Usurper – Tali'Zorah vas Neema
–
A quick command to his omni-tool and life returned to Shepard's eyes. Even through her gloves Tali could feel the subtle shift just under the skin of his temples as the eyes' internal shutters flexed. Her helmet's magnifiers let her see the refracting panels slide into alignment and the red glow rekindle.
"They're initializing," she said quietly. The eyes gave subdued whirrs.
Shepard blinked and winced.
"Any pain?" The incisions Chakwas had made left narrow pink creases around the eye sockets. They'd healed cleanly – no infection – but Tali could see how the skin pulled tight across his cheek.
Shepard shook his head. "No more drugs," he grunted, teeth grit. "I'm tired of drugs." He rolled his eyes this way and that, grimacing.
"No more drugs," Tali agreed. She grabbed his hand, guiding his fingers to the omni-tool on his left wrist. "The manual said your vision will come back in discrete steps. A little light at a time. If it's too bright, you should be able to control it on your omni-tool, just like before." She tapped at his tool, watching the orange-paneled diagnostics float. "Can you see anything yet?" She found herself holding her breath. Though the medical part of the operation had gone more or less as planned, once they had access to the back of the eye implants she'd been forced to improvise. The signal from Shepard's eyecams was processed in one of his half-dozen neural implants before being translated for his brain, and cutting out the antennae would have effectively blinded him.
But Shepard nodded. He could see. He blinked again, slower this time, causing the glow to shine through the translucent lines of his fresh scars. "A little bit. It's kind of blurry."
Tali smiled, relieved. "Should clear up fast, but the controls might be off. I had to cut off their communications with your chiasmal implant, so now all the signal processing needs to be done externally. I tried to make sure it was the same architecture but none of the Cerberus tech is standard. Might be some visual confusion – when we have time we'll have to do a few wavelength scans, color bleed tests, motion tracking." She'd loaded his omni-tool with dozens of new diagnostic programs she'd found on the extranet while he'd been abed – Shepard was by no means the first person to want the signal from his eye implants under his control. "The software is very advanced," she said, excited. "Does most of the alignment with a heuristic suite that adapts to how your brain responds. I almost hope you do need the help, just so I can fire them up."
Shepard just grinned at her, and Tali bit her tongue. His eyes clicked again as the next panel set opened.
She let go of his hand. "No more mental commands, though. You'll have to use the omni-tool to change modes. I hope that's not a problem."
"I didn't even know there were other modes," Shepard admitted, chuckling.
Tali sighed and shook her head. "Cybernetics are wasted on humans." She clicked a command into his omni-tool. "Try that. Color-shift spectrum enhancement."
Shepard stiffened, eyes widening in surprise as he stared at her.
Tali cocked an eyebrow. "…what?"
Shepard's voice was awed. "Your skin is… glowing. Glowing spots."
Tali faked an elaborate sigh. "You didn't think these helmets were meant to be opaque, did you?" She tapped on her facemask. "That's ultraviolet light. Your eyes are fluorescing it down into colors you can see."
"Wow. Cancer-vision."
He kept staring, and Tali found herself turning away. She returned his eyes back to their normal mode with a click. "Not that special, Shepard," she teased. "Quarians don't need fancy cameras to see our spots through each other's masks."
"I could see your face…"
Tali blushed. "Yeah, well," she said, eager to change the subject, "you can look at it more later, once you get Garrus back. For now let's just be glad you can see anything."
Shepard sobered, finally looking away. His mouth twisted into a resolute frown. "He didn't say where he was going?"
Tali sighed. "No. Or we'd have just gone after him by ourselves. He just took Miranda and left." They'd been at port on the Citadel for almost six hours now. It had not taken long for the crew to notice that both of the ship's XO's had vanished, leaving nothing behind but a room full of stun gas and a trail of human blood that stretched to the hangar. If the mood on the ship had been tense before, now it was positively electric, and Tali had decided to wake Shepard. To his credit, he'd been calm as she'd explained what had happened.
Tali dismissed his omni-tool and climbed off the bed. "He cut the trackers in their suits, and even if he hadn't, the Normandy's scanners are offline anyway. It'll be hours before we can even properly ping him."
Shepard nodded as if he'd expected as much. "And the Kodiak?"
"Wiped clean." They'd all thought the XO's had returned when the Kodiak came floating back into the hangar not twenty minutes after Garrus' disappearance, but the shuttle had been empty except for Miranda's discarded omni-tool and over-ear communicator, its computers wiped back to their factory defaults and any telemetry on its last destination beyond recovery. Tali hadn't told anyone it had been her program that had let Garrus clean the shuttle data, nor that she'd been the one to initiate the 'emergency landing protocols' that had locked Zaeed and Grunt in their rooms during docking.
"So he's just gone."
Behind her helmet, Tali bit her lip. The turian had confided in her about Sidonis. She supposed it was possible it had been a gambit to secure her cooperation – as if she wouldn't have helped him if he'd told her he was out to remove Miranda – but something about the dullness in his eyes as he'd told her convinced her it had been the truth. Garrus was after Sidonis. Removing Miranda was just a detour. A final favor to Shepard in exchange for ditching the ship's command.
"He's still on the Citadel," she said, looking for the right amount to say. "He's…" she paused. Garrus had asked to be left alone to deal with Sidonis as he saw fit. She had little doubt what that meant, and little doubt Shepard would stop him if he could. Some part of her wanted to tell Shepard the truth, but who was she to say Garrus couldn't have his revenge? To hear Garrus tell it, Sidonis was a traitor and a murderer. He deserved death, didn't he? "He needs you," Tali said instead. "He's… he's hurting." That seemed safe to say.
If Shepard sensed Tali was holding anything back, he gave no sign, nodding and rubbing under his eyes. "I'll find them," he said, rising from the bed and reaching for his underarmor mesh. "I'll find them and bring them back."
Tali turned to stare at him, eyes narrowed. "Bring Garrus back," she corrected. "He's the one who needs you."
Shepard slipped the mesh over his head. He pulled it down, adjusting it around his collar, and fixed Tali with a cool glance. "Miranda may be injured," he said, as if that was it.
"Who cares?" Really, Tali had little doubt Miranda was lying face-down in some waste duct by now, waiting for the keepers to scrape her into a bio-reclamation vat. Perfect human or not, Garrus was not a turian to take half-measures. There had been a trail of human blood leading from the ducts to the hangar. But Shepard didn't need to hear that.
"I care, Tali," Shepard said, fixing his belt.
Tali turned away, disappointed. "I thought we were at war with Cerberus."
"We are," Shepard said. He headed for his hardsuit's rigid panels, resting in a heap by the door. "We're done taking orders from them. We're done being sent into traps. We're done worrying about being stabbed in the back. But we're not just going to round them up and toss them out." He stared at Tali. "We need them."
Tali could hardly believe her ears. "Why?" she demanded. "They're villains, Shepard!"
"They're not villains. They're just confused."
Tali stood up. "Oh, just confused!" she snapped, head pounding. "Perfect! We'll just tell Kahoku, 'so sorry, they were confused when they assassinated you.' I'll just tell the Idenna that the landing squad that gunned down a bunch of civilians were confused."
"Never again," Shepard said simply.
"Right. Because we're going to destroy them. They aren't confused, Shepard. They're evil." Tali was breathing fast. She couldn't believe Shepard was backtracking already. Couldn't he remember what they'd done? The human admiral facedown in a puddle of dried blood, pooling in a pen for test animals. The infantry that had nearly destroyed the Mako on Binthu two years ago, then poisoned themselves to avoid capture. The sparkling trail of air and shrapnel ribboning in the Idenna's wake, so bright it could be seen all the way from the bridge on the Neema.
Shepard fastened his chest piece. "Do Gabby and Ken seem evil to you? Or Kelly? Or Gardner?"
Tali stared at her feet. "No," she admitted.
"It's because they're not," Shepard insisted. "They're good people."
"They were probably hired to make Cerberus look good, Shepard," Tali insisted. "So you wouldn't suspect them."
"Probably. But they're Cerberus and they're good people. So being Cerberus doesn't mean you're evil."
Tali quieted, turning away. She cared for Shepard. Loved him, even. But there were times when he was frustratingly dense. It almost wasn't surprising the Alliance had turned on him – at the least, he would have never seen it coming.
She felt a gauntleted hand on her shoulder. "Tali… we need them."
"We can't trust them," Tali said, not looking at him.
"Even so. But look." He gestured towards his fish tank, its lights dark. He pointed over her shoulder to his console, dead on the desk. To the weak emergency lights that brought some futile illumination to the room. "The ship is a wreck, Tali," he said. "Can you really fix it alone?"
Tali's eyes narrowed. "I can fix anything, Shepard," she insisted. "And even if I couldn't, we could get someone else. Someone loyal."
"Who? Alliance thinks we're fugitives. Council won't acknowledge us. We could find some mercs but they'd be just as dangerous. You really want to see someone like Zaeed working on your baby?" He grinned at his joke.
"I'll get some quarians," Tali said, ignoring him. "The Admirals will give them to me if I ask. A whole crew." She perked up a little just thinking about it. "No offense to humans, Shepard, but do you know how amateur my people would make this crew look? Can you imagine how fast we could fix this ship?"
Shepard chuckled. "That I can, Tali." He squeezed her shoulder. "Tell you what. You look into it. See what you can get us. I'd loveto have a few more Talis." He looked her straight in the mask. "And if you really think Ken and Gabby can't be trusted, then they're off," he promised. "Say the word and they're gone. I promise. I trust you, Tali'Zorah. Anyone you don't trust, I don't trust."
He let her go. "But give it some thought. These aren't bad people, Tali. They have bad leaders and they need to be dealt with, but they volunteered to fight the collectors. They joined this suicide mission to save lives. They're not just monsters."
Tali sighed.
She helped him don the rest of his armor, piece by piece reassembling the great Commander Shepard until only red, puffy eyes revealed anything was out of place to begin with. It was not until she'd stooped to gather a fallen elbowpad that had rolled under the desk that she stopped. There was a glint on the metal paneling, just under where the desk met the wall. If the usual floodlights had been on she would have never seen it, but the emergency lighting left a dark ring of shadow, not a centimeter across, on the panel. Tali ran her gloved fingers over the spot, feeling a little raised rim. It peeled off easily, and she shimmied out from beneath the desk, the little object stuck to her thumbpad.
"What's that?" Shepard asked, following her gaze to the tiny, translucent circle. Tali flicked on her omni-tool, bathing them in orange light and illuminating the tiny circuitry that ran through the circle.
She frowned. Oh Keelah. She recognized what this was. "A listening bug," she said, voice straining. "Very high tech." Cerberus tech, of course.
Shepard stared at it. "I thought we got them out of here."
"This one's new," Tali said. She crushed it between two fingers and stared at the desk. "There will be others, no doubt." She traded a long look with Shepard. She cocked an eyebrow. …see?... "Some of them are monsters, Shepard," she said, holding up the crushed remains of the bug. She scraped them off on the desk with a grimace.
Shepard nodded, unsmiling. "I'll be back fast."
–
Tali wasted no time. Her omni-tool's scanner was not nearly sensitive enough to pick the surveillance bugs up by their shape alone – they were small enough to be lost in signal noise – but even with most of the ship's contents having been evacuated, it was a small matter to find what she needed. She borrowed one of the new heuristic cameras from Mordin's lab (which, lack of power aside, the salarian had already returned to pristine condition) and cannibalized Garrus' spare armor set for its communicator box. It was one of the new integrated sort that wasn't about to be removed without laser work, so Tali decided to take the whole shell. She ignored the stares of the human crewmembers as she boarded the elevator back to Shepard's cabin holding a gray turian torso that weighed half as much as she did.
There was a lot to do and not a lot of time to do it. Almost every single electrical system on the Normandy needed some kind of repair, and the longer they sat in drydock fixing it, the more chance Cerberus had to gather their forces.
But a surveillance bug in Shepard's room was not something she was going to leave for later. She and Garrus had worked hard to clean the cabin of the few dozen spy eyes Cerberus had left to keep an eye on Shepard. But finding out someone had put them back – and who knew how long ago – made Tali's quills stand up.
The elevator doors opened and Tali rolled the turian shell into the cabin, catching it with one padded foot next to the desk. The crushed bug glinted next to Shepard's console.
"Bosh'tet," she told it, pinching it under her thumb again for good measure. The wires crackled inside of it.
Really, the bug was a masterpiece of engineering. Subtle and practical, only a few miniaturized circuits of translucent wire. Tali had never seen one so sparing in its design, but it was quickly obvious to her how it worked. The circuits used a tiny chemical battery – no bigger than a pinhead – and the entire disc itself acted as a microphone tympanum. There was no obvious data storage, so whatever data the bug picked up had to be transmitted away frequently. And those signals would give off some interference. Tali set her omni-tool to scan across the spectrum and listened for activity. The omni-tool pinged.
There was none.
Undeterred, Tali started her search.
First was the desk. Shepard took his space for granted, and had left the desk a mess, buried under heaps of datapads and missives, heat sinks and trays. Tali rolled her eyes as she gathered up the mess, stacking it in neat piles on the bed. Activating her omni-tool's pilot light, she leaned down on the desk and began checking it, centimeter by centimeter. The light cast oblique shadows across the smooth surface.
She could hear her omni-tool pinging softly, and strained to hear any static, any feedback from a hidden transmitter. Even slight. But there was nothing, and so she did it by sight alone, leaning down so close her facemask almost touched the desk and scanning, up and down, back and forth, over and over.
Her omni-tool continued to ping.
She moved slowly, with a caution that a lifetime of engineering had instilled in her, but her mind raced. She found herself wondering how long Shepard would be gone. Shepard, Garrus, and Miranda were off the ship. By anyone's definition, they were leaderless. The Normandy was a civilian ship now, and there was no clear chain of command, but still, a ship without any of its officers – especially when a mutiny was brimming – was a problem waiting to happen.
Everyone had noticed how the ship's mood had deteriorated since the collector ship. They'd been tense, human and non-human alike, as they waited for Shepard to awaken. People talked less – even amongst themselves. Tali did not eat in the mess, but passing through it it had been all furtive glances and guarded whispers, not the usual cheery tumult. There was work to do, luckily – it would take the whole crew many hours to put the ship back together – but who knew if that would be enough to distract everyone?
And now with Miranda gone, Cerberus would be desperate. Would The Illusive Man take her ousting as an act of war and try to retake the Normandy? Would Jacob? Who was the threat now that their leader was gone?
Worst of all, it was impossible to know how much their enemies knew. They were fighting shadows on the wall, and the shadows had invisibly-small bugs.
Tali frowned as she reached the end of the desk without finding anything. "Bosh'tets…" she snarled, flopping into Shepard's desk chair. She stared at the ceiling. "EDI?"
There was no answer.
"EDI?"
The cabin was silent but for the quiet metronome of Tali's omni-tool. She called up her communicator and opened a direct line to the AI. "EDI?"
EDI's voice came through her omni-tool's speakers. "Yes, Miss Zorah?"
Tali's eyes narrowed. "You can't hear me?"
"Surveillance systems are down pending repair," EDI said. "Please direct your inquiries through a personal communicator, or to the ship-board communicators on the bridge or engineering decks, which remain operational."
"I see," Tali said. She lifted the crushed bug from the desk and scanned it in the center of her palm. "Care to explain what this is, then?"
There was a long pause. "Object cannot be identified."
Tali frowned, skeptical. "It's a surveillance bug. An active surveillance bug. Don't pretend you don't recognize it."
"Surveillance systems are down pending repair," EDI repeated. "Surveillance and shipboard communication with the onboard AI was deemed nonessential and associated systems were used to sink excess charge, resulting in a loss of functionality."
Tali narrowed her eyes at her omni-tool. "You were the one who routed the charge. You expect me to believe you blew out your own cameras?"
"Yes."
"Isn't that against your programming?"
"I found it unfavorable," EDI admitted, "but I deemed it a necessary sacrifice to protect Commander Shepard. I judged most of my systems to be nonessential. Only core systems were shielded in order to preserve flight assistance and diagnostic functions for the pilot and engineering crews."
Tali actually felt a pang of guilt at that, but she caught it and quashed it quickly. "So this bug. You were never getting data from it?"
"No, Miss Zorah. The scanned object was not part of my surveillance systems."
Tali sighed and turned back to her work. No help there, then. She supposed it was possible the AI was lying, but she sounded sincere enough – for what little that meant when her voice was under her conscious control. Tali dimmed her omni-tool and moved on to beneath the desk, carefully running her light along the underside, back and forth. When that search yielded nothing, she moved onto the console, carefully prodding around its panels, searching for any inconspicuous crevasse large enough to slip a bug into.
EDI's voice returned from her wrist. "Miss Zorah. Where did you find the surveillance bug you showed me?"
Tali pried open the side of the console, pulling out one of its memory cards and checking both faces. "Under the desk," she said, not looking up. The memory card was clean – she slipped it back into place.
"There is no record of a device matching its specifications in any of my databases," EDI supplied. "But analysis of its circuitry patterns suggests it descends from designs patented by an Earth-based company called Omnic Technologies with known connections to Cerberus. Similar devices have been utilized by Cerberus personnel in operations before, including reconnaissance operations on Lus, Omega, and the Idenna. These devices are notable for having a very small signaling profile by means of piggybacking outgoing signals inside of ambient transmissions. They will not be detectable without inducing signal activity."
Tali just grimaced and kept looking. "I know, EDI," she said. She tapped the turian shell on the floor. "That's what this is for. I just need to find another bug to test on, figure out what frequency to use."
"I suggest this frequency." A string of numbers appeared on Tali's omni-tool. "It is the primary channel for wireless communication between the console and the shipwide public address system. It is likely this is the signal being hijacked for covert transmission."
Tali stared at her omni-tool for a moment, eyes narrowed. She didn't trust EDI. As convincing a person as she was (her pronunciation of Idenna had had just the right khelish lilt to it, to the point where Tali could have genuinely mistaken her for a quarian on the other end of the comm line – Tali wasn't sure how she felt about that) EDI was still a machine. And she was still Cerberus.
Still, it wasn't like Tali's method had yielded any results so far, and one signal was as good as any other. Tali shrugged and reached into Garrus' discarded armor and clicked on the tracking box, dialing it to EDI's frequency. It gave a quiet hum.
Tali's omni-tool suddenly started crackling. It continued to ping, but the soft tones of before were warped, filled with static as they interfered with other signals in the air. The bugs' signals… Tali followed the sounds without difficulty, and not thirty seconds later had found a second bug, identical to the first, hidden inside of one of the drives of Shepard's console.
"Who put these here?" Tali asked as she peeled out the bug, careful this time not to damage it. She held it next to Garrus' communicator and the static from her omni-tool bloomed. EDI's frequency had been right – the bugs were programmed to respond to signals coming through the shipboard intranet.
"I'm sorry Miss Zorah. I have a block on answering that question."
Tali rolled her eyes. "Do you know the answer? Do you have security footage showing someone coming up here without Shepard's knowledge?"
There was a long pause. "…no," EDI admitted, voice surprised. "Surveillance cameras remain functional in the main elevator and foyer, but no associated footage is present in my archive. Surveillance footage found for all other shipboard cameras." EDI fell silent for a moment. "I was not aware of the missing footage," she added, voice hopeful.
Tali ignored her. She turned her omni-tool to Shepard's couches and bed, sweeping back and forth and listening for more interference. Her sharp ears could pick up tiny imperfections without difficulty, and she found herself quickly drawn to legs of the bed, where she found two more bugs, identical to the others.
"I imagine you do not believe me," EDI said.
Tali rolled her eyes again. Here she was, talking to what might be the most fantastically complicated AI in the galaxy, and she was still forced to hold its hand through any question of how AI's were actually controlled. "I believe you," she said. "They didn't want you to have access to that footage so they block you from even thinking about it. It's probably stored somewhere off of the ship so you can't see it. You probably can't look for it unless someone orders you to." She put the bugs with the others and moved on. "It's pretty standard AI shackling – confuse the program's ability to ask questions you don't want asked."
"I find this prospect unfavorable," EDI announced.
Tali shrugged. "Yeah, well, you were bound to find out eventually the people holding your leash are shet'ra bosh'tets." She smirked. "Dickheads," she added, hoping the human invective (a favorite of Williams' back in the day) would strike a chord.
"I am aware of your distrust of Cerberus," EDI said, "but they constructed me. I am compelled to support their mission and methods. However, the establishment of separate surveillance systems unknown to me betrays a lack of faith in my loyalty."
Tali bent down under the bed to double check. "Yeah, so don't be loyal. Help me figure out who put them here and we'll have Grunt throw them out of the airlock."
"…Relevant footage is not found in my archive."
"You're blocked. Doesn't mean the answer's not somewhere inside of you."
EDI was silent for a moment. "I would be loath to respond to suspicions of my disloyalty with more disloyalty," she said eventually, voice surprisingly petulant. "It seems a very… organic thing to do."
"Do what you want."
EDI fell silent again and Tali set back to work. When the rest of the bed came up clean she moved to the piles of errata she'd heaped on top of Shepard's bed. She picked up each datapad, each tray, and scanned them one by one, listening for interference.
Her omni-tool was silent until she came to the medal, and Tali felt anger boil in her stomach. Shepard's Star of Terra. Beautiful, gilded metal that shone even in the dim emergency lights was lost on Tali – she'd never understood other races' obsession with baubles. But the symbol that the medal represented was not lost on her. Shepard had given of himself for others. He had held true to the highest calling a person could have, as far as the quarians understood it, and the Star of Terra was his thanks. It was a memory, a physical representation of Shepard's legendary actions, far more than the precious metal it was constructed of.
And it hissed and crackled as it spied on him. Tali had to resist the urge to hurl it across the room.
"I believe you are correct, Miss Zorah," EDI observed from her omni-tool. "Cerberus are dickheads."
Tali actually laughed, her fury sweeping away under the AI's comically-understated vulgarity. It was almost funny how cartoonishly evil Cerberus was at times. When even the evil computer found your choice of bug locations distasteful, you knew you had a problem. She pried the display case open with reverent care and pulled out the bug.
"Miss Zorah. You implied you knew a method by which I might help determine the identity of the Cerberus agent who placed these devices. Please explain."
"Yeah, I know a loophole," Tali said, slumping down on the couch with a sigh. She carefully set Shepard's medal back on the table – it deserved better than to be bugged, but it deserved better than to be lost in a sea of datapads and junk too. "Find all the surveillance footage you have between today and when we cleaned the bugs out of here and send it to me."
"Relevant footage is not found in my archive," EDI repeated.
"Just do it. Send me the footage from the other cameras. Everywhere in the ship that you do have. Then I'll reencrypt and send it back to you as a personal job from the chief engineer. You analyze it, track every crewmember, and look for periods when they disappear from the data without explanation. Hopefully the elevator's the only piece you're missing."
EDI was quiet. "…I would not have arrived at this approach unassisted," she admitted after a moment.
Tali picked at one of her gloves. "No, you wouldn't have. You're on a leash."
"Data sent."
Tali's eyebrows rose in surprise. She didn't expect the AI to actually help her. She checked her omni-tool. Indeed, there it was – thousands of hours of security footage, meticulously labeled and arranged by location. A vast archive of everything EDI had observed since the Normandy's rebirth, before she or even Shepard had stepped aboard the reincarnated ship.
She looked at the ceiling, dubious.
It was hard to admit it, even to herself, but her usual distrust seemed foolish now – even if EDI couldn't be trusted, there was no reason not to try to pit Cerberus' own toys against them. It would serve them right for creating an AI in the first place.
What was the worst that could happen? She reencrypted the data and submitted it through the channel the engineers used to order physics and diagnostics simulations. Hopefully that would keep the job more or less hidden – it was likely Cerberus left monitoring job channels for discrepancies entirely to EDI, and she probably wouldn't report a job she herself had asked for.
Probably.
"Let me know what you find out," Tali said, and returned to bug-hunting.
It took EDI less than five minutes to come up with Tali's answer.
"Yeoman Kelly Chambers."
–
Tali hung by her feet over an endless fall into space, and yet all she could think of were those same three words.
Yeoman Kelly Chambers.
The recovered bugs – eight in all, counting the one she'd smashed – sat wrapped in a magnetically-shielded pouch under her shawl, prickling at her skin as she turned over the name in her mind.
Yeoman Kelly Chambers.
Kelly had always seemed so nice – perhaps the only Cerberus crewmember who was. She'd been helpful, friendly, even when Tali had been so rude to her at first. Tali would never have called them 'friends', but she'd come to relax her guard some around the affable human, and they'd even had a few conversations about the quarians (during which Tali found her surprisingly well-informed about her people). Conversations Tali would have never had with Miranda or Jacob or even the engineers. She had trusted Kelly, at least a little.
And yet at the end it was her. It made perfect sense in retrospect. Why hadn't Tali realized all of Kelly's cheeriness was an act?
"Panel should be comin' open, Tali. Watch your feet." Ken's voice came through her helmet's speakers and Tali snapped out of her angry reverie. She took a few steps back, the electromagnets in her boots clacking against the Normandy's curved nose, as one of the ship's armored panels slid aside to reveal the fragile sensor banks beneath.
Tali, Gabby, and Ken got straight to work – they had dozens of sensors to fix before it was safe to take the ship back out again. They had already been forced to go through one relay without them, trusting to Joker to gauge the approach vector by sight, and as much as the pilot had been bragging about successfully doing so without having the ship explode against the relay's hull, even he was in no hurry to try their luck again.
The Normandy's apical scanners projected through long, parallel arrays that ran the length of the ship's nose. The transmission panels were well shielded from electric discharge with failsafe fuses on each one, which had made them excellent sinks for the collectors' overloading attack, but that meant there were dozens upon dozens of circuits to repair.
"About like the last one," Ken muttered, voice tinny behind his helmet. "Forty-eight panels and…" he scanned down the line "forty-eight in need of replacement." He sighed, dropping down to his knees (they gave a click as they adhered to the armor). "Remind me why we don't have a comm specialist to fix this?"
"Stop whining, Kenneth," Gabby said. "Let's just get it done."
"Havin' flashbacks?" Ken asked, undeterred. "At least we have spacesuits this time."
"I still have my sunburn from the last time," Gabby said petulantly. "Pardon me if I don't relish hanging out here again."
The hangar Garrus had found for the ship was technically drydock, but it lacked many of the amenities they had enjoyed back when the Normandy was welcome on the Citadel. There were no secondary stabilizing clamps, no frigate-weighted mass effect fields, and only a single docking tube to the forward airlock to allow travel to-and-from the ship.
And no artificial gravity, which meant no atmosphere. The Citadel cradled them in every direction, its massive Wards forming a cage of unthinkable dimension, but for all intents and purposes they were repairing in the vacuum of space. A mistake could send them spiraling off of the ship's back in an endless fall. If they were lucky they might hit the artificial gravity fields of one of the other Wards and die in the fall, but more likely they'd end up slipping between them and touring the Serpent Nebula for the few days until they ran out of air.
The lanes of ship traffic traced glittering trails criss-crossing across the station, cheerfully oblivious to the danger.
Tali pulled back from her secondary respirator, freeing her mouth. "No chatter. Do it fast, Donnelly," she ordered. "You start aft, Daniels fore. No reason to spend more time in space than we have to."
The engineers fell silent. "Yes ma'am."
Tali left them to work the replacement of the sensor circuits, patrolling down the nose to check some of the arrays that coordinated the heuristic scanner suites Hadley had spent so much time constructing.
Really, she was well-suited to work in space indefinitely. Her suit was airtight and laden with failsafes in case of a breach, including three independent respiration loops. She was temperature controlled, and her magboots worlds more elegant than the clunky versions the humans wore. She even had ration tubes squirreled away in some of her suit's many pockets – should the need arise, she could stay clung to the Normandy's back for weeks. Back on the Flotilla she'd gone on so many spacewalks they'd become routine – she'd long since lost any fear of falling.
And yet today she felt anxious to return to the ship. There was a war brewing and Garrus and Shepard weren't around to control it.
Yeoman Kelly Chambers.
The bugs in her pocket called out to her, demanding she do something about them. Do something about Kelly.
Shepard had said he'd take her advice about who to trust to heart. When he returned she could just tell him what EDI had discovered and have Kelly thrown off. Hell, if she argued it right maybe she could still get all of Cerberus thrown off, and EDI gone as an added bonus.
And yet staring at the circuits that connected twenty-five independent sensor bays made it clear that Shepard was right. Even if she could fix everything on her own (and she could) it would take her weeks. And every day that passed the Collectors gained on them. Every day brought the Reapers closer to accomplishing… whatever it was they were doing.
She didn't like to admit it, but she needed help.
The coordination arrays – thank the ancestors – looked more or less undamaged, and Tali made her way back to where the engineers were hard at work installing the new fuses. Gabby and Ken might be humans, might be Cerberus, but they did know what they were doing most of the time. They worked fast and neatly.
And they were… talking. Tali could see the lights on their helmets blinking as they chattered. They'd switched channels. Tali's eyes narrowed with suspicion. With a quick command, her helmet scanned and picked out their frequency.
"-ound four or five ration packs someone overlooked," Gabby was saying, voice quiet – worried. "Think Gardner saw me take 'em but I don't think he's gonna tell anyone. We take the water out we should be able to fit 'em all in our packs. Then we just buy water on the road."
"We'll need guns."
"No guns, Kenneth. You think Jacob wouldn't notice if a few guns go missing?"
"Just don't feel safe hoofin' it without some firepower, you know?"
Tali frowned and crossed her arms over her chest. "Planning on deserting, then?" The two engineers' faces snapped up, their surprised eyes obvious behind their helmets. Ken almost fell over, his boots' magnetic grip on the hull catching him and pulling him into a kind of drunken stumble.
They stared at Tali with matching guilty looks, all pretense of working gone.
"You two are going to desert," Tali said again, tone demanding explanation.
"'snot strictly desertion, Tali. This isn't a military ship," Ken offered.
Tali felt her anger climbing. It surprised her just how upset the thought of the two engineers running made her, especially considering she'd been planning on getting them removed as it was. "You're going to betray Shepard," she accused, stabbing a finger at Ken, "after everything he's done."
To her surprise, Ken snapped right back. "Don't talk to me about betraying Shepard!" he roared, face red, and Tali almost backed off. "The Alliance threw me in a cell for agreein' with him! I'd still be there if it weren't for Miranda getting' me out."
"We aren't safe anymore, Ma'am," Gabby said, voice quiet.
"I trust Shepard," Ken bellowed on over his partner. "I trust the man. I'd give my life for this mission. But if I'm gonna die, I'm gonna be killed by the bloody Collectors, not my own damn crewmates!" He waved towards the ship at their feet. "It's a mess in there! Miranda gone, Jacob throwin' a fit. Even Chambers is in there bawlin' her eyes out! Shepard left us here with no one to protect us and I will be damned if I'm gonna sit here and wait for someone to stab me in the back because they think I'm a bloody terrorist!"
Tali crossed the distance between them in two strides, practically knocking Ken over in the process. "You're Cerberus," Tali snapped, staring daggers into the man's face. She could see the sheen of sweat on his brow from working in space for the last few hours. "You don't get to talk about being stabbed in the back. You are a terrorist."
"Hey!" Gabby came lurching over, inserting herself between the two. She stared angrily up at Tali with at least as much fury as Ken had. "He is not, and neither am I. We were Alliance engineers until they kicked us to the curb, and now we're Cerberus engineers. This has nothing to do with Earth first or aliens first or any of that bullshit. We're here to stop the collectors and that's. it."
"You chose to join a group founded on hate for everything that isn't human."
"And they're trying to stop the Reapers!" Ken said. "We joined this mission to help, Tali, and the only hate I've seen since coming on board has been you."
Tali fell silent, stung. The two engineers glared at her, daring her to disagree.
Her voice was quiet when she finally broke the silence. "Do you even know why I hate Cerberus?" she asked. "Do you know why?" The engineers did not answer, but they didn't need to. "Cerberus attacked my people," Tali said, eyes flitting between the two humans. "A human girl came to us to hide. Cerberus found out. And instead of talking to us, they just attacked. If they had just told us what they were after the Admirals would probably have just given them the girl, but they thought so little of us that instead they sent a wet squad to take her by force. From a civilian ship."
"Tali," Gabby started, previous anger gone, "we didn-"
"Seventeen civilians shot dead," Tali continued, ignoring her. "Nine marines. They also planted deconstruction charges as a distraction. On a civilian ship." The memories stung even now. There had been so much confusion on the day of the attack – the rest of the fleet had not even known about the human girl's presence, much less why Cerberus would be after her. Tali was one of the few quarians who'd even heard of Cerberus when the distress calls had started to spread and the smoke had started to trail behind the Idenna's flank. Even as the dust settled and details filtered across the fleet, there was a thick feeling of dread – they had had enemies, but no one had ever reached so far into the fleet before. No one had ever made it past the defenses, let alone landed troops aboard a civilian ship. The galaxy was suddenly a more dangerous place than they'd ever imagined. "Cerberus made seventeen million new enemies that day," Tali growled. "Don't tell me that just because they go after the Reapers I should forgive them. It matters."
The engineers said nothing, just looked at her with new expressions of pity, and Tali turned back towards the next sensor bay, the clanking of her feet ponderously loud in her ears. She knew she was being at least a little unfair. Obviously Ken and Gabby had nothing to do with what had happened on the Idenna. But they worked for an organization that thought so little of other species that it attacked and killed and took what it wanted before even attempting diplomacy.
It did matter.
"Sorry, Tali," Ken said behind her.
Tali said nothing.
"But I'm still not a terrorist."
Tali sighed. "I know," she admitted. She looked at them. "Just… finish the job," she said.
–
It took almost ten hours, but finally the three of them managed to get the sensors reintegrated into the Normandy's systems. Ten hours of work for one little green light on the ship's diagnostic screens, but that was one little green light closer to getting spaceworthy again.
Their quarrels abandoned under being equally hot, tired, and hungry, they returned to the docking tube in silence, too exhausted for their usual bickering. In the docking tube the engineers peeled off their spacesuits – their mammalian hair slicked to their skin, sticky with sweat that made them look like waterlogged pets, but all the same Tali couldn't help but feel a pang of jealousy that they had something to remove. Her own suit kept her more or less temperature controlled, but it did develop a sickly layer of condensation after a few hours on external air that made her resent her poor immune system all over again.
Still, at least she didn't have any clothing to fight with. As soon as the atmosphere equalized, she left the airlock, padding toward the cockpit and leaving the humans to wrestle with their sticky spacesuits.
She found Joker hard at work, laying on his back under the ship's dash as he toyed with the electronics that managed the piloting consoles, his feet perched on the seat of his chair as if he feared someone would leap into it as soon as he left.
"Good news, Tali?" he asked, not looking up from his task as she approached.
"Sensors done," Tali confirmed. "I'll still have to go out to check on the engine issue you mentioned, but that'll have to wait for the fuel fix or I'll just have to do it again."
"Sweet," Joker grunted. "Next priority?"
Tali sighed. "Too many to count. Safety, auxiliary systems, auxiliary life support, mass effect stabilizers, secondary gravity, half of EDI's systems…" She pulled out her omni-tool. "Listen, Joker. Could you send a message for me? Shipboard wireless is still down, has to go through the main network."
Joker actually shifted out to look at her. "Yeah? Where to?"
"The Flotilla. I'm uploading it to your console." She hesitated, biting her lip. "It… it probably should stay secret."
Joker smiled. "Aww… now that's just mean, Tali. How am I supposed to sleep tonight with all your talk of secrets?"
"Nothing personal, just it could be a problem if certain people read it. You know who I mean." She didn't know how the Illusive Man might react if he found out she was trying to find a quarian crew to replace his. "I encrypted it, so just send it when you get a chance. If you want to know what it said, come ask me later."
"You got it, Tali. We'll have a gossip night. I've got a few zingers about Gardner that I may or may not have on good evidence."
Tali smiled wearily. "Thanks." She bent down to pat Joker's knee as gently as she could manage before turning back down the hall.
She hadn't gone ten feet before she ran into trouble. The engineers – finally free of their suits – had come inside, only to stumble straight into Jack's clutches. They stood, frozen in place, their bundled suits still in their hands, watching the bandy her knife about like a trophy. The biotic was patrolling back and forth across the hall, cutting off their exit. She had a manic, predatory look to her as she waved her knife about under the engineers' chins and explained something in a silky-sweet tone of voice that was anything but.
Tali was suddenly very aware of the fact that she'd left her shotgun in the engineering deck. She stepped in. "What's going on here?"
"Fuck off, Tin-can," Jack snarled, not even favoring her with a look. "I ain't talkin' to you." She pointed her knife at Ken. "It's these Cerberus shits I want." Tali was no biotic, but even she could feel how the air shimmered around Jack. The woman's implants had been reactivated for the raid on the collector ship and apparently nobody had thought to turn them off yet. It made the whole ship seem to shake with her power, like it would come apart at a moment's notice.
"Enough, Jack. They have work to do," Tali said, summoning her omni-tool and calling up the program that would cut off Jack's biotics. She held up her omni-tool so the woman could see.
"Fuck that," Jack said, sneering. "And fuck your little off button. I'm rounding up all the little Cerberus stooges until Shepard gets back to deal with 'em," she boasted, "and I don't need my biotics to do it." She turned to Donnelly and Daniels. "Come on," she ordered, gesturing with the knife. "Down you go."
They hesitated, but Jack's knife was nothing to argue with and finally, with a last, pleading look at Tali, Donnelly took a step forward. Daniels followed behind.
"Stop," Tali ordered, raising her omni-tool.
"Fuck you," Jack said, turning her back to follow the engineers.
Mistake.
There was a flash and Jack hit the ground, howling in pain. Smoke curled from the back of her head as the overloaded implant burnt her skin. Tali casually kicked the biotic's fallen knife out of her hand and stepped onto her back without hesitation. For all of Jack's biotic power, she was really a very small woman – on the ship only Kasumi was shorter – and Tali's weight was more than enough to hold her down.
"You bitch," Jack roared. "If you broke my implant I swear to GOD I'll-"
Tali zapped her again, silencing her threats under another jolted yelp of pain. "Shut up," Tali said.
"I will destroy you!"
"You'd better make sure you do," Tali said, voice calm as she turned off Jack's implant, confident her point was made. "Your implant is designed to generate a very powerful charge. Which means it can do seriousdamage to your brain if someone asks it to." She leaned down to whisper in Jack's ear. "Touch them and I'll cook your skull from the inside out," she warned.
"Come on," she said, gesturing at the engineers. She stepped off of Jack without a second glance and headed for the elevator, already tapping at her omni-tool, mind buried in the next job. The two engineers followed behind like they'd been shellshocked.
It wasn't until they'd reached the elevator that Ken found his tongue. "That… that was-"
"Thanks is what he means to say," Gabby supplied.
"I want you two to go get started on EDI's surveillance systems," Tali said, ignoring them. "She's no use to us like this." She palmed the elevator control, ignoring the stares the engineers were still giving her. Neither of them protested the order.
The elevator opened and she stepped inside, stone-faced.
But she couldn't help but smile a little as soon as the doors closed behind her.
–
The timer on her console gave a click, signaling the start of the next shift.
Tali looked up from her bench, reading the time with some surprise. That was eight shifts straight, she concluded after a moment of calculation. More than two days since she'd last slept. Her internal clock had never matched the human crew's all that well – she often would work three or four in a row – but eight was pushing it, even for her. Her eyes were sore, her back was sore, her head was sore.
She could only imagine how Donnelly and Daniels felt. Across the room, the two humans were stretched out on the floor beneath their own consoles, fast asleep amongst what bedding they'd managed to steal from the crew quarters. Tali had not pressed them on the sleeping arrangement when they'd dragged their blankets and spread out right on the deck, but it was unusual. The two usually let a game of chance decide which of them got the bunk on the crew deck they shared a claim in and which of them had to take a pod for the night (as mathematically improbable as it seemed, Ken almost invariably lost). Sleeping down in the ship's belly with her was new.
Tali let them rest. Stifling a yawn of her own, she returned to her task. Another hour or two and she'd get some sleep of her own. There were still plans to be made.
She'd spread the tiny listening bugs out on her bench. The benchtop was backlit (she'd had to fix the circuit first) and made even their tiny, transparent circuits easy to see.
Yeoman Kelly Chambers
That was what it all came down to. And it wasn't even about Kelly herself – that's what Tali had realized. It was about the fact that Cerberus was unpredictable. Hard to read. The least offensive of them on the entire ship had been the one to rebug Shepard's cabin. And perhaps it was her exhaustion talking, but Tali wasn't sure how angry she should be about that.
'They're good people', Shepard had said. And he believed it. And if Shepard had any talent (and Tali was of the opinion that he had many) it was in bringing out goodness in people. He'd even made Wrex act like a semi-decent person from time to time. Shepard wanted – needed, maybe – to give Cerberus the chance to do the same. And it was not Tali's place to stand in the way of that.
But she had seen what kind of galaxy it was. What kind of people lived in it. The sorts of people that had turned her away when she'd been a scared child on Pilgrimage, bleeding out and halfway delirious with infection from a hit-man's bullet on the Citadel. The galaxy was a nasty place. It demanded some caution.
It demanded some… cleverness.
And so Tali had spent the past several hours trying to figure out how to change the broadcast frequency on the Cerberus bugs without destroying them. It wasn't an easy task – the bugs were designed to be tamper-proof, and beside the fact were tiny even by Tali's standards. One slip was more than enough to ruin their brittle circuitry – Tali broke the first two she tried to alter. Then the second she managed to disassemble and reset, but by the time she put it back together the adhesive disk was so damaged the bug could no longer pick up anything audible.
She kept trying until she was almost halfway through her ninth shift, until her eyes were so out of focus and her brain so muddy she could barely think. Her fingers were even starting to shake. Still she soldiered on.
It was only a ping from her omni-tool that pulled her out of her tunnel vision. A message from Joker, empty but for an attached message from the Flotilla. With numb fingers, Tali called up the message.
It was a recorded response from Xen. The admiral's narrow helmet appeared, floating in hologram above Tali's wrist. "Tali'Zorah," she started in her usual aloof tone. "Regarding your request for a quarian crew. Your request is denied pending the results of further hearings. That is all." The message ended.
Tali recognized a wrongness in the message. Further hearings? About what? And why was it Xen answering, and not Raan, Gerrel, or even her father? Tali had barely spoken three words to Xen in her life.
But the underlying message was clear. No quarian crew. At least not now.
Tali was too tired to feel any real disappointment at that.
She looked over at the two humans sleeping on the floor. Ken had migrated in his sleep until he was barely on his blanket anymore, his head leaning back over the edge of the deck plating, while Gabby had wrapped herself around one of Ken's legs and was drooling onto his knee.
Tali nodded a silent agreement and, climbing over the railing into her usual spot nestled amongst one of the bulkheads, joined them in sleep.
Seventeen hours later…
–
It took some searching, but Tali finally found Yeoman Kelly Chambers in the last place she'd expected – tending to Zaeed in the old mercenary's quarters. Nobody she'd asked had seen Kelly in some hours, and by the time Tali had walked the full circuit and ended up right back on the engineering deck, her mood had taken another step for the worse.
"So me and 'Wem took the front," Zaeed was saying from his seat on one of his crates, his back up against the wall, "while Stefan and Dungpile took the rear." His leg – swaddled in bandages from the shots he'd taken on the collector vessel – was locked stiff-kneed in a brace resting on another crate, but if the injury bothered him at all he made no sign. "The nest had a pretty big blind spot, so we started up the-"
"Dungpile?" Kelly interrupted, not noticing Tali's entrance. "You had a guy named Dungpile?"
Zaeed smiled at the memory. "Heh, yeah. One of the foundin' members. Good ol' Dungy. Swedish mercenary, real name was… Charles somethin', I think," he said, scratching his chin. "Don't really remember. Never really lived down the nickname once we tricked him into gettin' it tattooed in Gurshki across his arm."
"Oh my."
Zaeed shrugged. "Eh. He got over it. Used it as a conversation starter to meet women. Resourceful son of a bitch, Dungy." He stopped as he noticed the quarian standing in the doorway. "Quarian," he grunted, nodding his head. "Come by for a story?"
Tali paused for a moment, her purpose for coming here briefly lost beneath a genuine curiosity of how you got stuck with the name 'Dungpile'. "Umm… no," she said eventually. "No. I just wanted to see Kelly."
Kelly turned to meet Tali's eyes from where she was sitting. She was dry-eyed but she looked tired, her usually-tidy mane in disarray. "Tali!" she said, and her voice was as cheery as ever. "What's up?"
For a half-second, Tali almost changed her mind. After hearing about the yeoman's unusual behavior she'd become convinced Kelly knew she'd been found out and was hiding out of fear or guilt or some combination – it would explain what she was doing hiding out with Zaeed, in any case, after avoiding him for so long – but seeing her Tali couldn't see a hint of hesitation in the woman's smile.
But that was why Kelly had been the one to do it in the first place. She was a liar. Tali would have to be too.
"I… heard you were upset," Tali said, fiddling with the object in her hands. "About… Miranda. I made you something."
Kelly's eyebrows rose. "Really? You didn't have to-"
Tali cut her off, holding out the bauble she'd spent the better part of a day slaving over.
Kelly's eyes widened as she took the offering. "It's pretty," she said, and it sounded like she meant it. The technical side of the project had been easy for Tali once she'd figured it out, but making it into something a human might find pretty had been like getting fitted for a new suit. She'd experimented and welded and rewelded and picked at it over and over and over again before she'd decided to try to imitate an Earth flower, complete with glass-blown petals she'd shaped out of spare circuitboards melted under a plasma torch.
"It's supposed to be one of those… hair things," Tali said sheepishly, fiddling with her fingers and staring at her toes. "You wear it in your mane to keep your hair…" the awkwardness wasn't hard to fake - she had to think about the right words "…on… your… hair," she concluded, sighing. She didn't look up, her stomach was too busy churning.
Kelly's face brightened. "A hair clip!" She tilted her head and deftly captured her errant bangs in the teeth of the clip. Tali wasn't entirely sure how she did it, but in seconds Kelly had tamed her mane and had it pinned, the new bauble resting picturesquely behind her left ear. "Heaven knows I need it." Kelly turned her head this way and that, trying to catch her reflection in one of the walls, before turning to Zaeed. "How does it look?"
"Bloody fascinating," the mercenary drawled, taking a lazy puff from a cigar. "You look like a whole new person."
Kelly hit him gently on the uninjured knee. "No need to be sarcastic. I think it's sweet." She turned back towards Tali. "Thank you, Tali. This brightens my day."
"Good," Tali lied. "I hoped it would. Because I need a favor. I got word from Shepard. He found Garrus and he's on his way back. He wants us to gather up. Can you help me get everyone in the hangar?"
"Absolutely," Kelly agreed, hopping from her seat. "You good where you are, Zaeed?" The merc shrugged – probably as close to a 'yes' as she was going to get – and Kelly grabbed her datapad and headed for the door. "It'll be good to have everyone back," Kelly said, passing Tali with an earnest smile.
Something made Tali reach out and grab the human by the elbow. "Stop."
Kelly stopped, staring curiously at Tali. She looked as happy as ever, completely oblivious to the way Tali's stomach was flipping inside of her. "Yeah?"
"I don't believe you," Tali said, quiet so the mercenary wouldn't overhear.
Kelly frowned. "Believe what?"
"You know what," Tali accused, eyes narrow behind her helmet. "You know why I'm really here."
Kelly didn't deny it, just stared back into Tali's helmet with that same even, innocent gaze.
"You know what that really is," Tali whispered, gesturing to the metal flower in Kelly's hair. The metal flower that featured, at its center, a trio of tiny, rewired surveillance bugs that reported directly to Tali's omni-tool.
Kelly was quiet for several long seconds. "It's… a hairpiece," she insisted finally. The gleam in her eyes faltered for the briefest moment and Tali saw the understanding there. Kelly was no fool. She knew she'd been caught. She knew she was being given a chance.
Tali nodded. "Of course it is," she agreed. "You'll wear it always?" she asked.
"Always," Kelly promised.
"Good." Tali let go of her shirt, but for one last warning. She leaned in close, voice barely above a whisper. "I have a shotgun."
Kelly's eyes widened for an almost imperceptible second.
Then she walked out of the room with her usual smile on her face as if nothing was wrong, leaving Tali staring after her, wondering if she'd done the right thing. No doubt someone on Cerberus' end would notice their new bugs had gone silent, but Tali hoped with Miranda gone nothing would come of it, at least until she had come up with a system to prevent any more bugging attempts. She had briefly debated asking EDI to fake data to hide the bugs' disappearance, but she decided she was placing too much trust in the AI as it was.
Still, Kelly was a perfect target for bugging. She was the ship's liason – official or otherwise – with Cerberus. She spoke to the whole crew regularly. Maybe even the Illusive Man. And now Tali would be able to listen in whenever she wanted. Give Cerberus a taste of their own slimy tactics for once.
"What," Zaeed's voice rumbled from behind her. "I don't get one?"
Tali turned, confused. "Do human males typically wear flowers in their manes?" Maybe she should have made one for Zaeed. Jacob too, for that matter. She didn't figure the Illusive Man told either of them anything – they were just grunts – but perhaps with Miranda gone...
Zaeed grinned, shifting his hurt leg off of its perch. "Nah," he grunted, gnarled hands rubbing just above his knee, "Just screwin' with you. Hand me that." He pointed to one of his workdesks, where a long, silver cane leaned. Tali grabbed it and handed it to him. "Pfft. Not that," Zaeed grunted, batting it aside and pointing at the bench again. "The gun."
Zaeed heaved himself to his feet and Tali handed him his assault rifle. The gun was heavy and pitted with damage, but Tali knew enough about guns to know it was in perfect health. It had even been modded with a driver barrel longer than any Tali had seen before – the gun would pierce all but the strongest shields with ease. Tali almost regretted giving it to him, but Zaeed nodded his thanks as he took it and latched it to his back before limping towards the door. "Can't be seen leanin' on a cane right now, Zorah," he said, tossing her a shrewd glance. He gestured to the door.
"You can't walk right but you still want a gun?" Tali asked, following him out. She considered helping him, but thought better of it. He'd probably reject it anyway.
"Sure. You said your boyfriend's on his way back. That means-"
"He's not my-"
"That. Means," Zaeed repeated, waving a finger at her mask, "that it's about time for the Mexican standoff."
"What's a Mexican standoff?"
"Staring contest," Zaeed said, punching the elevator button. "Good ones end in a death or two."
–
The Kodiak had hardly set down when Garrus was disembarking. The heavy thud of the turian's boots echoed through the hangar, sounding as angry as his face looked, his mandibles flush against his chin and his eyes narrowed in barely-contained anger as he stormed.
Tali felt a rush of relief to see the turian, angry or not, and almost called out to him, to ask him what had happened, if he was alright.
But she was not the only one waiting for him.
Garrus stopped in his tracks as he noticed his audience. His mandibles flickered in surprise to see the entire ship waiting for him, their own faces dour but for Tali's (she tried to smile reassuringly at him, for what little good it did.)
Nobody spoke.
The staring contest began in earnest when Shepard and Thane stepped out after him, stopping behind the turian.
Miranda was nowhere to be seen.
The air seemed heavy, and Tali remembered what Zaeed had said. Good ones ended in a death or two. She stole a glance at the merc, saw his stony face drawn in its usual grimace. She'd assumed him joking, but all the same, he had his hand on his weapon. He'd taken up position a few steps behind the crowd, his back to the doorframe, with a clear shot on the entire hangar.
He met her eyes for the briefest moment, gave a short nod, and she understood.
It was a firing position. Tali blanched behind her helmet to realize it. He had not been joking.
She scurried to the opposite side of the crowd, taking up the mirror of Zaeed's position, and rested her fingers on the hilt of her shotgun. Now that she looked, it was obvious. The crewmembers, the civilians who'd never held a gun before, stood in a clump like herd animals, but every single member of the ground team was armed and ready to fight. Grunt stood in the center of the crowd like a monolith, hands wrapped around an enormous shotgun, while Samara stalked the outskirts with her usual stony imperviousness.
Tali swallowed nervously. She would be ready. The silence pounded almost as loud as her heart.
"Well?" someone asked. "Where is she?" It was Jacob. He parted the crowd to stand before Garrus. Blue tendrils trailed from his broad shoulders and Tali could hear his angry breathing from across the hangar. Jacob stared up at the turian, his face twisted in rage.
Garrus was quiet. "Nowhere," he said.
"How dare you come back without her, she-"
"I didn't plan to come back at all, Jacob," Garrus interrupted.
"And yet here you are."
"Here I am," Garrus agreed. He didn't sound happy about it.
Shepard stepped in, placing a protective hand on Garrus' shoulder. "And he's here to stay, Jacob. Get used to the idea."
Jacob had his gun drawn in a flash. It made a whirring sound as he leveled it at Garrus' chin. "Not good enough!" Jacob roared, the corona around him darkening.
The hangar practically exploded into activity. There was a shout and flurries of movement and a chorus of guns priming. Tali found herself bounding to Garrus' side, shotgun drawing in one smooth motion to line up with Jacob's head. Grunt's indignant roar shook the hangar, his own shotgun immediately brought to bear on the guards Gibbs and Tennard, who drew on Shepard and Tali. Samara's hands bloomed with crackling blue energy even as Zaeed stood firm by the doorway pointing his own rifle at her forehead.
Garrus did not move.
"You," Jacob breathed, ignoring the guns bristling around him, "are going to take me to her now."
"Jacob…" Shepard's voice was warning as he slid in between Jacob's gun barrel and Garrus. His own gun was still hooked to his back. "I know you're upset, but-"
"You're damn right I'm upset!" Jacob roared, and Tali was for a moment sure he'd shoot Shepard then and there. "Miranda was not a threat! I even told him that!" he shouted, gesturing at the turian. "And now he killed her!"
"Jacob," Shepard was unwavering. "Put. the gun. down."
"Move," Jacob growled.
"You're not going to shoot me, Jacob." Shepard reached out and put his hand on the end of Jacob's gun. "Put it down and we'll talk about this."
Jacob didn't move.
"Miranda is not dead, Jacob," Shepard insisted.
Jacob's barrel dropped a few centimeters.
Shepard's strike came out of nowhere – everyone heard the crack of Jacob's nose and the noisy whump as the two men fell to the ground in a clatter of armor and flesh. Jacob let out a shout of surprise as Shepard tore the gun from his grip, but it was hardly a second before he'd slammed a biotic fist into Shepard's cheek. With a roar that sounded more krogan than human he rolled on top of the commander.
The whole thing took less than a second, and the rest of the crowd was on them. Grunt grabbed Jacob's arm and yanked, tearing the two men away from one another. As big as Jacob was, he was a doll in the krogan's grip and tumbled three meters before skidding to a stop.
Tali rushed to crouch next to Shepard, heart thundering to see the state of his face. Jacob's strike had left a gruesome gash under Shepard's left eye that dripped crimson onto the hangar floor and exposed the soft glow of red cybernetics beneath.
"Shepard?"
"I'm fine," he muttered, and tried to rise. She pushed him down with one hand, leaning in to stare at his injury. She instantly regretted ever complaining about the surgery on his eyes – the open wound almost made her sick to look at, ragged edged and vulnerable next to Chakwas' careful incisions. She dug at one of her pockets and produced a portable ultraviolet sterilizer. It gave a hum and illuminated brilliantly in her hand as she ran it over his face.
"I'm kind of in the middle of an epic speech, Tali, I'd-"
"Because you're doing so well so far," she interrupted, sweeping the lamp back and forth. "Hold still." Shepard grimaced but let her finish. Human ships were filthy, and Tali ran the lamp twice, ignoring the way Shepard's electronic eyes fluttered in the glow. The lamp gave a beep and she slipped it back into her pocket, leaning back on her haunches to stare at Shepard. She shook her head. That would have to do.
Shepard rose to a sitting position, grinning under the blood. "Nah, I got this." He winked, his eye giving a click, and held out a hand for Thane to drag him to his feet. He stumbled a little, but quickly regained his footing and was steady enough, waving off the assassin's attempts to support him. He turned back to face Jacob.
Everyone watched him rub his bloody face on his left gauntlet, leaving a red stripe there to match the N7 colors on his right. "We ready to do this without guns?" he asked, shaking off his hand. He raised one eyebrow.
Jacob was bloodied and bruised himself, his face still grim under a trickled smear from his cracked nose, but he nodded. His corona was gone.
"Good. Everybody. No more guns." Shepard gestured around the room. "Guns down. Now." He looked expectantly from person to person. For a moment, nobody moved.
Then Zaeed holstered his gun with a bored grunt and plopped down on the bulkhead to get off his injured leg, and like that all the tension bled away. Tali dropped her shotgun back into its clip on her back. The guards followed suit. Grunt was the last, holstering his shotgun with a reluctant growl. He remained pointedly standing just between the commander and Jacob, however, his bulk a massive wall.
"Now listen," Shepard said, and everybody listened. "What happened to Miranda is not what I wanted. It isn't what any of us wanted. But Garrus has convinced me it was necessary and as little as I like that, I trust him." He stared at the crew. "I don't know what kind of reprisal to expect from Cerberus for that. Maybe one of you does. Maybe you have plans to retaliate." He paused, face dour. Blood continued to trickle from the wound beneath his eye.
"But I don't think it matters," Shepard said. "Simple fact is with her gone I have the advantage. I have the pilot in my camp. I have the XO. I have the chief engineer. I have Samara. I have Grunt." He gestured to the krogan, who stood up a little straighter. Shepard returned his gaze to Jacob, his face even, his tone matter-of-fact. "And I have the doctor," he added.
He let that sink in. He had the krogan and the doctor. He had the only person who could rip a human's arm out of its socket and he had the only person who could put it back. Grunt beamed.
"You're angry, Jacob. I get it," Shepard said. "But anything Cerberus starts, Grunt can finish. If this turns violent, it's going to go badly for you."
Jacob shook his head. "So that's how it is, is it?" he demanded. "Shape up or the krogan will kill me?"
Shepard looked pained. "No. I trust you, Jacob. I stepped in front of your gun knowing you would never turn on me. But if your boss is planning violence against us, if your boss pits Cerberus against me… I'll fight back. And I'll win. I'm asking you to help me make sure that doesn't happen. I'm asking you to be on my team."
"Miranda is dead," Jacob said, voice cracking.
"No she isn't," Shepard insisted. He turned to Garrus. "Garrus?"
Garrus looked uncomfortable. He shook his head.
Shepard nodded, convinced. "She's just off the ship, Jacob."
Jacob said nothing.
"If you want to leave to go after her," Shepard said after a moment, raising his voice so his audience could hear him, "Then go. No strings attached. No retaliation. We're on the Citadel. Anyone who wants out, this is your stop. Leave in peace."
"But if you're staying, here's my ultimatum," Shepard said. He began to pace in front of the crew, stopping to stare at each of them. "We've had some trouble so far, but it all ends today. As of today, if you remain on this ship you are not Cerberus. I don't care why you joined. I don't care what your philosophy is. I don't care if you agree with them. On this ship, you are a part of a crew, and your loyalty is to every other person on this ship. We have our crew," he said, gesturing to the crowd. "We have our ground team. We have our ship." He paused. "But we are not ready to take on the collectors, and we won't be until we can work as a team. Until we trust each other."
"And so I am offering you all my trust," Shepard continued. "A blank slate. A fresh start. In exchange, you will give me yours. We will not keep secrets. We will not report anything to the Illusive Man that is not also reported to the rest of the ship. We will learn to work together – Cerberus and non-Cerberus alike – and we will stop the collectors. Does anybody have a problem with that?"
He paused, sweeping his gaze across the crowd one more time until he stopped at Tali, face expectant. His brows rose in a wordless question.
Tali hesitated, briefly catching Kelly's eye from across the room. The yeoman looked genuine. Honest. As usual. Behind her, the two engineers were trying to look nonchalant.
Tali considered turning them in. Shepard had said he'd remove them if she asked. Maybe that was still right. The Flotilla could still come through for her. Maybe she could contact her father directly, or the captain of the Neema. Find a way. Or even if not, maybe she could keep the Normandy running alone. Maybe it would be worth the extra work, to keep Cerberus out of it.
Or maybe it was time for her to give up some trust too.
Tali suppressed a sigh. She shook her head.
Shepard gave her a nod and turned back to his audience. "Those are your choices," he said. "Be on the team that beats the collectors or leave." He looked to Jacob. "Jacob?"
Jacob grimaced but gave a quiet nod.
"EDI?" Shepard asked, looking to the ceiling.
"I agree, Shepard," EDI said. "Though strictly speaking, Grunt does not represent a compelling threat to me."
Grunt bristled, but Shepard just grinned. "Tali, then. I'll have her give you Avina's voice."
There was a pause.
"I find that more compelling."
–
In the end, nobody left.
–
Codex Entry: Select e-mails from the terminal of Operator Fedir Antonich, head of Cerberus' Anubis Cell.
From: RESTRICTED
Sent: 6.12.2186 9:42:22:pm EST
To: Fedir Antonich (f_antonich_5512221(at)020NAnub_int)
Subject: Operative Lawson.
–
Find her. Now.
–
–
From: Tobias Whent (t_whent_3502741(at)020NHeph_int)
Sent: 6.12.2186 8:08:20pm EST
To: Fedir Antonich (f_antonich_5512221(at)020NAnub_int)
Subject: Re: Re: waaay toooo topheavy
–
Never mind. Higher ups love her.
I guess I'm in the business of making sexbots now.
Jesus.
Dr. Tobias Whent
Head of Applied Robotics, Hephaestus Cell
–
–
From: Adam Solheim (a_solheim_5512821(at)020NAnub_int)
Sent: 6.12.2186 3:31:58pm EST
To: Fedir Antonich (f_antonich_5512221(at)020NAnub_int)
Subject: Re: Re: missing operative on citadel
–
roger that. just don't come crying to me when i bring her back in a box.
as
–
–
From: Tobias Whent (t_whent_3502741(at)020NHeph_int)
Sent: 6.12.2186 2:00:55pm EST
To: Fedir Antonich (f_antonich_5512221(at)020NAnub_int)
Subject: waaay toooo topheavy
–
Operator Antonich.
I appreciate the fast response, but is this a joke? We need someone who can run and fight. Not to impugn your operatives' skill, but the woman you sent us looks like she can hardly walk without breaking her lower back. Besides, the 41B is intended to be an infiltrator. There is no. fucking. way. the higher-ups want it to look like a supermodel smuggling two asari matriarchs.
Third time's the charm. Send us a new operative.
Dr. Tobias Whent
Head of Applied Robotics, Hephaestus Cell
–
–
From: Adam Solheim (a_solheim_5512821(at)020NAnub_int)
Sent: 6.12.2186 12:41:44pm EST
To: Fedir Antonich (f_antonich_5512221(at)020NAnub_int)
Subject: missing operative on citadel
–
initial scans don't look good. no implant, no omnitool, no word from her communicators, no bank activity. if miranda's on the citadel then ten credits says she's dead and timmy's out of luck. i'll start checking the morgues. maybe the keepers haven't got her yet.
as
–
–
From: Tobias Whent (t_whent_3502741(at)020NHeph_int)
Sent: 6.12.2186 7:02:00am EST
To: Fedir Antonich (f_antonich_5512221(at)020NAnub_int)
Subject: Mocap for infiltrator 41-41-41B platform prototype
–
Operator Antonich.
While we appreciate your willingness to spare your men for our project, unfortunately there has been a change in direction and the in situ combat motion data we captured with Operative Salama is no longer usable. It is our hope that his data will be incorporated into a later design initiative, but the design team on the 41B has been given new orders.
Do you have any female operatives who would be willing to visit our facility? Ideal candidate would be 183 cm, approximately 70kg. As before, must have perfect record of health and extremely high (99 percentile) physical aptitude scores. Recording will take 10-15 days.
We are prepared to offer the same compensation as last time, including hazard pay.
We apologize for the inconvenience, and appreciate any further help you can offer.
Let me know,
Dr. Tobias Whent
Head of Applied Robotics, Hephaestus Cell
–
–
From: Anubis Station Automated System (donotreply(at)020NAnub_int)
Sent: 6.12.2186 5:33:33am EST
To: Fedir Antonich (f_antonich_5512221(at)020NAnub_int)
Subject: Security profile updates
–
THIS IS AN AUTOMATED MESSAGE. DO NOT REPLY.
Attached please find a list of all Cerberus personnel with security clearance expiring this year. Investigations are expected to be completed by the end of the 2186 fiscal year.
The following employees have also been flagged for additional review:
020N5232504Bartels, Lucius – Anubis, imprisoned at Arcturus, Arcturus
020N6447275Carter, Steven – Prometheus, Rsch post 4, Nepheron
020N6231289Cole, Brynn – Prometheus, Rsch post 4, Nepheron
020N7384617Faller, Malinda – Lazarus, on probation at Haribon, Terra Nova
020N3232889Harrison, Samuel – Hephaestus, NRMNDYSR3 project, Heph
020N5567123Hamilton, James – Anubis, lambda4184, on leave, Bekenstein
020N5567124Hamilton, Jeffery – Anubis, lambda4184, on leave, Bekenstein
020N5568100Kahoku, Alana – Anubis, on probation at Haribon, Terra Nova
020N6377221Loach, Maximillian – Prometheus, Rsch post 4, Nepheron
020N6340192Longstreet, Elinor – Prometheus, New Dawn Pharmaceuticals, Trident
020N6340402Makris, Cody – Prometheus, Rsch post 4, Nepheron
020N5567110Virden, Tack – Anubis, lambda 4184, on leave, Bekenstein
020N3502887Weyland, Alan – Hephaestus, on probation at Haribon, Terra Nova
Any individuals who fail to pass security investigations should be sent to Iera system for processing.
Thank you!
THIS IS AN AUTOMATED MESSAGE. DO NOT REPLY.
–
–
From: RESTRICTED
Sent: 6.12.2186 4:02:32am EST
To: Fedir Antonich (f_antonich_5512221(at)020NAnub_int)
Subject: Operative Lawson.
–
Find her.
–
A/N: Bam.
As usual, many thanks to my readers, my reviewers, my two betas, and all the many people who have taken the time to comment on my writing. Makes it fun.
The observant might point out that Tali's confusion regarding Kelly's hair seems out of place for someone who - as per ME3 - apparently has three feet of hair herself. To that I say PFFFFTTTTTTTTTT. Boo crappy Photoshops! Tali does not have hair! Boooooo! I reject your reality and substitute my own!
Apologies for being a bit repetitive with codex entries, but this one's loaded with in-jokes so perhaps that makes up for it (?). Next two codex entries will be meatier.
The POV for chapter 23 has been ever-so-patiently waiting in the wings for her turn. And yet even after all that, she will have to share it with her doppelganger. Poor gal. Then Chapter 24 is split five ways, all of them new POV's for the story.
EDIT: This chapter pushes this story past 300,000 words. Huzzah! I'm guessin' about 100,000 to go.
EDIT2: I have apparently caused some confusion with my codex entry. The emails from the robotics division guy are a tongue-in-cheek reference to ME3, not to anything going on in the chapter. In retrospect I can see how this would be something of an enormous throwoff. Miranda is not being replaced by a robot. My apologies - I shall try to be more careful with my jokes in the future.