Undocumented Features Future Imperfect

Dear Tali,

I've had to write a lot of hard-to-begin letters over the last week or so, but I think this one's been the hardest. I've made five or six false starts a day on it for the last week, ever since I arrived back in Zeta Cygni. By now you've probably seen the news reports of my trial on Earth last week. If not, well... I've done it. With a lot of help, I've finally managed to clear my name. I'm a free man again. I don't have to run or hide any more.

I'm sorry for the way we got separated on Halo. I don't know if you saw what went down or not, but if not, I need you to know I did NOT willingly abandon you there. Vision and Zaeed, that merc she hired, had arranged beforehand that if Kei showed up, they were going to get me out of there whether I wanted to go or not. And I can tell you, Zaeed had quite a right hook at the time. Vision and I had... words... about that once I came to, but by then we were so far out that the Federation would have been there by the time I could get back. I hated like hell to stay away, but it was the only thing I could do, so I went back to Deneb and cleaned out my safehouse there in case Kei had managed to get a line on it somehow.

When we left Deneb, I planned to go looking for you - try to figure out some way of making contact that wouldn't cause trouble for you. Before I could do that... well, it's my own fault. I was so angry at Vision for what she and Zaeed did that I didn't preflight my Valkyrie properly. One of the Cochrane coils had some microfractures in it from my fight with the Blue Suns, and when I went to warp speed, the engines went into a cascading imbalance. We went over the high side. Ended up in a parallel dimension, which is where I've spent the last 24 years your time, nearly 40 for me.

Written out like that, it looks like the lamest excuse ever conceived, doesn't it? But it's true. That's really what happened. I only got back last month (and that by accident - at least there's symmetry). Fortunately, while I was gone, a lot of people had put in a lot of effort toward clearing me. They laid the groundwork for me and my crew to make it happen. I think I can see your hand in some of it. I hope so. It might mean you didn't hate me for leaving you.

So anyway, tonight I'm sitting here in what used to be my office in the old UPNS complex at Zeta Cygni, surrounded by the ghosts of a past so distant it seems like it happened to somebody else, and I'm listening to Grieg's Piano Concerto in A and thinking about how it used to be one of your favorite pieces of music. I'm remembering the day you played it on your omni-tool in the kitchen while I tried (and failed) to make right-handed satay ponorogo. That bit around four minutes into the first movement is making the windows shake and would really be annoying my neighbors if I had any, but I don't. There's nobody here but me. Even my crew is off chasing down survivors from the old WDF.

I've spent the last week trying to make contact with everyone I can find from the old days, pulling together the barest fragments of a plan for making the WDF live again. It'll take me years, if it's even possible at all. I've got an idea, too, for a new settlement here in the Sphere. (Did you know about the Sphere? Wolfgang and his people have kept it pretty well secret, but I know how smart and inquisitive you are... ) So much stuff is running through my head that it doesn't feel like I've finished one race so much as I'm beginning another one, but... nobody's shooting at me, nobody's going to come run me out of here. I saw Kei at my trial the other day. I don't know who her therapist is, but whoever it is does good work. I'm not going to say we're exactly friends again, but... we're civil. Which is an interesting change.

You've probably noticed by now that I'm just kind of rambling. I didn't really know whether I should send this. Part of me said, hell, Ben, that was 24 years ago to her, and from where she was standing it probably looked like you ditched her. She doesn't want to hear from your sorry ass now. She'll have her own life well in order. Don't bother her. If she wants, she'll get in touch with you.

But...

... I miss you, Tali'Shukra. If it had been up to me, I'd have let you come with me into exile when Goodyear had to end. You convinced me before you left for the Migrant Fleet. We'd have had wild and crazy adventures and, hell, who knows? I expect we'd have found a way to arrive at this day. And you'd be here with me tonight. We'd have spent the last week deciding where home should be.

Instead, I'm going to send you an email that you might not even want to get, and then I'm going to go to bed alone. And listen to the Shipping Forecast. And tomorrow I'm going to get up and get back to work. Like the poet said, sometimes life ain't fair.

I hope you're well. I hope you're happy. Even if you don't want anything more to do with me, I think if I know that, I'll be okay, 'cause whatever you think of me, I still love you.

Keelah, I thought you were dead. I know you had a drive malfunction. Mordin and I mapped the subspace anomaly it left behind. When word reached us last week that you'd been captured, I thought they meant the other Gryphon, until I read it more closely and saw that they'd caught you both. Or you caught him and turned yourself in. Then I knew it must really be you. Only you could do something as mad as that and get away with it.

Where can I even start? So much has changed since you disappeared. Since we settled for good in the Scandia system, the Flotilla has become a proper nation - we're called the Quarian Union now. Some of us chose to keep wandering, but most remain here, and the others return from time to time. For all their big talk about the nobility of the nomadic life, I think they like the security of having a home port to rely on. We've also set up a gas mine on Substance and an orbital fueling station. Ships bound for Lucas and Heskemyr sectors stop in a lot. It keeps life interesting.

We've done a lot of research into Halo; we still don't know what it is or where it came from, but Mordin and our own scientists have done a great deal of basic research into the environment and how we can be adapted to live in it. There are several permanent test settlements on the surface now. Those who live there must still live as we do aboard ship, in their suits, but it's a start.

A few years ago they offered me the governorship of Halo - well, they call it a captaincy, since within our legal framework it's considered a ship - but I couldn't accept. I spend a lot of time there in the course of my work, but I could never live there. They put the main settlement where Goodyear used to be. Too many memories. I think our old house is still there. When we finished the evacuation, we never bothered to tear it down.

You probably didn't find out about it before you had your accident, but everyone from Goodyear resettled on a moon in the Kebera system. The last time I was there was four years ago, for New Goodyear's 20th anniversary festival. It's a busy little agri-city now, not cut off from the galaxy like old Goodyear, but still carefully and happily remote. People keep themselves to themselves, as Scott says. Miranda's still running the place, but last time we talked I got the feeling she was getting restless.

The argument in the Conclave continues about exactly what Halo should be to our people. Some of the Delegates want to start calling it New Rannoch and begin phased relocation of the entire crews of our oldest and poorest-condition ships to the surface. Some want to wait until such time as those who settle there can do so without environment suits, though that may take generations to achieve. Others want to abandon all settlement there and just lease research rights to outside academics. And so it goes. Did I mention that we like to debate?

I guess it's my turn now to ramble. It's a stupid nervous habit I seem to have developed in the last few years. If we were together in person I'd be talking on and on and on and not saying a single thing that had any meaning, because it keeps me from having to deal with the topic I really should be addressing.

I miss you too, Benjamin. If I could, I would leave for Zeta Cygni tomorrow, but I have responsibilities here. I'm the de facto leader of all the Halo research and exploration efforts. I'm the quarian government's liaison to the biomedical studies being conducted there as well.

And... I have a family.

After we found evidence that your warp drive had failed, I didn't want to believe you were gone. I spent a decade searching the galaxy for anything that could prove us wrong. Some sign that you were just... marooned somewhere, like you and I were on Halo. I had elaborate fantasies of how I'd come swooping out of the sky and rescue you from some isolated rock, and then we'd fly off to some other slightly less isolated rock and live happily ever after. In the process I went to most of the places you'd been to before we met, and encountered a lot of people whose lives you'd touched. It made me feel even closer to you, learning so much about your life before me... but I didn't find what I was looking for, because it didn't exist except in my own wishful thoughts. Finally, I had to accept defeat like a scientist - Mordin's phrase - and come home to the Archangel.

I had a childhood friend, Vedik'Zorah - I think I told you about him, he lived next door to my grandfather on the Kedrin, and his grandfather was the admiral Miranda and I went to see. (I found out later that Admiral Zorah knew you in his youth. Sadly, he passed away a few years ago.) Vedik had done his pilgrimage a year or so before me and joined the Archangel's crew, and when I finally returned to the ship, he was still here. Waiting for me to come home. He was there for me while I grieved for you and the life we never got to have together. A year or so later, he asked me to marry him.

I don't know exactly how I can explain the next part to you. My people are trembling on the edge of extinction. There are only 17 million of us left. There are fewer than half as many quarians in the entire universe as there are people in New York City on Earth. We've practiced very strict population control throughout our time as wanderers, but it works both ways. It's considered strange for us to remain unmarried when we return from our pilgrimages and establish ourselves as adults. No one is allowed to have more than one or two children, but everyone's expected to have at least one. Otherwise, our population can't remain stable and genetic diversity suffers.

Ugh, I'm making it sound like I married out of a sense of... biological duty. But I guess there's an element of truth to that, however unattractive it is to confront in so many words. Over the years Mordin has taught me that the facts, however unpalatable, have to be faced head-on. At any rate, that wasn't all there was to it. Vedik is a good man, a solid and reliable man, and he truly loves me. He has never grudged me what I felt - what I still feel - for you. And somewhere along the way, I've learned to love him too, as much as I ever can.

Our son Rael is 13, just entering secondary tutoring. He'll be ready for his pilgrimage in just a few years. He's preparing for a military career, like his father. He cares very little for how Halo came into our people's lives; like so many of our younger people today, he yearns to return to Rannoch, the homeworld none of us has ever seen. The other day he proudly informed me that the first thing he would do once the geth were driven out would be to build a house for his father and me.

It's good to have goals.

I hope this news doesn't cause you too much pain. If I'd had even the slightest hope that you would ever return, I would have waited for you. I should have listened to Miria. She wouldn't believe that you were gone for good, even when I showed her all the data. When I asked her what she based her conviction on, she gave me a look of pity I wouldn't understand for years and said, "Benjamin cannot die with so much left unfinished. The gods will not allow it."

I didn't think there were gods, but... I've been wrong before.

So you see how it is. I can't put into words how happy I am that you're alive. And I'd never tell you I want nothing to do with you. You were... you are my first love. That hasn't changed. I don't think it ever could. But it can't be like it was, or like it would have been if things had gone differently when Goodyear ended.

Please don't be angry.

Dear Tali,

How could I possibly be angry? For all you knew I was dead. You had to move forward. I'd be a real bastard if I had it in me to hold that against you, don't you think? Sure, I'm sad you can't join me here, but it was a blue-sky thought anyway. You've got your own life. Just knowing you're out there living it would be enough. That you're still willing to be any part, however distant, of mine is the icing on what's already been a hell of a good month.

Your husband sounds like a stand-up guy. I think I'd like to meet him some day. And your son, too, that's an ambitious plan for a 13-year-old. I like a kid who's not afraid to think big. If he finds picket duty in Scandia too dull for his taste once he's past his pilgrimage, I might have a job for him over here. I'm not just putting the band back together, I'm adding a serious horn section. The "new" Wedge Defense Force is going to be hundreds of ships strong. Maybe thousands. We're going to need experienced spacers by the bucketful to finally bring GENOM to heel.

Also, wait, your husband's grandfather was Kevirin'Zorah? I did know him. He was the first quarian I ever really got to know (our brief visit to the Flotilla in 2184 certainly didn't count). Served with Gin Shepard on the Normandy. Hell of a nice guy. Smart, too. He could make a data system get up and sing Aïda.

You mentioned Mordin a couple of times. Is he still kicking? I'm not actually convinced he had a life-extension treatment. I think he just refuses to die while there's still interesting stuff to do.

[...]

Dear Tali,

It's been a long time since I got a birthday present in the mail. Thank you! This is a terrific piece of kit. It'll take me years to figure out how to make it do everything it does, but I'm having a great time just fooling around with it.

Very much looking forward to having you and your family as my guests at our little shindig next weekend. I think you're going to like the show I've got planned.

[...]

Dear Benjamin,

If anyone else had made the announcement you made last Saturday, I'd have said he was crazy. But you... you might just able to pull it off. I'm looking forward to seeing it. The hologram was beautiful. I can imagine what the real city will be like.

It was wonderful to see you again. I'm glad you got to meet Vedik and Rael, too. I think you made quite an impression. Rael hasn't stopped talking about the tour of the shipyard you gave him. When the newest starship you've ever seen is a hundred-year-old Star Destroyer, seeing them being built from scratch is an unforgettable experience. As was meeting the Sterling sisters, I think. Clearly they all take after their parents.

Speaking of which, thank you for introducing me to Dr. Sterling and your father. I think their company can be a great help to us as we develop Scandia - not only Halo, but the space installations as well. Your father seems like a meticulous engineer (very safety-conscious), and I like his ideas. I think he'll impress the Conclave when the time comes to present proposals. Mind you, it looks like you'll be keeping him busy for quite a while with your own projects.

[...]

Oh, I almost forgot. I had a message waiting from Scott Chen when I got back to the Archangel. He called to tell me they're breaking ground on a new spaceport town on Euphrates, a hundred miles or so from New Goodyear, so that the port expansion they expect won't compromise the standard of living in town. They're going to call it Harrisburg. You'll never guess who the chairman of the port authority is - Herrick Mitchell. If you had asked me who I thought would be least likely to have stayed on Euphrates 25 years later...

Dear Tali,

Thank you so much for coming. It meant a lot to me to have you there for the big moment by the lake, and I had a great time meeting your family. I had a feeling I'd like Vedik, anyway. Rael's a sharp kid, though if you want a little unsolicited parenting advice from someone completely unqualified to give it, I think maybe he needs a hobby. He's awfully intense for his age. Don't get me wrong, I liked him, and I'm glad he had a good time on the tour, but I had to keep reminding myself he's only 14. I know life on the Flotilla is srs bsns, but damn. Were you like that at 14? I mean, he must have gotten it somewhere, and Vedik seems like he can undo his top button once in a while, so to speak.

Go figure about Herrick; I guess maybe all he really wanted was cable, and once New Goodyear had that, he was good to go. Suppose I should cross him off my list of people I need to track down and punch. (It's a long, long list. Zaeed Massani is right at the top. I think Vision knows where he is, too, but she won't tell me because she knows I'll hunt him down. Which is unfair. I won't hurt him permanently. I just want to punch him in the face one time. Is that so wrong?)

Speaking of people one feels a moral obligation to punch, I'm not sure if you knew, but there was a bunch of historical archive data on the omni-tool you sent me for my birthday. Yesterday I stumbled across the speech you made to the Conclave during Operation Desperate Gamble. I loved the part where that one admiral got in your face and you just got right back in his. "Then to hell with you!" I'm still grinning just thinking about it. You're a firecracker, kid. A dangerous and inscrutable interplanetary woman of mystery.

Dear Benjamin,

I'm not sure whether I should congratulate you on your promotion or not, given that you gave it to yourself and that you seem to have undercut yourself a little. If you're supreme commander of the whole WDF, why rear admiral? It seems a bit lacking in ambition. Or are you basing it on the number of ships in active service, so that as the fleet increases you'll promote yourself again?

The new pictures you sent me of New Avalon are impressive, but I particularly like the plans you included for some of the outlying settlements. Is it just my imagination, or do I recognize parts of the street plan of Goodyear in the one labeled "Prisoner's Base"? (I had to look up what that was. It's similar to a game our children play on the Flotilla called - this won't surprise you - "fuel raid". I used to be a champion fuel raider back on the Kythera.)

Rael is preparing for his pilgrimage, as I mentioned last time. I would be expecting hear from him, if I were you. He still has his heart set on a military career, not one in engineering, but he's not afraid of hard work, and he thinks helping with the rebuilding of the WDF would be a valuable experience, even if you can't find him - his phrase - "some soldiering to do."

For what it's worth, I think he's right. If he does petition you and you accept him, though, please be sure you're doing it because you really have something useful for him to do, not as a favor to me. You'd be doing neither of us a favor if you went easy on him just because he's my son - but you know that.

Dear Tali,

It's because I'm only interim supreme commander. I still hope I'll be able to get Zoner back in the top spot before game day with GENOM, in which case I'll just be in command of Blue squadron; if not, well, I can always swap my rank bars before the shooting starts. It'll mess up a lot of my plans, though. I haven't really got a backup plan for White squadron if that happens. But there's time yet. My agents in the Corporate Sector tell me they're still at least two years from being able to move against ZC, probably more like four.

Oh, uh, that last paragraph was very burn-before-reading, but you know that.

Funny you should mention Rael, the very next message in my inbox was a very polite note from him asking if he might trade some of his time and energy for valuable military experience he could then take back to the Union and put to use in the defense of the quarian people. I won't tell him his mother already wrote and told me I should be sure to work him hard if I hire him. Let the young man have his pride. Besides, you're right, I was going to anyway.

[...]

So he might even get to do some proper soldiering before it's all said and done. I won't lie to you, it could get a bit dangerous, but then I remember what you told me about quarians and danger way back when. Anyway, he's a smart kid, like you were. He'll know when to keep his sprocking head down. :)

Dear Tali,

Have a look at what turned up on our doorstep today:

Yup, it's a Ragtag Fugitive Fleet with a whacking great warship in the lead. (There's not much for scale in that picture - I didn't have a lot of time to set up my shot, and I would have killed for a wide-angle lens - but she's about the same size as the old SDF-17, a little smaller than the Archangel.) They turned up out of nowhere this morning, out at the edge of the system. Jim Kirk and I went out to meet them. Turns out they're human, though not from any previously known line. They're from a group of colonies nobody's ever heard of, which were colonized by another planet nobody's ever heard of, and they misfolded a bit back, so they have no clue whatsoever where they are. We think they might be from another galaxy. How exciting is that?

Their situation will probably strike you as familiar, too. They were driven from their homeworlds unexpectedly, so their evacuation fleet was not what you would call purpose-built, and they've been surviving on spit and baling wire repairs ever since. They haven't been at it as long as the Flotilla, but on the other hand, there are only about 200 ships in their fleet - maybe 50,000 people, all told. And only the one warship (they call it a "battlestar", which you have to admit is catchy). The rest are mostly freighters, liners, couple of ag ships. Some of them don't even have FTL of their own, they can only ride around on the big ship's fold drive.

Here's one way in which they're definitely more screwed than you guys were, though: Their enemies are still chasing them. (Robots, no less, why is it always robots? At least we think the Cylons are robots.) Maybe that's what made them more willing to ally with us than the Admiralty was back in 2184. Whatever the reason, they're inside the Sphere now. We're getting their civilians bunkered down and trying to figure out if we can even make their big ship (she's called Galactica) combat-worthy again. She's taken a hell of a beating.

We don't know how long before the Cylons get here, but the Colonial leadership is pretty convinced they'll trace Galactica's trail eventually. Good thing we were building a battle fleet anyway!

It never rains but it pours in this job.

By the way, what did Rael do to annoy the brass back home? He let slip the other day that he had to start his pilgrimage a little early, but clammed up when I asked him why. I'm assuming it's not related to his enormous collection of Minmay & the Marauders bootlegs...

Amazing. Did they build their robot aggressors themselves?

As for Rael, I'm surprised he didn't tell you the whole story. He and Han'Gerrel were pleased enough with themselves at the time. They were sent out on one of our ten-man corvettes as part of a convoy escort - everyone who's angling for a military career post-pilgrimage does it a few times, to make sure they have a head for that kind of service before they're committed. Some pirate band or another decided to help themselves to a straggler; the ship Rael and his friend were on took a pretty serious beating, and they - come to think of it, what they did was a classic Wedge Defense Force stunt, disobeying orders to save lives. So they were heroes, but also insubordinate. The admirals deadlocked on what to do with them, so they compromised - slapped on a couple of medals and then shipped them out to do their pilgrimages while the storm blew over.

Ha! I like this kid a little more every day. He still needs a hobby, though. Besides collecting punk rock music. Maybe he should join a band. We've got enough of them around here. It's probably hard to play the guitar with only two fingers, though. In fact, I can't think offhand of an instrument that is playable with two fingers. No, wait - trombone. I guess he'll have to join a ska band.

Or swanee whistle, I suppose, but all you can really do with that is be on I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue.

Surprisingly enough, the Colonials didn't build the Cylons. Someone else did. I'm fuzzy on the details, we only made First Contact with these guys yesterday, but the basic outline I'm getting from the historical docs I've skimmed is that the Cylons were built by some other civilization as robot soldiers, they got into a war with the Colonies umpteen hundred years ago, and then, I dunno exactly. They pulled a Vorlon, retired into a nebula or something, but nobody thought to shut the robots off before they left, so they've been mindlessly carrying on their makers' war. Or, well, not that mindlessly. They seem to have developed a much keener sense of strategy in the last decade or so; maybe they've gone heuristic.

Are you serious? That's even more of a karmic mess than what happened with us and the geth. At least we brought the geth on ourselves.

There's been a lot of debate - when is there not, I know, but - in recent years as to what the Quarian Union's position should be on synthetic lifeforms. The galaxy has a lot of them, after all, and most aren't a problem. Now that we're angling for full Federation membership, one of the things we have to face is whether to sign the Turing Accord. Some in the Conclave are absolutely opposed to this. They insist, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, that there's no such thing as machine life, only particularly convincing simulations, and that recognizing synthetics as life forms is a priori stupid. Worse, that it's dangerous - that the rest of the galaxy is on the same slippery slope we fell down when the geth rebelled.

And then there are those who accept that the situation with the geth got out of control because we - or rather our forefathers - screwed up. To them, the infamous "does this unit have a soul?" incident and its aftermath is a prime example of a botched First Contact, and if the 20th-century quarians had handled it better, we and the geth might today have a thriving composite society on Rannoch, or at least have gone our separate ways in peace.

The people closest to me, who know what happened to us on Halo - Vedik, his grandfather when he was still alive, Mordin - are a little surprised that I'd take the second view. (Well, maybe not Mordin so much.) After all, look at the record: My life was disrupted, the plans I had for my future ruined, by the interference of an AI. The irony did not escape me in the years after it happened. But I realized after a while, as I roamed the galaxy, met other synthetics, and broadened my horizons, that what Vision did wasn't the coldly calculated act of a rogue machine intelligence; it was the misguided act of a well-meaning person. She would have done the same thing if she had been made of flesh and blood.

Anyway, my point is, the relationship between quarian society and synthetic intelligence is still a tricky one. AI research is still strictly banned in the Union, and imports of foreign AI-based products are very tightly controlled, but if we're going to join the Federation, Turing is a bridge we're going to have to cross as a people. The news of your new contact, when it propagates to the general galactic public, is going to add a whole new wrinkle to that debate, so I'm glad I know about it now. It gives me time to plan what I'm going to say when it comes up on the floor of the Conclave.

(No, I haven't been elected to office or something and forgotten to tell you - but as the discoverer, so-called, of Halo and the leading figure in the ongoing research effort, for better or worse, my views carry some weight. I'm forever being asked what I think about things that are entirely outside my areas of expertise or interest. I might as well make use of that when a topic comes up that I actually give a damn about.)

The most important men in town will come to fawn on me
Like a Solomon the Wise
If you please, Reb Tevye
Pardon me, Reb Tevye
Posing problems that would cross a rabbi's eyes
And it won't make one bit of difference if I answer right or wrong;
When you're rich they think you really know!

Yes, exactly, except without the part about being rich. :)

Dear Tali,

Please find enclosed one (1) son, in proper working order with all relevant parts attached. In addition, he now comes equipped with 18 months' experience in starship construction and shipyard security operations and the Star of Avalon Second Class for his excellent service during last fall's throwdown with the Cylons. If he wasn't so hellbent on making his name in the Quarian Navy, I'd keep him. He's done a hell of a good job here. If he needs a letter of reference or anything for the captain of the ship he wants to join (and such a thing would do any good coming from me), let me know.

Seni seviyorum,
--G.

Dear Benjamin,

Before I start with the more unusual things, let me pass on this straightforward bit of good news: Rael has been confirmed as a member of the crew of the Rayya. She's a good ship, one of our heavy cruisers, and as one of her officers he stands to see a good bit of action on convoy duty - more if the Union's application for Federation membership is accepted this year and the Navy starts operating with Starfleet. Some of the younger captains are eager to try their hand at deep space exploration, and I suspect Captain Renjli is among them.

I've just come back from a two-week expedition to one of the unexplored sectors of Halo. Over the past two days I've had two very strange experiences, making this the oddest weekend I've had in quite some time.

On Saturday, Mordin and I were leading a team into one of the surface structures that turned up on our space surveys. (You may recall the pictures I sent you of the one we mapped in '79.) These things are scattered all over Halo, and at first we thought they were buildings, facilities of some kind left behind by the construct's original builders. Closer examination, though, reveals that they're actually part of Halo's internal structure that happen to stand higher than the simulated terrain. Inside, they extend deep into the inner workings of the ring, most of which remain unexplored and unexplained.

In this particular one, we made a few interesting discoveries that you probably wouldn't find that arresting - we think we know how the plants manage to propagate themselves without insects or animals, for instance - but the really interesting discovery was on sub-level four. There's what seems to be an automated factory down there, designed to build... well, we're not sure what they are. If I didn't know better, I'd say they were telejournalists' camera drones. Little spherical robots about the size of your head. There are no working ones and whatever system controls the factory seems to have failed or been shut off, but there are parts and semi-completed units. We're trying to get permission to assemble one by hand and see what they do, but you can imagine what an uphill climb that is. If I don't watch him carefully, Mordin will go ahead and do it anyway.

On Sunday, while I was back at base camp organizing my notes on that little discovery, who should turn up at my tent but Kei Morgan.

This was actually not the first time we'd met. I ran across her once during my wilderness years, after you disappeared. It... didn't go all that well, but I should probably admit for the record that it was my fault. I'm not sure what had happened to her, but she was about as aggressive as shyam noodles before I started shooting at her.

This time I was a little calmer, and she just wanted to talk. She said she was going around apologizing to everyone she'd hurt during her hunt for you. I said that must be taking her quite a while, and she smiled and said it was, but she'd made it as far as the middle of the Ses, so she had hopes of being finished with it this decade. That seemed to break the ice somehow. We ended up talking all night.

She's... an interesting woman. I won't say I liked her, exactly, but once we were done I couldn't bring myself to hate her any more. She's as haunted as the Queen of Ranroon, which is at odds with the image I had in my head of a remorseless sociopath. (Is that redundant? I think it is.) And for all that's passed between you, I can tell she's obviously still very much in love with you. It takes one to know one, as they say.

Before she left, she said she was thinking of asking you to take her back when she's done, and would I have any objection to that? There were a dozen or so things I could have said, most of them cruel, but after what she'd shared with me, all I could think of to say was that I'm married myself and don't have any say in what you do. Which is true and true. But it makes me wonder... would you? After all she did and tried to do to you?

I'm not asking out of some kind of strange jealousy; or maybe I am, but it's not anything I'm at liberty to act upon, if so. Mostly I'm just genuinely curious. I know you can forgive a lot - Miranda called it your "quality of mercy" once when she told me about your past together, such as it was - but...

I guess what I'm trying to say is, if the time comes when you have to make this decision, don't turn her away on my account. We've made our peace. It was an ugly time, but there's nothing to be gained by prolonging the ugliness for the sake of a grudge.

You are a fine and noble woman, Tali'Shukra vas Archangel. I've found it in me to forgive Kei for what she did to me - she thought she was trying to kill somebody else, in a sense - but I've had a hard time coming to grips with what she did to everyone else she trampled along the way. Knowing that you've come to your own terms with her is a big part of that weight removed.

Mind you, I'm busier than a one-armed paperhanger and she's apparently only up to S, so this is probably not an airlock I'm going to have to cycle anytime really soon, but it's still good to know. If nothing else, it's healthier for you anyway.

Dear Benjamin,

I've been invited to New Goodyear's 30th anniversary festival, which is being held the weekend of August 8. I know you're horribly busy - and so does the organizing committee, which is why they omitted to invite you - but perhaps you could take a day off and fly out for the barn dance Saturday evening. Mordin's deejaying. I'll wear my dress. I don't think Vedik's ever actually seen me in it before.

Dear Tali,

Intel Division and the Salusian SIS are both lit up like a Christmas tree this weekend. GENOM's on the move. Their fleets have come out of the Corporate Sector, and it looks like there are a lot more of them than we initially thought. They're already moving on a number of high-profile targets, including - we think - Earth.

I'm sending a recommendation to the Admiralty that they put your navy on high alert. Given GENOM's history with the Migrant Fleet, it wouldn't surprise me at all if they've got a task group heading your way right now, looking to get their own back for the Archangel Incident. I'm also sending over the Shanxi to offer support. It's just one ship, but then, the Minuteman Nine was, too, and they didn't do half-bad. Captain Williams has a personal interest in seeing the quarian nation stay free. You can trust her - she was your grandfather-in-law's shipmate.

I wish I could do more, but the fact of the matter is, GENOM's timing couldn't be worse. We're simply not ready. Most of the fleet is still in dock; we've got three to five months' work to do before we're ready for a full-dress throwdown with Largo's full force. I'm sending what ships we have operational to reinforce key points as much as we can, but it's going to be damn dicey.

And now, just when I have six million and eleventy-fourteen things that have to get done in the next 12-20 weeks, I've received a priority message calling me out to Musashi, which is approximately the last place I ever want to go back to. But it's ReRob's priority code. Which means it's important. Really important. So as soon as I finish this message I'm going. Vision calculates a 27.53% chance it's some kind of trap. I guess I'll find out when I get there.

Dear Tali,

Well, once again I've returned alive from Musashi. That was... unexpected. (What happened there, not that I made it back alive.)

ReRob's priority call turned out to be nothing less than the catalyst for the whole damn band getting back together. Rob's back. Kei and Yuri are back. Eve's back. Zoner's back. If we didn't have a galactic war to prosecute, we could go on a Card No. 1 reunion tour.

Well, I say Rob's back; he and his crew are actually still on Musashi, working to finish their own project. But he's back in the WDF, and so are his people. And with his help, and Eve's, and Yuri's, and a little persuading of my own, we've got Zoner back in harness. I'll be honest with you, that was my plan all along, but I've always figured it only had about a 30% chance of actually happening.

We might just win this thing after all.

Kei and I... have a lot of work to do, and "while GENOM is on the warpath and the whole damn galaxy is vibrating at 60 Hz in fear" is probably not the time to do it - but when have we ever done anything the right way around?

I'm leaving the Shanxi on station over there, partly because I think you guys are still very likely to be in GENOM's sights and partly because Ash would just refuse if I tried to recall her now anyway. Salusian women are stubborn. Did I type that part out loud?

Now is the time on Sprockets when we double our already frantic pace! This is beyond crunch time. We've got 500-odd ships that still aren't battleworthy, allied forces all across known space to coordinate with, and a grand admiral who hasn't commanded anything bigger than a flying car for a hundred years. I'm probably not going to be able to steal a lot of time to write until this thing comes to a head, one way or the other. After that... well, either I'll have a ton of spare time, or nobody will.

Be very careful, Tali'Shukra. I think the galaxy is about to turn a corner, and until we know what's around it, things are going to get good and hairy. Stay alive.

They may have routed Starfleet at Wolf 359 and fought the Salusians to a stalemate in the Trolorian Approaches, but GENOM's navy was no match for the Quarian Union today. The fleet has suffered some casualties - Admiral Torvan's ship was lost with most of her hands, including the admiral - but victory is ours.

By now you've already read the official report from the Admiralty, but I wanted to let you know I'm all right. Vedik, Rael and I were right in the thick of it - the Rayya destroyed one of their smaller Star Destroyers, and the Archangel was in the van for most of the fight - but we're all unharmed. GENOM sent a dozen of their largest ships and perhaps three times that number of smaller ones. With Captain Williams's help, we bloodied their noses and sent them packing.

The commander of the GENOM task group that came here wore a damaged copy of your face. I assume he was the replicant they used to frame you for the Musashi murders. As they were disengaging, he said he would be back for me once he'd dealt with you.

I don't fear for my own safety, but for yours. Never have I seen such naked hatred. Not even Kei at her worst was as crazed as this creature. Be very careful, Benjamin. The endgame cannot be far off now.

GENOM's at the door. The fleet's moving out now. We'll be in combat in about five minutes. We're not quite ready - the SDF-23 still doesn't work, and ReRob's not here yet to fix it - but we're a hell of a lot closer than I thought we'd be when they started this war back in June.

I know Kevirin'Zorah wasn't your ancestor, strictly speaking, but if you'd ask Vedik to drop a prayer or two his way for us, I'd appreciate it.

One way or another, this'll be over in 24 hours. If I don't see you again in this world, a chuisle, I wouldn't trade what little time we had for anything.

Holy shit, we did it.

HN1 and Largo are dead. HN1 got it in the naval battle, and I dealt with Largo personally. And he beat the mother-loving crap out of me, but that's okay. At the end of the day, I'm the one with my head still attached and he's the one with his skull on my desk. The rest of GENOM surrendered, after a little timely intervention from Vaughn Gross. We're going to have to figure out what to do with the company, but that can wait. I'm going to want to get at least 12 hours of sleep first.

Oh, and in addition to the whole company and all the MILARM ships we didn't blow up, check out the door prize we won!

It's... big. 550 miles or so in diameter. See that laser emitter? That actually managed to knock a hole in the Sphere. And we managed to capture it without blasting it all to crap, go us! You guys want it? You could park it out at the back edge of the Formation and really give those batarian assholes something to think about next time they come sniffing around.

I'm not sure we've tamped down all the regional brushfires, and the company's holdings in the Corporate Sector remain unreduced, so for now, you'd best stay wary, but I think the worst is past. Without Largo, it'll take a while for a leader to emerge in the parts of the company we haven't got a leash on yet.

From the Core to the Rim,
We are there, we will win!
Nothing can stop the Wedge Defense Force!

Woo! Still alive! And very punchy. I'm-a go to bed now. We can have the obligatory huge party dinner thing tomorrow sometime.

You utter madman. The reports that we've seen here have called the battle you just fought the greatest naval engagement in modern history. When I heard that you had led a mission to infiltrate that giant battle station and confront Largo directly, I knew it had been your idea. It was a brilliant move. The last thing they would expect. And I knew you would succeed.

What I wasn't quite so sure of was whether you would survive... and I can't say how relieved I am that you did. Enjoy your rest, space hero. You've earned it. Keelah se'lai.

Dear Tali,

Fool that I am, I thought the train wreck of life-altering surprises would be finished once we'd beaten Largo. Ha! Little did I realize that was just the beginning.

We were sitting around the SDF-23's forward observation deck earlier, after the giant celebratory dinner, sort of riding out the adrenaline crash, still tired despite all the sleep we got yesterday, and talking about what happens next. There's a new Kilrathi invasion in progress in the Vega sector, as you may have heard, and Starfleet's still picking up the pieces from Wolf 359, so we've been asked to help out with that. And there's the continuing problem of what to do with GENOM, and so forth.

And then Kei sort of casually mentions, oh yeah, forgot to tell you guys in all the excitement, I'm pregnant.

What do you say at a moment like that? I couldn't think of anything. Rob said "BWWWaaaaAAAAAA!!!!!!", which summed it up pretty well anyway.

In one of the terrifying ironies with which my life is filled, it must have happened on Musashi back in June. Uh, on my birthday. I'm glad you can't actually see me right now, though I can imagine the ghost of the look you're giving me anyway.

Anyway, um. Hm. This part is awkward. See, my first inclination is to invite you and Vedik to the wedding - it'll be on the 31st, somewhere here in Zeta - but... well, you could certainly be forgiven for lacking interest, under the circumstances. I know you said you and Kei made peace a couple of years ago, but... Well, let's leave it that I'd love it if you came, but if you'd rather not, I completely understand.

That, and the notice is a little short. (True story: My father remarried in... when was that, 2196 or thereabouts, I think. We're somewhere rimward of the Terminus dealing with pirates and I get a call from him. "Hey. Me and Sue are getting married Saturday. Can you come?" This was, I think, Thursday night. He lived on Earth at the time.)

... It keeps coming back and hitting me again that I'm going to be a father. Me. What I know about raising children you could write down on the back of a... a really small thing. I would be completely panicking right now if I didn't know Max and Miria Sterling. And Marty Rose. Did I ever tell you about Marty? Marty knows these things.

Oh, who am I kidding, I'm completely panicking anyway. But I'm also ridiculously pleased. I never thought I was particularly interested in founding a dynasty, and I certainly hadn't intended to just now, but with the Force rebuilt, Largo destroyed, and New Avalon well along... I don't know, the time seems right.

I did not see this coming.

Of course we'll be there. As it happens, we have an excuse to visit Zeta Cygni anyway; the Conclave has voted to award Captain Williams a medal for her performance in aid of the Navy in the action against GENOM last month, and someone has to deliver it on their behalf. It might as well be Vedik, particularly since there are rumors that he's being considered to fill the vacancy on the Admiralty Board.

I'm pleased for you, Benjamin. And for her. The last time Kei and I spoke, I got the sense that this sort of stability was what she needed more than anything else to finish healing, as much as anyone can ever heal, the wounds Largo's plot inflicted all those decades ago... and she has loved you for so much longer than I've even been alive. As you once told me, I'd be a real bosh'tet if I had it in me to hold that against her, wouldn't I?

At the risk of seeming like a xenologist, I'm also intrigued by the idea of what children raised in your... unique culture will be like. Growing up in that environment, surrounded by you and your friends, your eldest is liable to found a chivalric order or become a famous film star. Or both.

Send me more concrete details as you get them and Vedik and I will make our travel plans. As they say aboard the ships where one of Earth's ancient religions has found a foothold in the last few decades, mazel tov.

Dear Tali,

I had been expecting my and Kei's firstborn to come along in New Avalon, but you know what they say about the best-laid plans, right? We were actually about 20 hours out of Zeta when the Time Came, as they say. Which was... interesting. I have to get a doc droid for this ship. Barn door, horse gone, etc. Anyway.

It's a girl, we decided to call her Kaitlyn after a friend of mine from before WPI and Yuri after Kei's partner. I know that for some weird reason people always want to know babies' birth weights and how long they are, but to be honest I don't know either of those things and I'd feel ridiculous digging the tape measure out of the tool kit to measure my newborn daughter. She's a decent size. Sort of... newborn-sized. She's got my hair, poor kid, but Kei's eyes, so that works. As for what the rest of her will look like, who knows? Human babies all look alike to me. Mother and daughter, since we're hitting all the stock phrases, are doing well.

We're on Earth now; we were on our way here to check out a couple of things and generally get out of town for a while. (Yes, Kei was already in a hospital before we left. No, the irony there did not escape us. But she was ready to leave; at that point staying was just reminding her of how she got there, and we were both all too willing to put that behind us.) Kate came along on the morning of the 17th. Born in hyperspace, no less! Does that make her an honorary quarian?

Anyway, I've got to run - have to go see a man about a job (Yuri and Eve think they've found me the right guy to head up GENOM's side of the big corporate realignment), and then I'm off to buy some real estate.

Benjamin, you colossal fool. You honestly don't know the first thing about parenting, do you? You're supposed to include holos with a birth announcement. We even do that, and our newborns really do all look alike (or rather their isolation capsules do). :)

Seriously, congratulations, to you and Kei. You're probably feeling a bit overwhelmed right now - I know Vedik and I did - but you'll do fine.

It seems today is a day for passing along family news. I found out yesterday that Rael plans to marry this summer. His fiancée is one of the Rayya's engineers, which prompted his father to make a few remarks about the family tradition. To hear him tell it - and I remember his grandfather making the same comment once - the Zorah men have a long-established custom of marrying women who are smarter than they are. Mind you, though Vedik's mother is a very clever woman, his father is a well-regarded biochemist who has done a lot of the pioneering work on the Halo Acclimation Project - even Mordin holds Arnim'Zorah vas Kedrin in high regard - but when I point that out, I'm told airily that it skips a generation now and then.

So, just as you are finding it hard to accustom yourself to the idea that you're a father, I'm having to confront the notion that I'll be a grandmother before too much longer. It hardly seems possible. I feel the same age as I was in Goodyear.

Of course, that's because I am, but we needn't get into that. It's the one secret I've kept from everyone in my life. Now that Kevirin'Zorah is gone, only you and Mordin - and possibly Miranda, I can never be sure if anything is secret from Miranda - know what Mordin and I did that day on Halo. I've never even told Vedik. When we were married I had to pretend I was sick for three days. Kevirin and I agreed that it was a secret best kept, and for obvious reasons, it's been fairly easy to do.

I don't seem to be able to pass it on - Mordin tested Rael when he was born and found no indications - so it's just as well. Sometimes I think I should tell Vedik, but... well, what would it profit him to know that I'll most likely outlive him and our son? Sometimes I have to just stop and think about that. I don't think we're old enough yet for it to really sink in - I'm 52 and Vedik is 54 - but how does one cope with this knowledge as time goes on and civilization itself ages? You must have relatives on Earth who are as far removed from you now as I am from the last quarians to live on Rannoch.

I'm sorry. It's hardly fair of me to maunder about these things in response to your joyful announcement. Like you said back in Goodyear, I've bought the ticket and now I have to take the ride - and I wouldn't change my decision, even if I had known that my ultimate purpose in making it would never be realized. Just that one kiss we shared was worth it.

And, for the record, I still expect holos.

Dear Tali,

You're just about on schedule; I had my first serious "holy crap, what have I done?" moment when I was in my early fifties too. Mind you, I had it easier, because I was just one Detian in a whole community of 'em, and most everybody around who wasn't one was Salusian and thus was going to live for three or four hundred years anyway, but still - we were back in regular contact with Earth by then, and I realized as I watched my father's generation pass, and I was still 18, that I really was in it for the long haul... though it didn't really hit me until Tamaran. I'm sure I told you that story...

I wish I had a magic bullet for you, some kind of mantra or tidbit of wisdom that would make it all snap into a new perspective, but it's really just a matter of time. As things change and evolve, so you learn to accept that they're going to, regardless of whether you approve. I've seen it speculated by some sociologists that the galaxy's so-called retro bent is the result of immortals like me hanging onto the past we remember and refusing to advance, but I don't know that I buy that. I mean, yes, I like things that remind me of the era I grew up in, but I don't think I'm trapped in the past. I'm just enjoying the future more because I remember when it wasn't here.

You'll get there. It doesn't not hurt, but then life doesn't for people with regular lifespans either. There'll always be those moments - the ones that make you wonder why you did it, and the ones that make you glad you did. The only trick, if there is one, is to try and make sure they balance in the long run.

Kei doesn't like the pictures I took. She says she's buying a new camera when we get back to New Avalon and then you will have, and I quote, "more baby holos than (you) can stand."

Oh - and you didn't ask, so feel free to ignore this, but for what it's worth, I think you ought to level with Vedik. You'll probably find he knows, or at least suspects, anyway, and hasn't felt it was his place to confront you about it. Even with the advantages your culture gives you in hiding it, he's too smart not to know something's up. It's not going to turn him against you. The guy's absolutely crazy about you. Like you said about Kei, takes one to know one.

That was, bar none, no question, without any fragment of a doubt, the. weirdest. week of my life. Period.

I'm not sure how I can even start to explain what just happened. Remember a few years ago when you said you didn't think there were gods, but you'd been wrong before? Well, have I got a story for you.

[...]

So yeah, uh, interesting week. Hung out with a lot of old friends... most of whom are dead. Picked up a fancy new peripheral for my omni-tool. Got the girl, killed the baddies, saved the entire universe. Oh, and now I get to do all that work I did restarting the WDF? Again. Only probably more so.

I need a vacation.

Dear Benjamin,

Strangely, this is not the first time you've told me something that no reasonable person would ever believe. And it's not the first time I've believed you. I'm not sure what that says about either of us. If you don't mind, though, I think I'll keep it to myself. Many of my people would be very disappointed to learn that the afterlife is a cold and snowy place populated by Vikings. For that matter, I would be too if I had previously believed there was one in the first place.

Why do you have to duplicate the effort of restarting the Wedge Defense Force? I'm unclear on how that follows from helping to avert the prophesied end of the universe. I can't believe I just seriously typed that.

Dear Tali,

I don't have to duplicate it exactly, not in the sense of starting another space navy or anything. Well, not at first. That may come later, if... maybe I should start at the beginning.

What I have in mind is a completely different kind of agency. I'm only in the very, very early stages of developing the concept, but I see it as a kind of international police organization. And as to how it connects with the Ragnarök, well... a few of us were in a conference room after all the craziness was over with, trying to get a handle on the long-range implications, and Skuld said, "This was only the warning tone."

[...]

This is probably going to be even more complicated than setting the WDF back up was, now that I think about it, but I'm committed now. And anyway, the galaxy needs it, or it soon will. At least I'm only doing half of it. Zoner's got the other half. Supposedly. I haven't actually seen him since he wandered off with Eris. Hopefully he remembers that he said he was going to take care of the diplomatic part... although now that I think about it, that sort of fills me with fear.

Apropos of nothing, I should introduce you to Skuld. I think you'd like each other. She's a very technical girl.

Dear Tali,

Today I've spent the day handling some of the fallout from last fall's Interesting Week. For the most part this has involved making repeated round trips between New Avalon and Nekomikoka. In absolute terms I think I've covered something on the order of 2,500 light years today, which may explain why I'm exhausted even though I haven't actually done anything at either end but stand around being in people's way.

The upshot of it all, though, is that I have not one, but two sons to report. And yes, I did send you holos this time; they're under separate cover because I'm too tired to work this fershluginer attachment widget properly.

The first one you see there is Corwin, he's Skuld's son, which I guess means he was technically there for the Battle of Asgard. Do not give me that look. It was literally the day before the end of the world. This is especially traumatic if you happen to be the personification of the future. And the second one's Leonard - obviously he's Kei's - who was born about an hour later.

You want to talk about ready-made peer groups, there's a whole raft of these kids being born right around now, to those of us who were there at the Ragnarök. They're all going to hit the New Avalon public school system together in five years.

I think the school district's going to need a bigger boat. :)

Dear Benjamin,

I wasn't giving you any look. I am now, but I wasn't at the time. At the time, if I had been inclined to give such a look to anyone, it would've been Skuld.

They're handsome boys. I know you think all infants look alike, but trust me, they are. And they both have your eyes. I can easily envision both, in 15 or 20 years' time, as serious breakers of hearts.

And I think you're right about the school district. If you make your donation now, they can probably complete the new building by the time it's needed.

Dear Benjamin,

Rael has just informed us that he and his wife will be blessed with a child, if all goes according to expectations, sometime early next summer. I'm still not sure how I feel about the prospect of being a grandmother, but Vedik is ecstatic, and I'm certainly not upset, just... it feels a little strange.

I only wish Vedik's father had lived to see this day; Arnim worked so hard for so long on the Acclimation Project, in hopes of giving the generation after Rael's a hope of living free on Halo. Although he and Rael would probably just have gotten into an argument about it if he were here. Rael doesn't approve of the Acclimation Project. Over the last few years, he's settled firmly into the "Rannoch or nothing" camp. It's the one serious bone of contention between us.

Rael's also been promoted to second officer of the Rayya. He told me about that first, actually. I wonder about his priorities sometimes.

Did you ever have one of those days when you discovered something you thought was tremendously exciting on its own merits, but you knew was going to cause you a huge amount of tsuris when everybody else found out about it? Well, that's my day today.

Meet 2401 Penitent Tangent. He calls himself the Monitor of Installation 05, i.e., Halo. I'm not sure which is going to make more noise in the Conclave, the fact that we discovered an ancient AI construct, or the implication that there are, or have been, at least four more Halos. (And no, I don't know why penitent or tangent. Something lost in translation, perhaps.)

Tangent appears to be the same sort of device as the ones we found incomplete versions of on a defunct assembly line a few years ago. He says they're less advanced models than he is, not intended to be self-aware, and that he's the only proper AI on the ring. His job, as he describes it, is... well, basically just to make sure the automatic systems keep working. Which they do so well that he claims he's been in sleep mode since around 47,000 BSC. The other ones are just mobile terminals for him.

What's really amazing, though, is that Tangent himself is not the most fantastic discovery we've made this expedition. What Tangent showed us when we reactivated him is. He directed us to another of those outcrop/buildings, in a sector we hadn't explored yet. It's a facility he calls the Cartographer, and you can guess from that what it does.

We had to run around, shut down its security, and then run around again to get into the place, but it was worth it. The Cartographer contains a complete map of Halo, not just the surface but the substructure, with detailed explanations for what everything is and does. It'll take us years just to sift through all the information that's here, but in one day we've taken an enormous leap toward understanding what Halo really is.

Tangent himself is not that much help, sad to say. He says he's programmed to monitor Halo, not explain it, and that if I am truly the Reclaimer - whatever that means - I'll be able to work it out for myself.

The good news is that, whatever he's here to monitor, he doesn't object to our presence. It doesn't appear to matter to him at all that we're here, or that we may establish permanent settlements on the surface at some point. If anything, he seems pleased to have the company.

The Conclave is just going to love this.

Wow. 50,000 years old and it still works. Whatever civilization built that knew what they were doing. I wonder who it could've been? I mean, 50,000 years, that's way too long ago to have been Mandalor or Atlantis, or even the Padishah Empire. That's serious previous-epoch territory. Pyramids of Mars old. Earth still had a twin on the opposite side of the Sun back then. Do keep me posted on what you learn from the Cartographer, would you? It's a lot more interesting than the niceties of interstellar diplomacy.

Ah, I shouldn't bitch. Zoner's really come through, which I wasn't sure was a given when he went off on the whole "avatar of chaos" thing after the Ragnarök. The Babylon Foundation is perking away and between me, him, and Jer Feeple, we've just about got the International Police Accords knocked into a shape that reasonable nations might actually want to sign.

Mind you, I'm not entirely sure that this "Earth Alliance" that replaced Olympus once GENOM withdrew from Earth is going to be a reasonable nation - the charter they're debating for the Psi Corps rather argues against - but it's early days yet. They may calm down some once the memories of the Corporate Occupation have had a chance to fade a little.

Now all we need to do is find a place to put Babylon Station. Zoner thinks a big building in New Avalon would be fine, but I'm convinced that it should be somewhere less obviously aligned, not to mention more convenient for the delegates from, well, pretty much anywhere other than Zeta Cygni. We've got a short list. Once we have the site nailed down, I'm going to make sure whatever contractor we hire (yeah, three guesses who that's gonna be, I mean we're not going to cheat on the bid process, but) is aware that the Quarian Union is a good place to start if you're looking to hire experienced space hab technicians. And the Freespacer Home Fleet. Think they'll be able to work together? :)

Dear Benjamin,

I can no longer deny the inevitable. On this day, I must bow my head before the gods and acknowledge the pitiless truth:

I am a grandmother.

Rael's wife Zira'Vel gave birth to a daughter about an hour ago, in a cleanroom here in the Rayya's sickbay, with her friend Shala'Raan in attendance. I had to stay outside - Shala synchronized her biosuit with Zira's two weeks ago so that they would both be over the acclimation sickness in plenty of time. This shows considerable foresight on Zira's part. She knows her husband well enough to know that he wouldn't attend himself.

I am slightly furious with my son, but I suppose I have myself to blame. I suspect his tendency to focus on his duties to the exclusion of all else is a behavior he learned from me when he was small. I have to be honest with myself and admit that I was probably not the most enthusiastic parent the first few years of his life. But that does not excuse his refusal to go on the sick list for the birth of his child! That's something he should have done for Zira, if nothing else.

I'm sorry. This is supposed to be a moment of joy, not an excuse for an old woman to grumble about her pigheaded son. And however annoyed I am with her father, Rael and Zira's daughter is definitely a little spark of joy. Zira insists she looks like me. I think that might be stretching the point, but I do have to admit she's a little charmer. I suspect the magic will be lost on you, but I've sent along a picture anyway.

In case you're wondering why I haven't told you her name, it's because she doesn't have one yet. Zira decided to wait until Rael could participate in at least that much of the process, presumably because she didn't wish to force her daughter to go through life dragging the name "My Father is a Big Fat Idiot'Zorah" behind her.

Dear Tali,

Awww, it's a portable bio-isolation unit! Oh, no, wait, there's more than one image in this encode. Here we go... Oh! Aw, she's precious. Come on, I'm not completely indifferent to these matters, particularly not now that I've got three of my own. Though I have to admit, on a baby those ears look pretty funny.

I don't blame you for being annoyed with Rael. I'm not entirely clear on how these things work, socially speaking, among quarians, but I know that if I'd tried to skip out on, oh, let's say Leonard's birth, with the excuse that it was a work day, his mother would have skinned me and used me to cover the couch. On the other hand, I didn't have to prepare two weeks in advance - but then it's not as if Rael didn't have any advance notice. Little thing like your wife being pregnant? At least among humans, that becomes sort of obvious some time before game day.

But I did tell you years ago the kid needs a hobby.

I don't think you get to play the "I was a bad parent" card here, either. You were coming off a major disappointment your first few years back on the Flotilla. Maybe you should've waited a while longer before starting a family, I dunno, I wasn't there. But all things considered, you did all right. Remember, I spent 18 months with at least one eye him while he was working for me over in the Yard. He gets fixated on work, sure, and he's got no sense of humor, but in many other respects it's obvious he was raised right. You can't give Vedik all the credit for that.

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.

Anyway, from what I've heard about Zira, I imagine he's going to hear all about it very soon, if he hasn't already. Maybe there'll be a useful lesson in there for next time.

And, while I'm refuting your assertions with cold, hard facts, let me just point out that you're not old either.

Dear Benjamin,

I believe that sincerely was your best attempt at being reassuring. That's slightly depressing. You're probably right, though. I know Mordin agrees with you.

You're definitely right about Zira. When Rael came off-duty at 0930 and finally showed up in sickbay, she wouldn't even let him enter Recovery Decon until he apologized at the window, not just to her, but to their daughter as well. On his knees. It was most impressive and satisfying. Shala'Raan and I didn't even have to do anything but stand there and radiate nonverbal disapproval.

Perhaps in an effort to appease us, Rael suggested that they name her after me. I think Zira was leaning toward naming her after Shala, but she chipped in that she thought it was a great idea, so Tali'Zorah she is, and may Keelah have mercy on her soul. So now, in addition to resigning myself to being a grandmother, I'll have to put up with being called "Tali the Elder".

And there is nothing wrong with her ears, thank you.

Sadly, there won't be a next time for Rael to apply any lessons learned from this one. He and Zira have already given their second child allowance to another couple aboard their ship who wish to have a third. This is not an uncommon practice - Vedik and I did it as well - but it's a bit sad, inasmuch as it means little Tali's the end of the line for this branch of clan Zorah. But she's healthy and strong, and at the end of the watch, that's what's important.

Oh, and don't think I've forgotten what day it is in all the excitement. If nothing else, Zira's timing is good; I'll never forget my namesake's birthday. And happy birthday to you, too.

Dear Tali,

Thanks. My best birthday present this year is knowing your tribe has increased. Keelah se'lai.

And, for the record, you're the sexiest grandmother in the fleet. Ask anyone. Except Mordin. He clearly doesn't get that kind of thing. But I definitely still would. You know, if we weren't both married and didn't live a million-zillion miles apart.

Your being married didn't stop you and Skuld...

Ah, God, I do miss that arch little look I know you were giving me when you said that.

Anyway, I might be the kind of guy who goes to another tent on the night before the end of the world (at his wife's instruction, I must remind you), but I'm not the kind of guy who'd steal another man's wife. Well, not a man I liked, anyway. I mean, if Vedik were a total creep who clearly didn't deserve you, that'd be one thing.

Phew. This is veering toward the sort of territory that could get somebody blackmailed someday. We'd better quit while we're ahead.

Pah. Blackmail works only on people who have something to hide.

Good night, Benjamin.

Dear Tali,

I expect you've seen it on the newswire by now, but in case you haven't, our first attempt at building Babylon Station ended in a complete shambles today. Somebody rammed a bulk freighter into the superstructure, blew their reactor, and smashed it all to hell. It's a complete loss, it'll be quicker and cheaper to just scrap it all and start over. Luckily, the crews were able to evacuate, so the only people who got killed were whoever was flying the freighter. We don't know who it was yet, but we'll find out.

Well, we knew this project wasn't going to be popular in some circles. Guess we'll have to beef up security on the site and try it again.

Sigh.

Oh my. Your father must be heartbroken. I hope he wasn't hurt.

No, he's fine. He was the last one out of the project office, but we made sure there was good shielding at that end of the complex. They were never in any real danger. And he saved all the diagrams, so we won't have too much of a delay getting started again. I yelled at him a little for that - I mean, the place is coming down around your ears, the hull breach alarm's going off, screw the documents, right? But he's not a lifelong spacer like us; he's spent most of his career building stuff on the ground. He doesn't have those instincts.

And I don't know if I'd say he's heartbroken. "Royally pissed off" would be more the phrase I would reach for. He hates people breaking stuff he built by accident, let alone on purpose. And the one thing we absolutely know right now is that this was on purpose. That ship was fully under control until the moment of impact, and that reactor cookoff was not crash-induced. These assholes deliberately rammed the station and set off their self-destruct.

There's a special spit in Hell for people like that to roast on. I know, I've seen it.

... for now you face...

... the Spawn of MegaZone.

Behold the terror, all... hang on, I have it written down here, you see, I am learning... seven point two five Standard pounds of it. (You can calculate her length yourself with the handy scale guide I included in the holo!) Sylvie Anri Daniels, future scourge of the cosmos. Look at those evil little eyes, those snarling lips, those chubby fists already prepared to punch the galaxy in the middle of its face.

No, okay, I admit, she's adorable. But then, with Yuri's genes in there she'd be hard-pressed not to be, even if she did end up with her old man's nose.

Kei's figuring on providing her with a playmate in a couple of months. After that I think I'm calling a halt to this whole parent business. Four is quite enough, thank you very much. I do not have a Rameses the Great complex.

... Say, there's an idea. If you don't want to be called "Tali the Elder" - and who could blame you - see if you can get people to start calling you "Tali the Great". I mean, you did discover Halo. More or less. And the Cartographer. And Tangent. And Mordin, whom I truly believe should be declared a national treasure by the quarian government. And... well, you're just generally great.

You are not exactly an unbiased witness, but thank you.

Please pass my congratulations on to Zoner and Yuri. And possibly my condolences to Yuri, who now presumably has to raise a child with Zoner alongside her trying to help. As your friend Dr. Duke says, I think I am getting the Fear.

Dear Tali,

Remember a couple of months ago when I said I was done fathering children at four? As it turns out, that was predicated on a false assumption, that being that Kei was only working on one.

So here we have Priscilla (named after Priss from New Japan, of whom you've heard - Kei's idea) and Gai (pronounced "Guy"; Kei swears it's someone she knew at work around the time I was with Priss and it's not just that she wasn't expecting him and didn't have a name prepared). We were thinking of middle-naming them after you and Vedik, but we thought we should check with you first. This is going to seem weird, but Priss's eyes kind of remind me of yours. No, look at the picture before you decide I'm crazy. They're blue and not reflective, but they're so pale that in some lights they look silver.

Okay. Five. I can handle five. But this is absolutely it, at least until this batch is grown up and out of the house.

Help.

You'll get no sympathy from me, space hero. It's not as if you played no part in any of it. :)

They're beautiful. (And you're right about Priscilla's eyes, how odd. That will get some lucky boy or girl's attention in a few years.) Vedik and I would be deeply honored to have them bear our names.

Dear Tali,

Sometimes I hate living in the future.

By that I mainly mean that life was a lot simpler when it wasn't possible for people to build elaborate cybernetic traps that take more than a hundred years to fire, then leave them lying around the galaxy for me to trip over them all unsuspecting. Especially assassin androids. I hate assassin androids for a bunch of reasons. Chief among them the fact that they give all the other androids a bad name. It's difficult maintaining public credibility as a robot-rights advocate when killer robots keep attacking you in shopping malls.

This particular one annoyed me even more because she had a copy of Largo in her head. Dammit, call me demanding, but when I kill a man I expect his ass to stay dead.

Still, all's well that ends well. I managed to subdue her (killer she-robot with Largo's matrix in her. that boy had issues) and Larry yanked the Largo chip. She's going to spend a little time with us while she tries to figure out who the hell she is without Largo timesharing her neural net.

Makes me wonder, though, how many other contingency parts of Götterdämmerung are still out there somewhere, hanging fire because Largo was a sloppy programmer. Makes my head hurt.

On the plus side, Thursday is Kate's birthday. I can't believe she's five already. Five and sharp as a tack, though I'm a little worried. She still has the stutter I told you about, and it's not responding to therapy at all. It's weird, too, because talking to me or Marty Rose, she doesn't stutter at all, but anybody else? It's not too bad with her mother, or Eiko, or Zoner and Yuri, but with strangers she can barely talk at all. The doctors are completely baffled, even Rocky Stone hasn't got a clue what's causing it - there's no physical reason for it as far as he can tell. But something has to be causing it, and it's going to make life hard for her when she starts school this fall. Kei thinks maybe we ought to home school her, but I don't know... if it's a social anxiety thing, she's never going to get over it unless she's more broadly socialized.

This parenting stuff is hard.

Dear Tali,

Just got home from Ishiyama, where - as usual - what was intended to be a simple social call turned into a wild and crazy adventure. I have to feel for General Yanagi, I really do. Of all the times to try and spring his coup, he does it while Kei and I are visiting the Hanagumi. Poor bastard.

Despite the unexpected need to fight off half the Imperial Army from the front lawn of the Emperor's summer palace - or, hell, maybe because of it - it was good times. Kei and the girls got on really well (arguably, slightly too well), and we found out that Sakura has a daughter who's about Corwin and Len's age, so it's a fairly safe bet that that already dangerous peer group just acquired another aspiring galactic hero. Sumire had some problems, but we, er, sorted them out. And it was fun to fight alongside the Hanagumi again. Just like old times. I hadn't piloted a Kohbu in, hell, 40 years?

Inevitably, because of the timing - I'd left Ishiyama just before I got the invitation to that auction on Omega - I thought of you a lot. After what happened on Ishiyama, I felt... used up, emotionally. Burned out. Not only did I think I didn't care any more, I assumed I was no longer worth caring about, either. I think I wanted to be that cynical, that bitter, simply because giving a damn had gotten to the point where it hurt too much.

And then you came along.

Without you - without what we became to each other during our time in Goodyear - I don't think I'd have been able to accomplish what I did after my warp drive accident. My head wouldn't have been in anything like the right space for me to make a career for myself in Starfleet, to forge the friendships I had to have to make it work, or to command the loyalty of my crew that eventually saw me through on Salusia when we crossed back over. I wouldn't have been a good enough man to make any of that that happen, and I wouldn't have cared enough to bother trying anyway.

So when I tell you tayyôr qitæn, I mean it more literally than most. I think you really did save my soul. I'm incalculably lucky you came along when you did. I'm not sure I've ever told you all that in so many words, and after unexpectedly reconnecting with the part of my past that immediately preceded it, it's been very much on my mind.

I love you so much.

... Wow. That was unexpected. Not unwelcome, mind you, but unexpected.

I'm flattered to think that I singlehandedly reversed the course of your life, but here's something you should consider: I didn't do it alone. You're the one who took the first step. If you had truly been as low as you thought, you would have walked away on Omega and left me to my fate. But you didn't. You risked confronting one of the most dangerous criminal organizations in the galaxy for the sake of a perfect stranger. No one incapable of caring would ever have done a thing like that.

If you hadn't, then I wouldn't be here now, and Rael and Tali'Zorah wouldn't exist at all. So, on the whole, I would say we're about even. And you know I love you too.

Well! That's knocked what I was going to write you about today quite out of my head. I had intended to write later this afternoon to tell you about the latest developments on the Halo front. There's good and bad news there, as is often the case. The good news is that the Conclave has finally gotten around to acknowledging that Tangent can help us and shouldn't be interfered with in his duties (not that they had much choice, given the Federation charter's language about pre-epochal relics).

The bad news is that the Acclimation Project isn't progressing as quickly as Mordin had hoped. A few volunteers from the experimental town at what used to be Goodyear (which, with typical imagination, the Conclave still calls "Test Settlement One", though the residents have taken to calling it "Soluston", much to Mordin's embarrassment) tried to go a month with their biosuits in open protocol (not taking them off, but disengaging most of the filters), and... it didn't go well. Mordin insists that he got a lot of useful data in the process, and nobody died, but it'll clearly be a long time before anyone can live in the open down there.

Still, we persevere. Science, Mordin reminds me, is a relentless lesson in the universe's indifference to our desires.

Speaking of science, did Kohran ever get her capital-wide messaging system working? When I was there, a year or so after you disappeared, she was making progress with the clockwork pigeon protocol, but the constant demon attacks were interfering with her testing schedule.

Once again I've typed something that shouldn't make any sense at all. They say the pilgrimage is supposed to broaden one's horizons, but I don't think the ancients had contact with your world in mind when they devised it.

But, as I've told you before, I wouldn't change a thing. Well, one thing. But, as we know, there's no point dwelling on that.

Dear Tali,

They've done it again. This time it was some sort of internal sabotage, we're still figuring out the details. It looks like somehow they managed to bypass the internal energy distribution systems' safeties and the damage control protocols and flash all the station's internal power lines to plasma. Basically, a very sophisticated form of good old-fashioned arson. The resulting overpressure blew bulkheads out all over the place and the heat warped major structural members throughout the spaceframe. The whole thing's a total loss, again.

Worse, this time people got killed. Not many, luckily. We think they were trying to take out the entire night shift crew, but they blew their timing and set it off during the changeover. Almost everybody was either off the station or near enough to an evacuation area. About two dozen people weren't so lucky, but if they'd gotten it right the total would've been more like 6,000. Not much consolation to those two dozen families, though.

I say "they", we don't really know it was the same people. Nobody's taken responsibility for this one yet.

Dad's all right, and it was just dumb luck this time. He was supposed to be aboard for the shift change, had some instructions he wanted to pass on to the night crew, but at the last minute he had to meet with a vendor rep and they insisted on having the meeting down on Bajor rather than on the station. The time difference between B2 and Jalanda City saved his life.

I am, as the noted Weekly World News political columnist Ed Anger used to say, pig-biting mad. If I wasn't so busy picking up the pieces, I'd go out and find the people responsible, and demonstrate my disapproval personally. As it is, Kei and Yuri are on it, so those people are probably even more screwed.

All I'm trying to do is save the universe here. Why do so many people feel the need to get all up in my grille about that?

Dear Benjamin,

There's just no pleasing some people. If three decades as the unofficial chief representative of all the Halo research projects to the Conclave have taught me anything, it's that.

I'm glad your father is safe. Such narrow escapes were commonplace on the Flotilla when I was young; they've tapered off a great deal since we stopped roaming the cosmos and settled in Scandia, since even though we still live aboard our ships, we aren't subjecting them to the stresses of constant interstellar travel any longer.

Also, I think you'll find it's "all up in my grill". No e.

Really? I always assumed it was a metaphorical reference to the shiny bit on the front of a car. Ah, well. Clearly I am not "down with the street".

Though I kind of have to wonder how it is that you are, given that you spend most of your time exploring an ancient space habitat and the rest living aboard a Star Destroyer.

Just because we live on ships doesn't mean we don't have a youth culture. In fact, if anything, our adults are more thoroughly exposed to what our young people are up to because of the close living conditions on the Flotilla. Even I, a certified old person, understand the importance of being able to both pop and lock.

Your kung fu is best.

Dear Tali,

If Ephrem Broadbank doesn't stop encouraging his daughter Liza to torment Kate at school, I swear to Christ I'm going to have him killed.

Obviously I need to be prevented from doing this. Kei is no bloody help at all in that department, as she wants me to have her do it.

Dear Benjamin,

Of course you shouldn't have him killed. Don't be preposterous. You're one of the good guys. Miranda said so, and Miranda is never wrong about these things. Except when she is, but let's not consider that.

Now, if you were to arrange matters so that he is very publicly, and totally deniably, humiliated - perhaps by being arrested in the city center for reckless driving - that might be all right, assuming you had the tools necessary to make something like that happen. Unfortunately, you do not, and so there the matter must rest.

Due to a system error, you may happen to find attached to this message a bit of omni-tool software that can remotely override the helm controls of certain models of aircar, including - by a strange coincidence - the SEAT Grandee del Vuelo. With this, a person possessing a quarian omni-tool and a criminal mind could get up to all sorts of mischief at the expense of certain corporate eminences who drive GdVs.

I hope I can trust you not to use this power for evil.

That was richly satisfying. I love you.

Dear Benjamin,

Good news to report on the Halo Acclimation Project. Mordin has had a test group living in Soluston under open protocol for the past three weeks, and both illness rates and severities are markedly reduced from the 2395 experiment. The statistics are still not comparable to the Flotilla, and the quality of life isn't acceptable for long-term settlement, but it's a major step forward. It shows that the treatment vectors he's been developing may be the right direction in which to proceed.

We're now seeking approval for a larger-scale test (we have hundreds of eager volunteers, but all sapient experimentation must be approved by the Conclave, nor would Mordin's ethics permit him to proceed otherwise). Depending on the data we get back from that, we may be able to determine definitively whether we're on the right track. If we are, it's all a question of refinement. If not, it's back to square one. Again.

Cross your fingers for us.

Dear Tali,

That's terrifically encouraging news. I'm pulling for you.

I'd offer to throw the IPO's growing tech/sci resources behind you as well, if you want them, but frankly I think you've already got the best person in the galaxy on the job, so all we could provide is basic backchecking. Still, it's available if you want it.

Dear Benjamin,

No joy with the Conclave. They want to proceed very cautiously after what happened during the 2395 test. We're only authorized to run further trials with different groups the same size as the one we just completed, one at a time, until we've accumulated enough of a statistical base that we can come closer to guaranteeing success in a large-scale test. Mordin and I tried to explain to them that that isn't the way science works, but they don't want to hear it. Unless we can promise them ahead of time how it will come out, they don't want to take any but the smallest steps at a time.

I suppose I can see their point, but it's frustrating. And disheartening for our volunteers. They want to go ahead. They're not worried about getting sick. Some of them wouldn't even mind dying if it got us somewhere. Obviously we don't want to risk that, but it shows how committed they are to creating a better life for their children or their children's children.

Sometimes I despair of the Conclave, I truly do. I suppose I should look at the positive side of it and say that at least they're letting us do this much. Without Mordin's relentlessly upbeat attitude, I'd have thrown up my hands a long time ago.

At least with Tangent's help we have a farm working. Its produce is only cleared for use in Soluston, as part of the experimental settlement project, but early test results show that what we're growing there is every bit as good as what comes off the Flotilla's ag-ships. I thought of you helping to plant the melon field in Goodyear...

Fucking batarians.

What?

Oh. I see. I'll... just be here if you want to talk later. You must be far too angry to carry on a conversation right now.

At least this time I know for certain that there's no way your father could have been involved, since he's here. Do you want me to tell him?

Yes, please.

Can't believe this happened again. I was afraid something like it would, though. Knew right from the start what I needed to do and pretended it'd all be okay and I wouldn't have to go to the trouble.

IPO needs its own navy, which means I'm gonna have to set one up.

Again. Christ.

Sorry so terse. You're right, too pissed off to be civil right now. Might vidcom you later on, once I've calmed down. Screw the expense.

Dear Benjamin,

Happy birthday to you.

I just got home from Tali'Zorah's birthday party, and I think it's now official: That child is dangerously clever. For her birthday, she asked me for the casing from one of the incomplete Monitors Mordin and I found years ago. I saw no harm in that. Unknown to me, she also asked Mordin for certain of the internal components and her mother for an energy cell, then spent the afternoon, after cake and ice cream, assembling them all into a working robot.

It can't do very much - it has no internal logic systems and simply operates as a remote sensing drone from her omni-tool - but that's not the point. The point is that she's seven years old and understood both how to maneuver the three of us into providing her with all the parts she would need for this project and how to assemble them into a working device. She's dubbed it "Chikktika vas Paus" (why vas Paus I have no idea, we don't even have a ship called the Paus in the Flotilla) and refuses to be parted from it.

Oh, and the part that glows blue on Tangent is pink.

Rael is annoyed, which is only going to make Tali'Zorah more adamant. He was recently promoted to first officer and is apparently concerned that her tinkering with Monitor parts will play poorly with the brass. Which, to be fair, it probably will, but so what? I do wish he could look beyond his precious career for a few minutes and just appreciate his daughter's genius.

I suspect he hoped for a son. Certainly he expects she'll be a soldier like him, which everyone else around her can see is patently absurd. She attends to her military studies diligently, because she's that kind of child, but her heart clearly belongs to engineering. Fortunately, Zira and I are here to offset his excessive zeal.

Ha! I love this kid and I've never even met her. She sounds like Mini-You.

I wish I'd had a robot friend at that age. It would have kept me out of so much trouble. And gotten me into so much other trouble, probably, but what the hell.

Also, wait, she's seven and Rael has her in military training?

Yes, as a matter of fact, he does. She won't be allowed to start the really physically demanding training until she's old enough to have a proper biosuit - there are no cleanrooms large enough to hold facilities for that kind of thing - but he's had her studying small-unit tactics, military history, weapons technology, and such for more than a year, and she has a personal fitness regimen she does every morning. I don't object to that so much - a healthy body is important, especially when you're quarian - but I can't see how cramming the child's head full of the Battle of the Cron Drift at the age of six is in any way helpful.

As I said, her mother and I do what we can. Zira makes certain her other studies aren't neglected in favor of too much of what she calls Rael's "navy nonsense", and I ensure that she doesn't completely lack for opportunities to just be a child. We don't get many of those growing up on the Flotilla anyway, but no one can be serious all the time. Not without ending up like Rael, anyway.

Perhaps she needs a vacation. We don't receive our first permanent biosuits until adolescence, but they can be custom-made for smaller children. They don't last long because children grow so fast, but for a two- or three-week trip, they're perfectly adequate, and it's useful training for later in life. Rael would never countenance the cost of such an extravagance, but Vedik and I don't answer to him. If we want to take our granddaughter to visit friends in New Avalon at our own expense, I doubt he will stop us.

By all means, come ahead. We'd be absolutely delighted to have you. Tali'Zorah's in between the Ragnarök Wave and the twins in age, so she should fit right into the pack, and our schools here are on summer break for the next couple of months, so they won't be wandering off to school and leaving her all alone. I bet Corwin, in particular, will love her. He's a very technical boy.

Let me know the dates you plan to travel and I'll make arrangements on this end. As you may recall from when you and Vedik were here in '88, I've got a guest room with its own ensuite that can be cleanroom-ready in a matter of a few minutes, and we already know I can iso the kitchen with a little work. I just need to source some right-handed ingredients, which isn't hard in a city with a Turiantown. You can't bring the kid to New Avalon and take her home again without shyam in between!

Oo, this is exciting! Best birthday present I've had in years.

Dear Mr. Hutchins,

Thank you and your family very much for your hospitality for the last two weeks. I had a wonderful time. New Avalon is a beautiful city. I especially enjoyed the Foundation Day fireworks. I hope to return on my pilgrimage.

Sincerely,
Tali'Zorah nar Rayya

You're very welcome, Tali'Zorah. It was great having you here. You're both welcome to come back any time you want!

And you don't have to call me Mr. Hutchins. Ben is fine, or Benjamin, or Gryphon. Your father doesn't need to know. ;)

Dear Tali,

If this message's originating server name looks familiar, that's because this is the very same computer system from which I sent you my first message 20 years ago... and I'm sitting in the very same office, in the very same chair. Just to make the symmetry as complete as possible, I'm even listening to the same piece of music.

Remember I said the IPO needed its own navy after the Babylon 3 debacle? Well, here's where we're going to build it. I've spent the last ten months pulling together the manpower to dust off this old place - the original Utopia Planitia Naval Shipyard complex at Zeta Cygni II - and get it ready to roll again. We pretty much left it alone back during the WDF reconstruction, because of the much larger and shinier facilities we had Sphereside, but those are working to capacity maintaining the WDF and doing contract work for Starfleet and the Salusian Navy, and rather than wait around for ReRob and Wolfgang to expand operations over there, we all decided between us that firing up the old yard would suit our purposes better.

Mind you, it hasn't been, and continues not to be, easy. Some of this stuff hadn't worked for a while when the yard went down, and so has been gathering dust for more than 110 years. Restarting the yards and beginning on Babylon 4 at the same time is pushing the envelope of what even our resources can swing... but it has to be done. If we can have the first of the IPO Space Force's new ships online by the time B4 is, say, pressure-ready, we'll be doing just about right. In the meantime, I've swung a deal with Daver and Noriko for the WDF to cover our asses at the construction site, with some backup from the Freespacers. I'm a little nervous about that, but it'll have to do.

I've had a bunch of ideas kicking around in my head for the ships we should build once we have these yards running again, too. Obviously we could just load up the schematics for ships we already own the type certs for and start cranking out Connies and Iowas, but I've been thinking - we're probably going to have a hard time recruiting as many experienced spacers as we'd need to crew a reasonable-sized fleet of ships like that, and we don't have the time to set up a training command and start from scratch. Even in reconstituting the WDF we were able to restart the Academy and bring through three complete graduating classes before it all hit the fan. I just don't think we're going to have that kind of luxury with the Space Force.

Complicating that, there are basically two courses of training a person needs before you get a competent spacer. There are the technical aspects of the job itself - how to operate the ship's systems, how to steer and fight and fix her - and then there are the basics of being a spacer. I ran up against this when Babylon 1 was destroyed and Dad nearly got himself spaced. He hadn't been properly trained as a spacer, and it never occurred to me when I tapped him to build the station - and it nearly got him killed. I should have remembered from my own academy days: First you have to be taught how to survive out in the black, then you learn how to make the toys work. And all that takes time.

I was in this office yesterday, mulling over that very idea and playing Tempest on my omni-tool, when it hit me. The beauty of the omni-tool is that it's so simple and intuitive a child can use it, and yet so powerful and flexible that an expert can make it do almost anything. I've had mine for almost 20 years now and while I'm still no expert, it didn't take me very long at all to become at least basically competent with it. And I thought: Why not build a starship that operates on the same principles?

Think about it. With modern automation and virtual intelligence technology, we could build a starship the size of, say, a Saracen-class destroyer but with a crew requirement no greater than that of a Predator-class scout, and except for a few very specialized positions (the engineering staff, mainly, and medical), we could design the control systems to provide the same sort of context-sensitive help that omni-tools do. We could build warships ready to be crewed by, not laypeople, but reasonably sharp individuals who may not necessarily have comprehensive training as spacers.

And if we could do that, and make it work reliably, then the training we give most of the crew could focus on teaching them to be spacers - and it could be that much shorter as a result. The rest would be a matter of learning on the job. If we made the systems adaptive enough, they could even pick up on the crew's progress along the learning curve and streamline themselves - get out of the cleverer crewmen's way, more or less.

I know you're shifting uncomfortably and giving me that sidelong look now, but I'm not talking about fitting every ship in the fleet with an AI. That wouldn't be practical anyway - the only AI protocols I trust enough for a job like that are CLULESS and HalOS. (Larry would be hurt to hear me say that - he's very proud of STACIS and justifiably so, but STACIS constructs are better-suited to organization and enterprise management than starship operations, IMO.) Producing a sufficient number of AI cores under CLULESS would be flat-out impossible, and procuring that many HalOS systems and making sure they're all metastable would take longer and cost more than building the ships they'd go into - and in either case, then we'd have to go through Turing and half of them would probably quit and go off to run donut shops. :)

I don't know, maybe it's a pipe dream. For certain it'll take a hell of a lot of work. (sigh) I have to learn to delegate. I keep having ideas and then ending up hellbent on seeing them through myself, and since they all take years and years and I don't have that long, I end up just getting busier and busier.

Dear Benjamin,

Having seen in person how busy you were last summer - and that was making a concerted effort to block out some free time to spend with us - I can certainly concur with your sentiment about delegating.

Your idea about borrowing a page from the omni-tool design handbook, so to speak, and applying the principle to the control systems of a starship is a very intriguing one, though, and I think I may be able to help you with both items at once. Let me introduce you to a friend of mine, Emdra'Dakka vas Rylcar. She's the daughter of Admiral Rael'Dakka (my son's namesake), who was captain of the Archangel when I joined her crew. Emdra is a brilliant software engineer and the lead designer for the QuarTech Consortium, the national enterprise we set up (at your recommendation, I might remind you!) to patent and market our omni-tool technologies to the galaxy. There are a number of features we don't sell to the general public (your omni-tool has most of them, because it's a fleet model, not one of our commercial offerings), and Emdra knows how every single one of them works from the inside out.

Some of the technologies Emdra knows about are considered state secrets, so you'll need permission from the Conclave Subcommittee on National Security and the Admiralty to incorporate them in your ships, but given the Conclave's support for the IPO, I think you'll be able to convince them if you can provide assurances that your new yards won't be selling its products to anyone other than the IPO's fleet itself - which it sounds like you can.

As for the hardware, well, I haven't worked directly in starship engineering for many years - as you know, I've been rather permanently sidetracked by the various Halo projects - but if you need a sounding board for any of your ideas as you develop these new ships, I'd be happy to tell you what I think.

Oh - and for the record, don't think I don't know what you're always saying when you sign off. This time you tried to catch me out, but I happen to know the phrase you wanted was rydw i'n dy garu di. What you actually said means "this road is closed", which I sincerely hope was not some sort of attempt at being metaphorical.

Ha! I knew you'd catch me. No, it wasn't an attempt at a metaphor, it's just the only other phrase I could think of off the top of my head in that language.

I'd love to consult with your friend, maybe with an eye toward hiring her and a team from QuarTech to develop the system if she thinks the concept's workable. If we can get it to work, it could be a major feather in the Union's cap to have something like that come out of Scandia. As you've told me many times, the Flotilla's always looking out for new PR opportunities, after all.

Dear Benjamin,

This is a terrible thing for a mother to say, but sometimes I wish they would stop promoting my son.

I know, it's a dreadful sentiment. But throughout his career, every time he's been promoted, Rael has gotten a little bit more intense, a little bit more driven - a little bit more obsessed with the twin lodestars of his life, namely his career and the reconquest of Rannoch. He's convinced that if he can attain a seat on the Admiralty Board, he can rally those who wish to return into a political force formidable enough to sway the Conclave. For my part, I am just as firmly convinced that launching us into a war against the geth would be the worst mistake since the last one - but Rael believes that war was lost through military ineptitude, not over before it began.

If you couldn't guess from these grumblings, he has indeed been promoted again. With Captain Renjli's retirement, Rael has been advanced to command of the Rayya, and some are saying that it, like his previous promotion to first officer, is simply an obligatory step, for form's sake, before he's elevated to the Admiralty. Among his peers in the Navy, he's considered a charismatic force, a natural leader. Civilians don't often see that side of him - he's brusque with them, impatient with what he sees as their softness and complacency - but he'll have to learn better if he plans to influence the Conclave.

The person I feel sorriest for in all this is Tali'Zorah. The pressure on her increases in direct proportion to her father's prominence in the Navy. Vedik and I played into Rael's hands by buying her the encounter suit she wore on her visit to New Avalon; when we returned, he took the opportunity to send her through primary arms training before she had a chance to outgrow it. The instructors were nonplussed to be asked to put a seven-year-old through the course - they don't call it the Grinder for nothing - but he insisted, and in the end they had little choice.

Luckily - for her, not so much for Rael - Tali'Zorah is just as hard-headed as he is, and does not bend easily once her back is straightened. She puts up with much of his pompous strutting because he's her father and, whatever his flaws, she loves him and wants to please him - but she has limits beyond which she will not go, and he has learned to his cost (and, I have to confess, my delight) where they are. He threw her into the Grinder, and she repaid him by bettering his own scores, which he logged when he was twice her age - and then politely declining to attend the graduation ceremony on the grounds that she was not planning to pursue a military career, so the honors would be meaningless to her and should go to the next highest-scoring candidate. Rael couldn't decide whether to burst with pride or fury. It was a beautiful sight.

(And then she spent two weeks in sickbay being treated for exhaustion, having pushed herself to her limit just to set up that one moment of defiance. Whatever one may wish to say about the child, one cannot claim that she is lazy.)

Well, I say I feel sorriest for Tali'Zorah, but perhaps that's not strictly true. She does not enjoy their confrontations, but she holds her own. Zira'Vel, on the other hand, can do little but get out of the way when Rael and Tali'Zorah are on a collision course. Rael is, after all, technically her commanding officer, and don't think for a minute that he hesitates to pull rank when it suits him. I don't say Zira is cowed by these tactics, not for a moment - but she's too professional an officer to indulge in open defiance when he plays that card, and he knows it.

I had always thought that Vedik and I taught him better - and that you did, come to that, when he spent his pilgrimage working for you - but his obsession with Rannoch has become so all-encompassing that it blinds him to everything that does not advance that cause. He honestly believes that pushing his daughter so hard is in her best interests, because she'll be of serving age when the time comes to retake the homeworld - and so she'll need to be ready to stand at his side as he leads the charge...

And now he's been promoted again. He's one step from his destination, and if his past behavior is any indication, this will only make him harder to deal with. And once he reaches the top of the Navy pyramid, then what? I fear the consequences for all quarians, not just Tali'Zorah, if he should somehow succeed in propelling the Union into a war with the geth.

I hate to ask it of you, but you were his commanding officer during his pilgrimage, and in his (admittedly, increasingly rare) softer moments he has often spoken fondly of his time under you. He may listen to reason if it comes from you. Keelah knows he won't when it's coming from me. Will you please try to convince him of the folly of his ambitions? Even if the geth have done absolutely nothing since driving us from Rannoch, there's no conceivable way our navy could defeat them. The whole Wedge Defense Force, with all its shiny new ships and advanced weapons, would be hard-pressed to defeat the geth forces that sent us into exile, let alone what they must have built in the centuries we've been gone.

For Tali'Zorah's sake, if nothing else, please try.

Dear Tali,

Well, I tried... but whatever fond memories Rael may have of me, he's clearly not letting them influence his present behavior. In fact, he got quite angry. As to quarian foreign policy, he desired me in no uncertain terms to take my meddlesome Earthman's superiority complex elsewhere and tell some other species what to do with its future, then declared the subject closed.

After that he got quite... personal. It seems he doesn't much approve of my continued interference in his family's private lives (his phrase). He said he holds me in large part responsible for the fact that you've - again, his wording here - wasted your life chasing after first me and then the false hope of Halo, and that he suspects I'm a major reason, directly and indirectly, that (as he sees it) Tali'Zorah has turned against him.

"My father may inexplicably be willing to tolerate your constant efforts to lure Mother away from him," he said at one point, "but I'm not. I can't stop you from communicating with her, but I can and do forbid you and your family to have any further contact with my daughter."

I'm sorry, Tali. I was as friendly and diplomatic as I could be - I've always liked Rael, you know that - but I think I just ended up making everything worse. What he turned on me just now sounded like the kind of thing that's been bottled up for a long time, and I commed him up and pulled out the cork.

On the other hand, now that he's gotten it off his chest and given me the telling-off he's obviously been saving up for a while, maybe he'll lighten up a little bit with the rest of you.

Maybe we'd better just... let him cool off for a while.

Keelah. I'm so sorry I set you up for that. I had no idea he had such resentment stored away. He asked me once, many years ago, what you and I were to each other all those years before he was born, and I, wanting to be as honest as I could with him, tried my best to explain... and it seems he's formed entirely the wrong idea of where we stand today as a result.

Vedik will be furious - at Rael's ideas both that you've spent all this time trying to "lure me away from him", and that he'd just meekly put up with it if you were. He understands us in a way that Rael clearly does not at all. He considers you a great friend and he'll see Rael's attitude as a grave insult to both of us. As do I, come to that.

I'm sorry to drag you into my family drama. You must think we're a pack of fools, and in several respects, you would be right.

Nothing to apologize for. The more I think about it, the more I suspect he didn't really mean at least some of what he said. He's under a lot of pressure himself, after all - mostly self-imposed, but still. Man's got to vent under those conditions. Maybe I was just a convenient outlet.

I'm glad to hear that about Vedik, though. I mean, I knew it already, but it's nice to see it in black and white like that. He's a hell of a guy. You couldn't have done better. (I just realized it looks kind of backhanded phrased that way. Not how I meant it, I assure you.)

I just hope this doesn't bring a bunch more crap down on Tali'Zorah. God, when I was her age, my biggest worry was whether Mrs. Hanington would make us sing "America the Beautiful" in class that day. (Patriotic songs were very big at my elementary school, and for whatever reason, I've always particularly hated that one. I think it's because even in the fourth grade, my little voice simply couldn't handle the "amber waves of grain" part.)

Dear Mr. Gryphon,

Don't worry about me. I can handle Father. Look how well his attempt to block me from sending you email worked. :)

Dear Tali,

Attached is the basic specification document for Project Sovereign, which we just finished this morning. Obviously most of the actual engineering remains to be done, but here, in broad strokes, is what the IPO-SF's new flagship is going to be.

At the big signoff conference this morning, Vision had an interesting idea. She suggested that we actually prototype the ship virtually, "building" a fully operational ship in a simsense environment before we ever cut a single piece of actual metal. That way, the inevitable engineering changes and unplanned snags that the lead ships of new classes always run into during construction can be taken care of much more quickly and without wasting real materials, which (touch wood) means that when we build the physical one, it'll be smooth sailing. It also means we can spend that much more time training up the yard's new tradespeople and getting everything all in a row before we pick up tools and start building for real.

Obviously, that'll require an intricatedly modeled VE - if our virtual shipyard's physics model is even a little bit out, we'll just be designing a really elaborate video game. But Vision's confident that she can take care of that, and if any machine intelligence in the galaxy can, it's her.

It also means that when we get the software for the new ship working, we can port that layer directly from the virtual hardware onto the actual hardware and boom - one of the jobs that's usually the biggest pain in the ass on a new starship class project, one and done.

Been a while since I started work in earnest on a brand new starship type. The last one was Concordia, and that was such an almighty rush job I didn't really have time to enjoy the process.

Dear Benjamin,

I stand by what I said when you showed me the first sketches - that is an extremely ambitious design. You and your team will have your work cut out for you making it happen - but having seen the list of people you have working on it, I'm convinced it can be done. I wish I could be part of it.

Meanwhile, my own work goes on. With Tangent's help, I've finally worked out a reliable system for translating the inscriptions we've found in the Cartographer and other sites around Halo. So far none has revealed anything helpful about the construct's builders, but we have discovered what it's for... and oddly enough, it's more or less what we're trying to use it for. It was intended as a sanctuary, though I'm not sure yet what from or who for. It seems strangely exposed for a fortress, which makes me wonder if it's supposed to be a part of some larger construct, though Tangent insists that isn't the case, except inasmuch as it was part of a system of several such installations.

Unfortunately, he knows nothing of those other installations, other than that they existed - not even how many there were. A prudent security measure, if they were indeed intended to serve as sanctuaries, but frustrating for us now. No one ever builds things with archaeologists in mind.

That's fantastic! Ah, these are exciting times.

As for wishing you could be part of Project Sovereign, well, Halo Station One has subethernet broadband now, right? We're building the prototype in cyberspace... :)

... And so much for me having any spare time over the next couple of years. I hate you, Milkman Dan.

Dear Tali,

Sometimes I love this job. I just met another me! How much do you know about parallel cosmos commonality?

[...]

I once joked to a reporter, back in the Golden Age, that if I hadn't become a Wedge Defender I'd have been a super-hero. That's what led Derek to create the Scarlet Sentinel comics, but it appears, in a weird way, I was kind of not joking.

Also, you may have noticed that his girlfriend a) is named Katherine and b) looks a bit like Kaitlyn. I'm not sure whether I ought to be slightly disturbed by that, but I kind of am.

In other news, I'll be back at the Yards next Monday for an inspection tour; Zed thinks we might be ready to lay down the second Sovereign within the next couple of months. Certainly the virtual prototype is looking in good shape, thanks to all our late nights. Now I just have to decide what to call her...

Dear Tali,

I give up. I just give right the hell up. Terrorists I can deal with. Enemy agents I can deal with. Random crazies I can deal with.

DISAPPEARANCE WITHOUT A TRACE, on the other hand? I draw the line there. The Cianbro guys had finished clearing out Friday; Major Krantz from Tac Div and his guys were doing a final security audit before the Systems guys went in to finish up the interior fittings and whatnot. We got a distress call from him this morning about 0500, the Bajoran Militia reported an energy surge of some kind from B4's position, and then... nothing. It's just gone. No debris, no signs of violence. The station is just not there any more.

Zoner swears up and down that it's not his fault. Neither one of us was anywhere near the place.

And now the contractor's out of the picture. Which, you know, I can totally understand Dad's position on the matter. They did the job they were hired to do. They did it four times, in fact, and this time they'd finished - the paperwork was signed off, the crews had moved out. Job done. Contract fulfilled. We could hire them again, but that would mean going through the bid process again, a completely new job code, and so forth, and so on. That'll take three or four years before we can even start building attempt number five.

We're not even sure we'll be able to start over, with or without Cianbro. Even the IPO's resources aren't infinite. We were able to use reclaimed and salvaged materials from the prior attempts in each of the previous restarts, but B4 was complete and has disappeared entirely. We're literally starting from scratch.

It's times like this I wish we had just agreed to repurpose Terok Nor. Babylon would've been operational ten years ago if Zoner and I hadn't insisted that a new station had to be built.

Oh, my aching back.

Dear Benjamin,

No you don't. You really don't. I was part of the team that reviewed the Terok Nor surveys, remember? I know what a pile of junk that station was. Cardassian space habitat engineering, outdated and indifferently maintained by a resentful conquered people - the worst of all possible worlds. It would have been a nightmare. Probably several of them. You'd have been better off buying our oldest, most worn-out ship, parking it in orbit, and using that.

If you do decide not to proceed with a whole new contractor selection process, what's the alternative? Running the whole project in-house is liable to be just as complicated. You'd need a very experienced workforce with highly capable, self-directing leadership to pull such a project together - one accustomed to the kinds of economy and time-saving measures that will be required to make up for the complete loss of everything that's gone before on that site.

I can think of two, offhand, neither likely to have the available manpower to do the job alone. So I guess it comes back to what you jokingly asked me years ago: Do you think the Freespacers and my people can work together? :)

I don't envy you trying to get it to happen, but if you can pull it off, it'll be a great example for the whole galaxy of the Babylon Foundation's cooperative ideals.

Dear Tali,

Remember a couple of days ago when I said Kaitlyn seemed strangely preoccupied, but I couldn't think why? Well, I guess I know the answer now, but it leaves me with more questions.

After dinner tonight, she announced that she's been accepted at Worcester Prep, the private high school some crazy person started on the site of the old WPI when they rebuilt Worcester the second time. Classes start next Monday. She apparently filed her application last Friday and didn't say anything to Kei or me until her acceptance came through. (It's probably an indication of how old I am, but I'm still sort of vaguely stunned that she got an answer back in four days, two of which were a weekend. When I was her age - well, when I was her age we were still figuring out whether dinosaurs were good eating, but if you wanted to get into a private school back then you had to apply months in advance of the school year starting. But that's neither here nor there.)

I've done what little research I've had time to do, and it does look like it's a good school (even if it is, God help them, a replica of WPI). The music program, in particular, comes very highly recommended. But we have good schools here, too. Making the school district the best it could be was one of my city planning team's priorities, not because I was expecting to have need of them myself at the time, but because you can't have a great city (or a great civilization, come to that) without great schools. So I'm thinking there has to be more to it than that... but I can't imagine what it is.

I mean... I'm torn. On the one hand I think it's great that she's come up with this plan and seen it through on her own. We've always tried to give all our kids as much latitude in charting their lives as they're willing to take responsibility for, and so far that's worked well for all of them. And it's great that Kate wants to undertake this big adventure at her age. (I passed on private school when I was about her age because I didn't want to leave home.) It also doesn't hurt my feelings that in order to line this up, she's apparently dumped Mike Carpenter, but that's probably just Grumpy Dad Mode kicking in. I can't help it, I just never cottoned to the guy.

But... I don't know, I worry about her more than the others. I wouldn't bat an eye if Leonard said he wanted to go to private school on Earth. (I would if the twins did, but mainly out of fear for Earth.) But Kate? So far from home, on a planet that - let's face it - Zeta Cygni isn't on the best of terms with, with her speech problems, and she's so shy to begin with... I can't figure why she's decided to do this. And I'd never say this to her, but I'm terribly afraid that she'll find it was more than she bargained for. I'm not worried for her safety - she can take care of herself, I've seen to that - but emotionally, I just don't know if she's prepared for something like that.

I'm not going to stop her, obviously - I'd be the class hypocrite if I even tried. She's met all the criteria that we set out for our kids' personal projects. I'm not even going to try to talk her out of it. But I'm going to worry. And I'm going to wonder.

Dear Benjamin,

One of the many things modern quarians like to debate about, since the Migrant Fleet ceased to migrate, is whether our tradition of pilgrimage should be continued. Some argue that it's no longer necessary, because even though almost all of us still live on the ships of the Flotilla, the Quarian Union has a much more stable and prosperous economy than the Migrant Fleet ever did. We don't need to send our young people out to search for and return with things of value. Others maintain that it's not we who have changed but the galaxy, and it's too dangerous nowadays. But there are those who insist that it's important beyond its practical value - that it provides a much-needed change in perspective without which our children, confined to the Fleet throughout their upbringing, can never truly understand the world in which we live - never become the people they're meant to be, if you want to be a little romantic about it.

That the pilgrimage remains necessary is one of the increasingly few things about which Rael and I agree, though we believe it for different reasons. He's adamant that it's a critical opportunity to acquire practical experience in the outside world, and while I don't disagree with that, I think it's much more important as a... I guess you might say a spiritual experience. I know my own life would have been very different - and very much poorer - if I had never left the Kythera and gone out into the wider galaxy to see what there was to see.

Maybe this is Kaitlyn's pilgrimage.

Dear Tali,

Maybe it is.

Thank you. I feel a little better. I'm still going to worry - she's awfully young to take such a big step, and Earth is so far away... but I feel a little better.

After all, what navy mother doesn't hope that her son will one day be an admiral? And yet, now that Rael's final promotion has come, I feel... well, I am proud of his accomplishments, I'd be a very poor mother indeed if I weren't, but I also feel a great foreboding. He's ramped back the rhetoric when speaking to me in recent years, but I think that's only to maintain peace in his house, not because his views have moderated. It's become reasonably clear that he sees his father and me as silly old people who resist his vision out of inertia or timidity. Only the fact that Vedik would knock his fool head off, admiral or not, keeps him from saying it in so many words.

Fortunately, Tali'Zorah is busy with her schoolwork. Now that she's entered an academy ship, she's insulated to some degree from her father's fanatical drive by her own. She may not be as far from home as your Kaitlyn is, physically, but the headmaster of the Hekademos will brook no interference with his pupils' schooling from parents, even newly minted admirals.

The Hekademos is one of the Union's finest school ships, and boards its students full-time, saving them the wear and tear of constant shuttle rides across the Flotilla. If nothing else, Rael is sparing no expense to make certain Tali'Zorah has the finest education any quarian can get. He may still want her to be a soldier, but he doesn't want her to be just a soldier. And between her academic schedule and his new responsibilities, with any luck they'll see too little of each other over the next few years to get into many really big fights.

Keelah, listen to me. You would think I was talking about some cheap holodrama, not my own family. "Next time on 'Tweendeckers... "

Anyway, as I said, I'm proud of his achievement. His old confederate Han'Gerrel reached the board before him, which should make Admiralty meetings interesting, since Han has all the interpersonal subtlety and regard for social nicety of a krogan mercenary. His bluntness and unwillingness to put up with optimistic speculation may make him a useful counterbalance to Rael's unrealistic insistence that we can and should undertake the reconquest of Rannoch. Unless, of course, he agrees, in which case, Keelah help us.

Dear Tali,

Attached is the simsense stream of the christening and launch of IPS Challenger, which took place at the Yard earlier today. Since you couldn't be present for the ceremony, I've done the next best thing and sent it to you. Skuld did the editing and presentation, and special thanks to my long-time steward and galley chief, David Jantzen, for providing the recording platform.

We're going to be doing final fitting-out and whatnot for the next few weeks, and then we're off for space trials; if all goes well, that'll lead to a shakedown cruise sometime around Thanksgiving, then home for Christmas and regular deployment to B'hava'el in the new year. As a thank-you to everyone over there who made it possible - Emdra's team at QuarTech, the Logistics Command guys, you - I'm planning to make part of the shakedown an official visit to the Union, with an open invitation to any members of the Conclave and/or Navy staff who want to see what their support for the Babylon Foundation and the IPO is actually paying for. We'll have tours, maybe some fun activities... it'll be a hoot. Most likely sometime in early December.

Got a note from Kaitlyn the other day; she seems to be doing better at WPI this fall than last, not that that would've been hard. Her band is doing really well - they've got a gig in Canada next weekend! - and her new roommate is apparently working out a lot better than poor Hiroe. I'm quite looking forward to meeting her, actually; she sounds perfectly fascinating, and I think Kate's planning to invite her home for Christmas break.

For now, though, it's back to work - we're starting on the basic spec document for the Defiant class on Monday, assuming that the fitting-out of Challenger is going well enough that I'll have time to hold the meeting. And I need to set up a meeting with Emdra and the QuarTech board to talk about licensing the NGW operating system to Kanzaki Industries on Ishiyama. Sumire's shipbuilders are thinking about a heavy destroyer to complement the Defiants, and we'll need NG/OS to get it to work.

So much to do!

Dear Benjamin,

That was a lovely ceremony. Thank you for having it recorded for me. I particularly enjoyed Skuld's little speech about the significance of ships' names - something that I think would resonate for any quarian.

You complain, but I think you're only happy when you're busy. I'm much the same. My team and I spent much of last month conducting a second comprehensive survey of the Cartographer, based on what we've learned from the first-generation translations. The new discoveries we're making are more evolutionary than revolutionary, but every little bit we uncover brings us closer to understanding the origins and true purpose of Halo.

One thing that I'm becoming more and more convinced of as the investigation goes on is that Mordin's initial estimate of Halo's age was way off. His estimate of 50,000 years was based on biological factors he observed in the plant life, and which I don't particularly understand. It's possible that the current biosphere (bio-ring?) on what Tangent refers to as "the habitat surface" has only been here for 50,000 years, but it's becoming clearer that the ring structure itself is much, much older. Exactly how much older, we still haven't figured out - the materials the ring structure are made of defy radiological dating - but our astrophysicists have done some fascinating work examining micrometeorite impacts and solar wind erosion on the outer surface and come up with an estimate of at least 250,000 years!

Our first clue has actually been in front of us for years, but I only thought to investigate it a few weeks ago. When we reactivated Tangent, he said he had been in sleep mode for about 50,000 years. We assumed that meant he had been dormant since the structure was built, but one thing we didn't really understand about the way Tangent's AI worked at the time was that he never volunteers anything. I don't think he's secretive, particularly; he's just not creative enough for it to occur to him that anyone might be interested in anything they didn't specifically ask.

So I asked him: How long ago were you activated? The answer wasn't definite, but it was informative: so long ago that he doesn't know, because the number of seconds since epoch on his system (whenever that was) has overrun the MAXINT value for the register it's counted in. He knows the date he was activated, but since the calendar system Halo's builders used is long-dead, that tells us nothing. When I asked him to elaborate about his initial report, he told me that the last time he'd emerged from sleep mode was at the time of the installation's "prior activation".

I haven't gotten anywhere beyond that yet - I'm not asking the right questions. For instance, when I ask him what that activation involved, he says merely, "This installation was activated." Who ordered that activation? "The Reclaimer." I said I thought I was the Reclaimer, and he said I am. What constitutes a Reclaimer? One who meets the criteria established in his operating parameters. What are those? Impossible to articulate, I guess. Like Mr. Justice Stewart, he knows it when he sees it. It apparently has nothing to do with species. 50,000 years ago, my species was just figuring out fire and sharp things.

If you're taking away from this the idea that Tangent can be frustrating to work with, you have no idea.

Oh - when you set up your meeting with the QuarTech board, remember that some of the technologies incorporated into NG/OS are not just trade secrets but state secrets, so you'll need to clear any licensing arrangement you make through the Admiralty. Which will be a slightly more uphill climb now that Rael is on the Board, but possibly not - he's smart enough to recognize the benefits that the Union's collaboration with the IPO have brought us, personal problems with you or no.

Dear Tali,

Kaitlyn and the gang just headed back to Earth, and I feel like the last two weeks lasted about a year.

By which I don't mean that it was a trial having them here, just... it's been a busy time. Kate had a very rough time a couple of days before Christmas - I can't really go into the details right now, but don't worry, she's okay. Going to be okay, anyway. You know how that works.

We were still sort of recovering from that when the holidays were upon us, and you know what a busy time that is around here. This year it was even busier than usual, because Kate brought her roommate from WPI with her for the break, as I suspected she might - and thank all the gods she did, because she got us through the rough patch pretty much by force of will. She's an amazing girl. She reminds me... well, she doesn't remind me of anyone I've ever known, actually. Maybe there's a little of Miria Sterling there, now I think about it, but the complete package is utterly unique.

Utena Tenjou is her name, and I doubt it'll be very long before everyone in the Federation knows it. She's just one of those people who have it. The Force is strong in this one, as they say. (Indeed, I suspect that's literally true in her case.) She's fearless without being (too) foolhardy, confident without arrogance, beautiful without (I think) entirely being aware of it. I probably sound a little besotted with her, which is unseemly in a man my age, but it's not really like that. It easily could've been, but context prohibits. Anyway, I suspect my eldest son is going to be walking into closed doors enough for the both of us with her on his mind. Poor boy, I know the signs all too well.

Okay, so she did wreck part of my dojo and break my shoulder, but I was asking for it. (Did I mention she's a very talented swordswoman? Sorry. I'm rambling again.)

The important thing is, she's good for Kate. I don't think they're involved, per se, but they obviously make each other happy - and make each other feel safe, if that makes any sense - and really, when you get right down to it, I think that's more important in a relationship than anything else. And Utena brought with her a classmate from her old school who's even better for Kate in his way, a young man named Miki. He's a real young gentleman, you'd like him - and possibly the only person in Kate's age group I've ever seen who can keep up with her musically. Watching them collaborate over this break has been incredible. It's like they've known each other for years, when as far as I know they met for the first time on Christmas Eve.

Where was I? Oh, right. The reason I say this break was even busier than usual because of Utena - well, partly that's just because she's the kind of person who catalyzes things. The world just becomes more eventful in her general vicinity. But what I mainly meant was that her birthday fell right in line with all the others - two days after Kei's, three after Zoner's, four after Christmas - so we had still another party. And Corwin had another present to make. (He really outdid himself, too. He's done his best work to date, week before last. That's one of the signs I mentioned earlier.)

I have to admit, I feel a lot better about Kate being on Earth now. She's been content there since last spring, thanks to Azalynn and the rest of the band, but now I know she's really happy. And I know... she'd be mad at me for phrasing it this way, but it's the only way I can think of it... I know she's in good hands there. Hands I can trust. I've faced the girl steel-to-steel. Having her there, looking out for Kate (though I know Kate would say she doesn't need any such thing), is the next best thing to being there myself.

Hope you've had a good Yule, and all good wishes for the new year. Keelah se'lai.

Dear Benjamin,

Vedik and I extend our fondest holiday wishes to you as well. Keelah se'lai.

This new roomate of Kaitlyn's sounds like the sort of person who makes an immediate impression. I was just talking to Tali'Zorah a few minutes ago, and she mentioned rather grumpily that Corwin has written of absolutely nothing else in his half of their correspondence over the past ten days or so. (Oh yes, they remain in regular contact, much as we do, despite her father's having forbidden her to have anything to do with your family. Rael is no technician, and even if he were, can you imagine that anyone would be able to prevent those two from communicating electronically?)

Tali'Zorah's complaints aside (I don't think it's a matter of jealousy, exactly, but I can sympathize with her position - any girl gets tired of hearing constantly about another after a while), I'm glad she's had such a positive impact on Kaitlyn's life, and that you find her presence in that life so reassuring. I know that Kate's self-imposed exile (as you've seen it) has been a source of worry for you since it began. It pleases me to see that weight, at least, removed from your shoulders.

And it amuses me to read that, in your world, mortal combat is a perfectly normal way of getting to know your teenage daughter's boarding school roommate - and that, from the sound of it, you got yourself a bit of a thrashing in the process. I think I'd quite like to meet this girl. :)

Dear Tali,

You're not wrong about that! When the first reports started coming in, I thought World War VII had started - and by the end of the day I wasn't that far wrong, either.

You know, on the one hand, I can't help but find it very depressing that my home planet now appears to be run by fascist assholes. On the other, I find it richly, deeply satisfying that my daughter and her friends just punched them in the middle of their face without my having to get involved in any way until it was all over. It's like they just dropped their book reports on my desk all at once and said, "We're ready for finals now."

Tomorrow we're having Kate's mastery trial in the dojo here on Challenger. I've got some interesting contestants lined up. It should be quite a show.

Dear Tali,

After only 14 years and four attempts, as of this afternoon, we at last have an operational Babylon Station. The ceremony went well - I've attached a simstream of the highlights - and all is going smoothly so far. the diplomatic staff is still getting settled in, but by next week they should be ready to get busy saving the galaxy.

Meanwhile, over on Jeraddo, construction has started in earnest on Satori Mandeville Memorial, and the Duelists are getting stuck in on the rehabilitation of their castle. All good stuff.

[...]

And - to no one's great surprise - Utena and Corwin are off to spend the summer preparing her for her starship master's examination. I wouldn't be at all surprised if they were to swing by the Flotilla at some point in their travels. I figured I'd warn you now so you can be ready to repair the dent Rael is presumably going to leave when he hits the ceiling.

Dear Tali,

I just heard from Corwin and Utena about what happened on the Rayya earlier today. I'm so sorry about Zira'Vel. If there's anything I can do to help, let me know. Please pass on my condolences to Vedik, Rael (if you think it won't just make things worse) and Tali'Zorah as well. I never met Zira, but you and Vedik have spoken so well of her over the years that I almost feel like I have - and I hate to see anybody little Tali's age lose her mother.

I hope she's holding up all right, and that the rest of you are too. Rael and I... may have had our differences a few years ago, and we've been barely cordial since, but I wouldn't wish this kind of loss on my worst enemy, and he's far from being that. I'm thinking of you all.

Dear Benjamin,

Thank you. We're all still a bit in shock. It's a powerful reminder that just because the Migrant Fleet no longer migrates, we still live aboard ships, we still depend on these suits, and we still face dire consequences if the systems we take for granted fail. There hasn't been a significant infectious outbreak aboard one of our ships in nearly thirty years. Some in the Conclave believed such events were things of the past.

In a way, we - the quarian people, I mean - were lucky. Though tragedy has struck my family and two dozen others, it could have been very much worse. Would have been, but for the intervention of Tali'Zorah's guests. She could not have done what she did without their help, and Mordin has confirmed that the fever would still be ravaging the Rayya if the three of them had not defied Rael's orders and breached the quarantine. We would be losing hundreds of people, not dozens.

For all my fury with Rael for his stubborn adherence to outdated procedures and his pigheaded refusal to accept outside help, I can't bring myself to punish him for it. After all, he knows it's cost him his wife, their daughter her mother. Perhaps - it sounds terribly cold and calculating of me to say it in so many words - it will give him reason to re-think his views.

On the other hand, I couldn't be prouder of Tali'Zorah. It was already too late for Zira by the time Mordin was able to cure the fever, and she knew that, but she also knew there was a job to do... so she put aside her grief, devised a plan, and made it happen, obstructions be damned. With Corwin's help and Utena's, she saved hundreds of her shipmates. The Admiralty Board will probably vote them all medals for it, whether Rael objects or not, and I'm not even sure he will. He's probably furious about his orders being defied, but he's never been one to argue with results... and he has his own problems. However much of a prig and a martinet he's become, he truly loved Zira and I'm sure he's devastated by her loss, even if he won't permit himself to show it, even to their daughter.

And she has such... such grace. She's suffering terribly, of course - she's just lost her mother, to whom she was very close. But she's bearing it stoically, the way we always used to do when untimely death was a commonplace thing in the Flotilla. (An unexpected side benefit of her father's adherence to the old ways, I suppose.) She even had it in her to console Mordin, who was absolutely crushed that he couldn't devise the cure in time to save Zira.

He's bounced back now, of course, with his usual salarian resilience. If anything, the incident has re-fired his enthusiasm for the Acclimation Project, which has been flagging a little bit of late with all the pushback we've been getting from the government. Now more than ever, we are both convinced that we have to get off these ships, sooner rather than later, or things like this will keep happening. Evolution itself is against us; with our obsessive need to clean and disinfect, our heavy reliance on antibiotics and antivirals, and 18 thousand viral generations for every quarian one, we're breeding our own destruction.

We're not going to start agitating, using this as a rallying cry - that would be crass almost beyond reckoning - but it motivates us to double our efforts... obstructions be damned. Tali'Zorah expects nothing of us that she wouldn't demand of herself, after all.

Corwin and Utena had to quit the scene in quite a hurry, as you might imagine, and no one except Tali'Zorah properly thanked them. In lieu of an apology for this rudeness from the quarian government - which may yet be forthcoming - please pass on mine to them, and my thanks. It was a great thing they helped my granddaughter to do, and they didn't have to get involved.

Dear Tali,

Back in New Avalon after a lovely few days on Titan. We missed you and Vedik at the big to-do; the place was jammed, you'd have had a great time. Even the Hanagumi made it over from Ishiyama. Maybe next year...

Corwin and I gave Utena her birthday present a little early tonight, and of course then none of us could resist taking it out for a spin. She whipped Corwin and me good, but we're taking the official position that it was only because I'm rusty on Legios ops and Corwin's a lousy Beta gunner.

Attached are a few photos from the big party. Please note that that isn't a toy tiger Kate has there. I told you Zoner had something big planned for her this year. :) (That's Utena's friend Wakaba Shinohara showing off the new Lens. Go figure, I didn't even know Skuld was considering her. Sound choice, though. Got more than a bit of that Tenjou spark in her own right. Good kid. Why am I talking like Mordin?)

Glad to hear that Tali'Zorah liked the Christmas package Corwin and Utena sent her way. And that Rael doesn't approve. (Ooh, that makes me a bad person, I'm sure of it.)

Dear Benjamin,

Fifty years ago today, a quarian teenager on her pilgrimage did a very foolish thing and nearly paid for it with her life. She was saved only by the intervention of a perfect stranger, a man with a colossal price on his head and a dull coldness in his eyes. At first she thought her situation had gone from bad to worse. For what possible purpose could the galaxy's most notorious murderer have purchased her from the Black Dragon Society?

But then he risked his life to protect her, not once but several times. He stuck by her when they were stranded in a very strange place, guiding her through the wilderness to (relative) safety. By the time they got there she had come to like him, then to trust him. As she got to know him, which was easier and took less time than she would ever have imagined, she realized that what she had taken for coldness in his eyes was actually a deep sadness, a spiritual wound she, in her youth and naïveté, couldn't begin to understand. But she didn't need to understand it.

Because, quite by accident, by then she had fallen in love with him.

A person could argue that it wasn't meant to be. They came from different species, after all, biochemically incompatible species, and she was quarian. They couldn't eat the same food, couldn't eat in the same room; she couldn't even let him see her face without risking a deadly illness. Besides, he was an adult - in fact an immortal - centuries old. He'd seen and done things she couldn't even imagine. By comparison, she was just a child.

But one day she told him all those things, and he told her that none of them mattered. And he was right. They didn't.

In the end it wasn't to be. At least not the way she thought it would. Their lives accelerated them on different vectors; perhaps it was inevitable, perhaps it was just bad luck. It doesn't really matter. As a dear friend of them both would tell her many times over the following years, the cosmos is under no obligation to conform to the desires of sapient beings. She was bitterly disappointed; so, she is given to understand, was he. But they regrouped and got on with things, because that's what they both do. They're survivors.

And eventually they did find each other again, and if what followed wasn't what they had been expecting, all those years before, it doesn't necessarily follow that it wasn't as good.

Keelah se'lai.

But you probably put it better than I was going to anyway. :)

Keelah se'lai indeed, my love. Tayyôr qitæn.

Dear Tali,

I just heard from Bell; Corwin's away a-Trialing. They still won't tell me where they've sent him or what he's there to do - even the Midgard-Knight, it appears, can't expect all his questions about celestial matters to be answered. Well, that's not really fair of me. They're keeping it from Skuld, too, and she's a member of the Æsir Council. Presumably these are ancient rules that were put in place to keep people from cheating.

Whatever the reason, the next we'll hear will be news of his success... or failure. However long it takes.

Utena's on Tomodachi, staying with Skuld; she's on break from school right now, but if this isn't over before the break is, I don't imagine she'll be going back. She wouldn't be able to concentrate anyway. I can't claim I really understand their relationship - something happened last Christmastime that seemed to put them on a whole different footing, but for all that they're obviously in love I don't think they're lovers. It's none of my business, anyway, but sometimes I have to wonder. Regardless, they're very close, and she must be freaking out. I know I am. I've known this was coming for a long time, but somehow that's not really any help.

I just have to keep telling myself: He's as well-prepared as we could possibly make him. He's smart. He's tough. He's resourceful. He'll be fine. He'll come back covered in glory.

If I repeat it often enough, maybe I'll start really believing it.

Dear Benjamin,

Now even more so than when Kaitlyn left for Earth, you understand what it is to be a quarian parent whose child has left on pilgrimage. The same utter uncertainty. The same constantly recurring questions - where is he? What is he doing? Is he safe? Is he well? When will he be back? Will I ever see him again?

Vedik and I were so lucky. Rael's pilgrimage was untraditional - a thing which I think annoys him as he has gotten older and more set in his ways, but it meant that we, as his parents, did not have to be tormented by most of those questions. We knew where he was, what he was doing, that he was in good company. We knew that, while there was always the possibility of some accident befalling him, chances were good that he'd come home in one piece. Most of my generation's parents didn't have that luxury. Vedik's certainly didn't. (Mine had died by the time I left, but the Zorahs suffered similar agonies in their place.)

Everything you've said about Corwin is true, though. He is smart. He is tough. And he's bold - when he and Utena were here last summer, he proved his courage in grand style. No one could be readier to face whatever challenge the gods have put before him.

Speaking of Utena, are you still planning to offer her command of the Defiant test article this summer? I must warn you that if you do, Tali'Zorah may actually catch fire from sheer jealousy. There is no way Rael will ever agree to let her go along, and it'll be years yet before she's finished her schooling and can declare herself ready for pilgrimage - however hard she pushes to compress her academic timetable.

I'm joking, of course, but also serious. Jealousy is really the wrong word - she won't grudge Utena and her friends the opportunity - but she'll be furious that she's unable to take part. I tell you this not to put you off doing it, but merely because I need a bit of advance warning to prepare for the inevitable explosion when she and her father have it out.

That's the plan right now. I'm going to stop by Skuld's in a few days and run it past her. Figure we could both use the distraction by then.

Sorry about Tali'Zorah. I imagine the last thing she needs right now is more teen angst. Mind you, if she gets word back to the rest of the gang, it's not entirely out of the question that they'll mount some kind of rescue mission. That would be... strangely satisfying, but politically unsound, and I think Utena has sense enough not to try it. She's very particular about anything she perceives as oppression of her friends - I told you what she and the others did to B'Elanna Torres's uncle last fall! - but she's smart enough to know the difference between something like that and Tali'Zorah not seeing eye to eye with her father. Besides, she knows Little Tali (ha! she's what, almost 14 now) has an automatic out, she just has to wait for the window to open.

I have to admit I take a certain perverse pleasure in knowing that Rael's own insistence on traditional quarian values guarantees that she'll be out from under his opposable digit in a couple-three years. It's really got to kink his air hose knowing that, if it's occurred to him at all yet.

I recognize that that's rather petty of me - all he did was insult me, my family, and my species - but they do tell me I can be unforgiving sometimes. I'm working on it. My therapist thinks I'm making real progress with my anger issues!

Dear Tali,

Corwin's done it. He's more than done it. They sent him to investigate a developing situation in a place called Cephiro - which turned out to be the alternate plane Utena and her friends come from - and he not only investigated it, he fixed it. Sorted the whole damned mess, and reunited Utena with her long-lost fiancée. I just came from their wedding reception, which was held in the Great Hall of Asgard and, as you can imagine, was quite a shindig. Not quite so big as the party I attended in the same room back in '91, but still.

I'm so proud of that boy I could bust. It's customary for Æsir to return from their Trials covered in glory or blood; Corwin managed to do both, and rack up the full Eight-Ball Code trifecta in the process:

1. Get the girl: check (FSVO "get").


2. Kill the baddies: check.


3. Save the entire planet: very much check.

Okay, point 1 is debatable, inasmuch as he got the girl on behalf of another, but I think it stands. And I think that's what I'm proudest of. Any bastard tough enough can kill the baddies and save the entire planet. It takes a special kind of man to get the girl for someone else's sake. But he did it. From what I've heard, he didn't even have to think about it. He just saw what was right and made straight for it. No hesitation. No complaints.

He obviously thinks we've seen the end of that story. Me? I may not be a Norse god, but I've been around a while longer than he has. I suspect it's only just started.

Like the poet said, it ain't over 'til it's over. Eh?

Dear Benjamin,

No doubt you're very busy right now, but you should be aware that your young protégée has caused something of a revolution on a certain level of quarian society. The younger strata of the Navy officer corps, as well as many quarians of Tali'Zorah's generation, have followed the extranet reports of the Valiant's battle with the Amar avidly. There are fan clubs springing up around the Flotilla; their members are very taken with the idea that planetborn children can be such capable spacers.

Tali'Zorah is much envied by her contemporaries because she's met Tenjou vas Valiant, as she is now known in these parts. (The number of youngsters who, very quietly and in private, try on the name "vas Valiant" may very well be all those above the age of ten who haven't gone on Pilgrimage yet... and a large number of those out there now.) Rael is annoyed, though mainly with the younger officers - and Han'Gerrel, who infuriated him by pointing out, quite rightly, that it sounded much like the day they had when they won their Medals of Valor - rather than Tali, for a change.

I have to admit I'm a little skeptical of what Leonard thinks he is doing, but Mordin insists that the Force is real, and I defer to his expertise.

Also, I must note that this makes three of your children who have undertaken something very like the pilgrimage. Are you quite certain you're not quarian? I would hate to think that I sweated out that retroviral rewrite for no reason.

Dear Tali,

Revolution - ha!

(Re planetborn, I wonder what her fans would say if they knew she comes from a world where there's literally no such thing as outer space.)

And oh yes, the Force is quite real. Remind me the next time we're in the same place and I'll show you.

As for the pilgrimage, I dunno what to tell you. Maybe you rewrote part of my DNA. After all, you did kiss me when yours had just finished.

... Why is that funny? And what in the galaxy does that mean, "literally no such thing as outer space"? I've grown accustomed over the years to you telling me things that shouldn't make any sense, but that one, I'm afraid, actually doesn't.

Incidentally, I have just been informed that the Conclave will be discussing the question of "Valiantism", as the local network is calling it, on Monday. It seems a group of students at one of our secondary school ships has asked the headmaster for permission to apply for a Duelists' Federation charter (and invite the club's officers to teach them the basics of the sport). You can imagine why this has caused some consternation. Dueling with edged weapons is not a common sporting activity among my people, for obvious reasons.

And as to your DNA, I don't think it works that way.

Utena comes from an alternate dimension where the cosmology is Ptolemaic. The sky is literally a glass dome on which the sun turns around the earth. (Don't bother trying to calculate how that could possibly work. Magic is involved. Big magic. Cephiro is pretty much made of magic. It's a carpet remnant of Creation.)

As for why the "revolution" thing is funny, it'd take too long to explain. Suffice it to say that Utena and revolutions go very much hand in hand, so your unknowingly apt choice of words tickled me.

I'm not sure whether I support the idea of a quarian IDF chapter or not. On the one hand, I've seen first-hand the kind of character it builds if you get the right group of kids involved. On the other, you're right, dueling with live steel when you have a pressing need to maintain enviro-suit integrity is crazy-go-nuts. Getting the officers in to explain that might be the way to go, though. If they're anything like Utena and company, those kids aren't going to listen to any boring safety speeches from boring safety grown-ups. They're going to need somebody they identify with to tell them, "Hey, you guys, maybe this isn't the best plan."

You're also probably right about my DNA, more's the pity. I doubt the pilgrimage is a genetic trait anyway. Though since I've had my omni-tool, I've gotten so good at typing with only my first two fingers that my subordinates claim it's slightly disturbing.

"A carpet remnant of Creation." That is a fascinating metaphor.

Dear Tali,

Have you seen the latest hilarity out of Earthdome? You just watch, we'll wrangle about this diplomatically for a few years, but in the end I'm gonna have to invade the frickin' planet and sort those assclowns out myself. 'Cause I'm not already getting enough bad press. Jesus wept.

I told you things spontaneously get more interesting with the Duelists around.

Unscheduled excitement notwithstanding, it was great to see you guys at the big Sendai do. And to see Tali'Zorah in action. How she's grown! And did you notice how easily she fit into the machine those kids become when there's work to do? It was like she'd been one of them all along. Definitely takes after you, particularly in a crisis.

Four more years at least before she can strike for pilgrimage, huh? The phrase "we'll see about that" comes to mind. :)

Mr. Hutchins:

Your email address is one of the most frequently used in the Reclaimer's system profile. Online research indicates that you are affiliated with a galactic law enforcement agency and have extensive starship combat and search-and-rescue experience. This combination of factors makes you most suitable to address the current emergency situation.

Please rendezvous with the Quarian Navy vessel Rayya as quickly as possible. Precise coordinates and current fleet approach IFF codes are attached. NOTE: Immediate contact with hostile forces upon arrival is near-certain.

Captain Tenjou:

Current IPSF fleet distribution data indicate that your command is nearest to the Scandia system. For this reason, and because of your prior association with the Reclaimer's family and familiarity with the Rayya, you are receiving a copy of this request as well.

Benjamin, Captain Tenjou...

I don't even really know how to begin. By apologizing that this message is so late, I suppose. I've been trying to make a start on it for hours and coming up empty.

Thank you - both of you, and all your crew - for your gallant defense of the Rayya last week. I know, because you are both idealists, you have spent the last day rebuking yourselves for the lives that were lost in the battle, but you mustn't. You did all you could.

Whoever, whatever these creatures are, they knew exactly when and where to strike. The Navy is already learning the lessons of that day. No ship will ever be sent to patrol the Formation's perimeter alone again - but the Rayya was alone that day, and without the help of the Challenger and the Valiant, she would have been lost. You saved nearly a thousand lives. Don't let the ones you couldn't save blind you to that fact.

Just the fact that you came to her aid means more than I can say, to me and Tali'Zorah both. If the Admiralty have forgotten how to be grateful for help freely offered, she and I haven't. (And nor, I think you will find, has Captain Kar'Danna.)

Vedik's memorial service will be held Tuesday afternoon on the Archangel. Please come. He considered you both his friends. Rael knows that, and he respects his father too much to make a fuss.

Oh, Tali. You don't have to thank me for trying. And though I take your words about the lives we saved to heart, as I'm sure Utena does too, I'm so sorry it wasn't enough.

Nothing I try to say right now will be adequate... I've never been any good in this kind of situation... but you have to know that I have - have always had - the highest regard for Vedik'Zorah. He was a great man and a good friend. The galaxy is poorer without him.

Of course I'll be there Tuesday. In the meantime, I won't intrude on your grief, but I'm here if you need me.

Benjamin,

Thank you. Inadequate or not, it's good to know you feel that way. Because you're right. He was a great man. He was never one for grabbing headlines or making a stir, but in so many ways, great and small, he was a hero to all who knew him. Certainly he was my hero. Just by being there, with all his quiet, undemanding strength, he kept me in one piece when I finally accepted that (so I thought) I would never see you again.

Vedik used to joke sometimes that he knew I was only settling for him, but it didn't matter to him because he'd rather have half my heart than all of anyone else's, particularly knowing that a man of your caliber (that's how he always said it) had the other half. And every time he did it, I would take the bait and start to chide him for selling himself so short, and he would sit with his arms folded and just smirk at me (you learn to tell these things after a while) until I caught on that he was teasing me... and yet we both knew, but never said, that there was a thin filament of truth buried somewhere in all the self-mocking humor. That was the sort of relationship we had - one that recognized its limitations and worked creatively around them. There's something very quarian about that.

I told him a few years ago about Mordin's experiment in Goodyear, and he just laughed and said he'd figured as much when it only took me three days to recover from Rael's birth. "I'm not as dumb as I look, Tali," he said. It was a thing he often said.

He wasn't dumb at all.

He saved so many lives. It's a horrible cliché, but if he had to go, this is how he always wanted it. He loved being a soldier. Loved protecting his people. The idea that he perished in defense of the Fleet - and of Tali'Zorah, who (as you know) he doted on... I truly believe, I have to believe, he was content with that end. Not that he wanted to die; he loved his life. But he loved his job more. He loved his people more. The way he met his death will make him a legend, but I will always know that he was greater even than the myth.

Such men are rare. In my life, I have been privileged to know more than my fair share of them. Vedik's grandfather, the hero of the Archangel, was one. Vedik was another. So are you and Mordin.

Keelah. I can't believe he's gone.

I'll see you Tuesday, Benjamin. You'll be most welcome. Until then... I have much to do. I can lose myself in the work. That's always been my way anyway.

Oh - and please thank Utena and Corwin for the note they sent to Tali'Zorah. I don't know what was in it, but it has done a great deal to lift her spirits. She blamed herself for her grandfather's death; he detailed one of his marines to guard her while he led the counterattack in Engineering, and she'd convinced herself that if Kal'Reegar had been with Vedik - or if she had been - things would have ended differently. Whatever Corwin and Utena told her seems to have disabused her of that notion, and for that I'm grateful. She's too young to carry such bitter self-reproach.

Dear Benjamin,

As you can see by the change in my address, I've relocated. It was my choice. I had to get away from the Archangel, at least for a while. Too many memories. Too many ghosts.

If the new conjunction in my name is puzzling to you, well, it's puzzling to a good many of us as well. It's the Conclave's clever way of differentiating a brand new third class of quarian. Where nar means (roughly) "child of" and vas "crew of", vel denotes someone who lives in a permanent surface installation. It's actually not new - centuries ago, when we inhabited more than one planet over on the far side of the Perseus Veil, people indicated which world in the Quarian Hegemony they came from that way. Somewhere a long way back, I have an ancestor named Rana'Shukra vel Rannoch, the last member of my clan to be born on the Homeworld. This is the first time since the Evacuation it's been used, though, and now it's applied to those of us who live full-time on Halo.

Which, right now, is just me and Mordin, who isn't even quarian, but you'd be surprised how often he appears in the Observer as "Mordin'Solus vel Halo". This amuses him, as he notes that if we were to apply the full salarian naming convention to his present situation, he would properly be called "Scandia-CN38 III-Σ Quarian Union Sector 27A Test Settlement One Science Center Solus Mordin".

I've moved into our old house, which now stands next to the Science Center in the center of Soluston. It's been vacant all these years - the people who have spent time in the Test Settlement have kept it up as a sort of monument to the discovery of Halo. I hadn't stepped foot in it since I left Goodyear, the day after you did. I was slightly startled to discover that it's just the same.

Don't worry, I'm not spending all my time alone here, moping around amid the ghosts of our past. That would be no better than if I'd stayed where I was. I did, for the first week or so, and then I pulled myself together and asked Mordin to move into what used to be our spare room. He seemed a bit flustered at first - gave me a long and slightly rambling explanation of salarian mating drives, or lack thereof, until it eventually dawned on him that I wasn't hitting on him, I just wanted some company. Then he was utterly embarrassed. Then he got over that, as he does, and we just had a good laugh about it. I haven't laughed like that since... well, since before Vedik died.

Anyway, neither of us is here all that much. He spends his time working on the Acclimation Project, which is finally moving into larger-scale trials, and I spend my time in the Library with Tangent, puzzling over the cryptic holo-records. There's got to be some kind of key to decipher them; even being able to translate the language doesn't help me much if I don't have the context for the metaphors employed. And there's so much data buried in the optical banks that running searches doesn't help unless you have very, very specific search terms already worked out. What's needed - and I can't help but think that the Forerunners (as we've taken to calling Halo's unknown builders) must have needed it as well - is some sort of index to make sense of it all. But if such a thing exists at all, it's not here... so I work at it the old-fashioned way. I have time, after all.

Some days it feels as if I have little else.

That came out all wrong. I'm all right. Honestly, I am. I have worthwhile work, I have friends, I have connections to the outside world. And if I'm not on speaking terms with my son, I still have my granddaughter. She has little free time, as she is very busy blazing a mile-wide trail of shattered assessment benchmarks across the Quarian Union's educational system, but we see each other at least once a month. Which is more often than either of us sees her father. It's a sad thing to say, but that suits us both fine.

All right, I am in a bit of a brown study today, it seems. It'll pass. They always do. And then I'll dust myself off and get back to work. That's what I do, after all. It says so right on my clan's crest. Did I ever tell you about that? As the last living member of clan Shukra (this branch, anyway; I think there are a few on the Davrella), I have our ancestral records, including a certified holo of the crest we were entitled to display on our homes back on Rannoch. (It was a tradition with its roots in our pre-spaceflight era, like heraldry on Earth.) A few years ago I translated the clan motto from the ancient Khelish. Arak atav - "I survive."

Strangely apt, no?

Well... back to work.

3WA COMCEN just lost contact with the Z'ha'dum expedition after receiving an incomplete transmission that may have been an attempt at a distress call. We can't raise Kei on the Lens. I'm on my way out there now with Bea, Jean, and Mace to try and find out what the hell is going on. If you guys have got anybody in that part of the Rim, I'd suggest you ask the Admiralty to flag them away from the Alpha Omega system until we get some answers.

Just finished a survey of the Icarus landing zone. The ship is here... what's left of it. At first glance it looks like a crash site, but look a little closer and the picture changes. They got down okay, just as the pilot reported, and then... not sure. Heavy weapons of some kind, but not anything I can identify off the top of my head. Some kind of laser or plasma lance, maybe. Massive. Cut the ship to ribbons. It doesn't look like they even got a chance to fight back.

There are several bodies, but not everybody's here. It's hard to tell whether the others were taken away, or just... vaporized. Given the amount of firepower that must have been flying around, the latter is entirely conceivable.

Kei's not here... but the Cosmic Rod is, in about a dozen pieces. I can't picture her letting that happen without a fight. On the other hand, I can't really picture it happening at all. But it must've, because here are the pieces.

Her Lens dropped off the grid just after the emergency signal. It isn't here, but we can't tell whether it even exists. Even Skuld isn't sure what that means.

Apart from the wreckage and the bodies, there's nothing here. Scanned from orbit, the whole planet's dead. No life signs, no energy signatures... nothing. We're not even sure why they chose to land in this particular spot. It's just a rocky nowhere. There's nothing here.

Just dust and echoes.

Marty Rose and Yuri just arrived. Zoner's supposed to be here within the hour. They'll do their best, but I doubt there's anything more for them to learn.

I'm going home. No. Not home. That would be a mistake right now. Back to New Avalon, though. Try to figure out what to do next. I feel like I've had a hundred plates spinning on poles for the last 20 years and I've just dropped them all.

Mordin just woke me after your yeoman reached him at the Science Center with the news. Why in the world didn't you com me? No, Tali, that's not helping. Mordin and I are preparing to leave now. We're much closer to the mission site than to Zeta Cygni, so we'll go and join the investigation. Do not despair. I know from experience that it's much too early for that.

Dear Tali,

I'm dropping off the grid for a while. A few weeks at least, maybe longer. Steve and Utena will keep the IPO running while I'm gone.

Remember the little place on Sakura's estate, way up in the back woods? She's offered to let me stay there for a while and get my head together. I need to clear my headspace. Sort a bunch of crap for long-term storage. I've had too much on the boil for too long, and I didn't even realize how hard I had to run to keep up with it until this broke my stride. Even once I've recovered my balance, assuming I even can, I don't think I'll be able to keep up that pace without her. Some things are going to have to go. I'm not sure which ones, or where. That's on the long list of things I need to figure out. Until I do I'll be no good to anyone.

Anyway, it's about time for me to go. Corwin's down at Mathews Memorial making sure Old No. 1 is ready for the trip. Even Daggerdisc is too big for the place my head is in. I need that exile feel, me and my Valkyrie against the galaxy. Got to get back to someplace like where Raoul helped me get to when the Fun Stopped. That was worse than this. It had to be. And I got on with things after that.

Oh, how I wish I could go back to Goodyear.

I'll drop you a line when I come back out... maybe sooner.

Dear Benjamin,

Welcome back! We've all missed you.

No doubt you're neck-deep in official reports explaining all you've missed while you were away. Somewhere in there is the report Mordin and I filed from Z'ha'dum, which, to save you the trouble of reading it, I can tell you now amounted, like all the other Z'ha'dum reports, to a small pile of nothing much. (You may notice that Mordin is referred to as "Dr. Solus" throughout; that was mainly an attempt to head off the inevitable confusion in the Records Office, since one of the members of the Icarus expedition was a 3WA operative named John Morden.)

Here are a few items of more personal news you won't find in the official reports of events momentous and historic on a galactic scale:

The large-scale Acclimation Project test scheduled for August went very well, with less than ten percent of the experimental group becoming ill and most of them recovering without needing heroic medical measures. There were no deaths, which is good on many levels. Most of the participants have already volunteered for the next test, which Mordin plans to run for twice as long and start in the spring. It's too early yet to add the wild card of winter conditions into the mix.

Tali'Zorah's reign of terror aboard Hekademos is nearly at an end; barring unforeseen (and frankly improbable) developments, she will graduate at the top of her class - technically, the top of the class before hers - in February. Once that's accomplished, there will be nothing to prevent her embarking on her Pilgrimage. She'll be even younger than I was when I began mine.

Your new apprentice sounds very interesting indeed. You do have the oddest habit of picking up strays when you're trying to be alone... :)

More seriously, I'm glad you're feeling able to face the galaxy again, and that you're making a sincere effort, at long last, to learn to delegate. I know I'm hardly one to talk, given my track record, but that same record gives me the weight of experience to tell you this - burying yourself in work only helps for so long. Eventually, as you've discovered, you have to turn a valve somewhere and let the system decompress.

If ever you find you're unable to do that for yourself, you know you can always call on me to help. I know you needed space to figure out what to do next, and I respected that - but now that you're back, you don't have face the universe alone.

Not as long as I'm here.

Dear Benjamin,

As you see, my situation has changed again - in an unexpected direction this time. The Admiralty has given me command of the Venachar, one of the Flotilla's Idenna-class long-endurance cruisers. She's a ship designed and built to travel great distances and stay out for months or even years at a time without a support squadron - a rarity among quarian vessels. They were originally outfitted before the discovery of Halo with an eye toward scouting the galaxy for a world to colonize, then sidelined when the debate over whether to seek such a world deadlocked the Conclave. Since then they've just been loafing around on Formation patrol.

The fleet's top engineers have spent the last three months refitting the Venachar, returning her to the configuration in which she was intended to roam far from the Flotilla looking for a homeworld, but now her mission is slightly different. With her, Tangent and I are going in search of the other Installations - the other Halos. We've deciphered enough of the Cartographer's data to know, or at least strongly believe, that there should be six of them, of which at least one other should be somewhere in this spiral arm of the galaxy.

I know that's not much to go on, and it's beyond a needle-in-a-haystack search, but there are a few clues for us to go on. We'll begin our search assuming that the other Installations are in similar systems, parked in similar orbital positions near relatively massive bodies. That much we know about at least one other, Installation 04, based on the Collier-Duke report. We also know 04 is probably somewhere coreward of the Zebulon sector. If we can find it, its Cartographer may yield more helpful information than 05's, and searching along similar parameters may lead us to others, if there are any to be found.

Before we leave Scandia, though, I'm going to make certain Tali'Zorah is fully prepared for her pilgrimage. You and I have both known for years what destination she would choose, and chosen it she has. Unless the galaxy comes to an abrupt end before then, she will graduate from Hekademos next week, and she's already making ready to depart. Her father is being surprisingly calm about the whole thing, though he, too, knows full well where she plans to go. It appears he's resigned himself to it.

Look for her in the first week of March; she's going to make every effort to be away in time to attend Corwin and Utena's wedding. Sadly, I won't be able to go, since by the time it happens I'll be on the other side of the Federation - but I'm sure they, of all people, will understand the importance of the mission that calls me away.

The mission is open-ended, but I expect to be at it for at least two years. The ship doesn't have a subether relay, just a hyperwave array, so contact with the inner sectors may be a bit sporadic, but I'll keep in touch as I can.

Until I see you again, Benjamin, be well. Stay alive.

Dear Tali,

That sounds like an exciting way to spend a couple of years. Congratulations! What will Mordin do without you?

You're right about Corwin and Utena understanding, but we'll all miss you. I'm sure everyone will be thrilled to see Tali'Zorah, though. Even the Duelists who haven't met her have heard all about her by now.

Be careful out there. If you run into anything your ship can't handle, don't hesitate to call. In fact... hmm. Let me see if I can arrange a more reliable bit of comm gear for you. It's long past time anyway.