[As-Of-Yet-Unnamed-Ship] Sing-Along?

"...wait, the shotgun's broken?"

A pause.

"Did you use it like a club again? You know, I keep saying I'll lend you a heatsink bandolier for a reason."

"But I LIKE clubbin' with it," Kirok said in a slightly petulant voice. "Shows folk I mean bidness. Someone gets hit by th' butt end of a shotgun, they know t'siddown an' shuddup."

There was a moment's reflection.

"Usually both, b'cuz they're unconscious."

The varren escaped his grasp and pelted down the hallway at speed, yiping like a demon unchained. Whitefang followed suit, barking at the top of her lungs. Goddamned varren.

There was a lot happening, and Jil'Korah was distracted by Ensemble yet again. He was getting better about it, at least - this time he'd been paying attention, just not processing events quickly. It took him a couple of awkward seconds of silence to catch up, and then as usual he was off.

"Okay, I was watching Marz'Rah and may have gotten carried away. I've seen the episode before so there's no great loss due to the rude interruption, but still. It wasn't whining, it was some human song in one of their secondary languages. I don't know what it's about but I like the sound of it."

It was a language known as 'Italian' and the singer was detailing the first meeting between human and krogan. Apparently they were not anticipating the smell.
I don't believe you, and it's probably for the best, because if I told Kirok that and he decided to kill me he'd have to go through you.
I concede the point. "I lied, Holmes!" is a potentially dangerous game.
Dwick may not have our best interests at heart.

And again, an odd pause, but this one he disguised as taking a deep breath. Finally he was getting the hang of multitasking constantly.

"Now, the shotgun's not broken but it's not what it could be, and I'm going to try and fix it up whenever I feel like working on something that isn't a ship. Well, whenever I feel like that and actually can spare the time, at least. ANYWAYS, Shirin, it's good you're here - we cracked into the flight records earlier and there's not a lot there, but analysis isn't really my thing so you might get more out of them than I do."

"Oh. Well, my bad."

Yeah, it had been annoying, but Shirin slept sporadically anyway - long nights devising plots and fantasizing about rummaging through Suri'Neyvi's insides would do that to you - and Jil was one motherfucker of a tech specialist. No reason to antagonize him any more than absolutely necessary.

Case in point, he'd managed to pull the Wolfpack's flight records, which would provide an insight into their transaction history and, more importantly, whether they were stowing any easy-to-reach loot.

"You don't say," she answered, eyeing Kirok's shotgun (and envisioning it upgraded and spewing death). "Mind if I take a look?"

Kirok shrugged as he handed the shotgun over. Repairing weapons he could do. Building them had never been his strong suit.

There was still some buckshot lodged in his brain that could testify to that.

"Yeah, jist b'careful with it, kid," the massive krogan said. "S'gotta hair trigger - anna temper. Likes t'aim fer th' face. Pretty sure the Xaxnot I took it off of is haintin' th' damn thing, but damn if it don't gotta kick. Y'think yew can fix that, quarian? A REAL man's gun?"

The ship suddenly rocked there was a 'swoosh' sound then silence before the ship-wide intercom crackled to life.

"Everyone all right? Good news, got the weapons working... need some calibrations though."

The turian, seemingly satisfied with his due diligence returned to his work.

Jil patted his belt a few times, looking for the right pouch - there were several, large enough to hold a few tools each in addition to whatever else he'd sequestered away in the compartments built into the suit. Truthfully, the extra storage space was probably the main reason he'd never upgraded to a newer, more form-fitting model. Eventually, he reached into one of them and pulled out a small OSD, passing it across to the nearly-naked drell woman.

"I can handle a shotgun," he said, turning to Kirok. "And don't worry, I know simple is best. Wouldn't want to give you a weapon nobody could figure out in a couple of hundred years when I'm not around."

The easiest way to upgrade the weapon would be to replace the virtual intelligence with a fragment of my base code.
I thought we agreed that pissing off Kirok was a bad idea? Wasn't that like, fifteen seconds ago?
I do not see the connection.
You're telling me that you really think it might be a good idea to give Kirok a shotgun that can talk. One that might one day decide to play "I lied, Holmes!"
...I concede the point.

And now the weapons were online. Perfect. She could've done with a less startling way to find out about it, but beggars can't be choosers.

"Thanks. One second..." Shirin disappeared back into her cabin for a second, then returned with a handheld miniprojector running the OSD. A 180 haptic display listed out the files, which she flicked aside one by one with a finger. "All right, most of this is in the Nebula, no bases we didn't already know about, some business on Omega, an asteroid outpost for the Blood Pack..."

Her eyes blinked once, twice, and widened a little.

"Oh, hang on, here's something. Kite's Nest star charts and a couple cargo manifests...looks like this particular bunch ran slaves in their spare time. There's a lot of recent traffic at Chresk. Apparently they were supplying slave labor to the mines and occasionally muscling for the governor, because the war kind of depleted the security to his..." Shirin paused to bite at a lip. "...palace."

There was a moment of silent, eager contemplation.

Kirok blinked a few times. Credit symbols started showing up in his eyes.

"I'm sorry, didja say... palace?"

"...I heard 'palace', I think she definitely said 'palace'."

She said 'palace'.

"Yep, Ensemble confirms it, she said palace. Tell us more about this palace, Shirin."

All pretense of work was dropped, and Jil'Korah stood looking expectantly at the drell woman. If quarians had Christmas, this is what their children would look like on it.

"Let the record show that I totally said 'palace'," Shirin said, with gravity befitting the word of God His Own Self descending from on high. "Hang on, let me check for details."

There wasn't much to gather, just from the manifests and star charts - the Wolfpack weren't the type to gush over anything other than profit, especially not in their business logs. Still, there were telling hints here and there: descriptions of cargo, requests from Chresk's governor, the occasional eclectic payment option...

"...Apparently he paid them in oriental rugs and platinum one time." Leaning back against the wall, the drell glanced from Kirok to Jil and back to the readout. The wall was cool against her bare scales. Refreshing, but just chilly enough to keep her attentive. "I'm seeing a lot of interest in domestic slaves, including a job three months ago where they needed to find someone who was reasonably qualified as an art curator. Not sure how much success they had with that around here, but the fact that it was an issue at all means Glorious Governor Gro'Habbon's got more art than he knows what to do with. Oh, here's another invoice. They, uh...oh. Wow. They captured an Orozhvad transport with a three pound cut diamond for him."

Shirin closed the interface.

"Okay. I don't mean to jump the gun here, but right now I'm fairly sure that one, Jil's getting a bonus on the next haul, and two, we need to go visit Chresk sometime."

Kirok's face went thoughtful, unfocused. It was clear he was giving this matter a lot of thought.

"Palaces got tons o' protection. Security. Shit like dat. We're gonna need a lot more guns. Th' Brood ain't up to'spec yet, neither, so varren're out. But we can git some 'splosives. Mebbe a gunship - somethin' we kin use t'take out reinforced placements, turrets, large groups o'mercs, shit like that. Can we git a mako or a yeti on short notice? Hammerhead, mebbe? How you plannin' on gettin' past th' guns, ennyways? We got a stealth suite on this thing I ain't known about?"

There was a long, withering silence.

"Kirok, I know two things about the palace right now. One is that it exists, and the other, pertaining to everything other than its existence, starts with 'sweet' and rhymes with 'Bacall'. A couple days to get an idea of what we'd theoretically be up against would be nice, before we start formulating plans."

Kirok shrugged innocently. It was a massive gesture that reminded one of plate tectonics.

"I'm just sayin'. Guns'd be a good idea, s'all. Ain't that right, Jil?"

"Okay, yeah, I'm in favor of guns. That said... art is a weird thing. Sometimes it sits on the market for ages and doesn't sell, sometimes it starts bidding wars, and really high-profile pieces are impossible to ditch because everybody would recognize them right away and know they were stolen. If we do this, we need some idea of what he's got in there so we can make sure we don't grab anything too outrageous."

That may have ruled out the three-pound diamond, though it could probably be cut into smaller pieces. They'd be worth less, though, and still traceable if anyone got an inkling to do a really deep scan. Risky, but three pounds of diamond...

"There's also the fact that batarian art generally only really appeals to batarians - something to do with having four eyes - who don't really have an economy. If he's got a lot of that we'd have a very small market to sell to, and being batarians they'd know that and barter the shit out of us. Almost as bad as the volus, when it comes to money. That said, though, it's a slaver palace. Odds are there's something valuable in there just waiting to be emancipated."

"'Sides, if he's gotta palace, dude's gotta have enemies, right?" Kirok rumbled as he shifted next to Jil. "Mebbe we can git someone t'fund th' robbery inna first place - y'know, 'we're gonna hit this dude hard, if y'wanna send enny kinda message while we're in, leave a donation an' we'll see 'bout doin' it.' S'way krogan do it. Mebbe raise some flags, but a lil' coin's always good. Whatcha think, Shirin?"

All of these limitations and possibilities were valid. Often, planning a job was harder than actually executing it. There were all kinds of factors to account for - case in point, right here - and unlike the vids, 'winging it' was usually just asking to get lit up.

(Shirin had said 'all right, we're gonna have to wing it' exactly once during a heist in progress, and although it was inevitable that she'd have to say it again someday, it was best to put that day off for as long as possible.)

"It's possible. We might end up needing some outside funding - like Jil says, there's bound to be something worth taking, but hell if we know what and where it is. That means we can't plan rigidly - we'll have to do a lot of running around and looking, which means more chances to get caught, which means more chances to die in a shootout. Some backing might be helpful."

It would also have to be carefully chosen and conducted as quietly as possible, lest Glorious Governor Gro'Habbon get word ahead of time that someone was planning on cleaning out his palace, but Kirok had kind of said that, and besides, all three of them already knew it.

"Dunno. We'll see how it works out - I'll put out some feelers, see if I can find out anything about the area, the government, any enemies they might have, that kind of thing." Shirin closed the omnitool and glanced between her confidantes. "...Tomorrow, though. I spent most of today on a personal project and if I don't get my five hours of sleep in, I'm gonna start missing details on the job, and that's unacceptable."

Over time, it had become evident to Jil and Kirok that 'a personal project' was a euphemism for 'finding and killing that quarian'. Sometimes it was better not to get between a drell and her white whale, especially when she made sure it didn't get in the way of her job performance.

Kirok just rolled his eyes at the drell and chuffed under his breath.

"Yeah, yeah. Jus' don't let yer 'project' hurt m'paycheck. Krogan's gotta eat, an' last time I werked fer a charity was... uh..."

There was an uncomfortable moment as Kirok wracked his brain for the memory. His face went slack with the effort.

"It was a while ago. Longer'n you've been 'live. Think I'll start combin' through Noveria's catalogs, see if Mars State Firearms done brought out ennything new we need."

"That isn't exactly a long time. And trust me, you'll keep getting paid as long as we keep bringing in hauls."

The doors parted, and (with the documents still scrolling in the air around her), Shirin stepped back into her cabin.

"Thanks again, Jil. Good work."

Hopefully she'd be able to get the rest of those five hours - if he started singing again, it was not guaranteed.

Jil watched the drell woman go, thankful he'd been able to buy off her ire with useful information. As she stepped into the cabin, it left him and Kirok alone in the hallway.

"Okay, I'll have your shotgun back to you by the end of the week. For now, I should get back to work, minus the singing of course. If ever there was an unappreciated talent, it's me."

With that, the quarian hopped back down into the open flooring, burying himself in his work.