Mass Effect: Reaper Dreams

Party Bomb

"Look at that party the other night. Everybody wanted to have a good time and tried real hard but we all woke up the next day feeling sorta sad and separate."

Jack Kerouac

December 7th, 2187

Samantha Traynor

The day couldn't have been any lovelier. A slight dusting of snow across the fields was blinding under the sunny skies of December. Tiny icicles hung from the dormant branches in the apple orchards, twinkling like the lights on the Alenko Christmas Tree. Samantha couldn't recall a more perfect day in recent memory. If only Diana didn't have that damn interview, they could have spent the whole of it together.

Work was going to be a problem, but Samantha understood what she was marrying into. It wasn't as if her fiancé was a gossip columnist. Diana's cross-species viewership allowed her to be a voice of reason in a difficult time. Samantha was proud of her, especially the way she handled the darkest days in the aftermath of the war. The sickness caused by proximity to the Reaper corpses had caused widespread panic and despair. The illness, known in some circles as Huskeye, and others as Reaper Rot, had claimed well over a million lives. It was halted only by the strictest enforcement of quarantine zones.

Entire portions of the Earth were rendered uninhabitable. This made the increasing alien presence more difficult to bear for some humans. In the minds of the most ignorant, like those in the Terra Firma party, the liberators had become squatters. Diana's editorials on the subject had quelled tensions, but they remained bubbling under the surface. Once the Citadel reached full operational status, things could only improve, or worsen, depending on perspective.

If it wasn't one thing it was another, but now that the Charon and Arcturus Relays were working, there was real hope. Many ships had left for the Exodus Relay. Once it was repaired, the expectation was that they would immediately connect with Annos Basin Relay, and the chain effect of open relays would restore some semblance of normalcy to the galaxy. The belief was high that within the next two years, Surk-Kesh, Palaven, Earth, Thessia, Tuchanka, and Irune, would all be accessible, and then perhaps the colonies would follow.

Samantha tried not to think of what her parents might be facing all the way out on the other end of the galaxy. She glanced in Tali's direction and reminded herself not to complain too much. Nobody had it worse than the Quarians. Rannoch was over fifty thousand light years distance, and a fleet was only as fast as its slowest ship. The Quarian journey home would be perilous, it would take decades, and it would cost lives. An entire generation might never live to see Rannoch. It was a cruel twist of fate.

Offers of help were coming in, mainly from Humans and Turians, but the rest of the galaxy still had a prejudice against Quarians. It was maddening really. Tali was worried for her people, and where was Garrus? He'd vanished ever since the Council promoted him to Spectre. Diana warned her that she shouldn't ask, or bring it up to Tali. Samantha didn't know how to interpret the advice. Did Diana mean to imply that something terrible happened to the Turian, or was he on a classified mission?

If that wasn't secretive enough, she'd heard from Mrs. Alenko that Tali had been here for the past week, secluded with Liara in the barn. Samantha instinctively knew it had to do with that damn canister—the one that she saw Shepard and Tali fussing over in the final days of the war. It had been stored in the AI room on their voyage home, and then she'd spotted it in Liara's shuttle the day she travelled to the Citadel with James Vega.

And more questions; Ashley seemed to be recovered, nearly happy. Samantha watched the Commander interacting with Liara. Something was up. It was the little things—casual glances, frequent touching, inside jokes, and knowing little smiles. It was all very intimate. What was going on?