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Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
Gryphon
Charter Member
22406 posts |
Dec-28-12, 10:25 PM (EDT) |
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"(frag) S5M3"
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LAST EDITED ON Dec-28-12 AT 11:46 PM (EST)
TUESDAY, MARCH 2, 2410 TEST SETTLEMENT ONE ("SOLUSTON") HALO, SCANDIA-CN38 SYSTEM QUARIAN UNION, KRESGE SECTOR Though she had been here many times in her young life, Tali'Zorah nar Rayya always found that entering Soluston gave her a weird feeling. Like every member of her species, she had never seen an actual quarian town - only holos of what they'd looked like centuries ago, on Rannoch or Venachar, Lubnaig or Haestrom, or one of the other long-lost worlds of the ancient Rannoch Hegemony. The permanent structures of Halo Test Settlement One had been built by combined teams of quarian engineers and human contractors based on those holos and what few architectural records remained from the era before the Evacuation. As such, it had a slightly artificial feel, like a movie set or an idealized version of the Old Country in a theme park on some ex- colony world. And as the Halo Acclimation Project had progressed and the test groups had spent longer and longer in the town, it had grown and evolved, starting to take on a unique idiom all its own, one influenced by the style of the structures that had stood on Halo's surface for millennia before the quarians came. There was nowhere else in the galaxy quite like Soluston. Tali walked down the settlement's main street. The place seemed particularly strange now, for the simple reason that it was largely deserted; the Acclimation Project was between phases right now, testing having been suspended for the winter, and the new spring's first group of volunteers wouldn't arrive for another two weeks. That made it seem a bit like she had always imagined the towns on Rannoch would be now, eerie and empty. Did the geth live in the cities they'd driven their creators out of? Did they have any understanding of the architecture, know what the monuments stood for - did they have any feelings at all about the people they'd displaced all those centuries ago? She'd always wondered. She shook her head, banishing the reverie. She had no time to muse on the geth right now; she was here for a very particular reason. There was one house in Soluston that was unlike all the others. Where the rest of the town - particularly the Science Center, the grand building that stood at its center and housed all the research efforts - was built in duracrete and glass, in that odd fusion of classical quarian and native Halo styles, the house called (for reasons that eluded most quarians) Spare 14 was a simple plastalloy colony prefab, known throughout human space (for reasons that also eluded most quarians) as an IKEA. Actually, it was two of them, because it had an attached garage that was made of another, identical shell that had been fitted with a larger door and no interior walls. This house was unique not only because it didn't match anything else in town, but also because it had stood there -before- the town. It was a relic of the previous settlement to stand on the site, a human farming colony called Goodyear. Nowadays, it was the private retreat of the only quarian to have lived in Goodyear, whose house it had been in those days as well. And it was where Tali'Zorah was bound, because that quarian happened to be her grandmother. She knocked at the door - no doorchime in a structure as basic as this - and was admitted a few moments later by that grandmother, who greeted her with a hug and ushered her inside. An observer would have been hard-pressed to tell the two women apart, and not only because they were both quarians, anonymous in their full-body environment suits and semi-reflec helmet visors. At seventeen, Tali was as tall as her grandmother, and they had the same slim, athletic build, honed by hours of diligent training. Their voices even sounded similar - enough so that, with a little effort, Tali had occasionally been able to fool her father into thinking he was talking to his mother, not his daughter. Tali's grandmother's name was also Tali, which occasionally made for confusion in its own right. Tali'Shukra vel Halo - Tali the Elder, as she was known around the fleet - was quite a famous woman in the Quarian Union. She was widely, if a bit inaccurately, acclaimed as the discoverer of Halo, and had led the efforts to understand the quarian people's most curious possession for quite a lot longer than Tali the Younger had been alive. "Well, well, well," said Tali'Shukra, stepping back to look her granddaughter over. "So the day has finally come. You must be excited." She shook her head. "Listen to me. I'm saying exactly the same ridiculous things your great-grandmother said to me when I was leaving on -my- pilgrimage." Tali'Zorah shrugged. "Tradition is important," she said, gently mocking one of her father's favorite pronouncements. Tali'Shukra laughed. "That it is," she agreed. "Come with me. I have something for you." She led the way around the half-partition that served to sketch in the house's tiny vestibule and into the living room. It always amazed Tali'Zorah how homey her grandmother had managed to make this dingy little prefab. She should've expected it - it was a quarian national gift, the ability to make the drabbest, most cramped living space into a warm and welcoming home - but it somehow seemed like a more vivid accomplishment in a human-built colony shelter than in one of the warren-like habitation holds of a starship. Centuries of living on the move had made the quarians a ruthlessly unsentimental people when it came to material possessions, but their place in the quarian heart was usually occupied with a vengeance by holograms and photographs, and Tali'Shukra was no different. The living room walls, like those of her quarters aboard the Archangel before this, were like a summary of her life in carefully selected still images. The younger Tali's attention was pulled away from the pictures by the sight of what lay, neatly laid out, on the low table in the middle of the room. It was an encounter suit, not unlike the ones they both wore, but obviously of higher quality than the standard model Tali'Zorah was wearing. Which is not to say that hers was poorly made; rather, the one laid out on the table was exquisite, with fittings and fabrics that had obviously been made, quite laboriously, by hand. "This was my pilgrimage suit," Tali'Shukra explained, gesturing. "Your great-great-grandfather, Kevirin'Zorah, made it for me many years ago. Now that you're leaving for your own pilgrimage, I want you to have it." Tali'Zorah blinked. "Grandmother... I... I don't know what to say." "You don't need to say anything," Tali'Shukra said fondly. "Just wear it with pride. It saw me through many a tight scrape before my pilgrimage was done. If anything, I expect yours will be even more eventful." "Thank you. I will." Tali'Zorah looked around. "I've never noticed - do you have a cleanroom here? I want to change before I leave so you can see me in it." "That's... something else I want to discuss with you before you leave," Tali'Shukra said. "Something else I've given you. Though I didn't realize it at the time." "... I'm not sure I like the sound of that." "It's nothing bad. At least I don't think so. You'll have to make your own decision about that... eventually. But I should start at the beginning." She gestured to one of the armchairs and seated herself in the other one. "It started not long after I first met Benjamin... " An hour later, dressed in her new encounter suit and with her head very gently spinning from all she'd just learned, Tali'Zorah embraced her grandmother in the doorway of her house. "Thank you, Grandmother. I... I don't really know what everything you've just told me -means,- but... thank you. I'll keep in touch as I can. And good luck with -your- mission," she added. Then, with an impish smile in her voice, she added, "This will be, what? Your -third- pilgrimage." "Some of us remain pilgrims all our lives," Tali'Shukra told her. Then, with another hug for good measure, she said, "Be well, Tali'Zorah. Be careful - but enjoy yourself. Keelah se'lai." "Keelah se'lai, Grandmother," Tali'Zorah said. She looked back once as she walked up the street, waving, and then went into the Science Center to say goodbye to Mordin. That didn't take long, not because Mordin was dismissive, but because he did everything, including sentimental farewells to beloved pseudo-nieces, quickly and efficiently. She'd always liked that about him. Growing up quarian, steeped in a society where everything could be and generally was debated at length, it had been very refreshing to have one friend who always got straight to the point. Presently she emerged, bearing further gifts and well-wishes, and headed for the shuttleport at the edge of town. That was all her goodbyes said. She'd parted from her schoolmates at graduation the previous week, and her few friends on the Rayya over the weekend. Now she'd been seen off by her grandmother and Mordin. In the Read Messages file on her omni-tool, she had a coolly cordial email from her father, which was all the sendoff she had expected from him in the first place. She wasn't going to see him in person; she had too much to do to be making special trips to his flagship just to hear him say in person that he disapproved of her choice of pilgrimage destination and the company she intended to keep once she got there. He'd made that plain enough already. She hadn't given a damn then and she didn't give one now. Time, she thought as she boarded the shuttle that would take her up to the Scandia-1 fueling station, to be gone from this place. She had two hours to make her rendezvous with the Red Arc Line freighter currently making the run from the Lucas sector to Zeta Cygni. Next stop: New Avalon. --G. -><- Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ zgryphon at that email service Google has Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. |
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Droken
Member since May-6-08
417 posts |
Dec-29-12, 02:53 AM (EDT) |
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2. "RE: (frag) S5M3"
In response to message #0
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Most interesting... It's good to see Tali the younger finally stepping into the wider world of SotS. Also, it would seem (or can be surmised) that Tali's major gene mod just happened to skip a generation. Most interesting indeed. -Droken "If at first you don't succeed, bull- riding is not for you." |
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Pasha
Charter Member
1018 posts |
Dec-30-12, 02:08 PM (EDT) |
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10. "RE: (frag) S5M3"
In response to message #7
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>>Maybe, maybe not. Rael strikes me as the 'separate beds' type, and >>it's not like he and Zira had any need to break his seals after they >>got done making Tali. > >That seems likely. After all, something like that might get in the >way of his military career, and he couldn't have THAT.... (I know >pretty much all we've ever seen of Rael has been Tali the Elder >holding forth about him in her letters, but you really get the >impression that his career was like an openly-flaunted mistress that >Zira was second place to, and Tali the Younger.... well, that's been >made pretty plain.) Really? That wasn't the impression I got. It was made clear to me that he did, in fact, actually love his wife very much (see his self destructive behavior immediately after her death), and the fact that he was willing to grovel for forgiveness. -- -Pasha What was that feeling again? Oh yes. -Rage- |
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Gryphon
Charter Member
22406 posts |
Dec-30-12, 06:05 PM (EDT) |
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13. "RE: (frag) S5M3"
In response to message #11
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>I don't doubt that Rael did love Zira, or that he does love Tali, but >the advancement of his career does seem to have an overriding priority >in most circumstances. That, combined with his fixation on >reconquering Rannoch and disapproval of anything not clearly aimed at >that end (such as his daughter's choice of pilgrimage), doesn't paint >the most admirable of pictures. "No, I think you're just going to have to bite the bullet and accept the fact that, although a fine and upstanding officer and a highly proficient spacer, your son is a little bit of a dick. It happens." --G. -><- Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ zgryphon at that email service Google has Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. |
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Gryphon
Charter Member
22406 posts |
Dec-31-12, 02:49 AM (EDT) |
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18. "RE: (frag) S5M3"
In response to message #16
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>Is it official, then, that said mod was some equivalent of Omega? Neither Tali nor Mordin was entirely sure what it would do at the time, but it came up a couple of times in Correspondence that she doesn't seem to age. Mordin's starting point was the salarian "bootleg" version of Omega-2, which had to be considerably adjusted to have any effect on a quarian at all - so much so that even he wasn't sure how many of its functions survived the transcription process. Decades on, empirical evidence indicates that the answer is "most, if not all." Interestingly, though Mordin was the lead researcher on the salarian Omega-2 project, he hasn't had the final version of the treatment himself. The preliminary model he used was a highly effective life extension, but - as he alludes to himself at one point in Star-Crossed - didn't address many of the cosmetic effects of aging, which is why he still looks quite elderly for a salarian. Of course, that may also be because he finds it useful to seem more decrepit than he is. In his old line of work, being underestimated often came in handy. --G. -><- Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ zgryphon at that email service Google has Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. |
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version 3.3 © 2001
Eyrie Productions,
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