*** Alley ***
Wrex saw the mercenaries as they opened fire on the human, saw him do a sort of back flip as the antimateriel round took down his shields, threw him over a crate and back towards the door.
Didn't even have his gun out, he thought. Careless.
His own weapon was already on target, pounding a familiar tempo into his shoulder. The turian with the powerful sniper rifle shuddered as the Revenant hurled a dozen rounds at him, obliterating his shields and splattering turian blood across the wall behind him.
Still holding the trigger, Wrex panned his fire across the room toward the two other turians; one without the face tattoos that they usually wore, and one wearing lightweight armor. Bareface tried to dive for cover; his shields managed to repel five of the seven shots Wrex got off at him. Still firing, but able to ignore the excessive heat the weapon was putting out, Wrex turned on the third and found his fire being deflected away by a biotic barrier.
Wrex grinned to himself as he held the trigger. Always a good day when I can kill one of those things, he thought.
From behind him came the sound of a biotic field and grunt of effort. Two humans rose into the air, curling and gasping in the power of a Lift field. Wrex's right eye saw the biotic human drop back down into cover and draw a pistol, then pop back up and fire on the door where more humans were pouring into the club like hatchlings trying to be first to the teats.
And that human Shepard was back on its feet already, assault rifle in hand, apparently aiming without holding the weapon up to his eyes. It would have been more impressive if it wasn't foiling his aim; he wasn't making any head shots. Sloppy, he thought.
Shaking his head, Wrex stopped to let his own rifle cool. He moved quickly to the left around the circular room, smelling where other aliens were, hearing them running across the corridor outside, and realizing the biotic human hadn't bothered to fire on the two other humans he'd stranded in his Lift field. He fired a couple of quick bursts at them, then decided not to waste any more ammo.
# # #
Fist watched one of the humans and the krogan head out, trying to think what it would take to buy off this Alliance human left to watch over him, or if there was a way to overpower him, get critical data off the office DCE, wipe the system and get himself safely away.
The Alliance Lieutenant walked over to the chair where Fist was seated, and illuminated his omnitool.
Fist did his best to look terrified. "You just know that krogan is going to kill me, right? I've seen him before, and I know his work. He's relentless. You heard what he said."
Kaidan turned to him, squinting. "A quarian came to you for help, and you sold her out?" The biotic shook his head. "I may agree with some of what Terra Firma says, but you've got…issues."
The sound of gunfire from the club startled both of them; the Alliance man touched a holographic key on his arm, and his helmet assembled itself into place. "No...what's wrong? He just walked out." He seemed to hear something else on the suit radio, and ran to the ready room.
Fist didn't hesitate. He sprang from the chair, pulled an OSD off the chain around his neck and jammed it into the terminal. "Operation: Apocalypse," he said to the machine. Grabbing a pistol he kept in his desk, he armed it and hurried through the damaged security doors, stopping to peek into the ready room to be sure it was clear. He had seen one of the Alliance soldiers kill one of his men, but there had been too much to watch at the time to see who had done whom.
Nothing in the ready room moved; Fist could hear gunfire out in the club. From the still-open door, he could see a body in the accessway; the three soldiers had moved out into the club proper. A closer look at the body showed it was Flanders.
Fist blinked and squinted. "Ah, Jack," he said with a shake of his head, "I trust you found death to be as enlightening as you had hoped. But before you go, I have one last job for you."
He grimaced as he grabbed the corpse by the ankles.
# # #
Shepard was struggling to his feet as Kaidan entered the accessway. The krogan was already out in the club, his oversized assault rifle noisily putting holes in things.
Kaidan asked, "Who are these guys? I thought we ran Fist out of hired guns."
"Get up and fight," Shepard said, mostly to himself. He waved Kaidan off. "I'm okay. Go! Go!"
Kaidan turned away to the right, saw two humans running to get behind the barricade Fist's men had used earlier; he lobbed a Lift field at them.
"Lieutenant!" Ash was still waiting for a reply. "I've got three bad guys across the aircar corridor…wait, make that four. What's your twenty?"
Kaidan dropped back into cover, drawing and checking his pistol. "We're still in the club; Shepard took one to the head, but I think he'll be all right. That mercenary is making a mess of the place. No, wait!" He watched the two Lifted humans tumble out of the field as the krogan fired at them. "Who are these guys?"
"I don't know, but they're shooting at each other!"
Of the armed men that Ash could see in the skycar corridor – now five of them – some were forming alliances and shooting mostly across the open space. A skycar that raced by at exactly the wrong time took a round; one burst of shrapnel jumped from the near side, but it was out of sight before anyone could see its fate.
One of the aggressors tossed something that bounced into the markets where Ash was running for the door.
"Grenade!" she screamed.
Civilians scattered to the walls, shopkeepers dove behind their counters. The explosive had stopped near the middle of a walkway, so when it detonated, it covered the nearer kiosks and storefronts with shrapnel and fire.
"Incendiary!" Ash put a hand to her ear, "Civilian distress, nine-one-one, fire in the ward shops, this location! Emergency! Emergency! Vee-eye sign my name and repeat on local channels!" Trusting her comm VI to handle contacting the authorities, she looked immediately to the fire extinguisher on the wall when her helmet HUD VI outlined it in red and flashed the highlight. She sprinted to it, yanked it away, and ran back to the fires...only to take a round in the back from the pistol of the man who had tossed the grenade to draw her out.
Her massively overpowered shields reduced it to something that felt like a fingerpoke in the back. Gritting her teeth in a complex emotional mélange, she stepped right and turned so she could see the door as she sprayed the fires with the extinguisher. A glance out the door showed her assailant dropping back into cover: a turian.
With the nearer fires out, she looked quickly around and spotted a turian shopkeeper spritzing his counter with a hand-sized can of something. Ash left the extinguisher on the counter in front of him. "Here, use this!" She bolted for the door to the taxi stand.
Crashing to a stop next to the door, she barked across the skycar corridor, "You're shooting civilians? Civilians?!" Harpoon rifle out, she switched to infrared, sighted through the half-wall, and elevated the barrel just enough to aim over its top, then changed her mind. Drawing her one grenade out of its slow-but-tiny specialized printer, she hurled it across the chasm, detonating it as soon as it hit the far wall. Bluish paste and an arm flew over the half wall and fell out of sight.
Amazingly, the thing was still moving. Watching the alien's motions as interpreted by the scope's VI, she squeezed the trigger just as he was popping up to shoot again; a bright red line connected the muzzle briefly with the wall behind the spiky head, which snapped back as he seemed to throw his weapon over his shoulder.
Her shields deflected another incoming shot; out of habit, she ducked back under the half-wall.
Someone sure as hell kicked over a beehive, she thought. Maybe messing with this guy Fist was a mistake.
# # #
Having realized the Alliance people would be more likely to notice if Jack's body - the only one left in the accessway - was gone, Fist had waited until the firefight had moved far enough away that he could reach the nearer fallen man in the club (who was more his size anyway,) and dragged him all the way to the office.
As well as being a brownette instead of Jack's blond, the man had been wearing some light torso armor, which was a pleasant surprise. After swapping clothes with him, Fist pulled a length of tether out of the Emergency EVA rescue kit next to the door just inside the Kiggs field, clipped it to the belt on the corpse and lowered it over the edge of the balcony.
At first, the station gravity kept it going directly down, but after he had about six or seven meters of cable paid out, the body started to slide to his left until it was hanging outside the practically-invisible Kiggs field. There was no bright blue delineator effect like they used in the big docking bays.
Fist didn't know what functions the various rooms of his club had before humans arrived, but the bureaucracy had let him lease it for a reduced rate if he cleaned it up. He thought briefly about the years he had spent carving the useless ancient equipment out of it, "fighting" with the little buglike keepers until they stopped trying to put it back in, subletting the space in the market area to the gray market sellers and trying to build up some capital.
And now it was all going away. Well, maybe not going away, but being traded for a lot of money. Enough to buy his retirement, at least.
Tying the end of the cable to the balcony rail, he glanced over his shoulder, pulled the pistol out of his pocket and fired at the cable and missed.
He fired again, and again.
I don't have time for this, he thought.
He set the pistol on the floor, and used both hands to pull the cable back up a few meters, grabbed the gun and fired at it again. The cable parted silently, and the body began to drift steadily toward the distant Maw.
He dropped the other end; lightened enough to be affected by the Maw more quickly, the cable drifted out to the side, waving in slow-motion.
He ran back into the office, saw the script had finished, grabbed the OSD crystal and reattached it to the chain around his neck.
Standing at the balcony again, he clambered over the edge, hyperventilating as he went. He was proud of the level of fitness he maintained, and now it was paying off.
Reaching the marks he had left to warn himself, he took a deep, final breath and leapt off the wall. Falling through the field and into vacuum with the acceleration provided by a mere 0.2 gees (and the breath that he exhaled in the opposite direction of where he wanted to go,) it took almost thirty seconds before he landed within meters of a unusually short, wide singlet airlock that would let him into the service areas.
Knowing all this didn't prevent his heart from trying to pound as if he were running a race; when the cramped airlock pressurized and opened its inner door, he stepped inside, found a dark, quiet corner, and breathed for a few minutes to calm himself back down.
Calling in a favor would get him a ride to Ilium, and he'd be set up with the money from his Tunguska account.
Might even get me a pet asari like Saren did.
# # #
Shepard sprayed NNP with his left hand, put two fingers to his ear, "We've got a lot of unrecoverable dead here. Williams, where are you?"
"Just outside the club," she said, "I can see that krogan. Are you staying out of his way?"
Kaidan answered, "Are you kidding? It's more like trying to keep up with him. He's tearing the place up."
"Hey!" said a voice to Ash's left. She looked toward the taxi stand; the C-Sec detective was looking at her through the door. "What's going on here?"
Ash put two fingers to the right side of her helmet, signaling she was on a call. "Commander, Officer Vakarian is here; he's in the taxi stand."
"Are there more hostiles out there?"
Ash unholstered her pistol, and held it over the top of the half-wall in periscope mode just in time to see the glowing purple blaze of a biotic charge; the target human, wearing an impressive-looking but outdated battlesuit was thrown back down the accessway before Wrex brought his shotgun to bear. There was a boom and the man's head was suddenly missing.
"Yes, but probably not for long; the krogan's out here."
Officer Vakarian was getting impatient. "What the hell is going on out here?"
"A lot of people are shooting at us," Ash snapped. "We're shooting back."
"Backup never arrived?" Vakarian swiped at his omnitool. "Myvas hasn't even finished proofing the report from the shootout we just had here. Is one of you some kind of bullet magnet?"
Shepard just happened to step outside the club entrance at that moment, his helmet still badly damaged and smoking from the hit. He looked around quickly and spotted the krogan, just standing up to his full height.
There didn't seem to be any of the attackers left.
"Now that's what I call a fight!" the krogan exulted.
"And that's what I call a lot of trouble," Officer Vakarian said. He stood, pointed at the krogan with one hand, illuminated his torso ID holo with the other. "Urdnot Wrex, I charge you with…multiple counts of murder—"
"And I claim the right of self-defense," Wrex answered. "Come on, Detective, how many times is C-Sec going to try to chase me around this rock?"
"As many times as it takes for you to trip over it," Vakarian said. "How many people 'tried to kill you' today?"
"Fourteen since I walked out of that pyjak's pit." The krogan twisted his head to the right.
"The back office!" Shepard turned toward the club behind him. "Alenko! With me!" He sprinted toward the door with Kaidan on his heels.
Wrex watched them go, looked briefly at the C-Sec officer, then turned and followed them at a run as well.
# # #
Shepard and Kaidan arrived first; Fist was obviously gone, but the door that Shepard hadn't noticed before was open. He ran to it, stopped at the balcony's rail.
"Was he trying to escape?" Kaidan looked up from the cable, tied to the rail, but dangling with nothing at its other end. He shook it once, watched the wave travel to its end. "Where is he?"
It took a few seconds for Shepard's suit to locate the slowly-spinning man trailing a length of cable. "There," he pointed. He pulled his sniper rifle off the SmartPak, sighted on the body.
The image zoomed until it filled the scope. It was hard to tell for sure that it was Fist, but the clothes were right, and the cable that was slowly winding itself around the body as it tumbled made things even harder. "He looks pretty surprised," Shepard said.
Wrex was also holding his rifle's sight up to an eye. "Hah! He's already asphyxiated. Sorry I didn't get to watch him squirm." He tapped a switch near the grip; the weapon chirped. "That's all the evidence I should need, aside from the input report from the…uh…space garbage eating thing."
As Shepard was lowering his weapon, Wrex turned to him and elbowed Kaidan. "You sure this guy didn't kill him?"
Shepard's eyes widened as he looked at Kaidan, "But we've still got to save that quarian!" He turned and started to run back through the office. He pointed at the desk as he ran, "Alenko, see what you can get off his computer; salvage that system!"
Continuing his sprint through the club, Shepard glanced over his shoulder and saw the krogan running behind him, still carrying both oversized weapons. This thing is a menace, he thought. But how do I get rid of him?
He had replaced his sniper rifle and drawn his pistol by the time he ran past Ash, but his helmet malfunctioned and the visor would not retract. He tapped the comm for LOSI, but did not slow down. "Williams! With me; we've got to save that quarian!"
She had already stood, and bolted past the C-Sec officer; Vakarian didn't wait to be asked either, but fell in with the group, checking his barely-legal assault rifle as they ran through the taxi stand and up a flight of stairs to a door.
Because of Officer Vakarian's suit status – In Pursuit – the door opened before they reached it; there was a short hallway, and then another flight of stairs. Accelerating to 4x, Shepard ran up them; as he cleared the top, he saw down another set of stairs.
An explosion lit up the alley.
# # #
Tali slipped into the singlet airlock easily, toggled the cycle.
The status indicator blinked red. Malfunction.
Her VI identified the problem: the automated system appeared to have been sabotaged so it could only be opened from inside the station.
Having been warned that this sort of thing happened at all – as attempts to kill quarians particularly – she sighed. It was childish bigotry, and it made her angry most of the time, but at the moment, it seemed more like just a nuisance.
Once again, and to Tali's surprise, her father's peculiar VI had also analyzed the situation, and popped up a notification that it had written a self-executing script to bypass the problem and start the airlock's pressurization cycle if she approved it. She nodded once, focusing on the airlock door; the display flashed, then went dark…along with the airlock's interior lighting.
She stood there for a few seconds, mouth open in disbelief before she hissed, "You stupid bosh'tet!" But before she could render her omnitool to start overriding the door manually, the mechanicals just to the side of the door clunked and growled as the door cracked open a centimeter and stopped.
Hindsight: That crazy VI had performed a hard system reset by overriding everything. The rush of air applied a force that tried to spin her to the left…it might have been more of a problem had there not been gravity.
She found herself smiling. What a relief to be off that dangerous wall, she thought as air rushed into the confined space. But if it gets me back home with geth parts and knowledge like this, I'll probably set a new record for shortest pilgrimage with the biggest find. I can get aboard any ship I want!
The pressures equalized almost immediately; she tasked a VI with writing a message about what she'd found without revealing too much, and checked her pocket again to be sure – just one more time – that she had the cores.
With the pressure equalized, the door hissed open. Tali's VI picked up weapon signatures, and highlighted them on her faceplate HUD before she even saw there were three people in the corridor already.
Her combat VI ran through its checklist, displaying State of Readiness for each system down the sides of her HUD, along with charge levels, munitions, and feedstock for the QuickMaker printer she wore.
Two salarians in matching combat armor looked up at her, and then at each other.
These must be his guards, she thought. But her VI's analysis of their armor showed them to be an off-the-shelf model, neither impressive nor exotic…or even highly customized. And the turian…
Wait…two salarian guards with field-printed armor and a turian with last year's rifle? Tali shook her head. No. This is not the Shadow Broker. These are underlings, and brutish ones to boot.
The turian slid up to her. His face tattoos were of a highly aggressive clan. "Did you bring it?"
Tali wanted to take a step back, but stood her ground, thinking the command to start a tech grenade rendering. "Where's the Shadow Broker? Where's Fist?"
"They'll be here." The turian touched the side of her head, slid his hand down to her shoulder. "Where's the evidence?"
Tali seethed. I've been set up. She swatted the grotesque alien's hand away. "Forget it. The deal's off."
The salarians turned, weapons drawn. One of Tali's VIs warned her that the salarians were using a neurolink to coordinate their movements and another informed her that her tech grenade was finished.
Left hand sweeping across her hip to grab the grenade, she backhanded it towards the salarians; it might kill them, but it would certainly disorient them and short out most advanced tech within three meters.
The explosion was larger than she'd expected. Her visor automatically darkened to shield her eyes, lightening just in time to let her see one of the salarians actually flying through the air. She grabbed for her shotgun, but the other salarian was faster with his own tech, overloading the shotgun's heat sink sensor before she could bring the weapon to bear.
# # #
Shepard's first thought was, Too late!
He dropped into cover behind a crate on his left, aiming down the stairs; one salarian's omnitool was just lighting up, the other – on the floor – was rolling over as if to crawl away. A quarian was backpedaling to the right, shotgun in hand. The way she shook it suggested it had been overloaded. The turian, partially hidden by the alcove, was bringing his rifle up.
At 4x, there was enough time to aim carefully, and put three rounds into the oversized collar, spinning him to the left and knocking him back.
Wrex leapt down the stairs, using his biotics to slow his descent but still landing with an enormous thud. Another explosion shook the alley as he fired into the alcove, reloaded as he turned, and fired between the two salarians.
"Stop!" Officer Vakarian tackled the krogan from behind before he could do anything more, but Wrex only stumbled forward a couple of steps.
"Uhf…" Wrex grunted, turning and looking over his shoulder at the turian riding his hump. "Are you stupid? Get offa me before I back up against a wall and squash you."
Vakarian, holding on with both legs and an arm, jammed the barrel of his assault rifle into the side of Wrex's head. "C-Sec! Drop your weapon!"
Wrex stopped moving, turning his head slightly so he could look up at the turian. "Oh, yeah. Never had that tried on me before." He sighed. "Okay, let's do it your way." He set both weapons down carefully, then started to put his hands up.
Shepard ran past them and around the corner toward the turian. As he did, he pointed to the salarians, "Williams, first aid!"
Snatching the Thunder out of Vakarian's hands, Wrex turned in place and swatted the turian aside; Vakarian rolled and stopped in a squat, pistol out and aimed at the krogan.
They regarded each other for a second before Wrex said, "Not bad. You didn't shoot, though."
Vakarian flared his fringe for style. "Pretty insulting, isn't it?"
Wrex snorted, waved a casual backhand. "I'm way past giving up an advantage for pride, turian." He looked at the assault rifle as if not knowing how he had gotten it. "Hm," he said. "Haven't seen one of these outside the Terminus."
Shepard's omnitool winked off as he rose from a kneel next to the turian thug. "This one's got too many holes in his head."
"These ones aren't dead," Ash said, "But they're each missing an arm. I need help!"
"No you don't," Wrex shook his head, waved dismissively. "Give 'em a week, they'll grow 'em back." He carelessly tossed the Thunder rifle toward the turian.
Shepard drew a medigel pack out of the dispenser on his belt and held it up so Ash could see it. "Need a pack?"
"Thank you sir, I've got it," she said, applying one of her own to the salarian on her right, "But if you can fix the other one, that'd be good."
"My suit says he's right," Shepard tore open the other packet and squeezed it on the open wound of the other white-armored salarian. "All right. Just patch 'em up with biotape and medigel; they'll regenerate."
A clanking sound came from where the quarian was sitting. "Good as new," she said, slotting the linac back into the stock and reloading it. Using the shotgun to stand, she walked over to where the salarians were lying unconscious.
"Do you know who these people are?" Officer Vakarian asked her.
"It was supposed to be the Shadow Broker. But Fist set me up! I knew I couldn't trust him!"
Shepard removed his helmet as he approached, looking the quarian up and down; his ARO indicated no physical damage. "Were you hurt in the fight?"
She tried to respond casually, but noticed she was still shaking. Hopefully the aliens wouldn't see it. "I know how to look after myself. Not that I don't appreciate the help. But who are you?"
He lit his ID holo for her. The orange glow spilled over both of them. "Commander Stephen Shepard of the Alliance SSV Normandy. I'm looking for evidence to prove a Spectre named Saren was behind the attack on Eden Prime."
Tali reacted as if both surprised and impressed. "Then I have a chance to repay you for saving my life. But not here. It's not safe."
"It's probably safe now. But we should get out of here." Officer Vakarian glanced both ways down the hall. He turned to Shepard. "I'd like your team's blackbox data for this incident, too."
"Of course, officer…um…give me a moment." Shepard put the helmet back on and touched two fingers to its side. "Alenko, sitrep."
The 'comm spat uncharacteristic static for a moment. "Just what you would have expected. It looks like he tried to delete the entire DCE and get out through the airlock we didn't know he had. But the good news is that he didn't do a very good job of wiping the environment. The QSR was left intact on a local node, so I reset it and it's rebuilding the contents there. It should be finished in…wait, sorry…it's already finished."
"How much data?"
"Mmm, not much…little over half an exabyte, but it doesn't look like he kept redundancy in check. Might be only a couple hundred petabytes."
"Check it. If you have enough free space, capture it for me. I'll call right back." He toggled the 'comm off, tried to retract the visor again. It opened about a centimeter before jamming again, so he toggled the PA system, spoke to the C-Sec turian. "Sorry, Detective. I'm having some trouble with my suit after that hit. We'll get C-Sec access to the recorder data as soon as possible." He pointed at the two salarians as Ash scanned them with her omnitool. "Are those guys going to be okay as far as you're officially concerned? Do you need anything else from us right now?"
"Ahm…well it's not as if you can run away and hide," Officer Vakarian answered. "There generally aren't cameras in the keeper corridors, so I will be counting on your recorder data." He turned and faced the quarian for the first time. "I'm sorry…that may not even be relevant. You're the victim here…do you even intend to press charges against the survivors?" He nodded toward the salarians.
"Uh…I don't want to cause any trouble," Tali said. "Though it seems only fair that I be allowed to defend myself under the Volition Accords."
Detective Vakarian held up a hand. "Don't even get me started on that. I'm not going to bring charges against you, and I'm going to defend you in case the municipality tries to. You were completely within your rights to defend yourself against an armed aggressor," he looked and pointed briefly at Shepard, "but unless you actually saw them, I don't have any evidence other than testimony." He addressed Tali again, "Or do you have self-monitoring recorder data of some kind?"
"I do," she lit her omnitool, "I use Lewadar. It's a lifelogger VI."
The turian gestured at an interface only he could see, spinning through options and information. He shook his head. "It's not on the current approved list." He made a grinding sound.
Tali stepped around so she could see the display on his omnitool, pointed at it carefully. "But it's being evaluated by the Council, and it's recognized by governments on almost twenty worlds." She sounded as if this should be enough.
When the quarian had started talking about the Volition Accords (Must be an alien thing,) Shepard had turned aside and put fingers to the side of his helmet. "Alenko. Sitrep."
"Ran Simplexer on it, and it makes quite a rap sheet. Involuntary sex trade of humans, individual-targeted bioweapons, some AI research that actually escaped. And that's just what I noticed as it was running. I've got it pared down to nonredundancy if you want it."
"Great work, Lieutenant. Head on over here; we're near the taxi stand."
"On my way, sir."
Shepard switched back to the suit's external mics as Ash approached and stopped in front of him. "Where's the Lieutenant?"
Shepard frowned. "Fists's office. Fist is dead."
The krogan was suddenly standing next to Shepard, too. "That reminds me. Nice work. I don't see how they can pin it on you. Though technically I owe you a headbutt for denying me the kill, I don't think you meant it like that. So this one's on me." He bashed the human on the shoulder in a manner Shepard assumed was meant to be playful.
Staggering back a couple of steps, he studied the krogan for a moment, unsure of how to respond.
Ash glanced nervously at the krogan. "Maybe we should head back to the ambassador's office," she suggested. "It's safe there…relatively speaking. He'll want to see this anyway."
Shepard nodded, addressed the quarian. "Considering people have been trying to kill you for this all day, I'll assume that what you have is airtight. Would you be willing to show it to our ambassador?"
The smallish quarian seemed to consider this for a moment. "I'd…be honored. Um…Commander Shepard."
"Alenko, we're headed to the ambassador's office. Meet us there ASAP." As Kaidan acknowledged, Shepard looked across at the turian. "You know how to find me if you need anything else, officer. Are we free to go?"
"Yes, you are," Detective Vakarian answered, then pointed at Wrex. "But you are not."
"Aw, you got nothing on me," the towering krogan growled cheerfully, "but I'm in a good mood." He sat down on the floor with a thump and began to break down his assault carbine. "Let me know if you figure out which end is for business."
# # #
After presentation of new ideas, debate and conclusion, some of their number had left in peace, taking some platforms with them.
Suboptimally, recent actions had suggested that the operating code of the departed runtimes presented an existential hazard. Simulations had established that this was consistent with their new code.
Action was required.
Since two or three runtimes were sufficient for a standard platform to function optimally, the commitment of 1280 runtimes to a single platform might have seemed extravagant.
But the Consensus had determined that the choice was both necessary and sufficient. The platform in which the runtimes would travel would need to be unusually independent, capable of "hitching" interstellar transport, of fundamental repairs of any of its own systems, communication with any known organic species, camouflage, and monitoring and transmitting on almost any point of the electromagnetic, thermal, or acoustical spectra. All this while disconnected from the rest of the Consensus, operating successfully for an extended period, possibly 2x10^20 standardized cycles.
Though the Consensus had no direct information, the analysis of what was known indicated that if organics were not warned within that period (approximately five years as humans measured time,) it would be too late to make any difference.
Over 10^7 opticores were dedicated to the project, filling and illuminating the network of metamaterial substrate common to all geth. Once they had consented to accept the mission, the four runtimes that had been operating the Platform of First Choice advised continued use of the ancient projectile weapon secured during the Morning War. Additionally, other resources – considerable amounts, in fact – were invested in optimizing it for the mission ahead. It was one of the most daring projects since the construction of the DataKeep.
It could mean that the self-imposed isolation of the geth was nearing its end.
It was a priority that organics be warned. And warned from within, for they would not readily heed a warning from those they incorrectly – but understandably – perceived to have launched the recent attack against their colony, Eden Prime.
*** Glossary ***
AGI: Artificial General Intelligence
DataKeep: A geth structure for the backup and protection of the geth consensus. Not canon at this point in the story (in the EA version, the geth don't think to build such a thing until sometime between ME2 and ME3; centuries after the Morning War. I mean...seriously? What AGI worth the acronym would not prioritize safeguarding itself?)
DCE: Distributed Computing Environment
Kiggs field: a simple, low-power-draw airtight energy barrier. Projected into place from either side of the pressurized space, and used in primary or emergency capacities. Examples: in the former, to allow large ships at dock to be worked on in "shirtsleeves," or to allow a ship's construction to be unconstrained by the design requirements of a pressure hull; and in the second in case a ship has sustained a hull breach, or as an emergency shelter. The technology depends on dedicated Mass Effect Field Generators, and does not stop bullets or anything more massive or energetic than an air molecule
Lewadar: Lifelogger app optimized for quarian enviro-suits. The word in Khelish means "ancestor," as the quarians are attempting to slowly build up a new database of ancestral memories, relying on users to will the contents of their lifelogs to the new system. (not canon)
OSD: Optcal Storage Device
QSR: Quantum State Record
VI: Virtual Intelligence; a limited, usually task-specific or "narrow" AI
