Carol watched as her adopted daughter got into a large black SUV parked at the curb outside the Dallon house, waving back to her other daughter who was standing next to her husband. Both waved in turn, then the vehicle drove off.
She sighed, looking at her sister who was right next to her in the living room. "See? And neither one of them will tell me where Amy goes, or who is paying for all that," she grumbled as she flopped rather gracelessly into a chair. "Ever since those FBI idiots turned up..." With a shake of her head, she leaned forward and snagged her half-empty coffee mug off the table in front of her, then sat there holding it in both hands and glowering into the dark liquid.
Sarah took a seat in another chair opposite her and shrugged. "I don't see the problem, Carol. The government did tell us that she was going to be offered projects every now and then, at a rate that is frankly a little disturbing, but considering just how effective her abilities are, probably not surprising. And it's happened several times before, after all. She got a trip to Washington out of it, and Galveston, not to mention Vancouver. And for once nothing involving Endbringers or any major threat like that. She's happy, she's earning more money than both of us put together, and she's certainly not causing any problems for New Wave. Quite the reverse."
"But I don't know what she's doing!" Carol snapped, then flushed a little when Sarah gave her an askance look. "You know what I meant," she added in a lower voice.
"I do, yes. And like I've said before, let it go. Your controlling attitude caused problems that we were lucky to keep under control, and you know that the next time, if there is one, they won't be playing around. Amy's done nothing wrong, and to be honest the only problem in all this is coming from you. Just relax for once, let her do whatever it is she's doing, and everyone will be a lot happier." Sarah shook her head as Carol glowered at her. "Why do we keep having the same conversation, anyway? This is at least the fourth time we've gone over this exact same subject in slightly different words."
Mark and Vicky came in the front door just as Carol was about to make a retort, causing her to swallow words that would probably have made her sister glare at her. She looked at the pair as they walked into the living room. "So where is Amy going this time?" she demanded of her other daughter. She was completely certain that Vicky knew, as both sisters were extremely close, especially after what had happened.
"That information is unavailable," Vicky said without any emotion visible in her expression, before suddenly smirking. "I love saying that."
"Vicky..." Carol said warningly.
The blonde grinned at her. "You don't have the right clearance, Mom. I couldn't tell you even if I wanted to."
Mark made an amused sound but when Carol snapped her eyes to his he was merely looking innocently out the window with a blank expression. She narrowed her gaze, sure he was hiding something too, but unable to think of any way of finding out without risking certain consequences that had been made plain to her she wouldn't enjoy. Eventually she just drained the last of the coffee and slammed the mug back onto the table before folding her arms and sulking.
She knew she was sulking, but she just couldn't help it. No one would tell her anything, and it was driving her around the bend. And she couldn't do anything about it!
"How the hell do my daughters have a higher security clearance than I do?" she demanded rhetorically.
The other three exchanged glances, then simultaneously shrugged. Sarah was definitely hiding a smile, Carol noticed, which didn't help in the slightest.
"I would assume due to having abilities that the government desires to make use of," Mark replied mildly. "Presumably biological research of some sort in Amy's case. But I'm not going to pry. Sarah? Would you like a glass of wine?"
"Thank you, Mark, that would be lovely," Sarah replied, nodding. He disappeared into the kitchen. Vicky watched him go then announced, "I'm going out with some friends, OK, Mom?" before zipping up the stairs without waiting for an answer. Carol opened her mouth, but closed it again having said nothing, and slumped back into her chair with a sigh.
"Life used to be so much simpler," she muttered.
"And much more annoying," Sarah agreed cheerfully, accepting the wineglass Mark handed her as he returned. He gave another to Carol, who took it with a grunt then poured half of the contents down her throat. Sitting down he picked up a book and flipped through it, settling on a page and starting to read.
Carol looked at him, rolled her eyes a little, and sipped more wine, while wondering just how and when things had become so peculiar around here.
Something was behind it but she still had no idea what even after months of puzzling over the problem. Which was really irritating.
Tali waved the work crew into action having carefully scanned the section they were dismantling to make sure everything was correctly made inert. The six-person team moved forward and started using a number of tools designed specifically for the job to remove the engine core. Three other crews were currently dismantling the aft section of the hull, having it down to the longitudinal frame members by now with all the removed inner and outer hull plates having been numbered, imaged, and stacked safely off to one side of the vast room. The intent was to completely tear down the Salarian ship, fully inspect every single part, inventory what was missing or damaged, and ultimately fabricate replacements to allow it to be reassembled.
Longer term plans would result in new ships being designed, Tali and Taylor already well into that phase after only a few weeks, but DARPA and Gravtec wanted this craft functional again as soon as possible for a number of reasons.
They'd already completely stripped all the computing hardware and electronics out of the ship, much of which was still functional after some relatively minor work. Salarians did build reliable computers, even Taylor had admitted that. Tali's friend had also then spent half an hour explaining just how primitive the hardware really was and why, which had amused Tali to no end as she was absolutely certain the comments would have highly annoyed the Salarians. They did tend to consider their designs at or beyond cutting edge, after all.
They'd never met Taylor Hebert, though…
Tali herself had been absolutely stunned when Taylor had initially shown her the sort of thing she'd designed. The optronic computing systems were… almost impossible. Even the Geth didn't have processors or memory remotely comparable to what the young human had apparently invented as a side project for something else she was working on. No one had anything even close to it. Not even the Protheans.
Taylor was something else.
And a very good friend as far as Tali was concerned. Not just because she owed the girl her life, but because Taylor had gone well out of her way to help the Quarian people as a whole. They might not realize it yet, but at some point in the not too distant future, her people were going to have something of a shock. A pleasant one, but a shock. She grinned to herself thinking about the reaction if they were able to do all the things that had been discussed here and with the US government since shortly after she'd arrived on this extraordinary planet.
She was pretty certain that they'd manage it. The resources being poured into the whole thing were ridiculous even by Citadel standards. For that matter, she was sure that the Council and all the Citadel species simply wouldn't believe most of what was happening. At times she had trouble believing it herself and she was living it.
Tali was rather curious to see what the end result would be if the Council did find out, because she was fairly certain that they were going to get rather upset for any number of reasons. Oddly enough that didn't particularly bother her. Considering her people's history with the bosh'tets she felt that a little payback was entirely warranted, and probably something that was going to be hilarious to witness…
Something to look forward to.
"Tali?"
She turned at the voice, to see Jacob, one of the fusion technicians who was involved in extracting the reactors from the Klaatu wreckage. "Yes, Jacob?" she asked.
He held out a tablet, which was displaying a schematic of the primary power reactor fuel feed system. Pointing at one section, he asked, "This coupling here seems to require access from under the reactor to remove, which would need us to cut through one of the hull ribs, and we can't lift the reactor confinement vessel out without disconnecting it first. That seems a little inefficient. Is there something we're missing?"
She accepted the tablet and flicked through the diagrams, which had been downloaded and converted from the ship's own engineering database. "Here. If you remove the port ignition array, then the injector pinch coils, you can get access to the coupling from the other side and disconnect it like that, see?"
He studied the diagram where her finger was indicating, then slowly nodded. "Yeah. OK, that's… a little awkward, but we can do it."
Tali handed the tablet back. "This class of reactor was actually designed for a slightly larger hull and it's squeezed into a space that's not really big enough for it," she explained, nodding at the ship. "The Salarians tend to keep using a design they know works until they're forced to replace it, only doing minor upgrades. It's cheaper, since they make more of any one model of whatever it is. For a ship like this, which isn't a state of the art vessel, there's no real pressure to make a new version if the older one can be made to fit. And they're very reliable, so there's not usually any requirement to remove the confinement vessel unless the ship's undergoing a complete refit."
"Fair enough. That makes sense, I guess." He looked up at the partially skeletonized starship. Blue light flared from the bow where another team was using plasma cutters to slice away at hull plates that had been severely twisted from the Batarian attack. "I suppose they pretty much build the power rooms around the reactors?"
"More or less that, yes." She inspected the hull as well. "These ships are expensive, but not nearly as much as a full spec warship would be, and with this much damage it would normally be scrapped. My people would fix it, like we're doing now, but hardly anyone else would. The Salarians would just strip out a few of the more useful parts like the computers and sensors then scrap everything else since it would be cheaper to build a new ship from their point of view. It's an older frigate design and those are common enough it wouldn't be worth the effort."
"Huh." He nodded slowly. "Interesting." Then he smiled a little. "When we put it back together again it's going to be a lot better than it started as..."
She laughed. "Oh, very true indeed. I can hardly wait."
He lifted a hand in a wave and walked off, climbing one of the access stairs and entering the lower deck of the ship. Once he'd vanished inside she went back to coordinating the engine core removal, intermittently being asked questions by other work teams as they encountered minor issues here and there. Overall, due to all the data she'd been able to give them, their own very high competence level, and essentially unlimited resources, the work went much, much more smoothly and quickly than she'd have ever expected.
Tali was in her element, having a hell of a lot of fun, and anticipating many interesting things that would occur over the next months and years.
Her father was going to be very surprised at what she brought home as a Pilgrimage gift, she thought happily...
"We need to get this stuff off the planet," Taylor said, pointing at the containers in which every nanogram of element zero that had been pulled out of the Salarian ship had been put. She'd even arranged to strip it out of all the omnitools and other equipment that Tali had brought through the portal with her.
Brendan looked over the faintly glowing stuff in the isolation containers, then turned to the girl. She was standing in the middle of the high security research lab with her arms folded, giving the containers an unhappy look. Tali and Angus, along with several scientists from both Gravtec and DARPA, were arranged around the lab and listening quietly.
"Why?" he asked curiously. As she was about to speak, he held up a hand. "I mean, from what I've learn the material is the key to a whole series of very useful technologies. Tali's people's tech base, along with that of every species associated with the Citadel in her universe, all rely totally on the material. Why do we want to throw away something so important?"
The girl hooked one of the tall stools near a workbench with her foot and pulled it closer, then sat on it, her feet up on the bar near the bottom. She kept examining the containers as she spoke.
"It's dangerous. First, it's toxic. There are all sorts of biological interactions which range from just nasty to lethal, even with the minor benefits of biotics, as the Citadel species call it. The data shows that the Asari are dependent on the stuff, but every other species has some pretty unpleasant interactions almost all the time. Amy's sure that it will do fairly horrible things to humans if they ingest it, even in trace quantities, with only a rare case of it not basically causing cancer of the everything. Or something worse."
He nodded, listening intently. He'd read the reports the Dallon girl had produced, and knew that her ability was very powerful indeed. If she said that, she was undoubtedly right. The work the rest of the biological researchers had done using more traditional means tended to agree as well.
"Secondly, it's not doing anything I can't already do better already. Yeah, that mass alteration thing is pretty cool but it was only a small mod to the GRF to do the same thing, without any of the dangers of overloading a chunk of the damn stuff. I mean, it's ridiculous! You put electricity into it and basically magic happens. Mass effect fields are a weird and dead end bastard offshoot of proper gravitational manipulation and it annoys me. And they're not even doing it right! The drive cores build up a static charge, which is entirely predictable due to the beta radiation emissions of altering the local substrate of space-time and generating leakage like it does, but apparently no one thought that it's still electricity! So they keep stopping and dumping the excess charge rather than just collecting it and using it like a normal person would… And don't get me started about the weapons designs using the damn stuff, half of them are just idiotic. Practically everything based around it seems to have been designed for maximum inefficiency."
She shook her head, turning to meet his eyes. "I thought of at least half a dozen ways to improve how they were using it in one afternoon, if you wanted to stick with it. Sure, it's simple and low tech, but it's also got so many flaws in the implementation even if you do it right that it's hardly worth the effort. As far as I'm concerned you'd be better served by researching just how it does what it does then doing that directly rather than using it to do the same thing. It's like cutting a hole in a fire hydrant then filling a water glass to run over and pour on a fire instead of using a hose like a sane person would." The girl sighed as behind her Tali and Angus exchanged amused glances.
"But from what Tali says, and all her data shows, no one seems to ever think of that. They just copy each other, making tiny incremental improvements to something that's about as effective as a chocolate coffee pot, instead of doing fundamental research into the stuff they'd based their entire civilization around to the point they're completely ignoring everything else. It's crazy."
"Not everyone thinks the way you do, Taylor," Tali pointed out in good humor. "In fact I'd go so far as to say that no one thinks the way you do."
Brendan chuckled, as this was very true. Taylor looked at her Quarian friend and grinned, but went back to looking annoyed a moment later. "Well, yeah, perhaps. But your people are certainly fantastically good engineers, much better than anyone else except maybe a particularly smart Salarian, and even they didn't seem to think of the stuff that's so obvious. It's like as soon as someone finds out about element zero they stop even bothering to look at anything else, which is nuts. Who does that? Yeah, you've found something neat, but that doesn't mean you don't keep looking for other neat things. Yet no one seems to have done that."
She rubbed her neck while staring at the containers, Tali frowning a little as if she wanted to argue but couldn't. Brendan considered her words and was forced to agree she had some very valid points. It was yet another example of the oddity of how Tali's home universe seemed to miss the obvious, at least things that were obvious to humans. He had no idea why but it was fairly noticeable.
"Thirdly, beyond the toxicity and inefficiency, it's dangerous. I'm pretty sure I could figure out how to make it destabilize in a big way at quite a range, and the energy release would be… significant. As far as I can tell it's some sort of metamaterial that links normal space-time to dark matter and energy through higher dimensions, which explains why Tali's beacon was so apparent to my equipment. In fact, she made about the most profound leap with the stuff that anyone from her galaxy has ever done. But that aside, it's got a huge energy density, and if it decided to let all that out at once it would be really bad. It's stable, more or less, but it's not unconditionally stable." She shook her head. "Sort of like crystallized dark energy in a way. Hit it just right and the crystal matrix might crack, then ruin your entire day once and for all."
He stared at her, then the containers, suppressing the instinctive urge to step further away that suddenly hit him. "Ah..."
"Yeah. It's like having a few dozen kilogram blocks of lightly shielded weapons grade plutonium sitting around. Safe right up to the point you put too much in a pile then things get exciting." Taylor shrugged. "Not as easy as fission, but if you manage to do it, it'll be impressive."
"I don't think anyone has ever actually done that back home, Taylor." Tali was also examining the containers with a slightly nervous look. "Are you sure about that?"
"One hundred percent? No. I mean, I am sure the energy density is completely ridiculous, but I'm not totally convinced it's likely to go bang all at once. But I'm almost certain that you could engineer a way to make it really unfriendly, a lot more so than your guys have any idea about. I'd prefer not to have that happen anywhere nearby." The girl spread her hands for a moment. "Having a sudden black hole appear in the lab would be annoying."
"I can't disagree with that," Angus commented dryly, Tali nodding next to him. He was looking thoughtful. "I have to admit that what Taylor's saying agrees with some of my own thoughts and calculations. I don't know how one would go about such a catastrophic deconstruction of the dark matter matrix but I certainly wouldn't like to say it was impossible. And if it is something that could be achieved, I would strongly advise that not be done. At least within an inhabited solar system."
"It would need a really serious energy pulse of exactly the right form to do it, so it's probably unlikely to happen accidentally, but that's not something I'd like to guarantee," Taylor put in. "You might have trouble if you were too close to a neutron star jet, or something like that, but if you're that close to one of those there are much more likely things to kill you."
"Generally speaking people avoid neutron stars," Tali remarked with a smile. Taylor laughed a little at her words.
"Good. They're very hazardous to the health." She turned around on the stool to look at Brendan. "This stuff is toxic, inefficient, potentially very dangerous, and doesn't do anything we can't do better using real technology. It's basically the Tinker Tech problem all over again. Why risk it if we don't need to? It limits what you can do with mass fields anyway, since it needs so much energy to work on a large scale it ends up being more trouble than it's worth. Even if it can't go pop if you poke it wrong, I can't see any benefit to it and I can see a lot of down sides. Leaving aside anything else If we accidentally contaminated the environment with it we'd have a hell of a job cleaning it up again. We already have too much crap floating around at the moment from people not thinking things through in the past."
"You raise some worrying points, I have to admit, Taylor," he finally replied. "We were quite interested in some of the weaponry we recovered from the ship, though."
She waved a hand dismissively. "I can make a design for a gun like that using something safer no trouble. For that matter, you guys can, you've got all the technical notes you need to duplicate anything it can do if you think about it a bit. We already have better shielding tech than those kinetic barrier widgets, our antigrav is far better, and the new design I'm working on for an FTL drive will kick the ass of the element zero one."
Everyone in the room looked at her. She peered around, then smiled in a slightly embarrassed way. "Ah… oops? Didn't I mention my FTL drive?"
"As it happens, no, you didn't, Taylor," Angus sighed. "You've invented faster than light travel now, then?"
"Yeah. Or, more accurately, I invented another form of faster than light travel, after the teleporter. It's not that hard when you sit down and think about it for a while." She shrugged. "Took about a week, although I haven't build a prototype yet. I'll write it up."
Rubbing his forehead, Brendan nodded. Every time he thought he'd seen it all, she did something like this…
"Thank you, Taylor," he managed when he lowered his hand. "Fine. You've made your case. We'll dispose of the element zero safely."
"That part is easy, we just fire it into intergalactic space with the teleporter," Tali pointed out. Taylor looked at her and nodded.
"Exactly." She frowned a little. "I'll have to figure out where it actually comes from, just to settle my own curiosity. Because I'm nearly certain what your information says is wrong, or at least misleading. If it's formed in supernovas, it should be practically everywhere, if only due to the age of the universe. But it isn't, it's quite rare in most places according to the documentation. And that's leaving aside the problem that once a supernova goes bang the entire star system it was in isn't there any more, so there's no asteroid belt to neatly accumulate the stuff in the first place… I can't believe none of your people have done more research into something that basic, but whatever. Maybe the physics of your universe are weird. It's something for when I'm bored."
She hopped off the stool and straightened her shirt. "We'll need to scan everything again just to be sure we got it all, and retrieve all the stuff your guys took back to DARPA, but I've got a list so we can be thorough."
"I'll make sure any samples we have are returned immediately," he assured her, deciding she was almost certainly right, as she usually was.
"Great." The girl headed for the door. "Hey, we've got some cool stuff to show you next."
He followed, as did Tali and several other people. "Such as?" he asked curiously, while they walked down the corridor to one of the smaller test chambers. She leaned on the door handle and pushed it open, grinning back at him over her shoulder. Going after her he stopped at the observation window and studied the machines on the other side.
Taylor pointed. "Interstellar probe, Mark one model six. All the sensory gear we could shove into it, along with the beacon, a GRF drive, shields, and a few other tricks." Pulling one of her phones, which he knew full well was far, far more than an actual phone, out of her pocket she fiddled with it for a moment. The device sitting in the left-most cradle on the floor of the next room powered up, tally lights coming on in a few places, then silently lifted into the air and hung there. Lenses at the front seemed to be looking at him. "It's got my latest software running on the processing core and it's more than smart enough to do any mission we want it to do."
Approaching the glass wall separating the lab from the next room, she waved at the compact car sized machine. It blinked some lights at her, one of the cameras tracking her hand, in a manner he couldn't help thinking was cheerful. "Cute, aren't they?" she added with a smile at him.
"They're… memorable," he said slowly. The machine looked like a huge robotic beetle with huge eyes more than anything else he could immediately think of.
"We're going to deploy one to our own solar system in Tali's galaxy to see if Earth exists there, and humans," Taylor said, turning and leaning on the glass as she looked at him. "Mostly out of curiosity right now. It's also got the optical diversion field fitted so if there are no one will detect it. Then we're going to use them to map out the exact coordinates of some of the Mass Relays Tali's civilization uses, and see if they exist in our reality. I'm betting they don't because I have a feeling her reality and ours are a long… hmm. Not sure how to explain it." She scratched her nose, thinking, then shrugged. "Call it a long way away as parallel worlds go. Much further than Aleph, for example. But I might be wrong, they could be here too. I'd like to find out one way or another."
"If nothing else we're curious not only to see if Humans exist in my reality but if Quarians exist in this one," Tali put in, moving to stand next to Taylor. "Maybe my home world is still there, without the Geth and the Morning War having destroyed most of my people… This version of them. If they exist."
"It's an interesting question," he agreed, nodding. "I have no reason to disagree with that plan. Just make sure that if anyone is there, you don't let them notice the probes. We're not quite at the point of being able to contact yet another alien species." He smiled as they both laughed. "I'm sure that will come in time though."
"We'll make sure no one notices," Taylor assured him. She poked her phone, then put it into her pocket, as the probe returned to the docking cradle and powered down. "We've also been working on some ideas for when we contact Tali's own species. Lots of people here have been thinking about how we can help them, and if and how we deal with any of the other Citadel species. To be honest I'm not impressed by them from the information we've got out of the Salarian computers and Tali's omnitools."
Brendan sighed a little. "That subject is one that's been the center of many discussions since Tali arrived," he replied. "On the whole most people agree with you on that. There are… inconsistencies… in the data that suggest a number of significant problems we probably don't want to get caught up in. The entire Citadel Council hierarchy is worrying on a number of levels, what they did, or at least allowed to happen, to the Quarians being only part of it. The Batarian problem, the complete lack of any sensible reaction to the Geth, that obscene Krogan genophage biowarfare operation, and quite a number of other things, have our people quite concerned. On the whole, and at the moment, the overall consensus is that it's probably best to avoid them entirely for now and deal only with the Quarians, who are much more likely to be reasonable."
"My people need help, and I'm almost certain they'll happily agree to almost any sensible terms for it," Tali said quietly. She looked sad. "The Council has been committing slow genocide on us for nearly three centuries. Certainly, they're not actively killing us, but the policies they've imposed are having that effect whether it's deliberate or not. Everyone knows it. Our ships are slowly decaying past even our abilities to repair them, we're entirely dependent on a very small number of food sources, we're galactic pariahs on top of that for things that happened generations ago completely by accident..." The young woman shook her head as Taylor put her hand on her shoulder comfortingly.
"We've probably got no more than two hundred years left, as a species. We can't even settle another planet without someone kicking us off it, and causing us to lose yet more resources. Assuming we can even find a suitable dextro world to begin with. And that's not even including the problems with our immune systems, of course, which are likely to kill us off even if the ships keep working. It's getting worse with each generation." She looked at her bare hand, clenching it into a fist, then relaxing it again. "And here I stand, without an environment suit for the first time for any of our people in hundreds of years, on an alien planet. Entirely safe and healthier than I've ever been, because of someone who decided to help me just because she's a good person."
"It was the right thing to do," Taylor remarked with a firm voice. "Just like Amy fixing you up was. And she's pretty close to a method to do the same thing to all your people."
"If you can do that, you will have the loyalty of the Quarian people for the rest of time," Tali said, her voice catching for a moment. "You're the only people to have helped us since we lost our world."
Brendan watched her for a moment, then nodded. "I believe our two peoples will be good friends, Tali. We have a lot more in common than I'd ever have expected. And what was done to you was horrific, no matter what the original circumstances. I can assure you the President feels the same way. He was not pleased with what we learned about a number of things in your home reality."
They stood silently for a moment, then Taylor looked over her shoulder at the half-dozen probes. "We've still got some work to do on these, so they won't be going out for a week or so. Once we've got those on the way we can get to work on the next project."
She headed for the door, stopping to have a quick word with a couple of the technicians who were sitting at a pair of computers working on some complex software, then led Brendan and the other two down the corridor back to the main control room overlooking the huge facility containing the salvaged Salarian ship. Inside, she moved to the observation window. He joined her, looking down at the alien vessel, which was entirely stripped down to the ribs now, only an outline of a ship hull. Piles of hardware and hull plates filled most of the enormous floor below them, with dozens of people and machines moving around working on the enormous project. There were chunks missing from the hull skeleton where damaged sections had been removed entirely and at the bow newly fabricated replacements were being neatly and carefully welded in place.
"It's going to take about another month to completely reassemble the ship to the original specification," Angus commented, joining them on Brendan's other side, Tali next to him. All of them watched the work in progress. "We're incorporating the improvements Tali, Taylor, and the rest of our people came up with as we go. The fusion reactors will be replaced with more powerful systems, and we'll retrofit shear field generators in place of the original kinetic barriers. That will give much higher protection with far greater reliability. The GRF drive will suffice for sublight use, and whatever Taylor's come up with will I assume replace the element zero drive." He glanced at Taylor, the girl nodding agreement.
"We're not sure about weapons yet. The original design of the ship, according to Tali, was a small frigate in Salarian terms, and as such it had a gauss cannon down the center line along with point defense optical laser turrets, which are… somewhat ineffectual. The question is do we replace the weapons, or leave it unarmed? Are we building it back into a small warship or is it a science vessel? The Salarians were operating it as the latter with the functions of the former still fitted, but considering how dangerous their reality clearly is, that seems not entirely unreasonable."
"And not entirely useful," Brendan remarked, frowning. "Considering why we have the ship to begin with."
"Indeed. Our shielding technology will easily deal with any weapons the data we have lists, so even if we do get shot at, it won't be an issue," Angus replied. "As and when we take it back to Tali's reality, of course. Assuming we even do. But we could easily mount something more effective than a fairly slow-firing cannon on the thing if we wanted to. Most of the weapons designs your people have come up with would go through even the best kinetic barriers Tali has data on without any trouble at all."
"It's another example of their static tech base," Taylor agreed, looking annoyed. "Everyone just throws chunks of metal at each other very fast, and all their defenses are based around that idea too. Come at the problem from the side and it's almost worthless."
Brendan thought about what they'd said, finally replying, "My military background says we should have weapons, my scientific background says we should avoid fights where we can. It's an interesting question. I'll have to think about it, and consult with a few people higher up than I am. There's no hurry to decide, I assume?"
"No," Tali said. "The weapons I've seen the documentation on can be fitted easily right up the time we put the outer hull plates back on. We'd need to make suitable arrangements for them at that point and it'll be a lot easier to do it first rather than afterwards, but we don't need an answer immediately."
"Fine. I'll let you know," he replied with a nod. "Excellent work, all of you."
"Thanks," Taylor said, speaking for all of them. "Dad will be pleased, his guys have been working their asses off on this thing."
"I suspect that no one thought the Dock Worker's Union was going to end up with a side qualification of starship refurbishment," Brendan chuckled. She grinned widely as Tali laughed.
"We could put it on the sign at the gate and see who looked confused," the girl suggested with an evil smirk.
"Probably best not to," he advised. She looked mildly disappointed but nodded.
"By the time this project is finished," Tali put in, "you probably could set up as a starship maintenance yard." The engineer looked highly amused. "Everyone is doing a much, much better job than I'd have ever thought possible, considering until we grabbed the Klaatu no one on this planet had even seen a real starship. To be honest they're doing a better job than most Turian shipyards would."
"Brockton Bay has a long history of ship work," Taylor laughed. "Apparently it carries over. A ship is a ship to a lot of those guys."
"Well, whatever the reason is, it's impressive." Tali smiled a little. "And a lot of fun. I'm learning at least as much as I'm teaching, so as far as I'm concerned it's a good trade."
"Our government feels much the same, Tali," Brendan assured her. He watched the work going on below for a moment longer, thinking about how things were progressing, then looked at his watch. "My flight to Washington leaves in an hour so I have to go, but I'll be in contact soon," he said, turning away from the window. "As soon as you have any more documentation please send it over."
"Of course," Angus replied, accompanying him to the door. When he briefly looked back both Tali and Taylor were deep in conversation at one of the computer stations, making changes to a complex circuit diagram and oblivious to everyone else moving around them. He smiled, shook his head, and left. The Secretary was going to be intrigued by the latest data.
"Aha!" Amy exclaimed, pleased. "Got it."
She looked at the small container in front of her, then at the results of the analysis she'd just brought up on the screen. Consulting with her power, which seemed to have become much more effective and, if she was forced to put it like that, relaxed in recent months, she smiled.
Picking up the little vial she swirled it around, watching the fluid inside slosh about. "Never thought I'd cure an entire alien species," she said softly to herself, before she saved the results and went to find Tali and Taylor.
This was far more fun than fixing idiots who got drunk and decided to get intimate with a telephone pole at high speed...