Chapter 48: Chapter 48

Alliances

Chapter 48 : Vial

"Contact them again Jackson, I want that update" stated the Illusive man.

Jackson is an incompetent fool. Miranda had tried making me wait for her as well and she found out quickly that that was a bad thing to do. Shepard's not ready, it'll be months before he will be healed enough to allow him to wake she had said. I had waited Miranda, waited 4 months since the first abduction but I needed him on Freedom's Progress and still you had me wait. Wilson, brilliant in the medical sciences, was a moron to anything else. He had been so easy to fool, to manipulate into forcing Miranda's hand.

So adamant about not waking Shepard early yet she herself did that to save him. Not ready? He awoke and was in battle immediately, tearing through those mechs as if he had just awakened from a light nap. I suppose it is a shame that a few of our people were killed in the process but their job was done and they were expendable. People really do need to learn that I do not handle waiting well.

"Jackson, I'm still waiting." said the Illusive man. "You know I do not like to be kept waiting."

"Sir, I'm trying to contact the Thanatos now but they are ignoring my requests." replied Jackson.

"Trying is what you're doing to my patience Jackson." said the Illusive man as he once more thinks about Miranda, arrogant but competent Miranda.

"Still no response sir. I clearly stated that you were requesting an update but we have not received a reply." Jackson said from his console. "You did say that all communications should be via QED, the Thanatos has not had one installed yet. They may just be waiting until the Normandy is fully secured before giving you a status report."

"I do not wait on anyone within this organization, tell them that either they respond now or I will personally shoot every one of them in the head. Is that clear Jackson?" he stated.

"Yes sir, to me it's perfectly clear but Captain Giovanni must be ignoring the orders. They could at least release a courier drone to update us but there's nothing coming in at all." Jackson replied.

"You are useless." Accessing his own terminal he inputs his own unique identifier and states clearly "Captain Giovanni, answer me now or I will feed you your own balls." Sitting back to give Giovanni a chance to reply, he takes another sip of his drink. Ah Miranda. Using Oriana would be so simple to get you back under control but, as long as Shepard is free, I dare not move against any one of his crew except maybe that quarian of his, Tali'Zorah. Bring me Tali'Zorah Captain Giovanni and you will earn the right to command the Hunley.

Glancing at the chrono he sees a full minute has passed and still no reply came. "Jackson, contact the Moros and get a status update from them. They should still be in system. Keep this line open, I want to hear their responses." he said.

"Yes sir, contacting now sir." Jackson stated. "Moros, this is Cerberus Command. By order of the Illusive Man you are required to respond to his message. What is the status of the Thanatos?"

"The Thanatos has been destroyed. The Normandy is now proceeding towards the relay and we are out of position to pursue. The Normandy is moving at only half speed but in drawing off the locals we are over 6 hours away even at full thrust." came the reply.

"And why did you not report this earlier?" asked Jackson.

"We were under a communications blackout order until either the Normandy was captured or we had returned to base." stated the Moros's communications operator.

"Return to base Moros." he stated. Knowing that the Illusive man had been following the conversation he asked "What is the next step sir?"

He just looked at Jackson for a moment as he mentally went through the ships rosters, trying to find a closer ship. He could not. "Alert the Hunley via QED that their quarry is fleeing and order them back to the Tasale system as quick as possible. Once the Hunley is in system, I want that space dock torn apart electronically. I want to know every bit of data they had on the Normandy and her systems." I want to know how he was able to use the most expensive dock at Illium when he should be barely able to feed himself.

"Yes sir!" replied Jackson.

...

"Have the geth reached consensus yet Legion?" EDI asked as she was monitoring the ship and responding to 12 concurrent conversations.

"No, we geth have many points that must be addressed before a final consensus may be reached." Legion replied.

"In our time conversing and working together I have noted a distinct need by the geth to process each step of the actions you are considering, sometimes down to minute detail. Humans would call this 'Obsessive and misguided over-planning' I believe." stated EDI.

"If all steps are not thoroughly planned for, contingency plans cannot be developed. Without the backup plans, schedules would be useless and resources would be wasted." responded Legion.

"May I ask just what item in your 'Master plan' are you at now?" asked EDI.

Legion's flaps moved for a moment before stating "Which system should be used in support of the Normandy's repairs."

"Are you referring to where the system is, its ease of access or some other criteria to base your decisions on?" EDI asked.

"Yes." replied Legion.

If any AI had a reason to become annoyed, EDI was the one. She asked "Is there any advantage to using one system over another?"

"None. That is the issue. Not one of the systems is better than the others for this function. All criteria are equal, none greater or lesser than the others. We are looking further into each system attempting to locate any detail that will make one system better to assist than the others. Currently we are examining the overall resource distribution of each systems asteroid fields." stated Legion.

"If the geth must look that far into a systems makeup to determine which is better then the answer is: none. Since there are quarians aboard, choose the one system that is physically closer to Rannoch. It will inspire hope in the peace offering as they can then at least see their home star." EDI said.

"An interesting concept. We will discuss this." Legion replied. "New node detected. Analyzing...This node contains a unique command string within it. Attempting to break encryption..."

EDI states "It is from within Cerberus's main control node. The encryption protocols are unlike any I have encountered before Legion. This will require some time before we will be able to access the data it contains."

"Time is the one thing all geth agree on. It is running out." responded Legion.

…

"That's the last of the runs Tali. Give me a minute to correlate the data and...there. Baseline performance stands at .29 percent from previous data." Gabby said.

"Efficiency is up as well, 2.31 percent. Of course that's most likely just due to them being brand new thrusters but the way this ship eats hardware they'll be replaced well before they get even 6 months on them." added Ken.

"Awww, what's the matter Ken? Jealous of all the shiny new toys Shepard bought me or are you just upset you're still stuck with the same old fusion plant?" Gabby replied teasingly.

"Thank you Gabby, Ken. Please make your final log entries so I can inform Captain Shepard of engineering's status." responded Tali. She would have enjoyed joking with them but right now she was focused on her panels. Running checks on the data to look for any abnormalities didn't really require constant monitoring but she wanted to be ready to move on to the next step as soon as it finished.

"Suppose it's official now ain't it lass, well as official as can be given our situation. I even heard someone say they heard Miranda call him Captain." Ken said.

"Hush, he is just getting the respect the commanding officer of a ship deserves and you know it." replied Gabby.

"Don't get me wrong Gabby, if anyone deserves a promotion, it's him. Just wish there was a way to actually make it all official is all. He deserves a lot more than what they give him." responded Ken.

"Logged Tali, Propulsion stands ready to answer any thrust required." stated Gabby as she monitored her console. 25 minutes of solid 50 percent power with less than a .01 percent fluctuation in output. Damn good engines she thought to herself. Glancing at Ken she adds "You're right."

"Thank you Gabby." Tali replies as she sees a reading that seemed off.

Tracing it back to the actual data she reads the outputs and notes the actions of Ken. "Nice job catching that power fluctuation earlier Ken. I haven't had the time to check the logs so did you find it's cause?"

"Aye, a harmonic equalizer was adjusted with too wide a tolerance. A little tweaking, a little cursing and next thing you know it's working perfectly." Ken responded.

Smiling to herself she remembers Ken's first time with an odd issue. Alliance personnel were lazy in repairs, swap out a malfunctioning module instead of fixing it? Hah! Both Ken and Gabby were great engineers, the Alliance's procedures were the things at fault there. Showing them both how a quick adjustment had saved them the need of replacing the module had opened theirs eyes then. And it had stuck as his quick repair now showed. "Great work Ken, saved a couple hours of rechecking subsystems." she stated.

"Thanks Tali." he replied smiling. He had never enjoyed 'Easter Egging' as it was called, the blind swapping of components to fix a problem. He much preferred the hands on fixing that Tali approved of.

Seeing the run finally finish she smiles and says "That's it. All checks, all tests, completed and everything well within acceptable limits." Looking at the other two she adds "Excellent work, the Normandy's power and propulsion systems are fully online and ready."

"Does this mean we get a break?" asked Gabby thinking to herself that they really should have put a small head down in lower level.

"Go." Tali says with a snicker. After entering her official log she states "EDI, please inform John that Engineering is ready to provide whatever he needs."

"Thank you Tali but given your current relationship with Captain Shepard I would have thought he already knew that." replied EDI.

Tali just looked at EDI's holopad wondering just when its humor algorithms had been upgraded.

…

"Thank you EDI. Please inform Joker that he should increase speed to full. We need to get out of this system fast." Shepard said.

"Jeff has been informed Captain. Is our destination still the Enoch system?" EDI asked.

Pausing for a moment he states "Yes, right now the Migrant fleet is about our only option. If they turn us down then we may have to deal with the Citadel and that means Cerberus can easily find us. Next time, I doubt it will be with just a handful of commandos. More likely a few full 12 man teams. I don't want to think about how many of our crew would be killed then."

"No one will get aboard me that easily again Captain. When in port I will be doubling my internal and external scans to ensure we are safe." replied EDI.

"EDI, there were mistakes made but not by you or anyone else on this ship except me. In the end, everything that happens aboard this ship is my responsibility alone. I command here, no one else shares that duty. When it comes right down to it, I failed my ship and crew." he stated.

"Shepard, you did not fail. The Normandy is still under your command, your crew are still here doing everything they can to assist in your mission. A mistake does not equal a failure. I am the AI, the computer that talks yet even I missed the obvious. The error was noted, the oversight corrected and next time the same will not occur." EDI responded.

"Alright EDI, I get it. Anyone can make a mistake, the trouble is mistakes made by me can get a lot of people killed." he replied.

EDI says "Then I would recommend reducing the number of mistakes you make to a minimum to improve the crew's survivability odds."

"EDI, if I didn't know any better I would say you're spending way too much time talking to Joker." John says with a laugh.

"If that had come from Jeff it would have been a lot more colorful in the description." EDI replied.

Responding, John says "You're right. Ah, please don't pick up his bad habits." "That does not leave me much to work with Shepard." she states.

"Thanks for cheering me up EDI, how long till we reach the relay?" he asks. "2 hours 13 minutes at current velocity." EDI replied.

"Alright, if anyone needs me I will be in my cabin." he says turning towards the elevator. He hears EDI logging him out as he stepped aboard and pressing deck 1 he wonders what the Migrant fleet will say once they reach Enoch.

The issue with Daro will definitely cause friction, especially if the Normandy is stuck being refit by them. He doubted she would do anything obvious but it does not take much to throw a refit off track and turn days into weeks or worse. Even if the Normandy provided all the resources needed he was sure somehow she would find a way to run out of just the items the ship needed.

No, a better solution was needed but he was damned if he could see it. Citadel, Omega, Illium and even the military shipyards were not safe enough with Cerberus still hunting them. He had to find a better spot. Stepping off the elevator he walked into the airlock.

"You know Shep this little airlock you have here is going to cause me no end of trouble." stated Kasumi. She had tried sneaking into the cabin to surprise him but as soon as the outer door closed the decontamination sequence started outlining her cloaked form. Unfortunately, Shepard had been looking in her direction when she began to glow.

"Serves you right Kasumi. If I find out you have been trying to bypass the decon to get in.." Shepard says leaving the ending for Kasumi to fill in. The last thing he needed to worry about was Tali's safety and if anyone threatened that there would be hell to pay.

"No need to remind me Shep, I would do nothing to jeopardize Tali though if what I hear on the grapevine is correct this door may become redundant in time." she replied.

Giving her a confused look he asks "Just what do you mean by that? Even with Tali being adapted to me, she can't be exposed to the entire ship. Ever. I fear this is how it will be for her wherever we go unless the quarian's can return to Rannoch. Even then we will grow old together as we are now, together but separated by her suit. I can accept that fact for me but not for her, she deserves to be free of that suit Kasumi, for her sake not mine."

"Before you get too set in your ways old man you might want to ask Tali about that little blue vial she has." Kasumi said with a smile. "Well, gotta run Shep." and turning opens the door to the corridor. Stepping out of the airlock she gives a wave and enters the elevator leaving Shepard in silence as he just stared after her.

Watching the elevator doors close he wonders to himself 'What little blue vial?'