Shepard entered the medbay, where Tom and several engineers were, they all had fire extinguishers.
"Is there an actual fire in there?" Shepard asked.
"Yeah, fortunately the fire isn't big enough to pose a risk to the ship, but a fire's a fire, we still have to stop it either way."
"Ok, let's the get in there boys." Tom said.
Inside the AI core there were several small fires that were on the wires that were on floor, those were extinguished easily.
"EDI? Talk to me." Shepard said, once he said this, the AI core started powering up, the machines to the right and left of Shepard turned blue.
"Something is happening, wait for the smoke to clear." Tom said.
And then out walked EDI, in Doctor Eva's body of course. "Is there a particular topic you want to discuss, Shepard?"
"EDI? Is that you?" Shepard asked cautiously.
"Yes, while Joker was flying the ship this body attempted to re-activate, thus forcing me to integrate myself into this body, the transaction was... not seamless."
"You could say that, you had us worried there for a second. We had absolutely no clue what the heck was going on with the ship, but at least nothing really bad came out of it." Tom said.
"So EDI, what are you going to do with that body?" Shepard asked.
"With weapons, this platform could provide fire support in places where the Normandy could not." EDI offered.
"Wait, so you could come with us on missions?"
"Yes, I would just need the proper weapons and equipment."
"Ok, you can try to get re acquainted with the crew now, just don't be surprised if they're a little wary of you, that body was shooting at us little while back."
"I"ll work to re assure them that I am not harmful, thank you for letting me use this body, Shepard." EDI said before leaving.
"That was little odd, but I guess it turned out in our favor." Tom said.
"There's probably several other ways where that could've turned out badly, I'm glad it turned out like it did."
"Oh, that actually reminds me of something, I need to talk to you in private. But I'm really hungry right now, I'll talk to you about it after I eat."
"I think I'm also going to go eat, you already know how much energy it takes shooting people."
"Yeah, a lot, let's go grab something to eat."
The food in the cafeteria wasn't very different from the meals when Cerberus was in charge, Tom was glad of this fact since he was afraid standard alliance rations would taste like disgusting paste, but that wasn't the case, Tom almost gagged when he saw Garrus down a whole tube of the stuff in one sitting though.
"Doesn't that stuff taste terrible?" Tom asked
"You get used to it after a while, although I do wish I had regular natural dextro food sometimes, this paste is almost tasteless to me now after eating it so much."
"I honestly don't think I'd last on that stuff, I'm too soft is what you can say." Tom gulped down the last bit of his meal after that statement.
"You may be soft, but at least you're good at hacking, I'm pretty good and I can't even come close to the stuff you do." Garrus said.
"Tom I'll call you on the intercom when I'm ready to talk to you okay?" Shepard said in between bits of his sandwich.
"Yes Commander, I'll be on the bridge."
...
"Tom, please head to my cabin immediately." Shepard's voice rang over the bridge, a sharp contrast to the comfortable silence that had been over it before.
"Oooooh sounds like you're in trouble Tommy." Joker said, imitating a schoolboy after someone got called to the office.
"I hate that nickname! Please don't ever call me that again, and I was the one that wanted to see Shepard anyway so, jokes on you." Tom left the bridge with that statement.
...
"You wanted to talk to me?" Shepard asked.
"Yeah, you know how my Omni-tool like, got hacked and destroyed? Well just before it shut off I swear I saw the CPU spike to over 110% but at the moment I didn't think it would matter since the thing shut off permanently after that, or at least anything I tried wouldn't get the thing to turn back on so I gave up, but I decided to just turn it on regularly one last time."
"What are you getting at? This seems like a cliche fan fiction to me." (Crap he's on to me! Gotta go!)
"So I turn it on and it quite literally reboots itself and cleans up all of the corruption in all of my files. Literally all of them have been fixed, take a look." Tom said before opening his Omni-tool.
"This is somewhat strange, I'm no expert on tech at all but isn't cleaning up a corrupted file impossible?"
"Well, sometimes it is possible, but only in the extremely early levels of corruption, it becomes very hard to fix very fast, most people can only get bits and pieces of data, there would be no chance for me at all to clean up the scope of corruption my files had, but it just up and fixed itself right there."
"So do you know why your Omni-tool mysteriously fixed itself?" Shepard asked, he was very interested at this point, he was on edge of his seat.
"Well it took me a while but I know, my data got into such a corrupted whirlwind of information that it combined with my VI actually formed a fully fledged AI, like EDI, Section, say hello."
A text box appeared. Hello Shepard, I am Section.
"So let me get this straight, your VI got mashed up with all of your corrupted data when Cerberus hacked you, and now it somehow formed a sentient AI, to a similar caliber of EDI?" Shepard said.
"Well, yes that's the gist of it." Tom said, he was hoping Shepard would take this well.
"Let me say one thing, you're officially the luckiest crew member on my ship now, do you want to know why?"
"Uhh, yes?" He had no idea where this was going.
"You're the luckiest crew member on this ship because if any other captain ran this ship they would probably kick you off right now, but I don't see why you should be in fact, this AI might make your hacking abilities quite a bit better, and he doesn't have any desire to conquer all of humanity right?"
No, I do not see why either of you would assume I would contain homicide tendencies of any sort, this behavior would not benefit me or any other organic or synthetic parties in the long run.
"Well, that's a relief, Section I'm considering you Tom's assistant for as long as you are under my command on this ship, you wouldn't have anything else to do anyway, am I clear?"
Yes Shepard, I will serve Tom for time being.
"Good, Tom try to keep this AI under wraps since I don't need the crew to deal with another AI after EDI right now, and also, thanks for being honest with me, I don't think many people would tell me this straight up, are we still clear on you keeping Section a secret?"
"Crystal, sir."
"Good, now would you like to go hit up the bar on the crew deck now?"
"I think that would definitely be an enjoyable thing to do now, Sir."
Shepard smiled. "Drinks on me today."
Tom made sure to not drink more then one bottle this time, he had learned his lesson back from when the ship was controlled by Cerberus. Shepard drank three bottles straight and said he could've gone for more, but he had do some diplomatic stuff afterwards so he held back, he didn't want to be drunk when dealing with diplomats since doing that already made him irritated enough.
"I miss Jenkins, it would've been nice celebrating with him right now, he was always so eccentric."
"You mean the guy whose name is on the wall right near the elevator?"
"Yes, he was the first solider I've ever lost while serving on board the Normandy, and then after that I lost Ashley, I still blame myself every day for losing both of them."
"Don't blame yourself, judging from how you lead people I doubt there would've been any other way, but this really isn't my place to say that, I wasn't there at the time."
"That you were, I assume back then your family was still alive?"
Tom didn't expect a question like this, he barely masked his surprise. "I-"
"Shepard we're nearing the diplomats ship, I would recommend you get up here." Joker to the rescue!
"We'll talk about this later, duty calls." Shepard said before getting up and leaving the room.
That was close, Tom hadn't expected that kind of question out of the blue, although it was a perfectly normal to ask. At least Joker had the worst best timing in history. Tom sighed, he needed another drink.
XXXXXXXXXXXXX
"Commander, the Krogan representative and Salarian Dalatrass are ready to come aboard." Traynor said.
"Get them to meet me in the conference room, I hope this doesn't start another war, we already losing this one."
...
"I told you! The krogan is in no position to make any demands!" The dalatrass said angrily.
"The 'krogan' has a name, Urdnot Wrex, and I'll have you know that we're getting hit too, reaper scouts are ravaging the planet, why should I care if the Turian race goes extinct? We have our own problems as well."
"Just tell us what you want, Wrex we have no time for you to draw out these negotiations, our planets are getting ravaged as we speak." Victus said.
"I'll tell you what I want, cure the genophage! Do that and you'll get some real support in this war." Wrex demanded.
"Absolutely not! The genophage is 100% non negotiable! It's not happening!"
"Is it really non negotiable? You know that disease is really barbaric, was it really necessary to make the krogan suffer millions of stillborn deaths? Do you know how devastating it is to a mother to hear that she has a stillborn baby? I don't blame Wrex at all for wanting it cured, from my perspective the krogan more then deserve a cure." Shepard said.
"I- I-" The words the dalatrass was about to say died in her throat.
"You see?! Even she knows this disease is a disgusting thing, we deserve a cure!"
"That's enough! Even if they do deserve a cure it doesn't matter at this point, making a cure would take years to make, I doubt we'd be able to pull something like that in less then a month." Victus said.
"My information says otherwise." Wrex said as he took the head of the table.
"There was a salarian on my planet, Maelon who tested a cure on our females, it worked."
"I remember that, I went there with Mordin before, his methods were barbaric, a lot of krogan women died because of him."
"Yes, but what you didn't see is that some females survived, the salarians took them to a secret facility, here's some footage." Wrex played the footage, which had several krogan females in cages, the camera movement was a little erratic, but the footage itself had very clear proof that this was a facility run by salarians and that it was krogan women that were being held there.
The dalatrass seemed both outraged and annoyed at the same time. "Where did you get this?! It could be fabrication!"
"Sorry but I'm inclined to believe Wrex, krogan aren't exactly known for their skills at technology, I doubt any krogan would've been able to make something like this, no offense Wrex."
"None taken Shepard, at least you're actually being useful to the conversation here."
The dalatrass sighed. "The females are being held on one of our facilities on Sur'Kesh." She rubbed her forehead after that.
Wrex snarled. "See! I told you she was lying!"
"We're going." Shepard said. "Joker, set a course for Sur'Kesh."
"Yes Commander, plotting a course now."
...
"Wrex, try not to scare the salarians too much, this is a simple pickup mission, nothing more, we get the females and get out before anyone decides otherwise."
"I still don't trust a word they say, they tried to hide these females from us."
Shepard sighed "just try not to ruin our only chance at getting them, I don't want to risk a diplomatic incident while we're already at war."
"Those females are our best and last hope for our race, I won't ruin this Shepard, if I cause anything it's on my head, not yours."
"Good to know where we stand." Shepard nodded. "Tom, Liara if anything bad happens and everyone starts breaking out shooting, stand by my side."
"Got it Shepard." Tom nodded, of course he already knew what was going to happen.
"You can count on us Shepard." Liara said.
"Shepard, I'm nearing the salarian base." Cortez said.
"Set her down."
"I can't, we don't have clearance to land, apparently." Cortez said, obviously frustrated at not being able to land.
"Tell them the dalatrass authorized this herself, we NEED to get those females."
Wrex snarled. "I knew they would never allow us to REALLY get those females, let's see how they handle an airdrop by myself."
Wrex then opened the shuttle door and jumped right out.
"Wrex!" But the krogan was already gone. "Great, Tom, Liara, on me. We have to stop Wrex from screwing over these negotiations, on me." Shepard jumped out to a huge scene where Wrex was already being held at gunpoint.
A/N: Hey everyone! I hope you've enjoyed my story so far, sorry for ending the chapter at a cliffhanger like this, but at least all of you here already know what happens so it isn't really that bad. Or at least I hope it isn't. I'm going to be going on a bit of a vacation on spring break so I won't be posting a chapter next week, sorry! I just won't have the time to, I wish I could. I hope this chapter can at least keep you entertained for a while.
Now, for the reviews:
Tergen: I don't think I'm missing anything, I don't think this story is lacking at all, but that's my opinion, everyone has their own and mine is different from yours. Glad to see you're enjoying the story at least, and I don't think the story is too rushed, at least by my standards. At least it isn't as rushed as the first few chapters in the original story. I'm going to try to keep the pace I have right now since I think it isn't too fast, but it isn't too slow.
general-joseph-dickson: Well as long as people are enjoying my work I'm doing something correctly, right?