AN: I hope you all enjoyed the last chapter. Because I'm going to step all over that. But before that:
1: I don't own any of the Bioware characters, settings and whatever else they got. Though I'd like to meet the people who did and gape at them in awe until they get tired of me. I'm also not receiving any pay for this.
2:Reviewers are hugely appreciated. Just as (I hope) you guys look forward to seeing what I put up, so do I look forward to see what you have to say about it. So... yeah.
3: I apologize for the use of the word mesa. Because I'm so very bored with fjords. Heh, I rhymed.
Also, I've officially broken past the 40k words barrier! (Which I failed to attain last chapter due to a whopping 14 words. 14. Freaking. Words. I should have just tacked on a shout out at the end of the chapter and had done with it.) HOORAY!
You remember that scene I talked about a while back? It's here! (Yes, I suck at planning. We'll just put that on the list with all my other faults. )
Lastly, the story has officially been brought up to 'M'. Reasons for doing so will be explained at the end of the chapter, though by then you'll likely know why. Until then, just think of it as 'M' for MONSTROUSLY AWESOME!
Right then, let it rain!
Deadly Resurrection
Chapter VII: The Butterfly Dreams
The Nietzsche, drifting aimlessly between solar systems in the Kaas'Den cluster, looked like more than an errant wreck of a ship than one of the most sought-after vessels in the galaxy. And even once inside, one might be forgiven for persisting in that belief. The many empty halls, devoid of atmosphere or gravity but pulsing with eerie orange light seemed to have been taken straight out of an old ghost story to frighten children.
And, when seeing the ship's sole organic inhabitant lying prone for hours on end, stirring only long enough to eat or stretch, they'd be forgiven for thinking she was dead. Or, at the very least, that something was very wrong with her. In a way, they would be right. The woman was quite literally dreaming of a better world, leaving behind the old until dragged, unwilling, back to reality.
It was hard for Tali to pull herself away from Shepard, to force herself away from him and into a world where he was only a voice. While she was with him, she could feel his touch without risk of illness, could do all the things she wished she could in reality without the slightest fear of what might happen. A thousand other errant wishes of a young woman forever barred from what others took for granted, suddenly granted all at once.
They'd already been to Virmire, delighting in the cool wetness of the water as she waded through the shallows or the way small fish would cautiously begin to swim along her, unfamiliar with a creature like her. The feel of soft sand falling through her fingers Or she would savour the feel of the warm sun on her back as they lay on the sandy beach and using Shepard's arm as a pillow. She could spend days there, careless of what she had left behind.
Or they would visit the memory of the Citadel, which always provided a pleasant distraction whenever they wanted to forget that they were alone and hear the sounds of a vast, thriving metropolis and, for the first time in her life, not have to listen to them through her suits aural receptors. To be able to dance with Shepard at Flux for the first time had been wonderful, though she was certain that Shepard had taken some time to learn how to dance before they'd started, and he'd maybe been taking a few liberties with the personification of the spectators as she was certain that they didn't often form a ring and start cheering. Though it had been fun, and Shepard seemed to be pleased from the way she seemed to blush over the attention.
They'd even, in a moment of weakness and whimsy for the two of them, played parts in a heavily modified version of the holovid Fleet and Flotilla, an embarrassingly awkward but hilarious affair that had nevertheless been a wonderful experience. Seeing Shepard try to act like a Turian was funny all on its own, but Tali was sure that her own skills as a thespian, or lack thereof, provided just as much mirth for her partner as he did for her. The way she would occasionally be distracted by something amazing happening in the 'background' and forget her lines, or the way she would collapse into a giggling mess that could only silenced by Shepard gathering her in his arms and-
Tali abruptly ended that line of thought, her cheeks warming at the thought. Needless to say, it was a pleasant distraction.
Shepard seemed more animated now than he had ever been since his resurrection, more like himself than he had been before, than Tali hadn't allowed herself not to notice. It had been easy for her to pretend that he hadn't changed. Perhaps she hadn't realized how hard it would have been for him to go along with that fable when so very much had changed for him.
But when Tali re-entered his word, touched her mind against his, the walls of reality melted away and changed into a place where they were together.
Because the things that he could create were amazing, so detailed and vivid that at times Tali forgot that it wasn't real, but instead an intricate construct of Shepard's imaging. It was an amazing feat, one that at times left Tali confused and bewildered as she disconnected from Shepard.
Now was such a time, her eyes blinking rapidly as they adjusted to the dimmed surroundings of the Nietzsche's bridge, with only a kind of half-light coming from the planet they were currently orbiting. She felt dizzy as she sat up, her mind still recoiling from the abrupt change in scenery.
"Ugh." She groaned, settling back down in her chair. "Shepard, could you get the lights?"
"Of course." Shepard appeared from a terminal, his holographic form striking a dramatic pose. "And then there was light!"
Tali tittered quietly at the exaggerated act even if she had no idea what he was referring to. It was fun to watch him in full stride, shouting down lesser mortals and making the impossible seem easy. Or at least appearing to.
Her eyes ached at the sudden brightness, forcing her to squint as she once again moved to leave her spot of rest. Her joints popped and crackled as she did, and her muscles seemed to rejoice at her movement if the pleasant that ran through her as she stretched was anything to go by.
"Keelah, that feels good." She said with a happy sigh as she started moving once more, trying to ignore the stiffness in her neck and back.
"Silly organics, with all your bones and muscles." Shepard commented idly, his face a mask of mirth at the terminal. "You should burn yourself to a crisp, too. All the cool kids are doing it."
Tali glared half-heartedly at the holographic face, though she was a tiny bit glad that he could at least joke about the whole thing.
"That isn't funny, Shepard." She admonished, turning away from him.
"But black humor is the best kind!" He protested, laughter in his voice. "It's the only kind that doesn't show up at in space."
Tali paused in her search for a nutrition paste capsule, her brow scrunched up in confusion.
"What?" She asked, feeling slightly foolish for doing so.
"You know, because it's black. And so is space." Shepard trailed off as he said this, as if realizing how contrived it sounded. "That actually sounded better before I said it."
That brought a chuckle to the Quarian as she resumed her search, rifling through the contents of a large plasteel crate for what she wanted.
"There has got to be a better way for you to eat than those little tubes." Shepard commented idly from the terminal. "I mean, I get that the Quarians are still getting used to the whole 'we're not space-refugees anymore' thing, but you're allowed to start allowing yourselves a few luxuries."
Tali resisted the urge to explain to him yet again that simply bartering their safe passage back to Rannoch did not mean that they would not have to carefully cultivate their immune systems back to something resembling normality instead of the atrophied mess that she and the rest of her race were likely to carry to the grave. The Quarian people would be lucky if they could finally live without an envirosuit in two generations, let alone forming the land for agricultural use and building up the industrial power that would be necessary to make selling surplus products or food a viable possibility for her people.
She didn't know why he had such difficulty in believing that it would still be decades before her people could be considered truly safe.
Instead, she focused on her search, and a moment later held up a small tube triumphantly.
"It's not like I need any, Shepard." She answered as she wedged the capsule into a receptacle just below the 'mouth' of her helmet. "I've never had any before now."
"You'll have to forgive me if it's my personal mission to change that, Tali." Shepard answered, his lips quirking into a grin that made Tali blush.
"Really?" She asked archly, trying in vain to pretend that she wasn't flattered by the sentiment. "I think I could get used to that."
"Oh?" The world seemed to take on all kinds of meanings when Shepard said this, the holographic image of his face fading into nothing even as he spoke. "Then you should hurry back, I've got something special planned for you."
"And what would that be?" The Quarian asked, but she wasn't very surprised when he didn't answer.
There was no answer, which served only to annoy Tali even as she wondered what the man could possibly give her that she couldn't attain by herself.
Tali thoughtfully chewed on the bland mush that she had lived off of most of her lived, barring the few times she had had an irresistible curiosity or desire for a taste other than the patented 'tasteless with a side of nothing'. Considering that she had been violently ill after all of those few times, despite the careful sterilization, her thirst for diversity had been curbed.
She chewed on the tasteless guck, trying in vain to pretend it was one of the many things she had 'tasted' with Shepard in their shared world. It was another benefit, as without a corporeal body she wasn't bound by silly things like opposing chirality, which was always handy.
With her thoughts drifting to what Shepard had in store for her, Tali found herself pacing anxiously. Even as she savoured the feeling of moving again after so being sedentary for so long, she couldn't wait to sit back down and plug herself back into a dream. If he said that he had something special planned, then she was eager to find out what it was.
Eagerly slurping down the last of her meal and replacing her suits waste compartment , she settled back down into her chair and closed her eyes, focusing her mind on the task at hand.
Shepard was permanently connected to her omni-tool these days, always ready to reach out and pull her into his world. All she had to do was try to grasp him and there he was, ready to guide her the rest of the way. It was the transition that provided a small problem, however.
Force-feeding her brain with false stimuli couldn't be healthy, but Tali had experienced no side-effects so far, beyond those normally associated with almost constantly lying dormant. But when she 'connected' to Shepard, there were times when the knowing where she ended and he began became a matter of guesswork. These times were few and far between, and happened exclusively while they were establishing their connection, which usually lasted only a matter of seconds. But she would never forget the unsettling feeling of remembering a moment of her childhood, and then a few moments later realizing that she'd been human at the time. She dared not speak of these moments to Shepard, even if she was afraid he might be undergoing something similar.
Luckily, now was not such a moment. She felt the world around her slip away as her body's senses were overwhelmed and replaced by the connection to Shepard. For a moment there was nothing, a return to the black nothing that she had first experienced. And then it twisted and contorted into a thousand tiny whorls of colour and sound swirled into existence all around her.
She found herself standing atop a sandy red mesa, overlooking a vast stretch of scrubland, sparse patches of plant life breaking up the uniformity of the land and a few solitary trees jutting up from the ground like skeletal hands. Combined with a sun cresting a tableau of distant ridges or spires of deep red sandstone and painting the sky a fiery mixture of gold and red, it became a very dramatic scene.
For a moment all she could do was stare, transfixed by the beauty of what she saw. She'd never seen a place like this, a land that seemed to have leapt out of some fantastic holo of an imaginary world, but lost none of its vibrancy.
Silence echoed all around her, but not the silence of death or emptiness. It was the kind of silence of a thousand things trying very hard not to make a sound. She heard the soft wind, carrying with it the sound of stone sliding across stone and a rustle of leafs. She heard the churning of earth and plants as some distant creature ran across the dry ground. The sound of feathered wings beating a quick tattoo as a bird took to the air. And, closer to her than she had first thought, the slow and deliberate fleshy tap of naked skin against stone. She turned to face the sound, and wasn't surprised when she saw Shepard grinning at her like a maniac.
"I've been downloading the topography from the Geth for days, getting everything perfect. We can go anywhere." Shepard boasted when he saw that she was looking at him. After a moment's pause he gestured at a stony outcrop in the distance that reached up from the ground. "Records show that that was called the "lover's rock"."
She could see why. Erosion and time had formed the rock into a pair of pillars connected by a length of stone. Silhouetted as it was against the setting sun, the formation bore a strange resemblance to two people embracing. It was quite a sight, their dark forms surrounded by a sea of colour.
"Shepard, I, I" Tali began, trying to find the words to describe what she was feeling and failing. "I- Thank you." She finally said, overwhelmed. "It's beautiful."
Shepard shrugged, his grin turning into a wide smile.
"I try my best."
Tali looked away from him again to once again take in her surroundings, a happy smile creepy up her face as she drank in the scenery. Shepard drew up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist. The Quarian eased back into his embrace as he did, delighting once more in the warm feel of his body against hers.
"What is this place?" she asked in a hushed voice, as if afraid that she might somehow disturb her surroundings.
"You mean you don't recognize it?" Shepard asked, the disappointment readily apparent on his voice. "Really?"
Tali looked over the land once more, searching through her memories for something that might help her put a name to her this world. Try as she might, however, nothing emerged. But, there was little chance that she would have, considering that the last Quarian to have seen this place had died almost three hundred years ago, and the few images the survivors had brought with them had been hoarded away by various clans and families, and as time wore on even those who had access to them would rarely display them. The memories for some and the sharp reminder of what had been denied them that such images seemed to invoke was not something most seemed eager to bring up. Tali was not the first Quarian who had never seen this world, though by now she was one of the last.
After a few moments of trying in vain to remember she finally gave up.
"Tell me." She asked at last, her patience quickly evaporating.
"Well, damn." Shepard said, defeated. "I was really banking on you instantly knowing where this is."
Tali raised a curious an eyebrow at this, turning around in his embrace so she could wrap her own arms around his shoulders. She drew in close, as if to kiss him, but pulled back at the last moment.
"Tell me." She said, this time her voice conveyed a promise for a reward that went unspoken.
Shepard's eyes and smile widened before he answered.
"Rannoch." He told her, and kissed her fully on the lips.
For a moment Tali was paralysed by the combination of his lips on hers and the realization that she'd spent the last few minutes looking at the wilderness of the Homeworld, a notion that had almost taken on religious connotations to the Quarian people. She'd given up the hope of ever seeing it for herself when she'd resolved herself to restoring Shepard, resigned herself to a lifetime of exile from what she had fought so hard to protect.
But Shepard had given it back to her, had made himself remember the very contours of the planet and the biospheres on it. He had committed every plant, every animal, every wrinkle in the land just so he could let her pretend that they were actually there.
Then again, to Shepard it was real, to a degree. His whole world was whatever he made of it, an illusion he could put himself into at any time. And for her part, what was so different about the world Shepard had created for her from the world that had she could never go? She could feel the ground beneath her feet here, smell the dry air and hear the world move around her. The sensations were there, in her mind. The only difference between the two was that Shepard would never be able to walk with her on the other, would never be able to kiss or touch her.
Tali drew away from Shepard, her cheeks burning and her breath stolen away by their kiss.
"I, I," Her voice turned treacherous as her nervous stutter returned. After a moment of trying to reign in her voice she finally managed to say, meekly: "Thank you. You, you didn't have to do this for me."
Shepard merely held her closer, rubbing his cheek against hers as he did.
"Maybe not." He said softly into her ear. "But I wanted to."
Tali felt herself warm up considerably at this, and began to feel slightly light-headed.
"Why are you so good to me, Shepard?" The question was out of her before she could stop it.
The man holding her simply smiled beatifically at her, touching his forehead against hers.
"Because I love you, of course."
"But, after everything-"
"Everything is done, Tali. We destroyed the Reapers and saved the galaxy. We've given enough to it." He said with conviction. "I don't want anything else to happen to us, Tali. Ever again."
Tali stared into the blue eyes she'd grown so familiar with, the traces of worry in her melting away as she did.
"I'll never leave you again, Tali." Shepard said softly. "For you, I want to be eternal."
Tali blushed at his words, some of the old shyness returning to her. She was prepared to wager that her cheeks were not far from catching fire at this point.
"Besides, it's not as if I have much choice in the matter." Shepard suddenly added airily, ending in a chuckle.
Tali frowned at his attempt at humour, though instead of scolding him she simply pulled him closer.
"Shut up and kiss me, Shepard."
Shepard didn't need to be told anything else, eagerly silencing himself to obey her.
They made love in the wilds of Rannoch, heedless to a reality they had no longer had a need for.
There was something to be said for looking at the stars from the surface of a planet instead of from the window of a ship. To be able to pick out individual constellations and formations, to have the inky darkness interspersed by clouds, or to point up at a blazing trail across the sky as a meteor fell from space.
Of course, the company was more than enough to make Tali appreciate the scenery more than she might have on her own. The warmth of Shepard next to her seemed proof against the icy chill that seemed to have dropped like a physical force on them. Knowing that Shepard was completely in control of their surroundings, it was likely that it had just dropped on them, a ploy to get her to closer to him. It was a thought that made her smile, even as they held each other and stared up into the sky.
Shepard stirred next to her, rolling onto his side so he could instead look at her. With a mischievous grin she turned her eyes to him as well.
"I should have done this earlier." Shepard commented mirthfully, running a hand across her side.
The Quarian woman could only laugh at his lechery even as it made her blush.
"I bet you give all the girls their own planet, Shepard." She answered playfully between laughs.
"No, only the Quarian ladies." Shepard countered smoothly. "They're too smart to fall for my other tricks."
This served only to make Tali laugh harder, and after a moment Shepard joined her in her mirth.
"How did you get the Geth to help you make this, anyway?" Tali asked suddenly, honestly curious. Her last encounter with them had left her with the distinct feeling that they regarded talking to Shepard as akin to talking to a hungry dragon, or some other kind of fantastical creature that nonetheless inspired terror.
"What do you mean?" He asked, mildly bemused. "I asked for the information, they gave it to me. Simple."
Tali wondered for a moment if that was truly all that had happened, or if the Geth were just trying to minimize their exposure to him. The latter was probably most likely, as the information he asked for would likely be easy for them to attain, having controlled the planet for over three hundred years.
"Well, that was nice of them."
"Yeah, and they were really quick about it. It was actually kind of nice to be able to get something done without having to shoot anybody."
Again, Tali wondered if that had truly been the case, or if the Geth had been prepared for him this time. In either case, she supposed that they would have been eager to make him far too busy with his own plans and devising to bother or destroy them.
As horrible as it sounded, though, the Quarian woman took a small amount of amusement in the notion that Shepard could, with an errant thought, destroy the Geth. It conjured images of one of the hilariously archaic films Shepard had foisted on her once, depicting some kind of giant turtle wrecking havoc on some human city somewhere. And from there it was a relatively short leap to imagine Shepard, a thousand times larger than life, crushing and destroying his way through a city of Geth.
As terrible as she knew the thought to be she could not stop the laughter ringing out, shattering the silence of the wilderness. Shepard, obviously pleased with himself, simply grinned mischievously.
For a few moments they simply lay together, content to let the galaxy spin without them. They put names to stars and planets, pointed out shapes in the clouds and spent the night trying to identify the sounds of animals. It was a peaceful end to one of the greatest days Tali'Zorah vas Nedas had ever experienced.
It was only when the sun began its ponderous rise over the horizon that they stirred.
"So what do you want to do today?"
The question woke Tali out of her own thoughts, enough for her to consider the thought briefly before shrugging and cuddling closer to the human beside her.
"Let's just stay like this for a while, and watch the sun rise."
Time flies when you're having fun, as the saying goes, and what are years except a string of days? And days have a way of vanishing before your eyes, wasted on so many little things. And when the wasting is being done wherever you want for as long as you want, time can move very fast indeed.
But neither of them were counting, and so time wore on without either of their notice.
The Nietzsche, aimlessly jumping from cluster to cluster, system to system, but always beyond the Perseus Veil, slipped out of notoriety in Citadel space. After all, nobody had seen or heard anything about it in almost five years, and there were far more pressing issues.
There was the issue of the Turian Hierarchy and its rapidly unravelling society. When their Volus allies left their protection for that of the Systems Alliance, they lost with them a great deal of their previous economic power. And with the handful of planets that had remained relatively untouched by the scourge of the Reapers, it had not been long before they could no longer perform their duties as a council race and were forced to give up their seat to focus on local matters. It was a bad age for what had previously been one of the most respected races in the galaxy, one that many predicted would be their death-knell as a serious galactic power.
Then there was the scouring if the Terminus systems, led primarily by the Systems Alliance, in an effort to once and for all put an end to the pirate threat as well as to force what remained of the Batarian Hegemony into peace, one way or another. Considering the swathe of destruction that had cut through recently, resistance had been weak. Though there were still pockets of resistance, many predicted that it would not be long before the Terminus Systems became a part of Citadel Space.
And, of course, there was the ever-present worry of the Quarians and their on-again-off-again alliance with the Geth. Technically the two had been invited to join the Citadel and accepted, but both had yet to present an ambassador. The Quarians explained that they were still busy with the rebuilding effort of Rannoch as well as the research into adjustment to their old homeworld. The Geth had no excuse, though they claimed that should their presence be required they could easily make themselves available. It was worrying that two of the most power factions in galactic politics could not easily be reached or swayed on current matters.
Lastly, there was the need to re-establish the Citadel. It became readily apparent how the Council had grown used to using the old station as a diplomatic tool, an unquestionable neutral ground for all species despite their other differences. Without it, there was an air of disunity and mistrust amongst the Citadel races, and the question of who would host the new home to galactic politics became one of the most widely disputed topics. The Asari pushed for Thessia, the System Alliance for the Arcturus station, the Turians for Palaven and so on and so forth. Everyone had a favourite, but nobody would agree with anybody else.
In that quagmire of distrust and confusion, it was easy for a single ship to simply vanish and for the galaxy's greatest hero and the woman who had briefly been its greatest villain passed into obscurity.
Some things, however, should be remembered.
"This place creeps me right out, Baalen." The first voice complained, somewhere at the back of their group.
"What, you afraid of a dead ship?" A second voice said with a chuckle, a little further ahead than the first voice.
"Are you kidding me? The walls are moving! How is this not freaking you out?" The first voice wailed.
"They're not, really. Just glowing." A third voice, bearing the rapid lilt that was typical of Salarian speech, informed calmly. "Though they are giving off unusual readings."
"See? Freaky!"
"Man up and shut up, Neret. It's just a ship." A fourth, and rather more authoritative voice, commanded.
For a while, there was silence as the four of them made their way through the corridors of the ship, each one careful not to put too force into their footfalls lest the almost nonexistent gravity push them upwards into the ceiling.
The ship had given off no ID codes, and the only reason they'd spotted it in the first place had been through its heat output. But they'd expected small wreck, a forgotten remnant of what might have been an expeditionary force that hadn't quite gotten away and retained some small amount of functionality. Upon discovering what looked like a modified Alliance Carrier in perfect working condition, its systems not nearly active enough to support any kind of crew.
It was as if the ship and simply been dropped there, fresh from an Alliance docks and ready to go, simply to wait for someone brave enough to enter the Perseus Veil and claim her.
"Any luck on schematics, Maezi?" The fourth asked after a moment, her patience from trekking through a veritable labyrinth of a ship wearing thin.
"None yet, sir." The third voice answered, a note of disappointment in his voice. "I'm having trouble interfacing with the ship's systems, they're not like anything I've seen before."
"Keep trying, Heurades isn't paying us to go on a picnic." The fourth said with an annoyed sigh.
"I wish I was on a picnic, not exploring some goddess-forsaken creepy shi-"
"Shoulda thought of that 'fore you joined the Suns then, Neret!" The second voice snapped out angrily. "Now shut the hell up like the captain toldja to!"
"No, I won't! Something's wrong with this place! The machinery won't work for us, we can't access any-"
"Neret, I swear, if I didn't want to use you as a shield I'd have shot you myself, you useless puddle of piss." The fourth voice, by process of elimination being the captain of the tiny group, shouted over her subordinate. "So shut up before I decide the finder's fee is better split in three than four."
"Hey, keep talking Neret!" The second voice jeered, laughing as he did. "There's a house on Bekenstein I wanna buy."
"Fuck you, Val. You have a girl's name."
This was answered by a quiet snigger from the third voice, Maezi, who quickly tried to stifle it with a hand across his mouth.
Val, or rather Valerie, glared darkly at his companions, settling into a stony silence of anger. There was a story behind his unusual name, but the stoic Turian had yet to offer one. It was one of those touchy subjects that only close friends or the terminally curious ever asked about these days, especially since he'd joined up with the Blue Suns. Even under new administration, the mercenary group retained a fearsome reputation.
Something chimed, and a moment later Maezi was rapidly accessing his omni-tool.
"Something up ahead, captain. Active omni-tool, military grade. Security too tight to hack into."
"Anything else?"
"Not yet, no. I still can't access anything, including that omni-tool. Pretty sure we're on our way to it, though."
"Good." The fourth voice said, a relieved grin appearing on her face. "Maybe then we can get some answers."
"And a ship." Val said with a dark chuckle.
Again they proceeded, though perhaps a bit more eagerly than before. As much as the three others didn't want to admit it, the deathly silence and darkness and the unearthly glow of the wall was getting to them, though not nearly enough to go into the deep end of cowardice as Neret had.
Without schematics and intimate knowledge of what had transpired in the ship, they could not have known that this was the second time the ship had been invaded by a force vastly lesser than what would be necessary to crew it. The difference was that this time Nietzsche could pilot itself when it bothered to.
Nor could they have known that their timing had been incredibly fortuitous, approaching the ship just as its sole inhabitant had interfaced with the only person who could have stopped them from coming aboard. They couldn't have known that the Nietzesche was perfectly capable of ripping their tiny speculator scout ship apart with little effort.
As it was, they arrived at the bridge of the carrier with no resistance beyond a small amount of bickering among their own ranks.
They clustered at the door, each one tensely gripping their respective weapons and silently wondering what exactly they would find behind it. Their leader, the female named Baalen held up an open hand for all of them to see, her fingers rhythmically curling down in a silent countdown. As the last of her digits came down into what was now a fist they burst into the room.
Each of the four individuals had had their own quiet suspicions of what they might find at the helm of the ship. Neret had expected some kind of horrible monster dredged up from the dark recesses of his mind, Maezi a corpse, Valerie had been hoping for an unnoticed credit shit he could surreptitiously swipe, and Baalen had entertained the notion that they'd finally meet a crew of some kind, a few pilots at the least.
Of the four, Maezi came the closest, as the sight the met them as they rushed through the door into the bridge of the Nietzsche revealed only a single Quarian laying prone in the commanding officer's chair, only her active omni-tool belying that she was wholly inert. Something was accessing that thing.
"That was anti-climactic." Valerie rumbled, giving voice to his disappointment.
"Indeed." Maezi agreed even as he approached the still body, his own omni-tool flaring into life once more as he checked the woman's suit for life-signs. "She appears to be alive, Baalen."
The Batarian woman shouldered her rifle with a sigh, relaxing a bit with the apparent lack of anything remotely threatening.
"She's probably an exile using this place as a base." Baalen suggested, challenging the others to come up with a better idea.
"Unlikely, given the ship's location. Deep in Geth space, only Quarians and Geth viable trade partners to sustain her existence, both factions unlikely to tolerate her existence." Maezi refuted calmly before he squatted down to examine her omni-tool.
"Fascinating." He remarked after a moment's inspection.
"What is it?" Baalen demanded, stalking over to the Salarian.
Maezi spared his commanding officer a glance as he stood up once more, gesturing to the Quarian's wrist.
"It appears the Quarian is in connected to the ship directly, though how I cannot tell. Likely a subdermal implant."
Valerie gave the Turian equivalent of a thoughtful frown before he too approached.
"When you say 'connected', do you mean...?" He tapped the side of his head with a talon to indicate what he meant.
Maezi nodded quickly, his enthusiasm showing.
"Mentally activated machinery." He clarified. "Likely grafted to skull directly."
Valerie's mandibles flared in disbelief, his dark eyes widening slightly.
"And she did that to herself?" He said with a slight gasp. "Crazy bitch."
Baalen was frowning thoughtfully at the woman's face-plate, not bothering to point out that it would have probably been impossible for the Quarian to implant something onto her own skull without any complications.
"Do you think she can control the ship?" She asked slowly, as if doubting it herself.
"Unlikely, though maybe she could with help."
Baalen nodded at this, stepping away.
"Wake her up." The Batarian ordered coldly. "We need her if we're going to get this thing back to base."
Maezi nodded as he began his work, focusing intently on the interface at his wrist.
"Remarkable interface." He muttered, more to himself than anybody else. "Would love to see how it was accomplished."
"Hurry the hell up, Maezi!" Neret wailed from his nervous position, not far from where they had entered the room. "The sooner we get this thing moving the sooner we can leave."
"Just a moment-" The Salarian answered, unperturbed at the interruption. "There."
As he said the words the Quarian's omni-tool died, abruptly severing the connection from mind to machine.
Tali's mind reeled as she was ripped from Shepard, gasping for breath as if she had just surfaced from water while at the same time trying to cry out in shock and each of her limbs flailing wildly.
Maezi recoiled from the Quarian, surprised by her violent movements. His hand went down to his waist where his pistol had been holstered, obviously unnerved. But a moment later he recovered, realizing that there was no malice in the woman's actions.
Someone else, however, had already been riding the boarder of 'afraid' and 'terrified' even before seeing the sudden and violent reaction of what he'd thought to be a corpse. This person, upon seeing the body explode into life from its prone state, panicked, his finger pulling down on the trigger of his rifle as he startled.
The gunfire was deafening after the prolonged silence and the relatively close quarters, a harsh banshee's scream ringing out in a crypt of a ship.
Baalen wheeled on her hapless subordinate, her face a mask of rage.
"You god damned idiot!" She shouted, advancing on him. "Do you know what you just cost us? How're we gon-"
"Tali?"
All four of the mercenaries were paralyzed by the sound of the voice, spoken from every terminal in the room at once. Lights bloomed all around them as the ship returned to life.
"Tali, what happened?" The voice was worried, that much was certain.
"S, Shepard," The Quarian gasped out, her hands slowly travelling to the wounds on her belly, trying in vain to stop the blood from pouring out of her.
Her omni-tool flared into life, a small human appearing on it.
"Tali, what's wr- wait, your suit's been ruptured, a- and..." The voice trailed off as dismay at the readings it was observing began to make sense. "N, no, this can't be right."
"Shepard," The Quarian said again, as if repeating the name would somehow change what was happening.
"No!" The voice came out like the cry of a wounded animal, conveying more pain than it did sense. It started out human, a voice many would recognize as that of John Shepard, but it soon degenerated into a garbled mess of sounds as he lost the ability to articulate as an organic being.
The four mercenaries began edging back towards corridor, each one sensing that this was way beyond what they had been trained or paid to handle.
Holographic faces appeared from every terminal, from the very walls themselves, each one searching the room until they found, inevitably, the perpetrators. A hundred eyes landed squarely on the four of them, and as one screamed in fury at them.
"You!" The ship roared at them in a deafening voice, coming from every direction at once. "I'll kill you all!"
Valerie, terrified by what was transpiring, started shooting wildly at the many faces while shouting for the others to flee. It was only when his rifle flared to signal that it was beginning to overheat that he paused in his wild assault to reload, his talons fumbling at his side as fear robbed them of their normal dexterity.
As he moved to reload he felt gravity suddenly shift in an unexpected direction, bringing him to his knees abruptly. A sudden pain inside his skull, a thousand times worse than any mundane headache, brought his hands to his hands to the sides of his temples as he grunted in pain. A sound that soon escalated into a flanging, agonized shriek before his head collapsed inward into a black sphere that crackled with dark energy.
Neret, upon seeing what happened to the Turian, made a mad dash for the corridor only to be thrown across the room. He let out a terrified scream as he sailed through the air before colliding against a wall with a sickening crunch of bone. For few brief moments the only sound to be heard what that of pained gurgling as he was pushed with even greater force against the wall before his body was dropped to the ground, where it landed with a boneless roll.
"You can't run!" The voice came out as the sound one might imagine steel making if it could scream. "You will pay!"
Baalen glanced frantically at her sole remaining crewmate, only to see him mirroring her own panic as he slowly trying to back away. He held out his pistol, ready to fire at a moment's notice. His mouth moved rapidly, trying out words inside his own mind before giving voice them.
"An accident, didn't mean to harm-"
The Salarian's arm was violently twisted back with a snap of bone, silencing him before he could continue. Baalen could only watch in muted horror as his hand, and the pistol in it, was twisted around opposite of his arm's joints to point at himself. As the first shot rang out she looked away, unwilling to watch yet another grisly end to a friend. She flinched at each of the five succeeding shots rang out before his pistol overheated.
Maezi collapsed to the floor, his body ruined by the damage he'd been forced to wreck on himself.
Baalen had by now edged back to a wall, leaning against it for support her legs suddenly couldn't provide. She'd just seen three of her crewmen, people she might have considered friends if not at least partners, brutally killed in the space of a few moments. It was not the sort of thing she'd been prepared for, not something anybody could bear.
She didn't notice that pulsing glow of the walls climb across her hand, and then her arm. But she did feel the sudden burn of it as nano-machinery tore at her flesh. Her four eyes snapped to the wall as the sensation stole upon her, realizing too late what was happening. She recoiled from the wall, stumbling backwards as she tried in vain to brush the unearthly glow from her hand and only managing to spread it to her other hand.
Blood began to flow from her fingers, each droplet hungrily devoured in a flare of crimson light. Baalen's four eyes wept in pain at the sight, gritting her teeth to stop herself from crying out. She would not give this monster the satisfaction of hearing her suffer. Instead, she watched the orange light crawl across her body, disappearing below her armour.
"A Batarian." The ship snarled out hatefully, at last returning to a human voice. "Why am I not surprised? You kill my parents, attack our worlds, and it still isn't enough?"
"I didn't do any of those things!" Baalen protested, knowing how weak it was. Even if she wasn't responsible for what had happened before, she was to blame for what had happened here.
"I don't care anymore!" The voice roared at her. "She didn't deserve this. But you do!"
And a few moments later, that was all that remained of her was a small pool of softly pulsing luminescence inside a shell of armor.
The many faces of Shepard glared hatefully at the remains of the mercenaries for a moment before vanishing momentarily, only to reappear at Tali's side from her omni-tool.
"Tali?" He asked quietly.
"Shepard." She said weakly, her visor moving slightly so she could look at him more easily.
"I, I, you-" The hologram grasped at words, each one conveying pain.
"This wasn't supposed to happen." He finally said, his voice so quiet she almost couldn't hear him.
"Shepard!" Tali repeated, her voice coming with laborious effort. "I, need you... C'nect... T'me."
"Wha-" Understanding sank in before he finished saying the word. "Why?"
Tali smiled weakly behind her mask, ignoring the pain.
"Wan'... Be wi' you..." She gasped out painfully.
John Shepard hesitated only for a fraction of a second before he forced his way through her omni-tool and then to her neural implant, tearing into her mind. He stole away her pain, sealing it away as he pulled her back into his world.
But as he did, Tali reached into his mind as well, altering him slightly. It was likely he knew what she had done, but did not care. He simply waited for her to join him in his dream of what should have been, waited to make her last moments pleasant ones.
And she, in love, made sure he wouldn't ever have to wake to the pain of being alone for all eternity.
AN: And then that happened.
See why I decided to bring this up to 'M'? Can't say you weren't warned. I did tell you terrible things were going to happen.
And yeah, I know the first half was bordering on the dangerously fluffy. I thought it would be a nice way to stab you. What of it?
Anyways, review! Yeah, I'll totally start putting the request at the end as well as the beginning if I have to. Because my ego needs to be stroked! Wait, that became all kinds of wrong.
I'm going to shut up now.
