34 – Up To Speed
The Commander made the necessary yet unpopular decision to have the crew bunk the night on Calypso. For a planet this large, the time between night and day was about half what Gorman was used to, but he wasn't having much luck getting forty winks inside a glorified tent with the rest of his team…not to mention more than a dozen colonists. The rain was almost soothing, but the snoring was so loud that he was dangerously close to asking Sally to turn off her visor's vocalizer. Somewhere across the bamboo forest, Blanc had the whole ship to himself. Lucky him.
Sleep was not a priority, however. The only reason Gorman decided to stay at all was the fact that there were still a couple rachni left. He'd seen enough acid burns on the poor colonials to know that as long as one bug was still out there, this place was no safer than when he first arrived. He convinced the crew to at least wait until morning. With everyone well rested and alert, they'd bring the Shackleton around to give the ground a good scan – and blast anything they found with more than two legs.
Aside from the snoring, and the insectoid threat, Gorman was having a hard time keeping his thoughts at bay. This wasn't the usual bloodied nightmare he'd almost been desensitized to by now, but rather the result of his conversation with a certain Boss in the big metal building across the compound.
Szymanski knew too much. One would be forgiven for assuming he'd just watched the Commander's recent interview on the Phenomenon, but on Bodewell's show he'd kept his head and divulged only the tame details of the days since his reawakening. What the Boss knew had to do with the larger goal – get to the Citadel, get authorization for Earth, get the hell back home. He hadn't mentioned a word of the docking codes he now possessed to the crew…yet. With them in tow, was there even a need to head for Virmire at all? The geth recording's hopefully reached the Council…so why not let them deal with it? An eternal regret awaited him if he arrived at Virmire only to get everyone killed by a geth battleship salvo, when all along he could have been talking it out with Mr. Ambassador at the galactic capital. The Commander was not used to moments of pure indecision – and now it had happened twice in the last few hours.
"Get up, Commander!" a voice right at his ear shattered his sleep. Gorman jolted upright and his dizzy eyes searched desperately for his nearest weapon or newest helmet. All he found was a woman in an orange jumpsuit and bandages around her right arm. He could also see two more interesting sights – sunlight and a severe lack of crew around.
"Sabine?" Gorman recognized, "What's…happening?"
"The bugs are back," Sabine solemnly nodded, helping the Commander to his feet. His joints felt especially achy – and not just from a lack of sleep nor any injuries in his recent fights. "They've changed tactics."
"Tactics? They're insects," Gorman scoffed, rolling his arms to try and find the source of his suddenly intense discomfort. The tent's bunks were not designed with comfort as a priority, but he'd slept on worse.
"They've started attacking the plants. Cutting off our source of habitability."
He remembered what the turian and the asari said. These were no ordinary bugs. Gorman's stomach started to tie up in a knot and his throat felt dry. The aches he was feeling were a result of the air pressure getting higher…and oxygen starting to deplete.
"Damn," he coughed out. He and Sabine stood there for a moment. Then he realized she was waiting for something he didn't have.
"What's the plan, Commander?"
Gorman winced. He'd used up all his improvisational magic yesterday, and the ever so slight lack of oxygen getting to his head was sucking up any inspiration. Put simply, he couldn't slingshot his way out of this one. Where were the rest of the crew? Maybe they could bail him out.
"Um…uh…where are the others?"
Suddenly a loud explosion was heard from outside the tent. The ground shook, almost sending Gorman back to bed. The tent's cover flapped violently.
The two of them looked at each other again and rushed outside. To the left was nothing of note, but to the right was a horde of people, the crew included. They were standing in front of a makeshift barricade, and across from them was the plume of a massive blast of white sand. When his ears stopped ringing, Gorman heard them cheering. Then it strangely got dark again. He looked up and realized he was in the shadow of the Shackleton.
The ship loomed overhead, its main gun still smoking, as he and Sabine made their way to the group.
Zaz was the first to greet him.
"We got 'em, Gorman!" she gleefully pointed to the cloud of sand being whisked away in the wind. Beneath it, a particularly large crater could be seen, along with some tiny parts that may once have been the rachni at large.
"You should have seen it, man!" Don Bodewell took a break from leading the colonists' celebrations to also pop towards the confused Commander. "It was like a lightshow at first, all the colonists shooting, all the bugs spraying their gunk, bamboo shoots falling left and right. Then we brought the ship in and BANG, problem solved!"
"It was a hell of a fight once we cornered them," Kalu emerged, greeting Gorman with a shake of the hand and the other on his shoulder.
"Good morning, Commander," T'Lore was next, followed by Petronis, followed by Saal'Inor.
"Is that you down there, Commander?" radioed in Blanc. "Hope you liked the wake up call!"
Gorman was overwhelmed. Sights, sounds, smells, sensations, people talking to and through his ears. Was he that tired that he didn't even hear any of the allegedly epic decisive battle? He could feel the weight of his skin on his bones, the pumping of the blood vessels in his head – something was definitely off. About the others, about himself, about the situation, it could be anything or everything.
It had to be the air.
"Alright…alright," he tried to stammer out a response of any kind, but all his brain was capable of was repetition. "…Alright."
The crew were already back to talking amongst themselves. Sabine had gone off to join the colonists. The only one who seemed to notice the Commander's state was T'Lore. One of her painted brows was half raised.
"Gorman!" shouted yet another voice, this time from behind the Commander. He spun around. "Got a problem, Commander. Need you. Urgently." Barclay was back and louder than ever.
"Crap, really?" Gorman sighed. His ears were hurting, his mind was spinning, and his reactions were groggy. Hence it was decided that this serious situation should be treated like any of the other inconveniences he was facing.
"This way," Barclay ignored his impudence and led him – and the crew – back through the compound.
They headed towards the little cargo bay. Someone had been busy clearing away bug corpses, but the stains on the concrete remained, as did the remains of the crates from which they emerged. Silvery in color, with orange markings. Szymanski never did say why a depot sent them in the first place, but Gorman's deductive skills were feeling totally spent. Whatever the case, the outcome couldn't have been intentional. Barclay adopted a grim expression and pointed down the bay. Sure enough, at the very far end, almost hidden behind metal panels, were a couple of large crates. Silvery in color, with orange markings.
"Two crates," Barclay stated, his deep tone wavering ever so slightly. It was also hushed somewhat – only a jog away, the rest of the colonists were still partying. "Scans…say there are two life signatures inside."
"Rachni?" Petronis was quickest to let the gravity of this revelation sink in.
"Can't say from here," Barclay shook his head. Gorman took a step closer and craned his sore neck to get a better look.
"What are our options?" asked Kalu.
"Best case, we move those crates out to your pilot's new firing range. I don't know about you, but If there are bugs in there, but I'm not going anywhere near them."
"I could try moving the crates biotically," Zaz lent her skills.
"That could work, but you would have to keep some distance," Barclay explained, "If you thought they were bad enough this morning, you should have seen when they first broke out of…" Suddenly Barclay noticed that someone wasn't listening. Gorman, while nobody was looking, had wandered all the way to the end of the cargo bay. He was standing right next to the crates, sizing them up with his hands on his hips and an almost bored look on his face. "Christ, Gorman!"
The crew started to panic. None of them dared to put their own feet forward.
"Don't move, Commander!" Zaz shouted.
"I can't watch!" Bodewell covered his eyes.
"Just stay still! We'll…we'll have to…" Saal'Inor went to her usual method of problem solving – whipping out her omni-tool.
"Can you scan them?" called out T'Lore.
Finally, something that made sense to hear, thought Gorman. He'd ambled over to the crates for two reasons, and both had to do with his strange new migraine. Firstly, he had the sudden urge to go anywhere quieter, and secondly, his tiredness had given him an unusual boldness. The pressure in his head was streamlining his decision-making process. He was too mentally exhausted to feel any fear.
Gorman casually opened out his omni-tool, switching it to scan. An orange beam of projected light sliced through the crates opposite him. What was a sound idea was undone the moment data started flooding back onto his holographic screen. Numbers, symbols, long words – not what he wanted to see right now. He switched the tool off.
"Is it rachni?" shouted Kalu. He was immediately shushed by everyone around, the colonists still in earshot.
Gorman did not reply.
Screw all these fancy future tests, he thought. He bent his leg back and gave the crate nearest to him a thumping kick. Unbeknownst to him, several of his crewmates (and Barclay) were scrambling to get their weapons out. Zaz glowed blue – ready to yank him out of there at the first sign of trouble.
The crate did not yield, it did not break, it did not even move. All Gorman got out of it was a new pain in his big toe. It was time for plan B. If whatever lay inside wouldn't come for Gorman, he'd come for it. He looked for a latch, finding one on the topside, and pulled hard.
The front panel of the crate came crashing down. The crew held their breath.
No wonder it didn't budge – the panels of the crate were only acting as thin covers for a smaller crate-shaped container within. Instead of sheet metal, however, the inner surface was thick and frosted, almost glassy. Wisps of cool air rose from the exposed side. Ice? Gorman put up a hand to the glass to try and wipe away some of the fog.
It revealed a creature within.
To the overwhelming relief of all present, he was not looking at another rachni.
Instead, he observed four limbs, a furry coat, white and black markings, especially around the eyes. Gorman rubbed his own eyes and the unexpected animal remained.
It was a panda.
Two crates, two pandas, each levitating in some sort of frozen block. The famous Polaris Zoo's missing bears had finally been found. First the victory over the last bugs, now this – Gorman was somehow racking up wins without trying and accomplishing missions he didn't even know he had.
His headache kicked into overdrive. The next events were all a blur for the blindsided Commander.
The crewmates took their turns exchanging jokes and making light of the panda discovery. The Shackleton lowered itself to ground level, the Bluntnose rolled in, and the team boarded the ship without delay. Two new black and white passengers took up positions in the cargo bay. Barclay, Ralph and Sabine all gave their best wishes and thanks – the Boss by proxy – and before Gorman knew it, they and their colony were reduced to miniatures out the Shackleton's viewport. Calypso was re-concealed beneath a swirling fog. Another triumphant return to Polaris was put on the backburner – the original destination of Virmire was reaffirmed, the route to it calculated and plotted. Somewhere behind the accelerating vessel, a massive blue cloud of a planet grew smaller and smaller, like a deflating balloon.
Gorman should have been in a good mood, or even a great mood. Instead, he lay on a top bunk in the crew quarters, staring at the ceiling. He'd assumed that once atmospheric pressure and oxygen were no longer issues aboard the Shackleton, he'd go back to his old self.
No such luck.
He was on the ship, he was breathing normal air, but his head still felt like it was about to explode. The departure from Calypso happened in the blink of an eye, people and places whirling around him so fast that he felt like he was drowning. He couldn't have picked up some alien fever, could he?
It was too loud in the crew quarters, not helped by Kalu's turn in the Phenomenon's hotseat across the room. Gorman hopped out of the bed and staggered around the interview, finding himself in the intermediate corridor between the bridge, quarters, and lower level. There was nobody here. He slumped himself against a wall and hoped everyone else was too preoccupied to pass through.
The crew themselves seemed oblivious to his situation. He hadn't helped by not talking about it, giving, 'Yes', 'Right', 'Sure, why not' responses, running on autopilot just like the ship. But that was his intention. Sure, the team had done well on their own that morning, but he had to keep projecting confidence as their Commander. If they knew he was under some sort of severe stress before the big Virmire mission, their own confidence would be rattled beyond repair. Or at least that's what he told himself as he soothed his temples.
Any privacy was short-lived. Footsteps were heard as someone began ascending the staircase.
Heading to the upper deck was the asari, T'Lore. She wore white, as per usual, but the type of clothing, also as per usual, was different. Gorman remembered when she first boarded the ship, and how she brought with her two suspiciously large duffel bags. The suspicion back then was being confirmed – they contained nothing but snowy outfits. Today, it was a head-to-toe piece with a high collar and faint hexagonal patterns, but no matter how blindingly white the clothes were, there was only one color Gorman associated her with.
She stood at the top of the stairway, looking in his direction with an askew expression. He couldn't tell whether it was confusion or pity.
"Are you feeling well, Commander?" she flatly asked.
"A-OK, ma'am," Gorman nodded with the least conviction imaginable.
Without another word, she turned and slid open the door to the crew quarters, disappearing inside. He breathed out a sigh. She bought it.
Finally, some more peace and quiet – although his seismic headache said otherwise, throbbing away to make every minute feel like an hour.
Suddenly the doorway shifted open again, and out stepped T'Lore. In her blue hands were two translucent mugs with wisps of steam floating from their tops. She approached him and outstretched one such mug. Gorman looked at her, and the mug, and the deep brown contents within. He took it from her and gave it a cautious sip.
"Better?" the asari enquired, joining him in leaning up against the chamber's inner wall.
'Better' couldn't quite describe what he had just tasted. It was as if someone had taken the agglomeration of every single cup of coffee he'd drank in the last thirty (or two hundred) years and handpicked the greatest of the lot for his direct pleasure. The flavor was orchestrated like a symphony, the aroma magnificent, the texture superb. Every single one of his tastebuds was rejuvenated. It was the perfect coffee. It made him want to cry. Just how in the world did the asari pull it off with the meager machine he bought with her money?
"It's perfect," he exhaled, and, incredibly, about half of the pressure racking his brain started to slowly melt away. He couldn't wait any longer to take another sip, no matter how scalding.
"Thought it might help," the asari smirked, swirling around her own mug before putting it to her lips.
"…How did you know?" Gorman had to ask.
"Hot," was the first thing T'Lore said, having to pause for air after her first sip. Then she looked at the Commander, seeing amazed yet puzzled eyes. "It's my job to know," she chuckled.
"That's right, you're a…therapist," Gorman recalled. That was what he first thought when they first met at the Polestar Lounge. He was, of course, under the influence of something much more hardcore than coffee at the time, but even still, her occupation there was not anything he could assume without hesitation. "Back in my day, therapists used to be fully clothed, but times have changed."
"Different people want different things," she shrugged, "I worked on the Citadel for forty years, Polaris Station for three. With other races you can guess pretty easily, but for humans…it can be hard to figure you out." Then she looked back at the mugs. "Seems I got it right this time."
"Am I that predictable?" Gorman scoffed.
"I was in your mind, Commander," T'Lore laughed again.
"Oh, right," he winced, and the pressure in his head pounded a bit heavier. He didn't want to be the one to bring it up, at this point it was the longest conversation they'd held without mentioning doomsday. "We don't need to talk about that."
"It took me a while to process everything I saw," she instead explained calmly, "But aside from the beacon's imprint, your mind was…fascinating. You are fascinating, Commander." Gorman's head perked up as she continued. "You've seen things no other human has, been to places that no longer exist, done things that many can only dream of – and it was all there in your mind, clearer than crystal."
Something clicked in that very mind, identifying a possible cause for his malaise.
"It's only been what, a couple of weeks?" he futilely tried to make sense of his time spent in places where normal calendars do not apply. "When I was in the freezer all that time, I didn't feel a second go by. But now, all of a sudden, my life feels like it really was centuries ago. I don't know why…but it hurts. It hurts bad."
"You're homesick," T'Lore diagnosed.
She let the notion linger in the air a moment.
It was something Gorman had considered and dismissed. The time for feeling homesick, he reasoned, had long passed. It absolutely should have set in when he first learned the real year, when he met someone who never even set foot on Earth, when the BlackBerry broke or when he eventually learned of Dublin's fate. None of those events set off anything like what he currently was experiencing. Instead, the trigger may have been time itself. With every passing day, he was creeping closer and closer towards accepting a horrifying truth, a truth the beacon-driven 'mission' had only served to distract him from.
He might eventually get back home…but it won't be his home. He won't even recognize it.
The Commander did not feel worthy of his title. This was out of his command.
"Can you, um, do me a favor?" he asked timidly.
"Anything," the asari nodded again before another gulp of coffee.
"Tell me about what you saw. In my head. Besides the beacon."
The asari smiled.
"Well…I saw a small town on Earth. Low, flat buildings, vehicles with wheels, and green. Lots of green, somehow both figuratively and literally. Everyone has your accent."
"Sounds like Boston," Gorman sighed blissfully. The pressure started to gently ease again.
"Walks along a muddy river, fried clams at Sullivan's, brightly-lit shops where you would buy drinks like these and frosted circles, a sort of train you travelled on under the ground that was always late…" she listed, head raised upwards in thought, "…and, strangely enough, a red pair of socks. Your associate them with your father."
"You saw my dad?" Gorman's eyes widened further.
"I saw your family – tall, brown haired, pale – briefly. Those memories were more guarded than some of the others."
"That…makes sense, I suppose. Sorry. Please, keep going."
"No need to apologize," T'Lore insisted. It was clear that she was trying hard to recall all the details that Gorman craved, but as he almost forgot, the inside of his mind was a garbled mess when she paid a visit. "Ah, yes. After a short education, you spent time working for local police…then you were a detective…then you were selected for a special unit…your career went by very quickly."
"A lot of people thought so too," Gorman admitted, "But in my twenties I was the type of guy who couldn't sit still."
"In your twenties?" T'Lore had to pause to get her disbelief across, "I was still studying until I was fifty. The ways other species make up for their lifespans will always amaze me."
Gorman was feeling better – good enough to also take a little detour and satisfy his ongoing hunt for answers. He hadn't forgotten how her grandmother allegedly fought brute bugs two thousand years prior.
"How long do asari live?"
"Oh, please don't think for a moment that I was belittling your qualifications!" she misinterpreted before giving the awaited answer. "Our lives go through distinct phases, but altogether we generally live for around a thousand years."
This information shocked Gorman to the point where he realized his coffee was getting cold. He downed the rest to give himself a proportionate caffeine jolt. A thousand? A whole thousand? Feasibility be damned, he had a number of new questions to ask about the logistics of such a fact, never mind the 'phases'. It would have to wait until he was fully back to normal.
"That's crazy," was all he could say.
"Either way," T'Lore kept going on the journey through Gorman's memories, and not just the feel-good ones. "Your job after the police was high-stress. You've taken lives, ruined others. You've seen it break better men and women – but not you. It gave you purpose. You made bonds, led a team. Your sense of duty was unwavering. Unyielding."
"I liked my job," he said in response. He wasn't trying to justify anything, she was stating an opinion of the Commander – his own opinion, taken from his mind – as if it were fact. He found it hard to imagine himself doing any other kind of work, which could be why he ended up doing his best to recreate it a hundred and seventy years later.
"The last memories of Earth I saw were very, very recent," she started, "You arrived at a sprawling complex with palm trees and a giant cube of a building, feeling confused and tired. The entire base was on lockdown. Your team were there, your boss was there, and…they had news that you refused to believe."
He recalled the exact moment he knew something was dreadfully wrong – within the space of an hour, Arecibo relayed the strongest signal yet and contact was lost with the International Space Station. Everything else followed; the mother of all briefings from Director Whyte, wheeling out a decommissioned Space Shuttle from a museum, packing it to the brim with essential supplies, and finally, the ascent. It all happened so fast.
"The last steps I took on Earth," Gorman confirmed. "We didn't know what we'd find up there, but you don't bring a backpack-sized nuke on a diplomatic exchange."
"That's one thing I fail to understand. It was a potential first contact scenario, and you brought a nuclear weapon?" T'Lore raised a brow.
"I still don't know what's weirder," he shrugged away her question and boarded another train of thought, "The fact that I now understand they really could have been extraterrestrials, or that they turned out to be some very hostile humans."
The asari had to ponder a bit longer before going on. There was something she had been holding back, and now that Gorman seemed relaxed enough to chime in, it was time.
"Across all of your thoughts, especially the recent ones on Earth, there's someone I kept seeing," T'Lore began, "Someone very important to you. Not a member of your team…"
Gorman could have easily stopped her there, but if he was going to overcome his homesickness he'd have to face her again sooner or later.
"…You were standing outside the entrance to a kind of skycar terminal. One hand was holding a suitcase, the other was lifting up her chin. You knew which one you had to drop…but you held off as long as possible, if only to look in her eyes some more. She's very beautiful. She gives you confidence."
He remembered the scene, just outside Logan Airport not very long ago. His return to active assignment wasn't scheduled for a few weeks, but when he got the call that he was needed immediately, his self-inflated sense of duty answered for him. The last time a code red warning was issued, it was just a minor intelligence leak – this time would surely be no different. His girlfriend took his hand away, and before he knew it he was on a flight bound for Florida.
"I'll get you back up to speed," Gorman heaved out the sentence that sprang to mind, and with it, an ocean's worth of mental pressure faded away.
"Hm?" the asari couldn't understand.
"That was the last thing I said to Tammy. I promised I'd be back home soon. She asked me what we'll do when I return."
A still silence passed.
"…I'm sorry about her, Commander," said T'Lore. He didn't look distraught, nor near the verge of tears, rather staring blankly through the walls of the ship and out in the far distance. "Were you bonded?" she asked.
"You mean married? Almost. The ring was hidden under the bed."
"Would she have eventually found it?"
"…Maybe."
Finding the ring was only part of the situation he luckily never had to see. At some point after his 'disappearance' Tammy would have gotten a visit from some men in suits. He wondered what the official story was – an accident? Assassination? Defection? That far out into space, would there have even been an attempt at a search party?
All those thoughts had passed his mind fleetingly at one point or another, but only now was he considering what really happened. She would have gotten the bad news, possibly found the ring, gone through all the stages of grieving, and, most likely…moved on. She had the rest of her life to live, it shouldn't have stopped just because her superspy boyfriend vanished mysteriously one day. He couldn't and shouldn't blame her.
So why did it still hurt?
"I may never know exactly how you feel, Commander," T'Lore admitted, "But I think I can get pretty close."
"How do you mean?" Gorman was quick to doubt.
"You've met my mother. She's barely in the Matriarch phase of her life, give or take a decade. She's seven or eight hundred years old…I always forget."
Gorman nodded, remembering what he could of Tara. She looked better than most seven or eight hundred year old things he could think of.
"But I never knew my father," she continued, "Couldn't, really – he passed when I was very, very little. Not long after I was born. You see, he was a salarian."
"Ah, that makes sense," Gorman nodded his head again. Then his brain processed the sentence some more and the nodding turned to shaking. "No, wait – that doesn't make any sense whatsoever. A salarian?"
The asari's smile gently reappeared.
"My species is mono-gendered, Commander, neither 'male' nor 'female' as you know it. We can attune our nervous systems to that of any species, of any gender, for procreation. The offspring, of course, is always asari."
Gorman had no words. This whole time? When was someone going to tell him? Next he was going to hear that Kalu was secretly magnetic, or that turians grow on trees. The realm of plausibility had incredibly widened even further.
"Because of our ability, it is not uncommon – indeed, it is often the norm – for an asari to outlive any bondmate, my father included. If I may be so bold, you find yourself in an exclusively similar position."
"Let me get this right," Gorman tried repeating the facts as if it would make them more logical to his outdated senses. Project Bonanza wasn't too far off after all. "Tara married a salarian, despite the fact that the difference between their lifespans is wicked long?"
T'Lore's smile faded somewhat, he got the feeling that he'd committed a faux pas – or simply failed to see her point.
"Our lifespans may be long, but certainly not wicked," she asserted, "We know that the gift of time is lengthy for us, short for others. We cannot, must not, let that difference get in the way. Just as my mother and father cherished their relationship, we've learned to savor what time we have with our bondmates. We do not dread the loss of companionship – it is as natural as all things."
Gorman finally understood.
"As much as I need it, I don't have that asari mentality."
"I've seen your mentality firsthand!" T'Lore kicked up her energy, "You are unique among your kind, a human even older than I am! If anyone can understand – it's you. You've already overcome impossible odds to get here in the first place. You're strong enough to move on, to both keep your memories and make new ones. You can make it home, Commander."
The Commander let her words, especially the two meanings of that last phrase, sink in. It was helped by the silence of the room. Then he noticed this silence, and realized that the pressure that was suffocating his mind had finally dissipated. He'd been given the opportunity to air out his woes, rediscover his lust for learning, and lay the foundation for acceptance. He wasn't completely back to normal, but it was only a matter of time.
"Please…call me Kevin," he corrected.
T'Lore could tell her efforts had borne fruit, her own smile was the widest yet.
"Well, then, there's one more thing, Kevin."
"Yes?"
"In your mind, there was another figure. Even more recent than all your old Earth friends, but only appearing in your mental space." Gorman raised a brow as she described the figure. "A short man with parted black hair, wearing a sweater and brown jacket. He seemed…enthusiastic."
"Oh, yeah!" he remembered, "That was Carl Sagan."
"Who?"