In the chaos, at least, there is one small blessing: he is forgotten. He has been crowded in with others for as long as he can remember (there is no space in the Migrant Fleet, he recites to himself, silently, we are all one family, we have no room for privacy. It is something the geth took from us).
It is always something the geth took from us.
Klaxons are screaming all around him, repurposed warning lights flashing an ugly red glow from ceiling and scaffolding. The adults are running, all of them, shouting technical phrases that he understands (of course he does, son of a maintenance mechanic and a scientist; of course he does) but can't quite string together. He hears multiple hull breaches and life support systems offline and drive core failing but can't piece them together into something whole, a solid idea like hide or run.
No one seems to remember him, alone in a family room and locked in the clumsy round world of a bubble. Bubbles are large and round and big,bad for scurrying and ducking the explosions that he can hear bursting through the hull of the ship. Outside the narrow slice of window he can see blossoms of red against the black of space, bright lights like the human fireworks he's seen in vids, gold and crimson. He sees the giant ship beside theirs break open, scatter into a million little shards and pieces to rain down upon the blue-green seas of the planet below.
The Homeworld.
It is something his mother always spoke about, when she was home, when they were alone, when she was alive.
He remembers, perfectly: days when she would stay home to link her suit with the bubble, take off her green-glass visor to show him the smile that lit her eyes like stars. She'd take her hand in his and fit their fingers together, three to three, show him a map of a place called Rannoch and have him trace the continents, the smooth edges of sea and the wide expanse of desert, the mountains laid across the land like glittering loops of circuitry, perfectly-planned. All of it, perfect. She'd said so. "Here," she said, tapping a spot on the map by the mouth of a river that opened wide as a nebula's eye, "here is where we're going to live. Daddy and I will build you a house there. We promise."
She'd talked of gardens, then, of space, of the brothers and sisters he would have. Of taking off helmets to see the sky. He loved these talks until they turned to geth and war and things he didn't quite understand, the word politics thrown around like a curse, Admirals' names filling the sterile air of their little room.
"Rael,"she was saying, that last time, "Rael'Zorah. I served on his ship before we met. I helped with his daughter. He is brilliant. He will save us."She was showing his father a set of schematics on the omni-tool, jewel-bright in the dark of later-than-his-bedtime. He could see flashlight heads, weapons specs, the intricate maps of circuitboards that were so much harsher than the coastlines of Rannoch. Geth. And then it was gone and his parents were ushering him back to bed, making soft shushing noises, faces unreadable behind green-and-black masks.
His mother had pressed the mouthpiece of her helmet against the top of his bubble when she left, all that space between them, the closest thing to a kiss she could (something the geth took from us). His father had pulled up the specs of the ship she was working on. Aleri. They'd sat there, the two of them, drawing over the blueprints of laboratories and computer rooms, imagining his mother working there, discovering a glorious war against the geth and a future for them that could raise the walls of a house by the sea.
Aleri.
The specs said it was an old ship, old, constructed before the Morning War (something the geth took from us). He imagined it sleek and shining. Better than the Qwib-Qwib, bigger,with wide doors and tall ceilings. This was a volus ship, and they had pride in their foreign volus ship, but there was no space, no doors that the adults could walk through without ducking or cracking their helmets, and half the hallways were low enough that he could reach up high and touch the ceiling through the bubble, hand almost against that metallic hum.
He imagined his mother walking with her head high and soon to be uncovered, brilliant, working on a ship from the Homeworld in the shadow of an Admiral. It helped. It did. It helped when the nights grew over-long and the humming from the ship too loud, when too many of his aunts and uncles and cousins all started asking if he was okay, did he miss her, pressed the lips of their helmets to the top of his bubble in a way that was like hers but not quite. It helped.
Until the word geth broke open and escaped from his nightmares and into the world, until Aleri was in everyone's mouth. He watched the video that the Admiral's daughter sent, over and over, memorizing the way loves you very much pitched high and his mother's voice filled with a fear he'd never heard.
His nightmares were full of mechanical buzzing, speech that wasn't speech. The crackle of gunfire. The shine of geth headlights in the corners of the ship. He'd wake up in the night to see his father turned away to hide the steam inside his helmet, the sea-salt wet, steal what little privacy and comfort that he could. There was even less space than usual, then, less space and too much comfort, too many relatives and unfamiliar hands. The whirl of helmets above him was red and pink and blue and violet, his father's deep black, but never, ever green.
He tumbled and rolled his way to the maintenance deck one day, wedged himself in amidst wires and circuitry just to have some silence. To be forgotten.
It was an hour before his father found him.
"I miss her too," he'd said, eyes star-bright through his helmet in the dark. He'd laid his hand against the bubble, whispered curses to low to understand (mistake was one, and war). "I miss her too."
"The geth took her from us?" he'd offered, voice high. He meant it by way of comfort. Hadn't meant for the way his father's shoulders slumped, for the sigh as he pulled him out of his hiding place and sent him rolling home.
"No," his father had murmured. He'd caught himself and then nodded, once, deciding honesty over shielding and masks. "We did." And then, softer: "I was wrong."
He hadn't understood, but then there were many things he didn't understand. Scientist and maintenance man's son, he could hack the programs on his child's omni-tool until they sang for him, but the whispers of Admirals' names meant nothing and the reassurances of family and friends meant less. They only left him staring at the low low ceiling before bed and hearing geth-speech, wondering why they spoke of war when it seemed to be nothing they wanted.
(He can hear the klaxons screaming, screaming, and the captain's voice loud over the intercom, the ships outside breaking apart bursts of glowing light, and that is what comes back to him: nothing they wanted).
He hadn't understood when the whispers grew loud, either, startled into real life and the marketplace floor when before they'd been hidden behind bedroom-curtain. They leapt out of his nightmares the way geth had done. War. His father was angry and his father was fighting and his father had lost. The Admiral was furious. He heard sounds in the night, thump after hollow metallic thump, as the man punched the bulkhead and repeated over and over mistake and nothing I can do.
Sometime amid the flurry of installation, preparation, weapons shipped aboard and welded in his father had come to him, brought up transfer orders on his omni-tool and knelt down for him to see. "It's not safe here," he'd said. "They're fitting this ship for war. I'm sending you back to your mother's old ship, it's less of a target, you'll be safer –"
"Why?"
His father pulled up a map, familiar, smooth coasts and wide deserts and mountains dancing down like lines of circuitry, perfect. A data point pulsed at the mouth of a river, green as gardens growing. "Because someone needs to make it home."
(Do you see? his new captain had asked, pointing out the tall window of his new-home ship at the planet far below them. Through the maze of ships and ships and ships he could see coasts and deserts and mountains, swathes of green, forests and almost see the shining mouth of a river smiling wide. Home.)
Only a few days later he'd watched out the window as the Qwib-Qwib swerved and dove and broke.Home crashing into home. His father had died under the sky, the old Admiral's daughter said. Died with the sand and stone of the Homeworld under his body. With the sound of the wind and the leaves.
He'd asked if there'd been a river nearby and she'd paused. Said yes. The connection had broken before he could accuse her of lying behind her violet mask.
After that there was no time for comfort, no time to tell his new not-friends that he didn't want their reassurances and hugs that couldn't be hugs. He wanted only his hole in the maintenance deck of a home that didn't exist any more, silence, quiet. His father pulling him out, his mother smiling behind her mask and dreaming of a house by the sea.
It was only the constant chaos of waras he learned his way around the new ship, rolling his bubble through too-tall doors to stop at too-wide windows that showed fire and death all around. He learned the feel of the ship shuddering as it took hits. Learned the quirks of the gravity field as his new captain pulled it through evasive maneuvers, learned the roar of the gun, the sounds of orders piped over loudspeaker as his new cousins fussed and whispered and huddled in fear.
Learned the sound of klaxons, deafening, the red flare of emergency lighting that means all is lost.
Learned them very well.
He is forgotten, for once, in the chaos. There is no one to fuss over him and tell him it's all right, no one to lie through the glass of a mask. The adults are running and their screams are fading towards the shuttle bay. He does not move. He remembers the Qwib-Qwib and its too-low volus halls that his bubble was not built for, the way to the escape pods blocked off unless he turned it off and opened the way for infection and illness. That was the Qwib-Qwib, and this is the Rayya, and the halls here are wide and tall and open; but the Rayya does not feel like home to him, never will.
Home.
Something the geth took from us.
This, too, as he watches Rannoch grow large and larger in his vision, frozen with nose pressed to bubble pressed to window. Captain Kar'Danna is yelling over loudspeaker that the drive core is offline, yelling brace for impact, but bubbles are round and made to roll and he cannot brace if he tries. Cannot hold on. He feels himself leave the floor as the gravity gives way, as explosions shake the ship and the shields scream and crackle along the hull as it hurtles through the atmosphere. Below him is Rannoch, growing large, sand and rock, elegant arches of stone, shrubs and spindly trees in a thousand shades of green. Water, silver shining. A cliff. A river.
At a thousand feet from impact the Rayya shudders and buckles and splits apart, fire dancing along its length and brightening the evening sky. He is thrown through a floor that no longer exists, borne on a wall of fire that shorts out all systems – the bubble crackles once then overloads and fades around him. Gone.
It is gone, and for the second before the flames race to embrace him and the ground rushes up to greet him, Jona'Hazt nar Qwib-Qwib (nar Rayya, nar Rannoch) breathes the air of home.