Is anything ever going to actually happen?!
Well, yes. At Horizon. When they get there.
Until then MORE DIALOGUE! I hope you like PEOPLE TALKING!
I know I do. It's why it keeps happening!
Meanwhile, in the lighter still sitting in the Normandy's hanger, a discussion was taking place.
"We should blow up their ship," Torian said. Jarrion massaged his temples some more. By this point they were starting to get a little tender.
"We're not blowing up their ship, Torian."
"They cavort with aliens, my Lord! They have them here with them! On their ship! Just walking around! They had weapons! They allowed them to carry weapons!"
"Please, Torian. Cavort is such a strong word," Jarrion said.
"What word would you use?" Loghain asked, her tone one of perfectly judged, insulting politeness. The kind that hopes to trip you up or, failing that, just get under your skin.
Jarrion wondered if this was something they taught Inquisitors specifically and gave Loghain a withering look. He also wondered if she was even aware of him doing this. Judging by her smirk she probably was, somehow.
Psykers. Wankers.
"Cooperate. They cooperate with aliens," he said, by way of answer to her question. Loghain raised her eyebrows above the blindfold.
"That's not a strong word in this case?"
"Well add 'misguided' as another word in here," Jarrion said, throwing his hands up in despair. "Look, we can talk all we like but we have to face facts. Whether or not we believe the Commander about the date or the disposition of the galaxy in general - and I don't care what you 'gifts' told you I remain unsold on this whole thing - we are still becalmed and cut off from the Astronomicon. There are explanations for this but I cannot conceive of any good ones."
One such explanation, for example, being that they'd somehow ended up in the Halo Stars which, having looked outside, even Jarrion could tell was not the case. Which left any other number of equally unlikely explanations, all of them more-or-less the same level of unhelpful.
He paused here on the off-chance that someone else might have had a suggestion to turn the whole situation on its head and make everything clear. No-one did, obviously.
He sighed and rubbed his face.
"Not that it matters anyway. The how and the why and the what are entirely irrelevant. We can only work with what is in front of us. Speculation is not going to fix anything. We are here, and this is what we have. Once we have the astronavigation data we can formulate something a little more concrete," he said.
"Assuming it's trustworthy, my Lord," Torian said, wincing as Jarrion rounded on him.
"Thor's wounds it's just one thing after another with you people! Let's assume it is! And if it isn't we still have other options! We'll have the choir see if they can intercept any astropathic traffic! We'll have our own astronavigators do a proper survey of the stars as opposed to their rough-and-ready first impressions! Emperor have mercy but I am so very, very tired."
"Did I come at a bad time?" Shepard asked, making Jarrion jump. She was standing just by the open ramp of the lighter, dataslate and a thinner device in hand, looking into the crew compartment. Jarrion rose on seeing her.
"Hmm? No, no, apologies, just another productive discussion with my crew. Something I can help you with?" He asked.
Shepard thrust the dataslate and the something else towards Jarrion, who took both. The dataslate did not appear to have even been switched on, while the something else turned out to be a very similar though obviously native-made device. Jarrion turned it over in his hands.
"Um, thank you? What is this?"
"We put the navigation data on that. Full galaxy map, relays marked, political boundaries, whatever. Should help you get to where you need to go," Shepard said.
"Ah, yes, thank you."
"Do you mind if I have a word with you? Just over here?" Shepard then asked, pointing behind her. Jarrion nodded, and the two of them moved off back across the hanger, away from prying ears. Shepard lent against a generic workbench and folded her arms.
"Can I ask you a very direct question?" She asked. Jarrion, slipping again into his smiling-pleasantly mode, nodded again. He was very good at nodding.
"By all means," he said.
"What's the deal here? There's something big and obvious that's sticking out pretty badly to you but is going right over my head and I'm feeling a bit left out, so what is it?"
Jarrion cast an eye back towards the lighter, but this was of very little help to him.
"You, heh, you're probably not going to believe me when we say this but we're not from around here."
"No, I figured that part out, I'm just curious about how not from around here you are."
Now came the harder part. Decision time. Now or never and no going back.
What was there to lose?
And, really, what reason was there not to be fully open and honest? Other than sounding like a lunatic, of course. But then who cared if some provincial in a tiny ship thought you were mad?
Best to bite the bullet, Jarrion felt.
"That's the bit you may have difficulty believing," Jarrion said, his smile straining. He swallowed. "We, ah, well, our current best guess and working theory seems to be that we are from the future."
A split-second for Shepard to process this. Not an answer she'd been expecting.
"The future?"
Jarrion could only shrug.
"Unbelievable as it may sound unfortunately but yes, the future. The, ah, forty-first millenium, in fact. As I say this is just our best guess at present. It may likely turn out to be completely wrong! Hope springs eternal, as they, uh, say."
Shepard blinked at Jarrion very, very slowly while she did some maths in her head.
"Right," she said. "So nearly thirty-eight thousand years in the future, then?"
"Roughly speaking. If certain things are taken as read."
Silence.
"The future a nice place?"
"Oh, wonderful! There are a few problems here and there, of course, but broadly speaking mankind is ascendent! The God Emperor rules justly and wiseful from the Golden Throne through His High Lords, honest citizens of the Imperium outnumber the stars themselves, heretics and aliens alike are being pushed back on all fronts and mankind reaches out once more to claim that which is its right!"
Jarrion didn't fully believe all of this, but it was what felt like should be true and why be anything less than fully enthusiastic when talking about the Imperium to a stranger? That, and Loghain was standing barely twenty feet away. He had no reason to be nervous, but he had no reason to be careless either.
He had the distinct impression the Inquisitor was trying not to laugh at him behind his back.
Shepard was looking at Jarrion with an expression which was impossible to read.
"So," she said. "You're telling me that you and your vessel are from the future. Just about forty thousand years into the future, rounding up. A future where mankind has some kind of galaxy-spanning empire overseen by a god-emperor and that you - through some crazy random happenstance - have ended up here?"
Given what Jarrion had said Shepard had done a fairly good job of quickly grasping the details. There'd been blanks but she'd filled them in, mostly just by guessing blindly. She had a good instinct for these things.
Jarrion, faced with the summation, could do little but smile helplessly.
"So it would appear," he said.
He felt it best to leave out the additional Loghain-forwarded opinion that they were from an entirely separate universe on top of also being from the future. He felt that that would be over egging the pudding. A bridge crossed when they came to it. Which would hopefully be never because hopefully it was all cobblers and they could go home soon anyway.
Shepard was having her own issues with the direction this conversation had taken.
Why couldn't she ever have a quiet, normal day? Why was it either someone trying to kill her or some other problem that required her to shoot it a bit or hack something? Why couldn't she just have a lie in?
The future? Seriously?
Stranger things had happened, this was true, but even Shepard had limits. Time travel? Arbitrary time travel? And then just running into them out here in the middle of nowhere? An Emperor? Golden Throne? High Lords? Proper Nouns?
No, Shepard had limits.
"She doesn't believe you," Loghain said, having left the lighter and silently crossed over to pop up right beside Jarrion with neither he nor Shepard having noticed her doing it. Given that this had involved crossing open space in full view it was a little alarming. Psyker trickery, no doubt. Jarrion scowled. Very poor form.
"Of course she doesn't believe me! I barely believe me!" He snapped back through gritted teeth.
"I could convince her," said Loghain.
"You know, a simple sentence like that becomes a lot more daunting when someone like you says it, Loghain. How would you go about convincing her?"
"I'm standing right here," Shepard said, flatly.
Loghain hadn't been speaking High Gothic but hadn't bothered to adjust her dialect to make herself more easily understood by Shepard. That she'd been understood at all was a mild surprise, but one Loghain rolled with. As far as the sort of surprises Inquisitors sometimes dealt with went, finding your communication issues smoothing out was probably one of the nicer ones.
"I can assure you the Lord Captain is telling the truth. Though I doubt that'd mean much coming from me," she said.
"No, funnily enough."
Loghain appraised Shepard a moment and Shepard had a shiver run right down her spine. She could have sworn the temperature in the hanger just dropped out of nowhere. Loghain then turned to Jarrion.
"She think you're hiding something from her. Which is rather amusing, given that you've made the decision to be more open than perhaps you should."
For a blind person - Shepard assumed she was blind, given the cloth wrapped around her eyes - Loghain was really, really good at looking people directly in the face when they were speaking. Like, she wasn't close, she was dead on every single time.
There was probably a good reason for that, Shepard assumed.
Jarrion, on having heard this, threw up his arms.
"What would you have me do? Or are you just going to stand there and needle me whichever way I go?"
"No offense, but me and the captain here were having a private conversation," Shepard said, deciding to crash through whatever disagreement was about to bubble up and try to get things back on track. Loghain snapped that blank, blindfolded gaze right onto Shepard.
"My apologies. I just thought - given the apparent topic of conversation - you might appreciate some ambassadorial input," Loghain said.
"Maybe later," Shepard said.
"Yes, please return to your seat if you'd be so kind, ambassador," Jarrion said with heavy emphasis. Loghain gave a curtsey, which was a very, very odd thing to see her do. Jarrion felt distinctly uncomfortable for having had to see it.
"As you say, Lord Commander," she said before wandering back.
"She's not an ambassador, is she?" Shepard asked once she was semi-confident that Loghain was out of earshot, sat back in her seat. Jarrion said.
"No, no she's not. She's an, ah, agent for an organisation with a certain level of oversight. Ironically that oversight does not extend over myself, technically, at least while I am outside of Imperial jurisdiction, which is where I am now standing. And yet see how she acts! Is that irony?" He asked. Shepard shrugged.
"Irony was never my strong point."
"Nor mine. But I believe you wanted to discuss something?"
Shepard looked at him hard a moment or two before looking away again, glancing briefly to the lighter and then back to Jarrion again. They all still looked like nothing she'd seen.
"I'm still skeptical," she said. "But there are a few things here I'll admit that don't add up so I'm going to assume - well, nothing, to be honest. I don't mean to sound rude but I really don't buy the time travel angle so I'll just put that to one side."
"Fair enough. It's what I'd do," said Jarrion. Shepard nodded thanks for his understanding and then took in a deep breath.
"I'm going to level with you, Jarrion. Just going to lay it out. Two years ago I got killed by what are commonly called Collectors. Odd guys. Come through one relay every so often, trade advanced tech for members of other races. And they killed me. I got better though, but by the time I did it turns out that the Collectors have started attacking colonies. Human colonies. Coming in and just sweeping everyone up, taking them away. And because these colonies are out beyond anyone's jurisdiction nothing's being done about it. So the guys who fixed me up - the outside agency I mentioned? - they don't like this, so they set me up to do something about it. Are you following this?"
"I believe so. You're being employed to stop attacks on human colonies?"
This was something Jarrion could understand.
Shepard waited for him to maybe call attention to the fact she'd mentioned being dead and then coming back but he took this wholly in his stride. Jarrion had a cousin who'd been dead, briefly. An Ork freebooter had sliced them in half at the waist and - clinically speaking - they'd been dead for a good ten or so minutes before the spark of life had been restored to them by the swift attentions of attending medicae. Luckily, too, Magos Biologis had been close at hand, and quite willing to help once persuaded.
It had taken the better part of a year to put Jarrion's cousin back together again properly. The spine was bionic but everything else had been vat-grown at great expense. Now they were back on their feet and almost as good as new, even if their tendency to stare into space every so often and pause in the middle of conversations was a little disconcerting at times.
As far as Jarrion was concerned, these things happened. Shepard shrugged and carried on:
"Basically, yes. There's details involved about the endgame of the mission but those can wait. Bottom line is Collectors need stopping and I'm the only one doing anything about it."
"Aliens are a foul and perfidious lot," Jarrion said by way of sympathy. Shepard blinked at him a moment.
"Uh, yeah. Now look, I know we just met and everything but I got a hot tip just now about an attack that I might be able to prevent and I was thinking that I might have a better chance at putting that ship of theirs down if you came along."
This was a surprise.
"You're asking for my help?" Jarrion asked. This was not the way Shepard would have put it, personally, even if in essence it was the case.
"I haven't got where I am today by passing up what look to be good opportunities. Whyever you're here, you're here, you're human, you have an imposing ship."
Such flattery!
"All of these things are true," Jarrion admitted.
"You're also in need of help - hear me out," she cut Jarrion off before he could protest that he was on top of things. "You're clearly a little lost. And I don't just mean in space. You're coming across like a guy who had the rug pulled out from under him. I don't want to tell you what to do, but I do have something you could be doing, and it is something that'd help people out."
"And what could be nobler than that…" Jarrion said, more to himself than to her, stroking his chin and staring just over her shoulder at some point in the far distance.
Jarrion was thinking.
He was, he felt, very rapidly approaching a fork in the road, a point at which he would need to make a decision that would very seriously affect things going forward.
Broadly speaking he had, as he saw it, two choices in his current predicament. Two choices about how best to proceed.
The first was to start throwing his weight around. It was the obvious and direct choice.
Certainly, it was what his father and brother would have done. They'd already be doing it, mostly likely. They would have fired a warning shot or two either at or across the bow of the Normandy, seized the ship by force, taken what they felt they needed and carried on from there.
Which was understandable, but Jarrion was reluctant to do this for several reasons.
For one, his father and his brother both had much bigger ships than he did, and much more men with many more guns. They also never went anywhere without escorts. They also were not lost in space (and quite possibly time as well) - they could put into port in any of House Croesus' holdings or anywhere in Imperial space to stock up on provisions, replenish lost manpower and have repairs done as needed.
The sort of things you had to be able to do to be able to keep throwing your weight around with any real expectation of effect.
Jarrion could not. Anything that happened would wear him out and slow him down. His mistakes would cost him. Even his success would lose him momentum. This he was painfully aware of.
The Normandy was a trifling little ship, yes, but what if this Systems Alliance had bigger ones? The way Shepard spoke it didn't seem unlikely. And what of the Council? And the various other threats that had been mentioned? These Collectors, for one demonstrably hostile example?
Surmountable individually, to be sure, but one after another?
Jarrion was not particularly prepared to go up against the whole galaxy on his own. You could very-well serve the Emperor by dying, yes, this was known, but far better to live for his glory and come out with something to show for it, in his opinion, being a Rogue Trader and all.
Dying was something other people did, usually for him, not something he did himself.
So Jarrion was thinking, thanking the Emperor again that he alone appeared to be the only member of House Croesus that hadn't had tact bred out of him.
"These colonies you mentioned. They exist beyond the reach and protection of your System Alliance?" He asked.
"Yes."
"And aid for them is unforthcoming other than from this outside agency you aren't especially fond of?"
"They're being left to twist in the wind, yes."
"Hmm."
An idea was forming in Jarrion's head, much as one had formed in Shepard's. His was running along different lines, though, at least in the long run.
"I think," he said. "I think we can come to arrangement. Certainly, I see no reason not to assist you. I will have to discuss it with my crew, of course. When is this attack you've been forewarned about set to occur?"
"'Soon', basically. We'll likely be heading off for the relay in an hour or two. Got to make tracks."
Jarrion did not know what a relay was, but doubted it was especially important. He was already putting together plans in his head, and details like that could wait.
"Right, right. And, uh, where is it?"
"Place called Horizon. I've never heard of it. Hang on, I'll just mark it for you."
Shepard took back the tablet and messed with it briefly before handing it back. What she'd done was unclear, but Jarrion trusted that they'd find out what was what soon enough once he let Pak get their hands - or whatever - on the thing.
"Many thanks. Horizon, eh?" Jarrion asked.
"Yeah. Some colony. Hopefully we'll get there in time, blow some holes in the Collector ship, save everyone, pick through the wreckage to find out how the Collectors get to and from wherever they're from, follow them back and make sure they don't keep making a habit of this. But that's in the future. For now, one thing at a time."
Shepard had this whole flowchart of things she needed to do stuck in her head and it was difficult to focus on the smaller picture with the bigger one looming so large in her mind. Jarrion could see that she had this problem, because he had it too.
"Quite so. I shall discuss with my crew and get back to you presently."
"I'll be waiting by the phone," Shepard said.
"Ah, yes," said Jarrion, again not having a clue what this meant, instead just smiling and nodding thanks as he turned and walked smartly back to the lighter.
"Pak, see what you make of this," he said, handing the tablet over immediately to the Magos. A mechadendrite slithered out from one of Pak's sleeves and took the thing lightly as someone might pick up a sodden tissue between forefinger and thumb. The tip of the mechadendrite split into further, thinner tendrils that then began probing the device looking for the best method to interface with it.
Jarrion, though, wasn't watching this. He was grinning at everyone instead, his hands on his hips. This made them all immediately quite nervous.
"My Lord?" Torian asked, having seen this look before.
"I have a plan," Jarrion said.