There's been some interest in seeing what the Liir/Batarian dynamic looked like once the Liir were done trying to commit xenocide, so let's take a look! I've been meaning to write this one for a while now, but was originally going to wait until after I wrote a Hiver story, for balance. Since I can't think of too many Hiver plots that grab me, we'll go with this instead.
The Liir have a bit of a reputation for being the 'good guys' of SotS. They're super nice, very mystical, and only aggressive if severely provoked. I never liked that portrayal, as I find it to be very clichéd and boring. The Liir are CREEPY AS HELL when looked at the right way, and for races that are just starting to get used to the idea of psychic powers as something real, the way the Liir operate can be downright scary. Put that together with a post-xenocide occupation of the Batarians and you get a recipe for good times.
Not sure I like how this turned out in the end, but I'll let you all be the final judges. Like? Dislike? You know where the review button is. I'll do my best to fix whatever you find.
Unfortunately, this may be the last update for a while. I just don't have the free time I used to, so I may have to take a bit of a break. If I can, I'll try and post the new Liir Codex soon, but no promises.
As the shuttle lifted off behind her, Elana T'Gori's dress flapped slightly in the high wind. She mentally congratulated herself on her choice of the more conservative human-style dress over an asari-style one, which would have left quite a bit more skin vulnerable to the winds of the shuttle port. As it stood, she still felt somewhat exposed, surrounded by armored turians going about their business with professional efficiency. As far as she knew, she was the only person on the base not wearing armor.
"Inspector T'Gori?" Someone called over the roar of the engines, and a turian male in blue field armor jogged up to her, helmet distorting his voice but amplifying it to be easily heard over the roar. "Let's get you somewhere else. Wouldn't look good if you got yourself squashed by a shuttle while you're wandering around the base."
The turian led her away from the shuttlepad, and Elana noticed that he seemed very well armed for how peaceful the planet was claimed to be. She noticed the distinctive shapes of a collapsed assault rifle and a sniper rifle, as well as a pistol strapped to his hip. Then again, it appeared almost everyone on this base was equally armed, so it might just be turian occupational regulations.
"There, that should get us out of everyone's way," the turian said, guiding her into a more secluded corner past one of the base's many prefabricated structures. "Welcome to Khar'shan, Inspector."
"Thank you," Elana replied graciously, before looking around in some confusion. "You wouldn't happen to know where my bags went, would you? I was told they had to be shipped down separately."
"Yeah, security is pretty tight around here," the turian explained calmly, pulling up his omni-tool. "They'll have to go through inspection to make sure you don't have any contraband before they'll ship it down. Should be here by the end of the day."
"Inspection? Why?" she asked, somewhat surprised.
"You want to know what even a pound of military grade explosives goes for on Khar'shan these days?" the turian asked, and though she couldn't see it, Elan was pretty sure his expression was somewhat wry. "There are always troublemakers who would love to get some high explosive revenge. The Liir have pretty much helped us put a stop to any organized resistance, but since the Council said we can't use hastatim or safe camps, we're limited with what we can do against individuals."
"I take it the Batarians are not integrating well with the Liir then?" Elan asked, silently triggering the hidden recording function of her omni-tool.
Her whole mission here was to make sure the rights of both species were being respected, as well as to assess the reconstruction efforts. It was her first assignment, and she wanted to make sure the matriarchs knew she was different from the other maidens that wasted their youths in merc groups or in clubs. If the Liir and Batarians were fighting again, that was certainly something the Council would want to know.
"Depends on what you mean," the turian replied calmly, though she thought she saw his gaze drift down to her omni-tool for a moment. It was hard to tell with his helmet on. "The lower casts don't mind them much, though they get very nervous when one goes by. Not much left up the upper casts, not once the plague riots got through with them, anyway, so I can't speak for them. Mostly we just see attempted crimes of passion. Usually we get there in time to stop it, though if we can't, the Liir usually take care of it themselves."
"I take it you are working quite closely with the Liir then?" Elan asked suspiciously. "Are you working with the Batarians as well?"
"What's left of them," the turian answered, and when Elan looked confused, he continued. "Towards the end of the Extermination, the Batarians had suffered so many losses that it was impossible for them to keep deceiving their people. And when the lower castes found out…it didn't end well for the Batarian leadership."
"What do you mean? Are you saying they had a civil war?"
"More like a revolution. The lower castes figured that maybe if they got rid of their leadership, the Liir would be appeased and have mercy on the rest of them. I guess it worked, in a way. The extermination stopped shortly afterward." He stiffened, his tone turning more businesslike. "Now, would you like me to show you to your quarters?"
"Actually, I'd like to look around the city first," Elan stated calmly, glancing over the walls of the compound at the city beyond. "My luggage isn't here yet in any case, so I might as well spend the time getting the lay of the land."
"Well, I haven't received any orders otherwise, so you are free to explore the city," the turian said with a shrug, leading the way toward the compound's gate. "I'll have to go with you, for your safety. There's a lot of construction going on right now, so not everywhere is safe to just wander into."
"You said that the revolution worked 'in a way.' Could you explain what you meant by that?" she asked as they passed through the compound's gate, security drones scanning them both thoroughly before the large metal doors swung open.
"Liir don't really understand the separation between species and government. They're a collectiveist government, which works for them because they're all telepathic. But because of that, they have trouble understanding how other governments can take actions that go against the wishes of the majority of their race. They understand it academically, but when it comes to making judgments, they tend to assume that the government is just a mouthpiece for the people."
"So when they declared war, they weren't declaring war on the Hegemony, they were declaring war on the batarians themselves?"
"That's what the xenopsychologists say, anyway," he confirmed, the wry note returning to his tone as he led her out into the street. As they moved away from the compound, Elan noticed fewer and fewer turian soldiers, and started seeing her first batarians since she arrived on Khar'shan. They seemed…smaller, somehow. They didn't appear afraid, though she noticed they carefully avoided making eye contact with the turian soldiers. It was more like they were...beaten.
"Earlier, you mentioned that when there are problems, the Liir try to 'take care of it themselves' if you don't get there fast enough," Elan stated, returning to something that stuck out in their earlier conversation. "What did you mean? Do the Liir kill them?"
"Oh, definitely not," the turian said quickly, leading them around a corner and past a large construction site.
There, she got a good look at her first Liir. It was just standing there, completely encased in the strange armor they wore, mechanical tentacles sprouting from both sides to hold it aloft. It was lifting a crumbling section of building up into the air, where three batarians waited on a scaffold with plaster and cement to seal it back into the wall. She noticed that while the two groups worked with quick efficiency, neither group spoke to the other, and an armed guard was standing carefully off to the side, his assault rifle held carefully in his arms.
"We haven't found a single case of a Liir physically injuring anyone since we arrived," the turian explained, leading them away from the construction site. "They don't even fight back if they get attacked."
"So how do the Liir deal with these rogue batarians then? If they won't fight back…"
"They take away the batarian's pain," he answered gravely, and in a tone that indicated deep disgust. "We've asked them to stop, and for the most part, they have, but we still try to get there first. Just in case."
"I don't understand. Take away their pain?"
"Wow, they really do keep you inspectors like mushrooms, don't they?" the turian asked, turning to stare at her incredulously. "Liir can do a lot more than just read minds and move stuff around. They can get inside your head and rewrite your brain. Take away memories, change the way you think, maybe more."
"Goddess!" Elan exclaimed, and then her mind finished connecting the dots. "So why you say they took away the batarians' pain…"
"They literally took their pain away," he explained darkly. "The younger ones aren't very subtle yet, they just remove the memories that caused the pain. But the older ones, with a couple centuries under them?
"I knew a batarian once. He was an engineer, so we had him helping with the reconstruction. The man lost his whole family to the Extermination Plague. Wife, kids, everything. I talked with him once or twice. He wasn't a bad guy, but you could tell he wasn't all there anymore. He was on watch as a psych risk, so when he made off with a case of demo charges, we were after him almost instantly. This was before the new regulations regarding explosives, of course. They got locked down pretty fast after that.
"Anyway, we found him in the middle of his home, ready to blow himself up and take half the block with him. I wanted to just take him down with a sniper then storm the place with the bomb squad, but we got ordered to get back and let the negotiators try to defuse him. Problem was, the Liir didn't have the same red tape we did.
"One of them walked right through our checkpoint, and disarmed the bomb before we even got close. Right through the wall, couldn't even see the damn thing. Something to do with its echolocation or something. Anyway, then it smashed the door in with those tentacles on their suits, and walked right next to our bomber. Two minutes later, they both walk out, and the batarian turns himself in. Didn't even resist."
"Doesn't seem so bad," Elan pointed out carefully, though she knew there must be more to the story. "The Liir was able to peacefully resolve the situation without bloodshed."
"Yeah, but I talked with the batarian later. He was a totally different person. He was happy and smiling. I knew the guy for almost a month, he never smiled once." The turian led her down another street, and Elan sudden realized just how empty the city seemed. Compared to the streets on Thessia or the Citadel, the city was almost deserted. "I asked him about his family, and he said it just didn't bother him anymore. He remembered them, but they didn't make him sad or angry anymore. This was a guy who was so worked up over his family's deaths that he was ready to blow himself up, and take everyone else with him. And in two minutes, he just doesn't care anymore?"
"You mentioned that you've asked the Liir to stop taking away the batarians' pain?" she probed, fishing for more information as she changed the subject.
"Well, the higher-ups talked to their higher-ups," he answered with a shrug. "They were concerned about the possible long-term effects of the Liir's brain tinkering, as well as possible sentient rights violations. So now they're just stuck with traditional methods of brainwashing."
"Traditional methods?"
"You might have seen them on the way in," the turian said, pointed up at the sky. "The Liir sent two 'communication' ships shortly after the occupation began. We've got one of the best extranet connections you'll find outside the Citadel. And the batarians were not happy when they found out exactly how much their government had lied to them, either. It's actually helped quite a bit to keep the level of violence down."
"You say 'communication ships' like you mean something entirely different," Elan pointed out calmly.
"That's because they don't just provide a nice link to the extranet. The Liir were kind enough to hook the batarians into their networks as well, only the Liir don't really have networks the way we do. They're a telepathic collective, they don't need them, except when communicating across planets. So a lot of their data is designed to be viewed by aliens like us." The turian stopped and turned to face Elan, his voice going grave. "Imagine what kind of data files, vids, songs you would send if you had all the cunning and wisdom of an asari matriarch, and could look into their minds to see exactly what made the batarians tick. Propaganda tailored specifically for them. Just a theory, of course, we can't prove it, but…"
"You're saying the Liir have a pair of propaganda ships in orbit, and never bothered to tell anyone?" she asked, thankful she remembered to trigger her recorder.
"I'm saying that considering the Liir just tried to commit xenocide, the amount of hostility we're seeing from the batarians doesn't add up. They were one of the most vindictive and warlike races on the Citadel before we opened up the Orion Arm. We should be seeing riots in the streets, not mild resentment and crimes of passion."
"I'm not sure that-" Elan's next sentence was cut off by two sharp cracks from a nearby alley that some part of the back of her mind recognized as gunfire. The turian reacted instantly, tackling her to the ground and pulling out his sniper rifle, eyes scanning the entire street in an instant.
"Stay down!" he ordered, and got to his feet, dashing over to the mouth of the alley and taking cover behind one of the walls.
Now that she was looking for it, she could make out movement in the alley. The figure of a large Liir, almost six meters long, took up most of the back of the alley, though she could make out someone else moving behind the Liir.
"Both of you! Come out of there, and put any weapons you may have on the ground!" the turian ordered, edging around the corner to point his rifle at the two figures. The Liir moved, but not to leave the alley. Instead, it shifted its body to shield the figure behind it from view, blocking the turian's shot.
"This man is distraught," the Liir explained, turning its armored face toward the turian. "Please leave us. I fear your presence will only aggravate him now."
"No!" the other figure yelled, moving forward. She could see it was a haggard-looking batarian male, a pistol in his hand and his gait uneven. Drugs or alcohol, maybe? "You stay, turian! I wanna know how you justify this!"
"Justify what?" the turian asked, though from his tone and the way he pulled one hand behind his back to activate his omnitool, it looked as though he was only stalling for time.
"This!" the batarian snarled, pressing his pistol up against the Liir's head. The Liir didn't seem bothered by this, moving its head only slightly to look at him expressionlessly. "You turians just sat back and let these monsters murder us all! You knew what they were doing to use, and you did nothing! And then when they've finished, you just swoop in and occupy our planets! You even let them live here, any expect us to be peaceful neighbors with the race that tried to exterminate us!"
"The Hegemony left the Citadel years before the war ever began," the turian said evenly, though his hand returned to the rifle and Elan saw him trying to aim around the Liir's protective bulk. "We can't interfere in the affairs of species that aren't members."
"We left because the Council was trying to outlaw our culture!" yelled the batarian, gesturing wildly with the gun. The turian's finger tightened around the trigger, but before he could take the shot, the Liir again moved to conceal the batarian from view. "The caste system was who we were, it was what made us great! You had no right to ask us to give that up!"
"Who you were?" the Liir asked, straightening, and for the first time, Elan thought she heard something like anger creeping into its tone. Its movement allowed the turian to line up another shot against the batarian, but the Liir gestured calmingly with a pair of tentacles. "Peace, friend. I have already disabled his weapon. He can harm no one now."
The batarian looked down at his gun in confusion before shoving it into the Liir's face and pulling the trigger several times. When nothing happened, he screamed in frustration and threw it at the Liir. It bounced harmlessly off the creature's armor, and the batarian began scrambling backward as the Liir straightened and placed its face inches from the batarian's.
"You have no idea of what you speak," the Liir pronounced, the anger softening to something like pity. "Come, little one. I will show you who you were. Perhaps then you will understand."
The batarian stiffened, his four eyes all rolling back into his head as he began to twitch uncontrollably. Moans and groans of pain escaped his lips, and a line of drool began sliding from the corner of his mouth to the pavement.
"What the hell did you just do?" the turian yelled, raising his rifle again, only to be met with another placating tentacle.
"Your leaders have asked that we stop taking their pain, because it is how your kind learns and grows," the Liir explained calmly. "So instead, to help him learn, I gave him more pain."
"You're torturing him?" the turian accused, and his finger began tightening on the trigger again.
"Not at all. I work with former slaves, helping to rehabilitate them," the Liir explained, its clicking voice being given a mechanical edge by the suit's speakers. "He did not understand the pain the batarian caste system caused, so I showed it to him. I gave him two years of memories I took from a young asari slave girl. All that she felt, all that she experienced, is now his."
"You just dumped two years of memories into him?" the turian asked, incredulous.
"The highlights," the Liir answered, nodding in agreement. "I only took what she could not bear to remember. He will recover shortly. The mind experiences time differently. What are seconds for us may be minutes or hours for him. When he has finished reliving them, I will remove the memories again. They are not his burden to bear."
"But you'll remember them?" Elan asked, climbing back to her feet and walking up to the alley.
"That is our penance," it replied somberly. "The Black Swimmers remember."
The turian moved between Elan and the alley, not lowering his rifle. He looked like he was about to say something, when the batarian suddenly jerked upright, gasping in shock. The batarian glanced around in surprise, and then embraced the Liir, clinging to its armored form like a drowning man would to a life raft.
"I'm so sorry!" he wept, sobbing openly as he cluched at the armored form beside him. "We didn't know! We didn't know!"
"You knew, but you did not understand," the Liir corrected gently. "I will remove the memories now. Please try to relax."
"Why?" the batarian asked, as the pain slowly eased from his face. "Why did you stop? We deserved it. We deserved it all and worse."
"We stopped because you were no longer Suul'ka," it explained as if it was the simplest thing in the world. "Officer, I understand that your duty requires you to arrest this man. However, as there has been no harm done, would you consider looking the other way just this once? The weapon has been destroyed, I am uninjured, and I believe Grota here has seen the error of his ways."
The turian seemed to think for a moment, and then sighed heavily. He collapsed his rifle and returned it to his back, shaking his head.
"See her? She's an inspector for the Council," he answered heavily, pointing to Elan. "You attacked his mind right in front of her. At this point, I couldn't let you go even if I wanted to, which I don't."
"But you do," the Liir answered, calmly contradicting him. "You know that the batarian will be locked up and placed in a penal group, even though he was young, foolish, and he held his sister in his arms as she died of the plague my people inflicted upon him. You know I will swim free within hours, because your people don't even have words for what I just did to him, much less laws against it. There is no justice to be had here. Only pain."
"That doesn't matter," the turian said, sighing heavily. "There are rules. I still have to take you in."
"As you wish," the Liir stated calmly, just as an assault shuttle swooped overhead, circling to land carefully in the middle of the street. A squad of turian soldiers disembarked, guns snapping toward any possible threat as they moved to secure the scene.
"Figures, backup always shows up just when you don't need it anymore," he grumbled, walking over to stand next to Elan. "Welcome to Khar'shan, Inspector."
"Does this sort of thing happen often?" she asked in confusion, hearing the wearied resignation in his tone.
"At least once a week. Not usually this spectacularly, of course," the turian confirmed. "I'm sure we'll have a word with the Liir about this 'pain sharing' thing, but they'll just have a new trick within a few months."
"Goddess," she whispered softly, suddenly understanding the magnitude of her task. The batarians were in pain, suffering from the almost total extermination of their species, and the trauma had obviously broken them. The turians had placed the whole planet under military occupation with armed soldiers patrolling the streets. The Liir were trying to help, but their idea of help made her skin crawl. And the worst was she honestly couldn't fault any of them. She had no idea how even the Council could sort this mess out.
"That's why I'm transferring to C-Sec," the turian announced as two armed soldiers escorted the unresistant Liir into the shuttle, which suddenly looked very cramped. "Give me illegal red sand dealers and weapon smugglers over this spookie telepathic crap any day."
"I can't say that I blame you..." Elan's voice trailed off as she realized she had never actually been introduced to the turian.
"Garrus," the turian answered, a small grin on his face. "Garrus Vakarian."