Chapter 11 – An Earth-Shattering Kaboom


"You ever read that new fantasy series, Aria of Flame and Frost?"

Prazza recoiled in mock horror at Vrael's suggestion. "Oh keelah, don't get me started on that 'modern fantasy' crap! It's all the same: everything's gotta be dark, gritty, and nasty, filled with characters who are unlikeable bastards just so the author can say the story has 'moral ambiguity.' You shouldn't be reading that crap; it rots your brain!"

Vrael gave him an offended glare. "So I suppose you read those old-fashioned fantasy novels, the ones where some bland, two-dimensional hero who's all pure incorruptible pureness fights some generic 'dark lord' who has no reason to be evil except that he's the antagonist?"

"That's a damn sight better than what authors today are writing!" he said, slamming his fist down on the table. "Aria of Flame and Frost doesn't even have any real fantasy elements to it, except that 'sir' is spelt with an 'e' and people talk about dragons a lot!"

Skaal, who had remained silent for nearly the entire mission, finally weighed in. "All this talk of 'fantasy novels' is so pointless. It is yet another reminder of what boundless misery our lives encompass; that we must seek solace in such literary tripe."

"And just what sort of thing do you like to read, Skaal?" Vrael sneered. "Let me guess, it's all horribly depressing?"

"I like romance novels," he said, in a completely flat and serious tone.

Vrael laughed. "That's the first funny thing you've ever said."

"I'm serious."

The cockpit was silent for several seconds. "You mean, you actually like that crap? With all the 'heaving bosoms' and 'engorged members?'"

Skaal remained totally sober in his tone. "If there is one thing that brings the smallest light of joy to my otherwise bleak existence, it is a simple story of some young, virtuous maiden soothing the anguished soul of some man with a dark and troubled past. I don't even care that all the stories have this exact same story."

"Whatever," said Prazza, going back to playing Galaxy of Fantasy on his omni-tool.

Tali had no choice but to endure their conversation, as the mineral scanner was entirely automated, locating deposits of valuable metals and transmitting the data back to the flotilla. Still, given what had happened the last time they went mineral-surveying, she was not taking any chances. She kept a constant eye on the scanner read out, ready to act on any sign that something was going horribly wrong. Nothing did, however, and to Tali's great relief it seemed like this mission would be a simple affair, with the exception of their brief detour into the realm of human mythology, of course.

Her mind kept going back to a message she had received from Shala earlier that day. According to her, a man named Vren'Taara had been speaking to Rael'Zorah a great deal, expressing interest in Tali as "possible candidate for marriage" (to use his exact words, which Tali found horribly clinical). The news came as a shock to her, mainly because she had barely spoken to this Vren'Taara during her time aboard the Neema. How could decide that he wanted to marry her after such a ludicrously short length of time? Obviously love didn't factor into it; only Tali's position as an admiral's daughter. That made her an object of desire for many politically ambitious men, which were precisely the sort of people Tali wanted nothing to do with, and she certainly couldn't imagine spending her life with them.

And there was no doubt in her mind that whatever man she chose, she was going to be with him for life. Given that quarians could not engage in even the most basic acts of affection without risking their health, nobody pursued a relationship for casual reasons. People entered into marriage with the expectation that it was a lifelong commitment, and the word "divorce" was scarcely mentioned. For that reason there was tremendous pressure on quarians to chose their partners well.

Until now Tali had never given much thought to marriage and family, and the few times she had she had reached the conclusion that while having a husband might be nice, she never cared much for the thought of having children. She never spoke of this, of course, as her father would be furious beyond words if he learned she had no desire to carry on the family name. He would be even more furious if he discovered that the only person Tali had ever desired wasn't even a quarian. Tali suspected that Shala knew about her feelings for Shepard, but said nothing to avoid embarrassing her. What was the point, anyway, when Shepard was gone?

If Shala were here she'd probably tell Tali that she couldn't spend her entire life alone, and that sooner or later she would have to chose someone. But how could she be bothered with something like courtship when the Reapers were doubtlessly bearing down on the galaxy? She fired off a message to Shala, one that was curt, barely polite. In it she said that she had no interest in this Vren'Taara fellow, and that there were far more pressing concerns than some man who wanted to make her his wife.

If there were one thing she had in common with her crew, it was that she completely lacked any sort love life (inasmuch as quarians could have a "love life"). Prazza had numerous relationships that never lasted more than a few weeks, and Vrael was far too unpleasant to ever attract a woman. Juodaan was a consummate alcoholic, which more or less precluded the development of any meaningful relationships, and Skaal was far too miserable for any woman to tolerate his presence.

A burst of static from the comm channel broke her from her reverie. "Hello? Is anyone there? This is Hrenn'Dael aboard the MSV Lahti – the captain's gone insane, he's killing everyone! You've got to, oh keelah, they've found me! Help-" The transmission then cut out.

Tali immediately traced the signal and found that it originated from somewhere on the opposite side of the system. Unfortunately the system's star was presently in the red giant phase, which meant it was emitting far too much radiation for the Kamala Kohtalo's sensors to determine the exact source of the signal.

Vrael gave a heavy sigh. "I suppose you want to rescue this poor soul, don't you?"

She glared at him. "A quarian is in trouble, and we're the only ship in this system. You'd probably be complaining if I suggested we leave them! You'd probably say it proved that I had no loyalty to our people!"

Tali was entirely right, and Vrael sheepishly looked away. "Very well, I'll set course for the location of the signal."

Luckily for them, the Kamala Kohtalo had a stealth system installed, although it was not as advanced as the Normandy's had been. Tali was puzzled by the fact that a civilian ship would possess such a feature, and she guessed that the one of the previous owners had been a smuggler of some sort. She activated the stealth mode as they came around the red giant star and into the line of sight of the ship from which the distress signal had come.

She scanned the ship, and its registry marked as it is the MSV Lahti, registered to Arcturus Geoscience Inc., the same people who had made the cursed, star-destroying Perkele5000 mineral scanner. The ship itself was enormous, possibly dreadnought-size, and its silhouette vaguely resembled that of an old seafaring warship. Near the bow were two enormous mass accelerator weapons, mounted inside an equally-massive turret. Towards the aft was a large bulge in the ship's profile, which the Kamala Kohtalo's scanners identified as an ore processing facility. Obviously this was a mining vessel, which made Tali wonder why it was so heavily armed. The ship's engines were inactive, allowing Vrael to bring their vessel up alongside it for docking. As they approached one of the docking cradles, Tali could not but be amazed at the sheer size of the Lahti. It dwarfed anything in the Migrant Fleet, and maybe even surpassed the Destiny Ascension in length.

"Look at the size of that thing!" she said, craning her neck to stare out the cockpit window.

"Someone is doubtlessly compensating for something," said Skaal, who was naturally unimpressed by everything.

So far there was no sign that anyone on the Lahti had detected them. That would change once they were aboard, however, so every one of her crew was going in armed. There was no telling if this Hrenn'Dael were still alive, but Tali wasn't about to leave a fellow quarian in danger. She guessed that Hrenn was working for Arcturus Geoscience; despite the racism often directed towards quarians many corporations valued their particular skills and quietly hired significant numbers of them.

"We don't know what we're going to find over there," she said flatly, grabbing her Eviscerator shotgun and Carnifex handgun. "According to the ship's scanners he's somewhere in the forward decks, probably the bridge, I'm guessing."

"Do we even know how many people are on that ship?" said Vrael. "A ship that size has got to have hundreds of crew, maybe thousands!"

"Then we'll have to move quickly."

Vrael grumbled something unintelligible. "This quarian better be damn grateful!"

Tali had never thought of herself as being particularly brave, yet it surprised her just how calm she was going into another dangerous situation. She remembered the first time she'd ever been in real jeopardy, which was when she'd been confronted with Fist's thugs in some alleyway on the Citadel. Tali had been so naïve back then. Then she'd joined with Shepard's crew and experienced so much, far more than most quarians ever would. Still, she was a long ways away from ever considering herself a true soldier.

She gripped her shotgun tightly as the airlock doors opened with a loud hiss. Was she being rash in mounting a rescue with so little idea of what lay in store? Was it possible she was trying too hard to be like Shepard? Tali readily admitted to herself that she had always wished she could be more like him. He was so courageous, so selfless; willing to go to any length for the greater good of all. How could she not want to emulate him? Not that such a thing was ever possible, as Tali wasn't a Spectre and had no special forces training like Shepard.

The instant she stepped onto the Lahti she looked left and right, seeing nothing. The ship itself was typical of a mining vessel, being grimy, gritty, and dimly lit for reasons Tali could not explain. What was it about starships that made people decide that installing the bare minimum of lighting was the best choice of design? There was no time to think on such things, however. She wasted no time in moving forward, tracking the quarian's lifesigns on her omni-tool.

A voice boomed over the ship's intercom, directed at the five of them: "I don't know who you are, but if you don't get the hell off my ship I'll throw your asses out the airlock so fast they'll redshift into plaid!"

Tali ignored him and carried on. This ship was a maze of branching corridors and rooms, and without her omni-tool Tali was certain that she would have gotten lost. Much of the space on the Lahti was given over to living quarters, as a vessel of this size required a large crew complement. There was little sign of the crew, save for the occasional bullet-ridden corpse they came across. As they neared the forward compartments of the Lahti they found more and more bodies, all of them human.

They entered into a large storage room, stacked to the ceiling with crates with only a narrow pathway among them. From somewhere off in the distance they could hear the sound of footsteps. Tali hated fighting in such close confines, thinking back to that time she and Shepard had boarded a seemingly-derelict freighter, only to discover that it was filled with husks. Luckily their enemies gave away their position by talking loudly.

"Listen up! We've got word that a bunch of space gypsies have infiltrated the ship, probably looking for Hrenn."

"Um, excuse me sir, but I believe the politically correct term is 'space Roma'."

"I'm not even going to tell you to shut up! Let's move!"

They pushed forward through the maze of crates, all the while they could hear their enemies moving about ahead of them. She took one look back at her crew, and saw that Prazza was cowering near their rear, clearly terrified. From her own experience the members of her "squad" weren't the greatest soldiers at the best of times, yet she had little choice in the matter but to trust that they would follow orders.

Coming around a stack of crates, she was confronted with a group of three Blue Suns mercenaries. She was familiar with the group to know that they, like most mercenaries, would gleefully commit atrocities if given enough money, and so Tali had no qualms about opening up on them with her shotgun. The Eviscerator was true to its name, ripping through kinetic barriers like paper and inflicting horrific wounds on anyone unlucky enough to be in its way. It only took two shots to drop the nearest Blue Suns merc, then Tali ducked back into cover behind a crate and ejected the spent thermal clip.

Prazza had equipped himself with an assault rifle, which in his mind meant that he was now invincible. He charged out of cover, screaming 'WAAAGH!' and spraying the mercenaries with bullets. Few of shots hit their mark, and a second later Prazza was under withering fire that quickly tore through his shields. Seeing that that one of her crewmen was in trouble, Tali stepped out of cover, drew a bead on the nearest mercenary, then squeezed the trigger. Her target's shields already damaged by Prazza's hail of gunfire, all it took was one shotgun blast to take him down. Without a moment's hesitation Tali trained her Eviscerator on the one remaining Blue Suns merc, dropping him with two quick blasts before he could even get a shot off.

"You idiot!" she hissed, pointing her finger in Prazza's face. "You nearly got yourself killed! One more bullet would have torn through your suit!"

Prazza was predictably defiant. "I do not hide from the enemy like a coward. I go in with guns blazing, all the time!"

She gave an exasperated sigh and pushed ahead into the next room. No sooner had she done so than they were under a barrage of fire that forced them to take cover on either side of the door, and even then their attackers were keeping up a steady stream of bullets. Typical mercenaries, Tali thought, possessing more enthusiasm than discipline. Eventually they had to replace their thermal clips, however, and when there was a break in their fire Tali sprinted in front of the door, shotgun ready. One advantage of being stuck in this suit was that her helmet had a targeting system that quickly identified the nearest enemy, who was just about to load a new thermal clip when Tali's shotgun blast caught him squarely in the chest. As the searing hot projectiles tore through his body his last thought was, "Did I just get owned by a quarian?" which caused significant damage to his ego.

The mercenaries resumed their suppressing fire, but Tali had another trick in her employ – her own personal combat drone. It was something she ordered off the extranet a few months back, advertised with a blurb that touted its ability to "amaze your friends and confound your enemies!" Being a small drone it didn't have much attack power beyond giving its target a few stiff jolts of electricity, but that was enough to drive them from cover or momentarily distract them. Tali set the combat drone loose in the room, positioning it so that it would appear behind the mercenaries.

"What the hell is that thing?" one of them shouted.

"I don't-," said another before crying out in pain. "It shocked me! Open fire!"

Tali switched out her shotgun for her Carnifex pistol, as her foes were out of shotgun range, and set it to use disrupter ammo to take out their shields. While the mercs were distracted by her drone, she stepped into the doorway and took aim with her pistol. She had never really considered herself that great of a shot, not compared to people like Shepard or Garrus, at least, but these mercs were easy targets with their bright blue and white armour. The Carnifex had a heavy kick and made a tremendous amount of noise as a design feature, but no one could argue with its raw killing power. Two shots were all it took to kill the nearest merc, who was still dealing with Tali's combat drone, and the other merc was down in three. A unsettling silence fell over the room, while the rest of her crew just stared at her, thinking that her quick dispatching of the mercenaries meant she was some sort of psychopath.

According to her omni-tool, the Lahti used some sort of tram system to move people along its length. The nearest tram was just a short distance from here, and from there they could make their way to the front of the ship where the quarian was located.

In addition to the dead mercs there were numerous corpses in the next room, along with pockmarks and burns on the walls, characteristic of a major fire-fight. The room itself appeared to be a large locker room, where employees would get their personal gear after leaving the tram. A large poster on the wall read Arcturus Geoscience Inc. prides itself on our safety record. We have gone 285 days without a lost-time accident. Note: If there is a HUGE fuck up call Lt. Järvi or Lt. Tuomi.

What had happened to the crew? Tali wondered. Moreover, why was it guarded by mercenaries? Surely a company the size of Arcturus Geoscience could afford to hire their own security forces? Perhaps Hrenn'Dael would know what had happened here.

Past the locker room was the tram station, a cavernous chamber that reminded Tali of the interior of a spaceport. A tram car was parked at the docking platform, its windows riddled with bullet holes. There were several dead bodies lying about, probably of those who had tried to get to the tram car only to be gunned down. The olfactory filters on Tali's suit were still active, so she could smell the blood and death in the air. Someone had massacred this ship's crew, likely the Blue Suns. Nothing good ever came with getting mixed up with mercenaries. Tali had nothing but contempt for those who fought only for their own personal gain.

They boarded the tram car, which was currently locked down. Tali quickly hacked the security system to allow them full access, and with the shrieking noise of metal on metal the tram car slowly started to move. Whoever was in charge was aware of what the quarians were doing, and made an angry broadcast over the ship's intercom.

"Whoever you are, if you set one foot on the bridge I'll have you killed slowly and painfully!"

"Ah Tali," said Vrael. "Earning us nothing but hatred and loathing no matter where we go!"

"Contempt is the natural reaction towards all quarians," Skaal said flatly. "It is our lot in life. I thought you would know this by now, Vrael."

"Oh shut up you whining bastard!" he snapped. "If you can't say anything that's not complaining then don't say anything at all!"

Skaal was unperturbed by Vrael's sudden outburst. "If everyone followed that maxim, the galaxy would be a very quiet place."

A minute later the tram ground to a halt and the doors slid open. Almost immediately they were under fire from at least seven or eight mercenaries, who were taking cover behind a large barricade. Tali felt a few rounds splash against her shields before she took cover, dropping them to nearly half-strength. The constant barrage of bullets were deafening, and if Tali were human she might have remarked at how quickly the tram car was being turned into Swiss cheese. One of the windows above her shattered under the heavy fire, showering Tali with broken glass.

She quickly thought of an idea. "Prazza, Vrael, I'll distract them with a combat drone while you head left and flank them. Skaal, Juodaan, you go right!"

Amazingly they obeyed with arguing. Tali deployed the combat drone behind the mercs, who scattered the instant it appeared. Unfortunately her plan hinged on her crewmates getting into position without the mercs noticing, and Prazza blew it all to hell when he opened fire while screaming and wailing. Seeing that Prazza was a bigger threat than the combat drone, the mercenaries turned their attention towards him and the rest of Tali's crew, and now she was standing completely exposed in front of several well-armed adversaries. She let off a few rounds from her Carnifex, none of which hit, before returning to cover in the tram car. There she found Skaal and Juodaan, who had fled back to the car in spite of her orders. Juodaan was predictably too intoxicated to fight, and Skaal was quivering in terror, too afraid to even move. Vrael and Prazza, now in danger of being cut down, turned tail and fled, diving into the trench beneath the tram rails.

A burst of fire from one of the mercs had dropped her shields, and while she waited for them to charge the mercenaries would surely advance on her position. Her heart was pounding and she was exhausted, and there was no way she was going to win a fight single-handedly against several enemies, especially not a close range. Then she spotted several cylinders of hydrazine that some thoughtless individual had left near the mercenaries' position. Her shields had only recharged enough for to break from cover for a few seconds, but that was all Tali needed. Springing to her feet, she bolted from the tram car, drew a bead on the nearest hydrazine canister, and squeezed the trigger of her Carnifex.

Her shot flew true, rupturing the canister and setting if off. Unfortunately for the mercenaries, the same careless person who had left the hydrazine cylinders in that particular place had also packed several crates of titanium fasteners (which resembled long, sharp spikes to an ignorant observer) between the canisters and the mercs' position. When the canisters exploded, they instantly sent a shower of deadly shrapnel towards the Blue Suns, instantly reducing them to the consistency of raw hamburger and creating a scene that even a hardened krogan battlemaster would call "needlessly bloody."

Vrael and Prazza climbed out of the tram rail trench, while Skaal dragged Juodaan out of the tram car by his feet. When they saw the bloody mess that the Blue Suns had been reduced to, they were struck dumb. After Juodaan got his wits back he made a sound like that of something retching.

"Damn, Tali!" Vrael said after several seconds of silence. "You really know how to deconstruct a threat. Literally."

The mercenaries' radio had survived the explosion, allowing Tali to listen in to their transmissions. A panicked voice spoke, "Bravo and Alpha teams just went dark! They're getting torn to shreds out there! Need backup now!"

This was followed by an angry voice, the same one that had spoken to them over the ship's intercom. "Backup? For five damn quarians? Either you hold them off, or I'll come down there and kill you all myself!"

After leaving the tram station Tali knew they were nearing the command area of the Lahti, as everything was less gritty and grimy. According to her omni-tool, the bridge was a large atrium on the uppermost deck of the ship, accessible only through an elevator. But to get to the lift they would have to fight through another squad of Blue Suns, and there was absolutely no cover in the hallway. That meant there would be a shootout, and the side whose shields fell first would be the losers. Disabling shields, however, was exactly what Tali was good at. In her spare time she had coded an application for her omni-tool that would send a surge of energy into an enemy's shield generator, overloading it and dropping their barriers. The only drawback was that it could only target one enemy at a time, and it required a length of time before the omni-tool could recharge the overload pulse.

Before the Blue Suns could even get off a shot Tali executed her overload routine, disabling the nearest merc's shields. What happened next was sheer chaos. Both groups opened fire, not even bothering to aim properly, creating a deafening cacophony of noise that reverberated through the narrow hallway. She felt several shots land against her shields, and saw a warning light appear in her helmet's HUD telling her that her shields were in danger of falling. Ignoring the warning Tali continued firing until her shotgun's thermal clip was at capacity, at which point their enemies lay dead before them. Quarians tended to have stronger shields built into their suits in order to compensate for their relatively fragile physique, and it probably saved their lives that day.

"We are ridiculously awesome!" Prazza boasted, looking down at the fallen mercs. He didn't know that, due to his spectacular inability to hit anything he was trying to hit, all of his shots had gone wild.

Ahead lay the elevator which would take them to the bridge. It was under a security lockdown, but hacking through that proved no obstacle to Tali. She loaded another thermal clip as the elevator ascended, realising that she was down to her last one. That meant she would only a few more shots left, so she prayed that there were not many adversaries awaiting them on the bridge.

It was only that brief instant that Tali pondered again whether or not charging onto the ship like this had been a good idea. Maybe Shepard could have pulled it off, but she wasn't Shepard, was she? There was a good chance she was leading her crew to certain doom, and it amazed her that she felt so calm about it.

The elevator doors opened, revealing the bridge atrium. It was enormous, bigger than most cargo holds on flotilla vessels, and resembled more an office than a command centre. Countless crew stations with bright holographic displays ringed the atrium, all of which were unoccupied at present. Enormous windows provided a stunning panoramic view of the space around them, although Tali had to wonder just how much structural integrity the Lahti had been compromised just so that such large windows could be installed.

"That's far enough!" someone said, followed by the unmistakable sound of a gun being readied.

In one corner, standing near a console, was a tall, blond-haired (and exceedingly good-looking, in Tali's estimation) man, pointing a gun at a quarian on his knees, who Tali guessed was Hrenn'Dael.

"One more step and I blow your friend's brains out. And that would be terrible, wouldn't it? I'd get blood all over me, and we can't have that, can we?"

"He'll do it!" Hrenn wailed. "He's crazy!"

"I see you had no trouble blasting through the Blue Suns," the man said, not even bothering to look at Tali. "Ah, mercenaries...you get what you pay for."

"What are you doing here?" she asked flatly. "Did you kill your crew?"

He laughed. "I cut off life support to most of the crew decks, then had my men gun down any one left. I guess that fits the definition of 'killed' doesn't it? But I couldn't allow them to live, you see. Project Jumalauta is too far along for me to risk being revealed now. Your quarian friend was very helpful in its development!"

"He lied to us!" said Hrenn. "He said I was helping the company develop a mining tool, but he wants to use it as a weapon!"

Tali tightened her grip on her pistol. "Who are you? What are you doing here?"

"What, you expect me to lay out my plans for you like some sort of supervillain? Well, I suppose I can indulge you, since you're all going to be dead in a short while. I am Captain Santala of the MSV Lahti, field promoted after out last captain was unfortunately thrown out of an airlock by me three weeks ago. You see, Arcturus Geoscience has a sort 'you kill it, you buy it' method of promotion.

"You're insane," Tali said, with less emotion than she expected. Maybe she was getting too accustomed to saying it?

"Insane? No...violently destructive maybe, but not insane. A madman would not have been able to create the Ukonvasara, the final end result of the Project Jumalauta."

"What the hell are blabbering on about?" said Prazza, growing annoyed with all this talking. His preferred method of dealing with hostage situations like these was "shoot first, shoot some more, keeping shooting until you run out of ammo, and then ask questions (if anyone were still alive, which they probably weren't, which freed you of the burden of having to ask questions in the first place).

Still keeping his gun on Hrenn, Santala explained it. "It is the name for the Twin-Axial Magnetohydrodynamic Neutron-Degenerate Matter/Antimatter Cannon, the most powerful weapon ever constructed."

Hrenn continued to protest his involvement. "They said it was purely a device for mining; for blasting planetoids apart for easier processing. Then Santala went crazy and started killing everyone!"

He laughed again. "Yes, those short-sighted fools back at corporate couldn't see the full destructive potential of the Ukonvasara. I do give them a gold star for discovering how to use intensely-concentrated mass effect fields to create neutron-degenerate matter outside the immense gravity of a neutron star; that was quite impressive. But all the suits could think about was something to make them more money. They didn't see the true potential behind something capable of shattering an entire planet! Can you imagine greater fools than that?"

"You have to stop him!" said Hrenn. "He's going to use the Ukonvasara to take over the galaxy! He's part of some secret human organisation called 'Manala' that does stupid things like that."

"Oh, you figured that out, did you? Well I've got another gold star for that, just for you!. But it won't help you; I've already won! In fact, I'm so confidant that I've won that I'm going to give you all a little demonstration." Santala entered a few commands into a nearby console, still keeping his gun trained on Hrenn. "We are currently a hundred million kilometres from an Earth-sized planet that shall be the subject of our demonstration. The Ukonvasara has two mass accelerators; one fires a projectile of approximately one cubic metre of liquid neutron-degenerate matter, the other fires a projectile of approximately one cubic meter of neutron-degenerate antimatter. The two projectiles are aimed to intersect with one another within the core of the target, and when they do, they will annihilate each other, creating an explosion of approximately 90,216,000,000,000,000 gigatons. This is, of course, much more than is necessary to completely destroy a planet, but as they say, there's no kill like overkill!"

The massive gun turret mounted near the bow of the Lahti slowly began to rotate into position. "This weapon will destroy everything within fifty million kilometres. Imagine what would happen if it were fired into the Citadel, or into the middle a battle fleet. The destruction would be unimaginable! With this weapon in the hands of Manala, we will use it to secure Finnish dominance throughout the galaxy."

"What are you talking about?" said Vrael, who was beginning to get impatient with Captain Santala's monologuing.

"I wouldn't expect quarians to understand, seeing how you don't even have a planet of your own."

"Try us!" said Hrenn.

"Ever since humanity discovered other races our people have been sliding ever closer to a monoculture. If things continue the way they have then soon it will mean nothing for one of us to call ourselves things like "English," "German," "Finnish," or "Japanese." Maybe it is too late for other nations, but Manala is dedicated to not only preserving the Finnish nation, but also its ascendancy over all nations, other planets, and other races! The Republic of Finland will become the Finnish Galactic Empire! We shall pay back the turians tenfold for the First Contact War! We shatter the immense egos of the asari when we reduce Thessia to dust! The devastation of Tuchanka during the Krogan Rebellions will be nothing compared to what we shall do! The economic blight that is the Migrant Fleet will be ended once we reduce it to a cloud of scrap metal! And you...you quarians on this ship will be the first of trillions to be ground into a thin, gruel-like paste by the fury of Finland!" Santala then paused, thinking something over. "Hmm, 'fury of Finland.' That has a nice alliterative effect to it, doesn't it?"

A computerised voice spoke over the intercom: "Ukonvasara target locked. Charging mass accelerators..."

"This weapon costs a hundred million credits just to fire once," Santala continued. "And this ship has enough stored neutron-degenerate matter/antimatter for fifty shots!"

Firing its projectiles at around 25% the speed of light, the blast from the Ukonvasara would take around ten minutes to reach to their target. They appeared as two blue lines streaking away from the ship, carrying with them a horrific amount of energy.

"This weapon is a menace to the galaxy," said Tali, stating the obvious. "I could just shoot you right now. Maybe you'd kill Hrenn, but any quarian would gladly lay down his life for the greater good of the galaxy!" It was a bluff, as the last thing Tali wanted was for Hrenn to get killed.

Santala laughed maniacally. "Go ahead! I'm equipped with kinetic barriers stronger than any of yours. I've been watching your progress, and I know that, due to their utter inability to control their fire, none of your companions have any thermal clips remaining, and your own thermal clip does not have sufficient capacity for you to do any significant damage to my shields. And even if you kill me there are hundreds of Manala operatives on board this ship, ready to kill you in a moment's notice. I suggest you simply wait until the Ukonvasara projectiles reach their target – I'd hate for you to miss out on the fireworks.

"Fireworks" was the understatement of the century. The two projectiles, given their immense mass, easily penetrated the planet's crust and, in a fraction of a second, bored their way to the planet's core. There they annihilated each other, releasing enough energy to shatter the planet into pieces no larger than personal shuttle. It took the light from the event about three minutes to reach the Lahti, and because of their distance, they only saw a bright, growing sphere of light that soon dwarfed the system's own star in apparent size. It hammered home just what magnitude of destructive power had just been unleashed, and Tali resolved to put an end to this project, even it meant her own life.

To that end, she set her omni-tool to run the "overload" routine, doing so quickly enough that Santala could not see what she was doing. The omni-tool then sent out a burst of energy which instantly overloaded Santala's shields, but it did not stop there. The program was designed to increase the strength of the overload pulse depending on how strong the target's shields were, and because of Santala's powerful shields it hit him with enough electricity that the overload pulse arced into the nearest control console and overloaded that as well.

His shields gone, Tali raised up her Carnifex and fired a single shot, dropping Santala to the floor before he could shoot his quarian hostage. Her relief was short-lived, however, as klaxons began wailing all throughout the bridge atrium.

"Warning," announced the ship's computer. "Overload detected in main engineering interface. Main cooling system offline. Emergency reactor shutdown system offline." Tali hadn't known it at the time, but the control console she had unwittingly overloaded was the engineering console, and overloading it had caused a cascading failure of all engineering systems throughout the ship.

Santala just laughed as he clutched his bleeding wound. "Well...well done!" he said, gasping for breath. "Thanks to you, the main reactor's going to go critical soon. When it does, this ship will be destroyed, causing all the stored neutron-degenerate matter/antimatter to mix, and when that happens there'll be a 4,510,800,000,000,000,000 gigaton explosion! It'll be the largest non-supernova explosion in the galaxy!"

"And this weapon will be destroyed with it!" said Tali defiantly.

"Ha! You have done nothing!" said Santala, coughing up blood. "You...you think we don't have plans? Backups? We will build another! You cannot stop Finland's rise; not you, not the Alliance, not the Reapers, no one! You have failed!" Those were his last words before he slumped over and died.

"Warning: Main reactor core temperature rising. All personnel begin evacuation procedures."

"Let's go! Back to the ship!" Tali shouted.

The five of them plus Hrenn bolted to the elevator, which descended agonisingly slowly. "A bunch of people died, and now there's going to be not one, but two enormous explosions. This is so you, Tali," said Vrael, his voice filled with contempt.

"You worry too much, Vrael," said Skaal. "The universe is nowhere near finished tormenting us yet."

Once the elevator reached the bottom, they ran as fast as they could to the tram car, which had been riddled with so many bullets holes from the earlier firefight that Tali was amazed it still functioned.

In spite of Skaal's assurance, something told Tali that today she was not going to escape her destruction. At least this time it would be entirely painless as her body was vaporised in a matter of nanoseconds. Of course that meant there wouldn't be anything left of her to take back the flotilla, and she could only imagine what her father would think when he learned that his only daughter had gotten herself blown up in the "largest non-supernova explosion in the galaxy." Of all the possible causes of death among quarians, "blown up" had to be one of the more infrequent ones.

The tram car ground to a halt, and the instant the doors opened they ran as fast as their legs could carry them (which was significantly faster than a human could run). The ship's computer continued to announce their impending doom, as the main reactor would soon reach a temperature where its containment system failed and all of its fuel underwent fusion. That in itself would produce a spectacular explosion, but compared to the one that was coming it would be a mere firecracker.

Through the storage room and hallway they ran, reaching the airlock that led to the Kamala Kohtalo. All of them were gasping for breath, but the moment they were aboard Tali wasted no time in firing up the ship's engines, doing so in such a short length of time that anyone back aboard the flotilla would be impressed. She didn't even wait for the docking clamps to disengage; instead she simply set the engines to maximum thrust, tearing their ship away from the Lahti with a frightful noise. As soon as they were away she initiated the FTL jump procedure, which required about five seconds of calculations on the computer's part.

Unfortunately, the Lahti's reactor went critical in just four seconds.

The explosion itself did not resemble the typical explosions that Tali was familiar with. Rather, it appeared as if a star, one that was very large and very close, had suddenly appeared right next to their ship. Had they gone to FTL a second later, they would have been vaporised.

The fireball from the explosion, so hot that it glowed blue and being ten billion times brighter than a typical G-class star, expanded at a rate of several thousand kilometres per second. In the time it took for the explosion to reach other planets, one was blown to pieces and another ended up being ejected from the system entirely. Everything within 240,000,000 kilometres that could be destroyed was destroyed, and in every way imaginable. Anyone passing through that system would have confused it for a binary star system, so large and intense was the fireball. The cloud of hot gasses from the explosion would stick around for another 800 years or so, making it not only the largest non-supernova explosion in the galaxy, but also the longest.

Several centuries in the future, when the light from the explosion finally reached inhabited worlds, many assumed initially that the star of that system had gone supernova. When they learned that it had not, they were puzzled at first, until someone discovered a record of what ships were in the area at the time of the explosion. A name came up, one "Tali'Zorah," and upon learning this they simply nodded and their heads and considered the matter closed, as everyone knew that Tali's name would forever be associated with "impossibly huge explosions."