But hear in oblivion
We cling to what we can
So in the end
We can say that with these hands
We took it all back
It all back
Chapter 7
New Arrivals
"Well Garrus, we'll be jumping into the system in two minutes." Joker said from the cockpit. "You got that gun fixed up right?'
"We'll need another couple of minutes. Can you drop us out early?" Garrus replied over the intercom from the main battery. He, Traynor, Tali and the rest of the engineering team had been working their asses off to try and get the thanix cannon modified into a makeshift signal light.
"I would not recommend doing so. The ship's hull has been weakened by 27%. With the extra damage we will need to set down for repairs on a repair station."
"Then tell EDI to get her mechanical ass down here! We need an extra hand."
"So you finally gotten over your fear of people being in your private sanctuary?"
"I can get over it later. I won't get over being dead anytime soon."
"I'm on my way down now." EDI said getting up from her chair. "What problem are you having?"
"Same one from the start. We can tone down the destructive power but if we do the power output drops too low to be registered by anything outside of 30,000 kilometers."
"Have you tried altering the metal-intermix ratio. If you decrease the tungsten you should not only render the cannon harmless, and we'll be able to fire more rapidly."
There was a slight pause from Garrus before he replied. "How did none of us think of that? Tali, bring the ratio to Six to eight to three."
"Shouldn't we bring the uranium down too?"
"No. We'll need the uranium to maintain the stability of the electromagnetic shell."
"Right. Adjusting the ratio."
The Normandy dropped out of FTL speeds, making no attempt to slow down or conceal her presence. The latter was not only a safety precaution, but a result of the former: the ship was starting to fall apart. When she came out though, every alarm across the Tikkun system was set off.
"ATTENTION ALL HANDS!" The orbital defense station's intercom blared. "UNIDENTIFIED VESSEL HAS BEEN DETECTED IN THE OUTER SYSTEM. CONDITION TWO, ALL PERSONNEL REPORT TO ACTION STATIONS!"
Though not formally a member of the military, Isabella Shepard ran for her ship, her long platinum blond hair flowing behind her. Yet one more reason she hadn't enlisted with her twin brother.
She ran through the cargo hold of her vessel, the White Raven. She was smaller than the Kowloon class starships but had the advantage of being armed with defensive and a small handful of offensive weapons to ward off pirates.
"Garret!" She hollered at her pilot as she sprinted through her ship's hold. "Get us in the air with the rest of the fighters!" Whenever her ship was with a fleet during an engagement she would volunteer her freighter to act as a mobile SCAWC.
"So much for Innaya station." She grumbled. The station was formerly controlled by the geth heretics. Around two years ago her brother "re-purposed" it bringing more geth onto the allied forces side. She would make fairly regular runs to it and the nearby system to gather whatever materials they could for repairing the mass relays.
"Preflight done." Garret said as he jumped into his seat in the nose of the cockpit. "But Jerry is still on the other side of the station."
"Fucking cock-puss whore!" She slammed the controls on her chair.
"Gerald Wallace! If you are not on this ship in the next twelve seconds I shove my foot up your ass and take a cross continental tour of Rannoch on foot! Do you hear me?!" She yelled over the private comm line.
"Already on my way boss!" A panted voice called back over the line. She wasn't a hardass. She just liked yelling at her crew due to the fact that she got to do it so rarely. It wasn't easy to get him to admit it, but when Markus saw how close they were he conceded that they were even closer than he was with his crew.
While the Raven was originally a small personnel carrier that was to be scrapped, her original captain talked the Alliance personnel who was going to tear it apart into giving it to him. He and a group of friend then redesigned it from the inside out. Shepard had since made some modifications herself when she was the pilot, but it still held it's point of pride: it was the fastest freighter in the galaxy. She would have gone with fastest ship period, but her brother didn't feel like racing them.
"Okay. I'm. Here." Walter heaved out as he collapsed into his chair.
"'Bout time. Garret, take us out and hold at one hundred kilometers off from the satellite network.
"Okay any time now!" Joker said. He had hit the button to begin firing the patter but nothing happened.
"I don't know what happened. It should have worked!"
"Well obviously it didn't. And we've got nine squadrons approaching. Looks like the geth have been busy."
"How long until they intercept us?" Joker could hear the door to the main battery open up over the intercom then close.
"Five minutes to missile range. Thirty to visual if we bother to evade the missiles. Ten if we don't."
"I'll keep working on things here but you might have to do some of that crazy flying."
"Are we talking normal-crazy or crazy-crazy? Cause, ya know there is a big difference."
"Umm..." Garrus wasn't quite sure what he meant by that. "The kind of flying like you did on Ilos."
"Oh, you mean me-crazy. Well okay then."
Garrus worked doubly fast, trying to first identify what went wrong with the firing procedure. 'Power generation is optimal. Okay, maybe it's not getting to the cannon. No, connection leads are solid. Intermix ratio stability? No, not that either. Weapon alignment? Of course not!' He finally tracked down the problem. As it turned out, it was to do with power getting to the thanix cannon: with the modifications made there was too much power that needed to be routed through to safely use it.
"Okay, I fixed it but there's something you should know."
"And that is?"
"There's a 50/50 chance that using this thing will cause explosive decompression across most of the ship."
"Define 'most'."
"Everywhere except for Shepard's cabin." Garrus said with mixed pride and worry.
"So pretty much same as usual then."
"Yeah. Pretty much."
"Well then, let's get this show on the road then."
"One second here." Garrus evacuated the battery room. "Okay, good to go here."
Joker started to slam his hand on the holographic controls to fire the main weapons, hesitating less than an inch from the button.
"Jeff," EDI said once more from her copilot's seat. She had since developed a distaste for taking as the ship. "If we are to send the signal, we should do it now."
"Right. So," He sighed out.
"Here goes nothing." He hit a closed fist on the launch button.
"This is Captain Isabella Shepard aboard the White Raven. All wings report." While she hated the military life she understood its importance, even more so in the last year. It amazed her that they were focusing on rebuilding the fleets as much as clearing up the debris. There still hadn't been any word yet about rebuilding the affected worlds.
The squadrons reported in, all in arrowhead formations.
"Rachel, has the vessel still made no attempt to communicate?"
"Five tries across all languages. Nothing." The communication and navigation officer replied.
"Very well then. This is White Raven to all pilots. You have permission to engage. Squadron One-Six engage. Two-Eight and Two-Ten will follow at five thousand kilometers. All other squadrons hold position for further orders." Working with the geth military was horrible. All they ever used was numbers, no names! It made it nearly impossible to remember which was which. Thankfully, they were pretty understanding about how easily confused most organics got about their "names".
"Wait a minute, there's something odd going on with that ship."
"Define 'odd' Jerry. Are they retreating?"
"No. It's the energy signature. It's... fluctuating. There's something familiar about it."
"Can I see?"
"Make it quick. If it's an attempt at communication they'll be in range of the missiles in twenty seconds."
Rachael turned her chair to look at the sensor screen at weapons control. "I think I know what this is. Something linked to the military. Ah, what was it?"
"This is geth fighter Two-Eight-Five. We are in range and have opened fire."
'Great. They're shooting at the target and whomever it is might be trying to say hi.' "So what is it exactly?"
"It's a repeating pattern. Four dots, a dash, three more dots then three more dashes. It repeated twice then died." Rachael said.
"Whoa! I don't think that was an attempt at communication. That was weapons fire! The energy signature is along the lines of a thanix cannon."
Something felt off in Isabella's gut. Why would they fire in such a precise pattern like that? Why not a string of quick ones or a couple of long shots? "All fighter squadrons, were any of you under a target log?" The squadrons replied with a complete string of negatives from each and every geth and quarian pilot.
The feeling in her guy got even worse. 'No locks and they put out enough power from a thanix to take out two cruisers?'
"Damn, you're right." Isabella said looking at the energy signal that had been broadcast. It finally clicked as to what it was.
The ship was using the thanix cannon to broadcast a message in code.
"Missiles will impact in fifteen seconds."
"Rach, run that pattern through a decode. Start with Morse and work your way out from there."
"Running." Her fingers danced over the holographic keys.
"Five seconds to impact."
"Oh shit!" She cursed out when the computer spat out the most likely answer: SR2. "This is White Raven to all fighters! Cease fire! I repeat, CEASE. FIRE!"
The estimated positions of the missiles had gathered too close to the ship to determine whether or not they had prematurely detonated successfully.