Mass Effect

“What?”

“How did you choose which drell to infect? It wasn’t all of us, or I would have it.”

Qetsi did not raise her face to meet Anax’s eyes. “I watched you, all of you, on Hephaestus. We chose the most outgoing ones, the social butterflies, the happy drell who talked to everyone. Like Soval. The ones most likely to make… new friends on the Nexus.”

Stony, venomous silence met that reply.

“You’re insane,” hissed Senna. “They say that in vids but you are really and actually insane. Something is broken in you. How did you get past the screening? The Initiative rejected people far less bent on genocide than you.”

Qetsi laughed. “Oh, Senna, you really are simple. I was always so good at taking tests, you know. Even if I didn’t study. There’s a reasoning, a certain logic, to all tests, and as soon as you know it, you can pass anything. It’s not like they asked if I planned to rewrite the whole history of the quarian species. That is not a question on the psychological exam. And if it was, my love, I am surely capable of answering no. Besides, they were looking for someone a little insane! The ancestors know you’ll never find a sane quarian who would abandon the quest for Rannoch. Anyone on this side of normal wouldn’t even consider it. They needed someone just the perfect amount of insane to dump their entire lives and families and all of recorded history and light out for Andromeda on the promise of… of what? A planet? Maybe? If there’s one out there for us? That the bureaucracy there would somehow provide for us when it never did back home? They wanted insane. Insane and inspiring and reckless. Only on their forms they spelled it ‘visionary.’ Well, they got me. I see the great pageant, just like the Initiative does. I see the new galaxy, writ large in stardust and blood. I just… see it a little differently arranged than they do. And that difference just looks like eagerness on a psych screen.”

“But the people,” Anax said. “My people. You used us. Why couldn’t you just wait until we got to the Nexus? Or spread your disease in the Milky Way? Why come all this way for so much death? Why did the drell have to be the bullets you fired?”

Qetsi stared at them, genuinely dumbfounded. “I’m not a monster. Killing a few thousand on the Nexus in exchange for a pristine society is an easy bargain. Killing trillions back home—and for what, there’s far too many of them on too many worlds to really change the balance of power—is horrific. What kind of person do you think I am?”

“One who will be easily convicted,” Senna said grimly.

“You can’t tell them,” the captain whispered. “The people on the Nexus. They will only persecute the quarians more brutally when we arrive. No one will ever trust us. You cannot tell anyone. Let Yorrik’s cure do its work. Airlock me if you have to—say I contracted it and died. I will accept that. But you cannot tell. You own this now, just as I do.”

For a long moment, there was only silence.

“Grandmother, open a comm channel to medbay,” Senna barked.

Comm channel open, ke’sed. By the way, I know you haven’t asked because you’ve got the manners the gods gave a black hole, but I am nearly ready to begin my final patch. You’ll want to be in your cryopod when I do. Things could get as rocky as a glass of good ryncol around here.

“Yorrik, is the retrovirus ready?”

No response. Qetsi wept. Anax watched her with curiosity. I will remember this so well, she thought.

“In overwhelming agony: Yes, Senna. It is ready,” Yorrik’s voice stuttered over the line. “Begging: P… p… please, my friend. Please say it.”

But Senna said nothing. He grabbed the captain roughly by one arm. She did not resist. He dragged her toward medbay without a single word, his anger so black and total that Anax didn’t even try to tell him a story of Kahje to pass the time on their long, dead woman’s walk.

* * *

Yorrik crouched in the corner, blue sores blossoming all over his enormous, noble body. The elcor nodded weakly toward the autopsy table where a loaded hypospray waited.

Senna’Nir turned to his captain. “I am not going to wake the Quorum. The three of us here should suffice for a tribunal. You did this, you’re going to undo it. Generating more of the retrovirus will take time. People will die in the gap. Maybe thousands. But you’re not going to let that happen, are you?”

He picked up the hypospray and looked to Anax. She nodded solemnly. Then to Yorrik, whose red, crusted eyes widened in comprehension, if not of the why or wherefore, at least of the fact of what they meant to do. The elcor struggled to his massive feet and seemed to allow that final rage of Fortinbras to reign free. He charged her with a broken bellow, slamming Qetsi’Olam against the glass medbay wall. It cracked horribly. The captain moaned in helpless pain. But she nodded.

She did nod. Years later, when Senna’Nir remembered this, he would try to hold on to the fact that, in the end, she agreed to mend what she had done. She had some speck of who he’d loved in her still.

But that charge was all Yorrik had in him. He slumped to the ground.

“With deep love and need: Say it, Senna. It is time,” he begged.

Senna’Nir knelt next to his old friend. He put his hands on the ancient elcor’s gray head. He leaned down and whispered, “With infinite grief and friendship: ‘Now cracks a noble heart. Goodnight, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.’”

The elcor sighed no more.

The quarian rose, seized the captain by the throat, released the clamps on her helmet, ripped it off, and injected the retrovirus directly into her jugular.

19. RELEASE

Qetsi’Olam walked naked, or near enough to it, down the halls of her ship.

Down every hall, in every zone. They watched her come, her crew, her passengers. The old woman’s voice that had taken the place of the ship’s interface had told them what to do, if not why. They watched her come, singing as she walked, and one by one, they approached.