Okay, I will admit right here and now that making this was a mistake.

Not the writing part, I enjoy it a lot obviously, but the upgrading bit. I don't actually know enough about Mass Effect to know what parts Skye should take and use for her own tech and what parts she shouldn't. Like, what tech does Mass Effect have that Planetary Annihilation wouldn't already have a reasonable and better alternative to?

Every time I look at this story, I realise how scarily awesome Drich really is for making such a good story incorporating elements of the different verses they go to ^.^

Chapter 8

After a period of thinking about how best to intervene in the first contact war, Skye came up with quite frankly the simplest way.

She could act as a newly-emerged artificial intelligence who had control over a fleet of machine ships, alongside one of her shipyards, and be discovered floating through a system near to Shanxi. She'd hopefully be able to control the first contact as to have humans not immediately distrustful towards aliens, and then be there when Shanxi was attacked and assist to repel the Turians. If she avoided humiliating them or killing too many of them, this would earn her brownie points all around.

The humans would be happy that she protected the colony, the Citadel races would be happy that she managed to stop the conflict with minimal bloodshed, and she herself would be happy at having neatly placed herself as the centre of attention. Sure, the Turians would likely despise her just out of principle, but that could be easily accounted for. The bigger issue would be that the Citadel races would quickly learn that she was an AI, and the Geth would immediately spring to mind, initially prompting fear, but her actions would hopefully overlay that. Plus, she wasn't a subservient AI who could turn on her creators, she was her own AI in control of a massive fleet of ships with technology that didn't utilize Eezo.

That was one thing she adamantly disallowed the Colonels to change about her ships, they were outright banned from using Eezo in their construction or operation. She didn't know whether it could be interfered with by the Reapers and there was no way in hell she was risking it. While she could literally just recall information from her memory banks, that didn't mean she could fabricate information that she outright didn't know. Plus, just as with her own constructions, she doubted heavily that the Mass Effect universe would be as limited as it was in the game.

Which of course cut both ways. The Reapers would probably be much more threatening than in the game, but on the other hand, things like the kinetic generators that the Colonels had created were usable, whilst in the game Eezo was just used to change the mass of things, without being used as generators, at least as far as she was aware. Maybe in this real version of the fictional universe, Eezo would be used intelligently, and ships would use them more, which could actually end up being hilariously detrimental.

One thing she most definitely did not skimp on even slightly was the order for the Colonels to use every scrap of information her memory banks had on the Reapers to create countermeasures. Indoctrination was the easiest target and thus first on the chopping block, as neither she nor the Colonels were organic. A virus would be dangerous, if they all weren't already running incredibly potent anti-virus programs, created to stop commanders or their creations from being hacked, then immensely upgraded by the Colonels to be even stronger.

Then there were their 'magnetohydrodynamic' main spinal-mounted weapons, which in simulations wasn't able to overwhelm the new wormhole/shield projection combination that had been created, not so long as the accompanying AI was on the ball with increasing the energy provided to the shield before the shot impacted. The Reapers had an absolutely glacial charge-up time for firing the weapon and had to rear back their entire bodies massively to fire it, so there was no way a shot could get through.

Their main advantage, in reality, was their immense numbers. There were likely at least hundreds of thousands of Sovereign-class Reapers in existence. She knew that to create Sovereign-class Reapers required a chosen race, who would all be harvested and turned into reapers. Skye just assumed it was likely that the race chosen would be the 'best' race available, and they would make more than one reaper per cycle. Since they were at minimum a billion years old, with cycles every 50,000 years, if they made 10 reapers on average per cycle, there would be about 200,000 Sovereign-class Reapers, and even if they only made one a cycle, that was still at minimum 20,000 Sovereigns.

Then there were the Destroyers, which were made of the lesser races. If there were 200,000 Sovereign-class Reapers, she expected at an absolute barest of minimum a million Destroyers. Less dangerous, but that was like saying a one-ton boulder dropping on top of something was less dangerous than a ten-ton boulder, it would still flatten whatever it hit. And sure, they weren't a threat to her craft, but she had no intention of allowing them to go on a killing spree. That meant more countermeasures, which really was just creating more ships. If they could have millions of Destroyers, she would match that with billions of her own ships.

Her own ships had been modified and updated, and thanks to her stipulations, she had an assortment of ships to choose from. There were some much tamer and simpler upgrades like her Omega battleships being enlarged with a 'few' new weapons added, and then there were the ships that were either completely reworked or just straight-up invented new, seemingly based off nothing existing but were actually from a ruthless development cycle whereby every deficiency in the starting crafts was removed, not that they had many to begin with.

Thanks to this development, she had all kinds of ships, including Dreadnoughts, Battleships, Cruisers, Destroyers, Escorts, Frigates, Fighters, Interceptors, Transports and Skirmishers. The only one she had really had a direct influence on was the creation of more standardized transport ships, since she intended to meet with the humans, and thus having a humanoid chassis for their diplomats to interact with would be best. The Astraeus was...well to call it a waste of material was an understatement. It could only pick up and move a single unit, which was genuinely ridiculous. As such, the Eos, a lazy name to be fair but one she felt worked just fine, was essentially a small Frigate that had been made into a transport instead of a combat vessel.

It would still have armament, but would be clearly less armed, less armoured and thus less of a threat than other ships, just having defensive armaments like point-defence and a few 'light' weapons which was exactly the image she wanted it to portray. It didn't exist to get into fights, that was the job of the other ships. The job of the Eos was just to be a transport, a way to at least feign moving her own chassis around if needed, such that the humans didn't get suspicious about her being able to move around so fast. She also had a smaller transport for in-atmosphere travel which would come in handy if, for example, she needed to get across the Citadel in a hurry.

Other than developing ships, the Colonels had also worked on her own personal chassis blueprint, refining all the little things that she hadn't really improved on her own, though not changing the basics like her appearance, since it mimicked what she had looked like beforehand. If asked about it, her intention was to simply say that she wanted to help make them at ease with her appearance, so talking to a humanoid instead of a computer screen or an obvious machine would probably be best.

As such, her chassis now housed more of pretty much everything, including a small sensor bank and wormhole combo which would monitor the general area around her and keep her apprised of any noteworthy changes. She herself changed her appearance a little, just making some minor adjustments such as finally giving herself the long and smooth crimson hair she had always wanted and adjusting her proportions over and over again by small increments, just indulging her own little body wishes.

Sure, she was happy as she was, but when she had the power to change herself to be better and thus happier, why not take it?

Watching through the sensor arrays of her fleet, Skye could honestly say she was surprised at how expansionist humanity was.

They literally swelled out like a flood or a tsunami, taking every system that was even remotely habitable. From doing a little data-mining on the nigh-unsecured human systems, she discovered that 2148 was when they discovered the Prothean cache and uncovered the relay buried within the moon of Charon. It was now 2156, which left a year until the First Contact War according to what she knew, and eight years since they were able to truly traverse space...they already had well over a hundred colonized systems.

Looking at the colony names, Skye was quickly able to discover, quite unsurprisingly, that Shanxi was a Chinese-majority colony on the very fringes of their territory. After doing some more digging, she assessed the situation, and what she found out was that humanity was in a really awkward position. American, Russia and China, whilst having still signed the Systems Alliance charter, were not on talking terms to put it in the bluntest of terms, and that also neatly explained why humanity was spreading out so much.

It wasn't that they needed space, it was like they were laying their towels down on as many chairs as possible at a hotel, claiming as much space as they could before other countries could grab it. They wanted to hold as much territory as possible to ensure that their voice in the SA was the loudest, and that meant staking their claims. As such, countries would guard which planets they had found religiously until they could claim the planet with a colony and then have grounds to force others away from the planet under threat of repercussions.

That explained why Shanxi was besieged and taken, why retaliation took such a long time to come, China probably didn't want to give up even the slightest increment of leverage to any other country and likely tried to handle it on their own, taking the credit and gaining a major boost in popularity amongst the Chinese populace. However, that posed a major problem for Skye. If she appeared in a system near Shanxi, she would come into contact with the Chinese Government, and entreating with them would mean she was backing them.

As such, she couldn't appear there. The best place to appear would actually be an area under the direct administrative control of the Systems Alliance, thus the best target for that would actually be Arcturus, as it was a system that the Systems Alliance controlled completely with absolutely zero say from the constituent countries. Arcturus was, after all, the single point of relay contact between Earth and the wider relay network, and so protecting it was a matter of protecting the cradle of humanity itself, something no country could interfere with.

When considering exactly how to get there, the answer was rather obvious actually. The relay network connected the galaxy together, but it didn't connect to every star. For every system with a relay, there were plenty of star systems that were unconnected. There were star systems all throughout the territory of humanity that weren't connected to any relay, including one that was close, at least relatively, to Arcturus.

Skye's plan was to head to that system, fracture the planets, cause the sun to go supernova whilst carefully managing it to ensure that it didn't send a gamma ray burst through a colonized planet, then vacate the system and head towards Arcturus, upon which she would come into contact with the Systems Alliance and humanity in general. Her story would be that she had been living quite comfortably and happily in her home system with all information about who created her or why scrubbed from her systems, when suddenly, the star began to violently fluctuate, prompting her to take all her creations and quickly vacate the system, upon which the star went super-nova. She didn't have anywhere she wanted to go, and so ended up heading to the nearest star, which happened to be Arcturus.

The star she intended to come from was utterly surrounded by human-claimed star systems, and so it was reasonable enough for her to head there. Some sceptics would doubtlessly crop up and point out how astronomical the probabilities involved were, but even if they did, it wasn't like she actually needed to get humanity to trust her. She belatedly realised that honestly, she could be stopping the reapers right at that moment, just by creating an endless field of shipyards producing an uncountable number of vessels to sweep across dark space and wipe out the reapers.

But somehow, she felt like she didn't want to do that. Maybe it was an indication of the cosmic entity she supposed had put her into her chassis in the first place, but whatever the case was, she didn't intend to wipe out the reapers like that, even if it was the most efficient and effective way to handle things. After all, it was so mathematically improbable that what had happened to her was random that to call it utterly impossible was an understatement. But the intercession of a powerful, potentially multiverse-spanning being putting her into a commander chassis for entertainment?

That was far more probable, and far scarier to contemplate.

Watching as a hole was torn into reality, Skye felt a stirring of excitement from within her.

The Colonels had already done the difficult work of setting up the solar system to their liking and covering the holes in the story she'd made, like the fact that humanity doubtlessly was observing their chosen solar system, or why it took her solar system suddenly becoming less pleasant to inhabit to make her leave for the wider galaxy. The first was explained away by their stealth systems, since they could hide from all forms of detection available to humanity and many that weren't, whilst the second was more of a philosophical issue, one that she was better suited to answer.

She decided on the notion that she could have stayed, she could still inhabit an utterly ruined star system, but the sudden and violent death of the star put to the forefront of her mind the fact that time was limited, and that spending so much time not seeing the rest of the universe would be a waste. As such, when it occurred, she decided that she wanted to see the galaxy, headed for the nearest star, and thus ended up coming straight into contact with humanity.

Humming, Skye debated the pros and cons of bringing up the possibility that her creators had deliberately placed her just two short hops away from Earth itself. That would lead humanity onto thinking about the Protheans and would likely conclude that her creators were Prothean and had deliberately placed her to be a guardian of humanity. This would help them to try and negotiate with her to get her to stay within human borders and defend them in case something happened, giving her a beautiful excuse to hang around.

If they ended up wanting her out, then all she'd do is keep an eye out for them, but not interfere. If she stopped the Turian force from encountering humanity, in turn humanity could potentially continue opening relays without knowing the risks and end up opening a relay to a race like the Rachni. Sure, on a galactic scale the chance was minor, but it was still there, and so interfering like that would be a bad idea.

Plus, as long as she gave humanity a quantum communicator, carefully designed so they couldn't reverse-engineer it or break it, they'd be able to get in touch with her at any time even if she was in another galaxy or in the home system. And with her wormhole technology, she'd be able to split space and come to the rescue in an instant. As long as she proved that she could literally traverse massive swathes of space in moments, the question of how she was able to get there so fast would be easily answered.

Of course, they'd almost certainly try to get her technology either through espionage or trade, but she had no interest in anything humanity could offer her, and she highly doubted that they'd be able to copy the technology without getting their hands on lots of the wormhole generators themselves, which all had an attached VI that would either destroy it or at least inform her if it was at risk of being taken, so reverse-engineering was even more of a dream than just the fact her tech was orders of magnitude too advanced for them.

Though, she doubted humanity would be quite so bold as to try to steal from her. Her ships were far larger than their current largest, which were several-hundred-foot-long Heavy Frigates. Honestly, the issue was that humanity simply didn't yet have the industrial base to support large ships, and when mixed with the tumultuous political climate and then added onto the fact that no aliens had actually been found yet, nobody wanted to be the one with their names on any project that could end up wasting trillions of dollars or more.

Her arrival would probably spur the militarists into action, citing the proof that intelligent and dangerous alien life existed and that humanity was very flat-footed as it stood. They had the First Fleet, which consisted of just 6 Heavy Frigates, two dozen Light Frigates, then an array of smaller ships, Corvettes and the like. As it stood, her Fleetships outsized the largest Systems Alliance vessel by about fifteen times, and that was just in length.

With a shake of her head, Skye ordered the ship to advance. All around her, her chosen fleet and singular Shipyard steadily glided along, drifting unerringly towards the massive wormhole. She herself was in her humanoid chassis and stood on her transport ship, looking out through countless sensors as well as directly out of the windows on her ship as they entered the wormhole.

It was only a short journey, thirty seconds at most, which was estimated to be the best amount of time to allow the wormhole on the other side to exist, giving humanity a scant half-minute between the opening of the wormhole and the emergence of her ships. Any less would be too sudden and could easily end up with a hot-head firing shots and causing them all to fire, but any longer would likely cause an unacceptable level of uneasy amongst the humans which could also cause a twitchy finger to pull a trigger at the wrong moment.

Sure, thirty seconds of warning was still likely to cause a problem, but it would give time for commands to be spread, fixing their control over their troops, whilst not making them sit in suspense for too long which would, as mentioned, cause them to get twitchy due to waiting and thus being more prone to firing a shot. As the first of her lighter ships emerged from the wormhole, she could practically feel the electricity in the air...or that might have just been her imagination, her ships were too good to have loose electricity zapping around.

Smiling a little at her own internal humor, Skye watched as more and more of her fleet came through the wormhole, culminating with her single Orbital Shipyard suddenly breaching the wormhole, the turrets and other outcroppings just barely missing the edge of the giant wormhole. Unsurprisingly, the vacuum was literally jam-packed with radio waves and other forms of transmission, all relaying the words of one man.

"Unidentified craft, you are trespassing in Systems Alliance territory. Stand down and state your intent." Not only through words, there were other forms of information transmission. Binary was just one example, as well as pictographs being transmitted out and many others, all of which were telling her fleet to stand down and tell them what they were doing there.

Skye made a show of sending her transport ship, one that was visibly unarmed and not heavily armoured, up to the front. "Greetings, Systems Alliance. We are machine. We come in peace. Home system star went...supernova. Had to leave the system with shipyard and fleet. Systems Alliance territorial star was closest star to home system. Language and common information has been gathered for diplomacy efforts." Not too comfortable with the mechanical voice that responded, Skye frowned. The Colonels had come up with that short paragraph, as it would give more the impression that when she was introduced, it would be as someone who was not the controller of the 'machines' but was more their diplomat. Not that she was super suited for the role, but if she messed up, really, did it matter all that much?

"Machine fleet, stand by and await response." The response came after a few moments, which was sufficiently short and curt, as expected when the gateway to the cradle of humanity had a fleet that vastly outnumbered and outgunned their own just sitting there. Skye waited for a few minutes, spending the time going over the information the Colonels had pulled out of Arcturus Station.

Currently, their leadership were collectively having a heart attack. Even the militaristic ones were advocating diplomacy for the time being, since they hadn't gotten to their positions through being stupid. Human pirates did exist after all, so it wasn't like the Systems Alliance hadn't already had to decide between diplomacy and fighting, it was just with other humans instead of an alien species. "Machine fleet, diplomacy efforts would be appreciated. What is your intent?"

The voice was changed, much smoother and less demanding, obviously a more diplomatic member of the SA had stepped up to the microphone. Skye in turn spoke up herself, using her own original and natural voice. "Our intent is simply to find somewhere where we can settle down and figure out what we're going to do next. We knew for a brief period that our star was unstable and was going to potentially go supernova, but while the Colonels have a lot of processing power, they aren't omnipresent, we basically had to either leave and figure things out or stay for longer and end up caught in the blast. I hope you understand that we really meant no harm coming here."

Silence met her for a brief while, making it clear that her way of speaking and her voice surprised the man on the other end. "Understood. I cannot help but notice that your lead ship has a frontal window, by chance, might you have physical forms within your vessels? I ask this purely as a face-to-face diplomatic effort is our standard fare, though I will not deny that this is of course also somewhat of a question in terms of information." Skye grinned at that, since obviously it was. Skye's fleet obviously outclassed the Systems Alliance, so if she wanted to eradicate them she would have done so.

That meant it was likely safe to ask those kinds of questions and just backtrack if it went wrong. "The Colonels themselves exist in, as you might say, a hive-mind of sorts. I was directly designed by our creators to act as a spokesperson I guess. It's why I'm a bit less...I guess 'robotic' would be the right term. It makes me less able to draw upon actual processing power for things, but in return does mean I don't instantly come up with super-efficient solutions, and instead have to rely on my own 'flawed' methodology, making it easier to communicate in a normal way if you understand where I am coming from. As for your unspoken question, face-to-face diplomacy would be fine." She then leaned back slightly, sighing in satisfaction as the weight of changing a history that she knew about hit her.

And honestly...it felt good.

Sorry this took a while, I honestly suck at writing diplomacy stuff, as anyone who read Infinite Possibilities will know xD

I hope at least it seemed vaguely accurate as an awkward first contact between humanity, who haven't encountered actual aliens yet, and Skye, who knows that she is literally changing history to an insane degree. So yeah, I also kinda cut it short because I'm writing this AN at 4pm and the chapter is due to be uploaded onto Pat reon at 5 so yeah, bit of a hurry, I had no other chapters that were close to finished.

Again, apologies if this chapter's diplomacy stuff sucked, I'm probably gonna avoid doing anything in-depth next chapter, most of the organizing will be glossed over. I should just write what I'm good at and gloss over what I'm bad at instead of forcibly writing stuff that ends up sucking ^.^