Chapter 25. Matres

Joker sighed loud enough to make sure Pressly heard it over the comm. "Look, old man, I don't care what your star charts say. Breaking burn needs to start at these coordinates. This isn't some run of the mill frigate we're talking about. I know my engines."

"Yeah, well I know my natural phenomenon, and there's a gaseous nebula that's going to affect our drift."

Pressly was such a damn grouch. He gave the comm panel the finger, eliciting a chuckle from Ashley Williams, who was hanging around the cockpit for some reason Joker hadn't yet figured out yet, feet propped up on the console, no less. Those gaudy neon green boots were bright enough to hurt his eyes.

He gestured to her feet. "Didn't your parents teach you any manners?"

"I'd like to teach you," came the grumbled reply.

Joker rolled his eyes. "Relax, baldy, I wasn't talking to you, I was talking to the bigfoot marine sitting in here who has the subtlety and grace of an elephant."

Williams made a face, then pointedly crossed and recrossed her feet.

"I hate my job," Joker lamented. "What the hell do you want, anyway?"

"What, the pleasure of my company isn't enough for you?"

"I'm sorry. I haven't experienced the pleasure part of your company yet. Be sure to notify me when that happens."

She examined her fingernails. "You need to get laid, Joker."

He grimaced, trying to avoid letting on that the comment struck a little closer to home than he liked. God forbid she, or anyone else for that matter, get a peek at his extranet bookmarks. "Seriously. Tell me what you want so I can tell you no and you can leave."

"Bandwidth," she replied, "And I tend not to leave until I get my way, so I'm going to assume that if you don't give it to me you secretly adore my company and want more of it."

Joker weighed the pros and cons of Williams riding shotgun, observing his every move, and decided that after about five minutes he would be scrambling for the nearest airlock. "What the hell do you need bandwidth for, or do I want to know?"

She wrinkled her nose. "I want to talk to my sisters."

"Sisters? Christ, there are more of you? Hasn't the galaxy suffered enough?"

Ashley grinned. "What's the matter, Joker? Intimidated by smart, independent, badass women who can kick your ass?"

He snorted. "Kicking my ass isn't much of a feat. And just throw a message in the with the next data packet. Queue isn't that long. They'll get it in a few days. "

She shook her head, a slightly sheepish look coming over her face. "I want…real time. I haven't talked to them face to face since I got posted on Eden Prime."

Joker thought briefly of his own sister. How long had it been since they'd last talked face to face? A year? Two? She was about to turn thirteen, for chrissakes. It wouldn't be long before he wouldn't even recognize her. He sighed.

Williams peered out the shutters, watching the stars drift. After a moment he heard her murmur something under her breath. "We pray for one last landing, on the globe that gave us birth; let us rest our eyes on the fleecy skies, and the cool, green hills of Earth."

"And what was that?" he asked, once she had fallen silent again.

"Heinlein. I miss my family," she explained when she caught sight of his confused look. "My dad would always recite that poem when he left for a tour. Always makes me think of coming home."

Joker's brow furrowed. He wasn't sure how to reconcile the jarhead marine sitting next to him with someone fond of iambic pentameter. She grinned, as though guessing his thoughts.

"What, because I can shoot someone between the eyes at two hundred meters I can't like poetry? Would it blow your mind to know I have a datapad crammed full of Tennyson?"

"Yes."

She laughed and dropped her feet to the floor. "Good. So will you do it? I just need a little help getting up the food chain for priority clearance."

He raised an eyebrow. "You know it's not technically legal for me to just bump someone because I have a godly amount of power that I'm not supposed to abuse."

"Please?"

"And what do I get out of the deal?"

With a deep inhale she leaned back once again and propped her feet back on the console. Joker felt something in his brain twitch. "Well, what do you want?"

"An all-expenses paid night out on the Citadel," he replied with a grand wave of his arm. "Presidium. Not some shitty dive in the wards."

"Ok. And what do you want that's within the realm of possibility?"

He tilted his head and tapped his cheek with a finger. "A night with the Consort," he answered finally.

"You're shooting higher there, buddy. Not lower."

"Fine," he said with an exaggerated sigh. He swiveled his chair as far as it would go so he didn't have to crane his neck so much. "Next time we dock at the Citadel. Or Arcturus. Or anyplace with decent restaurants. I want an honest to God panang curry. None of the reconstituted shit or fake substitutes. Real coconut cream. Real spices. Beef that actually tastes like it came from a cow, not some salarian monstrosity."

She leveled him with a skeptical look. "You want Thai food."

"Yes," he said, raising his chin. "My mom was born in Bangkok, and she's a hell of a cook. Haven't had a decent curry since I left for flight school."

"I'm sorry," she said with a laugh, "but I would never guess you were half Thai."

"Well, I don't know why it matters," he said with irritation, "but I didn't say she was Thai. I said she was born in Thailand. My grandparents lived there for years. Mamaw was a soil reclamation specialist."

"Ah. Right. Ok, so. Thai food. And you want it here on the ship? Why not go out, wine and dine?"

He shot her a glare, unsure whether there was mocking in there somewhere or not. "No thanks. Paper mache legs mean the hazards of navigating thirteen million people slightly outweigh the benefits of good food." He flicked at his crutches with a finger.

"You can use an assistance mech," she pointed out.

"You want one? Go right ahead. I'll save myself the humiliation, thanks." He crossed his arms sullenly across his chest and turned back to his navigation screens. The chief remained uncharacteristically silent.

"Sorry," she said finally. "I didn't mean to offend you."

"Right, whatever," he muttered.

She opened her mouth to say something more, but they were interrupted by the approach of footsteps, lighter than standard Alliance combat boots. Joker craned his head behind him and caught sight of blue skin.

At first their resident asari's abundance of clothing and lack of a stripper pole had been a disappointment, but it turned out the nerdy scientist look had about the same effect as a school girl uniform. A guy could dream. And whatever a guy could dream could be found somewhere on the extranet.

"Doctor," Joker said, making a point to grin at Williams. "What a pleasure. What can I do for you?"

Ashley rolled her eyes and pointedly rubbed the treads of her boots on the console.

Liara glanced about the cockpit. Worry lines etched her near perfect skin, and her hands kneaded one another absently. "I was…looking for Shepard," she said.

"He's in the conference room," the gunnery chief said with a disgruntled wave, either oblivious to or choosing to ignore her distress. "A bunch of them are talking about geth, I think. Dunno. Wasn't invited." She picked at some dirt under her nails. Joker hid a smirk. So it appeared there was more than one reason she'd decided to hang around the cockpit. We can be misfits together, he thought.

"Oh. I see." Liara made as if to turn, hesitated, and looked back at Joker. "How far are we from the Horsehead Nebula?" she asked.

Joker shrugged, curiosity roused. "Not far. The mass relay here can jump straight to Horsehead if need be. Any particular destination?"

"Noveria." She said the word like she was suggesting hell as their next destination.

"Noveria…" Joker accessed his link to the galaxy map in the CIC and began poking around. "That's in the Pax system. Yeah. No problem. Why, what's on Noveria?"

Her breath hitched, and Joker could have sworn she was trying not to cry. "Thank you," she managed. "I'm sorry. I have to go." She whipped her shoulders around and headed back down the hallway.

He glanced over at Williams. "That poor girl needs a hug."

Williams made a face.

"What's your problem?"

"Nothing."

"Jealous?"

"Nothing. So it's Thai food you want?"

Joker nodded. "Right here. In the mess. Fancy as shit. I'm talking tablecloths. Maybe even little paper doilies. You get to be my waiter."

She reached out and waggled the ballcap on his head. "Worth it," she said as he batted her hand away and straightened the brim.

He scowled at her. "Now can I have a little peace so I can argue with Pressly some more?"

"Yes." She got to her feet. When she was halfway down the corridor he called after her.

"Cool, green hills of earth, huh?"

"Take us back to the homes of men," she replied over her shoulder.

He sighed. "I'm guessing we're setting course for Pax first, unfortunately."

It wasn't until later that evening, when he hit up his locker before a shower and change of clothes, that he discovered a datapad he didn't recognize crammed into his things. When he powered it on, the words Future History, by Robert Heinlein, scrolled across its surface.

"That woman is not turning me into a poetry nerd," he muttered aloud, but he tucked it into the folds of the clean uniform stuffed under his arm. Then his concentration transitioned to managing the awkward bundle and the crutches without shattering an ankle on the way to the head.

Tali called a new holo up on the conference room's vidscreen of one of the red-armored geth units they'd encountered on Feros. Shepard, Alenko and Garrus examined it carefully.

"Okay, so what do we know about these guys?" Alenko asked.

"You mean other than the fact they carry rocket launchers?" Shepard remarked, rubbing a spot on his shoulder with a grimace. "I think that's pretty all encompassing."

Tali smiled to herself and pulled up the schematics she and Garrus had worked on. "They have greater shielding than the standard trooper units," she explained, "but still lower than some of the more elite geth." She glanced at Shepard. "At close range they use pulse rifles like the trooper. In other words, it's much better to fight one of these bosh'tets at close range."

"Do I want to know what a bosh'tet is?" Garrus asked, head tilted slightly.

"No," Tali replied. In fact, her father would kill her for using the word as often as she seemed to these days. But she was dealing with geth. It just seemed appropriate.

"Any luck getting one of those rifles from the field so we can study it?" Shepard asked.

Garrus shook his head. "They have some kind if self-destruct mechanism. Haven't managed to salvage one that's intact."

"Tali?"

"I'm working on a solution," she assured him. "They look and behave similarly to what they used against us three hundred years ago, with obvious improvements. But in the meantime, we have this." She displayed the weapons' data that Garrus had painstakingly compiled over the past several days. "Velocity, trajectory, impact analysis…we may not have the weapons themselves, but we know everything we possibly can otherwise about what they do, even if we don't know how they work."

Shepard folded his arms across his chest, corner of his mouth quirking up in a slight smile that made her shiver with pride. "Nice. So what else can you tell me?"

Garrus cleared his throat. "They use two types of rockets. Distortion rockets cause a lot of splash damage. All around messy, but not very efficient at greater than a hundred meters. At longer range they have scram rockets. Less splash damage, but much faster and more accurate. They'll wreck the Mako's shields in a hurry, and seem to be best friends with armatures."

"We can use that data to design better detection and evasion protocols," Alenko mused, a crease forming in his brow.

"I need a designation to enter them into the official database we send to the Council," Tali said. "My people called them rocket troopers."

"I think rocket trooper is a pretty apt description," Shepard said. "What's next?"

"The big one," Tali replied, pulling up an image of the three meter monster with yellow striping over its dark gray cowling. "Quarian records classify it as a destroyer."

Shepard's eye twitched. "They charge," he said.

Tali tilted her head. "I don't remember seeing that behavior on Feros."

"That's because I made sure they didn't get close enough to think it was a good idea," Shepard replied. "Trust me. They charge." He and Alenko exchanged glances. Tali reminded herself to review the Eden Prime file again.

"Heavy shielding with good regenerative capabilities," she went on. "I'm working on designing an overload charge that specifically targets their more sophisticated shield emitters. Should be ready to test it soon."

"Good," Shepard replied. "What else?"

"It's a command level unit." She pointed at the thick antennae mounted on its back. "See that? We don't see it on any of the smaller units. Best I can tell is that they use it to boost their neural net connectivity. If they're on the field, they're priority targets."

"Don't forget about the shotgun," Garrus reminded her.

"You analyzed that one," she said. "Go for it."

Shepard and Alenko turned their attention to the turian, whose mandibles flared briefly before he cleared his throat.

"The shotgun they carry is similar to the pulse rifle. But it's capable of firing a slug that fragments in a unique way I haven't seen before." Garrus shook his head. "It's like packing the power of a high impact grenade into a bullet. The fragments have some kind of thermite coating like the ones we were testing the other day, only more powerful. I've nicknamed it the carnage shot."

Shepard nodded thoughtfully. "Get with Wrex. And Williams. They know shotguns inside and out. Find out a way to replicate it. If we could get a sample of the geth's armor we might even be able to specially formulate something to chew through it."

"I'll see what I can do," Garrus said, an excited thrum running through his subharmonics. Tali doubted that kind of assignment was one he'd gotten much in C-Sec.

"What about the little hopper units?" Alenko asked. "We haven't seen many of them, but they have some nasty ECM attacks."

"They're capable of overloading shields, remotely sabotaging heat sinks, and even temporarily shuting down biotic amps," Tali confirmed, thumbing through the screens until she found one of the spider-like unit.

Now it was Alenko's turn to grimace. Absently he reached his hand behind his neck to his amp port. "So that's what happened," he muttered.

"They're fast, and seem to be specifically engineered for stealth and disruption," Garrus added.

Alenko walked closer to the viewer. "They're made of different material. It's like some kind of synthetic muscle tissue. Any idea what it is?"

Tali rubbed her elbow. "We don't have a frame of reference for this type of unit other than what we've seen on Therum and Feros," she said. She hesitated, shifted her feet. "Nothing like this particular unit existed during the Geth War."

"So it's new." Alenko folded his arms across his chest, still gazing at the screen. "Interesting. You think they've evolved?"

"It's…a logical conclusion." One that made her very, very uncomfortable. This was information the fleet didn't have. It confirmed some of their worst fears, or in the case of Admiral Xen, curiosities. This was the kind of thing her people had been aching to get their hands on for centuries.

There was no question it was the answer to her Pilgrimage. The Admiralty Board would salivate over data that might hint towards the geth's capabilities, behavioral changes, evolution! It might be the first step to taking back Rannoch. The homeworld no one had seen in three hundred years.

The thought of that kind of responsibility, consequences, on her shoulders, made her heart pound.

But one look at Shepard studying the image, intense scrutiny gathered on his brow, speared her with guilt. Shepard needed her. No one in the fleet had ever needed her for anything. To take the data and leave was selfish. Childish. The goals of the pilgrimage were to prove herself a worthy member of quarian society. The gift wasn't as important as her contributions, and right now, this was where she could make a difference.

So put away your ego and shut up, she scolded herself.

Shepard's scowl deepened the longer he stared at the holo. "It looks to me like something in need of an exorcism. I've seen it climb, jump, and rotate its head around like it's about to start spewing pea soup."

Tali shot a quick glance at Garrus, who seemed equally confused by the reference. "The good news is, they're lightly armored and have little shielding. If you can get a target lock they're pretty easy to take out. If you can get a target lock."

"Biotics worked well against them on Feros," Alenko said. "Liara was able to snag them in a singularity."

"What should I call them in the database?" Tali asked.

"Hopper sounds good to me," Shepard said. "They aren't paying us for creativity." He inhaled through his nose. "Keep working. By the time we track down Matriarch Benezia I want to be an expert on the geth."

"Yes, sir."

Shepard put a hand to his chin, still staring darkly at the screen. "Dismissed."

The three of them headed for the exit. Shepard made no move to join them. For a moment Tali considered lingering, asking him about the data. It wouldn't hurt to ask. To know that once this was over, it could be hers to bring back to her people. She just didn't know what she would do if he said no.

She kneaded her hands, drew in a breath, but before she could speak Alenko called to her from the door.

"Tali, do you have a few minutes to tell me more about that amp ECM?"

With one backwards look at Shepard, she headed towards Alenko and nodded. "Um, sure. Want to head down to the cargo bay? Garrus and I need to do some more analysis on their attack patterns."

Alenko glanced at the turian, who dipped his head in a nod. The noise of the CIC washed over them as they stepped through the door, Pressly calling out systems checks from the podium in front of the galaxy map, Serviceman Crosby gesturing animatedly to a blonde corporal. Tali spotted Caroline Grenado delivering an engine report and waved; the short-haired, smiling engineer returned it with enthusiasm.

Behind Grenado, she spotted Liara T'Soni at the edge of the CIC hallway, hands clasped awkwardly in front of her, eyes locked on the stanchion behind the sprawling galaxy map separating the CIC from the conference room.

A moment later Shepard emerged, and Tali saw the breath catch in the asari's throat, her face paling to the point she looked ill. The commander stopped to converse with Pressly.

"Tali?" Alenko asked, calling to her from the doorway to the stairwell. "Coming?"

Her gaze remained trained on Liara. She thought of her first day on the Normandy, when she'd felt so lonely and uncertain, and how Garrus had swept in and made her day without even realizing it. Time to return the favor. "Meet you down there in a few minutes."

Alenko gave her an odd look. "Sure. Take your time."

"Thanks," Tali murmured, heading towards Liara with a quick glance back at Shepard, who laughed at some comment Pressly had just made with a smile that was almost genuine.

"Liara?"

The asari startled at the sound of her voice, but upon recovering appeared almost relieved for the distraction. "Tali. Is there…do you need me for something?"

"No," Tali replied. "But you look like you could use a friend."

A hesitant smile flicked across her face. "I appreciate that, but…"

"Come on," she cajoled. "A few minutes won't hurt. Shepard will still be here when you're ready."

The asari's blue eyes lit up with shock. "How did you—"

Tali tapped at her faceplate. "You might not see my face, but I can see yours. And whatever's bothering you, if you want to talk about it, I'll be happy to listen."

Liara followed Tali down to the cargo bay, wavering when she heard the deep rumblings of the krogan. His thunderous chuckle echoed throughout the cavern-like space, followed by the flange of Garrus' subharmonics. She saw them near the lockers, along with Alenko, and cringed a little. She didn't exactly want to share her burdens with a group.

She knew where her mother was.

It weighed far more heavily on her chest than she had expected. Objectively, nothing about this information changed anything. But to Liara, it changed everything.

A contact of Benezia's who owed her a favor had provided the lead she'd needed. She didn't like what it turned out to be. Several years ago her mother and Saren had entered into a joint investment in Binary Helix, a corporation that specialized in genetic engineering and biotechnology. She'd traced the funds to a research lab on Noveria. With a little luck and some outside help she'd obtained security camera footage that confirmed her suspicions – her mother was there, though what she was doing remained unknown.

She looked so different.

It had been nearly forty years since they had seen each other, but time did not account for the change. Even through the grainy footage Liara could see that her wise, elegant features had become hard as stone, the warmth in her eyes siphoned out and replaced with something alien and cold. The Benezia that Liara knew always wore something yellow – be it in her gown, around her neck, attached to her headdress. But there was no scrap of it in the footage Liara saw. This was a stranger wearing her mother's face.

But she is still my mother, and now I have to go to Shepard and give him what he needs to hunt her down like an enemy.

A cold shudder rippled down her spine.

Tali patted her arm reassuringly and pointed towards the Mako.

"Tali!" Alenko called upon spotting them. "About that dampening field—"

"Hold that thought, lieutenant," Tali replied, swinging effortlessly up onto the tank. "Liara and I have some, er, last minute repair work to do on the Mako."

"Need a hand?" Garrus asked hopefully.

The young quarian sighed. "That was code for Liara and I want girl time, Garrus."

Wrex made an interested sound in his throat.

"Not that kind of girl time," Tali snapped, and in spite of herself Liara found herself stifling a giggle. The hatch opened with a mild creak. Tali dropped down inside, already nestling into one of the seats as Liara slid in beside her. When the hatch closed behind them the echoes of the cargo bay vanished, leaving them alone with a thick, welcome silence.

"What do you think?" she asked.

Liara looked around. "I…never would have thought of coming here."

"Quarians by nature don't like to be alone," Tali said, "but sometimes a little solitude is nice. Growing up in the Migrant Fleet you have to be creative to find it." She ran her fingers across the dash and activated the haptic display. Moments later thin strips of fluorescent track lighting flickered to life, creating an eerie, dark blue glow that was strangely comforting. With the air circulators off the air inside the tank was musty, tinged with the faint scent of oil and lubricant. Liara reached up and fingered the 'Oh Shit' handle.

"Shepard is a terrible driver," Tali announced.

Liara laughed, a spontaneous, unexpected sound that immediately lifted some of the weight off her shoulders. "I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks so," she said.

Tali ran her hands over the armrests of her seat, looking around the main cab. Liara wondered if she had sensors in her gauntlets capable of tactile feedback, or if the actual texture of the armrest remained completely unknown to her. The thought that quarians went through their life essentially deprived of physical touch struck her as profoundly sad.

The weak lighting reflected off her faceplate, making the purple tint even more opaque. "Quarians don't have much in the way of infantry vehicles," she said. "The Heavy Fleet is one of the largest military arms in the galaxy, but our actual number of ground troops is fairly low." She tugged at her suit. "We aren't exactly designed for prolonged ground warfare."

"You seem to do just fine," Liara said, leaning into the headrest. The Mako was surprisingly comfortable when it wasn't careening madly around corners or scaling vertical cliffs.

"Oh, I'm not a soldier," Tali said quickly. "I just have a knack for knowing how to make things explode." She snickered a little. "Growing up I was always experimenting with ECM and hacking into systems I wasn't supposed to be in, just to see if I could do it. My mother called me a techno deviant."

Liara smiled a little. "Tell me about your mother."

The quarian stilled for a moment, then squirmed a little in her seat. "She was wonderful. Patient, which was a good thing because my father definitely wasn't. It wasn't easy being married to an admiral. I always admired her strength."

Liara bit her lip, painfully aware she used the past tense. "Did…something happen to her?"

A soft exhale escaped her vocal emitter. "She passed away a few years ago."

Liara turned her head. "Tali, I'm so sorry. How?"

"Airborne virus." Her shoulders shifted in a tiny shrug. "It's the way things are in the Flotilla, unfortunately. The suits protect us, but infection is still the leading cause of death among my people. No matter how careful we are, sometimes it just isn't enough."

"And yet here you are, on a ship full of aliens, on one of the most dangerous mission imaginable. That's…courageous." Liara looked down at her hands.

"I don't know how courageous it really is," she said. "I wonder sometimes, if my father wasn't who he is, would I be here? I mean, I like to think so. But if I'm really honest with myself I think maybe I only came this far because I didn't want to let him down. I want him to be proud of me. Sometimes I wish that wasn't so hard."

Liara nodded absently, knowing all too well.

"The funny thing is," she continued, "that once I got here and started working with all of you, it became less about being here because of him, and more about being here because it was the right thing to do. Maybe there's someone else out here who would do my job better than I'm doing it, or be better suited to Shepard's crew. But they're not here. I am. And how I got here doesn't really matter." She made a sweeping gesture with her arm. "What we're doing could shape the fate of the whole galaxy. So as long as I'm here, I'm going to do everything in my power to help. Like it or not, we're the ones who got chosen to stop Saren. So we have to get it done." She smacked a balled fist into her hand. "Whatever it takes."

Liara was silent. After a moment she became aware the quarian was watching her.

"I know where Benezia is," Liara confessed. She opened her mouth to say more, but stopped. Her tongue felt like lead.

"I'm sorry," Tali said.

Liara turned her head, surprised to find that the quarian did sound sorry. "I should have marched straight to Shepard and told him, but I didn't."

"And you're…worried he might hold that against you?"

For a moment she didn't answer, because she wasn't sure how. "I feel like the entire crew is waiting for me to show my true colors. To side with her and Saren, lead them into a trap." She exhaled, hands shaking. "I suppose it's foolish to just wish it would all go away."

Tali reached for the control panel. "Here. I want to show you something." Her hand hesitated above the haptic keys, and she glanced quickly at Liara. "Um. This…is something that should probably stay between us. I've discovered that humans have a slightly different perception of communal living than quarians do."

Liara's brow creased in confusion. "What do you mean?"

"It's too quiet on this ship," she explained. "The engines are too quiet. The people are too quiet. I asked Grenado if it just had something to do with this ship or the mission, but she thought I was crazy. She said people on this ship are more talkative than what she's used to. I can't even believe that." Her head tilted to the side. "I suppose I'm just used to people constantly butting in where they don't belong. We do it so much in the Fleet it doesn't seem unusual. There's no such thing as private communications, unless you're talking about security matters." She laughed. "I suppose we just assumed that since our secrets would be found out anyway, there wasn't much point in trying to keep them."

"So…what did you do?" Liara asked, curiosity entering her voice.

Tali tapped at the Mako's control panel. A trumpet of noise erupted over the internal comm system, loud enough to send Tali scrambling for the volume. After she recovered from the initial blast of sound, Liara's eyes widened.

Voices. Dozens, maybe even hundreds of voices, all speaking at once to create an overlap of white noise. It was nearly impossible to make out any actual words, or even identify the speakers, but if she listened long enough the effect was strangely soothing.

"What is this?" she breathed.

"Crew conversations," Tali confessed. "The Mako has a separate comm system from the Normandy, but they're linked. I was able to use it as a backdoor to access ship to ship communications."

"Whose?" Liara asked, stabbed with sudden apprehension.

Tali's shoulders slumped a little. "Umm…everyone's. Crew pages, logs, message recordings…"

Liara gasped. The conversations she'd sent back and forth to Thessia raced through her brain. Had Tali been eavesdropping on some of it? All of it?

"Tali! That's—" The word she was looking for was reprehensible, but she couldn't push it past her lips.

"I don't listen to the contents," she said swiftly. "I set up an algorithm to automatically capture the audio files, scramble them and dump them into a central database. I just like…" she sighed, deflating a little. "I just like the sound of people. Talking. Breathing. Living. It helps me feel less lonely."

"And you're sure you don't…hear what's being said?"

Tali shook her head. "No. The program automatically splices up the contents of each file and redistributes it. I could isolate certain feeds, but it would sound like gibberish. If I really wanted to I might be able to piece some of it back together, but it would take, well. In some cases it could take years."

Liara went back to listening, still uneasy, but as the moments ticked by she found herself relaxing back into her seat, letting the jumbled whispers wash over her. If she closed her eyes the voices took on an ethereal quality.

"You know, this is kind of…nice."

"Glad you like it," Tali replied softly.

One eye cracked open. "Shepard would be…unhappy if he found out."

She made a fretful noise in her throat. "That's why I haven't told anyone else.

Liara thought about what might be happening outside the Mako. Garrus, Alenko and Wrex discussing weapons and mods. Dr. Chakwas going over medical charts in her tiny back office. Shepard in his quarters, maybe, just maybe, thinking of her. Wondering, perhaps, if she had the courage to do what she'd promised. Tears pricked at her eyes.

"Tali…I'm not sure if I can do this."

She felt a hand on her arm. "Yes you can. We're going to help you. You aren't alone."

For a moment, within the confines of the tank, surrounded by the voices of her crewmates, Liara believed her.