by Joan Jett
The Mako rolled up onto a stretch of beach, much like many others we had passed on the way from our landing zone. Normandy rested just offshore, its landing struts fully deployed as it stood in two meters of water. On the beach I saw a scattering of tents and temporary shelters, a military village inhabited by salarians in light battle dress.
We emerged from the Mako and approached the camp. Kaidan already stood there, conversing with a salarian officer. Neither of them looked happy.
“Are you in charge here? What’s the situation?” demanded Shepard.
“I’m Captain Kirrahe, in command of Company A, Third Infiltration Regiment, Salarian Special Tasks Group,” said the salarian. “You and your crew have just landed in the middle of a hot zone. Every AA gun within twenty kilometers has been alerted to your presence. Take off and your ship becomes flinders.”
“We took out one set of AA guns on the way in. We can go out the same way.”
“Not now that the enemy is on the alert. They’ve filled the gap in their coverage. There’s nothing we can do until the Council sends the reinforcements we requested.”
“Hmm. We are the reinforcements,” said Kaidan.
“What? You’re all they sent? I told the Council to send a fleet.”
Shepard shrugged. “The transmission was garbled. We were sent to investigate.”
“That is a repetition of our task. I lost half my men investigating this place.”
“So what have you found?” asked Kaidan.
“Saren’s base of operations,” said Kirrahe.
Shepard and I shared a sharp glance of surmise. We may not have been joined, but I knew exactly what he was thinking.
We may not be too late after all!
“He’s built some sort of research facility here,” the salarian continued. “It’s crawling with geth and extremely well-fortified. Normally we would need a whole fleet to reduce this place. We’ll have to consider alternative plans.”
“Is he here? Have you seen him? His flagship, Sovereign?” demanded Shepard.
“No. If he is here, he’s staying out of sight. Even so, his geth are everywhere and we’ve intercepted communications referring to him. This is his facility, there’s no doubt about that.”
“What is Saren researching here?”
“He’s using this facility to breed an army of krogan.”
“He’s breeding krogan?” I interjected, not certain I had heard correctly.
“How is that possible?” asked a basso voice. Wrex approached us across the sand, pushing himself into our conversation.
Kirrahe didn’t quite flinch, but his stance did become slightly tense. “He appears to have discovered a cure for the genophage. Or at least a work-around.”
Shepard frowned. “The geth are bad enough. A krogan army, loyal to Saren . . . he’d be almost impossible to defeat.”
“Liara and I wondered where Saren has been getting so many krogan,” said Garrus. “Maybe he offered them access to the scientific work being done here.”
Kirrahe shook his head. “We can’t permit that to happen. We must see that this facility and its secrets are destroyed.”
“Destroyed?” objected Wrex. “I don’t think so. My people are dying. If Saren has a cure, it can save us.”
Kirrahe snubbed the krogan, speaking directly to Shepard. “If that cure leaves this planet, the krogan become unstoppable. We salarians uplifted the krogan and turned them loose on the galaxy once. We can’t make that mistake again.”
Wrex pushed forward, looming over Kirrahe, bristling with furious insult. “My people are not a mistake.”
“Stand down, Wrex,” said Shepard quietly. “This isn’t the right time.”
The krogan turned on Shepard, his red eyes burning. “When does it get to be the right time, Shepard?” Then he turned in disgust and walked away, looking for a stretch of beach where he could be alone.
“Is he going to be a problem?” asked Kirrahe. “We already have more than enough angry krogan to deal with.”
“He’ll be okay,” said Shepard.
“I hope you’re right, Commander. In the meantime, my men and I need to rethink our plan of attack. Can you give us some time?”
“Take as long as you need.”
Kirrahe made a small salarian respect-gesture and then turned away to consult with his men.
Kaidan shook his head. “Well, it looks like things are a bit of a mess.”
“I wouldn’t be so worried if it weren’t for Wrex,” said Ashley. “He looks as if he’s about to blow a gasket.”
“I suppose I should go talk to him,” said Shepard.
“It couldn’t hurt.” Ashley paused. “Well, okay, it could hurt. A lot. Just be careful, Commander.”
“I’ll be careful . . . but be ready. Just in case.”
“I’m always ready,” said Ashley.
The four of us moved across the beach, slowly approaching Wrex where he stood alone, repeatedly firing his shotgun at nothing. The thunder of his gunfire echoed across the strand. Shepard quietly ordered us to stop and went on alone.
Ashley drew her own shotgun and watched Wrex closely.
“This isn’t right, Shepard,” growled the krogan. “If there’s a cure for the genophage, we have to recover it. We can’t just destroy it.”
“I understand you’re upset,” said Shepard calmly. “But Saren has to be stopped. He’s the real enemy here. He’s the one you should be angry with.”
“Really?” The krogan’s voice seethed with contempt. “Saren has a cure for the genophage. You want to destroy it. Help me out here, Shepard. The lines between friend and foe are suddenly getting a little blurry from where I stand.”
“Wrex, this isn’t a cure. He isn’t planning to become a benefactor for the krogan. It’s a weapon. He is planning to use your people, just like he uses everyone he encounters. If we let Saren do that, you won’t be around to enjoy the benefits. None of us will.”
“That’s a chance we should be willing to take. This is the fate of my entire people we’re talking about!”
Shepard spread his hands in a gesture of appeal. “If Saren has a cure for the genophage, that demonstrates it can be done. If we go in, we can try to recover his information. If that doesn’t work, some other scientist might be able to reconstruct his research. But one way or another, Wrex, this facility has to be destroyed. Saren has got to be stopped, or it’s the end for everyone.”
Wrex lowered his head, a krogan gesture of anger. “I’ve been loyal to you so far. Hell, you’ve done more for me than my family ever did. Maybe I can trust you. But if I’m going to follow you into this, I have got to know that we’re doing it for the right reasons.”
“I think so,” said Shepard. “These krogan are not your people. They’re Saren’s slaves. His tools. Is that what you want for all krogan, everywhere?”
Wrex stared at Shepard, one hand opening and closing near the stock of his shotgun.
Ashley eased her weapon upward, still not quite pointing it at the krogan, but very close. I followed suit, calling up a biotic surge, light and electrical charge beginning to swirl around my right hand.
“No,” said Wrex finally. “We were the Council’s tools once. To thank us for saving them from the rachni, they neutered us all. I doubt Saren will even be that generous.”
“Wrex, you have my word. If we survive this, I will do all I can to help your people. You don’t deserve what was done to you.”
The krogan relaxed and nodded. “All right, Shepard. You’ve made your point. I don’t like this, but I trust you enough to follow your lead. But when we find Saren . . . I want his head.”
“You’ll have to get in line, but I’ll see what I can do. Thank you, Wrex.”
“Pah. Don’t thank me until it’s done.” He gave Shepard a nasty smile. “Oh, and tell Williams and the asari they can stand down. It’s not as if they could have stopped me anyway.”
Shepard glanced at us. Ashley was already returning her shotg
un to its attachment point on her back. I let my biotic energy disperse.
After that, little remained for us to do while Captain Kirrahe and his men continued to deliberate.
I went down to the shore and found a large flat rock to sit on. I leaned back on my hands and looked out to sea, past the Normandy’s landing site, to where water met horizon. I breathed the sea air, listened to the sound of wind and wave, and watched avians fly by. Suddenly I realized that I felt better than I had in days. The setting was so homelike, so much like the seashore near Armali, that I found myself unable to feel sad or afraid.
I heard footsteps in the sand, and then the creak and muted clatter of a heavily armored figure settling down beside me.
I took a deep breath. “Hello, Shepard.”
He was silent for a while, just watching the ocean with me. Finally he said, “It’s nice here, isn’t it?”
“My people evolved near the seashore. We still love places like this.”
“Liara . . . I want to apologize. I’ve been very unfair to you.”
I glanced at him but said nothing.
“I’ve been thinking about this ever since Feros. Trying to understand why I reacted the way I did. Why I pushed you away so hard. It . . . has been very difficult. I’ve had to acknowledge some things about myself that I’ve spent years burying.”
I wanted to be cool and aloof, but his voice carried too much pain. I shifted positions, sitting cross-legged with my hands in my lap, just out of his reach, watching him. “I’m listening.”
“When I was young, I knew what my destiny was going to be. I was going to be a farmer. Or maybe a craftsman, or a technician, or a civil engineer. Something that would be useful on a sleepy little planet well off the main trade routes. I was going to build things. Make life better for people.” He took a deep breath. “Get married. Have a big family. All the things colonists hope to do.”
“Then the batarians came,” I said quietly.
“Yes.” He looked down at his own hands, contemplating them. “I had just turned sixteen years old. Not a child anymore, but still too young to be a man. I was away when the batarians attacked. I got home just in time to hold my mother while she died of her wounds. My father and my younger sister were already dead. My older sister was gone. We never found her.
“The Alliance arrived three days later. By that time I had killed three batarians. The first I stabbed in the throat with a knife. The second I ambushed with an axe, buried it in his skull. The third I shot point-blank with a shotgun. I hated it at the time. I was sick and scared. I threw up. But the things they did to us, the atrocities I saw during those three days . . . I was angry too. I wanted to kill.
“That was thirteen years ago. It never went away, Liara. That’s my secret. I am angry all the time. I want to kill all the time. I try to hide it. Sometimes I manage to hide it even from myself. But it’s always there, ready to come boiling back to the surface.
“I’m never going to be a farmer, or a craftsman, or an engineer, or a simple loving husband and father. The batarians took that destiny away from me. I can’t be a civilized man, working quietly in a peaceful profession. Not with such rage in my soul. Not with the urge to kill always there.
“Every time I see a batarian, I want to kill. Every time I see a pirate, a slaver, a terrorist, a cop on the take, a corrupt politician, a blindly selfish corporate executive. I could have killed Nassana Dantius. I could have killed Balak. I could have killed Anoleis. I could have killed Ethan Jeong. It wouldn’t have taken much . . . just a moment’s failure of discipline.
“There’s a man on the Citadel. Every time we go back there, I run into him. Conrad Verner. God help me, he’s one of my fans. He idolizes me. He asks for a picture, an autograph, just a moment of my attention. He’s quite harmless and innocent. His only crime is that he is stupid and ignorant . . . and yet every time I see him, something in me wants to kill him. Just to get him to shut up and leave me alone.
“I am a killer. That’s all I can ever be: someone who lives by taking life.
“For a long time I was happy to be a killer. I joined the Alliance. They taught me how to kill more effectively. They taught me how to cope with the psychological effects of killing. They gave me plenty of opportunities to kill. I became very, very good at it.
“Since then I’ve lost count of how many people I’ve killed. It must be hundreds. If not more.”
He held out his hands to me, cupping them as if to hold water.
“I can’t begin to guess how much blood is on my hands.”
Finally I couldn’t listen in silence any longer. “Shepard. You are a soldier. There’s nothing unjust or immoral about that.”
“Sure. A soldier is one who applies force – who kills, if he must – to defend his community. A good soldier never harms the defenseless, the weak, or the innocent. He places himself under strict discipline. He acts within the rule of law. It’s an honorable profession. I know all that.
“I can’t say this is why I became a soldier. When I was eighteen years old, all I cared about was that the Alliance would teach me how to kill batarians, and then would give me plenty of opportunity to do that. A few years later, after I had a chance to think about it some more, it’s why I stayed a soldier. The military is the only honorable profession available to someone like me. It gives me a channel for the rage, and the discipline to control it.
“It doesn’t justify who I am. It doesn’t make up for all the killing I’ve done. But it is a way for me to live. It’s a way for me to live with myself.”
He fell silent, still looking at his hands. For a while we listened to the sound of surf a few meters away.
Finally I shook my head in mild exasperation. “Shepard, to me all of this sounds quite normal and healthy. You have had a difficult life. You have undergone many traumatic experiences. You have been damaged by them, but you have found ways to cope. You are quite sane. I don’t understand why this caused you to push me away so firmly.”
He raised his eyes and stared at me, but it wasn’t a look of incomprehension. More like the stare of a starving man locked away from a banquet. It rather frightened me, to be the object of that stare.
“Liara, did you notice that for a long time I avoided even the possibility of doing a mind-link with you?”
“I thought you would ask when you felt ready. Eventually you did.”
“The thought terrified me. Even at the beginning, before I realized how I felt about you. Falling in love with you only made it worse.”
Shiala must have had some insight after all. “Why?”
“I don’t think I reasoned it out until a few days ago. I was running on instinct. I’ve never shared all this with anyone. None of my friends, none of the women I’ve been involved with in the past, certainly no one in the Alliance. But I knew if I let you touch my mind, you would see it: the rage, the need to kill. Even if it was just to look at the images from the beacon. All those people being slaughtered. I wouldn’t be able to help thinking about it. Wouldn’t be able to help how I felt about it. And even if you didn’t see it then, I knew you would see it if we ever made love. You told me how deep the joining goes at times like that. I wouldn’t be able to keep it away from you.”
I nodded slowly. “So when we finally tried it, you struggled and fought. You did manage to keep all of this away from me. But the vision turned out to be incomplete, and in your frustration and anger, you blamed me.”
He hung his head. “Yes. I know it was stupid.”
“Yes, it was,” I snapped, but then I gentled my voice once more. “It was also very human, and very understandable.”
He looked at me again. “Very human?”
“We asari cultivate the privacy of our minds most of the time, but we always remember that our lovers will know us in full, the ugly as well as the beautiful. We embrace that. It must be different for you humans, always locked away in your own minds no matter how intimate you might become with one another.”
&nb
sp; “That makes sense.” He took a deep breath, as if preparing to face an enemy. “I suppose the core of the matter is this. Some part of me doesn’t think I deserve your love. Some part of me doesn’t want you to be hurt by getting too close to me. Some part of me is terrified that if you really knew me, you would run as fast as you could . . . and you would be right to do that. So I sabotaged us.”
“Shepard,” I said gently. “I don’t think love is about what we deserve. Wouldn’t it be a terrible universe, if the only people who were ever loved were the people who deserved it?”
He chuckled ruefully. “I suppose you’re right.”
“In any case . . . Shepard, I know who you are already. I looked into your service record and your official biography after we fought the batarians at Terra Nova. I surmised some of what you’ve told me, and the rest comes as no surprise. I trust you. I know you won’t deliberately hurt me. None of this changes anything.”
He stared into my eyes for a long minute.
“Liara. I love you more than I can possibly express. I am very sorry that I hurt you. Can you forgive me?”
I pushed myself to my feet, looked down at him, held out a hand to help him rise in turn. Then I stepped forward and kissed him, very long and very deeply. In full view of Kaidan, Ashley, Garrus, Tali, Wrex, and every surviving member of Company A, Third Infiltration Regiment, Salarian Special Tasks Group.
“Of course I forgive you, now that I understand.” I looked up into his beautiful crystal-blue eyes, which at that moment were reflecting the subdued colors of Virmire’s ocean. “Let’s begin again.”
He smiled, the first warm smile I had seen from him in days. “I’d like that.”
We returned to our people, who seemed to have taken very great care not to notice what was happening out on our rock.
Well, except for Ashley. “About damn time,” she growled.
Chapter 38 : Shadow Team
20 May 2183, STG Camp/Virmire
Captain Kirrahe had come up with a plan.
“We can sacrifice our ship’s drive and convert the core into a twenty-kiloton ordnance,” said the salarian. “More than enough to destroy this facility. The problem is delivering it.”
