CHAPTER 5

The Aftermath

Liara paced around the war room contemplating all of the news that Traynor had received from Alliance command. It was all so much to take in. While the Crucible had brought them salvation from the Reapers, it had also brought with itself a whole new host of crises to solve.

Admiral Hackett gave an order to all remaining ships above Earth to retreat in the wake of the Crucible firing. Some managed to make it through the mass relay, although it remains unknown what happened to them after that. Most other ships simply made blind FTL jumps to anywhere out of the Sol system, and have been slowly trickling back to regroup around Earth.

While it was good to see so many had survived the battle, there were many among them who had suffered catastrophic amounts of damage and were in desperate need of immediate repair. One poor ship managed to make it back to Earth only to have its drive core overheat and detonate, killing all onboard and damaging a few ships that were in formation with it .

There was also the issue of the wounded. There were thousands, maybe even millions, of soldiers and civilians that were in need of medical attention, and they only had so many doctors that they could spare. Especially doctors who knew how to treat the many different species that were now stranded on Earth.

Then there was assessing the damage caused by the Crucible itself. When the Crucible was fired, it had sent a surge of energy that then traveled through the Charon mass relay into the rest of the galactic relay network. However, the surge was so powerful that the relay shook itself apart and was no longer functional. Based on whatever scattered reports they received from assets outside the system, this same damage has been found on every single relay so far, making them inoperable. The entire mass relay network was shut down.

This news especially horrified Liara. Everybody was now essentially stranded in whatever star cluster they were in when the Crucible fired. Many worlds had been devastated by the Reaper attacks and were in need of supplies that could take years to come. There are even many colony worlds that were not self-sufficient yet and relied on the Relay network for supplies. It was more than likely that many more people would die thanks to the network being destroyed.

In spite of all that, however, there was some hope. The creation of the Crucible had given the projects many scientists some insight as to the nature of the mass relays, since it was theorized that the Crucible was designed to exploit the network itself in order to combat the Reapers. They were hopeful that they could use the knowledge they had gained from the Crucible to repair the relays, but it will take some time. It would also require coordination between the different clusters in order to create stable links between the relays again. Which meant that some relays may never be able to be fixed. Either as a cluster's inhabitants may lack the necessary resources to repair the relays, or that the population had been completely wiped out by the Reapers. Either way, it could take potentially hundreds if not thousands of years to make the network whole again.

The destruction of the network wasn't the only unforeseen consequence of using the Crucible, however. In the hours following the Crucible's activation, its real function had been made clear. Not only did the Crucible destroy the Reapers, it also destroyed all other advanced synthetic life as well. Whoever designed the Crucible had created it either with the intent or the inability to discriminate between Reapers and other synthetics.

In the wake of the battle, rescue teams on Earth had come upon hundreds of broken down heaps of inactive geth units. Many of which had shown no visible signs of combat damage. It became even more apparent when none of their ships ever returned to Earth after the battle. Like the rest of the allied fleet, the geth ships had jumped away in an attempt to flee the energy blast when the call to retreat was made, but since then there has been no word from the geth here, or any other parts of the galaxy.

Liara was heartbroken to hear about the fate of the geth. For three hundred years the galaxy had feared the mysterious synthetics. Little was known about the enigmatic race of machines since they had forced the quarians from their homeworld. They remained reclusive and destroyed any organics that ventured into their territory. This led to the wider galaxy to grow suspicious of them. Believing that the geth were building weapons in a plot to destroy all organic life. This belief was nearly confirmed when an army of geth eventually attacked the Citadel.

That is, until Shepard befriended one. One solitary geth platform had left the Perseus Veil and joined Shepard in fighting the Reapers. The geth known as 'Legion' had done much to shatter Liara's and the rest of the Normandy crew's preconceptions as to the true nature of the geth. It was revealed that they harbored no hatred toward their creators, or any other organics for that matter. The geth mainly acted out of self preservation and a desire to improve themselves, as well as to understand the organics they shared the galaxy with.

In the months leading up to the battle on Earth, the quarians launched an attack against the geth in one last ditch effort to retake their long lost homeworld. The fighting nearly destroyed both races before Shepard was able to do the impossible and unite the two. Their considerable military might, combined with their technical brilliance, had made the geth invaluable allies in the fight against the Reapers. Liara mused to herself that Shepard hadn't just brought a powerful new ally into the war, but had also changed the way synthetics and organics understood each other. That not only could organics and synthetics coexist peacefully, but that they were also capable of cooperating towards a mutual goal.

But the geth were gone now. Destroyed by the weapon they helped create to save the galaxy. Liara bristled at the thought of it. If only they had known what the Crucible was designed to do. If only its creators had left some clue as to its true potential as a weapon. Perhaps they could have found a way to shield the geth from its deadly energy. Perhaps they could have saved them. They could have saved her. Liara's mind went to EDI. She now understood what had happened. The blast that killed the geth and the Reapers, had killed her too.

I'm so sorry EDI. I should have known. Liara chastised herself.

Liara couldn't help but feel responsible for what happened to her friend. She was the one who discovered the Crucible plans. Spent weeks pouring over data gathered from its blue prints and from the construction effort itself. They were so preoccupied with what it would do to the Reapers that she never truly thought about the collateral damage that could result from using a weapon designed to disable giant machines.

No. We had no way of knowing what it would do. Even EDI didn't see it.

She tried to push the doubts from her head as she walked over to the intercom in the war room. She could beat herself up about EDI later, for now she had a job to do. She had to inform the crew about what happened, and what they still needed to do.

"Are you ok?" Liara felt a delicate hand fall upon her shoulder. She looked back to see Samantha Traynor smiling reassuringly at her.

"Yes. I will be. I think it's time to inform the crew."

"Agreed. Remember, it's still good news… most of it anyway," Traynor shrugged.

Liara turned back to face the intercom, took a deep breath, and opened the channel.