A soft buzz woke Liara up. She sat up and it took her a few minutes to realize that the buzzing came from the VI she had programmed to wake her. That VI had woken her at first by saying 'Good morning, Liara' but with it's feminine voice it had sounded like her mother. She had almost gotten whiplash from the way she sprang out of bed as a reaction to that. Instead of downloading a new voice, Liara had opted for the buzzing as a wake-up call. In truth, the voice sounded nothing like her mother and it was quite pleasant. But in her half asleep state, her mind had made different associations.
She made her tea and undarkened the windows, programming the window pane with a checkerboard pattern. The sun was still up but it was on it's downslope, the light already not quite as dangerously bright as it was during mid-day. Tali's windows were still dark and Liara hoped that she would get some sleep now. They had worked for hours on the report for the politicians and the press, making it sound exciting without blowing it out of proportion.
Liara had been quite astonished about the lack of enthusiasm displayed by non-scientists. She had been an archaeologist before she became the Shadow Broker and she had known her share of ridicule and ignorance. But she'd never seen such disinterest in history as quarian politicians displayed. Even a second video that showed the main pole as part of an elaborate network of poles and beams did nothing to convince them.
The common reaction went along the lines of 'So someone built something underground a long time ago, why should we care?' and Liara had to admit that she had been at loss for words at that. Before she actually said any of the rude remarks that came to her mind, she had stepped back and let Tali deal with the ignorant people. She provided moral support as much as she could and added her perspective only when asked.
Tali rose to the occasion, her typical bluntness being the best tool in this. Liara just watched that she did not pull out a shotgun. She also realized how smart it had been of Tali to make the vid of the find public immediately. Because one of the first questions posed to her was 'How do we keep this quiet?'. Tali's smug grin and purple glow was entirely excusable in Liara's opinion.
Tali managed to convince most of the council members of the importance of the discovery but the prime-senator was still not impressed by the importance of this find. The main complaint was that the underground structures may show that someone constructed something under ground but that this was no proof for a civilisation. It could have been a singular project while the society still lived above ground. Liara had to admit that this was possible.
After the first discussions about that point, Tali had contacted old friends in the admiralty. She managed to secure scans of the ground under the mountains of Gelldre Kah from orbit, searching specifically for the iron-nickel alloy in the same proportions that they had found in cave Zorah.
Having the cave named after her, had caused Tali to flicker and pulse in her luminescence in the most adorable way. Liara loved to be able to see these reaction on the quarians, especially because quarians were still not used to guarding their way of expressing themselves with lights. There was a refreshing honesty around them, unguarded emotions showing on their faces once you knew how to read them. Liara had asked her father about reading quarians and she had given her more information on that than she ever wanted to know.
The orbital scans showed an incredibly widespread network of metal traces under the mountain ranges, covering almost one third of the northern hemisphere. The scans indicated that the underground civilisation had been even bigger than they had initially thought. Dr. Deltreva suggested that the whole mountain range had once been hollowed out by caves and tunnels, most of them artificial and supported by the kind of giant beams as they had found in cave Zorah. Seismic tremors must have collapsed the system, forcing the early quarians out onto the surface.
The theory spread like wildfire among historians, causing a flurry of activity in asari historical archives, trying to find proof of the quarian heritage. When the asari had made first contact with the quarians, they had lived above ground and had a significant high level of technological expertise. But those early contactors had written extensive reports. All those reports were pulled out again and studied for mentions of a pre-surface culture of the quarians. Liara had set two agents on that task herself.
Liara took a piece of sweet floari bread from her stock box, nibbling on it while she skimmed through her news feed. She was converting her secret network to an official information broker company. Getting rid of the secrecy made it simpler to operate, she payed taxes on Illium and had employees that did not have to fear for their lives. She still had secret agents but she also had official representatives that worked quite independently.
After about an hour she was satisfied with the status of her business, her staff was competent and quite capable of running operations without her. She closed the interface and slipped into her coat and quickly walked over to Tali's container, keeping her head low and hidden in the hood to avoid getting sunburned.
The door to the prefab home slid to the side as soon as Liara stepped in range. Inside it should have been dark, the window panes at their darkest setting. Instead the room had little islands of light coming from datapads and terminals, strewn around the room. Liara reduced the darkness of the windowpanes and looked around in the now brighter room until she found Tali sitting on the floor, slumped against her cot. She slept, a datapad in her hand, her head rolled to the side, resting on the cot. A box of dirt and artifacts sat next to her on the floor.
Liara took a few steps towards that box, careful not to step on any datapads and terminal connectors lying around. She knelt down next to the box and used a small spatula to carefully lift a few pieces of debris in the box. Some of it looked like fabric and Liara cringed at the careless way in which it had been put into the box. It probably had been found by one of the students, Dr. Deltreva's team would never treat artifacts this way. The contents of the box should all have been in a climate controlled box.
Tali had apparently scanned the box with her omni-tool and had also made a protective mass effect field around the box. Liara congratulated herself on her teachings, at least Tali had had the good sense to protect the artifacts.
Wrapped in the now brittle fabric and peeking out at one side was a smaller box, made of metal and covered in foreign patterns. Some of it looked familiar, it reminded her of quarian fabric designs but there was also some kind of lettering and pictograms.
Liara felt a chill run up her spine. The pictograms indicated that the box stored information, in some kind of crystalline system inside of the box. Her hands began to shake as she thought about the possibilities. This could be a direct glimpse into the past, showing them what kind of civilisation had lived in the caves under the mountains. Even if it wasn't a historic book, if it was just the bookkeeping of some salesman, it would still be the best proof they could ask for to confirm the cave-theory.
No wonder Tali had not gone to bed, her omni-tool was still scanning for possible connections. Liara was a little miffed that she had not asked her to help, she couldn't wait to get her hands on this artefact.
Tali jerked awake and stared at Liara wide-eyed. "Liara! There you are. I wanted... I got.. look..." her hands moved vaguely over the box and Liara couldn't help but laugh.
"I saw. Why didn't you call me, Tali?" She tried to not sound so disappointed but knew that she failed.
"I'm sorry, Liara, I wanted to but I wanted to give you at least two hours of sleep and I set up the containment field like you had told me and started a scan and I must have fallen asleep..." Tali seemed to finally wake up and began checking her omni-tool.
"And I thought you had started without me," Liara said with relief.
"No! I would never! I was just going to call you and then..." Tali shook her head, her hair fluttering along with it. Liara still found it fascinating that quarians had hair almost as thin as humans. What a strange similarity across a galaxy.
"So did your scan yield any results?" she asked, scanning with her own omni-tool. The scan easily mapped the crystalline structure inside of the box and even showed the connector ports but the interface was too foreign to connect to. She tried different combinations of connecting to the crystals directly but the reading she received made no sense. Either the information was encrypted or just not compatible with her interface.
Tali looked onto her display. "Do you get a useful readout?"
Liara shook her head. She tried different programs but none of them worked. She climbed up onto the cot and made herself comfortable. This would probably take some time. She initiated another program, grumbling to herself. Tali climbed up to sit next to her, taking a sip out of a water bottle.
"One of the students, Bitaa, brought this in," Tali said, "I know, I should have called Dr. Deltreva, she would probably have a stroke if she knew that I have this artefact here. But at first it just looked like a pile of dirt and Bitaa only noticed it because of the readout of metal. I had her mark the place of discovery and I will have Dr. Deltreva investigate it as soon as she is up but I just couldn't resist." She smiled at Liara, her eyes blindingly white. "There could be so much information here and I thought, I could finally do something real, something helpful. This is tech, I should be able to get something out of it." She angrily punched the interface of her omni-tool. "But I just cannot get a good connection."
"Me neither," Liara said and tried another program. "I think we need more computing power to crack this. But first," she closed the interface and laid her hand on Tali's, "we should really get Dr. Deltreva to look at this."
Tali sighed, "I know, Kealah, she is going to kill me isn't she?"
"I have practised my barriers and you still have your shotgun?" Liara chuckled, "I'm sure we will be fine."
It was nice to hear Tali laugh, it had been a while. Liara stood up and pulled Tali up with her. "You should probably clean up and your clothes..." They both looked down on the purple suit Tali was wearing, a detective could probably tell her last meal and tea from it. Not to mention the grime of the desert sand that had baked itself into every wrinkle of the fabric.
Tali disappeared into the bathroom with a sigh and Liara managed to organize the room into something resembling a serious work area. As soon as Tali had come out again, they contacted Dr. Deltreva, telling her of the artifact in the box. A minute later, the door chimed and Dr. Deltreva and her assistant stormed in, still in their nightgowns. Liara pulled her face into a serious expression with all her might, it was not often that you saw an asari matriarch in her nightgown and wrinkles from her pillow on her face.
"This is an outrage! You should have contacted me immediately," the doctor began to glow blue in her anger, "you may have destroyed this artifact with your careless handling, I knew it was a mistake to let untrained students work on such a site, this could be our only chance to get a real glimpse... where is it? What have you done with it?"
Liara wordlessly pointed at the box on the table, the containment field still faintly glowing around it. She had placed a terminal next to it and put it's scanner on repeat, looking for any change in the crystalline structures inside. Dr. Deltreva was beside the box with two steps, her own omni-tool glowing. After a few scans, she visibly relaxed and turned to the terminal. comparing the readout to her own.
"This looks all very well, did you raise the containment field around it, Dr. T'Soni?" she asked, her eyes not leaving her omni-tool.
"No, that was Professor Zorah," Liara answered, keeping her tone as neutral as possible. Dr. Deltreva finally raised her head and looked at her in surprise before turning to Tali with an apologetic smile.
"Professor Zorah, I apologize for my outbreak, you obviously treated this artifact quite correctly." She turned back to the terminal, reading over the reports. "So you assume this is some kind of data memory?"
Tali cleared her throat before she stepped up to the terminal. "The crystals inside are aligned in a way that seem to make them ideal for data storage. We have used similar systems over the years."
Dr. Deltreva nodded. "Yes, my assistant swears by quarian memory crystals." She kept fiddling with the controls in her omni-tool until she turned it off with a frustrated sigh. "I guess this is more your expertise, Professor Zorah, I have no method to get a read on the crystals. I will be back later to make an assessment of the physical appearance of the artifact, maybe I can seperate the box from the fabric and the rest of the archaeological relevant pieces. But I will leave the technical connection and retrieval of the data to you, I hope by the goddess that you will find a way. What we could learn from this..."
The head archaeologist had a dreamy look on her face and it was clear that she loved her work, despite appearing brash sometimes. She stretched her back and seemed to notice for the first time that she was still in her nightgown. Her face turned slightly purple and she hurriedly bade them goodbye.
Liara turned to Tali, who was glowing in beautiful purple luminescence and her aura was shimmering around her. Liara was very proud of her: Tali had always been exceptional, from the determined pilgrim to the fighter to the admiral and now to first true historian of the quarians.
And all that with just an omni-tool, her stubbornness and occasionally a shotgun.
Switching viewpoints still feels strange to me.