Ness more than half-expected to be dumped unceremoniously at the Citadel. The thought terrified her. She had no business being on a warship, of course, but she had no illusions about life as one of thousands of refugees, either. Of the two, she'd prefer the one where she knew people. The one with Rhi, who'd hadn't let her down yet. Back in her orbit, it was so easy to believe Rhi'd just somehow manage to take care of things. Logically, she knew that was silly. Rhi would do the best she could, just like everyone else, but she wasn't superhuman. Still, there was something comforting about being in the thick of things — at least, compared to imagining being a refugee. Just another damsel in distress, not knowing what's going on. Waiting for the axe to drop. She shuddered.
When they approached the Citadel Ness hid in Liara's rooms, hoping that out of sight meant out of mind.
Liara was deep in her work and uninterested in company, which suited Ness just fine — the Normandy seemed like a big ship, but there was nowhere except Rhi's quarters where she could be assured of being alone, and she didn't like feeling she was constantly depriving Rhi of that luxury. If she ever gets time to use her quarters. It wasn't just that she worked long hours; she never seemed to be off. It had been the Commander, not Ness's friend, ever since Rhi'd pulled her off Elysium. Even when she joined Ness to chat, her mind was clearly on bigger responsibilities. The rest of her had only peeked through a handful of times: when she lobbed a pillow at Ness as she settled in for bed, when she wrapped Ness in a hug, and once in the look she'd shared with Joker across a busy mess table.
Ness hadn't been meant to see the last one, of course, but she smiled when she thought of it. She was pretty sure no one else had noticed, but for that split second Rhi had looked so happy.
Thinking about Rhi, and the little transformations that happened around her pilot, lead inexorably to thinking about Samantha, and the way she could coax a smile from Ness despite her best intentions and most somber moods. She recognized that feeling, and despite her best intentions, she was doing an awful job at resisting it. Falling in love felt so good.
She'd been trying to decide whether to say anything or not. She was messed up, and she knew she was messed up. But the war was messed up, too, as was her useless civilian self being on a military ship. She wasn't sure if the second parts cancelled out the first bits, or made them worse.
On the one hand, we could all die tomorrow. On the other, adding in potential high drama to an already hard situation…
Ness put the book she'd been pretending to read aside and reached out to Liara for distraction. The asari seemed even more drawn into herself than Rhi had been, barely leaving her lair for food.
The bulk of the room's many monitors were currently displaying something that looked sort of like engineering or architectural diagrams, though admittedly Ness wasn't familiar with either. They were shot through with squiggles and patterns too small for her to make out from across the room. None of the lines formed a cohesive picture.
"What are you looking at?" she asked.
"Schematics from the Crucible project." Liara turned away from the screen and sighed. "I suppose it should be top secret, and I shouldn't let you so much as glance at them, but if no one can understand them anyway, what's the point?"
"Really?" Ness stood up to get a closer look. "Is it the physics they don't get, or the instructions, or — oh!" She peered closer. The smaller forms she hadn't been able to make out had the feel of writing. She couldn't tell whether it was a language with a full grammar or just a group of engineering symbols, but — she quickly scanned two other screens — it didn't seem to have enough repetition to be something as simple as architectural shorthand. Each shape was fairly complex, too, which suggested a lot of meaning carried per form. "That's fascinating! It's semi-pictographic, right? The protheans didn't leave much written language — I wonder if this actually originated with them, or was adapted from a different civilization. If you were leaving instructions for unknown species, you'd want it to be as universal as possible, but the ideas conveyed must be complex, if it really is an instruction manual. Hmmm..."
Liara looked at her oddly.
Ness pulled her attention away from the screens and met her gaze.
"I'm not just some kid that Rhi has to rescue all the time," she said. "When I'm not getting shot at I'm a xenolinguist."
Liara's eyes lit up, and then her face fell. "I'm sorry, Ness. I knew that, I've just been so busy I haven't stopped to think…" she gestured helplessly at her screens.
"Well, if there's a language thing you're stuck on—anything that isn't a dreadful military secret, I mean—I could take a look. I'd be totally out of my depth, but it couldn't hurt, right?" Ness had hoped to sound reasonable, but she realized she was pleading. "Please? I hate not having anything to do."
Liara smiled and summoned her drone. "A fresh set of eyes and a different academic background may be just what we need. I'll have Glyph put together a data pad. You can take a look at some of the more... intractable… directions."
Ness was so interested in the problem posed by the (possibly prothean, possibly grammatical) symbols that she barely noticed the engines whirring to life. She looked up, surprised. "We're moving?"
Liara nodded, distractedly. "First Officer Nguyen announced it ten minutes ago, but I asked EDI not to blast all the PA chatter down here. It's distracting."
"Isn't that dangerous?"
Liara smiled. "We'll still get anything urgent. It's not like I just cut the wires — EDI seems to have very sound judgment."
"Thank you, Dr. T'Soni."
Ness jumped a little. It was easy to forget, spending time in Rhi's quarters, that the AI was everywhere. Rhi's room was the only place on the ship the AI never seemed to speak.
Ten minutes later the door slid open and Rhi herself walked in, looking harried.
"That was quick," Liara said, not looking up from her work.
Rhi snorted. "I don't want any more distractions before I can get this precious supercargo to Tuchanka."
"Understandable." Liara turned now, her face full of worry. "Did you… did you have time to look in on Kaidan?"
Rhi motioned Ness to scoot over and sat down on Liara's bed, heaving a sigh as she leaned back on her elbows. "I did, but he was asleep when I stopped by. All I did was leave some of his stuff and a note. Got a doc to bend confidentiality enough to tell me he was doing okay, though. HQ confirmed. That bastard didn't do anything time won't heal."
"Good." Liara's relief was palpable, and Ness realized that some of Rhi's current near-relaxation was probably for the same reason.
"He was a friend of yours?" she asked Liara.
Rhi answered. "Liara and I both served with Alenko, back on the SR1. He's a good soldier, and a good man."
Liara nodded. "Seeing him run down like that…" she shuddered.
"It's always the worst when you're right there and you still can't do anything," Rhi said quietly, "But he's going to be just fine." She brightened. "Ran into another old shipmate at the hospital, too. Did you ever meet Thane Krios?"
Liara chuckled. "I don't believe we met, but I have considerable information about Mr. Krios, yes."
Rhi nodded. "Right, he'd left the ship by the time I went to help you with your little problem. Ness, Thane's the drell who was aboard when you were — not sure you ever talked to him. He kept to himself. Anyway, he's doing about as well as he can be, I suppose."
Seeing Ness's questioning look, she added, "Kepral's syndrome. It's terminal. He's in the end stages, though you wouldn't think it looking at him." Changing the subject, she gestured at the datapad Nes held. "What's that?"
Ness explained what she was working on. When she started discussing her actual methodology, Rhi suggested she save her breath. "I'm glad to know you're doing it, I don't need to know how. It looks like a bunch of squiggles to me."
Ness felt a weird little thrill, half of pride and half of fear. It was strange, seeing the person she'd always looked up to as a pillar of unachievable competence so out of her depth. "No, see, it's really simple, this one repeats here and here, and —"
Rhi leaned over to peer at the symbol Ness indicated. "Oh, yeah, that one. It's a one-eyed owl, obviously. Fuck, I'd expect a fancy linguist to know that. And that's a hamburger." She turned her head sideways. "Or maybe an eyeball. Clearly all vital engineering information."
Ness slugged Rhi lightly on the shoulder, her pathetic attempt at a fist bouncing off hard muscle. "You're teasing!"
Rhi let out the laugh she'd been holding in.
Liara shook her head, smiling. "See, this is why you don't try to explain things to our esteemed Spectre."
"Just point me at the things you want shot," Rhi agreed amiably.
Ness looked between the two smiling women and felt comfortable for the first time in days. Liara had entirely given up on her workstation to needle Rhi. Rhi was so agreeable she almost passed through into smug.
She's happy pretending she's an idiot who doesn't make huge decisions, Ness realized. At least for a little while.
Soon enough Rhi levered herself off the bed and bid them goodbye. "Gotta get some sleep if you want a well-rested bruiser when we hit Tuchanka," she said as she headed for the door.
"In case Tuchanka hits back?" Ness asked.
"It usually does," Rhi said, and the door closed behind her.
—
They reached Tuchanka to find a Reaper already there.
"Only one," Wrex pointed out. He was looming over the projection of Tuchanka as if he could assert control of his planet by over-shadowing its image.
"We thought there was only one last time." Rhi wasn't eager to make that mistake again.
Tuchanka wasn't nearly as over-run as Elysium had been, according to reports from the ground. The sole destroyer lurked around a modern environmental mitigation complex situated amid ancient krogan ruins. It must have brought ground forces with it, but there were no processing ships on the surface, and no transports.
Unfortunately the spot the reaper had chosen to hunker was exactly where they needed to be.
Rhi stared at the blip on the map and tapped a finger against her thigh. "Mordin, you sure that environmental installation can deliver the cure to the whole of Tuchanka?" She looked at Mordin.
The salarian was pacing back and forth in the close confines of the war room, careful never to pace too close to Wrex. Rhi wasn't sure if he was moving faster than normal if it was just the contrasting company: she, Wrex, and Victus were all still. Fighters conserving energy.
Mordin rattled off something about deviants from the mean and the impossibility of 100% certainty in complex biological mechanisms.
"99% of population should be receptive to airborne cure. Some genetic anomalies expected; some individuals may be underground or in sealed ship, not exposed in proper time-frame." He saw Wrex's glare, and quickly added, "Injectable version available for any missed by atmospheric dispersal. Best way. Individual administration requires time. Trust." Mordin eyed Wrex meaningfully. "Broad spread application more efficient."
Mordin gestured at the holo of Tuchanka. "Tuchankan ecology mostly destroyed. Massive systems in place for maintaining planetary liveability, dubbed 'shroud' complex after one of primary functions. L1 point satellites, sun shields, and —" Mordin pointed at the spot the Reaper had claimed, "Atmospheric particle dispersal tower."
"With a Reaper on it," Rhi pointed out.
Mordin shrugged. "Did not say it would be easy."
They were planning the attack when Shepard received a priority call. The Salarian Dalatrass wanted to speak with her. Shepard would have been happiest if she never talked to the rigid old snot again, it wasn't a call she could diplomatically refuse.
Hell, maybe she's realized the error of her ways and decided to offer us full salarian support after all.
She hadn't.
When the channel blinked off Rhi slammed her fist into the bulkhead in lieu of the old salarian's face. It took her a moment to cool off, and a while longer to realize that what irked her most about the salarian's suggestion was the implication that she thought Rhi would do anything but deal straight.
She'd be the first to admit she didn't have much use for honor in a fight - anything worth fighting for was probably worth winning for, even if it meant dirty tricks - but treaties and diplomatic negotiations… that was the kind of shit where your good word was supposed to matter.
Rhi thought of the politicians she'd known, namely Udina, and admitted ruefully to herself that she had no cause for that kind of idealism. Then she went to talk to the krogan Shaman, 'Eve.'
Shepard would have liked to ask the krogan woman up to her quarters, or at least the conference room, but she was still confined to the medbay. According to Mordin her health was improving, but it would take a little time for the retrovirus he'd fashioned to deliver the modifications he'd made, and longer still for her immune system to resume functioning at full capacity. For now she was stuck, wired up to an array of sensors and an IV drip of something or other, tended by her ever-present salarian doctor.
"Doctors," Rhi nodded to Mordin and Chakwas, "I'd like a word with our guest. If I'm not interrupting anything…?" They took her hint — Mordin had gotten considerably better at taking hints in his time aboard the SR2 — and left.
Rhi waited until the doors had closed behind them before she met the krogan's questioning gaze.
"The Dalatrass wants me to sabotage the genophage cure," she said baldly. "I won't do it, of course."
The krogan eyed her from the shadow of her heavy cowl. "Why are you telling me?"
Rhi leaned back on the med cot. "Because I know Wrex, and I know he'd have an even harder time working with salarians if he knew. He probably wouldn't start a war, but… I'm not certain. You…" she looked thoughtfully at the krogan. "I don't think you want another war. But you deserve to know the threat was made."
"And if I am not so eager to avoid war?"
The idea that she might have read the nameless alien wrong was like lead in the pit of her stomach, but Shepard played it cool. "Then I'd remind you that this Dalatrass is only one person, with a lifespan of maybe forty years. She'll be dead before your first clutch of children can talk. If any of us survive the Reapers, you can dance on her grave then. Perhaps I'll join you."
She couldn't see if the krogan smiled behind the thick fabric that shielded her face, but she thought the muffled sound was one of amusement.
"We would make quite a sight," the krogan murmured.
Rhi chuckled. "The Dalatrass seems to have a long memory for someone barely older than me. Fourteen hundred years since the krogan wars and the genophage… how many salarian generations is that?"
"Enough generations for stereotype to sink into fact, and for the errors of my grandmothers and great-grandmothers to become mythical horror."
Put that way the salarian's inability to believe anything else of the krogan made more sense. Rhi nodded, slowly. "The dalatrass thinks that with the genophage cured, your people will attack the other species. She thinks it's inevitable. I think she's wrong. I don't want her to be right. My decision would be the same, regardless—but I want to know what you think."
"I'm bad enough at figuring out my own planet's politics, so maybe you can tell me." Rhi met the krogan's eyes. "Is she right? Is a krogan war inevitable?"
The shaman without a name stared levelly back. "You say the answer does not matter to you."
"No," Rhi corrected, "I said the answer doesn't change my decision. No one should suffer something like the genophage, especially not for something they might do. But I still want to know."
The woman narrowed her eyes. "Why do you care about the krogan?"
It took her by surprise, and Rhi leaned back a bit, thinking. How could she not care, when she'd seen the bodies of the women who gave themselves as test subjects to end the genophage? When she'd talked to Wrex about his fears for his people, and harder, his hopes for his people? When she'd convinced him to pass up the chance of a cure on Virmire?
"The first krogan I got to know was Wrex," she said slowly, "And I liked him, right off the bat. Wrex…" she trailed off. She'd never bothered to sort out why. "He was straight-forward, up front. And he had my back through a lot."
"He speaks highly of you. And… fondly."
"The feeling is mutual." Rhi smiled, remembering a drunken evening of childlike glee she'd promised never to speak of, and the giant, genuine smile when Wrex had seen her alive after she'd been dead. Fuck, but she'd needed that smile then. "The second krogan I knew — not met, I mean really knew — was Grunt."
"The tank-bred." There was a note of disapproval in her voice.
"Yes." Rhi shook her head. "I've run into a lot of people who manage to make my childhood look good, but Grunt might be the strangest. Kid's got issues." She shook her head. "Sorry. Forgot where I was going with that. But I care about Wrex, and I want something better for Grunt than that crap his brain was filled with. And I know something about the kind of lives people lead when they don't have anything to live for. The kind of things they do."
"Indeed." The shaman closed her eyes. It was the life her people had been living for centuries.
"Also," Rhi went on, "I'm not so hot at history, but every time I know of humans trying to manipulate populations it was fucked up shit of the first order, so the whole thing leaves a nasty taste in my mouth."
She sighed. "The issue of the genophage has come my way twice before, you know. I blew up Saren's supposed 'cure' and convinced Wrex to let me do it. I was with Mordin when we found Maelon's experiments."
"And you convinced him to save Maelon's data, which probably saved my life. He has told me this."
"Yeah, well," Shepard looked at her feet, considering. "I know there's some history with research ethics and 'tainted' data and whatever, but if I had soldiers die to get me something, I know they'd damn well want me to use it. Anything else seemed like a waste." She raised her eyes to the krogan's again. "Thing is, those questions should never have been mine to decide — or any human's. I did it because I was there."
Eve blinked slowly. "I think I am glad you were. It cannot have been easy to talk Wrex down, and yet I know that what Saren offered would not have been true hope for our people."
"But you were in the place to make a decision, and it proved the right one." Eve looked around, at Rhi, then the medbay, her gaze seeming to travel to the ship beyond. "I had never left Tuchanka before the salarians took me. I had never seen a human until I met you on Surr'Kesh. And yet you have been present, now, at three pivotal points for the krogan people. Life is strange. I would not have wished for an alien to have that power over my people, but it is done, and being done, I am glad it was done by you. I am glad to see humans treat their women with respect. Your people have placed a great deal of responsibility on you."
"No more than yours have put on you." Rhi cocked her head to the side, eyeing the krogan. "You may be the most important person in the world right now, and no one's asked you what you want. Do you want this? You've been through so much, and I don't remember anyone bothering to ask what you wanted. You've been the subject of experiments, a political bargaining chip… if I knew a human woman subject to that," her lip twisted in revulsion, "expected to breed 'on behalf of her people', I'd swear I was in the wrong century." And probably shoot someone.
The shaman fixed her with a stare. "I appreciate your concern," she said, "But this is Tuchanka's story, not Earth's. When you think of the bodies of my sisters, mutilated corpses rotting in that Tuchankan excuse for a lab, remember that we went by our own choice."
Ouch. Projecting much, marine? Rhi accepted the rebuke. "Thank you. I needed to hear that." Both the reminder not to project and the reassurance that she wasn't party to something this impressive woman didn't want.
'Eve' nodded. "And you also need an answer to your original question. Are we doomed to war?" She sighed. "Before the genophage, our young fended for themselves. It proved their strength. It was natural that one or two of a clutch would triumph over their clutch-mates. The strongest survived; the weak went back to the dirt. But that was almost 1,500 years ago. Since the genophage, our children have become precious."
"The women of Tuchanka are tired of seeing our children dying — whether at their birth or waging pointless war. I do not know what the men want, or how many besides Wrex think past tomorrow. But my sisters and I want children, and a better world for them."
Rhi's voice caught in her throat a moment. When she found it, she said, "I hope that after we cure this thing all your children — however many of them there are — are still precious and wanted. Always."
She straightened up. "And now I better go make sure you can have them."
—
Joker leaned back in his chair and stretched his hands.
Shepard had been groundside for an hour now, and they still hadn't got Mordin and his cure anywhere near the Shroud Tower. First there'd been a break for a bit of krogan politics (which mostly meant Wrex pounding his political opponents into submission with his face), then when they'd finally gotten underway their convoy had attracted the Reaper's attention, far too soon.
Now the vid from Shepard's helmet cam was dark. Not off dark, just dark. Shepard's vision was being aided by the built-in night vision systems in her helmet, but the images sent back to the Normandy were plain old video.
Video of dark.
Rhi's team had been separated from the main krogan force. They'd headed into the nearby ruins on foot. The ruins were ancient, immense, and at least partially subterranean, but they were a short-cut from the route the cars had to take — if they could get through.
More importantly, slightly less chance of being pulverized. Slightly. Joker skimmed through the available information on the dangers posed by krogan archeology. There wasn't much to go on. Tuchanka wasn't seismically active, but between thresher maws and the possibility of Reaper bombardment at any moment, that didn't mean the ground was going to stay put. As for the ruins themselves, well, no one down there was taking the time to carbon date samples, but most of the ruined buildings on Tuchanka dated to before they were uplifted by Salarians some 2000 years ago. "If it was going to fall down it would've done it by now, right?"
"It seems likely," EDI reassured. "Krogan architecture is… sturdy. However, I do not believe a reaper has landed atop it before."
"Okay, six outta ten on the whole 'reassurance' thing, EDI. You're getting better, but it's still got a ways to go. I was doing just fine before you pointed out that possibility."
Rhi'd shout if something went wrong. He might not be able to help her, but… That's part of the job. He repeated that to himself several times, reminding himself that watching wouldn't help and being prepared would. He'd been in this position so often that managing this emotions was a habit: shove down the fear and worry; use the work to be done like a weight keep it all from popping back up again. And when in doubt, give the AI crap. Nothing like a little distraction.
Joker turned his attention to the situation in the upper atmosphere, where a squadron of turian fighters had assembled and was flying a holding pattern, ready to make a run at the reaper. They'd try to draw it away from once Rhi and Mordin were ready to make a run for the tower.
Yup, she'll be fine. Why get crushed under rubble when you have going toe-to-toe with a reaper to look forward to?
—
The air was cool for Tuchanka, and very still. The krogan had built massively, giant stone piled on giant stone, and the ruined space left behind felt more like a cave than a building. The work, huge as it was, had been clean, almost precise. On the edges Rhi's supplemented vision picked out the deeper shadows of ledges and shapes: architectural detail. Not something you normally expected from krogan.
In the corners of one vast room she saw statues. They were bigger-than-life size krogan; some missing limbs or even half their body, but still recognizable. They stood stiff and formal, like sentinels.
She was turning from one of the statues when she saw something on the wall. She thought it was a harder line than would be caused by discoloration, but there wasn't enough ambient light for her to really see the two dimensional detail.
"Light," she warned the squad, and shown a dim beam over the wall.
They were murals.
Rhi raised a gloved hand to trace the shapes but stopped before her fingers touched the surface, remembering something Liara had said once about the delicacy of archeological sites. The krogan rebellions had occurred over a thousand years ago, after the krogan had been uplifted from their war-torn planet to fight the rachni. These had to be from before their first self-inflicted disaster, the nuclear war that had decimated Tuchanka. The frescoes were stylized, but even Rhi could recognize them as art. Unlike some of that stuff Kasumi stole.
Rhi looked at the art and grinned fiercely. So the krogan never had any culture but war, huh? Suck on that, Dalatrass.
"It's lovely, but perhaps you can appreciate the art another time, hey, babe?"
Joker's voice in her ear made her smile. "You gotta admit, it's something to —"
A rain of dust fell down, making her glad for her helmet's faceplate. "Did you feel that?"
Garrus had. Wrex, on the surface, hadn't.
"Was that the Reaper? Or a tremor?"
"Definitely not the Reaper," Joker confirmed. "It hasn't budged."
"It may be something… else." 'The shaman's voice cut into the shared channel. "Kalros is said to live in this area. She is known as the 'Mother of All Thresher Maws.' It may be her movements you feel."
Rhi stared at the mural without seeing it, imagining a thresher maw big enough to cause earthquakes. "You're fucking kidding me."
"The hell?" Vega was looking around like the maw might be hiding in a corner somewhere.
"When krogan name a thresher maw, you know it's serious," Garrus muttered.
"Damn straight," Wrex agreed. "So get OUT of there, Shepard!"
Shepard waved her squad into motion. She wasn't going to argue with that order.
They finally emerged from the catacombs into a tumble-down courtyard. The big stones were baked hot by the sun, but in the shadows and crevices green things were growing, and in the distance she could hear running water.
Rhi had just enough time to gaze in wonder at a side of Tuchanka she hadn't seen before, lovely even in destruction, and then the wall to her right exploded. Her team dove for cover.
The reaper's minions had found them.
Even with Victus' warning, Rhi hadn't known exactly what to expect from semi-organic heavy artillery. Whatever the things were firing, it was enough to shatter stone. Luckily the krogan built big: the fallen block she'd ducked behind was a meter thick.
Two more shots followed the first in quick succession, and then Rhi leaned out of cover and shot back, trusting to Victus' description of the enemy. Slow to aim, three shots and pause.
Victus had been right.
It seemed like ages before they took the things down, sprinting from cover to cover so the monsters would have to-resight, but they did it. Twice hordes of husks flanked them, trying to scare them out of safety. Rhi tossed them back biotically, flinging them to either side to bounce off the walls or floor. She wished now she'd coaxed Liara out, or that Wrex were with them. Nothing dealt with husks like biotics, but there was only one of her, and she'd been on ice for six months. The mental strain was more taxing than it should have been, biotic use tapping her physical reserves.
She sipped an energy drink via the helmet tube and switched back to her shotgun.
It was hot, slogging work. Rhi got the last heavy with another biotic surge, flinging herself right into its side and unloading her shotgun point blank. She hadn't dared use the trick while there was more than one of them. One shot from those things and she'd have been toast.
She looked down at the fallen monster as Garrus and James trotted over to her. The thing's blood was smoking slightly, carving little pits in the stone. Acid. She knelt down to get a better look at what remained of its body under the mess she'd made, poking bits aside biotically rather than risk her fingers.
It had definitely been a rachni, once.
She shoved that worry aside. They had bigger problems, now. Problems the size of a Reaper destroyer.
They exited the ruins to find the convoy, and Shepard breathed a sigh of relief at seeing 'Eve', Wrex, and Mordin still in one piece.
"Need at least five minutes in tower top," Mordin was saying. "Maybe ten. Have to counteract STG sabotage." He nodded at Shepard, who'd told him what the dalatrass had revealed after she'd talked about it with Eve. "Cure complete, quantity sufficient, but delivery…" he shook his head in the direction of the Reaper. "Still a problem."
The turian fighter wing Victus had cajoled away from the citadel DMZ force hadn't been able to lure the reaper away as they'd hoped. The monster treated them like flies, swatting at them idly. "Normandy may be able to do some damage," Rhi offered, "But it's staying so low. Makes it dangerous to unload the Thanix."
"I would rather not harm my planet more than it already has been," Eve said wryly. "In any case, I have another idea. I suspect you'll find it rather… unconventional."
—
Joker had seen Shepard pull a lot of crazy shit, but this took the cake. The turian wing was keeping the Reaper's main gun busy, but she was right in there with it, dodging the huge legs. She leapt as it brought one down hard enough to shatter stone, landed in a roll, and travelled two meters before she found her feet again.
Rubble exploded not a meter away from her. The reaper's main beam weapon. The air team wasn't keeping its attention.
Joker's hands hovered over the controls, awaiting the word from Nguyen that had to come.
"Take us in, Mr. Moreau."
He did.
It was a distraction run, nothing more. Even if they could kill the reaper, they didn't dare. Shepard and her team were right in under its legs. A hit could crush them. A missed shot would hit the planet's surface, and cause a disaster in its own right.
Instead Joker took them down as close as he dared and buzzed the thing. He went screaming, with all the speed the Normandy could give him on conventional drives. The ship was a far more heavily armored target than Shepard, down below, but she was also a far bigger one. Speed mattered.
They passed over the Reaper close enough that EDI could unleash the point defense lasers, a system usually reserved for stray space debris and the unlikely event of a boarding attempt. A multitude of tiny hits flickered over the Reaper's hull. It didn't seem to notice the laser strikes, but it did turn to bring its beam weapon to bear on this new, larger threat.
"Might as well shuffle our socks on the carpet," Joker muttered, and whisked them out of atmo into safety again.
He'd bought a few more seconds for the turians, and a few more for Rhi.
—
Shepard had no time to notice who flew overhead. The only thing she cared about was the Reaper. Shadows warned her when the giant legs were descending; the beam weapon was preceded by a brief hum. She and her team had dodged it once already: it had separated them, scoring the stone they'd stood on in two. James had shrieked and Garrus had barked a laugh that sounded near hysterical; something about surviving weapons intended for ship-to-ship combat. She told them to cover her and kept going.
The maw hammers were her only hope, now. Over a ton of metal each, their thumping was supposed to summon the thresher Kalros.
The Reaper turned its attention elsewhere for a moment, and Rhi dashed. There was the second hammer. She heaved at the huge lever, built for krogan and sticky with disuse. Her muscles strained. The longer she stayed in one place, the easier the Reaper could end her. Finally the lever moved.
The massive hammer dropped to the ground once. Then again.
Rhi barely had time to hope that the mother of thresher maws liked to pick on things her own size. The ground on the other side of the Reaper exploded upwards, rocks and dirt raining down the sides of the biggest thresher maw she'd ever seen.
The maw raced forward along the ground, shrieking its challenge. The thunder of rocks and sand pushed away under its tough hide joined the huge mechanical noises of the reaper and the incessant rhythmic pounding of the maw hammer. Kalros three-part mouth was open, ready for the reaper.
For a moment Rhi watched in awe. She knew she should run — it was stupid to stick around while giants battled — but wasn't sure where to run to.
Then the maw hit the reaper.
Kalros raised her front before she struck, taking the reaper full in the center with all of her force. It staggered backwards a few steps. Shepard leapt to the side as its beam weapon fired wildly, passing a few meters from where she'd been standing. Then the reaper, struggling, changed direction. The maw's huge body looped around to keep up the attack.
Now the titans were heading right for her.
Shepard ran.
She didn't bother looking behind her or worrying about cover: she just ran. Her full stride ate up the distance, but it was impossible to tell how close the combatants were. The noise was everywhere. Rhi cleared the crevice that had separated her from Garrus with a leap taken from her top speed. She didn't stop to look back until she was out of the complex entirely, back on the flat plain, almost to the convoy.
The thresher and the reaper were still locked in combat. The ground around them was obscured by clouds of dust. The giants were shadowed within it.
Even at this distance, she still couldn't see the hind end of Kalros' body. It may still have been in the ground, giving her leverage against the invader. The maw had battled it out almost to the flats, now. If she kept at it, they might get to the tower after all.
There was a shriek of anguished metal, an indescribable sound of rough skin on armor plating, and Kalros lost her grip on the reaper.
The thresher sunk back into the ground, her huge length vanishing nearly as fast as it had appeared.
Fuck, no, come back! Rhi actually held her hand out to the thresher, as if the great stupid beast gave a shit what some puny human gestures meant.
The reaper resumed its place by the tower. Rhi's heart sank. It hadn't worked, and she was, for once, entirely out of ideas. She took a few steps backward, into the dubious safety of a pillar, and tried to think of something they could do.
The pillar was vibrating under her gloved fingers.
She knelt and touched the ground. Through the thinner material of her gloves, she could feel a shiver she hadn't felt through her boots.
Kalros. She's still here.
The thresher maw burst out of the ground again, twenty meters from the tower. She was moving fast, and her momentum pushed her worm-like body up into the air, higher and then higher.
Kalros descended on her prey from above. Tentacled mouthparts as long as shuttlecraft wrapped the reaper in an inexorable grip. The reaper tried to pull away, knocking over a building as it did so. Both combatants hit the Shroud tower, hard. The top shook.
Now Kalros was falling back into her tunnel, faster than she'd ascended — and she was pulling the reaper down with her. It rattled against the tower, gouging a track in the metal structure, but it was no match for the Mother of Threshers.
The reaper vanished into the earth.
The ground rumbled, and then was still.
Rhi stared at the spot where they'd disappeared.
"Holy shit," Joker whispered in her ear piece.
Rhi nodded dumbly. Her mouth was dry. After a moment she realized he couldn't see her nod, and said "Right?" She couldn't think of anything cleverer. She settled for a long whistle.
The convoy rolled up as the dust settled, and Wrex, Eve, and Mordin piled out. Mordin was talking a mile a minute, and had clearly been doing so for a while, but as soon as his feet hit the ground he shut up, nodded solemnly, once, and took off for the base of the tower, around the outside of the krogan structure where Rhi had activated the hammer.
Rhi, exhausted from her nerve-wracking race around the reaper and her earlier biotics, didn't register it for a second, and then she ran to stop him. She was faster than Mordin, even fully armored and on a high-grav world. When he didn't stop at her shouted command, she placed herself squarely in front of him.
"Mordin, wait! That tower's gonna collapse. We have to find another way." The edifice was groaning. Parts of the exterior cladding had fallen off, and she thought she saw sparks flickering inside: damaged electrical systems. She wasn't certain the elevator to the upper command chamber would even function. "We'll use another vector!"
Mordin shook his head. "No other way satisfies mission parameters. Out of the way. Time of the essence."
"Then we'll get a shuttle, fly you up, it can be right there for an evac —"
Mordin chuckled. "STG did not design Shroud facility for easy access, Shepard. Arial entry impossible."
A blast of hot dust blew past her head. Behind her a chunk of the tower cladding had hit the earth, sending up a puff of dirt. Mordin placed a hand on her arm, his expression softening. The brown dust of Tuchanka settled into the creases of his worn and scarred face, revealing every wrinkle.
Mordin was in his mid-thirties. A few years older than her, if she remembered right.
For a salarian, he was old, and for the first time since she'd known him, he actually looked it.
He smiled. "Fitting, Shepard. Worked on genophage. Work on cure. Full life."
She wasn't ready to stop arguing. "Someone else can go —"
He grinned, cracking the mask of dust. "Has to be me. Someone else might get it wrong." He shook his head, still smiling. "Good bye, Shepard."
She squeezed his arm once, a goodbye she couldn't bring herself to speak, and Mordin ran the last few meters to the door.
The run to catch Mordin had been instantaneous. The walk back to the krogan took a lifetime. She walked backwards so she could watch the elevator ascend the tower, her feet dragged in the red-brown dust. Her bones ached. She could feel every spot where she'd hit the ground or the rubble, thrown by the reaper, the places she'd bruised trying to avoid fire from the once-rachni.
She thought she could see a tiny figure high in the tower command room, but it was probably a trick of the light.
She finally reached the waiting krogan. Their conversations — three of them arguing, two re-enacting the thresher fight, Wrex giving orders — quieted when she arrived.
As one, they all looked up to the tower.
"And then there was life." It was Mordin, on her radio. A blue-white puff emerged from the tower, like a bright plume of smoke. It kept coming even as the first burst was taken by the hot winds of Tuchanka's upper atmosphere.
"Very clever, STG sabotage," Mordin's continued in her ear. "Easily dealt with, though. Glad it was me. Someone else —"
The explosions started near the center of the tower and spread rapidly upward, their sound drowning out everything else.
The control room at the top was a fiery flower, and then it was gone.
Rhi felt a heavy hand on her shoulder, and turned to find Wrex. The female shaman stood next to him. She stepped forward and clasped Rhi in a hug — a human gesture, carefully done for the human. It was unusual and uncomfortable, and all the more meaningful for that.
"We will remember the name Mordin," she said. "He worked on the genophage, but in the end he gave himself to put it right."
"And Shepard," Wrex added, "will be known as an honorary krogan. Though you were close enough already." He took both her shoulders, and chuckled. "Urdnot Rhiannon. My family."
"Which is about to get much bigger," Rhi said, and hugged him, her armor clanking against his. Wrex's joy was like a flood, covering up the shock of Mordin's death. She pulled away grinning. It was impossible not to, with her mountain smiling like that.
"As long as we are discussing names," the shaman said, "I would you like you to know mine."
Rhi turned in surprise.
"Shamans give up their names," the krogan said, to her questioning look. "But some of us walk the hard path to earn them back, for use by those we deem worthy." She nodded gravely. "I am Urdnot Bakara, Commander Rhi Shepard, and I thank you on behalf of the krogan people." She met Rhi's eyes, her own full of meaning. "For this chance at a new Tuchanka."
author's note:
Well, that was a much longer break than I expected. Thanks to all of you who didn't lose interest while I did silly things like play music and wire bits of my house. :)
I shall endeavor to present the next chapter in two weeks time, rather than *six*, but as the weather gets better the remodeling call gets more insistent, and the band gets more gigs, so I'm not going to make a specific date promise.
Many thanks to Rhiannon87, for most excellent betary above and beyond the call of duty.