What Are the Charges?
Only a few hours after learning that Tali was being tried for treason, the Normandy had arrived at the Migrant Fleet and docked with the Rayya, where the trial would soon take place. The Normandy had been close to a mass relay when Tali received the message, so they were able to arrive quickly.
"I'm not sure I like this—that they're only letting you and me unto the ship. I'd prefer to have a full team, like normal." Shepard said as Tali and him walked down the docking bridge that currently connected the Normandy's airlock with the Rayya.
"It's probably because our ship is technically flagged as Cerberus," Tali commented. "It'll be okay, it's not like we're going to do any fighting. I'm just glad you're allowed in with me."
They reached the end of the docking bridge, but stopped just before going through the door. Shepard said, "I've never been on a quarian ship before. Anything I should know?"
"You don't need to worry about anything. Just be yourself," she answered. "Oh, and keep your helmet on, otherwise they'll have to seal off and decontaminate the whole area."
The door opened and they stepped through. They met with the Rayya's captain, who was polite toward both Tali and Shepard, which was a pleasant relief after the hours they had spent worrying about her trial. Shortly after their greeting, the mystery of why Tali was being accused of treason was revealed by him: she was being tried for bringing active geth parts and components unto the Migrant Fleet, as part of a secret project.
Tali immediately defended herself. She stressed that she while she had indeed sent back numerous geth parts, all of them had been inactive and incapable of posing any danger. She explained that she had been very careful, even passing up great finds to stay on the side of caution; she would never endanger the Fleet.
The captain responded by explaining that he was only informing her of what he knew. He also explained that he was technically under orders to place her under arrest pending the trial, so she was confined to the ship for now.
Upon hearing what the trial was about, and hearing Tali explain that she had only sent inactive parts back, Shepard found himself feeling relieved. He knew Tali would never endanger the Migrant Fleet, and that she certainly would have been very cautious with anything she sent back. It seemed certain now that a simple mistake had been made; one that they would now be able to rectify.
But there was also another reason Shepard felt relieved. From the moment Tali had mentioned that she was being accused of treason, he feared that it was because she had sent him the details of her mission on Haestrom. There was no doubt in his mind that the consequences for leaking mission information—to someone currently affiliated with a terrorist organization, no less—that was assigned by the very top of her people's military command, would be severe. He was glad this was not the reason Tali was being tried, especially since he was the one who insisted Tali let him know about the mission.
Shepard and Tali proceeded to walk down the corridor, so as to reach the chamber where the trial was going to be held. Shepard took note of the interior of the quarian ship as they walked. As he expected, much of it looked fairly antiquated. The occasional repair was noticeable throughout. The ceiling also had various nets holding up storage containers and items; a testament to the limited space quarians had to live with.
There were a few quarians casually standing throughout the corridor, some of them engaging in idle conversation. A couple stood by the corridor's window, admiring the view of the incredibly advanced frigate docked just outside. As Shepard and Tali walked by, most of the idle quarians couldn't help but glance at them, specifically Shepard. It was an exceedingly rare sight to see a non-quarian aboard any ship of the Migrant Fleet. Many of them also noticed the high-tech, ablative combat armor that Shepard wore, as well as the cutting edge weapons he carried on his back. Just as it was rare to see a non-quarian on the ship, it was also rare to see such modern, top of the line equipment.
They approached the end of the corridor and turned right. At the end of the new corridor stood two female quarians speaking to each other. As Shepard and Tali approached, the one on the right noticed them and said something to the other, who then departed. The remaining quarian turned to face them, so as to greet them.
The quarian watched carefully as Tali'Zorah approached, side by side with the human male, who she knew was Commander Shepard. The human walked with an amazing degree of confidence. His posture, his stride, the movements of his arms… it was like the walk of an apex predator, roaming fearless and unchallenged. He was an indomitable spirit. In the mere seconds she had to observe his movement and study his body language, it instantly became clear that he was indeed worthy of all the praise she had heard him receive.
She also noticed how close together Tali and him walked together. It was a sign that each one was welcomed into the personal space of the other. The observation was no surprise to her.
"Tali'Zorah vas Normandy," she greeted as they reached her, "I am glad you came. I could delay them only so long."
"Auntie Raan," Tali said as she approached and hugged her. "Shepard vas Normandy, this is Admiral Shala'Raan vas Tonbay. She's a friend of my father's."
"Captain Shepard, I'm pleased to finally meet you. Tali has spoken very highly of you," Raan greeted. She looked at him, momentarily glanced at Tali, and then back at Shepard. Raan remembered well when Tali returned from her pilgrimage; how upset she was that this human had supposedly died. In the two years that passed since then, it was very common for Tali to bring up him, and share stories of the adventures they had been on together.
A short time before being sent on the mission to Haestrom, Tali had told Raan that he was alive. She explained that he had been brought back to life, and that she wanted to rejoin his crew. Raan wasn't sure what to make of it—she didn't know such a thing was even possible—but she enjoyed seeing Tali be so happy again.
"It's nice to meet you, Admiral. Hopefully we can get this sorted out quickly," Shepard said as he shook her hand, which was a gesture common to both species.
It's good that she has him here with her, Raan thought to herself, she's going to need his support when she finds out what happened to her father.
"Wait, Raan," Tali said, "You called me 'vas Normandy.'"
"I'm afraid I did, Tali. The Admiralty moved to have you tried under that name, given your departure from the Neema."
"Keelah… that's as good as declaring me exiled already."
"Let's not waste any time then," Shepard said. He then asked Raan, "Does Tali have a defense councilor, someone who speaks for her side?"
"Indeed she does, Captain Shepard. She is part of your crew, now, recognized by quarian law. And a defendant is always represented by his or her captain."
Shepard looked at Tali, who looked right back on him. She didn't need to say anything.
Shepard said, "You know I'm not exactly familiar with quarian law, Tali, but I promise I'll do everything in my power to help you."
"I know you will, Shepard, and thank you. I could not ask for a better defense councilor."
The three of them continued to speak a short while longer. Raan mentioned how, due to her history with Tali's family, she would not be able to participate in the actual judgment. She would only preside over the trial.
People started entering the chamber where the trial would take place, which signaled to them that it was now starting. Shepard and Tali went inside, and took their place at the defendant's spot.
. . .
It wasn't long into the trial when it was suddenly revealed what exactly had transpired. Supposedly, the geth parts Tali had sent to her father had come to life, replicated, and seized control of the lab ship, the Alarei. It was presumed that all people on board were dead, including Tali's father.
Tali couldn't believe what she had heard. The shock of the news was greatly augmented by the fact that Raan hadn't said anything about the possibility of her father being dead; it came as a complete and terrible surprise to Tali. The thought of her father now being a corpse, lying motionless on the cold, metal floor of the Alarei, instantly and completely replaced Tali's concern over getting exiled. The entire trial no longer mattered to her at all. All that did matter, was finding her father.
Shepard immediately called for the trial to be placed on hold, stating that their top priority should be to reclaim the Alarei. He also knew they had to look for Tali's father; he could only imagine how painful it must have been for her, not knowing if he was even alive.
The admirals agreed, and gave Shepard and Tali permission to attempt to reclaim the ship. Shepard spoke briefly with some of the admirals before departing. During which, he learned that the trial in reality had little to do with Tali herself. The quarians seemed to be close to war with the geth, and all of the admirals had different opinions on it. Han'Gerrel wanted to fight them to reclaim the homeworld. Daro'Xen was fascinated by the geth, and wanted to find a way to reprogram them so that they could be the servants of the quarians once again. And Zaal'Koris wanted to avoid conflict with the geth altogether, preferring to forget about their homeworld and colonize a new planet.
It was evident that this trial existed just so that the admirals could push and support their own political agendas. They didn't care about Tali.
Tali and Shepard were currently on a small quarian shuttle, flying towards the Alarei. They sat next to each other. Tali was very quiet, holding her hands together, staring blankly at the ground. Her mind busy trying to make sense of all that had just happened; of the possibility that her father was dead.
"How are you doing? They threw a lot of fire at you back there," Shepard said as he placed his arm around Tali's waist.
She rested her head on his shoulder and sighed. "I knew it was going to be bad, but… I couldn't have prepared myself for all this. They stripped me of my ship name, they accused me of treason, they… they said my father is dead…"
"But they don't know that for sure!" Tali continued. "He could still be alive! My father… he knows how to fight geth. He could still be, he…" Tali trailed off, her emotions preventing her from finishing her sentence.
"If he's even half as smart and resourceful as you, Tali, I'm sure he's fine. We'll find him."
"I hope so…" Tali said somberly.
Shepard hated seeing Tali so upset. In an attempt to cheer her up a little, he lightheartedly said, "Do me a favor. On the ride back, sit next to your dad. I'd rather not spend the flight back dodging his punches, if he saw us sitting like this."
A quiet, weak laugh escaped Tali's mouth. She then sighed, and stayed quiet, sinking back into her thoughts.
A brief moment later the shuttle came to a halt. It had reached the Alarei. It rumbled quietly, and some mechanical noises reverberated on the inside as it locked into one of the ship's docking stations.
"We're here," Shepard said as he stood up. "Come on, Tali, let's go find your dad."
Tali stood up as well. She looked at Shepard for a moment as he walked toward the shuttle's airlock and said, "Shepard… thank you."
He turned and asked, "For what?"
"For agreeing to help take back the Alarei. For being here to help me find my dad. For… everything." Tali took a few steps, approaching him, and continued, "You… you're all I have, right now. I just wanted you to know that I'm grat—"
"No, Tali," he interrupted, speaking in a gentle voice, "Don't thank me for any of this. How could I possibly not be here, helping someone who means so much to me?" He then took her hands and held them, looking at her eyes.
Tali said, "I, I know, it's just… I'm just really glad that you're here, with me."
"I'm glad I'm here, too. Helping you," he said. "Come on, let's take back this ship."
"Okay, Shepard," Tali said, her voice slightly cheerier than before. They then stepped through the shuttle's airlock, and walked down the docking bridge.
"You know, I'm actually a little anxious to try out my new anti-material rifle," Shepard commented as they walked.
"The one you found on the Collector ship? I don't even know how you can walk around with that thing on your back."
"I was kind of hoping you'd help carry it for me," Shepard joked. Tali responded by playfully butting her shoulder against his.
They reached the entrance of the Alarei, and stepped inside.
. . .
Shepard and Tali progressed through the ship without much difficulty. They encountered numerous groups of geth, ranging from Troopers to Hunters, but all were dispatched with relative ease. Both Shepard and Tali were among the most experienced people in the galaxy at fighting geth, so they were well within their element.
There was a high degree of synergy between the two. Their strengths in combat complimented each other well, and against the geth, they formed a single, unstoppable unit. Shepard was well aware that they didn't have a complete team for this, so he planned their combat accordingly. He made sure that they stayed at a distance from the geth, often trying to bottleneck them around corners or room entrances.
Shepard often attempted to draw their fire unto himself, knowing he was far more heavily shielded and armored than Tali. This let her concentrate on using her tech abilities, which were specifically effective in combat scenarios against geth. As he drew their fired and delivered devastating, precise attacks from his 86lbs Widow anti-material rifle, Tali would hack into their systems and cause them to attack one another, as well as send her combat drone in to distract them. Tali also contributed to the shooting in-between her tech abilities, with her modified Spectre shotgun, which was still devastatingly powerful despite being an older model.
As they defeated multiple groups and waves of geth and progressed through the Alarei, they encountered various consoles with vid logs left by the now deceived crew. There was a particularly sad one, in which a female quarian told her son, Jona, that he had to stay strong, and that she loved him very much. Right after, she was gunned down by unseen geth, and the message ended.
In another room, they found a console that contained significant information on the kinds of experiments that were happening on the ship, that led to the geth's take over. Tali looked through the files, her horror building as it was starting to become obvious that her father may have been responsible for all that happened. That the geth may have actually been deliberately activated, as part of his experiments.
"What was all this, father," she said, speaking to herself as she looked through the data on the console display, "You promised you'd build me a house on the homeworld. Was this going to get us back home?"
This was the first time Shepard had ever heard of her father's promise. It tugged at his heart to hear it. As much as he knew that Tali wanted their people to return home, it had never occurred to Shepard how significant it would be for her to have an actual house on her planet; how it would be the greatest possible gift she could ever receive.
"That's… quite a promise, Tali," Shepard said. Despite knowing what a seemingly impossible promise it was, for a moment, he found himself wanting to promise her the same thing.
"I know it is," she said with a sigh. "But I always chose to believe it. You can't imagine what it's like, living like this, trapped inside a damned suit your whole life, with no homeworld to ever return to."
Shepard had always known Tali was in favor of going to war with the geth, as it seemed like the only way for them to ever return back to their planet. Shepard also knew that it was a bad idea; not only could it possibly mean the extinction of her race, but it would also mean that the largest armada in the galaxy, the Migrant Fleet, would not be available to help against the inevitable Reaper invasion.
He considered discussing the topic of the quarians going to war and why it was a bad idea, but he decided not to. It was a very touchy subject, and she was under enough stress already. There would be other, better times to discuss it.
"Let's go, Tali. Let's keep moving," he said, placing his hand on her shoulder to encourage her to walk away from the console.
Not long afterwards, they entered a room that had a flight of stairs, leading down to a lower level. A particularly large wave of geth emerged in the lower floor. It was a heated battle with limited room to maneuver. Shepard focused his attention on the stairway, knowing that if even one geth made it to the top, they would be in trouble. The only geth that managed to reach the top, instantly found itself knocked back from the concussive force of Tali's shotgun. Its body tumbled down the stairs, and remained lifeless once it reached the bottom.
Ultimately, the wave was defeated, like all the previous ones. Shepard and Tali descended the stairway. This area, which only moments ago roared loudly as the sound of gunfire reverberated through its walls, was now eerily quiet. While Tali investigated some nearby logs, Shepard approached the only door of the room. As it opened, a corridor was revealed, and there was a male quarian's body lying on the floor of its center, motionless; dead.
Since boarding the Alarei, Shepard had seen numerous quarian bodies. They were never a pleasant thing to see; the tragedy of witnessing their dead bodies was augmented for Shepard in a somewhat primal way; quarians bled red, just like his own race. But something about this dead quarian in particularly disturbed him. He felt a very subtle chill run down his spine as he looked at the lifeless body. Somehow, he just knew that this was Rael'Zorah; that this was Tali's—
"Father!" Tali yelled, running into the corridor where her father now lay.
Shepard turned his head and looked at her as she ran past him and dropped to her knees before her father's body, desperately wanting to see that he was alive. Her hands trembled nervously as she investigated the body. Shepard let out a loud sigh. He instantly regretted all the hopeful things he had said to Tali about finding her father.
"No! No no no," Tali said, her voice heavy with desperation. Each one of her 'no's was like a stab to Shepard; he felt incredibly empathetic toward her. He hated seeing her suffer like this.
"You always had a plan," Tali continued, "Masked life-signs, or, or an onboard medical stasis program. You, you wouldn't—" Tali started to weep, interrupting her own words.
Shepard approached and placed his hand on her shoulder. Tali immediately got up and threw her arms around him, continuing to cry.
"Damn it! Damn it!" she sobbed, holding Shepard tightly.
"It's okay," Shepard whispered quietly, "It'll be alright." He was well aware of how fruitless such words were at comforting someone who had lost a loved one. But he was also aware that there was never anything else to say.
"Thank you…" Tali said weakly, continuing to hold Shepard, weeping.
After a short while passed, she pulled from the hug and looked down at her father's corpse. She sniffled, forcing herself to stop crying. "Maybe he knew I'd come for him," she said, "Maybe he left a message."
Tali sniffled again, and kneeled down before her father. She activated his omni-tool, which displayed a recorded holo of himself. In it, he mentioned that if she was seeing this, then he was dead. He then gave her instructions on how to disable all the geth on the ship by deactivating their main hub on the bridge. He also instructed her to show Han'Gerrel and Daro'Xen the data from the hub. The message then abruptly ended to the sound of recorded gunfire.
Rael's entire message had been nothing but orders. Not one word had been spent on the things that would have mattered most to his daughter. There was no goodbye; no apology for the wrong he had done; no pleasant, warm words of affection, that Tali could keep in her heart and cherish forever.
"Thanks, dad…" Tali said with sad, bitter sarcasm. Deep down, she wanted to believe that her father would have said more to her had he not been cut off. That he would have said what she wanted most to hear; the words she had always longed for, yet had never heard from him: "I love you, Tali, my daughter."
But that single semblance of hope she held, that told her that maybe he intended to speak those words to her at the end of his message, was drowned out by the simple, agonizing fact that he chose to give her orders first. It was what mattered most to him, even in the face of death.
"He knew you'd come for him," Shepard said, attempting to comfort her. "He tried to help you. I know it's not what you would've wanted, but it was all he could do."
Tali stayed quiet for a brief moment. She then said, "Do you remember that video log we found, a few rooms back? With the mother saying goodbye to her son? She used her last words to tell her son she loved him. My father… he used his last words to give me orders."
Shepard himself had noticed the stark contrast between that unnamed mother's last message, and Rael's. He had no intention of pointing it out, but it was no surprise that Tali had noticed it as well.
"Come on, Tali. You don't need to see this any further," Shepard said, placing his hand on her shoulder. "Let's keep pushing forward. The sooner we're off this ship, the better."
Tali took a moment to compose herself, and the two continued down the corridor.
. . .
Multiple geth bodies now lay on the floor of the Alarei's bridge, all damaged and dead, with white conductive fluid splattered on the floor and walls near their bodies. Close to the center of the room was the large body of a Geth Prime. Damage had been inflicted throughout its entire body, but most notable of all was the large hole through its mangled head; Shepard's Widow anti-material rifle had been put to good use.
Shepard and Tali approached the central hub at the end of the bridge, that Rael'Zorah had mentioned in his message. Tali scanned it with her omni-tool, and after typing in a few commands, disabled it. Any remaining geth on the ship were now offline.
"There's some kind of log here," Tali commented. She then brought it up on the hub's holo screen.
The log showed her father and two other Quarian researchers. They briefly discussed the experiments they were conducting with the geth, and during the discussion one of the researchers suggested having Tali bring back more complete geth parts. Rael immediately and sternly rejected the suggestion, stressing he didn't want Tali to be in any risk of political blowback due to their illegal experiments. The content of the log showed that Rael was fully responsible for what had happened, and completely cleared Tali's name.
There was complete silence after the vid ended. Tali stared at the blank display, her mind busy making sense of what she just saw. She had no choice but to accept what she had been fearing: that everything that had happened was truly her father's fault.
"I… this is all his fault," she muttered in disbelief and shock, "I didn't want to believe it, but this… when this comes out in the trial…"
She immediately turned to Shepard and said, "We can't tell the admirals—we can't tell anyone! We can't… nobody can know about this!"
"What? Tali, without this evidence, you're looking at exile!"
"You think I don't know that?" Tali snapped. "I do! I know that without it I may never see the Fleet again! But I can't let my father go down as the worst war criminal in my people's history! I can't let him be remembered as a traitor, as some kind of monster; I cannot!" She paused for a moment, calming down, and continued. "Please, Shepard… don't let all the good my father has done be tossed aside and forgotten forever. Please, don't show this to the admirals… don't destroy my father's memory."
Shepard looked at Tali and sighed. As much as he hated the idea of this, he knew that he couldn't say no to her; not with something like this. "Tali, since I have known you, I have known how much your people mean to you. I know how much you love the Migrant Fleet. And the thought of you losing something that is so dear to you… I don't want to think about it." Shepard paused a moment. "But… this is your decision. If you don't want me to show this to the admirals, then I won't. I just hope you're making the right choice."
"I know I am, Shepard. Thank you," she answered quietly.
"Whatever happens when we return to that trial, whatever those admirals decide… know that you'll always have a place—a home—with me, on the Normandy. Always."
Tali embraced Shepard, and hugged him tightly.