Interstitium

by AssaultSloth

Flashbacks, interstitial scenes, and backdoor dealings. A companion to ME2 focusing on characters and worlds, big and small.

24. Chapter 24, Mutiny, the Admirals

Mutiny – The Admiralty Board

---

–

The message kept repeating.

"...We locked down navigation. Weapons are offline. Our mistake won't endanger the fleet. They're burning through the door. I don't have much time. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. Jona, if you get this, be strong for Daddy. Mommy loves you very much..."

The message crackled and died for the nth time, leaving Xen and her geth patient embalmed in a heavy quiet. The static hummed for a few seconds, then clicked, and died.

The message restarted. "...We locked down navigation. Weapons are offline. Our mistake won't endanger the fleet. They're burning through the door. I don't have much time. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. Jona, if you get this, be strong for Daddy. Mommy loves you very much..."

Xen listened to the quarian in the message die yet again, unmoved from her work.

Geth weren't, as a rule, subject to the inconvenience of pain, but they knew when they were damaged courtesy of hundreds of tiny sensors spread throughout their armored chasses. Hundreds of tiny sensors that had to be deactivated one painstaking incision at a time before any work could be done. Geth platforms had evolved since they were made by quarian hands – their wiring had shrunk a hundred fold and optimized into networks that only synthetic minds could understand. Even Xen needed a magnifier and a VI-assisted stabilizing glove to operate, and even so it took days.

But she would not let this geth flash its memory.

The machine flexed its long neck back and forth, the dim socket where its optics had once been installed shuttering and focusing as it tried to look around the room, as if it had not yet realized it was blind. It was bolted down in six places, its vocoder resected, its arms and legs long since tossed out the Moreh's trash ejector.

It was helpless, free only to listen in the dark.

The quiet came back again, just long enough for Xen to hear the footsteps behind her. They seemed to thunder in the long hours of solitude. Before she'd retreated to her lab she had asked her crew for a few days' quiet (it was not prudent to let anyone see her working on live geth, even on such a small ship as the Moreh).

Which meant it had been a few days already. She didn't look up from her work.

"You asked for a report, ma'am, when the new crewmember arrived." Kobol was direct.

The message restarted again. "...We locked down navigation. Weapons are offline. Our mistake won't end-" It clicked off.

Xen did not look up. "Back on, please," she said (though it was not a request). "I am thinking."

Kobol muttered an apology and restarted the message again. "...We locked down navigation. Weapons are offline. Our mistake won't endanger the fleet. They're burning through the door. I don't have much time. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. Jona, if you get this, be strong for Daddy. Mommy loves you very much..."

"Thank you," Xen said (though it had not been a request), and kept working, the microwelder in her fingers leaving tiny droplets of molten wire in glistening patterns that she needed a lens to properly see. As delicate as the work was, Xen never made a mistake. She was slow, patient, cautious, methodical. Every move was perfect.

If it wasn't, she risked killing her patient, and she had no Tali'Zorah to ship her new ones.

"Ma'am," Kobol asked, clearing his throat.

"Put it on the desk."

"Very good, ma'am. I've also brought you rations, if you-"

"No."

"It's been four days, ma'am. You should eat."

Xen ignored him.

"Do you want to meet your new crewmember?"

Xen rolled her eyes behind her visor. Of course not. Still, Kobol had a head for this kind of thing. He was probably right – she had to make some effort, no matter how feigned. She looked up to the tall boy standing next to Kobol. His suit was recycled but clean, very little accoutrement. A crust of whitish dust clung to his boots and gloves – he must have just stepped off the shuttle. He slouched. He was afraid. Though whether he was afraid of Xen, the mutilated geth, or the last words of a dying mother looping on the overhead monitors, it was hard to say.

"Welcome to the Moreh," Xen said, offering him a perfunctory hand grasp that left her glove dusty.

"Thank you, ma'am," the boy said, visibly relieved. "Do you prefer to be called Captain Xen or Admiral Xen?"

Xen frowned. Technically either worked, since the Conclave had accepted her ship's petition to leave her captain position untouched, so long as she chose a representative. "I prefer not to be called upon at all," she said. "I expect you to remain in the lower labs until I summon you elsewhere."

The boy recoiled like he'd been bit. He glanced at Kobol, but the older quarian offered no help. He returned his gaze to Xen. "Y-yes, ma'am."

"Go."

The boy scuttled off in an instant, and Xen returned to her work.

"Qano'Zaeln nar Carta vas Moreh," Kobol recited for her. She forgot the name instantly.

"Why did I accept him again?"

"You enjoyed his gift, ma'am," Kobol said. "A treatise on using spectrophotometric analysis of starlight to find inactive relays, along with a list of possible candidates."

Xen said nothing. She remembered the boy's work. It was solid. He must have had talent. That would have to be good enough. So long as he could produce good research, he could be as awkward and mewling as he liked. She had too much on her mind to worry about him. She had the Alarei to worry about. She leant back into the geth's torso as the message started over again. Kobol stood silently behind her, watching the screens.

"Rael was a fool," Xen mused. She dabbed off her welder and moved to the next panel. "So convinced the key to defeating the geth is in a gun somewhere. So convinced he had to study them in a fair fight. This was an utterly predictable way for his experiments to end."

She was lying. She had never guessed Rael would be so careless. Natal'Hazt - the quarian in the message - had been one of Xen's employees, a plant in one of Rael's most prestigious lab ships, and her reports had confirmed week after week what Xen had suspected all along - that Rael was testing weapons on live geth - but she had never imagined he would let them arm themselves. She had little good to say about Rael'Zorah, but thatwas foolishness that shewould have thought him above.

Rael was supposed to be a genius. It was disgusting to see such stupidity from the second smartest quarian on the Fleet (after her, naturally). On his good days she might have even believed they were equals. Really, they would be perfect for each other if only Rael understood her plans with the geth. He wanted to shoot them all to death, to waste them.

Or he had wanted that, anyway. Now he was almost certainly dead.

"We should tell the Conclave about this," Kobol said. He was nervous. She could hear the way he wrought his gloved fingers together. "They will want to hear this."

"No," Xen said. Kobol was acting-captain on the Moreh for as long as she was admiral, and he had represented her on the Conclave with skill and tact, but she did not trust the rest of the fleet's squabbling captains for a millisecond.

"The Admiralty Board, then," Kobol said.

"I am on the Admiralty board," she reminded him. She gestured to the generator on the wall. "Change the voltage on the generator to one point one two." Kobol obeyed, operating the machine with rote familiarity. She returned her gaze to the geth and watched the displays on her helmet count down as the voltage dropped.

The geth's torso gave a jerk. Stripped of its armored outer layers, Xen could see the dozens of finger-width motivators shift, watch the glowing blue processing arrays blink off and on as power flows rearranged. It was amusing, really, that the geth had reflexes at all. The ancient quarians had instilled more than a few lifelike qualities into them, and to hear most geth researchers talk, they were only getting more pronounced as the years went by. The geth were not inert pieces of steel. They changed, they evolved, they learned.

They responded when you poked them.

Now if she could just get it to transfer itself into a server without killing itself.

"Admiral. Ma'am," Kobol started again. "If the geth have taken the Alarei, it's not inconceivable tha-"

"It is inconceivable," Xen interrupted. "Our agent's counts put the total geth equivalents on the ship at less than forty platforms." Tali'Zorah had been busy, but Natal had assured her of the count time and time again. "They would all be standard light platforms, small enough to be carried. Average twenty-eight geth nodes per platform gives no more than eleven hundred twenty nodes. Just enough to hold a conversation. Not enough to pilot a ship. The Alareiisn't going anywhere." She stared at Kobol. "We can report it after I've decided what I want to do about it."

Kobol said nothing to that, and Xen did not want him to. She peered back into the cavern of the geth's exposed chest, triple-checking all of her connections. Natal'Hazt's dying message continued to cycle in the quiet.

"The Admiralty board will order the ship destroyed," she said absently, reclaiming her microwelder and returning to work on the geth's wiry spine. "Along with everything on it. We mustn't allow that to happen before we've had a chance to salvage what we can." The geth's neck craned down to watch her hands with its empty eye. "I don't want this news spreading."

"Ma'am, we should at least inform Natal'Hazt's mate and child. The ones she mentioned in the message. We owe it to them to tell them what happened."

Xen arched her brow, incredulous. It really was amazing, sometimes, how stupid everyone but her managed to be. "You don't think they'll figure it out when she never comes back?"

Kobol was quiet. He stared uncomfortably at his feet.

Xen was about to order him away in disgust.

Then a thought occurred.

She remembered Doran'Hazt from Natal's dossier. Six circuits, one rad old. Born nar Vesta, began his pilgrimage at two circuits, four rads, joined the Quib Quib under then-captain Zaal'Koris with rhodium deposit telemetry data. Resided on the Quib-Quibworking as a hydroponics engineer. He and Natal had been separated for years – perhaps he wouldn't care about her death in the least.

But he did have Admiral Koris' ear. And Koris would never let them fire on a ship full of geth without a fight.

It would be best if the rumors reached him first, before Gerrel or Raan had a chance to group. Koris was a simpering fool at the best of times, but he had a surprising tenacity to have kept up with Rael's political juggernaut for so many years. Without Rael around he would drown the others in bureaucracy.

And the Alarei would be safe.

She turned to Kobol. "Go find him, then. Tell him everything."

"...everything, Ma'am?" he asked, surprised.

Xen favored him with an uncharacteristic smile. "Yes, everything. As you said, they deserve to know."

Kobol's eyes narrowed suspiciously, but Xen was already buried in the geth's torso again.

"Now, Kobol," she said, waving a hand behind her. "Doran'Hazt and his son Jora. Go tell them."

Kobol bowed. "Yes, ma'am," he intoned, and rushed off to do her bidding.

The silence returned. Xen thought best with her hands. She worked in the quiet, the geth her only witness.

The two of them listened as the message continued to play.

---

17 years previously…

–

No matter the context, the ship's captain was in charge. It did not matter if the ship was a vast liveship like the Golgi or a tiny speck of a vessel like the Moreh, even a visiting Admiral was only second-in-command to the captain.

Captain Zoar'Mal vas Moreh cut an impressive enough figure in his gray-and-black hood and neatly polished suit. He was in charge. He would decide whether or not her Pilgrimage gift was sufficient, he would decide whether or not to accept her or send her back out into the galaxy to try again. And if he did accept, he would be her new captain, above her and responsible for her in every way.

And yet even as he scrutinized her, weighing her fate, Xen only had eyes for Rael.

Rael'Zorah vas Rayya, Vice Admiral to Admiral Gennd'Tega vas Konal and Special Project's Chief of Research, sat next to the captain, his eyes still scanning the datapad she'd handed them. If Captain Zoar'Mal looked impressive, Rael looked positively gorgeous, shining and polished in unmarked black with his only conceit to fashion a thin strip of the Zorah purple ringed into his hood. Just being next to him made her feel small. Stupid. Normal. She had loved him from afar for years, but she'd never imagined he'd look so powerful. On the Moreh Rael was Zoar's guest, but as the captain had stiffly (and quite without necessity) explained to her when she'd entered, more than half of the Moreh's crew were doing research for one of the Vice Admiral's projects – one could hardly hope to succeed on the Moreh without Rael's support.

Rael had not so much as looked at Xen since he'd sat down, but she had hardly been able to drag her eyes away.

"I admit I'm concerned," the captain was saying, calling Xen's gaze back to the present. "Seven months is an unusually short Pilgrimage."

Xen resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "I did what I needed to do, Captain. As I believe my gift attests."

"I will leave that to wiser minds than I to decide," the captain said, gesturing towards Rael. "It is your previous captain's words that worry me. For your abilities she has nothing but praise. But your attitude. Your maturity. Your ability to work as part of a crew. She believes you had some growing up to do."

"I did it," Xen insisted, resisting the urge to roll her eyes.

"The Moreh is a small ship, Daro," the captain continued. "The crew must work together. Must be a team in all things. An uncommitted crewmember will struggle to survive. You will not be able to thrive alone. That is what your pilgrimage was intended to impress on you."

Xen nodded, but it was a lie. In truth, her pilgrimage had proven quite the opposite - she was fantastically effective on her own. Nobody to interfere with her plans, nobody expecting her to care about foolish things. She had come to Bekenstein without a credit to her name and hellbent on finishing as quickly as possible. Most quarians joined technology firms or other technical work, but the idea of working on the projects given to her by dim-witted turians or humans did not appeal to her.

The stares she drew just walking down the street had given her the answer. Quarians of either sex were exotic, especially to the wealthy humans that had come to dominate Bekenstein, and many were willing to pay lucrative prices for her time. She'd found a high class xeno-escort service, taught herself a few human languages, and made more in a month than most quarian pilgrims made in a year. Sure, it had required enduring some phenomenally boring human dates (the yowling the humans called opera was especially popular on Bekenstein), but every once in a while she'd actually met someone interesting.

Better yet, every day on the job meant a week or two of mild sickness, weeks she could spend in her employer's luxurious quarantine bubble working on her research and eating the gourmet turian food she bought with her leftover money.

"I learned a great deal on my pilgrimage," Xen insisted, "short though it was."

The captain eyed the datapad in his hand with some disdain. His eyes looked dubious. "Working, alone, in what was effectively a brothel."

"Researching, yes," Xen confirmed, unashamed.

"Not a typical pilgrimage."

Rael finally spoke up. "Irrelevant," he grunted, eyes not leaving his datapad. "This is not typical research." He gestured to the screen. "Who cares how she amused herself in between? It's hardly your business, even as her captain."

The captain's eyes narrowed but he said nothing. Rael didn't seem to expect him to say anything either. He finally looked up, staring at Xen. "This is phenomenal work," he said, voice even.

Xen felt giddy. "Thank you, Vice Admiral." She had worked long and hard on it. Her treatise on mass balance projector engine efficiency, half a hundred equations and illustrations tracing out proposed modifications for the engine systems used by the liveships. It was built atop previous work Rael'Zorah himself had done for his own pilgrimage, the data that had gotten him accepted onto the highly-prestigious Rayya.

Rael set the datapad down. "This is a fine gift. You could buy your way onto any ship in the fleet for this data. Any captain with half a mind would accept in a heartbeat." Captain Zoar's eyes narrowed behind his helmet. "Why the Moreh?It's a dreadfully dull ship."

"I want to do research," she said. "On the g-" She stopped, noting how Rael's eyes widened behind his visor. "On VI warfare," she amended. "The Moreh is small but it was converted from a turian communications ship in galactic standard year 2170. It is ideally suited to research on computationally-expensive VI simulations." That was true.

"You could join another ship and convince their captain to invest in computing resources," Rael pointed out.

But then I wouldn't be with you. "I could," Xen said. "But I confess. I do prefer to work alone. A life of research on a small ship will suit me."

"Collaboration is the heart of research."

"Thinkingis the heart of research," Xen insisted. "And I think best when it is silent."

Rael was silent for a moment, but she could see the smile in his eyes. He gave her a short nod and rose from his seat. "She has my support, Captain Zoar," he said, voice curt as he handed the captain Xen's research. With that, he pivoted on his heel and stalked away. "If you accept her, please assign her to the simulation team on deck three."

–

The Moreh was a dark, lonely ship. It had never intended to play host to more than a few dozen turians, and its life support systems were unambitious to match. Half of the ship was unlit but for the great glowing bays of computing towers. When Captain Zoar had given her the tour of the living quarters, even those had been drab and cheerless, too hot by half and with ceilings so low she had to duck her helmet.

Still, she was almost light-headed with excitement when her waiting paid off and she finally caught Rael'Zorah leaving the lab. His omni-tool cast long shadows across the hallway that twisted as he walked. He very nearly ran into her, until she cleared her throat and he looked up from his work.

"Daro'Xen," he said.

"He accepted me," she reported, smiling.

Rael nodded. "Daro'Xen vas Moreh, then. Congratulations."

Xen's stomach did flips. She was talking to Rael. Zorah. Somehow she found her tongue. "I was hoping you had a moment to discuss the VI project with me."

Rael turned back to his work. "Not now. Team three's manager is Kala'Reten. Ask her for the relevant readings." He made as if to step past her, but she moved into his path.

"I've already read them," she said. "And I know it's not about VI's. Not really. It's about the geth."

Rael's face gave nothing away, but he did look at her. She pushed on. "Further, I know that it's not a good approach. VI's don't accurately simulate geth behavior. We both know it's a dead end way to study them."

Rael's eyes narrowed. "And how do youknow that?"

"I did the math. On Bekenstein. The engine thing was just a side project." She called up a document on her omni-tool and displayed it proudly. This was the real reason she needed to be here. The Moreh was a dump of a ship, but it was the closest thing Rael had to a legitimate geth research project. It was her stepping stone into his illegitimate geth research projects.

Rael stared at her document without comment. He did not tell her it put her pilgrimage gift to shame (it did), nor that it was the most comprehensive and insightful treatise on geth computation in almost a decade (it was). She knew he knew it. She didn't need him to say it.

"You gave up hope on the VI simulations a long time ago," Xen accused, grinning behind her mask. "Which means you moved on to something better." She stared at him, daring him to deny it.

He did not deny it.

"What do you want from me?" he asked finally.

"You moved onto something better," she repeated, closing the distance between them. "I want to work on that." She pressed up against him, staring up into his mask. He was twice her age but still unyielding as iron muscle, like leaning up against a wall. "And on you."

Rael's eyes narrowed. "I have a wife. And a daughter."

She'd expected that. The great Rael'Zorah would hardly betray his honor without some proper convincing. She was undeterred. "Not on this ship," she said. "You run research projects on eleven ships. Do you ever even visit the Rayya anymore?"

"Infrequently," he admitted.

Xen grinned victoriously. "Then don't tell me you aren't tempted. I'm as smart as you are," she purred. It was true. She was sure of it. She'd always been sure of it. She'd spent her life so lonely, so bored with other quarians. They were so… stupid. But Rael was like her. A kindred spirit. Maybe the only kindred spirit. He had to feel the same way.

But Rael backed away from her so abruptly she almost fell. He stepped over her and continued his way down the hall, his omni-tool back to life on his arm.

Xen stared after him, frowning.

"I will contact you should an opening become available," he said, not looking back.

---

Presently…

–

Natal'Hazt's dying words had passed fifty six hundred and eight times since Kobol had left her, and still Xen had not eaten or slept. Her eyes burned, her body ached, her stomach demanded food, but she felt none of it.

She stared at the geth.

It had fallen still but for the steady serpentining of its neck as it still tried in vain to see its surroundings. Geth were dreadfully stupid when cut off from one another.

And yet smart enough to beat her, apparently. Even hacked apart and disfigured, even with every single damage sensor disconnected, even hooked up into a server salvaged from a geth node, the machine remained stubbornly planted in its own mutilated platform. No matter how Xen prodded, no matter how she disguised it, she simply could not get it to upload itself onto another server.

Xen had long known that Koris – not Rael – had the right of it. The geth were people, intelligent and capable of learning. They had evolved into much more sophisticated machines than most quarians realized. But they were still property and the prospect of being outmaneuvered by an appliance was more than a little frustrating. It was beginning to try her patience. It was consuming time she should be using to prepare for the situation with the Alarei.

By now the rumors of the Alarei's takeover would be spreading. They'd be full of misinformation, of course, but it would be enough to get both sides moving. Koris' legions would be rallying the Idennites, the reformists, the pro-conclaves, the pacifists, the xenos. All the little groups chafing under the three hundred year old martial law of the Admiralty Board threw their lot in with Koris' famously anti-military politics. On the opposite side the influential Zorah and Gerrel families - and, more importantly, the bulk of the heavy fleet - would be rumbling with preparations to defend the status quo. What was really only a very small threat - a single research vessel lost to the geth - would be twisted and dragged into every outstanding disagreement in quarian politics before long. Very soon it would turn into a zoo that even Xen would not be able to predict.

Every second that passed, the Alarei slipped farther from her reach. She had to turn things before she lost it.

And yet as the time slipped away still she found herself tinkering with her geth.

"This is a waste of time," she snarled to herself as she worked, her fingers fiddling with the charge sinks on the geth's power supply in yet another attempt to trick the geth to go into an emergency backup sequence. She adjusted the generator leads for the thousandth time and stared expectantly at the geth as the lights in its chest started to dim.

The geth craned its neck as if to stare at her. Even without its eyes, even without its face, somehow it looked taunting.

Xen shook her head and turned the power back up. "I am running out of patience for you, little geth," she said, rising to her feet. She was sore from sitting for so many hours, her lower back and thighs a dull throb, and she stretched her long legs, rolling her ankles until the stiffness dissipated. Her stomach roared. The geth's neck followed her as she dug through the workdesk drawers looking for a spare ration bar – hadn't Kobol said he would leave one? There was nothing. And by her own orders her research vessels did not receive food shipments from the Liveships for fear of someone stumbling into one of her geth labs - she would have to take a shuttle to one of the larger craft and eat there. That would take hours.

She gave a frustrated snort and plopped back into her seat next to the geth.

It was ridiculous, sometimes, how she had to hide her work. She was the great Daro'Xen, the smartest quarian on the fleet, and yet she had to starve herself as a precaution against anybody knowing just what she did with all her intelligence.

Everyone knew that Rael'Zorah did things that bent the law, but he'd always managed to get away with it. Even before he was made an Admiral, he'd been beloved. A few circuits ago he'd been caught working with projector-shielded high energy eezo cores, long since banned on the flotilla for their wastefulness and poor safety records, and the Board had given him a warning and handed him a new research vessel on which to continue his experiments. But if she ever got caught doing the same... it would be a very different story.

And now one of his ships had been taken over by geth. If the truth ever came out - if it was ever known that he had brought active geth aboard on purpose - he'd surely be tried for treason. The thought was simultaneously revolting and delicious. A treason charge, maybe the only charge Rael's popularity couldn't save him from, maybe the only chance Xen would ever have to get him exiled in disgrace and inherit all of his research projects.

And yet he was just going to die before anyone knew what he had done. The Admiralty Board would order the Alarei destroyed and Rael would be remembered as a hero and all his projects would pass on to his equally insipid daughter.

Somehow Rael always won. Even when he had to die to do it.

Xen stared at the blind geth. Its shutters blinked calmly. "Rael'Zorah wasn't smart enough to disassemble those platforms first," she observed, running a hand down the shoulder stump of the geth's left arm. "He should be exiled for his stupidity alone." The kinemat sensors in the fingertips of her gloves translated the smoothness of the geth armor as she traced up its neck to its head.

The geth had a sort of beauty to them. The ancient quarians had been masters. Geniuses. Far and away greater than the squabbling fools that had become of their race now. At the end of the day, it would be fear that would destroy the Alarei and any secrets Rael may have discovered. Fear of the geth. Fear that the synthetic ghosts that had dogged the flotilla for so long would somehow spread, somehow kill them all like they had killed Rael.

In quarian politics, it all came back to the geth. They were feared or pitied or hated. But they were never understood. Even Tali'Zorah, the so-called geth expert, had had nothing of value to say about them when she'd returned from her pilgrimage two years past. She'd come with much to say about how the platforms had changed, where their weak spots were, what kinds of weapons they'd acquired. But nothing on what they were. On how they thought.

Xen had expected that from a Zorah.

If only the quarians would take the time to learn about what the geth really were they would learn that they were not to be feared. Xen was so close to unlocking the secrets of their gestalt. So closeto understanding how they linked. With Rael's resources - with those forty geth platforms he had most of all - she could learn so much. Enough, maybe, to bring the geth back under control. Restore them to where they belonged.

She cradled the geth's head. It was so fragile in her hand, so light. Nothing like the heavy mechanical monsters the quarians liked to imagine in their myths. Forty geth platforms. That was all Rael had. Forty geth platforms couldn't take over a single real quarian ship, let alone a Flotilla of thousands. And yet they would be destroyed out of fear and ignorance all the same.

Xen stared at the blind geth and shook her head. "How dearly I wish the fleet could see you now, little geth." But that would get her exiled. Only Rael could escape a treason charge, and only because he was dead - nobody would risk going onto the Alarei to find proof of his crimes when he wasn't even alive to be charged.

Unless...

Xen released the geth and bolted to her feet.

Unless he wasn't the one being charged.

She left the geth, Natal's message still calling out into the dark.

---

–

The suit was supposed to stop everything, but somehow Gerrel could still smell burning flesh.

The outer airlock clamped shut as the last of the marines limped past its threshold and collapsed in a heap in the corridor. Neema crewmembers bustled to help them, each hooked up to an external oxygen scrubber as was policy when emergency docking necessitated skipping the usual sterilization protocols. Triage was done quickly, immuno-boosters and sedatives injected and the injured marines carried off on long stretchers while those still capable of standing were helped out of their combat kits and put in a line to be inspected by medics.

Eight marines returning, three of them shot.

Gerrel swallowed heavily. They'd sent twelve to the Alarei. Four more fine marines lost in the line of duty.

He shook that thought away, muscling his way through the throng of medics and volunteers to find Commander Noazza'Raan, who stood in the center barking orders and looking winded but unhurt. "Commander!" Gerrel shouted. "Report!"

Noazza gave a sharp salute. "Admiral. Intelligence was confirmed. The whole ship is swarming with flashlights. At least eighteen platforms, maybe more."

"Any survivors?"

Noazza seemed to wilt for a moment. "Negative. Sir. We saw none."

Gerrel felt his heart drop. Rael was dead. His friend, the great Admiral Rael'Zorah was dead. Gerrel had been a soldier all his life – he'd had friends die. He'd had mentors die. His elder son had been killed by geth on a scouting mission almost a decade ago. But Rael… he'd always seemed invulnerable.

He'd heard the news from one of his commanders first. It had been almost offhand, and at first Gerrel had assumed it was a confused rumor. Rael had a tendency to disappear for long stretches of time, burying himself in his work. When his mate Ykala had died a few years back it had only gotten worse, and from time to time his absence would spawn rumors that he had been killed, or he was leading an elite team to retake Rannoch, or how he was in secret dealings with the batarians.

Gerrel hadn't given it much thought until he'd heard it again, and again, and again, and so by the time he'd met with the Admirals to hear Koris confirm it with the help of sensor data and manifests Xen had managed to lift off of one of Rael's supply shuttles, he'd known it was no fluke - The Alarei had gone dark. Rael'Zorah and his crew were missing, presumed dead. It had killed Gerrel to hear it from Koris, but at least the suitwetter had had the decency to look respectful as he announced his rival's death – Xen had been positively singsong.

Gerrel didn't need to be a political genius to know bad times were coming. Oh, there would be trouble without Rael.

"I'm sorry, sir," Noazza said, tapping Gerrel on the shoulderpad with a quiet understanding in which only soldiers could share. "The geth were waiting in the cargo level," he said. "We took casualties and I deemed it best to retreat."

Gerrel looked at him, blinking. "…You didn't make it to the research levels?"

Noazza shook his head. "No sir." He paused. "As I said, the geth had reinforced the cargo level. Without heavier loadouts-"

Gerrel felt a stirring in his chest. If Rael was alive, he wouldn't be in the cargo bay. He'd be in the lab, defending whatever genius technology he'd been cooking up from the flashlights. There was still hope. He grabbed Noazza by the shoulders. "See your wounded to the medics, Commander, then get the rest of your marines ready for a second foray. I will get you your weapons. We will not let the geth have Admiral Zorah."

Noazza gave another sharp salute. "No sir we won't!"

Gerrel turned and rushed down the hall. There was still hope. Rael and his scientists could still be alive. Rael had saved him more times than he could count. It was time for Gerrel to repay the favor.

He would lead the rescue himself.

---

34 years previously…

–

The turians were naked. Or at least looked that way to Han'Gerrel nar Kestus, soon to be vas Potabh. They bustled about the station, unaware of their nakedness, ungloved hands and unsealed necklines. Those few that had helmets wore them on their shelled backs, revealing their vulnerable mouths and even their eyes to the filthy air. Ships took off and landed, dozens every hour bound for the Citadel or Omega or Union space or any of a thousand different worlds, each adding their own mix of potentially-pathogen-laden air into the mix.

And they were breathingit.

Filthy brutes.

"Oromb System," Rael'Zorah nar Kestusread off the screen next to him, apparently uninterested in the turians. "There's a mining transport leaving in two standard hours, dock eight. It should serve your purposes." He turned to fix his taller friend with an even glance. "You remember what I told you?"

Gerrel tore his eyes away from the aliens. "You worry too much, Rael," Gerrel insisted, slapping his friend on his polished shoulderpad. "I'm not that stupid."

Rael's glowing eyes narrowed.

Gerrel sighed. "Yes, Rael, I remember," he said, relenting. "Four potential nodes spread across Oromb III, all subsurface. I need to find ground penetrating sonar equipment to verify. Sell to Marowolar in exchange for three quarters of the exploratory coring samples. Ship to Sotol to wait for the Flotilla to pass by."

"Make sure your telemetry is accurate to a resolution of four meters or better," Rael warned, "or Marowolar won't be interested. Elcor are slow but they're not stupid. They know platinum isn't so rare they can waste their time with imprecise data."

"Yes, yes, I get it. You can worry about your own Pilgrimage, you know."

Rael shrugged. "Idon't have a time limit," he said, looking back to the screen of ship departures. Rael had decided to spend his pilgrimage on the turian homeworld studying 'field resonance thrusters' or some such technological magic Gerrel had never heard of. "Palaven will wait."

Gerrel smiled and wrapped an arm around Rael's shoulder. "I do appreciate the help, Rael."

Rael didn't look at him. "I stillthink she's a bad influence. Certainly not worth rushing your pilgrimage for," he whined. "You could come with me. Get used to the feel of an actual planet beneath your boots."

Gerrel shook his head. Rael could keep his planets. Gerrel was a spacer. "You're just jealous that even with all your brains I got a girl before you," he said, grinning behind his mask. He had yet to link suits with Nira'Vael nar Kestus but all the same knew she was the one for him. Thinking of her, he couldn't help but smile. She had started her pilgrimage a few weeks before as the fleet had passed through Hades Gamma, and had promised to find a suitable gift and join the crew of the Potabh as quickly as she could.

He would do the same. The Potabh was modest but sported an impressive marine corps for him to join, and Nira's cousin had promised them the ship had more than enough space for two new crewmates. It would work perfectly.

And with Rael's help, Gerrel would finish his pilgrimage in record time and be free to marry.

"You're rather young, aren't you?"

Gerrel shook his head, shouldering the pack of supplies he'd been gifted for his journeys higher onto his back. "So says Rael'Zorah," he said, "the boy who flew a gunship into a batarian slaveship's gun battery."

"It worked, didn't it?" Rael asked, petulant.

"That it did, friend," Gerrel agreed. "That it did." For their actions Gerrel and Rael had been called heroes and fools and everything in between. They'd been punished for the loss of the Yaksa(Rael's decision to ram the batarians' mass drivers saved the day, but it had ruined the gunship beyond repair) with weeks of forced labor, but they'd also gotten to meet the Admiralty Board. Admiral Alyey herself had placed the medal badges of valor on their chests.

But more importantly, they'd become fast friends. There was nothing like ripping a breach into an alien ship and watching the crew tumble out to freeze in space to bring two quarians together.

Different as they were, they'd been inseparable ever since.

But now it was time to separate. The board flickered as it updated, and Gerrel's ship, a mining vessel called the Corimbus, had entered the liftoff queues. Gerrel still had to haggle his way aboard – he'd brought a few odds and ends to barter with, and even if that didn't work, he was a beast as quarians went and could pull his weight loading cargo. He'd find a way. Still, there was no time to waste.

"About time for me to take my leave," Gerrel observed.

Rael held out a hand to shake. "May your air flow clean, Han'Gerrel nar Kestus."

Gerrel ignored the hand, wrapping Rael in a crushing hug that lifted his smaller friend from the deck. "Teach those birds a thing or two about engine magic, Rael'Zorah nar Kestus. I'll see you when you get back." He released Rael, tossed him a last, encouraging nod, and turned to head to dock eight.

"Remember, you have three months!" Rael called after him. "If you're not done by the time the fleet passes Sotol you'll be stuck!"

"Three months," Gerrel called back.

---

Presently...

–

Of course, it did not end up taking three months. Or even thirty-three months. Gerrel had been too slow, and by the time he'd acquired the data he needed, mining rights to Oromb-III's platinum deposits had already been sold to a volus conglomerate.

In the end, not only did Gerrel miss the fleet as it passed by Sutol once, but again on its return journey, a whole galactic circuit later.

All told, Gerrel's pilgrimage ended up taking eight years, returning to the fleet as it passed through the Shrike Abyssal. Eight years of running with a mercenary group, eight years of fighting alien wars, eight years of speaking alien languages, eight years of saving every paycheck to buy a few more guns, a few more armor plates, a few more shield capacitors, or grenades, or rockets, or military omni-tools. He knew it wasn't a creative gift, but it was all he knew, and by the time he had returned to the fleet he could equip a small army with the gear he'd acquired.

And so he did not feel guilty in the slightest raiding the Neema's armory. Technically all he and the other Admirals had convinced the Conclave to allow was a small exploratory team – twelve marines to assess the situation on the Alarei – but he was Admiral of the Heavy Fleet and the Conclave could go to hell if they thought he was going to wait for further hearings.

He was not about to let his best friend die without a fight.

If only Rael had told him what he'd been doing on the Alarei. Normally Gerrel wouldn't ask, and he hadn't this time either. Rael was very protective of his work, very secretive of his results until he was sure he had something, and Gerrel's bumbling interference (or anyone's, really) only hampered him.

But there were two topics on which Gerrel felt he had an authority, even over Rael – languages (he took it as a matter of great personal pride that his long pilgrimage had left him fluent in eight tongues across five species, while Rael knew only three) and killing geth. And if Rael's research was something that the geth wanted enough to sneak infiltrators into his ship, Gerrel thought there was no one better suited to defend it than himself.

Of course, Rael would probably disagree. In fact, Gerrel half-expected that even if he could rescue his friend, all he would get for his trouble is a great deal of lecturing from the Conclave about abusing his power and an even greater deal of lecturing from Rael himself about risk-taking.

Still, it was no decision at all. Rael had been there for him. Two and a half decades ago when he'd finally had enough of the mercenary life and had stepped onto the Potabh, Rael had been the one waiting to invite him to join the Neema's prestigious marine corps. Admiral Rael had bestowed him with his General's mark on behalf of the Board, and then when Admiral Gossit had died, Rael had helped swear him in as Admiral of the Heavy Fleet. After his divorce Rael had helped fend off the political mudslingers. Rael had saved his ass a thousand times.

If he could repay just one of those he'd die a happy quarian.

He picked his way through the armory, rows upon rows of eclectic weaponry his ship had acquired over the decades. Much of it was old quarian gear from Rannoch, repaired and re-repaired countless times over the years, but there were also fine turian guns and cheap volus knockoffs, incendiaries from Khar'shan and human-made polonium rounds, tracers and shields and grenades and medical supplies and every other piece of military sundry a rescue team could need. It had been years since Gerrel had carried a firearm (Raan insisted it was inappropriate for an Admiral – hethought Admiralty was reason to carry even more guns) but when he hefted a well-used carbine like the one he used to favor it settled into his grip like it had never left. He hooked it onto an eyelet on his suit and moved on.

He had to move fast. The Conclave wouldn't like him rushing off with a shuttle full of troops, to say nothing of his fellow Admirals. He'd already sent a message to the Neema's marine commander's personal omni-tool to gather what forces he could and rendezvous with Noazza. He trusted his commanders with his life – they'd been his loyal lieutenants not terribly long ago – but even so, word would get out fast.

He slipped a few grenades and an old-style rail launcher into his pockets, along with a handful of medigel packets. The Neema only had four GIGO transmitters ready for action and he took two, slinging them over his shoulders with an oof. Last but not least he found a shield projector and hooked it onto its jack on his lower back. His suit's shields shuddered with an audible whine as they struggled against the projector's amperage.

When he was a younger quarian he had strode into battle with enough armor to slow a batarian and he'd thought nothing of it. Back in his mercing days he'd even taken to carrying a krogan shield projector – it weighed half as much as he did but enemies never expected a quarian to soak so much fire and often overlooked him until it was too late. But those days were long behind him. He wasn't young anymore, and moving in armor had become a chore. He had to suppress a grunt as he sidled out the armory door, locking it behind him with a wave of his omni-tool.

He very nearly ran into Raan. The Admiral stood outside the door, arms crossed across her chest and eyes narrowed accusingly behind her visor. She cleared her throat. "Han…" Her tone was warning.

Gerrel frowned and pushed past her. She was the last person he wanted to deal with now, after the awful things she had said when the Board had convened the previous day to discuss their options. Still, Raan was sharper than her passivity suggested, and he knew there was no point pretending she hadn't caught him. "Don't speak to me," he snarled. "I'm going, and that's final." He turned down the corridor towards the lifts to the airlock bays. He knew the Conclave wouldn't like it, but the Conclave could go pinch their airhoses if they thought that would stop him.

Raan followed behind him. "You are needed in the antechamber."

"I'm needed on the Alarei," Gerrel grunted, refusing to look back at her. "And you don't get to order me around on my own ship. If you don't want to help me save Rael, fine, but don't ask me to sit around doing nothing."

"This is Captain Kol'varra's ship and I'm not asking," Raan said, and her usually gentle voice was hard as silari steel. Gerrel stopped. "You are needed in the antechamber," she repeated.

"I'm an Admiral too," Gerrel reminded her.

"Then act like one," Raan shot back. "Koris and Xen are waiting for us."

Gerrel finally turned to look at her, eyes wide in surprise. "Here? On the Neema?"

Raan nodded. "Along with half of the Conclave, if you do not hurry. We have decisions to make and you will join us or you will be tried for treason at Rael's side."

Gerrel stared daggers at her. He had never hated the soft-spoken Admiral more than he did at that moment.

–

Gerrel had only been vas Neema for a few years, but he'd spent most of his life with the marines on the ship and it felt like home. When he and Nira had split after the whole asari fiasco, it had been only natural for him to resign his vas Potabh name and join the Neema in word as well as in deed. The Neema was an old turian ship scavenged from a scrapyard on Orama almost a century before, and while it hadn't been pretty when new, it was positively hideous now, scarred and limping. Still, its armor had held strong and it was one of only a handful of proper warships in the Fleet, well-armed with spacious hangars and facilities for hundreds of troops.

It also had the distinction of being one of only a few ships in the Flotilla with a room large enough to hold an assembly.

The antechamber was a relic of the ship's past life as a turian troop cruiser, part of an expansive lecture hall the Hierarchy officers had used to teach recruits. On most days it was an unqualified waste of space, but captain Kol'Varra had left it untouched, its original tiered podiums and seating rows well-polished by turian backsides.

As Raan had promised, half of the room was full by the time they got there. Gerrel recognized a dozen or so Conclave representatives, but most were just curious crewmembers of the Neema. A few dozen Rayyaquarians stood in a corner holding holo images of Rael on their omni-tools, while others typed feverishly into datapads. Koris and Xen were waiting at the podium.

"Fine work, Raan," Xen said, voice all smiles. "I see you've managed to catch our illustrious Admiral Gerrel before he managed to kill himself too."

Gerrel ignored her. "What do you want, Raan?"

Raan had taken her place at the highest podium, where the highest ranking turian officer would have stood to look down on his students. "The Conclave has demanded we make arrangements for our trials."

Gerrel almost walked out of the room. "This is ridiculous," he snarled. "Now?Can we wait until Rael's body has cooled before we start dragging his name down?"

"Rael'Zorah's trial will wait until we have ascertained the extent of his crimes," Koris agreed, sniffing. He was suffering yet another infection, and the detox pumps in his suit whined. "But Tali'Zorah's crimes ar-"

"What crimes?" Gerrel demanded. "I have yet to see a shred of reason why we should subject a grieving girl to this nonsense." They had been arguing over this very point for most of the previous day, and Gerrel had only grown more and more furious as he'd heard his fellow Admirals hem and haw at what was – to him – a very simple matter. Koris he understood – his political motive in dragging Tali down was obvious – but Xen and Raan? Raan, who had been like a surrogate mother to Tali since Ykala had died?

It was one thing to refuse Tali's request for a quarian crew for her mission with Shepard. It was another to keep her father's predicament a secret from her. But to try to include her in treason charges against Rael that were shaky to begin with? The fact that they were considering at all was lunacy of the highest order.

And yet no one seemed to think so but him. "Then you have not been looking carefully, Admiral Gerrel," Xen said, as if she were talking to a child. "I did send you the Alarei's manifests, did I not? I'm sure if you peruse them again you will note Tali'Zorah's name next to nearly every shipment." She was right. At their last session Gerrel had tried to argue that her name on the manifests could have been a placeholder, that Rael had used it as a gesture of affection, but it had sounded lame even to his ears. Rael was not known for his sentimentality, nor for keeping anything less than sterling records.

"I don't have time for this," Gerrel snarled, not wanting to revisit that argument, not wanting to see Raan stand by again while he got verbally whipped for trying to help the Zorahs. "I'm going to save Rael."

"And risk two Admirals over the stupidity of only one?" Xen asked.

Gerrel turned back to her. "I have never lost a marine on the ground," he boasted, taking a step towards the smug female, who didn't so much as flinch. "Never. In every mission I have ever served as squad leader for. I have never left someone behind."

Xen was unimpressed. "'tis a pity Rael did not allow you on his ship, then, isn't it?"

"He didn't allow you on either, you harpy. You are not going to let him die just so you can get your hands on his work."

"Oh, I'll get it either way," she promised, sounding very proud of herself. She shrugged. "But go ahead, retrieve his corpse if it makes you feel better."

"Enough!" Raan snapped. "There is a bigger concern than your petty fighting. In less than two hours, the Conclave intends to vote on a motion to have the Alarei destroyed." She stared at Xen and Gerrel in turn, face severe behind her visor. "Can I assume neither of you wants to see that happen?"

Gerrel said nothing, but for once neither did Xen.

"Good," Raan said. "Then on that, at least, the four of us are in agreement. The Alarei must not be destroyed before we understand the situation better."

Gerrel couldn't hold his tongue. "What is there to understand? The geth attacked Rael's ship to destroy his research! We need to engage!"

Raan sighed, cradling her helmet in one gloved hand. "It is not that simple, Han."

"It's starting to look that way to me. It's starting to look like I'm the only one who wants to see Rael survive this. This is Rael'Zorah we're talking about. An Admiral. And a damn sight better Admiral than any of us. Can the Fleet really spare him?" He pointed back the way he'd come. "Let. Me. Go. GET. HIM."

"Whatever our personal feelings on the matter, we cannot simply override the Conclave on your whim," Koris said, sniffing. "They've forbidden us to risk any more marines. We must honor their demands."

"Why!?" Gerrel demanded. "We're the Admirals! Apparently we can accuse anyone we want of treason, so long as it fits our goals."

"Koris is right, Han," Raan said, voice weary. "We have had this discussion before." It was true, they'd had it many times. Han'Gerrel's appointment to the Board had been fraught with difficulty. When Gossit had died and he'd been nominated, he'd been a decorated officer, well known for his teams' successes in a number of dangerous missions in geth space (and unknown for several others that had remained confidential), but many quarians – chief among them Zaal'Koris – had questioned his ability to work in a political setting where decisions had to be made with the entire species in mind. He was seen as too risk-taking, too headstrong, too unwilling to cooperate. Combined with accusations – after his divorce and his history with an asari merc had come to light – that he wasn't truly loyal to the quarian cause, Gerrel had not only almost not been sworn in as Admiral, he'd almost lost his position as General.

But in the end he'd made it to the Board anyway, and he'd spent every year since fighting the Conclave and the other Admirals over just how much deliberation was necessary before acting. Gerrel hated deliberation. Slowing down to discuss each move in a committee costed lives. He'd been censured by the Conclave three times for abusing his power as leader of the Heavy Fleet. Each time he maintained his position by a narrower margin. And each time he cared about maintaining it less.

Gerrel shook his head. "I can't believe you people," he spat, clearing his air filter with an angry hiss."You… traitors. Hypocrites. Trying Rael for treason while you think of every reason you can to leave him up there to die."

Then, all of a sudden, an idea occurred to Gerrel. A terrible, irresponsible idea. "What if I call Captain Kar'Danna?" he demanded. "What do you think the Rayya's crew would feel about this? Is their representative even here?" he gestured back at the crowd of onlookers.

He called forth his omni-tool.

"You want to start a civil war?" Raan asked, staring at him like he had gone insane.

"Maybe I do."

Koris, Xen, and Raan stared down at him with equal looks of trepidation. Captain Kar'Danna was a reasonable quarian, but his crew would not take Rael's treatment lightly. Half of the Rayya's population was in the Zorah family, and they championed Rael harder than anyone alive. And given that the Rayya was one of the mightiest ships in the entire Fleet…

"Gerrel… don't," Raan warned.

"I'm the Admiral of the Heavy Fleet. Last I checked, the Rayya was a heavy warship. Was mine to command. Am I wrong in that?"

He was not, and they knew it. "You are an Admiral," Raan tried. "Your loyalty is to the entire fleet, not to one person, no matter how important. Once we decide on the charges to levy against Tali'Zorah, we will summon her and include her in discussions about what to do about the Alarei. But for now, we have to convince the Conclave to keep the ship intact."

Gerrel just frowned and opened the channel. He'd lived through three censures already. A fourth wouldn't kill him. "Come in Rayya. This is Han'Gerrel, Admiral of the Heavy Fleet, calling for Captain Kar'Danna vas Rayya. Come in."

A voice came through his omni-tool, loud enough for them all to hear. "Go ahead."

"I have orders, effective immediately. The Rayya is to take position next to the Alarei and protect it from all harm. If any ship should attempt to approach the Alarei without my express permission, you are ordered to open fire."

"Flotilla ships included?"

Gerrel nodded. "Any ship," he repeated.

There was a hesitation. Then: "Yes sir."

Gerrel closed the channel. Silence filled the room. The consequences would not be minor, but Gerrel did not care. He was tired of being an Admiral in name only. He would just have to see how effective the civvies' foot-stomping was against the Rayya's main cannons.

Raan shook her head, eyes wide behind her mask. "What… did you do?"

"I 'convinced' the Conclave," Gerrel snapped, staring up at them, face defiant. "Thanks to the geth, we live under martial law. Occasionally they see fit to remind us why."

---

4 days later…

–

The Admiralty Board had never been accused of being too sparing with its words, but somehow watching it from the outside made every rambling argument seem to take an eternity to Raan's mind. With her recused and Rael missing, the Board numbered only three, and yet Tali's trial went on for hours.

Tali looked very small, very far beneath her as Raan looked down on her from her podium above the other admirals. The girl seemed to grow every time Raan saw her, and yet today her shoulders were hunched as she stood next to the human, shrinking a little bit more with every word the admirals said. Behind her, half a hundred quarians watched in silence. Some looked on in pity and others with contempt, but none stepped in to help her.

Only Gerrel tried. The blustering admiral of the heavy fleet had his heart in the right place, Raan knew, but he was woefully underequipped to deal with Xen and Koris on his own. He tried to point out how very valuable Tali and her father had been to the fleet, how utterly spotless their records were. He reminded them that Tali had shown the galaxy a new face for their people in helping to defeat Saren and Sovereign. He reminded them that she was still very young, and scared, and grieving for her father.

But none of it mattered. Xen and Koris were simply smoother talkers, and they had the facts on their side. Xen paraded shipping manifests and security footage from one of the shuttles Rael had used. Koris dredged up every political mistake Rael had ever made. And no matter how loudly Gerrel ground his teeth, there was no way he was going to win.

And Tali got smaller and smaller.

Raan looked away to pick at a fraying seal on her fingertip and hoped for the thousandth time that she had done the right thing. Gerrel had been so furious when she'd told him she'd recused herself from Tali's trial, angrier than she'd ever seen him, and she feared that no matter what happened, she'd lost him as an ally.

But recusing herself was the only way to save Rael. Gerrel was too honest to believe that, to even understand that, but it was true.

Rael's only hope was for his daughter to be convicted of treason.

Raan had strained her brain for days trying to think of another way, but there was nothing. The Conclave would not allow the Alarei to survive the week, no matter what Gerrel did with his ships. They would never approve another assault on the ship after the deaths on Noazza's team, and if Gerrel forced the issue, they might have another Schism on their hands.

No. There was only one way anybody would step foot on the Alarei ever again without causing a civil war. Only one person could do it, and that one person was Tali. No matter the danger, the Conclave would not refuse her the chance to clear her name.

And if the ancestors were good and Rael or his team were still alive up there, Tali could bring them back. And even if Tali's good name was forever smeared by the treason charge, at least she would have her father back. Raan had seen Rael fall too far to believe the Zorahs' good names meant half so much as their survival.

It would work. It had to work. It was in everyone's best interests.

And yet it was hard not to feel like she was sending her surrogate niece to her death. She'd remembered Tali as the firebrand she was when she'd left on Pilgrimage, proud and unafraid, but the girl before her did not look ready to take on a ship full of synthetics at all.

Raan eyed her knuckles again. She could still take it back. She was arbiter. She could call for a recess and find an excuse to un-recuse herself. With her in the debate, she could shift the blame away from Tali back onto Rael. The Conclave might raise some trouble about her well-known fondness for the Zorah family influencing her decisions, but given how much dirt she could give them on Rael, they'd quickly quiet. She had been covering for Rael's inappropriate behavior since Ykala had died. The things she knew about him would have the Conclave howling for his resignation in a heartbeat.

For the thousandth time, she cursed herself for tolerating him. She could have saved his life – stopped all this madness before it began – if she had just listened to her instincts, but she'd always given him another chance, always decided that he needed just a little more time, a little more time to accept that his wife was truly gone and that his time with his daughter was running out. But Ykala had been dead for years now and Rael only seemed to get worse, more withdrawn, more secretive. His secret project on the Alarei was just the beginning, he'd been keeping his projects closer and closer to his suit with every passing day. She'd asked him – begged him, even – to take a leave of absence, but he'd always refused, always assured her he was on the verge of a breakthrough. When Tali had rejoined the Normandy, she'd tried to convince Rael to go with her under pretense of acting as ambassador to the humans, but he'd shut down the motion in bureaucracy before it could even be put to a vote. She had even been considering going to the Conclave with her troubles.

But she hadn't. She'd given him the benefit of the doubt, like always. Whatever one could say of him, Rael was a genius, and a tireless champion for the quarians. He knew more about geth than any quarian alive, and so when he said he was on the verge of defeating the geth, Raan had not second guessed him. She'd trusted his judgment.

She would not make the same mistake again.

"If it comes to choosing between me and the ship," he'd said, "choose the ship." He'd practically pleaded.

She wouldn't listen. She would choose Rael. The geth could take his ship and his research. She wanted him back. Tali needed her father back, alive and back the way he was when she was young.

And the only way to do that was to let Tali take the brunt of the trial for now.

It was the right choice, even if only she could see it.

Raan looked back to Tali. Shoulders slumped, mask down, the girl looked boneless, drained by what she had heard. And yet she did have a shotgun. She had done amazing things. And the human next to her was Commander Shepard, the only human most quarians could name. He had killed a Reaper, or so it was said.

Tali and Shepard were heroes. The best their races had to offer.

Surely between them they would be safe.

…right?

–

Tali's quills had gotten long. As she peeled the girl's helmet from her head, Raan could see where her scalp was being squeezed, pinched in by the quills pressing against the metal.

She tsk'd quietly, setting the helmet's rear piece next to the visor on the narrow shelf that had once been the lip of one of the Neema's escape pods, back when it was a turian ship. "How long has it been since you've cut these, Tali?" she asked, running a finger down one of the bigger quills. It was jet black and polished.

Tali mumbled something and kept staring at the wall. She hadn't said a word since the Admirals had passed their judgment. Tali'Zorah, guilty of treason against the fleet unless she could reestablish her innocence on the Alarei.

Raan's plan had worked, and yet it left a poisonous taste in her mouth.

She tried to brush it away. "If you're going to be spending time on that ship, you really need to talk to the human about getting a cleanroom for you," she said with as much cheer as she could manage. She moved onto the helmet's lower frame, detaching the magnets at the back and splitting it down the middle. Cybernetic jacks detached cleanly, wires pulled from their sockets with a gentle tug, and Tali's head was free. Her neck rings came next, unhooking just below the chin and slackening enough for Raan to pull each scute out and stack them with the rest. "Does the Normandy have escape pods?"

Tali shivered in the cold air, her quills standing at attention along the length of her pale neck. She seemed to grow ten centimeters out of armor, her plated skin stretching out for the first time in what had surely been months. "Twelve," she said quietly, her voice strangely whispery without vocoder assistance. "But I don't think the humans would appreciate me turning one into a cleanroom."

Raan put her hands to her hips. "Why not?" she demanded. "Even humans get sick sometimes, don't they?"

"Sterile air doesn't cure infection, Raan," she said, rolling her eyes with her voice. "They just douse things in disinfectant."

Raan clicked her tongue as she fetched a pair of shears from a sealed compartment on the door. It was hard to imagine having enough resources to be willing to waste the buckets of disinfectant it took to truly sterilize an entire room. The humans didn't know how good they had it.

The shears had been heat-sterilized on a fuel line and were brilliantly shiny and clean, and yet Raan gave them a careful inspection for any potential contaminants before setting them to Tali's quills. She clipped each one as close to the base as she could get without nicking her skin. But for the click of the shears, the room was quiet. Tali stared past the wall and Raan tried to think of something to say – anything to say. The thought of Tali storming the Alarei was terrifying to her – the fact that Tali was so silent even more so.

Though, to her credit, Tali did not look nervous. More tired. Shell-shocked. Raan almost wished the girl was nervous. "How many geth-" she tried.

"None, Raan," Tali interrupted, voice suddenly refilled with fire. "I didn't send live geth to the Fleet."

Raan chose not to mention the shipping manifests Xen had so proudly bandied about during the trial, the manifests that documented in excruciating detail the dozens of geth components Tali had sent her father. "Of course not, Tali, but if the geth on the Alarei are the ones you sent-"

"The ones I sent were dead!" Tali snapped, and fell silent again, arms held tight across her chest.

Raan did not press the issue.

"Thirty or forty," Tali admitted after a moment, voice morose. "Depending on how they put the parts together."

Raan almost dropped her shears. Eyes wide, she turned Tali around. "Thirty or forty?"

Tali looked nonplussed. "Maybe less. I would have thought most of the parts I sent were unsalvageable. But my father knows a lot about how geth work."

Raan's mouth felt dry. Forty geth. She had sent her niece to her death. "Gerrel has an attachment of marines readied," she blurted as Tali retook her seat. "The Conclave wouldn't let him send them. But they could help you." She hesitated. "If you want." It was technically against the law but Raan could figure that out later. Suddenly Gerrel's attitude seemed a lot easier to understand.

Tali said nothing, flexing her remaining quills and staring at the wall like she didn't even care she was about to go face forty geth. Raan's stomach did flips. Her hands shook.

She tried again. "You… you don't have to do this," she said. "There are other ways. We… we could go back and get the treason charge dealt with."

"That would mean leaving my father to die," Tali pointed out, flexing her quills again. She gestured to the unpruned side of her head.

Raan swallowed heavily and lifted her shears. She steadied her hands and clipped another quill back.

"And you'd charge him with treason anyway," Tali added.

Raan frowned but she did not deny it.

"I'd rather risk the forty geth," Tali said, and slumped down a little further in her seat, waiting for Raan to resume.

Raan did not resume. She set the shears aside and turned Tali around to face her. The girl's skin felt like polished marble under her grip, thick with sinew. "Do you know what Gerrel thinks happened on the Alarei?" Raan asked, voice quiet. Tali shook her head. "He thinks the geth somehow snuck on from the outside. He thinks Rael found a way to defeat them and so they infiltrated the fleet to stop him." It was patently ridiculous to think the geth could have broken their way onto a civilian ship in the middle of a flotilla of ten thousand craft, but it was all Gerrel would hear of his friend. He simply wouldn't believe that Rael had been the architect of his own demise.

Tali was quiet. "What if he did find a way to defeat them? Would you still call him a traitor?"

"Yes, Tali. I have done all I can to save Rael, and I pray he comes back to us. But alive or dead, what he has done is treason. He will not go unpunished for this."

"Not even if he figured out how to defeat the geth?" Tali repeated.

Raan sighed. The girl was her father's daughter. "This isour home," Raan said, as gently as she could. This is where the people we love live. Rannoch is lost to us and forever will be. Even if we could reclaim it."

"Rannoch is our home," Tali insisted, eyes narrowed in determination. "Until we get it back we are nothing. Nobody. How can we stand up proud while we live… here?" Tali gestured weakly around the room, disdain written on her face.

Raan felt something inside her stir. It was an argument she'd had before, a million times, and without warning all her frustration came up in a rush. "What use is having a planet if it costs us our families?" she demanded. "Would having Rannoch back mean anything without the millions of lives it would cost us to retake it? Does your Normandy mean anything to you without its captain or crew?"

Tali's stared at Raan with wide, glowing eyes, stunned into silence by the admiral's outburst. Raan did not meet her glance, busying herself instead resterilizing the shears. "No," Raan answered her own question after a moment, setting back to Tali's quills. "A ship without a crew is just a machine. A planet without a people is just a piece of rock."

Neither of them spoke for a long time after that, listening to the quiet as Raan worked. Once she'd finished shortening Tali's quills, she took a smaller paring knife to round down the blunt ends to minimize the risk of splinters. Then she cleaned with a sterile polymer cloth dipped in the tiniest dab of precious disinfectant. She ran it down Tali's plates, cleaning the ridges between them for powder residue and dead skin that tended to build up. When that was through, she tended to Tali's teeth, checked her tongue and eyes and the four timpani of her earholes. Every scar she found (and Tali had more than a quarian of her age had any right to) Raan carefully cleaned and disinfected before sealing them over with a drop of adhesive.

While she worked, she tried to see Tali's thoughts.

She regretted yelling at her, especially with all that was going on, but Tali was simply too smart, too important to be allowed to follow in her father's footsteps. Not six circuits old and yet about to go dive into a ship full of synthetics. Not six circuits old and already bitter about a homeworld she had never seen – could never even picture. Not six circuits old and already filled with hate for the geth, for the galaxy that let her ancestors down.

Raan had no love for the geth, but she knew scapegoating when she saw it. No matter what anyone said, the geth were not their real concern. In her long life, Raan had never lost a loved one to the geth. But she'd lost family to disease, to hunger, to ship accidents. She'd watched her friend Ykala waste away to nothing over something so little as a malfunctioning air filter. Her mate had been carried off by slavers who'd simply filled his ship with a glass-melting vapor and plucked up the crew as they fled out the airlocks. Her sons had resorted to privateering, stealing ships from whatever aliens did not flee from the approaching Flotilla – then once they'd gone after a volus transport and never returned.

The geth only killed those who asked for it. The rest of the galaxy had long ago accepted that the Perseus Veil was off limits, that all it took to have peace was to stay away. The geth had left the Morning War behind.

And yet every year more and more money and time and effort and hate was spent on the geth. Teams were sent to probe geth space for weakness – many never returned. When Raan had first become Admiral and had completed marine training as a formal induction into the military, all they'd spoken of was how to kill geth, what weapons worked against geth, what tactics worked against geth. Nothing about slavers. With all the resources and time they devoted to the geth, they could be improving life support, working on health infrastructure, buying ships legitimately.

Raan had tried, honestly tried to get her people to see this, but it seemed she was fighting a losing battle. Even the Outrider Coalition didn't help her, to say nothing of her fellow Admirals. Xen made no secret that she found geth ten times as interesting as any real person, and Gerrel and Rael were only slightly better.

No one understood. For better or worse, the Flotilla was their home. It had been for three hundred years, and yet the whole quarian race treated it like it was a temporary fix.

"We have no planet, Tali," Raan said quietly as she dabbed Tali's neck and cheeks with fresh hygroscopic powder to inhibit bacterial growth, "but we have family. It is all that matters."

Tali said nothing.

They did not speak again until they'd left the cleanroom. Tali was back in her helmet, the clasps engaged, the fit readjusted. Raan could not help but see the new set in her shoulders as Tali pressed the button that would have once launched the turian ship's escape pods and the clean room slid out of its socket with a rumble, dumping the contaminated air and the tips of Tali's quills out into the vacuum of space. The room would bake in the abyss for a few days, long enough for radiation and vacuum to kill any pathogens left inside, before the Neema's crew reclaimed it.

Raan set a hand on Tali's shoulder. "Gerrel's marines will meet you in-"

"I will take Shepard and Garrus," Tali interrupted. At Raan's surprised look, she added "he's a turian. He has a helmet."

Raan raised a brow. "If you do not want Gerrel's marines, so be it. But three people? At least the rest of your shipmates could c-"

"No," Tali cut her off again. Just Shepard and Garrus." The two quarians met eyes. "They might be my only family left."

The anger in Tali's eyes was unmistakable.

"…Tali," Raan started, trying to bury the sting of Tali's words.

Tali just stared back, daring her to protest. "Don't coddle me, Raan. I'm not stupid. You made this happen." With that, she pivoted on one booted foot and marched away, back to the antechamber where no doubt Shepard waited to take her to the Alarei.

Raan's eyes followed Tali out. In that moment, there was so much of Rael in her.

---

29 years previously…

–

The former Admiral Nyin'Vael had told her that it would be hard.

"They'll hate you for a time," she'd said, in what Raan had come to understand was her typical lack of tact. "You're new, that's normal. But the rest of the board is new too." Nyin had stared her hard in the mask as she'd explained. "They'll accuse you of just about anything. Don't let it get to you. Do what you have to do. Hold your vector. In time, it will be easier." And then Nyin had turned to leave, as if that was that, but not before adding – almost casually – "of course, you'll have it worse than I ever did, so use your best judgment. Keelah'selai, Admiral Shala'Raan."

Nyin had undersold it.

Raan had tried to be understanding. The Admiralty Board resigning was hard on everyone. The Conclave was furious. Half a dozen Qilahran-heavy ships (those that hadn't had their whole crews exiled for treason) had announced their intentions to continue the rebellion, even with the fledgling Admiral Gossit keeping every gun in the heavy fleet aimed squarely at them. Accusations of bigotry, of corruption, of betrayal were everywhere. The formerly-prominent Vael family – clan of two of the departing Admirals – had crashed so far down the ranks that some were now calling for its dissolution.

And yet with all the hate, all the confusion, all the fear flying around the Flotilla, it seemed to Raan that the only thing everyone agreed on was that she, Admiral Shala'Raan, formerly vas Siovanni and newly vas Tonbay, was the cause.

That was an exaggeration, of course, but after her first ten days of Admiralty were met with only dirty looks and muttered insults, it was feeling truer and truer.

"Admiral?" Ykala's voice came from below Raan's seat. Behind her mask, her eyes looked concerned. Raan did not answer, staring out at the long line of quarians waiting for an audience with her. The brief civil war was over, but it had left many questions in its wake, and all five of the new Admirals had been holding court for almost three days straight. "Shala?" Ykala asked again, quieter. "Are you ready for the next petitioner?"

Raan shook the weariness from her head. She was glad for Ykala – the girl was in the situation boat as Raan herself was. Raan doubted she'd have gotten through it without someone to share it with. "Yes," she said. "Yes, bring him forward."

A young quarian boy – probably fresh back from his pilgrimage – stepped up to her desk.

Ykala read his name from her datapad – Kzotta'Noan vas Tonbay nar Defranz– and Raan felt her stomach descend a bit. It was one of her new shipmates on the Tonbay.

Kzotta gave a short nod of his helmet, but Raan could see the contempt in his luminous eyes. "Admiral Raan vas Siovanni," he started, and Raan braced herself. "I am here to ask for the Board to reverse its decision on my cousin's exile."

Raan folded her hands. It was the same thing, yet again. Kzotta was only the latest in what had been an endless stretch of petitioners hoping for the same thing. Nyin had told her to listen to what each of them had to say and then tell each of them 'no' – the Admirals hadn't resigned their posts just to let the rebels back into the fleet. The rebels – all one thousand, one hundred eighty six of them – were exiled, pure and simple.

Still, Raan had to listen. There had been a scant few cases overturned already, mostly cases of mistaken identity. "Who was your cousin?" she asked, trying to ignore the way Kzotta looked up at her.

"Jeyam'Noan nar Defranz," he said.

Ykala consulted her console. "Jeyam'Noan nar Defranz," she read the words she'd repeated so many times already, "convicted of treason among the vas Nayctah cultists, sentenced to exile. Sentence was commuted under edict of the Conclave, then re-upheld by unanimous decision of the former Admiralty Board." She sighed. "Jeyam'Noan was captured along with fourteen other Defranz crewmembers piloting the gunship Alkanna against the battleship Aolenn'vasha, contributing to a battle that cost nearly eight hundred quarian lives." She looked up to Raan.

Raan just stared down at Kzotta, eyes expectant.

"He's just a kid," Kzotta said, looking nervous. He knew how bad Jeyam's crime looked. "Ain't even gone on his pilgrimage yet. Some bully tells him he's piloting a gunship, what's he supposed to say?"

"He was supposed to say 'no'," Raan said, voice calm. It was no decision at all. "Your request is denied. I will not support overturning your cousin's exile."

Kzotta's eyes narrowed. If he was hiding his distaste for Raan before, he wasn't now. "You hypocrite."

Raan's stomach knotted. She didn't know how many more of these she could take.

"Accusing a kid of treason after what you did. We don't want you on the Tonbay. You were on the Siovanni. Home come you didn't get exiled?"

"Because I did what your cousin did not, and chose the fleet over my homeship. I left rather than rebel." Raan said, as evenly as she could manage.

Kzotta muttered something, too quiet to hear. And yet somehow Raan knew what it was all the same. "Vael whore."

"You should address the Admiral with more respect," Ykala said, frowning. She had left the Siovanni for the Tonbay to avoid the rebels too – it was only Raan's new role as Admiral had made her the target for all of the abuse.

Kzotta cleared his air filter at her.

The room fell silent in shock. Clearing an air filter at another quarian – an Admiral's aide no less – was almost unthinkably rude. Kzotta seemed to puff up at his own bravado, and turned to storm off…

Only to run into the quarian behind him. Another young male, taller and thinner than Kzotta, in a black suit patterned with the Zorah purple. "You could have waited to clear your filter until you were not in audience with an Admiral," the Zorah said, arresting Kzotta's escape with a firm grip on the shoulders of his suit, "But you didn't. That kind of hygiene is commendable." Kzotta broke his grip and staggered back, confused. The Zorah just rubbed at his vocoder in mock thought. "I think Special Projects could use someone with your commitment to cleanliness to manage waste disposal for our ships."

"Piss off, Zorah."

The Zorah just clicked his tongue. "Unfortunately for you, Admiral Tega will not find his mercy so easy as Raan does hers."

Kzotta backed up a few paces, apparently realizing only now what he'd done.

"Apologize to the Admiral, will you?" the Zorah asked.

Kzotta's eyes were wide as he looked up at Raan. "S…sorry, Ma'am." He turned to leave.

"And her assistant?" the Zorah added. Kzotta turned and mumbled an apology at Ykala. The whole room watched him scurry out. Raan could not help but smile – seeing the boy run was about the only cheering sight Raan had had all week. "I suspect you shall have Tega's work order waiting for you by the time you get back to the Tonbay." the Zorah called out after him, before calmly readjusting his gloves and stepping back into line.

Raan just stared.

"Uh… Rael'Zorah vas Rayya nar Kestus," Ykala read, and Raan could hear the grin in her voice.

Rael'Zorah stepped forward and gave a showy bow. "Pleasure to meet you, Admiral." He met her gaze. "I am sure that fool does not represent your new ship at all. I should expect they would be very proud to accept you. Many other ships rue that the Tonbay got to you first."

The praise felt good, but Raan was too decorous (and much too wise) to put much stock in the young male's flattery. "He is entitled to his opinion."

"Naturally," Rael agreed. "But it is my opinion that hisopinion is moronic, and so I will treat you," he looked at Ykala with a none-too-innocent flick of his brows, "and your staff… with only the utmost respect."

Raan could practically feel Ykala blush from where she sat. "Are you here to petition for an exiled relative as well?" she asked, cutting through the adolescent pheromones that threatened to clog the ship's air filters.

Rael shook his head. "No, Admiral. Twenty-seven Zorahs on your list, I believe, and I, for one, earnestly hope they all end up serving their exile on Tuchanka. If the krogan find them palatable, they will at least do some good." Raan nodded. The Zorahs were not known for their mercy. "As I mentioned, I work for Admiral Tega's Special Projects. He sent me to petition your support for the release of some of the exiles' ships." Rael activated an omni-tool on each wrist and called up the schematics of the ships in question. "Several have had their entire crews exiled, and Admiral Tega feels some of these ships would be of better use in his hands than repopulated as civilian vessels."

Without asking permission, Rael transferred his data to Raan's console, and it bloomed with miniature ships before her eyes. "Which ships?" she asked.

"Admiral Tega did not specify. But if I may? The Alepso, Syreuteuth, Balupel, Alarei, and Runein would be ideally suited for some of our upcoming work."

Raan's brows rose. "Three of those ships are not empty, Rael'Zorah."

Rael averted his eyes. "Well… no. But almost."

"You are asking me to evict the remaining crew from their homes, then. This is a bold request."

"Admiral Tega is asking," Rael corrected, "and I think of it as consolidating. I have arranged with my captain to accept any interested among the evicted onto the Rayya, and Admiral Tega assures me the same offer will stand on the Konal.We would even be willing to accept them as research assistants for Special Projects if they were so inclined."

Raan dismissed the ship holograms with a wave of her hand. "If they are inclined to give up their homeships. These people have done nothing wrong, Rael'Zorah."

Rael shrugged. "One could construct an argument that many of the rebels did nothing wrong either," he said, pacing. He spoke as if to himself, but Raan knew it was showmanship. "They simply decided to put their own needs above those of the Fleet. Admiral Tega is offering these lonely crews the opportunity to do the opposite." He stared up at Raan, ramrod straight and confident. "Special Projects' research has the potential to save the quarian race, Admiral," he said, believing it utterly. "Many of those ships would be incalculable resources in our hands."

Raan looked down at him. She had seen his type before. Young, fearless, smart. Probably just returned from his Pilgrimage and thought he was ready to save the Fleet, to take on the geth single handedly. Still… he had some charm. And Ykala seemed to like him.

"You left your homeship for the Fleet," Rael'Zorah reminded her.

Raan nodded, coming to a decision. "Rael'Zorah, I will consider your proposal," she said, the twist of a smile on her lips.

Rael's grin was obvious even from behind his helmet. "That is all I can ask," he said, and he bowed again, lower, more showily. It was an alien gesture – turian, Raan would guess – and the pride in the boy's eyes as he stood made it clear he thought it made him look dignified.

Perhaps it did.

---

Presently…

–

"Are you sure you're alright, Admiral?"

Koris looked up from the datapad on his lap – he hadn't really been reading it – to see a cluster of his new students staring out at him from behind the crèche walls. With his head muddied by fever it took him a moment to realize what had been asked.

"You were coughing," one of the children – no more than a circuit old, with her baggy plastic suit taped to her temporary gloves and helmet – said, her fingers fiddling with the air hose that hooked to her back.

Koris shook his head. "Was I?" He sniffed wetly. His throat was rather raw. "Yes, yes, of course. I'm fine, children. No need to worry." He'd had enough of that today. "Back to your work, please. I expect your writings done before I leave."

"You're sick, Admiral," one of the students accused.

Koris' eyes narrowed. "And you're attempting to escape your studies. If you would leave matters of my health to me please, that would be most appreciated." He snapped his fingers. "Now. Back to your work." The young quarians gave a groan but returned to their consoles and the homework Koris had assigned them.

It was true, Koris' immune system had been acting up. Again. A little headache, a little itchiness, it was all routine, especially for him. He'd grown so used to it he'd hardly noticed it at first. Even after Shepard and Tali had departed for the Alarei and his headache had progressed into a full-on migraine, he'd simply dosed himself and forgotten about it, determined to see the trial through. His frequent illnesses had done little to help his (quite-undeserved, Koris thought) reputation as the weakest of the five Admirals, and stepping out of the most important trial of the circuit for an immunobooster would only make things worse.

So he'd grit his teeth and stayed for the whole thing, for Tali's return, for the mess that was the second half of the deliberations.

Now it was finally over. One of his assistants had brought him a shot an hour or two previously, but if it was working, he could not tell. He knew he should be resting on the Quib-Quib, but he was far too riled for sleep.

He had plans in motion. Persecuting Han'Gerrel for his rampantly illegal actions a few days previously was high on his list – he'd been waiting for Gerrel to make a mistake of that magnitude for a long time, and watching it ruin him – possibly even cost him his position as Admiral – would be delicious. He had already schedule the first disciplinary hearings.

But now there were even greater things to be done. Rael'Zorah's death – and it was clear now that the great Admiral had well and truly killed himself with his own experiments – would change everything. He'd sent the summons the moment the trial ended, invited every one of his political allies to the Quib-Quib to discuss their next move. They had no time to waste. The military-minded quarians would be scrambling to come up with a new candidate to replace Rael, someone equally warmongering, equally pro-martial law, but Koris could not let them have that chance. He needed an ally on the Board, for once. Time was of the essence – he and his allies had to find their own candidate, and fast.

But with half of his supporters on Outrider's Coalition ships it would take some time to convene. Hours, at least. Hours that Koris' incessant assistants would have him spending sleeping in a medical bay if they could.

He had no intention of doing that if he could help it. He needed time to think, to calm himself before he met with his allies. Time to decide who he would nominate. Time and quiet, not drugs in a crowded med-bay. And so he'd escaped them in the Neema's crowded shuttle bays as the trial attendees massed to return to their homeships and snuck his way back to the crèche to hide amongst the Neema's youngest crewmates.

The crèche was a good hiding place not because it was hidden but because of what he might accomplish there.

The Neema was Gerrel's ship through-and-through. Its crew gave Koris the respect he was due as Admiral (whether they liked it or not, he was of equal military rank to Gerrel), but it was not hard to feel how unwelcome he and his politics were. To them, he was the leader of the enemy, trying to take all their military power away just when they needed it most. For his part, Koris did not bother trying to win any hearts or minds on Gerrel's home territory.

But the Neema's children were a different matter. They were young, still unspoiled by their parents' warmongering. They were worth talking to.

And so the first thing he'd done upon setting foot in the crèche was to assign every single child there homework about quarian history. He knew Gerrel and his captain's curriculum wouldn't have bothered with much beyond military victories of the middle states and indeed – none of the children seemed to even know where to start. He'd had to show them how to access the old Rannochian archives on the fleet's intranet. He'd even had to spell Rannoch for some of them. Children on ships like the Neema were groomed for military service and little else.

Which was precisely why ships like the Neema had become so very, very stupid in the past three hundred years.

Zaal stood, ignoring the ache in his shoulders, and made a round, pacing along the length of the creche's glass walls, staring in at each quarian child in turn. They were all – to their credit – hard at work, bent over consoles, reading writings of their long-lost homeworld. Some were tiny, their plates still soft, their quills translucent bumps on their round skulls, their faces concealed behind brightly-colored full masks half again the size of the child. Others were older, boys and girls nar Neema, preparing to head out on their first sojourn into the greater galaxy.

He'd decided to focus on the Qilaharan tribes that hailed from Rannoch's southern continent today. He stopped by one child about a circuit or so old, wearing a patterned jerkin that identified her as a Raan. "What was the primary export of the Qilaharan southern states?" he asked her.

"Food."

Koris nodded. "And?"

The child screwed up her face behind her clear, bubble-visored helmet for a moment before looking up to him, defeated.

Koris shook his head. "The Qilaharan cultures also exported precious metals and fuel."

"Not geth."

Koris sighed. He was so terribly bored of talking about the geth. Did no quarians care about what they were before the nastiness of the Morning War? "Not geth," Koris agreed. "Those were the handiwork of some of the northern states. The Zorahs and the Vaels and such. Though the southerners were the originators of the VI ancestral databanks that ultimately gave rise to the creation of the geth." He took another step, ignoring the way the Raan girl sighed in relief at his passing. "What else?" he asked the room. "What else were the southerners known for?"

There was silence, but Koris stood through it, letting it build.

"V-veils," one voice supplied.

Koris smiled. "Excellent." He fingered his own hood. "Yes, the veils we wear were a fashion in the south long before the Morning War. Though on Rannoch they were considerably more elaborate. The ship Kalavasta in the civilian fleet has one on display. A deep blue with gold filigree. I'm told the gold alone weighs almost ten kilos." Koris could not help but smile at the quiet gasps he got at that. He'd seen the Kalavasta's veil – the captain had even let him touch it, one of the few pieces of Rannoch that still existed – and it had been a life-changing experience. He liked to think some of these children might get the same opportunity someday.

He kept walking. "What else?" he asked. "The Qilaharan maintained an important city on Rannoch's surface. One which – while now destroyed – should be familiar to every quarian. What was it?" There was a flurry of typing as each child queried their consoles, but Koris looked at another student, this one older, probably only a year or two from their pilgrimage. The boy met his eyes and shrank.

"Hmm?" Koris asked, brows raised.

The boy just shrugged.

Koris sighed again. It was frustrating how much the quarians had forgotten in their exile. The city of Keelhn had been Rannoch's cultural capital, the oldest city on the planet. It had lent its name to their gods, their people, even their homeworld itself. Until the middle states had razed them, it had played host to half of the ancestral imprints on Rannoch. It was not a part of history that should be forgotten, even if it never was attacked by the geth.

He felt a cough slither its way up his throat and he turned, coughing until his mouth burned with the taste of blood. His helmet gave a rattle as it pushed a blast of clean air down his nostrils and the dehumidifiers hummed. Koris leaned against the wall.

"Admiral?"

Koris shook his head. "The city," he managed, trying to force down another coughing fit. "Qilaharan city. What was it?"

The boy stood up from his desk. "Admiral, you're not supposed to be here if you're sick."

Koris just frowned. It was true, even suited quarians were expected to be careful around the crèche – signs painted upon the walls attested as much – but it was foolishness. If the boy thought he could oust Koris so easily, he was mistaken. "You are behind glass and the best filtration systems on the ship," he said, steadying himself against a bulkhead. "And furthermore, I have no infection to give you. I think you will be fine. Now, the city, please."

"I think I need a medic," the boy said, ignoring him.

Koris rolled his eyes, halfway amused at the boy's transparency. "I will call one for you just as soon as I am convinced you understand the significance of the Qilaharans' cities." He crossed his arms.

The boy coughed into his helmet. "I-I'm serious," he said, forcing another cough. "I need one of the crèche medics."

Koris narrowed his eyes.

–

The boy – Damec'Keeln nar Neema, as it turned out – had eyes as wide as moons as Koris led him down the crowded hallways of the ship. All of his vitriol had disappeared when Koris had opened the creche's airlock, disconnected his air hose, and pulled him out – he'd probably never left the crèche before, never seen an actual medbay, instead being cared for by the crèche's dedicated medics.

He pressed numbly at the datapad in his hands as Koris dragged him along. "I… I think I feel better, sir," he tried, voice weak.

Koris just shook his head. "No, no, you were quite right," he said, not quite keeping the gentle mockery out of his tone. "I may have contaminated the lot of you."

"Children aren't supposed to leave th-"

"I'm an Admiral," Koris reminded him, ignoring the stares of the Neema's crew as he dragged the boy towards the medbay. "I think I can handle the consequences. It won't be terribly long before you are off on your Pilgrimage, Damec. You'd best get used to leaving your cage." Koris could see he was scaring the boy, but that was good. If Damec was going to become a marine (or, ancestors willing, absolutely anything else) he would need to know how his immune system actually worked.

The medbay was even more crowded than usual, packed with hypochondriacs who were convinced Captain Shepard's brief stay on the ship had contaminated them. Koris rolled his eyes at the fools. If only they had been lucky enough to meet him when they were Damec's age, they would not be so foolishly alarmist in matters of health. The Neema was a big ship – one of the Fleet's heavy frigates (as if any other sort would have satisfied Han'Gerrel) – but it was overcapacity. Hundreds of quarians from all across the fleet had shown up to watch Tali's trial, and now that it was over the line waiting to see the medics spilled from the medbay and wound down the hall.

Koris and Damec took their place in line with the rest.

"Read," Koris commanded, resting a hand on Damec's shoulder. "We will be here for a while. You have plenty of time to find the city I asked for." Damec nodded, eyes still wide at the spectacle around him.

Koris scanned the crowd. He was confident his assistants wouldn't bother checking the medbay for him – he had made it clear how little he liked the medics poking at him – but there were a great many others he'd just as soon not run into while they waited. The crowds were a sea of Zorah purple today – whether true Zorahs or simply fans of Rael'Zorah or Tali herself wearing their colors in protest of the treason accusations. Koris eyed the nearest pack of purple-hooded miscreants warily. Rael himself had been a warmonger, but he was at least a very smart warmonger, a quarian who knew that a line had to be drawn at some point. Koris was not confident the same could be said about Rael's fan club, many of whom seemed to think Rael was still alive somehow, perhaps already on his way to Rannoch to liberate it for them.

Koris saw others too, interest groups that didn't care about the Zorahs but had realized the trial was more complicated than just Rael and Tali's fate. The Idennites were up in arms about Shepard and the turian being brought onboard, and that was just the start with them – Koris knew once it got out that the Normandy was a Cerberus ship and that it had been allowed to leave unaccosted, there would be hell to pay. The Outrider Coalition was present in force too. Most of those were Koris' allies, but even they often caused him more trouble than anything else. Koris even recognized Hide'Col vas Quib-Quib and his usual cadre of radical geth sympathizers in the line up ahead and did his best to duck behind the quarian in front of him. Hide had his heart in the right place, but had never seemed to grasp the delicacy of the geth situation like Koris would prefer. He and his followers were always submitting proposals to the Conclave to land on Rannoch straightaway, convinced that the geth would never fire upon them, and Koris had had to fight his whole career not to be lumped into that camp.

Contrary to popular belief, Koris knew all too well how dangerous the geth were. Even if he hadn't, the Alarei should have been a significant enough clue.

"Your immune system," Koris explained, once he was confident no one was going to pounce on them, "is a very complicated thing." Damec gave him his full attention and more now. "And not all illnesses are equal. They have different symptoms, different causes, different infectivity. Different responses." He squeezed the boy's shoulder. "In some cases, an immuno-booster could save your life. In others it would kill you."

"Yes Admiral." Damec nodded, eyes still wide and overwhelmed.

Koris nodded back, satisfied. "My current illness is simply a hyper-response to foreign material. Some haywire immune activity. It's a deregulation. Not a pathogen. More an illness. It isn't contagious." He squeezed Damec's shoulder again for emphasis. "It would be a poor excuse for me to shirk homework. It is an even poorer excuse for you."

The line pondered along and Koris left the boy to his reading after that (or, rather, to pretendingto read while gawking at the noisy crowd of quarians that filled the corridor shoulder to shoulder). The two of them made an odd pair, but aside from the occasional curious stare, nobody paid them any undue attention.

Until they finally got to a medic, that was.

The medic recognized them with a mixture of horror and amazement in her luminescent eyes.

Koris ignored her outrage, pushing past her into the med bay. "Admiral Zaal'Koris vas Quib-Quib," he said, peering into the nearest bay. "Damec'Keeln and I are on a bit of a pilgrimage together. We need to see the infection ward." The quarians in the first room stared out at Koris with confused faces, but he recognized the labels on the medicines they were being given – immunosuppressants for generalized reactions like his. He started for the next door.

The medic followed. "Admiral!" she shouted, finally having found her tongue. "That is a child!"

Koris ignored her. "Any patient with a true infection will do, ma'am," he said. "We are educating ourselves today. Think of it as preventative medicine."

"He needs to go back to the crèche!" Koris felt his grip on Damec's shoulder wrenched away by the medic's hands.

Koris turned and stared at her and she froze like she'd been spotted by some great predator. In her grip, Damec looked conflicted, but the look she gave him was nothing short of terror. He wondered what monster stories the Gerrel family had told her about him.

Still. There were benefits to be had.

"You will not take him," he said, voice quiet.

The medic released Damec like she'd been burnt.

Koris turned and led the way down the hall, Damec and the nervous medic in tow. Everywhere he went the medical bays were packed with patients receiving immunosuppressants, and he could not help but be irritated. It was only the last of the five bays that was set aside for quarians with contagious illnesses, each patient cloistered within a large, sterile cell.

Koris walked into the first cubicle without hesitation, Damec and the medic following behind.

Inside on one of the two cots laid a male quarian, armored in a red-and-beige hardsuit pocked with use. Koris recognized him instantly, even with half a dozen IV drips hooked to the ports in his arms and chin. He filed into the narrow standing space next to the cot, ushering in the others, and closed the cubicle door behind his captive audience.

He cleared his throat. "Thisunfortunate quarian," he said, consulting the console by the marine's feet, "has an infection." Koris paged through the medics' notes. "He sustained four puncture wounds on the planet Haestrom. Kal'Reegar, tell the boy how you feel."

The marine looked at Damec, who stared back with eyes that said he expected to melt if Reegar so much as blinked at him. "Like a suit full of shit, sir," he said, not unkindly.

"More specifically, please?"

Reegar's brows rose. "Err… Okay," he said. " Pounding head. Nasty fever. Coughing up blood. Can't hardly think straight without meds. Heart pounding like crazy. Feel like I've been run through an engine."

Koris was satisfied. "Could you stand, if you were so inclined?"

"For a little while. Stood up in the trial for a minute or two."

"And how long have you been ill?"

"Nine weeks, sir." Reegar paused. "Err… Maybe ten. Or twelve. I don't remember."

"Thank you, Kal'Reegar." Koris nodded and turned back to his erstwhile student. "Were he not wearing a suit," he said, "this marine would be highly contagious. His immune system is fighting a pathogen he picked up on Haestrom, probably a strain that originated from Rannoch and was spread to the colonies by spacers long before the Morning War. A true quarian illness. With antibiotics and immune boosting, he will recover, but it will take many weeks to defeat the infection."

He looked at Damec until the boy met his gaze.

"I, on the other hand, am suffering a general response to exposure to some foreign material. No pathogen, no illness. I am not contagious, nor am I in any great danger. If I took some immune-compromisers, I would recover in a matter of hours. Understand?"

Damec nodded.

The medic finally spoke up. "Now may I take him back to the crèche, Admiral?"

Koris nodded magnanimously. "You may."

The medic took Damec and rushed out the door. With a last quiet thank you to Reegar, Koris followed…

Only to find his assistants waiting for him outside the cell, wearing matched expressions of disapproval. Koris glared at the medic, who simply excused herself with a satisfied shine to her eyes.

"Admiral…" one of his assistants – Nala'Koris, a distant cousin – intoned. She did not look happy to see him. Behind her her counterpart looked no more amused.

Koris shrugged, defeated. "I am a consummate educator," he offered.

"Sit down, consummate educator," Nala commanded, pointing to the empty cot by Reegar. "You are getting treatment."

She had starfire in her eyes, and Koris knew there was no point in arguing. He could hardly evade them again, right in the middle of the medbay, and they looked like they were ready to strap him down if they needed to. He took his seat on the cot, resolving to save his battles for another day.

His assistants stayed by his side while a pair of medics came to fuss over him, testing his temperature with a probe slid into the jack beneath his jaw, mucking their way through adjusting the medical diagnostics and protocols in his suit's onboard computer (which he'd finally gotten to the configuration he liked, thank you very much), and generally making pests of themselves. Then there were the questions. Was he eating right, had he had any suit breaches lately, did he need them to go over any issues of suit maintenance, was he noticing any fever, was he taking proper contamination procedures. The patronization droned on and on, as if he wasn't an Admiral.

He only got respite once they'd stuck an IV of immunosuppressors into his forearm and forced him down to rest, but even after they'd left the room, Koris could see his assistants' silhouette through the translucent cubicle walls. They didn't trust him not to try to escape.

He sighed, staring at the ceiling for all of thirty seconds before getting bored and turning to look at his roommate. Kal'Reegar had been silent through the whole ordeal, lying with his back turned as his own battery of medications dripped into him.

"Medics, huh?" Koris asked.

Reegar turned to his other side to regard the Admiral. "Only trying to do their job I'm sure, Admiral," he said. He sounded polite enough, but Koris could hear disapproval in his tone. Not surprising, considering he was one of Gerrel's favored pets.

Koris ignored it as he disconnected the IV. Reegar's eyes watched him with guarded curiosity as he carefully removed the needle and tied off the line before draping it over a nearby console to prevent it siphoning valuable medicine onto the floor. Koris sat up and stretched his neck, clearing his clogged sinuses with a loud snort.

"Thank you for your assistance with my little demonstration. I am sure Damec will remember," he said. He paused. "I do hope your health is returning swiftly."

"Piss poor, sir, but coming back," Reegar said. He gestured to the IV lines in his own arms. "Gonna be on these for half a circuit." His voice was still stiff, still guarded. Still full of distrust.

Koris frowned, irritated. "Still, if I recall correctly, Haestrom is in gethspace," he said. "Positively crawling with geth, to hear Gerrel describe it. It is a lucky thing you came back at all." It was petty, to imply that being sent to Haestrom was somehow Reegar's fault, but all the same, Koris was tired of this ship's bad attitude.

"Nothin' I haven't suffered before," Reegar said, unruffled. He stared at Koris. "Won't be fighting for a bit but thankfully I can still speak."

"Damn straight. Tali's done more for this fleet than you assholes ever will. You're pissing on everything I fought for! Everything Tali fought for! So if you exile her… you might as well do the same to me." The marine had been so unsteady on his feet that he'd needed the other quarian – the halfwit – to hold him up, but his voice had been powerful enough for the crowd to hear. He'd practically whipped them into a frenzy in three sentences.

Reegar stared, pale eyes ice cold, willing Koris to remember and be ashamed.

Koris sighed. "You spoke well, Kal'Reegar vas Heera," he admitted. "You said something I believe we needed to hear. I wish I had said it."

"I wish that too, sir."

Koris eyed him. "I am sensing some resentment, Kal'Reegar."

"I'm sorry, sir," Reegar said, not denying it.

Koris sighed again. "I did what I had to do. I am frightfully alone on the Board as it is. If I must take drastic action to keep an additional vote out of Rael'Zorah's suicidal plans, then so be it." He shook his head. "Tali'Zorah must not be made Admiral." Rael's spot would need to be filled, and if the quarian people were to survive, it could not go to his daughter. She would be him all over again, Koris was sure of it. She was popular, she was intelligent, she was an expert on killing geth. She was Rael's own daughter, and Rael had treated her like his own parents had treated him.

But she could not be Admiral. Koris had fought against Rael and Gerrel on the Board for many years. It was only by Raan's indecisiveness and Xen's general apathy that had kept them from invading Rannoch already. But it was only a matter of time before he lost that fight. He needed another vote on his side.

"Not Tali," Koris whispered again.

Reegar was unconvinced. "Ancestors know we don't need another heroon the board," he said, voice dripping with sarcasm. Koris looked at him. "…sir."

"Rael was hardly a hero."

Reegar just shook his head and rolled over again, turning his back to Koris. "I wouldn't expect you to understand."

Koris ignored the flash of anger he felt at that comment. People had been saying its ilk to him for years, how he didn't understandwhat being a military quarian was like, but it was a patently ridiculous accusation. He'd been a marine in his youth, just as Rael'Zorah and Han'Gerrel had (in fact, he'd served three years longer than Rael, who'd left to join Special Projects immediately after returning from his pilgrimage). He'd also served on the Conclave like Raan, eventually following her onto the Board after the forced removal of Admiral Lestra'col vas Nyara. On the Board, only he had legitimately invested in both halves of the quarian government, the military and civilian alike.

"I think I understand better than you give me credit for, Reegar. I was once a marine."

Reegar didn't turn back, but all the same Koris could see the anger in his eyes. "I don't think a marine would throw a dead brother's daughter out the airlock for political reasons. I don't think a marine would try to exile a dead brother's daughter."

"I voted to exonerate her," Koris said, but it sounded weak even to him. It had been unanimous – after the crowd of onlookers had rallied, retracting the charges was the only way to avoid a nasty political fallout. He could hardly count himself among Tali's allies for that. Xen and Raan had orchestrated the trial against Tali – Koris had only really been interested in ousting Rael himself – and yet he had said some rather damning things about her, and so soon after she'd heard about her father. Not to mention trying to sabotage her by having her name changed to vas Normandy. He doubted the girl would ever forgive him.

And he did feel some guilt over that.

The two of them were silent for a long moment. "You are close to Tali," Koris said eventually.

"Somewhat."

Koris hesitated for a moment. "Did you see her after the trial? Did she look well?"

Reegar turned around again, eyes suspicious. "Yeah…" he admitted after a moment. "She had her human with her. Shepard. He'll take care of her."

Koris's brow rose at the forlorn look that took over the marine's face. "You don't look happy about that…" he accused, curious. There was something in the marine's body language, like as sick as he was, it was only on mention of the human that all the strength left to him.

It was simple enough to guess why. He couldn't help but smile a little. "You think she's in some kind of relationship with the human?"

Reegar didn't deny it. "Do you not?"

Koris thought back to the trial. Obviously his plan to change Tali's name had backfired - Captain Shepard had come through for her spectacularly. But a relationship with a human? It was… an unsettling notion. Still, the way she'd jumped into his arms once Raan had read the verdict. "Hmm…" he admitted, and Reegar's shoulders sank a little more. "Yes… I suppose I can see how you might come to that conclusion." He clicked his tongue. "Dreadfully odd, really. Tali is very eligible. And he looks rather like-"

"-A skinned baby," Reegar finished for him.

Koris nodded, mind full of the humans' bizarre, round skulls, pink, fleshy, skin, and distinct lack of plates or quills. "Indeed. Though perhaps with his helmet on he has a decent personality." He shrugged.

Reegar didn't laugh.

Koris sighed. "Kal'Reegar, if you'll allow me to give you some advice…" Reegar looked at him. "The Zorahs are… a difficult family. Stubborn. Fearless in the best and worst sort of way." He shook his head, full of memories of Rael. How he'd hated him just days ago. But now – he was surprised to admit – some part of him actually missed the warmongering lunatic. "But I will be the first to say their loyalty to the Fleet is without compare. Tali will not be away from her home for long." He nodded to himself, realizing it was true. "She will be back, do not fear."

---

12 days previously…

–

Rael'Zorah knew a great many ways to say 'no'.

"It is with deepest regret," he said, standing tall in the middle of the room, the Conclave, the Board, the Coalition, and half a hundred captains from across the fleet hanging on his words, "that the Admiralty Board has decided not to support Zoaph'Daran's motion for the time being."

From his seat behind the podium, Koris resisted the urge to interrupt with a fit of coughing. A scratching feeling had kindled in his throat some days ago after his most recent experiment, giving rise to a wet, futile cough that simply refused to abate, but he'd taken a pill and done his best to hold it in for the hearings. It was getting better. And, compared to last time, the cough was not nearly so severe. Koris took that to be a good sign. He was getting stronger. Still, listening to Rael pontificate overtop the motion he'd worked so hard on for so many days made his cough blaze with a vengeance.

But if nothing else, Koris was a quarian with principles. He would not be so disrespectful, not even to Rael.

And so he just smoldered in silence.

Rael was a powerful orator. As antisocial (and, in Koris' eyes, crazy) as he had become, he was still capable of pulling out the charm that had helped him talk his way into the Board in the first place. For all the Conclave knew – for Rael rarely left his draconian research but for the most critical of Conclave sessions – he was the same brilliant quarian they had voted in years ago.

Some of them knew the truth. Rael's hold had been slipping. But one could hardly see that now.

"The Fleet will be passing through the Valhallan Threshold in the coming weeks," Rael said, oblivious to the dirty stares Koris was shooting his way. "The Raheel-Leyya system, then to Pax and Micah." Rael paused, looking out at his audience. They nodded, anticipating his point. Everyone already knew the Flotilla's circuit route by memory, knew all the trouble spots. The Threshold had given them trouble before. "These are not safe systems on the best of circuits," Rael continued. "Least of all on this one. Council-race corporate interests fight the local krogan and vorcha populations on the Pax system's planet Garvug. Thousands of mercenaries stream through the relay every day to protect the Council's precious resources."

Rael's audience was full of understanding nods. The quarians had little fondness for Citadel business.

"We have no choice," Rael admitted, "but to move through these warzones. But we must all – every one of us – have a mind to safety while we do. We must avoid any compromise, any unnecessary risk. We must double patrols. We must broaden scanner ranges. We must see danger before it happens, and we must be ready to stop it." He paused again, letting his warning sink in.

"It is only with the full fleet in formation that we can safely occupy the cluster," Rael continued, nodding to himself as if it took great effort to admit it. Koris grimaced. "While we would like to authorize Captain Zoaph'Daran's request to escort Coalition ships throughout the cluster's more distant systems in search of habitable worlds, we believe this would be taking an unacceptable risk at this time. The Coalition controls some of the fleet's most important ships, along with many of our representatives here," Rael said, gesturing to the crowd. "We must not risk them lightly."

The audience drank it up.

Rael nodded again, folding his hands behind his back – the picture of magnanimity. "And I ask you," he added, his gaze flitting across the assembled quarians at just the right speed. "Even if the Coalition ships found a suitable world here… Is this really where we want to make our home? Do you really want to share your home with krogan? With vorcha? With the Citadel's parasitic business empires?"

"Do you really want to give up Rannoch to live… here?"

–

Koris was still fuming as he boarded the shuttle that would take him to one of the hub ships. Rael had, once again, managed to ruin everything, and simply make people love him all the more doing it. After his speech – and quite despite the short rebuttals he and Captain Zoaph'Daran had been allowed – the Conclave had voted the Outrider motion down by a landslide. Koris had expected all the military sycophants – all of Zorah and Gerrel's slavering, warmongering fans – to vote against him – missing, perhaps, the fact that unless the whole board wanted to resign, Rael didn't have the tiniest say in whether or not scouting ships could be sent. But for Rael to be able to so easily frighten the rest of the Conclave with veiled, nonspecific warnings of danger was a travesty.

It infuriated him. As far as Koris was concerned, the Outrider's Coalition was the quarians' way out of this mess, captains volunteering to take their ships out to look for new homeworlds. There was danger inherent, yes, but no more than the slow, wasting danger of continuing to live on the Fleet, waiting for a disaster to befall their food source, or their water source, or their fuel source. Putting all of the quarians in a single, fragile pile was lunacy, and when – not if – they had a major supply disaster, their entire species would be in terrible danger. For as long as the fleet had existed, the solution had been clear to everyone – retake Rannoch – but three hundred years later Rannoch remained un-retook.

They had to find a new homeworld. That was how they'd survive, not by slaughtering themselves against the geth on Rannoch or steadily starving themselves out in myriad cramped ship. That was their only chance. And yet in almost a year since the Coalition had been formed (and quite against Koris' constant efforts), Rael and Gerrel had managed to shut down every single real proposal, always promising to assist later. Later. Later. Not here. Not this system.

The Coalition would need military escort. But every time, Rael and Gerrel refused to share their toys. And nobody but Koris seemed to hate them for it.

While Koris had had to fight for every single victory (he'd had to defend the tiny Rannoch museum he maintained on the Quib-Quib from accusations that it was a waste of resources nine times), Rael didn't even have the decency to look like he prepared for his speeches. He just stood up, said a few misleading words, made a few empty promises, and smiled, and everybody suddenly agreed. If they knew who he was, if they knew the laws he broke, the resources he wasted, they would turn on him in a heartbeat. But nobody seemed to care.

Koris tried not to think about it as he took his seat in the shuttle's cramped passenger deck. His stress had brought his cough back with a vengeance and it did not do to linger on Rael's constant awfulness. Hating Rael accomplished nothing. Koris would have his victory someday. Eventually, clearer heads would prevail. He just had to think, had to go back to his datapad and come up with a new plan. Try to convince Captain Zoaph to appeal the Conclave's decision, perhaps.

But when he noticed the characteristic black armor ringed with a lone strap of Zorah purple sitting a few rows up, he could not help himself. He climbed out of his seat.

Rael was staring out the window as he approached.

"Congratulations, Rael," Koris said. "You've managed to stymie progress once again."

Rael said nothing.

Koris would not give up that easily. "You are abominable, you know that?" Koris asked.

Rael slowly turned to look at him, as if he'd only just now noticed Koris was there. His eyes were hollow, dimmer than usual. "I've been told as much," he admitted, voice quiet. He trailed off. "Usually by you," he added.

"What is wrongwith you?" Koris demanded, taking the seat across from Rael. "You know very well Garvug doesn't pose a danger to a few scout ships. How can you possibly-"

Rael returned his gaze to the window like he hadn't even heard.

Koris' brows rose on his head. "…Rael?"

"Why don't you have children, Koris?"

Koris' words died on his tongue, flabbergasted. He stared at the other Admiral in confusion. Since when did Rael care about his personal life? But if Rael was joking, he gave no sign, staring out the window at the swarms of mismatched ships that were the fleet. Koris found himself answering. "I just…" Koris started, "I suppose I never found the right mate."

"The right mate," Rael echoed, nodding, voice empty. Koris shook his head. Something was very wrong. Rael looked… intoxicated, somehow. Long ago, on Rannoch, quarians had enjoyed a vast assortment of liquors, but all such frivolities had been left behind in their exodus. There was no space to grow luxury crops. It wasn't something quarians on the Fleet did. It was wasteful.

But Rael had crossed lines before. Was it possible he'd gotten his hands on some kind of turian alcohol? "Are you ill?" Koris asked, deciding not to accuse anything further than that.

Rael looked at him with a bemused expression. "Not as ill as you are."

Koris faltered. Not this again. He narrowed his eyes, subconsciously clearing his throat of the mucus building up there. "What is thatsupposed to m-"

"It's a good idea, what you've been doing," Rael interrupted. He looked back to his window. "I wish I had thought of it."

Koris stared at him, not believing his ears. How could Rael possibly know what he'd been up to? "What I've been-"

"Why you're always sick," Rael clarified, interrupting.

"Oh." Koris was struck dumb by that, caught between surprise at being found out and confusion at Rael's bizarre behavior. "Thanks," he muttered. He eyed Rael warily. Yes, something was verywrong. If it wasn't illness, it was something else. Had the Zorah finally snapped?

"Is it working?" Rael asked. He looked genuine enough. "Can you do it here?"

Koris paused. It was foolishness. He'd only done it in controlled environments, at controlled time points, and always with his assistants in the next room. His experiments… the quarians weren't ready for them. He wasn't even sure he was ready for them.

And yet he'd been working in secret for so very long. Trying to drag his people into a new direction – without success – for so very long. As much as he hated Rael, the chance to share his secret, to show somebody that he was right, was impossible to resist. The future of the race would come from quarians like Koris, not Rael. Somebody needed to see that. Somebody needed to be on his side, for once.

He made his decision instantly.

Koris stood up and peered around to see if anyone was watching. The shuttle was mostly empty but for a shipment of waste headed to the Liveships for processing – only a handful of other quarians were aboard, and those that were looked suitably distracted.

He slumped back in his seat, satisfied. Rael's eyes followed him as he reached behind his helmet, feeling the smooth metal there. His heart was racing as he felt for the latches, his fingers settling into the familiar grooves. Forty years of training had put an instinctual terror in him that screamed now, twisting his guts into knots of anxiety.

He ignored it, taking a deep breath.

And he unlatched his visor with a click.It came off easily in his hand.

The open air of the shuttle rushed in to meet him so fast it almost made him nauseous. The air was shockingly cold on his plates. Smells and feelings and tastes assaulted his senses, unfamiliar and so powerful and real.Koris had to clench his tearing eyes shut, willing his dizziness away as he drank in the sensory assault that was breathing without a helmet.

Slowly, slowly his heart rate calmed, and he opened his eyes. Through the itching and burning Rael stared at him, expressionless, and Koris was struck by how much more vibrant the colors on the Admiral's suit looked when not viewed behind glass.

Then Koris could take no more, and slammed his mask back on so fast he nearly caught his finger in the seal. There was a familiar hiss as the suit's vacuums returned him to pressure. The world dimmed and grayed immediately. His throat, his eyes, his face felt like they were on fire and he took great, gasping breaths, fighting to force the air down through swollen nostrils. Just a few seconds without his mask had taken it all out of him, and he leaned down to put his head between his knees, resisting the urge to retch into his helmet.

"It works, then," Rael said, voice even.

The filters in Koris' helmet did their job and the fire on his skin started to abate under a mist of antiallergenic chemicals. "Slo-" he tried to speak, but had to swallow heavily around his inflated tongue. "Slowly," he managed, trying to muster the will to sit back up. "I feel less awful each time I take it off." As demonstration, he gave a heave and slumped back into his seat. Tears still streamed down his face, and he forced a confident smile that he didn't feel. "M-my immune system is getting stronger."

The idea had come from him after reading old documents – written by some of the scientists who'd survived the war with the geth – cataloging their first observations of the collective weakening of the quarian immune systems. They'd been scared, confused, and yet they had remembered life on Rannoch, had a perspective that modern quarians lacked. In the waning years of the quarian biological community – before such specialized science had been all but taken over by the Admiralty Board's Special Projects division – the consensus had been clear: quarians were getting sick because they were too clean, too careful, too afraid of getting sick.

And the solution, as dangerous as it was, was obvious.

"Have you tried an actual infection yet?"

"Not yet," Koris admitted, mind vividly recalling the first time he'd taken off his mask, alone in his bunk. How he'd lasted less than a second in the open air before his fear had gotten the better of him and he'd closed it again. How awful the following hours had been. How confident he'd been that he'd just killed himself. And that had just been antigens from the air – dust and engine grease and old powder and dead skin cells. An actual pathogen – a real infection – would be a million times worse. "I'm not confident I'd survive it. But soon."

Rael nodded and looked away.

Koris did not return to his seat. He sat next to Rael, head a storm of thoughts. He had kept his plans a secret, but his months of continued sickness had been enough clue for Rael to figure out what was going on. He wondered how many others knew what he'd been up to. Ever since it had become clear that what he was doing was actually working – that he was getting less sick each time – he had been contemplating how and when he wanted to reveal his discovery.

The quarians weren't ready for it. They wouldn't believe him unless he provided a powerful enough example. Something big and romantic and memorable, something grandiose enough to make them forget about Rael for a while. He'd take off his helmet for all to see, right in the middle of a Conclave session.

If he survived that long.

The fact that he'd managed to impress Rael of all people spoke well of his plan. Koris actually felt a twinge of pride as he re-ran his suit's diagnostics. He could feel his throat tightening a bit more already as his immune system overreacted to some unknowable mote in the air, but somehow he was sure it had been worth it. It was the first step to getting his people on a new homeworld. Getting them their pride, their hope back.

"I told you," he said. "I told you you were going about it the wrong way."

Rael turned to look at him, brows raised. "Congratulations," he said. "Your twenty years as Admiral has now produced two good ideas total."

"By your count, Rael."

Some of Rael's old confidence seemed to return to him. Koris could see a glimmer of amusement in his eyes, if only for a second. "I'm not aware of any other counts that matter."

"Bosh'tet."

Rael returned to looking out the window. "Just keep doing what you're doing, Koris," he said. "You'll get to three someday."

–

Neither of them spoke for the rest of the ride. They disembarked the shuttle in silence and went their separate ways to catch rides back to their own parts of the fleet. As amicable as Rael was acting, Koris knew nothing had changed – they were still rivals. Enemies, even. Come the next Conclave session, Rael would be dashing apart Koris' hard-earned efforts yet again, and everybody would love him for it while Koris sat at the back, sick and furious.

But all the same, he couldn't help but worry for his fellow Admiral as Rael climbed into the small shuttle that would take him back to the Alarei.

---

8 days previously…

–

Admiral Rael'Zorah vas Rayya lied on the floor of his own ship, his life seeping away around him.

Above him loomed the geth. One of the geth he himself had reassembled – from the wiring on its shoulder he recognized it as the platform he and his team had designated Ecco-6. It was more or less complete, cobbled together from a half dozen separate geth components Tali had sent them.

And it held one of the quarians' own rifles in its hands.

It stared down at him with its unblinking eye, watching his blood leak.

Rael sighed. The pain didn't bother him, somehow. He'd never been shot before but he'd always imagined it to be excruciating. But now he was shot thrice and he barely felt it at all. It had hurt when he'd dragged himself out into the middle of the corridor so he'd be easy to find, but that feeling had passed, and now the mess that had been his stomach was numb but for a creeping, cold sensation.

Ecco-6 watched in silence, its featureless face betraying nothing.

"I suppose you've killed them all by now," Rael said.

Ecco-6 tilted its eyebrow vanes in an unmistakable gesture of confusion.

Rael actually laughed at that. They were smarter than he'd anticipated. Koris, the damnable bastard, had actually been right. It was hard to imagine. Of course, Rael had always known they were smart – the quarians had not been kicked from their planet by mere automatons – and yet to see them now… They spoke to one another. They watched and listened and learned. As he lied dying he'd seen several geth pass – no doubt coming from slaughtering one of his team or another – with an air of intense curiosity about them. They'd looked at him and bruzzed at one another, investigated every console on every wall, touched every button, ran their fingers over every wall. They were like children.

Rael swallowed and tasted blood.

He'd had his doubts for a while now, ever since a week or two, the first time the miniature geth consensus they'd assembled managed to turn itself on without any quarian help. Perhaps he'd made a mistake in not shutting the project down immediate. But it was too late to change course. He would leave his accomplishments to speak for themselves. There was no point in changing on his deathbed. He was who he was.

And so he'd set one last plan in motion. As soon as it was clear he would not be leaving the Alarei alive, he'd sent Natal to the comm room to call for help. By now she would be dead too, but if Rael had been right (and he was very rarely wrong) she would have called her other boss Xen with the information first.

Rael didn't like the idea of Xen getting his work. He didn't like the idea of Xen thinking her spy had gone undetected. He'd always planned some gleefully vindictive vengeance, something that would show Xen she was not so clever as she believed, and aside from which had been feeding Natal false reports to send Xen's way for months.

But if he was dead, Xen was the only one who could continue for him. And his work had to continue. Xen would not let the Alarei be destroyed, not in a thousand circuits. She would gloat over his corpse and finally feel like she'd won, but that was the price he had to pay.

Rael sighed and closed his eyes, satisfied. Xen would finish the job. Now all he had to do was die and his part was over.

He sat and waited and waited.

Death came only slowly, and Rael found himself checking his omni-tool again. A light blinked on his wrist, signaling that the message he'd recorded for Tali was ready. She would be on the Alarei within a few days – Xen would make sure of that – and she would find his body and she would find his message and she would know how to stop the geth networks on the bridge.

Rael had said what he needed to say. His daughter was smart. She would know what to do.

The light blinked in silence, waiting to be heard again.

Rael sighed. There was still space. He could still add something. Tell her he loved her. Tell her about her mother, or… or something. Something to soften the blow. He knew Raan would want him to. Ykala would want him to.

Rael turned his omni-tool off with a wave and laid his head back.

He didn't deserve the self-delusion of a tearful, loving goodbye. He hadn't been a good father in life, and trying to pretend he was a good one in death reeked of desperation. Tali knew he loved her or she didn't.

It was too late to try to change that.

Ecco-6 continued to stare in silence, and Rael found himself wondering what was going on inside its 'mind'. The other geth had looked at him and then moved on, as if he were nothing more than another of the Alarei's many appliances. But Ecco stayed. Maybe it'd been commanded to guard him, make sure he didn't do anything. Or maybe it was just interested.

Either way, it was obvious it wasn't moving until Rael died.

Somehow that made him feel a little better.

---

21 years previously…

–

Rael'Zorah was very late by the time he returned to the Rayya.

He'd always suffered from spreading himself to thinly, from tackling too many projects at once. When he was younger, when he worked for Admiral Tega, throwing himself entirely into his work had been fine, had cost him nothing. With Tega's resources as head of Special Projects, he'd had the galaxy at his fingertips, and his staff had quickly bloomed to dozens. He'd spent very nearly every moment moving from one research team to another, reviewing results, establishing new directions, and moving on. It had been exhilarating.

Now Tega had retired and he was Admiral, with a host of new responsibilities that had very little to do with research. He'd picked a successor to help lighten the load, of course, a talented young quarian named Zletl'Zorah who worked very hard to please him, but once he'd gotten Zletl started on his own projects he'd never quite managed that next step of lightening up on any of his own. He'd only pushed himself harder.

Now, on today of all days, an experiment in one of his labs had run nine hours late and he'd had no choice but to stay with it.

He arrived at the clean room. His station as admiral had afforded them a very fine one, more than spacious enough, new and clean and most importantly, safe. The seals had all just been replaced, the life support system was well maintained. There was a small window in the clean room's side. Normally shuttered for privacy, now it was open, and Rael peered through.

Rael had been accused of being heartless before, but he knew that was not so, for there inside the cleanroom was his heart. Ykala was sleeping, reclining on a small white cot, her long legs stretched out in front of her. Instead of her suit she wore only a thin white gown, soaked in disinfectant. Rael could see her bare arms and legs, her dark skin, her marvelous quills, her face as he had only seen them a half dozen times before. She was beautiful.

Though not half so beautiful as the infant slumbering peacefully in her grip. Rael craned his neck, trying to get a better look at his new child.

"It's a girl. Tali'Zorah nar Rayya."

Rael had not noticed Raan – in a gown matching his wife's – sitting on the other end of the clean room, and he did not look at her now. "Tali," he said to himself, testing the name on his tongue. It was a lovely name. He stared down at his daughter. She was lighter and purpler than her mother, but shared the speckled pattern that ran down Ykala's back and legs. "Any complications?" he asked.

Raan stood and approached the window. "None, Rael," she said, smiling. "They're both doing well."

Rael nodded, relieved.

"Do you want to come in?" Raan asked. "Give me a few minutes to suit up and I can leave you three alone."

Rael shook his head. "No time," he admitted, ignoring the frown on his old friend's face. Entering that clean-room – even with Ykala – would almost certainly put him out of commission for a week or two, at least. He could not afford to be sick. Not with so much going on. "I am an Admiral."

"So am I," Raan reminded him.

"So one Admiral's absence strikes me as sufficient," Rael said. "I have work to do." He nodded resolutely and, with one last look at his slumbering wife and daughter, turned to go. "I will visit soon," he promised, and left Raan staring after him.

–

As soon as he was out of Raan's earshot, he summoned his omni-tool and called Zletl's tag. It took his second-in-command some minutes to respond, but finally his voice appeared on the other end, sounding exhausted. No doubt Rael had awoken him from much-deserved sleep.

Rael didn't care.

"Sir?"

"Zletl," Rael commanded, walking down the empty corridors of the Rayya back towards the shuttle bay. "I want you to have the Alepso and the Alarei cleared out for use on a new geth project."

"What about the Moreh?" Zletl asked. "There's still a whole unoccupied deck, we could fit a whole new lab in th-"

"We are going to work on some new ideas," Rael said, in a tone of voice that brokered no argument. "VI simulations will not be sufficient."

"Yes sir."

Rael nodded. "Good. And Zletl? Quietly, please." He terminated the call as he arrived at the shuttle bay, where a single pilot was awaiting his return, tiredly fiddling with a datapad while he waited. They wasted no time boarding the shuttle, and in thirty seconds they were off to Rael's next destination.

In the shuttle, Rael leaned his head back on his seat and closed his eyes. He had not slept in days, and it was beginning to drag on him. But now he felt alive, invigorated as he rarely did. His closed eyelids only looked like his new family, serene and happily sleeping in their cleanroom. Rael's thoughts were by turns dominated by his daughter and his new ideas for the geth.

It was time to start getting serious about this whole 'retaking Rannoch' issue. He was a father now.

–

---

Codex entry: the vas Nayctah Rebellion

The vas Nayctah Rebellion – more commonly known, now, as the Nayctah Schism – was a series of short skirmishes that occurred in the late months of 2157 between rival factions within the quarian Flotilla. Motivated by racial and political tension, the rebellion resulted in almost ten thousand quarian deaths, making it the largest single disaster in recent quarian history.

At its core, the Schism was a conflict between the Qilahran, a quarian racial group originally native to Rannoch's southern continents, and the rest of the fleet, and more broadly a conflict of ideals between civilian quarian government and the militant families and what was perceived as an overmilitant, overzealous Admiralty Board. The conflict began with the spread of a cult on the Qilahran-dense Nayctah, a large, populated ship in the Civilian Fleet. The cultists – who ultimately rallied Qilahran-descended quarians and other disaffected groups throughout the Fleet – came to call themselves the Keelhn – "Guarded Ones" in Khelish.

The Nayctah cultists' rise to power is traditionally blamed on the re-publication of sensor data from a remote probe that had been dispatched to Rannoch in 2101. The probe B8B8 – the only such probe out of dozens launched to reach Rannoch intact – managed to surveil the planet for three years before being rendered nonfunctional by a desert storm. Video data captured by B8B8 offered the first convincing proof that the geth had abandoned Rannoch's surface. Based on satellite readings taken of Rannoch's Tikkun system, quarian analysts concluded (correctly) that the geth had relocated to space stations in orbit around the planet and B8B8's data was forgotten for almost six decades.

In 2156, however, the surveillance footage was rediscovered by So'Kal vas Nayctah. So'Kal – a devout follower of a largely-extinct quarian religion centered around worshipping the God Qilah'Keeltahn – interpreted the images in a very different way; believing that the lack of geth habitation was proof that the geth had fled Rannoch under the fiery wrath of Qilah'Keeltahn, and that the promised land walled gardens of Rannoch were empty and safe, waiting for the quarians to return. Recapturing Rannoch, then, became only a simple matter of dealing with any minor geth space presence and landing. Over the coming weeks, So'Kal would ultimately convince more than one hundred thousand quarians of his ideas, and became the nucleus of the Nayctah cults.

While the religious backbone was critical to the Nayctahcultists' rebellion, the move was strongly political as well. At the time, three of the five Admirals were considered harshly militant, including two sisters from the Vael family who commanded the Heavy and Patrol fleets. These admirals effectively managed to control the Board's decisions, and, under the Vael sisters' now-famous bellicosity, exerted a level of influence over the Conclave that had not been seen since the escape from Rannoch. In the years preceding the rebellion, the Conclave – and many other quarian groups – became increasingly anti-Admiralty Board and anti-Vael, ultimately prompting the Admirals to begin cracking down on captains themselves in an effort to protect their power.

The rebellion began in earnest in 2156, when So'Kal vas Nayctah, with the help of his many supporters, managed to get elected to the Conclave. He called upon the quarians – most particularly those descended from the Qilahran but also any groups disaffected by the martial law of the fleet – to return with him in a grand migration back to Rannoch, with or without military escort. He called for a shedding of the martial law, which, most importantly, included excluding the majority of the Heavy fleet and many of its most prominent families like the Vael, Zorah, Reegar, Gerrel, Gossit, and Canbeh from his grand plan. The plan – especially the lack of military might – was seen as suicide by much of the quarian military, who argued that a premature attempt to return to Rannoch would be disastrous for the entire species.

In 2157 Keelhn cultists shocked the fleet to its core with a daring dual-pronged attack on the Liveship Crennae and the battleship Aolenn'vasha. Both ships – caught unaware – were captured in a matter of hours and pulled away from the Heavy Fleet. This demonstration of power began the rebellion, and within hours the Admiralty Board had dispatched its forces and declared So'Kal and many of his lieutenants treasonous. Both the Crennae and Aolenn'vasha were recaptured in battles which accounted for some 90% of the ten thousand or so of the rebellion's fatalities. The Nayctah cultists were dealt a considerable blow, but So'Kal and most of his lieutenants managed to escape into hiding.

While both sides began preparing for a lengthy conflict, the rebellion ended as suddenly and unexpectantly as it had begun when, Shala'Raan, a Conclave representative on the rebel ship the Siovvani discovered that her fellow representatives were in collusion with So'Kal and were smuggling him into a coming session, along with thousands of pounds of fuel stolen from the Aolenn'vasha. The quarian managed to sabotage the air filters on the other representatives' clean rooms before fleeing to the loyalist Tonbay to warn Admiral Ala'Vael vas Tonbay, who rallied her forces and captured So'Kal and his colluders. So'Kal himself died in the following days of a wound sustained in the skirmish, before he could be tried, but he was posthumously branded a traitor and stricken from his homeships' ledgers.

Ultimately, the entire crews of 19 rebel ships, as well as large sections of the crews of 11 others, were called traitors and sentenced to exile after a single trial before the Admiralty Board. The exiles were immediately appealed by the sympathetic Conclave, prompting the Admiralty Board to veto the appeals, upholding the exile of 1186 quarians and resigning their positions in the process. Of the 1186 exiles, 1183 were upheld by the new Admiralty Board, which consisted of Shala'Raan vas Tonbay, Pel'Gossit vas Onager, Kela'Ayley vas Chaddra, Gennd'Tega vas Konal, and Lestra'Col vas Nyara.

The rebellion is mostly looked back on with disdain by modern quarians, though some Qilahran quarians still hold a deep resentment. The Admiralty Board's power – and especially the ability of single families to hold monopolies over governmental branches – was effectively curtailed, and the Vael family suffered considerably for what was perceived as their role in the conflict. Many remnants of the original rebel factions now band together under the Outrider's Coalition and lobby for the search for new homeworlds.

–

---

A/N: Another chapter! And, naturally, it had to be gigantic. I was worried maybe I was updating too fast for you guys. *rimshot*

Anywho, if I were doing this again, I might not write this chapter. I am mighty fond of the quarian Admirals, but standing here and looking back at this huge pain-in-the-ass of a chapter, it feels a little off-topic. That said, I think Zaal'Koris and Han'Gerrel (namely, that Zaal is a douche but right and Gerrel is kindly but wrong) represent one of the few truly, awesomely compelling moral decisions in the Mass Effect series.

As usual, I must thank my betas, my readers, my reviewers, etc. Also koobismo for his insights regarding writing Shala'Raan. This time, however, I also have the privilege to thank hcjung10, whose generosity blows me away. Seriously, man – I can't tell you how much I appreciate it.

As for next chapter – turns out it was a fun one. I won't tell you who the POV is, but I will tell you that it will finally, finally give you some insight into Miranda's fate. You must sit in suspense for a bit longer.