literature

The Way Up, Chapter 2

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Literature Text

Mass Effect fanfiction
Characters: Tali'Zorah, Liara T'Soni, original quarian characters





"Professor Zorah, Dr. T'Soni? Would you care to join us in the tunnel? We're about to reach the cave," Dr. Deltreva's assistant called over the comm system.

Liara and Tali both pressed on their implant to answer.

"We'll be right there," Tali answered.

They both dropped their datapads on the table and picked up their hooded coats. The sun was still up, making the outside look blazingly white as they left the container. Tali squinted and fixed her mask to the hood, letting the faceplate darken to a comfortable level.

Recently, a young astrophysicist named Tan'Lordan, had published a theory that Rannoch's sun changed it's intensity over the years. He also established the hypothesis that the change in radiation outputs had radically changed the way the old quarians lived. To protect themselves from the harsher sunlight, they had to give up life in the open fields. Tali had contacted him right away; getting him to explain his theories to her and her class. Liara had sat in on the class which made Tali feel incredibly nervous at first.

She still felt out of place up there on the podium, being called "Professor" and having students listen to her. Her new class "Quarian Origins" had gotten her some critical looks in the university back when she had started it. The "cave theory" was not widely accepted but Tali managed to secure a well known asari historian and the young astrophysicist Tan'Lordan to hold classes. About twenty students had enrolled in the class. Almost all of them also signed up for the archaeological excursion and helped at the dig site.

Tali and Liara climbed down the stairs to the tunnel entrance, passing various students at work on the way down. They carefully extracted little things and pieces from the dark lines in the soil, checking it for traces of civilization. They all greeted Tali respectfully, it made her feel very strange. She still expected someone to call her out as a hack everyday.

Having Liara around for the last few weeks had helped her, she had been very supportive. She had a second prefab container installed next to Tali's and another module just for a power generator with photovoltaic collectors. The inside of the prefab hardly had enough room for a bed. It was full of terminals with screens from wall to wall. Liara worked in there many times but they also had spent many hours in Tali's room, studying scans and working through analyses from the students.

Tali and Liara became friends on the Normandy but weren’t very close. They spent time in the mess hall together or looked over scans together but they never spent much time with each other. Over the last few weeks, they had become very close and Tali grew to know Liara as a friend. She was a tremendous help, teaching Tali what she needed to know about archeology.

Dr. Deltreva greeted them when they finally reached the bottom. She wasn't particularly impolite but she was a scientist and didn't waste time with pleasantries. They both put on helmets provided by her assistant, exchanging them for the visors and masks and followed Deltreva through the narrow tunnel. The carved walls around them were made of compact sand first but slowly transformed into rock. The tunnel was supported by poles and mass effect emitters and was considered safe. Tali still felt nervous even though she had crawled through many narrow tunnels on ships but those were made of metal. She liked metal, it made her feel safe. Rocks were not her favorite thing.

They kept walking in the darkness that even the harsh sunlight could not reach, going deeper into the tunnel. The only lights came from the flashlights on their helmets and the blue glow of the mass effect fields. Tali felt her feet getting tired, she wondered how long this tunnel could possibly be. In front of them, lights became brighter and they came to the end. Four members of Dr. Deltreva's team had prepared the rockface with small explosive charges, waiting for the head of the team to give the command.

"Won't we destroy the thing we are trying to preserve and discover if we blow up this place?" Tali asked Dr. Deltreva, remembering Liara’s many teachings.

Dr. Deltreva looked at her as if she just now realized that Tali was even there. She was completely pre-occupied with the scanner and its readout. In answer, she projected a 3D-model of the cave, the tunnel and their positions to each other over her omni-tool.

"No, Professor Zorah, we are very careful not to destroy anything. As you can see here, the cave is surrounded by hard granite. We assume that is the reason why it is still intact. Most of the mountains of Gelldre Kah contain a mixture of granite and softer rocks. They have crumbled and cracked over thousands of years but this area is almost pure granite." She enhanced a section on the projection. "The granite acts like a protective bubble around this area but it also means that we cannot get in easily."

She stepped over to another asari who was working on the small charges sticking to the rockface.

"Tenja here, is in charge of the very controlled explosion that will give us a small hole to work through."

Tenja nodded and projected an image over her omni-tool,  "The explosion will make the rock in front of us brittle, just enough to pick at it and widen the hole carefully. We just want it to be big enough to send an omni-camera through."

Liara stepped up and studied the projection intensely.

"Can we not get better readings from the inside of the cavity?" she asked.

Dr. Deltreva shook her head, "Unfortunately not. The granite is much too dense to get more than rough outlines."

Tenja nodded her signal to Dr. Deltreva. She ushered them back into the tunnel and raised a barrier at the entrance. The other four scientists also wrapped themselves in a biotic bubble and after a nod from Dr. Deltreva, Tenja triggered the explosives. The small room filled with a cloud of dust and small pieces of rock peppered the barrier, causing white ripples to spread across it. An air cleaner started up and filtered the particles out when the asari dropped the barriers.

On first glance, the rockface did not look much different. Only when the archeologists took their small chisels and hammers to it, could Tali see the fractures crisscrossing on it. They had to wait patiently for a long time until they had worked a small depression into the wall. Tenja raised her hand abruptly and the other asari stopped working. She then placed her chisel in the center of the depression and hit it hard with her hammer. Nothing happened. She repositioned the chisel and hit it with her hammer again. The chisel sunk into the rock and seemed to disappear. With a surprisingly quiet rumble, the rock inside the depression crumbled and fell away. It made a hollow sound as it fell into the cave. Cold air, smelling of moss and metal, seeped into the room.

Dr. Deltreva was the first one to breathe again.

"Hand me the camera."

She took a small, floating device from her assistant and placed it front of the hole. The camera slowly floated into the darkness. With its tiny light, it looked like an insect in the darkness of the cave, at least for the tiny part they could see of it. The head archaeologist projected the camera’s transmission from her omni-tool. The other team members respectfully stepped aside to make room for Tali and Liara so that they could stand in front. Tali almost had to laugh at that. She felt like a kid playing with toys that were not hers.

Liara's hand on her back pulled her back to reality and she realized that she was communicating her nervousness with her lines to everyone in the room. With a deep breath she got her emotions under control again.

"I want everyone on this dig site to see the transmission from the camera," Tali said with a firm voice, "I want every student in this course to see this. This is our history, and it will not be kept secret."

Dr. Deltreva nodded and issued a few commands on her omni-tool. So far, they only saw the bright spot of the camera's flashlight crawling over mossy rocks. Occasionally, some areas lit up with blue glimmer. A stalactite hung from the ceiling, wrapped in a faint glow. One of the archeologists began to furiously type on her omni-tool and Dr. Deltreva adjusted the picture at the same time. More of the rocky walls and stalactites became visible now and they could see that they were covered with softly glowing vines.

"Those plants have bioluminescence, like quarians!" the archeologist pointed out and everyone looked at Tali. Her lines began to glow involuntarily. The asari continued, her fingers flying over the interface of her omni-tool. "That may have been an evolutionary advantage for quarians living underground. An ecosystem that does not rely on sunlight but on bioluminescence. That could have been the main resource of food and energy. This makes the cave-theory feasible!"

Tali had to hold on to Liara's arm for a second to steady herself. This was it! This was the proof she needed to find!

The camera floated down, turned and almost crashed into something. It slowed, dipping up and down. The cone of light illuminated a straight beam, presumably stretching from the bottom of the cave to the top. It was, without doubt, artificial. No natural design could ever be this straight. Every single person in the room outside of the cave gasped and Tali imagined the same thing happening all over the dig site as everyone watched the feed. The camera floated around the beam, an omni-sampler extended to scratch the surface. It removed some of the growth on the construction. In the light of the camera, they could see a metallic shine appear.

"Metal!" Dr. Deltreva gasped. "This is incredible!" The sampler scratched over the metallic surface and the doctor stared at her omni-tool reading the analysis. She gasped again, "An alloy! An iron-nickel alloy. By the goddess!" She looked around the group. "This alloy is technically perfect. The proportions of iron to nickel are such, that its rate of thermal expansion is very low. This requires a level of scientific knowledge and craftsmanship not far from our own today!"

The room fell quiet as everybody let that revelation sink in. They had expected to find traces of a rudimentary civilization, simple tools made of rocks and twigs, drawings on walls. Nobody had expected a technologically of an advanced society on an industrial level. Tali took a deep breath. This project had just grown. This was bigger than she had even imagined.

"I want Tan'Lordan here, I want the president of our university here -- Keelah! -- I want all members of the quarian council to be informed of this find. We will make everything public about this."

Liara looked at her, giving a tiny nod of encouragement.

"Yes, Professor Zorah," Dr. Deltreva mumbled, not taking her eyes away from the readout. "I will give you a report every day and send you all vid material."

"I want hourly reports for the next three days at least," Tali snapped back, earning her a surprised look from the asari doctor. "After that, we'll see. I want the current vid right now and the analysis of the metal composite."

This time, the doctor looked at her, "Yes, Professor Zorah, I'm transfering the files as we speak."

Liara stepped up, raising her voice slightly, "Will the structural integrity be preserved if the hole is opened up more?"

"We will try to make the access bigger but we can not promise anything," Dr. Deltreva answered, turning her attention back to her omni-tool again.

Tali turned away from the cave reluctantly, she would have loved to stay but she needed to talk to a lot of people. Liara followed her quietly through the tunnel, her presence a most welcome reassurance to Tali. She would have to speak to the head of the university, the politicians, and she would have to hold a press conference.

And what if nobody cared? Quarians did not look back -- history was gone and forgotten.

Tali knew that that was a mistake. Not many realized how much they had lost by forgetting the history of the Morning War. They had not seen the files from the geth consciousness. If the quarians had known how the Morning War had started, maybe peacetalks would have been possible, years before the Reaper invasion forced a decision upon them. They could have seen the homeworld decades earlier if they had analyzed their history. But most people did not see it this way. How would they look on these finds? Would they even care?

"Am I overreacting, Liara? Am I jumping to conclusions?" Tali wondered if Liara could even hear her questions, whispering to herself.

"I don't think you are, no," Liara said behind her. "Sometimes just a tiny scrap of a piece of junk can turn our perspective of the world around. The first find of the protheans was an insignificant little piece of metal that later turned out to be part of a prothean shoulder guard. It almost got thrown away. You have a giant pole inside of cave here, a thousand years old and it is made of metal like we would make today." A little snicker could be heard from Liara. "No, I don't think you are overreacting. You might even be underreacting."

"Thank you," Tali looked over her shoulder as she kept on walking to the exit. "I'm glad you are here."

"I'm glad that I'm here too, I had forgotten how much I love this."

They reached the stairs and ladders and climbed back up to the surface. Every person they met on the way congratulated Tali. It was quite embarrassing.

"Are you going to stay?" Tali asked as they stepped on the topsoil.

"Of course I'm staying. This may be the most significant archeological discovery of this era. I don't want to miss it," Liara came up to her side, smiling.

"But you... you are bonded, shouldn't you be with your bondmate?" Tali looked at Liara from the side. The sun was down and she could look at her without her mask on. She had wondered about Liara's extended stay for a while but had avoided the question. It was so nice to have her around, to have someone to talk to, she didn't want to risk it. But she felt guilty for keeping her away from her bondmate.

"The Reaper War is over," Liara said with a soft voice, "we have time now. We will be together for a long time. If we are always together, how can we ever miss each other? We talk every morning before I go to sleep and it is wonderful. It is good to be apart for a while, knowing that we will soon hold each other again. We have time now, thanks to Shepard."

"Yes..." Tali felt the words slipping away from her. She missed having someone. "Thank you for being here, Liara. As long as you feel happy being here... I would be glad if you stayed."

"I feel happy and I'm happy that I can help you, Tali." Liara put a hand on her shoulder, "I have a feeling... the hardest part is yet to come."

Tali raised her face to the starry sky and sighed, "Yes, I think so too."



The history of the quarians, according to my headcanon. How did they end up in those suits, why do their eyes glow? After the end of the Reaper War, Tali discovers secrets on Rannoch and asks Liara for help. Tali and Liara as history nerds and many original quarian characters. This is a story of adventure and discovery, a look into quarian history.

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And we find the cave! 

Biggest thanks go to :iconillusionsfire76: for editing this story.

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Chapter 1: barbexy.deviantart.com/art/The…

Chapter 3: barbexy.deviantart.com/art/The…
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Shadow-Wing-Darkstar's avatar
Great job barbexy... as always, lol