The St. Helens, flagship of the Alliance 5th fleet, 11am shipboard time
Steven Hackett, acting human councillor and commander-in-chief of the Alliance navy was sitting on an examination table stripped down to his dress uniform trousers while his personal physician, Dr. Stansen, played a medical omni-tool up and down his chest. He was attending a much needed check up. After Commander Shepard's funeral his health had taken a turn for the worse.
"Hm." Said the doctor. Without his customary spectacles his watery gray eyes looked small and worried.
Hackett sighed, his gravely voice rumbling in his throat.
"I know that look doctor. What is it?" Stansen straightened up and looked him in the eye. 'How to break bad news 101.' Thought Hackett, bracing himself for the worst.
"Your heart palpitations are getting worse, given the speed at which your health has declined I would recommend a transplant within the month, of course any unnecessary stress would only exacerbate the problem. My professional recommendation is that you take at least an eight week sabbatical." Hackett stared him down calmly.
"You know I can't do that doctor."
"Fine, I'm not about to argue with you about this sir. The real problem is finding a donor. I have the facilities to perform a transplant but without an organ bank…" Stansen ran a hand nervously over his bald scalp; he seemed unwilling to say what they were thinking.
At that moment a very flustered aide wearing the stripes of a corporal in the intelligence corps burst through the infirmary door.
"Saved by the bell?" Said the admiral with a straight face.
The aide was so flustered that he didn't salute or wait for permission before speaking.
"Sir nineteen Reaper capital ships just dropped out of FTL outside the nebula. They're right up our ass's sir!" Hackett's face drained of all colour and he gripped the table with deathly strength. In a flash Stansen was at his side, taking heart readings & placing a hand on his arm. "Admiral!"
Hackett waved him off and stood, already pulling on his vest and reaching for his uniform jacket.
"Corporal accompany me to the bridge, order all hands to battle stations but tell all vessels not to engage until I give the order or they are fired upon. Contact the other fleets: I want the Turians to form up on our right flank and the Quarians on our left. And get the council on the horn."
The young corporal did salute this time, already tapping commands on his datapad.
"Yes sir."
Normandy SR2 11:12am shipboard time
An unfamiliar male voice sounded over the Normandy's internal com.
"This is Stone, all hands prepare for battle." Major Thomas Stone had been sent over by Alliance command to act as the ships temporary captain the day before yesterday.
Liara had tried to tell herself that he was just doing his job, that her dislike of him was purely based on the fact that he was Shepard's replacement. Then she'd read his file, they called him the butcher of Torfen.
Liara poked her head out into the mess hall; ensigns were dashing every which way scrambling to their battle stations. She recognised one or two of them as long time crew members but not to talk to. Now that the Normandy was back with the fleets everyone had gone their separate ways, it reminded Liara of the first time Shepard had been lost in action two years ago.
Tali had returned to the flotilla, James had left to pursue his N7 training and Javik had agreed to be interviewed by a panel of Prothean experts. Normally she would have been there in a flash but she still couldn't leave the Normandy behind. Even Garrus had left to advise the Primarch, leaving only EDI up in the cockpit and Kaidan who was… striding towards her. She breathed a sigh of relief, a familiar face was just what she needed.
"Liara what's going on?" Kaidan's husky voice was sharp with worry, his brow furrowed above his dark soulful eyes.
"Lets find out." Kaidan might not know that she was the Shadow Broker but he certainly knew she was an information trader (or he wouldn't have come to her instead of Stone) so she didn't see the harm in letting him watch her work.
They stepped together into the XO's cabin, he looked around at the bulky data banks and wall spanning monitors with interest. "This is some setup."
Liara made straight for the terminal.
"Glyph: tap into the council's priority channel please." The floating drone buzzed over Kaidains head to hover at its mistress's shoulder. "At once doctor."
Four of the screens lit up and Kaidan couldn't help a sharp intake of breath as he recognised the figures, he had reported to them not five hours ago.
Admiral Hacket, Primarch Victus, the acting Asari & Salarian counsillors.
"That's… Liara you do realise I'm a spectre. I could report you for treason." She turned to him, her eyes were devoid of their usual compassion. It was the same look he had seen on Mars as she had executed two Cerberus troopers.
"No. You won't." Feeling slightly cowed he turned his attention to the scene unfolding on the screens.
It looked like Hackett had just joined the discussion.
Even from the poor quality images Kaidan could read their body language.
Hackett looked more tired than he had ever seen him and the councillors looked scared. At least the Primarch looked his usual straight backed self except that his mandibles were fluttering which Kaidan knew from Garrus was a racial tic indicating extreme stress. The Salarian councillor was the first to speak.
"What do we do? The war is supposed to be over."
"Why aren't they attacking?" Asked the Asari councillor.
Hackett lowered his head, collecting himself. When he spoke it was in a low serious tone.
"I'm afraid I don't know the answer to that. But I do know that we cannot afford to provoke the Reapers, they effectively have us pinned, as long as we remain in the nebula we can't jump to FTL. We hoped that it would protect us form surprise attack, I think it's safe to say that plan blew up in our faces."
The admiral's negative comments took Kaidan by surprise, he was normally such an inspirational speaker, was this what he was like behind closed doors?
It seemed it would be up to Victus to rally the leader's morale. Luckily he was up to the challenge.
"The way I see it we have two options: fight or flee. We are the cycle that completed the crucible. We are responsible for the miracle of Palavin, the reclamation of Rannoch and the victory over Earth. I think our combined forces are capable of driving off a score of capital ships." At his words the councillors looked at each other and, seeing the look on each others faces, nodded. The light of defiance re-entered Hackett's eye.
"That said." Victus continued. "A victory here would be costly and I'm not sure what we would stand to gain. We have to look at the bigger picture: the Reapers have reappeared and I doubt that there are only nineteen left in the galaxy. I suggest we fall back to Beckenstien, meet up with admiral Raan's fleet and then formulate a plan of action. I volunteer the Turian fleets to act as rearguard."
Once he'd finished speaking there was a few moments of thoughtful silence before the Asari councillor spoke up.
"As a working plan your proposal is agreeable. I don't think now is the time to test admiral Xen's idea of contacting the Reapers, not while our backs are to a wall."
Hackett stood. "Then we had best get the fleets moving, council adjourned."
As the councillors gradually filtered out the screens slowly emptied until there was nothing left to see.
"I should go, Stone will get the order to move out soon." Kaidan left in a hurry, without looking back. He didn't trust her.
Looking out the porthole Liara imagined she could see the insectoid shapes of the Reapers but even if they had been close enough for a visual they would be obscured by the nebula. As they often did these days Liara's thoughts took on a gloomy cast. It had been a mistake to show Kaidan.
How could the Reapers be here? Had all the effort and sacrifice that had gone into the crucible been in vain? Had Shepard died for nothing? She had no answers.
The morale of the fleets had been fairly high of late, with the general consensus being that the war was over and that a long, hard but manageable period of rebuilding lay ahead, but now? Everything was up in the air again.
A sudden blare of static through her terminal speakers tugged her back into the moment. For a brief second all the monitors in the room were filled with tumbling lines of code before a red error message flashed up:
DATA SATURATION 100%
Liara blinked. Her network was built to withstand the strain of a galaxy wide extranet flow, what could have been so CPU intensive that it crashed the system? More to the point who was responsible, the Reapers sprang to mind but with the combination of the Reaper IFF and EDI the Normandy was practically immune to cyberwarfare.
She spent a few minutes rebooting her hard-drives, once that was done she had Glyph run a diagnostic.
"All firewalls appear operational doctor." No sooner had the drone finished talking than another burst made Liara cover her ears. This time however there was no system overload and she could have sworn she heard a faint voice behind the wall of white noise, heavily distorted.
"Glyph can you sample the interference and play it back?"
"Of course doctor, one moment."
Quieter this time the strange voice was easer to distinguish it sounded like a metallic, artificial voice was saying 'lut sun' or something similar.
"Clean it up." She commanded, determined to get to the bottom of this unexpected mystery. It played back once more and this time it was perfectly understandable.
"Liara T'soni."
The voice was familiar to her. She had heard it on Virmire and listened to the recordings from Horizon. It was a Reapers voice. She lent back & rubbed her forehead, stunned.
"What is going on?"