THE 'BONEYARDS'

STARSHIP GRAVEYARD

ISHAKA-NEWAMI SYSTEM

TWENTY LIGHTYEARS FROM THE PERSEUS VEIL

OCTOBER 2188

"THEY FOUGHT THE BATTLE OF THE FOUR VEILS HERE," she told him as his ship made its way through the vast field of rubble. They slowly slid past an ancient fighter, and Kassidi could see the turian pilot still in his seat, still in his armor, hands on the controls. She shivered involuntarily at the sight. Soft music played, human music, nothing she recognized.

"I'm not familiar with that one," Black told her, keeping a close eye on his proximity sensors. There were a lot of ships out there, asari, turian, and ships not seen since the Rebellions – krogan-built warships. Behind him, Kassidi leaned back in her seat at the main computer access, and again adjusted the holo-window before her. Black's ship, which he called Virago, had no windows, an extravagance, he told her, "a simple mercenary" could hardly afford. It was a customized Alliance model, waggishly called "drifter-class' by its designers, three times the size of a Kodiak shuttle, roughly matching one of their mid-sized troop transports. It had a manual control scheme, and she'd been surprised by that. An actual yoke and steering system as an option to the standard interfaces. This thing could still be flown, even if the main interface went down. She had thought only quarians still used such 'antiquated' systems. The inside was utilitarian, his living space in the back comfortable, tasteful and well-supplied. It displayed all the indications of having an owner not only deeply cultured, but also enormously intelligent. Her quarters were smaller, but as tasteful, with small feminine touches that had her wondering what he actually used it for – and the room could be completely sealed, vented and scrubbed so she – if she so chose – could go suitless. She'd been again – pleasantly -surprised, and her regard for him went up another notch. The ship was also extremely well-armed, ably-shielded and fast.

Kassidi was also beginning to believe there was very little 'simple' about the human before her.

"It was during the krogan Rebellions. The Perseus Veil used to border on three other, rather smaller nebulas. A huge joint asari-turian taskforce engaged an equally large krogan fleet here. The battle raged for three weeks, and it's said that so much energy was released by the fighting, along with erupted and destroyed drive cores that the other three nebulas were dispersed." She ran a quick scan. "It's odd this place is so untouched."

"With the Perseus Veil that close? I can think of one reason why it's been left unmolested, although I'm surprised the quarians had left it alone." A crushed krogan warship drifted past. "…and the krogan."

"The geth presence likely explain all." Kassidi watched another shattered hulk go by, an asari lighter this time. "An odd place for a meeting, isn't it?"

"I trust the source." He glanced back at her. "Besides, where better to be discreet?"

Black readjusted his course slightly, thought about that source. He'd not heard from her in almost a decade. Using old code, she'd summoned him here, but left a mystery as to why. He either trusted her or he didn't. Black trusted very few, but those he did had earned that trust and then some. So they had diverted and come this way. He had the premonition that this and his mission for Reegar were tied together somehow. Things just seemed to work out that way.

"I still cannot see how why I need to be here." Kassidi repeated her refrain again, said at least once a day. To Black's count that would make seven, so far.

"You've seen the news. You've seen how quarians are being suspected as this – whatever it is – grows."

As usual, Kassidi sighed and said no more. Despite his hospitality, she refused to give him much in the way of interaction, whether through some ethical qualm or faint racism – a racism he surmised was more likely cultural than cultivated, quarian distrust for centuries of distrust by others. Why she should dislike humans he had no clue. As far as he knew, humans had been the quarians' biggest advocates. He shrugged internally. He didn't really care as long as she was as competent as Reegar had intimated. Quarians as a rule were not the best soldiers in the Galaxy, warriors like Reegar more the exception than the rule, their dependence on their suits made them over-cautious and unwilling to take many risks. As fighter pilots, ship techs, they had few equals. Still and all, Black liked quarians just fine. Kassidi had not been the first he'd traveled with – although she might be the last.

"What is this music, anyway?" She asked, after a few more moments of silence.

"Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor, called 'Quasi una fantasia', by Beethoven. This is the second movement."

"I see. Do you often play music while flying?"

"I do. Quarians have music. I've heard it."

"Of course we do." Slightly irritated. "We just don't play it often. Can't hear a system go down or a recycler fail with noise blaring everywhere."

"You don't like it?" A shrug from her.

"Don't see the point to it."

Black's proximity sensors went off, and he adjusted course, killed the music.

"What's the matter?" She came for'ard, leaned around him to look at his board. Quarians had a unique smell, and female quarians, like many females all liked to smell like… well, females. Kassidi, soldier or not, smelled faintly of the neepi'lei flower, native to Rannoch. But then, she was in an expensive, top-of-the-line envirosuit. He'd smelled a few down-on-their-luck, and flowers was the last smell he'd associated with them. She smelled rather nice, he thought, but kept it to himself. For some reason, he just felt like prodding her, but resisted the impulse.

"Mine. That may very well be the other reason this place hasn't been salvaged yet." He did a quick sensor sweep – mine indicators sprang up scattered through the 'boneyard'. "According to this, they're turian chain-mines. Detonate one and they roll through in sequence. Unpleasant."

"Lovely." The signal he'd been expecting returned. He altered course again. As he did, his sensors picked up a track, began to trace it.

"Hmmm."

"What?" He frowned.

"Take a seat." He gestured to his co-pilot chair, set in a small blister to the side. "Odd track coming in. Sensors can't identify it." He shifted his course, pulled a flight harness around himself, cinched it. "Personally, I'm not one for stopping and waiting to see what it might be. You can scan more thoroughly in the blister, also control my lateral cannon."

Kassidi nodded, approving. She climbed into the blister, took a quick survey of the controls, sync'd her suit through the interface port, cinched herself into the chair and began running scans.

Black was pulling the Virago "up" – trying to get out of the plane of the debris. Kassidi was concentrating hard on the scans, comparing waveforms and energy emissions. They were unusual, but they looked for all of Rannoch like…

"Missiles!" she exclaimed. "Vector 113, behind us… on an intercept course with…" she rotated the scan control, projected it.

Black could see instantly where it was headed.

"Not us!"

"A mine!" Kassidi cried at the same time. Black slewed the Virago to port as hard as he could, looking for the quickest exit from the debris field, just as the missiles impacted the mine. Behind them, they started to explode in succession. If there was any wonder in just how potent those ancient mines were, an ancient asari frigate near one blew into tiny, tiny pieces. Black kicked his engines as hard as he dared, trying to balance the rather urgent need for speed with his ability to maneuver – like many vehicles, the faster it went, the more difficult it was to turn. Behind them, the chain was detonating in sequence – and it was catching up.

Beside him, Kassidi was glued to the tracking array, calling out distances to all the debris that could be tracked – some could be heard whanging off the hull as he peeled past and around hulks. As the mines detonated, they also destroyed anything nearby – and that meant debris coming at them at high speeds, making an exit even more treacherous.

"We are only seconds ahead of that chain!" Kassidi yelled, calling out another vector. Black rolled the Virago over, dropped his speed for a moment and 'dove' under a wrecked turian cruiser and accelerated just as a mine behind them detonated. The pressure bubble smacked the Virago, and Black turned her into it, riding it for a moment and then darting away. The cruiser behind them convulsed as a mine hidden in it blew. A huge chunk of plating hit the Virago hard, and the lights flickered and dampeners failed. Kassidi was flung sideways, her head hitting the bulkhead to her right solidly, saw stars, thought she heard a crack, but had no time to check. To starboard, a dozen klicks away, another mine went up, and Black glanced at the scan, tried to see where the next one would be… and it detonated next to them, the Virago bucked and rolled and the lights went out.

A moment later they came back, and another pressure bubble slammed them from the front, fuses sparking all over, the barriers barely holding. Black literally flipped the Virago over and kicked her back the way they had come. Behind them, the mines kept detonating, but they were safe – for the moment, at any rate. Black ran a quick scan. Nothing in the vicinity. He set his alert sensors to very sensitive as he slipped behind a krogan ship with a huge gash in its side and powered down.

"We're damaged," Kassidi told him, slightly calmer. "Barriers are out. Anterior plating has ruptured and we're down an entire sensor pallet. There's also leak somewhere in your port engine coolant delivery system." A pause. "No, your whole CDS is down."

She felt a trickle of a warm something on her forehead, and her brain felt fuzzy. Her visor was badly cracked, the hardened viewport broken. Her HUD showed her all the damage in fine detail. Too much.

"I am also injured." She looked at him with a nod. "Yes. I believe I'll pass out now." Which she promptly did, slumping in her harness.

Black unhooked himself, climbed over, examined her. Her visor was broken, and he could hear her internal pressure venting slowly. Black sighed, pulled her from the chair, carried her back to her quarters – grabbing a med-kit along the way - and sealed the room, waiting patiently for the air to scrub. There was nothing he could do about any contamination he brought with him, but figured it was the least of her problems at this point. When the chime sounded that everything had equalized, Black bent over her prone form, searched for the seal-locks, and after a moment found them, pulled her mask free. Another few moments, and he had her cowl back, and her whole head exposed.

"Well," he said to her unconscious form. "A pity such a sour attitude lives behind such an appealing face."

She had a broad forehead with the typical quarian suit linkages, delicate arched eyebrows, one bisected by a nasty gash, evenly-spaced slightly-slanted eyes and a straight nose with a upward slanted tip. Her lips were full and her chin round but narrow. She had close-cropped auburn hair. Her skin was smooth but pallid.

Black treated the gash with some medigel, carefully laid a sterile fabric bandage over it. Locating her personal effects, Black hoped she'd a spare mask, frowned when he found only the half-mask many were adopting as they re-acclimated to their homeworld. Many quarians viewed it as a transitory thing – a mid-point to someday living without them altogether. A wrap-around HUD component lay under it, and he pulled both from her case, readjusted her on the bunk, checked her vitals with a mediscan – only a slight concussion, nothing more serious - and left both mask and HUD where she could see it when she awoke. He wondered if she'd resent him seeing her face, as quarians viewed that an extremely intimate thing, but it had been that or let her bleed.

He shrugged, stepped from the room, set the scrubbers to get it as clean as they could and went back to his cockpit, mind going back to the attack.

Whomever had launched those missiles had not followed up – or they had lost the Virago in the debris and radiation the detonations had scattered everywhere. He sat back down, ran a few passive scans, but found nothing. The holo-display showed nothing but the dark and silent hull of a long-dead krogan warship.

With a sigh, Black went aft to fix his CDS.

When he returned, he could hear a faint crackling over his comm array, activated it.

"Virago…" said amongst the heavy static, the voice unidentifiable. "…ome in. We've detected recen… plosions. Respond. This is… TES Phoenix. Do …copy?"

Black's eyes narrowed. A quick vector check showed the transmission originating from roughly the same area as the missiles. As ploys went, it was a rather rudimentarily stupid one. He rigged and programmed a remote drone, a small one, recorded a brief message, sent it to track two thousand kilometers from his position. It was small enough to get lost in the debris and rad-cloud.

Using a passive scan, he waited, and listened in.

"Phoenix," the drone replied. "This is Virago. We are damaged and unable to move under own power. Can you assist? Coordinates follow."

"Standby, Virago," the reply came, stronger, a cool, hard-edged female voice. A half-minute later, an intense beam of light speared through the field and impacted squarely on the probe, detonating with immense force, smashing it to its component atoms. Debris around it likewise vanished. The Virago shifted slightly as the shockwave propagated to him, and he nodded to himself, impressed. Using it as cover, he first fired another very small probe – this time an acoustic emulator passive-linked to his ship, and then fired his thrusters in a few short bursts, aimed his ship at the large breach in the krogan warship's hull, drifted into it on inertia. Once inside, a few quick series of commands and the Virago powered completely off.

That was not the Phoenix, then. Not even close.

The probe he'd fired would relay any engine emissions of a passing ship back to him as vibration – its signal easily missed in the now-heavily irradiated debris field. It was an old trick he'd learned long ago.

The air was beginning to cool and thin out as the emulator finally relayed a rumble that grew in intensity – a rather large ship was slowly passing near him. Black held his breath as it passed, hoping he had chosen his hiding spot well. Another few tense minutes passed, and the emulator registered the rumble dying away to finally vanish altogether.

Black waited until he could see his breath in the cabin and his lungs started to complain, then powered the Virago to absolute bare minimum, just to have the oxygen cyclers back on, waited another ten minutes.

Nothing.

Keeping the Virago at bare minimum, he slowly fired his smallest docking thrusters, just small puffs of gas to edge the ship ever so slowly from the breach and back into open space, doing his best to match the drift of the other ships set in motion by the shockwave that had killed his initial probe. He waited another ten full minutes.

Still nothing.

He activated a few systems – minor ones, heat, basic scanners and interior diagnostics. Ran a quick scan. The Virago, aside from a few minor easily-repairable troubles, was flightworthy. Kassidi was still unconscious, but seemed nominal.

Black kicked the Virago to full operations and unashamedly ran for it.

ON THE OTHER SIDE of the 'Boneyard', the ship that had been hunting him let him run.

It's Captain, in his black armor and it's skeletal heraldry, smiled to himself. Nice trick. Old trick, but worth the gamble. With anyone else, it might have worked. But this hunter had hunted a very long time, and he was very good at it.

He ordered his pilot, "Take us on a wide intercept course. We'll follow discretely."

The ship turned to follow. He leaned back, crossed his arms, listened to the ship hum around him.

"Now, this takes me back."

The Virago flew on.