Chapter 4
She took Liara and Traynor with her to the Martian archives. They wore formal uniforms. She didn't feel too tired. Being in the military you are quickly accustomed to going without sleep. But she was no longer some 19 year old green horn. She'd taken some extra coffee and that seemed to be doing the trick, although she forced herself to ignore the foul taste of rations coffee. The nature of the visions troubled her. She hadn't touched anything prothean. What had prompted this vision? And why during her sleep? Maybe her subconscious was absorbing more of the old prothean data lurking in her mind?
They were walking from the docking bay, making their way towards the archival room. There was no one to greet them. They followed signs, leading them to another elevator. "So, what's this lead you have?" Kara asked Liara.
"It may be some kind of a weapon the protheans designed to fight the Reapers." Liara answered.
"Sounds too good to be true." Shepard said.
"Yes, but we can't afford to overlook anything." Liara said. "We might succeed where they failed. We have the advantage of not facing an invasion."
"But they were more advanced than we are." Traynor said.
"Maybe." Kara said. "It's hard to know. A lot of what we assumed about the Protheans could turn out to be wrong."
There was no more conversation until the elevator doors opened. They found themselves in the middle of the archival room. The room was spherical, several hundred feet in circumference. There were rows of computer consoles skirting out in straight lines, radiating from the elevator. The walls were all windowed, plenty of sunshine was penetrating through right now. It almost felt like they were in a greenhouse. There were a dozen people working on various workstations. A middle aged man saw them and walked towards them. He was thin and wiry, wearing even thinner glasses.
"Welcome. Are you Commander Shepard?" He said, his voice booming in contrast to his physical stature.
"Yes. Are you Dr. Chandra?" Kara asked.
"Yes. Pleased to meet you." The doctor shook hands with each of them. His eyes rested longer on Liara than anyone else.
"Are you Dr. T'Soni?" He asked eagerly. Liara answered in the affirmative.
"Oh! I'm so happy to meet you!" He exclaimed, clapping his hands together, his white smile shining even brighter than the sun. "I'm a huge fan of your work. I've read every single one of your papers! Tell me, what do you think about Dr. Breen's theory of prothean DNA structure..." The Doctor gently yet firmly grabbed Liara's arm and led her towards his work console. Traynor and Kara looked at another. Kara grinned and arched an eyebrow. Traynor nodded, for once holding her gaze. For a few seconds anyway. The two ladies made their way towards the doctor's workstation. Kara felt poorly about interrupting them, given how passionately these two were conversing.
"I'm sorry to interrupt, Doctor. But I heard you found something useful?" She said.
"Yes, forgive me. It's just so rare I get to speak with such a distinguished prothean expert." Dr. Chandra said. Liara looked to be blushing, her cheeks flashing a deeper shade of blue than normal.
"I thought you were given extra staff?" Kara asked. She didn't see a lot of people working and most of the workstations were empty, gathering dust.
Dr. Chandra nodded. "Until a few days ago, there was only four of us. One month ago, only three. Quite an improvement, I say." There was no trace of irony in his tone.
"This is what we've found." He pressed a few buttons on his terminal. A display opened up and was quickly populate by schematics of some kind. It showed a large device that had a long cylindrical fuselage, with a large circular sections at each end. The middle of this structure a relatively small pointed cylinder protruded like a spear from a shield wall. This section looked like it was a focusing beam of some kind. The dimensions were impressive, 6 kilometers long, 3 in width, the circular sections were both 2 km in diameter.
"What is it?" Kara asked.
"We believe it to be some kind of super weapon." Dr. Chandra said somberly. "A massive reactor is housed in the rear of the device. We believe it channels the power of a mass relay through a narrow focus beam that transforms it into a weapon of incredible kinetic power. No one has ever been able to channel this power into a weapon before. I'm not sure we should."
"If it's so advanced, can we build it?" Traynor asked.
"Despite the revolutionary design, it's alarmingly simple." Dr. Chandra answered. "I fear this is another case of our technology advancing before our ethics."
"I understand how you feel, doctor." Shepard began. "But this may be needed to defend us against a great threat."
"What kind of threat?" He asked, looking at her keenly.
"I'm sorry, but it's classified. I can tell you it's not intended to be used against anyone."
The doctor sighed, his eyes downcast for a moment. She wished she could tell him about the Reapers, but she couldn't. His eyes rode back up to her, and she saw only skepticism.
"How can you contemplate building something like this without using it? Even if you do not intend to, someone else will. Or, the threat of using it, which amounts to the same thing. An accidental usage would be just as tragic as a deliberate one. I don't want to become another Oppenheimer."
"Doctor, if I showed you what we are up against, it might change your mind, if you allow me." Liara said.
Chandra eyed Liara cautiously. "I will only show you my memories."
He nodded meekly. Liara slowly approached him and placed her hands on his shoulder. She heard Liara mouth 'embrace eternity'. Chandra's body tensed and trembled slightly. His face was taught, his eyes clenched tightly shut. It looked like someone undergoing a minor epileptic fit. Is that what I looked like? What did the others think when they saw her undergo this process? After a few seconds, Liara released the doctor. The doctor stumbled back a few steps, but recovered, using his desk to steady himself. His face was ashen, and a look of cold dread upon it.
"I see." He said simply.
"Did the Protheans ever build it?" Traynor asked, breaking the silence. The doctor paused before answering, still getting his bearings.
"Unknown. This design matches no known prothean artifacts or relics. It was probably just in the design stages before their extinction." He said.
"Where did you find these schematics?" She asked.
"It was found, or re-found, if you will, in databank Bravo 35, sub cluster 3." He answered.
"If it was in one of the first discovered data troves, why hasn't it been uncovered until now?" Kara asked.
"It's probable the original survey team missed it." He explained. "There are petabytes of data in just a single sub cluster. Data gets missed fairly often, I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often. It was found by one of our newer employees. If it wasn't for the extra labour, it probably would've been forgotten forever."
Something about it seemed farfetched. Maybe even suspiciously convenient, but they needed to invest in every possibility if they had a chance of holding off the Reapers.
"I have copied this schematic onto an OSD." Dr. Chandra removed an OSD disc from his pocket and gave it to Shepard. She examined the device. To think this small, otherwise insignificant disc contained what they were hoping for. And it could've been lost forever to their doom all due to someone being inattentive for just a few moments.
"Well done, doctor. Congratulate your team on my behalf." Kara said. She turned to leave. As she turned, she spotted a worker sitting at a workstation opposite them. He was sitting at an angle to them, staring at his console straight ahead, but he seemed to be eyeing her out of the corner of his eye. Then looked away as soon as she looked in his direction. As quickly as she remarked it, it was forgotten. He probably just recognized her from the news, that's all. She was getting more of these double-takes from strangers where she went. She wasn't used to it.
"Dr. T'soni?" The doctor intercepted them. Well, he intercepted Liara. "Might I have your contact information? I would love to continue to correspond with you while you are away on your mission."
"Yes, of course." Liara said and innocently gave him her contact information. The Doctor beamed. Liara smiled back at him. Unable to hide his excitement, Kara thought he was about to start bouncing off the walls. They left the hall and re-entered the elevator.
"I think you've made a new friend." Kara said with a warm smile as the doors closed.
"Yes. So I seem to." Liara replied evenly.
"Sure you don't want to skip pleasantries and book a hotel room?" She teased.
"Why? What would we do in a hotel room?" Liara asked innocently.
Kara and Traynor exchanged a glance and giggled. Liara looked at them, puzzled.
"Humans, you're so very strange sometimes." She said.
Kara ordered Joker to set for Omega and she went towards the briefing room. She wrote a brief report and then submitted it along with the data from Dr. Chandra's OSD to the Council. Her report included her personal recommendation that they should commence construction immediately. She grabbed a coffee and assembled Ashley, Garrus, Traynor, Tali and Liara for a briefing. Bad tasting coffee was better than no coffee.
Ash had wasted no time sewing her lieutenant's insignia onto her uniform. They smiled at another, Kara felt the strangest of feelings in her chest. She caught herself and began her briefing. She went over what they'd found in the Martian Archive.
"So, what do you think?" She asked her team.
"Looks kinda weird for a super weapon, but if it works, I'll take it." Ashley said.
"Better something ugly that works than something pretty that doesn't." Garrus added.
"That something your mother tell you?" Ash teased.
"All the time." Garrus answered, playing along.
"Are we sure it's a good idea to build this thing? We don't know what it does, really. How much it'll cost, how much time it'll take." Traynor said.
"The Reapers are coming." Kara said firmly. "You don't organize cycles of galactic extinction without having a few tricks up your sleeve. All we and some long-dead protheans have done is buy some time. We have to make us of it. Otherwise, there's no point."
"What are we going to call this device?" Tali asked.
Kara shrugged. "Don't know. Maybe the Council will take a vote on the extranet?"
"How about: The Crucible?" Traynor advanced, enthusiastically holding her arms in the air like she was holding a frame and inscribing this name in the stars.
"Seems kinda dorky." Ash said. "No offense."
Traynor looked a little bummed.
"Thanks for the suggestion, Traynor." She said and gave the lieutenant a friendly smile. "How about Willy McWeapon Face?" She suggested. Several pairs of rolled eyes answered her.
"The Big Space Boomstick." Was Ashley's suggestion.
"The mighty, mighty Bosh'tet!" Tali said.
"Okay, that's enough." Kara said with understated firmness.
"So, we're going to Omega next?" Garrus asked.
Kara nodded. "We have a salarian team member to pick up. They tell me he's a doctor."
"Why do we need a salarian doctor? Chakwas is fine." Ash asked.
"It's so the salarians can feel represented. We got human, turian, quarian and asari on this crew, we had a krogan last time, but no salarian." Kara answered.
"There's probably more to this doctor than meets the eye." Traynor said.
"I think that's a given." Kara said.
"We should be in our combat gear when we go pick him up." Ash said.
Garrus nodded. "Omega can get very nasty in a hurry."
"You will have to deal with Aria T'loak, who runs Omega." Liara said. "We should do our best not to step on any toes."
"I'll take Garrus and Ash with me when we get there. I don't want anyone else to leave the ship unless I give the all clear." Kara ordered.
"Any questions?" There were none.
"Right. Dismissed."
She looked at dissatisfaction with her half-filled coffee mug.
"Commander?" Traynor approached her hesitantly.
"Yes?" Kara said, sipping her coffee, trying, and failing, to ignore the foul flavour.
"Is there anything I can do to help?"
"Well, if you can get us supplied with Duncan Hills coffee without murdering our budget that would be great." She said.
"Consider it done, Commander." Traynor said with a shy but confident smile.
Kara passed the time by reviewing the data file she'd been given on Mordin Solus. It was remarkably sparse. His scientific aptitudes were in genetics and general medicine. He didn't seem to have any strong ties to the salarian government. There was definitely something more to him.
She plugged in her guitar. Playing guitar helped her gather her thoughts. She thought about the mission. It was more ambiguous this time. Before they had a clear objective: stop Saren. As the mission wore on, the means to achieve it became much more complicated, but the final objective remained the same.
But now? Their objective was to stop the Reapers. She remembered Vigil's words "Your hope lies in defeating them, not understanding them." And could not help but disagree. How could they stop a foe they did not understand? They knew nothing of the Reapers' true motivations, their strategies, strengths, weaknesses or even numbers.
Their only hope was in information, but they were grasping at straws. Digging through old data archives, trotting through ruins and interacting with beacons didn't seem like a sure path to victory. But she could think of no other way to proceed and neither could anyone else. And that worried her. She trusted those in command to have a grasp of the bigger picture. But in this they were all equally blind. Was this how the Protheans felt? In a race against time they had no chance at winning? Feeling hope slowly slip through their fingers, squeezing tighter, only to grasp extinction in the end.
Her thoughts suddenly went to Ashley. She wasn't sure why. Focus, Kara! Focus! It wasn't the first time she'd served with an attractive woman, but it was the first time she'd ever felt ...whatever she was feeling. About anyone. But she didn't exactly know what she was feeling. Whatever it was, it was both thrilling and terrifying. How was she going to deal with this? It was obvious Ashley wasn't interested in her. It wasn't the first time she'd nursed an unrequited crush on someone, she'd always moved on. So why was this, whatever this was, so different?