by Cole Price
Pale violet skin tone, with interesting shading around her eyes and along her jawline. Facial structure not quite human or asari, long and delicate, with cheekbones many asari would have killed for. Human-like eyebrows that fanned upward at the outer corners. Lovely pearlescent eyes, with no obvious iris or pupil. A few tufts of dark, almost human-like hair, escaping past the edges of her cowl.
Even under normal circumstances, I would have found her quite beautiful. Now, with a lifetime’s desperate longing for her homeworld finally coming to fruition, she positively shone.
“For now, I have this.”
I stepped forward and put an arm around her shoulders, embracing her while we both looked out across the austere Rannoch landscape. Shepard loomed up close behind us.
One moment of perfect peace. Almost the last one we ever had together.
Chapter 46 : Bacchanalia
13 June 2186, Upper Kithoi Ward/Citadel
Music. Lights. Voices.
Admiral Anderson’s apartment had probably never seen a crowd quite like this. Almost forty people scattered across a half-dozen rooms, clustered into conversations or dance groups. Shepard’s stocks of snack food, wine, and harder liquors melted like snow in spring sunlight.
“It’s time to gather our friends and blow off some steam,” he had said, on our way back from Rannoch. “Might be our last chance.”
Prophecy.
* * *
“First time I met Shepard?” Garrus leaned back in his place on the couch in the living room, reviewing memories. “He didn’t impress me. Humans in general didn’t, back then. On the other hand, I was getting nowhere with my investigation of Saren, so I figured, why not see if this guy can get the job done?”
“And the rest is history,” said Tali, carefully fitting a straw through a port in her helmet. It amused me to notice just how closely she sat to Garrus.
“You could say that.”
“The first time I met Shepard, all I could think was: Eugh. I hope he took a shower, because my filters need replacing and humans carry a lot of germs.”
“And now here you are, drinking his alcohol through a straw,” I observed. “I’d call that progress.”
“Emergency induction . . .”
Garrus snorted. “It’s a straw, Tali.”
“I have gotten a lot more broad-minded over the past three years,” she agreed. She glanced at Garrus, not nearly as surreptitiously as she thought.
“Should my ears be burning?” asked Shepard, looming up behind me, one hand holding a glass of wine, the other resting on my shoulder.
Tali shook her head in disgust. “Your ears, burning. Human metaphors can be appalling, do you know that?”
“I’ve often thought so,” I chuckled.
“If you mean, have we been talking about you, then yes.” Garrus chuckled. “Not that we were being all that complimentary.”
“First impressions,” I explained.
“Ah.” Shepard chuckled. “And what about your first impression, T’Soni?”
“That’s hardly fair. As I recall, the three of you all met me at the same time, and I should be more worried about your first impressions of me.”
“Yeah,” Garrus said slyly. “There you were, pinned up in mid-air, three days without a shower or a change of clothes. Probably the least sexy asari I had ever seen.”
“I wasn’t at my best,” I admitted. “Although I will say, I thought Shepard one of the ugliest creatures I had ever met.”
Tali sputtered, removing the straw from her helmet with extreme care.
“Good thing you changed your mind,” said Shepard mildly.
“The eye can become accustomed to almost anything in time,” I teased.
“It’s been a strange time, hasn’t it?” said Garrus, suddenly sober.
“That it has,” Shepard agreed. Tali and I nodded in silence.
“Although some things have turned out a lot better than we might have expected.” Garrus raised his glass in a mock toast. “After all, Shepard, you’ve made friends with the rachni. Twice. Helped cure the genophage and set up an alliance between krogan and turians. Found the oldest sentient species in the galaxy and talked them into fighting the Reapers. Convinced the quarians and geth to make peace. Now all you have to do is figure out how to befriend the Reapers themselves.”
“No pressure,” said Shepard ruefully, taking a sip of his wine.
“Hey, you’re already a galactic hero. You manage that trick, they’ll probably make you a saint.”
* * *
“What’s going on here?” Shepard asked up on the balcony, his arm comfortably around my waist as I sipped another glass of wine.
“The tank-bred krogan is wondering whether it or the clan leader would prevail in personal combat,” said Javik.
“You have to admit, Shepard, it’s a good question,” rasped Zaeed Massani.
“It is a good question,” Shepard agreed.
“No, it’s not,” said Wrex smugly. “Age and experience will beat youthful enthusiasm every time.”
“Hah!” barked Grunt. “About the only thing you could defeat is a glass of warm milk!”
“You want to demonstrate that, Junior, I’m ready whenever you are.”
I glanced at the two krogan in some alarm, wondering how serious they were.
Probably not serious enough to splash blood on the floor. Unless they’ve already had too much ryncol.
Grunt roared, loudly enough to stop conversation in most of the apartment, and then lunged forward to give Wrex a ferocious head-butt.
Wrex did not step back, although he did crouch and shake his head as he recovered.
“Not bad, Junior. Not bad.”
Then, without warning, without any roaring, Wrex made his own lunge. The sound of their head-plates meeting sounded like a thunderclap.
Grunt stumbled backward, one step, then two. He shook his head and peered up at Wrex. “Ow.”
“Heh heh heh,” Wrex rumbled. “I still got it. Come on back when your plates have finished fusing, kid, and talk to me again.”
* * *
I happened to be close to the door when Ashley Williams arrived, somewhat late, looking rather stunning in an ankle-length, close-fitting gown in very dark blue. Her hair had been pulled back and braided, a long rope of glossy midnight falling down her back. Her eyes glittered with anticipation.
I had to do a double-take when I saw her date.
“Ashley,” I greeted her with a short hug. “Commander Bailey.”
He gave me a small smile and shook my hand. “It’s Owen tonight, Doctor. For once, I’m off-duty.”
“All right, Owen. Then I’m Liara.”
“My pleasure.” He glanced at Ashley, a twinkle in his blue eyes. “Think I’ll go find the bar, hon. Your usual?”
“Should do for starters,” she agreed.
Bailey moved away, leaving me staring at Ashley with an amused expression on my face.
“Yeah, I know.” She sighed. “I met Owen in the hospital. He and Kolyat visited Thane pretty regularly. One time they came by while Thane was helping with my physical therapy. Owen and I ended up talking for a couple of hours. Then, after I got out and went to work with the Council, he and I saw a lot of each other while on duty.”
I nodded, thinking about the C-Sec commander’s personality and personal history. Come to think of it, he would be the kind of man to appeal to Ashley: very masculine, courageous, highly competent, rough-hewn and not entirely civilized, but capable of great compassion. Rather like Shepard, in fact.
“He’s a good man,” I murmured, slipping my arm through Ashley’s and guiding her over to a couch in the living room. “Is it serious?”
Ashley gave me a sharp glance. “Not sure that’s any of your business, Liara.”
“I know.” I sighed, reviewing memories. “Ashley, I feel as if I owe you an apology. Back when we were on the first Normandy together . . .”
She shook her head, easing down to the couch
and letting me sit close by. “You’ve got nothing to apologize for. Yeah, I took an interest in Shepard. So did almost every woman on the ship. Plus at least three of the men.”
I snorted. “I’ll take your word for it. I wasn’t very good at reading humans back then.”
“I remember.” She gave me a wicked smile. “You’ve certainly improved since then. I can guess how.”
“Hmm.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said, reaching out to pat my knee affectionately. “You two have been good for each other. Meanwhile, I’m a big girl and there are plenty of fish in the sea. Besides, none of us have time right now to waste on might-have-beens.”
“That’s true enough.”
“Comparing me to a fish?” Owen rumbled in his rough voice. “Thought I rated a little higher on the evolutionary chain than that.”
“Only if you brought me . . .”
“One vodka martini, with a twist.” Owen handed the drink to Ashley as he sat down at her other side, quite close. “Just the way you like it. Shepard even had the right brand of vermouth.”
“That promotes you to mammal status,” she decreed, taking her first sip.
“Something large and aggressive, I hope.”
“We’ll have to discuss that later.”
* * *
I found an unusual group in the Admiral’s study, enjoying our hospitality like all the others, but not at all engaged in idle conversation. Jacob Taylor sat on a couch with Brynn Cole, the two of them drinking a sweet carbonated beverage rather than alcohol, out of deference to Brynn’s pregnancy. Ann Bryson and Samantha Traynor stood in the middle of the room, building an elaborate holographic map of the galaxy while Greg Adams, Ken Donnelly, and Gabriella Daniels looked on.
“None of you are supposed to be working right now,” I reproved them.
“Well,” said Samantha. “Logically speaking, what we are supposed to be doing is having fun. Which we are.”
Ann Bryson nodded, not looking away from the map. “This is a very interesting problem.”
I surrendered with a sigh. “All right, then what is it you’re working on?”
“The location of the Intelligence,” said Greg, taking a sip of his whiskey.
“Gabby had a keen idea,” said Ken, a proprietary arm around the petite engineer’s waist. “Y’see, she thought to look at the topology of the relay network, and noticed something a wee bit odd about the level of k-connectivity in it . . .”
“Executive summary, Kenneth.” Gabriella dug an elbow into her lover’s ribs, cutting off the spate of words. “The relay network is more complex than it needs to be, that’s all.”
“What are you suggesting?” I inquired.
“Well, we already know the mass relays can move data as well as physical objects,” said Samantha. “We use them as backbone infrastructure for the extranet, for example.”
“Aye, but the extranet uses the same connections as our starships,” said Ken. “Plod, plod, one step across the galaxy at a time. Might take six or seven hops, say, to get from here to Rannoch.”
Ann nodded. “We’ve always suspected that the network is capable of more direct connections. At least when it’s under the control of its true masters.”
“Like the Alpha Relay, in the Bahak system.” I frowned, reminded of what had happened there. “Dr. Kenson believed the Reapers could use that relay to reach every other one in the galaxy in a single step.”
“I think we have to assume she told the truth there. It fits what we know of Reaper behavior.”
“So what does that imply?”
Gabriella gestured, excited. “If all of the mass relays are capable of more connections over greater distances, it increases the connectivity of the network to a degree that might support . . . well . . .”
“Cognition,” said Ann. “Awareness.”
“You’re saying the Intelligence is distributed through the mass relay network?”
Samantha nodded. “Maybe. Part of it, anyway. The part that has to gather information about what’s going on in the galaxy, has to keep in contact with the Reapers as they move around and carry out their operations.”
“We don’t know if the Intelligence is fully distributed, like the geth used to be until a few days ago,” Ann observed. “Only a part of its neural network may be implemented on the relays. There may be a central node somewhere, maintaining core functions and providing a locus for its consciousness.”
I blinked, a sudden inspiration crashing into my mind. “What about right here?”
“You mean, on the Citadel?” Greg asked.
“Why not?” I demanded. “It’s as close to a central node for the entire network as we’ve ever found. We still don’t understand all of how it functions.”
Ann shook her head. “I don’t think that’s likely.”
“Why not?”
“Several reasons,” she said, calmly demolishing my hypothesis. “First, no matter how well the Leviathans could miniaturize AI hardware, there’s a certain minimum size for anything as capable as this Intelligence. There’s just no room for something like that on The Citadel.”
“What size would it have to be?”
Brynn Cole cleared her throat. “That’s something of my field, Doctor. Given even a conservative lower bound for the capacity required, the Intelligence would have to reside in a mass of computronium the size of a small planet.”
“Aye, a real Jupiter brain,” said Ken.
“Maybe not that big, but it certainly couldn’t be located anywhere on the Citadel.”
“All right,” I said. “What were your other objections, Ann?”
“If we can take anything the Leviathans told Commander Shepard as reliable, the Intelligence is on the order of five billion years old,” she said. “Recent work on the Citadel, following in Dr. Kenson’s footsteps, has come up with a probable date for its construction. No more than about fifty million years ago.”
“Which makes sense,” said Jacob. “Widow’s a hot young A8-class star, not much older than that.”
I folded my arms, rubbing at my jawline in thought. “Hmm. That suggests this isn’t the first Citadel. The mass relay network is much older.”
“Probably correct, assuming the Reapers have been using the tactic of providing a Citadel for the use of organic civilizations since the origins of the relay network.” Ann shrugged. “The Reapers may build a new one every thousand cycles or so.”
“Did you have any other objections?” I asked.
“The last one’s mine,” said Jacob, to my surprise. “It’s not a scientific or engineering problem, it’s a simple intel-analysis problem. Suppose the Intelligence is located here on the Citadel, where it’s in a position to see everything we organics do, and where it has access to the controls for the Citadel mass relay. Then nothing that Sovereign did makes any sense!”
I nodded, suddenly seeing it and feeling rather foolish. “Why leave a Reaper behind between cycles to watch over the galaxy, if the Intelligence is here to do that? Why would Sovereign have to go to such lengths to come here and activate the Citadel relay, if the Intelligence is here to do that too?”
“Well, the Protheans did disable the keepers,” said Samantha, but she shook her head at that idea at once.
“No. If the Intelligence is here, what need is there of the keepers, and how could disabling them have any effect?” I exchanged a glance with Ann. “You’re right, it doesn’t make any sense. The Intelligence can’t be centered here.”
“Which isn’t to say that the Citadel has no part to play in the Intelligence’s function,” Ann said. “I suspect if the Intelligence has a central node, it’s outside the galaxy entirely, somewhere in dark space. Somewhere the Leviathans explored, but where no organic civilization since then has ever reached. Perhaps the Intelligence spends most of its time withdrawn from the galaxy, not fully aware of what happens here until the Reaper scout triggers the next cycle. Which might imply that the Citadel is directly connected to th
e Intelligence somehow.”
“Maybe the Crucible has to be fired right here,” offered Samantha. “What if the Citadel is an interface point for whatever information it’s supposed to transmit to the Intelligence?”
“We don’t have enough clues to be sure,” said Brynn.
“It’s still as good a hypothesis as any I’ve heard,” I told them. “It’s very good work you’ve done here. Can you write all of it up and send it to Admiral Hackett?”
Ann gave me one of her rare smiles, minimal but quite warm. “In the morning, once we’ve all had a chance to sleep off Commander Shepard’s hospitality. Brynn and I will see to it.”
* * *
“Jeff, would you come and dance with me?”
“No,” said the pilot, taking another gulp of his beer.
“Many of our friends are dancing. It is an appropriate activity at social gatherings such as this.”
“That’s true. I see that they are. I am sitting quite comfortably here, enjoying the music from a safe distance.”
“That’s all right, EDI. I’ll dance with you,” said Shepard.
Joker laughed uncontrollably for a full half minute. Then he stood up and danced with EDI.
* * *
My father sat in the upstairs lounge, Sha’ira looking radiant as ever by her side, and the two of them held court. Most of their attendants were younger asari, of course, but James Vega (of all people) sat close to the center of the group, Treeya nestled into the curve of his massive arm.
“This is a very odd construction,” said Sha’ira. “I know of no asari dialect that has anything like it.”
“It’s pretty unique to English,” said James. “Back in what we call the late Middle Ages . . .”
“When was this?” Aethyta demanded.
James looked confused for a moment. “I don’t know for sure. Fourteenth century, maybe? Eight, nine hundred years ago?”
