Find that it is time to

breath, build, bend, and refine you

We sky tenants

give it all but won’t give up

Radio soul antennas

radio to lift spirits

Call sign commando

m.o. is independence

Scream till the walls fall,

dissolve all the limits.

– “Fight With Tools”, Flobots

Tali’Zorah nar Rayya vas Normandy sat in the corner of the Normandy’s engine room, much as she had six months before, and two years before that. She sat close enough to feel the ever-present humming mass effect field energy radiating off of the drive core, which bathed her in a bright blue light that made her feel like she was underwater, staring up at the sun.

Even though as soon as she boarded, Shepard offered to set her up in one of the private rooms off the crew quarters on the third deck, or even in her own quarters, Tali declined politely, opting instead to sleep in Garrus’s old bunk in the forward battery since the turian had made a more or less permanent move into the prow where Shepard slept. It was a development that she found strange, and when she first heard, she felt a strange pang of what could only be envy…but in the end she couldn’t help but be happy for them. They were her friends, strong and idealistic and good, and if they were good for each other, that was good enough for her.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to stay among the crew – they seemed like nice enough people – but they were not the crew of the Normandy that she knew.

That was the part that bothered her, more than anything else. So many things on the Normandy were the same, but different at the same time. As much as she had hated and distrusted Cerberus, when Shepard flew black and yellow, the Normandy was filled with aliens – the ship might have been operated mostly by human troopers, but the soldiers that Shepard trusted, the ones she wanted at her back, were the ones who were not.

Things were different now though. This crew was Alliance through and through – stiff, formal, courteous enough…but not friendly. The war had made everyone grim and distrustful. Tali quickly learned that the story of Gerrel firing on Shepard spread through the crew quickly, though she was sure it hadn’t spread from Shepard herself – the commander wasn’t one to hold a grudge. Shepard was the punch-and-forget type. Still, every time Tali saw one of the human crew looking at her for a few moments longer than necessary, she felt like they were replacing her face with his behind the mask. And then there was the eavesdropped hallway conversation she overheard where one of the crew was cursing over a lost augmented reality visor, and a joke was made about “quarian thieves”…

So one of the Admirals of the Migrant Fleet hid in the engine room, as she had what seemed like so many years before, when she was young and known as vas Neema instead of vas Normandy.

Chiktikka, who was hovering idly around the engine room casting golden shadows as she blipped and whirred, dropped down to face level with a chirp, speaking in her pleasant little-girl voice.“Tali’Zorah, you have an incoming communications link from the Rayya.”

Tali looked up from the datapad of fleet stats she had been studying, then stretched and stood. It wouldn’t do for whoever was on the other end of the line to see her crouched like a shy child in the floor. She smoothed the cloth of her helmet, then took a deep breath. “Okay, patch it through.”

Chiktikka cast a life-size communications VI. When the image came up and she saw who was on the other end of the line, she dropped her datapad in surprise, distantly hearing it clatter on the metal deck.

“Kal!”

We’re all dead anyway…just make them pay for it.

The quarian marine stood before her, the hologram flickering. “In the flesh, ma’am,” Kal’Reegar responded smartly, snapping her a salute. “Well, not exactly the flesh, but you get the general idea.”

Tali leaned back against the railing and stared, listening to the steady hum of the Normandy’s drive core behind her, struggling for words. Her legs trembled with the sudden force of her relief, and only the thought of what Kal’Reegar would think of her if she displayed that kind of blatant weakness kept her from going to her knees in shock. The silence stretched out.

“…Ma’am?”

“I told you not to call me that,” Tali burst out, seeing Kal’Reegar flinch back in the hologram at the strident sound of her voice. Movements jerky with barely-withheld emotion, she leaned over to pick the datapad up, then suddenly brandished it at his image as if she would strike him with it like a puppy caught with a chewed shoe, were he actually standing before her. “The Alliance News Network said that you died on Palaven!”

He snorted. “Does Shepard believe everything she gets in her email? If she does, I have some lovely beachfront property on Haelstrom to sell her. Communications are spotty on Palaven, they can’t keep their intel lines open, that’s one of the reasons I was down there in the first place. In any case, rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated. As you can see.”

Tali felt relief leak away and slowly be replaced with warm anger, filling her. Anger felt good, drove back the tears which were pricking at her eyes. “Damn it Kal, this isn’t funny. That message included a statement from the Primarch himself about it. How were we supposed to know any different?”

Kal’Reegar lowered his head slightly and when he spoke again, his voice was softer. “We were missing in action for four days. Lost our communications hub in mortar fire. I don’t blame the turians for thinking we were dead. I lost most of my men. Six guys just to suit ruptures. I had a breach myself, and barely made it out of there. I didn’t think I would, but we had a krogan melee squad catch our signal flare on radar. I’m sorry you were worried.”

She threw her free hand up in exasperation, resisting the urge to hurl the datapad across the room, glad for once to have the exosuit mask to hide her expression. “I wasn’t worried, you stupid bosh’tet, I was sad. They said you were dead. I thought you were gone…all of you…you were the only one left. And now all you can do is call me up like you never left at all, making stupid jokes. I never even got the chance to say goodbye, or be careful, or anything.”

“I’m sorry.”

Tali balled her hand into a fist. She never wanted so badly to throw herself around his neck and hug him. Tell him how glad she was that he was alive. But she was an Admiral. She couldn’t do that even if he was physically standing in front of her. So, instead: “I could strangle you.”

Kal’Reegar laughed quietly. “A marauder already tried that, ma’am. It didn’t take.”

“So what happened then?”

He shook his head. “We never would have made it without those krogan. The reapers had us pinned down, and I thought for sure that we weren’t going to make it. So when they said they were going to try and send in an evac, I told them not to bother. I’d already lost half my guys by then.”

“Why? Why would you do that?”

“Admiral, I couldn’t ask them to sacrifice an entire platoon just trying to save six guys, two of which were probably so sick at that point they wouldn’t have made it out anyway. So I told them no. It’s called an executive decision,” he added, his voice soft.

She pointed a finger at him. “Don’t tell me about executive decisions.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Tali brought her hand up to her helmet as if she had developed a sudden migraine. This isn’t going how I wanted at all…I’m so happy he’s still alive. So why am I so angry?

“So…krogan?”

He nodded, visibly relieved at the change of topics. “Yeah. One minute I’m laid up against a wall in a busted satellite station, listening to a harvester trying to beat down the door and holding this delirious guy Tasi’s head in my lap, thinking, ‘Man, sure would have been nice to see the homeworld before I went down, wish the last thing I saw wasn’t going to be a turian recruitment poster’, and all of a sudden we hear someone yell, ‘For Tuchanka!’ outside. They mopped those reapers up in ten minutes, tops. Almost shot us when they burst in though. Sort of trigger-happy fellas.”

“Yes, I served with a couple of krogan on the Normandy. That sounds exactly like them,” Tali replied, wondering where Grunt and Wrex were now. Were they even still alive? She hoped so.

“Strange guys, but tough as hell,” Kal’Reegar went on. “Never met one up close before that day. Saw a couple of ’em on my Pilgrimage when I passed through Omega, but steered clear. Anyway, they grabbed my men who were unconscious…or dead…and just threw them over their shoulders like they were nothing. The battlemaster – Drau Leto, he said his name was – pulled me up by one hand and said, ‘What are you bubble boys doing here? Don’t you know reapers eat quarians for breakfast?’ Cracked him up. They kept asking us if we were hungry, and laughing. I didn’t get it, really. Must be a lizard thing. We were hungry though. Too bad we couldn’t eat any of their rations, and didn’t have any of ours left. Finally got something when we got back to a turian FOB. They’re the ones that gave us a ride back to the Fleet. By then, the news had already gone out that we were all dead. You should have seen their faces when those krogan brought us in. You’d have thought they saw a pack of ghosts.”

“As far as we were all concerned, you were.”

“Yeah…I’m sorry about that, Admiral. Really. I thought that, once I got back to the Rayya, you would have been one of the first people informed. I was so busy trying to debrief and inform the families of the guys who didn’t make it, I didn’t even think to call you personally.”

Tali closed her eyes. She remembered having to do that for her fallen squad back on Haelstrom. Go to the parents of the slain, watch their mothers fall to their knees in distraught disbelief, their fathers cry. It was her responsibility as their leader, just as it was Kal’Reegar’s. She suddenly felt selfish for her expectations.

“No, I’m sorry, Kal. I’m sorry you had to go through all that. You barely make it out alive, on a mission that will have the whole Fleet calling you a hero, and all I can manage to do when I find out is snipe at you for not letting me know sooner. I know you had more important things to worry about.”

“Frankly, ma’am, I thought you had more important things to worry about than a grunt like me.”

“Maybe I do, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care what happens to you. Just because I’m an Admiral now doesn’t mean that I can suddenly start thinking of you as…I don’t know…some kind of pawn.”

Kal’Reegar looked to either side of him, as if checking to see if others were listening to their conversation, then looked back at the VI interface. “Hold on, Admiral. I’m moving this to someplace a little more private.” He reached down to push a button, and the interface went idle. After a few moments, he came back up on the VI. “Sorry, things were getting a little crowded. But back to what I was saying…pardon my insubordination, but that’s exactly what it means. We went out there to get that station back up, and we knew that there was a strong chance we weren’t coming home. Lots of us didn’t. But we’re marines, Tali. That’s what we do. So other people don’t have to.”

She sighed. “So I take it you would be insulted if I asked you not to take those kinds of missions anymore, and sent someone else in your place?”

She could hear the smile in his voice, even though she couldn’t see his face. “Highly insulted, ma’am. Outraged even.”

“And you can’t promise me you’ll be careful?”

“I don’t like breaking my promises. Especially to you.” He looked up again, then back at her. “I’ve got to go. Someone’s calling me, sounds important. I’ll call back, I have a battle strategy to discuss with you. I can tell you from the get-go, you’re really not going to like it, but I want you to listen to it with an open mind before you give me your answer. And don’t worry about me, Tali. I can handle things on my end, for better or worse. You just focus on doing what needs to be done. No matter what it takes. We’re all depending on you and Shepard to see this through.”

“Kal-”

The interface went dark.

“Goodbye,” Tali whispered. “Be careful.”

She took the front of her mask off and wiped her tears away quickly with one hand, waving the mask back and forth to defog it in the other.

“What are you doing?”

She let out a small exclamation of surprise at the sudden sound of a curt, accented voice behind her, and jerked around to face it. Javik was leaning in the doorway of the engine room with his legs and arms crossed, watching her with clinical, scowling interest. She thought he looked surprised to see her with her mask off, but it was hard to tell.

“So quarians are still attractive in this cycle after all. I am not surprised. Is that not dangerous for you to do?” he asked, his tone disdainful as he peered closer at her. He stepped forward. “Are you crying? …You are a military leader among your people. You should not cry.”

“Yes. No.” She sniffed, clipping her mask back into place and resetting the air filters, waving a dismissive hand at him in frustration. “Why, what business is it of yours? Did you come in here just to make fun of me?”

“No, not just. The Commander asked me to ‘grab you’ and bring you to the combat deck. I will assume that is a human figure of speech. I would rather not ‘grab you’, if it is all the same to you. I do not see your shotgun, but your drone is targeting me.”

“Stand down, Chiktikka,” Tali mumbled, turning away.

“What are you so upset about?” Javik asked, after a few beats of awkward silence.

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Yes, I’m not a former commando from a race vastly superior to your own, who has seen the destruction of my entire species. What would I know about the stress of leading men into battle?” he replied without missing a beat, deadpan.

Tali turned back to him. “I…I’m sorry. That was rude of me. It’s just that I haven’t even been an Admiral for a year yet, and already they’re asking me to make the kinds of decisions that are going to get people killed. I don’t know if I can handle that. I don’t know how Shepard does it.”

Javik looked at her coldly. “It is your duty. If you were not capable of carrying it out, you should never have accepted the responsibility. Do not ask why, simply do what must be done. The Commander knows this. She would send you to your death against impossible odds without a second thought, and she has done it before. She is your friend…but she is a warrior first. You should emulate her in this regard. If you do not, none of your people will live to see the end of this war.”

The Prothean stepped forward and embraced her. It was brief and rough, but Tali forgave that. It was a gesture 50,000 years out of practice.

He drew back. “Now stop crying, and come. I would rather you not blubber if you’re going to walk beside me. I have a reputation to uphold.”

“I…can’t believe you just hugged me.”

“Hmph. Me either. Hugs were punishable by death in my cycle.”

Tali stopped and stared at him. Javik cast a jaded look back at her over his shoulder.

“That was a joke.”