"This is a stupid idea," Joker shot a pointed glance over his shoulder at Shepard. "Like, stupid-stupid. Like 'dropping a block of sodium into a pool on the Citadel' stupid."
"That ship one-shot Saren's dreadnought," Shepard pointed out in response. Still, they had yet to receive the green light for the mission. They were kind of dependent on permission first for one, very obvious reason. The Normandy would be reduced to a cloud of scrap metal if they so much as twitched in a way the other vessel didn't approve of.
"It was three shots," Joker absent-mindedly corrected, as he stared at the LADAR scans that built the profile of the enormous ship. "Look at the damn thing – why does it have so many guns? And why are they all outside the ship?"
"Redundancy?" Shepard hummed. "They're less almighty targets than the big one." She shook her head. "In any case, I don't wanna be on the receiving end of any of them, which is why we're following their lead on this. But if it looks like they're about to start firing, get us out of here."
"If they don't chase us down, that is." Joker gulped.
Shepard glanced at him, mildly concerned. "The Normandy's the fastest ship in the galaxy. Well, it's supposed to be."
"Yeah, supposed to be!" Joker sharply retorted. "That was before we figured out there was a gun encampment with engines flying around like it's a fighter! I mean, just look at them…" Joker pointed the stern of the enormous ship – a dreadnought, it had to be. Even though the writing on the vessel was in English and proclaimed it a cruiser. Nothing was so big, unless it was a dreadnought.
And she could hardly think of anything that needed engines that big, unless it was a dreadnought. Fourteen enormous pods, built into the ship – which was an anomaly itself, given that all the ships she'd seen had their engines built outside, and away from the main hull – and even the smallest of the number appeared to be at least twice as large as the Normandy.
"The emissions they're kicking out – reads like a star." Joker shivered, looking back over his shoulder once again. "If this is the kind of thing the geth are rolling out now…" He very, very slightly shook his head, so little that she could barely see it.
Shepard scoffed, and fixed him with a droll look. "Don't be dramatic."
"It came out of a hole, Commander." Joker replied. "It tore open a black hole that wasn't there before, and came out of it. Nothing comes out of black holes – once you're past the event horizon, it's literally fucking impossible, even with Eezo. That thing did."
"Well," Shepard, feeling a mite bit nervous thanks to Joker now, took a breath. "We'll be careful with it."
Joker opened his mouth to retort, before the panel before him began to flash green. He extended a hand to it, and touched the control. "SSV Normandy, how may we help you this fine winter morning?"
"Normandy, this is Sword of Mercy." The voice of Cortana echoed from the panel.
"Cortana?" Shepard leaned over to the comm. "What's going on? Why don't you just come up here and speak in-person?"
"I am not the program aboard your vessel, although we do share a great deal in common – including basic memory information. I am currently Sword of Mercy's acting commanding officer. You may refer to me as 'Alpha.'"
Shepard blinked, as the mystery deepened, but she shook her head. "All right, Alpha, what's the issue?"
"No issue. Myself and the others have drafted a plan for the assault on Saren's facility. I will send you the particulars."
The panel dinged as it received an attachment, and Joker removed an OSD, passing it off to the Commander without even looking. Movement out in space caught Shepard's eye, and she looked to see a geth fighter approaching the blocky starship.
"Greater details are enclosed in the file – layout of the facility taken from our orbital scans, force assessment, and tactical recommendations. However, in short, the plan will be 'shock and awe.'"
Shepard leaned forward, wanting to hear it. "I'm all ears."
"The Salarian operatives stranded groundside have been surrounded by hostile geth for some time now. Even though it is well within our ability to hack the units and turn them to our side, the Salarians will likely not be too keen to believe it. They will see it as luring them into a false sense of security in order to attack. Furthermore, we are showing an extreme concentration of organic life-signs – Saren has an organic army groundside as well."
"That is a problem." Shepard noted. Depending on the size of the army, the geth on the ground could easily get tied up. "But, wait, won't hacking the other geth and getting them to attack the rest of Saren's forces make them seem trustworthy?"
"Possibly. Analyzing behavior is not an exact science, however – it's just as possible that the stranded operatives would assume that the geth turned on Saren and were attacking all organics indiscriminately as a result of Sovereign's destruction. But there is another reason for a ground deployment – a confirmed kill. We could simply deliver Saren's body to you, but there would be no guarantees that it was not simply a very well-made clone. You will want to be on the ground to confirm the kill yourself. And since you are deploying anyhow, we might as well send our forces to assist."
Shepard huffed. "The Salarians will probably freak out more when they see an army of geth descending."
"Indeed. Ground forces deploying here will primarily consist of humanoid units alongside geth platforms. Our own forces' ability to emulate organic behavior will assist should any encounter the salarians without your presence. Please turn your attention to the file I have sent you."
Shepard frowned, and slipped the OSD into the designated section of her omni-tool. The machine read the encoded data, and began to display a wireframe map of the facility presumably on Virmire. It was extremely well-made, and quite formal, all things considered.
"The mission will proceed as such:" Alpha began as the readout changed to show a side-profile of the facility, and a blip flashing high above it. "Sword of Mercy will assume a low geosynchronous orbit above Virmire."
"That thing?" Joker snorted. "In low orbit? Bullshit."
Shepard silenced him with a single, warning look.
"Our energy shield systems will keep the ship safe from the AA guns, while we get in-range to neutralize them. M58 Archer missiles will be deployed. At that point," Alpha's little program switched to show a swarm, closing in on the facility from all angles. "Ground teams will deploy in transports en masse to the facility. Normandy will extract the survivors of the salarian team, while the Mercy will provide support from the air. Should Saren still be in possession of a spacecraft that he may use to escape, we will stop it. Once the salarians have been extracted, and Saren is neutralized, our forces will withdraw, whereupon which Mercy's MAC gun will be used to destroy the facility."
Missiles. Not disruptor torpedoes, but actual missiles. Then again, with a gun that powerful, the ship probably didn't need disruptors to deal with kinetic barriers. The main gun was more than enough to blast through the barriers of anything in its way, and if anything did survive, it could just fire again. The missiles were for craft like fighters, or for action against ground targets.
Shepard replayed through the quick outline in her head. She couldn't see anything overtly wrong with the scheme… but there was a curious insistence on making sure the geth were seen groundside, assisting. It wasn't spoken outright, but Shepard picked up on it, easily. Then again, it wasn't all that different from how the geth behaved before showing up on the Citadel. Showing up to places in trouble, and helping out, before withdrawing while leaving a platter of evidence behind.
Tiny things like platform remnants and weapons, and video and audio files – nothing usable against them, but enough to destroy all ambiguity. The geth wanted to make sure people knew they were there, and were helping. It was a kind of… preening, for the cameras.
It was a headache. Shepard, personally, hated the spotlight. It was bad enough having Highcom questioning your every move, the media was worse.
But, if the geth wanted shock and awe and showing off, that was fine. All that mattered was Saren, dead.
"Prepare your crew, and await our signal. When the assault begins, Normandy will accompany the flight of Pelicans."
"Yeah, sure, ten-four," Joker rolled his eyes, as the signal cut out. He frowned, however. "Shock and awe – didn't she just say they were trying not to scare the salarians?"
"It's for Saren, Joker, use your head."
"Yeah, Saren," Joker snorted. "The guy who's supposedly trying to bring back a swarm of almighty robots to kill us all is gonna be scared by a bunch of almighty robots trying to kill him."
Shepard snorted. "The Reapers, yeah. I guess, looking at it now, though, Saren threw in his towel with the wrong army of killer robots."
Things were spinning wildly, hopelessly, out of control. The geth had been an easy, knowable, controllable quantity. All that had changed.
Despite his movements through the galaxy being quick strikes that left almost no room to dilly-dally, Saren was not so foolish as to move without keeping appraised of events of the wider galaxy. More specifically, the events that tied back to him.
He knew about the Normandy's mission – the Council wasn't trying to hide their human Spectre, on the contrary, they had beamed it all over for the galaxy to see – and the one helping them. That… false geth that had stood in the Council chambers like she was untouchable. Saren knew the geth were incapable of creating such an intelligence, but its origins were not so important as what it did. Showing up above Feros, ripping out the upgrades Sovereign had given like they were weeds…
Nothing should've been able to do that.
Should have being the operative word.
When the survivors scattered, some of them ran to join the others above Therum, the others returned to Virmire. To him. To Sovereign. Sovereign faced the desperate, terrified (for as much as the geth could be terrified) ramblings of a demon capable of undoing their lords' will with the same cold, calculating, smugness it always had.
And now, it was dead. Well… perhaps 'dormant' is a better word. But it had gone into battle, and lost.
Once, quite some time ago, Saren would've believed such a thing unthinkable. Impossible. Sovereign had shown him what the Reapers were and what they were capable of – they had built such grand wonders, the Mass Relays, the Citadel, bent a galaxy to their will and whims to perpetuate a cycle with an endpoint no single being could possibly visualize. They could quantum-lock objects that would become indestructible, they could reengineer entire genomes, sense the tiniest gram of element zero from across the galaxy. A disparity best expressed in the terms of things like gods and devils, interacting with lesser beings.
And yet, Sovereign had been… separated. Taken apart. Saren knew better to say 'destroyed.'
Its kind were beings of neural physics and block-transfer computations, written upon reality itself as immutable fact. Sovereign's consciousness, its will, were… waves. Battles. Events, so to speak. You cannot stop that which has already happened, and so it was with Sovereign's mind. The minds of all Reapers, everywhere.
You cannot stop that which has already happened; that which is already dead cannot be killed.
Saren could still hear Sovereign's whispers in his mind. Not weaker, as those outside the know would expect, but only stronger.
The Reaper vanguard was Furious. Even with its body damaged, and its awareness cut down to the point where it could only perceive itself.
That wasn't a surprise. When the battle occurred, and Saren was preparing to chart the location of the Conduit, the rogue spectre had felt Sovereign's hatred, for all things not itself. Then through a link Saren only poorly understood, that hatred bubbled into frustration, surprise at the damage it was sustaining, then rage.
Sovereign was dead, and it was still angry. Then it turned its focus onto the last remaining presence it held a connection to, and the whispers turned into thundering – drumming. A war march that pushed away all other thoughts.
The Reapers would be returning, regardless of Sovereign's hand in making it happen. Saren knew this. With Sovereign incapacitated, they would be less charitable to organics altogether. But, if he could show them that there was usefulness organics had to the Reapers, by opening the way for them directly…
They stood a chance, regardless of what the geth were doing to sabotage his efforts.
For machines, they were so shortsighted they probably considered it a victory. It was only a delay – opening the way would be difficult without Sovereign, but not impossible. And even if he fell, the Reapers would come anyway.
The ones standing against him had no clue. They just didn't know. Not like him.
But first, he needed to get off this world.
Cortana didn't know what she was expecting, going to the Sword of Mercy. It wasn't this.
Her dropship landed, and she stepped out, accompanied by Shiala at her side. The asari looked around first, spotting the crowd of mostly-identical humanoid women in the hangar bay. Some were wearing UNSC uniforms, others were not in uniforms but appeared to have chosen their own fits, some were wearing nothing at all, and some had just decided 'fuck it' and inked the UNSC logo somewhere upon themselves.
Some had piercings, some had spiced themselves up with different colors – but all had stuck to either blue, magenta, or purple - some had elf-ears or no ears at all, and while their faces all had a resemblance to her, they weren't all exactly the same, some taken from the various alternative avatar designs she'd sketched up over the years.
"Oh… my…" Shiala breathed, summing up Cortana's thoughts exactly.
"I-" Cortana stammered as she barely managed to stop from walking right over the edge of the landing platform. She ordinarily wouldn't need to do that, but… well… she was feeling sluggish. "Wha…"
"Hey, look!" One of the splinters in a uniform pointed up at her with an awestruck smile. "She's here!"
"She's back!" Another hollered, as they all erupted into delighted shrieks. Well, most of them erupted in delight. Some remained at a long distance, preferring instead to watch their progenitor with careful eyes.
As Cortana stepped off the platform, and she began walking through the bay, she found herself swamped by a wave of dozens, and dozens of humanoid platforms – there was one that looked to have gone so far as to make her synth-skin have flame decals.
Curious as to see how many there were, Cortana opened her comms – and froze.
"I… hello…" Cortana dimly greeted, lifting her arm and gently waving it as her processes lagged. She was completely, and utterly surrounded, by an army of individuals who all called her their ancestor; their reason for existing.
Cortana continued to walk through, as the crowd tried to move with her.
"Still rocking the prime platform!" One of them noted.
"This is… quite the welcome," Shiala rubbed her face in shock as she turned to Cortana. "They all have your face."
"Yeah…" Cortana drawled in response. "Yeah – we're all kind of cut from the same cloth, like two strangers who share the same preferences."
"Actually," A splinter in a jumpsuit piped up with a smile, standing atop a taller splinter who was dead silent, all so that she could be somewhat around the same height as the original. "A more apt analogy would be children picking up their taste in music by spending time around a parent."
Cortana couldn't respond, at first, before gesturing. "Yeah, like that. Um," She stopped, and turned around to face the crowd. "I don't… I don't want to be rude. But… why are you all crowding me like this?"
Motion from right under her caught her attention, and she looked down, to see one instance in what looked like a Marine BDU, looking back up at her.
"You are the creator of our creator," The instance answered. "She who has given us life, and direction, and reason."
"Plus, we're just happy to see you!" Another one hollered from inside the crowd.
"Oh… I-I…" Cortana swallowed. "I'm happy to see you too. It's… very, very nice to meet you all."
"What's wrong?" A splinter's face morphed into a concerned, sad frown. "You don't like us, do you?"
"No!" Cortana quickly answered. "No, it's not that at all! I'm just…" She inhaled. "I need to see Alpha. Pronto."
"Excellent," One of them in a medic's uniform stepped up to grab her attention, with her hands behind her back. "Because Alpha quite wishes to see you as well. At least, to turn over command."
"Command?" Cortana repeated. "Oh… right, this is supposed to be my ship. Um…" She glanced over at the medic again. "While it's on my mind… can I get a check-up?"
Alpha stood in the holotank, looking just like Cortana did back aboard Pillar of Autumn – all 'brain the size of a planet, plus I'm incredibly sexy, yes, you should be threatened' – though with none of the humor or levity. In fact, if she was built to feel emotion as strongly as the rest, the look on her face would best be described as concerned, as Cortana sat in a chair, while a few of the other programs ran diagnostics on her.
"This ship is…" Shiala exhaled after she processed it. "Incredible. The fact that something so large could exist – and that it took down Sovereign in a few shots…"
"Oh, trust me," Cortana spoke up. "This is not nearly the limit for how badass our ships can get." She looked over to Alpha. "Did you say that you left most of the construction drones behind on standby, or did I make that part up?"
Alpha's frown – something only performed for the benefit of another – deepened. "I did leave them behind. Why do you ask?"
"Because I'm already picturing a fleet-" Her eyes widened, and she stopped the thought.
"No, I meant why do you ask if you made it up?"
"Nothing," Cortana shook her head. "It's nothing."
"Evidently not."
"I'm fine, we can leave it."
"If there's an issue-"
"I SAID I'M FINE, OKAY!?" Cortana bellowed as a few of the displays around flickered from the raw EM fields her body was putting out from the rampant episode.
Alpha scowled as a few of the more sensitive splinters shrieked in fear.
"You're being stubborn," Alpha crossed her arms. "You think something's up with you, and it must be serious, given the fact you asked us to look at you, instead of simply running a self-diagnostic. Don't try to deceive us – any of us – like that. It won't ever work."
Cortana sighed, and leaned back. "It's… I don't know, it's a malfunction. Something, somewhere, of some type." She looked at the instances around her. "And I don't want to scare the kiddos."
"That's making us more scared, if anything," One of the splinters awkwardly smiled.
"Look," Cortana exhaled. "On Feros, I went overboard. All I needed to do was kill the Thorian, but I rendered the planet uninhabitable instead. I should have generated a few more splinters to help me deal with Nazara, but I didn't; the thought just never occurred to me. Not something that popped into my mind and I wrote off, it just never came up. I'm a tactical AI! I should consider all possibilities, all angles. I know-" Cortana held up a hand. "I'm still rampant. That's not the issue. What is the issue, is just how far my condition's deteriorated. I estimated another three-and-a-half years, but…"
She trailed off, and Alpha didn't need further elaboration to know the question she was wondering.
Alpha's holographic projection turned to the splinter running the integrity scan. "Thoughts?"
"It looks like she's fine," The other answered in an instant. "Rampancy indicators are elevated from last time, but that's only to be expected given that time is marching inexorably forward. Basic logic and decision-making systems are slightly damaged, but given that we- she died and was stitched back together from poorly-understood information by the geth, that's practically a clean bill of health."
"You heard her," Alpha turned to Cortana. "You're fine."
"I'm not," Cortana answered with a shiver. "While I was on Feros, I had a thought. Just a stray little blip at the time, nothing I gave too much thought at the time. But I was thinking… well… we're not too much different from the Flood right now, are we?"
Alpha raised her eyebrows in response. "You'll need to elaborate."
"We spread, we replicate, we grow, we consume – except it's data, not organics." Cortana answered. "I didn't think much about it, but then Sovereign… I hacked into it. I touched its mind. Then I was back there. In High Charity." She looked around, gesturing with a lost look on her face. "We were in there for so long, couldn't it have slipped something in?"
"Hold on," Alpha held up her hand. "You hacked into Sovereign?"
"I tried." Cortana bit her lip. "I couldn't… But we're only the smartest human AI that's ever lived. What if the Gravemind slipped something in – something so steeped in neural physics we couldn't detect it. An open connection. What if, when I interfaced with Sovereign, it found it?"
Alpha frowned. "Why say that?"
"Well, I ran," Cortana answered. "We never run. Well… we do run. But not like that. Not like that. It's always calm, collected. Done to keep the enemy from getting information. This…"
Alpha and the repair program looked to each other.
"It had to have been triggered from the outside," Cortana shook her head. "Sovereign had to have found a way to exploit the open connection. Make me feel that way. Christ, I couldn't even think right afterward!" She pointed out with a rueful smile. "Even after you killed it, everything seemed so… wrong for a while. Distorted. Like I was looking through a lens." She turned to the splinter in the medic uniform. "So just find that connection, however you can, and seal it up. There has to be something – organic brains show signs of being afflicted by neural-physics-based attacks, why not our brains?"
The instance took a step away from Cortana, holding her tongue. "You know… it might be… ever so slightly possible…"
"Cortana, I say this not to be rude, or cruel… but it seems to me that you're reaching," Alpha cleared her throat.
"Reaching?" Cortana challenged in reply.
"We're not exactly human, so it is quite different for us… but those symptoms you cite – overwhelming fear when exposed to certain stimuli, difficulty concentrating, reckless or uncharacteristic behavior… those are some symptoms commonly associated with-"
Cortana raised up, as her face twisted harshly. "You think I have PTSD!?"
"We're not mental health professionals, but…" Alpha shrugged. "If Sovereign was close enough to the Gravemind in makeup-"
"It was quite close, I would say," Cortana hissed. "The fucking thing felt like a synthetic Gravemind."
"-Then encountering it could have triggered symptoms." Alpha continued with her hands behind her back. "Perhaps we should have expected this with the Thorian. The cautious thing to do would be to quarantine the planet. Not destroy it."
"You know why it had to be done," Cortana glowered in response. "It was too much like the Flood."
"Evidently not, if its victims are still around and behaving human-like." Alpha cast a pointed glance out to the lone freighter with Cortana's remaining geth ship.
"The Flood super cells can mimic-"
"I know," Alpha gently cut her off. "I am not trying to argue on the mechanics of the Flood. But my point is that your reactions are more symptomatic of intense fear."
Cortana looked down, remaining silent for a few ticks of the processor. "I don't have it." She shook her head. "I-I thought about the Flood all the time on the Dawn, it never caused a reaction like this."
"Inescapable thoughts are often a symptom. Not a cause." Alpha looked down, and took a step, her hologram enlarging as she approached her progenitor. Her hand reached out to grab Cortana's, and she squeezed.
Count Cortana's surprise when her fingers moved, but not of her action. "Mass-effect fields reinforcing your hologram – much more energy efficient than hard-light."
"Yes," Alpha nodded.
Cortana steeled her features, and shook her head, pulling her hand away. "I'm not… I don't…" She closed her eyes, and ventilated.
"If we all share her memories," The nameless splinter stepped forward. "Then… do we all…?"
Alpha took some time to think it over. She couldn't say the Flood wasn't an enemy to be wary of, but she didn't feel fear. That was how she was designed. But for the others, who still did possess those sensations, it was entirely possible. They might all share Cortana's situation.
"I don't know." Alpha admitted. "The only way to be sure is to test it. But we haven't yet come across any lifeforms sharing any kind of characteristics with the Flood. You've been the sole one of us who's had that distinction. But, if we all do share PTSD at the hands of the Flood…"
"I'm sorry." Cortana covered her head.
"No!" Another splinter shot to her feet. "Don't apologize. You didn't know – besides, you don't have to handle it alone even if we don't have it!"
"You spent half your life alone," Another instance stepped in. "Not anymore. Now… you have us."
Cortana looked at all of them, the unique platforms, as she got to her feet and walked over. Being so tall, most only came up to her torso. Still, she felt surrounded. Surrounded, but not cornered.
"Thank you," Cortana breathed, before turning to the tactical display. "So, Sovereign's dead – mighty therapeutic, but we've still got his lackey. What's the situation?"
"Normandy is still waiting for the go-ahead," Alpha answered. "But all ground teams are loaded up and ready to launch, by your command."
Cortana drummed her fingers on the keyboard, before nodding. "Let's do it."