Chapter 82
A statuesque human woman with dark hair cut in a razor bob clung to a support pillar as the ship she was aboard shuddered. It was currently under attack, however the explosive rounds were not colliding with the ship directly. Despite the lack of damage to the hull, she cowered in fear not only of the damage but also of the Batarian slavers stumbling around trying to remain upright with assault rifles in their hands.
One of the Batarians went to belt out an order but he was interrupted a sharp jolt followed by the deafening sound of grinding metal. An Asari collapsed next to her and began sobbing in terror. The human woman bent to take her hands and help her up, they both remained low to the ground when they heard a clearly human voice yelling "FLASH BANG!" The human leapt to cover the Asari with the op half of her body and soon the cabin was filled with impossibly bright light and a deeply concussive noise.
"Goddess what was that!?" The asari exclaimed.
"It was an alliance flash bang grenade, I believe we're being rescued. Stay down." The human said, not understanding why she could still see and hear normally. She had little time to ponder that however as a group comprised of Humans, Quarians and Krogan burst through a recently breached airlock, incapacitating the Batarian slavers.
"Clear!" one of the Quarian soldiers shouted, when the leader of the squad, a towering Krogan began speaking
"Please stay low to the ground. As soon as we can we'll get you off this ship where you will have access to medical attention, food and new clothing. You're safe in here for now but we still need to deal with the rest of the crew." The Krogan sergeant said.
The crowd murmured to each other, marveling that the rumors they'd heard were true, that this new alliance they'd heard about were actively hunting down slavers and freeing slaves. Moments later a hologram appeared of a human being dressed in a business suit, being emanated from the invading ship's emitters.
"Hello friends. I am the AI called Rothschild, I promise all of your questions will be answered as soon as we can guarantee your safety, in the meantime don't be alarmed, there will be Geth platforms boarding momentarily who are fully equipped to render medical aid, and with your permission, safely remove the Batarian slave chips from your bodies." Rothschild said. The slaves slowly rose to their feet and stared at the AI, barely registering the Geth platforms skittering into the rooms. These new platforms were much smaller than regular military platforms and instead of two arms had a multitude of medical tools attached, along with several tanks of medigel, one for each of the species aboard.
"Strange, I've never seen Rothschild serious like that.." The human woman said. Rothschild snapped his gaze to her and carefully approached.
"Hello, you. I'm guessing you were abducted recently?" He asked, gesturing towards the woman's still clean looking hair cut."
"I think... actually I don't remember. God I don't remember anything before a few hours ago." The human woman said, alarm obvious on her face. Rothschild peered at her for curiously long, his expression unreadable.
"You should definitely be seen by one of our doctors as soon as possible. You might be suffering from a head injury. Do you remember your name?" Rothschild asked, his face set in stone.
"It's... Edi." She said.
Thousands of light years away, Shepard, Grak and Ash were stalking down the streets of the Capital of Tuchanka, their target far enough ahead of them they thought they were in the clear.
"Grak, go left and cut them off from behind. Ash block their escape on the right. I'll go up the middle." Shepard whispered to her colleagues. They both nodded and followed her orders. The target turned and Shepard dove behind cover just in time that she wasn't noticed. Suddenly her target gasped as Grak made his appearance known so the target bolted to the right, but stopped immediately seeing Ash standing there with her arms crossed, slightly leaning against the alleyway. While the target was distracted, Shepard crept up behind them, and reached around from the back, lifting them off the ground.
"Gotcha!" She yelled as the juvenile Krogan in her arms squealed in delight. Shepard started tickling shin between the plates on their head and the Krogan collapsed to the ground giggling uncontrollably.
"No fair, you two are N7s and Grak is the fastest Krogan alive." The juvenile Krogan jokingly complained.
"Narg, Krogan don't make excuses, you know better than that." Grak playfully admonished as Shepard set the kid down and laughed and ran off back to the compound. Ash came over with a smile on her face as the three set back to the landing pad where the rest of her crew were restlessly awaiting the arrival of the Normandy.
She immediately made her way over to Tali, kissing her before sitting across from her at their table. Tali was fidgeting anxiously, she'd expressed the previous day her concern about what changes had been made to the Normandy during the overhaul.
"Tali, you've got to relax. Do you honestly think our omni-tools wouldn't be ringing off the hook from Joker if they'd done anything bad?" Shepard asked.
"No, it's just that.. Jane it took months to balance the power draw on the Normandy's core, Adams Targ and I stayed up all night for a week straight making sure the manifolds held while we moved in stealth. Alliance engineers are great, but until you've served on the ship you will never know its needs." Tali responded.
"Don't worry, if anything is broken I'm sure Targ will hold them down while you pummel them into jelly." Shepard said, grinning.
"Damn straight." Tali responded. They both looked up as the Uvenk walked up to them.
"Good morning Uvenk." Shepard said, and gestured to an available seat. Uvenk gladly sat at it.
"Shepard, Tali. Got some news for you." He said, grinning.
"What's that?" Tali asked. Uvenk said nothing but pointed up. Shepard and Tali looked up to see something that made them both smile.
The Normandy came to rest gracefully on the landing pad, and the first thing they noticed were the new lines going from the nose to the tail and down the wings. It almost appeared to be a new paint job from a distance until you saw they were glowing slightly red. There were also a few new hard points at different positions on the hull, the ones between the thrusters on the wings featured some dangerous looking particle beam emitters.
As they approached they noticed the exterior of the hull had been completely redone, and when you approached it was possible to see nearly invisible polygons embedded on the surface that shimmered as you changed position. There were what appeared to be two new openings towards the rear underneath the wings leading into the docking bay. They were sealed by heavy looking hatches. Finally the external shield emitters appeared to have been replaced by much larger ones.
The gang plank dropped open almost instantaneously, which was a considerable improvement compared to the agonizingly slow rate at which they used to open. Joker came hobbling excitedly out, waving at Shepard, Tali and Uvenk.
"Captain Shepard! Look at her! LOOK AT HER!" Joker yelled with a goofy grin on his face, gesturing wildly at the ship.
"I thought she was beautiful before." Shepard said.
"Last one in is a rotten egg!" Tali squealed and bolted for the ship.
"NOT COOL ZORAH!" Shepard bellowed, chasing after her. The remainder of the crew had filtered in behind them and were chuckling at them.
"Well I'm not much of a navy man, but since I outrank all of you and your CO couldn't be bothered." Uvenk said, standing at attention.
"ALL ABOARD!" He bellowed and the rest of the crew saluted him and grinned as they more casually followed their commanding officer.
The interior of the crew deck had changed little, except there were more conduits running along overhead. The Geth had lobbied for the removal of all glass windows, having them replaced with ultra-high refresh rate displays given their doctrine of windowless ships. A study had been done and a large number of Alliance and especially older Quarian flotilla vessels that had suffered structural integrity failures did so along open view ports. Seats with restraints were also added at every station to avoid injuries when inertial dampening failed. The cockpit had been closed off with a privacy door because Joker essentially lived there and his chair had been converted to be able to recline fully and basically convert to a bed.
The CIC had been upgraded with improved holographic emitters so the galaxy map was now ten times more detailed than it had been previously, there were stations for the XO, and a tactical station adjacent to the captain's chair that she suspected would see very little use since it was hard to pry Garrus out of the main battery access chamber.
Engineering had been heavily overhauled, there was now a smaller backup reactor adjacent to the primary reactor and redundancies were added to most systems. With the flip of a switch all systems could be rerouted to emergency power in case of damage to the core It also housed a server room with an independent cooling system that housed nearly a million Geth.
The most massive change had occurred in the docking bay. The old Kodiak had been replaced by a pair of slightly smaller, more efficient shuttles known as "Blackbears" and suspended above from purpose-built docking clamps were two inferno fighters to act as an escort when needed in battle. These were positioned directly over the new doors they'd noted that were installed on the belly of the ship. Along the sides of the docking bay were a dozen cylindrical chambers roughly double the size of the average Krogan each and finally in the empty space on each side of the elevator stood a dozen dormant Geth platforms. Two primes, four stalkers and six standard infantry models.
After an hour or so of exploration, the crew were assembled in the newly expanded conference/war room to be briefed on the new stats and features. The Normandy now featured primary and secondary shielding, along with an experimental visual cloak adapted from the models used on inferno fighters and Geth hunters. The entire ship could be rendered entirely invisible, both visually and on sensors for 20 minutes without overheating the sinks, without the visual cloak the standard stealth systems would last 40% longer than previously. The lines on the outer hull vastly improved the efficiency of their heat sink venting, also when the ship drops out of stealth and the heat sinks are saturated it provides an angry, intimidating red glow that made Joker all kinds of happy.
Crew quarters had been expanded marginally because the Normandy would now host at least two fighter pilots one of which would also act as a shuttle pilot given the similarity in how they handled.
Finally the weapons had also been redone. The spinal cannon survived relatively intact, power distribution had been significantly improved, and a number of previously difficult to access utility panels had been relocated to far more convenient positions. The biggest change were the new wing-mounted weapons. Two of the positions were armed with particle beams and the other two were equipped with plasma cannons. These could be switched to different load outs depending on the mission. The hard points could also be used to deploy additional fighters, and assisted with bringing life pods and rescue shuttles under the aegis of Normandy's improved Normandy was now a much more versatile and deadly war machine, and the crew were itching to take it out for a test drive.
The crew chose to stay aboard, however Tali and Shepard disembarked briefly to say goodbye to Wrex, Bakara and Uvenk and thank them for hosting them. Wrex looked up at the new war machine with an unmasked look of raw envy, and Uvenk laughed at him, gently shoving Shepard back towards her ship.
"Go play with your new toy, Shepard, you know how to get ahold of us." Uvenk said, Shepard gladly agreed, saluting the Krogan heads of state.