[code]C:\Users\Shy\Locations\Milky_Way\Shadow_Sea\Horizon>time
The current time is: one_week_ago_[/code]

Fireworks of sparks erupted through the still air of the [i]Pretoria[/i], a hot blue welding torch sending them scattering and dancing against the cold aluminum floor of the engine room, it’s screaming heat making the metal whine in terrible and macabre harmony with the screaming of men from behind. The figure hiding behind their mask stopped their work for a moment as if to appreciate their handiwork before resuming. The screaming continued. In the med-bay there were three people, two men and a woman, trying to hold down a fourth man writhing and squirming and agonizing on a sterile bed. The racket was cacophonous as the flailing pushed over racks and tables, tools falling over, and the cries of the injured begged for the pain to stop.

“God, oh God! Please! Get it off of me!”

That voice belonged to Adam. He was one of the people acting as muscle on board the ship. Relatively new, but had been around longer than the engineer. The man’s arm was covered in residue from an incendiary round shot at him in an earlier firefight. A corrosive and self-igniting gel adhered to his skin and continued to dissolve and burn his flesh. They finally got him strapped onto the bench and the ship’s medic immediately got to work on him. One of the men, the captain of the ship, was still out of breath and panting as he stomped out to meet the engineer working on one of the control panels. He was beet red in the face and furious.

“Shy!” He shouted from around the corner before zeroing in on her. He was a large man, fit and athletic. He used to be a soldier, and it was obvious by how he kept a tight ship.“Shy, what the hell was that? What are you fucking thinking?”

The engineer behind their welding mask didn’t respond, but continued their work with the torch in large insulated gloves that went up to her elbows. The Hawaiian styled print on their button-up shirt a stark contrast from their industrial appearance. The lights flickered as the ship began taking off the ground.

“We had it! The deal went through and we could have walked away with what we needed without any problems! What the actual hell were you thinking?”

Still, the only answer he got from the engineer was them turning off the torch and prying open a panel from the wall before they buried their hands into the wiring on the other side. They grabbed their tools and began going to work.

“Of course, I shouldn’t be surprised. You’re a Goddamn selective [i]mute.[/i]” He sneered, before his voice eventually resumed his full-throated shouting. “Well I hope you’re happy about this, starting the [i]bloody fucking firefight that might cost one of our own his entire fucking arm![/i] The least you could do then is learn how to pick up a gun yourself!” 

The screams from the other room punctuated the captain’s shouting rant, but as the engineer silently resumed their work, his fingers were twitching for his sidearm. [i]“God damn it Shy!”[/i] He screamed. “Give me a fucking answer before I jettison your weird, [i]retarded[/i] ass into fucking space!”

Shy’s fingers moved deftly even in her gloves, and almost as soon as the captain shouted his threat at her, a distant voice called out from the cockpit, “Bishop, something’s wrong. We’re losing power to all systems!” Just as soon, the lights on board the ship blacked out, and the g-forces on board suddenly shifted upward. Shy hurriedly shoved the wires back into its compartment and leaped for the knife switch, using her weight to pull it down before she could fall away from it. A burst of sparks exploded from where she was working in a brilliant arc flash, and power was suddenly restored to the ship as the lights came back on and the ship’s automatic stabilizers kicked in. In the brief period of weightlessness that came with falling at terminal velocity, the much larger captain, Bishop, fell on top of Shy. The two were both groaning, Shy moreso as he rolled off of her.

“What the actual hell just happened?” He asked, wide-eyed and on edge, though he wasn’t expected an answer. This time he got one.

“They sabotaged the ship.” Shy grunted as she pushed herself onto her knees. Sitting down, she pushed the welding mask up. Soot marking the ordinarily fair tone of her face. Despite all that had happened and all that was said, her countenance appeared flat. “I could tell by the sound coming from the drive core. We should have enough power to sustain life-support and C4I services for now.”

The rage that was on her captain’s face softened, but his brows were furrowed and twitching. His eyes vibrating, not looking at any one thing in particular. Confused. He shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose, muttering, “How long have we…?”

“After we landed.” Shy answered. “Must have been after we left to meet with the Suns.”

“And the shootout?”

“Drones.” She said, lifting up her arm -- and wincing from a burning pain in her elbow -- to show off her omni-tool. “They’re tied to my omni-tool and set up to automatically respond to threats. One of them must have detected movement and an energy spike in one of their weapons while it was aimed at us, so it reacted before it could be discharged. They were also responsible for laying down the suppressive fire that let us all escape.”

“Shy, I…”

“It’s okay.” She said, her tone clipped. She looked toward her elbow where she felt a burning pain. It was from that arc flash earlier, she realized. She held her elbow in her gloved hand and turned back toward the captain. “You can just drop me off at our next stop.”
[hr][code]C:\Users\Shy\Locations\Milky_Way\Omega_Nebula\Omega>time
The current time is: present_[/code]

Shy always did have something of a black thumb -- she was an engineer, not a gardener -- but Bishop kept a tight ship with the same crew for a long time, about a year or two, and a week ago she was the one link in the chain that made it all fall apart after a month. Part of it was because it was such a bad job that resulted in permanent bodily damage, but a bigger part was that the rest of the crew apparently recognized that they would’ve been dead without her and she got chased off the ship anyways. Never mind her mechanical expertise or the security detail provided by her tech that they learned to appreciate, her and the captain never got along very well anyways. That was just the way things went with her, and now she was back on Omega. The dead end of the galaxy with no way out.

She sat at a table in a club, which was probably one of the safest places she could be, even if it wasn’t necessarily safe for her credit chit. Everything she owned she was either wearing or was collected in a big duffel bag on her lap. With her feet on the table and leaning back into her chair, she was staring at a screen projected from the omni-tool on her wrist, scrolling along looking for jobs. A lot of faces she recognized, some were people she worked with in the past and people who eventually got rid of her. Some faces she recognized as people who turned her down. Sometimes it was for being human. Sometimes it was for being young. Sometimes it was for being a woman. Usually it was for “being weird.” They never had to say it out loud. She could remotely access their datapads. Eventually she learned to just stop doing that.

Most of the job listings were fronts for gang activity and that wasn’t a gig that she was about to get involved with. Others were from Citadel trade stations, and she wasn’t on good terms with those people either. Eventually, though, she found a listing asking for volunteers to investigate a distress signal in the Asgard system by an asari captaining a ship called the Caelestis. She sighed and applied for the offering. It’s not like she had any other options aside from getting poorer and poorer with every minute she spent unemployed on Omega. She wondered, at least, if the captain being asari meant they’d make any more sense than the last dozen or so employers she’s had.

If there was even a drop of salarian blood in them, maybe it’d be enough.