AN:- Tali's loyalty mission is surprisingly long.
Chapter Fifty-Two: Betrayal
The shuttle ride over to the Alarei was tense. They hadn't had a chance to bring any more crew members through the decontamination unit, and no one had any idea about the sort of numbers they might face when they were over there. Admiral Xen had told them that to run the ship they would need anything between ten and fifty platforms. Which meant they were placing their hopes on Rael'Zorah not having enough parts to build that many. It wasn't much hope.
They docked and Tali was first out of the shuttle, sweeping her shotgun to cover the corners as she made her way to the internal door. Garrus and Shepard hurried to join her as the door opened and gunfire roared through it.
Shepard tackled Tali to the floor as Garrus returned fire, his shield overloading in an instant. He was forced into the cover of the doorway as Shepard pulled her submachine gun off her back and opened fire with it, spraying the half dozen geth who were hunkered behind cover.
"This is not ideal," Garrus said as he drew his assault rifle.
Shepard and Tali had crawled to cover on the other side. "This is more resistance than I expected," Shepard said, priming an incendiary charge.
"If this is what every room is like we're not going to get far."
Shepard fired the charge and a moment later there was a massive explosion as three geth went up at once. Garrus leaned out a second later and fired, cutting down the last one standing. They moved into the room, collecting the heat sinks and making sure the bodies really were down for good.
Tali found a storage room and went into it, Shepard close behind her. She was examining some machine parts that were sitting on a bench.
"This is one of the storage units I sent to father. Looks like parts from a disabled repair drone, plus a reflex algorithm that I didn't recognise. I got this on Haestrom."
"Haestrom was a war zone. How did you salvage gear in the middle of all that?"
"These suits have more pockets than you'd think. Quarians have learned how to salvage whatever we can whenever we can. Within reason. We're not vorcha, but we repair what most people would throw away. Hundreds of the ships in our fleet were salvaged wrecks. Either found dead in space or purchased for next to nothing."
She went back to examining the parts. Shepard couldn't help but be curious. "What made a part worth sending back to your father?"
"It had to be in working order. Something that could be analysed and integrated into other technology. Anything new had priority. Technology the geth had developed themselves, signs of modification, clues to their thinking."
"How did you get these things to your father?"
"Sometimes I left packages at secure drops in civilised areas. Someone on Pilgrimage would see them shipped home. For very valuable finds I'd signal home and father would send a small ship."
"Does that salvaged gear give you a clue as to what happened here?"
"No. I don't know." She turned to Shepard with her voice pleading. "Shepard I checked everything I sent here. I passed up great finds because they might be too dangerous prone to uncontrolled reactivation or self-repair. I don't know which possibility is worse, that I got sloppy and sent something dangerous, or that father actually did all this."
"We don't know anything for sure yet Tali. Let's just work on finding your father."
"Of course, thank you Shepard."
They went back to Garrus, who was standing by the only other way out of the lab. "You might want to listen to that Shepard," he said, indicating an open log.
She activated the log and watched as an image of a female quarian sprang to life on the screen.
"Who's running this system diagnostic, I didn't authorise. Oh keelah, how many geth are networked?"
"All of them." A male quarian entered the picture. "Rael'Zorah-"
"Shut it down, shut everything down. They're in the system!"
The log ended abruptly in static and she turned to Garrus. "Rael."
"Yeah."
"It doesn't necessarily mean that he was responsible for all of this," Shepard said to Tali. "Let's just… let's just find him."
The door opened and they followed the only path open to them. It looked as though someone had locked down and sealed most of the doors, probably in an attempt to contain the geth. The corridors were silent and still, no hint that anything alive remained.
The silence ended the moment they entered the next open room, when a geth prime at the far end opened fire on them, forcing them back into cover.
"This is insane," Tali said as she opened fire with her shotgun. "How did they build a geth prime?"
"Is there any chance that you sent any parts back that could have made one?"
"No, geth prime were always too dangerous."
"Then either someone else was sending your father parts, or they fashioned them here." Garrus stepped out of cover and triggered his omni tool. A moment later the geth prime's shields dropped. Shepard followed up Garrus' attack with an AM bullet through the visor.
"We've gotta keep moving," Shepard said.
"I see another terminal." Garrus looked away from his scope. "And some stairs."
"Alright. You and Tali get up the stairs and check things out."
"Understood Shepard."
The two of them headed up while she opened up the log, seeing the same female quarian from before.
"We locked down navigation. Weapons are offline. Our mistake won't endanger the Fleet." She looked off to the side. "They're burning through the door. I don't have much time. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. Jonah." Shepard felt like she had punched in the chest. "If you get this, be strong for daddy. Mommy loves you very much." Feedback erupted from the speakers as gunfire cut her down. Shepard shut off the recording, wishing she could open her helmet to brush the tears from her eyes.
"Shepard!"
The urgency in Garrus' voice snapped her out of her thoughts and she ran to join them, taking the stairs two at a time. Garrus was hunkered down at the top of the stairs as bullets whistled past him, burying themselves into the far wall. She drew her shotgun and pistol and knelt next to him. "What've we got?"
"Looks like a whole platoon. Tali's pinned down in there."
"We've gotta get her out." Shepard primed another incendiary charge and slipped past him, chancing a look out. Tali was lying flat behind a desk laden with vials of chemicals that were being shattered by the bullets. A bullet punched clean through Shepard's shields and she was forced to pull her head back in. "On my mark."
She knew there was no point waiting for a lull in the firing. Geth were capable of timing their firing so that there was never a pause when more than one had to reload at the same time. Instead she counted to ten in her head, then stepped round the corner and fired the charge, trusting her shields would protect her for the brief moment she was exposed to their full fire.
Garrus took full advantage of the distraction, breaking cover and sliding into place next to Tali. He wasted no time, sticking his assault rifle over the top and emptying the clip, forcing the geth down into cover. Shepard ducked back into cover and waited for her shields to recharge as the geth brought their fire to bear again.
Tali's shotgun joined the roar of fire and the geth onslaught faltered. Shepard broke cover and made for cover next to her team, adding her fire to their barrage. There was little room for any more complex tactics than just blanketing the other side of the room in bullets. The geth were smarter than most enemies though, and stayed well protected.
"Tali, can you do anything about this?" Shepard struggled to keep up fire with two guns while still reloading.
"Give me a second." Tali opened up her omni-tool and keyed something into it. "Stay down."
Across from them one of the geth suddenly turned and started to fire on its comrades, knocking two of them down before they could even respond. The final three turned on it and reduced it to scrap metal, but in doing so they were left wide open for Shepard's team to cut them to pieces.
"Come on," Shepard said. "There's bound to be more of them."
"How did so many of them get built?" Garrus said. "This is too many, even if other people had been supplying Tali's father with parts."
"They must be salvaging parts of the ship to build new platforms. "Tali said.
In the very next room they found the first quarian body, laid out on a packing crate, her arms folded across her chest. Shepard recognised the markings on the armour as the same quarian who had left the messages.
"Did the other quarians do this?" Garrus asked as Tali went to a computer mounted on a nearby wall.
"I don't see how they would have had time."
"The geth?"
"It's the only option." Shepard looked over to Tali. "What do you think?"
Tali hadn't been paying attention to their conversation. "This console might have something. Most of the data is corrupted, but a few bits are left." She scrolled through the files. "They were performing experiments on geth systems, looking for new ways to overcome geth resistance to reprogramming."
"They were testing weapons on the geth?" Shepard came over to examine the data. "That's not exactly ethical."
"It's not testing weapons on prisoners Shepard. I only sent father parts. Even if he assembled them they wouldn't be sapient. You saw what Saren and Sovereign did with the geth. Any research that gives us an advantage is important."
"Do you know what kind of tests your father was running?"
"No, father just told me to send back any geth technology I could find that wasn't a direct danger to the Fleet." She didn't have to point out how that might have invited corruption. "I suspected he might be testing weapons but I thought he was just working on new ways to bypass shields or armour."
There was no point speculating on that though. "Could any of that data clear your name?"
"Doubtful. This is mostly results data effects of different destructive hacking techniques. I don't understand all of it. But they may have been activating the geth deliberately." She shut the computer down and leaned against the console. "I don't know. Nothing here says specifically, but if they were, then father was doing something terrible." She shook her head, her voice muffled by more than the helmet. "What was all this? Father you promised me you'd build me a house on the homeworld. Was this going to bring us back home?"
"Maybe it's time for your people to let go of reclaiming your world from the geth."
Tali rounded on her. "You have no idea what it's like. You have a planet to go back to. My home is one hull breach away from extinction."
"I haven't had a planet since I was sixteen Tali. But I know what a home is. You've got a place Tali, don't throw it away in a war you don't need."
"Don't need… Shepard if I don't wear a helmet in my own home I die. A single kiss could put me in the hospital. Every time you touch a flower with bare fingers, inhale its fragrance without air filters, you're doing something I can't." She punched the computer. "Damn the pilgrimage. Without it I might never have known what I was missing. What we lost when we had lost our homeworld."
"Well then maybe it's not about finding the Homeworld but just finding a homeworld. Colonise somewhere new."
"We'd have enough difficulty reacclimating to our own native environment. Adjusting for exposure to a foreign colony would be even harder. It's the difference between years and six hundred. For anyone alive now to watch a sunset without a mask, we must take back our home." She sighed and shook her head. "At the very least we could take back one ship. Come on."
She pushed past Shepard and stomped into the next room. Garrus followed after her. Shepard took a moment to remember the dead quarian, not quite sure why it felt so important, and then went after them.
There was only one geth in the next room, and Tali had already blasted it in half. The door beyond had been locked, and she moved to bypass it as Shepard found another log entry. Wondering if it could possibly be any worse she opened it up to find the same woman from before.
"First entry. Our hacking attempts failed. The geth have an adaptive consciousness. Hack one process and the others autocorrect Still we're making progress. Rael'Zorah is convinced we'll have a viable system in less than a year. This weapon will put our people back on the homeworld, and it's all because of Rael'Zorah."
Right, she thought dully. That's how. All the good intentions in the world and this is where it led.
The door cycled open and Tali gasped, drawing her attention.
"Father!" She had hurried forwards to where a quarian body was lying. "No, no, no, no. You always had a plan." She pushed the body over so it lay face up. "Masked life signs, or, or an onboard medical stasis program maybe. You, you wouldn't." Her voice was choked with tears. Shepard started to hurry across the room towards her. "They're wrong, you wouldn't just die like this. You wouldn't leave me to clean up your mess-"
Shepard dropped to her knees next to Tali and pulled her into a tight embrace, feeling Tali's arms clamp around her back as she buried her head into Shepard's shoulder.
"It's alright," she said quietly. "It'll be alright."
Another pair of arms encircled them and she realised Garrus was on his knees next to them as well, holding Tali as she sobbed, deep, wracking gasps that shook her whole body and left her hoarse from crying. Shepard didn't say anything, just held her close until she was done, and they were left sitting on the floor next to the body.
Finally Tali pulled away, her voice low. "Damn it," She put a hand to her mask as if to brush away tears, then dropped it. "Damn it. I'm sorry."
"You have nothing to be sorry about," Shepard told her.
Tali turned back to the body, opening her omni tool. "Maybe… He would have known I'd come. Maybe he left a message."
The omni-tool on Rael's arm opened, then a moment later a green hologram appeared, floating above the body. "Tali. If you are listening, then I am dead. The geth have gone active. I don't have much time. Their main hub will be on the bridge. You'll need to destroy it to stop their VI processes from forming new neural links. Make sure Han'Gerrel and Daro'Xen see the data, they must-" The hologram looked up suddenly, then started to run, disappearing from view.
She sat back again. "Thanks dad."
"He knew you'd come for him. He was trying to help you. It's not perfect, it's not what you wanted. But it's the best he could do."
"I don't know what's worse." She didn't look up, staring somewhere at the floor. "Thinking he never really cared, or thinking that he did, and that this was the only way he could show it." She pushed herself up, Shepard and Garrus following her. "It doesn't matter. One way or the other I care, and I'm here, and we're ending this."
Shepard nodded. "Give us a second."
She nodded to Garrus, who apparently understood. They knelt, taking Rael's body beneath the shoulders and at the knees. It wasn't elegant, but they were able to manoeuvre him back into the room and lay him out on one of the tables, where Shepard then crossed his arms over his chest. She wasn't quite sure about quarian burial traditions, but at least they had afforded him some respect. Tali waited at the foot of the stairs, nodding when they returned.
"Thanks."
"No problem." Shepard drew her pistol. "Now let's end this."
At the top of the stairs they came to what was clearly the bridge, a glass screen partitioning two sections of the room. There were three geth beyond the screen, a prime and two hunters who turned as the door opened and drew assault rifles, opening fire on them. The glass cracked but didn't break as the fire pounded against it and they ran for the cover of two pillars on either side.
Garrus leaned out of cover with his sniper rifle and fired, nodding to her as he came back into cover. "Two to go." He said.
Glass shattered and the prime came crashing through the window, sweeping its arm out and smacking Garrus in the jaw, sending him flying into a bank of computers. Tali and Shepard turned to fire but it was faster, kicking Shepard into the wall and punching Tali hard in the face.
Shepard struggled to get up as the prime towered over Tali, raising its assault rifle and sighting on her head. Adrenaline flowed through her and she felt strength flooding her limbs, launching her out of the tangled mess of wires and across the room in a split second. She grabbed the prime by the midsection and kept running, slamming it into the pillar. She had lost her gun somewhere in the melee but her fists moved in a blur, striking again and again at the prime's chestplate, denting the metal.
Vaguely aware that it was trying to bring its assault rifle round she punched a hole clean through the shoulder joint. It struggled to kick back but she dug her hand right into the muscle mass and ripped out a handful of wires. She was aware, dimly, that she was moving faster than she could have thought possible, that the prime could have been moving through sand as she methodically cracked open the chestplate and reached inside, grabbing two bunches of wires and yanking them hard.
The prime sank to its knees, a weird high pitched whistle emanating from somewhere within it. She grabbed its head and twisted hard, metal grinding and shrieking as the top of the thing unscrewed at the neck. With a final determined pull she separated it entirely, and the body toppled to one side, sparking from a dozen wounds. The light in the faceplate went dull almost immediately and the whistle stopped.
She looked up to see Tali and Garrus staring at her. She looked back down to the twisted mess she had made out of the prime. "Oh." She tossed the head back towards the door. "No one messes with my girl."
Tali shook her head, but Shepard imagined she was smiling. "This console is linked to the main hub father mentioned," she said, heading over to the monitor. "Disabling it shuts down any geth we missed. It looks like some of the recordings remain intact, they'll tell us how this happened, what father did."
Shepard stepped next to her. "You sound like you don't really wanna here it."
"No, we have to. I know, I just." She turned to Shepard. "This is terrible Shepard. I don't want to know that he was part of this."
Shepard smiled sympathetically, rested her hand on Tali's shoulder. Tali seemed to draw strength from the touch, and turned back to the computer, opening up the terminal. An image of three quarian appeared, the women, Rael, and a third quarian.
"Do we have enough parts to bring more online?" Rael was saying.
"Yes," replied the other man. "The new shipment from your daughter will let us add two more geth to the network."
"We're nearing a breakthrough on systemic viral attacks." The woman sounded uncertain. "Perhaps if we inform the Admiralty Board, just to be safe."
"No, we're too close. I promised to build my daughter a house on the homeworld. I'm not going to sit and wait while the politicians argue."
"We'd have an easier time of it if Tali'Zorah could send back more working material," the other man grumbled.
"Absolutely not. I don't want Tali exposed to any political blowback. Leave Tali out of this. Assemble new geth with what we have. Bypass security protocols if need be."
Shepard shut down the recording. "It sounds like he was doing this for you."
"I never wanted this Shepard, keelah I never wanted this. Everything here is his fault. I, I tried to pretend it didn't point to him, but this…" She shook her head. "When this comes up in the trial they'll…" She grabbed Shepard's arm. "We can't tell them. Not the admirals, not anyone."
Garrus came up to her as well. "Tali without this evidence you're looking at exile."
"You think I don't' know that? You think I want to live knowing that I can never see the Fleet again?" Her voice was rising with every word. "But I can't go back to that room and say that my father was the worst war criminal in our people's history. I cannot."
"Rael'Zorah doesn't need you to worry about him anymore. You heard him say he didn't want you to be caught in the politics."
"You don't understand Shepard. They would strike his name from the manifest of every ship he ever served on. He would be worse than an exile, he'd be a traitor to our people. Held up for children as a monster in a cautionary tale. I can't let all the good he did be destroyed for this. Shepard…"
It was impossible to be harsh when Tali used that pleading tone. "We're not going to decide anything here. Let's see what the Admirals say when we get back."
"You're my captain in this hearing Shepard, it's your decision. But please don't destroy what my father was. Come on." She deactivated the computer and headed for the door. "If we wait too long they'll decide we're already dead and none of this will matter."
AN:- So yeah this is gonna be three chapters, and three pretty long chapters at that.
Not much to say about this one. Please read and review!
