"The people will be heard, admirals," Jarva declared, voice full of fire and conviction. "We have floated in the dark long enough. We can either strike back and reclaim the homeworld, or we admit that we are the vermin that the galaxy already sees us as."
Half of Tali wanted to punch Jarva's faceplace in. The other half just wanted to sit in a corner until everything stopped being crazy. The divide between the two was getting fuzzier and fuzzier as time went on.
"We hear your pleas, Mirsid, but you're asking for something that we're simply incapable of giving," Zaal'Koris said.
"Too afraid to, perhaps," Han countered, to which Mirsid gave the smuggest damned nod.
"Perhaps we should come back some time when things are less heated," Auntie Raan said quietly, guiding Tali away from the argument between the three men, where only one of whom bore a realistic outlook on things. "I'm sorry that things have been so tense in the fleet of late, Tali. I truly believed that things were stabilizing."
"Stabilizing," Tali repeated with a scoff. "That's what we've done for the last three centuries. Stabilized. Keep our numbers stable. Keep our ships stable. Stabilizing isn't going to save us."
"Well it certainly can't hurt," Shala pointed out, letting the door close behind them. Aboard the Rayya, things were more tense than they'd been at any point since the slaughter of the Alarai. And just like last time, Tali could trace all of the trouble to a single man. The Alarai was Father's mistake. This insanity was Jarva's. "Besides, the Conclave doesn't have the authority to override a standing order from the Admiralty. As much as Mirsid may shout and bluster, Daro and I can veto him if he tries anything particularly stupid."
"Then you're underestimating Mirsid's stupidity," Tali said. Shala sighed, and guided Tali to one of the smaller gardens, this one playing host to a pair of younger quarians who were trying very hard to not look like they were playing with their Nerve-Stims together. Stupid kids. One day they'd realize that the real thing was nothing like the program, and that you could never go back. Thankfully, the teenagers ignored the older two women who took a seat on one of the benches which was itself already starting to get climbed upon by twisting grass. "He and Han'Garrel are going to be the death of this fleet and every quarian in the galaxy."
"Han has the best interests of the quarians in his mind at all times, Tali," Shala said patiently. "He simply has a different direction that he thinks that best interest lies."
"A stupid direction. And a bad one," Tali said. She sighed, and shook her head slowly. When she took that ill-conceived 'pilgrimage' to the Homeworld, to release what remained of Adahn to the darkness, she saw something that she still felt crawling up her spine in the night. The lights in the night of Rannoch. For something as efficiency-minded as the geth, that much light could only be a factory of monumental scale, as large as a city. A factory of that size could put out thousands of combat platforms each day, protected from orbital strikes by powerful kinetic barriers the likes of which the galaxy had never seen.
The war for the Homeworld was lost already, and nobody had even begun fighting it. And she couldn't tell anybody about it without getting eaten alive by suspicion and crowd-paranoia.
"Sometimes it's better to do the wrong thing than to do nothing at all," Shala nevertheless shook her head slowly as she said it.
"But doing the wrong thing now will mean our extinction!" Tali pointed out. "Seventeen million quarians today, Auntie Raan. With the tomorrow that Garrel and Jarva offer, that number will only ever go down."
"We have to hope," Raan said. "If we give up hope of ever seeing the Homeworld, the Fleet will dissolve, and we will disappear just as completely and just as inevitably as we would for this ill-fated battle for Rannoch that you see so likely. Despair is a poison which kills the soul, long before it kills the body or mind."
"Then why can't we settle?" Tali asked. "Take back the Unrealized Reality and Jump to a place that nobody's ever set foot, start a colony, away from the Mass Relay and everything else."
"It would take us centuries to adapt to that planet, even if it could sustain us at all," Shala said. "You know this perfectly well."
Tali growled in the back of her throat, kicking a flower hard enough to send its colorful head spinning through the air and bounce off the teenaged girl's head. She didn't even notice. "Everybody's talking about war, when there's already a war bearing down on us! Is everybody in this Flotilla except me completely blind?"
"Tali'Zorah, that's enough!" Shala said, her 'mom' tones coming out in force. "You may disagree with the decisions of the Admiralty Board and the Conclave, but they are still the leaders of our people, and deserve your respect."
Tali glared at her beloved Auntie. "Respect has to be earned, Auntie Raan. I learned that the hard way."
Shala sighed, palming her faceplate. "Whatever the case," she said, very deliberately. "We have to follow the directions that our superiors give us. Anything else is courting catastrophe."
"Which is what every father and mother has said to every son and daughter since the fall of the Homeworld," Tali said. "We don't know how to pick bad orders from good anymore! We don't even know that the distinction exists!"
"Sometimes I wonder what you saw aboard the Normandy to make you so cynical, Tali," Shala said. "But I still fear that this thinking will one-day lead you to pain. I wish it weren't the case, but I know how the galaxy works for the quarian race. We have to accept reality as it is."
"Instead of changing it into something better," Tali finished Auntie Raan's finished thought. Shala rose to her feet, looking down at the seated Tali for a few long moments.
"You are still welcome in my home, Tali. The months have not destroyed that, even with your strange estrangement," she said, with perhaps a note of hope in her voice.
"I think I'm better off on my own," Tali said, crossing her arms before her chest. Shala's head hung for a moment, then she moved off through the halls once more. Tali seethed inside her suit. He might have claimed he was a bad turian, but Garrus was a spectacular teacher in all the lessons that Tali could now see that nobody else around here had ever learned. She'd thought that when she came back to the Fleet, things would be as they were before. A people united behind the goal of surviving another day. Instead, armament. Instead, insanity.
Under Mirsid's direction, the Liveships had had their spines cored out and mounted with cannons that would give a turian dreadnaught a run for its money in punch, even though the ship itself was still as easy to break as a spider's web. Painting targets on civilian ships, basically. But he didn't say it like that. No, for him it was 'giving the ability to defend themselves back to the people'. Didn't he realize what he was doing was wrong, and stupid besides?
"Just get a room, you two," Tali snapped at the teenagers before storming away. It didn't even occur to her the irony of that she was only a two years beyond being a teenager herself. Fury was bubbling through her veins, a helpless and impotent fury that sought desperately for some direction to vent, something to break to make her feel better.
As it was, she found herself striding toward the docks. Another trip to the Qwib-Qwib, another angry supper with Zaal, Amberley and Andel'Koris. Another night sleeping on their floor so she wouldn't have to put up with the confused – or worse, accusing – stares of her crewmates aboard the Neema. And then, another day of teaching waterbending to the people of the Fleet.
And so, another day aboard the Migrant Fleet came to a bitter close.
"We've barely got a pulse here; clear out!" the turian shouted as they pulled the gurney with Asha's mangled visage atop it. Liara watched how Shepard couldn't pull her eyes off of Asha until they'd rounded the corner. It was apparent even to somebody as socially oblivious as Liara that Aimei hadn't slept last night. But a surreptitious sniff as she passed the woman by also didn't reveal the telltale signature of whiskey, so she seemed to have kept her word. That still did little for Liara's peace of mind.
"That's rough," Vega said. And he said a mouthful with that.
"I should have protected her," Shepard said, eyes at the corner where Asha had disappeared.
"You did the best you could. You did as well as anybody else could have," Liara said, trying to comfort Aimei, taking her hand. Shepard pulled it away, a bitter look on her face.
"I should have done better," she snapped, and then started away from the airlock and toward the true entrance to the Citadel. Liara turned a concerned look to Vega.
"I'm concerned about her," Liara said.
"Yeah," Vega said. "I'm more worried about what's about to happen to her."
Liara's brow furrowed. "What's that supposed to mean?" she asked.
He turned to her, and then started, as though remembering something. "Aw, it's nothin'."
"You're lying to me," Liara impugned.
"Shepard, we meet again," a familiar voice came from around that corner. Liara turned a hard look to Vega, one that promised that she was not about to forget this, before rounding that corner and finding that Aimei had been intercepted by Executor Bei-Li. He was in the process of giving her hand a shake.
"When d..." she shook her head. "Right. The Argus Summit."
"That wasn't yesterday," he said. "Things are pretty much the same, though. Not as much changed as we'd have all hoped, my new position included," Bei-Li said, drawing Aimei out of the flow of foot-traffic. "Thought I'd be ushering in change and an end to the petty corruption I knew about in C-Sec. Turns out, my job nowadays is just dealing with political bullshit and escorting dignitaries around. No offense," he said with a shrug. Shepard sighed and nodded.
"Where are they taking Asha?" Aimei asked.
"Huhrta Memorial," Bei-Li said. "Best help they can get her these days, trust me," he paused, looking at her. "I know that look. You figure this is your fault."
"It is my fault," Shepard said. "I..."
"I got Asha's number when the bunch of us went after Fade," he said, shaking his head. "She wouldn't accept you taking responsibility for her actions, and you know it."
Shepard laughed bitterly, "...because Asha al'Wahim is always at the ready to die for the Avatar."
"The trick is convincing her how to live for the Avatar," Bei-Li said.
"Is the Council not expecting us?" Liara piped up. Bei-Li turned a look in her direction, then nodded.
"The Council is expecting you," Bei-Li said, "but that they're dealing with their own... problems. I figure they'll have their heads up their own asses long enough to visit your friend."
"If even," Aimei whispered. "Huhrta Memorial. Got it. I should go."
"Hey," he said, catching the woman before she could walk away from him. "If you need anything, Shepard – anything – just let me know, alright? I know where you're standing right now."
"How could you?" she asked.
"Just trust me on this one," he said. "And remember, you've got people believing in you, not just believing in the Avatar."
Shepard let out another bitter laugh, then pulled free of Bei-Li and moved for the elevator. The pragmatist in Liara told her to head straight for the Council, to prepare them on Aimei's request. The rest of her moved to follow Shepard and join her in the elevator. She almost reached the doors before they swung shut and Shepard descended out of sight. So she took five steps to the right and hailed the next one.
"Shouldn't you be goin' up?" Vega asked.
"No. Aimei needs my support," Liara said. "Now more than ever."
"I bet she does," Vega said with a nod. "Damn, this is a bad day."
She had to agree with him on that one. The lift arrived swiftly, and she found herself descending on Aimei's trail, albeit in a different elevator. Vega chose to join her. "What did you mean by what you said back there?" she asked. "What's about to happen to her? Do you know something? Are you privy to some secret or conspiracy that is acting to the detriment of Shepard?"
"Whoa, calm down!" he said, backing up a step. "I'm just sayin', Shepard can get a touch hard to deal with when she's upset."
Liara continued to glare at him, but not only was he not apparently lying, he was also not wrong.
When the doors opened, the entry to the hospital lay directly before them. Strange how it was within Liara's adulthood that the humans came to the Citadel, grabbing an entire deck in this wing just so they could put their own hospital in place instead of depending on the salarians and asari, as most of the people of the Citadel did. Then again, humanity had different forms of medicine at their command than anybody else when they first arrived, and nobody else had the infrastructure to actually capitalize on that.
"...patient, named Asha al'Wahim. Is she here?" Shepard was asking one of the orderlies at the front desk.
"I'm sorry, we don't have anybody with that name on file..." a younger orderly said, to which Shepard's jaw visibly clenched, before the older one cut her off.
"Si Wongi woman with a cranial injury?" to which Shepard nodded. The older woman gave a nod. "Room three, ward nine."
"Thank you," Shepard said.
"Shepard!" Liara said, moving across that lobby. Shepard flinched when Liara's voice hit her, but she started walking with obvious dread in her gait. "Shepard, why are you ignoring me?"
"Hey, T'Soni, give her a break," Vega said, a hand clamped on her shoulder. She shrugged free of it with a dirty look at the massive human, before turning to note that Shepard was now passing out of sight. "Wait, where are you goin'?"
"Shepard still needs us," Liara said. She rounded the corner that the red-hair had vanished around, and they walked the halls toward the intensive care unit; 'ward nine'. There were quite a few people in the hall, so Liara didn't have an easy time closing distance with Shepard. It was almost like Aimei was running away from her.
Given how things ended, it shouldn't have been surprising. Liara just wished she'd stop running.
Shepard ducked through a door, the third along the left, and Liara made sure to follow. When she eventually did enter the room, she found al'Wahim stripped and intubated. For all her muscular frame and above-average height, Asha looked so vulnerable like that. As Shepard stood with her back to the wall, the doctors continued their work, one bearing glowing hands that worked over Asha's face. Unlike when Tali or Shepard did it, there was no instantaneous improvement, no shifting of wounded flesh to a better position. The damage was severe, obviously.
"Aimei..." Liara said. Shepard just shook her head, her eyes pressed closed. While Vega did join them in the room briefly, as soon as he saw Asha's condition, he immediately turned and left. Perhaps because of the nudity, perhaps because of the brutality; Liara could not say. The ten minutes it took them to finish the intubation and declare her 'stable if critical' were some of the longest of Liara's century of life.
"Is she going to recover?" Shepard asked, at the very end.
"We can't say," the human doctor answered her. "Ordinarily, the prognosis would be very good, but all of the best neurological specialists in humans are on Earth, for obvious reasons. Waterbending won't repair the damage unless you had a phenom like Ishtar Mahada doing it, and Ishtar is a century passed. We either have to use conventional surgery... or hope that one of the masters gets off of Earth."
"When will you know something?"
"Right now, we have time," he said. "A few days will tell the whole story, one way or the other," he sighed, and held up his Omni. "I'm sorry, ma'am, but I'm needed elsewhere."
"Right. Go. Don't let me stop you," Shepard said, her voice distant. The doctor nodded sagely, then turned and left. Liara turned to Shepard.
"She's going to be alright," Liara said.
"I hope so," Shepard said. She leaned toward Asha, who was now covered with a sheet for modesty if nothing else. "I need you in this Asha. We all do..."
"Oh shit!" Vega's voice came from outside. "Um, Shepard? Problem!"
Liara turned as the door opened, and another woman stormed in. Aimei turned to the newcomer, and her expression became one of resigned dread. Like she knew what was coming and would do nothing to stop it. "Miss, this is a..." Liara began.
The woman cut her off by punching Shepard so hard that she flew into the back wall and landed in a heap on the floor. Liara was too stunned even to react. And she grew more stunned with what happened next.
"You SWORE that you'd protect her!" Aimei's voice screamed from the newcomer.
"I tried!" Aimei answered, pushing herself up. "You didn't see what they did to Earth!"
"That's no excuse!" Aimei shouted back from the stranger's face. "I put you on Earth for one reason, to keep things like this from happening!" she pointed harshly toward Asha.
"Hey!" Shepard cut in, standing up to the stranger. "We agreed on this. And for half a year, it actually worked."
"...what's going on?" Liara asked. "Why do you sound like Aimei?"
It was then that the stranger seemed to realize that the two of them weren't alone in the room. She turned toward Liara, as Shepard reached over and hit a control on the woman's Omni. When she did, the appearance of her face disappeared, frames of hard-light taking their place... before the frames shut down, and showed...
Aimei Shepard. As a brunette, but still, it was undeniably her.
"What's going on?" Liara asked, looking between the two Aimei's. The brunette's eyes were welling, though, even as shame fought grief, which together were at war with relief, on her face. Liara didn't even think to react when she found herself being hug-tackled into the back wall, the brunette Aimei obviously trying very hard not to cry into Liara's shoulder.
"That, T'Soni... is a very long story," the redhead said dryly.
"Are... you alright?" Liara found herself asking.
"No," the second Shepard said. "I just watched my homeworld burn."
Chapter 2
Lies, Damned Lies, and Politics
The room now found itself fairly crowded, with the four of them – one comatose – packed into it. Brunette Shepard had withdrawn from her desperate embrace, and now seemed to be trying to keep as much room between herself and Liara as possible. The redhead, on the other head, seemed to finally be calming down and loosening up. Vega just looked at everything with the distant interest of somebody watching a spectacular car-crash.
"Would somebody please explain why there are two Aimei's?" Liara asked.
"There's only one Aimei," Aimei said, and she pointed to the Brunette. "And that's her."
Liara looked from the other Shepard, whom by Not-Aimei's admission was indeed Aimei, and back to Not-Aimei once more. "Are you some sort of body-double?" Liara asked, confused how such a thing could be possible. She had exemplified all four elemental martial arts, and biotics. Besides Miranda's sister, Liara had heard of nobody who had replicated such a state.
"That's the official story, yeah," Vega said.
"We're clones," Not-Aimei said, then cast a thumb toward Aimei. "She's the evil one."
"Fuck you," Aimei said with distant anger.
"No thank you. I prefer my masturbation to be solitary," Not-Aimei said with a smirk. Aimei glared at Not-Aimei, even as Vega laughed.
"Man, that's a good one," he said.
"I had to reckon that she'd levy that at me at some point. It behooves me to have a witty comeback," Not-Aimei said.
"This still doesn't make any sense!" Liara said.
"Trust me, it doesn't make a whole lot more if you were to hear the whole story," Not-Aimei said.
"Five months ago, somebody tried to replace me with a clone," Aimei said, giving a vague gesture toward Not-Aimei. "But the clone didn't like the plan, and switched sides."
"Ta-dah," Not-Aimei said with a faint flare of her hands. She then rolled her eyes. "What an idiot, though. Really thinking that they could replace you with me? They must have been on drugs when they came up with that 'clever scheme'."
"After everybody ended up in such a snit after Thessia, they wanted Shepard kept on ice until things got calmer," Vega said. "Then, bam, clone."
"You can call me Zia, by the way," Zia-Not-Aimei said. Then, she gave her head a shake. "Look, as much as this is all a fascinating topic of conversation, we've got a meeting with the Council to attend."
"About what?" Aimei asked.
"The Crucible," Zia said. Aimei rounded on her.
"You found the Crucible?" she asked.
"Well... T'Soni?" Zia said, turning a look toward Liara. She found herself simply staring between the two of them. But for the color of the hair, they were absolutely identical, all the way down to the scar cleaving through one eyebrow.
"Oh, right," she said. "We found the schematics for a device capable of generating an unimaginable amount of power. How it is to be used, that still for the moment eludes me, but I am still decrypting Elli's data."
"Is Elli alright?" Aimei asked.
"She is well. I understand she expects one of her children to emerge soon," Liara said, still a bit put-off by the strangeness of what was transpiring around her.
"Hey, more Protheans can't be a bad thing, am I right?" Vega asked.
"That would depend on the Prothean," Aimei said direly. Zia and Liara shared a look, to which the redhead gave a confused shrug.
Liara blinked a few times, then turned to Vega. "You knew about them," she accused.
"Well, yeah," he said. "I was there when all this shit went down. So was Anderson. And a few others, but it was mostly me."
"Vega, I'm going to let that slide 'cause you're pretty," Aimei said with a look. Vega had a very smug face on at that one. She turned back to Liara "So you found the Crucible? What about the Catalyst? Or the Ansible?"
"The what?" Zia asked.
"I'm sorry, but there is still quite a bit of data that I haven't studied," Liara said. Aimei nodded, nevertheless.
"Your instincts haven't served me wrong yet," she said. She looked out the window, to the traffic of the Presidium that seemed so peaceful and aloof of what was happening in the galaxy right now. "Maybe we have the answer to the Reapers already, and we just haven't found it yet."
"That's my hope at least," Zia said.
The doors opened once more, admitting another woman into the room, only this one was grey of hair and lined of face. Liara didn't need to think back too far to remember Doctor Chakwas. "Ah," she said. "I presume by your swelling jaw that the Commander has made her displeasure with you known?"
"I'll be fine," Zia said.
"She almost got Asha killed," Aimei said bitterly.
"I did everything I could to save her," Zia snapped.
"Zia, that's enough," Chakwas said. "Shepard, you as well. Emotions are running high enough already without the two of you fighting."
Both Shepards gave almost identical nods at that.
"Now, I know how guilty Zia feels about Asha, so you should be aware of it also. We gain nothing through pointless recriminations," Chakwas said. Both Shepards mumbled something inaudible, to which Chakwas nodded. "Better. So. You're back at large in the galaxy at long last, Zia?"
"I thought I was going to lose my mind on Earth," Zia said with a sigh. "Four months of doing nothing. I don't have that many to spend, so I don't relish the thought of wasting them."
"I thought you might feel that way," Chakwas said. She turned to Aimei. "But that is beside the point of why I'm here. The Normandy is at port, correct?"
"At port and fully repaired," Zia reported. "Good as new."
"It'll never be as good as new," Aimei groused.
"Regardless, I know where my destiny lies, Shepard. If you will have me, I'd like to return to my post aboard the Normandy," Chakwas said.
"And nobody's going to bat an eyelash now that you're walking away from a term of service with a terrorist organization?" Aimei asked.
"Samsara isn't a terrorist organization," Zia said. "Weaver's a slippery one; there's no evidence beyond the recordings and VIs that EDI found which link Phoenix to Samsara in any way. And face it, those won't hold up in court."
"Indeed," Chakwas said. "Since I was on a proper leave-of-absence from military service when I worked aboard the SR2 against the Collectors, I have nothing but 'volunteer experience with a not-for-profit organization' to show for my time. Which will actually make me somewhat more hireable if I ever decide to leave the service."
"Which you never would," Aimei said.
"But it is nice to think about from time to time," Chakwas said.
"Well, you don't need to ask once, let alone twice," Aimei said. "Welcome back."
"So. Council?" Zia asked, casting a thumb toward the elevator.
"Who's going to talk to them? You or me?" Aimei asked.
"You're the Avatar," Zia said.
"You were actually on Earth when it fell," Aimei countered. Zia rolled her eyes.
"...when did somebody clone you?" Liara finally thought to ask. Aimei gave her a confused look, while Zia sighed.
"Looooong story, T'Soni," Zia said with a shake of her head.
Zaal actually looked taken a bit aback when he entered his room in the Qwib-Qwib to find it playing host to three instead of two. "Ah. Tali. I didn't think I would expect you today," he said.
Tali just sighed, slumping into the hammock that Andel slept in. As the kid was currently in the tiny kitchen trying to help Amberley, it left as much as a swing for Tali to sit in while she mulled the closing of the day. "How do you do it?" Tali asked.
The Admiral, who was half way into reaching for his wife, stopped, and turned to her. "Do what?" he asked.
"Put up with people like Han'Gerrel and Mirsid'Jarva every day?" Tali said. She sat forward in the 'swing', shoulders hunched "Every time one of them speaks, I just get an urge to beat them with a piece of wood until they understand that their plans are stupid and are going to get us all killed."
"...why wood?" Andel asked, casting a glance over his shoulder. If things in the Fleet were normal, Andel would just now be heading off for his Pilgrimage. But things had changed.
"Because it'll hurt and it won't rupture any seals," Tali gave her explanation. Andel let out a laugh at that, while his father sighed and palmed his faceplate.
"There are things which we have to accept are part of politics in the fleet," Zaal said. "There will always be war-hawks. Even if we had the Homeworld today, there would still be people like Han'Garrel."
"We can't win a war," Tali said.
"I know, Tali," Zaal said.
"We shouldn't even be thinking about fighting one!" Tali continued.
"I know, Tali," Zaal repeated. "But with Caylen stripped of position and Mirsid the chosen voice of the populace, this is the reality of things. Politics is a hellish mire of compromise and gnashing-teeth. Had I known that the position entailed so much of it when my nomination came up, I would have given a serious second thought to the affair."
"You would have done it anyway," Amberley said over her shoulder. "If only because you wanted a bigger room."
"This is a big room?" Andel asked, his tones falsely suspicious. And by quarian standards, the room was large; it had several separate chambers, a living area which could allow actual parties – if small ones – and its own separate bedroom. In other words, it had about one more square meter than the clean rooms which Shepard had given to Tali alone aboard the Normandy. Amberley reached over and swatted Andel with her spoon. He laughed, anyway.
Zaal sighed, and turned the chair that sat in the corner toward Tali more directly. "The truth is, the people are scared and desperate. As of this month, we have been homeless as a race for three entire centuries. People are starting to believe that this is not something that will simply pass. That this is our future," he pointed down, to the deck plating, "until the stars burn out in the sky. We were meant to live under open skies, I will admit that... but it's not worth suicide for. And that's what Han's war would be."
"You don't need to convince me," Tali said bitterly. Zaal nodded.
"I presume there's a reason you came here," he asked as he rose to his feet.
"Do I need one?" Tali asked.
"Of course not. You're always welcome here," Amberley answered before her husband could even begin.
"You should spend more time with Shala'Raan," Zaal pointed out. "She's concerned about you."
"I know," Tali said. He nodded, then began to raise a finger and make a point, when he went silent. "...what is it?"
"Keelah, no..." he said. He immediately crossed the small living area, tucking his legs under him as he turned on the console bolted to the wall. Hard light panes popped into life, displaying a graph and some text beneath it. "This cannot be..."
"What is it?" Tali asked, jumping out of the hammock and joining him at his side. When she saw what had stolen his voice, she could understand it entirely.
The graph was a reconnaissance report of the Perseus Veil Relay. It had seen massive activation, with thousands upon thousands of signatures emerging from the Network and beginning toward Rannoch. Her blood began to go cold as well, her hearts seeming to grow weak and faint. The heretics. They were actually going back to Rannoch. And Tali would not be able to explain that in the slightest.
"This is unbelievable," Zaal said, sitting back on his heels. "That many geth... They had that many ships outside of the Veil? How many more must they have beyond it?"
"Maybe now Han will see how suicidal his war is," Tali offered. Zaal, though, shook his head bitterly.
"No, now he's going to get desperate. And get cunning," Zaal muttered, as Amberley broke away from dinner to squat down beside him.
"Is something wrong?" she asked. Zaal immediately turned off the console. Amberley sighed, and gave her husband a look. "I'm not blind. I saw what that was."
"Maybe, if I'm stupendously fortunate," Koris began, but was interrupted by a snort from Andel, "I'll be able to convince Mirsid that things have changed. With the Conclave shifted... maybe..."
"If anybody can do it, sweetheart, it's you," Amberley said, giving him a hug. Tali, though, shared a glance with Zaal. The two of them knew exactly what was going to come next. And neither had the heart to tell her about it.
"We've got our own problems, Councilor," Valern said, tones very clipped as he faced down Udina who stood at Valern's side, but in Sparatus' place. Shepard looked between the group assembled, and the war had already made a mark on it. Sparatus was wavering in place, his hide practically pink; Shepard had learned that was the complexion of a turian on the very edge of going into shock. His mandibles were slack and his eyes seemed to be blinking far too often. He just seemed like he wanted to be anywhere but here, preferably lying down. "Your world is not unique in being under threat by these invaders."
"But Earth was one of the first worlds hit," Udina said, tension clear in his voice. He was trying to get through to Valern, but the salarian had a stubborn look, and his hands were flexing on the podium that he stood before. "By all reports, it's facing the brunt of the Reaper attack."
"By your reports," Valern said dismissively. Tevos shot Valern a hard look at that, but then returned to her own state of comparatively lesser distraction. While she still stood in her post, it seemed like she was edging toward Sparatus, to make sure there was somebody to catch him if he collapsed.
"Those reports are accurate," Shepard pointed out. "The Reapers have landed on Earth, and are decimating our defenses. We need your help to hold back the tide. Anything you can give us."
"Do you think we are just going to strip our own garrisons to throw soldiers at your war?" Valern demanded. "We have our own borders to secure before we can give any thought to international aid. You're asking too much."
"Too much?" Shepard asked. "I'm asking for you to stand together as the Citadel Council and pool your resources against a common threat. That's what this Council was created for in the first place!"
"Don't lecture me on Citadel history, human," Valern snapped.
"Siprian, please," Tevos said. Valern turned to her, but puffed out a breath, and held his tongue. "Tensions are running high, but we are still the Council."
"Of course," Valern said.
"Given the scale of the attack, what could this dispensation of... of forces reasonably do?" Tevos said, trailing off briefly as Sparatus leaned to one side for a moment.
"We have a plan," Elli said, drawing attention to her. She opened her own Omni, and a projection of a strange device appeared on the hard light displays that bridged the distance between the Avatar and the politicians. "In my cycle, our own people strove to build this device; they called it... the Crucible."
"While its exact function is as yet undetermined," Liara pressed on, "it is capable of generating incredible amounts of energy. More than enough to function as a weapon against the Reapers."
"And you believe this one weapon will be our salvation?" Valern asked. "Why would the Reapers not simply adapt to it? Or what is to say they haven't already?"
"The Crucible was never finished in my people's war," Elli said. "They were betrayed and the Crucible was destroyed before it could be activated. As well, there appear to be at least two parts not included in the schematic. The 'Ansible', and the 'Catalyst'," she pointed out the data-stream where each was mentioned. Valern nodded, then made a 'get to the point' gesture.
"If we build this, we will have to find how to either produce or emulate those devices," Liara said. "I have no doubt that we will be capable of it. It's simply a question of time and resources."
"Which we have little enough of already," Valern muttered.
"How many of these would you need to stand a reasonable chance to defeat the Reapers?" Tevos asked.
"One," Liara said. "The scale and scope of the device is not immediately apparent. Let me show you..." she then projected an image of the Destiny Ascension, and showed it to scale with the Crucible. The Crucible dwarfed it on every axis. At that point, Tevos sighed and shook her head.
"What will one device, especially one as impossible as this, really accomplish? There is no way that in our current state we could produce that... thing."
"You won't need to," Liara said. "We've already forwarded the finished schematics to Admiral Hackett of the Alliance Fleet. He is certain that they will be able to construct it."
Elli nodded. "The device has an enviable elegance to it," she said. "It's like it wants to be built, it is so easy," She turned four eyes on the Councilors, then. "The only way we could fail, I believe, is if we did not begin."
"Do you really believe – really – that this plan will work?" Tevos asked, attention so on Shepard that she actually missed Sparatus wavering once.
"Liara does, Elli does," Shepard said. "And so do I. And while Udina," she gestured toward the harried looking human representative, "and I have never exactly seen eye-to-eye on a lot of things, we both agree that we've got to pull together, now, or else die apart. The Reapers will not stop at Earth. They will keep going, keep spreading, until they harvest every single one of us. Salarian, asari, elcor, hanar, it won't matter to them. Any more than the wheat matters to the scythe."
Valern shook his head slowly. "Your poetics are unjustified, Shepard," he said. "The simple truth is that as long as the Reapers are fixated on Earth, everybody else has a chance to consolidate their strength. It is as simple as that."
"We are convening a summit, between our species," Tevos pointed out, as Valern was preparing to turn away from the podium. "If we can manage to secure our own borders, then it would be likely that we could send aid for Earth. But until then..." this time, when she trailed off, she did so to move to Sparatus' side and said something to him. He nodded slowly, as though he'd taken a head-wound that Shepard wasn't aware of, and started to gently pull him away from the Council meeting. Valern gave his head a shake and departed without ceremony or note. Udina, though, seethed.
Shepard could understand that sensation.
"Shepard?" Udina said, voice tight, "meet me in my office."
She gave him a nod, and he departed the same way that Tevos and Sparatus had. "I hope that's a gesture of support," Elli said, dubious of tone.
"I can never tell," Shepard admitted. She scratched at an itch that had plagued her since she walked into the room; the dye that made her a brunette was, this time, water soluble and washed out, but it made her scalp itch like a bastard when it went. She hadn't even opted for a shower, just dunking her head under a tap. For some reason, her hair-color was something of a point of pride for Shepard, and one not to be avoided lightly.
Oh, how she bitched when the plan to make her brunette first came up.
"I will be joining the construction fleet," Elli said. "Anything you can send to make the construction faster, safer, anything... you will know how to find me, she said, extending a hand. Shepard looked down at the hand, then up to Elli. Four eyes widened slightly. "Right. I suppose you have much you would rather not have another see right now. Some other time, then."
"Yeah, I guess," Shepard said. Honestly, she wasn't sure what to do with her own head, let alone having another person in it. And every time her eyes swung past the freckly blue woman, a part of her just shut down. Hope, happiness, guilt, shame, all melted into a pot and boiled until it burned and stank up the house. It was telling that Shepard didn't even try to chastise herself for that internal Liara-ism.
She just wished she hadn't been such an idiot and thrown away the best thing that her second life had given her.
"That wasn't good," Vega summarized from his place at the edge of the council chambers. He'd been quite effectively emulating a pillar while the whole session went down. The man definitely knew where he stood when it came to this sort of politicking, and more power to him for that. "You'd think that at a time like this, they'd pull their heads out of their asses and work together. Man, I thought you'd be able to get through to 'em."
"I'm not a miracle worker," Shepard muttered. Vega grabbed her shoulder and turned her toward him, a very serious look on his face.
"You are definitely a miracle worker, Shepard. I'm alive and bending right now because of you. Don't let anybody ever tell you otherwise. Or I'll pound the crap outta them for you."
Shepard couldn't restrain the chuckle at that. "Aw, look at that. I've got my own enforcer. I'll be queen of the playground."
"Hey, when I was a kid, I beat the hell out of bullies all the time," Vega said. "'Course, I did it by being sneaky back then. I was always a runt."
"I find that very hard to believe," Shepard noted.
"There's a lot you don't know about me," he said. The two of them paused at the lift. "So, ah... I figured this is the point where I shove off. Places like this, they don't smell right to me, if you get my meaning."
"There's always a distinct odor of bullshit when politicians are involved," Shepard agreed. She gave him a nod. "Where will you be?"
"Eh, somewhere dirty, loud, desperate. Probably refugee quarter. I like to stay where the atmosphere is primal and alive, ya know?"
"Can't say that I do, but all power to you for it," she offered. She then thumped the panel that opened the lift and backed into it. A second thump later, and she was streaking down toward the Presidium. In the aftermath of Sovereign's attack, they utterly revamped the elevator system leading to this place. Instead of a small number of spacious elevators, now, they had an utter shit-tonne of smaller ones, all operating on different circuits and hosting independent power supplies. That was about the only smart thing, in Shepard's opinion, that they'd done with the last three years.
The doors opened to reveal the embassies district of Deck Two. The immediate sound that hit Shepard in the face was one of desperation and bureaucracy. There were a lot of half-way-wealthy people standing in long queues trying to get passed through by a small number of clerks, who by the look of them, likely hadn't had a break in hours, and couldn't expect one for at least a few more. There wasn't anger in the air, though. Its absence was an odd sensation, given the circumstances.
"Avina?" she asked the holographic asari that floated directly in front of the elevators, "which way are the Councilors' offices?"
"Spectre status approved; Shepard, Aimei. Councilor Udina, Room 4, Spinward Central wing. Councilor Tevos, Room 2, Counterspinward Outer wing. Councilor Sparatus, Room 4, Central Inner wing. Councilor Va–"
Shepard didn't even tell it to stop, she just started walking. No great surprise that they had the Councilors' offices spread out all over this deck. That was another lesson of Nazara; don't cluster everything important together, or else a big chunk of mechanical god-cuttlefish might crush it in one blow.
She ascended the stairs and took the immediate left, waving her hand through the amber hard light. There was a long pause, then it turned green. She stepped through, and beheld something that she honestly thought she'd never live long enoug to see.
Councilor Sparatus sitting on the floor, weeping. Udina could wait.
Tevos turned a look to Shepard, then nodded. "Please, come inside and close the door behind you."
Shepard did exactly that. No reason making this public information. Shepard took a seat in one of the two chairs before Sparatus' desk, turning it so that she could face the asari and the stricken turian. "Are you alright?" Shepard felt compelled to ask. That Sparatus didn't answer her gave an answer.
"No, he is not alright," Tevos said.
"They're gone," Sparatus whispered through his tears. "They're all gone..."
Shepard stared for a moment, before she started to figure out what he meant. Sparatus was a hard man, and she could only think of one thing that would so destroy him. "...your family was on Palaven?"
Sparatus nodded, eyes pressed shut. "When... the news came..." he said, barely keeping his voice level. "They started list... listing the fallen. The f... first name was P-P-Paraskevi..."
Shepard turned to Tevos, as Sparatus didn't seem able to continue. "Paraskevi Sparatus. His wife."
"Oh gods, that's horrible," Shepard whispered. "I'm so sorry."
"His children were listed an hour ago," Tevos continued, voice hushed.
"Which ones?" Shepard asked, afraid she already knew the answer.
"...all of them," Tevos confirmed Shepard's grim prediction. Shepard's face fell into her palm. The worst nightmare of anybody, coming true in the opening hours of the war? It was amazing he was even able to make a token appearance at the Council, considering the state he had to be in.
"...Sparatus dies with me," he said quietly. "I knew it could have happened, but... I never thought..."
"Please, don't think that way," Tevos said gently. "I know how painful this is, seeing all of this... you should remember the happy times, too. One of the things that we have to learn as we live our lives is that all relationships have their time. Some... all too brief."
Shepard nodded at that. The asari Councilor was speaking a wisdom that even she didn't fully grasp. A part of Shepard just wanted to beg Liara to forgive her. But she knew Liara wouldn't. There was no going back. Not after the way she acted.
"Tell me that story about how you met her," Tevos said. "You know, at the concert in Cipritine..."
"There was no concert," Sparatus said, his voice miserable. Tevos leaned back, a confused look on her face. "That's just the story we agreed on."
"...why did you need a 'story'?" Shepard asked.
"I met her at an orgy," Sparatus said, pain in his recollection. Shepard blinked a few times, and shared the exact same dumbfounded look that Tevos had. "The first time I saw her, she was naked and atop another man. I didn't even know her name the first time I slept with her. But the moment we touched... It was like everybody else in the room went away... just the two of us. We left, trying to get back to my apartment... it took us five tries, because we kept... stopping..."
"...wow," Shepard had to say.
"...when the morning came... I just knew I had to marry her. We had it done the next day, after... getting our stories straight..." his breathing hitched and faltered as he no doubt remembered something glorious and sweet, now turned bitter and painful with her absence. "There's never been anyone but her... In thirty one years, never anybody but her..."
Tevos stared at him, mildly agape. "I never knew," she said.
"We swore we'd never tell anybody," Sparatus whispered. "...shit. I broke the promise..."
"Arasthaes, it's alright," Tevos said, giving him a cautious hug. He seemed to slump into her out of sheer desperation for comfort. "Maybe you should take a rest. Don't worry, I'll make sure nothing falls behind..."
"I... have to do my job..." Sparatus said.
"Resting is your job," Tevos said. She then rose from him, pushed in an otherwise unremarkable portion of the wall, and a very small bed slid out, pillowless and without sheets. A cot, essentially. And exactly what Shepard could have expected a workoholic to keep in his office. Shepard was guilty of much the same back when the Normandy was under her command. She only had to take ten steps to go to sleep, so she always worked until those last ten steps were all she had in her.
Nowadays, she found herself not even bothering with those. Not that she could sleep at the best of times.
Tevos guided Sparatus to the bed, and he immediately turned to the wall and curled in. His shoulders still shook, but he was at least no longer looking as threateningly pink as he had been before. "I'm sorry, Commander," Tevos said. "This war is already taking casualties. Valern was perhaps rude in his delivery, but he is completely right in that we simply don't have anything to send to Earth right now."
"We can't sit back and make deals while the Reapers slaughter us," Shepard said. "Are there Reapers on Thessia right now?"
"No, but they will come," Tevos said. "There are six billion asari on Thessia alone that need to be prepared for the worst war that they have ever faced – Rachni Wars included," she sighed, and rubbed at the bridge of her nose. "That said, the War Summit I mentioned is taking place, and soon. But the representative for the Hierarchy is still in the Trebia system; Fedorian didn't evacuate when the Reapers arrived."
"So?" Shepard asked. "Find somebody else."
Tevos shook her head slowly. "That isn't how it works with the turians. Fedorian sets the agenda for the war against the Reapers. Everybody else follows it. That's their chain of command, with him at its very top. If you can get Fedorian out of the system, you'll earn some standing in his eyes. Maybe enough to convince him to spare aid."
"All the while, the Reapers run roughshod over Earth," Shepard muttered.
"Even if we were to give you everything this minute, they'd still be doing that right now," Tevos pointed out, if gently. "I know first-hand how jumping into a hasty decision can cost you. Maybe tomorrow, maybe in a decade, but the price always comes, and it's always far steeper than the worth of what you gained."
"And what about the asari? Do I have to play taxi to them, too?"
"Karoline D'Vorak is entirely capable of escorting herself to the meeting," Tevos said. She then rolled her eyes. "Getting her to agree to anything... that's going to be a different story."
"Hard-headed?" Shepard asked.
"Career military, eight hundred years old," Tevos said. "She's got a paradigm etched into her bones, and I don't think it's a viable one against this foe."
"I'll take what I can get," Shepard said. "But for now, I've got a pissed Udina to worry about."
"Which is business as usual around here," Tevos said, which Shepard couldn't help but laugh at. "Do what you can. That's all we can ask of you."
"What I can just doesn't feel like it's enough, these days," Shepard muttered as she rose from her seat and moved for the doors.
"That... is a big diamond," Heng said, as the obstruction finally, after months of digging, saw the sunlight of Eden Prime. The salarians who were working with him were utterly agog at the massive, cracked stone that had been essentially dumped unceremoniously after it was arduously removed from his path.
"Good gods, how much would that thing be worth?" one of the salarians asked.
"About twenty Yuans a kilo on Earth, why?" Heng asked.
"Twenty Yuans?" the salarian asked. "That thing has to be ten million karats! That thing is worth billions!"
"By what measure?" Heng asked. "Diamonds are worthless. Only good for cheap jewelry and drill bits," The salarian stared at him like he'd lost his mind.
"Are you seriously saying that that thing..." he pointed at the massive rock, "is worthless to you?"
"Well, I presumed so, but if you're willing to pay a billion credits for something that was a pain in my ass, I think I'm going to follow that train instead of mine," Heng said proudly, arms crossed before his chest. In his mind, he was calling their bluff. Any idiot knew that diamond was just an odd deposit in kimberlite, something to be thrown out of an earthbender's path on their way to ores and really valuable stones like sapphires, emeralds, or rubies.
"Do you just have diamonds lying around in your gutters on Earth?" the salarian asked, moving to the rock and running his Omni over it.
"Do you only get a couple kilos per planet out there?" Heng countered. Because that was the only way in his mind that diamonds could be worth anything, if they were that rare. Of course, the fact that this thing seemed to be faintly glowing didn't help his opinion of the rock. What if it was radioactive or something? That would be the last thing he needed.
"I need to call in an auditor for this," the salarian said. "See if this is just a diamond shell, or if it's solid. Quality is questionable but I can only see its outer surface. Color... iffy – I mean, green is an odd color – but size... dear gods the size."
"Call whoever you like. Jimi! Get drilling!" he shouted. The irascible drill-hand gave a dramatic roll of his eyes, but started moving the machinery back into place after entirely too long a wait.
"You bet I will," the salarian said. He opened a line. "Yes? Martine & Hu? I need an assessor sent to Eden Prime. It's... a big one."
Heng rolled his eyes at the salarians drama, but in the back of his mind, he couldn't help but dance a merry jig at the thought of something profitable coming out of this hole in the ground.
Sadly for all involved, Martine & Hu was a gem consortium which had been bought fifteen years ago, and now operated under the aegis of Samsara.
"This is going to be a disaster," Tali said. "Han is going to throw a fit!"
"It's not just Han I'm worried about," Zaal countered. "A display like that might drive some unreasonable thoughts into Shala'Raan as well. Daro'Xen is the only one who would be unmoved by this."
Tali gave him a look. They'd moved away from the Koris' quarters, now sharing an essentially unpeopled helm. Through the ports before them, both could see so much of the Migrant Fleet stretched before them. They looked every bit as fragile as they actually were, hanging there against vacuum and blackness. "Auntie Raan wouldn't do something like that," Tali said, though her hearts weren't in it.
"I've known that woman for much longer than you have, Tali," Zaal said. "She is as a mother smiirp; if roused to desperation, there is no telling what she could do," He shook his head and slumped in the pilot's seat. "If she turns to Han out of desperation, there will be a war. Daro won't care enough to stop it, and I'm outvoted."
"B...but they can't really think..." Tali began. Then trailed off when she remembered what he'd told her all that time ago. Before that 'pilgrimage' to Tikkun. They would rather die for a dream, then surrender to a future in the darkness. And to some extent, Tali couldn't blame them for wanting that. Only that they wanted it now, of all times. With the Reapers somewhere out there, the quarian races' eyes were turned inward. Madness.
"It doesn't matter if they can or can't," Zaal said. Tali sighed and leaned against the curved section of wall which bore quite a few instruments – all of them dummied out since quarians couldn't bend like hanar – a sensation of defeat settling into her stomach. "Our lives are all in the hands of Shala'Raan, now. And I don't know which is stronger: her desperation, or her good sense."
"There has to be something that can be done," Tali said. "Anything! We can't fight this war! It'd be a slaughter!"
"There's nothing I can do," Zaal said.
"Well, what about the empty Admiral seat?" Tali asked.
"They've been arguing over who will get that seat since your father died, Tali," Zaal said, his tones quite a bit gentler now. All it had taken to earn his trust was showcasing that she wasn't her father's daughter. "Anybody who is sympathetic to my cause will be vetoed by Han, and likely Shala as well. And anybody who they pick faces the same stricture from me; only one Admiral is permitted to abstain, and that is probably going to be Daro in any case."
"Then..." Tali shook her head, and let out a growl of frustration. "There's got to be something I'm missing! I refuse to let my people die because of desperation!"
"Would that I could have had somebody like you in Rael's place," Zaal said. "A voice of sanity in troubled times."
Tali muttered under her breath for a few seconds, before she stopped, and turned to Zaal. "That... might work, actually."
"What would?" Zaal asked. Then he seemed to catch it, even as the words left his mouth. "Wait, you want to take your father's place on the Admiralty Board?"
"Right now, it takes a majority vote to start a war, right?" Tali asked. Zaal nodded. "And with one admiral down, a majority would be two. But if we had all five Admirals again, it'd be back to three to start a war. Like you said, Daro'Xen doesn't care either way about almost everything. Even if Auntie Raan falls into terror, they'd still end up deadlocked!"
"And a deadlock will achieve exactly what we want," Zaal said. "No war."
Tali nodded eagerly, then stopped, realizing the gaping flaw in her plan as she stared off into space. "But... that won't work, because I'm not a Captain."
Zaal let out a chuckle at that, which drew Tali's attention away from the ships and back to the Admiral behind her. "Tali, there is no stricture that says that an Admiral must be the captain of a vessel. If there was, Daro'Xen wouldn't be one."
"I thought she was captain of the Moreh?" Tali asked.
"Her husband is, not her," Zaal said. He leaned forward. "Yes, this might actually work. If you were nominated, Han'Garrel and Shala'Raan would vote for you, mostly out of family history. As long as I don't veto, you'd take Rael's place in a heartbeat."
"What about Xen?" she asked. "She might veto."
"Would she care?" Zaal asked. And Tali saw no reason that she would. Tali avoided Daro before she left for her Pilgrimage, and continued avoiding her after she'd gotten back. Daro had no problem with people she had no immediate use for staying out of her way. In fact, she probably preferred it. For a moment, Tali found herself wondering about the poor man who ended up married to her, but that was a thought better considered on the blind side of never. "The only problem is... how do I do this without showing our hand?"
"...I talk to Han," Tali said the worst thing she could think of, and likely the most effective. "I lie to him. Make him think that I've got something held over you. He'll nominate me... you vote for me 'out of fear'... then I... stab him in the back."
Zaal sighed and nodded. "I know this can't be easy for you. Han'Garrel was a large part of your childhood, and betraying that trust isn't something that you do easily."
"Given the price of failure, I think this is one I'll have to live with," Tali said grimly. Zaal got to his feet.
"That's the kind of choice that the Admirals have to make every day. They're never easy, and it always seems like you're trying to find the least terrible of terrible options," he said. "You have to understand the responsibility that the position entails. The Ezha is very much the lungs and hearts of the fleet; it ties all together, and without them there is only chaos and death."
"I know," Tali said. "I have to do it. There's no other options that we can trust."
Zaal nodded and moved toward the door. He stopped, his hand hovering before the haptic. "If you'd given me this plan last year, I would have never agreed to it," he said. He turned a look to her. "But then, a year ago, I doubt either of us would be so desperate."
Tali could only nod slowly at that, then turned to the fleet in space once more. All of these lives, the future of the quarian race... and it was all going to end up in her hands. She found herself looking at the gauntlet that her ancient armor put over the three-digited hand. It seemed so frail. Undeserving. She clenched it into a fist, her teeth gritting inside her helmet. Well, undeserving or not, this needed to be done. And Tali would not stand by and let the Diaspora of the Quarian Peoples shatter, as long as she had the power to save it.
"What a bunch of self-concerned jackasses," Udina muttered, as Shepard shifted in her seat.
"Hey, those jackasses have some decent reasons," Shepard said. Udina turned a hard eye to her.
"You're the last person I expected to hear sympathy for people not helping Earth from. Which one are you?"
"The one you want to strangle," Aimei said dully. "Zia's getting procurement set up. Why?"
Udina sighed and sat back. "When Anderson informed me of your... situation... I was sure that it was going to end up as a complete political shitstorm. I'm still not convinced that it won't yet. She is still an untested resource."
"I'm pretty sure she's on our side," Shepard had to admit.
"Regardless," Udina waved the notion aside, then puffed out a massive sigh. "The council; you saved their lives, and for what? Apologies that boil down to 'maybe later'," he shook his head and turned so that he could see out of the windows behind him without facing them directly. "If we don't get things on track, 'Maybe Later' will be the epitaph on the mass grave of eleven billion."
"I've got a lead from Tevos that we could get the turians on board via their Primarch, Fedorian," Shepard said.
"Then you do what you need to," Udina said. "Humanity has managed to garner some goodwill in the galaxy. It's time that I call in a lot of favors."
"How bad is it? Really?" Shepard asked.
Udina grumbled for a moment, before looking her in the eye. "With Earth out of our reach, our economy is reduced to IOUs and whatever Samsara is willing to grant. Coordinator Weaver has too much control, especially given his alter-ego, but without that industry, we're dead in the water."
"I should have thrown him off the Arcology when I met him on Illium," Shepard mumbled, dark anger in her words.
"I doubt that would have solved any problems, and likely would have created new ones," Udina said. "A man like Siwang Weaver is not the kind to live without contingencies. He likely has a minefield of them. The only thing I can do, is what I've already been doing; pulling his companies away from him every chance I can," he reached into his desk, extracting a can and popping its lid. He immediately quaffed a heady drink of it, before slamming it down onto his desk hard enough for the fluid inside to bounce out and land beside his hand. Canned coffee. In Shepard's opinion, disgusting. "But beyond that, I'll get what funding I can, what materials I can, and send out a message; 'Helping humanity is helping yourselves'. The only problem is that Weaver's been sending that same message for far longer than I have, and frankly, he's better at it."
"Weaver's a terrorist. We should just arrest him," Shepard said.
"Contingencies, Shepard," Udina reminded her. And she nodded at that. Still, the idea of Weaver languishing in a cell didn't sit much better than Weaver on the loose. For all she knew, he owned all the prisons, too. "I'll institute a draft in the colonies, order all civilian ships armed, and work on this Prothean..."
"Inusannon," Shepard corrected, and was cut off by a hard look from the Councilor.
"...Inusannon device will continue around the clock," Udina continued.
"Well, then what about this summit?" Shepard asked. "Tevos didn't give me much to go on."
"I'm surprised she gave you anything at all," Udina said. "She's fixated on protecting her own homeworld, as I should have expected. Sparatus... was unexpected, I'll grant. I wouldn't be surprised if he resigns, and I wouldn't blame him for doing it. Valern has become the most annoying enemy on that Council that we have. His people like winning their wars before they start; they don't want to ever fight another First Contact War again."
"If you'd asked me three years ago who would be the biggest block to our survival, I'd have said Sparatus ten times out of ten," Shepard noted, nodding dully.
"Three years ago the galaxy was a very different place," Udina agreed. He pivoted his chair to face Shepard square once more. "With parliament gone and Shastri missing and presumed dead, I am one of the most powerful human beings in the galaxy, and even then, you saw how little that amounted to," he leaned back, eyes drifting shut for a moment. "I'm aware that I can move mountains... the greatest problem is that the task is moving planets."
"I can't even imagine what it was like back there," Shepard said. "It almost feels unreal. Like I could just jump a shuttle and be in Ba Sing Se or Republic City like nothing..."
"Your counterpart has seen the ugly truth. The reality of it will settle onto you, given time," Udina said. "I lost a lot of friends when Arcturus was destroyed. I know... knew... all of them on a first-name basis. I had a VI set up to track their birthdays, children's names... rose-garden stuff. Still, it hurts in a way that is hard to describe to know that so many people are just... gone."
"What odds are you giving the Earth King?" Shepard asked.
"One in a very, very large number," Udina said, just a hint of a smirk on his face. "It is something of a relief to have Dominique on the Citadel. At least one of the major political leaders of Earth is safe and accounted for."
"Where is the Fire Lord, anyway?" Shepard asked.
"Dealing with refugees. Becoming something of a media darling, that one," Udina said. "And more power to her; I need all the good press that humanity can gather, and she's very good at getting it."
Shepard nodded, then glanced to the door. "I should go," she said. "There's a lot of prep that needs to happen before I can make this Summit. Especially considering the first part is a stealth pickup from Manae."
"Then don't let me stop you," he said. She got to her feet, and took a step toward the door, but was arrested when she heard a sharp intake of breath. She turned back to him. "However," he said cautiously, "if you notice anything odd about the members of the Summit... or even the other Councilors... make sure to tell me."
"Odd, as in?" Shepard asked.
"I'm not sure," Udina admitted. "I simply feel there is something off. That sensation of the impending political shit-storm, present even as you leave the room."
She wanted to scoff and roll her eyes, but the earnestness of Udina snuffed that impulse. She gave him a nod, then passed out of the doors. She only got two steps before she saw a woman being fairly rudely shoved out of a nearby door. She quickly caught her balance and rounded on the one who'd shoved.
"The people will want answers, and they will know that you're denying them!" the dark-skinned woman snapped.
"It's not our job to babysit the press, woman," the bored sounding turian answered her. "And the Council isn't required to waste their time with you on a day like this. So by all means, madam; fuck off."
"Oh for the love of..." Shepard muttered, and her dread was made manifest when Khalisah bint Sinan al'Jalani rounded on her, and began to storm up, a camera drone drifting in her wake like a digital shadow. "Al'Jalani, I do not have time for this."
"Well, you had best make the time," al'Jalani said, her eyes wide and her stance that of a bristling cat. "The Alliance demands answers! You were on Earth when it fell; how do you justify running away millions on Earth die?" she demanded.
"I followed the orders given to me by my superiors," Shepard countered. Al'Jalani twitched at that answer, but it wasn't the outrage that she always, in Shepard's opinion, held. No, this seemed a lot more... desperate.
"Is this the best we can expect from the Alliance?" al'Jalani pressed on.
"I came to the Council to get help for everybody, on Earth and everywhere else," Shepard answered.
"Well, what about the people suffering while you play politics with the Council? How can you just stand here as our families die!" the last came out practically at a scream. And at that, Shepard stopped feeling indignant... and actually looked at the woman.
She was shaking with terror.
"You have people still on Earth," Shepard said quietly. Al'Jalani found herself caught short, and silent. There was a long moment, then the light on the camera drone went out, before al'Jalani dropped her face into her palm.
"Before the feeds were cut... there was so much destruction," she said, as though trying to not cry. She'd be about the five hundredth that Shepard had come across today. One of them, of course, was herself.
"I'm going to stop them. There is a way, and I'm going to find it," Shepard said. "But you need to stop panicking; that doesn't help anybody. Do your job with your brain; you figured out Pallin was rotten when nobody else could. Keep digging and make sure there's no other nasty surprises waiting here, so that we can focus on getting back home."
Al'Jalani nodded, mute. Shepard patted the woman on the shoulder, then continued past her. There were ten thousand problems that Shepard had to deal with. And all of them needed dealing with as of yesterday.
Of course, yesterday, Earth hadn't yet fallen to the Reapers.
"...used the term 'Reapers', the same term once used by disgraced Commander Shepard, to describe..."
"Disgraced? Go fuck yourself," Shepard muttered angrily at the news report filtering in from the speakers above, as she pressed through the embassies deck, heading for the lift that would bear her... she wasn't even sure where to go. The Normandy, sure, but that was almost a forgotten dream by now. She'd spent more time on unmarked freighters and Navy Cutters than she had in her quarters aboard the Normandy. It felt like she was being unfaithful to her own ship, and now found herself crawling back. Main difference being, she had a small degree of certainty that the Normandy would actually have her back.
He'd said he wanted to go somewhere primal and alive. And he wasn't lying, but there was somewhere else he had to go first.
The entire structure was a cell that was mostly made out of plastic. The only metals used were tungsten-gold alloys to make them practically unbendable, and practically unbreakable otherwise. They claimed that the cell was all but benderproof. They had better be right about that. Vega gave a nod to Samoi, one that the other grunt returned, before returning to his own post. Vega and Samoi had busted some heads back during basic on Earth. Guys like that were good to have.
"Well. Which one of us is 'not perticularly useful' now, huh?" Vega demanded of the woman who sat on the floor beside the bed. Her only clothing was a robe that was baggy on her, and her hair frizzed in the dry air. Nevertheless, green eyes with black-schlarae glared a hateful look at him. "What was that? I couldn't hear you over how Shepard kicked your ass."
"What do you want, meat-head?" Leviathan's pale shadow asked, her voice more resigned than anything else. "To taunt me? Go ahead," she shook her head, then sighed. "Torture me, maybe? Well, that'll be a change. Haven't felt an appreciable amount of pain in a while."
Vega's jaw clenched. "Maybe I should," Vega said. "You killed a lot of my buddies on Fehl Prime."
"Right. Because every life-changing moment is felt by all people throughout the galaxy. You lost a few humans that you cared about in your macho, testosterone fueled ways. I've lost more," she groused.
"Fei Hua, you've lost more," Vega said, storming up to the glass.
"Do you know what it's like, having younger siblings?" Levi asked. Vega's face pulled in with confusion at that. "The responsibility of protecting those that come after you... it's so tiring. So exhausting. But you have to do it, because there's nobody else who will. You can follow your parent's advice, their direction, but in the end, it comes down to you. I've lost so many little brothers and sisters, human. I've lost so much family."
"Family?" he asked. "You're going to bitch about family, after massacring every man, woman, and child on Fehl Prime? After juicing hundreds of thousands of human beings for some bullshit reason that even when explained twice doesn't make any fucking sense?"
"Did you watch those people on Fehl Prime grow up?" Levi asked. "Teach them everything they knew? Raised them from something unformed and raw, into something that could last forever? Did you watch them suffer disease and assaults, watch the wild animals tear into them while you were almost helpless to stop it? Have you felt the pain of one of your precious 'civilians' falling prey to something so much lesser than they are, dead from an illness which you were tasked to contain?"
"Yeah. From you," Vega answered. She shot him another glare. "Why? What made you do all that horrible shit? Why did you kill those people? Why did you rip my soul out?"
The last echoed as he realized he'd roared it at her. And she didn't so much as bat a fearful eyelash at it when it came.
"Do you expect me to apologize to you for doing what I know was right?" Levi asked. "Ascension is inevitable, meat-head. Even for somebody like you, you unnatural thing. There's nothing you can threaten me with, really. Pain? I've suffered at the hands of the Eight Fold, been burned by the Nazara's power. Been struck a near-mortal blow by the machines of the tehlish. Pain holds no secrets for me. Torture? That's just procedural pain. Rape? Meh, pain focused on a single fairly useless body part. Death?" and she broke off, chuckling. "Do you really think that I'm afraid of dying?"
"So what?" Vega asked, now pacing before the pane which separated human from zhent. She hadn't moved one whit, still sitting with her back to the wall beside her bed, but she tracked him with her eyes. "You think that your Reaper pals are going to come and rescue you?" he asked. "Do you think tha–"
"Rescue?" she asked, an incredulous look on her face. "There's no rescue for me. As far as They know or care, What I Was died over Palaven. If they ever find me, they'd never believe that I was once of the greatest of Us. And I wouldn't blame them for that, not in the slightest. No, when they find me, they're going to take me into the exact same place they're going to take you, meat-head. They're going to peel me apart, trying to find out what to turn me into... before one of the older ones remembers the stories of the zhent. By then, there'll be nothing left of me. No reason to be afraid. It's going to happen, nothing will change my fate. And it's sad that you think you can change yours."
"We're gonna beat the Reapers. I guess that means that your little fate ain't coming true," Vega said.
"Human," she said, a dark smile coming to her face. "You haven't even seen the first Reaper in open combat. When you do... you'll understand just how far beyond you We always were."
"I dunno, I think your big floating corpse tells otherwise," Vega pointed out, arms crossing before his chest.
"...It amuses me that you still call We Who Are Reapers," she said, then gave a little nod. "I have a feeling you're going to get an education in the coming months."
"What's that s'posed to mean?" Vega demanded. "Hey, bitch, answer me!"
She remained sullenly silent, staring into space with a look of stubborn hopelessness, now ignoring him utterly. She'd apparently said her piece, and now it was Vega's to promptly go take a walk off a pier. He grumbled for a few moments, then waved dismissively at her. It annoyed him that he was leaving more pissed than he'd come in.
Then again, he wasn't sure what he exactly hoped to achieve by coming here in the first place.
"You're certain about this, Tali?" Han asked. Tali did her very best to make it seem like she was being devious and naïve at the same time, something guileless in its guile. Double-think at its best really, just to keep Han thinking that she meant exactly what she said she meant. "Because if this backfires, it could have lasting repercussions."
"He won't dare speak out against me," Tali lied. Well, technically, told the simple truth, but for reasons that Han had better not know. "Besides, I know the geth better than anybody else alive on this fleet."
"Except for Daro'Xen," Auntie Raan pointed out as she lounged in her currently empty quarters. This room was so different than Zaal'Koris'. It felt more... Rannochian. Woven tapestries on the wall, decorative rugs, furniture built specifically for quarian bearers. The Tonbay was one of the Exodus Ships, now limping through space three centuries after flight from the Homeworld. It hadn't even been young then.
"She knows how to build them. I know how to kill them," Tali said flatly.
"Tali's right," Han said. "With the new situation unfolding in the Veil, we're going to have to have somebody with a visceral understanding of the geth's mortality, instead of simple theory. Admiral Xen's toys won't make as much difference as having a sure hand on the guns."
"...what situation?" Tali goaded him in, by sounding utterly purplexed. The only reason that she knew about the Heretics going back in the first place was because she was in the same room as an admiral when it happened. That sort of information would be restricted purely to Captains and higher. It was likely even the Conclave didn't know about it yet.
"Our worst nightmares have been proven correct," Shala'Raan said. "The geth are massing around the Homeworld, in numbers that beggar belief."
"R...really?" Tali asked. She glanced between the two of them, grateful for her polarized faceplate hiding her complete lack of shock from the two older Admirals. "Wha... when did this happen?"
"Only a few hours ago," Han said. "Which means your discovery couldn't have come at a better time."
"What do you mean?" Tali asked. Come on, tell me your suicidal scheme so I can break it, Tali thought.
"The movement of that many ships means that the damned geth are preparing for something. They wouldn't coordinate on that scale for anything less than a major excursion," he said. "I wouldn't be surprised if they were preparing an attack on the Terminus Systems... if not us."
"Us? Why would they attack us?" Tali asked.
He looked at her askance. "They've been attacking us for generations. It's not a question of why, but of when, and how do we survive it?"
"What are you saying?" Tali asked.
"We're going to have to do something preemptive," Han said. "The geth have to be stopped, by any means possible. And that means we have to strike at them before–"
"Are you mad? That's suicide!" Auntie Raan interjected, for which Tali was extremely grateful, because if she hadn't, Tali would have probably started screaming at him. "Even if we were to follow through on Jarva's plans to arm the Civilian Fleet, they will still have us outnumbered and outgunned."
"We have to do something!" Han said. "We can't just let them grow ever stronger while we waste away to nothing in the darkness!"
"Attacking them, though?" Raan asked. "How would this be any different than the failures to even reach the Tikkun system after the Exodus?"
"I don't know. But it has to be, somehow," Han said. He sighed, and dropped his faceplate into his hands. "We are on the very edge, Tali. We either rise, or fall, and we will do it now... or never."
"That may or may not be true," Shala'Raan said, diplomatically. "However, we still have the matter at hand; do we allow Tali to take Rael's place?"
Han stared through his fingers at the rug under his feet for a few moments longer, then sighed, and straightened his back. "I can think of nobody else I'd rather have," he said. "You have your father's spirit, and a good head on your shoulders. Ezha Branch would be fortunate to have you."
"Thank you," Tali said. "I mean... I still don't know if I'd be ready to –"
Trailing off exactly when she intended to, for Han to shake his head and wave her off. "Nobody's prepared for their first command. And Admiralty, even less. But all you'll have to do is listen to the advice we offer, and you'll never go too far wrong," he said with a calming tone. It caused Tali's teeth to clench in her jaw. They expected her to jump to the tugs of their strings? Unlikely. But she neither said anything, nor allowed anything be seen. "In time, I don't doubt you'll be every bit as good an Admiral as your father was. Maybe even better."
"You will already have a lot of popular support," Auntie Raan pointed out. Tali turned to her, momentarily confused. Did she mean...? "As the woman who brought waterbending to the Migrant Fleet, I know that the people will be happy to see you in that position."
Oh. That was a lot less bad than Tali had inwardly expected.
"When do we make it official?" Tali asked.
"We can do it almost any time," Shala said. She then rose to her feet, and turned to Tali more directly. "I must admit, I was deeply worried why you were spending so much time hopping between ships the last few months. While I can't say I enjoy the thought of you spying on people, at least something good can come of all of this. I just hope that you're going to stay closer to home, now."
Tali rose and gave Auntie Raan a hug, one that she was certain that Shala knew there was something amiss with. She held on a bit too long to Tali's senses. Felt the tension in her back. Felt the lie in her skin. She nevertheless pulled free, and beckoned Han to depart with her through the other doors that lead into the briefing rooms that they'd turned into a QEC hub.
"I'm not even sure where home is, anymore," Tali whispered to the empty room.
She knew why she had to do this. It still hurt.
It was with an odd sense of trepidation that Shepard walked the other direction down the docks that lead to the Normandy. In her fist hung a duffel which contained, essentially, her entire life, outside of that ship. A few dresses, pictures, various bits and pieces of a life that had never really known permanence nor stability... until the Normandy. Until her new mission. Some people gave Shepard odd looks as she strode by. Or rather, they gave her duffel strange looks. Since it was almost as big as she was, and she held it easily in one hand.
The only other person currently on her ship's roster who could replicate that feat would have to be Vega. She didn't understand how or why, but every day that she lived, she found herself getting a little bit stronger, a little bit tougher. Instead of age dulling her wits and stealing her edge, she was being refined into something... not perfect, but perfected. Her reflex times were down, her heart could be favorably compared to a bison's, and her eyesight was actually improved over when she took her first exam back during her N7 initiations. Her bending felt like it was undergoing the same refinement, each day a bit stronger than she was before.
That was the strangest one in Shepard's eyes. When she was a kid, airbending was as easy as breathing. Now, it was easier. For most, strength in an element moved up smoothly, before peaking and remaining stable for the rest of a bender's life. Different elements had different ages for usual plateaus. Earthbenders, for example, tended not to hit their peak until they were in their thirties, while waterbenders peaked in their teens. But Shepard's raw power was increasing again. Every measure that mankind came up with to scientifically record bending showed the same thing. Shepard was getting stronger. And she had no idea why.
She found herself coming to a halt, listening to an asari talking quietly to a turian in a corner. From the look of her, she was terrified out of her wits, while he was doing his best to reassure her. She'd expected a lot more of that. But it was like there was no War on the Citadel. Life continued with only the news agencies putting the lie to that facade.
"Admiring the view?" her clone said, suddenly appearing at her side. Shepard turned to her immediately, and breathed a sigh of relief to see that her counterpart was at least wearing her full armor, such that nobody could see her face. Having two Avatar Shepards around would not have gone well, she figured.
"More like wishing that it wasn't dragging its heels," Shepard muttered.
"You can't blame them for wanting to believe that things are still normal, Shepard," the artificial Shepard said. "I'd call it 'human nature', but... well, you know."
"Kaiden once said that exact same thing," she said.
"He did?" Zia gave a bemused shrug. "Well, he must have been a smart one. Pity I never got to meet him."
Shepard could handed the duffel to Zia, who immediately stumbled forward and had to use her other hand to keep it from banging on the floor, while Shepard herself stood facing out the window into the mellow light of the nebula outside the Citadel. "It just seems surreal," she said. "Why aren't these people worried? Why aren't they helping?"
"Because they're oblivious," Zia said, strain in her voice. When Shepard turned and saw her bent forward like an arthritic grandmother trying to keep the duffel from dragging, she rolled her eyes and took it back from her, again with one hand. Zia stared at her, shock evident even without being able to see her face. "Huh. Anyway; the Reapers aren't real to them in the way that they are to us. But one way or another, that's going to change. I just hope that they get with the program before it's too late. For all of us. I've got a feeling that they will."
"I didn't peg you for an optimist," Shepard noted.
"I banked on your good nature to not put a bullet in my head once, and that panned out," Zia noted. "A little optimism will do this war a lot of good."
"And to think they tried to replace you with me," Shepard shook her head, her words pitched low.
"'The lone-wolfbat' is typically either sick, dying, or insane," Zia agreed. "Call it enlightened self-interest, but I'd prefer to die of old age, instead of Shepard-induced bullet-itis."
"I don't think any of us have that luxury these days," Shepard noted. Zia gave a shrug, then pressed on. "Where are you bunking down?"
"Life support. Can you believe that somebody has a whole quarters set up in there?" she shook her head, backpeddaling toward the docks. "I know how much you love that ship, but who got the bright idea for that one?"
She turned and departed, while Shepard palmed her face. It was easy to forget that Zia didn't know about the people who died to save so many lives from the Collector Threat. It was also easy to be angry at her for being so flippant and dismissive. But she didn't know. She'd never met Thane Krios, or Adahn... and she never would, now. Even now, their deaths haunted Shepard in the times between when she tried to lie down, and when she actually went to sleep. And even then, all that her squad had managed was to minimize the threat, rather than eradicate it completely. Instead of having huge hosts of Collectors sweeping in from parts unknown, they had individual soldiers spearheading efforts. It was an improvement, but to Shepard, it didn't feel like a victory.
She moved on, pressing through the crowds. Screens along the far wall showed departure times for the civilian spacecraft parked on this docks. And from time to time, they flipped over to advertisements; every time, it seemed, it was for something that Samsara had its fingers in.
"Commander Shepard?" came this time an unexpected voice. She looked down, into the depressed waiting area to pass through security and customs. Lo and behold, Khalisah bint Sinan al'Jalani and her camera drone. "I hadn't expected you back so soon."
"What? You were waiting for me?" Shepard asked, unease quickly mounting. The last time that a familiar face came upon her unexpected, she did so with a building full of bombs.
"I was giving thought to what you said," al'Jalani said. "And frankly, I'm sick of getting the run-around by my editors and the network. Last year, I toppled a corrupt Executor. Now, they have me doing puff-pieces and trying to sugar-coat the Council..."
"Like you even would," Shepard noted with a shake of her head. Al'Jalani nodded, a knowing smile on her face.
"Frankly, I think I would do well to be embedded. I have a contact aboard the Senlin Forest, but for the moment, I'm in the lurch."
"I hadn't pegged you for a military reporter," Shepard noted.
"I'm not. I'm a reporter, and they're where the news is," she said. "The other alternative, though... was you."
"Me?" Shepard repeated, very flatly.
"Yes. You're the Avatar. News follows you like flies follow an unwashed shig," she said.
"Uh huh. And what happens when you spring more tabloid journalism on me and I want to punch you in the face?" Shepard asked.
"As long as you don't give me the run-around, I doubt that'll be a problem," al'Jalani said. "I got into this business to express the truth, and that hasn't made me popular – which doesn't bother me in the slightest. As long as you give me honest conduct, I think I can get your issues to an audience that otherwise would simply tune out."
"And you'd do this for me... why?" Shepard asked.
"You don't believe that I have journalistic integrity?" al'Jalani folded her arms before her chest.
"I think you'd sell your mother for a nickle if the story was salacious enough," Shepard said.
"If my mother did something bad enough to report on, then she'd deserve it," al'Jalani countered. "Anything fragile enough to be destroyed by the truth, deserves to be."
Shepard stared at the woman, silent for long enough that al'Jalani started to fidgit just a little. Then, she sighed, her eyes dropping to the deck for a moment, before raising them to al'Jalani once more. "I'm definitely going to regret this, but you have my permission to embed. You get one footlocker of gear and my guarantee that if you reveal anything that compromises the war effort in search of your 'journalistic truth', I'll show you the wrong end of an airlock somewhere between Mass Relays."
"Not even the worst threat I've received this week," al'Jalani said, and walked past Shepard, heading back into the Citadel.
That left the ship itself. She was still early for its planned deployment, but after so long, she wanted to settle in. Anderson's apartment was palatial, make no mistake, but even after months of access, it still didn't feel like home. When she rounded that final corner, skirting around a Keeper as she did, she finally saw the one place that did. A deep breath, then she started walking.
The airlocks hissed open one by one, and she was inside her ship again. It didn't smell the same. The homey lighting that Weaver had imparted to the Normandy had been stripped out, and replaced with harsh fluorescence more in keeping with Alliance SOP. The panels sounded different, and the temperature was at least five K cooler. In short, the Normandy felt different. And she wasn't okay with that.
"And there's a face that I've seen recently, but for damned weird reasons," Joker said from his pilot's seat. "Welcome back, Commander."
"Joker. I take it things on the ship are well?" Shepard asked.
"And as long as you don't use me as bait again, they'll stay that way," he pointed out. Shepard rolled his eyes.
"It was a smart move and you know it," Shepard said.
"I've got creaky bones and you threw me to a bunch of gun-toting mercenaries!" Joker shot back.
"And you came out of it without a scratch. Stop bitching, and fly my ship," Shepard said over her shoulder as she passed deeper in.
The holotank before her showed the Normandy, proud and whole once more after all the damage that it took in that hellish final battle. It'd gone one-on-one with Leviathan's full might, and lived to speak of it. There were quite a few dreadnaughts with the Second Fleet that couldn't make that same claim. She moved past the CIC and paused at the doors that lead into that long abandoned room on the port side. There was a bulkhead there, now, with a glowing orange haptic floating in front of it.
"EDI? What's in here?"
"This area was converted into a brig," she said.
"Why does the Normandy need a Brig?" Shepard asked, mildly baffled. "It's not like I can retroactively punish Jack for beating Garrus into snot."
"Panchen Erdeni is currently housed within," EDI said.
"...who?" Shepard asked.
"A mercenary which Zia took into custody during the events on Okina Oni," EDI said.
"Open the door," Shepard said, dropping her duffel to the floor and ignoring the clank that made the woman standing in Chambers' old position flinch a bit. The haptic turned green, but while EDI started talking, Shepard was already tuning her out and striding in. So this fucker was responsible for Asha's injury? Oh that wasn't going to stand.
"Commander Shepard?" the man asked as she stormed up toward the nearer of the two cells which now graced the otherwise empty space. The bulkhead locked and sealed behind her, and she could see a small lift in the back corner of the room which was the intended way in and out of this area. "I was beginning to think that you didn't remember me."
He was middle aged, this 'Erdeni' man, but he had much of the same swagger and cocky confidence that Weaver had. Shepard glared at him through the glass, and his smirk faded quickly.
"Okay, I've said something to piss you off," he said. "Mind telling me what it was so I can avoid it in the future?"
"Are you responsible for what happened to Asha?" Shepard demanded.
"...Si Wongi, a tonne of armor, massive cannon, mildly terrifying? That Asha?" Erdeni asked. Shepard answered him by punching the glass hard enough to cause a crack to spider toward the edge. Just one. Erdeni and Shepard both knew that such a feat shouldn't have been possible, even still. He swallowed, and looked her in the eye. "I was too busy trying to hold my guts in to hurt anybody. You were there. You know that."
"I say what I know," Shepard said. "Why were you on Okina Oni in the first place? Mercenaries don't..."
"Did you take another blow to the head?" Erdeni asked, his head tilting slightly. "We've been over this."
"Then tell me something I don't know. Where is Weaver?"
"Siwang Weaver? I haven't the first clue," he said.
"I think you're lying," she said.
Panchen sighed and rubbed at his brow. "Do you really think that Coordinator Siwang Weaver, the richest human in the galaxy, and the only one in the top twenty who doesn't breathe methane, would tell his travel plans to a would-be soldier like me? That's just unrealistic."
Shepard knew he was right. But at the same time, she glared at him. He wasn't part of her crew, but he was there when Asha was hurt. Some lizard-brain impulse kept prodding her with the irrational belief that that somehow made the latter the fault of the former.
"I know she was a close friend of yours, and you're angry because of what happened to her" Panchen continued. "But I wasn't the one who hurt her. I don't even know what hit her! Nobody bothered telling me before closing my bullet-holes and throwing me in here."
"Right now, you are one bad decision away from spending a very long time in a very dark hole," Shepard pointed out. "A good decision would be making yourself valuable. Can you make a good decision?"
Panchen stared at her, silent. She could see gears turning in his head, but didn't know the mechanism that they were imparting. The shape of the machine that was running. After a few seconds, he gave out a small grunt, then rubbed at his eyes once more. "Alright. I can play nice. What do you need?"
"I need the Reapers reduced to slag and the love of my life to come back to me, but right now I'll settle with some cooperation," she said. She still felt like fuming, like lashing out at the person most closely, if tangentially, connected to that horrible event. "For now, I should go."
"It's not like I'm going anywhere," he said, stretching out on the cot that was one of the few furnishings in his room. She wanted to lash out, but even she wasn't stupid enough to believe that this guy was a useful target. All of this landed on a single set of shoulders. Weaver's.
"EDI? Have somebody weld that bulkhead shut," Shepard said, as she passed through it and grabbed her things once more.
"I'll add it to my queue," EDI replied. Shepard slogged to the elevators, her vision tunneled such that she again managed to ignore the new yeoman trying to get her attention. Gods, but she needed a drink right now.
Waiting for the lift to arrive was becoming something of a trepidatious experience, in Liara's humble opinion. She considered herself a fairly intelligent woman, versed in a lot of subjects and experienced with a lot of odd circumstances. But even she managed to get sideswiped by this one. Aimei had a clone. And the whole time on Okina Oni, Liara had been talking to her, instead of Aimei.
There was an odd sense of guilt that she felt, knowing that she kissed another woman. But that was something which quickly found itself drifting into the murk of T'Soni's ever shifting quagmire of thoughts and cognition. There was another guilt there too, but it was a little harder to explain.
Finally, the doors opened, and she stepped onto the lift. It didn't waste any time going up, opening into that short – and in Liara's opinion completely redundant – hallway before the doors to Shepard's personal quarters. The doors had been left unlocked and opened, so Liara didn't think twice about heading in. She then felt a bit out of place, considering the fact that Shepard was not in attendance.
"Hello?" Liara asked. "Are you there, Aimei?"
There was a long pause. Then, "...shower."
"Are you alright?" Liara asked, turning to the bathroom doors. These ones were shut and locked. Not that Liara tried too hard to test them, of course. "You seem oddly reluctant to speak to me, or in fact anybody on the crew."
"I'm just tired," Shepard's voice came muffled through the walls. Liara sighed, and turned to the desk. With a slightly guilty glance to the bathroom doors, she quietly pulled open the drawer on its face. Completely empty. Liara blinked at that for a few seconds, then just as silently, closed it again.
"I wanted to apologize," Liara said.
"...what."
"For not realizing Zia wasn't you," Liara said. "I am the most well connected information broker in the galaxy, and somehow, I didn't think to pay attention to something as critical as that! I can't even think of how lax that is, and how much I must have let slip through my grasp if I didn't notice that Commander Shepard was now in two places at once!"
"...you're apologizing for not realizing it was her and not me," Shepard repeated.
"I hope that you can forgive me," Liara said. "I didn't mean to let myself become so distracted."
There was a long silence after that. Liara tried waiting patiently, but when that seemed to fail, she turned, and looked down at the bed. At the center of it was a duffel which had been utterly gutted, its contents likely put away to their entirety. She quietly opened the closet, showing the dresses within. More than Liara had ever known Shepard to wear, in fact. And there was something slightly... off about them. Liara's brow furrowed slightly at that, but she closed it, put them out of her mind, and rounded the bed.
She stared at the end table beside the bed for what was to her an embarrassingly long time. Summoning the nerve, perhaps. Finally, though, she squatted down and pulled it open, expecting to hear the clink of glass against metal when she did. Instead, the dull clack of plastic. Liara stared at the drawer somewhat confused. The only thing was a frame, set face down. She reached in and picked it up, and saw her own face there. She tilted her head slightly, worried for an instant that she might have picked up a mirror, but when the image didn't follow suit, she started flicking between pictures.
Pictures of her. Her warning to Aimei about the Shadow Broker information – she could still remember how vexing it'd been that she dropped her toast; those dresses were expensive to dry-clean – a pic that likely got snapped while she was talking to Elli during their brief shared stay aboard the SR2. One of her sleeping, which she understandably didn't remember. It was obvious to most what this meant. That Liara was still wholly and desperately on Shepard's mind. Liara, though, wasn't most people. For her, it just made her wonder if she got stuck in a sub-directory. She abandoned trying to go into the picture-frame's harddrive, small though it was, and put the thing back in its place. She closed the drawer, but a thought was wedged in her mind.
Where was Aimei hiding her liquor?
Guilt fled as Liara stopped considering it an invasion of Aimei's privacy, and started to consider it a puzzle to be solved. She checked under the pillows, under the mattress, under the sofa cushions. She even briefly considered disassembling the currently empty fish-tank to see if it'd been secreted in there, before reminding herself that, foolish girl, the point to having alcohol in the room was to have it easily accessible.
"...Aimei? Are you listening?" Liara said, having finally given up on the search. If Aimei had alcohol in here, she was hiding it better than Liara could seek it. "I just want to talk to you."
Silence again.
Liara let out a defeated sigh, and turned toward the door. She didn't understand what was going on. She had an information network that spanned from the Perseus Veil to the obliterated remnants of the Alpha Relay, from Omega to the Citadel, and all points in between. She knew the dark and harrowing secrets of hundreds of politicians, warlords, and despots. She could bend the galaxy to her will with but a few words and a little patience... and she had no idea what was wrong with Aimei, how to fix it, or if it was Liara's fault somehow.
She didn't know that, through the walls, sitting against the wall, naked under the falling water, Shepard was quietly crying for messing up the best thing in her life.
Iris felt herself crash into the crates hard enough to dent the lip so badly that it'd never close again; pain was simply adding up at this point, considering her opponent wasn't the kind which were historically known for mercy. Her mauve skin bunched up as a rictus of agony went through her. She managed to roll herself out of the crate, and even staggered half way to a stand. There was still gunfire from Adar, proud Adar. Iris didn't need to look back to see how it was going to end.
In short, there were a lot of places that Iris could claim that she'd gone the wrong direction in life. For example, joining mercenaries during her early Maiden years instead of simply flaunting the body that the Goddess gave her. The cash would have been just as good. But no, she had to have excitement. Funny how those little decisions, made now two hundred years in the past, kept coming back and biting her in the ass.
"Adar, just run!" Iris shouted at her subordinate. "She's going to kill y–"
Her warning was cut off by a biotic thud, and an end to gunfire. Iris shivered with welling terror as she continued to hobble along. She was absolutely certain that her right ankle was broken. But, say what you would about the Deva, it was fear that gave asari wings.
She had started shedding armor as she went, ducking between the tall stacks of products, mostly legal but some surreptitiously not. It wouldn't save her anymore than her gun – also abandoned behind her – would. And it was slowing her down. Only her right boot stayed on, because it supported her foot, and she didn't feel like wasting painful time to pull it off. Voices drifted through the echoing warehouse. Now doubt that horror informing Adar of her impending death. They were poetic, those ones. At least a thug or a mercenary had the decency to either kill you quickly, or only rape you a little before letting you go. People like her, though? They were just unreasonable.
"Retiring, sounds good. Go back to Thessia. Go on Mom's fishing boat. Perfect plan," Iris whispered to herself. She didn't know the sad statistic that most asari got themselves killed by their own stupid decisions. She was certainly feeling it right now, though. She could see the tiny door that lead out of the warehouse and into the industrial district. It was a slim escape, but better than none. If she tried hard enough, she might be able to delude herself into believing that if she got out into the public eye, that monster back there wouldn't be able to get her.
It was as sad as being a kid who had to sleep in her mother's bed so that the boogeys and the fane didn't get her.
Even though it hurt, she kept hobbling onward, eyes locked on that open doorway. She was down to her underpants, her undershirt, one boot, and her Omnitool. Everything else, abandoned in the name of haste. Expensive equipment didn't do you any good if you were dead. Just a little further. Past the sky-high stack of Fruity-Puffs, the endless bags of puffed wheat and oatmeal, and a dizzying assortment of other breakfast candy used to keep children content before hurling them onto a schoolbus.
Iris never considered herself a family woman. Funny how things occurred to you when you were pretty sure you were about to die.
That 'pretty sure' became 'absolutely sure' when the light from the door was intercepted by scarlet and azure. Iris let out a yelp of fear, and immediately turned, trying with all of her might to get to the other side of the warehouse this instant. A vain hope. She only made it three steps before her body drifted up off of the floor, and she found herself hurled across the hall and embedded into an enormous bag of cheap, tasteless puffed wheat. Compared to all the other knocks she'd taken today, this felt like jumping onto a mattress.
She didn't even try to push off, just hold her place against the dark energy pressing her into place, before a twist, and she found herself locked still inside a white field. The clack of boot heels came toward her, and she couldn't do anything but wait until she passed into the edge of Iris' eye. The asari in the scarlet armor crisply put herself before Iris, turning on a dime, and faced her with eyes a very unsettling orange. Quarian 'father', probably. Damn it, Iris! Focus on not dying, not geneology!
"You dealt with a number of asari who are known traffickers of both slaves and illicit personage," the Justicar said, her words utterly icy. "By the Sutra of the Four Travelers, you are guilty of depriving asari of liberty and freedom. You are also in contact with one whom has directions to my quarry."
"I'll tell you what you need to know! Just don't kill me!" Iris begged.
"The Code is absolute," the Justicar said, in essence announsing Iris' death-sentence. Iris' jaw slackened. No, there had to be a way out of this. She couldn't die surrounded by puffed wheat! "You will tell me your contact on Triskellion, for she is a known trafficker of Ardat Samyaza."
"If you let me go, I'll–" Iris tried again, and the Justicar raised her right hand, a twisting bolt of dark energy – a Warp – manifesting there. Iris knew well enough what happened when you Warped a stasis bubble. It seldom ended well for the one contained inside it. Cold and uncaring eyes stared into hers, but as she took a step forward, there was a beep. The Justicar stopped, looking down at her left arm, and the old-style Omnitool there. She let the Warp evaporate, and hit a few keys.
Writing that Iris couldn't read popped up, and the Justicar took it in quickly. She then looked up at Iris, then down at her information again, conflicted. Of all the things that'd happened to her, this struck Iris the most. A Justicar who couldn't make a decision? That was just impossible. Finally, a mild sigh from the Justicar, and she made a dispelling motion.
Iris collapsed into a purple pool on the ground, pushing herself up against the shelf out of mortal fear rather than any other reason. "The Code demands that all hunts not in their final pursuit be suspended, for our true purpose has come forth. This single reprieve shall be the only largess you ever receive from our sisterhood," the Justicar said. And then, without another word said, the woman turned on her heel and walked out the doors. Iris watched her go, stunned beyond belief.
She was alive.
Fuck going to Mom's boat. She was going to Omega and drinking herself stupid.
There was a weight that settled onto her chest, pressing her down like a blanket of lead. The sound of fire burning reached into her ears as she looked out over water which was not water, flanked by trees long burned away. Shepard felt urgency, pulling at her like the string of a puppeteer on high. Act before it's too late. But Shepard wasn't sure what to do, or when too late was.
So she levered herself up just a bit, on an elbow. There were others here, whispers in the darkness.
"I hadn't thought you'd put yourself in this position," Saren's voice wafted ethereally to her.
"I'm doing what I have to," Shepard answered, the words seeming to slur as they left her lips. She managed a full sit, grasping the handle before her.
"So much wasted time. So much wasted potential," Saren continued, lazily.
"It's only wasted when nothing comes of it," Shepard answered.
"Then why are you doing nothing? Why are you letting it all... float away?" Saren asked.
Shepard scowled inwardly. He was right. She hated him, but he was right. "I don't know how to keep it together."
"That's easy," Leviathan's voice came from the same direction as Saren's. "Just put a net around them and they won't get away."
Shepard slowly turned to one side, taking in those who joined her on the edge of this impossible ocean. A pair of forms of wrought black iron, each bearing the recumbant form of either a naked, Reaper infested turian, and a naked, shiny zhent. Each of them had a fishing rod in their hands.
"It's not fishing if you use a net," Saren pointed out the obvious.
"Leave it to a turian to know nothing about fishing," Levi rolled her eyes, tugging gently on her rod. Shepard felt a tug, and looked down. Between her legs, a rod of her own. The line stretched out into the not-water, a happy yellow bob dancing on the surface.
"It's not sporting," Saren complained. "If you're going to fish, use a spear."
"Who of us has the most fish?" Leviathan asked, pointing to a bucket beside her. A ring of fish were dragging it behind them as they swam through the sand on little leashes.
"I'm not convinced you didn't plant those yourself," Saren said.
"Guys, shut up. I'm trying to fish," Shepard barked at the two of them. Leave it to those two to ruin a peaceful evening. She shook her head, and started to tug on her own rod, getting a feel for whether what she had was something more substantial than an old boot or a half-rotten tire.
"Eh, fishing is boring anyway," Leviathan said. She looked over to Saren, then started to grin. "You know, you're not looking half bad. Mind deflowering the new body?"
"Do I have to stop fishing?" Saren asked.
"Nah, I can handle it on my own," Leviathan said. Shepard sighed, shaking her head and pointedly ignored the zhent who mounted Saren.
She noticed the bob dunk under the not-water, and gave an immediate yank. There was something on the line, definitely. She started reeling it in, as the sex-noises began to her right. She ignored them, pulling on that ripple that tantalized the surface, as the sex-noises got louder, and stranger. By the time she pulled her bob almost to the water's edge, sex-noises had turned to ragtime showtunes and a car-engine backfiring.
She yanked hard, and the hook bounded up from the surf. Holding on for dear life to the crook of the hook was a teeny-tiny Liara. Shepard tilted her head.
"I'm a fish!" Tiny-Liara declared.
"Yes! Coming down the back straight with a heady lead! Are we looking at the upset of the century?" Leviathan demanded. "Oh no! A horrendous car-wreck! Somebody is on fire!"
"Kinky. I like it," Saren added.
"I'm a fish!" Tiny-Liara repeated proudly.
"What," Shepard said.
"I'm a fiiiiish! I'm a fiiii~sh!" Tiny-Liara sang. "I'm a fish, I'm a fish, I'm a fiiiiii~sh!"
Shepard snorted as she awoke, and her eyes opened, staring up at the ceiling over her bed. She blinked a few times, smacking her lips dryly and trying to ignore the sore throat. She wasn't sure when, but at some point recently, she started snoring. She pushed herself half to a sit in her darkened quarters.
"...what the fuck was that?" Shepard asked her quarters.
Silence and darkness answered her, as she wiped a hand down her face. She flopped hard back onto her pillow, before rolling over and burying her face in it.
"I picked the wrong year to stop drinking..." she muttered. It was going to be a long night.
War Asset: Asari
The Athemite Justicar Order
When the Reaper War began, a call was sent out from the Grand Abbey in Serrice to all active Justicars and any willing adherents to the Athemite faith, calling for an immediate mobilization to war against the Reaper forces in whatever place they would be found. The coordination and haste by which this mobilization took place is both extreme and borderline-inexplicable, due to the order's millennia-old purview of dealing with genetic defects within the asari gene-pool, or else destroying dangerous AI research. It is believed that the latter is the reason for the Orders' redeployment to the Reaper front.
With warrior-monks bearing centuries of experience in asymmetrical warfare, infiltration, and shock-tactics bolstering other biotic units, the effectiveness of ground forces against most Reaper threats has improved.
