Six hours had passed since Kahlee and the others had escaped the warehouse on Omega.
Lemm had managed to find the current location of the quarian flotilla by linking into the comm network and scanning the news updates. The Migrant Fleet was passing through a remote volus-controlled system near the edges of Council Space. According to the news reports, several volus diplomats were petitioning the Citadel to do everything in its power to hasten the quarians' departure.
Kahlee doubted their political appeals would have any noticeable impact. The Citadel was still coming to grips with the changes wrought by Saren and his geth army. Their primary focus was on eliminating the few remaining pockets of geth resistance scattered across the galaxy; an objective being pursued by an emergency coalition force headed up by humanity and the Alliance. Once the geth were pushed back beyond the Perseus Veil, she suspected the next order of business would be to address the restructuring of the Council, along with the massive political fallout that would entail. The last thing anyone on the Citadel wanted to deal with was the Migrant Fleet.
Kahlee knew that even during the long period of interstellar peace that had preceded humanity's arrival, the various species of the galaxy tended to view the activities of the Fleet as little more than a minor inconvenience or nuisance.. until they passed through one of their systems. Then the most effective course of action was to offer unwanted resources in the form of decommissioned ships, raw materials, and spare parts to the quarian Admiralty.
The quarians allowed themselves to be bought off with such gifts, with the understanding the flotilla would quickly move on to become a thorn in someone else's side. Kahlee hated to pass judgment, but she couldn't help but see it as the interstellar equivalent of panhandling.
And in another forty hours we'll be hoping to join up with them, she thought, shaking her head in disbelief at the course of events over the last few days.
Lemm had plotted their course into the navigation, then gone to lay down in the sleeper cabin in the back once they'd made the jump to FTL flight. Kahlee still had plenty of questions for him — like how he knew who she was — but in light of all he had done for them, she could afford to be patient. She'd give him a few hours to rest and start recovering from his injury before she began peppering him with questions. Besides, she was anxious to check on Gillian now that the girl had woken up.
The first words out of her mouth upon gaining consciousness had been, "I'm hungry." Hendel had easily solved that problem by preparing a double-portioned serving for her from the ship's rations.
With the ship's navigation following the preprogrammed course, there was no need for anyone to keep an eye on the helm. So the three of them— Kahlee, Gillian, and Hendel — had gathered in the passenger cabin, the two adults seated side by side facing her, while the girl ate from the hard plastic tray of food on her lap.
She was just now finishing the last of her meal. As she had done back at the Academy, she chewed with focused determination, never pausing or breaking rhythm as she steadily consumed her food one methodical bite at a time. Kahlee, however, noticed she didn't stick to her normal pattern of taking only one single mouthful from a dish before moving on to the next item on her plate. In fact, she didn't even touch the apple crumble dessert until everything else was gone.
Once she was done she carefully set the tray on the seat beside her and spoke for the second time since regaining consciousness.
"Where's my dad?" There was no emotion in her voice; it was flat and monotone, like the primitive speech synthesizers from the twentieth century.
There was no simple answer to this question. Fortunately, she and Hendel had discussed what to say while Gillian was still sleeping off the drugs their captors had given her.
"He had some business to take care of," Kahlee lied, figuring the truth would be too much for the girl to handle right now. "He's going to catch up with us later, but for now it's just you, me, and Hendel, okay?"
"How will he find us if we took his ship?"
"He'll find another ship," she assured the girl.
Gillian stared at her and squinted her eyes slightly, as if she suspected deception and was trying to peer through her to the truth. After a few seconds of this she nodded, accepting the situation.
"Are we going back to the school?"
"Not yet," Hendel told her. "We're going to meet up with some other ships. Quarian. Do you remember when you studied the quarians last year in history class?"
"They made the geth," she said simply.
"Yes," Kahlee admitted, hoping this wasn't the sole fact she associated with the species of their rescuer. "Do you remember anything else about them?"
"Driven from their home system by the geth nearly three centuries ago, most quarians now live aboard the Migrant Fleet, a flotilla of fifty thousand vessels ranging in size from passenger shuttles to mobile space stations," she answered, and Kahlee realized she was reciting the entry verbatim from her history e-book.
"Home to seventeen million quarians, the flotilla understandably has scarce resources," the girl continued. "Because of this, each quarian must go on a rite of passage known as the Pilgrimage when they come of age. They leave the Fleet and only return once they have found something of value—"
"That's okay, Gillian," Hendel said gently, cutting her off before she gave them the entire chapter.
"Why are we meeting a quarian ship?"
Kahlee wasn't sure how much Gillian remembered about the violent greeting they had received upon landing at Omega, so she was intentionally vague in her answer. "We met a quarian named Lemm while you were sleeping. He's going to help us hide from some people who are trying to find us."
"Cerberus," she said, and the adults cast a nervous glance at each other, uncertain where she had picked up the name.
"That's right," Hendel said after a moment. "They want to hurt you, and we won't let that happen."
Gillian frowned and bit her lip. She was silent for several long seconds before she asked the same question that had been bothering Kahlee. "Why is Lemm helping us?"
Neither of them had a ready answer for that one.
"I guess we'll have to ask him when he wakes up," Kahlee finally admitted.
Fortunately, they didn't have long to wait. Less than an hour later she heard the uneven, clumping steps of Lemm coming down the hall. His leg was covered by a hermetically sealed, hard-shelled boot that protected and supported everything from the tips of his toes up to the joint of his knee. He was still wearing his mask and enviro-suit, of course; Kahlee suspected he wouldn't take them off again until they reached the flotilla.
"Lemm," she said as he entered the passenger cabin and stopped. "This is Gillian. Gillian, this is Lemm."
The quarian stepped forward and bowed slightly, extending his gloved hand in a gesture of greeting common to both species. To Kahlee's amazement Gillian reached out and shook it.
"Nice to meet you," she said.
"Nice to meet you, too. I'm glad to see you up and about," he replied, releasing her hand and sitting gingerly down in the seat beside her, facing Kahlee and Hendel.
"Why are you helping us?" Gillian asked him.
Kahlee winced. They hadn't been able to warn the quarian about Gillian's condition, and she hoped Lemm wouldn't take offense at the girl's lack of tact.
Fortunately, he took her question in stride. "You get right to the point, don't you?" he said with a laugh from behind his mask.
"I'm autistic," Gillian replied, again with absolutely no hint of emotion.
It wasn't clear if Lemm fully understood the meaning of the word, but Kahlee figured he was smart enough to grasp the basic concept. Before he could formulate a response, Gillian repeated her earlier question.
"Why are you helping us?"
"I'm a little curious about that myself," Hendel added, leaning back in his chair and bringing his right leg up so he could rest it on his left knee.
"I'm on my Pilgrimage," the quarian began. "I was on the world of Kenuk when I met two crew members from the Bavea, a scout ship for the cruiser Idenna. They told me another scout ship, the Cyniad, had gone to Omega to broker a deal and not returned.
"I came to Omega in search of the Cyniad crew. I hoped I could rescue them, or at least discover their fate. On Omega another quarian, a man named Golo, told me the Cyniad had arranged a deal with a small group of humans.
"I broke into their warehouse hoping to find the crew. Instead, I found you."
"But why risk your life to save us?" Hendel asked.
"I suspected your captors were slavers. No species deserves to be bought and sold. It was my moral obligation to free you."
Kahlee had no doubt he was being sincere, but she also knew there was more to the story.
"You recognized me," she said. "You knew my name."
"The name Kahlee Sanders has become very well known among my people in the past few months," he admitted. "And I recognized your appearance from an old image we picked up off the Extranet. You have hardly changed in eighteen years."
The pieces began to click together in Kahlee's mind. Eighteen years ago she had been involved in an illegal Alliance AI project headed by a man named Dr. Shu Qian. But Qian had betrayed the project, forcing Kahlee into a desperate flight for her life. It was how she had met Captain Anderson. . and a turian Spectre named Saren Arterius.
"It's because of my connection to Saren," she said, looking for confirmation.
"Your connection to him, and his connection to the geth," Lemm clarified. "The geth revolt was the single most significant event in the history of my people. They drove us into exile; an army of synthetic machines— ruthless, relentless, and unstoppable.
"But Saren led an army of geth against the Citadel. He found some way to make them follow him. He found a way to control them and bend them to his will. Is it any wonder we are so interested in him, and anyone who has ever had anything to do with him?"
"Kahlee?" Hendel asked, uncrossing his legs and sitting up straight, his muscles tensing. "What's he talking about?"
"Back when I was with the Alliance, Saren was the Spectre sent to investigate a research project I worked on." She had never really talked about what had happened on that mission with anyone other than Anderson, and she didn't want to start now.
"How did the quarians find out about all this?" she demanded. Her voice was rising; she was beginning to get a little bit scared, and that in turn made her angry. "Those Alliance files were classified."
"Any information can be acquired for the right price," the quarian reminded her. It was hard to read his expression behind his mask, but his tone seemed calm. "And as I said, we have an understandable obsession with the geth.
"Once we knew Saren was leading their armies we began to gather all the information we could on him: personal history, past missions. When it was discovered he had close dealings with a human scientist working on an illegal AI research project, it was only natural we would delve into the scientist's background as well."
"Illegal AI?" Hendel muttered, shaking his head in disbelief at what he was hearing.
"That was a long time ago," Kahlee told the quarian.
"The Captain of the Idenna will want to speak with you."
"I can't help you," she insisted. "I don't know anything about Saren or the geth."
"You might know more than you think," Lemm replied.
"You make it sound like we don't have any choice in the matter," Hendel noted, his voice dark.
"You are not prisoners," the quarian assured them. "If I take you to the Fleet it will be as honored guests. If you do not wish to go, we can change course right now. I can take you to any world you choose.
"However, if we do join up with the Fleet, it is possible they won't allow you to leave right away," he admitted. "My people can be overly cautious when it comes to protecting our ships."
The security chief glanced over at Kahlee. "It's your call. You're the celebrity."
"This will end your Pilgrimage, won't it?" she wanted to know. "Meeting me is your gift to the captain."
He nodded, but didn't speak.
"If I don't do this, you can't go back to the Fleet yet, can you?"
"I will be forced to continue my journey until I find something of value to bring back to my people. But I will not force you to do this. The gift we bring must not be won through causing harm or suffering to another — quarian or nonquarian."
"It's okay," she said after thinking on it. "I'll talk to them. We owe you our lives, and this is the least I can do. Besides," she added, "it's not like we'll be safer anywhere else."
Forty hours later they dropped from FTL travel less then 500,000 kilometers from the Migrant Fleet. Lemm was once again occupying the pilot's chair, with Kahlee seated beside him. Hendel was in his now typical spot, standing just inside the door heading back to the passenger cabin, and even Gillian had come up to join them in the close confines, standing directly behind the quarian's chair.
The girl seemed to have taken to Lemm. She had started following him around, or just sitting and staring at him whenever he sat down or caught a few hours of sleep. Gillian didn't initiate conversations with him, but she answered promptly whenever he spoke to her. It was unusual, but encouraging, to see her responding so well to someone, so neither Kahlee nor Hendel had tried to stop her when she'd come up to the cockpit to join them.
The Migrant Fleet, with its thousands upon thousands of ships flying in tight formation, showed up on the nav screens as a single, large red blob as they approached. Lemm punched up their thrusters, and they began to move steadily toward the flotilla.
When they reached a range of just under 150,000 kilometers the nav screen showed several smaller ships detaching themselves from the main armada, arcing around on an intercept trajectory with their own course.
"Navy patrols challenge every ship approaching the Fleet," Lemm had informed them earlier. "Heavily armed. They'll open fire on any vessel that doesn't identify itself or refuses to turn back."
From what Kahlee knew of quarian society, their reaction was completely understandable. Deep in the heart of the Migrant Fleet floated the three enormous Liveships: gigantic agricultural vessels that supplied and stored the majority of the food for the seventeen million individuals living on the flotilla. If an enemy ever damaged or destroyed even one of the Liveships the inevitable result would be a catastrophic famine, and the grim prospect of slow starvation for millions of quarians.
Lemm responded to the quickly approaching patrol by thumbing open a comm channel. A few minutes later it crackled with a voice speaking in quarian, though of course the tiny translator Kahlee wore as a pendant on her necklace automatically converted it into English.
"You are entering a restricted area. Identify."
"This is Lemm'Shal nar Tesleya, seeking permission to rejoin the Fleet."
"Verify authorization."
Lemm had previously explained to them that most quarians who left on their Pilgrimage tended to return to the flotilla in newly acquired ships. With no records of the registration or call signs for the vessel, the only way to confirm the identity of those on board was through a unique code phrase system. Before leaving on his right of passage, the captain of the Tesleya, Lemm's birth ship, had made him memorize two specific phrases. One, the alert phrase, was a warning that something was wrong, such as hostiles on the ship forcing the pilot to try and infiltrate the Fleet. The alert phrase would cause the heavily armed patrols to open fire on their vessel immediately. The second phrase, the all clear, would get them safely past the patrols, where they would join the densely packed mass of other ships, shuttles, and cruisers.
"The quest for knowledge sent me away from my people; now the discovery of wisdom has brought me back."
There was a long pause as the patrol relayed the exchange back to the Tesleya, somewhere deep inside the flotilla, for confirmation. Kahlee's palms were sweating, and her mouth felt dry. She swallowed hard in the silence and held her breath. Grayson's shuttle was built for speed and long-distance travel; it had no weapons, no GARDIAN defense systems, and virtually no armor on its hull. If Lemm had mixed up the alert and all-clear codes, or if something else went wrong, the patrol would tear them apart in seconds.
"The Tesleya welcomes you home, Lemm" came the reply, and Kahlee let her breath out in a long, low sigh of relief.
"Tell them it's good to be back," he responded, then added, "I need to contact the Idenna"
Again there was a long pause, but this time Kahlee didn't feel the same unbearable tension as she waited.
"Sending coordinates and hailing frequencies for the Idenna" they finally replied.
Lemm verified receipt of the message, then disconnected the comm channel. They continued their approach to the Fleet, and the single giant red blob on the nav screens became countless tiny red pixels jammed so close together Kahlee wondered how the vessels they represented avoided crashing into each other.
Moving with a steady, expert hand their quarian pilot maneuvered them into the mass of ships, working his way slowly toward where the Idenna floated along with the rest of quarian society. Twenty minutes later he flicked the comm channels open again and sent out a hailing call.
"This is Lemm'Shal nar Tesleya requesting permission to dock with the Idenna"
"This is the Idenna. Your request is granted. Proceed to docking bay three."
Lemm's trifingered hands flew over the controls, making the necessary adjustments to bring them in. Two minutes later they felt the slight bump as docking clamps fastened onto their ship to hold it in place, followed by a sharp clang as a universal airlock connected to the airlock of their own ship.
"I'm requesting a security and quarantine team," Lemm said into the comm channel. "Make sure they wear their enviro-suits. The ship is not clean."
"Request confirmed. The teams are on the way."
The quarian had warned them about this, too. The quarantine team was a necessary step whenever a new vessel was first brought into the flotilla. The quarians couldn't risk bacteria, viruses, or other impurities from former nonquarian owners accidentally being released into the flotilla.
Similarly, requesting a security team to inspect your ship upon first arrival was considered a common courtesy among the quarian people — it showed you had nothing to hide. Typically, the team would come aboard, introductions would be exchanged, and no search would ever actually be conducted.
However, this situation was as far from typical as it could get. In the three hundred years of their exile, no nonquarian had ever set foot on a flotilla ship. As much as Lemm wanted to bring Kahlee before the captain of the Idenna, it simply wasn't in his power. And the unexpected sight of humans on a ship that had slipped past the Fleet's patrols was likely to cause shock and alarm.
There was no protocol for this unprecedented event, but Lemm had explained that there were procedures that could be followed to minimize the risk to both the crew of the Idenna and the humans on board the shuttle.
"Let's go meet our guests," Lemm said, standing up awkwardly on his injured leg. "Remember, just stay calm and everything will be fine. We just need to take it slow."
The four of them made their way into the passenger cabin, and the three humans sat down in the seats. Lemm made his way to the airlock to greet the security and quarantine teams coming on board.
Again, Kahlee felt the stress of being forced to sit and wait. What if Lemm was wrong about how the other quarians would react to their presence? What if somebody saw the humans and panicked? They were putting a lot of faith in someone who was, technically, not even an adult yet in the eyes of his own people.
I think he's earned a hit of trust after everything he's done for us.
Kahlee couldn't argue with the infallible logic of her own mind, but it did little to quell her fears. She could hear voices coming from the airlock, though they were too far away to pick up what was being said. One of the voices was rising, either in anger or fear. Someone — it sounded like Lemm, though she couldn't be sure — was trying to calm the upset speaker down. And then there were footsteps coming through the airlock and into the ship.
A few seconds later four masked quarians, one female and three males, entered the passenger cabin, armed with assault rifles. The one in front, the female, actually did a double take on seeing the humans, then turned back over her shoulder to speak to Lemm, who was standing just behind them.
"I thought you were joking," she said. "I really thought you were joking."
"This is unbelievable," one of the others muttered.
"What were you thinking?" the female, clearly the one in charge, wanted to know. "They could be spies!"
"They're not spies," Lemm insisted. "Don't you recognize the woman? Look closely."
The three humans sat silently as the female quarian stepped up to get a better look. "No… it can't be. What's your name, human?"
"Kahlee Sanders."
There was an involuntary gasp from the other quarians, and Kahlee thought she heard Lemm chuckle.
"My name is Isli'Feyy vas Idenna," the female quarian said, bowing her head in what seemed to be a gesture of respect. "It's an honor to meet you. These are my ship mates, Ugho'Qaar vas Idenna, Erdra'Zando vas Idenna, and Seeto'Hodda nar Idenna."
Kahlee bowed her head in return. "These are my friends, Hendel Mitra and Gillian Grayson. We are honored to be here."
"I brought Kahlee here so she could speak to the captain," Lemm interjected. "This meeting is my gift to the Idenna."
Isli glanced over at Lemm, then turned her mask back to Kahlee.
"Forgive me, Kahlee Sanders, but I cannot permit you to board the Idenna. That decision must come from the captain, and he will want to consult with the ship's civilian council before deciding."
"So what are you saying?" Hendel asked, judging the mood to be calm enough for others to join into the conversation. "We have to leave?"
"We cannot allow you to leave yet, either," Isli told him after a moment's consideration. "Not without the captain's approval. Your shuttle must stay here in the dock, and you must stay aboard your own vessel until a ruling is reached on this matter."
"How long will that take?" Kahlee asked.
"A few days, I would guess," Isli answered.
"We're going to need some supplies," Hendel said. "Food, primarily. Human food."
"And they will need suitable enviro-suits when the captain finally decides to let them onto the ship," Lemm added, taking the optimistic view.
"We will make every effort to accommodate your needs," Isli told them. "We don't have any stores of nonquarian food aboard the Idenna, but we will contact the other ships to see what we can find."
She turned once more to Lemm. "You will have to come with me. The captain will want to speak to you in person." Then she turned back to the humans. "Remember, you are not to leave the confines of this vessel. Either Ugho or Seeto will be posted outside your airlock at all times. If you need anything, they can help you."
And with that, the quarians, including Lemm, left them alone. A minute later they heard a loud clang as the door to the Idenna's external airlock slammed shut, sealing them inside the shuttle.
"Hmph," Hendel grunted, "that's a hell of a way to treat a celebrity."