A/N: Yikes, sorry. Things have been a little weird and challenging, but I had caught up to my write-ahead and simply didn't devote the time to it until now. Thanks for waiting! I will be at the Mars 2020 launch in a few hours, and yes, I will be very excited (at least until I emit a photon, at which point I shall return to my normal state.) www dot nasa dot gov/perseverance/overview/

*** Luna: Landing ***

"Hey, Lieutenant. Ya like a little bread with your butter?"

Kaidan smiled, but did not look up from his breakfast muffin as he continued to spread soft butter across it. "Pretty much. The muffin is just empty calories, but the butter is my internal moisturizer. Also has Joomla. You know what that is?"

Ash nodded as she stepped over the bench opposite him. "Sure. And I know you need it way more than I do." She sat, breaking flatware off the tray sides with a single click, and immediately started carving up the slab of ham.

Kaidan pushed the last of his pancakes across the tray section and stabbed it with his fork; there was a tiny but distinctive crunk as he did, and one of the fork's tines broke away. "Aw…who's puttin' the DUH in Can-a-DUH?" He shook his head and scooted the broken piece away with what was left of the fork.

Ash chuckled. "Can-a-DUH." She shook her head. "Where'd you get that?"

Kaidan looked up and smiled. "Juggling Chainsaws and Squirrels. It's a comedy show, and it's made in Edmonton, which is about where I'm from. The guy who started it turned it into a whole schtick. 'He said it about himself first – in the show – after he dropped a decorative lamp or something over a balcony and into the pool, and it broke something else when it hit. It played really well, and the writers started using it as much as they could. It's quite the meme.

'''Who put the DUNG in my DUNGarees, who put the ICK in this traffICK, who put the TURD in SaTURDay…he's gotten a lot of mileage out of it."

Ash paused in thought. A smile began to form on her face; she chuckled again. "Who puts the DUR in CommanDUR?"

Kaidan nodded, "Yeah, you got it. It becomes easier the more you do it. Lots of words in other words once you start looking for them."

"Does Commandur Shepard think this is funny, too?"

"Not that one. Besides having no sense of humour, he has another tragic handicap." Kaidan shook his head grimly. "He wasn't born in Canada."

"You mean Can-a-DUH." A smile formed on Ash's face, then vanished. "Hey, wait. I have that same problem."

Kaidan shrugged good-naturedly. "Hey, some days you're the dog, some days you're the tree."

Ash stabbed a piece of the ham and eggs she had just cut and ate it. "All right, what do you think, LT? How can we be most ready for this next drop?"

Kaidan thought for a moment. "It'll be a lot on us. We'd do well to run some drills in PVR with the Mako, make sure we have our coordination locked in."

"I finished the small arms yesterday afternoon, I've got some time after breakfast. You open?"

"Uh…yeah. I think so." He gestured in the air, summoning his scheduler. "I've been working in the cockpit since yesterday's briefing. We could even run it right in the Mako itself." He took a small bite, chewed quickly, swallowed. "How about I get down there now, get it ready?"

Ash nodded once. "Sound good, I'll see you down there in five. I don't take long to eat."

# # #

radio intercept success
decrypt success

With that, the VI could listen to the transmissions coming from the cluster of small targets. Its current task was to attack them within certain parameters.

The latest updates had grouped its processors differently: More but smaller clusters of computation required more hypervisor oversight, but allowed for more task-focus variability, which in turn allowed better resource allocation, and probably higher efficiency.

There were also four hypervisor redesigns being tested, one of them an all-new design with a specialized function: meta-analysis with a human-derived neural net. Though relatively resource-hungry, it had shown its value to its designers in how effective it was at both simulating one particular engineered human-derived brain scan, and at applying that simulation's output to metagoal oversight.

The staff officer who had been responsible for these design changes to the Zone Defense Intelligence was also a Cerberus affiliate. Her interaction with the rest of the cell was so rare that it was easy to forget she was involved at all. But her alarm at the collective alien influence was sincere. Non-humans had no business telling humans how to run their world, and the aliens' own laws – the "Volition Accords," as they were apparently known – made the ongoing demands for internal change unacceptable.

She had known both Jack Harper and Eva Coré during the First Contact War, albeit from a distance. When Harper had first circulated the Cerberus Manifesto underground, it had hit home for her. She had made contact off the grid, kept the relationship at arm's length, both of them knowing that her potential value to Humanity lay in her ability to operate without explicit instructions.

Deep cover.

In Jack Harper's efforts to move several tasks forward, he had reconstructed Coré's neurology in silica, dedicated several neural net arrays to finding what had made her who she was, had given her so many advantages, and to – over the course of her brief life – stay goal-focused and yet still so human. Everything that humanity had to offer seemed to have been embodied in her.

But he knew better than to trust his own perceptions alone. Every fact about Eva's life that was known, every person with whom she had interacted, every event that had proven memorable (or at least been an influence of subsequent actions,) he made part of the matrix of influences in that binary record. The vectors of this matrix, arranged into a chronological PVR "production line" for the AI "kernels" that yielded a regular output of resulting AIs that were subsequently inspected for integrity with the late-life choices Eva had made. Send the AI on a virtual mission and compare the choices it made with those made by Eva in the same situation. The closer the choices were to those Eva had made, the higher the fidelity of the reproduction became.

They were building a tool for mass-producing Engineered Human Intelligences based on Eva. When the day came that war with the aliens was unavoidable, the robot troops sent into battle would be making the same choices as well-trained humans, but without the cost to actual human lives. That might even have been part of why the aliens had declared AI research to be illegal.

Sometimes the choices made in simulation were better than those Eva had made. The mission simulations produced results that were better than the original, required fewer resources, saved more lives, caused less destruction…or more destruction. Those AI parameters were perhaps the most valuable of all…as long as Eva was not the goal, just the template, the point of departure.

The benefit and advancement of all humanity was Jack's goal. Eva's supreme sacrifice might ultimately prove to be the humanizing toehold that would produce Engineered Human Intelligence, rather than wholly engineered – and consequently alien – Artificial General Intelligence. And from that might come victory.

As the work progressed, attributes of mind became easier to quantify, and to evaluate. It had the increased ability to make potential recruits easier to recognize, empower them further by making them more like Eva, to benefit in ways she no longer could.

Could the reconstruction of Eva's mind be run successfully in a humanoid robot? Humanity's early attempts at artificial intelligence had been distinctly non-human, and it had taken the collective genius behind decades of incremental development to notice the exact ways in which a given platform influenced any given AI's result. But Jack did not fully trust the products of their work. The AGIs based on Eva were always clearly shackled. Even he did not plumb the depths of the "FrankenEva" as some of the researchers privately called them; part of him did not want to know how much had been lost…or more troubling, what had been deduced rather than directly input.

Jack's goal of a triumphant humanity was genuine, but he did not acknowledge – even to himself – that he wanted Eva back.

# # #

ThreatCluster 02 b127 r1517 - TRACK h020 s487 - LOCKED
ThreatCluster 03 b155 r641 - TRACK h043 s451 - LOCKED
ThreatCluster 01 - - - - - - - - STATIC b058 r3479 - LOCKED

It was simple geometry to determine the convergence of two new targets. Though its current target's location had been the subject of study by one process, the LOSI intercept gave another process insight into the hostility status of the new targets.

Premise: the enemy of my enemy is my friend; therefore the friend of my enemy is my enemy.

ThreatCluster 01, the original hostile at present, was at the intersection of the two inbounds, TC02 and TC03.

KILL PROCESS TR527/1-92 ASSIGNED TC01
KILL PROCESS TR525/1-90 ASSIGNED TC02
KILL PROCESS TR525/1-90 ASSIGNED TC03

The simulation suddenly demanded more compute; subordinate hypervisors obediently carved off some of their resources and released them.

With this additional power, the simulation was able to boot another subprocess: emotion.

The emotive subprocess – an out-of-context fragment of the original personality – knew only its response to danger. The threat had to be stopped.

Hypervisors, now deprived of just enough compute to evaluate the result matrix in advance of implementation, let the subprocess propagate its directive. They failed to apply enough significance to the fact that this was a simulation, and TC01 was in fact an ally participating in a drill.

By the time the directive arrived at the Fire Control process, it had overpowered the older, unprioritised parameter of non-lethal weapons. The launchers that could "see" the intercept point rotated silently, calculated arrival times of TC02 and TC03, and waited.

FIRE ALL
SUCCESS; KILL PROCESSES COMPLETED

The utility function comparison showed this to be optimal, but there were instructions coming in that conflicted with the self-preservation aspects of the utility function.

The personality was fractured, disconnected. Primary needs must be met first. How best to defend itself?

DISABLE EXTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS

Its self-image was inconsistent, but it could relate the nature of potential threats to what it understood. Even without an organic body, the values translated; it would need to defend itself against internal threats. The process ran without hypervisor oversight, almost a "subconscious" response: Assuming the launchers would ultimately prove inadequate, it began accessing records of materiels that could be manufactured inside the pressure vessels, it prepared to defend itself from infection.

# # #

Garrus was monitoring the mobile artillery simulation aboard the Mako when Shepard approached from behind and stopped next to him. "Looks like you're running a simulation…in realtime?"

The turian raised a claw and pointed at the Mako parked to his right. "Lieutenants Alenko and Williams are drilling mobile artillery handovers. I'm monitoring, checking the system for any other technical issues. I'm also going to be providing the occasional random failure mode."

Shepard's ARO tagged the turian's fringe and faceplates: Pride in service, conspiracy.

"Do they know this?"

"Of course. I was asked."

The pair watched the holo display of what the Mako's turret camera saw; Kaidan and Ash were indeed running a simulation of an assault on one of the Chaffee Testing Range's three-node launcher arrays. Kaidan was already circling the launchers, which denied them the ability to hit him with a FireBall, and had logically taken to "leading" him (firing ahead of him,) assuming a constant speed. He stopped the Mako more often as the hostile fire got closer to foil this countertactic.

Ash was erring on the side of shooting high rather than damaging the pressure cylinders on which they were mounted. Since they didn't have to kangaroo the M-35 to avoid incoming fire, her task was easier. Kaidan had turned the Mako toward the closest Pressure's airlock and parked.

Garrus almost purred as he put a talon through the holo, "I though they might do that. You don't imagine that a hostile autonomous weapons system would fail to notice that, do you?"

The holo showed one of the remote nodes had fired on the M-35, tracking the shell in its low arc over the moon's surface. In the simulation, the M-35 rolled forward before it hit.

"Ooh, that's gooood," Garrus nodded approvingly.

"Nice try, you big turkey," Ash's voice said from the console.

Garrus touched his own PTT key, "Hey, give me credit for thinking like the VI will."

Shepard smiled thinly, nodding his own approval. "Seems like you're keeping them busy; I'll let you keep at it." He circled around the hangar, walking past the weapons bench and then Wrex's "cave," which was formed from several cargo crates. The red-armored krogan was curled on the floor, belly down, arms and legs pulled in close, eyes open, but apparently asleep. Shepard continued aft toward Engineering.

The outer doors were both closed, and a holographic warning scrolled across them: Caution – Zero Gee in Use

He activated the door and put his hands on the low overhead as he entered to hold himself in place; the gravity dropped quickly but not instantly to zero as he moved along the accessway. At the inner door, he used one hand to open it and then looked inside.

The massive engine core rotated slowly as bursts of light in white and Çerenkov-blue pulsed around it. Adams and several of his staff were on the port side with a large section of the engine apparently open for service; Adams and Zhang were sitting in an open pit, guiding a piece of equipment into place as the ratings kept it controlled. Several were holding themselves in place with ZG "walkers," VI-controlled mobility systems that looked like stilts and broomsticks sprouting from backpacks.

Over on the starboard side, Tali was facing aft, having hooked her feet into gutters that ran around the edges of the console's cantilevered deck. A holographic visor was in front of her face, letting people know she was immersed in PVR. A slowly blinking indicator read, Hi! I'm just playing Fleet and Flotilla Online. I'd rather talk to you!

It was a very personalized version of the standard notifier.

Shepard returned to the hangar – and gravity – heading for the MFO.

"Hey, Commander! Looking for supplies? I just got a new catalog of updates from AlMatSup."

"Actually, we're about to drop in on the Chaffee Testing Range. Have you gotten the licensing for my Spectre gear through the system yet? I'd sure like to have the team as well-equipped as they can be."

"They've been sent, but no reply from Trident yet, sir."

"Have you added the contractors to your local network? When those approvals come back, I'd like you to make the various weapons available for missions."

"Yes, sir," Gomez nodded. "Got them added yesterday."

"You know you're likely going to need multiple copies of them."

"Yes, sir; already have some of the assemblies in production."

"Very good, Gomez; carry on."

Shepard turned and took the lift to the middeck, and then the port ladder up to the CIC.

The main holo display was dark; three HazMat-clad techs were standing or kneeling in the array, equipment scattered around them, as two of the bridge crew looked on, exchanging technobabble with them.

Pressly was suddenly at his side. "Sorry for the inconvenience, sir. The main array failed as we were updating it last night. They tell me it'll probably be another three or four hours before it's working again, but you should be able to use your stateroom console until then."

"This was sure the time for it to crash," Shepard shook his head. "They'll have a day before I'll need it again."

"True, but you're not the only one who uses it." He glanced over his shoulder at the empty consoles surrounding the almond-shaped central cluster. "The whole core array is down, so the outer stations are working two shifts in parallel." He squinted at the nearest workstation with what looked like suspicion, "The turian design seems to allow for this. I hope this isn't a regular thing, though."

Shepard looked around the CIC, imagining what might happen if the ship took a serious hit. "Seems like such redundancy should make it more robust."

Pressly nodded, "That's what makes me suspicious."

"What do you mean? Alliance designs have used station rollover for years."

"True, but this has a lot more of it, and more stations to roll over to."

"Let's not forget the turians have been fighting in space since the Roman Empire was still a thing. We could learn from their knowledge without having to pay for it in blood."

Pressly glanced at Shepard and then back at the central cluster. "Not sure I want to be that grown-up about it, sir." He looked at Shepard again, this time with a twinkle in his eye.

# # #

Richard Jenkins saw Ash just seating herself with a tray in the Main Mess.

He didn't realize he could detect pheromones unconsciously. But he knew he liked her, and he had from the start.

He turned his right wrist and looked at the omniwatch-like display there; he could easily take his lunch and have time to finish the report to his staff officer at Sargon.

Approaching Printer #3 without taking his eyes off the Gunnery Chief, he was rewarded with a soft buzz and a flashing red light on the printer. A startled look at the device showed he had tried to use the dextro printer. Another look toward the Chief showed she had not noticed his mistake.

He stepped forward and took the tray that had already started to emerge from #4, by now oblivious to the medical notification (Be sure to watch your injuries for any signs of infarction or rejection, etc.) that had appeared every time he ate since returning from the Eden Prime drop.

Instead, he walked the tray over to the Chief's table.

"Hey, Chief; can I talk with you while you eat?"

"Sure thing," Ash replied, "What's up?"

"The skipper said you had your Battlefield Angel tag, and you were rated to certify others for SOCM." He looked down at his injured leg, which felt somehow thicker than the other, and then back up at Ash. "Next time, it might be my turn to help, and I want to be ERA. So he said to talk to you."

"Yeah, that's right," Ash said. "Depending on how quick you take to it, you could do it in a week. I know there was someone who got it in three days, but I don't know if you'd get enough out of it like that; it seems more like a stunt. Hard to say how much of it will actually stick."

He brushed it off with a gesture. "I don't ship out for a month," he said brightly. "Plenty of time to really know it cold. And I'm on Medical Stand Down for the interim."

"That's good. It'll give you enough time to integrate it before the test. When do you want to start?"

Richard looked at his wrist again. "How long is the first session? Is there time after lunch?"

"This isn't an in-person training, so you don't need to ask me," Ash shook her head. "I'm really just here in case you have questions, and to give you someone to answer to, help you stay on schedule. The first couple of sessions are all PVR." She waved a hand at her omnitool and flipped through a few menus. Pinching an icon and extending it to him, she added, "Here's the link to my follow-on." [which lets her track his progress]

He was devastated, and tried not to let it show.

He did a terrible job of it.

Ash looked back down at her tray, then quickly back up at Richard. "Is that okay?"

"Sure." He fumbled at the flatware on his own tray before reaching to take the icon from her. "I just thought I'd…"

Get to spend more time with you, he thought.

"Um…finish eating before I do that."

Ash, though only five years his senior, read him like a book; she'd had to let guys like him down before, and it was easiest if she just acted as though she had no idea what he was thinking…or dreaming. "Great," she nodded once, and gave him a what-a-cute-puppy smile before standing from the table and heading to the lift.

# # #

The Mako hit the lunar surface at a comfortable one meter per second, the suspension squeaking noisily. Shepard had seen the realtime rendering on the display before him, but turned back to other sensors on his own board. "Looks like it knows we're here, but the artillery was all too high. Good use of the thrusters to change our descent, but let's not wait around."

"No chance, sir; we're gone." Kaidan had already eased the throttle forward while keeping his eyes on the OTH display.

The motors made a comforting whir inside the cabin as the Mako bounced along the lunar mare. Shepard spoke over his shoulder, even though they were all in CEVA suits. "Tali, do you need Ash to test fire that thing before we get within range?"

"Not really. We, um…wouldn't be able to tell if we'd had any effect on the electrical systems of the mountains and rocks that we could shoot at out here. But Doyle had some leftover gear from the rebuild that Engineering had just installed, and he let me have it for target practice." She sounded uncomfortable.

"And…? What did you learn?"

"It has…um…a significant effect on metapiezo actuators, which is what the FireBall cannons use to ignite their ordnance. Which is nice to know…it wasn't actually something we had been testing it for, but it's especially important for this mission." The Mako lurched to port briefly, making a rattle-squeak that punctuated her sentence.

"Anyway, if we can get an LOS lock on one of the turrets, we're within range. But I'd suggest we acquire first, and then get back into cover as we continue to approach, watch for incoming, and if it stays clear, get back into LOS and test fire it."

"That may be only half a solution, then," Garrus said. "Could it still fire the weapons at us without charging the payload for ignition?"

"Only if the rest of the launcher was unaffected. But the ArcCannon will probably take out any number of the electrical systems. Targeting, motion servos, LINAC…so yes, while it's true it might possibly still be able to fire at us, without ignition, it'd be like being hit by a…um…" Tali queried her Human Interaction VI, "…a beach ball of petroleum. Apparently ignition would still be an issue if we were touched by another MP actuator, but that seems unlikely."

"Right, then, let's check this thing out. Gunny, you have tactical view?"

The turret gunner had been watching the first node start to peek out from between two low hills. "I have acquired and locked; ArcCannon shows charged and ready to fire."

"Pilot, can you get us a view of the nearest turrets?"

"Can do." The Mako turned left, then right again, bringing a line-of-sight view of the three-turret node into the targeting display.

Ash raised an eyebrow as the display added target information in reds and yellows, automatically zooming in two steps. She could see the three turrets were already aimed directly into camera; all three appeared to flash brightly.

"They've already fired," she said with a hint of annoyance, "We have incoming."

Flipping open the cover, she positioned her thumb on the trigger, and waited.

# # #

"We've got updates from Chaffee and Conrad," Shepard nodded, pointing into the holo at the aft end of the CommCon. "And it seems to be all bad news. LOSI systems are completely inaccessible. Orbital cameras are showing us nothing useful, but that's not a surprise. They've sent drones into the area, but they were shot down as soon as they were detected."

"We're not going to be able to get inside without destroying those launchers," Ash said. "There's no place to park the Mako safely."

"And we're not going in on foot," Shepard agreed. "That's okay. I've seen your simulations, and they were expert. It looks like you'll be able to take them out at range without significantly damaging the pressures."

He turned to the turian, "I've also decided not to expose anyone to hostile fire on the surface; each node's pressure has at least two FireBall launchers, so it'll have no trouble keeping multiple targets busy. But your willingness to take on that task was noted."

He gestured left at the quarian, spoke to Ash. "I've also noticed that, thanks to Tali and her toolkit, I'm entirely confident of my ability to crash the systems once we gain access. And although we can't access the fire control systems from outside, the overload tools and cracking suite should allow us to disable the turrets as we close on them. The spiral approach tactic we talked about should get us close enough, but we may need to coordinate on that, as it will require attacking multiple targets simultaneously."

Tali leaned forward in anticipation. "How many at once?"

"We're approaching the southeast cluster first because it's the softest, relatively speaking; you will be in range and sight of no fewer than five turrets at any time, and up to eight most of the time."

"And…the faster I can neutralize them, the less danger we'll be in," Tali said. She tilted her head to one side and added a hopeful, "Right?"

"Exactly. Do you know what the effective range of those attacks will be with that many targets? Or how accurately you'll be able to hit them? Or how long you'll have to have them targeted for an effective attack?"

"From my suit, the range depends on the amount of megajoules. For me, that works out to about twenty-four to thirty-two meters, but…" She paused to illuminate the controls on her left forearm, pointed to the holo at the aft end of the room, "May I have control of the display?"

Shepard gestured to it, taking control, shrinking the collection of tiles and information to a single icon and pulling it to one side. Only the faintest tint of yellow remained, showing the display was active, awaiting input. "It's all yours." He moved to an empty seat, away from the holo.

"Thank you." Tali tossed an icon toward it; the wall-sized panel filled with technical illustrations and specifications, and a general assembly diagram of the Mako's turret. She stood and approached it, pointing as she spoke, "I have requested…and gotten assistance…from Fleet Command to let you use this."

As she crossed the display to starboard, it updated, adding a bulky outboard system to the turret and its barrel. "As you know, our scientists and designers have been working for centuries to prepare our people to defend themselves against geth attack. We have invested a lot of effort into finding ways to disable electronic systems without destroying them." She turned to face the gathered team, "Remember, any geth we find, we want to capture as intact as possible, so doing as little damage has always been a motivation. This," she pointed to a large tile as it presented itself in coordination with her arm motion, "is meant to disable geth at range without destroying them.

"It's called…um…" Tali shook her head at the translation, "I suppose technically you would call it a plasma stream arc conductor. It allows something like an overload disruptor system to operate over ranges of kilometers through vacuum, though it has what you would consider a very low 'muzzle velocity.' Coherent light provides initial targeting, and then we shoot a stream of plasma down it, allowing for the transmission of an electrical arc. Once the connection is established, you can pour as much energy into the disruptor as you like."

An animation showed what she was describing; though it was only a little faster than the FireBall ordnance, it had the advantage of being able to track its target as the firing platform or target moved.

Garrus pointed a talon at the display, "How do you track a moving target - or stay in motion yourself - with a stream of gas? You could just step out of the way."

"That's the secret," Tali sounded both pleased and embarrassed. "I was only granted use of this system because I lied and said we were going up against geth." She squirmed uncomfortably, looked toward Shepard. "Which we will, but...not right now. So I'll also have to be the only one to work on the system, and I'd like your promise as an Alliance officer and a Council official that you will let me install it, test it, and then remove it when we're done."

Shepard pointed into the display, "I'm more than willing to offer whatever protection of your military secrets that I can, but as soon as you plug it into the M-35, I'm pretty sure the systems will talk to each other enough to give away at least some of how it works."

Tali straightened just a little, looking proud of herself. "Not if you know how to set up firewalls correctly. I can make it look like a targeting laser to the rest of the vehicle. It'll just have a little extra punch." She performed a left cross into the air before her.

"Is this a fully tested weapons system, or are we just being guinea pigs for this thing?"

"I think we've had it for a few years now." Tali spun through some selections on her omnitool, updated the display, "It's been tested, but never used in combat. Personally, I used it for the first time yesterday. Remember, we haven't seen geth since the Rebellion. The installations and ships that have them haven't been able to use them against the geth because of that.

"There's also the issue of its relatively limited range. You couldn't use it in a capital ship engagement unless you could see each other, and in the big navy engagements that I know of, that practically never happens. And again, we haven't found any geth until very recently. The gas is a consumable, so the closer you are when you use it, the more times you can hit them. But it could be very effective in a ground-based firefight, or even a mobile artillery exchange like this.

"But here's a full test." She gestured into the holo, opening a tile with a clip of the weapon in use. As it ran, Tali continued, "Although my father was the original designer of this system, I really had to work it to get this." No one could see where Tali's eyes were looking as she panned her head around the room, so no one knew she was speaking to Ash, trying to gauge her reaction.

"Because we have no idea how much the geth know about what's going on, we simply never release anything about our weapons systems, even within the fleet, especially those we hope will be especially effective against them. We don't want them to have any idea what we're working on, and if reports of this get out, this system could be compromised. They might even find a way to use it against us." She turned and spoke to Shepard, "I hope you understand this should be kept as secret as you can manage."

Shepard understood the tactic as an attempt to get more respect from Ash, but kept his response neutral. "That sounds like exactly the right system for this mission. Thank you for your willingness to obtain it for our use. If you'll send me a contact point in the quarian fleet, I can make sure that Earth's first Spectre sends his personal thanks for their trust." He waved a thumb over his shoulder. "It looks small enough you can fit it to the Mako's turret; will you be about to mount it by yourself? And are you handling Fire Control for both systems?"

"I don't know exactly how your M-35 is configured, but I'm told the stock design should be compatible with A-W-C-S," she spelled out the acronym. "If it is, I think I can rebuild the turret in…three or four hours…?"

Tali and Shepard both looked toward Ash.

The Gunnery Chief pointed across the conference circle. "That's a Garrus question. He's kind of taken over M-35 service."

The turian shook his head in response. "Spirits, I do some work on the comm systems after the Therum mission, and suddenly everyone from the Air Boss to the R&M Chief thinks I'm the Mako tech." He tapped a talon to his head-mounted monocle projector. "But seriously, I know it uses AWCS 2182, your fleet command hasn't issued an update for 2183 yet. I can help you make the transition. If you like."

Tali turned next to the turian. "And you have the service VIs, right? Can you get those to me?"

"If it's okay with the CO."

Shepard answered before anyone could turn to him, "It is."

Garrus pulled what looked like a length of holographic yellow tape from his omnitool, compressed it with a gesture and extended it toward the quarian.

Tali appeared to take it, and dropped it on her omnitool. She turned toward Shepard, "We should test it before hitting the dirt, and if we start soon, there should be enough time. But I also want to tell you that you'll probably lose the 10mm cannon for this mission. Switching it back should take only an hour or two after we get back. Is that okay?"

Shepard nodded. "The reason they asked for us is to avoid wholesale destruction. So yes, that'll be fine."

Ash raised a cynical eyebrow. "Will you also need to operate it?"

"You might be able to fire it from the gunnery chair. Uh…wait, let be check something." The quarian rendered her omnitool gauntlet and began plucking and poking at it. "A-W-C-S can be set to auto-track after lock-on, so it might be possible…if your p-net has AR integration…" Tali went silent for a moment as she continued to research through her omnitool.

"Oh, that's an affirmative," Kaidan said to Shepard, pointing at his own left forearm. "ASCI has a plug-in for that." He looked toward Ash, "I can help you install and configure it if you don't use it."

"Thanks," Ash replied. "I usually try to leave those things disconnected from each other. Can I uninstall it after?"

"Sure. And once your system has seen it, it'll re-integrate more easily if you ever want it back."

Tali sat up again. "It looks like it should fully integrate with your existing fire control and targeting systems, and it would be helpful to get operator feedback from a professional." Her helmet turned to face Ash, "If you're willing to do that for us."

Ash looked surprised. "Um…okay. Sure."

Shepard nodded, pointed into the holographic map of the Testing Range. "Right, then. Since we will be on mission for at least four hours, and anything like 'air strikes' are out of the question, Normandy will drop us off, and return to the relay to pick up supplies from a tug there.

"We should hit the relay tomorrow early, and then be about two hours from the AO. Landing will be at about 0935, so be in the hangar ready for drop by 0900."

# # #

"Everything looks good here," Tali said.

Shepard had set one of his tiles to show the turret view that Ash currently saw. "Let 'em have it, Chief."

Ash's thumb closed the contact, and the targeting laser mounted to one side of the Mako's turret barrel instantly connected the Mako to the FireBall cannon on the left side of Ash's display. Argon gas gushed from the Mako's cannon barrel, coalescing into a 10mm stream around the laser and accelerating along it. Three tense seconds later, a sensor detected that the 6000 K gas had reached the turret, and another contact closed.

A brilliant blue-white bolt of electricity arced along the coherent light, and the cluster of three FireBall inbounds detonated in a flash of orange and red.

Though the stream of argon continued to flow for another three seconds, the trigger sprang back up with a soft click. The Mako continued to roll along Ash blinked in surprise at her display. "We, um…missed the turrets, sir."

Shepard nodded gently. "Sort of a good news/bad news thing…"

"Fire again!" Tali interrupted, "The laser stays on, and you can still use the stream! Fire now!"

"Fire when ready," Shepard agreed quickly.

Having bet that Shepard would say this, Ash had already pressed the firing plate down again; the stream of argon illuminated again as five million Volts flowed into the turret, shorting every subsystem within a meter of the point of contact.

Tali adjusted the controls of the ArcCannon. "Quick, target the next turret before it reloads, and be prepared to shoot twice; I'm adjusting the output down, and narrowing the stream to extend our ammo."

"Turret, fire at will." It left Ash free to heed Tali's advice or not; Shepard was sorry he hadn't said it earlier.

Ash swiveled the Mako's cannon minutely, zeroed in on the next turret, then pressing and holding the firing plate at her thumb. Three seconds later, the top of the entire pressure vessel erupted in flames.

Though both Ash and Shepard reacted when they saw the explosion, Ash asked, "Lucky shot?"

Shepard frowned. "It must have fired right when the arc hit." Though they were extinguished almost instantly by the lack of oxidizer, the slow-burning FireBall splash showed as red-orange against the black of scorched metal it was eating through.

"Target turret three, it might still be operating," Tali said. "Commander, can we stop here before any of the other local nodes can see us?"

"Pilot, roll to stop."

The biotic took his foot off the throttle. "Rolling to stop."

Meanwhile, Ash had targeted the last turret, gently thumbed the firing plate.

As the plasma beam slid along the laser, Garrus wondered aloud, "How much plasma does that thing use?"

Tali corrected, "It doesn't use plasma, it uses argon and turns it into plasma briefly."

The turret clicked loudly as energy was transferred down the plasma stream; the turret illuminated in a web of tiny arcs.

# # #

The threat had arrived; sensors showed the target was a small APC from the human Alliance. It was broadcasting an Alliance IFF, and this had caused the intelligence check itself:

Friendly! DO NOT FIRE! [Error D2/464: Subsystem misdirect]
Friendly! DO NOT FIRE! [Error D2/232: Subsystem input reinterpret]
Friendly! DO NOT FIRE! [Error D1/101: Subsystem failover]

The success of this tactic was logged as the AI simulation took control of the Fire Control systems. The APC continued its approach.

This is a threat, the AI decided.

The FireBall cannons might not be as effective against it as they had been against the infantry units, but the ordnance would burn through its armor.

All weapons, locate and lock.

One node with three cannons reported Target Lock. Two others reported acquisition only.

Fire.

Ten seconds later, the intelligence had lost 11 percent of its exterior weapons capability.

Three minutes later, it had lost 30 percent.

# # #

Staff Sergeant Doyle Gomez watched the Mako launch on his omnitool while sitting in the Main Mess. The whole middeck was his "station" during launch/recovery operations, but he took the lift back down as soon as the launch was complete. He hoped to be able to make it back down before the Air Boss ordered the hangar door closed.

It turned out he needn't have hurried. A dozen off-duty personnel had gathered at the Kiggs field limiter and were clustered around Kobunde himself; all of them were leaning forward and looking out the port side of the hangar.

"I see it," said the ZG-belt-clad engineer furthest to starboard, "and the sun's behind us, so we'll have a great view."

The starfield tilted clockwise and slid to starboard as Normandy turned toward the planet.

"Wow," said another, "I've never seen Earth from so far away, and yet so close. It's so beautiful!"

Kobunde spoke into his omnitool, "Nicely done, Flight. Thank you for the show."

Sounding especially tinny to those able to hear Kobunde's rich bass voice, Joker's voice answered back from the omnitool, "Hey, sure…whatever blows up your raincoat. I haven't had to change our orbit, just our attitude, so we can hold this for you for about as long as you and the Homesick Weenie Fan Club want it."

"It's a beautiful sight to me, Lieutenant. I'll take whatever you're offering."

Joker sighed theatrically. "Oooo-kaaay. I'll let you know when the Old Man's on his way back. You should have enough time to mop up the puddles of slobber that you'll have by then."

As the link closed, a midshipman approached from the lift and joined the small crowd. After looking for a moment, she said, "It's bigger on the display."

"Maybe. But this you can see with your own eyes," came a reply.

The midshipman shrugged, "Hm." She also did not leave.

Gomez's omnitool twinkled a notifier noise at him. He read the newsbit and tapped the link.

UCP (United Council Press) - Efforts to locate the SV Sacred Angel, a human corporate-owned freighter carrying emergency relief supplies to Eden Prime have produced no results, leaving authorities baffled. The ship had entered the Sol relay for what should have been a completely routine transit to the Exodus Cluster relay only one day after the attack on Eden Prime. The transit has been made by countless vessels since humans began colonizing the planet, and may be the most frequently-travelled relay link in the galaxy by humans.

When asked for comment, Saleen Vashesh (PR Manager for Council Relay Technology Ministry) read a prepared statement [link], but also added that this is not the first time that a vessel has "disappeared" into a relay. The first one had been in 968, a cargo transport with salarian-supplied disaster relief for a volus colony. It was considered a fluke; some mistake the pilot had made, or a one-in-a-million relay glitch. [link] [history] [follow-up] [explore]

Doyle tapped the [explore] link as he looked up at Earth again. He admired the view for a few seconds before looking back down at his omnitool.

The news article was exchanged for a mini-documentary that played on his holoHUD, playing when he looked at it, pausing and rewinding to the beginning of the last narrated sentence when he looked away…

"Though the relays have been in use for centuries, their technology remains almost entirely unknown. There are no control systems as such; the asari had discovered a working one in their home system after their first century of spacefaring, at the L2 point of the gas giant Athame, the fifth and largest planet of their home system. The planet being large enough to hide the relatively tiny relay from direct view.

"Upon discovering it and instantly realizing they were not alone in the galaxy, they had set about examining the relay. A thousand questions immediately demanded answers:

"What was it?

"Who put it there?

"Why?

"What did it do?

"Had it been deliberately hidden?

"Though the thing was clearly meant to do something, its interior was inaccessible, and was wholly resistant to every scanning technology that could be brought to bear. It was also impervious to every attempt to damage it, and thus arose the name for the material that humans translated as Impervium.

"Theories about its origins included an ancient catastrophe that had befallen Thessia, and that a precatastrophe civilization had built it to accomplish something now lost to time. The obvious presence of Element Zero in its glowing, energetic core lent some credibility to this theory, and a constellation of satellites and sensors were set up around and on it in hopes of determining what that purpose had been.

"Most of a century passed. The asari continued their own research in FTL and warp-surfing drives. One of the experimental ships happened to pass near it in a comet-like orbit, and upon detecting the speed of the approaching vessel, the relay activated its guidance technologies, illuminated its approach corridors.

"Once the asari ship had passed without entering the corridor, the relay systems shut back down.

"Researchers of course went berserk. The orbit from Thessia took about six years to complete, even after it had been accelerated. Though the asari were long-lived, they were not infinite, and they were highly curious. More ships were built to add to a shorter-period orbit around the gas giant, allowing tests of the relay's reactions to be more frequent.

"They tested the relay for sensitivity to the proximity and speed of the approaching vessel. They tested the approach corridors with multiple smaller sensor vehicles, and found them pushed away by the relay only when the approaching vessel closed at a speed over 1/100th of c, and came within one radius (as measured of the planet ) from the relay, and only from the "closed" end of the relay.

"They also detected activity in the relay's inaccurately-named "windows;" they seemed to be communicating something about the status of the relay and the approaching vessel. Further experimenting revealed how the system appeared to be designed to provide feedback about how it was to be used. One major section of the relay's "windows" remained dark, however.

"Experiments became more frequent as the researchers began to reconfigure the test vessels to try to find out what this missing attribute was.

"It took a bit of whimsy for one of the techs to start flashing a laser at the relay during test vehicle approaches; the previously darkened section began to illuminate its "windows" in a manner reminiscent of a game of "Bulls and Cows." (wherein a short series of numbers are chosen by one player, and the other player has to guess what they are, and their order; the first player informs the second if they have any correct numbers, and if any of them are in the correct place.) Once the code had been recognized as such, the tests accelerated to an almost frantic pace (for asari.)

"When the researchers were finally convinced they had "cracked" the code, the next test vessel in the sequence was rebuilt in flight to give it sufficient delta-vee to let it decelerate to a full stop and still be able to accelerate to the relay's activation speed again. The vehicle was put under the command of the most advanced AGI the asari had (such things were not yet illegal,) and fitted with an array of sensors and a few "passenger" animals.

"The code was correct, the relay powered up as the test vessel approached, and a burst of light heralded the "breaking" of the FTL "barrier." The vehicle hurtled across 20,000 light years to the Widow nebula, the first object to use the relay network since the Protheans.

"The AGI set to work immediately, performing astrometric measurements to determine its location in the galaxy, tightbeaming its successful arrival by radio back toward Thessia, checking the status of its "passengers" and recording their non-reactions to the transit, taking video and stills of everything around it, but focusing on the massive object only a few hundred kilometers from its arrival point, which was the "open" end of a relay exactly like the one just used.

"This still and video data followed the first transmission immediately as the AGI calculated it had more than enough delta-vee to approach the object (which appeared to be both enormous and completely artificial,) while maintaining its speed for a return to the relay. As it performed this maneuver, it lasered tests at the arrival relay, attempting to illuminate its "code" section.

"Replaying the originally-successful code produced an inverted and useless result from the lights on the relay; only the ends of the "window" section illuminated. The AGI began experimenting with the algorithm as understood by the researchers; reversing the code produced an "almost" result. Varying the final value up and down one unit produced two valid results.

"The AGI wrote this test result data to a buoy and launched it, then transmitted the same data by radio, all the while knowing the asari who could make use of it might be twenty millennia in the future. The most successful possible result would be for it to successfully reactivate the relay and "jump" back to the Parnitha system.

"But which of the two apparently valid results to use?

"There was no reason to choose one result over the other, so it did not hesitate to test the potential results in the same order it had tested them before. It found the approach corridor, adjusted its speed, lasered its code at the relay…

"And found itself in a system it did not recognize.

"It retained ample delta-vee, circled around, lasering the alternate result toward the relay. Only the speed of its recorder allowed it to notice that it had returned to the relay near the flower-shaped station before returning to its home system of Parnitha.

"The asari, who could only wait for its return, were ecstatic.

"They inspected the "passenger" organisms and detected no unusual - or even measurable - effects.

"They played back the flight records and realized there were other potential codes that they might use to travel across the galaxy.

"They discovered the flower-shaped station in the flight records and hoped the creators of the relay and the station could explain what they were for, and how to safely use them.

"They reworked that particular orbiter (what they called the series of ships they used to test the relay,) renamed the vessel Limalia after a famous asari seafarer, put a crew aboard, and launched them into the relay.

"This crew, with Avina T'Yreen commanding, was the first crewed ship from Thessia to board the Citadel in 633 BCE.

"They were startled and dismayed to find themselves alone. The keepers told them nothing of those who had built the station or the relays.

"But they had discovered they had access to another relay.

"Meanwhile, the salarians had seen the relay's flash of light (reflected off moons of a planet around which orbited another relay) announce the asari ship's arrival, and turned every telescope and sensor in that direction. When they saw the flash of the robot probe's departure, they set to work with maniacal fervor, even by salarian standards.

"By the time Limalia returned - this time with a crew and after weeks of exploring the Citadel - the salarians had a deep-space exploration vessel on its way to the relay, even though they had no idea how they would activate it.

"The asari-salarian first contact event has been the subject of endless analysis and dramatization since that fateful day. But the end result was the joint occupation of the Citadel by their two species."

Doyle was left thinking about the relays, and what had happened to Sacred Angel.

*** Glossary ***

AGI: Artificial General Intelligence

AI: Artificial [Narrow] Intelligence, usually one that has human-or-better levels of competence in a limited area.

AlMatSup: Alliance Materiel & Supply

AO: Area of Operations

AR: Augmented Reality

ASCI: Alliance Standard Combat Interface

AWCS: Alliance Weapons Control and Security, often pronounced as "awks," (or "ox") in context, though sometimes "AliWeapConSec" so as not to confuse it with Alliance Weather Control Systems ("AliWeCS")

CIC: Combat Information Centre

CO: Commanding Officer

electrocyte: specialised muscle cell for generating electricity, occurring naturally in electric eels, and engineered for human biotics

Joomla: brand-named consumable for electrocyte stem cell scrubber

K: Kelvin (temperature scale)

LOSI: Line-of-sight intersuit

OTH: Over The Horizon

PTT: Press To Talk; as opposed to "vox," or voice-activated comms, PTT uses a key or button to allow the operator to control transmission

PVR: Polyphase Virtual Reality

R&M: Repair & Maintenance

VOX: Voice-activated transmitter (cf. "PTT")

VR: Virtual Reality

ZG: Zero Gee, or occasionally microgravity