The Normandy had docked at the Citadel two and a half days after the incident at Edolus without further interruption. We had a one-night QFS (Quick Fuel Stop) to take on fuel and we were to depart the next morning at eight o'clock, so I gave the ship's company leave overnight. Leave expires at seven AM, so most opted to stay in a hotel or bunk at the small Alliance outpost on the Citadel. There's nothing like a bed and bath to yourself after several weeks or months adrift. I usually stayed aboard the ship so I could be easily found.
I was the last to step off the ship and into the docking area and took the elevator down to clear through C-Sec customs and was ambushed by a reporter.
Khalisah Bint Sinan al-Jilani was a veteran reporter, author and biting news columnist whose vivid prose championed activists, children and humans while challenging corruption and Council dealings. Her willingness to dissect controversial social issues earned her a reputation for uncompromising, and often polarizing, viewpoints, most recently on my appointment as a Spectre. Her articles were often bracingly frank, and charged with emotion. For the candid and notoriously ribald "Khal" this was all in service of her mission to speak truth to power.
Dealing with the press is easy enough since usually human reporters are eager to paint the Alliance in a positive light. Al-Jilani, on the other hand, was an entirely different species of reporter. Although our encounters sometimes appeared adversarial on camera, I admired her greatly. Her relentlessness and courage to ask tough questions ensured a little public oversight where there was normally none.
Following my first sparring match with Khal as a Spectre, I sent a message to Anderson, letting him know about the interview before it aired and confirmed our meeting that was to take place later that day, and took a seat in a small café to enjoy a coffee and a quick breakfast while reviewing Tali's findings on the forged signal.
The level of sophistication worried me. I was hoping Anderson had some luck tracking down the unit commander at the very least.
A shadow slowly appeared on my table and I felt someone standing in front of me. I raised my eyes from my data pad, set my coffee down and locked eyes with the man in front of me.
He had dark brown skin, short grey hair, and heavy bags under his eyes that made him appear older than he should have been.
"Commander Shepard?" He asked with a rare East Indian accent. "My name is Samesh Bhatia. Forgive the intrusion but I have no where else to turn." He was wringing his hands nervously as he looked around the room.
I set everything down and offered him the chair across from me. "No trouble at all. Is there something I can do for you?"
He took the seat willingly and took a breath before beginning. His eyes were red and tired. "My wife. Serviceman Nirali Bhatia. She was with the 212 on Eden Prime."
I sat back, the realization suddenly hitting me. In my years as an officer, I have had to attend funerals or memorials for soldiers and friends who had their lives cut short by operations, accidents or illness. Whenever I could, I would share stories about loved ones with them and grieve with their families. The ones who inspired me came from all walks of life. They wrote to me and talked to me in person. Some grabbed my hand and were too choked up to speak. Others spoke eloquently. Some cried on my shoulder and I shed tears with many.
"I am very sorry for your loss, Mr. Bhatia." I said sincerely. Samesh swallowed hard and nodded his head. He was grieving yes, but there was something else. "I've requested my wife's body be returned to me for cremation. But the military has refused my request."
While repatriation is a considerably exhausting process, the body of a fallen soldier is always released to the family. The family decides whether or not to hold a military funeral. The family decides what to do with their loved one. Samesh shouldn't have even needed to request her body be returned. It should have just happened.
He must have seen my confusion because he stared back intently. "Did they say why?"
"No. They just told me that it would be impossible. I just want to give my wife a proper funeral and the respect she deserves." Samesh placed a small stack of hard copy paper onto the table. "All her info is here. My request and my denials as well. If anything…I just want to know why. I want to see her one more time." He looked away, trying to hold back his tears.
"Let me look into this. I'll do what I can." I said. I wrote down her name and service number and handed him back his papers. He took them and stood, and too choked up to speak, nodded to me in thanks.
Ashley met me fifteen minutes later and took the same seat Samesh had taken. I explained the situation to her and asked her to look into it while I was meeting with Anderson. She agreed. Nirali was one of her soldiers and she felt she had a personal duty to find out why she was not being returned to her family.
"If you run into any road blocks, throw my Spectre status at them. If they're still not telling you anything, I'll get involved personally."
"Thanks. I'll start with the embassy. I still know a few people around here." She grabbed her coffee to go and I left for my meeting.
Anderson was given a small office several floors down from Udina's but big enough to fit a desk and two chairs across from him. He didn't even give me a chance to salute before introducing me to Rear Admiral Kahoku, an Alliance officer, who fought with distinction against the batarians during the Skyllian Blitz and had earned the loyalty and respect of his troops.
He shook my hand firmly. "Commander, it's a pleasure to meet you. Captain Anderson speaks very highly of you."
"Thank you, Sir." I glanced over at Anderson who motion for me to sit.
"Shepard, the team you found on Edolus belonged to Admiral Kahoku." I turned my attention to the Admiral, his expression difficult to read.
"Four months ago, a man named Armistan Banes was contracted by the Alliance to conduct research in the Attican Traverse. Last week, his corpse was found on a derelict ship in the Sparta system. I sent a recon group to investigate. Four days ago we lost contact, and I couldn't get clearance to check it out. It had been declared a restricted area. I want to know what happened to them."
I played the SOS recording, displaying Tali's deconstruction of the signal. "Sir, your men were lured into a Thresher nest by a false signal. I've got my tech experts trying to find its origin, but so far no luck."
"This has Akuze written all over it." Kahoku stared at Anderson. "This has Cerberus written all over it."
Immediately following the First Contact War, an anonymous extranet manifesto warned that an alien attempt at human genocide was inevitable. The manifesto called for an army - a Cerberus to guard against invasion through the Charon relay.
Cerberus was then created as an Alliance Black Op, and was designed to conduct operations involving activities that were highly clandestine and often outside of standard military/intelligence protocol, sometimes against the law. A black operation or black op is a covert or clandestine operation by a government agency, a military unit or a paramilitary organization. Key features of a black operation are that it is secret and it is not attributable to the organization carrying it out, but in reality operations such as these always end up with light shone on them once they've crossed the line. The Cerberus Black Op was disbanded not long after its formation when the public caught wind of torture, kidnapping, assassinations and other illegal activities.
"Who else would have access to Alliance technology? Who else could justify this type of brutality?" Kahoku was beginning to raise his voice.
"Let's not jump to conclusions just yet." Anderson interrupted. "We need to find out who forged the signal, why they did it and how."
"Sir," I turned to Kahoku, "If we can break into the forged code, we might be able to find out who did this."
He took a breath and stood, preparing to leave. "Thank you, Commander. I appreciate everything you've done. But I owe it to my soldiers and their families to find out who killed them and why. Send me that SOS recording. I will forward you anything I can as I continue my investigation."
He turned abruptly and left. I started to do the same.
"One more thing before you go." Anderson said, pulling a datapad from his desk drawer. "This comes direct from Fifth Fleet Command. Delicate situation. Contact Hackett directly once it's resolved."
I reached across the desk and grabbed the datapad. "What makes you think I'll have it resolved?"
"Because you don't have a choice. Good luck."
I left Anderson's office and was met by Ashley, who had been trying to reach me for the better part of an hour.
"Found out why they won't release her body." She said as we walked. "To sum it all up, they're studying her injuries to learn more about geth weaponry. So I tell him all this and he gets very upset and starts telling me his wife has already carried out her service and that he only wants her back."
We turned a corner and continued walking towards the markets. "Okay…"
"Well I can get the body back if I play your Spectre card." She said.
"But." I coaxed.
"But if what the embassy told me is true, she could end up saving a lot more lives. But who am I to tell a grieving husband that is what his wife would have wanted. I knew her. Not well, but I knew that if she had the opportunity to save another soldier, she would have wanted it. I think he knows that too."
I stopped. "Ash. She was your soldier. This is your call. I'll support you either way. If you can convince Mr. Bhatia to see it that way, then go with it. But put yourself in his shoes before you do."
She stepped back and crossed her arms, nodding positively. "Okay. Thanks for the advice, Skipper."
"Anytime. Want me to go with you?"
"No. This one's mine." She gave me a forced smile and walked away. "Have fun with your meetings."
My meeting with Udina was short and unproductive. With no new leads on Saren or Matriarch Benezia, he mostly just wanted to blast me in front of the council for destroying an ancient Prothean ruin. I then debriefed the council and informed them of Dr. T'Soni's contract with the Alliance and the intent behind her capture. The Asari councilor seemed quite disturbed and once again urged me to locate Matriarch Benezia as soon as was possible. She even connected me with an expensive information broker who could assist with the operation.
As I walked away from the embassies, I observed Ash's talk with Samesh. She sat with him, held his hand, and let him make the final decision. In the end, he felt his wife would have wanted the chance to save the lives of her fellow soldiers, even after death.
With my day finally winding down, meetings complete, maintenance and replenishment ongoing, I decided to treat myself with a nice meal while reviewing my new assignment from Hackett. My heart almost stopped when I saw the name, and I instantly knew why I had been selected to handle this particular situation.
I was knee deep in completing my estimate when I spotted Liara out of the corner of my eye. She had obviously gone shopping, not quite content with wearing Doctor Chakwas' lab outfits or Ashley's spare uniform, and instead purchasing her own lab wear. I watched as she sat down at a table on the far side of the restaurant, placed an order, and studied her data pad while sipping on a glass of wine. Quiet, solitary, introverted, but otherwise very content, I mustered a bit of bravery and approached her table.
"Doctor T'Soni." I stood holding a data pad in one hand and the chair across from her in the other. "Hope I'm not interrupting. I just received your employment contract from the University of Serrice an I was wondering if you've had time to review it."
"Yes, Commander, it seems perfectly in order." She said.
I smiled and moved the chair a little, encouraging her to invite me to sit. She didn't, so I invited myself.
"Mind if I join you? I was planning on having a little dinner over there by myself. Seems like a waste of tables. Valuable resource on the Citadel so I hear."
"Oh! Of course, please." She offered, laughing nervously. I could tell she was embarrassed for missing the social cue.
I sat down as she set her data pad to the side and I selected from the menu.
"How are you settling into the Normandy?" I asked.
She took a sip of her wine. "Not very well, I'm afraid. Your crew is weary of me. They way they look at me, I don't think they trust me."
"I consider myself a fairly good judge of character, Doctor. For whatever it's worth, I don't think you're lying and I know you'll do everything you can to help."
She gave me a small smile in reply.
"Why don't you tell me a little about yourself?"
She looked shocked by the request. "I am afraid I am not that interesting. I spend most of my time on remote digs, unearthing mundane items from long forgotten Prothean ruins. Until the geth followed me to Therum, I had never found myself in a situation my biotics could not handle."
"I'm just glad we got there in time." I said sincerely.
She let out a short laugh. "So am I. I never properly thanked you."
"You don't have to thank me, though you might have to thank Tali; she really hates elevators."
She laughed politely and we chatted a bit more before our food arrived.
"What is that you are eating?" She asked.
"Steak." I carved a small piece and offered it to her and she politely refused. "I try to have one every time we dock. I won't let the Alliance's tendency to turn perfectly good synthetic meat into the bottom of a leather shoe ruin my love for it."
I gestured to her plate. "And you're eating garnale slaai. A traditional asari dish closely resembling squid salad."
Liara was struggling between smiling, blushing and feigning indifference.
"It seems I know even less about humans than I originally thought." She said quietly as she began eating.
"I ordered it once, accidentally." I explained.
"And you did not like it?"
"Quite the contrary." I said enthusiastically, "I loved it so much it's all I ate when I was on Tevura."
"You trained in Asari space?"
I swallowed a piece of my dinner and took a swig of my drink and held it close to my chest. "I had the incredible honour of training with the Ankylos Commandos during my N training days. We were only there for about a month but it was some of the toughest training I've ever taken part in."
She placed her utensils down and held her glass of Thessian wine close to her, mirroring me and smiled. "I didn't know human trained with commandos. They're typically very secretive about their tactics."
"The Alliance military has a decent relationship with...the Asari military...structure." I said, waving my free hand in an attempt to describe the disjointed structure of the Asari military.
She huffed and rolled her eyes a little, "It's comforting to know our militaries are working together, even if our politicians insist on infighting."
"We're supposed to be talking about you." I laughed, changing the subject. "So what interested you in the Protheans?"
She contemplated her answer for several seconds. "I suppose my interest came from disinterest. Most theories of their extinction are well established and there is little evidence of their existence. Most asari believe we have discovered all we can about them. And...I suppose it was to escape the expectations that came with being the daughter of a Matriarch."
Her expression became a little sad, obviously thinking of her mother. I wondered if Liara'a career choice had anything to do with their falling out.
"I've upset you, I'm sorry." I said, reaching across the table to grab her hand but quickly retreating.
"You have no need to apologize, Commander. I grew up surrounded by people expecting me to follow in my mother's footsteps. They wanted me to become a leader of our people. I never saw myself as such. And I love what I do."
"I think you're more influential than you believe." I told her. "You wouldn't be an expert in your field if you weren't."
"Unfortunately, because of my age, my research has never received the attention it deserves. I'm barely an adult by asari standards. It is difficult to become influential when no one wants to listen."
"Wait how old are you?"
"I am only 106."
I coughed a little as I tried to swallow another morsel of my meal.
"Only?"
She laughed at my surprise and continued.
"I've always been drawn to the past." She continued. "The Protheans were these wondrous, mysterious figures. I wanted to know everything about them." She was suddenly looking at me very intently. "Perhaps that is why I find you so fascinating. You were touched by working Prothean technology. I have to admit, I am more than a little jealous."
"Fascinating." I drawled, mockingly. "I've been called many things in my life, but you're the only person who has ever called me 'fascinating'. If I'm not careful I might find myself in your next article." I joked.
Her eyes went wide. "No! I only meant that you would be an interesting subject for an in depth study." She brought her hand to her face. "Goddess that's even worse."
She sounded exasperated, my smile simply got wider watching her embarrassment grow. "You are smiling."
"I was joking." I chuckled.
"Of course you were." She began to gather up her things. "Now you see why I prefer the solitude of dig sites. I am not very sociable."
"Practice makes perfect." She smiled in return, her panic and embarrassment subsiding.
"Thank you for eating with me, Commander. I should get back to the Normandy."
"I'll walk you." I offered. "It will give you more time to practice."
As we passed the embassies through the markets towards the docking area, I kept chatting small talk.
"So you know my favourite asari meal," I started stupidly, "but you never told me your favourite human meal..."
I trailed off as I noticed a small crowd gathered just outside the C-Sec precinct. Several officers were holding bystanders back from the ledge. I was drawn to the commotion, easily pushing past people trying to peer over one another.
I approached a human C-Sec officer who was positioning a sniper over his comm. "What's going on here?" I asked.
"I'm sorry, sir. You'll have to step back. We have the situation under control." He was shorter than me by several inches and had a thick French accent. "Wait. I recognize you. You're Commander Shepard?"
"And you are?"
"Lt Girard. This is excellent timing." He seemed to relax a little and led me over to his vehicle. "The young woman behind those crates, she is a survivor of Mindoir who was enslaved by batarians but escaped her captivity. She arrived on the Citadel this evening, and I was escorting her to Huerta Memorial when she grabbed my gun. She's threatening to kill herself. I can't get close enough to calm her down. Every step we take gets her more wound up."
My breath caught in my throat, my mind working in a thousand different ways. The last time I had thought of Mindoir, I had been going through a box of the few possessions they had recovered from my home, after the batarians had put it to the torch.
"Let me talk to her." I said without thinking, without even looking at Girard. Very rarely did humans survive batarian slaver camps. It was even more rare to escape one.
Girard nodded and alerted the others on the comm.. I looked at Liara and gestured with my hand for her to stay in place.
"Talitha?" Girard called. "Talitha, I want you to stay calm, someone is coming to speak with you. Someone from your home."
I took off my jacket and made myself look as small and non-threatening as possible, even as a fine sheen of sweat had broken out all over my body. I had negotiated ceasefires, even stopped warring factions from killing each other with their bare hands, but I'd never talked someone down from suicide, never face to face.
I walked slowly around the crates and was met with the unfriendly end of a pistol.
"S-Stop! What do you- what are you?" The girl was small and skinny. She couldn't have been any taller than 5 feet, couldn't have weighed more than 100 pounds. Her hair was stubbled, her eyes sunken and tired, full of fear, panic, and pain.
I raised my hands and walked as close to her as she would allow, watching her body language carefully. "My name is John Shepard." I said calmly. "What is your name?"
"Animals don't get names. The masters put their symbols on her. Hot metal all over her back, she screams when they do it." She was talking a mile a minute, her hand squeezing the gun a little too tight for my comfort. I thought about knocking it away, and subduing her by force.
"You are not an animal. I want you to remember what your parents called you. Do you remember them?"
She lowered the gun and I lowered my arms. "Talitha." She said quietly. "They call her that. They're yelling. Run! Hide! The masters burn them. Sh- She doesn't want to see that! Don't make her look! Stupid! Stupid!" She was shouting and shaking, it took everything I had not to put my hands on her shoulds and stop it.
Confused and speaking in the third person, Talitha gradually told me her story. She was six when batarian slavers slaughtered her family, forced to watch her parents brutally murdered and incinerated. Talitha tried to hide from the batarians and hoped they would go away, but they captured her and implanted a control device in her head. The experience was torture, and she clearly had vivid memories of the entire experience. Her story was actually making me feel physically ill. I remembered watching the batarians pile human beings in heaps, and suddenly felt they were the lucky ones. Suddenly relieved I had found Stephanie, even if I had to watch her burn. At least she wasn't a slave. That was better, wasn't it?
Talitha was one of the unlucky ones. She became a slave and was physically abused and tortured over the years of her captivity. Eventually, the Alliance raided the slaver encampment, killed the batarians and freed their captives. Talitha was so inured to her existence as a slave that she even tried to help her 'masters' after they had been killed. At one point, she described to me trying to stuff the entrails of a slain batarian back into his torso.
After a while, I had managed to talk her into sitting down with me on the floor, my eye still trained on the gun in her hand. "You know, Talitha, I was on Mindoir during the raid. My parents were killed too."
"Lying!" She yelled, more agitated now than she had ever been. "You get hit for lying! Get the buzz or the burning. Can't be there!"
I remained calm, letting my body language and the tone of my voice encourage her to do the same. "I was broken. For a long time. I lost my whole family, Talitha. Someone helped me pick myself up and keep going."
Her fatigue was starting to show through. "She wishes she could stand up. Will you help her stand up?"
Happy I had finally broken through, I stood and offered my hand to her and she took it, leaving the gun on the floor. Her tears began to flow freely and I pulled her into a gentle hug.
We stood there like that for several minutes before I asked her to come with me to Lt. Gerard, who would ensure she would be taken care of appropriately. I had lie and promise her she wouldn't have any bad dreams at the hospital, and secretly hoped the sedatives they would give her would allow her to rest through the pain.
Girard thanked me and I quickly left the scene as the crowd was patting me on the back. Liara followed close behind.
Like me, Talitha had survived the raid, but she had been killed in another way. There was now nobody left on the face of the earth, either friend or relative, who knew who she was. No one who remembered her girlhood and her early mischief and family lore; no sibling or boon companion who could tease her about that first romance; no lover or pal with whom to reminisce. All her birthdays, exam results, illnesses, friendships, kinships—gone. She would go on living, but with a tabula rasa as her diary and calendar and notebook. I think of this every time I hear of the callow ambition to 'make a new start' or to be 'born again'. There's nothing worse than a clean slate. A truly clean slate.
For a minute, I was back in the forest behind my house on my hands and knees having a panic attack trying to catch my breath. In reality, I was just standing completely still like I'd hit an imaginary wall.
The feeling of Liara's hand on my shoulder as she approached me from behind snapped me back to my reality and I immediately felt embarrassed for becoming so emotional.
"Are you alright?" She asked sincerely.
I took a deep breath and straightened my posture. "Yeah. I'm fine." I lied.
"Would you like to sit down? Perhaps I could get you some water?"
Her suggestion seemed to prompt my body into accepting the inevitable and I fell back onto a bench and tucked my hands between my knees to stop them from shaking. I sucked in a deep breath, held it, and tried to bring myself back to the present. Tried to conjure a better memory.
Liara's hand was there on my shoulder again, but this time she said nothing.
I sighed deeply and lifted my head to meet her eyes.
"Just someone from where I grew up." I explained. "I haven't thought about it in a while, that's all. I'll be fine."
She sat beside me on the bench and seemed content to stare at the passersby walking on deck below while I tried to catch my breath.
The Citadel and its presidium had always reminded me of a spaceport with shops and restaurants lining the halls and grand windows facing out into the nebula. A cold and linear shopping mall where people's greatest concerns were avoiding line-ups to their favourite haunts. I felt a little more at home in the wards where the bright white walls and floors were impossible to maintain due to the masses of people teeming their way through the much smaller halls. Living and commercial spaces were non-linear and filled the available space rather than conform to it. Walking through the steam and the foot markets, I loved the way the different food stalls combined to create a sweet and savoury co-mingling of delicacies. But here in the presidium, the smell of artificial fragrance permeated the air and made me long for long green grass and open water.
Maybe you don't know what you want, and that's the problem. I thought. You're from too many worlds and none of them are compatible. But I remembered I had chosen a world where others could co-exist anyway. I had a mission and it had to be accomplished at all costs.
I clutched my hands on the bench under my legs and willed my emotions back into the darkness of my mind. Mindoir is over. I reminded myself. It's over and you're here now. You're home is a bunk not far from where you sit. Just get up and start walking, you stupid fool.
I swallowed hard and before I could stop myself from further embarrassment, the words poured out of me whispered and unobstructed.
"Do you ever feel lost?" The question hung between us, intimate, awkward only on my end.
Liara, despite her relative immaturity and all the things that made her different, slowly leaned back on the bench, taking her time and allowing an answer to evolve between us. Movements thoughtful and organic; there was a stillness in her, vast and majestic, the same stillness I remember in my mother before she died.
"My mother once told me a story. Once, in the days of Old Thessia, there were two birds who were greatly in love. In those days, they raised such animals to carry messages across great distances. These two were born in the same cage, raised by the same priestess, and sold on the same day to different tribals on the eve of a great war.
"The birds suffered apart from each other, each incomplete without their lover. Far and wide their masters took them, and the birds feared they would never again find each other, for they began to see how vast the world was, and how terrible the things in it. For months and months, they carried messages for their masters, flying over battle lines, through the air over tribals who killed one another for land. When the war ended, the birds were set free by their masters. But neither knew where to go, neither knew what to do, so each flew home. And there they found each other again, as they were always destined to return home and find, instead of the past, their future."
I tried to force a smile and asked "But what if their home wasn't there. What if it had been put to the torch?"
"Well," she started, scooting a little closer to me, "that's the moral of the story isn't it? As you humans say, 'home is where the heart is?' You can never feel truly lost, then."
Exhaling, I relaxed a little into he bench, my next question eagerly waiting to spill out of me like overflowing water.
"What if -" pausing, I looked at her and felt myself wanting to melt into her arms and unload a decade of emotional baggage onto her shoulders. That's not fair to her, or to you.
Her hand moved from my shoulder to my arm and I felt her squeeze, urging me to finish the question, though I got the distinct feeling she already knew it.
I swallowed hard. "What if I don't know where my heart is?"
To my surprise she tilted her chin and smiled at me, and placed her hand delicately in the centre of my chest. My breath caught and my heart quickened as her blue eyes locked with mine.
"Well that's silly isn't it. It's right here." She pressed a little harder, intent on feeling its beat. "It's right here, and from what I can tell, it's quite full."
I laughed to myself and looked into her eyes, wanting now instead to pull her into an embrace but thinking better of it. "Thanks for trying to cheer me up."
"My pleasure." She smiled at me and placed her hand on my knee, a simple and friendly gesture that made my hairs stand on end.
"And it's spaghetti." She added with a smirk.
"What?"
"You asked me my favourite human meal. It's most definitely spaghetti."
"I'll make sure to remember that." I told her.