Deus Ex Machina
26. Last of her kind
Liara followed Shepard down the long corridor. Her gun was shaking in her hands and her stomach felt as if it wanted to be rid of the last meal she'd eaten, but she tried her best to hide her fear. None of the others were showing signs of fear... but then, none of the others were going to face their mother and demand answers for difficult questions. None of the others had mothers who were well-respected Matriarchs. Otherwise, they would know exactly how she felt.
The corridor leading to the maintenance area was suspiciously quiet. Where were the commandos? The geth? Why was there no resistance? It was almost as if Benezia wanted them to proceed. Did she even know that her daughter was here? If so, would she be surprised to see Liara away from the dig sites which had been her home for the past fifty years? Or would Benezia simply no longer care for anything her daughter did? Maybe, she thought, and her heart sank as the thought crossed her mind, Benezia had been driven to aiding Saren out of disappointment over Liara's refusal to follow in her footsteps. The thought was almost too much to bear.
Glancing at Shepard, she saw the young woman slip a new clip into her pistol; rounds that were damaging to organics, rather than synthetics. The commander seemed so sure this confrontation was going to end in violence. Was she being pessimistic, or realistic? Was it too much to hope, that they could all just talk about their problems, and find a way to overcome them without resorting to fighting?
"Life signs," Shepard said, stopping at a closed door. Her omni-tool scanner was active. "Two. No energy signatures, but that doesn't mean there aren't geth inside. As soon as I give the all-clear, I want you all to enter and find cover. Those two life signs might be rachni, or asari commandos, but I don't want to take any chances."
"I think we're all ready, commander," said Kaidan.
There was a round of nods, and Liara joined them. Yes, she was ready. This was what she had come for, why she was here - well, it was part of the reason she was here - and she couldn't put it off any longer. The festering wound of bad feeling between she and her mother needed to be healed.
Shepard opened the door, her gun raised to chest height, and peered around the door frame, into the room. "Liara!" she hissed.
Taking a deep breath, Liara joined her, looking towards something Shepard was pointing at. There, she saw her. Benezia. Dressed in a long, regal dress with ornate head-gear, standing tall and straight and proud upon a platform. She was looking at something, something in a large tank... Liara saw it, and froze. It was the biggest rachni she had ever seen. Granted, she hadn't seen any rachni, before today, but this thing was immense, approaching the Mako in size. "The queen," she whispered, and Shepard nodded.
"Liara, you're with me," Shepard said. "The rest of you, fan out. Cover us, but make sure you can get to cover in a heartbeat."
As the team moved out, Shepard lowered her gun. She still kept it in her hand - no doubt her military training prevented her from doing anything else - but it was no longer in a threatening position. Liara put her own gun away. If it came to violence, she could fire a gun, but it was not the weapon she was most familiar with, and it could not defend, only attack. Together, she and Shepard stepped forward.
Her pulse began to race as she approached her mother. Her mouth grew dry as they climbed the steps. Benezia seemed not to notice them, at first, and when she did, she reacted only by turning her head. Her eyes... her blue eyes were so cold. There was nothing of the warmth Liara remembered in them. It was almost as if a stranger looked out from them, a stranger who did not recognise or care about who was nearing her now.
"You come here," Benezia said, the coldness in her voice radiating across the room, matching the coldness in her eyes, "not knowing what it is to be a mother. There is power in creation. To shape a life. Turn it towards happiness or despair." She looked back to the rachni queen. "Her children were to be ours. Raised to hunt and slay Saren's enemies. I won't be moved by sympathy. No matter who you bring to this confrontation."
"Liara's here by her own choice," Shepard said, and Benezia turned to face her, taking several paces forward. "Not because I asked her to be."
"Is that right?" Benezia said. Those cold eyes turned towards Liara herself. "And just what have you told her about me, Liara?"
"What could I tell her, mother?" she replied. "That you're evil? That you're insane? Should I explain how to kill you? We've barely spoken in fifty years. I don't know who you are anymore... so what could I say?"
"Have you ever faced a unit of asari commandos before, Commander Shepard?" Benezia asked. "Few humans have."
"You would order your own daughter to be attacked?" Shepard asked in disgust. By her side, her hand twitched, and the gun with it.
"I now realise I should have been stricter with her."
Liara should have recognised the signs, but she was so caught up in her emotions that it was too late. By the time Benezia had raised her hand, a biotic stasis field had surrounded her, and Shepard too. They could both watch, and listen, but they could not move. All they could do was observe as asari and geth flooded into the room. The response from Shepard's team was immediate. They opened fire, Kaidan and Wrex using their biotics to throw geth units at asari commandos, trying to keep their enemies off balance.
The moment the field surrounding her dissipated, Liara reached for her own biotic power, as Shepard stepped aside, ducking down behind a crate to return fire to a geth that was shooting at her. Safe within her biotic barrier, Liara turned to face her mother.
"You would dare challenge me?" Benezia snarled. "You, who were brought into this life by me? You, who only live today because of me?"
"I don't know what's happened to you, mother," she replied, trying to appeal to an older, gentler Benezia, one who had bought her history books, and watched as she played ancient asari puzzles. "I want to help you. Please don't make me fight you. It's the last thing I want."
"Your desires are no longer of concern to me," said Benezia. "That you believe otherwise only shows your weakness." She hurled a biotic field, which Liara blocked with one of her own.
"I'm not going to fight you, mother!" she insisted.
"Then you will die, along with your precious Spectre."
Another biotic field was hurled, then another, and another. Time after time Liara parried them, forced backwards towards the metal stairs. She did not glance around, to see how the rest of the team was doing, but she could hear weapons-fire, could see biotic fields sizzling through the air. And through it all, the rachni queen watched on from within her tank.
"Please, mother," Liara said, feeling her heel reach the top of the stairs. "Let me help you."
"I don't need your help, child! I am stronger than ever. I know more than you. You and your precious Protheans. They were wiped out because they did not understand, just as you do not understand. I am taking us into the future, and you, short-sighted and impudent, would hold us back."
There was no other choice. She couldn't back up any further. Clinging to her biotic barrier, she retaliated, throwing a mass-effect field at her mother. The shock-wave knocked Benezia back, and when her head came up again, she looked furious. Her hands curled into fists, and she generated a singularity, trying to pull Liara towards it. Liara countered with another mass-effect field, causing the singularity to collapse. But Benezia was too fast. Even as Liara was preparing to unleash another attack, Benezia struck first. Liara felt herself lifted into the air, suspended there, as her mother raised her gun.
Suddenly, Shepard was there, taking aim.
"Shepard, no!" Liara called. No matter what Benezia had come, she was still her mother. She couldn't see her killed, not like this.
Shepard fired, a single bullet hitting Benezia in the shoulder, missing the heart. Benezia screamed in anger, and Liara dropped to the floor. Quickly, she scrambled to her feet, rushing towards her mother. She was stopped, knocked by a feeble biotic field thrown by Benezia.
And then there was silence. The gunfire ceased, and footsteps approached. Looking around, she saw the rest of the team surround Benezia, every weapon pointing at the Matriarch. Wrex's armour had been pierced in several places, leaking orange fluid. Whether suit coolant or blood, she did not know. Williams had a graze across her temple, whilst Garrus' combat visor was cracked down the middle. To say that they had gone up against asari commandos, they had got off lightly.
"This isn't over," Benezia said, backing off towards the rachni tank. Her hand was pressed over her shoulder, trying to stem the flow of blood that gushed out. "Saren is unstoppable. My mind is filled with his light. Everything is clear. I will not betray him. You will... you..." She lifted a hand to her head, as if pained or dizzied. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, everything changed. Her posture relaxed, her the coldness left her eyes, and when she spoke, her voice was soft. "You must listen!" she said, in a tone of great urgency. "Saren still whispers in my mind. I can fight his compulsions, briefly, but the indoctrination is strong."
"Mother?" Liara asked, truly seeing her mother for the first time since entering the room. She took a step forward, but Benezia held up her hand in warning.
"No, Liara, stay back. I... I am not myself."
"You're able to break free of his control now?" Shepard asked skeptically. "Why not earlier, when you were ordering your asari hit-squad to kill your own daughter?"
There was pain in Benezia's eyes at the accusation, but she did not deny it. Instead, she offered an explanation. "I sealed a part of my mind away from the indoctrination, saving it for a moment when I could help destroy him. It will not last long. You must understand, people are not themselves around Saren. They come to idolise him. Worship him. You would do anything for him. It was not my will to attack you, Shepard, but I was not able to break his control."
"Mother..." Liara began, but was stopped again.
"Listen. All of you. The key is Sovereign, his flagship. It is a dreadnought of incredible size, and its power is extraordinary."
"Yeah, we've seen it," Williams said darkly.
"Where did it come from?" Kaidan asked.
"I can not say," Benezia said, lowering her head. "The geth did not build it, and its technology is far more advanced than that of any known species. Perhaps it is Prothean... but I do not know. All I do know is that the longer you stay aboard, the more Saren's will seems correct. You sit at his feet and smile as his words pour into you. I'd hoped to dissuade him from his course of action, to prevent him from finding the Conduit. Before I knew it, my mind was being slowly corrupted. It is subtle... insidious. I thought I was strong enough to resist. Instead, I became a slave, a willing tool, eager to serve." Her head came up again, a new determination in her eyes. "He sent me here to find the Mu Relay. It's position was lost thousands of years ago."
"A relay was lost?" Tali asked incredulously. "How does that even happen?"
"Four thousand years ago, a nearby sun went supernova," Benezia explained. "The shockwave sent the relay out of the system, but did not damage it. Its precise vector and speed are impossible to determine. As millennia passed, the nebula created by the nova enveloped the relay. It is difficult to find any cold object in interstellar space, especially one which is swathed in dust and radiation."
"But Binary Helix found it?" Garrus asked.
"No. The rachni found it. Two-thousand years ago, the rachni inhabited that region of space. The rachni can share memories across generations, with queens inheriting the knowledge of their mothers. I... took the knowledge of the relay from the queen's mind," she admitted, looking sicked by her actions. "I was not gentle."
"Mother, what does Saren want with the Mu Relay?" Liara asked. Everything she had heard sounded... almost incredible. Genetic memory? Relays getting lost? Mind-control and indoctrination?
"He believes it will lead him to the Conduit," her mother said. "I would tell you more if I could, but Saren did not share his counsel with me. I was merely a servant to his cause. I can't make up for the terrible things I have done, under Saren's control. And I can't ask you for forgiveness. But perhaps I can help you to stop Saren." She reached into her pocket, which caused the rest of the team to train their weapons on her once more, but she simply produced an OSD. "Here. The location of the Mu Relay. I have already transmitted the co-ordinates to Saren. He won't go there right away. There is something else he needs first, something on Feros. But after what you have done here today... you have delivered him a harsh blow. He will pull his forces back, re-evaluate his position. Only when he feels strong and secure will he resume his search."
Liara stepped forward when Benezia beckoned, taking the OSD in her shaking hand. She quickly put it into her pocket before she could damage it.
"You have to stop- me," her mother said. She lifted both hands to her head, pressing them against her temples. "I... I can't. His teeth are at my ear. Fingers on my spine. You should... you-"
"Mother!" Liara pleaded. She took a step forward but was stopped by a hand on her arm. Turning she found Shepard holding on to her. "Please don't leave, mother!" she called. "Fight him!" Seeing her mother in agony was almost too much to bear.
"You've always made me proud, Liara," Benezia said. And then her control was gone, just like that. One moment she was the warm and caring woman of Liara's childhood, and the next she was an emotionless tool of Saren. "Die," she said, a biotic field springing up around her.
From the other side of the room shots rang out, and another group of asari commandos began firing at the team. They dispersed, kept busy by the commandos, whilst Liara prepared to defend against her own mother once more.
This time she did not hold back. She knew that her mother still lived inside the body that tried to kill her, but she knew that she could do very little to call her mother forth once more. What now attacked was a shell, little more than a mindless husk, stripped of feeling and forced to do Saren's bidding. Saren would be the one to pay for this. She would see to it herself.
Benezia could not hold out long against the combined attacks of Liara and Shepard's team. Her strength weakened, her biotic power failing her as the blood leaked out of her injured shoulder, and she slumped backwards against the rachni tank, the light in her eyes growing dim. Not caring about the commandos still fighting, Liara rushed forwards, to crouch by her mother's side, and Shepard was only a step behind her.
"I... I cannot go on. You will have to stop him, Shepard," Benezia said. Liara pulled the older woman onto her lap, laying a hand on her cheek. She could not stop the tears that flowed from her eyes, dripping down onto her mother's face, even if she had wanted to.
"Hold on," Shepard said, willing to save even her enemy. "We've got medi-gel, maybe we can-"
"No!" Benezia's word was loud, and firm. It also coincided with the last shot fired, before the room fell silent. Liara was aware of the team approaching, watching, judging, but she didn't care. Let them watch, and judge. She had nothing to hide. Her tears did not shame her. They did not make her weak. "He is still in my mind," Benezia continued. "I am not entirely myself. I never will be again."
"Mother," Liara began, the word coming out as a sob as more tears came.
Benezia looked up, meeting her eyes. In their blue depths was peace. "Good night, Little Wing," she said. "I will see you again with the dawn." Then the eyes closed, and she let out a sigh. Death took her last breath. Unable to hold back the flood of tears, Liara buried her face against her mother's neck, crying for the past, for the mother she had lost long ago.
o - o - o - o - o
Ellie looked down at mother and daughter. Liara's sobs were heart-wrenching to hear, and as much as she wanted to give the woman time to be with her mother's body, to mourn in whatever way asari mourned, there was still a mission to complete. Before she left this place, she had to make sure the rachni would never hurt anybody ever again.
She stepped up to the tank, looking at the queen inside. Some sort of light-emitting cells made certain parts of its body glow blue, providing its own light-source. It looked like the large rachni which had attacked her team, only much larger, and much more dangerous.
"Shepard!" Wrex said, alarm in his voice.
She spun around, and saw one of the mortally wounded asari commandos approaching the tank. Her movements were stiff, disjointed, her jaw slack and her eyes wide and unblinking. She had no weapon, and made no attack, but when she reached the rachni tank, she turned around to face the team. She opened her mouth, words came out, but they were not natural. No asari could ever have reproduced those sounds, or the tone.
"This one speaks as our voice," the asari said. Her head jerked as she spoke. The words were as disjointed as her movements, as if she had only just learnt how to speak. "We cannot sing in these low spaces. Your musics are colourless."
"What the hell?" Kaidan asked. His gun was pointed at the commando, but there was confusion on his face.
Ellie glanced past the asari, at the rachni in the tank. The queen had turned, facing the same direction as the asari. If mind-control was another rachni quality, she had severely underestimated them as an enemy. But so far, it was not offering aggression. The fact that they could communicate at all showed that they were not the mindless animals many people considered them.
"What music?" she asked.
"Your way of communicating is strange. Flat," the queen said through the asari. "It does not colour the air. When we speak, one moves all. We are the mother. We sing for those left behind. The children you thought silenced. We are rachni."
"How are you controlling the asari?" she asked, walking around the commando, examining her from all angles. She had several severe gunshot wounds.
"Our kind sing through touchings of thought. We pluck the strings, and the other understands. She is weak to urging. She has colours we have no names for. But she is ending. Her music is bittersweet. It is beautiful. The children we birthed were stolen from us before they learnt to sing. They are lost to us." There was sadness and regret in the asari's voice. "End their suffering," she pleaded. "They cannot be saved. They will only cause harm, as they are."
"You don't seem to be hostile," she pointed out, "but your children are. Why are they killing people?"
"These needle-men." By that, Ellie took to mean scientists. The cause of all of life's problems, she sometimes thought. "They stole our eggs from us. They sought to turn our children into beasts of war. Claws with no songs of their own. Our elders are comfortable with silence. Children know only fear, if no-one sings to them. Fear has shattered their minds. Their deaths are lamentable, but necessary. Do what you must."
"Very well," she agreed. The neutron purge would destroy them, and send any traces of them deep into the glacier.
"Before you deal with our children," the asari-queen said, "we stand before you. What will you sing? Will you release us? Are we to fade away once more?"
"If you go free," Ellie said, on a purely hypothetical basis, "would you attack other races again?"
"No!" the asari-queen insisted. "We- I... do not know what happened during the war. We heard only discordance. Songs the colour of oily shadows. We would seek a hidden place, to teach our children harmony. If they understand, perhaps we would return."
"You were alive, during the war?"
"We were only an egg, hearing mother cry in our dreams. A tone from space hushed one voice after another. It forced the singers to resonate with its own sour, yellow note. Then we awoke in this place. The last echo of those who came out from the Singing Planet. The sky is silent."
"Commander," Kaidan said, "if the rachni truly are an intelligent, sentient race, as they appear to be, then Binary Helix have been experimenting on a sapient life-form. Not only that, but taking her children from her, and experimenting on them too. If they were human, or asari, or turian, it would never be allowed. The public outcry would be overwhelming."
"But they're not human, or asari, or turian," Wrex pointed out. "They're rachni, and they almost overran the galaxy once before. Do you really want another rachni war? There aren't as many krogan around this time to protect you softer species."
"Maybe we should alert the Council to this," Garrus said. "They might have a better idea of what to do. After all, this decision affects the entire galaxy."
"If what the queen says is true," Tali reasoned, "then what happened during the war was not their fault. If they were being controlled by something, like Benezia was, perhaps they simply couldn't help but obey."
"I believe the Council went too far," Liara said. She was still clutching her mother's body, like a child who refuses to believe their parent is gone. "They allowed the krogan to wipe the rachni out. That was a mistake, which you have the chance to correct, Commander."
"There's a reason their kind were hunted to extinction," Ash replied. "It's better to be safe than let a dangerous race loose."
"All races are dangerous, Williams," Ellie told her. She looked at the creature in the tank. Grotesque as it was, she believed its claims that it was helpless to stop its children, and that the rachni had been 'soured' and forced to fight the other races during the rachni war. This was a situation her special training could never have prepared her for. How did you assess the body-language of an alien insectoid race that communicated telepathically through song? It was definitely a question for Dr Kay.
"What was done here, to you and your children, was a crime," she said aloud. "Knowingly or not, the scientists willingly performed brutal experiments on sentient beings. Some of them have paid the price for that. As a gesture of good-will, I'm willing to let you go. I don't have time to consult with the Council, and I'm not willing to end an entire species because of mistakes made in the past. You can go free."
"You will give us the chance to compose anew?" the asari-queen asked, sounding surprised. "We will remember. We will sing of your forgiveness to our children."
"You're making a mistake, Shepard," Wrex said angrily. "And the krogan will be the ones to clean up the mess, just like last time."
She didn't reply. She had no idea if she was making the right choice, but these were the choices the Council had sent her to make. Difficult choices, that could not be made by anybody else. Hoping she was doing the right thing, she activated the nearby computer console, accessed the tank's monitoring system, and gave the command to open the tank.
A hatch opened on the far side of the tank, and it was lifted up to a holding platform. As the queen stepped out, her hold over the asari failed, and the blue woman sank to the floor. The queen entered a corridor, away from the maintenance area, disappearing from sight. Today, Ellie thought, I changed the galaxy. I just hope I changed it for the better.
o - o - o - o - o
It was a quiet and introspective group who made their way to the hot lab. At Ellie's request, Kaidan was keeping Dr T'Soni company, making sure she didn't fall behind. It hadn't been easy to prise her away from her mother, and even now her cheeks were damp with tears. Wrex and Ash had been the only proponents of killing the rachni queen, whilst Kaidan and Garrus had been on the fence, preferring to defer the decision to the Council. But when it came right down to it, the choice had been Ellie's, and hers alone. She was the one who had to accept responsibility for it, and for the consequences of her actions. And she still wasn't willing to kill a sentient creature without good reason. Batarians notwithstanding, of course.
The elevator door opened, allowing them out into the hot lab. But the room was not empty, as Ellie had expected. In the middle of the room was a man, a human, sitting on a chair and covered with blood. She hurried to his side, trying to see where the worst of the blood was coming from.
"Are you here to secure the situation?" he asked. His words were tinged by a Russian accent.
She ignored his question for the moment, searching his wounds. "How are you holding up?"
"Listen to me!" He grabbed the front of her armour, which immediately resulted in Kaidan pulling the man's hand away from her. "If we do not contain our mistake, they will drop bombs from the battlestations. Do you understand?"
"Mistake?" she asked, feeling a chill pass over her skin. "You mean you let these things out?"
"I was only following the orders!"
"Whose orders?"
"I cannot say. But we have to hurry, if we wish to fix this. The neutron purge must be activated."
"Alright," she said. "We'll activate the purge. Then you're going to give me all the answers I need, about what's been going on here, and who ordered you to set the rachni free. I'm placing you under arrest. Congratulations, you're my first."
"It will not matter if we can't activate purge," the man said. "I have access key, and access code on OSD. First you insert key, then I give Mira code. This will-"
His sentence was cut off as something was thrust through his chest, spattering the floor and Ellie herself in blood. She jumped back in shock, landing in a very undignified way on her ass, and shuffled back further, pushing herself to her feet. Her team were faster to react; they fired at a rachni soldier which had come up out a ventilation shaft directly behind the BH employee and impaled him with its spear-like claw.
"Are you okay?" Kaidan asked as she tried to wipe the blood spatters from her armour.
"Yeah. Fine," she said. Her heart felt like it was about to burst out of her chest, and adrenaline was pumping through her body, but she was alive, and unhurt. Which was more than she could say for the man on the chair, and the rachni that had killed him. "Search him for the key and the OSD."
Clearly not thrilled about looking through a dead man's pockets, Kaidan nevertheless acted without complaint, digging out both essentials and returning them to Ellie. She took them from him with a grateful smile, and gestured at the next room.
"Must be where Mira's console is located," she said. "Let's get this over with."
Once they were all inside the room, Ellie activated Mira's console. "Greetings, Commander Shepard," the VI said. "How may I help you?"
"I want to activate the neutron purge. Sooner, rather than later."
"In order to activate the neutron purge, you must enter the key in the switch on the wall, which is located just to my left. Ellie put the key into the hole, and turned it. "I also require an access verification code, to start the count-down procedure."
She slipped the OSD into her omni-tool, and read out the code from the display. "875-020-079. Code Omega, local execution."
"Verified. Code Omega execution in one hundred and twenty seconds."
"What?" Ash demanded. "Two minutes?"
"Relax, chief, that's plenty of time to get down to the trams," Kaidan said calmly.
"Come on," Ellie said, "let's get out of here."
She led her team out of the computer room, and back into the main room. When they got there, however, they found it less empty than they had left it. A whole host of rachni were waiting, some of them feeding on the body of the dead man. She immediately drew her pistol and opened fire, and the rest of the group followed suit. Despite the intelligence their mother had displayed, these rachni showed none. They rushed forward, trying to kill without co-ordination, and were cut down by gunfire.
"They just don't learn, do they?" Wrex asked, stepping in to the room once the rachni had all been put down.
Ellie glanced down, at her scanner, and felt the blood drain from her face as dots began to appear on her targetting system. "Oh my god," she said.
Liara, peering over her shoulder, gasped. "Are those..."
"Rachni. Hundreds of them."
"Goddess, they're all around us."
"Time to get out of here!" she ordered. "Everybody, make a run for the trams. Don't stop for anything!"
They piled into the elevator, and she hit the button for the floor above. As it ascended, she mentally hurried it on, aware that if the rachni came in force, she and her team might never make it back to Central Station. They, along with the rachni, would sink into the glacier, lost forever.
The elevator door opened and they all sprinted towards the door to the platform.
"Did it occur to you," Kaidan asked as they ran, "that if Ventralis still has it in for you, he might have sabotaged the tram system after using it?"
"I hope he's a better man than that," she replied.
When the reached the platform, relief flooded her body at the sight of the waiting tram. Inside, a lone figure was standing at the controls, and as soon as the last of her team were aboard, he activated the vehicle, returning it to Central Station.
"Figured you could use a bit of help, Commander," Ventralis said.
"Thanks," she said, taking a seat as she gulped in fresh air. Around the tram, her friends were doing likewise, sitting and resting their weary bodies. It had been a trying time for all of them, especially Liara. Glancing at the blue woman, Ellie saw her sitting alone, staring out of the window at the snow-covered peaks. Now was not the time for conversation. It was too soon.
"How many of your men and the scientists made it back to Central, Captain?" she asked Ventralis.
"All of them, thanks to you. As soon as we get back, I'll lift the lock-down on Peak 15, tell Port Hanshan to get some rescue vehicles sent up ASAP. In the mean time, my men are having some well-deserved rest. It's a bit cold over there, but the heating's been slowly kicking in over the past few hours, so it's not too bad."
She nodded, and let the chair take her full weight. It had been a long day. All that was left to do now was return to Central Station, drive three Makos down a slippery path of ice to Port Hanshan, see what exciting new missions Hackett had in store, and advise the leaders of galactic society that she'd freed a species that had once threatened to obliterate all sentient life-forms in the galaxy.
Piece of cake.