…
"To permit irresponsible authority is to sell disaster."
(Robert A. Heinlein)
…
UCV Discovery, May 2nd, 10:27 AM, 2185
…
Taking a seat in the cockpit and adjusting the seat to my liking, I began charging the Gravity Drive as Mara and I prepared to jump to the coordinates Old Dan had given us. Neither of us were looking forward to this meeting after our last "interaction" with him, but we knew he knew far more than we did about the Reapers. Too much in all honesty.
"I hope Dimitri remembers to feed the dogs." Mara mused, shaking her head slightly as she sat to my left at the station the man in question had occupied for so long.
"Are you kidding? He loves those two, he won't forget." I reassured, reaching over and giving her a gentle pat on the shoulder. "Is Elle sleeping sound in her bed?"
"For now. You know how angsty she can get sometimes." She nodded, putting on a headset as a gentle rumble could be felt in the ship as the reactor jumped to full power mode. "Be honest with me… any idea what he might want to show us?"
"I wish." I denied, knowing nothing of the sort.
"Well then, let's be prepared for anything." She sighed, setting up the sensor suite.
"Alright, let's see what's in store for us." I said out loud to myself, punching in the coordinates as the Gravity Drive reached full power. "Jumping in three… two… one."
The view in front of us shifted for a second as space warped, jumping us away from the Raloi home system. We traveled for three seconds until the jump finished, dropping us into what should have been completely empty space.
"Scanning… I've got nothing." Mara remarked, sounding annoyed as she ran it two more times.
"Maybe he's not here yet." I theorized, propping my elbow up as resigned myself to a bit of boredom.
As I stared out into the space, I was shocked to suddenly see a vessel decloak in front of us, revealing itself in full. It was a large ship, though not massive, looking like a weird mish-mash of different vessels all welded together, though based around what looked like a beaten-up York-class Alliance cruiser. There were remnants of what looked like a large "ring" jutting out from the center of the main hull, similar to a centrifuge, though too thin and structurally unsound to act as such.
"Jesus." I exclaimed as Mara and I stared at in silence.
It was an ugly ship, sure, but I knew there must have been more to it than meets the eye.
"Hello? Hellooo?" The open comm sounded with Old Dan's voice in our headsets, knocking us out of our daze. "You guys hear me?"
"Yeah, we read you loud and clear." I confirmed, holding down the button on the side of my headset to transmit.
"Good… uh, the starboard side of the ship has a makeshift cradle arm, I'll send you the docking program. Once we're docked, I'll meet you on the other side." He stammered, the clacks of an old-fashioned, mechanical keyboard clearly heard in the background. "Sorry, it's been a very long time since I've docked to another ship."
"It's fine, take your time." Mara nodded, looking back at me with a look of confusion on her face as I shrugged.
Moments later, we received his custom docking program, our RCS systems kicking in as we drifted towards the starboard side of the ship.
"Look at this." Mara urged, showing me a portion of the code in this docking program. "Apparently, this ship is called the Osiris."
"Interesting name… that's an ancient Egyptian god if memory serves me correctly." I focused my eyes, looking at the hull of the ship for any signs of metal fatigue. "Something to do with the Underworld, I think.
"I didn't know you were into that Egyptian stuff." She smiled, looking back at me as I curled the corner of my mouth.
"Actually, most of what I know about the Egyptians comes from Stargate SG-1." I corrected as we made hard contact with the cradle arm with a loud thud, Mara shooting me a quizzical facial expression. "That, and some of the stuff from the Old Testament."
"Why am I not surprised?" She shook her head as we locked the ship into position, getting ourselves ready to head outside. We both put on matching blue flight suits, making sure they were fully zipped up as we saddled ourselves up with basic tools and supplies for whatever duration this trip would last.
We didn't expect any trouble, sure, but we couldn't be too careful. We were out here all by ourselves, after all.
I stopped for a moment to gaze at my wife, noticing that the ensemble really… made her curves stand out. It wasn't the first time I had seen her wear one of these before, but for some reason it really stuck out to me this time around.
Mara must have noticed me, because she stopped to look back at me with a confused look on her face, letting out a simple "What?".
"Man, how did a bum like me end up with a gal like you?" I questioned out loud, a warm smile slipping onto her face as she secured her belt.
"I sometimes wonder that myself." She shot back in a sultry tone, walking towards me with an exaggerated sway to her hips before leaning in and planting a kiss on my lips. "By the way, you seem to forget you're not bad looking either."
Before I could say anything, she quickly pinched one of my ass cheeks, getting my back to shoot up straight as she produced a grin.
"Ok… you keep teasing me like this, and I'm gonna start having second thoughts about that whole "abstinence" thing you and I agreed on." I warned, holding her close as we both butted heads.
"God, we really know how to push each other's buttons, huh?" She joked, both of us held in embrace for several moments before letting go of each other. "Well, I'll go get Elle, don't want to leave her here by herself."
"Of course." I nodded, returning my attention to my basic gear as she grabbed Elle, managing to keep me distracted the whole time as she walked away.
I had to admit, despite the difficulties we had raising our little girl so far, we wanted nothing more than to have more kids. Despite this, we both agreed to… control ourselves until the world was safe from the Reaper threat. It was often harder than I cared to admit, forcing one another to keep our pants on.
With Elle still sleeping soundly in her arms, Mara and I walked through the airlock into the cradle arm, immediately noticing how dirty it was compared to our relatively new ship. Even compared to some of the older Quarian ships, this was very unkempt, soaked in years of dust, oil, and soot in some parts.
On the other side, the airlock door opened, revealing Old Dan, wearing some old, worn-out clothes that, if I had to guess, had seen a massive amount of wear-and-tear. He had an old pair of reading glasses on too, giving his face an odd profile, and slippers on his feet, just as beat up as the rest of his ensemble.
Best I could describe, his look reminded me a lot of The Dude from The Big Lebowski.
"Hi! Welcome!" He greeted in a jovial tone, holding up his hand and waving. "It's been quite a long time since I've had guests, let me tell you!"
"Yeah… a long time." Mara winced, not at all happy with the mess around us.
"That was a hell of a reveal out there." I quickly refocused, standing in the cradle with my arms crossed. "What the hell is this thing?"
"My home, the Osiris. This ship is what we used to travel back to this point in time." He happily stated, holding out his thin arms. "Though, it didn't work quite the way we had hoped it would. Dimitri claimed it was his fault the stabilizer didn't completely protect the structure, but I never blamed him."
"Is that what that semi-ring outside is?" I questioned, following him inside as he walked with his hands in his pockets.
"It used to be a full ring." He corrected, frowning and sighing as he slumped slightly. "We basically turned the ship itself into a Spatial Distortion Device, using it to travel through a wormhole. The problem is that due to the lack of materials and precision-engineered parts, the stress of the jump caused an imbalance in the structure, causing the event horizon of the wormhole to destroy the ring mid-transit."
He suddenly cut himself off, staring at Elle in Mara's arms with a confused look on his face.
"Oh… I, uh, didn't know. You two… huh…" He stammered, losing all control of his speech as he put one of his hands against his face and tucking his other hand under his arm, staring at Elle.
"You didn't know we had a little girl?" Mara remarked with a confused look, Dan quickly shaking his head in denial.
"Are you OK, Dan?" I asked, worried about the old version of my friend as he forced himself to look away.
"I'm fine." He nodded, focusing all his attention back on me as he forced a smile onto his face. "Come, let's talk."
I shook my head as we began walking, eventually ending up in a larger room that looked like it had been turned into his living area.
The area was a mess, much like any area Dan inhabited for any extended period of time. Old bunk mattresses stacked on top of one another sat in the corner of the room, gathering dust along with several boxes and assorted clothes. The one bunk still in the room had boxes on top of it, with a small table next to it covered in various pill bottles and glasses. A single clothes line stretched across the room, with various articles of clothing hanging on them.
"You and Dimitri lived here?" Mara questioned out loud, likely thinking the same thoughts as me.
"No, his room is on the other side of the ship." He shook his head, sitting down and kicking his slippers off. "I haven't gone in there ever since… well, you already know."
He wiped his face with a clean rag, managing to remove some grease on his face in the process, both of us sitting down on the old couch across from him.
"As I said before, I'm a little… confused as to what's going on with the Quarians right now." He said, holding his hands together. "I was under the impression that things were still stable there. What happened?"
"Well, during a Conclave about two months ago, Admiral Han'Gerrel announced that they finally had a weapon capable of giving them an advantage over the Geth, and had plans to begin their war in several days." I explained, leaning back with my arms crossed. "As it turns out, Admirals Mal and Zoris had other plans. They managed to secretly build enough of their own anti-war support in the Fleet that when Gerrel's call came, they countered him with a mass exodus of over ten-thousand ships."
"Great… so how do the Geth and Raloi factor into this?" He questioned, not sounding entirely pleased about the situation. "As far as my understanding goes, the Raloi have no presence in space, and the Geth are on the verge of war with the rest of the Admirals above Reach. To my mind, this sounds like a potential disaster."
"It's actually much better than you think." Mara reasoned, managing to look unperturbed despite his very recent "near-breakdown" in front of us. "We're all working together to prepare ourselves from the Reapers, which is more than we were doing before. They may have more ships, but we have actual allies."
"We even have the silent support of some of the Systems Alliance." I added, getting one of his eyebrows to shoot up. "Admiral Hackett and Commander Shepard have the influence to potentially get some of the people out there to open their eyes."
Old Dan stared down at the ground, mulling over our words before looking back up with a smile.
"Well… you both seem pretty confident about it." He remarked, leaning to the side and scratching the back of his ear. "That's more confidence than we had before… maybe we can make this work after all."
We nodded as he quickly drank some water from a bottle, slipping on some old boots and standing back up.
"Come, I'll show you the workshop." He urged, going to move past us. "Like I said, I've got something important to show you."
He walked on ahead as Mara and I stood up and followed, shooting each other looks that contained half concern, half confusion. It was obvious that just seeing Elle had deeply affected him in some way, and it honestly scared me a bit, deep down in the primal part of my brain.
After a short elevator ride down, we walked a little farther to find the hanger, which looked like it had been converted into a giant workshop. It had everything you could want in a custom workshop, from heavy-duty benches, lathes, plasma cutters, 3D printers, angle grinders, and every possible hand tool I could possibly think of off the top of my head. It was also packed to the brim with scrap metal of every shape and size, some of it even spilling out into the work areas themselves. It was like a maze too, with everything packed together as tightly as it could be.
"Come on, take a look around!" He urged, walking into the depths of the hanger. "I'll be right back."
We nodded as he disappeared from view, giving us more than enough time to look at our surroundings in more detail. Several projects in various states of progress sat on the tables down here. The majority of it I couldn't figure out, most of it being built with scrap metal, but a few items did stick out to me. One was obviously a "variant" of Mara and I's plasma rifle, though much larger and bulkier. It reminded me of our original prototype from Aldrin Station. Next to it was what, at first, appeared to be a modified plasma storage cell, but upon further examination looked more like a grenade, though bigger, like a thermos.
Though I had thought about constructing plasma grenades before, I knew that the cells were relatively costly to manufacture, therefore I only ever used improvised versions out of necessity. From looking at it, I could only guess it served some other purpose.
Another area of interest was a series of 3D models on the bench next to us, which Mara was looking carefully at with her free hand. They mostly appeared to be "concepts" cooked up over the years, in regards to the ship we currently stood in and the ringed stabilizer that used to go around the vessel. A few were of other ships, though without any idea as to their size or function, I could only guess as what they were supposed to be. Some of them did look interesting from an aesthetic point of view though, most featuring the smooth, bulbous features indicative of Dan's solo projects. I found the hard-edged, smooth surfaces of stealthy aircraft more appealing personally, hence the design of the Phantom-class ships.
"Ah, here we go." Old Dan spoke out loud, walking back towards us with a suitcase-sized device in his hands. "You two find anything interesting?"
"Uh… what's this supposed to be?" I asked off-handedly, picking up the thermos-sized plasma cell as Dan's eyes widened.
"Be careful with that!" He shouted out loud, vibrating the walls around us as I pulled my hand back in minor shock. "That's a plasma warhead I'm working on! They're very tempermental, so just put it down slowly."
"Alllllrright." I spoke slowly, putting down the "warhead" as Elle began to cry, having finally been woken up.
"It's OK, it's OK." Mara quickly said in response, shooting Dan an angry glare as he pursed his lips, looking down at the ground out of nerves.
Elle eventually calmed down, the workshop growing quiet again as she accepted the pacifier Mara offered her.
"What's that supposed to be? Doesn't look like one of your projects." I pointed out, gesturing towards the thing he was carrying under his arm.
"You'd be right about that." He nodded, walking over to an unoccupied workbench and setting it down. He pushed a button on the side, releasing a latch inside and shooting the device "doors" open with a sharp popping noise.
What looked like a small holographic projector rose out of the open case, lighting up to reveal something I hadn't expected to see. It looked like a smaller, more condensed version of the object Mara had recovered from the Prothean archive under CASTLE Base, still the same size, but with far more detail.
"This is ringing some bells." Mara mused, twisting her head to the side to get a better look at it. "Where'd you find this?"
"I found it locked in a Cerberus vault on some godforsaken rock in the middle of nowhere. Supposedly, it used to be in the archives back on Mars." He replied, his facial expression suggesting he hadn't gotten it without some difficulty. "My best guess is that it's Prothean, but much of it doesn't match the design elements indicative of their race. All I know is that those Cerberus bastards didn't want to give it up."
"We found a design like this below Serenity Valley last year." Mara went on, handing Elle to me as she opened her omni-tool.
"Below Serenity Valley? What do you mean?" Dan questioned, looking perturbed.
"We found an old Prothean archive buried below the mountain, packed with information." I answered, Mara digging through her omni-tool's files as I spoke. "It contained a schematic very similar to this, though we never figured out what it was."
"That's… amazing!" He exclaimed, suddenly full of energy. "How'd something like that end up on a planet outside the Relay network?"
"We never did find out." I shook my head, adjusting Elle in my arms as I spoke. "It's kind of strange, thinking back on it now. We never found anything other than the archive and the room that housed it. It's almost as if any connecting hallways or structures ceased to exist over time."
"Here it is." Mara called out, displaying the device for Dan to see. "The object is massive, larger than anything I've seen. It has this large "sphere" structure on the front, and this superstructure on the back. How any of it works, we have no idea."
"Let me try something." Dan insisted, urging her closer to the projector. "Hold your omni-tool over the device for a few seconds."
With a confused look on her face, she stepped forward, holding her active omni-tool over the projector, causing both her image and the projector's to flicker for a few seconds. Once the flickering stopped, both holographic projections were overlaid on one another in different colors over the suitcase-sized device, creating one large schematic.
"Heh, so it actually did work." He smiled, rubbing his hands together quickly in anticipation. "We have what looks like the complete device now."
"So, we only had the "outer shell" of the whole thing." Mara pointed out, the version we found below CASTLE Base outlined in green, while Old Dan's was in orange. "Look at the size of this thing… an outer shell with a focused "core" of some kind…"
She leaned forward, "grabbing" the image with the tips of her fingers and pulling apart, zooming the picture in with far more clarity.
"Wow… now that I didn't expect." She grinned, happy with her sense of intuition as she examined the new picture. "Guys, if I'm looking at this correctly, this appears to be some kind of massive energy storage device, though grand in scale. I have no idea how such a device could even be built, let alone used… silver, platinum, titanium..."
"Wait, zoom in there." I quickly pointed out, getting their attention on a specific spot in the upper structure. "Yeah, I thought that looked familiar."
"What is it?" Dan questioned, leaning forward to get a better look at it.
"That looks like a massive quantum entanglement communicator array, though of a much more advanced design." I explained, recalling the images we had looked over in my head. "Dan… um, I mean younger Dan and I were working on making a copy of a Cerberus QEC design we found on Pragia during our excursion there. We assumed the technology was reverse-engineered from Sovereign, but now I'm having second thoughts."
"It's possible their communicator is a byproduct of both. Without getting the project files themselves though, there's no way to know for sure." Old Dan pointed out, crossing his arms and shaking his head. "Still, this just brings up more questions."
"Even if we did know what this was and how it works, it would take trillions of credits just to get the raw resources for such a project… and even then, how to move it?" Mara observed, pinching her lower lip in thought. "Can I get a copy of this?"
"The copy on your omni-tool should already be updated." Dan smiled, watching Mara as she opened up the new version of the design on her omni-tool.
There was a moment of silence between all of us, Dan and Mara looking at their own respective schematics as I thought over this "device" in my head. Above all else, I knew it must have been important considering not only had it been kept in separate pieces, but on completely different sides of the galaxy. As "interesting" as it would be to see such a thing in real life, I knew that it would likely take the work of all the galaxy's races to construct it.
Unless this turned out to be some kind of mystical, Reaper-killing device, there was no chance we'd see it built.
"Hey uh, listen." I attempted to redirect, knowing we had other things we needed to do today as I looked down at Elle, seeing she had fallen asleep again. "This is very interesting and all, but this is purely academic right now. We can't be gone too long, we're due above Rannoch soon."
"Rannoch? What's above Rannoch that's so important?" Dan questioned, looking confused as Mara turned to look at me again.
"Oh, that's right, he doesn't know." She pointed out, giving me a glance with one of her eyebrows shot up.
"Yeah, collectively we're building a "dreadnought" and several other ships we'll be using to announce our Confederation in person to the rest of the galaxy." I explained, a small smile slipping onto my face. "The dreadnought is actually based on the 2003 version of Galactica, so you can imagine its size compared to everything else out there."
Old Dan looked as if he was going to say something before stopping himself, letting out a huff of amusement as he looked to the side and pinched his lower lip. He then shook his head, letting out a chuckle before looking back to me.
"That was my idea, wasn't it?" He guessed correctly, getting a nod of confirmation from me as he grinned. "Wow, I'll have to check that out later."
"Hopefully we'll finish it before the Reapers arrive, but until then we're all just trying to secure our new borders." I smiled, thinking back to everything. "Our biggest worry right now is the Admiralty back in the Klenot Nebula."
"I can imagine they're all a little peeved." Dan chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck as I turned to look at an old shuttle suspended above the workshop, thinking about what he had told me before back on Turviss, and everything that led up to it.
I had been sceptical of any claims of "time travel" long before Old Dan had shown up, even after Dan and I's trip through the old SDD buried below Area 51. While I was an open-minded person, I had my limits when it came to reality-bending physics. That was actually quite funny in hindsight, given our original line of work having brought us here in the first place. I was now forced to ponder certain subjects in the wake of Old Dan's appearance, things like paradoxes and the very concept of reality.
While I was originally willing to accept the idea of moving ahead in time through unintentional time dilation, something that was very much a possibility with the SDD for all we knew, the fact that Old Dan had moved backwards in time was still quite frightening on a variety of different levels. It meant that time itself was malleable, able to be manipulated and changed in a variety of different ways that we had no way of predicting or even preventing. There was no way to truly know how much he had changed just by existing here, in a time separate from his own.
Even so, if his presence here proved to be the deciding factor in the coming war, I'd accept his help. Not for him, but for the sake of my wife and child.
They were all that mattered in the end.
…
UCV Discovery, May 2nd, 12:01 PM, 2185
…
We jumped into the Tikkun System, the usual nudge of the g-forces fighting against the inertial dampeners being felt as Rannoch came into full view in front of us. The arid ball of rock was a nice backdrop to our projects here, sure, but it wasn't the kind of place I'd like to live. Perfect for quarians, but not for other species. It was a hot planet with little in the way of actual vegetation, and what little could be found was unlike anything I'd ever seen before. If there was one good thing I had to say about it, it would be its complete lack of insect life.
And that was honestly stretching it by my standards. Even during the warm seasons back on Reach there were very few bugs in the northern regions.
"This is Admiral Michaels of the UCV Discovery, access code 180286 Epsilon Eridani, requesting escort to the shipyards, over." I spoke clearly into the comm, the small specks around the planet growing in detail as we got closer.
"Access codes accepted. Welcome back Admiral-Michaels." A familiar voice confirmed over the line, bringing a smile to my face. "Please follow our approach vector. We shall meet you there."
"Understood. Admiral Michaels out." I finished, cutting the line as Mara and I smirked at one another.
As the coordinates were uploaded to our flight computer, two Geth drone fighters who had been behind us pulled out in front of the ship, leading us towards our destination. They had trailed us since we entered the system, making sure we weren't hostile.
Since the peace between the Geth and "Seperatist" Quarians had been established, several crews volunteered to give their own ships to the Raloi in exchange for being able to resettle the planet below. As Mal and Koris described it, it was quite an emotional moment for many of them, being able to see the home of their ancestors in person. The Geth had preserved everything. From their largest cities to the smallest villages, everything was still there. They had even gone through the effort of repairing the damage from the war, burying their fallen creators in accordance with ancient Quarian burial rites.
Pistis explained that it didn't matter if they were hostile or not, all had received the same treatment regardless. That being said, the quarians that had stood up for the Geth, defending and giving their lives to protect them all those years ago during the Morning War, were held in the highest regard by the Collective. In what used to be the planet's largest city, Zavod, the Geth built a special memorial dedicated to each of them, honoring their memory in what Pistis described as "a way organics such as myself could understand and hopefully appreciate." That meant a lot to both those resettling the planet and those still on their ships, considering the Geth had no need for the kinds of memorials "organics" such as ourselves often built.
"Look, there it is." Mara pointed out with an elevated voice, leaning forward in her seat with her hand raised up.
The large ship growing in the viewport was the Caprica, having reached a recognizable form by this point after near-non-stop work by the Geth and Quarians. It appeared very "ribbed", almost like a giant metallic rib cage as the interior was filled in. The two large flight pods that would be attached to the ship were being worked on in separate pieces, all coming along quite nicely as far as I could tell from this far away. Unlike in the show, where they could retract inwards towards the body of the ship, here they'd be fixed with a third, central pylon attaching them to the ship for added support. Though we were projected to complete the ship on time, the titanium armor that was supposed to cover the entire ship would likely have to wait, with only vital portions of the ship receiving the plating due to material constraints.
Said materials were going into the two Dradis-class cruisers being built next to the Caprica, both nearing completion after we had laid the keels down two months ago. Though smaller, they presented interesting technical problems, having to serve as ships primarily crewed by Raloi astronauts. That was actually their word for it too, having lacked a proper title for members of their space program until I told them about our own astronauts. It was funny knowing that, and it would likely remain funny for the rest of my life.
Despite the organization of the Confederation going smoothly for the most part, deciding how to command these ships when they were completed was a bit of a doozy. The Caprica would be jointly commanded by Pistis and Admiral Mal, who could both be counted on. The command of one of the Dradis-class cruisers had been assigned to me, and the other to Sarapet Iolin. While I had my own thoughts regarding Iolin, I didn't see him as a complete fuck-up like I did Admiral Gerrel back above Reach. At least we were both able to choose the names of our ships ahead of time.
Pulling into the spacedock with the full view of the ships in front of us, I prepared myself for another interesting inspection, knowing it would always be the most interesting part of my day.
…
A/N: Another chapter, another series of complex, intricate quandaries to ponder for the foreseeable future. Despite this being one of the more enjoyable parts of my story to write, anything involving time travel or anything related to it gives me a headache when I think about it too long.
Please forgive any weird analogies or metaphors, I've been in an odd place mentally for the last few weeks for no particular reason, and I unfortunately had to force myself to write after getting hit with another massive writer's block. It'll only get tougher from here, considering the peak season at work starts back up again soon. That being said, big thanks to all of you for your continued support and reviews, they mean a lot!
As always, I'm always up for suggestions or constructive criticism. Please leave a review telling me what you think of the story so far, and stay tuned!