* * * 68 * * *
Vol Courier

Immersed in his virtualised view of local space, Joker could see the tag indicating the "parking lot" at the relay's sun-opposing Lagrange point; it was occupied by a single UT-38 Condor, strobes and transponder announcing its location. The advised approach was displayed in amber wireframe; Joker tapped the Accept key, and then adjusted yaw and pitch to aim the ship along the indicated flightpath.

Pushing the throttle grip forward until the indicator above it read 0.861, he extended a finger forward from it and activated a holographic key; a chirrup sounded from the console he could not see, and the rest of the choreography happened behind the scenes. Minute voltages tickled the eezo fragments in the drive core, adjusting the ship's rectified mass down to a few grams as the engines spun up their overthusters.

Had anyone been there to see it, the ship seemed to disappear into the distance so fast, it would have been difficult to know which way she had gone but for the orientation of the four flattened nacelles and the briefly-discernible streaks of light they left behind.

The transit from relay to relay took only a couple of hours; enough time for the Draven twins to wake the Major, get him dressed and fed, and then hustled down to the hangar where his footlocker still leaned against the "Spectre Office."

Shepard's Scheduler twanged an alarm that the handoff was imminent, but he still had not quite been able to justify being there himself to say goodbye to the only other survivor of Torfan. The man he had known didn't seem to "be there" anymore, and the man who was there seemed dangerously unstable.

He looked up from his stateroom desk at the sound of the notifier, though. He put his fingers through a holographic tile, activating a camera view, adjusted a selector until it let him see the inside of the hangar from a camera on the hangar's portside overhead.

He watched as the internal strobes flashed for several seconds around the hangar door; a line of EPLs around the hangar door blinked an alternating red and blue; it would not be the first time someone had thoughtlessly walked through a Kiggs field and been baked, only to find themselves in hard vacuum.

The UT-38's wings were configured for interplanetary/interstellar travel, folded neatly across the smallish vehicle's back like a damselfly's. The pilot eased the craft up to the hangar and waited for the docking waldoes to lock on. Automation noted the vehicle type, and after Kobunde had approved it, the waldoes pulled the vehicle far enough for the UT-38's forward hatch to be inside the Kiggs field while simultaneously tipping the craft so its tail and wings didn't scrape along Normandy's ventral hull forward of the hangar.

Shepard noticed through the cockpit windows that the right-seat pilot had turned around for a rearward glance before activating a control on the centre console, and then another on the overhead. The Condor's strobes stopped pulsing, and the hatch was pulled inward, swung aft.

One of the Draven twins stood to the side of the hatch nearer Normandy's Kiggs field, and held it in place as the other brought the Major to the hatch. An MP in a full CEVA suit stepped out of the hatch as they approached, standing to the other side of it.

As the Major stepped up to the Condor's hatch, the MP put a hand to the man's back and kept contact with him, followed him through the hatchway. The Draven twin that Shepard could still see looked resigned, and gave a half-hearted wave as the other pulled the hatch closed and sealed it by turning a pair of inset handles, one on either side. Indicator lights above the handles changed from green (unlocked) to red (locked.)

Shepard saluted toward the display.

I hope they can help him better than I could.

The UT-38's left-seat pilot looked busy for a moment; the strobes restarted, and Normandy's docking waldoes accelerated the shuttle's prow out of the pressurised hangar, imparting enough of a vector such that the vehicle slid gently away when the waldoes stopped moving.

At a signal from the Air Boss, the hangar door began to close, and Joker pitched the ship up and yawed starboard; Normandy shot away to the planet with the mysterious orbiting object.

# # #

"Update on that unknown, sir." Though his stateroom desk showed Pressly on one of the holotiles, Shepard could hear his XO's voice in his head. "We're about eighty minutes out, and it just came out from behind the planet. LIDAR says it's a volus courier."

"Status?"

"Probably a loss, we're not even getting a transponder on her. Aah…hold on a minute."

Pressly leaned out of the camera's view, returned a moment later. "Yup, here it is: Megas-Tu has been on the 'Missing' registry for most of a century. From what we can see, I'd guess that they transited the relay while having some kind of technical problem. They were too far from the relay to make it to its LaGrange points for rescue, they bailed out before the out-of-control ship got too far away." His expression changed; he seemed resigned. "But the fact that no one came back for it…well, they probably didn't make it."

"Can we tell anything else from here?"

"Actually, it looks like we can." Pressly flipped through the sensor data. "Someone ordered a full LRSA, and from here, it looks like the problem was in Life Support…the CO2 recycler is one of those old DodecaForge-type, and it was probably back-burning; refrigeration couldn't keep up, and it was too far gone to save, or it just exploded. At the very least, they had an actual engineering fire as a result. Which is…weird. Volus are usually crazy safety-conscious, especially when the type's too small to rate an engineer. Anyway, the fire blew out the thruster controls, but they were venting badly already. That must be why nobody's found it until now. That also confirms the date on this; those DDF things have been out of use for half a century."

Shepard thought for a moment. "It's not like this was a deep-space mission, we're in a relay system. Ships come through here regularly. And you're telling me they were here the whole time?"

"Well, if the transponder went out at the time of the accident, nobody would have picked her up."

"And if the crew never got to safety at all."

"Right. But it's not as if anyone's going to go scanning a relay system. It'd be like looking for pirate treasure on a public beach." He chuckled to himself. "But Normandy's state-of-the-art, which is probably why we were the first to see her." He looked down at his console. "Looks like we're not a moment too soon, either; she's falling out of orbit pretty quickly."

Shepard gave a sigh, looked away for a moment. "Can we divert long enough for a closer inspection?"

Pressly adjusted a control. "Believe it or not, it kind of works for us. We can use a gravity-assist de-orbit to bleed off a lot of our speed. If you decide we need to get in closer, or even rendezvous, Joker would probably consider it another chance to show us what a brilliant pilot he is."

"Have Sensors monitoring continuously. If there's anything valuable to salvage, I want to be able to claim it."

Pressly was already shrugging. "The thing's so old, there should be no legal issues."

"And once we have the claim, the Alliance can send someone back to get the rest."

Pressly looked doubtful. "Ah…well, that'll kind of depend on whether we're doing this as an Alliance operation, or you're doing it as a Council Spectre."

Shepard put a hand to his chin and frowned. "We will be using the capabilities of what is officially a Council vessel to do it, but it'll be Alliance boots and gloves doing the actual work."

They both looked away for a moment.

Pressly said, "Sounds like you'd better make a call to the Council, or at least the Spectre Office on the Citadel."

"I think you're right. Thank you, Mister Pressly; I'll give them a call."

"Very good, sir."

Shepard gestured to end the call; the console emitted a synthesised "click" as the video went dark. Shepard waved a pair of fingers near his right ear. "Voice message to Agent Era T'Iar of the Spectres. Agent T'Iar, this is Commander Shepard, recently inducted into the Spectres, armoured with your help. I have a procedural question, and I'll be as brief as I can. I'm in the field on another mission, but have discovered a century-old wreck of the volus ship Megas-Tu.

"But I'm in a Council ship built and crewed by the Alliance. If I salvage Megas-Tu, who gets the proceeds? Thanks in advance for helping the clueless new guy." He smiled privately, "Again. End message. Sign and send."

Checking the Ship Status on his ARO, he gestured at it, saw they were approximately 40 minutes away from closest approach.

Shepard's ARO winked a notifier at him. Incoming call: XO Pressly, C.

He pushed through the apparent location of the notifier to accept the call. "More?"

"More data from that second scan. It's a wreck, all right, but the type is pretty rare, may be valuable on its own. Several still in service; they're mighty fast for their burn rate. Not much to add to the original analysis; both escape pods are gone. Really faint eezo signature, LRSA updated it to a couple of kilos. Design analysis says they should have some rhodium… even some lutetium…" He looked up from the display and shrugged cheerfully. "Hey, it's not antihydrogen, but it's still valuable stuff. Assuming we can get it out easily."

"And if it's still there," Shepard conceded. "Right, then; let's roll the dice, see what we get."

"Very good, sir. Preparing for salvage operations."

"Thank you." Shepard toggled the intercom off, stared at the various open tiles at his desk. "Hm," he muttered to himself. He sent the volus ship's profile to Tali and then messaged, Tali, is this ship one you might want for your pilgrimage?

No, not really.

That was a pretty quick reply. Why not?

An intercom window popped open above his desk; Tali's helmet was showing on it. "Because it's too small to do anything more than work as a taxi between ships. It's not big enough to be an independent ship, I could only join a dovra, be dependent upon another ship as a principal. While it's true there can be some value in long-range work – they're really fast for the drive type and efficiency – it would take a lot of work to get her reliably spaceworthy again, and there's not a lot of call for that kind of travel within the fleet, or even to and from."

"Would you be willing to help us salvage her?"

Tali's head tilted. "For free?"

Shepard's mouth scrunched in thought. "Haven't actually done much salvage work myself. I must admit I don't know what the going rate is." He smiled mischievously, "Though you do have your own crate."

She shrugged theatrically. "Ah, that's true. Sounds like I may be obliged…but I'm also glad to help."

Shepard held up a hand, "Not to worry, I am only playing with you. But I also do not yet know whose jurisdiction applies. Normandy was an Alliance ship, and still has an Alliance crew. And you're a contractor. I'm waiting to hear back from the Spectre Office on the Citadel; it may not be worth our while."

"Well, I'm no expert, but from what I know, I think it will make for good salvage. I can certainly help with that."

"Any idea how long it will take?"

"Not without more information. But it would go faster if I could delegate tasks. Can you loan me a crew member for the rest of the day? We'll still have to take what we get to an exchange to get any actual returns, you know."

"Is it worth hauling her to Damsili'iach, or Korlus?"

"I doubt it. What's your time worth? Though you might re-stabilise her orbit and stake a claim that you can sell to a salvage company."

Shepard hadn't realised that was possible. "Are you really going to need a whole day to salvage?"

"At this point, I have no way of knowing if there's valuable cargo. But we're talking about a ship that's hard to get parts for; that might be vary good, but you never know how long it'll take to extract them. If the crew abandoned ship in a hurry, they might have left valuables. If they had time to take their belongings, we might be done in under an hour.

"Here, have a look at this." A link appeared on Shepard's ARO. "This is the group I've been advised to use. They can give you good rates…um…especially if you tell them it's for me." An icon appeared next to the link. "Embed this in your message so they'll know."

Shepard nodded. "Good. Get with Kaidan and have him help you pick out your team. Be in the hangar in three hours. I expect to have the hulk's orbit stabilised by then. Ask the MFO or Air Boss if you need any specialised gear."

Tali sounded as though she was actually looking forward to the task, "Should be fun!"

# # #

"You want to stabilise the orbit of that thing? We're not a hauler tug, we're a frickin' frigate. We can outrun almost anything and outmanoeuvre absolutely everything, but the MEFG's field only affects this ship. You want to apply delta vee to an unpowered five kiloton wreck, it'll take…" Joker waggled his head as though it would help him estimate time-and-vector-versus-mass calculations, "at least an hour. A whole hour!"

"Are you in a hurry to get somewhere?"

"Pff," he shook his head dismissively, "It's not the time, it's the time under thrust. Do you know how much fuel it'll burn to shift that thing's orbit? With unrectified mass?"

"I want that ship salvaged, and I won't endanger the salvage team's lives to do it. We can sell the location to a salvage broker."

"Sure, for about ten credits."

"Stable wrecks fetch more because they don't have to be chased. Or dragged out of a gravity well." Leaning forward over the pilot's chair, Shepard lit his omnitool and held it where the pilot could see. "Here are the current rates. It's a money-maker. And we'll get first crack at the contents."

Joker held up his hands in mock surrender. "Aaaaaaall right, you're the boss, boss." He waved his right hand past his ear, "Engineering, Flight. Configure for towing. Air Boss, Flight. Configure for towing. R and M, Flight, prepare a tow-rigging team immediately." As he spoke, he manipulated controls that only he could see. "Matching velocities, and uh…thirteen minutes to IP."

"Let me know when you're confident of the orbital stability," Shepard stood again. "If the salvage team comes back with a goose egg, we're on our way to the Citadel."

Joker scoffed. "Let's hope they remember to give us all our stuff this time."

Shepard turned to exit the bridge, but only got as far as the airlock before Joker yelped, "Hey! Wait!"

"What?" Shepard turned and headed forward again.

"How about this: I match orbits with this thing, you send a technical prize crew over to see if they can get the MEFGs working. Doesn't need thrust, or environment, or Christmas lights, just…the MEGen to get the mass rectified. It'll be way more efficient, and a lot faster. We can still be rigging to tow while they're there, and if it doesn't work out, we're none the worse for the trouble."

Shepard bumped the back of Joker's chair with a fist. "That's my pilot. Sierra Hotel, Joker." He headed aft again, lifting a hand to his ear as he did, "Tali, we're going to send you over with thruster packs. Your first objective is get the Mass Effect Field Generators working, or even partially working."

The quarian seemed especially pleased, "Oh! Good idea! Um…will I be going alone?"

Shepard consulted his Crew Status. "I doubt it. But I don't know who'll be ready first. I assume you'd prefer an engineer for an engineering task."

"Actually, no. They're good engineers, but they're most of them too conventional for this kind of operation. I just want someone along who knows how to stay out of trouble, and can follow simple, non-technical instructions. And can pull me out if I…um…really step in it."

Shepard smiled at the thought of her reading an idiom from her HUD but not being sure whether to trust it. "You want one or two?"

"Just one."

Shepard had stopped at Pressly's station. "Mister Pressly, who can we have suited and ready to escort a technical prize crew in twelve minutes?"

The man looked up from the console and jabbed a thumb at himself. "Me."

"You?"

"I need to re-cert for my EVA ticket. Don, 30 minutes in hard vacuum, doff, and service." He pointed at himself again with an almost-embarrased grin. "Yeah, me."

Shepard nodded approvingly. "Mister Pressly, suit up and report to the hangar. You're on in ten."

"Thank you, sir!" Pressly turned to the starboard ladder, "Mister Gale, I am going on an adventure. You have the deck."

"Very good, sir." The Engineering Officer stood from her seat, "I have the deck." She moved to the XO's CIC station, immediately to port of the dais.

# # #

Another useful side effect of an eezo drive core was its orientational constant; properly exploited, a core of sufficient size could function like a powerful gyro.

Joker had easily matched the wreck's velocity, and then rotated the ship on the MEFG's centre of gravity. Megas-Tu swung into view as the hangar door yawned open; it was obvious the volus courier had taken serious damage, some from an equipment failure, and some from a century's exposure to deep space. The aft section of the craft – a row of four spheres joined by a hexagonal exoskeleton – was exposed to vacuum through a hole in the engineering hull, obviously the result of an explosion, not an impact.

Kobunde pointed at the forward sections. "The escape pods, at least the ones on this side, are gone. Perhaps they got away."

"Cripes," Pressly pointed, "You could dock a fighter in that hole." He turned to Tali, "You don't want to use the airlock, do you?"

The quarian was looking at her omnitool's display of the scan data. "The airlocks probably don't have power, and may not function even if they did. It's not as if there's any atmosphere left, and there's no sign of a gravity plane. We can inspect the opening when we get there."

"I know you know this," said the Air Boss, "but I'll remind you that you're going over with EMUs only. We can't pull you back."

"Thank you for the reminder," Tali said politely. "I think we're ready." Pressly pulled the "fishbowl" helmet on and twisted it until the HUD indicated it was locked on. He gave a thumbs-up and a nod.

"I can give you a push if you like," Kobunde pointed at the docking waldoes.

"Great! Saves propellant," Tali started walking to the portside gear, "I…um…didn't know if you humans were going to think that was beneath you."

"Hah! Are you kidding?" Pressly was right behind her, "This is my favourite part!"

The Air Boss worked his omnitool, and the portside waldoes flexed open, far enough to form a pair of vertical, narrow panels, about 10cm wide, 150 high; they looked rather like a pair of very thick skis.

Tali was about to "board" the "launcher," but stopped and turned to the human Navigator. "Do you want to go first?"

"Naah. Go ahead."

Tali stepped directly in front of the waldoes, faced forward, and took a step back. As her combined life support and jet packs bumped up against them, Tali reached her hands over her shoulders. Kobunde flexed the top tips down to about a 45-degree angle where Tali could reach them easily. "Ready when you are," she said, lifting both feet off the deck.

Kobunde slid his finger along a holographic track. "EVA-1, launching."

The "cradle" began to move forward through the Kiggs field, accelerating to just over 1.5 m/s by the time it reached its maximum extension, well beyond the residual effects of the gravity planing system.

Tali had enabled the EMU's VI, which fired minute bursts to stabilise and orient her. As she was approaching the wreck, Pressly said, "It's a wonder we found this thing. I'm barely reading it with my omnitool at this distance."

"If there is some vital eezo, it's buried in the core behind shielding. For all practical purposes, it's a blackbody."

"Right! Normandy must have impressive sensor gear to notice it. Clearly I have some catching up to do."

During this exchange, the docking waldoes had retracted, and Pressly was now standing forward of them, just reaching over his shoulders to grip them. Lifting his feet slightly, he turned his head and spoke over his shoulder, "Air Boss, EVA-2. Ready for launch."

"EVA-2, launching."

The waldoes accelerated the Navigator toward the wreck; he felt his own thruster pack adjusting his orientation. Ahead, he watched as Tali reoriented to be feet-first; the quarian touched down on the wreck next to the hole, and stopped where she had landed, obviously using "Stickee" boots or something similar.

She began to manoeuver her way into the ship through the hole, choosing her point of entry with the least hazardous approach as Pressly's EMU began to reorient him for the same landing.

Pressly landed with a grunt, and followed her carefully through the jagged opening.

Tali was scanning the engineering section with her omnitool. "I read the analysis you posted in the LRSA," she said, "And you're probably right. Here's what's left of the DDF, and you can see it exploded mostly to port. Which is fortunate, because the drive core would be starboard of it." She was attaching a small power feed to it as Pressly was clomping over.

"Jeez, it's easy to forget how clunky a set of magboots are," he said.

"If you don't use them a lot," Tali agreed. "Though I suppose that's true of anything. But you shouldn't use them all the time, just when you need to stay in place." The console she was standing in front of remained dark; she rumpled her nose in annoyance. "Hm. I suppose it would be too much to ask that it work the first time."

"Can't even check it for function?" Pressly scanned the panel with his omnitool.

Tali moved forward, inspecting the other side of the system. "Maybe if I used more power, but at the moment, I'm playing it safe." As her lights fell on the other side of the console, she shook her head. "The main connectors look pretty bad. The DDF failure may have caused another explosion, essentially welded the primary core access shut from outside." She raised her left arm and scanned the core for several seconds, adjusting the depth of her scan as she did. "Still, I suppose that's good. At least the seals are intact. We might get this core powered after all."

"Won't the eezo have boiled off or something?"

Tali turned toward Pressly, uncertain of whether he was joking or not. Her HIVI suggested he was not.

"No, actually. You know how elements with lower atomic numbers have lower specific gravity? One of the reasons your people call it "element zero" is because it has an apparent atomic weight that's half that of hydrogen, even though it has a higher specific gravity than osmium. That's why your scientists thought it was a mistake at first." She turned her head back to the control panel currently being powered by her suit battery. "But we need a better solution than this to get this thing working."

# # #

Gladstone kept a hand to his ear as he turned and spoke to the OD. "Lieutenant, the boarding party says the drive core passed initial checks, but they'll need a power supply to properly restart the core."

2LT Gale looked up from the datapad that showed a transcript. "I'll approve that. Inform the Loadmaster to accept and fulfil their request." She looked down at the datapad again, and then up again. "Did they say how big a power supply they need?"

"No, ma'am…uh…I was going to let them sort that on their own."

The OD shrugged. "Fair enough. Carry on."

# # #

Two ratings, one on either side, removed a deckplate in the hangar, leaned it against a bulkhead. One of them reached inside to push a release, and then the two of them then lifted a box out of it that was about the size of a very fat briefcase. Setting it to one side, as one dragged the deckplate back into place, the other wheeled the giant battery over to the waldoes. Then the two of them lifted it, and set it on the portside waldo, which was configured to an "L" shape, tipped slightly down. Both stepped away, hands held up so Kobunde could see they were clear of it.

He lifted a hand to his right ear. "Boarding party, we're sending a four megawatt battery." He adjusted a control and tapped a palm-sized panel marked EXECUTE. The single waldo began to slide cautiously forward so as not to impart too much speed on it. As it was, the thing was still going to take some effort to stop.

"Four megawatts," Tali replied over the comm, "is a lot more power than we need."

"Probably," agreed the Air Boss/Loadmaster. "Assuming everything goes exactly as planned. But it was also easier to loan you one our supercaps."

Tali paused, smiled, and then nodded to herself. "Good point. Thank you." With a sigh, she turned and looked toward the ragged hole in the hull. "I just wish it was less massive."

"No worries," Pressly waved her back to the console, "I can get it. You keep working."

Tali was uncertain. "Are you sure?"

The Navigator waved a hand carelessly, "Yeah, I'm on it. Be right back." He clomped his way over to the hole in the bulkhead, turned off his boots, and began to manoeuver his way out.

Though Kobunde had sent the battery at very low speed (about 50mm/sec,) Pressly took a little longer exiting the ship than he'd expected, and was not positioned quite properly after he got his boots turned back on; the battery was approaching him from "above," with his head pointed toward Normandy, and he was almost directly below it.

The helmet he had chosen was preferred for most EVA functions; it was neither ruggedized nor combat-armoured, and its lighter weight made it easier to service and easier to don and doff. It was also a personal favourite because it gave him a completely unobstructed view in every direction at all times.

Which, although it let him see that he was standing directly "under" the approaching battery, his slightly protracted exit meant he couldn't get out of its way fast enough. His hands went up, his feet tried to step aside, but the combination meant he wasn't balanced enough to stop the battery's large inertial moment.

He had just enough time for an "Uh-oh…" before the orange-striped gray box hit his outstretched hands, shoving him top first toward the jagged, outwardly-curled sections of the damaged hull; his boots held his feet in place.

Though she could not see him, Tali moved toward the opening immediately. "Do you need help?"

His suit VI detected a foot lift, releasing its magnetic grip so he could move it, but there was no time for any other action; Pressly found himself leaning backwards with the battery held firmly in his hands. He stopped falling when his Support pack met the hull, but the battery continued until it contacted his helmet, and the helmet contacted the hull.

Pressly grunted as the battery bounced off his helmet with a crunk; his left arm caught on a pointed blade of hull.

Grasping the edge of the hull, Tali's head emerged from the opening. "Are you okay?" She could see at once that he was not; the battery was drifting very slowly away. She also saw that Pressly was recovering quickly, and had pushed his upper body away from the damaged ship, grasping for the handles on either side of the supercapacitor "battery."

He caught one, and just in time; the box was at the limits of his reach, and it was only his magboots that stopped him being pulled off the hull. He grunted again, this time in satisfaction at having reacted quickly enough. "Not so fast, you," he said to the battery.

Tali's VI reminded her that this could only have happened if the battery had hit something and bounced away, highlighting the tear that her suit cameras could see on Pressly's left arm. "Looks like your suit got torn."

He was slightly embarrassed at having fumbled the catch. "Yeah, I see it. I'll tag it for repair when I get back." Both of them were aware that his MCP "biosuit" didn't have a pressure seal to lose, so Pressly was in no real danger from depressirisation.

What they did not know was that, compressed between the high-moment battery and effectively immobile hull, the "fishbowl" helmet had microcracked. Though strong and flexible enough to withstand regular carelessness, and an occasional impact, it was relatively brittle, and the deformation of being slow-crushed between the hull and battery had created two compromised sections of the helmet: One in front of his face that he would be able to see and reach, and the other that he would not.

Pressly pulled himself and the battery back to the hull. "Okay, I've got it. Are you still magged to the deck? I can pass it in to you and patch this tear."

Tali grabbed a safe edge of the opening with both hands and rotated her feet around so they were reversed. "Sure." With her boots gripping the bulkhead, she reached both arms out to take the battery from him. Its mass made it a challenge to move in a gravitational field, but in the microgravity of orbit, it merely required a little planning; she pulled it through the opening by twisting and flexing, allowing the battery's inertial moment to make the task easier, if slower. As she pulled it aboard the hulk, Pressly set about making repairs to his suit's left forearm.

Actual repairs would be performed by R&M once the suit was returned to the suit pool; he had only to be sure mechanical counterpressure was not significantly compromised. His suit didn't have a DCE because he didn't use one, but it did have a layer of smart metamaterial "armour" that had protected his skin from damage. The opening ran from outer wrist to inner elbow; a length of specialised tape from the suit's kit signalled the suit material to adjust for its new circumstances.

As he was doing this, Tali had coaxed the battery into the engineering section, and across to the secondary panel. She made the most of the lower overhead (due to the ship being built for a volus crew,) shoving it into a corner where bulkhead met deck. Holding it in place with one hand, she pulled out a length of cable, and started looking for the appropriate connector.

Her HUD highlighted the connector location, but as she was turning her head to look at it, she noticed Pressly's legs were projecting through the hole in the hull. They were not moving. Tali watched the legs for a moment before considering that she had not heard him say anything since talking about suit repair. "Are you all right over there?"

"Sorry, I was watching the rigging team get started. Normandy is already repositioning, and it looks like she's going to cable up to the aft exoskeleton. I've never seen an operation like this from so close."

"That makes sense; the explosion didn't touch the frame. Or at least it didn't look like it had to me." Her HUD notified her that the battery was connected and the wiring had passed a series of relatively basic function tests.

"Looks like the battery is connected to main power. Can you help me with the system restart?"

Pressly was just pulling himself aboard. "You've already got it connected?"

"Yes, but we can normalise to external power faster with two." She looked at the Navigator. "I'm glad we don't have to do anything except rectify the ship's mass, this would be like trying to fly a museum. Too many other systems would have to be spaceworthy."

"I thought you knew all about starships and so on."

"What…just because I'm quarian?" She caught herself before getting angry. "I may know more about some systems, but this ship was built before my great-grandmother was born. The tech is likely so long out of service that we may not be able to fix it. But the good news is that almost everything that can be known about this design is um…'public domain.' That'll help a lot if anything needs to be fixed or jury-rigged."

"And if we can't fix it, how long do we allow for salvage before we bail out?"

"A day, maybe several, depending on how it goes, and how much time the captain is willing to devote to it."

"Commander," Pressly corrected.

"Yes, Commander." Whatever, she thought. Tali left the connector drifting in freefall, pushed herself across the compartment to another panel, stopped herself with a hand to the bulkhead. "Is the battery talking to any of the VI nodes?"

The human stomped across to the battery, twisted himself around to read its display. "Uh…I don't think so. It doesn't seem to be finding any to talk to."

Tali turned her head around to look in that direction. "None? That can't be right."

Her HUD displayed an analysis from her internal VI Council, and she realised The volus were too paranoid about starship operation to be making general use of VIs in this design. Tali considered that it was this focus on safety that had motivated them to shield the eezo core. With a MEFG, this only meant there was a bit more mass to rectify.

"Oh," she corrected herself, "Maybe it can. It looks like this type predates onboard local VI tech." She shook her head. "We'll have to do everything manually."

"Can we do that?"

Tali's proactive VI was scrolling up a list of tasks. It didn't look terribly long or difficult, especially after she truncated the list down to show only the requirements for powering the element zero core.

"Probably. Between the databases your Alliance has, and the ones our flotilla shares, this can't be too bad," Tali waited; one of her VIs scrolled out a list, and then the items flashed in sequence as they were compared against a VRS; some of them changed from green to yellow, and then were event-treed against the particular ship and its relative state.

Tali pulled a service panel off the console, and began connecting the power brick to its main power leads as directed by her VI. "We'll need to just assume the core is functional, and still has its element zero, but it would help if you could be my eyes and hands over there." She pointed at one of the more badly-charred stations that had been highlighted on her HUD. "That should have a working board…as soon as I –" The second lead arced to the clamp before she had fully secured it, "Oh!"

Pressly had lingering doubts that the alien – and practically a child at that – was actually capable of this, so his response was one of genuine concern, "What?"

"Sorry, I just didn't expect this to be so excitable." She turned her helmet toward him. "Is that board working now?"

The Navigator's HUD showed him where to press on the controls; a gesture/touch panel illuminated, displaying unfamiliar volus engineering markings. He shrugged. "The panel's lit. But I have no idea what it says."

"The centre should have a graphic for a three-fingered hand. Do you see it?"

"Yeah, that's what's here."

"Okay, to restart this, we have to activate these controls at the same time. When I say 'now,' put three fingers in that graphic and turn it anticlockwise sixty degrees. It should change colour when you get there."

"Turn counterclockwise on 'go.'" Pressly positioned his hand. "Okay, I'm ready."

"Three …two …one …go."

Light in the overhead were a bit of a surprise. The human nodded approvingly. "Now we're cooking."

"Okay, is it still showing the same display, or is it asking to calibrate?"

"Same as before."

"Good. Do you have a volus translator overlay for your HUD?"

The human checked his omnitool, spun through some options. "I can get it from Normandy's Comms NFOX, but it'll take a minute."

"You'll probably need it later, go ahead and start." An RTM message appeared on his HUD instead, a graphic from Tali. "While it's running, touch these keys in this order."

There were five keys in the sequence; Pressly touched each in turn, pausing between each to be sure they changed to indicate functionality. When the panel above lit suddenly, it startled him; he looked up immediately.

"Looks like that's still working," Tali said when noticing his reaction. "Good." She played a brief scherzo on her omnitool.

"I'm initialising the mass effect core now. If it doesn't explode, they can start towing us after I get the rest of this functioning. But it will take a few more minutes to checklist."

As the quarian continued to work, Pressly looked around, his helmet-mounted lights casting a harsh glare on a small section of the compartment as he did.

"Just one more thing before we go forward," Tali said. She extended her left hand around one side of the connector cover, gripped it with her right and tugged…with no result. She tried again.

"Want me to give it a pull?"

"Would you? Thank you." Tali pushed herself back to where she had left the battery; her experience made the move look completely natural, especially when the human clanked his way into position to make another attempt.

Pressly positioned himself to apply the most leverage. "With the markings all burned off, I hope you know what you're doing. I don't want to open a fission drive by accident."

# # #

* * * Glossary * * *

ARO: Augmented Reality Overlay

CEVA ("see-vah"): Combat EVA

Damisili'iach ("dah-mis-ILL-ee-EE-ach"): Another starship-breaker location, but closer to Council Space, and lacking the pleasant weather

eezo: Element Zero. Bonus: Here's something almost as weird as "Element Zero" in real life: Semi-Dirac Fermions have no mass when moving in one direction, positive mass in another. Sciencealert dot com/physicists-find-particle-that-only-has-mass-when-moving-in-one-direction
or Youtube dot com/watch?v=EI_wlt_UJtI

EMU: EVA Manoeuvring Unit, a packpack of RCS thrusters, usually designed to fit around the standard environment pack, or replace it (by integrating environment control systems into said pack)

EPL (Electro-Photoluminescent Lights): Printable extremophile biologicals that fluoresce when stimulated with microvoltages of electricity

HIVI: Human Interaction VI

HUD: Heads-Up Display

IP: Intercept Point

LIDAR: Laser Infrared Detection And Ranging, sometimes referred to as "light radar"

LRSA: Long Range Sensor Analysis

MCP: Mechanical Counterpressure, a technology for simulating air pressure with smart materials and metamaterials rather than filling an entire suit with pressurised atmosphere; grants considerably greater freedom of movement at lower weight; first proposed in the 1960s/70s (Webb and Annis) and again in the 1980s (Clapp,) serious work began in the early 21st century.

MEFG: Mass Effect Field Generator

MFO: Master Fabrication Officer

MP: Military Police

RCS: Reaction Control System, an ancient term for control of attitude and fine positional control (usually used for docking,) because MEFGs render the effective mass of even a kilotonne warship down into the gram range, state-of-the-art warships use tiny and simple ion thrusters that require virtually no fuel and only tiny amounts of electricity

R+M (or R&M): Repair and Maintenance

waldoes: remote manipulators; Normandy's hangar has a set of automated waldoes to capture the Mako during retrieval because they are much faster and accurate than a manual operator, though they can be operated by crew if needed; the term "waldoes" arose from a story by Robert Heinlein wherein the protagonist (named Waldo,) develops the tech out of necessity

A/N - Sorry to have been walkabout for most of a year. I'm in London, without access to my home machines. A longer explanation of my protracted absence will have to wait, but briefly, my boss (Anita Gale, memorialised here in the name of the 2LT who took the deck from Pressly) died quite suddenly and unexpectedly of pancreatic cancer, and my wife, who was also her best friend, was named executrix. A storm flattened a relative's house; he's living in our old house, and we're living at what used to be Anita's. We don't get to keep the house, but we do get all the chattels that fill the place. The non-profit she used to run is being CEOed by someone (happily, another dear friend) who moved in with us three days before we left for the UK. (Nothing kinky or weird going on here; the house is simply large enough, and all of us travel enough that we don't expect to see each other much anyway.) I have been charged with scanning the entire contents of Anita's body of work and creating an "Ask Anita" AI for use at the competition, which means everything I could remove from her two offices, which includes the work by her also-shuttle-engineer husband (that's about 80 man-years of paperwork, and artefacts, newspaper clippings, bills, and Kodachrome slides, 1970s Star Wars masks, plus...god knows what else.)

Clearly I'm going to be really, really busy. But AitD is really important to me, and I absolutely will finish it, even if I have to get some help from another locally-running open-source AI to help fill in the gaps. FWIW, I have a million words of story written, less than half of them published; I intend to tell one potential story all the way to ending the reaper threat, and then going back and developing branches (different LI, what happens if things happen in a different order, what happens if "wrong" choices are made, etc.) With a little help from text-to-AR-video-game tech, we'll have a heck of a reboot possible. Anyone who's working in AI professionally, using and cracking AR, or anything that might be part of this, please PM me; I'll take all the help I can get.

From here, it looks daunting, almost unreachable. But I'm counting on some ML help, and I think it will bring the unreachable within reach. I'm doing everything I can to make for a positive Singularity, and you can, too!