XIV
For a long time, Akiban felt as if suspended in absolute limbo. Somewhere in her mind she was aware of her surroundings, but none of what her eyes emptily gazing eyes perceived drained into her consciousness. Her stomach was raging with hunger, but she couldn't mobilize the will to eat. Her body was begging her to lie down and rest, but she wouldn't even close her eyes other than to blink once every eternity. She just sat there, hunched over Foster's body, still holding on to the weapon with which she had killed him. Deep inside her Akiban clung to the hope that if she preserved the current moment forever, the realization of what she had done would never catch up with her.
But it did, and tears filled her eyes and started streaming down her expressionless face. Akiban had killed a helpless boy. And while she didn't know what twists of fate had driven him into the hands of Cerberus, she understood one thing perfectly: He lay dead at her hands in a place he probably never wanted to go, sucked into a situation that was utterly beyond him by powers he couldn't affect. Yet the worst thing for Akiban was that her pity wasn't directed at him but at herself. He was dead, but she would be haunted by this and other moments for as long as she lived.
"Imagine my surprise!" a flanging voice exclaimed.
Akiban snapped out of her ruminations, unconsciously tightening her grip on the pistol in her hand. She looked up and discerned a cloaked shape standing at the top of the Scientia's boarding ramp.
"I came here in search of quarians and a geth device they purloined," the voice continued. "And what do I find? I find Lieutenant Akiban amidst a field of corpses."
Only slowly did it dawn on Akiban who it was that was speaking to her, but with the realization came a flood of hatred that engulfed her mind. "Varelius."
The turian took two strides into the cargo bay and discarded his gray cloak, revealing his blue and white armor. A sniper rifle and a pistol were safely holstered in their slots, the former on his back and the latter at his hip, while his arms hung loosely at his sides.
"Indeed," he confirmed and reached for his rifle.
Akiban staggered to her feet and snapped on her shields. Revitalized by the burning rage inside her, she switched weapons and allowed a feral grin to spread across her face. Never in her life had she been as certain of anything as she was now of the absolute necessity of the turian's death.
Still holding his sniper rifle at patrol position, Varelius said, "I hadn't dared to hope for your survival to have the chance to end you myself, though I must admit that it was not absent from my thoughts."
Akiban decided to let him talk in order to assess the tactical situation, but it was hard to think with the seething fury in her that begged and commanded her to just throw herself at him. His sniper rifle was definitely his greatest advantage over her, though she doubted that he'd make it as easy as to just kill her with it—she knew she wouldn't in his place. No, she had to get in close.
"Let's end this!" Varelius shouted and raised his weapon.
Even as she was aiming at him, Akiban dropped sideways into an asymmetrical crouch, coming to sit on her left foot while her right leg was extended, and barely believed that his shot missed her. She fired her assault rifle, spraying his shields with rounds, but they resisted her initial salvo. The turian fired again, and this time his round found its mark. Akiban couldn't tell where exactly she was hit, mostly because she only recalled everything spinning around her in a blur followed by an impact when she found herself slacking against the forward bulkhead of the cargo hold. It took her a long moment to recover her senses, her sensation being dominated by a searing pain in her left shoulder and nausea.
Before she could even vomit, she realized that her feet were off the deck and that Varelius's face was only millimeters away from hers, which further subverted her dominance over her stomach. He was pressing her against the bulkhead, his hands firmly clasped around the collar of her armor, his elbows forcing her upper arms into a horizontal line and thus preventing her from reaching for her weapons.
"You cannot fathom how much I wanted this," he said.
"Bite me," she retorted and kicked him between his legs. The attack all of itself shouldn't even have hurt him through his armor, but he grunted and slacked in his stance. "Balls? Nah, can't be," she wheezed.
Varelius roared and lifted her higher, spun her around until she was head down, and slammed her down onto the deck. Akiban barely managed to move her arms in the way to dampen the impact, but she failed to prevent her head from hitting the deck hard, which made stars dance around her vision. Not waiting for her to recover, Varelius kicked her in the stomach, but her armor absorbed most of the force. Still upside down but now with a little more room to maneuver, Akiban kept her lower back against the bulkhead and kicked back at him with both legs, or rather awkwardly extended them with as much force as she could. She caught him square in his lower body armor, which was rewarded with an agonized grunt of his. He staggered back, visibly favoring his right leg.
Akiban dragged herself back to her feet and reached for her pistol, but he was already grabbing for his own. Neither of them aimed well, yet both of them managed to squeeze off a quick shot. While his round hit Akiban in the chestplate and slammed her back against the bulkhead, hers never reached him, though it made his shields flare and wink out. With her own weapon aimed into oblivion and his still trained at her, Akiban pushed herself off the solid steel behind her and threw herself at Varelius. She felt a round graze her at the shoulder, but then her tackle was already connecting with his hips, and they both tumbled down to the deck in a chaotic knot of limbs and groans.
Lying on top of him, Akiban was groping for her pistol, which she had lost hold off, but Varelius recovered quickly and swung a lateral punch at her temple. Dazed by the hit, she slid off him. With an awkward move that kept all stress off his right leg, the turian spun her on her back and swung himself on top of her, locking her torso between his legs. Akiban came out of her confusion and gave up on the pistol. Instead she drew her knife and slashed at Varelius's face. He blocked the attack by interposing his pistol and grabbing her wrist with his left hand. Her right hand and knife now locked in the turian's grasp, Akiban reached up with her left in the hope of denying him the range of movement needed to aim his sidearm down at her, but to her surprise he let go of the pistol and wrapped both of his hands around her right. The tip of the blade began turning toward her face as Varelius wrenched her wrist around, though Akiban managed to prevent the weapon from plunging into her throat by bracing her left hand against her right forearm. But then Varelius shifted his weight forward, and the knife started descending. The more her arms bent, the greater the strain on her muscles became, and even as the tip of the blade was only millimeters away from her throat, she trembled and groaned in exhaustion.
Akiban could see that Varelius knew that the only direction the knife would go was downward; his mandibles twitched in anticipation of the long-desired kill. She closed her eyes and felt him lean forward even more to finish it. Knowing that she couldn't dodge the blade and topple him at the same time, Akiban decided for effect over protection. She changed the direction in which her arms were pushing from up to left, thrusting her hips up against his crotch simultaneously. The blade sliced through the soft collar of her armor and dove into her neck until it was stopped by her backplate. She screamed, but Varelius fell over, still holding on to her right hand with both of his, and planted his face on the deck. Having neutralized his leverage, Akiban ripped the knife out of herself and his grasp and blindly rammed it into his crotch. The blade slid off the lower-body guard, but then it penetrated the softer fabric at the transition from hips to leg armor and sunk in all the way to the hilt. Varelius let go a savage howl and clutched his hands between his legs.
Feeling something warm spurt over her hands even as the smell of medi-gel shot into her nostrils, Akiban tore the knife out of him—which earned her another scream of his—and rammed it in again. While she still couldn't see anything with Varelius's chestplate pressed against her face, she was quite certain that her second thrust had severed a finger. Not waiting for her opponent to recover, Akiban pulled the knife out again and squirmed out from under him.
And not a moment too soon. Groaning in pain, one hand still pressed against the wounds between his legs, Varelius was already reaching for his pistol that lay on the deck next to him. Akiban, her face a mask of agony, her left hand clutched to her neck and her right holding the knife that was now coated in both human and turian blood, took a step toward Varelius and kicked the weapon out of his grasp before he could fire. The pistol skittered away, and the turian started rising to defend himself. He was barely on his knees when Akiban dealt him another kick, this time planting it to the side of his head. Hit, Varelius spun around from the force of the impact and dropped flat on his stomach. She was over him in an instant, intent on pressing her advantage, and pinned him to the deck with her left knee against his back. Since he didn't resist, Akiban suspected that he was knocked out, but she wasn't going to take any chances. With the high collar of his armor shielding him rather well from her, Akiban stabbed at the only target she had: his head. She raised the knife high into the air and plunged it down with all the strength she could mobilize. Varelius's body twitched as the blade sunk into his skull and brain, then he lay unmoving.
A medical scan Akiban conducted found no vital functions in the turian. Still breathing heavily, she dragged herself to his pistol, picked it up, and put two rounds in his head for good measure. After holstering the weapon, she dropped to the deck and started laughing. What started as a mild chuckle soon turned into a mad roar. Akiban couldn't help it. It was as if someone had injected her with a drug. There was nothing to laugh about, yet any rational thought was drowned out by elation and joy she somehow knew weren't her own. Her stomach cramped and her neck, which was mostly numb thanks to the medi-gel her armor had deployed automatically, ached dully. She lay flat on her back with her limbs stretched out, the boom of her laughter reverberating throughout the cargo hold.
When the lights went out and everything was left in an eerie blue glow, Akiban barely noticed it. Her mind was utterly in the grasp of relief and joy, so much that she didn't even realize that she was reaching for the pistol on her hip. As the blue light began to pulse, the weapon slowly wandered up to Akiban's head, and by the time she suspected that something was wrong, she was already pressing the gun's muzzle at her temple. She tried to pierce the veil of confusion that suddenly engulfed her mind, wondering where she was and what she was doing, but organized thought eluded her. But somehow the haze that clouded her thinking was familiar, and finally Akiban recognized it for what it was: the effects of the device.
"No!" she screamed and barely managed to tear the pistol away from her head before her index finger pulled the trigger as if with its own murderous intent. The round went off harmlessly, ricocheted off a bulkhead somewhere, and vanished.
Akiban's triumph of will did not last, though. An agony exploded in her head like needles stabbing into each and every single cell in her brain. The pain was so intense and complete that at first Akiban thought that it wasn't her who was experiencing it at all, but then the perfection of it came crushing down on her, and she screamed, writhing on the ground, clawing at her scalp as if tearing out her brain would somehow ameliorate her suffering.
"Organic creature," a voice said, and it was as if the very fabric of space spoke to Akiban. It came from nowhere and everywhere at once; it was unspoken yet infinitely loud. It was the big bang and absolute zero, infinite like space yet dense as a singularity. "You were evaluated and you have passed. Now your usefulness has expired."
"Who… What…" Akiban stammered, unable to focus her thoughts in her bursting head.
"You cannot comprehend that which you face. Your resilience and driven nature elevate you above the other species of this cycle, yet your existence pales before our infinity. We have always been. We are. We will always be. And now the time has come for you to end."
Akiban didn't understand. She didn't know what was happening. A part of her longed for the pistol. It was tempting, an easy way out. But she wasn't one for easy. Evaluated. It was just another test. The pain didn't matter. The absence of pain was just the illusion of comfort, the presence of pain the absence of illusion. A pained smile spread on her lips as she started crawling toward the bridge.
"Your resistance is founded in ignorance," the voice droned on. "Like many before you, you battle that which cannot be defeated."
Her vision blurred and with rivulets of blood running out of her nose, Akiban dragged herself into the cargo elevator and raised it to the habitat deck. When the door slid open, she resumed her crawl toward the bridge. While she wasn't moving fast, she was making steady progress. Her muscles were responding only sluggishly to her commands, but she forced herself to keep going. Most of the way she kept her eyes closed because otherwise everything started spinning. She looked up occasionally to make sure she was taking the most direct way, vomited violently the first two times, then only retched and gagged since her stomach was empty.
"You will submit to the inevitable," the voice boomed as Akiban reached the stairs that led up to the bridge.
Akiban ignored it and started pulling herself up the steps. Although the pain was still there, it seemed more distant to her now, its omni-presence diminished. Or maybe she was dying and didn't feel it as prominently anymore because of some damage to her brain. It didn't matter. She would keep going as long as her muscles worked.
At the top of the stairs Akiban activated her omni-tool and manually overrode and shut down her armor's automatic medi-gel dispersal system. She was bathing in the stuff by now, and its anesthetic effect was numbing her nerves and making motoneurons unresponsive. Coughing, she reached up to the control panel above her and opened the door.
"You cannot win," the voice said as Akiban pulled herself into the command chair.
"Will you shut the fuck up already!" she screamed with tears running down her cheeks. The exertion made her retch, and she coughed up blood. Groaning, she activated the command interface and transmitted Rynes's command codes from her omni-tool. When the ship accepted them, Akiban used assistant software to create a macro:
Sequence start
Idle 120 s
Initialize mass effect core
Set mass effect field output to 100%
Fire ventral maneuvering thrusters for 0.5 s
Fire dorsal maneuvering thrusters for 0.5 s
Fire port maneuvering thrusters for 0.5 s
Idle 10 s
Fire starboard maneuvering thrusters for 0.5 s
Fire rear maneuvering thrusters for 30 s
Set main propulsion power output to 100%
Override: mass effect core emergency shutdown
Idle 120 s
Set mass effect field output to 9999999%
Sequence terminate
Sitting hunched over the left armrest of the command chair, straining her eyes to focus on the holoscreen right in front of her, Akiban was fairly proud of what she had created. The firing times were estimates, uneducated guesses at best, for she had no idea how long the ship needed to yaw hundred eighty degrees, but with the yacht's external systems gone, there was no way to program the autopilot to just fly it somewhere. Similarly, the command she hoped would overload the mass effect core was a shot in the dark, but in the worst case she'd end up shooting the Scientia and the device into deep space, and a drive core discharge would cook the ship eventually, hopefully before anyone decided to board it and shut the whole thing down; at this point, though, she was beyond caring.
After coughing up more blood, Akiban initiated the macro and dropped out of the command chair and onto the deck. She regretted immediately only giving herself two minutes, but she guessed that she wasn't going to live much longer than that, anyway. Her body felt like it was decomposing from the inside now that her armor wasn't bathing her in medi-gel anymore. The pain in her head was as bad as ever, and she was still bleeding from her nose, but at least the voice was silent. Now all she had to do was depressurize the hangar and open the outer hangar door.
Instead of returning to the cargo hold, Akiban dragged herself to the airlock on the habitat deck on the ship's starboard side—the same she had used to leave the ship earlier—and jumped out. Even though the airlock was only some two and a half meters above ground, Akiban hit the deck hard, her muscles barely dampening the impact. Recovering, she was fairly certain that she had broken her right wrist, but she only registered it intellectually as the medium of agony that surrounded and permeated her made any pain she felt negligible.
By the time she had crawled past the bodies of the unknown aliens and reached the inner hangar door, Akiban's vision was going from blurred to blacking out occasionally, and she had coughed up more blood. She also felt a crushing pressure on her ears which made her head spin, and she found it not only painful but outright difficult to breathe.
When Akiban finally reached the control panel, she pulled herself up to her knees with her left hand and hit the control that closed the door. Under screeching protest, the mechanism responded and the hangar door wings were set in motion. Akiban had to squeeze her eyes shut for a moment to regain focus, and stared at the control panel for a long moment. The controls for close, stop, and open were, while in vorcha, easy to decipher. However, there was nothing she recognized as a command to vent the hangar or open the out door. She wondered if that could even be done from this panel.
The inner door shut while Akiban was still leaning over the controls, trying to make sense of them. Blood from her nose dripped onto the panel and she tried to wash it away frantically, though she only succeeded in smearing it all over the console. After a few attempts at cleaning the panel she gave up on it as everything she tried only seemed to make it worse. With a heavy curse, Akiban slacked against the bulkhead. She knew that if the outer hangar door remained closed when the Scientia fire her engines, then the yacht would bounce off it as it wouldn't generate any kinetic energy with its mass effect fields at full strength. On her way out, Akiban had lost track of time, so she checked the hangar interior with her omni-tool for emissions. There was nothing yet, but there soon would be, she thought, and realized that she had screwed up.
As she was staring at the orange-golden holographic device, an idea occurred to her, painfully obvious, but then her mind wasn't exactly working at peak performance. She linked the omni-tool to Omega's extranet uplink and downloaded a translator for vorcha. Then she took a picture of the panel with her omni-tool and ran it through the software, which automatically recognized the letters and translated them for her. She accessed additional commands, and had to use the translator again. There was nothing about a venting procedure in this menu, but there were the outer door controls. Relieved and too exhausted to bother looking any further, Akiban just hit the control. A warning popped up, something about the hangar still being under pressure and the atmospheric containment field not responding, but she selected something that her omni-tool translated as emergency override. There was low rumble, then everything trembled.
Hoping that it was the Scientia that had scraped the door on her way out, Akiban allowed herself a strong dose of medi-gel, and as the burning pain in her head started to subside, she finally fell asleep.