Author's Note: Again sorry for what happened last week. I will endeavor to ensure it doesn't occur this week as well. Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 4: The Meeting Between Worlds Part 1
Visiting the Terminus system was always a mixed package for the Quarians, on the one hand the Batarians were among the only races in the galaxy that didn't automatically try to get rid of them on sight, on the other hand the Batarian's had a bad reputation, and the Quarian's own was bad enough without associating with them. But the package was mixed after all, full of good and bad just like the rest of the pilgrimage, the most that can be done is to simply pick up and drop off as necessary and move on. And then they were greeted not by the usual Batarian escort, but rather a Council Blockade.
"Oh joy." You could see the dead pan unamused look in the eyes of Admiral Zorrah as he looked at the council ships. "It's gonna be one of those days." The admiral hailed this fellow admirals, conferencing them into the collect call that was being made to the Turian ship at the front of the blockade.
"Quarian Migrant fleet, state your business and be gone from this sector." The Turian's were in no mood for Quarian's today, but then again when are they ever.
"Believe me when I say that we have no desire to get in the way of... whatever this is. The Batarian's make off with the wrong Matriarch's daughter I presume?" Zal'Korris was in no mood to be blockaded either. "Either way I don't really care. Let us retrieve our people and we can be on our way."
"The situation is complex." A pause as if the Turian commander had someone else brought over to speak. "You wanna tell them or should I?"
A video played, of someone recording the start of the apocalypse and then uploading it to the Extranet.
"SUIT ZOMBIES!" Admiral Zorrah recognised him, Kal'Reegar, one of his people prior to his pilgrimage. What in the ancestor's name was going on?
Kal had shot shaky, hand held footage of one of the 'suit zombie' raising the dead out of the Batarian's mass graves and sending them after the guards. Comparing the number of Quarian's they had yet to pick up to the number of ones found it was quickly determined that there were a dozen or so Quarian's still missing on the Batarian world's.
This was certainly not what Tali had expected for her pilgrimage, walking around the abandoned, post apocalyptic ruins of several Batarian cities with hordes of zombies walking around and being escorted by trigger happy Turian's. A nearby building collapsed as a Elcor bulldozed through it, glowing lightly in the way that the undead in the footage did, the Turian's instinctively turned around to get ready to shoot it but it instead opted to ignore them and continue on it's merry way.
"Bosh'tet." The Elcor had several Kishock harpoons lodged in it's face, at least one in each of it's eyes, the hollow spikes had long stopped dripping blood, even if by some miracle it was still alive it shouldn't even be able to see. Tali did not want to get on the bad side of whatever could do that! "Did the Batarian's piss off the void or something?" As Tali was wondering about that a familiar face emerged past the rubble, or rather lack of face. Another Quarian was following the undead behemoth around until he took notice of the escort and waved them over as he walked forward.
"Man am I glad to see some friendlies!" The Quarian limped over, a splint over his suit where he managed to sprain his ankle present, and he met with Tali.
"Kee'Lah what happened here!? Has the void descended on this place or something!?" Tali was hoping that this was some kind of synth, like she really hoped that thing was well disguised Geth unit because if it wasn't, that meant something vastly more terrifying.
"I don't know but unlike the others I want nothing to do with these freaks." The other Quarian visibly shuddered and he tried to move past Tali however...
"What do you mean 'others?'" Tali instead stopped him and looked at him straight in the eye.
"First a bunch of hairy monsters in tribe clothes dropped down in the middle of the city and started attacking every Batarian in sight. The Slugs started flying and me and a couple of other Quarian's found a basement to hide in. Then the hairy bastards, a chunk of metal this long sticking out of their heads." The Other Quarian held his hand up a finger and a thumb held four inches apart from each other. "Got back up. Charged at the Batarian's shooting at him, took more shots to the chest, and mauled the poor bastards." A vivid and horrifying depiction of violence worthy of the apocalypse but not, what, she meant.
"What happened to the other Quarian's you met?" Tali squeezed down on him trying to get to the meat of the situation.
"One of the Suit Zombies walked up to us and asked us if anyone was willing to continue their pilgrimage in their corner of the galaxy." The Quarian apparently had enough of this interrogation and pushed passed Tali to reach relative safety.
Stunned by the statement Tali continued her exploration of the city with the contingent of Turian soldiers, yes she was terrified, but also excited beyond reason as well. An entirely unknown region of space! Full of things she would've never thought possible. And soon she and her fellow search and rescue operatives found not another Quarian or one of the Suit Zombies she had been told about, but rather a huge mechanical tank with crab like legs in lieu of Mass Effect manipulators. It looked like it had taken heavy fire, it's chasis had been perforated by Harpoon spikes, and based on how the front of it was warped someone managed to hit the damned thing with a Javelin Mass Torpedo, and it was still moving.
"Well now. You have 'Admiralty Board' written all over it." Tali whipped out her omni-tool and checked to make sure none of the guards were watching her, she first tried to hack into the tank but it turned out that their systems weren't compatible. She instead opted to have her Omni-tool produced a omni-blade which she jammed into the door of the vehicle and worked very hard trying to pry it loose. "What's the big deal? It's like they designed this thing so that people can't get back out once they're inside."
Instead Tali noted a spike lodged in the seal, pulled it out, and replaced it with a grenade, that she had on her for purely defensive purposes, took out her pistol, again for purely defensive purposes, and fired. The Lid of the tank was blown off. A half organic and half digitized scream of agony ripped through the city streets and immediately the Turian's trained their weapons in the direction of the Scarab tank as they locked their weapons on what they could best describe as semi-humanoid figure, metal plating hard welded into it's flesh and it's body hardwired into the sides of the pod, it's face a block of cybernetics and a jaw of some fuzzy alien.
"Well that's a pity." Immediately all weapons were trained on the new figure to arrive, a two legged two armed figure, in a suit with a blacked out helmet while holding a cane. "Another few years and this one would've been promoted." He walked over to the Pod, Tali scrambling to get away from him while keeping her weapon trained on the figure in front of her as he walked over and snapped the neck of the creature in the tank. "A Quarian, I've seen a few of you around already." He was speaking using a voice synthesizer, which did absolute bubkis to detract from her assertion that he was a synthetic. "That's rude." The man pressed a button on his helmet revealing a skeletal face with two glowing red eyes. "You're wearing a shaded in mask too, but I didn't call you a synthetic." Something that Tali distinctly remembered thinking but not saying. "Yes I can read your mind girl. One of the many benefits of what I am, that and Necromancy, but I believe you are familiar with that by now."
"You're talking about magic!" Tali snapped blaring in her mind that this thing was not real, just a corpse some twisted monster turned into a synth.
"I am talking about science." The skeletal machine snapped back. "Science of the shroud, where my broken, screaming soul has drifted for millions of years before being dragged out and stuffed into this by someone not too dissimilar to myself."
"You call yourself a scientist but you're rambling on about the void-!" The suited corpse's reliance on his cane belied his incredible speed. In moments he closed the distance with Tali and grabbed her head with his hand, and then Tali was thrown from her body.
The young Quarian Pilgrim was thrown through dozens of sheets of glass and into a void, hands emerged from her skin and and crawled over her body grabbing at her as she went, her entire body felt like it was separating into blocks and being pulled apart. And then it all crashed back together as Tali was doubled over on the ground throwing up in her mask after getting her mind pulled through the ringer. That was not a synth, or at least she hoped and prayed to the ancestors above, below and in between that was not a synth!
"So you have joined the rest of us in reality now. A shame that you had to mess up your helmet in the process." The old man activated a beacon on the craft, in a few short moments a ship would be by to pick it up.
"What are you doing with my people?" Tali asked looking at the suit Zombie half delirious.
"We have offered the Quarians who were working with the Batarian's an internship. They have a lot that they would like to learn and we consider ourselves teachers." Skeletor stated as he shrugged his shoulders.
"As soon as we can open a line of communication with your ships we can start with the usual formalities." Tali was panting, her helmet smelled like vomit and tasted even worse, perhaps not the ideal circumstance to make a rash decision on.
"Take me with you."
A sterile environment was already prepared that Tali could clean her visor in. Part of her wished she never saw it. The clean room overlooked a laboratory of some kind where the scary skeleton man from before was experimenting on Batarian corpses. To begin with, the corpse was blasted with radiation, according to the sensor in Tali's suit enough to kill off all the still living bacteria in his body, afterwards a space suit of some kind was manufactured around his corpse sealed off by a familiar helmet before being filled with some kind of gas. Then from a above and below two rings glowed purplish energy flowed into the corpse until suddenly, like a new born taking it's first breath of air, the body the people below had been operating on gasped to life. Tali didn't see much in the way of cybernetics being implanted into the corpse or in the suit, certainly not enough to warrant it getting up and moving around as it did in a few moments, as a engineer there was no explanation that she could think to explain what was happening here. Of course there was one that has been told to her already...
"There's no such thing as Suit Zombies. There's no such thing as Suit Zombies..." Telling herself that Tali adjusted her suit back into place and put her visor back on.
Dressed and ready to face the world once more Tali left the clean room and went to find her fellow Quarian's. Arriving at the video conference room she took attendance of all the people there, most of them on the list, some having been deployed to look for them like Tali was, most of the people who had went missing had been accounted for, which meant that it was time for her to contact her father and give him a update on what was going on. "Oh Keelah this is going to be a hard sell." The screen flashed to life on the other side, Tali's father in a conference call with the other Admirals of the Migrant fleet. "Greetings to Admiral Zorrah." Tali clasped her hand and banged against her chest over her heart.
"Tali, where are you?" Admiral Zorrah looked around and behind Tali. "That doesn't look like a Turian ship."
"It's not." Tali breathed deeply before she continued. "It's one of the Ship's belonging to the Lich's. They're the aliens that invaded the Batarian's territory and took it over." She stepped backwards a few feet as a familiar tapping echoed out as the alien in a sealed suit stepped out in front of the monitor and dropped the shading on his face shield revealing a bony face.
"Keelah...!"
"The Void!?"
"Well that's different..."
"Tali what the hell is that thing!?"
"I am a Lich." The bony cyborg in a suit stated standing in front of the camera, red artificial eyes surveying the screens. "Some of you think of me as a, what did she call it? A 'Suit Zombie.' It's a accurate description, but one I do not feel does justice for what I am."
"I'm sending a vid feed. I saw him make another one of these things a few minutes ago." Tali explained as she uploaded the video to the Admirals consoles. Some watched in confusion, others in shock, only Admiral Xen took an interest in the footage dissecting what she was looking at piece by piece.
"I am a soul, trapped in a hell of our own making called the shroud for eons, called back to this mortal plane to inhabit the flesh of the once living." The Lich explained shrugging his shoulders.
"Magic?" Admiral Korris looked like he was revolted by the entire concept.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is no different from magic in the eyes of the uneducated or ignorant." Admiral Xen stated as she held her chin.
"Hehehehe!" The suited corpse gave a full belly of laughter. "I like her! If you need a name for me those who work for me have chosen 'Skeletor.'"
"Very well 'Skeletor' I see some cybernetic implants in your body, should I then assume that you're some kind of mechanical or cyborg creature?" Admiral Xen asked making her curiosity known.
"While my advanced age does necessitate some cybernetic implants I assure you I am not a synthetic." Skeletor stated making his opinion known.
"I saw them make one of those things, near as I can tell there aren't any synthetics involved in the process at all." Tali stated as she recalled the tank from earlier. "I will give you a full report on what I've seen thus far later."
"I will be providing additional information to her about what she saw just to avoid any... misunderstandings." The Lich's tone of voice carried a vaguely threatening air, or it could just be that he was a terrifying skeleton in a space suit.
"I am going to ignore the past five minutes for the sake of my sanity." Admiral Raan opted to use flawless reasoning in the face of overwhelming Madness. "Why are our people on-board your ship?"
"We invited them." The Lich replied as if it explained everything. "We have invited them into the territory of the Stellar union for their pilgrimage, many of them accepted, some refused and have been released into the custody of the council to be handed over to you."
"We can't just let our people into some unknown territory like Qin-nal in a Eezo mine!" Admiral Han banged his fist against the arm rest of his chair, he didn't even mention the part where he had very justified concerns about what this abomination does to aliens in suits.
"Agreed." Admiral Xen voiced her opinion but not for the same reason.
"Sending our people into unknown territory for month's or years on end with no access to supplies is no different than suicide." She as a scientist understood any proper research expedition required resources first and foremost. "Have any of you even thought to tell this... 'Necroid' creature about our race's unique nutritional and biological needs?"
"Your kind's biology operates on a Dextro Amino Acid complex, chemically distinct from Deoxyribonucleic Acid common among most other life in the galaxy the denizens of the Stellar union included, aside from that Quarian's also possess a extremely weak immune system stemming from one part evolving on a arid world with few diseases and a strong symbiotic relationship with several species of bacteria and one part generations spent aboard a sterile ship borne environment which as a result necessitates living your lives inside of a quarantined suit to prevent infection to any sort of disease that would as a consequence have dramatically heightened lethality to a Quarian in comparison to most other races."
The Admiralty blinked a couple of times in response to the skeleton's long winded explanation.
"He can read minds too. I probably should've led with that." Tali stated as if the fact should've been known to everyone.
"To address your concerns. Firstly in regards to food we have been in talk's with the Turian's for several days now." The Lich explained while rubbing his neck, adjusting the suit as if something fell out of place during his explanation. "Several Turian's, formerly slaves of the Batarian's who do not wish to return to their original worlds, have requested to migrate into Stellar Union Territory. I presume to avoid not looking bad, I don't know I'm not a politician, the Turian government has acquiesce to their request for a colony ship complete with Dextro-Amino livestock and crops. I presume that handles the issue of nutrition?" The admiral's were stunned.
"A colony ship. As in..." Admiral Zorrah was hesitant to ask but had to anyway.
"To answer your second question, another member of the Stellar Union have had to deal with circumstances not too dissimilar to yours. They responded by developing a suit to stimulate their immune system until it was healthy once more." Astounding, if the technology can be adapted for use for the Quarians then... "To answer what is likely your third question, the Agrarian world set aside for the former slaves has a moon, smaller yes but uninhabited. A select number of our scientists are working on a project to terraform the moon so that it is habitable for Dextro Amino life." There was a pregnant pause in the room as the Admirals reviewed the information.
"To be clear, this is a world that the Quarian's will be allowed to inhabit correct?" Admiral Zorrah asked trembling, mostly with excitement but also a mixture of other emotions as well.
"I do not have the authority to finalise the details, nor do I think you want me to one-sidedly decide on everything." The Lich shrugged his shoulders. "In a few days, bar complications, the Stellar unions leaders will be arriving to speak with the Council. They can with equal ease speak with other interested parties while in the area." The admirals nodded, a touch of hope, not a guarantee, but a hope had been introduced. But there was also pessimism, and that was there for far longer and in much greater amounts.
"Why would you help us? We are strangers to you." Admiral Korris asked, let down far too many times to take the bait for the first time.
"I could tell you that the way that we 'Necroids' as your scientist put it live necessitate the good will of others, that bodies at the end of their natural life span be given up to us in good condition." He could say that, but he won't. "A war in heaven is coming, in ten years, a hundred, a thousand, it could begin right this instant. My people have spent the entire history of our race getting ready, preparing for the day that it comes and we have not stopped since." What kind of unimaginable horrors could this unimaginable horror fear that would warrant doing something like that? "We called them Reapers, Harvestors, the name isn't important, only that the old enemy is coming and not only for us. But I digress." The Lich shrugged his shoulders as if what he was talking about was unimportant. "One way or another you're going to be fighting them anyway, so it would be better if you didn't go extinct in the process." The Admirals had visibly taken a step back in shock by what the skeleton was saying. "You all have a nice day now." And with that the communication was ended.
Days progressed. The Three fleets of ships hovered around the former Batarian territory, the Quarian's got their own affair's in order as the Turian colony ship eventually arrived, the two sides bickered back and forth as to whether or not the Quarian's had any place on the ship and when neither side had any give it was the Lich's who stepped into mediate. The Conclusion? First and foremost the only Turian's being allowed into the new colony were those that had been taken as slaves by the Batarians, everyone else, the ship's original crew included, would be staying on this side of the border, this meant that the ship would be short on engineers and pilots so yes, the Quarian's would be coming along too in order to fulfil the roles that the Turian Slaves are not qualified for. With the issue of the Ship's crew settled on the next issue became a matter of settling on a neutral location to deal with the aftermath of the Union's occupation of Batarian space. After all of the war, slave liberation and arrests the Batarian population had been severely reduced to about a tenth of their previous population, several ships from the Stellar union subsequently came in and carted off all of the remaining Batarian's back to their home world of Kharsum.
The next matter became a complicated affair of trying to decide on where the border of Council space started and where Union space ended, it didn't help that they hadn't chosen which planets to take based on not on where the future border would land and instead on which planet they were most suited to taking with their respective forces resulting in a mess of a border. One of the many things to clean up. As for neutral territory between the council and the Union the Quarian's had offered one of their live ships as the negotiation ground, on the condition that they have a voice when the eventual negotiations begin, and that all the people who enter the ship have followed appropriate sterilisation procedures before boarding.
Finally they came.
The Human's deployed one of their senators dressed in a white suit, Senator Udina was his name, followed closely behind by Admiral Shepard.
From the Lich Necropsy, there was High Lord Xidre accompanied by a pair of Flerkin bodyguards.
Of the Lithoid Trade federation was Senator's Onyx of the Crystal Hive, Agate of the Golema and Aculeatus of the Gall floated, lumbered and trotted respectively into the Quarian ship.
The Elderly Chozo Cherrel Kahn supported along by two of his much younger concubines walked into the ship being followed by their vassals a Mero in some kind of wheeled aquarium and a distracted Tebrid being pulled along by one of their Custodians.
Finally, dressed in the robes of a monk was high priest Scamander of the Draconian Ascendecy, bringing no one but himself onto the ship.
On the other side were the chief decision makers of the Council: General Sparatus and his team of Turian Body guards, Councillor Tevos accompanied by a pair of Asari Commando's, the Salarian Councillor Valern with a pair of elite looking Salarian's and finally Admiral Raan whose lovely ship the various parties was borrowing this evening.
"Ladies, Gentlemen..." Admiral Raan looked to the living rock piles and the synthetic that had been tugging a slug along playing on what looked like multiple tablets at once. "...others. Shall we begin the meeting between worlds?"
If nothing else, the days to follow the evening would be one for the history databanks. That much everyone agreed on.
Author's Note: Firstly again my apologies to everyone for posting the wrong chapter last week. To make up for it, the right chapter now.
Gianfranco Cembran: Agreed.
Guest 1: You wouldn't happen to be the person who dumped all of that information in my review box earlier would you? The amount is much smaller though equally as nonsensical in it's amount. It sounds like you're talking about robotic and nanotechnology.
Guest 2: *Shrugs*
Guest 3: Sorry for my poor formatting.
RonaldM40196867: Agreed to all points. It would be kind of cool. I have a few ideas.