SING LOUD THE HOLY OMNOS / MOTHER TURA / TO HER SON DO WE GIVE PRAISE
BOOK []: FROM HIS TALONS OF GOD FLINT / MOTHER TURA / HE DREW SPARKS FORTH FROM NIGHT SKY
VOLUME []: WITH THOSE SPARKS HE LIT THE SUN / MOTHER TURA / ENDLESS FIRE HE BLESSES US
BONES BREAK FLESH ROTS SPEARS SHATTER / MOTHER TURA / GLORY ETERNAL IN DEATH
(VERUX! VERUX! VERUX!)
-come pounding down the hallway. Your HUD displays friendly IFF - but it has, literally, been beaten into you to take nothing for granted, and so you and your comrades whirl around and take aim at the doorway.
"In skies, in skies eternal," Tertius challenges.
"Stars, sun, moon, and the night sky ablaze," the operator - Quinta - barks into their comm. "Open the damn door!"
Tertius pulls up his omnitool, and unlocks the door; Quinta barges in, panting, and runs over to your spot next to the sniper's nest. "Back on your gun, Decimus," she orders. "Get the target on scope!"
"The hells? Why? What happened to Octavius," you ask, realising suddenly that the woman isn't carrying her rifle anymore, "and where's your gun?"
"Octavius is down," Quinta spits, her tone bitter; positioned on the one-hundred-fiftieth floor of the unfinished apartment complex overlooking the Marala Stadium below, you quickly re-acquire the target - Gherag Kopkamak, a batarian man so plain-looking that only his black beret and scowling expression differentiates him from any of the other thousands of spectators. "Died well."
Prima growls, rubbing at her helmet. "Shit. What about the comm relay? Did you take it out?"
"No," Quinta admits. "Bad intel from Ops - fought our way through the whole damn warehouse, only to find it was a backup." She shakes her head, tone downcast. "Ops has no Spirits-damned idea where the original comms relay is."
"Fuck. FUCK! Shit, shit, shit," Prima roars, pacing back and forth; she stops, finally, and jabs a talon at Tertius. "We make do. Tertius, spot for Decimus. When you have a clean line, take the shot."
"Whoa, whoa, hold on, boss," Tertius sputters, even as he slides next to you and cables his spotting module into the port on the side of your sniper rifle. "Target's still hooked with the deadman's switch, right? Decimus pops him, the whole fuckin' stadium's gonna get lit up."
"And? What's the other option? The second Gherag realizes we've cut off his escape route and killed his backup team he'll hit the detonator," you say as a roiling, churning sickness forms in the bottom of your stomach. "Last I checked, Ops reported only a quarter of the bombs around the city have been disarmed. The same Ops," you growl, "that just got Octavius killed for nothing. Forget the stadium, Tertius, half the damn city'll be a crater!"
"But - ah, hells, this is some real pyjack-shit," Tertius hisses; even so, he flips the switch on the spotting module and puts his hand on your back. "Alright. Decimus. Platform status?"
You click the safety off the Krysae, feel its accelerators hum with muted, crackling power. "Up."
"Confirmed. Range to target," Tertius drones, all the rage and frustration replaced by vacuum-cold chill. "Four, five, one, one. Geosynchronous data link, clean. Stabilisers online. Compensation algorithm, active."
You shift your aim ever-so-slightly as the spotting module interfaces with your rifle, its scope, and your HUD.
Red crosshairs flash green as you line up your shot: bare micrometres just to the left of Gherag's chest.
"On scope," Tertius calls out; soft chanting spills from his lips, broadcast not over comms, but shared only between the two of you via armour-to-armour link. "Verux, oh holy, Verux, oh holy, Verux, oh holy-"
-your talon tightens around the trigger, and you exhale deeply. "On target-"
"-fire."
The Blackwatch Long-Distance Engagement Platform, Krysae Type, screeches with fury as it accelerates and fires its round.
A talon-sized bolt, where most guns fire grains of sand.
The shining flare of seething blue dives from your vantage point and soars across the city skyline; it weaves through the night sky, arcs down into the open stadium and drives straight into Gherag's chest. In an instant the sheer power of the round, engineered specifically for this kind of job, rips the man apart in a shower of severed limbs, flaming meat and a catastrophic rain of gore.
Tertius, by protocol, should now call out the hit.
There's no need.
Two, three, four heartbeats-
-and the entire stadium disappears into a pillar of fire.
Prima allows everyone a half-second of misery before she starts packing away gear into hard cases. "We're leaving," she snarls. "Mark my words. Someone will answer for this."
Days later, you watch Prima and a pair of burly Hierarchy Intelligence agents escort a wailing, screaming Operations officer into an unmarked car, and some part of you cannot help but think you should be joining him.
There are no footsteps for the next man.
He slides down the stairs, his body a ruined tapestry of exploded viscera and shattered bone.
You do not even need the pistol to feed the fire this time.
You scoop the twitching pile of meat in your arms and hurl it into the fire.
The engine is not sated - it never will be sated - but the fire there is roaring with bliss.
The flames are hungry still.
Not the hunger of a starving, desperate hunter, who in desperation slays the vervus and tears flesh straight from the beast to eat.
The hunger of a matriarch, her tribe gathered around the fire, feasting. Flesh upon the fire. Bloodwine pours freely. Your stomach growls for more.
Oh, there is fear - [] is still chasing you.
There will always be fear.
Which of your brothers and sisters do not look upon that dreadful thing, the [] in all its terrible glory, and not feel the marrow in their bones begin to melt?
-IN THE AGE BEFORE AGES, WHEN MOTHER TURA'S WOMB HAD NOT YET FLOWERED THE GODS WARRED FOR ALL ETERNITY WITH SEMPITERNAL THINGS UNSEEN IN THE ENDLESS NIGHT-
There are no footsteps for the next piece of fuel.
It is a boy.
A boy.
Young.
So young.
If his face was not a ruined mass of char - like Desolas, back home, in days past-
If his shirt was not burnt to ash - you would see it, the symbol of the Irilani Comets-
If his limbs were not cooked and seared - he would prostrate himself before you-
-those ruined eyes look up at you, their empty sockets vacant, pleading.
No.
-SHATTERED AND BROKEN AND THE LAST OF THE AMBROTA, MOTHER TURA CHEWED THE FLESH FROM HER FINGERS AND WITH FANGS OF STARDUST SHARPENED HER BONES INTO TALONS-
There cannot be pity.
One million million million souls aboard this boat.
How sorrowful this sacrifice is.
But the fire MUST be lit and it MUST be fed and it must ALWAYS be fed-
-and the Sun does not care.
You do not care.
One boy against all who must be saved.
One life for countless others.
You drag him into the fire, for your cause is just and your soul is guarded.
Regret?
No.
No regret.
-to regret is to falter and to falter is to doubt and to doubt is to regret and to regret is to falter and to falter is to doubt and to doubt is to regret and to regret is to falter and to falter is to doubt and to doubt is to regret and to regret is to falter and to falter is to doubt and to doubt is to regret and to regret is to falter and to falter is to doubt and to doubt is to regret and to regret is to falter and to falter is to doubt and to doubt is to regret and to regret is to falter and to falter is to doubt and to doubt is to regret and to regret is to falter and to falter is to doubt and to doubt is to regret and to regret is to falter and to falter is to doubt and to doubt is to regret and to regret is to falter-
"JUST A LITTLE LONGER! HOLD THE LINE," Primus shouts, sticking his head over the makeshift barricade long enough to fire another burst into the oncoming crowd. "NOT A SINGLE INCH OF GROUND! KEEP FIRING!"
At this point, the pain is a good thing. The agony of the hastily-sealed wounds in your stomach and left leg and neck and right hand is grounding; without the shockwaves of searing pain, your focus would have long since faded.
True, it's ruining your aim, playing havoc with your hearing and making your vision blurry - but that, too, is also a comfort.
It's easier to gun them down this way.
Shooting the faceless, snarling horde is easy. Shooting the crazed mercenaries mixed into the group is even easier. Shooting hundreds of civilians and miners and cooks and doctors and security guards and all their children, their minds melted and twisted into unthinking madness by the hyper-stimulants pumping through the station's central air system-
-you can dwell on that once your team makes it out. "Tertia," you bark into your comms as you hurl the last of your frags into the incoming mass of bodies, "how much longer? That was our last grenade!"
"Five minutes, Secundus," Tertia replies, her tone frantic. "Almost done!"
"Two! You have two! Hurry it up!" Primus curses as a young asari, frothing at the mouth, leaps atop the barricade wielding a pair of compact pistols; Quantus covers for him, stabbing the woman in the throat before unleashing a fresh barrage from his LMG.
"Sir! We can't keep this up!," Quantus shouts, ducking down as his bulky weapon vents. "Let's fall back to the hangar!"
"Spirit's SHIT! Okay, let's move! Staggered retreat!" Quantus is up first, then you, then Primus; the three of you start backing towards the hatch leading to the hangar, laying down waves of blistering firepower. The hatch unseals just as you're about to back into it, and slams shut the instant Primus is clear, smashing the handful of victims caught in between its ferrocrete jaws.
For a singular, blessed instance, there's silence.
"Tertia," Primus barks as he runs past the throngs of cowering civilians - the ones lucky enough to have found the time to throw on their emergency hull-breach breathers - to one of the waiting shuttles where the woman is frantically digging through its engine bay, "we can't stay on this station any longer. We're going. Now."
"Not yet," she begs, not even bothering to cease her work. "It'll be a tight fit-"
-there's a loud crack-thoom, and the hangar door shudders.
"That was a breaching charge," you shout, rifle raised as you hurry over to Primus. "Door's holding for now but we're outta time!"
"Tertia," Primus growls.
The woman slides out from under the ship's belly and, rather than speaking over her helmet's speakers, keeps her words within their own unit's encrypted comms. "I've only fixed two of the shuttles, Primus. If we leave now, that's half of the civvies we're leaving behind!"
The entire hangar shudders.
Another charge.
This time, the door does not hold; a line of cracks begin to spread across its surface.
"We have the samples and we have the target bagged." Primus grabs hold of Tertia by the shoulders and shakes her. "We. Are. LEAVING."
Quantus hops aboard the second shuttle and begins giving the dreaded speech. "We only have enough room for half of you! I'm sorry but we only have so much room-"
-and then it all goes to shit.
The door breaches open.
The civilians start rushing the shuttles.
You haul Tertia into the first shuttle and shove her towards the cockpit; before heading back to the boarding ramp, you grab the unconscious form of the asari madwoman who started all this and stuff her into one of the under-floor lockers. Primus ushers on the last refugee - a middle-aged drell - and then begins raising the ramp.
The hangar bay begins to open, and Tertia brings the shuttle up-
-but the ramp doesn't close.
There's a young turian boy screaming in terror, holding onto the shuttle for dear life, and Primus-
-Primus, who you've seen kill entire squads of enemies armed only with a with a knife and sheer willpower-
-Primus, who you've seen fight for hours on broken legs and a crippled arm-
-he cannot do it.
You draw your sidearm, push Primus to the side, and, pressing the barrel against the boy's temple, pull the trigger.
"A quick death," you spit, "is better than dying in vacuum or being ripped apart down there."
Later, when your fleet of two shuttles finally makes it to the rendezvous point and the refugees are offloaded into the waiting arms of the doctors aboard the Turian Armed Forces vessel, Primus - staying in the shuttle and firmly out of view of any prying eyes - finally takes off his helmet looks at you with something in his eyes.
Exhaustion.
Relief.
Fear.
Fear?
"Spirits, Secundus," he mutters, slumping into one of the seats. "You…that was cold."
"I'm sorry," you growl, "I forgot we were actually just a bunch of Young Spears. Next time I'll give the next target a big fucking hug before delivering a merciful death."
"No, hells, I'm not - I'm not judging you. You did what had to be done," he sighs. "I just…I've done a lot, Saren, and I've never frozen up like that. Sure, there's been collateral before, plenty of times."
"You didn't hesitate back when we took out the stadium," you point out, sitting down next to him. "Back when you were Tertius."
"Yeah. But that was easy. Spot. Snipe. Leave." He cradles his head in his hands, rubbing at his fringe. "That kid was - I could hear him, Sar - Secundus. See his eyes. I froze." He looks up at you with the same hard, ancient gaze all of the other operators seem to permanently bear. "Shit. I knew taking up Prima's torch was a mistake. I'm not cu-"
You clap him on the shoulder. "-stop it. You're just tired. Let's get home, debrief, and get some rest. You'll feel better. Promise."
More children.
More innocents.
But you're not a monster.
Not a crazed murderer.
The violence?
Yes.
Yes, you are enough of an adult to admit this is true.
Violence is your home. It is your spirit. It is you.
But not unthinking violence. Not malicious violence.
Righteous violence.
And so, as you hurl the shattered and shot and burned and twisted bodies of more and more of those born with the luck to be caught in the crossfire, you feel…
…nothing.
Not true.
Sorrow. Weariness. Sadness, that the stars grow dim and die, that day becomes night, that the suns fade into voids across the plains of all space.
But not the Sun.
Not the Fire.
That is eternal.
This is eternal.
The fire MUST burn. The engine MUST feed. The boat MUST sail.
But it is a pleasant surprise when the next set of footsteps is some pirate or mercenary - you cannot even recall the circumstances of how you slew this one - that comes shambling down the stairs.
You raise the pistol.
Nothing.
Empty.
The Armax Arsenal Brawler Mark Ten is the standard-issue sidearm of the Turian Blackwatch.
Ten thousand rounds on tap.
Empty.
You toss the thing into the fire.
What is a pistol?
-WHEN MOTHER TURA GAVE FIRST BIRTH SHE DID SO LAYING UPON A BLANKET WOVEN FROM THE STRANDS OF THE INFINITIES SLAIN IN THE NAME OF CREATION-
You flex your talons.
Realise that the crust that sloughs off your hands is blood and gore and viscera.
The whole engine room, in fact, is painted in a panoply of spattered evidence of your duty.
A colour-coded rainbow of blood smeared across every surface.
Meaningless.
THE FIRE HUNGERS.
You knock on the unmarked door.
It opens.
She sits there, older, now; her carapace is dulling in colour, a tapestry of wrinkles stretches around her eyes and mouth, and little cracks in her carapace have formed along her jaw. She's long since stopped wearing the prosthetic left eye; in its place is a simple eyepatch formed out of a black cloth strip tied around her head.
The once-mysterious woman beckons at you. "Come on in, kid. Take a seat."
You salute her crisply, then take your place across from her; she puts her feet up on the table, but it takes her a minute.
She struggles to get her left leg up, and has to use her hands to help lift it.
"Nulla," you start to say, "I, ah-"
"-I know, kid. I know." She smiles at you with real, genuine warmth this time. "Still, as Nulla, I have to ask. Are you sure you won't accept the role of Primus? The Hierarchy's going to lose one of its finest if you go through with this."
"I'm not abandoning the Hierarchy," you point out. "If anything, I'll be free. More free. Able to go where I need to be. Do what I need to do. No restrictions. No rules."
"Call me greedy," Nulla sighs, "but, you know, you say all that, but the truth is you'll be serving the galaxy. You'll answer to the Council, not me, and unless we pull off a coup or something equally insane, the Council's only one third turian, last I checked."
You think for a moment, stew on the best way to put it. "Can I - permission to speak-"
"-Spirits, Secundus, of all the people to bother asking. I'm not in my dress uniform. Just an old lady and her favourite student," Nulla snorts. "Go ahead."
"I, ah…I don't really give a single shit about the Hierarchy."
Liberating.
It feels like an enormous weight pulled from your chest.
"Don't get me wrong. I'll defend our people until I'm too old to wipe my own ass, even after that," you explain. "There's…there are very few lines I'm not willing to cross to ensure the safety of turian civilization. Hells, Nulla, you know better than anyone, I've crossed most of them. But I don't care, not really, about this building, or Cipritine Hill, or the embassy on the Citadel, or whatever else. I care about the people, Nulla. About protecting them."
With visible effort, Nulla takes her feet off the table, and pulls out a decanter and two glasses from the desk of her drawer. "Spirits, kid, I didn't think you were gonna get all heavy on me. Come on. We can drink while we talk."
Drinking, of course, is forbidden on all Turian Armed Forces bases - but, then again, so is smoking, and as Nulla pulls out the very same chemstick she did when she brought you into her world, a smile sneaks onto your face.
"I thought you were trying to quit," you point out, pouring two hefty glasses of brandy.
"Gave up," Nulla admits with a small shrug. "I'm gonna retire soon, if the minagenic nerve-degeneration doesn't get me discharged - or killed - first." She shakes the chemstick at you. "This thing's vintage now, you know?
"Old hag," you chide, raising your glass.
She grins. "Fuck you, kid."
You both drain the glasses.
Burning, soothing whiskey slides down your throat.
It's not the good stuff.
The taste is recognizably cheap: a strong hit of heavy smoke at the start, a lingering wave of artificial, generically 'fruity' sweetness, and a finish that sits in your mouth as though you've swallowed gasoline.
Marksman's Tears - six credits per litre.
You've never seen Nulla drink anything else, if she has the choice.
You both set the glasses down.
Nulla takes a long, long drag from her chemstick, stifling a little cough as she exhales. "Well, I can't stop you, kid. Spirits know you're probably more qualified to be sitting in this chair than me, anyhow."
"Don't know about that," you mutter, pouring another glass of brandy for yourself, though this time you only take a little sip. "I don't think I could teach recruits like you did."
"Not hard, y'know," Nulla offers. "Mostly it was just beating the tar outta you and letting you go hungry. You did the rest."
"I meant it earlier, though," you say, picking up on the old thread. "Council Spectre. I'll keep doing what I do, but…no more tape. No more rules. I'll do what I've always wanted. Dish out justice. Protect people as I see fit."
"You gonna miss your time here?" Nulla's tone is soft, the closest thing you've ever heard to Nulla being gentle. "Now that it's almost my time to go, y'know, I've been talking to the other externati. People…I hear, I, uh, people say that they miss it. Like being in a little, fucked up family."
You smile. "Of course I'll miss it. Some Spectres build their own crews, though. Who knows? Maybe I'll put a team together. Get some of the old crew on board."
Nulla chuckles. "No you won't. You're not like that." She sucks in another lungful of minagen vapour, exhales, takes another long hit. She struggles not to cough, this time, and fails miserably, descending into a fit of hacking, wheezing coughs. "Ah, shit. Maybe I oughta hand in my papers with you."
You both drink together in silence for a long while.
"So I know you're never going to quit the minagen," you say at long last, "but maybe you could start with not drinking this cheap swill?"
"Yeah, not happening, kid. Marksman's Tears is what I grew up drinking and they'll bury me with a bottle of it," Nulla answers, smirking.
Grew up drinking? You raise an eye.
"Don't. Nobody ends up here," Nulla chuckles with a laugh that's utterly devoid of her usual, airy cheer, "because they're good, well-adjusted turian citizens."
"I wish," you admit, "that I'd gotten to know you better, Nulla. I don't even know your real name."
"No. No, you don't," Nulla mutters.
The two of you drink long into the night.
Idle chatter, but not unpleasantly so. Reminiscing on old missions and new ones since Nulla retired from fieldwork.
Eventually, half-past three in the morning, you stumble to your feet. "Alright," you mutter, working hard not to slur your words, "I gotta go. Not gonna…rep…go to the Citadel 'til next week. I'll see you 'round."
"W-wait," Nulla stammers, getting to her feet. "Come 'ere."
You walk over to her-
-and she embraces you. It's an awkward gesture - neither you nor Nulla are the hugging type - but there's warmth, deep warmth, in the gesture.
"Be careful, kid," she mutters, holding you tight. "Cross those lines. But don't lose yourself, Saren, please. You - me - all of us, we all live right at the edge of that fuckin' cliff. And there's no goin' back up once you jump off, Saren."
You return the embrace, match its heart as best you can. "I'll be fine, Null-"
"Auxios. Sibia Auxios. That's my name," Nulla - Sibia - whispers.
"Thank you, Sibia. For everything."
The day before you leave for the Citadel to start your new life, you get a message.
From "Nullus."
In the end, that "bitch-to-quit" habit does her in before you see her again.
Nerve-degeneration leading to a sudden failure in her brain, compounded by an aneurysm.
Dead in her office.
There's no time to stick around for a funeral, not that you think there will be one.
There never has been for anyone else in the Blackwatch.
But you do visit a small grave - not in the Cipritine Hill of Warriors, but rather a very, very small town far in the north of Palaven. A little, ancient fishing hamlet at the very edge of North Salavos.
The grave is unmarked, save for her name-
-and Secundus of the Turian Blackwatch places a bottle of Marksman's Tears there, just one amongst a little pile of whisky bottles all bearing the same label.
It all blurs into nothingness.
What does it matter who comes down the steps?
The fire burns.
The fuel comes.
You rip the fuel apart.
Break it down.
Shatter it.
Throw it into the fire.
You stand in a knee-high pool of reeking blood.
You have to wade through it, even get down on your hands and knees sometimes to fish out the bodies.
This is your home.
This is your spirit.
This is where you belong.
So long as the boat sails-
-so long as the fuel keeps coming-
-so long as the fire burns-
Aren't you tired, Saren?
Your head snaps up.
Footsteps down the stairs.
The blood recedes away from those feet, and it - she - he - they - walk down the stairs.
It's your mother.
Your father.
Desolas.
Sibia.
You are tired.
You are so very, very tired.
Garbed in shining white, the thing you wish for most gently takes the corpse in your hands out of your grasp and holds you tight.
My poor child.
This burden, oh, this burden.
Rest, my child.
Rest.
Dream.
Yes, yes, rest.
You have been fueling the boat for so long, so so so so so long now, and all at once it hits you - your muscle aches and your stomach growls and your bones creak -
-there is so much resting upon your shoulders-
It need not be this way, child.
It will not be a problem, surely.
To rest.
Just for a minute.
To close your eyes.
The engine's fire burns so hot, so bright.
So warm.
The boat will sail without your work, surely.
Sleep.
And dream of what you could be.
You close your eyes-