I don't own ME or 1/2.

Hey all. This was the winner of the Ranma poll thanks to the carry-over effect. This is the first of three stories I will be updating before the end of the month. The others will be FILFy (needs a final read through to get rid of words i used too often and some naming errors) and Magic of the Force. I may also be posting tonight another chapter of Climbing Together over on Ao3 this weekend, to give my Ranma fans a post Halloween treat.

It isn't the chapter I hoped for, as the conversation and getting-to-know-you scenes with Ranma and Tali grew way longer than I ever expected. Still, I hope you all enjoy it.

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Chapter 11: Campouts Happen everywhere

"Before we travel to Tuchanka, I think we need to head back to Mostromos and get Inu and the others back to their old lives. They're kind of in the way here," Usagi said, leaning back against the wall of a small, extremely run-down little makeshift living area deep in the bowels of the Citadel.

In Herb's opinion, voiced loudly when they entered, "The words little and run down do not do this place justice! This room is so small that if any of us were courageous enough to try, we would never even be able to lay out comfortably. The ceiling is so low even I have to duck, and then there is the smell—"

At which Wrex had interrupted her by saying a simple, "Quit your bitching, little girl," which infuriated Herb to the point all she could do was splutter and growl. Luckily, though, being able to turn back into his male body shortly after they arrived put him in a much better mood. Since then, he had been content with hovering in the air to one side of the doorway, making certain that none of his body touched the hovel's walls or floor while the rest of them were forced to do so. The only one who looked at home was Wrex, despite how cramped his presence made it for the rest of them.

The fact its only entrance was between two floors of the Citadel, hidden within a wrecked, burnt-out drug den, was actually far more important than the place's lack of space for the group of fugitives. This was one of many small boltholes, which Wrex, as a freelancer with connections to both local criminal elements and the Shadow Broker, knew about. It would serve to hide the group until they had a plan.

Herb nodded, remaining silent, staring off into nothing as he had been doing for several moments now, making Usagi and O'taku wonder what he was thinking about. However, Inu, the engineer, had a response of her own to that statement. "You're acting like we're unwanted hanger-ons you can't wait to get rid of," she grumbled. "I'll remind you that without us, you wouldn't have had enough people to man the freighter."

"I'm not saying you aren't helpful," Usagi said, pulling the other asari into a hug, kissing Inu's neck and cheek until she tried to get away, her blue cheeks a little red and her breath coming at little faster than normal at the older asari's masterful discovery of a specific point on her neck. "I'm just saying you're unwilling participants in this adventure of ours rather than enjoying every minute of it like me."

O'taku grumbled at that, as it was only sort of true for her. The human movie enthusiast had only signed on to fly the pair of martial artist's ship, not get in physical fights. Looking back, I have to admit it was probably really naïve of me to think that I wouldn't be dragged into that kind of thing, too, considering that Ranma and Herb were very upfront about wanting to look for adventure as well as fun… which for them is much the same thing, drat it. In fact, I'm wondering now if I should call it quits.

O'taku liked the pair of humans. Really, she did, and leaving them in a lurch was not something she wanted to do. But even this brief time was enough to tell O'taku there might be more conflict found in their wake than she was happy with.

Fighting criminals was sort of okay once. O'taku and the others had joined the fight in Afterlife on Omega. But after this bit of adventure, I'm getting the impression Ranma and Herb may just end up fighting the Council and its people one out of every four or five fights. And I seriously don't want to be involved in that.

The others nodded firmly, as that description covered what they all were quite well. They'd had some fun getting involved in the fighting against Aria, to be sure, but none of them had even agreed to join Ranma and Herb's wanderings about the galaxy, let alone anything more. Even Inu, the most adventurous of the rest of the sisters, wanted to get back to the simpler, safer life at the abbey. Being knocked out, apprehended and worse, here on the Citadel at all, was a bit much for them, and the fight with C-Sec in Chora's Den had not helped matters at all. That wasn't even considering their fear of word of their actions getting back to the Sisterhood as a whole, something that may have Justiciars sent after them.

Wrex snorted, looking up from his omni-tool. He'd been looking at some news, which had come through from a bot he'd set up to watch for news of the Blood Pack, using that to ignore the group of sexy asari all around him. "It's probably a good idea, regardless. If we're heading to Tuchanka, then you'd all probably need some protective gear. A lot of my homeworld's still a nuclear ruin, after all. Buying two suits is better than buying enough for all of you."

Honestly, Wrex had said 'probably' there only because of Herb. Most of the planet was highly inhospitable for all but krogan with their natural resistance to radiation, yet he'd seen how tough Herb was in the bar fight, tanking mass effect-accelerated rounds with barely a bruise to show for it even before he (then she) had put her armor on. With that, Wrex had to wonder if the human with the obsession with history and weird curse could survive on Tuchanka without the need for the normal protective gear.

"The question is how we can get back to Asari space," O'taku mused, leaning back against one of the hiding place's walls and trying hard not to notice some of the stains and the rest of the refuse around them. "Is there some asari ship that we could sneak out on going that direction, do you think?"

"Not without getting noticed." Wrex shook his head at the naïveté of the younger set of asari. Usagi may be crazy, but she's also been around the galaxy a few times. The rest are this weird mix of combat-capable and sheltered. "Asari ships usually have larger crews, for one thing. For another, they're mostly well-organized with everything in its place and so forth. We couldn't hide ourselves in a crate and wait to be placed aboard or something like that." Wrex grumbled a bit. "Freaking vids, ugh, there's so much shit in them it's not even funny.

"Actually, we might be able to. I was able to send a message out to the Sisterhood before we left the ship we had been using. I have no idea how long it will take it to get back to her, but…" Inu shrugged. "Hopefully, Abess Joldrea'as will be able to get us some help."

"I am not waiting here for who knows how long," Herb growled from where he hovered, his eyes closed. Wrex looked over at him, trying hard not to stare at the young man with odd-colored hair simply sitting there in midair with no visible biotic aura around him. Wrex had seen a few old asari matriarchs do that kind of thing for meditation, but not seeing any biotic flare accompanying it was weird. "Recall that Crastus has no means of connecting to the greater extranet. It will be days before she gets that message, if not weeks."

Inu scowled, not having thought of that, but thankfully for her, Inu wasn't the only one there who had been given special information thanks to being trusted enough to work on the supply ships that served the abbey on Crastus. She held up a hand, bringing everyone's attention to her, asking hesitantly, "Um, is Consort Sha'ira still operating on the Citadel?"

Wrex blinked, his brows furrowing at the apparent non-sequitur, but he nodded. "Yeah, The Consort's still got her place on the Presidium. Isn't she some kind of celebrity or something, though?" Wrex chuckled darkly. "I remember one time I got into a fight with an asari about that gal. I asked if she was some kind of high-priced hooker, and the asari took that poorly. Why?"

"…" O'taku and the other asari all glared at the old krogan, the pilot wondering if it would be at all a good use of her time to try to explain why the position of Consort among asari had very little to do with sex and mostly was about mental health but decided it would not be and moved on. "Because the first time I was allowed to pilot a ship away from the Abby, I was told that if I was ever sent to the Citadel for whatever reason and got into trouble, Sha'ira was a contact I could use. The sisterhood has a few thousand contacts like that scattered throughout the republics, but Sha'ira apparently is the only one here on the Citadel."

Which is understandable given, duh, the whole secret order thing, O'taku added mentally.

Thanks to Wrex, the group was able to get access to the local extranet very quickly using a few specific back doors. From there, finding the comm number for the Consort was simple enough. At that point, O'taku took over, talking to first Sha'ira's secretary and giving her two passphrases to pass on. Soon, the Consort herself appeared, looking at O'taku thoughtfully, the hologram flashing up from O'taku's omni tool, large enough for all of them to see her.

The appearance of the woman was somewhat surprising. Looking at her, she had the same regal, calm expression as a Matriarch, but her skin's perfectly seeming smoothness coupled with the slight hint of makeup on her lips, seemed to hint at someone far younger. From what the hologram showed, Sha'ira wore an asari equivalent of a kimono with a tight neckline, the color perfectly accenting her light blue skin, nothing ostentatious but tasteful.

Looking at her, Herb had to hold back a look of surprise and a bit of admiration. Most asari I've met so far have been good-looking, but this one seems to have taken some time to make herself look even better than normal. Not like she is a model in those commercials or a stripper as most young asari seem to like doing, but more like a courtier crossed with a courtesan. I suppose that it makes sense she is called The Consort.

Sha'ira was silent for a time, listening gravely to O'taku, her silence a gravity well that drew forth more words from O'taku than she probably had wanted to share. Eventually, though, the story finished, and Sha'ira nodded slowly. "Well, I can see you all have gotten yourself into a fine pickle. Yes, I can help you off the Citadel. There is an asari ship, the Wind's Chime, due to leave for Sanves in two hours local time. You can make your way back to Mostromos quickly from there. I can convince the captain and the crew to look the other way for you all. The latest news about the council members has not put Tevos in a very good light, and I get the distinct impression that any further interaction between you and the Council, or its forces would only end with more loss of face, something I, nor any right-thinking person, would like to see. Like it or not, respect for the Council is a pillar of the galaxy's societal fabric. In return, I have a simple request for your companion, the human, Herb."

"What is it?" Herb asked speaking up for the first time, scowling a bit at O'taku. His name was but one of the things she had let slip before either himself or Wrex could stop her.

The other asari didn't seem to have an issue with it, though, nor, now, did The Consort berate Herb or ask him questions, making her aid pursuant to his answering them. Instead, Sha'ira, who was interested in Herb and Ranma's past quite a bit, took a soft approach. "I would very much like to know more about you in the future. Not in terms of gaining anything specifically but simply because I find learning about people fascinating. And I get the distinct impression that sitting down and talking to you and your companion would be a truly interesting time. A, a window, I suppose, into a world that I think is very different than the one I live in."

Herb started at that, wondering if somehow The Consort was aware of how accurate that phrase was. He stared at her, wondering what connection she might have to Tevos and the rest. Then he shrugged. "So long as you agree to not share our secrets, which I gather is something you never do regardless, I would be willing to simply sit down and talk to you, to exchange stories of our lives I suppose. Certainly, I would find that more convivial than anything the Council could come up with."

"I will import some Chinese tea from Earth then," The Consort said before giving O'taku and the others the location of the ship. "Of course, you will have to both get to the ship and onboard unseen, but I imagine that will not pose any problem.

Between them, Wrex, O'taku and Inu hacked into the local intranet within moments, finding the security cameras covering that area. With that and a few tricks in Wrex's bag of tech goodies, they could create a loop in the security camera for a few moments to cover their two and into the ship. However, they also discovered that several C-Sec patrols were moving around the dockyard area. They didn't seem to have any set pattern, which was bad. It meant avoiding them would be next to impossible.

"We might have to knock a few of these idiots out. Which will only make things messier in the long run," Wrex concluded unhappily. Although, his unhappiness had nothing to do with actually assaulting citadel security. In fact, he would enjoy fighting more of them. No, he had an issue with the fact they couldn't just kill them since that would bring more heat down on them and might force Citadel Security to halt all outgoing flights. There was a particularly krogan thought to go with this, one that Herb would have agreed with wholeheartedly if Wrex decided to share it. I hate leaving living enemies behind me. Curse politics.

Here however, Usagi spoke up, and not to make a joke. "You won't have to do anything with them. Trust me, I can be very distracting," she said with a grin.

"She can," O'taku, Inu and the other Ardat-Yakashi intoned, with a few blushing, "she so can."

"Yep. I figure if we find a pair that is either male or asari, I can get their attention fully on me, and the rest of you can get past easy," Usagi announced with a smirk. "They don't seem to know what me or the girls look like, only you, Herbie."

When Herb barely grunted at the hated nickname, Usagi twitched, then kicked him lightly in the side, an easy thing to do considering how close they all were to one another. This sent him sideways through the air for a moment before he could right himself, and Herb growled at her, but Usagi simply ignored it. "What's up with you anyway? You've been way too silent and broody. I mean, I know you're broody normally, but your face has been doing this twitchy thing between thoughtful and furious. Like you want to bite someone in half. Which is really weird since mostly you always look like you've got a stick up your nose."

Herb growled again at the irreverent asari but subsided. "I have been getting a feeling of late. My people have a superstition about shivers up the spine and so forth… I do not know if that is a thing among asari. It's never come up before."

"Like knowing if you're going to walk into an ambush before it springs, a soldier's sense of danger," Wrex guessed. "I get those, and they've saved my life many a time."

"Something like that. Only this has nothing to do with danger. It is more the feeling that I am missing out on something I would greatly enjoy." Herb paused, his fists clenching again. "I'm also getting the impression that Ranma is doing something I would punch him in the head for. Possibly numerous times."

Wrex snorted in understanding, having dealt with many a fellow krogan who he would punch in the head at least once or twice a day for being idiots. The other asari all looked at one another, and then O'taku asked the question that was on all of their minds. "How is that different from most days? You two punch each other for no reason whatsoever."

"Quite true. Sparring with Ranma is always pleasant, as it gives me a legitimate reason to knock him down a peg. But no, I mean punch him upside the head in order to correct his obvious brain damage. Somehow, I know that out there in the galaxy, he's doing something remarkably stupid, or at least something that would make me greatly annoyed with him. And I don't like it."

OOOOOOO

The last gunfire died out as Ranma slammed the last pirate into the bulkhead above one of the control stations on the bridge, the man's gun falling from his dead hand. The kick had caved in the guy's skull, painting the back of the bulkhead with the strange puke-green color of salarian blood.

Behind him, Tali finished off one of the pirates Ranma had simply smashed to the ground. He had been trying to scramble for a gun before the quarian's shotgun blast finished him off. Looking over at Ranma, she very deliberately took a step back, her two-toed feet clicking one after another as she looked Ranma up and down, then deliberately down again to his blood-coated boot.

"I'm never going to say that your combat methods are ineffective or anything, but it is kind of… dirty… you know that?" Tali said, her voice as always coming out a bit breathy coming from within her helmet. "I don't think any self-respecting quarian would be willing to put up with getting so gore-streaked. Ugh, even thinking of how much cleaning our suits would need after that kind of thing. I can't imagine any human wanting to get their actual skin covered in blood like that either."

Snorting at that, Ranma mentally acknowledged that she did have a point. Most of the time when he hit people, Ranma hit to break bones (if that) instead of splatter bodies, but sometimes, as now, he overdid it. It doesn't help matters that most of the aliens in this galaxy are so much weaker than people back home. The lack of ki really hurts most of 'em in that area. Although I gotta wonder if that's the case with Tali, too. She seems a bit stronger than her body type'd suggest. Is that ki or just her body being more efficient or whatever than a normal human's? I didn't bother looking at any of the quarians I've seen before with my admittedly ki sight… ugh, that's the weakest of my skills by far. But now, I'm kinda wondering.

Shaking his boot to get rid of the blood and brain matter on it, Ranma decided to concentrate on the here and now. Not his stomach, which was again beginning to remind him of his hunger. The massive sandwich and the rest of the supplies he'd gorged himself on had already been turned into energy thanks to the patented Saotome Stomach, whose efficiency was legendary. Yet its efficiency simply meant Ranma was close to getting hungry again now.

"Yeah, well, I don't exactly like getting so much blood and bits on me either. I suppose I should get used to it, though. At least I know a few ki techniques to burn it off… if I've got the energy and have to, anyway. Still, dibs on the first shower."

Tali nodded. "Makes sense. I mean, I want to clean my suit, but I can do that with compressed air and industrial scrubs. Not exactly water-intensive, although on a salarian ship, just like among the Fleet, water's rationed outside of cook..ing…" she trailed off, looking around, and then shook her head, her helmet's visor getting caught in a light from above to almost let Ranma see a bit of her actual face. "I just realized how silly that is, considering the losses the crew took in this attack. And I doubt any of the survivors will argue about letting you have a shower if you want one."

She nodded to something moving underneath one of the consoles, "Isn't that right, Pogis?"

One frightened eye looked out from behind her. Two chairs had been pulled in behind the surviving sailor like a makeshift barricade. It had worked, too, considering the bottoms of the chairs were a bit pockmarked from ricochets.

The eye was enough to tell Ranma the race of the person hiding there. "Heh. Quick thinking there, frog guy, but the fight's over now."

Hearing one of the typical insults humans used when speaking about his species didn't really register to the terrified, gibbering civilian for several moments. Eventually, he only agreed to come out of his small hiding place when Ranma agreed to back away slightly. Even so, the sight of his would-be rescuer practically covered in the blood of his piratical victims did not make the man feel any calmer at all, even after hearing Ranma and Tali's earlier banter.

Tali had gotten used to it and now set it aside to look around the bridge, taking in everything before moving to the communications console, the least damaged console on the bridge. "Internal communications are down, that's not so good, along with everything else in here being shot to pieces. So much waste! Still, we've already canvassed the whole ship, so I suppose it should be all right for us to retrace our steps to the doctor and the other two we left there. Hmmm… I might be able to repair this in about a half hour."

Ranma nodded but held up a hand when she made to start. "Well, leave it for now. Let's get this guy to the rest of the crew. Then we can figure out what to do."

Shrugging, Tali agreed with that, wanting to check in on her friend, Ravi. They'd asked the ship's doctor and two other salarians who had forted up in the med bay to go and get him, and she hoped they had. Although, given how I've been treated since leaving the Fleet, I won't be surprised they didn't.

Looking over at the salarian crewman, Tali gestured between him and Ranma to make introductions. "Ranma, this is Pogis. He's the ship's navigator, so he actually has seniority over the doctor you met earlier. Not that that matters much given how much damage the pirates did to the ship, once they realized they were losing. Pogis, this is Ranma, who is some kind of human super soldier."

Pogis blinked several times, staring at Tali, then over at a now-grumbling Ranma. It was evident, though, that Tali's efforts were in vain. The mentally quick salarians were almost all near to genius level for other races when it came to pure brainpower, yet it was very obvious that Pogis was not tracking right now.

Seeing that, Ranma shrugged, and two of them exited the bridge. Pogis was the only one that had still been alive when the two of them burst into the bridge, and being left behind with the bodies of the dead seemed to break him out of his fear of Ranma, and after dithering for a moment, he chased after the human and quarian.

The pirates had taken to killing their prisoners the moment they realized their own ship had been invaded and then dumped off whoever was attacking them onto this one, leaving them with no way back. Tali and Ranma had discovered that when they burst into the engine room, having headed there first rather than the bridge. The pirates there had already killed everyone, done quite a bit of damage and moved on.

The ship's doctor and two others were the only other ones alive aboard the ship, bar one injured human. The other two had retreated to the med bay before the ship was boarded under their own cognizance and had created a defensive position there. They had been protecting it against the pirates with the human before he got injured. Coming up behind the pirates, Ranma and Tali had somewhat reenacted the earlier battle when Tali was saved by Ranma earlier in the cafeteria.

Sweeping the ship towards the bridge after securing the engine room, the pair hadn't found anyone else alive until they found Pogis in his makeshift fort, arriving at the bridge just in time to save him from joining the captain in death. The other salarian had been executed just as Tali's scout platform came within sight of the bridge through the shattered hatch. At that point, Ranma had charged in, but the ship's communications officer, another salarian, had been killed before he could intervene.

This left two quarian, Ravi and Tali, an asari doctor in her maiden years, a single badly wounded human whose leg had been amputated by some kind of weapon, and three salarians, Pogis and two other salarians who had identified themselves as working in the med bay. The human, the doctor's first patient, had apparently been the deck chief.

Like the two deckhands, he wasn't an actual officer and didn't have a stake in the ship like the doctor and navigator did, something Tali explained to Ranma as they headed back to the med bay to pick up the others. "So whatever happens, the doctor and the navigator will have the final say."

"Won't you have input too? I mean, you're the only engineer still alive, right? And when we took the engine room, didn't you say that it was seriously messed up?" Ranma asked. "I'd assume that'd mean your word would be the most important in the room right now."

"Yeah, but you keep forgetting, I'm quarian," Tali said with a shrug. It wasn't a philosophical shrug or anything like that. It was rather a very defensive and bitter shrug. "That means I'm trusted to look after the ship's equipment when it breaks, but no one else will ever accept us as equals or anything like that."

"Huh…um, I haven't had much to do with your folk before this. Sorry if I keep on forgetting, you know, how the rest of the galaxy seems to look at you all," Ranma said somewhat sheepishly. "Not that I understand why, really."

"It's fine. Frankly, you treating me like an equal… Well, not in combat anyway, but you get the idea. It feels good being taken on my own merits. Instead of someone just seeing the suit," Tali said, gesturing to her protective helmet and then down to her body suit.

That gesture completely derailed Ranma's next question, which would have been about the quarians in general. Instead, he tried hard not to let his eyes follow that movement and failed. While he had indeed met a few quarians before, first on Torfan, then in passing on Omega, Tali was the first girl of the race he'd seen. While her body suit covered her entire body, he had not been prepared for how the environmental suits they all wore showed off, well, everything.

There wasn't anything lewd about it, and even the feel of the suit was kind of meh in Ranma's experience, at least on the outside. The suit wasn't like a second skin. It was actually somewhat thick save around the fingers, which cut down on Tali's sense of touch a lot.

Yet it still showed Tali's body to good effect.

Tali had a thin waist, one far thinner than even Ranma's female form, paired with wider hips and a rear that was one of the better ones Ranma had seen in this galaxy. Her curves up top weren't as big as many of the asari maidens or matrons he'd seen, let alone matriarchs like Samara or Benezia. In fact, Ranma estimated that Tali's chest was around a B-cup, at least a full size smaller than Ranma's female form. But they looked just as firm.

And, well, Ranma had quickly discovered that he had what he'd heard called a fetish: nearly skin-tight clothing that hinted at everything but showed nothing. It was immensely distracting.

To stop his eyes from wandering, Ranma looked ahead of them and saw they were near the med bay. The medical center and the bridge were actually relatively close to one another in comparison to where either was to the engine room, thankfully. "We're nearly there."

Ranma looked behind them, smirking slightly at the sight of Pogis behind them. He was keeping his distance from them, looking incredibly leery, almost as if he would bolt the moment Ranma and his eyes met. "And the navigator's following us. That'll make this bit easier, I'll only have to tell yer crew what we need ta do once."

Tali cocked her head thoughtfully, looking at Ranma speculatively, although how Ranma knew that with the way her helmet's visor was almost entirely opaque from the outside, he didn't know. Maybe I've already begun ta pick up her body language?

"Why does that remind me of a line I once heard from a hanar comedy? Are you going to make them an offer they can't refuse or something?"

"That was a comedy?" Ranma knew of the hanar in passing, but his Japanese brain had taken one look at them, said nope and walked away, taking the rest of Ranma with it. Given how Herb had not been so wary and had looked them up on the extranet only to begin screaming about perverts, Ranma had been more than willing to continue to be ignorant of the race.

"It was made by hanar. Trust me, those floaties make anything a good comedy. The hanar know how ridiculous they look to the rest of us and play into it a lot. There's even a children's story about a Hanar Spectre, of all things." With that, Tali broke off, pushing open the hatch into the med bay, waving her forefinger and hand around the hatch itself. "It's us. We finished off the pirates."

One of the deckhands shook his head as he waved her in. "Still trying to take credit for that suit rat? We all know it was mostly that weird human and his strange…"

That was as far as the salarian deckhand got before Ranma entered behind Tali, one wintry eyebrow rising. The salarians on the crew had all been around enough humans by this point to spot when one was displeased. "Hey, I know you and your companion did the best you could to hold up here in the med bay, but don't talk down to Tali like that. She was a big help in protecting your navigator. If she wasn't so fast to tell me what was going on in the bridge, I don't think I would've moved fast enough to save him before the pirates shot yer friend like they already did yer captain and communications officer."

The salarian mumbled a little but subsided while the asari doctor, a young maiden, made a point of catching Ranma's eyes with a grin, looking him up and down. For some reason, that annoyed Tali a little, but she was pleasantly surprised to see Ranma simply flush a little and look away, not looking back at the doctor as the navigator entered behind them. "Anyway, now that yer all here, can I ask you all what your captain told you about what you were doing here in this system?"

The navigator answered, having been the only one on the bridge when the new contract came through and having been privy to his captain's reasoning. He explained it to everyone else, looking at Ranma all the time, very obviously still scared of him. However, even that fear did not quite subsume his species' normal curiosity. "I, I take it we are here to pick you up? Are you some kind of experimental super soldier that the Shadow Broker created? Is it some kind of body reinforcement or genetic manipulation?"

"… I'm just gonna ignore most of that. Yes, I'm who you're all here to pick up." Ranma sighed, looking a little guilty. "I'm sorry about that, I didn't have a working radar until after I got the ship up into space, and that was after the Shadow Broker called you in. I tried to use his authority to get them to back off, but they didn't buy it."

"Wow, that was stupid of them," the asari doctor murmured, not realizing most of that had been a lie. "If those pirates had gotten away, the Shadow Broker would have had them hunted down one by one. He's supposedly vindictive like that."

Given his conversation with Benezia, Ranma knew he had to keep the fact the Shadow Broker was dead a secret. The yagh's purloined network of informants, agents and everything else was still intact, but if it got out that the Shadow Broker was dead, it might collapse or just break up as his lieutenants grabbed what bits they could. So the fewer who knew, the better.

"Well, if we were, then I guess mission accomplished, but I don't know what we are going to do from now on. Our engines might be fine, but our reactor control's been smashed, and our whole engine room's are shot to pieces."

Tali's speaking up earned her glares from all of the others, even the asari doctor, but the young quarian stood her ground, crossing her arms over her chest and glaring right back at them. "I'm the only engineer still alive, so unless one of you wants to try to do the work, I'm going to be the one doing everything in there. Don't look at me like I don't know what I'm doing. We'll still make a profit from the Broker, but there's no way we'll be able to complete our preexisting contract with Capek."

"Yeah, if your own repairs don't take whatever raw materials you all are transporting, the ship I was on originally needs some work, and so does the pirate ship." Ranma thought about it, then shrugged. "Most of the work in the pirate ship has to do with the bridge, and I was still able to pilot it over to this ship. Would that be easier or harder than the engine room to repair?"

"I don't know. I'd have to see the damage first," Tali answered, her feet tapping down almost like a colt's hooves, eager to get to grips with the problem. Ranma could almost feel the sudden enthusiasm pouring off the girl. "What's wrong with the other ship?"

"Hold on, that I actually have a list on." Proud of himself for having downloaded that bit from the ship's computer, Ranma activated his omni-tool, letting it show the information to Tali. She frowned a little at it, shaking her head. "So I was able to program some droids to go outside and repair the outer hull, but there're a few places, or pieces that have degraded in the engine room that's stopping it from being able to build up speed."

"Why robots?" Tali asked. "And do you know what model of repair droid?"

"Well, even I'd need a VAC suit to go into space, and the readings from the planet's atmosphere told me that it would be a very bad idea if I tried ta go out while I was on the planet," Ranma answered, shrugging. "Besides, I'm a blacksmith. I know armor, working with metal and so forth. Not power grids, motherboards, energy and all that stuff."

Tali snorted a little at that, a remarkably human-sounding noise despite her helmet, before the navigator interjected, trying to get the topic back on task. He had several questions about why they were here in the first place, but Ranma, mindful that he probably shouldn't just tell everyone about the Shadow Broker anything to do with his information network, kept it simple. He said that he had been captured by other pirates, wiped them out and then called in a favor from the underground's premier information broker.

That passed muster for now among the rattled crew of the civilian ship, although his information that an asari matriarch was on her way and her personal ship caused consternation and relief in equal measure. In the navigator's words, "That means that we might well be paid twice over, which might even offset the deaths we took on this side mission."

Ranma scowled a little at that, reminded that it was his fault that this ship had been in a position where the pirates would be able to ambush them. He didn't try to take all the guilt on himself because that would be stupid, but he understood that at least some of the blame for that was on him. He was also a little thrown by the fact that all of them, even the asari doctor, were nodding at that, pushing past the fact that their friends and coworkers had been killed today far faster than he had thought civilians would be able to.

At that point, the group broke up to see to various duties. The asari doctor turned back to her patients, which did include Ravi, thankfully and to Tali's surprise. Evidently, Ranma's orders on that point had been followed, if, Ranma judged, more from fear of his response if they didn't than actually caring for their crewmate as they should. Now, the two dockworkers would have an even more thankless task: getting rid of the bodies. Given the faces the two salarians wore, the fact they could rifle through the pirate's belongings for anything they could sell at the same time was scant comfort.

Ranma did not feel sorry for them. The looks all of the crew, even the young asari, had been giving Tali when she spoke up had made Ranma kind of annoyed.

The navigator, much to his not-at-all concealed chagrin, was forced to head back to the bridge. The navigation/pilot console was still in one piece, and at Tali's suggestion, that system could be used to communicate with the computers aboard the other two ships, slaving them to his orders. Pogis had tried to protest, but when Tali simply sent him a program that would allow him to do so easily, Pogis agreed with ill grace, buoyed by a reminder from one of the other salarians that they would be getting prize money for the pirate ship.

"Y'know, I haven't had much to do with salarians before, but is that kind of thinking normal?" Ranma asked as he and Tali made their way to the engine room. They would repair it, then head over to the Shadow Broker's ship, finishing with the pirate ship. The pirates, which had invaded the freighter, had left their shuttle and Tali was able to pilot it. "I mean, they got over their friend's deaths really quickly and seemed way more interested in what they could get out of this than anything else."

"I think it is, given what I've seen in the past few months. For one thing, salarians don't have families like humans, asari and quarians do. They have these huge crèches I think, so family feeling isn't something they really go into a lot. They form strong friendships, but," Tali shrugged, "this crew really didn't go into that much. The captain, the first mate and the chief engineer were all close, but the others didn't seem to be, and I know two of the humans hated one another's guts. One was going to be leaving the crew at our next stop for some reason because of it. We, Ravi and I, tried to just keep our heads down and not get involved. It's always the safest thing for us."

"Yeah, I saw that given the way those asshats talked ta you both when we first helped 'em and when we came back with Pogis," Ranma said as they entered the engine room. Tali immediately began to move around the area energetically, shifting from one console to another and then to another piece of machinery, hitting a few buttons here and there, using her omni-tool occasionally to create small panels to cover damaged areas, then shake her head and move on. This ended with her scrambling up the side of the generator, then between two large pipes, Ranma would not have fit between.

"Any quarian away from the fleet gets used to that. It's not a big deal," Tali said, although from the set of her shoulders, Ranma could tell she had not, in fact, gotten used to it. "It's just one of the many hardships we have to face while on our Pilgrimage."

"I could literally hear ya capitalize that last word. What's a Pilgrimage?" Ranma asked. He'd never been all that interested in looking up the past of different races or anything like that, that was more Herb's thing, and none of the other quarians he had spoken to had mentioned that word before.

Right now, though, Ranma had nothing better to do until Tali told him she needed his muscle or ability to melt things. And talking keeps my mind off my once-again empty stomach. "Actually, let's start at the beginning. Why the heck does everyone seem to treat you people like you're pariahs or something? I know that it isn't like they can catch something from you if you're out of your suit or something equally stupid."

Tali paused, wondering how Ranma knew that but didn't know much of anything else about her people. Yet when she looked over at Ranma, he seemed to be remembering something bad and shivered, remembering he had said something about having freed slaves at one point. What the batarians did to her people was the stuff of nightmares. Instead, she took his words at face value, enjoying the fact that Ranma didn't know anything about her species. That meant he was looking at her not only as an individual but at her whole race without any preconceived opinions.

This made it doubly refreshing, and she eagerly explained about her people, how they had created artificial intelligence, which had then turned on them, which was against counsel law. After that, her people had been practically wiped out, forced to flee their homeworld of Rannoch on every ship they could find in what they called the Uprising.

"I'm guessing you mean the whole create artificial intelligence thing was against Council Law, not the war that happened after? But when you broke it, or… I'm confused," Ranma said, frowning. "Was it like you people deliberately did this, even after you were warned not to?"

"No!" Tali growled, removing a panel and looking inside it, clicking her teeth loud enough to be heard through her helmet's coms. "In fact, we cut back on the intelligence of our computers quite a bit after we realized we were coming close to that line. There were a few warnings from the Council before the Uprising, but they were all listened to and acted on."

To be fair, Tali wasn't quite certain about that aspect. When she was certain of was the next part of what she said. "But despite the fact that we were members of the Council Races in good standing, when it came time to help us against our creations, none of the other races would even lend us a single ship or soldier. Instead, they turned us away, treating us as if it was our fault entirely. As if by even associating with us, the stigma of artificial intelligence would spread!"

"That sounds like prime bullshit to me," Ranma answered instantly. "I could see people shouting 'I told you so', but at least humans would be telling you that as they held out their hands to help you along." At least, the best of humanity would do that. "None of the Council Races helped you?"

"The Council decided that since we had broken their laws, they were under no obligation to help us," Tali said, her tone laced with the outrage of three hundred years of exile, taught from birth to every quarian in the fleet from both their families and the larger society of the Migrant Fleet. "Really though, they simply felt it wasn't worth doing so. That and the issues with the geth. They keep an embargo on traveling into the Perseus Veil, and watch for geth ships coming out, but that's all."

Tali's voice softened a little bit as she went on. "Admittedly, the asari have occasionally reached out to help us, this or that Republic anyway. And recently, I think we made a few agreements with the asari republics as a whole, although I haven't gotten any news from the Fleet about what those deals entail. Yet it's nowhere near enough to really help the Migrant Fleet. And no one has ever even brought up the idea of helping us reclaim our planet from the flashlights."

Ranma scowled angrily. "What the hell? I thought that all the Council Races could look to the Council for help or something. Why the hell would you sign up for it if they weren't going to help you in your time of need?"

"Like I said, the Council felt as if we had broken their laws, despite the fact we weren't trying to research artificial intelligence and had agreed to the requests to pull back on the computerized intelligence of our equipment numerous times!" Tali growled, not looking up from where she had begun to repair some of the wires that had shorted out due to damage elsewhere in the engine room. "It's not my ancestor's fault that they didn't realize what was going on until too late, but we all have been paying for it ever since."

For a moment, Ranma fell silent, and Tali concentrated on what she was doing, pushing aside the bitter feelings of betrayal that any quarian felt when they looked back on what happened during the Uprising and after. Soon, Tali dropped back down to the deck, muttering, "Restarting the system now won't fry the engine runs even worse."

Eventually, Tali finished what she could do with just her hands and her omni-tool and turned to Ranma, shaking her head. "I've sent some orders to the ship's fabricator. If the fabricator can manufacture some parts, I'll be able to repair it relatively quickly. For now, let's head on to your ship so I can look at the damage myself. We'll stop in at the hold and grab those parts your omni-tool listed to bring along, too."

Checking in with Pogis, Ranma found that the navigator had been able to save the pirate ship to his system, bringing it in alongside the freighter High Risk, almost close enough to bring them into direct contact with one another. His attempt to do the same with the Shadow Broker's ship had failed. "Its operating system sent me back some gibberish I don't have a program to decode. It's both in a code and in a language not loaded into my Omni-tool."

Ranma winced. "Crud, I should have thought about that. Yeah, the pirates I fought on that ship were seriously paranoid. Still, Tali and me will be able to fix that problem too. And we've got the pirate's boarding shuttle to use until then."

Pogis slowly nodded, then looked over Ranma's shoulder to where Tali was at work on her Omni-tool again, figuring out where in the hold the parts they needed for the repairs ot the Shadow Broker's ship were. "I would be careful, what I share with the suit rat. Their people, they steal anything that isn't nailed down, and secrets are never nailed down enough for such. They can't be trusted."

Unaware that this was perhaps the most hypocritical statement in the known galaxy, Ranma simply stared back at Pogis, then smiled, or rather, bared his teeth in a way that caused the salarian to flinch back. Human teeth were no match for krogan or yahg teeth, but the impression still got across. "I'll take that under advisement. But have you ever wondered why they do that? Seems to me your vaunted Council hasn't left them much choice in how they live. Maybe if ya could see past your prejudices, you'd realize how blind they make ya."

Without another word, Ranma turned, leaving Pogis to stare after him. Looking at Tali as the pair made their way to the hold, Ranma could tell she had overheard Pogis, but she seemed to appreciate Ranma's words, although she didn't say anything.

While Tali went to retrieve the parts needed to repair the engine on the Shadow Broker's ship, Ranma headed off to take a quick shower, changing out of his pants into a pair left behind by one of the humans of the crew who was close to his size. Well, at least in length. The man's waist was several sizes larger than Ranma's, but he was able to create a makeshift belt for now. His own clothing, he dumped into his ki space for now to be cleaned later on.

He met up with Tali in the hangar bay where the pirates' original boarding shuttle stood. They would take that over to the Shadow Broker's ship. When they were settling into the shuttle's pilot and copilot seats, Ranma asked, "We kind of got off-topic earlier. What's a Pilgrimage?"

"When we quarians come of age, we go forth into the galaxy to find some piece of technology, data, or resource for the Migrant Fleet as a whole," Tali blurted out as if she had been holding in that explanation since the talk with Pogis, which she probably had, the need to explain more about her people building up inside her as she worked in the hold. "The Migrant Fleet's ships, they're almost all old, and need every resource, every erg of data or way to coax their systems further that we can get! It's not…"

"Easy!" Ranma said, placing a hand on her shoulder, causing her to twitch.

Even with suits on, touches like that were rare beyond the family circle to quarians just so they didn't get into bad habits or spread a touch-based pathogen of some kind. Even suit cleaning among the Migrant Fleet was at times troublesome and took away resources from other things.

"I get it. I've lived on the road most of my life, and a lot of the time, getting food was a major issue, and sometimes dine'n dashing or just straight-up stealing was the only way I could get food. Mind you, you all have a way better excuse, a whole galactic government declaring ya'll pariahs. With me, it was just my old man mostly being an idiot for anything but the Art. I get it. I ain't gonna judge ya for it, okay? I was just asking because I have no idea about your race or what you all are about beyond the suit thing and the fact you're all amazing engineers."

Inside her helmet, Tali flushed a bit at Ranma's words and the hand he held on her shoulder. Even through the layers of her suit, the heat from Ranma's hand was noticeable and distracting. Empathy from someone from another race was also something she had not been prepared for. It did not help matters that Ranma was easily the most attractive human she'd seen and that even thinking humans were attractive was something Tali had not been prepared for when starting her pilgrimage.

"Um, right, er, I, thank you. Anyway, um, early on in our exile from Rannoch, my people decided that if the Council had unilaterally decided that we no longer were allowed to the protection of Council Race Laws, that we were no longer bound to them either. We didn't take up piracy or anything like that, but a lot of my people started to look for ways around the law, stealing or scrounging what we could in order to help the fleet. It's given us something of a bad reputation on top of the social stigma of what had happened to us."

Ranma nodded and pulled back, gesturing her attention back to the shuttle's controls. "Where did that tradition come from? I mean, if it's just to gather resources and knowledge, there's got to be other ways of doing it."

"Ehh, not really. Most of the time outside a few places in the Terminus Fringe, a group of quarians would draw a lot of negative attention from the locals, both governmental and societal. I've heard stories of groups of quarians being attacked by crowds or just told to leave the planet by the local government," Tali disagreed. "As for the Pilgrimage, it evolved from when we were still living on Rannoch that young quarians would be sent out into the galaxy to further our knowledge in some way. So yes, I'm on my pilgrimage, the very start of it in fact."

Tali coaxed them away from the pirate and freighter heading out towards the far more distant Shadow Broker vessel, continuing to talk as she did. "I barely had left the Migrant Fleet behind before I was able to find a ship that was willing to take me, although that proved to be a dead end for various reasons. After that, I found Ravi, and he and I decided to go around together. That's technically against the spirit of the pilgrimage. It's supposed to be a singular journey, but…" Tali shrugged.

"After being taken advantage of you wanted someone to watch your back. Perfectly understandable," Ranma agreed with a nod. "Frankly, the idea of you all being sent away from the pilgrimage on your own is kind of stupid, regardless of what you said about large groups. Teams of three, at least. Four is better, a full fire team."

A part of Tali wanted to object to that, but the rest of her perfectly understood. That was why most quarians actually didn't leave the Migrant Fleet on their own, only splitting up from a small group of six or so after they were used to life away from the Migrant Fleet. However, Tali's family was a little more traditional in that sense. Tali also hadn't really felt like she was alone. Which she pointed out now, gesturing to the combat drone hovering behind them at the hatch leading into the shuttle's main loading area.

The fact it had somehow, when Ranma wasn't looking, been paired with a rifle was somewhat startling. When the heck did she do that? Did she have time when I was showering? Unless she's programmed the thing to arm itself and it could do that on its own? I don't know which would be more impressive.

"Mind you, having Chatika around me did kind of cut into the planets and other places that were willing to welcome me," she muttered, shaking her head. "But I was willing to put up with that. Planets like that rarely have any kind of resources or knowledge the Fleet can use anyway. Not without bringing down even more resentment or outright assaults on the Fleet itself."

Ranma chuckled. "Ehh, I think the little guy's kind of neat. But I suppose a more law-abiding place wouldn't like it if people walked around with their own robotic bodyguard."

"Well, that's my tale. What's yours?" Tali questioned, eager to turn the conversation to Ranma and away from herself. "How'd you gain a favor from the Shadow Broker, and how did you get captured in the first place? Judging from your abilities, that must've been some fight."

"Not a fight at all, a damn gas attack, a fucking ambush!" Ranma growled, becoming angry again at the mere memory of what Vasir had done to him, and Herb too, he supposed. "And when I catch up to the freaking Spectre who did it, I'm going to…"

"Wait, Spectre!" Tali yelped, staring at Ranma for a moment and turning away from the controls. She then yelped and turned back, grabbing onto them just in time to avoid colliding with the outer hull of the Shadow Broker's ship.

At that point, Pogis reminded both of them that while the interior comms of the High Risk was down, its external comms still worked quite well. "Suit rat, you're supposed to dock with that ship, not ram into it! If we lose the money we're due from this disaster-"

"Get off my back. I know what I'm doing," Tali shot back despite the earlier moment while Ranma rolled his eyes. After she got control of the craft and they came around again, she began to move over the ship, inspecting the area where Ranma's copied-out data had told her to look for damages. As she did so, she hissed, "What is this about a Spectre?! I am not going to get on the bad side of the Council. My people don't do well when they do that! Death is the least of my concerns there, let me tell you, especially if what I heard about some deal with the asari actually going well. The council's probably just looking for an excuse to swoop in and make them null and void!"

Considering how the Council had left the quarians out to dry and did everything they could to basically force the rest of the galaxy to ignore them, that seemed sadly accurate. They really did not want to acknowledge their, in Ranma's opinion, failings or what the quarians had birthed when they accidentally created AIs.

Still, Ranma just shrugged his shoulders and replied. "That might be the case if the Spectre in question was actually working for the Council alone."

He told Tali about the ambush, about the various types of gases that had been apparently used on him to dock him out, and then how he had been delivered all the way out here. That retelling covered the time it took Tali to dock with the Shadow Broker's ship, heading in through another emergency hatch than the one that the Pirates had blown open when they tried to invade the ship in the first place rather than an actual hanger as this ship didn't have one any longer. This put them close to where Ranma had left the body of the Shadow Broker, and they passed through that area, heading up towards the engine room where Tali would begin her repairs.

Tali stopped and stared at the corpse, then looked back at Ranma, pointing at it, then him, then back again, her hand shaking, bringing Ranma's attention to it again, showing the three fingers. That reminded Ranma of an old cartoon he'd once seen, but he didn't find himself repulsed by the sight, having gotten used to the idea of multiple species in this galaxy before he had even wound up on Capek. "What, what is… What is that?!"

"He called himself a yahg," Ranma said with a shrug. "He is a pretty big bruiser and put up one heck of a fight. But only because I was feeling weak at the time," he added hastily. "Fighting off those gases and dealing with the damage they had done to my system took it out of me. And I still handed him his head. Heh. Literally."

"Wait, right, okay, I, I'm just going to set all that aside. Considering you got up after being shot by my shotgun and took a few more rounds as we fought through the ship, it shouldn't surprise me. It does, though, Keelah, but it does," Tali slowly began to recover from her shock, then shook her head and headed off. "But there was only one aboard this whole ship?"

"Yep. He was sort of acting the part of a spider, if you know what that is, in the middle of its web."

Tali frowned inside her helmet, working things through. "But you said that you were captured by a Spectre. Why the heck would a Spectre drop you off here like this? They're supposed to be loyal to the Council."

Ranma snorted in disgust, not realizing that he was giving Tali enough information to piece together who the dead corpse had previously been. "Yeah, sure. Real loyal. That's why Vasir dropped me off here, sure. I'm betting anything that Herb was delivered to the Council. I was dropped off here so that Vasir could be paid twice for the same job, fucking bitch."

Well, that makes sense, considering most of the crew are thinking that they'll be paid twice for this job, too. But who could pay a Spectre more than the Council, and…" Tali began then broke off, looking over at Ranma. "The Shadow Broker. The order to our ship, the new contract. It came from a communication controlled by the Shadow Broker. You were delivered here because of the Shadow Broker. And you just said like a spider in the middle of its web. Which sounds as if the spider owns the web…"

Ranma blinked, then sighed. "Yeah, you got it right. I ain't exactly the best when it comes to keeping secrets, am I?"

"That thing was the Shadow Broker?!" Tali exclaimed before reining herself in, suddenly realizing what this could mean. "No, wait, more importantly. This is the Shadow Broker's vessel! His web, I mean the center of all of his information network!?"

"You're going to have to keep that to yourself," Ranma warned. "The more people that know about that, the less important that network will become." That was sort of dumbing it down quite a bit, but Ranma remembered Benezia's injunction about keeping it a secret and understood that if it became known that the Shadow Broker had died, a lot of his network would split apart.

Which is the last thing Benezia would want. Heck, I want some information from that network too, and to keep using it. The idea of going on a galaxy-wide Drug Dealer Punching Tour sounds like a lot of fun. Although the name could use some work. Galaxy-wide Asshole Punching Tour? Yeah, that's better, but I'll work on it.

"You're not even denying it!" Tali exclaimed, reaching over and actually grabbing Ranma by the shoulders, shaking him back and forth. He could almost picture her shocked, exasperated look as she ignored all normal quarian rules of touch. "Seriously?! This is the center of the Shadow Broker's information network? What would it take to get access to it?"

Ranma was about to answer with a simple blasé nothing, figuring that Tali's help in repairing the engines and maybe figuring out more about how to change the Shadow Broker's computer system to basic would be more than enough to pay for access. However, that was before the little piece of his mind he'd labeled his inner Nabiki, a portion of his brain that very rarely spoke up, did so.

Tali wanted something big, or something important, that was for sure, given how frantic she was suddenly acting. In addition, Ranma had heard numerous times in this galaxy that knowledge was power and a lack of said had bitten him on the rump several times.

"How about we look at it on a case-by-case basis," he said instead. "Since you're helping to repair the ship was no part of the original contract with your now dead Captain, if you do that and then change the operating system of the central computer to something we can both read, you can look up one thing."

For a moment, Tali simply stared at him, then she began to laugh. This wasn't the same kind of adrenaline-based, semi-manic giggles that Ranma had heard after he had helped save her in the cafeteria board her original ship, nor was it the snort of laughter Ranma had heard a few times since. No, this was a chuckle fest, with Tali shaking her head and practically jigging in place in merriment, the sound making Ranma grin in turn.

"I, I can tell you are trying to, you know, make this a deal where we both profit equally, but I have to say, even looking up a single piece of information in the Shadow Broker's database would be worth way, way more than those ships out there are. To my people, the Migrant Fleet, I mean. And that is saying a lot, considering new ships are always welcome to help offset our crowding issues. It'll be all in how I word the question."

Ranma huffed a bit in mock annoyance. "Well, I tried. I'm not backing off of it, though, considering those two things are things I couldn't do. Besides, while I ain't the type to go looking for people to help, if I run into someone who does need help, the type I can provide, I'm all for it. Help me look up stuff, and you can keep on accessing ithe Broker's data."

Tali stopped laughing slowly, looking at him, then reaching forward again. This time, not to shake Ranma but rather to hug him with surprising strength. She was no krogan, but her arms were, as Ranma had seen before, a good deal stronger than her size should suggest.

For his part, Ranma wondered what he should be doing at this point. The only asari who was into random hugs as if this was Usagi, but something about this hug reminded him more of Kasumi back in his old dimension rather than Usagi and her over-the-top affections. This felt both friendly and warm at the same time, and it made him smile and after a second, he decided to just let his arms move around Tali's shoulders in a loose hug, the kind she could back away from easily.

"Thank you! With that information, I can discover mining deposits in the Terminus Fringe where the Migrant Fleet can mine for much-needed resources, maybe enough to let us revamp a few of our ships. Or maybe even a planet we could use to find food! That would be a tremendous boon, way more than we were able to get from a recent deal with the asari, and without paying for it, Keelah!"

Tali pulled back from the hug, and Ranma could easily picture the beaming expression on her face as she looked up at him. Indeed, from this angle, he could see a silhouette of her face within the visor of her mask, and her glowing eyes stood out to him as did the hint of what could be a wide smile. "Seriously, thank you!"

"Heh, I guess it's no worries for me either. I mean, it's not as if I was the one who collected all that information or anything. And I doubt that the laws of this universe have something equivalent to 'you keep what you kill' or something like that," Ranma chuckled.

Tali let loose a little giggle at that and turned away quickly. "Let's get the repairs to the engine done if we can and then head up to the bridge. Keelah, the Shadow Brokers information network that is going to be amazing to investigate!"

Ranma nodded, following after her, but decided to remind her one more time. "As soon as ya figure out how to change the operating system's language, sure. Seriously though, I think it's better if the rest of the galaxy doesn't realize that the Shadow Broker's network has sort of changed hands, Okay? Which means we need to keep it a secret."

"You want to hand it over to this asari matriarch that you said is on her way, right?" Tali guessed. "I'd assume that someone like that probably has their own network, so they could incorporate the Broker's network into it, hiding where she gets the information."

She paused in place, bringing one finger up to tap lightly on the clasp of the weird hood thing that she wore over her helmet. Ranma supposed it was a part of the suit in some way, but what it did eluded him, as he had never studied environmental suits like that, only military-grade armored suits. "I'd wager also that she'll have access to binding contracts or something similar. I'll cheerfully agree to sign one of those if you want me to."

"A part of me thinks that just your word should be good enough for that kind of thing," Ranma muttered, shaking his head. "But I suppose having a written agreement to keep secrets is a good idea."

"Verbal agreements do well between members of the same crew clan or family," Tali answered as if by rote. "But when away from the Migrant Fleet and meeting people of different races, written down contracts are the way to go if you can make sure you're not being taken advantage of."

"That sounded like someone told ya that so often ya memorized it," Ranma said, scowling. "I don't like the idea that your people've been taken advantage of you all need to be warned about it."

"MMM… yes and no," Tali said, the humming noise she made causing Ranma to shiver for some reason as the pair of them continued to walk through the ship. "I would say a lot of the stories we were taught, the quarian in question was just naïve, and anyone can be taken advantage of if they aren't looking for it. A few other times, yes, the locals went out of their way to take advantage of the quarian in the story."

The two of them continued on, with Tali now plying Ranma with a few questions about his fight with the Shadow Broker, interest in his combat styles coming to the fore of her mind for a moment even as her fingers worked on her omni-tool, figuring out what kind of resources the Migrant Fleet needed the most of, where it was currently, which was hidden behind a series of codes, algorithms and numerical traps for the unwary, on her omni-tool, as they were for every quarian on a pilgrimage and how best to send a message to it.

Openly communicating information as valuable as what she might get from this deal with Ranma was a stupid idea. Too many times, even in Tali's own lifetime, the quarians had discovered an asteroid or uninhabitable planet with resources that they could mine. But within a few hours or a day, some salarian, turian, asari or volus would show up in their own ships, shouting about how this or that corporation owned it, and the Migrant Fleet needed to move on, or they would call in the authorities.

It was not a bluff, either. Much like the need for written contracts, Tali had been taught about an incident eighty years ago. The Admiral had thought to call what they thought a bluff of a volus corporation owning a planet on the outskirts of volus space, only for a turian fleet to jump in and attack instantly. The Heavy Fleet, the Migrant Fleet's military arm, had lost three frigates that day, and the Admiralty had been forced to pay 'reparations' after they surrendered.

The Council had done far more than just not assist Tali's species when they were in trouble. They had basically decided to toss the entire thing out of the airlock, as her people would say. They ignored the existence of the geth so long as they stayed on the other side of the Veil, and when it came to the Migrant Fleet, most of their policies seemed oriented to breaking the spirit of the quarians. The admiralty felt this was deliberate, either to add them into one of their own existing polities or simply to let them die out slowly for the hubris of creating AI.

Tali didn't know about that. She just hoped that the data she got from the Shadow Broker's resources would let them find resources they could use without getting in trouble with the Council. The recent asari overtures were just not enough. On the other hand, those deals were for heavy materials, yes? Food and planets where we can pick up air would be much more useful. A dextro-amino planet with plants and animals we can turn to paste. A planet where we could actually crack our suits is probably a pipe dream, I suppose.

As they entered the engine room, Ranma shot a question her way, interrupting Tali's thoughts. "By the way, I know that the Council members, and you know, the whole Citadel Council treated your people like shit. But why do people out here in the Terminus Fringe treat ya like that? The people out here, none of them are people who like to toe the party line. Heck, I'd wager that most of 'em know what it's like to feel as if the universe is against ya. So why would they treat ya like that?"

While she had to work out what that last phrase meant, Tali understood the gist of what Ranma was asking and sighed. "I, only about half of our modern reputation is built around what my people have had to do to survive since the Uprising, Ranma. I don't think you really understand the power of the whole anti-AI thing. I could see that you were sort of brushing that whole idea aside when I talked about it. That isn't something most people today are willing to do, as nearly every race within the Council Races has developed AI in the past. Every time, it's gone wrong, resulting in war. Because of that, the law against creating them is one of the Council's biggest, most important laws."

Ranma frowned a little, then shrugged his shoulders. "Eh, I was just going by what I knew of AI. Mind you, among humanity, we've got our own ideas about that. On the one hand, there's the whole… Askimov? Doesn't sound right. Er, Three Rules of Robotics, I think they were called. Um, the sci-fi series I got my armor design from had AI, and they varied wildly from good guys to crazy ancient fuckwits."

"Er… sci-fi? Armor design? You're not wearing armor," Tali pointed out, confused, before chuckling. "Fuckwits I can understand."

"Don't remind me. I should be, but freaking Vasir took it off me. I should have reached for my helmet the moment I figured out we were being gassed, but I was too damn slow, and then she took it too!" Ranma grumbled, before explaining about his armor and a bit about Halo as Tali turned her attention to the engine room.

The clucking noise she made as she took in the room made Ranma smile. The way she began to race around the room, examining, cleaning, opening panels and checking things made him wonder if she had figured out other things might be wrong more than the one degraded part he knew about. She also began to order Ranma about as a second set of hands, something he was more than willing to do. Ranma didn't think he'd ever develop into a real engineer, but it still interested him.

As he helped, Ranma continued to explain about sci-fi and AI since Tali seemed interested in learning more about humans, although honestly, learning about their sci-fi was possibly not the best way to go about that, in Ranma's opinion. "…So From the US, there was the Terminator series, pretty good action, I gotta say for how old those movies were, but then there were the Transformers, oh and gynoids, something my own nation came up with, I think? Those were well beyond the whole obvious robotic body kind of thing. Robot girlfriends, androids that were the next best thing to alive essentially."

"Robot girlfriends?" Tali turned away from her work, and even though Ranma, currently holding up a long piece of tubing in place for her, could see even the normal hint of a face he could make out in her helmet, he somehow sensed that she was giving him a look that he probably wouldn't like. "Robot… girlfriends. Seriously?"

"Hey, don't look at me! I didn't come up with those series. And that's all they were back home, made-up stories. No one had developed technology to that level or anywhere near it where I'm from originally."

"… I suppose primitive people will dream up a lot of different stuff like that. And what did Auntie Raan tell me once about the extranet? Sixty percent of it is porn or something?" That made Ranma laugh, and Tali shook her head before turning back to her work, deciding to cut this whole AI discussion short. "Well, regardless, creating our geth is part of why my people are treated so badly."

Ranma sneered. "Yeah, well, people with a lot always look down on those who are scrambling for what they have. Although I'm still wondering, I mean, I can understand the power of the Council and how they could probably spin the news of you and your Uprising their way, but do you quarians remember what the heck sparked that war? It can't be as simple as your geth achieving sentience and then instantly deciding to turn on you, right?"

"No idea. If there was one single event or update in the programming of the geth that caused it, no one has ever put that into the history books. Most of the time, we're told that the geth had suddenly begun to program themselves, program ways around the restrictions we were putting in place because of the Council's Orders. And when they did, they decided they didn't need us any longer," Tali answered, finishing with her current task and moving on, releasing that hum that caused Ranma to shiver.

"They? It sounds as if you're saying that all of these machines communicated with one another. So it wasn't like your defense system or something turned against you on its own? I'm now getting more Terminator vibes rather than Skynet."

"You've brought that Terminator thing up twice in quick succession now," Tali asked as she finished welding the two together and began to run an updated diagnostic on the engine with her omni-tool. "Now, that part we brought over was volus made, and they are kind of notorious for not working well with other people's equipment. The workaround should work, so long as the harmonics of the engine didn't shake it out of position. A quick test…"

Seeing Tali distracted, Ranma smirked and went into his own omni-tool. Luckily, thanks to O'taku, his omni-tool was loaded up with a lot of information about old human movies, and that one was on there specifically. Typing in a few commands, Ranma had a life-size hologram suddenly appear next to them of the Terminator.

Tali looked up and then yelped as the large mechanical man appeared. "EKKK!" She instantly kicked off of where she had been hanging upside down beside the main generator, rolling on the ground and sending her combat droid forward with a wave of her hand. Her other hand grabbed at the shotgun on her back, pulling it around to face the creature.

It was only when her combat drone went through it that Tali realized it was a hologram and turned to glare at the source. "You bosh'tet!" she shrieked.

"Sorry, I just want to see your reaction, that's all," Ranma laughed, wondering if bosh'tet was the equivalent of fucker or something like that in quarian. "Like I said, these guys were in a science fiction movie from when getting to our moon was seen as almost impossibly hard."

Tali grumbled and wondered why she had the sudden urge to reach over and flick Ranma's ear. Deciding to allow this action to occur, she watched as Ranma's head twitched away, his eyes narrowing, which caused her to smile inside her helmet. "You deserved that."

As Ranma grumbled, she tapped a few buttons on her own omni-tool, and soon, a simple geth unit appeared. "This is a farming robot controlled by a geth program. Like terminators, the geth were made in our image, but there the similarity ends, I think."

"Wait, so the geth are programs, not the actual robot itself? Those are like an outer shell?" Ranma asked, likening it to a program like Windows or something.

"That's right. My people created virtual intelligences several steps below AI or natural intelligences, to be able to network with one another, so a farming geth from one farm could network with another, to learn more about its duties, to be more effective."

Ranma's eyes narrowed. Maybe it was because adaptation was such a huge part of anything goes, but something about the way she spoke about that made him wonder. "And let me guess, the more geth that are working on a problem, the more they learn from a one another, the smarter they are." If that's the case, it was only a matter of time before they became truly sentient.

"That's it," Tali answered, nodding and moving to move her neck before wincing a bit, then rolling her shoulder. She quickly did a diagnostic of her suit, finding that there were no issues. She was simply bruised from the combat of the day, with her neck, in particular, bothering her. Still, she shook it off and moved over to interface with one of the engineering room consoles. After a moment, she nodded in satisfaction. "So long as there isn't any damage to the navigation computers, you should be able to make FTL jumps. Once, that is, you have enough eezo on board. Right now, you don't have enough to make more than a few jumps. Out here, that's not enough. There are so few Relays here in the Terminus Fringe, you'd never get to one."

"I suppose we'll have to wait for Benezia to arrive then," Ranma said, shrugging.

This was the first time he had mentioned Benezia by name, and Tali again cocked her head, wondering why that name sounded so familiar, although she shrugged it off. The pair made their way out of the engine room up to the bridge. Unlike the first few times Ranma had made that trip, he didn't get lost again, having pretty much memorized the layout of the interior of the ship, despite all the changes that the Shadow Broker had made to it to better turn it into a layer for his own amusements.

When Tali first stepped onto the bridge of the Shadow Broker's ship, horror was the first thing she felt on many levels. For one thing, the place was so darn cluttered and unorganized that it was just wrong. Furthermore, seeing what should have been a large space cut down and modified for only one individual was equally wrong! It struck her sensibilities as a quarian born into the Migrant Fleet something fierce. Worst were some of the details. "It.. is is that a turian eyeball in that little vial, and a, a finger o, of an asari…"

"Yeah, you might not want to look at those too closely," Ranma said apologetically, taking a subtle step around Tali and quickly grabbing up the yahg's hand and hiding it behind him. Yeah, trying to explain that might be a tough sell. People tend ta not like hearing about people cutting things off dead bodies. Especially since it's contributing to the smell in here, although I doubt Tali can tell. "I can remove 'em if you want me to? Just, um, don't go down to where the commissary is supposed to be. Just… don't."

"Why, by the ancestors, did you have to tell me that!?" Tali said, her all-too-fertile imagination easily filling in what Ranma wasn't saying.

She resolutely turned away, waiting until Ranma had finished removing all of the trophies, before stepping back into the room. Looking around now, her equilibrium was somewhat restored, the sight of the bits of sentients being kept in jars having thrown her badly, almost as bad as her first brush with combat earlier that day. Now, although part of her was still telling her how this whole setup was a waste of space, the engineer part of her realized what was probably behind that new wall that cut off half of the former bridge of the ship: a massive computer, paired with an equally massive communications array. Which brought up something she had to say to Ranma.

"If you want to keep this ship's modification and what it might've been used for, you might want to make certain that the High Risk doesn't get any sensor return on the front of your vessel. The radar console and the bridge were shot to hell, but I think that the actual sensors themselves are still working. Then again, you could just tell me not to repair the lidar portion of the sensor suite."

Ranma nodded and did so instantly, causing Tali to smile inside of her helmet a bit even as she moved forward and slid into the seat that the Shadow Broker had used, grimacing a bit as she disappeared almost into the large chair, which began to hit her in strange places. "Now, I believe you said something about the operating system being in a different language?"

Expertly, she began to type in commands. The primary screen, which had been showing some recording of a battle between batarians and turians on a planet's surface somewhere, shifted instantly, changing to show what looked like several dozen windows. Several were random, but at least two were what Tali was looking for.

"Yeah, the yahg had shifted the operating system's language to its own and also has a lot of passwords and stuff throughout the system."

"I see what you mean," Tali said, looking at several of the small windows, then closing them out one after another. "The original operating system language wasn't that one, so if I can find the boot kernel, I might be able to change that. If he didn't delete it, anyway. If he did, we'll have to find some other solution."

"You're not going to have to like, reboot to factory settings, are you? Wouldn't that delete all of the data the Shadow Broker's accumulated here?" Ranma questioned worriedly.

"No, I'm not going to do that, I'm going to take the original language, then replace the dictionary of the new language, so that the system thinks that's the language it should be using. The SB tied a lot of things to that language being in place, paranoid big bosh'tet…" Tali trailed off as she began to work.

As the young quarian worked, Ranma smiled faintly. The intensity of her body language as she leaned forward over the consoles and got to work. The narrow focus was much the same as when she had been working in the engine room. It was nice to see someone passionate about their craft like that, whatever that craft might be. Ranma had felt much the same when he had been helping Kasumi in the kitchen, watching Cologne train Shampoo or watching an asari from the abbey paint.

"Anything I can do to help?"

"Did you already work on some kind of translation for this language?" Tali answered with a question of her own without looking up from her work.

When Ranma answered in the affirmative, she held out her arm with the omni-tool on it, which was already activating. "Transfer it to my omni-tool. I might need the help. Beyond that… Well, you might want to clean up this ship just like you have those two deckhands doing on the High Risk. Sorry, but this is a one-person job."

"And ya don't want to handle dead bodies," Ranma drawled, to which Tali shrugged, and Ranma rolled his eyes. "Fine, I can do that. I can even get a few of the repair droids to help, I think. We'll see. I'll get out of your hair for now."

Blinking, Tali stared for a moment at the screen, not moving as she heard Ranma actually leave her there. Leaving her there with all of the data of the Shadow Broker's vast network at her fingertips. Admittedly, it would be a while before she would be able to actually get at it, but even so… "Does he trust me or is he just too trusting?" she murmured before shrugging her shoulders and getting back to work.

It wasn't as if she was going to go back against their agreement anyway. It just felt both weird and really nice at the same time to be respected and possibly trusted like that. "…And how does Ranma know we quarians have hair? Or is that a human phrase?"

For Ranma, it was but the work of an hour or so to clean out the dead bodies of the Pirates, shoving them out the nearest airlock. The one attempt he tried to get the droids to do it with him instead had them dragging the bodies to the commissary as if a previous order was interfering with his new one when dealing with dead bodies, which he didn't want to think about. After that, he decided to go a step further, cleaning out the Shadow Broker's disgusting larder. The last thing to go was the Shadow Broker's body itself, joining the floating debris of the rest of the bodies outside the ship, which was already expanding away.

During that time, Tali had finished the first portion of what she needed to do to allow them to understand the computer network better. She was just standing up from the chair, rubbing her neck and shoulder as Ranma was entering. "Well, I kind of finished what I need to do. Now, it's up to the computer to slowly replace what's already there with the new dictionary without damaging the rest of the data housed within it. That'll take a while, but the computer system will work on that without me here to watch over it."

"In that case, let's get back to the High Risk and get some food," Ranma said, patting his stomach.

Tali shook her head, trying hard not to let her eyes linger on Ranma's abs, which were easily the best she'd seen. Keelah, they're better than some of the quarian marines I once watched train with Poxi and Lisha. Hehe, Auntie Raan was so mad when she found out about that. "You can't be hungry again, can you?" she said aloud. "You ate enough to feed six people for an equal number of days!"

"I think your species and mine don't eat as much as one another. I would've said two days max, and not six people but four at most," Ranma said judiciously, causing Tali to snort in laughter. "We can still pilot this ship over to the other two, right?"

Tali nodded, and Ranma moved over to the controls. Having already gotten the ship out from the gravity well of the planet, he knew how to pilot it well enough. Within moments, the Shadow Broker's ship was moving towards the High Risk, with Tali calling ahead.

Taking the shuttle over the now much shorter distance was quick and easy, although the first thing they heard from one of the deckhands put Tali in a bit of a sour mood, the salarian commenting, "Well, it's about time you got back here? What have you been doing while we've been doing all the hard work, suit rat?"

"Repairing the ship we were actually here to help," Tali shot back, giving the man the quarian equivalent of the finger. "A job I finished just like the one I did in the engine room here to give us back environmental and heat."

The man grumbled a bit but fell silent as Ranma followed Tali off of the shuttle. The martial artist ignored the comment from the other deckhands nearby, as the man had only mumbled under his breath, not nearly loud enough to force a reaction from Ranma. "That freaking super soldier follows her around like a puppy, disgusting."

However, ignoring it was not the same as not noticing it in the first place, and Ranma definitely did notice. Yeah, if I have the time, that salarian's gonna find himself painted puke yellow and hanging out by his toes somewhere. Not, mind you, that they're altogether wrong. Tali is the only engineer around here, and given all of the repairs this ship needs, as well as what I need her for over on the Shadow Broker's ship, she's basically the most important person around right now. If none of the others want to volunteer to help her out, that leaves it up to me. And I also can't deny that the view is kind of nice.

Ranma wasn't altogether used to acknowledging that part of his psyche, but it wasn't entirely outside the realm of his experience either. Ranma had known that he had been somewhat attracted to Samara, not just because of her body, but also because of her strength. He also found himself blushing and staring at several asari on numerous occasions beyond Samara. The same was true for Tali, who had proven her toughness when fighting the pirates when they first met and then insisted on working with him to clear the rest of the ship. And whose body, although completely covered by her suit, was still noticeably attractive. Especially from the rear, where Ranma could watch her hips sway as she moved, each resolute step a cross between a stalking, liquid-like movement and prance, thanks to her clawed feet and the way her legs were put together. Her rear was also really nice.

Soon they found themselves back in the cafeteria where they first met, and he instantly began to make himself some food, looking over at Tali in some confusion. "So are you able to open that suit up to eat, or what?"

"No, I'm not," Tali replied evenly, not taking offense at Ranma's words because she knew they were spoken out of ignorance rather than any kind of cruelty. Reaching up to her suit's helmet, she opened a small panel set to one side of her jaw, and after a few seconds, a long, thin tube popped out. "This is part of the system that lets us eat. I'll make a nutrient paste for myself."

It was only now that she was watching Ranma work on his own meal that Tali realized she was hungry, and she quickly began to do the same.

"Nutrient paste? I think I've seen images of that stuff. You really eat that?"

"It's the only way to keep us from coming down with a disease or pathogen when interacting with the environment around us," Tali answered simply.

"Okay, I know I'm no biologist, but your immune system can't be that weak, can it? How the heck would you have survived to get into space in the first place? Is that something that's happened only over the last three hundred years? But even that feels off," Ranma frowned in confusion.

"Some people among the Council Races do think that, but no," Tali said as she finished making up her nutrient paste with what Ranma thought of as a small but super-powerful blender of some kind, although thankfully, had been silent, so they didn't need to talk over it. "On our home world of Rannoch, my race developed a symbiotic relationship with the environment. They were extremely few pathogens or microbes, and the ones that existed were entirely beneficial. When we were forced into exile, our immune systems just weren't able to pick up the slack. It's why we had never colonized other worlds."

"Hence the whole suit thing," Ranma nodded. "I wonder if you all would ever be able to develop enough ki to be able to do something about that?"

"Ki, what's that supposed to mean?" Tali turned back to Ranma, cocking her head in confusion.

Ranma shrugged and finished making up his meal. It wasn't exactly appetizing, Ranma had gone through most of the sandwich stuff earlier, simple frozen foods of various types. Two were labeled chicken something, with the third being a frozen spaghetti dish. "Eh, ki is how I can do some of what I can do. Most of which you haven't even seen yet. But what it boils down to is that every person creates energy in their body. If you are able to become strong enough or to push yourself beyond the norm, you can sometimes build up that physical energy to the point that you can use it consciously."

"That sounds like something straight out of a fantasy story," Tali said bluntly, grimacing inside of her helmet as her neck again began to pain her before sticking the container of the nutrient paste onto the end of her eating tube. Shifting her neck forward inside of her helmet, she clamped her teeth around the end of the tube from the inside, sucking on it.

Unlike the humming noise that Tali had let out a few times, the noise of her eating did not send a pleasant tingle down Ranma's spine. Rather, it reminded him of a clogged drain crossed with someone trying to get the last of the smoothie out with a straw. Unpleasant did not do it justice.

With an effort, he resolutely ignored it, explaining a bit more about ki, reminding Tali that she had seen him get up and walk away from being shot by a shotgun shell and basically ignore being shot by rifle rounds to boot. She tried to say that that was probably because he had ablative armor under his skin due to being an experimental super soldier, half-joking and half-serious about it until Ranma shook his head and promised to show her some of what he could do with ki. "But the important thing for you would be that if you could consciously use your ki, you might be able to fight off any kind of disease. I know I've not gotten sick since I was around nine or ten, where I had begun to build up ki in my body, although not to the point where I could consciously use it yet."

"It sounds fascinating, and I'm looking forward to seeing some of your demonstrations, Ranma, but I'm not going to get my hopes up about that at all. It sounds like it would take a lifetime's work to be able to build up my body to the point where I would have excess life energy, as you put it. Furthermore, well, no offense, but even with what I've seen you do so far, it all sounds a little too fantastical," Tali admitted. "I'm not calling you a liar or anything. I just doubt I could ever be able to do what you can or anyone else from my race."

"Don't be so sure. You ever heard of krogan? Well, have you ever heard of their healing ability, since you probably have heard about those giant freaking dinosaur wannabes," Ranma corrected himself, snickering.

Tali also laughed, the sound more than offsetting the sound of her eating a moment ago. Something, thankfully, she had finished doing during Ranma's explanation. As for Ranma, he had also kept on eating. The frozen spaghetti dish was actually quite good, while the best you could say about the other two so-called chicken meals was that the texture at least matched chicken, and hopefully, that would give Ranma a good source of protein. Although, if I ever find the person who thought that was rice, I will have words for him.

"I've heard about them. I haven't met a krogan yet, and I'm not exactly in a rush to do so, considering that all of the stories about them talk about how warlike and anger-prone they are. Still, I've also heard about their healing factor. Why?"

"I fought the Blood Pack on Omega, mainly because it was admittedly fun, but also because it would make for a great distraction and let us figure out that they had ki. They do. They can't use it consciously, but they've got a goodly amount of it, and that's the source of their healing factor."

Tali shook her head again, debating whether or not she should make herself another paste, but then decided against it. "That still sounds a little too mystical for me. But if you can show me some of what your life energy stuff can do, maybe I'll become a believer then. Although I still don't know how much that would help me or my people."

She paused then, reaching up to tap the clasp of the hood-like segment of her suit for a moment, which was an obvious sign of thought, causing Ranma not to try to fill in the silence, instead simply watching her until she spoke, seemingly a bit nervous. "Speaking of, I think we need to make some plans."

"When you get access to that bit of data you're after?" Ranma asked, turning to look over to the entrance of the commissary just in case.

Realizing why he had done so, Tali nodded slightly. "About that and more, I think. If I really push it, I can probably repair the High Risk's bridge in a day or so. I think..."

"You think we should send off a High Risk on defense will marry way? Without you aboard? Do I need to buy out your contract or something?" Ranma guessed.

"My contract and Ravi's," Tali answered, relief flooding her voice at Ranma's understanding. "We're both only for us to be on the ship until the next planet we were supposed to stop at. It won't take much, and they shouldn't need an engineer's services after I'm through with the bridge. Running the ship with just the five of them might be tough, but I think that they will all go for it, so long as you can transfer the rest of the money that's owed them."

"I was able to do that before. I should be able to do so again, especially if the operating systems change into something we can actually read," Ranma agreed with a nod. "I'll pay them even more so they don't want to stay around until the asari show up."

"So I think the best idea is to buy them out, then send them on their way. Make up a reason or something," Tali said. "That way, the salarians won't be tempted to poke around the Shadow Broker's ship one way or another."

"And the longer these three ships are all close by one another, the more they'll want to," Ranma nodded in agreement.

Getting the crew of the High Risk to agree to leave was easy enough, yet while the rest of the crew were more than happy to take your cash and go, they ran into a bit of a problem with Ravi. The other young quarian wanted to stay aboard the ship, having already made plans going forward from Capek and not wanting to change them.

Luckily, the immune booster shot that Tali had given Ravi from their supplies at work, and he was out of danger on that front, although the actual injuries he had taken would take longer to heal. Something he pointed out to Tali. When she pulled him aside and explained what she could without hinting at the whole Shadow Broker network thin. She heard the obdurate tone in his voice and knew it was a lost cause. Something about the next ship he was going to be on interested him a lot, even though he wouldn't share why.

Ranma and Tali split up at that point, with Ranma taking the shuttle back to the Shadow Broker ship with the supplies the two of them would need over the next week as they waited for Benezia to arrive. Meanwhile, Tali got to work repairing the bridge, including the intercom system and everything but the active sensors, specifically the lidar. That was the sensor that would give the High Risk an opportunity to map out the exterior of the Shadow Broker's ship.

This way, the freighter crew would not be able to detect all the changes that had been made to the ship's exterior but would still be able to be piloted and see trouble coming from a distance with their passive sensors. Tali was even able to do so in such a way that it would make it seem as if she was forced to make a compromise between the two systems and chose the most important one for a civilian freighter.

By the time she was done with that, Ranma had made two more ship trips over to the Shadow Broker ship and transferred the money to the same account that the first half of the contract had been paid into. This made the surviving crew members of the civilian freighter very happy indeed when they checked, to the point that they didn't even ask about the prize money for the pirate vessel.

Soon, Tali and Ranma were watching from the bridge of the Shadow Broker vessel as the High Risk pulled away from the two remaining vessels, turning towards the outer system and accelerating as they went.

"The operating system was finished changing from the yahg language into common," Ranma said before realizing he would be spending the next six days with Tali on their own. This could be bad. "So, do you want to look up what you wanted to now, or wait a bit?"

He was interrupted as Tali let loose a yawn, the sound a startling kind of crackling sound over her suit's intercom, with Ranma watching in amusement as her hand came up and an automatic reaction of anyone who is yawning to cover their mouth, only to simply cover the facemask of her helmet where her mouth undoubtedly was. "I don't know about you, Ranma, but I am ready to drop," she said, shaking her head tiredly. "Where did you stash the sleeping gear?"

The sleeping gear in question was a series of hammocks. With room on the freighter mostly taken up by the cargo bay, space had apparently been at a premium. Whether or not it truly was at so much of a premium that the two quarians had been forced to bunk down in the engine room, Ranma wasn't certain was entirely the truth. Yet it seemed as if Tali had been satisfied enough with the accommodation.

"Out in the hallway, along with your protein paste thing to make food with, I transferred the supplies down to the commissary. I figure we don't really want to use it for much more than that. Even though I've dumped most of the Shadow Broker's food out the airlock, it still smells down there, and the air circulation system doesn't seem up to dealing with it."

"I'll take your word for that," Tali said, tapping her helmet, causing Ranma to chuckle a bit. "And I'm fine with wherever we hang our hammocks. Honestly, I'm still getting used to having this much space to spread out. Most of the Migrant Fleet is as cluttered as the bridge here, although only because of how many people there are, rather than how much equipment."

Ranma shuddered a little, shaking his head. "Sorry, I know this might come off as unsympathetic or something, but I don't think I could survive in that kind of environment. I like having elbow room."

"It isn't for everyone. I certainly enjoy having elbow room myself," Tali said dryly, shaking her head. "Although frankly, I enjoyed bunking down in the engine room of the High Risk because of how noisy it was in comparison to the rest of the ship. Silence is never a good thing on a ship of the Migrant Fleet. It signals something is going wrong somewhere."

Ranma laughed at that. "I can understand that, although if we both throw up our bunks out in the hallway, trust me, I'll make enough noise to put you at ease. I have it on good authority that I snore."

That authority being Usagi and several of the other asari he had slept with during the mini orgy on Sijou's Eye. While only Usagi slept with him after that, all of them had agreed that the noise Ranma could emit once he was fully out of it was enough to wake the dead.

Giggling at that, Tali followed Ranma off of the bridge. The two of them basically set up a small camp area right there in the hallway leading to the bridge, complete with two hammocks, into which Tali promptly climbed, laying out and doing something to her helmet that made the facial covering even more opaque than normal.

Why do that rather than asking me to dim the lights in the corridor? Ranma didn't know, but he did so anyway and then, despite feeling a little peckish, climbed into his own hammock a few yards away.

That night, it did indeed turn out that Ranma was correct. He made more than enough noise for Tali to fall asleep to.

The very next day, Tali was up almost as soon as Ranma was, the lack of his snoring waking her up as well as an alarm clock. She stumbled off of the hammock, one hand flicking up to her helmet to return it to normal, before landing lightly on her feet, looking around blearily, shaking her head. "I'm going to need more sleep than that. Yesterday was rough."

Ranma didn't answer that, simply shrugging his shoulders and heading off to get some breakfast, asking politely if Tali wanted him to make her anything with the strange nutrient-paste-creating machine. She shook her head though and hurried after him, saying, "You wouldn't know what to make, and if you try to make me something from your ready meals, it will make me extremely sick."

"Is that more to do with your immune system? Or are you like the turians are supposed to be?"

"Dextro, not amino," Tali answered with a nod.

With their bellies decently full, the pair of them headed back up to the bridge. There, while Ranma decided to figure out a way to make their little camp area more comfortable, Tali got to work on breaking the hundreds of passwords that protected different segments of the Shadow Broker's information network and the information already gathered.

By mid-afternoon, she had broken most of the passwords on the stored data, although several protecting the outgoing transmissions to various lieutenants out in the wider galaxy were still defeating her efforts. That was enough for her, though, and soon, Tali was hip-deep in her research project, pulling out a series of planetary and asteroid surveys to pass on to the Migrant Fleet. "I can even put in information to pass on to the original surveying companies that the Shadow Brokers made a deal with the Migrant Fleet to mine those places!" she laughed excitedly. "This world, it even has a dextro-based ecology!"

Ranma snorted, then poked her lightly in the shoulder, frowning as she flinched a little. "You okay? That was supposed to be a friendly poke. I didn't hit a pressure point or something, did I?"

"Pressure point? That sounds more like a phrase you would use to describe a point on a ship, not a person. And I'm okay, I think I just slept on my shoulder wrong. No suit tears or anything," Tali answered quickly before changing the subject. The last thing she wanted to do right now was admit that she was feeling incredibly sore from the day's activities before when Ranma looked as fresh as a child's first VAC suit.

Ranma shrugged, then asked her to look up a few things in the Shadow Brokers databanks for himself. Wondering why he wanted to discover the planets with the worst corruption and figuring he wanted to pass it on to someone else, she agreed, coming up with a few. Several were known as corporate worlds, worlds that were owned lock, stock and barrel by corporations, which was kind of obvious. A few of them had ties to the Batarian Hegemony, while others were deeply involved in organized crime. Two of them, in particular, were apparently responsible for producing a tremendous amount of narcotics for the intergalactic drug trade.

"It's almost scary how much information the Shadow Broker had," she murmured, shaking her head, then frowning inside of her helmet as she began to input more commands. A moment later, Ranma had to tap her on the shoulder again, asking what she was up to. "I was hoping maybe he had some information about the Perseus Veil, about if the geth had ever been beyond it. Apparently not, or, well, he does, but most of it is rumor and hearsay. There's a good chunk of it, but nothing substantive. Weirdly, there's been a lot more activity in the past few months. Although, maybe it isn't so weird? Even the geth would probably be interested in the Batarian/Human-Turian War."

Ranma nodded, deciding to let that drop for a moment. The whole AI/geth thing was very obviously a sore subject for any quarian. He still had questions about it but decided now wasn't the proper time. "Come on, you've been sitting there for a full day. Let's get up and move around a bit."

"Ugh… still, I suppose you're right about that. We've got a whole ship to ourselves. Good grief, even voicing that sounds weird to me," Tali said with a laugh, allowing Ranma to pull her to her feet. That wasn't something another quarian would have done, but she liked the gesture.

Noticing that Tali was looking a little in pain, hunching over and touching her back, Ranma volunteered, "Sorry, do you want me to head over to the pirate ship and get us a new chair?"

"Please? That chair is not exactly built for someone of my smaller stature, and there's this bridge thing that's poking me right between the shoulders and another one right up… Well," while Ranma could not see Tali's face, at that point, he was quite certain that she was blushing, as one hand moved to almost touch her rear before pausing, instead simply gesturing to her lower back.

She paused as she exited the bridge, looking at what Ranma had done. He had gone over to the pirate vessel already that day and had come back with several large cushions of some kind, spreading them out over the sides of the hallway, leaving a small walkway through it. There were two 'chairs' that were facing one another at the far end, and under the hammocks were two makeshift beds made out of pillows and cushions. "You've been busy. And I take it you didn't like the whole hammock thing?"

"It was okay, and I actually kind of like being that high up off the ground, but I tend to toss and turn. Last night, I didn't, but better safe than sorry, you know?" Ranma said with a shrug.

Tali nodded, although she would probably stick to her hammock. It was how she had slept for as long as she could remember back on the Migrant Fleet. "Come on, let's head over to the pirate ship. I want to look at what damage you did to it and see if I can find a chair that's more comfortable than that monstrosity."

The two of them worked on the pirate ship for the rest of the day, heading back to the Shadow Broker vessel that night. They had a large meal, or at least the equivalent for both of them, talking about everything and sundry to pass the time. It was quite a nice time for both of them, with Ranma explaining the whole alternate dimension thing, much to Tali's interest. Ranma had also eaten enough food by this point to show off some of his ki techniques. Watching him melt through the connectors holding the chair she wanted to remove from the pirate vessel bridge had been more than enough to convince her that ki existed, although that was a far cry from believing that any of her race could build it up to the point where they could use it.

On the other hand, Ranma had used ki sight on Tali during their conversation that second night aboard the Shadow Broker vessel. He came away from the viewing somewhat nonplussed.

Tali had an okay amount of ki. More than most of the humans he'd seen in this universe, way more than the salarians and volus, but not quite as much as the few elcor he had met, who themselves were a step below asari. The problem was Ranma couldn't quite figure out what Tali's ki was doing. He wasn't an expert at sensing ki by any means, but the feel of it in Tali's body was simply different from anything he had felt before. It didn't match any of the other aliens, either. He theorized that maybe it was already working overtime for her immune system, but that didn't feel quite right.

Regardless, he was determined to see if Tali could build up her ki to the point where she could use it consciously. It would be very interesting, and Ranma didn't like the idea of an entire race that couldn't afford to open their VAC suit helmets and feel the wind on their faces. It seemed wrong to him on a fundamental level.

For her part, Tali was enjoying herself. Having so much space to spread out in was at first weird and almost frightening, but the noise of the ship, and in particular Ranma snoring at night, helped her get used to it. The work she was doing with the Shadow Broker's databanks was also fascinating, and Tali already knew she had found and prepped enough data to send back to the Migrant Fleet to call her Pilgrimage a roaring success.

She wasn't about to go back, though. For one thing, Tali wanted to explore the universe just like any young person wanted. Just as important was the fact that over the past few days, Tali felt she had found a true friend in Ranma. He was the first person she'd met since leaving the Migrant Fleet that had taken Tali entirely on her own merits, and he seemed to like what he had seen.

More than that, Tali found him quite attractive.

Tali hadn't really been prepared for that when she left the Migrant Fleet. She'd heard other stories about quarians of both genders feeling attraction towards asari and a few humans on a strictly look but don't touch basis, but hadn't really thought that she would find humans attractive herself.

In addition, the few humans she had interacted with before this had mostly been middle-aged and bearded. The beards threw her off immensely. Why in the world would anyone grow facial hair? It was such a strange concept.

Ranma was different. He was completely clean-shaven and was around her age, a year or two older at most than she was. He was also lithe, built for agility and speed, much like a quarian, rather than the stout, blocky bodies of the humans she'd seen previously. His lack of mountains of muscle, coupled with his obviously insane level of strength, was intriguing.

That was honestly in both forms. Ranma's curse had reared its head on the third day of their time on the Shadow Broker's ship when Ranma had accidentally poked a water bulb too hard, causing it to squirt out into his face, initiating the change.

Tali had simply stared, raising a hand to first poke her own chest, then reached over towards Ranma with one of her thick fingers. "What, what kind of hologram or trick is…"

Ranma gently took her hand, holding it still and shaking her head. "It's real," Ranma had said. "And I'd appreciate it if you ask before you touch, okay?"

"Can I please touch?" Tali asked with all seriousness.

The surprise of that instant polite response made Ranma release his grip, and Tali's poking finger then continued its journey, although, to Ranma's surprise, she didn't poke Ranma in the chest like so many people had previously when faced with his curse. Instead, she had let her finger bounce off the top of her chest, then poked Ranma's cheek. "It's real!"

"I just said that," Ranma grumbled, although he was pleasantly surprised at the lack of tit poking.

"Well, yes, but seeing someone change from a male to a female with the application of water isn't exactly usual. Your face changes, your height changes, your hair and everything else too. I thought there might be a way to, I don't know, suddenly inflate your outfit somehow, but that kind of felt real, and your cheek, which changed shape like I said, also felt real. Fascinating! So are you really human, or is this a sign of your being some kind of strange subset of the human race?" Tali asked enthusiastically. "Your skin is softer, too!"

Ranma blushed a bit. The two of them had been forced to work a little too closely for his comfort in the shuttle as they loaded and unloaded stuff and had brushed against one another a few times, Ranma's hand along her arm and vice versa. Although this was the first time that Tali had touched his face like this, that would've been more than enough to prove her point about his skin changing as well. "I'm still fully human," Ranma began before going into the full explanation.

While that was interesting, it wasn't the most important or fascinating secret from Tali's perspective because Ranma let slip that night the fact that he and Herb had commissioned an entirely unique vessel at Mostromos. One that utilized several building concepts that were entirely unique to Ranma and several design concepts that were unique to him and Herb, mixing their desires with the construction methodology of the asari.

"It sounds fascinating. Several new ship concepts, as well as that reinforced armor technique of yours," Tali said enthusiastically before cocking her head to one side in what she hoped was a winsome manner as she put her hands together, her six fingers leasing into one another in an almost pleading expression. "I don't suppose there's room aboard your ship for one small quarian?"

"Heh, well, are you actually small for your race?" Ranma snickered. His male body had grown in height by a few inches thanks to the properties of the various foods he had been fed, which let him stand a full head above Tali in his male body.

"Eh, not really. I've got some growing to do, but Auntie Raan's only about 3 inches taller than me," Tali shrugged. Looking at Ranma, hopefully, she kept her pleading pose, adding a bit more tilt to her head just like she would when she tried to get something out of her aunt.

"Sure. Actually, Chief Engineer is one of the positions we had in the field. In fact, we haven't filled most of the positions, frankly. Me, Herb and our navigator/pilot O'taku. Usagi… I have no idea what position she would fill on board the ship. Doctor maybe? Although frankly, she'd probably just want to play doctor rather than actually act like one."

Tali laughed aloud at that, having heard from Ranma about the oversexed asari before this. Although, for some reason, the idea of the asari wanting to play doctor with Ranma somewhat annoyed her. She ignored that, saying aloud, "I find it hilarious that both our races make use of that same concept, playing doctor."

"I suppose some things are universal," Ranma snickered. "But yeah, you can come aboard our ship. I was serious about that."

Ranma grinned as Tali whooped, fist-pumping into the air, a bit of body language that their species seemed to share. He then frowned as Tali once more shifted where she was sitting, rubbing at her neck and collarbone.

Before he could ask what was wrong, Tali asked, "By the way, what do you plan to do with the pirate ship? It's pretty much fully repaired now."

"You think I should sell it to you? Or sell it through you to the Migrant Fleet, don't you?" Ranma guessed shrewdly. "I don't think so. Instead, I think I might want to take it. We've still got at least a few weeks before the ship back on Mostromos is due to be finished, and I rather would like to start my Galactic Asshole Punching Tour before then."

Tali snorted, then nodded her head, indicating without words that she would probably go along with him on that score, although warning him that even with two people, manning a ship the size of the pirate vessel wasn't going to happen. To which Ranma simply shrugged. "Benezia tends to have a lot of commandos with her. I'm sure I could convince her to loan me a few of them as crewmen for a bit."

The position had petered out for a bit until Tali said she wanted to start cleaning her suit, and Ranma headed to another area of the ship to do some exercises. After that, the pair went to sleep after another longer discussion from their beds, both of them smiling happily to themselves at having apparently made a new friend.

The next day, Tali could no longer hide her discomfort from Ranma. She stood up that afternoon intending to head out the hole with Ranma to get some food, only to stop and both of her hands going up to her neck and shoulders. "Okay, what's wrong? You've been touching your neck and shoulders since shortly after the fight with the Pirates ended."

"At first, I thought it was just bruising, but I'm afraid I've actually developed some pulled muscles," Tali admitted. "Don't worry, they'll go away shortly. I just have to figure out a way to not exasperate them further, that's all."

Ranma slowly nodded, thinking about it, then, fighting the urge to poke his fingers together sheepishly, asked hesitantly, "I, I could help with that. There are certain massages and such like, they might help you too. And I don't think your VAC suit is thick enough to stop you from feeling the benefits. It's just an offer."

Inside her helmet, Tali blushed. The idea of anyone putting their hands on her like that, even Ranma, who had become a friend in a few short days, was not something she was altogether willing to contemplate. And yet, the pain relievers she had injected into herself hadn't worked. Sore muscles were just one of those things that you needed to let your body recover from naturally most of the time. "I… I suppose that sounds like a good idea. If you're sure that the suit won't get in the way. And no offense, but I'll probably have to clean the surface of my suit right after."

"No offense taken. And yeah, I'm certain." Ranma gestured for Tali to sit on one of the cushions that he had set up as part of his makeshift bed, sitting down next to her and placing his hands on her shoulders. They tensed under his touch, but he simply rested his hands there for a moment, beginning to circulate some of his ki into his hands to warm them up very slightly. This wasn't metal he was working with, after all, but someone else's body.

He waited until he felt Tali relax, then began to work, pushing his thumb into her neck, then down to her collarbone, finding the knots there and working them out one after another. She squirmed and grunted a bit into her helmet, but it felt good!

Although she couldn't see it out of the corner of her helmet, Ranma was also blushing a bit. While Tali's suit easily stopped this from being too sensual, the noises she was making kind of offset that, and he quickly closed his eyes so he wasn't tempted to simply watch as her chest shifted as he worked on her neck and shoulders.

Eventually, he was done there and moved down her back to a point on her lower back, which was also hurting her. This took a bit more time and was far more painful for Tali than pleasant, but eventually, she lay out on the cushion, feeling better than she had for days. "I'm going to just lay out here for a bit," she slurred. "Let my body recover."

Ranma laughingly agreed, hopping to his feet and heading out to exercise. He was surprised that night when Tali embarrassingly asked if Ranma wanted a shoulder massage, too. It seemed only fair after all, and she had taken the time to look up massages on the extranet. Blushing, Ranma acquiesced and admitted that, although Tali didn't put nearly enough power into it, it did feel nice.

Although not as nice as her running her fingers through his hair, muttering about how amazing it felt. It'd been a very, very long time since Tali had even seen her own hair, let alone touched someone else's.

The next two days fell into a routine. During the morning, the two of them would have breakfast and then search through the Shadow Brokers files for interesting things. Ranma found quite a bit and had already begun to plan out his Galaxy Wide Punching Excursion. He had even begun to sort out the planets in terms of priority. Topmost priority was given to those businessmen or gang leaders who were heavily involved in providing the batarians, or others, with slaves. The second priority went to planets that were most heavily involved in the narcotics trade. While Ranma was willing to ignore simple theft, money-laundering and such, selling drugs was a big no-no, as drug sellers typically targeted the most vulnerable, like kids or people who were already poor.

He would have to be careful on those though, considering many of the companies the Shadow Broker knew were dirty were also heavily involved in the pharmaceutical side of things, the legitimate business of drugs, not just the illegal one. He wouldn't be able to just walk into those corporations, wreck everything from the bottom up and then walk away. Ranma would have to be very selective in whom he punched and how hard. That wasn't going to stop him, though.

And finally, there was a corporate planet on which a corporation that may or may not be doing illegal experiments on living beings and had certainly bribed Vasir to look the other way to conceal whatever it was they were doing. The Shadow Broker's information on the nature of the experiments was flimsy, but there were enough of his agents on the planet reporting the rumors that Ranma was determined to look them up. There were just some things that he wasn't willing to allow to stand if he both knew about them and could do something about it. Medical experimentation on unwilling victims was one of them, harkening back to some of the most horrifying things the Japanese government had done during World War II, which he hadn't really discovered about until he had traveled in China.

Meanwhile, Tali had found still more star systems that contained resources, which the Migrant Fleet might be able to use. A few of them were a little too far into the Terminus Fringe, and others were far too close to the conflict between the Batarian Hegemony and the Human/Turian Military Alliance, but others were actually on the far side of asari space, in areas where no other race had really truly pushed just yet. She concentrated on those, thinking that the recent developments between the Migrant Fleet and the asari would probably mean that the Republics would possibly look the other way when it came to such things, especially if they were happening entirely out of their territory.

In the afternoon, much to her dismay, Tali was completely unable to convince Ranma to leave her alone to putter around the ship. Instead, he somehow convinced her to do exercises with him. Not the same exercises as he did, thankfully, although at least a portion of the time was spent on teaching her some more self-defense. That was nice. The various exercises he did make her do not so much.

After only a few hours, Ranma was able to figure out precisely how far to push her without going overboard. She didn't know what was more amazing, Ranma's own pure physicality or the fact that he was somehow able to figure out her own limitations like that so easily despite their being two different species. Regardless, when it was time to quit for the night, Tali was always hungry and tired.

During dinner, as with their other meals they would talk, exchanging stories. Tali learned more about Ranma's past life, the number of masters he had learned with, his very mixed relationship with the Tendos, and his friendship and rivalry with Herb. Ranma would learn more about Tali's family, her admiral father and her aunt, the ship's captain who had practically raised her after her mother had died. The various troubles and problems she had both seen and helped with during her time on the Migrant Fleet, and more.

This way, the two of them passed their time until Benezia arrived.

End Chapter

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I wanted to push away from the Shadow Broker plotline in this chapter, but the interactions with Tali and Ranma blossomed beyond what I thought. It still looks good, though, so I hope you enjoy it. I mean to have Ranma and Tali get together a lot more quickly than I have most of my romantic subplots go. By the time they meet up with Herb again, I hope to have Ranma and Tali involved with one another romantically, but not able to do much physically just yet. That will take a lot more self-training for Ranma and for Tali alike.