. The magnetic approach will probably be the optimal choice here, as it doesn't risk alerting the ship that something has been attached."
"That's the great thing about a geth," Kevin interjected. "Unless it's taking damage, it can't feel a freakin' thing."
Tosh continued. "The question is, how do we get it to the ship? Without any probe bays to launch it from, this might prove difficult."
"Yes, that will be a problem," Tyr mumbled.
Again, Ralik lit up and jumped in. "Kevin can do it."
"I can do what?" the human barked.
"I saw your easy handling of the zero-gravity environment during the Cerberus attack, Kevin. You can hand-deliver the bug to the back of a geth ship and return to the loading bay."
Kevin was less than ecstatic. "What! Are you insane? If I didn't know any better – and I probably don't – I'd say you were trying to get rid of me."
"It is a bit of a stretch," Arla mused. "Seeing as how Kevin obviously can't do it."
"It may be a stretch, but it's the only shot we have," Tyr noted. All eyes settled on Kevin, practically goading him into taking the job.
"Can't we, you know, throw it at a geth ship or something?" It was an absurd suggestion and Kevin knew that. Such a risk of odds wasn't going to cut it. Fourteen staring eyes silently reminded him of that. "I just have my reservations about tap-dancing on the back of a geth ship so I can give him a present."
"Come now, Folner, we wouldn't ask this of you if we didn't think you could handle it," Riik said. Kevin had a hard time figuring out if that was sarcastic or not.
Bela leaned over to nuzzle Kevin's shoulder with her helmet. "Yeah, there's nothing sexier than a man risking life and limb to soar through open space to plant a tracking bug on the back of a filthy synthetic ship!"
"Thanks, Bela. I feel that much more masculine now," Kevin sarcastically added. He paused with a sigh and shook his head. "Okay. I'll do it. Just. . . Make sure it isn't moving and that you catch me on the way back, alright?"
"Do you want me to let Ralik fly?" Kar amusingly asked.
"I'm so doomed," Kevin said as he banged knuckles against his visor.
"Focus, team," Tyr said, cutting their comical conversation short. "The only matter remaining is how to locate a ship that will leave the system. Thoughts?"
"I've been analyzing the sensor data that Bela and Riik have collected while you all slept. It seems the ones leaving the system are primarily mining vessels after they've stopped at four to six asteroids. As long as we're still tracking their movements-"
"We are," Bela interrupted.
Ralik stared at her for a few seconds as if waiting for her to say something else before continuing. "-We can easily pick one out that would be a good candidate."
"Excellent. Tosh, how soon can you have the tracker ready?" Arla asked.
"Give me about twenty minutes, tops," he replied.
"Then we'll head out now," Tyr concluded. "Welkas, after we get out of range of the geth here, refrain from using the IES3 until it is absolutely necessary. We don't know how long we'll need to drift about amongst the geth." Kar nodded in acknowledgment of his orders. "Let's get to it."
Everyone broke from the table to head to where they were most needed. Tosh had Kevin follow him down to the cargo bay so that the quarian could give him a quick overview of the device. Kevin at least needed to know how to turn it on and how to get it to stick to the geth ship's hull. Tosh explained these things as he worked on modifying the beacon, which was an object that looked like a smooth chrome disc with a small, similarly textured radio dish perpendicularly stuck to the top. Its diameter was as large as Kevin's torso from shoulder to shoulder, and the top of the dish barely reached knee-high. The four clamps, which were normally equidistant from each other every quarter of the way around the edge, had been removed. There were hardly any other physical features except for a small row of five buttons under the lip of the disc. Tosh only explained that the first one activated the beacon and the last one activated the magnet.
After all this information was divulged, Kevin hauled the surprisingly lightweight device to the closed loading ramp in preparation. Tosh headed upstairs to sit in front of a terminal, leaving Kevin to wait alone. By now, the team upstairs was already working on finding a suitable target for their tracking bug, and it wasn't long before Ralik identified a mining vessel that had already been to four other asteroids and was now settling on a fifth.
"Kevin, standby," Kar said over the comms. "We're making our approach now."
"How much distance am I going to have to close, Kar?" he asked.
"That will depend on the exact conditions surrounding the vessel. I'll get in as close as I can, but I don't want to risk giving it a reason to move or look for us.
That wasn't exactly what Kevin wanted to hear, but it made logical sense. "As long as I can see my target, I'll get there." He bounced in place trying to calm his nerves. Jumping out into open space wasn't exactly a safe plan, and doing so in the middle of an asteroid belt begged for disaster.
A few anxiety-filled minutes later, Kevin heard someone pop into the room. He turned around to see who came to visit and was mildly surprised to see Arla striding towards him. "Hi. Err, shouldn't you be up with the rest of the team?" he asked.
"Someone needs to be down here to make sure that you don't kill yourself on the way out."
"I don't think that's going to help me while I'm in open space standing on the back of a geth ship and dodging asteroid collisions."
"I know. . . But just think of how much worse it would be if you tripped into space."
"Was that supposed to make me feel better? Really?" Kevin was having trouble keeping his nerves in check. This was about to be the single most dangerous thing he's ever willingly done in his life, and the more he thought about it, the more dug into his mind.
Arla stepped in close and tugged on several pieces of Kevin's armor to be sure it was snug. "Yes, because I'm here to make sure you don't do that. Now get ready, we're going to be in position soon."
"Hnngh," Kevin grunted, further expressing his unease with the situation. "Why did I agree to this? Stupid, stupid."
"We're in position," Kar announced. "I'll be cutting the gravity well so that you can get the most out of your launch."
Like clockwork, the artificial gravity shut down and anything in the bay not clamped down began to lift ever so slightly. Kevin's vision narrowed for a brief moment as the sudden lack of gravity forced his body to adjust how it pumped his blood. Kevin grabbed the beacon, hoisted it to chest height, and effortlessly hauled it over to the very base of the shut loading ramp. The ramp opened a sliver, but it did not go any further. Kevin decided to address the issue.
"Uh, Kar? I think there's something wrong with the loading ramp. It only opened a tiny bit."
"That's no malfunction, Kevin," Tyr stated.
"Come again?"
"The inside of the cargo bay can't be hidden by our stealth for obvious reasons, so we can't open it much without giving away our location."
"That's great. I haven't even left yet and I'm already improvising." Kevin shook his head and growled to get himself into a more focused state of mind. It helped. . . A little.
"Here, I'll toss it up to you," Arla calmly offered. She grabbed the beacon from Kevin's hands and flicked her hood-covered head up towards the ceiling. "See? I'm already helping you."
"It's not helping this 'I'm going to get spaced' feeling." Kevin pushed with his legs and headed for the ceiling. There were rails on either side of the bay near ceiling height that the cargo loading arms ran across and he grabbed onto one to steady his movement. From here, he could launch himself over to the lip of the loading ramp and get this mission under way. Shortly after he made his way up, the beacon followed his path, tossed by Arla who followed close. He grabbed the beacon with one hand as it came up.
"Do you want me to equip you with a float tube?" she joked as she grabbed ahold of the rail.
"What the crap is a 'float tube'? I don't think that translated correctly." He shimmied along with the beacon until he ran out of rail, at which point he handed the beacon off to Arla again so he could make the short flight to the lip of the loading ramp where he could peek his head out and get a good look at his target.
"A float tube," she explained as she shimmied along, "is a piece of equipment you latch onto your suit. It provides thrust in a number of directions to help you move in zero gravity. It's normally used by Migrant Fleet dock mechanics and engineers. It's also huge and ungainly."
"I'll pass. I don't think we have one anyways." A light push on the end of the rail was all he needed to reach the sliver of open space between the loading ramp and the hull. Arla tossed him the beacon and he lightly wedged it into a corner so it would stay in place while he looked out into space.
His target was straight ahead, but it wasn't nearly as close as he'd hoped. He estimated that the geth ship directly ahead of him was at least one hundred and fifty meters and was dug into a small indent in the asteroid it was working on. The way it mined reminded him of an insect eating a meal, only it wasn't actively sitting on the rock and its mandibles were replaced by mining lasers and claws. The path to it was direct and currently empty, but it was obvious it wasn't going to stay that way. Small asteroids occasionally flew by, sometimes colliding with each other and sometimes shattering against the larger rocks. Additionally, the geth ship wasn't alone. In the other large asteroids surrounding the path to his target, other geth ships were hard at work gathering metals and other resources. As long as they didn't move and he didn't attract their attention, though, they shouldn't be a problem.
Kevin drew in a deep breath. He crawled through the slim opening and out into open space to prep himself for the launch. Everything seemed to fall completely silent just then. On the ship, he could still hear or feel the slight hum of the engine even when there were no other sounds to be heard. Out here in open space, this level of absolute silence was downright terrifying. He had conditioned himself over the years to hear everything he could, and now that there literally was nothing to hear, his body didn't know how to handle it.
Behind him, Arla hopped over to the lip and pulled the beacon from the wedge. "Hey. . ." she called to him as she slipped the beacon through. Kevin didn't respond, but she knew he was listening. "No heroics, okay? Just do what you need to do and come back to. . . Just come back, that's an order."
Kevin turned his head with a smirk buried under his visor and looked her straight in the eye. "If I die, I'll just come back to haunt you." He'd probably have winked if he thought she could see it.
Arla's head slid back in shock. Though her face was hidden, her upper body language betrayed the silence and was easy for Kevin to read. First there was fluttery bashfulness where she turned her head away followed by a sudden and stiffening dread that forced her to look anywhere but at him. Finally she looked back to Kevin just in time to see him take a deep breath and kick away from the Kellius. Just after he left the small opening shut, cutting off her limited view of him.
Kevin's launch was quick, but it was by no means as spontaneous as his usual dealings in life. He looked around as best he could for a few seconds to spy any threatening asteroids. Seeing none, he felt that now was as good a time as any to make his move and he kicked off. He carried with him no equipment other than his mandatory blade and pistol and of course the beacon gripped tightly by both hands. He faced forward as he mutely flew towards his target, continually running a self-made plan over and over in his head.
He intended to land on the asteroid next to the geth ship rather than on it. With no real way to slow his flight, he didn't want to impact the ship for fear of tipping it off to his presence. He aimed to grab ahold of an outcropping on the uneven and craggy portion of the surface east of the geth. All he had to do at that point was just launch himself close enough to the Kellius to use the magnets in his boots to walk into the airlock or cargo bay. Simple enough, right? Right.
Unfortunately, the dangerous and unpredictable nature of the asteroid field was not about to go unchallenged. Out of the corner of his eye, Kevin spotted a rock easily four times bigger in its diameter than he was tall slowly spinning towards his flight path. If Kevin's mental calculations were anything to go by, things were just about to go all wrong. If that asteroid hit him or blocked his path, the mission would instantly be a failure because they'd miss their chance to land the beacon on this one geth. It was good, then, that Kevin's calculations were off by just a smidgen. The backward-spinning asteroid passed in front of him, but it was so close that he had to use a hand to push off of it to avoid being smacked by an outcropping. He flattened out as much as he could, but the tip of the incoming hill nicked his right knee with the force of a fully loaded crate.
His first reaction was to grunt heavily in pain and use a free hand to press down on the injury to feel for serious damage. Luckily his knee was still intact, but there was going to be some nasty bruising, even with medi-gel. His second reaction was to feverishly figure out how bad his trajectory had been affected. Again it would seem luck was somewhat on his side – he was still heading in the same general direction, but he was now stuck in a slow backwards spin of his own. This was disorienting as heck, and it made determining his distance from the target extremely difficult. Just then, someone called over the comms.
"Kevin, are you alright? Don't worry, this channel is secure." It was Ralik.
He let out a tightly held breath. "I'm fine, but my current situation keeps me from determining distance to target. Can I get some help with that?"
"Sure thing. Currently fifteen meters and closing at a rate of one point five meters a second. Your trajectory was modified a bit as well, stand by. . . It looks like you'll hit due south of the geth."
"Okay. Thanks."
South wasn't where he wanted to be. He wanted to be east where it was craggy, and south was smooth without anything to grab. He would have to improvise again. He looked up and saw the asteroid dangerous close as it came into view, and his current spin would have him landing face-first. He held the beacon above his head and he switched on the magnet, making ready to cling to the metal-rich deposits in the rock via the beacon.
Murphy was paying close attention to this mission, it seemed. The flat area south of the geth had already been mined clean of metals, so there was nothing for the beacon's magnet to grab onto. Once Kevin realized this, he had barely enough time to move the beacon out of the way before he faceplanted square into the surface. The impact had enough momentum to cause his backbones to audibly crack when his light spin finished out in a veritable bellyflop, and he was glad that he wasn't spinning forwards instead which might have resulted in a much more serious injury. He was even more thankful that his visor didn't crack and implode and that he hadn't lost his hold on the beacon.
He could only count his blessings for so long, though. After the impact, he found he was floating away from the asteroid and away from his target. To make matters worse, he was heading out towards open space through a dense asteroid field, where he had somewhere of around a ninety-five percent chance of getting pummeled by a wayward rock before the Kellius could even catch him. He had to think of something, and he had to think of something now.
An idea sprang into his head and he started gathering dark energy to himself. Using a biotic push on himself was flat out suicide, so he had come up with a much more creative way to get this mission back under control. He encased himself in a negative mass effect field to decrease his own mass exponentially. He then took out his pistol and aimed it exactly one hundred and eighty degrees from the direction he intended on heading. He fired one shot and his flight away from the asteroid came to an abrupt halt. Another shot propelled him in the direction opposite of his aim. He was moving back towards the asteroid again, but this time at a much more controlled pace. With the beacon awkwardly tucked under one arm and his pistol firmly gripped by the other hand, he resumed his mission.
He had to take four more shots in order to correct his course so that he could land where he planned. Since his gun had no way of dissipating the heat, he had to rely entirely on the thermal clip. He had to take special care not to use up the current heat sink in his clip because ejecting it would be like launching a beacon for searching geth sensors to center on. The gun displayed that he could shoot about five more times before it automatically ejected it, which meant four more shots to correct his direction and speed.
He still aimed for the craggy region to the east of the ship, an he only required one last shot to slow his approach just as he got there. He grabbed ahold of an outcropping before the rest of his body smacked against it and held fast. From here, he planned to drift across the back of the target vessel and lightly place the beacon on its back. He'd use the magnetic hold of the device to stop all movement so he could aim and launch himself back to the Kellius. This was if all went according to plan, of course, and so far things hadn't gone his way.
It was time to execute his plan. He bounced on the crags a couple times to perfect his angle before finally letting go on the final bounce. His trajectory was spot on and his velocity was minimal. A few meters later, Kevin activated the magnet on the beacon and aimed it down at the back of the ship. Kevin felt a light thunk through his arms and he knew that the device was stuck on good. He activated the device and immediately started making visual scans of the entire area to ensure that no geth had taken notice. Fortunately, none had, and he looked back at his ship.
"Tracking bug in place," he transmitted. "Making my way back now."
"Acknowledged. Make it quick, it looks like the geth are stirring," Tyr said.
Before he could make his move, however, the geth he was on ceased mining and began to pull away from the asteroid. "Crap," he muttered. Fearing that the geth had detected his presence, he held onto the beacon for dear life to stay out of the way of the weapons, sensors or anything else he could possibly avoid. His fears were alleviated when the ship simply turned towards open space and started to fly out. Obviously this was a bad situation, especially if the geth left and hit FTL with him holding on.
Aiming for the Kellius at this point was out of the question. He would have to rely on his last three shots to change his angle and velocity enough to get to the ship. He looked up for his general target area and pushed hard off of the geth vessel. He could hear his breathing again, a warning to himself that he was getting a bit stressed. There were so many ways for this to end badly, starting with the stray tumbling rock that he was about to be splattered across. Thinking quickly, he shot with his gun at a sharp angle to change his trajectory enough with intent to avoid the asteroid entirely. Impact was not an option here – it would be fatal.
Luckily, it worked. Mostly. His path was now that of a grazing one, but this time he wanted to do more than just skim by it like the first one. Getting an outcropping to the knee could easily have enough force to shatter his bones all the way to the spine. As the asteroid was passing within leg's length under his feet, he tucked his knees to his chest and waited. At what he felt was the right moment, he shot his legs out straight at the asteroid. This was to send him more towards the Kellius with less shots, since he only had two left. The upside was that it was a general success – his path was better corrected towards the Kellius. The somewhat expected downside was that the short moment of friction caused him to go into a dizzying forward spin. He suddenly felt nauseous.
He then realized he hadn't thought this particular action all the way through. The spinning caused him to lose all bearing on direction and distance. Trying to aim for the Kellius was pointless now, and the best he could do with his last two shots was try to stop the spinning. Fortunately, he could spot the Kellius with each revolution, so at least he knew when the best time to shoot was so that he didn't accidentally give himself more velocity. He blanketed himself in a negative mass effect field again and shot twice with as precise timing as he could muster.
His spinning slowed, but not completely. The forward spin was, however, slower than his earlier post-impact one, and he could finally get his bearings. More good news and bad news came along with this action. He was traveling toward the Kellius like he wanted, but the bad news was that he was going to just barely miss the bottom of the fuselage and head right out into the same open field of colliding stones as before. He flailed fruitlessly, and even considered aborting the entire mission by firing that last shot.
"I'm going too low! I'm going to miss the cargo bay!" A few grunts made his panicked struggle audible. His breathing and heartbeat dominated his thoughts along with the replaying image of a bloody smear on the side of an asteroid.
As he came around his last spin on his way by the edge of the cargo bay, he stretched his arm out in a vain attempt to latch onto the corner. Much to his dismay, it was a little more than an arm's length out of reach. To his surprise, however, something had latched onto him. It stopped his spinning and held on tight as his momentum attempted to rip him from the ship. Once his head was clear enough, he looked to see what had caught him and saved his life. He found a hand wrapped tightly around his – Arla's hand. She was dangling from her grip on the inside bottom corner of the open loading ramp.
"Where do you think you're going, Folner? We have a mission to complete!" Not surprisingly, she sounded more relieved than cocky.
"Freakin' a, Arla! I think I love you right now!"
"Yeah yeah yeah. Get inside already so we can clear out of this deathtrap." As Kevin climbed up and into the cargo bay, she contacted the bridge. "I got him, guys. He's all set."
"Thank Keelah," Bela responded.
Once they were both inside, the cargo bay was sealed and pressurized. "We're receiving telemetry data. Good work, Folner!" Kar exclaimed.
"Did it notice the beacon? Is that why it took off?" Kevin asked.
"That didn't appear to be the case," Ralik said. "I think it had reached its mining capacity and had to return with the payload. It's heading for the usual jump point at edge of the asteroid belt now."
Arla turned to face Kevin. "All that's left of this investigation is to go vent the IES3 tanks, FTL out to the destination and make our analysis. You did an undeniably good job out there, Kevin. Real Xelvas'taersh stuff. I know Siri would be proud of that."
"Are you getting squishy on me, Tavval?"
"'Going soft' is the term, I believe. Squishy just sounds so. . ."
"Yeah, sounds like something out of a porno." Crude jokes helped him settle his nerves sometimes.
"That's the sort of statement we expect out of Bela, Kevin."
Kevin winked, but he doubted she caught it. There was a quick lull while they turned to head upstairs.
"So about what you said before you headed off to play hero. . ."
"I don't think I was at one hundred percent there. I was sort of losing it due to nausea and facing my own death and stuff so I-" Kevin cut himself short and paused his walk when he caught her giving him the dagger-eyed stare of doom. Kevin suddenly found himself unable to say anything. Not because of her stare, but because of the situation he'd gotten himself into just by quoting Nor. He hadn't thought of the immense weight of those words when he said them. Now that he had time to think about it, he could see all the implications that came with it. Implications of deep feelings, a connection, and ultimately, an imminent and premature demise.
He avoided the premature demise, at least for now, but he and Nor never made it this far. What now?
When he looked back to Arla, she was standing there, impatiently waiting for an answer. This wasn't the tap-of-the-foot irritated impatience, this was the I-really-need-to-know impatience. Despite her easy to read desire for a straight answer, Kevin hadn't sorted any of it out yet. He lacked an answer, so he did the thing he usually did during awkward situations that got a little out of hand.
"I- I think they need us in the bridge, we should get moving." Kevin looked towards the floor and charged for the airlocked stairs.
Arla's body language was fairly clear here. It depicted a mix of unfulfillment and irritation. Kevin knew that now was not the time to be arguing about it, so he took this opportunity to dodge the issue without fear of immediate debate. He also knew that there was no dodging the issue a second time, so he had to get his head right and figure out just what was going on up there. Not just for the sake of answering to Arla, either. He had to make the decision of whether to move on or not for himself.
Kevin left Arla high and dry, but he knew she wasn't one to get so distressed that she couldn't do her job. Within seconds of his speedy retreat, he spotted her jogging to catch up. They entered the bridge together and saw the garden world growing outside the viewports. Kevin pretended to flex his muscles at Bela, and she humped the air as a response. Kevin pointed both index fingers at her in approval and he quickly received a punch in the arm from Arla next to him.
"This will only take a few minutes," Kar announced to the many watchers in the bridge. "We just have to touch down so we don't attract the geth's attention when we vent the tanks. It's the only real safe venting place there is outside of shimmying up by the sun or traveling to the far side of the system where most of the planets are right now."
"Are we getting telemmetry yet?" Arla asked.
"Still waiting for it to come back up since it went to FTL," the young quarian replied.
"I expect that we should be seeing it in the next few minutes unless their destination is a significant distance away," Tosh added.
The conversation died and the entire crew of the Kellius watched in silence as Kar navigate the ship to a tight valley on the opposite side of the planet of their basecamp. They landed for no more than three to four minutes before taking off again. Just as Tosh predicted, the beacon's location data began to reach the Kellius just as they lifted off.
"Wow," Ralik exclaimed. "That's not too far off, actually. It's not even the distance between the black nebula and this star system."
"But it looks like it's set relatively close to the nebula," Kevin pointed out. "If we FTL to the far side of the nebula the same way we came in, travel along until we're close to it and then pop around, we might be able to get there without giving away our position. It's better than trying to make our stealth last the entire trip, right?"
"Good call, Kevin. I'll do that." Kar nodded and aimed the Kellius in the proper direction before sending it to FTL once outside the atmosphere. "This detour should only take up about ten minutes tops."
Most of the crew filtered out to the briefing room and took a seat. Kevin took the one closest to the burned and jagged side. "Anyone have an idea what we'll find?" He was hoping some realistic answers might calm the churning in his stomach. It wasn't the same kind of anxiousness he felt before jumping out into the asteroid field. This was more subtle. Once more, he recognized this sickly feeling from before the team boarded the geth homeship. The fact that it was still bothering him this much only served to make it worse.
Riik was the first to take a shot at it. "I'm guessing a station built to store their payloads. They probably need some obscure place to keep it all if they want to maintain their ranks stranded here."
Kevin tilted his head. Riik's statement implied that he already knew they weren't going home.
"I don't know," Bela said. "They're mining out an entire asteroid belt. That's a lot for just maintenance. It's not like they consume it that much."
Ralik placed a finger on his flat chin. "True. Where is it all going? What's it being used for?"
"Not likely a fleet, I'm guessing," Tyr added. "There's no reason for it. There's nothing out here."
"Then what might require such a huge amount of metals and minerals that they need to mine out a whole belt?" Tosh asked.
Arla leaned in. "If it's not something of large quantity, it has to be something big." Heads nodded in agreement.
This conversation was not helping.
"I don't like this," Kevin finally said.
"Why not?" Bela asked while hanging her head upside-down over the back of her chair.
"What I mean is that I have a bad feeling about what we're going to find out there."
"It's just a feeling, Kevin. It'll pass," Arla assured.
"I remember when I used to rely on those," Tyr joked.
"I get feelings about food after I eat, sometimes," Ralik mocked.
There was a round of chuckles. Normally Kevin would let it go. After all, they had to keep calm about the situation somehow. This was more serious than that, though.
"You guys don't understand. I've only had this feeling once before," Kevin defended.
"Oh yeah? When was that?" Riik asked, expecting a joke.
"Before we boarded the Valesh'saat."
The atmosphere in the room fell and shattered like a giant pane of glass.
"We're here!" Kar informed. "Activating stealth!"
Nobody moved. Kevin gave them all a quick stare before he got up and left for the bridge. After everyone else exchanged looks for a bit they followed suit. As they filed up front, they heard Kevin's report of what he saw outside.
"Oh my God. . ."
Arla was the first of the following group to get a look outside. "Keelah. . ."