"So, how'd it go down there?"
Back in Engineering, Tali shook her head at Ken as she walked toward the locker where she stored her tools, to collect what she would need to dissect the geth. "It wasn't raiders after all, it was Collectors. Shepard took them out, but Zaeed was pretty badly hurt."
The mix of good news and bad, combined with Tali's detached tone made her subordinates look at one another. "He gonna be okay?" Gabby asked.
"Should be. Doctor Chakwas is working on him. But the big news is our geth was destroyed."
"YES," Ken screamed and high-fived Gabby, then both turned around to face Tali to repeat the gesture. Their cheers died, however, when Tali continued to stock her tool belt rather than reciprocate.
Gabby wore a frozen smile. "Uh, that's good news... isn't it?"
"Very good news." Tali nodded, completed her loadout, then closed the locker. "But Shepard needs me to try to download its memory or something before I ship it back to the Fleet. So we're not done with it yet."
"What for?"
"Doesn't matter." Tali turned to face them. "He asked me to do it, so I'm doing it. But the second I'm done, it's gone. So how are things in here? Anything I need to know about before I go?"
"Not a thing," Ken said. "Go take care of it. Gabby and I are on the case."
"Damn right," Gabby. "We got you covered. You need anything at all, you know where to find us. Tools, an extra set of hands-"
"A full body massage," Ken interjected, followed by an oof as Gabby smacked his shoulder.
They both grinned, waiting for a reaction, but all Tali could muster was a tired smile. As much as she wanted to, she couldn't celebrate until the geth was off her ship. "I'll be in the lab if anything comes up. Hopefully this won't take too long. Call if you need me."
Ken and Gabby glanced at each other once again. Gabby tried one last time. "Put some extra holes in it while you're at it, just to be sure!"
Tali waved and walked back to the main elevator and punched the button for deck three instead of deck two. She needed to pick up one more thing from her quarters before reporting to the Lab.
The Normandy's shop had one of the finest tool collections in the galaxy, but she'd need specific instruments designed to work with geth technology. She pulled a heavy satchel from her bunk to examine its contents. The kit was a tangle of wires, tools and geth components, still jumbled after dealing with the disaster on the Alarei, but everything looked to be present and accounted for. The most important device was a functional geth omnitool salvaged from a juggernaut Shepard destroyed on Feros years ago. Just that one piece of hardware alone cut the time to interface with geth wreckage by half.
But all of the tools were special in their own way, each with their own history. Some were hers, some were handed down by her father from technicians who died long before she was born. One particular bit driver in her kit dated all the way back to Rannoch, used in a household electronics store to repair malfunctioning geth. It might have ended up enshrined in some museum as a revered, sacred artifact from the homeworld if weren't still a valuable, functional tool.
Tali flipped the satchel shut and noticed a dark stain on the flap. Grease? Solvent? It flaked off when she scratched it. Dried blood, she realized, from the Alarei. A few years ago she might have compulsively scrubbed it clean after squicking out. Now? She briefly wondered whose blood it was before slinging the bag over her shoulder and heading back to the lift.
CIC was abuzz with the usual activity. "Hi Tali," Kelly scribbled on her datapad as Tali stepped from the elevator. "The Lab's ready for you."
Tali nodded without stopping, her affability another casualty of the geth's presence on board.
"It's terrible what happened down there, isn't it?"
Tali stopped and stared at the deck, her voice carefully neutral. "Hopefully his leg can be reattached."
"Oh, I meant Legion," Kelly said. "Zaeed'll be fine. He's a tough old bastard. Doctor Chakwas already halfway through the procedure. Guess we'll have a new war story to listen to tomorrow, huh?"
"Mmm," Tali said and continued to the Lab.
Kelly called after her. "Do you think you can fix him?"
"Fix who?"
"Legion."
"For the last time," Tali snapped, loud enough for everyone in CIC to hear. "It's not a he, it's a machine! I don't know why it's so hard for you people to get that!" All eyes turned at the sudden outburst and CIC fell silent. Kelly looked particularly stunned. Tali returned their stares with narrowed eyes. "And no, I don't think it can be fixed."
She turned on her heel and stomped toward the Lab. The sooner she cracked open the geth, the sooner she could banish it from the ship. Then, maybe, both she and life aboard the Normandy might return to normal.
All hopes of that faded whe hatch opened, and Tali stopped dead in her tracks. Mordin, Kasumi, Thane, Jacob, and Garrus all hovered around the geth, sprawled on its back on the workbench in the middle of the compartment.
"Come on bot-buddy," Kasumi wiggled one of the geth's fingers. "Wake up! Where's your reset button, huh?"
"I doubt he can hear you," Thane said. "There is no power in any of his systems."
Kasumi leaned close to the geth's central lens aperture. "Of course he can hear us. He's just sleeping."
Jacob's expression remained dour. "Shepard said he was down for the count. That's what Tali told him, anyway."
"Unfortunately that's correct," Tali said. Everyone in the room turned to look at the quarian.
"Hey look," Kasumi now shook the geth's wrist. "It's Creator-Tali'Zorah! See, you'll be just fine. She can fix anything."
Tali scowled at the thief's use of the geth epithet for quarians. "I'm going to have to ask all of you to leave. I need to concentrate."
Her squad mates looked at one another. When they didn't move, Garrus ushered them toward the door. "Alright everybody, let's let her work. Why don't we go see how Zaeed's doing?" Thankfully, they finally started milling toward the hatch. Jacob gave the geth's shoulder a thump as he walked by and Kasumi gently placed its arm across its chest, patting it lightly before walking away.
"It can't be fixed," Tali told Kasumi as she passed. "I'm just recovering data."
"I know." Kasumi glared back at her. "Would it kill you to at least pretend that you're trying?"
Tali turned away sharply and continued toward the table. Mordin's fingers massaged the air before pulling a tray of probes and drills from a nearby drawer. "Never examined geth. Brand new exposure. Very stimulating! Where do we start?"
"Thank you, Mordin," Tali said tersely. "But I really prefer to work alone."
Mordin looked back and forth between Tali and Garrus. "But... it's my lab."
Tali set her satchel on the workbench at the feet of the geth. "Well, it's mine now."
The salarian's already huge eyes widened. "Beg your pardon?"
"She needs to borrow it," Garrus stepped between them, "just for a little while. Please?"
"Fine," Mordin said with a sniff, replacing his instruments one at a time in the cabinet. "Will be waiting in Engineering, since we're trading spaces. Plenty of important things to occupy time there. Perhaps the Commander will drop by to play poker."
The salarian stalked out the door. When the hatch closed behind him, that left only one more problem for Tali to deal with, and he would undoubtedly be the toughest. "I'll let you know when I'm done," she told Garrus.
Garrus studied her for a moment after the tense exchange with Mordin, and everyone else. "You going to be okay in here?"
"Mm-hmm. The Science Lab is more than adequate for this task."
"That's not what I meant." Garrus moved next to her. "Are you okay?"
"Why wouldn't I be?" Tali searched through her satchel for nothing in particular.
"You used to drag people in to watch you tear down one of these things. It was almost a spectator sport."
"Was it?"
Garrus leaned against the workbench next to her. "Look, we all know how badly damaged he is. We understand if you can't bring him back-"
Tali slammed her hands against the table and whirled to face the turian.
"Tali, talk to me." He cocked his head at her. "What's bothering you?"
"What's bothering me?" Tali's eyes burned behind her faceplate. "Everybody treating this thing like a damn person! 'How's he doing?', 'Can you fix him?', 'Oh, it's terrible what happened to him, isn't it?' Even giving it a name in the first place!"
"People name their machines all the time. Just ask your little friend Chik'tikka. I'm sure she would agree."
"When was the last time any of you held a vigil for my combat drone?"
Garrus shrugged. "Never. But I don't recall the last time she engaged me in meaningful conversation, either. Look, Legion's different, I'll admit. I didn't particularly like him when Shepard powered him on, but he grew on me. He grew on all of us."
"Well then, all of you can go to hell."
"Hey-"
"What, you still don't understand? You actually need me to explain this to you? These things wiped out our entire civilization! They drove us from our homeworld, and the entire galaxy turned their backs on us! You, the asari, the salarians...you banished us from civilized space and called it genocide when we tried to fight back! We've been completely on our own for three hundred years!"
Tali circled around the table, glaring at the immobile geth. "They sided with the reapers. They attacked the Citadel. They've killed billions of my people, my friends, my father..." She choked back her tears. "They've brought nothing but death and destruction wherever they go, but somehow, we're the villains. The Citadel has more restrictions on the Migrant Fleet than the geth! And not once have we gotten the tiniest bit of sympathy or help, from any of you!"
Tears streamed down her cheeks as she stared into the geth's dark lens. "And even here, on the Normandy, among my closest friends... Whose side did you take?" Garrus just looked at the floor. His silence seared her heart worse than anything he could have said. "That's what I thought."
"I know it might not have seemed like it of late," Garrus said softly, "But I am on your side. We all are."
Tali scoffed and leaned back against the table, arms crossed. "Could've fooled me."
"We're just... on the outside of the whole thing, looking at the it from a different perspective. And, well, I can't speak for anyone else but I just got used to having Legion around. It's normal now. And on this ship, what's normal, right?" Garrus shook his head at himself. "It's a lousy excuse. The truth is, it's all too easy to forget someone else's past. I'm sorry."
Tali sniffed and settled next to Garrus with their backs to the geth. He said the right words, but they were just words. "It's like everyone is so shocked I'm mad about this. Like I should just... get over it, like a bad break-up or something. But nothing's changed. Not for me, anyway."
They sat in silence for a few moments, until Garrus spoke again. "Do you think you ever will? Get over it I mean."
"I don't know, are you over Omega?"
Garrus blinked, then cleared his throat. "I suppose I earned that."
No you didn't, Tali thought. It was the absolute worst thing she could have said to one of her closest friends, and she regretted it the second it came from her mouth. But there was no taking it back. "Look, I know it's not what everyone wants to hear, but no. I can't. The universe doesn't work that way."
"I guess not," Garrus said with a sigh. He stood and started for the forward hatch. "I should let you get to work." He stopped before the door sensor could activate and looked over his shoulder. "You know, we went to war with humans the first time we met them."
"Do you really think it's the same?"
"Not even close. But the hate was just as real. The point is we don't have to hate them anymore."
"I'm happy for all of you."
"So am I. Otherwise I wouldn't be serving the best commander I've ever had, with the best friends I've ever known. Let me know if you need anything." The hatch whooshed shut behind him.
Tali let out a long, heavy sigh. Garrus's attempt to frame the geth uprising with the turian's reconciliation with humankind was a heartfelt sentiment, she knew. The galaxy was a better place for it, but it just didn't apply.
Their war was over. Hers was not.
She didn't want to think about it anymore. She dug through her satchel for the geth omnitool. She powered it on and felt around inside the cavity in the platform's chest - a convenience that made prying off a panel unnecessary - then snapped a lead from the omni into a recessed socket. Her holographic instrument pulsed to life.
With any luck, the memory tests would fail and she'd have the geth disassembled for shipment by dinner. She might actually feel like eating, for a change. And if by chance something did survive, well, she might just find out what data the geth had actually stolen - and anything else that might still reside in memory.
As the geth omni started its diagnostic, she thought back to her encounter with the geth in the AI Core. She had it dead to rights, point-blank range, with a full load of disruptor rounds. All she had to do was pull the trigger.
Then Shepard walked in.
Since she joined the Normandy, he was at her side when she faced the geth, rifle to cheek, laying waste to her enemy. In their years together, Shepard annihilated as many geth as a company of Fleet Marines. She never even had to ask. Defending the quarians and the Migrant Fleet was as important to Shepard as it was to Tali, or so she thought.
His order to lower her weapon was as painful as the one to power it up in the first place. She begged him not to do it. It was the only functional geth captured intact, ever. Shepard could have sent it to the Fleet. They could have ended three centuries of exile. Instead, Shepard gave it a name, free run of the ship and an invitation to dinner.
A soft ping from the geth omni pulled Tali back into the lab. Its virtual displays sparkled to life as it traced the geth's dormant circuitry. She nodded with satisfaction. The primary memory nodes were physically obliterated, with no chance of recovery. It was going to be an early night, after all.
Out of thoroughness, she switched to the secondary non-volatile memory core, used by the geth to reboot after powering down for ambushes. Undoubtedly the geth's self-destruct protocol had fried it as well. Once she confirmed that, she could honestly report to Shepard the platform was a total loss and put the whole gods-awful nightmare behind her.
The geth omni glittered with a cascade of raw data and code. Exabytes of perfectly preserved information still resided in the static memory bank. It wasn't just a reactivation cache, but a volume of data thousands of times beyond anything Tali had seen. Her hands trembled as she patched her own omni into the geth model to validate the data. From what she could see, there were logfiles chronicling the platform's journey back to when it left the Veil.
She leapt around to the table's main console. After the incident in the AI Core, she couldn't risk another intrusion. With a push of a button, the holo displays on the doors into the lab switched from green to red as the hatches locked shut. Forget your omnitool data, Tali thought as she configured the geth omni to scan the logs. If she found what she was looking for, the three-century war against the geth could be over within hours.
She just hoped that she had enough time.