by Cole Price
Shepard scowled at him. “Not in the mood, Wrex.”
“What, because Liara took a hit? Even from here I can see it’s just a scratch. Anyone with krogan in her family tree can bounce back from a little thing like that.” And the scarred old krogan winked at me.
All right, how does he know that when I only learned about it a few months ago?
I realized I would need to have a long chat with Wrex about his intelligence sources, as soon as possible. For the moment, I gave him back a rather strained smile. “Too bad my grandfather didn’t pass along his regenerative ability. Or – ai! – his redundant nervous system.”
“Hah! He gave you krogan spirit. That’s what counts!”
Wrex turned, brusquely pushing Mordin aside, and offered the female krogan assistance in disembarking from her isolation pod.
She glanced at him, amused pride in her eyes, and ignored his hand as she stepped down. Then, quick as a striking serpent, she grabbed his Claymore shotgun and fired it twice, one-handed and with no time to aim.
The two Cerberus troopers who had just landed behind us fell, their armor smashed, covered in blood.
The female tossed the Claymore back its owner and turned to head for our shuttle. “I can take care of myself, Wrex.”
All of us glanced at the krogan warlord, Garrus and Kirrahe looking especially amused.
He shrugged. “Women.”
* * *
24 April 2186, Interstellar Space
I had managed a good job of self-diagnosis. The bullet scored my side, gouging out a nasty wound and breaking two ribs, but it reached no vital organs. Medi-gel kept me alive and in good condition until Dr. Chakwas could repair the damage. She then ordered me to bed, and put me on the light-duty roster for at least the next few days. I tried to protest to Shepard, but I might have known that would be futile.
Thus when Shepard went off-duty, he found me lying in his bed, wearing nothing but bandages and some light sleepwear, working through a set of datapads. I looked up when I heard the door open, to see him arrive with a tray in his hands.
“Hello, love. Is that dinner?”
“Yes, it is. I had a sandwich a couple of hours ago, but I stopped by the galley and picked up one of your favorites.”
I caught the aroma of garlic and meat sauce, and smiled. “Spaghetti and meatballs!”
“Plus two pieces of fresh garlic bread. Think you can make it to the desk? Spaghetti isn’t the kind of thing it’s safe to eat in bed.”
“True.” I got up, still a little stiff and sore, but mobile. “It’s a good thought. My stomach has been growling for hours, but I didn’t want to risk the wrath of Dr. Chakwas by going down to the crew mess. She can see anyone sitting out there through her office window, you know.”
“Not to worry.” Shepard chuckled. “Mordin chased her out of sickbay entirely once you were patched up. He and Eve are set up in there for now.”
“Eve?”
“She’s apparently a shaman, and they don’t give out their names, so we needed something to call her. It’s Mordin’s idea. If this works, she’s going to be the mother to her whole species.”
I remembered stories Shepard had told me from his holy book, and nodded. I sat down at his desk and attacked my pasta, sipping from a glass of white wine along the way. He took off his boots and stretched out on the bed in turn, taking a deep breath as he let the day’s tensions slip away.
“Does Mordin believe he can synthesize a cure?” I asked, once the edge had been taken off my appetite.
“It will take time. A week, maybe longer. Mordin has to reconstruct a lot of Maelon Heplorn’s work, and he has to be careful not to hurt Eve while he’s at it.” His eyes closed, Shepard smiled. “He’s pretty confident it can be done.”
“You’re glad to see the possibility of the genophage being cured.”
“Yes, I am.” He opened his eyes to watch me. “I know Wrex pretty well by now. I’ve had a chance to talk to Eve. I’ve talked to some other people too, both krogan and outsiders who know them well. There’s more to the krogan than a pack of bloodthirsty barbarians.”
“I agree . . .” I said, but I still hesitated.
“They went down a bad path thousands of years ago. Before they could figure out a better way on their own, the Council used them without any thought for the consequences. Then they suffered through centuries of the genophage, until they lost all hope for the future.” He smiled at me, but his eyes were very determined. “They’ve paid in blood and pain for any mistakes they’ve made. They deserve a chance to find out what more they can be.”
I crossed the room to sit down on the bed at his side. Almost without my will, my hand reached out to caress the side of his face. “William Allen Shepard, do you know why I love you?”
“Let me count the ways,” he said, amused.
I snorted in exasperation. “You’re a fine diplomat, you’re a fiercely determined warrior, but you also have compassion enough for whole worlds. I’m fortunate beyond words that you’ve chosen to share your life with me.”
He captured my hand, pressed a kiss into the palm. A kiss to his forehead in return, and then I went back to the desk to finish my meal.
“Liara, there was something else I wondered about.”
“The data I stopped to download in the middle of our battle,” I guessed.
“Right. What was up with that?”
I took a sip of my wine and sighed. “A very nasty suspicion. One which I’ve already confirmed.”
“Something to do with the yahg, I’ll bet. It gave me a bad turn when I saw those creatures in STG custody. I can only imagine how you felt about it.”
“Yes. It’s all in that datapad there, by your right foot.”
He grumbled a little at having to shift positions, but he reached out for the specified device and brought it up for closer examination. That lasted only a few moments. “Argh. I’m not up to parsing through gigabytes of salarian scientific reporting right now. Executive summary?”
“The salarians have already decided to uplift the yahg, the same way they did the krogan all those centuries ago.”
He stared at me, his blue eyes gone glacial.
“The only thing that’s halted the project is the Reaper invasion,” I told him. “For now we have bigger problems to worry about. If we manage to survive the Reapers . . .”
“Then we may have yet another war to look forward to,” he growled. “Any indication as to the targets the salarians have in mind?”
“Yes. The krogan, of course. The Batarian Hegemony. Various Terminus warlords.” I paused, knowing he could anticipate what came next. “The Alliance.”
He nodded, his suspicions confirmed.
“Shepard . . .”
“I know. We need to keep this information buried for the time being. Bad enough that dalatrass Linron isn’t playing ball. This would split the Citadel Council wide open, might even cost us what little salarian support we have.” Very carefully, his rage under tight control, he dropped the datapad on the bed. For a moment I had an image of the device shattering against the far wall of the cabin. “Liara, I want you to promise me something.”
“Anything.”
“If we beat the Reapers, I want you to make absolutely sure this information gets to the right people. Much as I’ve come to like a lot of individual salarians, I have damn well had enough of their government and its schemes.”
“I promise. Shepard, I should point out that all of the salarians you know well are male. Apolitical. Soldiers and scientists without an agenda of their own. It’s the dalatrass who give the orders.”
“Maybe.” He shrugged, letting his anger fade. “I’m not sure it matters. Mordin is as independent a salarian as I’ve ever met, and even he was perfectly okay with just following orders for most of his life. In the end, I don’t much care where the problem lies. If the dalatrass decide on a power grab, if they decide to release yahg on the rest of us, then someone is going to have to put them down.
Hard.”
I nodded in agreement.
Ironic, that by the time the issue arose, Shepard had long since gone. At least those of us who remembered him were able to take action as he would have wished.
Chapter 16 : Interview
26 April 2186, Utukku Orbit
“Let’s begin. Your name?”
Silence. Four hot yellow eyes stared at me from across the table. I waited patiently.
“Rrrh,” he growled at last. “You speak Prothean with an abominable accent, asari. Under the Unity, even the meanest of our servitor races would have taken pride in speaking more clearly.”
“I didn’t have the dubious benefit of the Unity’s instruction. Deal with it. Your name.”
“Javik Taran. The custom is to use only the outer name except among intimates. To you I am Javik.”
“Service and rank?”
“Arm of the Unity. Extraordinary Forces. Commander First Class. Decorated seven times for valor in battle. Your Shepard is a fool, to leave me idle on board while he goes down to the surface to fight.”
“Shepard will call you to fight when he believes you are ready, and when he is certain he can trust you. What was the span of control associated with your rank, within the Arm of the Unity?”
“It varied. A typical Commander First Class might lead perhaps two thousand soldiers in the field. As a member of Extraordinary Forces, I led smaller units, but of elite quality. I spent several years in command of a cruiser, like this Normandy but somewhat larger.”
Roughly equivalent to a colonel in most human military organizations, a captain in the Alliance Navy, or a major in the Alliance Marines, I noted on my datapad.
“You were not a general officer, then.”
“No. So late in our war against the Reapers, the Arm of the Unity had shattered. Few general officers survived. We learned to fight in small units, independent of any central command. Unorthodox strategy. Innovative tactics.” He took a deep breath. “It was of no use. No matter what we tried, it only delayed our fate.”
“Your Unity didn’t approve of innovative tactics?”
“In the great days of the Unity, command was highly centralized. Officers in the field were expected to follow the established doctrine, worked out over centuries of successful conquest.”
“I imagine that doctrine wasn’t very effective against the Reapers.”
“It was not. The Reapers applied an extreme form of natural selection. Those who could adapt and exercise initiative, survived. Those who could not, died. By the time I rose to command, no one remained to insist on the old ways.” A grim smile. “I developed a reputation for low cunning on the battlefield. It was said of me that I did not fight fairly. Understand, asari, that this was praise.”
“I understand.” I turned to another subject. “What was your mission on Takenu?”
“The extinction was nearly complete. The Reapers marched to destroy the last of our people.” He looked down at the table, reliving painful memories. “Takenu stood isolated, far from the centers of Reaper activity. We hoped to conceal a remnant of our people, some of our best and strongest, hidden away until the Reapers returned to dark space. Then we would rise, a million strong, the seed of a new Unity.”
“You led this project?”
“I was the military commander, chosen to lead our people into the next cycle.”
“That must have been quite a heavy responsibility, for a Commander First Class.”
“Rrrh. No one of higher rank remained available. Most of those selected for the project were civilians in any case. Farmers, machinists, engineers, scientists.”
“They all were prepared to defer to you?”
“Yes.” He stared at me. “Civilians must defer to the Arm of the Unity. Is it not so among your peoples?”
“It depends. We can discuss the social structures of this cycle later. So the military held authority in your society?”
“Yes.”
“Was that always the case? Or was it the result of your war against the Reapers?”
“It was always the case. Every class in our society served the Unity. We built our empire upon conquest, from the very beginning.”
“Conquest of whom?”
“The subservient species. One by one, we encountered them as we expanded into the galaxy. One by one, we conquered them and made them part of the Unity. Over time, most of them accepted our culture and became valued members of our society. If they could not or would not, they perished.”
“You never considered permitting them to live on their own? Inviting them to be your allies?”
“What would be the point? Power is not a thing that can be shared. One rules, or one submits. Nature demands that the strong dominate the weak, that all may flourish together. If conquest and assimilation are possible, it is a violation of duty and reason to refrain. If any of the other species had proven stronger than the Unity, we would have submitted. None did. Until the Reapers came.”
I frowned slightly, trying to conceal the abandonment of decades of fond illusion.
The Protheans are not at all what I expected. All those vast cities and soaring spires, all that brilliance in engineering and the sciences, all of it nothing but a façade covering brute force.
For millennia, ever since we discovered their existence, we asari have aspired to emulate them.
That may have been a serious mistake.
I decided to deviate from my script for a moment. “Where did the primitive species fall into this scheme?”
Javik cocked his head. “Which ones?”
“We’re aware that your scientists were observing some of our species before the extinction cycle began. Asari, humans, and hanar at the very least.”
“Yes. The turians as well. Very promising.”
“What were your intentions?”
“At some point you would have been uplifted to join the Unity.”
“I assume we would have been given no choice in the matter.”
“No.”
“So what happened?”
Javik cocked his head at me. “Clarify.”
“None of those projects reached completion. You partially uplifted the hanar, but not so far as to give them a high-technology civilization. As far as we know, your people never moved beyond observing asari or humans.”
I saw a gleam in his many eyes, one I couldn’t guess how to interpret. “What do you think, asari? The Reapers happened.”
“You abandoned the projects to fight the Reapers?”
“Of course. When we first began to observe you, we already knew the extinction cycle existed but we did not know its cause. Nor did we know how long it would be before the next cycle began. We hoped to have plenty of time to bring you into our civilization. When the Reapers appeared, we saw it was too late. We also saw that the Reapers ignored primitives. We left you alone so that you would have a chance to grow strong before the next cycle.” His eyes narrowed to slits of yellow flame. “A pity you did not make better use of the opportunity.”
“Excuse me?”
“I have been reading your extranet. A primitive form of communication and data archival, but simple enough to interpret. Your Citadel Council, it is a hollow joke compared to our Unity. You stand weak and divided. The Reapers will devour you in a fraction of the time they needed for us.”
“You will notice that we are still fighting.”
“Badly. Rrrh. At least you have not given up. That is good. I only wish you had not wasted the time we purchased for you with our blood and pain.” He shrugged, shifted his position in his chair. “Never mind. You have more questions?”
I tapped at my datapad, taking a few notes, gathering my thoughts before I moved on to the next subject on my list. “Yes. Let’s discuss the Crucible.”
“I know very little about that project.”
“Perhaps. Any small recollection might be critical, as we try to reconstruct what your people hoped to accomplish.”
He made a nod of gru
dging approval. “True.”
“I’ve read inscriptions that ascribed the Crucible to information you inherited from your own predecessors. The inusannon.”
“That is what I was told.”
“Do you have any idea where they got it?”
“No.” He paused to think. “I heard a rumor once. The inusannon were said to have learned something from the ones who came before them, the kerrach. A vulnerability in the Reapers, plans for a device that could exploit that weakness. Whether this was the same as our Crucible, I do not know.”
“So the Crucible might have been handed down, somehow, from one cycle to the next.”
“Possibly. Scraps of information, a few artifacts, these things may survive even the Reapers. Especially if someone makes an effort to preserve knowledge for the future.”
I stared at him, while the idea crashed into my mind.
I’m an archaeologist. I understand how artifacts survive over long periods of time. I have access to vast quantities of information. Everything we’ve learned about galactic history, about the Reapers. Could I compile the most important of it, and preserve it as he suggests?
I made a note to investigate the idea further, and then moved on.
“Do you understand the Crucible’s function? Our scientists and engineers have looked at the blueprints, we have begun to build the device, but we are at a loss to understand it. It appears designed to gather and direct vast quantities of energy, but we see no targeting mechanism, no way to focus that energy for destructive purposes. It looks nothing like any weapon we have seen before.”
“Yes. I have been examining the blueprints as well, asari, and I concur. It is very strange.”
“You’re more familiar with the Unity’s technical base than any of us, especially in the field of weapons technology. Do you have any ideas?”
“Rrrh.” Javik worked with the computer controls at his side of the table, calling up an image of the Crucible between us. “Remember that the Unity may have inherited the Crucible design from previous cycles. These plans do show some of our influence, but many elements of the design appear foreign. They may indicate a different approach to engineering. Perhaps even a different approach to the foundations of physical science.”
