Shepard Likes Rocket Launchers

~Chapter 25~

"What," Tali said flatly, leaning forwards in her chair.

"Let me say that again, slowly," Shepard reiterated. "Stay calm. We. Have. A. Geth. In. Our. Computers."

Tali scratched her head carefully. "Okay," she said, looking wearily around the debriefing room. "So you've waited until you got me, the geth expert, on board so we could disable it without blowing up the Normandy. Got it. Where's the computer core?"

"Tali," Shepard said carefully. "I talked to it. It was what told us you were in trouble. If it hadn't said anything, you'd be floating as dust particles in what's left of the Dholen system."

Tali groaned. "I see what you're trying to do here, Shepard. What do you want me to do? Thank it? Let one of the things that drove my people from our home-world have free reign over the systems keeping me alive?"

"Calm down, Tali," Shepard said quickly, holding up his hands. "When's the last time you talked to a geth? Heard what it had to say?"

Tali just about pounced on him. "I don't know about talking, Shepard, but the last time I saw a geth, it was killing my people! My family, Shepard!"

"Different geth, Tali," Shepard pointed out. "Heretics. The true geth don't want-"

"Don't want what?" Tali spat. "I don't care how you label them now. They destroyed our entire civilization. How do you expect me to react?"

Shepard sighed. "Look, Tali. Just promise me you won't try and kill him, will you? He hasn't done anything hostile towards us. Think of it as an intelligence-gathering opportunity if you want."

Tali stood. "Kill him, Shepard? It's a program. It wasn't alive in the first place." With that, she stormed out of the debriefing room.

"I'll take that as a 'maybe, but no promises,'" Shepard muttered.

The Cerberus shuttle descended into the expansive scrap yards of Korlus, just outside a certain mercenary outpost. The commandos inside shifted nervously as they awaited a response. Getting the krogan scientist on their side would be hard enough, even without a legion of Blue Suns mercenaries gunning for them.

"Okeer?" the scrabbly female voice responded over the speaker. "Yeah, he's here. What do you want with him?"

Miranda rolled her eyes before opening her radio again. "We need his help. He has information that may be vital to our mission. We're working for the defense of humanity, Jedore. Your clone krogan army can wait."

"Hah!" the loudspeaker responded. "I've heard that one before. You're just a bunch of terrorists. The Blue Suns actually stand for something. You? You're bigots and cowards. Okeer will stay with me, thank you."

Jacob frowned. "Damn. What do we do now?"

Suddenly, an alarm went off. "What?" the loudspeaker shouted. "There's been an unscheduled krogan release. All units, to the perimeter! Put them down! Find me the source. Who authorized that release?"

Miranda smiled. "Well, well. Chaos ensues. I'm sure we can take advantage of this. Let's move in, people."

The squad of commandos unfolded their weapons and advanced through the twisted piles of metal.

Garrus walked through the automatic doors into Engineering. The Tantalus drive core's pulses subtly shifted the air, making his fringe stand up slightly straighter. It wasn't really his environment.

But Tali'Zorah was there, carefully integrating her omni-tool into the Normandy's systems so she could monitor them without using an actual computer console. Garrus sighed. The Alliance engineering staff hadn't noticed any difference in the performance of the drive systems, but clearly, Tali wasn't taking any chances.

Garrus walked over to her and leaned nonchalantly on the railing beside her. Tali looked up from her omni-tool. "Oh, hey, Garrus," she said off-handedly. "Don't normally see you in here. What's up?"

Garrus sighed. "You know," he started, "when I first heard that we had a geth on board, the first thing I did was waltz into Shepard's room and put a hole in his terminal with my rifle." He chuckled. "Shepard was pretty mad at me for a while after that. Afterwards, I ended up having a text chat with the geth on my data pad. He's not so bad, really."

He crossed his arms. "You know, we were thinking about giving him a name. Needing to refer to him as 'geth in the ship' is getting rather annoying. We were thinking maybe you could think up a nice quarian name for him."

Tali turned on the turian. "Stop that," she growled. "It's a genocidal program. It doesn't get a name."

"Now, now. You don't know that," Garrus pointed out.

"Why wouldn't I?" the quarian shouted. "They've attacked the Citadel! They've sided with the Reapers! We got banished from Citadel Space because of them. The entire galaxy has ostracized us: you, the asari, the salarians, everyone! When someone looks at us, they see a race of liars, thieves, and vagrants. Despite all the destruction the geth have caused, we're the villains somehow? They've murdered billions of us! And… and…"

She suddenly stopped. "My father's dead," she whispered.

Garrus was startled. "What?" he asked. "How?"

"I just got a secure transmission from the Fleet," she said quietly. "Geth pieces he had been working with were able to spontaneously reactivate. His lab ship, the Alarei, was taken over. They destroyed it with torpedoes an hour ago. No survivors."

"Oh, Spirits," Garrus mumbled. "I'm so sorry, Tali." He reached forwards and hugged his friend.

She broke down into tears. "I… I'm sorry, Garrus," she sniffed. "You didn't deserve that... rant."

Adams and the other Alliance engineers looked away in sympathy.

"Yeah," Garrus said. "Just like how quarians don't deserve to be looked down on like criminals. I'm sorry, Tali. I really am. Shepard would probably give you time off if you asked, to mourn your father."

"No, I think I'd prefer to work," Tali said, breaking away from him eventually. "The admirals had a full investigation done," she explained quietly. "They salvaged some black box logs from the Alarei. He circumvented security protocols when experimenting on the geth parts. And his experiments… If they'd been on organics, he would have violated the Citadel Conventions more times than I could count."

"Damn. I guess I understand why the geth took over that ship."

"I'm trying to understand," she muttered. "Father promised me a house on the home-world. If I'd known this was how he'd try to get it for me…I… I never wanted…"

She sighed, holding back more tears. "I should be able to get over it. We were exiled three hundred years ago. I wasn't even alive then."

"Yeah," Garrus added. "You know, turian-human relations started with ship-to-ship combat. And now, here I am, working under a human commander. Things can change."

"I know," Tali mumbled. "But… I just keep thinking about it, and nothing has changed. Us and the geth have never stopped being at war. Scouting parties, surprise attacks on isolated units… Your war ended. Ours hasn't."

Garrus leaned back again and crossed his arms. "Well, if it makes you feel any better, we're headed to a geth station right now. And our only goal, really, is to blow the entire thing to bits."

Tali smiled slightly at that, sniffing one last time. "Really? Well. I'm feeling better already."

"It doesn't have to end this way, Jedore!" Miranda shouted. "We can still sort this out peacefully!" Her squad had actually taken a beating from the mercenaries and enraged krogan, as they were down three men and had multiple wounded. But Jedore had herself backed into a corner. The repurposed skeleton of a rusty old ship wasn't much of a place for a final stand.

Jedore snorted from across the large chamber. "Same to you! I'm the one with the heavy mechs and krogan on my side!"

Miranda sighed and warped the approaching YMIR mech with her biotics. Jacob finished it off with several well placed incendiary rounds, and it exploded harmlessly a few meters away.

A brainwashed krogan clone charged straight at their squad, but was quickly gunned down by their combined fire.

"Break them, kill them, I'll make more!"

"No you won't," Miranda muttered. "Take her out, please."

The four of them that had sniper training pulled out their rifles. In seconds, a volley of shots was away, and Jedore fell to the ground, dead.

"Well," Miranda said briefly. "That's over with. Let's check on Okeer."

The Enhanced Defense Intelligence chirped in her earpiece. "Warning. Warlord Okeer's life signs are failing rapidly. The toxins in the room exceeded lethal levels and are only now being vented. I recommend haste."

"Damn," Miranda muttered. "This trip better have been worth it. We lost good people fighting our way in here."

The squad dashed back up the stairs to Okeer's makeshift lab. When the doors slid open for them, they revealed Okeer, lying on the floor, unmoving.

Jacob crouched beside him. "Already dead," he reported.

A recorded message, in Okeer's voice, was playing from the terminal in front of the dead krogan. "You gave me time, humans. If I knew why the Collectors wanted you, I would tell you. But everything is in my prototype. My legacy is perfect. This…"

"Someone shut that recording up," Miranda spat. "What a waste of time this mission was. Search the lab; see if we can recover any data related to the Collectors. We'll have a clean-up team get," she gestured at the stasis tank holding the unconscious clone, "whatever this is to a lab for study. It's none of our concern."

Jacob nodded and put a hand to his ear, calling the shuttle back in to pick them up.

"Hah!" Tali shouted with a grin. "Twenty-six!"

Garrus snorted. "Hacking them doesn't count. You have to use your guns or your overloads." He peeked through his scope and took another shot. "I'm at thirty now, by the way."

"Tssk, tssk," Shepard said, pulling up behind them. "Thirty one."

He peeked around the corner and fired a rocket. "Make that thirty two."

"Dammit," Garrus cursed. "Tali, mind hacking that one over there so I can get a clear shot? There's no way I'm letting Shepard win."

Tali shook her head. "Sorry! Hacking isn't helping my score at all. Got to use my omni-tool to overload."

Garrus grumbled to himself unintelligibly.

A message popped up inside Tali's helmet. She stopped to read it. "Warning," she read. "Hunter-class platform directly behind y-"

She abruptly dove to the side, and a shotgun blast tore through the space she had been standing in. The geth hunter's optical cloak faded, allowing them to see it clearly.

Hearing it, Shepard and Garrus turned. The turian quickly overloaded the unit's shields, and Shepard unloaded into the geth with his assault rifle. It eventually fell to the ground, leaking hydraulic fluid.

"The hell?" Shepard grumbled. "Invisibility? That's new. You okay, Tali?"

Tali nodded and climbed back to her feet. "Fine. Thanks for that warning, whoever sent it. You couldn't have just shouted or something?"

Garrus scratched his head. "What warning? I didn't even know the thing was there until it opened fire."

"Same here," Shepard noted. "Keep your eyes open. The Alliance was experimenting with tactical cloak tech. The best they could manage still left slight distortions in the air. We should be able to see 'em coming."

Tali checked her message log again.

Warning. Hunter-class platform directly behind you. Immediate action advised.

-Geth

Tali blinked. "It… what?"

Shepard glanced back at her. "Something wrong, Tali?"

"No," she said quickly. "It's just… never mind. Let's keep moving."

"Ookay," Shepard said. "By the way, Garrus, that one counted for me. I'm up to thirty-three now."

Garrus sighed, raising his sniper rifle once more.

The Normandy accelerated away from the heretic geth station. As it vanished into FTL, the station's core detonated, shearing the twenty kilometer long station into bits and ending the millions of geth processes stored within in an instant.

Shepard sat at his newly repaired terminal, tapping away.

Okay, Mr. Geth. We took care of the virus problem. Was that really necessary though? Any regrets? You said there were more than six million programs on that station. I can't help but feel a bit like a mass murderer.

-Shepard

The geth responded as quickly as always.

It was the only logical solution. The virus was one, perhaps two years from completion. The majority of the remaining heretics resided within that station. With their numbers diminished, and Nazara already destroyed, they will have much difficulty recreating it. The destruction of so many geth programs is unfortunate, but as you organics say, it was them or us.

-Geth

Shepard sighed. "One more thing out of the way," he muttered to himself. He rose to go check on Liara's progress with the data collected on Ilos, but before he reached the door, it slid open to reveal Tali.

"Tali?" Shepard said, surprised. "Nice to see you. Garrus told me about your father; I'm so sorry. Is there anything I can do?"

Tali seemed excited, jumpy almost. "No, it's fine. I'm coping. But I got something for you."

Shepard was confused. "Got something? What?"

Tali lifted her head up, and Shepard swore he could see a smile under that mask. "A name."

She tapped into her omni-tool, and a message appeared on Shepard's terminal.

Seyci'Queyum vas Normandy, representative of the Geth

-Tali

Shepard read it and raised an eyebrow. A second later, another message appeared.

A translation for Shepard: Observant Guardian of the Normandy. We accept this as an appropriate designation. Thank you, Tali'Zorah vas Neema.

-Seyci'Queyum

Shepard rolled his eyes. "Of course you had to make it something that's hard for me to pronounce. I'm hoping this means you're good with him now?"

Tali crossed her arms. "Not quite 'good' yet. But I'm trying."

Shepard smiled. "That's all I'd ever ask."