(Definition of terms at the end of the chapter)
August 19th, 2183
Abandoned Mine Shaft | Therum | Knossos System
Dr. Liara T'Soni | Associate Professor of Xenocultural Studies at the University of Serrice
The stasis field hums and buzzes. Unlike modern biotics or artificial barriers, it produces no smell of ozone. Too well tuned, perhaps. Too efficient. As perfect in the mechanism as it is in its spherical shape.
The krogan they sent with the geth stomps down the gangway, carrying something over his massive shoulders. Purple droplets fall to the white deck before fading on the unstainable, self-healing alloy the Protheans use. Still snow-white fifty thousand years after whatever caused this place to be abandoned.
He dumps his load with a dismissive grunt and the body of Emnyi Jaega tumbles to the plating, the left side of her face a rotting, charred gap and her vivid teal skin almost black with discoloration and decay. Liara's friend. Her mentor in field work who reminded her that yes, she did need to have a pistol strapped to each leg or you'll wind up with batarian slaver's cock between them and scolded her to wear a kinetic generator, foolish girl, don't waste your brain on keeping a barrier up who would jam ration bars between Liara's pursed lips if she didn't think she was eating or tap her on the crests with a hydration tube every few hours.
Mother of five and a half, Emnyi would joke, though whether she counted Liara or her youngest as the 'half', she never explained. Liara was probably more work. She'd shown Liara more tenderness in three years than Benezia had since Liara was sixty. Emnyi raised five daughters from birth and one from halfway, she would joke. Six daughters will mourn her.
"Files say this one had a krogan father," her tormentor huffs. "Guess that's why the bitch got a piece of me."
He taps a crater dug deep into the bone-plates of his forehead, one of the few parts of a krogan that never heals. Warpfire has ripped apart the bones atom by atom, down to the milky-pale layers closest to the skin. A few centimeters more and the front lobes of his brain would have melted.
He kicks the body out of his way and it tumbles off the platform, landing with a thud somewhere below.
Don't cry, Liara reminds herself. Don't spit at him. Don't use your biotics. You can't spare the water.
"She did." She tries to remember how her mother's voice sounded at the council. When her mother warned the brasher matriarchs of their folly, her voice sent shivers through her. Made Liara think of the arctic caps of Thessia. Somethin ancient. Something that would never melt. Something that would kill patiently with cold, hungry fingers and never give back the bones.
"And her wife is ten times the krogan you are! After I pull your vast'kak from your spine, I will give them to her for a grave-trophy. She can chase down your pups by their sire's stink."
He jabs a giant finger at her and pulls a hunk of charred varren meat out of a bag on his hip.
"Hah! I like you."
He keeps talking, but she's too exhausted to piece together the words.
A bang that reverberates through the cavern jars Liara from the half-sleep she had been languishing in. Dragging her eyes open, she sees a pair of the paler, thicker-shelled geth slam into the barrier bubble, wrapped in ghostly white biotic fields. The machines twitch and chirp and struggle until two shots ring out, striking each through the optical housing on the head and ending them.
"Hello!" Liara calls out, but she's not even sure she's making any sound dragging air over her aching tongue. "I'm trapped! I need help."
Three figures approach the edge of the barrier: A massive krogan male-a more mottled and paler green and in a different armor-a tiny, fidgeting quarian in a suit draped in purple and gray silk, and an asari huntress in heavy, gray armor with a red and white stripe on one shoulder-guard. A black, mirrored faceplate hides her face and she carries a type of pistol Liara's not familiar with. The barrel is longer than any pistol Liara's ever seen and the muzzle, accelerator and the heat exchange chamber are sized for a heavy shotgun, but the sightin, grip, and chassis are reminiscent of the Carnifex that the turians on the shuttle carried.
The stillness of the posture, the efficiency and purity of the biotic fields she saw earlier, the precision of the shots, firing that massive pistol at all while maintaining twin lift fields one-handed...only a huntress could do that.
"Doctor T'Soni, I presume?"
With a hiss of recaptured air, the huntress removes her helmet. Rather than scaled crests and Serrice Guard tattoos or a House T'Soni diadem of rank, the helmet reveals a human woman with pink skin dusted with tawny speckles, eyes the dangerous green of tideglass shards in the moonlight and hair like a blast of wildfire: Messy, red and curling.
"Goddess. You're human."
"Got in it one, Doc. Commander Shepard. We're here because of your mother."
"Emnyi?" Liara mumbles.
"Your other mother."
"Benezia," Liara replies. Goddess, but talking hurts. "Benezia's my mother. Emnyi..."
The sob rushes up her chest and out of her throat. She shakes her till her body aches.
"Commander," the quarian murmurs. "She's dehydrated. Badly. She's delirious like I would be after a week of suit failure."
"Place reeks of Botan Gatatog," the krogan rumbles. "He's an insult to the krogan, but he's not weak. Smart of her to hole up, but she's been stuck in that field a long time. Tough little pyjak."
"Less chatter, more options. I need her out of that field and patched up."
"Can't," Liara groans. "Pro...Pro...Prothean bubble field."
The human's teeth capture her lower lip and scrape across it. She points to something in Liara's direction, then leans to say something to the quarian, who shakes her helmeted head and points to something else.
Darkness settles once more.
Hands pry her lips open-none too gently-and Liara thrashes, flinging what biotics she can. A stasis field clamps tight around her body, stilling her below the neck.
"Easy! I'm not going to hurt you. It's just water. Here."
Liara forces her eyes open despite the way the light stabs at them. Something thin and plastic pokes at her lips. A straw, she finally realizes, with the other end jammed into what looks like a huntress's ration tube except for the lack of the Asari Republic's sigil on the plastic. She takes it between her lips and lets her rescuer squeeze eezo-infused water into her aching mouth.
"Gotta go slow on the water, sorry. Don't want to shock your system."
Her focus ebbs and flows, but when she can make herself see and think clearly, she finds herself staring. Staring into those dark green eyes-like tideglass on the beach at dusk-and staring at the damp curls of hair plastered tothe sweat-slicked ski. Wondering how long it would take to count every freckle and if freckles are permanent on humans, or if they can be sucked from the skin and Goddess, Liara, get a hold of yourself and wishing she could ignore how powerful and steady the hand supporting her head is. It's like a pillar of stone, even as it cradles her crests without a whisper of pressure on the inflamed tissue.
"You..."
"Me, last I checked. Commander Shepard, Systems Alliance and Council SPECTRE."
"And now a human is a SPECTRE. You're delirious, Liara..."
"Why does no one believe that?" the human grumbles.
"She probably hasn't had extranet access."
"Good point, Tali. Wrex?" she calls, raising her voice to a holler that makes her aurals and her crests ache.
The floor shakes under the big krogan's feet.
"Any way out?"
"Mining laser blew. Caved in. Nothing that way unless you can get me a dozen krogan with more muscles than sense."
He licks his big lips.
"And some explosives."
The quarian clears her throat, which her suit translates into three buzzing noises.
"We found the body of an asari named Emyni near the edge of the chamber you were in. There was a bracelet under her omnitool. I figured you might want them."
She pulls one of the wide ribbons of silk off her suit, wraps the baubles in them, and places them in Liara's lap.
"Thank you. She was..."
Liara coughs.
"She cared for me like a mother."
Long fingers smooth over Liara's crests in a lazy pattern that seems to have no purpose and no rhythm.
"We can't bury her. I'm sorry. We have to get you out of here before Saren sends more geth."
"Athamist," Liara coughs out. "She was Athamist."
Shepard tilts her head and then turns her green-eyed gaze back at the edge of the chamber.
"Right. Athame allows for biotic cremation. I can do the pyre. But remind me of the words."
Liara reaches for her omnitool only to have her hand captured and pulled away. The human's other hand rises to her ear and taps twice on a metal object curled around it. Her own omni goes dark.
"I speak Serraci and Armanese, though I'm better with the former."
Liara manages to get the stanzas of the Poem of Nightfall out and Shepard nods, then lifts her like she weighs nothing and carries her to the edge of the chamber.
"Keep an eye on her, Wrex. If you let her fall off, I'll pull your quad off and mount it on the Normandy's bow as a decoration."
Hands spread wide and head bowed, Shepard sings the dirge in trembling, low tones before releasing a torrent of pure destruction from her fingertips to dissolve Emyni's body, sending her back to the Goddess as only the Art of Athame can.
The cavern shakes. Liara yelps and an arm the size of a mining crane grabs her by the middle.
"Can't drop you, doc."
"What was that?" Tali asks.
"Cave in," Liara croaks.
"Fuck. Options, people!"
An orange projection of the caves rises from the quarian's omnitool. She spins it around and expands on a section in the center of the facility.
"That might be an elevator. Assuming Protheans even used things like pistons."
Shepard returns and takes Liara from Wrex, tucking one arm under her ribs and another under her knees. She lifts her with ease and Liara's limp hand flops against the commander's steel clad thigh. She molds her palm to the ceramic to feel the actuator rotate with each sure, long-limbed stride. Even if she had the strength to move her hand, she's not sure she wants to.
The old krogan chuckles.
"Someone's got an itch."
Even through her semi-conscious haze, Liara can tell that the look Shepard gives him was what made the krogan step back.
"Stay with me, Doc."
The tremors increase in tempo as they make their way to the elevator, coming closer and closer together. Shepard tucks her behind some sort of ledge the Protheans added to the center of the elevator and pulls up the controls. She runs her hand over the panel for a few seconds, then taps on it.
With a shudder, the elevator rises.
How did she understand the glyphs?
"Joker, we need exfil at the caldera! On the double, mister!"
"Aye-aye, commander. Secure and aweigh. ETA, eight minutes."
"Make it four," Shepard snarls back. "Leave the Mako if you have to. This volcano is pissed off."
"You have that effect on people, Commander."
"Ha-ha, Tali."
Wrex snorts.
"Best thing about her."
Liara is on something warm, and scratchy, and squashy.
She remembers the elevator, and loud noises, and that krogan that killed her friend. She remembers rage and pain like someone was flaying the skin from her arms and a sharp crack on the head. Nothing else.
"Welcome back," someone tells her. "Don't you dare try to sit up. I've put all the asari-compatible IV fluids I have into you and it was barely enough to even out your vitals. For all the things you asari are good at, surviving dehydration is not one of them. And I say that as a human," the doctor jokes. "We dry out in a couple days, but at least we don't get delirious until the end."
Liara opens her eyes to the inside of an auto-medical pod. The clamshell is half open and the lights are dimmed-truly a mercy-and her vitals are displayed on one of the interior screens. On a chair next to her is a human woman with silver hair, a few tiny wrinkles around each eye, and a kind smile. She rests her gloved hand over Liara's and squeezes gently.
"You're a doctor?"
"Dr. Karen Chakwas, chief medical officer of the SSV Normandy."
"Thank you," Liara croaks. She doesn't have to be a medical doctor to know that her blood levels of eezo, sodium, and tungsten are more suited to a mummified corpse than an asari maiden.
The doctor's omnitool pings.
"...and that's the commander asking for an update on you. I think I'll lie, give you a couple hours more rest. How's that sound?"
Liara can't manage to thank her before she falls asleep.
She wakes to a fully dark medbay. The doctor has retreated to what looks like a sleeper pod in the corner and sealed it.
Does the poor woman sleep in her office? Is this how humans operate? Liara wonders.
There's a lab coat and jumpsuit on the chair the doctor had occupied earlier, with half a dozen ration bars and as many eezo-hydration tubes lined up beside. Inside of the pod is touchscreen with a blinking prompt offering to remove the IV lines. Liara taps the control, wincing when the needles slide out. She shouldn't feel anything, but maybe human anesthetics aren't tuned for asari nerves.
Swinging her legs over the edge of the bed makes her surroundings spin in a truly nauseating way. She decides to eat and drink before trying to dress. She takes delicate nibbles off the ration bar, swallows and waits. It tastes like raw grain glued together without the benefit of baking, seasoning, or sufficient time in the oven. When her stomach doesn't immediately reject it, she shoves the rest of the bar in almost whole and tears into the next.
With a full belly and so much eezo water in her she feels like she's sloshing, Liara finds the strength to wriggle into the undersuit and activate it-it cinches tight, as is typical for spaceships-and throws the lab coat over her shoulders. In a scholar's dress, she feels more like herself even if the vacuum-sealed weave clings to her skin so tight it feels like it's sucking on it.
She raises a palm to the door's scanner, hesitates, and then drops it.
"You're allowed," Chakwas grunts before rolling over in her sleep pod.
"Thank you. Dream of still waters, doctor."
The door opens with a sharp hiss and reveals a far more brightly lit space and a pair of heavily armed human marines. Liara's feet stop working and she glances around, trying to determine whether she faces a firing squad, an interrogation, or something else entirely.
"Two more paces, gentlemen," someone orders. "You can keep watch without being so close you're breathing all over her."
"Aye-aye, sir."
It's a deep voice, deeper than the Commander's voice, and hers had scraped across Liara's thoughts like heated scrub-stones at a bathhouse. Male? Human males have deeper voices, she recalls reading that. Whoever it is, they're somewhere around the corner and even after both marines take two full steps back and lower their weapons, she's not bold enough to peek around the corner.
A cup of some steaming brown beverage sails around the corner on a lazy curve, propelled by a weak throw field.
Thus lured, Liara forces her feet to work and rounds the corner.
The medbay must be located next to the mess hall, because there's rows of bare metal tables and the sight of a small kitchen bathed in orange light. Something there is sizzling and spitting. Her benefactor is a human man with precisely groomed facial hair and gentle brown eyes. A cup identical to her own sits in front of him, along with a stack of data pads and a crumpled tube of eezo water. A plate with some sort of brown residue sits on the opposite side, away from the datapads. She recognizes the placement; that's how she puts her food aside so she can't spill it on her work.
Biotic. Doing paperwork. Perhaps an officer? Liara wonders.
Liara spent hours upon hours every day with her mother's commandos as a taele, but even though her body reacted with heat and trembling at the sight of their long, sinewy bodies, her mind didn't yet understand why. Not until later, until true maidenhood, did she understand why her cheeks were hot and her biotics fizzling when she did her schoolwork on a bench near the barracks. If any of the soldiers harbored intentions towards the matriarch's daughter, the fear of Archon Shiala kept them from even glancing at her as they went through their sparring and biotics drills.
All those hours of gawking, and yet Liara never really gained an idea of how soldiers worked, not even asari. She couldn't make many assumptions on the dignitaries deck of the Destiny Ascension. She can make even fewer about an alien army's inner workings.
"You being nervous is making me nervous, doc. Have a seat, please."
"Thank you," she squeaks, scurrying towards the bench and trying to calculate what is too close and what is too far for humans. No easy task, given that she's interacted with humans for less than an hour, all told, and only half of that with possession of her mental faculties.
"Don't mind them. Standard procedure when..." The man huffs. "...when we have someone we're not quite sure about. Technically, every bolt on this ship is classified information. So until the commander clears you, they have to shadow you."
Liara swallows.
"I see."
"Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko, by the way. I'm the MCO here. Sorry. Marine Command Officer. Means I'm in charge of keeping all these fine men and women in the metal suits ready to go."
Liara hazards a sip of the liquid. It's bitter and slightly spiced and she can taste eezo in it. She smacks her lips, trying to place the flavor.
"Closest I could get to kaffe. Colombian roast from the commander's stash, cinnamon and some granulated honey."
She sets the cup down hurriedly.
"I...I couldn't possibly."
Kaidan chuckles.
"I'm pretty sure Skipper would kick my ass if I hadn't offered you the good stuff. Please, enjoy. For my safety, if nothing else."
Kick his ass? Is that an idiom?
"Why?" Liara asks, hating that she sounds like a toddler bothering her mother and also unable to stop herself.
Another sigh.
"Skipper and I go way back. I was in one of the earliest human biotic programs. I was a child, and not there by choice. It was a mess. Got shut down. Most of the organizers got locked up. She was the first class at the academy to be allowed to use biotics in combat and, for lack of any proper trainers, they put those of us who BaAT didn't kill in there as tutors."
"We kept in touch ever since," he says, glancing up from his datapad and finally setting it on the smaller stack with a huff. "I was...God...I was head over heels for her, at first. When we started, she was my student. Absolutely off limits. And it wasn't long before I had to write her up for throwing another cadet against a locker and making her scream."
Making her scream? Are all their idioms terrifying?
"Making her scream?" Liara asks, drawing on every moment of her decorum classes to still the shaking of her hands. "Sounds cruel. Was the other woman badly injured?"
He laughs again, this time louder and rougher-sounding and shaking his whole body. When he finishes, he wipes his mouth.
"Oh, my God. I needed that laugh. I don't think her partner thought it was cruel at all. Girl could barely stand and she was falling all over herself to lie for Shepard. Skipper is what humans call a lesbian. She's not romantically or sexually interested in men."
"Making her scream..." Liara murmurs, rolling the words off her tongue as if the taste of them will translate the untranslatable. "Oh!"
An image flashes unwanted through Liara's brain. Sinew hard and smooth as river stone from the of the old quarries near Armali, palest pink, carved into arms that lift her up with ease. Hips leaned forward, pinning her body against the cold steel of a bulkhead. Tongue dancing between the neck-folds, fingers pressing into the bundles behind the sil'atr and pinching at the tips, where the skin is firm and can take that abuse. Making her body weep with salt and eezo, the stuff of asari bodies running in rivers around her fingertips.
Would it be like an azure? Would Shepard want my fingers in it? My tongue? Goddess, would I even know how to pleasure her?
Heat crawls up her neck-folds to her cheeks. She wishes the table wasn't so shiny because she can see her cheeks glowing violet with embarrassment.
"Let's just say I know Kitty well enough to know that if we have a civilian woman aboard I'm to treat her well."
She glances at the marines standing still as stone figures by the staircase. To prevent her escape, perhaps? As if Liara's feet could carry her any farther than back to the medbay.
"Yes. Ah. Thank you. It's good to know I am not only an object of fear."
He nods and lifts his own cup.
"Reports?" Liara asks, gesturing to the various datapads.
"Exactly. Some of the marines clearly never filed an after-action before. Williams is a born warrior, but she is hopeless on paperwork. I'm not even sure Draven knows how to alphabetize."
"Perhaps I can help," Liara offers. "Are you familiar with the Solus-T'Van-Maelis system for rapidly indexing recovered texts? All the libraries on asari, turian, or salarian campuses live and die by it."
Kaidan grins. He taps one datapad until it goes blank, then turns it to face her. Several pages of nonsense text appear in several human languages scroll past in completely random order.
"Class is in session, professor."
"Doc."
Someone is shaking her. How dare they? Liara T'Soni, credentialed archeologist, Heiress and Peeress of the Thirty, blood of the first Justicar, scion of Cellinis T'Soni and sworn protector of Sonalere Republic is being shaken while she is trying to sleep and she cannot imagine anything more rude.
Liara grunts unhappily.
"Doc!"
She cracks an eye and sees a pale, speckled hand-smooth and hairless, a woman's hand-pushing a plate of crackling, fragrant something towards her face. She rolls her head to relieve some of the pain in her neck and looks up. It's Shepard. Goddess help her, but it's Shepard, stripped to her armor's undersuit, hair wet and scented with the ghost of her shampoo. She's waking her up with a smile on her face while Liara's right cheek wears a thin trail of drool.
"We have beds, you know. I could have one set up for you."
Liara's reply to Shepard's offer is less a word than a moan she chokes down before it can take shape.
The commander takes a seat next to her, filling Liara's vision with armored fabric crisscrossed with hexagonal reinforcement that neatly silhouette the commander's abs and the curve of her breasts in the dim glow of the running lights.
"Figured a Serrice University graduate knew her way around seafood. Shepard family recipe fish and chips. Made it myself."
Shepard laughs quietly, and Liara thinks she can feel it rippling across her scales.
"Breakfast in bed, in your case."
TERMS:
For detailed entries on all, see the Systems Alliance Officer's Codex
Athamist or Athamism = A follower of the religion of Athame, more widely known as "The Goddess." Prayers are directed to Athame but faithful believe that she has trusted her disciples or goddess-students with various Spheres: Janiris (crops, storms, and fertility), Kurinth (war and hunting), Piares (care for the dead), and Tevura (love, sex, tavel and justice) with various spheres.
See "Athamism" under "Articles" in the Systems Alliance Officer's Codex
See "Athamism: As Are the Divine, So Are We. Understanding Athamism in the Context of the Bodies and Minds of the Asari" in the University of Serrice Faculty Circular
kaffe = A beverage brewed from kaff tree nuts and bark, serving as a common breakfast and social drink. Culturally analogous to coffee, despite not being an actual stimulant-instead, it is a mild anesthetic which dulls the asari's electromagnetic and gravitic senses, thus allowing them to focus more on sight, sound, and touch. It has been popular ever since asari scholars needed to focus on a sheet of papyrus in front of them.
sil'atr = An asari's "crest" which serves the dual purpose of cooling the brain and providing specialized sensory organs for the asari's "Four Pillar" senses they use to detect shifts in dark energy, electricity, mass or velocity and gravity. The ability to perceive shifts in nearby objects of large mass or high velocity and see dark energy fields as they are being formed are key to the precision of asari biotics.
taele = The asari term for non-toddler children and teenagers, which may also be used to indicate a physically mature but not yet maiden-stage individual. Believed to be drawn from an ancient dialect's term for the 'nymph' stage of a shark-like creature's life cycle.
vast'kak = A series of connected bones running from the head plates of a krogan to the skull and including the top vertebrae of the primary spinal cord and both the secondary spinal cords. Taken from corpses post-mortem in ancient wars for trophies or pre-mortem as a form of humiliation.