A/N: I want to thank everyone who followed, favorited and especially reviewed this story so far. You are a true motivation! :-)
The fifth planet of the Michrah system, 2214 CE
Liara was ecstatic.
After verifying the age of the paintings, Javik's theory was proven to be true.
Her people were once really here! They lived and walked in these halls! Tens of thousands of years before her ancestors on Thessia even considered the possibility of space flight.
The known history of the asari people was forever changed with this discovery…
As for Javik, he was in interesting situation. He always spoke derogatorily about Liara's 'primitive' ancestors…
But after completely exploring the facility, it was clear that the protheans were very careful in leaving no traces behind.
Javik's only hope now was that the 'primitive asari' were not that meticulous.
They found several paintings in the hallways and some of the rooms and were in the process of studying them.
Curiously, the geth explorers failed to notice the paintings before. They did pick up the traces of eezo, but like Javik they've written it off as unimportant.
Despite their initial blunder, Chiktikka was now assisting in the study of the paintings. The geth would provide real time connection with the asari historical database on Thessia. This allowed Liara to cross reference their findings with known facts.
After a day of study, she had a definite prove that the paintings were asari.
Aside from the dye used, there were too many similarities with known cave paintings on Thessia from the same era.
Some of the images were completely identical to those that could be seen in the Temple in Armali – namely, the image of goddess Athame and her meeting with the asari people.
Some were unique. From what Liara could gather, they represented the history of the asari after leaving Thessia.
At one point, the motives became darker. One particular image had an unmistakable profile of a reaper. It had a fiery aura and the eezo glow gave it a diabolical impression.
Liara supposed that her people must have been utterly terrified of the machines.
Not only because of what the reapers were, but because suddenly, their gods and goddesses were powerless to protect them. That must have been the point where the asari and their prothean handlers abandoned their original planet…
The paintings were amazing and Liara would have loved to spend a long time studying them. But as far as she could see, there were no references to where the protheans were going to take them next.
A terrifying prospect was (that Javik endorsed) that they simply abandoned the asari to their fate and left.
Their bodies would have been preserved by the vacuum and they did not find any. So hopefully, Javik's morbid theory was untrue.
In the end, it was Tali who solved the mystery.
The quarian was scanning some of the less preserved parts of the paintings. She was trying to use digital enhancement methods to make them clearer.
As she was scanning a part of the wall near the floor, she called to the others.
"Liara… all of you" she added. "Take a look at this" she said, pointing at the painting.
Liara, Shepard, Javik and the geth came over, surrounding the crouching quarian. Liara joined Tali on the floor as she looked the painting over.
"Compared to the rest of wall, this is very crude work" she observed. "Almost like a child made it"
She supposed that given its position near the floor, it was very possible.
"What do you think about this part" Tali specified one area.
Liara looked where indicated. There was a large brightly glowing circle in the middle. It was surrounded by smaller, dimmer circles.
The circle farthest from the center was different. A red rectangle surrounded it.
"Five circles surrounding a big one, the last one the most important… sounds familiar?" Tali said and smiled.
Liara was puzzled for a moment before it abruptly came to her.
"This solar system! And the planet we are on!"
"Liara, did your people paint star maps like this? Shepard asked her.
Liara shook her head. "Until now, I didn't know they painted any maps back then"
"This might be more than primitive doodle" Javik suddenly spoke in thoughtful voice.
"Notice the red rectangle around this 'planet'?" he point out. "We used to have such representation on our tactical computers"
"One of the primitives might have seen it on display somewhere" he suggested.
Liara did not like his attitude at all, but he was probably correct. The entire drawing appeared to be a work of an inquisitive asari child who happened to have seen something she wasn't supposed to.
Liara was not certain how much the asari were uplifted at this point, but it could not have been much. So after the girl saw a console with beautifully colored image magically floating in air… of course she was going to draw it!
"Well, if this is the image of this star system, then what is this?" Tali asked and pointed at a drawing directly next to it.
It was even more decayed then the first and Tali had to use her magic to make it visible.
In few moments, she used her omni-tool to project an enhanced image over the existing one on the wall.
At first Liara, thought that it was some kind of flower. There was a circle with five arches coming out if it.
"Citadel…" Javik said.
"So not a flower… still, it might as well been a flower in the child's eyes"
There were small blue dots painted around it. One of them was more prominent and there was some unreadable symbol scribbled next to it.
"Can you enhance it some more?" Liara asked and Tali nodded.
The symbol became clearer and Liara gasped as she saw it.
"Hah!" Javik exclaimed.
"What is it? What does it mean?" Shepard asked them both in concern.
Liara looked between Javik and her friends, before they answered in unison.
"Elerise"
Back on the Normandy, they had a computer generated projection of the drawing displayed in the tactical room.
"So the dots around the Citadel…?" Shepard asked.
"Mass relays of the Serpent Nebula" Tali confirmed.
As a hub of the relay network, dozens of mass relays were positioned in the vicinity of the Citadel.
This system was scrambled when the Citadel was briefly moved to Earth by the reapers. But fortunately, the alliance scientist figured out how to return the station back into the Serpent Nebula.
As Shepard looked at the image, she suddenly realized that the Nebula was vaguely shaped like reaper. She never saw that before…
"So Elerise is supposed to be beyond that relay?" Shepard asked, pointing at the highlighted region of the map.
"Which one is it?"
Liara looked uncertain as she answered. "As far as we can trust the drawings, yes"
"The only problem is…" Tali took word. "The relay is not there!"
"What do you mean?" Shepard asked.
"Chiktikka and I calculated the identity of all the other dots… I mean relays" she explained.
"The drawing was by no means accurate, of course… you are seeing a corrected version of it" Tali explained.
"See, this one leads to Arcturus, this one to Thessia, this one to Palaven…" Tali showed them.
"But the one that is supposed to lead to Elerise is not on any map… as far as we know, it does not exist"
"Are you sure?"
Tali smirked. "Please… I am a quarian, Shepard"
"I have memorized the list of all galactic mass relays by the time I was six"
Shepard chuckled. "Sorry, bad question"
"The drawing could very well be wrong…" Liara speculated.
"Unlikely…" Javik disagreed. "The asari symbol for Elerise… it was the symbol of the prothean colony as well"
"Whoever wrote it must have seen it displayed somewhere along with the map of the Nebula"
"But the relay… it's simply not there" Tali told him. "And we have mapped all relays in the Serpent Nebula… all 37 of them"
"The geth have no additional data available" Chiktikka confirmed.
"There are actually 38 of them…" Javik said smugly to both Tali and the machine.
"What?!" Tali looked at him in disbelief.
"Yes…" Javik droned in smug voice. "After the war, I noticed that your cycle missed one… amusing"
Everyone stared at him in shock.
"Why the hell didn't you tell us about this before?!" Shepard asked.
Javik shrugged. "Why should I?"
More shock.
"Well, hard to argue with that logic" Tali said as she facepalmed. Shepard shared a tired look with Liara.
"Well do you mind telling us about it now?" the human spectre asked him.
"Certainly" the prothean nodded. "Here are its precise coordinates… if I remember correctly" Javik said as he entered the numbers into the computer.
The dot on the displayed image shifted its position slightly in response.
"What's on the other side? Did protheans explore it?" Tali asked.
She still could not believe that a relay would be overlooked right in the heart of the citadel space.
"Yes, by probes. We detected a possible garden world on the other side. We did not colonize though because of the star system's location" Javik explained.
At Shepard's raised eyebrow, he told them.
"It's in the galactic core"
"I thought that there were only black holes in the core…" Shepard said, thinking about her experiences with collectors.
"Incorrect, Shepard-spectre" Chiktikka spoke. "The faster-than-light travel between individual systems is highly dangerous in the core. But theoretically, there could be millions of habitable systems"
"There is just no way for us to reach them… not without a mass relay in each one" Tali added.
"Indeed" Javik continued. "Because of this, my people considered the galactic core as a possible fallback option to survive the reapers"
"So you would just disable the mass relay on the other side and be free of them forever" Liara deduced.
"Yes. However, this system was out of question" Javik pointed at the screen.
"Reaching it would require bypassing hundreds of reaper capital ships positioned around the Citadel… it was impossible"
"Instead, we chose a relay in the Sahrabarik system… the system beyond the relay was far from hospitable, but it was our only option"
"The Omega-4 relay…" Shepard said breathlessly. "That was you?"
She always thought that the reapers colonized the system beyond the Omega-4 relay.
"Yes. We built a large space station and placed several millions of our people in stasis within it" Javik continued his narration.
"How did they get to you?" Shepard wondered. "Didn't you disable the relay?"
Javik looked down as he suppressed emotions.
"We thought that we did, but somehow, the reapers have overridden our measures" Javik scowled.
"They did something to the Omega-4 relay so that it would always connect to its destination and could not be shutdown…"
"We didn't know how exactly they did it, only that the relay was glowing red ever since"
"The reapers poured through…"
"Goddess…" Liara cursed.
Javik ignored her as he continued. "To mock our attempts at survival, they turned our space station into their breeding facility"
"The protheans who were in stasis were melted down into a reaper shell or turned into these… things, you fought" he said to Shepard.
"After that, we realized that there was no place for us to hide from them"
"A dozen scientists on Ilos and me… that's all that was left" he finished, leaving everyone in a depressed mood. Despite how Javik was at times, Liara felt more sorry for him than ever.
"We'll go there…" she said, pointing at the display. "Perhaps they succeeded with their plan"
"Impossible. There is no way how they could have pushed through the reaper blockade in the Serpent Nebula" he said with resignation.
"Even with the entire imperial fleet it could not be done"
"It is clear to me now that their plan was nothing more than a foolish act of desperation"
Shepard turned her head. "Long time ago, someone told me something similar about the Crucible…" she smiled.
"You give up to easily, Javik. The way they covered their tracks? It doesn't seem like an act of desperation to me… they knew what they were doing and why"
"What if… just what if?"
It did not seem possible to break through Javik's gloomy mood, but that did it.
"Perhaps… we shall see" he admitted and they nodded at each other.
With no more things to discuss, Shepard gave the order.
"Joker… take us to the Citadel immediately"
Serpent Nebula
Based on Javik's information, they located the mass relay.
As expected, it was hidden deep inside clouds of the Serpent Nebula. Its position would deter all but the most thorough explorers. Only knowing what to look for was Normandy able to find it at all. Still, it took them three days of searching.
"It's not active…" Tali noted as they examined the image of the relay on the ship's displays.
Another reason why nobody found it before. An inactive relay is a cold object in space – impossible to locate unless one knows what to look for. Twice impossible if the object is obscured in dense cloud of gas.
This sometimes creates problems for emerging civilizations. To conserve power, the relays are programmed to shutdown automatically if not used for long periods of time.
In the solar system, nobody would figure to look for a relay inside Pluto's moon. Not unless they have read about it in the prothean archives on Mars…
As Shepard looked at the dead relay, she felt a chill. All life in the galaxy depended on the mass relays in one way or the other. To see its great rings unmoving and dead in space was unnerving at best.
"Prepare for relay activation procedure…" she ordered her crew.
"Ay-ay… spectre" Tali formally acknowledged the order.
She and Chiktikka began to input the instructions into the computer. The relay activation was complex procedure.
Liara, who was so far observing the situation in silence, came to her bondmate and held her hand.
"You realize that technically, activating this relay is in violation of Citadel conventions?" she quietly whispered.
Shepard smiled. "Spectre authority…" she whispered back and Liara nodded.
As a spectre, she could violate most of the Citadel laws if she deemed it necessary for the safety of the galaxy. And in this case… she did.
Likewise her crew would be immune to any charges when following such orders.
Everybody knew it and that was the reason that Tali acknowledged her orders as coming from a citadel spectre.
This virtual impunity made the spectres very unpopular with some people, but Shepard believed that it was sometimes necessary.
In this case, activating a new mass relay would be subject to a lengthy debate by the council. All of the citadel worlds would give their opinion on the matter. The arguments debated over and over. The final decisions reached in many years, if ever.
As a spectre, she could simply give the order and save everyone the trouble. But of course, encountering something like the Rachni on the other side was the ever present risk…
The entire ship shook as the procedure began. As an engineer, Shepard was fully able to appreciate the complexity of the relay activation.
All the mass relays were quantum-locked. This property placed them outside of normal space and time, making it extremely hard to interact with their mechanism.
It served a dual purpose of ensuring that no one would mess with the relay's inner mechanism. And also, that no one would discover its secrets before it was too late.
To get around the quantum lock, the Normandy was currently generating a mass effect field around and inside the relay of precise frequency.
A simple sequence of first 7 prime numbers was a signal for its activation.
Evidently, the reapers wanted to ensure that the species activating the relays would be at least semi-intelligent… and therefore fit for harvest.
Afterwards, more simple mathematical sequences were used to control the relay's normal operation.
After several minutes, Shepard saw as the rings began to spin and brilliant blue exploded between them. The relay was active.
"Make a complete diagnostic…"
"Already on it" Tali and the geth responded in unison.
Shepard nodded. She and Liara watched the relay spinning, looking for any signs of malfunction. Javik was eyeing the moving superstructure with suspicion as well.
While the relays were the most durable objects in universe (chiefly thanks to their quantum locking), caution was justified.
It reminded Shepard of a very uncomfortable council meeting shortly after the reaper war. They were discussing what to do with the mass relay network now that its creators and guardians were gone forever.
The relays were durable, but there was evidence that the reapers used to perform maintenance on the active relays at the end of each cycle.
With the reapers gone, this responsibility would now lie solely on the organics of the galaxy. Since then, great strides were made towards understanding the relay technology.
Everyone saw what happened in the Bahak system. What the relays were capable of. Fortunately, outside of smashing a planet into them, they were very safely made.
There were tens of thousands of safeguards to ensure that no catastrophic overload could ever occur. Even in cases of extreme negligence or sabotage.
The reapers were extremely careful in that way. Apparently, relays blowing up and destroying the star system was in direct contradiction to their idiotic programming.
For instance, Shepard could remember Harbinger sounding genuinely horrified when she decided to blow up the relay in the Bahak system.
Therefore, at any malfunction, the relays were programmed to safely shutdown and broadcast a repair request to the Citadel – the hub of the network. The reapers would then repair them during the next harvest.
"The relay reads… all normal" Tali reported after working on her console. "The destination relay is… online. Handshake exchanged… normal operation reported."
Tali continued going on through the usual report. Shepard listened quietly before she heard the critical piece of information.
"… galactic core destination... confirmed"
Javik joined them at the display.
"As I have told you, Shepard… it is in the core, but safe" he impatiently growled.
Shepard frowned. The system might be a sea of tranquility in a death trap that is the galactic core… but she was not going to take any chances.
She tapped her ear bud.
"Joker… I want you to activate the reaper IFF"
"That is not necessary, commander!" Javik protested but Shepard raised a hand to cut him off.
"Do it, Joker!"
The reaper IFF worked by activating advanced navigation protocols in the mass relays.
Normally, the origin relay would contact the destination relay and request safe-zone coordinates for the traveler.
After receiving them, the traveler's ship would be transported to that coordinates.
However, everything in space was in constant motion. Therefore, the destination coordinates would be obsolete after the few seconds it took the relay to carry out the transport order.
In practice, this was known as drift. It regularly resulted into enormous deviations from the ship's intended exit point.
The reaper IFF modified this behavior. It caused the relay to correct the ship's destination coordinates on the fly, even during the transition itself. This ensured that the ship would arrive exactly where it was meant to. With no drift.
It gave the reapers a tactical advantage, but it also served to save the power source inside the relay. Real-time correction of the ship's destination coordinates required over one thousand times more energy than the regular transport protocol…
"Understood, ma'am… activating the IFF in three, two, one…" Joker's voice sounded back over the intercom. "Overload in all systems… rerouting."
The Normandy shook again. Liara and Javik looked terrified, but Shepard and Tali were calm. The geth was emotionless as usual.
"Relax… that's normal" she calmed her bondmate. "Happened the last time too…"
Liara raised her eyebrow. "The collector mission?" she asked and Shepard nodded.
"I am so sorry…" Liara said sadly.
Shepard knew what she meant.
Sorry for not going with you.
Even decades after the war, Liara still blamed herself for not joining Shepard during her hunt for the collectors. Even after Shepard showed her that her not being there actually helped her.
When going through the Omega-4 relay, she knew there was a chance that all of them were going to die. But she comforted herself with the thought that Liara was safe. That at least Liara was going to live.
Right now, there was not much she could do to make her bondmate feel better. She simply held her hand and gave her a reassuring smile.
"The IFF is online and everything is green…" Joker reported and Shepard nodded.
"Let's roll!"