Tali's shuttle was not designed for passengers.
The cockpit seated one. The cargo hold — if you could call two cubic meters of storage wedged behind the pilot's chair a hold — seated zero. Webb folded himself into the space between a toolkit and a crate of emergency rations, his knees against his chest, his rifle across his shins, and the back of Tali's seat pressing into his shoulder every time she adjusted her course heading.
"Sorry about the space," she said without turning. Her fingers moved across the control interface with the fluid speed of someone who'd been flying since before she could reach the pedals. "Quarian shuttles are built for efficiency, not comfort."
"I've been in worse." The Distant Fortune's airlock berth came to mind. At least this ship smelled like clean suit sealant instead of hydraulic fluid.
"Have you been in smaller?"
"No."
Through the cockpit's forward viewport, stars streaked into the blue-shifted lines of FTL transit. Haven's Point had disappeared behind them three minutes ago — a grey-brown speck swallowed by the vastness of interstellar space. Garrus had stayed behind, jaw tight, mandibles carrying the expression of a man who didn't like the plan but couldn't argue with the logic.
"Your colony, your call," he'd said at the docking bay. "But if you die four hours from home chasing ghosts with a quarian you met yesterday, I'm going to be very annoyed at your funeral."
Webb had left him in command. The territorial overlay still functioned at this range — a faint pulse in his peripheral vision confirming Haven's Point's status: stable, defended, population 2,104 and holding. Garrus could handle anything short of a fleet incursion. Probably a fleet incursion too, if he had enough thermal clips and a decent elevation.
"Tell me about the relay station," he said.
Tali pulled up the navigation data without pausing her flight corrections. Multitasking — quarian baseline, apparently.
"Theta-7. Built sixty years ago as a communications relay for Alliance colonial expansion into the Voyager Cluster. Decommissioned twelve years ago when the Alliance pulled back from this sector. Standard relay architecture: comm arrays, power generation, crew quarters for a dozen, data processing core." She highlighted the station's schematic on the nav display. "It should be dead. Empty hull, vacuum-sealed, drifting."
"But it's not."
"The power signatures I'm reading are consistent with Geth mobile platform reactors. Small, efficient, running on internal fuel cells that could sustain operations for years without external power. Six signatures when I first detected them. Now..." She checked the passive sensor feed. "Eight. Two more activated in the last four hours."
"They're multiplying?"
"They're assembling. Geth platforms share processing power through a local network — the more platforms in proximity, the smarter each individual unit becomes. Six platforms is a scouting force. Eight is the beginning of a tactical node."
"In the games, Geth networked intelligence was a core mechanic. More platforms meant more processing, which meant better tactics, faster adaptation, and collective decision-making that approached true AI at scale. Eight was manageable. Twenty was a problem. A hundred was a war."
"If they're building a tactical node, they're expecting to need one. Which means they're expecting trouble."
"Or they're preparing for a mission. Geth don't garrison — they deploy, execute, and withdraw. Whatever they're doing at Theta-7, it has a purpose, and when that purpose is fulfilled, they'll leave. Along with any data worth finding."
The urgency was clear. If they waited, the Geth would finish their task and disappear, and Tali's Pilgrimage gift would vanish with them. If they moved now, they were walking into an active Geth node with two people, a rifle, and a shotgun.
He checked his MP. Seventy-eight points. Enough for one emergency construction if things went sideways. Not enough for two.
"What exactly are you hoping to find?"
She was quiet for a moment. Her hands continued their constant motion — checking instruments, adjusting course, monitoring suit systems — but the rhythm slowed.
"The Migrant Fleet's admiralty values intelligence above all other Pilgrimage gifts. A working Geth memory core containing operational data — patrol routes, communication protocols, network architecture — would secure my place on any ship in the Fleet." The luminous eyes in the faceplate caught the FTL glow from the viewport. "But more than that... the Geth drove my people from our homeworld three hundred years ago. Every piece of intelligence we gather brings us one step closer to understanding them. And understanding is the first step toward—"
She stopped.
"Toward going home," he finished.
"Toward knowing if going home is even possible."
The shuttle hummed through FTL. The cargo hold was cramped, the air recycled through Tali's suit systems and whatever the shuttle's minimal life support provided. His back ached. His knees protested. The rifle's stock dug into his thigh.
But the coffee Kowalski had given him that morning was still warm in his stomach, and the stars outside were beautiful in the particular way that things became beautiful when you stopped taking them for granted. The galaxy was vast and dangerous and full of things that wanted to kill everything in it, and here he was, wedged into a quarian shuttle, chasing synthetic intelligences toward a derelict station because a young woman needed to go home.
"This is the life now. Not the old one. This one."
---
[Relay Station Theta-7 — April 27, 2180, 1845]
The station materialized from the dark like a skeleton surfacing from deep water.
Theta-7 was standard Alliance colonial infrastructure — a cylindrical hub with six radial comm arrays extending like the spokes of a broken wheel. Two of the arrays had been damaged by micrometeorite impacts, their lattice structures bent and trailing severed cables. The hull was intact but darkened, running lights dead, the entire structure drifting in a slow rotation that caught distant starlight and released it in lazy sweeps.
Except the docking bay. The docking bay had lights.
"Active power in the docking section," Tali confirmed, her voice dropping to an operational murmur. "Geth shuttle — small, two-platform capacity — is docked at bay two. The main reactor is offline, but they've brought portable generators. Smart. Self-contained power, no external signature unless you're scanning at close range."
"Can we dock without triggering their sensors?"
"Their sensors are focused outward — watching for incoming ships. If I approach from the station's shadow, using the damaged comm array as cover, we can reach bay three without crossing their primary scan cone." Her fingers danced across the controls. "Probably."
"Probably."
"Seventy-eight percent probability. Quarian engineering deals in probabilities, not certainties."
The approach took twelve minutes. Tali flew with a precision that made the cramped shuttle feel like an extension of her body — micro-corrections, attitude adjustments, engine burns measured in fractions of a second. They slid through the shadow of the damaged comm array, using its bulk to mask their thermal signature, and docked at bay three with a magnetic clamp that attached to the hull with a soft, resonant thunk.
"Seal is good. Pressure equalization in sixty seconds." She reached for the shotgun at her hip. Checked the thermal clip. Racked the slide with a practiced motion that made the weapon click like a punctuation mark.
"Stay behind me in the corridors," he said. "I'll take point. You handle electronic countermeasures — doors, locks, anything with a circuit."
"And if we encounter platforms?"
"I shoot. You hack. We don't stop moving."
Her eyes met his through the faceplate. The nervousness from the colony was gone. In its place: focus. The particular intensity of someone who'd been waiting for this moment and was ready to meet it.
"One thing," she said. "Geth don't feel pain. They don't panic, they don't retreat out of fear, and they don't make mistakes twice. If we engage, we commit. Half measures get you killed."
"Understood."
The airlock opened. Cold hit them — the deep cold of a station that had been vacuum-sealed for years, its atmosphere barely warmed by the Geth's portable generators. His breath didn't fog — the atmosphere was too thin for condensation. Every surface was coated in a fine layer of dust that their boots disturbed in slow-motion clouds.
The corridor stretched ahead. Emergency lighting — the faint amber glow of backup systems that had been dormant for a decade — provided minimal illumination. Enough to see shapes. Not enough to see details.
Geth platforms stood in alcoves along the corridor. Six of them. Bipedal, humanoid in the loosest sense, with single photoreceptor eyes that glowed a faint, dormant blue. Standing upright, arms at their sides, like soldiers at permanent attention.
"Dormant mode," Tali whispered. Her omni-tool scanned as they passed. "Processing cycles at minimum. They're conserving power for... something."
He positioned himself between Tali and the nearest platform. The rifle came up — sights aligned on the photoreceptor, finger outside the trigger guard. Ready, not committed. Webb's combat training made the stance automatic. His own brain made his hands damp inside the gloves.
They moved deeper. Past the dormant platforms, through a sealed bulkhead that Tali bypassed in nine seconds, into the station's central hub. The data core occupied the hub's lower level — a room lined with server banks that should have been dead and weren't. Portable generators hummed against the walls, feeding power into systems that the Geth had reactivated with the surgical precision of a species that thought in circuits.
Tali's breathing quickened. He could hear it through her suit's audio — the rhythm shifting from controlled to eager as she saw the data core's active terminals.
"This is it. Active data processing. Communication logs. Network protocols." Her omni-tool was already interfacing. "The encryption is... different. Not standard Geth. Something layered on top. Whoever these platforms are talking to, they're using a secondary protocol I've never—"
The first platform's optical sensor activated. A red light, sharp and sudden, cutting through the dim amber like a laser.
Then the second. The third. All six alcove platforms, their photoreceptors flaring from dormant blue to hostile red in a synchronized pulse that lasted exactly one second.
The station's PA system crackled. A voice — not organic, not exactly synthetic. Something between. Processed, layered, carrying harmonics that vibrated in the chest.
"Organic intrusion detected. Consensus evaluating."
Six red eyes. All pointed at them.
Webb's rifle came up. His finger found the trigger.
"Tali. How fast can you download?"
Her omni-tool was already working. Data streaming across the interface in cascading blocks of encrypted information.
"Four minutes for a full core dump. Three if I skip redundancy checks."
"You have three."
The platforms stepped out of their alcoves.
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