- - -
INSPIRED
MASS
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Location: Milky Way / Local Cluster / Sol system
Date: 2171 (34 months after arrival)
Guns - 5
Mathematics - 16
Engineering - 10
Chemistry - 10
Biology - 7
Biological Engineering - 7
Computer Programming - 15
Mass Effect: Technology - 15
Mass Effect: Quarian Enviro-suits - 5
HALO: Shields - 10
Star Trek: Replicator - 1
Civilization Beyond Earth: Molecular Forge - 10
Stargate: Alteran Technology - 10
Stargate: Alteran Power Generators- 5
Stargate: Alteran Molecular Construction Device - 5
Stargate: Stargate - 1
Metroid: Chozo Technology - 5
Metroid: Power Suit - 1
"A violent confrontation erupted on Illium today when Vaef'Shafor nar Veewa, a Quarian smuggler, was confronted and arrested by an unnamed Spectre over the issue of illegal narcotics."
"Witnesses say that what began as a verbal argument quickly turned into a physical altercation during which the Quarian drew his weapon and began firing at the lone Spectre."
"Illium Security arrived on the scene shortly after, finding the Quarian dead and a half-million credits worth of narcotics on fire. The Spectre had nothing to say about the incident, except that they were resisting arrest."
"I can confirm there was an incident which resulted in the fatal shooting of an armed Quarian near the loading docks," Nos Astra Security Captain Dara said. "We're still not sure about any accused smuggling but our investigation is ongoing and until it's concluded, we have no further comment."
I threw the wrench at the monitor with every ounce of my not inconsiderable strength, shattering the mass of electronics and silicon into countless pieces. Not once in my life, either of them, had I ever felt such anger as I did at this very moment.
Anger. Wrath. Rage. Ire. Fury. Hatred.
I had been frustrated with the Citadel, then disgusted, but now? Now I wanted them to burn.
Such small words to describe the smoldering, unrepentant, need to force an entire mass relay down the throats of the entire Citadel Council and all their Spectre servants, hiding behind the catch all of 'orders' to excuse the inexcusable. Then I'd send a dreadnought through that relay, just for good measure.
Vaef'Shafor had been one of my couriers, one of a dozen new pilgrims that had arrived on Earth after news of my 'streaking' had spread to the extranet. along with the hundreds of photos of the four of us sunbathing on beaches in Rio de Janeiro, Miami, Zakynthos, and more that made it back to the Fleet. While the sight of suit-less Quarians didn't have much impact on Earth beyond curiosity from the Humans, there was an uproar across Council space about us.
Various talking heads who didn't know anything but speaking with authority as if they were experts were making wild accusations about Quarians suddenly trying to overthrow the humans and take over, which only resulted in the human talking heads laughing at the Council's nonsensical reaction. There were four of us Quarians on Earth, and nearly a thousand turians for each of us, but the Citadelians claimed that we were going to take over.
If the Citadel had nearly pissed themselves, it was nothing on the Fleet's reaction. It'd taken months for the cultural nuke I'd accidentally set off to taper down, which honestly surprised me. I still didn't know the specifics of what happened, but I did know that, after weeks of my calls being blocked, the Fleet suddenly contacted me and declared my Pilgrimage was over, requesting that when I return to the Fleet that I accept the offer of Admiral Daro'Xen vas Moreh to join Special Projects. However, I had barely finished reading one message that I received a second that made it clear that there was no rush for me to return if I could produce more of the 'Super Quarian Formula', as they called it, for them.
So I'd rolled my eyes at the occasional schizophrenic nature of the Admiralty Board, and I'd accepted their request. To handle it I'd hired a dozen Quarians to take my 'Pilgrimage gifts' back home, each with enough vials of gene treatments to bring a quarter of a million Quarians up to peak condition. I'd paid them well in credits and a serum themselves. I'd gotten to know them and share drinks and laugh about the Fleet with them, all of us proud of how we'd help the people that we all loved...
And the Council murdered them.
Vaef'Shafor wasn't the only one to die, just the latest. Two had been intercepted at the Citadel, despite, since they were produced in Alliance space, the transporting of the serums not being a crime by Citadel law. Both had mysteriously died while in police custody despite being as close to Captain America as I could make us.
But Quarians died all the time, what with their 'weak immune systems', despite my couriers' immune systems being even more robust than the Turians that had arrested them. That meant it was an open and shut case, with anyone questioning the story threatened with an investigation of their own with the heavy implication that something would be found. Whether or not it existed before the investigation started was immaterial.
Two other couriers had their shuttles vanish just after entering Terminus space, and a ship that I'd contracted to investigate was told to leave as the Citadelian warship they'd run into while trying to find the wreckage was 'hunting pirates', and the only ships that had a reason to be there were 'pirates'. The fifth was found dead of an 'apparent' suicide on Lymetis in the Mesana System, despite her destination being nowhere near there, and with no hint of her cargo to be seen.
And now, Vaef'Shafor is killed in a shootout with a Spectre on Illium over 'illegal narcotics.' Illegal narcotics which had been coincidentally burned. With only the Spectre's word on what had happened.
"Once is happenstance, Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action," I muttered, lifting my arm and activating an incinerate app to further destroy the offending monitor. "What the hell is four?"
But I knew the answer, and it wasn't one I liked at all.
Suna'Lolas nar Nanbay, one of the original group that has followed me to Earth - and dare I say it, one of my best friends here on Earth- sat at a workbench not too far away from me. She raised her head at the casual destruction, commenting blandly, "I know you're upset, and so am I, but that's no reason to take it out on the equipment."
Suna, with her calm nature and dry, borderline sarcastic, wit, had become something of a shoulder to lean on, a confidant, as well as an anchor to reel in my more excessive tendencies. I knew I was the kind of person who would likely have skipped the basics in order to jump into working on AI and advanced robotics, before starting to work my way up to the really scary stuff, just because they were all so cool, but her focus on the practical and tendency to ask simple yet insightful questions had managed to pull those urges back into something more manageable and productive.
Even if I was going to make a gundam. Eventually.
Sometimes I needed a reminder that, while I loved the idea of machines and their various intelligences, after three hundred years Quarians were nigh-universally terrified shitless of any machine they couldn't directly control. Basic Virtual Intelligences that could be programmed to work as surveillance drones were something that the more liberal parts of our society were pushing, but the fact that they had to push it at all was telling. The extreme conservative factions unironically suggested that we all go back to using belt-driven industrial machinery, and working only with the strength of our arms when we could. They weren't widely supported, but they weren't laughed out of the room either.
Fortunately, that particular group was small, more from necessity than anything else. If there was one thing that living on the fleet taught someone, it was logistics, and the value of the right tool for the job. It really wasn't practical to give up technology when you're living on a spaceship. Though it didn't stop them from trying.
Still, that wasn't the current issue. "Upset!?" I echoed, heart pounding as I felt the need to lash out, to do something to make them hurt. "Upset is what I am when the Volos tried to place an injunction on my company by claiming 'ZodCorp' was a trademarked name already, when the records didn't exist a few hours prior. I'm well past upset. I'm well past angry. Pissed would be a pleasant vacation to what I'm feeling now. No, I'm circling a new level of hate so quickly there are pulsars that would beg me to slow down!" I yelled, aware that I was starting to rant, but not caring in the slightest. "The Council loves their ancestor-be-damned station so much, lets see how much they like it when I jack into the Keepers and have them start to actively rip all Asari-made structures down one after another! After all, they don't have the proper 'permits', which is what they always claim whenever WE try to build something!"
I had moved over to my computer as I spoke, something entirely unique in this universe and likely more powerful than all other computers in the Alliance Military combined. Eight layers of specialized crystals had been grown just for their raw processing power and then set in a clear case to create my personal Alteran workstation. The result of two months of carefully controlled and cultivated growth, design, and just a touch of art, it was nowhere near as powerful as it could one day be, the technology limited by my vague understanding of the knowledge base that it was based in, as well as the limitations of the tools available to me, yet the results were still borderline ridiculous. It wasn't up to the level of Atlantis' supercomputers, those things I only had the barest understanding of, just enough to know how much I didn't know, but it was at least to the level of the anything the Tollan could produce, or maybe up to the same standards as the era when the Destiny was launched.
I mostly used the device in any work that required biological manipulation, having to handle the ridiculous levels of calculation needed to make sure that everything in a compound worked with the various biologies that made up even a single race. Being able to gene-edit and see the results in real time was a massive productivity boost to experimentation, but, occasionally, I used it to work on other projects, like the one currently resting atop one of the tables in the middle of the workspace.
One that was nearing completion.
It was this machine that had allowed me to work out a much more effective version of medigel, what was being called 'medigel+' by the boys and girls in marketing. I thought it sounded derivative, but it tested well, and there was a reason I paid them to handle these things for me. The Sirta corporation had jumped on the stuff as soon as I presented it to them, and, once testing was complete it'd likely see widespread distribution, and widespread profits for Zodtech.
Rather than just being an anesthetic and clotting agent, Medigel+ would act much more like the stuff in a video game was described. To vastly oversimplify it, Medigel+ promoted rapid emergency healing in a way that would keep a soldier on his feet. It wouldn't make a good replacement for actual medical care, and too much reliance on it without downtime could cause health problems, but it would certainly hold you together long enough to reach a doctor.
"Should be simple enough to repurpose the systems to jack into the Charon Relay," I muttered, the secondary programming of the Relays still mostly opaque, but I'd found a few workarounds anyways, "and send a signal through the network until it reached-"
I was interrupted from my returning fire by Suna coming up behind me, her arms pulling around me in a hug, making it hard to type. "How about not declaring war on the Council just yet," she calmly suggested, letting go and standing to the side, but not breaking contact. One hand was still on my arm as she made subtle circular motions with her fingers on my neck with the other that equal parts distracted me and slowed down my anger-quickened breathing despite the anger still boiling in my chest.
That gesture was the same thing mothers did to their children to get them to go to sleep back on the Fleet, but apparently it worked just as well on adults. This was also something I was getting used to as, while what she was doing would be seen as incredibly forward among Humans, unsuited Quarians, universally got… handsy.
I'd never even heard of the term 'Touch Starved' before I heard it used on the news, to discuss us. I'd been paying attention to make sure that the Humans' opinions of Quarians didn't start to slide towards a Citadelian point of view, but had come across a panel of doctors and psychologists that were doing an educational piece on the Quarian people. Apparently, touch was a need, in some ways just as important as sleep or light, and, without it, Humans suffered.
Quarians, with their similar brain formations, had a similar need, but, because of our immune systems, had been denied it for most of our life, and, while our implants could simulate tactile feedback, it wasn't the same. Maybe it was my own memories of being Human that helped me ignore it, but the others only had a lifetime of being suited, cut off from the world, and, for the first time in their memory, could interact with the world without that barrier.
To a race that'd been living on half-rations for all of living memory, was it any surprise they'd gotten a bit gluttonous?
As my breathing evened out, not wanting to push Suna away in order to get back to what I was doing, I looked around the workspace I had managed to build for myself over the past year, which helped in it's own way. While not the most organized space I'd have ever seen, I did have to admit I was rather proud of it. It certainly had more in common with Tony Stark's lab than I intended, but I couldn't exactly complain about that.
My primary workstation was at one end of the cavernous bunker, with a wall of holographic emitters able to project anything from one massive screen all the way up to more than a thousand screens the size of a smartphone screen. The center of the space was largely left open, allowing for any number of projects of various sizes to be worked on at a time, with scanners and localized Mass Effect field generators to better allow them to be tracked, lifted, monitored, and constructed.
I currently had three tables laid out, though there was enough space to fit a shuttle in here, but only a single project was currently set up, covered with a holographic 'sheet' to hide it from casual inspection. This place was secure, but every once in a while one of my friends dropped by, but I knew that, despite their best intentions, they still worked for the Alliance Military.
To the left of the room were all the various workbenches and large tooling machines, laid out and organized by Suna to try to maximize efficiency. To the right of the room, and nested into a cut out area separate from the main room, and with a lower ceiling and more direct lighting, was a storage area for spare materials. There was even some room left over for lounging when a break was needed.
A small couch and entertainment system had been set up, with a full shower behind a nearby door, as well as a decent kitchen area to prepare meals, almost like a small loft apartment but with zero privacy. It'd been a bit of a compromise, as I'd get so busy working on something I'd occasionally forget my more biological needs, and having a couch right here to crash on, or a place to make a sandwich, meant that it was easier to take a five minute break, or a twenty minute nap, instead of leaving the workshop for the night.
At the far end of the bunker was a fridge for drinks, but it was mostly dominated by a massive opening to the outside world, and how we'd gotten the aforementioned shuttle in and out. It was protected by two redundant Mass Effect field systems, but when they were disabled led into a tunnel that gently curved up for a half mile before it reached the surface. The surface entrance wasn't open, though, it ended with a solid twenty centimeter steel door that could roll back to let vehicles through.
Subtle? No. Secure? Yes.
That tunnel was the first thing we built after purchasing the farm and surrounding lands, and was how we got most of our materials in or out from the lab. The other way out was a small staircase that led up to the ranch house on the surface. However, because I'm paranoid and have watched too much Star Trek and Bond movies growing up, there were emergency mass effect fields that could be deployed every meter or so in any area of the bunker, powered by an Altaran fusion generator that I had constructed into the floor beneath us.
Altaran fusion generators were bullshit squared to make once you understood how to do it, and were able to produce almost as much energy as several Alliance cruisers when brought up to full capacity.
Mind you, I couldn't bring it up to full capacity yet, only managing that of a single cruiser, tops, but the fact that I'd even got it up and running with as few points as I'd put in the nearly inscrutable tech base was a small miracle. Normally it wouldn't have been possible to construct, nor as small as a couple of semi trucks, but when you start adding eezo bullshit to the mix a lot of things start to get...weird.
Mixing the two tech bases was like walking a tightrope made of science over a pit of explosions, but when Alteran tech asked for something impossible to create without knowledge of even more tech that I didn't yet possessed, I could cludge together an Eezo device that was close enough to get the entire thing running. Like an FTL particle accelerator.
Looking around the bunker, my heart and head swelling with pride in all I managed to pull together since leaving the Fleet, my mind moved to the surface. Or the Farm, as everyone seemed to be calling it. Not sure how I felt about my base on Earth having taken the old nickname the CIA's Camp Peary used to hold, but it was minor in the scheme of things.
The Farm was situated almost in a direct line between the Oklahoma City megacity to the north, and the Texas Triangle megalopolis to the south. Mostly grassy, the two-hundred acres also came with eight lakes and ponds, riding trails, hills and access to the Red River.
For all that though, the real feature was the rustic-style home that came with it, if you could call something this advanced 'rustic'. The whole plot used to belong to some NFL star back in the early twenty-first, but problems arose when he decided to sell his 'smallest' property, but only as it currently was. Lots of people wanted the land for other reasons, however it was more difficult to find anyone who wanted to purchase the small mansion built on it in the middle of nowhere, with the restrictions on construction that came with it. I could build down, as I absolutely had, but for the large industrial complexes that were all the rage, it wasn't cost-effective. For someone that wanted his work to be both secret and secure, it was perfect.
Two stories, six bedrooms, eight bathrooms, high ceilings and four oversized brick and stone fireplaces, it was more than anyone would want for themselves, and yet still less than anything that could be considered a 'compound'. Outside, the building wrapped itself around an olympic sized pool in the middle of which sat a patio that also included a full kitchen, bar, fireplace, sauna, and fire pit. The estate even had a fenced-in doghouse with space for twenty dogs to roam.
It was opulence without truly being opulent, which meant those that wanted the house as a house, and looked for opulence would ignore it, and those who wanted practicality would balk at the price tag, both to purchase it and in general maintenance. This problem was compounded as housing trends on earth moved towards smaller, energy efficient homes, which added a degree of societal disapproval in anyone who would seek to acquire the property, the rich and powerful creating penthouse mansions instead of country estates.
So the main house was left to be watched over by a long line of property managers, with money set aside by the footballer's estate to maintain it, while not being allowed to split up, nor remodel the property into something more socially acceptable.
That was until I showed up and saw it for what it could be: a new start. I could make it a destination for Quarians on Pilgrimage who needed a friendly port of call, away from any Citadelian races that loved their Citadel-esque cities. And the underground construction, as I said, was more than worth the cost. So, shortly after buying the property, I hired local contractors to refurbish the building, leaving it largely the way it would have been in its prime as the purchasing agreement required, but with modern amenities to bring it into the future, and then built down instead of up.
I don't think I'd ever forget the looks of delight on my pilgrimage companions, and now my friends, when they went swimming in the pool that first time. It took some time for the four of us to finally leave the shallow ends of the pool and learn to swim, something we never could do properly while bound in our suits, but we got there.
As for my other friends, Anderson was usually off Captaining somewhere, his promotion finally getting him his own command, but whenever he was able to get back on Earth, he usually took a day or two to sip drinks with us poolside. Amy sometimes came with him, but was clearly only doing so because he asked. And Steven, well, he came for business meetings, and to check in, but never stayed for long, like a no-nonsense uncle.
That said, it was usually more than just the four of us living here, with our status as a safe haven for anyone on a Pilgrimage, and that, if anything, helped make me as happy as half my inventions. Such waystations had been attempted before, but each and every time they hadn't lasted.
If they were set up in Citadel space, it was only a matter of time before someone came sniffing about, warned those who'd set up to leave, and, if they didn't, found some reason to arrest everyone involved and 'confiscate' everything they had. If set up in Terminus space, it would only be a matter of time until pirates showed up, or suspiciously well regulated 'pirates', or pirate 'hunters' who'd attack the waystation as a pirate haven.
If Ekuna had proved anything, it was the fiction of the Terminus systems being 'free', and not controlled by the Citadel. However, the Systems Alliance was a group that the Citadel couldn't bully, and Hackett had let me know they'd tried, so I could make sure other Quarians could be safe. Had been able to make sure they'd been safe, and made new friends, which had been… nice. Nice, until those friends had been murdered.
However, with time to relax and cool my head, I realized what I'd almost done. Could I have sent the Keepers to tear down the Asari Quarter of the Citadel? Honestly, it would be the matter of moments. Knowing what the Keepers really were, and with my knowledge of Mass Effect technology crossing ever so slightly over into Reaper tech, I'd stumbled across the Keeper Management Programs in the Citadel's mainframe, but I hadn't done anything with it.
It wasn't quite my ace in the hole, if only because I had more than one, and several nastier cards I could play, but to do so, now? It was. . . stupid, when I'd been so careful.
I'd show I could control the Keepers, show the Keepers could be controlled, and, for what? To inconvenience the people in power, while killing innocents who'd only committed the crime of not being Quarian, and thus allowed to live in the Asari district?
Madness. Sheer madness.
Suna seemed to get that I'd come to some sort of conclusion, and let me go, though she seemed ready to step back in if I kept going as I was before. The woman watched me as I grabbed a scanner, ran it over myself, and ran a general diagnostic program from my workstation, the results coming back barely a moment later.
"Fuuuuuuuuck," I swore, not having expected this, but unable to argue with it.
"What?" my assistant asked, concerned. "Are you all right?"
I sighed, running my hands down my face. "No. I'm fine. It's just puberty."
Suna blinked a few times, surprised, and repeated, "What?"
I brought up the screens. "It's the enhancement formula. It's… well, it's doing what it's supposed to. Let me check…" I trailed off, pinging my records, and then my copy of the Citadel's records, the Migrant Fleet's secret records, and the STG's records, getting a few results, which I directed up, scanning over as Suna read over my shoulder.
The language was formal, jargon-filled, and obtuse, but points in not only Biology, but Bioengineering, weren't for nothing. "There," I declared, opening up the study, a historical one by an Asari thinktank that'd been declared classified. "And There, and… did everyone know about this other than me!?" I demanded, getting results from every source.
"What is it?" my assistant asked, hand once more on my back, though, from her tone, she was starting to get a sense of things.
"The Viral Rations are a fix, but biological development is a tricky thing. Lack the right thing at the proper time, and it can cause permanent damage, or at least stop the proper formation of tissues from happening in a way that's hard to ever fix," I explained, bringing up the relevant information. "But the Alliance genetic tuneup has a bit, this bit here, that handles it. See, it kicks off a secondary growth cycle when the body has developed improperly. However, that's something that only happens when you have someone that grows up in deprived conditions, like consistent malnutrition, or repeated toxin exposure."
Suna frowned, "But our suits protected us as children. And our nutrition was carefully monitored to ensure proper development."
I nodded, having overlooked this aspect of the formula for the exact same reason as she had. "And you're right," I agreed. "But our immune systems weren't fed. It's not a good analogy, but it's the closest thing we have. After we left Rannoch, for the first few generations, our immune systems were stronger than ours now. Those born on our world and taken off before puberty had weaker immune systems, and those born on ships had the weakest of all."
"Then, we won't need the rations?" she asked, confused yet hopeful, but I shook my head.
"No, we'll still need them, but, possibly, being caught without them won't be the death sentence a suit puncture was before," I explained, looking over the models of the enhancement serum's effects on my own DNA. It was a GIGO error, where I'd set our current standards of Quarian health as the target, not realizing there was room past even that without artificial enhancement. And, working from bad data, even an Alteran supercomputer couldn't pull the correct information sets out of the ether.
I sighed, "However, until then, it's going to be messing with my hormonal imbalances. I'm… I'm going to need your help here."
"Won't my own judgement be affected?" she asked, looking thoroughly disturbed at the thought.
I shook my head, "Not until I'm already at the tail end of things. Benefits of sexual dimorphism. Men will develop more quickly than women in this respect, but it's something I'm going to need to warn everyone else about."
Considering what I've been doing, I wondered for how long I'd been compromised. By Quarian standards, since my arrival nearly three years ago, I'd been 'eccentric', which meant that any further changes in my behavior had likely been blamed on that. Putting that thought aside, I now knew enough to be aware of it, so I needed to move forward. Doing so, I asked, "Where are the others?"
Suna answered easily, "Jeere is up in the main house likely doing paperwork for 'ZodCorp.'" She smirked as she named my company. While naming it after myself was the height of Hubris by Quarian standards, it was infinitely amusing to my assistant. "Mun is likely working with the others in the orchards," she added.
I nodded along to that. Jeere'Helan nar Wuwib was, out of all of us, the one most grounded in business management and logistics. The daughter of the Wuwib's Quartermaster, she had experience that we all lack, which had made the young woman perfect for the running of the day-to-day decisions of my young company. With our offices being our house, and our products being my inventions, that meant she helped money exchange hands. Namely, from others into ours.
Because my company was so small at the moment, she focused most of her work on looking for things we could get paid to do, challenges to throw my way to keep us afloat and give us the funds needed to both supply me with needed materials and to help the Pilgrims that swept through like clockwork. I wanted to outfit each Quarian that left my home with milspec weapons, armor, and so on, but doing so was expensive.
Star Trek replicators were a no-go, for obvious reasons, and the single point in the Alteran version was enough to tell me that the full point cost to understand how to make one might well be in the triple digits, which meant all our supplies had to come the normal way: buying them from other people. Thankfully, the Alliance didn't screw us, but, even then, we were currently working on a pretty tight profit margin.
It was all well and good to rock the technological boat with something like Medigel+, it was another entirely to make sure that we got our fair share out of it. That wasn't to say Sirta was screwing us on that one, but until it hit the market, we weren't seeing a dime, and running this place, and my experiments, wasn't cheap, though thankfully I didn't have to manage it myself, Jeere stepping up to take care of it, though I did occasionally check, just to make sure she didn't miss something.
Despite how it sounded, it wasn't like I'd foisted the work off on Jeere, the woman legimently enjoyed managing things, putting everything under her power and in their proper place, and making sure that others gave us what was our due. With an attitude like hers, she'd likely make an excellent Captain one day. When we finally got our returns, and could start to roll out our other ideas, she was certainly going to make enough money to buy her own ship.
ZodCorp started when I got identified and contacted by Hahne-Kedar for my version of the new Mantis Gunship. Hackett had kept my involvement a secret, as he said he would, but I'd used a few Quarian tricks I'd merely thought of as good ship design, and the corporation had tracked it through those back to me, the only Quarian inventor on the planet. Given I was one of four Quarians, in total, on all of Earth,, and Hackett being a known contact of mine, it wasn't that much of a leap.
HK was sure that I could do even more than I showed them, and they were right, but while the first design had been free, the others would cost them. I was not unaware that I was acting like a drug-dealer to multi-planetary companies, but they were the ones coming to me. No, still sounded bad. Either way, that was when I'd gotten lawyers and negotiators involved, after a little bit of harmless hacking to make sure the people I'd hired couldn't be bought. HK wasn't exactly evil, but you didn't get to be their size by completely playing by the rules either.
It took several weeks of negotiation, which was enough for me to start to expand my knowledge base a little, before they secured my initial royalty rights to the next design I'd drawn up because I wasn't stupid enough to just flat out sell them the upgrade outright. After hashing it out with people that knew how megacorps screwed people over with their contracts, I took the option of selling them permission to use it instead, but that required me to form an actual company around it to protect my rights in Alliance space. Since I was an alien, I didn't have a lot of those, most of the ones that existed were political niceties instead of legal standards, which was a bit of a shock to find out.
Regardless, someone must have liked me, because rather than taking ever opportunity to fuck me over and steal my work, HK worked along with me to get me incorporated and even showed me the various tricks needs to get it all done quickly and cleanly instead of needing to hire a hundred more corporate lawyers and spends the next five years in courts litigating it. They had tried to slip their own favorable terms in, but, talking with my people, that was more of a 'you'd be insulted if we didn't at least try' situation more than outright malice, as even the things they tried to slip in were just small benefits to themselves instead of anything truly nasty, like the rights to not only the current tech, but every other piece of tech I'd ever invent, as another corporation had a habit of attempting.
I even managed to get on the Alliance's books as an official 'citizen of Earth' which was a hell of a lot easier than trying to get citizenship in any of the various nation-states that made up the Alliance, but gave me the same benefits. The only downside was that it meant I couldn't hold a government position in any of those states, those that didn't already have 'birthright' requirements, but I had no interest in politics so that was no scratch on my suit.
Since then, I've been selling various 'improvements' to the numerous systems the Alliance Navy used through various companies they worked through. Mostly it was small improvements to their defensive systems to make their shields stronger and faster to recharge. Nothing that would rock the boat too much, but enough to subtly increase capability without overly increasing cost, and the payouts were enough to keep us in the black. Jeere was the driving force there, as she worked her way through the various consultation requests, and I was happy to let her.
With no official Quarian embassy on Earth, we were soon seeing interest from various media sources as interest in our species rose, being the next best thing. Honestly, other than a handful of interviews and talk show appearances, with each of us having to do a few, the humans were taking care of our PR for us. Suna made sure to show off her suit, explaining the different cultural meanings of each component, Jeere explained logistics of the Migrant Fleet, which was boring as hell but she got her points across, I talked about life on the fleet, in a way humans could understand, and Mun, ironically, had humanized us the most, not by talking about the Migrant Fleet, or the Quarian people, or anything big picture, but had talked about Jeere. The lovestruck kid gushing about his crush had hit a chord with the types of audiences that'd ignored the other three of us.
From there, our status as the big new thing had caused things to blow up to a somewhat worrying degree. I'd even heard a radio station, which were still apparently things, offering a thousand credits to anyone that'd spend an entire month in a suit like we did. A few had, but most couldn't handle it, and all of them had talked about their attempts, which just drummed up even more sympathy as the Citadel tried, and failed, to double down on their smear campaign against the 'suit rats'.
As Suna had pointed out, with Humans getting an idea of how unpleasant living in an enviro-suit could be, even the Citadelian slur for us didn't register to the Systems Alliance as a slam on our appearance, but as making fun of our disability. Like making fun of a kid in a wheelchair, or insulting someone who needed glasses, what should've been a linguistic finisher instead just made those who used it look like bullies.
Then again, it wasn't like the Citadel needed much help to look bad lately. Only a few weeks ago, the Batarian Hegemony officially shut down their embassy and withdrew from the Council in protest, something I dimly remembered from the first game. Apparently, they took Humanity's rapid colonization of territory the Hegemony had claimed, but then never did anything with, a little personally.
The Batarian Hegemony promised revenge, and retribution, and a whole lot of things, but the common consensus on almost every Alliance news agency was that, like most of what the Batarians historically did, it was nothing but saber rattling. They'd curse, and they'd threaten, just like they did to the Citadel, but it was a tale told by the Batarians, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
However, I knew something that the Alliance didn't.
I knew about the Skylian Blitz.
And I was going to stop it.
"So," Suna drawled out, breaking me from my inner thoughts as I thought of blowing slaving Batarians bastards back to hell where they belong, "have you calmed down now?" Her slight smile took the sting out of her words, showing her to just be teasing me.
I blinked back at the woman, before letting out a defeated sigh. "I suppose so. I will admit, planning to unleash the Keepers of the Citadel was a horrible idea."
To my surprise, the woman giggled softly before reaching out to thump me on my shoulder softly. "Of course it was," she exclaimed, voice laced with subdued mirth and exasperation, subtle, if you didn't know her. "I don't doubt you could do that, somehow, but that sounds like something you should be careful with. You can program them?" I nodded. My knowledge of Mass Effect Tech hadn't given me reaper coding, yet, but it'd harmonized a little with my programming knowledge to let me find a backdoor into their systems. Nothing fancy, but 'return this to zero' wasn't a particularly complex command. "Then can you have them help our people there?"
Before I could respond, she turned and walked away, forcing me to consider the idea instead of making a snap decision. She wound her way back to the table in the center of the room and its covered project, while I was left to just watch her, eyes automatically drawn to swaying hips without thinking about it.
After taking a second to shake myself free, damn hormones, I followed her over to the project we had been slowly putting together over the last month. It'd been a lot more error than trial, and was still a work in progress, but it was a work that'd been slowly but surely coming along.
Nodding to Suna, she dismissed the holographic 'sheet', and what rested on that table looked like the bastard love-child of a suit of Warhammer space marine armor and the War Machine armor from Marvel comics. It had come to me one day as I was looking over some of the publicly available results of experimental exo-power armor suits that the Alliance had dabbled in before genemods had become ubiquitous, and mechs had filled the niche from the other direction.
For anything that required a person, a soldier with the MarsGene formula could handle it easily, and for anything that required armor, but not enough for a tank, a HEIMDALL mech could be easily deployed. Power efficiency was still one of the biggest hurdles facing the idea, making it difficult to make a set of power armor anything close to the size of a person that could be used in the field, weight issues compounded the issue, and then there was the mess of issues for actuators. Making an exoskeleton work around a squishy pilot was far harder than just making a robot that you could copy notes from nature off of.
And that wasn't even getting into the additional training that'd be required to use them, which neither genemodded soldiers nor deploying mechs required.
However, I managed to make some interesting strides with the problems inherent in the concept, as I used large portions of what I had learned to make something approaching useful. Engineering, Biology, and Mathematics had led me to start to crack the structural issues I'd run into in my desire to make a powerful, yet flexible, exo-skeleton armor.
Chozo and Alteran technology led me to advances in the required computer systems and control systems to hopefully keep the suit from ripping a person in half, though trying to make the three disparate technology systems of Mass Effect, Stargate, and Metroid to play nice was an exercise in frustration. Unsurprisingly, while the Chozo tech was all the place, my knowledge of its general base combined with how they made their power armor was helping with the control systems, to make them more intuitive.
I could theoretically cobble together a suit of Chozo Battle Armor, if I had access to Chozo production facilities to get some of the more complicated parts pre-made, but no-one except maybe a Krogan could use it. Turned out the birds were absolutely ripped, and without gene-modding myself well past anything natural, I wouldn't be able to get it to move. And, if I did, there was a non-zero chance I'd break my limbs, not tough enough to handle the stresses of using it, even with my gene-mods.
Mass Effect technology helped, but wasn't the cure-all I'd hoped it would be. After all, if it was, I wouldn't be the one to finally make it work. Mass Effect fields could negate the armor's mass, but the static buildup was non-minor. For any kind of jump-jets, or segmented movement modes, It'd be fine, but keeping a low-level field up on all times to handle the stresses of moving was a no-go. That left me with two options, build small, or build big.
Building small, I could've gone for a Mass Effect-esque Ironman creation, but not only would that require me to try and splice in another universe's systems, with all of it foibles, it wasn't what I wanted. What I wanted was power, to make something that could fight a mech, or the Geth, and win. It'd need to fit in corridors, but that was the limit, and the bigger, and badder, the better.
I toyed with the idea of trying to miniaturize an Alteran reactor, but not only was that going to take a lot more points, this wasn't just for me. My computer, the generator beneath my feet, they both had self-destructs built into them, just in case, but this was going to be something I equipped people with. Once I put it out into the world like that, I'd lose the ability to control it fully, and that meant I needed to be careful.
I'd been playing with battery systems instead of generators, but getting any more than half an hour of use was a problem, and this was going to need to be something that could be deployed at length if need be. I was starting to get some progress with trying to combine my slowly building knowledge of Chozo Technology with everything else I knew, but the points I'd spent in Mass Effect Technology stood upon the foundation of my pre-existing knowledge, and the Chozo's tech level was far, far above anything the Citadelians could claim.
But, with my power, it was not a question of if I could figure it out, but when.
Suna glanced down at the table, then back at me, smiling slightly, "And what are you thinking now, Zod?"
After a moment, trying to figure out how to phrase it, I answered, "What do you know about Rannoch's history, preindustrial?"
Blinking in confusion, Suna looked a little lost as she replied with a simple, "What?"
"The Firon city-state, it was a small nation of it's time, smaller than all its neighbors," I answered, smiling as I spoke. History, Human or Quarian, was something I enjoyed discussing, "yet while all the surrounding nations saw a great rise and eventual fall, none bothered with Firon. None dared to, because they knew what would happen. In the early days of Firon, they had a neighbor who liked to raid and pillage the edges of their lands. And for a time, Firon attempted a proportionate response. Raid for raid. But that just led to more raids on both sides."
"Who was the neighbor?" she asked, used to my non-sequiturs, and indulging me.
I shook my head. "No one knows. Because one day the king of the time decided enough was enough. After one raid too many, he sent his armies into their lands, and burned it all. And I mean all. After everything burned, laborers were sent in with hammers to remove everything else. Nothing of the neighbor remained, not a single stone was left standing upon another to mark their existence. Then, over the next few years, Firon expanded to include the lands as part of their realm." The Quarians had no bible-equivalent, but some things seemed universal.
"That response, that fear of what could happen," I went on, turning to face my project once more, "became a shield that protected the Firon state for almost a thousand years. At first, others feared them, but the forces needed to go after them would've left the other nations vulnerable, so none preemptively 'defended themselves' from the threat the Firon's presented, which bought them the time they needed. You see, the Firons weren't aggressive, they traded with their neighbors and generally got along well with everyone. However, between their reputation from that one incident, and their policy of making sure every citizen was a soldier, no one dared bring their wrath upon them. It was so total, it was said, that a citizen of Firon could have walked naked from one end of the known world to the other without fear. That is why I dislike proportionate responses, they don't do anything but keep the fighting going. Because the people making the decisions are almost never the ones paying the price. And because there's no reason not to hurt anyone that can't hurt you back."
After taking a moment to let that sink in, Suna frowned, "So what are you going to do? We're Quarians. We don't have a military. Or even a planet. No one 'fears' us."
"They will," I answered, wishing I didn't have to, but reality didn't work they way you wanted it to. "I'm tired of Quarian's behaving in the way everyone expects. Forced into the role that the people that hate us have dictated to us. Just look at how the Humans, who haven't been poisoned by the Citadel's propaganda, act." I sighed, "I'm tired of seeing our people having to work for scraps, of walking in fear of being arrested, or even just shot because someone thought it would be fun. Because they knew that nothing would happen to them if they did. Because we can't even manage a proportional response. And if we were to try, they'd just go harder, and harder, until one of us broke, because they'd know, even if they were wrong, that it'd be us first."
I waved a head upwards, towards the mansion proper. "In less than a year, we've seen hundreds pass through The Farm who looked like they were about to break down in tears because they'd finally found a safe place, not even able to go back to the Fleet because of the Pilgramage's stupid rules, where they only way they could be safe would be to suffer a lifetime of shame. And most of all, I'm tired of allowing it to happen."
I moved back to my computer, this time with none of the anger of before and with a clarity of purpose. "We keep on playing a rigged game, and wonder why we lose. The Citadel talks proportional response, but then declare what counts and what does not. And that mask drops as soon as they don't get their way, and we lose Ekuna. Technically, if I wanted to truly give them a proportional response, they wouldn't lose five, as I have lost five, but they would lose seven percent of their total population, like I lost seven percent of my organization to them. We'd both lose a similar proportion of our people. So what if I wipe a few systems from existence, it's only a proportional response, after all. And you know what? I could do it too," I laughed, though not happily. "There's things I haven't shown you, Suna. Terrible things. There's more to the Relays than you know, and it would be easy."
A single unmanned probe, with a single phaser, on a timer, could quite possibly destroy an entire system as the cascade reaction, next to a Relay, would be somewhere in the ballpark of a supernova, if my calculations were correct.
"But you won't," my assistant asserted, worried.
"But I won't," I agreed. "Because, while they go after us indiscriminately, I'm better than that. I have to be, because I'm the only one that could stop me, once I really get going," I added with a wry smile. "No, until we can hold our own against them, the Fironian solution will be out of our reach. Because the other nations knew that Firon could go after them next, and succeed, but the Council will never believe 'suit rats' could be a threat to them, until the Citadel is in flames, the Destiny Ascension a smoking wreck, and they're looking down the barrel of my gun, and…" I trailed off, shaking my head. "And I don't want to do that. And they can't make me. So, like Quarians since time immemorial, I need to be smarter, until I can be stronger. Tell me, do you know how Spectres work?"
Suna hesitated, before slowly answering, "They're above the law, to keep the peace?"
"But whose peace?" I replied. "But that's not what I meant. Not what they were, but how they did their job." My assistant considered that, but shook her head. "Spectres are," and I had to resist sneering the next few words, "'celebrity peacekeepers'. But, if everyone knows who you are, how can you investigate anything? No, it's the ones no one speaks of that do the real work. The untold army of spies, helpers, and other corrupt officials that report everything back to the Council. They are the ones informing the Spectres where our people are, and also the way we are going to fight back."
"Then, what's the plan?" Suna asked, sounding far less concerned than before and leaning forwards in curiosity.
I brought up lists of names. Corporate climbers. Mercenaries. Law enforcement. Military. Career criminals. And many, many more. "I can't act against the Council directly. They'd lash out, if not at me, here in Systems Alliance territory, then at any Quarian they could find. So I can't hurt them militarily, but the Citadel loves its image as the metaphorical city on the hill. So we go after that. Interestingly, for as corrupt as they are, they keep surprisingly good records."
Amusingly, I could see the moment Suna made the connection between my topic and the list of names. "These are the spies. But there's…" she trailed off, as the names continued to scroll.
"Thousands," I replied easily. "Far less than seven percent of their organization, but this'll only be Act One. It won't hurt them that deeply, and I'll make sure they don't know it was a Quarian that did so, but the Citadel claims to be a 'Beacon', shining the 'light of civilization' into the dark corners of the galaxy?" I questioned, quoting their own propaganda. "And as the Citadel claims the right to tell me and mine how we should live, even in the Terminus systems, as if they are our leaders, it's my civic duty to shine a light on their operations."
I opened my hands, expansively, as more and more screens, each scrolling endlessly, appeared behind me.
"Starting with the names of those on their payroll."