FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

"It's tumbling," Chula muttered as her fingers nudged the controls, moving the Sulaco as close to the geth ship's central airlock as she dared. "Matching rotation."

Lia sat, silent and unmoving, letting Chula concentrate on her docking maneuvers and trying not to stare at Weyland from the corner of her eye.

"That should do it. Bringing us in." Chula brushed her fingers over the thruster controls, waited as the Sulaco eased up to the disabled ship, and touched the opposite thrusters, slowing their approach. The Sulaco settled into place with the slightest nudge and Chula secured the docking clamps.

Lia turned back to her console and ran another scan. "All primary systems are offline, including the mass effect generator; we won't have gravity over there. No self-contained power sources or movement detected. Same goes for heat sources. The whole ship appears dead."

"We will link with the Sulaco's sensors." Weyland turned to leave. "If this was an attack, and the ship responsible returns, we will vacate the area before it arrives. Anyone wishing to join us on the geth ship may do so."

"I'm definitely in." Chula glanced at Lia on the way out of the flight deck. "How about you?"

"I have to admit, I'm kind of curious." Lia followed the others. Under her curiosity was more than a little dread. She wasn't sure she wanted to see whatever was on the geth ship, but she didn't want to be caught off guard if Weyland and Yutani suddenly turned against organics because of the attack. And if the Sulaco was detected and the pirates--or whoever--came back to get rid of witnesses...

Don't get yourself all worked up. Wait until we know more. She held in a sigh as they stood in the airlock.

Quint and Dakka came around the corner and joined them, putting their helmets on and securing them to their armored spacesuits. Weyland activated its Omni-Tool and waved its arm over Quint.

"I'm fine." Quint chuckled, but his voice was slightly raspy. "Just have a bit of a headache, still, but I'm not missing this for anything."

"Vital stats are normal. It appears Dakka did not over-exert you." One eyebrow flap lifted slightly.

Did a geth just make a joke? It had appeared to make one in the med-bay yesterday, but Lia hadn't been able to accept it. Now, though...

"We only got to first base, so far." Dakka chuckled. "Still, my chances of scoring later have increased significantly."

"You go, girl." Chula laughed, but it was short and tinged by nervousness.

"So," Quint said, "anyone else joining us?"

"Yutani will remain onboard to monitor Kenn and Sidonis. Magnum is on her way."

Dakka nodded, leaned against the wall, looked at Quint for a moment, slipped her arm around him and put her hand on his ass.

Magnum appeared around the corner, wearing her spacesuit. "Hey, guys."

"You feeling okay?" Quint said.

"About the same as you, I imagine." She plucked the rifle from her back and turned to face the outer door, keeping the gun pointed downward.

The inner door closed and Chula depressurized the airlock.

"Alright. Let's see what we've got."

#

"Ever been on a geth ship before?" Quint said softly as everyone drifted deeper into the vessel, lights projected by their Omni-Tools sweeping around, illuminating bits of the walls, floor, and ceiling before flitting onward.

"No." Lia looked around and shivered. "Seeing it from the outside was creepy enough, but there's something very off-putting about the interior layout."

"No chairs, for one thing, but then, I guess synthetics don't need 'em."

"Correct." Weyland grasped a doorway and pulled, propelling himself farther along the corridor. "There is a terminal in the next compartment. We will be able to view the ship's flight recorder, if the files have not been deleted."

They came to a hatch. Normally, a green hard-light panel would've appeared in front of the hatch, allowing access to the room beyond, but without power, there was no holographic button and no way to unlock the door.

Chula pulled one of her swords out and jammed the tip into the seam between the two halves of the hatch. "If I can pry these apart--"

"Right. I'm ready." Dakka floated up beside her.

Chula braced her feet on the wall and pushed, throwing everything she had into it, grunting and straining. Weyland joined her, placing his hands beside hers and adding his mechanical strength. The hatch split apart, the crack between its halves widening millimeter by millimeter. Once it was wide enough, Dakka wedged her huge fingers into the opening and started prying.

"That's quite a sword," Lia muttered.

"The blade's made from the same alloy as a typical starship hull. Makes it pretty hard to break."

"Nice."

The hatch slid apart slowly; even though there was no air to transmit sound, Quint could easily imagine a horrific scraping, grinding noise as Dakka forced the hatch open. She slipped into the opening, put her back to one edge and braced her hands on the other. She pushed, snarling, and the hatch ground open a few more inches. She braced her shoulder on one half, her feet on the other, and kept pushing.

The doors opened abruptly, as if the mechanism holding them together had snapped. Dakka tumbled in the air before grabbing onto the edge of the doorway.

Okay, that's definitely hot. Grinning, Quint pushed off the wall and drifted past her. He held out his 'Tool and lit the compartment up.

Three disabled geth platforms hung in the air, holes blasted through their heads and torsos. One of them bumped into the floor and bounced slowly back toward the ceiling.

"Oh, hell." He floated up to one of them, grasped its arm and scanned it while he continued drifting across the room. Even a less-advanced platform would've contained at least a few hundred individual geth programs; with a few dozen platforms on this ship, plus however many geth had been in the ship's servers...

The number of geth casualties could very well be thousands.

He looked across the room and found Chula scanning one of the other platforms and Weyland examining the third.

"I'm sorry, Weyland."

The geth looked at him and nodded. "Thank you."

"What the hell?" Chula muttered. "These geth were hit by quarian weapons."

"That can't be right," Lia stammered.

"We believe it is unlikely. The Migrant Fleet is currently passing through the Far Rim mass relay. It will take the fleet at least one day to complete the transit."

"Could've been an individual ship, though," Dakka said.

"Another possibility is pirates using stolen or black-market quarian firearms to cover their presence or cast suspicion on the quarians. We will not take action until we are certain about what happened."

"I don't suppose we could find out from these guys' memory cores?"

"Geth fry their cores when their platforms are destroyed," Chula said. "It's automatic. If you're skilled enough and fast enough, you can salvage some of the data, but these poor guys were killed long before we got here, so there's nothing left to save."

"We will attempt to find information in the ship's flight recorder." Weyland floated over to a console and activated his Omni-Tool. "We are attempting to access the auxiliary power supply."

Quint reached the far wall and pushed gently, sending himself back toward everyone else. Dakka caught his hand as he drifted past, pulling him up toward a ceiling strut and keeping her hand around his after he grabbed hold of the strut.

"Access achieved. We have found the most recent exterior record."

Dim lights came up gradually and a holographic display and control panel appeared in front of Weyland. He touched glowing buttons on the panel and a view of space popped up in the holofield. At the bottom of the image was the hull of the geth ship.

For several seconds, nothing happened.

A stream of incoming fire seemed to blast out of nowhere and rip chunks out of the hull. Among the debris was a pair of platforms, flailing as they shot out into space.

The unseen kinetic weapons fired again, striking each platform and blowing it into scrap.

"Jesus," Quint blurted. As violent as pirates typically were, a move like that was a bit beyond the pale. Crew ejected from the ship were no threat, even if they could survive for a while in open space. If nothing else, shooting them down was a waste of ammo.

This struck him as an act of pure hatred.

"Doesn't mean it's quarians," Dakka said, keeping her tone soft, having apparently followed the same line of thought.

"Correct. Many organics were harmed by the Heretic geth's attacks on Eden Prime, Virmire, and the Citadel." Weyland tapped another control and loaded a second file. "Accessing internal records."

Everyone kept their eyes on the display. A corridor appeared, filling with platforms carrying plasma rifles. A flash from an onscreen explosion washed over them and a hail of gunfire tore into them. One by one, their shields overloaded, flaring and sparking. Some of the platforms survived, but a few collapsed, critical systems knocked out by the overloads.

A sustained burst of gunfire ripped the rest to pieces over the next two minutes.

Someone entered the frame wearing the familiar quarian protective suit and helmet. He was followed by more, all wearing similar gear.

Quint counted twenty-six by the time the last one filed past, pausing to shoot a still-moving platform in the head before following the rest deeper into the ship.

More recordings appeared, showing similar scenes as the quarians stormed through the ship, not stopping until they'd found and terminated every platform onboard. Then one of them stopped at a console, tapped his Omni-Tool, and pointed it at the control panel. Lights flickered and cut out, the ship shuddered, and an electronic cry came from the speakers before falling silent.

"Oh, shit." Quint realized what he'd just witnessed--the quarians executing all the geth in the ship's server. He shivered.

Dakka put her arm around him.

Weyland stared at the display.

Lia stared at him, her eyes wide in horror. Her hand inched toward her pistol.

Chula pulled herself along the wall until she reached him. Hesitantly, she put her hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

He reached up to touch her hand. "Thank you, but it is not your fault."

The display continued showing clips of the quarians entering the cargo holds and taking supplies--weapons, plus crates of food and medical supplies.

"So they knew why this ship was here." Quint shook his head. "They must've followed it all the way from the Perseus Veil. They knew you were bringing food and medicine from Rannoch. Hell, they might've even known who you were bringing it to."

"We still do not have enough information to act. We will not transmit these records to the geth at this time. If we do, they may launch an assault on the Migrant Fleet."

"Thank you," Chula whispered. "I want to know why this happened, too. Whoever did this could start a war if they keep it up, and doing that would put our entire species at risk."

"It would also cost us resources and leave us vulnerable. If the Reapers invade the galaxy, we would not be ready to fight them." Weyland continued operating controls, probing for more data. "The attacking ship was invisible to cameras and sensors. It could still be nearby."

Lia shook her head. "Since when do we have stealth ships?"

"We're just kids on Pilgrimage; we're pretty far out of the loop. They could have all kinds of stuff we don't know about." Chula shrugged and looked at Weyland. "Is there anything they didn't steal?"

"There is nothing left." He stared at the display as it cycled through scene after scene of the quarians emptying cargo holds.

"Damn." Chula sighed.

Dakka nodded at the hatch they'd come through minutes before. "Since that ship could still be somewhere nearby and we'd never see it coming, it might be a good idea to get back to the Sulaco and jump to a friendlier neighborhood."

"Agreed." Weyland pulled himself along the ceiling toward the hatch.

Everyone else took a moment to exchange a worried glance and followed him silently.

#

"Well, we're under way." Chula sat beside Lia in the mess hall. Across the table, Quint and Dakka sat, the former sipping a cup of coffee and the latter shoveling another meal into her mouth.

"Where to?" Quint said.

"The Citadel. Since we're nearly out of quarian food and meds, we're taking Kenn to Huerta Memorial Hospital so he can get top-notch medical treatment. Then we'll run by the fuel depot and head over to the Boltzmann system. It'll take a while for him to heal, so we might as well see if we can pick up a job or two in the meantime."

"Ah, we're going to Bekenstein? That oughta be...different."

"Never been there," Lia said. "Planet populated by billionaires, right?"

"Pretty much. The whole economy is based on high-end luxury and entertainment goods. I know I've always been too low-rent for that place." Quint chuckled and took another sip. "If we don't land a gig right away, the docking fees alone might bankrupt us if we stay longer than a day or two."

"Whoa. Wonder why we're going there?"

"Weyland, Yutani, and I talked over several options for our next destination, and we ended up settling on Bekenstein. Figured it'd be a nice change of pace, and they thought we might like to take in the scenery while we're there, after what we saw on the geth ship."

"Yeah, from the pictures I've seen of the place, it's kinda pretty." Quint smiled.

"Yutani described it as 'aesthetically pleasing.' Close enough, I guess." She chuckled. "It'd definitely be a nice change of pace. Most of the crime there is white-collar, so if we manage to land a job, there's a good chance it won't involve being shot at, for once."

"Glad to hear that." Lia wrung her hands. "When we saw those recordings on the geth ship..."

"I know. If Weyland and Yutani weren't as reasonable as they are, it could've already started a shooting war."

"Maybe that's what someone wants." Quint stared into his cup and turned it slowly. "Maybe it was someone else wearing quarian enviro-suits."

Chula shook her head. "I took a close look at them when they were onscreen. Only quarian legs are built like that."

"Shit." He slumped forward slightly. "Yeah, this could get bad. If they keep hitting geth ships..."

Dakka put her arm around him. He took another sip, put the cup down, leaned against her and reached over to take her other hand.

The door behind Chula opened. She looked over her shoulder and found Magnum and the turian they'd rescued on Omega. They walked over and sat at the adjacent table.

"Hi, guys," Magnum said.

"Hi." Chula looked over at Sidonis. "How's our new passenger doing?"

"I'm...alright." He crossed his arms over his chest, hunched over, and stared at the table with a haunted expression. "Is the quarian kid alright?"

"He's out of surgery and recovering in the clean room. We're taking him to the Citadel for medical treatment."

"Good. I've been really worried about him."

"Friend of yours?"

"I've only known him a few hours." Sidonis took a slow breath, clearly struggling to make a decision. Finally, he sat up a little straighter and faced her. "He just happened to be in a corridor I was passing through. A bunch of people were beating the shit out of him--I'm not sure if they were mugging him or if they simply wanted to kill a quarian."

Chula nodded. "Most of my people stay away from Omega for a reason."

"Yeah, I was kind of surprised to see him there. I didn't get a chance to ask him what brought him there. From what I was able to learn, all of his money was stolen shortly after he arrived, and he ended up trying to sell salvaged parts until he had enough money to leave. He ended up running into a human who gave him a thousand credits for a ticket off Omega. Then he got mugged on the way to the docking bay and lost the whole thousand. That was before I found those guys beating him up."

"Wow." Magnum shook her head. "Sounds like the universe insists on taking a big, fat shit on him at every opportunity."

"Seems that way." Sidonis shrugged. "I jumped into it, did my best to fight them off and get him out of there. Turns out they were mercs. They brought a bunch of their friends and chased us down. They had us pinned down in that docking bay, and I guess that's where you came in."

"We heard your call for help. We made a bit of a mess on the way out, but the important thing is, you'll both live."

"Good." He slouched again. He didn't look too thrilled with the thought of surviving.

Hmm. Chula watched him for a moment, then said, "It was a brave thing you did, but it could've gotten you killed. So, what's your story?"

He didn't answer for a moment. Finally, he mumbled, "I got a lot of good people killed, not long ago. All because I was a coward. One of them survived; he hunted me down, almost killed me, but his friend talked him out of it. He gave me a second chance, so I'm trying not to waste it. Trying to make up for what I did."

Chula nodded and waited, but he said nothing else. "Well, Kenn's alive because of you, so you're off to a good start."

He nodded slowly. "Thank you."

No one said anything else for a few minutes. Dakka finished eating, stood, and picked up her tray. She took it to the kitchen, returned, and looked down at Quint.

"So, I'm in the mood for dessert. How about you?"

"Well, I, uh..."

She scooped him up and threw him over her shoulder. A bewildered look crossed his face as she carried him to the door, then he shrugged and waved at the others.

"Don't wait up for us." He grinned before the door closed.

Lia burst out laughing. "Wow."

"She finally landed him." Chula chuckled. "Way to go, Dakka!"

Sidonis stared at the door and cocked his head. "That's an...interesting couple."

"Yeah, it's certainly one I've never seen before."

"Same here." Lia chuckled again. "It's kind of adorable, though."

"Very." A message popped up in Chula's heads-up display. "Well, we're about to hit the mass relay, so I should get up to the cockpit."

Lia stood. "Okay. I think I'll go check on Kenn. I imagine he'll have a lot of questions, if he's awake yet."

"That should be an interesting conversation." Laughing softly, Chula headed for the flight deck.

I wonder if we'll make it through a whole day without nearly being blown up. She sat at the controls and snorted.

Probably not.