content warning for: trauma, references to PTSD, references to suicide
A/N: The Siege happened before and during the battle with the Crucible, when the Reapers moved the Citadel to Earth. For the sake of this fic I have a Reaper perched inside to carry out the harvesting, but that aspect is very tangential to this fic. Haven't decided yet if I'll write more of the Siege.
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Evan "Mouse" Dammer, human male, former Citadel architect and Ward repair planner (retired):
"She stood before us, see, near the dock. Stood in front of the pictures. You know, the pictures of the missing, the dead. Of people's loved ones. Covered the whole wall by then.
"There was a bit of light coming from the side, some of it was the station, some of it was the fires. The explosions too. A lot of noise, I remember that, whole station was going to shit, but I also remember that we heard her clearly. Like the chaos didn't — no, not like she didn't feel it, not like that. Like she knew how to reach past it."
Like a warlord?
"A who?"
Battle leader. Commander.
"What? Are you kidding me? Not a chance. Like a...speaker? University type? Or...I don't know. Not military, not in a million years."
What makes you sure?
"Had a few run-ins with military types in my day. Met Shepard herself once, actually - no, really, I did. 'Bout a year before the Reapers came, something to do with...to do with...ah, it'll come to me later. I'll never forget that glare, though. Shit. No, the Angel was nothing like that."
What else do you remember?
"She weren't that pretty, maybe she were. I don't really remember. I do remember I couldn't take my eyes off her. Something about her...it was like she had some divine purpose, and she made me feel like that that purpose was us. Look, I don't know nobody religious, nobody, and definitely not me, but she sure convinced me there was something I could believe in. Some bigger meaning, you know? To the things she said. No wonder we call her 'Angel' nowadays. Earned that name.
"And when she spoke...the things she said...hundreds of people must've heard her, and they spread the word. She's the real hero, I say. Yeah, I know the batarians fought and everyone else pitched in, but it was all 'cause of her. All started with her. She saved the Tuatha Ward and everyone in it."
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Von Bartrek, volus female, executive manager of Devlon Industries:
"Urdnot Saldek, it is a *cough* pleasure to speak with you. I read your excellent piece on the STG two years ago. Explosive reporting. Your critics do not *cough* give you enough credit. Have you *cough* have you been in Tuatha long?"
Von Bartrek. Tell me about the Siege.
"Right to business, I see."
You disapprove?
*laughs, coughs* "Quite the contrary. You are here to interview me, I am *cough* here for the credits you're paying me. Certainly *cough* tidier. And I do not like wasting time, you understand."
You're dying. Not much to it.
*sighs* "How I've missed krogan bluntness. No, I mean it. What do you want to know, son of the Urdnot clan?"
Turrets. Twelve in the Tuatha Ward were completed and operational that day.
"You are obviously no stranger to the Siege, young one. But that's not a question."
Battle data recovered from the remnants of the CDF indicates that anti-aircraft fire directed at the Reaper came from thirteen locations in the Tuatha Ward. Visual signatures captured on video confirmed twelve of these as where anti-air turrets had been constructed. The origination point for the thirteenth didn't match any known turret location, the timing was unprofessional, and radiation signatures indicated a power source that would've broken any pre-war regulation six times over.
"...It's a pleasure to finally speak with one who does their homework, Urdnot-clan. I had a good feeling about you. *a coughing fit* Yes, that was my ship."
Two questions, then. How did you convert a frigate-sized pleasure palace into an effective anti-air cannon in four hours?
"Hah! *cough* Let me tell you a couple things about a crisis, young one. The first is that every skill matters, and the second is that everyone, and I mean everyone, will pitch in to help. *cough* We had refugees without any useful experience, yes, but we also had plenty who'd *cough* who'd been engineers, mechanics, arms dealers, pirates. Batarians, quarians, turians. Some professionals, others fringe types, all knowing roughly what it would take to make a big gun out of scrap. Along with how to bypass most of the extraneous steps. You know. *cough* Armor, shielding. An automated means of preventing it from simply blowing itself up.
"They cannibalized an impounded pirate ship for a decently sized cannon. Took two hours of backbreaking work - ah, for them, of course - but after it all I learned that the process should've taken half a day. Incredible, no?
"Apart from rigging my ship's mass effect core as a power source, which, yes, important, they really just used my ship as a mount, once I had repositioned it. My, I can *cough* still remember their jokes. A wonderfully foul-mouthed bunch, that lot. All dead now, of course, from the same illnesses that will soon take me. I suppose that's how we were able to construct it in such short order. No safety measures."
About that.
*coughs* "Ah, the inevitable *cough* question. Ask away, Urdnot-clan."
You oversaw the cannon personally for five hours.
"I did. Wasn't going to let anyone else rotate my ship."
Precisely. You'd managed and piloted your own ship. You knew the danger of eezo exposure with no protection. Volus environmental suits today are no match for that kind of output. Forget three decades ago. You knew.
"Of course I did. The others knew it as well, yes, in case that *cough* was your followup."
You did it anyway.
"We did. *cough* There wasn't time. Not to look for hazard suits, not to build it properly. Every minute we wasted was a minute that Reaper tightened its grip. I wish it had been different, but so do all who lived through the War."
It was a miracle the weapon didn't blow up after the first shot. You were instrumental in ensuring that the engineers could work around your custom modifications, but the core would've been leaking radiation and other toxic elements the whole time. So, my second question: why stay?
*a long silence, coughs* "Would it make sense if I told you that I stayed because I was afraid?"
Yes.
*laughs* "I truly have missed conversing with your species, Urdnot-clan." *a pause* "'Don't think about the future right now. About what might be. This is where we are, and we have to make it through this.'
"That is what we did. We fought and died so that there might be a future. And for all I've suffered, for all the decades I've lost as a result, I've still seen more than forty years of it. So *cough* forgive me if this does not answer your question properly, but I stayed because I could."
Those words, about the future.
*coughs*
They're hers, aren't they.
"Yes, Urdnot-clan. Saldek. Yes they are."
(Von Bartrek suffered from severe health complications developed during the Siege; manageable at first, the symptoms worsened in her later years with only occasional respite. I spoke with her during her last remission period. She died five weeks after this interview.)
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Madak Shar, batarian male, aide to the batarian ambassador to the Multispecies Repatriation Committee and former deputy chairman of the Citadel Survivors' Rehabilitation Project (indicted twice for corruption):
"Can you believe I used to be a pirate?"
Is that a serious question?
"Okay, I'll give you that, but really it's difficult for me to remember the details, so long ago...anyway, yes, that was me. Captain of a sizable freighter - almost a frigate - three dozen crew, human slaves, all of it.
"It means nothing now, nothing but nostalgia, but back then it was an impressive accomplishment for a batarian just breaking thirty, and I won't deny I enjoyed the lifestyle. Name a crime, I did it. No shame, no regrets. It's different today, I guess...but back then I was a pirate, and I was real good at it.
"Then They came."
*a long pause*
If you need to talk about this at another time —
"Fuck you, krogan. I took your request, you're in my house, I'm doing this at my pace."
Alright.
"We fought Them twice - once on the ground, then again fleeing Kar'shan. Eh. 'Fight' isn't the right word. If someone 'fought' me like we did back then I'd rupture a lung laughing."
The Reapers didn't allow you to fight.
"They, krogan, ripped organized resistance to shreds, and we occasionally sent panicked shots back at them. Think we plinked an Eyeball, maybe.
*a long pause* "It took my ship several weeks to limp to the Citadel. To this day I don't know why I made it our destination - I guess when all you've ever known tears itself apart in madness and fire, you seek the strongest shelter you can find, where you can curl up and die in peace. Doesn't matter who it's infested with. Kar'shan was oblivion. The Citadel wasn't.
"And so, just a couple months later, we found ourselves caught in another apocalypse. Only this time there was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. And that...that's not something you can be ready for.
"Remember, we were the first. They came for us before any of you. While the preening Council races were still arguing if 'the threat' was even real, our species was drowning in fire and choking on ash. A lot of my people will never forgive them, any of them, for that.
"I haven't. I won't. Not now, not ever.
"Put it this way. I loathe Shepard, there's no death too horrible for her, but by Kar'shan at least she did something. Imagine that. Put me in a room with any politician from that era and the monster who murdered the Bahak system, put me in there with one shot, and I think Shepard…I'm not sure I use it on her."
Not many batarians who would say that.
"Nevermind. You're right. I'd kill them both."
I see.
"No, you don't. You're a krogan, and if anyone understands it'll be the krogan, but you're young. You don't have to tell me. It's in your posture, the way you walked in. Hell even the way you talk. You're Peace-born. Naive. You don't know firsthand what it's like for your whole species to be abandoned, not like that, so what I'm telling you...batarians died by the million. Cooked alive in burning refugee transports, crushed into paste by the bones of breaking cities. Turned into...into...those things.
"And only when our mechanized corpses came for you did the galaxy give a shit." *a short silence*
Tell me about the Ward.
*sighs* "Right, yes...Tuatha.
"We were sitting in the refugee camp - just sitting, waiting to die. What was the point of continuing on? We'd seen our whole society burn around us. Everything we batarians were was gone. Obliterated. Whether we lived or died was irrelevant, because what were we? Hell, weren't we dead already? We didn't belong anywhere, didn't mean anything. Nothing we did would matter. Makes life pretty pointless. Even if you don't, your species knows that feeling. Couple days earlier, two of my crew had cross-eyed their shotguns and checked out. A few others had simply walked off and never returned. The rest of us weren't far from one or the other."
What changed?
"You know exactly what fucking changed."
Tell me about her.
"Alright. We're there, They are coming and everyone knows it. Not sure how, but that was the one rumor that could never be controlled. Then, suddenly, it was true. Lots of screaming. Terror, mostly. Stayed like that a while, too - even in the first hour only the Presidium was dying. Not that it made a difference in a cesspit like the Tuatha camps.
"And then a human walked into our group, straight toward me. Young female, hesitant but not really afraid. That part hurt the most, I think. The lack of fear. From a human, from prey. Showed how pathetic we'd become. How weak I was.
"I told her to fuck off. To give me just one reason not to shove my gun through her teeth. But she only looked at me with irritatingly smart eyes. Green eyes. They were green. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you varren shit. Green like...the Basin Sea on Kar'shan, before...or like the...
"Hrgh. It must've been that stare, that fucking...all the anger in me, I felt it, like fire. I raised my fist to hit her - don't know why I didn't think to pull my gun — probably for the best that I didn't, in retrospect - but before I could swing she spoke.
"'I believe that you'll fight.' And that was it. She walked away. Never saw her again.
"I...hearing that from a human, from one so obviously...after all we'd been through...I can't explain that feeling. Won't ever recapture it, and I don't want to.
"But right then it was what I needed. That fire didn't go away. Yeah, I cursed her out until she was long gone, but my crew saw and heard the whole thing, and when she was gone a lot of us started thinking...and the more we thought, the harder it was to shake the nagging feeling that maybe we could do something.
"That somehow, we could make a difference in all this.
"So we spoke to other batarians, gathered them to set up some defenses, found weapons, and when the husks came we fought. We fought, and we died, and we...and...and with the...the galaxy calls it the 'Batarian Stand', like they - no, krogan, do not fucking ask - we...showed them. We showed the galaxy a side of us that they...and we...hadn't known existed."
She gave you something you could do.
"You asked me to speak of her…I can say only this: I despised her, and you know what? Maybe I still fucking do. Put that in your tape. And we fought for our own lives, our own dignity, nothing was given to us. That was my fire, our fire. Our blood. And we paid for our future with an ocean of it. The few of us who survived are still paying for it.
"But…Kar'shan damn it. She helped us light the spark."
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Saldek's Comments:
I was one of the last krogan children conceived under the shadow of the genophage.
My brothers and I were born a few months after the Reaper War into a society greater than any krogan since the earliest Rebellions had imagined. With the genophage cured, there was new hope for our species to flourish.
Our image in the galaxy changed almost overnight. Under Wrex and Bakara, we turned from war for suicide's sake and began to build a culture of strength with meaning. The desolate nuclear wasteland we call home was reborn – still uncompromising, still a world that devours the cowardly, but we krogan have carved our rediscovered spirit right into its hard shell.
The adult krogan remember when our future wasn't so bright, and I've heard their stories. When our species had no future, Tuchanka didn't just kill the weak, it ravaged the strong. We krogan fought each other for scraps, a few clans clawing for dregs of our former glory at the expense of the rest.
The Citadel's Tuatha Ward, when the Reapers attacked in 2186, was…analogous, to a point. A weak comparison, but not relative to the rest of the station. You wouldn't know it, standing within its glittering serenity today, but every Citadel record tells of a Lower Ward so depressed and bleak that it was a graveyard of the living. Aside from the Presidium, Tuatha was the ward most likely to be overrun when the Reaper forces pressed their attack.
Consider this atmosphere, if you can. Survivors' testimonies tell us that morale was in a dead varren's rotting digestive tract. These were people who knew the end was coming for them and had stopped caring weeks before the Reapers even arrived. Over three hundred thousand refugees, of whom nearly half were sick, wounded, or catatonic. A couple hundred Citadel officials to coordinate them. Few military supplies apart from several Blue Suns weapons caches uncovered shortly before the marauders showed up.
And every one of their dead, a potential husk.
According to my brothers, a growing number of krogan visit the Tuatha Ward when they come to the Citadel after their Rite. To walk its corridors, and in their gentle gleam to reflect on the old despair hidden by this decades-long tranquility. I'm not surprised. A hundred desperate battles took place here. The Batarian Stand alone is legend.
My own visit was quite memorable.
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Decimus Vidor, turian male, best-selling author of the acclaimed Homeward Star novels and former C-Sec officer (retired):
"She had a way with people, I remember that much.
"Saw it happen with everyone, even the batarians in the corner. She'd walk up to a group, speak quietly with them, and after she left...it wasn't everyone. Not even most at first. But some - two over here, three over there - would be standing up a bit straighter, checking weapons or grabbing medpacs, talking quickly to each other. A few walking with purpose. Eventually the mood caught, spread. Within a couple hours it had cut right through the despair and, well. Here we are."
Here we are.
"I'm still impressed at how many heeded her request, in the end - and it was always a request, as far as I can tell. Nothing more or less than a reminder that they weren't alone in this.
"And she listened, too. Plenty of people can fire up a crowd, but it takes a special kind to heal one. She'd have made a hell of a speaker or some sort of organizer, I remember thinking. Or a therapist, maybe. For all I know, she was one of those. Or not. Makes you wonder, doesn't it? Who she was before. What work she did. Anya tells me they still don't know her background."
Hard enough to search war-ravaged records when you do know who you're looking for.
"I suppose that's true...and when you consider that she was almost certainly a refugee herself, that task must be nearly impossible."
Putting it lightly.
*a pause* "Ever reach out to the Shadow Broker? Don't know if he even survived the War, but maybe -"
I have. Twice.
"Hah, so he is still active. Incredible. And no luck even from him?"
It's complicated. Please continue.
"Very well. Where was I...ah. I'd been watching her progress, I'd heard the echoes of her speech, so I thought I knew what to expect when she walked up to me. I didn't even wait for her to open her mouth, I told her I knew what was at stake, that I'd fight the good fight. It seemed pretty hopeless, but even if we weren't all trapped on the station, I was still a member of C-Sec."
One of less than forty remaining in the Tuatha Ward.
*a pause* "I hope you don't expect me to speak ill of my former colleagues. I haven't judged the decision many of them made in those circumstances, and I won't allow you to."
Appreciation of one individual's code does not require insulting others'.
"That's right."
Yes. Why hadn't you left?
"Job like that's supposed to mean something. You understand, I hope? We turians know our duty better than anyone. And then there was Anya, the young human I'd been keeping an eye out for over the previous month, give or take. I had plenty of reasons to shoot until our end came. Wanted to make sure she knew that this turian wouldn't run.
"But the Angel just shook her head. 'I know,' she said, 'but duty's not all you have right now, is it?'
"Sometimes it takes someone else to get you on the right track. She didn't say anything more to me, and she didn't have to. As soon as the Citadel arms reopened and the cleanup had begun, I asked Anya if she wanted to stay with me while we looked for her parents. Ended up adopting her officially six months later, and she's been the light of my life ever since.
"Ah, hmm, don't tell her that, please. She'll tell me to 'stop being sappy'." *a pause* "I think I've looked that up on the extranet ten times and...Saldek, I'll be honest with you, I still don't understand how complimenting my daughter makes me a tree." *a pause* "Heh. Humans, right?"
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Dr. Anya Vidor, human female, Tuatha Ward physician and veteran coordinator of "Fight for the Lost" (a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing together family members separated by the Reaper War):
"I was a teenager at the time, just a month shy of fifteen. I'd come to the Citadel with the second wave of refugees. This was right after the Reapers had occupied Earth, before most of humanity's smaller colonies had been overwhelmed.
"I...I still remember the day I left Drasta. People rushing about, crew and passengers alike, easily twice the number the dock could safely fit. No open panic, not yet, but the collective anxiety made me sick to my stomach. I saw my two best friends get on another ship, a freighter bound for Thessia. I never learned whether they made it out when the Reapers attacked the asari - I want to hope, but given the odds...I mean, the planet was scoured.
"My parents promised they'd come soon, that they'd find me as soon as they got to the Citadel. They never did.
"I was lost when I arrived. The serious guards, the recruitment posters, the unending stream of refugees...against a surreal backdrop of bouncing clubs and roaring parties and placid scenery. So early in the war, the Citadel was still smothered in a blanket of casual disbelief and overwhelming arrogance. Millions died every day, but the Citadel's residents were used to the problem being solved long before it affected them."
Did that anger you?
"You know, it didn't, and maybe it should have. The contrast between the Citadel-dwellers and the refugees coming in was, to put it very kindly, stark. But I was a guest in their home. If they wanted to party, let them. In a few months maybe I'd be back home doing the same.
"I was fourteen, remember. I'd lived my whole life in a town so quiet you could hear the grass grow. I hadn't yet figured out how bad it really was."
So you stayed in the refugee camp. And then?
"A funny old turian, one of the Tuatha Ward's veteran cops, kept asking me if I was alright, making sure I was fed and had a corner to sleep in. Yes, that was Decimus." *a pause* "Kind of amazing, really, the turns the universe takes. If you'd told fourteen-year-old me that the awkward turian I'd just met would become my father..." *laughs*
You wouldn't have believed it.
"Of course not. If anything, I didn't pay him much attention at first, though I was certainly grateful. He was just, you know, a guy helping out. That was supposed to be it. I was waiting for the people I knew, walling off the worry and fear that I didn't want to acknowledge but knew would take me over if I gave it a chance.
"Then Cerberus attacked, and then Thessia fell, and those walls I'd built to protect myself collapsed. The Reapers were coming. My family was gone. We were all dead. It was just a matter of time.
"I was a sobbing wreck in Decimus' arms – he really is strange, wonderfully so, no stick up his ass like I'm always told turians are supposed to have - don't tell him I said that - anyway, I was a total wreck when the Angel came to us.
"She never told me to fight, just that I should do what I could. Doubt it took her more than one look at me. Probably would've discouraged me from it if she could've known I'd take it the right way."
This disappointed you?
"Oh, no, I would only have gotten in the way. I'd volunteered at my colony's med center a few months earlier, before the chaos hit, and I knew more about first aid than I ever would about shooting. But she herself had a gun, a pistol, and she looked like she meant to join those at the front.
"One of the first things Decimus and I did after the war was search for her, just to thank her for what she'd done. Took forever, as I'm you can imagine. When we found out she'd been killed in the chaos, that was bad enough…but then to discover that this woman who'd done so much for us, for everyone, could just vanish with barely a trace…"
You've worked with Fight for the Lost.
"Twenty-six years now."
Did it help you discover anything about her?
"Not a thing. And truth be told, my memory is useless. She was there twenty seconds, said ten words to me, and then she was gone.
"I spoke to people around the Ward for years, trying to learn about her. Was a little obsessed with it back in my teens. Same story everywhere I went. No one knew anything. Everyone had a different description, muddled memory - things you expect from warzone trauma, but it's frightening to think how it's distorted what little we know about the woman. And she never revealed anything about herself.
"We never even learned her name. How could no one know her name?"
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Saldek's Comments:
Who was the Angel?
We know she was human, and we know she was female. Many accounts say she was young, too, but even among humans that's where the agreement ends.
For most of the rest, many of whom were lifelong colonials whose first real experience with humans was as a fellow refugee…well. Trying to describe humans is a nightmarish task. Don't get me started on "hair".
Of what the Angel did during the Siege, we have more to go on – and this is where, at first, the story baffled me. She was no warrior, yet she knew how to move others to battle. Some survivors attest to her confidence and an "inner fire"; others recount the words that ignited such things within them. She reached out to thousands who didn't know her and had no reason to trust her…and somehow, this was enough.
The Angel, Tuatha veterans tell us, made the Ward's survival possible.
But beyond that I've discovered almost nothing about her. Sometimes feels like the Protheans themselves left more hard evidence than she did. What was her profession? Where did she come from? Clearly she was someone comfortable conversing with every species in the galaxy, but there is nothing to say this was true of her before the stress of the Siege. Did she have training? What kind?
Who was she that she could rip through the terror that held so many of the refugees? Today, the Angel is a religious icon for tens of millions, and not a single one knows her real name.
Why did she do it?
Dr. Vidor – keenly and commendably curious, for a human – and many others have testified that the Angel fought alongside the people she rallied. Running from battlefront to battlefront, exposing herself to enemy fire. Stories are told, more than can possibly be true: of desperate firefights and heroic sacrifice, of relief, of escape.
Many accounts state that she was present at the ward's docks during the brutal firefight around the passenger liner Comfort. Citadel infrastructure records tell us that when the vessel's fuel cells ruptured, the explosion overloaded the docks' atmospheric shields and opened the entire docking bay to vacuum for four and a half seconds.
For most, her trail seems to end here. Rumors abound of further sightings and tales of apotheosis are common, but no matter where I look not one trustworthy account of the Siege ends with her survival. Her body, as far as we know, was never found.
My inquiries to the Shadow Broker have been rebuffed - if they know anything, they're keeping it close to the chest.
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Lieutenant Trisk vas Tuatha nar Qwib'Qwib, quarian male, head of C-Sec's Cybersecurity Division (first quarian to enter C-Sec):
"I...yes, alright. You won't -"
I promise. Not a word.
"I've never had to face -"
It's been three decades. Your uncle died two years ago on Rannoch. What are you worried about?
"Look, it's not that-"
Whatever. I'm not here for your stay after the Siege, quarian. Tell me about what you did during it.
"Oh...okay. Of course. It won't surprise you to learn that before the Siege I worked as an engineer –"
It doesn't.
"Yes, but here's the thing. We're efficient engineers, we've had to be, except a kid learns from their elders. My uncle...didn't pursue war. Until he did, at Rannoch. In the Unification War. But he never encouraged it. Look, point is, I wasn't a combat engineer, strictly. Not like Tali'Zorah. So when the batarians and turians started going at the turrets, at barricades and fortifications, they didn't need me. They had their own way of doing things. Not better, necessarily, but...I was out of my field."
Software. You were a hacker.
"Well, officially we called it 'cybersecurity infrastructure', but back in the Migrant Fleet...I mean, you can guess. We were at war with the geth. A good hacker was worth a hundred rifles, and if you weren't good you didn't try. Too risky. We used to lose ships like that, before they set the rules. And after, too, if you believe the rumors about the Alarai."
You weren't just good, though.
"Correct. Tali'Zorah was better on the fly - we always knew she'd end up becoming a combat specialist, and a brilliant one at that - though the admiral bit I didn't see coming - yes, she was much better on the fly, but me? Sit me down in front of a computer bank and I could be her equal. I just needed time to dig in, as the humans say."
They say that you single-handedly kept the comm lines active.
*sighs* "I can't take all the credit for that. Three volus gave their lives so I could do my work safely. But I also did more than - make sure you include this, please - I did more than just communication. I found supplies, I mapped routes, I kept the power running, directed defenders to weak points and choke points. Most of them died. They did things, though. Succeeded. A lot succeeded before they fell.
"But, I don't mean, I mean to say, that is…look, I didn't know anything, krogan. About the battles. The invasion. The...I was just…doing everything I could to keep busy. The Angel told me that when facing an unassailable obstacle, I should start with what I knew. With what I could handle. And I did. It...distracted me from my...from..."
You hacked the Council's most classified military files during a Reaper siege.
*chuckles* "Y-yes. Not sure if that improved my C-Sec application, after, or nearly ruined it."
You discovered the reserve docking bay three Wards over and its lone occupant, the CDF cruiser Tarpeia. Did you guess at the time that someone – perhaps the cruiser's CO, Captain Niria Var'sko - would attempt to fly it? You sent half a dozen people to lock it down so that the Reaper forces couldn't board.
*a long pause* "That was a dream. A fantasy. I never thought...it was supposed to be a rundown cruiser, scheduled for decommission. Until I broke the layers of firewalls hiding the classified bits. Which was all of it. Keelah, the tech they stuffed into that ship...
"I told them. I told them to go. People with naval experience. I...I just wanted to cover all the options. You know. To...protect it, I guess? It was just another thing for me to do to keep the fear at bay. And half a dozen people…not me, though, because I was afraid. I was afraid.
"I know what it did late in the Siege, how Captain Var'sko put it to use, bless her, but I...oh, keelah, I sent those people to die, and I didn't go with them.
"I was an admiral's nephew, krogan, but not on that day. Why didn't I go? Why didn't I die with them?"
(As nephew of one of the highest ranking admirals in the Migrant Fleet - and taking on his Pilgrimage only three years after that of galactic legend Tali'Zorah vas Normandy - Lieutenant Trisk faced an immense amount of pressure in his Pilgrimage. I recommend his short but powerful memoir Clouds Over the Network for his tale.)
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Madak Shar on the Batarian Stand:
"Ah, here it is. The instant you contacted me, I knew. I knew it.
"You want to know about the battle? About the Batarian Stand? You can just watch the vids. Oh, they're great. Top fucking quality. What is it the humans say, something about a bunch of stars? High five stars, that's what they are."
I want to hear about the Stand from you, not from melodramatic idiots trying to sell me a lie.
"You don't say. Great line you have there, like I haven't heard that pyjak piss before."
Don't test me, batarian. My species knows better than to disrespect tales of war.
"You really love to pry, krogan, don't you? Fine. Just this once, because it might be I almost like you. Then you never speak to me again. Sound good?"
No, but I don't think I have a choice.
"You're Kar'shan-damned right you don't." *sighs* "Well, not like I won't be seeing us tonight anyway...
"The fighting had been going on for a while. A few hours, maybe, with spikes of intensity. They'd overwhelmed our outer defenses, as expected. There were, what, a thousand experienced fighters in the ward? Fifteen hundred, maybe? Lot of untrained but eager fodder, though - thank the fucking Angel for that - and I have to admit, they held their own. Still, not much against an invading horde.
"But we'd found heavy weapons - you know about that, of course you do - yeah, we'd found a couple caches. I think they belonged to other criminal organizations. The Blue Suns, probably. Always hated that stupid blue armor. Those pricks are one casualty of the war I sure don't miss.
"You ever fight, krogan? Not 'combat', whatever weak shit you kids think you do these days. I mean real fighting. The kind where every step could mean, should mean death, but you have to take that step because sitting still will kill you too. Every second has to be your last, because if you don't respect that then it's a guarantee. Kar'shan, I don't even know how you could know."
My krant slew a thresher maw during our Rite.
*laughs* "Oh, well done. Then you have a taste of what hell is. The explosions of gunfire, the shrieks of pain and rage and purpose. Your friends are burning alive, and you can smell it and it makes you want to throw up, but if you take the time it'll be the last thing you do.
"It's worse if the smell makes you hungry, they say. Knew guys who told me that, afterward. That they were hungry. Number of them ate their pistol barrels that first year, before the Citadel pricks started catching on that, hey, maybe an eighty-six percent fatality rate is going to fuck up a Hegemony survivor pretty bad…"
*a long pause* "Where was…right. You ignore the little cuts from shrapnel. You take cover behind a body and then your mouth is full of its guts and piss and shit. You don't spare a moment to properly spit it out or wipe your eyes or stretch your leg cramp. You can't. Nothing makes sense, nothing except moving and pulling the trigger until you click empty or overheat or die."
*a long pause, punctuated by deep breaths* "We thought we had them stalled, and for the most part we did. I told you the outer defenses were fucked, but the rest were holding, to our surprise. It took us a little while to realize what they were doing, that a swarm of them had split off and was striking right for the refugee camps. I mean a swarm. That's one thing the vids get right.
"Once we figured that out...I already told you how we felt. That we wanted to prove ourselves.
"And we'd been doing that already. Wherever we ran, we blew those Reaper-spawn away. Our blood was pumping, our heads hot…"
*a deep breath* "...we weren't warriors, krogan. We were gods. Angry gods, avenging the ghosts of our species. And Kar'shan, we were glorious. We were glorious."
*a pause* "But when we heard about the horde...this was different. Refugee camps...and no one else was close enough to make a difference in time. Just a lot of batarians. Just us. I wonder if that...
"Anyway. I sent my teams on ahead, through back alleys and buildings, and ran to contact Heikal. Didn't take long, she'd already heard, met me halfway." *whistles* "Heikal. What a fighter. Her whole band, too. Never knew a -" *spits* "If you have something to say, asshole, say it."
I don't care about batarian culture. I'm here to learn about the Stand.
"Hmm…and I bet you're familiar with the galaxy's stereotypes, even being so young. Krogan."
Yes. Batarian. So you called other batarian units to aid you. And then?
"Yeah. Heikal and me arrived a couple minutes ahead of the brutes, but the marauders had already found cover. Or tried to. The shooting was picking up when I snuck around to join the line, had turned our choke point into a death trap. We had snipers, rocket launchers, machine guns, more grenades than we could count. Five hundred rifles - courtesy of the Blue Suns, may they rot - and the batarians to shoot them.
"You've been around here, right? You know that broad street close to the main bay? That was our killzone. A single thoroughfare wide and near a hundred yards of effective range. Once they entered it, they either broke through us or they died. They'd been doing the latter for hours. We were confident they'd do the same here.
"But this time they had harvesters with them. Fucking harvesters. They..."
*a long pause*
And yet you stood your ground.
*laughs* "Hah! What a stupid phrase. 'Stood our ground'. Right up there with 'held the line'. Fuck. I told you, it was to the death. There wasn't a soul who thought otherwise. We all knew it, and they sure fought like they knew it. If we bent a foot, they'd snap us in half and slaughter forty thousand refugees. For starters.
"Can you imagine a harvester loose among camps of weaponless civilians? Can you imagine if...if they revived them, those numbers flooding the other Wards? The ones barely hanging on as it was? Might've chained into the whole fucking station. Your 'Crucible' would've latched onto a nest of thirty-three million dead.
"So we fought. And we died. A marauder stumbled into our makeshift barricade with a bomb strapped to its gun, and suddenly our wall had a hole the size of a heavy tank. A hole we plugged with bodies. Ours, and theirs.
"I...it gets hazy, here. Images, impressions. I know I saw my pilot go down firing, his sidearm hardly denting the brute before it twisted his head off with a squish and a crack. I heard the sound from thirty yards away, louder than any explosion. Still remember it clearly. Pop that sharp stays with you.
"I saw another, my youngest mechanic, stick his rifle in a marauder's mouth and start blazing away, using the thing as a shield to soak up return fire. Annoying, lovable, brave bastard. Clever, too. You know the type. Well, you're krogan, maybe you don't. Kid was years from his third decade. Never really gave up when we made the Citadel.
"Eventually the kid burned through the marauder's skull, the rest of the corpse fell, and its buddies shot him to rags. One second alive, the next dead.
"One of the harvesters went down not long after that, just collapsed after we'd emptied about a thousand heat sinks into it. Couple of Heikal's gang finished it off up close, rockets to the neck. Monster took them with it when it exploded.
"I saw Heikal herself, Kar'shan bless her, I saw her at a machine gun like a flaming goddess, mowing down marauders by the dozen until a rocket blew her arm and half her face away. Caught sight of her a few minutes later, more blood than batarian. Her expression - what was left of it - was cold as space when she threw herself onto that brute's talons to stuff a grenade down its gullet. I have no idea how she's still alive today."
*a pause* "Chaos. Fucking chaos. I nearly lost my guts to the second harvester when it scythed through seven of my crew in one pass. Thirty of us jumped on that thing when it swooped low again, and four were still alive when it finally crashed to the ground.
"When it was over, when the firing finally trickled to a halt...maybe two in ten of us were breathing? All injured, all bloody, all broken. That's before you count the ones we couldn't save…
"And then that fucking red light swept through the place and the Siege was lifted, and then the cleanup started, and there were thousands of faces and loud voices around us, tens of thousands, saying we won, celebrating, and we stood there asking what the fuck we'd just won because all we could see was our people dead, our friends dead, the last pieces of the lives we'd known torn away. Gone.
"Just like that.
"The galaxy thought we were scum, and, shit, a lot of us were, by their standards, even by ours, but, Saldek…" *a pause*
You fought, batarian. You fought, and you killed them.
*a long silence*
*sighs* "...we...yes. Yes, we did. I did. But...Kar'shan, we lost so much.
"I still dream about us. I see us die. I hear us roar, and I hear us scream. Always have. Once or twice a week for the last thirty years. Nightmares that sleeping pills and mind relaxants can't touch. And yeah, I've tried that virtual cognitive therapy bullshit. Worked for a couple months.
"We'd already lost everything we knew, everything we were, and we...we still gave more. We gave more than we had. When the Stand destroyed our bodies our species reclaimed a part of its soul, but we who were there…I don't think any of us got ours back in the trade. Not then, and not since."
You called her 'Angel'.
"What?"
The Angel. Most batarians call her that, but you haven't until now. Why?
*silence*
Do you regret it?
"Fuck you. Get out."
Why did you do it?
"We did it. The 'why' doesn't matter. Now get the fuck out of my house. Don't come back."
(Shar was the only member of his crew to survive the Siege. As he promised, he kicked me out of his home and refused to see me again. No other survivors of the Batarian Stand agreed to an interview.)
###
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Saldek's Comments:
My stay in the Tuatha Ward lasts a month. I'd only intended to remain a few days, maybe a week at most. After all, my journey is far from over - there's still much to learn about the final days of the Reaper War. There are libraries and ruins (and ruined libraries) to dig through, information to request. I've still a hundred interviews to carry out, twenty of them with a line of secretaries and bodyguards just to get to the Consort.
It's hard to leave. The insular ward is almost a contradiction: as community-minded as the most traditional Pure Rannoch enclave, yet so accepting of outsiders that most visitors don't even draw a second glance. It's a curious combination, made all the more strange by the post-War retrenchment as the species of the galaxy licked their wounds in cautious isolation.
The result is a soothing, almost mystical atmosphere of deliberate, deep-seated faith. It doesn't feel real.
Yet here we are.
Decimus Vidor accompanies me on my way out. We walk slowly - I know that I probably won't return, at least not for decades, and Vidor intuits this well enough to allow me to drink in the atmosphere without comment. Besides, old age has weakened his legs, slowed his stride.
My first instinct is to scoff at this open display of weakness, but then I remember that his fighting days are long over.
The shame reminds me that I'm not quite there yet, if you understand me.
As we near my destination, he finally speaks. "You know, we thought about giving her a monument. A year or two after the War, they were popping up faster than anyone could keep track of them. Shepard, of course, Shepard and her team, but everyone wanted to honor their local heroes too. Immortalize them in steel and palladium. Here, too. There was talk of trying to pool our memories, get the closest image to reality that we could."
I nod. I was only an infant at the time, but one of my earliest memories is visiting the statue of my father on Tuchanka. And later, reading the plaque to learn how his deeds are remembered. Seeing these monuments, standing before them, has been such an important part of my life that I'm surprised I didn't think to ask before.
As it turns out, that lack of concern would be its own answer. "You didn't show me a monument."
"In the end, there wasn't one." His voice conveys dry amusement, but buried in the pause that follows I hear a quiet anger. "The rest of the Citadel has always called us stingy for that decision. Some say we're ungrateful, or forgetful, which is the worse insult. And there are those -" and here his mandibles click audibly "- who say she wasn't real, that we just made her up to turn a mundane ward into a tourist hotspot. To start a cult. To make us famous. And then they wonder why we want nothing to do with them."
"Hmm."
Pundits and critics have targeted the Tuatha Ward's enigma almost since the day the Reaper War ended. They're fond of reminding us that saints don't exist, that everyone has a dark side. That maybe the Angel wasn't just a doctor or good-hearted colonist. That she wasn't a lost soul who found her way but was part of something darker, something less innocent, seeking redemption. Or that it wasn't redemption she sought.
Or that she never existed at all.
This last isn't trumpeted, not anymore, but even today it's undergoing serious debate in salarian academic circles.
Naturally.
Time to test the sands and pray that no thresher maw waits beneath. "I've heard the controversies."
And as soon as I hear my own words I realize they're a mistake - not their curiosity, but the implied question I've made of it. I'm still a long way from other species' definitions of tactful, and that makes evasiveness more disrespectful than a blunt course would have been.
Vidor glances sidelong at me, exasperation in his eyes. "Don't herd me, krogan. If you're going to ask, stand tall."
I grunt. Sometimes, even bluntness is too slow. "Why?"
He laughs, shaking his head. "Why isn't there a statue somewhere, or a light show? Where's our tangible tribute to her? Of course we could never realistically settle on a single image, too many conflicting memories and species and traumas and prayers, but that's not the main…alright. Try to understand, the Tuatha Ward was very nearly a combat zone before the Siege.
"Look around you, Urdnot Saldek. What do you see?"
We come to an open skyway bridging the dock and the rest of the ward. I watch as his cloudy eyes survey the serenity below, the lights, the moving bodies.
"We still have crime. No denying that. This is no utopia, much as we want to think of it as such. And those who remember the day of the Siege are dwindling. We're all mortal. Sure, I might have another half century, Anya longer, but we won't be here forever. Someday, we'll be gone. Everyone who saw the Angel, who listened to her speak. All of us.
"But our communal rules, the unspoken codes that govern our way of life...when we set those up, when they came into being, she was still fresh in our minds, in our hearts, in our souls. Everything this ward is today, it is because of her.
"We don't know who she was, but we know what she did, and that was what we wanted to honor above all else. So that generations from now, when the Tuatha Ward has long forgotten the Angel's actions, when even they aren't sure she really lived, they'll still hear her words and feel her touch."
He turns to me, and it's then that I finally see the fervor in his eyes. "What's a piece of metal compared to that?"