“Lieutenant.” SAM-E’s voice was subdued, she thought. Unhappy. “There is a… problem, up ahead. I believe Medea has anticipated your route.”
“What does that mean?” But then she ran into the corridor that would’ve finally led her back to the hangar bay, and saw.
Half a dozen augments stood there, shuffling and grunting as they waited for their chance to kill her. As Cora stumbled to a halt, one of them spotted her, and with the speed of sublight communication all of them turned to face her at once.
Too many. In ones and twos Cora could take them, but not that many, and not when lifting her pistol felt like hauling rocks. Her biotic amp was so hot from overuse that she imagined stray strands of her hair beginning to singe.
Beyond the crowd of monsters, she could hear the distinctive choppy-hum sound of the shuttle’s engines, warming up.
“Tell them to go,” Cora said, hoping SAM-E was close enough that his prior link with the shuttle might allow communication. “Don’t worry about me.” She managed to grin, though even that hurt. All at once she understood something that Nisira had told her, years ago after she’d nearly died on a mission.
It was the story of an asari matron. She’d faced a hopeless situation, too: a whole horde of krogan descending upon the colony of Ellita before it could evacuate, and no one but her left to hold the defensive line. Her commander had tried to persuade her to retreat by reminding her that she had two small daughters back on Thessia. They would be orphaned by their mother’s death. Who would raise them to be good asari, if not her?
“I have only one lesson to teach them,” she had replied “The most important lesson that any mother can teach her children: How to fight.” And then she’d flung herself at the horde—eventually dying in a hail of enemy weapons fire, but holding them back long enough for the last evac shuttle to lift off.
Cora had no children, but there were children on that shuttle. And anyway, hadn’t Cora’s own mother, lost somewhere and probably dead, shown her the way? But not before carving a place for her daughter in humanity’s future.
“‘I am a daughter of Talein,’” Cora murmured to herself, still grinning as the augments began their charge. It was the Daughters’ motto. She threw aside her useless gun, clenched her fists, and blazed with every bit of blue-white energy she could muster. “‘Against chaos—we stand. Against death—we refuse.’”
Then she ran at the augments, flinging a shockwave of kinetic energy at them as her vanguard. The blast staggered two of the creatures and scattered two others, but those on the edges of the blast merely slowed a little before they were on her. Cora skidded to duck a grasping hand, threw a singularity into the forest of legs and feet around her, slid between two of the creatures and came up behind them with a shout of rage. One of the monstrosities swung at her and she writhed aside, just evading the blow—but the sheer force of it made her stumble, then try to regain her balance.
In the instant that she fell out of battle rhythm, a massive hand grabbed her by the right shoulder in a crushing grip. She hit at it, ineffectually, but before she could muster her biotics to throw it off, the thing whipped around and flung her at a nearby wall.
She hit the wall so hard that all the pain stopped. Thought stopped. When she became aware of the world again, she realized she had blacked out for a few seconds. As she opened her eyes and tried to push herself up—the creatures were closing, but taking their time about it, almost as if Medea wanted to savor its victory—she was surprised into a scream, because everything on the right side of her body was a white flare of pain. Multiple fractures, probably. That single blow had depleted her shields to almost nothing, and damaged her armor enough that the shield-replenishment generators were sluggish at best. And the rest of her had descended into a kind of detached, floating lethargy, which she assumed was the onset of the post-augmentation collapse that SAM-E had warned about.
Bottom line: Cora wasn’t getting up again.
“S-still there, SAM-E?” she asked. One of the creatures stopped before her, hands twitching. Trying to decide how best to beat her to death, maybe.
“Yes, Lieutenant,” the AI said, softly. “Always.”
Cora raised her good hand, though it tingled with numbness or muscle overuse or both, and tried to throw a wave of force at the creature. It stumbled back a step, and maybe it was her imagination that it looked amused when it recovered. She had nothing left with which to fight, and Medea knew it. Wearily, Cora let her arm fall to the floor.
“Good,” she said. “It’s nice. Not to be. Alone.”
The augment above her clenched its fists, raising one to start pounding her helmeted head into pulp—
—and then it fell to the floor, beady eyes wide with the surprise that came of instant death. Captain Ariokis jumped backward off its shoulders as it fell, omni-blade glowing almost red-hot on her fist. She glared at Cora, then leapt away.
What the…?
In the next instant, Cora heard the rattle of assault rifle fire, and—uh-oh—the hollow shoop of a missile launcher. Her shields were still low, practically fizzling, so Cora mustered what little biotic energy she had left and wove it into that fragile skin of kinetic force, because—
The missile blast rocked the whole corridor, shattering glass and tearing metal and blowing half the monstrosities around Cora into chunks. Her makeshift barrier-shield shunted away an arm as heavy as a stone, but then she lost it, too exhausted for anything else. As her vision blurred again, she saw the muzzle flash of assault rifles, heard the roars of the creatures around her, felt the floor shudder with their stumbling as they fell. Then booted feet trotted toward her face. The size of the boots, extra small, told her who it was before the voice confirmed it.
“Huh. Still alive, Harper?” Ariokis asked, crouching above her. “I worried the missile might do you in.”
“Mostly alive,” Cora rasped. “Maybe.”
“Let’s see if we can’t keep it that way.”
“Not your. Usual area of. Expertise. Is it?”
“A girl’s got to have her hobbies.” Then Ariokis grabbed Cora’s broken arm to start trying to haul her up. Cora didn’t remember screaming, but in the brief flicker of grayed-out awareness that she retained once Ariokis got an arm under her good side, she felt the tingle of abrasion in her throat.
SAM-E said, “I’m going to place you into a medical coma now, Lieutenant. Between the aftereffects of the augmentation and the damage you’ve taken, it’s the only chance I have of keeping you alive until you can receive proper aid.”
“Well, hurry up, then,” Cora said blurrily, and it was probably a mercy that she lost consciousness before Ariokis started dragging her toward the shuttle.
Happy Sun Week, Council-space citizens! This is your weekly Trend Report, and I’m Marcus Simmons, your guide to everything that actually matters in the galaxy.
We’ve got a heart-throb alert! Alliance soldier James Vega, hero of the Fehl Prime tragedy—oh, too soon? Sorry—but feast your eyes, bipeds! Oh, those tattoos. Those shoulders. Some of our asari attachés are already busy trying to figure out how to embrace a little eternity with this big fellow!
And in other news, time to celebrate! What the Alliance has been calling the Eden Prime War is officially over, since the last geth ships were destroyed exactly two years ago. We hear there’s going to be a big party at club Afterlife on Omega to celebrate! Rumor has it a ship was seen coming out of the mysterious Omega 4 Relay. Maybe they heard about the party, too?
And in other news, neck tattoos are in again. We spoke to the Consort, and…
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Whether hours, days, or weeks had passed, Cora could not have said. For a while she perceived the world only in vignettes that might have been fever dreams.
* * *
A flash of lucidity. She’s lying on the bench of the shuttle, with a sallow-faced woman holding an omni-tool sensor over her face while a crowd of people hovers around. SAM-E’s voice from the shuttle
speakers: “The excessive adrenaline remaining in her system is causing her to resist the comatose state. Please try this—”
* * *
A half-gray moment as she is jostled. People are carrying her. The sallow-skinned woman is shouting, waving with her free hand while her other hand supports Cora’s lolling head. “We’ve got a casualty, level-three metabolic collapse, I need help!” Strangers in Alliance Medical uniforms surround her, and Cora sinks back into the dark.
* * *
Alec Ryder leans over the railing of a hospital bed, yelling at someone across the room. The words don’t make sense, so she goes back to sleep.
* * *
Her mother’s face, though this cannot be. Her mother has been missing and presumed dead for years. But sure enough, there are Cora’s hazel eyes, a curl of Cora’s blond hair peeking unnoticed from the edge of her scarf, fear and sorrow in her expression. “If you came all the way home only to die here, I’m going to kill you,” she says, and Cora tries to laugh but can’t. But I’m not home, she thinks, and the vision fades away.
* * *
An asari face, startling after so long. Has it been a week? A year? A decade? It’s Nisira. She touches Cora’s face with long fingers, and for an instant she imagines her eyes are blue-within-black. Something digs down through the heavy woolen blankets of darkness that drape Cora’s mind, pulling. Cora jerks and thinks, Quit it. I’m trying to rest. Then she’s briefly appalled at herself for thinking so disrespectfully. But Nisira is smiling and normal again as she straightens and moves away. To someone out of view she says, “Oh, yes, she’s still in there. Rather indignant about being disturbed, too, so let’s not.” Something, a pump attached to her somehow, hisses, and then she sinks into the dark again.
* * *
Suddenly, jarringly, Cora came awake. Blinking, she looked around and saw that she was in a brightly lit hospital room, in a medical-monitoring bed, though thankfully someone had dressed her in pajamas and not a hospital gown. The pajamas were hideous—white with flowers and stars all over them—but she forgot all that as she glanced through the infirmary room’s internal window and saw two guards standing outside.
“Lieutenant,” SAM-E said. “How are you feeling?”
“Okay,” Cora said, surprised at how rough her voice sounded. “For a dead woman.”
“You came very close. I’ve alerted your doctor.”
Cora slid back the blankets and attempted to swing her legs over the bed’s edge, but the limbs didn’t respond. Not fully. And the effort caused her to feel a wave of dizziness and nausea.
“I advise caution, Lieutenant.” It could be her imagination, but SAM-E sounded more formal than she’d remembered. “Your muscles have likely atrophied a bit during your recovery.”
Atrophy? “How long have I been out?” Another wave of dizziness. This was worse than zero-g training.
“Forty-six days, five hours, and twenty-two minutes.”
Almost nine weeks! She felt her heart begin to race, and she broke out into a cold, clammy sweat. She heard the door swish open and someone entered the room as the darkness began to take her once again.
“Rest, Lieutenant.” SAM-E’s voice seemed miles away, and yet oddly closer than her own thoughts.
* * *
The next time she opened her eyes the room was more dimly lit. How much time had passed? She noticed only one guard outside the door. “SAM-E? Are you there?”
“Of course. How are you feeling today?”
“Tired.” She carefully pushed herself up onto her elbows. No dizziness. That was progress at least. “How long this time?”
“Less than forty-eight hours.” SAM-E seemed to be speaking in quiet tones. “There was a brief spike in your adrenal levels. Likely an aftereffect of the augmentations I performed. But you should be stable now.”
Stable. That was reassuring. Slowly—gingerly—she got her legs swung over the side of the bed and sat up. She felt clumsy. Foggy. But not dizzy, or even overly sore for that matter. Cora carefully slid off the bed and took a few tentative steps. When she went over to the exterior window, the view beyond startled her. She was on one of the higher levels of Tamayo Point, gazing down through its central well at bridges and platforms full of people bustling toward their respective destination-bound ships. Full circle, apparently, since she’d first left asari space.
Asari. “I thought I saw… Was Nisira T’Kosh here?”
“Briefly,” said SAM-E. “So was Alec Ryder, who ordered me to link to the hospital network in order to better monitor your health. Alec has returned on several occasions. Ms. T’Kosh has not returned, but she asked to be informed when you woke up. She did not want to disturb your recovery. There was concern at the time that your mind might have been affected by the brain damage.”
“Brain damage?”
“That’s why you were brought here. Tamayo Point was the only place in the Sol system with the facilities to assist with my medical repairs,” SAM-E replied. “Medical staff aboard the Alliance vessel which rescued the Quiet Eddy personnel—the SSV Zama—were able to at least keep you stable, with my aid. But the events on Quiet Eddy left your body seriously compromised, in more ways than one.”
Cora shuddered. “I’m still… me, though.” She said this tentatively. She felt like herself, but would she actually know it, if some part of her had been permanently changed?
“Yes. The effects have either subsided or been reversed. And my program has since been modified to prevent me from doing so again, without Alec Ryder’s permission.” SAM-E said this with just the barest hint of… regret? Was it regret for what had happened to Cora? Or that SAM-E’s own programming had been altered? Cora felt a twinge of guilt—was it really okay to just rewrite a part of SAM-E, even if it was to protect her?
“And the damage inflicted by the effects of the blood-rage was exacerbated by the blunt-force trauma you sustained just before Captain Ariokis retrieved you. To put it frankly, when you arrived here, you had been poisoned by your own broken-down muscle tissue; several of your organs had begun to fail. There was some thermoelectric damage to your brain stem from implant feedback—”
Cora held up a hand. “Okay. Let’s… let’s just go with FUBAR.”
“Very well, Lieutenant. You were FUBAR. But I am pleased to see you up and walking again.”
“Good job putting me back together,” she said, looking at her hands. No overwhelming urges to kill anymore either. “I wouldn’t be—” Human. “—here if not for you. You’re pretty awesome.”
“Thank you,” SAM-E said, sounding pleased. “It’s nothing a little micro-reconstruction, gene therapy, neurotransmitter blocking, and—”
“Yeah, we talked about this.”
“…anti-FUBAR treatment, then. Forgive me, I had been given to understand from Alec that humans prefer honesty to euphemism.”
“Some humans, sometimes. Probably there’s some stuff even Ryder doesn’t want to hear in detail, when you get right down to it.”
“I will include your observation in my heuristics dedicated to human behavior, then. And to conclude, your ‘anti-FUBAR treatment’ was completely successful.”
Cora turned away from the window and began making her way back over to the bed. It at least looked more comfortable than the room’s lone, metal chair. “The Quiet Eddy personnel remained with the Zama, I take it?”
“Yes. Dr. Jensen sends her regards, and her gratitude for saving the lives of the survivors.”
Cora was glad the survivors had all made it off the Eddy. But…
“Tell her if she really wants to demonstrate her gratitude, she can turn herself in for court martial. So should every other Quiet Eddy project lead—those who survived.” At the end of the day, Jensen and her team had done the same thing that had gotten Ryder kicked out of the military—and a lot more people had died on their watch than his. If you were going to bend the rules, you had to be willing to face the consequences when things went wrong.
“I be
lieve Dr. Jensen knew that, Lieutenant. It was an audio message, and vocal stress analysis of her message suggests she is indeed considering doing as you’ve suggested. However…”
“Don’t tell me. Whoever authorized Quiet Eddy is going to get off scot-free.” On every world, in every species, bureaucratic bullshit was always the same. Cora rubbed her eyes.
“Yes. Ryder seemed of the opinion that those most responsible are sufficiently insulated from Quiet Eddy that they will suffer no consequences as a result of the incident. The facility itself was vaporized via saturation orbital bombardment by the Zama, as predicted. There is no way that the contaminated AI known as Medea could have survived or escaped offworld.”
Good old thorough Alliance military. “You said Ryder knew something about this.”
“Yes, and he has asked me to share his findings with you. Quiet Eddy appears to have been a clandestine project developed jointly between certain elements within the Alliance, the Union of Incorporated Nations, and several corporate conglomerates, as a cost- and risk-sharing venture. Top-level decision-makers within the Alliance, including the current human Councilor, were unaware of the Medea project’s existence. The orbital bombardment was intended as a discreet way to clean up evidence of malfeasance, but when survivors were recovered… discretion became more difficult. Alec Ryder believes this may help to flush out the true culprit behind the repeated theft of the kernel codebase.”
“Wow, he really is pissed about that, isn’t he?” Cora shook her head. Then again, so was she. “But at least the kernel’s destroyed now.”