The Asari military shuttle locked its docking rings on to the ex-volus freighter with a clang. The passage hissed, as massive atmosphere tanks on the shuttle slowly filled the delicate docking corridor with air. The crew of the diminutive freighter all stood ready in the ready room, nervously shifting around. They had long since offloaded the less-than-legal cargo that occasionally found its way into their hull. Their safety registration and inspection were both up to date with a little help from an inspector who was a little down on his luck at the varren track.
When they had first arrived in the system that housed relay 314, Osh'Leih was exuberant, eager to take the plunge into an entirely new region of space, even if it had to be with a crew that could scarcely remember her name. If she could find something out here, she could return a hero, and secure herself a spot in one of the premier crews in the flotilla. She could revolutionize the Quarian way of life, depending on what she found. She was sure that at this very moment there were hundreds of young Quarians rushing to this sector, eager to try their luck in the brand-new world revealed to them. She had to act fast to cement her place.
But when the captain received word to heave-to by the Asari military vessels at station around the relay, Osh's heart began to pump. She knew that this was all part of the visa process outlined in their information packet. She knew that there would be hundreds of ships in a condition just as dire as theirs. She knew that there would be countless cargo's seized attempting to smuggle goods into the newfound colonies.
And in her head, she knew that her crewmates knew that this would happen. That didn't make it any easier when the massive Krogans that stood beside her made certain to secure their enormous shotguns to their armor.
"For security," the captain had said. Keelah.
A tortured rattle filled the hull, as the outer airlock doors of the transport slowly opened. She was supposed to inspect those doors on an EVA two days ago, but in the rush to 314, it had quickly been forgotten by the crew. Osh hadn't forgotten of course, but every second she avoided putting on that death-trap of an EVA suit was a moment she would enjoy.
So, for now, they would all have to deal with a squeaky door.
After a short decontamination, a chime rang through the bay, and the interior doors began to open. One of Osh's crew twitched, his hand resting on the shotgun at the small of his back. The smell of Krogans ready to fight filled the room, a revolting musk that Osh was particularly vulnerable to, even though the complicated filters of her suit. A wave of fog rolled through the bay from the airlock, malfunctioning temperature control units failing to regulate the temperature inside the airlock. Another thing to fix. All eyes remained locked on the door.
It opened, and three Asari commandos in jet black armor stepped on board. Two of them carried large rifles, held at rest. Despite their seemingly relaxed posture, Osh could see their eyes scan the room, and settle on the tensed hands of the crew, hovering near the shotguns. The third had her omni-tool activated, and quickly moved to confront the crew.
She didn't waste any time for niceties, demanding, "Ship's name, complement, and useful occupation for joint UEG settlement."
While the captain covered the finer details, Osh let her eyes wander to the two commandos. They seemed more at ease now that the cargo vessel hadn't erupted into gunfire. They still eyed the Krogans with a keen sense of self-preservation, however, their fingers hovering over the trigger guard of their rifles. Their faces were sunken with exhaustion, with dark blue bags underlying their soldier's eyes.
Osh supposed she couldn't blame them. She had seen the column of ships awaiting entrance to UEG space. They vastly outnumbered the small complement of the Asari second fleet that had been left here. As a result, it seemed it had fallen upon the elite units of the Asari military to doll out the tedious records-keeping of the new colonization efforts. Osh supposed it at the very least kept violent confrontation to a minimum, as little consolation as that might be to the exhausted Asari currently staring down the pack of Krogans.
Her focus drifted back to the conversation between the captain and the lead commando.
"Salvage?" the commando asked, "Salvaging efforts are currently strictly forbidden in the Sol system."
The captain slyly pivoted his tact: "Of course, commando. What I meant is that our ship is ideal for hauling heavy loads of minerals and ores needed for rebuilding. Due to our experience in salvaging... naturally."
An unconvincing grin spread across his face. The commando gave him a long look, before shrugging and accepting his answer. She still appeared unconvinced, but if 'unconvinced commando' got their crew passage to Sol, Osh would take what she could get.
"And your crew?" the commando prompted cocking a brow at the krogan captain.
"Four, all Krogan."
The commando paused a moment, as if waiting for something else.
"And the Quarian?"
"A passenger, not on the payroll."
The commando slowly glanced her over, evaluating her filthy enviro-suit and grease smeared visor. Even her head covering was beginning to fray from getting caught on the jagged edges of the decrepit transport. If her father were to see her suit in this condition, he would be horrified, even as a hard-working mechanic in the flotilla. He might just think she had just lost a fight to a Varren.
One of the other Asari opened her mouth slightly, as if to speak up, before quickly deciding otherwise. The leader kept her gaze fixed on Osh's eyes, almost seeming to peer through her mask.
"Sure…" she remarked, disbelief obvious in her drawl. At that moment, all three commandos suddenly looked away, distracted by something none of the Krogan crew could hear. The leader nodded to nobody, snapping back a quick "affirmative" to whomever was on the other end of the commando's encrypted channel.
She gave one last glance to Osh.
"Captain, you will find the permissions to enter the Sol system on your console. Be sure to follow exactly the directions enclosed, and report to Mars for temporary duty assignment."
The commandos briskly retreated from the room back to their shuttle. When the shuttle detached, it sped away at breakneck speed.
Osh counted the jumps in her head, as the rest of the crew began to prepare the transport for relay transition. Soon, she would be in Sol.
"Look at all that money..."
The entire crew of the freighter was crammed onto the small command deck, Osh included. The freighter was part of a long chain of ships awaiting clearance to finally land on Earth's surface. In front of them, glimmering in the gentle light of Sol, was a band of destruction.
Hundreds of titanium hulls drifting abandoned. Thousands of tons of semi-conductors. Thousands of miles of electrical wiring. Explosives and ordinance. New technologies. Floating in orbit around Earth was a veritable fortune for a scavenger.
And that wasn't even mentioning the purple and silver hulls of the Covenant ships. The information packet issued at Mars barely mentioned anything about them, other than their technological superiority in space. They were warned to notify the authorities if they found covenant tech once they made landfall.
In the captain's experience, however, anything the citadel government tried to keep him from was all that more interesting. Not to mention that sometimes the most illicit fetched the highest price in black market deals. The promise of an entire orbit's worth of salvage was simply too good to be true.
Mostly because it was. The column of civilian transports and ships was being funneled through a gap cleared in the UNSC defensive perimeter. The massive hulks of destroyed frigates and destroyers had been tugged away into the rest of the debris field, leaving a zone for easy commercial traffic to the surface of the earth below. This corridor hosted a flurry of traffic, carefully controlled by an Asari cruiser in orbit, watching as the arriving craft buzzed along their carefully planned paths.
The ray-like hull of the cruiser stood in stark contrast to the massive debris field behind it, a tiny dark blue speck against the dark grey of the UNSC battlelines. It drifted at the perimeter of the traffic corridor, well out of the way of the flow of ships, but plenty close enough to intervene.
And therein lay the problem.
Osh'Leih could see the look on the captain's face. It was a dangerous look.
Her voice, tiny even in the enclosed space of the cockpit, barely reached his ears. "Captain? Are you really going to..."
"Quiet whelp." He whipped around and growled in her direction. Osh seemed to sink even deeper into the corner of the room. One of the other Krogans spoke up.
"Blue told us the debris field is off-limits. We can't get in there to salvage boss." Indeed, perhaps the single most emphasized point of their introductory briefing was about the exclusion zones, both in Earth orbit, and down on the surface. And foremost in all those exclusion zones was the massive debris field in orbit.
Their ship was supposed to proceed to the damaged city of New Mombasa and help with hauling away the ruins of war, and transporting supplies to begin rebuilding. The Asari resource officer had told them it was vital work, but it would take long hours and extensive wear on the ship. Which means that the captain of Osh's freighter had very little interest in doing what he was told.
The captain was currently eyeing the Asari cruiser guarding the passageway through the debris field. Hundreds of ships buzzed through the cleared gap, and only a single cruiser was left to watch them. It was obvious that the efforts of coordinating an entire system was stretching the deployed Asari fleet thin.
"It's just one ship. Look at how dense that field is at the edges. We get in there and there is no way they will be able to pick up our eezo signature with all those destroyed ships out there."
The other Krogans looked unsure.
"What if they shoot?"
The captain grinned. "Thats the brilliant part. When we hit that junction, we take off into the debris field. That takes us what? 15 seconds? You know the Asari; they love their rules."
The crewmember groaned. The captain continued: "They'll warn us first. They aren't going to shoot on sight. By the time they finish, we'll already be hidden in the field."
"Then what captain? We sit in the field while a cruiser hunts us down?"
The captain tapped his thick skull.
"Think meathead. There's just one cruiser out here managing traffic. If they go chasing us down, who's going to keep things in line? By the time reinforcements arrive, we'll just be one tiny ship somewhere in tens of thousands of kilometers of debris field."
"And how to you plan to get out of there with the goods? Ask nicely?"
Osh doubted it would be difficult. More and more ships streamed into the system every hour. While the Asari controlled the system with an iron grip for now, as more colonists began their daily jobs and travels, things would cool down quickly. Which was the perfect time for a smuggler to sneak out of a debris field with their valuable cargo.
They would be striking while the iron was hot, before the news of what was and wasn't valuable came trickling out of the system. The captain could probably sell something as simple as a toilet for a fortune, so long as he waved the idea of alien technology in the faces of a sufficiently naïve mark.
And it was so wrong. She would be robbing the graves of these poor people. She had long since abandoned any positive opinions of her other crew members, but she didn't know that she could do it.
What if I find a body?
What if we get caught?
Osh knew the Krogans stood to gain a lot of money. Provided they could sneak past that cruiser. But as the crew agreed to the plan, she could see her dream of a new world and a fresh start disappearing before her eyes.
The freighter moved closer and closer to the break-off point. The helmsman gripped the ship's yoke tight enough to crush Osh's arm. He was still clearly unsure, checking over his shoulder for confirmation from his captain. If they were going to make a break for the debris field, they needed to do it now.
"C'mon, coward, think of the riches."
The transport broke off from the stream of traffic. Throttles were slammed into their sub-light maximums, as the ship turned away towards the entrance to the debris field, across from the watching cruiser. The drive whined as the ship's reactor groaned under the stress. Given all the time she had spent repairing that reactor, she certainly wasn't comforted by the sound.
Still, without her work, they undoubtedly would of all died a horrific fiery death already. Silver linings.
The transport picked up speed and raced across the empty space between the traffic column and the drifting hulks of human and covenant warships. Osh turned her attention to the readout behind her. The cruiser was pulling out from its station, aware of their intrusion.
The sleek hull of the Asari ship picked up speed, and Osh could only count down in her head the time until they broke through into the debris field.
5...
6...
7...
The radio blared on the control channel. An authoritative Asari voice filled the cockpit.
"Rouge transport, heave-to immediately. You are entering a restricted space. You are in violation of joint Citadel and UEG law. This is your final warning..."
"Turn that shit off," the captain barked. With a click, the Asari was cut off, and once more the cockpit was only filled with the whine of the reactor and the rattling of the ship's frame. They were racing towards a large wreck, gently spinning in space. It was cleaved in half lengthwise, the fragments thrown off by the spinning hull cluttering the transports.
Osh closed her eyes, trying not to imagine the cell waiting for her whenever they got caught. She might never return home, stuck in some backwater prison where she would never meet another of her kind. Her family would never hear from her. Just another Quarian lost to the stars on her pilgrimage. She had set out to create a better world for her people. How had things gone so wrong? Where did she screw up?
The count ticked on in her head, even as she squeezed her eyes shut hoping it would all go away.
13...
14...
15...
NOW!
She felt the transport turn as it began weaving around the debris. She opened her eyes and took another peek out of the front of the ship. They were speeding through the debris field, darting between ruined pieces thrown off from the spinning wreck.
Other destroyed ships quickly filled the viewscreen, as they entered the heart of debris field; where stricken vessels had been hauled to clear the transit path. In here, they would be very difficult to detect. Their eezo drive would be shielded by the signatures of all the ships around them.
And, true to the captain's prediction, the Asari cruiser didn't follow them into the field, instead continuing to keep within range of the traffic column.
And with a sinking feeling the pit of her stomach, Osh realized that the captain had been right. The cruiser wasn't going to follow them into the field. For now, they were free to scavenge through the destroyed ships of the UNSC Home Fleet. Soon they would be pillaging the graves of a people she had hoped would be a new beginning for her.
Osh'Leih nar Teslaya stood in the airlock of the transport as the door in front of her slowly opened. Coiled in the airlock behind her was a long tether, feeding air into the heavy tanks on her back and providing easy and secure communications with the ship, essential during covert operations like this.
Normally, her suit filtered most of the rank smells of the ship before it reached her nose. But attached to the onboard, EVA gear, the stench of the stale air being fed through dried out seals and into poorly fitting regulators permeated her entire suit.
She was lucky that her enviro-suit could keep her protected in space. It meant that she wouldn't have to rely on one of the decaying suits collected by the Krogan crew over the years. No, instead she just had to trust that her supplemental oxygen wouldn't poison her while she worked. Or that her tether wouldn't break. Or that the tanks on her back wouldn't rupture.
It didn't surprise her that she was going to be sent across to the derelict first. Somebody had to set up the heavy oxygen tanks and compressors that would be needed for long term exploration of the ship. She would have to set up the power plants that would run their tools to take apart the ship piece by piece.
Staring across the empty gap towards the UNSC ship, she felt like a vulture. The ship had been ripped in half by the impact of some kind of plasma projectile. All that was left in front of her was the pronged front of the vessel, relatively stationary in the empty space. The torn open bay of a hangar was in front of her, and inside, shrouded in darkness, she could make out the dark tangle of the damaged interior systems of the ship. A doorframe waited in the darkness, a portal deeper into the ship.
She looked once more at the upper prong of the ship, her target on today's exploratory walk. While the rest of the crew remained safe inside the transport, she needed to first explore the wreck to determine if there was anything worth deploying the salvage gear for. She would be walking alone on a dead ship. Any hundreds of things could go wrong. Any hundreds of things that could leave her with a cold death.
She was looking for electromagnets. On their approach, the captain spotted the huge barrel in the prow of the ship. It dwarfed the size of even Turian linear accelerators. If this ship was anything like citadel ships, they would use powerful electromagnets in junction with eezo. With a barrel of that bore, there would be plenty of valuable electromagnetic systems they could haul out of the ship. If the captain was lucky, the eezo drives for the weapon would still be intact.
She checked the seals on her suit one more time, ensuring that none of her precious atmosphere was leaking into the vacuum around her. Then, she carefully pushed out of the airlock, and drifted towards the derelict.
For a moment, she was truly free, floating alone in the stars. Then, she felt the tug of the tether unspooling behind her and was reminded of her mission.
She glanced behind her, at the stationary bulk of the freighter that had been her home. It looked out of place in the debris field, a tiny craft floating amongst the giants.
She entered through the jagged hole in the side of what was left of the hangar. The thick external blast doors were cracked open, but whatever had ripped apart this ship had taken the entire bulkhead with it leaving the bay exposed from the rear, providing a much simpler ingress point. A transport aircraft took up most of the space in the hangar. The thick supports suspending it had been twisted like a thin wire, and the ship now rested with one wing smashed into the deck of the hangar.
Osh touched down onto the deck behind it, magnetic soles attaching her to the crowded hangar. She touched the side of her helmet, and the light she had attached to her rig flickered to life, bathing the bay in a cold white glow. Instead of reflecting off shiny titanium walls, the light was absorbed by the dark carbon scoring of a raging inferno. The room was covered in black, from the floor to the ceiling. The walls were twisted and melted, and everything inside the bay was charred or destroyed.
The large transport suspended in the bay looked at one point to have been green. Now, the nacelles of its engines were twisted and melted, and covered in soot. The entire upper half of the craft had burned away. As she moved around the craft, the other side had melted down to the ribbed frames of the ship, the skin and internals vaporized and burned away. The supports above the craft seemed to have bucked under intense heat.
The quiet click-hiss of her suit's regulator was the metronome to her footsteps. In the silence of the destroyed bay, she swore she could hear her own heartbeat.
She clicked on her microphone.
"I'm aboard. It looks like there was a fire. A bad one."
"Just find the servicing rooms for that main gun," the captain retorted. Osh could hear frantic chatter in the background, before the captain cut off the microphone.
Fire was one of the worst nightmares of the flotilla. Uncontrolled, fire could take out an entire live ship. With thousands of Quarians crammed into the tight confines of a ship, any incident could kill dozens. If the fire started in the interior and spread through the ship's wiring and life support systems, it could kill hundreds. She used to have nightmares, dreaming she woke up in a blazing inferno. From an early age, the proper steps to damage control were drilled into every young Quarian mind. She would obsessively practice the drills with her parents to set her imaginative mind at peace.
She could remember her teachers now.
Step 1: Ignition. Identify the fire source and fuel type.
She walked past the burned-out husk of an ammunition cart parked beneath the wing of the transport aircraft, surrounded by the intense black of scoring. The deck around the cart was covered in ash, and under the ash was the bright rainbow of heat-affected titanium. The frame of the cart was melted, and cooled droplets of metal from the frame littered the ground. Ammunition loading gone wrong. Chemical fire.
Step 2: Containment. Identify and remove potential external sources of fuel.
The wing of the aircraft on this side had burned completely through, leaving the heavy engines of the ship to crash to the deck. The remains of a missile pod remained slung under the wing. Engines, wiring, insulation, munitions. All things that could power the raging inferno in the bay. It would have happened fast. Especially when ignited by explosives or rocket motors. By the time anybody noticed the fire in the munitions cart, it probably was already seconds away from spreading to the aircraft.
Step 3: Fight the fire. Be sure to use appropriate fire suppression solution.
The charred remains of hoses snaked out from four ports on the walls. Osh could see the stains left behind by fire suppression foam coating what would have been the cooler portions of the room. The remains of oxygen masks were stuck to the floor, melted in place. On the nozzles of one of the hoses, Osh could see the remains of thick leather gloves, still grasping the handle, joined to the nozzle by the intense heat.
Firefighting gear was meant to help against a small blaze. By the time the transport craft ignited, in such a small space, the fight was likely already lost. But Osh knew that no Quarian would ever give up the fight, and she guessed these humans were much the same.
Step 4: Compartmentalization. If fire persists, seal off the casualty area.
She looked over at the blast doors that led out of the hangar and into the rest of the ship. They were firmly closed, overlapping metal plates airtight against the intense heat of the blaze. In the black ash covering one of the doors, there was a five-fingered handprint, which had uncovered the white-painted titanium beneath as it dragged down the door.
She lifted her hand and placed it over the mark. Her three fingered hands were much longer and much slenderer than the imprint that remained. From the height of the mark on the door, she guessed that these humans were about her height, maybe slightly taller. She pulled her hand away, and stared down at the ash that covered it.
The heat would have been intolerable. Even more so if they didn't have full environmental suits. This was not a large hangar, especially compared to the gigantic size of the aircraft that had become an inferno. It would have been a painful death.
She looked last to the exterior hangar door, opened perhaps a meter along the diagonal seam running its length.
Step 5: Save the Ship. If fire persists, vent atmosphere from casualty areas.
A captain must save the ship. The grim reality of space travel.
Still, the sealed off interior doors would pose a problem for her own exploration of the vessel. She had her omni-tool equipped with a cutting tool, perfect for cutting apart small portions of the ship. It was an unfortunate necessity when press ganged into doing a Krogan smuggler's dirty work.
She could probably cut through these doors, but it would take some time. She ignited her omni-tool, and moved towards the farthest most bulkhead, avoiding the door that now had two handprints, one human, one Quarian.
The only warning was a short crackle of static over the tethered intercom.
And the next second, the hangar was awash in a bright orange flash, drowning out even Osh's headlamp. It was as if the inferno had reignited in the bay, except there was no heat. No air. Just the sinister orange glow of a raging fire.
She whirled around just in time to see the engine of the freighter explode.
White tracers ripped through the hull of the ship that had been her home for months, each blast shattering more and more of the freighters already delicate frame. The destroyed engine block was awash with flames, and debris was ejected from the ship as secondary explosions rocked the hull. The landing gear pods were blown clean off the body, and the forwards sensor array was turned to shrapnel as it was blown into the debris field.
It took Osh a moment to even register the destruction. A moment longer to even think about a source.
In the distance behind the transport, was a dark gray phantom, a ship where there hadn't been one just minutes before. She knew. She had checked. Had she missed it? Or had it stalked them like a Qorach stalks its prey?
The phantom was a mirror image of the ship she was on. Long and narrow, with a split prong at the bow and a heavily armored pair of thrusters at the back. A large white bird emblazoned on her armor plate.
Muzzle flashes were erupting from the two twin-barreled turrets on the ship's flank.
The rounds zipped across the void of space and ripped into the thin hull of the Volus transport. Osh watched a round in the milliseconds it took from leaving the muzzle of the gun clean through the cockpit of the transport, unimpeded by the thin plating of the freighter. She wished she hadn't noticed the expanding cloud of orange gore that trailed out of the hole in the side of the cockpit. A gout of fire followed as another round ripped clean through the cockpit.
Another white tracer round flew through the crew quarters before tumbling into the wreck's hangar bay, sending Osh diving for cover as it bounced off the interior of the hangar door and ricocheted over her head. The round slammed into the back of the hangar bay, driving vibrations through the floor and sending shrapnel clattering around the room.
Hidden in cover, Osh watched the streaks of the tracers weave up and down the length of the freighter.
The destruction unfolded in silence. With no air to transmit the violent explosions rippling along the hull of the transport, the entire scene was quiet, surreal. Osh cowered behind a burned-out console, shocked.
In a moment of clarity amongst the chaos, Osh ignited her omni-tool and sliced clean through her tether. The air in the lines hissed out into space, but her suit switched over into the internal oxygen in her tanks, saving her from a slow death from asphyxiation.
Not a moment too late.
Within her next heartbeat, the ship flashed bright white one final time, exploding violently into hundreds of pieces, casting debris in all directions. The silent explosion washed the bay in white and caused her visor to automatically tint to protect her eyes. By some miracle, no debris found its way into the derelict's hangar. The end of Osh's tether attached to the airlock floated loose for a moment, before viciously whipping out into space as the airlock flew into the abyss.
What was left of the freighter's main body slipped out of sight behind the hangar floor. Across the now-empty expanse of space, the UNSC warship hung motionless. The guns had stopped firing, returning to their stowed positions. She watched breathlessly, waiting for the warship to make its move. Would it come closer to finish her off? Would it destroy the derelict to punish her for her trespasses? Was this the end?
The UNSC ship hung silent for another moment. Then, a bright flare burst from her engines, and she sped off into the expanse of the debris field from which she had come.
And, just like that, the debris field was dead space, like it had been moments before.
Osh'Leih nar Teslaya was left alone, on a dead ship, with a dead crew.
/
/ FFG-336 'IRONCLAD SPIRIT', Date: 2553/2/16
***ALERT***
NEW TRAFFIC ON: UNSCBattleNet/HomeFleet/7Fleet/QRF-1:
-ROUNDS COMPLETE-
-TARGET ELIMINATED-
JOY 2610-9 (Acting CO, 7th Fleet (HomeFleet/7Fleet/QRF-1)): Acknowledged.
-WAITING...-
-DONE-
-ENGAGEMENT REPORT READY-
JOY 2610-9 (Acting CO, 7th Fleet (HomeFleet/7Fleet/QRF-1)): That won't be necessary FFG-201. Return to your patrol pattern.
-ACKNOWLEDGED-
JOY 2610-9 (Acting CO, 7th Fleet (HomeFleet/7Fleet/QRF-1)): Good work. I'll contact the Asari.
/
In the six days since Triumph entered slipspace, Varso had yet to adjust to the strange sensations.
The ship was dead quiet. Not in the conventional sense, as the fusion torch engines still thrummed, and her crew still chattered loudly in the hallways. In fact, the ship filled his ears the same way ships always did, a constant, unending drone.
No, the ship was quiet, because it almost didn't seem to be moving. There were no vibrations through the deck, no subtle changes in momentum before the inertial dampers kicked in. It was as if Triumph was perfectly still, and the whole world was moving around her. It was uncanny, and left Varso's keen senses on a hair trigger.
At least the nausea had passed, replaced with a gentle tug on his chest, almost imperceptible. Had Varso not talked to other Turians experiencing the same, he would be certain that it was a trick of the mind. Instead, all it served to do was remind the crew of the Triumph that they did belong on this plane of reality, that the thick hull of Triumph and the careful maneuvers of an AI were all that kept them from the featureless oblivion beyond the hull.
He wondered what it must feel like aboard the Turian ships trailing in Triumph's wake, dragged across dimensions by the disturbances left behind the 12-million-ton warship. They would have surrendered control of their ship to Halliday, so that she might guide them through the abyss of subspace. They were totally powerless, at the whims of an AI that was carefully orchestrating the dance of the vessels behind Triumph.
Still, now that the ship was in transit, Varso had nothing but time. He was a grunt, after all. There wasn't much he could do right now. And he suspected that a boarding action was, well, unlikely. He had been assigned a squad earlier that week. He supposed he was technically promoted; having been placed as a squad lead. Still, having seen the quality of the Turians on his team, he frequently found himself missing his team from Corvus, even if it meant going back to being a basic rifleman. They drilled every morning.
Today, they had done squad maneuvers. He had taken the team up to one of Triumph's massive cargo bays. Fresh from their resupply, the crates of food, ammunition, spare parts, and other vital supplies were stacked dozens of meters to the roof of the bay. And as far as Varso was concerned, the massive clusters of crates formed approximations of city blocks, leaving long 'roads' separated by narrow alleys. The perfect opportunity to drill his team's aptitude for street warfare.
The day before, he had taken them in full combat kit to the upper decks of Triumph, still largely unoccupied by Triumph's understaffed crew. They cleared room to room, down the entire length of the ship. It was the perfect simulation of a boarding action. Staircases, long hallways, close quarters berthing spaces, all perfect areas to work his team back into fighting shape. Between the disconcerting influences of subspace and the quick scares when they barged in on the occasional engineering team, the drills certainly kept him on edge.
And the day before that, they had practiced dismounting from a UNSC 'Pelican' dropship, in the unlikely situation where they would have to deploy from the craft of Triumph's original compliment that hadn't be moved planetside during her rearmament.
Despite the training, he still found himself with more time off than he knew what to do with. So, he spent much of his time exploring Triumph's mostly empty decks.
Aurelia joined him sometimes, but as one of the scientists who had been able to demonstrate an impressive intuition for slipspace mechanics, she had quickly become one of the key members in the ongoing effort to integrate citadel and UNSC tech. Which meant that she didn't have much time to go gallivanting around the cruiser's dozens of kilometers of passageways with him.
So, for the most part, he was alone. He spends most of his time in the upper compartments looking for traces of human life that had been left behind. Down below, most uniforms, clothing, neural links and other relics from the casualties of the pulse, had been cleared away. It was hard on most of the new crew to work alongside the tattered remains of Triumph's staff, so the removal and stowage of what the UNSC left behind was a priority.
There were entire rooms stacked high with uniforms, boots, belts, the works. Between the artifacts left scattered around the combat spaces and what was cleared out of crew berthing, there was almost too much to handle. Varso didn't know what they would do with it all. It seems that, for now, it would just sit. He supposed that incinerating the belongings of Triumph's loyal crew didn't sit quite right with command. He supposed that he agreed.
The upper decks, however, didn't get the same treatment. It was here that Varso spent much of his spare time, searching for the stories left behind in the pulse's wake. He didn't take any of it, not anymore. He couldn't place why these artifacts felt different to those he had taken from New Mombasa. But it just felt wrong.
He had come across an officer's quarters. The room was small, but it was still packed with mementos. Pictures of the UNSC officer and their family on the narrow desk. There was a small black object on the desk. When he touched it, light streamed from thousands of tiny holes on his surface. In the dark room, the roof was illuminated with the light of thousands of stars. Constellations that Varso had never seen, vast expanses of stars, galaxies, and nebula. A map of the stars, projected onto the ceiling. He had lost track of time staring up at that map.
In the end, he left the small black puck on the table. Even now, two days later, he knew the exact compartment the map was in. He could walk in there and take it with him on a whim. And yet, every day, he let it rest.
When he had seen the stuffed animal and the toy soldier on the streets of New Mombasa, something had called to him. They were abandoned, most likely by young children forced to leave them behind. Casualties of their vicious war. There was no pile of clothing that marked where a human had been whisked away by the pulse. Without his interference, the toy and the animal would have been pounded by the elements, torn to shreds by birds looking to build a nest, caked in dust by the wind blowing down the empty streets.
But here? On Triumph? Every relic, and room, and closet, and desk, was left exactly the way it had been when the pulse swept through Triumph's halls. Every room felt like its occupants would come strolling in from action stations any minute. For Varso to ruin that delicate serenity, to thaw the corridors of Triumph that were still frozen in time, felt like an unspeakable crime.
For now, every room he entered, every berthing he strolled through, he took nothing. He was a ghost, wandering the decks left behind for the dead.
The handcuffs wore rings into Osh's filthy enviro-suit, her wrists held vice-like by the bindings. The holding cell was atop one of New Mombasa's many massive skyscrapers, in the old police headquarters of the local law enforcement. NMPD headquarters, now taken over by the Asari military police force, was already a hub of traffic for the ruined city. On the shuttle ride to Earth's surface, there were no windows, no viewscreen. She was left alone in her thoughts, both grateful for her rescue, and terrified of what would come next.
The UNSC had executed the rest of the crew without a second thought, the freighter obliterated in the blink of an eye by gunfire of the UNSC vessel. As far as she knew there had been no warning, no sign of danger. From the moment they escaped the Asari in orbit, to the moment the shells were ripping through the hull, there had been no signals, no warning.
And now she was left at the mercy of the UEG.
From her cell, Osh could hear the non-stop arrival and departure of Asari shuttles, buzzing to and from local centers of activity.
The Asari commandos had found Osh sitting on the floor of the burned-out hangar, breathing slowly and calmly to preserve the oxygen she had in the tanks on her back. When they pointed their rifles at her and ordered her to put her hands on her head, she had hardly noticed, still in a trance. She hadn't felt it when they crammed her wrists into the handcuffs, nor when they locked her in her seat in the back of the Asari shuttle.
Osh was hurried out of the shuttle as soon as they made landfall. For a glorious five seconds, she stepped out into the warm afternoon sun of New Mombasa and could see the city she had dreamed of stretched out below her, an endless metropolis that lay ready for the taking, full of new opportunities, and old technology. Out there was her future. Out there was her ticket back to the flotilla.
The buildings of the city seemed to shine in the light, despite the telltale signs of war. From the shuttle platform, the entire city seemed to stretch out below her. Out across the bay was the old city, street after street of sand colored concrete houses, tangled alleyways; a whole world to explore. Below her, on the central island, was the might of the UEG industrial capacity. The destroyed space elevator. The docks. The flow of resources and manpower into the UNSC war machine, much of it funneled through the city below her.
Or so the information pamphlet had said.
Her time marveling at the view had been short. Very shortly she had been shoved into the cell. She was alone in the cell, although the cells around her were filled with other rough-looking individuals. The cell was bare, angled metal walls polished to a dull shine. There were racks of bedding on the sides, and a single toilet in the back. At the top of the rear wall, a camera was mounted, carefully out of reach of any of the fixtures in the room. On the walls, there were messages scratched by past inhabitants of the cells.
With a start, Osh realized that she was reading human for the first time in her life. They had all received the translation package at Mars, but she hadn't had a chance to use it until now. Even aboard the UNSC ship, where any lettering either went unnoticed or had been burned out by the raging fire.
She really would have preferred a more enlightened first experience with the human language. Most of the messages were crude references to sex acts, or expletives aimed at the NMPD. Still, it cemented for Osh the fact that she was finally here. She was on Earth. In a cell. Bosh'tet. Stupid, stupid girl.
She was likely the first Quarian to ever grace the inside of a UEG cell. And given the poor relationship between citadel policing and her people, she suspected that she wouldn't be the last. While she was stuck in here, doubtless other Quarians were flocking to UEG space, living her dream.
The door to her cell slid open with a chime. On the other side stood a pair of Asari officers, this time in the blue armor of the local police force. They looked down on her in dismay. Osh was sure that she smelled something fearful. Months in tight quarters with a Krogan crew certainly wasn't doing her any favors. Add to that layer after layer of grease and oil, and well; her Asari captors certainly didn't want to spend more time in her presence than they had to.
The leader rattled off a quick, clearly often repeated message. She was being held awaiting trial for trespassing, desecration of a war-grave, and interference with Citadel military operations. The way she listed the accusations, emotionless and apathetic, left a small chill creeping down Osh's back. She tried to protest, but the officer gave her no chance to plead her case, and the sounds that came out of her mouth didn't even resemble khelish.
The other officer marched over to her and grabbed her bound hands. Osh flinched, recoiling against the touch. The heavy cuffs fell off her wrists with a click. In a flash, the officers retreated out of the cell as the door slid and locked with a click behind them.
Osh's was still catching up to what had just unfolded. The charges, well, they were serious. Not that it came as any surprise. She knew the stakes if they were caught. As soon as they left the traffic lane in orbit, her life would be forced in one of two ways. Either the krogans would make bank on the salvage operation and retreat out of the Sol system to sell their goods, or they would be caught and brough to justice.
She just hadn't expected justice to come so quickly and so violently. The flash of the transport exploding was still scarred onto her retinas. Everywhere she looked, she thought she saw the crew. The captain was a bastard. He had it coming. But that so easily could have been her, getting ripped to shreds by the human warship. It would have been quick, at least. Hopefully not any quicker than what the UEG has planned for her.
She raised her now freed hands to her face.
The glove of her enviro-suit was still black from the ash of the UNSC ship. Everywhere she moved, she left little black smudges on the metallic surfaces. Her bed sheets included were quickly becoming filthened by her own suit. Her suit boots left faint footprints behind her, despite most of the soot having already been rubbed off on her way to the cell.
She raised her hands and looked down at the soot-covered glove. She touched her finger to the wall. It left behind a dark black spot.
She stared at the dark smudge on the wall for a long time. In a way it was a piece of the destroyed ship. The remnants of the fire that condemned the hangar, chemical byproducts of the destruction of the bay. And she had brough it here, planetside, where it now stained the walls of Mombasa's police headquarters.
She wasn't sure if it would be simply washed off or if it would stain the walls forever. Osh suspected that the Asari didn't care much about the interior of the cells. From the looks of things, the NMPD certainly didn't.
Would the mark still be here by the time she stood trial? Would the mark outlast her? She didn't know the UNSC's punishment for such things, but the ship in orbit had taken no quarter. Did violating the graves of their sacred dead warrant death in their eyes? Had she doomed herself all those months ago by boarding the Krogan ship? And to think that just a few short months ago, she had been so worried about what she would bring back to the fleet on her pilgrimage. Now she wondered if she would go home at all.
She would not rot in this cage waiting for whatever the UEG had in store. She wouldn't place her future in the hands of some human or asari judge, praying that they would understand that she had no choice but to do what her captain said.
She wouldn't die on this world. At least not like this.
Unbeknownst to Osh, the camera in the corner of the room tracked her every movement.
In the middle of the night, the door slid open with a quiet chime. This time, there were no Asari officers waiting outside. It took Osh a few minutes to even notice the disturbance, still groggy, awakening from dreams of white tracers and orange explosions.
When she saw the door slid wide open, she sat up in her bed. She softly crept to the threshold of her cell, careful not to make a noise. She peeked her head out of the door, looking left and right down the long corridor. The hallway was empty, and the lights were off. So far, it looked like no other prisoners had been woken up by her door opening. And it was just her door, none of the cells had opened.
Which was, well, odd. Osh didn't pretend to know much about human prison structure, but it didn't make sense that only one door would be affected by an electrical fault.
Continuing her survey of the hallway, she froze. Up on the ceiling to her right was a security camera staring right back at her, a blinking red light lethargically blinking on its face.
Osh winced, bracing for the blaring sound of an alarm, or the clattering of armored boots running down the hallway. But nothing came. She stood there in the doorway for another minute, waiting for the other shoe to drop. And still, nothing. So, she took her first slow steps into the hallway. And still, the holding cells remained quiet.
Osh thought about what she was doing. She was already neck deep in trouble. Was she about to add a prison break to that list? There would be no turning back.
Osh decided that fortune had punished her enough lately. It was time for her to catch a break.
She cursed herself for not paying more attention to the hallways of NMPD when she was brought in. Osh had been so caught up in her own head, trapped in images of explosions and gore, that she hadn't even registered the hallways as she walked down them. Her usually intuitive feeling for corridors and directions certainly wasn't ironclad in her condition. She thought she might be able to replicate the route to the landing pad. But without a ship, it would do her no good.
Still, getting to the areas of the facility devoted to the police staff might be her best bet, as risky as it was. The holding cells certainly wouldn't be near an exit, but the police staff had to come and go from somewhere, right?
She continued creeping down the hallway. She didn't have a plan to deal with any guards she found along the way. There weren't many prisoners in the holding cells, and the city was still mostly empty. With any luck the night shift at the station wouldn't be very busy. She turned the corner and had to stifle a gasp. At the end of the now illuminated hallway, sitting at a broad desk was an Asari officer, reviewing documents in front of her.
Luckily, the Asari hadn't looked up and caught the Quarian standing in the middle of the hallway. Nor had she noticed the open door to the holding cells tucked just out of sight around the corner. Osh was screwed. She didn't see any way that she could get past the guard. This hallway, unlike the last, was brightly lit. And there was nothing to hide behind once she stepped out into the hallway. While the guard certainly wasn't paying attention right now, Osh had no doubts she would be caught if she tried to get past the guard. Maybe I should head back to my cell, pretend this never happened.
A phone in the room with the guard rang. Osh jumped and was just barely able to muffle her startled sound of surprise. The phone continued to ring, filling the silent night with its harsh call. The Asari guard looked over at it annoyed. Clearly, she would rather have any messages read on her omni-tool, and Osh didn't blame her. Still, the noise of the phone didn't go away, and with a sigh, the guard stood up and walked across the room to answer. The second the guard had her back turned Osh made her mode, rushing down the hallway as quickly as she could without making a noise.
As Osh reached the desk and crouched low to stay behind it, the Asari guard sounded increasingly confused and frustrated. She demanded the caller identify themselves, threatening that any pranks would be seriously punished. Apparently not getting a satisfactory answer, she asked again for identification. The voice of the guard quickly faded out of earshot as Osh rushed past the desk into another hallway.
This one was much better decorated, with painted blue crests of the NMPD adorning the titanium floor, and many benches, chairs, and digital posters filling the rest of the room. Thin wiry grasses filled narrow planters placed around the benches, giving the room a peaceful and domestic feel. In the back of the room, there were a series of doors recessed into a wall.
Above them a sign said 'Elevators'. Perfect. Osh rushed to the open door right as more Asari voices filled her ears, coming down the hallway from which she had came.
"And they didn't say anything, just made some weird sounds," one voice said.
"Oh? Like what?"
"You wouldn't believe it if I told you," the first voice followed, "It was like some wet, disgusting, purr. Never heard anything like it. Oh! It and it whistled!"
"What? Whistled? You sure you haven't been alone up here too long? Nobody uses those phones. You sure you aren't hearing things?"
The voices continued getting closer. Osh continued towards the elevators. She looked back up at the sign for the elevator. It had changed.
'ESCAPE'
What...
Osh swore that just a moment ago it had read 'Elevator'. I don't understand...
Behind her, the pair of Asari guards finally rounded the corner, spotting the Quarian standing in the middle of the lobby. Their alarmed shouts pierced the silence.
"HEY!"
VOT!
Osh sprinted into the open elevator door, turning around to frantically press buttons, hoping that one would take her to the ground floor, but even more than that, hoping one would just close these doors and get her away from the guards. She found the button she was looking for, the large numeral 1 in human script. The doors slid shut with a chime.
Osh heard pounding on the outside of the door, before she felt a sudden weightlessness as the elevator began racing down. The elevator was fast. In the readout above the controls, Osh could see the floors whirring past at an alarming rate. Her heart was still racing, adrenaline pumping through her system. That was close.
Still, she wasn't done, soon this elevator would reach the ground level, and Osh had to hope that she could somehow make it through whatever was waiting for her on the ground level. She could only hope that the Asari that saw her would be slow in raising the alarm.
The elevator chimed. Osh readied herself for a sprint. The doors opened, and Osh found herself facing bright flashing red and blue lights. As she sprinted out of the elevator, she found herself in the lobby, and somehow there were no Asari waiting for her.
Ahead of her was a large glass façade looking outside, and in front of her, the double doors that led out onto the street to her freedom. And outside of the doors, the reason for the lack of police in the lobby was clear.
There was a blaze on the street. One of the city's police vehicles, which had, until now, been motionless on deserted lanes and avenues, abandoned as first the Covenant and then the pulse swept through the system, had crashed itself into the front of the police building. The vehicle had driven right through the tall glass façade and parked itself half inside and half outside the building. The bright lights on the car were flashing, its siren wailing, and the engine of the car had erupted in flames.
A dozen Asari security officers surrounded the wreck, trying to fight the blaze. Nobody noticed or bothered to look at the arrival on board the elevator.
In the confusion, Osh took her chance, sprinting past the group as fast as she could out of the double doors.
Right as she crossed the threshold, an alarm blared out of the police headquarters. In an instant, the officers looked up from the blaze, and saw Osh, caught red handed attempting to escape. They stared at each other for half a second, before Osh took off again, running away from the police car and the security officers.
The Asari gave chase, and Osh soon found herself weaving left and right dodging biotic lifts and throws, the bright attacks making her stomach flip as they sailed over her shoulder and through the space she had just been. She was already out of breath, too used to the cramped quarters working aboard the transport. It had been some time since she had forced her legs to run like this.
Already it felt like her heart was burning.
Behind her, she heard a startled shout. She quickly looked over her shoulder to see flashing barricades popping out of the ground behind her and blocking the Asari chasing her. Some tripped over the barricades and were scrambling to their feet, and others vaulted the block. Osh picked up her pace, eager to open on her advantage.
She raced down the still empty streets, darting around burned-out cars and mortar craters. There were some civilians around, who jumped aside and watched in confusion as the Quarian was chased down the street by the blue armored security forces.
The metal street pounded her feet as she ran, and Osh was very quickly beginning to ache from head to toe.
In front of her, a sign was overhanging the roadway, displaying an advertisement of a happy human family, with a young child holding a toy and smiling at the camera. When she looked at it, the image flashed away, replaced with a bright yellow background and a flashing black arrow below the word 'detour'.
Osh still didn't understand what was happening. From the door to her cell, to the perfectly timed phone call, to the crashed police car. None of this was supposed to happen. She was supposed to be on her way to trial right now, to face justice for the crimes she was forced into. Instead, she was sprinting down a street with Asari security officers hot on her tail.
Still, so far her 'luck' hadn't led her wrong yet.
When she reached the street the detour was pointing towards, she took a hard right. She heard the hiss of another set of street barricades popping out of the ground behind her. This time she didn't look back. A block ahead of her, across a small plaza, the road went through a huge set of blast doors. Above the doors was a green sign flashing a bright 'enter' prompt.
As she raced down the street towards the doors, another sign above the street flashed a detour sign. This time, the arrow pointed straight ahead. Osh continued straight ahead, dipping to the left as a biotic lift sailed past her head, hitting a nearby vehicle and lifting it off the ground in a purple cloud of energy. She weaved around the vehicle and set her sights on the blast door.
As she neared the doors, they began to close with a massive hiss of steam. Giant slabs of titanium began sliding shut from the top and the edges.
Bosh'tet!
Osh ran harder than she had ever run, and at the end of her stamina, reached the doors. With only seconds left before the doors shut for good, she vaulted over the titanium plate appearing from the streets itself. As she went tumbling through the blast door, she heard it slam shut behind her and lock.
She lay flat on the ground, her heart thudding with exertion, and heavy breaths threatening to fog up her visor. A wave of nausea passed over her, and her vision began to swirl, as she became lightheaded from the exertion. It was beyond a doubt the hardest she had ever run before in her life.
Still, she knew there must be a way around the massive doors. She needed to keep moving, keep pushing her advantage. She looked around the square she had stumbled into. The fighting had been heavy here, and the Covenant presence had not yet been completely cleared up by the joint government. Weapons and armor had been a priority, but the clean-up crews couldn't be everywhere all at once, and large purple and red boxes still scattered the square. Plasma scoring and UNSC bullet pockmarks littered the square, and Osh could feel the occasional case of spent round roll under her foot. Over in the corner of the square was piece of covenant armor; a helmet. It was dark red and looked to be ornamental, with multiple projecting metal plates ornamenting the helm. It was surrounded by other, less intricate armor. Osh wondered what kind of beast had once worn that helmet.
A voice drew her attention.
"Attention Travelers!"
She couldn't find the source. Instead, the sign above an otherwise unassuming glass door illuminated, flashing bright colors and an arrow pointed down.
The building didn't look special, at least to Osh. She suspected it was a UEG building. It lacked the personal touches of a residential building but had none of the dramatic advertising or corporate flair of a company building.
She staggered over to the door. Her heart dropped. The door led to an elevator shaft, but the elevator was nowhere to be seen. Instead, the doors to the shaft had been forced open, and a giant metal cable hung down the length of the shaft.
"Citizens of New Mombasa: Be Brave!"
That voice again. Do they want me to... no...
Osh looked back at the final detour sign, and the downward arrow displayed. She shook her head, swallowed her fear, and leapt for the cable, descending down into the darkness.
The Asari commander stood in the cell of the escaped Quarian.
"You said you found the door opened? Nobody else got out?"
"No, Ma'am."
She crossed her arms over her chest, a grim expression on her face.
"There's more to this city than the UEG is telling us."
She turned around on a heel and stormed out of the room. Written in soot on the wall of the cell was a lone message. One that stood out against the sea of human vulgarities and curses etched into the cell:
'Keelah si'yah: esu se'lai'
"Sir, 30 seconds to slipspace transition!" the helmsman of Triumph yelled out.
Victus stood behind the captain's chair, looking down at the holo-table on Triumph's bridge alongside Halliday. For now, it showed the Triumph and her Turian charges weaving through the imperceptible waves and eddies of slipspace. Their weeklong transit was nearly over.
Once again, he would be in uncharted territory, where no Turian had been before. He looked at Halliday. She was looking out of the bridge windows, nervously tapping a sandaled foot, her ancient helmet, as always, perched precariously atop her head. She looked back at Victus and flashed him a quick smile when she caught him watching her, before returning to staring impatiently out of the bridge window.
Victus followed her gaze out the front window, for now engulfed in the featureless black of subspace.
"5!"
"4!"
"3!"
"2!"
The incessant buzz of the slipspace drive, now familiar to Victus' Turian ears, escalated into an ear-splitting howl. Ahead of the bow, in the black of subspace, lightning arced, and a rift was torn in the tapestry of subspace. The rift quickly grew, until it dwarfed the bridge window. Victus felt the familiar tug forwards in his stomach, the sharp pull towards the anomaly being created in front of Triumph. The nausea followed soon after.
"1!"
The ship, which had felt impossibly smooth for the last week, suddenly jerked down and began shuddering as the length of the ship burst through the portal.
Triumph darted into real space, her drive still howling, keeping the massive rift behind her open for the Kilware and the two escorts behind her.
Halliday shouted her orders: "Disengage."
The roar of the Shaw-Fujikawa drive diminished into a buzz, and then a faint rattle before going quiet once and for all. Outside the bridge window, Victus saw stars. Stars. Not the empty canvas of subspace, but stars. He could once again feel the rumble of Triumph's fusion torch engines through the deck, the comforting vibration that had so discomforted him on his first arrival.
As Triumph shifted to form up on the rest of the citadel fleet, Victus felt the ship shift beneath him for the first time in weeks, the gentle tug of inertia on his extremities, the telltale sign of their return to real space.
Victus found that the discomfort that had been brewing in his gut suddenly disappeared. He began snapping orders.
"Scanners, search the system for any sign of Battlegroup Omicron. You know the drill from Earth. Titanium in orbit, debris obstructing stars, radio signals, anything. Find me that fleet."
Ahead of Triumph, another slipspace portal opened, as one of the group's UNSC frigates appeared into real space, an echelon of Turian frigates close on its wake. In closed with a shuddering flash, and the lights on Triumph momentarily flickered.
He turned to the holo-table. All around them, the fleet was arriving, forming as planned. With one final portal, the last of the UNSC ships arrived, and together with its charges, meant the entire fleet had made the jump unscathed.
Halliday still hadn't said a word. Victus looked up at her pedestal. She had dropped her shield and spear, her eyes wide. She was staring into the empty space in front of Triumph. Victus followed her stare but could not see what she was looking at. There was nothing there.
"Halliday?"
She didn't look back at him. Her voice shaking, she responded.
"Onyx... the planet we're looking for. It's...it's not here. It's gone."