"Dad!" I yelled, grabbing his hand and activating the cloaking program I had recently installed on my omni-tool. In a second, the cloaking field enveloped us both, providing us with a visual camouflage.

Please don't let them have any infrared scanners… if they do we're dead.

My dad froze in place. When he finally spoke, his voice sounded terrified. "Nikki?" I pulled him along, knowing he was just as scared that he could no longer see me as he was of the aliens that had just shown up.

"It's a cloaking field dad," I explained as quietly as I could while pulling him behind a retaining wall, well out of the way from the gunfire. The field failed a split second after we ducked from view; I honestly hadn't expected it to last that long.

"How…." He seemed so stunned that he couldn't finish the question, although I knew where he was going.

"I can't really tell you… classified and all that jazz." I lied. He looked at me, dumbfounded. "Dad, would you please get down!?" I hissed, pulling him down in a crouch next to me. "Do you want to get shot?" He continued to give me the deer-in-the-headlights stare.

"I'm sorry, sweetheart." My dad finally found his voice, although it was small and timid. "I know you've had training for all this… I just… I never…." He looked around trying to find the rest of his sentence. After a moment he just shrugged.

Guess that little bit of combat training from C-Sec really was worth something.

I activated my omni-tool again, scanning the area for the closest creature, hoping to get enough of a signature that I could later figure out what these things were. Unfortunately, my scanner was jammed. I growled in frustration, tracing the jamming signal, trying to figure a way around it.

"Nikki…" My dad said slowly.

"What?" I snapped, looking up at him, my expression turning from frustration to 'Oh, shit' in an instant. There was a creature towering over us, it's massive, one-eyed head seemingly staring at us.

In that instant that I realized the creature wasn't an alien as I knew them - it was a machine. Nothing like any mech I knew either, but this thing - with the cables and even some exposed wires - was a machine; which meant I could do something about it. Before the strange mech could raise it's weapon, I activated my omni-tool, causing a pulse of energy to arc into it, charring circuitry and disabling it, for the moment.

"Dad, go!" I urged him. "Get back home, lock the door and hide. I'll be there as soon as I can." I wasn't even focused on him as I quickly found the location of the machine's motherboard. I intended to hack this son of a bitch.

"Nikki, I'm not leaving you-"

"I can handle myself." I grumbled, initializing programs to crack this thing. "I need to figure out what these things are and why the hell they're killing people."

He put his hand on my shoulder. "Sweetheart, we can take it with us. Let's go!"

"If this thing gets up in the next minute we'll be up shit creek weather we're here or twenty feet from it. My omni-tool can't handle another overload yet, especially one that large." I snarled out as I popped a cable out from it's neck and into a port on it's chest, hoping to bypass some of the circuitry I'd damaged.

My dad, meanwhile, just stood there, too shocked at the situation to do much else. "Dad, if you're not going to go, can you at least keep an eye out for more of these things? I may need to cloak us again so we can move in a jiffy."

That seemed to shake him from panic mode. "Alright." He looked around from our hiding place, and suddenly I was glad he was there. If one could sneak up on us like this one did, another surely could.

It took me another two minutes to get through the machine's security - and there was a hell of a lot of it, including several failsafes that looked like they were set to wipe the things memory if anyone were to get past them. I had written something similar for the Alliance's N7 soldier's omni-tools so I was able to work around it pretty fast.

Finally I got through to the core programming, and it asked for a command.

"Command… command…. dammit." I growled out in frustration. I had just reacted; not thinking about what I really wanted the thing to do.

If I can get this thing to target it's friends, dad and I might actually have a chance to get away….

I typed in a few command codes, but before I brought it back online, I copied the contents of its memory core onto my omni-tool, then uploaded the hack.

"God, if you're out there please let this work." I mumbled under my breath as I powered the thing on.

The flashlight making up its face lit back up, and the thing slowly stood. It looked at me and I took my father's hand, readying to cloak us should the thing attack.

It cocked its head to the side and made a garbled noise; a lot like the sound a modem or computer board makes while it's processing data.

"Can you understand me?" I asked it. Again it replied with the noise, this time sounding a little different. I tried a different tactic, typing in my omni-tool and sending a transmission directly to it.

"This unit is awaiting orders." It suddenly said in a robotic voice. I grinned and my dad looked astonished.

"What are you?" My dad asked it. The thing turned its head to look at him.

"We are Geth."

I bit back my initial reaction. "Look, before we ask more questions, are there any more of you around here? I need some answers but I don't want to get shot to pieces."

"Negative. All other platforms are currently headed toward Prothean beacon." It responded. A warning on my omni-tool noted an intrusion on the firewalls I had set up to prevent this thing from going back. Something else entirely was trying to get this geth back to hostile.

"Why are you here?" I asked, trying to countermeasure as it spoke. I couldn't believe I had just hacked a freaking Artificial Intelligence… that wasn't supposed to be possible.

"Geth are under orders of the Old-Machine, Nazara, following Saren Arteruis-Spectre." The flaps on its head moved energetically as it spoke. "Geth seek to bring the (gods) Old Machines back from dark space. The Prothean beacon holds information to achieve this result."

My dad looked deep in thought. "I know the name Arterius…. He's a turian! The council is going to have a field day when they find out he's working with the geth and attacking a human colony!"

I started to glance through the information this geth was storing, stopping short when I came across schematics for bombs. Opening the file I skimmed through it fast, pausing in fear when I realized what I was reading.

"Dad… we can worry about Saren later." I looked up from my omni-tool, trying to figure out how to tell my dad our home was about to be destroyed. "It uh… it looks like Saren has bombs at the spaceport. He plans on leveling the colony."

"How the hell does Saren think he's going to get away with this?!" My dad asked in frustration. "The security feeds from all over the colony are going to give him away!"

"The geth... or Saren, I can't tell which… their ship is sending out a massive jamming signal. All outgoing communications are knocked dead before they can go anywhere." The bombs looked easy enough to disable, but I had to get to them first. I turned to the machine. "Geth, can you take me to these bombs?"

The geth stood there, quiet. I wondered what was going through its head... well, chest. Its chest held the main CPU.

"It is your intention to save this colony." It stated. Or it may have been asking. The thing had no inflection.

"Innocent people don't deserve to die, do they?" I wasn't sure if the geth reasoned the same way as organics did, but I could be hopeful, right?

"It is the only logical course. When the Old-Machines return from dark space, they will destroy all organic life. Organic life will desire to self-preserve. Destruction of this colony is the only course of action to prevent additional organics from discovering the Old-Machines plan."

My jaw hung open. Fanatically religious artificial intelligences willing to kill for their beliefs…. Who woulda thunk it?

"Can you at least tell me where the bombs are?" I asked. If I could get to them quick enough I could disarm them.

"Transmitting coordinates." The geth's flashlight face blinked several times and my omni-tool pinged as it received the data.

"Thanks. Can you do us a favor and not tell your buddies what we're up to?" I asked, hopeful again.

"All other platforms are currently connected to this unit. Geth have been attempting to reintegrate runtimes within this platform into the collective. Your firewalls are impressive."

"Thanks?" I said, not sure if that was a compliment. "So, all the other geth on the planet already know that I'm going to try and disarm the bombs?"

"Affirmative. Current calculations show that you will not reach the bombs in sufficient time to disarm. You are not perceived as a threat."

"Great. Well… um… Geth, it's been great talkin' to ya' but we really have to go. See ya' around!" I hit the final program to make sure the "auto-target other synthetics" hack stuck, then grabbed my dad's arm and pulled him along with me. After we were out of sight from the Geth, I stopped and double checked the coordinates of the bombs.

"Nikki, what are we going to do?" My dad asked, voice trembling. I looked at him, my heart breaking to see him so scared. It's not every day you see the person who grew up protecting you in such a helpless state.

"I am going to go diffuse those bombs. You are going to go home, get the truck, and get as far away from here as possible. Hopefully there's enough time for you to escape the blast radius if I can't get those bombs disarmed in time." I replied, confident I could get it done based on the schematics I got from the geth.

And hopefully I can get there in time.

"No." My dad said forcefully.

"Dad…" I whined. I really didn't want to argue with him on this.

"No, I can't let you do that!" He protested, his eyes beginning to water. It killed me to see him so upset.

"If I don't we're both dead!" I yelled. "Don't you want to live, dad?"

"Why does it have to be you?" He asked, tears leaking from his eyes. "I've already lost your mother, I'm not going to lose you too."

"Daddy, please, just trust me. I'm good with things like this, it's my job for christ's sake." I was twisting the truth a little - I really only sat behind a desk, but I knew he needed to hear that I normally disarmed bombs to get him to remotely listen. "I love you, daddy, but I'm not going to let you or anyone else here die because I ran. As of right now, we are the only ones who know about these bombs. You may be the only chance we have to save other colonists if those bombs do go off."

His eyes softened, but still held a sadness to them. "My beautiful baby girl, all grown up." He touched his hand to my cheek. "I'm not going to make you promise to come back to me, because…. Well…"

"I know." I closed my eyes against the sting of tears, then took a deep breath that did nothing to calm me down for what I was about to do. "I love you, daddy. Promise me you'll go as fast as you can." I opened my eyes and pulled him into a hug, knowing this was very possibly the last time I'd ever get to.

"I love you too Nikki." He replied, holding me tight. "Go, get to those bombs before it's too late." He finished quietly. We stood there for another few moments, both of us reluctant to let go.

I pulled away first, and he finally let me go. "Get out of here and take as many people with you as you can, daddy."

"I will, sweetheart." He half waved a goodbye before heading back down the lane towards our home. I watched him for a few seconds, longing to go with him, but knowing fate had brought me back home for a reason.

Blowing out a breath in an another attempt to calm myself, I turned and started jogging toward the spaceport.

Whatever god is out there, please let me make it there in time…. please…