SALVAGE FLOTILLA VICTOR CHARLIE 149
NEAR THE CHARON RELAY
SOL SYSTEM
SEPTEMBER 2187
"I thought with a shudder of what Old Castro had told Legrasse about the Old Ones;
'They had come from the stars, and had brought Their images with Them.'"
CAPTAIN OF THE ALLIANCE SALVAGE BARQUE STARDUSTER and Chief Technician Abby Buchanan gazed at the monitor before her, checked the updates streaming in. In the distance, the Charon mass relay's cold blue light glittered through the debris field her remote salvage teams were swarming over.
No sentient life forms were allowed in close proximity to that particular debris. Too dangerous.
Even dead, Reapers could still indoctrinate.
They could not, however, be allowed to remain where they fell. Even dead, the damn things and their remains were causing havoc.
Standing in her observation alcove on the Starduster, she pondered the monstrosity before her. Above her head an area scan counted the debris of seven Reapers, the wrecks of about thirty Alliance, turian and asari vessels, all in various stages of salvage. She 'dialed' in a close-up view of the Reaper, frowned. The thing had a hole in it amidships you could pilot a cruiser through. Several other salvage ships slowly cruised the debris field, among them two large asari vessels and three small salarian 'orb' ships, each containing a crew of five. The salarians were always rather specific in salvage operations, and didn't need big ships to do it. The Starduster could, in a pinch, carry the entire wreckage of a Normandy-class frigate.
"Abs – "came from behind her. Malcolm, her drone tech, on another coffee run. He was right on time.
"Present."
"Coffee?" She glanced back, nodded. He saw the close-up, stepped into the drone control alcove, handed her the drink, which she sipped gratefully.
"There's some nightmare fuel," he said, quietly, as if even speaking loudly around the image might reawaken the cursed device. He shuddered. "I'm glad we don't have windows. Scans are bad enough."
"Windows? When you can afford it, we'll get some." She shook her head. Transparent metals were expensive as hell. The 'Duster wasn't some overpriced asari pleasure liner.
Abby sneered at the hulk.
"Fuck that thing. Dead is dead and good riddance." Malcolm sighed behind her. "Ever read the specs on one of those bastards?"
"Nope. Don't need details. Just glad they're kaput. Haven't even seen any of the documentary vids. Always too busy."
"Y'know, your vocation is the reason those things existed at all."
He gave her a sideways skeptical look.
"The hell! I study AI applications – I don't create AI's."
Abby crossed her arms, sipped again.
"According to the official history, the Reapers were created around a billion years ago or so. Can you believe that? They've been butchering trillions upon trillions of people and erasing whole civilizations for over a billion years." She whistled softly. The numbers of dead never ceased to stagger her entire brain. "Does your head in."
"I heard that."
"But do you know why?"
He shook his head. He could see she really wanted to tell him.
"Why?" She smirked a familiar smirk.
"Software glitch." He was completely incredulous.
"Bullshit!"
"Really. I saw the leaked scans from Shepard's suit on the 'Net. The whole mess of them was controlled by an AI stuck in a cyclic logic problem loop."
Malcolm shook his head, not believing a word.
"Come on – that wasn't a code error – and for a billion years? As advanced as they are they had no error-correcting software? That's crap." She had an answer for that, too.
"Hardwired core stuff in the Intelligence. Frigging loopy logic trap. A massive AI blindspot."
He shut his mouth, thought. Yeah, that could do it. Even AI's can't undo those. You'd have to wipe the whole thing and start over.
"It had managed to come up with three 'possible solutions', it had said. Three. In a billion years. Thank all the gods, Shepard was smarter than that."
Malcolm nodded, shuddered at the "what-could-have-happened". He'd heard of those.
"It figured it'd be something simple," Malcolm said. "Someone somewhere in the past had some sense."
Abby agreed, sighed.
The Crucible had added an option to its 'solutions' the AI had kept to itself, something Abby couldn't imagine how Shepard had ferretted out, (although she suspected the quarians might have had something to do with it); the salarian media called it the 'Dark Energy Solution', everyone else called it 'Shepard's Choice' - and it was indeed simplicity itself: the Crucible had added code to the Intelligence, forcing it to obey, the contribution of some unnamed dead race.
The Crucible had then no choice but to present every solution it actually had – and Shepard chose.
He picked the one the Intelligence didn't like. It was then commanded to fire a single harmonically-phased nuclear pulse, amplified by the Relays, that did nothing particularly spectacular.
It just fried the kinetic barriers of the Reapers.
Just that. All of them.
The Intelligence had considered it, naturally, a 'futile solution', and thus never included it on its roster of 'choices'.
Shepard had thought otherwise.
Against the combined fleets of Sword, and the space-borne Reapers suddenly losing their-near-impenetrable barriers... they weren't pushovers by any means, but they came apart like any other ship after that.
On many planets, almost a full year later, however, the "Hammer" part of the Last Offence was still raging. Orbital bombardment took care of Destroyers and their ilk, but millions upon millions of husks of all species still had to be shot one at a time – or bombed to hell, where appropriate.
Abby suspected that particular part of the war would take a few more years yet.
The Intelligence had been preserved, and all the collected knowledge of all the civilizations it had murdered over the uncounted millennia remained. Its chamber in the Citadel was rapidly on its way to becoming one of the largest libraries in the Galaxy – if not the largest ever. Scientists of every stripe, historians, teachers - the list grew larger every day - clamoured for access. The 'personality' of the Intelligence – if it could be called that – had apparently been purged when the Crucible fired. It would take centuries to sift all the data. Abby figured the asari were probably rubbing their hands with glee at the idea. Geth had volunteered to help organize the myriad remaining programs left over, as they so closely resembled the geth themselves pre-sentience.
"It cost us, though. Still costing us. Damn." She checked her updates again, shook her head at the wreckage out there. It was the same all over, in space and planetside. The turian, asari, and batarian homeworlds smashed. Hanar, elcor, volus, and salarians had fared somewhat better, but they were still hurting.
Turian casualties Palaven-side were damn-near sixty-five percent, the planet itself a crushed and smouldering ruin; almost as high for those in the once-huge turian fleets, the redoubtable soldiers never backing down, never giving a centimeter. Determination and legendary courage, yes, but it cost them. It would take the turians a long time to recover.
Asari around fifty-five percent dead, a third of Thessia still on fire. The batarians were down to a few hundred million spread across a few paltry colonies. Without their paranoid Hegemony, though, they were gaining new respect. New leaders had looked into the past and didn't like it. It was a new galaxy, they said, and the batarians were new, now, too. They weren't welcomed with open arms, it was true, but they weren't brushed aside, either.
The salarians were still in good shape, were picking up a lot of slack, and the krogan were rather enjoying their new roles as galactic saviours and protectors, led by their Urdnot messiahs. After the Cure and the "Great Heroic Stand", what Wrex and Bakara said went. Period. Being krogan the krogan armies grumbled, but they obeyed. Abby smirked again. Right now, in many major universities, even one or two on Sur'kesh, of all places - after over a thousand years - krogan were enrolling in the sciences – arts, culture and mechanics, technical schools and guilds. They had an irradiated culture to rebuild. It would be odd to one day address a krogan as 'doctor' or 'professor'.
The new Mordin Solus School of Applied Sciences on Tuchunka had to turn potential students away. Solus and Shepard had a statue together on the site that once contained the Shroud that was almost half-a-kilometre tall. Krogan couples used it as a pilgrimage point before moving to the breeding planets.
Moratoriums were being held on AI's and synths everywhere. The geth had retreated back behind the Veil with the quarians, and in a surprising twist, it was the quarians themselves who were fighting the hardest to defend geth 'rights'. Abby suspected that it was more the immense military power that particular alliance gave the quarians that was behind all the sudden concern for their once-to-be-exterminated-at-any-cost newfound allies. There were doubtless some old grudges still festering in the quarian psyche, even with rumours of the Council newly-granting them the return of their Embassy on the Citadel as a reward for their aid.
The Citadel races had, after a fashion, agreed to agree that the geth would likely be exempt from any new legal restrictions. Geth versus Reaper had been something to behold.
Still, she wondered, with all the those quiet grudges and new-strutting quarian arrogance, just how long it might be before the Galaxy was at war with the quarians. At the rate the bucketheads were pissing people off, it wouldn't be long.
Humanity…? On Earth in 2184 numbered around eleven billion, seven hundred and fifty-five million, six hundred and eighty-three thousand, two hundred and twenty-odd souls at the census taken that year.
Humanity now, on the still-burning Earth, where even now Hammer continued to be waged; topped out at around four billion, two hundred million, not counting what was left of the colonies – but, the Alliance was still running, the Fleets halved and quartered and thirded but still nothing to take lightly, and colonies rebuilding at a feverish pitch. Malcolm had just come back from Far Meklav Colony a week earlier from his shore leave – the first joint Human-batarian effort, well, ever.
The threat of extinction changed a lot of perspectives.
Like anything, she mused, it was all a matter of time. It was a more than a little frustrating that most people seemed not to value change until they had to peer over an ocean of corpses to see it.
On her board, one of her drones chirped. It had found something. It relayed a scan and Abby frowned, told the drone to return with it.
"Lucen's Shine to Starduster, acknowledge."
The asari research vessel leading their salvage efforts. She reached over, hit her comm.
"Starduster – go ahead, Shine."
"Local sensors picked up a unknown energy spike in the vicinity of your Reaper hulk, appearing on course to your vessel. Can you confirm?"
"Stand by, Shine." She did a quick check. "That would be proprietary remote drone returning to this ship. It has reported an anomalous object within the local debris field – our side," - emphasizing salvage rights – "and is returning with it for extensive analysis. Standard procedure."
"We recommend caution, Starduster, the energy signature matches nothing in our database. It is not Reaper tech."
"Asari databases are pretty extensive," Malcolm added. He was shushed.
"Then we're not violating the Indoctrination Convention, Shine. Your caution is acknowledged and appreciated. We may be willing to share our findings. Perhaps. Starduster out."
Malcolm chuckled.
"You shouldn't be so perfunctory with the asari. They have long memories."
She scoffed.
"Screw 'em. They're just worried we found advanced tech before they did. They of all people should know better."
LUCEN'S SHINE waited and scanned. That energy reading was too different, even coming from Reaper debris, to be taken as lightly as the Starduster's crew so obviously did. Captain Aoi Salara sat and pondered and waited. An hour passed. The Starduster recalled all its drones, made a small course correction and drifted within a kilometer.
"Lucen's Shine, acknowledge." The voice was calm. Very calm. Almost bland. It was definitely the woman she'd spoken with earlier though.
"Go ahead, Starduster."
"Scans of the recovered object are inconclusive. We request asari expertise in this matter. Can you assist us?"
Salara blinked. Odd request coming from them. It must have been very unusual.
"We can, Starduster. Can you transmit…"
"Request transfer of object to you, Lucen's Shine." Again that oddly bland intonation.
"We will assist you, of course," Salara told them.
"Remote on route."
That was quick. Salara told the crew to expect it.
"Will you be sending any specialists of your own, Starduster?"
There was a long pause. A lieutenant reported the drone already docking.
"Negative."
Twenty minutes later, the salarians were enlisted to study the object.