Feb. 24th, 2286.
Mothership Zeta, In Transit, Hawking Eta Cluster, Century System.
Hard times in life have a habit of exposing deficiency in all manner of unexpected ways. Areas in which you once believed that you possessed unusual strength are laid bare as your principle faults. Parts of your character that you overlooked are drawn inexorably to the light of day, for all the world to judge you by.
Lantaya knew these things. She had lived for close on four thousand years; and even if only a quarter of that time had been spent genuinely living, she knew these truths better than most. But no matter how much you acquaint yourself with the reality of your fallibility, you will always be grieved by your own inadequacies.
She had supposed that she was resistant to stress. Lantaya had done much with her life that she was proud of, most of which lay in domains that few of her kind had been capable of rivalling her in. Philosophy, science, engineering, combat, and some others besides. Stressful occupations.
But being among humans had taxed her capacity for enduring stress like no other.
Their leaders were insane cannibals, emotionally restricted cyborgs, poetry-spewing spies, religious fanatics… and one comparatively normal barber.
Their scientists and men of learning were madmen who designed weapons capable of levelling entire continents in an afternoon, whilst in the morning they broke every moral or ethical consideration of civilised people in order to revolutionise their understanding of scientific enquiry.
The pilots had crashed two of the new Falcon assault craft that Christopher Haversam had designed so far and were determinedly pursuing the hattrick.
Not a day went by without some new absurdity making itself known.
And she?
The Matriarch attempted to relax into her meditations, but for the umpteenth time in as many hours, she felt a deep, dark presence bursting upwards from within. Like a demon was trying to claw its way out of her, and she started into full wakefulness. Her skin was feverish, and her fringe was steaming ever so slightly, fulfilling its purpose of shedding heat away from the beating heart of her nervous system, so refined an instrument for Asari.
She was turning into… what was it that Ted Strayer had called it? A headcase? Yes, that was it.
She was turning into a headcase. It made for a fitting advertisement.
Planet Earth! Home of Humanity! For all your traumatising needs! Book today!
And the only place she could reliably find some peace and quiet was a hydroponics bay populated by sentient plants.
Lantaya shifted her weight minutely as a vine curled itself around her shin, warm within the confines of the Bay. Its exterior felt both wet and waxy, like tropical plant-matter wrapped around a thick cord of muscle.
"Now, now, Bob…. That ain't polite, now…. is it?"
The ponderous voice of Harold echoed in the vaulted chamber, muffled by the foliage that the sentient tree had spread throughout the chamber in the manner of a greenhouse, taking root in earth and water supplied by the scientists of the Zeta for just this purpose.
"Think nothing of it," she said with an indulgent smile, finding the touch of the plant to be somewhat comforting, "Bob is just making sure of my good health."
This was where Harold, and his mischievous symbiote Bob, grew the healthy supply of fresh vegetables, grains, medicinal plants and recreational drugs that the Zeta used on a daily basis, helped along by a sentient plant that could hurry the process along, and even modify the spoils of the harvest on command, when situations required it.
Lantaya had pondered why they didn't just use the Matter Forges to perform this task, as the resulting product would theoretically be exactly the same. They, in this case the humans on board, were in universal agreement that food that came out of the Matter Recombinators did not taste as good as when it was grown or killed naturally.
And damn them all if she didn't agree with them. She reached down and picked up a simple, unornamented clay cup from which she sipped a fragrant green tea. Perhaps madness was catching when you were exposed to it in large enough doses?
Whatever the reason, she did agree that the products of the Matter Recombinators tasted suitably different from the naturally grown fare. Scientifically speaking, it made no sense. But sense could hardly ever be applied where humans were concerned. Savouring the subtle taste of the liquid, the Matriarch opened her eyes in an admission of defeat, no longer willing to pursue another attempt at deep meditation. Across from her, the still and silent form of Toshiro Kago resolved himself in her field of vision, the Samurai seated, as was she, in the cross-legged position so universal to those pursuing the solitude of the inner self.
Dressed as he always was, in the folded robes of his cultural heritage, with his sheathed blades placed not far from his resting hands. He had his eyes closed and his mouth nailed shut. Casting her mind back, she could not remember a single time she had heard him speak. But it was something of an inside joke among the crew of the Zeta that Toshiro never spoke English, and when he chose to speak at all, it was only in his native Japanese and almost exclusively with the Wanderer.
It was never explained why.
She found his silence to be to her liking, however. She wasn't lacking for interesting diversions. What she lacked was an opportunity for escape from occupations and situations that were, at times, more 'interesting' than she had the nerves to suffer through.
"Y'know," Harold continued on after waiting for some engagement on her part, "You're looking a bit peeked, there. How about you…."
He drew in one of his mighty breaths that came in time with a soft rustling of leaves and branches within the Hold, as every plant shifted in time with his inhalation and exhalation. "…sit and talk for a spell. Something is bothering you, missy. Bob an' I can…. tell that much."
"I've had some difficulties sleeping, as of late."
An understatement if there ever was one.
"Sorry to hear that. Feel free to ignore us…. if we're prying but, is what's keeping you up at night…. more than just the sound of the engines?"
"The engines of the Zeta made no sound, Harold."
"I know. Was more of a… polite formality, Y'know?"
A way out of the conversation if she felt uncomfortable with the subject.
"I have rather a lot on my mind."
The raging storms of the Divide, nuclear giants soaring through the air to end countless lives. Legionaries dying as a grenade liquified them within a Biotic Singularity. The victims of murderers and rapists calling out from beyond the grave, asking her why she did not avenge them?
She clenched her teeth and rubbed absentmindedly at the bags under her eyes. Unseen, Toshiro cracked an eye and looked at her for a protracted moment, then closed it once more as her hands left her eyes.
"Us old souls…. have a lot to deal with. A lot…. to remember," Harold said after a moment of reflection.
"True," Lantaya agreed wholeheartedly, "And some of it is less than pleasant. Some of which, I would not mind forgetting."
"But… you can't forget. Just keeps on piling up, don't it?"
She made no reply, but her silence spoke for her. The vine wrapped itself around her hand, like a hand putting a reassuring pressure around her fingers as to make her aware that she was not alone.
"Yes. But it is endurable. This too will fade in the fullness of time. Although," she smiled with a dark amusement that gave her expression a cynical air, "I am old enough now that the fullness of my time may be reaching its end sooner, rather than later. If that is the case, I may not have to live with it for much longer."
"Getting old has some advantages," the tree confirmed with a wry chuckle that sounded like dry, creaking bark in the wind. "Not that I'd know, of course…. Bob keeps me going and going…. and going…."
His drawl ended with the sound of a pair of lips smacking in consideration of a life, or rather pair of lives, well spent. Lantaya found herself compelled to return his line of enquiry in turn. "Do you find it difficult? Remembering all you've seen? I imagine you have quite a few memories that are less than palatable. Living the life you've led; in the places you've been."
Living on a planet such as Earth, among a people like humanity.
"Ohh, sure…. Was a time when I felt I had more than enough…. to be remembering. Wanted to put an end to it. Once good old Bob got big enough…. and I couldn't move because he and I were…. rooted to the ground."
The Mutant paused in deep reflection for a moment, muttering as he and his tree communed privately in the confines of their shared mind. Leaves rustled and vines tightened around wooden trunks as the surrounding undergrowth responded to their inner turmoil.
"How did you find the will to continue on? To find joy in life? Or simply to sleep at night?"
"Ohh, from the same places that made me want to…. end it all. Some say hell is other people…. but some people are just mighty fine folks, Y'know? Make up for all… those bad apples. And I got Bob to keep me company. Even the things that get you down… are a comfort when you learn to appreciate them."
Lantaya smiled softly at the fondness in Harold's tone and took note of how the plants surrounding her seemed to rustle happily at his words. If a plant could be described as having emotions. She would take Harold's word that they did.
"It ain't much consolation at the moment," the tree said with a deep sigh, "But, when I felt at my lowest…. I never would have thought that things would get better. I was a…. sad man, stuck to the same damn spot for years and years…. and years. I thought life wasn't worth living no more. But now?"
At this the old tree's words dropped to a whisper, that due to his size was more like wind whistling between distant branches. The vines shifted, almost involuntarily in their shivering length, like restless snakes curled about the length of the deck, causing solid metal to creak with the force of their contractions. Leaves rustled in time with his words, which up until now had sounded rather akin to the ramblings of a doddering old man who could no longer speak with any attempt at speed, much less move with alacrity.
Now, words came with a strength of ages. What once seemed feeble now seemed wise and filled with a dignity that could not be denied.
"Where once…. I felt alone, I hear and see…. More than I could ever hope. A child is crying on Earth…. Under the fronds of my many trees. I hear him… I feel the heat of his breath on my leaves…."
Toshiro opened his eyes and glanced around himself warily, taking in how the plants were shifting and rustling, as if there was a wind blowing in the confines of the temperature and climate-controlled Bay.
"His mother looks for him… a mile distant. I guide her to him… moving my trees to make a path…. Stiggs and Haversam are talking…. In the Engineering Bay. I hear them speak as if…. In the same breath…. The same moment."
Harold's voice rose and took on a darker tone, "A supermutant is wandering too close…. to the farmland of Washington. He wants to harm the farmers…. I pull him down into the ground…. crush him…. between my mighty roots."
The plants shook more violently, and Lantaya saw Toshiro's hand drift guardedly towards his sheathed blade. It stilled as a vine matched his move, stopping an inch from the blade as if to head him off from drawing it. And as his reaching hand stopped, so too did the vine, shifting like a wild animal, tensed and shivering in anticipation of his move. Toshiro's eyes narrowed, and Lantaya felt the prickling on her skin that told her she was unconsciously drawing upon her Biotics.
"On Terra Nova…. My roots are already reaching beneath…. To link with the plants around me…. To learn how they grow…. To bind them to us. To Bob and me…. 'til one day they grow with us."
The rustling of the leaves and plants around them ceased, dying away as rapidly as the apparent agitation had overtaken them. But Lantaya and Toshiro remained tense, wishing that Harold would manifest the face he sometimes used to communicate, and show them his expression so that they might gauge his mood.
"I'd be worse off…."
The mighty tree said with a voice once more returned to its somewhat cheerful, somewhat unassuming drone of an old man with no ire towards mankind, nor a care in the word beyond telling meandering stories of ages past.
"If the Wanderer, hadn't convinced me and Bob…. To stick around a while longer…. My life is full, and my heart is…. Light. If I hadn't kept going…. When everything seemed so dark… I never would have known all that I know now…."
In another life, Lantaya thought, tribes of people would have worshipped a being like Harold as a spirit of the forest, or a God of Nature. Something akin to the spirits that the Courier believed in.
But, in a World such as the wastelands of Earth, born out of the wreckage of a more enlightened age, there existed enough men of science and learning to have stripped Harold of the title he might have otherwise attained. Although, those Treeminders she had heard tell of back on Earth might still have bestowed upon him the honour of a quasi-divinity.
Lani listened attentively, attending to his words as one unfathomably old being to another.
She might, perhaps, be his superior in years, but Harold had lived a more interesting and eventful life in the years he had. If the amount of adventure she had managed to cram into her comparatively short time on Earth was any indication, a year on the surface of that harsh planet was the equal of five anywhere else.
And this strange couple, joined together more securely than any pair of Asari bondmates, was like a lonely god, bereft of a temple.
"There is…. A life lesson, somewhere in there…." Harold asserted in a bright tone, his long breath giving the sentence a terminus that suggested that he too was considering what that lesson might be.
The Matriarch nodded respectfully, offering a wan smile in return for the encouraging words given with the best of intentions. "Thank you, Harold. I appreciate the attempt at cheering me up. You are very kind."
"Aww…. Don't mention it. Keep on hoping for a better tomorrow…. It'll find you eventually…."
And with this reassurance, the trees sighed contentedly and settled back into immobility. It was clear that both Harold and Bob were done talking and had settled back into the state of dormant pre-occupation that they occupied when they weren't conversing with members of the crew.
Though, now that she had been reminded so forcefully, Lani could not put aside the possibility that the Psychic Forest hadn't simply switched his attention from their conversation to another of the numerous similar conversation that might be going on at that moment, all across the galaxy from Earth to Terra Nova, to their ship drifting through the dark void of space.
It was a humbling thought to consider. It put the vastness in space into perspective when you conversed with a being who could communicate across those distances, almost in real-time. And the unknowability of reality, when even she could not determine how the amalgamation of plant and mutant could do so. She, like the scientists aboard, could only speculate and theorise.
She felt a vibration on her arm, accompanied by a soft beeping of her Pip-Boy. On the flexible screen held to her forearm by its fingerless glove of tough fabric she saw the notification pop up onto the screen. An incoming transmission from the Courier.
Mixed emotions passed through her. On one hand, Six was and seemed set to remain the most static and dependable part of her new and out-of-control existence. He was the reassuring keystone that held everything together, unlikely to be deposed by anything less than a triumphant return to Thessia with a new identity and a fat bank account, courtesy of Desmond Lockhart and his much-vaunted skills in covert tradecraft.
One the other hand, he was the Courier….
Enough said.
She accepted the call. Curiosity, quite frankly, killed vastly more than simple housecats.
"Six? To what do I owe the pleasure today?" Lantaya enquired with a guarded edge to her voice.
"Were ye missin' me?" the mischievous reply came through her comms with all the easy confidence she had come to associate with him. And a kind undertone that he seemed to reserve almost exclusively for those who she regarded to be within his small, inner circle of confidants.
"Against my better judgement."
"That's how all the best stories start, ain't it?" His laugh was rough but warm, a result of all the heavy smoking, she assumed. It continued to surprise her how disconcerting it was to hear such a deep voice, Asari voices being almost uniformly higher pitched. It both fascinated and disconcerted her, which seemed to be the overarching metaphor for the Courier himself.
"We're comin' up on another planet, lass. Spirits are whisperin' in the Dream, tellin' me to go stretch my legs for a spell. Fancy comin' along with us?"
Lantaya frowned, deeply. Typically, when the Courier started referring to the demands of his 'Spirits', something a trifle more interesting than a mere stroll on the surface of a new planet was afoot.
The Matriarch caught Toshiro's steady gaze across the vine-crossed expanse of deckplate and he politely averted his gaze, so not to distract her from her call. His manner had become almost habitually deferential to her once the initial suspicion had worn away.
Now, he treated her akin to the head of a household, but still behind the regard he showed to the Wanderer. He showed no-one the same level of respect that he showed his Master.
"Who is 'us', exactly?"
"Falcon's takin' a survey team down to the surface. Few o' Saint Haversam's lads and lasses. Top off on Raw Matter for the Forges, see? Wanderer, Boone and me. Ye too, if ya feel the inclination."
"That is all? Just a 'stroll'?"
Her scepticism was as obvious as the reasons behind it. The Courier laughed again, "'Course not. Spirits don't whisper to me like this unless it's important. An' important is usually fun, ya? The kind o' fun that ends in screamin'. Ye in or out, lass?"
She rose, somewhat stiffly to her feet after the long hours of immobility, stretching her legs out to return feeling to them and banish to feeling of needles from her flesh.
"In, if only to make sure you don't do anything too foolish. Where shall we meet? The Hanger Bay?"
It seemed to logical choice if they were going to catch a ride on one of Haversam's outgoing Falcons. The warmth of returning blood-flow suffused her lower limbs as she squatted down on one haunch, stretching her free leg out to the side in a move that laid stress upon her already supple tendons and ligaments.
"Engineerin' first, lass. Paulson's crackin' open some prime ordinance for us. Ye know the rules."
"When in doubt, bring lots of guns," she mirrored his words down to the millisecond. While his voice was bright and cheerful, however, hers sounded slightly more akin to a resigned sigh, "I know. I'm in Hydroponics now. I'll see you in Engineering shortly."
"Sound. I'll put a popgun to the side for ye."
The connection cut out, leaving her alone with her thoughts and Toshiro's unobtrusive presence. Almost without thinking, she reached down and drained her tea in several hearty swigs, before placing the clay cup on a nearby planter to be retrieved at a later time. It was something about being around Wastelanders; she had developed something almost akin to an eating disorder.
She couldn't Not finish food or drinks.
It seemed almost sacrilegious to do so in the face of the extreme devastation and privation she had seen on Earth. Or the echoes of it, at least.
A simple drink of tea had taken on a more meaningful aspect, an importance out of proportion to its humble origins. Origins no longer seemed so humble when clean water was a commodity of rarity and value.
"I regret to say that I must take my leave of you, Mr. Kago. Thank you for your company," she inclined her head respectfully towards her meditation partner. He looked at her for a long moment, then inclined his head in a silent but equally respectful return.
Turning away, she made for the teleporter room at the other end of the hold. It took some time to navigate the overgrowth that spilled out from their planters and beds on either side of the narrow walkway that wound through Hydroponics. A veritable jungle of greenery that obscured the only available space for walking.
Bob and Harold made their crops grow unearthly fast. When she had come down here a few hours ago, the path had been relatively unobscured. It would be another hour before some of the robotic staff would be down to cut it back again and take the resulting bounty to be stored in the Cryobay.
Wastelanders, predictably, had a slight hangup on being well-supplied with food.
An almost imperceptible rustling from somewhere behind made her shoot a glance over her shoulder, as her newly acquired habit of hypervigilance picked out the subtle variation in the normal rustling of Bob's many plants and vines and differentiated it from the sound of a man brushing aside a frond of leaves.
She felt her biotics responding unconsciously. Another recently acquired habit.
But it was just Toshiro, following her at a respectful distance with one hand on his sheathed blades and the other tucked into the fabric belt of his robes. He hadn't been making any particular effort to remain unheard, but he was just that graceful. He didn't move, so much as prowl.
"Do you intend to accompany me, Toshiro?"
The Samurai gazed at her with a passive expression. Finally, he nodded, as if he had decided that this was close enough to the truth for him to agree with dignity and honesty intact.
Lantaya couldn't say she minded. Bob's vine brushed against her hand as she passed by, bidding her farewell as she headed for the teleporter room at the end of the retrofitted Bay. According to the original crew of the Zeta, this Bay had once been the Holding Cells within which new prisoners abord the Zeta were processed and interrogated.
She could not recall her time here, so long ago as it was. The Zetan had not interrogated her as thoroughly as they had the human prisoners. No doubt they had deemed her an unforeseen oddity, and their preoccupation with the humans had precluded them from giving her as much attention.
An exclusion that she could help to feel somewhat grateful for. The thought of being defrosted from cryo-sleep just to be tortured or experimented upon like the rest of the humans hadn't been a pleasant one. No, she had only been tortured infrequently, and spent so much time in cryo that her moments of lucidity were less than entirely lucid to begin with.
Passing by a long row of bushes, bowing under the weight of Mutfruit, a mutated fruit whose status as a product of radiation lent it the distinctive name, she veered left and arrived at the hatchway door to the teleporter. To her left, in a bed opposite the Mutfruit, a row of gnarled and twisted trees bore an equal weight of disgusting punga fruit, native to the East Coast at Point Lockout.
Latchkey Kenny was particularly fond of them, though looking at the blackened, sickly skin of the dubious-looking fruit, the Matriarch T'Rali had to question why.
Stepping into the teleporter with Toshiro, she neglected the inbuild controls in favour of a controller on her Pip-Boy. They vanished with an accompanying snap of electrical discharge and a flash of blue light, reappearing several decks away in Engineering.
After the tranquillity of Hydroponics, Engineering was a veritable cornucopia of sights and sounds to the Matriarch, who winced involuntarily from the veritable wall of sound that assaulted them. Robots walked, rolled or skittered hither and thither, carrying heavy loads of manufactured materials and supplies.
Lani could see them at the end of the hallway, where the corridor opened out into the factory floor, where the trifecta of Matter Forges were in constant use. Their heavy, resounding thrum undercut every sound on the Engineering Deck, even overpowering the sound of the Engine Core.
She walked up the narrow hallway, just far enough to come level with Stiggs' tiny cubbyhole within which he tinkered with a rack of modified Assaultron chassis', some masculine in shape and appearance, others strikingly feminine.
Although, she had to admit that Haversam and the Mechanist had managed to convince the rampant robophile to be a little more tasteful in their design than might have been expected.
Apart from a modest set of slight mounds in the vicinity of the breastplate and some tactful swelling around the hips, Stiggs had exercised remarkable restraint in his designing of the Assaultron combat mechs.
"Stiggs," she called out, ducking aside to let a small ant-like robotic drone skitter past her feet on its metal limbs.
It make the ominous clacking sounds of metal upon metal as it passed her by, deviating from the floor in order to crawl diagonally up the wall like a spider. Once several feet off the ground, it released its inexplicable hold on the flat surface of the wall and hovered in mid-air, surrounded by the faint blue glow of a mass effect field.
It warbled at her in a manner reminiscent of ED-E, then shot off further down the hallway towards the main chamber, its six metal legs curled up underneath its black, conical thorax. These were the new Drones that R&D were designing to take on the functions of the old Enclave Eyebots. The conversion was all but officially agreed upon.
Even ED-E had been transferred to the new prototype, to see if it would meet with the little Eyebot's approval. Evidently, it had. They had been hearing his pleased warbling at all hours, emanating from the ventilation ducts that he had taken to crawling through.
"Matriarch, back from your break?" Stiggs lifted his head and regarded her from underneath his military-issue crew-cut, a remnant from his days in the Enclave.
He finished slotting a large array of data-crystals into an Assaultron body, connecting up a long row of fibre optic cables from within its exposed chest cavity. This particular model was one of the more masculine creations, with a trim waist and broad shoulders.
It was somewhat bulky, even without the reactive armoured plating that had yet to be fabricated and affixed to its outside. At present, the synthetic muscle and hydraulics that made it move were exposed, as well as the fibre optics that made up the robotic equivalent of its nervous system.
Its head was comparatively small when compared to the rest of the body, merely a small orb of shimmering black, like an oversized onyx. As the central processor was situated in the body of the robot, protected by the heaviest armour, its head only housed its optics and sensor array.
The faceplate was a blank screen, currently deactivated and devoid of light or movement. Behind him, an entire side of the wall was taken up by panes of a transparent material that served as viewports.
Distant stars twinkled like jewels suspended in tar. With the deactivated Mech's faceplate side-by-side with the infinite blackness of space, she realised that the two were exactly aligned in their particular shade of fathomless black.
"How does that update to the Ironsides OS come along? We need the latest version compiled and ready before we can roll out the neural interface to the rest of our ground team," Stiggs asked absentmindedly, only half paying attention to her as he replaced the panel at the front of the robotic Mech and secured it in place with a collection of interlocking inserts and screws.
Lantaya waved him off, without ceremony or much preamble. Stiggs was a straight-forward kind of man. Yes or no were just segments of code to him. You didn't need to phrase it correctly in order to spare his feelings or reassure him. He liked his answers the way he liked his women: direct and stern.
"I'll handle it tomorrow. The Courier is taking a small group of us down to the planet and invited me along."
"What's he want to do down there? I didn't think you could murder and eat rock and sand," Stiggs enquired with a lack of etiquette that in anyone else would have been deliberate and malicious. In him, it was the kind of honesty only achievable by a man with only a basic understanding of tact.
She didn't get to answer him. He turned his attention away from his work and in sufficient quantity to realise that she wasn't alone.
"Hey, Toshiro! You going planetside, too?"
The same long stare followed, the same eventual nod.
The grin that Stiggs shot from his greasy face was charmingly bright. He motioned to the blades at Toshiro's belt with his blackened fingers, "I'll take a look at your helmet cams when you get back, then. We're still trying to figure out if Monomolecular or Proton blades are best for ground troops. Your new Katana is one of our primary test cases."
Peering past his calloused, workmanlike fingers, he finally paid enough attention to her that he noticed how haggard she was looking. He frowned and jabbed a thumb towards the corner of his private domain, where a percolator sat on top of a running hotplate.
"Overtime got you looking a bit peeked, there. I know how you coders are. Get some coffee in you, you'll perk right up."
Lantaya took this in her stride and refused the proffered coffee diplomatically, "I would love to, but coffee is a diarrhetic, and I don't feel like testing out the waste disposal on the synth-muscle suits."
"No worries on that front. They don't even work yet. Whatever business you do, you'll be walking around with until they call mission complete. Murphy has some nice cocktails he's been cooking up in the Science Wing. I'll rustle up a few while I'm getting your gear sorted out. Keep you bright-eyed and bushy-tailed."
"I appreciate the offer, but turning to drugs for such minor complaints is a response vastly out of proportion to the severity of the issue. I will be fine," she assured him as she made for the stairs leading up from Stigg's little den of robotics to the main office of Engineering, where Christopher Haversam ruled over his Department with the iron fist of the ill-humoured.
"You sure? Murphy has got this great amphetamine-derivative he cooked up! Non-addictive! And only a minor increase in the likelihood of a stroke! I've taken twelve today already."
Lantaya felt her eyeball twitch as she paused on the stairs, "It's only noon."
Stiggs frowned and checked his Pip-Boy screen with an expression that rapidly morphed into one of mild surprise, "I thought it was still yesterday? I must have worked through the night, again."
He considered this for a moment, frowning as his brain ping-ponged through several different time zones in rapid succession before hopefully ending up back where it belonged, in the present. He clapped his hands and pointed at Toshiro, bounding up the stairs after them as Lani forged ahead.
"Cam footage!"
It seemed that Stiggs' thought process had landed a few minutes prior in the conversation and was about to shoot off on a tangent. Lantaya listened patiently as they ascended the stairway.
"Jericho came through here with the Wanderer a few minutes ago. I reckon he's going with you. That makes both of our primary Preliator test subjects in the field at the same time. Perfect for a side-by-side comparison of capabilities in the field!"
"It might be best not to refer to Toshiro as a 'test subject', Mr. Stiggs."
"Why not? You haven't run the field testing already, have you? Why didn't anyone tell me we'd advanced the project past the testing phase?"
Up above, the Big Man himself, Head Engineer 'Saint' Christopher Haversam was hunched over a desk, upon which a portable terminal was currently displaying a readout of Project Wright on its semi-flexible display screen.
The Falcon Dropship was a squat, boxy spacecraft with stubby wings. Covered in armour plating, boasting several redundant shielding systems and a cargo bay big enough to hold a squad of fully-kitted troops and a few robots as support, they resembled a Brotherhood Vertibird in most aspects, excluding the lack of rotors.
Haversam, being an aerospace engineer, was the best choice to head the Project and he had made astonishing inroads. Despite it looking rather akin to a Vertibird, this had in no way been the original intention. He had designed the Falcon from the bottom up, lovingly crafting each aspect of the vehicle from its potent array of weaponry to its practically impregnable defences, its impressively powerful engines. Lastly, but certainly not least, the inbuilt stealth systems that gave the gunship and troop transport vessel its piest-de-resistance.
Or, perhaps more accurately, its cherry-on-top.
"Ahh, Matriarch T'Rali. We're getting backed up with work-orders for the current project-work. Ortal needs a hand with the new revision for Ironsides and if you're not doing anything, she'd appreciate an extra pair of hand on the keyboard," Haversam exclaimed as he looked up from his work, his bald head shining in the light from the stars outside and his grating, ghoulish voice reminding her strongly of Desmond.
She imagined that she could see those distant cosmic bodies reflected in the grease that was building up on his hairless pate. The scientists and engineers of R&D, referred to unofficially as 'The Workshop', followed the eternal example of overachieving workaholics the galaxy over, by being poor judges of time and only passingly interested in personal hygiene.
They could build or design practically anything under the sun. Now the only problem that remained was finding the time to build and design everything under the sun and still making time for self-care.
So far, they hadn't managed to strike a balance.
"I'm afraid I cannot, Mr. Haversam. I'm heading planetside with the Courier for a little field testing. Would you mind if I started refabricating our gear for a trip planetside?"
Haversam clicked his tongue in irritation but gave way without too much contention, with what was for him a tolerable show of civility. "My kingdom for a dedicated team of coders," he grumbled to himself, returning to his computer and opening up another diagram of a Falcon with a large, multi-barrelled weapon built into its underside.
"Well, thankfully I don't have to tear myself away from my work to assist you with that," he rasped, sounding very pleased that he wouldn't have to be bothered, "Paulson has jurisdiction over hardware that has already been fabricated and tested. He'll sort out the picnic basket for your little misadventure. Try to stop Six from doing anything too reckless. I know that planet is a miserable ball of sand, but so is the Mojave and he never fails to find trouble there, either."
"We could use some updated testing on the new weapons-systems, though. Maybe just a little trouble?" Stiggs posited with a speculative air.
Haversam practically growled, "Don't tempt fate, especially where the Courier is concerned."
Stiggs, an East Coast native who wasn't as familiar with the legend of Courier Six, remained unimpressed. "Come on, what's the worst he can get up to? We're in a system on the edge of the galactic core. These are all gas giants or scorched lumps of solar rock! What are the chances that there is anything alive down there at all?"
Haversam rounded upon the man, turning from an overweight, balding aerospace engineer in a greasy lab coat to the businessman who had carved a profitable commercial empire out of the scorched bones of Vegas through sheer force of will and consistency of effort.
"God damn it, smoothskin! Anyone born in a wasteland, east or west, should know better than to tempt fate like that! Are you trying to get us all killed" the bald man exclaimed as the engineer tried to protest. His eyes flashed with ire that illuminated the hollowing sockets.
"That's just superstition," Stiggs said, somewhat weakly as he leaned back from his portly superior's incandescent rage.
"Superstition?! I may have been a member of a cult, but I'm still a man of science, smoothskin! And I've launched enough rockets to know that being a man of science doesn't mean being a man of stupidity! If praying to whatever god will listen for the damn thing not to blow up during atmospheric transit is what gets that giant phallus into orbit, you pray to God and Atom, too! And you never tempt fate!"
Stiggs nodded silently, thoroughly cowed.
"If you didn't spend so much damn time working on a body for Doctor Dala and redirected some of that energy towards more fruitful pursuits, Project Ironsides would be off the books and we'd be working on the Anti-Grav Units by now!"
Stiggs seemed surprised and aggrieved by this sudden change of tactics. It seemed as though Chris's legendary temper had been triggered and he was about to find a kitchen sink to throw at the hapless engineer, who opened his mouth to protest. He barely got out a low mumble.
"No, don't you dare argue with me, or I'll have you shoved out the damn airlock into the Great Beyond! I know what you keep hidden in that false wall in your workshop! If it didn't affect your work, I'd be more than willing to leave well-enough alone, but as it stands I think you deviants should be lined up against a wall and filled full of plasma! Go on, get out of here!"
Stiggs vanished out of his superiors office, utterly shamefaced at being dressed down in front of Lantaya, while Haversam waited until the roboticist was out of sight before he sighed deeply. He glanced sideways at Lantaya, who was staring at him, nonplussed by the long and detailed outburst.
"It is a shame to see a bright man like him waste his talents, pining after a brain in a jar," he licked his hand and smoothed back a few errant whisps of hair before finishing lamely, "Damn pervert."
Lantaya, who had a prodigious judge of character, suspected that the reason Haversam railed against the robophile so heavily, was repressed self-disgust at having wasted so much of his own potential with failed attempts at pursuing love. She didn't say this, however, as most men of strong character didn't react well to having their faults pointed out so blatantly.
Toshiro edged past her and nodded his head in the direction of the armoury. Without waiting for her to guess his intentions, he padded off like a panther, his soft footfalls lost in the background noise of the Workshop.
Haversam frowned, his brow knitting together underneath his horseshoe of remaining hair, "You know, I don't think I've ever heard that man talk."
He said it as though he had only just realised this fact. As though throughout the entire week or so that Toshiro had been knocking around Engineering and the Science Wings, being poked, prodded and filled full of bleeding-edge tech, the fact that the ancient Samurai hadn't said a word had not registered with him.
"He never seems to need to," Lantaya said philosophically.
"A silent man is a product of deep thoughts or deep head wounds," Chris said after a moment of consideration. That was Wasteland Wisdom if Lani had ever heard it. She nodded to Haversam in the manner of a colleague arranging a business meeting. Polite, but professional.
"I will be back to help with coding of the new Ironsides revision later on today."
"If you aren't, smoothskin, then I'll assume you're dead."
More Wasteland Wisdom. You could tell because the lesson was always low expectations.
She crossed the gantry-way that wound around the Engineering Core that hummed and pulsed with the power of the ship's main power generator and the excess runoff from the three Matter Forges, making her blue skin prickle slightly as she passed it by.
Another drone, carrying a heavy black plastic storage crate barnstormed her and zipped through the door before her as she neared the Armoury, which was built into the room where, in days long past the Lone Wanderer had defrosted a Cowboy, a Samurai and a Combat Medic from their century's long captivity aboard the Zeta.
Elliott had told her that particular story on their long journey through the blackness of space to get to this nowhere system on the edge of the Galactic Core, still halfway from anywhere she knew and nowhere she wanted to be.
He had phrased it in the manner of a joke; a Cowboy, a Mute Samurai and a Combat Medic walk onto a Spaceship. What happens?
As it happened, the punchline was space piracy.
Stepping into Paulson's domain was a bit like walking through a door in a factory and finding a gift shop within, one crammed with people because there was a sale going on and everyone was obliged to fill their pockets.
It was crammed full of wastelanders in various states of besotted with the lethal contents of the Armoury. They chattered and hefted every variety of high-velocity death that their twisted hearts could desire in the large room, making it look cramped with their presence.
"Lani," her nickname echoed out from the back of the Armour, closest to the workstation where Paulson sat, busily cataloguing the kit that was being checked out of the Armoury so that they could be accounted for upon the return of this large cavalcade of wasteland operators.
The Courier waved lazily at her from where he sat against the side of Paulson's desk with Boone and Raul clustered around him.
Boone was sitting down, but with the posture of a man so completely and utterly military that he even sat at attention. Raul was slouched in that way that only Latin men could pull off, crusted scalp towards the rest of the world and his chin resting on his armoured chest.
They all wore battle-rattle that, despite being brand new, the wastelanders almost universally altered to match the same style: Wasteland Chic.
This involved taking the standard Ironsides loadout of skin-tight synth-muscle jumpsuit and overlaying armoured full-body carapace and defacing it so utterly with rags, spraypainted symbols or laser-etched graffiti that it seemed as though they had on wearable Freeside.
Boone wore cayote brown combat harnessing over his carapace, which he supplemented with NCR standard-issue uniform pants and a mag-carrier stocked with enough ammo packs for his two rifles that the heat death of the universe might well arrive before he ran out of shots to throw downrange.
The distinctive bear-skull of First Recon and its iconic inscription was given a place of honour on both his shoulder-guards and on the side of the helmet he currently had clipped to his belt.
Raul had on a good portion of his Vaquero Outfit, including the leather jacket, gun-belt and bandoliers over his armour, and his canvas pants to conceal the synth-muscle that wrapped his thighs. Wearing the jumpsuits made you look like an onyx bodybuilder without any clothes on. It mirrored human musculature, after all.
Most of the wastelanders seemed to find the effect distasteful. They liked looking like a ragged bunch of wanderers. It fit in their minds with some kind of internal self-image they held regarding themselves. They needed to look scruffy and unkempt.
Like there was a rule written down that stated looking slicked-back or well-dressed was somehow beneath them. Or above them, as the case might be.
Then there was the Courier.
About the only difference she could see with his loadout was that, instead of the faded and chipped surface of the NCR Elite Riot Armour peeking out from underneath his long duster, the carapace of the Ironsides now lay.
He too had ruined the pristine surface of the armour with combat webbing and iconography. A stylised 21 housed within an Ace of Spades there, a quick stencilled comment or quote from long ago here. The edge of a few letters printed in large typeface that was probably his blood-type peaked out from underneath his own mag-carrier.
A datura-root rollup was drooping from his bearded chin, threatening to set his entire face alight with the glowing tip. He was sucking on the roll-up as though he wanted to be paid extra for his services.
She commented on this as she approached, "Do you have some manner of grudge against your lungs today, Six?"
"No more than usual, lass," he answered as he idly flipped the lid of his tarnished zippo lighter open and closed with a synth-muscle thumb. He plucked the roll-up from between his lips and exhaled a cloud of psychedelic smoke past his inhumanly white smile, "Planet ain't got breathable atmosphere, 'parently. Gettin' in me fix 'fore we catch the lift down."
He tapped ash down into a coffee mug on Paulson's desk, which he had apparently co-opted for this purpose. It didn't look as though Paulson had finished the mug of thick, frontier-style brew before the Courier had arrived, but drinking what remained now would probably be both disgusting and mildly hallucinogenic.
Lani looked around her at the press of wastelanders. At a cursory glance, the Wanderer was there with a small retinue of his own men, including Butch Deloria, the deplorable Jericho, Clover, Charon and Desmond Lockheart. Toshiro had found a place beside the Wanderer and was currently rifling through the contents of the storage crate that had passed her on the gantry.
It likely contained his gear, recently refabricated by the Matter Forges.
Then there was Ulysses and Joshua Graham, conversing in the corner over an open copy of the Bible. They too wore conventional clothing over their new armoured suits. Most notably, Ulysses had his sleeveless duster while Graham had his Salt Lake City Police Department flak vest, criss-crossed with more combat webbing.
She suspected that if you strung all the webbing present in that room together in a straight line, they could rappel down to the planet's surface and leave the Falcon to collect dust. But then, who would take the Portable Mining Unit down to the planet to suck up another few tons of raw matter to be fed into the bottomless maw of R&D?
"I had thought that 'we' would be a few less than there evidently are," Lantaya said with a pointed look about the crowded armoury.
The chattering bunch were now shrugging on rucks and haversacks in addition to the already considerable weight of their combat harness, armour and weapons.
This had been the real point of the synth-muscle suits when all was said and done.
It was true that the suits made it possible for a man or woman to drive their fist through an inch-thick solid steel plate, but what it actually did was allow them to hump enough gear to wage a lonely, one-man war with munitions that could stack three or four of those plates back-to-back and blow them to kingdom come.
They bore their heavy loads without a hint of effort.
The Courier laughed and shrugged, datura smoke coming out of his beard in wisps of grey vapour against his equally grey hair. Raul looked up, somewhat groggily, seemed to notice Lani there for the first time and smiled, his hideous but genuinely welcoming smile, full of goodwill, "Hey there, senorita."
"Bein' shut up in this hulk for weeks ain't easy to deal with when yer used to bein' as free as a bird, Lani," the Courier intoned, "They're wantin' a little somethin', see? Somethin' all hot an' cold at the same time, with flyin' lead an' screamin' voices. Somethin' all full of life an' death stuffed into a single, perfect moment…"
He flicked the tail end of the rollup into a mug and stood upright as the guttering flame spat and the coffee gave out a burnt odour. He took up his new combat helmet and squeezed it on over his hairy head.
Where his previous helmet was modelled on the facsimile of a human face, with eyeholes and a breathing apparatus where the mouth should be, this helmet was very different in design.
It was shaped like an axe-head, sharp edge running up the centre of the wearers face and widening towards the back to accommodate the skull. Incoming rounds were meant to skip off the sloped surface of the faceplate, and the bulbous protrusion over the eyes and forehead that housed the targeting system and optics.
The user could switch through several different modes of view, including but not limited to Low-Light, Thermals and Electro-Mag. It resulted in a distended forehead so prominent that a neanderthal would think it excessive.
It made the aged Wastelander look alien.
More alien than he already was to her. Simply… wrong. Like a bipedal bug.
On the forehead, along with a variety of other spraypainted or etched additions to the waster aesthetic, he had stencilled a pair of overlapping white bullet holes above the spot where the two 9x19mm wake-up calls had fractured his skull and begun the legend of the Courier that would become King of all New Vegas.
Along with the words, 'The Spirits Protect, The Strong Endure'.
A double-barrelled refrain for a double-barrelled memory. It was the least of what was written on his kit. It time, it would collect scraps and dents that would speak louder than any spray-paint.
The Courier didn't defabricate or refabricate his gear. Any battle-scars he or they collected, he walked away with. Another of his eccentricities.
"I 'ad a Dream last night, Lani. First I've 'ad since sharin' one with ye in the Nightmare. My Road led through a cave, underground an' into the earth. Only it weren't earth no more. It was a sea o' blood, an' the Road was pitch black an' full o' stars…"
Lantaya stood and listened to the raspy, metallic sound of Six's voice echoing through his external microphone, because what else did you do when a wasteland warlord turned cannibal king spoke about his drug-induced coma that you had a sneaking suspicion was something more?
Something darker and more ominous than you wanted to admit.
Not listen?
Boone and Raul gave her commiserating glances from behind the Courier's back. They'd been dealing with this for a lot longer. Stand strong little alien queen, it will all work out in the end.
Paulson reached over Boone's shoulder and tapped the handle of a large revolver on Raul's shoulder, which the ghoul grasped and tucked into one of his two hip-holsters with an appreciative look at the deadly handcannon.
The two cowboys hadn't been able to part from the time-honoured wheel-guns of their youth and had adapted the design to fire self-contained gauss slugs. Each shot hit like a bus filled with trucks.
"The blood burned like fire an' the cave started closin' soon as my boots crossed the threshold. Closin' in 'round me like a giant's mouth. There were chains down in tha' darkness, an' eyes. Lot's o' eyes starin' out at me from the stomach linin', white an' sightless. Trapped down in there wit' the eyes."
The Courier was gesticulating with his hands and his legs seemed to have made the decision of their own accord to pace around her like a maypole. It sounded as if he had put the helmet on so that she wouldn't see the deranged expression on his face, under the greying hair and the wisps of datura smoke.
He was far away and yet right there with them.
Ulysses and Joshua had stolen a glance at the situation and were striding over with hard expressions.
"Was 'bout to rig up a mini-nuke an' blow a hole back out to the outside…"
He paused.
A full-body pause. His hands stopped moving in mid-gesticulation, his legs stopped pacing mid-step, his body stilled and his silence was deafening in the armoury where all other voices had died down the second they realised that the Courier was having one of his 'moments' and it made better entertainment for the watching than humdrum conversation about guns that could turn Deathclaws to smoking chunks of giblets.
The silence continued until Butch piped up.
"Uhh, so then what happened?"
Cool guy Butch, leader of the Tunnel Snakes, trying not to sound too much like a kid listening to a campfire story.
"…then I feckin' woke up, is what feckin' happened!"
The Courier whirled around and glared at the world at large through his helmet optics like a petulant child who had been told that cookies were only for after dinner, not before. Joshua and Ulysses circled him warily.
"Just when things were gettin' to the good part, too! Can ye credit it?!"
The tension did not break, but it lessened somewhat at the slight note of mock outrage in his tone.
Butch chuckled nervously, Clover raised one razor-cut eyebrow mockingly, and everyone who knew the Courier well enough to know, saw the subtle tension in his shoulders underneath the heavy coat and armour-plating.
Real or not, the Courier believed in Dreams and Nightmares. The kind that got capitalised. It was no laughing matter.
"So, we're goin' down to that dust ball an' scopin' the place out. An' when I find that feckin' cave in the sea o' blood, teeth made o' stone at the end o' a starry path, I'm gonna blow the ever-lovin' fuck outta that shithole!"
ED-E soared in through the door with another storage case, this one marked with a crudely stencilled 'LANI'. He warbled triumphantly as he airdropped the package onto a mostly cleared workbench, sending two errant grenades flying and upending a communal bowl filled with bottlecaps from the almost constant procession of soda bottles that were emptied by people visiting the armoury.
Alcohol had been banned by Paulson after the Courier spent an entire night at one of the workbenches, wiring up customised explosives in a drunken stupor.
Six flipped open the crate and took the GuP1 off the top, a stubby personal defence weapon that R&D called the 'Guppy' and the Tunnel Snake operators called the 'zipgun'.
It didn't have the shattering recoil of their standard gauss battle-rifle, but discharged tiny hypervelocity slugs at a rate so ludicrously fast that it made a sound like a zipper being done and undone at speed. Lantaya had judged the weapon to be more suited to her size and stature, it being much smaller than the GuR3.
He proffered it to her as ED-E circled once in the air and landed on his shoulder, the spidery claws of the robot's new body curling around his neck to hold steady.
"How 'bout it, lass?" The Courier enquired with an edge of glee to his voice, "Feel like goin' to find some trouble?"
She looked at the weapon, held out towards her by the barrel, stock and grip ready and waiting for a willing hand. Her hand reached out and took the handle, feeling the slight difference in weight that denoted it's unloaded status. She had practised enough to tell the difference.
"I feel like going to keep you from doing anything unwise once you find it, Six."
Author's Note: Hiya there, folks!
I've got good news and bad news. I'll lead with the bad news first because it's always better to get the bad stuff out of the way first. That way you can enjoy the stuff you like in peace a quiet. Remember kids, eat your vegetables first and don't leave them until last!
Bad news is I'm rolling back Wasteland Galaxy to before Talein's Daughters.
Reason being, succinctly put: It was utter shite and set me up to write a clusterfuck of a story arc that had way too much crammed into a short timeframe. I became a victim of sunk-cost fallacy. I didn't want to roll it back before now, despite having that conversation with myself multiple times, because I'd already spent so much time on it. Special callout to Psyentific who pointed out what I was already dissatisfied with first. Don't make a habit of being right. Or do, you know, just not when I also happen to be wrong.
But now that I've decided to rid myself of it, the story is flowing again and my fingers have remembered their skill.
The last few months were a dream brought on by imbibing way too much datura root.
A big thank you to all my Patrons, past, present and future.
Tyrone Lambert
CB-Otaku One and Two
Roa
Simlicity
Bum
Guerrilla Stride
Jace
Mobius Strip
ZombieDwarf
Sweet Water
Dawn Whitbeck - (You've got a whole raft of perks due to you and I haven't got any response, yet. Let me know if you want them and I'll roll out the welcome wagon)