2 – Tara IV
Boston Common in the springtime. Birds chirping, children playing, sun shining, smooth jazz playing from a busker. Looking over a bridge at the swan boats stood Commander Gorman. He took in the view. To his right, the most beautiful woman in the world. To his left, an ice cream stand. He looked down and, lo and behold, there was a cone of pure, unadulterated chocolate chip in his hand. This was a special occasion, he could feel it. It was a feeling not of success, but of satisfaction. This was all he wanted.
Suddenly, there was the complete opposite. His senses were overwhelmed by a blood-soaked red hue as the scene disintegrated into unspeakable horrors. Screams and death enveloped the Commander, closing in. A mechanical screech bellowed unlike anything he had ever heard. He was an unescapable urge to scream out himself, to call for anything and anyone that could help…but gazing upon his hellish surroundings only the dead would be an audience. Unfortunately, the vision was just as vivid the second time around. And there was a Frenchman with a beard there too.
"He's French!" exclaimed Gorman, jolting awake with realization. His heart was pounding. Academy training took hold of him, his hand swiftly making its way to his holster only to find it empty. Two blue eyes peered down at him from a meter away – no language barrier could mask their concern.
"…Oui, je suis français," he cautiously said. He gave the Commander a questioning thumbs-up. "OK?"
Gorman got up, cracking his shoulders back. He tested out his legs and arms. The ship was whirring yet felt still – perhaps even landed?
"Yeah, I'm okay. Are we back on Earth?" In response, he received a head shaking side-to-side. "Are we…near Earth?" There was a pause, his piloting acquaintance had to think about this one. He hesitated before giving his head another shake. Gorman sighed. "Did we run out of fuel?"
This time, behind the beard the face perked up before displaying the most enthusiastic shaking of the head to date, almost proud about it. He held up his hand with two fingers incredibly close to each other. They had made it somewhere, but it took almost every ounce of fuel the ship had left.
"Station essence," he remarked, pointing to the left side of the ship. Never a straight answer, thought Gorman. Station essence? So what, it looks like a station? It has station-like qualities but not quite worthy of the title? How come this guy understands everything the Commander says without speaking his language? "Nous devrions aller, non?" he concluded.
"Interesting," mouthed Gorman, still pretending to have some understanding, cursing his decision almost two decades ago to take up German instead of French in school. "I think we should go, no?" The pilot's face turned to stone. He gestured with an open hand towards the stairwell. 'You go first' was not said but implied, which didn't exactly fill Gorman with confidence in their new location. He huffed, shaking his own head to dispel any remnants of his nightmare, before grabbing his weapons from the table and marching to the upper level.
Out of the window slits was likely the most comforting sight one could possibly see in all of deep space – a planet. Perhaps literally anything else runs a close second. This was unmistakably a gas giant, a remarkable beige blur coating an enormous orb that stretched on way beyond the viewports' capability. There appeared to be a bulky, off-white metal structure off the port side, and barely visible on its planet-side were a series of what seemed like tubes that stretched far into the depths of the planet's atmosphere. The Commander's train of thought had missed its stop altogether as he observed the majesty from the comfort of the ship. This was no planet of the solar system he knew and loved, for sure.
Behind him, the ship's other occupant cleared his throat and tapped his foot impatiently on the metal grates underfoot. Gorman snapped out of his stun, twisting back to the hatch where he first carelessly threw himself into the ship. The small bundle of electronics attached next to it flashed green for go. He stretched out his gloves, gripped the handles, and pulled. Gas billowed out and in as the door came apart. With a heave, the hatch rotated open. The Commander took a stride inside to find a short corridor of sorts, blisteringly bright compared to the ship and the walls and floors smeared with off-white panels. It looked and smelled sterile. The Frenchman followed suit, leaping over the doorway, and to Gorman's confusion, dragging the hatch shut behind them.
Without warning a horizontal laser beam shot across the ceiling of the corridor. Gorman's hand drifted to his sidearm, but a quick glance at his colleague showed no sign of worry – if anything, bemusement. The beam carved through the whole zone, top to bottom. It left a bitter taste in Gorman's mouth that quickly subsided.
"Decontamination complete," a woman's voice announced from speakers somewhere overhead. Although there was little doubt that it was a recording, to hear someone speaking English was a great relief to the Commander. As luck would have it, he hadn't inadvertently stumbled into a French colony somewhere in outer space. English meant humans, too. The possibility of the pilot having secretly been a disguised alien like the ones that attacked him hadn't really crossed his mind, but now he could cross it out.
Other interesting and terrifying possibilities were still creeping into the Commander's mind at all times, however. His now fully awake brain was finally grinding away at making sense out of all the outlandish things he had been seeing. Humans on a station around a gas giant that wasn't anywhere near Earth? The technology for such a feat was feasible…but only if…
Just how long has it been since he had left Earth?
White clouds spread into the corridor as the properly human-sized doorway at the station's end shifted open. Gorman walked through and was promptly greeted by a gunshot. The round whizzed by, impacting the doorway's arch with a crack.
"Woah! Hold fire!" a deep voice shouted. The gas cleared enough for the Commander to lower his own instinctively raised sidearm. His finger eased off the trigger.
He was staring at the wide eyes and trembling weapons of two ill-fitting armored suits, and another standing central who lowered his gun with much more confidence. He was the one who gave the command.
These people were mostly young and mostly dusty, a stark contrast to the almost unnaturally clean station interior. On the left was a pale young woman whose helmet was so oversized it covered her eyes unless she continually adjusted it. On the right was a bald, mustachioed man with a cigarette dangling from his lip. His strange, arced rifle was also smoking. The middle man was a head and shoulders over the rest, his dark brown skin and dots for eyes striking against the light backdrop. Lockers and kiosks flanked the trio, they themselves covered from the elbows down by an overturned table. From the kiosks and beyond a far entranceway, heads could be seen gradually poking out.
"Damn, I'm really, really sorry, son," spluttered the bald man, trying his hardest not to look at how close his shot was to Gorman's head. "We thought you two were, y'know, batarians."
"Batarians?" blurted out the Commander.
"We see a batarian slaver ship on approach, we get a little cautious," grimaced the woman, once again pulling her helmet upward. She sounded offended. "No matter who requests to dock."
"Vous ne pouvez prendre aucun risque," chimed in the Frenchman, hoping nobody noticed how he slowly emerged from the Commander's back once the gunshot had died down.
"I'm glad you understand," sighed the tall man. Gorman was taken aback. Does everyone else understand the pilot? "And as for you," the man continued, gesturing to Gorman, "I'm glad that someone on this station knows the difference between humans and batarians!" The bald man scowled, before starting to walk away from the scene in frustration. The woman followed suit. The small crowd of spectators split.
"Batarians?" the Commander could not help but repeat. "That's what the aliens are called?" The man sized Gorman up, as if gauging whether there was anything visibly wrong with him. Gorman's mind was racing – his near-fatal encounter was not first contact, and although the alternative was just as horrifying, the thought still frightened him.
"…Yes, the ones that kept you and your friend in their slaving ship."
"Do they have four eyes?"
"Like a spider."
"They tried to kill me."
"Could say that about half the people on this station, really."
"How many of them are there?"
"Enough that McFinley keeps three guards for a fuel station this size…two of which actually standing a chance of keeping their jobs. Could be worse, I suppose." He took off his helmet, revealing an overgrown military crewcut and running his fingers through it. His accent was hard to place. "Listen, you two have been through enough, hot food's available further down the hall, past the armory."
"Merci beaucoup," stated the Frenchman, giving Gorman a curt nod and proceeding to jog out of view.
The Commander, on the other hand, was bursting with more questions. He opened his mouth to speak, but there were five things it wanted to say at once. He gave it another thought and narrowed it down to three…and finally one.
"I need to get back to Earth. It's urgent."
The man gave a chuckle but failed to hide some frustration in it. Not frustration towards the Commander, but towards the situation at large.
"Don't we all? You're out of luck there, turtleneck. Next shuttle to Elysium isn't for months, and as for home it'll be even longer." Gorman sighed – one question answered, three more appear. "You…feeling alright? Couldn't have been easy, captured for so long. Get some food and some rest, Mister…" he awaited, turning the table back upright and extending a free hand. Gorman gripped it and shook.
"Gorman, Kevin Gorman."
"Kabiru Kalu. And your friend was?"
"Not a clue."
"…Right. Be seeing you inside." With that, Kalu made for the storage lockers, trying to find a space for his rifle. Gorman took his first proper steps around the station. It was time to look around and get some more answers, but first, a trip to get some energy. He felt famished.
There must have been a couple dozen people hanging around the whole complex, all wearing white and green company uniforms and ambling around the halls chatting to each other in various languages. Information came steadily from bulletin boards, overheard conversations, and station-wide announcements over loudspeakers. This small piece of humanity in the deepest reaches of outer space was the Tara IV Depot, which through some innovative process extracts gases crucial to space travel from the very atmosphere of the gas giant it was orbiting.
All for the benefit of the McFinley corporation, who, according to one technician that passed Gorman by, were gambling on this station's profits if they stood any chance at competing with the 'big players', like 'Eldfell' or the 'Salarian' companies. One engineer, when spotting the Commander at the lunch table and recognizing him as the man freed from batarian hands, cursed McFinley's good name for Tara IV's proximity to batarian 'space', before asking how many Gorman had slain in his valorous escape. Of course, he did it all in Japanese. Luckily the Commander was bailed out by the young woman from the entrance standoff, who took a seat opposite.
"Don't mind Goro, he's only seen batarians on the vids. If only you and I could have been so lucky," she sniggered, trailing off as she stared not at the Commander but somewhere far past him. Another planet, perhaps. "Anyway," she regained her composure, "we definitely got off on the wrong foot. Jenny Boxer." She was the next station dweller to extend a friendly hand. Gorman was only too happy to comply.
"Commander Kevin Gorman."
"…Commander? What are you, Alliance Navy?"
Gorman paused. Pulling rank might be his ticket off the station…but if this so-called 'Alliance' came knocking that wasn't a problem he was looking forward to. The question therefore was how best to say that he was the leader of a top-secret effort by the government to intercept an extraterrestrial threat. A good backup option presented itself – his previous line of work.
"Law enforcement."
"Oh," began Boxer with barely hidden disappointment. "My father was a Commander. Served on the SSV Auckland…died in the Blitz." Goro started speaking again. Gorman couldn't catch a word of it. Boxer nodded her head solemnly once he was done. "I know, I know, it's just we barely get anyone new in this godforsaken depot. None of you want to talk about it, so why not-"
"I'm sorry, I have to say something," interrupted Gorman, the gradual buildup of annoyance having reached a tipping point.
"What, don't tell me you don't know about the Blitz? The Skyllian Blitz? Elysium? Torfan? Ringing any bells? Did the batarians sell your memory into slavery but not your body?"
"I don't know half the words you just said, but that's not my point. How are you able to understand Goro? First it was the pilot only speaking French, then those guys having a conversation in the hall somehow in both German and what I think was Arabic, and now Goro? Does everyone except me have a translator built into their heads or something?"
It was Boxer's turn to pause. She glanced at Goro, then back to the Commander.
"You're pretty much right."
"I must apologise, I thought you understood everything I was saying!" laughed Goro, in plain English.
Gorman's jaw fell, and although he felt the urge to flip over the table and yell 'Why didn't anyone tell me!' he managed to find a much nicer thing to ask.
"Well…where can I get one?"
"Most spaceports sell them for only a few hundred. You can get them in your shirt, your glasses, or even," Goro began with a smile, explaining with the patience of a parent to a toddler, now pointing at the back of his neck, "beneath the skin." Gorman shuddered at the thought.
"Didn't Ray say he had a spare one in his locker?" Jenny enquired. Goro nodded.
"Yes, along with all the other junk taking up more than enough of his 'half' of the locker. I still wonder where he gets all those trinkets sometimes…"
Jenny turned her head both ways to make sure prying ears were out of reach. She leaned in to the table – the Commander and Goro followed suit.
"I think he's been exporting more than just fuel, if you follow."
"What?" Goro spat, as loud as a whisper allowed. Gorman took a long sip from his condensed can of sterile water. "Ray wouldn't do that, would he? Exporting what, to where?"
"Call me paranoid," Jenny leaned back, crossing her arms, "but you know how much fuel we pump out of poor old Tara in a week," she continued, before realizing a correction was necessary. "Well, at least you do, Goro." She gave the perimeter another glance. "If a couple canisters go missing or some are 'misplaced' on return, what's the big deal? Worst case scenario, Macaulay McFinley loses a decimal point at the end of his salary."
"And what does Ray stand to gain?" Goro questioned with a lot less confidence in his allegedly mischievous co-worker. "Last time we talked, he seemed to be doing well for himself. Owns a house near the spaceport on Eden Prime, saving up for a brand new skycar…" Goro's face turned from confusion to concern. "Oh. Oh no. All this time? I know how you feel now, Commander."
"Who's Ray?" was all Gorman had to say after the revelation.
"Bald, moustache, smokes indoors. Nearly shot you in the head a couple hours ago."
"I need to have a chat with him," Gorman asserted, beginning to rise from the table before Jenny and Goro took hold of his arms. Carefully he sat back down. "Don't worry, I won't say a word of this to him – I just need a translator." Jenny started to speak again, this time a tone more direct than before.
"Yeah, yeah, sure thing 'Commander'. The way we understand it, you've got questions. We have our own, believe it or not. We'll answer a few, we'll ask a few, then we'll let you talk shop with Ray. Sounds good?"
Gorman gave a nod of acknowledgement. Jenny and Goro sized him up properly this time. Before them was an armed stranger who had arrived from a batarian ship looking totally bewildered and without neither the necessity of a translator and the knowledge of what a translator was. He appeared taller than average with a thin build, fair skin, cropped brown hair, hazel eyes and five o'clock shadow. He was wearing not exactly something ordinary for spacefarers – a navy turtleneck with black elbow pads, and across his torso a lighter blue vest bearing straps around his waist and shoulders. On the vest's front were rectangular pouches for storage. If they looked below, what they would find were khaki cargo pants that looked best suited for a different barren lifeless wasteland…the desert. Finishing off the odd look were steel-tipped boots – not a trace of magnetism.
"Alright, I'll start. Who are you really?" queried Goro.
"Commander Kevin Gorman."
Goro hummed stoically. Jenny shot him a dissatisfied look. It was now Gorman's turn. Which one of the innumerable burning questions took priority?
"Kalu told me a shuttle to Elysium is months away. Then you mentioned it. What's Elysium?"
Jenny and Goro once again gave each other a look somewhere between genuine concern and skeptical disbelief. Jenny took her time in responding.
"Colony a good few light years from here. Lovely weather, long days, low gravity. I was born there. It's…also where the Blitz started."
"A colony?" shot out of Gorman's mouth.
"Hey, I answered your question, it's our turn."
"Right, okay, fine," he accepted. Somewhere deep inside him he began to experience a sinking feeling. Something was close to clicking within his brain…dangerously close.
"Where are you from and where did you work in 'law enforcement'?" were Goro's next questions. Jenny sighed again. The Commander elected to ignore this glaring stretch of their one-for-one Q&A agreement.
"Boston," answered Gorman with confidence, but not before feeling obligated to add "…Earth." Then came the illegally second question's reply. "Graduated from Boston Police Department about ten years ago. Then a stint in the SWAT team, and then some more…specialized work."
"Explains the weapons," noted Goro with a brief laugh. "Only a policeman would carry a handgun like that. Straight out of a museum."
"It's gotten me out of a few scrapes," remarked the Commander. Goro seemed impressed, Jenny not so much. "Now, here's a question; How do I get to Earth from Elysium?"
"What's the big rush? You sound like Kalu," scoffed Jenny. "You'd wonder why he ever signed up for this kind of work, the way he talks about the 'homeworld' all the time."
"Simple, really," grinned Goro, ready with the actual answer. "Catch a shuttle through the mass relay and you'll be at the Geneva spaceport by teatime. They're much more frequent than any to this station, that's for sure!"
"Assuming you know what a mass relay is…right?" Jenny tested. The Commander shook his head and braced his encumbered mind for even more knowledge. "Well, it's something you should know about. It's…well, the best way to describe it is…Goro, help me out here."
"Imagine something with a negative mass."
"That's not helpful," Jenny placed her forehead in her palm. Goro continued, undaunted.
"Now imagine a pair of structures out in space, fifteen kilometers long and fifty thousand light-years apart, that can create a sort of tunnel between them where mass has been completely neutralized. You would weigh nothing – a big ship would weigh nothing. If you sent this ship through this tunnel at already high speeds, it would zip across the galaxy like a bullet. A trip that would take centuries…just like that." Goro snapped his fingers for emphasis. "They're magnificent, gorgeous, and terrifying at best." He sounded in awe.
"First human space stations, then human colonies on other planets, now these…relays? Outrageous…" Gorman leaned back in his seat, taking it all in.
"Well, we didn't build the relays," interjected Jenny.
"Don't tell me the batarians did."
"Not quite – the protheans. And let me guess, you've never…"
"What is this, history class?" boomed another voice entering the area. The three seated turned to face the bald smoker. "How's our recent arrival feeling?" His voice was upbeat yet raspy, likely trying to make the Commander forget about their friendly-fire incident.
"Getting up to speed," was Gorman's reply, extending a hand. "Commander Kevin Gorman." Ray's grip was like a vice as he vigorously shook Gorman's, almost dragging him from the table.
"Ten-hut!" snapped Ray into a comically exaggerated salute. "I didn't know we were dealing with a naval officer! Raymond Toner, humbly at your service."
"Ray, he's not actually Alliance." began Jenny.
"Bah, he could be the first human Spectre for all I care, when some fella walks away from a captured batarian ship wearing khakis, carrying a reenactment peashooter and calling himself 'Commander', you show some respect!"
"I was told you had a spare translator," stated Gorman.
"Telling tales again, Boxer? Do I need to bring Kalu down here for a third disciplinary report?" Ray chortled, suddenly redirecting his attention towards the unfazed Gorman. "I'm kidding! I'm kidding. Come with me, Mr. Commander. If it's essentials you need, I'm your man."
Gorman slammed down the last of his water can before bidding farewell to Jenny and Goro. Elbowing past engineers, he and Ray ventured from one end of the station to the other. Ray whipped out a green keycard, and upon scanning it at a doorway, the two came upon a bright room filled with fuel canisters. He could feel Gorman gazing at him…and the lit cigarette in his mouth.
"Relax, helium-3's nonflammable, don't you worry about that. Not to mention these are all empty. Frankly, if leaving this lousy station is what you're now waiting for you are one unlucky fella – last delivery outbound was three days ago. All empty…except this one."
There was a large cylinder propped against a locker with the labels G. KOBAYASHI and R. TONER emblazoned across it. Ray opened the locker, and the two were greeted with a deluge of sheer…stuff. Trinkets, baubles, and keepsakes were crammed into every nook of Ray's half – overflowing into Goro's. Ray cracked his fingers before beginning to rummage.
"A translator, right? Don't you soldier types have them under your neck these days?" Gorman didn't have time to answer before Ray produced a small, black semicircle with a hoop from the locker. He threw it in the Commander's direction, and Gorman was able to catch and examine it. It was something that he would recognize as an earpiece but given the situation as of late it would not surprise him if what he was holding could brush his teeth or carve a hole in space itself. "Nifty little thing, isn't it? The best the 60s had to offer, one of the first human-made models. Just wrap it around your ear and you're all set." It looked like nothing the Commander had ever heard of from the 60s, for sure. The sinking feeling moved to his chest.
"What do I owe you?"
"Owe me? I almost shot you, remember? Consider it a debt repaid – and besides, you have those state-of-the-art military kinetic barriers, right?" Ray turned back to the locker, and after proudly examining his stock, made to close it shut.
"…Right, the barriers. Listen, Ray, pal, I have one last favor to ask," Gorman said before the moment passed. Ray swerved back towards the Commander, an eyebrow raised.
"Shoot."
"I need to get back to Earth as soon as possible. I've got a ship, but no fuel. Can we work something out?"
Ray's demeanor changed. His back straightened, he took a long draw of his cigarette, and his beady eyes began to size Gorman up and down. This was Ray's true self, his 'business mode', and it was time to savor a good negotiation.
"We have fuel, but as you can see, not much left for 'recreational purposes'. You'll have to make me a good offer…Commander."
"It's urgent. Military importance."
"Spoken like a true naval officer – and a broke one at that. Turn around for a moment?"
Gorman obliged, swiveling on the spot.
"Now what have we here?" laughed Ray with glee. Gorman noticed the object of his desire – the rifle strapped to his back. He heaved it off and presented it in his arms. There was no denying that for whatever the weapon was worth to the Commander, it enraptured Ray.
"This here's a standard-issue M16. Thirty bullets, give or take, of five-five-six ammunition. Fully automatic." Gorman began, trying his best to hype up a gun that had proven inferior to quite literally every foe encountered since his previous mission began. Despite that, it had survived it all – at the cost of every last bullet Gorman had brought with him.
"I don't know what wet-wipes you've been using, but I want some. This is in absolutely pristine condition. I can think of a half dozen museums that don't have M16s this factory fresh. Tell me," Ray giddily remarked, "does it still…fire?"
"Like a charm."
Gorman placed the rifle into Ray's embrace, knowing full well that it may be the last time he sees what carried him through waves of starship defenses during the fateful battle in Earth's orbit some time ago.
"You know what, I think you'll find this benefits both of us," Ray beamed. "If you tap the fuel gauge of that batarian ship in a few hours, don't be surprised to find it full."
"I knew I could count on you, Ray."
"What can I say? It's a big galaxy. People like us have to help each other." Ray took great care in placing the M16 on top of the locker, before waving the Commander towards the doorway out. "Pleasure doing business."