Mass Effect

But Malak’Rafa shook his head. “No, not at all. I can’t believe you’ve never listened to Kholai’s sermons. That hanar never stops talking.” It certainly has now, Therion thought. The quarian recited from memory in a long-suffering voice, “‘Only the Enkindlers know when the Day of Extinguishment will come. Take no action to hasten it, for all deeds are meaningless, and to strive toward accomplishment is to arrogantly elevate yourself to their glory. The holiest bear happy witness to the rot of the universe, but have no part in it.’ They are the laziest cult I have ever encountered. They quite literally believe any action at all is a sin. I am genuinely surprised they went so far as to seek out the ark and book passage.”

“Perhaps there has been a new revelation,” Borbala said darkly.

“Perhaps,” shrugged Malak.

“And what about your friend, this… Soval?” asked Anax, her voice full of feigned hesitance, as if she had never known her, never seen her shining face dancing in the tavern lights on Hephaestus. “Did she also listen to the hanar?”

“Soval… Soval.” Therion watched the way his shoulders moved when he said her name. “She did, but not like Jalosk. She’s the happiest girl I’ve ever known. She was a poet back on Kahje. She wrote ‘Each of Us Dying is the Soul Name of Rakhana,’ do you know it? It’s very good, if a little on the nose. Her husband is political, a revolutionary, at least in his own mind. But she isn’t like that at all. Soval didn’t listen to Kholai so much as she talked to it. I think she really thought she could change that jelly’s outlook on life. Show him that the galaxy is not a mistake. That joy in living is not a sin. We had our last meal all together. Threnno, Soval, and Kholai sang some Citadel song together. It was nice. No one argued. No one acted strange. And that’s all I saw, I swear to you by the new homeworld we seek in Andromeda.”

“Impossible. There is something else! We know when it happened, and it happened on your watch,” the batarian fumed.

“When what happened? Why don’t you tell me?”

“You said you inspected the cryopods…” Anax ventured softly, tracing an idle pattern on the table. It helped her think.

“Yes. I confirmed each and every one of 20,000 were in good working order with the assistance of the elcor team member, Threnno.”

“And you saw no problems at all?” Borbala said.

“Did something go wrong with the pods?” asked Malak.

“Why don’t you tell me whether something went wrong with the pods?” snapped Borbala.

“You were in love with her,” Anax said quietly. “With Soval Raxios. With a drell.”

The quarian’s faceplate showed no expression, but his voice was tight and thin. “That’s preposterous. I told you she’s married.”

“Yes, to Osyat, the radical. I know him fairly well. He is obnoxious and disliked. Married to his politics. She would have been lonely. And though twins may well be less close than you and Qetsi’Olam, I have seen the way she and Senna’Nir speak. She left you lonely, too, even on your salarian Pilgrimage. Even in your Nedas cell.”

“I would like you to leave. I can’t help you, Anax. And what…” Malak’Rafa held out his hands pleadingly, “…what point can there be to any of that now?”

Therion said nothing for a pregnant moment. She had her line. Now she needed only to cast it.

“I was in love once,” she said, filling her voice with all the softness of someone who really, truly had. “It was forbidden for us, too. But not because its immune system could never withstand my subcutaneous oils. Simply because the soul bond between a drell and a hanar is never meant to be a physical bond. Its name was Oleon. It bought me from another hanar, a cold and cruel master who worked me nearly to death to spread the word of the Enkindlers without having to do any real work itself. Oleon was kind. It was giving and soft. When it was happy, the lights of its skin were brighter than any galaxy here or there. We were happy, for a time. I was the first drell to love a hanar in that way. As far as I know. But we were discovered, and…” Therion hid her eyes in one hand, as though she could not bear to go on. She heard Borbala snort.

The captain’s voice droned on through the public audio system.

If you detect symptoms in yourself or others, do not report to medbay. Isolate and confine symptomatic individuals to designated residential quarters on your species’ environmental control decks and await further communication.

“So you see, I know,” the drell said. “I know what it’s like, to love someone you can never touch again.”

The quarian’s faceplate fogged gently. He was crying. “When we reach Andromeda, she’ll go back to him,” he whispered. “And all I will have in my memory is the way she smelled on that last night, so impossibly sweet, like flowers, flowers in the depths of space…”

A bone-cracking scream echoed down the hall. All the tiny hairs on Anax Therion’s neck stood up straight. That was a mother’s scream. Once you heard it, you could never mistake it for any other.

They dashed out into the corridor. A quarian woman was standing there, her violet hood black in the shadows. She was holding something small in her arms. Something terribly small. A child, clutching a stuffed green keeper toy in one limp, dead hand.

With a little luck and ingenuity, we will all be safely back in our pods in a few days and the next time we open our eyes all we’ll see before us is the Andromeda galaxy in all its wonder and infinite promise. Everything is going to be all right.

13. REPLICATION

Someone banged on the door of Senna’Nir’s quarters. No one else had closed their doors in the quarian zone, so this had begun to happen very frequently. The locking mechanisms now cheerfully activated and deactivated whenever they pleased, so he simply hoped they were active now and tried to be as quiet as possible, ignoring the insistent and regular punching of his door.

Yes, they were in pain. Yes, they were starving. Yes, they were dying.

But if Senna could just get the ship working right again, they could fix it all. The med scans, the communications, the decontamination protocols—it could all work, if he could just make it work. They were only in this mess because they couldn’t access their own tech. Technology will save you. It will always save you. As long as you treat it with respect. As long as you don’t leave it alone with its thoughts. Those people out there didn’t understand. He was in here saving them. No less than Yorrik in the medbay. Of course they don’t understand. People with subacute sclerosing panencephalitis don’t even understand how many fingers they have. And if one of those thundering knocks was Qetsi, well, he could not risk her seeing what he was doing in here. He just needed more processing power.

But even through the door he heard the scream.