Maintenance
Some twenty-four hours after the return from the batarian ship, the general mood on the Normandy had not improved. It helped nothing that the tiny frigate still felt empty, crewed only by those able to answer Shepard's abrupt request. The commander herself had disappeared into her quarters, and the human marines seemed moodily wrapped up in their work.
Garrus had attempted to sate a nagging curiosity by looking up what a 'kitten' was, but ended up losing a few hours surfing through the human encyclopedia, gawking at pictures of the bizarre cavalcade of creatures that inhabited Earth, both now and in past millennium.
In the midst of his search he found himself wondering, not for the first time, what had possessed the humans to name their home planet 'dirt'. It made him think about his grandmother, who stubbornly referred to Palavan by a thoroughly archaic name that roughly translated to 'The Middle Place', a name only used by her native country. He had to remind himself that home planets tended not to be named by popular demand like a colony, but rather by the civilization that happened to be on top of the heap when the concept of 'planet' was popularized. He reflected that 'Earth' had a certain basic, elemental appeal- it was after all, a fairly accurate description.
Finally, he figured out that 'kitten' was not in fact a species in itself, but the diminutive name for the juvenile of one Felis Catus, a small quadrupedal furry animal many humans apparently kept as domestic pets. He was no closer to divining what this could possibly have to do with Executor Pallin, but he decided the question could safely be left for another time, filed away with the innumerable other human linguistic enigmas. Somewhere between bored and worried, he went looking for Alenko.
The hull of the Mako loomed in the cargo bay as the elevator doors opened. Garrus paused and swept his gaze over the familiar tank, the indomitable vehicle that had survived the punishment of Shepard's missions to some of the most unforgiving places in the galaxy. It was a little hard to believe it was the same tank that had been to faraway Ilos, only to be catapulted bodily through a mass relay back to the Citadel.
The commander probably could have requested a replacement, but she'd insisted on keeping the same Mako after it had been repaired. Garrus quietly approved of the decision, as he considered the ornery vehicle as much part of the Normandy's crew as the sentient beings. And as Alenko had remarked, no piece of technology worked as advertised- better to keep the familiar quirks than get a batch of new ones.
Garrus idly ran his talons along the sloped nose of the Mako as he circled around to the far side. There, Lieutenant Alenko was reaching into an open side panel toward the rear of the vehicle. Behind him, thick plates of battered armor were strewn about on the floor, removed from the section that had taken a direct missile hit down on the asteroid from one of the base's defense turrets.
Of the human crew of the Normandy, Garrus felt the closest kinship with the lieutenant. When he had first come aboard, he'd felt it most appropriate to place himself at the bottom of their Alliance hierarchy. Still stinging from Executor Pallin's dismissal of his work on Saren, Garrus hadn't felt presumptive enough to demand anything of the human Spectre who had, surprisingly enough, agreed to let him come along on her mission.
Shepard remained his superior, even if she often freely blurred that line. But now, after months, many battles, and a promotion back into C-Sec, he felt more on equal footing with Alenko, not just as a brother in arms but as a friend.
Suddenly there was a crackle and a flash of blue, causing Alenko to recoil violently. The human performed a brief stamping dance of pain which culminated in a vicious kick to the Mako's tire and a string of invective disparaging the tank's parentage.
Garrus watched the decidedly uncharacteristic outburst with raised eyebrows. "Are you all right?" he inquired tentatively.
Alenko glanced his way, wringing his hand. "Oh, I'm great. Perfect end to a perfect day," the lieutenant grumbled disgustedly.
The turian blinked, then decided Alenko was likely being sarcastic. He stepped up to the open panel and peered in, noting the scorched cabling within.
"Hm, I didn't know the damage was that bad," he said.
"Yeah," Alenko said morosely. "Feedback fried the shield emitter on this side, we're going to have to replace the whole damn thing. Just to make things easy, a couple of the capacitors are still holding a charge."
"Can I help?" Garrus asked.
The lieutenant rubbed his carbon and grease-stained hands together. "Sure," he said finally. "We need to get the burnt stuff out of there, but watch out, some of the connectors are live."
Garrus settled into the now comfortably familiar ritual of repair, a language he easily understood. Between them, they managed to clean out the damaged systems and began installing replacements, using the cargo bay's omni-gel fabricator to rebuild the specialized parts necessary. Much larger than the omni-tool-based micro-fabricators, this one could handle more complicated items, reorganizing and weaving the gel into parts based on preset templates.
As an hour wore into another, it became evident that Alenko wasn't going to volunteer whatever was weighing on him. A few months ago, Garrus would have let it pass, preferring not to meddle in what wasn't his business, but concern dogged him. Whatever was affecting his friend was also affecting the commander, and thus the whole ship.
At length, Garrus gave up on trying to adhere to circuitous decorum and simply asked.
"You are upset about how the mission went, aren't you?"
The human stopped what he was doing and drew a long breath, his eyes distant as he absently scraped blackened grit off the tool in his hands. For a moment, Garrus thought he might not answer at all.
"It's just... we should have saved the hostages," he said finally, voice tight. "She... Shepard didn't even try!"
Garrus frowned. "Yes she did, she risked her life to try to get to the bomb in time."
Alenko shook his head. "No, I mean the bombs shouldn't have been set in the first place."
"You would have let Balak walk away, then?" Garrus asked. "Someone determined to murder an entire colony of your people?"
"Well..." Alenko hesitated. "I wouldn't have been happy about it, but innocent lives should come first. It wasn't right."
Garrus felt his mandibles flicker with tension. He couldn't help but feel that down on the asteroid, Corporal Nayar's enthusiasm had fouled up his sniper shot, a shot that might have prevented the bombs being armed at all. But such was battle, and in his mind a soldier was measured by how they dealt with things going wrong, not right. His training in the turian military had ingrained in him the idea of total war, where he was taught that it was foolish to leave your foe in a position where they could come to strike at you again, and that it saved lives to ensure that your enemy was utterly and completely beaten.
But it was a fundamental difference in philosophy that Garrus didn't feel like arguing. "It's our privilege to disagree," he said finally.
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Alenko said irritably.
Garrus hissed lightly, frustration rising. "Is it that humans so often say one thing when they mean something else that you think everyone does the same?" he demanded. "I mean exactly what I said. It's the privilege of those below to think that they might have done something differently than those above! It is the burden of those above to actually make that choice. And if you really think the choice was wrong, well, you have regulations, don't you? Courts?"
A grimace flickered across Alenko's face as he stared hard at the Mako's exposed panel for a long moment. Garrus found himself regretting the suggestion- what little he knew of human laws was that they were oppressive at best, threatening prison terms for something as inconsequential as casual drug use.
"That... that won't bring anyone back," Alenko said finally. "And it doesn't justify my big damn mouth," he muttered.
"I don't understand," Garrus said quizzically, distantly relieved.
The lieutenant sighed, then waved a dismissive hand. "Never mind, it's not important."
Garrus frowned. "Why do you say that? It clearly is."
Alenko stopped, mouth open. "I meant... I don't want to talk about it," he said finally.
"So why not say that instead?"
"I..." The lieutenant's brows knitted together in consternation. "This is why we drive turians nuts, isn't it?" he said after a moment. "I wasn't trying to deceive you, I didn't even think about it. But we do that all the time, talk in ambiguous half-truths. It must sound like we're talking in code."
Garrus thought for a moment, suddenly recalling a conversation he'd had with Liara a short while after the Novaria mission. The asari archeologist loved to talk about culture, and it seemed that even after a short time on the Normandy, she could offer insights that never would have occurred to Garrus.
"It is a code, your culture's... code," he said. "When a turian joins a new group, whether it's a family, a work crew, or a military unit, we naturally try to find ways to fit in as fast as possible. Our lives are... defined by the hierarchies we keep. Do you remember when I talked about spirits?"
Alenko nodded.
"Your word, spirit, is loaded down with your human meanings," Garrus continued. "It's not really a good translation for our word, only the closest one, I guess." The turian thought again for a long moment. Humans seemed to like analogies. Since they so often related one thing to something else, maybe it would help here.
"Think of it like... your body," he ventured. "All the parts that make it up work to one purpose, so that your mind, your spirit, can achieve its goal. Sometimes some of those parts go wrong, and the others have to help bring everything back into harmony."
Alenko frowned thoughtfully.
"My example is a clumsy one..." Garrus said.
"No, I think I see what you mean," Alenko said. "Like you said, humans think of spirits as external, supernatural beings, but you're talking about... the sum of parts."
Garrus nodded. "So when a turian joins a group of non-turians, we still try to fit in, to become part of that sum. But we can't rely on our traditions, so we have to make do with trial and error. Whether we like it or not, we're always strongly affected by the spirit of the group, good or bad. Humans seem so often very individual."
"We like to think that. We're still social animals, though," the lieutenant said. "I always wondered why some turians seemed to like to try and use human idioms. It sounds weird to us, but they're trying to understand, aren't they?"
"Yes," Garrus replied. "Some of us try, and learn. But some of us get frustrated, and others don't try at all. We'll always have an easier time with your military, because you have a hierarchy we understand. Once we place ourselves within it, we know how to relate to those above and those below. But your civilian population doesn't have that hierarchy. Or, if you do, it's far too convoluted for us."
"Some turians just default to assuming humans are 'those below', I bet," Alenko smirked.
Garrus shrugged. "I suppose so, yes. But you have to understand, among turians there's no stigma associated with being a lower rank. The problem is that some turians consider humans too much as outsiders, not part of our world at all."
"Being outside the hierarchy is worse than being low ranking, then."
"Well, yes. Without a spirit to belong to, well... you're something less."
Alenko was silent for a long moment. "Well, that makes a certain amount of sense," he said, half to himself.
They spent a few minutes testing the repaired shield array, re-balancing the output of each of the emitters along the perimeter of the Mako.
"I often think about the chain of events that led us here," Garrus mused as they fitted a new armor plate over the shield emitter. "One thing out of place, and Sovereign would have succeeded. It could have been a very small thing, too. It could have been just a few seconds somewhere."
A dark cloud crossed Alenko's features. "I don't like thinking that people had to die for anything to be the way it is."
Garrus glanced toward the lieutenant, then shook his head. "You misunderstand me. I don't believe the universe wants to be a certain way... I don't think it cares what we do. Maybe that makes it all the more tenuous that we broke the Reaper's cycle.
"If Terra Nova had died, the spirit of humanity would have been shaken to the core, at a time when the spirit of the Citadel badly needs you. Did those engineers have to die for Terra Nova to live, for the Citadel to live? I prefer to think not, and if I'd been in command, maybe I would have chosen differently. But then, I don't know if I would have succeeded in saving the colony.
"I don't know. I can't know. Any more than... Any more than I know how you get along in life with so many extra digits."
Alenko looked at him with a surprised expression. The turian held up his three-fingered hands and shrugged slightly. The lieutenant laughed suddenly, wearily, but gratifying nonetheless for Garrus, who had risked his decidedly flimsy grasp of human humor to try and lighten the mood.
"So that's the real secret behind some turians resenting us- finger envy," Alenko said with a smirk.
"Envy?" Garrus said with deliberate haughtiness. "Perish the thought. It's a sign of degeneracy."
Alenko snickered. "You sound like one of those Terra Firma rejects."
"I'm related to one of those," Garrus said ruefully. "My grandmother is a conservative who is convinced that 'humanisms' will spread among turians like a disease, and that our society will fall apart. Your religion has already started to 'infect' some of us."
"Bhuddism is a social evil now?" Alenko said mildly. "I thought it was about jovial fat guys, incense and sitting around talking about how great non-materialism is."
"Exactly!" Garrus nodded vehemently. "The doom of civilization as we know it." Such hyperbole didn't come naturally to Garrus, but there was a certain reckless fun to it.
Alenko just chuckled and wearily shook his head. In truth, nothing was solved. But perhaps because there could be no bringing anyone back from the dead, it was important to reinforce the bonds that kept the spirit whole.