A/N: Bit of a short chapter today. My apologies but RL keeps interfering.

Damn you RL!


"There is much you must understand, Sihra," Liara said as she and Shepard walked with the rakir toward the open launch bay. Marines were everywhere, having arrived with the Orizaba.

Admiral Hackett had been fairly close by when Liara had sent her contact out on secure channels, reporting what they'd found and requesting a secure pickup. Instead of sending another Alliance ship he'd come personally, wanting to fully secure the facility and strip it of any tiny scrap of information or new tech. Liara had told him of the strange doorway that Shepard believed was capable of creating a link through folded space, and he'd already sent a science team down to analyze it.

Sihra paced along beside the two 'detrak' she knew, ignoring the others that flanked her. Shepard had seen the alien regard the rifles they held only momentarily before almost visibly dismissing them.

Her people would only have bladed weapons, or perhaps slings and bows, to use when they can't rely on their claws and teeth. She probably thinks the rifles are little more than fancy clubs.

"Tell me," the rakir said to Liara, her eyes roving around at every new sight, scrutinizing it and filing it away.

"Some of it will be difficult for you to understand," Liara told her. "Some you may not want to believe."

"I will be able to tell if you are lying to me," Sihra said impatiently. "Just tell me."

"Very well. When I told you I was a captain you asked what sea I sail. The answer is, my ship sails no sea. It is not a ship made for floating upon water."

"A ship not made for water…what does it sail upon then?"

"It sails the night sky," Liara said. "It sails in the stars. Each star is a sun, just like the one that rises and sets on Nakira every day. They only seem small because they are incredibly far away. Most of those suns have worlds, lands that move around them as Nakira moves around your sun, and some of those have people on them as the rakir live on Nakira."

The rakir blinked at her, then laughed. "Impossible."

"You can tell if I am lying, Sihra. Am I?"

"No, but that does not mean that you aren't just a fool to believe it," Sihra told her.

"We will show you, Prilekk," Shepard said. "We-"

She broke off as they entered the bay and Hackett himself headed toward them. Behind him, one of the shuttles ferrying the scientists and troops down from the Orizaba was just lifting off to make the return journey. Sihra gaped as it rose into the air effortlessly. She pushed past Liara and Hackett as if he was not there, staring in wondering horror at the sight.

Hackett looked at her, then back at Liara. "I take it this is the rakir you told me about."

"Yes. And she is just starting to realize that everything she understood of the universe is incorrect," Liara replied.

"It is flying!" Sihra said almost accusingly, pointing at the shuttle as it moved out of the bay and into the now dark night beyond the door. "It is floating in the air…how do you do this, detrak? What magic is it? Can you teach me?"

Shepard walked over to her. "It's not magic, Prilekk, just technology. If the treaty is brokered with your Ubuut, our people will teach yours this technology, and much more."

"Prilekk, I want to introduce you to someone," Liara said. Sihra reluctantly turned her eyes away from the now distant shuttle, and looked at her. The asari gestured at the man standing next to her. "Prilekk Utchibahna Sihra, this is Admiral Steven Hackett of the Alliance."

"At-mee-rahl?" She mouthed the word in her guttural voice, the collar offering no translation. Apparently, the rakir had no equivalent word for Admiral.

"I captain a ship," Liara said patiently. "An admiral commands an entire fleet of ships."

She pondered this, then nodded. "Ah, a water general. I understand."

"Prilekk, it is my honor to meet you," Hackett told her. "And it is my duty to extend apologies that you were taken off your home world-"

Sihra's expression instantly shifted to disdain, and she grumbled something that the translator could not change into galactic.

"Prilekk?" Liara asked warily.

"Do all you detrak do this?" Sihra asked in frustration.

"Do what-"

Her eyes fixed to Hackett. "Why do you apologize? Only Stunted and children apologize. Grown men and women stand by their actions and do not take credit or blame for the actions of others! You did not take me and bring me here. Why do you apologize for another? Bring me to her so that I can tear her apart. That is all that needs to be done."

Hackett regarded her evenly, then looked at Liara. "You are sure about this?"

"We have little other choice, Admiral," she said. "We cannot condemn an entire species to extinction offhand."

He nodded, then looked back at Sihra. "Then you just may get your chance to tear Osco apart, Prilekk."

The rakir grinned.


Chakwas had been able to stabilize Lawson, but all of her talents combined could not compensate for the lack of a full infirmary and proper equipment. If they didn't get to a real medical facility soon, they could still lose her.

Sam and Ashley were both treated for their fairly minor wounds. Almost the moment Helen cleared them they returned to the black ship, insuring it was clear of hostiles and that Liara and Dr. Shepard truly were nowhere on board.

Joining with the black ship's computer at the pedestal- as Miranda had- Feris was quickly confident she could pilot it back through the relay into home space. Ashley reluctantly went to the small ship still attached to the belly of the dark beast, the one that Miranda had sent through two years before. It was empty, but functional. Taking control of the helm, she disengaged it from the airlock.

It was a strange procession that carefully weaved its way back to the relay. The black ship took the lead, its strange barriers carving a way through the debris field like an old ice-breaker from the oceans of Earth battering a path through the frozen northern seas. In the clear wake it produced, Ashley followed in the old exploration ship, Jura guiding the Aswa along in the rear.

Sam let out a tense breath as the relay loosed her into home space, Ashley and Jura following closely behind. As the Aswa came out of the relay, Jura almost immediately contacted the other two.

{I've got open communications and about a hundred pings from Liara lighting up my board.}

Feris straightened. "Really? Where is she?"

{The pings originate from a moon about six hours travel from our current…stand by. She is sending another ping from…the Orizaba. Connecting and patching it through to all three ships.}

Liara appeared, seeming to hover just behind the pedestal. Feris knew the image was only in her mind, created by the black ship's technology directly on the visual centers of her brain, but she started a little just the same. Unlike the holographic projections she was used to, it appeared Liara was actually standing there…as three dimensional and solid as the real asari.

"Aswa, this is Captain T'Soni. What is your status?"

Jura's voice answered. {By the Goddess, Captain, it is good to see you. We are just outside the Omega Four relay. We have successfully returned to home space. Miranda Lawson is stable but critically injured.}

"Feris and Williams?"

"Here, Captain," Sam answered. "Minor injuries but our skins are still on I'm happy to say. Glad to see you in one piece. Is Shepard with you?"

"Dr. Shepard is here and is just fine," Liara replied. "Apparently that black doorway on the alien ship was a transportation device of some kind, acting on the principle of folding space. We passed through right into Gellian Osco's base of operations in the Horsehead Nebula. Unfortunately, she and her men had already cleared out. I am on board the Orizaba and we are now about twenty minutes from your location. Were you able to salvage the black ship?"

"I am on her deck as we speak," Sam replied. "I have full access to its entire computer systems…though I don't think I understand half of what I'm seeing."

"We have two Council ships with us that will take possession of the black ship," Liara told her. "Her databases will be downloaded and any pertinent information regarding Osco or her plans will be forwarded to us."

{And the rest of the black ship tech and intel will stay with the Council for reverse engineering,} Ashley said, a note of suspicion in her voice.

"Unfortunately, it is what it is," Liara said. "Whether or not our peoples are ready for the advancements that ship will provide, that door cannot be closed now. All we can do is concentrate on stopping Osco. I will expect you two on the Orizaba as soon as we arrive for a full briefing as to our next move regarding Osco and the PMD. Jura, please have Dr. Chakwas transfer Ms. Lawson into the hands of the Alliance medics. They have a much more advanced infirmary than we do and can better treat her."

{I will do so, Captain.}

"Liara out."


Shepard thought that Sihra adjusted to things rather well. Though it wasn't exactly possible for her to put herself into the alien woman's proverbial shoes, she was pretty confident in the thought that in Sihra's place, she would have thrown up at least once.

The view outside of the windows still seemed to trouble the rakir. She stood near them, looking outward at the stars and endless black, but she leaned away from the view as if struggling not to turn around and flee. Del supposed she might be doing just that. Rakir seemed to take an immense amount of pride in their strength and determination. It took a particular kind of courage to stand and face a fathomless eternity you had never before even conceived of.

Though she knew that the rakir considered her weak and 'stunted' and seemed to look upon her with disdain, Del remained by her side. She had experienced the same fear herself, after all, in the not too distant past.

Liara lingered near the door of the observation deck, watching the pair in silence before she was notified that the cousins had come aboard, Lawson being moved into the Orizaba's infirmary for treatment.

Hackett entered a few moments later with Sam and Ashley on his heels. If the rakir disquieted the admiral on any level, it was impossible to tell. The cousins' reactions were slightly more animated.

"Bloody hell, you weren't kidding!"

"Looks like the krogan have a challenger for 'biggest and baddest' in the galaxy," Ashley added with a smirk.

Shepard and Sihra turned, Del smiling and going over to the pair. "It's good to see you two in one piece," she said. "And you managed to salvage the black ship?"

"Good to see you too, Doc. We did indeed," Sam said.

"We are doing our best to download its databases now," Hackett told her. "You will be updated with any information we can find regarding Osco or the PMD as soon as we have it."

"Hopefully there's something in there that can put me on the fast track for a cure," Shepard said. "Any PMD that may have been at that base she removed. There was no way for us to tell how much of it she even had on hand, or what her next move will be."

"You guessed she'd hit the quarians," Williams said. "A larger test on a more dense population in an enclosed and controlled environment. She's still acting like a scientist. If you were in her shoes, what would you do next?"

"If I considered my test a success- which, as far as Osco is concerned, the quarian test was- and I was looking for wide dispersal I would likely hit a major galactic hub. Omega, the Citadel, any one of a hundred locations where it would spread to the entire galaxy the quickest. And since she doesn't have a base of operations any more she'd want to do it fast, before we could stop her."

"So we seal off those hubs, track everything going in and out," Hackett replied. Del shook her head, brows knit in frustration.

"No, there's…there's something wrong with my logic. Something I'm not accounting for."

"Osco didn't say anything to you, did she?" Ashley asked Sihra. The rakir grimaced.

"About her plans? No, she said nothing to me or around me that may be of help. She smelled of catika."

"Catika? What is catika?" Liara asked. Sihra scratched at her ear in irritation again, where the translation bud was feeding her rakhani. She now understood that it wasn't magic, of course, but she was frustrated at times it did not work an exact translation.

"Catika," she repeated. "She is lost to the rage, the instinct…the blood madness."

The blank looks turned her way only frustrated her more, and she growled. She was not an ambassador, scholar, or teacher. She was a soldier, and not always an eloquent one.

"Just speak slowly, Prilekk. Describe it to us," Shepard said kindly. Sihra gave her a dark look, then snorted out a breath.

"My people remember the blood drive of our ancestors," she said. "We have their fury in our veins. It fuels us when we battle, when we fight. We remember the blood lust. Sometimes, we remember too well. Sometimes, if a rakir is not strong enough to resist it, they get lost in the lust…they lose their sense, their thought. They want only to kill, to fight, to rend and tear anything that comes close to them. They want only to rip and eat. They have to be contained. The Ubuut uses them for execution and criminal punishment."

"You are talking about complete psychopathy," Liara said, catching on. She looked at the others. "Rakir are obligate carnivores, predators of the purest vein. They have evolved complex ways to control their bloodlusts and animal urges in order to maintain a civilization. These 'catika' must be those who go insane, who are reverted to their basest animal instincts with no real sentience left to them."

"But Osco isn't driven by bloodlust," Ashley said. "I mean, not the slitting someone's throat or gutting them kind of bloodlust."

"No, but she is insane," Shepard replied. "She may not be personally violent but she fits every definition of the word psychotic."

"So you could smell that Osco is crazy?" Sam asked. "That's impressive."

"Your datlek noses are very weak, it seems," Sihra replied disdainfully. "She is cunning, but she is catika."

"Oh, my God, that's it! That's what I wasn't considering!" Del snapped her fingers. "She's smart and she's doing this like a scientist, but she's still insane, still following her nonsensical goal of cleansing the galaxy of what she considers chaos!"

"Does this help us?" Hackett asked.

"I was looking at it from the vantage of what I would do next as a scientist- but I'm also approaching it from the vantage of a scientist who is still mentally sound. She wants to cleanse the galaxy of chaos and make its people perfect, but where does that come from? She ran her second test on the quarians but who did she test on first?"

"Humans," Sam said.

"Exactly. The alien races are secondary to her. She'll perfect them if she can but her primary objective has always been to perfect humanity above all else. She won't disperse at an intergalactic hub, not right off the bat. She's going to send it right to the source of her primary objective!"

"Earth," Hackett said grimly, then activated his omni-tool. "Communications, this is Hackett. Put out an immediate priority one to Alliance command and all Alliance forces: Osco is going to send the plague to Earth. I repeat, Osco is going to send the plague to Earth."

{Received and sending priority one now, Admiral-….Admiral, we have an incoming transmission from…oh, no…}

"What is it?" he asked. When there was no immediate answer he frowned. "Lieutenant Donnelly, what is it?"

{Sir, we have a priority one message from Alliance Command. We're too late, sir. Command reports some sort of device just impacted on the planet's surface-}

"What? How did it get past our security grids?"

{Some kind of stealth technology, the device never registered on any instruments until impact, sir. We've got reports flooding in, already there are…already there are massive casualties and Alliance forces are moving in to quarantine the area sir.}

"Where did the device impact?" he asked. "Where is the strike zone?"

{37.764723 degrees, -122.445884 degrees precisely, sir.}

Shepard glanced around at the others, only to see that Feris had gone incredibly pale, her eyes wide. Alarmed, she reached out and touched her arm. "Sam…?"

"Understood. Helm, get us back to Earth, immediately."

Liara opened her own omni-tool, directing Jura to follow the Orizaba, that they were heading to Earth. Ashley moved over, her hand on Sam's shoulder as her cousin's jaw tightened.

"I-I don't understand. Where did it hit?" Shepard asked, confused.

"It hit in San Francisco," Williams answered softly. "Sam's girl lives in San Francisco."