Chapter 11: Cutscene
“You released a Rachni Queen!” It wasn’t question. A statement of fact.
“What were you thinking, by the Goddess! You’ve endangered the entire galaxy! That is not the point of specter! It’s the exact opposite of the point! Are you fucking mad!?” Tevos’s biotics were flaring angerly, and it was clear the Councilors were not in the same room together. The Citadel had taking a liking to Alliance curse words, starting with a weapons officer browsing the insults section of the transmitted lexicon to find something to call his Admiral.
Valern stood silently, with a serious but inquisitive look on his face. There stood the chance that there was logic to the course of action.
It wasn't the first time he had been chewed out, but it had been a while since anyone dared. House inviting him to the Lucky 38 to talk over the warp equations, and spending the first hour simply yelling at him incoherently. He respected the gall of it.
“The Reapers endanger the galaxy.” He replied, bucking the Council opinion again. Telling them what they needed to hear, not what they wanted to hear as any good agent of theirs should.
Tevos threw her hands up and turned. Sparatus wasn’t done, “A robot myth!?” Now it was a question.
Jon huffed, “Synthetics don’t have myths. But now they do? A cult? What could bring that about but a machine god.”
“An obvious lie!”
“An organic, lying to a synthetic? Actually selling, a religion? To a collective consciousness with trillions of eyes potentially. No one is that good. I’m not, I assure you. Neither is Saren.”
“You have you’re own cults, Sheppard.” Valern finally added.
Jon smirked, “One wasn’t my fault, and an organic faith in every sense, and the other is in the same league as John Brown or Abraham Lincoln, Hannibal Hamlin, House for fucks sake. They don’t actually worship us, which is the only logical conclusion of your belief that this is a cult. And I agree with that particular belief. Other Alliance recon missions have found literal shrines to these things.”
Valern said, “I see logic, however you do not have the benefit of hindsight on this particular issue. All you have offered so far are thought experiments on very wild claims. The hindsight in question is you releasing the Rachni, a Queen, without even talking to us first, and I have not heard a satisfactory explanation for this course of action.”
Jon said, “An interrogation of the queen revealed vitally important intelligence, and she was the victim of torture. She was also born long after the war. In civilized space that’s worth a pass.”
“HA! I almost believe it! An interrogation of a Rachni queen!? Talking though what your own culture would call a zombie puppet!?” Sparatus chimed in again.
The red called to him, pulling at his mind and his reactions. He breathed deep to center himself, “I believed her. She said the Reapers indoctrinated them, and caused the war. That they didn’t want to fight. Her testimony also corroborates the existence of the threat. Look, she was and is the last of her species. And she knows that the last of the Krogan race will literally eat the last of the Rachni, if that’s what it comes to. Shes not a threat to the Council or Alliance. The Reapers are. If its going to take that 2 kilometer tall death machine I saw, that dwarfs anything any of us have, parking right on your door step then so be it. I will continue my investigation of Saren, as he is my best lead, and you should pray to your Goddess and spirits that I can stop that from happening. In the meantime, I’ll be taking shore leave for my crew.”
He cut his throat, and the Council resigned themselves to their fate again. He took another deep breath, and Joker chimed back, “They’re going to be in for a real fucking shock boss. I just know it in my fragile bones. They brake in anticipation of saying I told you so.”
“I have the electronic feeling that they would have yelled at you even if you killed the Rachni.” EDI added.
Jon chuckled, “Yeah, and probably yeah.”
He turned and left the courtroom, making way for the elevator on the command deck. A quick hop took him up to his quarters, and a quick step threw him into his command chair, Anderson thankfully never changing it. No doubt he wanted to put his ass where the General's was as much as possible. Valern was right, he did have his own cults, just like Khan in the end.
He had a second social contract to maintain. As the screen lit up, he deadpanned, “Hackett.”
“Sheppard. You’ve been busy. Largest volcanic eruption in galactic history, and House up to his old tricks. Good call on the Rachni too. We may need them.”
Jon scoffed, chuckled even, “A relief to hear my friend. I just got done with the biggest ass chewing in Council history for that last part.”
Hackett smiled, “They’ll get over it.”
“I think they have a handle on how I roll at this point.”
“Keeping them in the loop at all is a courtesy.”
“And technically that's true for all specters by the charter. They don’t want involved with details, however I am a bit of a special case. But as as I told them, I do what I want.”
“You earned that right. I saw you do it many times over.”
Jon smirked at his old handler, one who earned it as well as many times. He said, “How are we preparing?”
“The fighting fifth is about to slip its moorings for the first time at Arcturus Station. Originally built for the Council, it’s what we got so far for the reapers. We kept them mostly in line with galactic standard, not to spook the Council too much. And getting up to the size of that monster test the limits of our engineering. We got a carrier, a few dreadnoughts, and escorting cruisers. We’re thinking the Normandy class can act as a scout force. Small wolf packs like what zao already did, or lone operators like you and Anderson. We cant build many of them. They are expensive with all the toys, another reason for keeping up with the Jones’s in that regard.”
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“Land forces?”
“The Garrisons have been moved around, and the recruits are on their way to basic. They quite literally doubled the military budget in response to what’s going on. I heard you’re putting the Mako though it’s paces, working out the bugs.”
Jon scoffed, “It’s a serviceable IFV. Wrex is the one doing the stress testing, and I guess that’s not a bad thing, but trust me-”
“Don't get in the passenger seat of a Krogan’s ride. Got it. He called it-”
“The perfect little go getter. We invented a Krogan economy sedan. That’s what they cooked up.”
Hackett fought to contain his reactions, “I’ll include that in the report. What’s you’re next move?”
“Giving my crew a day off, and proceeding to Feros. The intelligence we gathered from the Matriarch also pointed me towards a Mu relay, but I don’t know what’s behind it, or how many more relays I would have to go to. It indicated it as a primary relay.”
“There could be dozens, whole chains. You want us to scout? We could send a probe if nothing else.”
Jon shook his head, “No, as it could trip a wire and let Saren know I’m coming before I’ve gotten all the facts. The Normandy will handle it, just not right now.”
Hackett returned with a nod, “Anything else you need boss?”
“Just keep doing what you’re doing, say the orders came from me if you had to, which, like,”
Hackett smiled, “Wouldn't even be a lie. Hackett out.”
Jon gave one last grin to his old friend, and the screen blacked out. He got up and stretched as he made for his bed and nap. He got one step when his door chimed. His good eye twitched, but he quickly took his seat at his desk again.
“Enter!” It had better be good, the blood red aftermath of the beacon called to him.
Soft blue answered back when it opened, and Liara was taking careful steps in and to the guest chair. She had a photo frame clutched in her hands, and her eyes were still heavy with sorrow. Jon took a breath to center himself. He would need to do something about his head, sooner rather than later.
He gave her her time. She finally spoke a moment later, holding the frame out, “This was my mother, before Saren did what he did to her. She always wore yellow, her favorite color.”
Jon closed his eye for a moment, remembering the color of her garb that day, and the small wing embroidered on it. He took a deep breath and said, “What happened to her was my fault.”
“Sheppard-”
“It was. She was the one I met during first contact. I intentionally fucked with her head, with the Council’s heads. With the entire galaxy’s heads under her watch. It was the only way I knew how to protect my people. One one hand, we’re reasonable, willing to engage in good faith if met in good faith. On the other we’re savage killers with superior technology, worse than the Krogan if you dare bring war to us. It isn't even a fucking lie. The moment she broke, when the chambers were filled for a public trial, I laughed in her face. Then left her in the dust, irrelevant to the rest of the proceedings. I said I was a fucking compromise, then demanded all that Earth could see, and shot an ambassador in front of her. Again, it wasn't even a lie. I needed to get extremely favorable terms, and deflect my people towards another target, the Batarian slavers to avoid a total war. Your mother was caught in my crossfire.”
Liara remanded silent for a moment after Jon’s diatribe against himself. She took a careful breath and said, “I will only say this once. It was Saren's fault for what happened. You heard her. She had to learn about the Alliance, and she learned she was wrong.”
“She wou-”
“Sheppard.” She bit, with a small flair of her biotics.
“My actions have consequences. This was one of them.” He shot out before she could interrupt him.
“Everyone’s actions have consequences.” She replied.
“Mine are literally astronomical, Liara, and literally always have been.”
“And it was still not your fault, you arrogant fool. It was whatever Saren did to her, what the Reapers did.”
“Yeah. That’s fair. Arrogant, perhaps a fool.”
Liara was silent for a moment, “I need to see what you saw. Though the beacon. I need to see what could turn my mother like it did.”
Jon winced some, “I still don’t know what I saw. Trust me, you-”
“I need to try. I am an expert on Protheans, and they may be something that can help us.”
Jon thought a moment, “If, you’re sure.”
“I am.” Liara slowly put the photo frame down and walked to Jon’s seat, getting down on her knees.
She took Jon’s hands in hers, and met his eye deeply. She said, “Relax, Sheppard.”
Their eyes both closed, “Embrace eternity.” She softly said.
Their nervous systems met, and there was a moment of dark. Liara's eyes had opened wide, black with starry highlights. The flood came after, Jon guiding her to it by intent. It wasn't hard to find, in the same place it always was. A flash, maybe a Reaper, maybe a city.
Then the anger came, hot it burned. The red overtook them both.
REV-
Liara yelped and pulled away, back onto her feet in a snap. She started breathing heavily, and slowly founded her way the one or two steps to the other chair. Jon sat with a determined stare at the floor space where she was.
When she found her seating again, she was silent for a moment more, “H-How…”
“I am superior, unfortunately.” He answered her unsaid question.
“That beacon would have killed a normal man.”
“It would have killed me if I hadn’t gotten shot in the face. The last time I had a brain scan was a couple years after. There was a very noticeable lack of neuron density along the bullet path, along with the cavitation that happened.”
“Scar tissue.”
“Yeah. Dr. Chakwas had never seen that brain scan, and didn’t notice how lit up it was where my brain was practically dead before.”
“She would have assumed that was where the beacon would interact with everyone.”
“And she’s about a step above a sawbones, not a real head doc.”
“The beacon rewrote you, essentially, downloading the information into the empty space. The density of your nervous system…”
“I can understand some of it, not all of it. The Reapers are coming, avenge us, basically.”
“You would need a cipher, cultural context basically to understand the Prothean language.”
“Feros is next on the list, after a stop at the Citadel. Maybe something can be found there.”
She nodded, and picked her photo frame again. She smiled and said, “I saw that photo too.”
On Jon’s desk was his own frame with his favorite, taken from a snoop’s camera. Piper was smiling wide with Jane in her arms waving with her off hand, and Jon was walking towards the snapshot with a very unfriendly look in his face. Jane was giving back the same cold stare, however small she was. Piper of course published it on the next front page, without context even. It was simply a warning to others in the profession that only she had the inside scoop when it came to the General, and no one got a scoop on the kid.
He said, “The guy that took that actually pissed himself.”
She snorted and he chuckled, “Piper credited him, and payed him handsomely for the picture. He even won an award for it.”
“But he pissed himself.” she said though her own chuckles.
Jon smiled at the reminder of better days, “Yeah. That was always our favorite family photo. Just took it perfectly, a shot of a lifetime really.”
She looked a moment more with curiosity and intent, before saying, “I will leave you be, Sheppard. Thank you for taking the time to talk again. If we find something that can help you interpret, I would like to try again.”
Jon nodded, “Yeah. Someone else has to see this. It can’t just be me.”
She got up and put her hand on his shoulder as passed, and finally exited the room. Jon left it a moment more before getting up to resume his nap. He didn’t really need it, but if he had the time getting plenty of rest never hurt anyone at his age.