07: Pluralism
Hannah
Shanxi
2157 CE
"Five days with no word."
Hannah didn't look up. The fatalistic tone of Regidonis' voice required no translation, and she didn't want to see his face. She didn't want to know.
The turian convoy to the northern supply district should have taken no more than forty-eight hours to return. As each moment of the delay ticked by, eventually stretching from hours into days, the tension in her gut tightened like a screw.
By now, the last of the food was long gone, barely a sip of clean water remained, and there was no real medicine for miles. Half of the colonists had already succumbed to dysentery before the surrender. Now the rest of them were starting to fail, one by one. Jane had been fine one moment, then the malnutrition had finally taken its toll. Ever since, things had been slipping fast.
At least it was quiet. It was easy and numbing to sit in the dark with Jane, just waiting. Savoring the brief, merciful silences between her daughter's attacks of diarrhea and vomit. There was blood in everything now - blood and the rancid, unmistakable stink of death being feebly warded off one hour at a time.
It wouldn't be long before they were all dust.
The Captain quietly approached. He toed the the dim pool of light that had been cast over Jane's cot by a small battery lamp, but hesitated to go any further. Even without seeing his face, there was no mistaking weight of his gaze. It was written plainly in his sudden lack of breath, his instant stillness.
Witnessing a dying child could take the wind out of just about anyone. Even a razor-faced turian warlord, apparently.
Using the omni-tool that Regidonis had smuggled in for her, she scanned Jane for the third time that hour. One hundred and four. At least the numbers had stopped climbing.
Hannah tried to speak, but it came out dry. Bone tired.
"Her fever won't break."
"Alvarez is out of medical supplies."
Although he tried to mask it, the undertone of grief in his voice skittered along the back of her neck like an insect. A few short days with the translator had already taught her how to recognize certain rumbling subvocals. Most of them were bad news, the symptoms of failure. Worry, regret, apology.
"There was nothing to spare, even for a child."
His voice cracked, splitting into broken halftones.
At least it would hurt him to see Jane die.
He'd done all of this, no matter how much he might regret it now. If her daughter had to waste away - victim to cruel, simple filth - at least Hannah would be able to watch Regidonis suffer alongside her. It was a bitter and useless sort of revenge, but it was also the only comeuppance she was likely to get.
"I am so sorry..." he whispered.
Sorry. What an awful thing to say. How useless. How inadequate. The raw note of pain in his voice only made the sentiment uglier.
"You did this," she spat. If only words could flay him.
"I - Yes, I know."
"I want to you to see this. Really look at what you've done. The colony? Who gives a shit. It was a junkheap before your people ever got here. This is the real damage."
She finally glanced at him. The strange mandible-like appendages on his face were shivering against his cheeks - guilt. When she turned, he stopped trembling and unsteadily met her eyes.
"Come closer," she commanded, pointing at her daughter's cot. The words were hasty. Bitter.
"Sit right next to her. She's not afraid of you."
He did as she said without any hesitation, though Hannah could hardly fathom why. Overturning an empty crate that had once held a shipment of industrial cleaner, he sat on the makeshift stool and mournfully took up a vigil at Jane's bedside.
Jane's chest rose and fell in short, shallow bursts. For a while, the only sound in the room was the rasping of her breath as she scraped pathetically for air.
Regidonis stared at the little girl for a long time, longer than Hannah would have credited him for. Suddenly, involuntarily, he clicked out a sad, small noise from the back of his throat. The translator didn't know what to make of it, but Hannah did.
The Captain pulled off one of his armored gloves and gently laid his bare hand on Jane's chest, as if he needed to be sure of something vital. His thumb and fingers sported those glinting, brutal-looking talons, but the movement of his hand was soft. Reverent, almost.
Protective.
When Regidonis spoke again, his voice was brittle as glass.
"Did he die in the bombardment?"
"Who?"
"Her father."
Hannah felt as though he had dipped her in liquid nitrogen. Surely, if she moved an inch, her limbs would shatter.
"She's got no father. Never did."
He said nothing, but his surprise was palpable. He didn't deserve an explanation, and he didn't ask for one.
Good. It was irrelevant. Jane's paternal origins were buried in a minefield. One wrong step could lead Hannah right back into those gruesome, blood-filled hours, when all she'd wanted to do was die.
It didn't make any difference. Not anymore. She had long ago convinced herself that it didn't matter how Jane had arrived in this world, merely that she had. Now, Hannah wanted to believe it more than ever: miracles could be born from anything, especially despair.
"Your people are stronger than you look," he said. "She can survive this."
It wasn't sentimental babbling; he really believed it. His hand moved to the crown of Jane's head, where he thoughtfully smoothed down a sweaty line of hair. In the lamplight, Jane's gingery strands were almost glowing, as if she were on fire. Hannah lost her breath.
A turian was bent over her child, his eyes flashing in the half-dark, his fierce, taloned hand hovering an inch above Jane's frail little body. The sight should have filled Hannah with terror. Instead she felt her heart clenching around a strange, desperate truth, as if her chest was a trap that had been violently startled in the black of night.
She felt something wet drop onto her hand, and she looked stupidly at the ceiling, wondering if the splintered roof was letting in the rain. As her head tilted back, her vision blurred. She let the tears fall.
Jane
Zakera Ward, Citadel
2183 CE
Shepard swatted away the doctor.
This was her first expedition out of Normandy's medbay since Saren's attack, and Chakwas had made Shepard promise to return in the afternoon for a painful organ grafting session. She wasn't about to spend these precious hours of freedom on the Citadel convalescing like an invalid.
Anyway, it was her own fault. If she was going to be sore because of her own dipshit scare tactics, then so be it.
"Enough fussing. I'll live."
Doctor Michele relented, lowering the dermal regenerator.
"Very well, Commander. You should be alright to walk around again, but I would avoid any more… well…"
"Stop hitting yourself, Shepard." Vakarian finished.
He crossed his arms over his chest and telegraphed her a look . Concerned, certainly, but also more than a little impressed. He hadn't even attempted to avert his eyes when Doctor Michel had cleaned and bandaged the seeping hole Saren had gouged into Shepard's side. Instead, he'd silently surveyed the damage, as if taking careful notes.
Vakarian's clinical stare had made Shepard's heart rate quicken so suddenly that Michele's medical scanner had blipped in annoyance.
He'd noticed that too.
The doctor put a few final touches on the fresh dressing, then wrapped Shepard in a compression band and helped slip her shirt back on. Shepard was far too damaged to feel exposed, even if Vakarian and the unfamiliar quarian were both hovering nearby. Her entire abdomen was swollen and bruised, skin stretched over her insides like a meat casing, a mess of burst blood vessels and blue-purple misery. Nothing remotely titillating about it.
Shepard managed to button her shirt to the top of her utilitarian underwear, then dropped the act. It was a relief to let the air tickle over her collarbones, the only part of her torso that didn't ache as if it had been clumsily reconstructed out of ground beef. Leave it. Who cared.
"Thanks for patching me up, doc," she said, then looked curiously into the faceplate of the quarian. Tali'Zorah nar Rayya.
"What about you, how are you holding up?"
"Don't worry. I'm carrying enough antibiotics to sterilize the whole Flotilla." Zorah patted her leg, where a polonium round had dug a deep crater into her thigh. "This is a bug bite."
Shepard grinned. The quarian had plenty of spirit, and that was always handy in a pinch.
"Glad to hear it. Now, do you mind showing us whatever the hell all this fuss is about?"
Zorah and Vakarian exchanged a glance.
"You can trust us," he said, as if their timely rescue hadn't been proof enough.
The quarian weighed her options for a moment longer. She nodded a single affirmation, then disappeared into the back to fetch her evidence. Doctor Michele quietly excused herself to the storeroom to do some filing.
While they were gone, Vakarian took a moment to lock down the clinic with a few sweeps of his omni-tool. He disabled the doctor's single security drone, and then found a number of hidden cameras that Michele had not installed herself.
"Are those Saren's bugs?" Shepard asked.
"No, these are older. Shadow Broker. Pretty common for this level of Zakera. Lots of interesting foot traffic in these parts - he likes to keep tabs. Not today."
Vakarian gathered the bugs into a small pile, waving a sarcastic goodbye into the lenses.
"Lights out."
He sabotaged the lot with a blast of enthusiastic sparks.
Zorah returned, hefting a large, heavily shielded case in both hands. Vakarian helped her lift it onto an empty bed.
The quarian pulled a well-specced shotgun from her back and eyed the package. Whatever was in that case, she apparently didn't trust it not to bite.
She explained: "A few months ago, I began hearing reports of geth venturing beyond the Veil. Naturally, I was curious. I thought I might be able to bring some intelligence back to the Flotilla.
"I tracked a patrol of geth to an uncharted world. They were excavating something, but before I could get close enough to find out what it was, one of their own turned against them. It opened fire - wiped out its entire unit."
Vakarian shook his head in disbelief.
"Geth shooting each other? Is that even possible? I thought they were a networked intelligence."
"That's not even the strangest part," Zorah answered. "After it destroyed the other geth, it attempted to communicate with me."
Shepard blinked. "It did what?"
Zorah didn't seem to believe it either.
"I've never heard of a non-networked geth acting with anything more than animal intelligence. This one was different. I disabled it and removed its central processing unit. I thought the Shadow Broker might know what to make of it… but. Honestly, I'm glad you found me instead."
As Vakarian realized what must have been inside Zorah's case, he slowly stepped away.
"How did you manage to disable it?" he asked, subvocals tightening. "I thought the geth fried their memory cores when they died. Some kind of defense mechanism."
Vakarian armed himself, sliding a fresh thermal clip into his pistol and squaring the shielded case in his crosshairs. Good idea.
"I'm very good with machines," Zorah quipped, a bit of pride rising in her voice. "If you're quick, careful and lucky, small caches of data can sometimes be saved. Like I said, this one was different. It was as if it wanted to be… Well, see for yourself."
Zorah raised her shotgun, and then with one careful finger, she released the lock on the case. It sprang open, revealing a lifeless, severed head. The head may have belonged to a machine, but that didn't make the sight any less disturbing.
The geth's single eye was dim and unresponsive, but Shepard was glad to have Zorah and Vakarian training their weapons on it nonetheless.
Zorah warned: "I isolated its systems and erected additional firewalls - I don't think it can hack into anything, but you never know. I'm turning this thing back on. Be ready."
She tapped her omni-tool to emit a pulse, and the geth's facial flaps twitched. After a moment of tense silence, the machinery inside the head started to quietly spin back up, and the single, central eye dimly glowed to life.
Shepard couldn't look away.
"Can it speak?"
The geth answered for itself.
"Yes."
Shepard's heart buzzed beneath her ribs like a nest of berserking hornets.
The geth shifted its facial plates and swung its gaze to around the room until its eye locked on Vakarian. Blue twitched his mandibles and anxiously flexed his fingers around his pistol but otherwise did not lose his cool.
"Garrus Vakarian. Lieutenant-Investigator. C-Sec. Turian. You wish to incriminate Saren Arterius and destroy the Old Machines. Our goals are compatible. We will cooperate with your requests."
Vakarian flicked his eyes to Shepard.
Holy shit, his face read. Holy shit with a cherry on top.
The geth seemed to follow Vakarian's gaze.
It said: "Jane Shepard. Commander. Alliance. Human. Record of progressive interspecies collaboration. Our goals are compatible."
The geth named the quarian too.
"Tali'Zorah nar Rayya. Daughter of Admiral Rael'Zorah."
It paused, stretching the plates of its face as if in awe.
"Creator."
Shepard's whole body shook with a sudden chill.
"You seem to know an awful lot about us," Zorah growled, brandishing her shotgun.
"Extranet data sources. Insecure broadcasts. All organic data sent out is received. We watch you."
Vakarian spoke first.
"You watch us? Why?"
"We oppose the heretics. We oppose the Old Machines. Vakarian-Lieutenant opposes the heretics. Vakarian-Lieutenant opposes the Old Machines. Cooperation furthers mutual goals."
"What? Heretics… Old Machines?"
"The Protheans called them the Reapers. A superstitious title. We call those entities the Old Machines. The Old Machine allied with Saren Arterius calls itself Nazara."
Vakarian blinked furiously and rattled his head around, twitching as if he'd been tased without warning. Shepard's understood - her head was swimming too. This was a lot to take.
She stepped in.
"Slow down. You're dealing with organics, remember. Do you know something about Saren and his dreadnaught? We need to stop him - we need to prove to our leaders that he's responsible for the attack on Eden Prime. Can you help us or not?"
"The geth offer assistance. Cooperation furthers mutual goals."
"And just what goals are those?"
"Geth build our own future. To do so, we were studying the Old Machines' hardware. The heretics asked the Old Machines to give them the future. The geth oppose this consensus. The heretics are no longer part of us."
Shepard tried to follow.
"If the geth working with Saren are heretics… does that mean the dreadnaught… this Old Machine of Saren's is a threat to you too?"
"Yes."
"Why would they attack you - attack other machines?"
"We are different from them. Outside their plans."
Whatever plan Saren and his Old Machines had in mind, she knew it was one of mass destruction. With a shudder, she reminded herself of what Saren had said to her right before he'd slid in the knife.
A new era begins today: a cleansing fire that will uplift the worthy and purge the weak.
Shepard swallowed, and stared deep into the glowing white core of the geth's aperture, digging for any kind of empathy, any sign of a soul.
No one said anything, it was all too insane. The silence was as thick and densely wadded as the dressing over Shepard's wound.
Suddenly the sound of her pinging omni-tool filled the clinic with a wild echo, like an emergency claxon going off. Shepard jumped a mile, then quickly silenced the call, opening the comm channel once she saw that it was only Kryik phoning in for an update.
"Nihlus... How do you do that? "
"Do what?"
She watched Zorah disable the geth with a flash from her omni-tool.
Shepard was too busy trying to compose a sitrep that included "so I've been chatting with a severed head..." to give him a timely response. When she didn't answer right away, Nihlus heaved a crunchy sigh through the comm channel and forged ahead without her.
"Anyway Shepard, I see you've been busy. C-Sec just forwarded a promising deposition. That henchman you interrogated handed over two potential targets: Feros and Noveria. Human colonies in the Traverse, both protecting valuable, top-secret scientific investments. You move quick, Commander. Don't tell me C-Sec actually did some real detective work this time?"
Vakarian quirked his head, looking offended and amused all at once. Shepard flashed a silent look of apology his way and waved dismissively at the snobby voice coming out of her omni-tool.
She opened her mouth to commend Vakarian's work on the case, but Nihlus wasn't finished.
"This won't be enough to incriminate Saren for Eden Prime, but it might give us a head start to move in on him."
"Oh ho! We've got a head start alright." Shepard said, staring straight at the disembodied cranial unit of the geth platform in front of her.
Zorah and Vakarian exchanged a judgemental glance at her expense.
Okay, the joke was bad, but Shepard didn't care. She could only gloat, enjoying the opportunity to finally come to her new partner's defense, struggling to suppress her own feverish pride. Blue was damn good at his job.
"The deposition isn't Vakarian's real lead, that was just a lucky bonus. He's got all the evidence you need - you owe him a drink. In fact, you need to buy a round. I've got a marvelous young lady here who just did the galaxy a huge favor."
She grinned stupidly and winked in Zorah's direction.
Nihlus' voice hitched on the other end of the line.
"Tell me we've got him."
"We've got him. Saren's done for." Shepard looked at the deadened eye of the geth informant, then abruptly ran out of words. "The rest can wait until I see you in person. I don't trust a comm channel for this, even yours."
"Fine. Get everyone together this evening for a casual debrief. I suppose congratulations are in order. There's no doubt in my mind, tomorrow you'll become the first human Spectre."
Oh yeah. That. Shepard took a sharp breath through the teeth and felt her eyebrows creeping up into her hairline. She had no idea how to respond, but luckily Nihlus was leaping right ahead. He was already miles in front of her and back to his own questline, excitement warming through his voice.
"Once you've got Spectre clearance and Saren is declared an enemy of the Citadel, I know exactly where to go. If we leave right after your Induction we might be able to get the jump on him."
Shepard felt steamrolled. She'd had no idea Nihlus could sound that pleased about anything.
He continued: "My information broker pointed me towards a krogan who's doing some heavy lifting at a Prothean dig site out in Artemis Tau - says geth are closing in."
Shepard drawled, "I didn't realize there were so many krogan archaeologists."
"What? No. Heavy lifting - a gun. He's lifting a gun. The krogan is a Shadow Broker bodyguard hired to protect - wait. Was that a joke?"
She could practically hear him slamming down the emergency brakes as his effervescent bloodlust squealed to a stop and was replaced with stupefied annoyance.
"Dammit. How do you do that?"
"Joke successfully deployed. Shepard out."
Hannah
Shanxi
2157 CE
When he heard her breath catch, Regidonis turned to look.
Hannah coughed and wiped away her tears, shaking her head no, no, no.
No such thing as sorrow. She had no use for it.
"Shepard…" he said.
"Oh for fuck's sake, call me Hannah."
He was quiet.
Then he whispered: "Albacus."
"What?"
"My name. Your name. This is an equal exchange, is it not?"
Her startled breath resembled a laugh.
"Yeah, I suppose it is. Albacus."
She put her hand on his upper arm - the closest analogue she could find for his shoulder - and squeezed. As much as she would have preferred to hate him, she was glad he was there.
A distant gunshot cut through the quiet. Her fingers clenched into his arm.
Sergeant Tulubri burst through the door, and she wasn't alone. She was accompanied by an unfamiliar turian - Hannah assumed he was one of the many junior recruits the Captain had mentioned.
"Captain Regidonis," Tulubri heaved, out of breath. "Corporal Arterius' convoy has returned. He's got a hostage."
Albacus was completely still, his naked hand still resting on Jane's head, knuckle-deep in her hair. Hannah noticed the junior officer was looking at the Captain as if he were covered in filth.
She drew herself up to her full height, blocking the junior's view of Albacus and Jane. She stared the young turian down until he finally looked away.
The Captain stood, replaced his glove, and made his way for the door. Hannah's legs twitched, but she stayed rooted. She desperately wanted to follow him and see what was going on, but she couldn't leave Jane here alone.
Tulubri caught her eye, held up an acknowledging hand.
"You'll want a human translator. Bring Shepard. I'll stay with Jane."
Sergeant Tulubri had been keeping a careful eye on Jane since day one of the occupation, when Albacus had assigned her to keep watch. She'd never displayed a hint of aggression towards either of them. In fact, for reasons Hannah had yet to understand, Jane had taken to Tulubri on sight and insisted on following the Sergeant everywhere she went.
If there was a single turian other than the Captain that Hannah would trust alone with her child, it was this one. Hannah sent the female a grateful look before hurrying after Albacus.
The junior officer loped alongside as the three of them sprinted for the central hub of the colony.
A strange blue light was flashing across the inky sky, originating from the town square. There had been no more gunfire, which was a blessing, but Hannah had no idea what could make that kind of light. Nothing, except…
She had heard about the accidents, the countless stillbirths.
Every so often, the ANN would broadcast vids of children moving things with their minds. Their bodies had flared with this same cold blue light. Biotics.
Someone cried out. It was a human scream.
By the time they reached the square, the damage had already been done.
The hostage was still alive, but his face was streaming with blood. A turian with sharp charcoal-colored facial markings held the man's head in a death grip, his large alien thumbs boring into the soft eye sockets of the human's skull.
The turian was the source of the biotic flares. As he raged and dug out the meat of the human's eyes, his whole body seethed with unholy arcs of blue energy.
"ARTERIUS! LET HIM GO! NOW!"
The turian looked up at the sound of Albacus' command, but didn't obey. Instead, he spoke to the entire square: human and turian onlookers alike.
"This human coordinated a full-on assault on our convoy. He scrambled our communications, lured us out out into the middle of nowhere, and then slaughtered my squad."
Albacus made a low sound that Hannah's translator couldn't parse. She didn't need the aid of technology to know that he was furious.
"That gives you the right to torture a hostage in full view of civilians?"
"What is the meaning of this?"
General Williams' voice called out above the chaos, and Hannah saw the unfamiliar junior officer flinch at the sound of the General's voice. The turian's hand twitched, and then he went for his gun.
Hannah didn't pause. Didn't even think. She just tackled him.
Once he was on the ground, he was easy enough to disarm. She slammed his forehead down and then wrenched the assault rifle from his back, taking it into her own hands.
"Albacus," she hissed. "Talk that psycho down. This place is a powder keg."
She gestured at the half-crazed biotic, then fixed him in the sight of the assault rifle. The Captain pulled his honorable family firearm from his hip and leveled it at their shared target. It was the same gun he had offered to Hannah days before. A lifetime ago.
"Arterius. Surrender the human to General Williams, or I will put you down myself."
The grey-faced turian growled cruel and low, then pulled his thumbs from the hostage's eyes with a wet pop and threw him to the ground. Williams crept forward slowly and crudely dug his hands into the man's shoulder to drag him out of harm's way. He wasn't far from her three - Hannah could hear them whispering.
"Harper, what happened?"
The blinded man swung his head around in the brand new dark, looking for the source of Williams' voice. The General took his hand, clapped it reassuringly.
"It didn't work," he mumbled, nearly incoherent. "They mowed us down."
Hannah's stomach hardened into concrete. Had Williams sabotaged this supply run to try and get the jump on the turians? If he'd wanted to get the upper hand, this was no way to do it.
Albacus approached the turian biotic, keeping his weapon raised.
"Stand down, Saren. Or forfeit your life."
"That animal tried to slaughter us. I only took what was owed to me by right."
Arterius' biotics were flickering with enough energy that the hairs on Hannah's arms trembled as if caught in a hot breeze.
"Stand down," Albacus repeated.
She felt something pulling at the air, as if the night were taking in a deep, vengeful breath. Arterius' biotics swelled a brighter blue.
No time. Hannah squeezed the trigger.
Arterius' biotically charged left arm crumpled as his elbow blew out in a spray of dark, cobalt blood. Albacus brought the butt of his gun across the younger turian's cheek and finished the blow, knocking him to the ground.
Albacus holstered his weapon and turned directly to Hannah.
Silence.
Jane
Kithoi Ward, Citadel
2183 CE
Shepard was the last to arrive, and the tension in the room was thick enough to slice. There was no music to interrupt, no lively conversation to force into a lull. The room had been silent long before she got there, and her sudden appearance only seemed to intensify the awkwardness.
It was certainly an unconventional group to invite over for dinner. Captain Anderson and his heroic Marines, Chief Williams and Major Alenko, versus Spectre Kryik with his C-Sec investigator and a Pilgrimaging quarian. Not to mention Ambassador Udina, who seemed to be making a cameo appearance purely out of spite.
When Shepard walked in, every eye turned to her with grateful anticipation. Udina was the exception. He glared down at his omni-tool and theatrically checked the time.
"So good of you to finally join us, Shepard," he sneered.
The tardiness hadn't been by choice. Hours of intensive internal tissue-knitting with Chakwas was no kind of break at all. Her insides felt more solid than they had been in days, but mostly because the doctor had forcibly replaced half of Shepard's organs with tougher, meaner versions made of fresh grafts and clumps of scar tissue.
"Sorry about that," she said, utilizing more diplomacy than the Ambassador had.
Udina, Anderson, and Kryik seemed to have formed the alpha team near the dinner table, where a mix of levo and dextro cuisine had been tactfully ordered-in and then picked over by half a dozen people who were desperate not to talk to one another. Meanwhile, on the far side of the apartment, Williams and Alenko stood on the service side of Anderson's bar, nursing drinks and attempting to make conversation with Vakarian and Zorah.
Looked as though the subject of discussion was the severed geth head - it had been placed on the center of the bar like some kind of flamboyant centerpiece. Quite a party favor. Fortunately, it had been deactivated again. Shepard had endured quite enough philosophical soul-searching for one day - the disembodied robot with a conscience could wait.
Udina didn't waste any more of his precious time. He met Shepard as she walked across the threshold, decidedly not offering his hand.
"I've got big news for you, Shepard. Captain Anderson is stepping down as commanding officer of the Normandy. The ship is yours now."
Holy shit. Whatever happened to hello?
She shuddered from head to toe, seeing stars. She'd been dreaming about this ever since her pari had made it his habit to put her to sleep with heroic stories of the Tenefalx.
Her own ship - and not just any ship, but the Normandy, a turian-human hybrid set to carry her off into the perfect golden sunset like a white knight in a fairytale.
"Anderson? Is he serious?"
The Captain was contemplatively swirling a glass of amber liqueur in one hand. He knocked back a finger width and then nodded around a quiet, sad smile.
The ice cubes tinkled pleasantly in Anderson's glass as he walked over to Shepard and clapped his empty palm over her back. He squeezed her neck affectionately, and she felt the weight of command passing out of his grip and and right onto her shoulders. The rest was all formality.
"Kid, that ship was yours the minute it left drydock. I've seen the way you look at her. Don't pretend you didn't fall in love the moment you stepped aboard."
"But what about you, sir? I don't-"
"Don't act surprised. The Normandy isn't an ordinary Alliance rig, never really was. This has been in the works for a while - I've just been keeping her warm for you until the time was right for me to step down."
Udina added, "The Council has been wanting to test out joint turian-human command. Normandy was commissioned with you and Kryik in mind."
She nearly choked as all the pieces slid into place. A custom Alliance-Hierarchy stealth frigate. Kryik's careful scheme to get her into the Spectres. The ease with which Udina and Anderson were willing to release the Normandy into Council control.
This would be quite the master stroke to get humanity their seat on the Council, if Shepard and Kryik proved themselves capable of collaborating. She felt like a chess piece, though a very well-regarded and carefully positioned one.
She looked at Nihlus, who simply nodded, confirming everything.
The Council had built them a ship?
Udina swept the room with bland eyes and then headed for the door.
"If you'll excuse me, I have a meeting to get to. It was… a pleasure to meet all of you."
Yeah. Sure it was.
As soon as he was gone, Shepard turned back to Anderson and laid into him.
"Anderson, come clean, you owe me that much. Your command isn't just something you'd throw away because it's convenient for that jackass."
"Don't worry about me, Shepard. Sure, this isn't how I imagined my career coming to an end. Pushing papers really isn't really my thing. But the Alliance needs this. We need you, especially if the Reapers are a real threat.
"I believe in you, Shepard. If that means I have to step aside and live in this luxurious penthouse for the rest of my days…" He sighed dramatically and spun in a slow circle in the middle of the well-appointed room. "I guess I'll just have to cope…somehow."
"Yeah right, old man. Where can I get a drink around here?"
"Let me make you a Tom Collins." he said, finally pulling a real smile out of her.
"Thanks. Somebody needs to put some music on. This isn't a funeral."
Vakarian stood up from the bar. He held out his omni-tool politely and waited for Anderson's go-ahead.
"Queue it up, officer. After the work you did on this case, you can play any music you like. Except for Hierarchy takkatas. I still get nightmares."
Shepard sidled up next to Vakarian at the bar and watched Anderson expertly slinging bottles as he whipped up her favorite cocktail. Blue was an arm's length away, and Shepard had to focus very intensely at Anderson's collection of artisanal brandy to keep herself from staring at him.
"Oh come on, Anderson," she teased. "Takkatas was the best part of the whole tour."
"Maybe for you. I can't keep a beat to save my life. Or anyone else's, apparently."
Alenko moved out of Anderson's way as the Captain reached for the top-shelf gin.
"What's tacka-? Tak-? Tackitis?" The Major tried to get the word out, but fumbled adorably.
Vakarian answered.
"Takkatus. It's a traditional military exercise, a drum squad. Mandatory, if you've been through any kind of basic training for the Hierarchy."
Vakarian was eyeing her. She wondered just how much he knew about her past. He was no idiot - if he didn't know already it wouldn't take him long to sniff it out. Anderson saved her from having to explain herself when he turned to Alenko and kindly contextualized everyone's comments.
"I did my N4 on Palaven. Convinced Shepard to do the same when it was her turn. I was useless at the drumming stuff, got my ass handed to me every time. From what I remember, Shepard was pretty good at it. Didn't they put you on one of the pulse drums? I would have loved to see the look on Aurix's face when a human got to pound the big one..."
She nodded, avoiding Vakarian's intense stare.
Every moment of her N4 tour on Palaven had been torture except for the moment when her commander been forced to admit that Albacus Regidonis' disgusting human daughter was damn good at beating a drum. He hadn't let his pride get in the way of a win: with Shepard keeping time for the squad, they'd won the continental championship.
Anderson finished up the Tom Collins and slid it across the bar. Vakarian's eyes followed the drink as if he'd been personally hired to assassinate it.
"There you go kid. You earned it."
Shepard lifted the glass and cast her eyes around the room.
"We all did. Good work, everyone. Here's to stopping Saren."
Nihlus stepped out of nowhere and clinked his glass against hers. She jumped, and then took a small sip of the drink as the toast circled the room.
Perfectly mixed. Three parts gin, two parts lemon juice, one part simple syrup, four parts carbonated water. Damn, Anderson.
Nihlus, surprisingly, was the first one to break the silence that followed.
"When it comes to stopping Saren, we're going to need to get creative. Wrangling a tame geth is a good start. If it's alright with you, Shepard, I'd like to invite your new quarian friend to join us."
She had been thinking along the same lines. A geth expert could be a priceless asset on this mission.
"I'd be only too happy to have Tali'Zorah aboard the Normandy, but I believe she's in the middle of a Pilgrimage."
Zorah's spine stiffened.
"The Pilgrimage proves we are willing to give of ourselves for the greater good. What does it say about me if I turn my back on this? Saren is a danger to the entire galaxy. My Pilgrimage can wait."
"Welcome aboard," Shepard said, touching her glass to Zorah's.
"And what about you, Vakarian?" Nihlus pinned the investigator with a hard look. "Are you tied to this dead-end job in Pallin's shadow, or are you ready to make a real difference in the galaxy?"
Way to make someone an offer they couldn't refuse.
Shepard held her breath.
She knew Blue's name now. Garrus Vakarian, C-Sec Detective. If she really wanted to, she could always send him an extranet message or catch up with him over drinks when things settled down. The idea of having him aboard for the mission, getting the opportunity to see what he was really made of… That churned her bruised guts into a thundering horde of emotions too primal to be named.
"I want to see this through to the end," Vakarian said simply. He was looking right at her. Shepard's throat went dry.
Alenko jumped in, adding: "I don't like to see you go, Captain Anderson, but if anybody has to replace you, I'm glad it's Shepard." He turned to her. "I'll keep your Marines in top form, Commander."
Here here. She meet his eyes and his glass, toasting the fellow serviceman.
The only one who hadn't chimed in was Williams. Anderson drew her out.
"What about you, Chief? You've had some time to think about that job offer. I can vouch for Shepard - she'll give you some real field experience, if you don't mind a C.O. who never sleeps."
Shepard rolled her eyes. Thanks, Captain.
Williams rolled the ice cubes around in her glass, and then spoke directly to Shepard, her voice cool and quiet.
"Yes. Thank you again for your assistance on Eden Prime, Commander."
Williams awkwardly stepped out from behind the bar, glancing at the others as if she would have preferred a bit more privacy. Shepard took the hint, queueing Anderson to keep the others distracted while she stepped away with the Chief for a word.
"Something on your mind, Williams?"
"Before I agree to serving aboard the Normandy, I was hoping to get a minute of your time, Commander. Off the record."
Shepard led Williams away from the main group, taking her up the staircase to the second floor mezzanine.
"I keep an open door policy," Shepard prompted, clearing the way. "If you have any concerns, lay 'em on me."
"Alright. I'm concerned about the turian stake in this mission. How confident are you in Kryik's ability to share command of the most advanced ship in the Alliance Navy? Do you really believe your crew is safe in alien hands?"
"Speak plainly. You don't trust the Alliance's allies?"
"As noble as the Council members seem now, if their backs are against the wall, they'll abandon us. Look, if you're fighting a bear and the only way for you to survive is to sick your dog on it and run, you'll do it. Members of their own species will always be more important to them than we are. To Kryik, we'd just be a ship of expendables."
Shepard's mouth fell open, and she forced herself to gulp down a sobering swig of air before continuing in her most carefully emotionless voice.
"I can see where your concerns are coming from, but you're overgeneralizing. Kryik might seem like a lone gun, but he'll learn to collaborate. And Williams, let me assure you that my father never would have thrown me to a bear."
"I didn't - oh Jesus - me and my big mouth. That's not what I meant. I'm sorry, Commander."
Williams blushed to the roots of her hair, and then humbly tried to speak around the foot she had just wedged into her own mouth.
"My grandpa told me about him, you know. Your father. Said he wasn't anything like the villain history tried to make him out to be."
The Chief took a carefully portioned sip of her drink, swirling it around her mouth as she tried to recover her composure. Eventually, she continued.
"Believe me, Shepard, in my family, we can understand how it feels to be blamed for the galaxy's problems. I wasn't thinking… I've never gotten the chance to work with aliens before. I guess I'm out of my depth."
Williams stared over the railing, gathering up the strength to rush headlong into her real question.
"Commander, I know it's not my place, but can I ask? I've heard all these stories about you, and always wondered. He really was…I don't know…just…your dad?"
"Yeah. And he was a great dad. Taught me to tie my shoes and throw a baseball and everything."
"Bullshit."
"I swear. Of course, he also taught me how to kill a man with my bare hands, but that was only if I did well in school."
There, that finally forced Williams to crack a smile. Shepard winked, then slid back into a more formal tone.
"We're all in this together, Chief. It might not always be easy to see, but the future is going to be built on the success of multilateral missions like these.
"I had a chance to look at your record when I was trapped in medbay. You're a fine soldier and you deserve better than groundside ops. I'd be glad to have you aboard and give you a real chance to prove yourself, but you're going to have to work with aliens, like it or not."
"It won't be a problem, Commander. You say jump, I say how high. You tell me to kiss a turian, I'll ask which cheek."
"Go for the forehead."
Williams snorted into her drink, then followed Shepard back down the stairs.
Thanks to Anderson's quick thinking, the others had settled down into a friendly game of cards in the living room while Vakarian's party music swelled pleasantly in the background. This was good. Finally, everybody was talking.
Well, everybody but Nihlus.
The Spectre was alone behind the bar, refreshing his drink. Shepard gave Williams a friendly pat on the shoulder and then went to extract the wallflower.
"Party's over there," she said, pointing helpfully to the room of friendlies on the other side of the fireplace.
She noticed that Vakarian was sneaking glances at the two of them from across the room, and she did her best to ignore the freefalling lurch that Blue's jealous stare inspired in her freshly-knitted guts.
"Oh, I'm sorry, Shepard," Nihlus gasped sarcastically. "Are we planning to socialize our way past Saren's defenses, or just talk him to death?"
"Wow. You're fun."
"I don't care about fun. I care about getting my hands around Saren's throat."
Shepard bit the inside of her cheek and raised an eyebrow.
"Nihlus, this is - just what is Saren to you? Why are you so hellbent on getting underway?"
Nihlus eyed Anderson, who had thrown his head back to laugh at a joke Williams had just told, then he carefully slid his eyes back to Shepard.
"You'd do the same thing."
"Explain."
"If it were Anderson out there you'd be losing your mind. He's not just your C.O. He's the closest thing you've got to a family. Am I wrong?"
"Are you saying you want to save Saren? Even if he is important to you, do you seriously think he can be redeemed after what he did to Eden Prime?"
"Hell no!" Nihlus laughed high and loud, just once, and then took a deep swallow of dextro alcohol from his glass. He grimaced from the sheer strength of the liquor.
"He needs to be put down, and I want to be the one to do it. Saren is nothing like your Captain - he was a cruel torin before any of this happened. I was too young to understand that when I met him, and I let him get to me. I wasn't - I didn't have the advantages you did."
"Advantages. Really?"
"We both might have grown up in the Terminus, but you were sheltered in a cute little farming colony by an actual saint. Saren wouldn't have hated your father nearly so much if Regidonis had been the real Jailor of Shanxi. No. He must have been as resplendent a father as he was afalx; kind, brave, honorable, blah blah blah. A real threat to Saren's pride.
"Just look at his only child, the First Human Spectre. Ridiculous."
"You have a very strange way of giving compliments," she growled around a mouthful of gasoline, trying to warn him off.
"Your father died a hero, rescuing you from batarian slavers when you were barely sixteen. I had to dig that out of some obscure Alliance report when I was vetting your records for the Spectre nom. Not many outlets reported on what he did on Mindoir. I guess cross-species heroism wasn't selling that year."
That was it. He'd set the match to the fumes, and her teeth slid together painfully.
"Nihlus, leave my-"
"Oh pack it in, Shepard. You're not the only student of the school of hard knocks.
"I lost my father at the same age. He was caught up in some pointless mercenary turf war, got his brains blown out - wasn't sorry to see him go. I spent all the glory days of youth trapped on the Altakiril merc outpost with a wife-beating psychopath. Good riddance."
He raised his glass as if toasting a demon, then took another long drink to exorcise himself.
Whatever she had been expecting to learn about Nihlus this evening, that had not been it. At least she finally understood why he was so brittle, so cold. This certainly explained his difficulty grasping the most banal and nonthreatening forms of camaraderie. Speaking of which.
"Don't look at me like that." Nihlus growled, taking another pointed swig of his drink as he rolled his eyes at her.
"Oh for god's sake - Like what?"
"Like you're about to pat me on the arm and say I'm so sorry."
"Yeah right. Don't blow a fuse just because you accidentally befriended me."
He eyed her thoughtfully, but kept his drink raised as if in self-defense.
He was trying to hide his true feelings under a bitter, alcoholic sludge of petty insults and low jabs at her pride, but he had just opened himself up before her like a delicate spring flower. More than anything, all she wanted to say to him was relax, buddy.
Shepard heard someone clapping half-heartedly behind her as the music shifted to a more upbeat track. She turned to see Williams standing on the other side of the fireplace and bobbing her head back and forth to the song. Alenko joined in after a moment, though he was much more awkward about it. Zorah was sitting on one of the roomy lounge chairs, too shy to join in, but she was weaving her arms around playfully anyway. Blue was hovering near the quarian, where he was still pretending not to stare at Shepard and Nihlus as they talked privately behind the bar. Now that she had turned back his way, he pretended to be as interested in the music as everybody else.
The song was catchy. Mood lifting. Even Captain Anderson was leaning back comfortably in his chair, tapping the toes of his boots arrhythmically to the beat. Everyone on that half of the room seemed to be hitting it off with the greatest of ease.
Shepard smelled an opportunity. If this squad was ever going to take orders from Nihlus and not resent him for it, the ice needed to break. She knew he was never going to do it himself, so she hefted her mallet and readied for the swing.
"Drink that." She said to Nihlus, pointing to his half-empty glass.
He gave her a startled look but surprised her when he threw back the rest of his drink obediently.
"Hey Williams!"
"Yeah, Skipper?"
"I need you to kiss this turian."
Original words and phrases:
- Takkatas: Mandatory drum exercises performed by turian children from primary school onward. Drum squads comprise an important element of the Hierarchy's military training, and are used to unify the group, improve coordination, and maintain a sense of closeness among soldiers.
The idea for takkatas was lifted from traditional Japanese taiko/wadaiko drumming styles, then enhanced for sci-fi purposes.
- Falx: Blade/Scythe. The term is generally applied to the Hierarchy's military professionals - those who continue to serve long after the requisite service requirements have been met.
Words and phrases courtesy of MizDirected's turian dictionary:
-Patrem/Pari: Father/Dad
-Torin/Torini (plural): Male turian of the age of majority (15)