Five: Liara
Her mother gasped. Her father swore. And Liara sat and watched, impassively, as Thessia slowly grew before them until it filled the cockpit's windows. Inwardly, though, she cringed. Every column of smoke that discoloured the once-pristine atmosphere was a mark of her failure, every chunk of debris in orbit a testament to her deficiencies. She should have focused more of her attention on helping her people. Used the resources at her disposal to better browbeat the matriarchs into doing what had been necessary. She'd been stupid and naive to think that they would see reason of their own accord. Even if they were supposed to be wise and knowing and responsible, they were still only asari, and, in their fear and in their pride and in their complacency, they'd betrayed the people they were meant to serve. And she'd let them do it, because she, herself, had been too proud to see her people for what they really were: just people, like any others.
Failure and betrayal. Betrayal and failure. Those were her memories of Thessia now.
"I should have done more," someone said softly, and then she realised it was her.
"You did all you could," Aethyta told her from the co-pilot's chair.
"You don't know that," she replied shortly, feeling her mother's gaze, hot on the back of her neck.
She had told Benezia as little as she dared, evading her questions and outright lying, if largely by omission. It had felt wrong- Benezia had always been a sticker for the truth - and it would be harder now that the matriarch was up and about, but her mother seemed fragile. Disorientated enough that Liara didn't want to disturb her equilibrium even further by revealing just how much she'd changed since they had last seen each other. She'd been forced to become a different person, that day on Noveria, and again when Shepard died, and once more when the yahg lay dead at their feet. Four years it had been, since Shepard had rescued her, and she hardly recognised herself.
It would be harder to mask the changes once they had landed, she knew, and impossible once she started putting her plans into motion. She would not fail her people again by letting their leaders go unchallenged when they were clearly wrong. She no longer had the luxury of granting deference to age. But was she wrong for wanting Benezia to think of her as she had been? Even if, had things gone just a little differently, Benezia might well have been one of those same 'leaders' she now despised?
No. That wasn't right. Her mother believed in cooperation with the other species. She would have listened to reason. Liara would have been able to get her on their side. They would have worked together to stop the Reapers.
And yet...
And yet Benezia must have known about the Beacon. She was a matriarch, an important diplomat, an influential politician, a famous theologian and the closest thing Athame had left to a high priestess. There was no way she could not have. Liara could only imagine what would have happened had she known about the Beacon in time, all the lives that would have been saved. Benezia was just as complicit in their deaths as the rest of them. Would her mother have continued to conceal it from her, too? Until it was too late? She wished she could be certain that the answer was 'no'.
Another, darker realisation came along with the thought: the beloved stories of the Goddess from her childhood were nothing but lies built upon lies. Benezia had sat Liara in her lap, held her close to her heart and told her that the world was other than it was with the conviction of a true believer. And Liara had believed – not in the Goddess herself, but that she believed.
"Even if you didn't - which I doubt-" Aethyta continued regardless, "I knowthat you did a hell of a lot more than most."
"So did you," she countered, trying to steer the conversation towards safer waters. "I heard that there was talk of a statue after the Citadel."
"You heard wrong," Aethyta replied shortly, scowling. "And don't change the subject. From what I heard, you pretty much single-handedly organised the evacuation here."
Edging well out into dangerous territory now, Liara opted to remain silent. But it was not to be.
"You were here, then? When Thessia fell?" Benezia asked.
She'd been on Thessia, when the planet fell, had tasted the very moment when hope turned to ash. They'd won in the end, but how many lives would have been saved if they'd just been a bit better prepared? If her agents within Cerberus had managed to survive the purges, or avoid indoctrination? If her mind hadn't been reeling from the implications of the matriarch's deception? If she'd fought just a little bit harder? She heard the desperate pleas and the screams of the dying commandos every night in her nightmares. If only she had known.
"Yes. I was here. With the Normandy. It was... horrible," she said, shuddering at the memory. "You should strap yourself in now. The scanners are picking up a lot of debris in the upper atmosphere."
"We haven't been challenged yet," Aethtya noted, a hint of worry in her voice as Benezia settled into the jump seat without another word. The homeworld of their people was- had-been one of the most heavily defended in the galaxy. Travel to and from Thessia was strictly controlled, traffic tightly regulated, and the Home Fleet had never had any compunction about using unexpected arrivals as target practice.
"No. From what I can tell, the Home Fleet was completely wiped out."
"But there should be something. Automated beacons. Fighters. The orbital platforms."
"Yes. There should."
But there wasn't, not even radio chatter from sector traffic control, and they descended without interference through turbulence of the upper atmosphere and down through the layers of smoke and ash until the great city-state spread out before them, a bleak, unforgiving vista stretching to the horizon. The comm unit crackled with static and silence.
She'd chosen Armali as the point of their return in large part because it was her home. She'd grown up there, played in its parks, run down its laneways, visited its temples, lost herself in its museums. But Armali was also, in many respects, the closest thing Thessia had to a capital, containing within its soaring heights and sprawling confines its largest debating Forum, its greatest legal library, the embassies of the other races and the greatest number of matriarchs per capita of any city within the Republics. Unsurprisingly, given the way the Reapers operated, it had been one of the first places on the planet targeted.
There had been five and a half billion people on Thessia before the war began, and some sixty million of them lived within its greatest city-state. Surveying the devastation now, from the air, Liara would be surprised if a tenth of that number had survived. There wasn't a single building left standing within the city's confines, the bridges collapsed and roadways torn. The once pristine waterways were black with ash and choked with debris; the parks, great and small, little more than glassy craters no longer capable of sustaining life. They flew over impact craters the size of skyball fields and the body of a Reaper destroyer, fallen on its side to crush Ar'Shian Square, where the great statue of Istha T'Rolin had stood.
Of all the monuments in her city, Liara had always loved that statue best. The matron in her flight suit, head tilted towards the sky in wonder, the Parnitha system modelled in her outstretched hand... She had always seemed to embody all that was great about their people: curiosity, serenity, determination and drive. Now that she knew that the plans for the first eezo drive core had likely come, not from Istha's own imagination and skill, but through the Beacon, Liara was glad to see it crushed. Another lie to be absolved.
"I'm getting a nav beacon," Aethyta said abruptly, bringing it up on the screen. "Downtown Nanthris."
The markets. Well, she supposed that made sense. Down by the river for water, open and flat enough to host a large crowd and near several major food distribution warehouses.
"Probably a refugee camp," she acknowledged, bringing the freighter around.
It was a refugee camp, smaller than she would have liked and, when viewed from above, little more than a disorganised huddle of tents and emergency shelters crouched against the banks of the sadly polluted river. Some work had been done towards building defensive walls; to Liara's now practiced eye, it was a mediocre job at best, cobbled together from rubble, storage containers and a few pieces of portable wall likely liberated from fortifications elsewhere. She couldn't spot anyone manning the battlements as they came in, low, but a gaggle of young children ran out from one of the studier shelters, pointing excitedly up towards them. The group was quickly shepherded back to relative safety by a couple of older girls, and moments later a pair of asari in commando leathers appeared, moving purposefully.
The camp wasn't much to look at, certainly, but it would be a place to start. She had to start somewhere. And, if not here, there would certainly be other places that needed help.
Liara picked out an open spot on the downstream end of the camp, behind what little protection the walls offered, and carefully brought the freighter down, killing the engines once settled. She undid her point harness and made her way out of the cabin and to her locker in the cargo bay, leaving her parents to follow after. She retrieved her gauntlets there, and drew and clipped them on, wincing as the right rubbed against the still-tender skin of that hand. The fit was imperfect now, tight in places and loose - or empty - in others, and the gauntlet itself stiffly new.
She tried not to think about it, and avoided her gaze in the locker's mirror.
Her weapons came out next, to be drawn, checked and holstered. First, from the rack, came the Tempest that had been the first gun she'd ever bought for herself, back on Nos Astra; it was an old, reliable friend, modded to increase accuracy and clip size. Next, from its case, she drew the Paladin Shepard had 'borrowed' for her from Spectre supplies.
She stared down at the pistol in silence. Goddess, Shepard was never very far from her thoughts. If she closed her eye she could see the human standing before her, the gun and its case in her hands, that silly, lopsided, perfect smile on her face. Liara had laughed even as she accepted it, because she knew that this was her lover's idea of a romantic gift (where other beings gave sweet treats or pretty flora, Shepard gave ammunition mods), and then the two of them had gone down to the cargo bay to test it out. Testing had led to competing, and Liara had quickly achieved a lead that seemed comfortable until she realised that Shepard had been deliberately throwing the match. Liara had told her, all mock indignation, that such tactics might well work on a certain turian of their acquaintance but wouldn't on her, and Shepard had asked her then, in that low, sultry voice, her eyes dark and alive in a way that made Liara's breath catch, what would work and then-
"Overkill much?"
Liara shrugged and closed the locker, clipping the gun into its holster at her waist beside her grenades, along with the spare clips and medigel pouch.
"I doubt that we will encounter trouble, but the humans have a saying: it's better to be safe than sorry." She looked past Aethyta in her own light armour to Benezia, not quite able to stop a frown of concern when she noted that her mother was almost hugging herself, expression uncertain as she eyed her daughter's armaments. "Are you ready?"
"No," Benezia admitted with a tight smile that was painful to see. "But I believe there is little choice in the matter."
They'd discussed it at length, the three of them. Or, rather, Liara had explained her reasoning until the other two had been forced to agree that there was no point in hiding Benezia's return.
Oh, Liara had considered it. Benezia looked a pale shadow of herself, and they could alter her markings and do one or two other little tricks that would draw out those differences enough to let her hide in plain sight. But, if information brokering had taught Liara one thing, it was what secrets never stayed secret for long. If they tried to conceal Benezia any longer than absolutely necessary, the implication, when the truth was inevitably revealed, would be that they thought they'd done something wrong.
"I'm sorry it has to be so soon," she said, honestly. "I would have waited until you were feeling better of I could have, but..."
"As you say," Benezia said, and turned away.
Liara caught Aethyta's eye then; the matriarch's shoulders lifted in the slightest of shrugs as she prepped and holstered her own shotgun. There was real tension between the older two asari now, and Liara wondered, not for the first time, if involving Aethyta in this was a good idea. But who else could she turn to? It would have been unfair to expect anyone aboard the Normandy to come with her to Thessia when their own homes were in ruins, and she'd not heard from Shiala since Rannoch.
Liara suppressed a sigh, straightened up, and led the way through to the airlock, hesitating only a moment before keying in the sequence to open it.
The smell hit her first as the outer door hissed open, a scent of mingled ash, death and decay that was all-too familiar from Earth. Cool damp air was next, cold enough across her face and neck that she almost shivered. Far too cold for an Armali summer, she knew. And it was strangely, unnaturally quiet, the aural landscape devoid of even birdsong or insect noise. The only sounds she could hear were the wind, a distant clatter of falling stone and the sluggish churn of the river.
One of the commandos she had spotted during their descent was waiting for them outside the hatch, rifle at the ready. Elsewise, the camp appeared all but deserted. Over the other asari's shoulder, though, Liara spotted the other huntress, having taken up position atop an emergency shelter with her sniper rifle.
She found herself surprised by the lack of a welcoming party. There was almost no relief effort on Thessia; where the other species had hierarchical systems of governance to direct the flow of aid, the Republics, with their sprawling, technology-dependant democracy, were floundering, the various colonies and outposts too shocked and too busy trying to tend to their own populaces to worry about faceless figures on the homeworld. Surely those here would welcome anyone who might be bringing supplies? Or had they faced raiders or pirates, or others of that ilk to make them wary of newcomers?
The thought of such filth setting foot, unchallenged, in the city of her childhood made her blood run hot. But there was no denying that it was a possibility, now. With the Home Fleet gone, and the others scattered, Thessia was all but undefended. The major merc companies might be under Aria T'Loak's thumb, but there were always a hundred other bands, many of them opportunistic cowards who'd sat out the war, and Thessia, even devastated, was a rich planet.
The commando before Liara was shockingly young, barely old enough to don the leathers if she was any judge, filthy and clearly on the verge of exhaustion. Her eyes, though, were hard, her face wary, and she carried herself like the gun was an extension of her body. She opened her mouth, in challenge or in greeting Liara couldn't say, but froze, the words dying upon her lips and her gun falling to her side when Liara stepped out fully, into the wan sun of her homeworld. The wariness melted into a look Liara had seen before, if usually directed Shepard:
Awe.