Ascension

to grasp the basic concept. Before he could formulate a response, Gillian repeated her earlier question.

'Why are you helping us?'

'I'm a little curious about that myself,' Hendel added, leaning back in his chair and bringing his right leg up so he could rest it on his left knee.

'I'm on my Pilgrimage,' the quarian began. 'I was on the world of Kenuk when I met two crew members from the Bavea, a scout ship for the cruiser Idenna. They told me another scout ship, the Cyniad, had gone to Omega to broker a deal and not returned.

'I came to Omega in search of the Cyniad crew. I hoped I could rescue them, or at least discover their fate. On Omega another quarian, a man named Golo, told me the Cyniad had arranged a deal with a small group of humans.

'I broke into their warehouse hoping to find the crew. Instead, I found you.'

'But why risk your life to save us?' Hendel asked.

'I suspected your captors were slavers. No species deserves to be bought and sold. It was my moral obligation to free you.'

Kahlee had no doubt he was being sincere, but she also knew there was more to the story.

'You recognized me,' she said. 'You knew my name.'

'The name Kahlee Sanders has become very well known among my people in the past few months,' he admitted. 'And I recognized your appearance from an old image we picked up off the Extranet. You have hardly changed in eighteen years.'

The pieces began to click together in Kahlee's mind. Eighteen years ago she had been involved in an illegal Alliance AI project headed by a man named Dr. Shu Qian. But Qian had betrayed the project, forcing Kahlee into a desperate flight for her life. It was how she had met Captain Anderson. . and a turian Spectre named Saren Arterius.

'It's because of my connection to Saren,' she said, looking for confirmation.

'Your connection to him, and his connection to the geth,' Lemm clarified. 'The geth revolt was the single most significant event in the history of my people. They drove us into exile; an army of synthetic machines— ruthless, relentless, and unstoppable.

'But Saren led an army of geth against the Citadel. He found some way to make them follow him. He found a way to control them and bend them to his will. Is it any wonder we are so interested in him, and anyone who has ever had anything to do with him?'

'Kahlee?' Hendel asked, uncrossing his legs and sitting up straight, his muscles tensing. 'What's he talking about?'

'Back when I was with the Alliance, Saren was the Spectre sent to investigate a research project I worked on.' She had never really talked about what had happened on that mission with anyone other than Anderson, and she didn't want to start now.

'How did the quarians find out about all this?' she demanded. Her voice was rising; she was beginning to get a little bit scared, and that in turn made her angry. 'Those Alliance files were classified.'

'Any information can be acquired for the right price,' the quarian reminded her. It was hard to read his expression behind his mask, but his tone seemed calm. 'And as I said, we have an understandable obsession with the geth.

'Once we knew Saren was leading their armies we began to gather all the information we could on him: personal history, past missions. When it was discovered he had close dealings with a human scientist working on an illegal AI research project, it was only natural we would delve into the scientist's background as well.'

'Illegal AI?' Hendel muttered, shaking his head in disbelief at what he was hearing.

'That was a long time ago,' Kahlee told the quarian.

'The Captain of the Idenna will want to speak with you.'

'I can't help you,' she insisted. 'I don't know anything about Saren or the geth.'

'You might know more than you think,' Lemm replied.

'You make it sound like we don't have any choice in the matter,' Hendel noted, his voice dark.

'You are not prisoners,' the quarian assured them. 'If I take you to the Fleet it will be as honored guests. If you do not wish to go, we can change course right now. I can take you to any world you choose.

'However, if we do join up with the Fleet, it is possible they won't allow you to leave right away,' he admitted. 'My people can be overly cautious when it comes to protecting our ships.'

The security chief glanced over at Kahlee. 'It's your call. You're the celebrity.'

'This will end your Pilgrimage, won't it?' she wanted to know. 'Meeting me is your gift to the captain.'

He nodded, but didn't speak.

'If I don't do this, you can't go back to the Fleet yet, can you?'

'I will be forced to continue my journey until I find something of value to bring back to my people. But I will not force you to do this. The gift we bring must not be won through causing harm or suffering to another — quarian or nonquarian.'

'It's okay,' she said after thinking on it. 'I'll talk to them. We owe you our lives, and this is the least I can do. Besides,' she added, 'it's not like we'll be safer anywhere else.'

***

Forty hours later they dropped from FTL travel less then 500,000 kilometers from the Migrant Fleet. Lemm was once again occupying the pilot's chair, with Kahlee seated beside him. Hendel was in his now typical spot, standing just inside the door heading back to the passenger cabin, and even Gillian had come up to join them in the close confines, standing directly behind the quarian's chair.

The girl seemed to have taken to Lemm. She had started following him around, or just sitting and staring at him whenever he sat down or caught a few hours of sleep. Gillian didn't initiate conversations with him, but she answered promptly whenever he spoke to her. It was unusual, but encouraging, to see her responding so well to someone, so neither Kahlee nor Hendel had tried to stop her when she'd come up to the cockpit to join them.

The Migrant Fleet, with its thousands upon thousands of ships flying in tight formation, showed up on the nav screens as a single, large red blob as they approached. Lemm punched up their thrusters, and they began to move steadily toward the flotilla.

When they reached a range of just under 150,000 kilometers the nav screen showed several smaller ships detaching themselves from the main armada, arcing around on an intercept trajectory with their own course.

'Navy patrols challenge every ship approaching the Fleet,' Lemm had informed them earlier. 'Heavily armed. They'll open fire on any vessel that doesn't identify itself or refuses to turn back.'

From what Kahlee knew of quarian society, their reaction was completely understandable. Deep in the heart of the Migrant Fleet floated the three enormous Liveships: gigantic agricultural vessels that supplied and stored the majority of the food for the seventeen million individuals living on the flotilla. If an enemy ever damaged or destroyed even one of the Liveships the inevitable result would be a catastrophic famine, and the grim prospect of slow starvation for millions of quarians.

Lemm responded to the quickly approaching patrol by thumbing open a comm channel. A few minutes later it crackled with a voice speaking in quarian, though of course the tiny translator Kahlee wore as a pendant on her necklace automatically converted it into English.

'You are entering a restricted area. Identify.'

'This is Lemm'Shal nar Tesleya, seeking permission to rejoin the Fleet.'

'Verify authorization.'

Lemm had previously explained to them that most quarians who left on their Pilgrimage tended to return to the flotilla in newly acquired ships. With no records of the registration or call signs for the vessel, the only way to confirm the identity of those on board was through a unique code phrase system. Before leaving on his right of passage, the captain of the Tesleya, Lemm's birth ship, had made him memorize two specific phrases. One, the alert phrase, was a warning that something was wrong, such as hostiles on the ship forcing the pilot to try and infiltrate the Fleet. The alert phrase would cause the heavily armed patrols to open fire on their vessel immediately. The second phrase, the all clear, would get them safely past the patrols, where they would join the densely packed mass of other ships, shuttles, and cruisers.