Liara looked around the large open space of her tent. It was slightly smaller than her quarters aboard the Normandy had been, but the walls of the tent were higher and she had fewer personal belongings to take up space. Her array of monitors was finally set up and functional, but crates of other supplies sat ignored. They were what remained of her personal effects. A picture of Benezia has a Maiden, a few pictures of herself as a child with her Mother, a particularly treasured holovid of her with her Mother and Grandmother. And most painful of all, her only picture of Shepard, a stolen image of the frequently cranky Marine in a rare moment of peaceful slumber. Taken just weeks before... before now.

There was an entire crate of clothing, of course, and various other necessities she had managed to salvage throughout the war. But the pictures meant the most, and would prove the hardest to unpack. For now, she lacked the energy to deal with them or any of the rest of her emotional turmoil. And the messages from Jack provided her with the perfect distraction.

A quick tap of a finger brought out a holographic keyboard and she entered a quick set of commands. If Glyph were functional, he could handle it, but unfortunately it took him a good day or so to sort out his functions after a power down. And it would not be too much work to pull up the information. When she was done with Jack she could add search parameters for any information regarding surviving members of Shepard’s crew.

The outdated information was the first she found, and with surprisingly little data corruption. Liara smiled at that and dragged a finger over the monitor screen, effectively tossing the data to a larger monitor so it would be easier to present it to Jack, if and when she arrived. The newer data was harder, still needing to be pieced together, but she was able to gather up most of the fragments and get a few useful bits from it within a matter of minutes.

Oriana woke early, long before the sun came up, and at least an hour ahead of her scattered team of scientists. She woke up exhausted, every morning, and physically dragged herself from bed. Getting herself cleaned and dressed was a special torment, but she would not leave small private section of the researchers’ barracks without doing it. And like every other morning now, she slogged out of the tent with a loud yawn.

The camp was quiet at this early hour, just before the general population woke up. There were still people about, mostly soldiers or Miranda’s long suffering subordinates, groggily making their way through the morning hours. For the soldiers it was either the last minutes of their overnight watch or the pre-dawn preparations of the morning shift. No one smiled at her, or even acknowledged her, as she made her way to the mess hall. Blessedly it was in operation almost entirely around the clock, aside from a few short hours in the middle of the night.

Once she stepped through the swinging door of the mess, however, she did what she could to make herself look alert and happy. It took only a few minutes to get her food, the cooks on duty given to little more than grunts as communication. She smiled at them politely and picked a table near the door to settle herself.