THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2356 GOODYEAR SECURITY OFFICE_ Tali was lying on the bunk in her cell, listening to Edvard Grieg's Piano Concerto in A Minor on her omni-tool and thinking, when the forcefield sealing her cell suddenly winked out and Millandra Caspian stalked into the room, a blaster pistol in her hand. "Get up," Millandra ordered her, gesturing with the pistol. Tali paused the playback and did as instructed. "Is there a problem?" she asked, pleased with herself for keeping her voice so calm and even. "You're going to think so," Millandra replied. "Your pal Harris set us up, and that's bad news for you." /* Big Country "Far From Me to You" _Why the Long Face?_ (1995) */ Eyrie Productions, Unlimited presents UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES EXILE STAR-CROSSED Part IV: Bad Day in Goodyear Benjamin D. Hutchins (c) 2010 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited "I beg your pardon?" Tali checked her in-helmet chron. "You gave him 48 hours. It's been 44. He'll be here." "Sure," Millandra snarled angrily. "He'll get into town just in time to help his Blue Sun buddies mop us up. They're here in force, a half-mile out and closing, and us with our two best gun hands chasing across the tundra with Harris - if he hasn't killed them already. Christ, I can't believe I fell for this." She raised the pistol and thumbed the prestage charger. "But he's not going to get to keep -all- his toys. I bet right now you wish -you- hadn't trusted him, either." Her own anger at Millandra's assumptions trumped fear in Tali's mind; ignoring the gun entirely, she snapped, "Are you an idiot? If the Blue Suns are here now, it's either a coincidence or someone tipped them that - that Daniel and Mordin and Sheriff Chen were leaving." "Yeah, and I know exactly who it was, too." "Not Daniel," Tali shot back. "Never." "Aw," Millandra said nastily. "I suppose I ought to feel bad for you, kid. You're not the first teenage runaway to fall for a lowlife like him and end up paying for it. Tough break. But that's life. Now say goodbye," she added, leveling her blaster. "I've got work to - " She was interrupted, not by anything Tali did, though the young quarian was steeling herself not to go down without a fight. Rather, the gunshot which interrupted her came from outside the cell. It entered through the open doorway behind her and clipped her shoulder, spinning her half around and causing the pistol to tumble from her hand onto the floor. Tali automatically dove for cover behind the bed as Millandra crumpled against the wall, her good hand grabbing at the wound in the opposite shoulder. A moment later the doorway filled with the blue-and-white- armored form of a Blue Suns mercenary, humanoid, half his face hidden behind the bug-eyed visor of a scout-ops helmet. He had a Salusian MA5B combat rifle at his shoulder, using the sights, as he drew down on Millandra and said into his comm, "Three-two-two here. I have Caspian wounded and down. Request instructions." They didn't hear the response, but the merc scout smiled a moment later and settled his rifle a little more firmly against his shoulder. "I guess Brejik doesn't need you alive," he said. Tali reached as far as she could, got a finger around the butt of Millandra's fallen blaster, and pulled it toward her, then flipped it into a proper grip and popped up from behind the bed. Startled, the scout pivoted toward her, but she had the advantage and didn't hesitate to use it. Ignoring the tempting target presented (quite by design) by the painted design on his armored chestplate, she put two rounds square into the middle of his visor. "I am -not- a -runaway,-" she told Millandra coldly. With an icy efficiency that shocked Millandra almost as much as the wound in her shoulder, the quarian moved carefully out of cover, kicked the scout's rifle away from his hand (though the placement of the smoking holes in his helmet made that superfluous), then checked to make sure there were no more in the outer office. There weren't; in fact, the place was completely empty. Prakusya was nowhere in evidence. Tali supposed Millandra had dismissed her, or sent her off to prepare for the impending arrival of the main Blue Suns force - a lucky escape, at least for the moment. In any event, there were no more scouts, and a quick glance out the window showed no hostiles out in the street for the moment. Satisfied, she secured the pistol, magged it to her hip, and returned to crouch by Millandra. "Here, let me have a look," she said, prying the mayor's hand away from her wounded shoulder. Rezzing up her omni-tool, she ran a basic medical diagnostic scan and tutted quietly beneath her visor. "Bloody, but not too serious." She produced a vial of medical gel from one of her encounter suit's myriad little pockets and sprayed the wound with it, re-ran the scan, and nodded with satisfaction. "Better?" As the pain receded under the coolness of the gel, Millandra nodded. "Thanks." "Hnh," Tali replied, rising. "It's more than you deserve." She bent over the dead scout and stripped him of his ammunition belt, slinging it over her shoulder, and picked up his rifle. "But this town needs its leader." She turned and regarded Millandra as the latter struggled to her feet, then removed the pistol from her hip with her free hand and regarded it. "If I give you this," she asked, sounding only half-serious (or maybe half-joking), "will you shoot me in the back?" Millandra thought about that for a second, then shook her head. "No. You just saved my life. You didn't have to do that." Tali shrugged. "You don't know that. He'd have killed me too." "He didn't know you were there. You could've waited until he finished me off before taking him out. That's what I'd have done in your position." She managed a wan half-smile. "I still think your buddy sold us both out, but if you're willing to go down fighting with us, that's good enough for me." Tali snorted. "Go down fighting, my ass. We're going to hold them off until Daniel and the others get here." She tossed Millandra the pistol. "Where's my shotgun?" "In my office, assuming the Suns haven't taken the town hall yet." "Great. Well, come on if you're fit to fight. If not, stay out of my way." The quarian pulled out the MA5B's magazine, checked how many rounds were left in it, then slapped it back into place and headed for the door. "I've got work to do." /* Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori "Unyielding" _Halo 2: Original Soundtrack_ (2006) */ Over the next three hours, Tali surprised and impressed Millandra Caspian at several turns. With this unasked-for crisis pressing down on her, the young quarian responded by blossoming into a cool, precise battlefield leader, rallying the startled and disorganized Goodyear Citizens' Militia into something approximating a fighting force. Having done so, stepping into control of the situation in spite of her youth and the fact that she was a stranger to everyone in town, she then led the militia in a brilliantly improvised series of actions, blunting the Blue Suns' probes into the town's meager defenses and making the mercs pay for every foot of every street they entered. Millandra had spent thirty years in the merchant navy before unexpectedly settling on Halo - not a military career, but one with its share of combat, all the same - and she had some unusual experiences before that. Pirate activity had reached an all-time high in the '30s, while the United Galactica was falling apart and the Federation just getting its feet under it, and it was in the middle of that turbulent decade that she had achieved her first command. As such, she recognized what Tali was doing as an adaptation of an action to repel boarders. She was treating the town of Goodyear as a large starship with very wide corridors and no proper security crewmen, directing the townspeople as if they were passengers or operations crew armed to deal with the emergency, and handling the Blue Suns as if they were pirates... and it was working. The good folk of Goodyear couldn't hold the Suns forever, that much was obvious; but they could fall back in good order to the square in front of the town hall, and there make an almost impenetrable stand. And that's exactly what they did. "Keep your head down!" Tali barked as a townsman - Garrett Redding, a hotheaded young man who had been just a boy when the Goodyear Sojourner went down - craned his neck for a look out the office window and nearly got the top of his head blown off by a Suns sniper for his trouble. Early in the action, she'd decided he looked steady enough to fit him out with the Blue Suns scout's rifle and ammo. He'd been good on the line and in the pullback to the town hall, but now she was starting to wonder if she would come to regret that decision after all. "Why don't we counterattack?" Redding demanded. "We've let them have practically the whole town." "They don't want the town," Tali told him. "They want -us.- And if we go out there and try to take them on head-to-head, they'll -have- us." "There are more of us," Redding protested. "Do you know what it's called when you have body armor and an assault rifle, and ten people are coming toward you who don't have either one?" Tali asked him. To his blank expression, she explained, "A target-rich environment. Now keep your sprocking head down." She went to the door, stood with her back to the jamb, and peeked around the corner, keeping as much of herself in cover as possible. If the Suns sniper saw her, he decided it wasn't worth taking the shot. There were a dozen or two of them out there now - hard to get a good count because they kept moving around - using the barricades the townspeople had left behind them as they fell back as cover for themselves now. Had Tali had her 'druthers, she'd have blown the barricades as they fell back, to deny them to the enemy, but she didn't have the explosives or the time, and getting back in good order was more important. Where the hell are you, Benjamin? she fumed silently. By Keelah, if Millandra's right about you I'll... I don't know what I'll do. Die here today, probably. And then -haunt- you. One of the Suns - the shoulder plates on his armor had a pattern of stripes on them, probably denoting some kind of officer or NCO - stepped out of cover, walking with a nonchalant swagger intended to cow the townspeople with its air of unconcern for whatever meager resistance they might care to present. He advanced across the square, his rifle held loosely across his abdomen in a sort of sloppy patrol carry, and stopped when he was about twenty yards from the front door. "Okay, you yokels," he declared in a parade-ground bellow. "I'm Tech Sergeant Kastrel and I'm gonna give you one chance to get outta here alive today. That's a lot more generous than I usually am, so I advise you to take advantage of my good nature. Here's all you gotta do: Throw down whatever ratbag arms you've managed to cobble together and come out of there with your hands up. Give up now and we'll relocate you someplace nice. This ring belongs to the Blue Suns now." "We were here first!" Redding yelled back. Kastrel laughed. "Kid, you don't have any idea how much shit you're steppin' in," he said cheerfully. "Maybe you were here first, but -we- came with -bigger guns.- Now, I gotta say you're starting to try my patience just a little. I'm gonna repeat my very generous offer -one more time- and then this is gonna get -real ugly.- Come out now and we'll take you somewhere nice and warm where you can farm all the dirt your little hearts can possibly desire. Or don't, and we come in there and kill you all. Your call." He tilted his head as the commset in his ear chattered. "Oh. And one more thing. My boss wants the alien bitch who's been leading your little resistance. We can't let things like that happen, especially if we're gonna let the rest'a you krattheads live. An example's gotta be made." Tali peeked around the doorjamb again, gauging the range to Kastrel's position from where she stood. Her Bryar scattergun, with its barrel shortened and its plasma attenuators removed, could throw enough energy to cut even an armored man clean in half, but only out to a range of about ten yards; then the intensity of the blast tapered off sharply as the energy dissipated in atmospheric scatter and thermal turbulence. Kastrel was perhaps twice that distance away. She seriously doubted that she could get a one-shot kill on him from here. Knock him down, maybe, but then the sniper she knew was out there could nail her before she could give him a second dose; she'd have to go back into cover, he'd have time to get up, and then the Suns would almost certainly abandon the idea of taking anybody alive... and then things would get very messy, but not for very long. Before she could finish deciding whether to chance it anyway, a fat beam of brilliant blue light momentarily linked Kastrel's chestplate to the sky above the town hall, or at least that's what it looked like from inside. The sergeant looked down at the neat, fist-sized, circular black hole it left when it had passed, opened his mouth to say something, and then toppled over and sprawled on his back. From up on the roof, Tali heard Gryphon's voice, slightly distorted as if by a PA amplifier: "Bigger guns, eh?" The Suns, still processing the sudden elimination of their swaggering NCO who had just had everything under control, recoiled in shock at the sight of a man in a fully operational VR-052F Cyclone standing on the roof of the town hall. Veritech mecha, for Christ's sake! Nobody around here was supposed to have THAT kind of hardware - and now the town's Landmaster, which they'd been assured was out of the picture, was nosing into the square. "Fall back! FALL BACK!" yelled the ranking man on the scene now that Kastrel had bought it, a corporal. The Suns grabbed their gear and pulled out. Gryphon sprang down from the town hall roof with a puff of his Cyclone's jump jets and pumped a couple of pulses from his EP-37 at them, felling two more who tried to make a fight of it, but when they broke and ran he ceased fire. Instead, he stood and tracked them with the Cyclone's sensors until they were out of town, mounting their vehicles and fleeing up-spin. Only when he was sure they were gone and not coming back did he let himself relax, power down the EP-37, and drop the Cyclone back into bike mode, then lean it on its kickstand and rack the EP on the back. Turning toward the town hall, he held out his hands and declared, "It's okay. They're gone. For now." Townspeople rose gingerly from cover, peeking around windows and doors. Millandra, her bad arm done up in a sling, emerged from the front door and started making her way toward him as Mordin and Chen dismounted from the Landmaster and joined him in the square - but Tali got there first, pushing the mayor out of her way and hurrying across to grab him up in a big hug. "Whoa, hey there," he said, putting an arm around her. Gesturing vaguely to the barricaded, firefight-scarred town with his free hand, he added, "You've been busy." "Yes. You got here just in time." She rested her visor against his - would've been her forehead to his chin if they hadn't both been wearing helmets - and added in a lower voice, "I knew you'd come back." He chuckled and patted her back. "And I knew you'd hold 'em here while I was gone." Looking past the top of her head at Millandra, he added in a louder voice, "Surprised to see me?" "Very," she admitted. "Guess I was wrong about you, stranger. And your friend, too." Tali released Gryphon and whirled to confront her. "That's all you can say?" she snarled. "'Guess I was wrong about you'? You wanted to -shoot- me, you -bosh'tet.- If I weren't wearing this damned helmet I would spit at your feet. And if you weren't wounded I would punch you right in the middle of your face. 'Not the first teenager to fall for a lowlife like him', I think you said? Well, this teenager and her lowlife just saved your town in spite of you, -Captain.-" She folded her arms. "Think about that the next time you decide to make snap judgments." "I guess she told you, Millandra," said Chen with an undisguised grin. "Tali'Shukra's anger probably justified. In any case, advice about snap judgments is sound," Mordin put in. "Re-evaulating certain presuppositions of my own. Regardless, bigger problems to worry about. Blue Suns unlikely to take this defeat lying down. Know our capabilities have increased." He smiled. "But not by how much. First priority: Determine source of their intelligence. Must have known Sheriff Chen and I were leaving town. Mr. Harris obviously not their source. Well, still possible, I suppose, but highly unlikely. Senior NCO unlikely to be willing participant in suicide mission," he added sardonically. "I'll leave that to you and Scott, Doc," said Millandra wearily. "I've screwed up enough times for one day. I'm going to retire to my cave and lick my wounds." Mordin tilted his head and went to her side, his cybernetic hands deftly parting her field dressing so that he could examine the wound. "Gunshot wound. Salusian, .30-caliber standard infantry round. Surface furrow, no bone impact. Treated with tailored nanoid gel." He turned to Tali. "Your handiwork?" Tali nodded. "It isn't the most professional job, but I did my best." "Not at all. Quite competent. Equivalent to work of salarian combat medic, at least." Mordin refastened the dressing. "Bed rest, plenty of fluids, ibuprofen as needed. You'll be fine." "Bed rest? After this?" "Blue Suns unlikely to return soon. Will need time to regroup, rethink strategy. Maybe call for reinforcements. Unsure of probability. Not convinced rest of organization knows where they are." He shrugged. "Insufficient data. Won't be back today, at any rate." Millandra dragged her good hand down her face. "Yeah. Okay, Mordin. Okay." She turned and trudged back toward the town hall, paused, turned back, and met Tali's eyes as best she could. "For what it's worth," she said, "I'm sorry. And you did a hell of a job today." Tali couldn't quite bring herself to be verbally gracious - the surge of wrath she'd felt at the mayor's cavalier greeting to Gryphon was still too fresh - but she at least inclined her head in acknowledgement. Millandra didn't seem to have been expecting anything more; she cast her eyes down and walked away. "She'll come around," said Chen. "You slammed the door on her pretty hard, but it sounded like she earned it. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'd better see how much of a beating my town took while I was gone." "I'll show you," Tali said. "I was there for most of it." "Yes, excellent. Go with Mr. Chen. Mr. Harris and I have things to discuss," said Mordin. "Find us in my clinic when you're done." "We have things to discuss?" Gryphon said curiously once he and Mordin were alone in the clinic. "Not at length," Mordin replied. He bustled around for a few moments, satisfying himself that the Blue Suns hadn't defeated - indeed, didn't appear to have challenged - the building's security. As he did, he observed, "Your behavior paradoxical. Actions, apparent motivations completely at odds with reputation. Infamous criminal with heart of gold? Unlikely. Radical change of heart? Had to have one of those already to commit Musashi massacre in first place. Two in succession stretches bounds of credibility. Temporary insanity, since recovered?" The old salarian shook his head. "No. Would have accepted consequences of actions on Musashi. Instead, roam galaxy, place self in danger trying to help people." He looked up from the security console, meeting Gryphon's slightly puzzled gaze, and said flatly, "Only an innocent man would do this. Inescapable conclusion: You were framed." "I'd say you're right, but then I would either way," Gryphon pointed out, but Mordin only smiled. "Suspected as much at the time, actually. Data on Musashi incident never satisfactory. Too many holes. Subsequent investigation practically nonexistent. Situation too chaotic. Fall of Wedge Defense Force left no one with both position and motivation to uncover truth. Which was presumably the idea." Gryphon nodded. "That was always my take on it." He eyed Mordin. "You said 'at the time'. That was 67 years ago, Mordin." Mordin maintained eye contact for a second, then turned to his lab equipment and started fussing with something. "Wedge Defense Force not only organization with access to lifespan extension technologies," he said. "The Special Tasks Group has some equivalent to Omega-2?" asked Gryphon, but Mordin met that with a dismissive wave. "Omega-2 inefficient. Halts -all- aspects of aging, including purely cosmetic dermal changes." He looked up with a sly, mischievous smile. "Typical of human vanity." Then, changing the subject entirely, he asked, "Does Tali'Shukra know who you are?" Gryphon nodded. "The way we met, it was kind of unavoidable." "Hmm. And yet she trusts you with her life. Based on the remark she quoted, Millandra dismisses this as childish infatuation. Doubt that myself. Her performance today argues against such naivete. Youthful she may be, but nobody's fool." Mordin gave him a mild look and seemed like he might go on, but then jumped to a different topic instead. "Blue Suns problem not resolved," he said. "In long term, probably made worse. They'll feel obliged to escalate aggression. Not our fault; unavoidable. New defensive strategies needed." He returned to the computer console and started typing. "First order of business: Find their source of intelligence. Idea that someone in Goodyear would abet the colony's destruction unpalatable... but inescapable. Must discover who it is. Know it's not you." He looked up from the computer and added, "Go home, rest. Nothing you can do here right now." Night was falling when Tali and Chen completed their tour of the settlement. Showing the resilience that had enabled them to make a go of life in this completely disconnected system in the first place, the people of Goodyear had the place pretty much cleaned up by then. There was a small crew in the town square dismantling the barricades when they arrived at the security office. Tali recognized several of the people she'd led against the Blue Suns, including Redding. It took her a few moments to realize that they were waving to -her-, not Chen. "You've made quite an impression," Chen told her. He slid into his chair, put his feet up on his desk, and leaned back with a grin. "If I haven't yet, I ought to thank you for doing my job for me while I was gone. From the looks of things, I couldn't have done it any better. I'd never have thought of treating it like a boarding drill, that was a helluva good idea." "Some other approach might have been just as effective. And five people got hurt," Tali replied, shaking her head. "I think if you hadn't arrived when you did, the situation would have gotten completely out of control within about 30 seconds." "Yeah, and if you hadn't taken charge when you did, it would've been out of control hours earlier. Don't sell yourself short, kid, you did all right. Besides, you know what my grandmother used to say about days like you had today?" "No, what?" "You ever heard the old expression, sometimes it's better to be lucky than good?" She nodded. "My gramma used to say that's fine, but the -best- thing is to be lucky -and- good. And that was you today. Yeah, you got lucky - but you were only in a position to use that luck 'cause you were good." Tali chuckled tiredly. "Thanks." "Just the truth, ma'am," said Chen with a self-deprecating grin. Then, his expression softening, he added, "You oughta get some rest. You look beat." Tali raised her head to give him a look; he smiled and said, "I can see it in the way you're standing." "Good idea," she conceded. "I think I'll do - " She was interrupted by the sudden arrival of Mordin Solus, who gave the impression of a man bearing important news. Chen picked up on the salarian's air of urgency. Removing his boots from his desk, he leaned forward on his elbows and asked, "What's doing, Doc?" "Long-range sensor activity," Mordin replied, dropping a printout on Chen's desk. Chen peered at it, then sat back and pushed a hand through his greying hair. "Aw, hell, Doc, you know I can't make hide nor hair out of anything that homebuilt rig o' yours spits out." "High-energy event in grid sector 337E," Mordin told him. "Consistent with spacecraft launch. Since then, no energy signatures of any kind, no comm traffic. Obvious conclusion: Blue Suns have left Halo." Chen blinked. "They bugged out?" "Yes. Either abandoned their encampment or took it with them. Should take a team and check it out soonest. May have left behind something we can use." "You think they'll be back?" "Not a fortune teller, but think it likely. Probably with reinforcements." "Why would they leave?" Tali wondered. "If they wanted reinforcements from out-system, they could have called for them. Their ship must have hyperwave capabilities." "Don't know," Mordin replied. "Possible that death of senior NCO required personal report to superiors by ranking survivor. Alternately, discovery of Halo may be considered too sensitive to risk transmission. Maybe combination of both, other unanticipated factors. Not enough data. Point is - they're gone. For the moment, we have Halo to ourselves again." "It won't last," Chen said. "Probably not," Mordin agreed. "Hell." Chen got to his feet. "We better go tell Millandra." He turned to Tali. "I seem to recall you were gonna get some rest." Tali nodded. "I was. I am." With a weary chuckle she added, "I'm certainly in no mood to spend any more quality time with Captain Caspian today." Chen, who had heard the whole story during their review of the town, sighed. "I understand why she thought what she thought, but I'm sorry as hell she reacted the way she did." "I suppose it could be argued that I brought it on myself," said Tali wryly. "Anyway, good night." The three of them left the security office together and immediately split up, Chen and Mordin heading for the town hall, Tali going out to Spare 14. She never would have thought, two days before, that she'd be so glad to see a dingy little colonial prefab shack, nor that it would feel so much like coming home when she entered. Gryphon was asleep, the pieces of his armor scattered on the floor between the door and the bed, his Gallant-H90 in easy reach on the bedstand next to the radio. Tali put her scattergun in a similar position on the other stand and crawled in behind him. Sleeping under covers was a peculiar experience - textiles were too valuable for such extravagances on the Flotilla, and besides, bedclothes served no useful purpose when you wore a climate-controlled suit all the time - but she was starting to find it oddly comforting. The blanket was like a sort of psychological deflector shield. She wasn't sure just what it was deflecting, but it made her feel better. "Tali?" said Gryphon blurrily. "You were expecting someone else?" she replied, amused. "Just making sure," he mumbled, and then, barely intelligibly as he drifted back to sleep, "Can't b'too crfl wf p'pl li' Mrrnd 'bout." No, Tali thought amusedly, I suppose you can't. /* Édith Piaf "La Vie en Rose" (1946) */ In the wake of the Blue Suns' retreat, quiet returned to Goodyear. Having proven themselves by the parts they played in driving off the mercenaries, even if only temporarily, both Gryphon and Tali found themselves fully accepted by the little town. They went along with Mordin and Chen to scout the abandoned Blue Suns encampment, carried out a complete salvage of the Ranger's remains, and generally consolidated what few assets they had, and then life settled into a gentle rhythm. The plan at first was that they'd see about condensing the Ranger's wreckage into a working spacecraft, possibly with the aid of a few surviving bits from the Goodyear Sojourner. Gryphon set up a workshop to that effect when they got back and, for a few days, he and Tali diligently catalogued all the parts and materials they'd managed to glean from the wreck. But as the days grew into weeks and winter began yielding to spring, they began rather to drift off the beam, getting sidetracked with other little projects. Tali's skills as a technologist and medic meant she was in constant demand as a sort of supplement to Mordin, and before long she had eased into a place of honor as Goodyear's unofficial machinist, EMT and general handywoman. If she hadn't already been a hero to the whole town, she'd have become one the day she fixed the Sojourner's busted old bridge holoprojector so that they could show movies, of which Scott Chen had a huge collection on crystal ROM, in the big common room at Charley's on Friday nights. She even received a peace offering of sorts from Millandra Caspian, in the form of a battered old Bartley Cyclone, powerless and stuck in storage mode, but complete with all its parts. ("Used to be mine, back in my hellraising youth," the captain explained. "If you want it, and you can get it to work, it's yours.") For his part, the man Goodyear knew as Mr. Daniel P. Harris soon found himself something of the town's master-at-arms, a kind of adjutant general to Sheriff Chen in all but title, taking charge of weapons and self-defense training for the Militia. Apart from that, he served as a roving troubleshooter, helping out wherever help was needed. Once winter had fully given way to spring and full activity resumed on the town farm, he even tried his hand at farming, something he hadn't encountered since his long-ago childhood in Maine. FRIDAY, APRIL 13, 2356 GOODYEAR_ It was a lovely, balmy spring evening, just coming on for dusk, and Gryphon was on his way home from the melon field. He was crossing the town square, grubby and tired (but in a good way), when Mordin emerged from his clinic and beckoned to him. "Ah! Daniel. Excellent timing," the salarian declared. "Come here a moment. Have something to show you." "What's up?" Gryphon asked as he followed Mordin into the clinic. "Have you tracked down our Blue Suns mole?" "Sadly, no," Mordin replied, shaking his head. "No perceptible activity since Suns left. Probability that sleeper agent has gone back to sleep. Still, maintaining vigilance. Hyperwave detectors, subetheric sniffers - whoever agent is, will catch him if he transmits again. No, want to show you something unrelated. Personal matter. May be of interest to you." Mordin led him to one of the tables at the back of the lab area, where several stacked plastic containers held what appeared to be various fruits and vegetables, not all of them immediately recognizable. "New crops?" Gryphon wondered. "Of a sort. Some are flora native to Halo; others specially engineered Goodyear produce." Mordin pointed. "Tomatoes; barley flour; refined soy protein." "... So you've invented tofu," said Gryphon. Mordin grinned. "Better than that. Everything in these cases has mirrored protein chirality. Inedible to humans; perfectly fine for turians, quarians, a few other species." He indicated a couple of aluminum equipment cases, then pointed to a piece of electronic gear that looked like a cross between a tricorder and a photographic flash. "Utensils and culinary equipment made from bio-resistant alloys; nanowave food purifier. Eliminates contaminants with electromagnetic resonance. Less dangerous than gamma rays." Gryphon blinked, then grinned. "Mordin," he said. "With all the legitimate work you have to do, you spent the last month developing this?" "Not a shirker," Mordin replied, mock-offended. "Got all regular work done first. Don't need a lot of sleep. Salarians don't anyway. Needed even less since the treatment." He winked. "Besides - for a good cause." He handed Gryphon a datapad. "Sanitation and safe preparation guidelines. Recipes gleaned from ancient databanks. Serving suggestions. Have to be very careful. Seal dining area and disinfect beforehand. Should quarantine yourself after serving. Not perfect, but better than nothing." "How did you even know?" Gryphon asked. "Served 20 years as STG operative. Know a thing or two about keeping eyes open." The old salarian beamed. "Consider it part of my job to improve standard of living across colony. Replicating quarian field rations all well and good, but... " He shrugged. "Probably too complicated to do on regular basis. Deserves a special occasion once in a while, though. Good kid." "Yeah," Gryphon agreed. "The best." Surveying the stack of containers and equipment, he grinned and said, "Looks like I've got some work to do." "Give you a hand," Mordin offered, picking up a couple of the cases. "With preliminary preparations, at least." Tali got home considerably later, tired but satisfied with her day's work improving the colony's water purification system, to discover the house strangely altered from the way she'd left it that morning. The kitchen and half the common room appeared to have been tented off, as if for fumigation or painting, with heavy plastic sheeting and an inflatable temporary airlock. She called Gryphon's name (well, his assumed one; he might not be home alone), got no answer, and investigated more closely. A yellow warning sign on the airlock door read DECONTAMINATION AREA: DO NOT ENTER WITHOUT PROTECTIVE CLOTHING. Guess I've got THAT covered, thought Tali wryly. She unsealed the tentflap-like door and stepped into the airlock, noting the slight positive pressure that made the flap flutter until she resealed it behind her. Inside, it was a standard single-person portable decon chamber. Wondering what was going on, Tali punched the entry key and waited out the cycle, feeling oddly nostalgic as the sprayers, scrubbers, and nanowavers stripped the outside of her encounter suit of contaminants. It was eerily like the process of moving from one ship in the Flotilla to another, as she had done many times visiting relatives. Except that she emerged not into the main docking corridor of, for example, the Kedrin, where her grandfather lived, but rather into Spare 14's tiny dining room, scrubbed and decontaminated until its every surface shone. On the table, a single place setting of some dully lustrous white-gold metal, a glass vase with a holographic flower, a candle. And over on the other side of the half-counter in the kitchen, dressed in one of those bright yellow, bubble-hooded hazmat control outfits... "Ah, good!" said Gryphon cheerfully. "You're home. Have a seat. Let me just put a couple of finishing touches on this." He picked up a wok-like frying pan made of the same pale gold metal and gave its sizzling contents an expert flip. "Mordin's computer assures me it's just like chukaba shyam, only... you know, the other way round." Tali stared at him. "... You cooked dinner for me?!" "Chopping anti-chukaba in these gloves is harder than I thought it'd be!" he remarked, holding up his yellow-clad hands. "I made a complete hash of it the first time." He looked as if an idea had struck him. "Hmm. Hash. Must remember to ask Mordin about that. Trickier to make corned anti-beef, I expect, but might be worth it. God, I'm talking like him now." "You cooked. Dinner. For me," Tali said slowly. "Yes." "Why?" "'Cause there are no turians here?" he said. Then, delivering the anti-shyam into a serving dish, he put the pan in the sink and rounded the end of the half-counter to start setting things out on the table. "No, that's not it. 'Cause I've wanted to ever since we got here and, for reasons I can only guess at, Mordin figured that out and went to a lot of trouble to make it happen." "This must have taken you -hours.-" "It did a bit," Gryphon admitted. "Mordin helped me set up the clean area and get everything in here deconned, but he said the cooking was entirely my problem." He finished arranging dishes and said, "I apologize for the French presentation, but I ought to make myself scarce before you crack your seals, and I wanted to get it all set up for you before I go. This is the shyam, and over here's kind of a rice pilaf-y sort of thing. The recipe for this soup came out of an ancient quarian database, God knows how Mordin got hold of it, I just hope I made it right. It's tricky when you can't taste anything you're cooking. And these are the biscuits. Mordin's particularly proud of the anti-butter, so he's hoping for a full report." He clapped his hands briskly together, grinning, and finished, "Bon appetit!" Tali sat speechless for a few seconds while he dimmed the lights in the dining room a little to soften the cleanroom glare, then went to the airlock and paused in the doorway. "Do you... want to stay?" she asked quietly. Gryphon smiled. "I would if you asked, but it looks to me like you feel a little weird about it. Anyway, this isn't for me, it's for you. I'd just have to sit there with my hood on making you feel awkward anyway. You enjoy." "Thanks. I... " Tali groped for something more meaningful to say, some more elegant way of expressing everything this gesture meant to her, but after five seconds of struggle, all that came out was a muted, "Thank you." He seemed to understand anyway. "You're welcome, Tali'Shukra," he said gently. "Just leave the cleanup to me. I'll take care of everything." Then, with a nod, he was gone; she listened to the airlock cycle, then heard the front door open and close. For a long moment, she sat silently at the table, gazing vacantly into the candle flame. "Yes... you will, won't you?" she said softly. Then, carefully, hesitantly, she removed her helmet, set it on the table, and picked up her fork. Gryphon came home from having his own dinner at Mordin's, his mood pleasantly mellowed by a few samples from the salarian's private stocks. The living room was empty and dark, the house quiet. He hooded up, cycled through decon and found - not entirely to his surprise - that Tali hadn't left the washing-up to him, despite instructions. He couldn't be bothered to tear down the cleantent and cart everything back to Mordin's tonight - it was past midnight - so he cycled back out to the living room, shut off the lights, and went to bed. Tali was already there, curled up on what was usually his side of the mattress, the Shipping Forecast issuing softly from the radio. He took off his hazmat gear and climbed into bed; as he did so, she stirred and turned over, her visor glinting in the faint light falling from the radio's tuning dial. "That was amazing," she said softly. "I haven't eaten like that in... well... ever. I may suffer for it tomorrow," she added wryly, "my digestive system isn't used to that kind of treatment, but... it was totally worth it." She nudged his chin with her forehead, the closest she could get to giving him a kiss. "Thank you." Gryphon put his arm around her slim shoulders and gave her a squeeze; he'd gotten so used to the angles and ridges of her encounter suit's duraplast and leatherine parts by now that he hardly even noticed them any more. "You're welcome," he said. "I'm glad you enjoyed it. Good night." "Sleep well," she replied, settling down with her arm across his chest, hand on his shoulder - almost like, it occurred to her drowsily, the way they'd been sitting during that dogfight, oh, it seemed so long ago now. "... Five to seven, occasionally gale eight in Southeast Iceland, but variable four in Faeroes at first. Moderate or rough. Wintry showers. Moderate or poor." /* Joe Satriani "Just Look Up" _Is There Love in Space?_ (2004) */ As Mordin had predicted, the dinner was too complicated a production to arrange often, but it did become a semi-regular part of the routine. About once a month, usually on a Friday, Gryphon and Mordin would tent up the kitchen and ruthlessly decon everything, and then Gryphon would do his best to make something culinarily interesting happen, feeling more like a member of the bomb squad than a cook. The results were not always perfect, but, Tali assured him, even his failures had ration paste beat for the simple reason that they were never boring. Right around the end of the spring mud season, Tali got her Cyclone working. Between the two of them, she and Gryphon figured out how to adapt Millandra's old CVR-3F ride armor into a modular system that could attach to her encounter suit and be removed when it wasn't needed, similar to the way Valkyrie pilots' CVR integrated with their specialized flightsuits. Once the ground was dry, he taught her to ride the Cyclone in bike mode and operate it in battroid mode. Sometimes, when nothing much was doing in town, they'd ride off into the downspin countryside together, gather samples of various native flora for Mordin to study, and work on mapping the nearby parts of Halo, like the network of canyons and river gulches out beyond the farm. While weeks became months and spring flowered into summer, the two became integral parts of Halo's only settlement. People forgot what life in Goodyear was like without them. They were just there to be relied on, like Charley's, Sheriff Chen, and old Doc Solus; they ceased to be the outsider and the alien, and became simply Dan and Miss Tali - fixtures, neighbors, friends. Weekends, they still puttered around with their spaceship parts in the garage they and their neighbors had raised next to Spare 14, but somehow it all seemed less urgent than it had when they'd started. But for all that time sometimes seemed to stand still for the residents of Halo, in the rest of the galaxy it kept passing. /* Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers "Refugee" _Damn the Torpedoes_ (1980) */ Eyrie Productions, Unlimited presented UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES EXILE Star-Crossed Part IV: Bad Day in Goodyear To be continued in Part V: Ockham's Razor E P U (colour) 2010