[The Frontier] Farewell

“Hello Emma.” Freh’ya decided to leave the rank out this time, first name seemed appropriate after their assignment last time, although it’s been a while.
“Yeah it seems like a lot of the same gang again. Plus a couple of new additions.” That last part was directed at Jakuzure and Sanageyama with a smile of white teeth.

“I take it you two know each other as well?” Everyone had history, the war had created unusual alliances in battle. Not that Freh’ya particularly liked or trusted mercenaries, far from it, but for what she was concerned she would judge them by their actions. This was a mission and they had a working relationship. Confined space and all that. She wondered if there were biotics in their group, she had not sensed anything.

“Freh’ya Paruun,” she introduced herself.

"None taken," Kai replied in a small voice that indicated, yes, some offence was totally taken. Offence that wasn't really aimed at Nem mind, but still.

And then came the burning shame and embarrassment that came from someone else sticking up for him. Kai was almost compelled to overcome the stock-still terror that came with being the centre of attention for a krogan to tell Nem to cut it out, but no dice. Instead, he got to notice the quarians coming in! Yay!

"Oh Keelah no ancestors why did there have to be other quarians oh Keelah," Kai muttered to himself, head in his hands. Aaaaand then he heard them refer to him as a 'weird geth' that was emulating organics by wearing clothes and stuff. So all in all, it was really shaping up to be a swell day for him. It almost took his mind off the fact that he'd ignored the call to Rannoch during the war and was thus basically a big fat race traitor!

"Sorry I have to go do a thing in a place," the cyborg mumbled somewhere in Nem's direction and shuffled off, sticking to the margins of the group, into the bowels of the Mashhad.

Cline waved as Freh'ya pointed him out. "Hey Rajapaske, congrats on the promotion! How's it been?" he asks the PFC.

"I...guess?" Rajapaske said, tilting her head to look at the merc. At the Service Chief's words she stared at him for a long moment, blinking once, twice, "Uh, Service Chief? I haven't been promoted? I was the same rank last time we worked together?"

"Well I mean, what do you call three people in five minutes out of the blue going 'oh hey best buddy remember that one time and that one thing'?" The platoon was already settling into their units, half a dozen different conversations welling up as the crowd milled about them. There was a touch of informality to them really; in the way they talked, the way they stood. You could practically see the silver and green and black threads wending between them, binding them together. Even the hanar and the young man with the tattoo, even the siblings. The four of them the outsiders, the auxiliaries, even they fit beneath that banner easily, unconsciously.

Sangeyama was standing a few feet away, scuffing one boot on the deck. Hands still in his pockets, wrestling with boredom's return. His sister, on the other hand, was far too pleased with her new find to go stand (more or less quietly) waiting for the rest of the expeditionary forces to make their slow, slow slow slow , way in.

"Oh no we just met!" Starlight. Sunlight. Really it's just nuclear fire. And there were edges to Jakuzure's words as she made the perfunctory smalltalk with Freh’ya, feeling the muted disapproval from the asari squirming over her lilting introduction. A moment of thought.

...Eh, you know what? Water off the back. Potential for a new friend meant a good mood meant that the hoity toity commando could get stuffed.

Nem stared after the rebuilt quarian, his expression one of bemusement. Shrugging, he hefted his pack again and dropped an arm down to loosely cradle the rifle hanging at his chest. He'd hook back up with the shyest cyborg in the galaxy later, no doubt. He loped off towards the boarding hatch, finding it easiest to fall roughly in step with the detachment of quarian marines a few paces ahead, recognizing some familiarity in their digitigrade gait. He gave little thought to the scans and stares of SSV Masshad's naval contingent; that was just the everyday rigor of life on a ship, turian or human, and he'd been shipped out across the galaxy on everything from cruiser weight down since he'd been little more than a boy.

Rather, he diverted his attention to the chatter around him. This was the perfect time - and he was perfectly placed - to pick up a little scuttlebutt. He nodded a head, a sharp, exaggerated gesture, at the sullen augmented mercenaries and their respectable collection of blades, as they casually gained themselves ownership of a prime piece of cargo bay real estate.

The bay was cramped, lousy with crates and loosely discarded supplies, but Nem had no qualms adding to the disarray by unshouldering his pack and propping his Phaeston up alongside it. Nonchalantly, he lowered his bony turian ass to the floor and dropped into a set of ab curls. Someone would hop down and join him, if only in some vain attempt at oneupmanship. He was surrounded by soldiers. Turian or otherwise, no one loved competition more. And competition was the best way of getting to know people; people who Nem just may be called on to trust his life to.

Besides, how else was a bro meant to keep in shape on these low grav human ships?

For all the bravado, the staring down, the comments, the staking-out of territory, a hush fell over the cargo bay as the captain of the SSV Mashhad stepped forward, dark eyes sweeping over the crowd of disparate groups. She simply commanded silence. She wasn't a Marine, bristling with guns and muscle and scars but her shoulders were square and her chest had a multi-coloured stack of ribbons. In front of her, the Mashhad's Marines stood in a solid block of blue.

"Welcome to the SSV Mashhad," She said, her voice resonating through the bay, "I am Captain Tabah and this is my ship." Her eyes were hard as she looked over the faces before her, hands laced behind her back. "I understand that there are many, differentiated people of vastly different allegiances, but I want to make one thing clear." Her eyes narrowed slightly, "While on this ship, while a part of this ship, you will follow my orders. While I do not expect you to pretend to be Alliance, I do ask you to follow three rules while embarked: no entry to restricted areas such as the CIC, bridge, gunnery or drive core; no interference with the running of this ship unless asked to do something by a member of the crew or as part of your contracted role and absolutely no fighting." She shifted her gaze to the Alliance contingent, sharpening it into a glare, "That goes particularly for my crew. The brig is feeling lonely."

There were a few chuckles amongst the Marines.

"Moving on," She declared, "I'm sure you all know our mission. To enter the Attican Traverse, ascertain the status of Citadel worlds and allies in the region, open talks with non-Citadel space entities and provide what relief and stabilization we can. Rules of engagement authorise proportionate force in self-defence. Anything else must be authorised. This is a relief and exploration mission, not one of war."

She seemed to relax, her point made, "Now, the flotilla will be departing soon. Please, get settled in and accustomed to the ship. I've ensured maps have been delivered to your omnitools. There are observation decks above-decks for those who would like to watch the departure. Again, welcome to the Mashhad. Marines, dismissed."

She stepped down from the crate she'd been using as a podium and walked briskly towards the elevator, accompanied by a stocky African man in the service uniform of an Operations Chief.

Freh’ya looked at all the different groups as the captain prepared for her introduction, a bit amused about a turian showing off with crunches right away. At least it looked like more fun than some more grim looking contractors. Maybe she could engage in some competitions with the likes of him to pass time.

Then the Captain stepped on the box and all attention was to her. She followed the speech relaxed, hand on her back. No fights, huh? Yeah, this assembly had a bit of a potential for that and it would be a small wonder if there would be no trouble at all. The mention of the brig got everyone to their toes, but still.

When Captain Tabah stepped down again, there was a lot of shuffling and talking again as everyone was grabbing their stuff and the room was literally glowing with opened omnitool and people looking up their assigned quarters. Of course the commando did the same, a blue line pointing the way to her bunk out on a layout of the ship’s deck. Everyone was moving out slowly, following the map and guided by assisting crew members. As she was making her way to section G-3 she was curious as to who would be occupying the bunks around her. Was the Alliance having gender separation? Freh had no idea.

"Remember that steak we got last time? So what about checking out were to find a bite next?" She asked at Cline's and Rajapaske's direction who left the bay through the same door. Not that the memory of that still unidentified lul meat was particularly pleasant but knowing where the food was to be found was an important thing. She expected the ship's kitchen to be better.

"Oh god, don't remind me... No amount of hot sauce could make that crap taste good. MREs tasted better than that mystery meat." Cline replied, setting his three duffle bags on one of the bunks ajacent to Freh'ya's bunk. "Now, If I remember correctly, the Mess hall should be on Deck 3." he stated, looking at the map of the ship on his omni-tool. "Yep, Deck Three, Section Bravo-4... Currently on the menu... Sloppy Joes, Chili, Macaroni and Cheese, Jambalaya, Vegetarian Pizza, and Caesar Salad... he added, reading through the menu provided to his omni-tool.

Caught along in the tide of bodies, surrounded by the dully roaring press of men and women and materiel, the mercenaries elected to follow the river downstream. Meandering and weaving and in some cases forcing their way through the crowd. The way forward only really held half their attention; conversations flowed freely and easily between the dragon-stamped, so released from the stricter bounds of propriety post-address. Someone laughed. A warm sound, genuinely mirthful. Really, unless you saw the mechanical lips of batarian Relicae's Process doing the laughing it would have been almost impossible to distinguish from the noise produced by warm meat of an organic throat.

People shot the group looks over their shoulder, from the corners of their eyes. You could practically see the eddies and ripples of the living current shift, adjust. The way forward for the mercenaries eased, their path quickened.

The Captain could restrict fighting all she liked, she couldn't do shit to erased several thousand years of cultural, social, and technological tension. You could see it, here and there, the ugly undertones. The sour expressions. The contempt. The disdain. Titan's commandos were alien among a press of aliens, a discordant, jarring color in the grand tapestry that was being woven together. They didn't fit. Their weapons were wrong. Their language. Their bodies. The way they moved. The way they stood. Wrong. All wrong.

Apparently nobody got the memo. It was a brave new world, and its people had arri-

"So, question for the girl who actually lives here." Aaaand suddenly Jakuzure.

"...You know the best way to deck ten? Because I uh...don't really think we know where we're going."

For everyone that went down towards the crew quarters of the Mashhad, the quarians had elected to stay behind, opening up the crates they had been standing by. Gently prying the opening of one of the crates up, they slipped inside of it carefully, the entire squad disappearing into it.

What came out of the crate, could be construed as a rather... unique, monstrous thing thing.

Making only a slightly louder *Clang* as the boots of these rather large, bulky suits exited the crate. Well armoured in a composite plating, an underlay of ballistic fibre covering any exposed joints (and assumably running beneath the plated sections). The armour itself shaped into a single plate upon the torso area, curving as it neared the limbs. The helmet had a thick, short drooping "beard" overlapping a gorget, while the entire head was completely covered in armour.

"Systems nominal. Let's head to the armoury before we see what the quarters are." The apparent leader of the squad said, before he gestured and started moving out of the cargo hold, the rest of the quarian team following in suit.

Resisting the inner voice telling him to make snarky comments at various points through the captain's talk with the featureless external veneer of a man who had long ago quashed instinct with imposed discipline, Nem stood passively amid the crowding irregulars.

A little put off by what he heard initially, he quickly rationalized that the captain was likely not outlawing the sort of drilled, supervised sparring that was so commonplace on turian vessels, and was merely trying to keep the peace between a potentially volatile mix of species. Mollified, he allowed himself a brief moment of guilty excitement at the thought of watching a cruiser depart the Citadel from an observation deck. As a Leaper, the few times he had left the Citadel had either been in the cheap seats of some low budget passenger hauler, the IFV bay of a frigate or, one time during the Reaper War, the hastily converted hold of an old volus bulk freighter.

Filing out of the cargo bay with the others, beating an arrhythmic pulse on the wall as he went, he kept an eye out for anyone else who may have been drawn by the allure of a military sponsored viewing gallery.

True to the creed of any infiltrator anywhere, Lyra Palmer had already made her way to an observation deck. How exactly she had gotten there ahead of everyone else was undoubtedly a mystery but there she was, waiting for the ship to leave. She stood there, hands clasped behind her back, idly admitting to herself that was going to be the last time that she was likely to ever see Earth. There was much doubt in her mind that she would ever leave the Traverse after she got there. It was home for her after all.

It was a decent place but she was glad to be moving on now.

And just like that Lakshika had become a tour guide. She adjusted her sea bag and said to the mercs, "Yeah, just take the left personnel elevator. Bunks are on the starboard side."

She wrinkled her nose a bit at the mention of the mystery meat. She'd been studiously trying to forget that particular mission. She shrugged, "I was actually planning to dump these," She raised her bags, "On my way up to the observation deck."

There was a hum underneath her feet now, the Mashhad uncurling itself, ready to spring free of the metal holding it to the Citadel. It still sent a shiver of excitement down her spine.

Right then. Quick checklist. Sea bags? Yes. Weapons cases? Yes. Headcount of officers? Yes. NCOs? Yes. The hanar? Ayup. Sanageyama still there? Mmmmmhm. That familiar, comfortable twisting and twining around her heart, her spine? Check! Now all that was left was-

Observation deck.

"Mmmmmyyyou know what? I think that actually sounds like a great idea."

"..." Don't look now, nothing to see here. Just Sanageyama mourning the loss of a quiet bunk and busy martyring himself.

"Don't you think so?"

The martyring silently intensified. The reproach was a palpable, tangible thing, beating on the backs of the small group's necks like the heat from a bonfire. That nobody's hairs curled in the flames of metaphorical self immolation was a miracle in and of itself. Quietly it ebbed as the source fell back, fell in step with the hulking Relicae's leading the corporate procession. An exchange in undertones; almost impossible to hear over the constant thrum of voices. A clap on a shoulder by a hand that could have palmed a human skull. Wordlessly it increased as the young man rejoined his sister and her newfound friend. .Behind them the mercenaries were breaking off, heading for the elevators. Not the siblings though oh no. Jakuzure wanted to see the ship decouple and power away and so to the observation deck with them.

The girl was positively bouncing through the halls as her brother trudged on, hands in his pockets. Really the show was more for the benefit of everyone else, she had long become immune to the Face of Disapproval.

“Yo! Yo Kai!” An arm wrapped in a battered and scuffed red leather sleeve snaked out of the press of bodies, the torrent of marines and mercenaries and specialists, and caught the quarian teen on the shoulder.

Another man, about Kai’s age, forced his way through -”Get the fuck out of the way I swear to fucking God”- and half stumbled half tumbled out of the crush. Catching his balance at the very last second, arm extended. He broke into a grin.

Out of the transsapients and aliens and who the hell knew what else Kyle was something of an oddity. Broad shoulders. Bandage wrapped hands. A beaten pack slung over a dull crimson coat made of some scaley, slick leather. He didn’t look like a soldier. If anything he looked like some unholy cross between a whaler and a mechanic.

Kai made a noise somewhere along the lines of ‘meep’ at the sudden grasping hand on his shoulder. He may have adjusted relatively well to some things, but physical contact wasn’t one of them. From his reaction, it seemed that Kai assumed it was an axe-murderer leaping out of the crowd to get him. The relief that it was Kyle seemed palpable.

“Oh. Hey Kyle. Starting to think you weren’t coming.” And I really need someone I can talk to, went the unspoken addition.

“Naaaah man. Marines by the gate were just being ‘thorough.’” Read: suspicious. And pricky. And suspicious pricks. Though, in all fairness, an eighteen year old Terminus kid with a support specialist’s license, mercenary transit papers, and a case full of military tech did tend to provoke a reaction of “yeah, no, sir can you please come with us.”

He thumped Kai on the back, barely even wincing as bare knuckles met carbon nanofibers. “So where’re we off to?”

“(I wish people would stop doing that)” the quarian Relicae’s mumbled. It didn’t hurt him but he always felt bad for whoever was smacking, hitting or otherwise wounding themselves on his slablike cyborg body. “I... have no idea. Help."

Already boding so well.

As the new arrivals arrived at their respective destinations, the quiet hum of the Mashhad's engines changed pitch, became more urgent. You couldn't feel the movement of the ship but those on the viewing deck saw the moment that the docking apparatus folded away from the hull and the cruiser sedately drifted out of the docks and into the void.

As the flotilla cleared the Citadel and the shipping lanes, the ships moved into formation: the lightly armed transports and tankers forming the centre of the flotilla, with the Mashhad before them and the light cruisers bracketing them in an inner line, the frigates forming a defensive orb.

As one, they turned their bows towards the Charon Relay.

The pair stood on the observation platform, the vast, sprawling mechanism of the Citadel slipping and sliding past the viewports. Sanageyama leaning on a sheathed blade. Jakuzure with her nose pressed up against the glass watching the intricate hive of arcologies and streets and docks fading away. A cruiser, leviathan of metal and ceramic, rose up into her field of view like a whale breaching the waves. A skyscraper taking flight.

Scale. Magnitude. Scope. Flying cities with thousands upon thousands of souls housed within; shielded from the hard vacuum of space by ablative plate and carefully balanced life support systems.

It was beautiful.

Completely and utterly terrifying but in the best way imaginable.

Neither of them paid any mind as the hanar, that tentacular growth of bioluminescence, drifted in. It's sea-soaked skin layered in fine silver traceries. Limbs delicately, oh so delicately trailing just above the plating of the deck. It stilled, liquid innards shifting, tendrils swaying.

"Bashadalokon." The young man now, glancing back over his shoulder; the last of the Ward arms falling into the distance.

"Sanageyama. Jakuzure."

"Is there something you needed?"

"The final assets have been secured and the militants have found their accommodations agreeable. This one thought it proper to inform the most esteemed and valued compatriots as to those facts."

It was a peace offering. A moment of consideration and the young man took it with a simple "thank you". Behind him his sister had finally torn herself away from the (increasingly boring now that all the good stuff was gone) view.

"So how much did the boss end up giving you?" She asked.

Bashadolokon settled its tentacles primly. It's squirling and shifting lights smug and conspiratorial.

"Quite enough most honored Mutasrita Imugi.

Quite enough."

With the briefing over, Worag departed for his cabin resignedly. He knew what was ahead of him. Until they'd get to a part where experience of the contractors was required, it would be downtime and lots of it on a crowded ship, full of all manner of people given the outsourcing. Transsapients, aliens, enough stimuli and enough annoying stimuli that tempers might very well flare up as chemistry refused to work.

For people not krogan, it was harmful but ultimately could be resolved. But for Worag and his kin...there was the blood rage. A contractor who tears his partners apart is not long employed. Cramped, crowded corridors did not work for him well, this Worag had learned through his long career as hired gun.

Worag retrieved an injector from the locker assigned to him and began to look for a soft spot on his hide to punch through. Soon enough, the needle found its place and delivered a carefully measured dose of sedatives. Enough strong to remove risk of incurring blood rage, enough weak to not leave him a drooling vegetable.

He was going to hate the downtime spent like this.