Book 5
Siha: Rise of Rakhana
Part III
"Silver and Fire"
They follow the tour group to where the guide stops them, her hand indicating a sight for the group to observe where three pronounced pillars jut together from the ceiling, wall, and floor, creating a focal point above a round platform, "…Here is an actual operating construct from the prothean era," a small sphere jumps up in several separate sections of jigsaw geometrics, swirling in the space where all of the pillars converge.
"My Gods," Braith pushes passed Casnar and Feron, "…it's Vigil!" She thought the virtual intelligence with marks of a dead prothean in its memory storage was finished on Ilos, but it appears to be chatting away with the other tour members. She runs over. "Vigil?"
The lonely sphere spins in reverse of its former slow revolution, and for a moment, amid the astonished looks by the rest of the tour group, the sphere says nothing, and then, "…Commander Braithlyn Anne Shepard—"
Braith claps her hands, "…Yes!"
The tour guide flattens her irritated tebris and raises her hand towards Braith, "…Excuse me, Miss, there was someone else asking the VI their questions first."
Braith ignores the drellahna, "…Vigil, I need to know what you have in your data stores about the Mechinist."
Vigil agitates and flashes bright yellow, "…Mechinist, organic species from Culmina Sector, capable of telepathic ability. Space flight capable and communication through telepathic wavelength…The Epataha, or voice of the Mechinist was a problem for my predecessors for decades after first contact…War with the Mechinist was at its peak in this very system before the Reapers attacked and annihilated my designers…It is presumed the Mechinist went into hiding to wait out the Harvest…End of data."
"Were the protheans winning against the Mechinist?"
"They were fighting to regain control of the war against the Mechinist."
Amid the tour group's murmurs, far more intrigued by this bit of Q and A between Braith and Vigil than by the tour guide's scripted queries, Braith continues to interrogate the VI, "…Who struck first, the protheans or the Mechinist, Vigil…You said first contact was when it all started?"
"Correct, Commander Shepard…The Mechinist was the aggressor."
Casnar and Ylyssus sidle up to Braith, staring at the VI, "…And I always thought this thing was useless as an interface," Casnar says and looks to her, "…It responds to you more than I've ever gotten a word out of it…Ask it about the Enmity and the Silver."
Vigil spins, "…Enmity not found…Silver not found," erratic all of a sudden, the VI darts off the platform to spin wildly around Braith, issuing a high-pitched static—and unworldly screams, not its own, but part of a recording—before the VI dissolves into thin air.
The lights in the corridor suddenly flicker, dousing them all in brief darkness before coming back on, but at reduced intensity.
Wrex moves over to Braith, "…That didn't seem to go down well…Did your questions break it?"
Braith stares at the empty space where Vigil no longer exists, "…I didn't even get to ask it the questions I really wanted answers for."
"Hey," they hear someone say, "…You're Commander Shepard…Are we going to be invaded?"
Braith turns away from the group, all eyes staring at her, and when she looks at Ylyssus, her eyes jump to Casnar, then to Feron…Diogenes…Wrex…to the floor.
"Where's Jaspin and Jenner!?"
Somewhere distant from Kahje is a small vessel, flying with a solitary figure in it.
Siln Ta, the Mechinist, waits at his port receptacle, watching the stars go by. He closes his amber eyes, picking up a transmission from his army's leadership, …Speak.
The way is clear, Great One…
Siln Ta laughs, …This is no title for an exile…My vessel is hardly the body in which greatness would be worthy to travel within…Have you found them…Have you found those I sent you for, Taciua?
This one wishes to delve deeper…The soldiers are sleeping far below…Much has layered above their nests…I will find them, Great Leader of the Galaxies…
Not yet, I have not yet become that, Taciua…What about the morthwyls, have you located these?
Not…all…There was contact with three individuals…Four, but I did not identify it through the medium…Three were come to me, searching to find me, Greatness…I was unable to take any in the dreampath of fortune's gardens of probabilities…I did leave the one with the power to block me with a seed of a plan…His mind was open, wounded, and it was easy to enter and find that which he desired…Hopefully it has turned him against the others who know, he included, where the last morthwyl bloods hide…
Very good, Taciua. Keep searching, find my army, but do not unleash them right away…Make sure there are none of their rivals present…Their voices will be weak against the voices of the others, and remember what happened last time we advanced them from their cryo-stasis too soon, before their minds matured from their dormancy…
Taciua's response in his head is to tremble in cascading memories, the images rippling of silver-backed creatures from a mantidian race, designed by his master's own engineering, and when they were revealed too early in the last war…in the presence of a hidden rachni colony...the results were slaughter and most of the mantidian pupae were either eaten or destroyed.
The one named Tetonbaum, Siln Ta folds back his eyelids to reflect the passing space outside the display receptacle, …I would like to see these memories you have taken from the encounter…
I was only able to do what I could before he realized I was there and the Ri within him was freed to engage with me…It is a strong energy he has allied within him…
The Ri, their name for the dark energy—the biotic power…Show me his memories, Taciua, and while you attend to your tasks, I will attend to influencing his…
The memories of Tetonbaum take on a golden color, imbued with fire and light as Siln Ta's eyes shine silver and three minute spheres revolve wildly and as organized as the planets in a solar system between the prongs that make a circlet attached unto his slender skull…Among the golden halos of these flames travel his vision following the drell's wife—a human woman, skin pale and gold as moon and sun through the layer he shares with Taciua by…Her eyes soft and laughing as if she were sharing a secret with him, too…She walks in a flowing silk ba'tran among flowering vine-covered walls in an open garden overhung with plants and billowing green and gold banners above…
Where is this…Ah, it is Nualavera…
…An ocean breeze stirs her hair—in a long black braid between her shoulders, dancing its end about her waist, …Kasumi…
The drell's voice whispers in these memories he longs for, …Little Mouse…Mine heart loves thee…
Tetonbaum's memories open wider as Siln Ta delves into what Taciua—the morthwyls' so-named Great Enmity—has collected to pass onto its master through the Eye of S'syalahe, and through Cemal's dying mind, which yet lingers on in a blue tomb of fire and magma, contained deep in the heart of Bangal'roux on Rakhana.
Taciua turns from his commune with his master's telepathy, and pours his skull of flames and magma into a crevasse—displaced of morthwyl root and ashes, soil and dead bodies…boring deeper still for the silver-backed army he seeks.
A black silhouette trapped inside the mass of Taciua's liquid blue-silver chest.