Chapter Eleven: Ghouls

Sol wasn't really surprised to see Liara there. She'd already invaded his headspace once. Darza was scared out of her mind though. She recoiled from the spot where Holo Liara sat and almost ran out of the room. Quelb grabbed the girl's hand and held it, keeping her rooted in place.

"While it is good to meet you at last, Doctor T'soni, I think perhaps you should consider explaining your presence here. Clearly I need to re-evaluate the ship's shielding, as neither you nor Spectre Taptrin appear to have any difficulty getting transmissions through."

"When I learned that my niece had left her undergraduate program to join a group of zealots and extremists, I was rather worried. Darza has never been a homebody, but neither was she especially rebellious."

"If you knew she was in distress, why did you not take steps to rescue her?"

Liara clasped both hands over one of her knees and leaned toward Quelb. "There are several reasons why I chose not to intervene personally. They're all rather complicated and involved, so I'm sure you'll forgive me if I don't go into them right now. Suffices to say that I sent a friend to watch over her. He seems to have kept her out of the worst of it."

"You think so?" Sol didn't want to grill Liara. She was his aunt as much as she was Darza's. He looked up to her. "What's worse than getting drugged out of your mind and tricked into dismantling your pen pal?"

"Attempted genocide."

Liara's reply was smooth and crisp. She always seemed to talk like that, like she knew everything and she was just being kind enough to reveal a part of the puzzle. "I believe Nerat was involved in bringing down the batarian Hegemony."

The new guy, Miller, coughed like he had something to say. "The Reapers torched Khar'shan forty years ago. The batarians didn't need a whole lot of encouragement to tear each other apart after that."

"And you should know, having been there during their final moments," Liara replied. "One day you will have to tell me the story of how you and Commander Toria escaped the violence of the Exodus."

"We didn't."

Miller ran a finger across the scar on his forehead like he was reminding himself of something. Sol realized that even though the man was probably less than thirty years old; he'd seen more death and destruction than anyone on the ship. Except Liara. She didn't really count, since she wasn't actually there.

"Why didn't you come with us?"

Sol almost shivered. Zaal sounded terrified. He sounded like a lost, lonely teenager again. Liara looked grim.

"I'm not your keeper, Zaal. When you came to me with this idea, I gave you what you needed to get into the sky. This is your mission. My presence would only have held you back."

"T'soni." Taptrin went over and stuck her face right up next to Liara's. "I'm sick of your mysterious act. Say what you came to say, or I'm shutting you down."

Liara spread her hands and smiled. "You are certainly welcome to try. Zaal has attempted to access my private network on multiple occasions."

"Couldn't even break the first layer of encryption," Zaal admitted.

"So you've got the biggest pair in the room, we get it," Taptrin snapped. "You're still wasting our time."

"What an amusingly human turn of phrase. John would have been proud."

That shut the Spectre up real quick.

"Much as I would like to bring you all onto my ship and let Janae serve you tea and biscuits, I can't afford the risk at the moment. I have never kept my love of other races a secret, and so I and my daughter have become targets. There may still be one way I can assist you though, if you are willing."

Zaal was still in his self-destructive fugue, so Sol picked up the slack. "Shoot. Not like we have a clue anyway."

"You are closer than you might think. I recently received information indicating that someone on Earth is trying to sell an N7 breather helmet they claim Commander Shepard was wearing when he entered the transportation field that carried him up to the Citadel. Supposedly the helmet contains fragments of his skull."

"I heard about that," Taptrin said, "some kind of black market auction or something. We thought it was just a hoax."

"That may yet prove to be the case. Still, if the find is genuine; it may lead to further evidence that could tell us how—or even if—John perished while he was aboard the Citadel. Regardless, I will provide you with the location of the auction. Whether you choose to act on the information will be up to you."

Taptrin glanced over at Miller. "Sounds like we're headed home, buddy!"

The mercenary didn't answer, but he looked troubled.

Once they reached Earth proper, it took them two days to get through EDF security. Then they had to contend with a squad of suspicious human customs agents, who came aboard the ship like they belonged there and proceeded to search every nook and cranny they could find for contraband. Zaal roused from his funk long enough to shout down the leader of the red tape coterie, but his heart wasn't in it. In the end, the Treno had to stay in high orbit over the home world while a small group flew down in a shuttle.

With Tana unable to use her wings and Quelb still getting used to his new body, Sol found himself landing in Yunnan Province alongside the two humans, neither of whom he trusted to have his back in a fight.

"It's raining," he observed, peering out through the shuttle's tiny porthole.

"That's why they call it a rainforest."

Zaal was up front in the pilot's chair while Sol and the humans were crammed together in the shuttle's claustrophobically small cargo compartment. There was just barely enough room for them and all their gear, if Sol stooped and they all got real cozy. Sol did a little dance with the human mercenary so he could stick his head into the cockpit.

"Hey Zaal. You want me to rip your waste tube out through your primary induction port, you go on acting like a little shit. If you want to keep your face lookin' pretty, then shut the hell up."

The quarian winced a little bit, but he didn't quite cringe. That was a good sign that maybe he was recovering from the confrontation with Liara. Sol squeezed back into position and held on while his friend brought the shuttle in for a landing.

"You coming with us?" Sol asked.

Zaal hesitated for a moment before he answered. "I don't think so. Someone needs to stay here and keep the shuttle prepped for a speedy getaway. Never know what might be out there."

"Lions. Tigers. Other fuzzy beasts," Taptrin quipped. Sol and Zaal glanced at one another in confusion; most of that had been lost in translation. Taptrin cursed under her breath and banged on the hatch. "Let's get the hell out of this sardine tin, all right? This krogan smells like warmed-over death, and the merc ain't much better."

Zaal obliged her by opening the hatch, and the heat hit rolled over them like the wave of scalding air that flies out of an open oven door. Unlike the interior of an oven, the rainforest was wet. A torrent of water hammered down from the sky overhead, and as he stepped out into the forest, each drop seemed determined to land squarely on Sol's head.

"Reminds me of home." The rain made a valiant effort to run down into his armor, but the moisture had little success finding and openings in the flexible mesh between plates.

"Really?" Taptrin popped out from behind him. She had her yellow hair tied back in a tight bun against the back of her head. Holding her pistol ready beside her chin, she cut a very different figure from the one she'd put on the first time Sol had met her in hologram form. "I'll have to cancel my trip to Tuchanka then. Can't stand the heat."

Miller brought up the rear, his largest rifle already cocked near his hip. If the rain annoyed him, he showed no sign of it. His mouth was a thin line beneath the heavy combat specs he wore across his eyes. The huge lenses made him look like an oversized skrill.

Sol's boots sank a thumb's length into the mud as soon as he took a step forward. He'd never been anywhere with this much moisture. Even the best tended Tuchankan gardens were filled up mostly with cacti and other plants that preferred dry weather. Here in this human forest, Sol saw ferns, trees, and flowers of every possible shape and color. He was a little envious, but at the same time obscurely nostalgic for home.

He yanked one boot free of the mud with a soft sucking sound and started off in the direction Zaal had marked on their map. An insect of some kind landed on his plates and promptly tried to sting him. Sol grinned; the little monster couldn't even get through the tough outermost layer of his skin. After half a minute of fruitless attacks, the thing flew off in search of easier targets. Part of Sol hoped it would go after the Spectre. Realistically he knew she would probably have come prepared with some kind of noisome ointment to fend off the bugs, but he could dream, couldn't he?

It was surprisingly easy going as they traversed the bush. They were in a part of the forest where the underbrush grew tight around the base of each tree and left large portions of the terrain relatively clear. Sol still had to dodge long, hanging vines and the arched roots of trees that had decided bust up out of the ground, but at least he and the others didn't have to blast their way through the jungle.

"No major heat readings in the vicinity," Miller reported.

Sol sniffed, and his nose confirmed the merc's words. "Big predators probably all ran when they heard the shuttle drop."

"Doubt it. Forest floor's clear as far as I can make out. Some birds and small mammals in the trees. That's about it."

"What's the range on that headgear?"

"Two point seven kilometers."

Taptrin peered off into the forest around them like she thought she might find something among the moist greenery that Miller's goggles missed.

"Not very current equipment, is it?" she observed.

"Current enough to catch you sneaking around," Sol replied.

"I wasn't trying very hard."

"Whatever. Anything out there that might explain why all the beasts ran off?"

Miller pushed his goggled back onto the top of his head and shook it. "Nothing. It all looks normal. Just like a rainforest should, except for the animals."

"Your pardon, ground team."

Miller's head shot up as Quelb's deep voice came across the comms. "We are currently monitoring the area from orbit. Doctor Habaq agrees that the level of animal activity is lower by far than average for a rainforest in the midst of the monsoon season; however the ship's sensors indicate no abnormalities in either air pressure or temperature. We detect no recent signs of deforestation. Yet your personal observations from the surface show clearly that there is something wrong. We therefore surmise that our readings are faulty."

"My specs work just fine," Miller protested mildly.

"Indeed. The error is not in the function of our equipment, but in the readings themselves. Doctor Habaq and I believe that an advanced form of heat shielding installed beneath the forest floor has been set in place to baffle any outside sensors."

"Doesn't sound like a one-time auctioneer's pavilion."

"Certainly, Mr. Miller. We arrived at a similar conclusion. I recommend that you proceed with caution. If the proprietors of this establishment have the capacity to conceal their thermal emissions, they may also have methods for intercepting external communications."

"So I wouldn't have to listen to you rattling around in my ears anymore?" Sol grinned. "Sounds beautiful."

"Your sarcasm is noted. Doctor Habaq assures me that it will be taken into account during our next mealtime. Good day."

Sol must have looked nonplussed. Taptrin let off a short burst of laughter-quiet enough not to give away their position-not so quiet that Sol couldn't hear it.

"Sorry big guy. You were kind of being an asshat though."

"Why does he talk like that?"

Miller was looking intently at Sol. Maybe he thought he'd find the answer to his question's somewhere in the krogan's plates.

"Why does who talk like what?"

"That Quelb guy. I've met marines packing less muscle than that, but he sounds like my old Philosophy professor before she had her first coffee of the day."

Sol rubbed his hands thoughtfully across his plates as he skirted an enormous stand of bamboo stalks. It was a bit of a readjustment to think that the taciturn merc might have some formal education. "Always been like that, long as I can remember. Could probably kill a salarian just by boring him to death."

"Any particular reason he speaks in a quarian dialect?"

Sol peered at the mercenary through the loosely gathered bamboo, but he couldn't think of a way to explain Quelb to an outsider.

"He's a geth."

Taptrin kept her eyes focused on the forest. She seemed more serious now, like she sensed that they might be attacked at any moment and there wasn't any time for her usual antics.

"He looks human though."

"Sure does! That'll be the Alliance-made body I procured for him. Don't let the beefy exterior fool you-Quelb's an egghead through and though."

Miller probably wouldn't be satisfied with that explanation, but they didn't have time to go into it. Out in the lead, Sol took a step across what looked like a perfectly ordinary bed of wildflowers.

His boots crunched down on dry earth and dead leaves, and then he was in the middle of a firefight. Gunshots seemed to come from every direction at once. Even though none of them were aimed directly at Sol, several still slammed into his barrier. Momentarily stunned, he couldn't do more than stand where he was and absorb the hits.

Miller and Taptrin came flying across the threshold. The mercenary tackled Sol from behind to get him out of the line of fire while Taptrin ducked behind the trunk of a nearby tree and started shooting back.

The first thing Sol noticed as the shell shock started to wear off was that either the rain had stopped or something was keeping it from getting through. Then he was throwing up a quick barrier bubble to protect him and the human mercenary as they crawled, hopped, and scrambled into cover. They ended up somewhere cadi-corner to Taptrin's position. At least, Sol thought they did. With the buzz of his amp whirring in his ears, it was hard for him to tell where anything was.

"We were lucky," Miller told him. "They aren't really shooting at us."

Sol winced as a wound in his upper arm made itself known with a painful twinge. "Could've fooled me. Who brings that kind of firepower to an auction?"

Miller pursed his lips as he prepped an application of medigel for Sol's arm. "Soldiers, pirates, arms dealers. Us."

He had a point there. Sol exhaled gratefully as the cool, numbing gel drove away some of the pain. The two of them had their backs pressed up against the side of a plasticised structure that had no business being in the middle of a rainforest. Sol hadn't met a whole lot of salarians in his time, but he thought he recognized the Special Task Group's emblem. It was there, just a few feet down the building's façade, painted in ugly orange and black.

Miller followed Sol's eyes and saw the STG insignia. "The salarians are mixed up with this?" He didn't seem very surprised. "Doesn't matter. We should pick up the Spectre and get the hell out of here."

"What? We can't leave now! Zaal'll kill me in my sleep if I don't at least try to find out what's going on in there."

"So you'd rather go in and get us all killed for sure?"

Sol yanked his rifle out of its slot at the middle of his back and flicked his wrist to extend the barrel. "Never said that. This above your pay grade? Stay here, or head back to the shuttle."

"Oh come on merc boy. This is where you earn your credits! It's a little soon for you to wuss out on us, don't you think?"

Miller released his own rifle—a batarian W'rasha, if Sol was any judge—and replaced his goggles across his eyes. "Short range comms are still up."

Sol took a moment to admire the man's aplomb in the face of battle (and Taptrin's questionable wit). He inched his way along the wall until he was close enough to look around the edge.

There were six buildings of varying sizes sticking up from the earth, all bearing the marks of salarian technology and the STG insignia. Counting Taptrin's pistol shots, gunfire was crossing the tamped-down earth in the center of the compound from at least four different directions. Sol had to pop back behind his protective wall before he could do more than let off a hastily aimed singularity.

"Looks like a bunch of salarians were running the show," he told Miller.

"All right. Why bring in STG though?"

"Because what they've got is the real deal!"

Taptrin was enjoying this. Sol wasn't sure whether it was the fighting or the thought of finding the human hero's remains, but something had the Spectre excited. Sol started to duck around the side of the building again, but Miller caught him by the shoulder and pulled him back.

"Wait a second. How do we know which of them to shoot?"

Sol almost laid the man out for putting a hand on him. There was no arguing with logic though. "No idea. Salarians all look the same to me."

"Maybe we should try to get in touch with your ship."

"Already tried," Taptrin informed them breathlessly. "Can't get through. Those thermal shunts Quelb told us about must be interfering."

"We could just wait for them to kill each other," Miller suggested.

"A sound plan. Unlikely to succeed, however. Please drop your weapons and surrender peacefully."

Sol cursed violently as he felt the cold barrel of a submachine gun press up against the side of his head. Beside him, a stealth field dissolved to reveal an STG operative in full combat gear. Sol didn't have any choice; he let his rifle drop to the ground. This close, his strongest barrier wouldn't do a thing to stop a round from the salarian's gun from opening his skull and spilling his brains out on the soil.

Neither of them had accounted for Miller's reflexes. As soon as Sol dropped his gun, the mercenary kicked out with his left leg and sent the STG operative sprawling to the ground. It didn't take the salarian long to spring back and recover, but by then Sol had his barrier up and a stasis field primed to lock the amphibian in place if he so much as croaked.

"That wasn't very gentlemanly of you!" the creature protested. He ducked as more stray gunfire came his way. Miller aimed his rifle at the salarian's head.

"You threatened my employer at gunpoint."

The salarian might have looked angry then. Sol wasn't terribly up to date on frog language.

"I could have filled your friend's thick skull with bullets if I wanted to!" He winced as a shot hit his shield. Sol seized his arm and yanked him back into cover.

"Who are you?" he demanded.

"Torazo Denassi. Yourself?"

Baffled by the salarian's behaviour, Sol looked over at Miller. The mercenary shrugged. Clearly he didn't understand either. He kept his rifle levelled on their new captive though, which was comforting.

"Maybe you'll live to find out someday," Sol told Denassi. "What's STG doing here?"

The salarian burst out laughing. "Wait, you actually thought I was STG? Unbelievable!"

"You've got STG colors on, and the STG insignia on these prefabs," Sol jabbed a finger in the direction of the module beside him, just in case the crazy salarian couldn't find it on his own.

"That old thing? That's just a mockup the STG circulates to fool outsiders. If they even have a real one, you don't think they'd let anyone actually see it. Do you?"

"Who are you working for then?"

Denassi broke down into another fit of giggles then. While Sol was considering head-butting him to shut him up, Taptrin took advantage of a lull in the fighting and made her way over to them.

"There's more than just salarians out here," she informed them. "Saw a few turians and a bunch of humans. Even a batarian or two. I don't even want to know what those guys want with a piece of Shepard's corpse."

Denassi's mirth cut off suddenly. He seemed to recognize Taptrin's voice. "You're Katrina Taptrin! The Spectre!"

Taptrin leered malevolently at him. "Oh how nice. It speaks. Pipe down, will you Froggy? People are trying to talk here."

The sound of fighting was beginning to move off. Whoever was attacking the compound was making some progress. Sol grabbed Denassi again and got in his face.

"Who's running this place?"

"No idea, friend! I'm just a hired gun. They put us all in these fake STG uniforms in case the Alliance tries to crash the party."

Miller nudged his rifle's safety into the locked position, but he kept the weapon out as he backed up to the spot where Sol was holding Denassi. "Salarian crime family, most likely. No one else hires salarians for guard duty."

"And they're trafficking in human remains." Taptrin holstered her pistol and consulted her omnitool. Sol waited impatiently while the woman scanned lines of code. He almost wished Denassi would start laughing again. Then at least he'd have an excuse to pummel the idiot.

"Sounds like the Hiral family," Taptrin said finally. "Seeta Hiral and her brothers are infamous here on Earth. They fly in on their stealth frigates and raid the tombs of famous Alliance citizens. Then they fly back out, all before anyone realizes they're here. Guys, if this really is Seeta's work, we're in a whole lot deeper than we thought."

"Already pretty far down the shitter," Sol pointed out. The look Taptrin gave him remind him uncannily of the way his sister Brell looked when she thought her brother had said something unconscionably stupid.

"If Nerat and the Hiral family are in this together—well let's just say I'm starting to see why T'soni lured me in on this one."

Sol let go of the salarian. Suddenly robbed of support, Denassi stumbled and pressed a webbed hand up against the wall beside them. He looked stunned.

"The Hiral family? Really? That's—that's freaking hilarious!"

Taptrin snorted to show what she thought of that reaction. "What do you guys want to do with him? Tie him up? He'll probably break out of whatever restraints we put him in. Kill him now so he can't follow us?"

Sol shrugged. "Kill him, I guess. He came in under a cloak. That type'll stab you in the back as soon as he gets a chance."

"You're right. He does remind me a little of Zaal."

Taptrin aimed the barrel of her pistol at Denassi's forehead. The wretched amphibian just started giggling again.

"Wait."

Miller got between the Spectre and her victim and motioned for her to lower her weapon. "He might know what the inside of the compound looks like."

"And he might have a sack of red sand stitched to his intestines," Taptrin returned. "Who cares? It's not like we can bring him with us."

"We shouldn't kill him if we don't have to."

"We have to! He already got the jump on us once. I don't get it Cody. You're supposed to be the tough, battle-hardened merc. What gives?"

"He tried to capture us, not kill us. There's no advantage in slaughtering him here."

"Sure there is! The advantage of not having a stealth goon on our tails the whole way in."

Denassi stirred. He didn't seem too scared by the prospect of death by Spectre pistol. "If it'll make you feel safer, I'll give you my cloaking module."

"Like I believe you'll give us the real one."

Denassi's answering grin was a little lopsided. "Look, do whatever you want, Spectre. Might want to get it over with though. Mama Hiral won't be too happy when her boys finish cleaning up the riffraff and find you three trespassing."

Sol didn't have a whole lot of time to make a decision. He had to go with his gut. He grabbed the salarian by the seat of his armor and yanked him upright. "You're coming with us."

Taptrin made a noise halfway between a gasp and a splutter. "You've gotta be kidding me."

"Don't want salarian blood on my gear," Sol replied. He hid a smile as he pulled Denassi's arms around behind his back. "Shit's a pain to get out. Either of you have restraints?"

Miller plucked a pair of cuffs from a compartment just above his hip and handed them off to Sol.

"Here's the deal, Denassi." Sol got the cuffs into place around the salarian's wrists and fiddled with them for a few seconds until a pair of mass effect fields cinched the little circles of metal tight. "You get to live, but you go first. We run into any trouble we can't handle; you get to find out how well salarian hides hold up against bullet storms. We get in, find what we need, and get out, and we'll drop you off at the Surkeshian Embassy."

"I can live with that."

"Let's all hope you do," Taptrin muttered.

Codex

The Harsa Exodus: In the year 2222, the remnants of the batarian Hegemony—long since bereft of any real leadership—collapsed into warring factions that turned on one another and touched off the bloodiest civil war the Milky Way has ever seen. In just two short years, the entire batarian population of the galaxy was nearly obliterated. Survivors fled Hegemony space with whatever they could take, in whatever ships they could find, steal, or restore. To date, there are no known batarian inhabitants living in the Harsa system, where once a great empire grew and flourished.

Skrill: A small nocturnal reptile native to Tuchanka, the skrill is often mentioned in krogan oral traditions as having unusually large eyes and keen vision. They feast on insects and smaller reptiles by night, but by day they usually sleep or rest in patches of open sunlight.

Doctors Xiaocao Ji and Bao Ji: The masterminds of an ambitious rainforest restoration project that started at the end of the twentieth century and achieved completion in the year 2104. Credited with the creation of the first viable terraforming technology in human history, these two scientists spearheaded the campaign to bring biodiversity back to their native Yunnan Province. Today, the Ji Memorial Rainforest flourishes across miles of equatorial China; a veritable shrine to the ingenuity and heart of the human race.

Reader Responses:

cellotlix: I'm glad you like Quelb and the space opera vibe! Quelb takes me about five times longer to write than anyone else, but I really enjoy it. I hope you enjoy the rest of the story as much as you seem to have liked the beginning.

Sailor Amber: My bad; I should have known that if I had to look up what Harsa was, everyone else would too. Harsa is the star system where the batarian homeworld was before Shepard exploded it. I added a little blurb about the Exodus in the Codex for this chapter; hopefully that helps a bit.

shadowmythic: I've sprinkled in some more detailed descriptions in this chapter, so maybe that will help give a better picture of what's going on. As always, thanks for reading!