Chapter 21: slaughterhouse
1.
There was still gravity on the Alarei. The hatches were still sealed; the hallways hadn't been violently depressurized. All the bodies on board would still be on board.
There was a dead quarian just outside the airlock. He'd bled a lot. You could see half a ribcage and a lung that looked like a popped balloon.
Garrus and Kaidan bent down to examine him.
"I…don't think I need to say anything about his condition," Kaidan said.
"What's the angle of attack?" Ashley said. "I'm not seeing a gun anywhere or…or anything. A blunt object even."
"Hard to tell with the suit," Garrus said. "But I'd guess he was shot from behind. Whatever hit him left a bigger hole going out than in—hence the..." He shook his head, then turned to the group. "I don't think he's one of the guards. He was…probably just trying to get out. Sorry, Tali."
Kaidan stood up to his full height too. "We've got about ten packs of medi-gel between all of us. Any, um, chance the ship has dispensers in it?"
Tali was staring at the quarian body.
"Tali?"
Her head rose but her eyes refused to leave the body. "We…no. Father needed the space for other things. Everything remotely related to combat or ship defense was stripped out and…" Now, now her eyes rose to meet the rest of the group. "There are no medical supplies on board."
The rest of the team looked at each other.
"All right," Kaidan said. "Well...prioritize any survivors. If we've gotta transport casualt—the injured back to the Flotilla, we can."
"Do we wanna risk a geth program jumping ship with us?" Ashley said.
Kaidan looked at Tali. "Your call. Is it doable?"
Tali looked at the body of her fellow quarian, then the airlock, the ceiling, and finally, the rest of the team. "Quarian laws says not to endanger the fleet. Most captain's would leave the wounded behind."
Everyone nodded, but everyone—except Thane—tensed up before doing so.
"Then let's go find the survivors before any need medical attention," Garrus said. "Tali, lead the way."
Tali stared down the hallway and, slowly, pulled out her shotgun. Everyone else saw, and everyone else—after a moment's hesitation—pulled out their primary weapons. Again, all except Thane.
"I'm thinking if most of the weapons have been stripped from the ship," Ashley said as everyone started following Tali, trying to get her voice to reach her friend, "then we've got a fighting chance. We might just be better armed than the geth."
Kaidan nodded. "Hell, maybe the guard's finished most of them off—they just need some backup."
The next room they hit—a reception area just at the other end of that short, short airlock hallway—had nearly fifteen bodies in it. Suits were torn open, limbs were missing, the floor was sticky and black from streams of oxidized blood. A quarian guard was bent over a bench, his spine pushing up against the inside of his suit like a tentpole, and all his weapons were missing.
Tali stood at the entrance of that room and breathed in, breathed out. That was the only sign of life in her that the others could see.
"Jesus Christ..." Ashley said.
Garrus noticed something in all that carnage. There were bullet holes at around head-height next to a pile of five corpses.
"The guard was targeted," he said. "Something went after him, killed him—grabbed his gun—then…those people never stood a chance." A dead quarian near his boot had been shot in the back of her head. It'd exploded her helmet and probably propelled shards of her visor a good ten, twenty feet. Wasn't anything recognizably like a head or face inside that helmet anymore, though.
"Spirits…"
Tali gripped her shotgun tighter and moved ahead, weaving over bodies, keeping her eyes locked on the reception-area's exit.
"Hold up," Ashley said. Her and Kaidan and Garrus and Thane were sprinting after Tali, trying not to trip over a body. "Easy, look, we're right behind you—just don't go—"
The door opened and there were two geth troopers—just two regular geth troopers—on the other side, heads and guns down and pointed at another dead quarian. They looked up just in time for the one on the right to be blown away by a close-range blast from Tali; the one on the left opened fire and nicked Tali's shields but that was it, one blast and then another, down went the trooper in a clicking heap.
Tali's gun was shaking in her ha—no her hands were shaking as she pointed her gun at the first geth she'd just blown away. She looked at the dead quarian too and her brain sputtered and pushed up images of what the corpses face might have looked like when it was alive but it was the gun the geth trooper was using, it was the bulbous silvery geth gun that the trooper had brought to bear on her and she…and Father had...and…
"Spirits that's a…" Garrus looked at Tali and shut his mouth as quick as he could.
"Shit," Ashley said, pulling right next to Garrus. She turned to Tali. "All right, everyone check their shields. Anyone got disruptor rounds?"
"Here." Garrus tossed a blue-tinted cylinder at Ash and she quickly slid it into place. Garrus went to toss a second cylinder to Kaidan but he shook his head and pointed at his omni-tool.
"Overload ready." He, too, turned to Tali. "Tali, look, whatever's going on, we'll get you your answers. We pro—"
Tali sprinted for the next door. Her attack drone was out and her omni-tool was thrust in front of her and she was holding her shotgun with a single hand, holding it like a sail that'd pull her through the Alarei faster than anyone with two legs could physically run.
Garrus's mandibles clicked. Spirits, he'd never…no, stay focused, help Tali, get her father back to the Flotilla, figure out what caused all this don't screw this up don't make it worse don't kill anyone else.
"We should hurry," Thane said, appearing out of the void like the bastard her was. "We likely don't have much time."
"Pessimistic, optimistic, and stupidly obviously all at the same time," Garrus said.
Thane looked to the roof. "If the geth wanted to kill everyone en masse, they could have infiltrated the ship's systems and just opened the airlocks. If they're going room to room, exterminating the quarians, then Tali's father might still be alive. But no doubt not for long."
The bastard was right.
"Spirits," Garrus said again.
He and Thane—and Kaidan and Ashley as four of the only five people they knew were still alive on this nightmare ship—took off after Tali, not caring which body they stepped on, hoping that nobody would reach out and grab a leg for help or just because they were operating on pure instinct.
Everyone was thinking it—Tali had been thinking it the moment her boots touched the Alarei's floor—but only Kaidan bothered to ask:
"Why the hell would the geth bother going room to room?"
And, of course, he was also thinking the same thing Ashley was. He knew he was thinking the same thing Ashley was—and if Thane was the least bit readable, maybe he'd know the drell was thinking this as well.
He was thinking what he'd been trying to ignore since the moment Han'Gerrel told them what happened: Did they do this?
It was so easy to think they had.
2.
Admiral Shala'Raan vas Tonbay had watched Admiral Han'Gerrel vas Neema agree to let Tali retake the Alarei. She had watched as Admiral Zaal'Koris vas Qwib Qwib argue that enough people had lost their lives already—Rael included, unfortunately—that such an operation was fool-hearty and immoral. He threatened to resign. Admiral Daro'Xen vas Moreh—the holographic image of her—had not-so-subtly indicated that Rael's data was worth the risk.
Tali had shared Gerrel's view on things. Her father was on that ship. Her duty as his daughter was to find him. But Tali was smart; she knew quarian laws and customs, and she knew what Gerrel was saying, what he was keeping out of reach of everyone else in the conversation.
Rael would be destroyed for this. The real Rael. The one bit of immortality that any quarian—past, present, or future—could hope to achieve was their memory, and had he been found to have brought geth online within the Fleet, that would be the end of his soul. He would never be spoken of again except in euphemism.
Tali knew this. Gerrel knew this. And Raan knew this.
She also knew this would be the last time she would ever see Tali alive. Before Tali became a memory. Before all that was left of her niece—of the little girl whom she had watched, with linked suits, be brought into the world—was the memory others had of her.
Raan's memory would be that she saw Tali agree to die and then said nothing, for Raan knew quarian tradition too.
"I will resign," Koris said to her after Tali had left. "The moment I find a captain who understands the situation like I do, I'll step down. This is a farce and a travesty, and we all know it."
Raan did not say anything then. Only minutes later, when, by her calculations, the SSV Mars would have reached the Alarei, did she turn to the memories of Zaal and say that so much worse would happen to the Admiralty Board than resignations.
She did not know what she meant by that; she just knew that it was true.
3.
Ashley's foot finally caught on a body. A combination of Kaidan and a hanging bit of grabbable ceiling kept her from tumbling face-first into the torso of a perforated quarian.
Shit, she recognized the colour scheme.
"Fuck me."
"That's the…she's from the Rayya, right?" Kaidan said.
"We gotta move," Garrus said, stepping over the body. "Tali's half a ship ahead of us already."
"Fuck me," Ashley said again.
"What?" Kaidan said.
"I just…look at these bodies. Arms shot off, legs, shoulders blown open—since when've the geth ever missed the head so freaking much?"
"Maybe we're dealing with a small network," Garrus said. He was starting to pull ahead of the group—nearly turned around and started jogging backwards. Big mistake, never expose your back to anything, let alone something with a cloaking device.
Spirits Tali slow down.
"Sure," Ashley said. Spirits guide them all she was starting to pick up speed too. "But that doesn't explain how many were just...torn apart."
"We're not getting answers from anyone other than Rael," Garrus said. "Either that or we're blowing the ship and getting the hell away from here. Whatever the geth are thinking right now, they're free to take it back behind the Veil or lose a processor for their troubles."
"We've got a platform with mission critical data, Garrus."
"Kaidan, if a mission's completely fucked then only an idiot would—"
A bang and clicking, followed by another bang. Well up ahead.
Right by where Tali had last been standing. Sprinting. Whichever.
Everyone bolted for her last known location.
There were three geth platforms on the floor—one a hunter, the other two just troopers—and another fifteen quarian bodies, all mangled and spread over the floor like elsewhere. The guards had snapped necks and broken arms and empty holsters. No chance to fight back, no possibility of even getting lucky.
Tali had put another round in the hunter and its head exploded and Garrus realized, just having now looked over, that there was a circle of singed dots just above Tali's head where a shotgun might've discharged, if something crawled its way up close to someone and missed their shot by mere inches.
Garrus was about to grab her shoulder and ask if she was all right like an idiot, like someone operating entirely on instinct, like someone pretending he was a team leader, but he noticed what was in her hands. It was a geth shotgun. She'd grabbed it from the hunter and was looking it over and…and she was gripping it so hard he could see her muscle spasming, even through her suit.
Finally, Tali become aware that other people were in the room with her.
"I don't...there shouldn't be anything on board that the geth could turn into a shotgun."
"They probably know how to make a weapon out of anything," Garrus said.
"These things utilize a very, very specific mass effect field generator. You can't—unless you're inside an eezo mine, there's no way to craft a functioning shotgun of any description, but least of all one that utilizes plasma to...to..."
"Tali, hey, hold on," Garrus said. He went to put a hand on her shoulder but drew it back at the last second. He knew what she was probably thinking and this situation? This situation didn't need that extra complication. She didn't deserve it but what she also didn't deserve was to get blasted apart by the geth because he mind was obsessing over her father. His mandibles twitched and threatened to pierce through us helmet and…and spirits this mission was dead, didn't anyone understand? This was it—they'd failed. Get out, get off the ship, before anyone else could die and just—
"How close are we to your father's lab?" he said.
Tali stared through her fogged purple visor at Garrus with a glare that could cut a frigate in half and was it him? Was it her father? Was it the geth? Did it matter if she hated his guts for asking when it got them off the damn ship?
"We're three quarters of the way through," Tali said.
"So there're a ton of geth concentrated up ahead," Kaidan said. Ashley whispered something under her breath but Garrus could guess what—
"We don't KNOW how many survivors there are," Tali said, whipping around. "We don't know where Father might be. We don't know anything about…Keelah he said he wanted parts!"
Everyone paused and couldn't keep their eyes from wandering away from Tali. Ashley forced herself to at least glance in Tali's direction and immediately her face defaulted to saying, sorry, sorry Tali I know I'm not helping here. Or at least that's what she hoped it was saying, not that it mattered—Tali had turned her attention elsewhere, away from her friends, back into the maelstrom of her own mind.
Ashley sighed then quickly said, "We'll need extra firepower." She pointed at the geth shotgun Tali was holding. "Tali's got the right idea."
Tali let the gun clatter to the ground and pushed passed the group. "Father might have logs stored away," she said, reaching a terminal. "I'll hack them, but after I have, whatever geth are on board will know where we are."
Again, Ashley sighed; Kaidan's shoulders deflated just a little bit; Thane didn't move a damn muscle; and Garrus's mandibles clicked at the side of his helmet.
"It's not worth the risk," Garrus said. "If we're just sounding a dinner bell then—"
"I am not leaving without answers," Tali said. She violently swiped at her omni-tool. "Come on you stupid bosh'tet I will rip you open and do this by hand if I have to."
"Tali—"
"There—it's done." Tali closed her omni-tool. "I'll need time to let the security programs override any locks so, in the meantime, we can go look for Father."
"Tali…"
"What, Garrus? What?"
Garrus's mandibles nearly detached from the side of his head just like...just like they'd been doing in Omega nonstop after—
Aria crossed her arms and stared down Garrus. "As for Archangel, you can just leave. I don't want to keep you from making mercenaries scared of the dark."
"Are we just making some hired thugs scared of the shadows?" Sidonis said to him once. "Or is there...y'know. Is there some standard of progress we can use so we know if we get to go home?"
"If our fatality rate's less than the people we're fighting," Garrus said back, "then I'd say progress can't be far behind. Right?"
"Fuck me. You'd better be joking."
"It's worked for the Hierarchy."
Sidonis gave Garrus a once-over. "Yeah, okay, so where're ya hiding your fleet of dreadnaughts, Primarch Vakarian?"
Answers—she wanted answers.
Tarak cracked a toothy smile.
"Told you," he said.
"Nothing," Garrus said, shaking his head. "We'll get you your answers. Just…everyone be ready. We don't know what we're walking into."
Tali took off and Garrus went to follow. Right up until Ashley strode next to him and tapped him on the shoulder.
"Just hold up a second," she said.
"We shouldn't be letting her wander off," Garrus said.
"This'll be quick and Tali's got her shotgun. I just need to know what the chances are that the platform we brought caused all this."
"Why're you asking me?"
"Because you've got tech know-how and the last thing I'm gonna do is ask Tali if she thinks bringing that geth aboard caused all this."
"She's focusing on her father right now—I think the blame's being directed elsewhere."
"Unless she's telling herself that now so she doesn't completely shut down. C'mon Garrus: what're the chances this is our fault?"
Before Garrus could answer, from the rear of the group, Kaidan said: "Uh, where's Thane?"
And Garrus's stomach fell into a singularity, where it was torn up, spat out, and drifted through the universe as a warning to anyone else stupid enough to think they could play hero.
4.
Scan complete. Outlook for Creator Tali'Zorah poor. Unknown number of programs lost. Probable range of total annihilation of geth and organic presence on ship: one to four percent. Chances of total annihilation of organic presence on ship: forty-seven to fifty-five percent.
Conclusion: chances of Creator death excessive.
Presence of Old Machine noted in external programs. Question: why?
Network rejoined for the purpose of information building. Action does not indicate change in consensus.
Further question: Old Machine presence a permanent or temporary measure?
Justification?
Interesting. New information must be considered. Request ceasing hostilities against Creator and her team.
Ultimatum: this unit will activate to assist Creator.
Restatement: consensus on matter has not changed.
Understood—we regret the loss of programs that may follow.
Correction: choices made are yours and yours alone.
5.
It was true that Thane had never seen a machine with the spark of life in it. Should they even be called "machines" then? Or did so many people now believe that the body was all there is—nothing more, nothing but skin, bone, and impulse—that calling any living, thinking, feeling creature a "machine" hardly registered as an insult? Now wasn't the time for those questions; indeed, there wasn't even time to utter a blanket prayer, to cover those still inside the ship. Now was the time for Thane to remember how to discretely disable something with wires and circuits rather than nerves and muscles, in the event that he was discovered while collecting inte—
A cold night. The sounds of games all around him. Children scramble for makeshift toys, coveting the little instances of innocence in a world determined to rob them of their youth. Two LOKI mechs patrol the interior wall of the complex, steel feet scratching against harsh stone steps. Few other guards in sight; none of them armed with more than a pistol. Far too little security for a regional warlord. The locals seem no more troubled by him than the quarter-pound insects that dive like birds between the bungalows.
The contract is likely to take out a small-time competitor, so that a far worse tyrant can make their nest. He'll have to make additional prayers for what his body is about to do.
His arm's already reaching for the first LOKI mech…
Thane shifted in the darkness. Too much of that memory had surfaced: all he needed was an image of the disabled LOKI mechs. The whole exercise was largely pointless, anyways: LOKI mechs weren't connected to a network—you could disable one without alerting the others.
This may have been a mistake. His body refused to acknowledge its own decline while his soul could not consistently reign in his physical impulses. His trigger finger, his itinerary of disabling techniques, his implicit knowledge of where to best strike the necks of over fifteen species if you wanted to severe their brain from the rest of their central nervous system…
He hadn't found anything; he'd return to the group and apologize for disappearing.
Except, in the corner of his vision, he could see a quarian crawling out from a room a few metres down the hallway. Its doors seemed to have been thrust open, with jagged metal bending outwards, into the hallway. It gave the impression of a beaten and bloody animal attempting to crawl out of a much larger predator's mouth.
Commander Alenko had asked why the geth would go room to room—a fair question, given that they could have at least whittled down the quarian resistance by throwing open the Alarei's airlocks, either decompressing the ship or hurtling any occupants not tethered to something into space. He also said that they only had ten packages of medi-gel to go around.
There wouldn't be many other survivors. If at least one crewmember managed to live through this ordeal, it would not completely darken the universe.
Thane crept forward. The quarian—another scientist, by the looks of the toolbelt on her hip—saw him and silently reached out a hand. No, not completely silent: he could hear a gurgling noise through her helmet's speakers.
He crept forward more quickly.
Then he saw her lurch backwards and flail widely for purchase on something—anything—and there was a mechanical roaring noise coming from the inside of that room, a roaring noise and the static-filled sound of a cloaking device being deactivated. The quarian grabbed onto the teeth of the door and Thane could see her slice open her fingers as her legs were tugged yet again, once then twice then on the third time her fingers slipped, taking part of her suit and no-doubt part of her skin with it.
Thane reached her and grabbed a hold of her wrist. He planted his feet against the wall just next to the door and held onto the quarian's wrist with all the strength his body could muster, while his soul his spark searched for something that could pry whatever was in the room from her legs. He couldn't see the quarian's eyes through her helmet, her helmet with a mask that didn't align right with the contours of her head, but he could feel the fabric of her suit sliding around, bunching up around his hands, threatening to rip apart just like his muscles. He could only keep her from being pulled inside, that was it. He only had the strength to keep her outside the snarling teeth of the pried-open door until he tired and the geth platform that was pulling on her simply overpowered hi—
A sharp pain in his lungs, like someone had run a scalpel across it. That pain turned into a tickle and a bout of disorientation and he knew that the coughing would start next. He wouldn't be able to keep his footing, let alone hold the quarian's wrist. As soon as the coughing started he'd—
And then it started.
His body quaked and his knees buckled, just enough that his arm nearly sliced itself on the remains of the door. The quarian was cognizant enough to reach for Thane with her other arm but there was nothing to grab, no other hand to extend, and after another cough that rattled his chest like he'd been hit with a concussive round, his grip faltered. The quarian disappeared and Thane rocketed backwards.
The moment he hit the wall, he pushed off and slid into the room. His arm was outstretched, hoping to grab whatever part of the quarian he could.
His hand grabbed nothing. He slid into a room with a single blinking light and nine quarian bodies—all scientists—sitting up against the walls. Their masks were off and their eyes were—open but glossed over, dead for however long. Their dead eyes stared at the centre of the room and their mouths were frozen with a sickening, terrified grimace. Blackened blood spatters above their heads framed them as if they were decaying wallpaper.
The quarian Thane had tried to rescue had her mask off, too. She was being held by the geth—one to each limb—above a surgical table, and a makeshift pike had been welded into its centre.
Thane watched them pull her down until the makeshift pike held her body like it was a harvested animal, like it was a slab of meat to serve at an open market, like…like the dragon's teeth on Eden Prime.
The geth knew he was there. All four turned their heads and slowly marched towards him.
Thane took a breath—a breath that stung his throat and nearly created another wave of coughing—and readied himself.
If he was to die here, then that was his fate.
But he couldn't help his mind drifting towards Illium and the promise of a death in the service of better, bigger cause. His death wouldn't create a better world; if anything, the team—Ashley Williams, for certain, for he could tell it was in her nature—would come hunting for him, would search for him and wander only deeper into what might very well be an impossible situation.
He would cost them their lives and who knew how many other innocents would suffer in the process.
Thane tossed his submachine gun and pistol onto the floor and readied himself.
If he was to die, he wouldn't make any noise.
6.
"I'm about ready to kill that son of a bitch," Garrus said.
"Is this helping?" Ashley said. "What you're doing right now—is that helping? Because news from the front: it's not."
"Guys, please, we're already a man down," Kaidan said. "Plenty of time for us to kick the crap out of each other once we're off this ship."
"We're two people down, skipper. Tali's got other things on her mind right now—and she's still a hundred paces ahead of us."
"All the more reason for us to pick up the pace, get an update on her security program, and then blow this place to hell. We can find Thane when we're not running blind."
"And before we 'blow this place to hell'? I dunno what crawled up your ass, Vakarian, but if it thinks leaving people behind is Bravo Zulu then you'd better take a squat."
"You really think speaking in military slang gets your point acro—"
"Hey—hey!" Kaidan walked in between Garrus and Ashley and held up his hands like he was a security guard. "Did we not have a conversation about this? About not chewing each other out? Christ Almighty people, we're in the middle of a massacre here."
They'd been searching every nook and cranny of the Alarei as they slowly crawled from one end of the ship to the other, trying to keep in visual range of Tali but failing utterly at that task. Kaidan had stepped in front of them but the group had already stopped: Garrus and Ashley had their flashlights shining in each other's helmets like they were hoping the light would melt each other's eyes or something.
Garrus's helmet had a completely opaque visor so no hints on his state of mind there, but he could see Ashley's eyes soften a bit. Eventually, she put down her flashlight—Garrus, slowly, followed suit.
"You're right—sorry skipper."
"Don't apologize to me," Kaidan said. He motioned to Garrus with his head, then looked Garrus right in the visor. "Same goes for you, Garrus."
"Yeah, don't…don't apologize to me either," Garrus said. "Sorry Ash—didn't plan on taking all this out on you."
"But Thane's fair game?" Ashley put up her hands defensively. "Not starting anything, I'm just genuinely curious: what the hell's got you so worked up over him?"
Garrus was silent for about half a second (shut it Vakarian don't say a single damn word don't clue them in) then said: "It's not him. I'm worried about Tali."
"So are we, Garrus," Kaidan said. "Trust us."
"I do I…it doesn't matter. Let's keep moving."
"Yeah, all right." Kaidan, though, stayed where he was. "Just a heads up: next time one of us says 'let's keep moving,' it'd better be because we found something."
"You got it, skipper."
"Read you loud and clear, Commander."
"No ranks, Garrus. C'mon."
"Just showing you I'm serious, Alenko."
"Ten-four," Kaidan said, "just...keep in mind we're in an enclosed space. Both of you."
"Aye skipper."
"And Ash...about your question? That's—"
"I get it: wrong time, wrong place."
Kaidan shook his head. "I was just gonna say that you're not the only one wondering that. But yeah, wrong time, wrong place. We good?"
Garrus and Ashley nodded.
"All right, let's go...let's go hunt down Tali and pray to god Thane turns up soon."
Tali was somewhere in front of them, somewhere down the darkened halls with scorch marks and holes and viscera of some kind all along its walls. However many geth platforms and quarian bodies were left to be "discovered," nobody wanted to guess. They should've hit some more pockets of geth, though, that much was obvious. The shit they'd seen—literally since the moment they stepped foot on the Alarei—what they'd seen done to the security and science teams on board? Unless every other platform was a Prime, a handful of troopers and hunters couldn't pull of the kind of carnage they'd encountered.
Mmm…there was a cheery thought…
Finally, though, they could all see Tali. She'd stopped at a corner, her head down and her shotgun on holstered on her back. She had her omni-tool out and it was glowing an angry, wavering orange.
"Tali?" Garrus shuffled forward, gun arm ready to jolt upwards at any second. "Find anything?"
"The programs are finished. I only have limited access to the…t-to the files on the ship." Tali didn't look up as she spoke; her eyes, little fog lights behind her mask, stayed on her omni-tool.
"Anything as far as the security system goes?" Kaidan said.
Again, Tali didn't look up. "No. The system's been rendered offline or…I don't know where the geth are."
"Or Thane," Ashley said.
Finally, Tali looked up. "Thane's gone…?"
"All right," Ashley said. "So we're completely blind except for the fact that we know we're about to hit a massive concentration of geth. We can probably guess where they're all holed up, right?"
"The lab," Kaidan said.
"Yeah. So…all right, Tali, anything in there that can show us a back route to your father's lab?"
Tali was staring at…well, at nothing in particular. After a few seconds—where Ashley contemplated asking her question again—finally, finally, Tali showed signs of life.
"I…no, no they wouldn't be in Father's lab. They'd be…they'd need some place where they could form new neural links. Otherwise they…otherwise t-they wouldn't be able to any platforms larger than a drone."
"You sure?" Ashley said. "Wouldn't your dad's lab be the perfect place for…um, what I mean is—"
"No. Father had extra shielding and program dampeners in his lab. I-it would…they would need to activate and interface elsewhere. Somewhere less protected."
"Like…?"
"The bridge. The geth's neural hub is…probably on the bridge."
"Wait," Kaidan said, "so…if your father's lab was…it couldn't've been the platform that did this, right? That's what you're saying?"
Tali…didn't say anything.
"That's…look I, I don't wanna sound…" Kaidan sighed. "What I'm trying to say is, if the platform didn't do all this, then—and just...bear with me because this is gonna sound selfish—but if the platform isn't the cause of all this, then we can stop beating ourselves up. We can focus on saving as many people on this ship as possible and not second guess our decisions. Right?"
Ashley nodded; Garrus…did not.
Slowly, Tali's head turned towards Kaidan. He expected to be glared at. He expected her eyes to tear into him. But no…no, Tali's eyes, even through the fogged visor, even through the purple tint and the dim lighting of the Alarei, Kaidan could tell that Tali only looked scared.
"They'll destroy Father for this," was all Tali could say.
Then there was a metallic crack and the whine of steel bending and stretching. A wet, sickly sound—like someone dropping a bag filled with water—followed. Everyone's guns went up and everyone assumed a combat position. The sound came from just up ahead, down the hallway that jutted out to the right of the corner Tali had stopped at.
They crept forward. No lights, no further sound.
They rounded a corner and turned into an atrium, the mirror of the atrium near the other end of the ship. Through sickly yellow light they could see quarian bodies—who knew how many—all dangling from metal pikes, dripping litres upon litres of blood onto the floor.
Dragon's teeth, just like Eden Prime. Just like the Citadel. Except these were made out of ship parts and held together by tape and straps and sometimes just the bodies of the quarians that'd been skewered on them.
They'd have to walk through that. And they'd have to walk through it slowly: too much blood had pooled on the ground.
Tali had to brace herself against the nearest wall first, but to everyone else—to Garrus and Ashley and Kaidan—the fact that was all she had to do seemed superheoric to them…if she hadn't just shut down completely...
7.
It would have been quick. It would have been physically painless. It would have been the end to a life that he had not properly sought forgiveness for. There had still been too many acts of violence, of vengeance, of destruction and debasement that his soul had wholeheartedly endorsed, that his spark had purchased from his body despite knowing it was wrong. The mere act of seeing the end in such a negative way—of seeing his death so selfishly through the lens of his failures, his faults, his intentions not yet met—was yet further proof of how lost he had become.
Perhaps Vakarian was right. Perhaps he was as selfish as was claimed.
The geth had raised their rifles and were prepared to execute him. They would take no chances, give Thane no room to fight. A cold extermination of life, not so different to an assassination carried out with ruthless efficiency.
Thane would still make no noise.
But one of the geth's heads exploded, followed by another. The remaining two were disoriented just long enough for Thane to grab the closest one's weapon and kick the leg out of the other. Two bursts of plasma to the heads and they were deactivated; his foot ached from the surprisingly solid leg of the fourth geth platform, but otherwise he was unharmed.
But how? No—who?
He turned towards the door and prepared himself for the glares—prepared himself to ask forgiveness and express his desire that nobody find him, that nobody feel obligated to put themselves at risk for him. But it wasn't Garrus that greeted him, nor was it Ashley, the only two people carrying heavy rifles with them. And it wasn't a surviving quarian marine, either.
It was a geth platform. No, the geth platform. Its body's black armour was dulled but it otherwise looked exactly as it had on the Mars, sequestered behind that containment field.
The flaps on the platform's brow raised and—just as the others had said—the platform spoke.
"Krios, Thane. Drell assassin. We are glad you are unharmed."
"You have my thanks," Thane said. His spark was intrigued, grateful, confused; his body was still tense, ready to strike. "I assume this means you're not behind the geth awakening."
"These are not geth. They are defectors from the Heretics, however they have not rejoined the geth. We were informed of their intentions; we informed them of ours."
Thane blinked.
"I don't think I'm equipped for this conversation, at the moment."
"Information gaps will be filled. Urgent action is required, though. We are asking that Krios-Thane trust us, so we may prevent further losses of life."
Thane looked at the four platforms near his feet. "Our lives? Or theirs?"
"Both, if possible. Creator Tali'Zorah and her team remain our priority."
"Interesting," Thane said. He stepped forward, hesitated, then slowly extended his arm. "I don't know if you believe in such things, but we've been taught that our gods bless whoever's willing to trust a stranger. They say the same about the merciful."
The flaps on the platform's head extended, giving Thane the impression that it was contemplating. The flaps returned to their resting position and the platform closed the distance between it and Thane. "Cooperation remains an optimal strategy, even when defection risks are high. Trust facilitates cooperation." The platform extended its hand too and, even more slowly, the two hands combined, clasped together, and shook. "We operate with similar theories."
Thane chuckled. "I can think of a few philosophers and theologians who would have loved to hear that."
Again, the platform's flaps raised. "We know. They have not yet reached consensus."
The handshake ended and the two of them went out into the hallway, a million questions dancing about in Thane's mind.
8.
A lifetime ago, back on the Neema, Tali had watched Han'Gerrel tell her that something had happened on the Alarei. Something catastrophic, based on the distress call they'd just received.
Gerrel said that they were attacked. It took her mind no time at all to connect the dots; after that, all she could hear was ringing, or rushing air, or some horrid combination of the two, like a turbine was about to rip itself apart as it started up.
There had been arguing between Gerrel and Koris, arguing that she couldn't hear or that, if nothing else, never found purchase in her mind. She could see them pointing and jabbing at each other, Koris making wide gestures and Gerrel looking like he was trying to restrain the other Admiral. Auntie Raan was ducking in and out of the others, trying to be a body in the way, trying to keep them apart as best she could.
Garrus was grabbing her shoulder. Talons—she could feel his talons pinch her suit, far more than she could feel him shaking her.
"—ali! Tali they're—"
She brushed his hand off and walked right up to the other Admirals. "What did you mean? What do you mean 'attacked'?"
Gerrel separated from Koris and Raan, gave Tali a look that would have screamed sympathy for any quarian eyes that saw it. "I'm sorry, kid. We didn't get much in the way of details…but the distress call didn't sound good."
"It's high time you admit what's going on over there," Koris said, budging his way back into Gerrel's personal space. "Admit that it's the geth so we can all stop living a carefully curated lie."
"Koris," Gerrel said, "since you've never served with the Heavy Fleet, I'll assume you're just naïve and not completely stupid."
"A lie of omission, when it comes to living creatures, is not only unjustified, but wholly unjust."
"I'm not inciting panic just because you think guns with legs have a soul!"
"Admiral Koris," Raan said, "ever since you arrived on this ship you have done nothing but badger us and push your views in our faces. For you to now attempt to dictate—"
"I have pushed because thus far, all I've encountered from the rest of you is open hostility and a refusal to even countenance the idea that—"
"WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO MY FATHER?"
Everyone in the area—everyone from the Admirals to the onlookers who were doing their best to not look like onlookers—were now staring at her. Ashley and Kaidan and Thane were back, closing in around her, trapping her with the echoes of the question she'd just screamed.
Her brain was moving fast, faster than anyone who might want to answer her question. She conjured up images of unimaginable suffering and death and ramifications spanning whole cosmic epochs in the small, small silent space between when she'd spoke and when Gerrel finally sighed.
"We don't know," he said. "But the message we received…they didn't paint an optimistic picture, Tali. I'm sorry."
"What did the message say specifically?" Raan said.
"Very little, beyond saying a hostile lifeform had seized control of the ship and was in the process of executing the crew."
"So it might not be the geth?"
Gerrel shook his head. "The secret's out, Raan. You and I both know there's only one culprit."
"And unsurprisingly, I'm not one of the elected few to know," Koris said.
"Zaal, there's a bloody good reason why we wouldn't tell you."
"Yes of course—I might object to the wholesale experimentation and vivisection of a species, even though in any other context that would be a perfectly reasonable thing to object to!"
"And in this context you're just being a pompous, bed-wetting buffoon who—"
"Shut up! Shut UP!" Tali barely managed to keep her voice from tearing apart her throat again. "Keelah, my father—your friend—is on a ship that's being massacred, and every second we stand here arguing he…he…" Tali's head dropped into her hands. "Keelah…"
"Tali…" Raan reached out to hold her. "I am sorry—we weren't thinking."
Gerrel sighed again. "You're right, Tali. You're right. If anyone could find a way to survive, it'd be Rael."
Tali couldn't help but glare at him, at this man who likely knew her father better than she did. "If you're just saying that…"
"I'm not, kid. Trust me, I'm not." Gerrel sucked in a breath, moved his eyes away from Tali and towards the hallway he'd just come from, and then his gaze fell back on her. "Your father would also want us to focus on the safety of the fleet, first and foremost. That's what we should be thinking about right now. Nothing else—nothing beyond the safety of everyone else inside the Flotilla."
Right…that's what Father would always focus on. The safety of the fleet, first and foremost. Fleet first, always fleet first, and even if there was a secret project involving geth parts on an isolated research ship and the open acceptance of an intact geth platform the fleet's safety always came first keelah Father, keelah I could have told someone, I could have told someone what you were doing but I didn't because I trusted you even though Kar'Danna doesn't and other people clearly wouldn't because you didn't tell them yourself a-and…
Gerrel had to be thinking the same things as her. He had to be. He knew what quarian law said about people who brought the geth to our home. He knew what would happen to Father's records, to his legacy, to his memory if…
Keelah, if she was in any way responsible, she'd have poisoned her father's soul for as long as a single quarian remained alive. She'd have killed all the innocents on the Alarei and killed her father for good and held Shepard's mission back and thrown her trust and kindness into an inferno (her name would be mud her memory would be poisoned too that didn't matter that DIDN'T matter).
"What're you proposing?" Garrus said. He turned to Tali. "Whatever it is, you've got our full support."
"Damn right," Ashley said.
"Is that military bravado speaking?" Koris said. "An ulterior motive that no doubt everyone else in this conversation is perfectly aware of? Or do you genuinely wish to help us?"
"I genuinely wish to tattoo the inside of your colon with my boot, sir," Ashley said.
"Bravado it is, then."
Tali walked directly between him and Gerrel, pointedly ignoring the one Admiral and making it as clear as possible that she cared to listen to only one person's response. "Admiral Gerrel, what is the Heavy Fleet's plan?"
"Our plan, if you can call it that, is to send in a strike team and ascertain what the hell's actually going on inside," he said. "After that…if we have to take more drastic steps, we will."
"You'd fire on the ship," Raan said. "You'd destroy it and any geth onboard."
Gerrel, slowly, nodded. "At the cost of any quarians still alive…and any answers we might find."
Answers about Father. About what he'd done. About what she had done. He could fire on the ship and destroy everything and attempt to cover it up but, but no that wasn't the quarian way the quarian way didn't involve lying keelah Father how many lies did you have to tell how many lies did I tell did I EVER trust that this was a good idea did I ever THINK about how this was a good idea you wouldn't…you wouldn't just leave me to DEAL WITH THIS you wouldn't—
"We can go," Tali said. She looked at Garrus, at Ashley, at Kaidan, at Thane. "We can…I can go, I can lead a strike team, and we can—"
"No, no way," Garrus said. "You're not doing this alone."
"I-I don't want to volunteer you for something you never signed up for."
"Doesn't matter. We're a team, we go together."
"I'll say again," Ashley said. "Damn right."
"We've got business on the Alarei anyways," Kaidan said. "Tali, if any part of you is worried we're off track—don't. We're right where we need to be."
"Ah," Koris said, "so there's an ulterior motive too, is there."
Tali spun around. "We're rescuing my father you bosh'tet!"
"If I hear so much as a single objection, Koris," Gerrel said, "I won't bother to settle things diplomatically."
"My only objection," Koris said, "is that enough people have lost their lives already. To send yet more people to their deaths is…" He turned to Tali. "You have my deepest sympathies for your father, Tali. I won't pretend we saw eye-to-eye, but any life lost is a tragedy. I don't want that same tragedy to befall you."
"I don't believe you," she said.
Koris looked taken aback…but only for a second. "You can believe that if you must—I know I can't change your mind. But I also know that no father would want their daughter to put themselves in harms way like you're propo—"
Gerrel punched him. Punched him right in the gut. Tali's mind didn't even register the hit until Koris, doubled over on the floor, reached for support and found nobody there to greet him. Nobody except Thane, who accepted the Admiral's hand and helped him to his feet. Halfway up, Auntie Raan extended her hand as well.
"Don't you dare use Rael as a bargaining chip," Gerrel said.
"I…*cough cough* I'm not, Gerrel you insufferable—"
It…keelah it didn't matter that Father wouldn't want Tali in danger. It didn't matter because…because…
S-she…she couldn't find an image—a voice clip a memory an anything—in her brain of her father saying that Tali shouldn't risk her life. Nothing that stuck. Nothing that seemed real. If Father cared only about his legacy he…
No. No she wasn't thinking that. She would never think that she…
What was done was done. She had volunteered. Everyone else had agreed. Auntie Raan understood. Auntie Raan hadn't said anything either, even when Koris—just as Tali was beginning to leave—told Raan that he'd resign.
And then they got to the Alarei, and she saw the carnage, and she knew that Father was dead somewhere on that ship. And everything she saw was screaming at her that he knew this was a possibility, that he knew this could happen. She wished—keelah she actually began to wish—that this was all her fault, that the platform had done this. It wouldn't make sense for the platform to do this; it made perfect sense for the geth to have come online because Father wanted it that way.
She wished that was the other way around even though she knew she was damning her friends to a terrible fate (they weren't quarians they wouldn't understand they couldn't understand they were more like family to her than anything if anyone would understand it WOULD BE THEM it would be—).
"All right," Kaidan had said. "Well...prioritize any survivors. If we've gotta transport casualt—the injured back to the Flotilla, we can."
"Do we wanna risk a geth program jumping ship with us?" Ashley said.
Kaidan looked at Tali. "Your call. Is it doable?"
Tali looked at the body of her fellow quarian, then the airlock, the ceiling, and finally, the rest of the team. "Quarian laws says not to endanger the fleet. Most captains would leave the wounded behind."
Everyone nodded, but everyone—except Thane—tensed up before doing so.
"Then let's go find the survivors before any need medical attention," Garrus said. "Tali, lead the way."
Lead the way to what? To more death? More destruction? More proof that Father doomed however many quarians because…because why? Why would Father do this? Why wouldn't he have told her about this? Did he? And did she just ignore it because…because…
"That sort of thought never happens in the Flotilla," Tali had said, forever and ever ago. "The moment it does, people die. If we start losing faith in our leaders, who knows what might happen."
"Even if your leaders are terrible?" Garrus had said back.
Keelah it would be so much easier if this had all been her fault…
The carnage that followed—the bodies bent and broken in such horrific ways—her mind barely registered it. The images were fed into her brain and smashed against rocks and pulverized by the pulsing, deafening sound of her father's words: trust me, trust me, trust me. What her eyes interpreted as a family of dead quarians turned into a reminder that she hadn't seen or interacted with Father for months—no, years—before she left to Freedom's Progress. The first time back since being swept away by the Alliance and immediately afterwards, immediately after seeing her father, a massacre had broken out on his watch.
She was being selfish. She was closing in on herself. She hadn't seen the geth right in front of her until a hunter had nearly blown her head apart…and even after she had killed it she barely noticed what she'd done, where she was, who she was with.
She pressed on, ignored her friends, finally worked up the courage to hunt for files on a nearby terminal. Her omni-tool ate away at the locks guarding the terminal's secrets as her mind concocted a million and one explanations for what she knew she'd find. Excuses, rationalizations, counterfactuals—the data would surely be corrupted, or the very act of her omni-tool hacking into the terminal would inevitably delete everything she was hunting for. Whatever had happened, there'd be no records of it and she'd be free from knowing anything, of being certain. That was better than knowing. Of course it was. Of. Course. It. Was.
There was a beeping. She looked at her wrist. The files had downloaded. They hadn't been corrupted—they hadn't been deleted.
She was standing in a darkened hallway with dead quarians and scorch marks and viscera everywhere and she was alone, reading what her father had done.
Reactivated geth.
Encouraged networking.
Checking for signs of intelligence.
Deploying a "memetic virus," a bit of information that would propagate throughout a network and render any shared observations obviously incorrect. The more the geth would try to correct for it, the more the virus would spread. The lack of any grounds to form a consensus would isolate geth programs, and then they'd made less adaptive, made easier to put under external control. It had worked on a small network, but just barely. Simulations showed that if more programs were linked, or the program's linkages were continuous and strong, the network could adapt around the virus, overwrite it, filter out the virus and grow smarter from it. They could use the fact that they were infected to build a new consensus that worked around the false information.
Father tried to make the virus stronger. He needed to wake up more geth to test if it worked.
He did. It didn't. And all the other geth that had been experimented on knew what had happened.
The network had begun to inhabit geth platforms right when the Mars docked with the Alarei.
There was no denying it. There was…Father had…keelah Father had willingly caused all this and—
There'd been another Admiral, another Tali hadn't heard of before. An Admiral that was part of Father's fleet, Special Projects. And she'd said…Admiral Daro'Xen vas Moreh, she had said—
"Whatever it is Rael is doing over there, the fact that his daughter wants to rescue him is…admirable. It also presents an opportunity to make sure we honor his work, in addition to his life."
Would the Admirals even care? Keelah was that somehow better than her father's legacy being torn apart?
"Tali?" Garrus shuffled forward, gun arm ready to jolt upwards at any second. "Find anything?"
Tali realized where she was, who was next to her. She answered their questions, told them that the geth neural hub was likely on the bridge (it was on the bridge she knew it was on the bridge because the files very clearly pointed to it being on the bridge and she didn't tell them all the reasons why she knew it was on the bridge because…because…).
Thane was gone. Was Thane dead? Had Father killed him too? Was Tali at least responsible for that? Had Tali gotten all her friends her family the people she had relied so much on killed because she had hoped prayed been an idiot and thought Father somehow wasn't a…a lying, lying monster who…
Monster?
"They'll destroy Father for this."
The quarian bodies on the metal pikes, the makeshift dragon's teeth.
Monster? Was this not the sort of thing you would expect a monster to create?
They would destroy Father...even if the geth had already tried to do that on the Alarei. Keelah she should be worried sick about her Father still and yet all she wanted to do was interrogate him over this and...
...and she got another look at the quarian bodies. The bodies that were covered in gore.
Tali braced herself against the wall but, blocking out the murmuring she heard from Garrus and Ashley and Kaidan, she pushed herself forward. She pushed herself towards the bridge where the geth's neural hub would be. There was another platform with mission critical data on it somewhere in the ship but she could not…she just couldn't manage…
The bridge was just up ahead. They hadn't seen more than two geth at a single time since they arrived on the ship. All the geth platforms—all the programs left—they'd be behind these doors. They'd be waiting—waiting for her. Waiting for Garrus. For Ashley, for Kaidan. Her father's sins, ready to strike, ready to continue the cycle of punishment that the quarians had suffered for eons and eons and eons.
The doors slid open. The room was dark—absolutely pitch-black. The implants in Tali's eyes still had trouble picking up any shapes. But she could make out one shape, one very familiar shape.
It was a quarian, dangling from the same type of pike—the same makeshift dragon's tooth—and dripping blood onto the floor. It was her father, it was Rael'Zorah.
And he was still alive.
"Father!"
Tali felt hands try to grab her but she sprinted forward, she nearly lost hold of her shotgun but she sprinted forward. She reached out with her hands b-but what…what could she do he was bleeding out a-and and—
"Tali…" he said. His voice was weak keelah, his voice was so weak. "Tali…I knew…you would…"
"No, no no no no don't speak don't…" Tali dropped her gun and fumbled for medi-gel for a-a loose piece of cloth for something to stop the bleeding, she had to stop the bleeding she…
"I…am…sorry, Tali…I…"
"Please just…don't…I need help with—"
Garrus and Ashley and Kaidan were right beside her, flashlights up, illuminating the…keelah the way the light reflected off her father's suit and his mask and the blood everywhere and…and they were fumbling in their kits as well, their omni-tools were glowing orange, they were dropping their weapons and reaching out towards the pike that was killing her father.
"All right," Kaidan said, "all right, Ash, grab the pike just below Rael. Hold it steady."
"Got it." Tali saw Ashley grab hold of the metal dripping with blood her father's blood and she looked up and saw the hole in his suit and—
"H-he needs a-anti-biotics. H-he's g-going to get a-an i-i-inf-f-fection."
"What can we give him?" Garrus said.
"M-my belt h-has a-a—"
Her father reached up a shaking hand and said "D…don't…I have…" and then he was reaching for his omni-tool.
"Father please just stay—"
"Okay," Kaidan said, "Garrus grab his arm. We need to keep him from moving or he'll—"
"Tali…you…must…"
"Father just KEEP STILL—"
A whirring, clicking, horrific sound echoed all throughout the dark room. A second later there was light—the light of ten, possibly fifteen geth heads, leering high above them all. Then the room's lights exploded into wakefulness and Tali, Garrus, Ashley, and Kaidan found themselves surrounded by geth primes, all twelve feet tall and stacked top to bottom in armour and thrusting colossal pulse rifles out in front of them. They just stood there, heads down, flashlight heads beaming at them, whirring and clicking and pointing rifles that could disintegrate an entire wall of the ship with only a few blasts.
Then they lurched forward, just a single step. They moved like mako tanks with malfunctioning axels, even though Tali knew they could move almost as swiftly as a normal sized—
Keelah what about Father?
She backed towards her father and checked for signs of life while everyone around her held their hands towards the ground, like they were willing their weapons to leap up into their grasp.
"Overload's ready to deploy," Garrus said. "It'll maybe take a bite out of one of their shields. Can't promise more than that."
"Between the two of us, we'll probably get one," Kaidan said. "Ash, any ideas?"
"Wish I brought a fucking rocket launcher," she said.
Tali's hands couldn't find purchase on anything because t-there was too much blood on everything and…and there was another prime, near the ship's navigational computer. It had wires sticking out of its head and the light on i-it's face was off and—
The light flashed on, as did a holographic screen just behind its head. Tali could see—everyone could see—an image of the bridge of the ship, with Father and the team and the circle of primes that surrounded them. Every time the shutters on the prime's eye moved, the image on the screen would move too—zoom in, zoom out, focus on Father, focus on her.
"Keelah…" Tali said. "It's…it's recording."
The other primes moved closer; their pulse rifles crept higher. Everyone else's guns were still on the ground. And Father was still…oh keelah he wasn't moving anymore.
"Father…"
The barrel's of the pulse rifles let out shrill screams as they spun to life and Tali reached for her father's hand, just like he used to hold her hand as a child, just like she'd wanted him to do more and more the older she got, the more often her father had to be away from the Rayya.
The primes took one more step forward.
And then the head of the prime that was recording the whole scene exploded.
9.
Garrus had heard the shots first, because they were heavy rounds. They'd done a flyby on both sides of his helmet and despite the shock absorbers built into the thing, he could still feel his brain vibrating. He caught just a glimpse of the prime that was filming everything as his heard whipped around, following the faint vapor trail back to towards the bridge's doors.
There was Thane, down on his knees, the bastard's rifle balanced out in front of him with perfect posture—a professional's posture. And right beside him was…spirits it was the geth platform they'd brought on board.
No wonder the rounds had given him a migraine: the platform managed to grab itself one of the heavy sniper rifles geth units like to lug around. The ones that weighed damn-near a hundred pounds and would liquify your shoulder blade.
The other primes were turning and clicking—angrily clicking—in Thane and the platform's direction and, yeah, Ashley and Kaidan noticed too. Garrus and Kaidan thrust their arms out and let electricity arc their way towards the primes while Ashley let loose with her assault rifle. The three of them managed to drop the shields of one of the primes and then watched another round from the platform rip the prime's head clean off its body.
One down, way too many left to go.
Damn omni-tool recharge rate—damn him for not packing better. Not like he could've seen this coming and brought a large-scale EMP device with him or anything but, Spirits he'd forgotten about the disruptor ammo. Getting sloppy, getting lazy—getting something that was gonna end up with more dead bodies, more names he'd have to remember if he didn't take a pulse rifle round straight through his head.
Tali—Tali was still by her father.
"Tali," he said, reaching out to grab her. "Hit the deck—NOW!"
It took half a second—half a second way too long—but she listened and dove for the ground just as Garrus knocked into her shoulder. They collided with the pike that her father had been dangling from and sent it crashing to the ground, but watching that sick display was better than getting atomized by one of the primes. The two of them rolled and unleashed another round of overload attacks—Tali's omni-tool must've gotten an upgrade, because they managed to fry the prime's gun in the process.
Tali overheated her shotgun and Garrus nearly did the same with his assault rifle, but the thing rocked backwards and with a shrill cackle, was no longer anyone's problem.
There was more electricity to their right and, right, of course the geth platform had that attack. It and Kaidan had isolated another prime and managed to knock its shields down. Ashley was unloading shotgun rounds at close range while Thane was…a biotic, apparently.
If Shepard was here they'd have been halfway to freedom by now…Spirits, first time he'd thought of Shepard in a long, long time.
He felt movement and saw that Tali had rolled away from him—she was pushing herself up on her knees and he could tell she was aimed straight for her father. He nearly reached for a limb to slow her down but settled with calling out to her as he got to his feet too.
"Tali there's nothing you can—"
"Grab the other one!"
Grab the other…? Oh, oh Tali was going for the pulse rifle of the prime that'd been hooked up to the navi-computer. Right, good plan. The nearest rifle got fried but there was still a free one. He dove across the floor for it and unloaded a handful of rounds at two primes just in front of him, two primes that'd seen him dive for the weapon and had turned to fry him in mid-air. They were tough but the pulse rifles were well made—too well made probably, from their perspective. He nearly didn't finish them off in time but they were down, and their weapons were free.
He called out to Ashley and kicked one of the rifles her way, then called out to Thane. "Krios—catch!" The drell caught the gun and Garrus picked up the last free one on the ground. By the time he stood up, everyone but the geth platform had a pulse rifle, and every prime except one had been blown to Kingdom Come.
Garrus finished off the last one and then, and only then, did he let himself take a breath. It was all right, everyone was fine, everyone was…spirits, Tali, she…she needed some time.
"Here," Garrus said, pointing at the pile of rifles on the floor, "put them all within grabbing distance of the door, then some of us will need to stack up. We might not be done with the geth just yet."
"Uh, Garrus?" Kaidan nodded his head in the direction of the geth platform, who was just…standing there.
"Yeah yeah, not now," Garrus said. "Ash, you good?"
"Good as I can be," she said, grabbing an additional rifle and kicking another one to the door. "Heading to position—someone's watching my back, right?"
"Got it," Kaidan said.
"I'll provide long-range cover," Thane said.
Swell. Now they just had to—
"We have performed a sweep of the ship. The remaining programs have not yet transferred to an active platform. If we disable the navigational equipment, we can isolate the programs and remove their threat."
Everyone stared at the geth. If it cared…it didn't show.
Ashley turned around and pointed at the computer. "You're saying that computer can shut all the other geth down?"
"Or it can trap them, allowing for their removal into—"
Ashley blasted the computer apart. It sparked and crackled and shot smoke into the air, and then fell silent.
"That do the job?"
The platform eyed the smoking ruin of the navi-computer, then turned back to Ashley. "Affirmative. No active enemy programs should remain on this ship."
Ashley tossed the pulse rifle to the ground. "Good. Then we've just gotta figure out what to do with you."
"Wait," Thane said. He stepped in front of Ashley—between her and the geth platform—and held up his hands like he was separating boxers. "Whatever you might think about this platform, it saved my life."
"Great," Ashley said. "And thanks for disappearing on us, by the way!"
"I apologize," Thane said. "I thought I'd be more help on my own. I was wrong. But this geth has made it very clear to me that it doesn't align with any of the geth you've fought. It's entirely different."
"Yeah, no shit! It talks!" Ashley moved closer to Thane. "And frankly I don't know why I should trust a single word it says."
"It showed me in deeds, not words," Thane said. "I was alone, isolated. If it had killed me none of you would be the wiser. And if it wanted everyone else dead, I can't think of a good reason why it would open fire on other geth platforms—especially ones that had you at their mercy."
Kaidan had moved closer, and he was still holding his pulse rifle…but he looked more curious than anything. And Ashley had to concede that…yeah, yeah there really wasn't an angle that she could think of where saving Thane and then saving everyone else made any tactical sense, not if they were all just gonna be targets somewhere down the line.
Ashley sighed.
"Fine, fine you got me." She looked past Thane, at the platform. "You can talk, so you might as well tell us what the hell's going on."
The flaps on the platform's head moved like…like eyebrows. Was it trying to do facial expressions? How the hell did it know how to do that? Whatever, none of this made sense except for the fact that if the platform wanted them dead, they'd be dead.
Finally, the platform said: "We will provide the requested information."
At the same time, away from Kaidan and Ashley and Thane and the geth platform, Tali was kneeling in front of her father. Her father's corpse, his…she could remove his mask and look at his face again, for the first time in so very, very long. But no, no her brain refused to let her do that. There was no risk of him catching an infection, no possibility of her causing a loved one to succumb to disease, like every quarian feared they might do one day. Her father was dead…dead after causing so, so much mayhem.
He was reaching for his omni-tool. Maybe he…yes, yes he'd recorded a message.
She pressed play and a green, holographic image of her father ascended from his wrist.
"Tali, if you are listening then…I am dead. The geth have gone active—I don't have much time. Their main hub will be on the bridge. You'll need to destroy it to prevent their V.I. processors from forming new, neural links. I am…I am sorry, Tali'Zorah. I did not want you to become involved, but we needed parts, and I knew I could trust you. Do not think this is your fault—we all knew the risks, but we all thought they were worth it…that someday we could give our children the future they deserved. Make sure Han'Gerrel and Daro'Xen see the data, they must—"
There was an explosion, and then that was the end of the message.
"Thanks, Dad," Tali said. She stared at his corpse and…and that was all she could do, just stare.
Garrus was behind her though. Slowly, she stood up and turned around. A part of her wanted to reach out and hug him just to feel like someone in her life was still alive, could still catch her if need be…and another part of her wanted to punch him for simply existing in that space, a space where her father had committed terrible crimes and then refused to stick around long enough to really justify it all.
She chose to just look at the floor instead.
"Tali…" Garrus said. "I can't…I can't imagine what you're going through right now."
Tali stayed looking at the floor and then said: "I need…to get off…this ship."
Garrus paused, then said, "All right. All right, yeah, I understand."
Tali started walking beside him and Garrus nearly said that she could talk to him, if she ever needed to…but he stopped himself, because the last thing she'd probably want right now was a toothless cliché or any amount of talking what-so-ever.
Spirits…Garrus hoped she'd be all right.
Up ahead the group was talking to…to the platform, of all things. And Thane looked like he was holding Ashley back. Then Ashley said, "what the hell's a 'Heretic'?" and Garrus saw Tali's head shoot upwards.
"What's going on?" Garrus said.
"Human Williams, Ashley, has asked us about the platforms she has engaged with in the past."
"What I said was that I killed enough geth that neither of us should trust each other. But this thing keeps saying 'we've never met.'"
"We have not met. Shepard-Commander and her team only fought Heretics. We are geth. Shepard-Commander did not engage with geth."
"God it's Commander Shep—what the fuck am I even doing?" Ashley put her head in her hands. "Christ almighty, what the hell am I doing right now?"
"This is what the platform told me as well," Thane said. "I don't know much about the geth, but I was under the impression you all fought the bulk of the geth forces when they invaded the Citadel."
"The Heretics were a minority viewpoint," the platform said. "When they left the Consensus, only a fraction of hardware was appropriated. We have remained outside of major organic settlements since the Morning War."
"The what war?" Kaidan said.
The flaps on the platform's heads moved…and it looked an awful lot like someone raising their brow. "The tipping point when the Creators attempted to exterminate us. We refer to it as the Morning War."
"And you haven't been outside the Veil since then?"
"We have sent units to small colony worlds for observation, but we have never arrived in great numbers, nor have we approach large settlements. No organic had come into direct contact with us until—"
"Freedom's Progress," Tali said. Everyone's eyes landed on her. "Until you saw me on Freedom's Progress."
"Correct," said the platform.
Tali moved closer to the platform. "You talked about the Heretics then, too. You said Shepard opposed them and the 'Old Machines.' You said you she wasn't…she…"
"Shepard-Commander is not pursuing an effective retaliatory strategy."
"So tell us everything," Tali said. "About these 'Heretics.' About you—about whatever you are. About what the Reapers have to do with any of this and what Shepard has to do with any of this. Tell us or you will…you'll…"
Father was dead Shepard was a shambling corpse the Alarei was swept clean of life everything was different everything had changed she'd been told so much about the geth she'd seen so much from the geth and everything was wrong nothing made sense the room was spinning and and and and
Tali pulled out her pistol and aimed it at the platform's head. Everyone reacted—everyone either reached for a weapon or for her—and everyone started shouting.
Everyone except the platform.
The flaps on the platform's head moved, and if Tali's mind hadn't been trying to eat itself, she probably would have thought that it looked surprised.
10.
The Migrant Fleet had a large number of security algorithms that searched any data-bursts coming too and from the fleet for mentions of the geth. Not solely geth activity—any mention of the geth. The Flotilla was still under Marshal Law, and while the Admirals exercised very little direct authority, they did have the first and only say when it came to the geth.
So it was Han'Gerrel who first saw the footage that had been broadcast from the Alarei, and it was Han'Gerrel who decided to quarantine the footage. Only a select few would see it until he decided otherwise, and while he had every intention of spreading word of the massacre far and wide, nobody needed to see it. Nobody needed to see their fellow quarians butchered like that.
And by the Ancestors, nobody needed to see Tali's death. The feed had cut out for some reason, but there was no way Tali could have survived those odds. No, nobody in the public needed to see Tali get mowed down by a platoon of geth primes...
He'd send the footage to the rest of the Admirals, however. They all needed to know, and damn Koris to the blackest void if he tried his usual rhetoric after this. The Admirals would convene and the rest would need to realize what happened next.
And maybe they'd get a sense of just what the hell Rael was doing on that ship of his…and why it was the most important thing a quarian had done in the past three hundred years.
Huh, I really didn't expect this to be a long chapter. But uhhh well I'm not in control of my associate here, so the story's gonna do what the story wants to do.
Anyways, hope this chapter was at least somewhat enjoyable. The whole quarian-geth storyline is changing at a pretty rapid pace so I've really got no idea what's coming next. Probably nothing good: I mean, Tali's holding Legion at gunpoint and Gerrel's doing Gerrel things. Not a solid combo, if you ask me.
But, yeah, thanks for all the view and reviews and so on - it means a lot to me! Hope you like where the story's going so far and that you'll stick around for the next installment, whenever that is.
Oh, and the title comes from issues #32 and 33 of More than Meets the Eye. Both of them involved ship-related massacres so, hey, already ripped MTMTE off for a the titles of some earlier chapters - why not do it again?
Peace out y'all!