5

The farm ship Raya

Daro stood by the porthole of her quarters, which had been allocated to her after her entire crew had been picked up by several frigates. Daro and Zaal had been ordered to the Raya, and now, after four hours of a meeting in which they had both been brainwashed, Daro looked out at the vast stars and was glad that she and Zaal had managed to keep their positions after all. Zaal had managed to spout nonsense to the admirals that the ship had been hijacked by a Quarian who had threatened to blow up the mass core if everyone else didn't leave the ship, and Daro had agreed to it. To make it even more convincing, this Quarian was presented to the board as a shell-shocked and mentally ill man who dreamed of going to Rannoch, and therefore probably flew there, and it was useless to go after him. The admirals believed it, though, as it explained why Daro didn't try to repel the ship or convince the hijacker. It was no use talking to the mentally ill, and Daro said that he had been concussed when he had landed on one of the former Quarian colonies, and that he was an experienced paratrooper, which meant that he would pull the trigger on any extra movement they made. And now, after the meeting, Daro was finally able to think about hers in peace. But suddenly the door opened and Zaal entered the cabin.

- Daro, may I come in? - He asked uncertainly.

- Ah, Zaal, yes, of course, come in, Daro let him in.

- Yes. Now, can you tell me what it was all about? - Zaal had wanted to ask her for a long time, but there was no time. Four hours of meetings with the other admirals was something you wouldn't wish on your enemy.

- I... I... Eh, I don't know, Zaal. I just don't understand how it happened," Daro began.

- Has this ever happened before?

- ─ That's the point, no, you see. - Daro began to explain. - Earlier, when I had a Get connected to a limiter, I could hardly twirl a light bulb to focus, but here... this Get was just knocking us both out, and he was just lying there. And that wasn't enough for me, he also ran off, stunned Cal`Rigar, took off his suit, put it on himself, and then walked around the ship, taking my daughter hostage and ordering the entire crew to evacuate, all while talking like... like...

- Like a sane person. - Finished Zaal.

- THIS IS IT! He said as if he had... humour! Kila, and all, all he did was ONE! You understand that, alone! A single Get is dumber than a Warren. At least the latter can be tamed. Keelah, what's going on..." Zaal saw from this conversation that Daro isn't strong anymore. She's exhausted beyond repair, but she's still trying to think for the good of the Fleet, and the Fleet thinks that Daro can do anything. And no one's seen what she's really like. Yes, she's an Admiral, dedicated to the Fleet to the bone, but she's also a fragile woman who's not treated properly.

- Daro, sorry to change the subject, but how long have you been awake? - Zaal asked again.

- It seems to be four days now... Kila, I have spent three days with that damned Geth, telling everyone to go to hell. Shit, I think I said something to Lina when she brought me the pasta supply. Or did I not send her to the Abyss? Hell, I can't remember...

- Daro! - Zaal couldn't take it anymore and just took her by the shoulders, trying to look her in the face. - You. You should. Sleep. - Speaking each word clearly, he said.

- Zaal, I don't have time. - Daro pulled herself roughly out of his grip and continued to stare at the stars, taking a few steps away from Zaal. - Look, here's what we're going to do. We're going to send a squad of paratroopers after this geth...

- WHAT?! Daro, you...

- Zaal, listen to me! You saw that this Gete is special. He didn't kill anyone when he had hundreds of opportunities to do so. This Geth... He is not like the other Geths. Which means we can... talk to him. If we can make contact with him, then we can... Make peace with the Geth. You understand, peace between us and the Geths! Zaal, that's what you've always wanted, isn't it? Isn't peace what you have always wanted? - Daro looked at Zaal and, even though he could not see her face, he could tell for sure that her face was asking the same thing as her tongue.

- Yes - that," Zaal answered simply. - But since when do you no longer wish to make the Goths our servants?

- Since... I saw this Gete today. He didn't kidnap us, he didn't kill us, he just wanted to avoid bloodshed and death. And what are we worse than them, Zaal? How are we worse than the Geth? If one of them had the good sense not to kill hundreds of our own, why should we have the right to own someone who wasn't as brutal as they seemed? What have we earned the right to own geths? - As soon as Daro finished, Zaal tried to digest everything she had said.

- You seem to have thought about it long enough. - That was all he could answer.

- Not that long. A couple of weeks or so. Thoughts slipped in occasionally, plus sometimes I read philosophy.

- Philosophy? - Zaal wondered.

- Yes. Mostly human philosophy. Ancient philosophers. People call them 'Greek'. Sometimes it's useful.

- You read human history, then you read philosophy. You are very interested in this race, Zahal continued in a calmer tone of voice and tried to change the conversation.

- Yes, I know. It has a very... different history... They have scarcely any wars, but there are more philosophers than you could ever count. The Turians have wars and wars and wars between clans. There's only one philosophy - war. Humans have a kind of golden mean. They've been at war all their history, but they've always tried to make peace and learned from their mistakes. I think it's time we did the same. Eh, okay. By the way, how's Cal doing? - decided to ask Daro.

- In the infirmary. The doctor said he's in there for a month, and that's a best-case scenario. I mean, he did run naked through the ship, and that's fraught with... Yeah, and the people who know about the Goeth, they'll... they'll keep quiet?

- Yeah, I talked to them. I convinced them there's no need to tell the admirals the truth. Oh, I hope they won't tell..." Daro was about to say something else, when suddenly she staggered and almost fell to the floor. She would have fallen if it had not been for Zaal who had caught her.

- Okay, you have to go to bed now. Come on, go now, otherwise you will fall in broad daylight and you will break the mask, - Daro did not answer but went to her bed, and in a minute she was asleep. Zaal didn't even have time to say goodnight, so he just walked out of the Admiral's quarters.

It is now the fifth hour that I have flown at light speed, and I still have not arrived where I need to go. Yeah, and there's not even anything to do. The extranet only works when the ship is close to the fleet, and apparently, I'm flying to some shithole town that is not even marked on the maps. Well, I guess it's time to check out the ship. Fortunately, there's autopilot for all the systems, but it looks like the Quarians don't use it, so everyone has a job to do. Stepping off the captain's bridge, I decided to inspect the deck directly below me. Now I could get a good look at everything there was to see. And there was a lot to see. The whole place was occupied by something. Even on the ceiling there were crates that were in a grid.

I immediately decided to look into the first cabin and immediately realized the position the Quarians were in. It was a room four metres long and three metres wide. It had a bunk bed on one side and a small bedside table. Yeah, even my two-room flat in Yekaterinburg was better. And it wasn't exactly a great room. A hruschevka. But here... Yeah.

There was still a computer on the nightstand. Well, the same holographic computer with an orange screen that had an ectranet page open, namely Azari. Just a page on the local wikipedia about the race itself, and everything related to it. There was nothing of interest in the nightstand itself. All sorts of clerical trivia: duct tape, screwdrivers of three kinds, a couple of microcircuits, in short, engineers lived or lived here. So I just moved on.

In general it felt like this deck was something of a marketplace. Quarians didn't have any money for lack of use, but bartering... You definitely need a place for that. And this was something like that. Rooms on either side of the corridor, lots of abandoned crates and things, and it was generally warmer than the deck I was walking on, which indicated that there were a lot of people here. And even though I'm gettin' and kinda not feeling anything, I had a temperature gauge. And if it was 25 degrees on the deck I was walking on, it was all of 35 degrees here. It's a big difference, though. As I walked on, I decided, for the sake of interest, to see what was in the crates on the ceiling. I jumped and grabbed the net and pulled it down a few times, and it gave way quickly. Two of the crates immediately fell, almost on top of me. It wouldn't hurt me, of course, but breaking my arm was a real possibility, and I didn't want to walk around with some piece of dangling metal on the wires. When I opened the first box, I immediately understood why these boxes were on the ceiling. There were seeds in here. The box was stuffed to the top with sealed bags of 10 kg each, containing the seeds of some Turian vegetable. Fortunately, I had all the languages of the known galaxy in my memory, so I understood what it said. Realizing that there was nothing useful here for me personally, I just gathered up the bags and closed the box.

I considered whether or not to open the second drawer, but curiosity won out. Opening it, I saw cables. Cables and wires of all varieties, colours and sizes. There were both the thin wires that were in my radio-controlled toys and the thicker cables that looked more like telephone cables. Yes, the Quarians seemed to be scooping up everything they could find. And it is quite understandable, in their position even a tube radio and cipher machine Enigma would be useful. Maybe not for its intended purpose, but for the details.

Right, well, time to get on with the inspection.