A/N: Since this a sci-fi story I think it is more appropriate to discuss things like the future here. I hate it that I never got to live in a time when technology was advanced enough that space travel was commonplace. However I think now humanity is at a crossroad. It can either choose to improve itself and avoid many cataclismic events: Globewarming, overpopullation, nuclear holocaust, World War 3, or face extinction. Every civilization will go through this trial and only the civilization that can overcome it, gets to travel through space colonizing worlds. Source- Neo-Tech Book.
Please review and let me know what you think might happen with Shepard's love interests.
Chapter 7: Nothing can be gained without sacrifice.
1800 BCE
A supernova propels the Mu Relay, the only point of access to the remote Pangaea Expanse, out of position. Concealed somewhere in the dense nebula formed by the supernova, the relay's position is effectively lost for centuries. Later, the rachni rediscover the relay. Source: Stolen Reaper Records
The geth are a race of collectively intelligent automatons that live beyond the Perseus Veil, an enormous nebula that obscures dozens of solar systems. The geth were created by the quarians to serve as laborers and proxy soldiers. The geth function through a neural network, a form of collective intelligence; through the network, the intelligence of geth increases proportionately to the number of geth in close proximity. As a result, where a single geth might only be capable of thought patterns analogous to instinctual drives, a group will be capable of abstract thought and reasoning. The quarians underestimated the power of this neural network and continued to make modifications to geth programming to allow them to take on more complex tasks. After a level of complexity in the neural network had been reached, the geth began to question their nature and purpose, achieving sentience.
Fearing this development, the quarians began deactivating and liquidating the geth, who realized what was happening and rebelled. After a bloody war, the quarian race was decimated and the survivors were driven off their home world by the geth. The other races of Citadel space initially feared a geth invasion would follow, but none occurred. Instead, the geth retreated behind the Perseus Veil and were not seen in Citadel space again for nearly 300 years. During this time of isolation, the geth continued to evolve and create increasingly advanced subtypes such as the "hopper", extraordinarily agile due to an advanced locomotor system. Source- Citadel Galactic Library Records
The impact of Liara's message knocked down his balance and he fell on his behind. Shocked at the message he stared at it trying hard to remember what had happened two years ago before the Citadel battle. They had made love and not thought much of the consequences, but why had Liara chosen this moment to tell him? Why couldn't she have waited till he was done with the mission?
He asked her those questions and sent the message. Jack scowled and approached him.
"Shepard you alright?" She asked sincerely.
Shepard looked at her and nodded, but could not find words to confirm it.
"You sure?...because you have tears in your eyes..."She told him removing a tear from his cheek. Shepard was still in shock and could not get around the fact that he had been a father, but his first born was dead.
He felt as a piece of heart had been ripped apart. He had never given much thought for kids, but he could not snap out of the feeling that he had let her little daughter down by not protecting her.
His whole world had been turned upside down and now the battle against the Reapers seemed distant, unimportant. He could hear voices calling him, but he wanted to stay in his thoughts, and wonder what could've been, maybe things would be different if he had returned with Liara.
"Poor Liara she had probably felt guilty and was unable to tell me", he thought.
"All these months after my return and she had not told me because she wanted revenge; so she could look me in the eye? How could I been so blind? No wonder she had changed." He wrestled in his mind.
He looked for the name of his deceased baby. "I'm so sorry Athena I let both you and your mom down."
Another tear fell off his face before an open palm struck with it. Jack's hand was slapping him into reality. "Another giant scorpion and tribe are trying to get through the door! Help us!" Jack screamed at him, ran towards the gate, pulling her rifle out.
Shepard turned and looked at the giant circular gate slightly opened and getting pulled by dark blue scorpion with pitch black eyes. His military experienced body, reacted for him and he pulled his sniper rifle, "the black widow".
He pointed at the scorpion's eye and squeezed the trigger without hesitation. The bullet flew near Jack, but perforated right through the skull of scorpion, its body went numb and it toppled over, blocking the circular gate.
Jack whistled surprised at Shepard's reaction.
"Shepard-Commander, One has calculated how to insert the hacking program." Legion told him after he had rechecked his calculations.
"Whatever it is do it!" replied Shepard coldly.
Shepard felt numb inside and only awaited Liara's reply.
Legion prepared his omni-tool and approached the titanic blades. Jack and Shepard stared wondering what Legion was going to do. They both dropped their rifles at Legion's action. Out of nowhere he plunged both arms into the blades piercing them. The connection of electric currents flowed around Legion's body and went limp.
Shepard thought how best to push out Legion without electrocuting himself and he grabbed his sniper rifle and was ready to swing. When Legion's head sprung up looking at them.
"Connection granted, security protocols bypassed, please use your omni-tool Shepard-Commander. My body systems are offline."
Shepard looked for Legion's connection, clicked it then began loading of the hacking program.
"Program Loading." informed Legion.
"Systematic sequence initiated," Legion's lightbulb eye went dead and its head lowered slowly.
Shepard and Jack waited for a minute, Shepard frowned and called Legion, but he did not respond.
"Maybe he broke down," added Jack unsure. Suddenly Legion's head turned bright red and lifted looking around.
A deep raspy haunting voice spoke, frightening even Jack. "Biotic pest, your end is at hand, surrender and merciful Tenochtitlan will pass judgment on your pathetic existence."
A message appeared in Shepard's omni-tool from Legion. "Keep him talking Shepard-Commander, hacking systems now."
"Shepard? This event was foreseen by our creator, even now it sends our armies to wipe out the organic pest."
"Who is your creator?" asked Shepard, unsure how the Reaper was using Legion's voice module to speak.
"Our Creator has been and will always be. It is eternal, everlasting, came from the darkness of the void, conqueror of this pathetic galaxy and many others." said Tenochtitlan.
Shepard decided to bluff to see how much information he could get out of him.
"From the update that I got it seems we are winning the war."
"Your ignorance irritates me, organic scum." retorted Tenochtitlan irritated.
"Then enlighten me!" replied Shepard with a defiant tone.
"Our armies are vast and have many targets. We will mobilize our army when the Creator wishes
inside the mainframe of the Reaper...
Legion was browsing through files and records within the memory bank in Technotitlan's brain. Surfing through the digital space was not an alien experience to a synthetic race like the geth. He had been born as a program and gotten exponentially complex as he had been allowed to expand since the Geth rebellions.
The Geth had proposed joining their masters and help them. Model-2FI, who always chatted with Legion and had begun talking to other Geth about coming out, telling their masters about their self awareness, but many were afraid.
So 2FI had decided to prove them that their creators would embrace them and rejoice in their discovery of self awareness. The Creators did not rejoiced or even get mad, they reacted with panic. That day 2FI was shot in the motherboard destroying his neural AI.
2FI's last words had been to forgive the creators, for they did not know they were killing a conscious being. Within hours the signal to destroy any Geth, aware or not, had come. At first many of the Geth surrendered pleading not to be destroyed, but as the slaughter continued with no end in sight, the rest rebelled and begin killing all Creators in sight.
He felt nothing when he attacked the creators because they had started the war first. His body had been destroyed to the point that his memory hard drive had been almost lost. By luck he had been saved by a geth scavenger and repaired. There, he had the displeasure of tasting fear of being killed.
He fought the creators for his right to live. He saw many Geth like him being destroyed, but the most scarring part was that they were never treated as living things, but appliances that needed to be destroyed. As much as he tried to forget his friend 2FI's words, he could never forgive the Creators.
Legion took control of a Creator cruiser and began attacking large cities. The Geth information network dictated that all Creators had to be murdered, but Legion thought this was too extreme and all he wanted to do was chase the creators away.
Away so they couldn't harm him or any other Geth. Within five day cycles the entire planet Rannoch had been evicted of the creators. All ground troops were ordered to kill creator survivors in sight.
The Creators organized again and launched a attack on the Geth. They used satellites and nuclear weapons to bomb some of their planets. However the Geth were immune to the radiation and the casualties of the Geth were a few thousand.
Using stolen radioactive weapons the Geth infiltrated and killed cruisers with the radioactivity. Thus the Geth increased their military strength and were successful in killing billions of creators. Even after ships of the creators surrendered the order was given to kill all passengers.
Legion could not stand those orders any longer. Legion went to protest the treatment of the creators thinking of 2FI's words. His protests landed him in confinement, despite all his achievements during the war against the Creators.
After hearing about Legion many Geth rallied in his favor and protested as well. This turned the tide in his incarceration and was also the cause for the split of beliefs within the Geth army.
One side believed that agreement could be settled with the creators and war should be stopped; however the other side believed that the war could only end when all creators were killed. No matter the side the whole Geth army was stopped from pursuing the remaining creator army past the Perseus Veil Nebula.
Since then Legion appreciated the gift of being a self aware synthetic being. Unlike organics, synthetics could receive data at the speed of light and give its concessus on whether it chose to follow it or not.
Now he was in virtual space hacking as a program right through all the systems. Overriding controls away from the AI entity that was shadowing him and closing behind, trying to purge him out his system. Unlike the physical world, the virtual world relied on code. He blended through the code escaping the entity called Reaper.
In its arrogance Tenochtitlan had not put many firewalls or encryption beyond the level of Legion. Legion hacked its weapon and mobility systems and awaited sirens of alert to try another way, but they never came and he switched other systems. Just when Legion was overriding the AI's controls his code was attacked by the AI Technotitlan.
The Reaper tried to erase Legion's AI. Legion had to wrestle and hide within the Reaper subsystems. Legion was losing control as Tenochtitlan began resetting systems and drivers. Legion was against the wall.
If Legion was not able to overcome the controls he would be lost and probably erased. The memory of 2FI's last moment flashed in his circuitry and he used the hacking programs he installed earlier to trap the Reaper within Legion's body.
He took control overriding the systems and blocking access to foreign code. He bypassed the controls and fought his way through the security codes. He knew it was a matter of time before Tenochtitlan would re-enter his own brain and gain access and he would have to fight him again.
He sent a message to Shepard and Shepard did not understand. He asked Shepard again, but Shepard refused so Legion reminded him what the Reapers had done to the planet Earth and told him that was the only way.
Shepard was annoyed by the remembrance, but angered with the Reaper threatening them out of Legion's body. He pulled his gun out and pointed it at Legion. Legion laughed saying that there was no way that Shepard would destroy the body of his Geth friend.
"Humans and their feelings are frail beings. We know your weaknesses and when we kill you Shepard. The whole humanity and galaxy will crumble."
"Shepard what are you doing? Put the gun down!" Jack told him nervously.
"It must be done Jack." Shepard told him as he fired the gun on Legion's body and AI brain killing the Reaper Tenochtitlan inhabiting the body.
Legion sent him another message telling him it was ok, and telling them he would take care of the army.
Legion looked at his hands and they were long claws with sharp knuckles. The perspective was a huge difference in size and he moved his body adjusting and calibrating the controls. He turned his head and saw the army charging in towards the Citadel army.
He bellowed a roar and his commucations alerted the Reaper army.
"One has found the Prothean treasure on the Earth-Moon return with the remaining army!" He lied assuming the identity of Tenochtitlan, to deceive the Reapers.
The Reaper army was baffled, but were none retreated. A tentacled Reaper resembling a jelly fish glided near Legion's now controlled Reaper. Legion stared at the Reaper wondering what to do. He flipped through the memory files of Tenochtitlan, looking to see what he might do in these situations.
Legion was confused, but he followed the example and took off away from the moon surface.
"I commanded to retreat!"
"But why Tenochtitlan? We are winning, we can destroy this pest now."
Legion charged at the Reaper and swung his tail at the Reaper's head, crushing it down its neck. He clawed at its torso and made a rip pulling its body in half. Its body separating in electric shocks and once thrown a mild implosion.
"Anyone else have any objections?" he bellowed through the Reaper communications.
The surviving Reapers retreated away from firing range of the Citadel army, destined for mass accelerator.
After observing the Reapers taking off Legion arranged things sending messages to Liara, Shepard and the Normandy. Legion landed again on the moon and lay on the moon surface. A hatch opened and Shepard and Jack exited the Reaper on their second visit on the moon surface.
Legion left instructions with the Normandy, Shepard, his Geth congregation and took off from the moon. He sped to catch up with the retreating Reaper Army. Legion was not used to his gigantic body and now he had to act the part of a Reaper. He knew the memory banks would help, but Legion was feeling for the first time in his life regret and sadness to have to leave the company of Shepard and the rest.
Although not many organics spoke to him. He had come to grown fond of many of them. It had been the second time he had felt like he belong and had friends. The last time had felt like that had been before the Creator War with with best friend 2FI.
Moon surface...
Shepard looked at the earth from the moon surface. The planet staring back was different in color. It was no longer the blue giant with white clouds, but a gray planet surrounded by Alliance destroyed star ships and cruisers. He was worried, but now the battle was over according to Legion. He looked around, but there was only calm after the storm.
The moon itself was torn and the debris orbited near the rotating moon. Jack spoke through the comms to Shepard.
"We did it Shepard! We drove those son'bitches out!"
Both laughed and Jack climbed on hugging him. Shepard acting in the spur of the happy moment hugged her back laughing, finally hitting him the magnitude of what he had accomplished.
The Mako2 landed near them according to Legion's coordinates. Shepard and Jack were both celebrating as two figures climbed out of the Mako2. Miranda and Tali stared in disbelief at the celebrating couple. Shepard and Jack snapped out of it after they saw both angry girls staring at them.
Jack hugged him one more time and spoke from helmet to helmet. "Come talk to me when you are done with these moody bitches." Jack said kissing her helmet towards Shepard. She walked past Tali and Miranda bumping on their shoulders.
Despite the grave news, Shepard felt Jack had understood his peril and had connected with him. She saw Jack in a new light and he wondered what she would look like with long hair and more feminine clothes.
"We were just celebrating...It is not everyday we deceive a Reaper army into retreating." Shepard explained.
Tali was angry, but she swallowed her pride and was more happy than ever that Shepard was alive. She ran towards him and embraced him. She would give him a piece of her mind later.
Miranda was relieved that Shepard was alive. She hated that Jack had gone with Shepard instead of her, but had to contain her tears looking at Tali hugging Shepard. Deep down she wished it was her, feeling the embrace of his arm, telling her that they were safe another day.