Chapter 3

Two turians, three asari and two salarians were dead. Another six people wounded. Tarras the turian had lost a lower leg. Neria Tenakis was severely wounded by shots to chest and abdomen and barely stabilized by the human medics aboard the McPherson, a Systems Alliance heavy frigate. Ysa couldn't believe being still alive. She didn't even have a suit rupture. Not a single scratch! And she felt guilty. For not having been able to help. For cowering in the dirt, while the people defending her were just dying around her! On a rational level, she understood that there was nothing she could have done. Had she tried to fight, she would have just instantly had gotten herself killed without helping anyone. Still, she felt like a useless piece of trash. From the humans who came out of the McPherson she gathered what had happened before. The small human mining colony 'Nova Macedonia' in the neighborhood system got attacked by the geth just the day before. The colony was heavily damaged, twenty of the fifty-five civilians within the colony dead or turned into husks, before the patrolling Alliance heavy frigate and the human soldiers could destroy the geth forces. The human colony had to be abandoned, as the colony's buildings were too severely damaged to support the survivors in the toxic atmosphere. As there were still numerous geth forces reported between their position and the mass relay, the human ship's captain decided to go for Thimaya to make camp before Alliance reinforcements could arrive in several days. Too bad for the archaeologist party, the pirates seemed to have had a similar idea earlier on, driven to Thimaya by the geth threat. To the McPherson and it's cannons, those pirates they found attacking the camp on the surface were just a minor annoyance. So, too bad for the pirates, too.

Now, one day later, the former archaeologists' excavation site had turned into a refugee camp, with several newly erect tents for the thirty-five human survivors from Nova Macedonia, who'd just been cramped in the McPherson's cargo hold before. The humans were pragmatic people, Ysa liked that trait. What she didn't like was their tendency to stomp over everything in their way, even when they were trying to help. She remembered how she rudely had been pulled away from Neria by the human medics, when she'd been cradling the asari's bleeding and barely breathing body in her arms. Humans were strange. Sometimes, they'd honestly be trying to be polite, then charge and yell at you the very next moment. They behaved like hanar crossbred with krogans. Likeable, but annoying at times. Ysa felt their curious looks on her, some of them discontent. She heard them whispering about her.

"Look, a quarian. I never saw one of those in person before. Weird suit, that."

"Damn them all! They created the fucking geth that just blew our home to shreds and turned our buddies into monsters!"

"Oh, leave her alone, look at her, she's just a kid! She's not responsible for what her grand-grand-grand-parents did centuries ago!"

"I still won't trust them!"

At least some humans seemed to have brains in their bulky heads, Ysa noted, as she walked on. She certainly was not responsible for the geth's creation. But what responsibility did she have...? She absentmindedly looked at the two tubes of dextro nutrient paste in her hands, she had cooked and prepared herself from turian ingredients. It still had to be sterilized for her to eat, so she was heading for the sterilizer unit in the field hospital. But she realized that she wasn't hungry at all. She was just tired. Terribly tired.

"Keelah, gotta sit down, just for a moment..." she muttered to herself.

She sat down to the ground, leaning her back to a large supply crate, breathing heavily. She felt like fainting, where did that come from? Shivers shook her and it all just crashed down on her, as she started sobbing. She cried bitterly, like she hadn't in many years. All that death and suffering so close to her, sorrow burning like acid in her soul. Her mind went blank when she cried out all her pain.

"Hey, easy, easy! Can I help you? Do you need something?"

Ysa felt a hand on her shoulder. A human man knelt in front of her, looking at her with a concerned expression.

"Don't touch me! Leave me! Go away!" Ysa screamed, haggardly pushing the hand away.

"Okay, okay! I'm sorry! I'm leaving."

The human ambled off, sighing, "Poor girl..."

Indefinitely later, her sobs went dry. She lay on her side with drawn up legs and her eyes closed, listening to her own muffled breath and the whirring sound of her mask's filter systems that were trying to cope with excess moisture. She felt the evening cold creeping into her suit. She didn't care. Then, some sensation, like a weight on her. And warmth. She opened her sore eyes. Someone had put a thermal blanket over her. Blurrily she saw a slender figure sitting a meter away from her, with a blanket around it's narrow shoulders. A salarian?

"What..? Who's there?" she croaked.

"It's just me, Drenon, geologist, remember me? Some human told me you're out here. You were freezing. I was afraid to touch you, though. Earlier on, you appeared... disturbed."

"Tha-Thank you. I'm sorry, don't know what came over me..."

"Oh, I know. I heard quarians are emotional people. Dealing with death and distress, must be difficult for you."

Ysa sat up slowly, putting the blanket around her shoulders like the salarian. She felt numb and worn out, but also strangely calm.

"Yeah, it sucks, you know. How do you cope with all this crap?"

"Oh, have to. Too much mourning is a waste of time. To us salarians, death is always close, in a way. We have to move on quickly, cherish the time. Leaving the sorrow behind."

"I wish I could forget that quickly. "

"No, not forgetting it. Probably we're just quicker repressing it.", he smiled faintly.

"I know what you mean. And, you know, we quarians are also always close to death, in a way. We're just better at hiding it.", she pointed to her helmet.

"Yes. Inconvenient, but useful, isn't it?"

"Yeah, inconvenient it sure is. But useful for not dying, at least...", she cleared her throat, "How are the others doing?"

"Oh, the asari were just meditating for hours, quite boring to look at. Tak, the volus, is busy calculating financial losses. The turians are cleaning their weapons, and glowering around. The humans... doing this and that and a lot of unremarkable things."

"Ha, weird bunch those humans aren't they? You never know what they're up to."

"Human behaviour sometimes seems inconsistent, but most of them turn out to be decent people when you get to know them."

"If you say so... Um.. Oh, have you heard of Neria? Did she wake up, yet?"

"No, I'm afraid she's still not stable. The pirates used toxic ammo that caused severe damage in her organs. The asari say that the human doctor is very competent, but he's not sure if she will survive."

"Keelah... I really hope she makes it... Damn those bosh'tets! How could they use toxic ammunition? That's just purely evil!"

"Most pirates are exactly that."

"She was good to me. I don't want her to die..."

"Me neither, Miss Dahan. We can just hope for the best.", he suddenly stood up, "Well, now it's time for me to go back to work. Still have some ore samples to analyse."

"Wait, you're still working now? Here?"

"As I said, we abhor wasting precious time."

"Oh, well then, have a good... work. And thank you, for talking... and not letting me freeze to death."

"You're welcome. Better go back to your tent, the wind's really chilling. Night!"

"Good night, Drenon!"

She got up and picked up her two tubes of nutrient paste she had carelessly dropped before. It still needed to be sterilized. And now she felt a little hungry. So she got back on her way to the field hospital.