Alarei
Chapter 134
Alarei
Stick with Tali. 50%
Rainbow quickly dismissed heading to talk with Zaal'Koris, that admiral could go buck himself. Heading over with Legion sounded attractive but she only needed to glance in Tali's direction to decide she should follow her, Tali would probably appreciate the support.
Rainbow quickly flew up so she could glide over the crowd and land next to Tali just as she reached Kal'Reegar. “Kal’Reegar, how are you doing.”
Reegar turned to look at who approached, turning fully as he saw Tali. “Tali’Zorah, Rainbow Dash. Got off pretty well, already fighting off the infections. Good to see you, just didn’t expect it to be this soon after we split up.”
“Yes,” Tali agreed. “Did they get anything from our readings at Heastrom?”
“Damnedest thing. Like they said, no way Heastrom’s sun should be acting like that,” Reegar replied.
“So the dark energy theory is right… that’s concerning.”
“You guys should ask princess Luna about that,” Rainbow budded in. “The magic there was really oppressive, that might be something to take into account. Not the expert so other than that I can’t really say anything else on that, not really an expert.”
“That’s… actually a good idea, mind passing along her contact so our science teams can start crunching on that?” Reegar asked, Rainbow nodded and sent over the contact.
“Just give me a day to allow me to give her a heads up,” Dash chuckled.
“Heh, of course. Nice speech back there by the way, really got through to the crowd.” Rainbow blushed slightly, glad that the helmet covered her face thoroughly as Reegar complimented her. “You deserve better Tali, I hope my testimony helped but I fear politics are going to determine this. Admiral Raan and Gerrel want you to blow up some geth on the Alarei to get the crowd on your side and hopefully find some helpful evidence.”
“We’ll get her out of this,” Rainbow said confidently.
“Thank you Reegar, we’ll get that ship cleared,” Tali agreed as well.
“Good luck out there, Tali. Keelah se’lai.”
Tali sighed as Reegar split off from them and the two made their way to the shuttle that was prepared for the group. Legion was already there, waiting for the others. The quarian that was waiting for them there nervously eyed the geth as it stood there.
“Did you find out something, Legion?” Rainbow asked the geth.
“Creator admiral was very interested in our exoskeleton. It is not available for experiments,” Legion simply said, Shepard adding himself to the squad. “Point of interest, creator Admirals decision for war on geth underlying motivation for this trial… we find this new data disconcerting.”
“That sounds about right for Han’Gerrel,” Shepard said, agreeing with Legion. “I’m no politician but it sounds more that whatever the outcome is more to determine the power balance of the admiralty board than you Tali.”
“That’s… how could they!” Tali wanted to turn and walk back into the chamber only for Dash to block her with a wing.
“We should clear the Alarei first before we kick the admirals’ flanks... so to speak,” Rainbow argued. “It’ll get the crowd on our side which will put extra pressure on the admirals.”
“Rainbow’s right, we should be on our way as soon as possible,” Shepard nodded, turning to the quarian that was guarding the docking bay. “Lead us to the shuttle, we’ll take care of that geth problem.”
“If you say so...” He replied, not sounding too sure as he eyed Legion. The shuttle’s autopilot was rigged so it would fly directly to the other ship.
“Everyone ready?” Shepard asked as they stepped inside.
“Just got to make sure I don’t get hit in the face, this helmet would not hold up against fire.” Rainbow tapped the shell covering her head.
“Then try to hold back a bit, we have no need for heroics here Dash,” Shepard said, executing the autopilot to bring them over to the other vessel. “Legion, you have no issue with this?”
“No active geth platforms detected, all platforms active inside the captured vessel are heretics,” Legion informed them as he loaded his assault rifle.
“Good. Let’s go find out what happened over there then,” Shepard said, checking the eta on the shuttle’s console. Tali meanwhile nervously wrung her hands, glancing out the front window of the shuttle so every now and then. Rainbow gently covered her back with a wing to comfort her, Tali wrapping her arm around Dash in response and pulling the pegasus close.
“We’re almost there, get ready to roll out the moment we set down,” Shepard announced, the shuttle docking to the target vessel. Tali and Rainbow pulled away from each other again as Tali was the first to step out and clear the hallway. “What would be the place where they’d set up, Tali?”
“The central computer on the bridge. If there are any ge- heretic programs in the system we could purge them from there so it’ll be well defended,” Tali answered, Legion behind her made a mechanical noise but didn’t say anything.
“Understood, I assume you know the layout to this vessel?” Tali nodded. “Then you’re our lead. Let’s get going.”
The first few hallways were clear from geth as Tali snaked through the narrow passages of the quarian vessel but soon they came into contact with the first group of heretics. The firefight was short but really heavy as the close quarters of the ship pushed the heretics right up to the squad, omni-blades being brought to bear on a few occasions. The group continued to look through the hallways, destroying small pockets of geth platforms.
On their way through the ship they found various consoles where quarians had recorded logs or were taped while performing their job. A particular log made Dash’s stomach twist around into a knot as a mother recorded a crying message to her family before getting shot by geth that were breaking in, the corpse laying on the ground next to the terminal. Not a word was said between the four of them as they found one of the other important things they found was a research console with results of the tests the quarians were running there.
“I don’t understand… They may have been activating the geth deliberately, all this data pertains to hacking geth systems… If they were, father was doing something terrible,” Tali said as she looked over all the data. “What was all this father? You said you’d build be a house on the homeworld. Was this going to bring us back home?”
“Maybe it’s time for your people to let go of reclaiming your world from the geth?” Shepard carefully asked, but Tali did not take that too well.
“You have no idea what it’s like!” She spat at him. “You have a planet to go back to, my home is one hull breach away from extinction!”
“Not having a home to go back to is hard on its own, Shepard,” Rainbow agreed with Tali.
Shepard held his hands up defensively. “Just saying that it would cost a needless amount of lives to take back the planet.”
“Needless? Shepard, if I don’t wear this helmet in my own home I die. A single kiss could put me in the hospital! We need to take back the homeworld if anyone alive will ever be able to walk around without helmets! It’s the difference between decades of readjusting or centuries.” Tali sighed. “At the very least we can take back one ship.”
Shepard said nothing as Tali continued to lead them through the ship, getting really close to the bridge as they found another dead quarian lying face down on the flight of stairs leading up to their goal. This one Tali recognized though…
“Father!” she exclaimed as she rushed forward, turning the dead quarian over and checking up on him. “No, no, no! You always had a plan! M-masked life signs, o-or an onboard stasis program! You-you wouldn’t!... They’re wrong! You wouldn’t die like this, y-you..”
“Hey, come here.” Dash gently pulled Tali off of her dad, pulling her into a hug. Tali broke down sobbing, tightly holding on to Rainbow.
“Damnit!... I’m sorry...”
“Don’t be, you’ve got nothing to be sorry about,” Rainbow comforted while Legion and Shepard kept their distance to the grieving quarian.
“M-maybe… He would have known I’d come, maybe he left a message,” Tali said, releasing the hug and scanning her father with her omni-tool to pull any recording he might have made, finding an audio file.
“Tali, if you’re listening to this then I am dead. The geth are active, I don’t have much time. Their main hub will be on the bridge, you’ll need to destroy it to stop their VI processes from forming new neural links. Make sure Han’Gerrel and Daro’Xen see my data. They must-” Gunfire signaled the end of the message.
“Thanks dad,” Tali choked.
“Do you want to get your father back to the shuttle?” Shepard finally asked.
“No, leave him. The mission comes first, that’s what he would have wanted,” Tali said, standing back up. “Let’s finish this.”
Tali strode up the stairs and went through the door at the top of it. A large geth Prime stood surrounded by a set of hunters and troopers. Tali let out a roar as she unloaded her shotgun into one of the troopers, sending her drone to harass the prime. Rainbow rushed after the quarian, she’d been angry before at the admirals but now… Seeing Tali so devastated fired up something fierce in her as her wings lit up with biotic energy. She did not charge at the geth but instead picked the large machine up in her aura before smashing it into the ground, Tali finishing it off with a shotgun blast to the head. Shepard and legion stormed into the room and started suppressing the other remaining geth Rainbow and Tali hadn’t gotten to yet.
Not that they lasted long after Dash located them.
The pegasus made a small leap into the air towards the remaining three geth and slammed down in the middle of them engulfed by biotics, a wave shooting out and knocking the geth to the ground where they became easy pickings for the others.
Tali stepped up to the main console in the room and started typing commands into it as all the geth were taken care of. “There are a few recordings that remain intact...”
“You sound like you don’t want to hear it,” Shepard said.
“No, we have to, I know. I just… this is terrible, I don’t want to know that he was part of this.” Tali let the video’s play, Rael’Zorah clearly visible in them as he gave the orders to create new geth and network them. “No… that’s- He broke our most sacred laws! Laws that have been in place since before the flight from the homeworld. We... we… we can’t tell this to anyone, Shepard.”
“Tali, you’re looking at exile without this evidence!” Shepard exclaimed, shocked.
“Do you think I don’t know that? You think I want to live knowing I’ll never get to see the fleet again?!” Tali hissed. “Shepard, I can’t go back into that room and tell them my father is the worst war criminal that ever lived in our history! I cannot...”
“We’re not going to decide that here, let’s see what the admirals say once we get back.”
“You’re my captain in this hearing, Shepard. It’s your decision but please, don’t destroy what my father was...”
Next chapter's gonna be awesome 
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(Crying) Tali...
Sheesh...Tali getting a rough deal in all this.
I really hope Shepard goes all renegade on there arses, that once speech makes me smile so much.
Corpse.
At least Legion can honestly claim the admiral wanted him for his body!
I never really understood the Quarian's issue.
I mean, if I remember correctly they explained that they had a symbiotic interaction with the microorganisms in their home planet, that got shot to hell after they were forced to leave the planet and now they have a massive allergic reaction to pretty much everything.
But that doesn't really explains why they stay on ships instead of finding any other planet, if you are going to control the environment anyway then it still would be much easier to do so with sealed cities in a planet than in a lot of ships that are falling apart. It also doesn't explain WHY they have so many issues with their immune systems, given that massive allergies is something that we can control with current day medicine, it should be really simple with Mass Effect levels of technology.
10374744
They actually do, in ME3. Tali reveals that Quarian immune systems are actually designed to work in cooperation with beneficial virii in her natural environment. They don't harm the Quarians the same way. Mostly, they're just an irritant, but presumably help them in other ways, in order to maximize their ability to spread. Less parasitical and more symbiotic. But that also means that their immune system is horribly compromised against anyone else's, highly aggressive and parasitical virii, which will take horrible advantage of such a weak immune system.
As for building colony worlds, they probably never had enough resources. It would mean having somewhere safe to stay put long enough to build, and it's pretty clear the races in the galaxy never forgave them for loosing the Geth on everyone.
How far up does teh chain of command go though? Was Talis father doing it for himself because his total overwealming desire to reserch was subsuming everything else, or was it suggested to him by others higher, or was he even indoctrinated?
The trouble with space stuff, is everyone always bases it on horribly expensive minimum weight ground based stuff.
Instead one option I saw to make bases was to take a light sail, focus teh sun onto teh surface of a large asteroid, boil a hole a few miles inside, thn drop in a few clean thermonuclear charges to create bubbles. You can fit an awful lot of people in relative comfort on just the inner surface, even more when you sart adding grav fields, spinners and stackers.
10374807
Well yes, that was what I was referencing, but it doesn't explain any of my points.
While weak immune systems would mean that any quarian sickness would be extremely dangerous, most things are not designed to infect quarians. Its not that easy to do cross species infections, and the most common thing that could happen would be allergic reactions, where the body responds negatively to something that it cannot understand, and are relatively simple to keep under control.
I think that Tali even gives the clarification that it is allergies in one of the random conversations, but I honestly don't remember when or even in what game.
About the colonizing a planet, I would understand that they would have issues with the rest of the races if they were looking for habitable planets, as those are relatively rare resources, but if they are going to need to keep control over their environments anyway then they only need a rock anywhere, and those are so numerous that I find quite unbelievable that they could not find a single one.
The resources necessary to keep the fleet moving with all their people is greater that the ones needed to make a colony like that (less danger of catastrophic failure, more space, less energy costs, etc.) so lacking resources is not really a reason.
There wasn't much action in this chapter.
Silver lining... No Dad Jokes and no awkward Daddy protective speeches... To soon? ... ...
Could Legion not try save some of the Geth programs?
His platform is very advanced...
I think the writing possibilities got neglected here, Legion is a Geth. A peaceful resolution would have been awesome.