Smoke rose from the wreckage of the Presidium, shrapnel still sizzling and twisted from the force of impact. The ground was starry with broken glass. Burn marks on the wall outlined the shape of a body. From underneath the rubble of a fallen stairwell, a hand still reached out, hopefully, although its fingers had become cold and motionless.
Whole sections of the Wards caved in when the ship crashed into the Citadel. It would take weeks to clear out the bodies, identify the dead and notify next-of-kin. When it was all over, the death toll was more than 250,000, with some victims still missing, their remains unidentified amidst the wreckage.
The survivors of the Battle of the Citadel bear the marks of that day too. Some suffered burns, gas poisoning, gunshot wounds, broken bones or amputations. Some witnessed the deaths of family members, friends and neighbours. Numerous rescue workers experienced permanent damage to their lungs, eyes and biotics from exposure to concrete dust, broken metal or ground-up glass. The physical suffering could be quantified in surgeries, crowded emergency rooms, triage units, hospital rooms and morgues packed end-to-end with bodies. The psychological trauma experienced by the survivors is incalculable.
It was the most devastating blow the galactic community has ever suffered and yet it could have been much, much worse. Nobody talks about that. They just feel damn grateful for Commander Shepard, her crew and the Fifth Fleet, Alliance Forces. The name 'Saren Arterius' is a curse.
Mike McDougall, the director, adjusts the brim of his baseball cap and then knocks twice on the front door. He can hear the scuffling of clawed feet over the floors inside and voices whispering.
"Go away," a female voice says at last. "Leave us alone."
Mike expected this kind of resistance to the documentary crew. It's only been three months since the attack and emotions are still very raw. It's not quite so difficult filming here on Palaven as it was filming on the Citadel, but the turians dislike human journalists poking into their business. Hierarchy officials have gone out of their way to impede the production with ridiculous, seldom-enforced regulations. Interview subjects have been cagey and sometimes he's caught them in outright lies.
In some ways, the adversarial element might help the documentary, providing an added element of conflict. At other times, Mike just has to admit defeat and pass the interviewer role over to someone less...threatening. It's funny to think of himself, a thin, scruffy human bloke, 5'9", dressed in rumpled tech gear, being a threat to 7-foot-tall aliens with talons that could puncture his jugular with one swipe, but the camera has a way of intimidating sapient species. The questions he asks...well, those bring up problems too.
He glances back at his cameraman and chief researcher, Savro Tallidin. Savro is a salarian and so he's more popular on Palaven than the human crew members. 'Course, it'd be a different story if they were filming on Tuchanka. "Maybe I should man camera for this one. You alright for questions?"
Savro blinks and then passes the camera over to Mike. "Sure. No problem. I think I can manage."
The twitchy salarian approaches the door and knocks again, four light, impatient raps against the metal. "Hello? My friend and I are here from Citadel NewsCorp. We're just here to ask a few questions, if we may."
There is no answer from inside, although Mike can hear the floor creaking as somebody walks away.
"Sergeant Scorpius Arcturus? Scout Sejana Arcturus?" Savros says in a weedy but well-mannered voice. It's hard to believe that, in human years, the guy is only nine years old. "Why did you choose to change your names following the Citadel attacks? Arcturus is not a traditional turian name..."
The sound of locks clicking open. The door opens a crack and a pale blue eye peeks through the opening. "No, it's not a traditional turian name," a female voice answers. She sounds young. Sejana Arcturus, Mike thinks. "But would you want to walk around with the clan name Arterius? Now, go to hell. We aren't speaking to you bloodsuckers."
"There's nothing to be ashamed of," Savro assures her. "People watching this documentary will sympathize with your situation..."
"Yeah? You think I give a damn? Leave me and my father alone." She seems about ready to slam the door.
Mike cuts in, hoping to rile her up enough to talk. "Why Arcturus? That's quite a political move. I mean, choosing the name of a human station and all..."
The door stays open – in fact, the gap widens slightly, as Sejana Arcturus leans against the metal doorframe, her arms crossed over her chest. "My father visited there and he liked the sound of it. Doesn't mean anything more than that. How would you feel, human, if you had a family name like..." She ransacks her memory, looking for a comparison. "...Hitler or Bin Laden? Would that be good for you? Help your career? I don't even know why you come here."
"People want to understand why he did what he did. It's that simple," Savro said. "We're just collecting facts here. This is for the historical record. You'll be able to tell us whatever you like. Perhaps correct some mistaken assumptions about your family..."
Sejana snorted. "Or create some new ones, more like it. No thanks."
She was about to close the door when Mike bolted forward and stuck his arm into the door jamb. "Please, just wait. Just think about it. We can do the interview and you and your father can review the tape after, alright? If you decide that we can't use the footage, then it'll stay out of the final cut. I promise. Give us a chance. It might be helpful to you."
Sejana glared at him, clearly considering shutting the door on his arm. She stood about a foot taller than him and her red facial tattoos gave her a frightening and impatient appearance. Looking past her shoulder, Mike saw Scorpius Arcturus slumped in his easy chair, watching them from the living room. He was drinking what appeared to be a gin-and-tonic.
The old turian heaved a world-weary sigh. "Sejana, let the human come in. I'm tired of running. Maybe this madness will die down if we just tell them the story already."
From the autobiography of Saren Arterius – last saved to disk, 2185-01-07
Chapter 2
The autumn of 2148 was known as the Black Harvest on Carthagea I. The unusually cold and rainy weather triggered a maritus plague that ravaged the colony. It is an excruciatingly painful illness that wastes the body, warps the bones and attacks the nervous system of its victims, sometimes causing permanent paralysis and in other cases, death, as the infection affects the brain and lungs. My mother was one of the first maritus fatalities on Carthagea, a dubious distinction, and I contracted the disease soon after, at the age of nine.
Our farm did not have easy access to a medical clinic and so I was transported in the back of shuttle to the hospital in the colony's only large settlement, Tsarr. This was the longest voyage I had ever undertaken in my life, the closest thing I had ever experienced to adventure. I remember feeling a mix of trepidation and excitement as my father and my brother, Traven, lifted me into the shuttle on a makeshift stretcher. All children, I suppose, feel a sense of destiny about their lives and wish to imagine they are the heroes of some great story yet to be told. I took comfort in this feeling of detachment, as if my troubles were all just preparation for something greater – for me. They'd burned my mother's corpse two days before and I had dragged myself down to the field to see the funeral pyre lit and hear my father speak the blessings to the spirits. It didn't impress me much. In my mind, religion has always smelled like burning flesh.
Upon my arrival at the hospital on Tsarr, a physician examined me, listening to my lungs and my heart, examining how the disease had warped the structure of my face and affected the development of my fringe. He left the room to speak to my father and I listened to them whispering outside, words and phrases leaping out of their conversation.
"The boy will never be...Don't expect miracles...There's nothing to be done about the face, unless..."
"No," my father's voice "No alterations...Unnecessary expense...Learn to live with it."
"I didn't think so...He'll live...no paralysis. In the future..."
It took me another month before I could go out hunting varren and traskrats again with Traven. In anticipation, I spent every day working my muscles, pacing the hospital floor and forcing my fragile bones to harden. I devised an exercise routine that I did every morning and again in the late afternoon to ensure that I didn't lose any more muscle mass. I performed sets of push-ups and lunges, twenty at a time. By the time Traven arrived to pick me up on the shuttle, I could walk and run unassisted and while my cardiovascular endurance wasn't ideal, it had improved significantly from when I'd been at my worst with the maritus.
"You're looking better, kid," Traven told me. I don't remember being very convinced by this lie, but my brother did manage to look me in the eye, which was more than what most of the nurses were capable of doing. Their eyes would always stray to the shard of fringe poking out of my cheekbone or the zipper-like scars on either side of my mandibles.
He handed me a rifle, showing me how to load the ammo, although the reminder wasn't necessary. Even as a child, I had a natural affinity for firearms and marksmanship. Of course, on the farm, we didn't have the sophisticated weaponry available to Hierarchy officers, C-Sec detectives and Council Spectres. We had two decent shotguns, two hunting rifles and the pistol my father kept in his bedroom, which he claimed to have used to kill batarian raiders.
"In the mood to kill some pests?" Traven asked.
I nodded, looking down the sight of my gun and he laughed at my enthusiasm, as older brothers tend to do with the young and eager.
I don't think he understood how serious I was, until we brought home our haul. I bagged over 20 varren that day and at least 50 traskrats. All good, clean kills. We took the pelts and dried the meat, and burned everything else. I can't say that I thought about my face or maritus much after that. Mirrors were easy to avoid. It was only other people's eyes that haunted me, that held my image and wouldn't let it go. Even now, I hate cameras. I despise the feeling of being watched. I'd rather be the one looking – down the sight of a gun.
Mike sat down on the sofa, adjusting the camera to a mid-range shot that framed Scorpius Arcturus' face, neck and shoulders. Like his daughter, the old turian's face had striking red colony markings rather than the typical Palaveni blue. Neither of them bore much resemblance to the pictures and video footage the crew had collected of Saren Arterius, although Mike had to admit that his ability to judge turian features still wasn't all that great. Sejana sat beside Scorpius, her face tense, her talons balled into fists on her lap.
Mike glanced over at Savro, who was skimming through his datapad notes. Salarian speed-reading was a thing to behold. Savro had once gotten it into his head to study Tolstoy, since Mike had mentioned enjoying "Anna Karenina" (truthfully, he'd forced himself to plod through it to impress an asari who was studying Intergalactic Literature and it was now the Impressive Book he pulled out when conversations seemed to require some knowledge of fiction). Two days later, Savro walked up to him and reported that he liked "War and Peace" much better and that he'd been pleasantly surprised by Tolstoy's philosophical essays.
As he presented their first question, Savro seemed to be sweating a bit under Scorpius' hawk-like gaze. "As Saren Arterius' cousin, what memories do you have of him prior to the incident on Citadel?"
"We encountered each other occasionally, at clan gatherings. It was a small family to begin with, you understand, and it became even smaller after the maritus plagues, the batarian raids and the battles ensuing from the Relay 314 Incident. Sejana and I once visited Saren's estate on the moon, Auctoritas. Have you been there yet?"
They'd finished filming there yesterday, capturing some exterior shots of the mansion and the gardens, as well as few interiors, including Saren's office and his lavish master bedroom. Mike had been surprised how strongly the place had affected him. He'd had to use a hover-cam because his hands had been trembling. Savro was oddly superstitious for a salarian and wouldn't even venture into the house. He just shook his head, saying it was unclean, a place of defilement. Mike wasn't so sure about that, but it was definitely maximum levels of creepy.
"Yes, we've been there," Savro answered.
"Big, sprawling place," Scorpius said. "I don't know why Saren invited us there, but I expect it was to show off his newfound creds and status to his poor relations."
Sejana rolled her eyes. "Oh, come on, we're hardly poor." Mike zoomed out to include her in the camera frame. "And anyway, Saren was an ass. His house was gaudy. He might've had money, but he had no manners at all. I mean, he invited us all to a party, showed up for five minutes to make a speech and order the servants around and then he wandered off- just ignored everyone!"
"He wasn't the most gracious of hosts," Scorpius admitted, "but he was generous with the food and drink. I won't fault him for that. Of course, none of us had any idea what he was planning. The very idea that he could be a traitor – well, it just didn't occur to us. After all, he'd been a Spectre for so many years and he'd been good at it..."
Sejana frowned. "What about the asari that was there? She was weird. Some kind of matriarch. Had her tits half out and Melchior keep staring, because I don't think he'd ever seen breasts before and certainly not displayed in that fashion..."
"Melchior's my younger son from my second marriage. Good boy. Never been off Palaven," Scorpius explained, before turning back to Sejana. "That was Matriarch Benezia. I spoke with her for a while. Expert on asari philosophy. More sophisticated than Saren. I was surprised that she'd follow him, but I suppose that he did exert a certain personal magnetism..."
"He was a self-involved jerk," Sejana said. "You go into his house and the whole thing is like a personal shrine to himself. And when he spoke, you always got the feeling that he had this inner monologue going, like polite stuff is coming out of his mouth but then inside, he's making fun of you or thinking about how he could take you apart."
Scorpius' mandibles flared, his grey eyes focussing on his daughter's face. "You barely knew him, Sejana. I'm not here to be his apologist. What he did was despicable but before then, he did some good, too. He served the Council for a long time. He tried to destroy the galaxy once, but he probably saved it seven or eight times before that, without anyone even knowing."
Chapter 9
I was in boot camp when I received the news about Traven. My commanding officer, Centurion Caelian, was the one who informed me.
"Legionnaire Arterius, the Hierarchy offers you its sympathies and its gratitude. Centurion Traven Arterius died valiantly defending the 314 Relay from human incursions. May the Spirits give him honour."
If I hadn't had a grasp of military discipline, I probably would have punched something or somebody just for the sake of hearing my knuckles crack against bone, for that gratifying spurt of blood that tells you you've made contact and done a little damage. Instead, I saluted the sergeant, a decent enough fellow, and let off a few rounds at the firing range. If there was going to be full-scale war against the humans, I wanted my unit to be a part of it. Traven had told me what their kind was like, parasitical, lawless, cowardly – they bow to the weakness of the individual and refuse to make sacrifices for the good of the many.
Each target I took down in the firing range, I tried to imagine as a human, although I had very little practical understand of what humans looked like. Indeed, now that the human race is extinct, I expect that my readers may be having some difficulty imagining these creatures. I shall describe them to you. They stood shorter than turians, although they walked upright as we do. Like us, they had two arms and two legs, but their skins came in shades varying from beige to brown to ebony. This skin was impractically soft, easy to cut through or bruise. They had peculiar faces, rather like monkeys – large eyes, a nasal cavity covered with cartilage and flesh, small mouths with lips and stubby teeth meant for mashing and grinding food. They had heavy fur covering the tops of their heads and then lighter hair spread over arms and legs and other places where they needed to conserve warmth. Their internal organs were in most cases analogous to those of turians, but they were levo-amino based and their blood was red when fresh, brown or black when dry. They displayed all the worst excesses of organic species- arrogance, thoughtless individualism, distempered passion. At the time, I had never seen one in the flesh. All I knew was that their culture was vile, antithetical to good governance and they had killed my brother.
I attended the funeral pyre for my brother and five other members of his unit who'd died in the fighting at Shangxi. The odour of burning flesh has a way of lingering in one's nostrils. Even after I'd returned to duty, I could still smell it. Even after Caelian told us that the Relay 314 Incident had been resolved to the Council's satisfaction and that we were shipping out to the Traverse, that fire was still crackling, searing orange under my eyelids. The Traverse is where I saw my first human and where my first human saw his last turian. On the battlefield, in full armour, we didn't always have the time to distinguish their soldiers from the batarian raiders. Command never complained so long as my unit met its objectives on time and with minimal losses.
"Turn the camera off," Sejana said. "I want to say something. Off the record."
Mike caught the look of uncertainty on Savro's face and nodded at him, flicking off the remote camera. Of course, he still had a mini tape recorder playing in the pocket of his rumpled flannel shirt.
Sejana leaned forward, resting her arms on her knees. "My father used to work for the Primarch's Office on Palaven. Served the State for 32 years..."
"31 years and 7 months," Scorpius corrected her.
Her mandibles prised open and she chuckled a little at her father's precision, although she was still wired, impatient, clicking her talons together. She made Mike more nervous than he'd like to admit. Lifting her mug, she took a sip of a steaming green liquid, what appeared to be the turian equivalent of coffee.
"Anyway, my father worked hard and for a long time. After Saren, they forced him to retire. Me, I was going to join C-Sec. Wanted to be part of it since I was a kid. Now what are the chances I'm going to get a job on the Citadel?"
"Still possible," Savro answered. "Just not...probable."
Sejana scoffed at this. "That's a salarian answer if I ever heard one. What I'm trying to say is these are our lives you're meddling with here. And if it were up to me, everyone would forget that Saren ever existed."
"It's more complicated than that," Scorpius said. "For a long time, he was a respected public figure. I mean, there were always shady rumours about him, understand, but people were overawed by his reputation for getting things done. That's a rare quality. Why, even two years ago, you could open a lot of doors on the Citadel just by saying the name 'Arterius'."
"And now the doors can't slam shut fast enough."
Sejana took another gulp of her drink and stood up. "I don't have anything more to say about that bastard. By the Spirits, just be sure you don't make it look like we're defending him." She strode out of the room and into the kitchen. Mike heard her clanging pots and pans together, with the apparent intention of cooking supper.
Scorpius shook his head. "I apologize for my daughter. She's young and she's had a few disappointments."
The recruit sprinted into cover and then shot the target with his assault rifle. The sensors on his vest flashed red, indicating a clean hit.
He scanned the field and then darted out of cover, bludgeoning the final assailant with the butt of his weapon and then pinioning him to the ground.
The lights went up. The simulation was over. I stepped out from the control booth to congratulate the recruit on his performance – he'd beaten the candidates' record for the second time that day and I planned to recommend him for a position as a Spectre.
At that moment, he made his mistake. He turned away, looking back at the simulation screen.
I narrowed my eyes at him. "Candidate Krillik, what are you doing?"
He spun around, his mandibles flaring. "Spectre Arterius?"
"Never turn your back on me. Especially not when I'm holding a gun."
His face remained stoic, motionless, but I could tell from the way he blinked that he was baffled. A good turian isn't supposed to admit to distrusting a superior officer. "Sir, I assumed – you're assessing me..."
"Doesn't matter. You want to survive as a Spectre, you don't give anyone the opportunity to kill you. From now on, stay vigilant. "
He straightened his back, his eyes looking to the far wall."Yes, sir."
"I'm approving you for a field test, Candidate Krillik. If you perform well on the ground, then I will recommend you to the Council for Spectre status."
"Thanks. I won't disappoint you."
That was one of my first encounters with Nihilus Krillik. I mentored him for a number of years before he started his traitorous association with the System Alliance, before we met on Eden Prime. Nihilus was a worthy soldier and for a long time, I called him 'friend' but he never did learn that lesson about keeping his back to wall.
"I never agreed with Saren's ideas on humanity," Scorpius said. "The truth is that I find humans quite fascinating. In some respects, they've very similar to turians. Have you ever read Confucius? He was a very turian human, I think."
Savro wrapped up the interview with the final question Mike had listed in his datapad. "If there was something that you could say to Saren now, what would you tell him?"
Scorpius looks down at the coffee table, his jaws working. "I – I don't know. A peculiar idea, that. I suppose I'd ask him why he'd want to kill all those people on Eden Prime, on the Citadel. It just seems so insane. Which is probably what he was. Still, people always go looking for explanations. 'Why?' is always the question that never gets answered."
It was true, Mike thought. Their research had delved into every facet of Saren's recorded history and yet they still couldn't explain what drove him to massacre so many innocent people, to cause so much destruction. Why? It was the question that haunted the Citadel. No matter how successful the documentary was, whether or not it marked the beginning of a great new film career, he'd never be able to come up with an answer for the victims and their families, who had to live with what Saren had done every single day.
He turned off his camera and said goodbye to Scorpius and Sejana, feeling a strange sense of disappointment, as if he could jam the pieces together and solve the puzzle, if he only concentrated hard enough, if he only re-watched the footage, if he only asked the right question.
Chapter 16
I never set out to be a hero. I always thought it was a somewhat laughable concept. But a decision was thrust upon me and I had no choice but to act in the best interests of the galaxy, to do what I could to conciliate with the Reapers. I understood that my intentions would be misinterpreted and that, in some quarters, I might be labelled a traitor for the course I had to undertake. A hero doesn't act for personal glory or the cheers of a crowd. I let my generation despise me as a traitor, knowing all the while that I would be vindicated in future days, that the people whose lives I saved would come to recognize the wisdom and courage of my actions. I never set out to be a villain, but if that's the price one must pay for heroism, if that's the sacrifice that one must make for the greater good, then so be it.
Something crunched under the krogan cleaner's boot.
"Damn it!"
"You okay?" his friend asked, still sweeping dirt and rubbish into his dustbin. They'd been working all morning in the Presidium, clearing out rubble and debris from the massive ship that Saren had crashed into the Citadel.
The first krogan stooped down with a low grunt and picked up a jagged shard of metal for examination. It was shiny and rounded at one side. "Looks like it used ta be a disk."
"Maybe it belonged to that Spectre feller," the other krogan suggested.
"Shepard?"
"No, the other one. The turian."
"Oh. Arterius."
"Yeah. What if it was his? And it had all kinds of top-secret stuff on it?"
"Eh, even if it was, I broke it. You ain't getting any secrets out of it."
The krogan snickered. "Pah. We got enough dirt here as it is."
He swept up the pieces of the disk into the bin and emptied it into the garbage compactor on the wall.