Encounter at Rashomon Valley (A Star to Sail Her B

Kelly stepped into the engineering bay. Kenneth and Gabby were standing at their posts, pretending to work. They both turned to look at her as she entered.

"Oh god, Kelly...you aren't here to tell us...anything..." Gabby's eyes were wide, horrified. Kenneth stepped over to her side and put his arm around her.

Kelly shook her head. "No, it's nothing like that... Commander Shepard is going to be ok." The two engineers still looked dubious. "Seriously. I just talked to Dr. Solus. She's hurting, but she'll be just fine in a week or two."

"Thank god." Kenneth sighed and gave Gabby a squeeze. "See, nothing to worry about. Shepard's tough as hell. She'll pull through, nae problem."

Gabby snorted and gave Kenneth a shove. "Oh shut up. You were just as freaked as I was."

"Impossible!"

Kelly shook her head, chuckling quietly, and stepped over towards the supply closet Tali had adopted as her private quarters, leaving the two to bicker as per usual. They were easily two of her favorite people aboard the Normandy, but once they got going...

A gentle rap, and Tali opened the door. She nodded silently when she saw her and opened it further, ushering her inside. She glanced over at the engineers, shook her head, and closed the door.

The furnishings were spare, the quarters snug. A bed, a footlocker, a very small desk, and a chair. The overhead light was harsh. Tali seemed quite at home, though. As she told Shepard when she moved in, her room on her birth ship was about the same size, and she was from an admiral's family.

She gestured towards the chair and perched on the edge of the bed. The two looked at each other for a long moment, neither speaking.

"I... guess I should start at the beginning, huh?" Tali sighed, bowed her head, and began.

--

You've probably heard why we were there. Samara told Shepard that some batarian pirates had a piece of Sovereign, and had taken over an abandoned human colony on Nigori. Mordin and Miranda said that it was a farming colony, and no one knew for sure why they'd abandoned it.

I've seen a lot of abandoned colonies. The Fleet's even made use of a few, tested the waters on setting up colonies of our own. Usually, we figure out why they were abandoned pretty quickly. Water supply issues, land that won't support the right kind of agriculture, air that isn't the right blend, a sun that burns through the atmosphere, insects the size of your helmet... you know. Quality of life issues. Some, we can work through...it's not like we can take off our environmental suits, so things like light radiation issues or air quality aren't problems. Others, we strip for parts and abandon too. So, I wasn't too suspicious about it. It was pretty far in the Traverse, and the atmosphere mix was not a great one for humans. We probably would have left it behind ourselves.

Shepard was thrilled. The chance to get hold of a section of Sovereign... that could be really helpful to the mission. I was excited too. I regretted not being able to take samples of the Reaper near the brown dwarf. This was like a second chance. We all felt it.

We landed the shuttle a ways away from Rashomon Valley, the main colony settlement. It was the last one to be abandoned, so the pirates had an easy time settling in. They probably didn't have to do much to set up the infrastructure, and they can handle a thinner atmosphere than humans can, so they were fine without suits. The team kept theirs on, so they wouldn't tire out quickly in a fight. Obviously, mine was on no matter what.

The terrain was pretty easy. Rocky, scraggly plants, nothing too hard. Then, we hit the crops. They were pretty. Giant stalks with lots of little blue flowers. Pollen falling and drifting like snow. Pretty, but it kept gunking up our visors and clotting on our filters. Had to keep knocking it off ourselves. I had a pretty good idea of why the colonists might have left the colony behind. Mordin said that the conditions were fantastic for this type of plant... salviodatum lusi...something. Probably too fantastic. It may have overwhelmed the colony.

We found a clear path into Roshomon Valley, through some back alleys and abandoned houses. I tapped into the communications network and listened in on some chatter. We got lucky. One of the pirates was complaining to a friend about being set on guard duty for 'the beast in the basement' over at the hospital. He also said something about not having any scientists who knew what to do with it, that some of them didn't even know what it was until they were told.

I focused my attention on chatter from the hospital. It sounded like they had a lot of biological labs set up in there, with regular small security patrols. Mordin said that the basement was probably the morgue. It made sense. They would want to keep it climate controlled and secure. Reinforced walls, refrigeration, and an easily controlled way in and out for security.

Garrus got set up on a garage roof. He found a vehicle inside the garage. Utility vehicle, big tires, lots of cargo room, pointed prow on the front to part the foliage, probably used to shuttle supplies out to the fields over rough terrain. It would be perfect to plow through the crops if we had to make a break for it. I took a quick look at it. It was fueled up, engine looked fairly clean if a little rusty. It wouldn't win any endurance races, but it should have gotten us back to the shuttle.

It really should have. Maybe I should have spent longer looking at it... checked the filters, at least. Stupid. So stupid.

She fell quiet for a long moment, head bowed, a string of whispered expletives barely audible through her helmet. I started to say something, and she shook herself back to attention.

Sorry. It's just... it was all so horrible.

Thane and Shepard went in through the back doors and took out the guards stationed there. We headed in. Thane cleared the way for us pretty well and very quietly. Eerily quiet. Jack started to get annoyed that she wasn't getting to kill anyone... bosh'tet k'liann... but Shepard shut her up. I stayed tapped into the communications, so I could get a heads-up if there were guards coming.

Then, I heard a shift change get called on the radio. A whole bunch of guards were heading our way. We ducked into a lab.

It was awful. There was a huge cage, with seven humans in it. Three women, four men, all in rags, all with huge fresh scars on their chests. It didn't look like they were feeding them very well. They were skin and bones. Shepard went to talk to them.

I looked away. I'm embarrassed to admit that. It was just too much. It's a good thing I did, though. When I looked away, I saw a set of tools for calibrating weapons telemetry systems. Strange thing to have in a biology lab. Then, Mordin said that they had surgical supplies, but no biotoxins or samples or anything. I looked closer at the rest of the supplies. There were a lot of remote detonation devices, and some shaped charges impregnated with metal shards. Mordin looked at them and said they'd fit nicely in a chest cavity. I almost threw up. He was right. Those people had bombs inside them.

Shepard heard me and asked them what they knew about the surgeries. They performed the surgeries in the same room, so they knew that the batarians were putting something inside each of them. They just didn't know what. Shepard told them. They got very quiet and pale. One woman threw up. One man started saying "oh my god" over and over again. Another started tearing at his chest, ripping out a few stitches. Shepard told them to calm down, that we'd find a way to get them to safety and get the bombs out of them.

I spoke up and said I'd stay behind to figure out a way around the proximity problem. Thane said he'd stay with me, but Mordin said he'd be a better candidate. He's a good shot, and he could help me with the tech and any surgical work that needed to happen to get them out. I was fine with it. Mordin's a little strange, but we work well together.

The rest of the group left. I did a few sweeps with my omnitool and checked out their calibration equipment. The devices were set to go off once they lost contact with a remote device, either by going out of range or having the device shut off. So, I figured out the frequency we needed and built a portable device to get them out of the building. Mordin said the best course of action was to move them to the shuttle, then to one of the other settlements on the other side of the planet for the extractions. He didn't want to risk blowing up the Normandy. Made sense to me.

With the parts I had available, I could only build a device with a range of 15 meters. So, if we had to make a break for it, we'd have to make sure no one fell behind. I explained that to them. As we were unlocking the cage, the floor shook. We heard rumbling, shouting, screaming. It shook again, harder. Down the hall, we heard chunks of floor falling in. We got the people out of the cage and started towards the back door.

The rest of the group came running towards us, so we started running too. Some batarians were behind us, but the floor caved in under them. We looked outside. Garrus had already pulled up and had the back hatch opened wide. Jack and Grunt brought out this huge piece of metal and circuitry and threw it in the back. While they were doing back, one of the women panicked and ran back inside. Shepard ran in after her. I screamed at her, told her she'd blow up at 15 meters. She kept running. We heard the explosion outside. Thane ran back in and got Shepard. Her shields had dropped for a moment, and she got hit with a bunch of shrapnel, but she wasn't badly hurt. Knocked dizzy, she said.

We headed off into the fields. I saw a few flakes of pollen drift in through the air vents. Mordin had said it was safe. I was more worried about the engine at that point...if there was pollen blowing in through there, the engine filters were probably clogged and it might overheat.

After a few minutes, all of the people we'd rescued started coughing. Hacking, wretched coughs with a lot of fluid. Mordin and I looked at each other. Were they bioweapons as well as explosive? They started complaining about how warm it was in the car. It wasn't warm. Then, Mordin looked out the window and got this look on his face, like he was going to hit something, or someone. "Three petals, not four," he said. He started tending to them, all the while telling us that the plants weren't what we thought they were. Pulsavolitus, I think. Instead of being a medicinal plant, it's highly toxic to humans.

It was horrible. Just horrible. They were coughing nonstop, burning up with fever, sweating, then...not sweating. They threw up blood. They started convulsing all over the back of the vehicle. Then, they died. They just...died. So quickly.

Right after that, the vehicle died too. I was right...the filters were clogged, and the engine overheated. Horrible symmetry. The engine couldn't breathe, and caught a fever that killed it.

Shepard stepped out first, and a big pile of pollen landed on her head. It would have been funny if it wasn't deadly poison. She cursed a little, brushed it off, and started walking. Said she was fine. Jack was a little freaked out, but Mordin said that it was only harmful if you breathed it in. Good thing, considering she runs around mostly naked.

We walked for a little while. Shepard sneezed a few times. Then she started to cough. That same hacking cough. We all looked at her. That's when I saw the two big hunks of shrapnel sticking out of the back of her breathing regulator. She knew she was poisoned, but she put on her brave face and told us to get moving. Mordin agreed, saying we needed to move a lot faster.

We could see the shuttle in the distance when Shepard started to shiver. She staggered a few feet. Garrus asked if she was ok. She just looked at him, lost, confused. He picked her up and told us to run. Jack helped him carry her after a few yards, used her biotics to take some weight off. Grunt took the shard. Mordin, Thane and I just tried to keep up.

Once we were on the shuttle, Mordin started taking Shepard's armor off. Said he needed to cool her down fast. I took the helm, disabled the environmental temperature controls. Left the air functional, but the interior of the shuttle plummeted to ice cold in a matter of seconds. We all just hoped it was enough. The seals on the shuttle door were creaking, we were all shivering. I swear I could see steam rising off of Shepard. Her cough was getting worse.

We got to the shuttle bay with no time to lose, for her or for us. When we touched down, I heard the seals blow out. Garrus started to grab Shepard to haul her to sickbay, but Mordin blocked his path, insisted that we decontaminate first. I thought Garrus was going to punch him. Mordin reminded him that the crew was human and he'd kill them all if he got that pollen everywhere. He punched the bulkhead instead. While the decontamination scan ran, Thane and I took turns using her suit's breathing device as a fan on the back of her neck, trying to keep her head cool.

Once the decontamination took out the last of the pollen, Garrus grabbed Shepard and ran. I've never seen him move that fast.

A sniffle from within her helmet. Her fingertips grazed her faceplate.

That was the last time I saw her. Keelah, I hope they're ok.

--

"Dr. Solus assured me that she will be fine. Sick for a couple weeks, but fine."

"Good." Tali paused. "How's Garrus doing?"

Kelly shook her head. "He's down there with her. Worried, of course."

Tali nodded. "They've been through a lot together. We have, really. Saren, Sovereign, the Collectors... now this." Her head dropped. "She has always been our strength. To see her so sick, so..." Her voice faltered. "We lost her once. We can't lose her again. We just can't."

They sat in silence. Finally, Tali sniffed hard, then rose. "I should get down to the shuttle bay. I need to fix those seals, and we need to move that shard out to the lab or the cargo bay." She looked at Kelly. "Thank you. For listening, and for being here."

Kelly nodded. "If you need anything, even just to talk..."

Tali nodded in return. "Thanks. I might take you up on that."

"Any time."