Chapter 17: Quiet Moments Are Hard To come By—Especially On The Normandy
Upon reaching the shuttle bay, Tali checked her weapons in her locker and headed for the lift, waited a moment for Legion to catch up, as Shepard as at her side almost at the same instant. Without looking at her Tali knew her Commander's eyes fell on her.
"You're going to the medbay." It was not a question. "I saw you take a few hits that your shields didn't absorb. How bad is it?"
"Not bad."
"Tali…"
"The antibiotics flooded my suit. I'll be fine, Commander."
"Just so you know if my Trusted not my XO comes knocking on my cabin door with his mandibles flaring do to the fact his wife had to spend a few days in ICU because she didn't listen to reason or an order to go check in with Dr. Chakwas, I'm spinning it back on you."
Behind her mask Tali grinned. "Understood, Commander. I'll head to medbay, right now."
"That's my Chief Engineer." The doors opened on the Crew Deck, Shepard carefully watched as both quarian and geth headed towards the medbay: one going to Chakwas the other to the AI Core.
Tali didn't look over her shoulder; she could feel the Specter's worried eyes following her footsteps and smiled deeply, as she felt the care and even love from her Captain. Now more than ever before Tali felt being vas Normandy was truly ship name of pure pride. When she was first forced to take that ship name during her trial Tali felt as a pariah amongst her own people. Ripping her ship name from her was supposed to be the lowest mark of shame without being exiled and at the time she might as well accept the inevitable fate of being an outcast.
But being vas Normandy was the proudest ship name any quarian could ever have. Tali stood a little taller in that moment, feeling the pride of her ship-name…the pride of her Captain. There was nowhere Shepard would or could lead that Tali wouldn't follow.
As it happened the antibiotics had done their job, other than using a bit of medigel there was little more Chakwas could do. The greater damage hadn't been to Tali personally but to her suit. Thankfully she had a few spares. The purple paisley one she often favored and the more special suit Shepard had gotten her during that first Mission against Saren the black and red Colossus armour that was favored by the N7s.
In fact the armor had come into procession the team when they had stopped the bartarian raid on mining asteroid over Terra Nova. The batarians had initially came on a slave raid but their leader a deplorable man named Balak decided instead to use the asteroid to hit the human colony that would have resulted in an excitation level event. Shepard had killed all the batarians on the asteroid, all but Balak. He was allowed to walk free of his crimes in order to save the hostages he had barricaded behind a booby trapped door.
It had not been an easy decision. Tali doubted she would have been able to make it, and to this day she was grateful she wasn't in any position to make those sorts of decisions. She was no Admiral. She was an Admiral's daughter and a dammed fine engineer but to hold so many lives in your hand and make cold hard decisions like that, Tali doubted she had it in her. If she were in any sort of position like that she'd just ask herself 'What would Shepard do?'
Back in her quarters after passing through the room's decontamination filter, she passed the partition of the cabin to the 'bedroom.' After double checking the clean room filters were functioning, she stripped out of her compromised suit and into the prized Colossus suit. She loved the black and red patterns, true it wasn't her favored purple but the black and red was so similar to the black and red of the lauded N7, that wearing it Tali always felt…a 'muchness' surround her. Empowered. Wearing the Colossus suit Tali felt if the Admiralty board appointed her father's position right then and there she'd take it.
As she was readjusting her omni-tool Tali's eyebrow shot up in alarm the firewalls pinged. Someone was trying to scan it. Using a tracer mod she had fitted into the omni-tool Tali wasn't at all surprised to discover that it was Legion.
"Bosh'tet!" Tali slammed the Omni tool on marched to the larger ' office' part of her quarters, rip open the footlocker that contained a Carnifax pistil she was allowed to keep in her quarters-practically flew out of her quarters all but ran across the mess hall and into sailed into medbay.
Dr. Chakwas abruptly stood up from her files to inquire at the sudden appearance of the young quarian she had only released a only a half hour ago but Tali shut her up with a hand and marched directly into the AI Core.
"Oh crap." was the all doctor said before hitting the ship's intercom. "Commander, Tali just went to have a 'chat' with Legion in the AI Core. You'd better get down here." Chakwas warned. "I have a bad feeling about this."
*I'm on my way.* Shepard out…Damn it…one day just one fracking day; I'd like my flagship team to play nice with each other. Is that too much to ask? The last sentence was said under the Commander's breath. It was obvious she had believed her words not to have been said on the ship-wide communications
Legion had the audacity to be studying his own omni-tool trying in vain to hack Tali's. It looked up, its face plates fanned out not unlike a surprised turian as its single photoreceptor rested on the young engineer.
"Creator Tali'Zorah…"
"I'm here to end you, you bosh'tet clanker! I know exactly what you've been doing. You hacked my omni-tool and I know you have a link to the rest of the geth! We should left you to be destroyed with the rest of your kind on that station!" Her gun raised without hesitation or second thought. "I'll make sure that happens right now!"
When Shepard walked into the AI core she saw Tali pointing her pistol point-blank at Legion. The young quarian turned to her Commander feeling vindicated.
"Shepard! I'm glad you're here. I caught Legion scanning my omni tool. It was going to send data about the Flotilla back to the geth!" the sneer on her face was evident in her voice.
"The creators preformed tests on geth hardware. We believed it necessary to warn our people of possible aggression." Legions responded coldly.
"We weakened the geth by destroying that base Shepard, but they are still a threat." Tali gestured with one hand as she continued to hold her pistol at the snyth. "I won't let Legion endanger the Fleet!"
"Creator Tali'Zorah acts out of loyalty to her people. She was willing to be exiled to protect them. We must also protect out people form the creator threat." the snyth delivered in simple cold logic.
"You can't let this happen, Shepard! I trusted you! And will work with a geth on the team. But this is too much!" The rage was evident in the young woman's voice.
Shepard took a breath of air, how to explain they were both right? This was Miranda and Jack all over again. Though she highly doubted Tali would engage in hate-sex with the snyth even if she wasn't a married woman. Jack and Miranda thought themselves so clever in keeping their little affair clandestine. A different approach then—not the whole 'we have to work together' spiel that had worked on the women, this called for pure cold logic. It was something the Chief Engineer and snyth could both appreciate.
Putting steal into her voice Shepard said: "Tali your father was running brutal experiments on the geth. If the subjects had been human, I'd damn well be telling the Alliance about it."
The gun still didn't lower, though Tali's voce did become softer, almost apologetic or perhaps the better adjective was shame filled. "I know. But if the geth find out…"
"...they'd attack." Shepard finished for her wife's Trusted. "This would cause a war that would leave both the geth and the quarians vulnerable when the Reapers show up. Is that what you want Legion?" blue eyes turned to the clanker accusingly.
"We believed it was necessary to relay the information." the snyth responded defensively almost dismissively.
"Sooner or later you both are going to have to stop fighting this war, or we'll all end up paying for it. "
Still the gun did not lower.
Legion's head swiveled to the creator. "To felicitate unit cohesion we will not transmit data regarding creator plans."
Only now did Tali lower her weapon. "Thank you Legion." There was a brief pause, "I understand your intention." it shocking even Tali to hear herself not only speak the words but mean them. With a shrug she prompted: "What if I gave you some non-classified data to send?"
"We would be grateful."
The next few seconds filled with Tali accessing her Omni tool, opening a tap in one of the many data files she had within its core matrix and sending the files directly to Legion's memory core.
"Legion under no circumstances will you transmit anything to the geth without my express authority. You will comply. There will be no comprise, no alterative. Do you understand? I took an incredible risk and I will add against the wishes of every single crew member aboard this ship to not only activate you but to activate you and keep you on board and even make you part of my team. Flaunting this privilege is a good way to end up out the airlock. "
"We understand Shepard Commander. We will comply."
"Good. Because, the next time you pull anything like this again that is exactly what will happen. I will not have my ship, my crew or this mission compromised. My orders are the only consensus you have on the Normandy and apart of this crew."
"We have all ready stipulated we will comply with the Shepard-Commander's consensus." Legion said arterially.
Shepard nodded her head and let the matter drop. Warning given and received. For her part Tali made good on her promise and activated her omni tool sending Legion the non-classified files she had promised.
Tali glanced up and watched Shepard go. Her breath sucked inwardly filling her lungs hard. She couldn't tell if Shepard was disappointed in her or not. Yes had pointed a gun at a fellow crewmate, technically. But Legion was still a geth and the enemy of her people. Yes the heretics had been destroyed but after discovering the sheer enormity of the geth aboard that station put everything in a very real perspective.
Once she had finished with the geth…with …Legion Tali returned to her cabin and filled out a report to the Admiralty Bard. She told them everything about the mission to the heretic station, the vast amount of geth on that station, even how the Normandy came to have a geth on their crew. What he had attempted, Shepards' response to it and her own. She held nothing back. When she had finished the report and sent it Tali felt drained, absolutely drained. She fell back on to her bed, and took the tiny moment of freedom and removed her facemask and then her helmet. She took in one breath of clean room air and wept.
The futility of it all! A war with the geth would destroy her people! The Reapers were coming, the quarians needed to forget about homeworld, they needed to forget the geth, they needed to bolster every single resource, ever single life and prepare for the dark days. If she couldn't argue the Admiralty Board to turn course of course action the quarian would face an extinction level event.
"Tali?" Garrus's whispered softly as he entered the cabin. All at once Tali rushed him headless of breaching the safeties of the clean room and fell into her husband's arms. The tears wouldn't stop flowing.
Garrus picked up her tiny frame and rushed into the clean room section of their cabin sat down on the bed and held his wife on his lap until her tears turned into hard hiccups. He asked no questions, demanded nothing. He loved this woman he loved deeply until even her tear-soaked hick-ups receded into the soft snores of overly emotional outburst.
Gingerly Garrus shifted his wife from his arms to the bed and with just as much care he started to remove the black and red Colossus environment suit leaving her only in the body sleeve. He might have been curious at first as to why Tali chose to change her favored purple environmental suit that what she claimed to be her dress suite if it had not been for Shepard sending a private message to him. The Spectre had given her XO an entire field report on what occurred on the geth base, the injuries Tali had sustained and then Shepard spoke of the emotional backlash Tali was bound to experience.
Almost as soon as the crew fled from the umbilical connection from Heretic Station to the Normandy, Shepard had informed Garrus that Tali was going to need massive amounts of TLC, but not immediately at least not medically. The aftermath of the mission had to play out on a natural progression. Like somehow the Commander knew what Tali was going to go through and when she needed space and when she needed comfort.
That got Garrus more than curious, hell yes he wanted to rush to the medbay once he had learned his wife had been injured. Shepard however informed him that that his wife's injuries weren't life threatening, and Tali was going to need time. As a quarian Tali would resent being handled it kid-gloves just because of her weakened immune system.
It was just precautionary that Tali was reporting to the Doc, even upon the Commander's insistence. After what they had discovered on the station, Tali needed her space, time to process everything she saw and learned about the geth division. Hell Garrus could attest to that. If his wife didn't want company she wasn't shy on telling him so. More than a few times she told him he should 'shove off and go calibrate something.' or that his voice sounded like a vorcha. Of course if she wanted his attentions and he was in fact off doing calibrations she'd let him know what she thought of that. More than a few times he was reminded she had a shotgun. Tali was no loner the chipper- little pushover everyone she had been when they first met her all those years ago. She had become a very capable woman. Indeed the young quarian had matured a great deal within Shepard's shadow, so much so she was now casting her own shadow for others to follow in.
Tucking his beloved in under the covers of their bed Garrus never felt more in love with his energetic diminutive quarian than he was at that moement even during their wedding ceremony that Shepard had officiated.
Garrus watched over his wife as she slumbered, worried for her. Tali was not one for overly emotional displays that had placed into a fitful sleep. Oh she showed exuberance in things she was passionate about: her work in engineering, dancing (she was certainly much better than Shepard, but then a frog in a blender was a much better dancer than Shepard's 'dad dancing'), signing along to all the songs in Fleet and Flotilla, the Migrant Fleet and her people and of course their lovemaking.
There were only a few times Tali ever broke down, truly broke down and lost herself in deep emotional turmoil: The first had been when they thought they had lost Shepard after the Battle of the Citadel. The second time had been when Garrus had been seriously injured—taking a rocket to the face during one of the scrimmages with the Blue Suns, the third after she had returned from the Migrant Fleet and that farce of a trial that had been pure anger but the cascading sorrow of her father's death was both anger and deep loss.
And now with whatever happened on that heretics' base had shook Tali to her very core. She looked shattered more than even Shepard had returning from the collector's ship. She wore the expression Shepard had the day her first child had been killed-unholy wrath and unending pain and the sudden realization that her world and all its hope had died.
Placing a kiss on Tali's lips as soft as the brush of a butterfly's wing on the cheek Garrus left their quarters and headed directly to what the ship builds called the Captain's Nest. There he paused, rose his hand with a pointed finger to ring the chime and dropped his hand only to raise it twice more before he steeled his reserve enough to hit the buzzer.
"I was wondering when you'd be stopping by." Shepard opened the door turned and went back into the 'den' part of her large quarters but not before stopping at a small hidden alcove tucked away under the L shaped desk in her officer area. One bottles was red the other blue. Garrus recognized both on sight. The red was turian brandy-triple filtered the other was Serrice iced-bandy.
She poured a snifter for both, sat down. "Chewing me out or asking me questions?" She said with a dead-pan no-nonsense expression.
"I thought I knew at first." Garrus took his ale and sat down on the sofa adjacent to the one Shepard had claimed.
Silence
Another snifter each.
"What actually happened over there?" The Specter's Trusted asked.
"A reality check" came an answer.
Another snifter-each. This one fuller than the last.
"The quarians can't win." Garrus said.
"In a full out war? No. No, the quarians cannot win, not even if they are stupid enough and I can't believe they will be to turn all of their ships into war vessels. On that station we saw the enormity of heretics and that is only a very tiny fraction of the geth.
"Garrus, save for the geth themselves only the quarians understand the vastness of snyth populations. The whole time we were fighting the geth it was so easy to see one of those mobile platforms as a signal geth. But each platform hold thousands of them, our resident snyth was right he IS Legion for he contains multitudes. The geth are software, they don't need the platforms to exist. Hell I wouldn't be surprised if we find out they can exist quite easily in the cloud of the extranet—like some Trojan virus.
"That's why she's upset; she saw the futility of a war between her people and the geth. When we were on the base Legion explained the same way Tali how the geth censuses works. How they are smarter the more of them there are. They are programs, Start deleting all those zeros and ones in their binary code and you start loosing whole colonies of the bastards. That's when they start slowing down, code lost. I saw it, data streams along the floor of the station going into data core hubs. As fast as the speed of thought. But even lost code can be overridden—rewritten-reprogrammed. That's how the Reapers got a hold of them in the first place. Even Legion thought of reprogramming the heretics to think like the rest of the geth. He left the choice to me. "
"I see you gave him his answer. 'Hell no. We blow it up.'
"Pretty much those words exactly. I won't brainwash a person, I don't see any difference with a snyth mind. Better they're deleted or exterminated or whatever it was." Shepard them told him of what had happened in the AI core.
"Ah crap." came a murmured flagging growl
"Yeah." The glasses were refilled, by now the bellies were warmed by ale and brandy, the heads fuzzy, words slurred and inhibitions nascent.
"But…"Garrus raised his glass. "You've made a whole career out of futility and the impossible. They said it was impossible to hold Elysium against an entire platoon of batarian slavers. You did. By yourself. They said it was impossible to not only find Ilos but the conduit as well. You did and saved the lives of less than grateful Councilors. Now they say it is impossible for us not only to travel through the Omega Four relay and return but to destroy the collector base. Once we do that, we can find the ways to stop the Reapers." He laughed. "Just to make things interesting during our war with the Reapers, we'll have to come up with six impossible things for to you do."
"You gotta list?" Shepard starred into her brandy.
"One get everyone together as one massive armada, both sides of the Attican Travers, the Perseus Vail and the Terminus systems: including the fracking batarians. Two: Krogans willingly working along side turians and salarians just like we did during the Rachni Wars. Oh and don't forget them, they'll be joining us –after all you did save their new queen. Figure she owes you big.
"Three…" here Garrus seemed to pause for a moment to consider. "You cure the genophage. Four you get Rannoch back for the quarians without too much blood or coolant shed. Five you put down Cerberus like the mad dog they are, and you put a bullet in that smug bosh'tet TIMmy."
There was a long pause. "You forgot six."
"Well that's the hardest of them all." Garrus's mandibles flared in a turian smile.
"Which is?"
"Having a quite life retired with your wife and kids after you destroy the Reapers."
"Oh I'll have my life with wife and my girls."
"I noticed you left out the word retired." another turian smile. "See the hardest one."
"I'm not the retiring kind, Garrus. Might take a year off to be with my girls—all three of them-but giving up space…my ship." she stroked the bulkhead behind her as she might have Liara's thigh. "Not a chance."
"Liara, know you touch Normandy like that?" The Trusted teased.
"Oh she knows." A cocky grin. "She even told me one time before we were married that she knew the Normandy was my first true love, but she was willing to share."
"But that was the SR1 this is the SR2."
A pause. "Yeah, I know there is nothing of the original Normandy in her, but maybe its like that old family shovel." At Garrus blank stare Shepard went on to explain the human metaphor. "Okay back in the day a young man buys a shovel. Bright shinny and new and he spent two whole dollars on it. This was back in the day when two dollars was a lot of money. The heft of it is polished blonde maple. The blade is perfect forged steal on a blacksmith's anvil no less, none of this dicast nonsense, and it shown brightly. To him it's beautiful, ready to start help him make his new farm bloom.
"When he got too old to use this shovel he passed it down to his son. After forty odd years of use the blade is a little loose, so it's removed from the heft and replaced with new screws and a with a new pinewood heft that isn't so worn or splintered. Another twenty there more chips form in the blade and it can't keep its edge and it's a little more than rusty, so the blade is replaced with one of those new factory made aluminum heads that isn't supposed to rust. But damn it, its still old granddad's shovel and it's been passed down through the generations from father to son or to daughter and so on and on. Almost every twenty years or so new a heft or a new blade or new screws replace the old. But damn it its still great great great granddad's shovel that he bought to start his new farm and it was worth two dollars. Way back then that was a lot of money."
Garrus thought for a moment. "It's the memory of the shovel and its history that has meaning. Not the actually physical shovel."
"Yeah, exactly." Shepard touched Normandy's bulkhead. "This is my ship. She has all new parts and larger and save for us there is nothing of the original in her but damn it, this is my Normandy."
They laughed.
"She'll see us though to the other side of that relay and she'll get us home again." There was an undeniable pride in Shepard's voice. She started to pour herself another shifter then paused and put the bottle down. She had had enough. "If at all possible, she'll see Tali take her homeworld back. I just don't know how yet. Find away to get a sit down between Legion and the Admiralty Board. After all the clanker did say the geth were acting as custodians over Rannoch not ownership."
"You got them to back down a listen to you before during the trial, maybe they will listen now. I might have said if anyone else was involved it'd be impossible for peace talked but hell you eat impossible for breakfast."
Shepard grinned and toasted her XO with the last dregs of her brandy before she swallowed it. It was a subtle dismissal; one Garrus took by swallowing the last of his own ale.
"Take the bottle." Shepard said pointing with her chin towards the turian brandy. "But, I want both of you clear headed tomorrow morning."
"Aye aye Commander." there was no jest or teasing in the XO's voice this time but the solemn timber of a promise.
Taking the bottle of turian brandy Garrus and to admit Shepard may not be able to drink the stuff but she knew good quality. This was at least twenty credits a bottle. It wasn't just the good stuff it was one to the best. Then again he expected nothing less form Shepard. She had expensive tats when it came to alcohol. That being said she wasn't above taking a swig of grease money grog either. He knew how tipsy he was when he tried walking to the lift that'd take him down to t he crew quarters. The whole ship was listing. Shepard on the other hand would drink three times what he did and still sober enough to run a fracking marathon and then turn around and go into battle.
The Commander metabolized alcohol quicker than a krogan, hell she even down a pint of raknol, of course that sent her spewing in the toilet but then she was still good to go. Snyth body parts and biotics what a hell of a combination. Even without the synthetic replacements being a biotic Shepard like all biotics had a very high metabolism rate which meant their bodies broke down alcohol very quickly. It was rare for any biotic to wake up with a hangover though not impossible but rare. It wasn't hard for a biotic to become drunk it was simply hard for them to stay that way. When you had synthetic body parts especially those that centered on most internal organs including the digestive system well…staying drunk was nearly impossible. Shepard could drink a krogan battlemaster under the table and still kill a thresher maw on foot not an hour after.
ME~ME~ ME~ME~ ME~ME~ ME~ME
Morning came with an announcement. *Commander, the Reaper IFF is online we but will need a few hours to fully integrated with Normandy's systems. I suggest your next mission be via shuttle craft.*
"Understood EDI. Thank you. Inform the rest of the team. I want the Normandy fully ready. There are a few Cerberus outposts close to the Omega Nebula that can be reached via shuttle. Have the crew assemble in the shuttle bay and there is still that stockpile of eezo Aria gave us the location of."
The stockpiles once belonged to Essul a batarian warlord who had terrorized the Terminus Systems. After given the location and where they came from or rather who they came from Shepard had read up on the man.
Essul had made an attempt to unite a pirate army under his banner, indeed he had successful conducted a rapid blitz against eleven habitable planets. Fortunately for the rest of the galaxy, Essul's crimes caught the attention of the Spectres who deduced his hidden location and assassinated him. Essul's empire built on hyperextend army, soon came crashing down. His lost stockpiles of element zero have become something of a legend, and foolish spaces have spent countless amounts to time and money searching the Batalla system, convinced they will be the ones to finally strike it rich.
Aria possessed the information all along and passed it to Shepard for services rendered, one for telling her that the three major merc guilds once united to take up the bounty against Shepard were gunning for Arian next. The second was to keep the Pirate Queen's pet krogan the former ruler of Omega alive. There was a moment where Shepard had toyed with the idea of being The Patriarch's krant but gave that notion up as soon as she heard him talking about killing the innocent just to incite the enemy to act in haste and with irrationality. That was too close to what had happened with Liara and Secura. Let the old shellback remained leached to Aria's throne, even if her throne was a couch with strippers in attendance rather than courtiers.
Following Aria's coordinates was a simple enough matter, and easy enough to get there by shuttle. Half the team could go there pick up the much needed eezo while the other half strikes the outlining Cerberus bases. A base Miranda said had been established to keep eyes on Omega. Blinding this base would be a significant blow against the Illusive Man.
Despite the fact Miranda had said she no longer wished to serve Cerberus agenda she'd not be put to the test by neutralizing the base, but Jack…Jack would jump at the chance to hit Cerberus in the daddy-bags. The base Shepard would take with her Jack of course, Grunt, Zaeed, Thane and Samara. Goring for the cache would be Garrus, Tali, Mordin, Miranda, Legion and of course the best thief in the galaxy—Kasumi.
*Understood, Commander. I will relay your orders.*
Shepard checked the clock on her desk—she had just enough time to jump into the shower, scrub off, grab something to eat and gear up before meeting with her flagship team in the shuttle bay. Nothing like an early morning mission to shift last nights cobwebs. Quiet moments were hard to come by especially on the Normandy.