A/N I own a disk but not the rights to it.

Hi loyal readers and those who wander into this story by accident or on purpose. Thank you for your patience. School is beating the hell out of me and I don't have anywhere near as much time as I would like to update this. Do not fear, I have not quit the story, as this chapter shows. Again, updates are not going to be as fast as they were in the beginning but that is because I had more time back then. I will continue and hope that you will be patient. Please keep sending Reviews and Follow/Favourite the story. It helps motivate me to make extra time for it.

Also, I hope that none of you or your loved ones were involved in that mass shooting in Vegas. Stay safe friends.

Comments:

frankieu, Sornosquinfallen, Colshan, BJ Hanssen, Xenozip, Squadpunk 2.0, betapike, Archangel319, Guest - thank you all. Your support is important and I value it.

Blaze1992 – thanks for all your reviews. To answer your original second question, there will be some that is not native to ME universe eventually, some that will be revamps or current (our world) tech and others are revamps of ME tech. Seeing as I am trying to make things at least 'reasonable' in a sense, I can't really see introducing technology that is impossible to replicate without having a basis in their ME tech abilities. So no X-Com mind rays or covenant plasma launchers without there being a reasonable way to introduce them. Hope that made sense.

Dahakstaz – thanks. Drell are in mind for the future. The observation satellite for the Omega 3 Relay is already in mind for later. Don't think I will go so far into buying scrapped dreadnoughts. They tend to bring a fair bit of attention to the buyers. As for Miranda, according to the official Mass Effect timeline, was born in 2150, which would make her 31 years old as of the MC arrival in the story. She just ages slower than a normal human would.

Artyom-Dreizehn – yeah she is. And actually no, my use of Glasgow Knight was not a reference to Code Geass. Just a happy coincidence. Not really familiar with CG. Is it any good?

On with the story!

CHAPTER 13 – CREW TIME

I sat in my seat at the navigations console in the cockpit and watched as Aleria took us out the relay. Leaving the Citadel behind actually made me feel a sense of relief. The place was almost like a vipers den of backstabbing and coercion. I had been on alert ever since my meeting with Tevos, luckily, and now that I was away from the place I could finally let my guard down a little. Not too much though. I didn't want a repeat of Sel's actions, after all. Once I could confirm that the others were not likely to interfere with the plans then I would be able to trust them

At the moment I had mentally cleared all three of my remaining original crew. They had proven their trustworthiness during the Sel incident. I was also pretty sure that I could clear Torrin. Having been a duct rat the odds of him being a plant were nearly beyond remote. Now that I had the beginnings of an orphanage running back on the Citadel, his loyalty was basically guaranteed.

The only other person that I could feel reasonably confident wasn't likely to be an informant was Jurt. Seeing as my having run into him was purely coincidental, I wasn't overly suspicious of anyone having found him and turning him before he got onto the ship. Besides, I don't see Tevos hiring a krogan as a spy. The Shadow Broker, maybe, but unlikely. There were more subtle characters for spying. Krogan make great muscle but stealth… nope.

That only left Liserias, Chop and Carlos. I felt reasonably confident that they were not agents of the asari councillor as using them would have likely been a risk of them tipping off their own races of Tevos' and my subterfuge. That didn't mean that they were not possible informants of other organisations such as Turian Intelligence or STG, or even Cerberus in Carlos's case, but I felt that the risk was rather low. Chop was middle aged for a salarian and according to the information that my trustworthy quarians had dug up had never worked in the military. He had solely worked for Kassa Fabrications for the last eight years working on their Colossus armour range. It was high-end armour so I was happy for him to be there, plus it was a human run corporation and seeing as there had not been any big corporate thefts from there I could make a relatively secure guess that he was clean.

Carlos was just a young guy in the galaxy, having only graduated from university a year and a half ago. He hadn't held down a steady job but instead had been bounced around on different star ships throughout Alliance space. That had concerned me a little but the references he had given were pretty solid so I was willing to give him a go. He hadn't joined the military as far as we could find out. I couldn't find anything that might point to Cerberus but that might not mean anything. Overall I thought the risk of it was pretty low.

Liserias was the harder one to be sure of. Being a turian meant that it was unlikely that she was an agent for Tevos. Military intelligence was a possibility but I had confidence that Tevos wasn't incompetent enough to let Sparatus know what had happened. Valern might have been smart enough to realise something but I don't think he would have sent a turian to join my team. It most likely would have been an STG member in disguise, though I wouldn't be taking anything for granted at this stage.

"Hitting the relay in 3… 2… 1… mark," Aleria called out, breaking into my thoughts. A bright flash filled the cockpit as the arc of energy leapt out from the relay core and connected with the ship. A soft judder later and we had moved into the next system.

"We're clear from the relay, five thousand kilometre drift," Aleria reported. She turned to look at me. "So, are you ready to head back to the homeworld?" Her tone was playful.

I gave her a blank look. "Last time I was there it wasn't exactly a vacation for me," I said, keeping my tone carefully neutral.

She immediately sobered up and looked panicked. "Oh no, I am so sorry…"

I couldn't help it. I let out a tiny smile.

She noticed and immediately fired up in indignation. "Brock, don't do that!" she cried out. "That is so mean! How could you joke about that sort of thing?"

I couldn't help chuckling a little at getting one over her. "Well, according to your aunt, the fact that I can comment at all means that I am either improving or a complete psychopath. Do you think I am a psychopath?"

She gave me a glare but shook her head. "No I don't. But it was still cruel. You know I am just trying to help you."

I raised my hands in mock surrender. "All right, I apologise. I won't set you up. On that topic anyway."

She pouted cutely then gave me a smile. "I am glad that you were able to make a joke about it though," she said. "It's a good sign."

I nodded and stood up. "ETA to Earth?" I asked.

She turned back to her instruments. "Looks like we will be there in three more jumps. Total travel time is forty two hours."

I nodded again. "I am going to see how the new crew are settling in," I said. "Keep me posted."

"Righto Cap!" she said very cheerfully.

I headed down to the first level of the crew decks, which I had designated the upper crew deck. Again, not the most imaginative but it was function over form. At the forward port observation deck, which was a rather large room with a decent viewport, Chop had set up shop. Almost literally. The room was pretty large and he had it all to himself so he had wasted no time in converting it to a large workshop space where he could work on the crew's armour without being interrupted or feeling too confined.

Well, except for when I walked in to interrupt him.

The room was a mess of boxes, tools, a new workbench and a few armour stands. A cot looked like it had been hastily assembled in a corner behind another stack of boxes. A clattering from another pile of boxes drew my attention as Chop appeared, carrying what looked like discs of some sort and dropped them at on the bench.

"Captain! Welcome. Didn't hear you, busy sorting shield modulators." He definitely had the sort of endearing salarian manner of clipped conversations. Made things faster. I could respect that. I wasn't usually one for long drawn out conversations myself. With the crew was easier because I made the effort, but I could handle a quicker conversation.

"Yes it looks like you certainly have made yourself at home," I replied dryly. The room had to be nearly a hundred square metres, possibly even larger than the cockpit area, and yet you couldn't tell that from the space that was seen here.

"Of course," he replied. "Need to have a functional workspace to boost creativity. Work better that way."

"Well I won't be the one to hamper your creativity," I said. "Any problems so far?"

He tilted his head back a little in a gesture that I had come to recognise meant 'thoughtful' from my other interactions with salarians on the Citadel.

"Not as such. Asari and quarian employees are no issue. Haven't spoken to the doctor or the other human yet." He gave what would probably amount to a long pause for a salarian. "Krogan growled at me."

"Growled?" I responded. "Did he make any threats against you?"

"No no. Meant that literally. Growled. From the far side of the common room on mid crew deck. Believe I will stay on this deck unless necessary to go elsewhere."

"I see." I obviously needed to have a talk with Jurt to make sure that he didn't try anything. The animosity between krogans and salarians was legendary, even for a trans-universal person such as myself, and I didn't need a smaller version of the krogan rebellions on my ship.

"Have managed to procure the armour that you requested," he said, changing topic. "Human and asari very similar. Turians, not so much. Quarians don't have combat armour. Use armour upgrades to their suits."

"Good to know. I want to be able to put mine on when you have a chance to get things organised in here." Never having worn armour before, I imagined that I would need a little time to get used to things. "We can also talk about a few custom upgrades I want to make to the armour, interface and so forth."

"Yes yes. Am interested to hear your thoughts. Nice to be able to experiment again."

With that he turned back to his boxes, his request obvious through his body language. I turned and left the room and decided to head down to visit the medbay next. It was on the way to my run in with my new krogan so it made more sense to do things in some sort of order.

The medbay was another large room in almost the centre of the middle crew deck. It had clear windows on either side that could be turned opaque for patient confidentiality in an instant. I hadn't really stocked it up that much before I left on the maiden voyage, only a few antibiotics for the quarians and a few bandages and med-gel canisters for the rest of us. As a result, I was not overly surprised to see that my new doctor had decided to give the place a professional face lift.

Much like Chop's workspace, Liserias had transformed a neat and orderly medbay into a box holiday home. Crates of syringes, surgical tools and things that looked suspiciously like middle dark-age torture devices were stacked around the room or placed on the eight patient beds. There was a pallet of medi-gel against one wall that would be stored in the various compartments and dispensers around the place once the medic was finished.

The turian woman looked up as I walked in but didn't stop her efforts to organise her work area.

"Captain," she greeted formally.

"Doctor," I replied, leaning against the door frame. "How are you settling in?"

She chuckled and gestured to the boxes around her. "I will let you know when I actually am, Captain. For such a small crew, you have more supplies here than I have seen in many clinics."

It's true, I had made sure to get everything I could reasonably find that might be necessary. There were the standard scratch-patches all the way up to being able to do full surgeries and limb cloning here. Cost me nearly a billion credits to organise it all but I had no idea how my plan was going to be on the success scale and I wanted to be prepared.

"Call me Brock," I said.

She shook her head. "No offence intended, but I prefer to call the Captain of a ship 'Captain'. It's a respect thing that has been ingrained in me for longer than you have been alive and I wouldn't feel comfortable in doing otherwise."

I gave a small smile. "Fair enough. Well, Doctor, I believe that having the crew fully prepared for anything important. No kill like overkill."

She finally paused her unpacking and looked at me, her head tilted. "A human saying?"

I nodded. "Sounds like something a krogan might come up with, doesn't it?"

She chuckled again and resumed her task. "Indeed. I have found that you humans have a tendency to be able to associate with all the attitudes of all the different species out there far better than nearly anyone else, except possibly the asari. Many turians respect human military doctrine. They don't like humans but they respect the doctrines. The salarians would be the only ones who would be able to match human creativity, krogans are the ones that would exceed your brutality, the asari like your culture. You are a universal race."

I cocked m head as I looked at her thoughtfully. "I don't think that your thoughts would be shared by the majority of the Hierarchy," I commented dryly.

She nodded once in agreement without looking at me. "What I have noticed is that we are more similar than the Hierarchy would like to admit. It bothers them that the Alliance was able to challenge them on the same small-scale level that the Shanxi incident was. The Hierarchy prides itself on power, humans challenged that. I think you humans have a saying that it upset the… appor cart."

"Apple cart," I corrected.

"Ah, thank you. You humans use the most metaphors, idioms and turns of phrase out of all the races. It's hard to keep up sometimes. But yes. You upset the balance that has stood for hundreds of years. Your appearance showed us that culturally, societally we had become stagnant and the attitude is now one of superiority that has not been proven since the Krogan Rebellions. And for the few who think like me, which is admittedly few, that war didn't prove our superiority. All it proved was that we were willing to follow the perpetrators of one genocide with another."

I looked at her appraisingly. This was not an attitude that I had seen during our interview. "You have a problem with the salarians and the Hierarchy?"

She huffed a little and looked back at me. "I have been a medic for nearly forty years, Captain. During that time I saw turians abusing power because they were the Spirits-damned Hierarchy and I saw good turians die because the Council sent us to fix their messes. I don't have a problem with turians or asari or salarians. What I have a problem with is people in high places who have a reckless attitude that don't take responsibility for their actions. The Council make mistakes time and again and yet don't get called to account for them because they are experts at misdirection. They exterminated one species and have set about the extermination of another because of mistakes that happened a thousand years ago. I have worked with many species and I know that there are bad and good in every race. The turians, salarians and asari don't have the monopoly on good people. The krogan, batarians and quarians don't have the monopoly of bad people. It is not as simple as the Council or the Hierarchy tries to make people believe. So I decided to get out and make my living helping out anyone that needed it. I did that for twenty years. Now I work for you because you heading out into the stars. From the sounds of it, you are planning to help a few people. Not that there isn't a shortage of people to help on the Citadel, there is just more help available there."

I smile. "Probably best if you don't tell my quarian engineers that you lumped them with the likes of batarians," I said, my tone light.

She gave a barking laugh. "Yes you are probably right. It wasn't meant as a negative statement against them. I have been patching them up for decades. Most of them are greatly skilled but ordinary people." She stood up straight looking around the boxes still to be unpacked. "Now, as much as I enjoy a good conversation, Captain Neilson, is there anything in particular that you need or are you just happy interfering with my organisation abilities?"

I shook my head. "Not really. Once you are done setting things up here I want you to do a check up on everyone in the crew. No exceptions, even from our resident krogan."

"Will do, Captain."

I walked in to the windowless storage room to see Jurt sitting down cleaning his gun. An open bottle of ryncol was sitting on the table next to him and it looked half empty. Great. I hoped he wasn't drunk. Otherwise this conversation could be interesting.

He looked up as I entered, grunted and looked back at his gun as he ran an oil cloth over its barrel.

I admittedly didn't have any real experience with krogans yet. I had seen a few of them around the Citadel and I had heard a few things from others I had talked to. The main consensus was to not show weakness to them. They had no respect for weakness and that meant trouble for the weak.

"Jurt," I greeted bluntly.

"Human," came the surly reply. Right. That was about as polite as I was likely to get. Still, I could live with that. It's not like it wouldn't be the first time I dealt with difficult to converse with people.

"Settling in?" I asked, looking around. Unlike the others, he hadn't had a whole bunch of gear. There was his armour, which he was still wearing, a large collection of weapons, mostly shotguns or assault rifles, a few other small bits and bobs and that was it. He had brought his own reinforced bed with him, which made it easier for me. I don't think standard beds are made with krogan in mind.

"I haven't had to shoot anyone, if that's what you're asking," he grunted.

It wasn't but it probably amounted to the same thing in his mind. "Well, that's as good a start as I could probably hope for," I said drily. "So, you ready to talk about this job of yours?"

That got his attention. He looked up at me, trying to pin me with his glare. "You first,' he growled.

I stared at him, remembering our conversation from earlier. I shrugged. "First question?"

He stared at me suspiciously. "What did you mean when you said what you said about being held?"

I fought the flash of annoyance that the topic brought up in me. "I was held in a dungeon by some rather bad people for about nine months before I broke out and escaped," I said, keeping it basic. "They tortured me. A lot."

"How'd you break out?"

"With planning, preparation, dumb luck and sacrificing a fair bit of skin."

"What happened to the ones that tortured you?"

I stared at him for a moment feeling that mix of satisfaction and shame. I fought down the feelings of shame, figuring that the satisfaction would be what would matter to a krogan. "I killed them all."

He sat back in his chair, looking at me. So far, I actually found krogan facial expressions pretty easy to read. It meant that I was able to recognise when Jurt was looking angry, surprised, or just murderous. Luckily, the current expression was more 'mild surprise' than anything.

"How?" he asked, his rough voice making it sound more like a challenge.

I shrugged. "Mostly with my bare hands and a sharp knife. Slowly."

"Got proof?"

I straightened up and half lifted my shirt to show the scars and burn mark on my stomach. His looked at them for a long moment before I dropped it down again and resumed my position against the door frame.

He gave a rumbling chuckle. "Good work. I thought you might have had a quad when you didn't flinch at my shotgun. If you aren't lying then you know the right way to pay your enemies back. Look them in the eyes as you watch them die. Make them feel back the pain they gave you."

My mind flashed with the memory of an eyeless face screaming at me. "Oh, they felt pain all right," I said, shaking the memory off. "Kinda hard to look me in the eyes when they didn't have any left. I didn't leave much that would have been recognisable before they bled out."

"Hah!" Jurt pounded his fists together, clearly getting excited. "You deny them a proper death. That's the best way to make their suffering worse."

"Well, from what I understand with krogans," I said, still leaning casually against the frame with my arms crossed, "is that it is more of an insult to say that someone isn't worth killing. I wish I could say the same for those that held me captive but no, killing them was definitely worth my time."

"Hah, that saying is only really true for the cowards anyway. Those that have already hurt you deserve vengeance."

I nodded. "Your turn," I said evenly.

His amusement crashed immediately and he threw the oil cloth on to his work desk. He reached out to the ryncol and took a swig before he said anything.

"A century or so ago I started running with the different merc groups," he said gruffly, looking off into space as if he was remembering things. "Started out with a group from the Terminus systems, called themselves the Hunters. Small crew, only about twenty of us. We did a lot of things, mostly assassinations, a little body guard work, and every now and then we got drafted by the batarians to do a quick slave run on an unescorted ship going where it shouldn't . Pretty standard, not that you humans really get into the slavery thing. For mercs it's just about the easy credits. Batarians pay well for slavers to be discreet. Stops the Council from pointing the finger at them. Those pyjacks are more concerned about preventing a war than they are about protecting small groups of people anyway.

"After a few decades, the Hunters split up. Most of us ended up starting out another merc group called Hazard Squad. Kept things mostly the same but we expanded the base a little. Before it was just krogans, batarians and a few vorcha. Salarians were not allowed at all. Hazard Squad was less selective. We had a few asari, a couple of salarians and one or two turians to go with the usual crowd. We had near a hundred members at one stage.

"I got close to an asari, her name was Polisa." His voice went soft as her name. Clearly she had meant a great deal to him. "She was beautiful. Skin the colour of a dusk sky on Tuchanka. A dark blueish purple. She was tough but knew how to be gentle. Her father had been a krogan, some warrior who fought in the Rebellions. After working together for a while she became my bondmate. She was the best thing that ever happened to me." He trailed off, looking off into space as he reminisced. I let him be, knowing from experience that good memories were treasures not to be trifled with.

After nearly a minute he shook himself out of his thoughts. "Things were going alright until about the time that your people came out into the galaxy. The big two merc groups, Blood Pack and Eclipse were expanding and Blue Suns was just starting out. There was a big recruitment drive among those three, trying to do whatever they could to get members. Most of the little ones joined up. It made things easier when there was less competition. I think the older merc groups were trying to choke off the Suns but they had deeper pockets than anyone gave them credit for and they became number three pretty easy.

"About five years later I had a place on Omega. It wasn't much. I just kept it mostly for Polisa. I had joined up with the Blood Pack. It felt good to be fighting mostly with other krogan. Sure there were plenty that were privateers that I fought against, but fighting alongside them made my blood sing. It's what I was meant to do! Anyway, I came back from a job to find that the house had been ransacked. The place looked like a battlefield." His expression turned dark. For a moment I noticed his fingers stretching towards his trigger and I tensed up, getting ready to move if I needed. After a long tense moment, Jurt relaxes and his hands move away. I let out a slow breath, feeling relieved.

"Turns out," he continued, his voice gruffer than before, "Garm had thought that me having an asari bondmate was a disgrace for what it meant to be krogan. He had sent me on a mission to get me away and had sent some other of the gang in and they had captured her and sold her as a slave. I fell into the worst blood rage I had ever been in when I found out. I tried to get in and kill Garm the moment I heard it from his dismissive mouth. I wanted to rip his head plate off and beat him to death with it. Didn't matter. He had the numbers. Beat me half to death, not before I killed a few of them though. I left the Blood Pack after that and swore off slaving. Been trying to find out who he sold Polisa to ever since. Found out one of her owners but he had sold her on to someone else. Found out where they are a year ago but I haven't been able to get close enough to take her back."

He leaned back and levelled a glare at me. "That's the job," he growled at me. "You help me find a way to get to her and get her out of slavery alive and I will follow to the ends of the damn galaxy."

I stood there, letting the story sink in as I thought about it. I looked him in the eye. "If you had asked me to do it, I would have," I said evenly. "You didn't need to make it a condition of you joining."

He grunted. "Maybe, but I didn't know you," he pointed out. "Still don't. You betray me and I will rip your spine out and use it as a hat stand."

I smile tightly, feeling better about him being here already. "Just so we understand each other," I said. "I am happy to help you out, just as I would anyone else in my crew." I turned my face as serious and dark as I could, years of practice from prisons making it pretty convincing. "You betray me or my crew though, and I will find a way to rip your head plate off and use it as a lid for my toilet."

He visibly winced at that then looked at me and nodded. "Sounds like a fair deal."

I nodded back, feeling satisfied.

I had made it a point to avoid engineering as much as possible. Not because I didn't want to talk to Ely, but because I had no idea what I would do there and considering how busy she always seemed I didn't want to distract her too much. That said, the place was fascinating on a certain level.

Despite the fact that the eezo core itself was rather small, the room was possibly the largest on the ship, save for the cargo bay. It was one of the reasons that I had bought the ship after all. I planned on taking that little frigate level eezo core and putting something in it that the captain of the Destiny Ascension would be proud of. If I could, that is. I would let my engineers figure that out.

Ely and Hectar were both standing at different terminals as I came in, focusing on their holographic displays. I had no idea where Carlos was but his voice came through a little speaker on Ely's terminal.

"How about now?" he asked.

"It's about eight percent better," Ely responded, sounding frustrated. "Still about twenty two percent short of the goal though."

"Right, let me try something else," Carlos replied, sounding distracted.

"Remember, you do any damage down there and I will be forced to make you spacewalk." It actually sounded a little funny and not all that threatening coming from Ely. She sounded too sweet and innocent most of the time. Carlos just mumbled something back.

"What was that?" Ely demanded, sounding more threatening than before.

"Nothing, ma'am."

"That's right." She shut off the intercom.

I chuckled at her management style. "Is everything all right?" I called out from my spot just inside the door.

Ely and Hectar both jumped. Engrossed as they were in their work, they hadn't noticed me arrive.

"Brock!" Ely exclaimed. "Sorry, I didn't see you there." Hectar nodded in agreement.

I gave them a tight grin. "I can be quiet when I need to," I said. "What's going on with the new guy?"

"Oh, he is trying to reconfigure some stabilisers to the hydraulic loader and internal maintenance arms," Ely explained. "There has been some wear and tear that I had noticed before but didn't have time to get to."

"Plus she didn't want to have to crawl through the maintenance shaft to get to it," Hectar mumbled.

She sent a quick look that probably translated as a mock-glare. "Neither did you!" She looked back at me. "Anyway, I sent Carlos to go and make the adjustments."

I nodded slowly. "How is he so far?"

The two quarians shared a look. "Well, he is pretty eager to help," Hectar said hesitantly. I could feel a 'but' coming.

"But he does have a few… peculiar ideas," Ely finished. Nailed the 'but'. Hmmm that sounded dirtier than I had meant for it to.

"Peculiar… bad?" I asked.

They both shook their heads. "No, just not overly helpful," Ely said. "Things that we could think of on our own or older ideas that he has obviously learnt from a manual somewhere without learning better ways. I mean, it is a little hard to say how he is going because he has only worked with us for less than two days but he could be good here, if he listens and learns."

Hectar was rubbing his arm a little in that nervous trait that I had recognised. Clearly something was bothering him.

"Problem, Hectar?" I asked.

He visibly stiffened a little, then relaxed. "Well, he does… stare. At Ely I mean. And Aleria too, when he saw her. I mean, not just looking but really just staring, like when Ely was leaning over a reactor coil…" he drifted off as Ely looked down, rubbing her arm as a way of showing discomfort.

"Did you know about this Ely?" I asked.

She looked back up at me and shook her head.

I sighed. Carlos's first day and I already had to deal with a horny engineer with a thing for aliens. Well, it wasn't the first time, I thought as I remembered Sel.

"All right, I will talk to him about that later," I said. "I don't want my two favourite quarians feeling uncomfortable when they are on my ship. I like you both too much to let that happen."

They nodded. "Right, now Ely, I have a task for you to look into," I said, moving onto another topic. "I need more ships, similar to this one. How did you go with the search at the Citadel?"

"Nothing really caught my eye," she said, shrugging.

"Hmmm, unfortunate. Keep looking into it. And a personal pleasure corvette or something, I don't know. Large enough to be comfortable for at least eight people, but small enough to be a leisure craft. I want you to scour the extranet for anything with good potential. When you have a moment free, of course." She nodded, perking right up at the thought of looking at more ships.

"Hectar, I have Chop going through a few sets of armour. I want you to meet up with him and help him incorporate that sensor program you cooked up for me. Again, when you have time. I don't want Carlos to be left here without one of you present. Even if you do your extranet searching down here Ely."

They both nodded again, looking confident. Like they were ready for anything and not the timid personas they had in public on the Citadel. This is what I wanted them to be all the time: confident in their own abilities and their standing in the galaxy. It was progress.

"Good, thanks," I said sincerely. "Now, if anyone needs me I am going to be running in the cargo bay."

With a small I wave I turned and headed to the nearest elevator. Time to move to the next level of training.

Torrin was already in the gym when I arrived, wearing some new clothes I had him buy before he got on the ship. He had fought against the idea but I had basically forced him to do it because he only had two sets of clothes and they were tattered horribly. I had bought them for him and Klara, making sure that she would be properly dressed now that the orphanage was in its early phases. That was one thing I had made sure of before I left the Citadel. I had even made sure that my assistant Malaea was coordinating the whole thing for me. She had seemed oddly enthusiastic about it when I had asked her to do it. As it turned out she was happy to have more fulfilling work, or at least something to do. I could respect that. Being bored at work sucked.

Torrin was in clothes that I guessed were the equivalent of workout clothes. It was some odd sturdy plastic looking material. I guess it had to be tough enough to survive being rubbed by scales and plates. I had no idea if turians chafed but truthfully that was information I was happy never finding out about.

"Hey Brock," he greeted me as he rolled his shoulders. "I just wanted to say again that I am really grateful for this. It means a lot to me."

I gave him a small lopsided smile as I quickly stripped my normal clothes and grabbed my exercising gear out of my locker. "Getting in shape to kill slavers means a lot to you?"

He gave a weird chirping grunt. "You don't know how many of my friends I have lost to that scum," he bit out. "Yes, it means a lot."

I gave him my normal small smile. "Well, so long as you do what you are told and at least as hard as me, you will definitely get your shot."

He nodded, his expression serious. "That's all I ask." He jumped a couple times as I finished strapping my shoes. "Now, let me show you how to run like a duct rat." He took off, me running after him.

A/N Please Review/Follow/Favourite as you please.

A little bit of a filler chapter but I felt it necessary to meet some of the new crew. They will be around for a while so I thought it important enough to warrant a chapter.