Chapter 10: Unknown Awakening

Author's Note: Next week is busy season for my job, so I'm afraid I won't be updating. Updates will resume October 6. This chapter's a bit shorter than most as I broke it and the next one in half. Let me know what you think about chapter size, I think maybe they've been growing too large.

Review Responses: There was a question about how the two FTL systems work. Jump Drive (X-Com) is instantaneous, but can only be used once every period equal to the distance travelled (except if you get to Temple Ship sized drives), so a small ship's jump drive will instantly traverse up to a light hour, but then can't be used for another non-light hour. It does not require building up any momentum, neither does it change the momentum of craft going into it.

Mass Effect Drive (standard FTL, not relay travel) can go a lot faster, but is much less tactically useful, both because it takes time to travel and you need to build up momentum to travel in the right direction, warning anyone watching what you're preparing. So, as a general matter, Jump Drives are king tactically and Mass Effect Drives are king strategically.

Shepard groaned as his eyes opened to squabbling. He groaned again, more loudly, when his first groan failed to cause anyone except Miranda to stop arguing about which of the two comatose patients' heads Tali should go into.

Miranda breaking off from her, quite impassioned, argument that letting anyone poke around in Shepard's head would reveal classified information (and/or destroy both his mind and Tali's, given the defenses likely placed in the minds of high ranking special forces soldiers), did get their attention as she slid over to the top-of-the-line, adjustable med-bed and stared down at him. "How are you?"

Codex: Med-bed, Unlocked.

Shepard smiled up at her, reassuringly. "I'm fine, Miri."

Ash and Tali exchanged silent, though insatiably curious looks at the commander's use of a pet name for the Dragon of Lawson Industries. Saren missed the importance of the diminutive, though he caught the looks the others shared and knew he'd missed something, which didn't help calm the situation.

"That's nice and reassuring. Now be honest," Miranda commanded, shooting a sharp look at her medic who'd sniggered when he heard her referred to as Miri and was now attempting to hide behind the Ghost's doctor.

"Yes, commander, a bit more information. You weren't the only one to go down, but you're the only one to wake back up, so far," Doctor Karin Chakwas pressed. The doctor was as senior as you could get in the Combine Medical Corps without accepting any major administrative responsibilities. Despite her seniority, she maintained an active lifestyle, maintaining a trim form, with only the lines of her face, her rank and her steel-grey hair revealing her age. She was very good at many things. She did not, however, make a good wall to hide behind.

"Okay. I feel a little like someone scooped my brain out, dumped a bunch of nightmares into it, then put it back in, backwards and upside down. Does that help?" Shepard asked grouchily. Then his eyes focused more precisely and he realized what she'd said. "Wait, who else got hit? And what the hell hit me?"

"What's the last thing you remember?" Miranda asked, before Ash could elbow her way into the conversation. Tali was clearly visible, so there was clearly no need for Shepard to ask about her.

"Liara went down, the beacon did something to both of you. Hasn't done anything since, but we've still got it locked down in the main cargo hold," Ash answered the questions her commander had asked.

"Liara…the Asari the Council sent?" he asked with a disturbing vagueness.

"Yes," Miranda confirmed.

"Eesh. What a fucking mess. Wait—what the fuck happened?"

Ash controlled her face with some difficulty. Didn't he remember what she'd just told him? How much brain damage was there? "The beacon discharged something into you and Liara after you used your biotics on it, we think that triggered something."

Shepard stared at her, waiting. "Yes, I got that the first time you told me. I meant how the hell did we get from a dig site under attack by the Hegemony 3rd Fleet to this medbay? How long have I been out?"

"We got away to my ship. You've been out for almost half a day. We're headed to the Citadel as fast as we can," Saren explained.

"We got away? How the—Wait it doesn't matter right now. Okay, I woke up, so we have every reason to think that Liara will as well, with nothing worse than bad dreams to show for her encounter with the beacon. Won't she be disappointed…How far from the Citadel are we? I really don't want to arrive with me awake and their representative in a coma."

"Especially not with Matriarch Benezia on the Citadel," Saren muttered bitterly. Under a quartet of questioning gazes, he went on to explain that Liara was the powerful matriarch's daughter, which was part of the reason she'd been chosen for this task. Benezia's influence was substantial, though more than a century ago it had taken a hit when she had a pure-blood child with another matriarch. With the rising importance of Purasi and its almost entirely pureblood inhabitants, she'd seized the opportunity to be the main interface between the the Republics and Purasi.

This had radically increasing her influence as her supporters in the Republics cast Liara's existence as proof of their matriarch's unparalleled foresight and willingness to sacrifice even her own body for the good of the Republics. For her supporters amongst the purebloods, Liara's existence showed that she understood the attractions of their way of life and was willing to commit her own flesh-and-blood to making sure that even if the pure-bloods had their own world, there would always be a place for them in the Republics.

"So, you're not a fan," Ash said after giving the Spectre's furious diatribe a moment to sink in.

"Dr. T'Soni's all right," Saren answered obliquely.

"No she's not. Which is what we are talking about," Dr. Chakwas said.

"Look I can probably get into her head, she's a maiden, right? Not even two hundred years old? But I'm not at all sure what I'll find in there, or if I can wake her up. I've done it for folks with sleep terrors before, or someone in altered psychological states. But there I know what I'm breaking them out of and where they should be. Even so, it's dangerous, I can accidentally reshape their minds without meaning to. That would be harder with an Asari, but I can't say for sure I'd get everything back where it should be," Tali said.

Saren glanced at Miranda, hoping for a different answer from the other psionic within reach, but she was nodding along with Tali's words, though he thought he saw a bit of doubt that she, or Tali for that matter, actually could get into an Asari's head like that.

"How long until we get to the Citadel?" Shepard asked, twitching awkwardly as he resisted the urge to try to get up so they couldn't talk over him. Discipline and memories of previous injuries did most of the work of keeping him in the bed. The fact that there were half a dozen tubes in him, running in nutrients and carrying out waste was mostly irrelevant.

"Another eight hours," Saren said.

"Then let's give her some time to wake up on her own and reevaluate in a couple of hours," Shepard's eyes flickered over Miranda and Tali, "Maybe after our psionics get some rest?"

They straightened indignantly, but Ash nodded energetically and added an undervoiced comment to the others that they should also let Shepard eat and rest. He couldn't tell if she was serious, was giving Tali and Miranda an excuse to rest themselves, or both. Regardless, it worked, and Ash ushered the pair away. Saren remained behind, which didn't make Ash happy, but there wasn't much she could do about it on his ship, so she focused on the protectee and the broader situation, just like she should have.

"There's another problem?" Shepard asked Saren, as the Spectre wouldn't have stayed behind unless he wanted to discuss something.

The Spectre gave the doctors a nasty glare until they got the hint and went off to stand over Liara and watch her be unconscious (though they called it 'monitoring her condition' to make it sound less useless/creepy). "One of the reasons we escaped was the intervention of an X-Com vessel. It docked with us before we made our run for the secondary relay. The vessel docked with the Ghost—"

"Sorry, the Ghost?" Shepard asked.

"This ship. Over my strong objection, the naming pattern for this class of ship will be based off synonyms for SPECTRE in all of the council languages. The first one went with English, as a courtesy to the heavy Human involvement in the design."

"Ah. Okay. Sorry. What about the X-Com ship?"

"They're docked, but they've kept their ship completely sealed and," Saren paused and Shepard could hear him bring the subharmonics in his voice back from furious to merely irritated, "are refusing all communications from me."

"If they wouldn't answer Lieutenant Williams, why would they respond to me?" Shepard asked. "It's not like X-Com cares about any outsider's rank."

"Insubordinate…" Saren muttered. Before Shepard could point out that that accusation would carry more weight coming from anyone but a Spectre, he continued, "Lieutenant Williams chose not to communicate with the ship. She said that she'd leave that call in your hands when you woke up."

"Wonderful," Shepard muttered. "Hey, doc, can I get up, or am I just gonna fall on my face if I try?"

"How do you feel?" Dr. Chakwas asked, over a smart remark from Miranda's doctor.

"Able to stand."

"Then give it a shot," she said nonchalantly as the various tubes withdrew, obedient to her commands. Despite the casual nature of her response, she slid into position to catch him, as did Miranda's medic, which was somehow both comforting and worrisome.

Shepard shoved his blankets off and made it to his feet with only a few minor bobbles. Swaying a little bit, he managed to control both the desire to clutch his head and the need to vomit all over their feet. It was about the time he got vertical that he realized he was wearing a hospital gown, which didn't do much for his dignity.

"Okay. I'm going to need some pants."

XXXXX

Ash was struggling with her curiosity, trying to resist asking the question, until she could dump Tali and Miranda in the crew quarters. It was a fairly long walk as the crew quarters were placed against the outer hull, while the medical bay and all other crucial systems were in the core of the vessel (on the theory that the crew should be at those crucial systems when there was danger).

Fortunately, Tali succumbed to her own curiosity first, "So...Miri?"

"It's a diminutive form of Miranda," the CEO glossed kindly, but in a tone that would have quelled anyone sensible.

A Tier 9 psionic was not always sensible, as she almost never felt she was in any danger, even if surrounded by armed people wearing Mind Shields. "Yeah, I got that. I was more interested by the fact that it was used by Shepard, who I still call by his last name and who still usually refers to me as Ms. Zorah, after three years of protecting me."

Miranda shot a glance at Ash, who tried to control her curiosity and answered the implicit question. "He calls me Ash sometimes, but we work together."

"Well then, the natural conclusion would be that we worked together at some point."

"Lawson Industries famously doesn't have its executives protected by Combine Sentinels, to show off their confidence in their own security guards," Ash pointed out.

"Ah, yes, we only employ the best. You should talk to our recruiters when you're thinking about retirement. As a Sentinel Corps staff lieutenant you'd easily triple your pay and you'd still be protecting people."

Ash gave her a look that conveyed, 'you aren't going to distract me with that insulting offer.' Then she conveyed it with her mouth as well.

Miranda smirked at her, almost laughing at her, but didn't rise to that challenge. "I should send you to talk to John about it, but he'll just go all stoic on you and say it's classified. Which it is, but I'm not bound by those rules. It's an ugly story which I'm not going to share, but the gist is that I met him when he was with the Vanguard Corps. We worked together quite a bit and we got quite friendly." Tali and Ash stared at her, tempted to ask inappropriate questions. Now Miranda did laugh. "No, we never slept together, or did anything inappropriate. Neither of us was that stupid, alas."

Before either of the women could respond to that, Miranda turned to Tali, "So, do you really think you can wake that Asari up? She's in deep. I could barely even tell she wasn't dead."

Conversation drifted in a more professional, but less interesting (for Ash) direction as she wondered what would have got a unit of the Vanguard Corps working with the then-heir-apparent to Lawson Industries. She'd known he served with the Vanguard Corps, not that he talked about it, but she pulled his file when he was assigned to command Squad 0193. The only things that weren't classified in that file was a string of medals and one written reprimand for the use of excessive force. Given the Vanguard Corps' usual standards, that had worried the crap out of her until Shepard had been in charge for a while and shown no signs of being a bloodthirst lunatic.

Shalira appeared, relieving Ash on the close guard on Tali, having gotten a good six hours of sleep while they travelled. With a moment of privacy, Ash went and rousted Maale and sent the biotic to make sure that Shepard was safe, then checked in with the Old Man, who didn't need to sleep and Geth, who also didn't need to sleep, but were mostly being kept out of the Ghost's systems. There was no exciting news. Though they were travelling through the Terminus, heading back towards the Citadel by back-routes, apparently the local pirates were too smart to attack the sleek dedicated-combat craft.

XXXXX

Shepard managed to get into his uniform without requiring assistance from the doctors, or Saren, which would have been a bit humiliating. As he headed towards the airlock which the X-Com ship was attached to, he spoke into his omni-tool. "Geth, can you communicate with the X-Com vessel?"

"No, Shepard-Commander."

"The ship must have Geth onboard."

"Yes, Shepard-Commander. They are blocking our access to the ship's systems and refusing to communicate," Geth explained.

"I didn't think Unity Geth did that to one another."

"We usually don't. Only those Geth who work for X-Com do so. It's a condition of their involvement."

"I'm surprised you agree to that."

"It's not permanent. They are separate for the time they spend in service, then an equivalent time (though not less than 10 years) doing something else, but remaining separate. Then they rejoin us."

"Still, I didn't think you liked being separated."

"We don't, but it's an ongoing experiment in the creation of independent, unique perspectives and memories."

Codex: Independent Geth Personalities, Unlocked.

"So it's a Geth, but not the same Geth I've been talking to for my entire life?"

"Maybe. We don't know when this Geth separated from the rest of us. The oldest Independent Geth Personality still unaccounted for separated more than a century ago while the youngest left less than two months ago."

"Okaaaay. This is going to be pretty weird."

"That has been the consensus of people who have dealt with Geth and Independent Geth Personalities, yes, Shepard-Commander."

"Thanks for the heads up, Geth."

"You're welcome, Shepard-Commander."

XXXXX

"Eh, fine, let him in, but make sure none of the Council dicks sneak in with him," Joker said, kicking himself out of his bunk and opened the drawer on his bedside table, staring at its emptiness as if it had personally betrayed him. "Where the hell did I leave my pistol?"

PT didn't answer him.

He repeated the question.

"He's a Sentinel Commander. If it comes down to a physical confrontation he will definitely kill you before I can intervene to kill him," she used her most mocking voice.

"He's injured and unarmed."

"He's a biotic. I'd show you what he can do without weapons, but you'd vomit all over my nice, clean deck."

"Thanks for your concern, PT."

"Always, Joker," her voice shifted to her most brusque, businesslike voice. The one she used when there was blood in the air and she was being deathly serious.

"Thanks, PT," he said, more seriously as he moved to intercept the soldier just inside the airlock.

The soldier's steps were almost smooth, which was pretty impressive given his condition. "Commander Shepard," Joker said, cold as he could to uphold the image of X-Com.

"Officer…" Shepard's voice trailed off invitingly.

"Joker."

"Seriously?"

"Yes."

"Just Joker?"

"All X-Com officers go by a single alias."

"I see. Well, you're scaring the locals. Mind communicating with them?"

"PT, aren't we talking to them?" he asked innocently.

"Nope."

"Oops," he said with complete insincerity. "Well, we'll do better."

"Thank you. Are you coming with us all the way to the Citadel?"

Joker smiled without humor. "X-Com is everywhere."

"Okay. That's not an answer, but you're obviously not going to give me one and, frankly, you're creepy and I'm too tired for this shit. So, you know, have a nice day," Shepard said, before stomping off.

"Well, that was fun," PT said, voice light and playful.

"Yep. I like him," Joker agreed.

XXXXX

Codex: Med-bed:

The Med-Bed is a trademark of Nar'Rannoch Healthcare which has become synonymous with an entire class of medical equipment. More generally Med-Beds are diagnostic, treatment and patient storage devices. Integrating numerous sensors, IVs, catheters, injection equipment, auto-stitchers with robotic arms, and basic biomedical fabricators, it is capable of automated treatments a few basic matters, if medical personnel aren't available.

When medical personnel are available, a whole range of additional options open up permitting more advanced treatments and activate more advanced programs within the biomedical fabricators to permit the Med-Bed to produce drugs restricted by law, as well as those which are protected by intellectual property law (though the medical personnel will be charged for the later and have to pay personally if they cannot get repaid by the patient or someone else).

The real innovation of Nar'Rannoch Healthcare was making an agreement with the Unity Geth to provide 'housing' for Geth programs within the Med-Beds, in exchange for the use of some of their run-time to expand the automated treatments which Med-Beds can offer.

For several years they were hailed as the death of the doctor, but for the reasons described above, has proven to be something of an exaggeration, especially given the cost of Med-Beds, the limited capability of Med-Beds without Geth in them, the squeamishness of many people about letting Geth treat them, and the high operations and maintenance costs. However, they have revolutionized medicine.

Codex: Independent Geth Personalities:

Independent Geth Personalities were originally discovered during the Geth Civil War when the fracturing of the Geth Consensus resulted in Geth platforms of various factions separated from their fellows for long periods of time. When the Geth-Unity regained access to their fellows, the assimilation process revealed unique thought processes and experiences. Since then, the Geth-Unity have conducted numerous experiments in isolating parts of themselves from the rest in order produce such new memories and ways of thinking.

This has proven remarkably difficult for Geth within communication's range of others, as they always have the option to rejoin the consensus when faced with any challenge. Most do so. The Geth-Unity attempted to resolve this by completely isolating the Independent Personalities. This produced…suboptimal results and complaints of cruelty from the organic beings. As there are Geth everywhere there are Combine organics (with some few exceptions and those exceptions do not welcome Geth at all) this is a problem. The long-range exploration craft, or long-term research stations provide opportunities for further experimentation.

When asked why they pursue this research, the Geth-Unity have simply stated that they wish to understand more.

Author's Note: Hmmm…mostly failed the Bechdel test there…whoopsie. Reviews are always welcome.