A/N: For chapter count, the re-edit has now exceeded the length of the original version of this story, but the word count has actually been reduced an average 500 words per chapter. There were a ton of chapters 7-8,000 words in length that should have been two separate chapters that have now been split for readability. Including the multiple endings, the story will probably top out at 90 or so. While this re-edit has been a fun exercise, it's been very eye opening to go back and see just how much needed fixing in this "complete" story.

Thanks for reading!

"Transit complete," EDI's voice echoed through the engineering compartment. Tali waited for a pair of indicators to flash green, triggered by Legion and Gabby to confirm status on their own boards. As her main display showed no alerts, she pressed her own key that would illuminate a similar indicator in the cockpit indicating all was well in Engineering.

Almost immediately after, Joker's inputs required full power from the reactors and thrusters. Navigation and Science were also requesting max power for the sensors as the ship got underway, but weapons remained at standby levels. Tali relaxed, but only slightly.

"Position of connector relay confirmed," EDI said. "Arrival in sixteen minutes, eleven seconds, with transit to Ma-at to follow."

"I guess it worked," Gabby said, shifting nervously from foot to foot. "Wonder what's out there?"

"I don't know," Tali said. In all honesty, she didn't care. In the next few hours, the fate of both the quarians and geth would be decided. She looked at Legion as the geth silently minded ts panels. Legion's processes were apparently satisfied by Shepard's plan as it showed none of the internal discord experienced earlier. It was her human assistant who needed reassurance now but Tali knew how to fix that. She keyed the intercom. "Garrus, what's it look like out there?"

The turian sounded awed, having to search for the right words. "It's unbelievable, Tali. It's going to change everything we know. It's incredible! I'll send you a feed."

For an instant, Tali forgot about the Migrant Fleet and geth as she and Gabby both fired up video from Garrus's gun cameras. An empty starfield filled the display. Tali squinted and leaned forward for a closer look. "I don't see anything."

"Wait, let me adjust the zoom."

The black rectangle shimmered and resolved into another black rectangle with a different pattern of stars.

"Still nothing."

"You sure? Let me switch to wide angle..."

Gabby scowled as another black rectangle filled the frame. "There's nothing out there."

"Hold on, hold on. Keep looking. Switching to infra-red..."

Tali looked up at the ceiling and shouted. "If there's nothing out there you could have just said so!"

"You just have to keep looking. Here, take a look at the next one..."

Upon seeing yet another empty view of space, Tali slapped the console to cut the connection. "Bosh'tet."

"He is SUCH a dick," Gabby said. "Next time he comes down here I'm gonna jam his spiked head right into the slag hopper. Who's with me? Legion?"

Tali watched Legion, who didn't react to Gabby's question. After the geth's spectacular ambush of Garrus over Fleet and Flotilla, Tali couldn't wait to see what else Legion might come up with to humiliate the turian. But the geth said nothing, not even a standard acknowledgement that it had heard.

"Legion?" Gabby tried again, her smile fading. "You okay?"

The geth turned to Tali. "This unit has a query."

Tali blinked. It had been some time since Legion requested permission to speak. "Go ahead."

"What is our course of action if the creators have successfully infected the collective before we arrive at Ma-at?"

Tali opened her mouth but no words were forthcoming.

"Don't worry, Legion," Gabby said. "The Commander's got it figured out. He always does, doesn't he? And you got all of us backing him up, so what can go wrong?"

Tali turned back to her console and punched up a status display in an effort to appear busy, but it was a question she'd been asking herself since they had returned from the Anba. If they managed to stop Xen, that only meant the geth were spared defeat. The quarian Navy's suicidal assault on Rannoch would cripple the Migrant Fleet forever if she and Shepard couldn't somehow convince them to stop. And nothing up to this point, not the geth appearance before the Conclave, the death of the Admiralty Board, or even the destruction of the Rayya had dissuaded them thus far.

And if Xen did succeed? The Migrant Fleet would join the Navy at Rannoch, home, unopposed. The quarians would be saved. In fact, out of all possible outcomes, it was only if Xen's virus worked that the survival of the Migrant Fleet was guaranteed.

But what then? Would Commander Shepard fight to free the geth? How would the Citadel react to the quarians repossessing their AI servants? Would the geth themselves eventually rebel once more? If they ever got the upper hand again, would they stop the slaughter a second time, or fight to the death? Xen's plan might end one war, but no matter what happened, another would be forever looming around the corner.

The only way the cycle could be stopped for certain was if Xen chose to destroy the geth outright so there would be no chance of retaliation or future rebellion. In fact, the only way to ensure peace was if Legion's kind was eradicated. Would the Citadel or anyone else interfere if the quarians solved the problem they created three hundred years ago?

Tali glanced at the silent synth, who still watched her with its bright white eye. "I don't know, Legion," Tali said. "Let's just hope that it doesn't come to that, okay? For now, let's get the reactors ready for the next transit."

"Acknowledged," Legion said and turned back to its panels.

Tali ran through all her screens once more, hunting for the slightest change in status on any reading. It was unnecessary given that any deviation would show instantly on the main holo, but it distracted her from hoping that when they reached Ma-at, the fate of the geth would be decided before they got there.

"Approaching Ma-at rendezvous point," the Moreh's XO's said over the PA system. "Deceleration to sublight in one minute. All stations stand by."

Daro'Xen settled in her chair on the bridge and closed her burning eyes. She'd left the senior Vice Admirals in charge of the Navy at Dholen while she and her personal task force streaked off to join the injection team at Ma-at. Though she was now the ranking officer of the entire Fleet, she was no military leader. War was best left to the warriors. Xen's talents were needed elsewhere to ensure the invasion succeeded.

The blue haze beyond the windows faded as the Moreh decelerated, with space soon returning to a deep black. Xen marveled at the elegance of it all: a half dozen ships of different tonnages all hurtling through interstellar space while both the origin and destination swirled in orbit about the galactic center at the same time. Mathematics were truly the base code in which the entire universe was written.

"Confirm acquisition of signal," Captain Rundan said. "All vessels accounted for."

"Good," Xen looked at her status panel. All six escorts maneuvered into formation around Moreh. "How long until rendezvous?"

"Thirty seconds," the XO said.

"Hail the Litanno," Xen said. The rendezvous point was little more than a converted cargo module in a wide polar orbit about Ma-at, used as a listening post to record geth network activity in the system. Though the Moreh had been delayed after drawing off the Normandy at Raheel-Leyya, they weren't so late that the injection team would have already proceeded to the geth hub. "Let them know we made it after all."

"Yes ma'am," Rundan said with a smile and passed the order to his communication officer.

"No response," the comms officer replied.

"Approaching the rendezvous," said the XO. "Negative contact."

"What about the transponder?" Xen stood from her chair. If nothing else, the transponder on the listening post should have responded to a coded query.

"Repeating interrogation. No response."

"Get us in closer," Xen said. Her stomach, already searing with sepsis, boiled with each passing second with no contact from the injection team. This far out, there was no way the geth could have found what amounted to a single mote of dust in the vastness of space, unless someone had been careless. And this mission was far too important for any quarian to make a mistake.

Moreh's passive sensors and cameras swept the blackness. One finally locked on something and transmitted its augmented low-light image to their screens. A patch of glitter twinkled in the dark... debris. The dark hulks of a half dozen ships tumbled in the void, surrounded by halos of shattered hull plating.

Rundan's voice was a whisper. "That's not possible."

Xen fought the urge to shoot down Rundan's pointless observation. "Scan the wreckage! Find the Litanno!"

Sensor techs from all the ships in Xen's task force reported the names of the ships as they were discovered. The Pal Tino, the Fennamore, The Bonche 263... ships assigned to protect the Litanno and it's precious cargo, all blasted to shrapnel. The listening post itself had also been blown to pieces.

"Deploy salvage parties," Xen shouted, her heart pounding. "Do it now! Look for sensor logs, anything! Find out what happened!" She checked the ship's chronometer. The Fleet Navy would be advancing on Rannoch within the hour. If the Litanno and Platform Two weren't found before then...

"I've got something," the sensor tech said. "Another debris field."

"Is it the Litanno?"

"It's not ours. I can't tell whose it is."

Rundan stared at the display. "Geth?"

"Still scanning," the tech said.

"Bring the wreckage aboard if you have to," Xen shouted. "But find out what it is! Find the Litanno!"

"Transit complete," EDI announced. Around the ship, the organic crew of the Normandy let out a collective sigh of relief.

Shepard peered out the top window and saw a comforting black dotted lighted jewels, with nary a rachni or reaper in sight. "Where are we?"

"Stellar position fixed to 99.997% accuracy. We have arrived at the system of Ma-at. We are approximately eight AU from the stellar core, eleven degrees off the ecliptic."

Shepard leaned over Joker's shoulder to scan the system display as EDI plotted their position. This far out, without a comm buoy, it could take up to an hour for a regular EM transmission to reach the geth. "Which is closer? The asteroid hub or Ammut?"

"Ammut," EDI said. "The asteroid is in opposition from our current position."

"Max V to Ammut, Joker. Hit it!"

"You got it, Commander!" The starscape shifted blue even before Joker finished his first word.

"ETA?"

"Ah, just under one minute."

"One minute," Shepard repeated. "What's the earliest the quarians could have gotten here?"

Miranda kept her voice neutral. "forty-one minutes and counting if they didn't run into any opposition."

"Dammit. Don't worry about getting pulled over, Joker. And when we get there, plot a reverse course back to the relay, just in case the geth are no longer friendly."

"Aye, Commander."

"And EDI? Make sure our geth are completely isolated from all transmissions. We don't want them catching anything if we're too late."

In the forward windows, a bright blue dot swelled into a thin crescent. Joker flipped the ship nose over tail and aimed the Normandy's engines toward the gas giant to brake. Shepard watched as the relative velocity indicator dropped, then eventually flashed sublight. Joker swung the Normandy around a rocky, white-frosted orb of a moon. The brown and green striped crescent of Ammut dominated the sky beyond. Communications with the geth would now be instantaneous, at least in organic terms.

"This is Commander Shepard of the Normandy, calling any geth. Do you read?"

"Shepard-Commander," the synthesized voice's response was immediate. Its speech rate accelerated to the point where it almost sounded excited. "Scans positive for identification. Vessel signature and vocal analysis confirmed. We are relieved at your return. We were unable to ascertain the the disposition of the Normandy subsequent to the loss of signal at Raheel-Leyya. Request status. Do you require assistance?"

"Sounds like they're okay," Joker said.

Shepard patted Joker on his shoulder with a sigh of relief. "Maintain orbit." Outside the window on the moon below, a gargantuan plateau of scaffolding, tanks and tubing rose from the horizon. Hundreds of geth platforms jetted in all directions, transporting fuel and resources above the largest single processing facility Shepard had ever seen. "We're fine," he told the geth. "Listen, terminate all contact with the hub on Orbital Body 413319 and Platform Two immediately. Quarantine them both."

"Request clarification, Shepard-Commander."

There's no time to explain, Shepard was about to say, but dealing with geth he knew he would have to anyway. "Platform Two is compromised. The quarians have modified the heretic virus and are planning to inject it via Platform Two at that hub. You have to terminate all contact right now."

"Unnecessary," the geth said. "The Creator threat in this system has been neutralized."

"No, wait. The quarians have been watching that hub for weeks, waiting to make their move. They sent the ship containing the virus in front of the invasion force. It might already be here."

"Shepard-Commander, you are referring to the Creator vessel Litanno? Accompanied by escort ships Bonche 263, Dazzra, Fennamore, Lowas, and Pal Tino?"

Miranda looked up from her console. "They must have already intercepted them."

"Are you saying you destroyed them?" Shepard asked the collective.

"The escort vessels were destroyed. The Litanno has been secured. Platform Two has been recovered. Details to follow."

"I knew it," Joker laughed. "We rushed all the way out here for nothing."

"That's great news," Shepard said. "We were afraid we were too late."

"Negative. Creator aggression in this system has been neutralized. However, the Creator Navy is still massing at the Dholen Relay. The Creator threat must be eliminated."

"We know." In spite of the fact he was talking to a machine, Shepard's tone was calm and soothing as if he were talking a jumper off a ledge. "Please, listen to me. Don't attack. I've got a plan to convince them not not to strike. But we need your help. We can still stop this."

"Stand by," the geth said. "This will require approval by Human Prime."

"Human Prime?"

A window expanded on Shepard's console to show a human face staring back with glowing blue eyes.

"Commander Shepard," The Illusive Man said, "This is quite unexpected. You never fail to impress. But I must caution you that the geth will destroy the Normandy if you cut this feed or Mister Moreau attempts to alter your course. Do not test them. They are remarkably efficient..."