Sara activated the vault on Voeld, next. But one vault was easily indistinguishable from the next and she was beginning to lack Peebee's zeal in that regard. Voeld was cold, as Sara had previously noted, and the less said about that globe of ice masquerading as a planet, the better.
Sara would much rather drink beer with Vetra and Drack. Alcohol cut through the freezing temperatures and made her feel warm, inside and out. It made talking about uncomfortable things simpler.
"Not good, Ryder," Drack was saying. "It's not just about conquering now. What these kett do is genocide."
"No shit," Sara agreed. Vetra had already intercepted the offered bottle of ryncol- something about it being like drinking powdered glass for non krogans- and traded it out for vodka. Better and more effective than IPA, it slowed the chaos as surely as it slowed Sara's tongue.
"All I'm saying is I've seen this before," Drack insisted. "You can't reason or negotiate with these types. You have to act decisively and fast. Drop a nuke if you have to."
"So we answer genocide with more genocide," Sara concluded. "We won't have to worry about sustainability if there's no one left to sustain!"
"Yeah, I'm going to vote no on following the Tuchanka business model," Vetra murmured beneath Drack's laughter. She plucked the vodka bottle from Sara's grasp and deposited it in the sink. "Are you sure there's not a way to reverse the effects on the angara?"
"The only cure I know is bullets." It was meant to be a joke, but the words suddenly felt sour in Sara's mouth.
Fortunately, Drack drowned out her discomfort with his guffaws. "That is my favorite cure! Kid, you're something else."
"A big part of why I joined the Initiative was to get my kid sister away from bad people, bad places." Vetra rejoined them at the table. "A fresh start. I can't imagine what I'd do if the kett got hold of Sid like that."
"You have a sister?" Sara mumbled. She hadn't paced herself and the warmth and courage the vodka had provided was quickly being overshadowed by a sluggish desire for sleep.
Vetra ignored her admittedly stupid question. "How would you react if it was Scott? Drack, what if it was Kesh?"
"I'd hope my ru'shan would leave some of those bastards standing by the time I got to her," Drack snorted, but the reprimand had the intended effect and he quieted as he turned to the comfort his bottle provided.
"I just don't want the angara to lump us in with the kett," Sara announced. "That's all."
With that admission, all of a sudden the kitchen grew far too silent. Drack and Vetra both stared at her and Sara couldn't decide if it was because she was drunk or profound. Vetra nodded.
"This kid's alright, Vetra," Drack declared.
Sara's head lurched upward. "Kid? Technically, my adjusted age is six hundred fifty-six, so..."
That doubled the krogan over with more laughter.
"Everyone's a kid to this old codger," Vetra told her. "Don't take it personally."
"No, no, Vetra, the kid's onto something," Drack managed to say between chuckles. "Six hundred fifty-six, huh? That makes you practically krogan, I'd say."
"Oh brother," Vetra groaned. "You're drunk, too."
Drack shook his head. "Not yet, but I certainly aim to be."
Vetra opened her mouth, but whatever retort she'd planned died with a glance to the freezer. "You know what?" she decided as she stood and helped herself to a bottle of her own, "sure."
If anyone asked, Sara would insist that she was drunk for the remainder of Voeld all the way to Aya. That wasn't true in the slightest, but it was a suitable excuse for her irritability and some of the off color things she said to her team without remorse.
Whatever. Addison got her next outpost. A few more people unfrozen from cryo so they could freeze on Voeld while providing the Nexus with a steady supply of ice. Now all they needed was a source of fruit and rum to sustain the necessary production of endless daquiris.
As they finally left Voeld behind them, Sara felt it would be prudent to hear their envoy's assessment of things. She found him in the tech lab and tapped her knuckles against the door to announce herself.
"Hey. How are you holding up?" she asked.
"You're checking in on me," Jaal realized. He had his rifle in pieces before him on a table. "It's kind of you to ask. You're kind."
She wasn't sure if he meant it as a statement about her or about her species as a whole. She also wasn't sure if his manner of speaking was an angaran trait or if Jaal was just forward. All that Sara knew was the bare bones observation of her actions left her uncomfortable. All she knew was that of the descriptors available to label her, she was uncertain if "kind" was really the best fit.
As she dwelled on these thoughts, the silence grew from comfortable to awkward. She could readily feel the shift between her being a concerned face in the doorway to a hovering creep staring down the spectacle of someone else's pain.
"Times like these make me really miss my family," he offered. "Are you close to your family?"
"Close enough to share a womb." The comment left her mouth before she could overthink it. Judging from the way Jaal blinked at her, Sara was either going to smooth this over or make things real weird, real fast. "Both my parents are dead. Mom died before we left and Dad almost as soon as we reached this galaxy. I have a twin brother."
"Is he on the ship with us?" he asked.
"Scott's on the Nexus. In a coma." And there it went, any last vestige of a normal conversation. She laughed, nervously. "So, now that I've made this all about me, are you hungry?"
Jaal nodded slowly. "I could eat, yes."
If he was a bit suspicious about being led to her cabin instead of the kitchen, he was a good sport about it. Team camaraderie could wait; Sara didn't really feel up for dueling wits with Drack or Liam or anyone else who might wander into their little lunch. So, instead of dining at the kitchen table, she pulled her red and blue comforter from her bed and spread it across the floor for a cozy picnic spot.
He looked hesitant to step on the blanket with his boots until Sara plopped down. "I'm sure Aya has way better stuff than protein bars and other rations," she told him.
"Expensive," he replied as he joined her. "But, yes."
"Got anything good?" She dropped the sad bounty she managed to pilfer from the kitchen into the center of the blanket. A biscuit slightly softer than hardtack, knife and prized jar of jam. "This is the best I could scrounge up."
"Only this." Jaal held out a stick of some kind of seasoned jerky or fruit leather.
"Meal of champions," Sara drawled. "Just like Mom used to make."
"Your mother was a chef?" The question was polite as he tore into the flimsy wrapper of his food.
"No. Not even close." She split the biscuit and opened the jam jar. "She had this one dish, though. Her famous mac and cheese. Dad said no one would ever make it better than her, so when she got sick, I asked for the recipe. You know what the recipe was? The number to Trudie's Diner where she'd order it from. Famous!"
"Your father didn't know about the deception?"
"I don't know." She shrugged and took a bite of the biscuit. It was a dry, hard lump as she swallowed it down. "After she died, I ordered some, but before I could say anything, Dad started criticizing it. He went step by step on how it tasted wrong and how I'd messed up the recipe. Mom would never abuse the garlic powder like that and she knew to be generous with the cheese on top. I didn't really feel like telling him that I hadn't under salted anything after that."
"Oh." Jaal bit down on his own snack. "I have several mothers."
"Yeah?" She paused as she tried to make sense of it. "Do you mean your dad remarried, or..?"
"I have one true mother," he explained. "We angara share our parents to strengthen the community. As such, I have five other mothers and more cousins than I can count."
"I wouldn't envy your bathroom during the morning rush," Sara replied. "But that sounds nice."
"Yes," he breathed. "It is."
"I should have brought something to drink," she said abruptly. "This is very dry."
"What is it?"
"A biscuit." She held out the remaining half for him as she smeared it with jam. "Mostly carbs. Not a lot of nutrition, but it fills you up. Kind of bland, so you cover it with stuff like butter or jam. It's basically a vessel to hold what you actually want to eat, because your mom will freak out if you try to drink gravy straight from the serving boat."
He stared at the biscuit a moment, before he raised a brow ridge at her. "And you know this, because you've drank directly from a gravy boat?"
"It wasn't me! It was my brother." After she'd suggested it, sure, but Jaal with his enormous family had to understand that's what siblings were for. She offered him what was left. "You ever eat stuff like this?"
"Maybe." As Jaal took the biscuit, he brought it under his nose and sniffed. Immediately, he recoiled. "What did you put on top?"
"Jam," Sara said slowly. "Strawberry jam. It's mostly fruit, sugar and pectin, I think. Makes it more like a dessert than savory."
"It smells like methyl anthranilate." He grimaced.
"I don't know what that is..."
SAM knew. The AI cheerfully rattled off that methyl anthranilate was a compound used for its distinct Concord grape flavor in candies and was, understandably, found primarily in Concord grapes. It was also found, albeit in smaller quantities, in some other fruits, like strawberries.
"It's a mild toxin," Jaal explained as he handed the biscuit back. "It produces a stabbing sensation. It's why I told you all to avoid the glass stars on Havarl. You willingly put that in your mouth?"
"I'm positive I've put worse in there," she assured him with an impressively straight face. "What are you eating?"
"Dried adhi." He snapped the stick in half and handed her a piece. "A little gamey, but that's why you cover it with spices."
"Humans eat meat, too." But still, to be on the safe side, she had SAM scan it. "Is there anything in this that's poisonous to humans?"
There was not. So, Sara took a delicate bite as Jaal watched. The regret was not instantaneous. She was hit with the flavor of salted meat in the back of her throat, first. It took a precious delayed second or two for the heat to sneak up, singe her tongue and flush out her sinuses.
SAM wasn't wrong, it wasn't poisonous. But it was a lesson for Sara to be more specific in the criteria she gave the AI. Jaal was apologetic and found some milk from the kitchen as her eyes and nose ran all over her comforter. When the burning finally subsided, Sara had SAM note that the angara were immune to the effects of capsaicin and to be wary of unpredictable scoville amounts in their cuisine in the future.
"I'm terribly sorry," Jaal said as he held her glass of milk.
"No, no, my fault," Sara snorted and wiped at her nose with the back of her hand. "I'm just glad we're doing this now, instead on the floor of a bar in Aya."
"Still..."
"We eat your poisons, we know this now." She grabbed the glass of milk and took a generous swig. "We can eat those flowers on Havarl for you. You can view us as pest control."
"Ryder."
She handed him the empty glass and flopped onto her back. "We're not competitors for a food source. Kind of. That's promising, right?" Sara exhaled. "That's one way for you not to feel threatened or hate us."
"Sixty-eight, Ryder," Jaal said softly.
She laughed. "I need sixty-eight reasons now, huh?"
"I got the report back from Commander Heckt," he said. "They were able to rescue sixty-eight angara from that facility before kett reinforcements arrived."
That was disheartening. "Jaal. There were hundreds of people trapped there."
"Yes." He nodded. "And before that day, the amount we rescued was zero. But now, we have the Moshae and sixty-seven others who would have never seen their families again. Sixty-eight is a far better number than zero."
He meant it to be encouraging, she knew, but it still found a way to be troubling. "Next time, we won't leave until every pod is emptied," Sara decided.
"Yes." Jaal gripped her arm and hoisted her upright. "Next time we will bring transports. And bombs."
"I like that," she snickered. "A transport filled with bombs."
He snorted. "What is that phrase? Promises, promises?"