21 Tali's Trial

--> A rather sudden and unlooked-for turn of events. Tali tells me her superiors have charged her with treason. She has no specifics, only that she is ordered to return to the Migrant Fleet to stand trial. She says it cannot be on account of working on a Cerberus ship; she got full and explicit leave for that purpose. She has no idea what the exact nature of the charges are.

I smell a rat. There’s something more to this than Tali’s actions.

Setting course for the Migrant Fleet.

--> Well that was unexpected. I thought I would be providing moral support to Tali. Instead I’m her legal representative. The Admiralty declared Tali to be vas Normandy instead of vas Neema, barring her Quarian captain from speaking at her trial.

Tali is accused of sending active Geth back home to her fleet. She admits to sending Geth parts, per her father’s requests for Geth material, but denies sending anything that could have spontaneously reactivated, or having reactivated, pose a threat. Tali’s father was conducting experiments on Geth parts and software for developing new weapons and hacking techniques; all details purportedly open and officially sanctioned.

But something went wrong and her father’s lab ship, the Alerai, is now overrun by Geth. It seems to me fairly clear that someone was getting a little too advanced in their simulations and accidentally kick-started the dormant Geth.

The Quarians have already tried to take back the Alerai, but the teams sent in were repulsed with heavy casualties. The vessel’s engines and weapons are offline, and it seems unlikely anyone aboard that ship is still alive. The Admiralty are debating whether to simply blow it to bits. I’ve volunteered to instead board and reclaim the Alerai. We've been granted permission.

This is not the first time, nor indeed will likely be the last, that I've seen the consequences of fooling around with advanced artificial intelligence. One would expect that, of all people, the Quarians should know better, but it seems the greedy and power-hungry never will learn. There should be a proverb about this sort of thing, perhaps, “the forbidden fruit of folly is seldom plucked but once.” Or on second thought, the old proverb that tells us “as a dog returns to his vomit, so a fool returns to his folly,” is probably sufficient.

--> Alerai secure. It was as I expected. Given the circumstances, how could it have been otherwise? The ruthless efficiency of the carnage therein was unmistakable. We stepped over the broken and bloodied corpses of the Quarians, marines and technicians, soldiers and civilians, adults and children, to find awaiting us the grim metallic figures that had so mercilessly torn them to pieces. Tali’s father had indeed been conducting illegal experiments on dormant Geth parts, and reconstructing full Geth for more advanced experiments. They screwed up; the Geth gained the advantage and slaughtered every last Quarian aboard, down to the last child. They’d taken all of the available Geth parts and assembled a small army inside the ship.

They’re now once again only so many pieces of rubble.

Tali's Father left a message for her, his recorded image speaking hollow words of attempted comfort to his bereft daughter. I've seen loss countless times before, and will again for as long as I live. Tali has lost something that can never be regained. She must come to terms with that and move on. There is nothing I or anyone can say that will give her the solace she craves. When a wound is suffered and the flesh made raw, it must be treated and sewn together again. A scar will always remain, but the body must seal the injury and survive.

Though it would clear her of the charge of treason, Tali begged me not to reveal to the Quarian Admiralty the truth about how her father had reactivated the Geth himself; she couldn’t bear the thought of him being immortalized as an infamous warning to future generations, and preferred the prospect of her own threatened banishment.

We returned the hearing, and I commandeered the floor. Tali and I had done a little digging prior to retaking the Alerai, and it payed off. I justly accused the Admiralty of bringing their disagreement about potential reinvasion of their homeworld into their judgement of Tali. I reminded them of how Tali had helped defeat Sovereign, of how she’d brought back with her to the fleet invaluable information on Geth evolution, demonstrating her abilities, loyalty, and judgement, and how there was nothing in the way of evidence that she had suddenly grown so foolhardy as to endanger the fleet.

The Admirals cleared Tali of charges. If necessary, I’d have presented the evidence from the Alerai to clear Tali’s name, regardless of her requests. Not only would allowing her to unjustly bear her father’s guilt been ethically untenable, he is dead and she alive.

I intend to see to it she remains thus.

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