Chapter 7

SSV Normandy

Lucius got into the elevator with Ashley to head up to the mess hall (though 'hall' was a huge exaggeration for the area on this small ship). After his biotic workout he was suddenly very hungry. The elevator door opened to show the area full of people. It was around the time designated as dinner, though of course being a spaceship this was a fairly arbitrary designation, and many crew members would ignore these suggestions if they had duties to complete. At the moment however, most of the crew had some downtime while the ship made the uneventful trip to the Artemis Tau cluster, and so the room was much more crowded than it had been earlier.

Ashley showed Lucius where the food was kept. There were single serve meal available to be heated whenever a crew member was hungry or when it was convenient for them to heat, but at meal times like this a large pot of food was prepared for people to serve themselves from. Ashley and Lucius got their food, then Ashley left him to find his own seat while she sat on the last seat by some marines she knew. Lucius scanned the tables and saw Tali sitting at one. She was sipping something out of a foil packet, sitting near some crew members who were speaking to each other. She was clearly listening to their conversation but not really contributing, the crew members didn't seem bothered by her presence but still mostly ignored her. Lucius took his food over and sat opposite her, quite eager to be able to finally have a proper conversation her.

"Lucius! How did your training go?" Tali asked excitedly as she saw him approaching.

"Good. I think. It's weird, I've got this new amp so I'm kind of relearning the basics right now. It's frustrating but I think I'm getting better. What have you been doing?"

"Just settling in and trying to write this summary report on the Geth for Shepard. I think I'm mostly done, but I'm not really sure what to put in and what to leave out. I'm sure the finer details on Geth programming would mostly go over her head and probably wouldn't be too useful, and a detailed history of our war with them probably isn't too relevant, and then there's so much I don't know about how much they've changed over the centuries. I hope I've done it right and that it's useful but I don't know."

Tali was speaking very quickly and Lucius was having trouble following; he was still getting used to his translator. "What are Geth?" he asked.

"What are Geth?" Tali repeated, a little incredulous, "Oh, well I guess you wouldn't have met any yet. The Geth are who we are fighting! They're a race of artificial intelligences my ancestors accidentally created over 300 years ago. We fought a war with them and they killed most of my people, the survivors had to flee our home planet to survive. They haven't really been seen since, but now they're back and being led by a Turian named Saren. They are looking for something called 'The Conduit' and trying to bring back another, worse kind of AI called 'Reapers'. To be honest I'm not completely convinced they exist and aren't just a myth that Saren is using to control the Geth, but either way we're trying to stop Saren and his Geth army before they find whatever it is they are looking for. That's the short version, anyway."

"So they're like.. robots? But… bad robots? And we're going to fight them?"

"I guess that would be the extremely short version, but yes," Tali laughed. Lucius smiled, glad that he was following allowing, and returned his focus to his meal and frequently glancing around. "It's nice to see this room so full," Tali said, "it reminds me of being back on the fleet a bit, things are pretty crowded back home. Of course the fleet is crowded with quarians, not humans, but still."

"I don't like it. I've never really like crowds. Too many people. I always avoided them back at the Citadel."

"Oh," Tali replied. They finished their meals in semi-comfortable silence. Soon Dr Chakwas came over with a meal of her own.

"Hello you two, how are you settling in? Are you alright Lucius, you look a little uneasy?" asked the doctor.

"I'm fine," answered Lucius. Dr. Chakwas raised an eyebrow.

"He doesn't like crowds," added Tali.

"Ahh, well that's certainly understandable given… everything," Dr. Chakwas leaned in closer, "honestly I don't much like crowds either. That's why I spend all my time in the medbay even when I don't have patients." Lucius smiled. "You know there actually a small room just behind the medbay, I think it's supposed to be an office for me, or maybe just extra storage, but it's empty right now and I've no use for it so you're welcome to hang out in there. There's probably not a whole lot to do on a ship like this for people without official duties like you two."

"That sounds good! I think I'll go there now actually," said Lucius. The mess hall had actually filled up more, if that were possible. It seems the crew had taken their first official meal after leaving the Citadel as an excuse for a social occasion. Many people were now eating standing up, as there weren't any seat left, and were half-excitedly, half-fearfully speculating on what the mission might hold for them.

Lucius and Tali got up to leave and some crew members almost immediately took their seats. "I'll come too," Tali said, "I promised to show you how to use that new omni-tool."

For the rest of the 'evening' Tali showed Lucius some of what his omni-tool could do. She showed him how to send messages, and gave him her extranet address to demonstrate it. She showed him how to look people up, they looked up Dr. Michel and found her address. He sent her a message telling her that they were okay and what they had been doing. Next she showed him how to do extranet searches, the galactic codex (a sort of encyclopaedia) and a variety of social medias, image and video sharing sites etc. Lucius seemed a bit bewildered by the possibilities of this tiny bracelet, and so Tali decided to end the lesson there. Lucius could explore the rest at his leisure, so she left him to it.

Lucius had been taught to read and write as a child, and he had a few children's books at the facility on Terra Nova, but it had been some time since he had put any of those skills to practice. After Tali had left, he found his way back to the extranet search bar and slowly typed 'kwurien' into the virtual keyboard.

'Did you mean "quarian"?'

Lucius pressed the link, which took him to the codex entry on them. He began to read. He didn't understand all of it but it was still informative, and thankfully there were several pictures to help. He read several more entries on The Migrant Fleet, Geth, The Council, Spectres and other topics before falling asleep on the floor of the small room. He didn't mind, he was used to sleeping like that.

An hour or so later Dr. Chakwas found him. She got out a fold-out cot, meant to be used for when the medbay became too full, and set it up in the room before waking the boy and guiding him to it. He would have had a spot to sleep assigned to him in the crew quarters but he seemed to prefer it here, she thought, and this way she could keep an eye on him. She was worried about how he would adjust to this drastic change in his life.


The next day Kaidan went down to the cargo bay to find Lucius practicing his biotics. He was waving the ball around smoothly, not quite as precisely as Kaidan had demonstrated the day before, but still a huge improvement. "Not bad kid, not bad at all." Kaidan walked up to him and tapped him on the shoulder, but his hand was stopped just before making contact. "And your barrier is up as well. Good."

"Yeah I kept forgetting at first, but Wrex has been helping me," replied Lucius.

"Oh, has he now?" said Kaidan, raising an eyebrow at the enormous krogan standing off to the side. Wrex had barely moved since his arrival on the Normandy. "How nice of him."

"I'm a helper," said Wrex disinterestedly. He picked up a used heat clip, a lump of metal weighing around half a kilogram, from the table next to him and threw it at Lucius. It bounced off his barrier and hit the deck with a clang. "Yep, barriers still up," he said as he biotically pulled the clip back to his hand.

"That's… thanks for helping Wrex, but maybe try something a little softer. We don't want to hurt him."

"I've always found pain to be an excellent teacher, but you're the boss," answered Wrex with a grin.

"Great. Well I've brought some things to help us with our next lesson." Kaidan held up a few cardboard targets, the kind that would be used at a shooting range. He dragged a crate over and hung them, each suspended by a thin cable, from the ceiling near the large cargo door. There were three of them, hung around eye level and about a metre apart. "Okay Lucius, now stand here near the elevator and cast a throw at the middle target, nothing too powerful."

Lucius did as he was asked, stood about ten metres from the targets and cast his throw. All three targets flew backwards as if hit by a strong wind. "Okay," Kaidan said, "try again, but this time hit only the middle target."

"Only the middle one? Umm… I'll try," Lucius said. He tried again, with much the same result as the first attempt.

"Don't worry, you've never done something like this before have you? Your throw is pretty good for a wide throw, which is great for knocking down a few people at once, but usually you'll want to focus it to just one target. This can make it stronger, focusing all that energy into one spot rather than wasting it by spreading it out. And sometimes there might be friendlies, or something explosive, or something else you don't want to hit just next to your target. You need to be able to focus your biotics so you only hit what you want to hit. Like this." Kaidan cast a throw of his own. The middle target flew backwards while the two nearby remained still. "Here I'll show you."

Kaidan spent the next 15 minutes demonstrating and giving tips before leaving Lucius to practice on his own. "I know it's frustrating, but keep at it. Once you've learned this I'll see about bumping up your amp's power a bit more," he said as he entered the elevator. Wrex waited until the doors slid shut before picking up the heat clip again and taking aim.


Shepard sat in her quarters, taking a break. Not that she had much to take a break from. They had arrived in the Artemis Tau cluster some time ago, and she had just been in the CIC while they scanned the Athens system for activity, looking particularly for signs of the Geth, but also for any prothean ruins or other signs that Liara might be nearby as well as keeping an eye out for any signs of the missing Alliance marine squad which Rear Admiral Kahoku had asked her to look for. It had been strange to receive a request from a Rear Admiral, rather than an order, but she supposed she would have to get used to it in her new position.

Travelling between the planets in the system and scanning each one had taken a couple of hours, and for most of it she had had nothing to do other than watch people do their jobs. They had found nothing, and were now en route to the Knossos system. She would let them scan this system without their captain breathing down their necks, she thought.

She had learned many years ago that as a soldier most of your time was spent hanging around waiting for orders. She was now learning that as a commanding officer most of your time was spent hanging around waiting for your orders to be carried out. In fact, after she had boarded the Normandy and given her orders to search the Artemis Tau cluster she could have spent all her time in her quarters talking to no one and the mission would have progressed much the same way as it had, and that was almost a day ago. Still, it was good for morale for her to be seen taking an active role in the running of the ship. Not too active mind you, most people don't like to be micromanaged.

She scrolled through the list of personal messages she had received in the past day, mostly requests for interviews from various news organisations. She ignored them all. She was sure that one day soon Alliance brass would ask her, or tell her, to do an interview, after all humanity getting it's first Spectre was a big deal, but until that happened she would ignore the messages. She had no desire to be famous. With a bored sigh she decided to walk the ship and see how the new arrivals were settling in.

She found Tali sitting at a table in the mess hall just outside her quarters fiddling with her omni-tool. She looked a little bored. "Tali, thanks for that report. It was very useful. I think the next time we find some geth I'd like to take you into the field, see how your expertise works in action." In truth the report did have some very useful information, but most of that Shepard had already picked up from her encounter on Eden Prime. The rest of it was a little… overly technical. Hopefully seeing Tali in action would prove more useful.

"Oh yes, the would be good! Hopefully we find them soon. Oh, no, I mean I hope we don't find any of them. No wait, we know they're out there and we're looking for them, I do hope we find them. I mean, hopefully they aren't with Liara, I… ugh, I'm going to stop now." Tali rested her head on the table.

"Relax Tali," Shepard laughed as she walked over to the elevator, "we'll find them soon enough."

Shepard walked out into the cargo bay to see Lucius practicing his biotics with some targets placed on the other side of the room. Garrus was near the lockers tinkering with his sniper rifle while Wrex was in the corner on her left leaning against the wall. "Well, good to see your all keeping… busy," Shepard said as she glanced at Wrex, "I just came down to…"

"Captain to the CIC urgently, Captain to the CIC. We've got something on the long range scanners in the Knossos system," XO Pressly interrupted through the PA.

"Well, never mind then," Shepard said as she quickly turned around and got back into the elevator.

"What do you reckon that's about?" asked Garrus once she had left.

"How would I know?" replied Wrex gruffly.

"Hmm… I'm putting my armour back on," said Garrus as he opened his locker.

"I never took mine off," said Wrex as he threw the heat clip at Lucius. This one hit him on the arm, no barrier, and would leave a bruise. Wrex said nothing as he biotically recalled the clip.

Shepard walked onto the CIC, taking her position on the bridge. "What have we got?"

"A Geth ship in orbit over Therum, frigate sized but I don't want to speculate too much on what that means for its capabilities," answered Pressly.

"Has it spotted us?"

"Doesn't look like it. It hasn't moved, just holding it's steady orbit. I'd say our stealth system is working."

"Hmm. It seems likely that our target is on that planet then. Unless she's on that ship instead."

"We're too far out to properly scan the planet. If she's already on their ship I'd say our chances of retrieval are pretty slim. We might be able to take them by surprise and disable them, but I don't like the idea of boarding a Geth ship with no idea of what we might find or what their numbers would be, and I'm not the one who will have to do it."

"Agreed. Joker, take us in nice and quiet. Let's see if we can find out more before making our move. Passive scans only, let's not give ourselves away just yet."

"Aye aye, Commander," said the pilot over the intercom.

After a few minutes they were able more closely examine the planet. "We've got activity on the planet, looks like Geth," said one of the many technicians at one of the terminals dotted around.

"Also found what looks like some kind of mining facility. They appear to be heading towards it," said another.

"That's probably where the prothean ruins, and Liara are. Looks like they don't have her yet," concluded Shepard.

"But if they're coming for her then she's probably involved," said Pressly, "maybe she's found something in those ruins, another beacon?"

"Maybe. All right, I'll take the ground team in the Mako and pull her out. But first, let's cut off their retreat. Joker, line up an attack run on that frigate. Weapons, target their engines first. We don't know much about their weak spots, but that's usually a good place to start."

"Aye aye sir," came a chorus from around the room.

The lighting throughout the ship switched to red and an alarm sounded. Shepard cut through it with an announcement: "Attention all crew. Battle stations. We have found a Geth frigate and are initiating combat from stealth. The bastards won't know what hit them. I repeat, all crew to battle stations." She let the alarm sound for another fifteen seconds before switching it off. No sense in having that grating alarm going while people were trying to concentrate.

The Normandy approached the geth frigate, firing missiles from close range, or close range for space battles at least. The missiles screamed along the hundred or so kilometres to their target. The Geth, while unable to detect the Normandy, detected the missiles immediately and, with a reaction time only a machine would be capable of, fired up their engines and prepared to do evasive manoeuvres. By the time they began to move, however, the Normandy was already in a different spot and with its main cannons fired a volley at their engines. To the geth these rounds seemed to come from empty space, and they had no time to dodge. The first two shots depleted their shields, the third and fourth were a direct hit and their main engine was taken out. With time they may have been able to repair them, but they would not have time. A few moments later the missiles impacted, burrowing through the whole opened in their thruster before detonating. Secondary explosions rocked the ship before they lost power completely. The frigate was still largely intact, at least from the outside, but were well and truly out of the battle. A cheer went through the CIC, soon spreading to the lower decks.

"Joker, find me a landing spot and prep the Mako. We're going in."