Maybe the angara were satisfied with the Initiative's success on Havarl. Sara didn't know; she was too busy trying to sort out the turian mess while Jaal escorted the scientists back to Daar Pelaav by himself.
"The turian ark?" Vetra immediately perked up from where she was chopping vines from around the Tempest.
"There were turians." Sara shrugged. "Whether there's a whole ark of them..."
Drack swung a machete down on a branch and kicked it aside. "Don't get your hopes up," he huffed between swipe after swipe of his blade. "Probably just exiles."
Vetra paused her work to shoot him a glance. "You are one of those exiles. Do you know anything about them setting up camp here?"
"No," he grunted. "But don't be surprised if it's not what you want."
Back on the Nexus, Tann and the others had seemed hesitant to discuss the other arks. It was a reasonable assumption that all missing arks, along with their respective Pathfinders, were crippled by the Scourge, fell victim to the kett or ran into issues as they attempted to settle a less than "golden" world. Even the Nexus, modern marvel that it was, had several systems zapped offline and life support to an entire sector of cryo pods cut when it first ran afoul with the Scourge. Without any clear evidence, it had made more sense to the powers that be to press forward with what they could affect and control. Secure resources and alliances for the Nexus. Anyone was free to whisper the names of Arks Leusinia, Natanus and Paarchero while they stared at the black of space and twiddled their thumbs on their own time.
"Is it true?" Cora appeared on the gangplank and jogged down to join them. "You found an ark?"
"We don't know." Hadn't Sara just said that? Wouldn't it be nice if they had a specific area where they could gather the entire crew so they could relay important information all at once? Something like a Meeting Room with a vidcon terminal?
"If it's turian, I bet Vetra would like to be there," Cora said. She waved to Peebee and Liam. "I can debrief these two for you so you can get back out there."
"Right." Sara nodded. "Vetra? Drack?"
The krogan laughed. "Is that even a question? Harper can play at gardener for a while. Let me get my rifle."
"Great." Sara grinned away the nervous energy. "SAM, upload the navpoint to their omni tools. We can rendezvous with Jaal on our way back."
The three began their trek toward the navpoint, their path drowned in shadows of overgrowth. Sara had SAM pull up her father's personal music library for her to peruse while Vetra relied on distracted chatter to get through the monotony of foot travel.
"It could be an ark," she told Drack. "Refugees show up from time to time on the Nexus."
"Maybe," Drack groused. "Could be refugees, could be exiles, could already be dead by the time we reach them."
Vetra stopped. "You think so?"
"If they were civilian stasis pods and they woke up to a firefight?" He shrugged.
Sara liked to think it was fortunate then, that they were turians. Forget being born with silver spoons in their mouths, turians were taught to hold rifles before they could barely walk. Even if they were civilian pods, she could hope the Roekaar had no idea what they were walking into when they tried to ambush baby with her grandpa's hand-me-down military blade.
It didn't sound like something appropriately comforting for her to say now that SAM had Dad's music blaring in her skull.
As they drew nearer to the navpoint, Sara's soundtrack of Taylor Swift and other centuries old classical music was replaced with the patter of gunfire. She abruptly ended the song and readied her own weapon.
By the time she had a pistol aimed at the small clearing, Drack had already charged in with a roar. He blasted one angara with his biotics and practically surfed in on the flying body as he sprayed rifle fire into the flank of Roekaar. Vetra strategically picked off others hidden in small pockets away from the main group as Drack continued on with his rampage. Sara could kiss that krogan right on the mouth! Everyone always wanted to praise asari commandos, the salarian Special Tasks Group or turian military, but in an elbow to elbow ground fight, Sara would back a krogan every time. She watched him grip a Roekaar by the throat and break the angaran's face against the front plate of his skull while he shot another point blank in the belly, all while she looked at her cover of bramble and decided it wouldn't eat her.
And there was a turian! A fucking turian hopped out from ship debris embedded in the ground and rushed Drack and the Roekaar.
"A shot to the gut." The turian placed his own weapon against the Roekaar's head and pulled the trigger. "Painful."
Drack just chuckled.
"I appreciate the help back there," the turian told him. Without missing a beat, he had his assault rifle pointed defensively at Sara as she stumbled out of the bramble. Fortunately, he glanced at Drack for the go ahead, instead of just blindly firing.
"Human Pathfinder," Drack snorted.
"Huh." The turian dropped his weapon. "Avitus Rix. You looked different to me in the vids, Alec, apologies."
"I get that a lot," Sara deadpanned.
Vetra's groan got lost in Drack's raucous laughter. "I'm going to be sad when you get yourself killed, kid," he told her.
"Me too," Sara agreed. "Wait. What do you mean when?"
The fact that Vetra joined in with Drack's laughter was not comforting, despite her patting Sara on the shoulder. She ignored them both and pressed on. "Are you from the Nexus or Ark Natanus? Ark Hyperion is the only one to reach the Nexus so far."
"Me and the others are from Natanus," Avitus said as he gestured to a handful of turians huddled behind cracked and shattered cryo pods and other scattered debris. "What happened to Alec Ryder?"
"Dead," Sara replied. That it was darkly comedic to keep reliving her father's death for the sake of others while refusing to take the time necessary to process it was not lost on her. She wondered how many different ways she could phrase it or joke about it. "What about your Pathfinder?"
"Don't know." As Avitus waved, his group slowly revealed themselves and made their way over. "Not dead."
"You have proof?" Sara asked.
"If Macen Barro died, the role of Pathfinder would have been transferred over to me," he said. "That hasn't happened."
A safe assumption, she supposed. Then again, Cora could have safely concluded the same had she woken up separated on a strange world. Sara chose to keep that thought to herself.
"Is the ark here?" Vetra asked suddenly.
Avitus shook his head. "No, and I don't know what happened. I woke up on this planet and had to claw my way out of my own stasis pod."
"Wait. Are you saying your pods were just jettisoned and you woke up here?" Sara probably looked slow, having to repeat all that information, but fuck! The implications of dropping live cargo into the atmosphere without first rousing them and putting them into escape pods? "You have no clue why someone did this?"
SAM had multiple gloomy theories, already.
"Trouble." He wasn't very talkative, Avitus Rix. "I'm sure Macen has a plan, wherever he is."
"And how about you?" Vetra asked. "Do you have a plan for this rock? Or were you just holding out for a rescue?"
"I need to find Macen, make this make sense..." Avitus trailed off and stared at the small group of stranded turians in the dark jungle. He cleared his throat. "I wouldn't say no to a rescue."
Vetra snorted and nodded toward the path they'd come from. "Today's your lucky day. We were headed back to the Nexus anyhow and I just so happen to have some dextro-amino chocolates in my bunk."
And that's how they ended up with a band of refugee turians hanging around in the med bay of the Tempest. Sara viewed it positively, if for no other reason than it forced the ship medic to actually be a doctor instead of chasing the Pathfinder down to play at armchair psychologist. Sara didn't need to talk to Lexi T'Perro about her daddy issues, she would much rather work them out physically on a gross couch with the first idiot who thought it was because she liked them and not because she hated herself, thank you.
But Liam and his glorious musk would have to wait. Aside from the fact that Sara had yet to think of an appropriate pickup line (to the point where she began to mull over if Peebee's bit about "fooling around" had really been that bad,) there were still the angara, there was still the problem with Havarl's ecosystem, and she still needed to get Jaal from Daar Pelaav.
Kiiran Dals was more agreeable now that her team had been safely returned to her. She greeted Sara with a nod of her head.
"Welcome back," Kiiran said. "I apologize for not being more... hospitable, but I can see now that I misjudged you."
"Knowing what Jaal's said, I'm just glad you didn't try to shoot me." The words fell out of Sara's mouth before she could consider their implication. "Not you personally, I mean. Just that he mentioned your people's interactions with the kett..."
Jaal saved her with a laugh. "I was just informing Kiiran about your actions back at the monolith. How you freed our friends with your knowledge of Remnant and your SAM."
"Yeah." It seemed impolite to disagree, so Sara just shrugged.
She was sure they were relieved to have the science team unfrozen, never mind how little she actually did to accomplish that feat. The two monoliths were already active before she'd even set foot on Havarl, she only opened up an interface so that SAM could do his thing. Then again, she hadn't been exactly forthcoming with the angara about the fact he was an unshackled AI lounging in her head. It seemed prudent to let them assume he was only a sophisticated computer program until she knew them better.
Sara didn't know how the angara felt about AIs or if they were as illegal in Andromeda as they had been in the Milky Way. How would her new allies feel if they knew she could scan their heart rates with a glance, detect minute temperature or pheromone differences and a myriad of countless other calculations well beyond her own intellect? Hell, half the time Sara could ignore the conversations happening around her in favor of navel-gazing, because she knew SAM was listening and would extrapolate the pertinent data.
Like right there in Daar Pelaav. Sara knew they were talking about mystics and angaran religion. She knew based on Jaal's biosignature, that her envoy thought it was all nonsense. So, despite knowing that it was important and even worse, knowing that she would likely even find it interesting, she still allowed her brain to wander. What would be the best way to approach Liam Kosta? That conundrum had piqued SAM's curiosity by that point as well. The only other window to the world SAM had experienced prior to her, was her father and all the AI offered in that regard was that each Ryder had a wildly different outlook. Why, for example, SAM wanted to know, would Sara waste so much time trying to attract someone she wasn't even sure she actually liked?
Why, indeed.
Sara attempted to explain, with some words, but mostly her endocrine system, that sometimes humans thought with things other than their brains. When SAM matter-of-factly told her that was impossible, she changed the subject and asked him if angarans could blush, since both Jaal and Kiiran were staring at her and her own face was now burning. All SAM could offer was that angara blood was the color blue, so regardless of any potential to blush their faces would never turn any variant of red.
"What makes you think a group of zealots will know anything about a missing monolith?" Jaal was asking Kiiran.
"Sages, Jaal, not zealots." Whatever opinion Kiiran may have had, she kept to herself. "And they've been on Havarl since before the decline."
"Yes, hiding away and keeping our histories to themselves," he replied as SAM detected a small surge in electrostatic energy. "In all your time here, why has one of your team not sought them out?"
And with a single, clipped laugh, Kiiran Dal's opinion of the sages was clear. "Because we have important scientific research to attend to," she replied.
As Sara and Jaal trudged toward the Tempest, she pulled Peebee up on her com. "Hey, you want to meet some ancient angaran sages in ruins on a hilltop?"
The invite was met with the sound of Peebee sucking in air through her teeth. "Ehh, I'm more into abandoned ruins," she said. "Maybe next time?"
"This is all bowl-shit, anyway," Jaal grumbled.
"Is it?" Sara tried not to snicker.
"Religion works better if the stories are viewed as metaphor. To say we are reborn and all have past lives could mean that we are affected by our parents' past. Intergenerational trauma." He swatted at something that buzzed toward his arm. "To take that literally and insist we have actual memories of previous lives is silliness."
"Oh."
"I said that wrong, didn't I?"
"What? Metaphor?"
"No. Bowl-shit. Is it bowl-shit? It's not bowl-shit."
"Close enough." Sara shrugged. "I knew what you meant, it's cool."
"No, it is not cool," Jaal snapped. "It is hot and muggy and I'm saying human colloquialisms incorrectly!"
She sighed. "Bullshit."
"Bullshit." He let the phrase roll around in his mouth. "Thank you."
"My pleasure."
They bypassed the Tempest and followed a swirling silver river to Mithrava. What Sara had dismissed as a hilltop was actually a pillared skyscraper sitting on a hilltop swarming with Remnant. Peebee was going to kick herself for missing out on this little jaunt, but that sounded more like a Peebee problem than a Sara problem.
Sara's problem consisted of scaling pillars stacked like platforms all while dodging Remnant firepower. It made her wish she had insisted on Peebee's company. Or Drack. Anyone with aggressive weaponry, really. Sara had always been accustomed to doing all the small, technical things while Scott stood guard and blasted anything within radius to bits. Jaal with his hypersensitive scope and space monocle were equally too specialized.
The two of them relied on moving quickly, shooting blindly and a spiraling deluge of obscenities in both angaran and Common Trade as they rocketed themselves upward toward the inky above. The higher they climbed, the more the leaves and trees tapered and thinned until finally Sara could see sky. It was a quiet pause, where she could gasp for air and admire the blanketed canopy beneath her. She noticed the central structure of the skyscraper had an opening just above her head, if she could manage to continue her ascent and stop herself from looking down.
Jaal appeared more at ease and almost elegant as he pulled himself up over a ledge. His long, powerful limbs seemed suited for skulking about in trees- a glaring contrast to Sara as she activated the rocket propulsion in her boots and pitched her blocky form toward the interior platform. Inside the skyscraper finally, and tucked away from the hovering Remnant, she stretched her aching shoulders and staggered to the central console.
"This looks like another gravity well," she called to Jaal behind her. "Just like in the vault. You ever use one of these?"
"I have not," he replied as he joined her.
"You're in for a treat, then," she snorted. "Hold onto, well... nothing."
Sara briefly considered coming up with some kind of a catch phrase, something that would sound cool, as she had SAM activate the gravity well. Nothing immediately came to mind, so she braced herself for disorienting feel of weightlessness. If Jaal was uncomfortable as the air around him changed and sent them shooting upwards to the top of the structure, he made a good show of seeming anything but. He blinked quizzically and stared at how their surroundings passed them by in blurry streaks. The very act of him simply being appeared effortless, especially when comparatively, Sara's big accomplishment was to avoid whipping her cheeks with her fluttering ponytail.
They popped up through a hole in the center of the floor above them and she could feel gravity grip her once more and pull her downward. Jaal landed on two feet with a graceful dismount, while Sara ducked her chin to her chest and rolled. When the momentum working against her body finally stopped, she lay there on her back, unmoving, and stared at the sky. It really was quite pretty and that high up, she could practically reach out and stroke the edge of a cloud with her outstretched fingers.
"What is this alien? You are not welcome here!"
She turned her head from the heavens to take in her surroundings. It was a quaint little village with cooking fires set up along the interior of the high-rise. Paths were marked by metallic stones that shone with more green glyphs. The community was a small one and fortunately, the only weapon aimed at her thus far was their elder's attitude.
"Sorry, did I interrupt lunch?" Sara grunted as she sat upright.
"Pardon my friend," Jaal said quickly. "She may not look it, but she is here to help and can be very resourceful."
The elder didn't appear to care as he turned his ire to Jaal. "You should know better than to show an outsider how to reach Mithrava! Both of you should leave immediately!"
"Actually, I was the one who showed Jaal how to use the gravity well to get up here." Sara pushed herself up to a standing position.
The elder glared daggers at her, then shifted his gaze back to Jaal.
Jaal shrugged. "It's true. She has been interfacing with monoliths and activating vaults. She wants to reactivate the vault on Havarl."
"That's impossible." The elder took a step back and sat down by a fire. "The last monolith is lost. We have accepted Havarl's inevitable fate."
"Wait. You're just going to sit up here and wait for the planet to eat itself alive?" Sara spluttered. "That makes no sense."
"The last angara to see the monolith died over a century ago," the elder explained. "There is no one of his blood in Mithrava to rekindle a memory."
"Memory?" she asked and almost wished she hadn't. She could sense a flash of irritation from Jaal, but he politely held his tongue.
"We angara are reincarnated from one life to the next," the elder explained. "There are times we can pull a memory from another life, but the only known descendant of Zorai is a member of the Roekaar. Perhaps if you seek out Taavos he could provide the memory you need. Otherwise, leave us to await Havarl's end."
"Right." She glanced to Jaal, who wore a thin lipped smile that was closer to a sneer for the nameless angaran elder sage.
Jaal thanked him and led her back to the gravity well.
"So..." Sara let the unspoken trail out as they dropped down the skyscraper. "Are we really chasing after past lives, now?"
"Bullshit." She did enjoy his crisp annunciation that word.
"It might not have been a waste of time, you know," she said once they were free of the gravity well and continued their descent the old fashioned way.
Jaal's mouth twisted as he looked at her. "After I spoke well of you to the sage, you're going to prove me wrong by believing his foolishness?"
"I didn't say that, but I had a thought." She pulled out her comm and punched in Peebee's frequency. "He buried it under a bunch of mystic mumbo jumbo, but he mentioned a Roekaar named Taavos."
"Who needs to remember his past life as Zorai!" Jaal scoffed.
"That's what the sage said, right." Sara nodded. "But here's my thought. What if they already know where the monolith is? They're pointing us at the Roekaar, because the monolith is within their stronghold."