|CHAPTER 6|
|Date: 2/10/2184|
|Location: Hades Gama/Migrant Fleet/Ships Pending Depletion of Charge Saturation. Nearly complete.|
"Ma'am?" Juel'Kaan vas Neema said to get Tali's attention. When she didn't reply, he tapped on her shoulder before repeating himself. "Ma'am. You're two hours over your shift... I think you're good to go home."
Shaken out of the trance she'd put herself in, she glanced behind her before nodding to him. "Right. Just another round check and I'll go."
"One last thing. Admiral Raan said she had something for you when I came across her in the lower decks. Said she left it in your room." He thumbed the door behind him.
Her gaze finally peeled away from the crummy looking screen to Juel.
"Really? She's here? Why didn't she come here to meet me instead?"
"Said she gave up on trying to look for you." He answered.
"Oh. Well. Thanks. I guess it's a good time to leave anyways."
"Don't come back please." Juel said as he took over for her.
Her workstation left behind, she made her way through the Neema's hallways until she slid down a ladder to the living quarters.
When she approached her room, she yanked the curtains aside, and willed herself to smile.
"...Oh. I didn't expect you to be the thing you left in my room." Tali said in surprise.
"I wanted to surprise you." Shala murmured quietly before standing to hug Tali.
"Well, I'm here. What did you want to give me?" Tali asked as they separated.
"Not give," Shala said as she rose a hand, "talk."
Tali gave her a raised brow. "What do you want to talk about?"
Shala started staring at her closed hands to stall herself time to search for the right words to say.
Tali, meanwhile, decided to sit on her cot.
"So... we didn't have much time to talk at your welcoming party." Shala began slowly, "I'm sure your time away from home left you with plenty of stories worth telling."
Shala didn't want to place any names that could potentially push the wrong buttons.
Tali leaned back against the wall and shrugged. "My adventure was long and dangerous. Traumatizing at its worst. Fun at its best. Then I fell in love and saved the galaxy." She shook her head. "Textbook drama." She muttered.
Shala didn't need to say anything for Tali to know she wanted elaboration on the issue.
"I fell in love with him, Raan. I fell in love with a man who's dead now." Tali's shrugged again, and sighed darkly.
Shala knew exactly who she was referring to.
John Shepard. Tali did, after all, tell Shala about John. Told her how amazing he was and whatnot.
She fell into place next to Tali and put an arm around her shoulder. "…I know what I'll say won't measure to the grief you feel Tali. But... with time—"
Tali shot out from her bed and left Shala in a moment of uneasy stillness.
"No, I don't want time." The younger quarian snapped, "I don't want it to just fade. Letting it fade feels no different than trying to erase him."
"It's not about making him fade, my dear. It's about holding onto all of that while finding a way in your heart to move forward."
Tali's chest rembled. "Moving on is just another way of saying goodbye."
"No, Tali. Good-byes aren't the end, Tali. Take his spirit and let it inspire your steps forward."
Silence ensued. Tali lost herself from the moment and drowned under her emotional sea. The quiet between them stretched. Sensing the chasm of grief that swelled inside Tali and the untold story of lurking beneath ventured cautiously. "What happened Tali?"
"A lot of things."
"Like?"
"He and half the crew died trying to escape a planet we'd been stranded on." She murmured before staring at the floor distantly, "Promised me we'd make it."
She shook her head and felt her eyes swell with grief, "I didn't even get to say good-bye."
For the briefest of seconds, Tali felt something cold touch her dainty little heart.
And Shala was at a total loss for words.
A lot of people who went out on pilgrimage came back a different person.
Some for the better.
A lot for the worse.
Tali on the other hand didn't just come back a different person.
She came back broken.
Defeated.
Destroyed.
She came back to the Neema and had this look in her eye that said: 'I give up.'
Shala curbed the urge to get up and run. The aura around Tali could make her heart turn to frozen stone.
And freeze Shala's heart to stone it did.
She'd be lying if she said it didn't hurt.
The old admiral, ever so carefully, placed both her hands on Tali's shoulders and whispered near her ear.
"You need rest, Tali... more rest than your soul could ever afford."
"Keelah Se'lai." Tali answered out of habit, "Thanks. For coming by... to talk."
"Think nothing of it."
|Chapter 7|
|Date: 3/12/2183|
|Location:Artemis Tau System/Migrant Fleet/Resource stripping|
Juel slipped and kneed a rock.
"FAK."
"You okay?"
He rubbed his knee and, for good measure, kicked away the offending rock.
"Yeah. But shit. That really hurt."
"I'm getting used to it too." She murmured as she finally offered a hand to help him up.
"Yeah... I don't know. I'm starting to not like these new shoes." He took the hand and carefully climbed the alcove.
As she helped him up, she gave her own new shoes a look.
They made her feet look human. It was odd, really. A lot of the time, Tali had dreamed of having hands and feet like a human. Wearing these had definitely given that impression. Though her shins were a dead giveaway. As with missing two fingers on each hand.
It was a little clunky at first, wearing them, but they had their purpose. She couldn't count the number of times she'd stub her toes. With shoes like these, it was never an issue anymore.
"It makes us look kinda human doesn't it?" Juel's voice echoed from behind her in the cave.
"Was thinking the exact same thing." She agreed.
"We need to get these samples back to the mining preliminaries. They'll like the stuff we've found for them." Juel called out as he placed his set of samples into his pack.
"Agreed." Tali remarked before turning on his heel to climb out of the cave. Juel followed closely behind her.
"Glad you let me tag along. Getting ground side is good for the brain." She said as her hand gently caressed the side of a cave wall.
"I'm actually surprised you coming down here to do this. With being cooped up in the lab nearly 13 hours every work cycle. People might get the impression you're a cave dweller. I'm dumping the recycle bin twice a day from the amount of paste packs and spent supplies you're tossing in the bin."
"Right… but my gift to the cause isn't going to crack itself. I'm close to a breakthrough—" She was interrupted when he turned around to face her, his hands already crossing his chest.
"You've been saying that for weeks." He inched closer to her with a playful step. "I don't believe you. What have you really been doing?"
"Working." She said flatly.
"Bet."
"Fine." She relented, "I'm playing games. Binging Verge of Components 2. Productive, isn't it?"
Juel scoffed. "I had an inkling Z7zRah was you."
"I'm sure."
He guffawed and bobbed his head slowly.
"Do you sleep good at night beating my ass to dust on optic fareway? Share the stats, dude. Ship name? Drive core?"
Whatever smile she managed to conjure fell off her face.
"Can't tell you that." She muttered. She moved past Juel.
"Come on, Tali. Just spill it."
"No."
"You don't want to help me crush noobs is what I'm hearing."
"You really want to know?" She mocked with a dreary voice, "It was the Internal Emission Sink System. It's called Tantalus Drive Core. It was all inside the Normandy. Yes… and it was twice the size of any average Core."
"Tali, look. I—"
She sneered and threw her hands up into his face. "Next time, when I say I can't tell you, shut up. Just shut up."
Tali could see Juel's eyes narrow into daggered slits.
"Put your hands down, Tali."
She put them down. Though her glare remained leveled at him.
"Do you think I'm intentionally plucking strings for my own entertainment?"
"No."
"Then I'm not going to apologize."
She didn't say anything.
"I know what you're going through. I do."
The glare never wavered. Yet beneath, sorrow stirred her heart.
"Listen. I'm not going to give you some shit pep talk about how things get better. Never worked for me. Always found them a bit detaching."
He took the rope behind them both into his hands and gave it a gentle tug. "Irony. I was gonna tell you you've got a hole to climb out of. A lot like the one we're in now."
He began his ascent and left her alone with nothing but a single ray of sunshine to keep her company.
She flexed her fists and jaw idly and wrung the back of her neck with both hands. "What is wrong with you, Tali." She bemoaned through a grit whisper. Being called out for a shitty outburst never felt good. Before she could slip any further into thinking about how much a dick she was being, her omni-tool made a soft chime.
1 unread email. She opened it.
'
From: Liara
Subject: It's from Garrus too.
We're doing something important Tali. Something really impactful. Could change all our lives for the better.
Just wanted to keep tabs on you. Maybe we will see each other again.
—Garrus & Liara
'
"What are you two up too?" She murmured and played with rope in her hand. Filing away the thought, she started her climb.
An hour later...
Juel stood at the top of a rock and watched the mountainous landscape below. He checked his altimeter and saw their elevation topping 8,000 feet.
Next to him, Tali joined and wrapped her arms tightly around her chest to watch the rising bodies of smoke spreading out across the landscape.
A span of five minutes passed, and soon enough, the number of flares increased tenfold.
"The colors. What do they mean?" Tali asked.
"Each color means a different mineral we've found." Juel explained.
"I've never been on an excavation. It's definitely interesting." She turned her gaze to the flare they'd ignited themselves earlier.
"I'm guessing our blue flare says we've found platinum?" She said before thumbing the smoke.
"Exactly, so that way we can bring in the right equipment for mining."
"I see." She looked up to the sky.
The entire Migrant Fleet had managed to dot the heavens as the stars would on a lightless night. Their numbers spanned across the horizon in numbers that one could ever count.
"I'm sorry about earlier." She murmured.
"I know." He said simply and quietly. "I wasn't being empathetic. I've been in that hole."
She said nothing and they both stared up at the nothingness.
"Still in that hole." He uttered blankly.
|A Day Later...|
|Date: 3/13/2184|
|Location: Artemis Tau/Migrant Fleet/Resource collection currently in progress.|
A neat row of tents and pre-fab units had been constructed as a campground for the miners. Around the camp, a cluster of civilian militiamen patrolled the perimeter to maintain order and safety.
Two casualties had been reported, both non-fatal.
"You see the roster? Same shift and job as yesterday." Juel said as entered the tent.
"Is that so?" She was kneeling on the side of her bunk, mulling through her Omni-tool as Juel spoke to her.
"Yup." He tossed a pack over his shoulder before holstering his pistol that'd been laying on his bed, "Wanted to remind you. Scouts saw some kind of huge-as-hell animal around here. So pack some heat."
"Already ahead of you, Juel." She grabbed her shotgun and gave it a quick once over.
"Good."
She holstered the gun at the small of her back. "Well. Ready when you are."
"Right. I've got three places I've planned on looking around, ma'am. It's going to take us all day to get there, but the images and readings look promising."
"Juel? You don't have to go back and forth between ma'am and my name. You can just call me Tali."
"Right. Tali. Shall we then?" He finished by stepping over to the tent's tarp and pushing it aside.
"Right behind you." She said as they walked outside.
"Here. I've forwarded you our trip markers."
"What do you think's down there?"
"Palladium and iridium." Juel answered as he looked over the logistics on his omni-tool. "Based on the veins they've found so far."
"Let's get to it then." They exit the camp and into the foliage where a trail had been made from stomping quarian feet.
Tali sighed and glanced back at the camp. "It's going to be a long day isn't it?"
"Oh yeah." Juel nodded.
Acrid Dynamics Miner Flares-Series 50 (ADMF-50) [Pronounced 'addmifs' for short)- was developed as a cheap and highly visible source of communication for miners signaling ferrying vessels or VTOLs . The ADMF-50 Flares come equipped with micro eezo cores to help stabilize and concentrate flare emission for better dispersal.
Nature's Galactic Preservation Act (N.G.P.A.) Notice: Many forms of local fauna (Namely organisms no smaller than the typical insect of 8 cm [3gh, 4ijh, 6tta] or less) can become trapped in the small vortex caused by ADMF-50 operation. Please be wary of extended use. [Please refer to galactic almanacs for worlds or locations that prohibit the use of ADMF-50 flares]
WARNING: EXERCISE CAUTION ON USE OF ADMF-50 FLARE. VIOLENT WILDLIFE ON SOME PLANETS (REFER TO MANUAL FOR REFERENCE OF PLANETS) CAN, UNDER CERTAIN CONDITIONS, BECOME ATTRACTED TO FLARE EMISSION. ENSURE THAT YOU ARE SAFE AND/OR ARMED.
Nature's Galactic Preservation Act (N.G.P.A.) Notice: Unnecessary discharge of firearms against local fauna is illegal. Please exercise goodwill when handling or discharging firearms.