"I need a feckin' smoke," the Courier grumbled to himself.
Lantaya sighed heavily but didn't reply. She was currently too busy ignoring the creeping dread in the pit of her stomach that told her under no uncertain terms, that it disapproved of her current situation immensely.
All around them was the barren, red sand and rock of Mars.
It stretched out in all directions as the group of three explorers tracked deep footprints in the surface of the planet. They hadn't been walking for long. Only ten minutes or so since the probe they had launched from Zeta streaked down onto the surface of the fourth planet, giving them a beacon to use as a marker for teleportation.
They trudged through the inhospitable landscape in human space suits, which was the principal source of Lantaya's current distress. Asari were known for building equipment that lasted, at least as far as her three-millennia old memories reminded her, but even she wasn't enthused at the prospect of using space suits that had lived through a nuclear war and two-hundred years of sitting in a dusty service tunnel beneath REPCONN, only to be passed over by a bunch of manic Ghouls looking to be blasted into space.
She was particularly concerned with the Wanderer, who wore a suit that his maker had salvaged from the Zeta many years previously and had subsequently been holed through-and-through with an alien atomiser pistol.
It had been patched up with spare materials and happy thoughts.
But the Wanderer wore it without a care in the world, striding forwards confidently towards their destination. The crash site of the REPCONN rocket.
"Oi, Saint Christopher!" The Courier bellowed into the microphone at a volume that would make a battleship's main gun shrink back and search for protective earmuffs.
Lantaya restrained the urge to clip the Courier around the head with a biotic Throw, as it would most likely end with him suffocating in the low atmosphere of Mars as his suit depressurised. But after the first few shouts it was becoming more and more difficult to restrain herself.
And she used to be such an even-tempered Asari.
She mourned the days when being a Matriarch just required you to smile pleasantly and pretend you knew more than you let on. Now, it seemed the trick to being a Matriarch was advising a psychotic alien Warlord to keep his voice down.
"Yes, I can hear you Courier! You don't have to shout!" Chris returned over the radio at a volume that matched the Courier's decibel for decibel.
Lantaya winced within her helmet. Could a space suit visor crack from the concussive force generated by these two shouting? It was theoretically possible. She didn't dare turn up her volume. She had the setting cranked down to the second-to-lowest possible setting already.
"Are ye sure?!" The Courier bellowed back at a volume that could peel plaster from a wall at twenty paces, "Yer two-hundred miles up, yer Saintliness! I think I 'ave to shout!"
She could see the Courier's grin behind his visor and knew he was lying. He was just in a shitty mood because being locked up in a space suit meant he couldn't chain smoke like a lunatic with a personal vendetta against functional lungs.
"The Matriarch's new communications system is more than capable of bridging the gap without us having to listen to you bellowing like a foghorn, you moron!"
"Then why are ye shoutin' too?!"
"Because you're….!" The exasperated Head Engineer cut himself off for a long moment, during which they heard muffled screaming on the other end of the connection. Then he returned and spoke in a voice so sickly sweet and low that it gave them all chills.
Save for the Wanderer however, who had subtly adjusted the volume setting on the advanced cybernetics in his ears to compensate.
"Matriarch," Chris asked in his new voice, practically Zen in his state of apoplectic rage, "Would you please let me know what your current coordinates are?"
"We're just coming up on the crash site now, Mr. Haversam. Why do you ask?" She enquired, tentatively. His tone of voice worried her.
"I need targeting data for the main gun. I apologise that you must die alongside him, but sacrifices must be made for the greater good," Chris replied in his Zen-like state of calm fury.
"You're not firing my baby anywhere without my permission, jackass," Somah cut in across the connection without fanfare. The communications system had been a rush job and they hadn't yet set up separate channels. Most of the crew were listening to the exchange as their own form of in-flight entertainment.
"I am Head Engineer. You're overruled!"
"I have a Disintegrator. You're welcome to try," Somah proffered her most convincing rebuttal.
With the situation in upper orbit rapidly devolving from a tenuous chain of command into gunboat diplomacy, Lantaya severed the connection for the time being and looked around the site of the crashed rocket as the three of them trudged up to it.
It had clearly seen better days. It was half-buried in the red sand that the planet of Mars was so famed for, pieces of its instrumentation missing from the whole and large sections of the hull missing entirely. She cast around, seeing twisted pieces of metal everywhere, blackened and burnt, poking up through the sand like grasping fingers, or the spines of some titanic creature buried beneath them.
The Courier however, upon seeing the wreck, cackled and hooted like a maniac and increased his pace. He darted as quickly as the differing atmosphere and gravity would allow, climbing through a ragged hole in the rockets exterior to stand on the inside of the vessel. Being an exceptionally large man by stature and an exceptionally old man by age, the way he contorted his body in order to fit into tight spaces, all the while still clad in the bulky space suit was an impressive display. Asari, being naturally flexible, could perform more impressive feats, but he was a close second by the width of a hair.
"You seem pleased," Lantaya observed, picking her way through the debris not yet buried by the storms that ravaged the planet's surface. Looking down at her space suits feet she observed how the Martian dust seemed to adhere to its surface in a thick coating, like thickly packed mud, only without a drop of moisture to give it such properties.
"No bodies!"
Lantaya blinked within the confines of her helmet and cast around to confirm his statement. She hurried over and poked her head through the hole he had climbed through. It looked on the inside like the interiors of the burnt-out wrecks of cars she had seen so much of during her time on Earth. Half stripped by salvagers; half stripped by the elements. All that was left was the bare frame that not even the most committed hand nor the most fervent Martian storm could hope to degrade or shift.
As he had said, there were no bodies inside the rocket's crew compartment.
"Evidence of salvaging operations carried out upon the vessel. Many of these cuts are manmade," The Alpha observed from outside the vessel, making detailed observations of the wreckage all around them.
He carried his laser rifle over one shoulder of his space suit, it being a weapon that he could conceivably fire in the atmosphere of Mars. Not that they expected to fight anything, thus his currently being under Alpha Protocols rather than handing control over to the Omega.
"The crazy feckers actually did it!" The Courier cried out in jubilation, vaulting out of the hole once more and casting around for tracks in the sand. There was very little chance of finding any, as the storms on Mars would inevitably have covered them over in the same way they partially buried the remains of the rockets themselves.
"Sent them off with nothin' but a wave an' a quick prayer to the spirits! Ridin' off across the sunset with Ride o' the Valkyries playin' on repeat, an' they actually made it!"
"But how," Lantaya asked in consternation, "It shouldn't be possible! How long is the trip between here and Earth with a rocket of this model?"
"Eight months at a conservative speed," the Lone Wanderer replied as his considerable internal databanks churned out the answer to her question, "The propulsion system is nuclear powered. They could also have run at full burn all the way from Earth to Mars, in which case the travel time could have been reduced by another month. I postulate somewhere in the region of seven months."
The Courier turned on the communications and barked at a respectable volume over the sound of Chris and Somah having a shouting match as Jericho egged them on in the background. His urgent tone cut through the chatter just long enough to make his query known.
"Chris! Which o' the pilots were in charge o' the rockets when they launched?!"
"Francine, Ned and Augustine. Why?"
The Courier clicked his tongue and severed the connection again without responding.
"Call it six months," he replied gravely. Ned's rocket hadn't made it all the way there, and without the most sluggish of the pack slowing them down, those two speed demons would have cranked the speedometer as high as it could go without tearing their Rocketships apart.
"Did they have enough food for six months?" Lantaya asked.
"Aye, they had plenty o' food for the journey. We stocked 'em up with pre-war processed garbage an' pemmican I made for 'em. Radscorpion meat from the Hidden Valley. The good stuff, last them for five years if they stored it in the cold-chest Chris cobbled together."
"And water?"
"Fair bit, fair bit," the Courier agreed. "They're feckin' ghouls, so radiation didn't matter when we were collectin' it. Three rockets in all. Veronica an' I reprogrammed the targetin' best we could an' Chris's work was already solid to begin with. Zeta's scans showed that one rocket never made it. That were Ned's. Veered off an' drifted out into the Black. Spread out 'cross six months…."
Lantaya watched the tribal calculate the odds that the ghouls had lived up until now. It didn't look hopeful. Even if they crashed and survived, then they would need a sustainable habitat to live in. And she doubted they could build one with only the scavenged parts from the two rockets. And after that, the problem of how to grow enough food to last them indefinitely became an intractable issue.
"Did the low orbit scans from our probe as it came down tell us how badly the second rocket was damaged? And did they have any way of growing food once they arrived?"
"Indeterminate. If it was scavenged in the same way this one was, then damage could appear worse than it was upon initial impact," the Wanderer stated, before turning his attention to the Courier, who was currently pulling a piece of debris from the sand to examine it. He scowled and tossed the metal fragment away. Useless.
"Been starvin' more times than I care to mention durin' my time," the Courier stated in a low voice.
"So, I know how folks act when the spasms start settin' in. If some o' them died on the way down, durin' impact or otherwise, then by eatin' the bodies they might have drawn it out for another month or two. They took seeds an' other sources o' grown life with them, but without a steady source o' water, an' with the background radiation, an' no atmosphere nor good soil…."
Lantaya couldn't restrain herself from asking the obvious question, "Then why in the name of the Goddess did you ever consent to help in pursuit of this foolishness? You sent them to their certain death."
It was one of the many, many questions she had wanted to ask but hadn't had the time for during the five-day period they had spent on the surface of Earth. It had felt like an eternity. Any available moment in which she hadn't been involved in a firefight, she had spent asking questions or paying rapt attention to the answers. In all honesty, she felt no more secure in her knowledge of the proceedings than she had at the onset. Now, she just had a better idea of just how much she didn't know.
"How could I do anythin' but? Bright was clearly bein' guided directly by the spirits," the Courier said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, "An' don't give me that look, Lani. 'Twas the most obvious thing in life. Spirits were helpin' him to get his Great Journey off the ground an' they'd sent me to make sure they had what they needed. Jason agreed with me. Or…"
The Courier went to scratch his nose or beard and pull a rollup out of his belt pouch, as he had a habit of doing before explaining matters related to his Spirit worship. His hands met only the protective layer of his space suit. She saw him scowl deeply behind his visor.
"…Or I agreed with him. He used different words, 'course. Providence, Fate, Destiny an' all those fancy words civilised folk have for the will of the Spirits, but it all came to the same thing."
"You let this madman, Bright, lead these brainwashed ghouls on a suicidal journey into space because of tribal superstition? Why am I not surprised?" she shook her head with profound disappointment in his judgement. She knew it was suspect, but the depths to which he was subject to misguided, almost regressive delusion still managed to give her pause.
"Did you ever stop to think that your Spirits did not, in fact, have any hand in this situation whatsoever, and that you were just seeing what you wanted to see?" She queried him as they stood together on the surface of this inhospitable planet on the outer edge of the galactic spiral.
The 'Did you ever think that your spirits don't actually exist and that all your beliefs are simply the result of overly inventive storytellers coming up with a lie that would make their existence more bearable' was left unspoken.
The Courier scoffed, "That'd just be bein' silly."
Of all the things she had expected to hear in reply, this threw her for a loop.
"Silly," she repeated in a flat voice, "Attributing a sequence of events to the random chance that governs all the other parts of our lives is 'sillier' than attributing it to the vague and unknowable actions of supposed cosmic entities."
"O' course it is," the Courier replied in a voice full of feeling, "What, you're thinkin' that Jason Bright an' his cadre o' feckin' sycophants just happened to run into a random aerospace engineer out in the Wastelands? As ye do, o' course, 'cause they're just such a common sight. I know I can't go a step in the wastes without trippin' over one."
She opened her mouth to protest the fallacious argument, but he continued on before she could.
"An' they just so happened to be the only group other than the feckin' Hubologists to be interested in goin' to space? Just so happened to find their way to REPCONN, one o' the only places in the Wastes with functionin' rocket parts an' a launchin' pad? Just so happened to run 'cross me, of all people? Right when they just so happened to be needin' a helpin' hand, that only I could provide?"
He listed the long string of admittedly far-fetched coincidences back to her. A string of occurrences that she would have been quick to assume some manner of intelligent design to.
If the proposed architects had not been Spirits.
"What're the chances Lani? Yer a lass o' science. Calculate those feckin' odds for me, why don't ya?"
Astronomical, was the answer. But she wasn't about to give him the satisfaction of acknowledging his point.
"Lower than the chances of Spirits actually existing," she replied with the stubborn and dogged insistence that had made her so unpopular on Thessia when she set her mind to challenging the established order. They held each-other's gaze for a long moment through the see-through visors.
Until the Wanderer called out from the outskirts of the crash site, his calm voice carrying through the comms link directly into their ears. Unlike the Courier, he spoke at just the right volume to be both comprehensible and comfortable to listen to.
"Courier, Matriarch."
"What?" She asked, glancing towards him.
And she froze.
There were two figures standing off in the distance, beyond the Lone Wanderer's own outline against the wide-open expanse of dull red that was Mars.
Two shuffling figures in space suits that matched her own exactly, aside from a few patches to hold back the relentless march of entropy. They were waving, frantically.
No.
It couldn't be.
"That is impossible," she flatly stated as the two figures started walking towards them and the forlorn crash site. The Courier on the other hand just looked at her as if to say, 'I told you so.'
"That's feckin' Spirits," the Courier hooted in derision, "Deny it now, why don't ya. If the spirits hadn't lent their hand, how the feck did they survive 'til now, aye? Riddle me that, civilisation."
He bounded off with his arms held out in a widely expansive gesture of greeting. His strong legs propelled his broad and terrifyingly tall frame into the air where he managed to net some hangtime, owing to the lower gravity on Mars. Lantaya remained where she stood and resignedly hung her head. Dear Goddess, he was going to be insufferable after this.
As her own legs carried her after him, she considered telling him to stop going out of his way to help impossible things less impossible. Not because she was bitter about being proved wrong about things, she had taken for granted as simple exercises in common sense.
No indeed, that would be petty. And as Matriarch she was, of course, above such things, she thought to herself with a heavy dose of internally directed sarcasm.
Instead, she would do it because if he continued doing so, there might come a time when mature and reasonable people, such as herself, could no longer count on common sense to be so common. And where several impossible things happened every day; walking cat-men and cyberdogs started living together, and you couldn't tell up from down without specialised equipment.
She just hoped sanity would reassert itself once she got back to Thessia.
Returning to the present, the meeting with the two ghouls in space suits was a profound anti-climax.
Though they could communicate through hand gestures and written messages in the sand, the two ghouls did not have a comms link and therefore could not communicate effectively with the newcomers. The Courier and the Wanderer tried Chinese Hand Signs, American Sign Language, and even the physical half of the Dead Horse Scout Signals.
None of them worked.
But the Courier could supply one piece of information simply by looking at the two ghouls.
"Harland," the Courier cried out in genuine pleasure, giving the ghoul a wide smile through the visor of his helmet, which the ghoul returned with a gap-toothed grin of his own.
"His names Harland. Tracker for the Bright Brotherhood. Their trouble-shooter, see? Good man, a hard man," the Courier enlightened Lantaya over comms. The Matriarch looked at the ghoul.
In his old space suit, with his hunched posture and faint limp, he didn't look to deserve the praise that the Courier bestowed so readily. But then she considered that the ghoul had been stranded on Mars for a whole five years. Suddenly, the ghoul's mere ability to walk without folding over like a lawn chair seemed incredible to her, speaking volumes to his tenacity.
They followed the ghoul named Harland off into the Martian wastes, feeling curiously at home on the utterly inhospitable planet after days on the surface of Earth. None of them had difficulty keeping up with the pace set by the two ghouls.
It was clear that time spent isolated from even the scant sustenance and fluids available in the Mojave had taken its inevitable toll. Both ghouls began noticeably flagging early in the march yet stumbled doggedly onwards, waving off the Courier when he tried to help.
Without much else to do, being unable to effectively communicate with the two survivors, Lantaya and the Courier fell back to their usual avenues of occupying themselves. Exchanging question for answer.
"Who exactly is this 'Jason Bright'? You have not been very specific regarding him, thus far. Why did he wish to come all the way to this desolate planet? It doesn't seem all that much different from Earth. Albeit slightly worse, all things considered," she noted, casting around as they walked.
At least Earth had a breathable atmosphere, even if breathing it carried the risk of being killed and eaten by any number of horrible predators.
She considered the weight of each set of dangers and eventually concluded that Mars and Earth might be equally inhospitable, just in different ways. It was hard to judge and categorise. Maybe she should create a system for rank-ordering planets in terms of their danger?
The Courier shrugged; the motion somewhat concealed by the thick space suit he wore.
"Sure, I liked Jason. Knew his own mind, knew the will o' his spirits. One o' the few who still do, nowadays. Why I helped him an' his Brotherhood? 'Suppose 'tis a bit like walkin' over the lip o' a ridge an' seein' a battle goin' on, ye know? Ye just wanna join in," The wastelander tried to explain in terms that he felt made sense.
Lantaya did not, but she listened intently as the three of them carried on after the ghouls at the leisurely pace that seemed all the limping Harland could sustain. She wondered what such an obviously injured man was doing out here, away from wherever the ghouls had set up whatever habitat had been keeping them alive since their marooning, so long ago?
The Wanderer was observing the Courier also, looking at the tribal as the man seemed to cast his mind back to recall a memory, he hadn't paid much attention to during the fact itself, much less five years after the fact.
"He told me he wanted to take his flock on a Great Journey," Six spoke finally, his accent unusually clear to her ear, as if finally remembering to retrain it for his listeners benefit, "To a place where he an' his fellow ghouls wouldn't need to suffer the wastes anymore. Not the death, nor the starvation, nor the discrimination. I would have told him he wasn't likely to find such a life on Mars, o' all places, but like I said, I heard the whisper of the spirits about him."
He patted the spot where his belt pouch full of datura would have hung, his hands full of a kind of nervous energy that the Matriarch couldn't pin down. It wasn't drug withdrawal, not at least as far as she could tell in her limited experience. But something deeper. Like a reflex that was being denied.
"Too much good fortune for simple chance," the Courier said as his space-suited hand attempted to gather up enough of the suit in one hand to clench itself upon. He seemed to realise what he was doing and stopped himself before he could tear his suit with his abnormally strong grasp.
"Forces were at play stackin' the deck in their favour. Making sure that they ran into every person they needed to make Jason Bright's Great Journey become a reality. Into Christopher. Into me. I might not have delayed my hunt for Benny to bother with 'em, else."
"I believe I may have seen this 'Benny'," Lantaya proclaimed as the name triggered a memory not of her own collection, "In a vison. One of your memories that bled into my mind after our melding."
She had even heard the name uttered several dozen times since by different members of the Courier's coterie of misfits, which gave her reason to believe that he had been an important figure in the events leading up to Six's current control of New Vegas. The Courier paused any attempt at speech for a long moment, seemingly preoccupied with walking after the ghouls.
Then, "I never told ye 'bout ol' Benny, did I?"
He seemed almost surprised at the way he had unintentionally skirted around it during their many discussions. She felt the ground underfoot change as it shifted from soft sand to hard stone. The ghouls were leading them upwards into what looked to be a winding cleft in a nearby hill.
Upon further reflection, Six realised that with all the other things going on, any mention of Benny had been ignored in favour of more pertinent explanations. Up until now, there had only been an odd mention there and a brief allusion here. Lantaya, on the other hand, suspected that she knew what Benny looked like, as his name always drew the memory of the man in the Checkered Suit with the card-shark's smile distinctly to mind. The man from the Courier's memory of the death of Caesar.
"Who was he to you? Had you been an Asari I might have suspected a friend, since you wore a suit similar to his to the soiree we hosted at the Ultra-Luxe."
"Might 'ave guessed?" The ever-perceptive Courier remarked upon the odd phrasing.
"You do not seem to maintain the same level of enmity towards your enemies that I have come to expect from other Asari, nor the more," she searched for a politic expression or word to convey a distinction she wasn't too sure of, "mundane humans."
"Enmity?" The Courier enquired, for once not at all sure what she was driving at, "Sure, no need to be angry with a man too long after the fact. My enemies usually end up dead as dormice in any case. No reason to be holdin' grudges against a dead man."
Lantaya considered this and had to admit that it made some weird sort of sense that a man who treated violence and death as casually as the Courier would be equally casual when it was aimed in his direction. He found acting this way as natural as breathing, so naturally he found the same behaviour displayed in others to be lacking the same bite that other, more civilised people, experienced.
"So," she prompted with interest, "Which was Benny? I could see you wearing his suit under one of two circumstances: Either he was a great friend and you wished to bear a piece of him with you, or a great enemy who you stripped a trophy from, as you have a tendency to do."
"Or" the Courier remarked with his usual irreverence and a wide grin behind his visor, "I just thought his suit were mighty snazzy."
The good Matriarch gave him a Look of profound disbelief, tempered somewhat by her knowledge that his motivations and reasons were often arcane and indecipherable to her, so such a banal reason wouldn't be out of character.
"Alright, so yer correct. He was an enemy of mine," the Courier admitted.
She nodded, satisfied with having one of her deductions confirmed. "And what exactly did he do to provoke your ire?" She queried.
"Beat me up, knocked me out, stole a package I was deliverin', shot me twice in the head, then buried me in a shallow grave," the Courier summarised in a blasé fashion.
Lantaya stopped walking for a moment, then shook her head and gave him another look of disbelief.
"I've witnessed you tear apart Marked Men, Super Mutants, Legionaries and know of your triumph over many other threats in the Wastes. And you expect me to believe you almost died to a man in a pretentious suit?"
"Oi, oi, oi" the Courier exclaimed with significant feigned ire in his tone, "Ye take that back 'bout my suit!"
She only smirked in reply.
Ahead of them the two ghouls had turned a corner around the edge of a large outcropping of rock, vanishing from sight. They had been travelling over rough terrain for some time now, taking a narrow path seemingly carved from the Martian rock by some naturally occurring phenomenon.
The three of them followed, and to their astonishment found the ghouls fiddling with a keypad inlaid into the side of a smooth expanse of rock wall. Entirely too smooth to be natural. It surrounded a crude metal hatchway, obviously put together from the metal hull plating salvaged from the REPCONN Rocketships.
As Lantaya stared at the architecture, the Courier stepped forwards and brushed his space-suited hand across the rock, letting his fingers drift across the indentations formed by age and pockmarked by debris from the Martian storms. It was shielded enough by the rock on all sides that these small marks were few and far between.
"Feels like the Divide," he whispered, almost inaudible if not for the sensitivity of the Comms. He felt something here. Something older than anything he had yet experienced in his long life. Something too ancient to put into words. Something large enough to put even the Spirits inside him on the back foot.
The Wanderer joined him in his perusal of the stonework as the two ghouls interacted with the keypad. It seemed as though they were waiting for something. Something they evidently received when the keypad glowed a vibrantly pure white and the vibrations of retracting mechanisms were felt beneath their feet.
Spot-welded and cobbled together from Rocketship hull segments it may have been, but the door retracted smoothly into the wall as if its decrepit appearance was purely for show. The two ghouls staggered inside, motioning for the three newcomers to follow.
They did so, though Lantaya paused in shock when she got a good look at the internal architecture of what obviously served as a decontamination and airlock chamber. She recognised this architecture.
Many Prothean ruins adopted the same standardised design, underground bunkers inserted into the already existing strata of rock formations in order to simplify construction and reduce the need for shipping construction materials to the far-flung edges of their galaxy spanning empire.
She had seen more than most during her travels throughout the galaxy. As one of the first Asari explorers, she had had the pleasure of discovering some, her boots being the first to grace their halls for uncounted millennia.
But, for such a ruin to be so close at hand to the exact spot where Jason Bright and his followers had crash-landed on Mars…
It was almost enough of a coincidence to make her believe in the Courier's spirits. If she hadn't been so dead set against believing anything of the sort, that is.
What could she say? She was a scientist at heart.
"This is Prothean architecture," she said to her companions once the outer airlock doors had ground back into place and the makeshift seals the ghouls had jury-rigged into place had locked themselves tight.
"Prothean? Are you certain of this?" The Wanderer questioned in his habitually calm, didactic voice.
"Almost positive," she confirmed with only moments pause to take a closer look at the vaguely metallic vents that had cracked open and were filling the airlock with breathable atmosphere.
"Prothean architecture is very distinctive. Usually a dull grey, constructed from the stone most common in the surrounding landscape, with metal additions for added stability and reinforcement," Lantaya rattled off as she tapped the metal grill of the vent with one hand, finding it slightly difficult to do so with the inrush of pressurised air rushing in from the opening.
"Harsh and utilitarian, though this was mostly assumed to be a result of the far-flung nature of their Empire's outposts, which would doubtless have had difficulty importing items of a decorative or artistic nature. Asari academics postulated that although very few examples of Prothean personal items or art survive, outside of their stone architecture, to have risen to such a standing amongst their peers they would necessarily have to have been a race of profound wisdom and insight, likely patrons of the arts themselves."
The Wanderer cocked his head to the side and enquired further, "I do not follow. Why must this necessarily have been the case?"
Lantaya shrugged, as if the answer to his enquiry was obvious.
"Protheans were generally considered to have been very erudite and cultured as a species, owing to their place as the most powerful race of their era. As you yourself are no doubt aware, the most successful civilisations tend to be conflict-avoidant, focusing more upon diplomatic outreach, artistic expression and scientific enquiry."
There was a pause.
"This may be a cultural difference," the Wanderer spoke as the Courier tried to ask Harland through a series of hand gestures and mouthed words how long it usually took for the airlock to repressurise.
"Historically speaking, the most successful civilisations in human history have admittedly been heavily involved in art and science; but have also been inclined towards conflict as a method of expanding power and influence. All the largest empires in human history have been notable for their military might and the willingness to utilise it," he finished this brief explanation as the vents finally stopped hissing and another white light flickered faintly from a shattered light fixture in the wall.
Harland the ghoul reached upwards and attempted to unseal his helmet with some difficulty, the latches having been jury-rigged at some point in the past in order to provide a more secure seal. Lantaya frowned at the Wanderer's description of his races past. It seemed absurd to her.
If it was true that rampant violence was bad for a society and that science, art, and cooperation were good, then how could the most successful human societies be partly predicated upon conflict and strife?
It seemed nothing less than completely counterintuitive. Such a thing never occurred in Asari society. The forerunners were always the societies that habitually eschewed war and conflict, or if pressed upon, resolved it with as much precision and haste as possible.
But her chain of thought was derailed by the rumbling of the inside airlock door, this one the original, if the dull grey of Prothean standard architecture and the absence of REPCONN red hull plating was anything to go by. It slid back into the wall with far less vibration than outside door, admitting all of them into the inner chambers of the ruin.
Harland rushed from the airlock with indecent haste, obviously not trusting the makeshift outer airlock door as much as the inner airlock. He still fumbled with the space suit helmet.
Once they were out of the airlock, the second ghoul thumped another keypad on the inside wall with a closed fist and stood back as the heavy Prothean-made door slide shut with a reassuring boom.
And there it was that Harland finally popped the seal on his helmet and tore it from his head. The Courier followed suit, holding the helmet in only one hand as he locked eyes with Harland. They both ignored the others present as Harland opened his mouth to speak but shut it again.
That brief look inside his mouth revealed that scurvy from lack of proper sustenance had both set in and been treated some time ago. The ghoul was missing a number of teeth and his gums were showing the signs of scurvy in remission.
"Travel half-way 'cross our solar system," the Courier commented with a twinkle in his eyes, "An' ye manage to end up right back where ye started: Trapped in a crumblin' ruin, afraid to step foot outside, an' about to ask me for help."
"Fuck you, smoothskin," Harland grumbled.
"What, right now? I know you've been stuck 'ere for a while now, Harland, but I don't swing that way."
Harland the ghoul sighed in exasperation and looked up at the ceiling as if pleading to the heavens for deliverance. Unfortunately, they had seemingly already sent deliverance, and it was Courier-shaped.
The Courier clapped him reassuringly on the shoulder, almost buckling the sickly ghoul under the force of the blow, "Don't ye worry now Harland. Ye look in a bad way, aye? But I'm 'ere now to get ye off this rock. Where's Jason? Still alive?"
Harland looked slightly overcome by joy and relief at the pronouncement of rescue but kept enough control of himself through the wash of emotions to nod his head and gesture down the passageway.
"He's in the control room. The bases sensors saw an 'energy spike' of some kind from the surface," the ghoul tracker spoke the unfamiliar term with some hesitation. He wasn't a scientist and was likely just repeating back what another ghoul had told him.
"He stayed there to keep an eye on things and asked me to take a look. I'm the only good tracker we got, see?"
The Courier ushered Harland along the ancient halls of ages long past and motioned for Lantaya and the Wanderer to follow them. The second ghoul followed behind them, unwilling to comment on the proceedings and draw too much attention to themselves. They just stared at Lantaya, obviously wondering what the hell a mutant mirelurk was doing on Mars.
Lantaya swore to herself that if she heard one mention of Earth's crustaceans or aquatic life out of either of them, she would smack them. She had developed a rather low tolerance for the remark.
"Some of the base infrastructure is still operational? How much of it?" She asked Harland as her mind realised the significance of his comment regarding base sensors.
He peered at her in the gloom only partially held at bay by the occasional white lighting strip inlayed into the walls. He glanced at the Courier for some sort of explanation as to who or what she was, but the towering wastelander just smiled reassuringly.
"Answer the lass's question, Harland."
"Yeah," the ghoul replied after a sidelong look at the Courier, "We manage to lug a generator into these ruins from the rocket crash site. Used it to jumpstart the bases main reactor. Its leaking some radiation, though. But nothing too bad and no worse than the background radiation on the surface. Hell, it's got nothing on Earth, that's for sure."
Lantaya nodded, feeling thankful for the Rad-X she had consumed prior to their sojourn on the surface of this planet. With no atmosphere to speak of, the surface of Mars was practically baked by solar radiation. It was only her space suit, as dilapidated as it was, and the anti-radiation drugs that kept her from being affected by it.
"And what else?" she enquired with barely disguised impatience. "Prothean ruins seldom have functioning infrastructure left after so long. Intact data banks and functioning technology of any kind would be a priceless find."
"Protheans? What the hell are Protheans? And it only had a few things. A few terminals we managed to get running but can't read. Some fancy doodads that some of the others are calling 'hydroponic beds.' They're how we've been growing food since we got here."
The ghoul cast his gaze towards the Courier. Ordinarily, Harland was self-assured and slightly abrasive, but his eagerness for reassurance and a path off of Mars left him rather more diffident than usual.
"Aliens," the Wanderer clarified.
"Aye, aliens," the Courier confirmed.
"Aliens?"
"Indeed," Lantaya concluded, "Aliens."
They were silent for a long moment as their course took them through the bowels of the ancient facility.
"Well that explains everything," the second ghoul commented sarcastically.
"Less o' the sass Charlie or I'll fuckin' leave ye here."
"My name isn't Charlie," the ghoul protested.
"Sorry, Charlie. 'Tis now."
Before the ghoul could reply, they arrived at their destination.
They stepped out of the wide passageway into a truly expansive vaulted cavern. It made the passageway they had just exited seem positively claustrophobic in comparison. Lantaya blinked at the size of the bunker, marvelling at the tall pillars that supported the network of supporting metallic beams that crisscrossed above their heads, keeping the vaulted ceiling stable for Goddess only knew how many millennia.
Almost on reflex, the academic in her burst to life and she began expounding upon the vista in a haze of rushing thoughts, "This is out of character for Prothean architecture. Their outposts are usually so much smaller, owning to the need to ship construction materials from star system to star system. Even with the Mass Relay network, building something this expansive on a far-flung frontier world would be ludicrously wasteful."
The Lone Wanderer picked up the trailing end of her explanation, to her surprise and delight. She so enjoyed having another intellectual around to bounce ideas and hypothesis off of, even if it was barely more than a crude AI.
"The size and general shape of the cavern would indicate that this was a natural hollow, likely a stratum of softer rock worn away over many, many years by water erosion."
His cybernetic eyes trailed over the vast vaulted ceiling with simulated interest as he walked down the length of the wall, studying the rents and gashes in the stonework.
"I would hazard a guess that some of these gashes in the wall used to be conduits for data or power transmission. Holes in the floor and walls seem to suggest that there were many modular units in this space that required both datalinks and power supplies. They have since been removed."
"As per usual," Lantaya confirmed.
The Wanderer sent her a questioning look, as did the two ghouls and the Courier, who only listened to them with half an ear. He was sensible of the importance of such conversations but didn't have the same interest as his two associates. In his mind it boiled down to, 'all the valuable and useful shit has already been looted' and could safely be left at that.
Harland kept his mouth shut and read between the lines. He might only be a humble tracker, but he knew how to listen.
"Bit hard for to have water erosion on a world with no feckin' water, ain't it?" The Courier commented.
"Mars likely had water at some point in its distant past," Lantaya pustulated, absentmindedly answering the unspoken question as she turned her attention away from the ceiling to examine the gashes that the Wanderer had pointed out.
"In point of fact," the Wanderer supplied from his vast databanks, "Mars still does. It possesses two polar regions with vast quantities of ice."
"The base has water too," Harland commented. "It pumps it up from someplace underground. Really far underground too, I think."
Leaving the two intellectuals to yuck it up with each other over the ruins all around them, the Courier grasped Harland by the elbow and dragged him towards the approaching figure whose footsteps reverberated through the cavern towards them. His sharp ears had picked them up some time previously, eagerly awaiting the man whose presence they heralded.
He glanced sharply behind himself to the ghoul who had accompanied Harland out into the Martian wastes. Vaguely, he realised that he did recognise the ghoul from his REPCONN days but didn't actually remember his name. In all likelihood, they had never been introduced.
"Keep an eye on the two professors, Charlie, an' make sure they don't get lost or blow up the bunker, aye?"
Leaving the unfortunate ghoul with the impression that the Courier was speaking in earnest, he strode towards the source of the footsteps with Harland's sticklike, emaciated arms still clamped between thumb and forefinger.
The ghoul approaching them seemed heedless of the grim nature of his situation, of the fact that he and his followers were starving to death on a hostile world. Though he was just as thin, if not more so, than Harland, he managed to walk with an inner energy and purpose that set him apart from the others.
More akin to a priest striding through hallowed halls that he alone was appointed to watch over by divine mandate.
Unlike most of his ghoulish brethren, this man glowed from within with an ethereal green light, illuminating the ground around him as if he carried a loaded and fully charged plasma caster. It remined the Courier of the events of Fort Defiance. Of the trick that the Wanderer used to kill the hidden legionary force in the Old Hospital.
Instead of the relief he had seen in Harland's visage the Courier recognised the baring and manner of a messenger discharging their duty. Some things were more important than survival, even to someone who grew up in the wastelands of Earth, putting survival above almost everything else out of absolute necessity.
This was a matter of faith.
Jason Bright drew to a halt before Courier Six, his soft green glow casting shadows over the old messenger's craggy features and stubbled chin.
"Courier," Jason spoke in his ghostly voice, his own natural tones overlayed by a voice that seemed to resonate outwards from another world not their own, with the gravitas of a prophet.
"Bright," the Courier acknowledged the Glowing One.
The only Glowing One he had ever known who still retained their mind after the radiation took root in their body.
"The Great Journey has led me down unexpected paths. Once more our Roads intersect under the strangest of circumstances, Great Messenger. Once more, Fate brings us together. It appears that the Great Journey is not yet at an end. I regret to say that I have misunderstood the signs that led me to this place."
The Courier nodded sympathetically, "Sure, the Spirits don't often make their intentions clear to us 'fore they send us off into the unknown. Never thought I would be speakin' to ye again for one."
"Nor I to you."
The two men stood, engaged in thoughtful self-reflection for a long moment. The last time the Courier had seen Bright, the Glowing One had been dressed in a salvaged space suit of the same kind he had found for Lani. Now, the ghoul was once more dressed in a dirty pre-war suit that he must have packed with his luggage and brought with him.
"See ye found a pair o' pants with both legs still attached," the Courier commented idly.
"Indeed," Jason replied, his troubled expression taking on a lighter cast as his inner glow responded to the pleasure these words brought him with a brief increase in his luminance.
"And you seem to have left your duster aside for the comforting embrace of the Holy Vestments. You have taken the first steps along the path of the Great Journey, and you are not even a ghoul. Curious. Have you become a believer since we last met?"
"Nah, I'll stick by my spirits if 'tis all the same to ye. They done right by me, see? An' ye too, though ye call them by a different name."
"Not to interrupt the spiritual debate, Boss," Harland cut over Jason's ethereal voice with his own, more reminiscent of sandpaper on gravel, "But I figure we probably have more important stuff to talk about at the moment."
"True," Jason agreed.
He turned his glowing gaze back to the Courier in hopeful appeal, "Have you come here to guide us once more upon the Great Journey, Great Messenger? Will you aid us once more by saving us from this trap we have stranded ourselves in, so we might once more take to the stars and pursue our course?"
The Courier shrugged, "Sure. Only really came as a favour to Chris, see? Thought ye'd all be long dead. Since yer alive though, I'm guessin' ye were meant to find this place an' I was meant to find ye."
"The Saint lives?" Jason Bright intoned thoughtfully. "This is joyous news. Has he too come to aid us in our hour of need?"
"Aye, hang on a second. I'll get him on the horn."
Holding up a finger for silence, Six flicked on his Comms Unit and winced at the sudden shouting that reverberated in his ears. Clearly, Chris and Somah were still going at it, hammer and tongs. He cut across the chatter with his booming voice, stunning everyone into silence and catching the attention of Lantaya and the Wanderer, who dragged themselves away from their examination of the Prothean ruins.
Lantaya caught sight of Jason Bright and stood stock still, staring at his Glowing figure in shocked amazement. The Courier with his preternaturally acute hearing, heard her muttered benediction to the Goddess clearly, even from across the wide expanse of the cavern. She wasn't usually the type to invoke the name of her race's deity. But Jason was a truly magnificent sight to behold for someone who had never even seen a Glowing One beforehand.
"Oi, yer Saintliness! We found Bright!"
There was a clatter on the other end of the line that sounded like a man throwing himself across a room crowded with both expensive implements and breakable people, to jam his face right up against the receiver base station that they had rigged up in the Workshop aboard Zeta.
"You have?!"
Chris sounded to be caught partway between excitement and terrified dread at what he might be told.
"Are they… is he…?"
The question did not need to be voice allowed. Chris's usually caustic tone was startlingly fragile and torn. He desperately wanted closure but wasn't sure if he could survive the bad news that he had every reason to suspect.
The Courier was happy to allay his concerns.
"They're alive. What's left o' them at least."
There was a choking noise on the other end of the connection. Then Chris's voice, heavy with sincere relief emerged through the link.
"Thank God."
There wasn't a trace of Christopher Haversam's usual asperity in his voice, only the sound of a man learning that those he cared for the most in this world, still lived. It was everything that truly mattered.
Smiling faintly to himself, the Courier waited for the other shoes to drop.
"All right. Pass me over to Bright, Courier. We need to talk."
The Courier did so with a pleasant smile laden with expectation.
"'Tis Chris," he said as he proffered Jason Bright the Commlink. The Glowing One took the device, studying the unfamiliar design. He plugged in into his ear in the same manner he had seen the Courier do.
"Chris?" He asked.
The Courier took a hasty step back.
"DON'T YOU CHRIS ME, YOU GHOULISH FUCK!"
Even without the Commlink plugged directly into his ear, he heard the reply perfectly. Jason clapped a hand to his ear in shock and pain at the sudden sound of a voice yelling profanity directly down his ear canal.
"You left me behind to play at being a fucking astronaut! If you're quite finished playing at being John Carter of Mars, get the Courier to teleport you up to the ship so I can smack the shit out of you, you religious nut!"
Harland looked both taken-aback and silently pleased by the sudden turn of events.
"Chris, please…"
"Go please yourself! Your dick glows in the dark you jumped up flashlight!"
There was a spluttered cough from somewhere on the other side of the Comms as several listeners in on the line restrained their laughter. Jason Bright looked shocked.
"You would never have managed to get to Mars without me! And because you're so useless, I've come to do all your work for you. Again! I'll have you know that I'm a very successful businessman now. I have far more important things I could be doing with my time than saving you idiots! I'm an entrepreneur! A man of substance! I earn more caps in a day than most casinos in Vegas do in a week!"
"I'm very happy for you," Jason echoed, unsure of what else to say.
"Shut up!"
The Courier reached out and tentatively cranked the volume down on the Commlink before tiptoeing away with a grin on his heavily lined face.
He walked up to Harland and grinned down at him, laying an arm companionably across his shoulders.
"So," he asked with a knowing grin, "What else did ye lads find in this shitehole?"