In the waning hours of the Citadel's night, the only sound in the apartment was the ambient hum of the air system, joined by the occasional drone of an air car passing in the distance.
It was a rather nice place, Tali thought to herself. The detective's residence was, as she understood, somewhat modest by the Citadel's standards, but the apartment was still a few times larger than the admiral's residence she'd grown up in. Even the guest room was larger than most of the housing cubicles aboard the Rayya.
Another way it differed from her birthship was the decorations—or, rather, the lack thereof.
Even if the age of the vessel and lack of materials meant that systems were constantly breaking down and engineers like herself were chronically low on parts to make repairs, the Rayya was still her home. The halls may've been worn by the countless thousands of quarians who had walked them, but they were always clean, and her people would decorate their tiny rooms brightly, often adorning the walls with patterned fabric in their clan colors. Detective Vakarian's apartment lacked the same... warmth. The walls were bare and from where she stood in the doorway of the guest room, she couldn't see a single picture or anything that didn't look strictly functional.
Tali sighed mournfully. All this space, and it hardly felt like a home.
Most quarians had very little they could call their own, but what precious little they had in the way of personal property was dear to them. As an admiral's daughter, Tali had a bit more than most, but she'd taken almost everything to the Rayya's trading plaza or given to Raan for safekeeping before she'd departed. For her pilgrimage, everything she carried had a purpose—food packets, omni-gel, medicine. Until she made it back to the Fleet, sentimentality was a luxury she couldn't afford.
The engineer had gotten very little rest, sleep lost somewhere amidst the unsettling silence of the room and the unending clamor of her mind. Reluctantly, she had climbed out of bed, unable to bear staring at the ceiling any longer.
Venturing deeper into the sleeping apartment, Tali wandered into the living area, where a tall window on the far wall looked out across ward. The dusky light and the violet backdrop of the nebula gave the scene an air of predawn, casting only the faintest glow into the apartment.
Quarians, as a rule, had excellent night vision, which was further enhanced by their visors, allowing the engineer to navigate the room with ease.
Drawing closer to the window, she paused, hearing a quiet snarling from the direction of the couch and recalling suddenly that Nickeli was sleeping there.
Admittedly, Tali didn't have any real experience with humans. The doctor in the Wards had been the only she'd spoken to prior to C-Sec arresting her a second time, and since the Fleet had no official diplomatic contact with the Alliance, most of what her people knew about them were little more than rumors.
Aboard the Fleet, Tali had always heard that they looked surprisingly quarian, though she personally thought they were generally of broader build than most quarians she knew, especially around the waist. Still, she generally agreed humans shared more external similarities with them than they did the turians or salarians, even if their legs were a funny shape and they had strange flaps of skin for ears.
Culturally however, the two peoples were vastly different. Generations of standing alone against the geth had united her people to serve the good of the Fleet above all else, and though quarians were no strangers to conflict, she'd heard that humans could be apparently quite aggressive, both individually and as a race.
They were fierce individualist, spending much of their history sharply divided into dozens of nation-states over differing beliefs in government, religion, and a million other things. These clashes of ideals had led them to wage countless bloody wars against one another, and even a brief conflict against the turians. Some had even gone as far as compare them to the krogan, though Tali would note that the doctor in the Wards and young soldier on the couch had been markedly more civil than any krogan she'd ever met.
Just the same though, she did wonder what the snarling sound meant. Was it some sort of warning? Was it dangerous to disturb a human when they were sleeping?
Cautiously taking a few steps closer, she peered over the back of the couch and found the source of the strange noise. Her voice was barely a whisper. "Hello?"
The human was not, as she might've worried, waiting to strike. Rather, he was sprawled limply across the couch, his head resting on top of his folded arms and mouth slightly agape as he dozed. To the young quarian, it didn't seem like a particularly comfortable position to sleep in, but he had apparently tried his best to get comfortable. His sheathed knife rested on the nearby coffee table and his black boots stood neatly beside each other next to the couch, and the soldier had found a thick, if undersized, blanket somewhere. Nick hadn't stirred, far too lost to exhaustion to be disturbed by the sound of Tali's intrusion.
Seeing this, she wandered toward the apartment's small kitchen, seeking nothing in particular. The sleepless days she'd spent on the run and the mending wound on her side had left her sick and exhausted to the point of delirium, but too restless to sleep.
Tali quietly made her way toward the window, leaning against the glass and feeling the chill that gradually crept into her shoulder through her suit. She closed her eyes and released a slow breath, concentrating on the muted sensation.
Despite its strange start, the night had surprisingly turned into the quietest since she'd arrived on the Citadel. In fact, it was the first time she'd had a proper bed since she'd left the Fleet, but now her wandering mind had kept her awake. Every fear and doubt that she'd forced down as she fought for survival was bubbling back to the surface. At the moment, worries about what morning would bring plagued her mind just as much as thoughts about the past few weeks.
In principle, tomorrow would be quite simple. She'd be taken to the Presidium to meet the Alliance commander she'd been told about, and then she'd present the evidence she'd gathered to the Council. She wasn't even particularly concerned about the latter part—the proof she'd gathered was irrefutable, laced with terabytes of data from the geth network. For quarians, such encrypted background data was unremarkable, if poorly understood, but it would be more than enough to convince the Council that the evidence was authentic.
But beyond that, the future was less certain.
She couldn't return to the Fleet—not in any real sense. It didn't matter what happened afterward, if she set foot on a quarian ship, she'd live the rest of her life as a mark of shame—on her father, on the Rayya, on the very name, Zorah. She'd be followed by hushed whispers about her pilgrimage for the rest of her days. They might even exile her.
Tali felt her stomach clench at the thought, before bitterly realizing it almost didn't matter. Even if she wasn't exiled, she'd no longer be Tali'Zorah. Anyone who wasn't sickened with disgust at the sight of her would only see the pitiful husk of what used to be one of the Fleet's most promising young engineers.
There goes the admiral's daughter, they'd whisper as she passed.
What a shame, they'd say.
Such a waste.
If Tali had known it would end this way, she would've just let Saren's mercenaries kill her on Illium. She'd have rather died a fool than lived as a bedtime story mothers told their children. Her father would never speak to her again—he'd become a different person after her mother had passed. Vindictive. Demanding. No matter what Tali had accomplished, it seemed as though she'd more than adequate. His words to her before she'd departed on her pilgrimage had been about duty, and doing her people proud.
And what a damned mess she'd made of that.
A dozen good quarians dead, a scout ship abandoned on Illium. All because she'd persuaded them to go after the geth. She'd been so fixated on bringing back a worthy gift and so convinced of her own abilities that she'd been blind to the consequences. Her mistake had cost people their lives.
Could she make up for that? Perhaps. It wouldn't undo the damage she had caused and their blood would always be on her hands, but maybe—just maybe—she could bring something back to the Fleet that was worth all the pain she had caused.
She couldn't do that if she got on that ship in the morning, but this evidence might be her chance. Any mission to stop Saren and his geth would be perilous, perhaps even doomed from the start. The geth were incredibly effective killing machines, a lesson that her people had learned all too well. They didn't eat, sleep, or feel fear. There were countless millions of them lurking on the other side of the Veil, and if they had awoken then they were nothing short of an existential threat to the entire galaxy.
This mission was her way out. An opportunity to prove the worth of the quarian people to the galaxy, and to prove her own worth to the Fleet. Even if she was killed, she'd rather be the admiral's daughter who died trying to redeem herself than to surrender to shaming her father for the rest of her life.
She'd find a way, she resolved as she fought back a wide yawn. But first, she'd find her way back to bed.
The apartment's front door opened slightly, swinging back a few inches before a black combat boot halted it. After a moment, Nickeli finally entered, his shoulder pressed against the door as he stepped inside. One hand clutched a pair of brown paper bags while the other held aloft a cup of coffee, the corpsman careful to avoid jostling the plastic grocery sack that hung from the same elbow.
His stay at the Irin Center had afforded him the opportunity to adjust to the Citadel's night cycle, and he'd gotten an early start to the day, despite getting only a few, short hours of sleep.
Not that he appeared particularly well rested—he'd quite obviously slept in his clothes, badly needed a shave, and the only reason he looked slightly less exhausted than he felt was because he was half-way through his third cup of coffee. Spending the night on the couch hadn't exactly done his back any favors, either. In short, if Ouder caught sight of him, he'd be in for the ass-chewing of a lifetime.
The group had arranged to meet Shepard at the embassy later that morning, and the medic had gone out half an hour ago to find breakfast. It had made for a hell of an elevator ride down to the nearest thing that resembled "street level," but he'd found a food truck at a construction site a couple blocks away. Mercifully, it seemed human construction workers were numerous enough of the Citadel that they served coffee, and he'd grabbed meals for both himself and Garrus.
However, when he'd asked if they had anything suitable for quarians, the turian working the truck had laughed, replying with something that didn't completely translate and shooing the baffled marine away.
Eventually, he'd found his way to a nearby shop and, after a while spent wandering the dextro aisle in confusion, had selected three silver canisters the size of large water bottles from the shelf. They were, as he understood the labels, more self-contained rations than proper meals and he hadn't a clue what flavors constituted "breakfast" to a turian or quarian, but they were marked as quarian-safe, so he'd selected two entrees and a canister of tea.
Tali sat at the small bar that separated the kitchenette and the apartment's living area, resting her head atop her folded arms.
"Morning," Nick greeted, pushing the door shut with his foot. The quarian gave a sleepy grumble in reply, lifting her head and stretching with an air of mild annoyance. "Well, tell us how you really feel."
"Like I could sleep for a week." The engineer groaned, slouching back as far as the stool she was sitting on would allow. After a moment, she seemed to take notice of the pleasant smell wafting from the bags the medic was carrying. "What're those?"
"Breakfast," He answered, peering around the quiet apartment. "Where's Garrus?"
"I smell food." The turian declared as if on cue, entering from the direction of his bedroom. The detective hadn't donned his armor yet, and Nickeli noted that turian casual wear looked rather formal, sharp lines and crisp angles that rather reminded him of his own service uniform.
Vandas nodded, setting everything down on the counter. Fishing through the brown paper bags, he produced a stack of black plastic containers. Popping off the lid, he regarded the contents with a skeptical look and began to read from the grease-stained slips attached to them.
"For the detective, a 'Palaven Special' with some kind of mash that looks like they scraped it out of the grease catcher and a side of something I can only assume is meat." Pushing the container aside, he grabbed the second one. "For me, a 'Sunshine Skillet' with powdered eggs that probably aren't from a chicken and sausage links made out of people who ask too many questions about what the sausage is made of." He fished around in the bag a bit, "And a bagel."
Garrus grabbed his meal, regarding both the food and the corpsman with equal amounts of skepticism, to which the man gave a defensive shrug. "Hey, I bought it out of a truck, what'dya want from me?"
The turian just shook his head with a toothy smirk, rummaging through a drawer to find a set of eating utensils before situating himself at the coffee table in the living room.
"And for the lady," The medic began, digging into the grocery bag. Pulling out one of the metal canisters, he stared at the label for a long moment, the text utterly unpronounceable. With a shrug, he set it down on the table. "Whatever this is."
Tali grabbed the canister, reading the label before turning it over in her hand to inspect it. She seemed surprised, perhaps even a little incredulous.
"I grabbed a couple because I wasn't sure what the portion sizes were," Nick continued, pushing the bag a bit closer. "I hope I got enough."
"Yes, I..." The young quarian seemed at a loss for words, looking from the container, to the plastic sack, and finally fixing her gaze on the medic. "Thank you."
Nick found himself taken off guard by the odd swell of emotion in her voice, flashing a slight smile. "Uh, yeah, don't worry about it."
Taking a sizable bite out of the bagel, he pulled open the same silverware drawer Garrus had used, digging through it until he found something that looked roughly like a fork. Pulling his meal closer, he dug in, content to lean against the counter as he ate.
Nickeli looked on Tali did likewise, activating the canister's ration heater and extending a thick, grey straw from its top. After a few minutes of watching steam form as it warmed itself, she attached the tube to a port on the underside of her mask and her violet-white eyes were soon reduced to pleased slits as she happily munched away.
"Keelah, I look like a disaster," Tali groaned, trying in vain to brush off her suit as the group approached the human embassy. It was hopeless, of course—she'd accumulated a terrible assortment of stains, smells, and other unpleasantries over the course of the past few weeks. Not only did her suit need plenty of attention to deal with the array of worn spots, loose threads, and other issues from all the abuse she'd put it through, she'd have to scrub down every square inch of the thing before the world quit smelling slightly like the musty cargo hold she'd stowed away in days ago.
"Hey, look at it this way," Nick began with a grin, "Sometimes when you save the day, the 'and look good doing it' part is optional."
She gave a rueful laugh. "I hope they don't make me present the evidence. The first quarian to stand before the Council in three centuries and I look like I got dressed in a dumpster."
Despite her concern, Tali was in high spirits, thanks in no small part to the events of the morning. Breakfast had been an unexpected surprise, and Tali had waddled from her seat like a fat varren—feeling swollen and a bit guilty after shamelessly devouring both helpings and downing the entire canister of tea. She'd given herself an enormous stomachache, but it had been so very worth it. Still, it had been a bright spot in what had amounted to a rather bleak pilgrimage.
Turning over this evidence would be making good on a promise she'd made to herself only a few short weeks ago, though she had aged years in the interim. When she'd realized the enormity of the data she'd recovered, she had sworn to bring it to the Council not just out of fear of a geth invasion, but to demonstrate the value of the quarian people. They were not a band of honorless thieves and vagrants as was too often said, and they had not been consigned to the pages of history when their homeworld had been lost. But that message was to be sent at the cost of nearly twenty quarian lives.
For all of her mistakes, Tali wasn't a fool. She didn't believe for a second that getting rid of this evidence meant that all of this was behind her.
"Tali?" The quarian looked up at the sound of her name, realizing that the group had come to a halt in the embassy's reception area as she was lost in thought. Nickeli stood beside the engineer with his hands clasped behind his back in a loose parade rest, but his voice betrayed a hint of concern. "You feelin' alright?"
"I'm fine."
The medic didn't immediately move on, instead keeping his gaze fixed on her for a long couple of seconds, and it was rather apparent he didn't entire believe her. After a moment however, he gave a nod, turning his attention back to the matter at hand.
Garrus, having stepped away to speak to the asari seated behind the embassy's front desk, joined the pair, jerking his head in the direction of the diplomatic offices. "Sounds like they're waiting for us. Let's head inside."
Navigating the polished corridors, they paused in front of an office bearing the symbol of the Alliance in burnished silver. Glancing between his two companions, Garrus gave a nod and tapped the access panel.
The door to the ambassador's office opened, and as the trio entered, they quickly found themselves the center of attention for the handful of people already inside.
Tali first noticed the ambassador himself, an older, well-dressed human with grey hair, wearing a cream-colored jacket. He stood before a desk with two other humans in crisp uniforms the same shade of blue as Nickeli's fatigues with gold trim.
Noticing their arrival, one of them, a woman with short, red hair and an officer's cap clutched under her arm, seemed pleased to see them. However, her companion, a man of darker complexion and higher rank, regarded them with a much more reserved expression. Beside her, Vandas stiffened, noticeably worried to be the subject of their attention.
"Captain Anderson, sir!" Nickeli jumped to rigid attention.
The officer was silent for a long few seconds as stepped closer and took in the medic's unkempt hair and badly wrinkled uniform, a palpable sense of dread radiating from the young marine as he endured the man's appraising eye.
"Private Vandas," Anderson began slowly, folding his hands behind his back with an air of pointed expectation. "Can you explain to me why you didn't return to the Normandy when your liberty expired last night?"
"I," For the briefest moment, Nick's eyes flickered to Shepard, who stood beside the captain with a neutral expression on her face, but quickly snapped back forward. There was a hint in resignation in his voice. "No excuse, sir."
Behind her mask, Tali winced. She hadn't expected him to get in trouble for helping the detective find her, much less to receive a dressing down from his ship's captain for it.
Anderson made a thoughtful sound, glancing to his executive officer. Though the quarian was still learning to read human expressions, the look he gave the commander seemed oddly pleased. "Sergeant Nalwitz,"
From the corner of the room where a pair of Alliance marines waited, the largest human that Tali had ever seen stepped forward, the neatly shaped peak of his beret towering half a foot above the top of her own head. "Sir?"
"Accompany Vandas back to the Normandy, and ensure he reports to Gunnery Chief Williams." The captain glanced to the corpsman, his voice turning reproachful. "We'll discuss disciplinary action later."
"Aye aye, sir." The two marines replied in unison, Brice's tone much more lighthearted than Nickeli's as they came to attention, the captain quickly returning their salutes and dismissing them.
The pair turned for the door and as it closed behind them, the ambassador, who had been standing to the side regarding the affair with a look of mild suspicion, stepped forward.
"Miss Zorah, I am Ambassador Udina," He began, giving a slight bow of the head. "I understand you have evidence you want to present to the Council."
Nickeli exited the Normandy's showers looking and feeling much better off than he entered them.
He'd returned to the ship nearly two hours ago, though he's spent most of most of that time with Williams.
Apparently, he'd missed a rather rigorous gear familiarization training the gunnery chief had run earlier that morning with the rest of the ship's marines, and she'd run him through the details of every piece of his newly requisitioned equipment. Somehow, he'd had the dumb luck to wind up on a ship with a Colonial Security Operations Specialist—meaning the chief who had spent months training security forces on the frontier would be the same one whipping him into shape, which promised to be interesting.
On the bright side, his Berretta had been delivered, though he hadn't had the opportunity to take a look at it yet. At the moment, he had a fairly long to-do list.
The marine plodded barefooted through the Normandy's corridors towards the crew quarters, a towel wrapped around his waist and his boots clutched in one hand. Most of the ship was either asleep or busily finishing preparations for getting underway, and years of barracks living had mostly robbed him of his sense of modesty anyway.
He was, however, rather surprised to meet a familiar C-Sec detective along the way. "Garrus?"
The turian greeted him with a nod, not seeming phased that the medic was bare above the waist and dripping wet. "Vandas." He greeted, "Everyone just got back from meeting with the Council. Felt damn good to get to nail Saren like that, thanks for the help."
"Uh, yeah." Nickeli answered slowly, "What're you doing here? I figured this sort of closed your case against Saren."
"It did, but with the Council sending Shepard after him, I joined up." He replied, though he quickly seemed to remember something. "Oh, speaking of, I was told you were to report to the captain's quarters."
"Right," Vandas acknowledged, fighting the urge to cringe. That would likely be the 'disciplinary action' Anderson had postponed at the embassy.
That probably meant he should get dressed. Somehow, Nick doubted reporting to Anderson's personal quarters in nothing but a towel would help would persuade him to show some leniency. He could try talking to Shepard, though.
Er—Not that he'd be wearing a towel then either. He was just hoping that the commander could persuade the captain to show some leniency, since he couldn't outright admit to having been under orders.
"Uh, anyway," The medic continued, realizing he'd spent a long few moments lost in thought. "Welcome aboard, and thank you for the message—I'm going to go put on some pants."
For his part, Garrus gave a nod, though it was hard to miss the rather perplexed look on his face as Nick hurriedly continued on his way to the crew quarters and ducked inside.
Safely out of sight, the marine grimaced as he pulled a clean uniform from the drawer beneath his mattress. 'I'm going to go put on some pants'? Christ, he needed to get some sleep before the turian was convinced that the ship's corpsman was some kind of sociopath.
Not that he could do that now—he'd have to pencil it in some time after the verbal thrashing he was about to receive.
As the corpsman got dressed, he silently pondered his options.
A late return from liberty wasn't a serious infraction in of itself, but it was certain enough to make life unpleasant for a while. However, if Anderson wasn't privy to the instructions Shepard had given him and caught wind of it now, then he could be very quickly find himself on the receiving end of the military justice system. Granted, Jane had put him in a tough spot with her request, but there still existed the very real potential that he could catch time in the brig for willfully disobeying orders if the captain pressed the matter.
By the time he reached the elevator, Vandas had more or less resigned himself to the situation. He was going to walk in there, stand at attention, and hope against hope that the captain was in a forgiving mood. Given how his luck had been running the last couple of days, the medic wasn't exactly holding his breath.
He paused at the closed door to Captain Anderson's quarters and, taking no risks, gave a heavy knock.
"It's open," A voice that sounded decidedly unlike the captain called, the door moving aside a moment later.
Entering, Vandas found Shepard waiting inside, leaning against the captain's desk with a datapad in her hand.
Bringing his feet together and coming to attention, he rendered a sharp salute. "Reporting as ordered, ma'am."
"As you were," The commander instructed, returning the salute.
The corpsman fell into a slightly more relaxed stance, quickly glancing around and confirming his suspicion that Anderson wasn't present.
"You know, I had faith you and Garrus would find our quarian. Good work."
"Thank you, ma'am." He replied stiffly, prompting the redhead to roll her eyes.
"Relax, Nick." Jane said, pulling the chair from the desk and sitting down. She nodded towards another chair. "You're not in trouble."
The words took an enormous weight off his chest, and the look of relief on his face as he sat drew a chuckle from Shepard.
"I thought you were going to be sick there, for a moment."
He gave a dry laugh. "I thought Captain Anderson was going to tear me a new one."
Her smile faltered slightly. "Anderson's... been relieved. He turned the ship over to me." Glancing up at the medic, she gave a weak shrug. "I'm going to make an announcement to the crew once I figure out what to say."
"You made a pretty good speech on the Council broadcast, commander." Nickeli said, the look of surprise on his face quickly fading. "I'm sure you'll know what to say."
"I appreciate the sentiment," She replied with a rueful chuckle. "But anyway, wanted to thank you for your help finding Tali—her evidence was what we were looking for, and she's decided to join the team."
Nick grunted. It seemed the ship was picking up new members left and right. "So, the enormous krogan in the hangar?"
"Wrex. He'll be joining the ground team."
"I guess I'll make sure to stay out of his way, then."
She chuckled, nodding toward the door. "Anyway, I'd recommend you go get some sleep. We're getting underway pretty soon and I want you rested when we go groundside."
"Groundside? Where are we headed?"
"They'll be a briefing once we're in orbit," She answered with a grin, seeming to relish the chance to get back into the field. "We're heading to Feros."
A/N: Well, I'm not sure if you're all glad to finally be off the Citadel, but I certainly am. Moving forward from here, the plan is for each mission to take up one, or at most two, chapters. I've crunched the numbers a bit, and found that the average chapter length is roughly 4.5k words, so I'll be using that as my minimum length wherever possible.
Additionally, I've been working on some updates to the previous chapters and will be pushing those out here shortly. No significant plot changes, just some writing improvements here or there. I may also set aside a 'chapter' as a place to collect author's notes, but that's to be seen.