Chapter Twenty-Nine: Arrival on Earth


Tali padded along beside John, every step sending up a small puff of dust to swirl around her ankles and flirt with her legs before dissipating under the never-ending winds that ripped Earth bare of any hospitable environment. The wind had become nearly as monotonous as the walk, always the same, no change but the direction. She heaved a sigh, she had never travelled so far by foot before in her life. The liveships were relatively tightly packed inside and you could access anything in a few short minutes travel, and a quarian was never welcome long enough on a planet to do any significant trekking. Where she had thought herself in good shape, the burn that now ate away at her legs like acid was showing her otherwise.

As usual, Shepard didn't seem to even be breathing hard beneath his iron carapace. A carapace she had breached, only to recoil. He had been ordered to kill her, because she stole government secrets. He had been ordered to do it, and like a good soldier he probably would have. But a small voice in the back of her head persisted. He was a good man, he had saved her life time and time again, put his head on the chopping block to get her out of trouble. Would he really have been able to pull the trigger and watch her fall?

She shuddered and pushed the glum thoughts away, refocusing on an equally glum reality. No longer did spires and towers surround them like the decaying bones of a giant, no more rows of broken down houses on either side of rotting roads, the now dried up veins of the city. Shepard had been particularly on edge since their encounter with the mutants, even more so after the call. She caught him looking at her more than once when he thought her eyes were averted. Her hand now constantly rested near her pistol, just in case.

On either side of them was a great empty plain, interspersed with the occasional house or ancient pylon, twisted and tortured by the trials of time. Nothing but grey grass, dust and hills as far as the eye could see before her. "How far away from the next entrance are we?"

"It might not be safe, Tali."

"What, why?"

He turned towards her, his head cocked to the side as if to say 'what the hell do you think?' She raised her hands quickly, a small frown creasing her smooth brow. "I know they want me dead, but they won't dare do it if I return!"

"You think?" He laughed harshly and with a click of his heels turned back towards the horizon and kept walking. "If you come back, then I didn't kill you. If I didn't kill you, then I helped you, and that means you probably know you're meant to be dead. They'll take their chances."

Tali's hand curled into fists and she jogged up to him, glaring through her helmet and kicking at a small rock. "Bosh'tet's! What did I even do? What do they gain?"

"I don't know, Tali." He passed a hand over his helmet, metal scraping on metal with an unpleasant grinding sound. "It doesn't make sense to me either."

The conversation subsided once more and Tali fell into deep thought, her legs moving automatically forward as her gaze fell downward to the ground, her eyes going out of focus. What could all this mean? Had she seen something she didn't know about? Caught a conversation she wasn't aware of? But no matter how hard she racked her memory, nothing came to the front.

"Shit," said John.

She looked up sharply, her hand flying to her shotgun handle. It froze midway when she spotted the huge cloud of dust approaching them. It was easily recognizable, the dust kicked up by one or more vehicles, coming in fast. She cursed and looked around wildly for any cover, but the surrounding land was as barren as a desert and the nearest ruin was far too distant to be of any help. "What do we do?"

"Rebels," he muttered something beneath his breath and put his gun at his side. "They'll probably take us alive. It'll give us time to think. Don't shoot them, there are too many of them for us to fight in open ground." He stood still as a statue, his arms crossed over his chest like some titan of old, facing his fate with pride.

Well, she wasn't going to go down without trying to find a way. "Can't you use your cloak?"

"I can't cloak both of us, Tali."

"Oh…" A small smile crossed her lips when she realized he had used her name for the second time in a row. As the dust cloud grow larger and the sound of motors reached her ears, she took her place beside him and crossed her arms.

They would get through this, they had lived through worse. With a grinding of age-old gears meshing with cogs rusted beyond recognition the small convoy screeched to a halt as a pile of men jumped out.


John raised his hands slowly, palms forward. He'd seen videos of the rebels before, hell, he'd heard stories and none of them were pleasant. More beast than man, most of them sported an incredible amount of mutations on the visible parts of their bodies. Some had a third, empty eye socket, others had teeth growing out of shredded holes in their cheeks. Not one of them was free of sores and most had dozens of them on their arms and bare chests. They breathed heavily and the smell of burning oil along with the constant revving of their motors put a nearly surreal aura to the situation. It reminded John of some of the old vids he'd seen as a kid. Now they just needed their god-given savior to swoop in.

With a clatter, some of the rebels raised their guns and chambered rounds. Beside him Tali tensed, but a quick hand on her shoulder and her muscles relaxed slowly. He tried to communicate his meaning with a light squeeze. It was no use trying to fight them, they were as crazy as a Project with a damaged control chip and would sooner rip their own comrades throats out than surrender.

"You! Bunkerman, you kill us!" snarled the leader, pointing an unsteady finger in John's direction. His face twisted into a horrible parody of a snarl, looking more like some monstrous apparition than any human expression. His eyes were yellow and the skin surrounding them covered in sores and running pus. John cringed at the sight and shook his head. He needed to figure out a plan.

"I don't kill rebels."

Apparently, it was the wrong thing to say. A few of them screeched angrily and shook their weapons in his direction but none of them even tried to move forward, as if some invisible barrier was blocking them, protecting Tali and John from their bloodthirsty grip.

The leader himself recoiled and his eyes widened. "Not rebels! We control the surface, we don't hide. We are brave, we fight!" he screamed, his voice scratching like a damaged vinyl. His hand went for his pistol and John tensed, his arms lowering to grab his gun. Then the leader stopped and a cruel smile crossed his lips. "No, not kill you. You come, we show you strength of Surfaceman. You see yourself we are brave, stronger than y-"

A deafening crack interrupted him and a moment later his head erupted into a gout of blood and gore, spraying the ground beside him with its contents. For a moment everything seemed to freeze as his body stood still. Then, ever so slowly, like a great tower finally falling beneath the weight of artillery fire he fell to his knees, and crumpled to the ground.

A fraction of time passed by and with a deafening roar the rebels fired on them. Time sped up once more and he yanked Tali into a tight embrace, folding his body over hers as his shields flared to life, the obsolete rebel bullets pinging off them like so many drops of rain.

The sharpshooter unleashed a veritable torrent of precision shots as one after the other the rebels stopped shooting behind him, but before their mysterious savior could finish them off he felt a solid impact in the small of his back followed by a flare of pain similar to a dagger digging deep into his skin. His shields had broken.

"Hurk!" he grunted, his grip on Tali loosening as the final enemy fell to the ground with a neat hole in the middle of his chest.

He let her go and straightened, his hands flying to his back, automatically trying to feel for the entry wound. A cold feeling was slowly sliding up his side, as if a sudden chill had blasted through his veins and now headed straight for his heart. With a hiss, his medical support system unlocked and in flowed medi-gel. But already, his legs were going numb.

"Shepard!" shouted Tali, as he fell to his knees with a muted groan. She grabbed him around the shoulders and helped him lie down, her eyes wide behind her mask as she felt over his body quickly.

A patter of boots on sand and another figure drew itself above John. "Get his mask off, quick," the person snapped. With a hiss his helmet came off and a fresh breeze rolled over his face, bringing with it the smell of blood and death along with burning oil. For one absurd moment John wondered if all this was a dream and he was just a soldier in the old wars some historians talked about. They had burning oil in them.

A small hand rested against his cheek and forced him to look into two silvery eyes. It felt nice to have someone touch him like that, he hadn't felt such a gentle hand in a long time. As darkness slid across his vision like a treacherous beast, the last thing he saw was the face of an old man with a scar slashing across his face. His face was twisted in concern and his mouth moved animatedly, but no sound came out. Hadn't he seen him before?


Ash, ash everywhere. It fell like snow on Ilos and swirled around them in a maelstrom so similar to the sand on Morag. A great barrier carrying the lost souls of billions of dead humans blanketed their vision as the diplomatic corps flew into Earth's atmosphere. Nobody spoke, not even a whisper as the whole delegation stared through the great window with grave-like silence. They were not going to step onto a planet, they were stepping onto a mausoleum of monolithic proportions.

A sudden gust ripped apart the thin veil for a few moments and a ripple of gasps and mutters ran through the assembled asari as a few covered their mouths in shock. Garrus' mandibles twitched and he clutched his hands behind his back tightly. Of course, they had never seen the scale of war, had they? As if swiping away a feeble illusion the violent gust had revealed the landscape beneath them. A cracked, broken and blackened surface, where all life had been burned away, carbonized in one brutal blast. The lower they flew, the clearer his words became.

"Goddess…" muttered a nearby asari.

There was nothing left but charred rock and melted rock beneath them, all life wiped away by the destructive force of a vengeful turian. Garrus stood transfixed for a long time as the landscape changed beneath them, slowly morphing from the barren plains into mountains. Eventually even those faded and they were skimming above an ocean of green waters topped by sickly yellow crests raising into the sky like ravenous maws, snapping at their exhaust.

"Hell of a planet, isn't it?" said Vasir next to him.

Garrus had long since gotten used to her constant apparitions, popping up next to you and saying something or the other as if she had been there all along. For all he knew, she had. "Hell, being the important word," replied Garrus with a grimace. "I'll give them that, if they can deal with this, and us at the same time then they've got a little skill."

The two turned back to the scenery and watched it pass by silently, moving back from the choppy and sickly sea to burnt land. It looked healthier than what they had just seen, and even a few trees stuck out of the ground. Mutated and twisted they looked like the shattered hands of fallen giants, desperately grappling to pull themselves back to their lost grandeur. He shook his head and frowned as the great window slowly turned black and the outside world was cut off. A quick look around confirmed it, everyone else was glancing at each other with confused looks on their faces.

For a few minutes they went on in silence and Vasir didn't move from her place beside him, until finally, with a shudder, the shuttle went still and the engines shut off. There was an explosion of activity as the asari organized themselves pre-planned ranks, and Garrus smirked as one went by, huffing "They didn't even give us a warning!"

Would he have, when he was greeting the destroyers of his world? A few seconds later, once he had taken his place beside Benezia, the door slammed open.

"Remember, keep an eye open, stay observant and let us do the talking," she whispered in a nervous voice before taking a deep breath and smoothing her worried features.

They stepped out slowly and Garrus almost froze, his hand instinctively reaching for the non-existent pistol at his side. "Spirits…"

In front of them were row upon row of motionless soldiers, their guns pressed tightly to their chests while pristine looking officers in strange looking hats stood next to each rank, their hands clasped behind their backs.

A few banners stuck out of the ranks, each one bearing an identical red triangle on a black background. A light cough forced him to look away from the impressive array of soldiers and show of iron discipline. He focused on the small group of humans below him, each one with a pleasant smile on their faces. A pleasant smile that never reached their eyes. Turians had always been good at reading what they could from eyes, you had too when most of your face was made of bone, contrary to so many other species. He could see emotions that transcended even the race barrier within the human's eyes. Cold determination, a ruthless and uncaring expression that promised only one thing. These humans were not here to back down and accept the lesser deal. Hopefully, he would have time to communicate this to Benezia.

"Council diplomatic envoy Benezia, General… Vakarian," said the first one curtly. "I am, as you know, Robert Trump. With me is Mister Slavinask, my assistant. He will be available to answer any queries as well as ensure that your stay is as comfortable as possible."

Garrus narrowed his eyes as he inspected the man. He stood unnaturally still, not even the smallest of twitches, and his smile felt far too artificial to even be remotely real. This was not some simple assistant meant to cater to their every whims, he would have bet his dreadnought on it.

Trump snapped his fingers and the troops behind him parted like a field of grain before a great wind, flowing into new positions like one great, well oiled machine. With one final, thundering stomp they fell still and Trump swept an arm out towards a dim exit on the other side of the room, through the newly created hallway of humans. "Please, follow me. While we are sure that you would like to rest before negotiations commence, we have no interest in having your presence on our planet any longer than necessary."

A smattering of gasps echoed through the group of asari and Garrus could have sworn that a small touch of cruel humor appeared on the man's face for a brief moment. Of course, what should he have expected? It was a good reminder than even though they resembled the asari in many ways, they were far, far from being their literally pale copy.

The group wound their way through a dozen corridors, all dark and barely lit before finally reaching a large tunnel burrowing into the shadows on either side. There was a small vehicle latched onto a ramp, its engines humming gently, like a horde of small insects on a summer night. Garrus walked onto it and took a seat near the edge, next to Vasir. She looked up and nodded sharply, all former traces of levity erased from her features. "It's all fake, the smiles," she said quietly.

"Glad I'm not the only one who saw it. I think a few of the younger ones were looking too insistently at that Slavinask guy."

Vasir grabbed his forearm and looked into his eyes with an intensity he had never seen in those blue eyes. They burrowed into his own and for a brief moment, Garrus felt like he could understand the hundreds of years of experience and war Vasir had gone through. "Don't trust him, not for anything. Anytime. Never stay alone with him, he's far more dangerous than any other human we've seen." Then the moment was gone and she leaned back, a small smile on her lips. "If anything, this will be interesting."

So fast were her words, so brief that small moment of warning, that Garrus barely felt like it had happened as he nodded absently and sat back, feeling a cool breeze rush across his face as the small train picked up speed. Interesting indeed.


TheJackinati275: That's fine, not everyone is going to like my story. Thanks for the criticism.

dnt wory b hapy: Well, I'm not sure how what I said could ever be interpreted as begging for reviews and money but ok. Cya