Victory is a Long Patience
Liara's cell was tiny. Just enough room to stand, and a hard plastic bench that wasn't quite long enough for her to lie down comfortably. The men who had taken them captive had grabbed her hands and tied them together to prevent her from using her biotics before cutting open her uniform from the back, and pulling out the Solaris wetware amp she wore at the base of her spine.
That had been two days ago. The ship had passed through one relay, and a shudder in the hull suggested that the drives were warming up for another relay transfer. She'd done the calculations. From Tiptree, Arclight would have to travel back through the Annos Basin secondary, then on to the primaries at the Exodus Cluster. From there, another thousand light years or so would take them to Attican Beta. Which mean that before entering the Traverse they would be passing through a considerable area of Alliance controlled space. What little good that would do her. After Pirin, Liara gathered no one would send the cavalry, even if she could get a message out.
Which might have been possible. For some reason no one had bothered to take Liara's omnitool. For about six hours on the first day of her captivity, and perhaps as many as ten on the second, she had tried to hack into the ship's comm systems, and, failing that, to contact EDI, who she assumed must be nearby. Two times she came close to inserting an unencrypted message into one of the ship's block transmissions. Perhaps they had gone through or perhaps they'd been picked up by the scrubbing software that she was certain lived in the ship's mainframe.
Contacting EDI was even less successful. Signals on all possible frequencies had yielded nothing. All other attempts to communicate failed as well, flashes of light, scraping or tapping on the bulkheads, loud singing. Nothing worked. Liara wondered if Arclight had simply had EDI deactivated, given that she could communicate with any other EDI connected to her secure QEC network. Perhaps they hadn't noticed that she was a machine, and so left her alone. Perhaps there was hope still that they would be intercepted before they reached Omega.
The ship rumbled again. It was dumping heat after passing through a relay. They were in the Traverse now. No help was coming.
Liara had finally turned her attention to the last file her mother had sent. Another video of Benezia in her office at the apartment on Armali. It had seemed odd to Liara that EDI hadn't shown it to the rest of the group, and now she couldn't ask her why she hadn't. Liara watched it once, and then a second time right away. It was short and to the point: her mother was sitting in her office. Some years had passed, because the towers from the third western expansion of Armali were already rising in the distance, and construction on those hadn't started until about five hundred years ago. Benezia was wearing a yellow shirt, and dark blue trousers. By now she was no longer on active duty with her combat group, and had shifted her interest instead to political infighting between some of the matriarchal groups.
Benezia looked straight into the camera. Without speaking she projected onto the screen the schematics of a small interstellar probe. On closer inspection, Liara saw that there was no space for any crew. There was a second schematic that showed how the simple craft could be mounted into a ship. Fed by an alternate power source, an interplanetary ship's reactor for instance, the probe could be repurposed to interact with a mass relay as handwritten notes in the margins of the second schematic explained. Liara noted the script, and moved on.
Benezia pulled back again, and held up photographs of a planet. "These are the first known images ever taken of a world external to the Parnitha system. This is Niacal." She flipped to the next, and said, "Kraila, and finally Egalic. These were imaged by a probe named Venturia 1, originally sent to the Orisoni system roughly two and a half millennia ago. It was to have been recovered by the Nixia. Neither it, nor the Nixia, ever appears in any written record after the Nixia disappeared. How do I have these images then?" Benezia paused to smile and tilted her head to the side. "And how do I have this?" Here she held up another image of a planet. She went on, "This planet is not in the Orisoni system. It's about a thousand light years away from Thessia, and located on a channel not often used by the Thessia relay. I've been there, but I didn't take this picture. This image is twenty-five hundred years old. Someone brought it back for me to find." Putting that one down, she held up another, this one of an elongated object. Liara squinted at it, but Benezia put it down too quickly for her to see. Liara spooled back and froze on the image. It was small enough that it could have been an artifact in the video. She stared at it for a while before finally moving on.
Benezia put the images face down on her desk. She put the revised image of the probe up again. Then, over that she superimposed a second image, of a small interplanetary research vessel. The asari had built nearly two dozen of them during the first expansion throughout the Parnitha system. In the overlay it was clear that the probe modification schematics had been meant for the cargo hold of the research vessel.
"The Nixia vanished without a trace," Benezia said. "Now I know why. But it doesn't explain why every so often I come across images like these." Benezia looked down at the wooden top of her desk and then at the ceiling. "It's almost like someone left them there for me to find." She shook her head. "I'm growing weary of the search. I don't know if I have it in me to finish, but there's no one else I can trust to complete the task. Except for you—whoever you might be." Benezia sighed. For a moment she looked as though she were about to turn off the camera, before she leaned back and said, "I know that the Nixia survived its initial encounter with the Thessia Relay. What I don't know is where it went after it arrived at the planet surveyors have marked as PR-1078-B. I've been to four-dozen systems over a century looking for evidence. Now I'm back in the archives, where I've found reference to a system in the Exodus Cluster. I'll go there, as soon as it's safe."
Benezia hesitated, then her face disappeared and was replaced with several other documents detailing procurement for the Nixia's scheduled mission. They'd been carrying nearly a week's worth of extra food and water. With a little rationing they could have lasted as long as six months, and this was provide that they never found any other sources of food. Liara thought of Tiptree, and the corpse EDI had unearthed there. If the Nixia had arrived at Tiptree, they could have foraged food and water to last for a while. They could have survived for years, if they had stayed put.
Benezia's face returned. "Thessia Prime links to forty nine other relays. The relay at PR-1078-B links to hundreds of systems. There is no sign of the Nixia in that system, though it's possible it could have crashed into one of the two gas giants in the outer part of the system." Pointing to the documents on her desk, Benezia looked up and said, "I am more than certain that the Nixia must have passed through the system. Where they ended up is not so much a matter of tracking where it went, but in learning how it was again found. There are three possibilities. The first is the crew died, and the ship was eventually discovered adrift in a system visited by later generations of explorers. The second is the crew found a habitable planet with potable water and edible plants and animals and set up an existence there. The third is they returned after a time of wandering across the galaxy. In all three cases, the ship and its mission were covered up, for reasons which I cannot begin to fathom." Benezia paused and sighed. "I've compiled a list of systems visited by the asari scientific fleet in the century following the first official transit through Thessia Prime." A file opened on Liara's omni tool that listed potential planets. Strangely enough, one of them was the Earth. Liara shook her head.
"When it's safe," Benezia went on, "I will leave for Exodus. Expect to find my next file there." Now the image disappeared, leaving Liara in her empty cell again. She tried contacting EDI again. Still nothing.
Liara watched the video once more, not looking for clues, but just to see her mother. Benezia had always been a mystery to her. Now she understood a bit more why: Liara was a late child, born after centuries of chasing ghosts. Liara wondered whether Benezia had ever found what she'd been looking for.
There was another rumble in the ship. Accelerating again, in preparation for travel to another relay. She didn't have much time left, perhaps a day or two at most, before they were on Omega, and from there it was a certainty that Aria would have her killed. Best to accept it, she thought, then wondered if all the people she herself had sent to die had spent their final hours this way, too. In despair, hoping for some kind of salvation that would never come.
No doubt some had. Others had probably tried thinking of a way out. They'd been no more successful than the ones who had fought back, or who had simply waited and then calmly faced their end.
Liara lay down on the bunk and slept for about an hour. When she woke, she was thinking of the Nixia, of her captain, looking out through their narrow viewports at a new world. It was a shame, she thought, that the quest to discover the fate of the ship and its crew would die with her. So many secrets and mysteries would, what did one more matter?
Not much, she thought as she pressed her head against the hatch of her cell. Outside there were guards moving around. Probably they were bored. Probably they were poor. Sometimes money could motivate them to be less careful with a lock or a set of handcuffs. Not this time.
Even if she weren't aboard a ship, Arclight's men were a tight unit. Small and lean. Never more than company strength at any given time, in part because they did specialized work, and they were unified by a mixture of fear and love and awe for the massive krogan. There would be no bribing her way off the ship. Perhaps she could save the others? She banged on the door to her cell. No one answered. A tray of food appeared at the usual interval.
What Liara wondered now, though, was how Arclight had persuaded Minos to attack Tiptree. Even a casual analysis of EDI's defenses would have signaled certain failure for any operation.
Somehow this all tied back to Councilor Deniri. Worse, though, was that it meant one of her own crew had betrayed her. Another thing to wonder about as she went to face Aria. How many hours did she have left, anyway? Liara had lost count.
But it felt good to let go, and for the first time in years she felt safe enough to retreat into a memory from long ago, of her mother working in her office, late into the night, and finding her recording a message much like the one she'd just seen.
#
A day had gone by, according to the omnitool's internal clock. The ship made more noise, and then noticeably slowed down. More noise in the corridors, boots and hatches. They had arrived.
About two hours later the door to her cell opened, and Liara found herself standing, her clothes still torn down the back, in the blinding light coming from outside her cell. Someone grabbed her and pulled her out into the corridor. Metal handcuffs clamped her wrists. There were others standing there, but blind as she was she could only see their feet. One was turian. So at least they hadn't killed Varian yet. That was something.
They marched her out of the ship and into a landing area, where they stood screened by tall crates. A shuttle was waiting, and rough hands shoved them in from behind. A trooper came and buckled them in, before taking a seat by the far exit. In seconds the ship was in the air and flying away from the docks.
Varian and Alera were sitting across from her. EDI was next to Liara.
"I assume you had a good flight?" Varian asked. "Not too bumpy? Any decent in-flight entertainment? I was stuck with old war vids myself."
Alera told him to shut up. Liara nudged EDI with her elbow. "How are you?" she whispered.
"I've been—communing with myself," EDI said. "I find spirituality is a help in times like these."
EDI tented her fingers and made like she was praying. Liara nodded. The shuttle banked hard and made a low turn over the twisting streets of the neighborhood just beyond Afterlife. It dropped quickly and landed almost directly in front of the main doors. The soldiers to the left and right of Liara's group got up and shoved them out into the street, then hustled them up the stairs through the main doors, while people standing in line to get in gawked.
The club itself was empty, except for the bartenders wiping spots off the glassware before the start of their shift. Aria appeared in the opening of her command center. With a gesture they were shoved down a flight of stairs and into an unlit corridor. More shoving, legs and arms bumping in the dark, then green light and a long flight of stairs leading up.
Liara gasped. She'd seen this place before, though not in person. One of her agents had been wearing a recording device when he was captured by Aria. Tile floors. A chair with buckles and straps. A rig for suspending victims by their wrists or ankles. And an exit port that led straight to Omega's waste disposal system. They were on their way to Aria's kill room.
Liara's agent had lasted all of fifteen minutes in there. He hadn't really known anything of value, just his own assignment, and his immediate contact who was not on Omega, and so out of Aria's reach.
Now she had reached the top of those same stairs. It was about as Liara had expected, except that Aria was there, a pistol on her hip. She and Liara exchanged a look. Standing next to her was Mason. To their right, a group of batarian thugs dressed in protective clothing. These men didn't wait for everyone to enter, but began grabbing the prisoners as soon as they entered, throwing them up against the wall and hooking their metal handcuffs to steel rings embedded in the far wall. Varian struggled. Everyone else seemed resigned. Liara heard human sobbing. It had a particular sound that she remembered so well from her time on Earth, and had hoped never to hear again. Leaning forward, she saw that Letha and Drummond had also been taken.
It was certain, then. Arclight and Minos had been working together.
They did Letha first, drawing blood into a vial and scraping off a patch of skin from her scalp.
"How much did this cost you, Aria?" Liara asked.
Aria held up a hand for the men to stop. "Excuse me?" she said.
"You've obviously gone to great lengths to find me and my associates. Paying Arclight to betray me, not to mention that sham Minos operation." Aria shook her head but said nothing. Instead she motioned for the men to continue. They dragged Letha off the wall and through a door into another room. A brief scream and a shot, followed by silence, and more sobbing from Drummond.
She was next. Liara watched the needle go in. The skin and hair samples going into glass containers. When they'd finished, two of them unhooked her from the wall and began dragging her toward the back room.
Drummond and Liara both shouted for them to stop, but then Drummond was through the door. A moment later she cried out and there was a single pistol shot, and after that a hollow quiet, marked by the sound of Varian and Alera all fighting against the metal hooks on the wall.
"How much are you getting to kill me and my team?" Liara asked again.
Aria fixed Liara with her gaze and said, "Not a damned thing." To the batarians she said, "Continue."
Alera was next, and finally Varian. There was a sound from the back room: the waste pipe's valve cycling open and closed. The room filled with an unspeakable odor. Even Aria seemed to pale a little.
Liara turned to Mason. "I suppose you think you've won?"
"Haven't I?" he asked.
"Aria will turn on you the first time you cross her."
"And you wouldn't?" Mason said. "I only barely escaped your people."
"If you got away, it's only because I let you."
Mason shrugged. "You two sound a lot alike," he said.
Aria pointed at EDI. "Her next," she said. The batarians approached her. At that moment, EDI pulled her arms free of their restraints and charged the men. The first she took down with a pulse of light that burst from her palm. The second she shoved back against the wall. The others came at her, firing their weapons. Aria grabbed Liara and dragged her, still cuffed, through the back room, where the floor was covered in a mix of human, asari and turian blood, and then into another dark passageway. Liara turned around to look back. Part of EDI was glowing orange, as though she were about to melt, then there was a flash of light, the air turned to stone, and Liara and Aria were thrown to the ground.
#
Liara came to a few moments later. Aria already had her hand and was pulling her along the floor. The ceiling, what was left of it, was covered in roaring flames and smoke. "We need to move," Aria said as the fire boiled over the top of them. "Stay low."
They crawled back toward the kill room, to a place where the floor had given way, and slipped through to the level below. The ground was covered in sludge from the waste pipe, and bodies and parts of bodies. There wasn't as much smoke here, but when Liara tried to stand, she realized she'd broken her ankle.
Aria grabbed her arm and dragged her down another flight of stairs. Here they were in the upper levels of Afterlife, where some of the dancing girls and other staff who couldn't afford to go elsewhere lived. Some were poking their heads out of their shabby quarters.
"What's going on, boss?" said a young turian.
"Nothing," Aria told him as she dragged Liara past. "Get ready for your shift, Nestor." The turian nodded and withdrew.
They passed through a dressing room, full of panicked asari and female humans, too afraid to leave their seats.
There was another corridor, this one short, and it led to a landing behind the structure that held Afterlife. Defense turrets stood at either end, both of them active and targeting—though not firing on—a number of vehicles moving in to provide assistance.
"You start trouble every time you come here," Aria told Liara and threw her to the ground. Liara tried to stand, but Aria came close and eased her back to the ground. "Don't," she said. "Your leg is broken."
Aria touched something on her omnitool and a hidden panel in the ground slid open. A lift brought an inconspicuous looking vehicle to the platform. Aria opened the door and pushed Liara into the driver's seat. Once Liara was belted in, Aria pressed a command switch on the main console, and the doors began closing. Aria stepped back and watched from a few meters away.
Liara pounded against the glass. "What are you doing?" she shouted, but Aria only turned away and without any hesitation went back inside. Liara saw something move in the passenger's seat, and realizing it was a medical drone, leaned back. It gave her a dose of medigel, and after a moment, she passed out.
#
She woke again in the warm afterglow of the medigel slowly wearing off. Her head was resting against something soft, and she was comfortable, though the place she was in seemed to be moving. A voice was saying her name, and for a moment Liara thought it was her mother.
She blinked and saw a square of blue light. "Liara," the light said. Not her mother. Liara worked her mouth, dry as dust, and tried to sit up. A seatbelt was holding her down. She was still in the vehicle. A shape materialized out of the light, and it said her name again. It was Aria. Behind her was a smoke-blackened room. Her face was smeared with soot, and she had a bandage on her left hand.
"Liara," she was saying. "Wake up."
Liara blinked, then startled. "Where am I?"
"The docks," Aria said. "You're safe."
"You could have just killed me."
"I've done better. You're already dead." Somoone off screen spoke to Aria, and she gave them an answer before she continued. "Liara T'Soni was killed earlier this afternoon during a failed attempt on my life. It's all over the news."
Liara stared blankly at the console. The vehicle she was in had parked in front of a warehouse near the spaceport. There was no one nearby, and the only movement was from the automated loaders that were shifting containers here and there. Finally Liara said, "Who? Who wanted me dead?"
Aria waved her hand. "What did you find on Pirin?" she asked.
"Some sort of parasite," Liara said. "It was infecting the locals."
"Have you heard what a mess that's turned into?"
"No," Liara said. "I've been out of the loop for about a week."
"It turns out the entire planet had to be quarantined. No one in or out until further notice. The Alliance has four cruisers on station, ready to shoot down anything that takes off from the surface." Liara nodded, and Aria continued, "No one knows how the bug got released or where it came from. Except that I do."
"Are you responsible?"
"No. But I've spoken with Mason, who has been in touch with Eldrin. He's finally traced the parasite. It lives on the skin plates of the leviathan. For them it's a kind of symbiote, but part of the creature's life cycle involves other sea creatures that sometimes get eaten by land organisms. Like humans."
"There are no leviathan on Pirin," Liara said. "It's well outside the zone afforded to them in the post war Concord."
Aria shrugged. "And they claim that they haven't been on Pirin either, and that someone simply released the parasites there with the intention of causing an outbreak."
"To what end?"
"Mostly to distract you," Aria said. "Councilor Deniri knew she could buy herself a few days by having you look into the infestation, while she sorted through the data your mother buried on the Citadel."
"You couldn't—how do you—?"
"I am Deniri's trusted and loyal ally," Aria said with a bit of a laugh. "She knows that you and I have a little history, and she figured I wouldn't mind settling a few scores by getting rid of you. You know I almost took her side in this."
"And my friends and crew?"
Aria stared at the screen. "I'm about the only friend you've got left," she said coldly.
"So what do you know? Why does Deniri want me out of the way?"
"I don't know much, but Deniri says you're chasing the same ghost your mother tried and failed to find."
Liara opened her omnitool and sent Aria the video of her mother. "This isn't proof, but I'm not chasing a ghost." Aria watched the video, but only shook her head. Liara asked, "What now?"
"Dock 29 K. You'll find a freighter there, loading prefabricated housing units. You'll be happy to learn that the crew is amenable to taking you on to their final destination of Rannoch. After that? Nothing. You've got a chance to start over as a new person. Find someone. Fall in love. Get as far away from this as you can." Liara shook her head. "I know," Aria said, "But take it from an old bitch like me. Victory is a long patience. Let the galaxy forget your name. Pick a new one. Pick a new face. In the meantime, if you have the audacity to show yourself in Citadel territory, or here on Omega, I'll have no choice but to come after you."
The screen went dark, and the vehicle doors opened. The medical drone had put a cast around Liara's ankle while she'd slept, and bandaged her other wounds. Reaching into the back of the vehicle, Liara found a long coat with a hood that she put on, covering her face from any cameras that might be watching. There was a small handgun hidden in one of the pockets. Liara checked its battery and ammo block before she stepped out into the street, still limping. She hurried across the street and into a narrow alleyway between two warehouses before she pulled up the map.
The ship wasn't far. The walk felt like forever. More than once, she felt herself reaching for Alera's hand or elbow, as she went. It hadn't been love, what they'd shared, but it had been something like it, the best she could have done under the circumstances.
Alera and the rest of her crew, all dead. She couldn't imagine it. And worse, Liara couldn't imagine what Aria might think she was owed, for helping her to escape. Perhaps it was time to disappear forever. Feeling the pistol in her coat pocket, she realized there was more than one way to do that, but quickly put the thought out of her mind.
And soon she was in the port, where there were crowds to be avoided, automated security drones, looking for suspicious activity. Liara walked with purpose, but not enough so to call attention to herself, in the direction of the quarian ship. There it was already, taking on its load of prefabricated housing units, and its captain, a young quarian named Erana vas Rannoch, who shook Liara's hand and showed her to a cramped but very private cabin buried underneath the life support system. Shutting the hatch behind her, Liara heard two crew members outside shifting a wall panel over the hatch, then welding it in place. No one could get to her here. She was safe. Something she hadn't felt in a long time. The ship bobbed on its cleats as the loading continued.
She lay down on the bunk. There was nothing else to do but that, and stretching out her long limbs, she realized this little cell had something to teach her.
Patience, Liara told herself. Revenge. Victory.
END OF PART I
A/N: This is the end of the first part of the story, but I plan to continue a new section soon, under a new title. Keep your eyes open if you're interested. There may be some short pieces about some of the more minor characters in the meantime. Thank you to everyone who has read this far, in particular Red78910 and RheasHelm, and thank you to everyone who has taken the time to post comments. I really appreciate it.