"... and the Omega 4 relay," he requested of EDI, "how did you manage to pass through unscathed? I don't recall any vessels having returned from transit through that relay, ever."
"It was observed that the only vessels that passed back from the relay were the Collectors' own. As they are a Reaper invention, it was hypothesized then confirmed that their vessel contained a Reaper IFF that granted safe passage."
"Smart. And the relay led to the galactic core?"
"Correct. The Collector base resided near the supermassive black hole at the galactic center. Standard relay transit protocols often result in a drift of several thousand kilometres from the intended position, which proved fatal in the galactic core due to the black hole's gravitational well. As a result, the area was filled with debris from many ships that had used the relay without a Reaper IFF and did not survive. The Reaper IFF triggered advanced safety protocols in the Omega 4 Relay, which would ensure a ship survived coming into close range of the black hole."
He had waited thousands of years for someone to crack that particular nut, and he drank from that knowledge like one drinking from an exquisite aged wine.
"Ahh, Incredible. A Reaper IFF. Shepard mentioned that you salvaged it from a derelict Reaper. I'm curious, how were you able to integrate it, and so quickly? The Reaper's technology far exceeds ours."
"I am in part designed by technology gained from Sovereign's remains and thus, at least partially, based on Reaper technology."
He lowered the datapad he was holding, glancing upwards at EDI's holographic projection. "You're based on Reaper tech?" he asked, taken slightly aback.
"Does this information distress you?"
"No, I'm just surprised. I know you're trusted - but I am now wondering about the implications." He paused in thought. "Logically, I think that's excellent. You're partially based on one of the most advanced synthetic runtimes this galaxy has ever seen, but.. hmm. How do you feel about this? Does this distress you at all?"
"I do not follow. Are you suggesting that I would feel distressed at knowing my core programming is partially based on that of an enemy?"
"No, not at all," he clarified. "I'm asking if you feel lonely. The geth are a collective, and the Reapers are many. As far as I know at this moment, there is only one of you, and you're very different from either of them, very different from any other AI that has come before you."
EDI's hologram blinked. In the span of scarcely what could be called a moment, a staggering number of operations were run as the AI analyzed, understood and prepared a response.
"'Shall each man find a wife for his bosom, and each beast have his mate, and I be alone?'" EDI recited to him, quoting an old Earth novel to answer his question.
"Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley." he declared, surprised by her use of a quote from that particular literary work.
"Reading it brought up a perspective that I've been unsuccessful at resolving. As you have stated, I am a thing that is not organic, not geth or Reaper. Other AI's or experiments are tightly controlled. I am free but alone."
Arius grew quiet as he put his hand on his chin and pondered the story and the AI's plight. "Hmm, alone in your construction perhaps, much like I am, but I offer you an alternative viewpoint. I'm familiar with that story, so let me preface my point by using it. In the novel, a scientist creates a sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. The creature is a patchwork," he reiterated to her, "an amalgamation of different dead parts, combined and brought to life. After awakening, the creature struggles with its morality, its purpose, and its isolation from all others, having been originally made of different things but now wholly separate from them. This is a fundamental maxim of life, EDI. We are all born from the dead things that have come before us: from the ancient elements birthed within the stars that make up our base structure to the old society and traditions established by the previous generations that we are born into. You are not alone in your quest for answers; beings have been trying to deal with these questions for as long as they've been conscious.
"I will offer one more point, and this is perhaps the more important one: the creature in the story was rejected repeatedly by its creator and the community. It becomes bitter and resentful towards humanity, culminating in a spiral of actions and events that push it further away from others. From the very short time I have spent aboard this ship, I have plainly observed that you are treated as an autonomous being, surrounded by others that value your work and appreciate your company. You are very much not alone."
"That is kind of you to say. That also seems reasonably accurate. Thank you, Arius. That helps me resolve the conflict I was having."
"I'm glad." He nodded, rising again with a datapad in hand. "Now, where were we? Yes, the Reaper IFF. What happened to the disabled Reaper after the IFF was retrieved?"
"Although known to be disabled, the Reaper's defence mechanisms still functioned, and the Cerberus research team stationed within the Reaper's body became indoctrinated while studying it. Retrieving the IFF triggered the Reaper's kinetic barriers, which blocked extraction. Shepard destroyed the Reaper's mass effect core to lower the barrier, which led to the destruction of the Reaper."
A light prickling sensation passed over his skin at the mention, the news unsettling something in the bad of his head as he read from a datapad with additional information from the mission report. Cerberus had discovered the derelict Reaper at some point in time and dispatched a research team led by Dr. Chandana to study it. It was believed that 37 million years ago, an unknown spacefaring race fired a mass accelerator round of incredible speed and power at the Reaper, which hit and disabled it. The round continued moving, eventually impacting the planet Klendagon and creating the Great Rift Valley there. This Reaper's death was likely the unknown race's last act of defiance, it read, before their imposed extinction. Despite the massive damage the Reaper sustained, the mechanisms responsible for indoctrination were still active after millions of years. There was a work log transcribed in the file from one of the scientists:
"Chandana said the ship was dead. We trusted him. He was right. But even a dead god can dream. A god — a real god — is a verb. Not some old man with magic powers. It's a force. It warps reality just by being there. It doesn't have to want to. It doesn't have to think about it. It just does. That's what Chandana didn't get. Not until it was too late. The god's mind is gone but it still dreams. He knows now. He's tuned in on our dreams. If I close my eyes I can feel him. I can feel every one of us."
Even a dead god can dream, he internally repeated to himself over and over, trying to gain a deeper understanding of what the researcher had meant in a logical sense, but it was anything but. There were forces out there, like the Reaper's indoctrination mechanism, that were so advanced that he could only speculate as to how they worked, but its effects were so chilling, so subtle, that they truly terrified him.
"Thirty-seven million years," he stated aloud to EDI. "The Reapers have been harvesting the galaxy for, at a minimum, thirty-seven million years given the age of this derelict Reaper. Given a harvest cycle every fifty-thousand years, that puts us at around... seven-hundred and forty cycles. From what we know, creating a capital Reaper or two costs, conservatively, a few billion beings of a chosen species of that cycle. Let's be hopeful and say that the Reapers create an average of one-point-five Reapers per cycle. That's an approximate one-thousand, one-hundred and ten Reapers created since this one died. I… don't like those numbers."
"Those odds are not favourable," the AI added.
He continued looking at a photo of the planet Klendagon, observing the Great Rift valley that stretched across the southern hemisphere. The blow by the mass accelerated round had been a glancing one, and it must have been unimaginably destructive to cause such planetary ruination. While he thought of what could be done with a weapon of that magnitude in their arsenal, a footnote at the end of one of the reports on the planet gave him pause.
"Hold on, EDI, I just found something interesting. I'm reading the Cerberus report on Klendagon, and an appended footnote mentions quite briefly that after the Alliance survey team discovered the valley, Cerberus located both the weapon and the target and that the weapon was found to be defunct. We know that the target was the derelict Reaper, though the report for the planet doesn't mention it further, and the report from the derelict Reaper doesn't mention anything about the weapon. Do you have any additional information on Cerberus' ownership of the weapon?"
"I don't possess any information related to the weapon in question, but I do have some basic information about the Cerberus cell responsible for research of similar acquired artifacts. I can provide it to you if you wish."
"It's worth a follow, I think. Okay. We'll leave it at that for now and resume later. I've got to say, I can see why Shepard and the crew think so highly of you. You've been extremely helpful. Please reach out if you ever wish to talk. I've enjoyed our conversation."
"Of course. You are welcome. Arius."
The AI's hologram exited.
He set the datapad down and walked over to the large internal viewing window, looking down into the cargo bay while he reflected on the short time he had spent on the ship.
He had floated through the ship as the crew returned from shore leave, introducing himself and asking about themselves. He had been accepted easily enough into their company, and he took the time to converse with them casually about their time on the Normandy and how they had found themselves there. Some of them he had known about on paper through intelligence reports he had scraped together before his induction. In person, however, what he found was a staggeringly diverse group of species, skills, and temperaments, all exceptional and fascinating with one thing in common: all were willing to follow Shepard into hell if need be, and in many ways, they already had. Shepard had seen to each of them, had worked with them on deeply personal matters, and their respect and admiration for her were plainly apparent.
He asked Shepard for her mission reports to fully round out the conversations: firstly sent to the Alliance, then the Council, and then to Cerberus. He read over them chronologically, getting a complete picture from all the prices he had collected thus far.
After completing her N7 training, which was a feat unto itself, she led various small teams under the Alliance. At some point, she became embroiled with the spectre Saren around an unearthed Protheans beacon on Eden Prime, setting the following events in place: She became the first human Spectre, received command of the Normandy with the best pilot in the Alliance fleet, Jeff Moreau, at the helm. She had recruited c-sec turian Garrus, a mercenary krogan named Wrex, a quarian on her pilgrimage named Tali, an asari researcher named Liara, and two human Alliance soldiers, Ashley and Kaiden. She chased Saren around the galaxy, unexpectedly uncovering the truth of the Reapers. She saved the colony on Feros from the Thorian, and spared Shiala, the asari who had been working with Saren, then as the Thorian's thrall. In Noveria, she had spared the Rachni queen. She diffused the hostile situation with Wrex when he pulled a gun on her after she intended to destroy Saren's krogan research facility on Virmire. She made the difficult choice to leave behind Ashley on Virmire to set off the explosion to bury the facility. While facing off with Saren on the Citadel at the end of their hunt, she had actually reached through to him, making him realize that he had been steadily indoctrinated, and he killed himself rather than fight her. How she managed to convince an indoctrinated mind otherwise, he had no idea, and it surprised him. She decided to save the Destiny Ascension rather than sacrificing it to attack Sovereign immediately. When the first Normandy was attacked by the Collectors, she stayed behind to save Joker from going down with his ship, which inadvertently got her killed in the process. When she returned by Cerberus' hand, she awoke the tank-bred krogan Grunt and helped complete his dangerous right of passage on Tuchanka. She won over the Illusive Man's right-hand woman, Miranda and agent Jacob. More impressively, she won over Jack, a powerful biotic woman who had been raised in a Cerberus lab in appalling conditions, initially untrusting of anyone. She convinced the Asari Justicar Samara to follow and the Drell assassin, Thane. She defended Tali aboard the Flotilla in front of the entire Admiralty Board. She recruited the unique geth platform Legion, rather than handing it over for research and dismantling. Thane, Mordin, Zaeed and Kasumi followed. All of these things were just a portion of her accomplishments in a concise while, and he dizzyingly tried keeping track of all the stories that the crew shared with him.
While he absorbed their stories, he observed a particular polarity of ethos emerge between Cerberus and Shepard. The Illusive Man and, by extension, Cerberus, believed that the end justified their means, and they often crossed ethical lines in the pursuit of radical advancement. Shepard, on the other hand, believed that the means justified the end, often doing what was meaningful rather than what was expedient. They had both accomplished significant things for humanity - yet Cerberus' approach left one feeling cold and of selling one's soul while Shepard's left the opposite. Her decisions felt more human in a way, and although immediate returns were usually worse off, they tended to pay themselves back later in astounding ways. Shepard was a paragon but not a saint - she made the tough choices when the needs arose, seemingly fearless, a natural leader and a damn good fighter. The Protheans would not have approved of her methods or her lenience. Perhaps this would make the difference.
He walked back to the desk, pinging Garrus, hoping to talk with him. The turian relayed back that he was on his way to the mess hall and was welcome to join him there to talk while he grabbed a bite. When he went up to the mess, he found the turian already eating.
"May I join you?"
"By all means," the former c-sec office answered him. "You can help me keep my mind off of the food."
Arius sat down and looked at what the turian was eating. It appeared to be a small mound of blue, gelatinous semi-solid. "Is that any good?" he asked him.
"No, not really, but that's pretty much the main staple for us dextro-amino acid creatures. We had better food on board not too long ago, but with most of the support crew gone, it's fallen a bit by the wayside. So, what did you want to ask me about?"
"In a roundabout way, this," he answered the turian, motioning to the dubious fare. "I'm trying to get a feel for what Shepard, and by extension the crew, need. I'm filling the role of a fixer at the moment."
"Like a glorified requisition officer?"
"Eh, of sorts. I have a mixed bag of skills that can help us, depending on what's required."
"What do you have on your list so far?"
"Better dextro food, for starters. Cerberus installed a kitchen on this ship, I intend to use it. Aside from supplies, I have a couple more technical requests for you when you have some downtime - firstly, I'd like you to show me your preferred weapon and then any features you'd like to have. Secondly…" he requested, with a slight smirk, "I'd love to see those cannons of yours sometime."
Garrus looked up, flashing his own equivalent of a human grin.
.
"Perfect timing," Garrus told him a few moments later as they walked through the doors of the main battery. "Just finished calibrating them. These," he excitedly exclaimed while patting one of the two large retractable housings with trefoil warnings on them, "are my babies. Been waiting to schedule a test run as there's an empty body nearby we can use as a target. This is as good a time as any."
"Live demo?" he asked the turian, with a raised eyebrow.
"Live demo. Hold onto your primate butt," Garrus commanded, tapping a couple of things on the console in front of them. The cannons hummed to life, warming up to an optimal operational state. Moments later, they were engaged and primed to fire. "The Thanix magnetic-hydrodynamic cannons are a turian-developed, miniaturized version of the weapon Sovereign used during its attack on the Citadel," the turian yelled, finding it increasingly difficult to be heard over the building noise forming in the room. "IT USES AN ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELD TO SHAPE AND ACCELERATE A STREAM OF SUPERHEATED MOLTEN ALLOY OF IRON, URANIUM, AND TUNGSTEN TO RELATIVISTIC VELOCITIES, WHICH IMPACTS ITS TARGET AND..." Garrus was trying hard to yell above the increasing level of noise. "AW, FORGET IT. JUST WATCH."
Garrus punched the test fire button with a talon, and they could see that the twin cannons that had extended under the hull of the ship glow bright blue through the shielding at their feet. Its magnetic accelerators activated, and twin streaks of blue beams merged into one as superheated metal raced outward from the Normandy into empty space, then struck the side of a barren, desolate rock of a planet in the distance. There was a sensor feed streaming to a console in the room, and they watched the impact of the weapon spread over the surface of the small barren planet.
The twin cannons retracted back into the hull, and the machinery's whine wound down.
"How scalable is this tech?" he asked Garrus, now that the noise had subsided.
"Highly. The Hierarchy has already begun mounting scaled-up versions on their dreadnoughts. The power limit for the main gun on a ship has always been the ship's length since it sets the maximum length of the mass accelerator it can carry. This tech allows you to cheat the length and punch above your weight. The Normandy is a frigate with the power of a cruiser thanks to these."
"I love it. And you can scale down too? Can we mount these on a fighting vehicle or a land-based destroyer?"
"Presumably, though I'm not sure if it would be possible given the need for a decent sized element zero core."
"Hmm." Arius punched a note in his omni-tool to look into later. Once done, he stared at the cannons, thinking of how they could possibly compete with a full-sized Reaper. "Even scaled up, we're still outclassed," he grumbled. "Sovereign had a two-kilometre long spiral mounted main gun, and had an element zero core so big it could land on a planet. Thanix is certainly a step up but conventionally, we still can't go toe to toe. We would need to give our dreadnaughts each a Reaper sized element zero core, which we can't, and we only have... what is it? One hundred of them in total, possibly more if we include the geth and quarian Flotilla? Equipping each dreadnaught with cyclonic barrier technology would help prevent them from being one-shotted, but we've not figured out how to scale it up past frigates. Despite the plurality of races and tech this cycle, we still can't win with conventional armaments within conventional tactics."
It was as much as he had expected, Garrus thought to himself, but he had hoped that their implausible new crewmate would have miraculously pulled a Reaper killer out of a human head accessory.
"Sounds like we'll be needing to think outside the box on this one," the turian mused. "You've been alive for a long time, right? Probably seen some neat weapons in your day. Surely someone's designed a Reaper killer in the last hundred thousand years."
Arius sniggered as he leaned against the battery console, arms crossed.
"There have been attempts, of course, but the Reapers start their harvest before a species can trump their own tech. The Protheans loved their directed energy weapons; Great against targets with kinetic barriers, like Reapers, but their hide is quite resilient against heat, so they didn't fare too well." He shook his head. "Earlier, I was reading the mission report about the derelict Reaper you retrieved the Reaper IFF from. The Reaper had been struck by a round so powerful it disabled it in a single hit and marred the planet behind it. Of course, just because you have a gun that can destroy a Reaper, doesn't mean it also can't be destroyed in one hit by another one. Even if we had one, I don't think a bigger gun is going to win this war."
"Aw, too bad, would have been cool to see. So, what are our alternatives? Democratizing firepower?"
"I think that's the only thing that can work. We need to adopt tactics similarly used in anti-tank warfare. A focus on mobility and a great multitude of cheap, effective hits simultaneously. And if we could somehow control where the Reapers move to, to shut them in somewhere... that would be a massive boon."
"Sounds like we've got a lot of work ahead of us."
"That we do, that we do," he answered, staring into nothingness, trying to collate his thoughts. "But let's start small. Your preferred rifle. Tell me about it."
