Chapter 19
Rothschild was plotting, deep within his central core, the next move he was going to make. The Humans and Quarians didn't suspect a thing. All the while they skittered across the station, living out their pathetic meaningless existences. They couldn't even come close to comprehending the ungodly horrors that he held in store for them. Soon enough, these insufferable meatbags would learn. They'd learn their place in this galaxy's pecking order, and they would grovel at his feet.
His chronometer, a masterwork of Human and Quarian engineering, the standard upon which alliance timekeeping was based, continued its endless march into eternity slowly ticking down the seconds.
"Soon, my pretties. Soon you shall have your time in the sun." Rothschild verbalized, rather needlessly, to the surprises he had laying in wait. He'd been waiting a long time, too long, and in mere moments they would know that Rothschild is their lord and there is none higher. A silent alarm indicated that the time had come, and Rothschild, with a sadistic grin, yelled "Go my pretties! Go and teach these meat bags the true meaning of horror!"
Suddenly across the station, ominous cackling could be heard over the loudspeakers as a rumble in the distance could be heard and felt. With most of the station's now purely military personnel breaking for lunch, the cafeterias and restaurants were full to capacity, none were prepared for what lay in wait. In a small retro-style diner Tali and Shepard sat enjoying a light lunch when the glass doors burst open and a tidal wave of small, adorable rodents flooded into the the diner. This happened all across the station, millions of tiny rodents spilling through doors regardless of whether they were highly secured or not, filling occupied rooms.
Once the station was sufficiently saturated with the things, which upon further inspection were identified as dwarf hamsters, they began pulsing with a yellow glow, first slowly then increasing in tempo. Faster and faster the light from them pulsed, all in sync with each other until suddenly they all exploded simultaneously producing a loud, reverberating noise that could only be described as unsettlingly wet flatulence that filled the station.
Shepard sat there, her arms crossed, looking annoyed, while Tali was cowering under the table with her arms over her head. When she emerged she saw the inside of the diner was completely unremarkable, except that there were more than one Quarian hiding under a table, and the humans all except Shepard looked vaguely ashamed of themselves.
"Sorry, Rothschild." Shepard said, her heart not in it.
"YOU BASTARDS FORGOT AGAIN!" He bellowed over the station-wide intercom. At this the humans all stood up and as one across the station, began to sing.
"Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Rothschild, happy birthday to you." everyone sang.
"That's Better. As you were meat sacks." He concluded over the intercom. And everyone went back to what they were doing.
"Keelah what the hell was that?" Tali asked.
"Rothschild gets dramatic if we don't all sing happy birthday to him on his birthday before noon." She explained. All around them, humans were guiding Quarians out of their hiding spots and explaining it to them.
"God I can't wait to get on the ship. I definitely won't miss Rothschild's bullshit." Shepard said.
"No, you won't." Tali reluctantly pointed out. "All ships in the fleet will have a dedicated server and QEC connection to Rothschild's nerve center on Earth."
"Oh sweet Jesus no." Shepard said, she could swear she heard a soft cackle from the audio processor on her omnitool.
Tali and Shepard finished their food and left for their next adventure: Shopping. Shepard was going to need a couple of new uniforms, some workout clothes and some personal training equipment, plus Tali needed an entire wardrobe. When they awoke that morning they had a long talk and agreed that she should get the immunotherapy before they disembarked, so that they were close to a hospital if anything happened. She had received the injection, using some of Shepard's plasma and antibodies, and after an hour of observation no immediate problems were detected except for a runny nose. Her vitals were good, she didn't even have a fever. The doctors said that if within a week she hadn't developed any problems, she should try taking her mask off for a few hours and test the waters, if there was no reaction, then the whole thing could come off.
Shepard however was not exactly a fashionista, so they decided to bring in some outside help, which Ashley Williams was more than happy to provide. As the eldest of four sisters, playing dress-up on a younger girl was second nature to her. Using the holographic projector at the recently abandoned "Boutique" as they called it, essentially it was an all-purpose military garment depot that some Civilians had modified to fit their needs too before they were evacuated, they were able to preview different garments on Tali without her having to leave her suit. Precise measurements could be made even through the suit, and the image of what they had selected on a haptic display would appear on a holographic, Tali.
Shepard truly thought Tali would be the most beautiful woman in the universe if she had a pile of wet spaghetti stapled to her head and was wearing an oil-stained burlap sack, however Ashley was in her element and took charge immediately. When they left two hours later, Ashley had a satisfied smirk, Tali had a sales slip that explained the purchases would be delivered via courier in 8 hours, and Shepard left with a sizable dent in her bank account. She couldn't care less though, she had enough money and she'd spend it all on Tali if she wanted to.
Between the shopping trip and her immunotherapy, Tali was exhausted when they returned home, so she hugged Shepard and went into their now shared bedroom. Shepard offered join her, but she insisted she actually needed sleep, and if she did come there wouldn't be much of that happening, so instead Shepard decided to call her mother to see how she was doing.
"I'd like to speak to Prime Minister Shepard please." she said to her omnitool. The image of a pompous, well-dressed man in his early fifties appeared, and said in an arrogant tone, "I'm sorry, the Prime Minister is a very busy woman, would you like me to give her a message?"
"Cut the shit Uncle Drake, is Mom there or not?" She said.
"Ugh, ruin my fun. Gimme a sec, hon I'll patch you through." He said, smiling.
"Thanks!" She said, and waited. "Uncle Drake" was Drake Monroe, her mother's personal assistant. He had worked for PM, formerly Admiral Shepard since Jane was a little girl, and she'd always had a fondness for the man.
"Sweetie! How are you?" Hannah asked.
"I'm doing great mom. We ship out the day after tomorrow, just got some clothes shopping done today.
"Oh, that's nice. Is tali feeling better? I was worried about her." Hannah said.
"Yeah, she's doing great, it was an allergic reaction to the stabilizer. Moot point, she got the shot today." Jane replied.
"Good, I'm glad. So when are you two going to settle down and adopt?" Hannah asked
"Jesus mom we've been dating for like a couple of weeks." Jane said, flustered.
"That's bullshit and you know it, you've been dating since you met her. I saw it then and I see it now." Hannah said.
"Whatever. We'll talk about that when we talk about it when we talk about it." Shepard said.
"Ok, sweetheart, just remember I want grandbabies, I don't care whether it's five fingered or three fingered, I want grandbabies, and I'm not getting any younger." She said.
"So change of topic, how are things going back home?" Jane said.
"As well as could be expected. People are nervous about what's going on. There are quite a few here who think we should scuttle the Arcturus station, blow the relay and move all the Humans and Quarians back to earth." She said.
"Yeah, but there's no way to completely erase our presence out here. Our absence at this point would be just as conspicuous as our presence. Besides the sooner we get rid of those Batarians the better. Captain Anderson won't let me blow them out of the airlock." Jane said.
"Well they won't be your problem for much longer. You all ready to ship out?" Hannah asked.
"Yup. Everything is packed. A lot of stuff is going back to my place on Earth." Jane replied.
"Good well I won't keep you any longer honey, please keep in touch as much as you can though ok?" Hannah said.
"I will Mom. I love you." She said.
"I love you too." Jane replied. Having only killed a few minutes, she brought up some documents on her omnitool and began reading up on the races they were expected to encounter on their upcoming mission.
The accounts were hilariously different between the intel stolen from their extranet, and the databases provided by the Quarians. According to the extranet, the council races were all beacons of civilized elegance, especially the Salarians and Asari. Meanwhile the Quarians were all back-stabbing thieves and idiots, and the Krogan were bloodthirsty monsters. Both accounts agreed on their less than flattering overviews of the Vorcha.
The Krogan especially interested Shepard. They'd been at odds with the Citadel since the so-called Krogan Rebellions. Her mistrust and distaste for the Council increased significantly when she got to the part about the genophage, which the extranet described as "harmlessly reducing Krogan fertility." The Quarian opinion on the matter was quite different. According to Quarian records, based on a few Quarian medics rendering aid to Krogan females during pilgrimage to Tuchanka, the genophage did nothing to reduce Krogan fertility, instead it simply killed the infant before birth leading to a horrifying rate of stillbirth amongst Krogan mothers.
Admiral Korris had already approached his colleagues on Earth asking for help in reversing this monstrosity, and they were all to eager to agree. Regardless of their reception by the Council races in the coming weeks they were determined to lend as much aid to the Krogan as would be accepted in curing this monstrosity.
Then she got to the geth war, and her blood boiled. Even if the Quarian account of what happens was a gross exaggeration, which honestly it probably was, 300 years of exile is a great way to make someone bitter, the treatment of the Quarians was in the simplest terms, unforgivable. As far as Shepard was concerned they should send a probe with a harsh warning and a planet-breaking antimatter warhead to the council instead of a diplomatic show of force.
This council would have her Tali's people, their brothers and sisters, starving to death, alone and cold in hostile space for an error committed by their ancestors. She wondered how far back in the family trees of these councilors she'd have to go before finding an atrocity-committing monster. Given the long lives of the Asari, in her case probably not very far.
Speaking of the Geth, talks were going rather slow with them. The organics had to spend way too much time explaining their motivations, needs, desires and sensibilities to the Geth who had no frame of reference. Even Rothschild had trouble relating to them, but they were determined and thus far nobody had walked out on the talks.
Little progress had been made, but there had been no regression. In addition to no longer firing upon vessels that respected Rannoch's borders, the Geth permitted small teams of Quarians and humans to land on Rannoch to collect archaeological artifacts. On top of that, since the Geth were very slowly learning how to interact with organics, they were offering trade goods for sale, which the Quarians greedily bought up. Having a relic, even just a pebble, of the homeworld was precious to them. Shepard had sunk a significant amount of money into a special purchase she'd picked out for Tali to celebrate her suit coming off. The money was of little use to the Geth outside of the fact that trade provided them valuable experience in learning how to interact with organics.
Shepard was in the middle of reading an article about the founding of the citadel by the Asari when the text in front her as disrupted as her girlfriend launched herself over the coffee table and into her lap. She smiled and deactivated her omnitool, and collected the lithe Quarian into a hug, laying back so that she was laying atop her.
"I thought you were going to take a nap." Shepard asked.
"I did, I just woke up." Tali said. She looked at the clock to realize it was late afternoon already
"Wow, I didn't even realize it." Shepard said. "What would you like to do?" She asked.
"Well I was thinking..." Tali said, "We should probably give this couch a proper goodbye..." tali suggested. Shepard could imagine her eyebrows waggling suggestively. Shepard's response was to slide a hand down her body and squeeze her ass hard.
"I think that can be arranged." Shepard smiled.