#found families... healing from trauma... gay aliens... all that jazz

[ghostwise]

ch 1 :: the tonitrus

It was not immediately clear what had occurred, but Solimar relied on a keen intuitive sense which told them that the ships crowding around the mass relay were all wasting their time, and that in all the confusion following the inexplicable destruction of the reaper forces, there was a hidden possibility for reward; it was only a matter of where, and how.

Astrophel was less optimistic.

“I hate this. We still don’t know what’s going on,” he said, glaring at the control screens of the shuttle as he maneuvered them over city ruins. “We should just leave while we can, before something else goes horribly wrong…”

“You worry too much,” Solimar said with a grin. “Trust me. I got a feeling that relay isn’t going to budge anytime soon. And what’s the first thing everyone will want when they realize it?”

“Um…”

“Supplies!” Solimar tapped the viewscreen, making Astrophel jump. “These warehouses used to be full of rations… we might find something interesting while everyone’s distracted, yeah?”

“But… why did the reapers just keel over out of nowhere?” His mandibles flared, he shook his head. “No. Something’s wrong. It could be a trap. It doesn’t feel right.”

“I don’t know why the reapers do what they do, Astrophel. But shit’s already hit the fan. There’s no cleaning it up, so let’s just do what we do best and try and salvage what we can.”

And though Astrophel could think of ten more reasons why Solimar was wrong, he couldn’t bring any of them out of his worried mind. So, he flew the shuttle, in uneasy silence.

The red sun was setting over Benning when Astrophel set them down on an old abandoned courtyard. The city had long been evacuated, leaving them alone in the rubble.

“Stay put!” Solimar grunted, tapping a few commands into their omnitool and opening the hatch as they landed. “Should be easy for a coward like you, anyway!” In a burst of blue biotics they sped off.

Astrophel’s mandibles flared in irritation. He soon followed at a run.

.

In any war the front lines were never clearly delineated; they wavered, changeable as air currents, and a city street could just as easily be a battlefield the next day. However, there was a predictable standard of deviation to war, and Sol knew it well.

Things were kept mobile. Portable servers, comm devices, makeshift hospitals that could be packed up in minutes. As a professional profiteer, Sol didn’t know what to search for, but they’d know it when they saw it.

Flitting across the landscape they scanned their surroundings, while Astrophel puffed along behind, out of breath simply due to his nonstop bitching.

When the turian finally caught up he opted simply for shooting a steely glare at his companion. Solimar grinned at him.

“Good, you came after all! Did you notice comms are down?”

Astrophel’s expression softened to one of confusion. “How can that be?” he asked, opening his omniscreen. “Even through the worst, Palaven was still getting comms through. Benning wasn’t hit that badly was it?”

“Dunno. But whatever’s going on, it won’t be long before someone comes along to secure everything. In the meantime…” They nodded at the scraps of metal they’d found.

“A drone?” Astrophel’s eyes lit up, despite his unease.

Solimar nodded. “Here, reroute some of your omnitool’s power and help me get it back.”

“No.”

“Astrophel, c’mon!” Solimar threw their hands up, exasperated. “We don’t know how much time we have! This is important!”

The turian glanced back, raising an eyebrow plate. “What exactly are you hoping to gain?”

“Information,” The asari tapped gently on the drone’s shell. “It’s going to make all the difference in the next few months. Don’t think of it as stealing, think of it as… recovery!”

“I wasn’t-” Astrophel wheezed a little, an odd sound, coming from a turian. “I wasn’t thinking of it as stealing. Soli, are we stealing?”

“Of course not!” Solimar said all too quickly. “I wouldn’t—psh! No!”

“But-”

“Recovery, Astrophel. Recovery.” Solimar smiled at him. “Then we can get back to the shuttle, alright? What do you say?”

Astrophel regarded them for a moment, then sighed.

And so the two turned their attention to the dented little scrap of a drone, salvaging what they could.

.

“Well, shit.”

Astrophel looked up at the words, watching as Sol scanned the drone’s contents. They had both downloaded the information to their omnitools, and now perused the files individually.

“I was hoping for something like supply routes or Alliance secrets. This just looks like some kind of… computer program.” Closing out of the files, they sat back on their heels and sighed. “Waste of time.”

“Maybe.” Astrophel’s eyes scanned the lines of code thoughtfully. The work had calmed him down considerably; moved him from fretting about the possibilities, to wondering about them. “Maybe. Maybe not…”

Solimar rose to their feet, glancing upwards at the sound of ships passing by. “We won’t be alone much longer,” they said. “Cerberus and the Alliance have been scrambling over these ruins for months. With the reapers down something’s bound to give, and I don’t wanna be around when it does. I’m doing one more run before heading back. You coming?”

“In a bit,” Astrophel hummed. “Gonna spend a bit more time on this one,” he added, subharmonics already taking on a dreamy tone, the kind which indicated that he’d fully absorbed himself in his work, and would not be moved until he finished.

Solimar rolled their eyes. “Sure, now you want to focus on the drone,” they muttered. “Suit yourself. Comm me when you’re finished.”

.

It figured that Astrophel only cared about something when it proved to be incomprehensibly dull and pointless. Still, Sol wasn’t complaining. They moved faster alone anyway.

Already, the asari had returned to the shuttle twice, each time carrying a load of supplies. They searched for more drones, or perhaps a data terminal, but found none. Food, however, had been easy to locate.

The cities of Benning had boasted automated agricultural centers since their founding, but the war had decimated the population. Following that, evacuations and Cerberus raids took care of the rest. What this would mean after the war remained to be seen; there’d never been a war quite like this, after all, and the planet’s fate seemed precarious.

The crumbling granaries made an enticing and easy target for Solimar. It was a shame that they wouldn’t be able to share with Astrophel. This had been a human colony, after all. No turian food.

“All for Solimar, none for Astrophel,” they hummed cheerfully as they worked.

An unfamiliar stillness had descended on the planet, punctuated by the sound of distant ships passing by. Setting down the knapsack they’d been carrying, Solimar opened up their omnitool once more, only to realize, with a jolt of uneasiness, that it was still offline.

It was literally unheard of. In all their years, the extranet had been a steady and reliable presence. Outages, though rare, usually lasted mere minutes. Not hours. Not this.

Had local communications been altered? Following that hunch, Solimar made an adjustment to their omnitool, in order to pick up internet as well as low frequency radio waves. The screen immediately lit up with transmissions from the planet’s surface.

“There we go…” they whispered, tapping at volume controls and listening. “Sounds like a party.”

News reports from local agencies, maps, and most importantly, radio messages: a look into what was currently going on in the area. Solimar grinned, suddenly feeling less alone. These transmissions were coming from someone. Most of them were encrypted, but an exchange of information was happening in real time. Decoding the transmissions seemed worthwhile.

As they worked, events were being set into motion that would impact all their lives for years to come.

The effort to rebuild was already underway, and while many knew of the Crucible, of the thousands of hours of labor that went into winning the war, and of the implications in the destruction of every mass relay in the galaxy, most people on the ground still weren’t sure if the war had been won at all.

This information would ultimately impact who lived and who died.

As the first transmissions began to clear up, Solimar leaned in and listened closely to the choppy voices coming through the comm.

“… Hostile vessels incoming … … all stations, impose radio silence …”

A military transmission, by the sounds of it. Solimar raised a brow, sensing, once more, that intuition that had guided them onto the planet’s surface. Only now it was telling them to go.

And they would have gone, immediately, had it not been for the transmission that followed.

“Mayday! … coordinates as follows … … medical officer of the Tonitrus requesti…”

“… impose radio silence …”

“Mayday…”

“… hostile vessels incoming …”

“Requesting immediate assistance… please!”

“This automated message will repeat.”

.

With his companion gone, Astrophel was content to sink into the lines of code for a while, pondering over their meaning. Something in them felt vital, like there was a revelation waiting to be stumbled on… but then again, they were in a war zone, and maybe he was just paranoid.

Glancing up nervously, he looked to the horizon where a reaper had fallen. He felt fairly confident that this particular one was no longer a threat, but then again, there had been a hell of a lot of reapers. After nearly a year living in constant fear, he was not prepared to drop his defenses after a few hours of quiet. Unlike Solimar, who seemed to just shrug and carry on regardless.

More ships passed overhead, adding to a din that was getting closer, not farther. What was that Solimar had said? That they wouldn’t be alone for long? Perhaps they should head back to the shuttle after all.

It clicked then, suddenly. The idea that had been percolating the entire time he’d been working on the code.

Astrophel scanned the information a few more times and yanked himself to his feet, stunned by his realization. It was a hell of a lot of data. In retrospect, he wasn’t sure why he hadn’t noticed it sooner.

“It’s for a ship… a ship’s navigating program,” he said out loud.

This could prove to be useful after all.

.

Evenings on Benning were odorous, not poetic. Agricultural waste and warfare made for pretty sunsets, though, and Solimar wished they had time to appreciate the view.

Sprinting in a streak of glowing blue across the ruins, they caught up with Astrophel right where they’d left him, still analyzing data and mining information from his screen like a mad scientist.

“Cut the nerd shit for a moment and listen to this!” Solimar said. Ignoring Astrophel’s protests, they played the transmissions they’d recovered.

‘Attention. Hostile vessels incoming. All stations impose radio silence until further notice. Instructions from Alliance Command will be forthcoming. This automated message will repeat.’

“Radio silence…” Astrophel repeated carefully, listening. “These are all on local frequencies? Is there anything from outside the system?”

“No. Everything’s local, and hella encrypted,” Solimar said simply. “Comm buoys must’ve taken a beating during the last attack because there are no off-planet communications coming through at all. We’re cut off.”

Astrophel suppressed a shiver at the thought.

“Go back to that first transmission,” he said after a moment.

“The mayday? What for? There’s nothing we can do without the coordinates.”

“But you have it saved, right? You don’t have the right encryption key, but I could probably get the coordinates if you pass me the file.”

“Come again?” Solimar scoffed.

“The Tonitrus is a Turian frigate. It should be the same codes the Havincaw, which I served on.”

He didn’t wait for an answer, simply yanking Solimar closer so as to patch into their omnitool. Solimar meanwhile had taken on a rather deflated look, sinking to a crouch as Astrophel worked.

“Huh? Sorry? What’s happening?” they asked. “Since when do you know anything about military encryption keys? You can’t say shit like that and just-”

“Got it!”

Astrophel clapped his claws together, letting out a celebratory shout. “I have the transmission, the coordinates, and best of all...” At this point his grin turned towards positively revolting, all needled teeth and gaping jaws. Solimar winced a little.

“... Best of all, I have the ship’s missing navigation program. Let’s go! We have to hurry!”

Turians shouldn’t grin, Solimar mused as they followed them back to the shuttle, still baffled. Looks like a thresher maw with a Glasgow smile…

But they ran after him all the same. A profiteer and a war deserter, racing against nightfall, and whatever followed.