Chapter Seven: One Day on Feros

The little colony of Zhu's Hope was dusty and unassuming; the air was dry, and the mid-afternoon sun was almost too warm. It did not seem the most promising place for a human settlement. Liara wished she'd gotten a better look at the Prothean ruin sites. From an elevated spot, she could see telltale towers and typical Prothean city layouts in the distance. She didn't think the Feros sites had ever been thoroughly and properly surveyed. Doubtless the ExoGeni corporation was working on it. She was always wary of corporation-sponsored excavation, personally; the corporations were always more concerned with how to make their finds profitable than with doing the job correctly. It was somewhat curious to find a settlement, though. A lot of former Prothean worlds were no longer ideal for settlement, perhaps a result of the attacks that had ended their civilization. Liara grimaced at the thought, looking around at the sun-weathered humans and wondering that they all seemed so attached to the place.

The Normandy had headed straight for Feros as soon as they'd gotten word that the ExoGeni colonies there had gone dark. Fortunately, they hadn't been far away, and had gotten to the colony in time to fight off the geth incursion. Shepard had then divided the team, taking Ashley, Wrex, and Tali with her to the ExoGeni headquarters, and leaving Kaidan, Garrus, and Liara, under Kaidan's command, at Zhu's Hope to take care of whatever needs the colonists might have.

The colony had been under geth attack long enough that they were in a rather bad way, as it happened. The three of them had undertaken an exploration of the tunnels underlying the tower and skyway that led to the main ExoGeni facility, to repair the water pipeline and locate some spare power cells. The tunnels had been crawling with both geth and varren, forcing them to proceed cautiously. While they were down there, Kaidan's scans had indicated that the geth had set up a communications station. They had traced the geth signal to its source, only to find it guarded by a trio of krogan as well as geth, pushing their resources to the limit. Both of the men were now sporting substantial bruises; Kaidan had the weary, stretched look of someone who'd overtaxed his biotics, and Liara suspected she looked the same.

They'd found a missing colonist in the tunnels, as well, an unfortunate fellow who'd seemed quite deranged, rambling nonsensically. After some discussion, they'd decided not to force him to accompany them back to the colony. The colonists were really quite grateful for the assistance, and were already setting to the work of repairing the damage done by the geth attack. Liara sat on the steps of the walk running around the area, drinking the energy drink that the salarian merchant had pressed into her hand, watching the humans at their work. "What brought you to a little colony like this?" she asked the salarian.

He blinked his large eyes at her. "A good trader can find profit in all sorts of places. Isolated colonies like this one are usually very glad to have access to unusual goods. I might just stay here, though." His gaze drifted around the space. "This is... a good place. A special place."

"Really?" said Liara, surprised. She looked around herself, at the dry ground, the crashed freighter, the busy humans in their dirty coveralls. She couldn't see why a spacefaring salarian would want to live out the rest of his short life in a place like this. "What makes it so special?"

"Oh... I'm not the one to ask about that. You should talk to Fai Dan." He watched her solemnly, as if expecting her to hop up and seek out the human leader at once.

"I... see." Liara stood up, trying to shake off the prickling discomfort. She'd tried to make conversation with several of the colonists earlier, only to get similar responses from all of them. They all deferred to Fai Dan, and all seemed strangely passionate about the colony. She would have expected to hear some kind of complaint out of someone. "I should... see if Lieutenant Alenko needs me," she told the salarian, needing some excuse to retreat from his unnerving gaze.

He nodded and smiled. "Come back if you need anything!"

She managed a smile in return, and made her way through the downed freighter to their makeshift sickbay. One of the older women of the colony had become ill. Kaidan was doing what he could for her, although a field medic's skills were more suited to dealing with injury than disease. "Ma'am," he was saying, "it would be easy for us to evacuate you to a better-equipped medical facility."

She shook her head. "Oh no. I couldn't leave Zhu's Hope. It's... it's my home!"

"I understand that, ma'am," he said patiently. "We might even be able to help you more if you'd just come aboard our ship."

The woman turned her face away. "No. I just... I just want to rest."

Kaidan looked up and saw Liara waiting in the corridor, raising his shoulders in a tiny shrug. "Whatever you like, ma'am." He stood and joined Liara. They both left the freighter through the nearest exit, opposite where Liara had come in. "I guess you can't help people if they don't want to be helped," he said.

Liara nodded, looking around. Garrus seemed to be talking over the colony's defenses with the woman called Martinez, who appeared to be the only trained security personnel present. The woman kept giving the turian incredulous, sometimes even hostile looks, which he appeared to be ignoring entirely. Liara had been feeling a little conspicuous herself; this wasn't the kind of place that got a lot of non-human visitors. "I don't understand why they all like it here so much," she said to Kaidan in an undertone.

"Well, they signed on to help spread human influence in the Traverse. There's a sort of frontier romance to it all, I suppose."

"I suppose," said Liara dubiously. "Even the salarian, though. I was talking to him, and he said he might want to stay."

"Hm. Okay, that's a little odd."

Liara still thought that was an understatement. There was something very odd about Zhu's Hope.

Garrus joined them a moment later. "I think Martinez over there hates me," he remarked in a low voice.

Kaidan snorted. "I don't think it's personal. She was rude to Shepard, too."

"Garrus, do you think the colonists are behaving oddly?" asked Liara.

He didn't get a chance to reply. All at once, all the colonists they could see stiffened, simultaneously, and looked toward the three of them, as though their heads were on strings. Martinez, and a few others who were armed, slowly drew their weapons.

"What the hell?" said Kaidan.

Liara flung up a barrier, trying to stretch out the necessary energies to shield her teammates as well as herself—and from all sides, since she couldn't be sure where all of the colonists were. Kaidan was trying to reach Shepard on the comm, but wasn't getting anything more than static. He joined her in raising a barrier a moment later.

Somebody fired on them, but their barriers held for now. "Return fire, lieutenant?" asked Garrus, his rifle already out and ready. Liara realized that she'd drawn her own pistol, quite unconsciously.

"Avoid lethal fire if you can. Suppressing fire, keep them down. Retreat to the Normandy." Kaidan eyed the colonists who were approaching them; their kinetic barriers wouldn't repel fists or knives. Liara froze several of them in place with stasis. "Good," he told her. "Slow them down as much as you can without hurting them."

They began to retreat through the colony. They kept the freighter at their backs at first, but once they reached the end of it it was harder to keep track of all the colonists. Liara let the two men handle the suppressing fire, concentrating on keeping up the barrier while using stasis or throwing up obstacles to slow down the colonists who followed them. The humans moved strangely, stiff and jerky. She had already used biotics extensively earlier, in the tunnels, and maintaining their defensive shield now was becoming a strain. She glanced sideways at Kaidan and thought he was feeling it, too; he was sweating, tense, and paler than usual.

Something hard hit her shoulder. She stumbled, and her barrier flickered. A shot slammed into her midsection. It didn't penetrate her armor, but she the impact made her stagger. Kaidan moved to her side, putting her in the protection of his barrier while she collected herself. As she renewed the barrier, she glanced down and realized what had hit her: a rock. Their usual shielding and biotic barriers were intended to stop high-velocity shots, not slower projectiles. She looked up and realized that several of the pursuing colonists were gathering up stones in their hands. "Oh, that's not good," she said faintly. None of them were wearing helmets, thanks to the perfectly breathable atmosphere.

"No," Kaidan agreed. "Let's pick up the pace." As they kept moving, Liara managed to freeze three of their pursuers into stasis. She knew it was a weak attack as soon as she made it, though; it wouldn't last long. They weren't far from the docking area now, though, so they just had a little further to go...

Out of the corner of her eye, she realized that a few of the colonists, with rifles, had managed to move around to their side, using the various junk and barrels set up in the yard for cover. "Left!" she called as a warning. As she did, the colonists in front of them began to throw their stones. One sailed past her, and she heard it clang off Garrus's heavier armor. Some stones fell short; one or two hit Kaidan, she thought. Another hit her square in the chest. She ducked involuntarily, gasping for air. Then things went black for a moment, and suddenly she was on the ground. Her head hurt, but she couldn't figure out why. When she lifted her hand to her head, it came away sticky. She thought she heard her companions talking, loud and urgent, but her ears weren't working right, or maybe it was her translator. Someone picked her up, making her stomach lurch, and she seemed to bouncing against a hard, armored surface. It just made her head hurt more. She really wished whoever it was would stop, and tried to say so, but she couldn't make the words come.

They stopped at last, and she finally managed to gasp out, "Put me down." She slid, and felt ground under her feet again, with two strong hands clamped on her shoulders. Garrus peered into her face, looking grim at whatever he saw there.

"Liara," he said, and had she ever told him she liked how her name sounded in his voice? She didn't think so. "Come on, stay with me."

"Right here, Garrus. I like your voice." Her voice sounded funny in her own ears, but his clenched jaw relaxed a little.

"Well, you know who I am, that's good," he said. "You got hit in the head, okay? I'm taking you back to the Normandy."

They were next to the ship, she realized. The door slid open as soon as she realized it, like she'd made it happen. Garrus lifted her by the shoulders and set her on her feet inside the airlock, but she swayed as soon as he let go. "Dammit," he growled. He looked over his shoulder, then back toward her. "I have to go back for Alenko. Do you understand? Can you get on board by yourself?"

She put out one hand, relieved to feel the wall under her fingers. It would help hold her up. "P-perfectly all right," she said, trying to keep her voice, and the rest of herself, steady. "I'll just go see the doctor." That struck her oddly, somehow. "I'm a doctor, too, but not the right kind of doctor."

"No," he agreed. He touched her cheek lightly. "You're tougher than you look, though." He stepped back and hit the button to close the hatch.

She heard the familiar synthesized voice announcing the decontamination cycle, but then she must have passed out, because the next thing she knew, she was lying on something. A bed; the lighting overhead was dim in a familiar way, and she realized she must be in the medbay. And with that, she realized she had aches all over.

"Ah. There you are." She heard Dr. Chakwas's crisp voice, and the woman came over, checking the monitors and looking into her eyes. "Do you remember what happened?"

"We were on Feros," she said slowly. "The colonists were attacking. They had rocks." That must have been what hit her; she reached up to touch her head, and found it bandaged.

"That's right. Don't touch, please. You have a concussion, a cracked rib, and a lot of bruises. You've been out for most of a day."

"Is everyone else all right?"

"Yes. The rest of the team has been treated and is doing just fine. Let me call the Commander. She'll want to know you're awake, and meanwhile we can get you something to eat."

Shepard arrived shortly after. Liara straightened up, automatically, wincing as the action stretched sore muscles. "Glad you're back with us," Shepard said with a smile. "How are you feeling?"

"Not too bad, but Dr. Chakwas tells me that's because I haven't tried to get up yet."

Shepard's smile broadened. "Yeah, you take it easy. Your head is kind of important around here."

"What happened down there? Why did the colonists attack us?"

The smile fell away. "Well, it turns out they were being controlled by a giant... plant... thing..."

Liara's head was hurting again by the time Shepard finished explaining to her about the Thorian, and the geth, and the Cipher. She rubbed her forehead absently. "That's a lot to take in."

"Sorry. Do you know Shiala? The asari commando?"

Liara tried to remember. A lot of asari had followed Benezia at one time or another. Most of them had been rather dismissive of Liara once she and her mother started quarreling. "Maybe." She thought Shiala might have been one of the more polite ones, who at least pretended to be interested in her studies of the Protheans. "I'd have to see her to be sure."

"She stayed on Feros, but I can show you footage of her."

"She stayed? Why would she do that?"

Shepard shrugged. "She said she wanted to make amends for the harm she'd done the colonists. I can't help but notice that whatever Saren's up to, he's pretty interested in mind control abilities."

Liara shivered. "That's more than a little disturbing."

Shepard said, "I'll need you to take a look in my head again. The Cipher doesn't really seem to be clearing things up for me."

"Of course..."

"Not right now," said Dr. Chakwas firmly. "In fact, I think she needs some rest now, Commander."

"Sure thing. You work on getting better, Liara."

Complete rest was the best way to recover, Dr. Chakwas told her. Liara rested, and perhaps dozed on and off, but she didn't think she was sleeping for very long at a stretch. Instead, her mind wandered in an unfocused way. Kaidan paid her a visit some time later, one arm in a sling. "Oh dear," she said.

"Don't worry about it. You did well out there. You kept your head, and slowed down the colonists without killing them."

The praise was unexpected. "I... thank you." She frowned. "Garrus said he was going back for you."

"He did. We both got out of there fine. My arm will be all right in a few days. The colonists followed us, though. They were banging on the airlock before Shepard got back."

"I don't think I'm sorry I missed that."

Dr. Chakwas shooed him off shortly after, and Liara dozed again. Ashley and Tali came together with her dinner tray. She was pleased to find that she actually had an appetite, and ate while they took turns telling her about their trip to the ExoGeni facility.

Ashley told her, "And then we break into this room, walk past a piece of junk, and—bam!—suddenly it unfolds into a big geth..."

Tali put in, "I told you not to turn your back on it..."

Liara laughed. "I assume you dismantled it?"

She felt exhausted once they'd left, but couldn't help a little self-pity at the thought that Garrus hadn't been among her string of visitors that day. They'd said everyone was fine—and if he wasn't fine, he'd be here, too—so why not come see her?

Dr. Chakwas dimmed the lights further. Liara suspected that the doctor was trying to encourage her to sleep. It worked, though, as she realized when she woke up to hear the woman's voice.

"She's resting," Dr. Chakwas was saying firmly. "And you were supposed to deliver her to the medbay, not leave her fainting in the airlock."

"Well, I could hardly leave Lieutenant Alenko all alone with the rock-throwing colonists, could I? Or you might have two concussion patients in here."

The familiar teasing lilt made her smile. "I'm awake," she called.

Dr. Chakwas pulled back the curtain that gave her a bit of privacy and gave her a stern look. "Fine," she said, "but only five minutes."

"Ten?" Liara suggested hopefully.

"Five," she repeated, half smiling, "but I'm stepping out to get some coffee."

Real privacy, even for a brief window, was an unexpected gift. "All right."

She heard the door open and shut behind the doctor, even as Garrus came up to her bedside. "Hey there. How are you doing?"

Lying down, she had to look a long way up. "I'll be all right. My head hurts, on and off, and I'm getting tired easily. You can sit down, you know."

He pulled a chair up to the bedside, sat, and startled her by putting his hand over hers. "Yeah. You got hit pretty hard. There were too many threats to keep track of, so I didn't notice in time."

She tore her eyes away their joined hands, though she remained aware of the texture of reinforced fabric against her skin. There was a shade of anxiety in his expression, facial plates held tight. "It was hardly your fault," she said. "What, were you going to yank me out of the way?"

He shrugged. "Something like that. You wouldn't have been in front at all, if you didn't have to cover me with your barrier."

"Your getting shot is not really a better outcome. Stop being hard on yourself." He didn't look convinced. To distract him, she turned her hand palm-up and squeezed his. "You're still wearing gloves. Do you wear them all the time?" She knew many turians did, when working with other species, to conceal the more obvious aspects of their predatory lineage.

He shrugged again. "Most of the time. I don't want to alarm the locals."

Liara rolled her eyes. "I'm not human. I'm aware you have talons. Take it off?"

His expression relaxed a little more, and his tone was deliberately light as he said, "I didn't think humans came in blue." He unfastened his gloves and pulled them off, one after the other, before returning his hand to its previous position on top of hers.

He kept his talons trimmed, too, she noticed. Her breath quickened at the heat and texture of his skin against hers. "That's better," she said, and flushed at hearing her voice come out more husky than she'd meant.

Garrus leaned forward and lightly touched her cheek with his free hand. "You were pretty out of it for a little while there. I hated just leaving you at the airlock, but..."

"It's fine," she said, focusing on his eyes. "Wait, you didn't think I was angry about that, did you? Of course you had to go back, don't worry about it—"

He leaned forward and cut her off with a kiss, pressing his mouth against her lips. That was just about the last thing she expected him to do. It wasn't a gesture typical of turians; before, she'd been the one to kiss him, which meant... he must have learned it from her. His touch was warm and light, a little hesitant; she pulled him closer with her left hand at the back of his neck. His tongue brushed against her lips, so she opened her mouth, let him in. Heat seemed to flood through her, along with a growing urge to open her mind and bring them together, merge the two of them into one being. Too soon, too far, she thought, shying away from the desire to meld, which she'd never done before in that way. She concentrated on the feel and taste of him instead.

When he pulled away, she opened her eyes, trying to catch her breath. "Sorry," he said, voice noticeably lower than usual.

"Are you?" she said, still breathing hard.

His mandibles flared out into a grin. "No," he admitted. "Unless you are. But this doesn't seem like the time."

She slid her fingernails along the back of his neck, finding the edges of the scales that guarded his spine, and he shivered. "Kiss me again?"

"Yes, ma'am." He leaned in again, and this time she pressed her tongue against him, boldly venturing past the sharp teeth to taste him, strange and sweet and smoky.

She didn't hear the door open, but she did notice the ostentatious clattering Dr. Chakwas made around her desk, and broke off with a sigh. Garrus laid his cheek against hers and sighed, too, breath warm against her neck. "Get some rest," he murmured. "I'll stop by tomorrow."

"It took you long enough today," she said tartly, though she couldn't stop smiling.

"Shepard really did a number on the Mako this time, although I suppose the blame really lies with the geth. She has us going through ExoGeni's files, too." He stood, reluctantly, and put his gloves back on. "See you tomorrow."

Liara listened to him go and sighed, trying to find a comfortable position in the too-firm bed. She felt too wound up to sleep. Dr. Chakwas leaned around the side of the screen shielding her bed, smiling. "Everything all right, Liara?"

"Yes. Just fine." It was a bit of a lie, since the bed still felt a bit uncomfortable, but on the other hand she felt nearly giddy.

"He kept sending up inquiries about how you were doing, while you were unconscious," Dr. Chakwas said.

"Oh. Really?" Liara felt warm, and ridiculously pleased that he'd worried, somehow.

"Mm-hm. Pleasant dreams, dear."