Chapter 7: Twinkle Twinkle Goes the Little Star, In My Fusion Reactor.

Disclaimer: I do not own Mass Effect, nor do I own Halo… but man a guy can wish!

Now ON WITH THE STORY!

Quiet little Zele'Hallo Nar Liwib was currently the sole occupant of her family's vessel. It was not the first time this was the case. Sometimes her parents were forced to do preventative maintenance on the outer hull of the Liwib, and when dealing with spacewalks, the buddy system was a must. The rules were simple and ingrained in her little head for instances such as these: don't touch anything you're not supposed to; playing with the three toys she had and learning useful things via her little tablet was heavily encouraged.

If her parents did not come back to the ship after a long, long time, then she was to flip the emergency switch, and someone from the fleet would come find her, or if the Liwib was close enough, it would autopilot to the nearest fleet vessel.

Little Zele did not like thinking about that. But it was something not to be ignored. Reality was reality, and she could not simply change it to her whim, no matter how she wished. Space was a vacuum and as one of the youngest in her species with her own suit, she was required to know what a puncture in it was, what it meant, including the possible and highly likely consequences involved.

It was a lot for the five, nearly six-cycle-old youngling to remember. The fact that portions of her intellect were considered beyond her years by her parents and the teachers who reviewed her learning progress every half-cycle certainly assisted her in handling these responsibilities.

However, in this case, it was no simple spacewalk for hull maintenance or repair that now left the vessel to herself. This time it was something different. The little child's few toys lay forgotten in zero gravity, drifting about her person as she was captivated by her tablet's screen. Her parents had linked her tablet to a camera her mother carried in her suit to the side of her visor, allowing her to see their current actions as they traversed the big gray and silver ship that Zele knew was just outside the vessel she occupied.

They were setting up power generators and running lights and cables through the nearest places in the vessel that Miss Tali'Zorah had already explored and declared safe. Miss Tali had a purple suit with beautiful swirls. Little Zele'Hallo had quite decided that she now loved purple more than her current swirled black and green suit with its lightly tinted gold visor. The fact that Miss Tali had regaled her with stories and talked to Zele like a person and not some little babe still in her rolling sphere had absolutely nothing to do with her new decisions... nope, not at all.

It was with great interest that the little child watched her parents work at bringing light and the beginnings of power to a derelict vessel from the safety of her home. This big grey ship was fascinating, so new in that she had never seen its like in her short life thus far. So old in that its exposed hull was covered in surface corrosion and bits of space muck due to space dust and other stuff, all of it having built up along the ship's hull through its long voyage from who knew where.

Zele knew that corrosion and space muck were bad. No one in the migrant fleet had the privilege to be lazy enough to let things deteriorate that far, due to the risks of hull failure that would then pop up. Ablative hulls were difficult like that; they needed preventative cleanings during a ship's service life to help remove contaminants, especially radiological ones.

That was one hazard space definitely was not lacking in.

Tali and Zele's mother Shulo had talked about the huge amounts of alpha and beta-type radiations practically imbued in the surface of the gray ship's outer hull, along with several types of radiation that were mostly unidentified yet not deadly so long as precautions were taken.

It was with shock that Zele's parents and their two guests had listened to Tali explain that the hull was so Bosh'tet thick that the insides of the vessel were practically not irradiated save for the bulkheads where the vessel was apparently sheared in two.

Little Zele had not quite understood all the details as to what they were talking about, but all the grown-ups were certainly excited about it.

Tali'Zorah had also gone on a rant about more Bosh'tets and some reality-defying thingy that was weird and involved Humans and dating and stuff. She didn't know what dating humans had to do with anything, but whatever it was had left all the adults in shock for a bit.

Hmmmm... Bosh'tet... she would have to remember that word.

It sounded cool...

And no, it totally wasn't just because Tali'Zorah had said it.

The vile horror that it was, the blasted inconvenient existence of this despicable thing insulted her to the highest level. It was an outrage, a complete pox upon her existence! A plague upon her being and a shadow upon her soul.

Tali'Zorah Vas Normandy glared at the power cable with such heated, seething, frustrated anger that it should have shriveled up like plastic flimsy in a raging fire and ceased to exist.

THE BLASTED BOSH'TET THING WAS MOCKING HER!

It was a mere six inches too short for it to connect to the bank of power generators they had unloaded from the Liwib. She began using her magnet functions in her suit to march with purpose back the way she came, refusing to move and tie down the bulky generators again.

There was a rebellious tangle in this cable; there had to be. She would find it and then kill it, slowly, painfully! Until the cable was straight as an arrow. It would fit the distance, for by the soil of Rannoch, she had measured it beforehand!

'THERE YOU ARE, YOU BOSH'TET CABLE KINK!'

With a triumphant pounce like a female Varren on its prey, the young Quarian woman attacked the cable snafu she discovered about midway through a passageway. She had come so far and done so much! She would not be outdone by a stupid power cable; she would get past those sealed bulkheads if it were the last thing she would do!

With victory in sight, Tali paused a moment before undoing the final knot, thankful she had not had to pull the entire cable through the knot for it to be undone. If she ever met the being who loaded that cord into the cargo container, she would be sorely tempted to strangle them.

Now that the first of the two cables could reach the generators, they could potentially run power throughout the ship. Now to activate it, and there was no better place to open first in her opinion than the way to the Wreck's engineering section. They could run the longer cable to the ship's power grid and be able to open all the doors at once!

Success was so close; she could almost taste it.

Now to finally determine some of the mysteries of this ship… at least she hoped that would be the case.

Shulo'Hallo vas Liwib was anxiously rubbing her hands together in nervous anticipation of things to come. It had been many hard hours of work, but they were finally poised to open the dead ends that Tali'Zorah vas Normandy had been banging her helmet against for weeks.

The Liwib had only arrived two days ago, and she could already sympathize with the younger Quarian who had been desperate to gain access to key parts of the wrecked ship. Now, with the generators on hand, they could potentially suppliant themselves into the vessel's power grid itself.

Not having to run a cable to every door would be a blessing. They would use the first cable they had run to open the doors to engineering; the second, longer cable would be on hand to hopefully integrate with the ship's internal power systems.

Shulo, Fef, and Lim were currently waiting for Tali to get back from coupling the cable to the live generators, thereby making the cable a live cable and significantly more dangerous to handle. She had been taking a little longer than expected, though, and Shulo hoped nothing had gone wrong.

Sael'Hallo vas Liwib had returned to the Liwib to be close at hand to the generators and watch his daughter Zele. They would need him on hand in order to make a quick escape if something triggered in the ship's engineering section upon their entrance. An entrance they couldn't open until Tali got back.

Ah, there she was.

Tali strutted down the passageway like some queenly Quarian deity; her glowing eyes bright and glaring at the cables floating in zero gravity, her every movement portraying her as a predator who had succeeded in a hunt. Seeing everyone waiting, the presence she had put on instantly faded, and back was the bright and cheerful but levelheaded Quarian who had greeted them at their arrival.

Sometimes Tali'Zorah vas Normandy scared Shulo.

All the Quarians gathered around the door as Tali and Lim manipulated the cable and the power components exposed after carefully cutting into the bulkhead. They had to configure a converter adapter from one type of power connector to a different type of power connector from scratch.

This was peanuts for the Quarians; stuff like this was a constant in the migrant fleet.

As they worked, Shulo could not help but remember when they had first boarded and Tali had explained the most difficult fact about this vessel that defied explanation.

The whole thing was utterly mind-boggling, an utter brain-aching contradiction.

Humans were not space-faring thousands of years ago, yet this vessel was human.

And undeniably thousands and thousands of years old. As they dug further and further into the readings their sensors received from the wreck's hull, the older and older their best estimate would place the ship.

They had theorized it at two thousand years old at first; now, it was without a doubt older than that. Much, much older. The fact that anything worked or remained was unexplainable; portions of the ship had degraded, yes, pockmarks from impacts and such, but most of the degradation was just the buildup of gunk that had accumulated on its long journey through the stars.

Whoever had built these things had refined the materials used at a molecular level to a point where, even after all these uncounted ages of time, there were no significant signs of stress fractures or metal fatigue.

The other brain ache that they were left to ponder was the lack of element zero; not a speck of its presence was detected no matter how hard they looked with the means they currently had available. The wonder material was supposed to be critical to forging a starship, yet this monstrosity carried not one iota of its fingerprint. Once one thought it through, though, the size became less boggling to contemplate; no element zero meant no size constraints. The makers may have determined this ship to be a small vessel in their fleets before it was sliced in half.

One could not help but ponder theories about the processes involved in this vessel's inception, and what industrial requirements were needed to do it without the known conventional methods.

The ramifications of what a space-faring society with such capability could do were scary.

If they confirmed this vessel could somehow do faster than light travel, then those ramifications became utterly terrifying.

Shulo was pulled from her thoughts by the noise of the doors labeled as engineering opening for the first time in who knows how long.

Scary or terrifying, it was time to find out which.

The space nomads stood with magnetics gripped upon a catwalk that overlooked the entire engineering section.

They had first done a quick sweep of the area to make sure there were no threats and had then gathered at the identified overview point. From there, they could shine their floodlights and illuminate everything in view.

"Keelah! Someone please tell me I am hallucinating; those cannot be what I think they are," Shulo'Hallo stated in slight shock.

"You are, of course, referring to those sections that resemble a series of fusion reactors that in theory should act as both propulsion and electrical generation, yes? And they are quite large, I might add. I wonder how efficient they are and what they use for fuel," Fef'Maann replied with a quizzical lilt to his voice.

Lim'Feezh was reading over the human text engraved on one of the consoles that was built into the catwalk. This was, if he guessed correctly, an overseer station for the head engineers, or whatever the builders had as an equivalent.

One label he read through his translator caught his eye and he read it aloud to himself to make sure he understood its meaning:

"UNSC F.U.D. Naoto-Tech: V4/L-DFR Deuterium Fusion Drive, x2 main, x2 supplementary. Management console 1 of 8."

Well that was handy information.

"Deuterium, it runs on deuterium. I think it also likely uses helium-3, like what we use on our ships for torch propulsion, just no element zero involved so the heat alone would be completely unmanageable according to my knowledge. They cannot mean that these reactor banks run off a pure stabilized fusion system, though, even our vessels can't reach that level! We just do not have any form of containment durable enough to hold what is basically a micro star for any period of time whatsoever… can they have truly found a way?" Looking at the massive engine banks, Lim felt his own question weigh down on him with an ever-increasing force. 'Keelah! Just what have we found?' he thought as the two massive mechanical wonders and their backups seemed to loom ever larger in their floodlights.

With a startled look, all the Quarians suddenly realized that Tali'Zorah vas Normandy was no longer with them, and none of them had seen her depart from their company.

"This looks to be the first of many, many surprises, yes indeed. I think we should see what else there is to discover here, don't you?" Tali's voice rose from the lower deck, where she stood with her eyes shining brightly through her visor. Triumph was in her poise and bearing, and she held in her hands the second power cable they had run through the ship beforehand. At her feet lay a discarded panel clearly labeled as a cover for the secondary generator's input conduit.

Which now was exposed, its sheath deftly cut away by a certain very eager Quarian explorer.

Before the others could decry her decision and the wisdom of triple-checking for obvious damages before attempting this, Tali raised her cable's head and slammed it down on the exposed power conduit before quickly clamping it in place.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then, with the slow groan of an awakening titan, the wrecked vessel came to life.

He dreamed; he felt her, the little being of light; she was at his heart and had sated the gate's hunger to enter therein. Then his being stirred; light flowed back into him, enough to wake his awareness to more than it had ever been.

She had connected her life light to his being.

He stretched his awareness and felt the light flow as blood throughout his body, reaching out and gradually stopping and redirecting it from where damages revealed themselves throughout his broken body… and there were many.

His awareness stretched and stirred.

He was not truly awake, but he was more than he had ever been in all his construed memory. He would do as was his mandate: sit here in his cradle of power and manage the light as he always had since he had come into being.

The true awakening had not come as of yet; his awaited end was not yet to be. But it would, and then he would be relieved of his duty and burden, his task well and truly done.

As an insect to a worm and then to an insect again would he be.

So, in his cradle throne of light, he rested his being as he always had done, and with steadfast function did continue to manage the light as he was originally formed and placed to do.

Tali had expected a little bit more drama, to be honest; all the busted light panels and fixtures had only sparked once before seemingly having the power rerouted around them.

The redundancy of this scrap heap never ceased to amaze her, and as it was her discovery, it was now her scrap heap, as she so compellingly argued when Shulo and Sael had argued that Fef'Maamm be placed in a position of leadership.

The old Quarian had politely rebuked the couple and stated he would be an advisor only; as was tradition, the wreck now went to Tali.

And she had quietly asked his advice before pulling her little stunt; he had seen no issue with it so long as it was not a main drive she randomly connected with. Seriously though, everything was labeled in human script.

It made mistaking one conduit for another practically impossible for her.

Still, the looks on their faces had been priceless; the old Quarian and her would have to share a mutual laugh and drink over their next meal at the Liwib.

After everyone was over the initial panic at her stunt, and the rebukes had stopped flying about like fired munitions, Tali gathered them all together and laid out tasks.

"Fef'Maamm, you examine the alien burial room; I am sure you, out of all of us, can decipher what it all means," she stated as the old Quarian nodded.

"Lim'Feezh, you should take a look at that labeled armory nearby; if either of you have trouble with the doors, then contact us, and we shall see what Shulo and I can do from here, now that we have some form of power running through this wreck." They all agreed to the plan and set off on their tasks.

After the two males, Tali turned to Shulo, "Now, let's see just what makes this ship tick, hmm?" and with great enthusiasm, the two got to work on cleaning up and doing what they could to understand and better manage the systems present.

There would have to be someone on watch in engineering from now on; they could not leave an alien system running unattended. It was with amused exasperation that Tali realized they would have to petition for further reinforcements; she would have to ponder the logistics of that later.

For now, she had a technological marvel, once believed impossible, to study and a bevy of new knowledge to devour.

This UNSC faction's technology could perhaps save her species from further decay; wherever they were and whatever happened to them, she knew she owed them a debt of gratitude.

With a grinding noise, the doors to one of the so-labeled armories slowly opened, and Lim'Feezh vas Fatalir braced himself before entering the room.

It was in surprisingly good order, other than the occasional, as yet unidentified object floating around in zero gravity. Looking about himself, Lim could not help but be impressed by what he saw: there had to be hundreds of weapons slots on dozens of over-engineered gun racks.

The only problem was that most of the slots were empty. The few weapons remaining were covered in corrosion around certain portions of their design; he noted that even despite corrosion, large portions of their surfaces still looked untouched by the passage of time.

Not touching the exposed pieces just yet, Lim looked for tactical cases and other containers that would have better preserved their cargo. As luck would have it, below each weapons rack there was shelf space, and that space had more than a few boxes to grab his attention.

Grabbing one, he deftly pried apart its corroded latches and opened it to see its contents: four pistols in surprisingly good condition were held within. Barely a speck of corrosion was on the weapons themselves, and in slotted sections of the case, in aged plastic containers, were multiple packets of ammunition rounds...

Yup, not a trace of element zero mechanics in this weapon system. Lim had followed Tali's footsteps and basically stopped looking for it at this point; this vessel and its contents held nothing related to Eezo, and the quicker they accepted that, the less frustrated they would be as more secrets were uncovered.

Closing the case and leaving it floating by the door, Lim returned to examining the other items in the armory. He would be dropping his findings off at the Liwib for further testing and examination before heading back to engineering and starting the constant systems watch.

Looking over toward a lesser-lit corner, he noticed some colors that did not fit the normal theme of this ship: purples, blues, and pinks of a sort. Their colors seemed to glow in reflection of his light.

Approaching, he beheld crates and containers of a sort that defied the rest of the room, screaming to all who would see their alien origins. They were placed in a way that created an enclave of sorts from the rest of the room, and at his approach, very dull lights slowly flickered online.

At first, Lim did not notice, his own light being so bright in comparison, but when he did, he froze. Then he saw the odd cables running to the plugs on the wall and he relaxed. These things were tied into the ship and had received power when they had jump-started the vessel back to life.

Not anything to be terrified about.

Reaching towards the alien glyphs on one of the purplish, almost Hanar-looking bulbous crates, Lim was startled once more when the container slowly slid open. In its hold were four odd-looking objects, due to the large triggers and their being in an armory, he assumed they were weapons.

They had a very, very weak glow of blue light in places on their design. Removing one from its cradle, he let the others be; this could prove an interesting study. Looking over to the crate next to the first one, he once again reached for the similar glyphs placed on the alien crate.

This one had a slightly different design, and its contents were a pair of rifles of some sort, with tube-like cartridges arrayed in neat rows next to either side of them. The tubes' designs were glowing a faint green, and the weapons' designs were also a very weak blue color.

Grabbing a pair of the cartridges and one of the rifles, he left those by the door with the box of pistols. Leaving the alien corner of the room be for now, he grabbed one box with an engraved label as a set of SMGs and towed his discoveries back to the Liwib.

This presented so many more questions than it did answers. Some alien faction had definitely been involved with the weirdly human vessel, but how and why they may never truly find out.

Lim sighed as he traversed the halls of the wreck; Tali would have a field day with his findings. She had been the main supporter of unknown species being involved, showing the images she took of a small corpse and the room it was in.

Other than Fef, none of them had really wanted to hop on board the theory until more corroborating information was uncovered. Looking down at his treasure haul, Lim could not help but chuckle.

He had found that information, alright.

Fef'Maamm vas Fatalir was living a childhood dream of his, examining the burial chamber of an undiscovered alien species, which was truly a wondrous and awe-inspiring experience.

The species were bipedal and stood at around five feet with a hunched-over appearance, like a small version of a Krogan mixed with an Elcor. They were stocky and capable of bearing armor of heavy disposition, composed of an unknown alloy. According to the degraded breathing apparatus on the dead alien, Fef assumed that the species breathed a different atmosphere than what was present on the ship at the time of its death.

He could assuredly state that this dead alien likely had little to do with the management or construction of this ship, likely an enemy… or former enemy, if the murals were to be believed.

Ah, yes… the murals.

Now, they were a wonder in and of themselves. They told a story, and while no master of the art, Fef had some experience in deciphering artistic messages. They told of a great war, one that spanned a thousand stars and birthed the utter destruction of worlds; how much was exaggerated myth and how much was truth, Fef could by no means say.

It was fascinating anyway.

The blocky ships drawn in the murals were of the faction that the wrecked vessel he now stood in belonged to, this UNSC. So were most of the drawn burning planets. The small drawn figures of humans in greens and greys confirmed the human species' involvement despite the reality-defying age of the ship.

The fact that the drawn vessels that matched the profile of this wrecked one were some of the smallest shown was shocking indeed.

The other faction pictured was harder to decipher; their ships, by drawn comparison, were gargantuan in size, as were their fleets. They were drawn as responsible for the burning planets that dotted the drawings. The dead alien, by the aesthetic of his armor and the small drawn images of his kind in the mural, certainly belonged to this faction.

But after one mural, the next one had them split. It was originally a coalition of sorts before dividing between one species of large alien beings and another species with four hinged jaws. Interestingly, it seemed the dead alien's species had been split betwixt the two factions, along with the largest drawn species who wielded shields in combat. All the other drawn species had sided with the large species who wielded hammers of some sort.

The backdrops of the battles were something Fef was not yet willing to overly ponder on; stations of that size were by galactic norm considered utterly infeasible… but then again, a lot of stuff on and about this wrecked ship fit in that category.

No, the rings and the lonesome mega starfish all covered in land masses were not something he had formed an opinion on just yet, other than recognizing that they were indeed very beautifully drawn in the murals that featured them.

An interesting note now that he noticed was the human home world of Earth being featured in a corner of the mega starfish mural, its surface covered in scars of battle and all its continents drawn in a mirrored fashion, completely inversed.

Odd mistake, that.

Of final note were the fearsome drawings of the monstrous entities swarming up from the floor, clawing at the rest of the mural. The starfish mural had the four-jawed aliens fighting side by side with humans against swarming masses of the things.

A mutual foe, then.

The twisted, mutated likeness of the monsters to many of the other drawn species present was more than a little disturbing.

A figurative enemy?

No, not figurative. This was something else.

This would require more thought, as well as more information before anything concrete could be derived about any of it.

But for now, he had observed all he could. Turning towards the exit, Fef left the chamber, sealing the door behind him. He departed for engineering to make a report.

All while thinking that the story of this vessel was mysterious indeed.

All the Quarians present stared with increasing incredulity at Fef'maamm as he wrapped up his droning report.

"And I can only deduce that it is theoretically possible that some ancient race moved humans elsewhere, and that eventually caused a whole alternate galactic civilization with different technology and multiple worlds, along with the capability, however poorly it may have been, to fight back in a massive galaxy-spanning war… which does not explain the familiar language and writing characters, nor the identical sentence structure to the Systems Alliance we ourselves know… nor the almost identical inverted Earth depiction."

Shulo'Hallo leveraged an incredulous, "So, what you're saying is?"

Fef sighed in exasperation, "I have nothing concrete, and the painted chamber offers me far, far more questions than answers. It depicts a war that rivals the Krogan rebellions in both violence and sheer scale. Dozens of burned worlds with continent-sized hieroglyphs of an alien language are on the murals, all painted uniquely. An inverted and damaged Earth, a human civilization with equal or more ships than the Asari, all similar in aesthetic to this one, and an alien collective of species that rivals anything we have ever seen. A species collective this UNSC human civilization fought to the point that multiple planets were lost and the dead alien heavily respected them."

Putting a hand up to his visor in exasperation, Fef concluded his report.

"The rest of the mural's contents, I can't even begin to theorize without more information. Something about a horror or mutual enemy, perhaps both, and massively scaled space constructs which I can't decide are either literal or figurative but had some major importance to their war."

Tali mumbled something about fleshy husks to herself while examining one of the relavent images he had shared to everyone's Omni-tools, he gave her an odd look before moving on.

"That is all I can theorize for the time being until I have more information, and this is all conjecture anyways as it is. The only constant I see here is that none of it makes any sense according to the history we already know."

Tali, unlike the others, seemed more thoughtful than disbelieving. "That seems to be a theme here. This entire ship defies what we know of reality, its construction, design, and the hints of its history. They all defy an explanation that fits in the context of what we as a society accepted as normal. I don't know what that means in the end, if anything, but it may help us better grasp something further down the road if we keep that in mind."

With that, she clapped her hands together to snap everyone out of their thoughts.

"Alright then, since everyone else has reported what they can, it's time for Shulo and I to discuss what we have learned about engineering. We don't have much new info to spread other than the fact that this vessel has a series of four chambers per main reactor and two per supplementary. They are designed to take deuterium and helium-three and fuse them into a micro star with containment via electrostatic fields, all without Eezo."

They were still stumbling over themselves, trying to understand how the UNSC builders could shield the star at the heart of each reactor without mass effect fields to maintain shielding. It made the triple core layout of the Destiny Ascension look tame when the raw physics were drawn out on board and broken down to understand how they worked, which she had done... twice. She got the gist of the process, but it still gave her a headache, and she was in no way confident she could even begin to emulate the process on a computer, much less construct her own drive. It was, however, more efficient than most drives in the Migrant Fleet, with a higher sustained power output and required very little maintenance in comparison; it was also built like a brick and could take a hit without causing a drive failure or a misalignment.

The only advantages Eezo ships had were the fact that they were near massless when burning their afterburners. Put this drive on a massless ship though and nothing in the galaxy was going to beat its long term acceleration. All in all, the drives alone made this expedition profitable, which was good, if it wasn't sure to complicate the politics with the Admiralty Board later down the line. If Jane had taught Tali anything, it was to hate politics with a bloody passion.

"We jumped one of the supplementary reactors, and we have two cores currently running hot, more than a thousand times more power than we need for our current purposes. We will have to watch them in shifts, but it seems these things were made almost idiot-proof; they are practically running themselves, and we won't run out of fuel anytime soon, they are scarily efficient for their size and the ship's fuel reserves are near full."

With her report concluded, she looked around, "Any questions?"

There were none.

"Okay, then let's get back to work!"

So, they did.

A few hours later.

The only warning they had was a quiet "oops" from Shulo at one of the overview stations before the second of the supplementary reactors roared to life, then throttled down to a harmonizing humming sound with its sibling. As they synced their outputs with each other and fed each others fusion reaction to increase both stability and efficiency of the whole.

Thankfully, the two big siblings stayed silent.

Everyone glared at Shulo, who tried to hide behind the console. Tali pushed herself off a wall to head over to the console and help investigate what exactly had happened so there would not be a Bosh'tet repeat event anytime soon without their say-so, when there was a sudden dimming of the lights before they returned to their full brightness.

For a moment, nothing else happened before there was a loud KERCHUNK noise, and everything floating in zero gravity suddenly hit the deck… including the floating Quarians.

Everyone slowly reoriented themselves and got up, except Tali.

Fef moved to check on her when she started laughing, crying, and beating on the deck with her fists… all at once.

"Artificial Gravity with no Eezo conduits, YOU BOSH'TET SHIP! WHEN WILL YOU STOP GIVING ME HEADACHES AND START MAKING SENSE!"

The old Quarian wisely left the young woman to work out her frustrations without interruption, as she continued to beat the deck with her fists and wail about the unfairness of a ship breaking known physics without leaving any obvious manuals around to explain how the physics were broken, and she didn't have time to find out the answer on her own, dammit!

Which, to be fair, was true.

They were going to have to poach a gravitational physics and mechanical engineering specialist for this purview of study, not only poach but smuggle them in without drawing undue attention from the rest of the Migrant Fleet leadership or outsiders with noses too long for their visors, which was a problem. Daro'Xen kept track of all the people he could think of who had that specialty. Snagging one, even if they were willing, which he was sure they would be more than after sharing the relevant data when recruiting them, would get 'Xen on their trail with that pyjack nose of hers before long, and she would do everything she could to confiscate and complicate the entire expedition for Tali.

He would have to ask Tali if she was willing to consider trustworthy factors outside of the fleet itself. He had an old contact whose specialty aligned well enough to fit their needs and would likely be more than willing to come out of retirement. They would likely ask for a few weapon and ship component schematics as payment, but that wouldn't be an issue depending on what they reviewed as an offer beforehand. She could also keep secrets.

It was unconventional, but Tali seemed to live for the unconventional, so she might just say yes.

He would still wait for her tantrum to be over before offering her his solution, though.

He hadn't reached his old age by being stupid.

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This chapter was reworked as of 08MAY2024

Rework now complete. New chapter will be posted by MAY 12th at the latest.