* Landing Day + 11 months - Edge of Andromeda Galaxy *
"For the love of… all that's holy and full of grace, why won't this thing work?!" Suvi exclaimed in an annoyed voice. Her gloved hand slapped the side of the communications buoy that she and Rynn Gee floated around, in space. The motion caused her to start to spin again and she muttered under her breath.
Rynn waited for a few minutes for Suvi's motion to slow down and then helped her back to the access panel. The buoy was larger than the two of them, but the vast majority of it's structure consisted of antenna panels and radiation horns that focused the mass effect energy that would communicate with other buoys. Bolted to the site of the buoy was a box that housed the quantum entanglement communicator; the device that Suvi hoped would start communicating with its paired device in the Milky Way galaxy. For now, though, the buoy and QEC weren't talking to each other.
Rynn slowly swapped two wires and a couple of small circuit boards on the buoy while Suvi watched impatiently.
"I've never seen a device be so determined to not cooperate." the scientist grumbled. "And to top it off, we're out here in EVA suits instead of pulling this thing back in…"
"And that means taking the time to pull it in, cycle through pressurization, fix it, bring it back out, see if the fix works, nope, bring it back in…" Rynn reminded Suvi. "Easier to do it out here and besides…"
Rynn paused and tapped on her omni-tool. The buoy responded with a row of red lights blinking and changing to green lights. Several antenna panels moved to point back towards the Heleus Cluster.
"... that last swap seems to have done the trick. I don't know who put this QEC box together, but they didn't use standard ports or protocols. Anyway, this thing has to cycle through its diagnostics, be about another ten minutes."
Suvi sighed. "You know, this is really the only time we've gotten to be alone since we left the Nexus. It's … nice."
Rynn tapped on a control and a small puff of thruster gas slowly nudged the communications specialist alongside Suvi. The view was spectacular. In front of them, the Andromeda galaxy seemed to stretch across space, with a bright center and its many arms spiraling out. If she twisted around, she'd be able to see a faint smudge of light that was the Milky Way galaxy. She smiled and patted Suvi's arm.
"You know, I was sure that I was taking time to enjoy God's creations, but now that I've spent so much time in the Vesoan, I see how little I was really taking it all in." Suvi said. "It's amazing, we looked up at the skies six hundred years ago back in the Milky Way and could only see as far as we had experienced. Even though it was an entire galaxy we traveled, it was our original home. Familiar. Now, here, there's so much beauty and it's not our home, but yet just as spectacular and unique and full of the love that a creator has for their creation. It just seems to speak to me more now that I'm here."
Rynn listened and smiled. While she didn't quite share Suvi's faith or view of the universe, she found the depth and vision of her lover's beliefs fascinating, and beautiful in its own right. She glanced at the diagnostic panel and it was still blinking through its test cycle. She stroked Suvi's suited arm.
"We have right now." she said softly. Suvi reached out and covered Rynn's hand with her own.
"Yes, yes we do." Suvi replied softly and the two drifted together, touching each other in shared intimacy and silence for several minutes. To Suvi, it felt like forever and it felt like a brief moment when a voice crackled over the comms.
"You two OK?" Sara asked. "How's it coming?"
"I think we're going to be good." Rynn replied. "We have the connection now between the QEC and buoy and it's running its test cycles now. Cross fingers and toes!"
Inside the angara vessel's cockpit, Defra and Kheltef exchanged confused looks. They stared at their own hands and feet, then tried to nonchalantly look at the human Sara's hands and feet. Defra shook his head and chuckled.
"Another human idiom, no doubt." the soldier said in angara to the pilot, who nodded and shrugged. Beside them, Sara glanced their way and laughed. She'd picked up on the angara language fairly quickly and enjoyed catching on to little moments like these.
"Sorry about that, it's a human superstition, or belief. It means that if someone's about to do something that requires a bit of luck, putting one finger over another, or doing the same with toes, would bring that luck." Sara explained.
"Ah, indeed." Defra nodded. "Something like finding one's inalaara - finding your course and way despite what may lie in front of you."
Sara nodded. The last four months had been a crash course on learning angara culture and she found their viewpoint fascinating. Where humanity focused on the individual viewpoint, angara society was based more on the collective, on being in the right mind in sync with others and in life itself. She found the idea relevant to how the Initiative needed to work together to establish their new home in a positive way. She found herself, again, mentally thanking her brother for having had the instinct or foresight to have taken the first steps to establishing a good relationship with the angara.
Just then, Rynn's jubilant voice came over the comms.
"Got it! QEC's talking to the buoy, drawing power… and it's in receive mode. We're ready!"
Sara's stomach flipped in excitement. The stress from the hardships of the four month journey in a small scout ship to the edge of the galaxy melted away. The tedium of course adjustments, dropping comm buoys, taking measurements and scans, waiting for results before moving on; all that was now irrelevant as they had reached the culmination of their journey.
"OK, come on in and we'll send the beacon signal." she said and Rynn acknowledged.
Sara bounced out of the pilot seat and made her way over to Rynn's workstation in the forward bay of the ship. It was a former transport vessel that had been converted for more military purposes, then refitted quickly as a deep space exploration ship. The bridge (or cockpit as Sara thought of it, since it really had room for only two crew members, comfortably) and the forward bay was the only real non-cargo based area and they were cramped. Sleeping quarters and other spaces had been set up around the buoys and supplies that had once packed the rear cargo area, although as the journey had progressed and more buoys were deployed, space had increased.
On Rynn's workstation was a small holographic panel that controlled the QEC that the team had brought from the Nexus. Rynn had configured a big neon green button to put the QEC in transmit mode and send the arrival beacon message. Sara smiled at that, she knew that the comm specialist was taking this mission very personally. Rynn had been one of the specialists to advance the idea of bringing the QEC outside of the galaxy in the first place.
Surprisingly, when presented with the idea, the Initiative leadership had been very intrigued and open to the idea of putting the QEC outside the area of the Scourge. It seemed that due to their longer awake period and time to make the adjustment to living in Heleus, most of the "firsters" had grown used to being independent and being disconnected from the Milky Way. Their response to the mission had seemed to be "what can it hurt" more than anything else.
Sara thought about what Scott had shared what had happened back in Heleus over the days and weeks after he'd revealed news of the war that had occurred in the Milky Way after the Andromeda expedition had left on its long journey. Reaction had been sharp and angry in some corners, mostly from the exiles or those who were newly awakened. For those who had been awake for a while, or those who were busy establishing lives on the outposts and in Port Meridian, the general feeling had been one of sadness and concern, but was more abstract in the face of daily struggles. The human and krogan populations seemed to handle it the best, while the salarians, turians and asari had taken it much harder. The asari seemed especially despondent as a species about the news, as there had been no word in the three emergency messages regarding Thessia, the asari homeworld.
'Well, I hope we finally get some sort of answer.' Sara hoped. Her worst fear was that there would still be only silence in response.
Twenty minutes later, the airlocks cycled, allowing Suvi and Rynn to remove their EVA suits and join the rest of the crew in the small forward bay. The angara never seemed to be bothered by the cramped space when the six team members got together, while the humans had to overcome their natural tendency to want personal space. So everyone was practically on top of each other as they stood around Rynn's workstation.
Rynn looked at the green button, then Suvi and at Sara.
"Do either of you want to do it?" she asked. "I mean, you're the two from the Tempest and the team that helped us to establish a foothold in Heleus. It should be you."
"No, it was your idea." Sara replied emphatically. "You did the work, so your name should be in the history books as the one who reached back out to the Milky Way and touched our former homes."
"That's lovely, Sara and you're right," Suvi agreed as she smiled warmly at Rynn. "You've been the spark for all this, go ahead and push your green button."
"It really is green," Rynn giggled. "Just the thing to have when you want to make sure you press the right control."
She reached out a finger towards the haptic screen and paused for a long moment. She glanced at everyone, and upon seeing smiles and nods, she finished the gesture and "pressed" the holographic button. Several readouts began scrolling and some indicators changed colors.
"OK, beacon sent." Rynn said in a whisper. "Quantum communications is instantaneous, so whoever or whatever may be at the other end has just been notified."
"Wouldn't it be something if they were in the shower, or asleep, or not even in a place to see our message?" Sara mused. "What a disappointment that would be…"
The display chirped and changed dramatically, interrupting Sara. Rynn squinted at the information scrolling across several display windows. She flipped several to the side, pressed more controls and began "typing" furiously.
"What? What happened?" Sara asked.
"We… we… we got something." Rynn squeaked. "It's a mess, not anything that I can translate, maybe garbage data, I don't know, I'm working it through some filters, maybe it's encrypted, but I don't recognize the headers, but yea, we got something and …"
"Slow down and take your time!" Sara interjected and she put a hand on the comm specialist's shoulder. Rynn took a deep breath and nodded.
"OK, I see what's going on." Rynn said after a few moments of studying the screens. "QEC works by super compressing information to work around the fact that we're communicating a single bit at a time. While it's fast, there's still a limit on throughput because it's a bit at a time. That's why if you've ever seen standard Alliance QEC communications, they're not very good - grainy holograms and highly compressed data packets. This may be formatted, or it may be... I don't know, I'll need to work with it. But it's something! We got something!"
Sara and Suvi were both elated. Even if they couldn't understand the message, something had responded! Rynn was clearly the expert on communications, so they relied on her expertise to figure it out what exactly it was.
"Wait… " Rynn said. "There's something else. At the end. It's… not part of the compressed packet, it looks like it's been added on."
She pushed a window to the middle of the holographic display and made it large. Sara and Suvi gasped at the same time. Sara's eyes brimmed with tears as she reached out and grabbed both Suvi's and Rynn's shoulders. The three angara watched in amazement and some concern as the three human women burst into tears and laughter at the same time.
The text on the screen simply read:
"Message received. Will respond soonest. We survived and won."
* Landing Day + 11 months - Port Meridian *
"SAM, how's it coming with that decryption?" Scott asked. He sat at a table, several data pads blinking for his attention but he was ignoring them. Since talking to his sister late in the evening yesterday, the first time after almost three weeks of silence, he'd become consumed with deciphering the strange data packet that Sara's team had received from the Milky Way galaxy on the reconnected QEC.
The text message at the end of the packet had an unexpected emotional effect on him and Cora, and both had stayed up all night talking about memories and past experiences before their journey to the Andromeda galaxy. It had been a catharsis of sorts, especially for Scott who had held the secret of the Reapers and SOS messages for several months before sharing it with the Initiative. Now, he wanted to know more about the new data from the Milky Way and he was determined to get at it.
"Pathfinder, it has been an interesting challenge with this data." the AI responded. "I have determined that this is not one discrete set of data, but several sets, each appended to the other, but each created and compressed differently. One is in a standard Initiative format. One is a Systems Alliance format. Several seem to be from a private source which my archival comparisons have linked to a figure called "The Shadow Broker" but I'm unable to decrypt them further at the moment."
"Shadow Broker, hmmm… that rings a bell, sorta. Wasn't that someone that Dad worked with during his days of AI research and early on with the Initiative?" Scott asked.
"Yes, Pathfinder, that is correct." SAM replied. "The Shadow Broker was a mysterious figure who was known to be a central figure in intelligence gathering and dissemination, espionage, finance and other activities that were sometimes at odds or in support of Council or Alliance interests. There are many files that discuss the vast reach and influence this figure had in affairs in the Milky Way."
"OK, gotcha. Have you been able to decrypt the Initiative data?"
"Yes, Pathfinder. The data are a series of messages that date from just after our launch in December of 2185 to roughly mid November of 2186. The earlier ones are housekeeping messages to confirm functionality of the QEC, as we were still within range of Milky Way communications buoys. The last ones are different. Two of them are similar to the SOS messages that your father received. One is a copy of a System Alliance dispatch. It may be a duplicate of the encoded Systems Alliance data that I still need to decode."
"Display it, please, SAM" Scott instructed.
FROM: ALLIANCE FLEET OPERATIONS
** FLASH FLASH FLASH X1A.34 **
ALL ALLIANCE MILITARY PERSONNEL:
THIS IS A GALAXY-WIDE ALERT FOR ALL HUMAN TERRITORIES. FLEET ADMIRAL HACKETT HAS DECLARED THREAT CONDITION SABER ONE. ENEMY PRESENCE CONFIRMED IN SOL SYSTEM. EARTH UNDER REAPER ATTACK.
ALL ALLIANCE MILITARY PERSONNEL ARE DIRECTED TO EVACUATE SOL SYSTEM AT FIRST AVAILABLE OPPORTUNITY. DO NOT ATTEMPT EARTH APPROACH. HEAVY ENEMY RESISTANCE REPORTED. REPEAT. DO NOT ATTEMPT EARTH APPROACH. FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS TO FOLLOW ON CODED CHANNEL CRIMSON TACIT.
EARTH-BASED ALLIANCE PERSONNEL UNABLE TO EVACUATE ARE DIRECTED TO COMMENCE ANY AND ALL NECESSARY COUNTERMEASURES.
ALL REMAINING ALLIANCE PERSONNEL OUTSIDE SOL THEATER ARE DIRECTED TO MUSTER AT PRE-APPOINTED STAGING AREAS AND COMMENCE OFFENSIVE COMBAT OPERATIONS AT FIRST AVAILABLE OPPORTUNITY.
IN ABSENCE OF FURTHER INSTRUCTION, INDEPENDENT ACTION IS AUTHORIZED.
"My God." Scott whispered. "SAM, that would have been me. I was on duty rotation for several of the mass effect relays around Arcturus Station. My muster point was Arcturus. Admiral Hackett and Fifth Fleet worked out of there, so they would have been involved from the start."
"Yes, Pathfinder. Based on previous actions, I believe that Admiral Hackett would have taken the fleet to the Sol System to fight an invading force. However, given that we know both Earth and the turian homeworld of Palavan were attacked, it is likely to assume that Arcturus itself would have also been targeted at some point. It was the center of Alliance political and military power and communications. It would have been a logical place for an enemy to strike."
"SAM, that's… awful to think about." Scott swallowed hard. "I had friends there. When all this happened, I was on the Hyperion, already asleep. They were fighting… this… these Reapers…"
"Pathfinder, I have one other message that was part of the Initiative set of data. It is a short message and an image. It is dated November 11th, 2186." the AI announced. "Displaying it to you now."
A text window appeared on the monitor.
"To Jien and the rest of the Initiative. Don't have much time. We're enacting protocol Lambda 2. Something horrible is happening. The entire galaxy is under attack by things called Reapers. We're destroying flight path data and all the plans that we can find of where you're going, just in case they might get captured by the Reapers. We don't want to send our troubles following you. We will find a way to reconnect and hopefully you'll get this after the fact. We're hiding the QEC that's paired to the Nexus. Pray for us, that we survived, or this may be the last message from the Milky Way you ever receive. Pray for us."
Scott swiped the message to one side after reading it and studied the image. It was a scene of utter destruction with buildings smashed and bodies of humans tossed in a mad helter-skelter. What drew his eyes was the dark, angular, insectoid or squid-like shape that towered above the debris. It stood on four giant legs with what looked like other appendages tucked behind its armor or carapace that jutted upwards into the sky. A primal shudder of fear went up the young man's back.
"SAM, is this a Reaper that I'm looking at?"
"There is no identifying information on the image, just metadata that indicates it was recorded in the city of Chicago, in the jurisdictional state of Illinois, United North American States on Earth on November 2nd, 2186. Given that timeframe, there is a high degree of probability that this is a Reaper." the AI replied.
Scott found it difficult to tear his eyes away from the towering and utterly alien black figure. It seemed to radiate sheer malice just by its presence and this was an image that was over six hundred years old. Scott couldn't imagine the panic and fear that anyone must've felt in facing such an enemy in person.
"It's hard to tell if this is a machine, or some sort of vehicle." Scott said, trying to force his mind into a more logical mode. "It's huge, so if it's a single armored entity, I can't even imagine what the species are like inside."
"Pathfinder, in correlating both public and private information available to me, I can confirm that this figure resembles the vessel called Sovereign that attacked the Citadel in 2183." SAM said. "It was determined that Sovereign could host crew, or operate on its own. The subject in the image is identical in shape and configuration, and may even be slightly bigger in scale. "
"Wait, you mean Sovereign was one of these Reapers and not a geth ship? Are the Reapers geth? Or was Shepard right that the Reapers were a separate threat?" Scott asked.
"I am unable to extrapolate if the ship on this image and Sovereign were geth in construction. Up till the time we left in 2185, no other geth ship had been recorded that matched Sovereign's design." SAM answered. "Based on confidential data that was provided to me prior to launch, most analyses concluded that Sovereign was much older than the lifespan of the geth species and it was radically different in materials and design than the geth used."
Sam sat back, processing what SAM had revealed. He decided he needed to change the subject.
"SAM, have you figured out what the round trip time for messaging back to the Milky Way might be?" he asked.
"One moment, Pathfinder." SAM said and there was a short pause. "Based on the current configuration of the comm buoys and QEC relay, simple messages or high priority traffic would be nearly instantaneous. However, larger amounts of traffic or large messages would have to be prioritized, broken down and transmitted in packets to be reconstructed at the destination. The QEC limits the bandwidth further, so I conclude that the total result would be roughly no more than four to five seconds delay on simple back and forth audio, perhaps augmented with basic, outline only holograms."
"Amazing." Scott marveled. "But we've sacrificed a lot of buoys that were designated for colonization to this effort."
"Yes, Pathfinder." SAM responded. "It will require a much more advanced industrial base to begin constructing new buoys using the mass effect as a transmission medium."
Scott nodded. "Nothing more, SAM."
Scott stumbled towards the kitchen to grab what was now a cold cup of coffee. Coffee-substitute, he corrected himself. It was dark, bitter and went well with sweeteners, but coffee was coffee, and this plant extract that he was drinking was definitely NOT coffee. Whoever was first in Heleus to successfully modify and cultivate coffee in the new galaxy would be a very popular individual with the human population. Scott even pondered if he'd try to be first in line. He was the human Pathfinder, after all, that had to count for something! He allowed himself a laugh at that thought, but then his eyes fell on the monitor that was still displaying the image of the Reaper.
How in the hell had the Milky Way survived an attack by multiple beings or vessels that resembled Sovereign, Scott mused. He remembered watching the vids of the Battle of Citadel. The geth and Sovereign had carved through the Citadel fleet like a hot laser through ice. He couldn't imagine what the carnage must've been like against an army of Reapers. The loss of life and sheer level of destruction visible in that one image was horrific, duplicated across the galaxy was more than Scott was able to imagine.
It was with those grim thoughts, mixed with nightmarish visions of a black, insectoid monster that Scott slept restlessly...
* Landing Day + 11 months - Somewhere else *
"Yea?" The gravelly voice answered the incoming comm request with a curt response.
"Hello, my old friend. I hope you are well. I know it's been awhile."
"Well, it has been a long time, what, maybe a century? 'Bout time you remembered who your best and still living friend was!"
"It was only two years ago when we last spoke and of course I remember. I could never forget you."
"Aw, just pokin' at ya. Good to hear your voice. What do you need?"
"It's happened. I received a beacon."
"You're gonna have to remind me… oh, wait. That beacon? You sure?"
"Yes, the VI attempted to notify me earlier but I was asleep. The automated response went out. We have to talk about what we planned. This is going to be huge."
"OK, ain't got nothin' on my calendar for another decade at least. Not much action for the old fogeys around here, so I won't be missed. You coming here or want me to come to you?"
"Come here, if you can. I want to be in a place where I can respond as quickly as possible."
"Sure."
Thank you for reading!
I have to admit, I teared up when I wrote the single sentence in response to the beacon. It was pretty emotional for me to be in their shoes, experiencing what they would have thought and felt, and having gone through the original trilogy and Andromeda stories, experiencing the highs and lows of the Reaper Wars and exploration of Heleus.
Last chapter is coming next!