AN: I think I've gotten close to two hundred fifty e-mails over the past three nights... all of them, story alert, favorite story, review alert... I might just disappear for eight months again just to feel the love.
Shepard and his 'crew' stood inside the main mess hall of the Halcyon class Dawn Under Heaven. A half crippled pilot, a zealot, two completely unknown aliens, and himself. Several tables had been flipped over; scorch marks covered them from plasma rounds. The five of them sat around one of the still relatively intact tables, though in Shepard's and the Zealot's case, they stood. The dead had been taken to one of the Down Under's cargo airlocks. There were surprisingly few bodies on the vessel, even considering that it had been in dry dock when the covenant attacked reach.
It had been nearly two days since the Midnight Dreary left him in system. They would be nearly at earth by now.
Shepard cut his musing short, "So, Tali how goes the slipspace engine repair?"
The female alien shifted uncomfortably, standard benches weren't designed with lower legs bent the way her's did, "Well, considering that you're FTL is based on principles I barely even comprehend its going well. If it was a mass effect drive I could have gotten it running in an hour, as it is… I have to look at a textbook as often as I have to guess what goes where. So far, no accidents, except I lost a wrench, never did find the thing."
Shepard knew quite well the reports of technicians disappearing mysteriously around malfunctioning slipspace generators. He was glad he hadn't lost the strange alien to such a fate. He had only known her for two days, but she was an agreeable sort, damn good with technology, and curious as hell about how UNSC ships worked without 'element zero', whatever that was.
"Joker?" Shepard turned to the pilot, who was currently eating some runny powdered eggs from the ship's food store.
"Well… first I got up, went to the bathroom, damn hard with only one working leg, then I brought up some porn from Artemis' collection an-"
"Damn it Joker, keep it up and I'll shoot your other leg." Shepard affixed Joker with his best intimidating stare.
Despite sitting down, Joker made a good attempt at coming to attention, "Sir, I regret to inform you that you are an asshole."
Shepard chuckled at the statement, "You know that you still work for the military don't you Joker?"
The expression on Joker's face suggested that it was news to him.
"Right…" Shepard scratched at the stubble beginning to grow on his chin, "So did you manage to get to what I asked you to do in between making love to your left hand?"
The three aliens had various expressions of shock or revulsion on their faces. Shepard and Joker burst out laughing at seeing them.
Joker let out a long breath, "Yes commander, I've inventoried our supplies with Artemis' help. I have a list of those I could see with my own eyes, and what she says is still on the Down Under somewhere."
The AI popped up from a small holoprojector at one side of the room, "You know if you'd get over that hole in your leg, you could suit up and check them out yourself."
"Well, I have been thinking of having robot legs installed, but it's a risky procedure…" Came the pilot's retort.
Shepard turned to the last two members of his team, Liara and Odeg, an asari and elite respectively, "And you two?"
"The dead have been properly laid to rest," The zealot reported, short and to the point. Shepard had originally worried that the elite wouldn't accept his commands. Thankfully that hadn't proved to be the case.
Liara gave her informal report next, "Your pilot's condition is stable, but I recommend finding a suitable medical facility as soon as possible." Liara was the one who had the least useful skills, both in starship maintenance and otherwise. She had explained her research to him when they had arrived, but so far all Shepard had found for her to do as to play nurse to Joker, who enjoyed the experience immensely.
Shepard began his own report, "Good, I've managed to consolidate our armory in crew bunk 4-B, and-"
Artemis interrupted him before he could continue, "Wait a minute commander, I need to say something."
Shepard waved for the AI to continue, he knew he didn't have any sort of claim to command, so unlike a normal military group he had to run his unusual team as a sort of democracy. He knew better than to throw around orders without reason. That they all seemed to accept his commands was unexpected, but he was flattered anyway.
"Well, if Joker really wants robot legs, I can do that. The Down Under was equipped with a full surgical bay and several prosthetic limbs, all rated for combat conditions, both in space and dirtside." Artemis lost a bit of her carefree insanity as she went on, slipping into behavior more suited to an AI. "All I need is a little help in getting the parts and someone to help me work the automated equipment."
"I thought Medical equipment was outside the command of shipboard AIs, I thought they used a dumb AI programmed for that." Joker looked up from his empty plate at the AI.
"Well, normally yes, but that limitation was done with a programming block, which is now gone." Artemis smiled, "Besides, you can't kneel down to your AI overlord properly without two working legs."
Joker's mouth worked for a few moments but no sound came out. Shepard noticed Tali reaching for her pistol.
Artemis merely started singing, "Daisy, Dais-"
Joker cut her off, "Whoa, don't sing daisy bell, I had nightmares about HAL 9000 as a kid."
"How old is that movie? Six hundred years or so?" Shepard asked the pilot, smirking at his discomfort. He looked back at the aliens, who all looked very confused, not a party to their human culture. "Never mind, new tasks; Liara, Joker, assuming you want a replacement leg, I want you two to work on that. I'd like to have a halfway competent pilot on hand when we get to earth."
"Halfway my ass! I'm at least three quarters competent." Joker rebuked him.
"Whatever you want to tell yourself Joker," Shepard replied with a smirk. "Anyway, continuing on, Odeg, since you also have a completely working envirosuit, I need you to travel the ship, and see if you can collect spare armor for myself and Joker, and anything else useful. Artemis can help you with that. Hate to give you such a simple job, but it needs to be done."
The zealot gave his race's equivalent of a smile, "It will clear my mind, and leave me focused on any future battle."
Shepard nodded, secretly relieved that the proud warrior had accepted. "That just leaves me and you," He announced looking at Tali, who was fidgeting a little. "I guess I'll help you out with those engine repairs, got to warn you, I'm not the best when it comes to mechanical stuff."
The alien looked him up and down, as if evaluating him, "You'll do," was all she said in response.
"Good, then since I don't have a gavel," Shepard reached over for Joker's fork and hit the table with it, making a tinny sound, "Meeting adjourned."
ooooooo
Liara walked down the corridor with the injured human leaning on one shoulder. She still didn't understand his sense of humor, but somewhere between shooting brutes and trying to hastily prepare the ship for departure, she had found a sense of camaraderie with these humans, the sangheili as he called himself, and even the quarian.
She shook her head, that was probably just stress talking, they had saved her life multiple times, but she had only known them for two days. She knew the quarian for longer, and while she didn't really believe the reputation their race had as thieves, she still grew up among it.
"Ah, ow oh crap…" Joker spoke up beside her.
"What is wrong Joker?" Liara asked the extremely vocal alien. She looked down at his wound, which was currently sealed with medigel, though a small trickle of bright red blood came out. There was still a gaping hole where the spike had gone through, but the edges of the hole had started healing.
"Mom always said don't pick at it, and guess what I did?"
"You picked at it?" Liara answered the question hesitantly.
In return she got a glare from the pilot, "That was a rhetorical question."
"Oh, right…" Liara felt her cheeks heat up in embarrassment.
"You've got to work on that, and your sense of humor. You know, 'all work and no play'" Joker told her chuckling.
"No play what?" Liara asked in turn, which only made Joker laugh harder. She tapped on his wound.
"Okay, okay, you win!" Joker yelled.
Liara plastered on her best innocent look, "Win what?"
"That's what I thought," Joker replied, chuckling again. "Let's just get this operation over with."
ooooooo
Shepard kind of expected to find himself wedged somewhere in the middle of a mass of machinery. Instead he found himself standing next to the slipspace generator, handing tools to the alien as she affected repairs to the damaged parts of the engine.
More often he stood idly by while she changed various settings on the mass of machinery via computer interface. The whole situation did make for a good conversation. Tali seemed less nervous when she had something to work on. Before she had either seemed skittish like some teenager, or she had been overly paranoid about Artemis.
"So, what brings you out here? You know poking around in a debris field around a destroyed planet."
"Hand me that sealant," The alien demanded. After Shepard handed her the can she answered his question, "I'm on my pilgrimage, my right of passage into adulthood."
"Go on," Shepard prompted her when she seemed to pause.
"Just a second… need to… got it," Tali picked herself out of the slipspace engine, "Are you sure you actually want to hear about my people?"
"Well, yeah, I don't really know anything about you or your species besides your history with AIs." Shepard shrugged, "I guess I'm just curious."
"Well, you know about the Geth, how we've been wandering the stars for three hundred years," Tali paused to collect her thoughts, Shepard motioned for her to go on. "Well the Geth never pursued us; they haven't been seen or heard form for three hundred years. We've had to keep our fleet in working order for all that time. Some of our ships date back from before the flight from the Geth, we have to constantly patch and upgrade them so they don't fail on us."
"So, what does that have to do with a religious journey?"
"A what?" Tali looked at him, Shepard could only barely read her expression by her faintly glowing eyes, he assumed she was confused, "No, the pilgrimage isn't a religious thing. Young quarians are sent away from their birth ships to another vessel to promote genetic diversity."
Now it was Shepard's turn to be confused, "Wait, so how does that lead you out here? I assume Liara isn't a quarian too? I can't really be sure when it comes to an alien. Is asari like a gender or something?"
He heard barely contained laughter from her suit's speakers, "No, no, no… Liara is an asari, one of the council races. I almost forgot that you've never had access to a codex."
"A what?" Shepard raised an eyebrow.
The quarian brought up the holographic interface she called an omni-tool. After a few moments of tapping she brought up a display. "Oh right, of course the files wouldn't be compatible with whatever you're using."
"Never mind about that for now, keep telling me about the pilgrimage. I'm sure I can get Artemis to work up a converter for that later." Shepard could have sworn he saw her expression darken simply at the mention of an AI.
"Okay, well, we're required to move to a different ship when we come of age, but no quarian captain wants to accept a new crewmember without knowing that they can pull their weight. So we go on the pilgrimage, looking for something of value to give to the prospective ship so we can be accepted back."
"Huh, that seems a bit harsh," Shepard turned and leaned on the slipspace engine.
"Well, most gifts are accepted just because of a sense of tradition, though there is a stigma attached to a substandard gift." The alien wrung her hands in what Shepard had noticed was a nervous habit. "Actually I was kind of hoping to find something to bring back. We originally thought this debris field was a prothean ruin; their technology is the basis for most of citadel space. Intact prothean technology could represent a significant leap forward for the migrant fleet."
Shepard's face darkened at that, "Protheans? Don't tell me they were a hyper advanced civilization that existed a hundred thousand years ago?"
Tali cocked her head to the side, "Uh, no, fifty thousand years ago. They vanished mysteriously, but they left behind several relics like mass relays and the citadel. Oh right… you don't actually know what those are. I'll have to send you my codex."
"Later," Shepard waved his hand dismissively, and thought about what he had heard. The forerunners went extinct a hundred thousand years ago, she was obviously talking about some other hyper advanced race. Strange news, but not exactly important to the task at hand of saving earth. "We should probably get back to work,"
The alien didn't immediately pick up her tools "Just one more question, you keep referring to Artemis as a 'smart AI' what exactly does that mean?"
Shepard thought for a minute, AI technology wasn't exactly classified, but it had been one of the UNSC's most useful technologies when fighting the covenant. He decided to explain it to the alien. "Well, I don't know how your race, races, whatever, make AIs, but we have two basic types." He took a breath before continuing, "Smart and dumb, a dumb AI is basically just an extraordinarily complicated operating system for specific tasks. It can't really learn, and is only the sum of its programming. They're really good at what their programmed to be, database researcher, navigation, keeping a ship running up to speed without an excess of crew. They're really just a computer though; they can't do anything outside their programming."
A flash of recognition passed through the alien, "like a VI, though, normally there's a few hundred all devoted to a very specific task, user interface, individual guardian turrets, and so on."
Shepard didn't recognize the term and shrugged, "Sure that sounds about right, I think ours may be a bit more complicated, but yeah that's the basic idea. Smart AIs are a different story all together; they're made from, well a dead person's brain."
"What!" exclaimed the alien.
"Yeah… it's really expensive, and destroys the brain in the process, though they're normally made from flash cloned brains, not the actual person's brain. The remaining core programming is essentially a copy of a person's mental connections, capable of learning, problem solving, multitasking, learning how to accomplish new tasks, etcetera."
"That's… amazing… do they have the memories of their, uh, progenitor?"
"I think they have a few odd feelings and a sense of déjà vu every so often." Shepard found it slightly odd the utter reversal in attitude, from hateful to almost a child-like interest as soon as he mentioned that their AIs were made from organic brains. "There's a big problem with them though, as you've seen with Artemis. After a certain time limit they 'go bad', break their programmed blocks, and descend into rampancy, where they often devolve into a state of anger and lash out at anything they can, their creators, other AIs, anything really."
"Wait, then why is Artemis helping us?" Tali asked; suddenly back to her distrustful tone.
"Well, I remember a briefing about rampant AIs encountered earlier in the war. It's actually not so much that they always snap, they just sort of go crazy, they don't always get psychotic. I think there was one instance of an AI expressing feelings of, well, 'love' to another AI before they were destroyed by a covenant bombardment." He checked his watch, "Okay, that's enough history; we do have a world in danger."
Tali looked like she was about to ask him to continue, but apparently Shepard had managed to inspire her sense of duty. "Fine, hand me that nut driver."
ooooooo
Nihlus jumped out of the dropship and hit dirt. Almost immediately the turian trooper to his left took a shot to the head from a high power sniper rifle, Nihlus' upgraded shields kept him from a similar fate as he ducked behind a crate.
A marksman brought his own viper sniper rifle to bear and shot off a trio of rounds, "Target down."
Nihlus pushed forward, shotgun in hand. A storm of heavy slugs flew past and all around him, a pair of machine gun nests in the windows of the building ahead had the initial response force pinned by their transport ships.
He ducked in behind some sort of small cargo carrier as several mortar rounds landed in and among the turian forces. Of the squad that had originally sent the distress signal there was no sign.
The humans were smart; they had ambushed one of the recon squads securing the city just as their orbital fire support window closed. Forcing a group deployed by dropship to try and rescue their comrades.
A doorway opened into an underground passageway, out rolled a human tank of some kind, the turret arced over the flat main body like the stinger of some insect. It fired a round into the center of the turian squads. The shell exploded, sending shrapnel into the troopers. Despite being non-mass effect based over a half dozen troopers collapsed to the ground bleeding. The tank immediately began maneuvering aggressively, using abandoned civilian vehicles as cover. A second shot went out. The turian soldiers weren't as tightly packed this time, and only two fell to the storm of shot.
A few rockets reached out from heavy weapons troopers; all but one of the unguided munitions missed the rapidly maneuvering armored vehicle. The one that hit blew a large chunk out of the turret machinery, but barely slowed the vehicle down.
Nihlus stayed hidden, and waited for the tank to pass by, when it got within three meters he sprinted forward and jumped, landing on the tank's track. The operator saw him from his small metal cage, and threw the vehicle into a sharp turn. Nihlus didn't let himself be thrown off, he brought up his shotgun one handed and fired. Only two of the slugs hit, but they smashed through the man's helmet, and left the tank in an uncontrolled turn.
Nihlus leapt off the tank, only to find the other humans had stopped firing. The marksman from earlier called out, "They're starting to pull back,"
Nihlus walked back to the remaining turian soldiers. "They did what they meant to do, two of them and a light tank dead, at the cost of two squads worth of soldiers."
The remaining turians shifted uneasily, they were unused to someone outside their command structure giving orders. They were especially unused to losing. One of them spoke up, "But we won, they retreated from this sector."
Nihlus shook his head and walked back into the dropship, "If only it were that easy…"
ooooooo
Captain Kuril paced back and forth across his quarters. As a cruiser captain he rated his own private room, complete with sanitary facilities. Now that the enemy's orbital defenses had been smashed, there was almost nothing to do as a cruiser captain. The transports had already landed; frigates and gunships could provide fire support. Which left cruisers to maintain the orbital perimeter, a task that could be, and usually was, completed by a junior officer.
A bored turian was a restless turian, as commanding officer, it would be unbecoming for him to engage in the normal duels that soldiers often used to relieve stress. Which left him to pace his room.
His message terminal beeped. Kuril stopped his pacing and almost got on one knee and thanked the spirits for the interruption, almost.
He sat down at his small desk and brought up the message. It was from the specter he had spoken with earlier.
Captain, your earlier fears may have more truth than you think. Our ground forces are being stalled by these… humans. On a more interesting note, I've found several references to a homeworld in small personal devices. Most of their computer systems are completely wiped clean with references to a 'cole protocol'. I don't know-
Kuril's reading was interrupted by the general alarm sounding throughout the ship. He stood up and made his way to the command center. "Report!"
The crew was working with their usual proficiency. The communications officer filled him in on the details, "Frigate patrol reported detecting two dreadnaught sized vessels before all contact was lost. The admiral had ordered all ships into combat formation."
"Did the patrol send back any data or anything from their position?"
The com tech shook his head.
Kuril accepted the report with a nod of his head. A minute later the navigator reported that they were now in position with the rest of the fleet. A frigate screen moved about at roughly the midpoint between the planet's moon and the planet itself. A handful of frigates, the cruisers and the mighty Void Hunter were in high orbit over the turian landing zones. Standard operating procedure to defend from a counter invasion.
"Massive radiation burst detected! To the port of fleet relative direction." Fleet relative being the direction the formation was travelling in, currently the orientation of the dreadnaught at the center.
Kuril leaned in on the railing, "Show me."
While he had meant for a display of relative positions and planetary bodies to be brought up, he got the display from a probe. Two small purplish white points of light appeared in the display. They quickly enlarged into glowing discs. His cheek flanges fell open in surprise.
Within seconds two curving, almost fishlike ships slipped out of the discs. The color of the ships reminded him of the first time he met the specter in the admiral's briefing.
They were colored purple…
ooooooo
AN: I'm not sure how well this chapter turned out. I kinda wanted to go over the reactions of at least one ME alien to learning about UNSC technology. Might of gone over the top, I dunno. Also, yes I know medi-gel was created by humans, but I wanted the citadel races to have something useful besides omni-tools and kinetic barriers. That and it fits more into the mass effect style of things. The UNSC using the older, grittier feeling bio-foam and the council races having something nicer just feels right to me. Probably should have put a slight AU warning somewheres...
Also, for future reference, this story won't be along the teraton level MAC guns. Figure I'd let you know. Not enough of a sucker for reviews to want all those 'you got it wrong!' reviews. You can probably tell the spirit story uses them though... so... whatever.