Deep Space: An Epic Sci-Fi Romance

by Joan Jett

  The Reapers could be centered in the galactic core. At that time we knew nothing about the core except what could be learned from telescopes and long-range probes. It was known to be a very hostile region, completely uninhabitable for any organic civilization. It did offer enough energy and mass to support a large synthetic civilization . . . assuming the synthetics could find ways to survive the extreme radiation.

  The Reapers could be hiding outside the galaxy entirely. This seemed unlikely at first, but Shelby reminded us that intergalactic space was far from empty. Globular clusters, dwarf satellite galaxies, even the large irregular satellites the humans called the Clouds of Magellan, all of these orbited well away from the galaxy’s main disk. None of them had ever been visited by the Citadel races, or (as far as anyone knew) by the Protheans. The Reapers might use some of them as a base of operations.

  Shelby’s third conjecture was perhaps the most disturbing. She pointed out an assumption implicit in her own models: that the Citadel races had opened new mass relays and selected new regions of the galaxy to explore in an essentially random manner. If we had not expanded entirely at random, if some factor had acted to prevent us from reaching certain mass relays – in short, if the Reapers controlled the mass relay network – then they could hide from us perfectly well without us being any the wiser.

  Shelby’s conclusion was stark. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The Reapers, if they existed and had even some of the capabilities we had come to suspect, could quite easily hide from us while still being able to attack us at their convenience.

  In that context, it was disturbing to note that our best models of the Prothean extinction included the assumption that the Reapers had attacked by surprise.

  * * *

  15 May 2183, Herschel System Space

  Liara,

  The Armali courts have ruled that your mother’s crimes do not attaint you. You have therefore been recognized as her primary heir and the new head of the T’Soni lineage by right of primogeniture.

  In light of your youth and the exigencies of your mission, I would advise you to designate one of your mother’s sisters as proxenos of the lineage for the time being. I would recommend Kallyria, as she is thoughtful, intelligent, and entirely without personal ambition. She will not want the position, which makes her the best possible candidate for it. She will obey your directives and manage the affairs of the lineage competently while your attention must be turned elsewhere.

  Meanwhile, the day-to-day management of Benezia’s estate now falls to a board of trustees until such time as you are able to return and take up the burden. The courts have appointed me as the archon of this board. Do you have any instructions for us?

  Sha’ira

  I stared at the Consort’s message for a long time. It represented a very great temptation.

  I had once told Shepard that I would stay with him until we defeated Saren, and possibly beyond that. That was before Feros. Before he had told me he loved me, and then gone away to join with Shiala, and then tried so disastrously to join with me. Before a chasm of distance had opened between us.

  He had been avoiding me for days. He no longer visited me in my cubicle. He arranged his meal hours so they no longer matched mine. When we had to communicate on Red Team business, he seemed cool and professional and nothing more.

  He had led three ground missions without me.

  I had told Shepard that nothing was more important than his mission. Was that true? Back in asari space, with all of Benezia’s resources at my fingertips, could I do more to prepare the galaxy for the Reapers than was possible aboard the Normandy?

  If Shepard no longer needed me, wasn’t my place with my own people?

  In the end, I simply sent Sha’ira a message. I formally concurred with her recommendation of Kallyria, and expressed my confidence in their ability to manage until I could return. I advised her to invest in firms specializing in intelligence gathering and arms manufacture if she saw a good opportunity to do so. Then I signed off and returned to my work.

  I wasn’t quite ready to give up on Shepard yet.

  * * *

  16 May 2183, Interstellar Space

  As days passed and the Reapers failed to appear, we began to realize that Saren could not have attained all of his objectives. The Eden Prime beacon had presumably given him a complete message. The Thorian had given him the Cipher, and he had other asari slaves to help him assimilate it, so he presumably understood the message. Why did he not already have possession of the Conduit?

  The Red Team debated furiously over this point. Much depended on the nature and purpose of the mysterious Conduit. Some analysts proposed that the Conduit had failed over the eons and could no longer help Saren call the Reapers back into the galaxy. Other analysts proposed that the Conduit would take time to work, that we might still have time to prepare.

  I suggested a simpler hypothesis: that the Cipher was a necessary but not sufficient condition for properly interpreting the beacon’s message. Some additional knowledge was necessary, possibly highly technical or obscure, which Saren did not yet have.

  After two days of heated debate, the Red Team decided to stipulate my hypothesis for the time being. Not because there existed any objective evidence to support it, but because it preserved our agency. If I was wrong, then we could do nothing but hope that Saren’s quest had been futile from the beginning. On the other hand, if I was right, then we still had a chance to get ahead of Saren and stop him.

  To that end I turned back to a suggestion Garrus had made on Feros: where could one find geth cooperating with krogan? Any sighting of the two together might suggest the presence of Saren.

  I dug into every intelligence report, news article, and outright rumor I could find. I used every contact I could reach through the Red Team, through my own professional networks, and through Sha’ira. I sent a message to Operative Lawson at her data drop. I authorized a payment from my own funds to Barla Von, asking him for whatever data the Shadow Broker could provide. I worked with Tali to write data-mining algorithms, and turned them loose on the mass of compiled information.

  Looking back, I think that research was my first real work as an information broker.

  It succeeded.

  A pattern lurked in the data, pointing to one small cluster in the Outer Arm of the galaxy. The Sentry Omega region stood close to geth space, and had only been superficially explored. No colonies had ever been established there. At most, the nomads and pirate gangs of the Terminus Systems passed through from time to time. Such witnesses were not very reliable, but when they came to port they told stories of what they had seen, and sometimes those stories reached the ears of my sources.

  Several times in recent months, geth and krogan mercenaries had been spotted traveling together in the Sentry Omega cluster.

  I checked the star charts and looked for worlds that might be attractive to Saren.

  I found one, and forwarded a report to the Red Team and the Council, recommending further investigation.

  Virmire.

  * * *

  17 May 2183, Century System Space

  There came a time, in the middle of the ship’s night, when I could tolerate the situation no longer.

  I rose and went to my desk. “Bridge.”

  “Bridge here. That you, Doc?”

  I frowned. “Joker, it’s three in the morning. Don’t you ever go off-duty?”

  “No more than I have to,” said the pilot. “What can I do for you?”

  “Are we in range of the comm buoy network? I need to place a call back to Feros.”

  “Not a problem, Doc. Plenty of bandwidth available.”

  “Thank you, Joker. Get some sleep.”

  “Hey, I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”

  I used my computer to call the Zhu’s Hope station. Only then did I realize I had not checked the local time there. I wondered who would be roused from sleep to answer.

  Fortunately when the screen blinked and an i
mage formed, the timestamp showed mid-morning local time. A familiar face peered out at me.

  “Who is . . . ah, Dr. T’Soni. It’s very good to see you again,” said Ian Newstead.

  “Mr. Newstead. I’m glad to see you looking well. How are you?”

  “Much better now that bloody thing is gone,” he said. “All of us are getting back on our feet, working to rebuild what was damaged. A few of us are still having headaches, but nothing like what the Thorian inflicted on us.”

  “I could see what it was doing to you, when we met down in the tunnels. I’m sorry we couldn’t do more at the time.”

  He grinned at me. “You did everything I would have asked for, if I had been able. But I get the notion this isn’t just a social call.”

  “No. I’d like to speak to Shiala, if she’s available.”

  “Right you are, Doctor. Just a moment.”

  I didn’t have to wait long. Soon Shiala appeared, smiling warmly at me. “Liara! I’m surprised to hear from you so soon.”

  “Do we have privacy, Shiala?”

  Her smile vanished as she took in my voice and expression. “Of course. What’s wrong?”

  I dropped into an archaic asari dialect, to avoid any human ears that might be listening in. “I must ask a question, but it entails a serious violation of protocol.”

  “I see. Does it involve my joining with Commander Shepard?”

  “Yes. Shiala, after we returned to the ship he and I joined for the first time, so I could assist him in understanding the Prothean message. It did not go well.”

  “I’m sorry. Of course I will give you any insight I can.”

  “In fact we managed to understand the message, but it required a great struggle. He strove to conceal some eidolon integral to his self-image. Since then the love he once held for me seems to have died. He avoids me and is nothing more than correct when we must speak.” I shook my head angrily, wiping away the tears that had formed in my eyes. “Shiala, I am at a loss. I do not know what to do.”

  “Have you spoken to him on this matter?”

  “I do not see how to begin. Shiala, when you joined with him, did you see anything that could explain this?”

  She frowned, remembering. “I do not believe so. He was relaxed and receptive. I could sense the strength of his will, his areté, but he did not strive with me in any way. He impressed me greatly with his ability to assimilate the Cipher so quickly.”

  I couldn’t help it. My fist bunched and I slammed it down on the desk beside me. My lips pulled back from my teeth in a snarl. “How is it that he could join with you so cleanly?”

  “Because he does not love me.”

  “That makes no sense!”

  She watched me, a knowing expression in her eyes. “Liara, when I left with Benezia you had not yet experienced true eros with anyone. Is Commander Shepard your first?”

  “I thought he might be,” I said bitterly.

  “You surrender too easily,” she told me. “One thing I did see when I joined with him. He does love you, Liara, with rather frightening intensity. I cannot credit that one joining could change that, no matter how poorly formed.”

  “I still do not understand.”

  “Let me ask you a question. Are you his first love?”

  I stopped to think about it. “No. He has never spoken of it in detail, but I know he has been involved with others before. Human women, of course.”

  “Then he almost certainly knows more of love than you. The joys, the foolhardy passions . . . and the pain. Never forget the pain. Have you considered that Commander Shepard may fear you?”

  “That is absurd. What could he possibly have to fear from me?”

  “That is a question you must answer.”

  I sighed and covered my face with both hands for a moment, gathering the strength to look her in the eyes once more. “Thank you, Shiala. I think.”

  “You are welcome. I will pray for you.”

  “Pray for us all.”

  * * *

  19 May 2183, Interstellar Space

  Finally there came a knock at the door of my cubicle. I opened the door and found Shepard standing there.

  “Doctor?”

  He seemed courteous, reserved, his body language apparently neutral . . . but I began to know him better now. The position of his hands, a flicker in his eyes as he couldn’t quite force himself to meet mine, all of it spoke of uneasiness just beneath the polite veneer.

  I held his gaze, refused to look away, and spoke with cool detachment. “Yes, Commander?”

  He flinched, ever so slightly. “I just wanted you to know. I spoke to Councilor Valern a few minutes ago. The Council looked into your report on the Sentry Omega cluster. They sent a salarian STG company in to investigate Virmire.”

  “What did they find?”

  “We’re not sure. They ran into something. The Council got a signal on their emergency channel. It was too weak and garbled to make out. Valern has asked us to investigate further.”

  “Good.”

  He waited, as if expecting me to say more. Finally he asked, “Will you come on the ground team?”

  “Of course, Commander.”

  Another long pause. I saw a muscle twitch in one cheek, and firmly repressed the urge to reach out and soothe away the discomfort.

  “All right. We’ll be there about noon tomorrow. Good night, Doctor.”

  “Good night, Commander.”

  Then he was gone.

  Chapter 37 : On the Beach

  20 May 2183, Virmire

  “Five minutes, Commander,” said Joker from the bridge. “Those AA guns look nasty. I can put you down under their radar, but you’re going to have to take care of the guns from the ground.”

  “Not a problem, Joker,” said Shepard. “What are the passive sensors telling you?”

  “Lots of active radar, lots of geth transmissions, all around that big facility we detected from orbit. There’s something down there that Saren would really like to defend.”

  “Any sign of Sovereign?”

  “Negative, Commander. Not unless it’s a two-kilometer-high robot cuttlefish that can turn invisible.”

  “Keep a sharp eye. That dreadnaught is fast for all its size. If it shows up we’re going to have to pack up and run like blazes.”

  “I’m on it,” agreed Joker.

  Normandy came in very low to the shoreline, deploying the Mako at the last possible moment. Shepard worked a piece of magic with the mass-effect core and the thrusters, skimming along the surface of the water at a very shallow angle. The landing shook us about inside, and the Mako threw up an enormous fan of water as it shed momentum, but we suffered no damage or injury.

  “EWS, report,” Shepard ordered.

  I checked my console. “I see several active radar signatures from ahead, none of them above detection threshold. They don’t yet know we’re here.”

  “Well, Garrus, you seem to have gotten your wish,” remarked Tali as the Mako began to move along the shoreline toward the distant geth stronghold. “This is a very pretty planet for once.”

  Tali spoke the truth. Virmire reminded me of Thessia, as it must have appeared before the rise of asari civilization: sky a perfect blue and rich with clouds, ocean a deep grey-blue, beach purest white, and dense inland foliage green and lush. I saw abundant shore life, most of it of avian and crustacean forms. The external sensors told me that when we opened the hatch, we would find the air fresh and perfectly breathable.

  “Well, I don’t think we’re going to find a decent restaurant on the way to the gunfight,” said Garrus. “Too bad this place is so far inside the Terminus Systems. All the levo races could make themselves right at home, if they didn’t have to worry about pirate and slaver raids every couple of months.”

  “Hey, if we win this thing maybe we can put in for a bit of shore leave after,” Ashley suggested. “Some of those crab-things might be edible, the galley can probably make up a batch of drinks with the little umbre
llas in them, and I’ve got a bikini stored somewhere in the bottom of my footlocker.”

  “I think my translator just glitched,” said Garrus. “What’s a bikini?”

  “About two hundred square centimeters of cloth that covers the essentials while concealing absolutely nothing,” said Ash. “And in my case, it is fire-engine red.”

  I glanced over my shoulder at Garrus, who still looked confused.

  “Cut the chatter,” said Shepard sharply.

  Silence fell. I detected the first geth a few moments later, so we had no chance to resurrect the dead conversation.

  At least our teamwork in combat was unchanged. Shepard drove, Ashley managed the weapons, and I operated the EWS console. We had no difficulty dealing with the scattered geth we encountered along our path. Even armature-class platforms posed little challenge, so long as we took our time and used the available cover.

  Three times we encountered geth field-works. Each time we used the Mako’s main gun to hammer the geth platforms and weapon mounts on the outside of the fortification. Then we drove up, emerged from the vehicle, and fought any survivors on foot. Shepard fought conservatively, avoiding unnecessary risks. Even the larger geth platforms could do little when we stayed under cover, held a line, and hammered them to pieces from a distance.

  The second fortress controlled a set of AA guns on top of a low hill. Once we had dealt with the geth there, Tali quickly disabled the radar installation and the guns. As we drove onward, we could see the Normandy flying low above us, heading for our objective a few kilometers ahead.

  Joker called us as we approached. “Ah, Commander . . . we’ve landed at the salarian base camp, but it looks like we’re grounded.”

  “Grounded? What’s going on?” asked Shepard.

  “Now that we’re down, the AA coverage has been restored. More than restored. The salarian commander will want to talk to you as soon as you arrive.”

  “I’ll bet,” Shepard grumbled. “We’ll be there in about five minutes, Joker.”

  “Solid copy, Commander.”