* * * Presrop: En Route * * *

Shepard looked up from his omnitool; Rich Jenkins was still playing the controls on the Mako's dedicated service console. The younger man looked up and tilted his head slightly. "You actually use those things? Have they ever helped you, sir?"

"Respirocytes? You bet. They have before, and they almost certainly will again. I used to use Amgen, but switched to Sinnay a couple of years ago when I saw the specs. 10cc will give you three hours of full-sprint, or ten hours of sleep, fourteen of coma. Got 50cc only because they wouldn't sell me any more.

"Personally, I think it's reckless and irresponsible for the Alliance to not have them as standard issue. I could name you a dozen friends I've lost because it hadn't been commercialised in time. Anyone who works, or especially fights, in space should have a minimum of 10cc in circulation. I suppose they don't because they cost so little, and if you care about your life, you should already have them in. Do your parents have any insurance on you?"

"Sure; and the church pays for it. It's a waste of money, if you ask me. The Lord is my shepard…uh…no pun intended, sir. Uh…but He'll protect me, and call me home when it's my time." He smiled so broadly, it looked like a laugh. "And I'll be with my momma…and all my grandparents again!"

Shepard inhaled thoughtfully. "When did you lose them?"

Rich hesitated. "Never met my Grandpa...on my dad's side. But we were...uh...travelling to Eden Prime as a family. In a Church-funded vessel. My father's mother and my mother's father both died on final descent; their lander crashed into a whalezep that flew out of a cloud and tried to eat them." He chewed his lip for a second. "Momma died a few months ago. Broke my Nana's heart, and she died right after."

"I've been there," Shepard said, "I'm sorry. But you don't have a family of your own, so you don't need them to buy an insurance payout; they should be paying for a minimum dose of nanotech instead. Remember how much you spent on that little model of the Citadel for your folks? Respirocytes are just cheap insurance; given the choice, I'm quite certain your family would rather you made that investment, and survived a harrowing adventure – than sent them a piece of fripperous booty."

Rich shrugged. "That's why I'm a plain-vanilla ground pounder. No augments, no extra training, no extended commitment. Next year, I'm not re-upping; I'll qualify to be an Elder without having spent two years on a mission." He shrugged. "Gotta get my life started, ya know?"

Jenkins wasn't a glory hound, he was a GDWI ("GID-wee".) Shepard's evaluation of the young man changed instantly. He stood there for a moment, considering what to say. "Think for a moment about how much you miss your mother and grandparents.

"All the people who know you now – your father, siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles – will miss you that much if you've bought it. Williams, Alenko and I will certainly do everything possible to save you, but we could use your help to keep the rest of your family from losing you if you take a critical hit. In fact, I should tell you that they will probably miss you more; you still have your whole life ahead of you. Don't miss out on it. Don't make them miss out on it."

Rich looked aside for a moment. "Just a c-note, huh?" He looked up at Shepard again and smiled. "Well, I guess you kind of funded it, so…will do, sir!"

Shepard nodded briskly, waved a thumb toward the overhead, "Doctor Chakwas can get you set up; Personnel will deduct something like 99 credits from your pay, or some other trivial amount. You'll want to get them replaced every five to ten years or so; they lose efficacy over time."

Richard saluted. "Will do, sir."

"Carry on." As he headed for the lift, Shepard realised he had not taken any time to talk with the Engineering staff yet; to find out about the so-called "stealth systems" and how to both make the most of them, and be aware of their shortcomings or limitations. He continued aft toward the starboard Engineering accessway. Passing the MFO station, he couldn't help but smile as he passed Doyle Gomez - whose arms were inconveniently full of equipment - using an extension gripper as if it were a hand and saluting with it.

Shepard returned the half-serious salute without slowing his pace.

As he stepped through the inner door, Tali stopped just short of colliding with him. She took a step back, practically babbling. "Oh, Captain Shepard! Your ship's amazing! I've never seen a drive core like this before." Without looking away from him, she pointed aft at the slowly-rotating core shell, "I can't believe you were able to fit it into a ship this small. I'm starting to understand why you humans have been so successful. I had no idea Alliance vessels were so advanced!"

Shepard held up a hand to stop her. "Commander Shepard," he smiled, glanced briefly toward Greg Adams, who was talking with two of the other engineers. "And Normandy's not actually typical; she's the first of her type. Almost certainly our most recent launch, and chock full of cutting-edge technology. Or so they tell me."

Tali shook her head in amazement, "A month ago, I was patching a makeshift fuel line into a converted tug in the flotilla, and I just know that ship was older than my father. Now I'm aboard one of the most advanced vessels in Citadel space! I have to thank you again for bringing me along. Travelling on a vessel like this is a dream come true for me. In fact," she gestured him to follow as she moved to the port control pillar, "have a look at this. I'll bet you don't even know why this is amazing, but the engineers do, so I can't tell them."

She stopped at the pillar, summoned a control interface with a "come-to-me" gesture. Holographic displays appeared in an arc at arm's length from her. Her hands moved quickly and precisely until it looked like a throwing-cards-on-a-table stunt: Arranged like bricks, with overlapping fit, virtually every 20x30cm tile had something high-resolution and busy on it.

She stepped back and indicated the entire array. "I can now see every functioning system aboard the ship right now. With proper access, I can control everything except where we're pointed and who we're shooting at." She leaned up closer to him, lowered her voice conspiratorially. "Because that's the ship's primary mission. A pilot and a big gun. It's kind of a weakness in your security. If I can make the ship think I'm CHENG, I can control almost everything."

Shepard glanced toward Adams, "Actually, there's a lot more security there than you might realise. Greg just happens to wear it well."

Tali pointed over her shoulder at the displays. "It also looks wonderful. Not many ships in the Migrant Fleet have the kind of integration that could support this, and most of those are military. Not many people would appreciate that." The quarian's helmet tilted slightly. "But I think you do."

"I had no idea you found starship technology so interesting."

"How could I not? Though I suppose it comes with being a quarian. The Migrant Fleet is the key to the survival of my people. Ships are our most valuable resource. But we don't have anything like this. We make do with cast-offs and second-hand equipment. We just try to keep them running for as long as we can. Some of the fleet's larger vessels date back to our original flight from the geth."

Shepard paused, considering the implications. "I'd heard something like that, but wasn't sure whether to believe it or not. Your fleet's using ships that are three centuries old? Is that even true?"

"Oh it's true, all right. But it's a…well, we have a story. There was a captain, he was old when the Geth rebellion happened, but he knew so much, did so much, saved so many people, and yet he died, even as he was giving orders to keep trying." The quarian stopped suddenly, tilted her head at Shepard. "Kind of like you, how you're always trying to save people."

She shook her head, and waved both hands at him, "Never mind. Anyway, we have a…um…sort of a cultural mythos around captains; that their ships become a reflection of who they are. And because of that, we've really tried to maintain that ship as well as possible, even though they're constantly being repaired, modified, and refitted. As if, by doing so, we keep a part of Rocdot'Uthnam hod Rayya – umm…that captain – with us."

Tali's Human Interaction VI rendered a factoid into her field of view; she stopped suddenly, looked at him with focus. "Oh! You have a thing like that, too. The ship of Theseus? Do you know who that is?"

Shepard smiled as he nodded; he knew that story even without help from his ARO. "It's from thousands of years ago; it would have been a sea-going vessel, not a starship. And it's more of a thought experiment, really. The idea was that this guy Theseus was so highly regarded that the people who had his ship after he died maintained it, even when that meant replacing parts as they wore out. But after all the parts had been replaced, was it the same ship?" He shrugged. "I suppose that might hit a little closer to home for you, if you're constantly replacing parts or systems."

"That's true, and I suppose it's part of our story too, since sometimes we have to replace things with new systems that change how the ship functions. As a result, they aren't always the same ship, and sometimes changing one system requires modifying or replacing another system that wasn't failing. The result is that they're often not pretty, but they work...mostly. We've tried to make ourselves as independent as possible on the flotilla. Grow our own food, mine and process our own fuel, recycle materials of all sorts...even ourselves. Molecular disassembler technology keeps advancing because of our research and development, and then someone steals the advances and sells them to Council planets that still use scarcity economies before we can. And some things we just can't make on our own. A simple hull patch may require raw materials we just don't have ready access to. That's why our Pilgrimages are so important.

"And you – all of you – live like this? That sounds crazy…almost untenable."

The quarian sighed and nodded. "It's true…our lives aren't easy. Resources are scarce and we are constantly on the move. Everything we do must in some way contribute to the continuation of the Migrant Fleet.

"There are seventeen…maybe eighteen million of us in the flotilla, and each of us relies on the others for survival. The bonds among my people are strong. Unfortunately, we have had to surrender many of the freedoms and civil liberties other species take for granted."

"What sort of freedoms?"

"Well, one of the most controversial is that it's currently illegal for any one person to be responsible for starting more than two children."

"What if one of them dies as an infant, or in an accident?"

Tali shook her head sadly. "We already have too many people on the flotilla; hardly anyone lives on a planet because we have no planets of our own. It's a numbers game, really. If our population grows too much, it would strain our resources to their breaking point. On the other hand, some people can't have children of their own without biotech, which is an investment. We have a…um…I suppose you would call it a sort of market…for births to mitigate this, but some people go on Second Pilgrimages to seek help rather than participate. Though if you emigrate off the flotilla, you can have as many kids as you want." She seemed briefly uncomfortable, "That's something they're kind of encouraging at present. It's being compared to the diaspora experienced by other species like the krogan.

"But if a couple only wants to start one child, they can put that second potential one up for someone else who might want more…or who lost one. Like if they're the last of a bloodline or something. Uh...that's assuming the Conclave doesn't direct the market to absorb the extra birth, rather than put it back in circulation. Sometimes, they only want to be able to pass on a name, or maybe they want a ship of their own, or…well, all sorts of things."

Shepard thought for a moment. "That could be challenging. If someone, or even a whole family, moves away, their kids are going to be...lonely. As far as I know, no Council species can hybridise; even asari only give birth to asari, as I understand it. Is there a network that allows young quarians to find each other, even if they're light years apart? Can someone go on a Pilgrimage to be with someone they have found and fallen in love with?"

"That..happens more often in vids than in real life. But it does happen, and there are networks and NfoXes dedicated to it."

"I suppose you still have to keep the population from shrinking."

"Aboard the Migrant Fleet? Well, yes and no. We have far more people than we have assignments – I suppose you might call them 'jobs' – so that can be a problem. Some people get creative about what constitutes a 'job.' There's even a story about one who had the assignment of opening and closing a hangar door manually. Um...you know...with a hand crank. He even sabotaged the motor when they would try to automate it. The one day, he couldn't close it fast enough, and was killed.

"But the motor they had tried to put in was still inoperable. So they had to get someone else to do it until they could fix it. And then the second one didn't want to do anything else, either, and she took to sabotage when they tried to install a new motor system. Eventually, the whole ship is full of people who only want their assignment and stand in the way of making things better or safer. The ship falls into a black hole because of it, and they're trapped near the event horizon forever."

She chuckled, waved a hand dismissively. "I know, it's a silly story, mostly meant for children, but it's the sort of thing that really influences you when you're growing up. It makes you think of the big picture; we all have to watch out for each other, because no one else will.

"Of course, we can't allow our numbers to become too few. If our population is in decline – like if each couple only has one child – the Conclave can legislate adding births to the 'births market.' But there are programs we use to keep up our genetic diversity, weed out diseases, and make our people better, but there are so many variables that it's mostly managed by the programs. Even at that, they're just recommendations. There's a board that oversees the whole thing, too. The VIs they use are designed to be able to show what they're doing and what the expected results will be, and which generation will be able to benefit from it.

"But the most important consideration is the numbers game. In cases of extreme population decline, incentives are even offered to encourage more births. Though the Conclave hasn't had to take such measures in nearly a century."

"What had happened a century ago?"

"We had a…I suppose you could call it a civil war."

"'Civil war?'" Shepard folded his arms across his chest. "No such thing."

Tali nodded, "I know. But it was Journey Year 243 - which is sort of like a tricentennial, but with our math - of the flight from Rannoch, and some rabble-rousers were pushing for a build-up and all-out assault through the Veil, and back to Rannoch. They blew up a ship, killing hundreds, and tried to blame the geth. Lots of people actually fell for it." She shook her head sadly. "A lot of people died because of infighting and…um…'copycat sabotage.' We lost several ships. The Conclave voted to hand over governance to the Admiralty Board for a year. Well, 243 days; almost one of your years."

"When the Admiralty Board is in in charge, you're actually under military law?"

"Right.

"And this Conclave; that's your government?"

Tali focused on Shepard and moved her hands as if placing something before him, "Yes; the Admiralty Board is the supreme ruling body, but they hardly meet or do anything that affects civilian life unless there is a big problem that affects the whole fleet. The Conclave is our civilian branch of government. Each ship with a complement over 729 people, or over 81 kilotonnes, can elect a representative to serve on the Conclave and make decisions that affect the fleet as a whole.

"Sometimes smaller ships will affiliate with larger ships that already have representation. But sometimes they form up with other smaller ships to form a dovra…like how all the inter-ship tugs and shuttles formed their own dovra. I suppose you might call it a 'picket,' except there's no capital ship involved. Um…usually."

"On matters that affect an individual ship, however, the captain has the final say. It's a tradition that dates back to the early days when the fleet was governed by martial law. Some captains – four in particular – wanted to go search for mineable resources on…um…it looks like you have a word for them, alnummed worlds, but the Admiralty Board didn't want to send escorts. So the "Foolhardy Four" added some armament and voted among themselves to do this on their own.

"Two of them came back with the wreckage of one of the other two in tow, but they were absolutely loaded down with resources: Ilmenite, thorium, copper, gold, iridium, even eezo and some Prothean tech…and they had most of the crews of the other two ships."

"Sort of a 'good news/bad news' event?"

Tali nodded, "And the funny part is both sides saw this as justification for their positions of Go versus NoGo. Which is kind of why most captains have an advisory council within their own crew to give them advice and guidance."

"It still sounds like the ultimate power rests with elected officials rather than a particular class or family."

"In practice. The Conclave and the respective council for each ship tend to set the rules that govern our daily lives. But in theory, and officially, we are still under military jurisdiction.

"Five top-ranking military officials in the fleet serve on the Admiralty Board. They normally advise the Conclave directly, but the Conclave mostly has the final say on what the Migrant Fleet does. But the Admiralty Board have the power to overrule any decision by the Conclave in case of emergency. But for them to do so requires unanimous agreement. And they can only do so once; after that, the entire Board must resign their seats."

"I assume that's unusual; in an emergency, the Conclave would still have a good idea of what to do, right?"

"Usually. And if the members of the Admiralty Board are also ship captains, they retain those positions. And they could be appointed back to the Board after three years…well, our years. Like I said, it's a little less than two of your years.

"Still, it's a safeguard that's served us well. Since the Journey began, the Admiralty Board has overruled the Conclave only four times. And one of those times, the Admiralty board was kept vacant until it could be reinstated with those same members!"

Shepard smiled and nodded. "I suppose nothing wins like being right."

"Yes…well, most of the time. Sometimes you can lie your way to the top, if it's what people want to hear."

Shepard nodded again, looking at the quarian with a growing respect. "Tali, may I use you as a resource? I want to know more about the geth from the quarian perspective."

"Why of course!" Tali stood up a little straighter. Then she put her hands on her hips, "Uh…although I doubt I can tell you anything you don't already know, mister Spectre."

Shepard gave a conciliatory shrug. "I may have the position, but I still have to build the knowledge. You're the geth expert, that's at least part of why you're here. It would be a mistake for me to assume I know everything you do."

"Well…it's been almost three of your 'centuries' since they drove my people into exile. You know the basics, right? What they were when we created them, and how they turned on us?"

"I know the human version, so…probably not," Shepard admitted reluctantly. "Give me the briefing."

"The geth were originally created to serve as an automated manual labour force. Initially, their intelligence was as hardware-constrained as any other VI." Tali gestured to her omnitool, and it began to play an animation that matched and supported her description, intercut with real footage. "Over time, we made small modifications to their programming, leveraged advances in computing, added knowledge modules and specialisation add-ons to allow them to perform more varied and complex tasks, though at the time we didn't realise that this was bringing them closer and closer to true AGIs."

"You mean the Council didn't step in and try to stop you?"

"No! Why would they bother? Quarian mechs were the standard across the galaxy. And we were constantly working to make them better. But the changes were so insignificant, so gradual, that we were able to control them.

"Or so we thought. But one thing we underestimated was the power of the neural network. An individual geth might have one or two specialised expert systems, but as they were upgraded to faster and larger processing, a million geth thinking at once on a single matter was…well, the cyber-historians call it an 'inherently unstable matrix.'"

"So the geth share brain power?"

"Well, not like you would probably think. The can, but they don't have to. Many of the original geth logic systems were designed to work in concert with others nearby, either inside or outside the current platform. Basically, the more geth – or geth modules – you have, the smarter they can be."

"Smart enough to develop consciousness?"

"No, nothing like that, they cannot share sensory data, at least not in realtime. Their architecture cannot handle that much simultaneous input. Or at least we thought they couldn't at the time…um…although they pretty clearly did. Anyway, that's more like CobbleStone."

Shepard nodded to himself, recalling his speculation that the geth relied on exactly that sort of technology. It did seem unlikely they would have remained technologically static after striking out on their own, assuming they had collectively gotten that smart.

Or that they have not been improving on themselves since they rebelled.

Tali continued, "But consider a factory scenario: you have machines in motion have to be coordinated. Geth could partition processing to a common task, like if you wanted to calculate pi to a googol places while running that factory, each geth unit would set aside a portion of its compute power to the task, and then all of them would compute the optimal unit to act as task supervisor, and then starting the task. More geth sharing compute means shorter time to your answer.

"Each geth unit maintains an individual awareness and identity. The neural networking only operates on a process-based level. Doctor Vigee always said that it's basically the synthetic equivalent of a subconscious."

"Doctor Vigee?"

Tali sighed. "Vigee'Arj vas Rayya. He's a scientist and historian who…um…obviously, lived on our ship. My father would talk with him for hours while tending my bubble, and I would play in the room with them while they talked. Lots of times, they would leave me with him so he and mother could do their work."

Shepard almost laughed. "No wonder you're such a technology expert. You've been awash in it since you were a baby."

Tali shrugged. "I suppose you're right. Doctor Vigee was about as close to being an 'academic' as I think you could be on the flotilla. Ah…I'm being told that a closer word is 'professor emeritus.' And he was so sweet to me when I was growing up, it was like having a…um…grandfather. Both of mine had died long before I was born, but I know what they are.

Shepard didn't know whether to pity her never having known her grandparents, or envy her never having to lose them. Tali didn't give him time to consider it further.

"He postulated that geth have an understanding of what nearby platforms or local-networked geth are 'thinking about,' and that this gave the collective geth – all of them – a vastly superior awareness of their meta-environment, which in turn allowed for them to better understand and manipulate it like they did on Telmar or Rannoch during the uprising."

She looked away and down with a tiny sigh. "Anyway, Doctor Vigee died a few weeks before I left on my Pilgrimage. I think I was mad at the whole fleet about it, so I left early." She shook her head bitterly, "It was stupid and rash, I know, but it seemed like every time I lifted a doorcloth or went to the galley, I got upset I wasn't seeing him. And so here I am."

Shepard nodded politely. "But it still sounds like the geth are just simple VIs."

Tali seemed to remember where she was. "Oh, yes. As I said, when they're in close proximity, they'd switch to a different comms protocol, like NUV or similar, but with minimum terabit bandwidth and minimal LOS requirements. It lets them coordinate low-level functional processes, freeing up more capacity for triaged thought. I suppose that would include original or independent thought."

Her harem of exceptional VIs offered a context-relevant explanation, which she read from her HUD: "Actually, it's a lot like how your Solomonoff Induction algorithms – the ones that drive and serve in PVR environments like 'Home Again' or 'I'll Fix It' are being compressed when found to be computationally reducible. Once you can do the computation with less runtime, newer insights and better algorithms can be designed and compiled. The whole thing builds on itself...um...like what you call a logic puzzle."

"I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that you know about Solomnoff Induction," Shepard smiled, canted his head at her. "But how do you even know about those applications?"

The quarian fidgeted for a moment, as if considering how much to say. "We…have a similar project. We lost a lot of records when the geth took our planet from us; since we can't get the records themselves, we're trying to re-compute them."

"Are you using our algorithms?"

Tali seemed to pull back slightly, as if uncomfortable. "I…don't actually know…"

"You seem nervous," Shepard smiled reassuringly, "It's fine by me. If you're trying to recover information you lost because of the geth, I wish you every success; I'd help if I could."

"Oh." Tali's shoulders seemed to relax. "Um, thank you."

Noticing the quarian still seemed uncomfortable, Shepard changed topics. "So what made the geth rebel?"

Tali glanced to her left, checked the console, turned off the monitor array. "As we built more and more geth, their effective intelligence became more sophisticated, even…abstract. Apparently, one day, a geth began to ask its quarian overseer about the nature of its existence: 'Am I alive?' 'Why am I here?' 'What is my purpose?' The overseer probably wasn't paying enough attention, and spoke as if to a child asking philosophical questions."

Shepard nodded, thinking. "Perhaps as a way of understanding the circumstances around their tasks so as to perform them better, or more efficiently?"

"That's one of the possible explanations. But what really broke everything was when another unit asked if it had a soul. As you can imagine, that caused a near panic among my people."

"I don't see what's so bad about questions like that. It would at least be another data point in the question of whether intelligence is an emergent phenomenon."

"From another person, no, it's not a problem. But the geth were created to engage in mundane, dangerous, or repetitive manual labour. Tasks like that are fine for machines, but won't satisfy a sentient general intelligence for long. The geth were showing signs of rudimentary self-awareness and independent thought. Emergent phenomenon or not, if the geth were intelligent, or recursive, or self-aware…" Tali paused, took a breath, "…um…then we were using them as slaves."

"And you knew this?"

"Well, we probably should have, but most people probably underestimated the significance of what they were hearing until it was too late. I suppose it was kind of inevitable that the newly-sentient geth would rebel against their situation."

"What happened? Did anyone try to do anything before the geth started killing people?"

"I suspect as much, but there simply aren't very many surviving records from that time. The most tragic part was that, once they figured out that the geth would rise up against us, some committee of the Conclave issued a directive out across all quarian-controlled systems to deactivate all geth.

"It was an extreme directive, using almost outlandish languaging, and technically, the committee was acting beyond its authority...but they had to do something. A lot of people didn't understand why it was important, and thought their geth should be exempt and didn't shut them down. Some people just thought the directive didn't or shouldn't apply to them, or that it was illegal, or that it was the Conclave trying to exert control where it had no authority, or it didn't know what was really going on. Because so many geth were left functioning, the process of their rebellion wasn't stopped or even slowed until it was too late."

Shepard tilted his head as he asked, "You had said quarian mechs were the de facto standard across the galaxy. What about those? Didn't they rebel, too?"

"Those weren't actual geth, they were just regular mechs. You'd call them androids, I think. There were some other automated systems, too. But the geth were our mechs, quite superior to what we made available to the rest of the galaxy. You know that 'geth' in Keelish means 'servant of the people,' don't you? But we are 'the people.' The Council bureaucracy had laws that would have made them more difficult to export, so we just kept them on our worlds. There's some Volition Accords thing that applies to civilisations having the freedom to govern internal policies…you know…to the extent that they don't affect others."

"Are there any of them still functioning?"

"No, they were mostly shut down by the people who owned them…as if they might rebel, too. I think there are a few in museums.

"Anyway, when we tried to shut down just the geth – our geth – they fought back and started killing people."

"I suppose that would have depended on how you carried it out. Did you do it as a conventional power-down, or with bullets? If you used violence, you can't really blame them for defending themselves; they were fighting for their survival."

"The geth that were powered down at the time stayed that way. Ones that were charging started actively pushing compute out to the network in an attempt to solve the problems.

"But the compute was put to use solving self-protection problems." Tali began to gesture broadly, "We tried cutting power to chargers, to the relays and hubs, servers, NfoXes…but they were faster than we were. Active geth were working against us, restoring those systems and functions, setting up alternative charge modalitites and counter-NfoXes, and…and it got to where we had no other choice! They were on the verge of revolution. By acting quickly, there was a chance to end the war before it began."

"You were also going to have to resign yourselves to doing your own manual or dangerous tasks again."

"Well, maybe. Only until we could constrain their recursion. You know, redesign their code, make them simpler, less capable. But the hope was that most of the geth, cut off from others, would still be little more than machines; advanced but overly-specialised VIs incapable of organised resistance. But they had progressed much further than anyone anticipated, and insights gained already persisted in the geth that were still operating."

She sighed deeply, dejectedly shook her head.

"The war was long and bloody. Telmar, a world that had been settled very recently, was the first. The geth killed practically everyone there. I think it started there; they had a lot of geth; proportionally more than a fully-settled world. Millions upon millions of us died at their hands on Palormik, our second settled world after Busteron, and the place where most of heavy manufacturing and development was. That's when the rebellion began in earnest. Ultimately, they killed billions of us, wiped out our whole civilisation. What could we do but respond in kind?"

"I suppose the geth were thinking the same thing...?"

"We wouldn't have needed to shoot them if they had responded properly to the shut down directive." She shook her head. "We lost all our colony worlds; in the end, we were even forced to flee our own homeworld. At first, we had feared the geth would pursue us, but they never came beyond the Veil."

She sighed as she gestured to her left in resignation. "Now we drift through space, exiles looking for a way to reclaim what was once ours."

Shepard paused before speaking. "Sounds like something that could have been prevented at several points. Fairly typical for something of this magnitude."

"We made a mistake when we didn't have something in place to stop an uprising. And when we ignored the shutdown order. Maybe even when we created the geth in the first place. But we didn't make a mistake when we went to war against them. If we had not acted, they would have wiped us out. They're synthetics; they have no use for organics. None!

"Why do you think they cut themselves off from the rest of the galaxy? Why do you think they've killed every organic who's ever tried to contact them?"

It wasn't a good answer, but it was technically accurate: "Not every one; they didn't kill Saren."

"What does that tell you? The geth are not innocent victims in all this. They're the enemy, they want to destroy us. Not just quarians, all organic life. That's why they joined up with Saren. That's why we have to stop him; it may be the only way to stop the geth."

"You mean finding and catching Saren would be enough to fulfill your Pilgrimage quest?"

Tali's helmet tilted to one side. "I suppose that depends on how obvious I can make it that doing so was important to killing a lot of geth, which would be a step toward getting us back home."

Shepard folded his arms, shook his head. "I simply can't believe they just send you off alone. Seriously, do quarian parents throw children out into the galaxy with a map and a bindlestiff, and expect them to come back with something valuable enough to warrant lifetime passage on a ship?"

One of Tali's VIs displayed a graphic of a walking figure with a stick over its shoulder, on the end of which was a small bag of personal belongings labelled 'bindlestiff.' Tali paused to study the image on her HUD, then scoffed. "Be serious. It's not like they just cast us out. Before we leave, we are given lessons on how to survive outside the flotilla, and given gifts to help us on our journey." She gestured to parts of her suit and body, "We also receive implants and upgrades to fight off sickness and disease. Generations of living in an isolated and highly controlled environment have left our immune systems weaker than most. By the time we leave the fleet, we are well-equipped for our Pilgrimages.

"This is a rite of passage for all quarians. If it were actually dangerous, our numbers would suffer. Virtually every Pilgrimage ends with a triumphant return and the ritual presentation of the gift to one of the fleet's captains. We're set up to succeed, you know. Not to fail."

She paused, studying the analysis provided by one of her VIs. "There's an analogue on your own world: Sometimes students will go to other planets and live with the people there for a year, or even a few months. They go to school, sleep in a host's home, even learn the language if they're adventurous enough to have gone to a different homeworld."

"The point is to broaden your horizons, expose you to things you didn't know were true, or possible, or even existed at all. And when you get back home, you have a new perspective."

Shepard nodded; his wife had done exactly that before university; she had even gone so far as to have her exchange experience on Irune (the volus homeworld.) "Yup, I'll bet you do. Hm. Thanks, Tali, that helps a lot." He looked at his omnitool as if he didn't have an ARO. "Looks like I have a meeting in a few minutes, so I should go. Thanks for the talk."

"See you later!"

Though Shepard would not have admitted to it – the reaction was unconscious – thinking about his wife made him want to get away. His sudden focus on his omnitool had been called out to Tali by one of her VIs as a social cue. She watched him go, wondering what it was that made him behave so. It reminded her of her search of his savegames from Calico Jack 3, but she decided that she would look again later.

As Shepard moved forward, Greg Adams saw him and spoke before the CO could leave Engineering. "Hey, Commander. You have a minute?"

Shepard turned immediately. "Anytime, Chief. Something wrong?"

"I saw you talking with the quarian." It looked like Adams was trying not to look directly at her. "Uh…Tali. She's been spending all her time down here asking me about our engines."

"Is she bothering you? Need me to tell her to let you work?"

"What? No…she's amazing. I wish my team was half as smart as she is. Give her a month on board, and she'll know more about the ship than I do. She's got a real knack for technology, that one. I was going to ask how you found her; I can see why you wanted to bring her along."

Shepard looked away guiltily. "Originally, I didn't. But the Captain said to, and then she – Tali – fixed my helmet after it took a hit. What could I say? She's a genius; I expect she'll be a real asset to the team and mission, too."

"Wouldn't be a bit surprised," Greg nodded. "But I'm guessing that isn't why you came down here."

Shepard recalled that this was correct. "It's not. I know Captain Anderson was down here a lot during the outfitting and shakedown, but he never said why, and I realised I had been missing out of a lot of stuff. So I'd meant to get up to speed on the tech we're demonstrating to the brass. I'm hoping you can brief me on the IES Stealth Systems, at least for a non-technical type. How does it work?"

"Non-technical?" Greg practically laughed. "Yeah, right. You're the first engineer to get through the N7 programme. There's not a nerd in the Alliance who doesn't now dream about it." Adams shrugged, half an embarrassed smile on his face. "Anyway, it's not like the ship actually turns invisible."

"Different kind of engineering," Shepard conceded. "Come on, what's the story? We don't have the legendary 'cloaking device,' right?"

"Naah. But you don't need to make a ship invisible to humans, just to sensors. To you, without augments, a ship the size of Normandy is invisible at ten kilometres, even in full sun, and that's assuming you knew which way to look. And with a LINAC like we're packing, Normandy can clobber you at a hundred megametres. That's why we've always used sensors; radar, lidar, infrared, 4DO.

"But if the bad guys are also using sensors…" He paused, put a hand to the side of his mouth as if imparting a secret, "Spoiler Alert: They Are. The same ones." He smiled at his own joke as his hand returned to his console. "Anyway, because they are, you simply can't hide a ship out in space, they emit too much heat and radiation. Too easy for sensors to pick 'em up…unless you find a way to capture those emissions. Well…except for A4DO…the stuff we emit to make it not look like we're occulting stars. So our stealth systems trap the energy we give off in storage sinks built into the ship itself; no emissions to give away our location. But eventually the sinks have to be vented; more than a few hours of silent running and they overheat…cook us inside our own hull."

"There's no way for anyone to detect us?"

"A visual scan can still pick us up; anyone looking out a window can spot us plain as day. But you have to be pretty close to get a visual in space, and like I said, you're more likely to need a telescope or something, and know where to look.

"We still switch off all the external lighting, and the outer hull is coated with the starship version of BlackOut to absorb lidar and other active scanners that most vessels rely on. As long as the stealth systems are engaged, they can't see us. You know…unless we accelerate too quickly to FTL speeds.

"As soon as we accelerate at what would be over fifteen gees relative, it's like setting off a flare in bright blue or purple." The engineer chuckled to himself. "Kind of looks like fireworks, actually.

"Of course, as soon as we're over point three, it blue-shifts our emissions so far that the sinks can't absorb it all. At that point, sensors can pick us up regardless of the IES.

"But whenever we enter or exit FTL at over twelve gees, we're visible, even with the compensators working." He smiled as though amused, "You wouldn't think they'd affect our emissions, but they do. And for short-range missions, and with a pilot who knows their stuff, our stealth systems are amazing." He grinned, "And we've got the only one."

"Speaking of…what do you know about our flight officer? Does he know his stuff?"

Greg looked away with a soft graon, shook his head. "If you tell him I told you this, I'll be required to cut off the oh-two to your cabin. That pipsqueak of a lunatic is the best damned pilot I have ever seen. I wish he wasn't such a smartass, but by god he's earned it, at least in my book, and in Captain Anderson's, too…as far as I can tell.

"When we were performance-testing the ship – this was back when she was still under construction, mind you – they had a senior pilot who I knew from my days aboard SSV Gettysburg, a fella named Hal Crooks. Good guy, by-the-book, very competent.

"Before Crooks could get to the ship, he got mugged by Moreau, who not only overpowered him, but knocked everybody's socks off when he flew the course while under live fire. The turian rep they'd sent said he was impressed, and Anderson backed him. So Moreau got the Flight Seat, and Crooks got the distinction of getting laid out by a guy with Vrolick's Syndrome.

"And the reason I know firsthand that Moreau is god-level pilot is because me and the team here," he indicated the rest of the engineering crew with a wave of his hand, "were aboard when he did it.

"And because of the way we saw him fly," Adams drove an index finger down toward the deck, "I know that this is the best ship I've ever served on, probably the fastest warship ever designed, and she's the only one using the new Tantalus drive core."

"Tantalus…? Why is that so special? I thought it was just the stealth systems that were unusual."

"It's a significant feature, but it's not the whole circus. Unrectified, Normandy's got about twice the thrust-to-mass of any other vessel…well…outside of a race course. The core's mostly a leveraged design from a Pele-class destroyer, but with another decade's worth of tech advances and improvements. Faster eezo manipulation make us lighter on our feet, twice the processing for gravity planing make the weapons more accurate, three times the eezo in the core, but with only half again more core displacement."

He waved a thumb over his shoulder. "The Tantalus core is a technological marvel. You could electrocute the whole crew of a dreadnought with the amount of power the reactor has to be able to throw at it on demand. So each eezo node has its own supercapacitor, which also increases responsiveness, but also increases non-rectified mass. Whole new composite for the core shell was needed to make it happen, but not only does it give us higher delta-vee than any other similar type, we can run at FTL speeds longer before we have to discharge the core. That efficiency also helps with cloaking operations…you know…lower waste heat and EME."

Shepard couldn't help but smile as the Chief of Engineering wound up; clearly he was in love. "What other vessel experience do you have? Where else have you served?"

"You name a class of Alliance ship, I've probably served on at least one. All the way from dreadnoughts and carriers all the way down to fighters." He shrugged. "Okay, the fighter I didn't actually serve on, but I got to take one out for a flight to compare with the first ship I served on; one of the old hunter-killer ships, the first ones to use anything like a stealth system. Normandy makes them look primitive." He smiled, shook his head. "Been a hell of a ride. I can hardly wait for what's next.

"But my previous assignment was aboard Tokyo. Just a cruiser, and her hull was laid before I was born, but a fine ship and a mighty fine crew." He smiled as if he had a secret. "Captain said you had been there when I was, but we never crossed paths."

"With a crew north of of 3700, that's not much of a surprise."

Adams shook his head. "Nope."

Shepard glanced at Tali, flicked a thumb casually toward her. "Well, I can't say how long she'll be here, so make the most of her."

Adams smiled with what looked like embarrassment. "Oh, I do, sir. The whole Engineering team loves her because she volunteers for the crap details. See all the little origami swans on the rail there?"

Shepard looked; he hadn't noticed them before, but six little folded-paper swans in different colours were dangling from strings neatly RIPtape to the underside of the rail.

"Is that approved?"

Adams shrugged carelessly. "Eh…it wouldn't pass inspection, but that's the one place actually not governed by explicit regulations or even best practices. I've seen her grab the lot with one hand and pocket them in a heartbeat. And then, an hour later, they were back." He chuckled, "I figure it must be one of her super-powers.

"Anyway, Zhang folds one every time he doesn't have to assign the gap purge and service. Tali's super fast at it too, because she's always wearing her EVA gear."

"I had no idea," Shepard said after a pause. "Well, you take good care of her."

"Heh! Try and stop me."

* * * Glossary * * *

4DO: Literally, "4-Dimensional Occulting;" (First, it may be worth mentioning that stars appear to twinkle on Earth because of 20+ miles of atmospheric gases in the way. In space, stars do not twinkle.) Normandy's outer hull is covered with billions of paramecium-sized metamaterial-based, passive optical sensors (most are essentially wide-spectrum cameras, some - about 20% - are gas chromatographs) that constantly watch for variance in stars at all angles, and can determine when something is occulting them. (Consider how small and powerful modern cameras are, and add two centuries' further development.) With enough data, speed and direction can be calculated without using active sensors that would in turn give Normandy away. As a completely passive system – it has no emissions of its own like radar or sonar do – it is relied upon by ships trying to stay relatively undetected. In 2183, it is difficult but not impossible to defeat; see A4DO.

A4DO: Anti-4DO Normandy's 4DO system serves as an input to a directional light output system (A4DO) that emits proportional amounts of light (spectrum-matched to the stars which Normandy would otherwise be occulting when the locations of these other ships are known) toward other ships that are likely using their own 4DO systems.
Though it is relatively possible to do this when other ship locations are known, Normandy is also capable of computing and emitting light in all directions in the event that she encounters other ships using 4DO, but does not know where they are. This is, of course, highly reliant on powerful computation (detecting stars being occulted, measuring exact timing on same can provide some measure of size and distance; if a profile can be recognised, the computation of speed, distance, and direction of detected objects allows a buildup of a 4-dimensional map of what's around your vessel.)
It is also a still-developing system; the assumption is that, "If we have it, it can't be long before someone else has a way to defeat it," and so Normandy is also a testbed for this technology. This isn't canon, it's just worldbuilding: How does one cloak a ship from computer-controlled cameras a billion times more capable than we have today? Still, it's not a perfect system (A4DO distorts the light of stars that it emits, but it can be very effective in the world of Mass Effect. At least...this one.

AGI: Artificial General Intelligence

Alnummed: planets or other celestial bodies with only ALphaNUMeric designations

ARO: Augmented Reality Overlay

CHENG: Chief of Engineering

CobbleStone: a visual-data aggregation software module developed in the 2060s that allows swarms to collect environmental information from multiple camera angles (or other scanning media) and thereby build up a cohesive 3D map of an area relatively quickly

Eezo: "element zero," the magical spaaaacce technology of the Mass Effect universe; its properties, when electrified, seem to include the ability to reduce the effective mass of an object for the purposes of acceleration (from starships to bullets.) How this helps with brushing teeth is probably more plot device and in-joke than realistic application for such a technology, if you ask me. Which you didn't. So there. :-P

EME: Electromagnetic Emissions

EVA: Extra-Vehicular Activity; usually involves a pressure suit or biosuit to go outside the ship

FIGMO: Fuck It, [I've] Got My Orders; though usually used as an adjective ("She's getting all FIGMO,") the term can also be applied as a pronoun for someone who has no motivation to perform their job because they're about to leave, either the service, or for another posting

FTL: Faster Than Light; technically, it isn't, but the relativistic effects of high-fractional-c travel have earned it the name FTL at least in part because it's easier to say. There's also the fact that most long-range travel (i.e., between planets in distant systems) usually involves a hop through the relay network, which actually does move objects from one place to another with such speed as to be considered "FTL" if it were continuous; there's a long-running argument about whether this is teleportation, or "gate travel," or if – because there is a measurable transit time of milliseconds – it actually breaks our understanding of relativistic spacetime physics.

GDWI: "gidwee" Get Done With It; not quite as bad as FIGMO, this term is used for someone who is focused on the task only so as to be done with it

googol: 10^100 (if you insist, 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000)

HUD: Heads-Up Display

IES: Internal Emissions Sink (Note: To date, I have been unable to find an official clarification on this from Bioware, but it makes the most sense.)

lidar: LIght Detection And Ranging; radar, but with lasers; as an acronym, it should properly be capitalised (LIDAR) as were LASER (Light Amplification by Stimulated emission of Radiation) and RADAR (infra,) but as these two at least have been in popular use for so long, their origins are nearly forgotten, I shall bow to usage rather than be a stickler for convention.

LOS: Line of Sight; also Loss of Signal (context helps)

MFO: Master Fabrication Officer

NfoX: Information Exchange; a technology/protocol used by research organizations and universities for scientific research data collection and dissemination. Pioneered on Thessia, popularized in the Alliance by Husseinomica (part of the Venus Project 2.0) after the Prothean discovery on Mars, acquired by Alphabet in 2173.

NUV: near ultra-violet

radar: acronym of RAdio Detection And Ranging

Respirocyte: artificial red blood cell, hypothesised by Robert Frietas in the late 1990s; at 1µm, they can move blood oxygen more effectively into capillaries, providing better flow where a typical 5-6µm red blood cell get congested or slowed, also capable of holding over 200 times the oxygen of an organic red blood cell, allowing for "stunts" like running a marathon without breathing, or sitting underwater for hours at a time, but more critically for providing oxygen flow to the brain in stroke or heart attack victims, or any other form of asphyxiation; also an effective treatment/cure for respiratory afflictions like pneumonia or asthma (e.g., azonano dot com/article dot aspx?ArticleID=3034)

VI: Virtual Intelligence (a glorified expert system, or "narrow" AI)

whalezep: native to Eden Prime, the whale-zeppelin are actually shaped like giant flying carpets; their flap cycle includes a configuration that looks like a tube, about 300m long and 80-110m across, though from the side, it looks like a zeppelin

A/N – Sorry for the extended delay. I'd hoped to get this off before leaving town, but too much stuff crashed right before heading out. Three weeks in Italy, and then – surprise! – called in for two weeks at KSC within 72 hours of getting home. (Barely time to do the wash and pack.) I'm not actually complaining, I like wearing lots of hats, and I like most of what I do, but there just aren't enough hours in the day.
So to make up for the fact that I'm late, this chapter is the second-longest chapter to date. It would have been longer, but I realised I should save a lot of what I'd written for Shepard's next chat with Tali. Things like what that pattern on her suit is about, and what happens if Tali manages to return to the fleet with a whole ship...