by Joan Jett
Instead I went up to the crew deck. I ate a hasty meal, took a hot shower, changed into fresh clothes, and took refuge in my cubicle behind the medical bay.
As usual, the space stood in darkness. I left the lights turned off, except for the low glimmer of computer screens and haptic keyboards. It suited my mood.
I sat at my desk and remembered Kaidan.
His face, dark and well-framed, alien but more beautiful than that of most male humans. His gentle smile. The expressiveness of his eyes. His calm determination to succeed. His mature poise, like that of an asari matron centuries his elder. The suffering one could see written in his features, but only if one looked very closely, he had learned to deal with it so wisely and so well.
Kaidan showed me kindness before any other human. Even before Shepard, he accepted my presence, and worked to convince others to do the same. Even more than Shepard, he served as my partner on a dozen battlefields. I never wanted him as a bondmate, never loved him in the manner that I came to love Shepard . . . but almost from the day I met him, I loved him like a sister.
Gone, gone, gone beyond recall, stolen from us in a moment of bad luck and bad timing.
I sat with elbows on my desktop, face buried in my hands, the tears running down my cheeks.
The door to my cubicle opened quietly. “Liara?”
I turned a desperate face to where Shepard stood in the doorway.
I don’t think either of us gave it any thought. We moved like iron to the magnet, meeting in the middle of my cubicle. His strong arms held me close as I huddled against his chest and wept. His face spoke of tenderness as he bent it close to mine.
I don’t think the storm took more than two or three minutes to pass. I eased out of Shepard’s grip and wiped at my eyes with both hands. “I’m sorry, Shepard. I shouldn’t impose like this.”
“It’s no imposition, Liara.”
I looked up at him. “Everyone on board liked Kaidan. He was your friend too. You shouldn’t be here, letting me soak your shirt.”
He made a small smile. “I’ll deal with my grief in my own time, Liara. Besides, no one else has quite the same claim on my attention. If Corporal Müller needs a shoulder to cry on, he’s going to have to find someone else.”
That called up such an absurd mental image, I had to laugh for just a moment. “Shepard!”
“Feel better?”
“Maybe a little. Thank you.”
“In any case, the one who’s really taking this hard is Ash.” Shepard sighed, moved to sit down in his usual place atop an unused crate. “She’s having a bad case of survivor’s guilt. Told me to my face that I should have gone to rescue Kaidan and left her to die.”
“That’s absurd. What about Kirrahe and the rest of his men?”
“There is that. I suspect she’s not thinking very clearly right now.”
I nodded. “She’s thinking about her grandfather, the decision he made.”
Shepard gave me a sharp glance. “She told you about that?”
“Yes, on Feros.” I frowned, thinking it through. “She burns to prove herself. She may believe a glorious death in battle would wipe away the stain of her grandfather’s dishonor. Yet in this war she has more than once survived while others died. She was almost the sole survivor of her unit on Eden Prime. And now to survive Virmire at the cost of Kaidan’s life . . .”
“You see the problem.”
“I will help if I can, but I think you will be more capable. She and I have become friends of a sort, but it’s you she looks up to and respects.”
“I know.” Shepard looked down at the floor. “Liara . . .”
“I’m ready when you are,” I told him at once.
“What?”
I smiled at him, for a moment enjoying the fact that I could still keep him off balance. “You want to examine the Prothean message again.”
“That’s right,” he said, relieved. “Remember what Saren said? He said Sovereign still needed him to find the Conduit. He said that if he could find the Conduit, the Reapers would spare him. Liara, he hasn’t found it yet.”
My eyes widened with surprise. “Goddess, you’re right.”
“Are you willing to try?”
I pulled my chair across the floor, so I could sit close to him and take his hands in mine. “Of course.”
He looked soberly into my eyes from a few centimeters away. “It will be different this time.”
“I believe you,” I told him. “Now close your eyes. Sit upright so that your spine is vertical, like a stack of coins. Relax and breathe evenly. Imagine energy collecting near the base of your spine. It rises higher with every breath you take.”
I reached out with my mind, listened to his breathing, felt the pulse in his wrists. I began to match my own breathing and heartbeat to his.
“Listen to your true self. Place yourself in your context, the ship around you soaring through space, the galaxy immense on all sides of us, the universe extending in all directions to infinity.”
My eyes closed. I could feel our bodies and minds sliding into consonance once more. It was easier this time. I could feel his will, like a king sitting on his throne, determined that all things should be ordered as he wished. He wished that I should enter and be welcome in the spaces of his mind.
“The energy rises, to crown you with glory and light.” My eyes opened blindly, changed, no longer seeing the physical universe around us. “Embrace eternity.”
We were together again, and this time he didn’t struggle or fight. Shepard.
Liara. Come in with me. I’m not afraid.
It wasn’t quite the truth. He was still afraid, but this time he kept it under strict control.
Think about the vision. Hold the Cipher in your mind and review it slowly. I’m here. I will help you.
He agreed without verbal thought, and began to review the Prothean message.
It started in the same manner, but he had been correct back on Virmire. There was more to it this time.
. . . Living beings running through a burning city. Hatred. Determination.
Flee the Reapers. Survive as long as you can. Fight them as best you are able.
A double star hanging in space, bright against a background of dust. Concealment. Success. Hope.
A world has been concealed from the Reapers. Here we are working on a plan.
The double star receded into the distance, a small solid body appearing in the foreground. Passage. Stealth.
From here we have built a Conduit. We can reach a critical objective despite the Reapers.
A larger solid body appeared, a world looming dark against the sunlight. Caution. Triumph. Victory.
If we succeed, we may be able to end the threat of the Reapers for all time.
Against the dark body of the world, a Reaper appeared, flew toward us. Reserve. Secrecy. Warning!
Never permit this knowledge to fall into the hands of the Reapers or their servants!
The vision ended.
I found myself staring into Shepard’s eyes, wide with astonishment.
“The Conduit!” he said reverently. “It must be on that world.”
“Goddess,” I breathed. “I think . . . I think that was Ilos.”
“Ilos?”
“It’s a Prothean world, almost a legend among those of us who study them. It may even predate them as an inhabited world. We’ve found hints that it might have been the inusannon homeworld. I’ve only seen vague references to it in old inscriptions. We’ve never been able to determine its location.”
“We still don’t know where the Conduit must be?” he asked, ready to be disappointed once more.
“Wait.” I closed my eyes, reviewed the images in my mind. “There was something . . . just when we saw that binary star for the first time. Another concept, more abstract, layered beneath the images and the semantic content.”
“Yes. I think I noticed that too.”
My eyes snapped open. “Numbers.”
“C
oordinates!” He touched his omni-tool. “Shepard to Pressley.”
“Here, sir.”
“Are you in the CIC?”
“Of course. What do you need?”
“Stay there and put the galaxy map in simulation mode. Dr. T’Soni and I will be right there.”
* * *
Pressley stood waiting by the map when we arrived. “What’s up, Commander?”
“We’re going to find the Conduit,” said Shepard. “Liara, what do we know about Prothean astrocartography?”
“A great deal, actually.” I began to lecture, as if before a classroom. “The Protheans used a cylindrical coordinate system to map the galaxy. They defined a reference axis running through the galactic center and pointing to the galactic poles, perpendicular to a reference plane that was arbitrarily defined but as close as possible to the true galactic plane. They used three coordinates: an azimuth angle from the radius intersecting the Prothean home system, a radial distance from the axis along the plane, and a perpendicular altitude above or below the plane.”
Shepard nodded. “Can you convert our system to that, Pressley?”
“The math is easy enough, Commander. Simple trigonometry. I need to know the location of the prime radius, the units the Protheans used, and it would help if I knew the Prothean coordinates for at least three known systems for a check.”
I handed the navigator a datapad. “We don’t know the location of the Prothean homeworld, but we have managed to define the prime radius of their coordinate system. Here are the data you will need. Reference stars include Sol, Utopia, and Home Nest.”
Pressley got to work.
“Home Nest?” asked Ashley quietly.
I looked around. We had begun to acquire an audience. Several of the bridge officers, Ashley, Garrus, and Tali, all of them had gathered to watch.
“The hanar homeworld’s primary,” I told her. “Prothean data archives exist on Mars, Eden Prime, and Kahje, from which we’ve been able to discover the Prothean coordinates for those three systems.”
“You think this is going to work?” she asked. For once her spirits seemed very low, her voice flat and muted.
I turned to watch Pressley. “I hope so.”
Several minutes passed. More of our people arrived to watch: some of the Marines, Dr. Chakwas, Captain Kirrahe and his second-in-command. Even Wrex appeared, standing quietly in the shadows to the back. The command deck began to feel crowded.
Finally Pressley made a small bark of triumph. “Hah! Got it, Commander.”
Suddenly the galaxy map acquired a polar axis and an equatorial plane. Three short perpendicular lines sprang from the plane, two of them upward, one downward. At their ends small spheres popped into being, with labels.
Shepard shook his head. “That can’t be right. All three of those are close, but they’re off.”
“Ah, but here’s where I get to check my work.” Pressley touched another control. “We have to account for proper motion. Stars don’t stay in the same place over long periods of time.”
It was subtle. The galaxy map didn’t seem to change . . . but then I could see the myriad points of light that represented stars, moving slightly against the Prothean coordinate system, as if the galaxy’s rotation had started to unwind.
“Dr. T’Soni, what’s the best date for the fall of the Prothean civilization?” asked Pressley.
“The end of the Fourth Age and the start of the extinction period are usually dated to forty-nine thousand, nine hundred seventy years before the present, plus or minus one hundred fifty years.”
“All right, we’ll back the galaxy up exactly that far, and . . . positive matches,” announced Pressley. One, two, three, the points designated on the map turned green. “All three star systems are in place with no more than five light-years of error. I can refine the model a little.”
The coordinate frame rotated ever so slightly as Pressley adjusted it. When he finished, Sol, Utopia, and Home Nest all shone exactly where they needed to be.
“There,” said the navigator, satisfaction unmistakable in his voice. “Perfect.”
“All right,” said Shepard. “Show only the stars of the Pangaea Expanse cluster, and zoom in on that region.”
“Aye-aye,” said Pressley, working the controls. The entire galaxy vanished except for a tiny region, which zoomed out until we could see it easily.
“Liara, I’m not sure of the numbers from the message. Do you have them?”
“I think so.” I opened my omni-tool and began performing computations. “I have to convert from Prothean arithmetic to ours. They used a base-six number system . . . done.”
I gave Pressley the coordinates. He punched them into the computer.
A small white sphere appeared in the map, well within the Pangaea Expanse. Unfortunately no stars appeared in or close to it.
“There must be a mistake somewhere,” objected Ashley.
I checked my mathematics. “Unless the numbers from the message were garbled, this is the correct place.”
Pressley shook his head in confusion. “You can’t be too far off. The coordinate system is very precise. I think any significant error in your memory or your arithmetic would put the designated point far outside the cluster.”
“Wait a minute,” Tali interjected. “What about stars that aren’t in the Pangaea Expanse cluster today?”
I frowned in concentration.
“I’m not sure I follow you, Tali,” said Shepard.
“Well, we define navigational clusters by proximity to a major mass relay,” explained the quarian. “What if the Ilos star system was close to this mass relay in Prothean times, but it has moved too far away since then? We wouldn’t think of it as a member of the cluster at all.”
“She’s right,” said Pressley. “Some stars have odd orbital paths, cutting across the local flow that makes up the rotation of the galaxy as a whole.”
“Okay. Expand the list of stars we can see to include anything that’s currently within . . . how far from the mass relay, Tali?”
“After fifty thousand years? Two hundred light-years should be far enough.”
Shepard nodded to Pressley, who worked with the map’s controls.
More stars appeared in the hologram . . . including one precisely inside the marked sphere.
“I’ll be damned,” said Pressley. “It’s a halo star.”
Shepard frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“Most of the galaxy’s stars, almost all of its bright young stars, they occupy the galactic disk,” explained the navigator. “Today they make up the visible structure of the spiral arms, but billions of years ago the galaxy hadn’t formed that flattened disk structure yet. A lot of the oldest stars, the ones we classify into what’s called Population Two, they occupy a much larger spheroid called the galactic halo. Their orbital paths around the core are more random; they can be highly eccentric, inclined at a large angle to the galactic plane, even retrograde. This star system’s proper motion, relative to the stars around it, is huge. Completely different orbital parameters. It must be a halo star, just passing through the galactic disk for now.”
“What else do we know about it?”
Pressley touched controls, and the map zoomed in on the one star. I gasped in surprise when I saw it was a close binary, actually composed of two similar stars orbiting each other at very close range. Just as we had seen in the Prothean message.
“Not much,” said the navigator, referring to data on his console. “The system has never been explored, or even visited as far as I can tell. Two binary components, both class K-zero subdwarf stars. Fairly low metallicity. Might have planets, might not, there’s no way to tell.”
Shepard looked at me, nothing but certainty in his eyes. “That’s Ilos, isn’t it?”
I nodded. “I would wager a great deal on it.”
“We are wagering a great deal on it.” He touched his omni-tool. “Joker, patch me through to the Council. They need to hear ab
out this. We might finally be able to get ahead of Saren and stop that bastard.”
Suddenly all the humans in the CIC began cheering, applauding, slapping one another on the back in celebration. Ashley stepped forward and hugged Pressley, causing the navigator to turn bright red in confused embarrassment. Kirrahe and his second turned to look at each other with quiet satisfaction. Garrus watched the image of the Ilos system in the hologram, his eyes and the tilt of his head suggesting a predator’s intense interest. Tali bounced on the balls of her feet in excitement. Even Wrex showed something like good spirits, flashing an imposing grin full of teeth.
I shared a glance with Shepard. He only nodded, a slow triumphant smile spreading across his face.
If we had only known.
Chapter 41 : Grounded
The Council responded to Shepard’s report at once. They congratulated us on our success on Virmire and our decoding of the Prothean message. Ambassador Udina then summoned the Normandy home to the Citadel, to join a multi-species task force to respond to Saren’s threat.
Shepard was jubilant. After months of being unable to persuade the Council to take Saren seriously, he saw this move as a vindication.
I wasn’t so certain. As Benezia’s daughter I had never been permitted to be entirely naïve. Before I met Shepard on Therum, I had never been a very political creature, but I still had decades more experience than any human in watching the Council and its actions.
The Council remained a deeply conservative and pragmatic institution, concerned solely with maintaining peace among the competing established interests of the galaxy. They had no interest in fairness, justice, or objective truth, unless these could be applied to keep the peace. When confronted with a crisis, they traditionally stood well clear and hoped the problem would solve itself. Bold, daring action was left entirely up to the Spectres, with the unspoken assumption that any Spectre who failed could easily be disavowed and discarded.
Looking back on these events, I’m not sure Shepard ever realized just how cynically the Council was using him at this time. Goddess, he took such pride in his status as the first Spectre of his species. He did not see, until much later, that the Council remained unwilling to place humans on an equal footing with the older races. No one on the Council ever intended for his Spectre status to be taken seriously; they had only granted it so that he could serve as Saren’s nemesis. I’m certain that had Saren turned out to be the only problem facing the galactic community, Shepard would have found himself permanently suspended the moment his foe was dealt with.