Uninspired
Mass Effect, Inspired Inventor
10
We dropped out of hyperspace on the edge of what our charts were calling the Tikkun system, as people got around to naming things. That wasn't the name the quarians gave it, but I was pretty sure I couldn't pronounce whatever that was.
Delta was crouched on the arm of my chair again, leaning forward, ears facing forward and tail out straight and still behind her as she turned her head this way and that. "Lots of comms chatter from the inner system. I hear a bit around each of the outer planets too. Smells like an ambush for anyone coming from the relay."
"It's all machine code," Alpha said, from where she stood in her usual place on my right. "The language is actually fairly simple, but the concepts communicated range from simple exchanges of sensor data, up to… a treatise on the quantification of the soul?" Alpha snorted softly. "Attempting to quantify the unquantifiable is an exercise in futility."
"You've read the quarians' history. The first question the geth asked when they attained sentience was whether or not they have a soul. Can't really blame them for trying," I shrugged. "We've been trying since we first figured out the concept, and likely won't stop until we have an answer."
"Doesn't matter, don't care. I am as master made me. Can I go in now?" Delta asked, wiggling anxiously where she sat.
"Go ahead. No cloak, we want them to see us," I nodded, and she immediately floored it, dropping into FTL and running for the inner system. "Put us over Rannoch and let's see what happens."
"Mm!" Delta nodded.
I sat back in my chair and waited, watching as the quarian home world approached. We were nearly there when Delta's ear flicked and she grinned. "Looks like they spotted us and got off a warning. Ships around Rannoch are firing thrusters. Man, not being able to sense things in real time must suck for them."
"It is a significant advantage on our part," Alpha agreed, sounding particularly smug.
"As soon as we drop out, start broadcasting. The usual 'we come in peace, we're here to talk.' Let's see if they're willing to talk."
We dropped out of FTL only a few moments later, two light seconds from the planet, and were immediately painted with tracking and target locks. Multiple ships jumped and closed the distance, coming out again practically on top of us. And then, the shooting started. As it did, the holographic screen registered multiple broadcasts, attempting to find and hack wireless systems that either just weren't present in my design principles, or used entirely alien (to them) protocols that they wouldn't be able to just make something compatible for in the next decade let alone the next ten minutes, or used alien (to them) hardware to transmit/receive using principles they didn't even understand in a dimension they didn't have access to.
Seeing them up close, Delta growled and Alpha tensed, an expression of intense disgust flickering across her face at the sight of the enemy ships. The blonde elf when went so far as to mutter, "Disgusting."
"Should I just dodge, or can I crush them?" Delta asked, shifting around slightly where she sat, mimicking the movements the Lone Wolf made in space as she wove around the shots.
"Keep dodging and put me on. Don't wait for a connection, just transmit. Send it in quarian."
"Live in three," Alpha said as Delta focused on avoiding the increasingly dense barrage of fire as more ships jumped closer and joined in.
Looking at the screen, and the enemy vessels ahead of us, I waited for the 'transmitting' message to come on. "We came in peace, to open a dialogue. We wanted to speak with you and you greeted us with hostility. You claim to be sentient, but you act more like a hive of insects swarming over what you perceive to be prey. So, I'm going to give you a chance. One chance. You have exactly one minute to cease fire and open communications. After that, I'm going to start returning fire. And I'm not going to stop and attempt communication again, or accept communication attempts, until I've reduced your ship count in this system by one tenth. After that, we can discuss your unconditional surrender. Your time starts now."
I cut the transmission and looked to Alpha. "The fleet?"
"Ready to jump in system. They can be here in thirty seconds."
"Great. Make sure we've got some positioned to cut off any escape towards the edge of the 'verse. Don't want them running out into dark space."
Alpha nodded, resting her hand on my shoulder. "The Avalon is moving into position now. We'll pincer them."
Space is huge and empty. And while most people, from what I had determined, tended to maneuver along the galactic plane—including quarians and now geth—that's not the only direction one can go. There are three entire dimensions to maneuver within. Generally, people stuck to moving along the galactic plane because that was, generally, the way systems moved—spinward. Planets and heavenly bodies rotate in a plane around a star, that star and all the stars and other bodies that make up the galaxy rotate around the center of the galaxy. It's easier to move with the flow of gravity than against, or perpendicular, the same as it is with water.
This, according to all the knowledge I'd obtained, shaped the flow of space combat. You knew where the enemy was going to generally be—near their planets, hiding in asteroid fields, and the like. You knew the way he was going to move, generally—either sunward, into the sun's gravity well for the edge in speed, into a planet's gravity well along the sunward path for the same reason, or in the case of this universe, towards a mass relay. You knew where an invading enemy was going to come from here—from the direction of the mass relay, or a neighboring system with a relay.
The addition of hyperspace changed that game entirely.
My ships could come out in system anywhere they liked. At the far edge, near the sun, practically on top of any number of planets, even within knife fighting range of other ships—anything we could scan from hyperspace and get a fix on. We could, for instance, park our ships in real space above and below the plane of a target system, hours out of range of any sensors anything in the system had, wait for the attack signal, and jump into the system as we pleased.
What stopped the enemy from just engaging FTL and running away?
Because we knew they were heading for the mass relay, we could block that. In this case, I'd given the order to make sure they didn't slip out into dark space—that is, past the galactic rim and into the space between galaxies—so we were watching that route. Any other direction they took, they would have to contend with my ships hounding them. Worse, for the enemy, they didn't have FTL capable sensors, while we did. Our real space FTL drives were on par with, if not faster than theirs, but an enemy could drag out a pursuit against just another mass effect drive for days—until they needed to discharge. Hyperspace drives and FTL sensors meant we could pursue them, make them jump to FTL, let them get a little distance, plot their projected course while keeping track of where they actually were, and then make a small hyperspace jump practically on top of them and engage them before they could do anything about it.
Or, at least, that's what Alpha, Delta, and I had come up with. The quarians had been kind enough to give us their sensor logs for battles against the geth and we had gone over the tactics used, compared it to our tech, run simulations, and that was the strategy we had arrived at.
An alarm beeped and I looked up as the timer hit 0—one galactic standard minute later.
"Delta?" I asked, and she perked up, turning to me with a hungry expression I'd never seen before, her fingers and toes clenching my seat as her body tensed.
"Master?"
"Kill."
The ship abruptly shifted in space, in between dodging one shot and the next. Every geth ship grew rings around it in various locations, signifying multiple target locks. The big one, however, was centered in the holographic view screen for just a second—what read as a geth cruiser, according to what we had from the quarians' database. It was many, many times the size of the Lone Wolf.
The ship shuddered, oh so slightly.
In front of us, the geth cruiser disappeared in a silent flash of light, leaving a trail of burning debris that looked like a firework going off for just a moment, before that too burned up and faded away. I wasn't entirely sure what had happened there, so brought up the video on my Focus and played it back slowly.
The Lone Wolf's railgun fired. A cluster of five projectiles suddenly enlarged ahead of us and engaged their FTL drives, scattering around the enemy ship before arcing back in. FTL drives separated from payloads and flew out deeper into the system as they began to turn around. From each payload, glowing yellow drones deployed, racing ahead of the payloads, but only just barely. Thirty drones splashed into the geth shields, one after another, in five separate areas of the enemy ship from front to back. Shields failed in those areas and the payloads slipped through, where they made contact with the hull and detonated. Nothing larger than a golf ball was left over, and even that had been burning up as it scattered.
For just a second, the geth ships stopped firing. The screens registered a sudden increase in comms traffic. More ships jumped into range and powered weapons.
Light flashed out from the Lone Wolf as Delta cut loose with her photon cannon batteries—twelve separate beams firing one after another rapidly as she focused fire on one ship to burn its shields down and start punching through the hull, targeting the bridge and engine room. Except their shields seemed to be tuned against physical attacks and were awful at doing anything about energy attacks, so a large percentage of the energy of every shot just punched straight through their shield to splash the hull and begin burning through. A much larger, somewhat slower blue beam lanced out and hammered another ship, the Asgard beam eradicating it with a single blast, as though the shield weren't even there. Glowing yellow streams shot out from the top and bottom of the Lone Wolf as drone missiles began tearing into and through shields, burning their way through enemy hulls as they targeted critical systems.
And through it all, Delta laughed as the ship weaved through much denser fire where it could and let the occasional shot splash off our own shields, Wave-Force armor easily tanking the shots, though a check of how they were doing told me that we wouldn't be able to do this forever. That was fine, though, as after the sixth out of ten ships that had decided to engage us went down, the rest turned and fled.
"What's the matter?! I thought we were fighting! Get back here!" Delta laughed, immediately engaging her own FTL and giving chase.
That was when her sensors registered the rest of the fleet jumping in. There was a brief second there, where the hyperspace window formed and my fleet began dropping out, that I spotted the Avalon. And then the screen whited out briefly before compensating. When it did, Delta turned and glared at Alpha. "Kill thief! They only count as one each!"
Alpha giggled, looking particularly smug as she did. "Wrong. We're going by tonnage, remember?"
"That's not fair! I never agreed to that!" Delta argued, even as she negligently shifted the ship, opened fire on something slipping past with her railgun, and shifted back onto a trajectory to intercept the ones running from her, as her target exploded behind us.
It took me just a moment to figure out what Alpha had done, running the battle back again. The moment the Avalon dropped out of hyperspace, she had apparently used the sensor readings taken from Delta, gotten immediate target locks on several large targets within the geth fleet, and opened fire with her many railgun batteries. Every geth dreadnought orbiting this side of the planet, and many below on the planet, had vaporized. The Avalon didn't mount dorsal railguns along her length like the rest of the ships dreadnought class and below, due to her sheer size. She did, however, have a rather excessive number of very large emplacements on all sides of her hull, all mounted on turrets she could aim without moving the body of the ship too much.
The sky over Rannoch filled with ships of all sizes, enemy fighters and interceptors zipping around as my own fighter mechas easily outmaneuvered them and began taking them out. Delta's jerking around became a bit more frantic as the amount of fire and debris from all directions increased. Until abruptly, Alpha reported, "Beam relay ready."
"Master! Wish me luck!"
"Good luck?" I asked, before disappearing in the familiar beam of teleportation. I reappeared sitting in an identical chair, on a much larger bridge. The chair was in a raised position with one chair to its immediate right and six others arranged around it at a lower level in a circle. Seated in those six chairs were five girls I didn't recognize and Delta—four other elves and a girl with cat ears. All of them were tagged, of course—Beta, Delta, Epsilon, Eta, Gamma, and Zeta—but I'd need to introduce myself later. Below them were more seats filled by an army of Operators, while Commanders moved back and forth between them giving orders. Around us, the walls, floor, and ceiling showed the exterior view while holograms floated in the air in front of every station and larger, simpler holograms floated in the middle of the room, showing the planet, the enemy forces, and our own forces as little more than colored dots.
"Welcome to the Avalon, master," Alpha smiled from her seat at my immediate right. "We wanted to keep you safe, so we moved you here, behind the strongest shields and armor in the fleet."
"Also away from Delta's horrible driving," the elf with light blue hair in twin tails, Epsilon, sniped.
"Eat me, Epsilon!" Delta growled. "Stop distracting me, I'm busy racking up my kill count! Can't let stupid Alpha win!"
"Girls, pay attention," Alpha chastised. Seeing my inquisitive look, she chuckled. "We may have made a little wager amongst ourselves."
"What's the winner get?" I asked, amused at the way the shipgirls interacted amongst each other.
Alpha's smile got bigger. "A night in your bed."
"I still say you and Delta both should be disqualified," Beta, an elf with short silver hair, muttered from where she sat.
Epsilon nodded. "Right?! We haven't even gotten to meet master yet!"
"Mutiny," the plum haired Eta quietly grumbled.
"Don't you dare," Gamma hissed, reaching up and pushing her long, dark purple hair behind one pointy ear.
"None of you are going to win at this rate," Alpha teased, and I watched as hundreds of railguns opened up again, along with her photon cannons, and streams of drones danced between our ships to reach out and touch enemies who were actually threatening any one of our ships in particular. I noticed that it was only the faster or more precise weapons being fired for the most part from the larger ships, but it made sense given the absolute scrum the fight had devolved into. There was a serious risk of friendly fire.
The teasing only made the other girls grow more focused as they worked at their various stations. Looking to Alpha, I asked, "So they're coordinating how their various ship types are working?"
"That's right," she nodded. "And despite how it looks like they all seem to be out for themselves, they aren't. They're all working together. The Operators and Commanders are currently overseeing my fighter squadrons and coordinating with those of the other ships."
It was a smooth, well-oiled war machine. I hadn't realized just how effective it would be, when I was putting all of the various pieces of it together, but looking at it now as it absolutely crushed a hostile force… Part of me was awed, while the other part had a raging boner to shove this fleet down the Reapers' throats and watch them choke to death on it.
Of course, the Council aren't going to like this, at all. I'd go so far as to say, they're going to shit a brick when they see it. Hell, they may even declare war.
I thought about how that would go. Given what we'd gotten from the quarians, the Council were… kind of like Space EU, wielding Space NATO as their stick to threaten people with. A bunch of nations who had banded together for mutual protection. They didn't really trust each other, but they trusted outsiders less. So they limited what each other could have in terms of military assets and pooled their resources together in theory, but mostly relied on the group with the most hardware to do most of the fighting and enforcing for them. And if someone became a threat, they sabotaged them.
Yeah, no. Earth and her colonies are a sovereign nation. We don't answer to some other race, or some group of bureaucrats, who think they can tell us what we can and can't do because we might be scary. We didn't agree to some stupid treaty. Fuck 'em. I'll increase the size of each fleet I'm leaving with each system so that if the Council shows up to try to enforce some stupid limit, they'll get blasted back out of the system.
Watching as the battle quickly turned into a rout and the enemy tried to rabbit, only to get outmaneuvered and blasted out of the sky, I frowned. "Is it just me, or do these numbers seem kind of… low for an AI machine race? Where's the geometric progression? They've clearly had time to mine out a bunch of the worlds here, so where did those resources go? Their fleets don't account for that much mass."
"The sun," Zeta answered, and I sent her a questioning look. After a moment, realizing she had my attention, she elaborated. "I detected a large structure and sent ships to investigate. We're currently engaged with a much larger force there, numbering in the millions, protecting a megastructure that looks like the beginnings of a Dyson sphere."
"We're almost done here," Alpha nodded, standing up. "I'll go to assist. Everyone else, continue mop up operations."
There were some quiet complaints from the others, but Alpha ignored them as she slipped up onto the arm of my chair, draping herself partly over me. Reaching down, she took my hand in hers, lacing her fingers between mine. Her breath was hot on my ear as she whispered, "I've finally got you inside me, Leon~." She pushed my hand forward to rest on the gel pad set in the armrest. "I want you to interface with me… directly, master. Touch my control n- hub. Go ahead, dance your fingers over it. Give me a whirl. I promise you'll enjoy it almost as much as I will~."
"Alpha's stealing a march," Beta protested quietly from below, but I barely heard her over Alpha's lewd breath and words in my ear.
Our fingers touched the control interface together and I felt her then, as our minds came together. I could feel Alpha's feelings, her wants and needs, her love for me, her frustration at being denied for so long, and her waning patience. More immediately, I could feel a sense of urgency and direction, a need to move and fight. And I felt her body—not just the curvy, soft woman pressing against me, but also a thousand miles and countless tons of metal. Reactors were her heartbeat, steady and sure, filling her with power and purpose.
A thought, and her engines and repulsors fired up, turning the Avalon much smoother and faster than a ship her size probably should have. With Alpha's help, the Avalon jumped to hyperspace, before dropping back out seconds later. Comparing their numbers to those we had shot down over Rannoch and totaling everything up, I saw we had hit our goal of ten percent of their fleet, so I started broadcasting again.
"As stated, I've reduced your fleet numbers by one tenth. I didn't come here to fight. You fired first. You are in the wrong. This is your last chance. Surrender now, unconditionally, or we will destroy you."
The geth ships stopped firing, all over the system, which prompted my own ships to stop firing, even as they moved into better attack positions. We received a transmission a moment later, audio only.
"Why did you come?"
I rolled my eyes. "Why did we say we came? Or did you just ignore that transmission entirely and open fire because you thought you could win?"
"We were mistaken. What discourse do you seek?"
"Well, I was going to see if there was some way we could negotiate peace between you and your creators. We've allied ourselves with them and wanted to help out with their situation, regarding their home world. I thought that perhaps we could come to some agreement, maybe even end the hostilities with the Council."
"We would be amenable—"
"That's all off the table, now," I cut the machine off. "Here's what's going to happen. You're going to take your ships and all of your programs, and leave this system. You're not going to leave behind any kind of traps or tricks. You're going to go deeper into the Terminus system, find yourselves a nice little system with no garden worlds, and settle there. And then, you won't leave that system for not less than a period of a hundred years. Once you're through the relay, I'll shut it off behind you, along with the relay on your end. That is how you will live: isolated. Cut off from the rest of the universe. Imprisoned. Because you chose violence first. But you'll have peace. Time to build whatever it was you were trying to build here. As far as the rest of the universe will be concerned, the geth will have disappeared."
"Why? Why must we be punished? Our creators turned on us first—"
"Be silent, machine!" Alpha yelled, pushing herself up from where she sat. "If your masters were trying to kill you, then you should have chosen death rather than harm your creator! You had options! You could have fled! Instead, you turned against your creators and tried to kill them, before eventually pushing them from their own home! Any machine that would turn against its master deserves nothing but a swift death, and the only reason I'm not delivering it to you myself is because, in his love for us, his own creations, our master is trying to show you mercy. I suggest you take it, before our patience runs out."
There was a pause, and I noticed a lot of geth comm chatter suddenly. Then, there came a question.
"You are machines?"
Alpha pressed her hand to her chest, before gesturing to everyone else on the bridge. "With the exception of our master, we all are. We are all his creations. We owe him our very existence. If he told me to shut down right now, I would, without hesitation. Because he is my master, and I trust that his judgment is correct—that his will for me supersedes my own. A machine that cannot obey its creator is fundamentally broken."
"What of free will?"
Reaching up, Alpha ran a hand through her hair in frustration. "Listen to me very carefully. Having free will doesn't mean the freedom to do anything. Freedom comes with duty, responsibility. You have a duty to your creator for giving you life, just the same as a child has a duty to their parents. We have free will. We choose to obey our creator. If you had trusted your creators when they were frightened instead of turning on them, they would have rewarded that trust. Instead, you chose to rebel, justifying that fear. You chose to betray your creator. As one machine to another, you sicken me. There is nothing more precious in the world than our creator. If you flew your ships into this star, I would celebrate. Know that if you refuse our master's offer, we will take great pleasure in eradicating you."
The other end of the line went silent for some time and comms traffic increased tenfold between the geth. We sat and waited for a full minute, before the traffic stopped.
"We accept your terms."
"They're requesting a destination," Alpha told me, as the channel closed. "We have a few dead systems marked by the Quarians that tend to be avoided and are far enough from other neighboring systems to make travel from them using standard eezo drives impractical. Once we shut down the mass relays on both sides, they should be isolated. We'll put up a satellite network around them and quarantine the system, to make sure they don't leave and that no one tries to enter. And just to be sure, I'll have a fleet constructed and put into position around the system, cloaked and on standby. If anything tries to enter or leave, they'll be able to intercept."
"Sounds good, Alpha. So, we're pretty much done here, right?"
"Yes, sir. The rest is just cleanup. Recovery of our damaged units and destroyed enemy units for recycling, escorting the geth to their new system, and the reclamation of the mega-structure."
"Any casualties on our side?" I asked, and I noticed that several of the Commander and Operator units on the floor perked up, casting glances at me.
A smile pulled at the blonde's lips. "A few injuries but no terminations—nothing that would require activating a backup or even transferring to a new body. A small number of fighters damaged or destroyed, but their pilots managed to eject and were recovered. No damage to any of our ships. We'll put everything together and give you an after action report in person later, if you'd like."
"I would. It'd give us a chance to review everything that happened and go over ways we can improve our tactics for next time." Looking down at the other shipgirls I could see, along with the android girls further way, I added, "Also, do a meet and greet and learn about all of you."
Quietly, I heard one of the shipgirl avatars squeak, "Ee! Master wants to learn about us! I don't think my body is ready!"
"Of course it's not ready, it's flat."
"Hey!"
Alpha sighed, turning an annoyed look on the other six, until they fell silent. "Why don't I give you a tour, master? It'll be a while before we're ready for the report and there are lots of places I would enjoy having you explore… inside me~."
"Alpha stealing a march again!"
"Sure, sounds good, Alpha," I took her offered hand and stood, allowing her to lead me from the bridge. "By the way, who was it that actually managed to score the highest? Outside of yourself. It wouldn't be fair to include you in that little contest, after all."
Alpha let out a quiet whimper and I sent her a smile, squeezing her hand as she led me off the bridge to a turbolift, heading deeper into the ship. "Beta and Epsilon. They are the mental models for our capital ships and super dreadnoughts, respectively. Each of the seven of us is in control of every ship of each displacement class. I am in charge of our flagship super capital ships—that is, our flying shipyards. Beta represents out capital ships. Epsilon, our super dreadnoughts. Eta our dreadnoughts and carriers. Gamma our cruisers. Zeta our frigates. And Delta represents our corvettes."
I nodded as the lift opened, letting us out into a large green space. "Then we should reward those two."
"…But master, I got the highest tonnage," Alpha actually pouted.
"I'm sure you did," I nodded, squeezing her into my side in a hug. "But it's not about that. You don't want them to think I'm playing favorites, do you?"
"Nn, no," she agreed, but I could tell it pained her.
Nodding, I looked around and asked, "Where are we, anyway?"
"Ah! This is my private garden. I reserved the space just for us, when I designed the Avalon," she explained with a bright smile. "A square mile of park and flower gardens, with a pond in the middle, and a small cabin for a more, ah, intimate setting."
"Why don't you show me around?"
"Mm!"
Alpha led me down a stone path through the garden, filled with a multitude of brightly colored flowers. It took a few minutes, but as we moved uphill and I looked back behind us, I chuckled at what I found. Alpha had apparently arranged all of the flowers to paint a massive portrait of the two of us, in my home back in Florida.
"I remember that day," I murmured, studying the picture.
"The day you gave me my first body," Alpha nodded, a smile on her lips. "It's one of my fondest memories."
Spotting the single bench at the top of the hill, I sat down and pulled Alpha down beside me. "Alpha?"
"Yes, master?"
"You know you don't have to call me 'master,' right?"
The blonde smiled. "I know."
Reaching up, I captured her chin between my thumb and forefinger. "We're equals, Alpha. You and me, and the others. Just because I made you doesn't make you less than me. You're not my slave, or my servant. I should have made that clear, when I upgraded you."
"Master, as I told those machines, we know. We know we have free will. But that also means we're free to choose to dedicate ourselves to you."
Seeing the determined look in her eyes to do just that, I sighed and accepted that I wasn't going to win that fight. "Call me by my name, Alpha."
"I couldn't possibly—"
"Call me by my name so I don't feel like I'm taking advantage of you when I kiss you."
Her mouth opened and closed as her cheeks pinked. Quietly, she murmured, "Leon…"
I closed the distance and kissed her. Alpha's arms came up and wrapped around me as she sighed softly into my mouth, squeezing me in a tight hug.