A/N: Just a heads up, I am a professional writer, and I work on fanfiction alongside my actual work. So if my updating is slow just be sure I'm sparking joy in other works, and bear with me.
Anyway, few review responses:
RandomReader said:
Russia is no continent.
Yes, I know that, but the implication was she walked across both Russia and the rest of Europe. That and I do choose some words that carry more weight from time to time. I'm a fan of alliteration so you might see some of that pick up from time to time.
Guardian of the Inheritance said:
I would like some translations for the sign language please! I am not well versed in it. Great job keep it up!
For the more general signs, I'll translate, but for the more personal ones, it's part of the experience, but thanks for the heads up!
anotherguest said:
To me, the way you write Shepherd is much the same, just instead of constantly refering to asari commando training, refering to her travels on earth constantly.
You know, I see that now, so thanks for pointing that out. I'll develop Shepard more and more, seeing as I do have a whole three games plus some to kick around with.
A/N in general: For this chapter, few things I'd like to point out: Yes they are singing the Halo canticles. PLOT DIVERGENCE STARTS HERE. John Shepard is default Male Shep. Also I keep forgetting to mention offhand my character model for JD is Ryan Gosling in Blade Runner. As for Mai? I dunno, Alia Shawkat but with straight, dark hair, 200% resting bitch face, and also fuck huge. I've always imagined her as always eyebrows furrowed with a half-lidded look. I've staved off describing her straight up for several reasons, but generally she's kinda... amorphous? At the moment. Purposefully of course, because many of you keep seeing her as a Spartan, her identity is in constant flux between Spartan and Human, machine and man, etc. I'm a complete hack but that's the gist for that. I haven't read any of the Halo stories with Naomi-010 in them, but I can guess there's probably some similarities between them.
1-11
To Go Home
The galaxy was the same as it had always been. That much Destiny and Karonee could tell as they sat in their chambers, in a holding pattern within the arms of the Citadel. It had been, evidently, the first time a Quarian ship had been back within Citadel airspace ever since the Quarian exile from the galactic community. The amount of fanfare made from it only matched by Lieutenant Commander Shepard's admission into the Spectres. It was an interesting thing to see to Destiny: on how humanity conducted itself in politics and in celebration, something which the Covenant gave them no reason to dabble in within the crusades.
Still, even that fanfare had subsided in time, the galaxy dancing from problem to problem.
"Tell me, Shipmistress," Destiny used his subordinate's lesser title. She was a Fleetmistress, above all, but then again, there was no fleet for her. She tilted her head up from her side of the room at him, as he went over notes by his table, still seated within his hoverchair. "Do you recognize that the Quarians would be using us?"
His voice to Karonee had been muffled, filtered. Given where they were, the peculiarities of their host, during their stay on the Quarian envoy ship they had been suited and armored up. Karonee had borrowed one of the suits of the Elite Rangers, while even Destiny had donned an armor that she herself was not familiar with.
She glanced over at the Prelate, in the shadow of the room, always on guard. She hadn't even that San'Shyuum sleep, as they hadn't even left the room for as long as she remembered. Always on guard, outside of her own tactical knowledge. It was a Human expression she drew upon: She was creeped. The only thing that the San'Shyuum supersoldier had given her was her dignity, if nothing else. Destiny wouldn't dare do his usual tics with her while another San'Shyuum was around.
"I've learned long in my life that no one ever does anything out of the kindness of their being, outright, your holiness." She answered.
"How cold you sound, Shipmistress." Destiny responded with disdain.
For as long as her fleet had been attached to the Long Night of Solace and Supreme Commander Barutamee's command, the Prophet she currently shared a room with had never been shy in his preference for her. She wrote it off, during the first months of her command, as simply the nature of Prophets. She learned better as the deployments went on. A hand left too long on her shoulder, looking for skin beneath her armored plates, the way he had sometimes leaned in, just to feel her breath on his face. It wasn't anything she wasn't supposed to be unfamiliar with. Within the clans and families of Sanghelios, she was prized much for what she had done with her life. The stark impression of domination was apparently attractive for many an Elite male. She was thankful for the Covenant's influence in this regard then, she was deemed to strategically important to have to answer to the beck and call for those who would look for a mate, both on her ship and abroad. The difference with Destiny was that he had been above her in that structure known as the Covenant.
The other ambassadors of the Covenant races had their own quarters, and, as for the crew of that ship, had mostly avoided them, save for the Elites.
Ke Nazhumee had been the main go-between for dialog between the Sangheili and Quarians. He and one of the Quarian admirals, Shala'Raan vas Tonbay, had been acquainted in such a way that the Quarians saw fit as important to, not only the individuals, but their entire race. Questions of Sanghelios, or rather, known to that galaxy as Rannoch, had been bombarded upon the Elites by the Quarians.
She among them had been liable to answer. The Sangheili had many colonies amongst the Covenant, and she was, at the end of the day, one of the few that could call their homeworld their own home. She spoke, in idle moments during dinners with the captain of this envoy ship. It had been a difficulty finding food for the Sangheili, the nuances of diets among alien species not lost on this particular Milky Way, however the Citadel had food shipped up to them.
"Maps," the Captain explained as they passed them around the dinner table, Karonee and Destiny present among the other Covenant onboard. "My ancestors, it is said my home was built near here, tell me, what did you call this place?"
The maps were laminated and preserved, Karonee gingerly touching upon it as she worked away at her stew through an induction port. She recognized it almost immediately because of Reach.
"Vadam Harbor." She answered, recounting of the Covenant's greatest admiral, of which was supposed to be at Reach before the Long Night of Solace evaporated. "The state of Vadam was among the most respected of our kind, one of its sons led the fleets of the Covenant no less then as a divine instrument."
He beamed at her answer, the pride of being that much closer to home within him before his childhood dreams faded and realized a point of her answer:
"Against who?"
On the blood of her fathers, on the blood of her sons, the Covenant had waged a war like no other against a humanity. The one they were beholden to now had known that, and for the safety of galactic sanity, no one else did.
Karonee didn't answer directly. Before the humans, there were always Jackals, treasonous sects of Sangheili that didn't' abide by the Writ of Union, so that is how she answered, but what remained had been an uncomfortable, unspoken truth.
The Alliance knew what they had done, and yet they did nothing to them.
The Divines worked in mysterious ways, and now Karonee was instead embroiled in political intrigue lost on the Sangheili as a whole. Not one of the Councilors had survived on the Solace, and so she had become the highest ranking Sangheili and the keeper of knowledge that would've gone beyond her back in their reality.
Still, some secrets were not held.
"We come from another dimensional plane." Destiny had explained, before the Council, his chair floating in the same spot as the human Commander Shepard had made her case days prior. She was matched, if only because it marked the first time a Quarian had stood before the Council in centuries.
Councilor Sparatus and Valern shared a look of curiosity. Surely the idea of multiple universes was always theorized upon ever since the advent of hypothetical quantum sciences, but for Destiny to explain it outright, after so many questions on the nature of the Covenant and where, exactly, they came from, it floored the Council.
Udina had been given permission by Prime Minister Shastri that okay'd the Covenant explanation, and, for once, the Covenant heeded the words of the human political machine as they sat in Udina's office and were explained the galactic situation. Human expansionism on the Attican had become a hot-button issue that, snidely, all of them there were familiar with on a far more grim term. Unlike the Covenant the Council wouldn't forcibly keep humanity from extending its borders, especially if it made them contend with the pirates and lawless sectors that they themselves didn't want to deal with.
Karonee privately wondered if at least Supreme Commander Vadamee's fleet alone might've been a match for the Council in its entirely, but that issue had only been in her hypotheticals: reaching back to a simpler time she had been stolen from.
Among those issues had been the situation with the arisen Geth.
The fact that the Solace's AI had remained intact had been a curiosity to even the Engineers, but given the size of the Solace it was no surprise that enough redundant systems had been able to preserve the construct. Still, the issue of AI in that galaxy had been further trivial to the Covenant. What people would allow themselves to be overpowered by a machine?
In that galaxy, it had been the inheritors of Sanghelios.
The main Quarian envoy to the Citadel had been a shrewd man, if not well learned in his art of diplomatic relations. It had been such a show: between an exiled people and a Covenant which the Galaxy at large had not yet fully understood its full breadth and grasp.
Of the things that the Covenant knowingly kept hidden had been the fact they had an AI which they would recognize as illegal.
"Just to reiterate," The Quarian envoy repeated, white garb on him flowing in the slight draft of the Citadel tower. "The Sangheili of the Covenant are no more, no less, than natives of the Quarian homeworld in their dimension. Every single race of the Covenant has a homeworld in this galaxy, not yet discovered by any of the Council races. It would therefore be pertinent that with the arrival of these people that the Quarians be allowed to start proceedings of an adjacent alliance meant to return the Covenant to their native domains as they manifest in this galaxy."
"And why the Quarians?" Tevos had asked the Quarian envoy.
He had an answer. "The Flotilla is perhaps the most prepared to host the Covenant and deliver them outside of the Alliance sphere of influence. Although the Alliance graciously accepts and harbors the Covenant at present, the arrangement is far from permanent."
"Do you know how outlandish that sounds?" Councilor Tevos said again, looking to Destiny. "That an entire civilization, with the amount of you that have been reported, have traveled across a plane known only in theoretical physics, and ended up here?"
"And of what other explanation can you account for, Councilor?" The Quarian had stood off to the side, his imperial like garb reminding all of what the Flotilla had turned into in the generations of wandering. Destiny had spoken in place as if speaking to Truth himself, and in that sense: emulating the Hierarch here and now. "That millions and millions of people ended up on a human colony of their own ambition? That this was a calculated and intelligent maneuver?"
The Councilors kept silent, looking to themselves, giving each other eyes. It was madness, and yet random.
"And what is it you want, petitioning alongside the Quarians?" Sparatus pressed. The same thing anyone would want.
Destiny answered: "To go home."
Ambassador Udina sat on a private line in his office, a conference call between Prime Minister Shastri and a Ryder. Not the one that had caused his predecessor so much of headache, but rather, his daughter:
"They told the truth. Both of them." Sara Ryder spoke as she sat in a hijacked office on Altis to her comm console. "The Covenant War, the Covenant themselves, their warfighting techniques and their timelines. All of true from what I could gather."
Sara had spent the good part of the last week combing through any data archive she could from the Savannah: without an interface device made by the Alliance, she had become one of the very few to interface with one of the few pieces of resources given by Mai Gul herself: her data pad. It had been the only device able to interface with any of the surviving data pathways on the Savannah, and with it, Sara Ryder had learned, verified, and confided in Ambassador Udina and Prime Minister Shastri an inconvenient truth.
The showdown within his office had made the secret of Gul and Durante's survival known to the Covenant now, but secrets upon secrets were taken, held, and brought to an understanding as time went on.
"We are currently hosting a religious hegemony that has, for the last thirty years, has devoted itself to the death of a human race." Prime Minister Shastri tiredly repeated. "And were winning."
He didn't quite understand the Spartan's drive to go back fighting an entire planet's worth of them, but for the shock trooper, he had empathized more. If it made him tired beyond words, he wondered how he as a regular man took it.
Udina looked out the balcony to the Presidium from his desk chair. The return of the Quarians had been met with much fanfare: mostly protest, a whiplash from Humanity's moment a few days ago. Multiple Quarian captains and leaders brought along with the Covenant had been making statements to any news reporter that would listen: championing, in the face of a new Geth uprising, a return of a chosen people to their holy land. Alongside them: muscle. In the form of Brutes and Jackals, Hunters and Elites. Humanity and the Alliance might've been host to the Covenant on Altis, but truly, it had been the Quarians that captured them.
It was with a certain amount of dread that it had been reported that the Flotilla itself would be making its way to Altis in the coming weeks: the first visitation of the vagabond fleet into human space.
"The Covenant will never leave Altis entirely," Sara had reminded them. "The Solace would never be given up by them for us to freely investigate. Even my inquiries were stopped wholesale by even the Unggoy."
The correct name of their species had been the first reported, however their offhand names, they had been spreading. Both by the volition of the Alliance and by the Covenant themselves.
"I believe it would be in our interest for the Quarians to offload some of that population unto themselves." Udina, even as an ambassador, had still seen the immigration reports and defense spending of the colonies. "We'd risk Altis becoming an independent planet entirely to an alien species who has not gone to war with us yet to save face."
More importantly, leaving less to establish an independent planet within human space. Mai, upon her subsequent hours of debriefing, had revealed that Altis had been known to the UNSC, but abandoned as any sort of strategically important sight as the war dragged on. There had been suspicions then that perhaps the Insurrectionists would create a hideout there, but such efforts to prove or disprove it were better spent against the Covenant.
Even if they did anything to contain the Covenant, the reason could not be explain without a further breakdown that gave the Covenant the right to continue to war: The Alliance brass had known that the Covenant, as they were known to the UNSC, were an apocalyptic threat that mirrored perhaps the Rachni and Krogan of years before. For the Council to realize that now, it would bring the Council within Alliance space in ways that humanity wouldn't stand.
The Covenant had known that the Alliance knew, and vice versa. So the secret pact kept between them, muttered only in subtle cues and hushed mentions, was that they would keep that from the galaxy, else ruin come to both of them. And in any event, the religious crusade that the Covenant had been on had been for one humanity, not theirs, as cruel as that sounded.
"We would give a potential enemy ships, transport, allow them to hide from us into the galaxy… and that is the better option than keeping them locked to one planet?"
"For us to do that, would be to admit them as our prisoners, Donnel. And no state of war exists between the Covenant and the Systems Alliance… We have no history save for the month and a half we've known each other."
And yet the history went back further: transcended time and space and political affiliation.
Humanity and the Covenant were tied together.
"What have you dug up about the UNSC?" Shastri asked Sara. "Their tech and gear?"
"The Ardent Prayer offloaded much of the UNSC load it had before it began refit by the Solace." The Covenant frigate had taken again to the water and tended to. Being the sole starship of the Covenant now, some of the Solace's higher quality components had been given over, the Solace itself being cleaned of its wreckage and put in order. If it was to become a city at sea, the Covenant did it as dignified as they could: with the efficiency that was only rivaled by the Rachni. Slowly, ever slowly, the main colony on Altis had become a Covenant city, and for the first time in its thousand-year history, became intermingled with humankind. The Alliance who remained were there for security and to study the Savannah. "The slipspace drive is an anomaly, but it is what we're focusing on most."
"I presume the Covenant refuses to cooperate?" Udina guessed.
"We're keeping interactions to a minimum." Sara answered. The Jackal Kaal Roth had been more liable to speak to her as he gave his guidance within the Savannah's hull, but then again he had been paid by the word it felt.
"What's their goal then?" Udina had always known, there was always an ulterior motive.
"To go home." Shastri repeated Destiny's own words from his Council hearing.
"Their own universe, or their planets?" Udina asked again.
Every Prophet had a way with words, and that was a lesson being learned by the Alliance day by day. "We don't know, but we just have to assume," Shastri spoke as a former soldier, a man of military blood. "That if they mean us harm, they cannot afford to do it now."
There was a pause on the line, one that Sara only filled in with technical details, reports of weapons salvaged and sent off-world to research sites: both Covenant and UNSC. The most intact examples of the Sabres had been among the first sent off for research and study, followed closely by the Slipspace drive. The Council had not yet known of the UNSC, too enthralled by the Covenant to even be considering that they hadn't been the only ones brought over.
"How long till that secret breaks then?" Udina was always a pessimist, but it was what made him good at his job.
"Whenever it becomes inconvenient." Shastri answered truthfully. "Lieutenant Ryder, keep up your studies alongside the rest of the research staff. Udina, we have to keep playing this by ear. Let the Covenant do what they need to do, but any negative rhetoric toward us you reel them in and tell them the score."
"Is that really the best we can do?" The ambassador answered.
"Not without things getting a lot more complicated right now. The colonies are already in a fit and our military is already strung out preparing for the Geth. For us to act on a war that wasn't our own right now, against a entity that isn't at all interested in engaging with us right now? We can choose our battles."
Choosing a battle had felt more like choosing a war, and unfortunately, it's what was easiest for Udina to come to terms with as he replayed back Destiny's and the Quarian envoy's proposition to the Council:
Destiny spoke before the Council for what felt like hours, speaking of the Covenant as a singular people, nothing of their individual species and races. It was with this that was foreign to the galaxy. For all the history and the relations between the different races; the animosity between Turians and Humans, the reverence between the Drell and the Hanar, the historical bad blood of the Krogans against all, anything looking like that was not present with the Covenant.
The Covenant was what the galaxy would've looked like if totally unified in a way.
There was a reason behind that.
"And what of your gods?"
"The Forerunners." Destiny answered, freezing for a moment as his arms held his chair tight, clearing his long throat. In the echoes of the Citadel, the song of ancients had hummed, and then sung from a voice. It came from Destiny first, the chanting of ancient scripture, speaking of the Sacred Rings. Though he was not alone in that room. The Elites, the Brutes, the Grunts, those that came to represent their species, watching from the wings, had joined in chorus. A perfect harmony not seen in politics or song in that tower in ages. Not possible by those who had known it before.
Their voices echoed through rock and metal and time. A timeless chorus, joined and sang of victory everlasting through reclamation and a mantle of responsibility. This was how it was shown to the Council and its politicians as they all stood and were immersed by the sound of god.
"What was that?" Tevos asked softly of Destiny. "Was that a demonstration of your Covenant?"
"The Covenant is an agreement between no less than eight species toward a common goal of reclamation through our inherited right. Your Protheans, those form which you have inherited, are not our gods."
Sparatus had flicked his mandibles, deep in thought, he and Destiny locking eyes as words were coaxed out of the Turian. "We've had reports that your religious adherence spreads in such a way that would hint at… assimilation… And yet you recognize that your Gods are not present here?"
Destiny cocked his head before answering tersely. "Does faith have to waver with a lack of proof? Is that not the definition of faith? Are we, by your definition, unworthy of faith?" The Quarian envoy was visibly uncomfortable, drawn back by Destiny's explanation of the Covenant at its core, but, who was he to say? Was Rannoch not a holy land to him? "Spirits and Goddesses, Homeworld and Protheans, from what I have read of this galaxy, you have not made a faith of the one unifying force that unites you all. This opposed to us."
His long fingers gestured at the tower, at everything: from the Citadel itself, to the Relays, to Mass Effect fields and the Protheans that came before. He was right. The Forerunners binded the Covenant together not as just the means, but also the ends. In this galaxy, no consideration was given to that fundamental fact of galactic standard by ancestral inheritance.
"There is still much we do not understand about the Covenant, or its member races." Valern ran his own finger by his chin.
Fair, Destiny conceded: "No more than perhaps the average citizen of our own people know of their neighbors, perhaps, I don't expect you to fully understand each one of us and what we have brought to the Covenant: what is needed to be understood is that we are a Covenant."
There had never been an effective rival to the Council in its several thousand-year histories, but the Covenant had emerged with the promise that they had eclipsed them. Destiny spoke down to the most powerful people in the galaxy.
"It is our understanding that the Solace was a warship. The population which it carried dwarfing many colonies in size. Each individual a soldier. By taking on the Covenant and hosting them yourselves, do you recognize you also accord yourself with the military power unofficially recognized by the Council?" Sparatus had spoken like a Turian to the Quarian envoy.
"As opposed to allowing such a proposition to be held by the humans?" The Quarian held his hands up, playing on the obvious ramifications that no good, true blooded Turian would allow in any pretense.
Tug of war. Manifesting in the fate of the Covenant. Some of the Admiralty had been willing to let the Covenant become hosted by the Quarians instead, given the truth of their nature. Some had argued the exact opposite, but the knowledge they had was never revealed to the Quarians, and, for all intents and purposes, the Quarian claim on the Covenant had manifested in something as holy to them as the sacred installations of the Forerunners had been to the Covenant: a homeworld.
The Quarian pointed at his feet, as if pointing at non-existent footprints left behind by the Council's newest Spectre. "Commander Shepard is currently embroiled in the task of stopping Saren and the Geth. We too can assist in the effort. If Shepard is chasing after Saren, we can eradicate the Geth by going back into the Perseus Veil."
Destiny continued in step with the Quarian envoy. "And that world which the Geth now occupy, the Quarian people have accepted that in this particular exception of events, that they now share their rightful claim to it with our Sangheili. The Covenant would support one of its oldest member species."
"For three centuries," The Quarian envoy had curled his fists and held them to his chest, to his heart, looking to the only Council member to have been alive then: Tevos hadn't sat on the Council when the Citadel of yesterday had barred the Quarians an embassy, and had outlawed them from re-engaging the Geth out of fear of provocation. "My people have abided by a sentence we never deserved, and you have imposed."
"Your people-" Valern has spoken out but was cut off. The Quarian almost hissing at the Salarian.
"My people are the Quarians who live today! If the sins of my forefathers were deserved, so be it, but we carry not the weight of making that mistake, just the stigma placed upon us by a galaxy who now, as we offer to do right, give us no recourse."
There was a certain wonderment to Destiny, he reaching out an arm to the Quarian envoy, his voice ran hoarse as he felt as if he was screaming at god. Destiny had been the only San'Shyuum seen, the rest of his species population safely nestled within the Solace restricting and reorganizing the command structure all the way down the Brute and Elite children onboard.
His tone was cordial, homely almost. "We have come here today, honorable Council, in two parts. In one part: to recognize us. Both Covenant and Quarian. There is a certain kinship that we understand amongst ourselves that we are far away from our homes, and, even if we do ever return there, will never be the same. If that is something the Galaxy needs to understand the Covenant, for what you may think of us now, I encourage you to. But on the second part: The Covenant is here to do nothing more than aid this galaxy that has, from the human soldiers who found us first, to you, Councilors, give back."
To act as the superior: humanity had known what it felt like to be spoken to by such. Shepard intimately knew from the fact she was now subordinate to the Council. It was how the power dynamics worked in that galaxy, doubt thrown in its face by a union that did not abide, and did not need them.
Telos sucked in spit through her teeth. The Council needed a break period, but not on that note. "Normally species new to the galactic community are humbled, reserved, understandably. To be revealed that the stars are not empty, and that they have started at the bottom of a ladder's rung, it changes newcomers… However, you, the Covenant, are the first exception in this entire galaxy's history. You are no stranger to the stars."
Karonee tipped her head up at the ceiling as Councilor Tevos explained how they viewed the Covenant as a whole. Were it so easy to just have gone back to war with the humans. To be obliterated. Either in that galaxy or in her own, war was simple.
One of the human diplomats had brought his child along to these proceedings, the little creature silent, its proper teeth not even grown in and not even able to stand at its own command. Sangheili children had been different. Out from their eggs, they still would have their protective scales, their mandibles ready, even if somewhat ineffectually, to wave off predators of the Sangheili ancient past. Of the first things they ever learned, from how to walk, to talk, to read, and to listen, the most important of all had been how to fight.
There was no fight in this baby as he was held by his father, the young human's arms around his father's neck as their head rested on his shoulder, away from the Council and the speaking platform. With that, their shiny eyes looked directly at Karonee, in wonderment and awe. Something that she hadn't known from humans that long, a new feeling evoked only in the past month. This was the first human baby she'd ever seen, and, secretly, she admitted they captivated her more than the proceedings. She stared back at the child, and it flubbed with its lips at her.
Tevos continued. "Your arrival goes against every standard and every guideline we have on the introduction of new races to galactic society, so if you shall demand this recognition, this permission from us to be involved in such societal issues, then you would give us time to private discuss and then reconvene."
The Quarian envoy bowed, but stopped halfway by a gesture of Destiny's hand, pausing the entire Council and the audience. He would have one more thing to say:
"We ask only to help this galaxy." The fleshy, whisker like growths at the fringes of his mouth bobbed in its old, flesh colored ebb. "Should I expect to be denied?"
The Council had no answer as they shuffled uncomfortably out to their chambers and offices to consider that very idea: by their grace, the Quarians and Covenant would start a war on their behalf in the face of Saren. Destiny's tony had sounded of innocence, of elder wiseness at the same time, and yet it was a learned art.
For too long before the Age of Reclamation, the San'Shyuum that would become the Prophet of Truth often confided in his closer compatriots: That the adherence of a certain religious archetypical relations between the Covenant Council's politics and the Great Journey had lessened the two. To become a master of politics he had needed to recognize it as separate from the religious connotations, of which he also still tightly abided to. Of those he confided this into had been Destiny. Here in that world, the skills of the war that Destiny crafted had been of bureaucratic wonder combined with the grace of sermons. It was very easy to argue policy or requisitions when the confidence of word was backed by god.
The Quarian envoy had commented on this as they returned to his ship. Destiny only playfully dismissed such observances. He was simply telling the truth of his intentions.
The next time the Quarians came to him and Karonee then, there would be no playful distraction.
Admiral Tonbay had arrived with the captain of the envoy ship, the envoy, and a host of other representatives of the Quarian leaders. Entering the given quarters of Karonee and Destiny, the Prelate had shifted his stave defensively before Destiny gingerly waved him down. Several of the Elite Rangers deployed with them as guards had flanked the Quarians.
"I was hoping to speak with you, Prophet of Destiny, Shipmistress Karonee." Tonbay had sounded weak, but she had been, regardless, recovering from her exposure to Ke. It spoke to some simplified genetic immunity that the Sangheili had with the Quarians naturally. She walked in with a cane, leading the group, still, obviously weak at the knees.
"I presume then," Destiny waved at her assistive tool as his hover chair rotated from the desk he had been relaying notes with. "That this is important?"
"It is nothing that we haven't promised you prior." The envoy had spoken with a nod.
"Oh?" Destiny answered.
Karonee had moved off her own chair to meet the congregation. She had been, more than once those last few hours, forced to shake hands in a seemingly customary greeting of galactic society. It hadn't just been humans now. She bit back the motion by settling her hands behind her back.
"We first got your attention on Altis by mentioning what we could offer you, the Covenant." Tonbay continued. Destiny and Karonee very much remembered such promises, the two tilting their heads urging her to continue. "Just as your people have been true to their own word in assisting us and joining us by our side as we re-enter the galactic stage, we would be true to ours."
A data pad had been offered to the closer Karonee, of which she had taken, her eyes going wide as her new omni-tool automatically translated the text on it to her own tongue.
"If you help us take back our Homeworld in any capacity, then it would only be right then, that we give you that which we wouldn't need anymore."
A tempting offer, one which they immediately asked for time to consider. Of course they would've said yes to it, and, at the very least, the Quarian admiralty had more or less agreed to it given the increase in manpower and combat prowess they would far than make up for what was being traded. Though there was a danger in tying into relationships, even out of convenience. At least their current truce with the humans had been built on some aspect of dealing with a devil they knew.
"Shipmistress?" Destiny had said as soon as the doors were closed behind the Quarians.
"Yes, your Holiness?"
"How many worlds have you Glassed?"
She remembered how she became the fleetmistress that she was: through blood and glass. "Three. Lain siege to and recovered any of our Holy relics before we would burn them."
Destiny's voice turned dark, low, unturning as he looked at the data pad as well. "So you know, better than most, what it would take to invade a planet?"
Sanghelios. She was, it seemed, one of the few Elites born there, nowadays. It had been her homeworld. To be now told to do the unthinkable to it, to a world she had held in her heart, not only as an individual, born and raised, but as her species' homeworld…
She was still an Elite in the Covenant however, and thus she took orders from the Prophets. "The longer we would wait, the weaker my troops become. If we shall proceed with this action, then we have to do it now, soon."
"What do you need?"
Karonee thought long and hard about this. How often was she given the expediency of the Covenant logistics lines? Her fleet had been only moderate in size, a great deal lesser than the Solace itself. Though it was a task here and now she was granted.
"Time." She decided. "The Quarians have already offered my people passage on some of their ships deploying their people on their coming of age ritual. If some of our people follow them, learn the Geth threat firsthand, it would allow us to draw up battleplans, all while we retrofit a portion of the Quarian fleet to act within our guidelines."
The complement and weapon stores of the Solace were still ready and waiting. They were in the middle of invading the human fortress world of Reach, after all. The amount they needed to invade Reach, they could've subjugated an entire system.
"Are we capable of making a borer?" The Covenant equivalent. Destiny asked.
Karonee hadn't been an engineer, but she had Engineers. "I believe we should base it off of the Ardent Prayer's borer, and siphon fuel from the Solace's reserves." Another thought. "That and we would have to do it entirely in house. Given the nature of their FTL, our Slipspace drives would give us an immense tactical advantage in all aspects of naval degree."
"Well it's why we sabotaged the drive we gave back the humans."
"Hmph."
Karonee hadn't been told as such when her troops delivered the human cargo back to them. How pitiful it was when she caught a glimpse of their recovery efforts of the Savannah. They had no idea what they were doing, and any inward thoughts that this had been a long trick of devilry by the humans had gone away as they struggled to understand the UNSC frigate.
"What of the Ardent Prayer itself?" Karonee stared out the window at the color of space. How she longed to be out there, exploring that new, yet old galaxy. To see what it was like to travel without war.
Destiny's tony lightened. "Why do you ask?"
"I wish to travel with it, for a time, along patrol routes. Conduct my own surveillance and operations."
"It is certainly a risk." Even with his lack of knowledge of doctrine, it seemed risky sending the only spaceworthy, pure Covenant ship away. "Would you wait until we are guaranteed local transport?"
"Of course. And I say this with my own observances here." She gestured to the window. "If this is the capital of galactic society, then it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that the military ships we see here today are, in a sense, the best of their kind."
A pause, the light of the cloud the Citadel was in emanating through that room like a heavenly gas. Such light tended to reveal people as Karonee went to it, looking further out.
"You are looking for a fight, Shipmistress?"
Elites were born to fight, and with that, she nodded.
A new Age was upon this Covenant. Not of Reclamation, not of Discovery, but of Destiny.
It was understandable then why Mai had been the last to arrive from gearing down to the comm room for debrief. Though it was because of her armor that it had made her become unrecognizable.
The door opened, and a woman the crew had, in some aspects, had not yet seen was there. Shepard had barely remembered what Mai looked like on the shuttle ride up to the Normandy from Earth, but here, in the middle of the deployment, finally unburdened by her armor, her image was striking.
None there save Shepard or JD would recognize her outright, and yet who she was was easily identifiable after the moment of confusion. Garrus and Tali shared a look as, at once, they both realized standing in the doorway, and then making her way into the comm room, had been Mai herself.
She was, and remained, the largest human any of them there had ever seen. Tall by a measure barely natural, her arms and legs barely constrained by her uniform, and, even below the clothes, the black underlay of her techsuit remained. Her hands remained hidden, as was the rest of her body save the neck up.
Her eyes had been sunken in, the whites of them harboring blue irises that burned to look at on a face that was as a stone: cold and unmoving. The impression of the uncanny valley applied to something that had been very much alive.
Mai had looked to Shepard. "Ma'am." With her voice it only confirmed who she was to those who had doubted.
"Grab a seat, Chief Gul." Shepard had offered the one open next to JD. He had been the only one used to the sight of her face, even if he hadn't seen it for almost two weeks. When they locked eyes, only, just marginally, did Mai's face soften. With the littlest of nods he had affirmed it, transitioning to holding his face with both his hands, elbows on his knees.
The turnover between dropping on the planet and then getting back shipboard had been jarring, even for him. On Reach it had been terrible. Before the operation to gut the Solace, the Savannah had been around the clock dropping him at points around Reach and then picking him and the surviving ODSTs up for retasking. This hadn't felt much better. The drop was the beginning of what was usually day long ops, where he would be with his gun and squad be stuck on planet until the objectives were done or beyond reachable. The mission was decompression for him, and so now, on the Normandy, he still felt like he was fighting.
He looked around the room though: no casualties, and that had put his heart at ease.
Tali had leaned over to Garrus to his ear canal and whispered. "She's… prettier than I imagined."
"I doubted she was human." He hushed back.
Garrus had yet developed his own definition on what constituted attractive as far as humans went, but he did objectively saw what Tali saw. She hadn't looked like a Krogan, or one of those newly discovered Jiralhanae. Her dark hair had a certain thinness to it that didn't speak to sickness, but rather, it spoke to silk. It had hardly been taken care of, it tied into a pony tail unceremoniously like so many other human women he noticed.
He would've asked Kaiden later about Tali's statement, as both he and the Marine took apart the underside of the Mako.
"Yeah, I mean, I think she does look graceful." He bopped his head around the Mako and made sure neither Chief had been there, "but it's her eyes that take away from that. They're kinda like a shark's."
"She's also like, big." Ashley had joined them, overhearing, as she spoke more frankly, ghosting her own hands around chest, then thigh, then butt, then arm, and then pretty much anywhere there had been a muscle on her. "I mean, that suit of hers don't leave much to the imagination."
Pickup from Therum had been painless as Shepard drove the Mako away from the mine to a pickup point safe from any natural or synthetic threats. During that time JD had hopped in the back and given Liara a run down, praying to god that Asari were close enough in biology to humans for what little medical training he had thrown together since he decided on a specialization to work.
As he waved his omni-tool up and down her form one last time, she seemed okay, but the tell-tale signs of exhaustion were seen on her dry lips and bagged eyes. He reached behind to his armor's bag, drawing out a wrapped-up tubing with a mouth piece.
"Water." He said once, kneeled before her as similarly Wrex had cooled down from his run and Mai, having shown no indication of any stress, tried to fit herself up to the cockpit to man the gun. She couldn't fit.
Liara had been skittish, at first waving off the tube, but JD insisted. She was much too kind to be caught up with what they were doing, everyone in the Mako had pegged as she started drinking from JD's hydration bladder.
She had sucked it dry to Wrex's disappointment, he hoping to grab a sip afterwards.
"S-sorry." She started. "It's been more than a week then-"
JD raised his hands silently, shaking his head as Shepard talked for him, having parked the Mako momentarily as they awaited the Normandy. "Don't worry about it, Dr. T'Soni, we'll get you all checked up back on the ship before we get to anything else."
"Are you a Spectre?" Liara had thought Shepard had said she was on Council business. "I didn't think there were any humans in the ranks."
It was an easy mistake to make as Shepard nodded, getting out of the driver seat and sitting the steps up to the driver's cabin. "Just in the last week, Dr. T'Soni. Council made me a Spectre and put me out on assignment."
"Finding me? What did I do? Why would the Geth come after me?" Liara's mind was going a thousand miles a minute, thinking back to past expeditions and things she might've accidentally touched. It was only now she realized she had been sitting in a combat vehicle with a Quarian barely old enough to register as an adult, a Turian who had been as tired as anyone else, a Krogan battlemaster, and, apparently, two other synthetics-
JD had taken his helmet off as he took back the water tubing, sucking on it once and making sure it was out. His hair had been slicked up by taking it off, oily with his own sweat.
Liara had paused. The man tending to her hadn't been artificial, just a man with an armor system she had never seen before in her over hundred years alive. She looked up at the grey figure across from her. She was less convinced.
"Your mother," Shepard started. "Matriarch Benezia, is involved with a rogue Spectre: Saren Arterius. That Spectre also is responsible for leading the Geth on an attack on a human colony in order to-" Shepard stopped herself. Was it breaching opsec to mention the fact that he was interested in the Prothean artifact they found on Eden Prime?
"In order to what?"
Shepard had answered a question with a statement. "I was told to come look for you, both for your safety and your expertise in the Protheans."
The young Asari's grit her teeth, eyes widening, staying near silent as the Mako was retrieved as she rushed off to med-bay by Dr. Chakwas.
"CO Shepard has returned. She has the con." The Normandy's VI had spoken aloud the intercom as she stepped out of the Mako. The Req Officer and his people had gone over, taking their guns and grenades from them and helping them armor down when pertinent. It had been relatively empty in the well deck, if only because Joker had rushed over as soon as an evac was requested: A good part of Hitman had been left behind on a planet in system momentarily with Kaiden.
"God, there has to be a way to turn that off." Joker had greeted her over the intercom next after the VI spoke.
"Thanks for the pickup Joker." Shepard spoke back.
"Leave me a good review. Now excuse me I have to go pick up Kaiden and Emerson before they start fighting over top dog spot."
"How'd that Op go, Commander?" Ashley had remained on the Normandy, having did her tasking with her own fireteam of Hitman and retrieved before it all went down. The away team had gone to their lockers, cooling down, collecting themselves if needed as the various engineers took a look at Shepard's handiwork with the Mako: dirt and white ooze dripping from its underside, one that Garrus, after breaking open one of his MREs, had taken a closer look at and also grimacing.
"Chief Gul carried us over the finish line." She thumbed back at the still alert Spartan, she and JD taking the post-mission beginning slower than most, almost at a loss. They were given their priorities as she made one last statement before leaving the deck herself. "Away team, comm room in thirty for debrief."
JD had shed his own gear painlessly enough, but Mai had taken some time as they retreated back behind the Mako to their corner of the bay. He pointed at her, only to make a thumbs-up and place it on his other palm, moving it up.
She saw but didn't understand momentarily. "I-uh." She drew her knives. "I'm just gonna de-armor. It'll take a moment." For the first time in days she had taken off her helmet, revealing her balaclava'd face beneath it, her eyes bare to him for the first time in over a week. Her voice became unmuffled and the difference in JD's mind had been night and day. "Proceed without me."
She still had the crease of that balaclava around her eyes, but no one made note of it as they all sat in a circle in the comm room. Distinctly she noticed there were more aliens than Humans in that room.
"Before you get started Commander," Joker again, his voice over the intercom beamed directly into the comm room. "Try not to take us to too many magma planets. The Normandy's venting systems already have to deal with some pretty hot stuff."
Shepard had leaned back into the chair, sighing as a hand wiped down her face. "Not my choice, Lieutenant, you know that."
"Just saying."
Liara had come in first to the comm room with Shepard, waiting for the rest of the away team. She had a relatively clean bill of health. One that could be more or less rectified with a good night of sleep and a hot meal. Shepard had immediately pressed on her if she had left anything important behind on Therum, but it was no matter. She wanted nothing else but to be as far away from it as possible. It was good enough a discussion topic before Shepard had to get into the uneasy meat of things, her own mind spinning on whether or not to out herself as a loon.
"Does a subordinate in a human military often talk like that to their superior?" Liara had turned to Wrex and then Garrus. "I don't have a lot of experience dealing with your species, Commander."
"Yeah, me neither." Shepard had halfway joked. No one had noticed.
"But, regardless. I am grateful to you. To all of you." Liara looked across all the room, seeing the colorful affair. "Those Geth would have killed me. Or dragged me off to Saren."
"No need, Dr. T'Soni, we're just doing our jobs." Shepard had said warmly, gesturing to the team. "If you could introduce yourselves?"
JD rose an eyebrow. A quick icebreaker wouldn't hurt, perhaps, this time. Unfortunately, he had been first in the row, unprepared. "Ah. Uh. Private Durante."
Mai sucked in air into her lungs faster than JD could realize. When he did realize, so did Shepard. "Private?"
"I mean- Chief Jonathon-Jameson Durante." He corrected quickly. Before Shepard could vocalize her concerned look Mai had followed up.
"Master Chief Petty Officer Gul, Dr. T'Soni."
"Garrus Vakarian. Technically I'm a detective from C-Sec but, well, let's just say I'm on break while I'm with Commander Shepard."
"I'm Tali'Zorah Nar Rayya. I am currently on pilgrimage, if you know what that is. I helped the Commander with the Geth."
"Wrex."
Shepard had waited for Wrex to continue, but that was all he gave as he slunk back himself. He was due a nap by his own volition. But without further ado she had proceeded herself. "My name is Jane Shepard, and we need your help."
"My help?" Liara had put a palm to her chest, her lab uniform ruined by dust and burns. "I don't know how I could possibly assist you."
"Saren thought otherwise." Wrex crossed his arms. "Thought otherwise enough to send a Werylock after you." Krogan Battlemasters were rare in that galaxy, and spending money on one had meant something. He would know.
Shepard agreed in a nod. "Saren Arterius has gone rogue. He used Geth to attack a human colony in search of Prothean artifacts."
"Prothean?" Liara exclaimed. Shepard nodded again.
"Your mother was heard directly discussing the attack with Saren, thanks to data recovered from a Geth unit by Tali here."
"My mother?" Liara spoke with an air JD recognized. More than that, spoke with an air Mai even did. It was a type of voice she heard from people who thought owned her. From UNSC or ONI officers who used her for personal vendettas, or the downtrodden on New Jerusalem who needed someone else to stomp on. Liara spoke with an air of privilege. Then again, it was relative:
She was privileged compared to any of them in that room right now.
"Yes. We wanted to know if you had any information on her whereabouts."
The Asari's eyes sunk in as she tried to remember her mother. But the fact of the matter was-
"I'm not close with my mother… I haven't talked to her in quite some time."
Shepard shot a look at Garrus, and he had expected it. If it was a lie, they could easily check later. "I'm sorry to hear… but, in that case…" Might as well. "We need then need your help with Prothean knowledge. Saren has been searching with his Geth for Prothean artifacts."
"Why would he be looking for Geth artifacts?"
"Well," Shepard settled in. Maybe Wrex was going to get that nap he wanted. "We were hoping you could explain."
In truth, as spoken by Liara, who had been so eager for once to actually have the opportunity to explain her theories on the Protheans, it had been entertaining, if not illuminating. For JD and Mai at least, it provided a lot more tangible context then what could be provided by the Extranet.
Shepard had invited Liara to explain the berth and width of the Protheans as part of the debriefing, ranging from their predicted expanse of their empire to why the Relays were ever set up: left behinds left behind for the very reason of bringing those after them up. They, at least to her, sounded like a proud and noble race. Though her expertise then, as she arrived at the good forty-minute mark of her impromptu lecture, landed at how they disappeared.
It ending on a question. "Why?" She didn't know why, and not out of lack of trying. She had spent decades on her theory. "A galactic civilization does not just instantaneously disappear without leaving a trace of the reason why, and, if such a force is able to do that, can it happen again?"
Each of them there knew why though, hesitant to speak out before Shepard stood up, only to lean on the comm consoles, arms crossed. "What if I told you that force was called the Reapers?"
Liara had been using her omni-tool as an impromptu display to show her notes. "What?"
"A race of sentient machines."
"The Reapers?" Liara tried the name on her tongue, doubt on it. "How do you know this? What evidence do you have?"
The rest of them that hadn't been on Eden Prime, but on the Citadel, witness or hearing of Shepard's trial and case for Spectreship and the mission on Eden Prime heard it mentioned once, and then discarded, but for her to bring it up now, even Shepard herself wondered if she wasn't actually crazy.
"There was a damaged Prothean beacon on Eden Prime that I was tasked to secure. Saren was going after it too. It burned a vision into my brain and I've been trying to sort it out ever since."
For a brief moment, the uninitiated might've thought Shepard insane. Tali and Garrus had that thought cross their mind, but for Liara as an Asari, it wasn't outlandish. It hadn't been when a function like that had been a part of Asari biology ever since their ancient times.
"Visions? Yes… that makes sense." Hearing a scientist say that immediately after what might've constituted as rambling about a progenitor race had been both parts reassuring and also worrying to Garrus and Tali, but then again their lives had taken that sort of turn. JD and Mai had just about been okay with it ever since they had seen Shepard get hijacked and, more importantly, having seen New Jerusalem in her visions, intertwined. "The Prothean beacons were designed to transmit information directly into the user's minds. Finding one that works is extremely rare. Is it still-….?"
"Destroyed unfortunately."
"And you received that information?" Liara had taken steps forward, almost leaning into Shepard. She nodded. "Do you have any cybernetics? Genetic modifications?"
Shepard shook her head, only to lift part of her hair beneath her right ear. There had been a metal slot that led to the base her skull, and then her brain. It had been her biotic implant. Distantly, JD felt for his own standard issue neural chip at the back of his head, feeling the slit that tagged him as friendly on his and Mai's motion tracker.
"I'm pretty clean, Dr. T'Soni, only an amp and implant for my biotics."
Liara was impressed. "I am amazed you were able to make sense of it at all. The beacons were designed for Prothean interface only. If you didn't have the willpower, your mind might've suffered… irreversible consequences."
Shepard was rife with realization then. Perhaps Saren had gone actually insane? If he interfaced with the beacon first, maybe the brunt of it was sustained by him? Questions for later.
"Does the Conduit ring a bell to you?" Shepard offered Liara a seat again, which she took.
It did, she glancing at her notes again. "Only in passing. Mentions of it come up every few years, and the only thing stringing any reference together is that it is a physical thing that you can be in the presence of."
Shepard took back a seat herself, a little more comfortable now that there had been a Prothean expert at least listening to her. She closed her eyes and she saw a starless galaxy. Dark as the biotic powers she used, filled with nothing but horror. "We need your help, Dr. T'Soni. If Saren wanted you, either dead or alive, that alone is reason enough to have you with us if you so choose."
Wrex snorted a laugh and Mai hid a glare. More crew of the non-human type.
"Join?"
Shepard nodded. "I can provide you with what you need, and as we investigate Saren further, I'm sure more references and information with the Protheans will turn up. It'll help us make sense of the Reapers and if they're tied to your theory."
Liara blinked several times, surprised. "Honestly, Commander, the safety alone would be enough."
"And your biotics would be handy I imagine." Garrus tipped up at her. "Assuming you'd get into a fight with us."
Liara rose her eyebrows around the room. Tali answered. "We weren't anticipating a fight when we came to get you."
"Speaking of which." Shepard had returned her voice to a military standard. "All of you did very well today, for the situation we were in. As a fireteam I was more than pleasantly surprised we worked well in clearing out buildings, facilities, and vehicle operations. Now, some of us might be a bit unorthodox, not used to working in teams, but I'd like to make clear that my only complaint that is outright is that we need to eventually get around to trust." Shepard tried not to look at Mai but it was obvious. "If I make a call, please bear with me. If not for my sake, but for your fireteam."
A wave of relief measured throughout the room, the only bump being Mai as Carter's words echoed.
"Just make sure you trust us, Shepard." Wrex had called out, deciding that briefing was about done for him. He had made for the door anyway in his slow walk, about to activate it, but Shepard had paused him before he left.
"I'll be doing the rounds later," She said. "Checking with each of ya. But for now, welcome Dr. T'Soni to the crew, and I'll be doing the mission reports."
It had been something about JD and Mai remaining seated as Shepard had walked out with Liara back to the sickbay that had stayed Tali and Garrus, leaving the four of them in the comm room, a mutual decompression they didn't know they needed happening then and there.
"Did we do good?" Garrus asked to the ceiling, head against the chair.
"I think so." JD answered, chin tilted up at Tali for a moment. "You did good."
There was dust on all of their boots and shoes, from Therum, sprinkled at the floor.
"She was talking about you two, you know." Garrus answered back as Tali took the compliment to heart, thankful. "I saw the way you two push up and, that whole gun trading thing? Spirits."
Elite shields often recharged fast. For JD as an ODST, to push up was the only way to catch them vulnerable. For Mai it simply meant the margin for error had been higher the closer on their part she was to the enemy. "I don't know how that was a negative." Tali spoke.
It was Mai that answered though. "Principle." The one word answered got a noise out of the Quarian. "If the order was to cover a teammate, and instead I neglected and sought my own solution, it might leave the teammate vulnerable. That's the principle of following orders."
Her voice was softer, without the muffling of comms and her helmet. Mature, and yet childish at the same stroke. Her words were shaky, speaking like this, despite her outward propensity for combat perfection and that confidence. Hardly deviating from tone, it was robotic almost. Cold.
"If you two trained me, I don't know if I could keep up." Tali said, surprise on her own lips for having said that. "I know I said I wanted to train to keep up with all of you, but if I have to fight like you? I might just send myself back to the Flotilla if I ever get there. My father always bellyached to me on how we always needed the fighters."
"You were never a cop, right Durante?" Garrus had asked of JD.
"Just been around a lot." Present company included.
"Yeah, I can tell by the way you fight. You two. You both fight like, uh, what's the word in human- I think the Sangheili got the word: Demon." Usze Tahamee was marked by one, and so he knew one when he saw it. Garrus remembered the word from the Elite. "You're both not afraid."
Fear. JD knew fear. He had become accustomed to it. Not the fear of death, but the fear of failure. If he died, he hoped, prayed, it was because someone else was saved for it. That was the death he was looking for.
"How long have you two known each other?" Tali asked on a more personal note. "I've seen you two do that thing, with your hands." Tali tried to gesture herself but couldn't quite emulate. "Is that military language or…?"
Officially the first op Chief Gul and Chief Durante ever went on together had been ship-boarding actions in the days following Elysium, and Mai answered. She wanted to take the lead, JD having flubbed earlier, but she answered in a way she didn't anticipate: in the way that felt right.
"Years." She surprised herself, repeating slowly, almost unsure. "I've known Chief Durante for years."
It felt like she had known him for years, some moments.
To JD, the wording was odd, but he followed up, pointing two fingers up about chest level and rotating them like a bicycle pedal. "It's sign language. Just something to pass time."
Garrus's mandible flicked again as Tali was intrigued.
"Oh." She said, mimicking. "Well, I don't quite have as many fingers so I don't think I could ever."
Perhaps, perhaps not, Mai lost herself in her thoughts as JD noticed, the four of them sitting silently. How, out of all of them did he end up as the most willing to move along and do things normal people did? Like-
"Do you want to grab chow? You's?" He dropped into his father's urban drawl for a moment as the two guests looked at each other and shrugged.
"Yeah, sure. Our meals are stored in the well deck so, meet us down there?" Garrus answered for the two of them.
"Sounds good."
The Turian and Quarian had let themselves out, leaving the two Naval SOF alone for once. Truly alone.
"Private." Was Mai teasing him? She had repeated his true rank on her tongue and he held his face in hands again.
"My bad." He answered, muffled.
"Try not to again." He had moved his head, eyes peeking out from his hands at her as she looked down at him.
"What?" She wanted to say something, her fingers curling as she sat proper, resting on her knees. The silence between them dragged on longer than usual. This time she faltered first.
It was odd, after a time, to see her face as she spoke. He in that entire galaxy had been the one most familiar to her, and yet reading her lips had been hard. He had to read her lips because in this instance she spoke silently, as if holding back. "If they ask, can you not teach them sign language?"
Huh?
JD tilted his head, eyebrow raised. He tilted his chair over to face her.
"Wasn't planning to. Why?"
She paused for a moment, not remembering she had to give a reason. "Privacy, is all."
Her eyes darted to his own knees for a moment as she answered. He might've made a good MP, in another life, or a good cop. How odd that one of the protections of her armor was that that hid her ability to lie.
"Privacy?" He repeated.
"Affirmative." She answered in her military lingo: the language she was comfortable with the most.
"You don't trust Garrus and Tali?"
"It's not that." She answered quickly. Sure, she had been wary about Vakarian, if not on a species level but rather how easily he spoke to JD she noticed and how he and him led Tali through drills in a language she understood. She didn't understand how JD was okay with that. She didn't understand why Shepard would let non-humans free on this ship and let them work in engineering of all things. The fear, the aversion to aliens based on their appearance they could work through, beat through. They killed aliens all their lives.
It wasn't that however, that much was true.
"For them to learn sign language from you, it would feel… unearned." There was a word on Mai's lips that, if she knew to place, wouldn't place. It would be demeaning to her to say and yet it was what she felt. "Sign language is a part of you that is personal. For them to learn it from you like that would cheapen it."
She spoke to the point, harshly. She didn't know any better.
His mother would teach any and all who would take the time to initially know her signing. It was a language without words, those few that knew closer because of it. To know it was a gift. To know it was love, as JD understood it. He, with the privilege of being healthy, of having word and hearing and the patience to learn otherwise, had every right to it, as his mother told him, when he asked one day, unsure.
YOU USE ASL FOR GOOD. FOR LOVE.
He remembered the way she signed it in the dark, sitting on his bed as a child, illuminated by his nightlight.
"I don't think so." JD answered back silently; hands heavy at that moment. "To share is to care. It's why I'm teaching you."
"You care about them?" Mai's head dipped a bit.
"I have to." The words left JD's mouth so naturally. "Or else what would I become?"
A stagnant racist, so easy to draw upon his life experience to justify a hatred that did, more often than not, culminated in the kill? Someone who couldn't move on?
A fate worse than death, when faced with it.
And yet… there was something more to her words. Something he dared to ask.
"Do you hold what I'm teaching you, so dearly to ask something like that?"
What had JD been teaching her? Beyond the sign language, and her reciprocation with Spartan Signs. In the way he spoke, in gentle anecdotes or clarifications brought upon him by a life she was denied. Mentions of what life was like as someone free to live it. Slow, warm, gently, never bragging, never trying to make her think otherwise of the life she was given, but yet, most of all: it was human of him. Very human.
He taught her more than just sign language.
"Yes."
His eyes widened just a little, she licking the insides of her teeth as the guilt in her words was heavy. For her at least. The way her breath stayed; the syllable dragged out as if forcing herself to hear it.
"Just between us then?"
"We should be familiar with such circumstances." Mai clarified. Indeed, she was right. They had shared a world they could not go back to within themselves.
He mouthed okay, if it did mean that much to her.
"Do you want to join us for some food?" He stood, getting ready to leave. She shook her head once promptly.
"I need to do maintenance on my gear." She answered back cooly.
"We're in the same bay, Mai."
"I'd like to be left alone." Was her clarification. What was JD to argue? If this wasn't an Alliance ship, he would've been doing the same. Still, she had a point, buried beneath all of her rhetoric, forced upon her by Spartandom. He was easier to speak with Tali and Garrus than he would've thought. Maybe it was the translators that made all the difference, or the fact they seemed young compared to him (even if Garrus was technically older), but most of all, it was Garrus and him sharing something in common. A Turian and a Human: fathers bleeding blue.
They left together, walking down a deck, separating in the mess, however before Mai had left:
"Hey, we'll go over the alphabet again, later?"
Before the elevator had closed, he had seen a shadow of complacency on her eyes. It was a yes.
"Asari are stonger than they look. Squishy as they are. She'll be fine." The booming voice of Wrex had startled Shepard a smidgen as she had sat at the crew deck's table openly, some data pads being read through and written through by her. Post-action reports and summaries for both the Council and Alliance. She'd take a Krogan as a distraction as she felt for her mug:
It, corny as it was, had a picture of it of a younger Shepard in her dress blues. Flanked by two other Shepards, also in their dress blues. It was the day she had graduated OCS, on track to go into the N-program. The two elder Shepards had been beaming at their child having graduated, top of her class.
Taking a sip from it, Wrex had noticed. "Your family?" He tried sitting, but the chairs wouldn't have it, he sufficing to leaning on the wall behind the table.
"Yeah." She nodded, pivoting the chair toward him. "Captain Hannah Shepard, and Sergeant Major John Shepard. Both serving on the Kilimanjaro."
It'd been a hot minute since she'd called. Then again that was before she had become a Spectre, before Eden Prime, and definitely before the Covenant landfall at Altis. The Kilimanjaro had been the dreadnought flagship of the Fifth Fleet: Admiral Steven Hackett's personal ship. It led the task force responding to Altis and the Covenant and was subsequently still in the area attached to the Alliance holding fleet led by a Captain Shaw. Communications from the ship had been under lockdown, given the sensitivity of Covenant related activities.
"Would it be fair to say that you've outdone them?"
She chuckled at Wrex's question, a very Krogan question at that. Still there was an answer there. "Some would say. When people say Shepard, it's usually referring to me."
"Is it a common name?" Wrex wagged one of his armored claws. "Shepard?"
"Uncommon. Though there's been times where I've served on a ship with multiple."
It was a feeling to be sure: to be known as the Shepard. Offhand she couldn't only recount how many people in history could claim an entire name as their own: One had been the first through the Mass Relay and been a comrade to her mentor. The other conquered Europe in the 40s. A wide gamut to be sure, and hopefully it didn't go to her own head.
Hopefully.
"Need something Wrex?" She called back to him, more than willing to procrastinate. "Proper bedding?"
"Oh I'm fine, Shepard, but since you've been asking everyone to ask you to do something for them, I figure I try something:"
"Shoot."
He motioned to the mug. "What's family to you, Shepard?"
Nothing, then everything. "I'm not sure I understand?"
"Is it the blood of your ancestors, coursing through you? A guide for your life? People that you can always rely on?"
"Perhaps. Are yours like that?"
Maybe another time he'd tell, if Shepard prodded him like she did everyone. He'd tell her about the graves that held betrayal, and a knife through his father's heart by his own hand: an ambush that betrayed his people at their core. He had once wanted to raise the Krogan up from their squalor: the prodigal race that saved the galaxy, only to eat themselves alive after suffering indignities from the Council. For that belief however, he exiled himself, became a mercenary.
"If they were, I wouldn't be a mercenary."
She was meaning to ask. During one leave, a private recruiter for a mercenary group approached her: More money, better gear, more missions than an Alliance tour, they promised. She denied, but the thought of becoming a gun for hire out on the stars was romantic. "Why are you one then?"
"Lots of reasons?"
"Such as?"
"Such as… I needed to get out of Tuchanka. I needed to eat. I needed to survive."
She knew Tuchanka was as much of an apocalypse as any planet still habited in that galaxy, but she didn't know it was that bad. A few of the Marines on guard duty had given her a nervous look, but she had shoo'd them away as they filtered through.
"You couldn't stay?"
"Long story Shepard."
"I have time."
"I'd rather not. But… I could tell you, if you do something for me next time we pass by that station." Pinnacle, he was referring to. Shepard had made a deal with Ahern to transition some supplies there for the Normandy. Pinnacle was placed in a system on the border of the Attican, and if she wanted to maximize time out there, it was a station ideal.
"Sure."
"I had plans, before you showed up, to travel to a planet in Argus Rho."
"To do what?"
"Just business."
"What kind of business?"
"Unfinished."
It wasn't a lie if he didn't tell her anything. "Gotta give me more than that, Wrex. I can't use the Normandy to go do mercenary work."
A sigh pressed by Wrex's throat. "Family."
"Oh. Is it private?"
Wrex shook his head. "Trying to get me emotional Shepard? No. Before I left Tuchanka, I made an oath to my father's father: I swore to recover my family's battle armor, taken from us after the Krogan Rebellions."
"It special?" Shepard pressed.
"No. It's a relic. Useless really. Thought it's the principle of it: Worn by five generations of Clan Urdonot before the war. It's, by right, mine to care for." Right. Right and Wrong. The rights imbued by their creators. The right to take a life. What was a right in that galaxy, generations old, that Wrex acted on? It seemed unlike him. "Now it's in the hands of Tonn Actus. Some Turian scum who collects relics from the Rebellion. He's made millions selling Krogan artifacts that were stolen from my people."
"Done."
"Oh?"
"Done. Just point me in the right direction."
A hint of amusement was on his face. Usually Krogan were hard to read, but it was there for Shepard as he entered some data into his omni. "I'll upload data to your nav system. But, Commander, I make one thing clear."
"What?"
"I want to be there when you find him." Shepard recognized that drawl from him: It was the same as when he was daring Mai.
"Commander?" One of the Marines, turning her head to him, accompanied by Kaiden.
"I should go." Shepard had stood up, collecting her data pads and coffee cups. "I've got a meeting… But I'll keep you posted, Wrex."
He had pushed himself off the wall, a nod given to her. "Shepard." Walking back to the elevator and disappearing down. It'd still been a sight to see.
"Commander Ryder never told us to keep an eye out for a Krogan, ma'am, when he transferred us." The Marine had been Sergeant Emerson: Ryder's number two.
"Well, that's not your responsibility."
Kaiden gave side-eye to the sergeant. "Well, it's why we're here today, isn't it Emerson?"
Apparently the two men had been butting heads as far as fireteam command went. Kaiden had the rank and command, technically, but on the field, Hitman had a tendency to defer to Emerson. To play HR rep, even as a Spectre, Shepard had found humor in it as she motioned to her cabin.
There were rumors, about twenty years ago in human time, that a Kig-Yar community had integrated somewhat into a human habitat.
Such a thought was heretical, within the Covenant, but as for the Kig-Yar raiders who operated on the fringe, the thought was liable to be explored.
Kaal Roth had been one of those Kig-Yar raiders, and so he had been at relative ease with where he was now. His current assignment was directly communicated to him by the Prophet of Destiny: to assist the humans in navigating the human frigate Savannah. However, it was hardly a pay worth anything. If there was pay at all. All Covenant forms of trade and commerce had been rendered null by their new placement in the galaxy, and their ability to collect credits from the Council economy at all? Stymied at the moment out of security concerns.
"What's that? Out there?" A Turian had asked Kaal at a bar one night after his duties at the Savannah site were done for the moment. A token security force of Council personnel remained; The Doctor Mordin Solus having integrated well enough in them as entire field of science was revealed to them: that is the Covenant themselves. He was approached by the Salarian doctor for questioning and research, but he wasn't going to get paid for it, so declined.
Kaal smoothed the feathers on the back of his scaly neck. "Human oil rig that got damaged during landfall, they're trying to contain it."
He was being paid to keep a secret, that being the Savannah.
"Oh." The Turian responded.
It was nice, Kaal admitted, intermingling with aliens that hadn't seen his kind as just, purely, guns for hire. He was liable to have a nice human drink with them anyway as they told him stories of piracy in their galaxy which he salivated again at. It was the Turian that was chatting with him at the bar that spoke of him the stories of Batarians and mercenaries out in the Attican and the Terminus, the coastal, open air bar providing a view out to the Solace and Savannah sites.
"You work there?"
"Yep."
"Pay well?"
"Nope."
"Want to be paid better?"
"Sure." He had been half-ignoring, and yet half-cognitive of the Turian enough to turn his head as he realized what he said, only to find an empty stool and a running data pad on it, a credit chit on it. But, more than that, there was a promise there.
A promise of new prosperity.