An Old Prothean Trick

by Cause-and-Author

"We're losing this war, Shepard, everybody knows it. But we have an idea for how to fight it better next time." One-Shot, AU. With the war against the Reapers already lost, humanity reuses an old Prothean Trick.

A/N: H/T "The Shepard" by Galexz

In her sleep, she stirred.

The first things to come back were the memories. Fighting, shouting, death on all sides. The fall of Thessia, although for just a moment she couldn't remember why that mattered, or what a Thessia was, or even who she was. She remembered the loss of the Normandy - was that a ship? It felt like one, coloring all her memories of it with the feel of steel underfoot and the smell of burnt ozone in her nose and the sharp colors of artificial lighting in her eyes. Whatever it had been, the memory of it hurt. Faces flashed by, disconnected from any of their names, ending with the face of a woman, staring at her through a window. Pointed chin. Pale skin. Hair that had once been a vibrant red. Eyes of granite gray. Not a window, she remembered - they were called "mirrors". That was her face.

She felt the cold.

Biting, cutting cold all around her. It was too late to feel it seeping into her; she realized that she could feel the cold next to her bones, deep inside her body. Had she always been this cold? The woman in the mirror wasn't cold, or maybe she had already made the cold part of herself. She saw herself straighten, and brush her hands over her own faded uniform.

She blinked, and with a wrenching sensation she was back inside her body, picking some imagined lint off her bloused uniform shirt.

She was on a Helium-3 refueling station, having just come back from another strike on another Reaper-occupied outpost. Javik had cautioned them that this was how his own cycle had gone, the war dragging out over the centuries. But the Prothean Empire had been vast, spanning the entirety of the galaxy. They had opened every Relay, explored every world, stretched to the farthest fringes of the stars. Theirs had been a military that could have crushed the entire might of the Council and Terminus systems together without even slowing down.

The current cycle was not so fortunate. They'd never really had much hope; they were too fractured, too divided. Too weak and too busy backstabbing each other. In her more cynical moments, she agreed with him: the Council had been ripe for the harvesting.

She pushed her way out of the washroom, moving purposefully down the gangplanks of the fueling station toward the makeshift conference room. With the loss of Arcturus - Gods above and below, it still hurt to think of - the Alliance had taken to using this out-of-the-way facility as their de-facto headquarters.

But even that didn't explain why it had been Hackett himself to summon her here. With Admiral Anderson dead on earth, and an indoctrinated Cerberus-implanted Udina handing over every human he could find, Hackett was the last voice of authority for the Systems Alliance. Maybe the last voice of authority for any human, anywhere. So what was he doing here?

She brought herself to a stop and snapped a crisp salute. "Sir, Commander Shepard reporting as ordered, sir."

Hackett stared out the big picture window as though he hadn't heard her. It was silent in the room, but watching the swirling vortex of the gas-giant's atmosphere outside was enough to make her imagine the roar of the wind and the scrape of the micro-particulate dust against the station's hull. She held her salute as the silence stretched.

"At east, Commander." He spoke without turning around.

She relaxed, dropping her arm and adopting an easy standing posture. "Sir."

"Commander, my condolences on the loss of the Normandy."

She bit off the pang of rage and terror and shame that threatened to well up inside her. It was already a month gone; another ship lost, another vital resource wasted. Should could have continued harassing the Reapers behind their lines, slowing the Harvests, giving the home-worlds more time. Could have been making a difference. But she'd gotten careless, or maybe the Reapers had just gotten lucky. They survived the lance of molten metal that sheared through the ship, long enough for some of them to get to the lifepods and escape through the still-active relay. Some of those people had even survived the unprotected relay jump in lifeboats never meant to take the strain. She held her breath, offering a silent thought for the ones who didn't make it. There had been so many.

Would it have mattered if she'd had some of her crew? So many had died in the Collector base, and so much time had been wasted finger-pointing at Cerberus. Could she have done more, prepared better? Maybe Joker would still be alive.

At length, she replied "... thank you, sir."

"You're welcome, but I didn't come here to pay a social call. Sit." He gestured to the table with one hand, still facing out into the roiling clouds.

"I came here to talk to you about Ilos." he continued after she'd taken her seat, "We're losing this war, Shepard, everybody knows it. Every day, we lose more people. More ships, more trained crews. We're bleeding out war assets faster than we can scrape them up."

Shepard was silent. She knew all this already.

After a pause, he turned to look at her and she was struck by how much older he looked now than just a few months prior. "In fact,-" he continued "-we're not so much 'losing' this war as much as we've already lost it."

She jumped to her feet, practically spitting her defiance. "No! Sir, we have to keep fighting."

"With what, Commander? Eden Prime has fallen."

Shepard stood stock still, processing the news. Eden Prime had been spared by the Collectors in 2185 and had become an increasingly important part of the Human resistance when the Reapers came boiling through the Charon relay like immortal, indestructible locusts. After the loss of Earth, it had become the Alliance's main shipbuilding facility. If Eden Prime had fallen ...

She looked Hackett in the eye, and he nodded in answer to her unspoken question. "The shipyards held out as long as they could, but the Asari never managed to break the blockade. They fired their scuttling charges rather than be boarded."

Shepard sunk back into her seat, stunned. No more shipyards. That meant no more human ships, possibly ever again. No more marine free-fall training. Hackett was right. The war was already over. She was still considering this when he took the seat next to her and slid a datapad in front of her. "This may be the only plan we have left."

She looked, and began to read. A suspicion began to form in her mind as she read the orders for supplies and troops, computer experts and vital war materiel being diverted to Ilos. When she clicked through to the last page, she nodded.

"You want to preserve humanity on Ilos, in stasis. Just like the Protheans tried to do."

He nodded. "Yes. We know the Ilos facility escaped the Reapers attentions once, maybe it can do it again. And we won't make the same mistake as last time. We'll keep it small, just enough for a viable gene-pool."

She winced. That meant they weren't planning on inviting any of the other races. Viable gene-pool meant four, maybe five thousand people. If they tried to keep viable populations of the entire galaxy, they'd draw the Reapers notice for sure.

"So that's it? We just ... retreat? Wait for this all to blow over in a thousand years?"

He sighed, rubbing at his face. Up close, she could see how tired he looked. His unshaven face, the slight crumpling of his otherwise immaculate uniform. The illusion of stoic implacability shattered in her mind.

"What else can we do, Commander? You've been out there, you've seen how desperately outclassed we are. And now we don't even have the Citadel, or any real hope of resupply. We're defeated. If I thought we'd have a chance at surrender, I'd take it, but there's no hope for us there. This is our only option."

She sat in silence for a time.

"Are we all retreating?"

He shook his head. "No. We have to keep the Reapers occupied in Council space and keep them from noticing what we're up to on Ilos. We'll send a small force through, then try to deactivate the relay from this side while we fight over here."

She nodded. Neither of them needed to say that it was a suicide mission; they both knew.

"Then I guess the only thing I can say is that I accept."

He looked up at her, confused. "I accept the mission." she clarified. "I'll lead the charge while the civilians go through the Mu relay. I'll take my task force and we'll try to keep the Reapers occupied."

He snorted what might have been a cynical laugh. "You misunderstand me, Commander. I'm going to be the one leading the distraction fleet. You're going into stasis."

She blinked. "Me? No no no. You can't pull me off the front lines, Admiral. I'm needed out there."

"To do what? More hit and run attacks? More delaying actions? We can't win that way, Shepard. The Crucible is taking too long. We still don't know what the Catalyst is. The Council is still bickering over whose planets should be getting reinforcements first, and ignoring the bigger issues. We've already lost so much." He sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face. "I don't think we're going to finish this."

She froze, staring down at her hand resting on the table. It was an admission of failure. She'd never have allowed it on the Normandy, but now the Normandy was gone ...

"What's your plan, sir?"

"Ilos. The Protheans had a stay-behind operation there in suspended animation. We've been restoring and repairing it, digging down, trying to hide under all the other ruins. We think it'll work, and it'll give us access to the Conduit when it's all over. The stay-behind team will have food, water, laboratories and machine-shops, computer assistance ... everything you need to start rebuilding when you wake up."

Shepard frowned. "But don't the Reapers know about Ilos?"

Hackett shrugged, looking uncomfortable. "Probably - as an old prothean site, but they missed it last time too. We kept the secret of the Conduit, and with all the Geth dead, Saren dead, Sovereign dead, there's nobody around to tell. The only Alliance command who knew about it were all killed in the fighting on earth, except me, and the computers wiped. It's unlikely that Cerberus knows about it, but at this point we don't have much choice. We know enough about the stasis technology to fix it, but not enough to build it from scratch elsewhere."

"So ... that's the plan? Hide under the other ruins and hope we go unnoticed?"

"More or less. It's not a great plan, Commander, but it's the only one we have."

She shifted. The memory had ended. She could feel something; she was in a tight space, the walls of her chamber pressing against her arms and legs and twitching her hair every time she shifted. There was sound, now, a low but constant hiss. She could feel the air stirring on her skin, and there was a fuzziness to the edges of the blackness in her vision. The sound had risen to a roar, and a piercing brightness shattered her vision; all she could see was light, pouring in through a crack in the world. She blinked, and the light started to resolve into a vertical line, widening. She recognized the roar of the wind as the sound of servomotors slowly grinding. Which mean that ...

She tried to raise her arms, reach for the edges of what she now suspected was a stasis pod, but her arms would not obey. She strained her legs, but managed only a twitch. She clenched all the muscles in her stomach and suddenly realized she didn't even know which way was down.

"Duw uchod, mae'n agor cyfleusterau o'r fat!"

Was that a voice she was hearing? She tried again to move something, anything, and felt a click beneath one wrist.

"Mae'n symud."

She blinked again, and hazy images swam into view. Were they in black and white? She tried blinking, and each time the image shifted. Reds and whites. Purples and yellows. Her memories started to catch up with her and she remembered the first time she'd died. The cybernetic eyes Cerberus had given her. Oh, of course. She closed her eyes and concentrated, thinking of normal color vision. When she opened them, she could see.

There were ... figures. That was the only way of putting it. They were tall, but spindly. Their faces had what looked like tentacles coming from where their noses should have been, but they were wearing armor that looked like what hers used to look like, and they carried narrow, boxy things in their two hands that looked like weapons. One of them was holding up a small box and pointing it at her; a scanner, or something? Maybe it was the weapon. She had no way of knowing and - she strained again, feeling nothing move - no way of doing anything about it.

One of the figures turned to her with wide, black eyes that reminded her - just for a moment - of Thane.

"eistedd yn llonydd ac nad ydynt yn symud"

Now she knew it was a voice. It came out of the figure looking - no, STARING - at her, an escape of air hissing from between the tentacles. Was that a mouth behind there?

Shepard closed her eyes and tried to nod. Nothing, this time, but she remembered the drill. Remembered waking up on a Cerberus station and having to boot up her cybernetics herself. So she sat, concentrating hard on the image of a motor activating, of a person walking with careful precision. She could just barely feel the subtle shift beneath her pelvis that signaled the reactivation of her augments. Ignoring the chattering of the alien language above and around her, she shifted again. This time, her arms came up and gripped the pod edges. This time, her legs shifted and pulled up into a bent position. She was just about to try standing when the Staring Guy started waving it's 6-fingered hands.

"Nid oes rhaid i chi aros i lawr a sefyll Nid"

She ignored it, and pushed herself up.

Then fell over immediately, crashing painfully to the floor half-sprawled over the edges of her pod.

Immediately, she could feel the hands on her arms, pulling her up, setting her on her feet, and it was too much. She reached out in a panic, her training kicking in, and broke herself free of the grip, throwing a fast uppercut and already twisting to get out of the way of the counterblow, and -

She fell back down, panting hard. Her vision cut out, then came back in with a twinge of awful false-color. She found herself on hands and knees on the floor of a dark facility.

"hynafiaid isod hi yn prysur" one of them said to another. This was getting confusing. She'd call that one Staring Guy, this one Big Guy, and the other one Skinny Guy. That'd do for now.

She stayed down, concentrating on her breathing. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a hand appear. Looking up, she found one of them - was it Staring Guy again? She couldn't tell - as far away from her as it could be while still reaching out with its long arm to offer her a hand. Carefully, she put her hand in it and nodded once. It stood, and she stood with it, and they swayed in the dim illumination of the pod's systems.

"Where am I?" she tried to say, but it came out as a strangled croak in her suddenly too-dry throat. She coughed, doubling over and hacking as the rest of her body started to catch up. Oh, gods above and below she hurt everywhere.

When she had gotten herself under control, she found all three of them on the far side of the room from her. She slowly raised her hands up, in a gesture she hoped meant "peace" to them, and straightened. Her memories filled her thoughts, but she tamped them down hard. She'd deal with it later. Hacket had obviously gone through with it, and it had obviously worked. Unless she was dreaming, and this was all in her head. Either way, panicking about it wouldn't do any good now. She took a careful step, then another - her confidence came back to her as she felt her augmented body responding more like she remembered it. Good. She reached the edge of her pod and looked inside, hoping to find something, anything, some clue that would help her piece together a coherent story.

She felt, rather than heard, one of them come up beside her. It, too, looked into the pod with an expression that almost looked like ... curiosity? The wideness of the eyes, the sporadic twitching of the tentacles on the face. She took another breath and swallowed past the dryness in her mouth. She needed water. Turning to the figure next to her, she raised a hand to get it's attention. Then cupped her hands together like a bowl and mimed bringing it to her mouth for a drink.

It stared at her, uncomprehending.

Shepard tried to calm her frustration, dropping her arms and looking around the room. The emergency lighting had been activated, probably when these things had entered. They stood in a solitary room, the now open stasis pod in the middle of the room. There were banks of computers up against all the walls, and with a relieved sigh she noticed that they looked like Citadel terminals. Well, maybe this was a stroke of luck.

Crossing to the wall, she stroked the edge of the terminal to bring it alive. Sure enough, it beeped - and then the whole room illuminated. The computers sprung to life, and the figures leapt back together into a triangular formation as they pointed their narrow boxy objects at everything. The terminal whined for a moment, the lights flickering around her and she frowned. There was something she was forgetting, something important about this facility ...

She was startled out of her thoughts by the terminal, which at last beeped in readiness. She tapped out a quick sequence.

show system statusall

Ilos Reliquary Facility
Main Power: Offline
Secondary Power: Offline
Emergency Power: 18%

..
Archives: Offline
Stasis System: 1 / 4255 Online

Pods Online:
CMDR SHEPARD

Pods Offline:

There followed list of names, over four thousand. The terminal obligingly paused after each screenfull, and Shepard found herself starting to tremble. Was she the last? What had happened? At length, the terminal reached its end.

..
New Messages: 2 messages

She blinked. Behind her, there was more of the alien chatter. She tapped again, calling up the first message. Instead of the text she was expecting, however, a holoprojector in the ceiling flickered to life. She turned, and found herself staring at the back of Admiral Hackett as he faced her stasis pod. The aliens went silent, watching the hologram with her.

"Commander Shepard, good morning. As I record this message, you're being prepped for stasis by the technical team, and I'm en route to Hawking Eta to try and shut down the relay there. Reaper forces are on the move in the Traverse and our colonies, so I guess that's where we'll stage the big distraction.

The situation is far more grim than I let on to you when last we spoke, Commander. Tuchanka has fallen. Sur'kesh has fallen. In fact, the only fighting still going on are the roving strike forces harassing the Reapers ... but it's not enough. Our analysts thought we might have another 3 months, at most, before it was all over except for the harvesting if we'd kept on the way we did.

So here we are. If you're watching this, then our war is long since over. You and the others in the Ilos facility are our last hope. But you're a soldier, Shepard, and I have orders for you. Take command of the survivors of humanity, rebuild our civilization, and figure out a way to stop the cycle. Maybe you can get an early start on the Crucible this time. But whatever you do, Commander, know that you carry the hope and the vengeance of Humanity with you.

Hackett Out."

She hung her head, the tears stinging her eyes as the reality of her situation hit home. She was alone. She had been tasked with rebuilding humanity, and she'd already failed.

As the chatter behind her started up again, she keyed the second message. This time it was log output from the automated systems running the facility, and she skimmed it quickly. Daily activities from the humans stationed on Ilos as they prepared for ten thousand years of sleep. A dry recitation of diary entries created, of pictures and documents archived. Then the sleep - a few here, a few more there. Inside of a week, the entire facility had gone into stasis and rested there undisturbed for 8,498 years. Then there had been an event of some kind, the sensors said seismic. It knocked main power offline and cut off half of the computer systems. Secondary power kicked in. The 10,000 year mark came and the computer tried to wake everybody up, but something was wrong - the internal clocks didn't agree with the stellar-observation cameras meant to provide a backup. With half the computer system offline, the tie-breaking VI was unavailable. Secondary power dwindled, and the computer systems started cutting off pods until it failed after 13,112 years. Emergency power kicked in, but it had never been meant to power the entire facility; Emergency power started to fail. Pods were deactivated in batches until only hers was left online. She stayed there in a low-power state until the facility had been dormant for 13,704 years. Then a blip of activity - something had pushed open the facility's main door, generating back-spike of power that tripped a sensor. The system woke up, and reactivated parts of the facility. Emergency lighting came on. Pathway illumination was provided to the only active stasis pod left - hers. Then an activation code, and her pod opened.

And then a login. Hers.

She sat down on the floor and held her head in her hands, sitting for a few minutes and letting the enormity of her task confront her. She had nothing.

At length there was an almost tentative sound behind her. She lifted her head and saw all three of the figures holding up their hands in the same gesture she had given. She frowned, then stood and repeated the gesture. They held their hands up. She lowered hers, and they did the same.

"Can you understand me?" she asked, and heard decidedly negative-sounding ~BLRT~ from the boxy device the smallest one was holding. A tool after all.

Tools! She thought, suddenly excited. She reached down to her wrist and pressed the activation button for her omnitool, praying silently for a split second before the familiar orange haptic interface bloomed around her arm. The figures leapt backward in alarm, staring at her with wide eyes. Or maybe that's just how they always looked? She fired up the translation program, then spoke again.

"I am Commander Shepard. Can you understand me?"

The omnitool repeated her message in the Gal-Standard translation language, earning her another ~BLRT~ from their tool, and Shepard winced as she remembered that the omni-tools didn't have the entire translation matrix installed; it was queried through the comm system. But Big Guy stepped forward.

"Yr wyf yn wyddonydd o astudiaethau dynol ond nid oes sy'n siarad eich iaith. Gallwch ddeall imi"

Her omnitool produced only a red "X" and similar disappointed sound. She closed her eyes, trying to concentrate. It sounded so familiar, like it was right on the tip of her tongue ... she shook her head, unable to remember. She was probably just incorporating whatever of their language she'd heard during the process of waking from stasis.

"First thing's first," she said aloud, just to hear her own voice. "We need to get the power back online."

Her stomach rumbled in disagreement, and she amended with a wry grin "Okay, that can be second."

###

They were in no hurry, it turned out. They accompanied her on her search through the facility for the canteen, and watched as she opened the last active supply preservation pod. Inside had been preserved foodstuffs, held in the same kind of stasis field that had once held herself. They said little as she ate, feeling her strength slowly returning to her. She tried to make it last - no telling if anything in the powered-down supply pods had survived the almost ten millennia. Better safe than sorry, she thought, and commanded the computer to cut power to the rest of the facility entirely.

At length, the figures had made motions that Shepard interpreted as "follow us". She did, and they led her through dimly lit corridors of the facility, then to the outside. That had been a shock.

Apparently, they had drilled or blasted their way down to the facility. There was a sprawling basecamp set up on the surface, and a large rocket-shaped spacecraft of just away from it. Far from the way she remembered it, the surface of the planet was lifeless, dark, and cold. The stars were very very bright, and there remained only the rubble of the vast Prothean city ruins that had once plagued her own mission here. The aliens had erected some kind of dome over the entrance, and watching them go through what looked for all the world like an airlock she realized that the other side of the dome was depressurized.

She looked around, and saw the vast snow-like drifts piled up outside. She strained to remember her survival training; was that the atmosphere, frozen and resting on the surface? What had happened?

They rigged up some kind of umbilical, and led her into their ship. It looked positively primitive from the outside and little better from the inside; it smelled of fish, and brine, and the air felt thick in her lungs. She wrinkled up her nose, but said nothing. At least they breathed something that had oxygen, right? A quick check of her omnitool told her the atmosphere was 18% oxygen, 5% Methane, 12% Carbon Dioxide, and 65% Neon. Well. She blinked and ran the interface program that queried her cybernetics, suddenly very pleased to have them. As she hoped, her artificial lungs were filtering out the methane and recycling the off-gassed oxygen for maximum absorption. One problem solved.

Big Guy seemed to take charge, and led her to a small storage area.

"Mae y lle hwn i chi yn eich dwlc. Os eich angen unrhyw beth yr ydych yn gofyn i mi yn bersonol. ac nid ydych yn deall unrhyw beth yr wyf yn dweud i chi, a ydych chi"

She looked at it and made a helpless gesture. It repeated the gesture after a moment, then slowly backed away from her and left her where she was, with the door open. Not a prison cell, then. Maybe her bunk? Her theory was confirmed when another couple of the aliens, bigger around than the first examples, came in carrying her carefully-disconnected stasis pod. They left it in the middle of the floor, then left without saying anything.

"Okay. I'm their Javik. Wish I'd had the ability to learn their language."

She sighed and lost herself in memories. The last Prothean, they'd called him. Was she the Last Human? She remembered his sacrifice, holding the line on Thelassia while they evacuated as many as they could from the surface. The revenge of his people. Well, he'd taken a Reaper with him - couldn't ask for more.

The Reapers. She stopped and pinched her eyes shut. If the computer was right, she'd been asleep for almost 15,000 years. That might mean they had time. Time to prepare, before the next purge. Time to convince this cycle of their fate.

But to do that, she needed to talk. She tapped on her omni, and it obligingly produced a short flash-fabricated blade. Spinning her omni around to get a better position with the blade, she knelt down next to her stasis pod and began to carve.

###

She waited until one of them returned for her, then pointed urgently at the pod lid. It looked uncomprehendingly, then turned and left without a word. Sighing, she resumed pacing. It didn't look line one of the three that had found her, so maybe it was going to get one of them.

Her plan was a long shot, but it was the best she could do. She'd spent three hours wracking her brain, trying to remember her First Contact Protocol training. It felt like a lifetime ago, and a cynical side of her pointed out that it had probably been two even without the stasis pod.

At length, Big Guy came back into the room.

"A oes angen unrhyw beth oddi wrthyf fi"

She pointed again at the pod lid. Scratched into the lid was a map of the galaxy. she'd drawn a little box around the Refuge system where Ilos was, and then a "zoom" box showing the make-up of the system. She'd done the same for the Widow Nebula; would they have already found the Citadel there? Finally, she had sketched out the following:

2^0 = 1 1

2^1 = 2 1 + 1

2^2 = 4 1 + 1 + 1 + 1

2^3 = 8 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 +1 + 1

and then the Key Primes:

11 13

1 1+1 4-1 4+1 8-1 8+4-1 8+4+1

In the end, it was everything she could remember from her training and what little she could think of. Hopefully it would be enough, if one of them was any kind of scientist.

Big Guy just stared. If it was emoting anything, it wasn't anything she could detect. She tapped the zoom-box around where Ilos was, and then tapped herself on the chest, then the symbol for Ilos again.

"Me. You found me here. On this planet, me." she gestured to herself and the symbols she'd drawn, hoping it might work.

"Ni wn beth yr ydych yn ei ddweud, ond gallai Ryhanna gwybod. Bydd yn cael ei i chi. Byddwch yn parhau'n yma." And with that cryptic pronouncement, Big Guy left.

So much for that plan.

Big Guy came back a few minutes later with the Staring Guy, and she repeated her performance. Staring Guy leaned in to look at her work, casting a critical eye over her rough scratchings as it traced its fingers over her work - apparently muttering under its breath to itself. At length, it stood up and stared at Shepard while speaking animatedly to Big Guy.

"Mae hyn yn anhygoel. Mae dynol wedi tynnu hyn y credaf yw ei symbolau ar gyfer niferoedd sylfaenol. Dau i'r pŵer o sero yn un. Mae dau bŵer sydd un dau. Mae dau bŵer sydd dau pedwar. Mae'n ddull cyfrif ddwy ran."

Staring Guy turned back and raised a six-fingered hand with just one finger raised. "un" it pronounced, then raised its other hand in the same fashion. "un" it repeated. Then it brought the two fingers together. "dau" it finished, looking at her expectantly.

She held up a hand with one finger. "One" she said, starting to smile as she repeated the action with her other hand, holding the two fingers together. "Two." she agreed.

Staring Guy looked at the scratches. "Own" it pronounced, tapping the "1", and Shepard shook her head. "One" she carefully enunciated. It wiggled its tentacles at her and made a wheezing noise. She hoped that was a laugh.

###

Two days later, and Shepard reviewed the progress they had made as she poked at her food. The aliens had brought her the food-preservation pod she'd opened, and had dutifully stashed it on the ship for her. She had been shown to what passed for a galley - with an open-flame cooking surface, for Gods sake - and shown her food, and otherwise left to herself. She and Staring Guy had been working on numbers, and they'd gotten all the basics down. Base-10 counting, binary, all the numbers up to one thousand. Staring Guy had started bringing its little box with it to their discussions, so Shepard had initialized her omnitool and let it record as well. Maybe the translation program would start to pick up a few words, but without the power of the Citadel and a small army of linguists to provide software updates on the FTL comm network, it was unlikely.

They'd moved on to hand gestures.

"Human." she said, tapping herself, "Alien" and she pointed at Staring Guy.

It looked at her, then twitched its tentacles. "Ryhanna" it said as it tapped itself, then looked expectantly at her. Shepard blinked. Ryhanna sounded familiar ... she looked around and pointed at another alien, noisily slurping something that smelled like rotten seaweed stew through its tentacles. "Ryhanna?" she asked.

There was that tentacle-twitching wheeze again, and Staring Guy shook its head. "Ryhanna" it said, tapping itself again, but "Oswlon" it said, pointing at the other one. Then to a third, blinking its nictating membranes over its large eyes. "Awsho".

Shepard blinked. Names?

She tapped herself on the chest again and said quietly. "Shepard"

Starin- ... er, Ryhanna pointed at itself again. "Ryhanna", then swung its hand to point at Shepard. "Shepard".

She couldn't help herself. She smiled. Hey, maybe they'd get through this. She touched herself again, saying "Shepard, Human." then gestured to include all the aliens in the galley. "Aliens." she said firmly.

Ryhanna flicked its tentacles firmly. "genedl" it responded, taking in all of them with a wave of a hand.

Shepard really hoped that meant the name of their species. She lead Ryhanna back to her room, and pointed again at the galaxy map she'd drawn. She singled out Ilos, then indicated herself.

"Shepard here."

Ryhanna blinked, then touched the box around the Refuge system. "Here?" It mimicked. Shepard nodded. Ryhanna dragged its finger to the galaxy and tapped all over it. "Here?" it asked again.

She sighed, and shook her head as she realized that it thought she was giving the word for star, or planet or something. Kneeling down, she circled the entire galaxy. "Galaxy." She tapped all over it, as Ryhanna had done, saying "Stars". Then she tapped on the binary of Refuge and repeated, "Stars". Then tapped Ilos, Agetoton, and Zafe. "Planets. Planet Ilos, planet Agetoton, planet Zafe." At last, she touched Ilos again. "Ilos. Shepard on Ilos".

Ryhanna sat back and appeared to consider that. "alaeth" it agreed, indicating the galaxy; "seren" as it tapped all over the disc of the galaxy, and the twin-suns of Refuge. "seren" it repeated, then tapped the three planets and said "Blaned". At length, Ryhanna tapped Ilos. "crwydro"

Shepard leaned forward and tried to confirm. "Shepard on crwydro?" and this drew a distinct curl of the tentacles. Was that a yes? "Shepard, Ryhanna on crwydro." At this, another curl and a distinct wheezing hiss.

Shepard gestured to the widow nebula. "Citadel" she proclaimed, then proceeded to circle a few additional key systems with her finger and name them. Refuge, Sol, Trebia, Parnitha, Pranas, Aralakh, Tikkun, Phontes, even Harsa. At each name, she remembered the sacrifices they'd made in each system, the millions and millions dead. All dead, now. All preserved as Reapers, in the ultimate perversion, preserved only to turn on their principles and beliefs.

A surprisingly awkward silence filled the room, and Shepard realized she'd stopped talking to cry silently, biting her lip and shaking with grief.

Ryhanna looked ... divided. At length, as though making a decision, it ignored Shepard's tears entirely and dragged a rough shape around the eastern edge of the galaxy. "diriogaeth genedl." It said, naming the shape of space. It tapped near the center and said "byd cartref." It looked up, then tapped roughly where Shepard had, attempting to repeat the names she'd spoken, then concluded with the tap in the center of the rough area, repeating "byd cartref".

Shepard thought that must be their homeworld, or the name of their system. They weren't that far from Earth, it seemed. She closed her eyes and nodded, trying to control her breathing, get herself under control. Now wasn't the time.

She dusted herself off and decided to try again. "Ilos. Here." She stood, and gestured to exactly where she stood on the deck of the strange ship. "Here." She walked over to a different spot and repeated, "here." She pointed at Ryhanna and said "there", then walked over to join her and gestured to the deck again. "Here."

Ryhanna seemed to get it. "yma!" It gestured to where they both stood and repeated it, then walked over to a different spot. "yma" and gestured back to Shepard's spot of the deck, saying "Mae". It tapped on Ilos again, saying "yr ydym yma" but just as Shepard started to nod, it dragged its finger along the crude drawing of the galaxy, tapping just outside the edge of the rough space it had defined as "diriogaeth genedl". "Shepard yma. Ilos".

Shepard sat back, blinking. Well ... that was unexpected. She tapped the twin suns of Refuge. "Stars?" she asked, then tapped where Ryhanna had indicated Ilos was. "Ilos?" She dragged her finger between the two points, trying to convey confusion with her eyes and the set of her mouth.

Apparently it didn't work. Ryhanna stared silently before raising its gaze to the numbers scratched above and tapping the sequence of primes with one long, narrow finger.

"un ac un yn ddwy" It had indicated where Shepard had scratched 1+1=2, and she nodded. Ryhanna said "gwir". Was that "good"? or "right"?

Then it tapped again, saying "un ac un yn dri. ffug."

Shepard narrowed her eyes. They'd already covered numbers, so the alien was saying 1+1=2 something, then 1+1=3 something else.

True. gwir meant true, and ffug meant false.

Shepard reached out and tapped the same places. "One plus one equals 2. True. One plus one equals three. False."

Ryhanna nodded, then pointed back at the map of where Ilos was, in the refuge system. "Ilos here false." It held up both hands in loose fists, watching to see that Shepard was paying attention. It widened one hand, then "swallowed" the fist with the now-open hand. Then it mimed ... shrinking? Then a two-handed expansion. Ryhanna gestured again to the map, tracing a wide path through the systems of the galaxy and coming to rest again just outside what Shepard was increasingly thinking of as their territory. "Ilos here true."

She pinched the bridge of her nose and tried to think. Ilos hadn't been especially close to its parent stars; if one of the binary pair had undergone some kind of cataclysm, could Ilos have been ejected from the system? That seemed to be what Ryhanna was suggesting; and it would account for the lack of a visible star anywhere outside the ship, and the loss of the atmosphere. It would explain the "seismic event" that had disabled main power. It would explain why the stellar-observation cameras hadn't agreed with the clocks, since they were now drifting in intragalactic space and all the measurements would be off.

Shepard suppressed a shiver as she tried to avoid thinking too much about how close to death she had come, without ever knowing it. To die in battle against the Reapers, that had always been the plan. And, she guessed, in a way it still was. She scrubbed her hands over face, brushing away the tears.

###

They continued in that vein for another couple of days, exchanging pidgin language. Her omnitool built up a small library of exterior body parts, object names, and simple verbs. But the real victory came with Ryhanna approached with a large, clunky box held easily in its arms. It put the box down, then gestured at her omnitool.

"Yr wyf am roi cynnig ar rywbeth. eich arf yn gallu dal sain."

Shepard debated with herself. Ryhanna clearly wanted her omni; she slipped it off and handed the silver cuff to the alien with a small frown only to find it waving it's hands.

"False, false. Shepard omnitool catch sound true?" It was getting better - it even included the lift at the end to make the question.

"True" she replied, and tapped a few hardlight keys, setting the tool to record. "Okay" she said, smiling faintly as the alien carefully nodded back to her. It pressed a button on the box and mimed covering the sides of its head. "Shepard close ears true."

Shepard carefully mimed covering her ears as well, if only to avoid revealing the extent of her augmentations. She concentrated, turning the "volume" down on her implants just in time as the box emitted a horrible shrieking sound that seemed to go on and on, sometimes higher, sometimes lower. It warbled and hissed and crackled. After a half hour, it finally stopped, and at Ryhanna's instruction she turned off the recording.

Then, they spent 6 hours listening to it.

The sounds corresponded to numbers and symbols, and the symbols came together to form a computer program, and the computer program contained an interactive language-object tool. It used the omnitool itself to capture images of objects, cross-referenced them against an internal database, and produced the genedl word for it. Then all Shepard had to do was type in the name and record her speaking the word, and move on.

"Shepard speak object true?"

She set to the task with a will, cataloging everything she saw. She poked into every locker, opened every door, and generally made a nuisance of herself. Ryhanna talked to Big Guy (whose name, if she understood all this, was "bugail") and secured permission for them to have free run of the ship, the base-camp, and the Ilos facility.

The ship turned out to be about twice the size of the old Normandy, but was laid out very differently. Each circular deck was fairly small, but there were ten decks ascending vertically via an open shaft ringed with ladders. In the double-height center deck was a mass-effect core, which at least answered the question of whether or not this species had discovered the relays. There also appeared to be some kind of secondary engines which were arranged around the exterior of the ship.

The upper decks appeared to contain the ship operation areas - a medical facility, by the looks of it, and a pair of clean equipment-filled rooms she imagined must be science labs. Further up, at the very top, they found the main control room with it's oddly arranged seats that dangled from armatures installed on the walls. Directly above was the great transparent dome of the cockpit, and then the crystalline stars hanging overhead.

Below-decks, many of the crew seemed to be busy outside, gathering up the frozen atmosphere of the planet and pumping it into the lowest deck, from which sprouted the 6 great landing legs. They moved quickly through the area on their way out to the base-camp.

Bugail joined them at the entrance to the facility, staring down into the darkness of the doorway.

"Dymunaf y gallem gael mynedfa eich storfa wybodaeth. Mae llawer bod eich hil gallai pob un ohonom." it said.

Shepard's tool chimed, and displayed the rough translation:

"self *** *** *** other computer. *** many Human *** *** genedl."

She thought about that for a moment.

###

She spent the next 10 days crawling through the facility, tracking down broken computer feeds and reconnecting them. There had been some supplies left over, enough to make rudimentary repairs; not for the first time, she desperately missed Tali and Kasumi, who could have gotten this done in hours.

Most of the facility was dark, and some was airless. At her request (accompanied by much gesturing and demonstrating) Ryhanna and Bugail had arranged for one of the big pumps to be diverted, pumping the frozen atmosphere of Ilos into the facility to thaw out and repressurize. Slowly, the facility was coming to life again. The computer map suggested that the "seismic event" had collapsed the tunnels that gave access to the rest of the complex, and she certainly found no lack of dead-ends and cave-ins. But she worked around them as best she could. Her plan was straightforward: If she could gain access to the facility's computers - all of them - she could perhaps copy the genedl's language database to her own systems, and perhaps speed up translation. Frankly, it was a miracle they'd gotten this far, but Shepard was starting to get frustrated. She wasn't a scientist, or a linguist. She wasn't even Liara. She was a soldier, dammit, and if she couldn't save humanity she could at least break the cycle. She owed that much to everyone she'd lost.

But before she could win the war, she had to have an army. And to get that army, she'd need their respect and their language. The computer could give her the language. Respect, though ...

The biggest tunnel - which the map said would lead directly to "Main Storage 1", "Vehicle Operations", and "Computer Core" - was caved in some ten, twelve meters into its long, sloping descent. After literal millennia of settling and shifting, it was a more-or-less solid wall - getting through it would require the use of the heavy equipment the genedl had used to breach the complex in the first place. Shepard hefted the demo-tool in her hand. It was oddly weighted, and sized for one of the genedl, but with its one flat face and one straight pick it would do.

*slam*

She slammed it into the wall with an exploratory swing, feeling the back-vibrations in the handle, the way the head rattled, even the feel of the solid wall.

*slam*

She shifted her grip, finding the sweet spot. With a moment of concentration, she turned up the power on her augmentations.

**THUNK**

She clenched her teeth, feeling the reverberating ring in her years until she cut her implants, but she could still _feel_ the shaking in her hands. The wall showed a clear spiderwebbing where the demo-tool - boosted by the unnatural force of her cybernetics - had shattered the outer layer of compacted dust with a single blow. She lifted the tool again.

**THUNK**

**THUNK**

**THUNK**

She lost herself in the rhythm of the swing, feeling like she was back on Mindoir as a girl, splitting wood. Would her father approve of splitting rocks, instead? He'd always thought it was character building.

**THUNK**

She remembered her mother, for the first time in years. She'd been a handsome woman, not beautiful, but sturdy and resourceful. Life on a colony world wasn't easy, but she'd always managed.

**THUNK**

Liara used to joke with her about what she would do after the war; back when they thought they'd have a chance. Shepard had always quipped that she was a soldier, so that's what she'd do after the war - soldier.

**THUNK**

She replayed all the horrors of the war **THUNK** following all the threads of memory **THUNK** as she relived the last two years of her life **THUNK** and all the losses, all the fear **THUNKK* and all the rage, letting it build inside her **THUNKKK** until all she could see was Harbinger's face **THUNKKKKrk** hanging in front of her, taunting her **THUNKrKKRrRK** she'd show that stupid machine what ***THRACKKRKRAKRK***

Shepard dropped the demo-tool from her aching, throbbing hands as it caught up to her that she was exhausted, dripping with sweat, and she could barely hold herself up. She blinked, and blinked again, reaching up to smear the dust and sweat across her face in a futile attempt to clear her vision. The wall of rock had become a rough tunnel - about ten meters deep and two, maybe three meters around - as she'd vented her rage and frustration. The head of the demo-tool was warped and deformed, heat-temper lines showing on the metal like waves on the ocean from her repeated high-energy blows. Her hands were cracked and bleeding, she noticed; as she restored her auditory implants, she could hear whispering behind her. She half turned, hefting the demo-tool expectantly. The crowd was three-deep across the main shaft, watching her. She cleared her throat and fired up the translation program on her omni-tool.

"I am Shepard. I am a soldier. My people were killed by a terrible enemy, an enemy that will come for you. I have been sent here to show you how to fight back, how to win."

After a moment, the omni-tool spit out what it could:

"Yr wyf yn Shepard. Yr wyf yn milwr. Ydym *** ** ** *** gelyn, ** gelyn *** *** dod ** ydych. Rwy'n *** *** *** yma ** yn dangos i chi *** ** ymladd ***, *** ** ****."

Then a sad little "blrt" from the tool.

They looked at each other, then, twitching their tentacles and whispering to each other. The pointed at the tunnel, and at herself; they pointed toward the stasis room and the computers where she'd been found. They pointed to the silent tomb of the other 4,254 men and women who had died in their sleep - not even fighting! - just to have a hope of winning.

She dropped the ruined tool and walked through them, the crowd parting like a bow-wave, and went back to the ship. She didn't return to the dig-site until two days later, when the boring equipment was ready to deploy. She didn't wait to be asked, but stepped up immediately to help shift the big equipment sled down into the main tunnel. They lined it up on the ten meters she'd already dug and slowly turned up the power as the invisible beam started to slough off the rock and dust like a hot knife pushing through an ice cube. Ten more meters, then thirty, then one hundred. They killed the beam, and Shepard went back to the computer room to make sure they hadn't broken anything.

show system power status

Ilos Reliquary Facility Power Systems
Main Power: Offline
Secondary Power: Offline
Emergency Power: 14%

:_

They'd have to move quickly, she thought, only a week and they'd drained the emergency power four percent. It suddenly occurred to her to wonder if the genedl had anything they could use as a power source, if it came to it. She pinched the bridge of her nose, praying to the ghosts of Adams and Tali and Gabby and Ken that her Engineering qualifications wouldn't fail her now. Maybe she could rig something with the mass effect core.

Once the tunnel outside had cooled enough to walk through, they found that the cave-in had not extended the whole way. The first 100 meters were a relatively constant down-slope, but then the corridor dog-legged and dropped into a steep descent. She and Bugail stood nearby, examining the rocks still filling the corridor. It gestured to the wall and the demo-tools they'd been using.

"Gallwch wneud hynny unwaith eto."

Her omni tool chimed, and she frowned at the translation in her ear. It hissed through its tentacles, and repeated in the pidgin language they'd established.

"You action repeat"

Ah, Bugail had missed the show the first time. Shrugging, she stepped up to the wall and hefted the demo-tool again. It went much faster this time - the last of the cave in was only a meter or so deep, and when she pounded it the rocks gave way to clatter down the long shaft in a roar like a torrential downpour. She turned to face Bugail again, watching its face. Was that approval? Terror? Excitement? She had no way of knowing.

With the main tunnel open, some of the genedl joined her on her exploratory trip. Opening each hatch, looking into every room, she was struck by the thoroughness of the preparations for re-emergence into the galaxy. There were no lack of spare parts, supplies, clothes, tools, books, datapads, and in fact all the various relics of her society. There were shuttles, too - four battered Kodiaks - and some Mako's which showed the scars of hard fighting on the ground. Shepard dragged her hand over the unnaturally smooth wound of a high-energy weapon impact that had boiled the armor away in great popping bubbles of liquefied metal. Wherever it had come from, this Mako had seen Collector fire.

At last, they came to "Computer Core" - a huge cavern of a room, with a deep pit sunk into the middle. Everything was dark here and the room, though cold with the thinness of the atmosphere and the depth of the facility, was way too warm to run a main core. She sighed - that power issue was becomming a real problem.

Later, during what she had come to think of as the evening meal, Shepard spoke to Ryhanna.

"I want to connect your ship power to the site."

Her tool chimed: "Rwy'n *** i gysylltu eich llong *** ***."

Ryhanna frowned momentarily. "Shepard speak again."

She thought for a moment, then produced her omni-tool and started sketching with a fingertip. She drew the layout of the ship, roughly, and tapped at the central deck. "Element Zero Core". They'd worked this out already during her turn through the ship; she drew a dashed line from the middle deck and out to the base camp. "Shepard throw energy to complex, human computer catch energy".

Her omni-tool obligingly twittered it out in genedl, but all of these words were known. Ryhanna twitched one, then another, tentacle in a way that Shepard had come to associate with uncertainty.

"Shepard remain here. Self catch Bugail." it said as it rose from the table.

A few minutes later, Ryhanna and Bugail returned. Shepard repeated her desire, but was able to point out a few items on her improved map to make her point clear.

Bugail looked unimpressed. "Show." it said.

She shrugged, and called up the schematic for one of the power drains on the Normandy. "This 'power tap'." she said. "catch mass-effect core energy, throw to human computer."

"you **** this *** **** you to entrance you computer?"

She nodded, smiling. "True!"

Bugail imitated the gesture, then, a precise dipping down of its tentacled face, then a precise raising back to normal. "Self allow Shepard 'power tap' true."

Early the next morning, after the meal, Shepard was met in the central engineering deck by the ships workers. She paged through the schematics for the power drain, communicating in hand-gestures and images and the occasional ~BLRT~ from her omni-tool whenever it caught a word it could translate and she - again - wished that she'd paid more attention to what the engineers on her crew were always talking about. Hell, Tali could probably have built a new ship by now. The lead engineer seemed to have won its argument, and it turned to Shepard with a strongly crinkled-tentacle look on its face.

"We make this."

"Can I help?"

" ** self action **** you remain."

So she remained. Shepard watched as the team turned-to without hesitation, providing access to the schematics on her omnitool as requested and otherwise trying to stay out of the way. They broke twice for meals, but by the time the sleep cycle arrived, she had a functional Systems Alliance Naval Specification power drain for a mass effect core.

As soon as she could rouse an escort, Shepard practically down to the "Vehicle Operations" room with a half-mile of power conduit spooled out behind her. Looking like nothing so much as an Alliance Pre-fab base sunk into the ground, Shepard expected that the area would have an external power connection somewhere and so crawled meter by meter around the base of each wall looking for the tell-tale electrical hazard warning signs. If it didn't work, she'd have to excavate down to Main Power and see if she coul- ah ha! With a triumphant grin, she connected the ship to the socket and activated the power drain with a wave of her omni-tool. Instantly, there was a flicker, and then the shuddering roar of the complex's life support systems coming online. She dashed up to the computer room, gratified to hear the whirr of the cooling units starting to spin up. Maybe by the next day, she thought, she could get the core up and running.

She spent the rest of the day clearing out the facility with a will. By about mid-day, the air began to take on the cool tint and crisp dryness that Shepard always associated with being shipboard. She picked up her pace, determined to have an answer by the end of the next day. By evening, when the others were gathering up their tools for the end of the day, she felt confident enough to attempt to reconnect the main computer core. By trial and error she got the circulating fans working, and then spliced a new terminal connector onto the end of the link-up to the topside computers.

Here goes nothing.

She connected the linkup.

Immediately, lights bloomed across the face of the core, rippling like ocean waves as it initialized. She had waited 20 days to get this far - should could afford to wait another hour while the systems completed their initialization and handshake. But the time chafed on her, and she ended up trotting back and forth between the upper and lower computer chambers under the eyes of her escorts. At least the emergency power is recharging, she thought. That will give me time to fix this. If I can.

When the core completed its initialization routines, Shepard tried some simple queries to make sure that things were working.

show system statusall-filtered

Ilos Reliquary Facility
Main Power: Offline
Secondary Power: Offline
Emergency Power: 15% (Charging)

..
Archives: Online
..Archive VI: Available
..Archive References: Available
..Reliquary Reactivation Protocol: Available

Stasis System: 0 / 4255 Online

:_

Archive VI?

execute VI

..:standby:..
:_

The core projected a holographic image into the middle of the room. It was the Systems Alliance logo, but with only one star dripping a red tear.

"Ilos Reliquary Virtual Intelligence, online."

There was a noise behind her, and she turned to see one of her two escorts fleeing the room while the other studied the image in the air with what looked like concern. When no further action was forthcoming, Shepard addressed the VI, trying to keep the relief of hearing her own language again.

"This is Commander Shepard. Request voiceprint identification and access to restricted information."

"Voiceprint recognized. Hello, Commander Shepard. There is no restricted information available."

"Confirm today's date."

"Current date is not available. There is disagreement between the internal timekeeping system and the stellar observation system. Internal timekeeping returns that today is Monday, March 10 15890 CE. Stellar observation returns an out of bounds null-error."

She scrubbed a hand over her face, grinning with the excitement of the moment.

"VI, interface with my omnitool an download all data. Isolate the currently running program and tag it 'genedl language'. Hmm..." she scratched at her neck, wondering. "Execute."

"Running. Handshake with omni-tool: success. Accessing program memory: success. Copying data: success. Copied data tagged 'genedl language'."

"Okay ... report status of translation protocols."

"Translation protocols are available for the following languages: High Thessian handshaking in any or all of Siari, Serrici, Armali, Dassusi, or Kendrai; Thesserit; Salarian Union Standard; Hierarchy Palaveni Lingua; Urdosse; Krestnock; New Krestnock; Khellish; Rakhani; Reconstructed Prothean; the Terran ConLang composed of English, Mandarin Chinese, Federated Standard Russian, Latin, and Bantu Spaceform.

Alert: Language dictionaries are out-of-bounds-error years out of date. Please contact Alliance command and request updated dictionaries."

"Access file tagged 'genedl language' and import to the language translation system."

"File 'genedl language' successfully added to the translation protocol. Caution: language 'genedl language' contains less than 1% of the Gal-Standard translation markers needed to utilize properly."

Shepard blew out a small sigh. "Okay - compare genedl language to all stored languages. Analyze for commonalities."

"Unable to analyze. Language genedl does not contain enough reference information."

"Ugh. Okay, fine. New task: perform reverse image lookup on all visual identifiers in the genedl language database. Analyze and tag with the Terran ConLang and Gal-Standard translation markers."

"Program Running. Estimated time to completion is 18 hours."

"Fine." she turned away, looking for her escort. It was backed into the corner, holding what looked like a small weapon in one hand and one of the boxy tech-tools that she had seen in the hands of Bugail, Ryhanna, and Short Guy when they woke her up. A new though occurred.

"VI" she said.

"Ready for inquiry, Commander Shepard."

"Activate Translation protocol, all available languages, audio output, three second delay between outputs"

There was a moment's delay, then "Confirmed. Translation protocol available."

While facing her escort, trying to catch its eyes with her own, she spoke again. "Please tell me when you recognize a language."

Of course it didn't react, but momentarily the VI began speaking the message in all the available languages. The precise lifts and drops of Terran Conlang, the gravelly rumble of the Krogan languages, the shrill whistles and chatter of the Turian dialects, the stacatto single-phoneme bursts that were the only language the Salarian Union would officially recognize, and at last the individual component-languages of the Asari. All without any sign of recognition from her escort, who was (she presumed) still recording everything on his scanner.

The last message repeated in Thesserit, the formal language of Asari scholarship, and her escort jerked alert.

"VI, stop!" Shepard practically shouted. "New translation protocol parameters, remove all non-asari languages and resume translation."

"Confirmed. Languages now in use Siari, Serrici, Armali, Dassusi, Kendrai, and Thesserit. High Thessian available upon handshake request from any speaker."

"Escort - do you know where we are?"

The genedl listened, then spoke rapid-fire into its radio without replying. It received an answer, and nodded, then carefully stepped forward to speak to Shepard, her omni-tool translating.

"**** Ryhanna say self other *** remain here true."

She nodded and waited. Several minutes passed, and then she heard the clatter of many feet coming down the corridor. Bugail, Ryhanna, a handful of the others - including her missing second escort - came into the room. Ryhanna made her way to the front, addressing her directly.

"Shepard entrance computer true?"

She nodded, then spoke over her shoulder to the VI, watching Ryhanna's eyes.

"Hello Ryhanna. Yes, I have accessed the computer."

The translation rippled out in the Asari languages, and - just as before - when it got to Thesserit there were gasps of surprise. Ryhanna's eyes widened, its tentacles crinkling and stretching out in rapid succession. It spoke, this time pitched over Shepard's shoulder to the VI.

She held up a hand. "False. Remain" She addressed the computer again. "VI, include the subject standing directly in front of me in the conversation and provide translation protocols for this subject, designation 'Ryhanna'."

"Confirmed. Subject Ryhanna added to users database. Translation Conversation protocol now active with previous parameters."

She nodded, then turned back to Ryhanna and gestured with a hand. "Ryhanna repeat true."

Ryhanna spoke again, and this time the VI translated.

"How are you doing this?"

With a laugh, Shepard pointed to the computer as her answer. Inside she was practically kicking herself. Asari! That's what their language sounded like, it's what Liara was always murmuring away in! "I have successfully reactivated the main computer, and it has a language database. I was hoping to let it try and translate your language, and out of curiosity I thought I'd see if your language sounded anything like the languages from my time." A frown crossed her features as she considered. "Although, I thought I might get a kind of pidgin language, not perfect Asari."

Ryhanna twitched in surprise as it listened. "Ah ... we could not tell you this when we could not communicate properly. This is the language of the Watchful Goddess, who guided our civilization out of our barbarian roots."

She blinked. "Who is the 'Watchful Goddess'?"

Ryhanna lifted a hand. "We should discuss this with Bugail, he will want to know that you can speak now. Can you bring this translation with you, or must we stay near the computer?"

"Hmm? Oh, no - I can bring it with me." Saying this, Shepard turned to the VI once more. "VI, download field-translation protocols, these settings, to my omni-tool."

A soft chime. "Confirmed. Transfer complete."

Shepard nodded to Ryhanna. "Lead the way."

###

That evening, there was a great celebration. Many of the crew turned out to speak the language, and Shepard's translation protocols worked so smoothly that it became seamless - just like before.

Instead, she focused on the story that Ryhanna and Bugail told her.

"Many millennia ago," Ryhanna started, "when we were primitives living in caves, our shamans saw strange things in the night. Demons, monsters, gods. It was the way of our people. One night, many bright flashes of light could be seen, moving wildly across the sky. They said it was the spirits of the air having a war, and they told their children this tale and painted it on the cave walls."

Ryhanna gestured to an honest-to-God physical display that was showing a picture of a crude drawing on a cave wall. "Many centuries passed, and the story fell into legend. The tribe became wanderers, and they roamed between the many small islands of our world. On one island, they found the body of a god."

The display now showed- Shepard blinked. It looked like a Prothean Beacon, standing upright in the middle of the island. There was some evidence of excavation, and a shaft had been cut down into the soil a distance away.

"The body became a symbol to the people, and they made it their new home. They tried to investigate it, in their simple way, and managed to dig underground. That's where they found its heart."

The display switched again, now showing an array of physical displays similar to the one she was watching, linked to massive computer core.

"What is this?" she asked. "This couldn't have come from your world?"

Bugail took over, the translator rendering his voice as a smooth baritone. "No, Shepard, it did not come from our world. Our ancestors thought it was some magic artefact, or - as Ryhanna said - the body of a god. It was the home of the Goddess."

The display clicked, and Shepard caught her throat. There, half-invisible in the primitive photography and distorted by static, was Liara.

It hit her, then, all at once.

"Commander ... could we sit?"

She invited the tired-looking Asari woman into her cabin with a nod.

"I've been thinking about the knowledge we've gathered on the Reapers," Liara continued as she set down a boxy, black device. "... and how easily it could be lost again."

Shepard smiled as she sat. How typically like her.

"So, I've put a plan in motion to preserve things for the future." A few more taps on the device and a holoprojector flared to life, displaying the entire galaxy.

"What's this?"

"A record of the galaxy. Information on the Reapers, relays, different cultures, and blueprints of the crucible." Liara took a breath before continuing. "But ... there's one entry I wanted your opinion on."

"Which one?" Shepard asked, leaning forward in interest.

"Your own." came the simple reply. In a moment, she saw herself in wireframe, standing tall, looking directly into the holoimager for her trial photograph.

"I'd be honored to have your input." Liara continued, "How would you like history to remember you?"

Shepard tried to keep the skepticism out of her voice. "Fifty thousand years is a long time for a computer to sit around."

"Please," the other woman scoffed. "I was an archaeologist; I know what I'm doing. I'm encasing these records in time-capsules and seeding copies on multiple planets. And while it's not foolproof, the VI I'm installing has every translation and linguistics program I could find."

"So, it's an information guide, like Vigil on Ilos?"

"Yes. I've been preparing it for some time."

A few keypresses later, and the miniaturized form of Glyph, the VI Liara used in her other business as the Broker, flickered to life.

"And it will be a privilege to guide the future discoverers of these records." it chirped in it's annoying little voice. "Have you decided what you would like Doctor T'Soni to write in your entry, Commander?"

She leaned back, a predatory smile on her face. "You should describe how hard I fought to get here. Say that the Reapers can be hurt, and that I gathered up the whole galaxy to do just that."

Liara blinked, then smiled. "I like that. Any civilization that comes after us will still need heroes - even ancient, alien ones."

Shepard scoffed. "You're going to make me sound like something out of a legend."

Liara stood and shrugged a shoulder. "Too late - you're already a legend in your own time. Maybe we don't always say it so plainly, but we're proud to be here Shepard. And we're proud of you."

She tried to keep the smile off her face. "Thanks."

Shepard breathed out the breath she hadn't been aware she was holding. "You found one of the information capsules."

"Yes. It was intact, and when we approached the image of the Goddess appeared. At first, we could not understand her. But she spoke, and we listened, and in a short time she came to speak our language. She told our ancestors that there was a terrible war that her people had fought - and lost. A war that would come for us."

Bugail looked down, inspecting his fingers and looking for all the world like an embarrassed boy. "And ... she told us of the Shepard. The greatest warrior of her people, the Goddess of Vengeance." He looked up at her, and she blinked.

"Uh, I'm not a Goddess. I'm just a soldier."

The whole room laughed, and Bugail shook his tentacles in a motion that her omni-tool translated as a wry chuckle. "She said you were too modest." He leaned forward, and produced a small box from under his robes. "But we also found these, once the Goddess showed us the way to the stars."

He opened the box, turning it to her to view. Inside was a large flat coin, about the size of her palm. On it was engraved a stylized map of the galaxy and a path to Refuge, where Ilos had once been.

"What is this, Bugail?" she asked, turning it over in her hands.

"The Goddess could speak to us, but we were useless to her. How were we supposed to fight an enemy that had killed the gods themselves? We could barely feed our people. So she taught us - slowly, but surely. She said that she would uplift us, and as we learned she would give us new things. So, we did."

He gave that small laugh again. "It took us millennia before she said we were ready. She taught us the language of the Gods - Thesserit - and when we knew that she taught us math, and science, and astronomy. Our tribe had become a nation, and with the backing of the Goddess our nation became the world. We devoted ourselves to her service and it wasn't 40 generations until we took our first faltering steps into the realms above."

His eyes closed as he continued, the translation gaining a wistful note. "To see our world, so small, hanging beneath us as we rode our first rockets up into the skies ... it changed us, Shepard. A century later and we were probing our system, looking for Element Zero. The Goddess told us we would need it, showed us how to use it and refine it and where to look. Everywhere we looked, we found those coins instead. When we showed them to the Goddess, she said that it was a map of the galaxy, and that it indicated something important, but she didn't know what. She told us we should go look for it when we could. So, eventually we found our Mass Relay and enough Element Zero to work with."

He opened his eyes and frowned. "A ship was sent, following the instructions of the Goddess. We found many closed relays and opened them, looking for this place. But when we arrived, it was gone. The stars had gone supernova, and the planets had been destroyed. We thought we were too late."

He shifted, and reached out to take the box back from her. "Our astronomers had an idea: they would build a telescope and look for the light from that place. When we watched the light, we saw into the past via the speed-of-light delay - and to our surprise, we saw one of the planets being ejected from the system."

Ryhanna took over, nodding to Bugail. "We told the Goddess, and gave her the information we'd found. She taught us how to track interstellar objects, and account for gravitational forces. Finally, thought we'd figured out where you were. We called this planet the Wanderer, and this expedition was mounted to go look for it." She spread her hands wide, her tentacles twitching. "And here we are. We found you asleep, and revived you."

Shepard was silent as she took this all in. At length, she sighed and scrubbed a hand through her short hair. "Well. I don't think Liara- that is, the Goddess - intended to uplift a species, but if the computers in the complex were correct, we've got almost thirty-five thousand years to prepare for the next reaping." She stilled. "I was put into stasis with almost five thousand others in a desperate gamble to try to survive our cycle. We didn't make it. The rest of the pods in that complex contain the bodies of the last of humanity, the men and women who gave up everything to go to sleep with me. We were supposed to restore our civilization."

She sighed. "But I've failed before I've even begun."

Bugail leaned forward and took her hand in his. "No, Shepard. You have just suffered the last loss of your war. From now on, there will be only victories for us and for you. The Watchful Goddess has taught us that there is still much to learn about the galaxy, and the technology that we use without fully understanding. But more than anything else, we need a warrior."

Shepard looked up. "How's that?"

"Well, when the Goddess came to us it was basically the end of all war. Who would fight the Goddess's chosen? Who would dare defy her? By the time we were advanced enough to know better, to know that she was not a true divinity, our world had been at peace for centuries. We have no experience of war, but you and the other Goddess have told us that it is coming."

He looked around the room, as if gathering his courage, before speaking again. "We know - in our minds, we know - that the Goddess is just an image, a shard of her memory and personality given to a thousand worlds in the hope that some will live to fight the ancient foe. But you are alive, a true Goddess. You knew the Watching Lady when she was still corporeal. And you are the greatest warrior in the galaxy. We need you, to teach us and to lead us."

There were murmurs of assent at this, tentacles wriggling up in agreement.

Looking to Ryhanna to gather his courage, Bugail turned back to face Shepard. "Goddess of Vengeance, we have been empowered by our people to come and find you. To wake you from your slumber if possible, or to find any memory shards that you left for us if not. We find you here alive and whole, and we ask that you return with us to Genedlin and teach us the ways of war as the Watchful One taught us the ways of science."

It was such a formal offer that it caught Shepard half by surprise. But she nodded slowly. "Yes. Yes, Bugail, I will teach you and your people the ways of war. And we will ensure that my cycle is the last to ever be harvested."

###

A week later, the ship was ready to leave. They had placed beacons around the planet to help them find it again, and had stowed all the things they thought they would need immediately. The computer core couldn't be moved; they'd have to come back for that. But the shuttles and the Mako could come, and had been attached to the outside of the ship for the ride back home. The weapons and armor had to stay, but as the ship lifted off the ground on its chemical rockets and massless main body, Shepard promised herself that they'd each take a reaper in the end.

Ryhanna sat next to her, watching the clocks counting down until they were free to unstrap and get back to work. "Do you miss this place already, Shepard?"

She smiled. "No - it's good to feel like I'm getting back to work."

The tentacled woman's mouth shifted. "Do ... do you think we can win, this time?"

Shepard clapped a hand to the other's shoulder. "Yes. And when we get back, the Goddess Liara will show you how."

###

SCIENCE NOTES:

The process Shepard uses in this story to build up communication was first proposed in 1960 by Dr. Hans Freudenthal at NASA, who developed a "Lingua Cosmica" based on simple fundamental mathematical concepts and introducing new words and symbols until fairly abstract, high level concepts could be conveyed (including measurements, units, questions, references and other symbolic language concepts). She had the advantage of being able to interact directly, which certainly sped things up, but if Shepard had been an Engineer-class maybe she would have remembered more of it in the first place!

The 1+1=2 TRUE 1+1=3 FALSE method used by Ryhanna was first proposed by Carl Sagan (as 2+3=5 TRUE 2+3=4 FALSE) as an easy way to add logical conditionals to an interspecies vocabulary.

The computer program used by Ryhanna is a real thing called "CosmicOS", and uses a long Lingua-Cosmica style dictionary of symbols to build up a Turing-complete programming language. The programming language can then encode a virtual machine, which itself can run anything - anything at all. Current examples include simple computer games and logic-circuit simulators, but in the Mass Effect universe, such a system could conceivably run a VI.

A/N:

I hope you enjoyed reading this little one shot as much as I enjoyed writing it. It was nice to get back into the swing of writing fanfiction again. And if it prompts Galexz to return from hiatus and finish their INFINITELY deeper exploration of this theme, so much the better. I was reading "The Shepard", and I got to thinking what it would take to actually learn a xeno language from scratch, and ... well, here we are.

This story serves as a toe-dip back into the water. I am currently writing an ambitious novelization of Mass Effect, fixing the plot holes, ignoring much of Mass Effect 3's sloppy story as illogical drivel, giving the side-characters more agency, and creating what I hope will be an approachable FemShep x Tali romance adventure story that you can give to your non-Mass-Effect-playing friends to show them why this world is so cool.

If you have any feedback to give on what your favorite Talimance tropes are, let me know.

Thanks for reading!
~Cause and Author

February, 2018