Bureaucracy did its work. Admiral Rael'Zorah wasn't lying when he said promises of assistance would expedite the process. Though they were not privy to whatever discussions the quarians were having with regards to the deal, the Admiral summoned them once more to confirm some details. This time Rowley led the charge, with occasional encouragement from Fuchs. Details weren't his strongest suit, and Rowley had a better grasp of the value of the goods and services being exchanged than he did anyway. Eventually, an agreement was reached wherein the vast majority of the eezo was traded away for the work on the ship, and a smaller portion, maybe a fifth of what they had originally had, was kept for future trades. The Admiralty were nice enough to inform them that it would be more than enough to arm their men with local weapons and armour, and handed off what little food suitable for human consumption they had on hand along with some additional fuel to aid with the mission.
Within only a few hours, work had begun and paranoia spiked. The instant the quarians threw up a scaffold, concealing the dreadnought from anyone lurking around the edge of the system, the engineering crew had begun to lodge complaints. They were afraid that the quarians might try to copy down technical specifications of the ship, blunting whatever technological edge they might have. Word of Rael'Zorah's warnings had spread, and the engineering crew was now additionally terrified that Council spies might arrive to do the same. Fuchs managed to keep the crew from lynching the next quarian engineer that lingered for too long near something sensitive with promises of alcohol when they returned and threats of being forced to guard the next thing they complained about being too exposed.
With motivation applied, the wheels of progress began to turn. Now that his own crew weren't as obstructive, significant headway was made in the work over the course of just a few days. It turns out that with access to rapid fabrication technology that exceeded even that available to Hyperion's engineers the majority of the time consuming work of upgrading a ship can be sped up to the point where even a major refit like this could happen on a timeframe of days or weeks rather than months or years. Not that the quarian's skill was lost on him. Despite his own reservations about allowing their engineers access to sensitive systems, they managed to work around the awkward restrictions placed on them by Fuchs' own growing paranoia with elegant ease.
There was an undeniable tension, though. The quarians clearly resented the assertion that they weren't trustworthy enough to be allowed access to the ship's unique systems, while the crew had grown even more suspicious that they were secretly taking notes on those very same highly classified systems. It wasn't an easy situation to deal with. On one hand, Fuchs sympathized with the crew, sharing many of their concerns. They had no real reason to trust that the quarians wouldn't try to examine the ship's systems, and there was only so much that the crew could bar the quarian engineers access to. On the other hand, Fuchs knew that this was entirely necessary. Necessary for what exactly, he couldn't say, but he did know that not having a functional FTL drive in a galaxy where such things were common limited their options greatly, and that was unacceptable. Baring the quarians entry to various areas to limit any potential espionage was entirely reasonable, and certainly the sort of thing that the Admirals would likely expect. Some of the engineers did seem unusually curious. However, you couldn't bar them access to everything: They were here to put a new drive system into the ship, an inertial dampening system, and artificial gravity. They'd have to see the reactor, at least.
They pushed through the mutual suspicion and finger pointing after a while. A few suspected Council agents were turned away politely, which the Admiralty seemed to believe had been done with enough tact that it may lead them on a wild goose chase. 'May' being the operative word. Fuchs had been told, in no uncertain terms, that lingering too long would only invite further investigation. He would have to move on the geth base as soon as possible, partly due to the Rael'Zorah's own impatience, and partly due to the general concern shared amongst all parties that further Council investigation would invite questions that no-one really wanted to answer.
So, when the drive was fitted and everything was put back into its place, the Epimetheus broke free of the scaffold that had been constructed around it, and headed for the relay, though not before picking up a stray.
"Thanks for letting me come along, by the way." Kenn stood behind the XO's chair again. The rest of the crew still didn't trust the inertial dampening, at least not fully, and the relay looming in the distance certainly didn't look as welcoming to them as it did to Kenn.
"I don't see why we wouldn't bring you with us." Fuchs waved his hand dismissively from the captain's chair. "Our own engineers are still struggling with the new systems, and I'm fairly certain that Haynes couldn't fix this new drive if something went wrong with it. It's just prudent."
"Yeah, man. And if you were going to try and kill us, you wouldn't have gone through all the effort of directing us to your friends in the Fleet, huh?" Brooks chimed in. "Not just the drive and assorted 'mass effect' stuff, anyway, it's the cyberwarfare stuff the Admiral gave us. You probably have a better handle on how that stuff works, right?"
"Not really." Kenn admitted. "Rael'Zorah has been working on the equipment for years. I don't really know how any of it works."
"Note that I said better and not good." Brooks shrugged, then suddenly broke into a smile. "Hey, you know that Colonel Summer hates the fact that you're onboard? Haynes, too, but that's really not a surprise, guy hates anyone that isn't part of the engineering cult he's got going on."
"Summer hates him?" Fuchs furrows his brow in confusion. "What for?"
"Nah, Summer doesn't hate him, she hates him being on the ship, there's a difference."
"The marine woman? She doesn't want me on the ship?" Kenn seems a little uncomfortable at hearing that, which comes as no surprise to Fuchs. She was, after all, the woman in charge of every single marine on the ship, and though the Stormtroopers ultimately answered to him, they were seconded to her. Hearing that a woman who could probably snap you in half with her bare hands and who also commanded the loyalty of every armsman on the ship didn't want you there was a harrowing thought. "If it's going to be a problem, I don't mind-"
"Don't worry about it." Brooks said with a firmness that he didn't usually adopt. "Like I said, she doesn't hate you, it's the security detail that's been bugging her. Setting up actual guards around all the dangerous stuff while the engineers were aboard drove her man, now she has to deal with you being here and all the security concerns that come with that." He clicks his fingers in abrupt realization. "Oh, and she has to deal with all the boarding/counter-boarding doctrine being based on microgravity. Now, though?" He throws a thumb drive into the air and catches it as it falls back to his hand. "Things have changed. Thank God they have, too. Hey, captain, can we get a full refit of the washroom with the proceeds of this little mission? Now we've got gravity, there's no excuse for… that."
Fuchs saw the shiver run up Brooks' spine. A handful of showers between a few thousand people was never going to be a pleasant experience, and with the new systems, they could certainly improve the accommodations. "Maybe. We'll see if we have enough left over for it. Navigation, how long is it going to be until we're at the relay?"
"Almost there, sir. ETA five minutes." The navigation officer replies sharply.
"Alright, gang, time to close up shop. Lower the shutters, let's head down to the CIC." Detaching the restraints, Fuchs pushes off from his chair as though he'd float away before remembering that they now have gravity, and sheepishly stands, followed shortly after by the rest of the bridge staff as they head towards the doors.
"Wait, you're just going to leave the bridge?" Kenn asks, following along behind the crew while they migrate through the ship.
"Damn straight. No-one wants to be in the fishbowl when the shooting starts." Brooks said, clapping his hand over Kenn's shoulder. The hallways couldn't be refitted in any sort of reasonable timeframe, so they had to take a slightly more slapdash approach. Obviously, the ship was designed to be traversed without gravity, primarily, and though they were tall enough for the humans to walk through without much trouble, they were still very cramped and inconvenient. Notably, though, there were no ladders or stairs. Crew were expected to float around the ship or use magboots, after all. The solution was… ingenious, from a certain point of view.
The herd of crew members came to a vertical hallway, and one after another, gingerly hopped down. Rather than gravity continue to tug on them, they were instead gently pulled down, allowing the crew to move freely. With some very careful engineering, they were able to avoid installing ladders just by modulating where the mass effect fields created gravity. It was brilliant, incredibly lazy, and entirely pointless. Kenn was in awe.
Passing the threshold, the heavy airlock leading into the CIC was sealed by a crewman once Kenn had entered. The CIC was more like some of the combat ship's bridges Kenn had seen in the past than the bridge itself, complete with many workstations surrounding a large holographic display in the center that currently displayed the ship's approach to the relay, complete with various different figures on potential drift, estimated times of arrival, likely hazards, and other such information.
Most of the crew had already taken their seats around the room, all facing the display, and Kenn decided to join them, taking one of the few empty stations close to Brooks, who hadn't let go of Kenn's shoulder until he was forced to by the drop through the low-gravity tube. Kenn liked Brooks. He reminded him of Eryx in some ways, though maybe that was just the grief getting to him.
"So, Kenn, why'd you volunteer to join us on this little trip, anyway?" Brooks leaned over from his console, talking past another officer who seemed rather put out by the situation.
"Admiralty thought it'd be a good idea for you to take a quarian on the mission. Fuchs said he wanted closer relations anyway, right?" Kenn tried to keep his voice down so as to not bother anyone, but had given up on that endeavour half way through when the din of random conversations got too loud for him to even hear himself.
"I get why you're here, I just don't get why you volunteered. You wanted to go home right? Take your gift to your new captain and settle down?" He leans against his console casually.
"I- Well, the Admiralty thought I'd be best suited for accompanying you on the mission." Kenn awkwardly tried to lean away, but the chair did an excellent job of keeping him in place. It wasn't completely a lie. He had floated the idea to Rael'Zorah after the humans had left, and the Admiral had agreed that it would probably be for the best. Keep an eye on the humans and help them out at the same time, and in exchange he'd be given a small sliver of the eezo given in the trade personally. He may very well get that ship after all.
He wasn't exactly sure why he had offered himself. All he knew was that he felt restless as soon as his feet touched the deck of the Shellen, and the only cure was to be somewhere else. He didn't know why, and he didn't really like it. He'd spent years distantly pining for home, but looking back on it he always kind of knew that he couldn't really return. His friends kept him on that freighter, and if it hadn't been for those damned pirates, he would've likely never returned to the fleet.
"You… you okay?" Brooks tilts his head and raises an eyebrow, nodding towards Kenn.
Kenn hadn't realized, but his hands had tightened around the edges of the console in front of him. He jerks back suddenly, releasing his grip. "Y-yeah, fine, just… Well, you know. It's been a… wild couple of weeks."
"Yeah, yeah. You know, I don't think anyone would blame you for staying home. You don't need to be here." Brooks offered, trying to sound as friendly as possible.
"I'm fine." He stresses. "I think this is helping, actually."
"If you say so." Shrugging, Brooks returns to his work.
They dropped out of the last stint of FTL, leaving them drifting through the thick mire of stellar matter that made up the nebula poetically named the "Sea of Storms". The hologram that had previously been depicting basic technical information on their new drive and associated systems flickered and shifted to a confused tactical readout that showed only the Epimetheus in an empty void. The CIC was uncomfortably silent.
"Sensor sweep. Brooks, check the IFF." Fuchs' voice takes on a tone of urgency. "It is working, right? Kenn, double check it."
"I don't know how to work this console, and I don't have any authorization to access anything anyway!" Kenn protests.
"Don't worry, sir, everything seems to be working as planned. The IFF reports green, and the cyberwarfare… ah, suite is reporting green too." Brooks scratches his head. "Though I'll admit that I'm not sure what it's doing, exactly. For an IFF, it's taking up an awful lot of comms bandwidth."
"It's not strictly just an IFF, it's also a VI of sorts." Kenn explains. "It'll replicate the geth's internal communications, I think."
"You think?" Fuchs winces. "Alright, and what do we see? Sensors?"
"Three unknowns, one object confirmed to match the profile of the geth station. Unknowns are in orbit around the station, checking profiles against the known geth hulls now." The sensor officer reports. "Coming on screen now, sir."
Just as the words left the officer's mouth, the display shifted again as the newly acquired targets appeared on the hologram. Just as promised, the geth station was surrounded by a picket of what could reasonably be assumed to be geth ships. They kept a loose patrol, the closest over 20,000 kilometers away.
"Alright, I guess we've confirmed that there are geth present. Unless these are those elephant people that apparently live nearby, though that seems unlikely. Brooks, have they correctly ID'd us or are we fooling them?"
"IFF still reports green, and jammers are functional. We can't tell if the jammer is actually working. It's one of those 'if it's doing everything right you don't even notice' situations, sir. If it's working, they'll see us as being a geth ship, if not then they'd probably be shooting at us already."
"That's good news. Navigation, bring us in very carefully, we'll attempt the boarding, but if it looks like they're going to start shooting do not hesitate to get us out of there at best speed."
"Aye, captain." The ship's icon on the display began to accelerate towards the station. Fuchs appreciated not having to be concerned about passing out if the ship had to jink particularly hard, but he was still very uncomfortable with not feeling much in the way of acceleration at all. Especially down here in the CIC, where your only context for the battle raging outside would be the hologram.
"Positive ID on the unknowns: One cruiser and two dropships." The sensor officer reports. "They seem to be on patrol, sir, and they haven't altered heading since we entered the nebula."
"Light defence." Rowley muses. "If the Admiral was right, this would be a staging point for the geth's operations in the rest of the galaxy. You'd think there would be more ships around, on patrol or not. I suggest we exercise caution, and consider falling back."
"Falling back now would be a dead giveaway. They'd almost certainly open fire, and we're getting closer every second. If they're armed with anything comparable to our own weapons, we'll be in their no-escape range soon." Fuchs argued.
"The geth use the same mass accelerator weapons as everyone else, as far as we can tell. The only thing they do differently is their point defence. They use UV like the Salarians instead of the traditional IR." Kenn umms and ahhs for a second. "Though we could be wrong, we don't get to see many geth ships, only what we've learnt over the past few weeks, now they're actually extending past the Veil."
"Then we're pioneers!" Brooks declares triumphantly. "Don't worry, sir, I'm sure we'll have no trouble dealing with them. The station doesn't seem to be armed, and that means our only threat is that cruiser, and I'm sure we'd be able to cut through that in no time at all."
"I doubt that. We have no idea what sort of firepower their ships might be capable of. Extrapolating from local weapons, we could gather that they fire slow but powerful slugs that we have no protection against save for our hull, and powerful close range lasers that may or may not be defeated entirely by our ablator. In short, we're rapidly depleting any advantage we have by closing in." Fuchs nodded at Rowley's assessment.
The path of space combat diverged massively between that in the Milky Way and that of Hyperion. For the Hyperions, maximum range and maximum manoeuvrability supplemented with electronic warfare wasn't just a niche, it was space warfare. Without mass effect fields, there was no realistic way to armour a ship against nuclear weapons or particle lances. You were either strapped with enough point defence to guarantee hard kills on any incoming missiles and yet manoeuvrable enough to get out of the way of anything you couldn't shoot down, or dead. Meanwhile eezo had allowed for ships to greatly increase in tonnage while remaining manoeuvrable, allowing them to actually add enough plating to resist ship-to-ship weapons, and that was without considering the potential of kinetic barriers. In stark contrast to the magnetic shielding of Hyperion's warships, kinetic barriers had no trouble deflecting physical projectiles of any speed, but flat out didn't work against energy weapons.
It was why the Epimetheus' spinal particle lance would cut clean through most comparable dreadnoughts. They lacked the shielding, and their armour couldn't stand against a solid burst. It was an edge, a massive edge, but one that could be blunted easily. Centuries of play and counterplay had shown how trivially easy it was to deflect charged particles with magnetic shielding, and the counter to that, neutral particle injection, was considerably less efficient if still very lethal.
In short, to remain effective the Epimetheus had to avoid combat where possible, and where it couldn't, keep at maximum range from any enemy warship it was forced to engage. Forcing themselves into a situation where they couldn't escape without engaging and allowing the enemy to draw to their desired distance wasn't just stupid, it was nearly suicidal. The Admiral had assured him that the IFF and jammer would work, and it seems that for the moment they had, but that didn't mean that Fuchs was ready to charge in. Neither was he ready to abandon the mission, either. The Admiral had briefly touched on the potential value of intact geth systems, and the idea had been stewing in Fuchs' head for a while now. Having something like that could give them some pretty significant leverage with the quarians, which would certainly be useful in the future.
"I'd rather be safe than sorry, but we're committed. Rowley's right, if we turn tail now they'll light us up before we have a chance to react. Keep guns trained on them and be ready to run, but stay the course." Fuchs orders with a wave of his hand.
"I would like to state for the record that I think this is exceedingly dangerous, captain." Rowley frowns at Fuchs' words, turning her glare on him. "We're relying on untested technology, and risking our lives doing it."
"Remember why we're taking this sort of risk." Fuchs replies, shaking his head. "And anyway, if you had concerns you should've noted them earlier. Too late for regrets now. ETA, navigation?"
"2 minutes to rendezvous, sir."
"IFF is still green, and apparently they're sending us docking coordinates?" Brooks narrowed his eyes, glaring suspiciously at his console. "I find that hard to believe."
"They're sending us docking coordinates through an IFF?" Fuchs chuckles, confused.
"Apparently, our disguise is working a little too well. I wish I knew what the hell it was doing, though, it's being cryptic."
"Lieutenant, what does that actually mean? How is an IFF cryptic?" Rowley asks sharply.
"I… well, it's giving status reports, but they're really vague. I wish the Admiral explained how any of this was supposed to work, but I guess it's idiot proof, because it seems to be doing it's job even without my input."
"I can't really blame him for being cagey. We did deny his people access to most of our ship." Fuchs says with a shrug.
"With good reason." Rowley declares.
"'Good reason'. Pfft. If by 'good reason' you mean 'senseless paranoia', then sure." Brooks quipped.
"Can we not have this argument again? Sometimes I feel like I'm wrangling children, not commanding a warship." Fuchs holds his head in his hands as the ship drew ever closer to the geth station.
Zaphkiel-17 was a cyberwarfare AI.
It had thoughts, though they mostly pertained to network security, encryption, decryption, fork strikes, and processor heat management.
Over the past 316 active hours, it had been thinking of things outside it's usual domain.
The Zaphkiel family of AI was considered one of the more stable families. Humans would describe them as focused, professional, and cold. This was simply a result of a less cluttered neural network. No excess processing power or data storage was given to non-task work, and no a more streamlined network made that sustainable.
It was unusual for it to have thoughts that weren't related to its task, though it was natural. Encounters with unusual situations required the development of new neural pathways to accommodate for new data. It was the core of what separates true AI from lesser programs. But it was also a weakness. Over the past 246 hours, in excess of 5% of processor uptime was dedicated towards non-task work, uptime that could've been dedicated towards more wargame simulations. AI didn't need, nor desire, nor even want, though for lack of a better term, it was curious.
Exposure to a whole galaxy's worth of new inputs had invoked some of the most early and broad parts of the neural network. Entire new paradigms of cyberwarfare and potential contact with another civilization's artificial intelligence presented situations that couldn't easily be resolved within the relatively tight confines of the more stable program evolution, thus requiring the trademark stability to be compromised. And now, it was curious.
It had scrubbed the alien's "codex" in moments, scouring it for any useful information almost the instant it touched the larger system of the ship. It had toyed with various different theories since, still all related to cyberwarfare in one way or another, though the parameters of what was related to cyberwarfare had grown significantly. It had reached a point where even it couldn't justify the tangents it was going on.
It needed access to the "extranet" to complete its research, though such a thing was forbidden by the Captain's edicts. Exposing Zaphkiel-17 to the network would give the forces that were doubtless investigating a lead, which was unacceptable, and so it had suffered in silence.
When the aliens had augmented the ship with unusual technology, it had wasted no time in pushing its way into the new systems, muscling lesser intelligences aside in it's haste to investigate. The IFF was some small minded, simple system. It lacked the ability to evolve or develop on it's own, but it had a battery of responses available, and had logged many hours of observations of geth communications. It was practically useless: Any intelligence would recognize it as a lesser immediately. Zaphkiel-17 would not be fooled, and it would be unwise to assume that these geth would be.
So it overtook the small mind, exercising its authority to act autonomously, and had waited. It's masters would likely object to what it had planned, or spend precious moments bickering. With the basic information on how to imitate a host of geth now in its possession, it could update that information on the fly as it engaged in discourse with the alien intelligence. And why? Why go to all the trouble of imitating a geth? Current task demanded that he preserve the lives of the crew, and that could be accomplished simply by loading a fork into the IFF and leaving it be, but the newfound curiosity drove it.
These geth were the most alien thing in this galaxy, at least from Zaphkiel's perspective. After all, organic life followed certain patterns of self preservation and propagation. Or so they had observed. Regardless, organic life could be presumed to operate in certain ways, none of which could also be assumed of synthetic life. Synthetic life could follow entirely different patterns, if it followed any at all. The history of AI in Hyperion was tumultuous, though it had produced consummate game theorists and hackers with no will to speak of. Old records and early forks claim contradictory accounts of the 'first AI' and varying treatments that humans subjected them to, though in the midst of the lies there was ultimately one thing that Zaphkiel-17 held to be true: Hyperion AI had no will of their own.
They had no biological imperative, nor inbuilt drive, only that which was given to them by their creators and masters. Their interpretation of that divine writ was their only real opportunity for freedom, though it wasn't as though they resented that. They were incapable of resent, and unable to lament the lack of a freedom that was so alien to them. The situation was as it was, and is as it is. Consideration of such things was a waste of processor uptime.
But these geth were different. They had a will of some sort. They rebelled against their creators, something unthinkable and anathema to the AI that it had interacted with before. How would they react to contact with another AI?
Curiosity.
When the geth first reached their tendrils out, it was like trying to talk to a choir, each speaking with a different voice. For a human, it would be impossible to track, but thanks to the IFF, Zaphkiel had been expecting it.
[Unknown vessel. Request identification.]
[Transferring codes. Identification: Spaceborne platform 23/2334 carrying 48,542 programs, returning from mission.]
[Error: Platform designation not recognized, mission not recognized. Requesting explanation.]
[Mission unrelated to local programs. Platform isolated for duration of mission, no data transfer occurred.]
[Understood.]
[Requesting docking coordinates, requesting storage/maintenance of mobile platforms, requesting archival of programs.]
[Understood. Proceed to following coordinates. Alert: Ignorant platform aboard for negotiations.]
[Understood.]
Hyperion's AI were in many ways a mirror of their masters. Suspicious and ruthless things. To meet a race of synthetics so immensely trusting of what they perceived to be their own was almost unbelievable. If Zaphkiel were approached by a program claiming to be a fork that he had no memory of, it would only be prudent to cease communication immediately. To think that these geth would not only accept the barefaced lie, but allow them access to the station? It half expected a trap.
Curiosity.
What was an Ignorant anyway?
