"I'll try to catch her in a quiet period," Kaidan promises about the briefing. (This will also give him time to mentally sort out just what level of detail he's comfortable going into -- the science behind the mass effect is neutral in his own time and place, but could upset a lot of power balances here.

He'd have thought, if you asked him five minutes ago, that getting a smile from the lady d'Zefyst would be some sort of victory. Instead, he's left feeling even more strongly like he's talking with an asari matriarch who's just made a half-dozen plans he can't even guess at. Still... "Yes ma'am," he confirms. "Considering I was dropped here with nothing more than the clothes I was wearing, I don't hold out much hope for taking data back with me, but just knowing the location of the complexes would be all our own geneticists would need. And for something like this, it wouldn't run into the genemod rules."

He's not so naive as to assume the intentions of the Cetagandans are entirely pure, here -- a lot can be done to bring a world up to galactic speed without landing a colonizing military force -- but giving one of their lead researchers a chance to do something so easy to spin as altruistic might bear fruit.