Chapter Nine: The Vanguards of Solace, Continued
"Shit, it was a trap all along wasn't it?" Shepard screamed in a deep and angry voice up to the Land Speeder where the tied up Kelanya sat almost insubstantial to the geth guards. "What does this mean?" The Revenant machine gun quivered in his hands, a tear dripped down his cheek but remained hidden behind his helmet. He wanted to scream, he thought of the thousands of horrors caused by the geth heretics and their husk slaves. "We failed didn't we?" He remembered the dragons' teeth, the zombified machines that were once colonists on Eden Prime where he first saw them. He thought of his friends being impaled on them, Garrus, Liara and Samara, Wrex and Grunt, Thane and Tali, Jacob and Jack, Zaeed and Kasumi, they were all sprawled out in front of him, his mind could not escape the harrowing images. "After 38,000 fucking years we still failed?"
"Voice recognition confirmed. Subject is Commander Martin Shepard." One geth stated, its brow plates flapping in an odd sense of excitement.
"What the hell is going on here, this doesn't make sense." Miranda added. "If the Reapers are gone then why are there geth on the Citadel?"
"Whoa now, everybody just stay calm and put the guns away." A very muscular drell approached from the north, hoping to ease the situation from turning violent. Wearing loose grey pants and a tight black tee-shirt that barely contained his muscular chest, he pulled the cigar from his mouth and leaned towards the geth to Shepard's left. "Donmus, Petrun, put the damn guns away. You two aren't cadets anymore, so act like proper officers and don't point a rifle at every new arrival!" Unlike most drell, his voice was not as rasped as many others of his kind, making him sound more human than Shepard expected.
"But the Citadel Security personnel conduct manual states that when any subject arms himself with a weapon we are to do the same." The geth to Miranda's right replied.
"Protocol twenty-three-two-nine is in effect! You geth, the founders of such protocol, should know that with his arrival it goes into effect!" The drell angrily lectured the two geth, who seemed to pull away from him slightly as time past, like a parent scolding two children. Shepard was surprised that geth were able to show such emotions through simple bodily movements. "This here is Commander Shepard, hero of the Citadel and life as we know it! Do you think he would take kindly to any greeting at gunpoint?"
As the two geth soldiers moved their rifles to their backs, Shepard smirked. He had jumped to conclusions and gotten into an emotional breakdown over nothing. "The geth are a Council race now, aren't they?" Shepard put away his own gun and removed his helmet, holding it under his arm.
"The geth are the strongest race on the Citadel Council as of the current date." One geth replied.
"But these two are just knuckleheaded cadets, a fine example of the Geth Empire." The drell added sarcastically.
"This should be interesting." Miranda added, putting away her Avenger, "We have a traitor asari up in our shuttle. Without her we would have not found our way here, so we promised her leniency when handed over to the Citadel."
"Anyway, with that problem behind us you would please follow me, Commander?" The drell pointed his arm to the winding space behind him. "You two take the asari into custody, and make sure to put her in a Null-Field cell when you book her." The two geth bobbed their flashlight heads and climbed up to the shuttle and pulled the asari out.
"Will you answer any questions I ask or are you taking me to someone who will?" Shepard crossed his arms, "Just for the sake of saving time."
"I won't waste your time by pretending to know more than half of what you want to know, so I'll just take you as far as the Presidium. The Council can take it from there." The drell led Shepard and Miranda to a platform raised only a few inches from the ground, surrounded by black and yellow caution stripes with warning messages in a few alien languages. Shepard looked to Miranda with a crooked brow as the pad lit up beneath them, a second later the dim warehouse-esque scenery of the docking bay was replaced with the polished white walls and trimmed plants found only on the Presidium.
"Teleportation? When did?" Miranda was flabbergasted, still in shock from the sudden change of lighting and surroundings.
"It's been around for as long as I've been alive, and I'm almost a hundred." The drell officer shuffled them both of the platform before it lit up again, then his muscular form faded and disappeared.
Shepard knew where he was on the Presidium, just he hadn't been to this particular area often. Zakera Ward was to the left of the Citadel Tower, which was where the Embassies were. In his travels he only visited that area, and when looking from one of the many bridges across the winding lake he could see the balcony of the human embassy. Wondering who now occupied the room but had no idea how to get over there, Shepard caught a glimpse of what looked similar to Avina on the other end of the bridge.
"Notice anything different Shepard?" Miranda leaned against the railing beside Shepard and began rhythmically tapping the metal bar.
"I can see there are finally fish in the lake." Miranda looked over and saw silhouettes scurrying in the water a dozen feet below.
Miranda giggled before looking up, "They added a day and night cycle to the artificial light. And by the looks of it, its early morning here."
"That would explain why there are so few people walking around. We should go ask Avina the way to the Embassies from here, if the drell was telling the truth about the Council expecting us.
"Can we trust his word?"
"Probably, I doubt they would have set a trap just so the Council can get us at gunpoint." After walking over to the other side of the bridge, Shepard noticed even with the sparse amount of citizens on the Presidium given the hour, he could see no asari which didn't surprise him, but he could see many drell, krogan, and batarians. He then realized that humans probably weren't welcome here, so he avoided eye contact as much as possible.
"Greetings, Master-Commander Shepard." Avina, which was modeled after the asari race, was most likely changed in recent years to the form of a batarian man. They could see that hologram technology had improved greatly since 2185, which was to be expected. Now looking like something out of an abstract anime to Shepard, the batarian looked just as real as its organic counterpart, save for its limbs were replaced by interlocking hologram panels similar to tech armor, only these constantly fluxuated with different colors and subliminal advertisements. "It has been thirty-eight thousand--" The batarian's image warped violently, its voice reduced to broken patches of static, but moments later it returned to normal. "Temporal Protocol active, terminal ready to process queries."
"What is the name of this terminal?" Shepard crossed his arms and tilted his head, unbelieving that a batarian could be so polite to a human as soon at first.
"Please Commander, I am an AI, please treat me like one." The batarian politely retorted.
Shepard was shocked, "Are there AI's at each of the different terminals?"
The batarian AI laughed, "At first there were different AIs at each of the terminals on the Presidium and Zakera Ward, but they became competitive. They eventually hacked into C-Sec and legislative funds trying to bribe citizens into coming to their area more often. I am Dom' Hadeh, tour guide, non critical groundskeeper, and vigilant guard of the Citadel."
"Great, now that introductions are over with, can we get to the Embassies now?" Miranda impatiently interjected.
"What's the rush?" Shepard turned to face Miranda as he spoke, but he knew the answer halfway through the question. The longer they waited, the more likely the trigger-happy Space Marines would open fire on the Citadel.
"Head over to the public transporter system behind you and it will take you to the Embassies."
"Thanks, mind telling us how to use one?" Shepard asked.
"Oh yes… you don't have the implants." Hold on, I'll hardwire the transporter for a one-way trip. Just don't take too long, other people need to use that too." Shepard and Miranda walked over to the elevated pad, and in a split second warped from one area of the Presidium to the other. Now Shepard recognized where he was, and after a brisk walk across another bridge they stood at the Citadel Embassies.
"Shepard Commander?" Turning to face the right stairway leading up to the embassies, a towering geth construct gracefully descended towards them. It wore dark grey armor so well polished that it gleamed even in the early morning light, and underneath were ebony fibers woven together like muscle that twitched and pulled with every slight move. Behind it a crimson cape dramatically flowed, proudly displaying the Geth insignia on both sides: three hollow hexagons overtop a shield. The singular white lens that served as its eye was supplemented by two asymmetrically placed red lenses, both focused on both Shepard and Miranda.
When he was close enough, Miranda noticed the weathered chunk of N7 armor layered over its right collar and shoulder. "Legion?" She asked in shocked and surprised manner. Shepard reached out and shook Legion's hand, happy to see a familiar face but puzzled by the fact that it was a familiar face.
"Correction, I am now called Lord Legion, as head of the Citadel Council and representative of the Geth Empire."
"A lot's probably changed in the past 38,000 years. Care to fill us in?" Shepard asked.
"Not here, Commander. I concluded that it would be best to answer your questions in the presence of the entire Council." Legion waved his arm for them to follow him up the stairs and into the human embassy, but Shepard interrupted him with another question.
"Did you just use the word 'I'? I thought there were no individuals within the geth network?"
"As was stated previously, all will be answered before the Council." Legion led them into the Human Embassy, obviously bare of furnishings or computers but unchanged since he last saw it dozens of millennia ago. At the center of the room a smaller teleportation pad came to life as they drew near it, and upon stepping onto the platform it carried them away.
Shepard could not tell where he was now, since there were no discernable walls or floors. The entire 'room' was a shade of grey, with darkest shades at the horizon line in the distance and the ceiling colored the lightest. There was also no visible light source, yet Shepard could see Miranda and Legion just fine. The geth councilor walked forward, casting a shadow only directly below him, then he snapped his fingers causing a beam of light to spout out from the ground, ending only at the ceiling now visibly thirty to forty feet in the air, causing the light to become a tight pillar that encased his form.
"Councilor Legion, of the Geth Empire." Legion stated.
Scattering the room around the trio more councilors appeared out of thin air and separated themselves within pillars of light. The krogan was the first, whose towering body and intimidating demeanor proclaimed his high stature. Shepard could immediately tell that this krogan was different from any he had ever seen before, but he figured that this was most likely due to their adaptive evolution. The turian, the drell, the batarian, the elcor, and the volus arrived. Finally, holograms of the salarian, the quarian, and another unidentified alien race appeared. He could tell despite the grainy and flickering graphic that the quarians no longer wore biosuits, and though he was eager to see what was underneath their mask, the councilor wore a fine hooded cloak, and only a blue-grey pointed chin was visible.
"Clanmaster Serverus of the Krogan!"
"Shipmaster Holgrum, of the Turian Hegemony."
"Councilor Amun Darius, of the Drell." The many councilors introduced themselves, excluding the race Shepard didn't recognized, nevertheless in total it far outnumbered the council of Shepard's time.
"Then we call this council to order?" Legion asked, which was followed by the room agreeing.
"Honest rebuke. Humans are too overzealous for infiltration. If these two were spies would have tried to kill someone already." The elcor councilor retorted.
"But they pointed weapons at the two C-Sec cadets at Presidium Junction." The turian replied, "This proves that from the moment he stepped onto this station he has been causing trouble."
"Correction. The Commander and Miss Lawson come from a time when there were two factions of Geth, loyalists to our own cause and the worshipers of Nezara, a Reaper. Both were equally hostile towards them, thus their actions provoked such a response.
"I think most of us get it, Lord Legion." The salarian's hologram flickered as he gestured for the geth councilor to calm down, the graphics struggling to keep up with sudden movements. "Can we please proceed to the reason why they are here?"
"A human from this time, known only as the elusive Commissar Grissom, found a time travel device of unknown origin and used it at first to contact my time, or your past, of the coming war humanity faced in such a dark future. Now it seems that he's either dead, allowing his true device fell into sinister hands, or worse he's been indoctrinated by the Reapers or tainted by Chaos, or both." Shepard stated.
"Speaking of which, what happened exactly to the Reapers?" Miranda asked.
"Legion turned to face her, "For the sake of preserving the continuity of space-time, this council and any synthetic life form in a three light-year radius of the Citadel will not speak of the exact details into your conflict with the Reapers. Though no organic life form is old enough to have been there, it is a necessary precaution."
"I'm probably right in saying we killed them all, otherwise none of this would be here." Shepard added.
"Confused. How has Shepard arrived at the Citadel?" The elcor asked.
"That human Imperium must be helping him, if so then we have no right to trust him." The turian waved his arm, utterly dismissing the Commander's presence after his sudden revelation.
"I think they have the right to speak for themselves." Shepard activated his Omni-tool and tapped his helmet with it, the searchlights on either side came to life and a small screen with an oscilloscope appeared. "Master Ventralis of the Fate Breakers Space Marines, you are now in the audience of the Citadel Council.
"Greetings… uh, sirs and madams." The oscilloscope flickered and wavered as he spoke. This was most likely the first time he held a proper conversation with any alien species, let alone the leaders of a good dozen of them.
"Are you insane Shepard? You may be a hero but the Imperium is too far! They will see this station destroyed even if it means the death of millions!" The turian councilor was visibly angry with the sudden turn of events."
"Calm down Holgrum." The volus councilor spoke up, "Obviously this is a struggle for them (inhales) to even make it this far. I mean (inhales) a Space Marine willing to talk with the leaders of any alien species, (inhales) that's something you don't see everyday."
"If it means bringing an end to this threat, we are willing to cooperate with the Citadel." Ventralis replied.
"With the major players present, we need to get down to business. We need to find the final device and shut it down by any means." Shepard stated.
"You realize what this represents, Shepard?" Miranda added, "An alliance between the Citadel Council, now containing the races we saw as enemies, and the utterly uncompromising Imperium of Man. This could be groundbreaking."
"One thing at a time, Miranda." Legion replied.
"Our forces are scattered across the galaxy fighting Tau, the Orsk, and the Necrons. Any fleets in the area of this engagement will be all you receive." The quarian councilwoman added.
"Do we even know where this device is?" The batarian crossed his arms and raised a brow.
"We can find out." Ventralis stated, "The Commissar's long time confidant lives on a 'Paradise World' on the western fringe of the Tempestus. If anyone can find him, he can."
"If possible, would Legion be able to join us?" Shepard asked
"Are you insane human? Your Space Marine friends will gun him down on sight!" The krogan councilor boldly roared from across the room.
"We won't make any progress without compromise." Ventralis paused, "I am not totally against it."
Shepard raised a brow, "Did I just hear right? A Space Marine Company Master possibly agreeing to, nay considering to allowing a xeno-created synthetic life form aboard his ship?
"I do not make this decision lightly, we shall discuss this further when you return."
"Do you want to come, Legion?" Shepard asked.
"It has been many millennia since I served under your command, I would be… honored to do so once again."