Chapter 20 – Searching
Bill Arkansas Jakobs called a board meeting to again discuss the missing family shareholder. No Jackie meant no new advertisements. As a company that liked to rotate its marketing materials every six months or so, not having Jackie on hand meant not being able to deploy its star endorser. Selling products with sex appeal was older than dirt itself, but it still worked.
In a stark comparison to Hyperion's board-of-comedy, Jakobs' corporate governors were mostly competent and remained focused on business during meetings. That said, a greater diversity of opinions from seven members instead of Hyperion's five meant that consensus occasionally took longer to reach, as was the case now.
"We should send a rescue team in. It's our best hope!" enthused Pickens Jakobs. Odd, since he'd been the one whose anti-Jackie antics drew the attention of the Chairman at the last family shareholder meeting.
"Are you pulling a Hyperion?" replied Clayton Jakobs. Everyone knew the antics one would usually find speaking to the Hyperion Board, from Arlen Casper's high-jinks to Juan Pablo Rhees' trying to keep everyone else from attacking Casper, or Alice Sturdon attempting to talk down the latest hotheaded proposal. Thus, "pulling a Hyperion" was a backhanded way of saying "That's stupid." An ongoing pool among Jakobs board members on when the next turnover at their competitor would be continued to grow, as the current Board at Hyperion continued to exist years after their initial ascension despite many bets to the contrary.
"Clayton's right" chimed in Carson Jakobs. The entire board still consisted of family members, due to either having to own a "family-class" share of stock or receive a 67% majority vote from those owning such stock in order to be appointed. He turned to Pickens. "Are you forgetting what the Trans-Galactic Republic's fleet did to us last time we fought them? Actually, it would be more appropriate to say they steamrollered us. Admiral Shunpike made one dent, then his ship got completely destroyed!"
"So what do we do, give up on a member of our family?" intoned Bill. "I don't agree with Pickens—especially not without more information as to what we'd face if we sent in a rescue team—but we are not the Jakobs family if we leave Jackie in the hands of those…outsiders."
Lawrence Jakobs responded to the Chairman's statement, wondering "Do we even know for sure that she's there? You know Jackie, sometimes she just disappears for a bit, then resurfaces."
"Our intelligence operatives are working full-time to determine what is going on in orbit around Pandora" insisted Wayne Jakobs.
"Full-time work, or avoiding work full time?" snapped Dallas Jakobs. "They haven't brought us anything from that dirtball in months!"
"Have you considered it possible that the Trans-Galactic Republic may also have more advanced security measures to go with their fantastically powerful weapons?" asked Bill.
"Our intelligence operatives haven't brought back anything worthy of reporting to the full Board" continued the chairman, "unless you'd like to hear endless reams of 'unable to gain access' and 'HUMNIT rebuffed.'"
Several faces took on sheepish looks. Many Board members became annoyed with all the intel reports that were more header/footer than content due to an inability to round up anything actionable, so they'd opted to not receive those reports.
Wayne Jakobs let off a small "Hmph."
"Just because you don't mind having an inbox full of mostly blank ECHOs…" said Dallas.
"Look, I don't understand what's so hard about setting filters on your ECHOMail client" shot back Wayne. "Keeps them all in one folder instead of filling up your inbox."
"I still end up having to empty…"
Bill Arkansas Jakobs raised his hand for quiet. "These are issues best addressed to technical support rather than wasting valuable board time. Now, the intelligence operatives we have are trying their best to bring us information both on Jackie's whereabouts and what, exactly, we'd face making a military move at Pandora. We'd best wait until we receive more information before making any significant moves."
"What about the JVLN Alliance?" asked Carson. "Shareholders endorsed keeping our position within this corporate conglomeration."
"Until we hear from Hyperion again, we cannot assume they will commit to standing with us should conflict break out" replied Clayton. "I'd be willing to bet they're in it until the going gets tough—because then Hyperion gets going!"
His mild swipe at their competitor elicited chuckles from around the table.
"We must also ensure no one gains access to Fort Jakobs. Even though we haven't gotten any firm leads, strange rumors have abounded around Pandora" said Pickens. "I hear stories about people who were supposed to be dead showing up in random places, or someone stepping through a doorway and ending up clear across a continent!"
"Pickens, how many times…" Clayton grew exasperated with his fellow board member. He latched on to every tall tale, every implausible theory, every crazy bit of speculation.
"Our intelligence does suggest that things on Pandora are not normal" intoned Wayne. "Pickens may love himself a wild yarn or two, but he's not wrong—credible sources have given voice to unexplained events on a large enough scale to warrant concern."
"Gentlemen, what you see is not to leave this room. Seal the windows and entrances."
The computer complied, locking the seven members of the Jakobs board into their meeting room.
"You are all aware" continued Bill, "that our weapons receive their exceptional power from a technology we've managed to keep secret for centuries."
Heads nodded around the table.
"The slipcelerator inside a Jakobs weapon is the key to its high damage" he continued. "By passing through an alternate-dimension transforming mechanism (ATOM), the munition passes into a type of space we don't fully understand before re-emerging into our reality with a vastly multiplied velocity, permitting extreme penetration power."
"So what does a weapon technology we've used for centuries, which we don't even understand because it was taken from the Eridians, have to do with people popping up in random places?" asked Wayne.
Lawrence realized the Chairman's theory before he could say it.
"The scientists who worked with Montgomery on the first ATOM-powered rifles warned us that the enhancement to our weapons could have side effects. The most likely would be shots simply disappearing into the ATOM chamber. However, the probability was estimated at less than one against the total number of stars in the observable universe, so it was disregarded."
"Lawrence is correct" added the Chairman. "Where this intersects with today is the point at which things become slightly unconventional. It is possible, though not supported by a body of evidence as of yet, that the same phenomenon utilized to make our guns the best on Pandora might also occur on a much larger scale. This would explain people appearing in nonsensical places with no recollection of how they arrived."
"But why now?" questioned Carson. "We've been firing ATOM-powered guns for hundreds of years!"
Arkansas Jakobs tapped a button on his terminal, and the head of a scientist now floated where Jackie Jakob's visage had graced the last meeting.
"This is a prepared testimony for the board of the Jakobs Corporation. It is not to be used by any…"
The Chairman fast-forwarded through the disclaimers, legal notices, and obligatory "do not try this at home" to get to the meaningful portion of the ECHO.
"…events. Such portals might occur on a bigger scale, say, on the order of teleporting a person, or even a vehicle. Our mathematical models, as well as those used by our forebears who worked with Montgomery Jakobs on the original recovered Eridian tech, suggested that such tears in space could happen but would require immense amounts of energy to generate. Far more than any power system is capable of, even today. Thus, these formulae were regarded as mere curiosities, until now."
A chart replaced the scientist's head, though his voice continued describing what the Board members saw. It showed a rapid escalation of energy requirements versus the size of the tear expressed in square meters.
"Obviously, there is no way any technology we possess could generate the required output to create such large rifts. However, what little data we have on the Trans-Galactic Republic suggests they are not only capable of creating this amount of energy, but do so regularly."
The image changed again, this time to show one of the hated "Curator" cruisers, a mainstay in the Trans-Galactic Republic's fleet. Small white dots appeared around the ship. No doubt they represented stars, even though space did not in fact look like this. Suddenly, the stars stretched out into lines before a blue "tube" formed around the crude representation of the enemy vessel. The colors of this "tube" shifted around from white to various shades of blue (almost to black) and back again, as if the ship were moving.
"Every time a Trans-Galactic Republic ship engages its faster-than-light drive, it expends enough energy to push itself into what is essentially another dimension. This is how no violation of the cosmic speed limit occurs—if it isn't in our universe, it doesn't count."
The image changed again, zooming out. The tube lengthened into a tunnel, connecting two points in space. The ship "appeared" at the end opposite from where it went in. The unseen scientist resumed narrating.
"We, and likely the Trans-Galactic Republic, were under the impression that such interspatial holes only occurred when and where we wanted them to—if a gun's trigger were pulled or a ship engaged its FTL drive. Our mathematical models, however, show that while space-time itself occasionally experiences such holes on its own (they're really small), repeated uses of technologies which disturb space may correlate with an increase in both the number and size of naturally-occurring superlight anomalies."
"So we've turned the universe into Swiss cheese, and now we're falling into the holes" said Carson.
"Shhh!" said another board member. In the semi-darkness, he couldn't tell who.
"…increasing occurrence of random 'teleportation events.' It is very likely that whatever encouraged the initial formation of larger spontaneous interspatial connections is still present, and these anomalies will only become bigger over time unless a method is found to reverse the effect our weapons and engines have had on the fabric of the universe."
Bill Arkansas Jakobs switched off the presentation.
"Long story short, we have something out of an ECHOvid on our hands. And in some small way, it looks like Jakobs was partially responsible for it."
"So what, do we shut down the company?" asked Dallas sarcastically. "I mean, okay, we contributed to a bit of a galactic mess like the people who wouldn't stop burning fossil fuels on Artemis."
"Yeah, yeah, save us your environmentalist bullshit" huffed Lawrence. "We're here to make a profit, and if the universe gets a little bloody nose because of it, who cares?"
"Lawrence, that is a rather ill-advised position" chastised Arkansas Jakobs. Mouths dropped open in shock. This was the man who said regulations only got in the way, that a company should have free reign to pursue profit however it saw fit (though he disdained slave labor), and that so long as gains exceeded (in)tangible losses, forge right on ahead.
"Torching a planet is one thing. There are plenty more for the moment. But if the scientists are right on this one, we'll all be falling into new galaxies whenever we go to the bathroom. Does anyone want that?"
As if on cue, a blue rift appeared in the middle of the boardroom.
For a split second, the assembled executives thought they saw the blue of some sky, before a red wing appeared through the rift, which sealed itself. The severed part-wing dropped onto the table.
On Pandora, Marcus cursed the fifth dead, chopped-up rakk to land on the ground outside his store near the Badass Arena.
[…]
The Amerigo hummed as a hive of activity. Aboard were tens of thousands of scientists, researchers, graduate students, and even a few very bright (also fortunate) undergrads. Plus the support staff necessary for such a massive multi-disciplinary scientific endeavor. Most of the vast warship's weapons had been stripped off—what was left constituted a token defense at best. Forty individual turbolasers, twenty five ion cannons and five warhead launchers on a ship that once had several times that many of each. Space saved turned into laboratories, larger crew quarters, and general storage. Due to the rather chaotic nature of some science work (alternate-dimension experiments, shield harmonics research, and dangerous animals among others) most shield power got shunted into maintaining the containment of close to hundred unique scientific areas.
Within the biology wing, both Katie Ballard and Kevin Filner spent more than eight hours a day on their respective projects. Filner managed to capture a four-meter wormhole thresher, which he later categorized as a sub-species dubbed "black hole thresher." Its gravity nodule emitted exponentially more energy than its smaller cousins, and its tough hide contained twice as many spikes per measured area. Counteracting its grav-field when it grew agitated consumed so much power lights would dim throughout several sections nearby. To compensate, power was drawn from top-side turbolasers, further compromising the ship's defensive armament.
For the first time, Filner managed to obtain readings from within the wormhole on the creature's back. Smaller threshers' wormholes generated too much interference. Like actual black holes, the physical effects near a small thresher's wormhole were far more damaging to instruments due to stretching than the same distance from a larger thresher (with its consummately bigger back-portal). Curiously, a pair of high-precision chronometers inserted into a thresher's portal usually came out showing different amounts of time had passed. Sometimes the difference would be a rounding error, other trials yielded variations of several hours. One outlier showed a jump of over a week, but it was disregarded due to the inability to repeat it over tens of thousands of trials, plus the calculated probability of such a result being so small in the first place.
Attempts to obtain visual records returned pitch-black video feeds. Either this was due to there being nothing to see, or the instruments simply malfunctioned. Though it was unscientific, Filner refused to believe what might be another dimension could be so ugly compared to the beauty (to him) of hyperspace and hyperspace seen with an eezo core active (now referred to among Trans-Galactic Republic engineers as the "zero core").
Strange radiation appeared to emanate from the threshers' wormholes, though not being a high-energy particle physicist, Dr. Filner did little more than catalogue the anomaly in his notes before moving on. It appeared the threshers used their unusual ability to feed, since the spikes on threshers observed in the wild were often coated with blood, fur, bone, and other food traces. Feeding threshers in captivity did stimulate their wormholes as one would expect when presenting the animal with food, however, since pellets need not be subdued, the animals would quickly cease to exert energy on maintaining their gravitational devices. Filner observed that hand-fed threshers began to exhibit smaller, weaker wormholes over time as they no longer needed to pull food to themselves.
As to why there existed such a diversity among threshers in general, from fire-spewing monstrosities to the tiny "tadpole" thresher, Filner hypothesized that vastly differing prey drove the evolution of distinct thresher species. The largest "Pyromania" threshers often consumed other threshers, even the notoriously-tough black hole thresher. They also presented a significant road hazard.
Rumors abounded of a titanic thresher near a bandit settlement, which was supposed to be home to a titan of a man who ate other bandits for his meals. Clearly, even on Pandora legends could get out of hand.
Katie Ballard spent a good portion of her days trying to figure out exactly what the crystals on the legs of a crystalisk were made from. It seemed to be some kind of combination of organic and inorganic compounds—explaining why crystalisks evolved to stomp the ground so thoroughly. It enabled them to pulverize various forms of rock, which were ingested along with plant matter and used to grow their leg adornments which gave rise to their (human) name.
Obtaining samples could be difficult or not, depending on whether the crystals had been given a chance to grow back. Much to the chagrin of Dahl, who slaughtered the animals for their crystals, it was not necessary to actually kill the creature. Like the claw/nail on some furrier animals, the crystal could be cut down to a certain point before causing the crystalisk pain. Given sufficient food and time, the crystals would regrow, different in shape than the last set but generally similar in size.
An angry crystalisk could both stomp its large feet or excrete semi-hardened crystal material from its back, which could be shot at its enemies. The volatile mixture within would cause the crystal-missile to detonate several seconds later.
While Katie had not yet observed crystalisks mating, she did observe that all crystalisks she'd catalogued exhibited the same sex characteristics. Though mono-gendered races weren't impossible (see: asari) she decided it was very unlikely that this was the case with crystalisks, as she couldn't find any means of non-sexual reproduction based on the samples she'd taken.
An expedition into an area called the "Caustic Caverns" brought back video evidence of an absolutely colossal crystalisk with blue legs instead of the usual yellow. She vowed to make a trip of her own to study the giant animal. Perhaps crystalisks exhibited some form of sexual dimorphism with regard to size.
Permitted to work in peace and quiet, Patricia Tannis began to make progress on the (literally) tons of Eridian artifacts recovered from Rakkman's cave. The Trans-Galactic Republic taking control (finally) of the Altar permitted more artifact hauls, but according to scanners the biggest stashes were deep down. Someone was going to have to dig, and neither Trans-Galactic Republic nor anyone else on Pandora seemed to want to do that. Besides, it wasn't like she didn't have enough to occupy her as-is.
"I do wish we had this fantastic technology rather than those ridiculous seismic scanners earlier" she huffed upon finding out that the Trans-Galactic Republic could basically determine the existence of relics at the drop of a hat, so to speak.
The M4P-D droids assigned to assist were very compliant, non-obtrusive and quick to pick up on new languages, within limits. She'd gotten a basic translation matrix built within a week of beginning work in her lab aboard Amerigo. The droids were currently stymied with more advanced Eridian as it seemed to not follow the existing pattern, but for the moment there existed a good body to translate, if only partially.
So far, she'd divined some simple instructions, mainly revolving around the care of various items she presumed to be of religious importance. Tannis also noticed a discrepancy in the size of the scripts—that which had already been at least partially cracked by herself/her droids was physically larger than the script whose meaning remained unknown. Not deterred, she scanned in several small-script tablets using a high-resolution three-dimensional imaging device, before submitting the outputted files to the Amerigo's computer core for analysis.
"I thought this was the future" she complained when told she'd have to wait in line along with thousands of others who needed time on the ship's badly-overloaded primary core. Being a former top-of-the-line warship (superseded by the Curators), the control computer was designed for (shockingly) military tasks which relied on real-time response speed above all else. Scientists tended to load huge datasets into memory, then run massively parallel processing on those datasets, not exactly this computer's strength.
When the science crews complained about the bottleneck caused by the ancient TekShot 450-A CissionTrak (which also irritated those who disliked "c" being left out of words to "sound cool"), they were told that they should not gripe—after all, this Star Destroyer was headed to the scrapper before the Admiralty decided to refit her (at military expense) for science duty as part of an emphasis on exploration over matters of aggression. The Trans-Galactic Republic hadn't seen a full-scale war in centuries, so downsizing the military became the name of the game, until unspecified events hidden from the public eye triggered the construction of the behemoth Revenant Star Dreadnaughts, a ship-scale not previously seen in the Trans-Galactic Republic's time.
Tannis rapidly found herself entering into yet other domains she did not become an instant expert in. Checking out several tomes' worth of programming resources from the digital library ("At least this isn't offensively primitive"), she grew frustrated with her inability to master the allegedly-simple "Hello, galaxy!" program. The fact that it was designed to be many-threaded, three-dimensional with a full GUI, and haptically-interactive probably didn't help.
Ultimately, she handed her work off to computer programmers in the Applied Technology wing. Analysis of her scanned relics would have to wait.
[…]
Mallory and Malcolm Maliwan bid Torgue goodbye after signing an extensive cross-licensing and asset protection agreement between their respective companies. A first collaboration, called the High Impact Special Salvo by Maliwan and "F-CKING ACID EXPLOSIONS" by Torgue, would be ready for market within a calendar year of the pacts being created.
Without Moxxi or Vault Hunters, the Badass Arena of Badassitude began to drain Torgue financially. He insisted on continuing to fund it despite consuming over 5% of his company's revenue in doing so. Still, compared to Jakobs, Hyperion, and Vladof, the relatively flat numbers posted by Torgue seemed positively glorious. The war had drained the JVLN group's coffers, Hyperion especially. None of them could seem to get rid of their excess war materiel at anything more than fire-sale prices, even for brand-new ships that never saw combat. That the Cosmic Cleansing Sphere wiped out the Harvester forces not killed by Xytler's fleet before they could really do damage to populated areas further diminished attempts to sell advanced warships to a galaxy that hadn't see a major non-corporate conflict in decades.
Jakobs, with its Eridian ace-in-the-hole, made no public comment about the apparent collapse of its market. Vladof remained cryptic as always, issuing occasional press releases about being held down by "capitalist pigs" who would be swept aside in the "glorious people's uprising." It was hard to fund a "revolution"(ary marketing campaign) when the banks stopped taking your calls, though.
To offset his increasing lack of entertainment, Torgue Flexington branched out into starship design. Most current Torgue vessels were either clones of competing products licensed by the company or outsourced designs original to Torgue's brand, but not designed by Torgue himself like many of the company's guns were. After a few dangerously-failed experiments, the board gently steered their explosive founder back to designing guns, as his attempts to create a vessel propelled by dropping nuclear bombs out its rear end didn't sit well with focus groups (or anyone not wanting radiation poisoning). The whole promethium lining thing was annoyance enough in that area.
[…]
Arriving at the planned coordinates, Bart Jakobs wished dearly to use the New-U as his face felt as though he'd taken an acidic Maliwan between the eyes. However, his bitch of a some-relation-he-couldn't-think-of had locked everyone out, then disappeared, so no quick fixes just yet.
A ship appeared just off the port side of the massive MODDER. He wasn't sure whether it was actually stealth or if he'd just been mentally deceived—these women had strange, frightening powers…
Minutes later, one of these woman stepped aboard the mobile shipyard.
"I see you have finally made good on your promise."
Zera.
"Yes. Can you please do something about my face?"
"Scars are hot" she said, sounding almost aroused. "So no, I won't do a thing about it."
"I, however, will."
What was it with these women and being dramatic?
"You brought me a shipyard with a bulb out? Shame!" The new woman tut-tutted as if speaking to a child as she stepped into view.
"It is time to toss aside the façade you faced before. The Lady you saw in your communicator was an illusion—it is I you were speaking with."
Bart couldn't find words. On one hand, the woman was Amazonian in stature—over two meters. Her hair and eyes were not natural colors, being purple/blue and turquoise, respectively. On the other, despite her size, she…
"You find me attractive. Unsurprising. You also think I am not as attractive as the black-haired woman named Jackie whose location you do not know. That she is some kind of family member does not stop your desire to experience her in ways that I do not understand."
The new woman wrinkled her nose. "I am grateful our dealings relate strictly to business."
"How…"
"She does that" commented Zera. "Get used to it."
"You have brought me the largest digistruction yard with a single interior bay and you will be well-compensated for it once order has been restored to this plane. I will…what? I meant monetary compensation. Your thoughts confuse me."
"We cannot bring this shipyard, as impressive as it is supposed to be, to where we need it. We will thus have to build parts here and bring them in piecemeal."
Another woman who Bart did not recognize connected a data drive through six adapters before it would interface with the shipyard. "Damned computers" she muttered. The shipyard fired up and began producing a part Bart hadn't ever seen before.
"My lady, it may take several attempts before we can be sure that the parts produced by this 'digistruction' process match what we need to rebuild Revenant" said the third woman.
"This is Drythlyn" indicated the purple-haired Amazon. "You may continue calling me The Lady as you have previously."
"Nope!" she chided. "You may not call me that!"
Whatever Bart planned on calling her, if only to himself, remained unknown to the others, though they snickered imagining what he might have been thinking.
In the meantime, the digistruction system had completed approximately 33% of the part requested. It made a sound similar to a very low-pitched document duplication machine. The one called Drythlyn unpacked some kind of emitter from cases she'd brought.
"These will measure the part to determine how precisely it meets our requirements" she explained. "It appears highly complex parts combined with the adapter system and a very much non-native file format are slowing down your fancy printer."
Bart was curious about Drythlyn—she didn't carry herself the same way as the other haughty strangely-empowered women he'd met (or flat-out God-among-mortals attitude of The Lady). She seemed far more normal.
As if she'd read his mind (she hadn't), Drythlyn turned to him. "I was a computer tech before The Lady began training me. I did software development and project management."
"So this all comes naturally to you?"
"Some of it" responded the black-robed woman. "These converters—I have no idea where The Lady got them. But the file format—I reverse-engineered it enough to make this work. At least in theory."
"All this won't matter if we can't get the parts in" piped up The Lady. She was not going to tell this inbred moron her real name—she'd had enough of it from her fellow Current-Channelers for being a Sarah among Mayas and Liliths. "That's why we need what the Jakobs family knows. And the one to get us that information is the one who is apparently missing, according to your own thoughts."
Her tone had shifted, and Bart was very confused. She'd gone from formal and clipped to colloquial and casual with no warning. He figured his best bet was to roll with it. As long as no one burned his face, he'd play along.
"I promised I'd remove the marks Zera so discourteously left on you."
He hadn't quite grasped how tall the purple-haired woman was until she stood in front of him. Bart was hardly a short man, yet his head barely met her breasts. Running her long fingers over the scars left by a lightstaff, the cruel branding disappeared under her touch. "Do try to be a little nicer to our helpers, will you Zera?" She spoke as if scolding a child for being mean to a shop worker.
The Lady Finger found her own brain doing the same gymnastics to understand her superior's change in attitude and tone as Bart Jakobs had. She had been so cold, distant, and even cruel over the comm-link. In person, she could be reserved, but would occasionally show a sense of humor. It made no sense. Aside from her brutal treatment of Selina, though, she hadn't done anything remotely similar to her attitude over the comm since her arrival.
The gargantuan woman clapped her hands. "Now. We just need to figure out where Jackie Jakobs is. She'll have the key to unlocking a method to get these parts to the Siren Serenade."
"My lady, you insisted that using trans-dimensional travel was destroying the universe. You even used that exact phrase!" cried Zera. "You told us we had to destroy everyone who was destroying the universe!"
"Do as I say, not as I do, because what I'm suggesting is better for you" sang Sarah.
What the hell has my life become? Surrounded by women who could flip me over with a thought who sing nursery rhymes, stealing family property…
"Yes, my lady" responded Zera hesitantly. "What of the Jakobs heir?"
"We do not know where she is" replied Drythlyn Narb. "Our illustrious leader does not know either, which is unusual." No sarcasm entered her voice while describing her boss. "We must consider alternate methods."
"Well, the last place anyone saw Jackie was Pandora…" offered Bart hesitantly.
"We cannot just go storming in there" replied Zera. "We have no idea what we're up against."
"Oh!" squeaked Drythlyn. "This is new!"
"I have…learned…the art of vision from The Lady" replied Zera with a note of pride. "My former self was a hot-headed, aggressive fighter who didn't know the meaning of finesse. Why beat your enemy with a club when you can hit him with a sniper rifle from two kilometers away if you only find someone who has one and beat it out of them? Patience pays off!"
Indeed, through a combination of stretching, breathing control, and mental discipline, Sarah had considerably sharpened the skills of her overly-aggressive operatives since her arrival. Though some might mock activities similar to yoga or Zumba (the Sirens, of course, had their own) they greatly enhanced an already impressive force by improving concentration during times of mental stress. Now, instead of snapping their tempers at their enemies, the Lady Fingers were leaning how to (mostly metaphorically) kill with the tap of one finger rather than the swing of a sledgehammer.
"We shall try diplomacy" asserted Sarah. "There is no harm in asking politely. After all, why make saving the universe harder than it needs to be?"
[…]
Jack was in an incredibly bad mood. Not even a quick session with Lilith could restore his confidence. Maybe if he hadn't pumped her full of Eridium she might have been more…enthusiastic. But she might have also escaped. Maya had just vanished. No matter how many people he whipped, shot, beat, tortured, or threw to the Warrior, he couldn't get anyone to tell him where she'd gone. He'd paced over the spot she'd last been seen for hours, hoping that whatever took her away might take him too. Nothing happened.
Sitting on a massively over-wrought chair made of smaller chairs ("Heroes deserve to sit in comfort" he insisted), he contemplated his next move. Everything had gone his way—the Vault Hunters unlocked the means to his nearly infinite wealth while failing to achieve any of their own objectives, the Warrior responded to him alone, and he had as many attractive women as he wanted. And lots of rakkahol.
As he stumbled under the influence of said rakkahol down into the cellar where he kept, surprise, more rakkahol, he tripped. In what seemed like slow motion, he fell face-first down a long flight of stairs. Except he landed with a hard thud on a metal surface.
"OW OW OW!"
Yelling in pain from plastering himself on a dark metal roof exposed to sunlight at noon, he hopped around like a madman.
"Anyone who saw this, I'll scoop your eyes out with a spoon if you dare mention it to anyone!"
Gravity took over. The roof sloped, so Jack landed on his rear end, sliding down, down, down until his feet hit a gutter.
"My shoes! Fuck!"
It had just rained, and his expensive footwear went straight into the accumulated water. Someone forgot to clean out their drainage pipes!
"Dude, the hell is that shiz?" came a high-pitched, shrill voice. "Me be tryin' to go for a walk out here!"
Pulling out a pair of "binoculars" she'd made from two mismatched sniper rifle scopes, Tina looked for the source of the noise.
"Okay, who put the Jack-bot on top of the Siren Sparring Center? Uncool, man, uncool!"
She spoke the code-phrase that would freeze the robot and permit whoever spoke it to issue direct orders.
"Grade-A Douchenizzle detected!"
"You watch your language!" yelled Jack. "Also, you're dead! I had you roasted on a spit and fed to the giant skag at Lynchwood while my girlfriend and I watched!"
"Dunno what planet you're on, moron. That place is a crater. Lilith was bored."
Jack kicked the gutter in frustration. From his position, he was only able to use the back of his foot, resulting in more damage to him than the architecture.
"GOD DAMNIT!"
"Laaaaaaaaaaanguage!" mocked Tina from below.
The commotion attracted attention. Maya, Lilith, Persephone, and Hera appeared from inside where they'd been training.
"It's hard to keep getting better at killing things when someone's making a ruckus on the roof" shouted Lilith. "Tina, I know you like the toy Gaige built for you, but could you please not put it up there?"
"I'm not a toy!" bellowed Jack. "I am Handsome Jack, President of Hyperion, Hero of the Wasteland, and Holder of the Warrior Helm!"
It took a few seconds, after which the Sirens burst out laughing.
"Nice shoes" snarked Maya. "Heroes should dress better." Water dripped off Jack's now-soaked shoes.
The man tried to kick his shoe in the Sirens' direction, only for Maya to catch it in the blue bubble of a phaselock. "Thanks! I wonder how much Marcus will give me for it since it's covered in gold leaf?"
"I could kick farther" remarked Hera. "Phasekick!" She slid along a diagonal purple path leading from her standing position to Jack seemingly conjured out of thin air at extreme speed, landing a huge foot-based attack directly onto Jack's groin.
"Get down" sighed Persephone, as if scolding a child. "Phasestrike!"
A rain of what looked like Eridium arrows fell out of the sky, making high-pitched yet ominous whistling noises as they did so. Trying to avoid being turned into a pincushion, Jack jumped. Maya grinned as she let him fall right past (no phaselock-save) and land hard on his feet.
CRUNCH.
"YEEEEEEOW!"
"Awww" simpered Lilith. "Has de big nasdy diktatoo broken 'is legs? Poor baby!"
Turning to Lilith, he practically screamed at her. "Blow me, bitch!"
"I don't think I could—unless Maya's phaselock found it for me" she replied. "Besides, small parts pose choking hazards."
A loud series of crashing noises announced the arrival of the Angelic Avenger and its pilot. With a power more suited to controlling computers, Angel participated in battle by guiding a huge mechanical assault mech and coordinating the other Sirens in any maneuvers.
"Guess what?" boomed an amplified voice from the top of the massive walker. "You're still an asshole!"
[…]
Haunting screams echoed through the third surgical suite at Huerta Memorial's Advanced Treatments Wing. The nurses and surgeons had taken to ignoring it—the situation was operate or die. This second Samantha Shepard's body had begun excising her implants. Except, of course, the ones buried deep inside that let her system shrug off the anesthetic, and painkillers… MD-4 Microsurgery droids borrowed from the Trans-Galactic Republic assisted in removing hair-thin muscle boosters, nanofiber skin weaves, and other updates to the doubled Spectre's biological systems.
A specialized bacta-bath kept the patient semi-immersed while permitting surgery. Of course, operating on someone while fluid sloshed around didn't make the surgeons happy, but the team took the challenge in stride. Mounting biohazardous waste trundled out on carts to be incinerated.
On the other side of the glass, the normally-unshakeable Commander Shepard vomited into a nearby trash can.
She grabbed Mordin.
"Does this look right to you?" she demanded. "There is a woman in there screaming in pain, because they're tearing her apart. They've already botched the treatment by dunking her in that tank, and they just keep going." She shook him with every word.
"Never seen this level of anger or intensity from you, Shepard. Why now?"
"I already told you I don't want to be brought back again if it comes to that" she replied in an unusually punctuated tone. "And if no one can save her without subjecting her to more agony, is it really worth her suffering?"
"Unusual. Extraordinary medicine saved your life. Yet you do not want others to undergo similar treatment."
"What I don't want" hissed Shepard through gritted teeth, "is unnecessary pain. If you all stopped to bother to listen to her, you'd have realized she doesn't want any of this."
Mordin responded with logic that seemed typical for salarians given the genophage: "Consequences likely to be dire. Her plane of existence doomed. Without Shepard, Collectors keep attacking. Reapers arrive, destroy galaxy. No indication Trans-Galactic Republic would step in, or even exists. Life in that continuity condemned."
"How do you know that?" Samantha Shepard took on a dangerous tone. "You have no idea what's going on where she's from—none of us do! What I do know is in there, a patient is being treated against her will. What part of medical ethics permits forcibly medicating or treating a lucid person?"
"One life, or many? Needs of many outweigh needs of few."
"You keep saying that" shot back the Spectre. "There's no proof that she's essential to…wherever she's from! For all we know, Kaidan could end up stopping the Reapers! Or there might be no Reapers over there! How do we even get her back to where she came from?"
The pair took notice of a cession of bustling around the surgical table. Two surgeons stood off to the side, apparently deep in discussion. Both employed large gestures, and by the movements of their mouths, were likely shouting. Unsure of whom to obey, the MD-4s ceased their operations. Nurses and assistants stood with their hands dangling uselessly.
"I don't care what they're talking about. I'm ending this!"
[ Spectre status recognized ]
The door opened, and Sam stormed in. The arguing surgeons turned to her. "Wait, you're not even sterilized…"
"…very delicate operation…"
"…won't make it if…"
"So. I. noticed." Each word came out slowly, but with the weight of a dreadnaught behind it.
Without another word, she pushed through the slackjawed OR team.
"Please… Just let me die…" The woman on the operating table could barely speak.
"No one is going to force you to go through more of this surgery now that I'm here" replied Sam. "Your wishes will be honored if I have to shoot up this whole facility to make sure of it." She made sure to emphasize the last part. Several nurses shifted uncomfortably.
"Kaidan…where is he?"
At the moment, Kaidan remained cooped up in a briefing room with Admiral Hackett and Maya, where she'd left them upon hearing that there was some controversy about her…duplicate? Copy? Extra-dimensional version?
She turned to the surgeons, radiating a fury that were it heat would have melted the entire room.
"You keep her alive until I return with Kaidan. But if you do anything else…" She left the threat hanging.
Upon reaching the briefing room, she grabbed the surprised biotic by his arm. "Shepard needs you. Now. Come with me."
"What's going on? What happened? Will she make it?"
"You'll find out when you get there" replied the other Shepard tersely.
Upon seeing medical personnel standing around doing nothing, Kaidan burst out angrily. "Why aren't you operating? You're supposed to save her!"
"Kaidan…"
"Sam, what happened? What have they done to you?" The normally stoic major's voice began to crack.
It was easy to see why. The rejection of cybernetic implants required their removal. Left leg below the knee—gone! Right leg at the hip—also gone. Both arms looked like deflated, limp noodles since all artificial muscle fibers had been pulled out. Her stomach looked caved-in, as if she'd been sat upon. One hand worked, the other was flayed open to the wrist in order to facilitate removal of several high-tech implants.
Her eyes rolled back into her skull—the pain ceased to be a feeling. Instead, it became her entire being, consuming her, encompassing her, and blocking out everything else. She couldn't vocalize her feelings anymore, as they were too intense.
Kaidan took the one good hand of his shattered superior.
Noting this, the other Shepard muttered "Uhh, I should probably go…"
The original Samantha Shepard excused herself. The rest of the medical staff awkwardly followed, after which the suite door shut. On the way out, one of the surgeons opaqued the glass that let people in the observation room see into the surgical suites.
As the entry closed, Sam noticed its indicator go red. Kaidan had locked himself in.
"This is definitely not proto—"
The speaker found himself shoved up against the wall.
"If you even think about bothering them, I will personally ensure you will never work on the Citadel again. Am I clear?" Sam glared at him.
"Yes ma'am."
Sam Shepard stood in front of the operating room door, giving dagger eyes to anyone who made the slightest indication of moving toward the suite. She didn't know how long she stood at the door, a sentinel for those whose grieving had only begun. By the time the door hissed open behind her, the medical personnel had left, and most of the lights in the observation room auto-dimmed to save energy.
"Her suffering is over" whispered Kaidan. "Her mission went sideways, she lost so many… I'm not religious like Ashley was, but I hope she's reunited with them in Elysium."
"Well, it'd be a damned better place than where she was now" replied Shepard.
"Uhh… This is awkward…" Kaidan looked down.
"What?" asked Sam. "What's awkward?"
"Well, we'd kind of been together—her and me. I know you're not her, but I'd still rather have you as my commanding officer than anyone else."
"Well, as long as your service under me is strictly protocol, I think I can find you a spot. Got a big fancy new ship too!" Internally, she cringed. Too soon.
To her surprise, he smiled. "If anyone else made a joke like that right now, they'd probably be flying through a window. Coming from you, it's actually pretty funny. When do I report for duty?"
Sam put an arm around the distraught Major. "Kaidan, you take as long as you need to get back on your feet. If you need to talk, I'm here—or you can see what the Spectre medical office can offer. Either way, you are not to report to a duty station until you are ready. That's an order."
"Understood. Well, see you later."
Damnit. What am I, a galactic issues magnet?
Mordin hadn't left either.
"Do I want to know what it would have taken to keep her alive?"
"Given earlier outburst, informing you of necessary procedures" (inhale) "unwise."
"Thought so."
She stalked out, leaving Mordin to his thoughts.
[...]
A successful and damaging attack against a facility CRITICAL thought completely secret caused the alliance to launch a full and complete investigation. The destroyed vessels matched no known configuration, but carried weapons generally found in Trans-Galactic Republic arsenals. Some extranet conspiracy theorists cried false flag—the Trans-Galactic Republic didn't bother trying to argue with them. People like that never accepted themselves as wrong, it was simply another "layer of conspiracy" keeping "the truth" from being known. Mostly ignored, the "Trans-Galactic Republic did it" faction gained no traction politically.
That a single ship carried modified Javelin torpedoes wrought more confusion than anything else. Combined with its very Reaper-like weapon, analysts concluded it must have been constructed by someone with knowledge of both the Reaper War and Trans-Galactic Republic technology. While that seemed a rather obvious statement to make, those with deep access to both sets of tech were few and far between. Unfortunately, absolutely every accused had airtight alibis and no known affiliation with the attackers. To top it off, recovered IFFs didn't resolve to any known faction, so even if anyone had been involved with them, it remained unclear who "they" were.
Said individuals were well aware that in a straight fight, they'd all be dead within an hour. In that hour, scores of enemies would fall, but in the end the Lady Fingers and their leader would be so many corpses on a deck. Without them, the inhabitants of this universe would continue their destructive behaviors, eventually leading to at a minimum inter-spatial calamities, and possibly open war with other planes.
"When the Forebears created me" lectured Sarah the Siren, "they charged me with cleaning up their mess and stopping anyone else from making their mistakes if other measures failed. Apparently, absolutely everything failed."
"Thanks for the pressure" replied Zera. "With Selina dead, there are only five of us against hundreds of trillions of sapients (if not more) armed with a huge starship and more capital ships than any fleet I've ever seen."
"I wish I didn't have to do that" replied Sarah, showing some regret over the death of her soldier for the first time. "She was an annoyance. And more than likely would have hindered the mission."
"When the mission is preventing people from tearing the universe into pieces, I suppose almost anything goes" murmured Urthula.
"Precisely. The ends justify the means. I have zero compunctions about using this logic" replied Sarah. "When the scales are multi-galactic, the rule book goes out the airlock."
"And yet, we are still told to keep destruction to a minimum, not harm those who might not be attacking us but make our tasks difficult, and avoid creating spectacles? You'll have to excuse my confusion here" questioned Zera.
"Yes, but no. The state of decay between universes is far more advanced than I believed" said Sarah. "Monitoring the galactic communications networks has revealed an increasing number of people, things, and animals disappearing, then showing up somewhere else."
"What of the duplication rumors?" asked Drythlyn. "Several notable individuals are alleged to have seen copies of themselves appear from nothing."
"You speak of the Normandy SR-2 and its Commander Samantha Shepard. I am aware through intelligence sources that such a person and ship exist, but presently have no knowledge of their status."
"Our spies on Pandora, some operating as triple agents within the Jakobs Corporation, have discovered that the company is indeed the source of space-distorting weapons. We ought to start by shutting them down" added Zera enthusiastically.
"You realize neither Buck Rogers Jakobs nor Bill Arkansas Jakobs can exert enough leverage to accomplish that" replied Sarah sternly. "They have been valuable resources, but their usefulness is coming to an end. In open war, Jakobs would be a speed bump compared to the Trans-Galactic Republic."
Hammering her fist into her hand, she continued "Which is why the Siren Serenade will sing them all their death songs. That requires it to be operational, by the way."
"I'm doing everything I can" snapped Bart. He turned as if yanked.
"Wait a minute… You ladies have moles in the Jakobs Corporation?"
"I might not have mentioned that little detail" replied Sarah airily. "Bill has been under our control for years. He avoided any actions that might have brought undue attention to Jakobs' Forebear-induced advantage."
"Yet, in no way did we work to rid the galaxy of Jakobs in general" commented Drythlyn. "If the company manufactures guns which promote the very thing we seek to prevent, why did we use it, instead of someone else who could then assist in ending Jakobs as a company?"
Sarah looked at her fellow warriors as if expecting them to answer the question.
"Do none of you realize what we've accomplished by keeping Jakobs somewhat within our sphere of influence?"
"Wait…" mused Venera. "Jakobs hasn't changed their core weapon designs since we got Bill Arkansas in our pocket…"
"Win-ner!" sang Sarah. "There were many who wanted to try exploring Forebear tech again after the disasters of a century ago. Our hand on little Billy here discouraged that development, buying us time."
"But not enough" interjected Zera. "And with the Trans-Galactic Republic's new FTL drives, things are worse than ever!"
"Someone should have blown up every faster-than-light drive in existence" groused Sarah. "Why create this complicated mess of checks-and-balances that ultimately ends up being no check and no balance?"
"My lady" cautioned Drythlyn, "is this not what the Forebears sought to prevent? Mainly…"
"I know" sighed Sarah. "But direct intervention from beyond the Veil would make things even worse, if you can believe it. I just…I just hate what I'm required to do because the intended paths were not followed. The Forebears had great faith in the Unbalancing, the Corruption, the Purge, the Scouring, a series of massive conflicts meant to cause the denizens of these galaxies to wipe themselves out, the Ancient Machines, Pandora's buried bio-weapons… None of them worked very well. Now I take extreme measures to serve the purpose I was created for."
"Push hard enough, and some will push back" hummed Urthula.
"Or use things for entirely unexpected purposes" replied the purple-haired Amazon. "For example, if a man is taught to use fire for cooking food, he benefits. No one else is harmed. But if the man discovers that the same thing which enables him to fill his stomach also allows him to deprive his neighbor of his home by burning it down to settle a quarrel, fire becomes harmful."
Venera chuckled. "Ironic, isn't it. The very first of the Forebear powers meant to prevent the situation we are in from occurring will be used to try to correct that situation."
"Indeed" said Sarah. "We must use all aspects of the Current, no matter how much they might tempt us into evil."
"Let's hope we're more competent than the morons who were supposed to channel the nastier aspects of Current powers" laughed Zera. "They became so obsessed with themselves and their power that they failed to do as they were supposed to—the galaxy in which the Trans-Galactic Republic originated both grew and built even more dangerous means of propulsion. These means were often used by the very individuals who were supposed to destroy society, forcing it to rebuild and letting the fabric of space heal."
"There is a reason that 'to sith' means to fuck up" added Urthula. Despite her trance concealing the presence of both modifications to Revenant and the Current signatures within, she sometimes dropped in to conversations. Glares from the others made her regret her statement—the word had few synonyms and even without calling someone one, per se, it was considered extremely foul.
The remaining women began laughing upon discussing the "Purge," engineered bio-weapons meant to wipe out not only galaxies obsessed with the hazardous faster-than-light technology called the hyperdrive, but also to "reset" the Current by eliminating all Channelers of it. Given a fanatic devotion to all things organic and hilariously twisted notions of "gods," the children of a test tube in a Forebear lab believed themselves to be the "chosen" race. This race grew to hate all technology, not just the hyperdrive. Driven into a lust for war by devotion to a god whose name sounded like some kind of random noise made by a child, they went on a rampage.
"But seriously" breathed Zera through fits of laughter, "even if those foolish walking rejected science experiments had done their job, then what?"
"We'd all be a lot uglier" replied Sarah in her deadly, no-nonsense voice she often used in a completely inappropriate context (which as usual failed to conceal a grin).
"At least each attempt was tuned to its target" said Venera. "The Ancient Machines were doing a fair good job of controlling the damage from the abominable 'element zero.' I almost would have wanted to see the results of firing off that 'Crucible' device whose design has been passed through cycles—though the latest one ignored its existence."
"Sick, but train-wreck-eye-glue!" replied Drythlyn. "It would have blown the mass relays, stranding ships in the systems they docked at when the Crucible fired. Mass starvation as society grinds to a halt. Inability to ship resources where they need to go due to limitations in the otherwise-safe faster-than-light drives used where relays did not permit direct travel would result in economic collapse."
"Still, the goal would have been achieved." Zera's tone seemed entirely too chipper for discussing how a society using the device would have doomed itself to a slow, painful death.
"Why the Current-Bomb, though?" wondered Venera.
"The Forebears didn't always leave an instruction manual" sighed Sarah. "Or a list of motivations. They just did stuff sometimes, at least that's what the memories I was given say. Well, those I can remember, anyway. They did subtly kick off several inter-galactic wars from beyond the Veil though, which killed quadrillions of sapient beings."
"Who they underestimated" added Urthula. "It is as if resilience is hardcoded into genetic material, especially in the case of baseline humans."
"Not only that, but their ingenuity. We're warriors, not engineers, but I'll eat my hair if anyone expected the apes to combine Element Zero drives and hyperdrives" replied Sarah. Much to her annoyance Zera plucked a hair from her head and, unsurprisingly, ate it.
"Snozzberries" she commented, before returning to a more serious topic. "These combo-drives are what seems to have accelerated the process!" cried Zera. "Hyperdrives alone were bad, Eezo alone was worse—mix the two together and you're going to have interspatial breaches all over the place!"
"Yep." Sarah nodded.
"We should accelerate their destruction" giggled Venera. "Even if this whole universe implodes, I'm totally fine with being the last five standing."
[…]
"Freedom One to Pandora Control, reporting an 0-4-8. Repeat, 0-4-8."
The blastboat zipped over a massive structure jutting out of the Pandoran desert. It looked like some kind of energy projection device—not a weapon, its barrel had the wrong shape and was pointed down, not up. Too many exposed circuits, unless someone built a doomsday beam cannon on a backwater planet with boxes of scraps and the Trans-Galactic Republic failed to notice. Which, Freedom One thought, was a possibility. The Trans-Galactic Republic stood as a monument to what humans and institutions could achieve, but it also reminded everyone what the limits of both were. The Trans-Galactic Republic spanned ten galaxies, and as such was a clumsy, clunky instrument at best. Turning a Star Destroyer with the wing of a moon moth would be easier than trying to handle tax policy, military deployments, constant brushfires, bickering, egos, corruption, often very-organized crime, and pollution all at once. Times ten.
They don't pay you for that, One. Stick to your paygrade he chastised himself.
"Describe the 0-4-8, Freedom One" crackled the voice of Pandora Control.
Would it be too much to ask for communicators that don't sound like primitive radios?
"Uhh, I'll just upload some shots to y—HOLY SHIT!"
"Explain, Freedom One."
"My sensors indicate the 0-4-8 has a cloaking device. Its serial number and authentication are Trans-Galactic Republic."
"You are to disable the 0-4-8 with ion cannons and await further instructions, Freedom One."
TSEEER! TSEEER! TSEEER!
Ion fire raked blue lightning across the imposing structure. It apparently wasn't powered, since no reactions (i.e. sparks, popping, minor explosions) occurred.
"Pandora Control to Sacrifice of Angels: Deploy ground team to secure reported 0-4-8 at the transmitted coordinates."
Once a detachment arrived from Sacrifice, Freedom One found himself recalled and subjected to a debriefing by the Republic Intelligence Service. He received strict orders to never discuss his findings with anyone, followed by an ominous warning that should he break the taboo, his life would become very unpleasant.
"What the hell is this thing?" wondered a marine sergeant upon arriving to escort the device to a cargo lifter. "Looks like someone took a kid's science project and made it a lot bigger."
A massive cylinder pointed down at the ground underneath. Supported by six angled "legs," the 0-4-8 had wires snaking down each one, after which a large, thick "tube" connected the whole assembly with a quartet of drive motors: one on each corner. The drive motors were quad-tracks meant to disperse the weight of the massive structure so it would not sink into soft ground. Unfortunately for whoever was attempting to move the device, that is precisely what happened in the sands of a Pandoran desert. The front-left corner sank down, which caused the whole thing to skew. Instead of pointing straight, the cylinder took on an angled appearance.
Rectangular power units front and back drove the vehicle when not trapped in sand. On top of the back power unit: a Trans-Galactic Republic cloaking device stolen from a Vorknkx intelligence ship. Since no one actually admitted the Trans-Galactic Republic still had cloaking devices, it followed no member of the shore party recognized it. They assumed it was part of the 0-4-8, being covered in sloppy wiring and its TGR emblem scratched off/painted over.
"Looks like a large directed energy projector to me" remarked one of the scientists. "Probably meant for industrial use—there are a lot of valuable minerals here on Pandora."
I have no idea why the Trans-Galactic Republic or Pandora Command would be interested in this piece of junk.
"Tractor on!" yelled the transport foreman. Invisible forcefields from the load-lifter grabbed onto the strange object, re-orienting it and pulling it free of the sand trap it had gotten stuck in. Sixteen repulsor sleds pushed underneath let machinery finagle the 0-4-8 onto a lifting pallet attached to a cargo transporter.
"Let's get this thing outta here!"
Why the hell are we moving a rusted-out piece of crap? Whatever, I still get paid…
[…]
Samantha Shepard still felt a burning anger over what she'd seen her counterpart go through at the hands of the Huerta Memorial Advanced Treatments staff. She didn't know who'd ordered such cruel, inhumane "treatment," but she strongly suspected should she find out, those responsible would have mysterious problems. With breathing. That she definitely positively knew absolutely nothing about.
To take her mind off "stuff," she journeyed to Tuchanka. The fallout from the genophage cure started a fire she thought might not be possible to put out. Combined with the ascension of Trans-Galactic Republic Admiral Adam Grayson to Human Councilor, it started to look like someone was pulling huge backroom deals. Which, in fairness, they were—First Flight was the big backroom deal to end all backroom deals. No shadowy fingerprints showed on the geth-quarian ceasefire yet (thank god). Unfair as it was, this likely stemmed from the galaxy's negative attitude toward the quarians—so their issues (and resolutions to them) were deemed unimportant by comparison.
Upon arriving, she noticed the Council Demilitarization Enforcement Mission seemed to have disappeared, replaced by even more heavily armed Trans-Galactic Republic battlestations, Star Destroyers, and assorted other craft. When she tried to ask why, she got rebuffed, even after asserting Spectre authority.
Hmm… I thought "Spectre" was the universal term for "tell me what I want to know or I'll cut your balls off and sell them to a krogan." Apparently not with these Trans-Galactic Republic pooh-bahs.
At Wrex's citadel, she found the krogan leader looking wearier than usual, along with being guarded by Trans-Galactic Republic turbolaser towers that looked newly-installed. Shepard would have attributed his tired posture to his great age of closer to a thousand than five hundred years, until he said otherwise. While krogan had no biological issues living over ten centuries, few often did due to their violent nature. Since Wrex mostly subverted this by controlling his violence on top of being much more forethoughtful than the average krogan, his lengthy survival wasn't actually all that surprising.
"Shepard."
"Wrex."
"Remember when I said I'm glad the Trans-Galactic Republic didn't have to bomb Tuchanka?"
Sam's head dropped and she let out an audible sigh.
"Do I want to know?"
"There were giant explosions!" replied the krogan, enthusiastic as ever about things blowing up. "There are a lot of unmapped underground caverns on this planet—our ancestors built them after they turned this place into a nuclear wasteland. Turns out some of the clan chiefs who went along weren't exactly being honest with me."
"Let me guess: sneak attack."
"Bastards" he snorted. "Thinking they could fight the entirety of Clan Urdnot, Clan Jorgal, Clan Forsan, and Clan Raik all at once? Idiots."
"But they still surprised you." She couldn't keep a small smile off her face. Someone catching Wrex with his back turned had to be very crafty indeed—but also would have an extremely short life expectancy afterward.
"Traitors in Clan Ravanor—they run a mining operation on Tuchanka—tried to tunnel under this command center, along with some pyjacks they'd convinced to follow their plan" he growled. "That's why there is a big ditch to the west."
Shepard, having arrived from the north, had not seen it.
"I figured some shock and awe would get their attention. When dealing with krogan who don't think like me…"
That have their heads up their asses, or cloacas, or whatever thought Sam.
"…your best bet is to hit them with everything you've got. Since part of all this…Forward Unto Ascension…(he almost spit the phrase, despite coming up with it) project was to clean up the planet, I wasn't about to use our considerable numbers of fusion weapons to blow these guys away."
"Plus, fusion weapons don't work well if someone's hiding underground" added Shepard.
"Right. But you should see the Trans-Galactic Republic and their turbolasers. Drilled straight into the crust like it was nothing! As much as I think the name 'Promenade Sunrise' sounds more like a name for a pet varren than a starship, Jason Braxton told me these battleships could liquefy the surface of a planet to a depth of over two kilometers!"
"So despite being sneaky, they didn't really stand a chance."
"Nope" laughed the Urdnot clan chief. "Their unmarked graves are probably still warm from all the energy those ships put into wiping them out."
"Also, having people digging around a bomb isn't exactly a good idea either" she added, somewhat hesitantly.
"That's how we caught them—seismic sensors. It's also what this complex is for" hinted Wrex darkly. "Keep anyone from ever knowing it's here. That's why they installed the turbolaser towers. They're fun, too! Wanna try?"
Wrex handed her what looked like a krogan take on portable computers. The screen showed some kind of targeting interface.
"I think I got my fill of that helping Ratch with pyjacks" replied the Commander.
"You're no fun—these guns kill thresher maws!"
"I'm just sick of everything" sighed Sam. "There've been…things, I guess…that have happened making me really question if all this is worth it."
"Of course it is!" boomed Wrex. "The Reapers are destroyed, the krogan have a future, and some turians seem to have taken after Garrus and his surprisingly enlightened attitude toward the 'new krogan.'" He added "They all have the same crap humor though" in a tone that suggested this discounted overcoming centuries of racial mistrust.
"So what are you going to do? What are krogan going to do?"
"That's a funny question. See, we've forgotten how to do anything besides make war."
"Which is why Thax Vorak is here."
"I don't believe we have been introduced" said a curious Shepard.
"You haven't met the missus yet." Wrex practically burst with pride at this fact.
"I am the shaman of Clan Urdnot."
"So what should I call you?"
"I have no name, as I surrendered it upon taking my oath."
"Well, that's kinda awkward" replied Sam. "Am I supposed to just say 'hey Shaman' any time I want your attention?
"The salarian Mordin suggested for the sake of communicating with others that I select a name others may refer to me by. I demurred, but Wrex insisted—he did a bit of searching around the extranet and came up with 'Abra.'"
"It means 'mother of many nations'" added Wrex in a tone usually reserved for describing explosions.
"How appropriate. Now what was this about a krogan named Thax? I think I ran into a representative of his once—caught an associate trying to cheat him."
"Indeed you did," replied "Abra." Though her true name (Urdnot Bakara) was known to a select few (including Wrex and Mordin), she used it with no one else, not even Shepard. Only those who had thoroughly earned her trust would be given this piece of information.
"He told me about a curious human who had once helped him out, despite general galactic disdain for krogan when they're not guarding you or killing your enemies." Bakara took on a quizzical expression.
"What's wrong is wrong, no matter who is doing it to whom" insisted Shepard. "I may end up looking like some galactic do-gooder, but if that can make just one krogan be more trusting of humans and vice-versa, it was worth it."
"Given the stories Wrex tells about you, I suppose this is not entirely surprising. The reason Thax Vorak is on Tuchanka rather than tending to his businesses at the Citadel is due to my invitation" continued Abra/Bakara. "He, like Wrex is a rare example of his species who sees ways to contribute to galactic society that do not involve the discharge of weaponry. Certainly, he sometimes sells weapons, but Thax is a businessman—and a well-regarded one at that."
"He hosts classes" laughed Wrex. "Classes on how to run a business! This is a great idea, but very few attend. I tried explaining that running a business means more credits, which can be used to buy bigger guns. That two-step logic is apparently too much for some of my people."
"I think you might start making some education mandatory. Headbutt them if you have to!"
Bakara gave Wrex a look as if to say: Where did you find this strange human? She almost knows us better than the salarians do.
"We'll find a way to educate more krogan" growled Wrex. "I'll drag their asses to class whether they want to study or not!"
Snickering to herself over a very human-sounding reaction to students ditching class, Shepard took leave of the krogan homeworld.
[…]
The rebuilding of Rannoch moved at a blistering pace. Partially due to the efficiency of the geth and partially due to the geth's quiet maintenance of the world should the Creators return, Rannoch would become physically habitable (that is, shelter from the elements—not "no quarian suits") within months. A select few from the Migrant Fleet began residing on the surface, the first quarians to do so in generations.
Attempts to secure technology which permitted the construction speed of Aspirations Toward Infinity dreadnaughts were rebuffed, however.
A few quarian vessels were fitted with scavenged/"reappropriated" drives capable of intergalactic travel. The young quarians aboard sought to bring back the most valuable Pilgrimage gift ever: a working copy of the energy-to-matter converters used by the United Defense Command. Not knowing exactly where to go, many of these ships disappeared into the vastness of the Gamma-Three galaxy never to be seen again.
The few Rannoch-bound quarians were given a choice: live among the geth who would help rebuild, or live only among their own kind (who would have to do everything on their own). Unsurprisingly, many quarians elected to live among their own, even though many of those same individuals also believed eventual re-unification to be possible, just not now. The fact that the geth also lived on the planet, even separately, caused a good number of the nomadic race to decline a return "until we can have our planet back in its entirety."
The Citadel Council steadfastly refused to re-open the quarian embassy, despite Grayson's urgings.
"What do you want them to do, dismantle the geth? Remember how well that went!"
"For their part in causing severe instability to society, in order to earn the trust of the galaxy once again they must make an equally-large contribution which benefits the galaxy as a whole" replied Tevos.
"While it may seem unfair" continued Victus, "the quarian people cannot be excused from their past misbehavior. This is not a schoolyard—apologies are not enough. They must demonstrate that they have grown enough to not make similar mistakes in the future."
Grayson thought of mentioning the salarian/turian "contribution" in the form of the genophage that turned an entire species into heartless, gun-obsessed, violent mercenaries but thought better of it. Everyone had some level of hypocrisy, and most would not budge off it, no matter how egregious it might be. It also wasn't as if the krogan, whose relentless expansion pushed other rightful owners of planets offworld with threats, were completely innocent.
He really wondered what would become of the quarians. They had valuable skills and the biggest (numbers-wise) fleet under one command bar the geth (whose numbers had not yet been ascertained, thought to be over ten thousand individual ships). The galaxy could not afford to ignore them, and he'd try his hardest to make sure the quarians got a fair shake.
[…]
"Keep that barrier up!" yelled Jack to her student. Brick's charges slammed shot after shot of training ammo into it. Seeing her assailants going for a reload, Catalina Rodriguez dropped the barrier and one-two punched the "Iron Ab Slabs," disarming them.
"Ha ha!"
"Good!" called out Brick. "Now, Rachel! Marco! How could you have avoided that?"
"Get bigger guns" grinned Rachel.
"Not reload at the same time" replied Marco.
The Kinetic-Oriented Multiple Belligerent Training School honed the finest potential among young students in both biotic and non-biotic combat. Jack, arguably the most powerful human biotic living, served as the primary teacher for those like herself. Brick had the same job for those whose talents would be better suited to non-biotic roles due to lower potential in that area.
Having the opportunity to train with (or against) dissimilar opponents taught flexibility under fire—biotics might be surprised by the adaptability of non-biotic adversaries, and vice-versa. As a cross-species endeavor, the School's facilities were located on the Citadel to grant easy access to pupils from all races and worlds.
"So" Brick asked Jack after a particularly active day of training (students continued to spar below their observation deck), "what exactly is the point of keeping this school around? I mean, we're turning out more "ICT-Ready" enlistees for the Systems Alliance than they've ever had. Biotics of all races are developing their talent 15% faster thanks to your…methods. Except, there's no war on. We don't need all this badassness!"
"You never know when the next pile of space squids will show up" replied Jack, a hard edge on her voice. "Better to be over-prepared than overrun!"
A large noise and pink flash startled the two senior instructors. Many students observing the matches ran to the center of the arena.
A robed figure stood in the middle of a ring of students. Lips moved, but neither could hear what had been said, nor could a face be seen. Lights dimmed or went out upon the stranger's arrival, further limiting detail from the several-story-high skydeck. Whoever it was dropped into a combat stance. Several adolescents rushed at once—and were thrown backward as if repelled by an invisible barrier.
Flocks of warp attacks angled at the fighter. At this stage of training, the most they could cause would be a large bruise, but sparring partners would definitely feel it in the morning. Again as if wearing a personal kinetic barrier, a glow emitted from where the warps should have struck—before exploding and also propelling those who launched them back. Shockwaves reflected around the arena, hitting other students instead of the lone figure.
Having the same thought at the same time, Brick and Jack dived through the plate-glass separating them from the apparent battlefield.
"Holy shit, whoever that is—they're huge!" breathed Brick. The stranger to his eyes had to be two meters in height or more.
"Huge and attacking my kids!" roared Jack, throwing a supercharged shockwave that raised Brick's hairs from a significant distance away. Powering into a run, Jack launched herself at the apparition. The air around her biotically-amped fist turned red and she felt as though she'd punched into stretchy fabric. The only thing missing was a "sproing" noise as Jack hurtled backward, landing at the feet of an amused Catalina Rodriguez.
"Think this is funny?" shouted the enraged teacher. "You realize if I can't handle this…weirdo…you're in deep, deep varren…excrement."
Rodriguez said nothing, though her face took on a more serious expression.
"Distract it!" yelled the teenager Jack recognized as Marco. He fired burst after burst of training rounds in the general direction of the phantom.
"Kid, you're gonna need some real ammo if you want to accomplish anything!" yelled Brick. "Here!"
Marco caught the FireHose with both hands. A massive derivation of the Revenant Light Machine gun charged with a fire elemental unit, the fearsome gun lived up to its name on the battlefield. A competent soldier with a FireHose could take down an entire platoon on his/her own.
Loud bangs indicated students had broken into the nearby armory and were discharging its contents. Biotic punches smashed through locks as physical combat students picked up rifles, shotguns, and even a rocket launcher.
PHIPHIPHIPHIPHIPHI! A red stream issued from Marco's FireHose as he tried to keep the bucking, bouncing weapon under control. Some hit the unmoving figure, others forced fellow students to dive for cover.
"Watch it, moron!" bellowed Jack. "You're causing friendly fire!"
Indeed he was, in more than one way. Several small fires burned on the floor from the special incinerator ammo carried in a FireHose. Noticing this, he stopped aiming at the figure and instead aimed around it. Soon, even its two meter height disappeared behind a circle of flames.
ENOUGH.
It wasn't just a spoken word—it echoed through the heads of everyone present as if by telepathy. The fiery prison vanished, blown away by some unseen force. The flames disappeared on the wind as if they were smoke. Lights in the complex mostly came back to life. Students stood as if trapped in temporal stasis, jaws open in shock. Brick lay on his back, subdued after (unsurprisingly) trying to punch whatever had just defeated a wave of incinerator ammo, a cruiser-load of regular ammunition, and Jack's biotics.
You see that I mean your students no harm boomed the voice again. If I wanted them dead, their blood would have painted the walls upon my arrival.
"If there's a scratch on any one of them, I will destroy you!" screamed Jack.
You already tried. As I recall, you went flying.
Jack couldn't find words to express her rage. She knew attacking to be pointless, so she stood in frustration with clenched fists and a biotic aura begging to be used.
The red hood dropped. Bluish-purple hair spilled along massive shoulders. Turquoise eyes swept the room. Sarah the Siren swiveled where she stood, looking over the assembled students.
Without any form of amplification, Sarah resumed speaking.
"You train your children like an animal fighter trains their beasts for slaughter. Why?"
Brick sat up.
"If you had a bunch of purple cuttlefish of death show up, burn your worlds, kill billions of innocents, and..."
"The Ancient Machines" replied Sarah in a tone of voice suggesting the discussion of a trivial matter. "Yes, they tried and failed this time—for millions of years they kept you in check. Then, the Trans-Galactic Republic showed up and ruined it."
Jack couldn't control herself any longer. Here was this woman, if she even was one and not some kind of illusion, acting as though billions of people dying meant nothing. Combined with attacking her students, Jack lost it. The buildup of biotic energy surrounding her discharged in a tsunami of a shockwave aimed square at the mysterious purple-haired woman. Except, it rebounded, throwing Jack up high enough that if she were able to walk in air, she'd be back in the observation deck tower easily.
Catching the furious biotic in a blue bubble, Sarah resumed her monologue.
"I am the vanguard of your destruction. Your society and many others like it across hundreds of galaxies has upset the natural order of the universe. You ask what use your students have in a time of peace when they are trained for war. I will tell you, and you will not like it. However, you need to hear what I have to say."
Jack found herself unable to speak despite wishing more than anything to hurl an entire swear-jar's worth of curse words at the woman who currently held her suspended in midair.
"Now, where to begin…"