201
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Hmm?
An anomaly?
Scan-
Ah, finally.
Found one.
My Stronghold transitioned, appearing in front of an ice moon. That moon very quickly vanished as I Unmade it, freeing the object that had been trapped within.
An inactive Mass Relay.
Time branched outwards. In one future, I assimilated the Mass Relay, all but instantly coating it with shimmering blue crystal. In another, I began a detailed scan, building a quantum level blueprint of the ancient machine.
With the information I wanted attained, I chose to do neither, leaving the Mass Relay alone.
I felt Little1's and Anastasia's curiosity as I passed the data on to them, letting them play with it as they wished. There was an immediate, stark sense of irritation from Anastasia when she saw the device's use of element zero, which drew an amused chuckle from me.
But aside from that...
The technology that it incorporated was fascinating. The material it was made of was extremely durable, and very dense. I had superior composites, both tougher and lighter, but still...
Impressive.
That was augmented even further by Quantum Locking, strengthening the tough, dense material even further. It was... pretty much exactly like Seraphim Quantum Locking, differing only in the design of the machinery that generated the effect.
Wouldn't be too hard to bypass if I wanted to.
The power source exploited element zero to break conservation of energy, then harvest the extra energy, rinse and repeat. I'd call it ingenious, but it's really a rather obvious use of element zero.
There were a few sets of communication systems in it. The first was a quantum communicator linked the Mass Relay to the Citadel, which allowed it to send and receive data, which was apparently used so that the Mass Relay could locate and link with other Mass Relays.
A laser and radio communication system were also present, allowing local connections. Those could be paired with the Mass Relay's ability to generate low-mass corridors, allowing direct FTL communications with other Relays should the quantum communicator fail.
Made sense. The Mass Relays would have had to have something like that in order to actually function.
What else...
Not much, actually.
Those systems were everything of note.
...
Mass Relays really aren't that complex, huh.
Oh well.
Half a dozen ships spun into existence, a simple design that I called Arrowheads. They floated forwards, approaching the Mass Relay, broadcasting signals.
Receiving them, the Mass Relay activated, running checks and scans. Finding that nothing was broken, other systems were brought online, starting first with communication systems, and ending with the mass manipulation systems.
The rings in the center of the Relay began rotating, and the orb of element zero began to glow. Shortly, both reached their peak, and the Mass Relay began to turn, moving to face another solar system.
Again, the future branched in front of me, one where I stayed here, and another where I sent off the Stronghold in that direction after it finished aligning. Sure enough, slightly over eight hundred light years away, another Mass Relay was active and pointed back.
In the present, my Arrowheads transmitted more signals, moving towards the Mass Relay. Blue-white lightning extended from the core of the Mass Relay, and a moment later, all of them vanished in streams of blue light.
+++
Fourteen Relays later, I finally found one that was already active.
And, with it, a small colony.
Time branched outwards, my ships approaching it under stealth.
Let's see... the colony was full of Turians, relatively small, but well-equipped. A number of communication buoys were streaming information to and fro, linking the colony with the wider galaxy.
Don't mind future-me, just going to help future-myself to that.
First thing to check, Humanity. If they have an entry on the Extranet, then I can tell that I'm at least at past First Contact.
If not, then I can see about making sure the First Contact War doesn't happen. Sure, it didn't really kill a lot of people, but it was still a rather significant event that soured relations quite a bit. If I could prevent it, then I could both stop all the deaths that occurred during it, as well as encourage friendly talks.
Let's see, how do we use this... Ah, that's how.
Alright, to space google. Search, Humans...
Did you mean: Humats. Evidently, not a part of the galaxy yet. Humats are... some bird species native to some colony world of the Salarians.
Well, there we go. Before the First Contact War.
Which... Huh. I could just go wipe out the Reapers right now, deal with the Catalyst, kill Nazara, and effectively avert that crap entirely without anybody in the galaxy being the wiser. After that... well, aside from Javik and the Collectors, I'd be more or less completely done here.
Yeah, that's a plan. But first, space Wikipedia, go. Time for a wiki-walk. Let's see, we'll start with... Oh fuck it, Asari.
Oh, lag times. Ugh. That's painful. Their systems are so slow. I don't want to deal with that.
Thankfully, I don't have to.
The future split again, and again and again and again. Quintillions of possible timelines played out before me, each one differing only in the information I requested from the Extranet. In each one, I requested only a small bit of data, at most a single webpage at a time, which I received shortly.
It added up quickly. A quintillion timelines very shortly made the totality of publicly available data on the Extranet available to me, which would have taken forever to download if I had done so conventionally.
There was a lot of information, though it was only what was available through the Extranet. Anything else, such as classified or non-public data, was out of my hands for the moment. It wouldn't have been too hard to get if I wanted, but the information I had would do fine for now.
Map data, check the galaxy... slightly different to the Milky Way, but that's not unusual. Based on stellar position, it should be around about... 2019, for Earth?
Well, whatever. The closest ship sets the course, and...
March 19, 2019. Nailed it.
Alright, next question. What do I actually want to do here?
It would be incredibly easy for me to just go ahead and wipe out the Reapers. The Catalyst, too, I could destroy without anybody knowing any better.
There was a certain appeal to just going right ahead and actually doing that. Nobody said I had to stick around, after all. Just wiping out the Reapers and leaving, in and out in a mere few hours...
Yes. There was an appeal in that.
But there was also an appeal in throwing a curveball and watching everybody deal with it.
What would happen if I arranged things such that Humanity would just so happen to stumble upon the math needed to develop Phase Drives? What would happen if, suddenly, a Salarian experiment on a uninhabited moon breached into an alternate dimension full of glowing things? What would happen if a chance accident revealed the Asari Athame Beacon to the galaxy at large.
What if, what if, what if. Fun things to think about.
And now that I think about it, it sounds fun.
...
Ah, fuck it. If I can't have fun, what's the point?
Let me see...
I have an idea.
202
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You know, some might say that what I was doing was a bad thing. That I, by doing what I was planning on doing, would be forever altering the path of a species, all for my own amusement.
To which, I would say that the thing I cared about was the preservation of life, not the guidance of it. I had already thrown literally millions of species off track, and I wasn't going to stop now.
Step one of my plan began with borrowing Sovereign.
I needed an apparent villain, and who better to be an apparent villain than one of the genocidal fuckwits known as the Reapers?
No one, clearly.
Finding Sovereign did not take very long. Borrowing him took about fourteen seconds. Taking him to Arcturus took a little over three minutes, not because his size altered the speed at which my things travelled, though it did do that, but instead because it a little under three minutes to deal with the black rage that filled me after I checked through his memories on habit.
What I saw made me very, very angry.
"Oh." Anastasia grimaced. "That's... a lot of destruction."
"Average length between harvests: 47,391 years." Little1's voice whispered. "Average number of species harvested per harvest: 26.632. Average galactic population per harvest: 851.143 Trillion. End result: 21,101 harvests, 561,961 species wiped out... and 17,959,968,443,000,000,000 people killed."
Nearly. Eighteen. Quintillion. Lives.
And so many of them were recorded in disgusting, perfect clarity.
A Reaper is constructed, in the crudest sense of the term, from organic, sapient beings. They come in two classes, Destroyer and Sovereign, with the single exception of Harbinger.
How does this construction work? Simple. The first step is capturing a being, a task easily completed for the Reapers. The second step would place them into storage, for preparation of construction. The third step is conducting a quantum scan of the victim, archiving them and everything they were in perfect detail. Memories, genetic code, thoughts, emotions- everything...
While this scan is happening, the victim is also being broken down into a slurry of materials. This process occurs while they are awake, and is extremely agonising, though it is completed over the course of only a few seconds.
This is of little relief to the victims, because everything includes even the mind itself.
Their suffering does not end there. The mind, traumatized by this cruel upload, is then further attacked. Code will bind it, even as it is edited to remove every trace of free will. They are still free to suffer, but they can no longer even think of disobeying the will that controls them, and the directives emplaced upon them. To finally seal it all, the minds are then bound to other minds, awkwardly mashed together regardless of how compatible they are.
This forms the basis of a Reaper's consciousness. How many minds find themselves joined together in bondage depends entirely on the class of Reaper itself.
A Destroyer could incorporate several hundred thousand minds. A Sovereign can hold tens of millions.
Such is a Reaper. Born in an orgy of violence and suffering, bound in chains mental, physical, and digital, and controlled by the architect of it all to do the same to all organic life.
An abomination as bad as the Beast, but worse, because its controller knew very well how to keep the suffering going forever.
The Beast, at least, would starve over the course of eternity. The Reapers would survive until destroyed.
"You're going to destroy them?" Little1 already knew the answer.
"Yes." I said. "But not yet."
That caught him by surprise. "Not yet? You're not going to wipe them out immediately?"
"No."
"Why, mother?" Anastasia asked. "Why leave them alive?"
"Because a quick death would be too kind." I answered. "I will destroy them, Anastasia. I will take them, one by one, and rip them apart. I will seize the minds within, and heal them. I will release them into the universe, and undo all that the Reapers have accomplished. By the time that I am finished, they will be nought but a bad a memory, and even that will fade in the fullness of time."
"Your plan?" Little1 asked.
"It will need some revision." I noted. Which was true, because what I was planning before and what I was thinking of now were quite different things. "But I will likely follow the bones of it."
Before, I had been planning fun. Now, I am thinking Pest Control.
Sovereign, I need you in Arcturus. I also need a Festum, of sufficiently inhuman shape there as well. The original Sphinx-Type should fulfill that need nicely.
Sovereign needs some battle damage. Not too much, a missing tendril there, a deep scar on his armour here, some other, more minor damage here, here, there, and over there to flesh out the appearance... Perfect.
Next step, activate the Sol-Arcturus Mass Relay, give it a few minutes in order for the Mass Relay to rip Charon apart...
And, now, we send the Festum through. A slight modification of my typical standard, namely; almost no stealth whatsoever, and Humanity will notice it very quickly, once its light actually reaches Earth.
Next, send Sovereign through, and start a chase scene. Sovereign would try, and fail, to kill the Festum, because the would try, and succeed, in avoiding all of its attacks, whether by simple dodging, teleportation, or something else.
They would, over the course of the next twenty hours, move deeper into the Solar System, giving plenty of time for Humanity to notice and watch. Eventually, they would arrive at Earth, and I could start stage two; that being a more easily visible battle between the two. Have the Festum inflict even more damage, maybe even cut off a tendril or three...
I'd have to make fairly certain that Sovereign is seen as the bad guy, here. Shouldn't be too difficult, considering his appearance, especially in comparison to my Festum, which...
Yeah. It's a Festum. Odd, alien beauty galore. Given the Human tendency to like that which is pretty, it's no contest whatsoever.
Alright, let's get this show on the road.
+++
For Humanity, the day that incontrovertible proof that aliens existed came started with Charon, the moon, exploding.
Somehow, things only went downhill from there.
reality tore open.
203
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"No changes?"
"No sir."
It was an interesting day to be an astronomer.
Actually, it was an interesting day to be anybody at all.
It had all started slightly under twenty hours ago. Charon, Pluto's moon, had exploded.
A little over five hours later, the light echo of this event reached earth.
Astronomers would notice it after mere few seconds. Within minutes, almost every single satellite and telescope that could be pointed at Charon was pointed at Charon.
Minutes after that, odd readings would reveal the presence of two things that had appeared after the moon was destroyed. One was emitting heat and light, and was easily visible even across the vast distance. The other wasn't, and would probably have gone unnoticed, if not for the fact that it was shooting very noticeable high-energy beams at the former.
By ten minutes, governments around the world were being informed. At fifteen minutes, the information leaked into the public. By half an hour, almost everybody on the planet knew about it.
At the end of the first hour, over 67% of the planet was watching and waiting.
He was somewhat unique in the fact that he had a front row seat to the action.
His name was Chris. He worked at NASA. Fifteen hours ago, he had been about to leave his shift.
Now, he was surviving entirely off of coffee, three cans of red bull, and half a pill of adderall.
He had had, suffice to say, an interesting day.
He stared at his monitors, the main one displaying a feed from one of the many satellites in orbit, the one on the left displaying the paths that the visitors had taken, and the one on the right, which was awkwardly placed on the desk and half leaning off of it, displaying the projected path of them.
The third monitor had not been there at the start of his day. The haphazard placement of it, and the mess of wires attached to its back, hinted at that. The tracking program, too, had not been like that at the start of the day. It had been awkwardly kludged together a few hours ago, a mess of code that was as horrifying in its construction as it was effective in its purpose.
Even if he did have to restart the thing every hour or so.
"So we still have a pair of unknown alien things heading straight for our planet."
"Actually, if they keep going along the same general path they are now, they'll miss us by about three or four million kilometers." Chris corrected. He looked up, at the fourth monitor, attached to a stand that also hadn't been there at the start of the day. "While that is uncomfortably close, we could also fit an extra 200 Earths in that distance, no problems."
"That is not a thought that comforts me."
"With all due respect, mister Secretary?" Chris began. "There isn't a lot we can do about it. These two aliens have been bouncing across the system at speeds ranging from several kilometers a second to well over half the speed of light. Simply being able to survive the inertial forces their maneuvers would be putting on them also takes them far and away into the range of things Humanity has no hope of threatening."
On the other side of the camera, the Secretary of Defense sighed, falling back into his chair. "That thought doesn't sit well with me."
"Look on the brightside." Chris turned back to the monitor. On cue, a bright red beam lanced through space, moving at velocities only slightly under that of light itself. Its target, a small, glowing blue form, vanished before it could hit, reappearing elsewhere. "This is the most interesting thing to happen in... basically forever, when you think about it."
"I like my interesting things to come with less dread." The secretary grunted. "How long before they pass?"
"At their current velocity..." He checked the right screen again. "They're ten million kilometers away, so maybe twelve minutes-" He cut himself off, staring closely at the screen. "Ah, hell."
"What?"
"They're speeding up again." Chris quickly typed at his console. The right monitor, obligingly, recalculated the path, taking into account their increasing speed. "And their path is changing. If they keep this up, they'll pass... Three hundred thousand kilometers away from Earth... In about a minute."
"A minute?!" The Secretary straightened, face pale. "And that close?!"
"A light second away isn't that bad." Chris words were betrayed by his heavy tone. "Not really. Especially when you consider that they probably won't even care about us... Why would they, we're just a bunch of primitives, and they're a pair of star-farers, and they're both pretty focused on each other..."
The Secretary of Defence grimaced.
They seemed faster than they actually were. A product of them moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light. At ten million kilometres, light delay would have been about thirty three seconds.
Given that, they had actually started moving thirty three seconds ago. It was only now that light had crossed the distance. They seemed to cross the distance easily. Chillingly quick, really. That they accelerated to such velocities so easily implied a true immense amount of energy being spent- and neither of them had the decency to use to conventional thrusters.
He watched the screen closely as they came. Five million kilometres, three, one... As they came closer and closer, they also became more easily visible. Both were alien, but the larger aggressor seemed disturbing and dangerous, while the smaller radiated a sense of beauty...
Five hundred thousand kilometres-
And the glowing blue form simply stopped. Velocity zeroed in an instant, suddenly holding still.
The same could not be said of the aggressor. It continued onwards, slowing, but not quickly enough. A glowing blue limb extended, becoming larger-
And the dark form ran straight into it.
There was no sound, but he imagined that it must have sounded like an utter cacophony of tearing metal. The limb pierced the shell with ease, and inertia did the rest.
A long, terrible wound appeared on the machine, ripped into being over the course of less than a second. Its form pulsed with red and yellow light, the tendrils extending from it appearing to writhe.
It was difficult to imagine that anything could survive that- but less than three seconds later, the aggressor slowed to a stop, turning despite the wound, red light shining at the base of its tendrils.
Wounded-
And now, very angry.
204
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The aggressor's form shimmered, a light blue field beginning to surround it. It did little to conceal the red light emitting from it.
The beam lanced out, but the glowing one was already gone, vanishing in an instant and reappearing just outside the aggressor's shimmering form.
Again, the glowing one attacked, a tendril extending forwards. It hit the shimmering barrier, and stopped there, the barrier glowing brighter as it did. The aggressor reacted quickly, turning slightly before firing another beam at the glowing one.
It didn't hit. It never did- over twenty hours of attempted attacks had failed, so why would this one succeed?
All it did was make the glowing one reposition itself, attacking from another angle. This time, it was from above, with several limbs extended.
The barrier, it seemed, couldn't take the force. The limbs went through, and promptly gouged the attacker, long and deep cuts made into the armour. One limb wrapped around a tendril at the attacker's front, before squeezing. It came off with ease, but what happened after that was almost magical, in its seeming impossibility.
Blue crystals jutted from the tendril, shortly covering it in a mass of sharp, jagged shapes. Not a moment later, the mass shattered into countless pieces, vanishing just as quickly as they appeared.
The tendril, it seemed, went with them, something that made the scientist in him sit up in attention and the sci-fi nerd shout in glee.
"Son, what the hell did I just witness?"
"I have no idea." He answered. "Apparently, the laws of physics are a bit more open to interpretation than we had believed."
Red light lanced again, sweeping across space, to no avail. The glowing one avoided it with easy, vanishing and reappearing over and over again, the beam unable to keep up.
It was... strange to watch. The aggressor, at two kilometers long, was being whittled down by a target one fortieth its size.
Death of a thousand cuts, huh?
It seemed that the aggressor also realized this. Its shields pulsed again as it released... Drones?
Whatever they were, they were small, had a glowing red eye, and there was a lot of them. He lost count after the first few dozen. They swarmed after the glowing one, firing smaller bolts at it.
They had no more luck than their superior. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of bolts flew, and all of them missed. The glowing one simply vanished and reappeared in their midst, its many limbs already extending outwards.
It spun, lashing at the swarm. Every one it touched vanished in an explosion of crystals, depleting the swarm with alarming quickness.
Alarming quickness was still enough time for the aggressor. It's dark form had begun to turn the moment it released its drones, moving to speed away even as its swarm was wiped out behind it. After so long spent chasing it, now it tried to run.
Kevin frowned, looking closer at the screen. With a jolt, he sat up, rapidly hammering at the console.
The program beeped only a few moments later.
Running-
Directly towards Earth.
"Fuck!" He shouted. "Secretary, the aggressor is heading straight towards Earth!"
"What?!"
But why? Earth- Humanity, had nothing to do with this. They didn't have the capacity to threaten either of them, so what point was there in going to Earth, especially when they should be preoccupied with the other?
It took precious little time for the aggressor to cross the distance, five hundred thousand kilometers vanishing in only eight seconds. The path it took placed it in an orbit, around and among many of the satellites drifting around the Earth. Such closeness gave them an incredibly clear shot of its form, revealing what simple distance had obscured.
The cut that the glowing one had placed on its form wasn't the only one. Dozens, hundreds, of other wounds were also present, some of them small, some of them large, but all of them ghastly and adding to its dangerous appearance.
It's form twisted, the underside coming to face Earth. He shivered, and then his blood froze in his veins as that dangerous red light appeared once more.
It was about to attack.
The world seemed to move in slow motion. He saw the light, watched as it grew stronger and stronger. He thought, desperately, about the many, many targets it could have, hovering in orbit as it was, with nearly half the planet available for an immediate strike.
Any attack would surely be devastating. He couldn't help but note that the aggressor had never missed with its beam; the glowing one had simply always, always dodged it.
The red light reached its maximum, and then-
A glowing blue form slammed into the aggressor's side, just as the red light lanced out. The attacker twisted slightly from the impact, and the beam went with it, diverted at the last possible moment from its target. A camera view from the ISS, nearly a quarter of the way around the planet, showed the beam scything across the ocean, far and away from any Human life. Plumes of steam and gigantic waves were rising along the path, but that was surely better than whatever would have happened to its original target.
The glowing one did not relent. It struck immediately and quickly, its limbs extending and glowing brightly. With a single graceful motion, it cut straight through the aggressor's barrier, and sliced its remaining tendrils off, each limb vanishing in a crystal explosion.
The aggressor didn't let this stop it. It's turn halted, and its beam began to head back across the path it had taken, back towards the land. The glowing one struck it, again and again, but the barrier, it seemed, was back in force, glowing even brightly.
As the beam began to approach the shoreline, the glowing one stopped attacking, vanishing only to reappear in front of the aggressor. It held its limbs up, a large, square pane of light forming in front of it.
The beam hit the pane of light, and stopped on it just as it would have crossed onto the land.
The glowing one had barriers of its own, it seemed.
And- now he understood why the aggressor had targeted the Earth. A simple matter of using Earth as bait.
The glowing one would dodge everything the aggressor used- unless, it seemed, if that attack would hit something else. The glowing one put itself in between the Earth and the aggressor, acting to block its attack.
Merciless, but smart, if the aggressor had no other way of forcing it stay still.
The first barrier began to darken, its blue glow turning purple. As it did, the glowing one's limbs moved backwards, more square panes of blue light forming behind it.
The one in front was a simple one, but the ones behind were arranged oddly, seeming more translucent in comparison. There was ten of them, arranged at different degrees to each other, each one rotated slightly more than the last.
The tenth barrier appeared just as the first barrier broke, shattering into fading pieces. The beam continued, unabated, and slammed straight into the glowing one. It was the first hit the aggressor had ever landed.
The beam went straight through the glowing one's center, cutting it in half and continuing straight through to the barriers behind it.
It passed through them, too, but it did so oddly. Each barrier it went through bent its path, shifting the direction away from the Earth. It still passed through the atmosphere, but it didn't touch the land, going over it and leaving the surface untouched.
He breathed a sigh of relief at that.
Still, the glowing one had been injured in its defense. The lower half of its body had vanished in an explosion of crystals, but the upper was still present. Its own wound, it seemed, was not enough to kill it.
The aggressor seemed fully willing to try again. That red light appeared once more, but this time, it was answered by the glowing one also beginning to brighten. It shot forwards, heading straight towards the aggressor, reaching it only a moment later.
Without stopping, it slammed straight into it, crashing through its barrier and then into its surface. The aggressor seemed to shiver for a moment, before a large, blue crystal jutted out of its back, shortly followed by others, all over the rest of its body.
These crystals seemed different to the others. Larger, for one, but they reflected light differently, instead seeming to show something within them.
When it failed to shatter after a few moments, he concluded that it was different.
Just like that, it was all over.
Kevin slumped back, looking at his monitor. The crystalline mass was beginning to fall, yielding to gravity's grip, unlike the two aliens.
"It's over?" The Secretary's voice startled him, as he wasn't expecting it.
"Seems so." He sighed. "First time we get confirmation of aliens, and one of them bombards our planet. People are going to go nuts. I pity you, mister Secretary."
The secretary grunted. "Where's that crystal going to land?"
"Assuming nothing weird happens?" Kevin looked at it, biting his tongue as he considered it. "Rough guess... probably somewhere around Australia. I'll need more time to actually calculate the exact impact point."
"Do it." The Secretary nodded. "I'll be back shortly."
Kevin nodded. The mute indicator flashed on, and he sighed again.
He was so tired, but at the same time...
Aliens existed, one hostile, and one not.. He had seen, personally, teleportation, two instances of FTL travel, energy shields, energy beams, and what looked an awful lot like ignoring the existence of the laws of thermodynamics on multiple occasions.
And now, a product of the things that had done all of those was falling straight to Earth.
He grinned.
What a time to be alive.
205
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It was a lot larger in person than it was on a screen.
Kevin whistled as he looked forwards, past the fences and the guards, at the massive crystal behind them. It was beautiful, glowing faintly blue, with strange, ethereal sights seemingly contained within.
His licked his lips.
It had been five days since it had crashed. As he had guessed, it had landed in Australia: Specifically, in Queensland, about forty three kilometers away from Brisbane.
It had landed fairly gently, all considered. It had also stayed completely intact through both the fall and the impact, demonstrating a durability that belied its appearance.
Australian authorities had had it locked down within minutes of the impact. Guards, fences, searchlights, and a near constant presence of helicopters circled it, keeping everybody safely away.
It had only been after three full days of nothing happening that they'd declared it 'currently safe', and had started allowing civilians to get a somewhat close look at the thing. Nobody was allowed within one hundred meters of it, but still...
It had taken four days for him to finally succeed in booking a flight to Brisbane. The local airways were both under lockdown, and absolutely packed with flights, each flight to Brisbane carrying full loads of sightseers. Internationally, it had barely taken seconds after the landing for the world's' countries to start demanding access.
The politics didn't really matter. He was sure that the political world was absolutely exploding at the moment, but he was an astronomer, not a politician.
"Out of the way, man!" Somebody pushed him to the side, nearly knocking him over. He shot the man a glare, but the man was too absorbed in his camera to notice, quickly beginning to take photos.
It was a beautiful sight, he had to admit- but still, there were thousands of people and almost no free room. Getting to the front had taken hours.
The rumbling of the excited crowd was damn near deafening.
He shifted, beginning to work his way through the crowd again- this time, heading out. People eagerly took his place, which made it slightly easier to move, but still...
It took nearly ten minutes to get to a place that he could move freely.
He yawned as he started walking back to the hotel. Jet lag hadn't been kind to him, and neither had the oppressive Australian heat and humidity. The midday sun was a killer.
He closed his eyes for a moment- and evidently, the world hated him, because at that exact moment, something heavy slammed into his gut.
His eyes snapped open, and he doubled over, air driven out of his lungs. It was more surprise than anything else.
"Oh god, I'm sorry!" The thing that had hit him- a woman, now that Kevin was actually looking, quickly apologized.
He raised a hand, waving it as he wheezed. "I'm- I'm fine."
She was holding a box in her hands- the thing that had actually hit him.
She shifted, trying to hold it in one arm. "No, I really should have been looking out-" There was a tearing sound, and the woman's hands shot to her box as the underside of it fell open, bundles of paper and other things spilling out. "- nononono!"
She knelt quickly, trying to regather it all, but she accidentally jolted the box and ended up spilling more of it.
She froze as it all fell into a pile, looking distressed.
"Seems like I'm not the only one having a bad day." He said as he knelt beside her, beginning to pick them up.
She slumped, sighing miserably. "Things have been pretty hectic."
He chuckled. "I know precisely how you feel." He glanced over the bundle he was holding, an eyebrow raising as he saw a picture of the giant crystal. "Here for the crystal too, huh?"
"Who isn't?" She asked. "A giant alien crystal, the entire planet is paying attention to it."
"Yeah." He smiled. "Exciting, right?"
"Too exciting." She shook her head. "Booking a flight took days, and finding a hotel? Don't even get me started."
"I know precisely how you feel." He repeated.
"Are you quoting Garak on purpose, there?"
"A fellow Deep Space 9 fan?" He grinned. "I thought our kind was dead."
She smiled. "I like the classics, what can I say?"
She glanced down at her box, and frowned as she put the last bundle back in the box.
"Where are you headed?" He asked, mildly curious.
"Willowbank." She replied, shifting her arms under the box and holding the bottom of it closed.
"Really?" He asked. "Me too. I was heading back right now, actually."
She looked at him, blinking. "So was I, actually."
"Heh." He held his arms out. "Here, that looks pretty heavy. We're both heading to same place, so why not?"
"Oh, no, I couldn't impose like that." She shook her head. "It's my stuuuh-" She trailed off as another tearing noise sounded.
He smiled. "Really, it's no problem, and you look like you could use a break."
Carefully, the woman passed him the box. It was heavier than it seemed, so he shifted his arms underneath and around it to make sure it stayed together.
"Thank you." The woman said, quietly.
"Ah, don't worry about it, seriously."
"Allison." The woman offered.
"Kevin." He spoke as they began to walk. "Kevin Shepard."
+++
Well, that's all finished on my end for the moment.
Now I just need to wait four and a half years for it to all come together.
...
Well, technically, the beginning of stage two starts four months from now, but that requires no action on my part. Literally no action on my part. I would have to let my psychic energy run free, and not restrain it.
Easy enough.
That alone would eventually accomplish what I wanted.
...
I wonder how Altea is doing. It's been like eighteen years since I've seen her and I haven't called even once. She's over fifteen thousand years old, so that isn't actually that significant a period of time for her, but still...
Well, whatever, it'll give me something to do while I waited for everything to come to fruition here.
May as well check up on everybody else while I'm at it.
206
+++
Alright, let's see.
I had never gone back to the universes I'd previously been to. In four cases, it wasn't necessary, as I'd maintained a permanent presence in them. In the universes of Armored Core, Homeworld, and Fafner, everything was going pretty well.
Life continued as usual in Fafner.
The Hiigarans were a rising power in Homeworld, supported by and supporting the Taiidan Republic. The Bentusi watched them, still waiting for the Hiigarans to realize what their Mothership held, but until then wandering around the galaxy as they were want to do.
In Armored Core, the planet was slowly being purified, healing from the wounds inflicted by rampant use of Kojima technology. A couple warlords still roamed around, but ORCA was taking care of them when they popped up.
The universe I had recovered Anastasia from, the Planetary Annihilation universe, I suppose, was pretty calm. My ships had searched the galaxy, but aside from wrecks, sites of battles, and the occasional bit of organic life that hadn't been wiped out, there was nothing remaining of note.
We had, of course, expanded our search, but...
Well, we checked the entire universe. Progenitors were nowhere to be found. Intelligent life, sure, but the Progenitors? Not even a hint.
Which had raised... a number of questions that we still didn't have answers to.
Either way, the other three universes were the ones where I didn't know what was happening. I had left quite literally nothing behind in C&C, and as such I had no idea what was going on over there. In Supreme Commander, the only thing that we had present was a disconnected Warp Chasm, which, as one might guess, did not provide a particularly large amount of information about what was happening around it.
In Universe at War, the sum total of our assets present were five communicators, one for Queen Altea, one for Orlok, one for the Novus, one for General Moore, and the last for whoever General Moore gave it to. Exactly none had been used, because apparently nobody found it necessary to contact me.
In those cases, I wanted to know how things were going in those universes. It would be easy to find out in the case of Supreme Commander and Universe at War, but C&C...
Well, it might be, and it might not be. I wasn't entirely certain whether or not I could get back. Theoretically, setting the Teleporter to point at the bright blue star again would do it, but...
Well, let's find out.
An Asura Commander appeared in front of the Teleporter, already moving towards it. The glowing portal appeared instantly, targeting the star.
It ducked through-
And yes. Yes I could get there again.
Planet looks rather nice, actually. Much less Tiberium, now. Control nodes, based off the designs I had given to the GDI so long ago, were present on the surface, spread out over blue and yellow zones, making sure the Tiberium wouldn't come back.
Well, they seemed to have that pretty well in hand.
Scrin? No Scrin. The GDI seemed to have developed a pretty extensive network of orbital Ion Cannons, pointing away from the planet, along with other satellites.
Kane? In super-high security prison, guarded by the absolute best GDI had. They'd spared no expense in containing him. A number of other high-profile Brotherhood of Nod personnel were there with him.
Probably didn't want him to be a martyr.
Well, they seemed to have everything well in hand.
Good for them.
Time branched. My Commander transitioned in Phase Space, headed to Alpha Centauri, and constructed enough Strongholds to scout the universe in short order. The possible future collapsed a second after it was formed, and my Commander set off to do it for real.
In about four hundred years, an asteroid laced with Tiberium would hit a planet. I intended to deflect it when that happened, as the planet in question was inhabited by beings who wouldn't be able to survive it.
Right, done here. Let's see, next...
Hmm. Do I want to go to Supreme Commander or Universe at War next?
Eh... By my reckoning, it'd be around mid-day on the Atlatea. Universe at War, then. Altea was a good friend.
Let's see...
+++
The day was pleasantly cool. The wind blew, carrying autumn leaves throughout the city, tugging at strands of hair. The sun was warm, the sky blue, and decorated with white clouds here and there. The slow pulse of life in the air was as comforting as the sun, warm and pleasant.
Queen Altea held a book in her hands, reclining in a grand seat, simply enjoying the day. For once, she had no diplomatic duties, no need to act as a leader. Instead, she had a precious gift of free time.
Her clothes reflected the rare moment. Her headdress wasn't present, and the long, flowing garb she usually wore had been replaced with a shorter, though still long and ornate by most standards, dress. The book in her hands was one of fiction, telling a lengthy tale of magic and adventure.
A guilty pleasure, yes. She sometimes wondered if the reason Zessus was so free-spirited today was because she had spent so much time reading such books to him in his youth.
A cheerful tune rang out, startling her from the peace. For a moment, she was confused as to where it came from, before realization set in.
Slowly, daintily, she reached into a hidden pocket of her dress, pulling out a small, chrome, black, and blue device.
The cheerful tunes still rang out, and for a moment, she stared at it.
She had carried this device for nearly two decades. It rarely left her person, never too far out of reach. Still, it had never been used.
She tapped it, softly. The noise immediately stopped, and she felt a very familiar psychic power bleed through.
"Hello, Queen Altea. How are you doing?"
207
"It's good to see you again." I smiled at the Queen.
She gave a slight smile in turn, couple with a nod.
"What brings you here to visit?" She asked.
"Not much." I waved my hand. A pair of cups, and a number of bottles, appeared on the table between us, coalescing from golden energy. "I was just wandering around when I realized that it's been nearly two decades since the last time I saw you."
She picked up and examined one of the bottles I'd created, somehow making the action look elegant. "And so you decided to visit."
I leaned forwards, my smile twisting into something that resembled a pout. "Am I not welcome anymore?"
She smiled again, a faint laugh escaping. "Of course you are."
I grinned, then picked up a bottle and poured myself a drink. "So, how have things been?"
She followed suit, pouring a drink of her own. "Well enough, I suppose. Tense, when it came to Orlok and his followers, but that was to be expected."
I nodded, holding my glass out.
She clinked it with her own a moment later. "Orlok left for Mars not long after you left." She took a sip.
Her eyes widened, and she held the glass out, examining it. "Very tasty."
"Thank you. I had a feeling you'd like it." I took a sip from my own cup, enjoying the sweet, yet cold liquid.
"Zessus has been..." She continued after a moment, before trailing off.
"Zessus?" I offered.
She nodded, an air of motherly exasperation about her. "He is as impulsive as always. He has been wandering the planet in search of adventure."
"I hope he's having fun."
"He seems to be." Altea's head tipped to the side. "The Novus have been helpful, though many of them have retreated to Lieta Novus. Mirabel remains on this planet."
"She's interested in the life here. Until Earth, she hadn't met any form of organic life." I noted. "And the Novus... They're trying to revive the Quyion, aren't they?"
She nodded. "The Humans have been... rebuilding, but it is slow. They lost much of their population, much of their infrastructure, and much of their governments. We have been offering help, as have the Novus, but even so..."
"These things take time." I finished for her.
"We always knew they would. We discussed exactly that, the last time you were here."
That we did.
"Well, that's enough about that morbid topic." I leaned forwards, my eyes a bit wide, and my mouth set in a grin. An air of faux-secrecy surrounded me. "Do you want to see something really cool?"
She let out a noise of curiosity, her head tilting to the side.
I held my hand out, pointer finger stretched out. "Watch this."
A Worm Sphere burst into existence above my finger, expanding to the size of a basketball.
Altea blinked.
"There you go." I smiled at Altea.
Her arm was extended, fingers splayed and palm pointed at a wall. That wall had a hole in it, curtesy of a Worm Sphere that Altea had just generated.
"Fascinating, but odd." She murmured.
"Useful, too." I noted. "You can use it as a weapon, for teleportation, and if you're really good at it, you can shape it into pretty much anything." I demonstrated, summoning a chakram-shaped Worm, like those used by the Diablo-Types. It shifted, changing to a disk, then a lengthy sword, and then began cycling through dozens of simple shapes.
She gave a nod, examining the Worm as it changed. "Where did you learn this?"
"From a species known as the Festum. Very strange beings, but also very powerful." I'd give them that.
I leaned forwards, propping my elbows up on the table and resting my head in my hands.
"Strange?" She looked up.
I nodded. "Yep. They were a psychic hivemind who didn't have concepts of individuality, sensation, or emotion." I quirked a smile. "Understandably, they had a rather unique psychology."
"I see." She held her hands out, as if cupping something. A short moment later, a Worm Sphere bloomed, small, at first, but growing larger as she channelled more energy and focused.
"You got the hang of it pretty quickly." I complimented. "Alright, I'll teach you how to teleport with them."
"Nice place you got here, Mirabel." I examined the building.
As typical of Novus design, the building was tall, bright silver, and filled to the brim with electronics. Strings of bright blue light connected it to the dozens of other Novus constructions laying around. The occasional cloud of disassembled Novus nanomachines rushed along the Flow Network, robots in transit to different locations.
The location was in the wastes of Russia, one of the areas that had been hit by the Hierarchy in the first stages of the invasion. Radiation, plasma, and heat had shortly rendered the area uninhabitable for Human life, and what little that remained after the Hierarchy was through with it had shortly fled.
The Novus was cleaning it up. Mirabel had been the one to establish the operation, and, now, it the most expansive site of Novus construction on the planet, with the Flow Network stretching halfway across Russia.
"Thank you." Mirabel herself hadn't changed a bit. Granted, neither had Altea or I, but in her case, she wasn't ageless like the Masari or myself.
Or, not naturally so, anyway. The reason she hadn't aged was because Novus gene-therapy had kept her young and strong.
"Hello, Viktor." I greeted the mech, currently standing guard.
I got a garbled greeting in return. Viktor, it seemed, also hadn't changed a bit, still speaking in Quyion language.
"Have to say, I was surprised to hear you came back." She smiled, though a bit of worry tinged her features. "Bad news?"
I chuckled. "No, just a visit. I wanted to see how you were all going."
The worry vanished, and, for a moment, she seemed a bit wry. "Ah. Well, that's good."
I smiled. "So, how have you been?"
208
+++
"Hello again, Founder." I hummed to myself as I walked forwards.
The moon was not where I had expected to locate the Founder, but then, it wasn't all that surprising, either. The Novus maintained a large amount of stations and constructions on the moon, most of them meant for resourcing operations. A couple resource rich asteroids had been towed into orbit by the Novus, pulled from the asteroid belt, which was where Vertigo currently was.
The resources they harvested went mostly to rebuilding Earth, though a significant amount flowed back into the Novus' own operations. Even now, they were still expanding, constructing starships for various purposes.
A few Masari buildings were also present. Monitoring stations, mostly, connected to other stations around the galaxy, all employing the Masari's powerful technology to keep a watchful eye on the events that were occurring in the galaxy. Perhaps a wasted effort, as there wasn't anything actually happening, but hey.
If they wanted to put down dozens of monitors all over the place, who was I to stop them?
The other bits of Masari construction kept the area liveable for Masari. Gravity had been heightened in the local area to about ninety five percent of Earth's, while a large, golden energy field kept the atmosphere in.
"Drich." He greeted, levitating slightly above the ground. "A social visit?"
"Yep." I nodded. "So, how have you been doing, lately?"
+++
Not all that different, it turned out. The Founder still oversaw operations on Earth, and on Lieta Novus. He told me that the project to revive the Quyion was proceeding slowly, but they had some promising results.
Hoped that worked out for them. The Novus deserved it, after all they've been through.
But aside from that, all he'd been doing is play the political game with the various governments, and keep a watchful eye on Orlok's forces. So, business as usual.
Speaking of Orlok...
+++
"Well, you seem to have done well for yourself, Orlok." Despite having retreated to Mars, they hadn't set down permanently.
They still lived on their ships, keeping to the closed arcologies where it was easiest to sustain them. Still, they'd set up some mining operations on Mars' surface, extracting what resources they needed.
Orlok had made sure that they didn't fall back into the Hierarchy's insatiable lust for resources. They'd kept a significant stockpile, but aside from that, weren't pulling up too much.
Granted, they also didn't have many things they could do with those resources. The Hierarchy didn't exactly have much in the way of culture, and Orlok's renegades weren't all that different. Still, most of them found not having to fight endlessly to be a relief, even if, at times, it could be boring.
"Greetings." Orlok's head turned slightly. He was sporting a new coat of paint, his chassis now more red than black.
"So, how have things been?"
+++
Tense, it seemed. Still, Orlok kept everything together by being a good ruler. There had apparently been an attempted coup a while back, a few soldiers wishing to seize power. Orlok had reminded them, politely, that he had been the Hierarchy General for a very, very good reason.
There had been no more attempted coups after that. Which might or might not have been because Orlok had bludgeoned the attempted coupers with his crusher arm in front of half the ship. That, combined with the fact that he was still a fairly reasonable leader, lead to most deciding that it wasn't worth risking Orlok's fury.
Personally, I wondered what possessed them to think they could possibly win against Orlok, who's about five times the size of the average soldier, without the support of far more troops than they actually had.
Oh well. Their mistake.
+++
I knocked on the door.
Hawaii was nice this time of year. It hadn't taken all that much damage in the Hierarchy attack, all things considered, so it was rebuilt rather quickly. The house I was in front of seemed to be a fairly normal one, with nothing out of the ordinary.
That was even true, with the exception of its occupant.
A few thudding footsteps later, and the door opened. "Who are you and what do you..."
The man trailed off, seeing me. "Oh. You."
"Good morning, General Moore."
He straightened up, waving his hand in the air. "Not a General. I'm retired now." He opened the door wider, inviting me inside.
Randal Moore had aged fairly well, all things considered. The man was over sixty, yet he was still fit. His hair was grey, and he had some spots on his skin, but he was doing well.
He grabbed a bottle of beer from his fridge, before taking a seat at the table.
"So, what's this for?" He asked.
"Just a social visit." I took a seat at the opposite end of the table. "Simply curious to see how things were going."
"Same old shit, different day, really. Rebuilding, politics, other crap." He took a drink. "Getting old, relaxing in retirement."
"Nothing much then." I nodded. "You've been doing well, then?"
"Not my problem anymore." He grunted. "Not having to deal with the political crap is nice enough, I suppose."
I laughed. "Preaching to the choir."
+++
About three hours later, I said goodbye and walked out again, wishing him a nice a day and gifting him with a bottle of scotch.
He hadn't changed much, he'd just gotten older.
+++
Not much longer after that, I left that universe again. There wasn't much to do, and after I'd talked to everybody I'd wanted to, I'd simply left as suddenly as I'd came.
Which, of course, meant that it was time to check out how things were going in Supreme Commander.
Not... entirely certain if I wanted to use the Asura Commander for that, however. The Omega Commander chassis was fairly different from it, after all, though the colour scheme would denote it as mine. A familiar sight would probably help against misunderstandings.
Then again, I could also go full bore and bring something really impressive.
Hmm.
What to do...