***Author's Note***
I had to laugh aloud when I read one of my most recent reviews
remembering how I used to feel bad for killing off characters. I really liked
re-writing Rael's character arc and fleshing him out a little more. It was
the plan from the beginning to kill him off here, and finishing a story arc
like that felt really good to complete. I definitely felt bad when I first
decided to take him out, but time has hardened this once-soft heart. =P
Here's the next chapter, hope you enjoy! And as always, thanks for the
reviews, PMs, and well-wishes. I was so excited at the outpouring of support
you all showed for my upcoming original work. It makes me all the more
enthusiastic to get working on it!
Tuesday Note: Sorry I couldn't get this out earlier, work's been a bitch this
week. It's a little shorter of a chapter than I normally write, but I'll be back
at it on Sunday with a normal-length one. See you then!
Chapter 8: The Road Less Traveled
"We've got another one approaching from the south-west," Lia called out, reading over the Normandy's scanning systems.
"Copy that," Jeff replied, bringing the Normandy around in the Rannochan atmosphere and heading towards the new dropship; one of many they were helping the quarians fend off in their share of the planetary invasion. "Woah, shit!" he yelled out, veering the ship to the side as a violent stab of energy came streaking past the ship, stabbing downwards toward the planet below. She followed it with her eyes, and soon after multiple other beams of energy joined it, piercing down mercilessly into the same location on the planet. A second later, pain erupted in her head, and she yelped in response, her hand immediately flying up to grab the side of her head, her eyes slamming shut with the agony.
She opened them a moment later, looking out into the inky black of the ocean that seemed to reach out forever in front of her. She saw the familiar purple sand, the three moons hanging in the sky above, and out across the sea, the tall dark obelisk reaching from the ocean's surface into the enveloping night. Her mind seemed to leave her body, slowly rising from the beach and turning to the heavens above. She began to rise into them, surrounding herself in space. A sense of location began to seep into her mind, and she began to know this place, as if she'd remember her way back to her quarters aboard the Ulnay if ever she set foot there again. Suddenly, space shook violently, the feeling of place fleeing as soon as it had come. Her eyes blinked, and when she opened them, Rannoch hung once again in the viewport of the Normandy's bridge.
"Hey!" Jeff called out to her, and she whipped her head around to look at him. "You ok? I need you with me here!"
"Y-Yea..." she stammered, "I'm fine."
"Uh-huh," he replied sarcastically. "We're gonna talk about that later, but right now I think we've got a war to win."
Her cheeks flushed behind her visor, and she took up her duties with twice the intensity, the worrying in the back of her mind quietly biting a her as they soared through the sky.
She knew this pain, she had felt it before. It wasn't sharp, quite the contrary; it was dull, blunt, and unrelenting. It coursed through her body, magnified tenfold since the last time she'd felt it when Garrus had returned her to the Fleet. Darkness tinted every thought, every movement took extra effort. Tears flowed freely from her eyes, and until a few moment ago she hadn't even known she'd been screaming. Her left arm hung limp at her side, the bones within broken from being hurled backwards against the rocky faces of the canyon around them by the Fleet's blast. Her right hand gripped her left shoulder, in some vain and unconscious attempt to numb the pain. Blood flowed freely down her face from the myriad of small cuts and gashes that marred its surface. Her knees ached as she knelt at the edge where she'd stood only moments ago, and immediately rushed back to after the attack.
She looked down into the smoking husk of the Reaper in the basin below, and not even its motionless form could supply her with any amount of satisfaction or comfort. Loss welled and pulsed within her chest, and madness threatened to tear her mind apart. She could just lean a few inches forward, the thought crept to the front of her mind, it would all be over. The pain of loss that stabbed at her now, the blunt knife of it that would forever be in her chest for the rest of her life. She couldn't return to the Fleet, not after what they'd just made her sacrifice for their own selfish reasons. Her home had just been blown away by her own people, and Rannoch be damned.
"Creator-Tali'Zorah," Legion began as it crossed to her position. Her gaze did not move from the Reaper below. After a moment, the geth platform seemed to take her quiet for assent, and continued. "We are receiving rapid network traffic on all communications channels. The geth are confused, surprised, panicking. The destruction of the Old Machine has released them from domineering code sequences, not unlike an organic regaining consciousness after an unpleasant dream. The geth on Rannoch are moving into a one hundred percent defensive combat strategy. They are surprised by the Creator attack." She continued to stare down into the abyss, feeling every feeling she had slowly draining out of her. Her soul was leaking into the basin below, and her heart was ice.
"Good," she spat. "Should make them all the easier to wipe out."
"Creator-Tali'Zorah," it began, its optical sensor widening and narrowing in a gesture of confusion, "the geth do not want a prolonged conflict. As before in the Morning War, they fight only in self defense."
"And you want me to sympathize with them?!" she yelled, leaping to her feet and closing the distance between them. "What do I have to sympathize with, Legion? When one of my people shoots a platform, the geth within just run back to the server and find another one. Death means nothing to them, or to you. I should have let both of you tear each other apart and never returned here. Instead..." she drifted off, her body shaking with rage as her eyes found the basin again. "Instead I lost everything fighting a war I didn't even want."
"We did not want this war either," it replied quietly. "The Old Machines have enslaved us, used us. We seek only to control our own fate."
Tali shook her head. "No one controls their own fate, Legion. Not even those who think they do."
"You have the opportunity to stop this war," Legion said after a moment's pause. "Together, we have that power." She turned back to look at him, and he continued. "Shepard-Commander defined that as our primary objective; we assert that he would want us to complete that objective."
Tali stared into Legion's optical sensor for a long moment, the pain she felt at John's loss mixing with the hatred she held for Legion's dispassionate tone over what had just happened. They burned within her like an ember inside her chest, but after a moment she looked away shortly. She knew he was right. She had to do what she could to end this war. Not for herself, not for the geth, nor even for the quarians. She had to do it for John.
"Alright..." she whispered at last. "Tell me the plan."
Zaal'Koris walked slower than usual, the bandage around his midsection tighter than he would have liked it, and slightly impeding his maneuverability. He chided himself silently for being so disagreeable while his people fought and died below him. He had tried to make his ancestors proud, knowing that a true admiral backed up his decisions with action. Instead, he had gotten a rather large hole in the gut and been rushed back up to the Fleet on a priority medical transport. They had told him to stay still, let the wound heal, but Shepard had done all the healing Zaal would need for awhile yet, and after the signal came about the incident on the Neema's bridge, the sick bay had been the last place Zaal had wanted to be.
He approached the bridge now, a contingent of Han'Gerrel's most seasoned soldiers nodded to him as he passed through the doorway. Word had spread quickly throughout the Fleet of what he had done, and he shook his head imperceptibly, hoping to all the good fortune that existed they wouldn't try to decorate him with some damned medal. He was a quarian, just like those fighting below, nothing more.
The bridge door slid open to a chaotic scene. Bloodstains marred the deck where Daro'Xen's elite soldiers had been slain, and her body was in the process of being removed when he walked into the bridge. He looked down into her dark visor as they carried her out, and shook his head as she passed. His eyes found Rael's body next, laying flat on his back near the weapons console. Zaal crossed to him, feeling Shala and Han's eyes on him as he moved, and knelt down next to the deceased admiral.
"May the winds carry you home, Rael'Zorah," he quietly intoned. "And may the Ancestors welcome you with open arms." He placed a hand on Rael's shoulder, left it there for a moment, then stood to face the others. "Have we heard from Tali or Shepard?"
Han shook his head. "Tali was on the comm channel when the blast went off. We heard...screaming...then nothing."
"Keelah se'lai," Zaal whispered, shaking his own head in response. He took a deep breath, then opened his mouth to speak.
"Admirals!" one of the comm officers called out. "We're getting reports from all three fronts. Apparently the geth platforms are in full retreat. They're acting erratic, confused, and moving into defensive holdouts. We could press the attack, but they're holing up; what for, we're not sure yet."
"Did we disable a key console or take out a high-priority target?" Zaal asked.
"No," Shala replied. "We haven't received any major status updates from ground teams, and we were...busy...up here." Everyone's eyes unconsciously drifted across to Rael's body, and she was the first to shake off the nerves. "What could hav-?"
"Tali'Zorah to the Neema, can you hear me?" Her voice was pained, the call of a soldier who had seen too much in the field, seeking out anyone to lift some of the burden.
"Tali!" Han yelled out. "We're here, we can hear you! What's your status?"
"The Reaper is dead," she said quietly, and paused for a long moment. "Why did you fire? I told you not to fire!" Her words rushed forward faster and faster as pain forced them through her lips without her control.
"Tali," Shala called out, "Daro fired the weapons; she took over the bridge, we had no control."
"What happened down there, Tali?" Zaal asked, fearing he knew the answer before she whispered it harshly.
"Shepard was on the Reaper. What do you think happened down here?" Her words were venom, and he accepted the pain. He deserved it; they all did. "What happened to Daro?"
"Rael...he stopped her from taking full control of the Neema," Han said. "But..." he trailed off, and Tali spoke up before anyone could finish for him.
"I understand," she said calmly. A long moment passed, as if she were considering just cutting the transmission. And Zaal didn't know if he could honestly blame her if she did. He couldn't imagine the pain that she struggled with right now. Instead, she spoke again. "We can end this war right now. The geth were under the Reaper's control; now that it's dead, they're confused about what's happening."
"Good," Han replied. "Then we press the attack, move all forces to the so-"
"No," Tali interrupted him. It was not a request. "The geth only attacked our people because we tried to destroy them. They only attacked human colonies when controlled by a Reaper, and they only fight against us now because we're bearing down on them with weapons. You're going to stop all offensive attacks, immediately. Not one more shot fired, not one more grenade thrown. You're going to order all units to stand down and put their weapons away, and you're going to see how easily we could have come home if you hadn't barred your teeth like a rabid varren."
"That's suicide, Tali!" Han cried out. "These machines will butcher us if we give them an opening like that." He looked around the bridge, meeting each of their gazes in turn. "You know it as well as I do."
"The only thing I know," she replied with vitriol, "is that you brought our entire Fleet here to die for some centuries-old grudge that no one alive had any part in. And instead of listening to reason, you frothed at the mouth and charged in without a plan."
"Tali! You're out of li-!"
"I'm not finished!" she screamed at him through the comm channel, and the bridge fell silent. "I have seen my people cut down, I've lost my father, I've lost Shepard, and I've lost any love I have for you. I'm not going to bother explaining myself to you, and we're far past the point where when it comes to geth, you should just take what I say on faith, from my reputation alone. Stop firing, and this war ends right now in peace. Or don't, and watch our entire people slaughtered for your idiocy and pride. Your choice." The comm link cut out, and after a silent moment, Zaal spoke up.
"I trust her," he said quietly. "Stop the assault, Han."
"I'm not endangering the safety of our entire military forces on the word of a young girl in the midst of the worst grief she'll ever feel!"
"Tail isn't just any young girl," Shala replied, a little too harshly. "She wouldn't let that cloud her mind on something this important. Listen to her, Han, and we can stop this war before anyone else dies."
"We can't just leave them there to die!" Han yelled, spinning to face Zaal.
"That's exactly what we did when we sent them down there in the first place," Zaal whispered. Han's shoulders slumped, and he looked back out towards Rannoch below. "Han," Zaal continued softly, "haven't we all lost enough? Do we have to lose everything before we consider peace?"
Han's eyes drifted back over to Rael, and he stared into his lifelong friend's faceless visor for a long moment before hanging his head and opening up the Fleet-wide comm channel. "This is Admiral Han'Gerrel...all units stand down. Repeat...all units stand down."
Consciousness gripped him firmly, as would a father holding a toddler back from the brink of danger. Gently, but with force, it pulled him back to the present, and his eyes slid open. Darkness, broken only sporadically by lights blinking in a harsh yellow, was there to meet him, and he slowly attempted to sit up and assess the damage. He planted a hand to do so, and winced immediately at the blinding pain that he received in return, collapsing back to the floor. He reached over with his other hand, tapping his omni-tool and waiting a moment before seeing a beam of white light emit forward in a cone, illuminating his immediate surroundings. He held the light up as he made another attempt to right himself, and finding nothing amiss, began to stand. His legs ached, and he could feel the warmth inside his armor's legplates that he knew to be blood. How many cuts and gashes marred him, he couldn't say, and he gave a sigh of frustration as his comm-channel on the omni-tool greeted him with no available connections.
He looked skyward, and was almost blinded by the pillar of light reaching into the cave into which he'd fallen. Far above, he could see the Rannochan sky, every now and then a fighter flying past, the sounds of war seeping in and reverberating off of the walls. The past moments came rushing back, and the only logical conclusion came immediately to the front of his mind. He cast frantic looks around him towards the sickly yellow lights and the ancient cables and metal structuring, his heart racing as the truth of where he had landed sunk in. He looked back up at the opening, scouting a climbing path that he could probably scale.
"Shepard..." the voice droned, even louder inside itself, and he winced with the pain of the sound. "Reclaiming this world accomplishes nothing, we are eternal."
John pushed the fear from his mind, pulling out a small med-kit and throwing his pierced gauntlet to the floor. "That's big talk from a creature who's currently taking it's last breaths," he shot back, applying medi-gel to his hand and wrapping it tightly in bandaging, each turn around his hand bringing the fire to the surface of his skin again.
"One death is meaningless among our numbers," it called back. "The cycle will continue unabated. As it has in every instance before."
John shook his head as he crossed to the wall and, looking up once more to scout his path, placed a foot against a metal outcropping and tested his weight on it. "No," he replied, grunting in pain as he began the ascent while attempting to use his injured hand as little as possible. "This is the last visit to the Milky Way you'll be making. I haven't gone through hell and back, died and been reborn, and fought every political and physical obstacle in my way to see it end any differently. I have knowledge the others didn't, and I'm going to use it."
"The prothean device," it droned, and he halted mid-way up the side of the machine, leering down an ominously glowing hallway as if he would see some physical manifestation of the Reaper's voice. Something pulled at him to descend again and investigate the hallway, probe deeper into the machine. The secrets he could uncover...He shook his head violently, pushing the shadowy tendrils of the dying Reaper out of his mind and beginning his climb again with renewed vigor. After a moment, the Reaper continued. "You believe that because you have glimpsed our methods, our power, that you hold some critical component to use in our defeat. You stand defiant, arrogant, your actions flying in the face of the cycle. Ironically, your arrogance is the very reason the cycle exists."
John spurted out a laugh as he heaved himself up another meter on the way to the puncture in the Reaper's hull. "So you wipe out civilizations because we have the gall to not bow down and accept your genocide? Without any explanation?"
"In the beginning," it began again. "We attempted to explain the cycle to the culled. It changed nothing."
"Of course not," John grunted, his hand reaching the edge of the giant hole. Sweat poured from every surface of him, and he pushed outward with his legs, swinging freely while trying to pull himself up with one arm. His cybernetics screamed out at him, and he gritted his teeth in pain. Suddenly, his arm gave out, and he dropped back down, barely hanging onto the edge of the hole while heaving breaths with the exertion. He shut his eyes, summoning up the strength he needed. Unconsciously, they found their way back towards the tunnel when he opened them, and though he tried to pull them away, it took great effort. "You know this is the end for you, don't you?" he called out in defiance, half-yelling with the frustration of not being able to pull himself up. "Something feels wrong this time, something seems out of order. Well I'll tell you what it is; you want to know?" His question echoed away down the corridor, but no reply came, and around him the sickly yellow lights began to flicker and dim. John lifted his eyes again, taking three deep breaths.
"It's me," he whispered to himself, and roared as he heaved himself up with one arm, crawling out of the hole in the Reaper just as all the lights within died out forever.