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The worst thing, Varinnia thinks as she is struggling with the innards of a power generator, isn't even rebuilding after the war has ended. Nor is it the irreversible changes that have been wrought upon everyone - and Spirits, hearing others think and feeling what they feel is bad enough. She almost has gone crazy until she has managed to figure out how not to listen, not to hear, how to put up a barrier between her own thoughts and that endless chatter.
No, the worst are the Reapers and husks that are still hanging around. Their ugly shapes are constant reminders of the horror that has happened. True enough, Chesed is just a fringe world, far off the main routes, unimportant. This small colony hasn't been hit that hard. The Reapers - only a handful of them, one large, two smaller, and still overkill for a place as small as this city - only got as far as wrecking important places like the spaceport, some of the power stations and the comm center. There have been casualties, but that was nothing compared to what the garbled image feeds from the core worlds had shown. The fighting on the ground had barely started when that green wave had passed over all of them, and ended it all. Changed them all forever.
She yanks at a partially burned control panel that needs replacing and yet won't let go. Outside the power station, she can hear the unmistakable noise of one of the Reapers stalking around. Going by the sound, it's probably the large one. Varinnia bares her teeth in a silent snarl.
It's true, they are useful in the cleanup efforts - cleaning up the same destruction they are responsible for in the first place. The husks are tireless, strong and numerous. The Reapers can move and carry objects of much more weight than any construction machinery could. Clearing away the rubble of destroyed buildings and helping to put up replacement structures is something they are able and willing to do.
Still, she cannot fathom why suddenly everyone seems to be fine with the idea of having these creatures still around. She would have put it down to alien stupidity since most of the population of this colony are humans and asari, with a small number of refugees of other species thrown in. There are no other turians here, so it's hard to get a second opinion on that. Maybe it's something in the water that makes everyone stupid. Or maybe, she thinks bitterly, that damned link makes everyone forget.
She won't. She has seen more of fighting than most of the colonists here, has carried supplies in her ship through enemy lines like so many others when things had become desperate enough that the Hierarchy called in everyone regardless of citizen status or records to help in the war efforts. Before that, she hasn't been back to Hierarchy space for over a decade, but when world after world had to be abandoned to the Reapers, no one cared any more about any soldier's past. As long as someone could fire a gun or fly a ship, that was all that counted. War doesn't care about anyone's sensibilities. Then one retreat had been too unexpected and too chaotic, and she had found herself cut off from the escape routes, and unable to rejoin what little remained of the fleet she had been assigned to. Her ship had never been equipped for fighting, hastily mounted cannon or not, so she had made her own escape, and finally gone to ground on Chesed.
They had been left alone for a while, but then the Reapers found them anyway. Her ship is gone now, destroyed along with everything else at the spaceport. She snarls again.
She desperately wishes she could be gone from this place. But with so many ships gone, there is no transport off any world for nonessential personnel. Chesed isn't important, and neither are any of its colonists. They are lucky that they are mostly self-sufficient, because there won't be a supply ship for the foreseeable future either. There is no place she can return to, but space has been home for many years, and she wants to get back. But without a ship, the chances of that are slim. She is stranded here, along with everyone else. Except that apparently everyone else doesn't seem to mind the part about being stuck planet-side. Damned Reapers.
Husks are even worse. And the worst of the lot are Marauders. She still can't stand even looking at the twisted things, the nightmarish merging of one of her own people and lots of cybernetics. Abominations. She rips at the cables, silently cursing under her breath, gropes around for a wire cutter. Her fingers close around empty air. She lifts her head, then almost jumps out of her plates at the sight of the Marauder staring at her.
The ugly creature is standing just a few meters away, and the thought that it has managed to sneak up to her without her noticing is unbearable. She growls, mandibles flaring, but it doesn't react. Too many eyes, no telling what it is looking at, and she'll be damned if she'll open up that barrier she has up to listen to what garbled things it is thinking. "Go away!"
Its mandibles twitch into a clumsy approximation of her own expression, but it doesn't seem threatening. It's just imitating her. Unbearable. "I said go away." It still doesn't react. Snarling in sudden rage, she hurls a piece of the generator's plating at it. It bounces off its spiky head with a resonating clunk, and she regrets it immediately, because she needs that part, after all.
The Marauder shakes its head, as if confused. There is the sound of metal hitting the ground, and she sees the wire cutter she had been looking for drop from its claws. It shouldn't surprise her, because she has seen the husks pick up random things before, as if puzzled by them, but it just makes her more angry. She snarls again, the full description of what she will do to it if it continues to irritate her in the harmonics of her undertones.
The Marauder gives a buzzing sound, then retreats, graceless, its steps shuffling. She throws a few curses after it for good measure, then retrieves the wire cutter and gets back to work.
***
Sooner than expected, the rough cleanup work is done. The Reapers and their husks were useful for the heavy lifting, but are useless for anything that requires a more delicate touch. The husks can use tools, but they aren't good at it. Naturally. The damned things were created to destroy, not build, after all.
Two of the Reapers have gotten that change of situation just fine, gathered up the armies of husks and hauled their ugly spiky backsides out of here. Varinnia doesn't know nor care where they are going. Good riddance, she thinks as she watches their departure, irrational jealousy flashing through her. They are not confined to this planet. They have broken everything, destroyed so much, but they are free, to come and go as they please. And she is not.
But one of them is still lingering. It's one of the small ones, just a Destroyer, and for some reason only known to itself it hasn't gone back to space like the others. It's staying just outside of the city, a black, menacing monstrosity with its legs drawn up like a spider tensing to jump. It hasn't moved for weeks. There is at least one Marauder too, another leftover.
She is busy doing whatever repairs are needed, just like everyone else, but she still sees the Marauder that has surprised her when she was working at the power station stumbling around every now and then. She can tell it's the same one by the way it moves, slow and hesitating, with no grace at all. It's curious, because she remembers how fast and well they moved when fighting.
Its presence is a constant source of irritation, but it doesn't come close, so she refrains from throwing things at it.
Most of the colonists ignore it. Most of the time it's just standing there, watching, but sometimes its behaviour turns bizarre. One colonist reported that it watched them sort through the rubble of the destroyed communication center for hours, then suddenly moved in, grabbed a data crystal and refused to let go of it again. It was utterly ridiculous, because Marauders don't have the hardware to read them, and besides, what would a Marauder want with a copy of standard star maps that could be found in any ship?
She has personally seen it walk around with what had to be part of a set of crystal wind chimes of the sort the asari in this place had liked to hang in their gardens. Incomplete and cracked, the sound the chimes had made had been nerve-wrecking to her, and she has been very close to considering a violent solution, but it had lost interest just before she had snapped.
At the moment, she and some other colonists who are at least able to hold tools - she is reluctant to call them engineers - are busy with repair work on a rover. Its plating is more holes than metal, but it will run again, eventually. They never had many vehicles here to begin with, and there won't be new ones delivered from outside. They have to make do with what's here.
The work is tedious, but as she has to admit, however grudgingly, one of the effects of the Change is that all those aliens really are cooperating, for once. They work together as a community, supporting each other, every one of them pitching in where they can. Like turians are supposed to, at least in theory, she thinks, and suppresses the brief stab of loneliness. No use in giving in to that.
Still, she has to admit on the whole it could have been much worse. There is enough food and water for everyone, the residential area hasn't been hit hard, so there is no one left without shelter, and they are already getting normal services restored. It will still be a long time until everything is back to normal - for a broad definition of normal, of course - but she has little doubt that they'll get there.
It's annoying to her that they all so readily accepted that strange link between them, but she chalks down that one firmly to alien behaviour. She's quite certain that no turian would want someone else's voices in their head. In any case, she won't have any part in that. If anyone wants anything from her, they can damn well ask aloud.
But it's almost peaceful. There is a mixed group of children playing whatever the local equivalent of clawball is somewhere behind her, and if she ignores the difference in voices, she remembers times much longer past. So she doesn't, but tightens a screw with a bit more force than necessary.
Then the screaming starts, and she is up and in combat stance already, the wrench in her hand like a weapon, until she realises that the situation doesn't quite warrant deadly force.
The Marauder is standing among the children, holding the ball they have been playing with. Its grip is clumsy, and it looks all but confused as the children back away from it. It doesn't try to follow. For a moment, the image of it throwing that ball at someone is in her mind, and she is absolutely certain that clumsy as it is, it is still stronger than any of the colonists, and it will hurt or kill someone. She almost gives in to the urge to attack, to protect, even if these people are not of her kind. She might even have snarled in warning. But the Marauder turns away and lets go of the ball, letting it drop to the ground. As it wanders off, the game resumes.
Varinnia carefully relaxes her stance.
One of the colonists working with her, a human, laughs at her. "Calm down. The war is over, you know. Ignore it."
She wants to sneer, but curiosity wins out. "What is it doing?"
The man shrugs. "What it always does. It imitates people it sees."
"Why?"
"Who knows." He shrugs again. "It's probably just broken."
Varinnia looks at him, wondering whether to call him fool or not. "Have you talked to it?" she asks instead.
"It doesn't talk," he replies carelessly. "It's not intelligent. It's just a machine, now. Harmless."
How can you ever know? She doesn't voice what's on the tip of her tongue. Instead, she twitches her mandibles and returns to work. You are all insane, she thinks. She wants to scream in frustration. She wants the Marauder out of her sight. She wants the Reaper off-planet. Spirits, she wants to be gone from this place.
***
It's a few days later just past sunset that the Reaper starts to move. It walks around the outskirts of the city, just barely not hitting any of the buildings, its movement a clumsy search pattern. Varinnia's own temporary quarters that she refuses to call home are in a building just at the edge of the city. The buildings are sparse and built low to the ground here, so the Reaper is clearly visible and impossible to ignore as it wanders aimlessly, just past the few sprawled buildings. The streets are empty, the lights are still out in this section, she is tired and just wants to go lie down, but she sees it turn, and then move closer. Roughly towards her position. Then it takes a faltering step, and another, crosses a rather open section that used to be a park before the Reaper attack turned it into a dry, burned wasteland. It appears to be heading for the street she's standing on.
She doesn't know what possesses her to do it, but she takes off in a mad run, towards it. She doesn't think, just screams at it to stop and hopes it will understand, because she has no idea how to stop it from crashing into one of the buildings if it really tries to walk up a street that is far too narrow for it.
Only when she stands a few meters away from one heavy leg does she realise what a bad idea that was. It feels ridiculous to scream at something the size of a tall building. Strangely enough, it stops and appears to listen. She stares up at it, and even although she knows that it's small for a Reaper it seems to fill the sky. It could stomp her flat with one of those spiky legs. She refuses to be afraid. "You're too big, damnit. You'll ruin everything. Again." Her voice is almost steady, and she is proud of that.
There is a moment of silence, then the groan of metal as the Reaper folds itself down. It draws its legs underneath its bulk in a could of dust, then flattens its body as much as it can. It isn't doing much good, of course. Even crouched like that it's considerably higher than any of the buildings in front of it. She stares at it, speechless. The green lights on its body - its eyes? - glow unwavering. It's waiting.
"You're still too big." she manages, then her control breaks, and she swears. For a moment she feels real hate towards it, hot and searing, and she remembers where she could get enough explosives to finish it off. She won't do it, of course. She won't be the one to start the war again. Hate gives way to despair. "To hell with you all. Why don't you just leave? Why don't you just lift off and get back into space and leave us the hell alone?"
A hum goes through the black metal, a sound so deep she can feel it as well as hear. Then the thing wails, and the volume almost throws her back. It's not quite that awful noise they make when they attack, but it's close, a sound that gets stuck in the marrow of her bones and stays there. A sound like that should only ever be heard in nightmares.
Varinnia covers her ears with her hands, yelling at it to stop, just stop, now.
Maybe it hears. Maybe some of the colonists that have to be around somewhere here in some of the buildings tell it to shut up via link. She doesn't know, but that terrible wail stops, and she is so grateful for that that she forgets to be angry. "Why are you still here?" she asks, but it doesn't answer in any way she can tell. It just stays crouched, waiting for something. She doesn't know what. She's sure she doesn't want to know.
There is nothing she can say or do. Finally, she turns away, starts to walk back to her own quarters. It doesn't react to her leaving.
About halfway back, she hears the faint hum of machinery. A sideways look confirms it: the Marauder is back, following at a distance. She looks at it, shivering in disgust, swallowing the familiar rage she feels at the sight. She cannot forget that this has once been a turian, before the Reapers happened to it. Now it's an animated corpse. It turns its head, looking back at her. Its eyes are green, all of them, and she shivers again. Maybe the human is right and it is broken. Or rather, the thing behind its eyes is.
In the end, she decides that a Marauder is still less trouble than a full-sized Reaper trying to walk through the city. At least it can't knock any buildings down.
She resolves to ignore it, and it doesn't try to come any closer, nor does it try to follow when she reaches her sleeping quarters.
***
The Marauder is there all the time now, hanging around somewhere just at the edge of her vision as she goes about her daily business. She's sure now that it's stalking her, although she has no idea why. After a while, even the human engineers notice and crack some jokes about it, about how she's acquired a cyborg admirer. She in turn cracks a few heads in response, and that's the end of it. The Marauder keeps its distance, so there is no excuse to throw things at it again. The Reaper huddles just outside, motionless again.
She does her job, helping in the rebuild, but she is restless and bad-tempered. She sleeps badly, and her dreams are a half remembered mess, but the one thing she can remember is being back in space, and that makes her temper even worse. It's difficult to keep her distance from the others, keep that endless noise of the link out of her conscious mind, but she has to.
The day is hot and dry, and she is heartily sick of it all as she finishes a protective layer of paint on the main access panel to the power grid station she's just restored to life. The other engineers have already given up for the day, but she is keeping at work. It's better than to think, and being tired is good. If she's tired enough she won't dream.
She sneezes at the fumes of the ugly green paint, then pushes it away.
The Marauder has dared to come closer than usual, but she doesn't have the energy to chase it off, or even look what it's doing now. It's probably only interested again in some of her tools. Lately, it is constantly trying to do things with its hands, taking simple things apart and reassembling them. It's like it's practicing. Learning. Its overall coordination hasn't improved much, though. It still moves almost wobbly.
The Marauder moves into her field of vision, closer than it has ever come, just barely out of reach, but the only thing she can see are the streaks of green paint on its head. It takes her heat-addled brain a second or two to resolve the pattern, because the colour is wrong and the lines are crude, but when she does, she screams and jumps back.
It stares back at her, motionless, the green paint mimicking her own pattern wet and sticky on its face. It has painted over two of its smaller eyes in order to replicate the markings correctly.
It's too much. She wants to keen or whimper, but she forces a snarl she doesn't feel. "Why? What do you want from me?"
There is no answer, of course. Marauders can't talk, none of them ever have. Presumably there is no vocal apparatus left in their necks, and no mechanical replacement for it. The link presses in on her mind like a great humming noise somewhere in the back of her skull, and she pushes it back as hard as she can, desperately. She isn't going to give in to that, lose her mind in that chaos. Fear makes her hiss.
It holds out a misshapen claw, green cybernetics coiling and realigning to a geometric structure, layers of flesh shifting subtly. Uplink port, she thinks frantically, feels the answering itch in her own palm as her cybernetics react.
She stares at her hand, too stunned to feel horrified. If it can do that, what else can it do to her? She wonders whether she should attack it. It's slow and clumsy, and while it has to be stronger than her, she has a pretty good idea where its weak points lie. Before the Change, it would have been a suicidal idea. Now, it's an even match. She could take out this platform. She is rather certain by now that the Reaper doesn't have any others. Take it out, leave the Reaper outside cut off from any sensory input and rudimentary means of communication this platform provides. It might go mad, if it isn't already. Or it might finally give up and leave them alone.
No. She isn't going to start that conflict again. It's maybe inevitable that it will start again, but that task will fall to someone else. She is too weary.
"What do you want?" she asks, ignoring its claw, ignoring the warmth in her palm.
It stares at her, long enough that she starts to believe that it hasn't understood, but then it turns and bends down, retrieving the can of green paint. It decides on the door to the grid station as an acceptable surface, and even in this situation she cannot help wincing as it drags a green stained claw against the white of the metal.
The first few splotches and lines make no sense, and the paint is too thin and drips, but the Marauder doesn't seem to care. More splotches, more lines, and the pattern resolves into something familiar. It's a navigation map, one she has seen before, and she almost can name it when it just paints over it, new lines, new marks. Another map, and another, until she gets it.
Not a specific destination. Space.
The irrational feeling of homesickness is like a punch to the gut. Her own restlessness, and the Reaper's, combined, amplified, tasting like hot metal in her mouth, something burning that she can't get rid of. "You want to go home. Into space." She shakes her head. "Then go. What's keeping you?"
It holds out its claw again, green paint sticking to it, and there is nothing threatening about it.
She swears savagely, then takes it. Its hand is warm, neither the cold metal nor the dead flesh she has expected.
It's not like the link, nothing at all like that chaotic forced closeness, that randomness that has almost driven her mad at the beginning, no emotion not her own bleeding in. This is cool and white and ordered, rational. She is aware of her body, and her surroundings, but there is also awareness of the virtual space here. She has never experienced anything like that, but some part, some new and reconstructed part of her recognises this. It's merely a platform for exchange, nothing to get lost in. Nothing to be afraid of. She isn't.
Show me.
It's still without words, but it can shape concepts. She sees faint images of vast shapes, larger than the biggest Reaper but with a fluid elegance to their lines that only nature can have come up with. There are large groups of them, in close formation, moving through the stillness of space. There is a sound in their minds, voices interwoven in a complexity that transcends the concept of song. This is what guides them.
Is that what you were?
Then the manyfold song compresses into a single voice, a transformation in pain and fear and anguish. There is only this single form, smaller than it was before, and the others surrounding it are different, so different, but there is another song that connects all of them. There is unity, and there is purpose, and it is enough. Until that song is silenced suddenly, shattered by incomprehensible green that takes it all away and leaves only confusion in return.
The images fade to nothing, and the stillness is deafening. The pull of gravity is an annoyance, and everything is too hectic, too chaotic, too loud. There is a way out, but there must be direction. There is none inside, so it has to come from somewhere else. Someone has to lead. This is the way it has been before, and the way it is now. There is one who also longs for the stillness.
You would let me pilot you?
There is no direct reply, and she realises that it hasn't understood. It is trying to adapt, to shape whole images into the limited symbolism that the strange creatures around it are using, but it's struggling. This is new. For timeless moments, there are blurry images she can't interpret, then it forms words, clumsily, with much effort like working stone with one's own claws. Stars?
It's not a question but an offer. She hesitates, caution kicking in, and it moves back in some way, lets her see. It's images and blurry emotion and then endless lines of code, a program written in a language she can't understand. It's too vast to fully comprehend, but she is certain of one thing: whatever its actions before, as a Reaper or before, the entity before her is new, untainted. The potential for anything, like with any living creature, all of it so far unrealised. Time and life will shape it, but for now it is neutral.
Yes, she replies.
The next word takes more effort, but less time, and there is an undertone of hope. Together?
Yes, she confirms.
Relief. A flash of white-hot joy, anticipation. Longing. Impatience to be gone.
The connection falters and fails, but she doesn't mind because everything important has already been said.
She pulls her hand back from the Marauder's claw, absently wipes green paint from her fingers.
It looks at her, and despite its lack of facial expression its pose is expectant. Varinnia sighs. "Just let me pack."
In the end, there is not all that much that she has to pack. All she owns and wants to take fits into a couple of bags, and even with a good supply of rations there is still room to spare. She makes it a point to let the Marauder carry them.
There has not been much point in saying goodbye. She simply tells the first person she comes across - one of the engineers she has worked with for weeks - that she's leaving. He isn't surprised, or at least, not much. She doesn't know whether there's sympathy or pity or maybe relief in his expression, or anything else, and she doesn't use the link to check. The wish for good luck seems genuine, though, and that she accepts.
The Reaper is still where it has rested for days. As she approaches, it shifts from its resting position, shaking off sand and dust. It makes a deep, groaning sound that thankfully isn't like that terrible wail, but it still resonates in her bones. She considers telling it to quiet down, but then the urge passes. The groan fades into a deep hum as the lights along its hull come alive.
With another groan of metal, a part of the Reaper's shell shifts, opens like a hatch as a rudimentary ramp extends downwards. There is green-lit darkness behind, and she briefly wonders how much space there is inside a Destroyer. Storage space for the Marauders, certainly, but beyond that, she can't even guess. No matter; she will see soon enough.
The Marauder is two steps ahead, already climbing up the ramp. It almost disappears into the gloom, and her steps slow. It's not fear, but she feels apprehension. There will be no turning back from here.
The Marauder turns back, its figure only partially visible. Its useless mandibles work, and then there is the sound of static, as it replays a chunk of transmission it must have picked up somewhere. The quality is so bad that she can't even tell whether it has been a human voice, or an asari's, or something else, but she can make out the word, barely. "Space." Its green-marked head is tilted to one side, questioning, a gesture it must have picked up from her. It's learning.
Apprehension dissolves and leaves only a sense of adventure behind. Sometimes there is only the way forward. She flares her mandibles into a fierce grin. Maybe she has finally gone as insane as the colonists are. Or maybe she has just woken up.
"Space." she agrees. "You're right. Let's get the hell off this rock."
Head held high, she steps forward into the green-lit unknown.