Garrus watched his flagship shrink on the vid screen, pride glowing warm and deep. It hung in the black, poised above the arc of the planet like a great raptor locked onto its prey. The first of her kind, the Passchendaele never failed to amaze him. Sleek, deadly, and beautiful, she embodied the best of human, turian, and geth design, each influence obvious, but seamlessly blended into the whole.
"She's a beauty," Kasumi said, dropping her cloak to appear just behind Garrus's elbow.
He nodded, but then looked down at her. "There are three of us in this shuttle. We all know you're here, so you don't need to stay cloaked."
"Don't I?" She shrugged, a sly smile darting across her lips before she vanished again.
"That's going to get old really fast," Martin said, a rough sigh carrying along a couple of curses for the ride.
Garrus thumped into a seat, silently agreeing with Martin. The thief had a playfulness about her that lightened the anchors wrapped around his neck, but her growing infatuation with torturing Martin had already started to prove tiresome.
"I'm a force of nature, robot armour boy. Get used to it," the thief's voice said from the seat next to him.
"And so is that," Martin said, the words squeezing out between clenched teeth. "And you're not a force of nature, you're a pustulating abscess on the ass—"
"That'll be enough, thanks, Martin," Garrus interrupted. "Let's try to keep things civil." He flopped back into the seat, a hand over his eyes. A bright, white spark of pain settled in behind his brow plates as he considered a couple of weeks worth of their bickering.
"Get used to the abscess thing, too," Kasumi said, this time from the seat across from Martin.
"Are we there, yet?" Martin cried, moving to the seat next to the bulkhead.
Garrus grinned and shook his head. "Fifteen minutes." He stretched out, arms behind his head, and closed his eyes. "Just relax and enjoy the quiet." An implacable anchor, exhaustion pulled Garrus down into the seat. Even fifteen minutes worth of sleep would help ease the ache in his joints, but the anchor hit the bottom before it pulled him into sleep. Letting out a shallow sigh, he let himself float. If he slept, he'd just spend the entire time searching for Shepard anyway, and like the past two nights, she'd still be gone.
"Why are we using the shuttle? Base One has docks now." Martin sighed. "Let's face it, sailing in with the stabilizers at full extension, the Passch makes quite the impression."
Garrus opened one eye a slit as Martin changed the vid screen to show the planet, zooming in on their destination, the new capital. The small settlement remained officially unnamed, its residents referring to it as Base One.
"We don't need to make an impression, you in particular," Garrus said, closing his eye again. "Or are you forgetting about screaming and running through the camp in your underwear because you found a small lizard-thing in your tent on our last visit?"
"Now, see, had I been here, I could have recorded the whole thing for posterity," Kasumi said from the pilot's compartment, "and no one would have been the wiser. If it leaked to the extranet … well, those things happen."
Martin growled. "Why did we bring the criminal?" he demanded, and not for the first time. "We would have done just fine without her tagging along."
Garrus grumbled and shifted in his seat, stretching a little. "She's not tagging along. She's here to help us figure out what's going on. All I got from Tali's answers to my questions is that someone is agitating for war."
He understood how resentment and anger could fester after more than three centuries of exile, but surely, a peaceful means of returning to their home had to be worth trying to leave the anger behind. Apparently, some of the quarians didn't think so.
Kasumi materialized right in front of him. "Having an invisible set of eyes never hurts," she said. "They can have a much wider range of vision."
Garrus looked up at her, the spark of a headache rapidly growing into something that would take major fire suppression gear to put out. "Stop that, but yes. You're both going to have plenty to keep you occupied. Now just sit down and shut up. If one of you starts repeating everything the other one says, you're both going out the hatch."
Slumping back into the seat, Garrus went back over his list of questions, wishing he'd asked Tali for more specific information. Her answers just led to more questions and a sick sort of dread stemming from the fact it felt as though she was hiding things from him. He really hoped that part could be chalked up to the vagueness of their code.
"Hey, General?"
Garrus looked up, the worried tone of Martin's voice grabbing his attention instantly. "What is it?" He sat up.
"Look." Martin pointed to the vid screen, and several quarian ships hanging low and tight over Rannoch's northern pole. "That can't be good, can it?"
Garrus just shook his head. None of the ships were civilian vessels, but ones from the heavy fleet. A dry, heated wind of dread blew through him, and he wished he'd asked Nihlus to divert from chasing ghosts. At the base of his neck, where plate solidified into cowl, a prickle jabbed into his spine, twisting a little. He pushed the warning aside. He didn't need to have any sort of brilliant skills or talents to realize things on Rannoch had escalated far past what Tali led him to believe, but he couldn't very well do anything until they landed.
Thankfully, Martin and Kasumi listened to him and spent the last few minutes of the trip in silence. Still, Garrus thrust himself up out of his seat before the shuttle touched down, eager to find closure for all his nagging doubts. He flung the hatch open, the shuttle's thrusters sending billowing clouds of dust flying up in his face. Throwing his hand up to shield himself from the worst of it, he jumped down, eyes already scanning for any sign of trouble.
Tali hurried up the gravel road toward the docks, the chipped, red rock crunching and grinding under her feet. He'd worried that he and the other two should be fully suited up, but Tali and the two quarians bringing in a lift for their footlockers all wore complete suits and masks. Garrus frowned even as he strode out to meet Tali. He'd thought the geth had been accelerating the process to free them from their cloth prisons.
"Garrus!" Tali lifted a hand as she closed the last few metres. "Welcome to Rannoch, General Vakarian." Her hand dropped, extending toward him as she stopped a half-metre away. "Thank you for pushing us up to the top of the list," she said, glancing around her as if worried that someone was listening in. "Sorry my call for help came so last minute, but Legion and I have been trying our best to fix the situation on our own." When Garrus grasped her hand, she pulled him into a hug. "It's good to see you."
"It's good to see you too." Garrus gave the quarian a squeeze and a couple of pats between her shoulder blades. "And it wasn't a problem … at least once Wrex stopped shouting at me." He backed out of the embrace and stepped past her, walking to the edge of the landing area.
"Hey, Tali," Martin greeted her, giving her a quick hug as well. "Beware the invisible criminal."
"Invisible criminal?" Tali asked, walking up beside Garrus.
"He means me," Kasumi said, appearing on Garrus's other side. "Nice planet you have here."
Tali glanced back and forth between Garrus and the thief, then nodded. "Thanks."
Garrus stared down the nearly thirty metres to the main quarian settlement spread along the cliff walls, admiring the buildings that rose from the red stone like sculptures. They'd been formed out of the natural materials in much the same manner as turian dwellings, but the shape of them definitely harkened back to previous quarian architecture.
Garrus let out a low whistle. "Wow," he said, stunned by the beauty spread out before him. Everything about the settlement flowed in a seamless whole, buildings, roads, and garden spaces growing out of and moving through the landscape as if they'd been formed by the wind and sea rather than hands and tools. The dim sun gleaming red-gold off every surface and the wild shots of green cacti and brilliant flowers transformed the little village into a masterpiece.
She looked up at him, but sadness rolled off her in waves rather than pride. "I told you to trust me … that it would be worth living in the camp a while longer rather than throwing up those ugly prefabs."
Garrus nodded. "You were right. I take it those architects I sent were of some use?" He could see the influence of the turian team through the tiered construction and the sweeping, organic lines of the buildings. Turians loved their fortifications, but more than that, they liked their fortifications to be works of art. If you threw up a wall, it told the enemy you intended to keep them out, but if you transformed that wall into a work of art, it said that you fully expected that wall to perform its task forever. It was a subtle form of intimidation, but an effective one.
After looking down at Base One for another moment, the prickle at the base of his neck started heating up again. Something was off. It took him about five seconds to recognize the issue.
"When I came here six months ago," he said, turning to face Tali, "there were five geth platforms on the street for every quarian." His hand swept out as if erasing the previous scene in favour of the current. "Where are all the geth, Tali?" He looked back, dread moving in as his eyes confirmed it. Not a single geth moved between the buildings.
"That's why I asked you to come." She gestured down the road and hurried ahead. "We'll walk back. It'll give me time to fill you in as we go."
Garrus strode at her side, giving her a moment to start before he gave in to the many questions trying to turn the conversation into an interrogation. The combination of Tali's demeanour and the missing geth screamed along his every nerve. Something had been going on that would bring shame to Shepard's efforts for peace, and he couldn't abide that. Especially with her disappearance scraping those same nerves raw.
"So, why aren't there geth in your suits? I thought you were getting to the point where you didn't have to be masked all the time?" he asked when Tali just wrung her hands. The slump in her posture at the questions told him more than he wanted to know.
The sigh that dragged out of Tali sounded like stone grinding against metal; harsh, jagged, and uncharacteristic. "Admiral Xen announced a couple of months ago that she believed there was a danger that those of us on the planet were being controlled by the geth," Tali said, starting down the slope toward the settlement.
"Because you're allowing them into your suits?" Garrus looked up as a group of quarian passed by, all of them looking as spooked and jittery as Tali. What the hell was going on?.
"Exactly. She insisted that we all return to the flotilla for tests, so we agreed to come back in pairs, but that wasn't good enough. She and her growing army of doctors and experts wants us all to come back together." Tali flipped her hands, a small, frustrated gesture. "We've refused, because we know that we're not being controlled, and we won't be pulled off and held prisoner to their paranoia."
"Admiral Xen." He let out a long breath almost as jagged as the quarian's. "She's still agitating?"
He swore Tali rolled her eyes behind her mask. "Of course. Worse than ever. She's even started saying that the Admiralty Board had no right to decide unilaterally for resettlement and that they should all have to resign in favour of a new board." Another sigh, this one more musical as it cut the air between them. "At least that isn't going anywhere because technically all they did was approve the expeditionary team. The Conclave voted for continuing the survey process and unanimously in favour of resettlement should things progress."
"So, why do you need us?" Martin asked, jogging up on Tali's other side. "And where is Legion? I thought he'd be here to meet us."
"Tali'Zorah!" A female quarian raced up the road toward them. As she slid to a stop in front of them, her feet lost purchase on the loose stone. Arms flailing, she nearly went down on her backside.
Garrus jumped forward and grabbed her arm, just managing to hold her on her feet. Once she caught herself, he released her and stepped back, her frantic haste tying the knot in his gut tighter.
"Thank you, sir," she gasped, her chest heaving as if she'd run a couple of kilometers. In the next breath, her attention snapped over to Tali. "Tali'Zorah, Arax and a squad of primes just walked up to the south wall. Arax asked for you."
Tali nodded, and let out a shaky breath. "Run ahead and tell the geth that I'm on my way."
Garrus looked back and forth between them, cursing the masks that hid their expressions. Beneath their words, he sensed a current racing thick and fast, a landslide racing down a mountainside to wash them all away. Again, he wished he'd dragged Nihlus along.
The young female nodded, took a couple of gasping breaths, then turned and bolted back down the road toward town.
Garrus focused on Tali, a growing, sick feeling of disgust writhing through him as he watched the quarian squirm, trying to avoid his stare. "Tali, if you don't just tell me the truth about what's going on here … ." He left the threat open, not completely sure what he'd do. As much as he cared about the quarian and admired her courage, the shame he felt coming off of her left him cold. "Why are there no geth in the settlement?"
She set off, leaving him behind. "You know that the geth started making more advanced units based on Legion's prototype?" She glanced over at him as he caught up, continuing when he nodded. "They wanted more autonomy, the increased intelligence of more runtimes in each platform." She cleared her throat. "And they thought it would make interacting with us easier."
Her hands started wringing once again. "The flotilla was concerned about the new platforms' combat applications and asked us to run scans, send back any information we could gather on them."
Garrus shook his head, seeing the landslide veering off course, headed straight for the tiny village of peaceful coexistence. "Did you ask the geth before you started treating them like enemy lab subjects?"
Tali's shoulders dropped even further as she shook her head. "No. The Admiralty Board and Conclave formed the Rannoch Resettlement Committee to oversee our efforts and monitor the geth. They ordered us to remain silent. I argued with them, refused to do it myself, but a lot of the group were still nervous about the geth and agreed." For a moment, she seemed to teeter on the edge of making some sort of excuse. He really hoped she didn't. "I kept an eye on the others, stopped them when I caught them, but I didn't do enough. I let the committee intimidate me."
The mudslide took out the town, little villagers screaming as the mud washed them away, pulling them down into the muck of insanity.
"After a couple of months, we'd all gotten to know a lot of the geth, worked side by side with them, and considered them friends," Tali said, her shoulders rising, her spine straightening as some steel fortified her words. "At the same time, the committee's demands became more invasive. Samples of their materials, hack and copy any code we could." She shuddered. As they reached the bottom of the slope, she held an arm out to usher them along a street to their right. "We all refused to continue without asking the geth for permission."
Garrus nodded, unwilling to say anything to dismiss the quarians' abuse of the geths' sapient rights. That this committee had taken advantage of nervous children boiled in his blood. Had they done the same to any other race, they would have been dragged before the council for crimes against sapience. And so, he seethed, a seven foot explosive building to detonation, and waited through Tali's pause.
"The first of the advanced platforms disappeared about a month after we refused to continue the testing." She hesitated, swallowing loud enough for him to hear it even over the noise of their feet on the rock before she continued, "The next disappeared ten days later." Lifting her eyes from the road, she turned to look up at him, then at the houses around them.
"How many, Tali? And how long has this been going on?" He kept his voice soft despite the razor-keen edge, the knot in his gut tightened until it became all he could do to keep from retching.
"Thirty-five," she answered, her voice barely loud enough for him to hear it. "Over the last year."
Garrus stopped so suddenly that his boots continued to roll over the flaky, red shale. Backpedaling, he just managed to stay on his feet. "Thirty-five in a year?" He reached up, raking his talons over his fringe as the knot unspooled, releasing itself in fury. "How could you and Legion keep this from me for a year, Tali? What have you been doing to locate them?" At the end of the street, movement caught his attention. A platform that looked very much like Legion stood at the head of a cluster of primes. "Does the flotilla know that geth have been going missing? Did you report it to anyone?"
Tali shook her head. "No. Legion and I decided to keep it to ourselves just in case the committee was responsible." She shrugged. "At first, we thought it was just platforms leaving for the space stations or the shipyards on Haestrom. Then we started to worry that maybe the disappearances were either heretics that hadn't really rejoined the geth … or their victims."
Ice spread through Garrus's veins as he kept his eyes on the geth. Heretics, still functioning, possibly subverting the rest of the geth. If that was the case, the quarians were right to keep ships on hand. "When did the geth find out about your scans and tests?" Spirits, how had everything ended up so turned inside out? "Could heretics have thought you discovered them?"
Tali shifted further away. "The geth knew all along. When the committee ordered us back because they thought we were being controlled, we knew the chance was nil, because the geth had left months before. It's impossible to be controlled by geth who aren't even there." She shrugged. "The scans I saw didn't show anything out of the ordinary, but it's possible that heretic runtimes might have thought we'd discovered their presence."
"Was it just the ones in your suits that withdrew?" he asked, starting back toward the waiting geth. What a spirit-cursed mess.
"At first, but as more platforms disappeared along with thousands of runtimes, they all withdrew to their base and the space stations." Tali's voice thickened, taking on a nasal tone as if she fought back tears. "Even Legion."
Garrus stopped again, not as abruptly that time. "Is that why Legion isn't here? Is Arax its ... their replacement?" He stumbled over the proper pronoun. If Legion had stepped back from the colonization process, Garrus needed to pull the geth back into it. Of all the geth, he trusted Legion to be straight with him if the geth had a heretic problem. After a couple of seconds, when Tali still hadn't answered, he scowled. No. Dear spirits, not Legion.
"Arax is Legion's replacement," Tali said at last, "but because four days ago, I convinced Legion to come down to speak with me. I wanted to apologize. I got an idea that I thought could help us find the missing geth and get everything back on track." She stared down the road to where the geth waited. "He disappeared before he even reached Base One." The silver reflections of her eyes stared up at him. "I called you to come help, because Legion's vanished just like the others, Garrus." Her hands flopped at her sides. "I don't know what to do."
Garrus let out a long breath. If there were heretics running amok, Legion would definitely be at the top of their hit list before they started making any moves. Still, if Tali and Legion had kept the disappearances a secret from the flotilla, why were the quarians poised for war? What had them on edge? Something didn't add up.
"First things first," he said. "Let's go see what our friends want." He led the way down the street, not caring how it looked to anyone if he took charge. Events had accelerated beyond that.
"Creator Zorah, Vakarian-General," Arax greeted them as they approached. The platform extended a hand, shaking Garrus's when the general took it. "Geth orbital stations have scanned fifteen quarian vessels over Rannoch's magnetic north pole."
Garrus nodded. "Yes, we saw them as we landed." Stopping, he waited for the other foot to drop. The geth hadn't come out of their seclusion just to say that they'd seen some ships.
"Probability of creator aggression, high. Geth must prepare to defend themselves. We recommend that creator units currently housed in area designated Base One evacuate to avoid injury or death."
Garrus shook his head and cut the air with a hand. "There isn't going to be an attack. Tali'Zorah asked me for my help figuring out what is going on, and that is what I intend to do." He stepped up to meet Arax eye to eye. "Do you have any information on the geth that have disappeared? Where they last reported in, last transmissions received … anything of that nature?"
The geth cocked its head, the flaps around its light rising and falling in a slow wave. "We will provide Vakarian-General with the information geth have gathered into the disappearance of allied runtimes, but all efforts to locate missing geth have met with failure. Conflict with the creator fleet is inevitable."
"What's changed?" Garrus demanded, frustration bleeding into his voice, hard-edged and raw. "A year ago, the geth believed in peace. They believed that geth and quarians could live cooperatively. What happened between then and now?"
Arax stepped back, the primes encircling the platform protectively. "Creators ran tests without geth permission. The geth believe the creators responsible for the missing platforms and all runtimes housed within. They conduct covert scans of all geth operations, including those supporting the Archangel initiative. The conclusion is that they are testing for weaknesses and preparing for war."
Garrus pushed in, not willing to let them close the conversation down. "I just arrived, and I won't be allowing anyone to attack anything." He'd have to call Nihlus and get him there with a dozen Archangel vessels to keep the two sides away from one another. "Send me everything you have that might help me track down the missing platforms. Give me a chance to figure this out before everyone panics and we start evacuating people in preparation for a war I don't think anyone wants." Garrus leaned in to meet Arax eye to flashlight. "Peace is still worth taking a chance, isn't it?"
Dust exploded up from the ground, billowing up in a blinding, choking cloud. Garrus covered his eyes, and turned to face the new threat. Looking up, he saw a large shape through the dust. A frigate? He grabbed Tali's arm and dragged her back away from the ship as it settled to the ground right where they'd been standing. The thrusters still whipping dust and debris into the air, the ramp dropped, a small contingent of Marines marching down to surround them.
"Tali'Zorah vas Rannoch," the last quarian off the ship called out. He stopped a couple of metres back. "The Admiralty Board sent us to return you and your expeditionary force to the flotilla for medical testing."
Garrus stepped forward, but before he could say anything, Kal'Reegar slid between Tali and the newcomer, his rifle ready in his hands. "The hell they did," the Marine shouted over the roar of thrusters. "No one on this rock is going anywhere."