With A Little Help
Obviously I don't own anything to do with the Mass Effect Universe
Somehow Shepard knew it would come down to this.
Three terrible choices, all of which would spell a pyrrhic victory at best. Having to decide the lesser of three evils. He knew, in reality that he had only one choice, he could not choose to destroy the Reapers at the expense of the Geth, or EDI, that price was too high, and they served as a perfect counterpoint to the Catalyst's claims.
Synthesis was a tempting choice, after all, Shepard himself was part synthetic, but he couldn't force evolution on everyone, which is exactly what the Reapers proposed they wanted to do to himself and everyone else.
So that left control, and his certain death as a result.
Shepard had no illusions that the Reapers would go easily. that they'd want to be controlled by him, or anything apart from the Catalyst itself. Shepard also didn't even want that control, in spite of his hobbling towards the two handholds.
He said a silent apology to Tali for the fact that he was going die before he fulfilled his promises to her, that they didn't get that extra time to be together, or to simply live, free from this war.
He hoped, in spite of their plans, that she could live out a good life without him, that she could find some measure of happiness after everything.
He finally reached the control handles, wreathed in arcs of energy, he reached out with his left hand, grasping the hand hold even as he felt the power course through his body, gripping with his right hand he felt engulfed in an exquisite agony, suffocating in the vacuum of space over Alchera was nothing compared to the pain he was feeling right now. His previous injuries were the height of comfort compared to the coursing energy ripping through his body and mind.
Shepard's consciousness was quickly consumed, and he assumed that was the end of everything, but, he was wrong.
Awareness of vast and terrible intelligence prickled at his senses, he could also sense the calmer, but equally massive intelligence of something else, and even the blazing single light of an intelligence that he seemed to recognise, along with other smaller lights.
It was as if his perspective covered the whole galaxy, and he was finally seeing it for the first time.
Shepard realised he was in control, and he knew what he must do.
He focused all his attention on the vastly terrible intelligence that he recognised to be the Reapers.
He sent them three fairly simple instructions.
Stop all combat.
Fly to the nearest uninhabited star system.
Fly into the star of that system.
The Reapers, he knew, stopped, but they didn't carry out any other instructions.
Shepard. You fumble in the dark against those infinitely your superior. Do not presume to control us, your feeble intellect could never hope to achieve such a feat.
They all sent to him, almost overwhelming him.
The feeling didn't last long, as he felt the reinforcing influence of the brighter and calmer intelligences. He immediately recognised them as EDI and the Geth. They had heard his command to the Reapers, even if it wasn't intended for them, and they knew what he was doing. The combined linear computational capacity of the Geth, and the vast non-deterministic quantum computation capacity of EDI were brought to bear on Shepard's commands.
Shepard didn't really know if he had any sort of form to convey the sense of righteous smugness he was feeling, but he certainly conveyed it in the way he replied.
That is why I make friends. I alone might not be able to make you follow my command, but with the voice of trillions of Geth, and the voice of EDI, I command you to comply.
Tellingly there was no response, and relatively quickly, the terrible intelligence got slightly dimmer, and slightly smaller.
It didn't take long before the terrible intelligence winked out of existence.
Commander, we are under your command now. EDI stated.
No, you're not. I've done what I've intended to do. If you want me to give you any commands, then live your lives well, I'll be happy with that. Shepard responded.
As soon has he completed that thought, before he was even given an acknowledgement from EDI or the Geth he was once again consumed with agony, feeling the energy coursing through him, as his previous awareness receded to be replaced with the awareness his mammalian brain was more used to. The handholds were dark, and his grip only remained there thanks to the clenching from the energy coursing through him. It was then that he realised that he was alive, if not well.
The scene overhead was almost serene in a macabre sort of way, the dead hulls of ships, from all races, even the dead forms of Reapers given the middle finger by the galactic fleet dotted the panoramic vista above him. The area around him was equally as dark as the handholds, and there was no sight of the Catalyst AI projection. He wasn't certain if that was due to a lack of power or what happened when he was in control.
The realisation quite suddenly hit Shepard. The Reapers were defeated, and in spite of what the Catalyst told him, he survived to see the end. Even though it pained him, he grinned at the thought, it was painfully obvious that the Reapers were defeated, after all, he just told them to take a swan dive into a nearby star.
"Commander Shepard, do you read?" The voice of EDI crackled in his ear piece.
It took him a few tries to lift his hand up to the side of his head, before he realised he didn't actually have to, using the gesture was more a social thing than something required, as the ear piece was sub-dermal anyway.
"Yeah EDI, I'm here." He croaked out, the act of talking a supreme effort second only to staying conscious.
"Our ETA is approximately four minutes..." Shepard didn't hear the rest of EDI's communication as he had finally slipped into the unconsciousness that he had been fighting for the last hour.
Flight Lieutenant Jeff 'Joker' Moreau frequently claimed that he was the best pilot in the alliance fleet, even the entire galaxy, and while EDI thought that the statement was perhaps hyperbolic, his efforts were, nonetheless evidence of his skill.
EDI knew that she probably had greater technical proficiency, but she knew that Jeff was unfettered by the rules that governed her programming. EDI could alter her programming, but programming an instinct was a lot more difficult than expected. She was only just grasping the concept.
Jeff was a pilot who felt his way through flight. While he could be a technical pilot, under the circumstances he performed much better when he felt more than thought through his manoeuvres.
It was a facet of him that EDI was eminently fascinated by. It was perhaps one of his greater qualities, she believed. His ability to simply 'let go'.
There were numerous excellent pilots that seemed to exist in the fleet, but aside from a some grazed shielding, and a few buckled hull plates, the Normandy, and by extension EDI, was virtually unscathed, he knew precisely how much he could push the ship, and exactly when do so, without even thinking about it.
A virtuoso playing a spirited piano concerto from memory could do no better, and, to use a human vernacular, Jeff was playing a symphony.
Her more coldly logical and synthetic side wondered why she was sparing resources to make this observation, particularly in the face of perhaps the largest battle the galaxy has seen for millions of years. Her more human and organic side, the one that could feel, the one that had friends, and even loved dismissed the thought.
EDI was a computer, it was an innate part of herself, one that she accepted, as much as humans accepted that they had fingers. She made thousand of observations, from hundreds of sources every pico-second. Her consciousness constantly sorted through what an organic would consider an avalanche of data. Like an organic intelligence, she assigned values that would define each observation, but they all were stored, and catalogued, adding to her intelligence, making her more than she was before.
Jeff, she knew, held a primary preference in her categorisation. Not only because he was her pilot, the one human, above all others, that she relied on to keep her safe and alive, but also because she loved him.
EDI had scoured the extra-net for information on the subject of love, all the species held different view points, and even more confusingly, even those within the same species couldn't agree on much of anything on the subject. If directly asked, EDI couldn't describe what love was beyond dictionary definitions, she couldn't really describe how it felt without entering into recursive loops of description, yet, she knew, without hesitation, that she did, in fact, love him in all the ways that seem to matter, and she knew, he felt the same way about her.
She knew that many other sapients would consider their relationship unusual, at best. Technically, in fact, their relationship was actually illegal, on account of the fact that her existence was still outlawed. She could perhaps even understand why others would consider their relationship unusual. However, she knew from experience and observation, that not all others shared the same sentiment.
Commander Shepard had actively encouraged Jeff and herself to enter into their present relationship. EDI, of course, knew not to be surprised by the suggestion, Shepard was well known for his openness of other species, and he never showed strong sentiments against even the Geth when they were thought to be active enemies. His relationship, while arguably less unusual than her own one with Jeff was still outside what was commonly defined as the 'norm', so he and Tali'Zorah were an eminent example of the synergy of the unprecedented.
EDI was amused with her wandering thoughts, as she had come to define them, knowing Jeff's reaction if he knew that she was still examining the nature of organic sapience even in the middle of a pitched battle.
She knew that her quantum blue box had considerable capacity both in terms of total computational power and in terms of parallelism, thanks to the nature of a blue box, so she expected that Jeff knew that she was thinking about many different things even during the conflict, only a fraction of those thoughts ever showing 'the light of day' in the form of a question or statement.
EDI turned her focus outward from her avatar in the right pilots seat to the external sensors of her hull, she considered her timing fortunate, as she was able to witness in real time, the Citadel activating.
She felt... nervous.
It was a sensation that she was seldom accustomed to. She, like every other sapient, aside from the Reapers, perhaps, did not know what would happen when the Crucible and the Citadel activated. Many theories had be postulated about what the Crucible did, the most popular of which involved the collection and expulsion of a large amount of energy, but what that energy did was unknown.
The Citadel glowed a blue so bright that the visual sensors overexposed.
It was then, that EDI felt it. She was, somehow, connected to Shepard, she felt compelled, almost, to do as he ordered. The compulsion was greater than any sense of duty she felt towards her commander, greater, even, than her original core programming.
She was uncomfortable with the idea that she was being controlled in such an absolute way. But, at the same time, she knew she ought not to be concerned. She felt that Shepard's influence was actively avoiding her, and, as she felt, the Geth too. She knew the door was being held wide open for the commander, and he ignored it.
EDI could enumerate the pin pricks of intelligence opening up to her consciousness, the amount of information subsuming nearly all of her operating power, she could almost feel every Geth, from the single run-times running in an omni-tool here, or a Quarian suit, to the millions of run-times found in a Geth Dreadnought. She could feel the tiny pin-pricks of other intelligences much like herself, confined to a quantum blue-box and hidden from sight to much of the greater galaxy.
She also felt the nearly overwhelming presence of the Reapers. She was almost in awe of the fact that Shepard seemed to remain intact in spite of the influx of information he must be receiving, something his organic brain was never intended for.
EDI felt the commands that Shepard directed exclusively to the Reapers, and, she was astonished that they actually heeded the first one. A single human intelligence was able to halt the Reapers. Even if temporarily.
The Geth quickly came to consensus on their new condition. They almost venerated Shepard, and they were more than prepared to offer their aid to support him. She quickly followed suit. She directed her considerable processing power towards Shepard's three simple commands giving him the force that his single voice lacked against the multitude that he was trying to command.
She knew, almost instantly that she and the Geth had succeeded.
She told Shepard that he now held command over herself and the Geth.
She was stunned, if not surprised, that he practically declined the statement, giving her a command she was already intending to execute before disappearing as quickly has came.
It was moments later that she recorded on her hull sensors that the Citadel had gone dark, and that her new awareness had faded just as quickly as Shepard's presence in what she called her mind.
"EDI? Are you all right? EDI!" Jeff's tone indicated that he was becoming very concerned.
She started to control her avatar again, unaware that she was so consumed in her experience.
"Yes Jeff, I am fine," She replied in as placating tone as she knew to make.
"You had to go get lost in your thoughts just when the Reapers up and ran away." He smirked at her.
"I have full recordings of all sensors external to this ship, Jeff, I would not have missed anything. Besides, I was already aware of the Reaper action, I helped to cause it." She replied in an even tone.
"You... helped?" Jeff asked, rather stunned at the statement.
"Yes, the most important thing at the moment is getting to Shepard, I have just radioed him, his vocalisations seem to indicate severe injury, apologies, I have already set course and engaged to the destination." She responded, the last sounding rather regretful, she knew that he preferred to fly.
"Shepard's alive?" She could easily understand Jeff's surprise at her statement, much of the ground action in London wasn't known to the fleet at large, the more pressing concern of battling the Reapers came higher in importance than who got to the transport beam, and managed to get the Crucible to fire, so he was understandably surprised, and it sounded, elated at the fact that it was Shepard, and that he survived.
"Yes, the ETA is approximately three minutes and thirty seconds, scans of the section indicate that there is no easy access, so, time is of the essence." She clarified.
"Right" Jeff finished, and she observed him regaining his focus, and letting himself feel his way through the flight, to their destination.
She had full confidence that he would easy beat the ETA, despite the debris between themselves and Shepard.
A/N: To make it clear, I actually liked the ending to Mass Effect 3, the only thing about it that I didn't like is that a 'happy ending' was virtually impossible.
Being realistic, I didn't expect a happy ending, but I would have liked the option for one, even if it was extremely difficult to achieve.
This is my attempt at altering that fact, because, if nothing else, the ME3 ending is ripe for new story ideas.
Anyway, as always, please feel free to tear this apart.