Warm Satin and Cold Graves - HerPronounsAreFemSlash (2024)

Chapter 1: Evolutionary Imperative

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Shiala | Huntress, Armalia Militia and Disciple of Matriarch Benezia T'Soni

Chapter 2: Lionesses that Play Poker

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Chapter 3: Browser History

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Master Gunnery Sergeant (MyGySgt) Solaris Shepard (pending promotion to 2nd Lieutenant) | Suburban Paris

circa 2178 (six years after enlisting)

Dr. Proscha says she doesn't usually ask patients to do this.

Says she had to get special permission.

Promised her she'll refer her to a specialist for the more private parts of the treatment.

That's how she ended up staring at her own powered-off omnitool like a live grenade.

"Gadget?"

The voice-interface on the tool thrums to life and the hard-light projections boot up, coiling around her wrist in the shape of a long, serpentine bracelet she once saw in a fashion magazine. It even mimics the colors of the metal and jewels set into it.

She upgraded the thing the first week out of basic and never stopped. Spends most of her pay past rent on it. The biotic amps live in her spine, arm, and outside her skull. Off the shelf, if expensive for the service. The omnitool she can see. She had to make it hers, reprimand or no reprimand. The p*rn popup viruses loaded on the thing by the black market modder during the jailbreak were irritating. A quick visit in a hardsuit with an Avenger clipped to her back and he decided to fix that. He didn't need to know she was carrying a dummy gun with no rounds from the base's exhibit. He just needed to know she was crazy enough to go to that neighborhood in her work clothes.

"Yes, Shepard?"

"Upload my extranet history to the doctor's blackhole address. Transmit and confirm receipt."

"Done and done. Anything else, ma'am?"

"No, Gadget, thank you."

"Shall I set an alarm for the next time you're on duty?"

"Yes. Forty minutes. And push the vid-screen controls to my datapad, incognito."

"Living dangerously, are we?" Gadget jokes.

"They really need to make a non-terrible joke package for VIs," Shepard mutters.

"I know you are but what am I?"

Shep hits mute. Pulls an eezo-spiked hard cider out of the fridge and dissolves the cap with a flick of the finger and warpfire.

"Draw shades," she tells the apartment VI.

They close, taking the distant spire of the Eiffel Tower away.

Shep flops down on her tiny, third-hand couch. It's clean, especially for used. Not for lack of trying, it's still clean. Maybe she can get a second glance in a club once she's N7. Maybe an Asari princess with silver-blue eyes and a soft smile and a wounded heart will walk into her on her way out of the shipboard showers.

That may be impossible but God knows it's more f*cking likely than her ever learning to dance.

The remote is old-school. Plastic case, rubber buttons. She has an affinity for old school. The first people she can remember liking her, calling her Sparky rather than 'girl' were the guys who re-rigged the gangs skiffs and cars. Found her playing with the autowrench under one of them one day. She trusts two sorts of tech: the kind with an Alliance arrowhead stamped on it and something she built.

She mute the vid-screen and lets her mind--and her searches--wander the exonet.

Fornax is interesting, but mostly for learning what aliens look like naked. The fact that it's 'softcore' is beyond disturbing. Doesn't do anything for her besides that. Not so much as a tingle.

Human-made, female-made lesbian sites work, in a pinch. Don't do much for her raging case of xenophilia, though.

A couple of amateur performers on Ilium, those are her go-tos. Sometimes they do a candid of them going to the bars and pickup up a female human, or a drell. Even a male Krogan once, one of the smaller, human-shaped 'geckos' who paid a small fortune to cash out of merc'ing and into modeling and sex work over the course of a dozen or so bone-removing and gene-implanting surgeries.

Naseria and Kulii haven't posted in a while though. Riots. It's not like she can write them and ask if they're okay.

Maybe this isn't that sort of solo session.

Lately, she finds herself thinking about rope a lot. Rope is complicated.

She has three ghastly memories of it and a couple she's not sure what to call. Being tied up and dumped in the box when she misbehaved. Being tied up and cut up to put a proper amp--sized for an adult and with the previous owner's blood burned off minutes before--in her tiny body.

The one she can't think about.

Roping a horse on the family farm, bringing this massive, panicked creature back to earth and shushing it, petting its head as it nickered and whined and finally calmed. Megan clapping softly and her father just smiling from the edge of the paddock.

Climbing every tree in the colony with nothing more than a quick-cinching lasso and a stubby branch to hook it to. Trying and failing to get her crush at the time up there with her. Sally was afraid of heights and bugs and even though he transplanted oak was fully pest-free, patrolled by anti-insect robots, she wouldn't. Crying because up in the tree, secured by rope, they would've been alone enough to kiss.

That's the first time Shep heard the word 'phobia' in her life.

Ripping the arms off of the sickest of the sick back on Torfan with a loop of cable from her climbing pack and the spinning gears of an air vent pump.

Finally killing that damn thresher with a biotic-assisted leap, cable from the ruined Grizzly tank, and five grenades dropped through a hole she blew in its shell. Riding it like a bucking horse on the farm while the cable kept its spear-like pinchers clamped shut and unable to spit.

Rope has tortured her. Rope has been a tool for getting praise, and laughter, and even gasps from other people. Rope is a weapon she can combine with her biotics to strike from places she can't move out from without drawing a crossfire.

Rope takes control away and rope gives her control. Rope gives her options

So why am I looking at knots you can use to tie an Asari to the bed without hurting her? she wonders

That question leads to a whole other rabbit hole she goes down and she ends up asleep on the couch, pants unbuckled but her fingers and never left the remote or the paper notepad.

When she wakes in the morning, she looks at what she wrote.

Shibari

Safewords

Omnitool programs for consent enforcement

Adjustable voltage floggers

Tips and tricks for biotic-only bondage

How to blindfold a partner with cloaking tech implants or flashforged strips of carbon fiber

Clubs in Paris

The last one didn't need to be written down. Talk to the doctor about this before she does something because oftraumaand not because she wants it.

Dr. Katja Prosca, Doctor of Psychiatry | Jamaica Plain, Boston

circa 2178 (six years after enlisting)

The doctor's office is small--an apartment in a building near her actual apartment--and meant to feel safe. Leather couches, Pastel pink paint. Bottled water and tea in a cooler on the counter, individually wrapped candy and protein bars. Making the patient feel at ease, even a bit spoiled, while they wait.

Nothing like her sister's tidy, aggressively dusted interview in the field hospital in London.

Shepard knows that her own home can become a graveyard in the blink of an eye but it probably works on other folks.

The door opens and a small, twenty-ish woman stumbles out, weeping. Long red hair and so many freckles they form galaxies and consolations and bags under her eyes and a bruise on her cheek. Pretty woman. Someone hurt her and Shepard is the best there is at hurting people back.

"It'll get better, miss. You did the right thing, reporting it. Call me any time."

The doc barely avoided using the woman's name and Shep barely avoided leaping to her feet and wrapping the poor thing in a hug. She forces the dark energy back into her implant before she can rip the couch's stuffing out and gradually opens her fists.

"Solaris Shepard?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"What do you like to be called?"

"Shepard is fine, ma'am. My team calls me that. Most of my commanders. I doubt I'd recognize my first name," she jokes.

"Come in, Shepard."

If the office was meant to be cozy, the actual interview room is meant to be a womb. A squashy couch and a stack of round, memory foam cushions she could sink into up to her neck.

Feels un-marine like but she picks the cushions.

"So my sister referred you to me. Been a long time since she did that."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Don't call me ma'am, I work for a living," the doctor jokes.

Just like that, Shepard is laughing until her lungs burn.

"Doc will do. Or Doctor. Unless you're rather just Proscha, my last name. My dad always had a bad reaction to doc."

"He serve?"

"FIrst Contact War."

"Ah."

"Maybe you could tell me why dad reacted that way."

"Sometimes wounded marines scream 'doc' rather than 'medic'. I think because they're feeling like scared kids. Forgetting the term and using what they used as kids."

"So you're here for things that military psych can't help you with, right?"

"The things that are still sick, but don't affect me in the field, yes."

"I received your exonet history in your referral. Tell me what you think it means."

"That I'm damaged. That I don't want to be with men. Humans. Be with who I'm supposed to be with. Have kids, like I'm supposed to. That I won't ever have a normal sex life."

"Let's take that a piece at a time. I am concerned that you might be falling back into your time in the Reds, yes. I'm not sure how concerned I am because people who seek to repeat trauma like that, typically aren't nearly as functional as you. They typically do it, often drunk, rather than coming to a professional. We just want to rule it out."

"Why are you concerned about not wanting to be with men? Your time with the Shepard family?"

Shepard shrugs.

"Maybe. There wasn't anything I could do that would make them love me less. Learned that the second time they dragged me out of a cupboard I hid in after breaking a plate. Hugged me. I never told them I wasn't normal like the other girls but don't think I got a chance. I was young enough to not know."

"Shepard, I want you to close your eyes. Imagine yourself forty years from now. Maybe more like twenty. You'd have the right to a great pension by then, given your service history. Cottage somewhere, pick a planet. The cottage you bought with your pension. You need to work but for groceries, not for shelter."

"All right, Doctor."

"Where is it?"

"I can pick anywhere?"

"Anywhere."

"A dog. Can't train a varren. Pyjak, I guess if there's not space for a dog. No. One of those utility mechs, the bulldog-shaped ones. Because it won't get old and die on me."

"What's it named?"

"Clanky. Because I had to lube the joints when I rescued it from the surplus auction."

Proscha chuckles.

"I'm liking your ability to picture yourself happy."

"Who else?"

Shepard exhales.

"Maybe a kid? Adopted?"

"Son or daughter?"

"Daughter, unless he had like a brother to take in."

"What's her name?"

"Slaere. Or maybe Eaesa."

"Why?"

"Slaere was the asari commando who rescued me on Mindoir, doctor. Watched me on the sip so I wouldn't hurt myself. First-person to actually tune my amp and teach me to aim right. Eaesa would be a good name if she was an asari child, a traditional name. Daughter of Slaere."

"Excellent so far. Partner?"

Shepard's brain sticks like a jammed thermal clip.

"Beg pardon?"

"Assume that everything you just told me about, someone you meet loves you for it. Enjoys walking with you, cooking with you, doing dishes, sleeping next to you. Sleeping with you. Who is that?"

"She'd have to be asari, or krogan. So she could raise Eaesa after I passed. I'm gonna get old and my kid can't go in the foster system, doc."

"Ordinarily, I'd say this was asking for a lot," the doctor sighs.

"I know, ma'am, I'm sorry. It's stu-"

"Please stop talking."

"Yes, ma...I'll just stop."

"Shepard, I don't think you realize what you're capable of. You see yourself as a wooden stick holding up a gun or with a knife tied to the end of it. Stupid people and loose cannons don't end up where you are. Military service isn't everything but you've displayed the sort of skill that mean you could train to be a biotic dance or gymnastic instructor, therapist for patients recovering from blueware surgeries or implant replacements, even maybe a ship mechanic. You can, and I hope you will, have a life after this and any of those jobs are stable enough for you to raise a family on."

"Now, the partner. She or he?"

"She, probably. He but I don't think I could ever be with a human man like that. I can't..."

Shepard shivers.

"Pregnancy takes control of my body away from me."

"As a mother, I can confirm," Proscha laughs. "What's she look like."

Shepard isn't sure.

"What might she look like?"

"Quiet. Likes to read. Sometimes I find her reading, or writing in the morning when I wake up if she's not there. Sneak up, give her a kiss on the top of the head, or the crests if she doesn't have hair. Get my fingers under the head plates, or under the torso plates if it is a female krogan. Where it's soft."

"Do you know what you've just described to me, Shepard?"

"No, ma'am."

"You've described afamily that you can have with someone. You've described it so well that I can tell you'd love anyone except somewhere there was a pregnancy risk. You'd learn how to please them in bed and show affection. Never let this dream go, Marine."

"Yes, ma'am."

"When you want to lie down without making a foxhole, make one. So that you can wake up alive and be one day closer to it."

"We're almost done for today. Any other questions?"

"Can someone I love also like these...things I want to do with them? Does it take away the love?"

"Yes, absolutely they can. Depending on the person. We'll explore that next session."

Shepard shakes the doctor's hand and now she's the one crying her way out into the hall.

Chapter 4: Tailspin

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Chapter 5: Little Wings, Dark Spaces

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Chapter 6: Room Sixteen

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Second Lieutenant (2-Lt.) Solaris Shepard, entering phase 1 of N7 training | Calais, France

circa 2178 (six years after enlisting)

This is the first time she's taken the T'Shora girls out for in-city training. The bunker is all well and good but it's not a feasible way to train them in everything.

It rapidly became apparent that a key problem with training them is the girls ability to sense eezo and biotic fields. No surprise, given their mother's bloodline, but it made a grab from behind or an ambush on the street nearly impossible. She could knock them over with a throw at a hundred feet but the girls started keeping their barriers up almost all the time and the end result was always theother sister suspending her with a wicked combination of singularity and some curious, incredibly precise warp field. Dangled by her ankles while a warp field disintegrated just the holding pin on the thermal clip.

Set to ship out in a few days for the bloodbath of N7 training, Shepard is running out of time.

So she had their mother tell them to go apartment shopping in Oxford--something cheap--and Shepard used the lack of oversight by regular units that N7 cadets are awarded to get a second set of biotic implants and get her alliance ones retrofitted. Set to mimic the IFF of her official ones, these upgraded, black market monsters are part of some nasty Asari-Krogan initiative run by a lunatic warlord named Okeer and his disgraced matriarch bondmate with a much-looked down upon taste for intense, messy and 'gross' fluid sex with Krogans.

These expensive devices were paid for by the anonymous donor who dropped the hint via untraceable QEC message and are, astoundingly, compatible with tech implants. The list of black-market clinics in council space is not comforting. Someone very rich and mixed up in some crazy biotics and tech implants research gifted Shepard enough to buy an off-fleet Turian cruiser. She could get the implants she wanted, sell the spares and drop out of the service and go pirate queen with no up-front investment from her.

She is scheduled for N7 Adept which means she'll have to keep her thermal, cloak and fortify abilities to herself. Unless she's last on the training field. In combat, no one cares if she suddenly can do something new if she gets it done.

Alliance Medical Research seems more than happy to let Shepard volunteer for typically incompatible implant types with little more than frequent quizzes about her pain. She has no idea how many credits they've spent or how many of her implants are legal or even lab-tested for safety.

If someday she goes off in an implant explosion in the last stand defending colonists, she won't mind one bit.

Shepard doubts anyone who didn't film electroshock sex videos at age eleven--and eventually grow to like them--could stand the implantation of the illicit "Blackstar" implants, let alone the pain she felt practicing basic throws with them. The infection that ripped through her rejection-drug weakened immune system wasn't fun.

Combine her new toys with an electro-dampener bodysuit to hide the murmurs of magnetic energy the eezo in her body gives off and she is the invisible woman. Whether to the Ministry of Justice's cameras, microphones, biotic-sensitives, she is no one.

Tiri is arm in arm with her sister, in a low-depth continual meld. As the alert one, she's batting down questions about whether they're a couple with the easy answer of 'it's like hugging' which is both accurate in terms of appropriateness and deeply misrepresents the intimacy involved, according to their mother.

They've stopped at a row house with a 'for rent' sign up.

Shepard drops from the balcony she'd been hiding on, leaving a credit chit and a box of chocolates for the old lady who unknowingly loaned it.

She goes up the fire escape on the back while the kids go in the front door. The window by the fire escape latches on the outside--she'll have to browbeat the landlord into replacing it--and opens into the closet. In an old house like this, probably meant to air out the father's soot-polluted clothes after work.

Now I'm back in the closet. Ironic.

The apartment broker the girls are talking to is an acquaintance. Used to bartend near the training camp for NCOs in Hawaii. So she's agreed to play-act her part.

"It's cozy," Tiri says.

"Two bedrooms, one master."

"We can just hang a sock on the door if one of us needs enough space to..."

Lya clicks her tongue.

"Make a mess with someone."

"Lya!" Tiri whines.

"Kitchen's decent. No parlor," Tiri adds. "Difficult. Not a deal-breaker but...for someone like us, we do need some space to entertain."

"Someone like you?"

"Hmm. Asari are social animals. But in our case, more to do with class and expectations."

Lya drops out of the link.

"Would you like to?" she purrs.

"To, ah, meld? I have a husband..."

Lya's indigo hand is on her hip now.

"And you'll go back home to him in a mad daze," she promises. "For me, nothing more than a lingering handshake."

"Ly! Are you trying to encourage the promiscuity myth?"

Don't do it, Emilia. Shepard wishes she could make the woman refuse.Don't you f*cking dare.

"I wouldn't want to seem insensitive," Emilia jokes.

"Hands, please. Palm to palm."

"Relax, Emilia. I won't do anything to you and if you want to stop, I'll know soon as you do. Close your eyes. Sink into the world around you. Living things in a living universe. All connected by spirit and desire and need. All of it. Show me a favorite memory."

Lya's eyes go full black in a split second and Emilia gasps.

"Your son isdarling! " Lya coos. "Such a good father he has and I can feel how much you love him. In that memory of helping him with a fever, I felt your relief. Down in my bones," she whispers.

"Let me share," Tiri pleads.

Lya tilts her head, exposing the meld-sensitive folds behind her jaw. Tiri place two fingers on her sisters' neck.

"Both of you," Emilia murmurs. "Tiri's the well-behaved one. She...ah..."

Lya breaks the link.

"See? You didn't even need words to ask me."

"Sorry," Tiri mumbles. "I didn't think you would feel pressured like that. But I see why you might worry. Because of the woman in the memory."

Emilia nods, the human capacity for speech seemingly switched off.

"She and I share a resemblance," she reminds Tiri.

Tiri's purple lips quirk upwards into a smirk.

"Well, Sam had better hair."

Emilia playfully shoves Tiri.

"Wait. What? Why am I?"

"Acting like my sister? Because you just dived in our bond with each other. You felt me like Lya does. As a kid sister."

"Brat," Emilia grumbles.

"You can come out, Shepard! Emilia is so embarrassed she helped you!" Tiri scolds.

f*ck. Charming, casually seductive, see-into-your-soul asari!

That's something she can't see an easy counter for in her role as an assailant: the meld and the reading of emotions and thoughts that go with it. Date rape is out of the question with these two, long as they held hands while flirting.

She approaches, keeping her cloak up until a split second before she raises the Carnifex to Tiri's head. She puts it to the underside of the crests, along the curve of the back of the skull

"Bang."

"I'd boost her barrier," Lya reminds her. "Works faster than the gun's accelerator."

Shep holds out the taser cord. The one Lya never noticed her dangling over the back of her palm.

"You could, but this would react to it. Dropping you both. Bad guy gets you alive, which is what he'll want."

"So someone with extensive military training can get us," Lya scoffs. "Someone with enough mil-spec combat implants on your spine and limb bones that you ought to rattle when you bend over."

"Any non-biotic with deep pockets could, kids. Non-biotic you couldn't sense any better than I can. Stealth suit with non-implant optical camo? Thirty thousand creds. Taser cord? Five hundred, sold in ten packs. Control chip so it would stun on biotic use? Five thousand tops. Less than one-eighth of the going price of an underage maiden. If she's a nobody. And every one of those can be purchased legally, at least in the American markets."

"Should I be worried you know the price on asari sex slaves?" Tiri jokes.

"Not when you consider what happened to the guy whose accounting logs I got that from. It was a covert mission so I wasn't in full armor. Took an hour to shower the slime and chunks off me."

"The last serial rapist sent to prison in the UK was a multimillionaire, kids. Who planned for days. You're safe. You're not completely safe and the most important thing is to remember that. Go to a party? Take a scanner for the drinks. Go on double dates whenever it's the first date. Lots of humans find that practice cute anyway. Hold his hands, brush her hair back, whatever. Get that secret meld in. Walk around like you think an Eclipse slaver or a Britain First thug is after your pretty little faces and your holes at all times."

"Last lesson. Shipping out in the morning."

"Aww!" Tiri whines, in a frightening mimic of a whiny thirteen-year-old. "You're leaving us, Aunty Solaris?"

Shepard laughs.

"Duty calls, you little brats. I'll write when I'm not in comm silence."

"You do that."

Tiri presses a slip of paper into her hands. An address for a business in Amsterdam. Glued on the back is a digital room key and the number 16 is written in pencil beside it.

"When we melded after my first takedown, in that hug in the bunker? I got some ideas from you. Enjoy your reward."

"We'll take it," they tell a still-loopy Emilia.

"Just like that?" she mumbles.

"Just like that. Reminds us of Shepard. Can you stay for dinner?"

"If you can get me a fast skycar to the London space elevator, yes."

"We've been wanting to try this pizza. An essential part of college life."

Dr. Liara T'Soni,Xenoanalyst | Haskins star system | Titan Nebula | Terminus System

Passenger cabin on a "Starclan" class heavy freighter, landed under the polar ice of a liquid-core moon

"Glyph, tell me about pod sixteen."

The shimmering silver ball of nanites and hard light projections rises up to face level.

"Pod sixteen contains an adult individual, female, taken from a polar-area crypt in the rubble of DC1938."

"Why does that planet ring a bell?" Liara mutters. "Rhetorical question, Glyph."

"Understood."

She takes another bite of the dried ajahe fruit and chews it slowly. Far less sweet but she won't get dehydrated from processing so much sugar.

"Cross-reference records the DC1938 planet, please."

"Two entries. One is your status report."

"The other?"

"The planet orbited a red dwarf star, close enough to be a garden world. In Asari standard year 21402, the core underwent a runaway fission reaction, triggering every volcano on the planet, which was two standard deviations above standard volcanic density. The resulting magma was thousands of kelvins hotter than typical and radioactive."

"Early spaceflight era. No FTL technology, judging by the debris. Three survivors were located, an adult female, adult male and an infant male. The passing human freighter MSV Kent detected the radiation spike, entered the system and retrieved them. The infant male survived. The adults had sufficient radiation burns to render their basic anatomy unreadable. They had shielded the infant with their bodies. He was taken to an undisclosed hospital and treated, then placed in the human foster system, the lottery for non-human children."

"Where he promptly disappeared," Liara sighs. "The Shadow Broker could learn a lot about wiping a trail from Systems Alliance Family and Children's Services."

"What's the status of the inhabitant?"

"It appears polar cold and the unusually dense ice and rocks surrounding her casket provided basic protection when the crypt failed. Her tissues seem hardy to freezing, possibly those of a species accustomed to long hibernation."

"Describe basic anatomy, please."

"Asarioid physiology. Bipedal mammal with large lungs, long arms and five-fingered hands and with the human-like traits of hair, body head and body, and scaleless skin. Comparisons to humans are easier."

"Compare with them then."

"Unusually dense musculature, at least in the female we have. Similar to a human athlete but without microfracture indicating intense exercise. Low body fat outside of reserves on the mammaries, upper ribcage and around the pelvic area, and the presence of four arms, not two, are the key differences. It appears that under the cranial hair covering are a series of dense flaps, anchored at the top and base of the skull. Likely mobile and able to be drawn around the head and neck like a hood. Similar, but thinner flaps exist around the arms, especially the lower pair. They seem to lack the stiffening cartilage. This tissue is mere dessicated, possibly having grown in shortly before death."

"So somewhere between a four-armed person and a bat with gliding flaps and with a lion's mane of muscle?"

"I am unable to make such value judgments, Dr. T'Soni. I can conjecture that a light-permeable burial casket with transparent insets outlined in runic markings indicates that light had a significance to them."

"And a red-giant orbiting planet would be high in light and radiation but low-biomass. They may have supplemented with photosynthesis."

"A reasonable hypothesis, Dr. T'Soni."

"Glyph, why in the blazes are theirthree races with functionally identical skeletons, similar musculature and craniums? It's beginning to scare me. Parallel evolution can't account for humans and asari, let alone...this."

"Unknowable. It does seem deliberate tempering is likely."

"Is her reproduci-no. Don't answer that."

"Deleting 13.8 zetabytes of simulated fetal hybridization."

"Which race wasoldest, though?" Liara wonders.

"Based on current evidence, the inhabitants of Earth predate the Asari in known fossil records. DC1938 might or might not. No fossil record. Another candidate is the Densorin."

"The Densorin? The Prothean era race? Explain that conjecture."

"The Densorin were known to the Protheans to have extremely advanced technology but in limited fields, all of them non-military. They engaged in extensive research into celestial mechanics, were known to make use of stellar engineering and according to Prothean-era records, conducted simulations and extrapolations of evolutions of all known languages in the galaxy at the time. Such work would align with creating and seeding garden worlds and programming pre-sentient brains. Your work suggests the Protheans ignored them as an advanced but not demilitarized and non-competitive race. They disappeared at the same time as the Protheans did."

"Do we know how they died out? That paper I wrote on them was a long time ago."

"Unknown. A failure in their artificially constructed, ten-star, two-hundred garden world home system led to a momentary spike in light output, flash-heating all planets. This renders evidence minimal. A partial Dyson sphere that attempted to escape provides nothing but the evidence they worked with strangelet particles. It is likely that a Dyson-sphere-powered functionally ecosystem in computer simulation is needed to successfully engineer races for dispersal without running real-world trials that would outive the universe. If we operate on the assumption that the three known asarioid races were deliberate constructs, they would be the ones we have evidence of having the energy generation and megastructures needed."

"Goddess. Strangelets? Dyson sphere computers and simulated ecosystems? No wonder the Protheans didn't approach them. So we have no fossil evidence on Densorin, but parallel research tracks and sufficient technical knowledge to play around with planets and evolution. Depending on how far back they go, they might have put precursors on Thessia, perhaps using humans as a template. Or humans and asari both are templates of them."

"Agreed."

"Human fossil evidence?"

"Conclusive. Steady changes from primates to the current phase and liking back to the K-T barrier to the end of the ultra-fauna reptile age they call the Cretaceous."

"Solid bet they arose on Earth then, or that modern humans were seamlessly implanted in an existing pattern. We don't have our missing link for Asari and anything five million years old for us is cartilage on the seabed. The Densorin are a black box. No idea what they were, only what they could do."

"Agreed."

"Can she be woken, Glyph?"

"Yes. Two asari days. Recommend using the cloning and picoscale protein assembly lathes we recovered from the human supremacists, however. Clone embryos and construct a mirror body. Due to some anomaly in the sheathing of her bones, cranium, cardiac, respiratory and waste-processing organs, we would need to enact additional safety protocols such as moving the lathe to an ejectable cargo pod and it would be advisable to proceed in orbit. That would add ninety-three days to the process."

"The Prothean is ready to attempt to meld, yes?"

"Correct. Minimal brain activity remains. The body is not recoverable but some type of nanomedicine conservation process is ensuring that the marginal organ function feeds the brain."

"Begin the mirroring process on the DC1938 specimen. Collect every bit of writing on that casket and dispatch three stealth-coated probes to the system to look for more. I want to start brute-forcing their language."

"Understood."

-----

Liara lifts her aching head off the deck. The meld with the Prothean as brief, beyond intense andpainfully erotic in a way a surface skim of memories should not have been. She had the sexual upgrade surgeries early--most children of the Thirty do--and she feels like a human actress must in one of those terrible vids she caught a male student watching.

Her suit is soaked below her center, the outer ridge of her cl*t feels like it might have exploded and thunderstorms crackle behind her eyelids. Her twitching, grasping azure feels like it had a supporting pylon rammed inside and proceeded to try and crush it.

There's a trickle of blood on the deck from where she almost broke her nose.

"Glyph," the croaks. "Medical report."

"You? Or the subject?"

"Subject?"

"Deceased. The lucky one, from the look of you, doctor."

Liara chuckles.

"Stick with black humor, Glyph. Then, you're funny."

"Cause of death?"

"Massive internal brain hemorrhaging. Warp burns from a reflexive attack you made."

"Scan me, now."

"Anomalies include a four hundred percent spike in passive charge in your bio-electric organs, vasodilation in sexual organs, significant hormo-"

"That will do, Glyph. Collect the blood sample I made with my face and run a full analysis, please. Do not upload it to the central database of Peeresses."

"Understood."

"Glyph, arm all the ship's weapons and prepare to make a blind jump to interstellar space. Once we reach it, turn off all unnecessary heat sources. Warm the ship back up, make periodic jumps to random points, and shut the drives down afterwards. Long-range scanners up at all times. Proceed with this subroutine until further notice."

"Routine programmed and ready. Shall I continue with the waking of the DC1938 subject?"

"Why not? I'll need someone to talk to."

She doesn't like the pain she feels in the back of her neck. Like something metallic burst or melted and given that her implants for her biotic amps are laced around her skull and thesides of herspine, she had no idea what it might be.

This means someone didn't want her knowing she had it and the first time she melded with someone deeper than a squeeze of her mother's hand, it ruptured, melted, or otherwise destroyed itself.

Chapter 7: The Worst f*cking Tuesday - Shepard

Chapter Text

Second Lieutenant (2-Lt.) Solaris Shepard, first mission after graduating N7 | Attican Traverse (undisclosed location)

Tuesday, December 18th, 2178

The wasp-sized drone that slid through the air vents up ahead is feeding to the inside of her helmet, in the upper right where the targeting display doesn't reach. Five batarians. Eighteen geth with what look like bolted-on collars around their optical sensors. Three YMIR mechs, one already booted.

Three dozen doped asari and humans. The oldest human girl is sixteen, tops. The asari aren't half that, not in their terms. Worst case, all these girls are presumed dead.

Atop a throne smeared with vorcha blood is a long-limbed asari with an Acolyte on her hip and what looks like a hand-carved heirloom warp sword on the other.

Only one pirate is blue-blooded enough to own a warp sword and have the schooling to use it.

Kiva Dassantius. She has a glassy-eyed redhead in one hand, purring like a kitten and thrashing with the aftershocks of meld-forced org*sms and a naked asari girl sprawled beside her throne. That one at least looks like she's an adult. If she's a willing participant in this f*ckery, then Shepard's going to have to come up with another messy kill.

Kiva is in Silaris armor. Gleaming, iridescent white-blue and f*cking uncrackable. Carbon nanotubes and synthetic diamond compressed by hammers made of FTL engine fields. Dreadnought cannon rounds don't break ships clad in Silaris armor. They dent it, at least for the first two dozen impacts. One of two reasons the Asari navy is light years ahead with half the ships the turians have. They not only designed the stuff, they can afford it.

She didn't know they made suits for infantry with it but scaling down, a gunship's main cannon wouldn't crack it, not without a missile barrage or torpedo drop.

A thirty-million-credit suit of armor on a pirate running a half-assed operation deep in the red. Dassantius don't need to be criminals. They're pampered brats who do it for fun.

Because why not? Why not? Why the f*ck wouldn't Shepard be faced with a pedophile lunatic wearing armor of carbon nanotubes and synthetic diamond compressed by hammers made of FTL engine fields? Why shouldn't every awful memory in her brain be shrieking at her to grab some pliers and this woman's azure off and let her bleed out when she's wrapped in something that only a frigate's main gun can crack in one shot?

That glove she doesn't have on to mind-f*ck the kid is the only exposed part of her body.

She cuts her comms.

"Pull yourself together. This is a kill box. You're the f*cking Butcher," she reminds herself.

She turns her comms back on.

"Vega," she whispers into her comm. "Heavy ammo check."

"Two missiles."

"Air support?"

"Negative."

"Anything? I've got a warlord in Silaris over here."

Vega responds with a truly juicy stream of Spanish cussing.

"What's you're sniper score, big guy?"

"Eighty-three."

I scored ninety-five.

"The f*ck? How is the bounce-and-blast girl a better sniper than the soldier?"

"Holy mysteries, skipper."

"Vega. Go around the back. She's got a ship to get off this rock. Somewhere. Find it, blow the crew apart and jack it. You have six minutes. Go."

Vega swears again.

"You're going to do a number three, aren't you?

"Just get your beefy ass in that pilot's seat."

"You don't know what you're missing," Vega teases.

"You don't have a sister, so yeah, I do know."

Shepard smiles. She doesn't have to kill Kiva. She just has to get her attention until she can drop a spaceship on her head. Bonus points if she can get her grubby mitts on that sword. She detonates the drone, sending a swarm of tiny spikes out seeking soft spots in the armor. Two in the pet human, one in the hair, and one in the back of the neck to help her keep track.

"Popping smoke and breaching on the count of ten. Pressley, stand by for hot extract. Jenkins. I want you on the shuttle's heavies."

"Yes, ma'am."

Shepard clips her ODIN back in its slot. She's not entirely sure she wants to fire it for the first time with the new three-chambered core in a deathmatch which an unbreakable woman.

Carnifex with no serial number it is.

I f*cking hate deniable missions. Off the shelf armor, civilian made weapons.

Shepard rips the prefab's front door with a quick pull. It used to be a family home so it comes apart like paper. The smoke grenades burst and fill the room with black dust laced with narcotics. The geth strike first, firing in a neat zig-zag pattern trying to find her.

Her armor is soaking it. For now.

First things first.

Shep focuses on the tags outlining the kid's neck and pulls with her biotics hard as she can while keeping the kid's spine aligned. She detaches from Kiva's grip with a scream, sliding across the floor into a broken refrigerator and collapsing in a moaning lump.

Kiva shrieks. She felt the link break too. Until her mind gets used to living only in one body, she'll be sluggish and she doesn't seem like the sort for cuddling after, tenderly uncoiling from her lover's mind.

Playtime.

The Avenger chitters in her hand. She takes Kiva's bare hand apart with a six-round burst.

She's firing a bit too fast to really aim but it doesn't matter that much. Batarians never have great helmets. Too many eyes to keep a glass plate in front of. Two go down quick and clean. One more charges her, bringing up his barrier as he does.

f*cking frankensteied batties.

No choice. She charges, clipping him on the way past before he can liquify her on impact. His barrier is a sloppy thing but it's hard but the whole point of a charge jump is it is point to point at mind-f*cking speed. She exits a few centimeters from him, shattering gravity in the area around her. The oblique angle and the greater velocity of her motion has physics on her side. Smaller and softer will punch through with enough speed. Ask any wooden arrow.

He spins off into the corner like a billiard ball, blowing a huge hole in the dining room wall before popping like a demo charge out in the nearest field.

The geth charge forward.

She grabs the middle two in a pull focusing on one in each hand and locks on the arms holding their weapons. Fifteen is a small network for the geth. Not winning any Noble Prizes for creativity. They keep firing even as she bends their aim where she wants it. As the armor she wears starts to melt around her, she flicks out a pair of warps and the fields dispel each other, popping two bubbles of extreme gravity and scattering blue fluid on every surface. Leveling the front line of geth and a batarians.

The shockwave burns off the legs and lower abdomens of three of the girls, one asari and two humans.

Shepard charges forward, not caring about the diamond-shelled lunatic in front of her. She crushes her medigel canisters in her fists and drops them, letting the pink slime seek out blood and broken flesh and close it.

Kiva starts clapping.

"The butcher, indeed."

"You'll never make it out!" Shepard shouts.

"Beg to differ, little mouse."

"Helmsman, get me out of here."

"No hablas loco," Vega jokes. Seems like he did his half of the bargain if he's in the pilot's chair of her ship.

Kiva grabs for the warp sword with the hand she used to have, acting on instinct.

"Were younot ambidextrous? I thought asari usually were. Especially the Dantius. How else are you supposed to f*ck both your mommas, you inbr-"

Shep charges to the left before Dantius's still fogged brain can see her preparing. Dantius charges straight at her and spins, looking for her prey. Shep jumps again, coming out on the far side of the throne. She snatches the warp sword and drops a dome shield over the throne. No way through that with a charge, unless Dantius fancies an energy feedback loop between her biotics and the shield's eezo that will blow a dent in the planet.

She whistles.

"Here girl! Here girl!"

Roaring and frothing her facemask and sloppy, Dantius charges.

This should be interesting.

Warp swords in the hands of a huntress who knows how to charge, keep the crowd back with throw and stay mobile are worth more in a fight than a bombing run against an enemy regiment. That is, if the person knows how to use them without sending shards of supercharged eezo everywhere. Attempting to just pick one up and use it bare-assed was what happened to the 156th Frontier when a rookie biotic got co*cky with a sword taken from an Eclipse merc. The entire 156th Frontier.

Shepard managed to get her hands on some asari-focused training vids pirated from a secure server used by Eclipse mercs. She's put in hundreds of hours in a simulated training dojo. Between that and the sketchy, too-smart-for her safety onboard intelligences of the Blackstar implants, odds are she'll just melt herself down to superheated carbon slime.

She's never cared what happens to her, just the innocents. She's the Butcher.

Dantius charges and Shepard sidesteps two feet back with one of her own, swinging the sword in a long arc made of guesswork, prayer, and Pressley's love of martial arts movies.

The charge breaks against a denser, narrower biotic field and compressed layers of diamond and calcified eezo in her armor part for a nanometer wide cutting edge overlapping folds of dark energy backed by even more hardened material. Black eezo, depleted and more perfectly latticed in its structure than diamond or even pico-manipulator scrubbed tungsten atoms.

Shepard drops her focus on the sword and yanks it free, flinging it aside as lily-white intestines spill out of Dantius with a gush of eezo-infused slime that pools on the floor.

"I usually try to play nice with asari," Shep sighs. "Never met one who wasn't a fifteen out of ten in bed."

She kicks Dassantius over onto her back, nestles the Avenger into the wound, and fires until it overheats. The armor keeps the shells inside, forty steel needles bouncing at fifty thousand miles an hour, ricocheting over and over inside the shell and spraying purple glop inside the helmet. A few rounds escape out the sleeve of the hand she blew off, one of them pinging an asari hostage in the gut but not really penetrating. The girl has a solid barrier, even doped up.

The last batarian is dragging his top half towards a crate of grenades, leaving a smear of green blood behind him. Shepard pulls the crate out of his grip and into the air with a lift field. She unclips the ODIN and puts it between his two working eyes.

"I was on Mindoir, did you know that? I was happy."

She pulls the trigger, emptying all three barrels. Dropping the gun and dropping to her knees, eezo-depletion pain sizzling her muscles head to toe, Shepard manages to get her eyes over to the heads-up display trigger for comms for the nearest Alliance ship.

"HVT is KIA. We need extract plus fifteen and severe trauma times five. LZ is still hot. Enemy present at reduced strength. Over."

"This is Mercy 1-2 from the Hawking. Heard and received, Tombstone. We are through the relay and I have fish on my ten two and six o'clock. ETA twenty minutes."

"Give me wing lead."

"Wing Leader Cortez. Scanners show a hell of a mess down there, ma'am."

"Didn't get them all. I need you to blast a road up to the front door of this cabin."

"Solid copy ma'am. Two and Three, you heard the lady! Redline it. Go ahead and do it. I got the turtle!"

She cuts the feed to the quick response team and tags the channel for Vega.

"Vega," Shepard croaks. "Demo that ship's engines and come help me with the girls."

-----

A white-haired woman with a severe face and three sharp but small laugh lines is standing over her.

"You gave us quite the scare, Lieutenant."

"Happy to serve, ma'am," Shepard manages with a half-paralyzed tongue.

"You do realize human bones aren't meant to take near-lightspeed impacts with the barriers of trained biotics?"

"Missed that in grade school."

"Lord, the file was not kidding about you."

She pats Shepard's battered, entirely f*cking purple hand. The bones inside must be almostpowder to bruise like that. It should hurt like hell but she's too doped up. The doc taps her finger on the IV reservoir to even out the bubbles.

"Before you ask, The children are fine. Physically. We're en route to Arcturus. The nearest station with the capacity for asari-safe cybernetic reconstructive surgery."

"Solaris Shepard."

"Dr. Karin Chakwas. Seems I need to transfer to whatever boat you're on if you're going to live out the year," she grumbles.

Chapter 8: The Worst f*cking Tuesday - Liara

Chapter Text

Dr. Liara T'Soni | Interstellar space, random jump to 8 LY from Hawkins

Tuesday, December 18th, 2178

Liara knew space was cold. Two hundred Kelvin below the deepest Thessian oceans safe for free-swimming. Her primary school safety lectures covered it in case of accidents in suborbital commuter ships. Her body would reflexively seal up, giving her at most thirty minutes. Find something to pull towards with your biotics and look for an emergency chamber or escape pod, her teacher said.

What she wasn't aware of is how cold it is in aspaceship trying to run quietly. There's full oxygen onboard but nothing but minimum safe heat from the heaters. She rotated the cargo pods with active machines to the center of the cluster and flooded the others with oxygen during the last pass to dump drive charge.

She is living in a narrow tube. Three extremely minimalist crew quarters stacked end to end with eight pods of projects, storage, and experiments rotating around it at speed to lower the need for artificial gravity. Wrapped inside almost three hundred cubic kilometers of frozen oxygen in the other one hundred twenty pods. She never thought she'd be glad she once accompanied her mother to Noveria for Thirty business. It's a cesspool of ruthless corporate greed but the gift shop does sell an amazing arctic weather coat.

"Stand by," the ship's VI chimes. "The new commander is aboard. Re-initiating all life support functions and commencing boot-up of FTL drive."

She taps her omni and Glyph hurries to her side.

"Explain."

"We have been boarded."

"By?"

"They shot out the sensors. I have partial images."

He displays them.

Two asari, both late-matron stage and so heavily barriered they slip in and out of transparency at the edges of their outlines. In crimson armor and carrying biotic-sensitive whips and nets.

Justicars.

"Glyph, use your cyberwarfare package to take circuit-level control of the main systems. Transfer airlocks, life support and gravity to me. Prepare to detach the front spinal column of the ship and warm up the auxiliary command deck. If I don't return, jump back to Hawkins, pick a relay and make a random-path jump to Grissom Academy to contact Kahlee Anderson. Keep them guessing. Don't refuel except in the heart of Alliance space."

"The human school for the gifted?"

"I can't think of anyone else who'd trade me for this research. Expel my hardsuit out the rear airlock in open configuration for quick sealing. I need a QEC beacon attached to my hardsuit and seventy-two hours of oxygen."

"That will take nine minutes."

"At earliest opportunity, detach all oxygen-bearing pods. Inert drift. Highlight their onboard power cores for me using the traffic control lights."

"Understood. Please do not suffer a compute and sensory systems failure, Doctor. I would be...lonely.

"Well, Glyph...the plan is definitely to avoid that."

Liara clips an insane, six-chambered heavy pistol she got off the abandoned corps of a Cerberus agent to her hip along with the deeply illegal shotgun she found on the next body. Both loaded with depleted thorium rounds. At full velocity, these will explode nuke-hot in a blast the size of a fist and leave fatal radiation in the resulting wound.

She coils the centuries' old warp whip she received as a going-away present behind her back and clips a half-dozen biotic batons to her other thigh.

"Ardat-Yakshi filth, submit for execution. Owing to your family's status and your low kill count, you are entitled to death by sedative overdose. Don't make this difficult. Present yourself to the bridge immediately."

Liara hits the intercom.

"You've got the wrong girl."

I melded with the DC1938mirror clone without killing it. That's how I know it's brain-damaged.

"We doubt that," the matron replied, her voice even and smoky and entrapping.

In any other case, Liara would want her lips on her skin sucking the skill at seduction right out of her.

"Your spinal bomb failed to detonate but it did alert us."

"You know damn well I can't. I fall, so does house T'Soni and our future and I doubt even your order wants to try and survive clipping the branches of one of the Tree. Clip one branch, you have wounded all. You number what, a thousand? T'Armal has an army of war matriarchs half that size and war priestesses and paladins eight times that number."

"You talk about my family? You should realize that a member of the Thirty is just as entitled to lethal self-defense as you."

She takes her hand off the button.

"Timer on my omnitool, Glyph. I need to know the instant the ships mechanical core and the project pods are safely away."

Eight minutes two seconds.

She's armed but not armored and these women have spent centuries tracing fully-fed Ardats with centuries of escapes, killings, and duels under their belt. She just didn't want to lie to Glyph. Liara closes her eyes.

"Athame, great one. She who shielded us from the black rain and the burn of Cytha's rage. Lead me to shelter. She whose embrace gave us language. Make me wise. Janiri, whose stormy kiss made even the Goddess blush, keep me my aim true. Let me strike wild as your storms and careful as lightning on the lone tree. Lucen, handmaiden and teacher, let your might and your powers flow me. Help me wield it. Atone with Athame by aiding her faithful."

"Goddess. First among maidens, matrons and matriarchs. If my fate is to die, in your mercy take me to your bosom in the Great Dawn."

Glyph is busy so she tracks the Justicars by mapping which security cameras they blow out.

"Glyph, one additional command. Are any of the DC1938 specimens intact?"

"One of the mirror clones. We were unable to recreate the nonstandard matter in the skull on the first and second attempts. The second brain entirely failed to function so I loaded it with a redbox and neural-lace implants."

Remote control of a sentient body? Naughty, naughty, little drone.

"Wake it. Put it out into the hallway to protect the chamber and if it were to rip these bitches limb from limb, I'd be glad of it."

"Done."

"Spinal couplings for all the liquid oxygen pods detached," Glyph reports. "Spinning them out with maneuvering thrusters in three, two one..."

The ship shudders as a billion tons of cargo spins out into the void like sticks ripped from a bundle.

She goes to her omnitool and cuts the gravity. They're no doubt wearing mag boots but she doubts any of them ever played a zero-G exhibition waveball match for Serrice.

She heads forward, kicking off from ridges in the bulkheads and fat rungs of ladders meant to take heavy volus bodies.

If they come to her, no doubt they'll find the labs and blow the ship.

Shouts in liturgical Serrician bounce off the walls up ahead and the multi-tonal voice of the DC1938 specimen--like a six-voice choir--shrieks back.

Liara ducks into an empty mess hall, refocuses on her barrier, and grips the pistol.

She kicks off tables and trash cans on her way to theother door to the mess, the one that opens on the corridor the Justicars are in. The specimen from DC1938 is bloodied, one half the ribcage exposed but even with its badly deformed, minimally infused skeleton, it's standing. The bones are glowing with bright yellow light so intense Liara raises her helmet tint. The exposed, splintered bones of the two right hands are sunk into the flesh of one of the justicars, jagged bones sinking into her armor like a hand passing through smoke. The other arms are wrapped around her throat.

It's using a suicidal style of martial arts designed by Krogan to take as many rachni or turians with them as possible. Glyph must have loaded its redbox with some sort of infantry training VI.

"I have three more where it came from!" Liara calls out. "That's the weak one."

It's a lie but fanatics aren't scientists, as a rule.Under no circ*mstances will she sacrifice the original or a functional clone. They managed to build indestructible matter into their bones, for Goddess' sake and somehow it never infects their other tissues. If she can befriend it, it might have knowledge so great that the gift would dwarf the mass relays.

The standing matriarch generates a huge throw field, knocking the creature away and onto its back.

She goes over to her comrade, who grabs her ankle.

"For my service to the Goddess," she pleads.

Sighing and kneeling, she takes her coworker? friend? lover? by the cheeks and snaps her neck. Not so much as a tear.

Thessia should have outlawed these lunatics ages ago. Spies or soldiers can kill an Ardat. Might take more of them but it would keep these sociopathic paladins out of their cities.

"I have the right to know your name!" Liara calls out. "To kill in the shadow is to disgust the goddess!"

"So well-schooled, little one. I am Samara. And you are already dead."

The justicar's acolyte is rapidly depleting Liara's barrier and the eezo-infused combat stim she jammed into her thigh in the mess hall doesn't give her long.

There's a pipe that is strangey free of the ice the walls still wear. Meaning it has heat. Power conduit or combustible fuel for thrusters and life support.

Liara rips it open with a pull and empties four of the pistol's rounds into the justicar's barrier, leaving each red-hot chamber rotated and extended out for cooling.

"You are crafty, little one. Do you honestly think fire will harm me?"

Liara switches to the shotgun a moment before her barriers fail. She fires all three rounds, slamming the justicar with hundreds of spinning darts of radioactive metal that pop like fireworks against her barrier. Sliding her target back a few feet and propelling herself backwards past three bulkheads. She slams her fist into the control to close the one nearest her.

Her own barrier is failing and her underfed body can't keep up for long, highborn bloodlines or not. The bodysuit won't take more than one Acolyte hit. If that.

No time left.

Taking the baton in her palm, she flings it into the doorway beside the Justicar and it crumples like a balled-up piece of paper, exposing them both to the decompression. The mag boots keep her opponent anchored. The change in terrain gives Liara time to leap forward and duck back inside the mess hall.

She's too drained to use the warp whip so she takes a knife from the galley, holds it under the heater for the stove until it's red hot. The hallway outside is filled with oxygen-laced glucose meant for burning in the captain's cabin and the secondary heaters.

Pulling the largest plate of metal she can with her remaining reserves, she glides back into the hallway and throws the knife as the Disciple shotgun slams into the table she is covering herself with. Searing pain hits her arms and her gut. As the bread knife drifts end-over-end, the justicar hunkers down and turns her barrier into a bubble.

Liara slams into the wall, flattening herself as best she can to stay out of the line of fire.

The waving shimmer of released gas has begun to freeze back in the cold. Only the fresh outpouring keeps most of it flammable vapor.

"Drift, bitch."

The knife makes contact. The entire corridor turns orange and she lunges to get under the nearest bulkhead. The automatic system snaps it down so fast it nearly takes her foot. While she watches through armored glass, mag-boots fail and the justicar is sucked out into the void, still safe in her barrier. Her self-inflicted prison. She can drop it and freeze or keep it and run out her air supply.

"Glyph."

"Three minutes."

"Keep our distance from her. Locate the justicar and use the onboard weapons to ignite the oxygen tanks closest to her."

"Firing now. Done."

-----

When she woke this morning and took the nearly-frozen ajahe fruit out of the bedside bowl, Liara hadn't planned on spattering great violet globs of blood and probably intestinal fluid on the deck on her way back to her cabin. Walking with a wound like this is a terrible idea but she has no choice. The terminal there is the last place she can take control of the ship back.

She rips a medkit off the wall and opens it with blood slicked hands.

Medigel. Meant for volus. Good. The allergic reaction will overcharge my immune system.

She jams the injector into the wound and empties it.

The last thing she remembers is her own scream echoing in the thin air of the hallway.

-----

She awakes bandaged in a warm room with clean sheets. Not her cabin. Some of the gear from the medbay is in here. Someone is leaning in her doorway, back on one side and dirty boots in the other. The gravity has been turned back on because the bedsheets aren't cinched down. They're resting on their own.

"Lucen's tit*, kid. Dropping two red-crests with off the shelf kit and in a civvie jumpsuit? You're a beast. You got your mom's cool head and my dad's blood rage in you."

"What?"

"My father was Krogan."

"So what? How do you know my mother?"

"Get some rest, Little Wing."

The hazy, unclear face in front of her is not Benezia. Her mother is soft, head to toe and the only hard thing about her is her cheekbones. This asari is lean, muscular, and quite tall. She's wearing a tight ballistic undersuit for armor. Her face is sharply boned, nose cheeks, jaw. The outline is handsome but there's not much padding them. She's carrying half a dozen guns and a warp-whip of her own. The only things about her that does not look like a predator are her tear-filled eyes. She has the figure of a matriarch with the widened hips and shoulders and the increases inassets but the rest of her is toned like a maiden commando who's been on a campaign for a century.

Her bare arms are wrapped with the sort of muscle a human athlete wears.

There's only one matriarch who looks like this. Who is shaped like a spear and has no manners and the posture of melted ice. Who always slouches in her chair at the council. Who none of the others like to talk to except Nisii T'Armal, the most powerful asari in the galaxy. Empress in all but name.

"Matriarch Atheyta? You're my mother's bondmate?"

"Opposites attract, Little Wing."

"How do you know that name?"

A kiss is pressed to her forehead. A body so sizzling with eezo that the interaction makes her itch long after they part.

"Helped your mom pick it."

"Father?"

"Yeah. So glad I can say it out loud, my girl.

"Stay, please. With me."

"Promise I'll be here in the morning. I'll lie here with you until you fall asleep."

She climbs into the bed beside Liara and takes her non-bandaged hand.

"Sorry I didn't introduce myself before."

"It's..."

Liara's mouth is thick, sloppy with drool and her tongue is like lead. Sedatives.

"I hope there was a reason."

"Made a deal with Nezzie. Not until she asked me to or until I need to save your life. Was about to break it just because I was so proud."

Chapter 9: Friday Nights - Liara (1)

Chapter Text

Dr. Liara T'Soni | Interstellar space, random jump to 8 LY from Hawkins

Friday, December 18th, 2178

The justicar's ship is bare, cleaned of personality and most forms of physical comfort. It has enough weapons to outfit an army and enough hunting nets, harpoons, traps, mines and so on to outfit a production company's coverage of a thresher maw hunt.

It's actually a much-refitted exploration ship from the First Wave of colonization, from the look of it. These ships were built by hand using some uncanny alloy found in old wrecks on the deepest seabeds. Whole teams of matriarch craftswomen worked biotically to soften the metal for a few seconds so another, even larger team could warp it for a joint to be fused.

Already old during the Rachni wars, these ships became lendend during it and all but three were thought lost. A starfighter from the raid on the Rachni homeworld sits in the history department of Serrice's main hall with the broken-off stinger of the queen still embedded.

This ship is not a tribute or a recreation, Liara can tell that much.

Where the cool, beetle-green material of the hull is exposed inside, on the corridor the walls, it hums and whines like a nearby insect. Starhum, the first explorers called it. No other material reacts to a vacuum like this.

The spars for the solar sails are still in place, probably attached to flash-forging panels to just print new ones. The hull is painted in a heat-scattering polymer. The eezo core is modern, no doubt, and the engines, and the weapons. Silaris armor in classic Justicar red has been wrapped around the ships' ancient skin. A quick stroll tells Liara that the space once used to house, feed and amuse a hundred settlers and cartographers is now packed with engines, half a dozen mass effect cores, a full dozen barrier generators, and a collection of lance-shaped, crystalline spears that sit in grooves at the forward end of the engine compartment, bathed in eezo-rich liquid helium.

Liara wonders if the Justicars who blessed the Destiny Ascension after when she was rebuilt and relaunched might have helped themselves to the smaller weapons from the derelict they helped move it to Thessia for rebuilding.

This was a happy ship. Made by hand by the elders to found farms and homes, its shape deliberately sleek for frequent atmospheric flight and glide-only landings. Curving and sloped so it would appear pleasant to settlers soaring overhead. City-states had distinctive pigments they used for the fins of the sails so visitors could be told apart from returning founders. As many as two hundred could once have used this ship. A few dozen huntresses, the mad maidens of the olden days who plotted new worlds, bashing trees down with singularities so crops could be planted. A small crew to run the ship and settlers that called it home. Birthed little ones on their way to new soil for them to play in.

Now, a dozen could live aboard, if they were an intimate enough group of friends. A few more, if beds were shared.Kitchens remain, and a tiny garden deck. The baths have no doubt been replaced with one or two showers.

Liara runs her fingers along the plating, wishing she could apologize. Such a beautiful thing to have been twisted into a butcher's knife.

For a ship so irreplaceable and so ornate, it's impersonal. Two such ships arrived and they can't tell which justicar used which. The archaic and inscrutable justicar dialect seems to be used for uniform markings and personal effects so she can't tease out which toothbrush, breather or a spare set of armor reads 'Samara' and which one doesn't.

"Can't believe one of those hollow-crested twats stole my ship," Aethyta grumbles in her ear.

"Sorry."

"Ha! Don't be. It was a tub, little wing. I folded in a card game on Ilium and paid for it in cash when I heard you might be in trouble. Still doesn't mean it belonged to her just because you blew her holier-than-thou ass through the co*ckpit glass with that explosion. Doubt she made it through. All the medigel onboard was in my pack and I had the only repair kit stashed in the engine bay. If she managed a jump, the emergency return program was programmed for Pearl."

"The abandoned pleasure planet?"

"Mmm-hmm," she chuckles. "Not abandoned. Your mother and I mai-"

"That will be enough of that conversation," Liara snaps.

"Anyway. It rebuilt itself as an independent, non-profit colony after the Krogan Rebellions. The police there don't owe her sh*t. She'll stand out like an emergency flare just based on the celibacy. The moment she tries to tell someone to cover up, she'll get confronted."

Dead, then. Stupid idea to jump in a ship with a cracked forward hull and no way to seal it. Resort worlds in remote areas usually have excellent militias.

"But," her father chuckles. "I get to steal hers after you killed her and this old girl is amazing. Fair trade."

Liara hasn't dared to ask her fatherwhy justicars are such a sore point for Aethyta.

The first hypothesis is scary, and also all but certain. At least in part. That the justicars have grown arrogant over millennia and their goals now diverge from or oppose the common good of the asari people. They must be infiltrating the Thirty if they're implanting bombs made to chain surrendered ardats in highborn daughters. The Thirty are the Thirty in part because they do not produce ardats from their pureblood pairings. Public knowledge.

Wealthy families with unbreakable genetic health. Outside the Justicars reach. Free from intimidation.

The respect afforded to the Thirty is greater than that afforded to the Justicars and at a certain point, the head of the Order must get sick of looking out over the Goddess' Nest at the temple and the Speaker's Tower. One little plaza of pale sandstone with two citadels at the gates and a temple at the apex. The Voice of Athame steps out to pick some ajahe for breakfast from the public orchard and is immediately mobbed, the faithful crowding her and asking for advice and blessings.

The same folks skitter fearfully away the moment they see red boots on the paving stones.

Another possibility is more worrisome but even more impossible than a member of the Thirty being an ardat. Justicar turncoats simply do not exist. A fact which suggests they kill their own rather than allow leaks of information or the telling of tales from within. Her father has the anger of a disgruntled convert but she lacks the ritual tattoos and implanted jewelry, if those could evenbe removed.

The last hypothesis hurts worst.

Did Liara need that implant? Did she kill that Prothean, the last of a great race, with her diseased brain? Is Liara an ardat? Had she not already disgraced the Thirty enough? Did she need to be the death of House T'Soni as well?

Did her parents violate an ancient and holy law for a few more years to lie to a broken child?

Only that theory accounts for the events without wild leaps of faith. The sudden appearance of her heavily armed father moments after the justicar attacked. In time to rescue Liara and bind her wounds. The blood on the rags hadn't clotted before they got changed. Leaving an engine trial that suggests she was willing to melt the junker freighter's engine core to ash to make it in time.

"You all right, little wing?" Aethyta calls over the comm.

"I'm fine."

Even to her ears it sounds forced. Too quick and too loud.

"I haven't killed," she sighs. "Not like that. Notsetting out to bring someone into a trap. To arrange a way I could kill them."

She's killed a handful of people, always in self-defense. Underachiever, for a maiden her age off-world in places Council militaries can't protect little rich girls living alone. Until today, all were pirates trying to kill her, or slavers unlucky enough to cross paths. Pirates are part of digging on any but the calmest planets. Where there are pirates taking cargos, there are slavers following them, picking orphans from the rubble like maggots picking at wounds.

Liara's not afraid of slavers. Less dangerous than other criminals, because of their supposed 'strength'. Too used to having thugs and unwilling slaves to fight for them. Too quick to roll back their army and protect their slave pens at the slightest hint someone is hitting their base to take their property. Leaving their sanctums, bedrooms and offices almost unguarded.

Aethyta chuckles.

"You're a maiden, little wing. Barely above the surface of the waves. At your age, most haven't needed to do more than use a throw to push a grabby customer back while stripping. I was good with a shock stick when I was your age but my cousins were all krogan pups from dad's side. Liked to roughhouse."

Then I'm worse. This isn't my first.

"Of course, you've always been different. Most maidens don't get their azure in a knot before they hit seventy, impulse buy a skiff on graduation day and blast through unmapped relays with a shovel, a pistol and some notepads. You put way more on the 'explore' and less on the 'experience' part of being a maiden, you nitwit."

"I'll fill the cups as I like," Liara gripes.

Her father's barking, loud laughter replies. Her laugh really does have the boisterous, unrestrained, all-or-nothing way of a krogan to it.

"That old gem? Goddess! Your mother thinks that saying is old-fashioned. Tsk-tsk, already a staid old matriarch are we?"

"Hush," Liara whines. "I'm busy trying to think, dad."

"Dad," Aethyta mumbles like it's mostly to herself. "I was going to say it sounded like anthropomorphic bullsh*t, but no. Hearing it from you, it's cute."

"Hang on," Liara mutters. "Some kind of panel."

The panel is Silaris armor, like the lining of the exterior hull. Which is odd for an interior, nonskeletal piece of the ship's frame. It looks vacuum hardened. The terminal on the panel is modern.

"I've got a vault. Between the sleeping quarters and the study space."

On the comm, the pounding of a fist on metal can be heard.

"Me too. Weird. What does an order with vows of poverty, chastity and all that crestrot need with a vault like the Armali central bank? On every ship. Follow up. Where in the blazes were they keeping so many of the old beauties hidden?"

"No idea," Liara admits. "Glyph, have a utility drone run a cable out here. I want you to brute force this terminal."

"That'll take centuries. We're not getting any younger, kid."

Liara scoffs.

"Glyph is an AI. Or rather, a group of them. Like a flock of yahl birds, swarming around each other at a tree. The drone is just a figurehead."

"Well, that's..."

Aethyta coughs.

"Ominous."

"AI crime is nothing. I just murdered two justicars in cold blood," Liara reminds her. "The order has never lost more than one in a year. No one since Orasa killed two."

"You arenot a monster, little one. I never want to hear you compare yourself to that...that thing. Not ever. Understand? If anything, you're zausmel in that story, daughter mine. Your heart beats twice for others every time it beats once for you. I remember that would move the beetle nests out of the yard so you wouldn't find the husks of the dead ones. The way you sobbed when you would find dead birds in the yard...never really left me."

"I've gotten more used to death in the rim," Liara admits. "Killing, too."

"How many pirates have you had to flatten for trying to snag a T'Soni for a slave?" Aethyta wonders. "I imagine it's softened the Terminus up enough for the council to retake it."

"Not sure," Liara admits. "Pirates from the major bands stopped going near any ship I painted my mark on."

One of the ship's repair drones taps on the airlock with a manipulator claw, holding out the optical cable she asked glyph for. Liara spreads the strands across the panel and taps her omni.

"Estimated cracking time, three to nine hours."

"Wow. That's some toy, little wing."

"Thanks."

"That wouldn't happen to be the ghost story of an AI that an Eclipse warlord stole and got killed in bed by SPECTREs over, would it?"

Liara scoffs.

"No, she tried to cheat me out of it. And have me shot when I complained."

"I've spent enough time in merc bars Ilium has me on call as a consultant. They asked me to check-in. That kill was so clean it was painterly. War priestess could, most of them at least. Flame of Athame could do it in her sleep but she draws attention if she goes off-world. Those ladies are shock and awe types and the paladins in the huntress corps are more so. Shock and awe wakes the naked ladies to either side of the grease stain that got dragged up the wall as it melted. Told them that given what the victim was up to, a disagreement with a direct descendant of a member of the Thirty was their best bet."

"You told them it was me?"

"No! If I thought it was you, I would've lied. My exact words were 'you are looking for someone you don't want to actually catch' on the last page of my report. Skilled biotic with excellent control and endurance. Extensive training with all the different knives in the drawer. In other words, someone like a high family member, such as Aria T'Loak."

"She is not a-wait."

Liara slumps to the deck.

"What?"

"Aria T'Loak, queen of Omega? The Violet Hammer herself?"

"Yeah, dad?"

"She was born Aresia Sirais T'Armal. Your mother taught her calligraphy class, if you can believe."

"T'Armal," Liara mumurs. "She's from...why would she..."

Liara drops her head into her hands.

"Was that the whole confusion about T'Armal succession that Matriarch Guna was complaining about?" she asks into her sleeves.

"Same one. Aria was a bit hot under the collar and it turned out the lure of the family fortune wasn't enough to keep her calm and polite when she hit maiden stage. Red sand binge. Got into treatment. Ended up knocked up by a turian deserter she met in treatment. Cute kid. White knight type who would lead the biotics-rights protests at the turian embassy. Disappeared. The instant a ship stuffed with dead Blood Pack mercs pulled into a refueling depot with her face stamped on the bridge, everyone knew who it was. No one said anything."

Aria T'Loak had been next in line to the greatest pile of money, power and influence any living being enjoys and left it for a maiden's fling. Not even trying to get permission to elope. Next her father is going to tell Liara that the Protheans were actually just Hanar wearing rubber costumes...or that eezo is made from varren spit.

"How many have you had to kill, daughter mine?" Aethyta asks.

"Not too many, really," Liara sighs. "Five pirates. One after the other, the first four. Since then, they either obey the mark on the hull or settle for me getting them where I want them and breaking their hands and feet. I tell them that I'll stop crushing their skull through their armor if they go think about their actions."

"My little girl is even gentle with pirates and slavers."

"Pirates, yes. Slavers...no. Slavers, Dad. With slavers, I don't keep count. Slavers don't count, not with how they take and just use other beings."

"Honor among thieves, little wing?"

"You know the old joke. All varrens have teeth but not all varrens have tooth-rot."

"True. I've been known to hitch a ride with pirates engaged in some good old fashioned cargo redistribution. Cheap passage and they never ask what I'm up to."

"Why do you evenneed cheap?"

"I'm the last, kiddo. I don't even bother using my name. My house is and always will be T'Soni. Because I love your mother, of course. My line's future is...whatever you do. Whatever amazing, insane, tilt the galaxy like a saucer falling of a table things that you do with your life is what I'll be in the books for. Little note that said 'hugged her'. Your mom pays my way when we're together, I let her. But when I'm traveling, I pay my own way."

"Sounds lonely," Liara sighs.

"It is, especially since I haven't had, haven'twanted anybody since I laid eyes on Nezzy."

"What was that like?"

"Let's just say that a maiden bit younger than me walked in and asked for directions to the minerals exchange on Nos Astra in a voice that melted my spine. Not only could I not work my mouth to answer your mom, I managed to spill a bucket of ryncol on myself. And on her. She was wearing...whew. Let me think. A red dress someone from T'Van made her. And a yellow scarf."

Liara laugh echos faintly in the thin, cold atmosphere of the justicar's ship.

"Foaha tree yellow? Like the underside of the spring leaves?"

"How'd you know?" Aethyta teases.

"Mother always used to wear yellow. That exact yellow. First memories I really have are all in yellow. My bed. Her sleeves. Tugging on her skirts. Never saw her in matriarch black outside of the council meetings or the temple library. At home, never saw her in anything but yellow and white."

"Ah. Well, the dress was ruined..." Aethyta sighs.

"...the scarf wasn't."

"Exactly. The scarf wasn't, little wing."

"The next morning, I found a scarf laying on the bar when I opened up. Note tucked inside the knot at one end."

Chapter 10: Friday Nights - Liara (2)

Chapter Text

Dr. Liara T'Soni | Interstellar space en route to Pearl | IARV Passionfruit (formerly KU-839. transponder change pending)
Friday, December 20th, 2178

The justicar's ship is a curious mix of ancient technology, state of the art and gadgets and systems that supposedly do not exist. With the exception of the FTL drive and hull itself, everything is redundant and can be done in both modern and ancient ways. Antiproton engines or sails. Energy-lance weapons taken from some mid-sized gun on the Destiny Ascension or biotically sensitive tungsten rods with an explosive core plus a keen eye and an open hatch. An impressive onboard computer and top-notch sensors that are literally woven on top of the glass. Light-amplifying binoculars and glass-only telescopes. A medical bay with three full-body caskets that look like someone spliced them together from the sorts of paleo-tech she finds at her digs, except they're clearly made to specifications. The markings are all in the liturgical dialect of Armanese but she's fairly certain she's seen shards of ceramic like the outer shell two layers down from the Prothean era debris on Feros.

Nothing can reshape these hulls, not without lost arts of large-scale biotic crafting. So the order either put things on top with nanoparticle adhesives, like they did with armor, or picked components that would fit in the slots or in the cabins and rooms themselves, then simply ran conduits, cables whatever, around the doorways and through any windows between adjacent rooms. Refurbished them like moving a couch from the parlor to the bedroom. Incredibly wasteful, since they needed ten mass effect cores to achieve the mix of redundancy and power they wanted and since two whole decks are filled with the daisy-chained kinetic barrier generators.

Liara can't fault their shipwright for creativity, though.

Two different ships. One that puts out no heat, relies on dead reckoning and notes to can drop an explosive brick through the window of an ardat-yakshi's cabin on Omega. Another that can drop from a relay, power up barriers and engines that would meltany ship made of ordinary metal from the inside. Strike with with a salvo of plasma beams no wider than sewing needle tips but so hot they leave trails of quarks from the ripped-up helium atoms nearby. Knifing through a pirate queen's stolen ship with ease.

Liara supposes even those who kill their comrades without a tear revere something and this strange mix of new tech cradling older tech is proof they revere these ships.

The hull is older than the oldest of the night-trees on the northern shores. The kind that crack when they finally draw in too much eezo. Older than human written history.

The red-tinted Silaris plating is five years old and was inspected four months ago. The kinetic barrier generators are layered, redundant, and controlled by a VI to balance them, swapping a fresh field into the slot of a failing one. The short-range engines have thruster channels and emitters using the most recent configuration the Sirta shipyards make for a ship this size. Linked and looped into the FTL core for efficiency. A jump core and and field coils that all include markings in Thessian Standard, painted over something else. Liara checks it on the exonet and finds it's the imprint from some human conglomerate she's not familiar with. The manual lying next to the drives is in English and says it is called ODY-C Prototype Mark I and it was a microscale proof of concept for some lunatic crossing of darkspace to send colonists to Andromeda.

Even the eezo is unusually well refined. Traders call that paler, smoother shade in the fuel blocks 'Serrice select'.

A sextant, handheld telescopes and drawing canvas sat near a stack of erasable glass-etching starcharts on the floor when Liara slid into the pilot's seat, detailing the core and this half of the rim. The handwriting on it is a dead alphabet no longer used in Armanese. The justicar had been using first-wave, hand-drawn starcharts. Probably for a lark.

The fact that they were so complete means this ship may well be one that one of the Lost Maidens used. Following the example of Matriarch Dilgina but working from youth so as to have more centuries, they left Thessia at a hundred. Scattering to the winds a huntress-legion strong, they swore to map, document, locate, write about and discover the universe. Returning their findings to caches near the homeworld. Under their oath, their missions ended with death or bondmating to an alien, nothing else. The salarians were not discovered for three thousand more years.

Liara laid each sheet out on a different unused bed with a reverence that in hindsight, makes her blush.

The proximity alarm on her omni lights up and her father's voice crackles over the comms.

"Easy, kid. Back off my channel in the relay. Autopilot on these is a bitch."

"These ships were probably never meant to be used in group operations," Liara replies. "Too few justicars to double up."

"Probably. Amazing they don't trip in the shower and skewer themselves, given this sh*t."

Many of the data discs Liara found in the vault Glyph cracked contain stolen plans. Salarian. Turian. Drell. Quarian. Geth, though that was a hardcopy for safety's sake. With nothing but basic training in mechanical engineering, Liara can only guess the exact nature of each item.

She's a student of cultures, though. The devices, serums, medical chambers, weapons, ship components and even artifacts all shared a theme: war, fertility, and religion.

Human texts centered around Ares and Aphrodite, or Odin and Frigga, or Kama and Shiva. Asari artifacts either already stolen or soon-to-be-stolen by 'the guardians of the pure' range from the Library of Asha to erotic texts of a curiously deviant bent from the Third Era of Colonization.

Every single item came with a warning to the sisterhood to keep one's mind steady and pure.

Justicars are going around stealing designs for infantry weapons, artificial enhancement surgeries for biotic, chemical, biological and starship mounted weapons, euphoric drugs, neural control collars. The shopping list of either a matriarch with very eager and trusting lovers, curious interests and unlimited money for her bedroom make-believe, or the supplies worst of the worst of the sex slavers and cult leaders. Odd things for a group planning to remain celibate.

The least unsettling thing was the map of human colonies. The human worlds are few in number and so often crowed about in government and corporate propaganda that human colony locations are practically public knowledge.

It was a goddess-damned tour advert, after all.

Glyph's still deep in cracking some files she found in a secret panel inside the vault. Slow going with his main compute strength back on theStarclan which they left hidden in a system near Hawkins.

The title concerns her, though.

Ensuring the Eternal Unity of the Children of Athame.

Nothing has ever unified the asari, not in groups larger than a family, or a city. Batarians dictate. Vorcha claw. Krogans posture and bellow. Turians give orders. Salarians maneuver and assassinate. Asari talk and talk and talk and finally either agree or agree to disagree. Nothing has brought them under one banner. Not the threat of violence, not greed, not romance, not lust.

Liara supposes the romantic bent of her people comes closer than anything to a universally shared experience. The curious little shiver that went through trillions of minds at once when the first images of a human woman--a marine named Rebecca Florez--escaped the Turian military network. Copper skinned, grimacing, bracing her arm against a girder and sheltering her injured comrade behind her own barrier, she looked like a huntress in a torn-up food wrapper. Except she had no crests and no scales and instead had a messy pile of sweaty ringlets of black hair. Matriarchs of twelve centuries were as struck with the philosophical and religious implications as the maidens of sixty were stuck working out the geometric implications of what to do with a naked woman. The citizen's forums exploded in number as the discussions of politics--and the tips and tricks--created a surge in new posts not seen since the Krogran rebellions.

No being has ever offered to hold a mirror up to the asariin the way the female of the human species does.

"May their tulips unify us," Liara jokes, tilting her bottled water to the windscreen.

"Whatever you say, little wing. Your magic waveball cracked those files yet?"

"No. Progress is steady. Matter when, not if. If we link back up with my lab and the whole system can apply, a few days. I'm afraid what happens when he does."

"Me too, kid."

Liara gingerly balances the datapad on her knees. Her genetic scan, plus an overlay her father provided.

There, clear as day and red as sin, are the outlines of four infamous gene clusters. Nine more that her father highlighted but have no recorded meaning in medical files.

The image seems to whisper at her. Demon. Killer. Vermin.

The wordsArdat-Yakshi don't appear on the screen because the automatic report Justicars receive whenever a gene-test happens in a hospital is silenced. Only with the overlay her father provided does the image solidify. Some sort of shift, moving the offending DNA out of place rather than simply removing it. LIke it's hiding stones in exact the same pattern in th sand but spread farther apart and starting in a different place.

"How long have you and mom known?" Liara asks. "That I was..."

"Ardat?"

"Please don't," she begs. "Don't say it like it's nothing."

"Before you were born, kid. Hard not to be. Me and your mom are."

"WHAT?"

"Don't pop a crest. Nothing's changed."

"EVERYTHING HAS CHANGED!"

"Little wing, please. Calm, calm, calm," her father shushes. "Deep breaths. Breathe, breathe, breathe."

Goddess, that's the same routine mother used when I had a fever when I was a kid.

"More than a few houses in the Thirty have...what did my mother call them..."

The suit comms carry the sound of snapping fingers.

"Ah! Sparks. More than a few have sparks like you in them. We realized it not long after the first Justicars were trained. Story was never written down. Oral history. Not one matriarch ever gave it up, verbally or in a meld under Justicar torture. Salarian scientists suggested something they refined with clanless ardat and a pile of bodies in a black site under the southern ice. The affected maidens--one T'Van, one T'Armal--were each given three condemned prisoners, two salarians and one asari. They went through non-stop sparring with war priestesses, three on one. For days. Until they could barely stand. Train, meld, collapse. Repeat. Asari prisoner was last. They gave birth to exact clones of themselves...almost. The clusters--and the syndrome--remained but it shifted down the chromosome. The originals went into isolation and once their replacements proved whole and learned how to imitate them, they took over. The first pair went skin-diving into the sun to atone for their part in it. Covered the tracks."

"So there are more ardats in the Thirty and their families? Besides just me?"

"Yeah. Counting in cousins and nieces, two steps out? Probably a hundred. About twice the rate in the general populace but we're a pretty chummy, pureblooded bunch. If we allowed research on it, the Thirty case studies would be the fullest picture we have of the condition. Instead, whenever an ardat presents in the bloodlines, that ritual is repeated in secrecy at the family estate. The original dies oh so tragically and is given a manor off-world. The replacement, her clone, grows up and that anchors the house for her and any ardats she might give birht to. Having an aunt or sister who sees the signs and can take a ardat on without injury lets us catch it."

"That makes no sense. Ardats are infertile. That's half the reason the justicars were given their charter. We can't produce daughters. Wasted meat."

"Ardats are infertile...usually. The blended feed pattern of those two princesses taught us a lot. Their exhaustion made them confused when they patterned the salaraians. The weirdness of the alien brains blank-slated the daughters. Meant that rather than traits of the father, they basically had the mother, plus the changes she underwent becoming fertile. After that last prisoner, the asari-asari meld? Pop. Out cames a baby with all the same T'Van charm or that famous T'Armal complexion. Few genes around the ardat clusters lit up. Don't serve any purpose we knew back then. Research is slow when you have to take paper notes on trillions of genes so it can't be hacked."

"Without that breakthrough, estimates are that hundred of feeds in the space of a couple of years would have been needed to conceive."

Liara swallows.

"More than any recorded ardat has killed."

"Yeah. We'd have non-Thirty ardats if not for the justicars. I have a nasty feeling we let the justicars run wild so that they would look away from the Thirty when they started hunting. Propagate one version of the story and hide the other."

Liara shivers.

"I'm scared."

"Understandable, kid."

"Can I know the name of whoever mom...whoever she killed to make me?"

"Weren't you listening? "There's no one. Me and her. Kid, I'm no saint. Goddess knows."

Aethyta sniffles over the comms.

"But the only person I would enjoykilling is someone tries to take being your dad away from me."

"Over the generations, we got better at it. Every house but T'Shora and the Inya had ardats in the next two generations. Inya disbanded rather than marry off. Pious of them. Over time, some houses happily married more ardats in, others married them all out. T'Soni hasn't had a non-ardat head of house in three generations, for example. Saving the ardats from the justicars and from the rest is the House T'Soni grandmother project. Promoting a less militaristic Turian Hierarchy is her side interest. It's meant to pass from your mom, to you, to your little girls. Part of why the money is drying up. Your mother and her mother both felt that focusing on the homeworld is how we can bring the rest of the asari to a peaceful balance with ardats. So many of the off-world interests were liquidated and your mom especially gobbled up book collections, art, unclaimed scientific papers. Bought up libraries worth of it and a handful of her closest acolytes sift through it All so she could corner the market on any writing on anything cultural, artistic, religious about this sort of thing."

"The eighty years after the experiment showed us that the salarian doctors got on top of a big problem in the nick of time. The cloned daughters practiced. Found that with meditation and focus, they had good success controlling the feeds. Pulling back before damage was done. So we changed our approach, let them matron up younger to shorten the generations to about two centuries. The great-granddaughters? My mother's generation? They had it down to a science. Ardat-on-ardat, like me and your mom? Safe as any other maidens. Ardat-on-asari or ardat-on-alien? Just don't do it blackout drunk and you'll have enough control. More eezo in a partner's system, the better she can give what you take without feeling burned. Ardat's aren't evil, kid. We sink into deep melds much faster and draw much harder bioelectrically. Both on the partner and on our nervous system. Except ours can take it. The first meld alters the bioelectric organ's nerve reflex. Increased speed, power and shortened duratio-"

"Explaining the surge in biotic power ardats get after a feed!" Liara blurts out.

"Got it in one. It's almost like you infer things about a species daily life by looking at carvings on the wall and how they shaped their eating utensils and clues in their pronouns," her father teases.

"I try, dad. I try."

"With a compatible partner like another ardat, that they can let loose with, the boost doesn't fade. It climbs. The more and the better melds, the more the bioelectrical system ramps up."

"Fun story. T'Van estate. I was maybe thirty. Someone dared someone while drunk. She and her bondmates grabbed a half dozen other ardats, including some clan-less, even. They were going through a dry spell. Locked them all in a room together with some bottled water, dried meat, fruit and lots of pillows. I was too young to know what the moaning sounds coming out the windows were about but I saw it drawing eezo out of the water in the plants in the garden with ambient energy. Eventually, the melding urge drops because the body needs to put that somewhere before it gathers any more."

"Remember when mom took you to the Teardrops?"

"The crater lakes in the tidal area near the manor? With the glassy bottoms? Sure. Picnicked there in the summers."

"Warp flare craters, kid. Dead serious. When I was brought into the secret before leaving home as a maiden, I learned that some thought we should send the partygoers with some commandos and destroy the Justicar order while they were buzzed. Just be done with it. Burn down the citadel and smear the First Justicar all over her office walls. Put down the monster we set loose on everyone's families except our own and make sure they never could hurt our little girls. When we asked them to leave the order alone, the orgy guests walked out onto the rock and each picked a spot. Nine ardats, nine cute little round lakes they dug into granite to wear themselves out. We legitimized the clanless girls to prop up three minor houses with new bondmates and in exchange, they kept their mouths shut. Probably too surprised to be alive themselves and not waking up next to a dead body to even think about outing us."

"You hate the order. But you didn't strike," Liara points out. "...because you didn't have a replacement system."

"Exactly. Until that point, we had no clue how high the potential biotic power for glutted ardats was. We thought it was in the range of two to six. Like the gap between an average huntress and a war priestess. That the boost lasted a few hours. Were short two significant digits, it turned out. On both intensity and duration. We had a tool that wouldn't last--not without making the housekeepers wonder about the mess--and wiping the order out would make a hole we couldn't fill. A lone ardat breaking out can make a nasty mess, even on a world with police trained to deal with asari. The red-tatted bitches need to go but there needs to be a plan. A better plan, this time."

"Are you sure it's safe? For me, I mean? I'm...familiar with being alone."

Aethyta laughs.

"Uh-huh. The little girl who Nezzy says kept the romantic poetry books I sent for her birthdays shelved by which day of the month she'd read them is ready to give up on love without trying it. Sure. Real convincing."

Benezia must talk with her far more often than I thought. She knows me well.

"Don't invent any new body parts and meld without learning how they bend and you'll be fine. Nezzie and me, before you came along? I assure you that we used enough alcohol and f*ck knows else in bed with each other to tickle the edges. Nothing she or I passed down to you makes you anything but our little wing. You are only what you want to be, Liara."

"We both used to travel a lot. We were exclusive from the moment she asked me to bond up to a while after you were born and until she stepped up for the T'Soni line publicly. So we both got pent up. When we got back to each other, we were messy. We wrecked some hotel rooms, snapped a headboard or ten. Your mom melted a bedsheet once, never did get the physics of that. I'm pretty sure the brandy bottle collapsed into some sort of microscopic pulsar when she rolled me over and did th-"

"STOP!"

"Right. Sorry. You get the idea. I've woke up dehydrated and dizzy and hungover and in one case, I could taste her singing in the shower rather than just hear it. But I wasn't dead and your mom's smile made everything worth it. Every time. Always has. We knew we both were ardats, once we exchanged names. When she proposed, I told Nezzy I would spend every dawn with her until I died.

"But I wouldn't have a daughter unless we could be sure she could have a good life. Pair up. Have some little blue babies. Be happy. We promised each other that no matter what one of us would be there to teach you how. I just had my omnitool in front of my face when your detector implant pinged. Lucky me."

Chapter 11: Friday Nights - Liara (3)

Chapter Text

Dr. Liara T'Soni | In orbit of Pearl | IRAV Passionfruit (formerly KU-839. transponder change pending)
Friday, December 25th, 2178

"Follow my lead, kid. This is the password," Aethyta instructs.

"Pearl control, this is Blackcrest Nine, requesting landing sites for myself and blood kin. Word of warning, we are approaching in Justicar colors. I shall take no flesh but that I am given, steal no credits, and reject no hospitality I am given. By the Goddess, the Spirits, the Ancestors and the living universe, I swear this."

A female turian with a voice like the entire mezzo section of a choir answers.

"Long time, Nine. Welcome back. We're transmitting landing sites in the glass jungles, near the capital. Can't have that crimson paint spook locals. Blood kin, please identify and respond. Say the oath and name yourself, siaiiiɑa pæcsæ." ("ghost of midnight", Armanese)

"My name is Liara Kyha T'Soni, out of Matriarch Benezia T'Soni sparked by Aethyta, humbly in service to Thirty of my kin and all the children of Athame, heir to House T'Soni. I shall take no flesh but that I am given, steal no credits, and reject no hospitality I am given. By the Goddess, the Spirits, the Ancestors and the living universe, I swear this."

"Welcome to Pearl."

The projecting of the planet lights up with two red dots. Zooming in, Liara sees little more than a clearing in the jungles lined by hardy moss and with a self-contained eezo tank set back in the trees.

"Power it all down, comms too. We'll talk omni to omni. We're going in silent. Just in case that bitch made it here and is watching for her ship's transponder. You do remember your emergency flight class, right?"

Liara gulps.

"Remember I hated it."

"Relax, this time you have engine power, if you need it. Nice and easy, little wing. Stay behind me, follow my lead and split off to your landing site. Let the air do the work."

-----

The jungles are soothing. Most of Liara's digs are on worlds made either of dust, ash or crumbled buildings. The moss is springy. Some local serpent with three broad heads slithers across the pool of waste eezo, coils up and then sails off into the trees, assisted by biotics.

"See if you can find a justicar suit that fits, kid. First thing is we need to get proof of death. Then I can show you around."

"Right."

"Oh, and throw any gun you find in your bag. That is the good sh*t. We can look for amps and blueware in the holds later. Just don't use the glue under the crest jewelry. Find some in your pack so we can get it back off. There's a circuit in the back. Fail deadly in case a justicar is fed on. A gram of antimatter per piece. Do not touch it. The bottle can be drained from the middle."

"Goddess!"

"Yeah," her father sighs. "They try to avoid getting fed on but they have to blow up a city, they will."

"Right."

"Breathe, take your time. I just met you. Don't blow yourself up. By the time you leave, you'll be a midnight angel out on the town. Promise."

"Angel? The landing officer called me a ghost of midnight."

"Ghost, angel, demon. Ardat descends fromaedatu, which in a primitive proto-Seraci-Milari dialect basically meant 'spooky'. So think of yourself as a fallen angel from the Earth bible, or a ghost, vampire, werewolf, whatever. Don't let the justicars get in your head. Not smart, personal experience. You're not less for being this way. Some would say you'remore, especially on Pearl."

Liara checks the various armor sets in the hold. Most are sized for matrons. Justicars tend to be drawn from the mothers of the ardats or their widows. One, with clear crest jewelry rather than red, must be for a trainee. It will fit, if she sprays enough padded foam in to compensate for her slender build.

They landed at noon and it's sunset when she walks out to find her father waiting. Her face a blank mask, every twitch of emotion hidden behind a wall of stone. Ramrod straight posture. Warp sword on one thigh, Acolyte on the other, Disciple clipped diagonally across the backplate with the stock in easy reach.

"How do I look? Stone cold bitch enough? "

"Getting there," Liara laughs.

"Leave the whip, kid. Novices don't carry anything but guns."

"Sorry."

Aethyta laughs, then beckons her for a hug.

She presses a kiss to Liara's forehead.

"Never be sorry. Nothing you do can make me need to hear you're sorry. If you really screw up? Really f*ck the varren? Revive the Rachni or something? I'll love you just as much. We'll have a talk about drinking less," her father jokes. "Or getting a better partner."

I...I can have a partner! Love. I want it now, more than ever. The meld? That feed on the Prothean? Liara wonders.

"I'm asking you for a lot today. More than anyone should ever ask her daughter. And I'm sorry. Buying you a few lapdances and making some introductions to my friends here isn't an apology."

"Thank you."

"And I am calling your mother. Nezzy and I will have words. She should've had me shadowing you once you hit a hundred. I might've made it in time to save you the trouble of fighting."

"She's with Saren. Might be out of comms."

Aethyta makes a face.

"Athame's tit*! Why? Can't she just tie up the Primarch instead? Hear he's into that. Make sure she gets Saren on the line too. He needs to know I'll glue his flap open and stick thresher maw larvae up there if I hear so much as a sniffle when I talk to her."

Liara pushes her back.

"Father!"

"No one.No one hurts my girls."

She sighs.

"Let's start at the info exchange. She's probably trying to reach out to the order for pickup. If not, she's in the dance halls or the bathhouses on the assumption she'll find someone in a shirt that says 'I'm an ardat' or some sh*t."

"Won't she know? That you're faking it with the uniform?"

"Faking what? I am a sworn member, Liara. Last I heard, we had eleven double agents. Necessary evil to keep them in check. I showed them a meld memory of an ardat I had to take down to save her sister. Told them it was my daughter. First time I faced an ardat, let alone hurt a kid. So I was pretty f*cked up during the trial. They let me in."

"How long?"

"Three...f*cking...centuries on active duty. Went dark after a particularly nasty case. Buried the ship in the sand near your mother's winter place in the mountains. Chases take decades or centuries. Without bones or parts, they declare people missing, not dead."

Liara lunges forward. She starts the hug this time.

"Why do you think I know so much about Omega, or Khar'shan? Prime ardat hunting grounds are the Terminus. Batarians use ardats as enforcers. A steady supply of sex slaves. Hanging out there meant they never asked too many questions about who rented the next room over. Snuck out to Thessia to see your mom on 'missions' to kill ardats that were either just pirates or ones I knew were dead but the Order didn't. When I had to do it for real, she'd always come. Hold me. Let me cry it out. Meld with me for days, so I could borrow her soul. That one apartment in Omega probably still smells like her."

"Broadleaf kelp and ajahe," Liara remembers. "She mixed it herself, I think."

"That's it," her father sighs. "I can smell it when I close my eyes."

Liara had assumed that her mother and her father were rarely in contact, meeting only for occasional trysts. Clearly thi is a part of Benezia's life she never heard about and her mother is everything to Aethyta.

"And yeah, I killed. Hard to look into the eyes of a full addict and not do that. The eyes of a regular feeder are always black. Barriers so strong she bends the light around her skin. It's like fighting a puff of smoke. Hard to hit, harder to chase down."

"If I wasn't ardat, I probably would've gotten drained ages ago. I kidnapped others. Picked a merc or a corpse from the morgue, transfused the blood, warp burned it, and skedaddled. Clean up teams would match the DNA and move on."

"Dropped them at the polar ice black site I told you about. There are dorms. Places where they can mingle with each other, who they can't hurt. Three bondmate pairs, one quartet, last I heard. Lead Salarian researcher is the great-great-great-great-great-whatever-grandson of the first doctor."

"Your mother wanted you to make the announcement about yourself once the house fortune was yours, offer sanctuary in T'Soni and the old Ilyna strongholds, and announce a meld-blocker implant. Not everyone can conceal a three-kill ritual for the first member of a bloodline to present.No melding for them. Big thing is it would buy us time and version two was supposed to bleed off the charge into a braclet. Before anyone's brain bled, it would use it like a taser and then dose the ardat with tranqs based on a monitoring necklace the partner wore. Especially since the clanless bloodlines are in the millions."

-----

The info exchange in the capital, Moonrise, is curious.

Like the whole city center, it's made of some soft, pale local rock composed mostly of seashells. Dances in the sunlight, reflecting on the shale-lined streets. Sometimes pink, sometimes yellow, sometimes blue. So soft that it has a mesh netting laid over it. Liara drags her fingers along a wall and it deforms, leaving a groove. The more popular bars have walls scored with grooves. Handprints. The impressions of faces and crests, presumably from intense encounters after the bars closed.

The exchange is state of the art. Most ads are full life-sized holos but it's tiny.

Nos Astra is said to have half the secrets of the galaxy for sale, if you know where to look.

This exchange has ships coming and going, recreational drug prices for everything except red sand. Medical clinics that do all but the nastiest implants and augmentation surgeries. Cosmetic clinics with wildly reshaped maidens, muscled like krogan youth when their first blood rage occurs or wrapped in such soft curves they look like matriarchs. Prostitute's advertisem*nts. Jungle walks. Cruises and swimming tours. Prices on remote cabins with private lakes that would make a T'Armal girl choke on her brandy.

"Couple ships booked passengers," her father mutters, flicking through the offers.

"Volus and turians though. Not her. She couldn't survive in that cabin or on that food. Any comms for the order would be QEC and that's on the ship. She's alone. Scared, hopefully."

Aethyta laughs.

"No. No, this is the wrong way."

She hands Liara the whip.

"She can't leave your trail until she dies or you do. Strip, ditch the guns, keep the whip. I'll buy you something gaudy. You'll make a terrifying little dominatrix, little wing. Then we just pull aside some girls, make a show of you feeding and stash them in the back to sleep it off. She'll have no choice. She either puts a gun in her mouth or comes after you. In a wheelchair if she has to. I'll come as her 'backup'."

"How can they live like this?"

"Samara locked up two of her daughters and spent three hundred years chasing the last down. I beat her to it. Morinth was bad as they come. Worst I ever met and I can include a battie prince who was a cannibal and a krogan warlord with two thousand concubines in the list. But she didn't deserve to have to look into her mom's eyes when the gun went off. I actually forced her to record a message."

"Forced her?"

"Oh, right!"

Aethyta looks around and beckons to a turian lady crying in the corner.

"I'll teach you."

"Teach me what?"

"Mind control," her father says with a grin that makes Liara lean a bit more to theJusticar side of the issue.

"Meld slow. Try and find something she wants but is afraid of. Dumping her husband. Going to a casino. Running naked through the presidium. Focus on her pleasure. Reflect what she wants to do with everything you have. MAke her think you'll be so proud if she does. Give her a little zing. When the afterglow fades, she will do it. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe in three years."

"Morinth..."

Aethyta shivers.

"She was tough. Bleeding pretty bad when I broke her. I took my hands off her crests and asked her to take a deep breath and tell the truth to whoever she liked. The holo she recorded for her sisters was so sweet. For her mother, that one is probably the best manifesto of why the Order needs to go. Even recorded one to her first victim, before she knew and one to her last. She clearly remembered each one. Seducing them, sometimes living with them first."

Her father flicks through some clothing ads, finally settling on a pale blue, almosttransparent gown that's little more than a fiber optic shirt and two wide black ribbons to tie around herself so she's not just dangling her tit* out in the cool fall air.

"You can't be serious."

"Oh, little wing...here, on Pearl? Ardats are like fancy booze. You'd have trouble keeping that dress on, if people knew."

-----

The turian woman--Shu Landat--was crying because her partner wanted to be open, long enough to conceive at least. She wanted kids so badly but she wasn't convinced she'd come back. Same-sex pairings are legal but rare, especially for military-aged turians.

Liara dug deep, finding the memory of their vows to each other, some silly pillow talk. Crying in each other's arms seeing little pups running around the parks on Palaven.

"Qin wants it for you," Liara whispers. "She isn't doing it to hurt you."

She tests the hold by making Shu open her tablet, pull up her bank account and draft a transfer to Liara. She cancels it, moving her fingers like a puppeteer, then pushes raw affection into the poor dear.

Her father helps her catch the slumping, shivering mess of post-org*smic plates that results.

"Felt good," Shu murmurs. "Thanks."

"Do you love her less, after feeling that pleasure?"

"No. More, somehow."

"So will she. Go back and apologize before she goes on deployment."

The turian nods, her tightly-curled spikes dripping with wet grit. Sweat, for a turian.

"Help me up. And thanks."

Liara smiles.

"The order makes us do one good deed every day. Lift one soul closer to the Goddess. The honor was mine."

Her father waits until the crowd thins to start cackling.

"Well acted, in terms of how you moved and spoke. No one who knew enough about asari to fill a varren's skull would think the Justicars did good deeds."

"Didn't want to hate myself after."

"Maybe we should just makeyou First Justicar. Have you reform it."

"I have ashotgun, father."

-----

The nightclub is bathed in red, so much it pulses through the windows. Liara straightens up, sets the bag with the armor down in security and smoothes the glassy mesh of the dress down her body.

She lets the warp whip sizzle with a trace charge, hanging over her neck like snake, and pushes the doors wide. A row of visitors offer her their hands or their cheeks. She melds over and over, offering some ideas, testing their interests.

A quarian mechanic who is particularly adventurous in her kinks, wants in on the whole scam. Wants the electromagnetic signature of a non-fatal feed for her pilgrimage. Revenge too. Something about her dad dying from a stray dart from a Disciple piercing his suit and giving him an infection.

Liara puts down credits for a big room, dextro and levo wine, and collects her playthings.

-----

Samara blows the door open with a warp while Liara is pretending to be asleep. She piled the corpses in the corner and the quarian is in the bathroom in an antibiotic laced hot tub. The blue glow bleeding off Samara's barrier lights the room as brightly as the moon did earlier. Liara answers with her own barriers before letting the whip slither into her palm.

A few quick melds. More sensual but no deeper than the goodbye meld her mom gave her each semester when she left. She nibbled on strangers. Leaving them sleepy. Now she doesn't wonder if she can best an armed, armored and angry Samara naked and unarmed. She knows she can.

"Got sick of celibacy?" Liara teases. "Happy to help, Samara. Bet you red-crested slu*ts live for pain."

"Silence! You won't escape, you spoi-"

Her father's first shot goes through Samara's thigh, spraying material blood on the pink carpet.

"Drop it," she warns, pressing the disciple to the back of Samara's crests. "This can be quick, or this can be slow. Since you're bleeding out into that armor and our shields never switched on, believe me when I tell you I can defang your explosive crown and let her drain you."

"She's your daughter," Samara laughs. "The Thirty have been cheating..."

It's empty. Hollow. Somehow Liara doubts fear of death makes Samara sound so broken.

Liara shakes the pale human man beside her with the red freckles that remind her of spots on her aunt's pet malyk.

"Hmm?" he mumbles. "That was...intense."

Samara's eyes go wide.

"Theater," Liara coos. "Painting a picture for your assumptions, my dear justicar."

She points to a row of jams for the toast.

"Looks quite a bit like a nosebleed from a seizure, doesn't it?"

"Who's she?" he asks.

"Religious assassin. Basically the Spanish Inquisition," Aethyta explains. "They execute anyone who suffers from Liara's condition. Any moms who have daughters like Liara can pay a fine, dump them in a convent or kill them. That's the offer."

He grimaces. "I went into space to get away from the Bible beaters but should've expected that sort of crap."

He pat's Liara's bare knee.

"That was too sweet to be anything but sin, darling. And I didn't even get around to taking my damn pants off!"

Liara smiles.

"Tell him what your oath was, Samara. After all, you're going to kill me or die trying, right?"

"To see my youngest two daughters delivered to the monastery," she says, shoulders slumped. "To kill my oldest, who refused. To spend the rest of my days killing as much of you Ardat-Yakshi fil-"

A throw field from Liara so intense it shatters the barrier and bounces Samara's head off a wine bottle settles her rant. She crumples to the carpet with a broken nose. Drool soon gathers.

"Damn, kid! She is going to be in a lot of pain when she wakes."

Liara shrugs.

"We can medigel the leg and come up with a plan before she comes to, father. My guests should go. Patrick, can you stay until Tetka is able to seal her suit back up? I'll put a singularity at the door to keep any intruders out."

"Sure. I"ll take her for those dextro pancakes."

"Someone has a crush," Aethyta jokes.

-----

Morinth's bruised and bleeding face on the holo brings tears even to Smara's eyes.

"Mother...one day I realized when it came down to it, I did what you taught me. I studied. I practiced. I excelled. If we never went to that clinic, I would have excelled as a painter. You took that away from me. I didn't change when I was diagnosed, dear mother. Not in my soul. You did."

"I'm ready, justicar."

"Find peace in the Embrace of the Goddess."

The shot is thunderous, even over the recording. Morinth's head sinks slowly out of frame, leaving a trail on the dingy walls of the apartment in Omega.

"She recorded ones for sisters. For some victims, too. I think she loved a few of them. Truly," Aethyta tells Samara.

"YOU LIE!"

"No more reasoning with a lunatic than teaching Krogans to dance ballet," Liara reminds her father. "You know how this is going to end. Morinth deserved to die. Just not by her own mother's hand."

Liara gets off the bed, leaving the whip and drawing the thickest, angriest warp field she can around her right hand. Following her lead, her father puts the shotgun back against the neck folds.

"Same choice. You can die by a stranger. An ardat you failed to stop. Or by a fellow justicar. My father will continue monitoring your order for the Thirty. Betrayal or a fight you lost. You saw me. You felt that throw. I would have won without my father. Choose."

"I fight monsters. I'll die fighting one. I go to the Goddess without fear, demon. Do you?"'

Liara shrugs

"Someday, yes. Two feeds? One an accident? Weight alifetime of study, prayer, mothering my daughters and uplifting my people? Even you aren't stupid enough or brainwashed enough to think the scales of life are that tilted."

"The implants, father?"

"Removed. Took a bit of skin off but it's done. Used that fancy drone to take them back to the ship she stole. Middle of nowhere. Scuttling it won't hurt anything."

Samara looks up. Her leg is useless, one hand is broken and she's drained. There's no fight left.

"I'm ready, ardat."

Liara puts her hands on Samara's crests and another around her neck folds.

"Find peace, for your cruelty."

As she feeds, deliberatelykills for her own pleasure, something more ancient than her people lights a bonfire in Liara's soul. She envisions chases. No, she remembers. Ancient memories unlock. Nostrils flaring. Bare feet flying over the sand. Tackling. Taking. Stripping her victims. Moaning into their mouths as she feeds. Birthing daughters who blaze like torches even as newborns, only cooling as she takes them into her arms.

"Don't fall into it, little wing. Fight that part of you," her father warns.

Samara grunts in pain.

"You're just like the re-"

Liara shrieks in rage and draws everything she can. Samara sinks to the floor, her fingers moving nervelessly and her mouth frothing blood.

"It's done. I'll hail the order. Report that I found her ship empty and her body near the crater. Presumed dead by feeding when she ambushed you. Brave, my girl."

Liara's head snaps up. She can feel her lips curling, baring her teeth. Her father's presence makes her feel challenged. Like her territory is violated.

"Easy, there. You can't hurt me. I won't let you hurt anyone else. Walk it back. Remember how much you like ajahe paste? And your mom'sgoluh tea? Think of naps. Watching the rain. Any food except meat. Anything except running and chasing. Anything except sex."

By the time the haze fades, there's detergent sizzling away the blood on the carpet and Liara is in her father's lap. Some levo chocolates are on the table with a few handwritten notes.

"So brave," Aethyta whispers, rubbing Liara's aching crests. "So brave."

"My head..." she groans. "Why did I feed? I had a warp ready. I didn't feed on the others."

Liara stares at her hand. Even pulling back, she can't help but wear enough warpfire on her skin to melt ice instantly as she runs her hand over the wine bucket.

More power than I deserve.

"They didn't want to kill you."

"Because you wanted to prove to yourself you could, that you could make it your weapon rather than your curse. Because for who knows how long, ardats have been with us. Part of us. You were given the choice and you chose to be a protector. A warrior for your sisters and in so doing, protect them from Justicars and torture."

"You chose to make yourself belive you could. You made the same choice we must have been making since we carved spears. And unlike most, you chose right.

"My advice is meld whenever you can. Fall in love as soon as you meet someone. Even when you're bonded, feed whenever you have the opportunity. Find some sick f*ck who deserves it. That way you'll be ready for the next red crest you meet. For when you see a slave in a pen and your gun is jammed and the only way out is to take what you need from the guards raping and whipping her."

Liara moans.

"I n-n-need..." she stutters. "Need to rest. Then I want to go home."

"Shh. You're safe, little wing. Lie back. Haven't gotten to hold my little girl for a nap in almost century."

Liara hasn't heard that lullaby anywhere except her home. The middle verses are different.

Nezzy must have learned it from Aethyta.

Chapter 12: Friday Nights - Shepard

Chapter Text

Solaris Shepard | Amsterdam
December 30th, 2178 (end of year shore leave for Tombstone-N7 platoon)

The key chip Tiri gave her feels like a live grenade in her pocket.

The building itself has split personalities.

Downstairs, a gothic, gaudy pit of red satin ribbons, ropes, and bedsheets. A writhing couple in each other's arms in a bed of snow-white silk. Each of them leashed at the wrist to their dommes with a gilded chain and pulled into each other's laps, one arm extended out, unable to separate and having only one hand free. Engrossed crowds of spectators sitting on black vinyl cushions, sipping whisky or vodka, most of which were tinted cherry red or electric blue. A masked man selling crops and cuffs and suspension rigs of everything from cowhide, to corn-derived vegan plastics, to woven bamboo, to surgical steel, to fiber optics that glimmer when the electrical current on a partner's body shifts.

Most of which cost two month's salary.

The second floor is simpler, almost homey. Few of the paintings are something the Shepards wouldn't have put up in their farmhouse. Nothing racy. Landscapes, slightly-too-female outlines in black or red on fields of pastel.

The most erotic painting she's seen here is one of an incredibly detailed bowl of fruits from Earth, Thessia, Pavaven, Sur'Kesh, and even Tuchanka. Each succulent. Sliced open. Dripping. Begging for a mouth.

On this floor, it's an automated vendor. The tools here are deerskin, calfskin, sheepskin, braided linen and in one case, a coated chain of the sort a tree stump might be pulled with. Three sizes, ranging from massively oversized to fine enough it could be used to make a necklace. Probably steel, but hollow if so. Weighty but coated in something that puts a frictionless barrel coating for an Avenger rifle to shame. Shaped so it couldn't possibly pinch.

The third floor is crazy stuff. The sort of opulent, minimalist luxury of the penthouses that scraped the edge of the New Nork Arcology. Champagnes, caviar, iced fruit. Furniture that costs more because it's less decorated, less comfortable. Sheets from Dubai or Ilium or something. That's the ticket Tiri bought her, whatever is in that room sixteen. Seeing as how her favorite hobby used to be pissing on the power conduits of those buildings at the point they met the pavement, she got a partial discount and came down to floor two.

This, she can handle. This, she might have done with a girl on Mindoir, after they got to know each other.

She swipes the card. The door opens.

Inside is an asari who she can't put an age to and a human woman of maybe forty-five. They sit on a pair of wicker chairs, whispering to each other. The asari is in what looks like commando leathers, but they lack the thick padded bands where the shield circuits are woven in.

"Solaris, yes?" the asari asks, her voice soothing, lulling, rich. Listening to her is like the lapping of waves against a rowboat on a warm lake.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Don't call me ma'am," the asari teases, her grin white and toothy. "You have no idea the power words can have."

"I...I see."

The human woman rises. Her crimson dress is muslin, layers upon layers of it until even with such hazy fabric, she's covered head to toe, neck to wrists. When she moves, the sunlight behind her pierces most of the layers, leaving her curves outlined in a halo of crimsonLeaving a silhouette so clean that there can be no doubt that it is her only clothing.

"Liselle Jannsen, at your service."

"Ah."

"The proprietor of this humble place of mischief. My friend here prefers Shadow far more than she prefers ma'am, or mistress," Liselle jokes, flicking her eyes to Shadow, who flicks hers to the floor.

"She's the tutor I ask for when a client wishes to know about any form of biotic, omni-tool based or electric bondage."

"Thank you," Solaris mumbles. "Both of you."

Liselle smiles. It's brief and thin but a smile all the same.

"I must confess. I'm startled by your courage. Most times, someone who speaks of themselves as coldly as you do is not only a sub, he or she spirals, seeking more and more punishment, past the point of play. Becomes dangerous to themselves. Your results with the holo-interview were striking. Heart of a hero, indeed."

"What's next?" Solaris asks.

I once wrapped my legs around a thresher maw, blew it open, and rode it till it stopped thrashing. I can do this.

"I should certainly think so," Shadow chortles. "Though that is one kink I've never heard of."

"Hush, Shadow. The poor dear didn't mean to say that out loud."

"I DID WHAT?"

Liselle gestures with a white-gloved hand.

"See? The poor dear isnervous."

Shadow leans forward, holding out one hand with a flat metal bracelet on it.

"Pin me."

"What?"

"If you want to do biotic bondage, you need stamina. Put a pull field on this," Shadow says, tapping the band. "Small one. One you can maintain. Pick a direction."

Solaris does and the force of it yanks Shadow out of her chair and slams her hand to the ground.

"Red light!" she grunts.

Solaris drops the field. Shadow laughs.

"Holy sh*t! That was a light field for you?"

"Yeah. Had to use it to hold my cracked armor together once for an eleven-minute spacewalk."

Shadow whistles.

"Damn. You and I are going to go sparring, someday. You ever sparred with a war priestess? Few humans have."

-----

"So how do you see yourself entering your domme space?" Liselle asks, stirring her tea.

Solaris drums her fingers on the table.

"No idea," she admits. "I know how to give orders. But I need to keep a firewall between military commander me and domme me."

Liselle nods. "Wise."

"If I get to make a suggestion?" Shadow interjects. "That."

"That what?"

"That. The finger tapping. That's a nice, even rhythm. Military precision, so to speak. So if your playmate was into blindfolding? Tap, tap, tap. Break. Let them wonder if you're about to do something. If they behave,do something. If not, step back and tap on a farther away piece of furniture."

Liselle nods.

"Always theater to it. You're blending the psychological and the physical. That's why we call them 'scenes', after all."

"What's, ah...the difference..."

"She's adorable," Shadow whispers.

"Between vanilla and BDSM sex?" Liselle asks.

Solaris nods.

"I want...someday I want someone. Long term. Maybe forever. I'm guessing it'll vary if it's more than once."

Liselle tilts her head to watch Shepard and Shadow--clearly, they are some sort of item--tilts hers towards it, but bowed downwards.

"Setup. If you just lay her back? Climb over her on the bed," Lisbelle murmurs, finding some magnetic clasp on Shadow's outfit. "Open her up like a little bluebell in the snow? Take her clothes..."

Shadow's cheeks are purple now. Deeply so. The asari's version of a fierce blush.

"Ask her what she wants. How many fingers? Does she want to meld, or just skin play?"

Shadow is whining, continually and softly.

"That's sex."

"If you have to set up restraints, or arrange furniture, or negotiate new kinks, or schedule her to make her miss the deadline you set, anything thatpremeditated? That's BDSM."

Liselle sighs.

"It's not a hard and fast distinction, though. I use my safewords all the time. I only skip aftercare if I'm asked to, and never after anything strenuous. Even when I'm being quote vanilla unquote."

"And sometimes, I push her hard. Drain her of every drop of juice. Make her wait for permission, don't I pet?"

Shadow nods so quickly it's like her neck is a noodle.

"Fine line?" Solaris asks.

"Fine line. But shifting between is exhilaration."

Shadow nods.

"Maybe she's not ready. Too tired. Can't click into her headspace. If a girl suddenly asks you to tie her up after all, and you don't, you ought to get your furry head examined."

"Shadow!" Liselle teases.

"Did you write a contract, Solaris?"

Solaris nods towards the datapad.

"Datapad. She can drag wants into the green column and doesn't want into the red."

Liselle drains her tea.

"Then you have the room, my dear. Paid through the week. Go find someone to share it with. Oh, and I put some store credit on. You freeing up 316 was a great help. Senator needed to shake the wax off his candle, and he's a pushy jackass I'd rather not deal with."

There were options. The room and the sub could both be hired but the mere thought of paying for consent, even paying to negotiate it, had Solaris retching the suspect slime that is Alliance-issued oatmeal into her lap. Even if other women chose it, enjoy the work, love every moment of it? She could never ask.

That's why the boys do her tipping at strip clubs. A layer between her and the industry.

She still needs a name. A persona.

-----

The red-light district, amusingly, is the heart of old Amsterdam. A cathedral rises towards God in the center, surrounded by no more than a ring of propriety. The edge of the square is book and music stores, date-type restaurants, clothing stores, and even an electronics shop. No toy stores or brothels are line-of-sight with the cathedral but turn a corner and red light oozes from every window, while bored looking whor*s--human, drell, asari and even some races she doesn't recognize--lounge inside.

"What would papa say?" she chuckles, looking at the cathedrals spire.

"He'd say god can live anywhere," she reminds herself.

The hanar in the window across the canal is a bit disturbing, the curtains flung wide and the central mass of flesh pulsing with light. The fact that his current playmates are two sleekly-shaved young men, shivering and twitching in the air does amuse her. They hold hands, electrical tendrils slither around their necks and their thighs and their co*cks. With one long pulse of light, they come together, so hard they spatter the window.

Shepard turns away. Gay hanar. Let that be a lesson to the freaks who keep messaging her civilian facing address offering money for asari-hanar p*rn she finds in the Terminus.

Not that she doesn't have her own kinks. Oh no. Krogan-asari-asari is living deeper in her brain than she'd like, now that the amateurs on Ilium took in a long term female playmate. Shakl Wreyloc may well be the only paid Krogan camgirl in the galaxy and if so, Shepard sees why. Years of exercise has reshaped her, not surgery. As she piled on the muscle, her back curled in such a way that her posture is upright while her belly and hips are slung forward, as opposed to the stiff forward hunch of the males. Her hips and shoulders are massive, her body thinner but the frame bigger than any merc Sherpard's seen boasting about his quad. Shakl's dusky plates are tiny and look like shale rock. Decorating her torso and limbs, almost her entire body. When her lovers sneak a finger under one, the living glow that asaris give off during climax lights the darkened room they shoot in and a hundred little valleys open up as muscles pull the plates back into the skin so that fingers and lips and tongues can find purchase. A suit of jet-black armor opens up and reveals a sticky, slick, blood-red woman beneath it.

Gothic as f*ck and enough to get her through a nine-month deployment.

Hopefully, the Alliance cyberwarfare monitoring team never detects her lifetime subscription.

Here the narrow, silt-browned rivers carve the city up, running in stone channels with tour boats lining them. Water chose the layout of the streets and a tangle of alleyways and peddlers-cart paths grinning behind the houses define the rest.

She walks, the crimson glow from the brothels and the buttery glow from ordinary homes or simply the off duty workers scatters farther into the pavement since it comes from the upper windows. A quarian with a highball glass marked 'dex' staggers down the street, humming something to himself.

For some reason, the quarian reminds her of her real mistake. Seeing as how she needs to order in cafes when off base, she speaks French as well as a native, albeit with a New York stain to the accent. Barely enough German to get her to a taxi and absolutely no dutch. Her other languages, the subliminally trained ones, are more practical. Batarian. Palavenki uniform speech. Armanese. Seraci. High Salarian, though that one is quite literally painful to those who were not born with throats meant to swallow fish.

Natives are right out. Humans are hit and miss. Turians are a distinct possibility. She's not armed and she's in a good mood, so she wants abso-f*cking-lutely nothing to do with a battie today.

Which leaves the obvious choice of asari. Shepard's a crest-chaser to her bones and she's long since stopped being ashamed of it. Armanese and Seraci are excellent starts, easily the widest spread besides Galactic Standard. Galactic Standard is little more than Armanese-Seraci pidgin with some salarian borrow-words anyway. By the time turians joined the party, it was set in stone.

The issue is that to proposition a Serrice girl in the language of the city's dreaded rival in sports, culture, entertainment and VR wargames is like asking a Manchester United fan to hold a beer with the Arsenal team logo on it. Except for not getting hit with a chair.

It's winter and the fossil-fueled sins of pre-eezo generations surround Shepard. The river sits so high that the city laid down a rim on each channel so it couldn't slosh. The dead trees are more numerous than the living ones and every oak reaches to the sky with grim, skeletal fingers. The weight of thrice-thawed, thrice-frozen icicles that have gathered since September bend the smaller branches and break the hollow ones.

Her omni shows it's -3 Celsius. A re-enactor at some sort of early-Protestant era museum is out back, shaking even in her thick wool dress, mincing in her wooden shoes so they don't freeze to the ground and trying to get a yellow wool blanket off the line without shattering it. Shepard flicks a warp field towards the near end of the rope and the disintegration chases the water, loosening the fibers from within.

"Ha!" the girl crows, finally managing to get the blanket free.

Tomorrow is New Year's Eve.

Not much will be open, not even in a capital city with a significant alien population, multiple mega-corporation offices, and cuisine so wide-ranging that some of it would literally melt her insides.

The old train station will be, the site says.

More importantly, theswimming pools are open. She's not sure when the last ground-mounted train went through but now it's an embassy plus a small museum. Out front of the station are three enclosed lakes where barges once delivered cargo to the rails. Now the lakes are domed playgrounds with cleverly arranged, eezo-powered filters at the inlets breaking down the dirt in the river into its atomic elements, taking most but using others for decoration. The insanely over-the-top system strips out carbon to wrap up the zinc from the farm runoff in clear, impermeable shells and this leaves a shiny layer of zinc chilled back to a matching temperature of the river by the liquid nitrogen and the heatsinks. This turns the muddy water into a pulsing teal gemstone when the mirrored bottom catches light thrown off the eezo.

This was done to draw the European Union's embassy to the Asari Republics to Holland. A taxpayer-funded gift of ocean-cold waters in the rarefied shade of those of Armali's tide pools in summer, complete with cloaking field screened pleasure domes with walk up scan-on-access that checks for everything from criminal record to sexually transmitted diseasesTurned out to be exactly the sort of gift needed. In fact, the UN and the China-India-Japan consortium have theirs here too.

New York offered the tallest building, London, a plot of land.

Amsterdam offered a bathhouse suitable for a Janiris festival orgy and built it before a deal was signed. They did their homework.

Paris can call itself the City of Love all it likesMore asari of all walks of life live in a ten-mile radius from this spot than in France and England together. Paris has strippers. Perhaps a few commandos. Matriarch Dajj T'Dura studies at the Lourve and Shepard's friend in Calais is the only asari professor in France.

Holland won the bidding war. The restaurants she passed just now had probably a hundred asari. Wild-eyed, half-insane maidens looking for someone new to sink their minds into and perhaps have something sunk into their azures in the process.

Eternally patient matrons wearing the blaze-orange cotton pants and rustier orange shirts that seem to have been the fall fashion here. They dine and chat with their peers and human mothers, all the while with squirming, sniffling toddlers molded to their hip and being shushed and caressed by biotic fields.

There was a matriarch, unmistakable in the floor-skimming black silks favored by off-world matriarchs as a status symbol. She wore a white-and-crimson cowl attached to an actor's masque. House T'Van colors, if Shepard recalls. She had a scroll of flexible glass in front of her and a thermal stylus. A woman with blazingly red hair was draped on some couch in the back, one hand inside her almost-unbuttoned blouse and another held up with crooked fingers.

Shepard taps her omntiool and ID card to the scanner at the dome's gates.

"Stand by. Analyzing public records... Analyzing medical databases..." the VI drones. "Alliance military record located. Using for reference... Please place your hand on the scanner for blood sample." The needle is quick and the sting small enough she doesn't wince.

"Stand by for spot testing. Congratulations. You are cleared for swimming and for activity with all levo-amino acid partners. Please take wristband or skin dye."

Shepard takes both, smearing the dye in two broad swipes under her jaw and snapping the green rubber around her wrist.

The asari and curiously, drells dominate the lake-goers. Not one human in the water. Understandable as this is the unheated lake. A human would be incapacitated in ten minutes. One hanar has two tendrils in the water, four propping herself up on the rim and two flipping through a holographic copy of Jane Eyre. At least Shepard thinks she's trying to give off a female vibe. Either that, or pink scarves with yawning orchids embroidered on them mean something different on Kahje.

From a basalt pedestal in the center of the pool rises a copper sculpture of the tragic lover of the first general-queen of the Malari era. Offering her dripping heart to the viewer in her outstretched palm with her ribs cracked open under her lovely breasts, her crests twisted and bruised and her weight slumping onto her knees.

Legend has it that the maiden saw her beloved's first murder victim and tore herself open and offered her heart. A symbol of love, one mad grab to pull the woman she loved back from the brink.

Shepard's feet stops and her breath leaves in a long whisper. She first saw a rendition on a quick leave on Ilium. The work is called qeuw igcam awbu or 'The Shattered Bond' in Seraci.

It depicts the adulterous mistress and secret bondmate of Orasa, the true love in a sham marriage. The one who she abandoned her wife for. Orasa was a madwoman who would later become the worst fascist in the galactic record. Blessedly, the only one any part of Thessia ever suffered under.

The lover's name was scrubbed from regime textbooks but paintings remained as did propaganda art. That is her face. She has come to be known as zausmel ("core") for without her, the core of her beloved turned rotten.

Orasa has never been sculpted. Paintings of were systematically destroyed by reformers. Some historians redact her name, using only a small symbol. Her vile deeds stand as her only legacy.

Her zausmel is nameless, ages and ages dead and no doubt died heartbroken. Her mourning paramour kept every painting made of her in life in the deepest of her bunkers.

Based on those, she has been painted and sculpted as often as the Virgin Mary or Aphrodite. Some hospitals have her on the emergency room windows. There may be truth to the story, as such broken-ribcage burials begin to appear in the Malari fascist's era and it remains a form of ritual suicide for asari who go mad after the sudden breaking of a bond.

What stood on Ilium was proud, tender and gut-turningit was a reproduction.

This is Matriarch Oriaga's original. Seeing it hits Shepard like a slap in the face. Oiraga, the famously melancholic erotic master. This is her greatest work. Older than the first metal tools on Earth, it arrived aboard the Destiny Ascension itself on Treaty Day. Too culturally precious to be carried by any other vessel.

Shepard shakes off the effect of seeing it in person, something she never dreamed of, and begins her hunt.

She can't take her bodysuit off for more than a quick dip, unless her come-on will involve boring sex to drive her body temp up.

She's of half a mind to just call out an offer in Seraci or Armanse and see which crested heads turn.

Seems crass. Too much the Butcher of Torfan and not enough the Lioness of Mindoir.

There's a small group of maidens playing waveball in the water. Clever twist, as there's no gravity nullification field handy. Serrice silver. School uniforms. Visiting or exchange students from the look of itA still-younger maiden off to the side, rubbing a knot out of her calf with her biotics.

Shepard turns on her cloaking field and pulls out a chocolate bar and an eezo-laced painkiller. She sets them down on the tile and then steps back, quiet as she can. Nothing more than a shiver of the neck folds suggested her presence registered.

The maiden finally notices, picking up the bar and reading the label. Hershey has begun making the Curl, which is an attempt to multi-race the appeal of the Hersey's Kiss for races without lips. Some panel suggested that turians, krogan, elcor, hanar, even volus had curled body parts sensitive to a tickle but not all have lips. It's been an abject failure in public relations.

So much so that it's the sugary equivalent of 'did it hurt when you fell from heaven?' and probably uneaten outside of pick-up bars and relationships marriages with inside jokes. So not funny it makes people laugh.

The maiden smiles and bites into it.

"How's the sprain?" Shepard asks, waving a few paces off. "They benched you because of the leg?"

Her new friend shrugs, patting a spot beside her.

"Not so much that," she sighs.

"I'm not as old and I'm not from Serri-"

She shakes her head.

"Right. Never mind."

"Well, I may not speak the language but I do know from female athletes and massaging sprains."

Shepard dives in with a huge splash and turns around, coming up beside and gripping the tile.

Violet-ringed eyes track to the bare, wet skin above her suit's wrists and pupils start to grow. She may have unzipped to the elbow to show off her muscles. Allegedly.

"Get out of there. You'll freeze your fur off!" she jokes.

"I know my limits. Solaris."

Shepard offers her hand, palm vertical.

"Jakha Vasir," she chortles.

"Vasir, huh?"

Shepard lifts the proffered leg and unzips the suit just past the knee so she can get at the bare skin. Purple, darker than most, and wreathed in tribal tattoos with no runes or words curling along them. Minor family, or else no family name to speak of.

She drags her nails along the tiny scales, up and down, and brings her other hand to the snarled sinew of the back of the calves. She puts her right hand into it with everything she has, squeezing and rolling and dragging increasingly breathy whimpers as the tension eases.

"no ahaje læi bal ʤoimbæ," Shep marvels, spreading the pads of her fingers along the skin. ("like ajahe [fruit] flesh at dusk")

Vasir's fingers twitch.

"o woqeiq faiʧɑ mæpʃɜːŋ," Vasir groans. "teffu wʌz zein." (She's speaking Armanese, the crest-bending whor*." | "crest bending whor*" is asari slang for "tease")

"Now now," Shepard jokes. "I aim to do far more than bend, little fruit."

A swift pull has her out of the water, weightless and trapped in Jakha's lap. Nothing to be done but to drag her tongue along the neck folds while she waits. The suit's full coverage and with the black clouds filling Jakha's eyes and the rosy pink flare along her crests, she's fairly sure a drag along the oh-so-heated folds around the spine would have Vasir trying to maintain a pull during org*sm.

Quick as she was to the edge, that might mean pulling Shepard's guts out.

"Do you have a room?" Jakha demands.

"æɑ. næddhith," Shep replies. "tæmtʊ." ("Room. Food. Liquor." "Rope.")

Shepard uses a pull of her own to slide the braided handkerchiefs out of her left sleeve. A braid of linen in silver, checkered black and white, solid black, dark and light blue, pink and orange, bound at one end by three knots of rope and at the other by a small strip of electrical tape.

Her playmate draws it out.

"Everything except this," she decides, tapping the rope. "I especially like this," she murmurs, rubbing the dark blue linen in her fingers. "We have a deal?" she asks after feeding the braid into the right side of her suit's collar.

"Adventurous, eh?"

"You've no idea," Jakha purrs, dropping the pull and coiling her arms tight around Shepard's neck.

Chapter 13: Happy f*cking New Year - Shepard (1)

Chapter Text

Solaris Shepard| Amsterdam
January 1st, 2179 (end of year shore leave for Tombstone-N7 platoon)

"ALERT! ALERT! ALERT!"

Solaris jerks upright, her fist curling and a warp gathering before her eyes start working.

Jahka is still half-asleep, fitting against her side almost like she's a liquid. Like a cat filling a basket while it sleeps.

As if asari couldn't get any cuter, Shepard thinks. They melt into their partner while sleeping, just on reflex.

"My Star?" Jahka murmurs. She blinks her puffy eyes and rubs at her wrists, loosening whatever soreness remained from the shock-cord she was tied to the headboard with. Going from Solaris to Star isn't winning any creativity awards but it did help when Shepard was too blazed to think of anything fancy as she ripped Jahka's swimsuit open. She liked the title. Shereally did.

"Just Shepard, I think."

"ALERT! ALERT! ALERT!"

She taps 'acknowledge' on her omnitool. Magnets light up and yank her datapad out of her backpack with enough force to tear a zipper.

"f*ck."

"What's wrong?" Jahka asks.

"Colony got hit. Hard. All-call for any active duty and ready reserve to report to a muster point."

"Which one? I mean, if I'm allowed to know."

"Afraid not. Besides the fact it's a big one. But you'll see it on the news vids. Room's yours. Thanks for last night."

A dry-lipped kiss is pressed to the nape of her neck.

"Go kick their ass," Jakha teases. "Then come back and f*ck mine."

-----

Pressley falls in behind her at a jog sprint when she steps onto the platform at the starport, still trying to zip up her jacket and wearing her running pants. Vega is already at the Paris Depot, kitting out the team and yelling at the ordinance officer so he'll clear the cargo crate of heavy munitions captured from the last mission. Brittany Westmoreland has been posted as their new sniper. She's joining them en route to Arcturus. Biotic Sentinel she'd never heard of named Kaiden Alenko is waiting on the Hawking to link up and build towards the typical three-biotic per team composition for Tombstone. No one's too keen to buddy up with Shepard in the blast-and-bounce brigade after she showed off so many ways to break bones, faces and organs with biotics back on Torfan. Took six tries before someone was assigned and didn't just resign or Cat-Six themselves so as not to go into battle with the woman who walked back out to the evac flare still dripping guts.

"This is f*cked, huh skipper?"

Shepard wheels around and grabs the younger woman by the shoulders. Pressley can plot a safe course for a soap bubble through an asteroid belt. She's not a grunt and she shouldn't be because marines don't walk to the fight.

"We trained for this, exactly this."

"Yeah," Pressley agrees. "I'm just usually the coward in the armored hull of a heavy cruiser a half-light year back."

"No, you're not. You're the person listening to me yell like a wild animal over comms and who still has the balls to look me in the eye when I hit the shuttle bay," Shepard jokes.

Shepard salutes the billet officer.

"Shepard, S. and Pressley, J. SAMC. 100th Marine."

"Rank?"

"Second Lieutenant, sir."

"Opcode and posting?"

"Bio-Adept at N7 with secondary ratings in Infil-Wetwork and Demo-Tech. SA-SOC Rapid Response, Tombstone Team. Lead. Pressley is my NAVOFF and XO for starside."

The officer looks up from his datapad.

"Says here you were on Torfan..."

He whistles.

"...and Mindoir. f*ck. Grew up on Mindoir. Jesus Christ."

"Yes, sir."

"Good. Intel is the rank and file are Batarian."

"Yes, sir. Transmit to team leads agrees."

"Between you and me, marine? Don't leaveone of those four-eyed bastards breathing."

"Sir, it'd be apleasure."

He points Shepard and Pressley at a mostly-full civilian shuttle whose marquee is blinking 'commandeered'.

Chapter 14: Happy f*cking New Year - Shepard (2)

Chapter Text

2nd Lt. Solaris Shepard | SSV Hawking, Flight Deck Bravo, 30 minutes out from Arcturus Relay

January 2nd, 2179 | 1515 AUTC (Alliance Unified Time) | 0415 in Paris time (in terms of Tombstone-N7 team's sleep patterns and duty cycle)

Pressley seethes beside her in the flash-forged chairs a tech printed his with his omni. A f*cking Batarian is about to brief them with the permission of Hackett himself.

"What...the f*ck, boss?" she hisses.

Shepard shrugs.

"Sometimes they bring in ringers. People who know the pirates."

"A f*ckingbattie, boss."

"I can count, Pressley. Unless drell suddenly got all wrinkly and have four eyes, yes. That's a batarian."

She claps her hand on Pressley's shoulder.

"You think I'm not pissed? I'm barely able to keep my teeth from grinding. I had to shut down my amp, Pressley. Haven't done that before and I've had one since I was nine. I kept reaching for the biotics on instinct. If I had a gun, I'd be flagging down the master-at-arms to have it confiscated. The only reason he's alive is that I made myself unable to fight. Made myself defenseless. You know me and my story well enough to know I'm not exactly loving that feeling. Since the minute the gang put an amp in, I have not spent one moment without a weapon."

"God, skipper. Can't imagine what it must feel like for you to do that. Sorry."

"No need. Variety is the spice of life, mapgirl. Maybe there's one I don't want to kill."

"Believe that the day I see you meet a squiddie you don't want to f*ck. And before you say Kiva Dantius, remember that your hardsuit records three petabytes of biometrics a day. I go over them with Chakwas and Alliance technicians. We're going to figure out how to look for operators more like you. You're a goddamned tornado of chainsaws in a kill box and you somehow also have more talk-down arrests and disarms of suicidal marines than any other field officer."

"They think the first one-hundredth of a second of how you react face to face is the secret sauce."

"Now I feel really naked," Shepard grumbles.

"I won't tell you about the poor bastard they have analyzing your underage holop*rn then."

Jesus!

"I did not need to remember that, Pressley. And you're on cartography duty. Pre-emptively, for when we get a ship. Give me more sh*t and I'll put you on mess and head scrub detail."

"SA Psychological Operations wants to bottle the scene where you realize you like it and by the end of it, flip the power dynamic. So they can put it in a stim."

"Yeah, I did. And then when I looked around at where I still was, I spiked so hard biotically that I vaporized the camera guy, broke both the legs of the hooker they had me with, and took the wall of my cell out. The whole f*cking wall. Rather than just pick the lock. Strolled through the place on adrenaline, red sand and stims. Only guy I didn't kill was Johnny. Mechanic. He treated me like, well, a kid. So him, I just threw across the street in the car he was driving. Ended up in the Hudson. Didn't know if he could swim. At the time."

"That's as nice as I could manage in that state."

Pressley swallows a couple times before she speaks.

I need to tell the whole f*cking story, at least to command and my field team. After the mission.

"sh*t, skip."

"Yeah. The reason the child services found me in a blood-spattered sh*thole is that I squatted there. Because no one else would sleep there. None of the other gangs knew what happened to the Tenth Street Reds and there were enough walls down they knew there wasn't sh*t left to steal. They weren't big on checking."

"The videos after that were actually in the orphanage. I just spraypainted it to look like a Reds den. Thnigs I did for myself with someone I liked. Someone my age and a tiny bit less f*cked in the head. Granted, I was drunk off my ass and sloping down on red sand blockers. But those were probably the first thing I did that I chose. Took them as a joke with each other. Didn't even mean to leak them. Dextro booze is to be avoided, mapgirl."

"What'd the suit say about Dantius? Know thyself and all that."

"Your suit data showed what the doctor called a A-R-R-A sequence. Analyze, revulsion, regret, action. You have an A-A-A with batties. Anger, analyze, act. Even..."

Pressley calls up her tool.

"Just now. Anger spike in your adrenals was larger, probably seeing one on an Alliance ship. Except you took the correct action of waiting to see. Squiddies you're A-R-R-A with hostiles, if you know goin in or decide they're hostiles. The rest it's a S-PB-I-A chain. Stop, pack-bond, interact, act. Your brain adopts all of them as family, like kid sisters. Or cats. Doc Chakwas was grumbling that your bonding instinct would get you killed. You'd adopt a varren nest or put rachni in an ant farm. She ordered the psych guy to figure out why the f*ck you pack bond so fast, since humans are already off the goddamned charts on that instinct."

"Remember that one mechanic who taped a knife to the cleaning bot and taught it to chop potatoes?" Shepard chuckles.

"Sure. Admiral Stabby. Bestau gratin in the fleet. Honorary XO on the SSV Everest."

"What's a squiddie?" teases a familiar voice.

"Ignore my navigator, Sly. She hasn't had all her shots."

Slaere's paperwhite hand lands on Shepard's shoulder.

"How's my little mean girl? Been a year or so, hasn't it?"

"Better gear, worse sh*t. New crest tats?"

"Yeah. Someone in my unit suggested them."

Suggested tattoos with semi-transparent overlays in liturgical Armanese? Song of Janiris verses about light and bliss? Sure.

"S'cute."

"f*ck's sake, Pressely, put your eyes back in. That's basically my aunt. I wasn't on the official evac list for Mindoir, remember? Because her unit picked me up about nine weeks after the last survivors made a run for it."

"The Armali militia has a standing policy to sweep all 'presumed empty' raid sites. Sometimes, we find survivors. When I met this one, she had a sparking pistol in one hand, a shot-up leg and a necklace of eyesockets," Slaere tells Pressley, glancing at the Batarian laying out some dossier on a table.

"f*ck."

"My thoughts exactly. She zinged me with a warp after I cloaked. Sniffed my eezo's magnetic field out like a...what's that human dog...bloodhound!"

"I was having a bad day," Shepard sniffs.

"And I was impressed. Have been ever since. Even though you probably should just retire. Go to Ilium, hit up a bar. Enough maidens get knocked up and it boosts the asari's gene pool for kickass in the Terminus till the end of time."

Pressley frowns.

"I thought that it didn't work like that?"

"Mental traits," Slaere tells her. "Our daughters get mental traits from the other parent and in rare cases, epigenetic ones. Our dormant genes, triggered into expression by the meld. You humans actually have a much better idea about your own bodies than we do. Asari know we can make babies and we know how but we don't have fertility clinics, or reproductive alternatives like the Stewart-Kiyoko-Page protocol for two women. Or anything like it. Biggest mystery we have about ourselves."

"Oh...huh."

-----

Hacket walks up to the podium. Pushing eighty and still trim. Silver-haired and wearing a neatly trimmed beard in exception to regs (or a rewrite for him) broken only by a scar on the jaw. Royal Navy back when 'navy' meant ships on water or in orbit before the Systems Alliance was formed.

Shepard's never met him. Grunts don't meet him outside of vids, unless they're at a medal ceremony or being deployed to a ship's garrison, both of which are unlikely to be in her future.

"We are throwing everything we have at Elysium."

Not much for preamble, either.

"All we have is the report transmitted to your team leaders. With the relay blocked, we aren't getting any more intel until we unblock it. Assume the enemy has a full range of capabilities. Infantry, mechs, vehicles, air support. We know our javelin battery is captured, so assume nuclear and antimatter warheads in play. Orbital bombardment is a risk, in the early stages. The First and Fifth Fleets will clear the skies. That's the easy part, marines. Dreadnought versus a few jury-rigged freighters is nothing."

"You're the ones earning your pay, ladies and gentlemen."

"I'll turn it over to Huntress Slaere of the Armali City Militia who will explain the battle plan, and this gentleman,"

He gestures at the batarian.

"...is a consultant for Alliance Intelligence. His name is Mokr Hethe and he's suffered a lot to cross the fence to our side. I expect each of you to treat him with utmost respect. He will brief team leads on psych profiles of likely suspects. Because once we get Elysium back, we are making an example."

Hackett gestures to the podium.

"Huntress Slaere?"

Slaere strides up the stairs in two long, graceful motions and spreads a series of holo-transmitters on the table with one hand like a professional dealer at a casino, flicking out cards.

She's met human males before. She knows to wait before speaking.

As is official military protocol, the sight of an asari huntress in a skintight ballistic bodysuit has led to a lot of appreciative muttering. From the boys, it's a neat divide of either looking away or else biting back their reaction, with at least four she can see moving their helmets to their laps. Those who choose not to look out of a respect for someone back home, or a lack in interest in females, and those who lack the discipline to look away.

The girls' reactions are much more telling, Shepard thinks. A few like Jamie Pressley, are crashed. Their circuits scrambled by either newfound or reignited curiosity.

Pressley's face belongs in an exonet photo gallery marked 'when I realized I was gay'.

"Rookies," Shepard mutters to herself.

The other girls are blushing--maybe in relationships--or seething with some ancient womanly desire to tear down the pretty one for their own advantage

Slaere turns on the holos. An image of a mass relay, surrounded by little red dots at one end is displayed.

"Humans haven't had to deal with a mass relay minefield. Which is not," she adds sharply, making two grumblers in front sink down in their chairs. "an indictment of your skills or cleverness. Asari took two thousand years to go from steam engines to the atom bomb. Nothing was pushing us. You adorable lunatics took less than two hundred years."

"Fact is, humans haven't been out here that long. Things are new."

She triggers something on her omnitool.

"We asari have seen all of the nasty tricks people can do. Especially to the traffic system. Whether it's war, pirates, crooked captains faking mass relay buoy logs, you name it."

"Good thing about a mass relay is that they're instant transit across almost unlimited distance with minimal fuel use. The terrifying thing about them is they're the backbone of everything in the galaxy and they're not ours, nor can we replace or repair them."

"Protheans built them and whatever control programs they had for them died out with them. Backup controls exist in the form of physical manipulators. Quite literally we ask a robot arm to pull a lever and hop on the relay field before it starts moving. Hence, things like drift at the exit point. A hundred fifty thousand cubic kilometers for a ship this size. So anti-relay mines always include thrusters and sensors."

"And they can always be beaten..."

She calls up images of three mid-size turian ships. They're built like freighters except for the extremely thick spars around each cargo pod.

"...for a cost. Thanks to our good friends in the Hierarchy, we have three minesweeper ships en route. They'll go ahead. First two will break in opposite directions, dropping swarms of drones and decoys designed to mimic ship engines. The mines will light up, making them visible and the drones will approach them and counter-detonate."

"These ships are VI-piloted because we don't expect to get them back.

"The third ship is the TRV Scythe with the Turian's Engineering Fleet. She's held in reserve, waiting for a report from sensors on the first two. It is crewed and by good officers. So if you're the praying sort, pray for them. If the first two don't work, it will enter the relay and deploy this."

Slaere taps something and the projection zooms in on one of the ships. The entire front half of the ship unfurls, plate after plate after plate of armor sliding together until it looks like a bowl with engines on the back. The load-bearing spine turns into a massive piston.

"This armored front piece can soak massive explosive force. The ship will stabilize with its engines, dump everything it has into her barriers, and then fire a massive barrage of torpedoes. The torpedos have overlapping detonation zones and enhanced EMP effect. Enough to either vaporize or short out any mines in a space equal to your Jupiter, back home. Once she fires, she'll reverse her FTL engine's field to increase the density of the forward shield. End up somewhere in the outer planets from the shockwave."

"Goddamn," Pressley mutters.

"Either TRV Scythe or one of the VI ships will report the minefield sufficiently clear. Heavy ships go up front, barriers to full. Any loose mines will hit and do minimal damage. The Turians have requested a two-cruiser, four-destroyer escort to help the Scythe return to the staging area. That's all we have."

"Admiral Hackett?"

"That's where you come in. Special Operations Command, stay for briefings. N7 team leads and XOs, my ready roombefore you ship out. ETA for the minesweepers is three hours. This fleet goes through at three hour twenty minutes."

He taps his omnitool.

"Hawking CIC, signal the fleet to go to battle stations. Everest CIC, stand by for officer transit. Cairo and Jakarta, form up on the turian sweepers. Bracketing escort."

Hacket salutes the crowd.

"We'll get you in the dirt. Make the folks back home proud, marines."

Chapter 15: Happy f*cking New Year - Shepard (3)

Chapter Text

2nd Lt. Solaris Shepard | Elysium, southern outskirts of the capital city of Illyria

This was a working-class neighborhood, Shepard suspects. The prefabs were never replaced with proper buildings, but the damage has been fixed, and new welds made to expand homes as families grew. People with not much money but a lot of pride. Like the Puerto Rican and African neighborhoods in the Bronx that she saw as a girl. Dirty and cheap but whole. Places where families were willing to live.

The blue-black impact burns of small arms fire mark vehicles and walls and even the street's pavement. The scrawny, half-grown trees the settlers planted on arrival are shot up or burned out. There's maybe a dozen blood stains and no corpses in sight except for local police who went down fighting, which is worse. Subdue and wound, not kill.

She sent Brittany Westmoreland and the snipers she leads up ahead along with the ten marines of Tombstone-2 to a church with a sturdy enough tower to take a few hits.

"Tombstone 1-5, sitrep."

Brittany's reply is a long time in coming.

"Negative friendlies. Negative hostiles."

"f*ck," Shepard snarls.

She glances back at Alenko. She's not sure what she thinks yet. He can hack a turret or a lock in a twinkle, and he's good with a throw and pull. Raw power to spare, but except for keeping his barrier up, he's quickly drained. It seems more like a tech who can do biotics than what she's heard about Sentinels. Then again, she's sh*t with medigel, and he's got the top ratings for a field medic.

"Emptied the neighborhood."

"That's cheerful," he grumbles.

She's also not crazy about his affect, but she's not going to judge him about his manner in the field unless she can name what about it bothers her.

"Tombstone team, come in."

"Tombstone actual here."

"This is SSV Boston. We've got two anti-air batteries up ahead, giving the gunships hell and keeping the fleet orbital. Captured colonial defense. Your orders are to demo them."

"Confirm message, Boston. You want us to take them out?"

"Affirmative. On-site crews appear to be KIA per telescopes and drone checks. Fire from orbit will result in too much damage to the city. Showing skeleton crews and anti-personnel mines."

"Solid copy, Boston."

"Jenkins. Stay here, turtle up, and run comms. Make sure that every team gets every update from the others. That's how we all go home. The school over there should have a fire shelter. Reinforced. Alenko, give him some dome shield generators and auto-turrets."

"Aye-aye."

"Westmoreland, break off from the sniper group and form up with me. Corporal Udina takes point on your team. Udina, I expect you to be ten times the shot and one-tenth the asshole your famous daddy is, or I will boot your ass back to a cushy posting in a bank vault on Earth. Clear?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Shepard calls up the area on her omni, zooming the map in and splitting it into levels. It's the official city engineer data. The last update sent to building and safety a month ago. Overlaying that with the drone overflights and the sensors of the ships in orbit tells her what had been here and subtract what has been destroyed.

The gun crews either panicked or were overrun because orders are to scuttle the guns rather than let them be captured. Now the pirates have artillery in emplacements that no infantry-carried weapons can crack.

The batties demoed aircar depots. That makes sense. Smash and grabs in sporting goods, electronics and clothing stores. Have to be building something. Have to ask Alenko about that... Did Colonial Engineering really wire defenses into the main power grid? f*ck.

"On your six, skipper."

Alenko appears behind her. She felt his eezo but she's glad he was smart enough not to sneak up on her.

"Crew tell you to call me that?"

"Just a traditionalist. You seem like someone who'll have a ship one day."

"You mean you saw the NXC pins on my fatigues."

"That too."

She gestures to the map.

"Feed lines for the guns are part of the city's power grid. Blowing them to overload the guns is out."

"That's illegal, to build it like that."

"Haven't been out in the colonies long, have you? Older the colony, the sketchier the sh*t to build it. Elysium's fourth oldest still standing, right after Terra Nova, Arcturus and Eden Prime. I think half of the houses in Mindoir were made of plating that fell off the back of a freighter. The rest were bonepicked off the first ships to set down."

Corporal Udina cuts in on his channel.

"Movement on your two o'clock, skipper. Thousand meters out."

"Talk to me."

"f*ck."

"Report."

"I..."

f*ck. he froze up.

"Udina, report or I will charge up that tower and skullf*ck you with a black hole!"

"It's a kid, boss. Ten, maybe. Little girl. Lots of bruises. Wearing a harness made of climbing rope with some vehicle fuel cells on it and some batteries. Looks like a suicide vest."

"Hostiles?"

"Battie in the distance. Heavy armor. Haliat Armory kit. Looks like he's wearing a transmitter on his suit's medigel pocket."

"So he dies, she dies."

"Orders?"

"The f*ck you mean, orders?"Shepard snarls. "Monitor. Something comes up and tries to grab her, light it up."

"Aye-aye."

"Alenko, did you make a new year's resolution?" Shepard asks.

"Yeah, why?"

"Willing to share it?"

"Get treatment so I can get an L3 implant."

"f*ck, you're an L2. That's hardcore. Explains your weird-ass sense of humor."

"Thanks, skipper."

"That was a reprimand, L-T. Work on it."

"Right."

Shepard racks her ODIN back in its slot.

"Mine was that I was never going to watch another kid die."

"Oh."

"Here's the play. Alenko, they hit autocar depots and rentals, sporting goods stores, clothing stores. Legit ones so we should have full inventory. Assume they used parts stolen here and designs like that girl. Figure out how many bombs, what range, and get with engineers on the Everest. sh*t seems pretty crude. Might be a way to countermeasure it."

"Aye-aye."

Westmoreland shimmers into view behind Alenko.

"What's the job, skipper?"

"Cloak and creep. Find me a way into the main grids power lines and places to put charges. Pop up some cameras for command. Those two cruisers that landed in the main plaza aren't running. For a reason. They're only ships with a chance in hell of getting past theEverest and they're just sitting there."

Westmoreland nods and taps her omni.

"Tombstone 2-5, 3-5, 4-5, on me. Spotters, go with. Cloak up at all times. Full record on your scopes. Let's draw a map, people."

"Corporal Udina, find a way to make damn sure that battie knows he's f*cked no matter what. Don't let him think he can pop that kid to take me out. Someone put some flares in that area. Targeting flares for the ship's guns."

"Aye-aye."

"Jenkins, I need a running list of human languages you can load subliminally on my infiltrator implant. Thirty minutes or less absorption time. Sort by earth nationality and culture."

"I'm going to take a walk," Shepard tells her team. "Remind them that I'm the sick f*ck who got half my unit killed on Torfan. Tell him that if something happens to that little girl, this colony burns."

Shepard closes her eyes.

"Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."

"Going to go ask that kid how her day at school was..."

Chapter 16: Happy f*cking New Year - Shepard (4)

Chapter Text

Shepard | Elysium

January 2nd, 2179

The girl sent out with the suicide vest is a skinny black kid with rusty red hair. Probably picked because she looks like Shepard herself must have at age eight.

She has something that could resemble a plan, in a dim enough light. These f*ckers are counting on the Butcher of Torfan showing up, clearly. Hoping she'll shoot the kid and that once her team demos the guns, the Alliance will come pouring in. The only way they win is using the slaves as hostages. Talking their way into orbit and jumping because the Alliance won't risk shooting at warships with holds stuffed with human families. Human kids.

She sets her comm to theatre-wide.

"Command, do we have any friendlies secured?" Shepard asks.

"Eleven hundred nine, hiding in the caves with the 301st. Foxtrot, Hotel, Whiskey and Victor companies from the 100th Marine are heading to reinforce."

"Original colony population?"

"One million, three hundred and eleven thousand, nine hundred and two," the comm officer replies.

"Minus the dead cops and garrison," Shepard reminds them.

"Less than eight thousand. Stand by, Tombstone actual. Connecting you to SSV Everest actual."

"Report," Hackett demands.

"We've got a little kid with a suicide vest. Two sky-car fuel pods and heavy weapon power cells for triggers ziptied into harnesses of rope or cable. That's what, half a kilo of enriched thorium? She's a walking nuke."

"Good God," Hackett murmurs.

"Tombstone 0-3 found a partial device. Must not have needed it. He thinks they could've made thousands with the gear they stole just locally."

"Engineering!" Hackett bellows. "Get someone direct with Lieutenant Alenko and get confirmation on that."

"I'm about to go talk to a hostage. I'll keep my omnitool in active mode, see if we can get a good scan, sir. Maybe the engineers or demo guys can cook up a countermeasure."

Just before she crosses into the no-man's land that had been a park, Shepard sees a shimmer behind a concrete soccer goal. Like a low-quality cloak field. She swings her ODIN out in the general direction without taking her eyes off the girl.

"High-heat explosive rounds. Don't have to aim to kill you. Drop it."

Rather than resolving into a soldier, the shimmer slides off. Camo blanket, apparently. Two civilians are revealed, one a burly black man with a bleeding arm and one a tiny Asian woman in a sleek red pantsuit.

"Who the f*ck are you?"

"Emily Wong,Earth News Network. Tough guy here is Howard."

"M'fine," he grunts. "Knife wasn't even poisoned."

"Take the f*cking medigel, you stubborn asshole. I am not explaining a dead moron to your husband."

Shepard laughs.

"A reporter. No sh*t? f*cking hell. Perfect."

She hands Emily both her portable shields and two of her medi-gel injectors.

"Switch it on and put that in your jacket. Don't stick your head up but it should do for the rest. Last an hour. Do you have anything that can transmit from a helmet feed?"

"Yeah."

"Hand it over. Going to make you famous while I get myself either killed, cat-sixed or executed for treason."

Emily digs in the pocket of her suit for an interviewer's kit. Microphone, broadcast chip, and a connector for smart glasses and visors. Probably the one she uses to interview local police or garrisoned marines.

"Red plug," Shepard mutters. "So I attach that...here."

She clicks it into the maintenance dataport for her helmet.

"Check the feed."

"Live," Emily tells her. "Fleet isn't jamming, looks like. Ten seconds for pingback from New York studios."

"Keep it running. I'll just watch my motherf*cking language."

Wong smirks.

Shepard stops when she and the girl are a good ten paces apart.

"Hi!" she calls out.

"Hi."

She opens her arms. Hopefully, the battie will want her to get closer to the bomb.

"Come here."

The girl breaks into a sprint. Shepard has to warp her armor just enough to soften the metal so the girl doesn't break her face. She flings her arms around Shepard.

"You're safe."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

She kneels down and lifts the girl's chin with an armored finger.

"What's your name?"

"Milly. Milly Dlamini."

"Milly, huh?"

"Millard. I'm from America but I got adopted. Momma taught me 'bout my new name."

"You know, I was adopted too."

"You were?"

"Yeah."

"Dlamini's a pretty name. Hang on a minute, sweetie."

She switches back to Jenkins.

"What's the ethnicity on that?"

"Computer says...common in South Africa. Census shows a pretty significant Kenyan, Moroccan and South African population in the second group of landings here. Along with Libyan, Qatari, and Israeli. Came in with ExoGeni's off-world offices for their Middle East and Africa based projects."

"Xhosa, right? As a best guess?"

"Yes, ma'am. That or Afrikaans but..."

"But that's the white folks. Did a recon simulation in the Joburg sewers once. Load it in my implant. Basic words first."

Shepard scrunched her eyes tight as forced daydreams routed through her biotic amp's link to her nerves pour the language into her brain. Highly accelerated video recordings in a chemically forced REM state. Not awake, not asleep either. Her lips witch and her tongue twitches without conscious control. Hurts like someone dumped a spoonful of shrapnel into her eyeballs and put them on spin cycle.

"Max the speed," she snarls at Jenkins.

"Ma'am?"

"f*cking do it. Nosebleed never killed anyone."

"f*ck," she grunts. "That it?"

Blood from ruptured capillaries in her nose is pooling slowly in her helmet and her vision is red from tiny vessels in her eyes that burst from the strain.

"That's all I can do. Your brain was about to cook, ma'am."

She nods at the city walls and the battie watching their every move.

"Did he say why he wanted you to wear this?"

Milly nods.

"He needed to talk to you. Said you owed him money."

"Him?" she asks, pointing at the wall.

"No. His boss."

"Jenkins. Get with that batarian informant. Check for pirates suspected of running ops I shut down."

"Aye-aye."

"Bangaphi abazalwana bakho?" ("How many brothers do you have?" | Xhosa)

"Eyoyikisayo!" the girl chortles. ("Awful!" | Xhosa)

"Intoni?" ("What?" | Xhosa)

"Ilizwi lakho." ( "Your voice." | Xhosa )

"I learned it from white people," Shepard whispers. "Sorry about the accent."

"Yeah, you sound like white people," the girl grumbles.

Shepard shoves the girl's foot with her boot.

"You're a mean little girl. Can you take me to him, Milly?"

A nod.

"Keep being brave. If you see your parents, let me know."

"Okay."

Shepard sets her beloved ODIN, both the LOKI pistols she added to her custom collection last year, and her grenades on a nearby barrel.

"Those are sentimental, Ms. Wong. I'm trusting you to get those back to my unit."

"Tombstone teams 1 to 4. Proceed with current op. Tombstone command, stand down."

"What's the move, skipper?" Alenko asks.

"I'll find out."

-----

"Power cells," the battie grunts when she gets close.

"What?"

"Turn over the power cells for your implant."

"You're the boss."

She unclips the armor around her right arm and taps three times on the subcutaneous control panel for her biotic implant. A small battery soon pushes through her skin, wrapped in plastic. She puts it in his glove and closes the armor back up, letting the medi-gel dispensers do their thing.

"Happy?"

He drops it into the nearest trash chute.

"Heh. Yeah. Boss said if you actually fell for it, I got to keep your eyes. Maybe a kidney."

"Charming," Shepard drawls. "Shall we?"

-----

Human beings line every single centimeter of floor space. Mess hall. Engine room. Utility and storage lockers. Each tied with their hands behind their back and each row looped together with plastic cords to keep them standing and packed in. Some of the prisoners were taken naked and are still dripping or have soap in their hair. The raiders must have scrambled over the last 72 hours to get every single survivor of the attack loaded before the Alliance could respond.

Milly's mother is tied to her family in a bathroom not far from the bridge. She shrieks and reaches for Milly until a batarian silences her with a blow from his shotgun butt.

No guard seems to want to stand too close to Shepard. Makes sense, given that she's famously killed their kind with a shattered hand, one eye bruised shut and one leg so torn up the bone was visible. Her helmet's display shows that Emily's signal is still streaming and that her second Blackstar implant is fully operational. No humans are crazy enough to implant two amps, so the batties never asked.

She's at full strength with her biotics. Just a hell of a lot more likely to keel over or cook her brain.

"Seeing this?" she whispers into her comm. "The gear?"

"Yeah," Alenko replies. "It's all Haliat. I think some of it still has the presale interlocks on it."

"Right. And you know what we're not seeing? A single f*cking turian with these guys. Which is weird. Even for slavers, some mercs would at least take a job doing mechanic work or watching a door."

"Lieutenant, this is Mokr Hethe. The informant."

"I remember."

"Your man is Elanos Haliat, I'm sure of it."

"Give me a bit more than that."

"Middle son of the CEO of Haliat Armory."

"The Turian weapons manufacturers?"

"Precisely."

"Hence the brand loyalty on the weapons and armor. Let me guess, he's the black sheep of the family. Hence no turian will be caught dead with him."

"Yes. He ran off. The fact that the interlocks from the stores are still present means whoever provided these weapons could hack them. Someone with insider knowledge of the company."

"I'm sold, Mr. Hethe."

"Mr. Mokr, actually. Family name first."

"Right. New experience for me."

"Being polite to a Batarian? I can't imagine why," he jokes.

"Anything I can poke on, psych-wise?"

"Inadequacy complex that could fill the Citadel. Ran off when his father asked him to explain poor showings in his division's sales."

"Thanks."

Earth News Network | Human and Citadel Space

January 2nd, 2179

"This is Emily Wong, reporting live from Elysium. A few minutes ago, you the viewers were treated to exclusive footage of a marine named Solaris Shepard comforting a little girl who was taken hostage. She has entered the pirate camp to negotiate and has graciously offered to transmit footage continually. Please note that due to the compression on a quantum communicator like te one she is using to defeat the jamming, there is a five-to-nine minute delay between what you are seeing, and when it happened."

"We will now reconnect you to the stream."

-----

A turian in long silk coat of bright orange stands looking out at the display screen. The display of the ships in orbit shifts constantly and outside the glass viewports beside it, one of the broadside guns shifts back and forth.

Each ship is marked with an Alliance arrowhead and is labeled in blue and white.

"Shepard," Haliat sighs. "At last."

"Elanos Haliat. Little bird told me I owe you money."

"Mmm, yes. Your attack on my enterprises at Torfan and your unprovoked murder of my associate, Kiva Dantius have made it very expensive to operate."

"Translation: your daddy cut you off when you didn't make commission and you thought slave-taking was your real calling. Except I'm better at killing scum than scum is at killing me back."

"Pirates take cargo. They kill people. So do soldiers. You capture and you kill. Goods are goods, Shepard. Slaves, especially humans, are worth more by weight than eezo to the Batarian Hegemony. I find your moral hypocrisy surprising. Am I so much worse than your Alliance's Corsairs?"

"That's an exonet rumor. Corsairs project was shut down before it was launched."

"Come now, Shepard, it's just you and me. Tell me the truth."

"It's not, actually."

A finger crosses the video feed and taps the lens.

"Broadcasting across human space. Unjammable. You just acknowledged your real name. So kill me, don't, doesn't matter. The Alliance will chase you from rock to rock until they put a bullet in your smug face."

"Take her helmet. Kill her."

A blue glow covers the viewscreen, bending the armored glass towards Haliat.

"I wouldn't. I pull any harder and you get a shower of knives in the back of the head."

"Did you morons not take her implant?"

Shepard laughs.

"I planned for that, Haliat."

Haliat raises his pistol.

"Drop the field. Or I set off every vest on every child."

"You won't."

"Why not? Surely the Butcher of Torfan understands collateral damage."

"I understand a sticky-flapped mommy's boy who didn't do anything right. So much so that not one turian pirate in the Terminus would take your money. Who can't get so much as a shiver of the crests from a lady unless he puts a slave collar on her. Who can't imagine earning it, instead of buying it."

"You know as well as I do that one of those vest packs enough punch to vaporize this ship if it goes off inside the hull. Dead turians can't spend money."

Haliat fires, the bullet slamming into a shimmering field of energy just in front of the camera and spinning helplessly inside it. A small bubble of energy flicks it aside.

"Feel better?" Shepard teases.

Haliat snaps his fingers and his thugs throw a human girl into view. He changes his aim.

"Drop the field and surrender your power cells, or she dies."

"Milly, stay calm."

"You can't protect her, Shepard."

"Watch me."

A bubble of biotic energy surrounds Haliat's gun arm and cracks it at the elbow and again at the wrist. In opposite directions. He howls in pain.

"TRV Scythe, fire for effect. Tombstone team, clear this ship."

Mercs charge into frame from every angle. Shepard grunts in pain. The whole picture is suffused with blue and the signal cuts out.

-----

"This is Johnathan Walters, Earth News Network. We've temporarily lost the feed from Elysium. We are also experiencing some technical difficulties. Please bear with us."

"Wait, wait... Excellent news! I'm being told by our woman at the scene, Emily Wong, that the Alliance Navy has graciously allowed the use of military cameras and relay equipment to continue our broadcast."

-----

The camera lens is cracked and the signal staticky. A turian with two shattered legs, a ruined arm and a handprint still sizzling with warp fire burned into his crests is scurrying along the wall towards an escape pod.

Screams, weapons fire, and the metallic twang of biotic fields imploding and splitting the air all echo in the background.

"Tombstone actual to Everest. Please confirm countermeasures are deployed and effective.."

"This is Everest CIC. Ground reports from the 301st and Rattlesnake team show the torpedos were all successful against all non-hardened electronics."

"Understood. Shepard out."

A pistol rises into view, it's circuits sparking and the grip smeared in bluish-silver turian blood. It fires three times, shattering crests and spraying brain matter onto the deck and the wall.

"Sic semper monstra." ( "Thus always to monsters" | Latin )

"Alliance command, Haliat is E-KIA. Requesting infantry support and medical for the civilians."

"They're already on the way, Shepard. Hackett out."

Chapter 17: Nobody Hurts Her Girls - Aethyta

Chapter Text

Matriarch Aethyta, sworn Justicar (a member of "Blackcrest" double agent group) | Hawkins system

January 11th, 2179

Saren's half-cybernetic face draw into a sneer over the comms.

"It is unwise to threaten a SPECTRE,asari.>"

She knowsexactly which ex-SPECTRE gave him those scars and that little sh*t still owes Aethyta for some covering up she did with the Thirty.

The ship they're standing in is not turian. Unless the turians started using exclusively purple metal with an unnerving shine to it and stopped installing lightbulbs. Something about it, and about the pained knitting of Nezzy's eyebrows, sets her on edge.

"Never threaten me again..."

The right side of her beloved's face flares with a momentary surge of energy but Nezzy bites her lip--drawing a drop of blue blood--to contain it. Curious. A threat to a bondmate is the only thing that truly shakes a Matriarch. Powerful as they may be, wisdom and restraint dies the moment half of one's soul is at stake.

"You heard me. Take the fact that I made the threat as proof I can carry it out."

"Not even the Thirty would dare!"

Benezia's gaze turns on Saren and he flinches back.

"Speak carefully, Saren. Does the Turian Hierarchy know the names of any of the Thirty? Do the SPECTRE archives?"

He growls.

"Hurt my Benezia's feelings and I will stuff thresher maw larvae up your flap and staple it shut. Hurt her and I will send the one who cut your face in half last time to bring the other side of your face.Dismissed, soldier."

He snarls, swiping his claws across the lens and scratching it. Benezia tilts right, graceful as the first night they danced on Iilium eight centuries back and avoids it. The ribbons on her cowl barely flutter.

"He doesn't seem himself. Even for Saren, that's..."

Aetyhta whistles.

"I know, Thyta. More important than ever that I correct him. He has great power at his disposal. There's something of the playful rogue left in there. The one you introduced me to, I remind you."

"We needed to hitch a ride to the presidium! Should've shoved you in the taxi with that loony krogan girl. If anyone could have taught Baraka Tekka to make a living stripping, it's us, babe."

Nezzy jabs a finger at the camera.

"I beg your pardon! I never did that."

Tyhta laughs.

"True. You spent your maiden years bolstering the family fortune. I was the stripper. You just gave me constructive criticism. Very constructive. Very detailed. Took hours."

"Trouble. Always trouble. You're a bad influence on me and my child."

"Nezzy, my pet, I'm well aware. Liara misses you. Is it that important?"

"Siame, do you think I would be here and missing our daughter's first years of maidenhood, if there was a better choice? That I would be missing comforting her with this one or that one doesn't love her as madly as she deserves? That I would be missing her formal challenge to the University and the Republican Institutes to reinstate her titles? You know I wouldn't, Thyta." ("siame" = "one who is all" | Thessian standard)

"No," Thyta admits. "You wouldn't be. You could never do that to our baby."

"To stop Saren by force would cost us legions and fleets. If I bend him now, we don't need to break him later. Huntresses' lives are saved and we save the children those maidens will one day mother."

"You don't look yourself, Nezzy. You look tired. The headaches, again?"

"No," Benezia croaks. "This is new. It's not age sickness. Actually, before I left, my doctor said I was doing much better. Seems you'll have to suffer my judgemental and overly chaste ways another century or two."

"Judgemental, yes. Chaste..."

"Goddess preserve me."

"Two centuries, huh? I'll hold you to that, my love."

"Something else. Like a hum at the back of my hearing. I find myself disinterested in Saren's behavior. Our dear Shiala had to shake me out of a daze because she realized I had not objected to mining the area surrounding one of his research labs. Located in a city."

"That's not you."

"No, it's not," she admits.

"He brought an ardat, maybe?"

"Dominating me in my sleep?" Benezia teases, arching an eyebrow.

"Technology and animals capable of mind control is a short list, Nezzy."

"Don't tell Liara, yet. Please. I need to be confident I can resist it. I won't have her thinking of her mother as the plaything of a turian she despises."

"Make sure you do resist it. Make sure you come back, Nezzy. If Saren has to go down hard, he goes down hard. A quiet fix isn't as important as Liara having her mom back. I want you back, too."

"I know. How is she...ah...taking the news?"

"Better than I thought, honestly. Two justicars came after her. I think she gene-scanned herself when she woke up after the failed meld. They seemed to know her name. No idea if they got comms off. I was an hour behind. When I got here, one was spaced and bleeding out and the other dead. The spaced one hijacked my ship so we took theirs, chased her to Pearl and put her down. First kill was an accident, second was the older justicar. She looked into the old memories, calmed down. Looked like she wanted to throw up. She ended up bawling in my lap. Liara won't go dark, Nezzy. We raised her right."

"The accident?" Benezia asks.

"She had some half-dead Prothean she'd thawed. Figured she would meld since it had damaged vocal cords. Baby's first full meld and it's a fresh-from-stasis corpse. Kid's got issues."

"Goddess. A living Prothean?"

Aethyta nods.

"Our girl has been busy. She has thirteen stasis pods or vacuum-frozen corpses here from nine different species we don't have records of. Besides Protheans."

Benezia frowns.

"That must have hurt her, to have harmed one. She looks up to the Protheans so."

"She's been weird about it, yeah. I think she either got nothing off the Prothean or got something she didn't like. Seems way more interested in the non-Prothean species from that era now. She recovered what she thinks might be a Densorin, from a separatist colony. The planet that went volcanic ten years ago, she found a ceremonial casket there. Liara says she has viable members of six extinct races and at least three have sufficiently variable genetics besides their own that they can rebuild. Assuming she can get some salarian geneticists with enough stims in them to do the grunt work."

"All this, while she was hoarding justicar artifacts?"

"Your daughter,siame. I can do one thing well. Liara's not happy unless she's lifting five mountains at once."

"As for the justicars, her spooky little AI buddy broke the locks. It's too much to send via QEC but you need to see it. I'll send you rough notes and if you want the real thing, tell me where to drop it. The Justicars were preparing some nasty sh*t for the humans and the asari. Same concept as your work but a rush job, not encouraging it along and done from the opposite f*cking angle. Saw a way to use humans to create asari offspring without breaking our race's 'purity' with melding. Infuse human babies in utero with asari tissue."

"Goddess! Breeding them?"

"Yes. I'll need someone in Expansion Command you trust to verify the theory. Their practices were ghastly. Aerosol euphorics, hormonal modifications, restraints, fixing the adult male to adult female ratio. You name it. They seem to think the asari must either be consumed by Ardat-Yakshi or become a race of sexless nuns using humans as baby jars. Dates show it's pretty recent work. If I didn't know better, I'd say justicars looked at humanity and took worst possible lessons. Absorbed the worst of humanity's racism and the worst of human religion's puritanical about sex. They have to go, my love. And soon."

"Agreed. Next time I can establish secure communication, I'll speak to the Will of Sunset. If she won't strike, I'll nominate a replacement. Something this dire, she'll need to act on or be rotated to another title."

"As for your project for our little wing, looks like those bitches were also chasing our Black Blaze facility but no luck. The doctor there says the first-gen blockers will be ready before next year's Janiris. Hmm. That'd be an excellent time to release them. In the middle of a fertility festival. Have an ardat present and feed and harm no one and...Goddess!" Benezia gasps. "The justicars response would poison the well for them. Look into whether our Blackcrests and our war priestesses can block any justicar interference, yes?"

"Happy to."

"Be safe," Benezia pleads.

"I'm not the one with an egotistical SPECTRE sniffing around my azure. You be safe too,zausmel." ("core" = Serraci | idiom from a tragic romance)

-----

Liara's new best friend is the still-mute and still-unnamed female from DC1938. Female is a guess but unless there's another reason a smooth, two-legged race would tit*, a slit and a nub, it seems like a safe guess.

Not one bit disoriented, the stranger is willing to meld but unable to and Liara, smart girl she is, isn't forcing anything.

Leaving them working on visually communicating basics, like the shape of helium.

A hundred and five years ago, if someone had told her that this pale, freckled shrieking mess laying on Benezia's chest would one day be giggling at successfully identifying hydrogen with the last survivor of an alien race? Aethyta would have shot them. Motherhood took longer to tame her worst habits than it did for Nezzie.

At some point yesterday, the stranger decided the best method of showing Liara things was to use creepy, glowing green droplets of f*ck nows exuded through its skin from the finger bones. The first time it did that, it set off the emergency shutdown because the ship's VI thought it had just gained nine billion billion metric tons of mass. They ended just unplugging the sensors in that compartment. Every other thing this pink-faced lunatic does sets off some sort of alarm because starship keep a close eye on the sorts of disturbances that bend space, disrupt time, or generally f*ck normal physics up the ass.

Meaning the Starclan is a sitting duck, still slow as mud even with most of its cargo containers jettisoned and with its sensors blinded so Liara can research. The justicar ships are providing cover with that but they only relay their feeds to her and Liara's omnitools.

Keeping with her omnitool on is a matter of self-preservation now.

She plugged one of the low-speed QEC relays she brought into her omni yesterday so she could keep up on the exonet as the galaxy passed them by.

A particularly nasty salarian dalatrass died. Made the mistake of thinking her sister wouldn't poison her.

More talk of this sketchy human group, Cerberus. Bastards are like ghosts except that ghosts communicate their intentions better. Ghosts have the decent to say 'begone!' or something. She makes a note to shake some old trees to look for traces of some other black-ops groups she ran across. Let the snakes bite each other.

A human colony was hit. Big one.

Aethyta finds herself sitting upright almost as soon as she opens the link.

A million people loaded onto ships, headed for the worst possible awful in the Terminus. Saved by one human lunatic who comforted a kid with a gun to her head and...

She calls up the haptic and asks it to extrapolate and scrubs the takedown footage back and forth. This woman isn't like any human biotic she's seen. Humans pack a punch but just that. A punch without much actual finess or artistry. Most see biotics as magic, not an extension of martial arts or meditation. Huntresses flunk out in basic if they can't maintain a focus with their eyes, plus separate effects based the flow of sensation in the fingers of each hand.

The most dangerous human biotic she ever met could manage her barrier, a split-in-half lift field with messy focus but enough to pin two krogan, and a warp to rupture it all. Fun to drink with, though. If that lunatic ever gets her head on straight and spends more time drinking and less time getting tattooed, she'll be onto something.

That's three focus points. Three and a half, if Aetyhta's being generous.

"One. Her own barrier."

"Two. Warp field on the glass."

"Three. Deflecting the bullet."

"Four. Five. Goddess...double pulls just so she could break his arm in two different places?"

She scrolls back to where the video shows the woman surrendering an implant's power core.

Five. With one hand. Because she already surrendered the core for her primary amp.

It's clear from the sniffling off-camera that she hid the child's face while she executed that useless prick.

The woman dark skin and wiry red hair suggest her genetic precursors are from the hotter parts of Earth--whatever the f*ck that continent with the deserts is called--and she's not sure if it's alliance genetic improvements for soldiers or if the woman is simply three people surgically fused but she is a beast.

Biotic potential. Nice to look at. Takes care of kids.

Sadly, her name was redacted in this version of the broadcast. Probably public knowledge in human space.

Aethyta shoots a request to one of her spies, dims her omnitool and rolls over to get some rest.

It's important for a member of the Thirty to help her daughter meet suitable matches, after all.

Chapter 18: The Deep Waters - Liara

Chapter Text

Dr. Liara T'Soni | Hawkins system | MSV Starclan

January 13th, 2179

What her father suggested they call the DC1938er is patient, eager to learn, and almost too friendly for someone woke from what seems to have been a dangerous form of stasis pod that stopped life signs rather than pausing them.

They don't speak a word of each other's language. Scans show they could. Vocal cords are just as similar to hers as a human or another asari.

They have images.

Her new friend seems not to require sleep or food beyond sunlight and has stubbornly remained nude. Her new friend exudes tiny flecks of her own bone. Some strange manipulation ability she has that resides in her hands draws other matter from the room. Fingers dance like a musician playing a lyre. Whatever force is exerted acts like gravity but it simply cannot be gravity. The best biotics cannot violate the fact that a strong gravity change will affect an area, not just a single item. Yet her strange new friend can lift only the tungsten blocks that Liara brings without dragging along the wrappers of the ration bars scattered about. She can lift only Liara's coffee cup and send it end-over-end without spilling until it hovers over the recycling chute and drains of whatever sludge Liara left in it days before in her absent-mindedness. It seems the flaps of muscle on her neck are involved them, for after long sessions, they dry out and look like they will break off. So coffee cups and tungsten blocks are fed to strangelets, consumed by the predatory particles to add material.

Then the stranger somehow reshapes strangelets, whose unique characteristic is that they cannot be reshaped, dented, deformed, or destroyed.

Hundreds of sculptures are scattered on shelves.

A large prothean building that has a different style than any similar structures Liara saw the ruins of on digs.

Two other humanoid races, one with shaggy fur and backward-curling horns and one lean and menacing, with long tentacles dangling from its mouth and huge, triangular sockets that don't seem to actually have eyes in them. Quite like the strange statues on half-ruined murals she's seen of a Prothean city built on top of a more ancient one. What everyone had assumed were statues of the Protheans. Though now that she recovered an actual prothean body, she knows that those statues in the murals were not of the protheans.

A pair of what look like stars, with a tiny representation of her fried suspended between them on wires so thin they might as well be transparent. If it is to scale, these stars were not much bigger than a thresher maw.

Models of humans, asari, each in two shapes: hunched and animalistic and upright, their hands lifted to point at some imagined horizon.

Some strange race which seemed to have angular mechanical places and machines bolted to their own skulls.

A painstaking model of the artificial system the Densorin created, with all ten stars and hundreds of synthetically perfect garden worlds. Set into motion with a sharp twist of a gear-like apparatus hidden in the centermost stars until all planets move and dance and orbit each other on thread-like rails.

Last, she created some strange aquatic pest species. Three major limbs and dozens of manipulating arms held under its buglike thorax. That one the DC1938er shivered after creating.

Frustrated, she sliced Liara's palm with the sharpened claws of the sculpture as if to communicate some...danger? Toxicity? Anger that Liara cannot speak to her?

Liara has never been so frustrated by her own skill as a translator. She has friends who could probably have translated this all by now, letting them take dictation into the most beloved and complex epic poem the DC1938ers ever wrote. That would require admitting she broke first contact rules and rules about opening unopened relays. Ninety-five previously unopened relays and interacting members of seven species no living asari has spoken to or seen face to face.

Humanity was marked for extermination by the turians for opening only the unmapped Relay 314. Each relay she dialed to its nearest linkage could have contained the next Rachni and Liara had only QEC-equipped probes to suggest it was safe. More than the salarians had when they turned over the rock with Rachni under it but she's well aware her behavior would shame the Thirty should it ever be discovered.

Liara yawns and the DC1938er mimics it. She laughs and it mimics that too.

"More tomorrow. I need to sleep."

-----

Dr. Liara T'Soni | Hawkins system | MSV Starclan

February 28th, 2179

She's called Benezia several times and gotten no reply. Her father said the her last call ended when Benezia shrieked in pain and felt out of view of the camera. Not unheard of for a matriarch of such an advanced to suffer headaches, especially if she was so clearly exhausted and dehydrated. Yet her father tells Liara that her mother had been doing better with the age sickness, working to resort her memories so she could remember the ones she wanted. The fact Aethyta can still walk and still is interested in food means only that Benezia's alive. Their bond isn't broken. The dull stare makes Liara worried what Benezia's half of the bond must be broadcasting.

Now, she stares at her omnitool in disbelief.

The University of Serrice has terminated her with the cause being given as 'social harmony' which is a barely-veiled way of saying someone in the Thirty ordered it.

An old friend is now the dean of the Living Arts at Armali. Tivos said they could not hire her for the same reason, though she was kind enough to offer Liara a freighter stuffed with archeologist's tools and the services of a salarian who works on translations without prior references, in exchange for a statement absolving them of their illegal blacklisting.

The proof came when she tried to tap the family accounts to pay the good doctor. She was denied access. Something no one but Benezia could have done.

She has a total of four friends in the Thirty. None could explain it and they assured her that her standing there was strong as ever, which is to say she was not any more irrelevant than before.

Her father listened to Liara, kissed her for a silent, sad moment, and walked to the ruined front of the ship. She proceeded to rip it apart for hours with biotics before returning to her quarters.

Benezia isn't dead, thank the goddess. She's not the woman either of them loved anymore either, at least not right now.

There's a knock on the panel.

"Enter," Liara sniffs.

The creature from DC1938 is there. She is long, gloriously muscled and-smooth skinned. If this is what a human looks like, plus some hands, Liara understands the incessant, maddening gossiping among maidens about bedding humans.

The hair hangs like melted gold around her, grown almost to her calves now. She kneels beside Liara's bed.

"I wish I could speak to you," Liara moans.

The stranger exudes a small, sharp appendage from her index finger. With one pair of hands, she lifts her hair and binds it into a braid. With another, she pushes the razorlike blade through the joining of the neck flaps to the back of her head.

"No!"

One hand shoves her back onto the cot. Pinning her no matter how she flares her biotics.

She's strong. I've tossed bull krogans across the room with that trick.

Working slowly, the stranger continues her self-mutilation, cutting away the entire right fold, dropping it to the deck where it pulses and finally stills, dripping blood.

She lifts Liara's hands to the wound, placing them into the raw flesh even as she slices the other fold in the same way.

Does she want me to...

From under the skin, the meld works.

Liara guzzles memories she has thirsted for since the moment she realized how advanced they must have been.

Fire and dancing and people clad in clothing made of woven reeds shaking hands with identical beings wearing ever-shifting crystalline armor dances around them like a swarm of glittering jewels. She sees the stranger's face reflected in the water. The rush of making love in mad piles of gasping limbs as fire crackles and drums thunder.

She sees one of those things descend from the sky, red fire lancing from it.

Screaming.

Fleeing.

Taking refuge in the old crypts.

Returning to find the ruined shell of the thing, surrounded by an army of dead Protheans.

The stranger's mate, a smaller female, weeping at one of their kind. A male she found clad in that crystalline armor but roasted alive inside it. The mate flinging herself from a cliff. Finding the nearest male. Overpowering it. Riding it. Over and over and over until she was confident a child was inside her.

Walking to the crypts without so much as a word of apology.

Writing and writing and writing. Some of it liturgical, now that she recognizes the language. Some of it clearly scientific. A map of the artificial system, the glory of the Denosrin.

Closing the coffin around herself and willing her heart to stop. The lasts thoughts of the babies. The future of her people.

"You are Densorin."

"Yes. We called ourselves that."

"There were..."

Liara isn't sure how to put it.

"Two peoples," the stranger explains. "Divided into two clans. Each child chose at maturity. Engineer or Thinker. The Engineers went to the sky and built things and on the homeworld, we in the Thinker's clan. We kept the knowledge of the old ways and we created new mysteries for the Engineers when they visited. Their duties were to act, build, accomplish. Ours were to love, pray and dream. They traded tales and their findings in experiments for new mysteries and new questions. We gave them pleasure and memories of home. We kept it all on tablets and tattooed into our skin," she murmurs, glancing at the neck flaps she cut off.

Those. Those and the flaps too, maybe. Ritualized surgical implants or maybe vestigial structures.

"We seemed like animals to any looking on us from orbit. That is how we survived so long, as others burned."

"Those things?"

"Yes. They killed the Protheans. They had killed others before them. They killed the Engineers clan, every time they came. We narrowly survived the first attack, because they ignored my people for whatever reason. Volunteers went to continue the works off-world."

Liara gasps.

"Your ability. Your manipulation of the strangelets! That's how you built the artificial system. You expanded on an innate gift. And that sculpture! You traveled the stars like that, didn't you? Using those miniature stars?"

Rather than answering, the stranger reaches for the zipper on Liara's jumpsuit and tugs it down.

"Yes?"

The meld was electric. Tempting. Not enough. Liara wants hands, lips, skin, all of the animal things, therutting things that aren't necessary for sex. All that sticky, salty mess that so bothers the traditionalists.

Liara arches off the bed to give the stranger access.

"Yes."

If she must be cut off, disgraced and penniless, she will not bealone.

"Liara."

"Qairi..." her newfound lover purrs.

Four hands undress her. Irresistible forces turn her over. Powerful thighs bracket her hips. The trembling folds along her spine are peeled open and a tongue delves into them. One hand leaves her ribs and slides under her. Fingers find her aching ridge, spreading the lips of her azure to gather slick before grinding along it, tracing the too-tense, too-tender flesh. Teasing it from its hood until the tip scratches against the bedsheet.

Liara bucks her hips up, hoping the Qairi knows she wants this. Wants more. Wants to bury her grief in flesh.

She melds.

She moans.

She blacks out.

Chapter 19: Around the Bend in Eighty Days - Shepard

Chapter Text

>

Solaris Shepard | The Citadel

March 1st, 2179

There's a way to get through the emotionally overwhelming and Shepard mastered it ages ago.

She pretends its happening to someone else. f*cking disconnects herself from it all. Lets each event in each day be a flash, light cast from a thunderbolt. Come and gone so quick it barely illuminates the night.

Before she was The Hero of Elysium, she was the Freak. The one who threshers spat out. Before she was the Freak, she was the Butcher. An animal that learned how to hold a gun. Who good soldiers shied away from and who tore up her own body in killing to the point surgeons had to remove healthy tissue from her wounds to make sure they got all the scraps of batarian out.

Before that, Gunny. She liked it, it was when she was just another marine. Good at her job. Not special.

Before that, Lucky. The one who dodged slavers for two months, picking them off one at a time until only she remained in the rotting guts of her old life.

Before that, for a magical time, Solaris. Someone who was worth having a name. A first kiss. A home.

Before that, Sparky. Because her talent with a wrench amused the scavengers who worked the skycycles...because biotics and finally starting puberty made her worth more in videos than she was chained to beds for old men to empty their slimy co*cks into.

Before that, girl.

It's not her favorite memory lane to walk down but it helps. Living life in reverse, remembering the flashes of how she got to where she's standing right now.

Today, it's the Prime Minister of the Systems Alliance. Pinning a medal to her chest. A politely clapping crowd of every race in council space, beaming down at her from the Presidium's many walkways and balconies surrounding the human embassy.

Yesterday at lunch, the turian Primarch offering his clawed hands. Thanking her for dealing with a turian outlaw, a blemish on his race. Vowing to deploy their Blackwatch groups to put any of Elanos' followers down. Her, thanking him in Palevenki, much to his amusem*nt.

Yesterday at breakfast, the asari councilor and some friend of hers, a matriarch clad in silk robes emblazoned with flames. Sharing breakfast. Asking her about Earth. About what it was like meeting asari in Amsterdam. About Jahka. Soaking up gossip like teenagers and asking for details so graphic it made Shepard's head spin to recount them. Going still the moment she answered one question in Armanese, just to mess with them. Stealing glances at her and at each that made her wonder why they invited her.

The day before yesterday, the salarian councilor. Just watching her. Hard not to be creeped out by an amphibian person whodoesn't f*cking talkand unless Shepard meets a salarian who actually says what they mean, she's going to write that exercise in open-mindedness off.

Last week, teary sex with Jakhe that flickered and sputtered like a candle burning out over the course of a full three days. Just when Shepard was free of debriefs and rounds upon rounds of round of drinks in the officer's mess, Jahke had to head home. Some nastiness her sister was involved in. Bad for the Vasir family name. Bad enough she might have to stay on Thessia for a year or two to straighten it out. By which point the Alliance would point their favorite weapon at some new target and send Shepard all over the Traverse.

Wanting to keep each other and getting to keep each other are two different things.

In this exact moment, it's silent. People are looking at her.

"Thank you, Prime Minister. It's an honor," Shepard says, hoping she sounds only half-robotic.

Hoping that the monkey made the right noises on cue.

-----

Shepard's come to in hospital beds feeling like stomped horsesh*t so often she's starting to think that Lady Death has a crush on her but she's playing hard to get.

"Well, well," Karin Chakwas teases.

"Quite a scare, commander."

"Commander?"

"Mmm. Something about the courage, leadership, and resolve to defuse the situation on Elysium with no further civilian casualties. About sending a message of resolve against evil and protection of innocents. About being a paragon of humanity. Anybody with a baseline of self-esteem would've gotten a complex from all that nonsense."

"f*ck," Shepard groans. "Did you say commander?"

"Not the usual response to such accelerated promotion."

"I'm not usual."

Chakwas shakes her head.

"I've noticed. Haven't had a patient go through multiple awards ceremonies and give four inspirational speeches while suffering a dissociative episode. I demanded that Hackett give me permission to sedate you the instant you were away from cameras."

"Old trick," Shepard croaks, looking lustfully at the water on the table.

Chakwas's brows furrow.

"That was deliberate?"

Shepard nods.

"Partially. When...when it was the worst, like back in New York, I'd tell myself it was happening to someone else. Over and over. Beat my fists on the wall before they sent a client in so that I would be disoriented. If you pretend like the fat bastard ramming his prick inside your body isn't real and you're not real either, you don't feel so broken. Just a bad vid filmed from a funny angle."

"Do it enough, you get good at it."

"I got to where I could force myself into it more often than not. I avoided sleep and didn't drink too much. The Shepards helped me reel it in. When they died, it came back. Hard. Got me through Mindoir. Solaris Shepard wasn't holding a rock, beating in the skull of the batarian who took her sister. Some crazy girl frothing at the mouth was. Solaris Shepard wasn't burying her first crush, digging with her bare hands and a stick. Some girl too dehydrated to cry was."

"I'm not sure anything but a meld from an asari and having another mind to literally take shelter inside could have brought me back that day. After all the therapy, it's easier to avoid. Got better at taking care of myself. Three squares and a bunk helped. Hell, a spongy enough rock and a field blanket were luxurious compared to most of my life. Making sure I was well-slept, hydrated, blood sugar, and all that. I ever filled the hole in my head. Just covered is up so I couldn't fall in."

"The last few weeks sort of came to a head when Jakhe left. One moment, I was feeling so much and we were kissing because if we stopped, we'd have time to talk. Then waking to the alarm on my omni telling me I had to go to one last debrief and practice my speech. It stopped seeming real, all the people shaking my hand. Rather than reminding myself it was real, I kept pretending it wasn't."

Chakwas nods.

"I'll have to put this in my report. For a soldier in the field..."

"Complete disconnect from her surroundings is the absolute worst possible tendency, doc. I know."

"You won't be put back on duty until they're confident you have a handle on this, you know that right? Starside desk duty, if you're lucky."

"Good thing I've got the best doc in the fleet," Shepard jokes.

"Hmm. I'll leave you to your fate then. I've had an irritable holo lighting up my desk so much I started to think my is was a lifesize bust. Jahke. Demanding to know why I wasn't telling her what was wrong with you."

"We..ah...we aren't..."

It's the first time someone stopped seeing me. Didn't die. Didn't hate me. Just had no way to be with me.

"People care about each other, Shepard. Even if they're not fellow soldiers, or lovers, or family. They're called 'good friends' and as your doctor, I can and will relieve you from duty until you go make some."

"I'll leave you to it."

"Traitor..." Shepard hisses before turning the mic on.

Chakwas moves the holoprojector to the beside and turns it on.

Jahke's face goes from shocked, to teary, to hard-set andangryso fast Shepard can't believe it.

Chapter 20: BRIEFING || Cerberus Net || Argus Group || File ASR-REFR-03238

Chapter Text

BRIEFING || Cerberus Net || Argus Group || File ASA-REFR-03238

OPERATIONAL BACKGROUND:

Due to the accidental leaking of information to REDACTED-A1 by Target 198 on the Asari Threat Index, operatives have been sent to investigate the asari supra-governmental entity known as 'the Thirty'.

Operatives RONIN, WILLIAM TELL, and MATA HARI were deployed to Ilium to perform a compromise-trace-identify and return with interrogatable assets. Thessia was a no-go for this operation. No previous attempts to penetrate asari society on the homeworld past the upper-middle-class economic strata have been successful and middle-class attempts have been costly. All operatives have been killed, compromised or went missing and some of the missing are presumed psychologically compromised via the asari's sexual tactics.

FINDINGS:

Exiles and malcontents willing to engage in non-coercive interviews report conflicting situations:

• The Thirty are simply a group of very wealthy matriarchs from old families with political standings purchased through lobbying.
• The Thirty are a secretive religious cult engaging in sexual orgies, ritual sacrifice, and telepathic murder.
• The Thirty are the true government of Thessia, utilizing a mix of threats, inducement, and influence over the populace such that the decisions 'arrived at' by democratic means are the ones they planted.
• The Thirty are godlike beings, possessed of wisdom, cunning, and biotic power that renders resistance by any conventional espionage agency or military force pointless.

  Claims included

  1--Able to pass the full mind of one queen down to her daughters, superimposing that life experience without destroying the original personality.
  2--Able to blend not only bloodlines but the entire maternal ancestral memory of two houses with each marriage.
  3--Able to field assassins drawing on thousands of years of continual biotics training across multiple bodies, transferred champion to champion.
  4--Able to circumvent the 'black box' nature of asari reproduction to insert physical traits into the children produced.
  5--Able to override most, if not all, procedures in asari government with a series of religiously-coded commands. One instance we were able to extract is 'waves make sound only at the shore' which is believed to be a polite way of reminding the listener that the threat being made is not idle or the requested action is possible. It is important to note that claims 1 or 4 on the above list, while not remotely belligerent in nature would represent an advantage that poses an existential threat to this organization and humanity as a whole. While extremely unlikely, there is no logical reason why all five could not be true.

HOSTAGES:

13 attempts made

3 successful, later killed during the escape.
(35 of our personnel killed and 7 wounded between the Gehenna and Dis interrogation and experimentation facilities)

1 successful, trojan horse operation (escaped)
(The captive appears to have been part of the Covert Operations Group of the Asari Republican Militia. The Gehenna interrogation cells are a complete loss and all of the cells at Terra Nova are to be considered compromised by authorities.)

9 failed attempts

ASSETS:

Asari, aged 211. Given and family names redacted. Local alias "Ignite" in the amateur waveball circuit. Volunteered, requesting protection from the previously unknown group "Justicars" in exchange for assistance. [File ASA-THRT-01283 opened as blank for this group.]

NOTE #1: The subject self-reports that she suffers a mental condition resulting in an addictive need to engage in sex despite a brain abnormality that invariably results in the death of the partner. A request for a field demonstration was made.

The asset was provided a consumed interrogation resource (human male, non-biotic, age 14). The child was rejected, with the asset becoming irritable and reiterating the sexual nature of her condition as a reason for refusing to engage with an underage partner. He was executed elsewhere.

A list was provided and an analyst with job performance ratings in the 34th percentile slated for reading-out and possible liquidation was used instead (human, male, aged 29). The asset mentioned 'soulful eyes' in explaining her choice of victim. The asset engaged the victim socially and initiated sex after negotiating a relocation to a monitored space. Curiously, mutual and typical (if not extensive) foreplay was involved. The overall encounter lasted 7 hours, according to lab technicians.

The victim suffered a string of seizures during the asari's climax and was pronounced dead three days later from brain death. The asset requested to be present at the test subject's funeral and was allowed. She spoke a brief prayer in liturgical Serraci, believed to be a prayer of atonement.

NOTE #2: Immediately following what asset called "the feed", the asset experienced an order-of-magnitude spike in biotic potential.

At her request, she was put through a series of increasingly difficult biotic exercises, culminating in life-fire tests involving six Phantom-class augments in a combined arms exercise with the second wave being four YMIR mechs and two A-62 mantis gunships. The subject was assigned to 'escape' from a fortified facility. She was able to destroy five of the Phantom units in four minutes in close quarters inside the structure, even separating the last to feed again. Feed was successful despite the attempts to cybernetically protect the brain from toxins, electricity, and physical intrusion.

With this additional boost, she was able to destroy the YMIR mechs with a dual-lift, dual-throw attack that caused Mechs A and B to collide with C and D with enough force to destroy the skeletal structures of all.

Using a mix of cover and her own barrier to withstand the cannon fire, she applied a precision-targeted warp attack to the stabilizing engine of one of the gunships that led it to collide with the other, detonating both eezo cores. The subject suffered minor cuts from microshrapnel leakage through her barrier.

DECISION: Per the orders of REDACTED-A1 and consultant FREYA, this asset will be placed on payroll for covert recon, wetwork, and assault use. Preferred theaters are human and salarian space due to the presence of "Justicar" group attempting to locate and eliminate her in asari space and the efficiency of turian police units.

She will be given the same legal interdiction that RONIN enjoys for their off-the-books kills. She estimates that one kill every 10-20 days should be sufficient to maintain the power advantage she displayed in testing. The operative's codename is SIF. Cell commanders should see file ASA-OPER-00009 for details.

CONCLUSION (PRIMARY):

Brute force penetration of the Thirty's security exceptionally unlikely.

Even the populace of Ilium, which keeps Thessia at arm's length, expresses near-religious confidence in the judgments made by Thirty being beneficial for the long term success of the asari. Within sixteen hours of our first inquiries, the ground team was being monitored at a distance by Ilium's authorities and several items displaced in their accommodations suggested covert visits during the night, in two cases to occupied rooms. Multiple civilians seem to have spontaneously acted against our agents or cautioned others to not engage. MATA HARI and WILLIAM TELL had to restrain RONIN from killing civilians in public eleven times.

Compromising the support structure of the Thirty from within possible but unlikely. The levers that usually create double agents simply do not work.

Asari sexual mores and both Athamian and siari tenets of forgiveness means that affairs, fetishes, and other such blackmail are of limited use.

Any attempt to seduce and surveil asari are counterproductive in the extreme as any post-pubescent asari can read the thoughts of a human partner at will during sex of even affectionate contact, meaning our agent is likely to lose any information they have. Use of asari assets mitigates this but does add layers of complications in the trusting of their findings.

The universal basic income and social services mean that the worst we can threaten a worker with is that they get fired and end up in a smaller apartment using public transit.

The sheer scale of the asari economy, especially the homeworld, makes targeting anyone at the top, working for those at the top, or cleaning bathrooms for those at the top a prohibitively expensive proposition. On average, every credit in the galaxy is transferred to, paid from, or processed by an asari-owned entity three times per Earth year. In the eezo, shipbuilding, cybernetics, biotics research, and construction materials industries, the figure is twenty-nine times per year. The economy of the asari is 42.9% of the Galactic Gross Domestic Product and Thessia alone is nearly half of the asari economy at 19.5% of GGDP.

Almost without question, the Thirty are a Thessia-centric group.

The nineteen Great Houses are 'tithed' a portion of the collected taxes in the cities of Thessia they claim foundership and/or and whose militaries they raise, supply, and train. If a reasonable assumption is made that the T'Armal family tithes are representative at 1.5% percent of city property, business use, and excise taxes collected, the economy of Armali city-state means they have trillions of credits a year to pay the house's employees.

The smallest House-aligned city of Sonalere (which claims House T'Soni as their founders) is tiny by Thesssian standards at under six million. It is lucrative all the same. A thriving resort destination, an important artistic and literary center, and bedroom community for well to do persons in nearby Armali and Serrice. It would generate tithes of two to twelve billion credits every year, based on the tourist season and art sales, prone to fluctuations. These figures would be supplemented by any family-owned business ventures.

Attempting to bribe any employee with the tiniest inclination of loyalty would be exceptionally unlikely to succeed and almost certain to generate a report on our attempt and a salary increase for the employee's honesty.

CONCLUSION (SECONDARY):

It seems we have significantly underestimated the biotic threat an asari can pose. Either the militia huntresses are in fact, not skilled biotics (a ridiculous premise, since they are hand-picked frontline troops) or their training is partially designed to conceal the outer limits of their capabilities. In any case, we can no longer assume our prior successes in skirmishes against huntress teams as representative of our success in a no-holds-barred engagement.

The above-mentioned SIF asset is a civilian with a series of dead-end hospitality jobs and no military training on record. After completing primary education on Ilium (including self-defense classes) she was self-taught using books, exonet vids, and sparring. By her own admission, SIF was badly in need of a feed when approached. Nonetheless, she was able to protect herself from RONIN and kill the entire plainclothes security team in one hundred and thirty-four seconds using her biotics, a fast-food restaurant's disposable cutlery, and furniture which she biotically rearranged as portable cover.

The Asari Threat Index team is working with FREYA and they are reconsidering our assumptions about the "ceiling" of lethality for asari biotics. The management asset FREYA has recommended simply dismissing the idea that biotics of any kind have an upper bounds power limit other than typical boundaries such as the space-time tear threshold, the stress limits of atom's neutrons, etc.

ATTACHMENTS:

Bounty hunter offer made via deniable contact on the dark exonet requesting capture of Target 198 using picture taken from Serrice University Lecture. Any and all force is authorized to capture Target 198 alive. REDACTED-A1 has specified no limit in acceptable casualties in this operation.

Last known location was the Hawkins system.

Chapter 21: Any Port in a Storm - Liara (1)

Chapter Text

Dr. Liara T'Soni | Hawkins system |IRAV Belladonna

mid-2180

She checks in daily on her father. After incessant complaints about the 'freezerbox' environment of the freighter, Liara coaxed her to relocate to the justicar ship she took for herself. They hung various omni-printed decorations ot make it less grim. Lara's sure she flushed past purple to back when her father insisted on fabbing a full color, poster-sized image she had of Liara at forty-nine, gangly and beaming with a shard of Fourth Tribal Age pottery she found thirty meters down in the back yard after converting half of the lovely estate into a warzone.

Aethyta is in bad shape. Physically, she has recovered. Mentally, not at all. To have bonded so often over so many centuries has left her mind littered with not just memories of Benezia but eezo that was once in her body and traces of skin shared over many, many nights. To meld, they must still touch but to feel a presence, they need only rely on the ever-present whispers of paired eezo atoms.

There is nowhere she can hide from Nezzy's agitation, panic or pain. Not in the entire universe.

Liara leans down and wets the washcloth again.

"Father," she pleads. "Tell me."

"Hurts, little wing. Everything I get from Nezzy is justhurt. I can't tell if she's fighting for her life, or meditating herself sick or what but I haven't felt her relax in weeks. My back hurts from how tightly wound she's kept her barrier."

Liara slumps up against the bedframe, kicking her legs out across the floor.

"She's alive, that's something."

"Heh. Always the optimist, little wing. Any progress with the bank?"

Liara groans.

"Yes and no. I managed to convince the poor teller that she was about to cross wires with the Thirty business if she didn't stop stonewalling me. Nearly banged her head on the desk getting me the file. I thought mother had cut me off or removed me from her holdings."

"Your mother would never do that, darling. There will be some yelling about her getting you fired and blacklisted. That's bizarre. She was saying she wished she could be at your reinstatement defense, last time I had a real chat. But don't think for an instant that if Nezzy had two credits to her name, she wouldn't give you one for coffee."

"She hadn't. She locked the accounts for herself and me for some reason. Like she doesn't trust anyone to touch them right now. The VI and the regent she named, Besala are handling the businesses."

Liara scoffs.

"Good thing we've got stolen ships because we can't afford to refuel that beast," she sighs, nodding to the Starclan a few meters away out the viewscreen. "We can siphon her antiproton tanks. Unload the useful gear from the storage lockers into the unused cabins here. Put her in a stable orbit of a gas giant. Come back when the money's sorted."

"What about your experiments?" Aethyta groans.

"Those bodies and artifacts have kept for tens or hundreds of thousands of years. I'll take the living specimens with us and I'll move everything that was pressurized when I found it into one of the containers, subdivide by the conditions I discovered it in, and then vent the rest. Replicate the vacuum I found them drifting in. They'll keep until I can get money to come back."

"Then what?"

Liara's fingers twitch. It's unseemly but she allows the biotic flare, rather than getting control of herself. Why bother? Some new insult will freshen her rage.

"Then I do something to get some attention. Have you ever visited human space?"

"Haven't had the time."

"That's our first stop."

Dr. Liara T'Soni | Arcturus system | IRAV Passionfruit

mid-2180

It isn't until they approach Arcturus Station that it really occurs to Liara how deadly these ships could be. The problem with the justicars isn't only that they're fanatics, it's that they're smart fanatics. Like an eel hiding in a rock, invisible and silent until that one swift bite.

She made a single hard burn to clear the relay's exit lane, swung wide and made two more quick burns so that anyone tracking a ship on her initial path wouldn't find it. The dark red of the armor blends all to easily into the dimness of space. Her barriers are off and her weapons are powered down and she dialed back life support and FTL drives and scanners. She's no threat but in seconds that could change.

Three times as she approaches the flagship, she flicks the maneuvering thrusters to change paths before a destroyer or frigate simply crashes into her.

She taps her omnitool and patches it through the ship's communications gear.

"SSV Everest this is theIRAV Passionfruit, requesting a diplomatic audience with Fleet Command."

The flight control offer seems embarrassed by the name. All the more amusing with the young woman's pleasantly breathy voice.

"Passionfruit, please state your passengers and provide an itinerary a date of arrival so we may dispatch escort from the relay."

"With pleasure," Liara replies.

"Passengers are Dr. Liara T'Soni, of House T'Soni and one bodyguard, a civilian. I need to speak to someone in the military command who can receive sensitive intel. ETA is ten seconds. Assuming you have a docking bay on this side."

Liara turns the traffic lights back on, sliding the spotlight's beams across the portholes of the enlisted's mess.

"JESUS! Ma'am... Please withdraw to 10,000 clicks and stand down."

"Tease," Liara coos as she swipes her fingers across the flight controls.

-----

"Hell of a stunt, young lady."

The admiral's quarters are cozier than she thought they would be. Human warships are tighter and more cramped than some prisons on Thessia but this is a war hero's customized stateroom on board his flagship.

"I was in no danger," Liara assures him. "The ship is double hulled. It wears a full jacket of Silaris armor almost a meter thick. That sits on top of a hull made of an ancient alloy we found in the deep-sea wrecks on the homeworld. The original pressure hull and armor have comparable resiliency to the spaceframe of the Destiny Ascension. I could have had my barriers up long before the broadside guns did real damage. When moving on their interia only and with most systems powered down, they are extremely stealthy. As you learned. An outstanding silent approach, silent-kill vessel against unprepared ships or small space stations."

The attache from the Prime Minster's office arrived panting and panicked a few minutes ago from the station itself. Qairi took one look at the woman, placed herself in her path, and sniffed her before allowing her closer to Liara. Satisfied she was no threat, Qairi took the woman's face in her hands and kissed both cheeks. Now, she sits sprawled along the couch with her legs across Liara's lap. Densorin manners seem quite different than any modern race. Suspicious at first, she Qairi becomes cuddly to anyone she either decides to trust or perhaps given her immense strength, anyone who she realizes simply cannot harm her.

"That's a personal vessel?" he asks, reviewing a rotating projection of the Passionfruit on his omnitool.

"It's an antique actually. Old turtle with a new shell. An exploration and colonization design first laid down before we discovered the mass relays. It even has solar sails, if you can believe it. The actual frame is more antiquated than your much-opined on Bentley on Earth, sir. More like the difference between your Bentley and a horse without saddle"

Liara pushes the datapad across.

"It's part of why I'm here. There's a rogue religious movement, on Thessia. The Order of the Justicars. I've come into possession of plans." She taps on the pad, waking the screen. "That suggests they had some plan to set up breeding camps in the outer rim for their officers using humans in order to build up numbers to capture more human colonists. Snowballing for a century or two until they could take on Earth. I discovered these during my own efforts to peaceably dismantle them."

He turns the pad to face him on the table, taps through a few pages and grimaces.

"Unpleasant in the extreme, I admit."

He hands the pad to the yeoman standing by his desk.

"Fortify all of these colonies, immediately. Contact the ambassador and ask him to file a complaint with the asari councilor."

"You'llwant to use cruiser groups. Active scanning at all times. The ship I arrived in was one of theirs and they likely have at least three dozen. I liberated it during a...disagreement with the original pilot. I thought if I approached using it you would have some idea of what it could do."

Hackett's eyebrow rises halfway to his cap.

"Cruisers?"

"Mmm," Liara replies, sipping her tea. Surprisingly good kahhe for so far from home. He must entertain asari guests, or knows to be ready to. "The armor's resilience is matched by the barriers, I assure you. The ship's weapons are the same type as the broadside guns on the Ascension. I won't disclose the exact capabilities, naturally. Keep in mind that but fanatics fly those ships and they care little for collateral damage. A cruiser has the firepower and resilience to make them change course, which forces them to maneuver, which makes them visible."

"If you don't mind my asking, why do you allow a non-governmental entity to possess that kind of firepower?"

Liara sighs.

"There's a genetic condition among asari. We call it Ardat-Yakshi, an ancient term meaning 'demon of the night winds'. Much dramatized and mythologized condition until recently. Little studied by medicine beyond the ability to detect it. A recessive trait. If allowed to run unchecked, fully expressed form it leads to a serial killer who seduces, melds with and kills thousands over her centuries of life. Rather than the typical reproductive function, the deep melds other asari use to conceive, they use to kill. Seizures and brain hemorrhaging kill even as the victim's actual experience is one of intense sexual pleasure. The rush the ardat receives leaves her biotically boosted and unstable emotionally. The power surge lasts for several hours, or days in the case of a slower, more total feeding."

"Like a vampire?" the political attache asks.

Liara shrugs.

"They are seductresses who kill with a kiss and attain incredible strength from it. Take from that as you will. Unless she is stopped early, she will develop the skills in evasion and close-quarters combat necessary to take on police and reinforcements with ease. An ardat who makes it to three hundred is a match for a dozen huntresses. Six hundred? The Alliance only fields a few vehicles with that sort of power. Serial killers would be an embarrassing thing to be associated with. So when we discovered the salarians, there was a decision made to form the Justicars. Keep the Ardat-Yakshi a secret. Those who surrender are sent to monasteries. Those who do not, hunted and executed on sight."

"So you're revealing something your people kept secret for 2,700 years," Hackett asks. "While transparency is all well and good, I suspect there must be a motivation."

"There is," Liara admits. "Two, in fact. One is that there's a human group called Cerberus that has been making attempts on my life. Under the tablet is a piece of paper. Names and identities of some of the principals. In exchange for helping you hunt your rogues, I'm asking you to help me hunt mine. All justicar ships we are aware of use that outline and I included their traditional armor designs in the notes. We do keep a small force of double agents within the justicar ranks. They've been instructed to ground their ships and stay out of sight until the order is disbanded and at that time, I will have them switch the ship's colors."

"The other is that I am an ardat myself and while I prevent harm to my bedmates via meditation my house has developed a treatment through more traditional and mass-producible means. I feel it is my duty to announce its existence to the less fortunate at this year's Janiris festival. I cannot exactly predict what the reaction will be among traditionalists. Justicars are allowed to execute asari who oppose their holy purpose, at least that is the letter of the law. I may request passage through human space to Arcturus should I become an exile. Hence this trade."

Hackett's coughs into his tea.

"Bold admission," he almost sputters.

"Is it? I've not killed anyone. Any human man could hurt or kill a female partner during an encounter. Some have mental propensities to make such fantasies more interesting. My body makes me no more or less evil than any human. My choices decide that. Should this work out, I believe there is other information an asari of my stature is privy to that the Alliance might desire. "

He smiles and offers her his gloved hand. His left, because his right glove was removed to use the pad. Liara glances down.

"Cautious man. Your reputation is earned."

She dons her own gloves before shaking hands.

"Good day, Admiral."

Chapter 23: Any Port in a Storm - Liara (2)

Chapter Text

The Justicars proved as predictable as she feared. They fanned out through the pre-Janiris festivities, in several cases standing off with city police when they demanded blood samples from revelers for on-the-spot testing.

Thanks to her father's traitors in the organization, she knew how any were coming and who they were. Aethyta is too bondsick to fight herself but she has a thousand years of favors she can call in. She obtained surveillance footage of Justicars executing non-resistant ardats rather than take them to the monastery, trainees being taught to resist the urge to help bystanders, even some politically lethal videos of non-asari victims of Justicar investigations.

Liara hadn't had time to attend the vote in person but she read the minutes. Between the justicar files she submitted outlining using the human race as livestock, and her little gambit with the Alliance, she had the votes. The speaker will denounce the Justicars, the bill will be posted in the Forum and with the matriarchs who have sponsored it, the passage is a forgone conclusion. There were penalties, especially for interacting with the Illusive Man using her real name. She has to take on her mother's role in Expansion Command and must take any duty the other Thirty assigns to her. The letters she's received are evenly split between impressed she engineered the downfall of the justicars and enraged that such a young member broke bylaws and associated the Thirty with her own name.

Liara needs a bath, a nap and three or four people's worth breakfast in the morning. First she has to deal with First Justicar herself standing on cobblestone path leading from the landing pad up to her back door.

Standing there in crimson plating, head to toe, wreathed in barriers and carrying two warp swords. Liara sizzles with power from two fatal feeds. After the sixth attempt, she realized that a disabled but not dead justicar's facial bombs could be cut off before she started feeding. Nasty but essential as the last three weeks turned into one extended firefight. Fighting with her left arm already broken from the four-on-one ambush at the produce market this morning puts her at a disadvantage.

With a slowly-spreading shockwave at the end of her charge, the Will of Sunset appears a few paces in front of Liara.

"Duel me, Justicar!" she bellows.

-----

Her omnitool said it took nineteen seconds. Nineteen seconds in which the rocks on either side of the narrow path bulged and melted and in which trees simply vaporized and in which gravity became so intense that birds were pulled from flight to their doom. Liara barely followed, each strike, charge, and throw was so intense.

The First Justicar died in a plume of warpfire that reached the trees, burned in her armor. The bitch had wired up some kind of failsafe in her armor. It sought out whoever was touching the wearer. Judging by the blood dripping from the Will's mouth and nose and inside her eyes, brutal.

Less than five minutes overall between relief and finding the Will of the Sunset's mask and thus her office in Liara's hands.

"Not me!"

"Has to be you, fast fish. You're the only member of the Thirty here to witness the succession. I f you weren't worthy, I wouldn't have come."

"How?"

"Take my hands. I"ll pass the office on. I can't give you everything, but I can give you most of it."

She's far too weak to move the body so she summons maintenance drones from the manor to move it to the greenhouse.

Liara's head is buzzing. Her mind has been stuffed full of lives she never lived and the fact that it doesn't feel wrong--only confusing--terrifies her. This Will has three daughters, one half-elcor...or was that the one centuries and centuries ago? The one through whom she can feel the panic of a quarian dying during the geth uprising? The prior officeholder liked to use Rachni queen blood as a poison except that must have been one ages older than that with the Rachni War so long past. Her feet carried her to the concealed bag of personal effects and weapons because a prior life remembered pulling the branches over it.

Liara needs to get somewhere safe and either sleep or meditate as long as she can so that as much as possible of this is retained. The more she sleeps, the more the memories pushed through the meld will harden. She may be a maiden woefully unqualified for such a prestigious role but Athame guide her, she will try.

As she reaches for the security panel for the rear gate of the manor, she slings the straps for the pack over her right arm, grinding her teeth against the pain.

The garden is quiet. Scarred by Liara's childhood digs. Several rings of shorter flowers show where an ever-patient Benezia had trees moved so Liara's digging wouldn't hurt their roots.

Her omnitool says there are three staff here and two huntresses.

The moment the manor's rear door glides open, the maids all shriek. Judging by the one trying madly to wipe her shiny face on her robe and the knees slung over the armrest of a couch, they had been making good use of their time.

"Be peaceful," Liara hisses. "I just need to sleep."

The maidens--likely twice her age--leap into a panic and scurry away like a varren pup facing a full-grown thresher maw.

"Water!" she calls after them.

"...and a pillow."

It's spinning and dark and Liara is dimly aware of powerful hands catching her before she finds out why.

-----

"Scared me, little climber..."

"Rivos?" Liara croaks.

"Yeah. Long time. Imagine my surprise when the captain here hailed me, flipping out because the Lady staggered in wounded, completely unannounced and using ten-year-old backup codes. Not even apologizing for blasting off without letting me come with to keep you safe."

Liara chuckles.

"Needed to sleep off the broken arm."

"Benezia never introduced me to your father but from your reckless behavior tonight alone I am more than willing to believe he was krogan."

"Letters," Liara mumbles. "Bag. Send to the next of kin, please."

Rivos laughs softly.

"Kid, I've been watching your back since before your back came up to my knees. Not always easy work. I know how to visit the families of dead warriors. Already sent it all along and I stashed the Will's mask. The Council is sending spare robes."

Liara feels Rivos' calloused fingers squeeze hers. She doesn't take the blindfold off. The more her senses take in, the fewer of the memories will truly attach in her mind.

"I've been out a while, I suspect. How was Janiris this year?"

Rivos chuckles.

"Well...they let humans in the Silver District. Bathhouses and toy shops both."

"Goddess. Any takers?"

"Handful. One in particular."