An Engineer's Guide to the Technology of the Mass Effect Universe:


A/N: I read too much SCP, sue me. If you are interested in the hard technical details of Rydberg phenomena, a Google search will bring back three excellent but extremely technically heavy scholarly papers.

Any other method of the shit we see even in the games isn't really feasible. Single charge tunneling will not work, no matter what those hacks at Bioware claim. If you could pull that off you'd be a goddamned Time Lord, capable of generating whatever you wanted.


Jason Valthez walked along the carpeted blue corridor, glancing ever so often off to his right, where armaglass portals overlooked the expanse of Arcturus. The corridor was curved, with rich wood paneling and door after door with brass name plates that made his skin crawl with apprehension.

'Rear Adm. Jacek Kurgan, Intercession and Info Acquisition'

'Rear Adm. Lana Citran, Forward Hostile Research'

'Col. Jack Graham Kelly, Combat Mnmetics and Induced Remote Psychotropics'

'Commandant Lasar Brannigan, Black Rendition'

Jason didn't really want to know what Black Rendition was, and finally passed through a high archway set in blackened durasteel that opened out into a wide waiting area, heavy pillars of more durasteel flanking an armored double doorway and several smaller doors. Two heavily armed marines in unfamiliar looking flat-black segmented armor approached him, one with the bars of a lieutenant on his collar.

"I need your security pass, ID card, and for you to stand in the white marked box on the carpet by the scanning device when we tell you to, sir." The first marine's voice was bored but lined with a certain hardness, while the second had his fingertips tapping on his web-belt next the holster of a massive Zeus pistol.

Jason swallowed and gave a nervous smile, handing over the badge he'd been given and his Alliance identacard. He watched as the man slid the card, nodding as the blinking lights on the hand held device he ran it through turned green, then examined the card minutely before nodding a second time. "Here you go. The wall, sir."

Jason stepped onto the white metallic square nestled in among the thick blue pile carpet. A purplish beam from an emitter in the ceiling washed over him, and then a clear chime sounded. A VI's voice spoke quietly. "No indoctrincal lesions detected. No grayboxes detected. Hantaviral scans clear. No black nanological agents detected. Minor cyberware, lower back and right hand."

The two marines glanced at each other and then one tapped his omni-tool. "Colonel, Dr. Valthez is here to meet with Admiral Vandefar. He's clean."

The voice that came over the commlink was female and heavily accented with a strong Swahili tone. "Very good. Send him to me first. I will clear him through level II since he's not in the system, and take him to meet the admiral."

The marine clicked off. "Head through those double doors and all the way to the end of the corridor, the colonel's office is the last on the right." His mouth twitched. "And for God's sake don't piss the old warhawk off. She's got a razor tongue and hates kiss-asses."

Jason gave a little cough. "Thanks, Lieutenant." He took a deep breath and walked through the double doors.

If the corridor before had been lavish, then this one was frightening. It only held four doors, two on each side, and was twice as wide as the previous corridor. Everything was hardened laser steel, with a narrow strip of black carpet covering most of the floor. Automated turrets tracked him as he walked ahead slowly, and the symbol of Alliance R&D – a book over a sword – was embossed heavily into each of the wall panels.

He came at last to the designated door, flanked by a brass name plate that read 'Col. Nyomba Sahu, Project Security, Ahaltocob ' He hesitated in front of the door before tapping the haptic touch plate. "Lieutenant Valthez, ma'am.'

"Enter!"

He took another breath and stepped forward, the doors sliding open to reveal a room comprised almost completely of black armaplast and thick blackened steel bulkheads. A pair of glowing haptic screens covered in scrolling information took up two walls, the bottom of each split into multiple windows showing security camera feeds.

The third wall had a thickly-built metallic desk built into it, with rustic looking floor lamps of bronze on either side. As he entered the room fully, the woman sitting at the desk turned around and stood.

Her frame was massive, thick with muscle to the point of near masculinity, which was only enhanced by her titanic nearly seven foot tall frame. Her dark skin had a series of harsh, runic tattoos running down each side of her jawline, while one eye was framed in gruesome looking scar tissue and surmounted by a black-steel cybernetic eye. Her night-black hair was close cropped except near the front, forming two small bangs that framed her face. Her uniform was flat black with a armor panel across the chest, the sleeves rolled up to reveal one heavily muscled arm with an Alliance 'A' tattoo and one thick cybernetic arm with armor paneling. Thick steel toed boots thumped across the floor as she walked closer.

"Valthez. Bioethics and cybernetics, right?" Her voice was hard but still pleasant, although the exotic accenting gave her words an odd cadence.

He nodded, and her flat features broke into a sneering smile, narrowing her angry black eyes for a moment. "Good. You have no fucking clue why you're here, do you, Lieutenant? Why the Alliance would go to the trouble of salvaging the wreck of your career and want you to work for them?"

He straightened. "I can only make unsupported assumptions at this stage, Colonel." He licked his lips. "But if I had to guess, based on my background and work history, it has something to do with the work I did at Sirta that was of restricted nature and questionable ethical ramifications."

She looked at him a second and the sneer faded from her features, softening them ever so slightly. "Not an idiot, I see. Good. Sit." She gestured to a hard-backed chair near the desk and stumped over to sit in her own swivel seat.

As he sat, she fixed her dark, fierce gaze on him. "Before I begin, I need to make one thing clear. From this moment on, your mouth is to remain shut on what you do for us to everyone. Alliance R&D is already Nova clearance, and what you'll be working on is beyond Nova. It's Thaumiel."

He blinked as he sat. "I'm … not familiar with the reference. I thought Supernova was the highest possible Alliance clearance."

She snorted. "Nova is clearance only to the President, Joint Chiefs, AIS Director, and Lords of Sol. Supernova is only cleared to the AIS and the lords...Thaumiel is name-only clearance held by a total of nineteen people...until today. You are number twenty. The penalty for releasing this information level to anyone not cleared is death or worse. Thaumiel is a designation for the containment of threats to … human survival or even existence."

As his mind wondered what exactly could be worse than death, and then began thinking on what in the hell could threaten all of humanity, she tapped a control on her omni-tool and the doors locked with heavy thuds. The hum of a privacy generator erupted to life a moment later. "Bluntly put, Doctor, you're here to help us understand something we have come across. An anomaly of sorts, and one we think is going to present a problem in the future."

He arched an eyebrow. "Anomaly?"

She smiled that thin smile again, tapping her omni-tool. One of the screens on the wall blanked, a moment later displaying a clean-room facility with a badly damaged humanoid being on a white operating table. "In the aftermath of the Benezia Incident, we attempted to review a great deal of information found during the exploration of the sites on Noveria and in other places. We reviewed some of the more … curious and unexplained things left behind at those sites."

"Some of what we found was gruesome, most of it was impenetrable, and some of it violated the basic laws of thermodynamics. None of it was safe to use, much less research – and yet, if we failed to understand what we were and are dealing with, that would leave us vulnerable." She exhaled. "You'll be briefed on on the details later, by the Admiral. I just want to reinforce – the threat is real, dire, and is capable of fucking killing us and every other high order sentient being in the galaxy."

He swallowed. "I...see. How does this relate to my work, though?"

She gestured to the screen. "As I said, the Benezia Incident opened our eyes. Benezia T'Soni was one of the most powerful biotics in the known galaxy. She fought her way through God only knows what to get on the Citadel, and from Baroness Shepard's reports, beat the hell of out of a blademistress and took out a top flight Commissar, Shepard herself, and Lieutenant Commander T'Soni while badly wounded – and in the end, they didn't kill her."

He frowned. "I thought she was killed by her daughter."

Colonel Sahu shook her massive head. "No. The real story isn't important, but you might as well know. She got up after that last blast and eventually came to her senses when … something .. tried to puppet her into destroying the Citadel. According to Shepard, she was killed by the contained explosion of an asari warp sword, which should have vaporized her as cleanly as it did the decking below her feet."

She gave a feral smile. "Given the chaos in the Citadel after the Incident, it was hardly a surprise that an Alliance response team was the first to reach the site of the battle there. Keep in mind that, again, Benezia supposedly blew herself up by warp sword detonation, which has killed over six hundred people in the past and literally melted a battle tank. In the process of … securing the area, that team found what remained of the corpse of Benezia T'Soni below the Council meeting floor."

His eyes widened. "How?"

She tapped the tool again, displaying closeups of the corpse, naked. "By way of highly extensive and completely alien cybernetic technology. Saren was fitted with the same, but we had a very limited frame of time to study it. No one knows we have her body, and we've had all the time we need to examine it...and come to some fairly ugly conclusions."

Another gesture. "As you can see, some fifty five percent of the bodily mass survived. And based on repeated testing … the subject is not totally dead."

He gazed at the picture in a mixture of horror and wonder. "...but how? Her entire body is burned to a crisp, both legs are mostly gone, the left arm is missing, the skull – "

The colonel nodded. "I know. But there is still cellular, mitochrondrial and some other kind of activity going on inside her body. In fact, that's why we called you. Closer examination via magnetic resonance showed her entire body is literally overrun with nano-scale threads of some exotic metal, configured in chains wrapping around every major tissue, bone and organ remaining in the body."

She smiled, tapping her omni-tool again, and the scrolling text of Jason's research into sub-cellular cybernetic nanothreading appeared. "You are the foremost expert on this technology, yes? On your work on bio-synthetic regenerative resonance and regenerative nanothreading in general?"

He leaned back, a baffled expression crossing his features. "That work was abandoned. Not only was it completely unethical on every possible level – it would allow you to control a living being like a damned mech – it was economically unfeasible in terms of cost and maintenance and basically as unworkable as ship-scale omni-armor."

She leaned forward. "But you made a prototype, yes? Examined it? Found at least some methods to implement this sort of thing?"

He shook his head. "Not anywhere near on that scale! We could never come up with a way to deploy the high level of information needed to rebuild sub-cellular structures on that level or incorporate the needed cybernetic frameworks. In order to do that you'd need … gods, I don't even know. Some kind of super AI to manage all the connections – in real time! And the moment that shut off the being would most likely just … come apart into bionetic goo."

Colonel Sahu nodded. "Yes, I know. We pulled the research months ago, checking your work and that of Doctor Elisa Vaan to see if it matched up. Your method is, compared to what's inside Benezia, incredibly crude."

She squared her shoulders. "But someone – something – has mastered that technology. We have footage of the fights on the Citadel where the large krogan-hybrid creatures used the same tech when wounded. Don't worry. We aren't interested in using it ourselves. As you said, that would be unethical."

The almost sneering amusement in her voice made his stomach lurch as she continued. "But the Admiral wants to know how in fuck it works."

He blinked. "In the name of God, why? It's abominable – taking black nano and shoving a person full of it until they're no more than a sack of flesh shaped like their old form, but really just a template. What possible need would the Alliance have of studying it if Benezia is dead?"

Sahu laughed. "Like I said. She's not entirely dead. There's still cellular and nanonic activity whenever we take the corpse out of stasis. And … well. We need to know how it works so we can figure out a good method to counter it, to shut it off. We believe … based on interrogation of an asset taken in the Damocles Incident, that the batarians may have access to this technology."

A cold feeling crept up his spine. "...shut it off? Colonel, if the theories I had were correct, a fully nanothreaded device literally can't be destroyed except via direct contact with antimatter or some other method to completely, totally vaporize every last part of the body." He paused.

"Nanothreading involves a core reworking of the subject from the ground up. Every cell, every tissue and organ, all of it is suffused with nanothreads that make the subject much stronger and tougher. Each bit of this nanotech has the complete framework of the body it is installed into, and even a fragment of the flesh can recreate the entire being. And as long as it has access to repair material and it isn't completely vaporized, it will rebuild them."

She frowned, making her hard expression even harder. "What about energy? How does it power itself?"

He shook his head. "Rapid reconstruction will use a lot of energy, true. But even once that's drained, that doesn't stop it. Even our crappy prototypes could draw upon ambient heat differences, brownian motions, you name it. It won't be fast but it will still be repairing whatever it is attached to."

The colonel sighed. "That fits our observations, and it is what we expected, and yet we still need to know how to counter it."

He glanced at the screen with the image of the asari corpse. "How...fast is this regenerative effect happening on the subject?"

She snorted. "We're not worried about this trash." She gestured at the corpse of Benezia. "Although we are taking every precaution. We've got her sealed in a full-dark hardened remote lab facility in a rock orbiting a super giant, with enough M/AM explosives on the asteroid to vaporize a small moon and engines rigged up to plow it right into the sun. All examinations are done by remote robotics, and we've planted charge on the damned mass relay into the system just in case."

She sniffed. "But at the rate of 'repair' we're seeing, even if we were stupid enough to leave her out of stasis for long periods of time, Benezia will be waking up in about six thousand years. The larger problem is several pieces of evidence suggesting, as I said, that this may have been something certain batarians...possibly the Batarian Emperor himself...have access to."

She met his gaze."Tell me, doctor, how long could we last in a war against creatures all enhanced with nanothreading? Against a horde of enhanced batarians that could shrug off every wound, every injury, and regenerate even from being splattered into smoking paste?"

He shook his head. "Not long. In the … prototype I helped develop, we didn't have a full … deployment. Only major organs and some of the structure of the body itself. Even so, with every limit and failure we had, we were able to hit the experimental subjects with direct hits from HYDRA missile systems – and they survived."

The colonel leaned back in her over-sized chair. "That sounds about like the face of it. You can understand exactly why this is a Very Bad Thing. The number of people who can even understand this tech is probably something I can count on the fingers of one hand." She lifted up her cybernetic hand, which only had a thick thumb and three bulky armored fingers, and gave a slanted smile. "For the nominal future, a lot of what you'll be doing is helping us refine our understanding of what weapons systems can be deployed to the greatest effect."

He exhaled but nodded. "I see. And this … larger threat you spoke of?"

The colonel's expression darkened. "Is the originator of this technology, and worse. The Admiral will be covering that with you. Admiral Vandefar is the head of Alliance R&D and will be involved in your tasking and direction, but only on paper. In practice, you'll be tasked with accompanying Marine or AIS smash and grab teams, identifying elements used to implement and maintain this technology and either destroying them or capturing them."

She paused. "As a result you're going to be exposed to some pretty nasty possible situations. You'll do morning PT with my security force, and while you had to qualify on basic marksmanship in the Academy, here you'll be spending at least two days a week on military drill and combat practice."

She reached over to her desk and picked up a thick, slate-gray data pad with a biometric lock on the side and tossed it to him. "Absolutely nothing you work on is to ever be entered into anything except one of the hardened terminals in the labs, or onto this device. Do not put the shit you work on here on your omni-tool. Don't try to take your work home."

She stood. "Admiral Vandefar will give you the formal briefing, and then introduce you to the Project Ahaltocob team. You'll be assigned officer quarters here in this building and provided a uniform allowance. Tomorrow morning at nine AM I expect you back in my office so we can enter all your biometrics into the system so the turrets don't blast you, that badge will not work in the hot labs."

He nodded numbly, and stood when she did. "For now, you can wait in the admiral's briefing room. She's still finishing up some kind of meeting." He followed her out of the darkened, depressing metal cave of her office, back into the corridor and down to the first door on the left.

Stepping through it after the colonel, he found a well appointed waiting room. A pair of double doors opened into a conference room of some kind, with rich wooden furniture and armaplast windows overlooking Arcturus, while another door lead off to what had to be the Admiral's office, shut tightly.

There was a slender, older marine in flat-black fatigues at the desk, who looked up as the Colonel and Valthez entered. His face was marred by three ugly slashes from his hairline to his jawline, one bisecting his right eye, which had been replaced by a cybernetic attachment. A neat row of decorations was emblazoned on his right chest, and Jason's eyebrows shot up at the site of the ribbon version of the Star of Sol with two repeats and four valor decorations. The broad brass bars across his shoulder indicated he was a senior warrant officer.

"Command Warrant Officer Irons, this is Lieutenant Valthez, the new researcher. When the Admiral is done briefing the High Lords and Joint Chiefs, will you send him in? He needs the Thaumiel briefing kit and clearance for Ahaltocob, if you don't mind."

The older man nodded, his good eye narrowing in appraisal. "Sure thing, Colonel. I'll rustle up the paperwork and get him an OSD with it." He glanced at Jason. "Might as well have a seat and I'll let you know when she's ready for you, Lieutenant."

Jason moved over to the couch on the south wall of the room and sat, and the Colonel turned on her heel and stomped out. The warrant officer gave a faint chuckle as the door shut. "Hell of a woman, ain't she?"

Jason's voice was wry. "She is … ah, very martial. Direct. And scary." He paused. "But she seems a somewhat strange choice for a colonel in a research division."

Warrant Officer Irons gave a grin. "She's smarter than she sounds – has a doctorate in some kind of engineering – but she's mostly in charge of when R&D has to get dirty instead of genning up crap in a lab. And trust me, be very damned glad she's on our side. I've seen that woman shrug off heavy machine-gun fire and break a big-ass batarian over her knee like he was a child."

He nodded, and then clicked on his omni-tool as the warrant officer went back to work, opening up the next chapter of the Engineering Guide for lack of anything else to do but wait.


ENGINEERING TECHNOLOGIES

As an Alliance R&D researcher, you might expect that you would be doing conventional work in a lab environment – and depending on your assignments, you very well might. But most of what we do falls more into the realm of technological engineering of existing technologies into military applications than pure research – and in that light, you may be tasked with a more active role in obtaining or understanding such technologies.

In pursuit of that goal, basic groundings in the primary constructive technologies used on the battlefield are essential. From a military standpoint, there are four such technologies : optronics, haptics, omni-tech and infowar.

All four technologies are highly interconnected – optronics is required for both haptic interfaces and omni-tech deployment, while info-warfare and combat engineering often requires both haptics and omni-tech to be utilized. Deep understanding of the complex physics behind each isn't a requirement; the primary concern is that researchers understand how they relate to one another and how they comprise the basics of much of our military equipment.


OPTRONICS AND ELECTRONICS

Conventional transistor and later solid state electronic components dominated human technology until we encountered our cousins the asari. Conventional electronics reached a pinnacle of possible miniaturization and complexity with stacked quantum pattern board electronics, pioneered just after the discovery of the Mars Archives.

However, even these systems were highly vulnerable to EMP and generated high amounts of heat, while requiring significant programming and were generally inflexible. The asari used a more elegant system of quantum cascade laser logic, decoupled charge devices, and the incorporation of eezo into their electronic circuits.

Put simply, optronics is a form of fiber-optic based electrical switching and quantum laserpath logic circuits that can perform operations of almost limitless amounts at much higher speed while being mostly immune to EMP disruption and build up of heat. They are also not vulnerable to static electrical discharge, which makes them utterly critical for FLT travel, as conventional electronic devices are usually wrecked by FTL – one reason early model Alliance ships were so unreliable after long FTL transits.

Optronics is required both for haptic technology and omni-manipulation, making it a core strategic element. Unfortunately, the exact secrets of how to create the more complex optronic circuits is still an asari specialty, although (unlike other races) the asari have taught humanity how to create basic optronic circuits.

Most advanced optronics is purchased in kit form or by pre-stamped single-purpose circuits from the asari themselves. However, it can be reconfigured in the field by asari engineers or custom ordered from asari manufacturers for a wide range of devices, uses, and fields.

As a great deal of Alliance equipment relies on optronics, it is considered a critical strategic aspect and yet another reason to maintain our favored position with the asari. We pay roughly forty-five percent less for 'raw' optronics and thirty percent less for 'patterned' optronics than the other races, as part of our favored status trading agreement.

From an Alliance R&D standpoint, being able to reverse engineer the exact process of how optronics work is of critical importance. Much of the technology base we use today is merely human front end modules on asari black boxes, a state of affairs that has allowed us to advance rapidly in terms of capabilities but has crippled our own understanding.

While this is – at the present time – not necessarily a bad thing, it imposes a strategic dependence on the asari that Alliance R&D feels is ultimately corrupting. We cannot ascertain future changes in our diplomatic arrangement, and given certain intelligence – not relevant to this guide – it would behoove us to minimize that dependency as quickly as possible.

Current efforts suggest that part of making optronic circuits likely involves the use of biotics, which is why the salarians and hanar have been no more effective at reverse engineering optronics than we have. One important aspect is that the fiber-optic components are made using some form of highly ordered alumina/silica hybrid. The exact nature of this mixture (which surpasses human fiber optics made using plastics) is puzzling, but it seems to cut attenuation losses to almost nothing.

Detailed examination of optronic boards and switches also shows some form of layered microscopic channels in the more advanced elements, which are somehow infused or inlaid with finely powered eezo. Attempts to duplicate this eezo doping process have also failed.

Optronic systems used by the asari tend to utilize a complex blue-green laser system, although this may be due to a large portion of their technology being fully capable of amphibious operations.


OPTRONICS CONSIDERATIONS

Given that optronic components are required to run both military haptic systems as well as omni-technology projectors, as you can imagine this is a very high priority topic for the Alliance to obtain some level of mastery on.

Asari who have joined the Alliance are almost always clanless with no actual technical backgrounds. Only a handful of Clan Engineers have joined and most of them have little knowledge as to the deep scientific and technical details behind optronic construction. On the other hand, their assistance has allowed us much greater skill in optimizing and customizing the asari black boxes we utilize.

(As an aside, the asari caste system – Thirty, Clans, and Clanless – is considered by Cultural R&D to be very strange given asari concepts of unity. It allows for information, techniques and knowledge of both technology and biotics to be strictly controlled, and for higher-level asari to determine just exactly what the clanless can and cannot do. This frustration of effort has driven more than a few clanless to the Alliance, but most Clan Engineers who have come to us are, for lack of a more favorable word, criminals and outcasts. If Cultural R&D's theories are correct, the asari Thirty appear to have deliberately used social stratification to retain tight control of their technology, which is why so little of it has been reverse engineered by the Salarian Union nor mimicked by the Hanar Ascendancy.)

There are not all downsides to this situation. One side effect of utilizing pre-built tech is that our control and pilot/nav systems appear to be more highly developed than turian or quarian systems and nearly on par with salarian systems, mostly due to tightly integrated haptics. The very low asari pricing on such systems sold to Alliance and other human parties has allowed us to extensively fit almost every aspect of our military and much of our civilian population with such things, while they are far more rare in the hinterlands and Terminus systems.

This is both good and bad – good in that it enhances our military capacities, but bad in that it makes light military units and some civilian populations raiding targets. The Batarian Empire is no longer in open hostilities with us, but various fragment groups of batarian warlords or raiders still target such things. As military control systems, ECM systems and ship VI's are major consumers of optronic components, the protection of such things has become ever more critical – and raised the prices of optronics year after year.


OPTRONICS AND MILITARY SYSTEMS

The primary uses of optronics include all haptic control and command surfaces, most haptic projection devices, omni-armor projectors, Rydberg-Dirac projections (omni-tools, omni-blades, etc) and most high order VI systems. (Blue boxes can still be built with conventional quantum circuits but are highly inefficient and bulky, where as an optronic blue box takes up about the same space as a wall cabinet.)

Alliance Flight III (2075+) ships and all current model armor and battle-suits rely on optronics. The base combat omni-tool used by the Alliance military is an asari model modified for human use, but the advanced tools used by N-series and the AIS are custom built and require optronics as well.

All current GARDIAN and MONTAUK targeting and combat projection systems utilize optronics. All current fighters and gunships and ninety percent of higher-tier computer systems use it as well. If the Alliance was forced to buy at full price, it would contract our GDP by 7%, and if embargoed we would run into diminished operations in sensor, communications and control function in four to six months.

Optronics has a tendency to degrade overtime, becoming opaque and requiring infrequent but regular replacement. (This is why the first series of border conflicts with the Batarians and the second set saw such a drastic decrease in batarian targeting capabilities – the conflict exhausted their supplies and trade with Aria's domain did not even suffice to break even.)


HAPTIC TECHNOLOGY

Haptic technology is nearly ubiquitous in the modern age. From advertising and aircar controls to the adjustment panels on smart clothing, it has become the standard for instrumentation and interfaces. First developed by salarians attempting to find more uses for optronics than the simplified mass lightwave computers used by the asari, the technology has grown by leaps and bounds since it was first introduced.

The term 'haptics' is utterly misused and misleading, a word appropriated and then assigned to the technology the asari first introduced to humanity after the FCW. Haptic systems are (by definition) any system that is holographic in projection and relies on acoustic radiation pressure or other more exotic wave propagation systems to detect input (usually touch, but also verbal or even motion based). In short, the haptic system is a combination of multifunction holographic display, sensor, and computer system.

Haptic displays allow vast amounts of controls and information to be relayed quickly and efficiently to operators. Given the complexity of modern space warfare, ECM and information warfare, this is often critical. Haptic technology makes it possible for a warship to be flown by a minimum number of pilots and for rapid reconfiguration of consoles for any purpose.

Civilian haptic technology is found using lower-quality projectors that have a very weak tactile response. Most of these incorporate motion sensors as well as other detection methods and are known to be less than functional in rain or foggy condition. Military systems, on the other hand, rely exclusively on high performance, high resolution projections and combine many different systems to ensure not only that input is detected but detected accurately.

Haptics as an industry has exploded in popularity in the Alliance much as it has elsewhere. Haptic advertising allows a single touch to pull up a consumer's purchasing records, tailoring displays to their liking. Haptic entertainment systems can pull up detailed information (such as a sports teams records, or the voting record and positions of a politician) at the touch of a finger.

Likewise, haptics has revolutionized surgical medicine, allowing for servo-controlled robotic manipulators to perform surgery too fine and difficult for the human hand while displaying and reacting to input from a haptic representation of the surgery site.

While the optronic components of haptic technology remain vague, we can produce and maintain our own haptic systems for the most part. Human haptics are typically a dark orange, shading to red in battle stations or low light conditions. Asari systems are deep blue, salarians prefer bronzed green, and turians pale white. From what little we have seen of renegade or separatist drell military forces, their haptics are actually in the ultraviolet range. Quarians rarely use haptics given the cost to maintain them, but have some simpler systems that mimic their effect. What few haptic systems remain on Tuchanka are legacy salarian systems.

From a purely military standpoint these are conveniences, yet they allow for centralized training and much easier creation of training systems and labs for our military pilots and combat engineers.


HAPTICS CONSIDERATIONS

The primary innovation in haptics in the past decade has been to integrate them with omni-facturing capabilities to allow on-the-fly design and modification of various parts, mechanisms, or other devices. Without delving into unnecessary technical detail, the realization of this process would eventually allow for high-quality modifications to weapons and armor systems in the field by armorers, rapid repair of damaged components in battle, and even delicate surgical operations on the battlefield.

Jamming and disrupting haptic displays is a minor but crucial component of some races infowar capabilities – quarians in particular have very nasty capabilities in turning haptic control panels into digital mush incapable of interpreting anything. As a result, all piloting systems and weapons control interlocks must include manual hydraulic-electronic interfaces using hardened direct optronic relays and old fashion direct hydraulic feedback systems. While these will result in a degradation of flight quality and firing accuracy, it still is a better outcome than being completely unable to fly or fight an enemy.

There is also some work being done in haptic visual encryption, using advanced stenographic /mnemetic underlays on certain haptic displays to convey intelligence to field agents. The Cerberus terrorist network pioneered much of this method, which was conveyed to us when raids on their HQ resulted in capturing a large amount of research data. So far, no other races have tumbled to this concept yet, and keeping it a secret (and developing it further) are high priority tasks.


OMNI-TECH OVERVIEW

At its very core, omni-programming and omni-projection technology are two very different things. Put simply, omni-tech uses a functional variation on Rydberg blockade phenomena (mostly high order 'repacked' lithium ions) to create what some would call hard light. The projection branch focuses on using this effect directly, the programming branch deals more with using it to modify other things.

People often confuse the terms omni-tool, omni-gel, and omni-field. (Sadly, this is due to the starkly limited method of salarian cant – the root salarian word, 'tukchi', does not translate cleanly at all. The best fit would be 'the open hand that can form either a fist or a flower'). The simple way to keep them clear in your mind is that tools shape gel and make fields.

At the core of all omni-tech is the omni-tool, which is a haptic computer band either implanted in a projection chip or worn as a bracelet. This computer combines an onboard VI, extranet connection, haptic display projector, basic sensor, and a wireless MHF transmitter that is keyed to various omni-gel programming control bands. It also contains a Rydberg-Dirac photonic entanglement projector.

This device, which operates by 'locking' photons together until they are capable of interacting with matter directly, is the core of omni-projection. This locking action is known (to the Alliance, at least) as Rydberg blocking phenomena, and beyond the most basic description is most likely too advanced for non-physicists to understand.

(Alliance R&D is well aware that other races define the Rydberg phenomena family by other names. Alliance personnel shall use the human designations unless a term combines human and alien researcher results, such as Maethr-O'Connell-Vabo).

Put simply, the omni-tool can make fields of projected energy in a hard, discrete shape. This energy can be modulated into various shapes as needed – most commonly, omni-blades for close range or shipboard combat, omni-armor projected directly from an armor plate to block incoming fire, or omni-shields generated from an omni-tool that can be used for both attack and defense. All of these are formed from unstable high-energy shells linked into place and shape by Rydberg photonic molecules shaped and held by a low-level mass effect field.

Mass-stabilized RBP's allow the field to be strengthened based primarily on energy input. Beyond a certain level the phenomena begins to decay on a quantum level, so the resulting output cannot sustain itself, nor can it be held indefinitely. While it exists, however, such generated shapes are almost indestructible. Omni-shields and omni-armor can block massive amounts of damage that would otherwise outright kill or destroy material objects, and omni-blades with sufficient TeV rating can block even energized asari warp swords and eezo whips (although not very well).

As with any technology there are trade-offs. While reliable and quick to utilize, the main drawback is that there is no way this is a stealthy system – the energy levels required make any such tech glow brightly and produce distinctive harmonic vibrations from scattered photons interacting with the shaped envelope. It also requires a good deal of energy – without dedicated energy sources most omni-tools cannot generate omni-shields at all, and omni-blades generated without an energy source of sufficient power are unlikely to withstand blows from high disruption impacts (like a warp sword).

The second use of omni-technology is the rapid programming and shape of omni-gel. Omni-gel is a semi-conductive suspension that can be phased into a solid shape by way of omni-tool. Unlike the examples above, once the energy is removed the most stable configurations are 'locked' into place. This allows for omni-facturing everything from clothes to on-demand tools. Most modern armored vehicles have static forged omni-projectors linked to omni-gel reservoirs to generate additional ablative armor if damaged in combat, and all shipboard damage control kits contain pre-flashed omni-gel designed to harden with exposure to vacuum to seal hull breaches.

The two are combined in omni-foundry devices, which are the logical follow on to 3D printing processes prototyped over a century ago. These allow rapid creation of complex mechanical devices and spare parts from simple templates, improving logistics capabilities and reducing the need for parts storage. While this is heavily drawn on by the civilian market (especially the air car and automotive markets) it is also critical in almost every military application from arming colonial militias and setting up forward operating bases to maintaining repair part levels aboard long-patrol ship missions.


OMNI-TECH AND MILITARY APPLICATIONS

Obviously omni-technology remains a critical component of the Alliance military war package. All boarding actions and most close-range combat will make heavy use of omni-blades and omni-shields, given the relative internal fragility of ship systems and the ever increasing power of military personal weapons.

Omni-armor, in particular, has revolutionized defensive military planning and armor designs, requiring much more efficient and small power sources and force-feedback trickle movement chargers in even our basic armor sets. Refitting a set of basic armor with omni-armor grants it toughness nearly on par with much heavier and expensive armors at a fraction of the cost, while retaining light weight, mobility, and easier concealment.

Further development of omni-weapon concepts – the so-called omni-bow and other projectile weapons – has suffered due to lack of a suitable power source and the limited range of these weapons. Omni-bows are mostly used by assassins and other unsavory types who need a weapon they can sneak past most sensors, but it has very limited penetration.

Attempts to scale up omni-armor to vehicle or starship sizes have all failed. Projecting a Rydberg-Dirac field over a larger area results in exponentially expanding energy costs and weakened durability. While a set of omni-armor covering a large battle-suit can be powered by multiple RTGs and a conventional fuel-cell / eezo power source, scaling it up to cover a MAKO requires a full out fusion plant, and to cover a frigate a reactor typically used to power entire arcologies. Attempts at finding other stable photonic entanglement schemes (Rydberg-Palavanus and Maethr-O'Connell-Vabo) have failed in either power requirements, ability to stop damage, or sustainability.

In theory, super-potent zero-point energy sources (Inusannon power stars, for example) could provide enough energy for this, but as creating such devices is not even close to within our technology base and the number of known, functional power stars is in the low dozens (and the majority of those in asari or hanar possession) it is unlikely that such devices will bring about any breakthroughs.


INFO-WARFARE TECHNIQUES AND COMBAT ENGINEERING

The roles that the Alliance military currently fields do not differ that much from pre-Iron military doctrines. Our basic marines fill infantry roles, while N-series units take up the role of special forces. Battle-suits and armor perform the same roles that tanks and motorized infantry did in WWII, while many other unit types – scout-snipers, combat medics, and the like – are merely updated versions to use modern weapons.

Biotic soldiers and combat engineers are the roles that have no real correlation to pre-Iron combat. The combat engineer is a combination of support soldier, builder, trapper, comms officer, and heavy infantryman in one mobile package. Much of this is due to the flexibility afforded to engineers by the standard loadouts they carry.

Combat engineering is a distressingly vague term that incorporates four elements. The first is the use of omni-gel and omni-fields to set up mobile strong-points and to fortify positions. The second is the use of ECM and other electronic warfare capabilities to degrade enemy sensors, targeting and the like while enhancing the sensing range and targeted accuracy of those fighting alongside him. The third, and perhaps most critical role, is to create combat and scouting drones and drop turrets to amplify a squad's or positions firepower and anti-armor capability. The final duty is the maintenance of gear, field repair, and on occasion, other forms of technical activity (such as hacking locks or disabling security systems).

As such, the combat engineer is not as good with pure combat tactics as an infantryman, but makes up for it in flexibility and combat multipliers. This does not take into account his more powerful omni-tool, which can perform things most common tools cannot – plasma generation, holographic camo, electrical discharges, omni-projectiles and more.

Alongside all of the above is the increasing role of information and computer warfare directly on the battlefield. Comms systems, GARDIAN targeting arrays, sensor suites, mech programming – all of these are vulnerable targets to be protected – or taken out if the opposing force gives one the opportunity.

As a result combat engineers tend to be the most highly intelligent and valuable soldiers the Alliance has, and Alliance R&D expends a great deal of effort enhancing their kit, skill-set, and options to make them more deadly and reactive to all situations.


INFOWAR TECHNIQUES

Most infowar combat takes place via comms systems. With the need for real-time telemetry, the complications of FTL accelerated scanning, the staggering amount of ECM and IBT deployed on the battlefield, and the general chaos of combat, this is easier said than done.

Infowar programs come in many types, some mass produced, some custom coded. Most are loaded onto OSDs or infrared subduction discs and loaded to an omni-tool

At the most basic are the ubiquitous 'hak scripts' that push corrupted or bugged transactions to the onboard VI's managing modern weapons and armor systems. Examples of these include scripts to eject medigel or jettison ammunition from suits, lock down joints, cause weapons to overhead and vent burning heat sink components or even detonate, and more. Most hak scripts are run on a visual-target direct UV laser comm link, although on occasion this will have to be done via direct interface – i.e, jamming your omni-tool into an access port.

Above simple hak scripts are more complicated runtimes that can be used to overcharge defensive screens or hard kinetic barriers to burn them out, sabotage scripts to work against environmental or electrical systems, and hacking scripts to penetrate enemy comm networks and either tap into their communications or insert garbage or erroneous commands.

Hacking overrides to combat VI's, such as hacking mechs or automated systems, is the second highest level of infantry infowar and is complex enough that that it cannot be done simply. While most simple defense mechs employed for civilian uses or police augmentation can be overridden without much trouble, military VI's employ multiple layers of defenses, software traps, and other safeguards against being hacked and turned against our own people. It is safe to assume salarian, elcor and volus mechs follow the same rules.

The highest level of infowar programs are daemons, VI-driven autonomous programs that are designed to penetrate enemy systems on many levels and wreak havoc as they go. These are dangerous programs because they rarely discern friend from foe and, in the most extreme cases, are paired with black nano systems to allow them to affect things in the material world. All of these programs are classified as CHOKMAH level in terms of danger to living beings – in other words, it is very possible these sort of programs can go completely rogue and kill many more people than intended. They are only deployed upon specific orders and usually far from Alliance systems.

Infowar programs are sometimes coded directly by Alliance R&D, particular baseline versions that we expect veteran combat engineers to alter for their own custom purposes. Almost all higher level informational combat systems, including all VI overrides and daemons, are programmed by Alliance R&D, and this technology is not allowed in the hands of civilians or even corporations without express written leave from the High Lords.

As you can imagine, obtaining, decompiling and making defenses against alien hak scripts and VI overrides is of paramount importance.


COMBAT ENGINEERING TECHNIQUES

Most combat engineering done utilizes systems we've already covered – omni-gel, omni-shields and the like. Two methods that are critical to this endeavor are more complex – independent and mobile combat systems (drones) and constructed erected defenses or objects (turrets and projectors).

Projectors are the most common defensive method. Most combat engineers will carry a multifunction drop pack as part of their gear. This is a highly configurable device and usually modified quite heavily by the engineers who use them. At its most basic, the projector acts as a small-scale omni-fab, creating disposable low-quality heatsink inserts for weapons, basic grenades, and small repair parts.

More elaborate models can project directed kinetic barriers of a stronger level than suit generators, a number of combat turret styles, phase-focusing fields to enhance the power of a biotic soldier, and even rations and other survival equipment such as tier I medigel.

These drop packs can be linked together to form more powerful and elaborate defensive setups. Each one also contains a powerful comm relay and a VI computer loaded with defensive plans for omni-gel constructions of small bunkers, barricades and other defensive embrasures. They are also equipped with redactors to render extra gear or raw materials into omni-gel, albeit slowly.

Drone systems – invented by the quarians – are the more active version of this technology. Each drone is a small, eezo-powered omni-projector with an onboard VI system capable of accepting multiple programs. This projector will create an armored omni-armor shell around itself, and is capable of creating a number of minimissiles by injecting unstable explosive gels into 'shells' of omni-projected energy that are fired at an enemy. These mini-missiles are powerful, but some drones are modified to project plasma streams, 'sticky' omni-gel goop, or are loaded with hi-ex and can be deployed as remote, mobile mines.

Drone swarms are possible by specially constructed 'legion packs' carried by some combat engineers that can allow the creation of as many as fifteen active drones. The omni-projectors themselves are not complex and can be fabricated fairly simply and then loaded with the needed software and gel from an engineer's drop pack device or the legion pack. Combined with the drop pack, even a handful of drones can provide an infantry squad surprisingly heavy firepower from an unexpected flank or oblique angle. The uses of drones is almost endless – they can be coded with encrypted data and used as secure couriers; reconfigured for sensor sweeps, ECM discharge, or as missile decoys; or even deployed with holographic image projections to decoy images of a squad and trick snipers into exposing themselves by firing.

The combat engineer's very name implies that he goes into combat, and thus the final aspect of his work is the number of effects he can create from his omni-tool. Most of these are support abilities, offensive in nature but limited in range and power. The most common uses are plasma or napalm discharge, super-powerful flash-bomb / stun lance discharge, high energy EMP blasts or ionic bolt discharges, and the occasional exotic use.

Engineers tinker constantly with this technology, and are always finding new applications for it. One very innovative combat engineer programmed up a two-step magnetic bottle process for blocking plasma, another use taught to the Alliance by quarian engineers is the creation of semi-solid omni-bolts tipped with corrosive, explosive or other payloads and fired. The famous Tyriun no Kage, well known for combining biotic theory with technology, made a mod before his rebellion that utilized magnetic accelerators and static discharge to create a sort of EMP shotgun.

The more mundane uses of combat engineering – repairs, fortification, and the like – are usually handled by stock programs, and there isn't much room for improvement there. Alliance R&D is always looking for additional applications that extend the flexibility of the technology, however, and a sufficiently innovative or creative idea will no doubt be pushed forward to the front for testing.