IA IA disclaimer fhtagn!

Author's Note: I did some calculations based on the fact that Hab ships (or at least the Point of Contact) can only travel at ~5 light years/day (takes 65 years to cross the galaxy) compared to an Over Analysis-verse Relay clocking in at 3 light years per second (takes 11 hours to cross the galaxy). As Hab ships just don't fit through the Relays, the only ways to get over to where the Quarians are, is to either send a 'small' (about 3 km long) auxiliary craft gallivanting all over the Relay network, or to do that thing with wormholes that one Hab ship used to go intergalactic. Due to it taking a lot less resources and prep time I'm going with option 1.

Elaborating on the wormhole option, How much distance compression you can give a conduit is determined by 2 major things. namely; 1: how wide the conduit needs to be internally, and 2: how much machinery is being used to keep the conduit stable. A wormhole can be almost arbitrarily small while transiting a conduit, thus increasing the distance compression by several orders of magnitude. Then you just need to inflate the wormhole so your ship can go through it (possibly taking 20 seconds for military-grade drives) and you've got yourself a much faster 'jump' drive.


Turn: 2 (Point of Contact)| Time to arrival of Reapers: ~ 26 years | POV characters: ̷̝̝̳ͮ̏͂ͮͫ́̾ ̻͑ͫͧ͞ ̵̗̔̐ͧ̀͋̈́͜ ͗҉͏̖̬̙͎̘̟̻̺ ̵̟̱̠̲͍̞̲̀̽̆̍̑ͩͅͅ ̨̌̔̈́ͥ̍͛͆͏̮̖̱̯̹ ̡̩͖̰͆ͮ͛͛͒͊͘., Admiral Rael'Zorah vas Rayya

Roughly 8 months ago, Point of Contact had fabricated a 5 kilometer long vessel named Long Reach for the purposes of contacting the Migrant Fleet. This was trickier than would normally be assumed, as the FTL transmitter network most of the galaxy used to transmit information (or target and vaporize potentially hostile ships) could have a communications delay of up to 4 weeks depending on distance, and was not typically useful beyond 50 light years of range. Add to that the fact relay travel was not truly instantaneous, and tracking down the migrant fleet had been an absolute nightmare. Eventually, the Point of Contact had resorted to fabricating over 30,000 automated probes in direct wormhole communications with the Point of Contact to explore every bit of the Relay network, Citadel law be damned.

This had resulted in 3 first contacts, one of which was well on their way to building a matrioshka brain in their home system and had uploaded 98% of their population. Only one of the contacts had turned violent, and that was only because of the ever-present communications glitches that accompany a first contact. Still, large-scale wars had been averted for the most part, and a probe had managed to be in a system in the Styx Theta cluster just as the migrant fleet was arriving. It was previously mentioned that the probes were in constant wormhole communication with the Point of Contact. An additional function of this was that they also possessed the ability to inflate said wormhole to 1.2 kilometers in diameter and stabilize it enough to travel through. This allowed the Long Reach to reach the migrant fleet in just under 3 minutes (1 minute to inflate wormhole, 2 minutes of in-system Conduit travel).

̷̝̝̳ͮ̏͂ͮͫ́̾ ̻͑ͫͧ͞ ̵̗̔̐ͧ̀͋̈́͜ ͗҉͏̖̬̙͎̘̟̻̺ ̵̟̱̠̲͍̞̲̀̽̆̍̑ͩͅͅ ̨̌̔̈́ͥ̍͛͆͏̮̖̱̯̹ ̡̩͖̰͆ͮ͛͛͒͊͘. looked through the Long Reach's sensor arrays as the ship 'surfaced' into non-distorted space roughly half a light second from the Migrant Fleet. They had managed to get the jump on the Quarians so they couldn't avoid contact, now it was just a matter of making sure said contact was of the non-shoot-it-until-it-dies variety. To that end, ̷̝̝̳ͮ̏͂ͮͫ́̾ ̻͑ͫͧ͞ ̵̗̔̐ͧ̀͋̈́͜ ͗҉͏̖̬̙͎̘̟̻̺ ̵̟̱̠̲͍̞̲̀̽̆̍̑ͩͅͅ ̨̌̔̈́ͥ̍͛͆͏̮̖̱̯̹ ̡̩͖̰͆ͮ͛͛͒͊͘. had set the ship's transmitters to send a perfectly normal message of "We want to talk, please don't shoot us!" as soon as they surfaced. Well, it wasn't perfectly normal, normal messages weren't aggressively self-opening and programmed to show up on every screen in the migrant fleet all at once. Operating in compressed 'machine time' as ̷̝̝̳ͮ̏͂ͮͫ́̾ ̻͑ͫͧ͞ ̵̗̔̐ͧ̀͋̈́͜ ͗҉͏̖̬̙͎̘̟̻̺ ̵̟̱̠̲͍̞̲̀̽̆̍̑ͩͅͅ ̨̌̔̈́ͥ̍͛͆͏̮̖̱̯̹ ̡̩͖̰͆ͮ͛͛͒͊͘. was at the moment, what would normally be half a second instead felt like about 90 seconds, meaning she felt the message transmit exactly 58 milliseconds after 'surfacing'.

|=[POV SWITCH]=|

Admiral Rael'Zorah sighed as the fleet dropped out of FTL in the Acheron system. Slowly, they maneuvered to the system's single asteroid belt over the course of about an hour and began mining. It was an hour after that when suddenly all the screens aboard the ship started showing "We want to talk, please don't shoot us!". Rael realized why the last part of that message was relevant when he noticed that the computers had pegged it as coming from an Outsider vessel. Rael groaned internally, sincerely hoping that the synthetics inhabiting the Outsider vessel didn't want anything too unreasonable.

-45 minutes later-

Much to Rael's surprise, the negotiator from the Outsiders was wearing an almost completely organic flash-cloned Asari body. This made remembering that he (and the rest of the Admirality board and Conclave) were dealing with an un-trustworthy synthetic all that much harder, which may have been the point. It was then that the synthetic made her offer of "We would be willing to produce a Hab ship for you, and provide representation to improve your species' standing with the other races"

Just what was (no, not she, it) she trying to achieve?

Keeping an outwardly calm demeanor, compared to his internal paranoid frenzy, Rael asked "And what do you have to gain from this?"

Rael received the extremely unexpected answer of "Us outsiders need to stick together!"

What is it talking about!? The Migrant Fleet clearly isn't part of the Outsiders!

Though inwardly in a confused rage at the moment, Rael still managed to maintain his calm facade as he questioned the previous statement with "The Migrant Fleet are not part of the Outsiders, Why would you ever view us as part of your polity?"

At this point the synthetic spoke once more, stating "We seem to be operating off of different definitions of Outsider. When I say 'Outsider' I'm referring to a person or group of people who are ostracized from whatever the 'mainstream' society is and either can't or won't settle down. When you say 'Outsider", you seem to be referring to some form of nebulous synthetic empire that is extremely hard to attack due to not staying in one place for extended periods. The latter is a misconception on multiple levels, as the Outsiders as you are referring to are in fact a group of mostly independent Hab ships that are generally on good terms with one another and have agreed to collaborate for mutual defense. As far as I and the rest of the Point of Contact's population are concerned, you are already part of the 'family' so to speak."

This is too good to be true, therefore it ISN'T!

Before Rael could voice his concerns however, he was shouted down by 50.1% of the Conclave and 3 of the other Admirals approving the action.

Where to next?

[]We still need to wreck the Batarian's slave system
[]Hey, why did we lose contact with all the probes that went through the Omega 4 Relay... Oh look, one of the wormholes is still stable, let's check it out!
[]The Terminus systems are absolutely disgusting with all the horrible stuff that happens there, let's go clean them up.
[]The relay network is too small... Let's replace it with wormholes for everyone!
[]Let's go talk to the Geth!
[]Make your own option!


Turn: 2 (Outsiders at large) | Time to arrival of Reapers: ~26 years | POV characters: SCIENCE!

Orbiting around a brown dwarf close to Tau Ceti, an experimental vessel was about to (potentially) revolutionize eezo-free travel. The 1 Giant Leap for Sapient-Kind applied 3 revolutionary technologies that had been impractical to use before now. First was the reactor, gone was a 'conventional' fission, fusion, or antimatter device in favor of a Pulsed Singularity Reactor, applying utterly insane artificial gravitational fields to directly convert any matter one could feasibly insert into the device into energy through Hawking radiation. Next was the GRAVDAR system for FTL sensing, using gravity waves propagating at quadrillions of c to pinpoint ships up to 18 light-hours away in real time. Most importantly however, was the hybrid conduit/wormhole drive.

In it, a wormhole was generated as normal, and then sent to the destination via conduit at speeds approaching 550 light years per hour (for a scout-sized unit, bigger ships could move the wormhole significantly faster). That was not the new part, the Outsiders had been able to do that almost since they'd developed both Conduits and wormholes. The new part was that the wormhole could now be inflated at much faster rates WITHOUT bulky infrastructure at both ends, meaning that once the wormhole arrived at the destination the ship could follow in mere seconds after inflating the wormhole.

The 1 Giant Leap was a re-purposed Direct Combat Unit, which meant it could hit just under an effective 6.4 light years per second. the distance to the Citadel was roughly 12,000 light years. This meant that the 1 Giant Leap would arrive in about half an hour, assuming everything went well. Sure enough, the wormhole reached the Citadel with few problems. Now came the tricky part: inflating the wormhole.

Exotic matter flowed from the 1 Giant Leap's generator both expanding the near end and being coaxed gently through to the far end. The distorted gash in spacetime gradually grew to its final diameter of 500 meters over the course of about 30 seconds, and the 1 Giant Leap moved through. The selected arrival point was 12 light hours away from the Citadel, working off of telemetry received from the Point of Contact (the ship itself hadn't really gone anywhere). As the 1 Giant Leap exited the distorted spacetime of the wormhole, it allowed said wormhole to collapse behind it.

1 small step for a sapient being, one ludicrously fast method of FTL to share with all the Outsiders.


Turn: 2 (Citadel Council) | Time to arrival of Reapers: ~25 years | POV characters: Estarp Zolji (STG analyst), Nase Haat (Drell Spectre)

=[STG safehouse, further details on location classified]=

Estarp glanced impatiently at his omnitool as Nase entered the room. As Nase sat down, Estarp said "Good, you're here." and opened his briefcase

[Switching to transcript format.]

Nase: Why are you holding a hand mirror?

Estarp: This is in fact not a hand mirror, it is a 1 millimeter thick sample of the substance the Outsiders use for armor, acquired at the cost of 18 agents being captured. Go ahead, shoot it, but let me put it down first.

Nase: There seems to be an extremely small crater in the sample. I don't think there's any other material that can stop a bullet from this gun with only a millimeter of thickness.

Estarp: That is not the only bizarre property this substance exhibits, there's also its almost perfect reflectivity, and its borderline nonexistent coefficient of friction.

Nase: And you needed me here, why?

Estarp: As it turns out, this substance is not in fact composed of baryonic matter, which explains why our attempts to replicate it have failed. This cannot stand. Outsider vessels primarily use energy weapons with a yield measured in the double to triple digit gigatons. These weapons completely bypass our existing deflection systems and our ablative armor is effectively useless at this energy level. Your job is to get in there, somehow acquire an example of the device that makes this, preferably multiple, and bring them back so we can replicate the technology.

Nase: Understood, I'll be departing immediately.

[switching to narrative format]

As Nase left the safehouse through the [CLASSIFIED], he took in a breath of fresh air on [CLASSIFIED], and began the 8 kilometer hike back to where he landed his shuttle. He had to kill a Thresher Maw on the way, but he needed the exercise.