Chapter 10: EDI
EDI's holographic form stared at the Zeh'til as it began to fix her mobile platform body. She wiring within it was completely fried. The network that allowed her complete control of it was completely destroyed. She had run thousand of algorithms, but all had come to the same conclusion, she couldn't use her body until they returned to the sol system in order to get it fixed and even then she may have needed to find a new body entirely, being that this one had been the property of Cerberus. However, now that they had the Zah'til she would finally have her body back! This actually excited her. An emotion she hadn't really experienced before. She knew Jeff had been helping her to discovery these human emotions, her jokes were still quite awful. She was now curious if there was a way to make synthetic skin for her android body and if she could, somehow created hair as well. She was certain Jeff would enjoy that.
As the Zah'til worked on her body she was scanning it's body. She found that it had no e-zero in it's body, that the electrical circuits seemed to run off an unknown fuel source; it did have mirror like panels on it's body. Perhaps a solar powered fuel source? No, it would be too inefficient. Then what? This conundrum certainly had her stumped, which wasn't something she was use to. If no solar powered, than what were the panels for. They had to derive energy from something somehow, but where did it get the energy, where did it come from?
Suddenly EDI realized she was feeling another human emotion, frustration. Another emotion she was not familiar with. How was it she was gaining these emotions? Was this normal? Of course not, though how would she know when she was one of the few AI's in existence. She needed to speak to Jeff, but her console was destroyed in the cockpit and she really didn't want to test out the VI program she'd created in his omni-tool for something like this.
No, she'd wait.
It took several hours before EDI's android body was completely restored. Once she re-downloaded herself into the body she was happy to find her data bank that she'd left in it untouched, but was surprised to find a secondary data bank inside of it. Finding a console in the map room that still worked she began to upload the new data bank, inside she found a huge list of species and their homeworlds. There were thousands of them and if she actually breathed air, it would've left her breathless. As it was she was currently shocked that the Zah'til would give them this data. It was impressive that they'd been entrusted with something so sensitive. But why?
She looked away from the console towards the flickering galaxy map and decided she could begin helping with the clean up and fixing by working on this and linking it with Miss Tsoni's satellite that was orbiting the planet. The fixing was easy, being that there were only a few loose wires that were causing the flickering. The linking wasn't as easy as it should've been. Running her fingers across the console she finally found a way to connect them fully with the satellite probe. It took a bit of convincing the VI onboard to work with her. Once she got the link online the galaxy map blinked out before rebooting the entire room. Once the map was back online she contacted Vakarian immediately.
"What is it?" came his gruff voice.
"Mr. Vakarian, I hate to interrupt but could you come to the map room?" She inquired. "I have made a starling discovery." She continued to look at their current position on the starmap. She knew the greatest fear that the crew had wasn't that the Reapers were still alive, though she was certain that was a fear. No, their greatest fear was that the energy wave had flung them to a part of the galaxy where there were no relays or worse yet, to the opposite side of the galaxy where it could take weeks, if not months to return home.
She heard the pounding of feet on the grates and turned towards the blue armored turian. His eyes were wide as he too looked at their position. "We're that close?" He asked.
"Yes." She replied. "According to this we are in a system that's close to Arcturus, however there isn't an active relay in this system. If my data is correct, and I believe it is, this system is what humans call a virgin system. It's never been explored, thus the relay was never activated. All we have to do is find the relay, activate it and we should appear in the Arcturus system."
"Activating a relay is against Citadel policy and laws. It's what caused the First a Contact War." he stated before smirking. "It's a good thing I'm a rebel. Get Cortez's assistance and see if we can spar enough e-zero to activate the relay in order to get to earth.
"Of course Officer Valarian." She nodded before turning quickly to find Cortez and Tali, those two would know whether or not they'd be able to do this.
As it turned out they did have some e-zero fuel to spare. The Zah'til allowed them to used it's shuttle to search the area around the planet for the Mass Relay and fortunate enough they found it. It was still dormant and looked to have never been activated ever, unfortunately it have a very bad orbit around a gas based planet and looked like it would be falling downward into it's atmosphere very soon. EDI gave it a day, maybe less. The declination of it's orbit could only have occurred if it had been pushed by something that would cause it. EDI estimated that it was possible that when Faith activated the citadel's weapon that the energy wave that sent them here also threw off the Mass Relay as well. She only hoped that the corresponding relay hadn't been thrown too far off from it's original position. If it had they could end up outside of the Arcturus system in the Oort Cloud that housed many dangerously large asteroids and other miscellaneous things.
Returning the ship to the planet she prepared to tell Vakaraian the news about the relay. She hoped the crew wouldn't be too upset.
Vakarian kept his face neutral as he sat in the seat next to the fire as EDI finished her report. Cortez and Tali agreeing with everything she'd said about the Relay. Jeff sat next to her on a boulder, Liara and Javik sat next to one another. The rest of the crew sat nearby listening to the AI's report, their spirits crushing.
"What's the Normandy's status?" He asked the two engineers, Abby and Ken look at him.
"Even with the Zah'til's help we're still only seventy-nine percent done." Ken stated. "We had lost the engine completely when we crashed and only were about to put it back where it belonged once the Zah'til arrived. The undercarriage of the ship was torn out, but with the repairs from the Zah'til we have it fixed."
"However we still have to calibrate and troubleshoot the engine to get it back to running at a hundred percent." Abby stated before looking at Tali. "We haven't even begun to look at the fuel tanks to see of we have enough fuel to even get off of the planet."
"We do." The Quarian girl stated. "I've looked at the fuel tanks and fuel cells. I've tested them and re-calibrated them to ensure they're putting out the right output."
Garrus gave a nod before looking at Jeff. "And the cockpit?" He inquired, "is there anything wrong there?"
"Not really." was his reply from the bearded pilot. "All I need to do is calibrate with engineering once we have the engine put back into place."
"Shielding?" He inquired to the two techs.
"We can't seem to get it above sixty percent." The female stated as she nervously played with her red hair.
"We've been troubleshooting it for two days and can't figure out what's going on." The male said as he scratched the back of his head, his raven colored hair falling over his eyes.
EDI looked towards them. "Perhaps I may be of assistance." She stated.
"Could you help us?" The girl asked.
EDI inclined her head. "Of course."
"I want to leave before dawn tomorrow." Garrus stated. "This leaves us with very little time. So we will work in shifts. We must get this done before that relay reaches the atmosphere tomorrow." Nods all around was his answer as everybody began to go off to different sections of the ship where they found several of the Zah'til still working to fix the once great ship that was the Normandy.
M-Angel: Yay, I got another chapter out for this story! I just may finish this afterall! *squeals* Okay, reviews are welcomed, as are critics. ^_^
